Month: January 2022

No, you will not be surprised. It all centers around the Claremont Institute which, until recently, everyone erroneously believed was some sort of staid old conservative institution devoted to small government. It has not been that for a very long time. (As I noted here, they honored Rush Limbaugh with their “Statesmanship Award” back in 2007.)

Anyway, they are still hard at it and some very rich wingnuts are all in:

The biggest right-wing megadonors in America made major contributions to Claremont in 2020 and 2021, according to foundation financial records obtained by Rolling Stone. The high-profile donors include several of the most influential families who fund conservative politics and policy: the DeVoses of West Michigan, the Bradleys of Milwaukee, and the Scaifes of Pittsburgh.

The Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation donated $240,000 to Claremont in 2020 and approved another $400,000 to be paid out in the future, tax records show. The Bradley Foundation donated $100,000 to Claremont in 2020 and another $100,000 in 2021, according to tax records and a spokeswoman for the group. The Sarah Scaife Foundation, one of several charities tied to the late right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, supplied another $450,000 to Claremont in 2020, according to its latest tax filings.

Claremont’s own tax filings show that its revenue rose from 2019 to 2020 by a half-million dollars to $6.2 million, one of the highest sums since the organization was founded in 1979, according to the most recent available data. Claremont did not respond to a request for comment about its newly disclosed donors or its overall revenue for 2021.

The DeVoses, Bradleys, and Scaifes are among the most prominent donor families in conservative politics. For Bradley and Scaife, the giving to Claremont tracks with a long history of funding right-wing causes and advocacy groups, from the American Enterprise Institute think tank and the “bill mill” American Legislative Exchange Council, to anti-immigration zealot David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and the climate-denying Heartland Institute.

Bradley in particular has given heavily to groups that traffic in misleading or baseless claims about “election integrity” or widespread “voter fraud.” Thanks to a $6.5 million infusion from the Bradley Impact Fund, a related nonprofit, the undercover-sting group Project Veritas nearly doubled its revenue in 2020 to $22 million, according to the group’s tax filing. Bradley is also a long-time funder of the Heritage Foundation, which helped architect the wave of voter suppression bills introduced in state legislatures this year, and True the Vote, a conservative group that trains poll watchers and stokes fears of rampant voter fraud in the past.

But while the Bradley donations are to be expected, the contributions from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation to Claremont are perhaps more surprising. Betsy DeVos, in one of her final acts as Trump’s education secretary, condemned the “angry mob” on January 6 and said “the law must be upheld and the work of the people must go on.”

A spokesman for the DeVoses, Nick Wasmiller, said Betsy DeVos’s letter “speaks for itself.” He added: “Claremont does work in many areas. It would be baseless to assert the Foundation’s support has any connection to the one item you cite.” While the foundation’s 2020 tax filing said its grants to Claremont were unrestricted, Wasmiller said the filing was wrong and the money had been earmarked. However, he declined to say what it was earmarked for.

The donations flowing into Claremont illustrate that although the group’s full-throated support for Trump and fixation on election crimes may be extreme, they’re not fringe views when they have the backing of influential conservative funders. “Were it not for the patronage of billionaire conservatives and their family foundations, the Claremont Institute would likely be relegated to screaming about its anti-government agenda on the street corner,” says Kyle Herrig, president of government watchdog group Accountable.US.

The Claremont Institute’s mission, as its president, Ryan Williams, recently put it, is to “save Western civilization.” Since the 2016 presidential race, Claremont tried to give an intellectual veneer to the frothy mix of nativism and isolationism represented by candidate Donald Trump. The think tank was perhaps best known for its magazine, the Claremont Review of Books, and on the eve of the ’16 election, the Review published an essay called “The Flight 93 Election,” comparing the choice facing Republican voters to that of the passengers who ultimately chose to bring down the fourth plane on September 11th. If conservatives didn’t rush the proverbial cockpit, the author, identified by the pen name Publius Decius Mus, “death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”

The essay’s author, later revealed to be a conservative writer named Michael Anton, went to work in the Trump White House, which made sense given his description in “Flight 93 Election” of “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.”

Former Claremont scholars said they were aghast by the think tank’s full-on embrace of Trump in 2016. “The Claremont Institute spent 36 years as a resolutely anti-populist institution, [and] preached rightly that norms and institutions were hard to build and easy to destroy, so to watch them suddenly embrace Trump in May 2016 was like if PETA suddenly published a barbecue cookbook,” one former fellow told Vice News.

In recent years, the think tank courted controversy when it awarded paid fellowships to Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer who was an early promoter of the Seth Rich and Pizzagate conspiracy theories, and Charlie Kirk, head of the pro-Trump activist group Turning Point USA who has pushed baseless election-fraud theories and vowed to defend young people who wouldn’t refused vaccination from what he called “medical apartheid.”

As I said, the idea that this is new is fatuous nonsense. Here’s a piece of Limbaugh’s acceptance of that award in ’07:

How many of you yesterday happened to see any pictures at all of the opening ceremonies of the Bill Clinton Library and Massage Parlor? (Laughter) How many hands do I see? Okay. I don’t see too many hands and I’m not surprised. Let me tell you, I watched it. Not because I wanted to. I watched it for you. 

I watched it, my friends, because it’s my business to do this. The Clinton library opening ceremonies epitomized, if you will, exactly where the left in this country is today. First, where was it? It was in a red state. They hate red states. In fact, the media in this country, the — what I call them, the liberal spin machine — I don’t like to use the word “mainstream press” anymore. 

The liberal spin machine was there. They were all excited. But they’re thinking about sending foreign correspondents to the red states to find out what people — and to the red counties of California — to find out what Americans are really like.

Please. If people thought that garbage was “statesmanship” then I’m not sure why they would have thought supporting Donald Trump was beyond the pale.

Claremont continues to push the stolen-election myth and has apparently helped state lawmakers draft legislation to make election laws more favorable to the Republican Party. In October, Claremont President Ryan Williams told an undercover liberal activist that Eastman was “still very involved with a lot of the state legislators and advising them on election integrity stuff.”

Williams went on to tell the undercover activist, Lauren Windsor, that Eastman’s position was this: “Look, unless we get right what happened in 2020, there’s no moving on. They’re just going to steal every subsequent election.”

Trump couldn’t have said it better himself.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants the Speaker’s gavel in 2023. He’ll offer himself to his party’s graven image to get it. Axios:

Kevin McCarthy is signaling he’ll institutionalize key Trumpian priorities if he takes over as House speaker next year — aggressive tactics targeting undocumented immigrants, liberals and corporate America. 

Why it matters: He’d govern with an edge and agenda in stark contrast not just to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) but to Paul Ryan, the last Republican in the role. McCarthy’s vision would empower populists and pugilists to complete the Republican makeover Donald Trump drove this far.

Jonathan Swan contrasts McCarthy’s approach with those of former Republican Speaker Paul Ryan:

• Where Ryan focused on tax cuts and fostered friendly relations with corporate America, McCarthy is publicly excoriating the Chamber of Commerce, threatening crippling regulations on social media companies and planning to inject an anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mindset into the work of every congressional committee possible.
• Where Ryan tried to maintain civil relationships across the aisle, McCarthy promises to strip high-profile Democrats of their committee assignments.

“Many major corporations condemned former President Trump and after Jan. 6, cut their financial ties and disavowed Republicans who objected to certifying President Biden’s victory,” Swan explains.

Trump gave corporations tax cuts. They gave him the bottom of their shoes. Retribution will be the name of the game with McCarthy as Speaker. It’s what “defeated former president” Donald Trump wants. It’s the sacrifice McCarthy hopes to lay at Trump’s feet.

Swan adds, “Trump’s had plenty of opportunities since to attack McCarthy. But unlike Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — whom Trump attacks at every opportunity — the former president has been sparing to McCarthy, suggesting he probably wouldn’t block his path to speaker.”

That is because McCarthy has dirt on Trump’s actions/inactions during the Jan. 6 insurrection that Trump wants to remain hidden. If McCarthy wants Trump’s support in his bid for Speaker, he will keep his mouth shut.

“Sure, next question,” McCarthy told reporters who asked in May 2021 if he would testify before an independent commission looking into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Rarely does a politician give such a curt, unambigious response.

That was then. And now?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday night that he will refuse to voluntarily give information sought by the selection committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a stance that will put pressure on the committee to subpoena him.

The House investigation sent McCarthy a letter requesting information he may have regarding events leading to, during, and after the riot that breached the Capitol. McCarthy spoke that day to Trump and to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. McCarthy now brands the Jan. 6 investigation illegitimate.

“It is not serving any legislative purpose. The committee’s only objective is to attempt to damage its political opponents – acting like the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee one day and the [U.S. Department of Justice] the next,” he said.

“As a representative and the leader of the minority party, it is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have concluded to not participate with this select committee’s abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward,” McCarthy said.

Not to mention that answering questions on cameras that will beam McCarthy’s face onto TV screens at Mar-a-Lago will not help his bid for Speaker.

“The House voted in December to hold Meadows in criminal contempt for defying a subpoena issued by the committee,” reports CNBC. McCarthy could face a subpoena from the committee should he fail to answer the panel’s questions voluntarily.

It is not clear whom McCarthy considers the higher authority, a House investigatory committee or a twice-impeached, disgraced, and defeated former president with state and federal prosecutors nipping at his heels.

“But the overwhelming attention Manchin (and to a lesser degree Sen. Kyrsten Sinema) is receiving really is undeserved. The people who should be getting more attention are the 50 members of the Republican caucus who have sold their American birthright for a mess of Trumpism.”

I wrote that here last Saturday regarding the Democrat-led push to shore up voting rights systematically being undermined by Republican state legislatures, by the U.S. Supreme Court, and by a “defeated former president” relentlessly undermining public faith in American elections.

All 50 Senate Republicans oppose renewing the Voting Rights Act. All 50 Senate Republicans refuse to repair its preclearance provisions eviscerated by the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision in 2013. All 50 Senate Republicans will not prevent actions by the states to allow legislatures to overrule the majority of voters in presidential elections. Forty-eight Senate Democrats will. Two Democrats are holdouts.

On Wednesday. Vice President Kamala Harris prosecuted that case in an interview with NBC. (Preview of the Thursday broadcast below.)

“When we have the discussion about who’s responsible, I will not absolve the 50 Republicans in the United States Senate from responsibility for upholding one of the most basic and important tenets of our democracy, which is free and fair elections and access to the ballot for all eligible voters,” the former San Francisco district attorney insisted.

NBC’s Craig Melvin tried to whatabout the issue, asking about the stance taken by Manchin. Harris wasn’t having it.

“I don’t think anyone should be absolved from the resonsibility of preserving and protecting our democracy, especially when they took an oath to protect and defend our constitutions” she said.

On Tuesday, President Biden pressed his case for voting rights in a speech in Atlanta on the grounds of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College:

“The vice president and I have supported voting rights bills since day one of this administration, but each and every time Senate Republicans have blocked the way,” he said. “Republicans oppose even debating the issue. You hear me? I have been around the Senate a long time. I was vice president for eight years. I’ve never seen a circumstance where not one single Republican has a voice that’s ready to speak for justice now.”

The President recalled working with the segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, who he said eventually came around to supporting voting rights bills.”

Not a single Republican has displayed the courage to stand up to a defeated president to protect America’s right to vote. Not one. Not one,” Biden said.

In 2006, 98 of 100 senators voted to renew the Voting Rights Act. There were no votes opposed. Two Republicans were not present.

What changed between then and now? The country in 2008 elected a Black president with record turnout and a surge of voting by young people and non-white voters. “Black turnout exceeded white turnout — 69.1 percent to 65.2 percent — for the first time in history,” the Washington Post reported. “By 2012, when Obama sought reelection, the gap was even larger, even though turnout among both groups decreased slightly.” That’s what.

Following up on the post below, this piece by Dan Pfeiffer gets to a problem I’ve been thinking about for a while. Having Donald Trump off the radar for most Americans is making them complacent. They should not be complacent:

For the folks who inhale political content (i.e. you and me), Donald Trump remains omnipresent in our lives. We read the books written about his presidency. We pay close attention to whom he endorses. We consume the clips of his interviews on Fox and Newsmax that are tweeted out by Media Matters and the Aaron Rupar’s of the world. We love to mock his bizarrely long, and poorly constructed written statements. This obsession comes from our understanding that the threat of Trump has not diminished in the year since he left office. It has grown. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP nomination and, as of right now, has a very legitimate shot at reclaiming the White House.

For the rest of America, Trump could not be more absent. Trump was purged from social media. His rallies are not broadcast live and get scant coverage outside of the local market where they occur. When Trump does interviews, they are with friendly interviewers ensconced within the Right-Wing information bubble. I would guess that the vast majority of Americans have no idea Trump’s influence within the GOP has only grown in the last year; that he is likely to run for president, and could very well win.

I have no doubt that the absence of attention, the social media bans, and the inability to get news coverage drives Donald Trump insane. It picks at his deeply-held insecurities. But not talking about Trump might be the greatest gift we could give him and the Republican Party.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Donald Trump’s days of dominating social media came to an end on January 6th, 2020. Alarmed by his rhetoric encouraging the violent insurrectionists at the Capitol, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms suspended President Trump. Twitter made it a permanent ban. Trump remains suspended on Facebook and YouTube, although both reserve the right to reinstate him at some point. When President Biden was inaugurated, Democrats, the media, and most of America turned the page on this sordid chapter in American history.

All of the above pushed Trump so far into the background that he essentially vanished from the political conversation. The Wall Street Journal wrote this past weekend:

Since his social-media ban—just days before he left the White House—mentions of Mr. Trump on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have decreased 88%, according to Zignal Labs, a company that analyzes content on social media.

However, absence seems to have made the heart grow fonder. Trump’s approval ratings have nearly bounced back to where they were on Election Day 2020 when he came within 40,000 votes of winning reelection. An approval rating of 43/52 is nothing to write home about, but it makes him about as popular as Joe Biden is right now.

The lack of attention on Trump also helped his party. A Morning Consult poll found that the Republican Party has fully removed the stain of 1/6 from their brand. Prior to the insurrection, 32 percent of voters thought that the Republican Party was headed in the right direction. After the assault on the Capitol, that number dropped to 24 percent. One year later, it is now 34 percent despite the party leaders being more committed to the Big Lie today than they were one year ago. […]

Trump’s banishment from social media may be good for the world, but it’s an obstacle for Democratic efforts to hold onto our majorities. Donald Trump used Twitter to dominate the conversation. It was his strength, but also his greatest weakness. His twitchy Twitter finger got him into constant trouble, stepped on his message, and reminded everyone what they didn’t like about him.

Trump’s use of Twitter was almost always one of the first points voters brought up in focus groups. His constant tweeting was a proxy for all the concerns voters had about his temperament and focus on the job. It created a constant sense of chaos that unnerved a lot of the electorate. A 2019 Morning Consult poll found:

Majorities of respondents also said Trump’s use of Twitter hurts his presidency — 55 percent — and America’s standing in the world — 54 percent. Asked whether his Twitter use helps or hurts the country’s national security, 48 percent said it hurts, while only 13 percent said it helps.

Over the last year, Trump’s inability to remind the world why they hate him was a gift. His statements attacking members of his own party for insufficient loyalty to the Big Lie received a fraction of the attention a tweet saying the exact same thing would elicit. The Twitter ban created a false impression of unity in the Republican Party.

This unhinged statement from Trump about Mike Rounds, an essentially anonymous senator from South Dakota, could be exhibit A in the argument against Trump sniffing out power again.

Trump issues a statement attacking GOP Sen. Mike Rounds, who said over the weekend that Biden won 2020 election fair and square.

"Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again."

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 10, 2022

But don’t take my word for it. Trump’s own advisers agree. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Current and former aides to Mr. Trump said the shift in popularity was largely attributable to the former president’s diminished social-media presence. His constant, often provocative tweets helped galvanize supporters but provided steady ammunition for his detractors. During his time in office, even his most ardent supporters told pollsters they wished Mr. Trump wouldn’t broadcast each grievance and respond to every criticism

To Talk or Not Talk About Trump

Biden’s decision to take on his predecessor so directly brought to the forefront an internal issue for the Democratic Party that had been simmering in the background for months: How much attention should Democrats give Trump as they fight to maintain their majorities in 2022?

Ever since Terry McAuliffe lost the incredibly winnable Virginia governor’s race with a clumsy, ham-handed effort to tie his opponent to Trump (Glenn Trump-kin), the chorus of people calling on Democrats to avoid talking about Trump has grown.

My view is this: Trump is the elephant in the room. It’s simply impossible to avoid talking about a former president who is planning to run again while putting in place a plan to steal the next election, especially when that plan depends on electing Republicans. I don’t know about you, but that seems like something the voters ought to know about.

Mandy Grunwald, a longtime Democratic operative who is starting a SuperPAC to focus on Trump, made this case when she told CNN:

The reaction in our party implies that it’s a zero-sum game: We only talk about Trump or we never talk about Trump. We’re in the ‘and’ zone. People want to talk about the economy and what’s happening in people’s lives, and all kinds of stuff. But you just can’t ignore this. It’s that sense that you have to choose, it’s one or the other. Because Terry McAuliffe didn’t win, and he talked about Trump, that’s the end of it? That’s nonsense.

Joe Biden is fond of saying “don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” Donald Trump is the alternative. More and more, I believe the salience of Donald Trump will determine how Democrats do in 2022. If the looming threat of Trump and Trumpism is front of mind, we have a shot. If it isn’t, we may not.

Those of you who read this blog know that I have been saying this for some time. Donald Trump is the gift that keeps on giving. But if the only place he’s making a fool of himself is in the right wing media who love him for it. Normal people are living in a world in which politics is all about economic data and legislative sausage making — in other words, business as usual. Sure there is the January 6th Committee but even that is being portrayed as a partisan exercise like Benghazi so it’s also business as usual.

Trump running his long coup under the radar is much more dangerous than Trump running his long coup right out in the open. Everyone needs to pay attention. We can’t afford another 2016.

You can subscribe to Pfeiffer’s newsletter here. It’s always good.

Lucky for him, his voters will never hear about this:

Former President Donald Trump spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Tuesday in a brief phone interview. They discussed vaccinations for COVID-19, the 2020 election and the outlook for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.

The conversation was cut short when Trump hung up the phone while being questioned about his continued lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. He repeatedly attempted to assert misinformation about his election loss, as well as about the necessity of vaccinations.

In addition to the context provided in the course of the interview, you can read more fact-checking and analysis of the conversation here.

Former President Donald Trump: Hello.

Steve Inskeep: Mr. President.

Hello, Steve, how are you?

I’m doing OK. Thanks for taking the time today. It’s great to talk with you.

OK. Absolutely. Absolutely.

There’s no reason that you would know this, but we first invited you on the program in 2015, so it’s great to get you.

Oh, wow. Well, I guess I — I got lucky by not doing it, right? But that’s OK.

Maybe so. Maybe so, but you —

Are we going live, Steve? Are we, uh —

No, we’re — no, we’re not going live. This is pre-taped, and —

OK, fine.

And I promised to keep it to about 15 minutes, so I’ll do my best to do that.

Very good. Very good, Steve.

And why don’t we just dive right in? I’ve got a lot to talk about. There’s a lot to go over, but I want to begin briefly on the pandemic. What advice would you give to Americans who haven’t chosen to get vaccinated?

Well, first of all, the mandate is really hurting our country. Now that’s advice to an administration more so than to the Americans. A lot of Americans aren’t standing for it, and it’s hurting our country. It’s hurting our economy very badly. And being very — the proud person that did so well with therapeutics and, and vaccines and everything else and getting them done in record times, you know, I — I have a lot to say on the subject. And one of the things I say is they have to start promoting and making the therapeutics more available, because we have great therapeutics, too, in addition to the vaccines.

What is the advice on the vaccines, though?

But the therapeutics —

The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it’s got to be individual, but I recommend taking them. Many people recommend them. And if some people don’t want, they shouldn’t have to take them. They can’t be mandated, as the expression goes. And I think that’s very important. Personally, I feel very comfortable having taken them. I’ve had absolutely no reverberation.

Do you think the pandemic will continue as long as millions of people do choose not to vaccinate?

I think it’s going to phase out. You know, there are many people that have had it, if you look at the numbers. I don’t know why they would be getting the vaccine for the most part, unless they were at a certain age group and they had certain problems, whether it’s the high blood pressure —

Yeah.

— the diabetes and, you know, various things in particular. But, you know, we — the administration has to start giving credit to people that had the China plague — or call it whatever you want. But it came out of China, and it’s a disaster for the world, to —

People can be — I’ll mention that people can be reinfected, but I want to move on. South Dakota —

No, they can be. They can be. But generally speaking, it’s not as bad.

Let me ask about another piece of news here. South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, as I think you know, was on ABC over the weekend. He spoke about the 2020 election and also referred to the election campaign that is now starting in 2022. Let’s listen.

Sen. Mike Rounds: “We simply did not win the election as Republicans for the presidency. … And if we simply look back and tell our people, don’t vote, because, you know, there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a — in a — in a huge disadvantage.”

Couple of things to ask about there, Mr. President. Let’s start with the politics. Is it a disadvantage for Republicans to keep talking about the 2020 election in 2022?

No, I think it’s an advantage, because otherwise they’re going to do it again in ’22 and ’24. And Rounds is wrong on that, totally wrong. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the findings in Arizona, if you look at what’s going on in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, by the way — and take a look at Wisconsin — they’re finding things that nobody thought possible. This was a corrupt election.

I just have to point out Doug Logan — to name one of the states that you just named — Doug Logan, who ran the audit in Arizona that was set up by your allies, didn’t find serious problems. This is a quote. “The ballots that were provided to us to count in the Coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvass numbers.” He raised a bunch of administrative issues but didn’t find a problem that would have changed the result at all.

The ballots may correspond, but look at the ballots themselves. The number of ballots doesn’t mean anything. It’s who signed the ballots, where did the ballots come from. What you really have to do in that report is look at the findings. And the findings are devastating for Arizona. They’re devastating like nobody’s seen before —

Why did — why did your —

— And other states are just as bad.

Why did Republican officials in Arizona accept the results then?

Because they’re RINOs, and frankly, a lot of people are questioning that. Why would they? They fought very hard, the Maricopa County people. And people don’t understand it, because all you have to do is look at the findings.

And, just so you know, some of those people went before Congress a short while ago, and they were grilled by Congressman Biggs. You ought to take a look at their testimony. They weren’t able to answer anything. He made them look like fools. They couldn’t answer a thing. They got up and gave a beautiful statement. And then when it came time to ask, why this? Why that? What about these votes? What about those votes? They look like total fools.

Let me read you some short quotes. The first is by one of the judges, one of the 10 judges you appointed, who ruled on this. And there were many judges, but 10 who you appointed. Brett Ludwig, U.S. District Court in Wisconsin, who was nominated by you in 2020. He’s on the bench, and he says, quote, “This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.”

Another quote, Kory Langhofer, your own campaign attorney in Arizona, Nov. 12, 2020, quote, “We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election.” And also Rudy Giuliani, your lawyer, Nov. 18, 2020, in Pennsylvania, quote, “This is not a fraud case.” Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud, they said in court they had no evidence of fraud, and the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.

It was too early to ask for fraud and to talk about fraud. Rudy said that, because of the fact it was very early with the — because that was obviously at a very, very — that was a long time ago. The things that have found out have more than bore out what people thought and what people felt and what people found.

When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don’t know what his game is, but I will just say this: You look at the findings. You look at the number of votes. Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?

It is not true that there were far —

Gee, that’s a pretty tough thing to —

It is not true.

That’s a pretty tough problem.

It is not true that there were far more votes than voters. There was an early count. I’ve noticed you’ve talked about this in rallies and you’ve said, reportedly, this is true. I think even you know that that was an early report that was corrected later.

Well, you take a look at it. You take a look at Detroit. In fact, they even had a hard time getting people to sign off on it because it was so out of balance. They called it out of balance. So you take a look at it. You know the real truth, Steve, and this election was a rigged election.

Why is it that you think that the vast majority of your allies in the United States Senate are not standing behind you? We did have that statement by Mike Rounds.

Because Mitch McConnell is a loser. And frankly, Mitch McConnell, if he were on the other side and if Schumer were put in his position, he would have been fighting this like you’ve never seen before. He would have been fighting this, because when you look at it, and this is long — is a long way from over. You take a look at what’s going on now in Pennsylvania. Take a look at what’s going on in Wisconsin. You just take a look.

Now, we had a lot of cases where the judges wouldn’t hear him. We had a case in Nevada that was so good. You read the papers. It’s impossible. The judge refused to even listen to it. We had many cases. In fact, they say, and I can’t testify because it’s been through a lot of systems, a lot of different systems. But they say, and they say very strongly, the judges just — nobody’s really gotten a chance to look. Look at the United States Supreme Court. They refused to hear the case. And you had, I guess, 19 states suing —

They said, there was no standing to give the case. That’s correct. Can I just ask —

Well, yeah, no standing, I know, no standing. And the president of the United States supposedly didn’t have standing, either. So I wanted to file it myself. They said, “Sir, you don’t have standing.” I said, “Wait a minute. I’m the president of the United States. They just rigged an election.” Hundreds of thousands of votes in different states. They just rigged an election. We got — we got a number of votes that, I think you’ll agree — no sitting president has ever gotten the number of votes that I got. No sitting president has ever gotten —

Lot of votes. That’s true. In — lot of — lot of — you —

No sitting president. Do you — I — nobody believes. You think Biden got 80 million votes? Because I don’t believe it.

It’s true — it’s true that you got more than any sitting president in the election you’ve disputed.

You mean he got them sitting in his basement. He got 80 — how come he couldn’t — then how come Biden —

If I can, Mr. President, Mr. President.

Let me ask you this question. How come Biden couldn’t attract 20 people for a crowd? How come when he went to speak in different locations, nobody came to watch, but all of a sudden he got 80 million votes? Nobody believes that, Steve. Nobody believes that.

If you’ll forgive me, maybe because the election was about you. If I can just move on to ask, are you telling Republicans in 2022 that they must press your case on the past election in order to get your endorsement? Is that an absolute?

They are going to do whatever they want to do — whatever they have to do, they’re going to do. But the ones that are smart — the ones that know, you take a look at. Again, you take a look at how Kari Lake is doing, running for governor. She’s very big on this issue. She’s leading by a lot. People have no idea how big this issue is, and they don’t want it to happen again. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen, and they don’t want it to happen again.

I want to —

And the only way it’s not going to happen again is you have to solve the problem of the presidential rigged election of 2020.

Mr. President, if I —

So Steve, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Woah, woah, woah, I have one more question. I want to ask about a court hearing yesterday on Jan. 6. Judge Amit Mehta … He’s gone. OK.

Baby Trump doesn’t like being challenged about his Big Lie. And he hardly ever is, unfortunately.

Last night on Looney TV:

Tucker Carlson ended his wild interview with Glenn Beck on Tuesday night with a mild clarification regarding one of Beck’s more bombastic claims.

Beck, who was on Fox’s top-rated Tucker Carlson Tonight promoting his new book The Great Reset, claimed that an international “reset” is underway that is moving Western civilization toward a fascist dystopia and that there is proof of it in Washington State – upcoming Covid-19 “internment camps.”

“The Great Reset is not a conspiracy theory, it is something that the Davos people have put together along with the World Economic Forum,” claimed Beck, while Carlson listened intensely, “and it is running rampant through every Western capital and every Western country.”

Beck charged:

“Tomorrow morning at 9:30, the Washington state Covid detainment emergency, they are going to have a state board of health discussing from 9:30 to 3:30 tomorrow allowing health, local health officers to use law enforcement to force an emergency order in involuntarily detaining a person or group of persons’ families to be isolated in a quarantine facility following the refusal to voluntarily comply with requested medical examinations, testing, treatment, counseling and vaccination. This is an internment camp.”

[…]

“This again is all about total and complete control,” Beck argued. “I was wrong. For a long time, I thought this was about socialism. It is not. It is a brand of fascism.”

Beck, who currently hosts a popular talk-radio show, continued for several minutes, unwinding his doomsday theory which he claims will end the West by 2030.

Beck’s book, co-written by Justin Haskins, has the tagline, “Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism” and on the cover is Biden, Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, and Jewish billionaire Geroge Soros — a favorite target of Beck.

“They are going to bankrupt the entire West and only the elites are going to be able to have money, the food they want, the jobs they want, et cetera, et cetera,” Beck concluded. “We will be left in the dust. We must educate ourselves right now.”

Carlson, for his part, left Beck unchallenged in his unfounded and wild assertions, but added at the end:

“We’ve got a lot of communication about the law that Glenn mentioned in Washington state. We’ve not been able to track that down. Obviously, things have happened in the last years we never would have imagined are true. So, of course, our minds remain open and we will continue to look.”

His mind will remain open — to the idea that Washington State has concentration camps for unvaccinated people.

That is the most popular show on Fox News, the highest rated news network.

By the way, Glenn Beck was the fourth most popular man in the world back in 2009, right behind nelson Mandela. He was just as insane then:

Something unusual happened last weekend that may portend a little bit of dissonance in the Republican Party. A conservative senator went on television and directly refuted Donald Trump’s Big Lie. 

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, “What do you say to all those Republicans, all those veterans who believe the election was stolen, who have bought the falsehoods coming from former President Trump?” Rounds responded:

We looked — as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states. While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.

“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward — and that’s the way we want to look at this — moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it’s going to take to win the presidency.

Trump was not a happy ex-president. He fired off a scathing response:

“Senator” Mike Rounds of the Great State of South Dakota just went woke on the Fraudulent President Election of 2020. He made a statement this weekend on ABC Fake News, that despite massive evidence to the contrary, including much of it pouring in from Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states, he found the election to be ok – Just fine.

Is he crazy or just stupid? The numbers are conclusive, and the fraudulent and irregular votes are massive.

Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again.

And then the oddest thing happened. Rounds stuck by his comments. “I’m disappointed,” the Republican said, “but not surprised by the former president’s reaction.” However, he continued, “the facts remain the same. The former president lost the 2020 election.”

Rounds went on to argue that relitigating the past and attacking Republicans was no way to win elections. GOP Leader Mitch McConnell backed him up, saying, “I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020 election.” Sens. Kevin Kramer, R-S.D.,and John Thune, R-N.D., also agreed with Rounds. And here’s what Utah’s Mitt Romney had to say:

twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1480617074343006212

What makes this unusual is not that some Republicans are speaking out about something Trump has done. Over the years, many have expressed shock and dismay over some of his crude insults or egregious behavior, but they always back off once they realize that the rank and file are sticking with him. Soon after the night of the January 6th insurrection, when so many congressional Republicans made bold declarations of independence from Donald Trump, most slunk back into their safe spaces, afraid to admit what he did that day for fear of angering the base. On the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot, Politico took a look at all Trump’s cabinet members who resigned from the administration in protest and found that none of them had spoken out since.

No, what makes Rounds’ comments, and the powerful senators backing him up even in the face of Trump’s spittle-flecked rebuttal, unusual is what they are saying. Top Republicans in the Senate are now disputing the central organizing principle of the GOP in 2022: the Big Lie.

A Washington Post-Amherst poll released last week showed that only 21 percent of Republicans believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, which tracks with most other polling over the last year. Donald Trump’s relentless pounding of this issue, day in and day out, starting even before the election was held in November 2020 has done its work. Republican officials all over the country have used Trump’s sore-loser strategy to change voting laws, install partisans in the election system and generally prepare the ground to dispute elections whenever Republicans don’t win. The Big Lie is now the central organizing principle of the GOP.

All of this has the effect of not only validating the mistrust in the electoral system with Republican voters, it’s shaking faith in the system among Democratic voters as well. After all, if elections are being overseen by partisan Republicans chosen specifically for their willingness to back Trump’s delusional insistence that he won an election he lost by 7 million votes, people will be hard pressed to put much faith in the integrity of their decisions. This is not a problem for the GOP which will be happy to see Democrats flailing about trying to contest elections that really were “rigged.” They are not afraid of that.

So why are these Republicans testing the waters by speaking out about the Big Lie now? After all, it stands to benefit them if they can wire elections in their favor. But Rounds’ other comments make clear what they are concerned about. They are afraid that all this demeaning of the election system will keep their own voters from the polls In his first comments Rounds said:

 [I]f we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let’s focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can — they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.

He followed up later saying:

Why are we having that discussion today? I think because we’re getting closer and closer to 2022, in which we want people to get out and vote. We want them to have faith in the election process. We want them to feel like they’re a part of it and that their vote really matters.”

And while he only mentioned it in passing, these folks are very worried about Trump’s attacks on Republican incumbents and the fringe weirdos he’s endorsing to replace them.

Many smart Republicans understood that Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen was largely responsible for the loss of the Senate because of the way his lies played out in Georgia with the two Senate runoff races that sent Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to Washington. It’s fair to assume that they hoped Trump would fade away by now and they could carry on about their business without having to confront him on this. But he’s still lying and there’s no getting around it.

Will this challenge hold up any better than any of the other times a few Republicans tried to stand up to Trump? Who knows? But as the Democrats continue to struggle in the Senate over the vital voting rights legislation that could help stave off some of this partisan electoral engineering based on the Big Lie, it’s interesting that there’s some nervousness among the GOP leadership about how it might affect them negatively as well.

Imagine if they could summon the intestinal fortitude to really do the right thing and acknowledge that a bipartisan vote to secure voting rights for everyone (as has been done regularly over the past 30 years) could go a long way toward solving all these problems? I’m not holding my breath. 

Salon

When I’m wrong I’m wrong. I assumed that after getting booed, Trump would give up his dream of winning the Nobel Prize for medicine for the vaccines and shut up about it. But instead, it appears that he sees them as a good weapon to beat his potential rivals over the head with. He appeared on OAN yesterday:

“Now after so many months of the vaccine being administered and these side affects, and Americans’ questions [sic] of it, do you reconsider your push for it? Or what’s your view on the vaccine in general?” Ball asked.

“Well, I’ve taken it,” said Trump. “I’ve had the booster. Many politicians–I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’ – because they had the vaccine – and they’re answering like–in other words, the answer is ‘yes’ but they don’t want to say it. Because they’re gutless. You gotta say it – whether you had it or not. Say it. But the fact is that I think the vaccines saved tens of millions throughout the world. I’ve had absolutely no side affects.”

The former president reiterated what he’d said to Owens, and stated that being vaccinated greatly reduces one’s chances of being hospitalized or dying from Covid.

“If they get it, they’re not going to hospitals for the most part and dying,” Trump said. “Before it was a horror. and now they’re not.”

Interestingly, some of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress have refused to say whether they’re vaccinated, let alone boosted. As of last summer, nearly half of House Republicans declined to disclose their vaccination status.

Additionally, Trump ally Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has refused to say whether he has received the booster shot. “I’ve done whatever I did,” he said in December when asked if he’d been boosted. “The normal shot.”

He wants that Nobel very badly. And he wants DeSantis taken out, that’s becoming more and more clear.

It will be interesting if he brings this up at the rally on Saturday. And if he does, it will be even more interesting to see how his crowd reacts.

Dan Pfeiffer argues in his newsletter this morning that maybe it’s a bad thing for Democrats that Donald Trump is banned from social media. The Wall Street Journal reports his mentions have dropped by 88%. That’s a problem?

However, absence seems to have made the heart grow fonder. Trump’s approval ratings have nearly bounced back to where they were on Election Day 2020 when he came within 40,000 votes of winning reelection. An approval rating of 43/52 is nothing to write home about, but it makes him about as popular as Joe Biden is right now.

The lack of attention on Trump also helped his party. A Morning Consult poll found that the Republican Party has fully removed the stain of 1/6 from their brand. Prior to the insurrection, 32 percent of voters thought that the Republican Party was headed in the right direction. After the assault on the Capitol, that number dropped to 24 percent. One year later, it is now 34 percent despite the party leaders being more committed to the Big Lie today than they were one year ago.

Trump’s absence might be good for the world, Pfeiffer believes, but perhaps not for Democrats looking to hang on through the 2022 midterms. “Trump’s inability to remind the world why they hate him was a gift” that creates a false sense of unity in the Republican Party, Pfeiffer writes. The Journal backs him up:

Current and former aides to Mr. Trump said the shift in popularity was largely attributable to the former president’s diminished social-media presence. His constant, often provocative tweets helped galvanize supporters but provided steady ammunition for his detractors. During his time in office, even his most ardent supporters told pollsters they wished Mr. Trump wouldn’t broadcast each grievance and respond to every criticism

It’s rarely a good idea to amplify your opponent’s message unless it’s served up in a “truth sandwich.”

On the other hand, Trump has taken to promoting vaccines for now and slamming politicians who won’t admit to being vaccinated and boosted. (Looking at you, Ron DeSantis!)

Business Insider:

Former President Donald Trump endorsed COVID-19 vaccines again and blasted “gutless” politicians who won’t say if they’ve been boosted.

In an interview with the far-right One America News network, Trump said he was pro-vaccination and that he experienced “absolutely no side effects” after receiving his booster shot.

[…]

“Many politicians — I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’ because they had the vaccine — and they’re answering it like … ‘yes’ but they don’t want to say it. Because they’re gutless,” Trump told the OAN presenter Dan Ball.

“You gotta say it, whether you had it or not. Say it. But the fact is that I think the vaccines saved tens of millions throughout the world.”

Obviously, Trump wants to take DeSantis out of the competition for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. If advocating for vaccines spurs more people to get vaccinated in the short run, it’s better for the country. Even if he changes course yet again. But will it be better for Trump?

The jury is out. Remember, Trump got booed just weeks ago by some of his own supporters for advocating vaccination.

'You’re playing right into their hands' when you doubt the vaccine, President Trump says. pic.twitter.com/xJc7JTL0cR

— No Spin News (@NoSpinNews) December 20, 2021

Most of the Trump cult may change course when he says turn, but rather than admit error some will turn on him, too:

Controversial right-wing pastor Greg Locke recently criticized former President Donald Trump for supporting coronavirus vaccines, insisting that Trump “is going to lose his voter base” if he continues to do so.

Locke, who previously touted election conspiracy theories in favor of Trump, told members of his church that he is “sick” of the former president promoting the protective COVID-19 measure.

“He was lied to and he knows it. And his arrogance won’t let him change his mind. I’m telling you right now, on the authority of the Bible, if Donald Trump does not get out in front of this vaccine nonsense he is going to lose his voter base in the next coming election,” Locke said during a recent sermon, according to a video posted by Right Wing Watch on Monday.

MAGA pastor Greg Locke is now turning against Trump over the issue of vaccines, ripping Trump's "arrogance" and declaring that if he doesn't stop supporting "this vaccine nonsense, he is going to lose his voter base in the next coming election." pic.twitter.com/6X0CEReXx1

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 10, 2022

Pfeiffer makes a case not unlike the theory behind the race-class narrative. If we don’t mention Trump (like avoiding talking about race), the only messages people hear will be from Republicans. And that’s bad. Pfeiffer cites thinking from Molly Greenwald, a Democratic operative who appeared on CNN:

The reaction in our party implies that it’s a zero-sum game: We only talk about Trump or we never talk about Trump. We’re in the ‘and’ zone. People want to talk about the economy and what’s happening in people’s lives, and all kinds of stuff. But you just can’t ignore this. It’s that sense that you have to choose, it’s one or the other. Because Terry McAuliffe didn’t win, and he talked about Trump, that’s the end of it? That’s nonsense.

“If the looming threat of Trump and Trumpism is front of mind, we have a shot,” Pfeiffer concludes. “If it isn’t, we may not.”

Either/or thinking puts me off in any context. Let’s see how badly Trump steps on his own over-long tie with the vaccine advocacy. The worst that happens is lives (and hospital staffs) are saved. As soon as DeSantis is politically dead, Trump may reverse course. But for now, giving him enough publicity to shave off some of his base seems prudent.

Yes, Omicron is not as deadly as earlier versions of Covid if you are vaccinated and boosted. That’s little comfort to burned-out emergency room staffs filled to overflowing. Hospitals are putting patients outside in tents or storing them in hallways.

Dr. Bradley Dreifuss in Tucson has seen patients wait over 200 hours for a hospital bed. He tells NPR, “Our hospitals are totally full. We are not able to admit patients. We do not even have admitting teams currently … Our system is literally collapsing.”

The highly infectious Omicron variant moves so fast that the volume of patients visiting the ER is “staggering,” although the number who need to be hospitalized is actually smaller than with prior waves. Resistance built up from prior vacccines is helping. But staffing shortages stemming from infected caregivers is compounding the impacts of the Omicron wave.

People are coming to the ER for rapid tests because they need them early enough to qualify for monoclonal antibody. But we don’t have rapid tests nor antibody in the ER. FYI.

— Esther Choo, MD MPH (@choo_ek) January 11, 2022

Some of the numbers are symptomless people who visited the ER for other reasons, but show up positive because testing is protocol. Others wrongly seek out the ER to get tested. Nonetheless, numbers are staggering.

CNN:

“Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Those who have been vaccinated … and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death.”

In contrast, those who are not vaccinated are “going to get the brunt of the severe aspect of this,” he added.

The wave is expected to crest in the next few days.

We cope. Holding classes is a joke.

Speaking of jokes, Peter Weber at The Week recounts a few from late-night shows:

The never-ending COVID-19 pandemic is so bad right now, “the United States reported 1.5 million new infections yesterday,” Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday’s Late Show. “You want to know how sick of this pandemic we all are? Check out this headline that CNN thought we all needed to hear: ‘5 reasons you should not deliberately catch Omicron “to get it over with.”‘ Well, obviously you shouldn’t deliberately catch Omicron and — should I? I mean, all the other late-night hosts are doing it. I’m starting to think they had a secret sleepover and I wasn’t invited!”

And Jimmy Kimmel:

“The new bad idea floating around is people who — and I flirted with this idea, I realize now it’s stupid — but people who want to get the virus just to get it over with,” Jimmy Kimmel admitted on Kimmel Live. “Here’s the thing: There’s only so many doctors and there’s only so many nurses and there are only so many hospital beds. When everyone tries to get something all at the same time, it’s a disaster. Did we learn nothing from the great toilet paper crisis of 2020?”

Covid denial is so mock-worthy that it showed up in a commercial for the travel site, KAYAK:

But please don’t mock, writes Brian Broome at the Washington Post. It’s not helpful:

This is not a good place for a country to be. That sense of false security that comes from being sure we are always right keeps us divided enough for outside forces to manipulate and perhaps conquer. Because a fight between grasshoppers is a joy to the crow.

None of us is innocent in this situation. I admit to getting high off being right and wishing ill upon those who are so nakedly wrong that it warrants mockery. Like those who believe the “big lie.” Listening to them spout nonsense in the face of verifiable fact is maddening. I know they feel the same about me.

[…]

I have read the stories of covid deniers who have died of the disease and have felt nothing other than the schadenfreude that goes along with “I told you so.” I am not proud of that fact.

They say tragedy plus time equals comedy. I look forward to that time.