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Donald Trump’s very specific form of manipulation

We know about Trump’s psychotic behavior. He is a malignant, narcissistic, pathological liar. But he employs a specific manipulative strategy that actually has a name. But I didn’t know that there is a very specific diagnosis. Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian explains:

Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused.

But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim. Whatever it is, he is falsely accused. But his self-dramatization as the wounded sufferer is only half his story: he insists that whoever has accused him is in fact the offender. He emerges triumphant, the martyr, the truth-teller, courageously unmasking the real villain. J’accuse!

Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender.

“I named the idea in the 1990s,” Freyd told me. “People can deny an accusation without resorting to Darvo. Why not just say, ‘I’m disturbed by what you’re saying, it doesn’t comport with what I remember, these are important issues, I want to understand.’ You can stick to a firm denial without being a victim. But the viciousness of the attack is intended to be silencing.”

Freyd observes: “The people who use Darvo are different from the people who don’t … It’s a red flag.”

Trump’s behavior in the E Jean Carroll case has been a classic exhibit. The defamation case was brought after Trump said she was “totally lying”, explaining that “she’s not my type”, about her description of his sexual assault of her in a book and a New York magazine article. He issued a formal statement from the White House on 19 July 2019: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms Carroll or New York magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

All the elements of Darvo, his familiar pattern, were present in his deflection. He denied the incident occurred: “I’ve never met this person in my life.” He attacked her: “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” And he turned the tables to make himself the victim and her the aggressor deserving of punishment: “People should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

In the first defamation trial in 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan declared that based on the jury’s deliberations Trump had defamed her and committed rape. “… Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’,” he stated. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”

The jury awarded Carroll $5m. Trump appeared on CNN the day after the judgment to call the decision “fake news” and her a “whack job”. She amended her defamation lawsuit.

During the second trial, Trump inevitably repeated this pattern. First, he denied the accusation. “She said that I did something to her that never took place,” he testified in a deposition. “There was no anything.” Then, he attacked her: “I know nothing about this nutjob.” Then, he made himself her victim: “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is.” Then, he called her “sick, mentally sick” and labeled her attorney Roberta Kaplan “a political operative”. They had connived for ulterior motives to hurt him.

Then, he lied about an interview she had given, to claim that – even if he never knew her and the event never took place – she said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted by him. “She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”

In the second defamation trial, the jury delivered a judgment of $83.3m in damages against Trump.

There’s a method to Trump’s madness. The madness is the method – and the method is the madness. It’s more than his malignant narcissism. It’s more than his relentless lying. Conscious or unconscious, it is his invariable reflexive response to the danger of being held responsible for his misdeeds and crimes. Its roots lie in the model of his brutish father. Upon that foundation he added the vicious counsel of Roy Cohn to attack anyone suing him in order to raise the personal cost for his victims, drain them of resources and delay the courts.

Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts

And this has now become the defining feature of GOP politics.

…Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his Darvo blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts. Trump’s syndrome has become the core of his politics. Just as he is the Maga icon, even exalted as a god, his derangement is the golden calf for his followers. They worship by imitation. His gaslighting about his sexual violence has morphed into the essence of his pseudo-ideology of a debauched party.

The Trump Republicans, apologizing for him, twist their arguments into the Darvo template. In the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the weaponization committee has institutionalized a warped Darvo construct in its projections on the cave wall of conspiracies and enemies. One day, the FBI is the culprit victimizing Trump; the next, Taylor Swift.

In case after case, Trump applies the blueprint. His closing statement at his New York fraud trial on 12 January was definitive in his application of the complete features of Darvo. He raced back and forth from denial, to attack, to reversal of victim and offender. “This is a political witch-hunt that was set aside by – should be set aside. We should receive damages for what we’ve gone through, for what they’ve taken this company through.” He was the victim.

It is now everything in Trump world:

Trump’s campaign themes largely consist of his defenses, which are adaptations of Darvo. He denies all the accusations. A majority of Republicans believe he is falsely charged. He attacks a host of enemies from E Jean Carroll to Jack Smith, from the judges to their clerks. He is the victim. They are the offenders. Darvo is his shield of innocence.

“Are you thinking of trying to use campaign funds to pay some of the penalties?” a reporter asked Trump after it was disclosed that he had spent $50m in donor money on lawyers’ fees in 2023.

“What penalties?” Trump answered.

“In the New York fraud case and the defamation case.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said. “I mean, that’s been proven as far as I’m concerned.”

Read the whole thing. There’s much more to it. This tactic has to be the single most frustrating thing about Donald Trump and the Republicans right now. They deploy this tactic to great effect and it ends up manipulating not only their own followers but the rest of the culture as well by making it seems as though Trump can get away with anything. And with the exception of the two lawsuits in NY, so far he has.

By the way, there’s some news today about how he acts behind the scenes in his legal cases. E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan appeared on a podcast and talked about the Trump depositions:

The ex-president reportedly freaked out when his legal team provided lunch at his resort for opposing counsel. Like throwing papers, storming out of the room and yelling at his attorney Alina Habba. All because his lawyers extended a basic courtesy. Real stable genius stuff.

But there’s more! Trump apparently referred to Kaplan as a “see you next Tuesday,” which, as many are aware, is a euphemism for calling someone a cunt.

As Kaplan describes:

“We come in the room and I say, ‘I’m done asking questions’ and immediately I hear from the other side, ‘Off the record. Off the record. Off the record.’ So they must have planned it. And he looks at me from across the table and he says, ‘See you next Tuesday.’”

But Kaplan was unaware of the hidden insult:

Kaplan said that she was initially confused, as their next meeting was set for a Wednesday. “You could tell it was like, it was like a kind of a joke again, like teenage boys would come up with. But again, I wasn’t in on the joke,” she said.

“I wasn’t in on the joke, so I had no idea. Then we get into the car and my colleagues are like, ‘Robbie, do you know what that means?’ And I’m like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’ They tell me and I’m like, oh my God, thank God I didn’t know because had I known, I for sure would have gotten angry. There’s no question I would have gotten angry,” Kaplan said.

No kidding. Trump is not only a malignant narcissist, he’s got the mind of a 13 year old boy. He’s pathetic.

The Taylor Swift discourse is now approaching the David Icke discourse, and it's not great. pic.twitter.com/VbKELJC1kN

— Mike Rothschild (no relation) (@rothschildmd) February 1, 2024

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this insanity. Remember “frazzledrip”?

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Marjorie Taylor Greene had shown support for executing Democrats including liking a comment in January 2019 that said it would be “quicker” to remove Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with “a bullet to the head.” 

At the same time, it was revealed that the Republican lawmaker had signaled her endorsement of the unhinged “frazzledrip” conspiracy.

Here’s what that theory, which originated on conspiracy site YourNewsWire (now known as News Punch) in April 2018, claims:

A video that was found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman who was jailed in 2017 for sexting with a minor, began circulating on the “dark web.” The video was found in a folder on the laptop’s hard drive called “life insurance” and was named “frazzledrip.”

The bogus report says the video — which, to be clear, does not exist on the dark web or anywhere else — shows Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, Weiner’s former wife and longtime Clinton aide, raping and mutilating a young girl. Specifically, the video is supposed to show Clinton filleting the young girl’s face, and then taking turns with Abedin to wear the girl’s face as a mask in order to purposefully terrify the child so that her blood would be flooded with adrenochrome. The girl then bleeds out before Clinton and Abedin drink the blood during a Satanic ritual sacrifice.

But the horrific conspiracy theory didn’t end there. QAnon supporters also spread the rumor that multiple officers from the New York Police Department who saw the video had been killed by Clinton, who then covered up the murders by making them look like suicides.

In May 2018, just a month after YourNewsWire first spread the frazzledrip conspiracy, Greene posted a picture of the mother of slain New York Police Department Detective Miosotis Familia with former President Donald Trump, a post first flagged by Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog.

Under the post, a commenter wrote: “This is the mother of a NYPD officer who watched a horrific video seized on anthony weiners laptop of huma and hillary filleting a childs face. This was another hillary hit.” 

Greene liked that comment and replied: “Yes Familia.” 

In another comment, Greene appeared to lean further into the conspiracy: “I post things sometimes to see who knows things. Most the time people don’t. I’m glad to see your comment. I’ve decided it’s time to start doing a lot more videos and engage further in the fight. Most people honestly don’t know so much. The [mainstream media] disinformation warfare has won for too long!”

Most of the millions of Americans who have been brainwashed by the QAnon cult over the last 12 months have been exposed not to the extreme dark side of the conspiracy, but to a lighter version, pushed by hijacking the Save the Children message and eschewing any overt link to QAnon and its origins.

Greene has repeatedly tried to distance herself from links to QAnon, which recently played a central part in the Capitol riots, but she has never disowned the conspiracy movement. And this latest revelation shows that Greene is not just flirting with the fringes of this conspiracy theory, but embracing its darkest corners.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that Greene had endorsed calls, made on

Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the leaders of the MAGA party. This stuff is not fringe.

I’m listening to some talking heads on TV this morning and realizing for the 2,750,236 times that political conventional wisdom is deadly. I won’t go into details but suffice to say that while many of them are reluctantly admitting that the economy is good they seem to be at pains to explain that Joe Biden is still a great big loser and there’s nothing much to be done about it. Yeah, ok, I exaggerate a bit but it’s not far off.

Anyway, this piece by Brian Beutler for his newsletter (which is fantastic, by the way, you should subscribe if you can) was a tonic this morning. If only the talking heads on TV would get the message:

Once upon a time (about seven years ago) a Democratic Party critic whose identity would probably surprise you conceded to me that, whatever flaws leading American liberals might embody, Donald Trump is worse—a person, he said, who has “no redeeming qualities.”

That description has stuck with me all this time less because of its insight (tens of millions of people already felt the same way) than because of how durable it’s been. Given a four year term, and three more years out of power, Trump never once conducted himself in a way that might one day give his obituary writers material for a “to be sure” paragraph. (“To be sure, the paper towels he threw at hurricane victims were brand name…”)

When Hillary Clinton debated Trump in 2016, and was asked what if anything she admired about him, she referred to his offspring. “I respect his children,” she said. “His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald.” But even this almost-backhanded compliment was wrong! His adult children are wretched egomaniacs, liars, and thieves. The only one who seems truly devoted to his father, Donald Trump, Jr., is the most degenerate and least capable. He’s also the one Trump himself holds in the greatest contempt. 

Trump is just a bad man. The patriarch of a bad family. A person who came closest to demonstrating a trace of humanity not after any national tragedy, but when he lamented the regrettable-yet-necessary killing of Harambe. 

It’s this irreducible thing about Trump that makes me so frustrated with the upper echelons of the Democratic Party. Beating a bad person in a popularity contest should be easy. 

Trump would of course have millions of devotees no matter what. He’s a skilled con artist and a famous celebrity. A substantial portion of humanity apparently loves a good bully and lives to be servile. But mobilizing the greater millions who are on to his con and hate the way he treats people seems much easier than, say, beating a devoutly religious family man in the midst of a stalled-out economic recovery. 

Scouring the news this week, I came away once again with the sense that the Trump opposition has grown fatalistic about Trump’s large and steady base of support, and flummoxed over how to organize against him given how badly Biden’s has frayed. So I thought it might be a good time to revisit the simple premise: Joe Biden is pretty good; Donald Trump is one of the worst people in American history. 

For his recently launched New Republic podcast, Greg Sargent interviewed Jim Prokopiac, a Democratic candidate running in a special election for a Pennsylvania state house district near Philadelphia. 

Like most frontline candidates Prokopiac has decided or been advised not to dwell on Donald Trump. “To a certain extent their perception is already baked in,” he said. “I’ve had people who in previous elections—Democrats—who have said, ‘You know what, lay off the Trump stuff. We already have our opinion on Trump, you’re not changing us. Tell us what you’re going to do.’ And so I think to a certain extent some of that’s baked in, and we can say all we want about what’s going on and for more blue-collar people, they already have their opinion.”

Naturally I hope Prokopiac wins. And a win is a win even if it doesn’t come about as a referendum on Trump. But this strikes me as a naive way to think about human behavior, and about how persuasion works. 

-If a partisan Democrat doesn’t want to talk about Trump, fine—but they’re already a partisan Democrat! If they need any motivation at all it’s simply to remember to vote, and reminding them that we’re in a twilight struggle for American democracy will galvanize them at least as much as the details of a pension reform plan. 

-If a registered, Trump-curious Democrat said “lay off the Trump stuff, I already have an opinion on Trump,” I might interpret it as the pleading of a person who’s trying to avoid the torment of cognitive dissonance. They like Trump even though they know they shouldn’t. I would want to make sure that person knew both recent revelations about Trump, and the degree to which civil and criminal fraud is at the heart of all of his legal troubles. If he’ll defraud voters and charity donors, what makes you think he doesn’t see you as a mark as well? 

-If a pro-Trump Republican, festooned head to toe in MAGA gear, said “lay off the Trump stuff, I already have an opinion on Trump,” I probably wouldn’t sweat it. That’s a partisan, pro-Trump Republican! But I would still try to tickle their lizard brain, at least until I heard the click of a shotgun—you’re being manipulated by a con man, don’t you want to take your independence back? You’re stronger than to fall for the false promises of a lying crook. 

Democrats and liberal elites are paralyzed by this idea that Trump sentiment is “baked in.” But nothing in politics is baked in. You can’t add more cocoa powder to a baked cupcake, but you can always change the salience and public awareness of issues with effort. Three years ago, liberals believed Trump’s unique corruption was “baked in,” but now between him and Biden it’s much closer to a wash. How did that happen? It happened because conservatives understand nothing is fixed, and so they set about trying to rehabilitate Trump and slime Biden. So far they’ve been quite successful.

The same thing can work in reverse. Persuasion is not just about getting people from zero knowledge to partial or full knowledge of Trump’s corruption. It’s getting them to dwell on things they already know. At an individual level, that can make the difference between a voter and an abstainer; at a herd level, increasing the salience of derogatory information can demoralize large groups. If James Comey had made his final comments about Hillary Clinton’s emails in September 2016, and the Access Hollywood tape had surfaced in late October, rather than the other way around, Clinton would’ve won.

And at the end of the day, this job should be easier for Democrats than Republicans. They have much more real, verifiable material to work with because Joe Biden is pretty good, but Donald Trump is one of the worst people in American history. 

There’a lot more at the link and I urge you to read it. I think some of this problem stems from the somewhat self-righteous decision by the media to not show Donald Trump out of a misplaced belief in their responsibility to protect the public from the unpleasantness of Donald Trump. It may have been good for their audience but the effect was that there has been no mechanism to maintain public awareness of what a monster he is even as the right worked 24/7 to rehabilitate him. Democrats have been complicit as well, perhaps hoping that he will just go away. He’s still here.

Beutler concludes his piece with this, which is right on:

But one thing that would help is a bit more confidence among leading Democrats in the simple truth that Joe Biden is good, while Donald Trump is one of the worst people in America. It’ll be easier to elect Democrats adhering to that Manichean creed than with appeals that abstract away the top of the ticket on the theory that people’s views are set in stone.

This is the key.

Fox host: We're expecting 180,000 jobs in January… you got the numbers?

Fox contributor: Wow! 353,000 jobs added. I had to double check pic.twitter.com/iVDgCubXiY

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 2, 2024

Nobody on planet Earth has more chutzpah than former president Donald Trump. After claiming over and over again that the stock market would crash if Joe Biden became president, in light of the market reaching yet another high this week, he had the audacity to claim, in all caps no less, “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP.” He always finds a way to blame others for his failures and take credit for others’ successes. And his followers never seem to notice how obviously dishonest he is about it.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is brushing off the stock market’s stellar performance even though he could take credit since every president is largely held responsible for economic conditions during their term, whether it’s fair or not. But unlike Trump he is required to act like a normal human being and the stock market isn’t really relevant to most people. Yes, plenty of people have retirement savings in their 401ks but for the most part this particular economic indicator doesn’t tell the average American much about their every day economic lives.

That doesn’t mean Biden doesn’t have a good story to tell about this economy and his administration’s accomplishments, however. While many in the media have been flogging the doom and gloom of the post-pandemic recovery, both reflecting and creating a narrative of economic angst, the facts on the ground have been looking positive for a while. Now they are starting to look downright stellar and it’s not just the stock market. The Washington Post published a piece this week with the headline, “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery.” That seems like it should be bigger news.

Even Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former economic adviser and current Fox Business host had to tip his hat to reality this week.

Kudlow on the economy: From bust to slump to “I was wrong” pic.twitter.com/HjygBNLfe9

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 2, 2024

Here’s just a short list of all the good economic indicators that have been there for quite some time now and are only now being acknowledged by the likes of Kudlow and, finally, the mainstream press as well, gathered by Democratic strategist Scott Rosenberg, for his newsletter:

–Best job market since the 1960s, stock market setting records (401Ks are happy), best recovery in the G7, GDP growth 3.3% last quarter, consumer sentiment rising

-The inflation fueled by COVID/supply chain disruptions, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and OPEC price hikes has ended, and we are now in a place much closer to historic norms. Prices for many items are falling including groceries, rents and mortgage rates [and people are starting to notice.]

-Historically elevated wage growth, new business formation and prime-age worker participation rates. In the last few months we’ve seen some of the most robust real wage growth we’ve seen in decades, and Americans at all income levels have seen sizeable increases in their overall net worth

–Lowest uninsured rate in history, record ACA signups this year

-Renewable and domestic oil production set records in 2023, US more energy independent than its been in decades. In 2023 the US produced more oil than any country has in any year in history

There is a view among political mavens that it’s a bad idea to talk about the good economic news. “People aren’t feeling it” they say, and they get mad when you tell them that they should be feeling good when they aren’t. “Talk about what you plan to do to help them out of their troubles if you get another term” they say, “make them understand that you feel their pain.” That might make sense if those statistics didn’t belie that reality and if the sour responses weren’t so colored by partisanship.

The NY Times’ Paul Krugman has been tracking this phenomenon:

I’ve been writing about the recent improvement in reported consumer sentiment, which is really startling; here’s a chart from the Michigan consumer survey. In the release containing that chart, the survey notes that “Sentiment is now just 7 percent shy of the historical average since 1978.”

Reading that, I couldn’t help thinking about recent work by Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney in which they estimate the extent to which partisanship moves these numbers. Both sides of the aisle are more negative about the economy when the other party holds the White House, but the effect is much stronger for Republicans. Adjusting for this effect, they find, raises consumer sentiment by seven points, or around 10 percent — more than enough to bring current consumer sentiment above the historical average.

The good news is that people are starting to feel it, even if they aren’t yet ready to accept that it might actually be real. The pandemic was a terrible jolt to the entire world economy and when you combine that horrible experience with the trauma of four years of Trump culminating in a coup attempt and insurrection it’s not surprising that the American public has been suffering from mass PTSD. And this has been exacerbated by a coordinated right wing propaganda effort and a mainstream media that has been relentlessly perpetuating the narrative that the country is in dire economic straits.

You can see the results in polling that has shown for months that a majority of people feel good about their own financial circumstances but believe that the rest of the country is in economic crisis. Why? Because that’s what they are being told. When the media narrative changes, their views on the broader economy change too, and that’s starting to happen.

The Wall St. Journal reported, “consumer sentiment leapt 13% in the first half of January from December, the Michigan survey said, after a sharp rise the prior month. The pickup in sentiment was broad-based, spanning consumers of different age, income, education and geography.” They also point out that some of this rise in confidence comes from the shift in the press in recent weeks:

Media coverage might be rubbing off on consumers, too. The mood of economy-related articles has rebounded since November to the highest level since 2018, according to the San Francisco Fed’s Daily News Sentiment Index. Coverage had skewed much more negatively in the past three years relative to economic fundamentals, a Brookings Institution analysis found.

It is unknown if the strong economic news will be enough to boost the Democrats next November and prevent Donald Trump’s restoration to the presidency. It’s still a long road to bringing Joe Biden’s approval rating up after having been ruthlessly battered by the bad press on this issue over the past three years and there is no time to waste. But the economy is always a primary concern in any presidential election and having a good one is certainly an asset.

Just in case, it might be wise for the Democrats to revisit this famous ad and think about updating it with an accurate picture of America in 2024. (Even in 1984, the whole country wasn’t white…) Voters might just be getting ready to hear this message:

Salon

… is bad news for Biden, of course

Cable news was on in the background Thursday night when, responding to a right-leaning critic of some Democratic policy or other, an on-air pundit doubted the critic could name three examples to support the claim.

“Oh yeah? Name three,” we said in unison. (“Oh, yeah? Name five,” is a running joke around here.)

It’s standard fare for politicians to complain about adversaries’ “failed policies” without naming a single one. It lets the public fill in the blanks with sins real or imagined. The behavior is so rote that reporters never challenge speakers to provide examples. In the Politico article cited in my post below, a Trump spokesperson, on cue, slammed Joe Biden for his “failed policies.”

Ya mean, like this one? (CNBC):

Job growth posted a surprise increase in January, demonstrating again that the U.S. labor market is solid and poised to support broader economic growth.

Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 353,000 for the month, much better than the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The unemployment rate held at 3.7%, against the estimate for 3.8%.

Wage growth also showed strength, as average hourly earnings increased 0.6%, double the monthly estimate. On a year-over-year basis, wages jumped 4.5%, well above the 4.1% forecast. The wage gains came amid a decline in average hours worked, down to 34.1, or 0.2 hour lower.

Job growth was widespread on the month, led by professional and business services with 74,000. Other significant contributors included health care (70,000), retail trade (45,000), government (36,000), social assistance (30,000) and manufacturing (23,000).

The report also indicated that December’s job gains were much better than originally reported. The month posted a gain of 333,000, which was an upwards revision of 117,000 from the initial estimate. November also was revised higher, to 182,000, or 9,000 higher than the last estimate.

Just Wednesday, Axios reported that the U.S. economy’s recovery under Biden “grew faster than any other large advanced economy last year — by a wide margin — and is on track to do so again in 2024.”

Maybe it’s not bad news for Biden as much as for the spinmeisters at Fox.

Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business show can barely believe how good the January jobs report is. Thanks Biden! pic.twitter.com/EsXvXfSW5a

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2024

I remind myself not to pay much attention to presidential polls. The weakness of “the poller coaster” is manifest. Polls are also dependent on people who will actually answer their phones these days. (How many of you do?) No sooner does one poll declare Biden leading than another later in the day says it’s Trump.

A traumatized victim of the failed “Take Our Border Back” convoy last night came to the shocking realization that some of the organizers were “bad people” only in it to scam true believers for almost $160,000. If that glimmer of light got in, perhaps the truth of the strong economy backed by, you know, evidence, will sink in before election time. If not for her, perhaps with more of the flagging Trump faithful.

Now if only grocery prices will come down. That $6 box of breakfast cereal that was three-something before the pandemic isn’t going into the cart anymore.

Joe’s from Scranton, remember?

If anything, President Joe Biden has been too polite with Donald “91 Counts” Trump, indicted private citizen. .

Gossip from Politico:

President JOE BIDEN has a reputation for salty language behind closed doors. But it nearly slipped out in public during his speech at Valley Forge last month to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Animated and angry, he derided DONALD TRUMP and his followers for drawing glee from political violence.

“At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped up by the Big Trump Lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull,” Biden said.

“And he thinks that’s funny,” the president continued. “He laughed about it. What a sick …”

Biden let his voice trail off as the crowd cheered and chuckled.

In private, he doesn’t stop short.

The president has described Trump to longtime friends and close aides as a “sick fuck” who delights in others’ misfortunes, according to three people who have heard the president use the profane description. According to one of the people who has spoken with the president, Biden recently said of Trump: “What a fucking asshole the guy is.”

The White House declined to comment.

Of course. Biden, who jokingly crosses himself when he almost says what he’s thinking, has more respect for his office than his likely 2024 opponent. Trump respects no one except foreign dictators with a more iron grip on power than he managed.

More loathsome

Biden’s private comments illustrate the career public servant’s “core anger” toward an opportunist opponent with no prior experience in public office and no respect for the Constitution.

Biden believes Trump has grown only more loathsome with time. The ex-president’s jokes about the attack on PAUL PELOSI, the 83-year-old husband of former House Speaker NANCY PELOSI, particularly gall Biden.

“I fail to see the scandal here,” shrugs Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen.

We needn’t recount in detail other Trump incidents that earned Biden’s disgust: Trump “gleefully” watching Jan. 6 rioters “fighting for me,” his “both sides” comment after Charlottesville, his lavish praise for Vladimir Putin, and especially Trump’s refusing to visit a military cemetery in the rain and referring to military dead as “suckers” and “losers.”

Respect is earned. But Trump wouldn’t know anything about that.

Speaking of suckers and losers, let’s consider just how dumb you have to be to give money to a billionaire for legal fees to fight his massive number of lawsuits and criminal cases?

Former President Trump‘s political fundraising apparatus spent more than $50 million on legal costs last year as he faced a barrage of lawsuits and criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions.

The stunning new campaign finance reports reveal the financial damage the GOP presidential frontrunner has sustained while facing a colliding campaign and courtroom calendar.

The mounting legal costs have drained large sums from Trump’s campaign coffers as he gears up for what’s expected to be another tight race against President Biden.

Overall, Trump’s fundraising brought in less than his campaign spent in 2023, Politico reported.

Trump’s Save America PAC spent roughly $47 million on legal consulting last year, according to the group’s latest financial report.

That includes $25 million in the last six months of the year, the Federal Election Commission data shows.

The PAC listed payments to an array of lawyers and firms, including Alina Habba, who has represented him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case and New York civil fraud trial.

Todd Blanche and John Lauro, who have represented Trump in criminal cases, are also listed.

Another Trump-affiliated group, the Make American Great Again PAC, spent roughly $4 million on legal services over the same six-month period.

Get a load of this pitch for even more:

A top advisor to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has a message for some of the wealthiest Republican donors in the country: Don’t take the former president’s divisive rhetoric too seriously.

Susie Wiles made the pitch Tuesday at a private gathering of the American Opportunity Alliance, a group of Republican megadonors led by Elliot Investment Management founder Paul Singer.

Speaking at the luxurious Four Seasons hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, Wiles encouraged the powerful donors to essentially ignore Trump’s more offensive remarks and focus instead on the fact that the former president is in pole position in the Republican primary for president, according to people familiar with her remarks.

Wiles conceded to the donors that Donald Trump is going to say things people don’t like. But she countered that the former president is poised to lock down his party’s nomination, and that he is the GOP’s best hope to defeat incumbent President Joe Biden, according to a person familiar with her remarks.

Wiles’ effort to draw new donors into Trump’s fold came just days after the former president threatened people who had donated to his rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

If his fellow Richie Riches want to throw their ill-gotten gains at Trump that’s one thing. But a lot of his money comes from small donors who really can’t afford it. It’s hard to feel too sorry for them, however. They are marks for a brazen con man because they love the way he hates. So to hell with them.

If you think the Republicans in the Senate are the more sane members of the MAGA GOP, think again. They’re just as cravenly partisan as the nuts in the House. Remember Thom Tillis, the “brave” Senator who has been criticizing the House Republicans for refusing to even consider the border and Ukraine deal? Well…

The House passed its $78 billion, bipartisan tax bill with a lopsided 357-to-70 vote on Wednesday, in which the measure attracted slightly more Democratic than Republican support as it overcame opposition from hardline conservatives.

Now comes the hard part: Winning over GOP senators. Republicans in the upper chamber are already expressing deep skepticism toward the legislation, which combines several business deductions with an expansion of the Child Tax Credit that would all sunset at the end of 2025.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Wednesday that he’s been advising Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP Senate leaders that it would be “a mistake” to pass the bill. Speaking to Semafor, he argued that Republicans should hold out for a potential Trump presidency to make major tax policy decisions, especially since Congress is preparing to renegotiate much of the IRS code next year ahead of when large swaths of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire.

“I think everything should be on the table there, including the future of the child tax credit provisions [that] are being proposed now,” Tillis told Semafor in a separate interview.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa told Semafor he was concerned that expanding the child credit would aid President Biden’s re-election chances.

“I think passing a tax bill that makes the president look good mailing out checks before the election means he could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts,” the former Senate Finance chair said. He added that he believes the bill would give up some of the GOP’s leverage ahead of next year’s big tax fight, but said he’d take a closer look at the bill once it passed the House.

Though a number of Republicans on and around Capitol Hill have raised concerns that the bill would let Biden send out cash around election time, tax experts have dismissed those fears as essentially a misunderstanding. The GOP-led House Ways and Means panel said in a recent statement that the Biden administration is “explicitly prohibited” from sending “politically-timed refund checks.”

They are criticizing the House kooks for demanding a stronger border bill because of the “crisis” and then refusing to pass it because only Trump can really fix it and it might help Biden in the election. The only difference here is that Republicans in the Senate don’t care about poor families. And it might help Biden in the election.

There are no Republicans “grown-ups” in the room. Ever. Because there are no Republican grown-ups.

Let’s talk about the REAL border crisis. Hear me out…

Would it surprise you to know that 90% of people that try to cross our border end up in the hands of Customs and Border Protection? There is no open border flood of undocumented immigrants crossing into the U.S.

📌 Many… pic.twitter.com/nKGTb4AkZI

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 1, 2024

The media is not telling the real story, as usual. It’s just a “crisis” or a “caravan” or a “catastrophe” without any context or nuance. They have been doing this for years. I know they aren’t this incompetent. They can’t be.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy is not one of the MAGA goofballs. He even endorsed DeSantis over Trump. He was once Ted Cruz’s chief of staff so he’s an extremist but he isn’t stupid. As Judd Legum notes in his newsletter, there’s a method to his madness:

Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) is publicly urging Texas to ignore the Supreme Court. In previously unreported comments, Roy explained that he feared his position would push the country into “a post-constitutional world.” But, Roy said, the Supreme Court is “pushing our hand” by issuing a ruling related to the southern border that he opposes, and the Supreme Court needs to “feel the pressure.” 

The next day, Roy told Fox News that Texas should “tell the court to go to hell.” 

On January 24, in a little-noticed interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Charlie Kirk, Roy expanded on his thinking. Roy explained his position pushes the country to a “post-constitutional world.” But Roy said he was willing to take that risk because he believed the threat of a Constitutional crisis would pressure the Supreme Court to issue more favorable rulings in the future.

I say this respectfully. I say it with the fear of what I’m saying. I do not want to live in a post-constitutional world, but this Court is pushing our hand, and the Court needs to know that… I want them to feel the pressure, because if they’re political animals, they need to know it. We were out there defending Amy Coney Barrett when her house was being protested, we said that the law should be enforced to protect her. Where is she when the people of Texas need to be protected? Totally M.I.A.

Roy also said that his “first duty” as Congressman was not to comply with the Constitution, which establishes the Supreme Court as the ultimate legal authority. Rather, Roy believes he should take whatever actions are necessary, in his own mind, to “make sure our people are protected and secure and safe.”

I want to preserve and protect the Republican form of government that our country is built upon, and I want a strong America standing in front of the American flag. But my first duty as an elected official is, yes to the Constitution, but my first duty is to make sure that I’m protecting and following my job to make sure our people are protected and secure and safe. That’s what leaders of a state, of a sovereign entity, have to be concerned about, and so, that’s what we’re up against.

In other words, Roy believes his own opinion about what is required to keep people “secure and safe” trumps the Constitution. This is a radical view that would upend the nation’s legal system. 

Roy is a lawyer. He knows very well what he is saying. He’s trying to intimidate the Supreme Court — and if that doesn’t work, he’s ready to burn the Constitution.

Does he mean all this or is he just performing for the crowd? It’s hard to know. He’s also the guy who railed against his own party not long ago complaining that they hadn’t gotten anything done. (Perhaps we should ask just what it is he thinks should have been accomplished.) He’s a show boater just like his mentor Ted Cruz. But what he’s saying about defying the Supreme Court is a rank betrayal of his oath of office, either way.