Month: July 2021

Ronald Reagan, the most beloved president of the modern Republican Party (before Donald J. Trump, anyway) had a very famous saying:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. “

It was a clever comment that the leaders of the conservative movement never took seriously, of course. The Republicans were always big boosters of first responders, cops and the military who are generally the ones who literally say “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” But the anti-government sentiment worked well for the wealthy benefactors who paid these politicians handsomely to keep their taxes low and regulations scarce.

They also used that message to persuade voters that the government was trying to oppress them with everything from creeping communism to affirmative action and women’s rights. In other words, everything these people already hated was blamed on Big Government by the very people who ran it. The subtext of much of this was race, of course, as the cynical conservatives managed to convince people that the government was doling out handouts to the “undeserving” (and I think you know who they were talking about) in the form of welfare, while the hard-working Real Americans were paying the freight and getting the shaft.

Over time they were able to demagogue the issue so thoroughly that average Republicans routinely voted against their own interests out of a reflexive hostility to anything the government tried to do (other than wage war, which they loved.) When the financial crisis hit in 2007 and the government was required to intervene or risk the whole economic system going into free fall, it was clear just how successful they had been.

Almost immediately, a rebellion against the government helping “irresponsible” homeowners became the rallying cry of the anti-government right and the Tea Party was born. The GOP knew that government intervention was necessary but they made sure that the banks and the wealthy were taken care of while forcing everything else to be done on the cheap. The result was a very slow recovery and long-term damage to the average American household, which worked out well for them politically and further discredited government in the minds of many Americans.

The Obamacare wars flowed naturally from that, with half the country hysterical at the idea the government was going to choose their doctors and decide who lives or dies. Their fears were stoked by right-wing politicians who suspected that the program might work and restore people’s faith in the government to deliver needed benefits. Then where would they be?

There were dozens of conspiracy theories floating around from “death panels” to implanted microchips, to a giant government database that was going to house every personal piece of health information on every American. All of this inane resistance was fueled by the right’s decades-long anti-government propaganda campaign.

Fast forward to 2020 and the first global pandemic in a hundred years with an incompetent narcissist in charge. Between his ineptitude and self-serving desire to pretend that the crisis didn’t exist and the years of mistrust in the government, the U.S. ended up with an epic disaster and half the population refusing to acknowledge it existed. Today, we’re facing a situation in which tens of millions of people are refusing vaccines because they believe in daft conspiracy theories or are convinced the government is lying to them even in the face of over 600,000 deaths.

Throughout all this, most Republican officials have either been actively hostile to medical experts and their advice or they have been strangely passive, simply shrugging their shoulders as if this is just a normal part of life and everyone just needs to buck up. They refused to wear masks and social distance, they’ve egged on protesters and encouraged the right-wing media, which has been feeding snake oil, lies and conspiracy theories to their voters since the pandemic began.

Fox News has been particularly egregious in its objectively pro-COVID propaganda. Their headliners Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have all taken slightly different approaches. Carlson has gone with his patented dark conspiracy-mongering, playing off of the right’s new “Deep State” narrative to suggest that the government is forcing people to take vaccines against their will and that the shots are killing people. Ingraham has been an inveterate pusher of quacks and bogus cures while blaming it all on immigrants as usual while Hannity has been playing both sides, telling people to take the virus seriously in one breath and skepticism in the other. (One suspects this relates to his close relationship with Donald Trump, who similarly twists himself into a pretzel on this subject, wanting credit for the vaccines but being unable to buck the conspiracy addled anti-vax sentiment of his followers.)

Most of the rest of the right-wing media have followed the same trends — at least until this week.

Suddenly, we have been seeing members of Fox News breaking with their stars and making heartfelt PSA’s exhorting people to get the vaccines, something we’ve never seen before:

Newsmax CEO, and friend of Trump, Chris Ruddy wrote a glowing op-ed complimenting President Biden on his vaccine program. One of the House leaders, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La, a vaccine holdout, very ostentatiously got vaccinated and told anyone who’d listen that they should do it as well. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis actually went out and urged his constituents to get vaccinated now that his state is being overrun with COVID. Again.

The question on everyone’s mind is, “What happened?”

Obviously, it’s tied to the new surge of cases as the highly transmissible Delta variant runs through the population of unvaccinated people who are, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, heavily tilted toward Republicans. As of the end of last month, 86% of Democrats had at least one shot compared to 52% of Republicans. And it’s not getting any better.

Have they seen polling indicating that they are losing ground with their own voters over their lack on engagement? Are they suddenly worried that their base is going to die and leave them short of needed votes? It’s hard to say. But I think MSNBC’s Chris Hayes was on to something when he suggested that they had thought they could stick with the base and its anti-vax, anti-Big Government attitude about this (continuing to reap the rewards that brings to them politically) and let Joe Biden’s administration do the heavy lifting of getting their states vaccinated — at which point they would swoop in and say what a terrible job he did. (This works for them every time a GOP administration leaves the country in shambles and the Democrats have to clean up their mess.)

The problem is that the virus is spreading, restrictions have been lifted and the Republican base is refusing to save itself. The anti-government chickens have finally come home to roost — and they’re killing Republicans. 

Shhh, I was told we need to respect people’s’ desire to be idiots and extend the pandemic to own the libs. https://t.co/6fWZReKBoj

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) July 23, 2021

Yesterday the media went a little bit cuckoo about the Delta strain. Here’s Andy Slavitt with some common sense:

COVID UPDATE: What’s changed and what’s stated the same since I wrote the tweet that said vaccinated people have far greater things to worry about then the Delta variant?

And what would I say now?

Let’s look at what’s changed?

We have significant growth in cases. So far those are largely among unvaccinated people. And serious cases are almost entirely among unvaccinated people.

There are areas of the country where there are low vaccination levels that are experiencing the largest growth in cases? Hospitalizations are following.

While we can’t say for sure, the death rates look to be dramatically lower given vaccination protection in the elderly.

Still there are 100 million people estimated to have no immune protection either from a vax or prior infection & we know Delta is twice as contagious.

Delta appears likely to quickly rip through communities largely impacting the unvaccinated.

How many of the unvaccinated will be infected? Not 100 million.

There was an odd effect in India the first to experience Delta. It ripped through quickly and died just as quickly.

We should watch carefully what happens in the UK— where there are vaccination levels close to the US and vaccinated people are so far well protected.

Two doses of the mRNA produces plenty of antibodies & T-cell & B-cell memory.

As awful as Delta is to unvaccinated people, in a weird way, it has helped vaccinated people by out-competing variants that evade the vaccine. Delta attaches much more easily to cells but it is easier for the vaccine.

So far more contagious has meant easier for the vaccine.

Vaccinated people should view Delta as a slight difference as well. UK studies which are the closest thing we have suggest instead of 95% protection against infection, it may be closer to 88%.

A good way to think about that is it’s 10% less protective.

Here’s a decent analogy. A vaccine is like an umbrella. It keeps us from getting wet. Not perfectly. But mostly.

With Delta, the rain is the slanty kind that makes you 10% more likely to get wet.

Still, bring a little wet is ok. Easy to dry off in this analogy. What you don’t want to be is soaked (or being hospitalized would be the analogy). And the umbrella prevents that.

So what does it mean to be close to 10% more exposed. Should it mean you wear a mask for example?

Well you could always add a rain jacket if it’s really pouring. In other words if indoors around a lot of unvaccinated people for a long while, it could help.

My friend the scientist @EricTopol says it this way: just because the vaccines are great doesn’t mean you need to constantly stress test them.

Plenty of vaccinated people live in areas w lots of unvaccinated people & with case spread. Wearing a mask can’t hurt.

What is not the case is that evidence of breakthrough cases are concerning. They are news because they are surprising to people but in many cases they are found in routine testing without symptoms.

So if you’re in the Olympic village or on a sports team or traveling, you could find you’re testing positive as your immune system fires off.

And that will happen 10% more now. As will mild breakthrough cases. And presumably hospitalizations & deaths.

So instead of 99.3% of people who die being unvaccinated, it could well be 98.5%.

Your chances of being vaccinated & getting sick with COVID are still very very low. Not zero & slightly higher.

Worth taking precautions in areas with COVID & with unvaxxed people in the community. But remarkably low risk.

OK. Maybe vaccinated people are safe but is it possible with Delta that you could be infected, not know it, and pass it along to someone who does get sick?

Not great data on this with Delta but scientists consider that a very infrequent scenario.

So what do I think of my tweet weeks back where I say Delta is very low risk for vaccinated people and the most important thing they can do is begin to get their lives back?

On the one hand, science supports the ability of vaccinated people to get back the most important things in their lives. If Delta is a risk, it is a very low one.

Still…

Still most vaccinated people I know don’t feel like things can feel normal while cases are growing, even if it’s largely among unvaxxed people.

And of course, many people can’t get immune protection right now— kids & people who are immunosuppressed.

Psychologically for those who have it, the feeling of safety after a year of fear is a vital psychological respite. So is hugging our family & returning some of the normal rhythms of life. Delta shouldn’t keep people from any of it.

But there’s also no doubt that the unwillingness of so many to get vaccinated & Delta combined should make us all more cautious.

And getting back to life can be done while wearing the occasional mask & balanced with plenty of empathy & concern for others.

Originally tweeted by Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) on July 23, 2021.

As regular readers know, I am irked at the unvaccinated. The shots are free, available and super-effective and if so many people hadn’t refused to get them, this wouldn’t be happening. However, those of us who are vaccinated really don’t need to panic. I have no problem wearing a mask indoors with strangers. I hate them, but I’m happy to wear them if it helps. But I’m not terrified of ending up in the hospital as I was last year at this time because I am vaccinated and the odds are very low that I’ll get it and if I do that I will be one of the very rare unlucky ones who get very sick. It could happen. But now we’re talking about the kind of long odds that will make unable to leave the house if you start thinking about them.

But this vaccine resistance is not fair to the people who can’t be vaccinated like kids, the immunosuppressed and people with serious illnesses. It’s just plain immoral, I’m sorry. If people really can’t get access, that’s one thing. But I think we know that this surge is not being driven by those people. It’s being driven by people who simply haven’t done the responsible thing.

Having said that, I think the media is starting to get hysterical about “breakthrough” cases by not making it very clear that they are rising because there is community spread (by those unvaccinated people) and that most of them are being discovered with routine testing, not illness.

The point is that this is spreading and people should wear masks and be cautious, especially if they have kids or other vulnerable family members who can’t take the vaccine. But really, it’s not an emergency for the vaccinated. It’s a damning inconvenience and a small risk.

And it shouldn’t be happening, not with all the vaccines we have available. It’s shameful.

A frustrated President Abraham Lincoln once snidely commented on Gen. George B. McClellan’s reluctance to engage Confederate forces massed near Washington: “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

One hundred fifty-nine years later, President Joe Biden declared the G.O.P.’s passage of laws restricting access to voting the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.” The question is, Is Biden up to engaging in that fight? Or does he wish to be remembered like McClellan?

On Thursday, a group of 150 civil rights groups delivered a letter to Biden insisting he bring to bear the clout of the presidency to pass both the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act “by whatever means necessary.”

To date, Biden seems to believe gentle nudging, appeals to bipartisanship, and magical thinking will do it somehow. Those on the pointy end of about 30 new laws across the country that restrict ballot access have a very different perspective (New York Times):

Mr. Biden, a veteran of the Senate who for decades has believed in negotiating on the particulars of voting rights legislation, has faced calls to push Democratic senators to eliminate the filibuster, which would allow the two major voting bills proposed by the party to pass with a simple majority. The president and his advisers have repeatedly pointed out that he does not have the votes within his own party to pass federal voting legislation, and does not have the power to unilaterally roll back the filibuster even if he supported doing so.

But voting rights groups say that Mr. Biden is not expending sufficient political capital or using the full force of his bully pulpit to persuade Congress. They point to the contrast between his soaring language — “Jim Crow on steroids,” he has called the G.O.P. voting laws — and his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster.

“As you noted in your speech, our democracy is in peril,” the groups said in their letter. “We certainly cannot allow an arcane Senate procedural rule to derail efforts that a majority of Americans support.”

The Biden administration, sources say, believes Democrats can out-organize voter suppression. And perhaps that’s true. But it also echoes the same Beltway myopia that won Barack Obama a second term while losing Democrats 948 state legislative seats across the country (Ballotpedia):

Twenty-nine state legislative chambers in 19 states flipped from Democratic to Republican control compared to the start of Obama’s presidency. In ten states these flips resulted in the creation of Republican trifectas, where Republicans controlled both chambers as well as the governorship.

A senior adviser to Biden, Cedric Richmond, believes advocates have misinterpreted the administration’s position. The New York Times again:

“I think it’s very clear what he said,” Mr. Richmond said of the president’s speech in Philadelphia. “Which is: We’re going to have to meet this challenge in the courts, in the halls of Congress and in the streets.”

But in interviews, more than 20 civil rights leaders and voting rights advocates said that while they believed in Mr. Biden’s conviction to protect the right to vote, they thought his call for a “new coalition” of Americans to take up the issue was not what they needed from the White House.

Some advocates found this approach — the idea that the vaunted voter registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts that helped propel Mr. Biden to victory could be used against G.O.P. voting laws — naïve at best, signaling that the White House viewed the issue as simply an election challenge, rather than a moral threat to broad civil rights progress.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, wants to see Biden meet diverse people in Texas, In Arizona, and in West Virginia “to put a face on this issue.”

Nsé Ufot, the executive director of the New Georgia Project, tells the Times the administration’s talk of a “new coalition” isn’t enough. “And now we need them to do their jobs. I can’t write legislation. I can’t whip votes. I don’t have 47 years in that body, in the United States Senate. I’m not the president of that body. But they are.”

The White House needs to put its back into this effort. If President Biden does not want to use his bully pulpit, might they borrow it for a time?

Tax evasion is a lifestyle among the rich and famous. Paul Krugman mentions in his column that “one recent estimate is that more than 20 percent of the income of the top 1 percent goes unreported.”

The occasion is congressional Republicans balking at including more Internal Revenue Service enforcement funding in the infrastructure bill so the agency might collect more of what We The People are owed and not seeing in our Treasury balance: perhaps $500 billion or more per year. Those additional funds would help offset the shared cost of replacing the crumbling infrastructure on which those very untaxed private fortunes were made. But see, some of us never learned all we needed to in kindergarten.

Krugman is unsurprised that the 1 percent have Republican defenders in Congress. But they dare not make their usual “job creator” arguments about tax evasion, do they? He writes:

And who’s the constituency here? When a millionaire or billionaire evades taxes, this comes at everyone else’s expense: A bigger budget deficit might mean less room for social spending, but it also means less room for legal tax cuts. So everyone should be in favor of cracking down on tax cheats — everyone, that is, except the tax cheats themselves. You might even think that wealthy Americans who do pay what they owe, either because they have scruples or because they care about their reputations, would be especially angry at their peers who flout the rules.

Sure, the plumber offering you a discount for paying cash has similar motives, but the majority of working Americans who live for that Friday paycheck have less opportunity to cheat.

So tax evasion mainly involves business income — or, rather, “business” income, because it takes place via partnerships and other entities such as S corporations that are mainly accounting fictions rather than entities producing actual goods and services. There are some legitimate reasons these entities are allowed to exist, for example to help in retirement planning. But they also offer ways to hide income from the tax authorities: underreported cash inflows, exaggerated costs, personal perks — like the apartment the Trump Organization provided its chief financial officer — reported as business expenses rather than individual income.

But why defend that criminality whatever the color of the perpetrator’s collar?

Obviously some big tax cheats are also big political donors. What I’d suggest is that the cheats’ clout within the G.O.P. has actually increased as the party has gotten crazier.

There have always been wealthy Americans who dislike the right’s embrace of racial hostility and culture wars but have been willing to swallow their distaste as long as Republicans keep their taxes low. But as the G.O.P. has become more extreme — as it has become the party of election lies and violent insurrection — who among the wealthy is still willing to make that trade-off?

Some rich Americans have always been right-wing radicals. But as for the rest, the party’s base within the donor class presumably consists increasingly of those among the wealthy with the fewest scruples and the least concern for their reputations — who are precisely the kind of people most likely to engage in blatant tax evasion.

Such as the former chief executive whose family business is under criminal investigation for the same. Even in exile, the patron saint of tax cheats is the titular head of the Republican Party. If allegations are true, he and his family have spent a lifetime as tax cheats. G.O.P. legislators still in power have little incentive for angering that nest of vipers or the political donor class upon which they rely for retaining power.

Tax cheating supports politicians’ lifestyles, too. How many of our congressional millionaires launched their lawmaking careers with funds they and supporters unlawfully hid from the taxman?

Krugman concludes:

So maybe one way to understand the opposition to strengthening the I.R.S. is that it represents an unholy alliance between white supremacists and tax cheats. Is this country amazing, or what?

A little chuckle from Alexandra Petri is just what the doctor ordered:

How right, how right Leader Kevin McCarthy was to accuse Nancy Pelosi of playing politics with the Jan. 6 commission! That is the last thing we need in this commission: a one-sided, negative attitude toward the events of Jan. 6.

Suppose Rep. Jim Jordan did possibly strategize with President Donald Trump about how to overturn the election, and suppose Rep. Jim Banks did say, “Speaker Pelosi created the committee solely to malign conservatives & justify the Left’s authoritarian agenda” — all the more reason to have them closely in the fold on the commission! How do we expect to hear both sides with a commission comprising solely people who think the insurrection was a bad thing?

Why, as currently constituted, the commission will discover only negative things about the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 that had members of Congress cowering for their lives in the face of an unhinged mob. The members are probably just going to look into all the so-called horrors that occurred and try to find ways of preventing the events of Jan. 6 from happening again — a pathetic, narrow-minded view, when a good, well-rounded commission would consider whether they maybe should happen again, and how to encourage them

Trying to include Jordan on the commission was a step in the right direction, certainly, but not far enough. A better commission would include, at minimum, the QAnon Shaman, as well as that man who burst into Pelosi’s office and left her an enraged, misspelled note. This commission will hear testimony of Eugene Goodman’s heroism, the quick thinking that left him facing a mob alone. But a truly balanced commission would consider how scary it was for the mob, as well!

This will be closer to getting a real picture of all the parts of Jan. 6 that otherwise might have been overlooked. On the one hand, many of those who were there that day going about their jobs are still rattled and scarred. But on the other hand, people took a lot of great selfies. Not to mention all the free redecorating that occurred! These facts would have gotten lost in all this needless denunciation.

How can we possibly move on when we focus solely on holding the rioters accountable and spare no thought for the millions of voters whose careless casting of their ballots for Joe Biden created this mess? How can America possibly heal if we insist on seeing only the bad side of an attempt to stop the peaceful functioning of our democracy and threaten the entire legislative branch, and not also the nifty things about it, such as how creative the headgear was and how many of the insurrectionists have mothers who love them? Or how good it would be if Donald Trump were still president, and what a coward Mike Pence was, say. I bet the commission will not even spare a single second to ponder whether everyone who was wounded, traumatized or killed might not have been overreacting?

I am just devastated to find that we are going to have a body that will take such a one-sided, limited view of an event that, for all we know, might have been a good thing. How political! How small-minded, how parochial! Truly, they are letting the country down.

That is why I am so relieved the House Republicans will be opening their own investigation into the events of Jan. 6. How good it will be to hear both sides.

Trump’s narrative of January 6th has been all over the place. But he’s going back to his first instinct which is that it was a heroic, patriotic protest against the stealing of the election from America’s one true leader:

On Wednesday, The Washington Post published audio of an interview two Post reporters conducted in March with former president Donald Trump at his club in Florida. In it, he expresses obvious sympathy for the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a futile effort to derail the transition of presidential power.

It has been obvious since the day of the insurrection that Trump’s views of the rioters were not particularly hostile. A review of what he has said about the day since, though, makes that clear.

On Jan. 6, his comments to the rioters were generous and warm. For the final two weeks he was in office, his team managed one last burst of what has come to be known as Teleprompter Trump: Trump reading prepared remarks in an effort to establish a palatable narrative to which his team could point. Teleprompter Trump was usually contrasted with Twitter Trump, the Trump who posted unvarnished and honest opinions on social media, but there was no Twitter Trump after Jan. 6, because his accounts were shuttered out of concern that he’d foster more violence.

But since Jan. 20, Twitter Trump has reappeared in interviews, including with The Post’s team. And as the months have passed, Trump’s generous view of the rioters has become more obvious in his own telling — just as his party has similarly shifted toward increased support for those who engaged in political violence that day.

What Trump has said

Jan. 6, 2:12 p.m. Rioters enter the Capitol.

2:24 p.m. Shortly after Fox News airs an interview with a Trump supporter expressing frustration about Vice President Pence’s decision not to intervene in the certification of the electoral vote, Trump tweets:“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

2:24 p.m.

Around 2:30 p.m. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called Trump to ask him to tell the rioters to leave the building. After Trump first tried to blame antifa — perhaps based on a Washington Examiner report — McCarthy insisted that they were Trump supporters. This is how Trump reportedly responded:

l“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

2:38 p.m. Trump tweets.“Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

3:13 p.m. Trump tweets again.“I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”

4:17 p.m. After recording a few versions of comments, the White House releases a video of Trump in which he addresses the rioters.“I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”

6:01 p.m. Trump closes out the day with another tweet, even as the Capitol is still not entirely cleared.“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”Police radio communications synchronized with hours of footage show how failures of planning and preparation left police at the Capitol severely disadvantaged. (The Washington Post)

Jan. 7. The day after the riot, the White House released another video in which Trump read from scripted remarks.

“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol,” he said. “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders.” (The Post’s Philip Rucker reports that this is not true.) “America is, and must always be, a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.

“To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay,” Trump continued. “We have just been through an intense election and emotions are high, but now tempers must be cooled and calm restored. We must get on with the business of America.”

For the first time, he acknowledged that he would be leaving office.

“Congress has certified the results,” he said. “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”

Jan. 12. Trump reads a statement about the violence from a teleprompter during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Millions of our citizens watched on Wednesday as a mob stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government,” he said. “As I have consistently said throughout my administration, we believe in respecting America’s history and traditions, not tearing them down. We believe in the rule of law, not in violence or rioting.”

He later added that “now is the time for our nation to heal, and it’s time for peace and for calm.”

Jan. 19. During his farewell address, he again spoke about the Capitol from prepared remarks.“All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated. Now more than ever, we must unify around our shared values and rise above the partisan rancor, and forge our common destiny.”Body-camera video shows former NYPD cop attack police during Capitol riot, DOJ saysD.C. Police body-camera footage shows Marine veteran and retired NYPD officer Thomas Webster scream profanities and attack officers during the Jan. 6 riot. (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

Late March. During an interview with The Post’s Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, Trump describes the events of the day.

“It was a loving crowd, too, by the way,” he said of the crowd at his speech, many of whom then walked to the Capitol. He described the subsequent actions as “too bad.”

“They were ushered in by the police,” he then claimed. “I mean, in all fairness — the Capitol Police were ushering people in. The Capitol Police were very friendly. You know, they were hugging and kissing.”

“Personally,” he later added, “what I wanted is what they wanted. They showed up just to show support” for his false claims about election fraud.

July 7. At a news conference at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump announced a long-shot lawsuit targeting social media companies for banning him from their platforms. A reporter asked about the Capitol riot.

“That whole event, unfortunate event just went through Congress and a report was issued and my name wasn’t even mentioned,” Trump said, referring to a bipartisan Senate report in which his name was mentioned but which avoided looking directly at Trump’s role. “And I appreciate that. I was surprised frankly because I would have assumed that they would have come up with their typically biased, at least on the Democrat side, statement. The report came out as you saw it two weeks ago. My name wasn’t even mentioned, that was an unfortunate event.

“I say though, however, people are being treated unbelievably unfairly,” he continued. “When you look at people in prison and nothing happens to antifa and they burned down cities and killed people. There were no guns in the Capitol except for the gun that shot Ashli Babbitt. And nobody knows who that [man was]. If that were the opposite way, that man would be all over, he would be the most well-known and I believe I can say man, because I believe I know exactly who it is. But he would be the most well known person in this country, in the world. But the person that shot Ashli Babbitt right through the head, just boom. There was no reason for that.”https://7d37f014c6299ab1a6b0140356a4cef4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Babbitt was shot in the shoulder as she tried to enter an area of the Capitol used to evacuate lawmakers.The Post obtained video showing the chaotic moment before 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot as rioters rushed toward the Speaker’s Lobby. (Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)

July 11. Trump addresses the events of Jan. 6 during an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo.

“You had over a million people there, which the press doesn’t like to report at all, because it shows too much — too much activity, too much — too much spirit and faith and love,” Trump said, although the reason the media doesn’t report that there were 1 million people at the rally is because there were not 1 million people at the rally.

“There was such love at that rally,” Trump continued. “You had over a million people there. They were there for one reason, the rigged election. They felt the election was rigged. That’s why they were there. And they were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned the word love. The love — the love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.”

Later, he again lamented the death of Babbitt.

“Who is the person that shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman, right in the head?” Trump asked. (Babbitt was shot in the shoulder.) “And there’s no repercussions.”

“You have people with no guns that walked down. And, frankly, the doors were open,” he said at another point, adding that it was “also a lovefest between the police, the Capitol Police, and the people that walked down to the Capitol.”

Those who had been arrested, Trump said, were “military people, and they’re police officers, and they’re construction workers. And they’re tremendous, in many cases, tremendous people, tremendous people.”

He expressed disappointment that so many of these tremendous people were “currently incarcerated,” which, he said, was “not right” — a somewhat different message than when in January he told the rioters, “You will pay.”

It’s exactly the same pattern as the “Very Fine People” in Charlottesville debacle. He says what he really thinks, gets blowback and some staffer writes him a conciliatory speechy, then he turns around and says what he really thinks again.

He’s a child. His instinct is to side with anyone who be believes is on his side, no matter the reason. Then he gets chastised and makes a perfunctory gesture to appease the critics. Then he doubles down on support for his supporters.

The Big Lie has now taken on a life of its own. It’s not going anywhere. And the question will be if they are able to turn January 6th into a patriotic day of remembrance.

“Vaccine resisters can’t be persuaded if they feel disrespected,” the piece last week in National Review argued. That’s wrong
— the ‘disrespect’ here lies in approaching a resister such as this man as if facts and reason led him to his stance. https://t.co/19okkdsAc1

— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) July 22, 2021

538:

Biden’s steady approval rating outdid even that of former President Donald Trump, whose numbers were notoriously steady. Trump’s approval numbers had about a 10-point spread, from 38.0 percent to 47.8 percent in his first six months in office. Other recent presidents, such as Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, all saw considerably more volatility in their ratings during the same period in office.

Biden’s fairly static numbers are at least in part a reflection of the lack of major scandals in his administration as well as its avoidance, for now, of deeply unpopular policies — developments that have tripped up some of his predecessors. For instance, Trump’s approval rating dipped in March and April 2017 as the GOP began its push to pass health care legislation that was very unpopular in the polls. And Clinton’s approval fell all the way into the upper 30s in June 1993 as his economic agenda struggled to get going and his proposal to allow gay people to serve in the military got pushback.

By comparison, Biden has polled very well for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, arguably the biggest challenge facing the country in the past year and a half. He’s won over even some Republicans on that front, although that hasn’t translated into much cross-party approval overall. Biden’s administration has also focused on trying to pass legislation that is broadly popular with a majority of the public. And right now, Americans generally feel pretty good about how their lives are going, and somewhat more confident about how the economy is doing, as the country reopens and (hopefully) gets back to normal. 

But there are consequences to the fact that an insane, demagogic sore-loser is out there screeching that the election was stolen every day and his deluded cult members believe him:

That’s not to say all is going swimmingly for Biden. His administration has received lower marks for its handling of immigration and crime, issues that could cause the president trouble later on. More fundamentally, Biden’s narrow band of approval also reflects how polarized and divided our country is right now. First, Biden’s inability to stretch beyond 55 percent approval shows that presidents may no longer be able to count on much of a “honeymoon” period, largely because it’s so difficult to garner support from the other side of the aisle. Whereas around one-fifth to one-third of Republicans approved of Obama’s job performance at various points during his first six months in office, Biden’s approval rating among Republicans during the same period has usually hovered below 20 percent — sometimes even below 10 percent. Second, Republicans’ opposition to Biden has been more intense, too. More than 60 percent of Republicans have told pollsters that they not only disapprove of Biden but strongly disapprove of him. (In contrast, not quite half of all Republicans said the same of Obama in his first six months.)

They are brainwashed and they will remain so as long as Trump is out there and the entire Republican party makes a fetish of ostentatiously licking his boots every chance they get. The GOP is lost to reason right now and I honestly don’t know if they’ll ever be able to climb out of that rabbit hole.

The good news is that Independents are not breaking evenly, which is unusual. This is from the AP-NORC poll released earlier this week:

You can see where the fault lines are. It’s the usual. But the overall numbers are good and I think if the economy grows smartly and this Delta surge results in more people getting vaccinated. But as long as Orange Julius Caesar defines the GOP, this country will be starkly divided. I hope the Democrats understand that every election is going to be hand to hand combat as a result.

I’m not sure they do…

Speaking of the new generation, here’s the young guard of the GOP:

Rep. Madison Cawthorn vows that if the GOP gains control of the House in 2022, he will "make sure that consequences are doled out" to Dr. Anthony Fauci: "We want to prosecute this guy to the full ability of the law." pic.twitter.com/kFN0rGOCGJ

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 22, 2021

Punchbowl News hosted its first Summer Soiree last night in partnership with @Clear at the rooftop of Danny Meyer's new restaurant Anchovy Social to toast the country reopening, CLEAR's IPO and Punchbowl News' growing community.
Check it out: https://t.co/dDyR5OgThI pic.twitter.com/kNt6BFq3S0

— Punchbowl News (@PunchbowlNews) July 15, 2021

The new generation of “savvy” boys and girls of the beltway media are proving to be just as wedded to political establishment tropes as the previous generation. Here’s Brian Beutler on the astonishingly obtuse analysis of the January 6th Commission news of the last 24 hours:

Not to pick on this one piece, but it’s a good example of how Republican bad faith has become the background assumption in so much journalism, rather than a set of behaviors that can and should be questioned.

Like, Republicans could simply not try to do a coverup for partisan gain!

Here again the fact that Republicans are operating in bad faith is presented as a feature of the landscape, not political conduct in its own right.

It would be straightforward to present this same set of facts in the scandalous light it deserves—the GOP angling to cover up the truth about the insurrection. Instead, Republican bad acting is accepted as a given, and the story reduced to “will it work though?”

Republicans seeking a pretext to sabotage negotiations everyone anticipated they would sabotage is just how things work, as far as much of the mainstream press is concerned. Not dishonest conduct that deserves direct scrutiny.

Another instance of GOP bad faith basically rewiring journo brains. Of course Biden didn’t cause the chip shortage. They just anticipate Republicans will pretend it’s his fault anyhow and frame it as a challenge for him, not as a story about the dishonesty of his opponents.

Baking the presumption of GOP bad faith into everything, rather than treating it as a series of choices by human agents, creates a kind of impunity (through exhaustion or savviness or whatever else) where it isn’t even worth pressing them on their conduct.

Donald Trump is going on three weeks of insisting the Jan 6 insurrection was a righteous act and that charges need to be dropped against everyone involved. To date, no journalists with access are pressing any congressional Republicans for a response.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 19, 2021

The bad-faith GOP strategy of threatening to tank the economy while Dems are in charge, based on pretexts Republicans plainly don’t believe, and even though the Dems don’t engage in the same kind of nihilism, is just presumed and unexamined (and, of course a problem for Dems).

• 

• 

Isn’t the problem here that they’re threatening to sabotage the economy based on lies? Seems worse, idk,

Republican bad faith (in naming pro-insurrection members to sabotage the committee) is just a feature of the landscape; Pelosi intervening to prevent the sabotage is a move by an actor with agency, and subject to scrutiny.

Pelosi's move to reject GOP picks for the 1/6 panel is going to be a gift to Kevin McCarthy in the long run.

He wanted this panel to look partisan and political. Now it's definitely going to look partisan and political.

— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) July 21, 2021

Every reporter understands what happened when you interrogate it:

Why did McCarthy pick Jordan and Banks? To turn the committee into a circus, to protect the party and Trump.

Why did Pelosi reject Jordan and Banks? To prevent that from happening.

Nobody is confused about it.

But the first half of the equation must be presumed, an unalterable feature of the landscape. Otherwise reporters must confront thorny questions like: why do Republicans keep showing contempt for honesty, consistency, truth, fair play, etc?

Having baked in the bad faith—Of COURSE McCarthy appointed saboteurs, how could it ever be otherwise? Of COURSE he’s looking for an excuse to back out, pretend investigating insurrection is partisan!—the only person whose decisions become worth a closer look is Pelosi.

All reporters know this; they just can’t make themselves treat Republican conduct as a series of decisions that merit scrutiny.

Just want to remind people that Democrats negotiated for a bipartisan 1/6 commission, acceding to all the Republicans’ demands in the bill, and the Republicans sabotaged the deal anyway. McConnell put his personal relationship with GOP Senators at stake to fuckin kill that bill.

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 21, 2021

This speaks for itself.

Hard to find a better distillation of zombie Beltway both-siderism. Note how Chris Cillizza preemptively surrenders the press's agency—its ability to *judge for itself* 1/6 Committee findings—& totally buys the trope that only bipartisan = fair/worthwhile.https://t.co/XHxRuJSLaW pic.twitter.com/uKTiuWgCCj

— Reed F. Richardson (@reedfrich) July 21, 2021

They all know Cheney’s on the committee, that Republicans killed the bipartisan commission and that their attacks on the committee’s findings are pretextual. They can’t make that the basis of their reporting because it’d mean placing GOP bad-faith dealing under scrutiny.

https://twitter.com/djlavoie/status/1417923274596573188

Democracy dies in derpness.

Bothsides beltway journalism, folks. https://t.co/4SNcWXLaxp pic.twitter.com/5mS98ftv7I

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 22, 2021

Again, they know Cheney is on the committee, that McCarthy picked Jordan and Banks to sabotage it, and Pelosi nixed them to prevent said sabotage. They’d rather print disinformation—‘bipartisan probe falls apart’—than treat GOP conduct as a series of choices to be questioned.

The headline could be Republicans Withdraw From Insurrection Committee; Bipartisan Investigation Will Proceed With Democrats, Cheney

But that’d require tackling questions like “why are Republicans behaving in this way?” rather than treating their dirty dealing as a constant.

It’s wild because one of the most incredible stories in U.S. history is right there for the plucking—an organized mob of the president’s supporters attacked the Capitol and his party is trying to cover up the connections between the two.

But when you internalize and accept that party’s corruption—what else would you expect them to do?—it stops seeming like a scandal and frees you from having to confront how aberrant the behavior is.

If I were feeling churlish I’d note that this is why you don’t strive for bipartisanship as a goal in and of itself; it gives bad actors the power to make you fail on your own terms. But nah, this is a media failure first and foremost.

Plans for a bipartisan Congressional committee to investigate the deadly assault on the Capitol are in disarray.
House Speaker Pelosi rejected two of Republican leader McCarthy's five picks for the panel.

Both Congressmen opposed an investigation on what happened Jan 6th. pic.twitter.com/tymDIDeIfj

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) July 22, 2021

Originally tweeted by Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) on June 29, 2021.

This re-emergence of lazy Village CW has me more despairing than I’ve been in quite a while. If this keeps up, Donald Trump or one of his mini-mes could easily win back the government and I just don’t know what will happen.

It’s as Josh Marshall says, “DC is wired for the GOP” and the problem is that the modern GOP is neo-fascist. Apparently, these people don’t realize that the David Broder years brought us here. Or, they don’t care.