Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Is Trump Fever breaking?

Politico on Friday announced that the Harris-Walz campaign has hired my friend Matt Hildreth of progressive Rural Organizing dot org as the campaign’s National Rural Outreach Director. Hildreth’s group announced it formally in a tweet shortly thereafter.

Politico:

Hiring Hildreth, whose grassroots organization is already knocking doors for Harris and Democratic candidates across the country this fall, signals the campaign is looking to seriously expand a resource-intensive ground game to reach rural voters who could swing the election.

The Harris-Walz team doesn’t expect the ticket to flip many rural counties. But some of Harris’ top advisers have argued that simply losing by slightly fewer percentage points in these areas could help carry her and down-ballot Democrats to victory. In recent memos, the campaign has argued “the key to decreasing margins in rural areas is to show up and compete everywhere — which is exactly what we’re doing across the country.”

Exactly right. That’s how Democrat Heath Shuler ousted eight-term, NC-11 Republican Rep. Charles Taylor in 2006. It’s easier and more economically efficient for statewide Democratic candidates to perform voter outreach where they can find “their” voters in bulk (in the cities).

The flaw in that strategy is in states (and districts) where red-county voters outnumber and outvote Democrat-leaning voters in urban, blue islands. Under the right conditions, it is possible for Democrats to eke out U.S. Senate wins in Georgia where half the voting population lives in Atlanta metro. But a third or so of Georgia’s rural counties had no functional Democratic committees the last time I looked. It’s hard to win where you don’t show up to play. Shortchanging rural counties can leave Democrats winning statewide races but losing local contests and facing Republican-dominated state legislatures.

Local organizers also note that the party has a solid opportunity to gain support in some rural communities, especially in pockets of Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona with younger voters and voters of color. The Biden-Harris administration and Democrats have poured billions in federal investments into rural communities, with Biden just this week touting new funding in a largely rural swing district in southwest Wisconsin.

At the end of her Friday interview with N.C. Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton, CNN’s Dana Bash invited her back to discuss efforts to bridge the rural-urban divide in North Carolina. One of Hildreth’s people e-introduced Clayton to me over three years ago, before she became the youngest state chair in the country and a media star. Clayton hails from rural Person County and has vowed her party will no longer neglect Democrats’ country cousins.

So for rural readers wherever you are who need a little bucking up, veteran North Carolina Democratic operative Thomas Mills’ road trip last weekend presents some hopeful contrasts with 2020:

This weekend, I took a drive through a rural Brunswick County precinct where Trump won by 50 points in 2020. I toured Varnumtown, Supply and two RV parks. Four years ago, virtually every yard sported a Trump sign and Trump flags proudly waved above dozens of motor homes in a muscular show of support. This year, I saw very few Trump yard signs and even fewer Trump flags. The difference is stark.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that almost every one of the people living in those houses would vote for Trump if they make it to the polls. I’m just not sure as many will get to the voting booth this year. The obvious enthusiasm of 2020 is gone. I drove one stretch of winding road past dozens of houses for more than five miles and one sad, outdated Trump-Pence sign was the only evidence of support for the former president. It feels like the fever has broken.

Mills offers statistics that may favor Democrats in N.C. this year. But what he’s seen here may have echoes in rural counties in your state. Hildreth will be working on it where you live. Clayton is on it here in N.C.

“We’re not leaving one voter behind.” @abreezeclayton discusses the ground game North Carolina Democrats are using to win elections as down ballot races in her state heat up. pic.twitter.com/8RLV7daSX1

— The Weekend on MSNBC (@TheWeekendMSNBC) September 7, 2024

Taxpayers could pay for striking Kennedy’s name

Elections staffs across North Carolina had prepared over 100,000 absentee ballots to go into the mail on Friday as the law requires. A lawsuit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put a halt to it:

The State Board of Elections has appealed Friday’s order by the NC Court of Appeals, which required election officials to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from 2024 general election ballots and print new ones. The appeal was filed with the NC Supreme Court Friday afternoon.

As the Supreme Court considers the appeal, State Board staff will work through the weekend to begin the process of coding new ballots without Kennedy’s name and providing proofs of the new ballots to county boards of elections for review. There are 2,348 different ballot styles statewide for the 2024 general election. More than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed before the order by the Court of Appeals.

The State Board instructed county Directors to hold and not destroy ballots already prepared until the matter is resolved.

CNN Dana Bash challenged Democrats’ state chair, Anderson Clayton, Friday afternoon, presenting the “political argument.” Would Democrats be arguing for Kennedy’s name to remain on the ballot if they did not feel his presence would hurt Donald Trump? In trying to paint the matter as partisan wrangling, Bash misses the point.

Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party @abreezeclayton joins @InsidePolitics to discuss the delays in the start of early voting in her state… and whether NC is in play for Democrats in 2024. pic.twitter.com/sggzV3GSz2

— Dana Bash (@DanaBashCNN) September 6, 2024

Kennedy fought to get on the ballot, as Clayton noted. (Yes, Democrats in multiple states fought that, including in North Carolina.) Kennedy having won recognition of his We The People party, the state reprinted voter registration forms by the hundreds of thousands to include that identification as a choice for his voters.*

But Kennedy delayed withdrawing from the presidential race until August 23. The North Carolina State Board of Elections denied his formal request on August 29 to have his name removed, stating, “Approximately 2 million ballots statewide have already been printed with Kennedy’s name on them, and the first ballots will be sent to absentee voters in eight days.”

This week Kennedy turned his denied late request into a legal demand.

If the GOP-dominated state Supreme Court rules for Kennedy, those 2,348 ballot styles will have to be reformatted, reproofed, reprinted, mailings re-prepared by staff, and voting machines recoded in 100 counties. Boards of election are scrambling over the weekend to tally the unplanned costs in manhours and material to local boards and county taxpayers across the state. It’s the first question voters asked our local board (Buncombe County). The delay could cost weeks and impact voters as well.

“As of late Thursday afternoon, county boards of elections had received 130,400 absentee ballot requests, including more than 12,300 requests from military and overseas voters,” the State Board said in a press statement. More than 2.9 million ballots had been printed before the Court of Appeals’ order on Friday, reports WCNC Charlotte.

North Carolina’s absentee ballots are the first in the nation to mail out, but Kennedy’s eleventh-hour legal demands may impact other states as well. Michigan, for one (The Guardian):

In Michigan, a state appellate court also ruled on Friday that Kennedy’s name as the Natural Law party’s candidate must be stricken from ballots. The Michigan secretary of state’s office said it would appeal to the state supreme court.

Kennedy has been fighting to remove his name from ballots in swing states ever since dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters after the endorsement, Kennedy said that his polling consistently showed he would “likely hand the election over to the Democrats” in battleground states where he was on the ballot.

Kennedy has also sued Wisconsin to have his name removed from ballots there.

Donald Trump is, of course, pleased with the delay (The Hill):

“And that sounds like a bad thing for him. It’s not, it’s actually a great thing,” Trump said Friday in remarks to leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte. “He’s an incredible team player.”

“Some people wouldn’t realize it, so rather than voting for us they vote for him, and that wouldn’t’ help us very much, would it?” Trump continued. “It means that all of those who love Bobby — and there’s a lot of them — and all that he stands for, especially regarding the health and well being of us, can vote for me now. So all of the Bobby people are going to vote for me.”

Kennedy’s presidential bid did not go as planned. Now he and Trump expect taxpayers to pay to cancel his vanity project no matter the public cost and inconvenience. That describes Republicans’ past efforts (and future plans) to throw sand in the gears of democracy across the U.S.

* Tom Fiedler of the Asheville Watchdog finds “In the eight weeks or so that [Kennedy’s] We The People party has been among the options for registering voters, the number of Buncombe County residents choosing to join is … 0. That’s zero. Zippo. None.”  

Baby Koala!

Trauma Season is here. ❤️‍🩹 At this time of year, admissions to the @AustraliaZoo Wildlife Hospital triple. Spring means wildlife are more active, and they often come into contact with cars and domestic pets. While these interactions often have a devastating outcome, our team of… pic.twitter.com/HkjRVHEEwL

— Wildlife Warriors (@wildwarriors) September 2, 2024

Meet Squeak! 🐨 This adorable little girl was attacked by a dog and her mum had no choice but to save herself. Thankfully, Squeak was raced to the @AustraliaZoo Wildlife Hospital and is in the best hands possible! 💞 pic.twitter.com/fIs3G7mdHG

— Wildlife Warriors (@wildwarriors) September 5, 2024

Yay!

Good news alert! 🚨
Squeak’s mum was found, and brought to us at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. This is the adorable moment the two were reunited. They’ll both stay with us until little Squeak is well enough to be released! 💚🐨 Be sure to turn your sound up to hear Squeak… pic.twitter.com/fvHAD6ysOg

— Wildlife Warriors (@wildwarriors) September 5, 2024

A few fun facts:

– Baby Koalas are known as ‘Joeys’. Scientists often refer to them using terms like ‘juveniles’, ‘pouch young’ and ‘back young’.

– Younger breeding females usually give birth to one Joey each year, depending on a range of factors. However, not all females in a wild population will breed each year. Some, especially older females, will produce offspring only every two or three years.–

– When the Joey is born, it’s only about 2 centimetres long, is blind and furless and its ears are not yet developed. On its amazing journey to the pouch, it relies on its well-developed senses of smell and touch, its strong forelimbs and claws, and an inborn sense of direction. Once in the pouch, it attaches itself to one of the two teats which swells in its mouth, preventing it from being dislodged from its source of food.

– The Joey stays in its mother’s pouch for about 6 or 7 months, drinking only milk. Before it can tolerate gumleaves, which are toxic for most mammals, the joey must feed on a substance called ‘pap’ which is a specialised form of the mother’s droppings that is soft and runny. This allows the mother to pass on to the joey special micro-organisms from her intestine which are necessary for it to be able to digest the gumleaves. It feeds on this for a period of up to a few weeks, just prior to it coming out of the pouch at about 6 or 7 months of age.

– After venturing out of the pouch, the Joey rides on its mother’s abdomen or back, although it continues to return to her pouch for milk until it is too big to fit inside. The joey leaves its mother’s home range between 1 and 3 years old, depending on when the mother has her next joey. You can adopt your own Joey here!

– Koalas are mostly nocturnal. Nocturnal animals are awake at night and asleep during the day. Koalas, however, sleep for part of the night and also sometimes move about in the daytime. They often sleep for up to 18-20 hours each day.

– An adult koala eats about 1/2 – 1 kilogram of leaves each night.

– There is a myth that Koalas sleep a lot because they ‘get drunk’ on gumleaves. Fortunately, this is not correct! Most of their time is spent sleeping because it requires a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy

– Each Koala’s ‘home’ is made up of several trees called HOME TREES. They visit these same trees regularly. The area covered by these trees is called the Koala’s HOME RANGE. Each Koala has its own home range, which overlaps those of other Koalas. Unless breeding, they don’t normally visit another Koalas home trees. The size of each home range depends upon a range of factors including the quality of the habitat and the sex, age and social position in the population of the Koala.

More here

Michelle Goldberg takes on the latest rad fad on the authoritarian right: Hitler apologia and holocaust denial. You knew it was coming, right? She is responding to (yet another) right wing “influencer” and alleged historian named Darryl Cooper and his embrace by none other than Tiucker Carlson.

Some on the right found Carlson’s turn toward Holocaust skepticism surprising. “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” Erick Erickson, the conservative radio host, wrote on X. But Carlson’s trajectory was entirely predictable. Nazi sympathy is the natural endpoint of a politics based on glib contrarianism, right-wing transgression and ethnic grievance. . . .

For parts of the contemporary right, however, the social consensuses undergirding liberalism are artificial and even tyrannical. After all, the “Matrix”-derived metaphor of being “red-pilled” implies a realization that all you’ve been told about the nature of reality is a lie, and thus everything is up for grabs. And once you discard all epistemological and moral guardrails, it’s easy to descend into barbarous nonsense.

Candace Owens, another anti-woke right-wing celebrity who has lately become Hitler-curious, has also come to question received wisdom about the shape of the earth. “I’m not a flat-earther,” she said in July. “I’m not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”

Obviously, not every red-pilled conservative ends up arguing, as Owens did, that Hitler gets a bad rap. But the weakening of the intellectual quarantine around Nazism — and the MAGA right’s fetish for ideas their enemies see as dangerous — makes it easier for influential conservatives to surrender to fascist impulses. When they do, they pay no penalty in political relevance, because there’s no conservative establishment capable of disciplining its ideologues.

Carlson has just embarked on a national tour with special guests at each stop. In addition to Alex Jones, he’s scheduled to appear with the vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr.

Whitewashing Hitler is an interesting move for a pro-Russia, pro-Putin acolyte like Carlson. Does he know anything about Russian history, specifically what went down between it and Nazi Germany? He might want to bone up a little bit on that.

On the other hand, for all I know Putin is now a Hitler apologist too and all that mass death and destruction is water under the bridge. It would be a bit surprising if so. Russians usually have pretty long memories. But maybe the allure of der Führer has him in its grip as well.

The Trump spawn are in over their heads as usual

It looks like the two oldest Trump boys are following the footsteps of their father the online media mogul whose stock will soon be worthless. They’re going to lose a lot of people a lot of money with this scam too:

Plans by former president Donald Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to launch a crypto startup have set off alarm bells among even his staunchest allies in the sector, according to a new report in Politico.

The two brothers have spent recent weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-be-launched, shrouded-in-secrecy cryptocurrency firm.

But a string of mishaps, including Trump family members getting hacked by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep connections to a blockchain firm that lost $2 million because of security shortfalls, has some arguing they should pack it up before they begin.

“This is a huge mistake,” Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer, told Politico. “It looks like Trump’s inner circle is just cashing in on his recent embrace of crypto in a kind of naive way, and frankly it looks like they’re burning a lot of the good will that’s been built with the industry so far.”

I don’t know about you but I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the Trump boys are scamming and being scammed because they have no idea what they’re doing. Just this week the social media accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump were apparently hacked by people purporting to be members of the “team” guiding suckers to a fake web site.

The Politico article has the whole story which is even dumber than it sounds. And the fact that they are doing this in the run up to their dad’s presidential election is frankly pretty stunning. Just as Trump’s incoherence and intellectual defects are treated as normal so too is the corruption and conflict of interest everywhere in the Trump family.

But Hunter Biden will probably have to do time.

Everyone’s been waiting for this so naturally it’s a dud:

The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan postponed his sentencing until after Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House.

In a ruling on Friday, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cited the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in” and rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26. He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.

“This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.”

Yes it does. But once again, Trump gets the benefit of being a criminal who is running for president in order to evade accountability for his crimes. What a sweet, sweet scam this is.

The courts are obviously not going to save us from him. Neither are the Republicans. It’s up to the voters to come out in big enough numbers to turn him back into just another con artist. The mere fact that it’s as close as it is should terrify us, not just because he might win but because so many of our fellow Americans want him to. The rot in our culture runs very deep.

Trump held another unhinged “press conference” (at which he took no questions) today:

Trump today: “I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”

Well.. Trump 2005 Access Hollywood: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

'This woman, whatever her name is" — Trump is now bringing up additional women who have accused him of sexual assault and detailing the accusations pic.twitter.com/aDwmJtuQvl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

He went on for an hour like that. My favorite part was when he trashed his own legal team (standing behind him) and got mad that they didn’t bring up “the dress” in the hearing today. Apparently, he didn’t understand that this was an appellate hearing and there would be no new evidence presented. (The dress was disallowed at his original trial.)

He was obviously very upset.

Here are some excerpts:

Trump suggests that a photo of him and E Jean Carroll together "could've been AI generated" (it is not AI generated) pic.twitter.com/VjIjx6YAsN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

(It was not AI generated)

Trump blatantly lies about what E Jean Carroll said during her interview with Anderson Cooper pic.twitter.com/1bmjL7dXDg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

Trump on E Jean Carroll: "Somebody just makes up a story probably out of Law & Order — I don't know, she made it up out of somewhere — but check out the Law & Order episode that we're talking about." pic.twitter.com/ZpUfXS4EcK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

Trump ends his trainwreck of a news conference: "It's a hoax. It's a scam, it's a political witch hunt. And some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Thank you very much, everybody." pic.twitter.com/WIktTEHYfh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

Aaaand like clockwork:

CNN promptly sanewashes Trump's absolutely bonkers news conference. They'd be better off taking Trump live than whitewashing him like this. pic.twitter.com/CuNUzgke5V

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

It seems like only yesterday that the elite media were extremely concerned that President Joe Biden had mistakenly referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico. In the course of an otherwise cogent discussion of foreign affairs, he’d made that mistake in passing but it caused a huge uproar and spawned yet another round of critical reporting about his age and mental capacities. No one in the press blew off the gaffe and the substance of his comments went virtually unreported.

That press conference came in the shadow of the Hur report, in which the Special Counsel had made a gratuitous comment about Biden being an elderly man with a bad memory. From that moment on almost every story about Joe Biden was framed in terms of his advanced age and the question of whether he was up to the job. The drumbeat continued for months until Biden’s disastrous debate performance validated their narrative and it continued until the day he withdrew from the race. No one in the media cut Joe Biden any slack for his performance.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been speaking nonsense and spouting gibberish on the campaign trail and the media is covering for him by pretending that his verbal incontinence actually makes sense or by ignoring it altogether. Yes, there’s been some mordant chuckling in the media over his bizarre comments about “the late great Hannibal Lecter” and his meandering tales about electric boats and shark attacks. Those stories are all delivered with a twinkling eye-roll as if to say “oh that wacky Trump, there he goes again” as if it’s just a funny little anecdote, apropos of nothing.

And it’s true that he’s always done this to some extent. His speeches and press conferences are surreal windows into his undisciplined, puerile mind. Despite his regular protestations that he’s “like, really smart” he communicates at a 4th grade level (the lowest level of any of the past 15 presidents going back to Hoover) and uses the same handful of words and phrases over and over again to cover for the fact that he never really has any idea what he’s talking about.

But he’s getting worse and the press is failing to properly report it. Over the past couple of weeks the problem has gotten more acute and there has been very little recognition of it. Because they’ve been normalizing his unfit intellectual and emotional characteristics for so long they’re just continuing to cover him as if they are perfectly ordinary even though he is rapidly deteriorating,

Trump appeared with Sean Hannity for a pre-taped “town hall” in which he wondered how anyone could be voting for Biden. He has repeatedly made that mistake, declaring that he’s running against his former rival instead of his current one. That might have been an understandable gaffe in the early days after Biden withdrew but this has now been going on for a couple of months. I think we know that if Biden had done this we would have had screaming headlines.

But it’s the truly demented and/or incoherent blather that’s going unremarked upon and there is no excuse for it. I already wrote about his stunning declaration at the Moms for Liberty event at which he said that kids are getting transgender surgeries in school and the parents don’t know anything about it. But in the write ups of the event in all the big papers it wasn’t even mentioned. Instead we got headlines like: Trump Questions Acceptance of Transgender People as He Courts His Base at Moms for Liberty Gathering or Can Moms for Liberty save Trump?

The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie smartly called this bizarre coverage (and the double standard) out in a TikTok video:

Once again @jbouie gives a fundamental lesson in journalism pic.twitter.com/bCA8xSII7F

— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) September 2, 2024

On Thursday Trump gave what was billed as an economic policy speech to the New York Economic Club. This was a room ostensibly filled with educated people who have a deep understanding of the way our economic system works. Trump attempted to deliver a rote teleprompter speech that derided Biden’s economy and discussed his plans to raise more tariffs, drill baby drill and lower more taxes. It could have been finished in 10 minutes. But Trump inevitably digressed to his usual meandering stump speech which he delivered in ever desperate tones to an audience that was more often silent than not.

But the memorable moment came when he answered a question about what specific legislation he planned to propose to deal with the crisis in child care by spewing an incoherent string of words that a sounded like a 4th grader giving a book report of a book he didn’t read. He clearly had no idea about child care and so he reverted to the only economic policy he’s ever known: tariffs, the cure-all for every economic ill.

Donald Trump’s answer on how he will make childcare more affordable: pic.twitter.com/Hwu7R5aIt6

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 5, 2024

Here is how the NY Times wrote that mess up:

Does that accurately describe Trump’s incomprehensible babble? I don’t think so but it certainly was nice of the NY Times to “interpret” his comments to mean that he “insist[ed] that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would take care of child care.” It’s very generous of them to help him out that way otherwise people might think that Trump had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and clearly has no economic “policy” other than tariffs (which he doesn’t understand either) even after having spent four years in the White House. Why, they might even conclude that he doesn’t have the mental capacity to be president. I guess that would be rude.

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote about this phenomenon which he calls “sane-washing” (coined, I believe, by Parker Molloy.) He speculates that the reason members of the media are unable or unwilling to characterize Trump as being unfit for the job is because they think calling Trump’s ignorance and irrationality what it is would require them to make a value judgement which interferes with their self-regard as unbiased, objective observers. If that’s the case, they are simply failing to do their jobs. As he writes:

Serial incoherence, lack of basic curiosity, pathological dishonesty, a tendency toward sadistic verbal abuses of many different kinds—all these things can also plainly be evaluated through the prism of whether they might impair someone from performing the job of president effectively. Journalists can say what they know to be true about Trump’s qualities on all these fronts.

They could but in all these years that Trump has been dominating the political culture they never have. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Meanwhile, here’s a recent headline about Vice President Kamala Harris that’s indicative of the coverage she’s been getting from the NY Times: Harris’s Early Campaign: Heavy on Buzz, Light on Policy inspiring a whole line of criticism about Harris’ grasp of the details of the job of president. Just last night, we had this from Alex Thompson at Axios: Harris abandons 2019 pledge to ban plastic straws.

Trump’s “policy” speech (talk about light!) at the NY Economic club should have been reported as a train wreck. But the media covered for him as they so often do. He has the whole press corps acting as his ghost writer, sanitizing his babble for the public. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t so lucky. They have to campaign and govern in a world where they are held to the standard that requires a president to be able to demonstrate his or her fitness for the presidency

Salon

They know nothing, nothing!

By now you’ve read that the Department of Justice has indicted two employees of Russia’s RT network for spending nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russian propaganda into the U.S. digital mindstream:

“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”

“Our approach to combating foreign malign influence is actor-driven, exposing the hidden hand of adversaries pulling strings of influence from behind the curtain,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences. The Department will not tolerate foreign efforts to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”

Russia paid those coopted “online commentators” (far-right podcasters) enormous sums for spewing Kremlin talking points.

According to the court documents, RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a state-controlled media outlet funded and directed by the Government of Russia. Over at least the past year, RT and its employees, including Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company (U.S. Company-1). In turn, U.S. Company-1 published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube. Since publicly launching in or about November 2023, U.S. Company-1 has posted nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone. Many of the videos posted by U.S. Company-1 contain commentary on events and issues in the U.S., such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy. While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, most are directed to the publicly stated goals of the Government of Russia and RT — to amplify domestic divisions in the United States. 

Divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, in particular.

CBS News fleshes out the identity of U.S. Company-1:

Though the company is not named in the indictment, prosecutors said that it describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” and features six commentators as its “talent.” Tenet Media uses the same phrase in its description on its website, and other details in the indictment align with the firm. Its website lists six right-wing personalities, including Dave Rubin, who has more than 2.4 million YouTube subscribers; Tim Pool, a podcast host with more than 1.3 million YouTube followers; and Benny Johnson, whose YouTube channel has nearly 2.4 million subscribers.

[…]

Records with the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office show that Tenet Media incorporated on Jan. 19, 2022, the same date of incorporation mentioned in the indictment, and is headquartered in Nashville. It was founded by Liam Donovan and his wife, Lauren Chen. The founders are referred to as Founder-1 and Founder-2 in the indictment and prosecutors said they jointly run the company.

Forbes offers profiles of the propagandists Russia allegedly funded. They claim not to have known who was paying them as much as $100,000 per week for creating Kremlin-friendly content.

Pool responded to the allegations on FKA Twitter. He’s an innocent victim:

FYI, this is Pool:

Johnson also claimed victimhood:

What time is it in Moscow?

The indictment offers this tidbit on Founder-2 on page 19 that suggests Tenet knew that “Eduard Grigoriann,” the investor Founder-1 represented as being Paris-based, was not, in fact, in Paris:

30. Founder-2 also used the Investor Discord Channel to, among other things, submit U.S. Company-1 ‘s invoices to Persona-I, and to press for payment of those invoices. For example, on or about September 11 , 2023, at approximately 8:07 p.m. Central Time, Founder-2 wrote in the Investor Discord Channel: “Today marks two weeks since I submitted the invoice for August. Any idea for the delay? We are signing the large contracts and need to be certain we will get the funding to pay these people.” Persona-I did not immediately respond. While awaiting a reply from Persona-I, Founder-I searched for the then-current time in Moscow. Specifically, at approximately 8:50 p.m. Central Time on or about September 11, 2023, Founder-I searched on Google: “time in Moscow.” The time was, in fact, approximately 4:50 a.m. in Moscow.

Here’s another tidbit from page 24:

a. On or about February 15, 2024, AFANASYEVA (as “Helena Shudra”) shared with U.S. Company-I a video of a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia. AF ANASYEV A posted the video in the Producer Discord Channel. Later that day, Producer-I privately messaged Founder-2 on Discord: “They want me to post this” – referencing the video that AF ANASYEVA had posted – but “it just feels like overt shilling.” Founder-2 replied that Founder-I “thinks we should put it out there.” Producer-I acquiesced, responding, “alright I’ll put it out tomorrow.”

Before signing on with Tenet, Commentator-1 (possibly Rubin) wanted some background on Eduard Grigoriann, the supposed Paris-based investor:

g. On or about April 21 , 2023 and again on or about April 24, 2023, Founder-1 performed Google searches for “Eduard Grigoriann” and for “[Bank-1] Eduard Grigoriann.” As of in or about August 2024, neither Google search returns any results for a person by that name, much less any webpages describing an “Eduard Grigoriann” as a finance professional affiliated with Bank-1.

What Commentator-1 eventually received was a fake bio (see page 13).

If an anonymous investor suddenly offered to invest in Hullabaloo at a loss of $100,000 per week (we take no advertising) to write what we’ve been writing daily, for free, for the last two decades, I’d be more suspicious about who it was and where the money was coming from and why. Maybe that’s just me.

Update: I meant to add a link to a post by Brian Klaas on the “Need for Chaos” voter, a unique personality trait researchers recently identified:

These individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone. Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.

As you might expect, this means that perceptions of a loss of status are really important. And if that’s true, then there will inevitably be a group that’s particularly worrisome, because they feel a relative loss of status in recent decades. That group, they found, is white men.

Lord High Overseer of Gibberish

A friend owned an outdoor equipment store near me when I was in my 20s. When I stopped in to browse, Jim would smile and greet me like a stranger, saying mock-formally, “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”

Glancing through the glass counter at backpacking accessories on display, I replied with meandering nonsense. It was a running gag. 

“Yeah, I’m looking for one of those narrow, square, round things that’s kind of, you know, yellow with the, the purple pointed part that’s rounded on one side, with the, the, clippy thing that hooks onto the other part. You know. They’re about this long, but shorter, so they’ll nest inside if you have another one so you can put two of them together?”

Jim would grin and answer, “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, we just sold the last one.”

Among new employees looking on, heads would explode.

A large fraction of the American electorate wants to hire a president who talks like that for real. Behold. Donald Trump answers questions from the Economic Club of New York:

Q: What specific legislation will you commit to to make child care affordable?

Trump: Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka… But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about… pic.twitter.com/v8gqLUHS2v

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 5, 2024

Trump’s uncle worked at MIT, dontcha know. Genius is in his genes.

“My job is to analyze policy,” tweeted Catherine Rampell, economics opinion columnist for The Washington Post. “I can’t even find a complete sentence in this.”

President Ronald Reagan had his ball-turret gunner story and “We’re doing everything we can” episode. Reagan was 73 at the time. Trump is 78.

Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night blamed the rich people of the Economic Club of New York for inviting “the stupidest person who has ever spoke to them.” And he ridiculed “the stupidest rich people in New York” who applauded him for spouting gibberish.

Lawrence? If you’re reading this, a quip. The recommended response to the conservative taunt, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” is “If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?”

Chris Hayes assessed Trump bluntly.

"Donald Trump is 78 years old. If elected, he will be the oldest person to ever be sworn in as President of the United States. He is a man that is suffering from, I think, pretty obvious mental decline," says @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/c8SlFY7Vgd

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 6, 2024

“Obvious mental decline,” sure. But bullshit? Trump doesn’t need functional cognitive abilities to spout bullshit. All the career con man needs for that is muscle memory.

Trump was asked how his policies would affect the fiscal deficit, and answered by rambling on about the trade deficit, which is an entirely different thing. https://t.co/HbOAWup06M

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) September 6, 2024

What have I been saying about Trump plundering the treasury if handed the Oval Office again? Trump biographer Tim O’Brien has his number:

Translation: “I’d like to create a slush fund I can control from the Oval Office.” https://t.co/1qfeNFYUls

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) September 5, 2024

Trump still believes foreign trading partners will pay his tariffs, not American businesses and consumers. Remember, his uncle worked at MIT.