This takes courage. There are many cameras there and most observers believe the police are making note.
The Navalny family couldn’t come, of course. They would have been immediately arrested.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
I don’t care a much about the notion of “American dominance” or “prestige” but I do care a lot about the prospect of the planet being blown up and destroying the institutions and alliances that make it possible to reverse catastrophic climate change. All of that is becoming closer to reality as Donald Trump continues to dictate American foreign policy from his gaudy social club in Palm Beach.
One of the best things about the Trump administration is how copiously it leaked to the press, so in real time and later through the many books and articles that were written about that tumultuous term, we have a very detailed understanding of the man’s worldview went he went in and what it is today. We know that even after four years in the most important job in the world, he didn’t learn a thing about world affairs.
According to “A Very Stable Genius” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, by July of 2017 it had become clear to Trump’s national security and economic team that he desperately needed some tutoring in order to understand the importance of America’s key alliances. So they prepared a briefing with visual aids so that he didn’t get bored and assembled the top military brass as well as his relevant cabinet members to instruct him about US military and diplomatic alliances. He didn’t want to hear it, demanding to know why the US hadn’t won the war in Afghanistan, calling it a “loser war”, and kept interrupting the briefing to complain about the Iran nuclear deal and NATO. He yelled, “you’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore. I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” After he stormed out of the meeting then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson famously turned to the room and declared. “he’s a f—ing moron.” Tillerson was not wrong.
This was the same meeting at which Trump asked why South Korea isn’t more appreciative of America’s military alliance and indicated that he wanted to restore the US nuclear arsenal to 1960s levels. (He later denied that he said that, only that he wanted to completely modernize it, a task that had already been started under the Obama administration.) Throughout his term, Trump never understood why the country that he led benefited from the alliances that America had made in the nuclear age, apparently failing to grasp that if you have the most nuclear bombs on the planet, you have a special responsibility to keep a lid on the possibility of WWIII.
Despite his insistence that he hated nuclear proliferation (because he knew all about it because his uncle was a nuclear scientist at MIT) Trump was fatalistic about the prospect telling CNN back in 2016 that he thought that Japan and South Korea might as well develop nuclear weapons for themselves:
It’s going to happen anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely. But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them. Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?
This fatalism stems from the ongoing, puerile obsession that America is being cheated and that the rest of the world should just fend for itself or pay big bucks to the US for protection. This is why he continues to threaten to withdraw from NATO and says that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” He clearly still fails to grasp the existential threat of nuclear proliferation and simply cannot understand that US security guarantees benefit America largely because they prevent the spread of nuclear weapons — and mitigate the risk of a planet destroying nuclear war. He just doesn’t get it, even now, after being president for four years.
It’s scaring the hell out of the world, especially our allies. In the Atlantic this week, Anne Applebaum offers the view from abroad and it’s sobering. America’s European allies are taking his threats very seriously, not because they are new but because they are seeing that he controls the Republican party even out of office and the Republican party has now adopted his worldview. The unwillingness to allow Ukraine military aid in this dire moment, tells them that America is no longer a reliable ally, even if the Democrats are in charge. She writes:
For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand. In the week that the border compromise failed, I happened to meet a senior European Union official visiting Washington. He asked me if congressional Republicans realized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would discredit the United States, weaken American alliances in Europe and Asia, embolden China, encourage Iran, and increase the likelihood of invasions of South Korea or Taiwan. Don’t they realize? Yes, I told him, they realize….
Since then, I’ve had a version of that conversation with many other Europeans, in Munich and elsewhere, and indeed many Americans. Intellectually, they understand that the Republican minority is blocking this money on behalf of Trump. They watched first McCarthy, then Johnson, fly to Mar-a-Lago to take instructions. They know that Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent figure at the Munich Security Conference for decades, backed out abruptly this year after talking with Trump. They see that Donald Trump Jr. routinely attacks legislators who vote for aid to Ukraine, suggesting that they be primaried. The ex-president’s son has also said the U.S. should “cut off the money” to Ukrainians, because “it’s the only way to get them to the table.” In other words, it’s the only way to make Ukraine lose.
The Europeans are taking all this very seriously and one has to assume that America’s allies elsewhere are as well. This may very well lead to full scale re-armament — and they are in active discussions to build their own nuclear arsenals. This is a catastrophic consequence of Donald Trump’s narcissism and ignorance.
What’s most profound about this is that it’s not the result of a serious shift in ideology by the Republican Party. The change from the days of Reagan and John McCain and even George W. Bush on foreign policy and national security has been abrupt and done without any thought or care at all for implications. It’s happened because the party has turned into a cult that worships one man and that man has such staggering character flaws and intellectual defects that it could take the whole world down the road to perdition.
One story here and one there don’t make the point
I’m just going to leave these right here.
Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life? (January 2024)
Republican Officials Openly Insult Women Nearly Killed by Abortion Bans (January 2024)
Ohio Woman Who Miscarried Faces Charge That She Abused Corpse (January 2024)
Woman suing Texas over abortion ban vomits on the stand in emotional reaction during dramatic hearing (July 2023)
She was denied an abortion in Texas – then she almost died (June 2023)
Two friends were denied care after Florida banned abortion. One almost died. (April 2023)
Ohio abortion law meant weeks of ‘anguish,’ ‘agony’ for couple whose unborn child had organs outside her body (February 2023)
She had ‘a baby dying inside’ her. Under Missouri’s abortion ban, doctors could do nothing. (October 2022)
Louisiana woman carrying unviable fetus forced to travel to New York for abortion (September 2022)
Beauty YouTuber Forced to Carry Dead Fetus for 2 Weeks After Miscarriage Due to Abortion Ban (July 2022)
(h/t SS)
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No more Mr. Nice Guys
It’s clear from clips from Trump rally “The Daily Show” and “The Good Liars” that MAGAstan is a peculiar country with a history wildly divergent from our own and worthy of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse. Those clips are selectively chosen for maximum comedic effect, of course. But what those clips drive home is that what many Americans think they know about recent events is not just bizarre but harmful to their futures. and their children’s.
With the Supreme Court this week aiding and abetting Donald “91 Counts” Trump’s effort to ensure that justice delayed is justice denied, Greg Sargent believes those of us committed to truth, justice and the American way must double down on ensuring that even MAGAstan residents know that it is their rights Trump means to trample.
Consider Liz Cheney’s response to the court’s decision to hear Trump’s presidential immunity appeal:
It is our right as citizens to know whether the man (some of us) will be voting for this fall is a felon indicted by and convicted by juries of his peers, everyday Americans like the residents of MAGAstan. It’s not “it would be nice if,” but a right.
Democrats (and the rest of us in the reality-based community) need to echo Cheney’s message until even MAGAstan can hear it, Sargent writes (The New Republic):
First, Democrats should stress that voters need to know before the election whether Trump committed crimes—and this is due to them as a matter of right. Second, Trump is seeking these delays to end all prosecutions of himself if he regains the White House—to corruptly place himself above the law by pardoning himself or having his handpicked lickspittle attorney general do it. Democrats must say clearly that if the court helps delay the trial until after the election, it will be enabling him to do that.
As many have noted, the Supreme Court didn’t have to agree to review an appeals court ruling against Trump, who is demanding immunity from prosecution for conspiring to obstruct the official electoral count and defraud the United States, among other charges. The high court could have simply let the lower court ruling stand, given that Republican-appointed and Democratic-appointed judges unanimously ruled that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election don’t constitute official acts—and thus don’t get immunity—a clear-cut legal case.
It’s not even a close call, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional law professor, tells Sargent. But you don’t need to be one to know that or to see what Trump is up to. He means to get himself back into the Oval Office by any means necessary — including rigging the post-election a second time if he loses — and to stay there until he dies. He has help in Congress, in the right-wing think tanks, and now in the Supreme Court.
We need to not let this message fall into the Trump normalization memory hole.
Note that Cheney stated unequivocally that voters deserve to know whether Trump committed crimes while trying to overthrow democracy—and deserve a full accounting of those actions—precisely because the sheer gravity of what he did threatens the democratic system itself. As Will Stancil points out, Democrats sometimes hesitate to talk this way, out of fear of being perceived as trying to politicize legal processes.
But in this case, Democrats have an obligation to level with voters about what’s really happening here.
At this point, the notion that Trump would use presidential power to end prosecutions of himself is so widely accepted that news accounts note it in passing. “He could use the powers of his office to seek to dismiss the election interference indictment altogether,” The New York Times observes, as detachedly as it might report on Trump’s plans to alter the decor in the Oval Office.
So ask yourself this: What percentage of voters is aware that Trump actually will have the power to cancel ongoing prosecutions of himself, if he’s elected president again?
Joe Biden winning by a landside would be great. Winning close elections is not about that or increasing Democratic turnout so much as shaving the opponents margins where he’s strongest.
Steal your vote? All voters need to know that Trump and his SCOTUS allies mean to steal something precious from them by denying them what they have a right to know. Trump wants to be a king, a dictator, a monarch in a country founded on rejecting the very idea.
But how many voters grasp that if the trial is delayed, the election itself will decide whether that process runs to completion? How many understand that the Supreme Court’s handling of this matter will determine whether Trump has the opportunity—should he win the election—to place himself beyond legal accountability in a way no other criminal defendant can?
Democrats need to seize this moment to make those stakes clear.
And for God’s sake, for once not be shy about saying what they stand for, and loud enough for them to hear it even on Fox News.
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Is it just fear because of the Dominian lawsuit? Has Rupert sent down the word? I just don’t know. But there is a shift at Fox News:
Doocy and Cavuto are among the few who are doing this. Hannity and In graham and the rest are still fervently licking Trump’s boots, including letting him and his allies flog the Big lie. But the network has obviously made a decision to allow these other views on the network which is new. And they cover Haley pretty thoroughly too.
I don’t know that this will penetrate the cult but it’s worth noting.
Dan Pfeiffer on the Supremes’ decision to help Trump’s delaying tactics:
Thanks to the shenanigans of Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the MAGA justices thanked Trump by giving him a massive, possibly campaign-altering gift. On Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to take on Trump’s claim that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for acts that occurred while they were in office. The icing on the cake is that the Supreme Court scheduled the hearing on an “expedited basis” for April 22nd, further delaying Trump’s trial. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trump’s four (yes, four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November.
There is no reason for the court to wait six weeks before holding the hearings. On a matter this urgent, they could have moved much faster. Every day of delay helps Trump avoid accountability. If Trump wins in November, he could preemptively pardon himself or have his Department of Justice drop the charges. In addition to being a travesty for the rule of law, there are also significant political implications.
This may be the most blatant Supreme Court intervention in a campaign since Bush v. Gore — with the same result. Disregarding that three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump; Clarence Thomas also has a massive conflict of interest because his wife was involved in the insurrection for which Trump seeks immunity.
Polls have shown that a conviction could cost Trump the election. In the February NBC News poll, Trump led Biden 47-42, but when voters were asked how they would vote if Trump were found guilty and convicted of a felony, Biden led 45-43. Exit polls in the GOP primaries indicate that 30 to 40% of Republican primary voters wouldn’t view Trump as fit for the presidency.
Democrats in my text chains and on social media are equal parts enraged and despondent over the news. I share the rage but not the despondency (yet). Here are some quick thoughts on what it means.
Pfeiffer says that the trial still might happen before the election but I think we all know that’s probably a long shot. Had they had any desire for that to happen they could have taken the case back in December when both Trump and Smith asked them to. Instead they waited for the appeals court, which also took its time, and then sat on that for a couple of weeks before agreeing to take it, scheduling arguments sex weeks later. As Luttig said yesterday, it’s clear there are dissents from the appeals court decision and that means they will almost certainly drag it out to the end of the term at the end of June.
Pfeiffer mentions the New York case which is looking more and more like the only one that’s going to have Trump facing a jury before the election.
Trump is still on the hook for his crimes and election interference. The Supreme Court stay means that the trial in Manhattan over Trump’s use of campaign funds to pay hush money to cover up an affair will begin before too long. That case will almost certainly finish well before the election. Voters might actually determine whether they are willing to send a convicted felon to the White House. Because it is not a federal case, newly elected Trump cannot pardon himself or commute his own sentence.
There are two downsides to the Manhattan case. One, polls show that of all of Trump’s crimes, violating campaign finance laws to cover up an affair is not as concerning to voters as illegally hoarding classified documents or fomenting an insurrection. Two, these sorts of crimes rarely end in jail time for first-time offenders. So, our dreams of watching Trump frogmarched into prison may have to wait for another day.
Not only that, there’s actually a good chance that Trump will be found not guilty in that case in which case he will emerge once more as Teflon Don, spurring some of the bandwagon types to rally around him because he’s so untouchable. That was always the risk of any trials before the election but in the other cases the issues are so important, it might have been offset by the outrage that he got away with it. If gets off on this case it won’t have that effect.
The polls say that a good number of people wouldn’t vote for a convicted felon so people have been counting on that to turn the tide. I never thought that was anything we should count on. people have a way of rationalizing anything to support their decisions.
Pfeiffer writes:
Some worried Democrats comforted themselves by believing that Trump’s chances to return to the White House would end with a conviction. No trial before the election means no conviction.
Trump may avoid facing a jury before he faces the voters because of blatantly partisan shenanigans. This will further besmirch Chief Justice John Roberts’ already abysmal legacy. It’s an attempt at election inference from the highest court in the land.
Would it be easier to beat Trump if he were convicted of a crime before the election? Absolutely!
Does Joe Biden need Donald Trump to be convicted to win? Absolutely not!
This is a close race. Biden has a very good argument for reelection. He — and every Democrat — should make some chicken salad out of this chicken shit. Let’s fire up our base by calling out the Supreme Court, which has its lowest approval rating in history, for trying to rig the election. And then let’s make an argument against Trump that will ring true to the voters we need:
Donald Trump is running for President for one reason and one reason only — to avoid accountability for crimes he committed. He’s not thinking about you or your family. He only cares about himself. If elected, his first act will be to pardon himself because he believes that rich and powerful people don’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.
Sounds good to me. I would add that he’s also running for president to exact revenge because he’s the greatest sore loser in world history but that’s just me…
That’s pretty subtle… and funny.
Stephen Moore, formerly of the Club For Growth, is on board Project 2025. That’s not good news.
Stephen Moore, a conservative economist whose controversial remarks about women cost him a seat on the Federal Reserve board in 2019, is now co-author of a plan to radically reform the US treasury as part of Project 2025, a vast rightwing effort to advance radical policy proposals for Donald Trump’s possible White House return.
“Project 2025 is all about forcing a far-right agenda on to everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of the progressive watchdog Accountable.US, which produced an extensive report on Moore’s views and positions.
“So it’s no wonder they tapped a notorious social security opponent like Stephen Moore to help write their policy schemes.”
Moore, Carrk said, had “dedicated his career to slashing social security benefits and taxes for billionaires”.
Trump always says he will protect SS and medicare but it’s just a campaign promise. He doesn’t give a daman about any of that, he just knows that it’s popular and wants to pretend that he will erase all national debt through his silly tariff schemes and “growth” to appease the rubes. The Big Money Boyz are fine with that as long as they get their tax cuts.
But people like Moore really, really want to do it and it Trump isn’t running again he’ll probably let them do whatever they want:
Moore remains loyal to Trump but in the past has advocated for privatising social security, which he has called a “Ponzi scheme”, and told students they should march on the Capitol and burn their social security cards…
Moore’s co-authors are William L Walton, a private equity investor, and David R Burton, an economic policy expert. The three authors identify social security as a program relevant to treasury reform, including it in “issues of concern” that “cut across multiple parts of treasury or other governmental agencies”.
Elsewhere, Jonathan Berry, who was chief counsel to the Trump transition in 2016-17 and led the regulatory section of the Department of Labor in the Trump administration, notes the potential for privatisation of social security, writing: “Existing statutory language in the Social Security Act does not prohibit non-public organisations from administering the programme.”
Moore is now being bankrolled by Leonard Leo:
Moore went on to advise Trump during the Covid pandemic. Now, as well as writing books and providing analysis for Fox News, he is attached to a range of rightwing groups – he is a Heritage Foundation fellow; the senior economist at FreedomWorks; and chair of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP).
Moore co-founded CUP in 2015 with the billionaire Steve Forbes, the economist Larry Kudlow (later Trump’s chief economic adviser) and Arthur Laffer, an economist and pundit who advised Ronald Reagan and Trump and to whom Trump gave the presidential medal of freedom.
The Accountable.US report details donations of at least $1.77m to CUP from DonorsTrust, a rightwing group not required to reveal the names of its donors.
“A principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors” in its own words, but “the right’s dark-money ATM” in the words of Mother Jones magazine, DonorsTrust has links to the Koch network and Leonard Leo, two dominant figures in rightwing political funding.
All those people are staunch opponents of social security and medicare. If they can finally get their hands on all that money for their rich benefactors to play with in the markets, you can believe they will do it. Privatization has always been their goal and we’re far enough from the calamity of 2008 now (and the markets are booming) so they almost surely think people have forgotten what can happen when your entire nest egg is in the market. I could happen.
It’s been a nightmare and it just got worse. Today’s horror, in which starving Palestinians rushed a rare humanitarian aid station, trampling each other out of desperation when IDF soldiers fired into the crowd resulting in over a hundred dead and 800 injured is one of the worst yet. There can’t be any more vivid example of just how out of control the war has become or a greater necessity for Israel to put an end to this nightmare right now. They are not going to “eliminate Hamas” through attrition and creating a more and more desperate population is only going to radicalize even more of them. They have more than made their point and have, in the process, revealed themselves to be ruthless and brutal, giving up much of whatever moral authority they had left. This is indefensible, even in light of the terrorist attack on October 7th.
The Biden administration said they had been on the verge of a ceasefire agreement and this may have thrown a monkey wrench into it. It seems logical, but some observers are saying that this incident may illustrate just how extreme the humanitarian crisis is and may propel the US and its allies to change the policy of public support while privately pressuring the Israeli government while trying to keep a lid on the region. The US can’t stand by as Gaza is being designated as one step away from famine by the World Health Organization and dropping food supplies by air, which they are now proposing, isn’t going to solve the larger problem.
This may be a watershed moment that changes the trajectory of this entire crisis. I understand Israel’s angst and fear after October 7th. But just as the US overreacted to Sept. 11th, they too have overreacted and it’s led them down the same path. The US may have been trying to pressure the Israelis privately but the results so far have not been promising. It’s time for a change in course.
Do not underestimate Gen Z
Let’s push back on the narrative that young people are not excited about their likely choice of two old men for president in 2024. They are. But that’s not the end of the story.
The Independent interviewed young voters at the North Carolina Young Democrats’ annual convention in Durham earlier this month. (Full disclosure: I attended and was one of the event’s sponsors.) Granted, it was a biased crowd:
“The thing that I think people miss the most right now about what’s happening is there’s this narrative that young people are not engaged in politics,” North Carolina Democratic State Party Chair, Anderson Clayton, said. “[People say that] they don’t care. They’re not going to vote this year. And I’m like, ‘No, they are.’ Because young people are not stupid. They are a lot smarter than people give them credit for.”
Maxwell Frost (D-FL), the youngest member of Congress, pointed to young voters’ support of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign as evidence of their voting behavior.
“A lot of young people really loved Bernie Sanders, right? He’s also old. So it’s not really about age, but it’s about policies,” Frost said.
Senator Sanders, who was 78 during his presidential run, obtained nearly half of the youth vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries before suspending his campaign.
“The highest youth voter turnout we’ve ever had in our country’s history was in 2020. Who did they vote for? Joe Biden,” Frost added.
Clayton makes the point even more strongly in a related video.
Ariana Baio (The Independent): Are people excited to vote?
Clayton (bluntly): No. I mean, I’m not going to lie to anybody, right, and I shouldn’t.
But she asks a followup question the press is not asking.
Clayton: I went to UNC Charlotte’s campus the other day and I asked every single one of those students, raise your hand if you are excited to vote for the 80 year old president? Not saying which 80 year old, because Donald Trump might as well be up there too. Nobody in that class raised their hand. But how many of you are still going to vote? Every single one of them raised their hand, except for one.
Clayton: And the thing that I think people miss the most right now about what’s happening is, like, there’s this narrative that young people are not engaged with politics, they don’t care, they’re not going to vote this year. And I’m like, no, they are. The narrative around young folks don’t want to vote for Joe Biden because he’s old? I wish people would dig a little bit deeper into that narrative. To me, young people look at Joe Biden and they say you’re not as progressive, maybe, as we need you to be right now. But we can push him. We can’t push a Donald Trump who doesn’t want young people to have the right to vote right now. We can’t push a Donald Trump who doesn’t want people to have the right to abortion. We cannot push that type of president. We can push a president, though, that believes and cares about young people.
Eve Levenson, Director of Youth Engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign, attended the Durham convention. It is the earliest a presidential campaign has placed a youth organizer in the field, she said.
Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee vice chairman Ken Martin, also chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), was in North Carolina last weekend in a sign that Biden-Harris and the national party believes North Carolina is flippable this year, and that Clayton could make that happen.
Young voters, as Frost said, may have posted the “highest youth voter turnout we’ve ever had in our country’s history” in 2020. But even if they turn out strongly this fall, they’ll have a way to go to catch up with the turnout rates of the oldsters over 45. But Clayton is pushing them hard, not just in this state, but around the country.
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