Month: December 2022

WTF is he talking about now? This:

While normal humans who denied Republicans their red wave were enjoying an epic sports weekend, an insular community of MAGA activists and online contrarians led by the world’s richest man (for now) were getting riled up about a cache of leaked emails revealing that the former actor James Woods and Chinese troll accounts were not allowed to post ill-gotten photos of Hunter Biden’s hog on a private company’s microblogging platform 25 months ago.

Now if you are one of the normals—someone who would never think about posting another person’s penis on your social media account; has no desire to see politicians’ kids’ penises when scrolling social media; doesn’t understand why there are other people out there who care one way or another about the moderation policies surrounding stolen penis photos; or can’t even figure out what it is that I’m talking about—then this might seem like a gratuitous matter for an article. Sadly, it is not.

Because among Republican members of Congress, leading conservative media commentators, contrarian substackers, conservative tech bros, and friends of Donald Trump, the ability to post Hunter Biden’s cock shots on Twitter is the number-one issue in America this weekend. They believe that if they are not allowed to post porno, our constitutional republic may be in jeopardy.

I truly, truly wish I were joking.

Here’s a synopsis for the blessedly uninitiated:

On Friday, Elon Musk promised to reveal “what really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter.” It turns out that he had provided a trove of internal corporate documents to the Tulsi Gabbard of Substack, Matt Taibbi, who said they amounted to a “unique and explosive story”—revealing the juicy details inside Twitter’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, which had previously been rejected by such liberal outlets as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal due to its suspicious provenance. Taibbi agreed to divulge these private emails on Twitter itself rather than via his Substack as part of a “few conditions,” which he does not detail, that were imposed on him, presumably by Musk or a Musk factotum.

The documents Taibbi tweeted on Friday were titillating in the way that reading private correspondence revealing what people were really saying around a controversial subject always is, but nothing new was learned about the contours of the story. The leak mostly relitigates two facts that have already received much ink across the media: 1) How Twitter throttled the New York Post’s initial story about Hunter’s laptop based on what we now know was an incorrect assessment of its source; and 2) How political campaigns and government agencies have worked with social media companies—in this case Twitter—to flag troubling content.

On the first point, the emails confirm the essential consensus that has come into focus in reporting on the matter: Twitter got out over its skis on the ban and a typical corporate bureaucratic goat rope ensued as the company tried to “unfuck” the situation, as one employee put it. To say that this is not a new revelation would be an understatement given that Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that this was a mistake over a year ago.

As such it was the latter point that drove the most hysterical discussion online on Friday.

The most retweeted installment in Taibbi’s thread (so far) was this, which purported to show the Biden campaign directing Twitter to delete specific tweets:

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

This supposed smoking gun resulted in Musk responding to his own journalistic stenographer on Twitter with a fire emoji and the comment “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s first amendment, what is.” Musk was so impressed with this digital citizen’s arrest, that he made it his pinned tweet, after which the MAGA attaboys for Musky came hot and heavy.

Right-wing commentator Buck Sexton (real name), said this was a “bright red line violation” and that Biden should be IMPEACHED for it. Rep. James Comer (R-TN) was on Fox promising that everyone at Twitter involved with this would be brought before the House Oversight committee. Rep. Billy Long retweeted several MAGA influencers praising Elon for, among other things, “exposing corruption at the highest levels of society” (Projection Alert). Meanwhile Kari Lake hype man Pizzagate Jack Posobiec declared this the “biggest story in modern presidential election history,” claimed that “we can never go back to the country we were before this moment,” and donned this “a digital insurrection.”

In reality, all they really had was a digital erection.

The offending material that Taibbi revealed was removed by Twitter at the Biden campaign’s request turns out to have been a bunch of links to Hunter Biden in the buff.

There was a tweet from a Chinese account featuring a naked woman on top of Hunter Biden, as well as a family photo. Two pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, one with another woman in the background. Taibbi’s next list of material was removed by Twitter after being flagged by the Democratic National Committee. They include a picture of Hunter Biden smoking crack and getting his feet rubbed and a link to a Hunter Biden sex tape.

And that’s the big hubbub. Social media company removes unwanted dick pics: News at 11.

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As someone who once consulted for social media companies on content moderation issues, let me tell you, the amount of eggplant-related terms of service violations that these platforms review in a given year is so voluminous that we have not yet invented an artificial intelligence machine capable of counting them.

Yet Taibbi and Musk are trying to turn this mundane moderation matter into the story of the century by emphasizing a few misconceptions about how platforms work with political campaigns and what First Amendment obligations they do or do not have. To debunk a few of them:

1. Campaigns of all ideological stripes have direct lines into social media companies and make requests about offending content. There is nothing at all strange about what is shown in these emails. If Jeb’s kid’s grundle was posted by a Chinese troll, we surely would’ve flagged that for the company in the hopes they deleted it, and I suspect their internal correspondence on the matter would’ve been identical. This would not have been a “demand” or a “dictate” from our campaign, mind you. Companies can do what they want.

2. In this specific instance, the requests came from a campaign that has absolutely no government authority at all. At the time of the correspondence in question, Joe Biden was a private citizen running for office, while Donald Trump was the president. Taibbi acknowledges that Trump’s White House made requests that “were received and honored” and that “there’s no evidence—that I’ve seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story.” So if there are any First Amendment issues at play here—and I don’t believe there are since neither Musk nor Taibbi have demonstrated that the government made any mandates on Twitter—they would, in this case, only relate to the material that Trump wanted removed.

3. Why MAGA Republicans and Elon Musk are so adamant that people be able to post photos of Hunter’s johnson is something that should probably be explored with their respective preachers or psychiatrists, but it is certainly not a matter for constitutional scholars or litigators. While Mr. Lisbon from the Virgin Suicides may derive a depraved type of happiness from publishing pictures of other people’s genitals on a private company’s public bulletin board without the approval of those pictured, the First Amendment does not bestow upon him the right to prevent the company from taking down the offending material.

To sum up what we learned: Big penis, little news, First Amendment not under threat.

Musk and Taibbi have promised more editions of the “Twitter Files” in the coming days, maybe next time they won’t come up so limp.

That’s from Tim Miller. More from Emptywheel.

You’ll have to excuse me. I need to start drinking.

BTW: I called this on Sedar’s show two weeks ago. It’s about the dick pics.

What the effing hell?

H/t Laffy via Mastodon, this birdsite thread by Jason Coupet about the voting process in Georgia:

Man voting in Georgia is so different than in Illinois. When I lived in chicago, during early voting, I went to the local elementary school, waited in line about ten minutes, and they gave me a sheet of paper. I checked people off then I put it in the machine and left. 

Not Georgia. We drove downtown because *every* other polling place had a line >90 minutes. We paid ten bucks to park. We went in the building, then emptied out pockets to go through a metal detector. We then saw a sign about where to park to get our parking validated. Inside. 

We then waited in line ~80 minutes. We got to the end and we were given a form to fill out (?). We were told *not* to sign it until told. Then we were moved into a waiting room where we were given a ticket number, like when you are at the dmv. 

We were told to get our IDs out and wait. We waited here for 15-20 minutes. When your number is called they took your form, did some stuff on the computer, then told you to sign the form. Then you get a little green card. You insert it into the machine. 

Then you go through three or four prompts, including a very serious™️ warning about perjury, a totally necessary warning given how huge a problem stolen identity is for the purposes of voting on behalf of someone else. 

You then finally vote, and after an “are you sure” prompt you get a sheet. You then have to walk the sheet over to feed it into a machine. About half of these were working. 

The bottleneck was clearly the weird application and waiting room thing. There are two dozen people at a time sitting to have their stuffed checked. Think of it as regular voting except when you got there they had to run a credit check for *each person* like you need financing. 

It was easier finishing my PhD paperwork. Thankful for the kind people (nearly all black women) the shepherded the processes. But man if you are poor or disabled or whatever, good luck yo. That should have been easier. We finished tho.

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Still getting adjusted to Mastodon. It reminds me of buying a new VCR back in the day. You know what it does. You just have to find where all the functions are hidden (like how to cleanly embed poots or whatever) on the new unit. Expect only a short learning curve.

I’m still on the other site, but clearly it is sunsetting for many of us. Liking what I see on Mastodon.

Grab the family photo album if you haven’t already.

Dems in array; McCarthy struggles to keep GOP afloat

The non-drubbing of the Democratic Party last month should have been a clue. Republicans loudly predicted a “red wave.” Did you hear? In the first midterm of a new president, something like that is the norm. It’s just that with Donald Trump (indictments pending) and seditious conspiracy trials over a violent insurrection, norms went out the window. Americans noticed. Somehow.

Republicans are reaping the rancid harvest sown three decades ago. The party is adrift (if not sinking). It is “what happens to ships boarded by pirates, plundered and set aflame on the high seas,” writes David Von Drehle. The mojo Republicans had in the 1970s and 1980s has vanished like morning sea mist.

The landslides ended in 1992 when Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot’s third-party campaign helped torpedo George H.W. Bush’s reelection, aided by Patrick J. Buchanan’s far-right challenge (Washington Post):

One of the fathers of modern American conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., had Buchanan on his mind in the months leading up to that fateful 1992 campaign. In a 40,000-word essay published late in 1991, Buckley examined the pitchfork populist’s tendency to deal in antisemitic tropes and allusions. His conclusion: “I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it.”

George W. Bush’s election held off the far right until the election of a Black man to the White House. Then all hell broke loose with the T-party.

“Buchananism, with its ugly undertones and shades of paranoid grievance, was the only energy remaining in the GOP,” writes Von Drehle. Perhaps it is fitting that Donald J. Trump, the faux-billionaire, reality TV star with zero experience in elected office began his takeover of the party riding down a golden escalator.

From Buchanan to Gingrich to Trump, the drivers of the Republican Party have pushed relentlessly toward anger, accusation, isolationism, pessimism and paranoia. In the guise of battling the left, they wage their most effective warfare against their fellow Republicans. Having purged proponents of the overwhelmingly popular ideas of the 1970s and 1980s — strong alliances and free markets, individual freedom and personal responsibility, the rule of law, faith in the future — they offer nothing positive. Literally: In 2020, the GOP did not offer any platform.

Americans who value stability noticed a party adrift and in 2020 selected instead a familiar, if similarly old hand. In 2022, the country was not going to hand dozens of House seats and additional Senate seats to a Republican Party taken over by lunatic pirates.

As Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ends her storied tenure as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, her would-be Republican replacement, finds himself home alone without Macaulay Culkin’s resourcefulness. With a razor-thin incoming House majority, McCarthy will have to sell his soul to extremists for any hope “of eking out enough votes to become speaker,” writes Dana Milbank.

The crazies mean to provoke a government shutdown over the budget. McCarthy would prefer to avoid that torpedo headed towards his nascent speakership:

But McCarthy, evidently lacking faith in his own ability to get a deal through the House, is pushing to get it done now. Continuing resolutions “are not where we want to be,” he said this week. As Politico artfully put it: “Nobody trusts McCarthy to pass anything (not even McCarthy).”

For good reason. As many as 20 House Republicans oppose McCarthy for speaker (five of them in categorical terms). If he loses more than a few, the race for speaker could go to a second ballot on the House floor for the first time in a century. So he has been making desperate public warnings to fellow Republicans and offering holdouts whatever they demand. (The latest: a promised investigation of the House’s own Jan. 6 committee.)

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, meanwhile, is poised to take over leadership of his caucus from Pelosi with no apparent infighting. Democrats are in array.

Milbank quips:

There is no question about it: Hakeem Jeffries has the chops to be Democratic leader.

He chops left, right and center. He chops with one hand; he chops with two hands. He raises his index fingers and wags them. He points up, down and forward. He interlocks his fingers as if cracking his knuckles. He makes fists, holds his palms out and does loop-the-loops with his hands.

Watching his inaugural news conference as Democratic leader-designate this week was like watching a symphony conductor. I was so mesmerized by the hand gestures that I had to check the transcript to see what he had said.

Jeffries “has the politician’s gift of revealing nothing and the orator’s gift of doing it with great energy and enthusiasm.” He’ll need it, Milbank suggests. “Those on the far left, who already view him with suspicion, will in due time pressure the caucus to take politically unpopular stands.”

Not having Pelosi to kick around anymore, Republicans are trying to brand the moderate, establishment Jeffries as positioned to Pelosi’s left.

Hakeem Jeffries is the new Nancy Pelosi, only he’s even more radical than she is.

— GOP (@GOP) December 1, 2022

Good luck with that.

Polar bear cubs!

The Toledo Zoo is thrilled to announce the birth of twin Polar bear cubs. The cubs’ parents are 24-year-old female, Crystal, and 18-year-old male, Nuka.

In March 2022, the Toledo Zoo announced the addition of Nuka after the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s Species Survival Program (SSP) issued a breeding recommendation for Crystal in hopes of mating to sustain this endangered species.  

“We’re very happy to welcome these two new cubs and boost the long-term sustainability of the species,” said Michael Frushour, curator of mammals for the Toledo Zoo.

Crystal’s eighth and ninth cubs were born on November 11, 2022, each weighing approximately two pounds. Their genders are unknown at this time and will be determined at their first neonatal exam, which will take place in February.

Crystal and the cubs are currently in the birthing den, which provides a quiet, safe place for a mother to give birth and raise cubs. In the wild, this would be in a snow bank or side of a hill. Keepers and vet staff monitor the cubs via a camera that also picks up audio. Sometimes the cubs are not visible due to positioning, but they can still be heard nursing.

Male polar bears do not participate in the rearing of young; therefore, Nuka remains on exhibit daily. Crystal and the cubs are estimated to make their public exhibit debut in the spring of 2023.

In the meantime, you can watch a live feed on the Toledo Zoo’s YouTube channel of Crystal and the cubs. Live feed viewing is available daily from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. The camera will be off after 4 p.m., but viewers can still hear the Polar bears through the microphone.

“We’re proud to be able to give the community a sneak peek at the cubs in real-time before they’re on exhibit. You won’t want to miss seeing the cubs in person this spring, so we strongly encourage the purchase or renewal of a zoo membership to make the most out of your visits,” said Frushour. 

Here’s the Live Cam:

https://youtu.be/kBLzb1MCJRs

Despite winning reelection by just 550 votes in a race that’s now undergoing a recount, Rep. Lauren Boebert this week won a vote of confidence from her fellow Republican members of the U.S. House as she was elected to join the party’s policy committee.

Because she is an expert on policy:

The recount was announced just after Boebert was elected to be a new member of the Republican Policy Committee, which serves as an advisory panel and provides “conservative policy solutions to the House Republican Conference.”

The congresswoman, who has represented the 3rd District since 2021 and is the owner of a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado, has garnered outrage by threatening to carry a firearm on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol; joking in a video that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Muslim, was a member of the “jihad squad” and saying she felt safe riding in an elevator with her only because she didn’t “have a backpack”; celebrating fascist electoral victories in Europe; and making anti-LGBTQ+ comments.

She clearly brings a lot to the policy table.

Maybe this is some kind of backwater committee that they are just parking her in. After all, they aren’t really interested in policy are they? Still, you’d think it would be embarrassing to have this barely-winning-in-a-deep-red-county Rep near anything that resembles serious law making. But then, they are totally shameless so what’s the difference?

CNN has a new poll, four days out:

In the final undecided Senate contest of 2022, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia holds a narrow lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker among those likely to vote in a runoff election Tuesday, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.

The survey shows that Walker faces widespread questions about his honesty and suffers from a negative favorability rating, while nearly half of those who back him say their vote is more about opposition to Warnock than support for Walker. Voters’ modestly more positive views of Warnock and a firmly committed base of supporters appear to boost the incumbent in the new poll.

Overall, 52% of likely voters say they plan to support Warnock in Tuesday’s runoff and 48% pick Walker. Partisans on both sides are deeply entrenched, with nearly all Democrats (99%) behind Warnock and 95% of Republicans backing Walker. Independents break in Warnock’s favor, 61% to 36%, but make up a relatively small slice of likely voters, 17%, compared with 24% in a CNN exit poll of voters in the first round of this contest last month. (Warnock finished narrowly ahead of Walker in November but without the majority of the vote needed to avoid a runoff.)

White voters remain broadly behind Walker ahead of Tuesday’s election: 69% support him, with 30% backing Warnock, in the new poll, while Black voters likely to cast a ballot next week are near unanimous in their support for the Democrat (96% Warnock to 3% Walker). Those divides are similar to the racial split in the 2021 runoff during which Warnock initially won his seat, when 93% of Black voters backed him while 71% of White voters favored his Republican opponent, then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler, according to CNN’s exit poll.

There is also a wide age gap in the upcoming contest, with voters under 35 sharply behind Warnock (74% to 25%), while those 65 or older break in Walker’s favor by 26 points (63% to 37%). Younger White voters are far more closely divided than older White voters (52% Walker to 48% Warnock among White voters younger than 45, while 75% of White voters age 45 or older say they back Walker). Support for Warnock is about the same among younger and older Black voters.

White voters without college degrees are heavily behind Walker – 83% support him – while White voters with four-year degrees are closely divided, 51% Walker to 47% Warnock. White women with degrees tilt toward Warnock (53% Warnock to 44% for Walker) while White men with degrees break in Walker’s favor (58% Walker to 42% Warnock).

Warnock’s supporters broadly say they are casting ballots to support their candidate (83%) rather than to oppose Walker (17%), but it’s a more mixed bag among those who favor Walker (52% say their vote is more to support him, 47% to oppose Warnock).

That difference, the poll suggests, could be a factor in driving turnout. The runoff between Warnock and Walker is the only race on the ballot in most of the state, and voters who say they are voting more to support their Senate candidate than to oppose the other candidate express deeper motivation to vote – 79% of likely voters who say their vote is to support their chosen candidate are extremely motivated to vote, compared with 69% among those who say their vote is more one of opposition.

There are several indications in the poll that negative views of Walker are also a potential drag on his chances.

Beyond the gap in affirmative support behind each man’s candidacy, there’s a big difference in views of Warnock and Walker personally. Views of Warnock tilt narrowly positive, with 50% of likely voters holding a favorable opinion, 45% unfavorable, while far more likely Georgia voters have a negative view of Walker (52%) than a positive one (39%).

A broad majority say that Walker is not honest and trustworthy – 59% feel that way, including 18% of those who say they plan to vote for the Republican. A narrow majority, 52%, say they believe Warnock is honest and trustworthy, and views of his honesty are closely connected to vote choice (93% of Warnock’s own voters say he is honest, 91% of Walker’s voters say Warnock is not honest). Walker holds a wide lead among those likely voters who say that neither Walker nor Warnock are honest and trustworthy (they break 71% Walker to 27% Warnock).

Likely voters are more apt to see Warnock than Walker as well qualified to serve as senator (52% say that describes Warnock better, 27% Walker, and 21% say neither is well qualified); as someone who would represent Georgia effectively in Congress (50% Warnock, 41% Walker, 8% neither); as someone who has good judgment (50% Warnock, 33% Walker, 17% neither); and as someone who has the right priorities (49% Warnock, 43% Walker, 7% neither). Among the roughly 1 in 5 likely voters who say neither candidate is well-qualified, about 9 in 10 back Walker (92%), and he wins roughly 8 in 10 of those who say neither candidate has good judgment (82% say they’ll vote for Walker).

Still, when asked directly whether their votes are more about the candidates’ positions on the issues or their character and integrity, 57% of likely voters say issues are the more important factor and 42% choose character and integrity. Among those saying that the issues are their main concern, 64% are voting for Walker; on the character side, 74% favor Warnock.

That last is so interesting. Issues mean partisanship, basically. Who backs the party line. There was a time when “character” supposedly meant everything to conservatives. In the Trump era that’s been completely jettisoned for obvious reasons. Now they say they support Trump (and his minions) because of their stands on “the issues.” When asked, they have no idea what they are and that’s because they are still voting on character. It’s just that the “characters” they like are embarrassing.

It’s hard to see how Warnock could lose. But he could. It’s close. As usual.

Trump issues a special address to J6 defendants: “Our country is going communist .. People are imprisoned right now. People are being tormented. Can’t let it happen. We’re going to stop it, and we’re going to win.” pic.twitter.com/vDkjXVseYu

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 2, 2022

He’s shoring up MAGA before DeSantis can get to them:

Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago.

He stands with the mob.

Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. The country, he warned, “is going communist.”

The video underscored just how much the former president has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics as he seeks to reclaim the White House through a rematch with President Biden in 2024. With the Justice Department targeting him as well as some of his violent allies, Mr. Trump’s antigovernment jeremiads lately sound like those once relegated to the outer edges of the political spectrum.

He has embraced extremist elements in American society even more unabashedly than in the past. The video comes as Mr. Trump has been using music sounding like a QAnon theme song at recent rallies and hosting for dinner Kanye West, a rap star under fire for antisemitic statements, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent white supremacist.

And it comes just two days after the conviction of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, placed Mr. Trump at the spiritual heart of a seditious conspiracy to illegitimately keep power in a way that is unparalleled in American history.

Mr. Trump’s acceptance, if not outright courtship, of the militant right comes as the Republican establishment blames him for the party’s failure to do better during the November midterm elections. Republican officeholders, led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party leader in the upper chamber, argue that Mr. Trump’s promotion of candidates based on fidelity to his false claims about the 2020 election cost them seats.

“Trump is doubling down on his extremist and cult leader profile,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present” and a history professor at New York University. “For someone of Trump’s temperament, being humiliated by people turning away from him will only make him more desperate and more inclined to support and associate with the most extremist elements of society. There is no other option for him.”

His former dinner guests fanned the flames on Thursday with fresh incendiary comments on the Infowars show of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist. “I like Hitler,” said Mr. West, who now goes by the name Ye, adding that “Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.” He added that “we got to stop dissing Nazis all the time,” and he denied that the Holocaust happened.

At another point, Mr. Fuentes voiced his support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, calling himself “very pro-Putin” and “very pro-Russia.” Ye agreed: “I am also.”

The verdict in the Oath Keepers case underscored Mr. Trump’s alignment with a right-wing militia deemed a danger by the government. The trial effectively established that there was an illegal plot to keep Mr. Trump in power despite his defeat in the 2020 election, whether the former president was directly involved or simply inspired it through the lies he spread.

He needs to keep that 30% locked in to leverage the nomination. They are where his power lies. They aren’t very smart and they aren’t very stable. If he can maintain his hold, he can take them wherever he goes. And the rest of the party knows it.

I’m sure the likes of Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk would find this film to be objectionable as a government infringement of free speech or something but sadly, this film from 80 years ago is still relevant today:

Here's a clip from the short film "Don't Be a Sucker" that I think everyone should watch. This was made in the 1940s by the United States government to educate people about prejudice and discrimination. pic.twitter.com/EhV7io6khj

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) December 1, 2022

I had thought we’d put at least the worst of this behind us but what I’m seeing today is much worse than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. We have celebrities endorsing Hitler, billionaires enabling them and top Republican officials dancing around it all like it’s just politics as usual. This is bad.

DeSantis has a history of staying mum on anti-Semitism

The days-long spectacle of  Kanye West’s final descent into ignominy reached an odious new low on Thursday when the antisemitic rapper (who now styles himself simply as Ye) appeared on Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show with his new entourage led by white supremacist Nick Fuentes to declare that he was a big fan of Hitler and “we got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.” He ended the day by posting an image of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David to his recently restored Twitter account, which was later suspended (again). Elon Musk tweeted that he had tried his best to keep Ye on the platform but the rapper finally “went too far.”

Really, Elon? Ya think?

It took most Republicans more than a week to say a peep about Ye and Fuentes’ dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week and most of their comments were along the lines of “Trump should show better judgment in his dinner companions.” A handful, notably House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, eventually announced that the GOP “has no place” for antisemitism or white supremacy. Over the course of this week, most prominent members of the party found some way to say they disapproved of all this unpleasantness, even if it those words had to be dragged out of them. The controversy is simply too offensive to avoid altogether.

But there is one very prominent Republican who has not said a word: the other Florida superstar, Gov. Ron DeSantis. For a man who has never seen a culture-war issue he didn’t want to jump into with both feet, this seems odd, especially since he’s being widely touted as the answer to the party’s “Trump problem.” That would assume that the Trump problem has something to do with his embrace of white supremacy and bigotry in general, and there’s not much reason to think DeSantis sees that as a problem.

Rolling Stone reports that the Florida governor and his team have made a calculated decision to say nothing on this issue that’s roiling the political world:

“In ongoing discussions following his reelection, including this week, I’ve been asked to keep my powder dry,” says Dan Eberhart, a longtime GOP donor — and former big Trump donor — recalling his conversations with Team DeSantis. (Eberhart is now backing DeSantis for 2024). “My understanding is that the DeSantis team doesn’t see upside in kicking off the fight with Trump this early, even if it may be inevitable. Wading into the Fuentes fiasco just isn’t worth it for them. The media will harpoon Trump without Team DeSantis lifting a finger.”

This explanation is all about political positioning relative to Trump. It doesn’t sound as if “Team DeSantis” has even given a passing thought to the question of whether this issue should be addressed on the merits. There’s a good reason for that. DeSantis and his crew, much like Trump, understand perfectly well that to win the Republican nomination they will need to cater to the large and growing faction of base voters who see no problem in Trump consorting with antisemites and white supremacists and bigots of all varieties, and even openly approve of it.

There have been several antisemitic demonstrations in Florida in recent months that had nothing to do with Donald Trump and DeSantis made no move to denounce any of it. As the headliner at the Turning Point Conference in Tampa last summer, he refused to disavow a group of Nazis who demonstrated outside the convention center with swastikas and flags that said “DeSantis Country.” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., condemned the neo-Nazis, tweeting, “This is a disgusting act of hateful anti-Semitism and doesn’t belong in Florida, our nation or anywhere across the world,” but the governor himself stayed silent, leading the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald to call him out.

An earlier Nazi rally in Orlando last spring had DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw suggesting that the demonstrators were Democratic plants. She later deleted the tweet but an earlier post (for which she also had to apologize) about Georgia Republicans being manipulated by the Rothschild family — an ancient antisemitic trope — suggested Pushaw’s true inclinations. Whether that reflected yet more cynical political strategy or heartfelt belief is unclear, not that it makes any difference.

DeSantis never responded directly, although he ultimately called the Nazi demonstrators “jackasses,” as if they were just a few youthful pranksters who’d gotten out of hand. Instead he blamed the “Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to smear me, as if I had something to do with it,” insisting, “We’re not playing their game.” As with the current Trump-Kanye controversy, he reduced it to a question of political advantage instead of addressing the issue itself.

It’s not just about Nazis. DeSantis has the same reaction to non-swastika white supremacists as well. Over this past weekend a plane flew over the football stadium in Jacksonville with a Confederate flag and the unambiguous message “PUT MONUMENTS BACK.” When asked about it, the Sunshine State’s leader once again refused to directly confront the issue:

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) deflects when asked if he’s concerned about hate speech, including a Confederate flag being flown over the Jaguars game calling for monuments to be brought back:

“I’m concerned about people in the media trying to manufacture division all the time.” pic.twitter.com/qkJcGDRqph

— The Recount (@therecount) November 29, 2022

This is the man that Jim Geraghty extolled in the Washington Post as a “return to normal,” claiming that “DeSantis would be a Republican nominee without Donald Trump’s worst and most destructive impulses and habits.” Apparently, coddling neo-Nazis and other white supremacists as valued members of the GOP base is not among those destructive impulses, because there is no visible daylight between Ron and Don on that score.

Ron DeSantis is also an election denier, an anti-vaxxer and a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait reported, he marked the first anniversary of the insurrection “by wooing right-wing social-media personalities with an invitation to his office, dinner at the governor’s mansion, and rooftop drinks.” No one should fool themselves into believing that because DeSantis doesn’t have Trump’s specific personality defects he doesn’t share Trump’s deplorable political instincts.

We are seeing in real time the revival of overt antisemitism and racism on a level we have not seen for decades. It is the primary source of energy on the right and it’s fueling the campaigns of the top two candidates for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. in 2024. In that respect, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.  

Salon

“This would be funny if he weren’t running for Senate”

It is fasionable among glass-half-empty progressives to roll their eyes and drag Barack Obama whenever his name comes up. For what he didn’t do, for what he got only half of, or for the potential he didn’t live up to. The sourness is uninviting.

That is not one of Obama faults. Democrats have not had a better campaigner for decades. He always seems to be having fun. More fun than he had as president, perhaps. It’s catching. His crowds agree.

Last night in Georgia stumping for Sen. Raphael Warnock, Obama took some stinging shots at Herschel Walker. The crowd loved it. The internet too. Maybe Elon Musk’s “flaming port-a-potty dropped out of a helicopter” somewhat less.

“Can’t nobody hear you boo. But they can hear your vote.”

https://youtu.be/lopDiT4XefI

Obama: Mr. Walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people of Georgia like if it’s better to be a vampire or a werewolf.. This is a debate that I must confess I once had myself.. when I was 7.

All policy and no play is not a recruiting formula. Obama himself admitted in October it is something at which he sometimes failed. “Not being a buzzkill” is good advice.