Those of us who were born and raised during the cold war (and in a popular culture still steeped in WWII iconography) probably all know the in our bones that it’s a bad idea to just break up the NATO alliance and just leave them on their own after depending on the US for 75 years, especially since Russia appears to be very thirsty at the moment.
It’s very possible this is going to happen under Trump and it is dangerous:
Donald Trump is considering a reduction in intelligence sharing with members of NATO, which depends on the U.S. for the type of information that has helped Ukraine fend off Russia, according to foreign officials informed of the plans.
Trump advisers have told allied countries the reduced intel sharing would be part of a broader plan to scale back U.S. support and cooperation with the 32-nation alliance, according to three European officials and a senior NATO official, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The officials said they learned about the proposal to curb intelligence-sharing during discussions with Trump advisers about broader plans to reduce U.S. involvement with NATO. The former president repeatedly questioned and sought to undercut the alliance during his first term in office.
The curtailment of intel could have dire security consequences, especially for Ukraine as it tries to repel the Russian invasion.
“It’s the American intelligence that helped convince a lot of NATO countries that Putin was resolved to invade Ukraine,” one European official said. “Some countries didn’t believe Russia had the capabilities to carry out a successful military campaign.”
Asked for comment, a spokesperson from the Trump campaign did not respond directly, instead referring to a statement on TruthSocial that the former president “will restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage.”
Trump isn’t required to say anything coherent about any of this, we know that. Only Democrats have to be conversant in the details of foreign policy and communicate about them clearly. Apparently, he’s immune from everything.
This is important stuff. I don’t know if people really realize what all this is adding up to: an arms race. If you can’t count on the US to defend under Article 5, and you have morons like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump refusing to help with weapons, that’s what you get. And it won’t just be conventional weapons.
Also this:
Folks, Trump will NOT be isolationist if he gets back into power. He is part of the autocratic network and his job within that network is to neutralize America as a deterrent to autocratic imperialism and lead the country into ruin. https://t.co/MP0ETHoVHz
Breaking exclusive: The US and Germany foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of the powerful German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, which has been producing shells and equipment for Ukraine. with @KatieBoLillis@fpleitgenCNNhttps://t.co/gKqRrQ8RSL
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says Biden’s refusal to step aside has made him “rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018…You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his… pic.twitter.com/gi7dgiF6Be
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says Biden’s refusal to step aside has made him “rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018…You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his family through this. And now, looking at his behavior now, in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change, in that everything’s always been about his ambition and his ambition comes first.”
Here’s Trump saying the Heritage Foundation was going to lay out his agenda for a second term:
Trump at the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, right as they began working on his Project 2025: “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do [in my second term]” pic.twitter.com/ZiS2hLe3jl
Several stories appeared yesterday about where and when Joe Biden’s war chest would go should he drop out of the presidential race as the slavering press hopes.
Days ago, The Wall Street Journal alleged that Biden could not transfer the entirety of the nearly $100 million to Kamala Harris until after he is his party’s official nominee. The DNC still plans to hold a virtual roll call vote for that purpose sometime between July 21 and August 7. The move was originally planned to work around a rule in Ohio (since rescinded) that required a party’s candidate there to be formalized before August 7.
The New York Times seems to confirm the WSJ report that were Biden “to be officially nominated” Harris might receive the funds seamlessly since her name is already on the ticket. The Times and Forbes also run down options for where else the money might go.
But there is a lot of gray area, reports USA Today.
“It’s not crystal clear because I’m not sure if the people who drafted the Federal Election Campaign Act anticipated this situation,” said Dan Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections & Government Program.
A matter of timing
Should Biden exit, the most logical alternate candidate is Harris. But the timing problem means opposing voices both in the press and in his own party would have at a minimum another 10 days to beat the war drums calling for his exit and leaving his party weakened for any replacement. Not to mention that pundits and the “Biden must go” faction will keep hammering the party for sitting on its hands doing nothing when doing something before making Biden the official candidate would imperil funds meant for the replacement candidate they keep demanding.
Congressional Democratic and party donors may be pushing for President Joe Biden to leave the 2024 race, but polls and reports from battleground states suggest that American voters aren’t abandoning him amid his post-debate crisis.
[…]
A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released Monday found that 85 percent of Democrats would vote for Biden in the 2024 election were held today, a four-point increase from the 81 percent who said the same in March.
The president did see a slight drop in support from voters who backed him in the last election. Of those, 78 percent said they would vote for him in the July poll. In March, Biden saw 79 percent support among his 2020 voters.
On the GOP side, Tim Alberta writes at The Atlantic, Trump campaign spokesman Chris LaCivita is trash-talking Biden. He’s just the guy they want to run against:
One of the two principals tasked with returning Trump to the White House, LaCivita had long conceived of the 2024 race as a contest that would be “extraordinarily visual”—namely, a contrast of strength versus weakness. Trump, whatever his countless liabilities as a candidate, would be cast as the dauntless and forceful alpha, while Biden would be painted as the pitiable old heel, less a bad guy than the butt of a very bad joke, America’s lovable but lethargic uncle who needed, at long last, to be put to bed.
As the likelihood of a Trump-versus-Biden rematch set in, the public responded to the two candidates precisely as LaCivita and his campaign co-manager, Susie Wiles, had hoped. The percentage of voters who felt that Biden, at 81, was too old for another term rose throughout 2023, even as the electorate’s concerns about Trump’s age, 78, remained relatively static. By the end of the primaries, the public’s attitude toward the two nominees had begun to harden: One was a liar, a scoundrel, and a crook—but the other one, the old one, was unfit to be president.
President Bill Clinton understood the risks of Democrats’ second-guessing themselves over 20 years ago: ”When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” That’s the risk here. Further weakening Biden with talk of replacing him exposes Democrats’ soft underbellies and empowers Trump.
Democrats use their heads. Republicans know in their guts. In Colbert Report fashion, they plan to feel the election at you. What scares me is how many Americans will keep buying what they’re selling.
MSNBC plays side-by-side of President Biden speaking at the NATO summit vs. Donald Trump's unhinged rally last night pic.twitter.com/PU7sCf4bG2
It’s astonishing to me that anyone could think this is preferable to even the decaying corpse of Joe Biden being propped up behind the resolute desk. But apparently, at least half the country will vote for him some of whom are saying they will do so because they think Biden is too old to do the job. But this guy is a batshit crazy, criminal, imbecile who is surrounded by fascist freaks. I’ll pick halting old guy with normal professional staff over that any day if that’s what’s on the menu.
We haven’t seen much of Donald Trump lately but he did poke his head up yesterday to speak at a little rally he held at his Doral golf resort, almost certainly paid for by his campaign and put directly into his pocket. (Too bad he’s stiffed so many of the other venues that have hosted him but that’s just his way.) It wasn’t anything special. He sounded as unhinged as usual, delivering his greatest hits to a hot and wilted but adoring Florida crowd.
He did admit that when he became president he didn’t even know what NATO was before he launched into his tiresome rant about making the alliance countries pay their dues (they don’t have dues) and reiterating that he told some unnamed foreign leader that he wouldn’t defend them against Russian aggression if they were “delinquent.”.
Trump on his speech to NATO: I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much pic.twitter.com/yO9lJZPv6i
Trump says he threatened to not support America’s NATO allies against Russia: That’s right, I will not protect you if Russia attacks pic.twitter.com/J89B24BR1d
That stale lie is standard boilerplate at his rallies and hasn’t changed since he first started saying it years ago. But it was especially crude of him to say it on the day the NATO meeting was taking place in Washington DC on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the alliance. He was speaking at roughly the same moment as President Biden, in fact. The contrast couldn’t be more stark:
Biden: An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans understand that NATO makes us all safer. The American people know that all the progress that has happened in the past 75 years has happened behind the shield of NATO… Americans know we’re stronger with our friends. pic.twitter.com/wL6ePWxg3E
Setting aside all the current drama over Biden’s candidacy, when it comes to his presidency there is simply no comparison between his performance on the world stage and Donald Trump. Trump was a dangerously ignorant embarrassment with a strange need to beg and scrape for approval from dictators and tyrants like some sad little flunky trying to impress the playground bully. Part of his suck-up performance was to browbeat America’s allies to impress the despots whose attention he craved. NATO was his favorite punching bag for obvious reasons. His idol Vladimir Putin is its sworn enemy.
Biden, on the other hand, very deftly brought NATO together to meet the most acute threat it’s faced since since WWII, with the invasion of Ukraine by Trump’s bosom pal, Putin. The most striking evidence of just how important this was is the fact that Sweden and Finland joined the alliance after 50 years of neutrality due to the dire threat from Russia. His leadership has been, by all accounts, reassuring and stabilizing, the exact opposite of what they felt during Trump’s administration and what they fear from another one.
Right now NATO allied countries are in the midst of a massive military buildup and it has nothing to do with Trump’s demands that they “pay their bills” despite Trump’s boasts that he is responsible for forcing them to do it. It’s because they rightfully fear that the US is no longer going to be a reliable ally should Trump win. He’s made it pretty clear that he thinks treaty obligations are for suckers and losers.
Trump has been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, the MAGA Manifesto and detailed plan for his second term. It’s ridiculous, of course. It’s being written by former Trump administration officials, most of whom are being mentioned for important roles in a second term. Nonetheless, Trump and his campaign managers are obviously worried about the fact that it’s so extreme that it would be radioactive if people were aware of it so they are pointing everyone to the RNC platform, which is so puerile it reads like a 5th grade book report.
When it comes to foreign policy, this is all it says:
Prevent World War Three, Restore Peace in Europe and in the Middle East, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country — all made in America.
That sounds just great. Unfortunately, how this is going to be accomplished is unknown. When asked, Trump simply says that if he were president nothing bad would have happened and if he’s re-elected everything will magically fix itself. His followers like to think it’s because all the “bad guys” will slink away with their tails between their legs when they see his huge hands once more on the tiller, but the truth is that he will no doubt give the green light for his dictator buddies to do anything they want.
There are people at Project 2025 thinking about how to change the direction of America’s foreign policy however, and it’s not much better. Generally speaking those writing on national security and foreign policy are concentrating on many of the same culture war issues that the domestic policy planners are obsessed with. They want to take a wrecking ball to all the institutions and replace the personnel, including the officer corps of the military, whom they claim have weakened the services with their “woke” attitudes. Virtually the entire State Department will also have to go because they are similarly seen as a bunch of wimpy liberals who don’t recognize the great strategic brilliance of Donald Trump. It recommends that all treaty negotiations halt immediately for re-evaluation by the president and it appears that they feel perfectly comfortable reneging on any agreements they don’t believe serve “the national interest” which will be defined by Trump, the man who sees the entire world as one big real estate con. They say, “the next conservative President has the opportunity to restructure the making and execution of U.S. defense and foreign policy and reset the nation’s role in the world.” Yikes.
One of the positive consequences to come out of the brutal conflagrations of the first part of the 20th century was the idea (only sporadically realized and often betrayed) that democracy and shared values among allies could prevent any more bloodbaths like the horrors of the two world wars. The various authoritarian movements that are growing throughout the world today present a serious challenge to those ideas and the consequence of the planet’s only superpower joining them isn’t just terrifying for those of us who live here. Much of the rest of the world is petrified at the prospect as well.
As NATO was preparing for the big meeting taking place in Washington, over the last two weeks we’ve seen Trump’s favorite European neo-fascist Viktor Orban of Hungary (a NATO member) travel to Moscow and then Beijing to meet with their respective autocratic leaders on a so-called “peace mission.” (Putin put an exclamation point on that one by bombing a children’s hospital in Kiev on the same day.) The Prime Minister of India, Nahendra Modi was in Russia with Russian president Vladimir Putin just this week and Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Xi of China recently as well. This is the club Donald Trump would like to join. These are his role models. There is no group of world leaders he admires more.
ROB SCHMITT (HOST): Do these donors really think that Kamala Harris is going to do better in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania than Joe Biden would? I mean, that’s — because it can’t be anybody else, right?
SEBASTIAN GORKA (GUEST): Rob, you’re being logical. Stop it. All right. She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored. Therefore, she’s got to be good. And at least her brain doesn’t literally freeze in mid-sentence.
That’s what we can expect from the right if Biden drops out. On the other hand, it’s so crude and disgusting it might galvanize the Democrats to come out and beat them. I wish I could be sure of that but I’m not sure of anything right now.
Machetes collected after the Rwandan genocide. Photo: James Nachtwey
Women across the U.S. learned in 2022 that they’d lost control of their bodies when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Remember when the prospective justices pledged fealty to stare decisis in their Senate confirmation hearings? Right? Their statements under oath were and are worthless. Because the ends that justify the means with this crowd.
Since Donald Trump lost the presidency in 2020, conservative reactionaries have dropped the coy act. They’re saying out loud what they plan to do to America — to you — when they regain control of the White House. SCOTUS just promised Trump king-like immunity for whatever crimes he commits under the color of official acts. He’s drooling.
The Lincoln Project is made up of former Republicans. They know their former allies. They created a primer on what’s ahead. Yes, they mean to scare you straight. Straight to the voting booth.
Donald Trump’s plan for America is no secret. Beating Trump this November is the only mission. The Lincoln Project invites you to take a peek at the terrible future Donald Trump would impose on America. pic.twitter.com/XyynK48FG6
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 8, 2024
John Yoo authored the infamous Bush administration memos that justified torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Torture wasn’t about the mythical ticking time-bomb scenario. It was about exacting revenge on suspected terrorists in the wake of the September 11 attacks. In the conservative Matrix, laws are bent to justify criminal acts, revenge, and retribution.
Jonathan Chait wrote recently about Yoo’s concern for norms and his vision for twisting the laws to exact Republican revenge on Democratic enemies:
John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024.
“Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo. “In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents.”
Like allegations of stolen elections and voter fraud, no evidence required. Republicans will lock up opponents for unspecified “crimes.”
Trump operatives say their plan is to jail and execute those who don’t support Trump if he wins, echoing Project 2025
These guys are not just cranks with a podcast, like Tim Pool (above). These guys are serious. “Some folks need killing”? Guess who?
Mark Robinson, GOP candidate for North Carolina Governor: “Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it… It's a matter of necessity” pic.twitter.com/QvXuJczQ9P
— National Conservatism (@NatConTalk) July 9, 2024
Conservative reactionaries are being egged on by Trump’s growing thirst for blood:
Trump’s suggestion that there should be a migrant fighting league is dehumanizing and part of a much larger pattern of racism, white supremacy, and nativism against Black and brown people. Channeling Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump has repeatedly described non-white migrants and refugees as “vermin” and “poison” in the blood of the nation. A migrant fight club is the logical next step in such beliefs.
Oh, but those people are not like me? Think again.
And women? Roe was just the beginning. They’re coming for birth control and more.
Had seen the headlines on softening gop platform language on abortion. Jesus, how did people fall for this? I thought it maybe said leave it to the states. No it goes full fetal personhood under 14th. Any news org that fell for this shld be drawn and quartered. Good grief.
Where the 2016 and 2020 Republican platforms called for a national abortion ban, demanded a constitutional amendment to establish due-process rights for embryos and fetuses and stated that “the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed,” the 2024 platform simply states the Republican Party’s belief that “the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied life or liberty without due process and that the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”
Read “fetal personhood,” couched euphemistically.
Lest I start quoting “First they came for,” recall, we here at Hullabaloo in 2019 got threatened with a defamation suit brought by Trump and the Trump Organization. We treated it as a joke. It’s a fun anecdote to tell at parties. (Like, join the club of people Trump’s threatened to sue.) But under Project 2025 in a second Trump administration, who knows how low down the food chain these fascists will go? Who have you pissed off?
So. Find your local Democrats and donate, volunteer, stat! Local Dems are useless and have no “game”? (Yup, that happens.) Try the local Indivisible or the League of Women Voters. How about Field Team 6? There are lots of ways to impact the trajectory of this election even in a solidly blue state.
My advice? Don’t wind up as political roadkill. Or actual kill.
Zelensky in Washington says “let’s be candid and frank”
“Everyone is waiting for November”: the Americans, the Europeans and the Russians. “The whole world is looking to November” pic.twitter.com/3HmtjqetjJ
