Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Trump’s been channeling Hitler so I guess this is just par for the course. It’s still startling:

Anthony D’Esposito, a congressman from New York, posted a picture on X last week of an undocumented immigrant flashing two middle fingers after being arraigned for allegedly assaulting two NYPD officers. “We feel the same way about you,” D’Esposito wrote. “Holla at the cartels and have them escort you back.” But Republican Congressman Mike Collins took it a step further: “Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back.” His post was flagged as violent speech, but it was allowed to stand on the grounds that “it may be in the public’s interest for the Post to remain accessible.”

Collins probably considers his statement a joke intended to communicate his views of migrants, and it is best not to overreact to behavior that is designed to provoke. But his post also reflects the mainstreaming of authoritarianism in the GOP. Since at least 2016, members of the Proud Boys—the extremist group that Trump told to “stand back and stand by” in the event he lost the 2020 election—have worn shirts with slogans like “Pinochet did nothing wrong” or “Pinochet’s Helicopter Rides.” Now a Republican in Congress is repeating them.

During Augusto Pinochet’s rule in Chile, more than 1,000 people were “disappeared”: abducted by the state, never to be seen by their families again. More than a hundred of those were drugged, hooded, and tossed from helicopters to sink into the ocean. Given the debate about whether Trump and his movement are fascist—a debate Trump has fueled by describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country and promising that he would be a dictator on “day one” who would “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin”—you might expect comparisons to Pinochet to come from his critics. That they come from admirers instead reflects the unsettling and bizarre ways that Trump is seen by his supporters (as Pinochet was by his) as the savior of Western, Christian civilization against its enemies from within.

I’ve heard some of the fringe MAGAs talking about the “helicopter” option but I didn’t realize that elected Republicans were doing it too. Like I said: psychos.

Some GOP Senators behave responsibly today. Go figure:

Donald Trump spent the weekend telling senators they should not pass more unconditional U.S. foreign aid. More than a dozen Republicans ignored him Sunday, moving forward on a bill to send $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The Senate voted 67-27 to advance the foreign aid supplemental spending bill that doesn’t include border provisions, moving it another step closer to passage. That still isn’t guaranteed, as leaders haven’t yet reached an agreement on GOP-demanded border amendments.

The package faces some resistance from Republicans, who say they won’t back further aid to Ukraine unless it’s amended to include border policy changes. Last week, Republicans blocked a bipartisan border-foreign aid package that was negotiated for months, arguing it didn’t go far enough to limit migration. Consideration of border amendments would require unanimous consent from senators, which is still elusive.

“From this point forward, are you listening U.S. Senate (?),” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No money in the form of foreign aid should be given to any country unless it is done as a loan, not just a giveaway.”

Trump had helped tank the bipartisan border-foreign aid bill, calling for Republicans to block that legislation as well. This time, many GOP senators didn’t seem concerned with his opposition.

“I think that it’s unlikely that we lose any more [members],” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in response to Trump’s comments. “It’s more likely that we can gain more, particularly of members who … were just wanting to make sure that our members got a chance to file amendments and have them heard.”

Republican support actually gained some ground on Sunday, with 18 voting to move the measure forward.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stumped for further aid in his Sunday floor speech, refusing to back away from his adamant support for foreign aid, particularly Ukraine, that’s highlighted a growing divide within his conference.

“I know it’s become quite fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests we have as a global power. To bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership,” McConnell said. “This is idle work for idle minds. And it has no place in the United States Senate.”

Check out the spin from some of them on Trump’s NATO comments, though:

Trump had other comments over the weekend that riled lawmakers, suggesting at a rally Saturday evening that Russia should “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO-member nation that is not meeting its spending commitment. Senate Democrats were expectedly aghast at the comment — but the remarks also elicited mixed responses from Senate Republicans.

Tillis blamed Trump’s team rather than the former president’s long-established beef with NATO, saying “shame on his briefers” for not explaining the U.S. has made a commitment to assist any NATO country that is attacked.

Others were sharper in their criticism. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said it was a “stupid thing to say.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said it was “uncalled for.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he doesn’t take Trump “literally.”

Trump was president of the United States for four years. If he doesn’t know how NATO works by now it’s because he’s an idiot.

Still, good for them. They defied Dear Leader. The bad news is that even if they get past this amendment hurdle, the House is a screaming clown show so who knows if this will ever happen?

Kevin McCarthy was known as a prodigious fundraiser and is as connected as anyone in politics. And he’s pissed:

Donors no longer want to contribute to their campaigns. Primary opponents are lining up to take them out. And some of them have been ex-communicated from caucuses on Capitol Hill.

The eight House Republicans who took the unprecedented step of removing Kevin McCarthy from the speakership are facing blowback, both in Washington and back home. It’s a sign that even four months after the historic move, emotions are still raw inside a GOP conference that is continuing to reel from McCarthy’s ouster.

Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia have arguably received the most incoming fire, with both now facing serious primary threats as they gear up for reelection. And Rep. Matt Rosendale, who recently jumped into the US Senate race in Montana, is facing headwinds in GOP circles — in part because of his vote to boot McCarthy — as top Republicans fear he will cost them a pivotal seat.

A well-connected GOP outside spending group is planning to play in the races against Good and Mace, while McCarthy himself is widely expected to get involved as well, according to multiple Republican sources familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, the Main Street Caucus and Republican Governance Group, two center-right-leaning groups on Capitol Hill, have both quietly dropped Mace from their ranks, multiple sources told CNN. Neither move was publicized, but sources say frustration with the congresswoman had been brewing for months leading up to her McCarthy vote.

“She really wants to be a caucus of one. So we obliged her,” one House Republican told CNN.

McCarthy has little reason to be faithful to the GOP. And it seems as if he doesn’t care that he’s taking out incumbents in what may be a tough year. Why should he?

Stay tuned. This could be fun.

And then there’s this:

The kewl kidz are very upset that anyone would suggest they aren’t doing their jobs well:

By the way:

This is how you do it:

He is so brain damaged that he still thinks, after all this time, that NATO countries pay some sort of “dues” and if they don’t it means he can refuse to support them. It’s so stupid that it’s hard to even contemplate how dangerous it is to allow this person to be president again.

The only winning move is not to play

Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Joahua, the artificial intelligence defense computer in War Games (1983), almost launches World War III while playing “Global Thermonuclear War” with itself. A young computer enthusiast played by Matthew Broderick thought it was just a cool game he’d found on a military supercomputer he’d hacked. He invites Joshua to play. Joshua was actually in control of missile launch commands.

The presumptive Republican candidate for president in 2024, the imbecile Donald “91 Counts” Trump is no computer, and seems to lack intelligence, artificial or otherwise. But he did have an uncle who taught at MIT, so same difference. Trump last night publicly entertained inviting global thermonuclear war.

In the Broderick role in this year’s War Games reboot, we have the mainstream press. Reporters are busily pecking away at their keyboards trying to coax the American electorate into playing “but her emails” once again … because it was so much fun (and good for clicks and ratings) in 2016. For those with short memories, the press helped Republicans hack the 2016 election by promoting “but her emails.”

In the COVID-19 pandemic response that “but her emails” helped put “I have an uncle who taught at MIT” in charge of, over 1.1 million Americans died. No one died in the Broderick movie.

The New York Times is just one news outlet eagerly stoking this election season’s “but her emails.” Joe Biden is three years older than Trump, have you heard?

Mr. Biden’s voice has grown softer and raspier, his hair thinner and whiter. He is tall and trim but moves more tentatively than he did as a candidate in 2019 and 2020, often holding his upper body stiff, adding to an impression of frailty. And he has had spills in the public eye: falling off a bicycle, tripping over a sandbag.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, does not appear to be suffering the effects of time in such visible ways. Mr. Trump often dyes his hair and appears unnaturally tan. He is heavyset and tall, and he uses his physicality to project strength in front of crowds. When he takes the stage at rallies, he basks in adulation for several minutes, dancing to an opening song, and then holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.

Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin is aghast.

Post by @jenrubin9

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Lord love a duck. Joshua at least had the capacity to learn. Not so the press corps.

A demagogue with dictatorial aspirations

Jason Statler (LOLGOP on your favorite social media platform) asks if the press is trying to reelect Trump with “Biden’s too old.” His conclusion, like Joshua’s is not to play:

You don’t have to pretend that the press actually believes that Biden’s age, memory or trustworthiness with classified documents are actual issues — especially compared to Trump, who is basically the same age, whose speech is so littered with lies and errors you can’t even parse which is which, and who stole a trove national secrets, some of which he probably still hasn’t returned. 

You don’t even need to pretend these two men are comparable in any way. Biden is a standard 20th century American public servant imbued with all the imperfections that come with that. Trump is the worst president in American history. A demagogue with dictatorial aspirations. A fraud whose greatest accomplishment in life was avoiding any indictments for his first 76 years.

Politics is moral warfare.

You cannot engage the frames the press traffics in because it knows the best way to reach the maximum audience is to give Republicans what they want and drive liberals to hate reading, hate sharing, and even hate subscribing. Because even by rebutting them, you spread and strengthen them. That’s just how brains work.

Instead, Democrats need to push their own frames. The story here could easily be “Trump loses again, as Biden is cleared.” Democrats could then jump on TV and insist that this is an excellent time for Trump to return any classified documents that he still has at his fraudulent businesses and end this betrayal of America of national security.

These angles are journalistically valid as the story we’re being sold. And they’re far more moral than pandering to narratives Republicans feed, knowing the New York Times and others will play along.

November is still decades away in political years. Every flare up or stumble feels permanent and unfixable. But the truth is the news moves so fast that nothing stays present in the discourse unless there is a concerted effort to keep it there.

Republicans use the press to launder baseless accusations the way Dick Cheney used it to promote invading Iraq.

“We know [Republicans] play pious and law-abiding as their presidents have committed some of the worst crimes in the history of the Republic,” Statler adds. “We know that Republican leadership continually makes America weaker, poorer, and more aligned with the worst authoritarians on earth.”

Where Statler falls short here is that not playing is not enough. The press still wants and needs to be loved to stay afloat financially. It’s not enough to unsubscribe either. Republicans may not be past shaming, but the press is not. Shame away. And shame LOUDLY.

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Be a shame if something happened to it

Wicked Witch of the West voice: And your western economy, too!

“The president of a big country stood up, said, ‘Well, sir…” the former president told a MAGAfied crowd in Conway, South Carolina. Here we go. Another bullshit “sir story.”

Washington Post:

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?,’” Trump said during a rally at Coastal Carolina University. “I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”

“This is crazy. And 8 years later, Trump shows that he STILL doesn’t understand how NATO works! It’s not a protection racket. They don’t pay us to protect them. Geez,” tweeted former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Foreign policy wonks gasped. Why, at this point, who can say? It’s not as if Trump hasn’t advertised he’s an imbecile for decades.

Naturally, the MAGA crowd cheered.

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Masha Gesson sat through the whole Putin interview. Here are a few of her thoughts. She speaks Russian, of course, so this doesn’t rely on the Kremlin translators as Tucker’s show does: :

What Putin Saw When He Was Interviewed by Tucker Carlson

Here was an easy mark. Carlson meekly tried to interrupt Putin a couple of times, to ask a question he seemed stuck on: Why hadn’t all this history and these territorial issues come up when Putin first became President, in 2000? It was an ill-informed question—Putin has trafficked in historical revisionism from the start and became increasingly obsessed with Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, in 2004—and an easy one for Putin to ignore. It seemed to show that Carlson was less well briefed than Putin, who dropped biographical trivia about Carlson into the conversation, a trademark intimidation tactic of a K.G.B. agent. He mentioned, for example, that Carlson had unsuccessfully tried to join the C.I.A.

Carlson didn’t interrupt or challenge Putin on the many—too many to count—occasions when Putin told falsehoods about the history of Ukraine, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the relationship between Russia and nato, probably his conversations with former U.S. leaders, and, perhaps most egregiously of all, the Russian Army’s withdrawal from the suburbs of Kyiv after a month of invasion in 2022. Putin claimed that this was a gesture of good will aimed at achieving a speedy negotiated peace; in fact, it was a military defeat. This would also have been a good moment for Carlson to ask Putin about the well-documented war crimes Russian soldiers allegedly committed during that month of occupation. He passed up this opportunity.

Most important from Putin’s point of view, Carlson seemed to share two of his basic assumptions: that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war with the United States and that any negotiations will take place between the Kremlin and the White House, presumably without involving Kyiv. Carlson even nudged Putin to call President Biden and say “Let’s work this out.” To which Putin responded that the message Russia wishes to convey to the U.S. is “Stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks.”

What Russian Television Viewers Saw

Putin has reprised his history lecture many times. It seems likely that most Russians who watched the entire interview did so out of professional obligation—their job, as propagandists or political appointees, is to amplify and affirm the leader’s message. Ordinary Russians probably watched only outtakes and commentary. What they saw was that something momentous had happened: one of the most popular journalists in America came to interview Putin and looked like a deer in headlights. Channel One stressed both Carlson’s popularity and Americans’ evident interest in what Putin had to say. Carlson’s promotional video in advance of the interview itself had been watched more than a hundred million times! Russians see Carlson, not unreasonably, as a representative of a future Trump Administration, a preview of the coming America in which the liberals who support Ukraine are finally displaced.

What Tucker Carlson’s Viewers Saw

It’s hard to imagine an American viewer who would make it past the first ten minutes of Putin’s monotonous history lecture. (In the interview, Putin called it one of his “dialogues,” betraying either his ignorance or his idea of what constitutes a dialogue; the Kremlin translated “dialogues” as “my long speeches.”) The translator or translators generally cleaned up Putin’s prose, smoothing out passages that, in Russian, made no sense. For example, responding to Carlson’s question about a possible invasion of Poland, Putin said, in Russian, “Because we don’t have any interests in Poland nor in Lithuania—nowhere. What do we need it for? We just don’t have any interests. Only threats.” The translator rendered it as, “Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. It’s just threat mongering.”

In another exchange, the translator took liberties to make Carlson appear more dignified. When Carlson asked Putin about his obsession with fighting Nazism eighty years after Hitler’s death, the President said, in Russian, “Your question seems subtle but is very disgusting.” In English, though, Putin appeared to be praising Carlson’s question as “subtle” while Carlson himself, according to the transcript, called the question “quite pesky”—the words were actually spoken by Putin’s translator. However obscure the subject of Putin’s discursive exercise was, the genre probably looked recognizable to Americans. This was a conversation between an older man who has read a history book and fancies himself an expert and his eager nephew, who is trying to feign knowledge in a subject he failed in college. Except one of these guys reaches millions of viewers and the other has nuclear weapons.

Tucker Carlson said after the interview:

“The professional liars in Washington . . . are trying to convince you that this guy is Hitler, that he is trying to take the Sudetenland, or something,” Carlson continued. “Not analogous in any way!”

Gessen writes, “in fact, Putin had clearly, and more explicitly than ever before, channelled Hitler during the interview.”

Putin has reproduced Hitler’s rhetoric before. Ten years ago, announcing the annexation of Crimea, he seemed to borrow from Hitler’s speech on the annexation of Sudetenland. At the time, I assumed that the language had come from a speechwriter who knew what they were doing while Putin may not have. But the way Putin described the beginning of the Second World War in his interview with Carlson suggests that, although he keeps accusing Ukraine of fostering Nazism, in his mind he might see himself as Hitler, but perhaps a wilier one, one who can make inroads into the United States and create an alliance with its presumed future President.

It’s telling, too, that Putin took the time to accuse Poland of both allying with Nazi Germany and inciting Hitler’s aggression. As he has done with Ukraine in the past, he is positioning Poland as an heir to Nazism. He mentioned Poland more than thirty times in his conversation with Tucker. If I were Poland, I’d be scared. 

I’m scared. Tucker Carlson is a traitor to decent people everywhere. And he’s brainwashing a whole bunch of people in America. Like this POS:

And people are worried about Biden…