With the news that the House Judiciary Committee Republicans are a bunch of useful idiots, those former intelligence officials who sounded the alarm about this whole Hunter Biden smear campaign feel vindicated:
The allegation that Smirnov was spreading new falsehoods about Joe Biden with an election looming hearkened back to an episode from the 2020 election, when the question of whether Russian spies were trying to smear Joe Biden was first raised.
Derogatory information, purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop, had surfaced in a New York Post article. Soon afterward, 51 former intelligence officials signed and blasted to the media a letter warning that the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter continued: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails … are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
The laptop data included embarrassing photos of Hunter Biden with prostitutes — and emails that detailed his business dealings in Ukraine and China. The mainstream media largely ignored it, while Twitter and Facebook put restrictions on the sharing of the New York Post story.
After mainstream news organizations verified portions of the laptop material, the letter became a focus of anger among Donald Trump and his supporters. They branded the group of mostly Biden supporters as “spies who lie” and accused them of election interference, saying their letter suppressed coverage of a story that reflected poorly on their candidate.
The House Judiciary Committee hauled some of them in for sworn interviews, and in May published a report titled, “How senior intelligence community officials and the Biden campaign worked to mislead American voters.” Some received death threats.
No public evidence has emerged pointing to a Russian government role in how the laptop materials were made public. But the former officials say the materials fueled stories consistent with Russian efforts to accuse Biden of corruption that persist to this day — and that therefore they were justified in sounding the alarm.
Ken Dilanian tweeted this further explanation this morning:
A lot of folks are having a hard time grasping that the letter never challenged the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop material. And that Russian information operations typically make use of material that is mostly true. https://t.co/t8K2obU4xp
Russia is already spreading disinformation in advance of the 2024 election, using fake online accounts and bots to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, according to former U.S. officials and cyber experts.
The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said.
A similar effort is underway in Europe. France, Germany and Poland said this month that Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.
With Donald Trump opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine and claiming that he once warned a NATO leader that he would “encourage” Russia to attack a NATO ally if it didn’t pay its share in defense spending, the potential rewards for Russian President Vladimir Putin are high, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund.
“Not that they didn’t have an incentive to interfere in the last two presidential elections,” said Schafer, who tracks disinformation efforts by Russia and other regimes. “But I would say that the incentive to interfere is heightened right now.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that there’s “plenty of reason to be concerned” about Russia’s trying to interfere in the 2024 election but that he couldn’t discuss evidence related to it. He added: “We’re going to be vigilant about that.”
U.S. officials and experts are most concerned that Russia could try to interfere in the election through a “deepfake” audio or video using artificial intelligence tools or through a “hack and leak,” such as the politically damaging theft of internal Democratic Party emails by Russian military intelligence operatives in 2016.
The details of what they are doing should motivate all of us to take our bullshit detectors in for a tune-up. We’re going to need them to be working perfectly.
The GOP primaries are giving us some interesting information
Of all the 2024 political events I believed were irrelevant, the GOP primary campaign has been at the top of the list. But I was wrong. As it turns out these primaries, which have commonly been touted in the media as decisive evidence of the Donald Trump juggernaut going into the fall election, are illustrating a major weakness in his coalition and its one that we have been seeing since the day after he won the 2016 election. There is a substantial faction of Republicans and Republican leaning voters who simply cannot stand him.
Yes, he is overwhelmingly popular among his MAGA base which makes up about three quarters of the GOP and the majority of them are blindly devoted to the man no matter what he does. They are not just enthusiastic about voting for him they are ecstatic. The media sees this as a sign that he is virtually unbeatable even to the extent of pushing the narrative that he is the front runner for the general election and Joe Biden is on the ropes despite the polls saying that the race is very close.
It’s not that he is in any danger of losing the nomination. He is on track to wrap it up very quickly and has won every race so far going away. His last remaining rival, Nikki Haley, insists that she isn’t “going anywhere” (always a weird thing for a losing candidate to say) but after her defeat in her home state on Saturday, her biggest donor, the Koch Network, is pulling out and it’s only a matter of time before she runs out of money. Trump is going to be the nominee.
But we knew that. There was never any doubt from the time he announced his candidacy. He’s been the president in exile running the Republican Party from his gaudy social club in Mar-a-Lago from the moment he left Washington on January 20, 2021. And except for a few brief moments after January 6th and the 2022 election, his popularity among the faithful barely waned. It was always his for the taking and if he didn’t stand to make a higher profit from fundraising if he declared later in the cycle he would have declared his candidacy immediately, as he did when he first became president.
Given that the majority of Republicans believe Trump actually won the 2020 election, he’s basically running as an incumbent. Now that we’ve had the first Republican primaries a pattern is emerging that suggests that as an incumbent candidate, Trump is weaker than the narrative that’s been laid out would have us believe.
Donald Trump can’t win the general election with just his hardcore MAGA base. He must expand his coalition and he’s not getting that done. In every state so far, he has under-performed expectations. Nevada was a very weird situation with both a primary and a caucus so it’s hard to discern what the electorate was saying there but in Iowa, New Hampshire and S. Carolina, a solid 40% voted against Trump.
It’s a primary so that’s not unusual. But who makes up that 40% is a problem for Trump. He’s completely lost self-identified liberals which isn’t surprising. But moderates have abandoned him as well, along with the GOP leaning Independents. And the ongoing shedding of college educated and suburban voters has not abated. It doesn’t matter so much in the MAGA centric GOP primary, but he cannot afford to lose those voters in the general election. His numbers aren’t adding up.
If America were dominated by old, white, election-denying Christians who didn’t go to college, former President Trump would win the general election in as big of a landslide as his sweep of the first four GOP contests.
Fortunately, that is not a majority of American voters.
One of Trump’s biggest liabilities is his ongoing insistence on flogging the Big Lie about the 2020 election. While it’s true that 70% of Republicans believe President Biden was not legitimately elected, of the 30% who believe he was, the vast majority have voted against Trump in these primaries. Yet, that remains a huge part of Trump’s pitch, even now, and there is a large faction that simply aren’t following him down that rabbit hole.
He won’t shut up about it. On Sunday night he did an interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier who surprisingly grilled him on the subject asking him what he would say to the female suburban voter who feels that way. Trump insisted that he won and angrily repeated his usual litany of lies about stuffed ballot boxes and bogus analyses in the face of Baier’s attempts to push back with the facts. He was trying to give Trump the opening to say something like, “it’s fine if someone believes that but I think my record as president and my plans to make America great again will be enough to convince the voters that I’m the best man for the job” but he just couldn’t do it.
you look at this and the fact that 40% of every GOP primary vote so far has gone against him, and it sure looks like the wrong party is wringing its hands and despairing about being stuck with the wrong presumptive nominee to win a presidential election https://t.co/khln5SIsJD
Around 20% of GOP primary voters (59% of Haley voters in S. Carolina) say they won’t vote for Trump in November. Will they vote for him anyway? Who knows? But most of them aren’t voting for him in the primaries so far and he’s going to need every last one if he wants to win back the White House.
Despite all this it’s likely that Nikki Haley will be out of the race after Super Tuesday and everyone is wondering what it is she thinks she’s been doing since the writing was on the wall pretty much from the beginning. She’s clearly not going to be chosen as Trump’s running mate and her recent sharp remarks about him have placed her firmly in the anti-MAGA camp, rendering her future in the current GOP pretty tenuous. But you will notice that aside from her differences with Trump on foreign policy, her critique is simply that he can’t win.
She has said this over and over again and her calculation may be that even if she ends up endorsing him, which is entirely possible, she will still be virtually alone among her peers in going on the record warning the party that he will lose in November. If he wins, it’s all over for her anyway and if not, she has some credibility as the one who sounded the alarm. I don’t know if the party will reward that but what choice does she have?
She’s spent the last year with fellow Republicans and Independents who are telling her they will never vote for Trump again. Maybe she’s convinced they really mean it. After all, it only takes a handful of voters in a handful of swing states for her to be right.
Note: The story below is not about new Missouri legislation to prevent divorce during pregnancy, but efforts by a Democrat to remove the existing state ban. The headline frames it badly, but in a clickbait way.
X-user The Volatile Mermaid tweets, “Missouri law says pregnant women can’t get divorced, in case you were under the false impression that Republicans care about protecting life. It’s. All. About. Controlling. Women.”
Freedom. It’s another case of Republicans and “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As it stands, Missouri judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant.
Three other states have similar laws: Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. While a couple can still file for divorce in Missouri, the court must wait until after a woman gives birth in order to finalize child custody and child support.
When it comes to domestic violence, there’s no exceptions.
“It just doesn’t make sense in 2024,” said State Rep. Ashley Aune, a Democrat representing District 14 in Platte County, and that’s where it becomes a problem for her.
She introduced a bill this legislative session that essentially says pregnancy cannot prevent a judge from finalizing a divorce or separation.
“I just want moms in difficult situations to get out if they need to,” she said.
Abuse the spouse, abuse the child?
A report from Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services says out of 10,098 women surveyed between 2007-2014, nearly 5% were abused either before or during pregnancy. That equates to about 500 women.
“This legislation could literally save lives,” added Matthew Huffman with the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence, which works to ensure its advocates have the resources needed to provide services to rape and abuse survivors. “For abusive partners they might be using reproductive coercion and control to keep their partner pregnant so that they can’t ever actually be granted a divorce.”
Aune is working on the problem. Nonetheless:
The bill is still a work in progress, and despite Aune’s passion to change the law she said she doesn’t feel hopeful that it’ll get to Governor Mike Parson’s desk this session.
Still, the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence considered it a ‘top priority.’
Steve Kramer, a veteran political consultant working for a rival candidate, acknowledged Sunday that he commissioned the robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden using artificial intelligence, confirming an NBC News report that he was behind the call.
In a statement and interview with NBC News, Kramer expressed no remorse for creating the deepfake, in which an imitation of the president’s voice discouraged participation in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. The call launched several law enforcement investigations and provoked outcry from election officials and watchdogs.
A former Dean Phillips consultant, Kramer claims he commissioned the call as an act of civil disobedience to protest the threat of artificial intelligence to political campaigns. He compares himself to Paul Revere and Thomas Paine.
“This is a way for me to make a difference, and I have,” he said in the interview. “For $500, I got about $5 million worth of action, whether that be media attention or regulatory action.”
Plus possible jail time.
Kramer tested his tactic earlier with a voice clone of South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The calls went to 300 South Carolina likely Republican primary voters. It was a poll that had Graham’s voice ask recipients whom they supported in the GOP primary. Kramer said the response rate from the familiar voice of Graham was four times higher than the response rate to an automated call.
Kramer cannot have anticipated the slaying of a University of Georgia student last week by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant migrant. Republicans in general and Donald “91 Counts” Trump, in particular, will have a field day hyping both stories to drive a narrative of cheating by Democrats and fecklessness on immigration. They’d do it anyway, but these events only help them.
In fact, it is the GOP that has been irresponsible by killing immigration reform legislation and enforcement funding. But people won’t know if the Biden administration does not get ahead of the immigration story and remind the public that the GOP stopped efforts to repair the immigration system to give themselves and Trump an issue to run on.
The Kramer robocall is on him.
And it’s not as if the GOP is not using AI robocalls. I received one while working an election protection shift recently during early voting for the March 5 primary. The voice was convincing:
The caller ID says ‘RNC’.
Robocall? Crank call? Threat?
Me: “Democratic Party Headquarters, can I help you?”
A woman’s voice says she’s with the RNC and asks for Cynthia.
[Pauses]
Me: “This is a county Democratic Party headquarters and there’s no Cynthia here.”
[3 sec. pause]
Her: “I understand, and I will get right to the point.” Launches into pitch for money to defend Donald Trump’s ballot access in Colorado. Would I contribute $25 today?
Me: “You do realize you’re talking to a volunteer manning a Democratic Party headquarters?
I’ve actually wondered why they haven’t done this bit before. It’s been sitting there waiting for them for years.
This was very timely, though. They even had the S. Carolina vote count in the sketch. But they missed Graham being booed and heckled at Trump’s victory party after which Trump called him up on stage to bask in the recriminations and hate. There is no limit to how much abuse these weirdos are willing to take.
Here’s Graham being chased through the airport after he tepidly condemned the January 6th insurrection. He’d rather grovel before these assholes than give up his seat in the Senate. It’s pathetic.
“Nobody can ramble like this. They’ll say: ‘He rambled, he’s cognitively impaired.’ Well, it’s really the opposite. It’s total genius – you know that.” — Donald Trump
That’s Trump’s latest bullshit, from his CPAC speech. The crowd went wild in ecstasy when he said it.
Trump’s Heinrich Himmler, Stephen Miller obviously wrote it. It was American Carnage on steroids. But it also featured Trump’s personal riffs like the one above. It was a nightmare and everyone should watch it.
“For hard-working Americans, November 5th will be our new liberation day,” Trump told a packed ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor in Maryland. “But for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day!”
“Your victory will be our ultimate vindication, your liberty will be our ultimate reward and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge.”
The overwhelmingly white crowd, many wearing Make America Great Again regalia, rose to their feet and roared their approval.
He has been comparing himself to Jesus. Now he’s vengeful God himself.
The tone was set before he appeared on stage. A series of popular hits – Abba’s Dancing Queen, Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U, Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds – was followed by the tinny sound of Justice for All, a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner sung by defendants jailed over their alleged roles in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The CPAC audience rose solemnly for the dirge that was recorded over a prison phone line.
As usual, Trump entered to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, hugged an American flag and painted an impossibly grim picture of an America overrun by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime. “If Crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come,” he said. “A country that will go and sink to levels that are unimaginable.
“These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and it’s obliteration is me.” …
“A vote for Trump is your ticket back to freedom, it’s your passport out of tyranny and it’s your only escape from Joe Biden and his gang’s fast track to hell,” he continued.
“And in many ways, we’re living in hell right now because the fact is, Joe Biden is a threat to democracy – really is a threat to democracy.”
He is a martyr:
Speaking days after the death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Trump hinted at a self-comparison by adding: “I stand before you today not only as your past and hopefully future president but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident.”
The crowd whooped and applauded. Trump noted that he had been indicted more often than the gangster Al Capone on charges that he described as “bullshit”. The audience again leaped to their feet, some shaking their fists and chanting: “We love Trump! We love Trump!”
Trump argued without evidence: “The Stalinist show trials being carried out at Joe Biden’s orders set fire not only to our system of government but to hundreds of years of western legal tradition.
“They’ve replaced law, precedent and due process with a rabid mob of radical left Democrat partisans masquerading as judges and juries and prosecutors.”
It wouldn’t be a trump speech without some good old-fashioned xenophobia:
Trump also spent time on his signature issue: he said his “first and most urgent action” as president would be the “sealing of the border, stopping the invasion … send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home”.
“They’re coming from Asia, they’re coming from the Middle East, coming from all over the world, coming from Africa, and we’re not going to stand for it … They’re destroying our country.”
He promised to carry out the biggest deportation in American history. “It’s not a nice thing to say and I hate to say it and those clowns in the media will say: ‘Oh, he’s so mean.’ No, they’re killing our people. They’re killing our country. We have no choice.”
He added: “We have languages coming into our country … they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of. It’s a horrible thing.”
That’s what’s on offer in the Republican Party. And the media and the Democrats had better start reminding people who he is and let them know that he is even worse than before — and so are his followers.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like that. Did they not get what had just happened? Are they that slow? Or do they just not care and think robotically defending Donald Trump under any and all circumstances is normal.
I’m a little bit baffled by people able to smoothly deal with this kind of dissonance. It suggests something …. bad.
Republican primary voters in South Carolina said former President Donald Trump, 77, is more physically and mentally fit to be president than former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, 52.
Despite Trump’s 25 years on Haley, South Carolina GOP primary voters were more confident in Trump’s physical and mental fitness than hers. In CBS News’s exit polls, 72% believed Trump was healthy enough in both aspects to be president, with just 27% disagreeing. Haley fell short of Trump, with 60% saying she has the physical and mental faculties to be commander in chief.
Per ABC News, 71% said that Trump’s physical and mental health were satisfactory for a president, but just 59% said the same of Haley.
I would assume that Trump’s nickname for Haley, “Birdbrain” has taken hold among the faithful. Also she’s missing a penis, which automatically indicates lesser mental faculties with these people. Also, Trump shall have no other God before him.
More:
“Locked in my vote! I was like, ‘There we go! I’m voting for him!’”
Trump getting indicted for crimes made these Republican women in SC support him even more.
Q: Do you think it’s responsible for Joe Biden to be at the top of the ticket?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Responsible? I revere his record. What he’s done in three years is a masterclass. Close to 15 million jobs is eight times more than the last three Republican presidents combined.
It’s because of his age that President Biden has been so successful. He has character and wisdom. We’ve seen his bipartisan approach result in the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, border security solutions. What a gift to have that for four more years.
He’s not going anywhere and people need to get a grip and start making the positive case for his reelection instead of sitting around calling for the fainting couch like Aunt Pittypat.
A possible end for magical thinking about an ‘open convention.’
When it comes to the Democrats choosing a 2024 ticket other than Biden-Harris, I’ve long been in the “it’s too late” camp. The latest “not too late” time for Joe Biden to disclose that he planned to step aside would have been in the first half of last year.
At that point he would instantly have been transformed into a lame duck, on issues ranging from Ukraine to judicial appointments. You can easily imagine Mitch McConnell’s speech the very day after a Biden step-down announcement: “Next year, the American people will decide who should lead them in the future. We would do them a disservice by rushing to confirm any more nominees, or major policy changes, in this twilight period for a one-term president. Therefore… ”
Still, if Biden were going to do it, that was the time. Time enough for other candidates to make their decisions, assemble their staffs, raise their money. Time to try to protect the administration’s remaining plans—infrastructure investments, economic management—from being chewed up in the Democrat’s own primary-election struggles.
That didn’t happen. By last fall it was “too late” for any orderly Democratic alternative to Biden-Harris. But in these past few weeks, as I noted last time, the press has been abuzz with talk about Biden’s age and the possibilities of dumping him. The arguments mostly followed this two-step logic:
Step One: Sure, maybe Biden has been a good president. Perhaps a very good one. But his job now is to stay in office, and at that job he will be bad.
Step Two: Somebody else would be a better candidate! We don’t know who, but an “open convention” could be a good place to find out. (This is where the magical thinking begins.) So let’s talk more about dumping Biden, even though that will hurt him if he ends up as nominee, because the payoff will be getting somebody better.
I said a week ago that I we couldn’t be sure whether this sentiment would grow. This past week there was powerful pushback.⁴
To me the most significant and sweeping was a long opening segment by Lawrence O’Donnell this past Monday. It was deeply informed, and highly informative, about what the job of political leadership actually entails, and why those realities worked strongly against the “dump Biden” concept.
You can watch the whole thing below.
To summarize its main points:
Everyone who’d like to swap out Joe Biden thinks “some other” Democrat would do a better job. But they never say exactly who that other Democrat would be. That is because as soon as you name a specific person—Newsom, Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, Wes Moore, Gina Raimondo, Rafael Warnock, on down the long list—the flaws of that person become the issue. Also, when you name one person, the ten people you’re not naming will say, What about us? If you start out by skipping Kamala Harris, you have urgent additional explaining to do. If your argument is that Biden is “too weak,” where do you turn for evidence that others would be stronger? For instance: I am a fan of Gavin Newsom. But so far in hypothetical polls he has done worse against Trump than Biden has.
What about money? The $100 million+ that Joe Biden has raised so far has been raised for the Biden-Harris ticket. Legally it can be complicated to roll that over, to someone a wide-open convention might choose. So that new person would start out, in mid-summer, with a small rather than a bulging war chest, unless the person were Kamala Harris.
And what about experience? Almost none of these “better then Biden” people has ever run for national office. That process is surprisingly hard, and involves a lot of instructive bumps-and-bruises along the way. As Joe Biden knows, from the presidential races he lost in in 1988 and 2008. Kamala Harris knows it too, from having lost (to Joe Biden) in 2020. Some “better” candidate chosen at the convention would be set up for rookie season self-education, starting ten weeks before election day. You can already write the “Dems in disarray!” stories from the campaign trail.
Co-sign. It’s been too late for a very long time. Everyone needs to focus and they need to focus NOW.
The Never Trumpers held a rival CPAC called Principles First
My what a different rhetorical atmosphere:
.@judgeluttig: "Donald Trump has tested America's democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law beyond the breaking point over the past four years…America's democracy and the rule of law have never been tested like this before." pic.twitter.com/6JwbzWbrtb
‘Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6th, but we will endeavor to get rid of it’ — Jack Posobiec at CPAC on Feb 22.
When MAGA extremists tell you what they will do if they take power, believe them. pic.twitter.com/jaitZnkGsF
.@AsaHutchinson: “Congress particulary are falling in line behind Donald Trump. Rather than speaking, what I hope that they believe and understand is important, which is supporting our friends and allies and making sure that we continue to lead across the globe.” pic.twitter.com/ebFQ9qT0WS
.@BarbaraComstock: "The character of the leaders is so important…and having a demagogue like Trump is what the threat is and how he has cowered people to not care about character."
.@AstroTerry: “The most disappointing thing about Trump is not Trump it's that tens of millions of Americans think that he has the character and skill to be president.” pic.twitter.com/8CvP29XSYn
.@Alyssafarah: “They came forward to do the right thing when so many people three times their age saw the same thing and didn't say a damn thing about it. These are two incredibly brave woman and I am honored to be with you today.” pic.twitter.com/KCkvvVl0jc
Cassidy Hutchinson: “If the ticket is a binary choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, people need to understand at a very basic and very fundamental level, that there is one candidate on that ballot that will support our democracy…and that’s not Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/SQjty4BGqk
Standard Disclaimer: Many of these folks were miserable partisan character assassins during the Clinton and Obama administrations. I am aware, believe me. And I am fully in the “trust but verify” camp when it comes to them. But among them are some who have had a full reckoning with what they helped foment during those times and most of the others are, at least, dedicating themselves to the task of defeating Trump and the MAGA Movement as part of the popular front against fascism. We need them, whether we like it or not.
