Month: November 2021

In light of the good news about Steve Bannon being indicted, I thought I would eprise my piece from last month on this subject:

 The House of Representatives voted 229 to 202, with nine Republicans joining all the Democrats to hold podcaster and former White House adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify before the committee investigating the insurrection of January 6th and events leading up to it. The order was sent to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who will evaluate it and will likely put it before a Grand Jury to determine if Bannon should be prosecuted for criminal contempt, a crime which carries a possible fine of $100,000 and a year in jail.

It’s not uncommon for congressional committees to threaten contempt of congress when they don’t get the cooperation they believe they deserve and the committees even vote to take the case to the floor of the House from time to time. It’s usually a sort of game to get the parties to the table to work out an agreement — which they usually do. Or, they will instead file a civil action, where the case slowly wends its way through the courts. And sometimes, the Department of Justice just says no and that’s the end of that.

The last time the Department of Justice prosecuted such a case was back in the 1980s when it indicted then former Reagan administration Environmental Protection Agency official Rita M. Lavelle for failing to testify about the department’s handling of the EPA’s $1.6 billion “Superfund” to clean up hazardous waste. Reagan had fired her and the House voted unanimously to hold her in contempt but she was acquitted at trial. (She was later jailed for lying to Congress in a different case.)

The only person to be convicted of contempt of Congress in recent memory was none other than G. Gordon Liddy, who received a suspended sentence because he was already doing so much time for his other Watergate crimes. Even Nixon didn’t have the nerve to pardon all of his henchmen before he left office as Trump did. (Liddy went on to have a lucrative career as a right-wing talk show host so it all worked out well for him. )

The vice-chair of the committee, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, made it clear what they want to discuss with Bannon and you can certainly see why Bannon wouldn’t want to do it. She said in comments to the committee on Tuesday:

“Based on the Committee’s investigation, it appears that Mr. Bannon had substantial advance knowledge of the plans for January 6th and likely had an important role in formulating those plans. The day before this all occurred — on January 5th — Mr. Bannon publicly professed knowledge that ‘(a)ll hell is going to break lose tomorrow.’ He forecast that the day would be ‘extraordinarily different’ than what most Americans expected. He said to his viewers on the air: ‘(S)o many people said, “if I was in a revolution, I would be in Washington.”‘ (W)ell, this is your time in history.”

Bannon also said on his podcast:

It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. Okay, it’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. All I can say is, strap in. … You made this happen and tomorrow it’s game day. So strap in. Let’s get ready. It’s all converging, and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow.

Before Thursday’s vote by the full House, Cheney said,

“Mr. Bannon’s own public statements make clear: he knew what was going to happen before it did … The American people deserve to know what he knew, and what he did,”

She believes Trump did too:

Mr. Bannon’s and Mr. Trump’s privilege arguments do appear to reveal one thing, however: they suggest that President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of January 6th,

Trump was certainly involved in the planning. He invited people to come to the Capitol on that day tweeting, “it’s going to be wild.” And we know from the Bob Costa and Bob Woodward book “Peril” that throughout the post-election period, Bannon was pushing January 6th as the big event. (Some of that was, no doubt, Bannon’s way of cozying up to Trump for a pardon, which he duly received on Trump’s last day in office.) His involvement in the Willard Hotel “war room” with a group of Trump cronies on January 5th and 6th explains why he knew all about the John Eastman coup plot to have Mike Pence throw the election to the House where they could declare Trump the winner. (He alluded to Eastman’s scheme in his podcast on the 6th.) What he might have known about any planning for subsequent violence remains unknown although his rhetoric certainly did sound like a call to arms.

Trump knew everything about the Eastman coup plot. He knew about all the coup plots and there were a bunch of them, including, in my opinion, his direction to the rowdy crowd on January 6th to march to the Capitol as the joint session of Congress was meeting to certify the vote. Did he know, or suspect, that the crowd was going to storm the building?

Whenever I think of that I can’t help but recall the January 5th exchange in “Peril” between Trump and Pence in which Trump, listening to the crowd outside the White House cheering for him, told Pence that he wanted him to let the House of Representatives decide the election. Pence responded that he didn’t have the authority and Trump gestured to the crowd outside the window and said to him, “Well, what if these people say you do?” Pence replied that he didn’t think any one person should have that power and Trump pressed him. “But wouldn’t it be almost cool to have that power?”

As we know, Pence refused, but according to the book Trump later commented to others that there was a lot of anger “out there” and we all know what he said the next morning to his ecstatic and worshipful crowd. As he sat in the White House watching his people, carrying Trump flags, breaking windows and beating cops, it’s not hard to imagine that he was thinking about how “cool” it was to have that power.

Bannon, meanwhile, is almost certainly “in heaven,” as author Michael Wolfe put it to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell earlier this week:

“Remember, Steve has been in the wilderness for the last three years since Trump forced him out of the White House. But the real pain in Steve’s heart is that the attention has been on Donald Trump — who Steve regards as, as stupid, crazy and a crook — rather than the attention being on Steve Bannon. So, yes, it’s a good day for Steve.”

A good day, indeed.

I suspect Bannon will be happy to fashion himself as a “political prisoner,” comparing himself to everyone from Nelson Mandela to Gandhi to Martin Luther King. He won’t mention the one he really resembles, but he has certainly seen the parallels — and Steve Bannon certainly thinks it would be very “cool” to have that guy’s power. 

According to McCay Coppins, Utah Senator Mike Lee is in trouble, Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy:

For many Utahns, the Trump rally was the breaking point. A few days before the 2020 election, Senator Mike Lee paced across a red, white, and blue stage in Goodyear, Arizona, microphone in hand, rhapsodizing about the president’s many virtues while he looked on. Lee’s talking points were mostly familiar. But then he arrived at a novel line of flattery, pitched to his coreligionists: He compared Trump to a figure from the Book of Mormon.

“To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni,” Lee bellowed, pointing to the president. “He seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world or the fake news, but he seeks the well-being and the peace of the American people.”

The backlash was swift. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aren’t used to seeing their sacred texts so brazenly politicized on the stump, and many members—including even some Donald Trump voters—regarded the invocation of a scriptural hero at a MAGA rally as blasphemous. Lee’s social-media feeds lit up with outraged constituents, the national media piled on, and the senator hastily backpedaled, apologizing to those he’d offended. But among an influential contingent of political, business, and religious leaders in Utah, the episode surfaced long-simmering frustrations with the senator.

First elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, Lee has long rankled the local establishment in Utah, where he is viewed by many as a showboating obstructionist whose penchant for provocation routinely embarrasses his home state and its predominant religion. Lee’s MAGA makeover during the Trump presidency served only to exacerbate that perception. Now, as he prepares to run for reelection next year, Lee is bracing for a concerted, multifront campaign to unseat him. He seems to know that a third term isn’t guaranteed.

“I’m taking nothing for granted,” Lee told me in a phone interview last week. “I’m gearing up, I’m preparing in every way, and we’ll be ready for whatever comes our way.” This is the posture that incumbents are supposed to take in election years. There is nothing voters hate more, after all, than a politician who acts like he doesn’t need to court them. But Lee also sounded genuinely cautious when we spoke—like a man fearful of making any false moves.

Although Lee’s incumbency carries a degree of front–runner status, his approval rating sits at a meager 45 percent, according to a recent poll, and barely half of likely GOP primary voters say they’d vote for him again. In recent conversations with people around Utah, a range of politicians and operatives working to defeat Lee told me that he’s managed to coast through his first two terms, and insist that he isn’t invincible. “You have to remember,” said one political consultant, who requested anonymity to discuss strategy, “this guy hasn’t faced a serious challenger since he won the Republican nomination in June 2010.”

Lee has already attracted two well-funded primary opponents, as well as an independent, Evan McMullin—last seen running for president in 2016—who is framing his Senate candidacy explicitly as a bid to take down the incumbent. Opposition research is being assembled; lines of attack are being poll-tested. Two people familiar with the research told me that the “Captain Moroni” incident appears to be especially effective in swaying voters—but it’s not the only part of Lee’s record that his opponents plan to highlight in the coming months.

Lee’s relationship with Trump is likely to feature heavily in next year’s race. Although Utah is overwhelmingly conservative, its Mormon-infused politics are idiosyncratic. Trump, with his signature blend of nativism and xenophobia and his less-than-saintly personal life, has consistently underperformed in Utah. He finished last in the state’s 2016 GOP primary, and carried Utah in the general election with a paltry plurality of the vote. Lee loudly protested Trump’s nomination from the floor of the Republican National Convention that year, and sharply criticized him after the Access Hollywood tape was released. But by 2020, Lee had reversed himself completely, campaigning with Trump and defending the president’s role in inciting a riot at the Capitol on January 6. (Trump, Lee reasoned after the attempted insurrection, deserved a “mulligan.”)

To Lee’s critics, the pivot reeked of careerism. But he insists that his evolution was organic. Lee told me his opposition to Trump in 2016 was “related to friends of mine who ran for president and experiences they had in that race.” He also questioned the candidate’s conservative bona fides. But once Trump got to Washington, Lee says, the two men developed “a working relationship,” working together to pass a criminal-justice-reform bill that had long been a priority for the senator. “It’s easy to dislike somebody from afar,” Lee told me. “When you get to know them, sometimes you dislike them less.” He noted that many of his fellow Utahns had followed a similar trajectory: Trump won 58 percent of the vote in Utah last year.

But the fact that Lee flip-flopped on Trump isn’t the real source of establishment frustration in Utah—it’s how he’s helped to import MAGA-style politics to the state. Notably, Lee has picked several fights in recent years that appear to put him in conflict with his church. In 2019, when the Church endorsed the Fairness for All Act—a bill intended to balance LGBTQ rights and religious freedom—Lee deemed it hostile to the First Amendment and announced that he would “actively oppose it.” Last year, he waged a strange, weeks-long crusade on Facebook against a Church-owned local news outlet, which he accused of anti-Trump bias. And more recently, as Church leaders have pleaded with its members to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Lee has prioritized railing against vaccine mandates and introducing bills with names like the “Don’t Jab Me” Act.

The Church maintains a strict policy of electoral neutrality, and its senior leaders do not publicly support or oppose candidates. But the appearance of tension between Utah’s senior senator and the Church has been a subject of intense speculation in some quarters. At the very least, critics argue, Lee has demonstrated a willingness to gratuitously needle the Church to enhance his own stature in the national conservative firmament. These episodes also run against a strain of the state’s political culture, which prizes cooperation and comity and being a “team player.”

When I asked Lee about this line of criticism, he told me that his constituents expect him to defy establishment consensus sometimes. “I think it’s part of the job,” he said. “It’s certainly part of the job as I think it needs to be done.”

That claim to the principled-outsider mantle is what helped Lee defeat Senator Bob Bennett, Utah’s long-serving incumbent, in the 2010 Republican primary. This time around, Lee’s GOP challengers plan to use a similar playbook against him. Ally Isom, a former spokesperson for the Church, has pitched her candidacy as an antidote to Lee’s divisiveness. Becky Edwards, a moderate former state legislator, is arguing that Lee’s “strident approach” has prevented him from delivering for his constituents. Neither candidate has risen above single digits in early polling, but they have both proved to be able fundraisers.

If Lee does win the GOP nomination, he will still have to face McMullin in the general. A former CIA officer and Capitol Hill staffer, McMullin ran for president as an independent in 2016 under the “Never Trump” banner and wound up winning 21 percent of the vote in Utah. To beat Lee next year, McMullin told me, he will need to unite Democrats, independents, and Trump-averse Republicans. His platform will necessarily be a balancing act, mixing environmentalism with pledges to reduce the national debt. But when we spoke, he seemed most animated by loftier themes, such as protecting democratic norms. He repeatedly accused Lee of enabling Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 election process. (Lee, unlike Utah’s other Republican senator, Mitt Romney, voted to acquit Trump for his role in the Capitol riot and opposed the formation of the January 6 commission.)

“I just think Mike Lee has lost his way in Washington,” he told me. “I like to believe he went there as a principled constitutional conservative, but if you aid and abet an effort to overturn the republic, you can no longer claim to be that.”

For McMullin to have any shot as an independent, Utah Democrats would have to coalesce behind him and decline to put forward a nominee of their own. While some prospective candidates have already emerged, Utah’s unique convention system could allow the party’s delegates to choose not to nominate anyone. McMullin, who has been laboring behind the scenes to win the support of the state Democratic Party, told me he still has work to do in building the “cross-party coalition” he envisions. But the effort got a big boost this week when Ben McAdams, a former congressman and one of Utah’s most prominent Democrats, endorsed McMullin and urged the party to support him.

“What I know is that a Democrat is not going to win the U.S. Senate race [in Utah] in 2022,” McAdams told me. “I also know that I’m not going to support every position that Evan takes. But I think it’s a critical time in our country, our politics are severely broken, and what have we got to lose by trying something new?”

Generally speaking I’m in favor of being an idealist in the primaries and a pragmatist in the general. In this case I would think about voting for the moderate Independent, as much as it would pain me to do it. Mike Lee is a menace. Where he once held some principled libertarian views which placed him on the right side in certain areas, he’s completely abandoned that for hard-line winguttism.

McMullin will be a top pain in the ass, no doubt about it. He’ll make Susan Collins look resolute. But it is true that Utah is not going to elect a Democrat. So it makes sense to get rid of the Trump loving right winger and put in Susan Collins. It’s not optimal but it’s an improvement.

Us old farts have our place. We bring knowledge and experience to politics. But there is no substitute for youthful energy. (I’ve seen that firsthand recently.) Perhaps younger activists can save this country from us yet.

Sara Pequeño of McClatchy’s North Carolina Opinion Team has been watching the changing of the guard in her state:

Despite the age restrictions, young, progressive candidates are showing up and winning across North Carolina, even in the state’s rural counties. In Kinston, 21-year-old Chris Suggs became the youngest elected official in North Carolina when he received the most votes for Kinston City Council. In Boone, 22-year-old Jon Dalton George was re-elected to a seat on the town council after his appointment in August.

What’s important to note is that these electeds are from rural counties. Kinston, southeast of Raleigh in Lenoir County, voted for Trump by 3.5 points in 2020. Boone in Watauga County borders Tennessee and is home to Appalachian State University. Watauga voted for Biden by 8 points.

Despite living on opposite sides of the state, both men were involved in organizing for years. Suggs created Kinston Teens, a youth empowerment non-profit, when he was 14 years old and continues to serve as its executive director. At UNC-Chapel Hill, he served as president of the Black Student Movement and as the senior class president for the 2021 graduates. In the last year, Suggs took part in organizing vaccination drives in Lenoir County.

“At the time there were so many issues going on in Kinston that were really affecting young people,” Suggs told The Daily Tar Heel. “I felt like none of the community leaders were really engaging young people, asking us what we felt about these issues.”

George, on the other hand, moved to Boone to attend Appalachian State University but became known for his housing advocacy and his push to protect the school’s early voting precinct. He received votes from students and locals alike, thanks to the time he spent knocking doors in Boone neighborhoods, and says that Boone’s progressive elders have been encouraging to younger people looking to make their voices heard.

“We’re the generation that is going to have to deal with the most,” George says of his win. “I think it is really interesting that sometimes, youth is used as a negative or an attack. If anything, it gives us more reason to be invested in our communities and the issues we’re advocating for.”

Youthful exuberance has its drawbacks

The Republicans have their young-uns, too, Rep. Madison Cawthorn prominent (or infamous) among them. Cawthorn (who lives in the new NC-14) announced this week he will switch districts in 2022 and run in NC-13 to prevent another “establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican” from winning there. This would put him running head-to-head in a Republican primary against N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore, a conservative stalwart widely expected to run for Congress next year. Moore subsequently announced he would run for reelection to the N.C. House instead in a new congressional district state Republicans gerrymandered for him.

Try not to laugh, writes Yahoo News’ Editorial Board. “Turns out that unconditional loyalty isn’t as politically productive as Republicans thought it would be. Apparently, they’ve yet to learn what others have long known: people like Cawthorn aren’t loyal to anyone but themselves.”

Competing everywhere

The Democrats are getting a clue about making their presence known in rural areas they have long forfeited to the GOP. Their successes are instructive for red-state Democrats who need to regain control of state legislatures.

I’ve profiled Anderson Clayton, 23, before. In October, she helped Democrats in Roxboro, N.C. (rural Person County) elect their first-ever majority-minority city council, including its first two Black women:

“People keep saying, ‘How do we reach rural voters?’ and I’m like, “How do we reach rural Democrats?” Clayton says. “There are people in these communities that are just not voting our way and that are not voting at all because they don’t feel like they have power in their vote, and that’s a problem. Their votes were being left on the table. With the Person Dems, I was just kind of able to help build that energy back up.”

This energy is coming to suburban North Carolina too: Danny Nowell, a Millennial candidate endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, won in the Carrboro town council election. Ricky Hurtado, a 32-year-old state representative and the only Latino in the General Assembly, won in Alamance County last year. With these wins and this energy, we should remember that all of North Carolina — not just our big cities — deserve that energy too.

Granted, Carrboro is a bedroom community for UNC Chapel Hill. But Alamance County voted for Trump by over 8 points in 2020. Alamance is 63% white (non-Hispanic/Latino), 21% Black or African American, and 13% Hispanic/Latino. Hurtado, a Democrat, won narrowly by 1 point.

Youthful hustle pays. Democrats higher up the political food chain, take notice.

An Alabama man pleaded guilty on Friday to bringing a truck with five loaded firearms and 11 molotov cocktails to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The Washington Post Editorial Board wants a few words with an increasingly radicalized Republican Party:

The past week has brought yet more alarming evidence of the extremism that has come to define the House Republican caucus.

On one hand, a growing list of Republicans seeks to punish 13 of their colleagues who broke ranks to vote for an infrastructure bill — a bill that a bipartisan group of senators negotiated and that 19 Republican senators joined all 50 Democrats in voting to pass in August. The House Republicans’ chief objection to a bill that addresses long-needed investments in roads, rails and ports is that it gave a win to President Biden. Punishments against GOP members who voted for it could include removing them from their committees.

On the other hand, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) has encountered no such pushback after posting an anime video that depicts him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and attacking the president. Mr. Gosar claimed, absurdly, that the video symbolized the debate over immigration policy. This is not a joke: A recent Public Religion Research Institute poll shows that 30 percent ofRepublicans believe that violence may be necessary to solve the nation’s problems. One of the 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill, Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.), has described getting threatening messages since his vote. (Mr. Upton’s vote was a service to his constituents: His home state has some of the nation’s worst roads.)

The New York Times cites the young man at an Idaho rally last month who stepped to a microphone and asked, “When do we get to use the guns?”

The conservative audience applauded.

“How many elections are they [Democrats] going to steal before we kill these people?” he continued. A Republican state representative called it a “fair” question.

The Times, generally reluctant to call Republican extremists Republican extremists, has seen enough violence and violent threats this year to state it bluntly: the Republican Party is mainstreaming menace as a political tool:

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

In Washington, where decorum and civility are still given lip service, violent or threatening language still remains uncommon, if not unheard-of, among lawmakers who spend a great deal of time in the same building. But among the most fervent conservatives, who play an outsize role in primary contests and provide the party with its activist energy, the belief that the country is at a crossroads that could require armed confrontation is no longer limited to the fringe.

Historical perspectives offered on American political violence, yadda-yadda. But let’s be clear, on Jan. 6 this year, Republican/MAGA reactionaries, some outfitted in combat gear, broke into and ransacked the U.S. Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence” while trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by force of mob.

Polling indicates that 30 percent of Republicans, and 40 percent of people who “most trust” far-right news sources, believe that “true patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save” the country — a statement that gets far less support among Democrats and independents.

Such views, routinely expressed in warlike or revolutionary terms, are often intertwined with white racial resentments and evangelical Christian religious fervor — two potent sources of fuel for the G.O.P. during the Trump era — as the most animated Republican voters increasingly see themselves as participants in a struggle, if not a kind of holy war, to preserve their idea of American culture and their place in society.

The same Republican lapdogs who kowtowed to Donald Trump’s bullying rhetoric and lavished praise during Cabinet meetings have been silent.

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning group New America who has studied political violence, said there was a connection between such actions and the growing view among Americans that politics is a struggle between enemies.

“When you start dehumanizing political opponents, or really anybody, it becomes a lot easier to inflict violence on them,” Dr. Drutman said.

“I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that’s happened now,” he added. “I don’t see the rhetoric turning down, I don’t see the conflicts going away. I really do think it’s hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse.”

Ask school board members and elections officials from across the country who have faced screams and insults, angry protests outside their homes and threats of violence:

“This might be a good time to put a f‑‑‑‑‑‑ pistol in your f‑‑‑‑‑‑ mouth and pull the trigger,” the man shouted at Vermont officials in a thick New England accent last December. “Your days are f‑‑‑‑‑‑ numbered.”

Reuters documents that people “radicalized to the point of terrorizing public officials” have made “nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution, according to legal experts.” Threats against members of Congress have jumped by 107 percent this year.

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) received this message from a caller:

“They ought to try you for treason,” one caller screamed in a lengthy, graphic voice mail message. “I hope your family dies in front of you. I pray to God that if you’ve got any children, they die in your face.”

Republicans spent decades citing 1960s radicals such as the Weather Underground as examples of left-wing violence. More recently, they condemn window-breaking Antifa vandals and Black Lives Matter-adjacent protesters who vandalize property.

On the MAGA Underground threatening violence against neighbors and government officials they are all but silent.

I can’t stand to write about Chris Christie and was enjoying his disappearance from the political scene. But he’s back and I’m just not really up for it yet so I’ll let Tim Miller tell you about it:

In a desperate attempt to resuscitate his long-dead political career, Christopher “Cartman” Christie has undertaken a quasi-anti-Trump media tour that seems to be premised on the entire country having been afflicted with degenerative frontotemporal dementia.

The Axios story that greeted me when I opened up the Twitter machine this morning begins thusly,

“I’ve never walked away from an argument, no matter who stood on the other side,” Christie told me during a wide-ranging interview in New Jersey.

Is that so, Eric?

Like every other pathetic, podgy, scared, insecure bully who has ever disgraced a school yard, Chris Christie talks a big game. But when he was called upon to meet the biggest threat of his life—a doughy soft-handed trust-fund baby with authoritarian aspirations—Christie didn’t just walk away from an argument. He waddled as fast as he could go in his urine-soaked pull-ups.

The date was February 6, 2016. The occasion was the 8th Republican primary debate in Goffstown, New Hampshire, a few days before the primary. Over the course of the first seven debates Mr. Tough Guy had not laid a single cuticle on the frontrunner, Donald Trump. While my boss at the time—Jeb Bush—was getting slapped around like a rag doll by Trump’s insult comedy, Christie stood in the spot reserved for the lowest polling candidates on the far corner of the stage, twiddling his thumbs, doing everything he could to avoid drawing Trump’s ire.

In case you’ve forgotten, New Hampshire was Christie’s last stand. If his campaign was going to go forward, he needed a strong showing in the Granite State. And so one would assume that a big, tough fighter like Christie would’ve taken Ric Flair’s sage advice—“to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man”—and gone right at the frontrunner rather than leave the fighting to be done by a bookish policy-wonk.

Nope. Instead, Christie surveyed the stage and decided to try and butch himself up by taking on the runt of the pack: He ignored Trump and wailed on Lil’ Marco, to the delight of many. To the delight, in fact, of Trump. Here’s Christie in his book recounting what happened at the debate when they broke for a commercial:

I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Donald Trump. Donald put his arm around me and said, “God, you destroyed him. . . . You’re the only one who could have done that. Just remember: I haven’t said anything bad about you. Don’t go after me.”

Christie succeeded in blunting Marco’s momentum, but did nothing to boost himself. Three days later Trump went on to win New Hampshire in a rout, Marco fell to fifth, and Christie bottomed out in sixth. After which he walked away from the race without ever having even thrown an unkind glance in Trump’s general direction.

If Christie’s story of his cowardice and Trump suck-upitudde ended that night then maybe I wouldn’t have had to rage-write this column. But as we all know it did not end there.

Christie could have retired back to the Garden State and at greasy diner food in peace. He could have joined forces with a less dangerous GOP foe and tried to help stop Trump. He could’ve joined the anti-Trump Super PAC I signed up for two days after Jeb dropped out and been our chairman. Hell he could’ve done a full heel turn and endorsed Hillary because, let’s be honest, he was always a RINO at heart.

He took none of those paths.

Desperate for attention and a campaign where he could have “influence,” Christie surveyed the field and decided that once he had been defeated the only choice was to present to his dominant and endorse Trump

Endorsements normally mean very little, but this one was significant, right up there with Ted Kennedy blessing Obama, because it provided the permission structure that institutionally Republican voters needed to support an unorthodox candidate.

Christie didn’t deliver a specific cohort of voters to Trump—he had just got schlonged in a primary in which he received 0 delegates. But his support gave a stamp of credibility to a thoroughly uncredible candidate. He was the first prominent “mainstream” or “establishment” Republican to take the plunge. Newt Gingrich laid this out at the time tweeting that Christie “introducing and standing with Trump gave the event a sense of seriousness.”

So right at the moment when the Republican party needed to unite against Trump, Christie gassed the fellow up. And then he spent months solidifying Trump as the primary’s alpha male by allowing him to thoroughly debase his new pup in front of the entire country. As you might recall:

–Christie stood next to Trump pliantly as he ranted and raved.

–It was leaked, maybe apocryphally, that he was assigned the job of fetching Trump’s hamburgers.

–He stood by as Trump told him to stop eating oreos.

–After an event in Arkansas, he obediently walked up to Trump looking for a pat on the head but instead he was shooed off and instructed to “go home.”

–He weirdly referred to him throughout the campaign as “Mr. Trump,” despite the fact that he was a sitting governor and Trump was a former game show host.

And over the ensuing months Christie sat silently by as his new daddy talked about banning muslims, made racist accusations at the expense of judges, and insulted gold star parents. Christie maintained his endorsement even after Trump was caught on tape admitting to serial sexual assault. No one was a more loyal surrogate for a man that everyone knew was plainly unfit and dangerous.

So now, six years later, Christie wants to worm his way back into the spotlight as the guy who is willing to take the fight to Trump.

The gambit seems to have worked for the ratings-starved suckers at CNN.

Former Governor Chris Christie talks about what it’s like to go from Trump supporter to critic. Join Dana Bash for the CNN series, Being Chris Christie, Monday at 10 p.m. ET pic.twitter.com/KNtmauuyan

— CNN (@CNN) November 10, 2021

But it shouldn’t fool you.

---

Chris Christie can make fun of Trump all he wants and I welcome that. It is nice to hear any Republican in good standing actually admit that the orange fella lost. The more converts to reality, the merrier.

But we don’t have to pair that with advancing the phony BS that Christie is the one man willing to say hard truths. Admitting Trump lost isn’t a hard truth, it’s basic reality. And Christie isn’t a tough guy. He’s the most craven of bullies.

So if one of the men chiefly responsible for Trump wants a seat on our TDS-bandwagon, he’s welcome. There’s a narrow little jumpseat in the back that he can squeeze into.

But don’t board the bus while making a speech about how you never shied away from a fight.

We all know the truth.

Christie is six years late and one insurrection short and I will not be respecting his authorit-aye.

Both Trump and Biden are gaffe prone politicians and it’s inevitable that there will be some news cycles that obsessively cover them. But the need to tar Kamala Harris with the same problem is just low. I guess it’s part of the right wing media effort to Hillary-ize her but this is just silly:

The @VP again used the “thee” pronunciation for the word “the” when making a point. Some critics have claimed she appeared to adopt “a fake French accent” when she said “the plan” during a tour of a research lab on Tuesday. Today at Paris press conference, she said “the topic.”

FWIW, as a reporter in the room for both sets of remarks by the VP, I heard zero French accent in her words.

Originally tweeted by Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) on November 9, 2021.

FFS. She was emphasizing the word “the” as in “it was the topic of conversation …”

Jesus take the wheel before I drive it off a cliff.

This piece from Ryan Grim and Ken Klippenstein is an important bit of perspective to what’s happening with the inflation hysteria:

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is enacting revenge on Democrats in general and President Joe Biden specifically for the party’s increasingly standoffish attitude toward the kingdom — by driving up energy prices and fueling global inflation.

Biden himself seemed to allude to this at a town hall event with CNN last month, during which he attributed high gas prices to a certain “foreign policy initiative” of his, adding, “There’s a lot of Middle Eastern folks who want to talk to me. I’m not sure I’m going to talk to them.”

Biden was making a not-so-veiled reference to his refusal to meet with Salman and acknowledge him as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler due to his role in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of 2018. The move came after Biden vowed during a debate with President Donald Trump to make MBS, as he’s known, “a pariah” and represented a stark departure from Trump’s warm relations with the desert kingdom and the crown prince.

In 2017, Trump broke with tradition by choosing Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, for his first foreign visit and soon announced a record arms sale to the kingdom. Later, after Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post, was brutally dismembered in a Turkish consulate, Trump cast doubt on MBS’s involvement, saying, “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” After his own CIA director briefed Congress on Salman’s culpability, Trump reportedly boasted about his efforts to protect the crown prince, saying, “I saved his ass.” Since then, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, Tom Barrack, has been indicted for allegedly working as an unregistered agent of the UAE — Saudi Arabia’s closest ally.

In June 2018, heading into the midterms, Trump requested that Saudi Arabia and its cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, lower energy prices by increasing output, and the kingdom complied. Prices bottomed out in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, and usage sank to record lows. Prices surged once the pandemic waned and the economy reopened, and Biden in August 2021 requested that OPEC again increase output.

This time MBS refused, angry at having yet to be granted an audience with Biden and contemptuous of the U.S. pullback from the war in Yemen. As one of his first pieces of business, Biden had ordered the end of American support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’s war, though caveated it by barring only the backing of “offensive operations.” Saudi Arabia nevertheless received it as a grievous blow.

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi national who is considered a voice for MBS in Washington, made that clear in October, tweeting, “Biden has the phone number of who he will have to call if he wants any favours.”

Trump couldn’t get the Ukraine president to help him sabotage the Biden campaign. But MBS is more than willing to help Trump sabotage the US economy. It’s win-win for both of them. After all, Trump did his buddy a solid when he refused to condemn his for the disgusting torture and execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and now he’s paying him back.

There are a bunch of factors that are playing into inflation, obviously. The pandemic royally screwed up the supply chain and the workforce has had enough of being exploited. There is no instant fix. But if you want to know what’s driving gas prices up, it’s this. And needless to say, rising gasp rices raise the cost of goods that have to be transported which is virtually everything.

This is what happens when you have an amoral, traitor for president.

The new book by Jonathan Karl actually contains some interesting new information. Today’s big bombshell has Trump on tape justifying his riotous followers chanting “Hang Mike Pence”. Axios reported it:

Jonathan Karl: “Were you worried about him during that siege? Were you worried about his safety?”

Trump: “No, I thought he was well-protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no, I think — “

Karl: “Because you heard those chants — that was terrible. I mean — “

Trump: “He could have — well, the people were very angry.”

Karl: “They were saying ‘hang Mike Pence.'”

Trump: “Because it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? — how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that? And I’m telling you: 50/50, it’s right down the middle for the top constitutional scholars when I speak to them. Anybody I spoke to — almost all of them at least pretty much agree, and some very much agree with me — because he’s passing on a vote that he knows is fraudulent. How can you pass a vote that you know is fraudulent? Now, when I spoke to him, I really talked about all of the fraudulent things that happened during the election. I didn’t talk about the main point, which is the legislatures did not approve — five states. The legislatures did not approve all of those changes that made the difference between a very easy win for me in the states, or a loss that was very close, because the losses were all very close.”

It’s common sense to hang Mike Pence. Sounds like a good campaign slogan. And it has the virtue of being original, unlike his other slogans.

And you have to love the Axios “why it matters”

Well, it is unprecedented for a former president to openly say it was OK to threaten the life of his vice president.

Yeah.

Trump says that he had heard Pence was “in good shape” which makes you wonder what he heard and when. Recall that he posted this tweet as the mob was storming the capitol:

“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!”

This was an issue in the impeachment trial:

What former President Donald Trump knew of the safety of his vice president, Mike Pence, when Trump disparaged Pence during the Capitol insurrection was a key question in Day 4 of Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

In the trial’s question-and-answer session Friday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, asked whether Trump knew that Pence was being evacuated from the Capitol as the former president composed a tweet condemning Pence for not having the “courage” to stop then-President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.

“When President Trump sent the disparaging tweet at 2:24 p.m., was he aware that the vice president had been removed from the Senate by the Secret Service for his safety?” Romney asked.

Pence was presiding over the Senate as it counted the electoral votes.

House Democratic managers stressed in their presentation how close a mob of Trump supporters got to Pence, and that some rioters had yelled, “Hang Mike Pence.” Managers’ reconstructed timeline of the events also included Trump’s tweets throughout Jan. 6.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the lead impeachment manager, was first to respond to Romney’s question. He noted the events of Jan. 6 were broadcast on live television and on the radio, saying Trump had to know that the rioters had already breached the building and were armed with weapons, and that the police were outnumbered.

“Here are the facts that are not in dispute,” Raskin said. “Donald Trump had not taken any measures to send help to the overwhelmed Capitol police. As president, when you see all of this going on and the people around you are imploring you to do something, and your vice president is there, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Raskin also noted remarks by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who has told reporters that he spoke to Trump over the phone as the mob began ransacking the Capitol. During their brief conversation, Tuberville said he told the former president that Pence had been evacuated from the chamber moments earlier.

“Sen. Tuberville specifically said that he told the president, ‘Mr. President, they just took the vice president out, I’ve got to go,’ ” Raskin said.

That conversation took place shortly after 2 p.m., Raskin noted.

As it turned out Trump tweeted his nasty tweet just before that. But this latest comment indicates Trump may have heard from other sources that Trump was “in good shape” and this comment may indicate that Trump has waived privilege on that question.

I can’t wait to see Pence give a speech in which he says that Trump excusing his rabid crowd wanting to kill him was just a matter of disagreement but he is still very proud to have served the man who incited a crowd to kill him.

It appears that Dear Leader is starting to turn on his mini-me:

DONALD TRUMP has been complaining to members and guests at Mar-a-Lago that Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS still hasn’t joined the other 2024 hopefuls in pronouncing that he won’t run for president if Trump runs. One guest suspects that Trump’s gripes are so frequent because he is planting them in hopes that they’ll get back to DeSantis. Trump has told his advisers that DeSantis privately assured him that he won’t run if Trump does, but that’s not enough for the former president — he wants DeSantis to say it in public. Trump has even suggested that DeSantis shouldn’t underestimate his Democratic challenger CHARLIE CRIST, calling him a “killer.”

Now, as DeSantis crisscrosses the country to raise money for his 2022 reelection, Trump aides are starting to feel pressure to pick sides. Trump has made it known that he didn’t appreciate that former White House chief of staff MARK MEADOWS traveled to Beverly Hills for a DeSantis fundraiser in June (also in attendance: Trump pal and casino magnate STEVE WYNN and former Treasury Secretary STEVE MNUCHIN) and then went on to Orange County, where he introduced DeSantis to other deep-pocketed donors. In a statement to Playbook, a spokesperson for Trump called this reporting “fake news.”

I’m trying to picture the grotesque spectacle of Trump, Pompeo, DeSantis and Christie in presidential primary debates in 2024 and I find that it literally makes me ill. I don’t think the new/old Republican avatar of Glenn Youngkin holds water when you think about that, do you?

Trump is right to worry about DeSantis. He’s the favorite new asshole of all the movers and shakers. He’s going to need to nip this in the bud or it could get away from him and some of that cash might just slip through his fingers.

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who brought an illegally obtained AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a chaotic street protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and shot three people, killing two of them, has the country riveted this week. The judge and the prosecutor have been at each other’s throats, the top prosecution witnesses turned out to be more helpful for the defense, and defense attorneys unexpectedly put the baby-faced Rittenhouse on the stand, where he breathlessly sobbed like a toddler. Meanwhile, the judge got a phone call as he sat at the bench, revealing his ring tone to be Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” an unofficial Republican theme song. So the trial has been both dramatic and bizarre in equal measure.

The case is important for many reasons having to do with policing, guns, politics and the growing acceptance of right-wing vigilantism in America. Rittenhouse has somehow become a symbol of all those issues, with the country split down the middle on whether he should be condemned for carrying an illegally obtained assault weapon across state lines (he lived a few miles away, in Illinois) and killing people or should be viewed as a hero for standing up to the left-wing mob and defending himself when challenged. His childlike demeanor confuses the issue even more. How could such an innocent-looking boy have done either of those things?

The facts of the case are well known, so I won’t go into it in detail. Suffice it to say that Rittenhouse fashioned himself as a “medic” (a role for which he was entirely untrained) as well as a sort of adjunct militia member, protecting private property and supporting the police when he drove into Kenosha that night and ostentatiously patrolled the streets with his long gun. He was confronted by Joseph Rosenbaum, an ex-convict with a history of mental illness who threw a bag of toiletries at him. Rittenhouse fired his gun, mortally wounding Rosenbaum. He called a friend and said, “I just killed somebody,” as he jogged away from the scene. 

Rittenhouse was chased by several people, including one man who tried to hit him with a high kick. Rittenhouse fired at that person but missed. Another protester, Anthony Huber, attempted to bring him down with a skateboard and Rittenhouse shot and killed him too. Gaige Grosskreutz, an armed protester and trained paramedic who also chased Rittenhouse, testified that the two men aimed their guns at each other and Rittenhouse shot him as well, wounding him in the arm. Then Rittenhouse simply walked away from this bloody scene, walking right past police lines, and went home. He turned himself in the next morning. At no point did the self-styled medic try to help any of the people he shot.Advertisement:

Donald Trump defended Rittenhouse’s actions at the time, saying that Rittenhouse was “trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like. I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.” The Trump administration distributed talking points urging officials to say to characterize Rittenhouse as “taking his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.”

As for the MAGA crowd, the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman observed that Rittenhouse has been extolled as a hero from the very beginning, with Trump supporters raising most of the $2 million for his bail with online appeals:

On Fox News and other conservative media, one personality after another rushed to his defense….

Rittenhouse “should walk away a free and rich man after suing for malicious prosecution. That would be true justice in this case,” said Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire. “Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters,” said Tucker Carlson ….

So try to imagine what will happen if Rittenhouse is acquitted. Trump will issue a statement somehow taking credit for it. Fox News will fly Rittenhouse to New York for triumphant interviews. Social media will erupt with joy, as millions of conservatives cry “Suck it, libs!” He’ll appear on T-shirts and bumper stickers; maybe he’ll speak at the next Conservative Political Action Conference. And don’t be surprised if Trumpist candidates start seeking Rittenhouse’s endorsement and asking him to appear on the campaign trail with them.

The trial isn’t even over yet and that’s already happening. Here is Rittenhouse’s mother on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night:

This could be the beginning of a very successful career for young Rittenhouse. He’s already shown that he has an instinct for it. After his arraignment and not-guilty plea he was seen numerous times wearing a “Free as Fuck” T-shirt in public, accompanied by his mother and greeted with cheers from his MAGAworld fans.

This sort of vigilantism is routinely celebrated on the right these days. From the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida to the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers now unfolding in Georgia, they have lined up in support for citizens who take the law into their own hands — as long as the targets are left-wing protesters and Black people. They aren’t so keen when the shoe is on the other foot.

You may recall another very similar case in Portland, Oregon, last year when Michael Reinoehl, an armed antifa supporter, got into a beef with Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer. In this case, the leftist shot and killed the MAGA supporter and Trump, according to his own account of events on Fox News, personally ordered U.S. marshals to hunt Reinoehl down:

Now we sent in the U.S. marshals for the killer, the man that killed the young man in the street. Two and a half days went by, and I put out, “When are you going to go get him?” And the U.S. marshals went in to get him, and in a short period of time, they ended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.

According to this rundown of the events by the New York Times, it’s clear that Reinoehl was unarmed at the time of his death and that marshals opened fire without warning as he walked to his car. It was an extrajudicial execution, apparently ordered by the president of the United States

It may be that Kyle Rittenhouse will be seen in the eyes of the law to have fired in self-defense. After all, he’s being tried for murder, not for being a reckless fool who should never have carried a firearm anywhere near the melee that night. Many of the TV lawyers analyzing the case believe the prosecution has not made the case for a homicide conviction. If that’s the way things play out, that won’t be the fault of the lawyers, the judge or the jury. It will be the direct result of laws that allow teenage boys to wander the streets with loaded assault weapons slung over their shoulders, as if that were perfectly reasonable in a civilized society.

Vigilantism, extrajudicial killings by federal authorities, violent insurrections, threats and harassment of public officials, and rejection of election results and the democratic process are all hallmarks of authoritarian movements. Coddling the gun fetishists and allowing right-wing extremism to fester over many years has brought us to the point when we must ask ourselves if we’re no longer a country where politics is war by other means — it’s just plain old war.

Salon