I think Biden's stiff gait is a huge part of why people think he's too old, and I would guess 1% of voters know that he broke his foot in two places, leading to arthritis in his feet, on top of spinal arthritis that he already had. https://t.co/oAMWhnn9jr
I guess the Village 2.0 is circling the wagons round the NY Times and have decided to stick the shiv into Biden just to show the White House who’s boss. They’re going after the age thing again.
President Biden has introduced a change to his White House departure and return routine. Instead of walking across the South Lawn to and from Marine One by himself, he’s now often surrounded by aides.
Why it matters: With aides walking between Biden and journalists’ camera position outside the White House, the visual effect is to draw less attention to the 81-year-old’s halting and stiff gait.
Actually, none of it matters. It’s 100% prime bullshit.
Some Biden advisers have told Axios they’re concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age.
Weeks ago the president told aides that he’d prefer a less formal approach, a White House official told Axios. He suggested that they walk with him.
White House staffersand reporters alike noticed the sudden change in Biden’s walk routine beginning in mid-April, after more than three years in which he’d typically walked solo.
Senior aides such as deputy chiefs of staff Bruce Reed and Annie Tomasini and close adviser Mike Donilon are among those who’ve walked with the president across the lawn to and from the helicopter.
Since the change, some advisers think the images of Biden’s walks to and from the helicopter are better, and they expect him to continue to have aides join him.
In March, Biden’s five walks to and from Marine One at the White House were by himself, or with family members.
April 16, Biden was joined by staff or lawmakers nine out of 10 times he walked to and from Marine One.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates played down the significance of aides partially obscuring cameras’ view of Biden during the walks.
“He’s fully visible except for a few seconds,” Bates said. “Impeach.”
The big picture:Biden’s team has focused on changing voters’ perceptions about his age in recent months.
Biden has been talking about it more openly in public events and in a campaign ad last month.
The White House also has taken steps to prevent the president from tripping, as he did last summer on a stage at the Air Force Academy.
Biden increasingly has worn shoes with extra support, including a pair of black Hoka sneakers.
His doctor has disclosed that the president suffers from “spinal arthritis” and “mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet” which has contributed to his stiff gait while walking.
The doctor declared Biden “fit for duty” and released far more information about his health than Donald Trump’s team has revealed about the 77-year-old ex-president.
Between the lines: Biden resisted taking steps to account for his age early in his presidency, but has shifted gears recently.
Besides the different footwear, he now enters Air Force One on a lower level, taking shorter stairs than the ones used on his early trips to climb to the plane’s cabin.
Biden also continues to do physical therapy and stretching exercises most days.
Don’t ever get old, people. The world will revert to the shallowest, schoolyard perceptions of you.
What do you think these people would have done with this guy?
Donald Trump held a little rally at a construction site in New York before his trial commenced on Thursday morning. He glad-handed the workers and passed out some pamphlets saying that he would end Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. They all seemed to like him but then they would: Fox News reported that the attendees were solicited and vetted by the campaign. In fact, one of the “workers” interviewed at the event was actually a notorious former staffer of George Santos:
Black New Yorker to Biden:
“I don’t see you anywhere. I hope NY turns red because we’re NOT voting for you.” pic.twitter.com/LjtyHIGwyo
In other words, it was just another example of Trump fake news, which has been revealed in his hush money trial as a specialty of his going back decades.
Trump was very upset that he had to attend that proceeding since his Supreme Court immunity case was being argued before the Supreme Court yesterday and he had wanted to attend. Unfortunately he’s a criminal defendant and doesn’t get the privilege of making his own schedule of court appearances around the country as he’s used to doing. Instead, he had to face more testimony from his old friend, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker who took the stand for the second day.
When asked about Pecker at his little astroturfed rally, he simply said “David’s been very nice, he’s a nice guy” which is simply bizarre considering what he’s saying on the witness stand. It’s always been curious as to why he’s never had a bad word to say about Pecker when he always maliciously insults anyone he thinks has done him harm but something Pecker testified to later in the day may just explain it.
Apparently, once the campaign commenced, Trump had requested that Michael Cohen, his fixer and liaison on the hush money deals, retrieve boxes of information that Pecker had gathered about Trump over the years. Pecker told Cohen that he’d had an executive go through them and that there was nothing to be concerned about but he wouldn’t turn them over or let Cohen go through them. Knowing how Trump thinks — and assumes everyone else thinks the same way — he no doubt believes that it wouldn’t be wise to antagonize this man with whom he once conspired to destroy people’s reputations. Who knows what’s in those boxes?
Over the course of two days of Pecker’s testimony, the prosecution has laid out the details of what they say was a conspiracy to “promote or prevent” the election of any person under state law. (Trump is actually charged with falsifying his business records to cover up the violation of that law, which is what makes his conduct a felony.) It’s hard to argue that it isn’t exactly what they were engaged in doing. Pecker admitted it repeatedly and Michael Cohen previously pleaded guilty to the same thing and will presumably testify to that effect when he’s called in this trial. They were paying people off who were trying to come forward with negative information about Trump and then Trump and his company tried to hide the paper trail.
In his second day of testimony, Pecker told a number of anecdotes that implicate Trump in the scheme before, during and after, even during the transition and beyond often quizzing Pecker about the status of the McDougal matter. When the Wall St Journal reported on the McDougal affair, he said Trump was livid and called him up to ask, “how did this happen? I thought this was under control. Either you or one of your people leaked this story!” He also recalled that Trump had arranged a special “thank you” dinner at the White House to which he brought number of National Enquirer employees and at one point he and Trump were walking alone together and Trump asked him, “how’s Karen doing?” and Pecker replied, “she’s doing well, she’s quiet.”
#TRUMP TRIAL Former National Enquirer Exec David Pecker says pic shows him @ White House in 2017
Trump asking for update on Karen McDougal. “How’s Karen doing?” as they walk past Rose Garden from Oval Office “I said she’s doing well, she’s quiet, everything’s going good,” pic.twitter.com/fRYJE2Uko4
Pecker also testified that he spoke with former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about keeping Karen McDougal quiet during Trump’s presidency which is a little bit startling especially since he says they both agreed it would be a good idea. Hicks’ testimony is going to be interesting.
As for Stormy Daniels, Trump was clearly directing the plot once Pecker declined to pay the money, largely because Trump didn’t pay him back for the previous hush money agreements and because he knew from previous experience that there was exposure to campaign finance violations. Nonetheless, he was involved and was surprised to learn that Cohen had to make the payoff himself and was having trouble getting reimbursed as well. Trump was obviously trying to avoid having to pay because he’s a notorious deadbeat but he was also obviously trying to avoid having a paper trail. And that certainly wasn’t because he was trying to protect Melania.
The cross examination began at the end of the day and the defense got Pecker to admit that he’d engaged in such sordid schemes before, managing to get Arnold Schwarzenneger, Rahm Emmanuel and Mark Wahlberg’s names into the record in the process. Perhaps they’re laying the groundwork for some kind of selective prosecution argument but it’s unclear why any of this is relevant to the matter at hand except as a further illustration of just how depraved David Pecker’s organization really was. When Trump’s attorney elicited the comment that Donald Trump was his mentor and that he still considers him a good friend, it was very hard to see how that benefits his client. I’d imagine the members of the jury were all anxious to get home and take a shower after hearing about the gross conduct of all of these people, including the former president.
This sleazy tale of the arrangement Trump made with Pecker and his relationship with this extortionist gossip monger alone should be enough to sink Trump’s chances of ever being elected again to the presidency. But since he was elected the first time after having been shown on tape bragging about assaulting women it’s been amply demonstrated that a lot of people like that about him. Trump’s squalid character seems to be a selling point.
Throughout his life he’s been getting away with corrupt, unethical behavior and skirting legal accountability and he probably thinks he’ll slither out of this one too. The prosecution still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified his records in order to cover up this conspiracy and all we have so far is Pecker’s testimony along with some incriminating texts and documents. There’s a lot more to come.
Trump reportedly spent much of the day listening to the testimony with his eyes closed, not reacting to what he heard. But he did seem a little bit rattled when he emerged, calling the days event “breath taking” and for some unknown reason telling the gathered press that the Charlottesville Nazi protest was “a little peanut.” He should probably get some rest.
Trump says neo-Nazis and KKK members marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” was “a little peanut”: “It was nothing” pic.twitter.com/zTTKECY4zr
Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court arguments gave MSNBC’s Chris Hayes vertigo. “Am I losing my mind here?”
During MSNBC’s evening coverage of Thursday morning’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Trump v. United States case of presidential immunity, Ari Melber summed up his feelings (and mine) with a quote from Zoolander (2001): “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”
On Wednesday, the court considered how many organs a pregnant woman, septic and hemorrhaging, must risk losing before a doctor in Idaho could save her life and provide an abortion without risking jail. On Thursday, the Roberts court spun head-of-a-pin hypotheticals about whether a president can assassinate rivals or stage a coup with no consequences if it were alleged to be part of his/her official duties. We are that far down the MAGA rabbit hole.
Chris Hayes noted that in real time during oral arguments:
Something that drives me a little insane, I'll admit, is that Trump's OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosucuted if it came to that. Now they're arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.
Everyone, including the justices who agreed to hear this farcical presidential immunity case, knew Team Trump’s arguments were a joke. At least, that’s what we assumed. Team Trump was not expecting to win. Putting off the start of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump until after the November election was the point. But the court’s conservative wing played along, aiding and abetting Trump’s delaying tactic. Justices Thomas and Alito are looking to retire soon. They have no intention of allowing a Democrat in the White House over the next four years to pick their replacements.
What’s more, with Team Trump hammering the point that if Trump is not judged immune from prosecution upon leaving office, they promise subsequent presidents (Biden and other Democrats) will not be either. It’s not a theoretical point. It is an explicit threat Trump himself has already made.
Indeed, Justice Alito raised that as a point in favor of granting presidential immunity: “Now, if a — an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”
Crazy Pills
That the Jan. 6 sacking of the U.S. Capitol inspired by a president has already destabilized our democracy seems not to have registered with Alito. Rather than enforcing the rule of law to guard against a recurrence, Alito’s answer seems to be to allow presidents to crime with abandon. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern characterized Alito’s position on immunity at Slate as, “Don’t make me hit you again.”
Thus Melber’s, “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”
The D.C. Circuit’s February detailed, “cross-ideological decision should have been summarily affirmed by SCOTUS within days,” write the pair. Before yesterday, the pair figured that “when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6.” Thursday’s arguments “shattered those illusions.”
When Micheal R. Dreeben, Counselor to the Special Counsel, tried to focus on “the charges in this case,” Justice Alito jumped in to divert the discussion to abstract principles.
When the court’s liberal justices tried to return focus to the facts of the Trump case in interrogating the defense, the conservatives intervened to pivot to matters not at hand, such as whether the president has the power to pardon himself, or else to debate [Gorsuch, transcript pg. 18] how to segregate a president’s private actions (prosecutable) from “official conduct that may or may not enjoy some immunity.” Never to consider what Trump actually did. For her part, Justice Barrett ran through a list of Trump actions that his attorney agreed were indeed private and prosecutable. Game, set, match?
Not so fast. Chief Justice Roberts then suggested the case might be less complex if potentially official acts were expunged from the indictment. That is, if the case were remanded back to the lower court for further refining.
“[D]rawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond,” write Lithwick and Stern. “The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.”
The court’s right wing is running interference for Trumpism and signaled it openly. If they weren’t they would have let the lower court’s ruling stand, they conclude:
Five justices sent the message, loud and clear, that they are far more worried about Trump’s prosecution at the hands of the deep-state DOJ than about his alleged crimes, which were barely mentioned. This trial will almost certainly face yet more delays. These delays might mean that its subject could win back the presidency in the meantime and render the trial moot. But the court has now signaled that nothing he did was all that serious and that the danger he may pose is not worth reining in. The real threats they see are the ones Trump himself shouts from the rooftops: witch hunts and partisan Biden prosecutors. These men have picked their team. The rest hardly matters.
It was not a good day for the rule of law. We’ll have to wait until nearly July to find out how not-good.
Joe Biden was not my first pick for president, but that’s how it goes. Remember: This is politics. If you want a soul mate, try Match dot com. Even then, ever had an argument with your spouse and stayed married? There you go.
President Biden has chalked up quite a record going into this November.
I hate flying. Hate it. If a desination is within 600 miles or so, I drive. It’s not worth the headache and expense to fly. By the time I drive to the airport (which, depending on the destination, could take 1-1/2 to 2 hours) with enough lead time to park, get cleared through security, and to the gate with time to spare, I’m already partway there if I just drove. The last time I got on a plane, I missed a 1 p.m. connection because of a weather delay, waited hours for the next flight out, then sat on the tarmac for another hour in the late afternoon during another weather delay. By the time I got to my hotel after 11 p.m. it was like 12+ hours from the time I left the house. I could have driven (with gas/food stops) in 10-1/2. For less.
Joe Biden’s administration means to address that customer-unfriendly experience.
This is great — and an example of the kind of "show, don't tell" approach to re-establishing trust in government so that even bigger things become possible politically. Pairs well with the noncompetes and the debt relief. Show people tangible reductions in pain. https://t.co/lVqgW8o4Ib
— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) April 24, 2024
Even Fox News is impressed.
Sec. Buttigieg: If your flight is canceled, you will now be entitled to a cash refund. This package will also get your money back if the WiFi doesn't work and provides more transparency on costs
Fox host: You had us at hello. So many times I've paid for things like WiFi that… pic.twitter.com/aGAWmzxzOd
Matt Stoller provides a short list that goes beyond infrastructure.
This week is what governing looks like. Here are ten things Biden just did, from banning non-compete agreements to raising overtime pay to promoting steel and solar production to passing the first Federal privacy law to regulating TikTok. https://t.co/4V0rLsUNzXpic.twitter.com/dLug79u4II
During every presidential campaign the media starts kvetching that the Democrat isn’t giving them enough attention. (They don’t do it as much with Republicans because of the “play the refs” tactic.) Remember this from 2015?
It was the big story on Beltway Twitter over the weekend: The Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign, at a Fourth of July parade in New Hampshire, kept reporters behind a moving rope line so as not to get too close to their candidate.
The images were striking and quickly earned snide comments from reporters who have long been frustrated with their access to Clinton’s campaign, as well as from others who saw the effort as heavy-handed.
And it’s not hard to see why people are frustrated. We would hardly be the first to suggest that it looks like the media are being herded like cattle or sheep.
Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri took to “Morning Joe” on Monday and gamely tried to defend the tactic, with limited success.
“We try and allow the press as much access as possible, but my view is it can’t get in the way of her being able to campaign,” Palmieri said as the hosts laughed. See for yourself here:
And it’s an important story: Is a candidate for the highest office in the world allowing the press sufficient access as she seeks that office? Will the press be allowed to actually do its job and provide the kind of scrutiny and coverage that this process requires? […]
To the extent that people could care about something like this, of course, the images from Saturday might drive that home. After all, it’s rare that you get such an easy and apt illustration of the Clinton campaign’s treatment of the press. A well-documented rope line is much less abstract than, say, pointing out that the campaign hasn’t returned your phone calls in paragraph No. 11 of a 900-word story.
In addition, you can make an argument that it exacerbates a problem that Clinton already has: honesty. Poll after poll has shown more people see her as dishonest than honest, and roping off the media could reinforce the idea that she has something to hide.
Oh, and remember, they worked with Steve Bannon and his fellow henchman to publish that grotesque piece of trash “Clinton Cash.” We all know how that turned out.
Well, today we find out, courtesy of Politico, that they’re still at it. The NY Times is so mad at Joe Biden for not giving them an interview that they are purposefully publishing hit pieces on his age to punish him:
In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency. Beyond that, he has voiced concerns that Biden doing so few expansive interviews with experienced reporters could set a dangerous precedent for future administrations, according to a third person familiar with the publisher’s thinking. Sulzberger himself was part of a group from the Times that sat down with Trump, who gave the paper several interviews despite his rantings about its coverage…
“All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,” one Times journalist said. “It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.”
Well, Trump gives interviews and whispers in Maggie Haberman’s ear so it’s all good for him.
They never, ever learn.
When news broke one Saturday night in March 2023 that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration was withdrawing, Mark Walker was the reporter on duty in the New York Times Washington bureau. Assigned to write up the news, Walker asked the White House for a comment just before midnight. Assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan was still up and emailed a quote blaming the withdrawal on a barrage of “unfounded Republican attacks.” After going through edits, Walker’s 502-word story was posted on the Times’ website in the wee hours Sunday morning.
Then all hell broke loose.
Hasan, who has since left the White House, had offered the quote to Walker on background sourced to “an administration official.” Walker, not a member of the Times’ White House team, was unfamiliar with the protocol and had made an unintended mistake and attributed the quote to Hasan. When officials in the press shop called him Sunday morning about the mistake, they asked to speak with White House Editor Elizabeth Kennedy. But the number he gave them was the cell phone of Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times Washington bureau chief.
Bumiller, who was away from Washington visiting family, received a call from Emilie Simons, a White House deputy press secretary who had actually written the statement. According to three people familiar with the conversation, Simons asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. Bumiller, who expressed dismay that the issue had been escalated to her level, was reluctant to alter a story that had already been online for over 12 hours.
Both parties later told colleagues the call ended on a sour note. Two Times staffers recalled Bumiller grumbling, as she occasionally does, about how she’d been spoken to. Aides in the press shop recalled hearing that the bureau chief had been surprisingly defensive and that when Simons tried to bring up another concern with Walker’s story, Bumiller just hung up. The following day principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton emailed Bumiller asking the Times to reaffirm its commitment to abide by the administration’s rules about information given on background. For Dalton, Simons and others, it was about ensuring fairness with embargoed information so that all news organizations could be on a level playing field. But the Times’ bureau chief never replied. In response, the White House removed all Times reporters from its “tier one” email list for background information about various briefings and other materials, a situation that wasn’t resolved for 11 months.
The seemingly minor incident over sourcing might not have escalated or triggered such emotional responses on both sides if not for tensions between the White House and the Times that had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years. Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.
According to interviews with two dozen people on both sides who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject, the relationship between the Democratic president and the country’s newspaper of record — for years the epitome of a liberal press in the eyes of conservatives — remains remarkably tense, beset by misunderstandings, grudges and a general lack of trust. Complaints that were long kept private are even spilling into public view, with campaign aides in Wilmington going further than their colleagues in the White House and routinely blasting the paper’s coverage in emails, posts on social media and memos.
Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets, the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience — and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work. On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright.
The president’s press flacks might bemoan what they see as the entitlement of Times staffers, but they themselves put the newspaper on the highest of pedestals given its history, stature and unparalleled reach. And yet, they see the Times falling short in a make-or-break moment for American democracy, stubbornly refusing to adjust its coverage as it strives for the appearance of impartial neutrality, often blurring the asymmetries between former President Donald Trump and Biden when it comes to their perceived flaws and vastly different commitments to democratic principles.
“Democrats believe in the importance of a free press in upholding our democracy, and the NYT was for generations an important standard bearer for the fourth estate,” said Kate Berner, who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign and then as deputy White House communications director before departing last year. “The frustration with the Times is sometimes so intense because the Times is failing at its important responsibility.”
Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country, high stakes that they believe justify tougher tactics toward the Times and the press as a whole. Some Times reporters have found themselves cut off by sources after publishing pieces the Bidens and top aides didn’t like. Columnist Maureen Dowd, for example, complained to colleagues that she stopped hearing from White House officials after a column on Hunter Biden. For many Times veterans, such actions suggest that the Trump era has warped many Democrats’ expectations of journalists.
“They’re not being realistic about what we do for a living,” Bumiller told me. “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House.”
Having been in politics for some 50 years, Biden has long dealt with reporters and editors from the Times, and, for the most part, cordially. But frustrations began to mount early in 2019 as Biden launched his third run for the White House in a crowded Democratic primary field. Times reporters were annoyed not to have been invited to Biden’s first public appearance after announcing his candidacy, an informal stop at a Wilmington pizzeria that two other reporters were tipped off about. But aides to Biden, who tended to trust his generational contemporaries at the Times — columnists and other journalists he’d gotten comfortable with over several years — said they didn’t know anyone on the politics team well. “Unlike some outlets, the Times just never invested in a reporter who really knew and understood Biden and his appeal,” said one former campaign staffer. “And the coverage reflected that.”
In the early months of the Democratic primary, the Times was responding to pressures of its own. Still in the throes of covering the Trump presidency, the institution had become acutely self-conscious about criticism that it was out of touch with much of the country. At the same time, Editor-in-Chief Dean Baquet and then-Managing Editor Joe Kahn were stung by former editor Jill Abramson’s criticism of how the “narcissistic” Times had missed the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, according to four Times veterans. As Democratic presidential hopefuls began debating, coverage focused heavily on the policy debates among more progressive candidates — debates Biden largely wasn’t involved in.
While Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was gaining ground in early polls and enjoying positive early coverage, stories about Biden in the Times frequently depicted him as a relic, out of step with younger, more liberal primary voters and, following defeats in the early contests, poorly organized. Although it had nothing to do with the newsroom, the Opinion page’s double endorsement of Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota (neither of whom won a single primary or caucus), helped cement Biden world’s view that the Times was out of touch with the broader electorate — an electorate personified by the Times security guard who gushed over Biden in the Times elevator as he was headed up for his interview with the editorial board. (In a subtle tweak aimed at the Times, Biden’s campaign invited that security guard to formally nominate him at the DNC months later.)
Biden aides, who spent months privately imploring the paper’s editors and reporters not to write him off too early in the cycle, still hold a grudge under the belief that the paper was institutionally aligned toward Warren and progressives. “It’s just not true,” one senior Times editor told me. Biden, the editor continued, “wasn’t involved in a lot of the debates about Medicare For All [that dominated the early months of the race]. And while a lot of campaigns were offering access to the candidate, Biden was not. That played out in the coverage.”
But it was the paper’s willingness to legitimize rumors swirling around Hunter Biden’s past business dealings in Ukraine that left top campaign officials most incensed. In a letter to Baquet in October 2019, deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield blasted the Times for a story by reporter Ken Vogel and freelancer Iuliia Mendel focused on allegations by Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies that Joe Biden took actions toward Ukraine as vice president in order to boost his son Hunter Biden’s business interests there. The paper’s reporting, the letter claimed, legitimized a “debunked … conspiracy theory” that had been, to that point, “relegated to the likes of Breitbart, Russian propaganda … and regular Hannity guest John Solomon.”
Complaints about the paper’s Hunter Biden coverage dominated a late 2019 meeting at campaign headquarters in Philadelphia, where Bedingfield and other senior Biden operatives met with Times politics editor Patrick Healy and a few reporters to discuss the paper’s coverage.
Although the meeting was not especially confrontational, both sides mostly talked past one another, according to people in both camps familiar with the conversation. While Healy and the Times reporters made clear they took Biden seriously as a candidate and potential nominee, they defended coverage of the allegations swirling around his son — and, ultimately, made little headway in convincing campaign aides to make Biden more available. “It was helpful to hear what was on their minds,” one Times staffer familiar with the meeting said. “But in some ways they don’t shape and control their narrative the way they could if they were more engaged.”
The Times’ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, whose stories about Biden’s age have regularly strummed a particularly sensitive nerve, told me that the administration’s frustrations over his and his colleagues’ coverage wasn’t all that unique. “Every White House I’ve covered complains about our coverage. It comes with the territory,” he said. “But because of Trump, there’s this new assumption that the New York Times and other media are supposed to put their thumb on the scale and take sides and we don’t do that.”
Privately, other Times reporters who have engaged with the Biden White House and campaign view the frustration with the paper as a misguided effort to control its coverage. Beyond that, they believe writing about Trump with the stronger language Biden aides seem to want would likely do more to affect the newspaper’s brand, and the public’s trust in it, than Trump’s.
“We haven’t been tough enough on Trump? I mean, give me a break,” Bumiller responded when I asked about that oft-heard complaint. “Have they read our coverage? I don’t have to go through all the things we have covered on Trump so I just — we just do our jobs.”
Still, the White House and campaign officials most incensed by the Times’ coverage often trace their outrage back to Trump, who they see as a true threat to American democracy and, by extension, a free press. No current White House staffers were willing to speak publicly to voice their complaints, but those willing to talk on background without their names being used told me they viewed the matter as bigger than their or even Biden’s self-interest, expressing aggravation over the Times’ determination to maintain its neutral voice of God approach to an election that, in their view, is a matter of democracy’s survival.
“We do not comment on the specifics of our private discussions with reporters and editors,” said deputy press secretary Andrew Bates in response to my request for comment from the White House. “But as a White House that believes deeply in the role of the free press in American Democracy, we would note that a mutually honest, fact-based, respectful back-and-forth is a cornerstone of any healthy relationship between a media outlet and an administration. We have that kind of dialogue with The New York Times and many other media organizations.”
The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau. Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview. Harris, according to three people in the room that day, suggested that he contact the White House press office and later grumbled to aides about the back-and-forth being a waste of the allotted time.
A few months later, with the Times’ White House team still banned from the embargoed list and frustrations on both sides mounting, senior administration officials invited Executive Editor Joe Kahn, Managing Editor Carolyn Ryan and Bumiller to the White House. Although there was some discussion inside the Times of whether Kahn should respond to a summons to Washington from anyone besides the president himself, he decided to go, largely to make the case for Biden to do an interview.
The meeting with senior adviser Anita Dunn and communications director Ben LaBolt was not unlike many held from time to time with executives from other newspapers and TV networks, an exchange of views about the outlet’s coverage, a pitch for more access and an interview. Dunn and LaBolt went through a list of complaints: the unrelenting focus on polls and age, reporters not giving the White House much time to respond to stories prior to publication. The Times brass listened and sought to explain the principles guiding its coverage. The meeting, according to three people on both sides familiar with the conversation, was not especially contentious. One sign of a slight thaw in relations came weeks later when the White House invited Kahn and his wife to attend a state dinner for the Australian prime minister in October.
But the pleas for an interview have gone nowhere. As Sulzberger often tells colleagues and as he and Kahn have stressed in private conversations with the administration, every modern president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has done an interview with the Times. That, however, is an argument deemed uncompelling by Biden aides and one that, to some White House officials, smacks of entitlement. Plus, Biden has sat for interviews with only two print reporters in more than three years (Josh Boak of the Associated Press and Evan Osnos of The New Yorker, who earned Biden’s trust during a lengthy interview during the 2020 campaign that he turned into a book). He has, of course, been eager to engage with columnists he knows and trusts, two of whom happen to work at the Times.
In Sulzberger’s view, according to two people familiar with his private comments on the subject, only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency. Beyond that, he has voiced concerns that Biden doing so few expansive interviews with experienced reporters could set a dangerous precedent for future administrations, according to a third person familiar with the publisher’s thinking. Sulzberger himself was part of a group from the Times that sat down with Trump, who gave the paper several interviews despite his rantings about its coverage. If Trump could do it, Sulzberger believes, so can Biden.
“All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,” one Times journalist said. “It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.”
After this story was published, the Times offered an additional statement on its push for an interview. “The notion that any line of coverage has been ordered up or encouraged in retaliation for declining an interview, or any other reason, is outrageous and untrue,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for the Times who said the paper will continue to cover Biden “fully and fairly” regardless of whether he gives the paper an interview. He also emphasized that Sulzberger “has repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.”
When describing their grievances with the Times, almost every Biden administration and campaign official used the word “entitled” to characterize the institution writ large and several of the individuals within the newsroom, where “Timesian” is an adjective routinely deployed without irony. Those officials described reporters who refused to correct minor errors or mischaracterizations in stories or those who haven’t been willing to engage with anyone besides the most senior administration officials. That said, many White House officials maintain productive working relationships with most of the Times reporters who cover the beat.
Bumiller and other Times White House reporters note that it’s always been the newspaper’s prerogative to determine what to cover and how. “This is pretty much par for the course,” Bumiller said. “No White House has ever been happy with our coverage and I don’t see why they should be. Our job is to hold power to account.”
Even if some of the hard feelings toward the Times have eased somewhat with time — several White House reporters, after verbally reiterating their willingness to abide by the administration’s embargo rules, were added back to the “tier one” list earlier this year — officials in the Biden press shop remain frustrated that the coverage hasn’t changed. The paper continues to serve up fodder for the “NYT Pitchbot’’ account on X, which has amassed a large following (including almost the entire Biden press shop) by mocking the paper’s perceived negativity toward the president and its often euphemistic-laden, soft focus coverage of Trump.
Bates, the deputy press secretary, has developed an online correspondence with the operator of the Pitchbot account and occasionally shared material for potential posts, two people familiar with the press shop said. During last year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, Biden joked about confusing the Times’ coverage of his age with Pitchbot’s tweets. “I love that guy,” Biden said of Pitchbot, before a subtle parting shot at the Times on a frequency only Times staffers might hear. “I should do an interview with him.”
Aides in the White House press office and on the president’s campaign pointed to two recent examples of articles by the Times that presented Biden and Trump side by side, emphasizing broad similarities and obscuring the proportional differences. One piece by Michael Shear cast both Biden and Trump as restricting the information the public has about their physical health. Another in the paper’s On Politics newsletter by the newly hired Jess Bidgood reacted to Arizona’s reinstatement of a Civil War era law outlawing abortion by framing Biden and Trump as two “imperfect messengers” on the issue, a gross journalistic injustice, campaign officials said, given Trump’s outsized role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.
TJ Ducklo, a senior adviser on Biden’s campaign, blasted Shear’s story as part of an ongoing pattern of frustrating coverage by the Times. “With limited exceptions,” he wrote in a post on X, the Times “continues to fail the American people in covering the most important election for democracy in 150+ years.” It was not the first time Biden’s campaign team publicly went after the Times in a way the White House, for all its irritation, has not. In February, the campaign blasted the Times and other news organizations for focusing more on the president’s age than Trump’s comment encouraging Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country not meeting defense spending benchmarks. “If you read the New York Times this weekend, you might have missed it buried behind five separate opinion pieces about how the president is 81 year old — something that has been true since his birthday in November — and *zero* on this topic,” Ducklo wrote.
Earlier this year, Ducklo, communications director Michael Tyler and other senior campaign aides met privately in Wilmington with groups of reporters from a number of organizations covering Biden (including POLITICO), almost all of whom got dressed down for coverage that was seen as too fixated on the president’s age or other liabilities, especially compared to the treatment of Trump. But when Semafor wrote about the off-the-record meetings, only the meeting with the Times was described as not having been “substantive” or “productive.”
Times reporters believe the leak had to have come from the campaign, the only ones who’d have had knowledge of all the meetings. And it led to conversations on the politics staff about whether to even engage with Wilmington in an off-the-record capacity. But campaign aides are certain the leak came from the Times side. “We had done over a dozen of these meetings leading up to the Times meeting and only got a press inquiry about the meetings less than 48 hours after the Times meeting,” senior campaign officials told me, noting that Semafor’s Max Tani “quoted back to us the exact language that had been used by Times reporters in the meeting two days earlier.”
The campaign’s outward turn toward press criticism is something of a new phenomenon, mirroring the response of the very online left in the age of Trump. But the Times is bearing the brunt of it. And many who’ve given their careers to the institution are perplexed by the shift.
“[Criticizing] our stories in their press releases,” Bumiller said, “I just don’t know what it gets them.”
Trump says neo-Nazis and KKK members marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” was “a little peanut”: “It was nothing” pic.twitter.com/zTTKECY4zr
CNN: Trump just said the Charlottesville protest in 2017 was a ‘little peanut.’ Let's remember the fact that a woman was murdered there in Charlottesville. Let's remember there were neo-Nazis and other white nationalists there pic.twitter.com/eRoqQ3jcPV
Also, he also whined about being kept off the campaign trail. Yesterday, court was not in session. He could have gone somewhere to campaign. Guess what he did?
I’m feeling crazy today. How in the world is it even possible that this imbecile is possibly going to be exonerated for the crimes we’ve all seen with our own eyes, win the presidency again and be given carte blanche to abuse his power with total immunity.
Check out this BS:
The fakeness of MAGA perfectly illustrated.
That’s Vish Burra, a member of the NYYRC and former George Santos staffer. He’s a full on MAGA operative.
He’s presented as a union member New Yorker at a union event (in an ‘American Worker’ hat) backing Trump.
Today’s Supreme Court argument on presidential immunity was profoundly depressing. It really sounded like the majority is persuaded that they must protect criminal president Donald Trump (and any like him in the future) from any kind of accountability for his crimes. I don’t know if they will think better of it as they deliberate (probably over a period of many months) but it appears that this court has not been chastised at all by the country’s reaction to their radical actions in Dobbs or anything else.
So, if they do what it looks very likely they will do, which is to at least give Trump the delay he seeks and possibly upend the constitutional order at his behest, he could get off scott free whether he wins or loses.
But there’s another way to understand Trump’s move: It’s about what comes next. If he wins on this front, he’d be largely unshackled in a second presidential term, free to pursue all manner of corrupt designs with little fear of legal consequences after leaving office again.
That Trump might attempt such moves is not idle speculation. He’s telling us so himself. He is openly threatening a range of second-term actions—such as prosecuting political enemies with zero basis in evidence—that would almost certainly strain the boundaries of the law in ugly new ways.
Now imagine him pursuing this project with a get-out-of-prosecution-free card in his pocket. “It really would permit him to be completely unconstrained if he were reelected,” Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told me.
To be sure, Trump has a weak case, as legal expertspoint out. The Justice Department has a long-standing policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, and the ex-president’s lawyers cite civil law precedent to claim that Trump’s acts were within the “outer perimeter” of presidential duties, and thus immune from criminal prosecution after he left office. If not, they suggest, future presidents will be constrained in office by fear of nakedly political prosecutions later.
But special counsel Jack Smith counters that presidents do not “operate in a realm without law,” that granting Trump’s request would “license presidents to commit crimes,” and that his criminal efforts to overthrow democracy don’t fall within the “outer perimeter of official presidential responsibilities” to begin with.
Greg wrote this before today’s frightening argument and assumed that the court would not entertain such a preposterous idea. Well they did and it certainly wasn’t at all clear that they didn’t think that was perfectly fine. We will have to see how far they are actually willing to go. But there’s more to it:
But a favorable decision could still unshackle Trump in a big way. Trevor Morrison, associate White House counsel under Obama, says the key is whether the courts rule that Trump has immunity on the theory that his alleged criminal conduct does fall in the outer perimeter of presidential duties—and how the courts define that perimeter. If they accept Trump’s broad version of immunity or something like it, he might argue that future potentially criminal acts also fall within that perimeter.
For instance, could a victorious President Trump urge the FBI to investigate Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, who has also criminally charged Trump, and order the seizure of documents related to those charges to sabotage her effort? That would be similar to Trump’s corrupt pressure on the Justice Department to fabricate a pretext for halting the January 6, 2021, electoral count.
Or in the 2026 battle over the Senate, could President Trump threaten elections officials with prosecution while pressuring them to “find” votes in a decisive contest? After all, he arguably did just this with the Georgia secretary of state.
Trump justified his pressure on Justice Department officials and Georgia’s secretary of state by claiming he was combating corruption. If Trump wins now, it might give him room to claim later that turning loose the FBI on Willis or pressuring elections officials in 2026 also constitute carrying out presidential duties to fight corruption, Morrison noted.
“If he is found immune from these charges, there is at least a great risk that the courts will have endorsed an immunity that could cover a number of otherwise criminal things the president might do in the future,” Morrison said. Similarly, Cardozo Law School professor Kate Shaw suggests a ruling for Trump could encourage him to abuse his powers to purge the civil service and invoke the Insurrection Act to target all manner of domestic enemies.
Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy who served as a lawyer in multiple administrations, notes that Trump has signaled clear intent to do exactly this sort of thing. He has attacked Willis’s prosecution of him as corrupt, hinted at full-scale persecution of “vermin” Americans who oppose him, and openly threatened to prosecute President Biden as retribution. “If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,” Trump recently raged.
In saying this, Trump essentially declared that if he is denied immunity, he will prosecute Biden on a fake finding of corruption, just as he invented corruption as a pretext for his alleged election crimes. What happens if those efforts to name and target fabricated corruption are in some sense deemed official acts?
“Trump has threatened to use the presidency to punish enemies, reward friends, and protect himself,” Parker told me. “If the courts recognize immunity for the broad array of official acts of the presidency, that will incentivize Trump to abuse those powers further.”
Parker doubts the courts will side with Trump. “But the very nature of his claim further underscores his extreme view of the presidency as being completely above the law,” Parker said.
There’s a strange tendency in our “LOL nothing matters” discourse to treat Trump as fearless and invulnerable in his corruption and (alleged) lawbreaking. In reality, Trump fears prosecution and accountability. As special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia scandal documented, he took extensive steps to ward off that possibility, bullying his attorney general, trying to get Mueller fired, and ordering an underling to deny that effort.
It’s sobering to imagine what Trump might be capable of during a second term—if it’s decisively confirmed to his satisfaction that the law will not apply to him after all.
If you think he and his henchmen won’t do it, think again. Trump is a narcissistic sociopathic criminal. He will gather power-mad zealots with an ax to grind all around him . Don’t kid yourself. He will have no limits.
The archaic, undemocratic electoral college stakes are very high
Josh Marshall notes that 538 has finally put up their polling average and then takes a look at the state of the electoral college strategy:
The headline here is Trump and Biden tied at the national level and Trump holding what they call a “tenuous” lead in the swing states. But the breakdown of their averages shows something more specific. The two candidates also basically tied in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The precise averages are actually Trump +1.1 (Michigan), Biden +.1 (Wisconsin) and Trump +0.9 (Pennsylvania). But those datasets are still weighted toward GOP-leaning polls at the moment. In any case, those are basically ties and I’m fairly confident Biden wins those. It’s the Southern-tier states of Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona which each have Trump leads of around 5 points, give or take.
Here’s the key. If Biden holds the Blue Wall states and wins that single electoral vote in Nebraska he gets to 270 votes. Literally the absolute minimum to win. That’s if he loses Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. So 270 to 268. If this seems odd to you it’s because those southern states have gained a few electoral votes at the expense of blue states in the northeast.
You can see why Republicans really, really want to switch the rules for electoral votes in Nebraska.
Now if Biden wins Nevada or Arizona suddenly he’s also 40 electoral points up. On the other hand, if they’re able to change the rules in Nebraska you actually have a real chance of a tie in which the House picks Trump as President. Note that even if Democrats take the House they are highly unlikely to control a majority of state delegations.
As we make clear about the national numbers and really all the polls, we’re six months out from the election. So we can’t put too much into these numbers. But they do tell us that there’s a good chance the election will be decided in Arizona or Nevada. Or at least that’s where Biden has a shot of putting it away.
A couple final points on FiveThirtyEight. What we’re discussing here isn’t a forecast. It’s a very sophisticated average or perhaps better to say composite of current polls. I assume they’ll release a forecast at some later point. But for now we have an average — not a prediction or predictive model. Also, you probably remember that FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver parted ways with FiveThirtyEight or year or so ago. His replacement is a guy named G. Elliot Morris. He’s good. I follow a lot of these guys — mostly guys who are kind of the new generation of political numbers crunchers. I have a feel for whose judgment and technical know-how I trust. And he’s good. As I said, technical sophistication and complexity mostly needs to be its own reward probably. But if you’re going to be nerding out about averages and models I think you’re in good hands with him.
“There is no failsafe system of government, meaning, we have a judicial system that has layers and layers of protection for the accused in the hopes that the innocent will go free. We fail. Routinely. But we succeed more often than not. In the vast majority of cases, the innocent do go free. But we still fail. We’ve executed innocent people. Having said that, Alito went through a step by step of all the mechanisms that could potentially fail. In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we’ve destroyed our democracy on our own.
The argument today was depressing. It seems clear that the cult of Unitary Executive is very intrigued by the idea of granting full immunity to a president. That cult is a majority of the court.
He seriously said that.
This was a terrifying Supreme Court argument. It’s clear that the majority actually favors Trump’s argument that a president must have immunity. Whether they are willing to go that far remains to be seen but it’s almost certain now that the J6 trial will likely not likely see the light of day before the election.
We are in big trouble, people. Big. Trouble.
Update:
Judge Michael Luttig wrote:
As with the three-hour argument in Trump v. Anderson, a disconcertingly precious little of the two-hour argument today was even devoted to the specific and only question presented for decision.
The Court and the parties discussed everything but the specific question presented.
That question is simply whether a former President of the United States may be prosecuted for attempting to remain in power notwithstanding the election of his successor by the American People.
thereby also depriving his lawfully elected successor of the powers of the presidency to which that successor became entitled upon his rightful election by the American People — and preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history.
It is not even arguably a core power or function of the President of the United States to ensure the fairness, accuracy, and integrity of a presidential election.
Let alone is it a core power or function of the President of the United States to ensure the proper certification of the next president by the Congress of the United States. Neither of these is a power or function of the president at all.
In fact, the Framers of the Constitution well understood the enormous potential for self-interested conflict were the President to have a role in these fundamental constitutional functions.
Consequently, they purposely and pointedly withheld from the President any role in these fundamental constitutional functions.
To whatever extent the Framers implicitly provided in the Executive any role whatsoever in these fundamental constitutional functions, it was a limited role for the Executive Branch,
through the Department of Justice, to inquire into allegations of fraud in presidential elections and ensure that the election was free, fair, and accurate.
The former president’s Department of Justice did just that and found that there was no fraud sufficient to draw into question the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The former president of course has refused to this day to accept that finding by not only his own Department of Justice, but also countless others of his closest advisors.
Whether undertaken in his or her “official,” “candidate,” or “personal” capacity, a President of the United States has never been and can never be immune from prosecution (after leaving office),
for having attempted to remain in power notwithstanding the election of that President’s successor by the American People.
Consequently, there is no reason whatsoever for the Supreme Court to remand to the lower courts for a determination of which of the alleged criminal acts might have been personal and which might have been official.
Neither is a clear statement from Congress that a president is subject to prosecution under the statutes with which the former president has been charged necessary in this particular case.
As applied to the former president for the criminal conduct with which he has been charged, there can be no question but that Congress intended a President of the United States to come within the ambit of the statutory offenses with which he has been charged.
For the same reason, it would be ludicrous to contend that the former president was not on sufficient notice that if he committed the criminal acts charged, he would be subject to criminal prosecution by the United States of America.
To hold otherwise would make a mockery out of the “plain statement” rule.
After a harrowing discussion about humanity’s undeniable march towards a dystopian future, world-renowned thinker Noam Chomsky and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer move on to other pressing topics related to current events. Beginning with the issue that inspired the two-part interview, Scheer explains that an episode of his podcast “Scheer Intelligence” which featured Susie Linfield discussing her book “The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky” led to an ongoing exchange with Chomsky. The linguist, who has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, argues that “The Lion’s Den” and its chapter on Chomsky’s criticisms “is the most extraordinary collection of lies and deceit that I have ever seen.”
Admitting that before his interview with Linfield, Scheer had not paid close attention to the chapter in question, the Truthdig Editor in Chief goes on to say that upon re-reading it, he found it incredibly “unfair.”
“The people attacked in this book,” Scheer says, “are all attacked for daring to raise questions about the performance of [the Israeli state] and the Zionist experiment, particularly in its relation to the Palestinians and notions that many of us, myself included, who are Jewish had thought were built into a kind of universalism of the Jewish experience, and a concern for the other.”
To Chomsky, the dilemma Israel poses to Jewish intellectuals such as himself who are concerned with the state’s future, has always been clear: criticize the state’s actions or remain silent in the face of decisions that would endanger it. The thinker’s criticisms take root in the 1970s when Israel rejects viable two-state solutions more than once, an inconvenient historical reality he argues Linfield “lies about like a trooper.”
“If you care about Israel, what you tell them is you’re sacrificing security for expansion,” Chomsky argues. “And it’s going to have a consequence. It’s going to lead to moral deterioration internally, and decline in status internationally, which is exactly what happened. […] You go back to the 1970s, Israel was one of the most admired states in the world. […] Now it’s a pariah state.
Chomsky uses the example of how support for Israel within the U.S. had shifted from liberal Democrats to ultranationalists and evangelicals as an illustration of a dangerous shift in Israeli policies that led to the terrible suffering of Palestinians and a moral decline within the Middle Eastern nation. The linguist’s conclusion, based on the biblical story of Elijah, is one that can be applied across the board when thinking of constructing an effective approach to politics, not just in Israel, but around the world.
“You don’t love a state and follow its policies,” says Chomsky. “You criticize what’s wrong, try to change the policies, expose them; criticize it, change it.”
The discussion of Israel then leads to a broader conversation on the topic of “lesser evilism,” especially as applied to U.S. politics as voters face a presidential election in 2020 which could lead to President Donald Trump’s re-election.
“We’ve been living all these years,” Scheer argues, “with the illusion that there’s this lesser evil that somehow will make it better. […] I’m frightened out of my mind that it’s four more years of Trump; yes. However, do we really think that the Democrats are going to propose a serious alternative?”
“There’s another word for lesser evilism,” Chomsky replies. “It’s called rationality. Lesser evilism is not an illusion, it’s a rational position. But you don’t stop with lesser evilism. You begin with it, to prevent the worst, and then you go on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s wrong, even with the lesser evils.”
That’s all there is to it, IMO. This idea that you will vote against Biden and enable Donald Trump is simply irrational.
While Scheer agrees with Chomsky about the imminent danger Trump poses not just to Americans, but humanity as a whole due to his suicidal approach to the climate crisis, the Truthdig editor in chief insists that it is precisely having read Chomsky’s works that instilled in him a profound fear “of what neoliberalism and what that opportunism breeds,” concluding that “it breeds a Trump.” Chomsky, on the other hand traces the hard-earned progress that has been made by organized movements throughout the history of the U.S., using the examples of Presidents Richard Nixon and Franklin D. Roosevelt as leaders who were forced to amend their policies and actions by political activists.
“So even if there’s core, deep problems with the institutions, there still are choices between alternatives, which matter a lot,” says the MIT professor. “Small differences in a system with enormous power translate into huge effects. Meanwhile, you don’t stop with a lesser evilism; you continue to try to organize and develop the mass popular movements, which will block the worst and change the institutions. All of these things can go on at once. But the simple question of what button do you push on a particular day? That is a decision, and that matters. It’s not the whole story, by any means. It’s a small part of the story, but it matters.”
When Scheer goes on to express his surprise to find in Chomsky a source of optimism, the latter gives him a list of reasons to remain hopeful, including the Green New Deal and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
I guess you can call Chomsky a neoliberal stooge who “just doesn’t understand” (and he is very old which we know renders him completely irrelevant…) but that won’t make it so. He is right.
-Drafting a “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input that would have, if implemented, actually ended the possibility for a real Palestinian state.
–Cutting Palestinians out of the negotiations over the so-called Abraham Accords, realizing the longstanding Israeli goal of severing diplomatic progress with Arab states from progress towards a sovereign Palestine.
-Recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, disputed territory with Syria taken during the 1967 Six-Day War.
