I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts today. It’s been a couple of very long nights here in the LA area. I have friends who lost everything and having to cope with the ignorant sociopath who will soon be the most powerful man in the country again is almost too much to bear.
I’m outsourcing my commentary for the moment to California native son Brian Beutler:
- Donald Trump is a lying scumbag, who heads a degenerate family and political party.
- This has been true all along, but it comes into sharpest relief when he intentionally creates or exploits human misery—such as when a natural disaster strikes a state that didn’t vote for him. (I’ll get to the Los Angeles fires in a minute.)
- His patterns of repugnance are so tired and predictable, we can script them out in advance.
- If a disaster strikes a red part of a red state, it’s MAGA hands across America for the beleaguered victims.
- If a disaster strikes literally any other part of the country, he will spread lies about it and probably try to deny victims federal assistance.
- When Hurricane Helene flooded red Appalachia before the election, he spread lies about the FEMA response because the president was a Democrat. Misleading people in need of relief was worth it to him, so long as he could also mislead swing-state voters into thinking his opponent’s administration had failed.
- Most of his hurricane lies were about Appalachian North Carolina, because the state was in play, the victims leaned Republican, but the governor was a Democrat.
- If a disaster were to strike a blue city in a red state (Atlanta, say) he would praise the governor, attack the mayor, and spitefully attach strings to federal aid.
- When a fire incinerated a red town in California during his first presidency, he only approved federal aid after his advisers convinced him the victims were Trump supporters.
- Now, as heavily populated parts of greater Los Angeles burn, he and his loyalists and family members and inner circle are lying and cracking jokes about the fire departments, the mayor, the governor. When he becomes president in 11 days, he’s very likely to suspend federal support for the victims, or at least try. It’s repulsive.
- His sad apologists will try to spin this sociopathy into something defensible—he just wants the parks and forests to be better managed or some shit. They are also lying scum. They know California burns because it’s hot, dry, and windy—that’s it!—and that Trump’s punishing people for how they vote or who their political leaders happen to be.
- I asked this on Bluesky but will repeat for the newsletter audience: It’s been about 30 years since Republicans embarked on a strategy of buying up more and more media in order to slander Democrats and minorities as widely as possible. What’s the plan? Even if there’s no way to achieve parity with right-wing propaganda in the near-term, what’s the plan for persuading today’s casual observers that these liars are lying? Many Democrats in Washington think they’re super savvy for saying they’re eager to work with Trump on areas of overlapping interest. The people of California do not thank you. They need their leaders to say, “these people are lying scum, we can’t trust them and won’t work with them.” Or perhaps, “these people are lying scum, we’ll work with them because we have to, but you can’t trust a single thing they say in public.”
My exact words would be a bit more profane but that’s why I’m not a public official.