Month: October 2022

Now it’s fine to change voting rules. When it benefits them.

And here I thought that only the state legislature should have the power to do this sort of thing in an emergency:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used his emergency powers on Thursday to waive state election laws for counties hard hit by Hurricane Ian that are grappling with widespread damages and disruptions.

DeSantis agreed to set aside state election laws so elections officials in Charlotte, Lee and Sarasota — all of which are Republican strongholds — can consolidate polling places, expand early voting locations and make it easier to send mail-in ballots to voters to an address that is not listed in voting records.

During the pandemic, when people were dying daily by the thousands all over the country, state and local governments changed the rules to accommodate voters so they didn’t have to expose themselves to the deadly virus. We had no vaccine, we had no treatments. Any of us could have wound up on a ventilator or in the ground.

And Republicans, led by Donald Trump, said these accommodations were a form of cheating. Donald Trump and his henchmen like Bill Barr all claimed that the election was tainted by the use of drop boxes, drive up voting and mail in ballots. They asserted that executives and state courts had no authority to make these changes. They were liars, of course, but in the end they persuaded their gullible followers that Democrats stole the election through these accommodations.

Now that Ron DeSantis, an election denier, needs the votes of Republicans in the midst of an emergency, he has unilaterally made voting accommodations. How do we function as a nation with politicians this blatantly self serving?

Trump posted this last night on his shitty social media platform responding to the requirement that he be deposed in the E. Jean Carroll case:

Actually she didn’t say he “swooned” her. She says he raped her. And as we know. He admitted on tape that he believes “when you’re a star they let you do it.”

Someone should tell him that saying “this woman is not my type” in response to a rape charge isn’t a good defense. What type does he usually rape? And since this is a defamation case he should probably shut his mouth. He’s not the president anymore.

It’s going to be very interesting

Apparently they have proof that Trump was really planning to go to the Capitol.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is planning on Thursday to present a sweeping summation of its case against former President Donald J. Trump at what could be its final public hearing, seeking to reveal damning new evidence about Mr. Trump’s state of mind and his central role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Armed with new witness interviews and unreleased footage of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, the panel is planning to argue that Mr. Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud inspired far-right extremists and election deniers who present a continuing threat to American democracy.

Unlike previous hearings, which focused on specific aspects of Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, members will attempt to portray the entire arc of the plan, demonstrating Mr. Trump’s involvement in every step — even before Election Day.

The hearing comes at a pivotal moment, weeks before midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake and as time is running out for the panel to complete its work, including an extensive report on its findings. Should Republicans succeed in their drive to win the House majority, they would be all but certain to disband the committee in January and shut down any official accounting by Congress for the largest attack on the Capitol in centuries.

To bolster its case, the committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents and communications from the Secret Service that include details of how agents blocked Mr. Trump’s attempts to join his supporters at the Capitol even after they had begun the assault.

The communications lay out how Secret Service personnel attempted to find a route to take Mr. Trump to the Capitol in a presidential S.U.V., and how those plans were ultimately rebuffed amid the chaos.

Secret Service staff initially attempted to accommodate Mr. Trump’s wishes, but supervisors at the agency expressed alarm, and District of Columbia police declined to block off intersections for his motorcade as a mob of his supporters began attacking and injuring dozens of police officers, according to the communications, which were described by two people familiar with their contents.

Robert Engel, Mr. Trump’s lead agent, broke the news to Mr. Trump inside the vehicle, prompting an angry outburst. Afterward, a Secret Service supervisor followed up to ensure Mr. Trump would not be joining the mob at the Capitol, the communications show.

The panel is attempting to refocus the country’s attention on Mr. Trump’s central role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, including how he encouraged his supporters to congregate in Washington; agitated them and directed them to the Capitol even though he knew they were armed and threatening violence; and then did nothing to stop the violence for hours.

The Washington Post reported earlier that the committee planned to use the Secret Service communications at its hearing. NBC News reported earlier that the communications obtained from the Secret Service surpassed 1 million in volume.

Among the documents turned over to the committee were emails, Microsoft Teams chat transcripts, planning documents, tapes of radio transmissions and surveillance video of the events at the Ellipse near the White House that preceded the rally where Mr. Trump spoke that day. The materials show documentation that some in the crowd had tactical gear.

The agency turned over the documents in response to a committee subpoena, which was issued after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, told lawmakers that agents’ texts from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, had been erased as part of a device replacement program. Those texts have not been recovered.

The documents also corroborate parts of the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, who told the panel in June how Mr. Trump had become enraged when his security detail refused to take him to the Capitol.

What was he planning to do? I think we have an idea and it’s completely demented:

Hutchinson: As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his vehicles that evening, he looked at me and said something to the effect of, “Cass, are you excited for the 6th? It’s going to be a great day.” I remember looking at him saying, “Rudy, could you explain what’s happening on the 6th? He had responded something to the effect of, “We’re going to the Capitol. It’s going to be great. The President’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the senators. Talk to the chief about it, talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.”

Cheney: Did you go back then up to the West Wing and tell Mr. Meadows about your conversation with Mr. Giuliani?

Hutchinson: I did. After Mr. Giuliani had left the campus that evening, I went back up to our office and I found Mr. Meadows in his [inaudible 00:16:57] remember leaning against the doorway and saying, “I just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark. Sounds like we’re going to go to the Capitol.” He didn’t look up from his phone and said something to the effect of, “There’s a lot going on Cass, but I don’t know, things might get real, real bad on January 6th.”

I kind of wish they’d let him do it. Then there would be no question of his direct involvement. They saved him from himself.

Are the Mar-a-Lago informants a game-changer?

The Washington Post’s Wednesday leak ups the pressure on the Department of Justice to indict former president Donald Trump over national security documents he removed from the White House and attempted to conceal:

A Trump employee has told federal agents about moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago at the specific direction of the former president, according to people familiar with the investigation, who say the witness account — combined with security-camera footage — offers key evidence of Donald Trump’s behavior as investigators sought the return of classified material.

The witness description and footage described to The Washington Post offer the most direct account to date of Trump’s actions and instructions leading up to the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of the Florida residence and private club, in which agents were looking for evidence of potential crimes including obstruction, destruction of government records or mishandling classified information.

A Trump spokesman dismissed suggestions that Trump broke the law, accusing the Justice Department of being un-American.

Trump told people to move boxes to his residence at the property

To be sure, FBI interviews and subpoenaed security tapes supported the August Mar-a-Lago search warrant. The FBI knew some documents had been moved and by whom.

The people familiar with the investigation said agents have gathered witness accounts indicating that, after Trump advisers received a subpoena in May for any classified documents that remained at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told people to move boxes to his residence at the property. That description of events was corroborated by the security-camera footage, which showed people moving the boxes, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The Post story does not identify the Mar-a-Lago witness. A follow-up story in the New York Times suggests the aide caught on camera is former military aide Walt Nauta, now a Trump employee.

In the first interview, these people said, the witness denied handling sensitive documents or the boxes that might contain such documents. As they gathered evidence, agents decided to re-interview the witness, and the witness’s story changed dramatically, these people said. In the second interview, the witness described moving boxes at Trump’s request.

The witness is now considered a key part of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, these people said, offering details about the former president’s alleged actions and instructions to subordinates that could have been an attempt to thwart federal officials’ demands for the return of classified and government documents.

If there is a game being changed, it involves the amount of public pressure now on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department to bring charges.

The reporting represents “as powerful a case of obstruction of justice as you could imagine,” counsel for the first Trump impeachment Barry Berke told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner on Wednesday. And Donald Trump is “at the center of it.” It also buttresses bringing a charge under the espionage act.

“I will tell you the powerful case to bring is the January 6th case,” Berke said. “You don’t need to charge him with seditious conspiracy … you only need to charge him with interfering with an official proceeding — the certification of the vote — and the evidence of that is overwhelming.”

As many crimes as Trump committed, deterrence is the most important issue, Berke continued. There are people running for office in November pledging to do just what Trump did: obstruct official proceedings and overturn elections. If the department does not bring the case, those people will see that they are above the law as well.

Former federal prosecutor Daniel Goldman told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that bringing charges against Trump carries risk. Physical risk. When he led the impeachment investigation of Trump, Goldman received threats from Trump supporters. He’d prosecuted mob bosses and violent Russian organized criminals, but “the most fear I ever had was during the impeachment investigation.”

Nevertheless, if the reporting is accurate, Garland’s Justice Department has no choice except to indict Trump for obstruction (if not more) or else close up shop and turn out the lights. The rule of law in this country is dead.

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

Darkness is conservatives’ ally

Medicare open enrollment is October 15 – December 7 each year. Expect to see even more ads for Medicare Advantage programs between now and December 7. Private industry providers tease you relentlessly with “bonus” coverage, money back in your Social Security check, etc., that plain-vanilla Medicare supplement plans don’t. “Free dental and vision! Gym memberships!… No monthly premiums!” Sound too good to be true?

How do they do it? VOLUME, naturally. But insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter warns that it’s because the only “advantage” to these HMO-style networked plans is for the insurers.

But why, if they sound so good, someone asked when Potter addressed a pre-pandemic audience here. Potter replied it’s because insurers know what you’ll buy.

Caveat emptor.

A New York Times investigation found top health insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program overbilled the government to bump up profits by billions.

"It is a program that absolutely should be called disadvantage," says former health insurance executive @WendellPotter. pic.twitter.com/ysQPLNmw1T

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 12, 2022

Look, the reason Oz is running is because he's fronting for Medicare Advantage and United Health, which sells more Medicare Advantage plans than anyone. Tom Knox, the former Philly deputy mayor who just endorsed him? Former United Health CEO, major stockholder.

— Suburban Guerrilla 💙 (@SusieMadrak) October 11, 2022

Shifting gears.

Conservatives want to see public education demolished. Not just to get their hands on the hundreds of billions in tax money funding it annually. Not just so religious conservatives can restrict what students learn. But to prevent the general public from developing critical thinking skills — bullshit detectors.

Former Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, promoter of school “choice,” voucher programs and charter schools, is married to former Amway CEO Dick DeVos. Amway is a multilevel marketing operation. Need I say more?

I need.

Conservative activist Leonard A. Leo, the Federalist Society influencer who’s devoted years to elevating ultra-conservatives like Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, has another, less-visible pet project. Leo has built “an opaque, sprawling network” funded with dark money to underwrite it (New York Times):

An investigation by The New York Times of Mr. Leo’s activities reveals new details of how he has built that network, with relatively little public attention, into one of the best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics, giving him extraordinary influence as he pushes a broad array of hot-button conservative causes and seeks to counter what he sees as an increasing leftward tilt in society.

The network represents a dramatic expansion of tactics and focus for Mr. Leo, who spent nearly three decades working mostly behind the scenes to pull the judiciary to the right as an executive at the Federalist Society. His success in that effort, and expansion into other polarizing fights, is rapidly making him a leading target of criticism from the left.

His philosophy is defined by a belief that the federal government should play a smaller role in public life and religious values a larger one, and that institutions and individuals should be challenged for embracing what he sees as subversive liberal positions.

With the credibility he’s built in promoting conservative judges, wealthy conservative donors are willing to back Leo’s new project. Between mid-2015 and 2021, his group spent “nearly $504 million on policy and political fights, including grants to about 150 allied groups,” the Times investigation found. Prime targets are environmental, social and governance policies and companies that strike any “woke” poses.

His expanded effort focuses on a variety of causes, including restricting abortion rights in the states; ending affirmative action; defending religious groups accused of discriminating against L.G.B.T.Q. people; opposing what he sees as liberal policies being espoused by corporations and schools; electing Republicans; and fighting Democratic efforts to slow climate change, increase the transparency of money in politics and expand voting access.

“The idea behind the network and the enterprise we built is to roll back liberal dominance in many important sectors of American life,” Mr. Leo said in an interview last month. “I had a couple of decades or more of experience rolling back liberal dominance in the legal culture, and I thought it was time to take the lessons learned from that and see whether there was a way to roll back liberal dominance in other areas of American cultural, policy and political life.”

A Senate proposal to shine a light into such dark money corners failed on a procedural vote every Republican voted against. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referenced Leo’s network afterward, saying, “That sounds like transforming society, which is not easy. But look, I have a lot of confidence in his judgment and his convictions.”

Liberal efforts at transforming society : bad. Conservative efforts : good.

It takes a well-developed bullshit detector these days to perceive the gears turning behind the scenes. Conservative transformers prefer you numbed enough to buy whatever Donald Trump is selling. It means you’re not likely to see through more subtle Medicare privatization efforts and school “choice” promotions. Or behind the curtain of anodyne-sounding organizations intent on rolling back the social advances of the 20th century (and now the 21st) to the McKinley era. It is why billionaire conservatives are so protective of dark money and as averse to sunlight as vampires.

Hello darkness, my old friend.

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

American Democracy hinges on a lot of elections we don’t know about

If you’re concerned about this upcoming election beyond the big ticket national elections, you will need to have this guide from Bolts Magazine:

This week, we published our cheat sheet of the elections we are closely watching up and down the ballot, with explanations of why they matter. 

The primer currently features 468 elections and ballot measures that will affect national and local power and policy on Nov. 8. You can explore it all bit by bit, or jump to specific sections, such as sheriffs, school boards, attorneys general, criminal justice– or housing– related ballot measures, and control of the U.S. Senate. (Yes, Congress matters as well!) 

It builds on the myriad guides we have published all year, including on all secretaries of state elections and supreme court elections, or on elections where abortion access is on the line, as well as on our deep reporting on the stakes of the most critical prosecutor, sheriff, secretary of state, judge, and governor elections and referenda. 

Think of our cheat sheet as a living document. We expect the number to grow in weeks ahead as other elections come to our attention, and we will be updating the page on and after Nov. 8 when the results are known; we will also release a printable version in early November. 

Check it out. It’s important.

Feel the magic

Ugh…

Millions of dollars in television advertisements blasting schools for teaching critical race theory and assailing corporations like BlackRock, Uber and American Airlines for catering to “woke politicians.”

A lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. Complaints against President Biden for violating election law and against school districts that allow information to be withheld from parents about children’s gender identities.

These initiatives were advanced in the past year or so by a handful of new or reconfigured conservative groups — each with their own leadership and mission.

Behind the scenes, though, these groups have something in common: They are part of an ambitious coalition developed in recent years by the conservative activist Leonard A. Leo, who until now has been best known for his role in pushing the appointments of conservative judges to the center of the Republican Party’s agenda.

Most of the initiatives were financially supported, or in some cases launched, by an opaque, sprawling network shaped by Mr. Leo and funded by wealthy patrons, usually through anonymous donations that critics call “dark money.”

An investigation by The New York Times of Mr. Leo’s activities reveals new details of how he has built that network, with relatively little public attention, into one of the best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics, giving him extraordinary influence as he pushes a broad array of hot-button conservative causes and seeks to counter what he sees as an increasing leftward tilt in society.

It appears that Leo is picking up where the Koch Brothers left off. He’s only 57 years old so get ready for decades of this crapola.

Right wing money always makes its way into the political system. Always. This guy is especially bad — but, really, they all are.

He’ll be shocked

Ron Johnson is suddenly against profiting off family names and presidential grifters pic.twitter.com/NtWBhPnm1z

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 12, 2022

These people can drive you crazy with their hypocrisy. It makes you want to scream.But there’s no margin in trying to fight them on that basis because they are shameless and they just don’t care.

This piece by Tom Nichols speaks to this shamelessness. An excerpt:

The new American right, however, has blown past the relatively innocuous populism of the past 40 years and added a fetid cynicism about almost everything related to public life. Not only are the MAGA Republicans seemingly repelled by the idea of voting for someone better than they are; they support candidates who are often manifestly worse people than the average citizen, so that they may slather their fears about their own shortcomings and prejudices under a sludgy and undifferentiated hatred about almost everyone in public office.

These populists not only look past the sins of their candidates but also defend and even celebrate them. Let us leave aside the cult around Trump, which has now reached such levels of weirdness that the specter of Jim Jones is probably pacing about the netherworld in awe. Instead, consider how many people cheer on unhinged cranks such as Marjorie Taylor Greene or allow themselves to be courted by smarmy opportunists such as Vance and Ted Cruz.

This new populism, centered in the modern Republican Party, has no recognizable policy content beyond the thrill of cruelty and a juvenile boorishness meant largely to enrage others. The GOP’s goals now boil down to power for its elected royalty and cheap Colosseum pleasures for its rank and file. Republicans, therefore, are forced to lower their—and our—standards for admission to public office, because the destruction of dignity is the only way they can find the candidates who will do what decent men and women will not, including abasing themselves to Donald Trump.

The same Republicans who claim to venerate the Founders and the Constitution have intentionally turned our politics into a scuzzy burlesque. Last night, Fox News—home to some of the loudest carny barkers on the freak-show midway—played a snippet of a 2018 phone call from Joe Biden to his son Hunter. The message revealed a father’s love and worry; the Fox host Sean Hannity tried to make it seem scandalous. Meanwhile, GOP leaders continue to defend the Georgia candidate Herschel Walker, whose callousness to his own children (and their mothers) is on full display. They ridicule Biden—a decent and good man who was worried that his son was going to die from addiction—and make excuses for Walker, who seemingly forgot about multiple children he’s fathered and has made incoherent responses to charges from the mother of one of those children that he financed an abortion for her. She has also said that he later asked her to undergo a second abortion; Walker continues to deny all of these claims.

I’m an adult. I get it. Our elected officials aren’t saints, and only rarely are they heroes. But must they now be a cavalcade of clowns and charlatans, joyously parading their embrace of vice and their rejection of virtue? The Republican Party seems to think so.

They’re nihilist. Nothing matters but gaining power by any means necessary. There’s no agenda, no real goals other than domination.

TPM featured this piece by data analyst Mindy Finn showing that they have made a difference:

The House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol has now held nine televised hearings, and will soon resume. Throughout the summer, millions of Americans have tuned in as horrifying images and powerful testimony rocked our television screens. But has there been an actual, measurable impact on voters? We know Americans are watching, but do they care?

Our research suggests that skeptical Americans, including those who initially believed the 2020 election was tainted through widespread voter fraud, may be starting to change their minds.

While there have been conflicting reports on the impact of the Jan. 6 hearings, our polling has been more conclusive. Since the hearings began, more Americans have come to view Jan. 6 as a violent attempt to overthrow the government and more Americans now see the committee’s findings as legitimate. As we look ahead to the midterms and on to 2024, I believe the committee’s communications offer a playbook to replicate on the journey to protect our democracy and thwart those who threaten it.

In partnership with Protect Democracy, my company, Citizen Data, ran equivalent random sample surveys in April, May and July. Our goal was to gauge public sentiment at three crucial junctures: before, immediately preceding, and after the latest round of hearings. 

We found that between April and July, the share of Americans who believed that Joe Biden won the 2020 election increased by 5%. We saw declines in the share of people who did not believe he won the election, and in those who had doubts. Many of those surveyed who held onto their doubts or Big Lie beliefs changed their original view that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest. Nearly twice the number of Americans who view the 2020 election as “stolen” and Jan. 6 as peaceful now view the events of Jan. 6 as a violent attempt to overthrow the government.

As the hearings continued, we also saw an increase in the proportion of Americans who viewed the committee hearings as fair and who believed that the committee’s recommendations should be taken seriously. This trend coincided with an increase in awareness about the hearings, suggesting that the more people learned, the more they came to trust.

In fact, Americans seem more inclined than ever to hold the former President and his affiliates accountable. Particularly in swing states, Republican candidates closely affiliated with Trump’s post-election and Jan. 6 activities — such as Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, and even Utah U.S. Senate incumbent candidate Mike Lee — face unique headwinds in their campaigns as democracy becomes a top-of-mind concern.

As the hearings continued, we also saw an increase in the proportion of Americans who viewed the committee hearings as fair and who believed that the committee’s recommendations should be taken seriously.

As we enter the final stretch of the midterms, we’d typically expect base voters to come home to their party. While there’s not yet any data indicating the Jan. 6 hearings will have significantly disrupted that trend this year, even modest movement among the electorate towards resisting a flawed narrative could have outsized electoral impact by further softening Trump’s approval.

Overall, our research found that more Americans now believe President Biden rightfully won the election. Prior to the hearings, 43% of voters said they would oppose President Trump for re-election. As a direct result of the hearings, an additional 13% decided that he shouldn’t run again — enough, if the numbers hold, to severely blunt his chances of winning a democratic election.

The growing understanding that Jan. 6 was indeed a “violent” attempt to “overthrow” the government could also lend more political power to an alt-Trump movement within the Republican Party, which for years has seemed unwilling to take a stand.

Whether or not the hearings flipped the script or simply revised a few lines at the margins, the findings and takeaways from the Jan. 6 hearings appear to have created additional voter demand for government accountability and a renewed commitment towards the peaceful transfer of power, a long-term strategy that requires counting progress in inches, not miles.

Furthermore, all Americans concerned about the health of our democracy should view the last few months, and perhaps what’s to come, as an indication that the efforts to renew and rebuild it are paying off.

It’s always important to have a public record in cases like this. But the fact that they’ve conducted the hearings with dignity and gravitas means that it may have actually reached a few people who weren’t quite sure of what happened in the election or how the insurrection on January 6th came to pass. Just persuading a few of the seriousness of the matter makes a difference in theshort term and in the long run it could shape how the nation views these events.

Tomorrow’s hearing may not be the last one, but it’s certainly the last before the election. They say there won’t be any live witnesses for this one. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren said this yesterday:

The committee’s ninth public hearing will touch on the “close ties between people in Trump world and some of these extremist groups,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said in a CNN interview.

But “that’s not the only thing the hearing will be about,” Lofgren said. “We’re going to be going through, really some of what we’ve already found, but augmenting with new material that we’ve discovered through our work throughout this summer.”

That involves focusing on Trump’s intentions, she said, including “what he knew, what he did, what others did.”

“I do think that it will be worth watching,” Lofgren said. “There’s some new material that, you know, I found as we got into it, pretty surprising.”

I’m looking forward to it.

It’s enough to make you want to scream

I am watching one of the most sickening political rituals that exists in American politics right now. You know, the one where they stalk candidates who have a health condition and harass them for their medical records, whine incessantly about how they have been betrayed because the candidate didn’t inform them personally of their every sniffle and otherwise behave as if disabilities, even temporary ones, are disqualifying for office. That’s what they are doing with John Fetterman right now who gave an interview with NBC yesterday that has the entire press corps rubbing their hands together with glee that they can pretend to be “speaking for the people” as they pass judgement on Fetterman’s cognitive powers despite obvious evidence that his cognitive powers are fine.

Fetterman has what they call an “auditory/processing” deficit caused by his stroke. It is temporary and it is improving. It has nothing whatsoever to do with his cognitive abilities and is easily dealt with by using the miracle of modern technology which he showed in his NBC interview proving that he’s fully capable of being a US Senator.

Jesus, the US currently has at least 10 members who are barely sentient! Ans if you want proof of a cognitive problem in a Senate candidate I have two words for you: Herschel Walker. Have any of the these ghouls pressed him for his medical records, taking a look at how many concussions he had as a football player? No. His alleged problem is all about his morals, despite the fact that unlike Fetterman, he has clearly demonstrated numerous times that he is completely clueless about what the job he is asking to do entails.

This has happened before. The press pack gets over-excited at the prospect of taking down a candidate on this “health” issue and it’s grotesque. I’ve always hated it.

Rebecca Traister, a sensitive, humane journalist, wrote a great profile of Fetterman this week in which she demonstrates how to deal with a candidate with a health issue like a decent human being. I highly recommend that you read it. Here is her response to the ghastly speculative reporting on this:

I wrote in my lengthy profile of Fetterman this week about how open he has been about his ongoing stroke recovery, and how awful it is to watch not just Fox but mainstream media push for “transparency” even as he offers just that.

Watching tv news/online pundits leer over clips of an interview in which he’s completely engaged and communicative is stomach-turning and a super depressing example of what I was trying to describe:

“Every week, Fetterman’s public engagement has increased, & nothing about his increasingly frequent rallies & media interactions is at odds with what doctors suggest would be normal for a 53-year-old four months out from a serious stroke and expected to make a recovery.”

“Yet legitimate newspapers are pushing for further documentation with some of the energy once applied to Hillary’s emails, while the right-wing carnival barkers treat complete medical records as they did Obama’s birth certificate.”

Fetterman speaks about what it’s like to have a doctor (Oz) mock his recovery—a gross irony, yes. Also ironic is news media clamoring for transparency then themselves offering distortion: implying challenges are cognitive when they’re not, failing to contextualize accommodations.

Anyway, I think JF offering an open view of his recovery is fascinating & potentially very powerful in a period when this whole nation is struggling to recover from…a lot. Callous and contextually loose treatment of that recovery process is striking.

Originally tweeted by Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) on October 12, 2022.

Striking is a nice way of putting it. It’s disgusting.

Here’s an example of how the press is flogging the Fetterman interview:

NBC News’ Dasha Burns: “In small talk before my interview [with Fetterman], it wasn’t clear he understood what I was saying.” #PASEN

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 11, 2022

Plenty of other reporters who’ve interviewed him say this is nonsense:

Sorry to say but I talked to @JohnFetterman for over an hour without stop or any aides and this is just nonsense. Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk. https://t.co/CX9B7qWUaS

— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) October 12, 2022

Kara Swisher went on:

Listen to the interview in which we did not edit the ums or ahs out as we typically do for everyone else. There were few slips — I had more — and at no moment did he seem distracted:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-with-kara-swisher/id1643307527?i=1000582144500

Lastly the most irksome thing for me when I had a stroke in 2011 is all Dr. Google folks who kept trying to give me advice (“Slow down,” they’d say; “Fuck you,” I’d reply) or study my speech for signs of trouble. It is a slow recovery but many younger people do just fine.

Btw 11 years later, I still fear another, even tho anyone can die at any moment of anything at all. That’s why I’m getting heart surgery soon — the medical strides related to strokes are impressive — to close the hole there that caused it. Just not by this guy. Or Oz.

Originally tweeted by Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) on October 12, 2022.

Here’s the MSNBC interview. He’s fine. And anyone who would vote for that Trump-humping conman Oz over Fetterman simply because he had a stroke from which is recovering is the one who has brain damage.