Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

He knows he no longer has to legitimately win anything

A disturbing number of Republican congressmen are onboard for the lunatic right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden will be on performance-enhancing drugs for tonight's debate. https://t.co/aX3nRRAoyE pic.twitter.com/kRMWAeWDv9

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) June 27, 2024

Propaganda uber alles:

Donald Trump in recent days gave speeches in Washington and Philadelphia and greeted supporters at a cheesesteak restaurant in Pennsylvania. He flew to New Orleans for a fundraiser Monday, and called in to a roundtable with Black leaders on Wednesday in Atlanta.

Ahead of what could be the most consequential political event of the cycle, Trump has continued campaigning and has eschewed intense debate preparations, even as Joe Biden has remained hidden away at Camp David to get ready.

That’s made easier by the fact that he’s already declared the debate is essentially rigged.

Trump and his team have worked to undermine, undercut and cast doubt on the historic debate before it’s started: They’ve questioned the fairness of CNN moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Trump and his allies have criticized the format of the debate. They’ve repeatedly asked President Joe Biden to take a drug test.

It’s a playbook Trump has followed for years, most notably ahead of the 2020 election and his criminal trial this spring in Manhattan. If Trump comes out the winner of the debate, his allies predict, then it will be in spite of the obstacles. If Trump stumbles, then he has already set up who and what to blame. It’s also a brand of grievance politics that has long animated Trump’s most fervent supporters and helped him, baselessly, explain away past political failures and legal setbacks.

Win-win for the sore loser. And his followers can’t get enough of it.

Trump’s Himmler:

Here’s our future Secretary Of State:

The whining and crying continues: “The most important person tonight is going to be the engineer who decides when microphones go on and off. I’d like to know who he or she is, how they voted .. This is not a debate.” pic.twitter.com/58q5kQi2VJ

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 27, 2024

More from Vanity Fair:

A strong showing by Biden will neutralize Trump’s claims about his opponent’s cognitive decline.The Trump campaign knows this. That’s why, in recent days, Trump and his aides have been working overtime to mitigate the damage should Biden deliver a commanding performance similar to his fiery State of the Union address. The Trump campaign’s first tactic is the most Trumpian: Spread a nasty smear. At a Pennsylvania rally on June 22, Trump made the baseless claim that Biden will use drugs to get “jacked up” for the debate. Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told me that Biden’s State of the Union speech was “evidence” that Biden uses performance-enhancing drugs. “The Joe Biden who delivered the State of the Union is not the same Joe Biden the American people see every day. It’s clearly two different people. It’s literally Jekyll and Hyde,” Miller said. (Asked about Trump’s drug claims, a Biden campaign spokesperson said the former president is “resorting to desperate, obviously false lies.”)

Secondly, the Trump campaign is lowering the bar by playing the media’s victim. If Biden wins on Thursday, Trump can say CNN rigged the debate in Biden’s favor, regardless of whatever millions of Americans see with their own eyes. “It’s a three-on-one dynamic with Biden, [Jake] Tapper and [Dana] Bash,” Miller told me. “The structure makes it impossible for President Trump to get a fair shake,” Miller said. The Trump campaign will also say the media grades Biden on a curve. “The media has lowered the bar so much that if Biden can stand up for 90 minutes, he’ll be declared the winner,” Miller told me.

Trumpworld’s third move is to turn Biden’s serious debate preparation against him by highlighting that Trump is conspicuously not doing formal debate prep—a clear flex to show Trump isn’t worried about Biden. According to Miller, Biden is spending a week prepping at Camp David because the Biden campaign didn’t expect Trump to accept their offer to debate with a mainstream media moderator. “The Biden people didn’t want the debate to happen. The terms of the debate were so one-sided in their favor they didn’t think Trump would accept. But Trump called their bluff. That’s why Biden is freaking out and taking a week off to prepare,” Miller said.

Apparently, they don’t believe there’s a chance in hell of Trump just winning the debate on the merits. And they’re right about that. He’s a narcissistic imbecile. But these people do have a talent for influencing the media and indoctrinating their followers.

Rick Wilson counts ’em down

Rick Wilson via FKA Twitter:

For the debate tonight, not only for the spin before and after, but for every Trump utterance on stage, remember the Rules of MAGA:

Every accusation is a confession.

Every denial is a full confession of guilt.

Every claim of evil is projection.

Every boast of strength is an admission of failure.

Every fact is subject to Trump’s sole interpretation.

Every law is a conspiracy against Trump.

Every anecdote is pure fiction.

Every casual cruelty and crazed conspiracy leads deeper into more cruelty and conspiracy.

Every word is a lie, every lie is a promise of betrayal.

Every person or group Trump claims to stand for, he loathes.

Finally, Everything Trump Touches Dies.

That sums it up neatly. But ICYMI, I’d add this about MAGA, Christian nationalists, or financial or tech oligarchs, or all of the above (it’s a type):

They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Rules. Yeah rules ought to hold him.

So CNN believes it can keep Donald John Trump under control during tonight’s debate. They have rules. Rules will tame him. And no live audience to mug for. They’ll mute the candidates’ mics when their answer periods are up.

Slate’s Molly Olmstead wonders:

Will all those rules keep this exercise on the rails? CNN has said that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion” (emphasis mine).

But it remains to be seen what that means. If Trump begins stalking the stage menacingly or either candidate starts interrupting (or even yelling), will Tapper and Bash open up a trapdoor? Whip out a lasso or old-timey shepherd’s crook to yank the candidates offstage? Pull a fire alarm?

And there’s no plan for live fact-checking. How will any falsehoods be curtailed?

They won’t be. Trump is a firehose of falsehoods.

CNN CEO Chris Licht was fired a month after a town hall with Trump moderated by Kaitlan Collins last May became an “opportunity to spew lies, smear enemies, and insult the moderator.” No one (here) needs reminding that Trump lost the 2020 election yet incited a mob to storm the Capitol on his behalf. Rules are for suckers and always “rigged.”

“I also expect that CNN is going to rig it as much as possible and make it as favorable as they possibly can for President [Joe] Biden, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Team Trump is pre-spinning the debate every which way so Trump can claim victory whatever happens tonight. Heads he wins, tails Biden loses. They’re pre-spinning November as well.

Still, the big question of the night is: Will CNN be able to keep things civil? Cutting the mics will certainly help, but presumably, the moderators won’t be able to physically restrain Trump from, say, wandering up and talking into Biden’s microphone. Less dramatically, a candidate’s mic might still pick up another candidate’s shouting. Plus, the reality is, they’ll be in the same room. Trump yelling at Biden, calling him crooked or sleepy or accusing him of being on drugs, might prove distracting enough to derail the debate, even if viewers at home can’t hear it. CNN may have removed the unpredictability of a live studio audience, but it can’t remove the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

No flashbulbs, please. They upset the big gorilla.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Nate Silver is out with a new polling model that says Donald Trump has a 66% chance of winning and everyone on social media is having a fit.

If you come across that I would just suggest you remember this:

You’ll note that’s dated the day of the election. How’d that work out?

Just keep in mind that these close races, as they all are these days, are impossible to predict and data guys like Silver should stop with this nonsense. All it does is make people nervous and unhappy.

You have to watch this. It’s short:

WAIT, WHAT???

Is MTG telling Steve Bannon that President Biden, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash are planning to murder Donald Trump at tomorrow's CNN debate?

Holy sh*t. pic.twitter.com/fSZtbls280

— CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) June 26, 2024

Here’s Trump’s top adviser just five years ago:

"Q is anonymous, but he seems to be completely for the good. He seems to be totally on Trump's side … There's a once in a lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan worshiping pedophiles out." Marjorie Taylor Greene. Expel now.

pic.twitter.com/DMJAcfObZe

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) February 4, 2021

A global “cable” of satan worshiping pedophiles.

This is one of the most powerful people in the United States.

As a proud conservative, I’ve always put America’s Democracy and our Constitution above all else.  

And today, as a proud conservative, I am endorsing @JoeBiden for reelection! pic.twitter.com/57GYrWsX5w

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 26, 2024

More Republicans should do that.

Trump is “The most complainey-est, bellyaching-est, he was POTUS for four years, the most powerful man in the world and yet he the VICTIM of EVERY plot everywhere?! Everybody is out to get him he can’t defend himself?!”

Many Republicans don’t want this weakness in our party. pic.twitter.com/Aiurwv1bwv

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) June 26, 2024

That’s what I’m talking about. There must be some Indies and moderate GOPers who are getting tired of Trump’s whiny, sore-loserism. They can’t all have Fox News Brain Rot. Can they?

Here’s another one:

Fmr. GOP Lt. Gov. Duncan: Lies and conspiracies were spread by Donald Trump and his allies that the election was rigged. Then January 6 happened and that is a huge part of why I am here today. I'm looking at this election as an American who cares more about the future of my… pic.twitter.com/evyJ9nSN8T

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) June 26, 2024

Here’s Dan Pfeiffer with a super-interesting newsletter about the Biden team’s message.

[T]he concept of a “message box” … is an exercise every campaign should do at the outset. It’s a simple quadrant filled out to understand the message your campaign and your opponent’s campaign will communicate.

While a little lost to time, a message box is still the fundamental building block of a successful campaign strategy. The best campaigns run every ad, tweet, speech, and statement through this filter to ensure they advance their message and undermine their opponent’s.

For nearly a decade of running against Trump, Democrats have struggled with the lower left quadrant. We never really settled on a consistent argument about Trump. One of my maxims for politics (and life) is that the only thing worse than a wrong decision is no decision at all. That was the collective error our party made when it came to our anti-Trump message. We never picked one.

He goes into the fact that Trump is notoriously difficult to define because he’s just such an asshole (my word not his) on every level. As he says, “it’s like ordering dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with their War and Peace-sized menu. Is he a crook, a clown, a dictator, an asshole, an idiot, a racist, or a Russian sleeper agent? All of these have elements of truth, but they also conflict. Trump has unpopular policies, committed crimes, overturned Roe, tried to overthrow an election, and says and does incredibly crazy things all of the time. Connecting those in a coherent, compelling, believable way is a challenge.”

But the Biden campaign has found the way to do it and Pfeiffer thinks it’s excellent:

They settled on an essential truth that is obvious to everyone who has ever seen or heard Donald Trump — he only cares about himself.

Trump the Selfish Narcissist

Referring to the ad, one Biden adviser told the Washington Post:

It is about why he is a felon. He doesn’t care about the harm that he causes as long as he serves himself.

Pfeiffer writes:

I think it works for several reasons. First, the best messages are the true ones — and Donald Trump putting his interests first is true to all but the willfully blind. Trump is a classic grievance politician in the mold of George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. But with Trump, more often than not, the grievances are personal. The Deep State is after him; the press is unfair to him; the courtroom is too hot; etc. If elected, Trump has pledged to go on a revenge tour against the people who wronged HIM. It’s always about Trump.

Second, it connects Trump’s personal foibles with his policy agenda. Yesterday, the Biden Campaign released another ad that shows how you can use the
”Trump only cares about himself” frame to explain his economic policies.

Here’s the difference: Donald Trump is only out for himself.

I’m fighting for your family. Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/16wSuxt2HE

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 25, 2024

He’ll always choose himself. Always. The mere fact that he chose to go ahead and run for president in the midst of all these legal problems and the history of January 6th hanging over his head is a perfect example. Anyone who gave a damn about this country would have laid out rather than choosing to put the nation through all this.

Finally, I will bring this back to the message box exercise for a second. The best contrast messages are the inverse of positive messages. In other words, you want to exploit your opponent’s weakness while amplifying your strength.

Joe Biden is not perfect, but he is a decent, empathetic man more interested in helping others than himself. I saw this up close for years. Biden’s empathy — even in the face of immense personal tragedy — is his political superpower.

I totally agree. Trump’s silly “Crooked Joe” nickname and his endless attempts to paint him as a criminal mastermind are ridiculous and they don’t work. He is a nasty, mean, aggressively hostile piece of work and the contrast with Biden’s innate decency is glaring.

I think this message is good too. It encompasses all the things I loathe about the Trump so I’m sure I’m biased. His narcissism, his endless, overwhelming whining and crying about everything being rigged and unfair drives me up the wall.

Nothing matters to Trump except Trump. Some people apparently find that to be very appealing. But anyone on the fence wondering whether he should be back in the oval office tweeting his grievances all day should be reminded of just was a self-centered head case he really is.

The history of discrimination against gay people in our country — all countries, actually — is absolutely shameful. Biden took a step to rectify one of those past wrongs at long last:

Joe Biden has moved to correct a “great injustice” by pardoning thousands of US veterans convicted over six decades under a military law that banned gay sex.

The presidential proclamation, which comes during Pride month and an election year, allows LGBTQ+ service members convicted of crimes based solely on their sexual orientation to apply for a certificate of pardon that will help them receive withheld benefits.

“Today, I am righting an historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves,” Biden said in a statement.

“Despite their courage and great sacrifice, thousands of LGBTQ+ service members were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Some of these patriotic Americans were subject to court-martial, and have carried the burden of this great injustice for decades.”

The president said the step was about “dignity” and “decency”, and ensuring the military’s culture reflects that of America.

It grants clemency to service members convicted under Uniform Code of Military Justice article 125 – which criminalised sodomy, including between consenting adults – between 1951 and 2013, when it was rewritten by Congress.

That includes victims of the 1950s “lavender scare”, a witch-hunt in which many LGBTQ+ people employed by the federal government were viewed as security risks amid fears their sexual orientation made them vulnerable to blackmail. Thousands were investigated and fired or denied employment.

On a call with reporters previewing the announcement, a senior administration official said: “If you think about the historical periods where LGBTQ+ individuals were purged from the federal government more generally, in the parallel military realm that was also occurring during the lavender scare, and so the convictions from those eras are indeed covered by this proclamation.”

Biden issued a separate proclamation last year marking the 70th anniversary of the lavender scare. It described a “shameful chapter” in the nation’s history in which 5,000 to 10,000 LGBTQ+ federal employees were investigated and interrogated, and lost their jobs “simply because of who they were and whom they loved”.

Trump pardoned all of his cronies but he didn’t do this. Of course he didn’t. His evangelical base would definitely not like it and it wouldn’t do Trump any good so why bother?

Media Matters writes “We found 144 articles focused on either or both Biden’s and Trump’s ages or mental acuities in the period studied, with 67% focused just on Biden’s age or mental acuity and only 7% on just Trump’s.”

And yes, people aren’t reading the papers much these days but that’s where social media “influencers” get their news and TV journalists take their cues. It’s not like Tik Tok stars are doing their own reporting.

One of the more unusual side stories in this presidential campaign cycle is a renewed look at Donald Trump’s pre-presidential years as a Reality TV star and it offers some new insights into how he has transformed our politics into a spectacle we couldn’t have imagined just a decade ago.. The publication of new book “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass” by co-editor in chief of the Hollywood Reporter, Ramin Setoodeh offers a unique perspective on Trump’s post White House years and a long article in Slate by a former Apprentice producer named Bill Pruitt gives an inside look at the phoniness of reality television and how it perfectly fit Trump’s already well-developed phony persona.

It’s amazing that we are still trying to figure out what really makes this strange man tick but I think that era of his life illuminates one of the most mystifying aspects of his appeal. How is he able to convince tens of millions of people to believe him when all the evidence and facts prove otherwise? How does he successfully create an alternate reality for these people and in the process change ours as well?

Trump has always been a braggart and a bullshitter, we know that. You can watch videos from decades ago and he’s boasting and exaggerating about his wealth and success as always. He had books ghostwritten for him extolling his business acumen and he encouraged the tabloids to portray him as a wealthy playboy, the image he cultivated for decades despite being married for most of his adult life. He was a self-promoter desperate to be a celebrity.

The Trump name was pretty well-known (since he plastered it on everything in sight) and his press game was good enough that he achieved a sort of c-list level of fame. But it wasn’t until The Apprentice that he became a legitimate TV star. Suddenly he had fans all over the country who believed the character they created for the show was the real him.

Pruitt’s story tells just how fake that character really was. We all know by this time that his business success was largely due to the vast inheritance he got from his father and that most of his entrepreneurial attempts were failures. The fame he received from The Apprentice offered him the opportunity to create a celebrity brand which led to all those consumer goods like Trump steaks, ties, water, perfume etc. It was supposedly a “luxury” brand but they were marketed to his fan base of middle and working class reality show fans, the same people who became his political base.

The producers soon found that they wouldn’t be able to use Trump’s own offices to do the show because they were scruffy and run down. So they created a “board room” in one of the empty spaces in Trump Tower as well as the living quarters for the contestants while they were filming. They covered up all the racism and misogyny and never let that audience know how often he stiffed his contractors or how many of his businesses went belly-up. They created the “business genius” image of Donald Trump and somewhere along the line he learned that he could now lie with impunity because when you’re a star they let you do it (among other things.)

Sehtoodah’s book begins after Trump has left the White House and is reminiscing about his glory days as a TV star. He was down in the dumps and it seemed to perk him up to talk about his knowledge of how show business really works. Trump told him, “It’s all about one thing: ratings. If you have ratings, you can be the meanest, most horrible human being in the world.” (It reminded me of an anecdote from Dr. Anthony Fauci in his book “On Call,” when during the COVID pandemic he called Fauci into the office to brag about the ratings his crazy press conferences were getting.) That’s what it’s all about — ratings, poll numbers, Truth Social follwers. It’s all a measure of his fame and celebrity power.

According to Sehtoodah, Trump showed signs of short term memory loss, failing to recall that he’d spent several hours talking to him just a couple of month before and he talked about “dealing with Afghanistan” as if he were still president. He also said that Joan Rivers told him she voted for him even though she died two years before the election. But what’s really interesting is the extent to which reality TV stardom seems to have deeply informed his approach to politics.

Reality TV is essentially a lie. It maintains the pretense of authentic documentary filming of real life but it is actually a phony, manipulated narrative that tells the story the producers want to tell. (It’s like professional wrestling, another Trump obsession.) Trump discovered that his fame and access to media allowed him to literally create a new reality for millions of people through the simple act of manipulating the narrative with lies and repeating it over and over again. I don’t know if he even realizes what’s real and what’s not. At this point his very survival is on the line.

This week we are all on tenterhooks waiting for the presidential debate on Thursday and Trump is doing his usual promotional teases to get those all-important ratings up. He’s quite talented at that. Recall that in 2016, he staged a press conference and planted women that Bill Clinton had allegedly had affairs with in the front row of the presidential debate as a stunt to rattle Clinton and get the press buzzing. This year he’s demanding President Biden take a drug test to prove he isn’t going to be “jacked up” on something. Some of that’s just trying to psych out the opponent and playing the expectations game. But really, he’s just setting up a scenario for the press and his fan base: could Joe Biden really be on drugs? Is he senile or is he “jacked up”? Will Trump be “tough and nasty” or will he be calm and disciplined? Stay tuned.

That’s all politics is to Donald Trump — another reality show in which he is the star. It’s the only way he can understand it. Unfortunately, his massive fame and power have managed to convince almost half the country that it’s an actual reality. The rest of us are desperately clinging to facts and truth, dismayed and unnerved that so many around us are susceptible to such an obvious fraud. If only it really was a TV show that we could just turn off or change the channel. Unfortunately, it’s all too real.

3-1 —- also used it in 2016. recycle

FOUR YEARS AGO: Trump sowed the seeds of election conspiracy theories in the first presidential debate.

"This is not going to end well," says Trump on Sept. 29, 2020. pic.twitter.com/Z9GBQ7J1lR

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) June 26, 2024

We’ve reached the point in the pre-debate cycle where everyone is asking “which Donald Trump is going to show up?” When he was in the White House it was “Trump became president today…”