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Month: April 2023

“MTG” gets mainstreamed by 60 Minutes

Published by digby on April 3, 2023

Over the past few years there has been a lot of talk about the mainstream media “normalizing” and “mainstreaming” the white nationalist fringe that has risen to prominence under the Trump regime. They have been reasonably successful at providing context for stories about groups like the Proud Boys and have done a decent job of reporting on events like January 6. But they just can’t seem to wrap their minds around how to deal with the insurrectionist caucus in Congress.

On Sunday, CBS News inexplicably decided to air Lesley Stahl’s interview with second-term Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia for the venerable “60 Minutes.” If you think it was a tough interview, take a look at this response from Greene and I think you’ll be able to guess how it went:

“It was an honor to spend a few days with the legendary icon Leslie [sic] Stahl and talented crew [of 60 Minutes]. Leslie is a trailblazer for women in journalism. And while we may disagree on some issues, I respect her greatly.”

The show promoted it like Stahl was interviewing just another colorful, political character with some offbeat views:

“From fringe to front row” read the headline on the accompanying article.

First of all, is her nickname really “MTG”? I’ve never seen it used that way. It’s common on Twitter, but that’s just because of the character limit. If people are using it like JFK or FDR that’s news to me — and if they aren’t then it’s another example of “60 Minutes” not doing its homework.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has the instincts of a fascist and a penchant for conspiracy theories.

The interview started with Stahl rattling off a list of rude descriptions people have applied to Greene, as if she’s the real victim of rhetorical assaults. Then the two went into a long back-and-forth about the debt ceiling because Greene is so important now that we must take her seriously on the issues. (Greene’s answer to what cuts she would make was to cancel “Green New Deal” spending and Covid relief assistance. On that, she didn’t sound much more foolish than most GOP members of Congress.)

But something more important is at stake. Talking to her about substantive issues as if she is even slightly cognizant of the details, much less caring about them, was a huge mistake. This little colloquy gives the impression that Greene’s a legitimate legislator when she is not. She’s a hardcore culture warrior. That is from where her power derives.

Stahl’s attempt to pin her down on some of her outrageous statements was pathetically inadequate and Greene was allowed to deflect and turn the questions back on her political enemies:

And things she says that are over the top, like —

Lesley Stahl: The Democrats are a party of pedophiles.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: I would definitely say so. They support grooming children.  

Lesley Stahl: They are not pedophiles.  Why would you say that?

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Democrats, Democrats support, even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.

Lesley Stahl: Wow. OK. But my question really is, can’t you fight for what you believe in without all that name-calling and without the personal attacks?

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Well, I would ask the same question to the other side, because all they’ve done is call me names and insult me non-stop since I’ve been here, Lesley. They call me racist. They call me sen, anti-Semitic, which is not true.  I’m not calling anyone names. I’m calling out the truth basically-

Lesley Stahl: Pedophile?

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Pedophi– call it what it is. 

They then show some footage with Greene declaring she believes the election was stolen and cut to Stahl and Greene wandering on the grounds of her palatial home in Georgia where Stahl’s voiceover talks about her wealth, suggesting she’s a self-made woman who ran the family construction business along with her husband. (This is a tale that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-checked and debunked. She was not active in that company at all.)

We then spend an inordinate amount of time watching Greene lift weights at a cross-fit gym (uncomfortably up close and personal) which was actually her primary interest in life until she discovered Donald Trump in 2017. You see, Marjorie Taylor Greene did not even have a slight interest in politics until about five or six years ago when she went online in the excitement of Trump’s upset victory and immediately dove headfirst into the right-wing rabbit hole. It was there that she made her reputation as a Trump-worshiping conspiracy theorist. Greene’s entire political worldview was formed on 4-chan, Facebook and a fringe right-wing blog where she pushed QAnon and wrote posts about “disturbing behavior that seems to keep raring it’s ugly heads … Child Sex, Satanism, and the Occult all associated with the Democratic Party.” That is all she knows about politics and government. And within three years, she was running for Congress.

Stahl let Greene get away with blowing all that off by referring to that vapid House floor speech in which she said she regretted “being allowed to believe things that were not true.” And she didn’t follow up when Greene claimed she was not responsible for liking a post that threatened former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a “bullet to her head.” She laughably claimed someone else had been using her social media account.

If Stahl were better prepared she would have had this at the ready. It’s from 2019:

Greene got testy when Stahl asked her those questions saying, “have you fact-checked all my statements from kindergarten through 12th grade? And in college?” Unfortunately, Stahl didn’t point out that all of these comments were in just the last five years — when Marjorie Taylor Greene was well into her 40s. There is no need to go back any further than that because she didn’t have a thought in her head about politics until she discovered the Donald Trump fandom.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has the instincts of a fascist and a penchant for conspiracy theories. She’s very energetic and very aggressive and no one should underestimate her talents, such as they are. She has admitted that she wants to create a new Republican Party in her image and while I don’t think she fully understands what that means, she’s flying by the seat of her pants and, so far, it’s working for her. “60 Minutes” went some distance last night in helping her to shoot this toxic form of politics directly into the American political mainstream. 

Running the table

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 3, 2023

MAGites won’t stop until stopped

Your regular reminder: State legislative races matter.

The war MAGA Republicans are waging is not simply cultural, not simply rhetorical, but potentially deadly.

Ruth Madievsky reminds Salon readers:

The right’s escalating culture war — with vigorous attacks on abortion and gender-affirming care for minors — incurs ever-evolving collateral damage. In recent months, conservative lawmakers have introduced legislation centered on banning books with LGBTQ+ content, obstructing transgender care in both minors and adults, and removing nationwide access to mifepristone—one of the drugs used to manage both medical abortion and early miscarriage. Recent events suggest that the newest casualty in these battles may be access to HIV care.

On Thursday, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush struck down a key provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring health insurance companies to cover PrEP, the highly effective drugs used for HIV prevention. The Texas judge found that this section of the 2010 law could no longer be enforced against employers because “compulsory coverage for those services violates their religious beliefs by making them complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.” The ruling could severely restrict access to an indispensable medication that is already underutilized due to race-based healthcare disparities, prohibitive costs, and physician under-prescribing, among other factors. 

We are all in this together cannot be overemphasized. Conservative lawmakers are on a roll and mean to run the table on legislation aimed at disfavored minorities. All of them.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, Madievsky writes, rejected “all $8.3 million in federal funds earmarked for HIV prevention in the state” rather than see “just $10,000 in annual CDC funding go toward the volunteer-run Transgender Task Force—which provides HIV services to transgender individuals.”

Madievsky warns:

Lest you think this is a Tennessee-specific issue, allow me to restate that federal funding for HIV care is often funneled through organizations that support gender-affirming care for minors and abortion. Planned Parenthood of Tennessee, for example, is another organization the Lee administration is pulling funding from, despite the state already having one of the most draconian abortion bans in the country. Planned Parenthood of Tennessee no longer provides abortions. But their association with reproductive choice is undesirable enough for the governor to kneecap their HIV preventative services entirely.

Currently, 38 states are pursuing anti-trans legislation, 21 of them focused on bans of gender-affirming care for minors. 24 states have outlawed or are likely to outlaw abortion, and five states have signed bills to defund Planned Parenthood. Anti-trans legislation has advanced across several states in just the last few weeks, including the Kentucky House and Senate overturning the governor’s veto on a sweeping anti-trans bill, the Idaho House passing a bill that criminalizes gender-affirming minor care, Texas introducing a bill banning state funding for transgender care in Texans of any age. And on March 2, Gov. Lee signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for Tennessee minors, which will require them to detransition by March 2024. States with Democratic governors are less likely to face these particular challenges, but where does that leave the 26 states governed by Republicans? The right-wing obsession with restricting abortion and transgender services for minors—and what this will mean for HIV care—is a national issue that should raise alarm bells.

The attacks on individual liberties, on health care, and on democratic governance are coming from inside the house. Your state houses, the “Laboratories of Autocracy.” Serious damage is happening close to home. It is a tactical blunder for the left to focus too much attention on federal races. Republicans and their billionaire-funded PACs don’t.

As early as October 2016, I warned that President Hillary couldn’t stop what was happening in state legislatures. President Bernie couldn’t either. You have to fix that.

Got Chaos?

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 3, 2023

Wanting to “watch the world burn” is a type

Speaking of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), I won’t this morning. Much. At The Garden of Forking Paths, however, Brian Klass offers study results that might address her type.

Movie buffs know Alfred Pennyworth’s speech from The Dark Knight in which he offers Bruce Wayne an explanation of The Joker’s motivations: Some men just want to watch the world burn. Researchers find it is a type, actually. Alfred was right:

The researchers—Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen from Aarhus University in Denmark, and Kevin Arceneaux from Sciences Po in Paris—focus on a specific behavior to create a typology of “Need for Chaos” individuals. Specifically, they focus on those who share “hostile political rumors,” which they note, “portray politicians and political groups negatively and possess low evidential value.” In plain speak, they like spreading malicious political lies.

Jacob Wohl, for example. He pleaded guilty to telecommunications fraud in Ohio in October over a robocall scheme to convince targeted Black voters that voting by mail would risk “giving your private information to the man.” Wohl and an accomplice each received two years of probation, $2,500 in fines, and 500 hours of community service registering voters.

Or right-wing influencer Douglass Mackey, convicted Friday. He conspired in 2016 to disseminate ads encouraging Black voters to “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” The Department of Justice notice adds, “On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted ‘Hillary’ or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.” He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Researchers defined the Need for Chaos personalities as having “a general destructive mindset.”

In particular, people who score high on this metric tend to answer that they agree with several of these statements:

1. I get a kick when natural disasters strike in foreign countries.
2. I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.
3. I think society should be burned to the ground.
4. When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn.”
5. We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.
6. I need chaos around me—it is too boring if nothing is going on.
7. Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.

Then, to make sure that people weren’t just ticking the box next to every question mindlessly, the researchers included two additional statements that were the opposite of the other seven:

1. We need to uphold order by doing what is right, not what is wrong.
2. It’s better to live in a society where there is order and clear rules than one where anything goes.

Interestingly, when they looked at other toxic personality profiles — such as psychopathy (being a psychopath) and social dominance orientation — they found that the Need for Chaos was a separate dimension to destructive individuals. It wasn’t just capturing the same impulse. It’s a unique trait.

Democrats and Republicans? The trait is ecumenical. Those scoring high on the index just want to burn things down in hopes that their status will increase among the ashes.

The researchers explain:

[T]hey indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.

Considering sex and race, Hullabaloo readers won’t have to guess what the research found:

As is clear, the association between status concerns and the Need for Chaos is stronger among white men compared with any other group. The differences between white men and all other groups are significant for all status concerns, except personal status loss. While group-based marginalization tempers a Need for Chaos among Black individuals, group-based feelings of being unable to advance in society fuels a Need for Chaos among white men. Consistent with notions of aggrieved entitlement among historically dominant groups (Kimmel 2017), many white men are preoccupied with their societal standing and react with aggression against any threat.

Not all — traditional white status still buffers the impulse. But a subset of white men experiencing a perceived loss of status score high on the scale. Such scoring is not confined to “individuals low in socioeconomic status” either.

Increased inequality intensifies status competitions across the entire status hierarchy (Turchin 2016) and can induce even those who are objectively well off to feel that they are losing ground as others pass them.

Klass considers the implications:

The problem is that a relatively small group of people with Need for Chaos traits can now inflict a lot of damage in society. That’s partly because of the advent of social media, in which malicious lies travel much faster than they used to; partly because it’s easier for like-minded chaos agents to mobilize and organize; and partly because these individuals are more prone to political violence—a particularly important finding in the context of a post-January 6th United States political environment.

The researchers explain that this is nothing new, but that the trait may have more impact than in the past. “Every society contains disoriented radicals,” they write. “In the age of social media, however, these radicalized individuals can more easily find like-minded others and can more easily share their views.”

Their studies also show that people who score high on the Need for Chaos index express a greater willingness to participate in violent acts on behalf of a political cause.

“White women have, on average, the lowest score of Need for Chaos,” researchers find. That makes MTG an outlier (based on her statements and behaviors), but you knew that.

Klass suggests that when tempted to engage a troll online, remember (as Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes should have), “you’re likely not dealing with someone who cares about truth, or social progress, or justice.” Fact checking and “small nudges” will neither moderate nor mollify such persons.

The team concludes that “silencing, ridicule, and other exclusionary reactions will only exacerbate the feelings of marginalization that drive anti-systemic views in the first place. A key political challenge of our time may thus be to address anti-systemic sentiments in ways that remedy the underlying frustrations while remaining committed to democratic norms and principles of equal treatment.”

So, help mainstream them as CBS did last night? Will granting them a greater national platform for distributing hostile political rumors help ease their Need for Chaos? Good luck.

The words fascism and fascist appear nowhere in the scholarly report. Some men (and women) just need to be soundly defeated and their memory rendered permanently toxic.

Simply the best

Published by digby on April 2, 2023

The lawyers:

DONALD TRUMP HASN’T surrendered to authorities yet. But his lawyers are already fighting — with themselves.

Days after the former president’s indictment at the hands of Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, some of Trump’s lawyers are taking aim at Joe Tacopina, his co-lead defense attorney in the Bragg case. 

A source familiar with the matter and another person close to Trump tell Rolling Stone that a number of Trump’s other current lawyers have privately described Tacopina as “dumb” and a “loudmouth.” 

Tacopina is no stranger to made-for-tabloid drama: He has a lengthy track record of repping high-profile clients, such as Meek Mill and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez, as well as securing hard-to-land wins. But he’s also had some equally high-profile flameouts, including an acrimonious parting with his ex-client, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik.

In recent days, as a Trump attorney, Tacopina has also become a more and more familiar face on cable television — and not always to the ex-president’s benefit. During a recent appearance on Ari Melber’s The Beat, for example, Tacopina tried to grab a piece of paper held by the MSNBC host during the heated exchange. Tacopina also defended Trump’s denial of paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair, albeit in a somewhat unique way: Insisting that the denial wasn’t a lie as it wasn’t made under oath. 

“A lie to me is something material, under oath, in a proceeding,” Tacopina said. Melber explained that he wasn’t asking whether Trump perjured himself, just if the statements were true or false. Tacopina said: “It’s not a lie because it was a confidential settlement. So if he acknowledged that he would be violating the confidential settlement.” 

And some five years before Tacopina represented Trump, he said on CNN that, if the facts in the hush money scandal were as Daniels described, he thought the alleged payoff could be considered an in-kind campaign contribution, meaning it would have needed to be disclosed on campaign finance forms, which it was not. This omission could well be at the crux of Bragg’s attempt to get Trump on a felony charge. 

Framing his comment as a hypothetical, Tacopina said on CNN at the time it could be legally risky for Trump, “because this could be looked as an in-kind contribution at the time of the election. This is a real problem. And they both, and I’m telling you this, the reason we’re here I strongly believe is because of the words of both Michael Cohen and Donald Trump.” Tacopina has since called the Daniels’ payment “plain extortion” and argued it wasn’t a problem with campaign finance law. 

Tacopina tells Rolling Stone that he did not change his mind. Instead, he says, his previous comments were qualified as a hypothetical, whereas his current opinion follows having learned the case’s facts. “It was a hypothetical question asked by a T.V. host and I answered by twice qualifying my answer with  ‘if those are in fact the facts!!’,” Tacopina says.

The two sources say some of Trump’s lawyers and advisers have warned the ex-president that he should be careful with Tacopina, and that he cannot trust the attorney’s loyalty.

“He pisses off others with his antics, but he’s a blunt object that Donald Trump wants, apparently,” says one of the sources.

“People are saying” that this is all a savvy strategy by Donald Trump who is known for pitting his executive against each other. uh huh. Sure.

Tacopina criticized his critics for being anonymous, and he attributed their criticism to jealousy. “When anonymous sources make comments criticizing others it reveals jealousy and cowardice. Anyone who takes a look at my track record of trial success and the results I have achieved for my clients couldn’t seriously criticize my work or my intelligence,” he says in a statement to Rolling Stone. 

“My results are documented and if you truly wanted to do an honest and thorough story you would speak to the clients I served over the years instead of printing false allegations from ‘unnamed sources’ who are jealous that they haven’t been chosen in this case or the other many high profile cases I have had. The story loses journalistic value and calls into question the integrity of the story and the credibility of the so-called anonymous sources,” he added.

Asked for comment on the infighting, a Trump spokesman replied: “President Trump has the strongest legal team at his disposal as he fights against the radical Manhattan DA and other woke Democrats who are weaponizing the Justice system to persecute the leading Republican candidate for president.”

And then there’s this:

Some of the tension is playing out publicly. Asked on CNN Friday whether Tacopina is the right lawyer to defend Trump in Manhattan, Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said Tacopina had “potential conflict issues given his prior contacts with Stormy Daniels.” Daniels and Tacopina allegedly communicated around 2018 about her purported sexual encounter with Trump, when she was looking for legal representation.  Their communications were turned over to Bragg’s office, according to CNN. 

Asked again, directly, if he thought Tacopina is up to the job of defending Trump, Parlatore replied: “I’m not going to comment on Joe Tacopina.”

Oh, and then there’s this:

Parlatore and Tacopina have a history. Tacopina represented Kerik in 2006 when the former commissioner pleaded guilty to charges in a Bronx court that he had illegally accepted gifts while working as New York’s jails boss and that he didn’t report a loan on financial disclosure documents. In 2014, Kerik sued Tacopina, challenging the attorney’s legal representation and alleging racketeering and defamation. Tacopina denied the claims and filed a defamation lawsuit against Kerik. Kerik’s suit was dismissed by a federal judge, and Tacopina’s defamation suit was dropped.

Parlatore was a member of Kerik’s legal team for Kerik’s lawsuit against Tacopina, and Tacopina also sued Parlatore for defamation. The case was subsequently dismissed. 

This is such a New York scandal…

Waaaah!!!

Published by digby on April 2, 2023

Immediately following the news of the grand jury vote, Donald Trump Jr. posted a video response in which he claimed that the mere act of his father being held to the letter of the law was exponentially worse than anything some of history’s worst dictators ever did. “Let’s be clear, folks,” Trump’s namesake told his viewers. “This is like Communist-level shit. This is stuff that would make Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot—it would make them blush. It’s so flagrant, it’s so crazed. When even like the radical leftists of The Washington Post are out there saying, ‘it’s not really based on fact, it’s not really based on the law, it’s not really based in reality, but it’s 100% based on politics’—when your enemies are saying that, it’s got to tell you everything you need to know about where we are as a country.” 

Just as an aside, it’s not clear that The Washington Post has ever said the case against Trump is not “based on fact” or “based on the law.” Also, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, so we’re not sure that they’d look at Trump being indicted—for something he admitted to!—and be all “Whoa, whoa, this is a bit much.” Elsewhere, Junior has tweeted, “The ruling party is trying to jail the opposition leader like a third world dictatorship!” and “This isn’t just the radical left weaponizing the government to target their political enemies, this is them weaponizing the government to interfere in the 2024 election to stop Trump. The only solution is to shove it down their throats and put him back in the White House!!!”

Eric Trump has also been out on social media decrying the news. Among other things, he’s declared:

And:

He even shared this fatuous lie:

Poor babies.

They have no room to complain

Published by digby on April 2, 2023

I’m losing my mind with all the handwringing from the Trumpers over the horrors of indicting their Dear Leader. Puh-leeze.

A persistent idea undergirds reactions by Donald Trump and the GOP to Trump’s indictment. Sometimes it’s explicitly stated, and sometimes it’s more implicit: Indicting a former president and a candidate in the next election is beyond the pale. It’s even election “interference” or the stuff of banana republics.

Trump ceded the moral high ground on this idea long ago.

He has advocated for the prosecutions of each of the last four Democratic presidential nominees — every single one since 2004. In two cases, he did it during the campaign, even suggesting they should be ineligible to run.

And that’s to say nothing of the many other political opponents he has suggested should be prosecuted. He even, in some cases, actually agitated for that outcome when he held sway over the Justice Department.

The “lock her up” chant leveled at Hillary Clinton is the most well-known entry in this long succession. Trump at times merely goaded his 2016 rally audiences to go down that road, but at other times he endorsed it. He said late in the 2016 campaign, “Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail,” and he even told Clinton to her face at a debate that if he were president, “You’d be in jail.” He added at a later debate that “she shouldn’t be allowed to run.”

By 2020, Trump gave a similar treatment to both his predecessor as president, Barack Obama, and his then-opponent, Joe Biden.

A month before the election, Trump tweeted, “Where are all of the arrests?” He added: “BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!”

“But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country — and that includes Obama and it includes Biden,” Trump added during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network the next day. “These are people that spied on my campaign.”

Trump even indicated that he had made that case directly to his attorney general, William P. Barr: “And I say, Bill, we’ve got plenty, you don’t need any more” to indict.

Trump’s allegations of spying on his campaign were routinely wrong on the substance. But it wasn’t the only instance of his suggesting such indictments or prison time for his political opponents — or even, apparently, applying pressure on the Justice Department:

Former U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman in his book last year said that his office was charged with investigating former secretary of state and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry. That was two days after Trump tweeted about Kerry’s “possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy” and the same day Trump said Kerry “should be prosecuted on that.”

Trump accused a number of Democrats of “treason.”

Trump in 2018 told his White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute both Clinton and former FBI director James B. Comey, according to the New York Times. (White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders previously said the Justice Department “should certainly look at” prosecuting Comey.)

In 2019, he even stated that it would be “appropriate” for him to talk to Barr about investigating Biden.

Former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly summed up Trump’s posture this way to the New York Times’s Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman: “He was always telling me that we need to use the FBI and the IRS to go after people — it was constant and obsessive and is just what he’s claiming is being done to him now.”

Trump’s allies will certainly argue that somehow what these people did was worse than what Trump did — or that prosecuting him and not them shows a double standard. (Worth noting: While it is not yet known what’s in the Trump indictment, the New York grand jury had been hearing evidence about money paid to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — a proven crime in the case of his convicted former lawyer, Michael Cohen.)

But the Republican talking point generally doesn’t take into account the actual allegations and pretends as if it’s simply wrong to indict a former president and now-candidate, full stop.

Pence, lawmakers react to Trump’s indictment

“Indicting a former President is an unprecedented step, and it’s a threat to our democracy,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) posted on Truth Social on Thursday night. The message would soon be promoted by the man who two years ago suggested that his Justice Department do precisely that.

In a social media post shortly after his indictment became known, Trump echoed the message.

“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America, and the leading Republican Candidate, by far, for the 2024 Nomination for President,” Trump said, misspelling “indicted.” “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS.”

Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn responded to Trump’s tweet by saying, “We are now officially a 3rd World Country!!!”

Seven years earlier, Flynn spoke to the 2016 Republican National Convention, at which he made waves by leading the crowd in a chant of “lock her up.”

They all need to STFU.

Two for two

Published by digby on April 2, 2023

I don’t know if this will mean that we have stepped back from the abyss, but it’s at least a tiny positive sign:

For the better part of a decade, Donald J. Trump and his allies at Fox News have beguiled some Americans and enraged others as they spun up an alternative world where elections turned on fraud, one political party oppressed another, and one man stood against his detractors to carry his version of truth to an adoring electorate.

Then this week, on two consecutive days, the former president and the highest-rated cable news channel were delivered a dose of reality by the American legal system.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump became the first former president in history to be indicted on criminal charges, after a Manhattan grand jury’s examination of hush money paid to a pornographic film actress in the final days of the 2016 election.

The next day, a judge in Delaware Superior Court concluded that Fox hosts and guests had repeatedly made false claims about voting machines and their supposed role in a fictitious plot to steal the 2020 election, and that Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network should go to trial.

Both defendants dispute the claims. Still, the back-to-back blows against twin titans of American politics landed as a reminder of the still-unfolding reckoning with the tumult of the Trump presidency.

For the left, the seismic week delivered an “I told you so” years in the making. Democrats who have long wanted Mr. Trump criminally charged got the satisfaction of watching a prosecutor and a grand jury agree.

A day later, after years of arguing that Fox News was hardly fair and balanced, they could read a judge’s finding that Fox had not conducted “good-faith, disinterested reporting” on Dominion. Fox argues that statements made on air alleging election fraud are protected by the First Amendment.

While the two cases have nothing in common in substance, they share a rare and powerful potential. In both, any final judgments will be rendered in a courtroom and not by bickering pundits on cable news and editorial pages.

“There will always be a remnant, no matter how the matter is resolved in court, who will refuse to accept the judgment,” said Norman Eisen, a government ethics lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “But when you look at other post-upheaval societies, judicial processes reduce factions down to a few hard-core believers.”

He added, “A series of court cases and judgments can break the fever.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. But you’ve gotta keep hope alive…

He doesn’t stand a chance

Published by digby on April 2, 2023
PHOTO: Speaking to ABC News' Jonathan Karl, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announces his plan to run for the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaking to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announces his plan to run for the Republican presidential nomination.ABC News

Asa Hutchinson has tried mightily to turn himself into moderate and in today’s GOP, I suppose he is one. In reality he’s a hardcore old-school conservative.

Nonetheless, I suppose somebody had to take this tack in the GOP primary and it looks like he’s the guy:

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson made his 2024 White House bid official on Sunday in an exclusive sit-down interview with ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

Ahead of his presidential announcement, Hutchinson, a Republican, spent several days in the first-in-the nation caucus state of Iowa, stirring speculation that he intended to enter into what he acknowledged is a tense national political landscape.

“I have made a decision, and my decision is I’m going to run for president of the United States,” Hutchinson told Karl. “While the formal announcement will be later in April, in Bentonville [Arkansas], I want to make it clear to you, Jonathan, I am going to be running. And the reason is, I’ve traveled the country for six months, I hear people talk about the leadership of our country. I’m convinced that people want leaders that appeal to the best of America, and not simply appeal to our worst instincts.”

The former governor told Karl he is inspired by his travels around the country over the last six months and acknowledged it would take “a lot of hard work and good messaging” to raise his national profile and break through a crowded primary field.

“It’s still about retail politics in many of these states, and also, this is one of the most unpredictable political environments that I’ve seen in my lifetime. So my message of experience, of consistent conservatism and hope for our future in solving problems that face Americans, I think that that resonates,” Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson joins a field of Republican presidential hopefuls that already includes former President Donald Trump, former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Although more Republicans are expected to join the primary in the coming months, Trump’s shadow looms large following his recent indictment by a Manhattan grand jury — making him the first current or former president to face criminal charges.

In a statement issued shortly after news of the indictment broke on Thursday, Hutchinson expressed his belief that Trump should not be the next president, arguing the final decision should be made by voters at the ballot box. Asked by Karl how Trump’s indictment affects the 2024 presidential race, Hutchinson said the development “adds to the unpredictability” of the political process.

“I think it’s a sad day for America that we have a former president that’s indicted, and so it’s a great distraction, but at the same time, we can’t set aside what our Constitution requires — which is electing a new leader for our country — just because we have this side controversy and criminal charges that are pending. And so we’ve got to press on, and the American people are gonna have to separate what the ideas are for our future,” he said.MORE: Trump indictment: Pence, DeSantis and more confirmed or potential 2024 rivals react

Karl pressed Hutchinson on whether he believes Trump should drop out of the race now that he’s been indicted.

“I do,” Hutchinson said, standing by the position he took before Trump was charged. “I mean, first of all, the office is more important than any individual person. And so for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that’s too much of a sideshow and distraction and he needs to be able to concentrate on his due process and there is a presumption of innocence.”

“I’ve always said that people don’t have to step aside from public office if they’re under investigation, but if it reaches the point of criminal charges that have to be answered, the office is always more important than a person. And so, there’s some consistency there. And I do believe if we’re looking at the presidency and the future of our country, then we don’t need that distraction,” he added.

In contrast to GOP presidential candidates and potential candidates, Hutchinson did not blast the indictment as purely political, noting “the grand jury found probable cause and that’s the standard for any criminal charges in our society.”

“I know there’s going to be some that say I should be tougher on the prosecutor, I should be tougher on the unfairness of this. I’ve expressed my view that I wouldn’t bring those charges if I was a prosecutor. But let’s let the system work. And what I don’t want to do as a leader is undermine everything that is good about America, which is our criminal justice system,” he added.

“There are a lot of Republicans attacking that judicial system and that legal system right now,” Karl said.

“And I’m different,” Hutchinson countered.

Trump will swat him like a fly in the primary. But if there are debates (there’s no guarantee there will be) having Hutchinson there will at least make it interesting.

Something about capitalism

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 2, 2023

Nothing systemic here, nope

There’s something about these maps.

https://twitter.com/mitchkusek/status/1642324655032918016?s=20
https://twitter.com/minoharufan/status/1642346631768215552?s=20

The legacy of slavery is right there in color. The persistence of poverty across the South is too. It is of course more complicated, as Gordon Hansen of Harvard’s Kennedy School explains.

Well-heeled fans of The Market often treat workers as pawns, abstractions called human resources expected to move about the board of states in pursuit of work when jobs dry up where in places they call home. Relocating requires financial means the poor often lack. Not to mention people’s attachment to place is often more powerful than economics. (Blasphemy, I know.) Donald Trump considers such people losers. They consider him their champion for reasons that have little to do with The Market.

The Market is not some force of nature independent of human control. It is not somehow upset by human attempts to regulate it. That’s the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the financial sector.

Jeremy Ney, author of American Inequality substack, is a former researcher at MIT, Harvard, and Federal Reserve, and creator of the Life Expectancy graphic.

“U.S. manufacturing has had the biggest decline in employment of any sector in the last 40 years. Since the year 2000, the U.S. has lost over a quarter of its manufacturing jobs,” Ney writes. The effects on inequality are stark:

Working in manufacturing used to be a great way to break into the middle-class, particularly for non-college educated Americans. In 1990, manufacturing workers were earning $10.78/hr or 6% more than their peers in non-management roles ($10.20/hr). But by 2018, manufacturing workers were earning approximately 5% less ($21.54) than peers  ($22.71).

Trade shocks have contributed, especially competition with China, as has automation and the decline of unions. Ney offers suggestions for reversing the trend. He urges:

Let’s learn from the historical successes of the 1940s – 1960s that allowed manufacturing workers to make wage gains, to thrive in secure job environments, and to build the products and infrastructure that Americans so dearly needed. American manufacturing can have a resurgence (and the Infrastructure Bill and CHIPS Act will help us get there), but we also need to ensure we’re focusing on regions that stand the most to benefit from resurgent American manufacturing.

All good stuff. But Democrats and President Biden are kdding themselves if they think restoring manufacturing will take the hard edge off the hard right, much less eliminate the legacy of hundreds or years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow.

The New York Times finds:

Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst. For example, when legislation lifts incomes at the bottom without addressing the housing crisis, those gains are often realized instead by landlords, not wholly by the families the legislation was intended to help. A 2019 study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that when states raised minimum wages, families initially found it easier to pay rent. But landlords quickly responded to the wage bumps by increasing rents, which diluted the effect of the policy. This happened after the pandemic rescue packages, too: When wages began to rise in 2021 after worker shortages, rents rose as well, and soon people found themselves back where they started or worse.

Guess who didn’t?

Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving; it directs our attention upward and distracts us from all the ways (many unintentional) that we — we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college-educated, the protected, the lucky — also contribute to the problem.

Corporations benefit from worker exploitation, sure, but so do consumers, who buy the cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and so do those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do, too, their property values propped up by the collective effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday-lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.

Slavery, its legacy of poverty, and the systemic exploitation the Times details are the products of capitalism. As some believe, that’s as American as apple pie.