Month: October 2023

I will be eternally grateful to all the scientists who made the mRNA vaccines that have saved millions of lives during he COVID pandemic. Today two of them received the Nobel Prize for medicine:

Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic — technology that’s also being studied to fight cancer and other diseases.

Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman were cited for contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health,” according to the panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm.

The panel said the pair’s “groundbreaking findings … fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system.”

Traditionally, making vaccines required growing viruses or pieces of viruses and then purifying them before next steps. The messenger RNA approach starts with a snippet of genetic code carrying instructions for making proteins. Pick the right virus protein to target, and the body turns into a mini vaccine factory.

In early experiments with animals, simply injecting lab-grown mRNA triggered a reaction that usually destroyed it. Those early challenges caused many to lose faith in the approach: “Pretty much everybody gave up on it,” Weissman said.

But Karikó, a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, figured out a tiny modification to the building blocks of RNA that made it stealthy enough to slip past immune defenses.

Karikó, 68, is the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. She was a senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to make one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Karikó and Weissman, 64, met by chance in the 1990s while photocopying research papers, Karikó told The Associated Press.

Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia, described the mRNA vaccines made by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna Inc. as a “game changer” in shutting down the coronavirus pandemic, crediting the shots with saving millions of lives.

“We would likely only now be coming out of the depths of COVID without the mRNA vaccines,” Hunter said.

John Tregoning, of Imperial College London, called Karikó “one of the most inspirational scientists I have met.” Her work together with Weissman “shows the importance of basic, fundamental research in the path to solutions to the most pressing societal needs,” he said.

The duo’s pivotal mRNA research was combined with two other earlier scientific discoveries to create the COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers in Canada had developed a fatty coating to help mRNA get inside cells to do its work. And studies with prior vaccines at the U.S. National Institutes of Health showed how to stabilize the coronavirus spike protein that the new mRNA shots needed to deliver.

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Exeter University, predicted the technology used in the vaccines could be used to refine vaccines for other diseases like Ebola, malaria and dengue, and might also be used to create shots that immunize people against certain types of cancer or auto-immune diseases including lupus.

I won’t go into my usual rant about how the nihilist MAGA death cult has killed massive numbers by brainwashing their followers to refuse the vaccines. If we manage to get past this bizarre period in our history, the record of this chapter will not be kind to them Luckily some of the good guys are being recognized in their own time. And most of us are very, very grateful for their work.

Women in science can cheer just a little bit today:

This is how you quit a jobhttps://t.co/dynqquOuTz pic.twitter.com/6cksl7gA9I

— Liz Hoffman (@lizrhoffman) October 2, 2023

It’s just as bad as you thought

The Guardian reports on the latest “intellectual” vomit spewing forth from the centers of right wing academia:

 June, rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.

Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.

In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.

The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser.

Anton has been an influential rightwing intellectual since in 2016 penning The Flight 93 Election, a rightwing essay in which he told conservatives who were squeamish about Trump “charge the cockpit or you die”, referencing one of the hijacked flights of 9/11.

He gave Caesarism a passing mention in that essay, but developed it further in his 2020 book, The Stakes, defining it as a “form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.

The Guardian contacted Anton at his Claremont Institute email address, but received no response.

Anton and others in the Claremont milieu are not simply hypothesizing about the future: their dreams of Caesar arise from their dark view of the US.

Anton wrote the scene-setting essay in Up From Conservatism, an anthology of essays published this year and edited by the executive director of Claremont’s Center for the American Way of Life, Arthur Milikh.

In that essay Anton writes baldly that “the United States peaked around 1965”, and that Americans are ruled by “a network of unelected bureaucrats … corporate-tech-finance senior management, ‘experts’ who set the boundaries of acceptable opinion, and media figures who police those boundaries”.

His diagnosis of US social and cultural life unfolds under a series of subheadings that are almost comical in their disillusionment: “The universities have become evil”, “Our economy is fake”, “The people are corrupt”, “Our civilization has lost the will to live”.

Damon Linker, a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of several books on the American right, was early in noticing the extreme right’s drift towards Caesarism.

Linker told the Guardian that Anton and others in the Claremont milieu “have convinced themselves thoroughly that the current order is decadent, corrupt and far removed from the proper, admirable origins of American government”.

“The current order is decadent, corrupt and far removed from the proper, admirable origins of American government” explains why Anton worked in the Trump administration in the National Security Council. It must have been so refreshing to work for such an upstanding, principled, moral leader.

This seems very logical to me. After all, Trump’s best nickname is Orange Julius Caesar.

They aren’t trying to hide it people. It’s right out there. And they have happened on to a demagogue cult leader who can persuade almost half the country that this is exactly what they need. And it might even work if we don’t make sure they lose before they finally succeed in destroying the democratic republic.

Democrats are being pouty because they don’t have a young, dazzling superstar like Barack Obama to fall in love with. But they will vote and they will vote for Biden because they hate Trump. Negative partisanship is as powerful a motivator as 2008 style adoration.

Do Americans really want this unhinged crook to become president? pic.twitter.com/4ZJqoOIudB

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 2, 2023

This should go well. https://t.co/5vbtIHbiCe

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) October 2, 2023

According to CNN, Trump has decided that it will be good for him to appear at this trial and sit sullenly at the table with the expression he had on his face for the mug shot because he thinks it makes him look tough. The assumption is that it will help with the fund raising since the mug shot was so successful.

Given both his personal history and the recent pattern in white-collar accountability, Trump might understandably be surprised he finds himself in so much trouble. https://t.co/JB3vLz2NVK

— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 2, 2023

All of that is incredibly sick, but that’s how the cult works. They love their big, manly criminal Dear Leader.

By the way, Trump has been whining that he should have a jury trial:

“I have a Deranged, Trump Hating Judge, who RAILROADED this FAKE CASE through a NYS Court at a speed never seen before, refusing to let it go to the Commercial Division, where it belongs, denying me everything, No Trial, No Jury. He made up this crazy ‘KILL TRUMP’ decision, assigning insanely low values to properties, despite overwhelming evidence…”

But he had the chance to ask for one two years ago and opted not to have one.

“Donald Trump’s lawyers screwed up again,” trial lawyer Michael Popok said when talking about the development. “His then-lawyer Alina Habba screwed up the procedures in New York, didn’t file the appropriate paper on time, and therefore, Donald Trump was properly denied a jury trial.”

Habba is cute but she’s a terrible lawyer. Trump is sticking with her anyway. Maybe it’s because he can’t find anyone else but it’s possible that he just has a lot of faith in her for some “other” reason.

You’d think he’d be a little bit more practical when it comes to his fortune but you have to remember that he’s living in his MAGA bubble and believes that he’s somehow going to be saved when he becomes president again.

And remember, he’s been a terrible businessman on the brink of disaster over and over again. He’s always escaped accountability and naturally assumes that he can do it again through sheer force of his personality. And now he has an army of cultists backing him up.

Hello darkness my old friend … (Getty) pic.twitter.com/2af6yg3mSC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2023

… is right twice a day

Matt Gaetz on the House floor: “It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation.” pic.twitter.com/LXNxi9YMs4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2023

That will make a nice campaign ad, don’t you think?

Gaetz didn’t pull the trigger on the motion to vacate. But he told the press on the capitol steps that he still plans to do it later when the full congress is back in town. Stay tuned.

Real talk

Last week President Biden gave a speech that went largely unmarked in the press and it’s really too bad. It may be the best speech he’s ever given and if people saw it it might set their minds at ease a little bit about his prospects in the next election and the following four years. He’s never been much of a speaker but the speeches he’s been making on the threat to democracy are excellent. This is the fourth one he’s given and it’s a sincere effort on his part to which we should all pay attention. After all, while we are all painfully aware of the right wing’s anti-democratic turn, he is the president and it stands to reason he sees this from a different perspective. That he is so determined to sound the alarm should get much more attention than it does.

On the heels of a bizarre impeachment inquiry hearing last week in which Republicans House members threw out outrageous smears against him without a shred of evidence and a GOP primary debate that had the candidates yelling at each other like drunk sports hooligans, Biden traveled to Arizona to open the John McCain Institute and Library. He spoke at length about his long friendship with the former senator reminding people of a time when the divisions between the two parties were not as uniformly bitter and hostile as they are now.

But he didn’t linger too long on that. He used the legacy of McCain the Never-Trump patriot to pivot to the Republican MAGA movement’s assault on democracy saying that for the late senator “it was country first” subtly pointing the finger at Republicans putting Trump before the constitution. He said:

Let me begin with the core principles. Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty. Regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections; accepting the outcome, win or lose. It means you can’t love your country only when you win.

Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence. Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. It’s undemocratic, and it must never be normalized to advance political power.

He talked about what it’s like to meet with world leaders who ask him, “is it going to be ok?” and wonder whether Americans understand just how unstable this big powerful country appears to the rest of the world. “There is something dangerous happening in America,” he said. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA Movement.”

He said, “my friends, they’re not hiding their attacks. They’re openly promoting them — attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.” And then he made it absolutely clear what we’re facing:

They’re pushing a notion the defeated former President expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him. And this is a dangerous notion: This president is above the law, with no limits on power.Trump says the Constitution gave him, quote, “the right to do whatever he wants as President,” end of quote. I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.

Do most Americans know about that? I don’t think they do. I have been astonished at the media shrugging when Trump literally proclaimed on more than one occasion, “I have an Article II that says I can do whatever I want” as if a president saying such a thing isn’t automatically disqualifying.

He went on to exhort Americans to take this threat seriously and recognize that the whole thing falls apart if these people are allowed to seize power. It was very simple and straightforward without a lot of fancy rhetoric, just a strong, clear denunciation of something very dangerous that’s happening in our society and which it seems has somehow been accepted by too many as business as usual.

After he gave that speech Biden sat down with John Harwood of Pro-Publica for an interview largely on the same topic. If you have the time, I urge you to watch it and then ask yourself if it’s really the case that this man is somewho incapacitated.

If you have even more time, watch Donald Trump’s interview on Meet the Press to see the comparison.

At the moment there is a lot of angst about Biden’s reelection chances. It seems almost incomprehensible that it could be so close. But it’s important to remember that these are not normal political circumstances and that the GOP has pretty much devolved into a cult rather than a political party. Biden doesn’t say as much but the concept comes through loud and clear in his comments. So, while many of the usual suspects are demanding that he find a way to talk about “kitchen table issues,” he seems to recognize that something deeper than economic malaise is going on which explains why the improving economy and incredible job market doesn’t make people feel any better.

He sees that a majority of this country is simply frightened that the country has gone off the rails in some fundamental way and they don’t know exactly how to deal with it — they don’t even know how to define it. It’s about our sense that for all of Trump’s clownishness, something seriously disconcerting is happening. We see it in Trump’s flouting of every norm, rule and law with his followers cheering him on. We see it in their defense of January 6th. We see it in the insane gun fetish, the conspiracy theories, the authoritarian impulse growing in the right wing. We see it in book banning and cruelty toward transgender kids and COVID denialism. We see it in the fact that the moment they get the power to do it they start taking away constitutional rights.

Biden’s insistence on talking about this over the objections of many Democratic strategists and pundits shows confidence in his own judgement which proved to be right in 2022 when he ignored their pleas to change his closing argument from political extremism to the economy. He was right then and he’s right now. Americans are palpably nervous and agitated and it’s not about the price of eggs or gasoline. It’s about freedom. And they are justified in being so.

Obviously, nobody knows what the future holds and he is 80 years old. But as I watched all the celebrations over the weekend for former president Jimmy Carter’s 99th birthday, recognizing that he is reportedly as with it as ever although very physically feeble, it made me realize that it would be helpful if people paid a little less attention to the fact that he’s old and a little more attention to what he’s done and what he’s saying. It’s quite impressive.

I say this even though I was one of those progressives who would have chosen several of the 2020 Democratic candidates over him, but came around like the rest of us did because he earned the nomination and Donald Trump had to be defeated. But since then

Jen Psaki Morning Joe

Why is it important. It is the framework for something that is underlying the palpable nervousness that so many in the country are worried about. It’s not all about money. It’s about freedoms… this is not normal.

Insurrections, stealing supreme court seats, impeaching Biden, gerrymandering (wisconsin) political violence and threats, Trump, abortion, gun proliferation, Milley

https://x.com/mehdirhasan/status/1707172498465345714?s=20

https://x.com/BrennanCenter/status/1707477110036500861?s=20

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1707474785247035873?s=20

https://x.com/BrennanCenter/status/1707477110036500861?s=20

If the rain comes | They run and hide their heads

Brooklyn flooded on Friday. Again. Subway lines shut down as water poured off streets, down stairways and into stations. A niece reported she had to take cabs into the city for work and the basement entry was knee-deep.

Nancy Walecki wrote last week at The Atlantic:

New York City’s sewer system is built for the rain of the past—when a notable storm might have meant 1.75 inches of water an hour. It wasn’t built to handle the rainfall from Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, or, more recently, Hurricane Ida—which dumped 3.15 inches an hour on Central Park. And it wasn’t built to handle the kind of extreme rainfall that is becoming routine: The city flooded last December, last April, and last July—an unusual seasonal span. “We now have in New York something much more like a tropical-rainfall pattern,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York City’s environmental-protection commissioner, said yesterday at The Atlantic Festival. “And it happens over and over again.”

It happened today. Less than 24 hours after Aggarwala’s statements, rain arrived in New York City—the kind that sends waterfalls through Brooklyn subway ceilings, dangerously floods basements, and floats cars on the road like rubber ducks. Mayor Eric Adams said earlier today that the city could receive up to eight inches of rain today; parts of Brooklyn saw a month’s worth of rain in just three hours. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has declared a state of emergency, and New York City residents received emergency alerts cautioning them to avoid travel (unless, ominously, they were evacuating), seek high ground, and avoid driving.

“That’s not a pattern New York City is accustomed to,” Aggarwala told the audience. “That’s a pattern that Miami might be accustomed to, maybe Singapore.”

Donald Trump could solve New York’s problem quickly and easily. He’d send the free water to California to dampen the forests and prevent wildfires. People would have enough to wash their hair. Rich people from Beverly Hills could shower and smell good again. “You’re going to be happy and I’m going to get it done fast,” Trump promised California Republicans the same day Brooklyn flooded.

Maybe he can get it done while he’s in New York for his civil trial.

Republican urges Chaos Caucus: “All of them need to grow up”

Crisp fall air on the first Monday in October is perhaps a reminder to take a moment

Yes, the ethics-challenged U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term, God help us. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern do some teeth-grinding over having to write the obligatory journalistic “curtain-raiser” as the new term opens. The question “is not if we should be worried, but exactly how worried we should be.” What will the Roberts court do next with “the most dangerous and radical ideas to emerge from the conservative legal movement” courtesy of Donald Trump and Leonard Leo?

Yes, despite all the oddsmakers’ bets on which elected Black woman California Gov. Gavin Newsom, would appoint to fill out the term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, he chose instead Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler. The Washington Post reports, “She will become the second Black woman after Harris to represent California in the Senate and the first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress, a statement from Newsom’s office said. In picking Butler, Newsom kept his 2021 promise to appoint a Black woman to the chamber.” Newsom had suggested his appointee would serve an interim role so as not to shake up the primary field of Democrats already vying for the seat. At this late date, it would be difficult for Butler to launch and staff a Senate campaign even with her Emily’s List fundraising base.

Yes, Donald Trump’s civil trial begins today in New York City. The very unstable former and would-be president faces the judge who has already given his family business the corporate death penalty. He faces prosecution by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who accuses Trump, “his adult sons and their family business of inflating the value of Mr. Trump’s assets to secure favorable loan terms from banks.”

And yes, with Halloween still weeks away, MAGA maniacs inside the House still mean to slash the throats of key government programs, Ukraine funding, and Kevin McCarthy’s speakership.

But take a breath. There remain islands of sanity even among Republicans, former Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina reminds us in the New York Times.

Inglis, who lost his Fourth District seat to T-party Trey Gowdy in the 2010 GOP primary, has had plenty of time to reflect on his years in Congress. He has regrets. Both for the small-mindedness of positions he took in office and for what has become of the Republican Party to which he still belongs. He still holds many conservative positions, but with a softer edge now. MAGA extremists who demonize their opponents and threaten to blow up the government if they don’t get their way? Inglis sees them making the same mistakes he made.

“All of them need to grow up,” Inglis writes:

When politicians grow up, they search their careers for substantive accomplishments. The temporary affections of the political crowd, the petty disagreements, the party rivalries are lost in a quest for greater significance. “Am I/was I about something big enough to be about?” the grown-up politician wonders. “Am I/was I about leading or following — the wandering crowd, the party leader presenting a clear danger to the Republic, the aging colleague needing to leave the stage?” “Was I an agent of chaos in a house divided, or did I work to bring America together, healing rifts and bridging divides?”

Former members like me need to be careful not to write revisionist histories. Our times involved plenty of small-mindedness. In the retelling, we often sanitize our stories, removing some of the smallness. Even the irksomeness of the other side is omitted. The vitriol subsides. Former members of Congress even speak of the “others” with newfound fondness.

When I was in Congress, I butted heads with Representative Pat Schroeder, a Democrat from Colorado who served from 1973 to 1997. She was pro-choice; I’m pro-life. She supported nearly every progressive cause; I opposed nearly every progressive cause. The record of our exchanges in the Judiciary Committee will show real acrimony, but when I read the news of her passing in March, I was truly saddened. Someone with whom I had served was no more. A milepost was gone. I had seen Ms. Schroeder several years after we had both left Congress. We were in an elevator at the Capitol. The struggle was gone. The harsh, competitive looks had vanished. I might have even joked with her about using a line I’d heard her say before: “Don’t tell my mother I’m a member of Congress; she thinks I’m a prostitute!” I wish I had asked her if we could be friends.

Take a moment. Read the rest.

Chris Rufo and his allies make it clear that there are no enemies on the right:

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who is a close ally of Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, hosted a social media debate in which one participant argued that conservatives should cooperate with a hypothetical white nationalist dictator “in order to destroy the power of the left”.

Rufo, a Manhattan Institute fellow who has been a hugely influential figure in DeSantis’ culture war policies in Florida, did not disagree with the sentiments. Instead he commended speakers for their “thoughtful points” and presenting the discussion as a model for engagement with “the dissident right”.

Rufo is a high-profile conservative activist who in books, columns, media appearances and a Substack newsletter has encouraged conservatives to oppose “wokeness”. He has been credited with mobilizing conservatives against communities of color, first with a distorted version of critical race theory; then by linking LGBTQ-inclusive education practices to pedophilic “grooming”.

Rufo has exercised a particular influence on DeSantis. Rufo reportedly consulted on the drafting of DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act”, which bans schools and workplaces from teaching that anyone is inherently privileged due to race or sex, and was invited by DeSantis to witness the bill’s signing in April 2022.

Later, DeSantis appointed Rufo to the board of trustees of Florida’s New College in January. New College was a traditionally liberal college, but under Rufo is now transforming into a more conservative institution – a move that many say heralds DeSantis’ view of the future of academia in Florida and the US.

Rufo hosted the debate on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter.

Participating in the debate was Charles Haywood, a former shampoo magnate who the Guardian previously reported is a would-be “warlord” who founded a secretive, men-only fraternal society, the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR).

The debate concerned Haywood’s promotion of a strategy he calls “no enemies to the right”, which urges people on the right to avoid any public criticism of others in their camp, including extremists.

Early in the Rufo-hosted discussion last Tuesday, Haywood raised the hypothetical possibility early in the discussion: “Let’s say a real white nationalist arose who had real political power … and therefore [could] be of assistance against the left.”

Responding to the hypothetical, Haywood said: “I think that the answer is that you should cooperate with that person in order to destroy the power of the left.”

Later in the broadcast, Haywood responded to concerns about rightwing authoritarianism by saying: “When we’re talking about people like Franco or Pinochet or even Salazar … they did kill people. They killed people justly, they killed people unjustly, and that’s just a historical fact.”

“But,” Haywood added, “they saved a lot more people than they killed.”

Augusto Pinochet was military dictator of Chile from 1971 to 1990, and after coming to power in a coup he tortured, exiled or killed tens of thousands of his regime’s opponents.

Francisco Franco was dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975, and his regime killed 100,000 to 200,000 people during the so-called “white terror”. António de Oliveira Salazar was the head of Portugal’s authoritarian, one-party state from 1932 until 1968; his regime repressed domestic opposition and oversaw brutal colonial policies in Africa that permitted forced labor and other abuses.

In closing the discussion, Rufo credited speakers with raising “some provocative points on all sides, some thoughtful points on all sides”, and told listeners: “I think there is a room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right. I think we need to have a bridge between the two and engage in thoughtful dialogue.”

I’ve written a bunch about Rufo in the past. He’s a young arriviste on the MAGA right who has turned the “anti-woke” culture war into his personal brand. DeSantis especially loves him but he’s popular all over the right wing. His influence may wane a bit now that DeSantis’ campaign,based almost entirely on his ideas, has floundered so badly but he’ll be around a while. And you can see by this article where he’s headed. Funny how that always seems to be the case, isn’t it?

I’m sure you’res sick of seeing all these demented Trump clips but I wanted to post this just so that we could have it on record for when the right wingers try to claim Joe Biden is senile. Please…

Montage of 33 clips of the stupidest, most vile, insane, weirdest, addled dementia-ridden, psychotic statements made by Trump over the past two weeks. pic.twitter.com/iCbt5PtzBX

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 30, 2023