Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Here’s an interesting little insight into the workings of the FBI. You know, the agency that the Republicans want to de-fund? Maybe they need to rethink that seeing as it’s filled with MAGA insurrectionists:

Hi, it’s Jason Leopold with the second installment of my new weekly newsletter, FOIA Files. If you haven’t yet, sign up now to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday.

As news of the Mar-a-Lago raid unfolded on the morning of Aug. 8, 2022, it unsurprisingly drew fierce reaction from Trump, his biggest backers, and many Republican members of Congress. But a cache of documents I recently obtained from the FBI shows just how much the historic event roiled some of the bureau’s rank and file, forcing FBI Director Christopher Wray to engage in damage control.

“Did this really just happen? Am I dreaming? The FBI served a Search Warrant on a former president?” wrote an incredulous bureau employee in an email that was sent to the FBI’s acting ombudsman, Chauncenette Morey, shortly after the Mar-a-Lago search. “If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back. Like … Seriously? My own agency …. A bunch of democrat political hacks up top…I’ve lost just about all faith in our leadership.”

Of course they did ask … and ask … and ask again for him to give them back and he refused. And then he lied. And then he tried to hide them. And now we’ve learned he may have removed some of them from the premises. But sure, he’s innocent as a newborn babe. I feel so safe knowing people like this are in the FBI looking out for our democracy.

It gets worse:

A handful of records came from the FBI’s little known Office of the Ombudsman, the division within the bureau where employees can confidentially raise concerns. That partially explains why the FBI cited a privacy exemption under the FOIA to justify redacting the email sender’s name. Still, the documents showed that Morey forwarded the email to Paul Abbate, the FBI’s deputy director.

“Just wanted you to be aware of the concerns/comments our office has received regarding the search of former President Trump,” Morey wrote.

Another FBI employee was even harsher, characterizing the bureau as a “Banana Republic” and an “embarrassment,” and demanding answers to a series of questions.

[…]

Rumors have long swirled that FBI agents at various field offices had been sympathetic to Trump even as the bureau launched investigations into his campaign and his business dealings. The claims were always attributed to anonymous sources. An email I obtained last year after a separate FOIA lawsuit related to the Jan. 6 Capital riots backs up those assertions.

“There’s no good way to say it,” read the email to deputy director Abbate. “So I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol and said it was no different than the BLM protests of last summer,” the person wrote a week after the riots.

[…]

The FBI agent went on to summarize his view of the climate at FBI offices based on his conversations with his colleagues. Agents, especially those who work counterterrorism cases, he said, sympathized with the insurrectionists’ “frustration” and chalked it up to “everyone having been quarantined at home for months” due to COVID, losing their jobs and “fake news,” for example.

“A senior analyst from my first unit who retired less than 2 years ago has a Facebook page full of #StoptheSteal content. These are not one-off events – they are representative of a larger group within” the FBI, the agent wrote.

This agent sounds like he was concerned about these MAGA FBI types but maybe I’m misinterpreting it. I’d guess there are many Trumpers in the DOJ in general. The emails also showed that people were upset about the threats against the FBI after the search warrant but it’s unclear to me who they blamed, the people who were threatening them or the FBI for issuing the search warrant.

Do you feel secure knowing that people like this are in the FBI protesting that the government is trying to keep nuclear secrets from being stolen and left lying around in a social club where thousands of unvetted people wander unsupervised night after night? Is that ok with them simply because they worship a dangerously ignorant cult leader?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel all that good about it.

So many people have tuned out of politics over the past three years because of the trauma of the Trump years, the pandemic and simple exhaustion and relief. As a result they are uninformed. Will Bunch writes:

The biggest reason for the missing alarm about the prospect of Trump 47 might simply be a lack of information. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent recently reported on a poll of 1,200 voters deemed gettable for Biden in three swing states, including Pennsylvania, and found the vast majority didn’t know about Trump’s “dictator for a day” comments, or that he’d echoed Adolf Hitler in calling enemies “vermin” and claiming migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. The pollster said only 31% of persuadable voters had heard much about these statements. You can call it voter apathy, but a lot of the blame belongs to a mainstream media that’s not banging the pots and pans like it should be and remains much more obsessed about the horse race odds of who wins the election than the stakes of an undemocratic presidency.

Sargent says this presents an opportunity:

That’s maddening for obvious reasons. But it also presents the Biden campaign with an opportunity. If voters are unaware of all these statements, there’s plenty of time to make voters aware of them—and the polling also finds that these statements, when aired to respondents, shift them against Trump.

The survey—which was conducted by veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin for the group Save My Country and shared with The New Republic—did something novel. It polled 400 voters in each of three swing states—Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and weighted them in proportion with each state’s Electoral College votes. It omitted respondents who voted for Trump in 2020 and also said Biden didn’t legitimately win.

In short, the poll was designed to survey voters who are genuinely gettable for Biden. The poll asked them about 10 of Trump’s most authoritarian statements, including: the two mentioned above, Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” his vow to pardon rioters who attacked the Capitol, his promise to prosecute the Biden family without cause, his threat to inflict mass persecution on the “vermin” opposition, and a few more.

Result? “Only 31 percent of respondents said they previously had heard a lot about these statements by Trump,” the memo accompanying the poll concluded.

The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.

“This is an opportunity to move voters and change the race,” Garin told me, noting that this shows that current public polling, which has Biden down to Trump, is “not set in concrete.”

I know this may be boring to people like us who keep up with politics. But it’s important to keep it in circulation even among ourselves. It’s very easy, even for engaged, informed voters, to lose the sense of urgency that’s going to be necessary to save us from another round of Trump insanity. So pass this stuff around. It’s important.

One of Donald Trump’s most famous quotes is from the 2016 campaign when he said,” I could shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose any voters.” He seems to have convinced himself that it’s true. Despite the fact that he has been losing between 20 and 40 percent in most of the Republican primaries this year, he insists that they will all vote for him in the fall and anyway, he says, “I’m not sure we need too many.”

https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1753612048720666935?s=20

As recently as Super Tuesday he told Right Side Broadcasting, “I don’t need votes, we have all the votes we need.”

Trump: “I don’t need votes.” pic.twitter.com/aV8oeRjqwr

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) March 5, 2024

And why wouldn’t he say that? After all, as he told Newsmax again on Thursday night, “We won in 2016, we won even bigger in 2020 , we won by a lot more” so he’s certain to get as many votes this time. Or, at least, that seems to be his logic.

But if he was really so sure of himself you’d think he wouldn’t need to ensure that the election is going to be a nightmare that makes 2020 look placid and serene by comparison, wouldn’t you? But that looks like what he has in mind. Now that he has managed to install his daughter-in-law Laura Trump, MAGA henchman Michael Whatley in the RNC, along with his defacto campaign manager (and underhanded operative) Chris LaCivita, and immediately purged the RNC staff to make room for loyalists, the takeover of the party is complete. And from what we hear from Lara Trump, who has been all over TV discussing their agenda, they plan a full fledged assault on the election process in November.

Although she has said repeatedly that they planned to encourage early voting in this election, according to the Washington Post, they’ve actually ended their “Bank Your Vote” program and replaced it with a “Grow The Vote” outreach to less likely Trump voters (which must mean white voters since they are also reportedly shutting down their minority outreach centers.) Trump has made it clear that if her father-in-law is elected they will immediately put in place laws to return to one day voting, with paper ballots, voter ID and requirements that the count to be finished by the end of election day, so that’s something to look forward to.

In the meantime, they plan to train actual MAGA poll workers apparently, something the RNC was not allowed to do for decades because of a consent decree from 1981 when they got caught intimidating minority voters as they are wont to do. (In reality, this plan was already announced last fall under the auspices of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, but like all Trumps she’s taking credit for others’ work.)

Lara Trump told Sean Hannity, “we have to fight fire with dynamite” and announced that they are putting “massive resources” toward a newly created “election integrity division” claiming “we currently have 78 lawsuits out right now in 23 states across this country to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And here’s what I want to say. To anyone out there who is thinking about cheating in an election, we will go after you. You will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” (Actually that’s already happening — to her father-in-law and his cronies.)

But you won’t believe who they’ve hired as the “senior counsel” for the new election integrity division. It’s almost as if they are trolling the media and the Democrats by putting one of the most dishonest, hyperbolic purveyors of The Big Lie in all of MAGA world, Christina Bobb, the author of the book “Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024.” She’s the former Trump DHS official and OAN commentator who promoted the daft idea that Trump would be reinstated after Joe Biden was inaugurated on the basis of the absurd “audits” that took place in various close states and came up with nothing.

Bobb is probably best known to mainstream America as the attorney who signed the affidavit attesting to the fact that Trump had turned over all the classified material at Mar-a-lago which was later found to be untrue. But she’s been part of the Trump inner circle since November of 2020 as an energetic election denier, as this NY Times profile from 2022 illustrates:

Ms. Bobb was present in the pro-Trump “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington before the Capitol attack, along with Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump stalwarts. She acted as Mr. Giuliani’s go-between with state officials in Arizona and helped fund-raise for a recount in Maricopa County that Republican leaders called a “sham.” She drafted a memo and participated in meetings to discuss a plan to appoint alternate slates of electors to reverse legitimate state election results. And Ms. Bobb created the computer file used to draft a proposal, never carried out, for Mr. Trump to issue an executive order for the federal government to seize voting machines.

Bobb was also sued for defamation by Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines and played a key role in the fake electors scheme.

She’s had quite a trajectory. She went to law school and then joined the marines for two years after which she ran for office and came in last in field of 8. Then she went to DC and joined the Trump administration, then decamped to OAN where she became a “Stop The Steal” cheerleader and became “a fixture at meetings” with the likes of John Eastman and Sidney Powell. She finally quit OAN and moved to Florida where she took a staff job at Trump’s Save America PAC and somehow was tapped to be the lawyer who had to sign that affidavit when the FBI came calling.

Her devotion to Trump is limitless. I saw her on Right Side Broadcasting at a Trump rally where she extolled Trump’s impeccable musical taste and fantastic dancing abilities. I’m not kidding. According to the Times, even Trump himself has recoiled at her cloying sycophancy (which, frankly, is hard to believe.) But in MAGA world she is an expert on the Big Lie and the truest of true believers. Of course they’re making her “senior counsel for election integrity.” Who else could it possibly be?

From the state that brought you Jesse Helms

Al Jolson telling the audience, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer marked the end of the silent film era. Well, buckle up. The North Carolina that brought you Jesse Helms, the state that elected Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and made him the 2024 Republican nominee for governor, isn’t done yet.

The state’s Republican primary voters upset their own incumbent superintendent of public instruction, Catherine Truitt, on March 5 and replaced her on the ballot with Michele Morrow.

“Every sign we had said that Catherine Truitt was going to win this election,” political scientist Dr. Chris Cooper told reporters.

Jake Tapper and Andy Kaczynski introduced CNN viewers to Morrow Thursday night (via WRAL):

Michele Morrow, a conservative activist who last week upset the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina’s Republican primary, expressed support in 2020 for the televised execution of former President Barack Obama and suggested killing then-President-elect Joe Biden.

Morrow responded here, but has turned off replies and also hidden many.

She appears to be doubling down on her claim Obama should be executed — but has not responded on her tweet suggesting that celebrities harvest the blood of children. https://t.co/jZ67bPcYLE

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) March 15, 2024

“Wait a minute, I tell ya,” Jolson said. “You ain’t heard nothin’.”:

In other comments on social media between 2019 and 2021 reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Morrow made disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.

WRAL previously reported many of Morrow’s statements. She faces Democrat Mo Green, a career school system administrator, in the statewide superintendent race.

“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” Morrow wrote in a tweet from May 2020, responding to a user sharing a conspiracy theory who suggested sending Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

In another post in May 2020, she responded to a fake Time Magazine cover that featured art of Obama in an electric chair asking if he should be executed.

“Death to ALL traitors!!” Morrow responded.

In yet another comment, Morrow suggested in December 2020 killing Biden, who at that time was president-elect, and has said he would ask Americans to wear a mask for 100 days.

“Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” she wrote.

And QAnon. And adrenochrome.

Morrow has espoused a wide range of extreme views on social media in recent years. Many of her past extreme comments were made on her now-dormant personal Twitter account — which is separate from her campaign account.

Morrow also promoted QAnon slogans and tweeted that the actor Jim Carrey was “… likely searching for adrenochrome” – a reference to a conspiracy theory shared by QAnon believers that celebrities harvest and drink the blood of children to prolong their own lives. Media Matters, a left-leaning publication, was first to report the QAnon tweets.

All together, Morrow tweeted “WWG1WGA” – the slogan that stands for “where we go one, we go all” and is commonly associated with the QAnon conspiracy – more than seven times in 2020.

Oh, yeah. There’s more.

In other comments, Morrow repeatedly shared the false claim that Obama was Muslim, called Islam evil, and expressed belief in a conspiracy theory that tens of thousands of Chinese troops were stationed in Canada to invade the United States to help Joe Biden become president.

“Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers are already in Canada and probably Mexico waiting for orders to invade,” she wrote on January 8, 2021.

Years ago, Charlie Pierce named us “the newly insane state of North Carolina.” We’ll find out just how insane this November.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Fight back. We did it before.

“There exists no more sordid and unlovely type of social development than a plutocracy,” Teddy Roosevelt insisted in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1907. Roosevelt saw the harms of the first Gilded Age and sought, with public support, to end them:

The utterly changed conditions of our national life necessitate changes in certain of our laws, of our governmental methods…. National sovereignty is to be upheld in so far as it means the sovereignty of the people used for the real and ultimate good of the people; and state’s rights are to be upheld in so far as they mean the people’s rights. Especially is this true in dealing with the relations of the people as a whole to the great corporations which are the distinguishing feature of modern business conditions.

One hunded plus years later, we are in a second Gilded Age. Or haven’t you noticed?

Robert Reich has:

Folks, we're living in a Second Gilded Age.

It can be easy to feel discouraged, but the First Gilded Age teaches us lessons on how we can fight back. Watch. pic.twitter.com/to7ISs45QA

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 15, 2024

Billions in campaign contributions.
Jim Crow 2.0.
Workers exploited.
Child labor has returned.
Staggering inequality.

Oh, and facsism.

We beat back the first five at the beginning of the 20th century. Reich believes we can do it again. (I wish I had his confidence.)

Teddy Roosevelt did not hesitate to go after the masters of passive income.

Many men of large wealth have been guilty of conduct which from the moral standpoint is criminal, and their misdeeds are to a peculiar degree reprehensible, because those committing them have no excuse of want, of poverty, of weakness and ignorance to offer as partial atonement. When in addition to moral responsibility these men have a legal responsibility which can be proved so as to impress a judge and jury, then the Department will strain every nerve to reach them criminally. Where this is impossible, then it will take whatever action will be most effective under the actual conditions.

In the last six years we have shown that there is no individual and no corporation so powerful that he or it stands above the possibility of punishment under the law. Our aim is to try to do something effective; our purpose is to stamp out the evil; we shall seek to find the most effective device for this purpose; and we shall then use it, whether the device can be found in existing law or must be supplied by legislation. Moreover, when we thus take action against the wealth which works iniquity, we are acting in the interest of every man of property who acts decently and fairly by his fellows; and we are strengthening the hands of those who propose fearlessly to defend property against all unjust attacks. No individual, no corporation, obeying the law has anything to fear from this Administration.

But for “malefactors of great wealth” Roosevelt promised to bring the law to bear.

The rich man who with hard arrogance declines to consider the rights and the needs of those who are less well off, and the poor man who excites or indulges in envy and hatred of those who are better off, are alike alien to the spirit of our national life…. There exists no more sordid and unlovely type of social development than a plutocracy, for there is a peculiar unwholesomeness in a social and governmental ideal where wealth by and of itself is held up as the greatest good. The life of a man who accumulates a vast fortune in ways that are repugnant to every instinct of generosity and of fair dealing… [and] the vapidly useless and self-indulgent life of the inheritor of that fortune… [are] contemptible in the eyes of all….

The UAW President Shawn Fain agrees 117 years after TR’s speech.

Wow. UAW President Shawn Fain isn’t mincing words.

“People just don’t want to work…I agree…The people I’m talking about are the Wall Street Freeloaders: The Masters of Passive Income.”

This is worth a watch. #UnionsForAll pic.twitter.com/gFJUuU88yK

— Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 (@NickKnudsenUS) March 14, 2024

Where the power of the law can be wisely used to prevent or to minimize the acquisition or business employment of such wealth and to make it pay by income or inheritance tax its proper share of the burden of government, I would invoke that power without a moment’s hesitation….

Choose your future. Or let someone else choose it for you.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

You sure can see the tiny hands of Donald Trump on the party apparatus. Most Republican officials, even MAGA, do not want any of this. They know that people like to vote early and they know that it can benefit them. But no, “Honest Don” wants people to only vote on election day because he’s so stupid he thinks that allows him to win. He also wants all counting of all the (paper) ballots to stop on election night. Did I mention that he very stupid?

This is disgusting but unsurprising.

Racist pseudo-science is making a comeback thanks to Elon Musk. Recently, the tech billionaire has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents on his platform X (formally known as Twitter), spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers—a dynamic my colleague Garrison Hayes analyzes in his latest video for Mother Jones. […]

In 2022, just one week after Musk purchased Twitter, the Center for Countering Digital Hate —an online civil rights group— found that racial slurs against Black people had increased three times the year’s average, with homophobic and transphobic epithets also seeing a significant uptick, according to the Associated Press. More than a year later, Musk made headlines once again for tweeting racist dog whistles in a potential attempt to “woo” a recently fired Tucker Carlson. But, his new shift into sharing tech-bro-friendly bigotry carries its own unique set of consequences.

Garrison also talks to Dr. Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who points out that because this racism is seemingly backed by scientific fact, people often lack the language to call out its problematic nature.

“There’s a kind of fusion between old-school gutter racism that everyone can recognize and this new-school Silicon Valley, data-driven analysis. And I think that this is very confusing to people,” said Gusev. “They don’t know what to do with it. They say, ‘Hey, there’s this thing that I recognize as ugly, and then there’s somebody posting a hundred charts that seem to support it.’”

Musk is a racist. And an immigrant. A white South African immigrant.

This little problem with Don Lemon must be a coincidence, right?

Don Lemon asked Elon Musk about drug use – here’s some of the exchange + Lemon’s context (from @OutFrontCNN tonight) pic.twitter.com/0BAVCUUHaG

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 13, 2024

If you care about this spat, you can read about it here.

That he’s managed to convince so many people that it was the greatest they’ve ever experienced is a testament to the power of lying repeatedly

I know that the media is hooked on telling the “vibes story” but maybe if more of them would tell the “facts story” like the following, the vibes would be different:

.@SteveRattner: Trump’s tax cuts increased the deficit, even before COVID. Biden brought it down. Trump added more debt than any other president in history. The idea that he was going to attack the deficit and debt problem is actually completely false pic.twitter.com/Jwe1CoxL0d

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 14, 2024

Trump’s tax cuts increased the deficit, even before COVID. Biden brought it down. Trump added more debt than any other president in history.

Also:

Chris Hayes has been doing this all week and it’s excellent too.

🔥FANTASTIC summary by Chris Hayes of why Americans are much better off under President Biden than under trump: jobs, wages, manufacturing, stock market, disposable income — all UP!

PASS IT ON! pic.twitter.com/B9T3chc3ge

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) March 13, 2024

And more of this please:

Democrats’ newest trick is introducing hilarious montages of Trump, but here at #LNSM we’ve gotten it down to an art form. #ACloserLook pic.twitter.com/SqywUEsVe1

— Late Night with Seth Meyers (@LateNightSeth) March 14, 2024

I’ll just add this one to the mix, from yesterday:

Kelly: "Nobody is right all the time. Is there such a thing as overconfidence? Are you at this point tough to advise?"

Trump: "I've been right about everything." pic.twitter.com/f88lg8A5sR

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) March 14, 2024

Are you better off now? Yes you are.

Four years ago today, Trump bragged that only “50” Americans had died from COVID because of his “good decisions”

Over 1 million Americans would go on to die from COVID pic.twitter.com/Bc9vWM7zCf

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 14, 2024

I can’t even believe we have to have this conversation. The idea that the MAGA dunces would actually be asking it says everything about their bizarre confidence that the majority of Americans have forgotten everything.

It’s just MAGA now

These interviews with former Republican operatives and pundits in Politico about why the Never Trump movement in the GOP primaries failed says it all:

The Never Trump movement is a big tent, to be sure. For years, Republicans held on to the belief that Trumpism could be beaten in a battle of ideas. The ideological keystone the movement held at its core was the idea of fighting — in truly small-c conservative fashion — to return the party to its pre-Trump dogma of internationalism abroad and a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats economic policy at home. Haley’s campaign was its last flagship, if imperfect, vessel.

Here, in their own words, influential Never Trump strategists and former GOP operatives answer what went wrong and grapple with where their faction lands in 2024 — and beyond.

Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and former adviser to Our Principles PAC

Haley’s exit was kind of the end. It’s been in hospice for a while. It’s the official end of the Bush, neocon, compassionate conservative-Republican Party, and there’s no going back to it. Even if Trump, God-willing, loses in a landslide, I think the party would move more towards some kind of hybrid model of a JD Vance or something like that.

Nikki Haley is not going to be the party’s nominee in 2028. Neither is somebody from that era, nor is anybody who reflects an internationalist perspective. The kind of perspective — of America should have a role in the world, that immigrants are welcome, economically conservative and socially conservative or moderate — those types of candidates are just … that’s just not the party. Could somebody win on that platform in one random race? Sure, but it certainly is over as far as being a relevant part of the party.

The Never Trump thing will be around as long as Trump is around. That’s a coalition of convenience. It’s been so long now, this feels kind of quaint, but that came originally when we all thought Hillary was gonna win. It was literally a marriage of convenience. It was like, “We all expect to be fighting again next year.” Like, she’ll win. And then we’ll go back to working for RINOs and the Amanda Carpenters and Jonah Goldbergs of the world will push for more conservative types.

This is the one that chills your blood. Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and CEO of Longwell Partners

I certainly began my Never-Trump journey with the hope of saving the Republican Party and the belief that Trump was an aberration. But I watched after January 6, the way that voters slowly made excuses for Trump, where they were horrified by what happened — they walked it back. They either said it was Democrats who did it, or ultimately, well, it wasn’t that bad.

I hear this from voters all the time in the focus groups, they say it clearly — they say, “I’m not going back. I don’t want politicians like Nikki Haley. These people are RINOs.” When the Freedom Caucus says “Mitch McConnell, D-Ukraine,” that is a widely held sentiment in the party. I listen to these voters, and they don’t not like Mike Pence’s policies. They hate Mike Pence. They hate establishment Republicans. That’s why anybody who thinks that Nikki Haley, by being the last woman standing, becomes the putative front-runner in 2028, has completely missed what is going on with the party.

There have been stages in the Never Trump movement. “Never Trump” was really born out of people who were Republicans going into 2016 and already didn’t support Trump. During some of Trump’s actions in 2016, new Never Trumpers were born. Going into 2020, there was a new group of people who had been Republicans but who said “absolutely not” to Trump — “Never Again. I absolutely won’t vote for him again.” And then, after the January 6 assault on the Capitol, a new generation of Never Trumpers were born: Never Again Trumpers. So … a new Never Trumper is born every minute.

There’s a lot of talk about new parties in the circles that I move in. That’s always been what’s interesting about the Never Trump movement: there are people for whom the Democratic Party is anathema. Maybe they’ll vote for Democrats in the short term, but they don’t consider themselves Democrats, and they want a third-party option.

This is why the No Labels threat actually is so dangerous to Joe Biden, because No Labels is never going to win a majority of the country, but it can peel off 10 percent to 15 percent of right-leaning independents and soft GOP voters who might otherwise vote for Biden given a binary choice between Trump and Biden. But like you give them an off ramp, and they’re gonna take it because it’s much closer to who they are.

Mike Madrid, political consultant; co-founder of The Lincoln Project said this. I think he may be right. The battle for control of the GOP post Trump is going to be something to see:

The Republican Party has not been the party of classical conservatism, of Reagan-Bush, for six or seven years now. But any doubt that remained was removed when Mitch McConnell bent the knee, and John Thune, his lieutenant likely to take over, had gone for Trump as well. It’s fully Trump’s party — completely.

I don’t know who believed that Nikki Haley would bring back traditional Republicanism. If you believed that you weren’t paying attention for the past eight years. There was never an ideological lane for Nikki Haley or anybody else to be a viable anti-Trump candidate. This is a nationalist-populist party that is not tethered to an ideology, certainly not conservatism. That’s clear now. The revolution is complete.

The Never Trump movement is finding our feet better than we have at any point since Trump came down the escalator. There’s a lot more of us. There’s actually infrastructure. There’s influence in the media both on the left and on the right. There are actual talks now about formalizing the organization. That’s happening a lot more now. It used to be sort of guerrilla tactics.

Now, the question becomes: Do we want to be a faction? Or is there an attempt to kind of create a new party? I think that right now, the best thing to be doing is to demonstrate the power of the anti-Trump faction by defeating him. And then once that happens, you’re going to see, I think, a ton of movement, because the Republican Party will essentially shatter. It’s going to atomize once Trump loses.

There are going to be a bunch of people trying to be the next Trump. That will not work. It’s a cult of personality. Then there will be a handful of people trying to reconstitute the pre-Trump ideology that the party had. And that’s not going to be possible.

Mike Murphy thinks they’ll revert to fiscal conservatism after Trump is gone. Really? Where’s the constituency for that after all these years of MAGA? Good luck. Ben Howe says the Democrats need to appeal to the Never Trumpers. Ok.

Charlie Sykes, conservative commentator

It felt like the closing of the doom loop there: That any hope of a return to what Haley called normalcy was gone. I keep coming back to the difference between rallying around Trump in 2016, and 2020, and 2024. It’s not the same thing.

You think of all the things that have happened. You could rationalize 2016 by saying he would grow into the presidency. In 2020, he was the incumbent president, and there was a lot at stake. But in 2024, you’re basically surrendering to someone who has been found liable for rape, facing 91 felony charges, who continues to be increasingly unhinged in threatening retribution. And yet Republicans are recapitulating the surrender of the last eight years as if nothing’s happened.

[…]

It is as if we’re in this massive simulation: what if he crossed this red line? What if he actually didn’t just talk about grabbing women by the pussy, what if he actually raped a woman? Is that too far? What if he actually tried to overthrow the government? What if he actually incited violence? And the Republican Party is in the process of just shrugging and saying, “Yeah, four more years. We want four more years of that.”

There’s no doubt about it. But the one thing these guys really need to grapple with is what Stuart Stevens did a few years back — how the conservative movement they believed in and served paved the way for Donald Trump. He admitted after soul searching that that it was all a lie and that they’d been willfully blind to the attitudes they were creating in order to win.

Still, it’s important to know that there are Republicans who did finally reach the end of the line and we have to hope there are a few who will not vote for Trump in November. These 3rd party miscreants could screw it up and it wouldn’t be the first time. The last time they did we ended up in Iraq.