Legal beagle Ryan Goodman points out that the actual trial transcript shows Hope Hicks’ final testimony is actually worse than was reported. He wrote on twitter:
Trump not only communicates “it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.” Trump also links it to Cohen hush money: “had Michael not made that payment.”
I think you can see why she burst into tears a minute later. This revelation is damaging to Trump’s defense and she knew it. Hicks admits that Trump was worried about the election and backs up Cohen’s contention that Trump knew what the money was for before he reimbursed him.
What’s the significance of that? Trump’s defense lawyer’s opening statement featured this:
Apparently he didn’t know about this civil case (Daniels was trying to get released from her non-disclosure agreement) in which Trump and Cohen both admitted that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the hush money.
I guess they might try to blame the lawyer in that case but he’s not the kind of guy you want to mess with.*
Andrew Weissman writes on twitter:
Why Hicks is such a devastating witness against Trump:
1. Hicks makes clear Trump knew of the Cohen payoff scheme to Daniels. 2. Even if you believe his statement to her that he only learned after the fact. 3. Her testimony sinks Trump’s defense since he is on record in a civil case admitting that he reimbursed Cohen the $130,000. 4. Hicks establishes that Trump knew that money was for Daniel’s silence- not for the claimed legal fees for ongoing legal work by Cohen.
Hicks suggests that #2 was a lie by Trump to her (because she testified that Cohen was not a charitable kind of guy who would keep his good deed to himself), but it does not matter- even if the jury believes Trump only knew later, he knew PRIOR to making all the reimbursement payments to Cohen.
And Hicks’ crying on the stand makes it that much clearer that she does not want to be implicating her former boss– the DA is making the case, as the J6C did, through Trump loyalists.
Here was Hicks, taking her oath with solemnity, filling an apparent hole in the DA’s case: that Trump knew about this payoff (as David Pecker made clear, Trump knew about the payoff to Karen McDougal). That is key, because Trump thereafter reimbursed Cohen for the hush money payments, personally signing the reimbursement checks. Hicks’ testimony makes plain Trump did so knowing that they were not payments for legal fees. And for that reason, the jury need not decide whether Trump knew of the scheme at the time (as Hicks strongly intimated) or only learned of it later (as he claimed to Hicks), since in either scenario, Trump knew of the scheme prior to making the reimbursements.
Not that corroboration of Hicks’ testimony is needed, but it exists in a particularly damning form: Trump’s own admission in a civil case in California brought by Stormy Daniels. In that lawsuit, Trump admitted he reimbursed Michael Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels. Trump’s admission — made with his co-defendant, Cohen — is here, and the California court recognized these statements as admissions. (Trump of course has pleaded not guilty and denied the affairs with McDougal and Daniels.
This is the crux of the case. Did Trump falsify his business records to hide the fact that he had interfered with the election in 2016? Yes, yes he did.
*Charles Harder was the guy who once came after this blog for posting something that Lawrence O’Donnell said on MSNBC. I took it down because I don’t have the kind of money it takes to fight something like that. O’Donnell retracted what he said as well. Harder’s also the lawyer who destroyed Gawker media in the Hulk Hogan matter. I’ve often wondere why we haven’t seen him in Trump’s legal coterie since that period.
Yes, we know to take polling with a grain of salt right now. But the media went nuts over that outlier CNN poll showing Trump ahead six points. Crickets for these two legit polls in the past week.
Old vs young, rural vs urban, college vs non-college, Democrat vs Republican the usual (although the inverted old vs young is a little weird but I’d guess it’s Gaza.)
However, there are some interesting observations. RFK pulls more from Trump which is the second poll that shows that. Self-identified moderates are for Biden, which is good, and the battleground is definitely still in the suburbs.
About those swing states? It’s a tie:
And it’s a 46-45% race in the seven expected swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Some other issues:
Support for abortion rights remains widespread: Americans by 66-32% oppose the U.S. Supreme Court decision that did away with the constitutional right to abortion and by essentially the same margin say their own state should allow access to abortion in all or most cases.
Biden’s executive orders to forgive student loan debt get a mixed to negative reception: 42% say he’s doing too much in this regard, 22% too little and 34% the right amount. Among those younger than 40, 30% say he’s doing too much to forgive these loans; this jumps to 53% of those age 50 and older.
Thirty-nine percent call it highly important to them whom Biden picks as his running mate; 35% say the same for Trump. Overall, 54% say Biden should replace Kamala Harris as his choice for vice president; among Democrats, however, 76% say he should keep Harris. It’s about the same among Biden supporters.
Eighty percent call undocumented immigration a problem nationally, including 54% who call it a major problem. Locally, in their own community, many fewer call it a problem, 46%, or a major problem, 22%. It’s seen as a problem locally, and a major problem nationally, particularly by Republicans and conservatives.
Passage of a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine did not substantially impact attitudes on the subject. Thirty-nine percent of Americans say the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine, up 5 points from January but about the same as it was last fall. Twenty percent say the United States is doing too little; 39%, the right amount — both essentially unchanged.
It’s so interesting how those of us who follow all this stuff closely think these issues are going to land and then see how they actually do. It turns out that we pundit types are often wrong. Imagine that…
That poll showed Biden ahead among registered voters. (I guess they didn’t break down likely voters but it;s fair to say that it would show Biden even farther ahead if they did.)
These are legitimate polls by major media organizations that don’t seem to have gotten much attention, probably because they show Biden ahead of Trump and the media just doesn’t seem to believe them. I wouldn’t be alarmed if it weren’t for the fact that they seem to be much more inclined to promote the polls showing the opposite.
The race is very tight six months out. That’s frightening. But it’s not the kiss of death by any means. It’s just going to be trench warfare all the way to election day. So buckle up.
At one point in the book, titled No Going Back, Noem recalled meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, claiming he “underestimated” her. However, experts have called into question whether such a meeting could have ever taken place.
“Did you meet Kim Jong Un?” Brennan directly asked the governor, who avoided answering the question and instead said she’s “met with many, many world leaders” and has “made some edits” to the book.
“I’ve met with many, many world leaders and traveled around the world,” Noem said. “I think I’ve talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor, before governor, some of the travels that I’ve had. I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I’m just not going to do it.”
Her blatant refusal to say whether she actually met with the dictator contradicts her admission that the anecdote should not have been included in the book—a point Noem repeatedly noted during the interview. She never explained why she is pulling the story from the final version, however.
Brennan tried to offer Noem alternative explanations, including whether she might have instead met with South Korea’s leader, but Noem refused to clarify her actual reality.
The governor also claimed she went to North Korea via the Korean Demilitarized zone.
She is a sick cookie:
It is over Kristi Noem as she gets asked this question on Face The Nation, " How do you justify that? I'm asking you this, it seems like you're celebrating the killing of the animals?" pic.twitter.com/XS495hvs6T
Luckily, she seems to be out of the running for VP because of this. of course you never know. These flagrant lies may endear her more to Donald Trump, just as she hoped.
“If Roe v. Wade can fall, anything can fall. Social Security can fall. Medicare can fall. Voting rights can fall. And God help us all, but democracy itself can fall,” says Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. pic.twitter.com/HSQ9x8sKqZ
This is correct. And it happens slowly at first and then all at once.
If Trump wins, he will not care about getting re-elected because he will ensure that there is an “emergency” that requires the suspension of elections and his high court will back him up. He will die in office one way or another. But the far right agenda that underlies the right wing legal agenda will remain in place and they have shown that they’re willing to radically disassemble all 20th century progress (actually 19th century progress too) in pursuit of their revolutionary desire to ensure that wealth and white, male privilege remain the dominant force in American culture and politics.
If Trump wins another term there is no doubt that Thomas and Alito will retire and will be replaced with the likes of Josh Hawley and JD Vance and will secure the thousand year reich.
“When the state says to a woman that you cannot have an abortion after six weeks, what the state is doing is seizing that woman’s womb for its own purposes,” said Carlos Lacasa. “That’s scary to me.”
Lacasa is a Cuban American from South Florida, and a former Republican state representative. “Freedom-loving” Cuban Americans are keenly aware of Fidel Castro’s curtailing of freedom for Cubans and remain on high alert for state encroachments on it. That includes the freedom “to possess a firearm, even with a high-capacity magazine, or … to choose whether or not to be vaccinated in the case of a pandemic.” And to restrict a woman’s access to abortion.
Lacasa backs the referendum on Florida’s November ballot to reverse the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks. It went into effect May 1 (Politico):
The fate of a November referendum to reverse the six-week ban now rests largely on how many other Republicans feel abortion should be legal, even if they wouldn’t choose it for themselves. The constitutional amendment restoring legal abortion up to the point of fetal viability — around 24 weeks — would have to clear a 60-percent threshold in a state with nearly a million more registered Republicans than Democrats. One recent poll shows 57 percent support for the measure statewide, though another puts support below 50 percent. (“There is no path to passage without 2 out of 5” Republicans, Anna Hochkammer, a leader in the pro-referendum coalition, texted me.) And the referendum’s supporters know the path to passage runs through places like [Hialeah], where many residents or their recent ancestors fled from autocracy, and are Republican precisely because they value freedom and limited government.
Freedom is a contested value Democrats have failed to contest for too long. So long that some on the left may feel uncomfortable using a word so identified with Republican tropes. This is a mistake, Anat Shenker-Osorio has long argued, and as Lacasa’s declaration illustrates. (She advocates using freedoms, plural.) Freedom means different things to different Americans, Kathy Gilsinan illustrates in her reporting from Florida. “This doesn’t necessarily mean these voters feel abortion should count among those freedoms or that they’d prioritize a political freedom over a religious value.”
Over at The New Yorker, John Cassidy speaks with Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz about his new book, “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.” A play on Friedrich Hayek’s famous polemic against socialism, Stiglitz argues that the negative concept of freedom peddled by neoliberalism has hoarded it for the few while restricting it for the many. He illustrates by repeating a quote from the late Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin: “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”
Stiglitz observes, “The current conservative reading of what freedom means is superficial, misguided, and ideologically motivated. The Right claims to be the defender of freedom, but I’ll show that the way they define the word and pursue it has led to the opposite result, vastly reducing the freedoms of most citizens.”
Gun violence and the spread of diseases by people who refuse to abide by health guidelines are examples of what economists call externalities, an awkward word that is derived from the fact that certain actions (such as refusing to wear a mask) or market transactions (such as the sale of a gun) can have negative (or positive) consequences to the outside world. “Externalities are everywhere,” Stiglitz writes. The biggest and most famous negative externalities are air pollution and climate change, which derive from the freedom of businesses and individuals to take actions that create harmful emissions. The argument for restricting this freedom, Stiglitz points out, is that doing so will “expand the freedom of people in later generations to exist on a livable planet without having to spend a huge amount of money to adapt to massive changes in climate and sea levels.”
In all these cases, Stiglitz argues, restrictions on behavior are justified by the over-all increase in human welfare and freedom that they produce. In the language of cost-benefit analysis, the costs in terms of infringing on individual freedom of action are much smaller than the societal benefits, so the net benefits are positive. Of course, many gun owners and anti-maskers would argue that this isn’t true. Pointing to the gun-violence figures and to scientific studies showing that masking and social distancing did make a difference to COVID-transmission rates, Stiglitz gives such arguments short shrift, and he insists that the real source of the dispute is a difference in values. “Are there responsible people who really believe that the right to not be inconvenienced by wearing a mask is more important than the right to live?” he asks.
As in the debate over gun ownership, “responsible” is also a contested concept.
As an economist accustomed to thinking in theoretical terms, Stiglitz conceived of freedom as expanding “opportunity sets”—the range of options that people can choose from—which are usually bounded, in the final analysis, by individuals’ incomes. Once you reframe freedom in this more positive sense, anything that reduces a person’s range of choices, such as poverty, joblessness, or illness, is a grave restriction on liberty. Conversely, policies that expand people’s opportunities to make choices, such as income-support payments and subsidies for worker training or higher education, enhance freedom.
Ask “freedom-loving” Americans if they love their jobs, how many will say yes? Then ask them if they feel free to quit, to move and try something else somewhere else? Even with a closetful of AR-15s?
What the right and wealthy elites are selling is the cowboy myth of rugged individualism, where there is no common good and every man (of course) is a law unto himself, where freedom is personal and something to hoard in a threatening world against bandits, communists, and, well, THEM.
What the American left advocates, even if it fails to broadcast it to the heavens, is something breathtaking, Anand Giridharadas explained last year, something reactionaries and conspiracy theorists fear:
We are trying something hard and awesome. And at the risk of kind of mixing progressivism with patriotism, it is an awesome pursuit in history. Most of our ancestors lived in small, little monocultures in all kinds of different places in the world where they never met anybody who was different.
We are building an entire country on the idea that human beings are enriched through encounters with difference. And, even though there is this incredibly scary movement, it is not the protagonist of this drama. We are the protagonist of this drama. We have won victory after victory after victory to get here.
Look at this room. Most places in the world do not look like this room, right? And [opponents of the American experiment] are a barnacle on our progress. They are not prosecuting some awesome new revolution that is a cool, new idea. They have fought against every major advance of extending freedom to more people. They have lost virtually every time. They will lose again.
And I think we have to buck up, get our act together, talk and think like winners, and remember that the cause of the country we’re trying to fight for is an attractive cause, and make it attractive — joyous, your word [to a panelist] — and bring people in, not keep anyone out.
How much does the right fear that expansive vision, one based more in cooperation than ruthless competition? Fear the left talking, thinking and acting like winners?
On May 1, conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued that President Biden should stop campaigning as if he is ahead in the 2024 presidential contest. He should consider stepping aside in “a patriotic recognition of his own limits, physical and political.” He should stop “running on progressive autopilot.” Stop a phase-out of internal combustion autos. Stop a “new student loan forgiveness program that could cost over $1 trillion in the teeth of stubbornly high inflation.”
The flop sweat in Douthat’s insistence that Biden is “gliding toward defeat” by not boldly quitting the race almost dripped off the page.
Militia groups went quiet after Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection. But not for long, Tess Owen writes at Wired:
“JOIN YOUR LOCAL Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: “Now more than ever. Support the American militia page.”
Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an “armed militia group” on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence.
Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country.
After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook—with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED.
Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit “active patriots” and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They’re also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be “prepared” for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for “war” or to “stand up” against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students, communists—and the US government.
These cosplayers are often dismissed at Meal Team Six or Gravy Seals, but as Jan. 6 demonstrated they can still do damage. Enough have military training and skills that make them a threat. Maybe not as much of a threat as they imagine while they’re running around with AR-15s at secluded training camps.
Wired being Wired, it focuses heavily on Meta’s failure to police its own policies against this use of its online platform. Facebook remains “a go-to hub for militia organizing.”
Polling conducted earlier this year of more than 1,000 Americans found that one in five Americans “strongly agree” that violence is the only viable solution to get the country back on track. Although the societal conditions heading into this year’s election are not the same as those in 2020, a newly emboldened militia movement could add a dangerous dimension to potentially fraught future events, such as a judge handing down a prison sentence for Trump or Trump losing another close presidential election.
So far, Trump’s calls for MAGA to rise again to show its support outside his Manhattan trial have come up all but empty. Doesn’t mean they can’t still do damage. The Department of Justice is still not done prosecuting the lot from Jan. 6.
Comedian Neal Brennan thinks we should test out militias’ “watering the tree of liberty” theories with live fire.
The 50th Seattle International Film Festival opens May 9th and runs through May 19th. This year’s SIFF features a total of 207 shorts, documentaries, and narrative films from 84 countries. The brick-and-mortar event will be immediately followed by a week of select virtual screenings from this year’s catalog (April 20-27) on the SIFF Channel.
SIFF has certainly grown exponentially since its first incarnation in 1976 (in case the math is making you crazy, festival organizers “skipped” the 13th event; you know how superstitious show people get about Scottish kings and such). Compare the numbers: In 1976, the Festival boasted a whopping 19 films from 9 countries, with one lone venue (the venerable Egyptian Theater, pictured at the top of the post). This year, there are 8 venues. Then again, there were only 13 people on the staff in 1976 (compared with 110 now).
Regardless of how large or small the staff, the one constant over the decades has been the quality of the curation. Long before “sharing files” (or even making mix tapes) was a thing, SIFF’s annual lineup reflected that sense of joy in turning friends on to something new and exciting; instilling the sense there was a tangible film lover’s community (others who enjoyed being alone together, out there in the dark).
The first SIFF event I ever attended was a screening of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, in 1993. Linklater was there for a Q&A session afterwards. That was the first time I’d ever had a chance to ask the director of a film a question right after the credits rolled (I wasn’t writing about film yet-just a movie geek). I can’t remember what I asked (some dopey query about the 70s soundtrack), but I thought that was so fucking cool (I’d recently moved to Seattle after living in a cultural vacuum for a decade-what can I say?). Another memorable event I attended that year was a tribute to John Schlesinger (with the director on hand).
In honor of the 50th anniversary, SIFF has launched the SIFF Archives-explained thusly in a press release:
The SIFF Archives are the culmination of nearly two years of compiling, digitizing, and organizing materials from SIFF’s past. You’ll find interactive flipbooks of each Festival’s catalog, photo and video assets, full lists of the feature films that we played each year, and other highlights. Learning about the history of Seattle’s film scene has never been easier, and it’s all publicly available—for researchers and the casually interested alike.
It is a fascinating archive to peruse; I especially enjoyed the poster gallery. Some faves:
Whoa. I just realized that this will be the 32nd SIFF I’ve attended (in one form or the other). As (an alleged) film critic, I have been covering SIFF for Hullabaloo now for 18 years (since 2007), but as always, the looming question is – where to begin? I’ve found the trick to navigating festivals is developing a 6th sense for films in your wheelhouse (so I embrace my OCD and channel it like a cinematic dowser).
Let’s dive in!
This years Opening Night Gala selection is Thelma (USA). Described as an action comedy, the film (directed by Josh Margolin) stars June Squibb, who will be presented with the 2024 Golden Space Needle Award for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema in a separate event on May 11th. Squibb has had a 70-year career on stage, TV and the big screen (she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the 2013 film Nebraska).
Politics, politics. I’m intrigued to see Bonjour, Switzerland (Switzerland) a “…socially conscious slapstick political comedy about multilingualism [in which] a Swiss referendum leaves the country with only one official language—French—much to the chagrin of the German- and Italian-speaking citizens.” The documentary The Battle for Laikipia (Kenya) looks at a long-standing “and increasingly deadly” battle over land rights in a region of Kenya between indigenous peoples and ranchers of European descent. And Before It Ends (Denmark) is a drama set near the end of WW2 about a Danish school principal facing a moral dilemma over civilian refugees who have been housed at his school by Nazi military directive.
Speaking of Nazis…Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? (France) offers a challenging reappraisal of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 WW2 drama, Lifeboat. Now for something completely different…Rainier: A Beer Odyssey (USA) is a behind-the-scenes look at the marvelously inventive (and frequently hilarious) Rainier Beer TV ad campaigns that ran through the 70s and 80s. I’m a sucker for nature docs, so I am hoping to get a peek at Songs of Earth (Norway), described as a “breathtaking and immersive nature documentary, and Norway’s official Oscar submission”, the film was co-exec produced by Wim Wenders and Liv Ullman.
Always with the drama: I’m pretty jazzed to see Close Your Eyes (Spain), which is the first film in 30 years from heralded director Victor Erice (Spirit of the Beehive). From another venerable international filmmaker: In Our Day (South Korea) is auteur Hong Sang-soo’s 30th feature, described as “two parallel stories thematically link together—an actress unsure of her future, and an aging poet unsure of his past.” The New Boy (Australia) features the ever-versatile Cate Blanchett as a nun in the Outback charged with schooling a young Aboriginal orphan who may harbor supernatural powers.
Come on Otto, let’s do some crimes: Scorched Earth (Germany) promises to be a “…tense, tight-lipped art-house thriller that recalls the work of Jean-Pierre Melville and Michael Mann, [in which] a criminal returns to Berlin for a big-time art heist, only for Murphy’s Law to take effect.” Right in my wheelhouse. Lies We Tell (Ireland) is described as a “…smart modern reworking of Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic novel Uncle Silas“, and The Extortion (Argentina) concerns an airline pilot with a potentially career-jeopardizing secret who becomes embroiled in a “…world of intrigue and corruption.” Fasten your seat-belts!
I always especially look forward to SIFF’s music-related fare. Here are several I’m keen on…the doc Luther: Never Too Much (USA) examines the life and career of the late great singer-songwriter Luther Vandross; Scala! (UK) takes a butcher’s at “…a repertory house of ill repute with enough nose-thumbing alternative programming, midnight madness, illicit pornography, and transgressive politics that it would make Margaret Thatcher’s head explode”, and Saturn Return (Spain) is a biopic about Granada indie music group Los Planetas.
Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll be plowing through the catalog and sharing reviews with you beginning next Saturday. In the meantime, visit the SIFF site for full details on the films, event screenings, special guests, panel discussions and more.
Either Ted Cruz is so assured of winning that he believes he has the room to try to present himself as a human being or he’s seeing something in his polling that has him nervous. Whatever it is, it isn’t going to work:
There are two sides to Ted Cruz, the Republican senator says.
The self-described conservative warrior has opposed most big compromise legislation. He voted against the infrastructure law, the Chips Act and the recent Ukraine-Israel aid package. He has also opposed many of President Biden’s nominees, including almost all of his cabinet picks and his choice for the Supreme Court.
On his popular podcast, he regularly rips into Democrats, particularly on immigration issues and Israel. His latest book was called “Unwoke,” which charges that the Democratic Party is “controlled by Cultural Marxists.”
Yet here in Cypress, over sub sandwiches and cookies in a community clubhouse northwest of Houston, Cruz is rolling out a softer, bipartisan side to try to appeal to independents and Democrats as he faces a competitive challenger this fall in the red-leaning state. His so-called Cul-de-Sac Tour, with 10 planned stops in suburban communities, aims to recast his image as a dealmaking lawmaker who wants to bring jobs to Texas. His campaign even shot ads featuring “Democrats for Cruz.”
“I try very much to have my focus be on the policies and substance rather than going into the gutter with personal or character attacks,” Cruz said in an interview after the event.
There isn’t a Democrat on Planet Earth who doesn’t know what a despicable, right wing demagogue this creepy liar really is. In fact, you don’t even have to have any information about his politics to know it. He just oozes it. Even the MAGA cultists hold their noses to vote for him.
As Matthew Yglesias pointed out this probably isn’t being shared on Tik Tok but young people should know about it if they care about the plight of oppressed people around the world:
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton writes in his book that Trump encouraged the Chinese dictator to continue building concentration camps used to detain millions of Uighur Muslims:
“At the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.”
I feel pretty confident that Trump will be much, much worse on every level than the current administration. But it appears people have forgotten how bad he was and aren’t aware of how bad he’s planning to be.
As for the Uighur camps, Trump seems to be taking the idea and running with it. He’s open about rounding up millions of immigrants. And frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to be just undocumented workers. Here he was last week:
Trump says that he’ll implement a religious test for immigrants if he is elected: “If you don’t like our religion…then we don’t want you in our country.” pic.twitter.com/ddo5MuUd8m
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) May 3, 2024
The NY Times writes today that young voters don’t know anything before Trump and they think he’s normal.
Mr. Trump’s victory, to supporters and detractors alike, represented a profound break with politics as usual in the United States. People who voted against him feared he would turn the American presidency upside down. People who voted for him hoped he would.
But for the youngest Trump supporters participating in their first presidential election this year, Mr. Trump represents something that is all but impossible for older voters to imagine: the normal politics of their childhood.
Charlie Meyer, a 17-year-old high school student who volunteered at a Trump rally in Green Bay, Wis., last month, said he was first drawn to Mr. Trump at 13, during his presidency, because of his views on abortion, which resonated with his own as a Christian.
He has little memory of pre-Trump politics. “I was too young at the time,” he said.
Although President Biden continues to lead among 18- to 29-year-olds in most polls, several surveys in recent weeks show Mr. Trump performing much more strongly with young voters than he was at the same point in 2020, and more strongly than he was against Mrs. Clinton at the same point in 2016.
In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, from last month, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden were neck and neck among 18- to 29-year-olds. In the latest Harvard Youth Poll, conducted in March by the Harvard Institute of Politics, Mr. Trump trails by eight points.
Biden won that cohort by 24 points in 2020.
I suspect that most of these young folks are the children of conservatives who love Trump. But quite a few have been told on social media that Biden is worse and they simply don’t know what Trump really is because they haven’t known a time when he wasn’t just another politician. Someone should tell them.
That cover is a perfect illustration of Trumpian projection. The Enquirer claimed that it was Hillary Clinton who was doing exactly what he and David Pecker had conspired to do.
“Explosive story that will change the election” “Bribe reporters to bury the truth” “Pay hush money to hookers” “Hide her sleazy affairs”
It’s never a bad idea to assume that anything Trump accuses his opponent of doing is what he’s doing himself.
