Criminals are arrested every day in every town in America. You are not special, Trumpie. You’re just a private citizen being held to account for your crimes. Go to court and let a jury decide. That’s exactly how it works.
Just be glad you’re not Black.
Greg Sargent takes a look at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s grotesque 60 Minutes interview and the history of LGBTQ and pedophile slurs:
CBS anchor Lesley Stahl was shocked to hear that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stands firmly behind her frequent claim that Democrats are “pedophiles.” On “60 Minutes,” Stahl pressed Greene on her use of the slur, and the Georgia Republican defiantly responded that it’s the truth: “They support grooming children.”
“They are not pedophiles,” Stahl rejoined incredulously. “Why would you say that?”
Stahl has been roasted online for granting Greene a plum “60 Minutes” interview, which aired Sunday night. But the real problem with this exchange is thatStahl did not show any signs of understanding the longtime role of the “pedophile” insult in right-wing discourse as an expression of deliberate bigotry against transgender Americans.
As a result, Stahl squandered a high-profile opportunity to explainto a large prime-time audience what Greene and others really intend when they use this smear.
The “pedophile” slur, a companion of the term “groomer,” is regularly applied by Republicans and right-wing media figures to Democrats and others who stand up for transgender rights, including gender-affirming treatment for adolescents. Greene cheerfully flaunted this use of the term on “60 Minutes,” which left Stahl utterly flummoxed:
Greene: Democrats support, even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.
Stahl: Wow. Okay. But my question really is, can’t you fight for what you believe in without all that name-calling and without the personal attacks?
Greene: Well, I would ask the same question to the other side …
Not only did Greene casually conflate “sexualizing children” with transgender care, but she alsois being despicably dishonest by reducing gender-affirming care to “surgeries.” Yet this conflation of support for trans youth with pedophiliaslipped by, unrebutted, to a national audience. No wonder Greene told Semafor she was pleased with how the interview went.
Calling this mere“name-calling,” as Stahl did, does not communicate what is so hateful about it. And itimplies a lack of awareness of the slur’s role in a discourse of deliberate dehumanization of trans people and those who minister to or validate gender dysphoria, who are said to be “grooming” children for nefarious purposes.
Before transgender people were targeted with this word, gay Americans were.Opponents of same-sex marriagecharged a decade ago that its proponents aimed to destroy gender roles and the social order, ultimately leading to gay families with children and legalized “pedophilia,” according to Right Wing Watch.
“It has been a talking point for a long time in the religious right that same-sex couples pose a risk to children inherently,” Jared Holt, a researcher at Institute for Strategic Dialogue who closely tracks the right, told me. The frequent message, Holt said, has been that gay rights activists are “seeking to corrupt children” with the “goal of eventual sexual exploitation.”
After marriage equality triumphed, the “pedophile” smear against Democrats morphed into something stranger: the deranged charges of child trafficking that drive the QAnon conspiracy theory. When those accusations proved obviously false,right-wing media figures and MAGA Republicans such as Greene seamlessly shifted towidely applying the “groomer” term to Democrats advocating for tolerance of trans people, especially adolescent trans care and classroom discussion of LGBTQ issues.
The through line here, as historian Brandy Schillace points out, is that the right has recoiled both at the prospect of happy gay families and at young trans people finding better lives with their own parents’ loving support. The connection, Schillace told me, is “resistance to seeing homosexuals or transgender people as part of families,”carried out by associating LGBTQ people with “child predators.”
The “groomer” smear has become so mainstream in right-wing discourse that the longtime communications adviser for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brashly hurled it at DeSantis’s critics, with zero professional repercussions.
The “pedophile” term alsocarries echoes of historical slurs used during the civil rights era, says Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut. Shelikens it to claims that civil rightsactivists were “racial amalgamationists” out to “pollute” the South with racial mixing.
“The whole idea was to denigrate the fight for political citizenship as some sort of sexual attack on the White race,” Sinha tells me. “In that sense, this language of ‘pedophiles’ and ‘groomers’ is reminiscent of that kind of language.”
How to effectively expose the ugly underbelly of this ongoing dehumanization campaign is a complicated question, and we all have our work cut out for ourselves in figuring out how to navigate the ugly terminology of anti-trans prejudice. But Stahl missed an opportunity to talk about it plainly to the American mainstream.
It’s always about sex and race with these people. (And often both at the same time.)
Remember, the top states for use of online porn:
10:West Virginia
9:Florida
8:Louisiana
7:North Dakota
6:Arkansas
5:Oklahoma
4:Hawaii
3:Mississippi
2:Alaska
1:Utah
This could be settled by the time this posts, but….
Several media organizations, including CBS News, petitioned to allow video and photo coverage of Trump’s arraignment, but New York has one of the strictest policies in the country against cameras in the courtroom, according to The Fund for Modern Courts, a nonpartisan nonprofit.
Trump’s legal team wants cameras kept out of the courtroom, saying they would “create a circus-like atmosphere,” “raise unique security concerns” and are “inconsistent with President Trump’s presumption of innocence.”
Meaning Trump thinks getting a stern talking to by a judge about watching his mouth would be a bad look. Without video or audio, he can spin what happens in court today any way he likes. It’s he-said, the fake news-said. What a shame.
“Few Americans have seen Mr. Trump shimmy his way out of a jam more often than New Yorkers,” writes the New York Times’ Mara Gay:
We’ve seen him bounce back from bankruptcy six times, and he has never been truly held to account for his long history of excluding Black people from the rental properties that helped make him rich. We’ve seen his political fortunes soar despite credible claims of sexual assault and tax fraud. We’ve watched up close his gravity-defying, horrifying metamorphosis from a tacky real estate developer and tabloid fixture into a C-list celebrity and, finally, a one-term president with authoritarian aspirations.
Trump famously called for harsh punishment for “those who break the law” in his 1969 ad condemning the wrongly convicted Central Park Five. Now the lift shoe is on the other foot. New Yorkers will believe Trump will face equal justice when they see it.
I don’t know who Jean-Michel Connard is, but this is brilliant. He’s getting a head start on today’s court sketch artists. It’s far better than watching cable news gawk at Trump motorcading from his tower to the courthouse and from there back to his plane, etc.
Maybe these sketches are why this song’s been playing in my head for hours:
The Russian president’s imperial adventurism has not succeeded in bringing Ukraine back under Kremlin control. What it has succeeded in doing is doubling Russia’s land border with NATO. Except Finland did that for him (Washington Post):
Finland is set to formally join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday, a historic shift for a country that once insisted it was safer outside the military alliance, a dramatic rebuke to Russia and a sign of how President Vladimir Putin’s gamble in Ukraine is upending the post-Cold War order.
Finnish membership will double NATO’s land border with Russia, adding more than 800 miles. It will also bolster the alliance’s presence around the Baltic Sea and enhance its position in the Arctic.
To justify his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of NATO expansion. Now, his war has brought a bigger, stronger NATO to his door.
Whoops.
Putin was this close to gutting NATO when his bootlickin’ apologist occupied the Oval Office. Helsinki was not a NATO member — making it neutral territory — when the two met there in 2018. The world watched an American president suck up to the Russian autocrat. The display was “such an unbelievable, indelible moment that many deflated White House officials didn’t even bother to defend or explain it,” wrote Jonathan Swan of Axios.
Putin had Trump’s number. But so did American voters by 2020. Putin misread both Ukraine’s resolve and NATO’s when he invaded Ukraine in February 2022. His invasion bogged down. Ukraine’s nimble defenders under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy surprised the world, drew NATO military aid, and gave countries too close to Russia for comfort reason to join the North Atlantic mutual defense alliance.
Finland and Sweden signed protocols with NATO in July 2022 that put them on a path to admission. Ukraine applied for NATO membership in September 2022 just “hours after Vladimir Putin said in a Kremlin ceremony that he was annexing four Ukrainian provinces,” The Guardian reported:
The alliance is unlikely to accept Ukraine’s imminent Nato entry while it is in a state of war. As a Nato member, fellow members would be compelled to actively defend it against Russia – a commitment that goes well beyond the supply of weapons.
Putin cannot afford to end Russia’s invasion or else risk facing an additional 1,200+ miles of land border with NATO should Ukraine gain later admission.
Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin, said in 2014, “If there is Putin, there is Russia. If there is no Putin, there is no Russia.” Thus, Putin cannot afford to lose a war Russia seems unable to win. Putin, “czar with no empire, needs military victory for his own survival.”
Finland’s admission to NATO just made Putin’s political position that much worse.
Obviously, he did look inside the boxes. This is the story that just broke:
In the classified documents case, federal investigators have gathered new and significant evidence that after the subpoena was delivered, Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession, the people familiar with the investigationsaid.
Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes, these people said. While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.
Court papers filed seeking judicial authorization for the FBI to conduct the search of Trump’s home show agents believed that “evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises.”
The application for court approval for that search said agents were pursuing evidence of violations of statutesincluding 18 U.S.C. 1519, which makes it a crime to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal a document or tangible object “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency.”
A key element in most obstruction cases is intent, because to bring such a charge, prosecutors have to be able to show that whatever actions were taken were performed to try to hinder or block an investigation. In the Trump case, prosecutors and federal agents are trying to gather any evidence pointing to the motivation for Trump’s actions.
The Washington Post reported in October that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had told investigators that he moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s instruction after the subpoena was issued. Smith’s team has video surveillance footage corroborating that account, The Post reported, and considers the evidence significant.
In addition, the people familiar with the investigation said, authorities have another category of evidence that they consider particularly helpful as they reconstruct events from last spring: emails and texts of Molly Michael, an assistant to the former president who followed him from the White House to Florida before she eventually left that job last year. Michael’s written communications have provided investigators with a detailed understanding of the day-to-day activity at Mar-a-Lago at critical moments, these people said.
Clearly, he dug around in the boxes and took stuff out of them. They have no idea what he took. And he says there was nothing wrong with that,
It’s hard to see how they can avoid indicting him in this case. But they might. He’s obstructed investigations for years now and there’s been no accountability.
Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS following the news that a New York grand jury voted to charge him in connection with hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump, including 52% who said it played a major role.Independents largely line up in support of the indictment – 62% approve of it and 38% disapprove. Democrats are near universal in their support for the indictment (94% approve, including 71% who strongly approve of the indictment), with Republicans less unified in opposition (79% disapprove, with 54% strongly disapproving).
While views on the indictment are split along party lines, the poll finds that majorities across major demographic divides all approve of the decision to indict the former president. That includes gender (62% of women, 58% of men), racial and ethnic groups (82% of Black adults, 71% of Hispanic adults, 51% of White adults), generational lines (69% under age 35; 62% age 35-49; 53% age 50-64; 54% 65 or older) and educational levels (68% with college degrees, 56% with some college or less).
Of course, this also means that tens of millions of our fellow Americans believe he is above the law. And we have no idea what they will do. The good news is that the margin is big enough that it makes it very difficult for them to steal the election. (It’s not impossble, however.)
I didn’t know they still existed but apparently, the Blue Dogs and the “Problem Solvers” caucus are getting ready to screw up the Democratic strategy for dealing with the debt ceiling by giving away the store. (That’s what they always do — don’t kid yourself.)
A group of House Democrats is secretly crafting a fallback plan to avoid an economy-rattling debt default.
The White House wants no part of it.
The rogue band of moderate Democrats has spent weeks constructing a break-glass deal with centrist Republicans in case the country goes all the way to the brink on the debt ceiling. As the summertime deadline for action approaches, they’re worried a prolonged standoff could lead to fiscal disaster.
But Biden officials and party leaders, however, see it far differently and are bristling at the attempts at a compromise, according to four lawmakers familiar with the discussions. Their party’s message to those plotting centrists: Your efforts are unlikely to succeed and risk hurting our goal of a clean debt ceiling increase.
The intraparty friction is growing as Washington’s debt crisis gets less theoretical and more urgent with each passing week. And the freelancing Democratic centrists may not have helped their cause by getting involved just as party leaders began seeing a political advantage in the fiscal fight — as long as they can keep the onus on Speaker Kevin McCarthy to unveil a plan that might pass the GOP-controlled House, with unpopular spending cuts likely to be attached.
“We’re gaining ground because of [House Republicans’] inability to put together a plan,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a brief interview. “I’m certainly willing to entertain a mix of things on the budget. Not on the debt ceiling.”
A White House official said the administration has “not spoken to the Problem Solvers about this.” Centrist Democrats, however, say they’ve been made well aware the effort isn’t likely to win any endorsements from party leaders — and have decided to forge ahead anyway as the debt impasse sparks high anxiety, with Congress gone until April 17.
Biden and McCarthy have had zero recent contact on the debt other than jabs exchanged through the press, despite the jittery U.S. banking sector further rattling the situation. Democratic leaders say they’ll accept only a clean debt limit bill, but emboldened House Republicans insist that would never pass their chamber.
Complicating it all: Republican leaders won’t yet describe precisely what they want in exchange for their votes to raise the nation’s borrowing ceiling. Schumer, in response, has taken up the chant “show us your plan” for more than two months and counting.
Enter that group of moderate Democrats, who have privately met with GOP centrists since February, in defiance of their leadership. Their talks remain in the early stages, and two lawmakers familiar with the discussions said they have not honed specific details yet.
One centrist Democrat, who along with others addressed the talks on condition of anonymity, observed that “you’ve got party leaders in both houses that don’t want us to talk to one another.”
They’re not listening to those nudges to stop talking: “None of us work for the White House. We work for our constituents. And they should start talking and negotiating,” said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who co-leads the centrist Blue Dog Coalition.
I have been wondering when the “centrists” would start flexing. They’ve been under control since Biden took office but it was inevitable that they’d meddle eventually and no doubt screw everything up. It’s in their nature.
Mike Pence might harbor deep-seated resentment toward Donald Trump for his handling of Jan. 6. But it’s Nikki Haley who really gets under the Pence camp’s skin.
Inside Pence’s orbit, staffers have begun privately complaining about a presidential contender who, like Pence, is polling in single digits — distressed that Haley is drawing what they view as more favorable media coverage than the former vice president receives. In recent weeks, they fumed about coverage that painted her as a fiscal conservative at a donor retreat in Florida and didn’t fully capture what they described as her tepid reception at CPAC, where Pence previously drew headlines for getting booed.
The animosity hasn’t quite reached the level of hostilities between Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar in the 2020 Democratic primary, and Pence staffers appear to spend more time thinking about Haley than vice versa. But the tension surfacing between them has all the makings of the first, real undercard feud of 2024.
“It’s like giving a shit about who wins the NIT tournament,” said Jeff Timmer, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and senior adviser to the Lincoln Project. “Everybody is watching the NCAA Tournament. To use a boxing metaphor, it’s like an undercard race that no one is even paying attention to. They’re all watching the heavyweight matchup between Trump and DeSantis.”
In any other political universe, Pence, a former governor and vice president, and Haley, a former governor and U.N. ambassador, might be part of that A-list matchup, too. But in a race that hinges on either Trump or DeSantis faltering, they are both now fully engaged in a high-stakes, low-return battle for what amounts to table scraps in the primary — jostling for third place and a position to lift off from if Trump or DeSantis fades.
How did this stellar plan work out for them in 2016?
This level of politics mystifies me. They both must know they have no chance and are actually trying to attain something else from this process. But there must be an easier way to get what they want. What kind of ego must you have to run for president under circumstances like this knowing that you are wasting everyone’s time and energy in such a quixotic quest?
Axios recognizes reality:
Think about how topsy-turvy Republican politics has become for Trump’s top rivals to defend him after he’s indicted.
If that’s the mood of the GOP electorate now, good luck getting past Trump for the nomination.
The first poll conducted post-indictment, by Yahoo News/YouGov, shows Trump’s support skyrocketing among Republicans. Trump now holds a 26-point lead over Florida Gov. DeSantis (57%-31%) in the GOP primary — up from just eight points two weeks ago.
What’s good for Trump in a primary is unlikely to translate into a general election. Trump had rock-bottom favorability ratings among all Americans before the indictment, and the specter of a presidential candidate facing the prospect of jail time isn’t likely to win over swing voters.
The problem for Republicans is that their voters don’t care much about electability. Just look at their 2022 roster of statewide candidates, which was filled with deeply flawed nominees who nonetheless cruised through primaries in which the most extreme rhetoric resonated.
Getting them to care about DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or anyone else will be a Herculean task as Trump’s legal predicament sucks up all the media oxygen.
By the numbers: An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the indictment — but before the charges have been unsealed — found 47% of Americans view the prosecution as politically motivated, while 32% do not and 20% aren’t sure.
79% of Republicans see the charges as politically motivated — illustrating the fusing of Trump’s base with the Republican Party.
Trump’s growing momentum in primary polls pre-indictment — combined with DeSantis’ shaky debut on the national stage — already was altering the trajectory of the 2024 contest.
The lineup of potential candidates is shrinking, as potential Trump rivals assess their viability in a party that’s becoming increasingly dominated by its MAGA base.
Others, such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or newly announced presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson, see an opening for a candidate to make a strong case against Trump at a time when everyone else is avoiding directly attacking the front-runner.
The fact that so few Republicans dare to confront Trump speaks to the cold, hard political truth, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll: 72% of Republicans said they believe Trump has had a positive impact on the GOP and 79% said they view themselves as part of Trump’s MAGA movement.
We all knew the MAGA cult would rally and the so-called establishment would fall in line behind them. It’s what they do. But there is no reason to believe that it will help him in a general election. Most of the country isn’t quite that crazy … yet.