Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Before the election, Rolling Stone asked a number of experts on authoritarianism about what to do if Trump won. They all had good advice but, for me, this is at the top of the list:

Seeing the Threat Clearly

Experts in authoritarianism insist that Trump’s dictatorial threats need to be taken with gravity because he’s already done “things that autocrats do,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who is an expert in Italian fascism and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. 

“He has been able to domesticate a very old, storied party, and truly make it his personal tool,” she tells Rolling Stone. “He instigated a violent coup attempt,” and — instead of “having to go into exile or going to prison, like in Peru” — he “managed to paint it as a positive thing” or to make “a lot of Americans shrug their shoulders at it.” These are “preconditions for autocracy,” she insists.

Trump may have a “highly problematic, decompensating personality,” Ben-Ghiat adds, “but the guy is a master propagandist,” who has used those skills in a campaign against the American system of checks and balances. “He’s taken people step by step … for almost a decade now to view democracy as an inferior system — a system of crime and anarchy, weak government … and to see versions of authoritarian rule, with him at the head, as preferable.”

Ben-Ghiat warns that Project 2025, the conservative policy and personnel program, is the road map “to finish the job” Trump started in his first term. The intent is to “destroy the governing structures and norms of liberal democracy through mass purges of civil servants who are not loyalists — and create something else. And that something else is autocracy.”

Jason Stanley is Yale professor and author of How Fascism Works. He says Trump is pursuing a well-worn playbook. “He’s going to replace the civil service with Trump loyalists.” The next thing “autocrats do is go after the courts, the press, and the universities.” Many of our compatriots have grown up with a false confidence that the United States is immune from this kind of democratic corrosion. “Americans have to grow up,” Stanley says. “A lot of people live under these situations.”

Project 2025 will take time to implement. Sen. Bernie Sanders warns Rolling Stone to watch out for Trump’s use of national “emergencies” to produce a power grab, emboldened by allied partisans in the judiciary: “He will create emergencies, state of emergencies. You know, ‘The world is falling apart. I have got to do A, B, and C.’ And the courts will say, ‘Yeah, of course you have the right to do it. You’ve defined an emergency.’” Sanders says. “There’s a real danger of us losing the rule of law.”

I would add that fighting amongst ourselves would be the dumbest thing we could do right now. It’s what happened in Germany as Hitler came to power — the left and the center left battled, the establishment tried to make common cause with him and we all know what happened next. The popular front must remain intact if we are to survive this onslaught and ultimately defeat it.

The first step is to lick our wounds and take what time we need to deal with the shock of having that orange monster back in power. But as the numbness wears off we’ll have to figure out how we’re going to deal with it and that cannot happen if we don’t clearly see what’s happening. It isn’t good.

Karoline Leavitt has been named Trump’s press secretary. She is 26 years old. Trump clearly thinks she’s right out of central casting.

She’s also MAGA to the max:

In MAGA world, Karoline Leavitt is a rising star. A former Trump White House staffer, she won national notice last year when, at just 25 years of age, she captured the GOP nomination for a New Hampshire congressional seat. In April, she was hired as a spokesperson by Trump’s super-PAC. But earlier this year, her focus seemed to be elsewhere. She published a series of op-eds heaping praise on Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul and ally of Steve Bannon who has styled himself a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Guo, who also goes by Miles Guo, has since been arrested and indicted in a massive fraud case.

[…]

The op-eds were highly specific. In the far-right Epoch Times—as well as on a conservative site called Headline USA—Leavitt penned attacks on people involved in a 2017 lobbying scheme to force Guo’s extradition to China, where he faces fraud and rape charges. (Guo denies those allegations.) For Headline USA, Leavitt also wrote about a 2017 hack of computers at a law firm that was representing Guo in an asylum bid. She echoed a claim Guo made in a lawsuit against the firm, calling the obscure, six-year-old incident “a disturbing reminder of the lengths to which authoritarian regimes will go to silence dissent and suppress free speech.”

She wasn’t the only one writing on behalf of this fraudster. But she’s the only one who’s going to be in the White House. These people are corrupt all the way down.

There’s money in it

Rolling Stone reports:

Donald Trump’s incoming administration brass wants it made clear: The president-elect is not planning to build a brand new network of “camps” to house the myriad undocumented immigrants who Trump has vowed to round up in what he claims will be “the largest deportation” operation in the “history of our country.”

To be sure, Trump’s migrant expulsion program, if he were to follow through with his plans to deport millions, would require massive new camps — something that Trump’s top policy-hand has explicitly told reporters. But openly describing these camps as “camps” invites supremely negative historical comparisons. 

Some top Trump advisers get so annoyed when the media refers to his publicly detailed immigration-crackdown plans as including “camps” that they’ve cautioned the president-elect’s allies and surrogates to stop using the word “camps” during the current presidential transition, according to two sources familiar with the situation. 

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” says one close Trump ally. “Apparently some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The article goes on to show that Stephen Miller and Trump himself have often referred to the need to build “camps.” Trump says he doesn’t think they’ll have to build too many though because they’ll be “moving them out” so fast. No need for due process or anything like that.

Anyway, yes there will be camps. I noted this last week:

As the government and law enforcement brace for the sweeping ramifications of President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to deport what could be millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States, another stakeholder appears poised to cash in on the complex logistics that would be required: the powerful private prison industry.

On corporate earnings calls since Election Day, executives at the country’s top private prison firms have embraced Trump’s immigration agenda as a potential windfall if the federal government requires contractors to construct new detention facilities and provide additional support services for the unprecedented effort.

Geo Group founder George Zoley, whose company is the country’s largest private prison operator, told investors last week that Trump’s deportation plans represent a “potential sea change” for the industry.

See, there’s always a silver lining. Ain’t America grand?

But there’s no need to call them camps. That’s Nazi. Maybe we could just call them AirB&Bs. So much nicer.

Kennedy wants to make America healthy again. Uh huh…

WATCH: “There was another person who tried to raise concerns about the health of the food we feed our children…”

CNN’s @abbydphillip shows a supercut of how Hannity and other Republicans attacked Michelle Obama for what they’re now turning RFK Jr. into a hero for. pic.twitter.com/Bo5QOI7VKr

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 15, 2024

Michelle Obama is depicted as overweight and binging on hamburgers in a cartoon on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website.

The cartoon, which also appeared on Breitbart’s Big Journalism site over the weekend, references Obama’s campaign to encourage healthy eating and fight obesity. In it, she is drawn with a double chin and plump cheeks. She is drawn saying, “I’ve stepped up my efforts to control America’s eating habits by telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content.” While she says this, she is eating one of a plateful of hamburgers.

President Obama is shown next to her, with huge ears but no excess fat, eating one of a tiny number of vegetables.

“Michelle, I want to get re-elected,” he says. “What you’re doing is only going to annoy a lot of people.”

Mrs Obama began her Let’s Move! initiative – which is dedicated to improving the disastrous U.S. childhood obesity rates within a generation – last year.

‘I am determined to work with folks across this country to change the way a generation of kids thinks about food nutrition and physical activity,’ she said at the time.

She has since backed the campaign enthusiastically, touring schools to promote the healthy eating message and even turning over a section of the White House garden to an allotment.

But while she has met a slightly happier response than the British chef Jamie Oliver, her support has backfired in some quarters – with accusations of a nanny state approach.

How about this one?

During a dynamic and lively speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, Sarah Palin poked fun at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to reduce obesity by limiting the availability of large sugary drinks.

Halfway through her speech, while describing exchanging guns with her husband Todd for Christmas, the former Alaska governor pulled out a Big Gulp from behind the podium, smirked, took several sips, and remarked, “Oh Bloomberg is not around, our Big Gulp is safe! We’re cool. Shoot, it’s just pop!” The crowd erupted in applause. 

Who’s next for DNC chair?

Now that Democrats face four year of an administration bent on destroying the greatness their Lord Trump claims he wants to restore, they can don sackcloth and ashes or elect a someone to lead the DNC who knows how to lead, how to raise money, and how to organize at the grassroots.

Politico this week reported the fight for the future has begun:

When rumors began swirling that Wisconsin Democratic Party leader Ben Wikler might run for chair of the national party, Jeff Weaver, a prominent progressive strategist, texted him with a warning.

“I am letting you know that in advance I will be publicly and actively opposing any effort to elevate you to DNC chair,” he wrote.

Only one week after losing the White House, the battle for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee is underway — with members of the party’s political class boosting their favorite potential candidates for the job on social media and knifing their opponents behind the scenes.

Isn’t that nice?

It’s a fight with significant consequences for Democrats. What is sometimes a little-noticed contest over who is best connected to DNC insiders has become an urgent battle for the direction of the party in the aftermath of last week’s election. The next DNC chair will also be tasked with helping determine the next presidential primary calendar, debate schedule and who makes the 2028 debate stage in what could be the biggest and most unwieldy Democratic primary in history.

[…]

Democrats are floating numerous names as potential candidates: Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, California Sen. Laphonza Butler, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, ex-White House infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel and Wikler, to name a few. (Jaime Harrison, who is currently DNC chair, is expected to not seek reelection.)

You read that right, progressives: Rahm &%*$# Emanuel. I’d consider two or three of the others.

The Hill is already promoting Emanuel:

Democratic strategist David Axelrod is pushing for U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel to become the new chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

“If they said, ‘Well, what should we do? Who should lead the party?’ I would take Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, and I would bring him back from Japan and I would appoint him chairman of the Democratic National Committee,” Axelrod said Tuesday on his podcast “Hacks on Tap.”

Wisconsin Public Radio profiles local hero, WisDems Chair Ben Wikler:

He’s made his name in national circles by helping to transform the Wisconsin Democratic party into a campaign powerhouse, helping to solidify President Joe Biden’s win in 2020 and Gov. Tony Evers’ 2022 reelection, and to flip the state Supreme Court in 2023 to a liberal majority with the election of Judge Janet Protasiewicz. Her win was supported, in part, by a $10 million from the state Democratic Party.

[…]

After last week’s electoral rout, Wikler pointed to Wisconsin’s narrower margin of loss compared to other swing states as a sign of relative organizational strength.

And throughout this election cycle, he received acclaim from national Democratic leaders. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, a series of guests at Wisconsin’s delegation breakfasts heaped praise on Wikler.

“You know that ‘Big Ben’ is recognized nationally as a preeminent state party chair,” said former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. “His reputation is a great one.”

“This guy is one of the best chairs of a state party — not just today, but ever,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.  

Emanuel’s become proficient with chopsticks, I hear.

The game clock stopped on Nov. 5. Now we’re in overtime.

Don’t know about your states, but we’ve got a recount scheduled to start on Tuesday.

As counties tabulated remaining absentee and provisional ballots, Democrat Allison Riggs took the lead late Friday by 106 votes in the NC Supreme Court race. At the end of election day, she was down by over 7,000. As of this writing, there are still several counties yet to upload their final tallies that don’t plan to complete their work until Monday. So more to come.

Upside? Blue counties left to report voted 455k of their citizens. Red counties voted only 172k. The vast majority are already counted. What’s left are the handful that need approving by the county boards.

Remember the fierce 2023 battle in Wisconsin for the state supreme court seat won by Janet Protasiewicz? These local and state races matter. But like Rodney Dangerfield, they largely get no repsect. It’s why we station poll greeters outside polling stations urging voters to vote their ballots all the way to the bottom. Many don’t. Downlballot races suffer. We are still reeling from N.C. Chief Justice Cheri Beasley’s 2022 loss by 401 votes. Holding Riggs’s seat (she was appointed by Goc. Roy Cooper in September 2023) means maintaining the current 5-2 (R-to-D) balance from which Democrats hope to build. People’s rights hang on it.

Then there are the voting changes year after year (WRAL):

Some ballot officials won’t count this year, in a change from years past, are any mail-in ballots that arrived after polls closed.

For years the state allowed mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day and arrived within three days of the election, a grace period that acknowledged the slow and sometimes irregular pace of mail delivery. But Republican state lawmakers eliminated that grace period ahead of the 2024 elections, saying it was necessary to improve voters’ confidence in election results. It was also likely politically helpful to the GOP; recent shifts in voting habits have led to Democrats being more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.

Around the state, it’s possible that thousands of voters had their ballots invalidated due to the new rules.

Wake County officials, for instance, say they received 616 mail-in ballots that would’ve been counted in the past but couldn’t be counted this year.

Yes, I’m an elections geek.

I will confess that I’ve spent the last week watching a lot of Animal Planet rather than news.I needed a soother every single day.

But here’s some news that will renew your faith in humanity:

54 horses saved. That’s heroic.

I’ve always been frustrated by the inability of anyone to address the rank corruption of Trump’s administration. Some of his early cabinet officials were chased out of office for their greed and grift but nobody ever seemed to care much that Trump and his family were making vast sums of money from his presidency. (The utter gall of going after the Biden family for that was overwhelming.)

There were some belated senate investigtions which never held a public hearing as far as I can tell. But they’re over. And it’s going to be so much worse. Greg Sargent writes:

It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance.

There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term. In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom.

First, Senate Democrats, who just lost majority control, are now bracing to hit a wall in their inquiries into Trump’s apparent quid pro quo dealings. The Senate Budget Committee has been investigating the aforementioned $1 billion solicitation from Big Oil executives, aiming to establish precisely what Trump promised them—he reportedly offered to systematically roll back President Biden’s green energy policies and other regulations—seemingly in direct exchange for campaign money.

With little fanfare, this investigation has been making progress: At least one major energy company confirmed that the gathering happened, and most of the other companies haven’t refuted the central allegation, according to a committee aide. Democrats have followed up with demands for company documents that might illuminate exactly what took place.

But there is zero chance the incoming GOP majority will continue down this road, which means it will be much harder for Democrats to compel these companies to illuminate the true nature of their transaction with Trump.

“Republican control of the Senate will unfortunately undermine congressional efforts to hold Trump and executives accountable for wreaking havoc on our planet and selling out American families and U.S. energy policy to the highest bidder,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, chair of the Budget Committee, told me in a statement. He added that this will hamper getting to the bottom of this “apparent quid pro quo.” Once these policy changes start in earnest, we’ll have no way to trace them back to it, let alone to shed congressional light on influence peddling in real time.

Yeah, that’s over. So is the Jared Kushner investigation. Why the Senate didn’t make a serious attempt to take this on is a real indictment of the Democrats. I guess they had their own sugar daddies to protect. And here we are.

It’s going to be a candy store.

I’m with Joan Walsh on this. Watching Joe Biden welcome Trump to the White House almost made me sick especially since Melania apparently refused to go because Jill Biden “disgusts” her:

Within just a few hours of President Joe Biden’s welcoming President-elect Donald Trump to a cozy two-hour Oval Office meeting (which honestly made me queasy), Trump made any right-thinking American queasy, too. He quickly nominated former Democrat-turned-quisling Tulsi Gabbard his director of national intelligence, accused pedophile Matt Gaetz as attorney general, and womanizing, serial liar, dead-baby-bear-defiling, whale-head-removing, worm-in-his-head anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services.

That was just after he nominated Christian nationalist Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.

What to do? Well, if Republicans decide to hold on to their power to confirm the president’s nominees—new Senate majority leader John Thune said he was open to Trump’s demand to make recess appointments—I hope they will not confirm any of them. Obviously, if you’re a Democrat, you make sure every Democrat votes against confirming them.

But before the confirmation dramas begin: Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton—and honestly, every Democratic member of Congress–must follow the lead of the late Representative John Lewis, who skipped Trump’s first inauguration, and decline their invitation to the inauguration on January 20.

“It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress,” Lewis said in January 2017. “You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.” Lewis died in July 2020, before he could attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. But I know he’s fine with that. And if he were here now, I know what he would do. This is an ultimately inauthentic government, hateful of knowledge and science. And people. All but the people they see in their boardrooms.

Please don’t legitimize this, Madame Vice President.

Absolutely. No one could blame any of the Democrats for refusing.

Tht’s the rumor. It does appear that his name has been floated as a trial balloon which hasn’t happened for any of the rest of the freak show so maybe it won’t happen. If it does:

Kash Patel, who is poised to serve as a top official in a second Trump administration:

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.” pic.twitter.com/C0tvXXrNah

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) July 9, 2024

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”

This certainly does confirm that Trump plans to fire Christopher Wray. And after his experience with Comey and the Wray I can’t imagine that he won’t put in the most trusted henchman he can find in the job. Patel is exactly what he’s looking for.