The real politicization began
It was a dry run for January 6th. And he incited it.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Brian Beutler argues today in his newsletter (subscribe here) that even though the media has belatedly begun to acknowledge the booming Biden economy, we live in a world where there are too many people with vested interests in denying to allow Biden to have a “Morning In America” validation:
Even as the mainstream press comes around, there are more than enough individuals and institutions with a rooting interest in denying the health of the economy to keep economic perceptions anchored way below where they’d be under a Republican president. Indeed, it would be remarkable if sentiment pokes above water before the year is out.
If you’re wondering why I think that, here’s a rough-and-ready taxonomy of the doomsayers.
THE REPUBLICAN GRASSROOTS
I’m thinking of millions of partisan voters, mostly anonymous, who are so invested in GOP politics or movement conservatism or even just Donald Trump that they interpret Democratic rule as coterminous with apocalyptic decline. They huff right-wing media for hours a day. Their identities are wrapped up in their disdain for liberals, big cities, Hollywood, and the mainstream media. They can’t fathom the country succeeding under the opposing party so they assume it must be spiraling downward along every conceivable dimension. Sadly, these kinds of Republicans comprise the great majority of GOP voters. There are Democrats who have an equal-and-opposite worldview, but their numbers are lopsidedly small. When Donald Trump became president consumer sentiment among Democrats dipped slightly but spiked among Republicans. When Biden beat him, Democratic sentiment improved quite a bit, but Republican sentiment collapsed.
REPUBLICAN CYNICS
These are conservatives and professional propagandists who know the truth, but understand the value of misleading the public in big ways and small—if all they can do is tell a pollster they think the economy is a disaster, when they know that’s not true, that’s what they’ll do. If they have enough clout to spread false gloom to low-information voters, they’ll do that, too. This category includes scores of party elites, but I’m thinking especially of Steve Bannon, Fox News anchors (particularly in primetime), the Trump family, Elon Musk, etc. Between these first two categories, we’re already edging close to half the country.
ONLINE WRECKERS
There’s surely overlap between Republican cynics and online wreckers, but here I’m thinking less of official and unofficial party operatives, and more of a diffuse set of content makers with bad motives. Clout-seeking doomsayers who know that spreading free-floating misery is a recipe for viral traffic; influencers in realms like fitness where showing disdain for all things Biden is an entry point to selling supplements (or investment tips or whatever); leftists who want to crush liberalism, even at the cost of returning Trump to power; armies of trolls who are excited about returning Trump to power; megarich tech and finance bros, but I repeat myself.
If you ever express anything remotely positive about the economy online—particularly about macroeconomic data—you will encounter one or all subspecies of online wreckers. They spread conspiracy theories about official data being cooked. They mock the idea that data, even if gathered ethically, can tell us anything more valuable than anecdotal impressions of the national economy or “lived experiences.” There’s a secret depression. Eggs and Big Macs are more expensive now, even though eggs haven’t been expensive for over a year and you bought that Big Mac on DoorDash. Their meta-method isn’t just to say they haven’t enjoyed the spoils of the recovery, but to make observing the reality of the recovery seem deeply uncool. I don’t suspect that there are many online wreckers in absolute terms, but they dominate economic discourse on social media, where most Americans get at least some information.
LEFTY MATERIALISTS AND LIBERAL QUANTS
I’m lumping these two groups together because their approaches are similar, though their ideologies differ. The former essentially believe—for perfectly justifiable reasons!—that the U.S. economy has never been good or just. For them, a mismatch between sentiment and macro data represents the first time in memory that the numbers have made sense. And because they believe politics is downstream from material conditions, they go looking for material explanations of unusual political phenomena, even if it means reaching much deeper into the data than could possibly be useful. The scholar Tyler Austin Harper wrote, “Many middle-class people want to buy a house and cannot afford to [] buy a house in this economy. An economy where many gainfully employed middle-class people can’t buy a house is not a good economy, no matter what the pie charts say.” It’s true: many middle-class people who want homes can’t afford them. Also true: This has been the case for a long time now, including through periods when economic sentiment was sky high.
Liberal quants have much more faith in the macro data. So much so that they believed the correlation between GDP growth and incumbent political success was something like an iron law. Biden’s poor standing amid a historic boom unsettles them, and so they’ve taken to revising their theories with epicycles. Perhaps a heretofore undiscovered lag effect keeps sentiment mired in the doldrums after a period of inflation? Perhaps people remember 2020 fondly because of all the stimulus money they had (while stuck in their homes for months on end)?
You’d think these validators of discontent would be more responsive to straightforward refutations of their insights: Last time inflation was high it did not generate this much economic despair, let alone for over a year after inflation ended; last time interest rates were at this level people thought the economy was good. It’s easier for young Americans to buy homes now than it was just a few years ago, when economic sentiment was extremely high. The economy is stronger now than it was prior to the pandemic, but sentiment is much, much worse. Etc etc.
Nevertheless, they persisted.
SALESPEOPLE
These people aren’t acting with obvious political or ideological motives. They just want people to spend their money, and think the best way to do this is with a “we feel your pain” appeal to the collective sense that things are expensive and it’s harder than usual to get by.
We are living in a whiny, outrage culture driven by social media, Donald Trump, pissed off liberals, right wing grievance fetishists. And we are still recovering from the pandemic which knocked us for a loop. So I think Beutler has a point. On the other hand, most people get tired of negativity after a while and want some relief. I think that may be in play as well. Unfortunately, that may not come until after the election. If Trump wins he will get credit for it which is just too much to bear.
This is abnormal, even for him
There’s a lot going on in this world right now. This man is running for president and has a business that’s failing. Why in the world is he thinking about this at 8:00 in the morning?
And, needless to say I’m sure, it was Al Pacino who made the gaffe about “Best Picture” (not Picture of the Year) not Kimmel. And I don’t think anyone said “Don’t read his truth, Jimmy” because it’s stupid.
His mind is not working right. Not that it ever did but it’s getting a lot worse, right before our eyes. This is just bizarre.
It’s the Republicans, stupid. Or rather, the stupid Republicans.
This is so idiotic. Everyone knows that Mayorkas will not be convicted in the Senate. This kabuki today, with some MAGA Republican Senators caterwauling that there must be a full trial is supposed to jam up the Democrats running in tight Senate races but I find it hard to believe this mess means much to the average voter. Do most people even know it’s happening?
I expect we’ll see more of this in the future. Just as they set the precedent for presidential non-accountability with the criminal Richard Nixon’s pardon, they did the same with Clinton’s absurd impeachment. The Republicans have been destroying norms for many decades now. It just ramped up to warp speed under Trump.
This Mayorkas impeachment is particularly pathetic because it’s all happening because they can’t muster a reason to impeach the president even though they want to do that more than anything as a gift to their Dear Leader so they’re doing this as a sop to their base and a means to flog immigration for their electoral benefit. But it’s clear that they’re also fighting among themselves, just as they are in the House, so this is actually more evidence that they are completely useless at governance and their party is completely dysfunctional.
Half of Republicans think the Arizona ban is wrong
It’s the other half that is the problem:
Think about that. A quarter of Arizona’s Republicans strongly approve of that grotesque law. And another 21% sort of approve of it. It’s sick. They’re sick.
Fueling ecumenical extremism
What Alan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” left me with most, beside his “these kids today” tone, was how, in our congenital hubris, many Americans believe their thoughts are their own. With no real schooling in the evolution of ideas or in critical thinking, Americans may ignore what they’ve absorbed from their cultural melieu as having no real bearing except perhaps on their sartorial and musical preferences. Fundamentalists, of course, receive an upbringing not only in what to think but in what not to, and to distrust ideas not handed down by the patriarchs, the apostles and megachurch prosperity peddlers.
A habit of not interrogating one’s own thoughts make a mind fertile ground for those deliberately sowing weeds. The Washington Post has obtained a Russian document describing its government’s efforts at just that:
In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States.
“We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”
The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.
Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.
It’s hard to imagine more fertile ground for sowing such weeds than the minds of a nihilist, anti-democratic movement led by a malignant narcissist with dictatorial ambitions, unless it is social media that rewards anger, divisiveness, and conspiratorial content with engagement. The Mueller Report documented in detail how the Russian Internet Research Agency skillfully played Americans for suckers in 2016. They watched as seeds of disinformation sprouted and choked reality until Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway could proudly speak her alternative truths on Meet The Press.
Ecumenical extremism
Yes, they mean it:
The academic, Vladimir Zharikhin, called for Russia to “continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationist right-wing forces in America,” “enable the destabilization of Latin American countries and the rise to power of extremist forces on the far left and far right there,” as well as facilitate “the restoration of European countries’ sovereignty by supporting parties dissatisfied with economic pressure from the U.S.”
Read: Undermine NATO.
For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia’s richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison — it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.”
The long congressional standoff on providing more weapons to Ukraine was only making it easier for Russia to challenge Washington’s global power, he said.
Moscow has plenty of help on Capitol Hill. Some MAGA types may be bought. Others willingly volunteer. Other volunteers may not even know it:
“I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck’s Julia Ioffe last week. Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went further, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper a few days later, “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
The play’s the thing
MAGA House Republicans on Tuesday peformed “The Impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Act 2.”
You wonder why Republicans get nothing done? So does Chip Roy.
“One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” Texas Rep. Chip Roy thundered on the floor of the House in November.
Roy got no takers. They were too busy performing for the Fox News audience and Donald Trump. The play’s the thing, they thought, wherein we’ll win approval from the MAGA king.
“What’s especially striking about Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment is how little effort Republicans are investing in keeping up appearances,” Maddowblog observes:
It’s been more than a month since House Republicans made history by impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His GOP detractors couldn’t find any evidence of him committing high crimes, but they nevertheless made Mayorkas the first sitting cabinet secretary in American history to impeached.
And then, nothing happened. The idea that this was an urgent matter of great national importance was quickly contradicted by the fact that Republicans didn’t do anything with the articles of impeachment for weeks.
Ah, but wait. They did. For Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan to begin. They delivered the impeachment articles to the Senate on Tuesday. And who did they select for that solemn duty?
“The group of GOP impeachment managers included some of the party’s most right-wing extremists, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, and Andy Biggs of Arizona,” writes Steve Benen:
These aren’t the kind of managers party officials would choose to make a credible case to the Senate; these are the kind of managers party officials would choose as part of a partisan, election-year stunt.
And that’s because this entire process is clearly a partisan, election-year stunt.
Evidence? Pishposh. Unserious impeachment managers? Step outside and we’ll show you serious.
The party that won’t raise the minumum wage or support Ukraine against the Russians won’t give their voters bread but will give them a circus in hopes that somehow it will either a) fuel their base’s simmering anger, and/or b) distract attention from Donald Trump’s legal peril.
“We’ve taken impeachment, and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept,” former Colorado Rep. Ken Buck declared before resigning in disgust last month.
Benen adds:
GOP officials are barely even trying to prove him wrong. Republicans might as well be wearing t-shirts that read, “Yep, we’re engaged in a partisan, election-year stunt.”
NBC News’ report added, “It’s expected that Senate Democrats, who control the chamber, will band together and vote to dismiss or table the issue, then move on to other business, including the chamber’s need to renew a critical spy tool before it expires Friday. None of the Senate’s 51 Democrats have said they support the Mayorkas impeachment, and even a handful of GOP senators have said the impeachment is meritless.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will swear in senators as jurors in five hours. Watch this space.
The Lincoln Project set “The Procession of the Impeachment Managers” to appropriate music.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Here’s the rundown from Ian Millhiser:
The Supreme Court spent about an hour and a half on Tuesday morning arguing over whether to make it much harder for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who joined the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
It appears, after Tuesday’s arguments, that a majority of the justices will side with the insurrectionists — though it is far from clear how those justices will justify such an outcome.
The case, known as Fischer v. United States, involved a federal law which provides that anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” commits a very serious federal felony and can be imprisoned for up to 20 years — although, as Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar pointed out during Tuesday’s argument, actual sentences against January 6 defendants convicted under this statute have been much shorter, normally ranging from a little less than one year to slightly over two years.
According to the Justice Department, more than 1,265 people have been arrested for playing some role in the attack on the Capitol. Approximately 330 of them have been charged under the obstruction statute at issue in Fischer. One of them is Donald Trump.
As a federal appeals court held in its decision in this case, the obstruction statute is pretty darn clear that it applies to an effort to obstruct any congressional proceeding intended to certify the result of a presidential election — like the proceeding that the January 6 rioters attacked. And very few of the justices seemed to agree with Jeffrey Green, the lawyer representing a January 6 defendant, who proposed one way to read the statute more narrowly.
Nevertheless, many of the justices expressed concerns that the law sweeps too broadly and that it must be narrowed to prevent people who engage in relatively benign activity from being prosecuted.
Justice Samuel Alito, for example, expressed uncharacteristic sympathy for hecklers who interrupt a Supreme Court hearing — suggesting that prosecuting them under a statute that can carry a 20-year sentence goes too far. Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed similar concerns about prosecuting someone who peacefully conducts a sit-in to delay a court hearing, or someone who pulls a fire alarm to disrupt an official proceeding.
Indeed, Tuesday’s argument had a bit of a split personality. During Green’s time at the podium, most of the justices took turns criticizing his attempts to read the ban on obstructing an official proceeding narrowly. Even Alito, who is normally the Court’s most reliable vote for any outcome preferred by the Republican Party, got in on the game — telling Green that he “may be biting off more than [he] can chew” by arguing that the statute must be read to benefit his client.
By the time Green sat down, it appeared that he could lose in a 9–0 decision.
But any optimism that the Justice Department might have had early on in the argument must have been shattered almost as soon as Prelogar began her argument. Most of the justices peppered her with skeptical questions, although the justices who seemed to want to limit the obstruction statute struggled to agree on a single legal theory that would allow them to do so.
So the bottom line is that this case is probably going to end well for many January 6 defendants, but it is far from clear how the Court will justify such an outcome.
It appears that Trump may be spared having to pardon some of those J6 “hostages” after all. (The ones currently in jail for long terms were convicted of other crimes as well.)
Millhiser goes on to lay out the obstruction law in detail and then writes:
[W]hile it is hard to read the obstruction law in a way that doesn’t apply to rioters who invaded a government building for the purpose of disrupting the election certification process — forcing the entire Congress to flee for safety — many of the justices were concerned with other, hypothetical cases where this law might be used to target less troubling activity.
As Alito put it at one point, “What happened on January 6 was very, very serious,” but we need to figure out the “outer reaches” of the statute.
And so Prelogar faced a blizzard of hypothetical applications of the obstruction statutes, along with vague allegations that the government was applying the law selectively to pro-Trump rioters. Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, asked her if this law has ever been applied to a violent protest in the past (Prelogar conceded that it has not, but attributed that to the fact that the January 6 attack is unprecedented).
Meanwhile, several justices expressed concerns about people being charged with a felony for what Alito called “minor impediments,” such as if a heckler forced a proceeding to be delayed for a few minutes or if street protesters made it more difficult for members of Congress to drive to the Capitol. The concern appeared to be that people who engage in minimally disruptive political protests could be charged with a very serious felony.
There are several potential ways out of this trap. Prelogar pointed out that the statute prohibits behavior that “obstructs” a proceeding, and a minimal disruption might not rise to that level — though that theory did little to quiet the many skeptical questions she received.
One of the appellate judges who heard this case, Trump-appointed Judge Justin Walker, also suggested another way to limit the law. Walker homed in on the fact that the statute only applies to someone who “corruptly” obstructs a proceeding, and he wrote in an opinion that this word should be read to only apply to defendants who acted “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”
That interpretation, which Sotomayor and Kavanaugh both alluded to during Tuesday’s argument, would allow the January 6 insurrectionists to be prosecuted — because the whole point of that insurrection was to procure an unlawful benefit for Donald Trump: a second presidential term. But it would prevent the obstruction statute from being applied to minor heckling and the like.
Among the Court’s Republican appointees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed the least sympathetic to the insurrectionists. Though she asked Prelogar whether she could “be comfortable with the breadth” of the obstruction statute, she also suggested that overaggressive prosecutions could be culled because the defendants in those cases could raise First Amendment challenges.
Still, even if the Court’s three Democrats hang together, and even if Barrett joins them, it is unclear whether they can find a fifth vote to hold the January 6 insurrectionists accountable under this particular statute.
Millhiser points out that the conservative judges appear to be very “selective” when it comes to protection for protesters. Yeah.
Let’s hope they can at least cobble together a majority to narrowly agree that the law should apply to Trump. But I won’t be surprised if they let him off the hook. That would mean that two charges will be dropped but he’ll still be on the hook for two others. But it’s obvious that he should be tried under this law.
I’m sure you’ve heard that Mehdi Hassan was let go from MSNBC. It was a mistake. He’s opinionated and I don’t always agree with him but I do respect him. His interviews are among the best in the business.
Anyway, he has a new media venture called Zeteo.com, (which you can subscribe to here) and has a Youtube channel here. I thought this was especially good:
Here’s how it opens:
If you’re one of those people even on the left who isn’t that concerned by the prospect of a Trump second term that it won’t be that bad, that we survived Trump the first time round then this next segment is for you.
See I need you to hear me out and I need you to picture the scene. It’s January 20th 2025, inauguration day. You turn on the TV and Donald J Trump with his hand on his own God Bless the USA Bible is being sworn in as 47th president of the United States. Now the quadruple indicted new president makes his way back to the Oval Office and begins to make America great again again.
And based on team Trump’s own words own proud promises here’s how his first 100 days could very well turn out. Let’s go to day one — Trump begins his dictatorship.
Take the time to watch it. It’s worth it.
Trump is exhorting his cult to buy Truth Social stock. Here it is today:
On March 27th it went to 79. A whole lot of MAGA cultists are losing their red, white and blue Trump shirts.
Truth Social Stock Crashes as Donald Trump Maneuvers to Sell His Own Shares
Pulling the Ripcord
Shares of Donald Trump’s social media meme stock tumbled yet again today, sinking over 16 percent Monday morning.
The timing of the latest shellacking is particularly interesting: it comes after Trump made the first moves to cash out, likely leaving investors — who have already seen their holdings crumble — out to dry.
As Bloomberg reports, Truth Social owner Trump Media & Technology (TMTG) filed to register shares, including ones that are linked to warrants — a sign that Trump and other executives are looking to cash out far sooner than September, at which point the obligatory six-month hold on sales would be over.
Trumpet Section
The news comes after TMTG shares have been on a precipitous decline, slumping to less than $27 — significantly less than half of what they were worth around the time of the merger last month.
The drop has resulted in the former president’s net worth dropping by several billion dollars in just three weeks.
Despite the grim outlook, Trump and his collaborators could still hold on to millions of shares, likely planning to eventually sell them for many hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Bloomberg.
The company, however, still needs permission from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Trump would also need the green light from TMTG’s board before selling — which shouldn’t be too difficult, given his personal standing.
Analysts have held that investors looking to increase their money should stay away from the former president’s meme stock, calling it a “scam.”