Q: "Where are you on the [Biden] administration sending troops to the border?"
Graham: "I think it's ridiculous theater."
Q: "Did you feel the same…when Trump sent troops to the border in 2018?"
Graham: "I feel that Donald Trump did the best job in my political lifetime." pic.twitter.com/mPhEfg1RMw
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) May 3, 2023
Hey, only two impeachments and one insurrection. Plus he lost. But other than that he was great.
I’m reminded of this interview with Graham after he lost. He’s lying. He just thinks Trump is the best chance for Republican power and he doesn’t care how he does it:
Sen. Lindsey Graham told “Axios on HBO” that Donald Trump has a “dark side” but he tries to “harness the magic” because he succeeded where Republican candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney failed.
Why it matters: The South Carolina Republican gyrates between support and criticism of the former president, even after Trump harshly criticized McCain — Graham’s longtime friend — and helped spark the Capitol insurrection.
“What I’m tryin’ to do is just harness the magic,” Graham told Axios’ Jonathan Swan. “To me, Donald Trump is sort of a cross between Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and P.T. Barnum.”
“He could make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know can make it. He can make it bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it,” Graham said.
The big picture: Graham won reelection in November in one of the most expensive political races in American history. That helps explain his embrace of Trump, wildly popular with the Republican base, but also confounds those who wonder why he sticks with him.
In 2016, when they were competing for the GOP presidential nomination, Graham questioned Trump’s mental fitness.
After Trump beat Hillary Rodham Clinton, Graham embraced the new president, despite him criticizing his former sidekick McCain for becoming a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
The day after the Capitol siege, Graham blamed Trump for fueling the attack and declared, “enough is enough.”
Now, Graham says he is reengaging purposefully.
What they’re saying: “Donald Trump was my friend before the riot. And I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history, and we’re going to move forward.”
“I want us to continue the policies that I think will make America strong. I believe the best way for the Republican Party to do that is with Trump, not without Trump.”
“Mitt Romney didn’t do it. John McCain didn’t do it. There’s something about Trump. There’s a dark side and there’s some magic there.”
Flashback: When Swan noted Trump is not showing remorse for his election challenge and still arguing he won in a landslide, Graham invoked McCain.
“I tell (Trump) every day that he wants to listen that I think the main reason he probably lost in Arizona is beatin’ on the dead guy called John McCain,” the senator said.
Sadly, I doubt this will end up blowing back on Graham. If Trump is defeated, Graham will still be a senator and he will attach himself to yet another daddy figure that he tells himself he’s manipulating for the good of the country.
Read this thread by Emptywheel and you’ll see what I’m talking about:
WaPo’s 1800-word, 4 reporter story on the upcoming decision on whether to charge Hunter or not says it matters bc it’ll affect Biden’s campaign.
Here's WaPo's front page, with the Hunter story on it.
Can someone point me to where the story on the rape trial, the one in which TRUMP, not his son, is a defendant?
How about the news that Trump's long-time digial media guru spent all day before Jack Smith's grand jury yesterday (on a Tuesday)?
NOW: Trump aide Dan Scavino and his legal team have left the federal courthouse in DC where a grand jury is hearing evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's investigations. Scavino arrived shortly before 9am and had been inside all day.
Now check out story. It's not until ¶¶10 & 11 that WaPo tells you that EVEN IF Hunter is indicted, it's not the stuff that right wing has been drooling abt non-stop for 5 years, it's a charge that Trump's campaign manager, personal lawyer, and OWN CORPORATION were convicted of.
HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to say that a Hunter Biden prosecution on tax charges would hurt Biden's reelection campaign, w/o mentioning Trump Org's conviction on tax charges?
Trump is mentioned ~11 times.
None of those times are a description that Trump's eponymous company was ALREADY CONVICTED, by a jury, of tax charges.
MOST hilarious paragraph in this really embarrassing article is this one: Questions about Hunter Biden's foreign businesses have dogged Joe Biden's political life.
BUT WAIT!! You've already told us this AT WORST is a tax and false statement charge. That's not the Burisma stuff.
And, I kid you not, Devlin Barrett et al present as proof that HUNTER's business life dogged his dad's political life …
Because Trump was impeached for trying to gin up a false scandal about it.
"dogged Joe's political life" = Trump being impeached.
Again, FOUR JOURNALISTS put their name on that article. None of the four apparently thought a rape trial or Dan Scavino's testimony was newsworthy enough to get coverage. None of the four seem to remember that Trump Org has ALREADY been convicted on tax charges.
Tucker Carlson — who was fired by Fox News last week at the height of his popularity and influence in right-wing punditry — has aspirations of moving into a larger role that doesn’t limit him to a single medium, according to people familiar with his thinking. And he is willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle.
Most ambitiously, Carlson wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system. The idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer — Fox is hosting the first official primary debate, which Trump has threatened not to attend — if he can manage to make his grandest plan happen.
Ultimately, Carlson is scrambling to try to avoid the fate of other once-towering former Fox News personalities, who in exile from the network have found lucrative gigs but nothing like their former positions of influence.
“If I’m sitting in his seat right now, I’m plotting really my own media company, how I want to build it,” said Joel Cheatwood, a former Fox News and CNN executive who helped found theblaze.com with Glenn Beck after his forced departure from Fox News in 2011. “Whether you like him or not, there are very few individual brands out there that you can almost guarantee an incredibly significant following from day one.”
Carlson’s Fox contract reportedly runs through the end of 2024, which would limit his options, though a source close to Carlson said he might accept less money than he is owed to be able to get back into the media game before then. Hollywood lawyer Bryan Freedman, who is representing Carlson, did not respond to a message asking about his contractual status.
Among the smaller broadcasters that have approached Carlson are the faith-based Trinity Broadcast Network and the far-right One America News Network. OAN’s founder and chief executive, Robert Herring Sr., fulsomely praised Carlson as having “the largest and most passionate audience in cable news,” adding that the company has “made our interest clear.”
A stronger pitch has come from Newsmax, the conservative media company that has seen a prime-time ratings surge this past week at the same time Fox was losing viewers from Carlson’s old time slot.
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy approached Carlson and his associates with a wide-ranging proposal that, in the words of one person familiar with the pitch, would involve “rebranding Newsmax under Tucker’s name.” Carlson and his advisers are intrigued by the idea of his own media company, and taking over an existing one would be easier than building from the ground up — though any possible deal would boil down to unresolved questions of money and editorial control.
And Cheatwood speculated that Carlson would diminish his own brand by signing on with a smaller media company. “I just don’t think he needs it,” he added. “He’s just so much bigger than they are.”
Many in conservative corners of the digital media world have assumed that Carlson — a polarizing personality whose disparaging comments about immigrants, defense of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and dabbling in paranoid white-nationalist theories during his years on Fox would make him toxic for mainstream media companies — will strike out with his own podcast or streaming show.
“He could do very well and find an audience immediately, and he could earn a good living and never have to leave his home studio,” said Ken LaCorte, a former digital-side executive for Fox News.
In 2020, Carlson’s team explored the idea of launching a podcast as a “joint venture of sorts” with his then-employers at Fox, according to a text message exchange made public in a recent defamation lawsuit against the network. And since his firing, his team has fielded inquiries from potential podcast partners.
But Carlson doesn’t want to just be a podcaster, people in his circle say. He wants to produce documentaries and host live events as well.
Twitter has also emerged as an area of intrigue for Carlson. That’s where he went to issue his first public comments after his dismissal, and his team was impressed by the number of views amassed by the video, according to people familiar with their thinking.
Carlson has not had any recent conversations with Twitter or its political-provocateur new owner, Elon Musk; but shortly before he left Fox, he had a briefing from Twitter tech staff about new features for subscriptions and other ways for content creators to make money from the platform.
Beck praised the Twitter video, in which Carlson claimed that television news shuts off legitimate debate. “You see what he’s setting up here? He’s setting up a different kind of show, a show where he takes big issues and he debates them,” Beck said last week on his own show. “That’s where he’s headed.” (Beck, who pivoted to digital video after being forced out of Fox, has already offered Carlson a job.)
Carlson and his team have discussed the possibility of moderating a candidate forum outside of the traditional protocols surrounding the GOP primary debate system, according to two people familiar with the considerations. These people said the setup — as well as Carlson’s availability to take on that kind of role, given the noncompete constraints of his contract with Fox — remain unclear. But Carlson has personally expressed enthusiasm about the idea, according to people familiar with his comments. At least one major candidate — Trump — has told Carlson he’s interested, according to a person familiar with the exchange.
The former Fox host’s interest in a debate is said to stem in part from its potential to loosen the Republican National Committee’s grip on the process, as well as to challenge the role traditionally played by the major television networks. “He could go straight to the candidates, stream it live, invite the networks but maintain control over the process,” said one person familiar with the discussions.
Carlson has been approached in recent days by candidates as well as Republican fundraisers about appearing on the campaign trail but is interested in maintaining a more independent posture, according to people with knowledge of his views. A role moderating a debate or delivering analysis about the contest is seen as a way to influence the process without becoming an arm of a particular campaign.
But the main holdup in Carlson’s post-Fox future is his contract status, which could limit his options until his deal with the network runs out. “Fame is a depreciating asset, and Tucker in nine months of relative radio silence would not be nearly as powerful as Tucker is now,” LaCorte said.
“Tucker’s too gifted a writer and host not to put those talents to use every day,” said Vince Coglianese, a friend of Carlson who serves as editorial director for the publication he co-founded, the Daily Caller. “I don’t know what format he’ll end up in, but I’m confident he’ll be a massive success — which will be good for the country. Anything that breaks the corporate stranglehold on our debates is a huge win.”
I don’t believe this. Tucker Carlson is motivated by money. I doubt very seriously he will give up millions just so he can host a 2024 primary debate. (You can bet that Joe Biden won’t agree to any debate with him so the general election is out of the question.) This is just silly. I can imagine him trying to build his own online media company — and I would guess it could make big bucks. The right is full of suckers. But his influence was dependent on that older TV viewing audience and I can’t imagine that Newsmax will offer him the kind of money and profile that he believes he is worthy of.
I suspect he will go the way of Glenn Beck, the last wingnut who achieved Tucker’s level of influence. He’ll have a podcast and some kind of video presence and he’ll be rich. But nobody will pay attention to him anymore.
This literary analysis by A.O. Scott of Carlson’s notorious “white men don’t fight like that” text is very interesting:
Gertrude Stein warned that remarks are not literature. Neither are hateful messages sent to a television producer’s smartphone and hidden away in redacted legal documents.
In the case of Tucker Carlson’s now notorious post-Jan. 6 remarks on an earlier episode of political violence — recently uncovered by New York Times reporters — literary criticism seems to be beside the point. But given that the text is both unusually long (almost 200 words) and contributed to Carlson’s firing from Fox News, some textual analysis might illuminate the author’s state of mind and the political context in which he operates.
What Carlson wrote is a complicated and troubling piece of prose. That it can even be called prose is somewhat remarkable. Not many of us, thumbing away on our phones, would compose such a grammatically coherent, cleanly punctuated missive, without an abbreviation, emoji or autocorrect snafu in sight.
Before he was a cable-news demagogue, Carlson was a magazine journalist, and some of the old print discipline clings to these 15 sentences. They quickly set a scene, place the author within it and tell a compact story, complete with a moral at the end.
That story — about Carlson’s conflicted response to the sight of “a group of Trump guys” dogpiling an “Antifa kid” — appears to involve a crisis of conscience, an unexpected, chastening eruption of empathy. The narrator’s bloodlust seems to waver as he moves from solidarity with the perpetrators of the attack to a grudging acknowledgment of their victim’s humanity. This looks like the kind of wishy-washyness Carlson often mocked on the air, a departure from the demonization of political and cultural enemies that was his nightly bread and butter. You might wonder if Fox fired him for going offbrand. But a closer reading elucidates what that brand always was.
At first, Carlson is right where you’d expect him to be: on the side of the attackers, rooting them on toward homicide, even as he finds their behavior “dishonorable.” “It’s not how white men fight,” he says.
That is a jaw-dropping sentence — as empirically ludicrous as it is ideologically loaded. A glance at American history — taking in night riders, lynch mobs, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 and the killings of Michael Griffith and Yusef Hawkins in New York in the 1980s, to say nothing of Jan. 6 itself — suggests that this is exactly how white men fight. Not all white men, of course, and not only white men, but white men precisely when they perceive the symbolic and material prerogatives of their whiteness to be under attack.
Thinking otherwise is more than just a fantasy of Anglo-Saxon righteousness, redolent of Rudyard Kipling and The Marquess of Queensberry. The old imperial myth undergirding that fantasy — the belief that a program of plunder and subjugation was, in spite of everything, a noble crusade — survives in the curious amalgam of genteel preening and pseudo-proletarian rage that Carlson manifested in his nightly broadcast.
His most successful on-air persona, perfected on Fox after the departure of Bill O’Reilly, has been a volatile mixture of upper crust and salt of the earth. Whiteness was the glue that held the package together, and in this text you can see it coming unstuck, even as Carlson tries to work through some inherent contradictions.
At stake is not the life or safety of the anonymous “Antifa kid,” but rather Carlson’s own perception of himself. “This isn’t good for me,” he finds himself thinking. That phrase, a syntactic echo of “it’s not how white men fight,” establishes the stakes, which are not so much Carlson’s ethical probity as his racial superiority. Watching the beating, he becomes aware of what Kipling called “the white man’s burden” — the duty to subjugate the supposedly lesser races without sinking to their level.
The race of the man being beaten isn’t specified in the text, but his otherness — his debased status relative to both his attackers and Carlson — is repeatedly emphasized. “The Antifa creep is a human being,” he writes. This is not exactly an upwelling of compassion, and even so Carlson rushes to qualify it. “Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him, personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it.” The “shoulds” indicate that Carlson isn’t really bothered — is still actually gloating — but is aware that this reaction poses a problem.
It’s a problem because he imagines that the glee he feels at the man’s suffering aligns him not with those inflicting the suffering, but with the man himself. If he takes pleasure in watching an Antifa creep get pounded, that makes him as bad as the Antifa creep. Because that guy reduces “people to their politics.”
How can Carlson be sure of this? Isn’t this just projection? Yes, but it’s also another way of insisting that this isn’t how your side behaves, even as you prove the opposite. Reducing people to their politics is what the enemies — the others, the savages, those without honor — do. Making a point of not doing that, even when it’s clearly what you’re doing, is what sets you above them.
“How am I better than he is?” That question isn’t rhetorical, it’s existential, and it presents Carlson as both the hero and the victim in this story. To borrow a phrase from Elvis Costello, this is someone who “wants to know the names of all those he’s better than.” Not because of personal insecurity, but as a matter of racial and ideological principle. That’s how white men fight.
Interesting but I think sort of misses the point. His hatred for some anonymous alleged Antifa guy is sociopathic as are his feelings of joy at watching him be beaten by a mob. That he has a burst of conscience about his literally insane hatred of something that barely exists in this world and presents no real threat to him doesn’t change the fact that this level of hatred denotes a very serious psychological disorder. And he wrote it on the day after January 6th which indicates to me that it represents an attempt to distance himself emotionally from the violence that took place at the Capitol. He’s got problems.
Steve Martin on the first day of open season on the L.A. freeway. Still image from L.A. Story (1991).
“Road rage incidents are on the rise nationally and right here in San Diego, according to the California Highway Patrol,” reports NBC 7 San Diego:
“Somebody who is driving aggressively is driving in and out of traffic, slamming on brakes, making unsafe lane changes, following too closely, that type of stuff,” CHP Sgt. Brian Pennings said. “It escalates into offending or upsetting another driver.”
Offending someone else isn’t always intentional, but once it happens, road rage is a common response.
This can and has escalated into the road rager threatening gun violence. In recent months, the San Diego City Attorney has secured five road-rage-related gun violence restraining orders for alleged road rage drivers. These civil orders stop someone from buying, possessing or using a gun and can stay in effect for up to five years.
Sgt. Pennings has seen his share of road rage incidents, including one that turned deadly for a driver at a stop light.
“He looked over and there was a driver of the vehicle who was a female,” Pennings remembered. “She looked over at him, smiled, and he smiled back. Her boyfriend was reclined in the passenger seat. He leaned forward. He saw her engage with him with the smile, and as the light turned green, he pulled out a gun and shot and killed him.”
God Bless America. We’re insane.
These are all within the last couple of days:
Colorado: Bullet narrowly misses toddler in car seat in road rage shooting
Hawaii: Man arrested for allegedly showing gun to other drivers in road rage incident
Alabama and Florida: See Alabama man attack teens at Florida gas station in road rage incident
Arizona: Road rage shooting at Phoenix intersection leaves man hospitalized
Pennsylvania: Driver Injured in Road Rage Shooting on I-95 in South Philly
Tennessee: Jonesborough man arrested and charged in alleged road rage incident involving teenager
Wisconsin: Deadly shooting on Milwaukee highway investigated as possible road rage
Steve Martin played road rage for laughs in 1991. Thirty years later the scene feels deeply unsettling.
It’s Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you. You’ll need it.
It was a tad disorienting the first time I entered a public men’s room in Europe and there was a woman attendant standing inside keeping the place clean and neat. But what the hell. When in Rome, right? (Was it Rome?) So it’s hard to understand the parochial freakout on the American right over trans people using bathrooms. Well, not that hard. They react to anyone outside their black-and-white categories as they might at encountering a snake or a spider the size of a Buick. With a visceral shudder.
Count on Florida to model how to overreact for the rest of MAGAstan (Washington Post):
Florida’s legislature Wednesday passed a bill that bans transgender people from using many bathrooms and changing areas that match their gender identity, on penalty of criminal trespass charges, in the latest spate of anti-LGBTQ legislation that has been taken up by state lawmakers.
A small number of Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in opposing House Bill 1521, which applies to schools, government buildings, prisons and detention centers. It now heads to the desk of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is expected to sign it into law. DeSantis — who has privately indicated that he intends to seek the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — has tacked to the hard right on social issues such as abortion, as he courts primary voters by showing off his conservative vision for the state and pitches Florida as a “blueprint” for the rest of the country.
DeSantis means to prove to the rest of the country that he is what his state looks like on a map.
The legislation is “part of a pernicious, degrading, and systematic attempt to dehumanize one of our most marginalized communities,” said Human Rights Watch.
Under HB 1521, “specified persons who enter certain restrooms or changing facilities and refuse to depart when asked to do so commit the criminal offense of trespass.” Unisex restrooms and changing facilities are exempt. But those attendants in Europe would find no work in Florida.
And enforcement?
The nine GOP legislators who wrote the initial draft of the bill did not respond to requests for comment overnight Wednesday. In the draft legislation, they write that they aim to “maintain public safety, decency, decorum, and privacy.” Researchers have noted that trans women are much more likely than their cisgender counterparts to be victims of violence.
It is not clear how such a law — which defines sex using characteristics such as “chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth” — would be enforced. Kaleb Hobson-Garcia, a transgender man, said at a hearing that despite his beard and deep voice, the bill would require him to use the women’s restroom, potentially alarming those around him and putting him in danger.
Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, and more states are on the stomp-a-trans bandwagon, the Post reports. North Carolina’s infamous 2016 “bathroom bill” cost the state about $3.7 billion in bocotts, etc. before its more-or-less repeal.
Upholding HB 1521 will be a challenge in courts where equal protection still means anything.
And good luck enforcing this:
Twitter user Erin Reed tweets, “This is one of the most terrifying bills in America. It will cause violent confrontations. Its enforcement mechanism is essentially, ‘cis people can demand trans people subjugate themselves to their request to leave a bathroom.’ ”
Reed adds, “Connecting flight in Florida? Convention? On Vacation? Visiting family?”
Jeff Sharlet (The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War) reacts, “Read the bill. It’s even worse than Erin says. Read this and @ me — please — with your ‘explanation’ of why this isn’t ‘fascism.’ Tell me which side you’re on.” He adds, “Yes. Folks saying ‘courts will overturn’ might as well say ‘the center will hold.’ It won’t, because it hasn’t. We’re past that now.”
The internet has freed many of our most marginalized groups to emerge from the shadows where our most reactionary neighbors wish they would remain. Myself, I get L, G, and B. I have friends. I still have trouble wrapping my brain around T. But that’s because I’ve met few of the people Florida and other red-state legislatures are rushing to criminalize. But I don’t have to to believe it’s none of my business in the United States of America to legally stomp them like spiders.
Charlie Sykes had a good column today about the astonishing fact that the GOP front runner is on trail for rape and there is a legion of other women who have credibly accused him of assault:
By the latest count, 26 (!) women have accused Trump of sexual assault or misconduct. Here’s the full list.
When prompted by Kaplan, Tacopina confirmed his client would not appear.
“So Mr. Trump will not be coming?” Kaplan asked.
“That’s right, your honor,” Tacopina replied.
Let’s try to put this into some context:
It is hard impossible to imagine that someone with more than two dozen accusations of sexual assault would be able to survive in any other realm of American society: business, entertainment, sports, the military, even politics.
We save our lowest standards for the presidency.
As we now know, the charges of assault — and rape — are not disqualifying for the GOP; since the release of the Access Hollywood tape, the charges have barely been a factor. Now, they hardly even register.
In the right-wing media, the women have been thoroughly memory-holed. Philip Bump notes:
When Carroll’s allegation first emerged in June 2019, CNN mentioned it on-air more than 130 times…. MSNBC mentioned it more than 110 times. Fox News mentioned it less than 10 times.
This year, the pattern has been similar. CNN has mentioned Carroll more than 230 times and MSNBC more than 440. Fox News has mentioned her seven times.
Seven times.
But, to be fair, it’s not just Fox News. Out of the hundreds (thousands?) of articles written about Donald Trump in the last two years, how many have mentioned the women?
Imagine writing a story about Harvey Weinstein . . . without once mentioning the #MeToo allegations. And yet, when is the last time Trump was even asked about the allegations? Outside of the E. Jean Carroll trial, how many news stories about his surging presidential campaign even mention them?
Will Trump even be asked about it at next week’s CNN’s townhall?
What’s the over/under on the number of women whose names will even be uttered? (My guess is one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s zero.)
I can’t imagine CNN r=bringing it up. And the Republicans voters at the townhall are unlikely to do it either. Nobody cares about this, not really. It’s baked into Trump’s reputation and I suspect many of his voters like it about him.
This is the sort of rhetoric I see on Next Door frequently. But I haven’t seen anyone suggest that the mentally ill should be ground up as dog food. Yet.
It doesn’t sound like the man was threatening anyone.
The 24-year-old passenger stepped in after the vagrant, identified by sources as Jordan Neely, 30, began going on an aggressive rant on a northbound F train Monday afternoon, according to police and a witness who took the video.
“He starts to make a speech,” freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez said in Spanish during an interview Tuesday, referring to the disturbed man.
“He started screaming in an aggressive manner,” Vazquez told The Post. “He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn’t care if he goes to jail. He started screaming all these things, took off his jacket, a black jacket that he had, and threw it on the ground.”
That’s when he said the straphanger came up behind Neely and took him to the ground in a chokehold — keeping him there for some 15 minutes, Vazquez said.
The approximately three-minute-and-a-half-long video shot by Vazquez shows the blond subway rider lying on the floor of the train with his arm wrapped around the man’s neck.
Neely — who was living on the streets and had a history of mental health issues — lost consciousness after being put in the chokehold, and EMS workers at the station were unable to revive him, police and law enforcement sources said.
President Trump: “I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge… that’s a sacred element of our country, they can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.” pic.twitter.com/MPyBnJQkJw
President Donald Trump on Friday extolled the debt ceiling as “a sacred element of our country” that should never be wielded as a bargaining chip in budget talks — despite urging Republican lawmakers to do just that 6½ years ago.
“That’s a very, very sacred thing in our country, debt ceiling. We can never play with it. So I would have to assume we’re in great shape,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
The president’s remarks come as White House officials, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, home in on a two-year budget agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would raise the national debt limit.
“When I first came into office,” Trump said, “I asked about the debt ceiling. … And I said, I remember to Sen. Schumer and to Nancy Pelosi, ‘Would anybody ever use that to negotiate with?’ They said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
The president added: “That’s a sacred element of our country. They can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.”
But as a private citizen in December 2012, Trump tweeted that “the Republicans must use the debt ceiling as leverage to make a good deal!”
That social media directive from the future commander in chief came amid the Obama administration’s legislative battles over the U.S. fiscal cliff with then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
“I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge,” Trump said Friday.
The Democrats should take out ads all over the country with that footage.
Federal prosecutors have charged a former F.B.I. agent with illegally entering the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot and said he had called police officers Nazis as he encouraged a mob of Trump loyalists to kill them.
The former agent, Jared L. Wise, was arrested on Monday and faces four misdemeanor counts, including disrupting the orderly conduct of government and trespassing, after agents received a tip in January 2022 that he had been inside the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint.
Mr. Wise, 50, told the police they were like the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s feared secret police, the complaint said. When violence erupted, he shouted in the direction of rioters attacking the law enforcement officers, “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
Mr. Wise raised his arms in celebration after breaching the Capitol in a face mask, and he escaped through a window, the complaint added.
‘
He seems nice. This is an interesting trajectory. I have to wonder how many people like him opted to stay in the FBI. More than we think, I’d guess.
From 2004 to 2017, Mr. Wise worked on counterterrorism matters at the F.B.I. in the New York field office. He was briefly detailed to Libya to help agents investigate the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, that killed four Americans. Mr. Wise left the bureau after his supervisors became unhappy with his work, and his career had stalled, a former senior F.B.I. official said.
Mr. Wise later joined the conservative group Project Veritas under the supervision of a former British spy, Richard Seddon, who had been recruited by the security contractor Erik Prince to train operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets.
At Project Veritas, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of his employment, Mr. Wise used the code name Bendghazi and trained at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming with other recruits. Mr. Wise took part in an operation against a teachers’ union and apparently left Project Veritas in mid-2018, the former employee said.
I guess I’ve been out of it but I didn’t realize that Project Veritas and Erik Prince had joined forces to train infiltrators. Is there any toxic operation in right wing politics that Prince isn’t involved in?
This is one of the people Trump celebrates at his rallies and promises to pardon. And Republican voters are fine with it. Many see it as one of their primary reasons for voting for him.
Maybe. Among a very few GOPers. But that could make a difference in the general election.
The front runner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, former president Donald J. Trump, is currently on trial in civil court in New York for rape (rape!) and it seems that none of his potential voters care that he is jetting off to a new golf course in Scotland instead of appearing in court to defend himself. Neither do they care that he’s also been indicted on felony charges in New York City for illegally paying hush money to an adult film actress or that he and his offspring are the subject of a massive civil fraud case filed by the state Attorney General last September.
And that’s just New York.
Trump’s also got investigations pending in Georgia over election fraud and two major federal probes being handled by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding the stealing of classified documents and criminal liability for the insurrection on January 6.
But according to a new CBS/YouGov poll, the majority of Republican voters could not care less about any of that. This new survey shows Trump is the undisputed leader of the pack, besting his closest rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by 36 points and it delves into why GOP primary voters feel the way they do. 94% of those declared for Trump are voting for him because of his performance as president. (Apparently, they love chaos and incompetence.) 94% believe he “fights” for people like them and 82% love the way he deals with his political opponents. 65% believe that a good reason to vote for him is as a way to show support for his legal troubles which explains why they could not care less that he’s credibly accused of numerous crimes. It’s clear at this point that Trump’s trope that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes is literally true.
Meanwhile, 84% believe he can beat Biden and this is because nearly 70% believe that Biden is illegitimate and 75% see Trump’s “victory” in 2020 as a reason to vote for him again. Even worse, 61% believe that all candidates must say that Trump won. In other words, the Big Lie is a litmus test even after the 2022 election in which GOP candidates who ran on that were slaughtered at the polls.
They are feeling the exhaustion of having to keep up a false front.
If anyone thought that Trump’s celebration of the January 6 criminals might turn off GOP voters, they need to think again. Only 15% prefer a candidate who is a critic of the events that day while 24% want one who supports what they did. Most Republicans just want to sweep it under the rug and not talk about it at all and they certainly don’t seem to be holding it against Trump.
What about “the issues?” Well, here’s what GOP voters care about:
As you can see we are dealing with very serious people. Only 51% are in favor of a national abortion ban and a mere 44% believe that the government should rip up the Constitution and favor Christianity over all other religions. I guess that’s good?
CBS pointed out one interesting little finding that I suspect may have more of an effect in the general election should Trump win the nomination: Of the voters who say they aren’t going to vote for Trump, half of them name “exhaustion” as the reason why. 54% explain that he’s “too controversial” and 41% of those who won’t vote for him say it’s because of his legal woes. This doesn’t add up to a large number in the full primary pool, but it’s enough that he’s going to have to find a way to appeal to them if he hopes to beat Joe Biden. These are people who could just decide to stay home rather than vote for him again.
Perhaps that’s why he’s decided to do mainstream media outreach and has agreed to appear on CNN for the first time since 2016 for a town hall next week in New Hampshire. CNN is desperate for ratings so I would imagine they’ll be happy to let Trump and his cult followers say pretty much whatever they want which may appeal to some of the disaffected Fox viewers who’ve stopped watching in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s firing. Vanity Fair spoke with CNN political director David Chalian, who acknowledged that Trump is “unique” what with all the impeachments and crimes and coups and all, but said they plan to treat him “just like any other candidate.” Great.
Maybe someone in the audience will broach the subject of his legal woes even if CNN declines to be so rude as to mention it. If there are some Fox defectors who tune in to see their idol, they might learn something. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump took a look at the coverage he gets on these issues on the right-wing networks and it’s pretty astonishing. For instance, regarding the rape trial that’s currently unfolding in New York, “this year CNN mentioned Carroll more than 230 times and MSNBC more than 440. Fox News has mentioned her seven times.”
If charges emerge in Fulton County, Ga., as seems likely, it may actually surprise the network’s audience. Since Trump was first recorded cajoling state officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election in January 2021, Fox News has mentioned the county in the context of Trump less than 100 times. CNN has mentioned it more than 800 times and MSNBC twice as often as CNN.
This pattern holds for all the Trump legal scandals. It’s no wonder that Republican voters don’t care about them. If they’re aware of them at all they think they aren’t serious or dangerous to Donald Trump.
The results of this CBS poll are a testament to Trump’s insight that constant repetition of lies, no matter how preposterous, will convince people that the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Many of his followers certainly believe every word he says but just as many know he didn’t win the election and are at least somewhat aware that he is scandal-plagued for a reason. They admire him for refusing to acknowledge the facts and have willingly joined him in bending the truth to fit their desires. It must be a powerful feeling, almost like magic, to be able to live in an alternate reality and they have Trump’s historic audacity to thank for that. They won’t give it up easily.
However, for a few, it’s wearing off and they are feeling the exhaustion of having to keep up a false front — the veil is falling from their eyes and they can no longer look away. They are a small minority of the party but there are enough of them to deny Trump a second term if they decide they just can’t do it again. Let’s hope the mainstream media doesn’t convince them that he’s really “just like any other candidate” after all.
