Jonathan Last throws water on the magical thinking about skittish Democrats replacing Joe Biden on their presidential ticket. (Really? Are we still talking about this?) Scary New York Times polls? How about scarier polls? Virtually all the also-mentions poll worse than Biden against Trump: Harris, Newsome, Whitmer and Shapiro.
Ten days ago already, Lawrence O’Donnell’s “the governing will not be televised” monologue refuted Ezra Klein’s speculation about Democrats replacing Biden. If that was not sufficient to dispel the notion that the DNC is going to rub a monkey’s paw and produce a younger presidential candidate, Last provides bullets on why it won’t (The Atlantic):
Let’s say that one of these not–Kamala Harris candidates is chosen at the Democratic National Convention in August. In the span of 10 weeks they would have to:
Define themselves to the national audience while simultaneously resisting Trump’s attempts to define them.
Build a national campaign structure and get-out-the-vote operation.
Unify the Democratic Party.
Fend off any surprises uncovered during their public (and at-scale) vetting.
Earn credit in the minds of voters for the Biden economy.
Distance themselves from unpopular Biden policies.
Portray themselves as a credible commander in chief.
Lay out a coherent governing vision.
Persuade roughly 51 percent of the country to support them.
Democrats may have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but not since 2018. Unless the carnage abates in Gaza soon, there will exist the potential for protests in Chicago that (for those of a certain age) will evoke bad memories from 1968. Even the rowdies of The Big Tent Party will want to avoid that kind of bad press. All the more reason for DNC and FBI bloodhounds to alert on any ratfucking schemes the RNC or Russia may cook up to recreate that chaos on Democrats’ “behalf.”
Joe Biden is Joe Biden. He isn’t going to win a 10-point, realigning victory. But his path to reelection is clear: Focus like a laser on suburban and working-class white voters in a handful of swing states. Remind them that Trump is a chaos agent who wrecked the economy. Show them how good the economy is now. Make a couple of jokes about the antlers. And then bring these people home—because many of them already voted for him once.
Having a sure thing would certainly be nice, given the ongoing authoritarian threat we face. But there isn’t one. Joe Biden is the best deal democracy is going to get.
He’s already beaten Trump once. A brokered convention, Last warns, is unlikely to help Democrats win when “Biden has a 50–50 shot.”
Perhaps it’s my own magical thinking, but that tight polling feels off. We’ve seen them wrong too often. The media focus on Biden’s age is, at least in part, MAGA- and horse-race-driven. What’s not being polled enough is “Trump fatigue.” As my friend found, students may not be “excited to vote for the 80 year old president,” a question pollsters love to ask, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t planning to vote.
High card still wins when your opponent’s got nothin.’
Yes, our outrage is selective. In a world of double standards, Nicholas Kristof reminds readers how much we have one toward Israel (New York Times):
Rabbi Marvin Hier in The Jerusalem Post condemned “an unprecedented double standard” that relentlessly criticizes Israel’s bombing of Gaza but is unbothered by the Allied bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan in World War II. And the World Jewish Congress cites “criticizing Israeli defensive operations, but not those of other Western democracies” as an example of antisemitism.
A fair criticism, Kristof writes, and a false one.
In 2023, for example, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions critical of Israel, and only seven resolutions critical of all other countries in the world together, by the count of one pro-Israel group. Does anyone think that represents even-handedness?
People are more focused on Israel than on what Unicef describes as a “wave of atrocities” currently underway against children in Sudan, while the number of children displaced by recent fighting in Sudan (three million) is greater than the entire population of Gaza. University students in America and Europe protest about Gaza but largely ignore the 700,000 children facing severe acute malnutrition in Sudan, after a civil war began there last April.
The Darfur region of Sudan two decades ago endured what is widely described as the first genocide of the 21st century. Now bands of gunmen once more are killing and raping villagers belonging to particular ethnic groups. I was seared by my reporting from Darfur during the genocide, and it staggers me that the world is ignoring another round of mass atrocities there.
Not to mention that some of the worst crimes against civilians in recent years were committed against Arabs were “by by Arab rulers themselves, in Syria and Yemen.” But Gaza right now is the most dangerous place in the wold for a child.
Consider that in the first 18 months of Russia’s current war in Ukraine, at least 545 children were killed. Or that in 2022, by a United Nations count, 2,985 children were killed in all wars worldwide. In contrast, in less than five months of Israel’s current war in Gaza, the health authorities there report more than 12,500 children killed.
Among them were 250 infants less than 1 year old. I can’t think of any conflict in this century that has killed babies at such a pace.
Kristof adds the obligatory “of course Israel has a right to respond” and Hamas should release its hostages, etc.
Because of America’s support for Israel’s invasion and diplomatic protection for it at the United Nations, this blood is on our hands, and that surely justifies increased scrutiny.
Yet here’s another double standard: We Americans condemn Russia, China or Venezuela for their violations of human rights, but the United States supports Israel and protects it diplomatically even as it has engaged in what President Biden has called an “over the top” military campaign.
So yes, some of the campus outrage is selective, and yes, we condemn some attrocities of war here and ignore others there. Double standards, Kristof concludes, “run in many directions, shielding Israel as well as condemning it.”
But it seems to me that in a world of screens (like this one) screaming for our attention, people have only so much bandwidth. Our selective attention goes to places with the most cameras in places that look the most like our homes, and to people who seem most like us.
I’ve noted before that the left is more critical of its friends than its adversaries. We expect little of our adversaries and wield little leverage for modifying their behavior. But the U.S. is heavily invested in its ally Israel, both financially and culturally. We have both interest and leverage. For Jewish Americans, history and family. For Christians, a theological heritage. For others, a kind of moral muscle memory that grants Israel undeserved grace because of crimes visited during the Holocaust.
“[W]e should never let our very human tangles of double standards and hypocrisies be harnessed to deflect from the tragedy unfolding today for the children of Gaza, or America’s complicity in it,” writes Kristof. Netanyahu may not be movable, but Israel can be pushed. So push.
For supporters of Israel reluctant to demand better behavior, whether from a sense of loyalty or a sense that because of Hamas’ attrocities, Gaza “had it coming,” perhaps the New Testament provides guidance.
To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48).
Winning isn’t everything. Consider tonight’s Top 10 list, compiled in honor (or in spite) of the upcoming Oscars (March 10th). Each of these films was up for Best Picture, but “lost”. So here’s a bunch of losers (in alphabetical order) that will always be winners in my book:
Apocalypse Now– “Are you an assassin, Willard?” This nightmarish walking tour through the darkest labyrinths of the human soul (disguised as a Vietnam War film) remains director Francis Ford Coppola’s most polarizing work. Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness by Coppola and John Milius, it’s an unqualified masterpiece to some; bloated, self-important nonsense to others. I kind of like it. In the course of the grueling shoot, Coppola had a nervous breakdown, and star Martin Sheen had a heart attack. Now that’s what I call “suffering for your art”. And always remember-never get outta the boat.
Year nominated: 1979
Lost to: Kramer vs. Kramer
Chinatown–There are many Deep Thoughts that I have gleaned over the years via repeated viewings of Roman Polanski’s 1974 “sunshine noir”.
Here are my top 3:
1. Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.
2. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
3. You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but, believe me, you don’t.
I’ve also learned that if you assemble a great director (Polanski), a master screenwriter (Robert Towne), lead actors at the top of their game (Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway), an ace cinematographer (John A. Alonzo) and top it with a perfect music score (Jerry Goldsmith), you create a film that deserves to be called a “classic”.
Year nominated: 1974
Lost to: The Godfather, Part II (A tough call, to be sure).
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- “Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet (knock on wood) to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece (co-scripted by Terry Southern and Peter George) about the tendency for those in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that one wonders why the filmmakers bothered to make this up. (Full review)
Year nominated: 1964
Lost to: My Fair Lady
La Grande Illusion-While it may be hard for some to fathom in this cynical age we live in, once upon a time there were these things called honor, loyalty, sacrifice, and basic human decency. Ostensibly an anti-war film, Jean Renoir’s classic (which he co-wrote with Charles Spaak) is at its heart a treatise about the aforementioned attributes. Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, and Erich van Stroheim head up a fine cast.
Year nominated: 1938
Lost to: You Can’t Take It With You
The Maltese Falcon-This iconic noir, adapted from the Dashiell Hammett novel by John Huston (his directing debut), is embedded in film buffs’ neurons-so suffice it to say that “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.” Humphrey Bogart truly became “Humphrey Bogart” with his performance as San Francisco gumshoe Sam Spade. Memorable support from Sidney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Peter Lorre as ‘Joel Cairo’ (“Look what you did to my shirt!”).
Year nominated: 1941
Lost to: How Green Was My Valley
Network– Sidney Lumet’s brilliant 1976 satire about a fictional TV network that gets a ratings boost from a nightly newscast turned variety hour, anchored by a self-proclaimed “angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisy of our time” (Peter Finch, who won a posthumous Best Actor statue for his turn as Howard Beale). 48 years on, it plays like a documentary (denouncing the hypocrisy of our time). Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning screenplay not only foresees news-as-entertainment (and its evil spawn, “reality” TV)-it’s a blueprint for our age. Fantastic work from a cast that includes William Holden, Faye Dunaway (Best Actress win), Ned Beatty, Robert Duvall, and Beatrice Straight (Best Supporting Actress win). But alas…no ‘Best Picture’ statue.
Year nominated: 1976
Lost to: Rocky
Pulp Fiction- With the cottage industry of Pulp Fiction clones that spewed forth in its wake, it’s easy to forget how fresh and exciting Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film was. Depending on who you ask, what exactly was it? A film noir? A black comedy? A character study? A social satire? A self-referential, post-modern homage to every film ever made previously, jacked in to the collective unconscious of every living film geek?
The correct answer is, “yes”.
Year nominated: 1994
Lost to: Forrest Gump (Still difficult for me to accept.)
Reds– It’s a testament to Warren Beatty’s legendary powers of persuasion that he was able to convince a major Hollywood studio to back a 3 ½ hour epic about a relatively obscure American Communist (who is buried in the Kremlin, no less!). Writer-director Beatty plays writer-activist Jack Reed, and Diane Keaton gives one of her best performances as writer and feminist Louise Bryant. Maureen Stapleton (as Emma Goldman) and Jack Nicholson (as Eugene O’Neill) are fabulous. And Beatty deserves special kudos for assembling an impressive group of surviving participants; their interwoven recollections provide a Greek Chorus of living history. The film is at once a sweeping epic and intimate drama.
Year nominated: 1981
Lost to: Chariots of Fire
Sunset Boulevard– Leave it to that great ironist Billy Wilder to direct a film that garnered a Best Picture nomination from the very Hollywood studio system it so mercilessly skewers (however, you’ll note that they didn’t let him win…did they?). Gloria Swanson’s turn as a fading, high-maintenance movie queen mesmerizes, William Holden embodies the quintessential noir sap, and veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim redefines the meaning of “droll” in this tragicomic journey down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr.
Year nominated: 1950
Lost to: All About Eve
The Thin Man-A delightful mix of screwball comedy and murder mystery (based on the Dashiell Hammett novel) that never gets old (I just took it for an umpteenth spin the other night, and laughed as if I was watching it for the first time). The story takes a backseat to the onscreen spark between New York City P.I./perpetually tipsy socialite Nick Charles (William Powell) and his wisecracking wife Nora (sexy Myrna Loy). Top it off with a scene-stealing wire fox terrier (Asta!) and you’ve got a winning formula that has spawned countless imitators through the years; particularly a bevy of sleuthing TV couples (Hart to Hart, McMillan and Wife, Moonlighting, Remington Steele, et.al.).
MSNBC’s data guy Steve Kornacki took a look at the polling a few days ago that I think addresses some of the weirdness we’re seeing with the national polls and the election results.
Donald Trump is winning his primaries handily and has a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination — but a common interpretation of the results says that he is also exhibiting profound weaknesses among independents that portend dire general election consequences.
But there’s a hitch. A look at general election polling reveals a completely different story among independent voters — and a dive into all the other data we have on the 2024 presidential race shows why Trump’s poor independent numbers in the primary and better performance in general election polls are completely consistent with each other. The short answer: These are two very different groups of voters.
First, the evidence for Trump’s weakness among independents voting in this year’s GOP primaries is straightforward. Despite the widely acknowledged — even by his critics — inevitability of his nomination, Trump is still losing around 40% of the vote in Republican contests. And he’s getting crushed among independents, a group that looms large in November. From exit polling data, here’s how bad Trump’s numbers have been with them so far (note that exit polls weren’t conducted in Michigan):
But the recent NBC News poll paints a very different picture among independent general election voters:
For context, Trump lost the independent vote to President Joe Biden in 2020 by a 9-point margin, 52%-43%, per the NBC News national exit poll. So the current general election polling actually indicates slight improvement for Trump (and a decline for Biden) among independents, albeit with a significant number indicating they don’t want either candidate.
For that matter, even as Trump is losing 40% of the overall vote in Republican primaries, general election polling shows no slack in his support among Republican voters. He took 92% support from Republicans in our last poll.
How could this be? Look at the primary results and you see a front-runner who is hemorrhaging independents at an alarming level and a Republican electorate that contains wide resistance to him. And yet, look at general election polling, and you see … almost none of this.
It’s possible, though, that there’s really no inconsistency here at all.
Start with the simple stuff. A chunk of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s primary voters (23% of them in South Carolina, per the exit poll) say they will nonetheless be satisfied with Trump as the GOP nominee. So at least some of the Trump current opposition stands ready to rally around him in the general election, which helps explain why general election polls show almost unanimous Republican support for Trump.
And given Biden’s own dreadful poll numbers with independents (a 27% approval rating with them in NBC News’ latest poll), there are surely some of them who will be motivated to vote against Biden in November and thus cast ballots for Trump, even if they’ll never pronounce themselves satisfied with Trump.
But all of this only goes so far. It still leaves the bulk of Haley’s primary voters appearing to be dug in for good against Trump.
The answer that reconciles those figures, or at least a big part of them, with the general election polling is that many of these Haley votes are likely coming from people who already cast ballots against Trump in 2016 and 2020 — and who are committed to doing so again in 2024.
To them, these primaries amount to a bonus opportunity to cast yet another vote against Trump.
The pool of independents who voted in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries will be far different from the much, much larger pool of independents who will vote this fall. After all, primaries attract far lower turnout than general elections, so those who are most motivated to participate can skew the independent pool in various directions. The question becomes whether there’s a particular type of independent who feels drawn disproportionately to participate in these GOP primaries.
And here there’s an obvious answer: the “Trump resistance.” Opposition to Trump extends across many demographic groups, but the most dramatic activation against him has come from white, college-educated voters in suburban areas. Many of them routinely voted for Republicans until Trump came along. In 2012, white college graduates sided with Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 14 points, per the national exit poll. But by 2020, they were going with Biden over Trump by 15.
That swing is only part of the story. What matters for our purposes is that the anti-Trump segment of white, college-educated voters is also proving exceptionally motivated to get to the polls and vote against Trump and his party in any and every election they possibly can.
We saw this just weeks ago in the special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, anchored in suburban Long Island. Like primaries, special elections are low-participation affairs, where turnout disparities can make all the difference. Sure enough, per data compiled by Newsday, in the five locales with the highest concentrations of white, college-educated voters in the Long Island portion of the district, turnout ran from from 69 to 76 percent of the level seen in the 2022 midterm elections. In these places, the Democratic candidate, Tom Suozzi, romped.
By comparison, in the five locales with the lowest share of white college-educated voters, turnout was only 54 to 61 percent of the 2022 level. That disparity goes a long way toward explaining how Suozzi won the race by 8 points.
And it’s not just Long Island. Democrats have been achieving success, often by unexpectedly high margins, in one special election after another, thanks in no small part to this enthusiasm.
There’s every reason to suspect this same energy is at work in the GOP presidential primaries. The rules in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan all allow for mass participation by non-Republicans, meaning there has been little barrier for “resistance”-types to take part. They may not consider themselves Republicans, but they are supremely eager to vote, so why wouldn’t they join in en masse, especially with no meaningful contest on the Democratic side?
This is consistent with the results we’ve seen so far, with Haley’s support rising and falling depending on the concentration of whites who have college degrees in any given area. For instance, on Saturday in South Carolina, she actually won the state’s 1st Congressional District by 6 points. Not coincidentally, the 1st District contains the highest share of white college-educated voters in the state, with its anchor, Charleston County, clocking in at No. 1 among counties.
And we know that many of these college-educated whites voted for Joe Biden in 2020, since he won Charleston County by 11 points. For Haley, this made Charleston the single biggest potential source of crossover votes from anti-Trump non-Republicans. It seems she took full advantage, routing Trump in the county by 24 points — her best showing anywhere.
The intense political engagement of anti-Trump, college-educated whites has been evident for some time. It could be crucial in November, ensuring Democrats that a big chunk of their base won’t need any prodding to vote. And especially if overall turnout dips significantly from the record-high levels of 2020, it could also translate into a decisive edge for Democrats in close battleground states.
But when it comes to the GOP primaries now unfolding, what looks at first glance like a new and alarming weakness for Trump may very well be just the latest manifestation of a now-familiar phenomenon.
Biden voters don’t run around in garish costumes festooned with his face or wave gigantic Biden flags from the back of their Biden-covered pick-up trucks. They just vote. And they vote in great numbers. That quiet enthusiasm is apparently impossible to pick up in the polls.
I don’t know the story here, but anyone who would do this, even as a joke, is seriously messed up. It may be a cult but this is something even more disturbing.
There’s a disconnect between the reality and the narrative framing that sticks to everything. For example, we continue to get horse race coverage that tells us about Trump’s “big win” in South Carolina as if this were just another normal election cycle. On the other hand, the combination of Trump’s legal jeopardy and his increasingly unhinged, overtly fascist rhetoric is indisputable evidence that what we are facing is anything but normal.
As for Trump’s claims about being a prophet or some type of messiah, I think we have here a convergence between what appears to be Trump’s mental disorder and the needs of a base that has been primed for fascism. The only surprising thing about Trump’s claims is he has not yet said he is better than Jesus. That is sure to come!
It is what it is, and anybody who has been watching this unfortunate man for the past decades knows exactly what I’m talking about. It’s just sad. The more pressing problem is that fascism so often works through the cult of the leader. The leader is always one who suffers on behalf of the victim majority, but who nonetheless triumphs against the evil cosmopolitan elite. And Trump seems to understand this instinctively, which is why he insists that, in his legal struggles against a supposedly corrupt system of justice, he is standing up for the little guy.
We can’t know the extent to which Trump believes his own lies. The more important point is that majorities of Republican voters believe him when he speaks. In last summer’s CBS News-YouGov survey, Trump supporters – astonishingly –tend to trust him more than they trust their family and friends, conservative media, or even their own religious leaders. We cannot overstate the role of conspiracism and disinformation in bringing us to the point we are in right now. Many MAGA voters have been drawn into a fear-filled, fact-free world. They continue to believe the Big Lie that the 2020 was stolen; they think Trump was the greatest president ever; they say that his indictments are just political persecution from a “weaponized” system of justice; and they have been persuaded that a global cabal is trying to strip away from them everything they hold dear – and that Trump is the savior who will face down the demons and set the world aright.
Yikes.
Dr. David P. Gushee author of several books including his most recent, “Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies” says this:
I hate to say it, but it sure looks like his notable appeal to the non-college white male is connected to a certain credulousness on the part of his base to Trump’s increasingly outlandish religious appeals. And his supporters either don’t know or don’t care that he is articulating cruel positions on such matters as deporting undocumented immigrants and abandoning Ukraine and maybe Europe as a whole to the Russians.
Idolatry is when a false god or no god is worshipped as God. Trump’s narcissism enables him to see himself in idolatrous ways. Trump is using increasingly idolatrous language to describe himself. I think this may be because he actually believes it but it certainly is because he finds that the language works with a part of his base.
The will-to-believe that we find in some of these followers is a classic precursor to idolatry. A lack of serious knowledge of the historic Christian faith is also a precursor to people being attracted to the use of religious symbols and language even when they should be repelled by what the faith itself would describe as an obvious misuse. e.g., just because someone uses religious language that does not mean they are a friend to faith or to believers. They may be a predator to faith and the faithful. But you have to actually know something about the religion to be able to tell the difference. Many scholars are trying to make sense of this, and here an internal Christian theological perspective is the most help. That is, we know that what Trump is doing religiously is parasitic on, rather than an expression of, vibrant and real Christian faith.
Nothing I have seen to this point shows me that Trump’s hardcore religious base can be pried away from him. Not even imprisonment is likely to make a difference with this base. Sometimes in politics, and in history, a malignant force must simply be defeated, and then defeated again, and then defeated again. That is where we are.
David L. Altheide author of the new book “Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump”:
The disinformation about Trump’s defense of Christianity from leftists who want to tear down crosses is key to so-called Christian Nationalism. There is scant evidence that Christianity is under attack in the United States. But in true gonzo fashion, Trump creates a false image that appeals to extreme Evangelicals and Pentecostals. He is their savior. His effort to paint himself as a victim of political persecution plays to religious fundamentalists and others who have supported exclusionary and discriminatory policies. Many of his supporters fear ongoing rapid social change in our culture, including social media, the push for more rights by women, workers, and minority groups. And like Hitler, his sanctimonious appeal for strong resistance to guilty verdicts and criticisms of his racist policies is justified by the Divine, and that we all “answer to God in heaven.” When Trump refers to Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists as “persecuted Christians” he is following Hitler’s lead of defending racist policies with holy appeals. In 1936, Nazis claimed that God revealed himself “through our Fuehrer, to enable us to accomplish our great mission in the world.” Churches were tolerated as long they did not interfere with the state and did not oppose German racial ideals.
Most of Trump’s rhetoric to religious zealots is intended to solidify their support. Trump’s minions are not likely to be dissuaded by anything since, in their support for a man who asks no forgiveness of numerous sins, they have already compromised many basic Christian ideals and standards of morality and conduct. Christians are aware of Biblical cautions to beware of false prophets, but political zealots could care less: They are political and will support anyone who advocates for their right-wing views of abortion, America as a white Christian nation, patriarchy, and discrimination against foreigners, most immigrants, and racial minorities.
MAGA is a cult and its dominated by people who call themselves evangelical Christians. They love him more than Jesus.
Marge Greene has been fighting funding Ukraine from the get and now she has the power to stop it altogether. And she’s using it.
Speaker Mike Johnson, and everyone else in the House GOP caucus, is scared to death of this woman. She is the defacto Speaker of the House because any speaker knows that she will trip that motion to vacate without a second thought and that will be the end of their speakership. McCarthy managed to co-opt her early because he knew how dangerous she was but she’s not going to make that mistake again. She knows her power lies in being the most vicious, ruthless person in the US Congress and she won’t give it away again.
Among the loudest voices taking Johnson to task is Greene, who has threatened to file a motion to vacate his office if he does not meet the demands of herself and other hardline conservative House GOP members, particularly on opposition to providing more aid to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. Greene has said that those funds should instead be spent domestically, including on measures to strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border amid an influx of migrants arriving into the country.
Speaking with Politico for an article published Sunday, the congresswoman admitted that the GOP’s desperation is largely why Johnson still has the speakership, even as his position within the party is increasingly perilous.
“I don’t think he’s safe right now,” Greene said. “The only reason he’s speaker is because our conference is so desperate.”
Ukraine’s future is in this woman’s blood soaked hands right now. How in the hell did this government come to put so much power into such a person’s hands?
What am I saying? This misbegotten system put Donald Trump in the White House so obviously anything is possible.
Former President Donald Trump was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of trying to “drastically dilute” the value of stock shares in his social media company held by the firm’s co-founders, potentially depriving themof hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
The partnership, United Atlantic Ventures alleges that Trump Media & Technology Group engaged in “wrongful 11th hour … maneuvering” to dilute UAV″s minority stake in the media company, a court filing says.
The Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit comes in advance of the planned merger of TMTG with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which would result in the shares of the combined entity being publicly traded.
If DWAC shareholder approve the merger next month, Trump’s 90% stake in TMTG could be valued at more than $3 billion, given DWAC’s current share price.
UAV is a partnership of Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who initially pitched Trump the idea of creating Trump Media in February 2021, after the former president was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Both Litinsky and Moss were contestants on Trump’s television show, “The Apprentice.”
TMTG later built and launched Truth Social, the social media platform that Trump uses almost exclusively to communicate with the public.
The planned merger comes as Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has been ordered to pay more than $500 million in civil judgments in New York, related to trial verdicts for business fraud and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll.
“The attempt here is to deprive them of the deal,” said Christopher Clark, a lawyer for UAV.
“It’s not like they went out and bought a lottery ticket,” Clark said of the co-founders. “They actually went out and did the work, they created Truth Social, and now the beneficiary of that, Donald Trump, doesn’t want to pay.”
“Not a unique story, unfortunately,” Clark said, referring to Trump’s infamous practice of contesting bills from contractors and lawyers.
This is the same crime he’s been committing for decades and getting away with it, at least until the State of New York finally stepped up and did something about it. But he’s clearly still at it. If these guys manage to deprive him of his 3 billion dollar deal, that would be of great service to the world.
Quit the clickbait and get back to issues. @Sulliview calls out the “destructive obsession” with @JoeBiden’s age. “I wonder whether people are as aware of Trump's authoritarian plans as they are of Biden's age? And I think the answer to that is pretty clearly no," she argues. pic.twitter.com/8L9nnhSLdo
That applies to clickbait polls like today’s NYT poll that has everyone spinning out. No, women are not suddenly voting for Trump. And this too:
Have young voters truly move towards Biden since then, and have middle aged voters moved away? Who knows. But let's be careful about setting false narratives here, whether we're talking about age, race/ethnicity, or any other subgroup.
One more note on this poll – while people are talking about the shift from Biden +2 w/ likely voters in Dec to Trump +4 the biggest driver in that shift is the Dec poll sample had equal shares of Dems and GOPs while this poll is GOP +3. https://t.co/fySk2UJmmM
Punching back with style. Too bad it was behind closed doors.
A Tweet (suck it, Musk) regarding the closed-door House questioning of Hunter Biden caught my attention in a big way. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) used his questioning time to punch back against the GOP’s phony Burisma inquiry.
If you have not read Eric Swalwell’s questions to Hunter Biden during his hearing, you have to.
SWALWELL: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?
BIDEN: No, he has never operated a hotel.
SWALWELL: So he’s never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?
BIDEN: No, he has not.
SWALWELL: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?
BIDEN: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.
SWALWELL: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?
BIDEN: No.
SWALWELL: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family? BIDEN: No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.
SWALWELL: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?
BIDEN: No, he has not, thank God.
SWALWELL: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?
BIDEN: No.
SWALWELL: That’s all I’ve got.
Here’s how ABC News reported Hunter Biden’s “defiant” appearance and Swalwell’s snark:
Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, led one particularly pointed exchange intended to draw out the differences between President Biden and Trump, the Republican front-runner to challenge him for the White House.
“Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?” Swalwell asked.
“My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge,” Hunter Biden testified.
Swalwell went on to ask questions referring to the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump’s legal case in New York City, his daughter-in-law’s recent bid to lead the Republican National Committee and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia.
“As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?” Swalwell probed.
“No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC” — the Democratic National Committee.
Had his father ever been fined $355 million? “No, he has not, thank God,” Hunter Biden testified.
Lesson? Read the transcript. This pointed statement from Biden, for example:
So when you — when Jared Kushner flies over to Saudi Arabia, picks up $2 billion, comes back, and puts it in his pocket, okay, and he is running for President of the United States, you guys have any problem with that?
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) adds more and points out the “stark contrast” between Biden’s actions with a private enterprise and Jared Kushner’s deals with foreign governments.
Now, when do House Republicans charge Biden with lying under oath, not because he did but because it suits their narrative and helps Donald “91 Counts”?
An illustration of immigrants on the steerage deck of an ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 2, 1887. National Park Service, Statue of Liberty NM
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he warned, and warned again:
MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.
They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.
They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
And, oh, the pearl-clutching afterwards! Biden was being un-nice, mean, partisan. How dare he? The man-child leading MAGA called it “the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.” (Takes one to know one, as any schoolyard bully knows.) “[J]ust eight weeks before midterm elections,” The Washington Post Editorial Board scolded, “Mr. Biden was wrong to conflate upholding the rule of law with his own partisan agenda.” Pundits questioned his political judgment to address the elephant in the room rather than campaign on bland-but-safe kitchen-table issues.
Two months later, the over-hyped, midterm “red wave” flattened to a ripple. Cause and effect? Maybe. Maybe not. But Biden’s “mistake” in campaigining on the soul of America may indeed have been an inflection point, “one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after.”
But America’s short attention span means we are too easily distracted from America’s first principles, says Anand Giridharadas, by “Whac-A-Mole crises ginned up by fascists.” By which he means the hysteria over immigration. Sometimes it takes a son of immigrants to appreciate what makes this country worth fighting for (The Ink):
We shouldn’t be having a defensive conversation about immigration that starts with the story of border chaos.
We should have our own conversation from first principles: This is an extraordinary country. It’s extraordinary for many reasons. Among the reasons it is extraordinary: it is a country built of the world, from the world, from every part of the world.
I have had the fortune, as a journalist, as a foreign correspondent, to visit dozens of countries. And I’ve enjoyed all these countries I’ve been to, but I’ve actually never been to any other country that truly aspired to be a country made of the world.
When you’re in France — there are immigrants in France, but it is not like the United States. It is not a country made of the world. It is a country centered on Frenchness.
A lot of countries in the world — people may not know this — don’t even have birthright citizenship. If you live there, if you’re born there, even if your parents are from there, you still don’t necessarily become a citizen.
Eric Liu, a friend of mine, a Chinese-American, wrote in a memoir called A Chinaman’s Chance about how his family’s been in China thousands and thousands of years. His parents left, came to America. He said if he wanted to go back and become Chinese, he couldn’t. 5,000 years of loyal living in China, one or two generations in the United States.
Becoming Chinese is not a thing. Becoming Indian is not a thing. Becoming American is something that we do to a million people every year. We’ve done it under Republicans, under Democrats.
My family came here 47 years ago. I think we’ve had a pretty good run of contribution to this country — perhaps except my own.
So I think we need to not just react to Whac-A-Mole crises ginned up by fascists, but actually own this notion that our blood is better with the blood of many people in it. Our country is better when more people are here.
We have built everything we can because we have every kind of idea, every kind of contribution mixing together, and people who don’t have a heart, people who are miserly, or people who are cynically trying to raise money off of hatred don’t belong in the American story.
Conservatives by their nature resist change. But they are fine with it, grudgingly, if there is a buck to make from it. Their red line is cultural change that threatens a status quo that preserves white, male Christians atop the American social pyramid. For all our “created equal” chest-thumping, yes, we still have castes here, as Isabel Wilkerson argues. Some of us aspire for America to be better than that. Others are just fine with it, especially if there is a buck to make from it. Abolitionism was one of those inflection points where change happened against their resistance. We are at another of those points today.
Our blood is better with the blood of many in it. Our country is better when more people are here.
— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) March 1, 2024
It is helpful to have Giridharadas around to remind us who we aspire to be. In the streaming age, his bandwidth is narrower than Neil Diamond‘s and Neil Sedaka’s back in the day, but his message is as strong.
Conservatives never back down; they double down. It’s a debating style the left has never embraced, but should. We hem and haw when challenged. We justify and present facts. I looks and feels weak to conservatives who value strength and strong conviction, like Giridharadas’. Punch back.
I’m reminded of a Roy Blount Jr. tale of reading in The New York Times that a southern folk remedy of eating kaolin clay (a main ingredient on Pepto) as a stomach ache remedy was on the wane. Naturally, some New York sophisticate asked if Blount ate dirt:
At that point there were two tacks I could take. I could say, “Well, I know there are some folks down south who like to chew on clay, but I never ate any myself and neither did any of my relatives or friends, and in point of fact I never even saw anybody eat dirt.”
The response to that tack would have been a knowing look. “Here is a man who comes from people who eat dirt and he thinks he is better than they are.” She would be thinking I couldn’t handle stigma. Or that I was inauthentic. Southern and inauthentic: the worst of both worlds.
So I took the second tack. “Hell, yes, we eat dirt,” I said. “And if you never ate any blackened red dirt, you don’t know what’s good. I understand you people up here eat raw fish.”
“And eat cold soup,” I once heard Blount add.
“Hell, yes, I support immigration” is not the answer Whac-A-Mole fascists expect. Try it out. See above for the punch combination that follows.
