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Month: May 2023

“That’s Marla”

Published by digby on May 5, 2023

Here it is:

During the October deposition, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan showed Trump a late-1980s photo of him with his then-wife Ivana, Carroll and her then-husband John Johnson. Referring to Carroll, Trump said, “It’s Marla,” referring to his second wife, Marla Maples.

“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he said, before being corrected, and told it was Carroll. The writer sued Trump for defamation and battery after he said she “made up” allegations that he raped her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s. Trump has adamantly denied the allegations and claimed Carroll “is not my type.”

The picture is not blurry:

The court released his deposition today and there will be more excerpts released throughout the day. That one is a doozy.

So are these:

We all know he’s a disgusting pig. But it still has the power to shock to see just how much of a pig he is.

Media failure 101

Published by digby on May 5, 2023

That should be the headline. But it isn’t:

There is also no reason that the following piece does not explain that Democrats have never held the debt ceiling hostage and voted to extend it without any drama in the Bush and Trump years. This kind of coverage without the context to understand the dynamic means those Independents who blame both parties probably don’t understand what really going on.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Americans divided on who they would blame if the nation’s debt ceiling is not raised and the government goes into default, a potentially devastating outcome that could happen as soon as June 1.

The poll finds 39 percent of Americans say they would blame Republicans in Congress if the government goes into default, while 36 percent say they would blame President Biden and 16 percent volunteer that they would blame both equally. (That dynamic is similar to the 2011 debt limit showdown, when 42 percent said they would blame congressional Republicans and 36 percent said they would blame President Obama. Lawmakers averted a default that year.)

Read Post-ABC poll results

Opinionsfall sharply along party lines, with Republicans just as likely to blame Biden (78 percent) as Democrats are to blame congressional Republicans (78 percent). A 37 percent plurality of independents say they would blame Republicans, with the remainder divided between Biden (29 percent) and blaming both equally (24 percent).

In fairness, they do mention this way down in the story:

During the Trump administration, Republicans raised the debt limit several times without calling for spending cuts.

It’s only deeper into the story that we see it’s not nearly as evenly divided as they portray it in the opening paragraphs:

A 58 percent majority of Americans say the debt limit and federal spending should be handled as separate issues, down from 65 percent who said this in February. A much smaller 26 percent of Americans say Congress should only allow the government to pay its debts if Biden agrees to cut spending, the same share as February.

What? How can that be? I thought they blamed both parties equally. It seems to be a little bit more complicated than that. Still they manage to make it sound as if the Democrats are the ones in trouble:

Most Democrats and independents say the debt limit should be handled separately from federal spending, although the share saying this declined by nine percentage points to 74 percent among Democrats, and by 15 points to 58 percent among independents since February.

Republicans are more divided, with 46 percent saying the debt limit and spending should be handled separately and 40 percent saying the ceiling should be lifted only if Biden agrees to cut spending. In February, 48 percent of Republicans said the debt limit should be tied to spending cuts.

Blame for a possible default varies by age and education. Americans 65 and older are more likely to blame Republicans in Congress if the government goes into default (47 percent) than adults under 40, 35 percent of whom say the same. Americans with college degrees are also more likely to lay blame on Republicans (47 percent) than those without four-year degrees (35 percent).

The truth is that more Republicans believe the debt limit and spending cuts should be handled separately. Imagine if that was the headline. It should be.

Democrats pay the bills no matter who is in the White House. Republicans only pay the bills when a Republican is in the White House. Under a Democratic president they threaten the world economy to force him to enact their agenda. This has happened over and over again. It’s not as if the media can’t make this clear when they report the story. This is why we can’t have nice things.

DeSantis loves talking about mayhem and murder

Published by digby on May 5, 2023

For some reason he seems to think this is a great campaign message

I know there is a constituency for this blood-thirsty rhetoric but he doesn’t do it with the cartoon-like, WWE glee that Trump does so I suspect even some of Trump’s people may find it just plain icky to hear him say it. Trump has the ability to make violence sound fun even to people who normally might have a tiny bit of conscience. They think it’s schtick. This guy sounds as serious as a heart attack. I don’t think that plays nearly as well.

Will Clarence Thomas resign in disgrace?

Published by digby on May 5, 2023

Not bloody likely. But it’s probably all we’ve got. The Court has gone rogues and the entire GOP supports it.

It seems as though the press is dropping a new Clarence Thomas corruption scandal every day. Yesterday we got two. First, Pro-Publica published yet another story about Thomas’ wealthy benefactor Harlan Crow passing on a lavish gift to his pal which Thomas once again failed to report. This time, it was private school tuition for the grand-nephew Thomas and his wife Ginni have said they raised like he was their own son since he was 6 years old. By evening, we found out that Federalist Society guru Leonard Leo instructed longtime GOP operative Kellyanne Conway back in 2012 to have her polling firm bill his nonprofit group “another $25,000” but give the money to Ginni Thomas — adding, with “no mention of Ginni, of course.”

What the hell is going on here?

It’s bad enough that Ginni Thomas is a hardcore far-right Republican activist who even participated in the coup attempt of 2020 and spouted QAnon conspiracy theories. This was not a huge surprise since she’s been working in far-right circles for some time, even helming her own Tea Party group and working with the shadowy Groundswell organization. But it’s particularly unnerving since her husband was the lone Justice to dissent from the Supreme Court’s rejection of former President Donald Trump’s bid to block the release of some presidential records to the January 6 committee. She claimed that she never talks to the man she famously calls her “best friend” about any of that — which nobody believes. So we’re left with the fact that while it’s unseemly that she’s so involved in issues that come before the court in the first place, and her husband refuses to recuse himself, they both are completely shameless about their rank partisanship so there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it.

To be precise, this isn’t exactly news. Back in 2004, the Los Angeles Times published a big expose of Crow’s lavish gifts to Thomas, which he wasn’t disclosing. And in 2011, Ian Millhiser, then at Think Progress, came out with yet another article revealing even more examples of Crow’s largesse to the Thomases. They both made brief splashes at the time but Thomas didn’t care and that was that. We’ll have to see if this time is different.

The story about Leonard Leo in cahoots with Kellyanne Conway to secretly funnel money to Ginni Thomas is a new twist. We knew that Crow had bankrolled Ginni’s activist group Liberty Central back in 2009 with over half a million dollars, $120,000 of which was used to pay her salary. As it happens, Leonard Leo co-founded that group with Ginni Thomas and the non-profit he told Conway to bill for her non-existent services filed a brief in a landmark case, Shelby County v. Holder, which was the first step in gutting the Voting Rights Act. So Crow may not have had immediate business before the court but Leo certainly did. The opinion was 5-4 with Thomas voting in the majority. I doubt the money caused Thomas to vote the way he did — he has always been hostile to the right to vote — but it certainly is nice to have so many good friends with similar ideas making a public servant’s life so comfortable, isn’t it?

In 2010, Ginni left the group so that it would not be encumbered by the distractions her “media celebrity” was causing. This happened shortly after it was revealed that Ginni had left a message with Anita Hill, the woman who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment back in 1992, demanding an apology. Shortly thereafter, Justice Thomas amended 13 years of his financial disclosures after having omitted his wife’s employment. He said he had misunderstood the rules. It seems to be an ongoing problem with Thomas, which is odd for a man who is charged with interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

Then came all the lavish trips and the purchasing of Thomas’ mother’s house, which she lives in rent-free, and various other perks and presents, none of which Thomas disclosed even after having been caught numerous times in the past. He seems so addled about all this that you have to wonder if he might have neglected to claim all these gifts on his taxes which would not just be an ethical violation but an illegal one as well. Maybe nobody told him that either. He’s just an old country Supreme Court justice, after all.

With the revelations about Ginni Thomas combined with the sheer volume of Harlan Crow’s cash and the justice’s ongoing refusal to disclose it, we might finally be reaching a tipping point. But it’s a long shot. The Senate can hold more hearings and give Ted Cruz a platform to say “high tech lynching” again but Chief Justice John Roberts claims there is a separation of powers issue that precludes him, and I assume any other justice, from testifying so that’s not going anywhere. They can bring Harlan Crow up to the Hill but I’m not sure what good that would do as long as the Republicans are protecting Thomas. And Roberts could push through some new ethics requirements but he doesn’t seem inclined to do it and anyway. This looks like rank corruption which some new norms and rules won’t fix. Disclosure requirements are supposed to make judges embarrassed to take big sums of money from “friends” and cause them to recuse themselves when there are conflicts of interest (or the appearance of such conflicts.) Thomas obviously has no such concerns and neither do his defenders.

Obviously, impeachment is off the table with the House in the hands of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her loyal manservant Kevin McCarthy. Even if the Democrats were in control, the Senate doesn’t have even close to the votes to convict. (So much for our vaunted checks and balances.) That leaves the only option being Thomas resigning in disgrace and I am quite sure that will never happen. He won’t even stop taking “gifts” from Harlan Crow.

As long as Clarence Thomas is the patron saint of the right-wing legal establishment, he will not be held liable for his actions. He can do what he wants and he knows it. He could have accepted suitcases full of hundred dollar bills on the courthouse steps and Ginni could have rampaged through the Capitol chanting “hang Mike Pence” and it would have changed nothing. The Supreme Court has a radical majority made up of hard-right extremists and Republican partisans and apparently at least one of them is openly corrupt and they have gone rogue. And they have the full support of the Republican Party.

The country has lost trust in the institution and the members of that institution could not care less. That’s a serious problem for our system of government and unless the political system wakes up and takes some kind of action like passing term limits or expanding the numbers of justices (very difficult to do, of course) we are in for decades of turmoil no matter who sits in the White House or has a majority in Congress.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2023

RW Eeyores will downplay this

They’re ba-ack. Jobs, that is.

I know, the Market is not the average American’s lived experience. But damned if Republicans don’t treat it that way when it’s going their way. Except under a Democratic president.

Investor’s Business Daily: Dow Jones Surges 450 Points On Strong Jobs Report. AAPL Stock Jumps On Earnings.

Barron’s: The Jobs Data Were Hotter Than Expected. Why the Stock Market Is Celebrating.

Washington Post:

In March 2021, more than 4 million workers were “missing” from the job market as a result of early retirements, a lack of child care, covid illness and death, and slowdowns in immigration. More than 75 percent of that shortfall has been filled, according to a Washington Post analysis, as new and returning workers help boost labor-force participation back to pre-pandemic levels. The share of adults who have a job or are looking for one is back to where it was in March 2020.

Watch for the negative spin from the right’s Eeyores. And from “labor participation truthers,” cautions Carolina Forward.

“They won’t care” is right.

Even stranger ‘stranger danger’

Published by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2023

Paranoia strikes deep

Image via New York Times Twitter.

The strangulation homicide of Jordan Neely, Michael Jackson impersonator, on a New York City subway has prompted a flurry of commentary. Neely’s race and that of his killer is familiar. What’s out of the ordinary is that his assailant was not a cop and did not use a gun. Also familiar is the judgment by law enforcement officials (for now) that a homicide of a black man is not necessarily a murder. The assailant has not been charged.

“Barack freaking Obama would not be allowed to walk away after choking a homeless white man to death on the subway,” rages Elie Mystal at The Nation. Poverty, homelessness and mental illness in the richest nation on earth are all accomplices, as are the bystanders who remained bystanders as they watched (reportedly) a former Marine choke the life out of Neely for behaving erratically.

There is a forest here, not just trees. The string of Americans killed lately over mundane, nonthreatening actions, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, should unsettle us all. But it is the outgrowth of paranoia that’s been cultivated.

Since the 1980s and earlier, unreasoning fear of the “other” has been cultivated and marketed. There was the moral panic over rumors of ritual Satanic abuse at day care centers. There was the repressed memory syndrome fad. There was “stranger danger.” The response of parents fearful of their children being abducted was to have them photographed and fingerprinted at mall clinics designed more for identifying bodies than for preventing rare abductions. There were ubiquitous “Baby on Board” signs in car windows. Danger lurked around every corner.

By the 1990s, there was Rush Limbaugh’ and imitators’ version of “Two Minutes Hate” that lasted three hours per day, five days a week. There was the “Clinton Death List.” There was a bombing in New York City that did not take down the Trade Towers. That came later. And another in Oklahoma City that demolished a federal building, killing 168, including children in the daycare center.

Not to mention the daily firearms slaughter. The individual risk remains near-infinitesimally low, “but the incessant rat-a-tat of bloody headlines makes people feel—viscerally—that the risks they do encounter are unbearably dangerous,” writes Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic in response to the Neely killing:

This process, through which mundane uncomfortable situations are transformed into terrifying ordeals by all the incidents of random gun violence that came before, is one means by which a healthy community becomes a violent society. Nobody looks forward to encountering people behaving erratically on the subway, and neither does anyone want to fall victim to an act of stochastic violence, but killing a mentally ill man on a train doesn’t represent much of an improvement upon either circumstance. It represents the loss of a peaceful commons, the absence of compassion, and the overwhelming fear we have come to accept in our culture of violence. This is the country we have become.

“Paranoia strikes deep” dates from the 1960s. By the 2020s, it’s reached our doorsteps, writes Roxane Gay in the New York Times:

We are at something of an impasse. The list of things that can get you killed in public is expanding every single day. Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life. We can’t even agree on right and wrong anymore. Instead of addressing actual problems, like homelessness and displacement, lack of physical and mental health care, food scarcity, poverty, lax gun laws and more, we bury our heads in the sand. Only when this unchecked violence comes to our doorstep do we maybe care enough to try to effect change.

There is no patience for simple mistakes or room for addressing how bigotry colors even the most innocuous interactions. There is no regard for due process. People who deem themselves judge, jury and executioner walk among us, and we have no real way of knowing when they will turn on us.

More than a few of the paranoid have turned on our democracy and deemed themselves its executioners. More were convicted Thursday of trying to kill that. We’ve become “a people without empathy, without any respect for the sanctity of life unless it’s our own,” Gay laments.

It’s hard not to agree.

The latest vote suppression atrocity

Published by digby on May 4, 2023

Now they’re just letting Republican officials throw out elections whenever they want — in Democratic counties.

Texas of course:

The Texas Legislature is advancing a bill that would allow the secretary of state to redo elections in Harris County, where a number of Democratic candidates posted strong midterm election results and which has been dogged by GOP claims of election mismanagement.

The Republican-controlled Senate passed the bill Tuesday and sent it to the state House. If it is enacted, it would allow the secretary of state to toss out election results in the state’s largest county and call a new vote if there is “good cause” to believe that at least 2% of polling places ran out of usable ballots during voting hours.

The bill would apply only to counties with populations greater than 2.7 million, effectively singling out Harris County, which is home to Houston and has by far the largest population in the state, at nearly 5 million. In recent decades, Harris County has become more Democratic.

Last year, the Harris County Republican Party sued the county and Clifford Tatum, its election administrator, over the administration of last year’s election, and numerous Republicans also challenged their losses and called for the election to be redone. During the election, a legal battle arose over whether to extend voting hours at Harris County’s polling places after several locations had issues, including ballot paper shortages and late openings.

[…]

Mimi Marziani, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a former president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit group that advocates for voter rights, said the bill was a “partisan power grab” over Harris County.

“It gives an unelected person the authority, without any procedural guardrails, to overturn an election when there are paper ballot issues,” Marziani said. “It’s very easy to see how this vast authority could be abused in a way that’s profoundly undemocratic.”

She added that there are existing mechanisms to address election errors, including recount litigation.

They did post-election assessment and couldn’t find any evidence that people were turned away because of the shortage of paper ballots. It’s all BS of course.

“Stand Back and Stand By”

Published by digby on May 4, 2023
Kimberly, Don Jr. and convicted seditionist Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio

Tarrio’s going away along with his cohorts:

Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right extremist group were convicted Thursday of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election.

A jury in Washington, D.C., found Tarrio guilty of seditious conspiracy after hearing from dozens of witnesses over more than three months in one of the most serious cases brought in the stunning attack that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, as the world watched on live TV.

It’s a significant milestone for the Justice Department, which has now secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the leaders of two major extremist groups prosecutors say were intent on keeping Democratic President Joe Biden out of the White House at all costs. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

Tarrio, behind bars since his March 2022 arrest, didn’t appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read. He hugged one of his lawyers and shook the hand of the other before leaving the courtroom. A few of the people sitting among the defendants’ relatives wiped away tears as the verdict was read.

The verdict comes after a trial that took more than twice as long as originally expected, slowed by bickering, mistrial motions and revelations of government informants in the group. Securing the conviction of Tarrio, a high-profile leader who wasn’t at the riot itself, could embolden the Justice Department as a special counsel investigates Trump, including key aspects of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Special Counsel Jack Smith in recent weeks has sought the testimony of many people close to Trump. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, who testified before a grand jury last week, likely giving prosecutors a key first-person account about certain conversations and events in the weeks preceding the riot.

Tarrio was a top target of what has become the largest Justice Department investigation in American history. He led the neo-fascist group — known for street fights with left-wing activists — when Trump infamously told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate with Biden.

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city. But prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.

In addition to Tarrio, a Miami resident, three other Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy: Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl.

Jurors have not yet reached a unanimous verdict on the sedition charge for fifth defendant: Dominic Pezzola, a new member who hadn’t spoken to the other defendants until after the charges were filed. Pezzola, however, was convicted of other serious charges.

Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were also convicted of obstructing Congress’ certification of Biden’s electoral victory and obstructing law enforcement as well as two other conspiracy charges. The four were cleared of an assault charge stemming from Pezzola, who stole an officer’s riot shield.

The judge told jurors to keep deliberating on a few remaining counts where they haven’t reached agreement.

Rehl’s attorney, Carmen Hernandez, said her client “continues to maintain his innocence.” Lawyers for Biggs and Pezzola declined to comment. An attorney for Tarrio declined to comment.

Prosecutors told jurors the group viewed itself as “Trump’s army” and was prepared for “all-out war” to stop Biden from becoming president.

The Proud Boys were “lined up behind Donald Trump and willing to commit violence on his behalf,” prosecutor Conor Mulroe said in his closing argument.

The backbone of the government’s case was hundreds of messages exchanged by Proud Boys in the days leading up to Jan. 6 that show the far-right extremist group peddling Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and trading fears over what would happen when Biden took office.

Here’s the latest for Thursday May 4th: Suspect caught after Atlanta shooting; North Carolina House passes new abortion ban; Trump taped deposition played in court; Bipartisan group of Senators trying to keep children away from social media.

0 seconds of 58 secondsVolume 90%

As Proud Boys swarmed the Capitol, Tarrio cheered them on from afar, writing on social media: “Do what must be done.” In a Proud Boys encrypted group chat later that day someone asked what they should do next. Tarrio responded: “Do it again.”

“Make no mistake,” Tarrio wrote in another message. “We did this.”

Defense lawyers denied there was any plot to attack the Capitol or stop Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. A lawyer for Tarrio sought to push the blame onto Trump, arguing the former president incited the pro-Trump mob’s attack when he urged the crowd near the White House to “fight like hell.”

Who’s their ultimate leader? It would be the guy who recorded a song with them and promised to pardon the whole group if he becomes president.

Somebody’s having a bad day

Published by digby on May 4, 2023

His lawyer says he’s not actually going to do that.

Here’s a report on his deposition testimony. I don’t think it helped him. He should probably shut his piehole:

Before his infamous “grab them by the p—-” remark in the “Access Hollywood” tape, then-candidate Donald Trump told Billy Bush: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” Trump doubled-down on those lines during his deposition on E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations.

“Historically, that’s true, with stars,” Trump testified. “Well what’s what if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true not always but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.”

Originally recorded in October 2022, the video deposition was shown to a jury on Thursday. The jury will only hear Trump on video, as he is not planning to appear in person. In a brief passage, Trump sat expressionless as the “Access Hollywood” tape roles in the corner of the frame, marking the second time the jury saw it played.

On Wednesday, the outtake appeared in court for the first time during testimony by journalist Natasha Stoynoff, who testified that Trump pushed her against a wall and started kissing her when she was sent to profile him and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in 2015.

When she saw Trump on the hot mic to Billy Bush, Stoynoff said, she thought: “Oh, he does this to a lot of women. It’s not just me.”

In the video deposition, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan grilled Trump about his reaction to sexual assault allegations made by Carroll, Stoynoff, and Jessica Leeds, another accuser who said Trump groped her on a plane. In each instance, Trump implied that he didn’t find his accuser physically attractive, and he acknowledged that implication in the video.

In Carroll’s case, Trump said: “She’s not my type,” but the jury saw that claim take a hit when Trump mistook Carroll with his ex-wife Marla Maples in the video.

“That’s Marla, yeah,” Trump could be seen commenting, apparently referring to Carroll. “That’s my wife.”

The photograph, seen in the deposition, showed Trump, Carroll, and then-spouses Ivana Trump and John Johnson. Trump was referring to the woman standing next to Johnson, who was Carroll.

Trump and Carroll

This photograph of Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll at a party was embedded in her complaint.

As an afterthought, Trump claimed the photograph was “blurry.”

Jumping at the error, Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asked Trump: “I take it the three women you married are all your type?”

Trump answered in the affirmative.

No fewer than four times, Trump has been seen by jurors disparaging the attractiveness of women who appeared in court. In another video, Trump said of Leeds: “She would not be my first choice.” At a rally, Trump jeered Stoynoff to a roaring crowd by saying: “Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me. What do you think? I don’t think so.”

The fourth woman who’s appearance Trump disparaged was Carroll’s lawyer: Kaplan.

“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest,” he said during the deposition. “I hope you’re not insulted.”

“I wouldn’t, in any circumstances, have any interest in you,” Trump added.

I will be shocked if he shows up. But I kind of hope he does. It would ensure a big verdict for Carroll.