Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Unicorns and frogs

We had our assortment of inflatables at Asheville’s (pop 95k) No Kings rally on Saturday, attendance estimated at 8,000. Ana Marie Cox saw a bevy(?) of unicorns in New Braunfels, Texas (pop. 90k). There was no protest there back in June, but on Saturday “there were over a hundred people (as well as amphibians, reptiles, and cryptids) lining a long city block.”

She found regretful Republicans among the mix of normies she found:

Others have pointed out the long tradition of silly costumes and street theater in radical movements; there is a direct line between the Dada stunts of the situationists, pranks by the Yes Men and “zaps” by the Lavender Menace, culture hacking in the No Logo movement, and that original punk frog in Portland. There are forests of Ph.D. papers about how surrealism undermines the very structures of capitalism itself.

But around the country, we’re seeing a parallel evolution: whimsy as the logical response to MAGA’s nonsense. What “trans ideology”? Eating the dogs, eating the cats? You’re talking about vicious immigrants, but you curb-stomped the ice cream man. “I don’t even know what antifa is.”

For many of the new protesters, the cleanest response to such wild paranoia (even if those in power use it to justify horrible violence) isn’t a manifesto—it’s a snort-laugh and a unicorn horn. It’s “I don’t know what that means, but I do know you’re full of shit.” This is purposeful illogic in the exurban wild, no less revolutionary for lack of intellectual pedigree. True, the semi-pro situationists will likely never become card-carrying Communists. No room in the wallet, what with the Kohl’s card and the Costco membership.

The event had the feeling of a band fundraiser or church picnic. Passing drivers honked, flashed thumbs-up and pumped fists. And an occasional middle finger. (I got flipped off by a Ferrari while propoting our event from an overpass on Friday. NEXT LEVEL ACHIEVED.)

What Cox found I found. I spent much of our event marveling that I saw so few of the usual suspects at the protest. In part because of the size (about 8,000). But in part because, as Cox found, “it’s the folks in cargo shorts and polos who make the unicorns stand out.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Autum Kirgan (@autumkirgan)

I didn’t have an inflatable. But this rig (photo recycled from Oct. 2) had one woman doubled over with laughter and others howling and asking for photos. Laughter is good medicine and cathartic. Mock the MFers.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

A career GOP operative steps into it

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair

Miles Bruner has left the Republican Party after more than a decade in the pay of the campaign industrial complex. That system exists on both sides of our political duopoly.

Bruner, a minor cog in the Republican fundraising team, is particularly tardy in taking his leave. He exits far behind the Never Trumpers, behind former GOP consultant Tim Miller, author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell,” and behind former right-wing journalist Tina Nguyen, author of “The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (and How I Got Out).” Bruner nonetheless charts his path to the exit this morning for The Bulwark. If the link works for you, do yourself a favor and study it.

Bruner summarizes why he’s leaving up front:

For ten years, the GOP has waged an unrelenting war on our civic institutions, the separation of powers, the foundation of the rule of law, and the very nature of truth itself. While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms.

I’ve written before about how seductive it can be (on the Democratic side too) to be paid to do what you love:

However idealistic they may have started, many — and by no means all — whose ambitions tempt them to acclimate, to learn the swamp’s rhythms, to be seduced by power’s soothing burble, slowly become the kind of politicians people love to hate.

The process of learning to compartmentalize what you do from where your paycheck comes from Upton Sinclair described rather memorably in 1934. It is a caution people have still to heed.

From his beginnings in Orange County, Bruner thought Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was a joke until it wasn’t. He stayed on. He rationalized. He was replused by the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally and Trump’s response. Yet he stayed on. He took a professional fundraising job in D.C.

Then came the Trump insurrection of January 6, 2021. But the systems guardrails held, so he stayed on.

“I was treated to conventions in exotic locales and was invited to D.C. parties,” Bruner explains. “I got promoted and received a sizable pay raise. At a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager.”

He started a family. Or he and his wife tried. Their first pregnancy in 2023 failed. That’s when the GOP’s dragging the Supreme Court to the far right and the Dobbs decision finally hit home. When it hit home. Suddenly being pro-life wasn’t as black-and-white as he’d always believed:

To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked. It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur.

There is an empathy gap among conservatives. Many cannot or will not walk a mile in others’ shoes until forced into them. It is not like having a child murdered that makes one a lifelong gun control advocate, or having cancer shift one’s focus to cancer prevention for others. For many on the right, it is an ideology-driven blindness to others’ plights only overcome by personal experience.

And still Bruner stayed on. But he began looking for a way out. Today, finally, is the day. He’s not looking for absolution. Seeing masked, federal thugs and soldiers on our streets reminds him every day of the small part he’s played in bringing our country to this.

At every mile marker, I’ve rationalized, compartmentalized, and found every excuse to stay. I stayed past Trump’s migrants-are-‘rapists’ tirade. The January 6th insurrection wasn’t enough for me to leave. His lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic contributed to the deaths of over a million Americans, yet I still went into the office.

Wingnut welfare is seductive. The campaign industrial complex is seductive, even on the left.

Over the course of the last 20-plus years, I’ve had a couple of temporary, low-paying, part-time campaign jobs that I paused my better-paying engineering work to take on. I know idealistic young people working professionally on the Democratic side who may never lose themselves, just as Sen. Bernie Sanders never did. But some will.

As Bruner’s experience proves once again, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Trump: "Don't forget I can use the Insurrection Act. 50% of the presidents almost have used that. And that's unquestioned power." pic.twitter.com/2MBpQoo8Ij

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 19, 2025

No, 15 presidents have invoked the insurrection act, not 50%. But he hears what he wants to hear.

Here are the previous instances:

Some of those were questionable I’m sure. But there have been no riots, rebellions, looting, insurrections, insurgencies or any other kind of uprising since Trump took office the second time. HE’S MAKING IT ALL UP.

On the other hand, there was an actual insurrection during Trump’s first term but it was perpetrated by the president’s own supporters so naturally, he didn’t invoke it.

He’s created a crisis, sent in masked federal agents dressed like soldiers to terrorize cities and provoke violence so he can involve the insurrection act and fully militarize any Democratic stronghold that dares to resist his tyranny.

I hope the media does some homework on this but all I see and read just seems like more “crossfire” argument or bending over backwards to accommodate the MAGA extreme and give Trump credit for being emperor of the world. Millions of Americans took to the streets yesterday but I think it’s clear that most people in this country don’t yet grasp what’s at stake. Hopefully, that will change but it’s going to take constant, relentless effort to make that happen.

James Fallows noted a slight difference between that front page and this one:

More than 100,000 people showed up yesterday in New York City alone. They estimate 7 million around the country. The first gets the big A1 front page story. The second has a picture below the fold and a story on page A23.

This is a huge problem.

I highly recommend this piece by Chris Hayes in the same NY Times (gift link) that discusses how much the attention asymmetry is killing us. It’s a media problem, for sure. They are draw like flies to honey to all the provocations of the right and simply aren’t that interested in the earnest dissent from the left. Unless they commit violence or do something illegal they fail to see it as particularly newsworthy. The old “if it bleeds it leads” journalistic trope is very true. But it’s also a liberal/progressive problem.

An excerpt:

The old way is dying. Any campaign must have a theory and a plan for capturing the attention of the voters they need to win. Before the era of TV, campaigns used all kinds of strategies, like doing whistle-stop tours and training supporters to give speeches to local assembly halls on the candidate’s behalf. For much of the past four decades or so, the reach and power of broadcast TV solved this problem for campaigns.

The recipe was fairly straightforward for politicians seeking political office at the statewide and federal levels: raise a ton of money and then spend it on 15- or 30-second TV ads. There were and are other forms of advertising — radio ads, mailers and digital advertising, most prominently — but the main way you got the attention of your potential voters was through TV ads. This made sense; TV was the place that attracted the most attention from potential voters collected (particularly during, say, the prime local viewing hours of network evening news). If you had enough money to buy ads, you could reach the voters you wanted to reach, and the problem was simply getting enough money.

That world no longer exists. TV viewership has declined, and audiences have fractured. Money cannot buy attention as reliably or directly as it once did.

Therefore, it will not do to run the old playbook and hope for victory in this very new game.

He goes on to recommend several strategies and tactics the Democrats can adopt to start narrowing the attention gap. Most important is the idea that they have to start being willing to take chances and risk getting something wrong.

I get the reluctance to do that, I do. First of all, the press rarely gives the Democrats a break when they mess up and Democratic voters don’t have the same “who gives a damn” attitude that Republicans do. After all, shamelessness is their superpower. It gives them tremendous leverage. But you have to be willing to take risks to get something positive as well so Dems need to develop a thicker hide and be willing to endure negative news cycles which move much more quickly these days and leave a shallower mark than in the past.

And yes — look for charisma over fundraising prowess in candidate recruitment and flood the zone by going everywhere. The day of the dominance of TV ads is over. It’s time to look for different ways of getting attention and Hayes’ ideas are well worth thinking about.

This is a fresh way of looking at the Democrat vs MAGA conundrum and I think it’s important. As he points out, all the usual garment-rending about “the message” isn’t the problem. The message is actually much more popular than the right’s creepy 14 year-old trolling. He shows how that was true of the Harris Walz message in 2024 — the problem was that not enough people heard it.

You have to penetrate the overwhelming cacophony of noise in which we live and it’s not easy. But that’s central to turning things around. The Democratic Party needs to listen.

The great British actor has a podcast in which he answers questions and dispenses advice. it sounds fabulous. That advice above is spot on.

I have started dating a man who is very nice but does not share my politics. Any advice?

“You just have to get the fuck out of there. What are you thinking? He must be incredibly attractive-looking. I mean, what is it? Is he tall? Does he remind you of your father? There’s only two kinds of politics these days, and you can’t breathe the same air as the other kind.”

I hate to say it but … yeah.

An interesting interview in a Dutch periodical with two high level intelligence officials:

The Dutch intelligence agencies AIVD and MIVD have reduced their information sharing with their American partners, according to the heads of the Dutch agencies. Peter Reesink (MIVD): “It’s true that we sometimes stop sharing information.” Erik Akerboom (AIVD): “Sometimes you have to consider each case individually: can I still share this information or not?”

• This is the first time that the AIVD and MIVD have acknowledged that developments in the United States, where human rights and the rule of law are under pressure, are impacting the intelligence relationship. This marks a striking rupture in the decades-long relationship between the Dutch agencies and American intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA.
• In Europe, a leading group of Northern European agencies has emerged that collaborate more intensively and exchange intelligence. This includes the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavian agencies, France, and Poland. They also share raw data with each other.

Here’s that’ part of the interview:

While this is looming over Europe, the US is rapidly moving towards an autocracy. US President Donald Trump is deploying the military against his own people. Judges’ rulings are being ignored. The head of the NSA surveillance agency was fired for allegedly not being loyal enough.

Reesink: “To our great sorrow. We knew the man well.”

Is it still responsible to continue intensive intelligence sharing with the US at the same pace?

Reesink: “We visited the CIA and NSA a few months ago. Even with my own surprise: how are things going on the work floor? I was positively reassured. The ties are good and will remain good. That doesn’t change the fact that we regularly evaluate this collaboration.”

What is the conclusion, for example, when it comes to sharing intelligence about Russia, with the US uncertain about what it will do with it?

Reesink: “That’s being weighed.”

Are you more reluctant to share certain information?

Reesink: “I can’t comment on what that relationship is like now compared to before. But it’s true that we’re making that assessment and sometimes even not sharing things anymore.”

That’s a striking shift. What has been the most significant change?

Akerboom: “We don’t judge what we see politically, but we look at our experiences with the services. And we’re very alert to the politicization of our intelligence and to human rights violations.”

What does it mean in practice if there are risks in those areas?

Akerboom: “Sometimes you have to consider case by case: can I still share this information or not?”

Is it possible to share bulk data, such as intercepted telecom and internet traffic, containing details of Dutch citizens, with the US?

Akerboom: “We can’t say what we will or won’t share. But we can say that we’re more critical.”

More critical than a year ago?

Akerboom: “Yes.”

Just to be clear: does it still happen that raw data, including information from Dutch people, is sent to American services?

Reesink, hesitantly: “Phew.”

Akerboom: “I don’t think we can rule it out.”

Reesink: “I find it difficult to rule it out completely.”

Does that also have to do with the technology of these kinds of systems?

Reesink: “Yes, it’s very technical. We try to extract Dutch data, but we can’t always rule out complete success.”

Reesink: “For example. You can’t submit every country for verification in that system.”
Now that the United States is a less obvious ally, the Netherlands is looking more explicitly at cooperation with European services.

Wow, just wow.

Akerboom says that there has been “a huge escalation.” He speaks of a leading group of Northern European services, such as the British, Germans, Scandinavians, supplemented by the French and Polish, who exchange intelligence. “Raw data too.” A break with the past, when those relationships were more one-on-one. Due to the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat to Europe, multilateral relationships are starting to emerge. A similar development is visible in the military services, says Reesink.

You can’t blame them for not trusting us anymore. We are completely untrustworthy. They are turning elsewhere — and to each other. What choice do they have?

Trump thinks of Europe as a bunch of losers. But together they are as powerful as the U.S. and China. America is an idiotic nation for electing such a ridiculous person to the presidency and allowing him to destroy the most powerful alliance in history without any regard for what’s to replace it. His “policies,” such as they are, consist of paying protection and licking his boots. That’s it. And that is not a sustainable strategy in a nuclear world.

By the way, it’s particularly interesting that they are reluctant to share information about Russia with the U.S. Gosh, I wonder why…?

BARTIROMO: You said you wanted to develop Gaza. Do you have plans for that?

TRUMP: I liked it as, like, freedom place you call it. And we would get all of the people that live there into decent homes throughout the region. Egypt has a lot of land, Jordan has a lot of land. pic.twitter.com/6mpcFmIXdN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 19, 2025

So he’s back to the ethnic cleansing.

The thing is that Trump is commonly just going back in time to say things that are no longer even part of the conversation anymore and I think it’s because of the encroaching dementia. His memory is bad so he defaults to stuff he’s said in the past even though it’s no longer relevant. He’s always repeated himself so it’s hard to see it — but it’s different now.

On the other hand, it’s also very possible that this is actually still the plan. Before Egypt was saying “hell no” but it’s always possible that Trump has promised them Hawaii or nuclear submarines or something so you never know.

Either way, this is a grotesque idea — a crime against humanity — for which Trump thinks he should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile:

Israel on Sunday launched its heaviest wave of attacks on Gaza since a fragile cease-fire took hold a week ago and said it was suspending humanitarian aid to the territory after accusing Hamas of firing on its forces and violating the truce.

Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza on Sunday. Gaza’s health ministry initially reported 14 Palestinian deaths across Gaza on Sunday.

Both Israel and Hamas have now accused each other of violating the truce after repeated flare-ups of violence over the past three days. But both made clear on Sunday that they were still committed to maintaining the truce.

As Ron Filipkowski wrote on Bluesky:

We always get these huge Trump announcements with much media hype and fanfare with lots of big promises and assurances, effusively praising himself looking for awards & prizes, while experts say the details are scarce or nonexistent. Then a short time later we get the reality.

I don’t think we have any idea what reality in this situation (or, really any situation) is anymore. The hype and the lies and the propaganda are so thick it’s hard to see. But bombs and killing are real. And they’re still happening.

Trump posted the following on his Truth Social feed in response to the protests yesterday:

😂🤣😂👑✈️pic.twitter.com/3nUD6aOvhj

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) October 19, 2025

😂🤣😂pic.twitter.com/U7oqjAKym6

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) October 18, 2025

Happy King Trump day democrats!!👑🛻🌪️🤣pic.twitter.com/fw0mJL5cik

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) October 18, 2025

And yet:

Not a single mention of this across the Sunday shows as far as I could tell

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-19T15:35:55.930Z

NYT sanewashing extends, apparently, to sparing NYT readers from a description of Trump's literal shit.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T14:43:36.128Z

Some reactions:

So the president- wants to wear a gold crown as he- dumps feces on mothers holding babies because they are- protesting kings and fascists?OK. Just clarifying.

— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) 2025-10-19T02:04:44.682Z

Trump says he's got his golden palace, let the American people eat shit.

— Dean Baker (@deanbaker13.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T04:32:32.055Z

This is what the 25th Amendment is for.

— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T05:42:11.425Z

The most honest thing he’s ever posted. Admitting he’s shitting all over America.

— Dara (@daraveda.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T11:03:23.904Z

With Donald Trump? Bwahaha!

In my first post below, I mentioned The Washington Post “exclusive” about Marco Rubio. David Waldman above succinctly summarizes the metamessage.

Betrayal is the Trump administration’s one-word mission statement. First and foremost, his betrayal of the U.S. Constitution. Ask the people of D.C., Chicago, and Portland about their betrayal. Ask the Afghan translator snatched by ICE. Or the Iraqi Christian killed after being deported. Or the hundreds of stiffed Trump Organization subcontractors. Because you still can.

An easy flow chart for you. Do you have a deal with Donald Trump? l l Yes No l l V VNo you don’t Correct

— David Waldman (@kagrox.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T13:32:21.422Z

In the days before the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, the president of that countrydemanded somethingfor himself: the return of nine MS-13 gang leaders in U.S. custody.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a March 13phone call with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, promised the request would be fulfilled, according to officials familiar with the conversation. But there was one obstacle: Some of the MS-13 members Bukele wanted were “informants” under the protection of the U.S. government, Rubio told him.

To deport them to El Salvador, Attorney General Pam Bondi would need to terminate the Justice Department’s arrangements with those men, Rubio said. He assured Bukele that Bondi would complete that process and Washington would hand over the MS-13 leaders.

The Post offers, “While the outlines of the quid pro quo have been public for months, the Trump administration’s willingness to renege on secret arrangements made with informants who had aided U.S. investigations has not been previously reported.”

“Who would ever trust the word of U.S. law enforcement or prosecutors again?” said Douglas Farah, a U.S. contractor who worked with the DOJ to take down MS-13.

I’ve been focused on how the Republican Party’s nationwide attacks on voting and gerrymandering systematically undermine the Article IV, Section 4 guarantee to each state “a Republican Form of Government“:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Perhaps we should be as focused on Section 1:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Watching for clues

In an attention economy and a war for attention, opponents of fascism are outgunned but not outnumbered. Indivisible and MoveOn estimate that 7 million people took to the streets for more than 2,700 No Kings rallies on Saturday in 50 states. Kudos to Indivisible, MoveOn and other groups that organized this huge event.

Strangely (or not so strangely), The New York Times places a couple of pictures below the fold on Page One and plops its coverage on Page 23. This after an estimated 100,000 filled the streets of Manhattan. The protests don’t even merit a photo on the landing page, just one line. The Washington Post print edition announces the protests with its top headline and photos. But its landing page places the story below an “exclusive” about Marco Rubio. Politico buries its coverage down the left sidebar and focuses on Trump’s attacks on “No Kings.” The Guardian did better.

Good luck finding coverage on Fox News. Although despite the administration’s preemptive efforts to brand protesters as violent, Fox reports, “there were no reports of violence or arrests at the afternoon rallies amid the ongoing government shutdown.” CNN notes that the protests were “largely peaceful,” but a closer look reveals that the few reported arrests on Saturday were not directly related to the rallies.

That’s not what they’ll hear from the man with the biggest megaphone (CNN):

President Donald Trump and his allies have spent weeks painstakingly trying to manufacture an image of an irredeemably violent American left…. The Trump team and its allies suggested that the rallies, which are likely to draw millions of people, will essentially be chock full of antifa, terrorist sympathizers and even terrorists themselves.

Still, even on one of the largest protest days in U.S. history, millions of Americans taking to the streets to protest “the government’s swift drift into authoritarianism” (signs I saw went straight to fascism) under Donald Trump is not the biggest news of the day. Even 7 million Americans in the streets does not wrest control of the nation’s biggest media outlets. Point being, the way this movement builds is for more people need to know about it and join it. That means finding ways to get attention. People must see that their neighbors involved, ordinary Americans like them. It will take more than one-off days of big protests. A nationwide strike will be necessary, but for that to happen, the movement must first be visible, building, and persistent.

Indivisible is working on that with a Tuesday evening What’s Next After No Kings? mass call.

For his part, the wannabe dictator (or his account) issued a series of AI “Truths” mocking the protests and playing up himself as king. False bravado?

I am curious how the famously thin-skinned Trump and his majordomo, Stephen Miller, will react in the wake of such massive public defiance. Authoritarians like these never back down. They double- and triple-down. Do that and the public pushback will intensify. It needs to. The irony is that the would-be king is helping.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense