I’ve always thought it didn’t make any sense that Donald Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand because he doesn’t read. (He later said it was a book of Hitler’s speeches given to him by a friend.) I do think someone has told him that Hitler built the Autobahn which is why he thinks he’s just great:
John Kelly,Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, discussed the former president’s apparent dictatorial aspirations for a new book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto.
“My theory on why he likes the dictators so much is that’s who he is,” Kelly said, according to an article published Monday about the forthcoming book by the CNN anchor and chief national security analyst.
Kelly told Sciutto, “Every incoming president is shocked that they actually have so little power without going to the Congress, which is a good thing. It’s Civics 101, separation of powers, three equal branches of government.”
“But in his case, he was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send U.S. forces places or to move money around within the budget,” the quote continued. “And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”
Kelly was one of several former Trump administration officials who spoke to Sciutto for his book, “The Return of Great Powers,” reportedly warning that Trump is ill-prepared to lead the country in the current global climate, and that “they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.”
The book also revisits previously reported allegations that Trump praised Adolf Hitler, including Kelly’s claim that the former president lamented that his senior staff were not as loyal to him as the Nazi leader’s officers were.
“He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do,” Kelly told Sciutto.
I don’t know if Biden will get credit for this but he should. It’s from the Hur transcripts:
It’s important not to get too carried away here. Biden may not have owned stock but he wasn’t called the Senator from MBNA for nothing. Representing Delaware he took up for a lot of banks in his day, including shepherding through a punitive bankruptcy bill back in 2005 on their behalf. He played the game. But there is no evidence that he personally enriched himself while in office. He bought some real estate back in the 70s that ended up being worth quite a lot. And he sold books and gave speeches like they all do. But of all people accused of influence peddling he’s one of the least likely.
According to the Hur transcripts Biden had very detailed and distinct memories of the past including time he spent in Mongolia. George Conway recalled Trump’s embarrassing ignorance about world geography and linked to this article in the Independent about a list he made a few years ago:
Mr Conway’s Twitter thread came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly berated an NPR reporter who was asking him about the president’s Ukraine scandal which sparked an impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Mr Trump has been accused of withholding crucial military aid to Ukraine as it fought a war with Russia while demanding the country’s president announce political investigations into his own 2020 political rival, Joe Biden.
The secretary of state, who previously served as the CIA director before Mr Trump appointed him to the head of the State Department, reportedly shouted profanities at NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly while asking her: “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”
“He used the f-word in that sentence,” the journalist said, “and many others.”
On Monday, Mr Conway detailed infamous reports of the president’s geographical shortcomings, including a Politico story titled “Trump’s diplomatic learning curve: Times zones, ‘Nambia’ and ‘Nipple.’”
Mr Trump “didn’t understand that when it’s the afternoon in Washington, it’s the middle of the night in Tokyo”, he wrote.
“In a meeting with leaders from the *Baltic* states, @realDonaldTrump thought he was talking to people form the *Balkans*,” Mr Conway continued. “No, seriously. This created quite a stir in diplomatic circles.”
He added: “I have to say that really is my personal favorite. @realDonaldTrump is there trashing the presidents of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia for the breakup Yugoslavia, and they’re like, WTF. And then it [dawns] on them—Balkans, Baltics … buffoon.”
The attorney also noted how Mr Trump said at a rally that he was building a “beautiful border wall” between “Colorado and Mexico”, despite the state not sharing a border with the nation’s southern ally.
The Twitter thread also included apparent gaffes, like when Mr Trump mistakenly suggested the US bombed Iraq in an airstrike. The US had instead struck Iran.
He pointed out how Mr Trump told the Indian prime minister that he did not share a border with China, when in fact the country has a 2,520 mile border with the country.
Mr Trump “remained blissfully ignorant” last year when he was seemingly confused about “the distinction between England and the UK”, Mr Conway continued.
“He seems to think that England changed its name,” one of the tweets read. “Maybe a branding thing. Who knows.”
He hasn’t gotten any better I guarantee it. He is unable to learn anything.
This is epic. Rep. Swalwell just played this minute-long montage featuring Trump’s gaffes and mental decline. The best part about it? He forced Fox to carry it live to their audience too. Democrats came to play today & it’s glorious. pic.twitter.com/HFeheBBc4F
By the way, the president of the Virgin Islands is the President of the United States. He didn’t know that just as he didn’t know that Puerto Rico is a US territory.
I didn’t watch the whole thing but from the reports it appears that the Republicans held a hearing in which the Democrats showed a bunch of clips of Donald Trump sounding demented, illustrating that Donald Trump’s classified documents theft is a serious crime and getting the Special Prosecutor to admit that he said that Biden had a photographic memory but didn’t include that in his report. Other than that it went really well for the Republicans.
I encourage you to watch this exchange between @tedlieu and former Special Counsel Robert Hur in its entirety. These are key points and distinctions between the conduct of President Biden and the conduct of Donald Trump. They are enormous. pic.twitter.com/wzv0addOR2
Rep. @ericswalwell points out that Republican counsel Robert Hur left out in his report the fact that during his interview he praised President Biden’s “photographic” memory and how “well” he remembered things pic.twitter.com/TLMLpBc1k1
Rep. Scanlon plays compilation of Trump repeatedly failing to remember basic things during his depositions, including when he married his current wife pic.twitter.com/wAD8xuDY8N
Hur is given a chance to correct the record on the claim he made about President Biden’s memory of the date of his son’s death. Hur claims that it’s not correct that Biden remembered the date and has to be reminded that Biden did remember from the transcript pic.twitter.com/yUudvV1nC5
I always remember that time Michael Dukakis came out of his convention 18 points ahead and we all sat back on our laurels thinking that the election was over. Yeah, that didn’t work out.
Brian Beutler had a keen insight in his newsletter today (you can subscribe here) into what’s driving some of Trump’s decisions right now and it seems pretty obvious to me that he is right. Trump is desperate for money and he is open for business, even on Social Security and Medicare which is extremely risky for him:
Trump appeared on CNBC Monday—his first mainstream or quasi-mainstream interview in many weeks—and, when prodded over whether he’d reconsidered his position on entitlements, said he willindeed consider cutting the country’s two big retirement programs for seniors. Just like a fusty old Republican.
“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump said. “There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do,” he added, before lapsing into blather.
If you’re deep in the weeds on this stuff or a certain kind of know-it-all you can argue there’s nothing new here. When Trump was president, his annual budgets all envisioned cutting these very programs, so if you ignore his once-studious campaign-trail insistence that he’d never touch them, or chalk it up to intentional deception, you can write it all off as old news.
But this kind of jaded thinking gives Trump a pass on the interesting question of why he let the mask slip. In greater context, he’s been reversing his rhetorical commitments a lot lately, and each time it’s been for one reason: An interested party has given him a lot of money.
Buetler points out that Trump has always made a huge deal about his commitment to spare SS and Medicare and even Medicaid (all three of which he actually proposed to cut.) But he’s been very careful to lie about that in both of his campaigns.
Now, he’s come clean for some reason. Why?
Though I can’t prove this, and feel a little bit conspiratorial positing it, I suspect Trump reversed his opposition to entitlement cuts for the same reason he reversed his support for the right-wing’s Bud Light boycott and his own, years long opposition to TikTok:
He desperately needs large sums of cash, and the kinds of people who are willing to give it to him also want him to back off Bud Light, TikTok, and his opposition to Medicare and Social Security cuts.
In recent days he has very ostentatiously defended Annheuser Busch and Tik Tok despite previously jumping on the boycott bandwagon for Bud Lite and proposing a ban on TikTok, using very transparent rationales.
The TikTok story appears to be similar. As president, Trump actually tried to ban TikTok or force its parent company, the China-based ByteDance corporation, to sell the platform to an entity that isn’t controlled by the Chinese government. He was ultimately thwarted by the courts during the 2020 lame-duck period for overstepping his emergency powers, but his antipathy remained.
Then Jeff Yass, a MAGA-skeptical Republican stock trader whose fund has invested over $30 billion in TikTok, patched things up with Trump, turned the money spigot on, and Trump had a change of heart.
As Buetler points out there are political reasons for doing that as well (beer and tik-tok are popular) so it’s a win-win, but as for Social Security and Medicare, there’s no other reason to do it:
By contrast, the constituency for slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits comprises a very small number of rich conservative and business elites and basically no one else. Embracing their views entails significant political risk for Trump, which makes it seem more, not less, likely that he’s doing it for money.
He’s desperate for cash and at this point he seems to be selling himself to the highest bidder.
Donald Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the Republican National Committee on Monday began the process of pushing out dozens of officials, according to two people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC.
All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut.
In a letter to some political and data staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s new chief operating officer, said that the new committee leadership was “in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned” with its vision. “During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team.”
The overhaul is aimed at cutting, what one of the people described as, “bureaucracy” at the RNC. But the move also underscores the swiftness with which Trump’s operation is moving to take over the Republican Party’s operations after the former president all but clinched the party’s presidential nomination last week.
Why it matters: Reports of plans to purge some 60 staffers come days after likely Republican 2024 presidential nominee former President Trump’s allies were installed in key committee leadership roles.
The RNC voted for the Trump-backed Michael Whatley to become chair and the former president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump to be co-chair on Friday, some eight months before the 2024 election.
Driving the news: “Chairman Whatley is in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned with his vision of how to win in November,” wrote new RNC chief operating officer Sean Cairncross in an email first reported by Politico.
“During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team.”
Political, data and communications staffers were among those affected by the layoffs, according to multiple reports.
Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign adviser who’s the RNC’s new chief of staff, said the job cuts represented “Republicans streamlining” in order to avoid any doubling up between the committee and Trump campaign so they’re basically functioning as one, per AP.
The check is in the mail
First, the RNC. If Trump’s elected, next it will be the civil service and the diplomatic corps.
Only toadies need apply. It will be government dysfunction “like nobody’s ever seen,” to borrow a phrase. This guy’s casino went bankrupt.
“Journalists seem bored by the biggest story of our lifetimes”
Time ran this cover in June 2018.
Donald “91 Counts” Trump hopes to be reelected president so he can prevent himself from facing justice. Meanwhile, he misuses the justice system’s very due-process features intended to prevent an innocent person from being wrongly convicted to stave off facing a jury of his peers, journalist Mark Jacob tells Greg Sargent.
“These are not the actions of an innocent man,” says Jacob, criticizing the press for whitewashing this as politics as usual.
Over the weekend, The New York Times published a news analysis titled, “The Biden-Trump rerun: A nation craving change gets more of the same.” This has become a constant refrain in the press: One of the candidates is running on an explicit set of promises to destroy American democracy, yet the press keeps calling this a “rematch” of 2020, almost as if it’s all a sporting event.
Trump “wants to be a fascist dictator of the United States,” and the press treats it like old news, Jacob complains. “Trump said he wanted termination of the Constitution, and NYT put it on page 13…the media has utterly underplayed the story of an attempt to kill democracy.”
“Some journalists seem bored by the biggest story of our lifetimes,” writes Jacob at his substack.
“They call it a re-run, and sigh a heavy sigh on behalf of voters who say they don’t want either candidate,” summarizes Jay Rosen.
But 2024 is not 2020. The Dobbs decision for which Trump takes credit has shifted the political landscape. Religious extremists are now targeting birth control and in vitro fertilization. Biden has overseen a historic economic recovery. Something has shifted as well in Trump himself.
“Not enough people are sounding the alarm that, based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented,” psychologist Dr. John Gartner tells Salon’s Chauncey DeVega. “In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public.”
Yes, it’s a race between two old white guys we already know. But the choice is stark. When the Times argues ridiculously that neither Biden nor Trump is a “change candidate,” it’s ignoring the fact that both of them have clear visions for transforming American politics.
Biden’s agenda calls for making the super-rich pay more taxes, capping prescription drug prices, restoring abortion rights, addressing the climate crisis and creating stronger alliances to confront the growing threats facing the world’s democracies.
Trump’s agenda calls for him to become a dictator and create alliances with other dictators, as well as to harass his opponents with the Justice Department, send troops into American cities, put millions of immigrants in camps and crack down on the press.
Trump promises one of his “first acts” will be to let out of prison people held for crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that aimed to stop the certification of the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/yz2gxnQdjW
Trump on Monday promised one of his first acts as president would be to free prisoners convicted for Jan. 6 crimes. He’ll use the fanfare to obscure quashing federal investigations into himself.
By the numbers: “In the 38 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,358 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol,” per the latest Justice Department statement.
Zoom out: The description by Trump and others of those convicted over the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as “hostages” was denounced by a Reagan-appointed federal judge in D.C. as “preposterous.”
But that’s Trump: preposterous. So is press coverage of him.
Jon Stewart Monday night said what I’ve said for years. MAGA represents the monarchist strain in American politics that never died out after the American Revolution, just uniformed in red, white and blue instead of red coats.
Jon Stewart is right. Go ahead and support His Magasty if you must. But don’t call it “patriotism.” And wear the right damn coats. pic.twitter.com/W2AEcqixXz
Trump means to abuse due process, absolve himself of his own crimes, and wield the power to have dissenters and looting suspects shot on sight, as Stewart points out at about 10:15 into this clip.
Trump has always been a lunatic. He’s just sunken deeper into lunacy since 2015. Jon Oliver invites viewers to simply read transcripts of Trump speeches.
