I wrote the other day about Trump’s weird “freeze” during his speech to the NRA, when he just stood there for 30 seconds making faces while the music rose. He claimed that he always did this and I contradicted it saying I’ve never seen it happen. Well, a reader pointed out that I have seen it happen, it’s just that usually there is cheering and applauding for that 30 seconds.
He builds up to the line “greatest nation in the history of the world.”
The music starts.
He stands for about 30 seconds, looking around, as the crowds cheer wildly and chant his name.
Then he proceeds with the “We are a nation in decline” line.
ANGRY MARMOT [Dkos commenter]:
See for instance the laboriously dramatic musical pause-for-effect from 1:26:57 to 1:27:23 here (Waco, March 25, 2023) and from 1:09:42 to 1:10:31 here (Greensboro, March 2, 2024), always before the “we are a nation in decline” line.
The only difference in the “freezing”/“teleprompter fail” video is that, while Trump is doing what he always does, with the exact same timing he always uses …
No one cheers and yells his name during those 30 seconds. There is dead silence.
That’s what makes it look weird. He’s acting as if there are cheers going on for about 30 seconds, when there aren’t, and then proceeding, as usual. But if someone overdubbed the usual crowd sounds over those 30 “frozen” seconds, that video would look just like any of his other speeches.
In fact, if there is anything weird about Trump’s behavior in that clip, it is that he’s NOT doing anything differently. He’s doing everything rigidly and by rote, and not showing enough flexibility to adjust to the change in circumstances.
Or maybe, most likely, the teleprompter was not glitching at all, but working perfectly — the way it is programmed to — doing the usual timing and allowing for 30 seconds of cheering and showing a blank screen for about 30 seconds, forcing Trump to wait for the next line to come up.
I stand corrected. He didn’t freeze like Mitch McConnell. He just didn’t know how to cover a 30 second pause for applause that didn’t come. So he just stood there. That makes sense.
Brian Beutler has some advice in his excellent newsletter OffMessage today for the Biden campaign that doesn’t include throwing up their hands and saying “Oh my God we’re so bad that we’re giving up and will open up the convention to anyone who wants to try for it!” This might actually be useful:
At the outset we should stipulate that if Donald Trump were in office today—presiding over full employment at a time when Americans enjoyed more purchasing power than ever before, and inflation was hovering steadily around three percent—he and Republican officeholders across the country would claim credit for building the greatest economy in history. In fact, if Trump defeats Joe Biden in November, they’ll all sing from that hymnal by early 2025. The news media will scratch its head and finally notice, Gosh, this is a strong economy! Economic sentiment will spike as Republican voters come around to the Trump line in unison, while most Democratic voters—who are much less driven by partisanship in their responses to survey takers—will continue to acknowledge the economy is strong.
Nothing will change in the macroeconomic or policy realm, but public opinion will kip upright.
I know a bunch of liberals who disagree with each other over what Biden should do to change economic sentiment. I don’t know any who doubt my premise: Republicans would love to inherit this economy. They’d brag about how it became good the moment they took charge, and they’d quickly reap the political spoils.
Nevertheless, the emerging Democratic consensus seems to be that Biden should continue to “meet people where they are”: sympathize with the plight of the struggling, implicitly concede that the economy—which would poll through the roof with Republicans stealing credit for it—is actually bad.
“Within the White House, some aides are pushing for a message that makes empathy toward the economic plight of certain Americans more central,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday in a piece titled, Biden Needs More Empathy on the Economy, Democrats Say. “Some noticed a preview of that direction when the president described the April inflation report in a statement, writing, ‘I know many families are struggling, and that even though we’ve made progress we have a lot more to do.’”
How can this be right, though, if poor economic sentiment is a matter of pure partisan affect? If we can swap Republicans for Democrats without changing anything else, and the mass “struggling” magically goes away, it seems almost mathematically true that Democratic sheepishness over their economic successes is one of the key reasons Biden’s economy is widely viewed to be a failure. Letting people who hate Democrats or who are perennial critics of the U.S. economic system make all the strong claims about the economy, while the people in charge hide behind empathy for those left behind, is a big reason why public opinion and economic reality have detached from one another.
That’s not to say empathy has no place in Democratic campaign rhetoric. America is a big place. Even in prosperous times, millions of Americans will fall behind, and Democrats are the only major party concerned with the wellbeing of the poor. But speaking as though the Biden economy is one where more people need that kind of help, rather than less, simply affirms the false notion perpetuated by people who want to see Biden lose: That American suffering is out of control and there is much work to be done to alleviate it—as though that doesn’t reflect poorly on the man who’s been president for three and a half years.
What if instead of exaggerating the level of deprivation in America right now, Democrats characterized the situation accurately—as the most prosperous period in our lifetimes—and expressed their empathy by promising to help everyone share in the bounty? What if Biden and Democrats took pride in their accomplishments, and appealed to voters not to be taken in by prophets of false doom?
I know, I know. I get blow back whenever I write that the economy is good from people who insist that the statistics are wrong and it’s all Biden’s fault and it’s his fault (and mine) if Trump wins next November. Inevitably people say that the Biden campaign needs to grovel and apologize and promise to do better in a second term. Meanwhile, Trump has convinced half the country that his economy was the best in the country’s history and he will being it back to that the moment he is re-elected. And it will be very good on that day indeed. Because it already is. And all the Republicans who are currently wailing about the terrible economy (which makes up the vast majority of economic naysayers) will change their opinion.
This is a sucker’s game. I really hope the Democrats don’t succumb to this impulse. It will get them nowhere and only helps Trump.
Beutler has a much longer discussion of all this and it’s well worth reading.
Let me give you two recent examples of inflation brain in action.
This month, a preliminary release by the widely followed University of Michigan survey of consumers reported a significant fall in consumer sentiment. Consumers gave a number of reasons for reduced optimism, but every news article I saw about it attributed their pessimism to a jump in expected inflation, both over the next year and over the next five years.
Then the final version of the May report was released, and the initially reported jump in inflation expectations more or less disappeared. Consumer sentiment was still significantly down, but the survey’s news release attributed this decline largely to concerns about labor markets and interest rates, not inflation fears.
Another example: Target, Walmart and other big retail chains have recently announced a number of price cuts, both temporary and permanent. They are presumably doing this because they are seeing worrisome softness in demand. But many of the reports I saw managed to frame falling prices as somehow a symptom of inflation — simply assuming that inflation must be sapping consumers’ purchasing power, when the reality is that wages have consistently outpaced inflation since the summer of 2022. Maybe demand is weakening for other reasons?
In both cases, then, commentators seemed determined to frame everything — even falling prices! — as an inflation problem, while ignoring other possible concerns and risks.
And he worries that it’s infecting the Federal Reserve, noting that the European Central bank is planning to cut rates while it seems the Fed is still holding fast. He notes that inflation is coming down at a similar rate in both America and Europe (and goes into some arcane technical explanations as to why inflation is at this rate) and then speculates that the Fed is suffering from a touch of inflation brain:
Am I sure that the bump in inflation early this year was a statistical illusion? No, of course not. But the Fed has to steer between two risks, that of cutting rates too soon and feeding a reacceleration of inflation and that of waiting too long while the economy starts to crack under the stress of high rates — a possibility hinted at in consumer surveys and in those big-store price cuts, as well as indications of a softening job market. And I worry that the Fed is too focused on the first risk and not enough on the second — that it’s suffering from at least a mild case of inflation brain.
And at this point we have to talk about politics. If and when the Fed finally does cut, you know that it will be fiercely attacked by Donald Trump and his allies for conspiring to re-elect President Biden; after all, that’s what they wanted the Fed to do on their behalf before the last election. I don’t think that’s weighing on the Fed yet, but as the election approaches I fear that it will.
So let’s be clear: This would be a really bad time for the Fed to give in to political pressure from the right. It shouldn’t do so in any case, but especially not now, when it’s clear that any attempt to appease MAGA types would be futile. If Trump’s forces are victorious, the Fed (along with many other U.S. institutions) will quickly lose its independence; a former Trump aide, Peter Navarro, interviewed in prison, recently declared that if Trump wins, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, will be gone within 100 days.
I understand that Fed officials can’t talk about these political considerations. But I hope they’re aware of them.
Vibes are a bad way for people to decide elections or for the Fed to decide interest rates. Succumbing to threats is even worse. But both of those things make up a huge part of our politics today. It’s not good.
I predict Trump will be found guilty. Someone from the NY AGs office will make a statement on the steps of the courthouse.
Jury Finds Donald Trump Guilty In E Jean Carroll Defamation Case May 10, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBSyT3ebB88
Then, instead of talking about the win for the rule of law, the focus of ALL the coverage in the mainstream media will be on the appeal.
The legal experts will explain all the ways the ruling can be overturned and how an appeal can take years. The political experts will wonder if this will hurt Trump’s chances of being elected President.
A New York Times poll will ask “Do you believe the conviction is legitimate?” 57% of the Republican will say no.
Trump’s GOP sycophant’s will question the integrity of the “95% Democrat jury” and wonder “who was on that jury?” setting up their followers to dox them, threaten them and attack them physically.
New attacks on Judge Merchan and his daughter will happen, then right before sentencing, there will be ANOTHER SWATTING attempt at someone’s home, but that won’t lead to any arrests until after the election.
It’s easy to predict this, because we’ve seen this before. It is all part of Trump & the RW’s long term plan to make the left feel demoralized, even following a success.
Even a successful guilty verdict won’t feel satisfying to us because of this plan. What is fascinating is that the other part of the plan is to make the right feel enraged by the left’s success. They aren’t told to “vote harder.” They are told to go and DO SOMETHING. Preferably with violence.
You know that feeling you get with Trump that even when we WIN, it’s not a win? That’s intentional. It’s part of their story about Trump. Teflon Don. What is OUR story about him? Who promotes it? Who repeats if over and over? Does anyone go into the fever swamps of RW social media and question their view of him? And if they do, does it even matter?
Who challenges RW spokespeople in their bubble? Who challenges them outside of their bubble? Would it make a difference?
Who is helping OUR side tell our story? Are they using the same psyops techniques against the right that are used on the left? Do they use social media tools? Bots?
I’m looking forward to Annalee’s Newitz new book “Stories Are Weapons. Psychological Warfare and the American Mind about how psyops works on the American public. I have a lot of questions for HER, some about how to fight the right, but also about what can be done to help the left.
The Rule of Law Needs a Hype Man
Someone needs to help the DOJ with their PR. They are terrible at PR. Even when they win, they don’t promote their successes. And it’s not just the DOJ, the AGs who are defeating Trump in court need to talk about their wins. The rule of law needs hype men and women to promote its successes.
Did you know that a Texas man, Frederick Francis Goltz, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years for threatening to kill Katie Hobbs, who was then the Secretary of State of Arizona?
This image provided by the Lubbock County Detention Center shows Frederick Francis Goltz, 52, of Lubbock, Texas. Goltz, who advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and threatened two Arizona officials and their children, has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison, prosecutors said Friday, Aug. 4, 2023. (Lubbock County Detention Center via AP)
Did you see the story about Joshua Russell of Ohio, who was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for threatening Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs? No? That’s because the DOJ is terrible at PR. They don’t see it as their job to make a big deal of their victories. They put out a press release, have a boring press conference with no great visuals and NOT EVEN A PHOTO OF THE PERSON CONVICTED! Someone needs to do it for them.
The Biden admiration won’t, they are afraid to talk about the success of the DOJ because they know the RW will scream, “SEE! SEE? We TOLD YOU! Biden is behind the DOJ’s prosecutions of his political opponents!”
The Dems are afraid to do more than acknowledge the justice system works when if holds someone on the right accountable for violating the law. They should be going on TV and talking up why it’s good that the law is holding law breakers, who happen to be Republican politicians, accountable. But they MUST! As Michael Tomasky wrote in the New Republic.
If Trump Is Convicted, It’s Democrats’ Job to Make Sure America Cares
Say it again and again: “convicted felon Donald Trump.”
All this puts the onus on team Biden and the Democrats generally to message a guilty verdict relentlessly. At least until the GOP convention and probably beyond, no Democrat elected to federal office should ever say the words “Donald Trump” without saying the words “convicted felon” in front of them. Convicted felon Donald Trump. Over and over and over and over.
To compare, the GOP attacks the justice system, the process, AND the people n the process.
How could this look different? One model for victory is how E. Jean Carroll AND HER LAWYERS talked about her 1st success. But that wasn’t enough, since Trump instantly defamed her again.
They prepared for the attack and won again. The story of her 2nd success was good, they got to talk about the win again. But they still AREN’T done because, the right says “Yeah, but he’s appealing, good luck getting him to pay…”
E. Jean Carroll wins again! ABC screen grab
The MSM legal experts explained the issues about the appeal, the payment of the money, escrow vs bankruptcy and why she will likely collect in 2 years. But there still needs to be more proactive messaging from the winners about the case, because the RW’s PR plan is to minimize our wins at every turn.
The winners in the E. Jean Carroll case CAN go out and talk about it, they can push back on more attacks, and they have. They sued again. And won again. Trump attacked E. Jean Carrol AGAIN this weekend. Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan said, “We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today — all options are on the table.”
But it’s different when the STATE is the winner. I had a discussion about this with some Team Justice friends recently, and they talked about how it’s just not appropriate for the state, that has the power to take away people’s freedom, to make a big deal outside the courtroom.
Okay, but if THEY shouldn’t do it, because of various rules, norms or they are legally not allowed to do it, then who SHOULD? US! We need to hype the wins! And do it EVERYWHERE! As Tomasky wrote May 27, 2024
[the Democrats] need to do more than that. Democrats don’t just need to fight; they need to fight on the right battlefield. They need to get it through their heads that while cable news matters, and The New York Times and The Washington Post matter, they don’t matter as much as TikTok and Instagram and other social media platforms. There was a Pew study late last year asking people how they got their news. “Digital devices” was number one by a country mile, and print publications dead last.
We should be promoting the win OUTSIDE THE Courtroom. The case against Trump needs to be fought and won in multiple venues. Media and social media are critical arenas today, and we can’t count on just wins in the courts to save us.
Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.
“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.
When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”
“Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he said, according to the donors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail a private event.
[…]
The private New York meeting offers new insight into his current thinking. Speaking to wealthy donors behind closed doors, Trump said that he supports Israel’s right to continue “its war on terror” and boasted of his White House policies toward Israel.
[…]
Trump’s campaign did not respond to detailed questions about The Washington Post’s reporting. “When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary, wrote in an email.
Anyone who is a critic of Biden’s position on Gaza and says they“won’t forget in November” over the issue of Israel and Palestine needs to realize that it’s the Palestinians who will be getting taught a lesson — from Donald Trump. Voting for more suffering to make a political point is immoral.
The NY Times headline writers are romanticizing Trump as an “outlaw” like Butch Cassidy (the Paul Newman version.) The article paints a different picture. And it’s just plain creepy:
Over the past week, Donald J. Trump rallied alongside two rap artists accused of conspiracy to commit murder. He promised to commute the sentence of a notorious internet drug dealer. And he appeared backstage with another rap artist who has pleaded guilty to assault for punching a female fan.
As Mr. Trump awaits the conclusion of his Manhattan trial — closing arguments are set for Tuesday and a verdict could arrive as soon as this week — he used a weeklong break from court to align himself with defendants and convicted criminals charged by the same system with which he is at war.
The appearances fit neatly into Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, during which he has said he is likely to pardon those prosecuted for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and lent his voice to a recording of the national anthem by a choir of Jan. 6 inmates.
There was a time when so much confirmed and alleged criminality would be too much to tolerate for supporters of a candidate for president, an office with a sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. That might have been especially true in the case of a candidate who has been indicted four times and stands accused of rank disregard for the law.
Yet with less than six months until Election Day, Mr. Trump, who has long pushed messaging about “law and order,”is leaning into an outlaw image, surrounding himself with accused criminals and convicts.
The list of indicted felons he routinely consorts with is a mile long and includes many of his co-defendants in the 88 felony indictments he’s facing as well. Now he’s taken to promising pardons to notorious drug dealers and accepting endorsements from rappers accused of violent felonies, not to mention all the insurrectionists of January 6th.
Mr. Trump’s most recent behavior took place against the backdrop of his lawyers’ arguments before the Supreme Court that he is immune from prosecution in the federal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On social media, Mr. Trump has insisted presidents should have “absolute immunity.”
Despite arguing that he was acting within his rights, Mr. Trump has turned his criminal charges into a commodity. He sells campaign merchandise featuring his mug shot from his indictment in Georgia and aggressively raises money off claims that he is being persecuted.
He’ll put his name on anything if somebody wants to buy it. I suppose it was really only a matter of time before Americans embraced an outright criminal huckster as their leader. I guess I’m just surprised that it would be such a tawdry, obvious one. But I guess we’ve never been very subtle about anything.
The good news is that just as we don’t have to ever listen to the Christian right moralizing again we don’t have to listen to right wingers go on about ‘Law and order” any more. Just say the words “Donald Trump” any time they bring it up.
You are going to vote anyway. Voting in person on Day 1 of early voting has several advantages. First, once you’ve voted you will quickly “stop getting canvassed and called!!!!” Second, once you are scratched off the list, campaigns will turn their dollars, attention and efforts to turning out voters needing more of a nudge than you. And they’ll have more lead time for reaching more of them.
Rosenberg notes:
Voting on Day 1 has other benefits. A heavy early turnout leads to stories about “hey everyone is voting” putting social pressure on people to go vote, which also increases turnout. Voting early in big numbers also becomes a very public affirmation that our democracy and election system is working as intended, which creates a greater incentive for people to vote and makes it far harder for the Republicans to cheat, disrupt or contest the election.
That’s a lengthy way of saying stories about heavy voting are “social proof.” Social proof, says Anat Shenker-Osorio, is “arguably most effective tool we’ve got. People do the thing they believe their kind of people do.”
The press runs prominent stories about the first day of early voting. Days 3, 4 and 5 get no press. The bigger the Day 1 turnout, the more press coverage and the stronger the “I’ll have what she’s having” message sent to lower-propensity voters.
If there’s any issue with your ballot, voting early (Day 1, please?) leaves you time to straighten it out. I helped a local voter who called in a panic in 2012. He received word from the state election protection lawyers that his vote was contested. Herbert (not his real name) had been flagged for double voting.
Here’s what happened. Herbert’s son, Herbert Jr. (same address), voted at one of our Early Voting sites, signed the log, and the elections clerk mistakenly crossed off Herbert Sr.’s name in the voting register. Herbert Sr. voted at another location later the same day and the clerk there recorded it accurately. Compiling records after hours, the computer saw two votes by Herbert Sr. Because this was the Early Voting period, Herbert (and our attorney) was down at the Board of Elections the next morning to clear it up. The Board quickly discovered the clerk’s error, Herbert’s “second” ballot was voided, and Herbert was issued a new ballot to re-vote.
Mailing vote-by-mail ballots as early as possible affords the same advantage if there’s any issue with them. “Ballot curing” is allowed in many places. In the past here, volunteers checked Board of Elections records for flagged ballots each day and contacted the voters to help “cure” any deficiencies. Today, our BoE handles that directly. Election Day is likely to be too late.
We need a 2024 early turnout like the first Obama election. Obama’s volunteers were everywhere and there were lines here on Day 1:
Early voting was so intense here in 2008 that by Election Day there was virtually no one left to vote at my precinct who intended to. Between 3 p.m. and polls closing at 7:30 p.m., six voters showed up. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Just me and the tumbleweeds outside in the street. In the end, Barack Obama won the state by 14,000 votes, 3,000 less than the margin delivered out of our county. That was close. Not Florida 2000 close. Not Roy Cooper 2016 close. But too close.
Election Day 2008 was a yawn until the results came in. Make it so again. Vote on Day 1.
There’s no telling what the Manhattan jury in the Donald Trump falsified records trial will do. Summations are due to start today. Right-wing media outlets claim there is no there there. Leftier services make it clear that the evidence against Trump is solid. Neither set of pundits gets a vote in the jury room.
The summations mark the climax of a trial that started more than a month ago. They are expected to last all day Tuesday and could stretch into the following day. After Judge Juan Merchan instructs jurors on the law, Trump and the rest of the country will be held in suspense to see whether he will become the first ex-president and presumptive GOP nominee to be convicted of a crime after allegedly falsifying financial records to hide a hush money payment to an adult film star in 2016.
The verdict will reverberate far beyond the courtroom and Trump’s personal life since the case has become intertwined with his bid to reclaim the White House. The stakes are especially high since this is likely to be the only one of four pending criminal trials expected to go to a jury before November’s election. The former president appeared to be in a bitter mood on the eve of his return to the courtroom, lashing out at opponents he called “Human Scum” in a message on social media marking Memorial Day.
It’s easy to dismiss Trump’s raging about “Human Scum” as his usual impotent bluster, but his increasingly crazed rants send messages that his cult members could act on whether or not he is convicted. His followers heard those messages loud and clear after the 2020 election did not go his way. They flocked to Washington, D.C. at his beckoning on January 6, 2021, for the “Stop the Steal” rally he promised would be “wild.” Many came prepared and equipped for the wilding that followed. Not since the British burned the Capitol on August 24, 1814, a date largely forgotten, has the seat of government been so violated. Not even during the Civil War.
Trump may be out of power at the moment, but his army of believers means he is not powerless. What might he do with real power if Americans are foolish enough to hand it to him again?
Greg Sargent cautions readers not to dismiss Trump’s raging as just that:
On Sunday, Donald Trump posted video of a man raging and cursing uncontrollably at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough outside what appears to be an airport in New York. This generated a flurry of attention on social media, with some pointing out that Trump’s fury at Scarborough has a history dating back to the Morning Joe host’s public turning against Trump, which includes Trump falsely suggesting Scarborough murdered a young MSNBC intern.
Scarborough and the whole Morning Joe crew have been stern Trump critics for years, but I’d like to focus on something beyond Scarborough here: The video’s declaration that if Trump wins the presidency, “liberals” are “done.”
As the man delicately puts it:
He’ll get rid of all you fucking liberals. You liberals are gone when he fucking wins. You fucking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you fucking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the fuck out of here, you scumbag.
By posting this video, Trump appears to be endorsing that sentiment about not only Scarborough but about liberals generally. Shouldn’t that be pretty big news in and of itself?
Well, no, because the press has acclimated to Trump being Trump. Trump may fume, but two-thirds of the country is not conditioned to the permanent state of froth to which right-wing talk radio and television have addicted their audience. Another 20 percent tunes in each day for a “fix.” The rest of us grow too weary of the hair-afire rhetoric for the mainstream press to dish it out as relentlessly.
Besides, this is all performative. Sure, Trump re-Truths this stuff, but he and his followers are just cranks, right? Ask the scarred Capitol Police about Trumpish cranks.
Sargent caustically observes:
There is a mini-cottage industry of punditry that is forever on the lookout for the merest hint of disrespect toward conservative voters, particularly rural and working-class white ones. But the fact that the GOP nominee for president approvingly posted a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans “done” and “gone” if he is elected—never mind the vile epithets directed at them—appears to have garnered almost no headlines. Few if any top shelf pundits have scowled with disapproval.
This is not intended as whataboutism. Rather, the point is that allowing such moments to remain decontextualized makes it easier to evade grappling with their true underlying intent. After all, it is undeniable that a central rationale of Trump’s presidential run is the threat to use state power to persecute and target—in a newly aggressive way—a large albeit ill-defined class of Americans who are designated as enemies of Trump and his MAGA movement.
Importantly, this vow is not merely rhetorical. As CNN’s Oliver Darcy shows, Trump’s threat to “investigate” the media exists in the form of a concrete program, with ideas about prosecuting media figures now discussed openly by Trump loyalists who are expected to serve in a second Trump administration. This talk has taken a truly dangerous turn.
What was it Dubya once observed? “Fool me once”? The Confederacy lost the Civil War but won the peace. Southerners refused to accept Lee’s surrender the way MAGA refused to accept Trump’s 2020 loss. Whites reasserted control, sabotaged the Reconstruction amendments, instituted Jim Crow, and enforced it with a reign of terror that lasted decades. Indeed, it took 100 years to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts over southern objections.
Trump’s MAGA movement is simply civil war by other means, a backlash with a long history. Sargent asks, “What if some subset of Trump supporters continues backing him not in spite of his efforts to place himself above our institutions and the law—not in spite of his threats to unleash punishment and suffering on other large groups of Americans—but precisely because of those things?”
Do not dismiss his raging, or his cult’s, as impotent bluster. Not as long as Trump has followers who will believe up is down if he says so.
“South Carolina is too small for a republic, but too large for an insane asylum,” said James Louis Petigru of Charleston, South Carolina in December 1860, after secession. That’s true today of MAGAstan.
Trump pulls up to the NASCAR race today and acts like the crowd is cheering for him so his propaganda film crew can do a nice edit later. pic.twitter.com/Fp7AW7AwzC
He’s just walking around saluting everything today. He salutes during Amazing Grace. He’s saluting people. Saluting airplanes. pic.twitter.com/25mmY4ntSR
Is this all staged for some campaign film? I don’t know. But all the saluting is just plain weird.
I think Nikki had it right the first time:
MSNBC plays montage of Nikki Haley calling Trump out for being unfit for office, saying he is too unstable and unhinged to be president pic.twitter.com/NWCympplIy
