Month: September 2023

This is hilarious:

In an urgent appeal to wealthy Republicans who had assembled in Milwaukee ahead of the first GOP presidential primary debate, top brass for the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told donors they needed an injection of $50 million over the next four months, according to leaked audio obtained by CNN.

“We just need your help getting $50 million more by the end of the year, and $100 million more by the end of March,” Never Back Down CEO Chris Jankowski told donors hours before DeSantis stepped on the stage Aug. 23, according to the audio. “I’m not worried about the second 50. We need the first 50.”

Throughout an hour-long presentation, Jankowski, chief operating officer Kristin Davison and chief strategist Jeff Roe walked donors through their inside view of how DeSantis is faring just five months before the Iowa caucus kicks off primary season. Their frank but upbeat assessments touched on perceived shortcomings in media exposure compared to the Trump campaign, their push to lean more heavily on Florida first lady Casey DeSantis and their goal of getting more than 100,000 Iowans to caucus for DeSantis.

Among the information shared was the “DeSantis index,” an in-house metric that measures the likelihood someone will back the Florida governor.

“If you have an education, if you have higher income, if you read the Bible and if you go to church regularly, you happen to be a DeSantis supporter,” Roe told the room.

The audio provides an inside look at the strategy behind a super PAC that has assumed an unusually outsized role in DeSantis’ presidential campaign – one that has attracted the attention of campaign finance watchdogs and has, at times, led to friction with DeSantis’ official operation. The tension spilled into the open just days before the Milwaukee event, when the super PAC released a memo with debate pointers for DeSantis. The unsolicited advice was poorly received.

Never Back Down – initially funded in large part by $82.5 million transferred from DeSantis’ state political committee – has operated as a de facto shadow campaign for the governor. It has assumed traditional campaign duties, including building out an extensive field operation in early nominating states, training operatives, enlisting endorsements from local leaders and planning DeSantis’ travel and staging his events. Last week, DeSantis toured northwest Iowa on a bus operated by Never Back Down.

Roughly 60 donors attended the fundraising lunch, hosted at a DoubleTree hotel blocks away from the debate venue, sources familiar with the event details told CNN. Among the attendees was Dallas businessman Roy Bailey, the former co-chair of the Trump campaign’s finance committee who has since changed allegiances.

Davison told CNN Thursday “every investor wants to see how you get to the final round and how you win, and almost all the donors left confident that that we had a clear path to victory to help the governor win.”

[…]

Jankowski, Davison and Roe spent much of their presentation hyper-focused on former President Donald Trump and his inherent ability to out-gain all other GOP candidates in earned media, meaning organic and free coverage on television, online and in newsprint. Both Davison and Roe emphasized the positive impact Trump’s indictments are having on the former president’s White House bid, something they used to try and persuade donors to help them overcome.

“Donald Trump probably gets roughly at least $30 million of earned media every single day. We’re number two, with roughly $5 (million) to $6 million every single day. Where you see the spikes are after every indictment,” Davison said. “After every indictment, it goes up to $100 million of earned media, and in a presidential race, no news is bad news. What we really learned in 2016 is that Donald Trump dominated earned media and we see it happening now.”

Roe, meanwhile, made very clear how problematic this is for DeSantis, arguing that Trump is not only a major threat to DeSantis, but to the GOP at large.

“We can’t lose to Trump. If Trump’s the nominee, we’re gonna lose the White House. If we lose the White House, we’re gonna lose the Senate. And if we lose the Senate, we’re gonna lose the House. And [Democrats] are going to be in charge of the full House, Senate and White House for at least two years,” Roe told the audience.

Roe further suggested Democrats would add two new states if given the chance, including Puerto Rico. DeSantis while serving in the US House co-sponsored a bill authored by Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress to provide the US territory with a path to statehood.

Though Never Back Down officials warned Trump’s legal troubles present a challenge, they insisted it had not hardened Republicans’ resolve to nominate him once again.

“Trump gets a bump every time he gets indicted. But there are fewer and fewer and fewer people that will support him in the party,” he added.

The PAC representatives walked the crowd through their internal plans for improving DeSantis’ likeability with voters who remain on the fence. One of the key takeaways from their data, they said, is how messaging around DeSantis’ “bio” — mainly his military record, his family and his background as “a blue-collar worker” — plays better with voters than other topic areas. Super PAC advisers acknowledged many Republicans were unaware DeSantis is the only veteran in the race or that he was a father.

DeSantis mirrored that biographical emphasis later that night at the debate. He called himself a “blue collar kid” who “worked minimum wage jobs to be able to make ends meet” and he touched on his personal responsibilities as a husband and dad to three young kids. He emphasized his military experience at several points, noting that he was “assigned with” and deployed “alongside” Navy SEALs — leaving out that he was a JAG lawyer.

The PAC is running the campaign and all the evidence shows they are terrible at it. It isn’t really their fault. Desantis is just a terrible candidate. But they are blowing through hundreds of millions. And I just heard on MSNBC that they are pulling their door knocking program in Nevada and Super Tuesday states. It’s not going well.

More trouble on the way?

Rudy has been drunk for the past several years so it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that he was compromised by Russia in his quest to get Trump re-elected and make big bucks in the process. This bombshell report from Mother Jones suggests it happened:

It was big news when Rudy Giuliani, once hailed as America’s Mayor, was indicted last month by a district attorney in Atlanta for allegedly being part of a criminal enterprise led by Donald Trump that sought to overturn the 2020 election results. Giuliani was back in headlines this week when he lost a defamation suit filed against him by two Georgia election workers whom he had falsely accused of ballot stuffing. Giuliani’s apparent impoverishment, caused by his massive legal bills, and even his alleged drinking have been fodder for reporters. But another major Giuliani development has drawn less attention: An FBI whistleblower filed a statement asserting that Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while working as a lawyer and adviser to Trump during the 2020 campaign.

That contention is among a host of explosive assertions from Johnathan Buma, an FBI agent who also says that an investigation involving Giuliani’s activities was stymied within the bureau. 

In July, Buma sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a 22-page statement full of eye-popping allegations, and the document leaked and was first reported last month by Insider (after a conservative blogger had posted it online). According to Buma’s account, Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Moreover, Buma says he was the target of retaliation within the bureau for digging into this.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment on Buma’s claims.

Buma’s revelations may only be the start. A source familiar with his work tells Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and might meet with congressional investigators in coming weeks. That attorney, Scott Horton, declined to comment.

Giuliani faces a heap of legal and financial problems, including those felony charges in Georgia. He is also an uncharged co-conspirator in the federal case in which Trump was indicted for his efforts to retain power after losing the 2020 election. He has been sued by a former assistant for rape. And apparently Trump has not helped the supposedly broke Giuliani cover his legal bills, though the former president did agree to headline a fundraiser for Giuliani.

Still, Buma’s statement suggests that Giuliani has been lucky to avoid deeper trouble over his attempt during the 2020 race to deploy made-in-Ukraine disinformation to sully Joe Biden. 

Read on for the details. They are very, very juicy.

I totally believe Rudy could have been caught up in this. And I also believe that the FBI might have protected him from the investigation. There is a long association with Giulianisome members of the bureau as we know from 2016.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on the former twitter on Wednesday that the Democrats are going to drag the country into a full-scale war to “unite the country behind Biden.” She said it would “be horrific”and would infuriate the country “but make no mistake, they want war.” Donald Trump was so pleased he actually re-posted her comment on his own social media platform Truth Social.

Greene trying to portray herself as some sort of peacenik is possibly even more hilarious than Trump doing it but they both l like to position themselves as “anti-war” by calling Joe Biden a warmonger for supporting Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. They claim to be “America First” or at the very least, “non-interventionist” as if they just want to give peace a chance but they don’t seem to realize this just doesn’t scan as their faux pacifism is belied by their extreme bellicosity. Take for example this on from Greene just a few months ago:

I’m proud to co-sponsor @RepDanCrenshaw’s legislation to declare WAR on the Mexican cartels.

We must authorize the use of military force to eliminate the thugs who are smuggling drugs and illegal aliens across our southern border, leading to crime and the murder of countless…

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 14, 2023

As you can see, they’ve actually introduced legislation to “declare war” on the Mexican cartels. And Trump is echoing this in the presidential campaign:

I will order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.

That kind of talk will sound familiar to anyone who lived through “the war on drugs.” There were covert operations in places like Colombia but those were coordinated with the governments in question. What these people are talking about is essentially an invasion of Mexico which hasn’t happened in over a hundred years.

Trump wanted to do it during his first term but was apprised that it would be unwise, to say the least. The NY Times reported that former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper revealed in his book “A Sacred Oath” that:

Mr. Trump, who was unhappy about the constant flow of drugs across the southern border, during the summer of 2020. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Esper at least twice if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.”

“They don’t have control of their own country,” Mr. Esper recounts Mr. Trump saying.

When Mr. Esper raised various objections, Mr. Trump said that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that “no one would know it was us.” 

Trump wanted to perpetrate an act of war against our neighboring country and then lie and say it wasn’t us who did it? That sounds so unlike him.

That was just one of many kooky anecdotes in Esper’s book which was like so many other of the Trump books that were released during and after his term. It was clear he had no understanding of how the government worked or what the Constitution meant and was always issuing crazy orders and he would be talked out of it by some of the more responsible people he had around him.

It has been made very clear since then that none of those people would be welcome in a new administration and Trump would have free rein to carry out some of his most irresponsible impulses. In fact, they are openly making plans to that effect. Unfortunately, much of Trump’s reckless rhetoric has infected the Republican party in general.

A case in pointy: this idea of war with Mexico is now a mainstream Republican policy. As you can see from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s post, one of the people pushing this aggressive policy with Mexico is Dan Crenshaw, R-Tx., who is generally considered to be at least occasionally sane. No one would say the same about House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer who told Fox News that it was a mistake that Trump didn’t go ahead with his plan to send Patriot missiles into Mexico to take out the cartels. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and introduced a bill designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, creating the option to take military action against them.

Sen. JD Vance, R-Oh., makes it clear what he’s after:

“We need to declare the Mexican drug cartels a terrorist organization because that’s exactly what they are. It allows our military to go into Mexico, to go on our southern border, and actually do battle with them.”

And the presidential candidates have jumped on the bandwagon as well. Asked if he would send special forces over the border into Mexico at last month’s presidential primary debate, Florida Governor Ron Desantis said “yes, and I will do it on day one.” (He has likewise vowed to kill drug smugglers “stone cold dead” at the border which means that he’s going to order summary executions as well. — which is illegal, obviously.)

Former S. Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the alleged moderate who told Vivek Ramaswamy in that same debate that his lack of foreign policy experience was showing told Fox News:

When it comes to the cartels, we should treat them like the terrorists that they are. I would send special operations in there and eliminate them just like we eliminated ISIS and make sure that they know there’s no place for them. If Mexico won’t deal with it, I’ll make sure I deal with it,” she added.

S. Carolina Senator Tim Scott has said he would destroy the cartels and would “allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that’s exactly what they are.”

This talk is, to be blunt, batshit crazy. Mexico is a sovereign country and taking any of these actions unilaterally would be an act of war. Even such hawkish Republicans as former Ambassador John Negroponte are appalled at the idea. He points out that “Mexico is our largest trading partner, we share a 2,200 mile border and we have inter-relationships that are extensive and across an entire spectrum of issues such as migration, trade, people-to-people relations and environmental concerns.” Needless to say, the Mexican government and its people would be outraged and defiant and the consequences would be dire.

The allegedly “isolationist” GOP of 2023 may love to call the Democrats warmongers. But just listen to that rhetoric and this rapidly evolving consensus that the US should send troops into Mexico and it becomes obvious that the anger and hostility that animates their domestic policy extends to their foreign policy as well. They are the ones itching for a war. If I didn’t know better I’d think they watched Russian President Vladimir Putin make his move against Ukraine and thought, “what a good idea!”

Salon

Or just when conservatives find it convenient?

Fourteenth Amendment challenges (and counterchallenges) to Donald Trump’s disqualification for any public office in these United States are beginning to multiply. On its face, the post-Civil War constitutional amendment disqualifies Trump from running again for president over his involvement in the Jan. 6 attempted coup. Multiple conservative legal experts agree.

Activists have already challenged Trump’s eligibility in North Carolina and Florida.

And so? (CNN):

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, said earlier this week that he asked the state’s attorney general to examine the matter and advise him on the “provision’s potential applicability to the upcoming presidential election cycle.” The attorney general’s office said it was “carefully reviewing the legal issues.”

In the statement, Scanlan said he wasn’t taking a position on the disqualification question and was not “seeking to take certain action” but was going to study the matter in anticipation of lawsuits.

Oh, they’re coming (Associated Press):

The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.

Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.

Just days ago in Michigan, “litigious activist Robert Davis” asked Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to declare Trump ineligible.

Michigan state Rep. Peter Meijer (R) declared in response, “This kind of asshattery would be immediately rejected as nonsense by serious people in normal times. I don’t give a damn what your ‘novel legal theory’ is- it will be far more corrosive to the body politic than whatever threat it is you think you’re ‘protecting’ the country from.”

Novel legal theory? Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse responds, “Six officials were barred under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment a century and a half ago. And a participant in Trump’s insurrection was disqualified from office last year.”

It’s not a “novel legal theory.” Six officials were barred under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment a century and a half ago.

And a participant in Trump’s insurrection was disqualified from office last year. https://t.co/8v6sjstXkE

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) September 1, 2023

Julian Sanchez, a writer and former senior fellow at the Cato Institute, replied, “It’s… not a ‘novel legal theory,’ it’s a 155-year-old constitutional provision that explicitly disqualifies people from federal office, and which a bunch of prominent conservative legal theorists believe applies squarely to Trump.”

“I’ll note the courts have already applied this to Jan 6 insurrectionists: A county commissioner in NM was removed from office under this clause, and his appeal was rejected by the state’s supreme court,” Sanchez concludes. “So apparently not entirely unserious.”

New Mexico’s state Supreme Court denied former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin’s appeal in February.

Sanchez adds, “The ‘novel legal theory’ would be that an express Constitutional clause doesn’t apply when it’s politically inconvenient.”

The Queen of Hearts’ rules

Constitution, shmonstitution, say the pocket Constitution-clutchers. The law is what MAGA Republicans say it is. Before there were MAGA Republicans there were T-party Republicans. Same difference, as they say. The law is what they think it should be.

But that’s always been the case for conservatives: preferential treatment for the preferred. And they get to say who’s preferred. Cue Frank Wilhoit:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

“Off with their heads!”

“How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held,” one-time Republican Stuart Stevens wrote in “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. “

Jan. 6 was just a warm-up

Change can be threatening. It can be uncomfortable. What it means to an uncomfortably large number of white men who can’t get over themselves is an occasion for violence, even murder. In Jesus’s name. Spouses, children, and neighbors beware.

Behold the righteous Christian soldier (and sometime bounty hunter) preaching death to MAGA enemies:

Extremist right-wing broadcaster Stew Peters really can't wait to start killing people, declaring that it's time for Americans to prove that they're willing to shed blood just like the Founders did: "I'm so tired of talking about it. It's time that we do something about it." https://t.co/7OX0lEJ1Wb pic.twitter.com/XREcIRsOxV

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 31, 2023

Right Wing Watch elaborates:

Stew Peters is a far-right virulently anti-LGBTQ bigot who regularly uses his nightly “The Stew Peters Show” program, speeches, and social media accounts to promote white nationalists and antisemites and to spread wild conspiracy theories, bigotry, and calls for violence.

Lately, those calls for violence have become increasingly explicit, as just last week Peters used his program to urge Americans to begin exploring “extra-legal options” to remove “enemy combatants” like Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs from office.

Over the weekend, Peters joined members of former President Donald Trump’s family and inner circle and a cavalcade of far-right conspiracy theorists for a ReAwaken America event in Las Vegas, where he delivered a bloodthirsty rant that was alarming even by Peters’ already unhinged standards.

Speaking on the same stage as the likes of Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Michael Flynn, Peters repeatedly called for his perceived political enemies to be executed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci? Dead. Doctors who treat transgender youth? Dead. Hunter Biden? Dead. Neidermeyer? Dead! (Gallows humor on that last one. Sorry.)

“We are going to see extreme accountability,” Peters asserted. “Maximum accountability. We are going to have permanent accountability, with extreme prejudice!”

Every one of Peters’ violent threats was met by wild cheers from the audience.

A slightly less virulent version of this pitch led a MAGA mob to march on the U.S. Capitol, to battle armed police for hours, and to sack the halls of Congress. We all watched it live.

If Peters used the words “cockroaches” and “snakes” on the ReAwaken America tour, it’s not been reported, but you get the idea. Dave Neiwert has been warning about eliminationism for years.

“Some liberals will argue that this is ‘just rhetoric,’ that nobody is answering these calls,” Jeff Sharlet (“The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War“) posted. “& yet one answer is Jacksonville; another is bomb threats shutting down schools for having queer books; another is schools without books at all.”

“Seems to me they’re eager for someone else to start killing,” responded historian Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American). “A sick game, rather like that of Shakespeare’s Iago, who convinces Othello to kill a whole bunch of people and destroy how [sic] own life, just through the power of Iago’s lies. The ultimate power trip.”

Consider the hundreds facing jail time and financial ruin over their embrace of Donald Trump’s big lie, Ruth Ben Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) said recently. Trump will never know their names or care about their fates, yet they sacrificed their freedom for him.

And for whatever demons torment their souls.

Consider a few of the men who answered Trump’s call on Jan. 6 (NBC News):

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy who the government says “served as an instigator and leader” during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison Thursday.

It is among the longest sentences in Capitol riot cases. The record is the 18-year sentence given to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, also convicted of seditious conspiracy, after prosecutors sought 25 years in federal prison.

It took an unsettling amount of time for the overwhelmed Department of Justice to apprehend and charge the hundreds aho stormed the Capitol. Just as it took the DOJ and state authorities to charge those working in front of the cameras and behind them to attempt the coup that culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. But the wheels of justice operate more slowly than a lynch mob with ropes.

Biggs went to trial alongside Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. All five were convicted of felonies, and all but Pezzola were convicted of seditious conspiracy. The other Proud Boys were also to be sentenced in the coming days: Rehl on Thursday afternoon, Pezzola and Nordean on Friday and Tarrio on Tuesday.

[U.S. District Judge Timothy] Kelly sentenced Rehl later Thursday afternoon to 15 years in federal prison. Prosecutors had sought 30 years. “You did spray that officer, and then you lied about it,” Kelly told Rehl. “Those are what we call in the law bad facts.”

Here’s another bucking for an indictment and advocating violence where the rule of law should be.

Georgia GOP State Senator threatening violence over Fulton County prosecution. Sitting Georgia legislator. https://t.co/rbMaj8cr01

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 31, 2023