Month: July 2022

In a damage-done contest, it’s no contest

“Good riddance” reads a billboard in Zagreb, Croatia addressed to outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “Get Your Johnson Out of Our Democracy!” read signs outside Parliament this week after Johnson announced his resignation.

Actor Hugh Grant suggested that activist Steve Bray troll Johnson with the Benny Hill theme. “Yakety Sax” blared in the background all morning as newscasters tried to do interviews and provide on-scene commentary.

Johnson is on his way out like Donald Trump before him. Unlike Johnson, our domestic menace threw in a violent insurrection as a parting “fuck you” before leaving the White House. He has yet to face criminal charges. But the damage to both democracies is done (Associated Press):

“I will not miss him,” French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said, highlighting an open disdain unseen since the Europeans welcomed the U.S. election loss of Donald Trump in 2020. And while trans-Atlantic relations picked up quickly since the arrival of President Joe Biden, don’t expect anything similar with a new British leader, politicians and experts said.

“Even with a new prime minister, I believe there will likely be few changes in the British government’s position” on the main Brexit issues causing current divisions, said David McAllister, the leading EU legislator dealing with the United Kingdom.

Guy Verhofstadt, who was the top EU parliamentarian during the whole Brexit divorce proceedings, said Johnson’s impact was such there is little to no chance another Conservative prime minister could steer a fundamentally different course.

“The damage done by the outgoing prime minister, through the project that he instrumentalized to achieve power, lives on,” Verhofstadt wrote in The Guardian. Polling suggests 51% of people in Great Britain regret that the country followed Johnson out of the EU, while 38% do not and 11% have no opinion (thru July 7).

In the U.S., with help from Sen. Mitch “Grim Reaper” McConnell of Kentucky Trump’s legacy is a radicalized Supreme Court and voiding of women’s right to bodily autonomy. Trump’s legacy also includes hundreds of thousands dead who might not have died. It includes open rejection of democracy, science, and truth by his political party; embrace of criminality; more wealth for the already wealthy; more rights for gun owners and less safety for the rest of us; inflamed Christian nationalism bordering on fascism; and the demolition of faith that democratic governance has power to do anything about it.

If this were a damage-done contest between the two misleaders, Trump is the clear winner. Congratulations, Donald. It’s what you always wanted.

Jonathan Pie gives a send-off to Britian’s “sad, little liar” who sounds remarkably like our own.

“Lies, on top of lies, on top of lies. He lies and gets people to lie on his behalf, and then lies about the lying.”

Johnson’s party this week finally had enough, Pie observes. But those too-little, too-late cries “are coming from the same people who have sat and watched him take a flamethrower to their party and our constitution for three fucking years…. All of the reasons they’re getting rid of him now — lack of leadership, lack of morals, lack of integrity, lack of truth — all these traits have been in plain sight for years. His CV reads like a demons resume.”

Now, finally, these Conservative Party politicians are pretending to notice. Republicans in the U.S. see no need to. They are Trump. And Trump is them.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

A mixed bag

And our girl Fiona has a milestone!

The 2000 Mules theory in action

There is no systematic “ballot harvesting” or voter fraud using drop boxes. But the right is invested in saying that the system is so rife with Democratic cheating that they must restrict voting access to the ballot box by any means necessary just to prove a point. There is no partisan advantage to drop boxes. Their own voters use them too:

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court barred the use of most ballot drop boxes on Friday and ruled voters could not give their completed absentee ballots to others to return on their behalf,a practice that some conservatives disparage as “ballot harvesting.”

It’s a ruling feared by voting rights proponents, who said ahead of time such a decision would make it harder for voters — particularly those with disabilities — to return their absentee ballots. Many Republicans hoped for a ruling that they said would help prevent someone from casting a ballot in the name of someone else.

The 4-3 ruling came a month before the state’s Aug. 9 primaries, when voters will narrow the fields for governor and U.S. senator. Both contests in this battleground state are being closely watched nationally.

Advertisement

For years, ballot drop boxes were used without controversy across Wisconsin. Election clerks greatly expanded their use in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic as absentee voting hit unprecedented levels.

By the time of the presidential election, more than 500 ballot drop boxes were in place across Wisconsin. Some Republicans balked at their use, pointing to a state law that says an absentee ballot must “be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.”

The state’s high court on Friday ruled that means voters themselves must return absentee ballots and cannot use drop boxes.

It doesn’t get any dumber than this

From Car and Driver:

Politicians have to run on some kind of platform, and Ben Moss—my incoming state House representative here in North Carolina’s District 52—decided that his animating principle is Being Mad at Electricity. To prove his animosity toward this invisible menace, he’s sponsoring House Bill 1049, which would allocate $50,000 to destroy free public car chargers. It contains some other enlightened ideas, but that’s the main theme: We’ve simply got to do something about these free public chargers, even if it costs us $50,000! Those things cost tens of cents per hour, when they’re being used.

Of course, there’s a caveat here. Moss isn’t saying that free public Level 2 chargers—of which there are three in my town, with plans in the works to convert to paid kiosks—definitely need to get crushed by a monster truck. That rule only comes into play if a town refuses to build free gas and diesel pumps next to the EV chargers. So anyway, warm up El Toro Loco, we’re smashin’ some car zappers!

But what about private businesses? you ask. Don’t worry, Moss hasn’t forgotten that a business might put a charger on its property as an inducement for EV owners to patronize the establishment. And small business is the heart of the local economy. That’s why he’s staying out of the way when it comes to private property. Just kidding! Ben Moss cares about the consumers being harmed by these hypothetical free chargers—namely, any customer who arrived via internal-combustion vehicle, or on foot, or in a sedan chair. Why is someone else gaining some advantage based on a decision they made? That’s not how life works.

Thus, House Bill 1049 decrees that all customer receipts will have to show what share of the bill went toward the charger out in the lot. That way, anyone who showed up for dinner in an F-150 (not the electric one) can get mad that their jalapeño poppers helped pay for a business expense not directly related to them. It’s the same way you demand to know how much Applebee’s spends to keep the lights on in its parking lot overnight, when you’re not there. Sure, this will be an accounting nightmare, but it’ll all be worth it if we can prevent even one person from adding 16 miles of charge to a Nissan Leaf while eating a bloomin’ onion—not that restaurants around here have free chargers, but you can’t be too careful. Now, there is a charger at the neighborhood Ford dealership, which is marking up Broncos by $20,000. Coincidence? I think not.

Critics of this bill might point out that increasing the number of electric cars could actually benefit owners of internal-combustion vehicles, thanks to reduced demand for petroleum products—kind of like how, during the Colonial Pipeline gas shortage, there were no Ford Mustang Mach-Es in line at the local pumps. Or, to put it another way, if the price of paste skyrockets because your local politicians eat so much paste, those prices might come down if you could get them to eat some crayons. But good luck with that! Paste is delicious.

I got nothin’

Democrats are pissed

Biden took some action this morning. It’s a start:

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday aimed at protecting abortion rights in response to the landmark decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The President said the order will safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives, protect patient privacy and establish an interagency task force to use “every federal tool available to protect access to reproductive health care.”

It will also increase public education efforts and bolster the security of and the legal options available to those seeking and providing abortion services, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.

Biden laid out a hypothetical scenario, one that he believes to be more likely after the court’s ruling, to explain the stakes.

“A patient comes into an emergency room in any state in the union, she is … experiencing a life-threatening miscarriage, but the doctor is going to be so concerned about being criminalized for treating her they delay treatment to call the hospital lawyer, who’s concerned the hospital will be penalized if the doctor provides the life-saving care,” Biden said, speaking from the White House.

“It’s outrageous. I don’t care what your position is, it’s outrageous and it’s dangerous,” Biden said.

Lake Research did a poll for Move On in the swing states. It’s not good news for Republicans:

Electorates in battleground states lean heavily in support of abortion rights. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade runs counter to public sentiment in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where, like many states, access to safe, legal abortions – among other aspects of people’s reproductive healthcare – could cease to exist in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. This is key to picking up swing voters. In all four states, more voters identify as pro-choice than identify as Democrats.

A majority of voters in each state reported that overturning Roe makes them very motivated to vote in November (pre-the June 24 Supreme Court decision), including 59% of voters in Arizona, 52% in Georgia, 63% in Pennsylvania, and 54% in Wisconsin. Just the threat of overturning Roe was even more motivating to voters than the possibility of abortion bans, the future of which had yet to be determined at the time the survey was conducted. Fiftytwo percent (52%) of Arizona voters, 55% percent of Georgia voters, 56% of Pennsylvania voters, and 48% are Wisconsin voters are very motivated to turn out in November in response to abortion bans.

Democrats are mobilizing in support of abortion rights in battleground states. Even before the Supreme Court announced its decision on Roe, upwards of seven in ten Democrats in every state professed being very motivated to vote in November in response to a forthcoming decision to overturn Roe or state-level abortion bans2. Democrats and pro-choice voters are mobilizing to turn out in November in response to abortion laws in significantly higher numbers than Republicans or voters who oppose abortion in each state.

Reclaim the living Constitution

This piece by Ryan Goodman called “Will no one defend the American republic?” has gone viral and for good reason. He lays out all the dysfunction in our current political environment in vivid, at times harrowing, detail. (Some of it might even make your hair stand on end.) I might quibbel with a few things but for the most part I think he’s right on.

But I think what is making this piece so popular is his prescription to cure the problem:

Is there any alternative? I think the best example of what might be called critical patriotism is provided by Abraham Lincoln. As Garry Wills writes in his brilliant book on the Gettysburg Address, in that speech Lincoln quietly altered the popular understanding of the Constitution as being at least tolerant of slavery and skeptical at best of democracy and majority rule.

Lincoln is here not only to sweeten the air of Gettysburg, but to clear the infected atmosphere of American history itself, tainted with official sins and inherited guilt. He would cleanse the Constitution—not, as William Lloyd Garrison had, by burning an instrument that countenanced slavery. He altered the document from within, by appeal from its letter to the spirit, subtly changing the recalcitrant stuff of that legal compromise, bringing it to its own indictment. By implicitly doing this, he performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off, from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.

Lincoln even more or less declared his intention in advance. In an 1854 speech in Peoria, at the end of a frankly rather slippery argument that the Constitution and the founding generation were against slavery and thus would support his efforts to limit its spread, he said: “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it … If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.”

Lincoln always had an acute sense for the grubby realities of power, but this wasn’t mere political cynicism; it was part of an act of political will. His strained (though not wholly dishonest) arguments about the founders and the Constitution were part of an effort that hugely changed the actual character of the country. He seized on the parts of American institutions and history that were useful to his purpose of destroying slavery, and downplayed the parts that were not.

Lincoln was thus able to convincingly claim political legitimacy (backed up by a massive national organization) as leader of the country and defender of freedom, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, and lead the country through a horrendously bloody war that actually did destroy slavery. It was, in a sense, a successful political prophecy. Then he used his unparalleled rhetorical gifts to cement the meaning of that sacrifice, and he and his party heavily revised the text of the Constitution and laws—with sweeping reforms to the currency, banking system, higher education, land, and more—to cement that new reality.

The histories of all nations have many threads, and many of America’s are dark indeed. But it is simply inaccurate to say that there is nothing worth defending or being proud of in there. Eradicating slavery was a great achievement. Enfranchising four million former slaves was one of the most radical expansions of democracy in world history. The New Deal was, on balance, a massive improvement on the status quo, even for Black Americans. The Civil Rights Movement was a splendid achievement.

More broadly, to put on an academic hat, there cannot possibly be such a thing as a national “essence” that will hold for all time. Political communities are malleable things—its character depends on who wins the inevitable constant struggle between factions.

Obviously I’m not a national leader and so I can’t lay out a political program that will reach the hearts of the masses. But a sketch of one is not hard to imagine. Start by appropriating the good side of the founding generation (centered on the Declaration), the Civil War and Reconstruction, the New Deal and the union movement, the suffrage and feminist movement, and the struggle against Jim Crow. Heroes with some popular resonance abound: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Tom Paine; Lincoln, Grant, Fredrick Douglass, Thad Stevens, and Harriet Tubman; Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt; and Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Rosa Parks. (Dozens of others could be added, of course.)

That stuff would serve as the propaganda and ideological glue to hold together a mass movement in favor of democracy and economic reform—the latter being critical so as to demonstrate the functioning of national institutions, as both Lincoln and FDR knew instinctively. One reason why faith in national institutions is collapsing—just 7 percent of Americans have confidence in Congress—is that they are so pathetically helpless in the face of enormous problems, from cancerous medical cost bloat to constant mass shootings of children to climate change threatening human civilization as a whole.

Plainly the Constitution is going to have to come under scrutiny in any such movement. In my view the Electoral College and the Senate are going to have to go, and the House be reformed to allow multiple parties (and thus diffuse escalating two-way mutual hatred in several directions) to have any prayer of the country functioning at all again. But even the Constitution has some good stuff, like the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction Amendments, and defending at least its legacy of elections and the peaceful transfer of power against violent right-wing assault is a powerful rhetorical stance.

This will require people to be able to hold two ideas in their heads at once: the document that allowed egregious compromises on slavery and disenfranchisement of all but white male property owners also contained some brilliant, powerful, universal appeals to human rights and freedom. That is not our current vibe, to say the least. We’re in a time of not only throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we are throwing out the bathtub and all the plumbing as well.

But he’s right.

And maybe, if we survive the next little while without losing everything, there will be a realization that there is something of value in that old document and that it is written with the idea that it will evolve and progress over time. The “originalist” nonsense on the right is the biggest clue that this is the way forward.

I wouldn’t count on it

In the last 50 years, the United States has had two demonstrably corrupt presidents who egregiously abused their power, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. The two are not similar in personality — Trump is an ignorant, gregarious, entertainer while Nixon was a smart, reclusive loner — but their characters are remarkably the same. As the January 6th investigation continues to unfold, exactly 48 years after the Watergate hearings riveted the nation, it’s more obvious than ever that our system of government is terribly vulnerable to such men and their allies.

The public shouldn’t have been so surprised by the Watergate revelations. Nixon’s character had been exposed during his many years as an elected official, first as a vice president accused of running a slush fund — his flinty, paranoia never far from the surface as when he petulantly blamed the press for his electoral losses. They didn’t call him “Tricky Dick” for nothing. Still, what came out over the course of many months of press exposés and investigations was a shock. The House Watergate Committee eventually voted for three articles of impeachment:

1) obstruction of justice in attempting to impede the investigation of the Watergate break-in, protect those responsible, and conceal the existence of other illegal activities;

2) abuse of power by using the office of the presidency on multiple occasions, dating back to the first year of his administration (1969), to unlawfully use federal agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as establishing a covert White House special investigative unit, to violate the constitutional rights of citizens and interfere with lawful investigations;

3) contempt of Congress by refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas

There were two other articles proposed that did not get a majority vote: Nixon’s tax fraud and the secret bombing of Cambodia. 

It’s astonishing how many of these charges are similar to what we know Trump did throughout his one term — from enemies lists to foreign policy scandals. In fact, we just learned this week that “somehow” two of Trump’s targets, former FBI Directors James Comey and Andrew McCabe, were audited by the IRS under very suspicious circumstances. And we all know about Trump and his tax issues, which make Nixon’s look like child’s play. Trump’s blatant corruption while in office has no comparison in U.S. history. 

The corrupt character of Trump and Nixon defines the entire Republican Party.

The main difference between the two presidents is that Trump committed his crimes in broad daylight in front of everyone while Nixon tried to cover them up. And while it’s a dubious distinction, Nixon will at least not go down in history having attempted a coup and incited an insurrection.

Still, the parallels between the two sets of summer hearings are glaring even though they’re presented very differently. In the past you had the committee members, some of whom were allies of the president, questioning the witnesses for days on end on camera. Of course in those days, committee hearings still adhered to some sense of decorum and didn’t turn into circus sideshows the way they do now, so it was a more civilized event. Today, we have a multi-media presentation with a bipartisan panel questioning just a few of the witnesses in person. But in both cases, the committee investigators had interviewed them in advance and knew what they were going to say.

The big difference between the two sets of hearings, of course, is that Watergate was an impeachment inquiry and this is a fact-finding congressional investigation. Trump has the distinction of already having been impeached twice and was saved by his partisan supporters in the Senate in spite of ample evidence that he committed the impeachable acts he was accused of. The current investigation is focused on finding out the truth about the attempted coup and the insurrection on January 6th after which they will recommend reforms that might help prevent such a thing from happening again.

Today, the committee will be interviewing Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, who was name-checked repeatedly by former chief of staff Mark Meadows’ aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, in the last hearing. He had been “cooperating” before but had not testified under oath. He was finally subpoenaed and will do so in videotaped testimony that will no doubt be played in a future hearing. It’s pretty clear that he will not follow in John Dean’s, Nixon’s White House Counsel’s footsteps, and lay it all out without regard to that amorphous concept of executive privilege. Cipollone has been very reluctant. But it is possible that he still believes that it’s wrong to lie under oath so one hopes that he will honestly answer questions that don’t relate to policy, which is really the only area that executive privilege applies. Coups aren’t covered. Neither are insurrections.

There are a couple of recent situations that point to the possibility of real cooperation. First, Cipollone’s predecessor in the White House counsel’s office, Don McGahn, refused to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee for years in a protracted court battle. He and lawmakers finally reached an accommodation in 2021 and he testified a little over a year ago confirming what he told Robert Mueller about Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice. His reputation among the Federalist Society in-crowd seems to have survived. Cipollone can also look to the testimony of former Attorney General William Barr, a close associate, fellow Catholic activist and nobody’s idea of a Democratic tool. His testimony was damning. If Barr can do it, Cipollone can do it.

On the other hand, Cipollone is also Fox News personality Laura Ingraham’s religious mentor, which gives you an idea of some of the other company he keeps.

So, who knows?

Nixon was on the ropes in the summer of 1974 and it wasn’t long before he ignominiously resigned from office. He was abandoned by his party which cut its losses and almost immediately turned to an up and coming superstar, also from California, Ronald Reagan. Today, the man on the hot seat is getting ready to announce his grand return from exile having created a cult of personality that sees him as their one true leader. He’s been impeached twice and weathered more scandals than all previous presidents put together and, whether out of cowardice or opportunism, his party won’t quit him. Trump is the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

So there will be no great moment of catharsis as a result of these hearings like there was back then. All we can do is bear witness and hope that somehow, whether it’s some brave prosecutor or a wave of outraged voters, something finally forces this man out of the arena.  

Salon

Legitimate protest for me but not for thee

A growing number of Americans don’t believe what happened happened on Jan. 6, 2021. A Monmouth poll indicates many of those who did accept what their eyes told them then remember the day differently now (Washington Post):

The poll asked people in June 2021 and June 2022 whether each of those labels were appropriate descriptors for what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021. And the GOP shifts are pretty uniform:

• While 33 percent of Republicans said in June 2021 that Jan. 6 was an insurrection, that number is now just 13 percent.
• While 62 percent of Republicans called it a “riot” back then, that’s down to 45 percent.
• While 47 percent said it was a “legitimate protest,” that’s now up to 61 percent.

So whereas more Republicans once said it was a “riot” than a “legitimate protest,” by a 15-point margin, that has been flipped, with Republicans favoring the “legitimate protest” label by 16 points. A majority of Republicans no longer even regard Jan. 6 as a “riot.”

And that’s to say nothing of the fact that, yes, it was an insurrection. But at least in that case, the doubters might not truly understand what that word means or might have been fed dubious and incorrect definitions by their favorite cable-news hosts and pundits. (By contrast, people know what a riot is.)

OTOH, they likely find this protest illegitimate and an outrage:

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

Brace for gun-nut impact

The story is developing (BBC summary):

• Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has been assassinated while giving a campaign speech in southern Japan
• Abe, 67, immediately collapsed after being shot in the neck and was rushed to hospital
• He was pronounced dead about five hours later at 5pm local time (9am UK time)
• The suspected attacker – reported to be a male in his 40s – was tackled at the scene and arrested
• Japan’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, says he is “lost for words”, describing Abe as a “personal friend”
• Abe – in office in 2006-07 and 2012-20 – remains the country’s longest-serving PM and best-known political figure internationally

Washington Post:

Footage of the event showed Abe giving a speech, then a plume of smoke forming behind him as he collapsed. Officials ran to apprehend the shooter, who appeared to be positioned behind Abe. Videos showed a chaotic scene with Abe, unmoving, lying on the ground as attendees yelled for an ambulance. The bullet wounds were found in the front of Abe’s body, Fukushima said.

In Japan, a country known for its strict gun laws, the murderer may have used a homemade gun. A photo of the improvised weapon found at the scene appears online. Police found what they believe to be explosives in a search of the attacker’s home.

There are and will be more statements of shock from world leaders, as well as tributes to Abe.

Given events here in the U.S. this week, expect gun nuts to insist, “If you ban guns, only criminals …” etc. Criminals will always find a way to get them, they’ll say. They’ll blame mental illness, violent video games. The usual.

Anything to ignore that what makes the assassination in Japan more shocking is how rare gun violence is there because firearms in private hands are harder to get. Japan requires permits, paperwork, background checks, training, storage requirements, refresher courses and permit renewals. There is none of the “militarized peacocking” Henry Grabar (Slate) observes.

That’s the United States. Home of the mass shootings, hardened schools, and active shooter drills. Of open-carry activists “going to Chipotle dressed for Fallujah.”

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

Trump is holding fake rallies for personal profit and the cult is eating them up

Trump used to say he was the only person in America who could make money running for president. Well he’s doing it, and not just for his PAC/slush fund that pays out huge sums to his properties for allegedly “political” expenses, or sycophants paying him large sums to be in his presence at his resorts. He’s doing commercial “rallies.”

On a Saturday morning at an arena outside Memphis, Terri Owens joined the crowd streaming in to see former president Donald Trump.

They lined up according to how much they’d paid.

At the far end of a white entrance tent, near a bus wrapped with a photo of Trump’s head on a muscular, shirtless body, were attendees who paid $55 for a pair of tickets as “citizens,” a general admittance option.At the front, closest to the doors guarded by Secret Service agents, stood a “presidential” tier who shelled out $3,995 each.

Owens, a 53-year-old nurse, bought a pair of VIP tickets for $800. She wasn’t clear on where the money was going — nor did she care.

“I really wanted to do my part in contributing to where he can keep doing what he’s doing, traveling around,” Owens said. “I know he probably doesn’t need financial help by any means, but just to do my part in supporting him because I believe in what he’s doing.”

In fact,the fees aren’t going to Trump’s political action committee, his $100 million war chest. This event was not a Trump rally, where attendance is free.

Instead, it was a for-profit show, more like a rock concert. The proceeds benefit Trump personally as part of a multimillion dollar deal to speak at the events, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The program, the “American Freedom Tour,” is the work of a longtime motivational-speaker promoter with a trail of bankruptcy filings and business disputes across the country. A Trump adviser said very little vetting was done on the organizers.

A spokesman for the tour, Republican media consultant Larry Ward, said the 2020 election inspired the new business venture. “The tour was inspired by a nation of disappointed voters and a love for President Donald J. Trump,” he said. Ward declined to discuss Trump’s financial deal.

Trump’s spokesman, Taylor Budowich, also declined to discuss his fees from the events. He said the former president enjoys supplementing his own rallies with speeches at events organized by other groups, such as the American Freedom Tour, National Rifle Association, Turning Point USA and the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “There is a tremendous demand for President Trump in every corner of the country and he is driven by his love for America to continue leading the MAGA movement into 2022 and beyond by sharing his America First vision in front of massive crowds,” Budowich said.

Former presidents including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have often taken paid speaking gigs after leaving office and have been criticized for cashing in on their service.But those fees were generally paid by businesses, not individual fans who may not understand where the money is going.Clinton and Michelle Obama have charged for book talks, with no ambiguity about the use of the proceeds.

“Paid presidential speeches are nothing new. It’s nice work if you can get it,” said Mark K. Updegrove, president of the LBJ Foundation and author of “Second Acts: Presidential Lives And Legacies After The White House.” “The difference here is Trump is doing this under the guise of a political rally. There might be a little deception there.”

Yah think????

It is also common for politicians to offer access to big spenders, though the money usually goes to a campaign — not just a candidate’s pockets. Trump’s moneymaking is especially brazen considering that he is the only modern ex-president to contemplate running for president again.

Yes, that would be a very big difference. People are putting money into his own pockets thinking they are donating to his presidential campaign. It’s a grift.

Indeed, many gathered outside Memphis drew few distinctions from Trump’s prolific campaign fundraising. Stephen Maybank, 60, bought “citizen” tickets with his wife after hearing about the event through texts and emails similar to fundraising appeals from the campaign. “This is just another form of donation for us,” he said.

He’s not the only one who’s making bank on this con:

The speaker series has attracted more than two dozen Republican luminaries, such as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, talk radio host Dan Bongino and right-wing influencer Candace Owens. One speaker who has participated in the program said they negotiated a deal through a speakers bureau and agreed to do the speech because it was so lucrative.

His people are dying to give their money to a billionaire. Nothing cult-like about that. Nothing at all.