He’s just commonly calling Black Democrats racists now. I’m sure wingnuts all over the country will soon be adopting it as their talking point. It may be the most grotesque example of “I know you are but what am I” I’ve ever seen.
He seems to be particularly worried about this for some reason. I wonder why?
James’s office responded:
I briefly noted Tucker Carlson’s latest culture war offering yesterday, but in case you missed it:
Here’s a little excerpt from the program:
Hookay. There has been a lot of chatter about the homoerotic nature of this promo but I really don’t think that’s the point. I suspect Tucker is pushing something else, which John Stoehr’s Editorial Board gets to in his newsletter today:
The Nazis made a fetish of men’s bodies. Some were closeted, but all? As Annika Brockschmidt, author of America’s Holy Warriors, said:
Fascist aesthetic is highly militarized, focusing on sculpted male bodies that represent the strength of the volk.
This form of hyper-militant masculinity can carry homoerotic implications. This is very on brand, not off brand for fascism.
Other aspects are ruralism, anti-urbanism, idealised version of hyper-virility, anti-feminism, pro-natalism.
This is a case study in modern American fascist aesthetics, anti-modernist, inspired by idealized ‘Roman’ bodies.
There was a lot of this during the post 9/11 period too. They fetishized the movie called “The 300” about the Battle of Thermopylae in the Persian Wars, casting themselves as the embattled Spartans. It featured the same imagery:
This is a favorite autocratic fantasy. It’s silly, yes. But it’s also a warning that these people are feeling their oats. It’s what they do when they think they are on the verge of winning.
It’s quite clear we are now in “every man for himself territory” and has been for a while. So I’m not surprised. If you are a vulnerable person (over 60, immunosuppressed, or have other comorbidities) (that includes tens of millions of us, by the way) get that extra booster, scope out the availability of Paxlovid or the one monoclonal anti-body treatment for omicron (bebtelovimab) in your area and double mask if you are around strangers indoors. Trump’s federal court wrecking crew is in charge now and they believe that asking people to wear masks is Big Government but telling teachers specifically what they are allowed to say in a classroom is not. Just saying.
Nixon or Hitler! That’s quite a choice.
So why did Trump endorse this man? Well, he has turned groveling for Trump into an art form.
J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and best-selling author who last week entered the Republican primary for Ohio’s open Senate seat in 2022, apologized for criticizing former President Donald Trump in now-deleted tweets.In deleted tweets first discovered by CNN’s KFile, Vance wrote in 2016 that he would not vote for Trump in the presidential election and instead] support Evan McMullin, a former CIA operations officer who ran as an independent. Vance also called Trump “reprehensible.””Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” he wrote in October 2016.
In another deleted tweet — this one sent following the fallout of the infamous Access Hollywood tape — Vance wrote, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.”
And in a tweet from March 2017, he wrote, “In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump’s voters who fought him the most aggressively.”
On Fox News on Monday night, Vance said he regretted making his earlier comments and asked viewers not to judge him on his past statements.”Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” Vance said. “And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”Vance added that he thought Trump was a good president and that “he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.”
Here’s one esigned to make Trump swoon:
Trump understands something very important. It is actually more powerful to have people who once opposed you grovelling and apologizing, especially when they do it publicly. That demonstrates dominance which, as we know, Trump considers to be the essence of leadership.
Vance is sort-of a celebrity which Trump sees as the most important attribute any would-be politician can have. I’m sure that guides his belief that Vance “can win.” But really, he is just rewarding the grotesque genuflecting of a former critic. He likes that. A lot.
I’ve had some distractions the past week and haven’t had a real chance to delve into the Mike Lee-Chip Roy coup planning as deeply as I’d like. Looking it all over this morning it seems clear to me that the fatuous defense that Lee and Roy were just trying to get the facts and then backed off is bullshit. This piece is from Amanda Carpenter at the Bulwark:
Senator Mike Lee’s defenders insist his repeated texts to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows offering his guidance on the proper constitutional process to overturn the 2020 election results prove his honor. Never mind that the basis for overturning the election wasn’t anything more than Donald Trump’s desire to do so. Details, schmetails!
Let’s bat the argument around, though. The texts show Lee was eager to assist Trump in challenging the election—to the point of Lee texting Meadows dozens of times, begging “please tell me what I should be saying” and offering his advice about what should be done. (Pour one out for his Article One Project.) Specifically, these texts and Lee’s other on-the-record statements show he was consistent in advocating that the only way, according to the Constitution, to change the outcome was for state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors for Congress to accept on Jan. 6. Lee spent much time and effort insisting on this. But, the state legislatures did not. So Lee did not raise any objections on January 6th and voted to certify Joe Biden as president. And, for this Lee is supposed to be some kind of hero.
Slow clap.
Because what if GOP-controlled state legislatures in the swing states Biden won had decided to appoint Trump electors based on whatever Cheetos-dust some drive-by gang of Cyber Ninjas sniffed and got high on while seizing Dominion Voting machines? Well, as Lee wrote Meadows on January 3: “Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of electors pursuant to state law.”
Got that? Everything changes. If state-level Republicans had been okay with overturning the election results, then Lee was okay with it, too.
In interviews with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa for their book Peril, which came out in September 2021, Lee depicted himself as someone who, through December 2020, “never wavered” from the view that Congress had no role in messing with Electoral College votes.
The story goes that someone “directed” him to speak with John Eastman around Christmastime. Soon, Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz started looking at other options to challenge the election results, and Lee didn’t go along with their plans.Then, on January 2, in Woodward and Costa’s account, Lee was “shocked” to receive a memo from Eastman. The memo—the short, two-page version, not the six-page version Eastman later developed—outlined a scenario where “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate.”
It’s conceivable Lee was shocked that Eastman wanted the president of the Senate, Mike Pence, to play such a prominent role on Jan. 6th. But the idea of alternate electors is one that Lee knew plenty about—because he and his friends had been talking about it quite a bit.
Some relevant texts to keep in mind:
Lee writing to Meadows on November 9, 2020: “We had steering executive meeting at CPI tonight, with Sidney Powell as our guest speaker. My purpose in having the meeting was to socialize with Republican senators the fact that POTUS needs to pursue his legal remedies. You have in us a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him, but I fear this could prove short-lived unless you hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately.”
On November 23, Lee told Meadows that Eastman has “really interesting research,” indicating that he was familiar with Eastman and respected his analysis. (By this point, Eastman was apparently just starting to work with Trump’s political-legal team. He had not yet written his infamous memos or represented Trump in a rejected Supreme Court motion, but had sent out plenty of tweets insinuating that Democrats had by various means stolen the 2020 election from Trump.)
On December 8, Lee texted Meadows: “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”
Lee was on board with Kraken lady, coup memo man, and an alternate elector plot. Check, check, check.
The “CPI” Lee mentioned is presumably the Conservative Partnership Institute. Its leaders, and a who’s-who list of other prominent Lee allies in the conservative movement, issued an open letter on December 10 that said:
The evidence overwhelmingly shows officials in key battleground states—as the result of a coordinated pressure campaign by Democrats and allied groups—violated the Constitution, state and federal law in changing mail-in voting rules that resulted in unlawful and invalid certifications of Biden victories.
There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.
Accordingly, state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan should exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump. Similarly, both the House and Senate should accept only these clean Electoral College slates and object to and reject any competing slates in favor of Vice President Biden from these states.
Conservative leaders and groups should begin mobilizing immediately to contact their state legislators, as well as their representatives in the House and Senate, to demand that clean slates of electors be appointed in the manner laid out in the U.S. Constitution. [Emphasis added.]
Notice the key line: “State legislatures in the battleground states . . . should . . . appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.”
This is what the activist conservatives in Lee’s circle were loudly, openly demanding. They publicly endorsed a scheme to, through the power of state legislatures, convert Biden’s electors into Trump electors. All without any of the evidence of voter fraud Lee spent two months searching to find.
And we are now supposed to believe that Lee was shocked that his buddies who were willing to throw an election based on butt-dials from Rudy Giuliani would bypass the state legislatures to make up even phonier slates of electors?
That’s a story worth hearing. We deserve more explanation about all paths pursued to install alternate electors. Lee should, under oath, tell it to the Jan. 6th Committee.
What’s amazing is how desperately Lee was still trying to make Trump’s dream of flipping the election come true as late as January 4, 2021.
That day he attended Trump’s rally in Georgia to help “Stop the Steal” Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler get elected. There, he also met with Trump’s legal team. According to Peril, Lee told Trump’s lawyers that they should be making their case in courts and state legislatures, not to members of Congress.
And the newly released texts show Lee wrote to Meadows a lot between January 3 and January 4. He firmly insisted to Meadows that he was helping Trump and was very upset that people were saying otherwise. For his trouble, Trump depicted Lee as someone who wasn’t really a team player.
At the event, Trump said: “Mike Lee is here, too. But I’m a little angry at him today. . . . I just want Mike Lee to listen to this, what I’m talking [about], because you know what, we need his vote.”
Lee texted Meadows: “I’ve been spending 14 hours a day for the last week trying to unravel this for him. To have him take a shot at me like that in such a public setting without even asking me about it is pretty discouraging.”
Meadows said “sorry” to Lee and Lee, in his response, remained eager as ever to show how loyal he remained to the cause:
It’s not your fault. But I’ve been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow. I’m trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend, and this won’t make it any easier, especially if others now think I’m doing this because he went after me. This just makes it a lot more complicated. And it was complicated already. We need something from state legislatures to make this legitimate and to have any hope of winning. Even if they can’t convene, it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote.
How was it that as late as January 4 Lee was still “trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend”? Remember, by January 4, the election was decided. Trump had lost dozens of court cases. The states had certified the elections on December 14. It was over. And still, Lee was working his butt off trying to find any flimsy veneer of constitutionality for Trump’s bogus claims.
And what did Lee mean when he wrote “it might be enough if a majority of them are willing to sign a statement indicating how they would vote”? Did he mean that if Republican state legislators in, say, Pennsylvania and Arizona got together informally and put their name on a something—nothing binding, just a “statement,” maybe jotted on a bar napkin or the back of an envelope—Lee would consider that sufficient excuse for Congress to reject those states’ official, certified results? Keep in mind that a key suggestion in John Eastman’s short memo was to find a way to “give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.”
In short: Lee outlined paths for Trump nuts to reverse the election. But, after giving these clowns all his attention, time, and effort, he didn’t, in the end, like how the Trump nuts tried to reverse the election. His disagreement was about tactics, not the mission. But his error was accepting the mission at all.
And somehow Lee’s defenders look at this and say, “BOOM! Hands clean.”
He is a perfect avatar of the mainstream of the Republican Party:
They don’t believe in anything, that much is clear. It’s pure tribalism at this point.
When you read about all the ring kissing and boot-licking that’s going on at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort these days, it is clear that Republicans of all stripes see him as president-in-exile, our once and future Dear Leader. He is believed to be so powerful that his endorsement will make or break any candidate, from the loftiest seat of power in the U.S. Senate to a lowly election clerk in a small jurisdiction in Real America. The big question facing the GOP now is whether or not that’s actually true. And new reports from around the country suggest that it may not be as clear-cut as many think.
The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher characterized Trump as a “modern-day party boss” and quotes insiders comparing his “Mar-a-Lago Machine” to the notorious Tammany Hall, which dominated New York politics for centuries. Naturally, Trump is personally making money from it and he’s not the only one:
An entire political economy now surrounds Mr. Trump, with Trump properties reaping huge fees: Federal candidates and committees alone have paid nearly $1.3 million to hold events at Mar-a-Lago, records show. A phalanx of Trump whisperers has emerged with candidates paying them in hopes of lining up meetings, ensuring that he sees damaging research on their rivals or strategically slipping him a survey showing a surge in the polls, even as Trump alumni warn that it is always buyer-beware in the Trump influence game.
Goldmacher points out, however, that while Tammany Hall kept its grip on power by doling out patronage, Trump isn’t spending much of his massive war chest at all. One of his spokesmen, Taylor Budowich, explained that the benefit of Trump’s support lies not in money, but in the fact that voters value his endorsement and it generates a lot of “free media.” We’ll soon find out that that is as valuable as people think it is, but in the meantime, there is apparently a long line of supplicants night after night seeking his favor, and he is reveling in it.
There are reportedly certain protocols for getting Trump’s attention and impressing him. I think we all know how much he loves flattery and how he requires his supporters to love who he loves and hate who he hates. But that’s not enough, according to Goldmacher. “He likes compelling visual material matters, too. Big fonts are crucial. With photos and graphics. In color.”
There is no system by which Trump is making his endorsements for the midterms. Mostly, it seems to be based upon a mixture of his gut feeling, his desire to punish anyone who displeases him by supporting their opponents, rewarding those who most eagerly push The Big Lie and a desire to place sycophants and true believers in a position of power to influence the outcome of elections. Goldmacher writes:
As Tammany’s corrupt Boss Tweed was portrayed saying, as he leaned on a ballot box in a famous 1870s cartoon: “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?” Or, as Mr. Trump told Breitbart News this month, “There’s an expression that the vote counters are more important than the candidate, and you could use that expression here.”
A couple of months ago, Salon’s Igor Derysh reported that there were more than 80 pro-Trump 2020 election deniers running for election posts around the country and there are not doubt even more today. It may be that these lower-level endorsements will end up being much more important than his support for servile candidates for the House and Senate.
The question in all of this is if he still has the juice to get his candidates the nomination much less win in the fall. So far, it does not appear to be a slam dunk, particularly in the primaries.
There is no system by which Trump is making his endorsements for the midterms.
Many eyes are on Georgia as a microcosm of the “Mar-a-Lago Machine” in action, where Trump has waged a particularly ugly crusade against GOP Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, along with anyone associated with them, endorsing their challengers and insisting that all GOP candidates running for any office sign off on the Big Lie. So far, however, it does not appear to be having much of an effect, with the incumbents still leading in the polls. Meanwhile, Trump’s handpicked candidate to oppose Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Rafael Warnock, 1980s NFL star Herschell Walker, is causing plenty of heartburn in the state as well. Walker is ducking debates, showing himself to be extremely weak on policy and dealing with many long-standing personal scandals.
Endorsements based upon Trump’s own personal vendettas against RINO incumbents or his belief that celebrity of any kind is an automatic ticket to success in politics (because it worked for him) are causing Republicans grief in other states as well.
His endorsement of Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Pat Toomey reportedly has the state in an uproar since they had what they considered to be a strong candidate who thought he had Trump’s support. But Trump capriciously endorsed Oz, a clumsy political novice without any real ties to the state and who has a record of liberal commentary over the years that makes him anathema to the hardcore right in that state. But Oz is a celebrity, which impresses Trump, and he’s one who did Trump a major solid back in 2016 when he had him on his show and validated his quack doctor’s assessment that Trump was in good health. He’s mentioned it several times recently.
Last week he endorsed J.D. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” which I’m sure Trump has never heard of much less read. What he did read were accounts of Vance’s recent ostentatious Trump worshiping and decided to endorse him against the advice of just about everyone (except Don Jr and Sean Hannity who pushed him relentlessly). In his endorsement statement he said he chose Vance because he can “win,” noting: “This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race — they’ve said great things about ‘Trump’…”
The “Mar-a-lago Machine” may just turn out to be a wrecking crew.
And yes, he immediately endorsed former Republican vice presidential candidate and reality star Sarah Palin, who is running for the seat opened up by the death of Alaska Congressman Don Young. Of course, he did.
Those are just a few of the celebrity gadflies, sycophants, grifters and weirdos he is backing. Will all this activity solidify his self-defined characterization as a kingmaker? Maybe. The electoral terrain for Republicans looks very good for the fall. But Republicans are nervous. No less that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week:
From an atmospheric point of view, it’s a perfect storm of problems for the Democrats. How could you screw this up? It’s actually possible. And we’ve had some experience with that in the past. In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election. So you can’t nominate somebody who’s just sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people and win. We had that experience in 2010 and 2012
Indeed they did. It seems as if Republican voters care less and less about such things but in states where they need to attract non-Trumpers, the “Mar-a-Lago Machine” may just turn out to be a wrecking crew. Of course, if they can install the right Trump-friendly “vote-counters” it may not matter.
Laffy’s retweet got me going just now:
In case you missed that last item and Ostroy’s list:
Can you blame, DeSantis? Stories that went ’round about Euclid and his “geometry” are not appropriate for impressionable young minds.
A visit to this Letterman guy’s timeline indicates that the tweet below is a put-on. But it’s just so nuts these days, who can tell? Ken Burns?
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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Two columns from the New York Times frame how sometimes politics in the U.S. is more monarchy than democracy.
Charles Blow laments poor polling numbers for President Joe Biden amidst an electorate “tired and overwhelmed.” People are taking that out on Biden, Blow writes:
Biden is a decent man. As a matter of course and tactic, he strikes me as not entirely built for hyperbole and hype, for beating his chest while he boasts. It’s not part of his character. He is sober and straightforward. Many Americans wanted him as an antidote to Donald Trump for precisely this reason.
But America has changed its mind and its mood. It wants a show and a showman to distract from its misery. Biden is not that. And he is being punished for not being a huckster.
It is a shame, Blow goes on, that “emotional connection plays such an outsize role in our politics,” yet it does. Biden is not giving people enough with which to identify.
Shane Goldmacher notes how the unindicted Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor, now holds court at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Trump has “has transformed Mar-a-Lago’s old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters.” Arriving supplicants bring gifts, dish dirt, and parrot “his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.” They treat him as a president in exile.
Trump behaves, Goldmacher argues based on over 50 interviews, like “a modern-day party boss.” Former Trump adviser Michael Caputo describes a “developing Tammany situation” in which political aspirants visiting Mar-a-Lago seek the king’s approval, a connection they can leverage as though they have an “inside track” to winning the king’s ear and favor. None exists, Caputo says.
The pair of columns points to how much for all the pretense to individual liberty and democratic self-rule, Americans, more so on the right, still yearn for a king.
Not explicitly, Blow ties the Democrats’ fate to Biden’s. When he rises, they rise. When he falls, they fall. Policy and economics play a supporting role to court intrigue and rumors.
Republicans have abandoned all pretense. Governing is not their goal. Maintaining their power is. Theirs is tied to the king’s. They wage legislative skirmishes in the provinces to scatter the Democratic rabble, to win the king’s approval, and to rally the countryside to return him to power by any means necessary. Democracy is window dressing for them as it is for autocrats across the planet.
Meantime, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sounds more like a Biblical prophet, a voice in the wilderness. Standing outside the personality-driven side-show, she writes as if calling down judgment on a politics that has strayed from the faith (New York Times):
Republicans want to frame the upcoming elections to be about “wokeness,” cancel culture and the “militant left wing.” Standing up for the inherent dignity of everyone is a core American value, and Democrats are proud to do that every day. While Republican politicians peddle lies, fear and division, we should use every single one of the next 200 days or so before the election to deliver meaningful improvements for working people.
“Time is running short.” Judgment is at hand. Climate doom hangs in the air. Politics is rife with corruption.
“To start cleaning up government,” Warren writes, “members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks, which the vast majority of voters support banning, according to multiple polls.” Woe unto ye hypocrites!
“We can stand up to the armies of lobbyists and P.R. flacks and tackle tax loopholes for the rich and powerful.” They will have their comeuppance when God’s wrath finally is manifest.
The sad part is that Warren’s voice is so lonely. The people revel in their cults of personality and fixate on leaders’ failings rather than on doing the work on the ground.
Republicans “are using parental rights as the Trojan horse to enact their agenda,” Blow complains, and Democrats are not fighting back. “They do not recognize that oppression by conservatives in this country is like an amoeba: simple, primitive, pervasive and highly adaptable. It simply shifts its shape to fit the environment and argument.”
“Democrats cannot bow to the wisdom of out-of-touch consultants,” warns Warren, shouting into the wind.
Pundits revel in their polls, Trumpers in their man-child-god.
“We have no king but Donald!”
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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Let you think he’s just a crude, stupid pig:
Ok fine. He is still a crude, stupid pig.
Here, I offer you the dumbest story you will read today:
🍔 The Big (Mac) picture: McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment, but data from the Big Mac Index — which has been measuring the price of a Big Mac since the year the Oprah Winfrey Show debuted — shows that the price of a Big Mac nationwide rose 7% from 2020 to 2021. Big Mac prices have risen by a whopping 40% in the past 10 years, according to the index.
Yes, inflation has hit the US over the past 10 years. Just as it has hit the US in the previous 10 years. Guess what? A Big Mac cost $2.45 in the 1990s, $1.60 in the 80s and only 65 cents in the 1970s. My God! What is this world coming to???
Axios seems to think that this has something to do with labor costs, although the story doesn’t really make the case:
Menu prices vary across the country, and even within cities.
So we decided to make our own Big Mac Index, showing the price of McD’s flagship burger in all of our Axios Local cities — the 14 current ones and our 11 coming-soon ones, including my own.
And we compared those prices to each town’s minimum wage.
Austin, Texas —where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour — is home to the cheapest Big Mac in the Axios Local world at $3.75;
But 200 miles down the road, Dallas — with the same minimum wage — a Big Mac is selling for $5.69.
Seattle, Wash. — where the minimum wage is $17.27 an hour — has the priciest Big Mac we found, at $6.39.
A Big Mac in San Francisco, where the minimum wage is $16.32 an hour, is $5.79
In New York, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, a Big Mac can be found on Broadway for $4.95
But in my town of Richmond, Va. — where the minimum wage is $11 an hour — I’m paying $4.89 for a Big Mac — just 10 cents less than folks in New. York. City. And I’m furious about it.
I’m not sure what the point of this story is except to show that Big Macs were rising in price a lot faster over the past decade than they have been recently.
Well, ok then.