Month: October 2022

How the Republicans aided and abetted Donald Trump

I think we more or less knew this. But it’s good to see the details anyway:

Republican senators were more deeply involved in orchestrating President Donald Trump’s defense in his first impeachment trial than previously known, according to excerpts from a forthcoming book shared exclusively with HuffPost.

In “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” due out Oct. 18, Politico’s Rachael Bade and The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian offer a behind-the-scenes look at the two failed efforts to remove Trump from political power.

The first attempt, which began in 2019 and culminated in an early-2020 Senate trial, dealt with Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine on the condition that the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The House impeached Trump for abuse of power, but the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted the president with just one Republican dissent: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.

Trump and his defense team maintained he did nothing wrong throughout the January 2020 trial and that no “quid pro quo” had taken place, even though he was caught on tape telling Zelenskyy to “do us a favor” by launching a probe of Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Former law professor Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer for Trump, went so far as to argue before the entire Senate that Trump could have done whatever he wanted to get himself reelected if he believed that his own reelection would be in the public interest, a sweeping claim of executive power.

The outlandish line of defense alarmed a number of Republican senators who sat in the chamber for weeks as “jurors” in the impeachment trial, according to “Unchecked.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told Trump’s team afterward to fire Dershowitz on the spot, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned them to switch tactics.

“Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one,” Cruz reportedly said at one point, contradicting what Republicans were saying publicly about the charges at the time.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also fumed at Trump’s legal team after they fumbled responding to a senator’s question about calling new witnesses. Trump’s attorneys said that it was simply too late to do so, a line Graham worried would lose Republican votes.

“We are FUCKED. We are FUCKED!” Graham, a top Trump ally, reportedly said afterward as he walked into the GOP cloakroom, a private chamber adjacent to the Senate floor.

Publicly, many GOP senators refrained from commenting on the substance of the proceedings, telling reporters doing so would be inappropriate because of their responsibility to remain neutral as jurors. But privately, the ineptitude of Trump’s legal team forced them to take matters into their own hands, Bade and Demirjian report.

Their goal was to convince a small group of moderate GOP senators to vote against hearing testimony from witnesses like Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who had claimed in a book that Trump specifically told him that he withheld military aid from Ukraine in order to obtain an investigation into Biden and his son. The book’s release had rattled the entire GOP conference.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell played a pivotal role in convincing GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to vote against hearing from witnesses in the trial ― an outcome he feared would split the caucus and cost it control of the Senate, but which ended up happening anyway in large part due to the man he was working to protect.

“This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” McConnell told his caucus, according to the book. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

Mitch McConnell literally cares about nothing but power. Nothing. Being Senate Majority Leader is his raison d’etre and he will do anything to accomplish it. He hates Trump and had many chances to put the final nail in his coffin but he always chose not to. Because he cares about nothing but power. And he would do it again.

I used to think that we might have some breathing room when all these old reactionaries shuffled off their mortal coils. But just look at what’s waiting in the wings.

Here’s one case that’s being prosecuted. But there are millions of people doing this stuff with less violent language but threatening nonetheless and they’re only getting worse. The right wingers have lost all inhibitions:

The Justice Department announced on Thursday night the arrest of an Iowa man who prosecutors allege had sent death threats to an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona.

According to the indictment, 64-year-old Mark A. Rissi of Hiawatha, Iowa, allegedly sent two voicemails to Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman calling for him to be hanged.

“We’re going to hang you,” Rissi allegedly said in a voicemail sent to Hickman in late September 2021. He’d also allegedly called Hickman a “stupid lying Commie” and said that the election official was going to die.

In another voicemail allegedly sent in early December of that year, Rissi allegedly told Hickman: “Do your job” or “you will hang with those [expletive] in the end. We will see to it. Torches and pitchforks. That’s your future, [expletive].” He then accused Hickman of having evidence proving “conspirators” deleted data from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors computer system, prosecutors allege.

Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, was the site of a highly publicized election audit in 2021 after the former president claimed the area was rife with voter fraud.

Hickman serves as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Trump reached out to him twice after the election to persuade him to investigate the county further, but Hickman reportedly let the calls go to voicemail. 

On Thursday, Hickman said in a statement that Rissi’s voicemails were “chilling”.

“This wasn’t a prank call. This wasn’t protected speech. This was a serious threat to me and my family,” he said.

A Republican and self-proclaimed Trump voter, Hickman has faced a wave of death threats since the election for refusing to fold under pressure from Trump and his allies to find more votes for the former president.

“I’ve received numerous threats over the past two years,” his Thursday statement said. “My colleagues on the Board have as well. The Recorder. And worst of all, county elections staff doing their job honorably are getting calls and emails threatening violence, calling them traitors. It’s despicable.”

Since Trump claimed that he actually won several key districts back in 2020, election officials and poll workers have become targets of death threats from his supporters, prompting state and federal responses to provide extra protections for the group.

One hopes that a little accountability for this behavior will show some of these nuts the error of their ways. But when you have a (shameless) grievance machine desperate for martyrs, it’s probably unlikely.

I almost feel sorry for Herschel Walker. He is so clearly unfit for the job of United States senator that it’s uncomfortable to watch him flounder about, unable to coherently answer even the simplest questions or offer any reasons why he should be one of the most powerful people in government. He was a star athlete, forever to be revered by college football fans, and now he’s just a pathetic tool of cynical politicians, particularly, of course, Donald Trump. Still, Walker willingly allowed himself to be used and that’s on him.

Once again we see the shamelessness of the Republican Party and the rank hypocrisy of the conservative evangelical Christians who form its strongest base. They’re sticking with Walker no matter what, with ludicrous excuses that wouldn’t pass theological muster in a fourth-grade Sunday school class.

There was a time when conservative Christian morality was considered the backbone of American society and everyone in politics was obliged to genuflect to their leadership, regardless of party. This week, as the latest Walker scandal unfolded, I was reminded of the hysteria that engulfed American politics in the 1990s when right-wing Christians spent eight long years in a frenzy over the immoral, draft-dodging, womanizing, lying baby-boomer president, Bill Clinton. (They didn’t much care for his feminazi wife either.) From the Christian right’s point of view Bill and Hillary Clinton personified the sexual revolution, which they claimed was sending the country straight to hell.

Over and over again they bellowed that “character matters” and when the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit, offering proof of Clinton’s perfidy, they went into overdrive. Televangelist Pat Robertson told 3,000 cheering members of the Christian Coalition, that Clinton had turned the White House into a “playpen for the sexual freedom of the poster child of the 1960s” and solemnly declared that “our national trust has been deeply wounded.” Focus on the Family’s James Dobson sent a letter to 2.4 million conservative Christians insisting that Clinton should be impeached because his behavior was setting a bad example for “the children” and bemoaning the lack of moral among the millions of Americans who saw through the right’s hypocritical crusade. 

Clinton, as we know, survived that impeachment but the power of the Christian right was actually strengthened. The conventional wisdom after George W. Bush’s dubious Electoral College win in 2000 was that the Democrats had lost because Americans were disgusted by their general immorality. Abortion once again became the issue that illustrated that most clearly with middle-path Democrats dominating the conversation and wringing their hands over the supposed need to “reach out” to “pro-life” voters or face permanent political exile. Op-eds with headlines like “Why Pro-Choice Is a Bad Choice for Democrats” proliferated and voters had to endure endless discussions of the “God gap.”

Cowed by this criticism, many Democrats labored to avoid any kind of confrontation over the issue. It came to a head during negotiations over the Affordable Care Act when “pro-life” Democrats, with the help of the same pearl-clutching pundits, carried the day. Abortion coverage was not required and the odious Hyde Amendment, banning abortion coverage under Medicaid, was not repealed. The conservative Christians still hated Obamacare, of course, but they had proved they still had clout.

Then along came Donald Trump, the very personification of everything the Christian right had railed against for years. He was an inveterate philanderer who’d been married three times with one of his children even born out of wedlock. He bragged incessantly about his sexual exploits, lied compulsively about everything and literally ran gambling houses (including the nation’s first casino strip club.) He cavorted with the likes of Hugh Hefner and appeared in a softcore porn movie. As we know, he has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women and was caught on tape bragging about impulsively grabbing women’s crotches and getting away with it.

And the Christian right couldn’t possibly have loved him more. In fact, they were his most ardent supporters in 2016, and remain so today. All that talk about how leaders must exhibit personal morality was forgotten in favor of a ruthless pragmatism they make no effort to conceal. They just want to win by any means necessary and worship power for power’s sake. 

Herschel Walker’s case illustrates this even better than Trump. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which hit this midterm campaign like an 8.0 earthquake, Walker has been accused of paying for a woman’s abortion while professing to support a ban on abortion with no exceptions. Politico reported that Walker’s Christian supporters couldn’t care less, quoting one pastor saying, “The dilemma is, do you wait for a candidate who is perfect? Or do you take what’s given to you and make the choice between the options?” 

That’s very pragmatic, which is fair enough. But I think we can safely say that Democrats no longer need to listen to the religious right’s pompous braying about “character” and have absolutely no obligation to give them any credence when it comes to morals and values. They are political actors, doing what political actors do. And we know they’re religious phonies too: Look  at what happens to those who refuse to go along, like theologian Russell Moore, a former leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention who quit rather than continue to support the moral rot at the heart of his organization, which includes a cult-like devotion to Donald Trump. The contrast couldn’t be more obvious.

A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that the Christian majority in America is rapidly fading and may become a clear minority, perhaps as little as a third of the population, over the next 50 years or so. One big reason why that’s happening is because many young people are leaving Christian denominations in large numbers in favor of no religion at all, with no guarantee that they’ll switch back as they get older. It’s impossible not to conclude that the rank hypocrisy of the Christian right, which has been granted such a prominent role in religious and moral leadership for the past 40 years, is repulsive to people who actually have principles and ideals. If that collapse comes to pass, it’s almost certainly a good thing for America — and the Christian right only has itself to blame for sowing the seeds of its own demise. 

Hunter Biden’s indictment, nonindictment, what?

Fox News serves up some “Hide yer women!” minor story and it inflates it like an air dancer every election October. Hysteria over the seasonal bugaboo — ebola, migrant caravans, gangs, etc. — provokes legitimate news outlets to cover the Trumped-up stories. Even knowing it’s a right-wing ploy doesn’t stop the mainstream from devoting pixels and ink to it. They take the bait.

As soon as the election is over, the panic dies a swift death, notes Steve Morris of The Recount. What will it be this year? Crime, crime, crime, looks like a likely suspect.

2014: Ebola outbreak
2018: Migrant caravan
2022: ???

When it comes to midterms, where Fox News goes, the rest of media follows — and that could be pivotal to the outcome of the 2022 elections. pic.twitter.com/soxnGegdyI

— The Recount (@therecount) October 6, 2022

The record is clear. We don’t have to listen. Better to inform the public, says Parker Malloy.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

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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

Where are the documents “in Trump’s possession”?

Former President Donald J. Trump’s attorneys are torn. Whether ’tis nobler to cooperate with a Department of Justice that believes Trump still has government documents “in his possession” or “to maintain a more combative posture” with all the legal slings and arrows pertaining thereto.

Here’s the rub: the Department told Trump’s lawyers it believes Trump has “not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House.”

New York Times:

The outreach from the official, Jay I. Bratt, who leads the department’s counterintelligence operations, is the most concrete indication yet that investigators remain skeptical that Mr. Trump has been fully cooperative in their efforts to recover documents the former president was supposed to have turned over to the National Archives at the end of his term.

It is not clear what steps the Justice Department might take to retrieve any material it thinks Mr. Trump still holds.

For starters, how about an indictment for obstructions of justice already committed? “Use your leverage,” as The Donald himself instructs. You or I would already have been cuffed, fingerprinted, and softened up for cooperation.

The press devotes a flood of column inches to investigative delays preciptated by legal wrangling between the Department, Trump’s attorneys, and a couple layers of Trump-appointed federal judges. But the matter everyone dances around is this:

The government has found more than 300 classified documents in material that had been kept at Mar-a-Lago, including some marked as containing the most sensitive information that would cross the president’s desk.

But the Justice Department has previously signaled doubts that Mr. Trump had turned over everything in his possession. Shortly after the search in August, it was revealed that federal investigators had found dozens of empty folders at Mar-a-Lago marked as containing classified information. The disclosure raised further questions about whether the Justice Department had indeed recovered all the classified materials that may have been taken out of the White House.

The empty folders were found during the search of Mar-a-Lago along with 40 other empty folders that said they contained sensitive documents that should be returned “to staff secretary/military aide,” according to a court filing. Agents found the empty folders along with seven documents marked as “top secret” in Mr. Trump’s office. Investigators also found 11 more marked as “top secret” in a storage room.

Brat is in counterintelligence. His interest is not simply helping bespectacled federal archivists complete their checklist of Trump administration records.

The phrase “in his possession” crops up repeatedly in these missing document stories as though his possession is a given. Ryan Goodman of Just Security points to the dancing elephant in the room.

What if Trump no longer has the missing documents “in his possession”?

2. There are multiple worse case scenarios.

One of them is that Trump has actually lost control of the missing documents.

(That could also be an aggravating factor that pushes toward indictment — because of dissemination to third parties not just retention of documents).

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) October 6, 2022

Yes, Trump is rumored to have retained classified and national security materials to show off to his buddies or just to make the ex-president feel more important by having them. But if so, why the empty folders? Has Trump “actually lost control of the missing documents” as Goodman speculates?

“Lost control” is perhaps a euphemism for something worse that no one wants to say out loud about a former Grifter-in-Chief with solvency challenges.

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Across the Bering strait!

Whatever it takes;

Two Russians have crossed the Bering Strait by boat in order to avoid conscription to fight in Ukraine and landed on a remote Alaskan island where they have appealed for asylum, according to reports from the region.

The pair beached their small boat near Gambell, a settlement of about 600 people on St Lawrence Island, 46 miles from Siberia’s Chukotka peninsula, earlier this week.

Town clerk Curtis Silook told the Alaska’s News Source website that the men said they had sailed from the Russian town of Egvekinot, approximately 300 miles by sea. They were flown off the island on Tuesday, he said.

A spokesperson for the department of homeland security said: “The individuals were transported to Anchorage for inspection, which includes a screening and vetting process, and then subsequently processed in accordance with applicable US immigration laws under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

“These two individuals that came over from Russia in a boat and were detained in Gambell … my understanding is they are in Anchorage now being dealt with by federal authorities,” Alaska’s governor, Mik Dunleavy, said. “We don’t anticipate a continual stream of individuals or a flotilla of individuals. We have no indication that’s going to happen, so this may be a one-off.”

Fergawdsakes. He actually sounds worried that he might have a “border problem.”

It must be a big relief that there are only two of them. Otherwise,he might have to get on the horn with Ron DeSantis and see if he can get a plane to fly these desperate people out to a blue state. Isn’t that how they do it now?

Meanwhile, you can see why these guys got in that boat. In Russia, things are getting crazy:

Just over two weeks since Vladimir Putin’s latest hail mary in his war against Ukraine, things are going so well for the Russian leader that draftees are rioting, his top allies are at each other’s throats over a series of losses, and his defense minister has now been urged by his own team to blow his brains out.

“Yes, really, many are saying that… a defense minister who allowed such circumstances to arise could, as an officer, just shoot himself. But, you know, for many the word ‘officer’ is not clear,” one of Russia’s puppet leaders in Kherson said Thursday in the latest sign of the wheels falling off the Russian war machine.

Kirill Stremousov now joins a rapidly growing list of Putin loyalists openly venting about recent Russian failures on the battlefield—and blaming “worthless” Russian military brass for the humiliating debacle.

After weeks of complaints by pro-Kremlin military bloggers, anger at the military has now officially carried over into a more formal setting: even some Russian lawmakers are now lashing out at defense officials, with retired army officer Andrei Kartapolov on Wednesday demanding the army “stop lying” about war losses.

Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, interviewing Kartapolov, suggested the “only solution” would be to execute the defense officials “guilty” of the mounting setbacks.

The very public infighting could not come at a worse time for the Kremlin, as Ukraine’s eye-popping counteroffensive to reclaim the country’s land has already forced Russian troops out of territories Putin boasted were officially now part of Russia just days ago.

The meltdown also comes, quite fortuitously, just in time for the Russian president’s birthday on Friday, which the Kremlin says he will spend in his hometown of St. Petersburg, more than 800 miles from Belgorod—the scene of the latest episode showing that Putin’s “partial mobilization” is going, quite spectacularly, not according to plan.

Just two weeks after Putin announced to all of Russia that he would be summoning hundreds of thousands to face likely death on the battlefield to stop the West from “weakening” and “dividing” the country, his own troops are clearly divided: video has emerged of draftees straight-up rioting over the dysfunctional call-up, and more than a hundred of them are now said to have refused to fight.

An estimated 500 draftees were filmed in Belgorod trashing Putin’s chaotic “partial mobilization” this week in a video widely shared by social media channels linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group puppet master who human rights groups say personally recruited hundreds of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine in order to “win this damn war” for Putin.

“Nobody needs us, there is absolutely zero preparation!” one of the draftees can be heard shouting in the video.

As if the footage of Russian troops deriding their own leaders was not bad enough, the video was also widely seen as evidence of further infighting between Putin loyalists behind the scenes, as several men seen in the video were donning Wagner insignia. The video immediately sparked suspicions that Prighozin himself may have leaked it in order to further smear top Russian defense officials he’s openly criticized for recent war failures, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. That theory appeared to gain traction as news broke that Alexei Slobodenyuk, a staffer for one of Prigozhin’s media projects known for attacking Shoigu, was arrested by a spetsnaz unit in Moscow.

But similar scenes have played out elsewhere, and even new legislation threatening deserters with up to 10 years in prison has apparently not deterred Russian draftees from opting out of the war.

More than 100 newly mobilized troops from Bryansk are now said to be refusing to go to the front.

“Where are they sending us? We have no experience, we have nothing,” an unnamed draftee said in an interview with the news outlet Sota published Thursday.

The soldier said military leadership intends to send him and roughly 100 others who are refusing to fight to take back Lyman in the Donetsk region, from where Russian troops were forced to retreat last weekend.

“About a hundred and something people were sent there [before] and one remains alive, he’s in a hospital,” the soldier said.

Apart from refusing to fight, many of the new troops Putin mobilized also appear to be more busy devouring each other than “defending the Motherland” as the Russian leader hoped. Residents in the Moscow region’s city of Serpuhkov are afraid to leave their homes as draftees drunkenly fight in the streets; draftees in Penza beat up a lieutenant-colonel accused of calling them “meat” for the slaughter; and draftees and conscripts engaged in a mass brawl near Moscow that required police intervention, according to Mozhem Obyasnit.

At least 10 Russian draftees have died before even making it to the frontline, according to local media reports. Those already on the battlefield are also revolting, according to human rights group Rus Sidyashaya, which revealed Thursday that 13 soldiers hijacked defense ministry vehicles and fled from a military base in occupied Kherson with weapons and ammunition in tow.

And that’s to say nothing of the nearly 700,000 citizens who fled the country after Putin’s mobilization order, according to a new report by Forbes Russia.

In the face of such losses, however, the Kremlin appears to prefer sticking to what it does best: playing dumb.

“I don’t even know what the Russian publication Forbes is,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday when asked about the mass exodus. “Is it published? Is there even such a publisher?”

If they didn’t have nukes and weren’t committing atrocities in Ukraine this might even be funny. It’s anything but …

We’d like to not burn up if that’s ok

A photo-op but one with meaning:

Facing recent years of drought, record heat waves and major wildfires, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed an agreement with the leaders of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to accelerate and expand efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and address the impacts of climate change.

The “statement of cooperation,” unveiled at a news conference in San Francisco at the Presidio, was the latest effort by Newsom and other Democratic leaders to raise the profile of climate change and to take steps to continue to increase renewable energy, boost electric vehicles and widen efforts to thin fire-prone forests.

“This is not about electric power, this is about economic power,” Newsom said. “This is about dominating the next big global industry.”

Although the West Coast governments already are national leaders on environmental and climate issues, the event and the document Thursday were more of a photo opportunity and a general statement of principles than a binding contract.

The agreement’s fine print noted that “this document shall have no legal effect, impose no legally-binding obligation enforceable in any court of law or other tribunal of any sort, nor create any funding expectation.”

“Generally, I think these sort of subnational statements are important, politically and symbolically, because they can help push national governments to do more on climate action,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

But he noted that there is no guarantee to make sure any of the parties follow through.

“There’s no enforcement mechanism here other than public pressure,” Elkind said, “but at least the pledges provide a way for the public to measure action.”

California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia have 57 million residents — twice the population of Texas and three times the population of New York state — with a combined economy of $3.5 trillion, the fifth largest in the world, just behind Germany.

Newsom urged the world to reduce its use of oil, citing the decision by OPEC-Plus, a coalition of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria and other nations, Wednesday to cut production, which will is expected to raise oil and gas prices.

“Petro dictators don’t have your interest at heart,” Newsom said. “They seem more interested in Putin than they do Western democracies. We are as dumb as we want to be.”

And he took a shot at Fox News commentators, who regularly criticize San Francisco for its homelessness and crime, and have opposed California’s efforts to reduce oil use.

“Eat your heart out, Fox News,” Newsom said, looking back over the scenic San Francisco Bay and waterfront. “This is San Francisco crackup? Really? Tucker Carlson? These guys every night are doubling down on stupid, trying to make the case for subsidizing the very problem we’re all trying to solve.”

Oregon needs to ensure that the Republican or Indy doesn’t win the Governorship and it’s a close thing. But this is meaningful on its own, at least demonstrating to the rest of the world that we aren’t all self-destructive throwbacks.

Tucker loves him

I had never seen this quote from Tucker Carlson before. It’s from the introduction to Roger Stone’s 2008 book:

“Like many in the upper reaches of media, business and government, this executive stood in fear and trembling before the legend of Roger Stone,” wrote Carlson in the introduction for a book authored by Stone in 2018. “And for good reason: Roger Stone is a troublemaker — indeed, not just a troublemaker, but perhaps the premier troublemaker of our time, the Michael Jordan of electoral mischief. This is either terrifying or delightful, depending on your uptightness level. I love it. Television executives don’t. That’s the difference.”

He loves Stone’s “electoral mischief” because he has a low “uptightness level.” That’s true — if you think being a decent human being with a modicum of morality is “uptight.”

I wrote about Stone the other day, in case you missed it.

I did not realize how close he was with Tucker Carlson, though. According to the new Haberman book, he also lobbied for Stone to get a pardon:

And “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has been there for Stone. When the FBI in January 2019 raided Stone’s Florida home, Carlson denounced the tactic and criticized CNN for obtaining video of the early-morning action. The network, he contended, was in cahoots with officials from Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which had been probing Stone’s activities. “CNN acted as the public relations arm of the Mueller investigation, as they have before,” said the host. (In fact, CNN journalists’ presence that morning was because of a hunch informed by their reporting.) Stone was subsequently indicted — on counts that included witness tampering and making false statements — found guilty on all counts and sentenced to more than three years in prison.

The whole affair short-circuited Carlson, who just couldn’t stand by and allow the justice system to do its thing. When it emerged that the Mueller report hadn’t established a Trump-Russia conspiracy, Carlson howled about Stone’s situation: “Where are the pardons here?” asked Carlson in March 2019. “I mean, is it time for the executive branch to send a really clear message we’re going to stop the destruction of innocent people by completely out-of-control bureaucrats?”

Following Stone’s conviction, Carlson revealed some inside reporting on a possible pardon, citing Kushner as one gatekeeper.“We’re hearing that certain people around the president — possibly his son-in-law, maybe not — are telling him no, you can’t pardon Roger Stone, even though the president has come out and said publicly, I think that this was a travesty.”

That little clue perhaps explains why, in Haberman’s book, Carlson seeks an audience with Kushner. In the meeting, Carlson told Kushner that if Trump didn’t act, he’d “press the issue publicly,” according to “Confidence Man.” As noted above, Carlson had already been doing just that, but in mid-February 2020, in the days leading up to Stone’s sentencing, Carlson did multiple segments on the topic. “You know what the average rapist does in this country? We checked today — four years. You know what the average armed robber gets? Three years. The average thug who violently assaults somebody? Less than a year and a half,” riffed Carlson on Feb. 11. “But the left, CNN as well, demanding that Roger Stone die in prison. This man needs a pardon.”

The next night, he kept at it. “If the Russia collusion story was a hoax, and of course it most certainly was a hoax, then why is Roger Stone going to prison for his role in it?” he asked. “If Roger Stone serves even a single day behind bars, the Russia lie will be validated as true.” On it went: “Prosecutors want Roger Stone to serve nine years not because he hurt someone or hurt this country. He didn’t. But because they hate him,” Carlson said on Feb. 13.

The transcripts, in other words, reflect that Carlson made good on the consequences that he’d dangled before Kushner — if Trump didn’t act, he’d make a public fuss. Journalists don’t, or should not, veer into this sort of personal advocacy; their role is to determine what is happening and to report the findings, the better to inform viewers. Yet viewers weren’t the priority for Carlson. Stone was.

I don’t know how I missed this longtime close relationship but I did. I guess even a news junkie like me inevitably misses important details. It is very interesting and says so much about Carlson’s character going way back. The guy is mostly about money (this NY Times portrait spells that out.) But he’s also a nasty, adolescent punk attracted to a ratfucking weasel like Stone because it makes him laugh.

He’s this guy:

It was Saturday, and the police had finally called for everyone to clear the park. As I filmed officers opening up a blocked street, a young man ran into view, screaming for help. He wore the khaki-and-white uniform of the white nationalist group Vanguard America. He had been separated from them and was being chased by at least one protester. He ripped off his shirt and begged the crowd for mercy. He wasn’t actually into white power, you see.

“Barely,” he clarified to me. As he shoved his polo shirt into a plastic bag, the fear on his face settled into a smirk. “It’s kind of a fun idea,” he explained. “Just being able to say ‘white power,’ you know?”

It’s fun. For sociopaths.

Good for her

Liz Cheney in AZ: “For almost 40 years now I’ve been voting Republican. I don’t know that I have ever voted for a Democrat. But if I lived in AZ now, I absolutely would.” pic.twitter.com/CH4SReZJnA

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 6, 2022

I’m frankly surprised that she did this. I can’t think of another GOP official who has done so. A tiny handful have said they won’t vote for Trump but I’ve not heard any but hardcore, unelected Never Trumpers say that you need to vote for Democrats instead.

I don’t know who she can influence but if there are a few McCain fans out there who recall his hatred for Trump (he was not even invited to the funeral, remember) maybe this will get them to vote for mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs, both of whom are straight arrow, mainstream politicians.

It shouldn’t take Liz Cheney saying this but partisanship is a helluva drug. It’s very hard to get people to just say no.

It’s just obvious

DeSantis is known for being stand-offish, cold and lacking in empathy. He knows how to own the libs but he has no personal skills. That pic says it all.

DeSantis looked like he was sucking on lemons the entire visit. But I doubt that will help him if Donald Trump decides to Chris Christie him with this. By that I mean attack him for consorting with the enemy, as the Republicans did to Christie in 2012 when he welcomed Obama to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.

You know he’ll use the white boot pic.