Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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: On day one I will restore and expand my Muslim ban pic.twitter.com/cnRc17ZBGk

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 1, 2024

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.

The last 4 hours of psychic breakdown:

Does he post anything else? Yes. He reported some of those 12 hours later. He also posts “polls” showing him beating Biden by 10 points, memes of him as Hercules, 007 and Jesus and the like, endorsements of fringe MAGA candidates and articles by right wingers saying Biden is senile. But these psychotic bleats are what he writes in his own words.

Yes, they are an illustration of a very disturbed mind. But they are also cult leader propaganda messages to his flock, emotional and relentlessly repetitive. I don’t know how many of them are actually reading this stuff but I think it penetrates their minds when you combine it with his rallies, the right wing media and their constant campaign fundraising messages. It’s insane. And it’s powerful.

I think this is yet another piece of evidence that people are just not paying attention —- to anything, apparently. I’m fairly shocked at the age breakdowns but the rest seems predictable under the circumstances. This is such an ugly situation.

Pray for a ceasefire and the toppling of Netanyahu. Nothing good can happen until that does.

Play it safe or go for broke?

Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in pursuit of “double hater” voters who dislike them, Axios reports. Whether this bloc stays home or turns out to vote this fall is a serious wildcard. Double haters “represent an extraordinarily broad range of views,” including Old-guard Republicans, Pro-Palestinians, and Techno-optimists (Elon Mush and fellow travelers).

Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “independent campaign has collected enough signatures to appear on at least three swing-state ballots, could win as much as 38% of the double hater vote, according to a Monmouth poll out this week.”

Axios:

Between the lines: Biden’s campaign believes the president has an advantage with the double haters, even as his unpopularity has soared amid questions about his age, illegal immigration and persistent inflation.

• The campaign is running ads explicitly targeting Haley voters, who continue to turn out as a sizable protest vote against Trump in GOP primaries nearly two months after Haley exited the race.
• Trump has done little to mend bridges with his former UN ambassador or other jilted allies, and has even mocked conservative critics like former Attorney General Bill Barr who decided to endorse him.
• Trump is instead counting on expanding his appeal elsewhere — including with an address to the Libertarian National Convention later this month and ads targeting disaffected Black voters.

What they’re saying: “If Trump’s extreme agenda of banning abortion nationwide and gutting Security Security wasn’t repellent enough to these voters, he is also doing nothing to reach them — a surefire losing strategy,” Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said in a statement.

Axios fails to mention independent voters (unaffiliateds, no party preference, etc.). My estimates here show a sizable group from hundreds of precincts where indys lean heavily blue but turn out far less than their country cousins out in red counties. Those are votes Democrats leave on the table. Many of them, too, are “a plague on both your houses” voters Democratic campaigns ignore at their peril. I give reasons why they do here:

Volunteers’ pitch to these untapped, young independents is not to evangelize for Democrats. Independents don’t like them. They don’t pay close attention to party politics. Independents “view themselves as proudly unmoored from any candidate or party.” Voting in 2024 has to be about them, about local/state issues to be decided in the election that may impact them or people they love. The ask is: Vote this fall for them.

Are there issues about which they care strongly? Do they know they’ll need a photo ID in 2024 because THOSE GUYS don’t want them voting? Offer nonpartisan information on the where, when, and how of casting their fall ballot. Will you exercise your freedom this fall? Save democracy? Make history?

In these precincts, we don’t care what indys’ support scores are. If they vote, Democrats score. Those are the odds.

Or Democrats can just play it safe.

Women’s reproductive freedom is on the ballot this fall, as is the environment and gun violence. What are the odds that Israel’s noxious conduct in Gaza will be the hot issue in two-to-four years, even as entire coastal communities disappear under swiftly rising seas and tornadoes grow in frequency and intensity, even as women die from complications from untreated, failed pregnancies in states where abortion is banned?

Whether or not double haters vote (young indys among them), the next president may appoint two to three new Supreme Court justices whose views may define the rest of their lives and the rest of this century. They may decide whether mass shootings continue and if women get to control their bodies. The next president, may decide whether the courts, the law, and personal freedoms even matter anymore.

Even if both your choices are distasteful, they are still your choices to make. Even abstaining is a choice for which any of us bear repsonsibility. Best make them good ones. And Democrats? Best not to play it safe.

MSNBC: The Biden campaign is out with a new ad calling out Donald Trump for wanting to allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and punish them if they get abortions. It's an effective ad. It's very powerful pic.twitter.com/sq9jcMR6Gv

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 3, 2024

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Hope Hicks testifies

It seems the news has already moved on from Hope Hicks, judging by the headlines. But there were gasps in the overflow room when she enterered the Manhattan courtoom Friday to testify under subpoena in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. When she briefly broke down on the stand and the judge called a pause, newsies scrambled to report the drama.

But ahead of that, Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine posted a thread with observations on Hicks worth noting:

Some things to know about the prosecution’s next witness, Hope Hicks: her relationship with the Trump family began in 2012 when she began doing PR for Ivanka from an outside firm. She joined the Trump Org. By the winter of 2014, when Donald Trump was preparing to run for the GOP nom, she was part of a tiny circle of his trusted advisers.

For most of the 2016 campaign, the staff was the Island of Misfit Toys. Hardly anyone had traditional political experience. At least half the staffers were possibly literally, clinically insane. Her general competence and normal-ness and likability made her an outlier.

She was good at managing the principal. She was good under pressure. And she maintained good relationships with the mainstream press. She entered the WH as a senior adviser and kept a small office within earshot of the Oval. Close enough that Trump would just yell out for her.

Unlike most who stayed in the Trump orbit through the administration, she never really succumbed to a bunker mentality. She never got stuck in their information bubble. She maintained connections to and perspective from the world outside MAGA. She was not an ideologue.

But for a long time she was inclined to make excuses for her boss. How else do you wake up and go to work each day and spend your working hours putting out the fires he seemed to have a pathological impulse to spark? For anyone who stayed, there was a lot of self deception.

Hope Hicks is not Fawn Hall. She was genuinely powerful and central to the Trump operation. But she’s also not John Dean. She was compelled to testify, just as she was compelled to take part in various hearings and investigations over the years.

She is a powerful witness for the prosecution because the public is so familiar with her image and the perception of her closeness to the former president, though they have not been close in years and have only spoken a few times in passing since 2021.

She has a long and near-photographic memory and she witnessed more than most, but anyone expecting her to offer some sort of operatic betrayal of her former boss will probably be disappointed. That’s not her style.

Aside from hearings or investigations, she has never spoken on the record. She will do what the prosecution requires & then she will return to private life. She does not want a book or cable contract. She does not seek forgiveness or understanding from the Trump-critical public.

Nuzzi profiled Hicks for GQ in 2016 and later for New York Magazine and provides links.

WATCH– Hope Hicks ‘drops a bomb’ during Trump trial: "Nail in the coffin moment." https://t.co/Mi0f1KpUtX

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) May 4, 2024

The Trump campaign grew frantic at the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016 and went immediately into damage-control mode that might have been pointless. “The tape was damaging. This was a crisis,” Hicks said. “I think [Trump] felt like it was pretty standard stuff for two guys chatting with each other,” she added.

Jurors received only a transcript.

Hicks had one response: “Deny, deny, deny.”

Hicks claimed not to have been privy to any of Trump’s hush-money efforts involving Trump affairs with former Playboy model Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels.

In testimony on Trump’s state of mind in 2018 when the Daniels payments became public, Hicks told the court, “I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and it would’ve been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks said.

It was a “mic-drop moment,” Greenberg told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, a “nail in the coffin moment” for Trump.

Regarding Cohen telling the New York Times he’d paid hush money to Stormy Daniels on his own, Hicks testified:

“I’d say that would be out of character for Michael,” Hicks responded. “I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person.”

Of Cohen, Hicks said on cross-examination:

“He liked to call himself a fixer, or ‘Mr. Fix it’ – and it was only because he first broke it that he was able to then fix it,” Hicks said, laughing.

Now we wait for Michael Cohen to testify. Mic-drop or not, Trump’s defense only needs one juror to vote to acquit. To be continued.

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Baby tiger time:

Sandstone, Minnesota – The Wildcat Sanctuary was called upon in late November 2020 to help two adult tigers and two elderly lions in Indiana after one of their caretakers passed away. Staff and volunteers made the 14-hour journey from Minnesota with vehicles, trailers and transport crates to rehome the cats and bring them back to the sanctuary. As they were loading the big cats from the hillside private breeding facility in a rugged, remote area of rural Indiana, they were stunned to find that tigress Winona, approximately 3-5 years old and missing her tail, had given birth to a cub just hours earlier. Sanctuary staff named the 4-pound male newborn Dash.

The Wildcat Sanctuary’s Founder Tammy Thies explained, “The facility had bred tiger cubs for years to be sold on the Internet or used for cub petting profit. We had been told tiger Winona had given birth only 5 months ago, so we were shocked to find a cub born just four hours earlier lying next to Winona, the umbilical cord still attached. Marcus, the male tiger housed with Winona and father of the cub, noticed the cub at the same time our staff did. For little Dash’s safety and wellbeing, we had to remove him from his mother.

“We were devastated to make that decision, but comforted to know Dash would never be sold into the cub petting trade or used to breed more captive tigers. Dash is the youngest big cat I have ever rehomed to our sanctuary.

He will live his entire life ‘wild at heart’ in a large, natural habitat at The Wildcat Sanctuary, where he will be loved and receive proper vet care, nutrition and enrichment.

He lives at the Wildcat Sanctuary today

President Joe Biden on Friday announced a final rule that will open up Obamacare plans to tens of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States as children but do not qualify for government health insurance because they lack legal status.

Federal health officials estimate that roughly 100,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will sign up for subsidized plans through the health insurance marketplace over the next year under the rule, which the Biden administration proposed last year.

The announcement comes as Biden continues to make health care and his defense of the Affordable Care Act a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

That’s Trump during the lunch break in his criminal trial today. His beautiful gal friday, Hope “Hopey” Hicks is testifying today and it’s very uncomfortable for him. Apparently, he can’t look at her and they didn’t make eye contact.

Of course you’ve heard about Noem’s disgusting tale about gleefully shooting her puppy. And it’s possible that you’ve heard that she claims in her book to have “stared down” Kim Jong Un, which is a blatant lie. And now here’s another one.

She says that Nikki Haley threatened her. Playbook reports:

The way Noem tells the story, in the summer of 2021 she “was hauling a trailer full of horses” when she got word that Haley wanted to talk.

Here’s how Noem recounts the conversation:

“‘Hi, Governor, this is Ambassador Nikki Haley, and I just wanted to introduce myself and have a conversation. I just wanted to let you know that I follow you quite a bit. I have heard quite a bit about you, and you are doing a good job there in South Dakota. I was thinking that maybe you might like a mentor, and maybe I could be someone who could do that for you. Because you’re a governor, you’ve gone through some challenging things that I did as well. I would be more than willing to be a mentor, because you’ve never been in this type of role before.’

“She went on to tell me about her life story, her résumé, and some of the challenges she faced in her legislature as governor and as ambassador to the United Nations reading daily talking points from the State Department. Once again, I recall, she offered to mentor me, as she was sure I was facing some decisions and situations I’d never seen before. …

“After what seemed to me a bit of an awkward pause, she added, ‘I … just … also want you to know one more thing … I’ve heard a lot of really good things about you. But I also want you to know that if I hear something bad … I will be sure to let you know.’

“There was a long pause.

“‘Um, well, thanks for that, Ambassador.’

“‘Let me be clear,’ she added. ‘I’ve heard many good things about you. But when I do hear bad things, I will make sure that you know. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. We will visit soon. Goodbye.’ Click.”

She says she took a few minutes and then called her assistant:

“‘I think I was just threatened by Nikki Haley?’

“‘What?!’

“‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure I was just threatened by Nikki Haley. It was clear that she wanted me to know that there was only room for one Republican woman in the spotlight. It was weird.’

“Unsurprisingly, I never received any calls or ‘mentoring’ from her, but the message was clear. I’m the alpha female here, and you should know your place. I actually felt a little sad for her.”

Playbook reports:

Contacted for comment, Haley spokesperson Chaney Denton was befuddled. She said the two women did talk, but — looking back at Haley’s calendar — found that it was in 2020, not 2021.

I had thought she had the best chance for the VP nod because she checked all the boxes. Then we found out that she had an affair with that miscreant Corey Lewandowski and she did that weird infomercial for her Texas dentist. Now this book. I don’t know that Trump absolutely won’t pick her anyway because he does what he wants but the consensus is that she’s toast. I hope so. This is a very weird person.

I have recently begun to think that Trump is leaning heavily toward her North Dakota neighboring Governor Doug Burgham because he’s made a very impressive show of Penceian sycophancy on television. We know how much Trump loves that. And it would actually be a smart move because they could bill themselves as the “billionaire businessmen” ticket coming to save America. That might appeal to those deluded cultists who still think Trump is a genius businessman.

I think Trump truly wanted to choose a woman but there just aren’t any good ones. Isn’t that always the problem?