Trump gave all of us more reason to vote this fall
If it was not clear before that reproductive freedoms will be the central issue of this presidential campaign, Donald Trump made that clear on Monday, as Digby noted. Every time he does, he’ll drown out his own party’s messaging about border security, age, inflation or any other bit of spaghetti they hope sticks to the wall. But then keeeping his mouth shut about “our Great Roe v. Wade Victory” is not one of Trump’s strong suits.
This is one Trump message the left should amplify, and Biden-Harris is on it.
This is a painful story that so many families around America now know too well: Amanda was denied the medical care she needed, and it nearly took her life.
More than 1 in 3 women in America now lives under an abortion ban, with more on the way.
The GOP wants to leave all our freedoms up to individual states. Where once we were North and South, segregated and less-so, MAGA Republicans want to make what freedoms we Americans enjoy contingent not on the Constitution but on where we live. They want to leave our freedoms up to the states.
When the eclipse reached totality Monday afternoon, we looked around and thought this one was much darker than the total eclipse that passed an hour away in 2017. Seven years ago when the celestial light dimmed it was dusky, but not dark. This time we were on the edge of night. What’s up with that?
It turns out that the explanation was out there. The geometry of the Earth, Moon and Sun were slightly different this time, making the path of totality wider (Mashable):
Setting aside weather conditions, the wider path of totality is also the reason some solar eclipse observers could be treated to a darker sky, Zeiler said, allowing people to see more stars against the backdrop.
If a person stood in the center of the narrower path in 2017, then went to the center of the broader 2024 path this April, the sky could appear darker the second time around. The duration of the eclipse and the level of darkness are related.
“If you’re in the center, then you’re a farther distance away from sunlight. That’s what it boils down to — how far you are from the edge of the shadow,” he said.
— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) April 9, 2024
So it was near Bloomington, Indiana. The backroads drive up from Louisville, Kentucky through southwest Indiana was otherwise free of Confederate flags and Trump signs except for one house festooned with TRUMP you-name-it. But it was clear we’d arrived in one of Indiana’s few blue patches when a Bloomington church sign read:
Save The Earth It’s The Only Planet With Chocolate
The college town (Indiana University Bloomington) was flooded with people. You could tell by the offers of eclipse parking around town: $20, $30, $40. The frat houses brought couches out onto the lawns. A concert set up on a campus lawn for the afternoon. Security vehicles and personnel blocked entrances to empty lots around campus.
Out by the reservoir bridge (I spent 2017’s eclipse by a closer one) where the parking was free and less crowded, a family brought their 10-year-old from states away to celebrate her birthday. After the eclipse ended, the parking lot crowd sang Happy Birthday.
Most (including me) were too busy watching the sky to notice the shadow bands on the pavement the spouse and another woman witnessed:
As millions of Americans look to the sky on Monday to witness the total solar eclipse, a group of young astronomers from the University of Pittsburgh will be in a sparse pocket of the Texas Hill Country trying to crack a 200-year-old mystery.
Shadow bands are thin, wavy lines of alternating light and dark that seem to race across the ground in the minute or so right before, and right after, the moon completely blocks out the sun.
No one knows why this phenomenon occurs. But since German astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt wrote about it in 1820, a couple of theories have emerged.
The leading hypothesis is that shadow bands are caused by atmospheric turbulence. In the brief moments before and after the moon completely obscures the sun, just a sliver of light is visible. As that sliver travels down through the Earth’s atmosphere, it hits air pockets of different densities. That causes refraction patterns to create the undulating shadows.
As Digby noted in a tweet from her bunker, no virgins were sacrificed in the making of this eclipse. No Rapture either.
Former president Donald Trump has privately said he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory, according to people familiar with the plan. Some foreign policy experts said Trump’s idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and condone the violation of internationally recognized borders by force.
Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential. That approach, which has not been previously reported, would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy, which has emphasized curtailing Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.
As he seeks a return to power, the presumptive Republican nominee has frequently boasted that he could negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, even before taking office. But he has repeatedly declined to specify publicly how he would quickly settle a war that has raged for more than two years and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.
Trump-aligned foreign-policy thinkers have emphasizedaddressing threats to U.S. interests from China and seeking ways to reverse Russia’s increasing dependence on China for military, industrial and economic assistance. They have also embraced limiting NATO expansion.
Privately, Trump has said that he thinks both Russia and Ukraine “want to save face, they want a way out,” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.
Accepting Russian control over parts of Ukraine would expand the reach of Putin’s dictatorship after what has been the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Some of Trump’s supporters have been trying to persuade him against such an outcome.
“I’ve been spending 100 percent of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a onetime Trump critic turned ally. “He has to pay a price. He can’t win at the end of this,” Graham added, speaking of Putin.
I don’t really think Trump cares what Lindsey thinks. He cares what Vladimir thinks.
This plan has been on the table for a long time:
I was unaware of that one. But I sure remember this from the Mueller report:
Czech intelligence has busted a Moscow-financed network that spread Russian propaganda and wielded influence across Europe, including in the European Parliament, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday.
The group used the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site to spread information seeking to discourage the European Union from sending aid to Ukraine, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022.
Fiala said the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) discovered that the pro-Russian network was indulging in activities that “would have a serious impact on the security of the Czech Republic and the EU.”
“This group sought to carry out operations and activities on EU territory aimed against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine,” Fiala told reporters.
“The group’s activity… also reaches the European Parliament,” he said, refusing to disclose further details.
Aaaand this:
.@RepMikeTurner tells @jaketapper it's "absolutely true" that Russian propaganda has "infected" a portion of the GOP base, calling out "anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor." pic.twitter.com/Jv4fAiCNf4
I guess we can see all this as one big coincidence but that would be foolish. Russia is targeting right wing politicians in Europe and the US and it’s working, especially here. Republicans know that but they seem unwilling to do much about it.
I’m going to get out my worn copy of “The Guns Of August” and force myself to read it again.
After claiming abortion should be an issue for the states to decide, Trump concludes his new video by saying the country is "at the brink … we have to win … we are a failing nation." Bleak stuff. pic.twitter.com/d2jyI2yryH
Yeah, whatever. He made it clear yesterday that he’s just doing this to get elected. I mean, he said it out loud:
Basically Trump said that he’s fine with making little 10 year old rape victims go through childbirth because a “state” says that’s how it should be. He also took credit for ending Roe v Wade — I don’t think he realizes just how much that’s going to hurt him in swing states that are trying to ban abortion.
The Biden campaign came out swinging:
NEW AD: Donald Trump just took credit for extreme abortion bans across the country.
Former President Donald Trump went after Sen. Lindsey Graham Monday for knocking Trump’s stance on abortion, saying that “Democrats are thrilled” with Graham pushing a federal ban on the procedure.
Trump, 77, rebuked his ally on Truth Social hours after Graham (R-SC) said he would “continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks.”
“Senator Lindsey Graham should spend more time focusing on all of the many people being killed because of our now non-existent Border, and the millions of people dying in senseless, never-ending Wars that he constantly favors and promotes, and should spend less time on taking away our Great Roe v. Wade Victory of sending a complicated and controversial Issue back to the States where, according to Highly Respected Legal Scholars on both sides, it belongs,” Trump said.
“The Democrats are thrilled with Lindsey, because they want this Issue to simmer for as long a period of time as possible,” the 45th president went on.
“They are destroying our Country, and they don’t want to talk about Inflation, a Bad Economy, the Horrible Open Border, Rigged Elections, Afghanistan, Ukraine/Russia, or the Attack on Israel, all of which would never have happened if I were President. Great job Lindsey!”
He seems a little agitated don’t you think?
Interesting that he thinks the Democrats are doing the same thing on abortion that has admittedly done on the border — purposefully keeping the issue on a high boil for political purposes which is ridiculous. Democrats are certainly going to urge people out to vote by making it clear who is responsible for this reversal of a fundamental human right that had been acknowledged in the US constitution for 50 years. “Leaving it up to the states” which he is trying to claim is the middle ground (and he doesn’t even believe) does not solve that problem. Republicans, on the other hand, had the opportunity to take action at the border using methods that Democrats had to hold their noses hard to vote for and Trump told them not to vote for it because it could harm his election chances if there was a bipartisan agreement.
He always assumes that others are operating from the same corrupt motivations that he is and most people can see through it in cases like this.
Oh my. Somebody needs to lay off the diet cokes:
He’s still going on about it:
It appears he thought this was some kind of magic bullet that would remove the issue from the campaign. I don’t think so..
I’m not sure where she’s getting this stuff but she’s one step away from QAnon with crap like this:
Marjorie Taylor Greene once again does Putin’s bidding:
“This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians…Russia is not doing that. They are not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.” pic.twitter.com/QEMYN1BLDn
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) April 8, 2024
This woman is very powerful. (I know that’s hard to accept but it’s true.) In this Republican Party she is a force to be reckoned with and she’s on the verge of defenestrating the current Speaker over this if he doesn’t do her bidding. There’s a good chance he will bend to her will because it does not conflict with his Christian Nationalist beliefs. In fact, she’s probably trying to rally his right wing Christian base to pressure him not to bring Ukraine aid to the floor.
That would explain this as well:
She got roasted on social media and responded on Sunday:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Sunday defended an earlier statement saying Monday’s eclipse and Friday’s New York-area earthquake were signs from God telling people to repent.
After two days of backlash, Greene addressed a community note that was added to provide context to her original post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. She said that while eclipses are predictable, they still are created by God and can be signs for those who believe.
“Many have mocked and scoffed at this post and even put community notes,” Greene said in Sunday morning’s post on X.
“Jesus talked about that in Luke 12:54-56,” Green continued. “Yes eclipses are predictable and earthquakes happen and we know when comets are passing by, however God created all of these things and uses them to be signs for those of us who believe.”
On Friday, an earthquake shook the New York region, which infrequently experiences such incidents. On Monday, people across the country will witness a total solar eclipse, a rare phenomenon that is next slated to occur in two decades.
In a post Friday, Greene wrote that “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”
The idea that this cretinous horror is a “good Christian” is laughable to me but apparently you can be as evil as you like in the name of the lord. I suspect she’s the one who’s going to need to repent but what do I know?
By the way, this is her boyfriend, a youtube broadcaster on RBN:
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend warns of potential “fallout” from the total eclipse “combined with several earthquakes,” a resurgence of once dormant locusts “who will all of sudden attack mankind,” and threw in a line about Joe Biden for good measure. pic.twitter.com/pXs51EraKV
They didn’t even show Florida, which is a real shocker:
It’s about time the MSM took notice of this phenomenon. There’s been a ton of talk about the Biden “uncommitted” vote because of Gaza but very little about the fact that Trump’s getting a smaller percentage of the GOP vote than Biden gets from Democrats. And a bunch of these races have happened long after the other candidates have dropped out:
A month after Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican race, former President Trump is still dealing with a contingent of voters showing up to cast primary ballots for candidates who aren’t him.
Why it matters: PresidentBiden has more successfully unified his voters despite never facing a strong primary opponent and an organized protest vote over the war in Gaza.
-In 10 recent primary contests, more than one-quarter of GOP primary voters cast a ballot for a non-Trump candidate.
-“Joe Biden has a real golden opportunity to capture all those disaffected people who voted for Nikki Haley,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
Driving the news: In the key battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, 20.8% of Republican primary voters cast a ballot for a candidate other than Trump.
-Haley, the former UN ambassador who suspended her campaign a month ago, drew more than 12%, or 76,000 votes, in Wisconsin, which Biden won by just over 20,000 votes against Trump in 2020.
-“Those are significant numbers,” longtime Wisconsin Republican strategist Bill McCoshen told Axios.
-“Will those voters come home in November? I think it’s possible they will, history suggests that most of them will, but I think it’s also a signal to the Trump campaign that his pick for a VP could be very critical to bringing these voters back.”
-Trump saw a larger share of protest votes in Wisconsin than Biden in the Democratic primary, where 8.3% of voters, or about 48,000, supported the “uninstructed” vote in protest of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The big picture: In another key presidential swing state, Arizona, Haley won about 18% of the vote in the GOP primary last month, despite having suspended her campaign about halfway through early voting.
[…]
It’s possible that some of the non-Trump votes in recent contests were from voters who cast a ballot while Haley was still in the race — and are planning to back Trump in November.
But the sizable shares of protest votes could also be a sign of Trump’s vulnerabilities ahead of an election that’s likely to be decided by the margins in a few key swing states.
Yes it could. It’s possible that there are more disaffected Trump voters than are being measured in the opinion polls. These are real elections and while they can’t tell us exactly what’s going to happen in November, they are certainly a clue. The Trump campaign should be worried.
When voters learn more about independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he’ll take votes away from Donald Trump in the general election, a pollster told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday.
Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project said she recently administered two focus groups on Kennedy’s candidacy.
“I specifically did former Biden voters, who were leaning toward RFK, and Trump voters who were leaning toward RFK, and it’s crazy because it’s like a Rorschach test,” Longwell said, continuing:
He’s such a wildcard that, the Dems will tell you they love his positions on conservation and the environment. He’s really good on those. And Republicans will tell you they love the way he’s beating up on Democrats as what they perceive to be a Democrat, because his last name is Kennedy, and they love his position on being anti-vax. And so, right now, and because he’s a Kennedy, there’s from the Dems a sense of, he is a Democrat.
So he’s pulling from both right now, but comments like this, ultimately, if I were Donald Trump, I would be very concerned that when voters become more educated on who RFK is, that he will pull much more from the MAGA anti-vax right.
The “comments” Longwell referred to came in the form of a statement Friday where Kennedy tried to explain his stance on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. In it, he claimed the rioters received “harsh treatment” through the “vigor” of their prosecutions and “long sentences.” He also claimed the rioters had no weapons, but court records show authorities confiscated everything from guns to Tasers.
Longwell added, “Here’s the thing: I think that anybody who splits the broad anti-Trump coalition is dangerous. And, so, if you asked me my preference, it would be that RFK wasn’t in there. But I do think once Dems are done, sort of educating people about this guy, he will take more from Trump than from Biden.”
I’ve always felt that way (but I wouldn’t put money on it.) He’s a conspiracy theorist nutcase and while there are some of those in the Democratic coalition, the GOP is the party making a profit at it.
Keep in mind that there’s a whole GOP sub-cult around JFK Jr that believes he actually survived the plane crash and is making a dramatic return to American life. If they’re daft enough to believe that I could easily see them thinking that RFK Jr is JFKJr or that he’s planning to bring him into the cabinet. Or something. In other words, these nuts are far more likely to be right wingers and they are far more likely to think RFK Jr is their guy. If the left turns on Biden I would expect them to go to Jill Stein as they always do. They are still at least somewhat tethered to actual politics.
On the other hand, the RFK brain trust certainly sees lefties as a target:
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That question is circulating on social media and cable news every day now in response to the Trump campaign foolishly asking it, apparently expecting that everyone is mathematically illiterate and won’t think back to the spring of 2020 when thousands of people were dying in the COVID pandemic. You’d think the last thing they’d want anyone to remember is Donald Trump appearing on television every day yelling at reporters and telling people to take snake oil cures or inject disinfectant. It was a nightmare from which the country has not yet fully recovered and his abominable performance during that horrific crisis marked the worst days of his presidency.
You’ll remember that he was careening madly from day to day, completely out of his depth, making everyone even more frightened and nervous than they already were. We know from reporting in real time and later from books and interviews that Trump was really only concerned about how the pandemic was going to affect his reelection campaign and as a result he tried various PR approaches, from denying it was happening to demanding that we stop testing because it was making “his numbers” look bad to declaring that less than a hundred thousand deaths from the virus would be a big win. (The American death toll stands at well over a million.)
One of the more inane attempts to shape the narrative was when he tried to adopt the mantle of “wartime president” to rally the country around the commander in chief and send him to a second term by acclamation. Salon’s Bob Cesca wrote at the time:
As of the past several days, Trump’s been marketing COVID-19 as an “invisible enemy.” He can’t stop repeating the bellicose platitude that America is at war against the virus, even though he spent the first two months of this catastrophe telling us it was no big deal.
Yet during the Sunday edition of the Trump Show, the president said, “In a true sense we’re at war.” On top of not understanding the definition of “war” or “true,” Trump is also struggling to present himself with a patina of unity and cooperation (which he and his people routinely contradict with obnoxious cracks and tweets about his political opponents), while conspicuously thanking “first responders,” as in the days and weeks following 9/11.
Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation. … Now it’s our time. We must sacrifice together, because we are all in this together, and we will come through together. It’s the invisible enemy. That’s always the toughest enemy, the invisible enemy.
No one bought that line because it was clear that he was in over his head and once he made the most famous gaffe of his presidency — the suggestion to scientists that perhaps humans could inject or ingest disinfectant to kill the virus — he stopped appearing at the daily briefing. But despite the fact that he loves to fatuously portray himself as the “peace president” he clearly liked the idea of being a wartime leader and thought it would be useful to his campaign. The only war he’s ever been interested in waging, however, is the culture war.
That May he launched an all out attack on former president Barack Obama, with a convoluted conspiracy theory he called “Obamagate” (original as always) having something to do with the Russia investigation which nobody could ever figure out and demanding that he be jailed for his alleged crimes. He even had his Attorney General Bill Barr assign U.S. Attorney John Bash to look into the matter and then Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., agreed to hold hearings although he didn’t follow Trump’s orders to subpoena Obama to appear. Nothing ever came of it because it was nonsense but it did distract for a time from his miserable failure to lead the country through the pandemic.
Recall that he also launched a series of assaults on blue states demanding that governors would have to “negotiate” for aid by giving up sanctuary cities. As I wrote at the time:
He and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even cooked up a plan to deny pandemic aid to liberal-leaning states, literally calling it “No Blue State Bailouts.” Republican governors are now following his lead and doing the same with the Democratic mayors of major cities. After years and years of bellowing about “local control,” they are now overruling mayors’ stay-at-home orders in an effort to force people back to work.
Essentially, Trump declared war on his political opponents in 2020. It wasn’t successful for him at the time but that’s not stopping him from giving it another go and this time it’s scorched earth. Over the weekend he shared a video made by Tom Klingenstein, a very wealthy financier and the Chairman of the Claremont Institute. Back in 2021, Klingenstein took up the banner when Trump went into exile at Mar-a-Lago and started a Super Pac to fight what he calls the “Woke regime.” He characterizes it as a cold civil war which the woke regime is winning because the right is too afraid to fight.
Until now, his work has mostly been focused on the idea itself but now he’s taken it to a new level presenting Donald Trump as the only man who can lead us with a piece he calls “Trump’s Virtues” which Trump shared on Truth Social to a rapturous reception:
Leni Riefenstahl wouldn’t be impressed with the aesthetics but her client would certainly admire the message. A small sample:
We shouldn’t much care whether our commander-in-chief is a real conservative, whether he is a role model for children or says lots of silly things, or whether he is modest or dignified. What we should care about is whether he knows we are in a war, knows who the enemy is, and knows how to win. Trump does.
His policies are important, but not as important as the rest of him. Trump grasps the essential things. He understands that the group quota regime is evil and will not stop until it destroys America. He is a fighter—bold, brave, and decisive—who has confidence in himself and his country.
His enemies hate him with an indescribable fierceness. “Another Hitler,” they say, “elect him and he will be a dictator.” We should take this hysteria as reason for hope. The America-haters rightly fear that he and his party are on the threshold of a successful counterrevolution.
Trump hates his enemies every bit as much as they hate him. His enemies are America’s enemies.
Those enemies are everyone who doesn’t support Trump and they must be destroyed. The man who made that video surely believes all this and Trump’s followers love the message and are inspired by it. The rest of us are simply left stunned by the idea that any of this could possibly be defined as “virtuous.”
Republicans’ impeachment probe of President Biden is unraveling because of a lack of evidence — but their work could become the basis for federal investigations and even prosecutions of the Biden family if Donald Trump wins re-election, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Trump has vowed retribution against his enemies if he wins in November. House Republicans have struggled to show Biden has done anything illegal, but people close to Trump are still plotting to use the Justice Department against Biden and his family.
A source close to the Trump campaign said that “everything you have seen from the Biden DOJ,” in terms of the charges against Trump, “you can expect to see from the Trump DOJ.”
One Trump ally argued that there is precedent for a second Trump administration to investigate and prosecute the Bidens: the current federal charges against Trump.
Reality check:Those charges stem from allegations that Trump led a conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election, and that he illegally kept classified documents and then schemed to conceal that he’d taken them.
Biden was found to have some classified documents from his vice presidency, but cooperated with authorities in returning them.
The special counsel who investigated Biden’s case, a former Trump appointee to the Justice Department, decided not to prosecute.
Driving the news: House Republicans have alleged that Biden should be impeached because he illicitly benefitted from lucrative foreign deals arranged by his son Hunter.
Despite their difficulty proving that, Trump has said he thinks Biden should be prosecuted anyway — because Trump is being prosecuted now.
“By weaponizing the DOJ against his Political Opponent, ME, Joe has opened a giant Pandora’s Box,” Trump posted on Truth Social in January.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a fundraising email last month that “when President Trump returns to the White House, it’s critical the new leadership at the DOJ have everything they need to prosecute the Biden Crime Family and deliver swift justice.”
Comer also said on Fox News recently that if Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department won’t accept criminal referrals from House Republicans, “then maybe a Donald Trump Department of Justice will.”
Ther’s more at the link, but you get the gist.
They’ll find a ham sandwich to prosecute even if they have to bake the bread, slaughter the pig, grow the lettuce, and assemble the sandwich. It’s who they are. It will be the most productive work the GOP has done in years.
