Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

He doesn’t have the requisite gaudy glamour but he’s got something else.

Just look at the arrogance of this conspiracy addled freak show saying that someone else isn’t living in reality:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Monday dug into Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) recent remarks against sending further aid to Ukraine, calling the Ohio Republican’s comments “total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑.”

Vance, in an interview with former White House aid Steve Bannon earlier Monday, claimed some lawmakers are looking to cut Social Security benefits for more aid to Ukraine that he argued will be used so one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ministers “can buy a bigger yacht.”

When asked about Vance’s remarks later on Monday, Tillis told reporters, “I think it’s bull‑‑‑‑.”

“If you’re talking about giving money to Ukrainian ministers — total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑,” Tillis continued. “Not productive conversation … not real happy about it.”

On Sunday, Vance reaffirmed his opposition to sending additional aid to Ukraine and said he does not believe Ukraine will ever be able to prevail over Russia. He argued the U.S. needs to accept Ukraine will likely need to “cede some territory” to stop its fighting with Russia and questioned how billions in additional aid to Ukraine will help the war-torn country.

Presented with Tillis’s criticism later Monday, Vance said he believes Ukraine is “one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.”

“We know that a number of people have gotten rich in Ukraine, and … I think it’s naivety if you don’t think they’ve gotten rich with some of our money,” Vance told reporters.

Maintaining that Tillis is “one of his favorite colleagues,” Vance said the North Carolina Republican is “not living in reality.”

“Well, it’s never good to have Thom Tillis peeved at us,” Vance told reporters Monday, adding later, “But with all due respect to Thom, he’s not living in reality. There is no plausible pathway to the end of the war where Ukraine goes back to 1991 or 2014. It just isn’t … that’s not a desirable thing; it’s not a good thing.”

“It’s the reality that we’re living in, and if you can’t accept it, you’re never going to actually force negotiation that’s going to bring this thing to a close.”

This is a very dangerous man. There’s something very off about him. Keep your eye on this guy. The chutzpah is off the charts.

And these are just for starters

Judd Legum came up with a good Top 10 Trump dictatorial promises. I might have put invading Mexico and destroying NATO in the top 10 but that’s just me.

Anyway, the first is his explicit promise to be a dictator on Day One. The following are the other nine:

Trump says election fraud in 2020 gives him the power to “terminate” the Constitution

On December 3, 2022, Trump posted the following message about the 2020 presidential election on his social media platform, Truth Social:

A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

Following a backlash from some Republican elected officials, Trump later claimed reports that he was open to terminating the Constitution were “fake news.”

Trump says he will issue “full pardons” to January 6 insurrectionists

Trump has promised to issue pardons to those involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. In September 2022, in an interview with Wendy Bell, Trump said, “I will look very, very favorably about full pardons… with an apology to many.”

In May 2023, during a town hall with CNN, Trump again said that he would likely pardon “a large portion of” insurrectionists, stating that “it’ll be very early on.” Trump said, “They’re living in hell… and they’re great people. Many of them are just great people.” Trump added that while he was “inclined to pardon many of them,” he couldn’t “say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.” 

Among those convicted for their actions on January 6 are Thomas Webster, who was sentenced in September 2022 to “10 years in prison for assaulting police” during the Capitol attack, and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former chairman of the Proud Boys, who was sentenced in September to 22 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol.” 

Trump says he will cut funding to schools that cover subjects he believes are “inappropriate”

Trump has vowed to cut funding for schools that teach about aspects of race and gender. In a campaign video released in January, Trump promised to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children,” stating that “[w]e are not going to allow it to happen.” 

Critical Race Theory is a complex legal theory that is not taught in K-12 schools. Despite this, the right has dubbed many books that simply discuss racism as Critical Race Theory. Because of this, if Trump is reelected, any school that does not implement an ideological purge of its curricular materials could be at risk of losing federal funding.

Trump says he will legally erase trans people and ban them from military service

In a video posted to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said he would “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth” if reelected in 2024. At the Turning Point Action conference in July, Trump additionally promised to “restore the Trump ban on transgender in the military.” 

“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender,” Trump said in the video. Trump falsely claimed that it is a concept “never heard of in all of human history” before “the radical left invented it just a few years ago.” According to the Human Rights Campaign, however, “transgender and non-binary communities” have existed for centuries.

Trump says he will end birthright citizenship by executive order

Trump has pledged, on his first day back in office, to “sign an Executive Order to stop federal agencies from granting automatic U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.” The Executive Order would “make clear that going forward, the children of illegal aliens will not be granted automatic citizenship, and should not be issued passports, Social Security numbers, or be eligible for certain taxpayer funded welfare benefits.” Moving forward, “at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident for their future children to become automatic U.S. citizens.” 

Such an order would defy 125 years of legal precedent and the text of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” The 14th Amendment was adopted in response to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which denied citizenship to people of African descent born in the United States. 

Trump says he will impose a new 10% tax on all imported goods

In an appearance on Fox Business on August 17, 2023, Trump pledged to impose a new 10% tariff on all imported goods. “When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let’s say, a 10 percent tax,” Trump said. “I do like the 10 percent for everybody.”

This tariff would be passed on to consumers, who would be pushed “into buying higher-cost, lower-quality goods, because that’s what protectionism does, making America as a whole poorer.” It could also spark a wave of retaliatory tariffs, harming U.S. businesses and the global economy.

Trump says he will investigate NBC and MSNBC for treason and potentially remove the company from public airwaves

Trump has proposed investigating media publications for treason. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that “Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC… should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason.” Trump promised that when he “WIN[S] the Presidency of the United States” the media “will be thoroughly scrutinized.”

Trump also questioned whether media companies should be potentially removed from the airwaves. “Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?” Trump called NBC a “true threat to Democracy” and “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” stating that the “Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great country.” 

Trump says he will demand anyone convicted of selling drugs get the death penalty

In May, during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire, Trump said, “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” adding that “it’s the only way.” According to Drug Policy Facts, there were 110,771 arrests in the United States “for sale or manufacture of a drug” in 2022.

According to NPR, expanding the death penalty as Trump suggests for drug offenses “would be a violation of the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),” which states that the death penalty should only be used for “the most serious crimes.”

Trump says he will order the arrest of all urban homeless and relocate them to federally-run tent cities

In August, Trump posted a video to his website announcing his plan to combat homelessness by “BAN[NING] urban camping wherever possible.” Trump promised that the “[v]iolators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated,” adding that “[m]any of them don’t want that, but we will give them the option.” 

Trump says he will “open up large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists, and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified.”

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “[t]here were nearly 600,000 Americans experiencing homelessness last year.” Ann Oliva, the CEO of the organization, told Newsweek that Trump’s plan was “alarming and dangerous in numerous ways,” stating that “[t]he way to end homelessness is not to arrest people and move them out of sight into internment camps.” 

By the way, he has also said that if the homeless refuse to be moved to these alledgly utopian prison camps probably in the desert he will have them arrested. I suspect he’ll put his old pal Sheriff Joe Arpaio or one of his heirs to do that job, as he used to do in Maricopa county where he housed inmates in desert tents with 100 degree heat. He liked to make them wear pink underwear too for some reason.

I realize that some of this reflects legitimate concerns and fear that way too many people will see his “solutions” as attractive in their simplicity. (Also there’s a clear desire to punish somebody for something among too many of our fellow Americans right now, and there are a number of vulnerable populations in the cross hairs.)

If you believe that we are still a nation of laws and constitutional rights then this stuff is as daft as Trump’s plan to build an impenetrable nuclear dome over the whole country. With out those safeguards, he can probably build as many camps as he wants and put all us vermin in them whenever he wants to. Who’s going to stop him?

America’s fascist, collaborationist past

Russian meddling in the 2016 election will be a factor in Donald Trump’s trial on his (alleged) attempt to overturn the 2020 election. See, he had good reason to think 2020 might have been rigged (AP):

To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president to focus on cybersecurity and had a good-faith basis four years later to worry that foreign actors had again meddled in the race.

But to federal prosecutors, 2016 is significant as the year that Trump spread misinformation about voter fraud and proved himself resistant to accepting the outcome of elections that might not go his way.

But for now forget about the former Liar-in-Chief’s motivations and focus on Russia’s (in a moment).

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man.

Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” expands on her podcast‘s tale of U.S. government officials’ collusion with the Nazis and the largest sedition trial in U.S. history. “Prequel” gives readers more background on the Americans who exposed the plot. The Nazis’ well, well funded propaganda effort to keep the U.S. sidelined while Hitler marched across Europe began six years before der Führer invaded Poland. Hitler was playing a long game. To win it, he knew he had to keep Americans out of the fight. He stoked American fascism, antisemitism, isolationism, and America Firstism. His agents worked to prevent FDR’s reelection in 1936 and 1940. His operatives distributed millions of pages of Nazi propaganda as purported Senate and House speeches — cost-effectively mailed, in fact, on the taxpayers’ dime under congressional frank.

The 1930s echoes in current events and contemporary public officials are there, even if Maddow purposefully recounts the history so they cannot be unheard.

Today, American support for Ukraine stands in the way of Russian president-for-life Vladimir Putin’s dreams of restoring the Russian empire to its Soviet-era vastness. He too needs the U.S. to butt out. He too is leveraging America Firstism and the same cultural divisions and prejudices Hitler used to weaken America’s resolve and undermine its democratic institutions. Putin too is playing a long game that began years before he annexed Crimea and helped elect Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton would have kicked his ass. Donald Trump kissed it.

Heather Cox Richardson tells readers where the effort to resupply Ukraine stands:

As is sometimes the case in American politics, a bill that many people are likely not paying a great deal of attention to is likely to have enormous impact on the nation’s future. 

That $110.5 billion national security supplemental package was designed to provide additional funding for Ukraine in its war to fight off Russia’s invasion; security assistance to Israel, primarily for missile defense systems; humanitarian assistance to citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and elsewhere; funding to replenish U.S. weapon stockpiles; assistance to regional partners in the Indo-Pacific; investments in efforts to stop illegal fentanyl from coming into the U.S. and to dismantle international drug cartels; and investment in U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enhance border security and speed up migrant processing. 

President Joe Biden asked for the supplemental funding in late October. Such a package is broadly popular among lawmakers of both parties who like that Ukraine is holding back Russian expansion that would threaten countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). If Russia attacks a NATO country, all NATO members, including the U.S., are required to respond. 

Since supplying Ukraine with weapons to maintain its fight essentially means sending Ukraine outdated weapons while paying U.S. workers to build new ones, creating jobs largely in Republican-dominated states, and since Ukraine is weakening Russia for about 5% of the U.S. defense budget, it would seem to be a program both parties would want to maintain. Today, even Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “If Ukraine loses, the cost to America will be far greater than the aid we have given Ukraine. The least costly way to move forward is to provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to win and end the war.”

But now that former president Trump has made immigration a leading part of his campaign and a Trump loyalist, Mike Johnson (R-LA), is House speaker, Republican extremists are demanding their own immigration policies be added to the package.

When George W. Bush was president, the GOP mantra was “fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.” But that was 2007. Biden’s policy is to help Ukraine fight “them” so NATO doesn’t have to. At a far higher cost in lives and treasure, it goes without saying.

As Americans witnessed in the 1930s, xenophobia, racism, Christian white nationalism are still weapons in the autocrat’s propaganda arsenal. Social media enhances their yield while holding down the cost.

… House Republicans are so determined to force the country to accept their extreme anti-immigration policies, they are willing to kill the aid to Ukraine that even their own lawmakers want, leaving that country undersupplied as it goes into the winter. 

When he brought the supplemental bill up last week, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) promised the Republicans that he would let them make whatever immigration amendments they wanted to the bill to be voted on, if only they would let the bill get to the floor. But all Senate Republicans refused, essentially threatening to use the filibuster to keep the measure from the floor until it includes the House Republicans’ demands.

This unwillingness to fund a crucial partner in its fight against Russia has resurrected concerns that the Trump-supporting MAGA Republicans are working not for the United States but for Russian president Vladimir Putin, who badly needs the U.S. to abandon Ukraine in order to help him win his war. 

That’s how it worked with Hitler and his U.S. collaborators 90 years ago. But U.S. fascists were exposed and discredited. Hitler took his own life. Europe and the world should be so lucky again. One hopes without a world war first.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Free speech for me, but not for thee

It’s that time of year again. A nip is in the air (regionally). Christmas trees whiz by strapped to the roofs of sedan. Clauses are everywhere this time of year. Thus, Baby Jesus is battling Lucifer over the Establishment Clause. One of the battle fronts this year is in Iowa “where the Satanists have antagonized the Christians with a goat’s head wreath in the Des Moines capitol building.”

See, because the Supreme Court ruled that Christians could erect Christmas displays on state property if other faiths get to erect theirs … you know where this is going. Satanists each year make a pointed point about the foolishness of it all by erecting displays honoring Lucifer.

Amanda Marcotte weighs in on this less-clebrated holiday tradition:

Every year, Christian conservatives discover the Satanic display and have a loud, public temper tantrum about it. In this, Satanists prove their point: Conservatives claim to respect religious plurality, but it’s a lie. The overt religious iconography on government property was always about promoting the Christian nationalist view that theirs is the only “real” American religion. 

Of course. Christian nationalists get a secret thrill every time a defeated Ramses (Yul Brynner) utters, “His god – IS God.” And they want everyone to know it around the pagan winter solstice. Like skin color and religion, it’s always about dominance.

So state Rep. Brad Sherman will be damned (poor choice of words?) if he’ll let this affront to the Savior go unchallenged. Citing the preamble to the Iowa Constitution, Sherman demands that Gov. Kim Reynolds order removal of the ram’s head display (Des Moines Register):

“According to these opening lines of our Constitution, the foundation for laws and continued blessing and success in Iowa is based on these points: 1. There is One Supreme God. 2. Blessings over this state come from the One Supreme God. 3. We must depend upon the One Supreme God if we want to enjoy continued blessings,” Sherman writes.

He says it is “a tortured and twisted interpretation of law that affords Satan, who is universally understood to be the enemy of God, religious expression equal to God in an institution of government that depends upon God for continued blessings.”

God and your tax dollars, he means.

Iowa lawmaker calls for Gov. Kim Reynolds to remove satanic Capitol display https://t.co/fFdeOn3x55

— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) December 11, 2023

Marcotte opines on the annual freakout:

It’s hardened into a ritual because both sides get something out of it. The fundamentalists get a chance to freak out and use this as evidence for their lurid conspiracy theories claiming demonic forces are out to get them. The Satanists and their fans get a chance to remind everyone that Republicans are hypocrites who never really believed all that “free speech” talk. This year, the annual rite is playing out in Iowa, where the Satanists have antagonized the Christians with a goat’s head wreath in the Des Moines capitol building. 

Blunt force of censorship

The holiday tradition this year rings harmonic with arguments over free speech, protests for and against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, “alleged anti-semitism on campus,” and the trap Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) laid last week for university presidents in a House hearing on campus antisemitism.

But while people get into often-incomprehensible arguments over the finer points of defining “genocide” and “free speech,” what is getting lost is the most important issue: Republicans are a bunch of lying hypocrites. It’s this message the Satanic Temple is trying to remind us all of with their holiday display. The MAGA right has been wailing for years about the alleged threats to free speech from hazily defined social pressures like “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” but when it comes to opinions they don’t like, they don’t hesitate to call for the blunt force of censorship.  

As many people pointed out, Republicans have defended genocidal and violent rhetoric for years now under the guise of “free speech.” Trump’s unsubtle calls for violence against his perceived enemies have led to an attempted murder of the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, R.-Calif., threats against government employees and even private citizens, and, of course, the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Dehumanizing rhetoric against Black Lives Matter protesters and “great replacement” theory have led to mass murder, shootings, and conservatives crashing cars into protests. But when liberals call for social media companies to curb the ugly rhetoric using their legal powers to self-regulate, a chorus of right wing whining about “cancel culture” erupts. We do not need to litigate how real the threat of campus anti-semitism is, in order to see how Republians use tensions over hate speech and the First Amendment to advance their “free speech for me, but not for thee” agenda 

‘Twas always thus.

“To give quarter to the enemies of God is pathetic and contemptible,” complained one woman. “God placed you in a position of authority for such a time as this,” griped a man. Others quoted Bible verses at him that appear to call for literal murder of unbelievers or insisted that a true Christian believes the Bible trumps the constitution. Same thing happened across social media. Wherever the story about the Satanic altar appeared, the comments are completely dominated by Republican voters wailing about how the government needs to censor this, that the purpose of government is to uphold Christianity, and that the Founding Fathers supposedly agreed with them. 

This satanic statue was erected in the Iowa state capitol this past week.

It’s increasingly clear we’ll either have Christian Nationalism or Satanic nationalism.

Which way western man? pic.twitter.com/JszOcsRHUS

— Smash Baals (@smashbaals) December 9, 2023

Watch how quickly the right pivots on Second Amendment absolutism when minority groups begin arming themselves for the civil war that right-wing militias are arming for to wage against democracy. See how quickly the right gets selective about whose religion the First Amendment protects when “lesser” faiths demonstrate that they don’t know their place.

Marcotte concludes with her broader point:

This kind of thing is why it’s so gross to see Republicans cynically exploit fears of anti-semitism to promote their culture war narratives about “campus leftism” and “political correctness.” The Satanic Temple’s trolling exposes the bare truth, which is the GOP is rapidly becoming a Christian nationalist party full of people who want to find a way to use government power to marginalize and silence non-Christians, or who are even those who are just critical of conservative Christianity.

If only they had a Red Sea handy to drop on the rest of us.

And Happy Hollandaise everyone!

What else is new?

Axios reports that there’s some dissonance in the House Freedom caucus. They’re voting for new leadership and there seems to be a bit of a problem:

An influential member of the House Freedom Caucus won’t run for a leadership spot, citing a recommendation by the group’s board that Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) serve as its next chairman.

“I am concerned that our group often relies too much on power (available primarily due to the narrow majority) and too little on influence with and among our colleagues,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told his fellow members in a letter sent Sunday.

“I ask that we consider how to best increase our influence while preserving our power to move policy in the right direction. I strongly feel that Bob Good as Chairman will impair that objective.”

“I do not have an alternative nomination, but as my final fiduciary duty as a board member, I ask that you prayerfully consider electing someone else as Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.”

Davidson’s push against Good comes just ahead of the HFC’s scheduled election to tap a new leader of the group, with the Ohio Republican arguing that “we must not miss the opportunities to achieve what can be done.”

Oh, how reasonable. How, dare I say, moderate?

But come on, what’s the real reason?

Good endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Trump, and has gotten pushback over his vote to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Ok, now I get it. It’s just more MAGA drama. Even the wingnuttiest of wingnuts can’t get on the same page. (And it’s entirely possible that the word has come down from on high that there shall be no leadership jobs for DeSanctimonious traitors.)

They’re making an effort. Will it be enough?

Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop takes a look at how the media is handling Trump’s threats to democracy. He notes the flurry of articles in recent days exposing the authoritarian Trump agenda for his second term and examining his increasingly fascistic language and makes the same observation that I did earlier about the Trump campaign obviously getting nervous about it.

However:

Back in January, as part of an article laying out the media dynamics CJR’s staff would be watching this year, I wrote that I would be interested to see how media outlets continued to center—or didn’t—threats to democracy; I’d observed some progress on this front in 2022, but also feared that last year’s midterms—which brought defeat for the most ardent Trumpian election deniers running to assume oversight of the country’s election infrastructure—could push the question down the media agenda even though the threat hadn’t dissipated. That fear has not been realized, not least due to Trump’s frightening rhetoric and multiple indictments, and work like that of the Times and The Atlantic has kept the threat visible. If anything, though, the threat is even more real than it was this time last year, and I’m not convinced that the broad sweep of political coverage has kept pace with that reality. Political media has certainly not undergone the cultural reset required to elevate the future of democracy over more trivial pursuits—to a world where that question is not the subject of special series and issues, but the baseline norm. I also wrote in January that the press serving democracy would require more than just highlighting the loudest threats to it. That subtler work, too, remains incomplete.

Even the clear-eyed coverage has not been beyond reproach: The Nation’s Joan Walsh and Chris Lehmann indicted recent reports for treating the threat of Trumpian authoritarianism as an inevitability, when it can in fact be stopped (“Preachments of authoritarian fatalism are infinitely more seductive than the painful exercise of learning from one’s mistakes,” Lehmann wrote); the media critic Dan Froomkin argued that political reporters don’t seem interested in finding out why such a vision appeals to so many Americans. And much national political coverage this year has not been clear-eyed in the first place: as I’ve tracked in this newsletter, too much of it has remained obsessed with the election horse race, continued to treat Trump as an entertainment draw (particularly in the breathless coverage of his indictments) or otherwise played into his hands (exhibit A: the CNN town hall packed with his cheering partisans), and, most fundamentally, treated him as both an election subverter and a normal candidate.

In recent weeks, I’ve observed more of the same unevenness. When Trump compared his opponents to vermin, some headlines in major outlets centered the fascist lineage of the term, but others euphemized it and the story as a whole was arguably underplayed; the same could be said of other Trump remarks that would have made the front pages a few years ago but now don’t—a function, perhaps, of what the political scientist Brian Klaas has called the “banality of crazy.” Meanwhile, a political-media narrative has coalesced that Nikki Haley, a rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is surging even though she remains miles behind Trump in the polls—a narrative, as Politico’s Jack Shafer noted, that smacks of media wishcasting for horse-race drama. Listening to TV news chatter following last week’s Republican debate—which Trump once again skipped—it sometimes felt as if we were in a normal election, without Trump’s shadow looming over it. In fact, the debate, like others before it, was a sideshow. Sign up for CJR’s daily email

I wrote in January that saving democracy would require media scrutiny of the functioning of America’s political and media systems as a whole, beyond Trump. On its face, this year brought a great deal of that—a central story line was dysfunction in Congress, and much of the coverage I saw was laudably clear-eyed about Republican responsibility for it. Often, though, that same coverage treated the drama more as personalized palace intrigue than a fundamental structural problem. Within the media industry, the debate on Fox between Florida governor Ron DeSantis and California governor Gavin Newsom—while flawed in its execution—offered a template for debating competing political visions absent an immediate horse race (DeSantis is running for president; Newsom is not), only for much of the follow-up coverage to cast the event as a confusing aberration and shove it through the mangle of horse-race analysis anyway. For a 2021 CJR issue on reimagining political coverage, I profiled Mehdi Hasan, of Peacock and MSNBC, whose explicitly pro-democracy approach and tough interviews with politicians from both sides of the aisle themselves were a template for more vigorous political journalism, albeit one rooted in Hasan’s unapologetic progressive views rather than performed neutrality. Last month, his shows were canceled. (He’ll stay at MSNBC as a guest anchor and on-air pundit.)

I continue to believe that American political journalism needs a radical reset to better serve democracy: less focus on the horse race and entertainment; more focus on policy; more cutting interviews; deeper thinking. Bad coverage of Trump is, to my mind, a function of these sorts of broader pathologies, which will take years to fix, if they’re fixable at all. But taking at least a step toward more accurate coverage of Trump and the threat he poses should be easy—increasingly, it only requires reporting what he himself is pledging to do and has already done, and describing it directly and honestly, as Goldberg, Baron, and others have. The potential reasons for downplaying his rhetoric are myriad: boredom (it’s just Trump bloviating), a failure to take it seriously (…it’s just Trump bloviating), a fear that accurate reporting will read as hysterical and biased amid a political-media culture that prizes civility, a vision of politics so gamified that members of the elite press don’t believe Trump will come after them, even as he and his allies promise just that. At this point, all these reasons are indefensible.

I can’t emphasize enough how vitally important it is that the media keeps this up. Only relentless exposure of the threat Trump brings will be able to counter the propaganda and biased narratives that have taken over pour political culture over the past year. People are drastically misinformed about the economy and the administration’s accomplishments and there’s no way in this environment to hold the Democrats responsible when half the country is sticking its fingers in its ears and singing “lalalalalala” to avoid hearing anything from politicians or political parties unless they are already on the team.

It’s up to the media to push the truth out there by repeating it over and over again. And even then, the best hope is that a percentage of swing voters and the Democratic base will come out to vote to keep the worst from happening.

Kate Cox, the Texas woman who is carrying a fetus with a fatal anomaly, has been forced to leave the state to get her needed abortion:

The announcement came as Kate Cox, 31, was awaiting a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court over whether she could legally obtain an abortion under narrow exceptions to the state’s ban. A judge gave Cox, a mother of two from the Dallas area, permission last week but that decision was put on hold by the state’s all-Republican high court.

“Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which was representing Cox.

This is horrifying. Cox has the ability to pay for this and pay for an attorney. Other women in her position aren’t.

The horror of these creepy men like the criminal Ken Paxton and that grotesque anti-abortion zealot Supreme Court just John Devine deciding such issues is overwhelming. I think this will be a problem for the Republicans politically but many, many people will have to suffer in the meantime.

Jennifer Rubin’s piece today on this subject is on point:

The Texas case has far-reaching ramifications. Any state ban presents doctors, patients and judges with an untenable decision: Violate the law, or violate the essential humanity and well-being of a woman? Voters, who have approved an unbroken string of seven abortion measures (the latest in Ohio) on state ballots and who tell pollsters in higher numbers than ever that they support abortion rights, know this basic truth.

Republicans, still in denial about the overwhelming unpopularity of their position and the handicap it places on their candidates, likely will confront this issue in virtually every race up and down the ballot. Democrats who leaned into the issue in 2022 and 2023 won handily. They show no inclination they will hold back in the 2024 elections.

At the presidential level, where GOP candidates keep touting a national ban, abortion might again be a decisive issue. President Biden’s campaign certainly believes so. “This story is shocking, it’s horrifying, and it’s heartbreaking — it’s also becoming all too commonplace in America because of Donald Trump,” Biden’s campaign said in a written statement after the Texas decision. “As Trump proudly brags, it was his Supreme Court picks who provided the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, allowing Republican extremists across the country to pass draconian bans that are hurting women and threatening doctors.” The campaign reiterated that if “Trump or other Republicans running for president get to the White House, they will try to ban abortion nationwide and the dystopian reality that women like Kate Cox in Texas are facing could be the reality everywhere.”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. sneered in his majority opinion that reversed nearly 50 years of abortion rights precedent, “Women are not without electoral or political power.” Neither are men, who also support abortion rights. Moreover, if Dobbs attempted to get the courts “out of” the abortion issue, it has failed miserably.

To the contrary, bans have opened a Pandora’s box of litigation as doctors, courts and women try to make sense of laws ill-suited to determine medical decisions. Courts will be more deeply involved than ever as vague and unworkable laws come before them and as women such as Cox seek refuge in the courts. Dobbs has only enmeshed courts more deeply in difficult health-care decisions.

As abortion rights activists predicted, Republicans remained trapped in a dilemma of their own making. Having catered to extreme antiabortion forces and backed extreme and unworkable abortion bans in a slew of states and nationally, they cannot retreat from their stance without infuriating their base. Seeing the political wreckage in the wake of Dobbs, they are unable to step away from a policy that is wildly out of step with a large majority of Americans. They should prepare to reap the political whirlwind in 2024.

I hope so. The lives of women and the well being of millions of families are on the line.

The case is “at the apex of public importance”

Josh Kovensky at TPM reports:

Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court on Monday to take up Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, seeking to speed up a question which could delay the former president’s trial on charges he conspired to subvert the 2020 election. The trial is currently scheduled for March 4, 2024 in D.C.

Trump lost his claim of absolute immunity at the district court and has appealed that ruling to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. But rather than wait for the appeals court to hear the case, Smith is now asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether presidential immunity protects Trump from prosecution for crimes related to his efforts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election.

“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” Smith wrote in the petition for writ of certiorari.

Smith asked the high court to consider two issues. One is whether immunity protects former presidents from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The other is whether former presidents have constitutional protection from federal prosecution if an impeachment, but not a conviction, has occurred before the start of criminal proceedings.

The court needs to resolve those two questions as soon as possible because of the momentous stakes that the Trump Jan. 6 case has for the rule of law, Smith wrote. That principle — that nobody is above the rule of law — is “at its zenith” in the Trump Jan. 6 case, Smith argued.

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” he wrote. “This is an extraordinary case.”

The question of how much immunity from prosecution the law affords presidents for acts taken while in office remains largely unexplored. In typical Trumpian manner, the former president staked out a maximalist view in in his motion to dismiss. There, he maintained that presidential immunity protects him from prosecution from anything he did while in office.

The district court judge ruled against Trump last week, setting the question up for a battle at the appellate level. But Smith is asking the Supreme Court to take up the matter now, bypassing the appeals court. In the staid world of elite lawyering, it’s an extraordinary request.

There are signs of urgency all over the petition and in Smith’s conduct. He asked the court for a briefing schedule “that would allow the case to be resolved as promptly as possible,” and then followed up with a request that if the court declines to hear the case now, it do so in a way that would allow it to hear it “immediately” after a ruling by the D.C. Circuit.

Smith also asked the D.C. Circuit in a simultaneously filed motion to expedite proceedings there.

Listed as a signatory to the Supreme Court petition is famed former deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, who oversaw criminal matters which went before the Supreme Court. His work with Smith was not previously known.

Smith referred to the one case that has some applicability to the urgency and uniqueness of the case:

In U.S. v. Nixon, Smith wrote, the court agreed to take the case on an expedited basis. That involved similar issues of presidential immunity: Nixon fought unsuccessfully to block the Watergate grand jury from obtaining tapes of his conversations. There, Smith noted, the Supreme Court was able to hear and rule on the case in a timeframe which preserved the original trial date.

And, Smith added, the court should take the case partly because of the completely unexplored nature of the question — and charges — at hand.

“While no precedent supports respondent’s claim as a former President to criminal immunity, the government acknowledges that this Court has not addressed a comparable claim,” he wrote.

In the past the Court has rarely heard cases in these circumstances but that’s changed recently:

The Supreme Court hears cases before appellate process concludes when, per a rule cited by Smith in the petition, a showing has been made that the case is of “imperative public importance.” It’s a rare remedy, but one that the court has recently become more willing to adopt. University of Texas Law Professor Steve Vladeck blogged last year that as of January 2022, the high court had taken 14 early grants. From 2004 to 2019, they took none, he found.

Smith spent relatively little time laying out his argument for why the case is of supreme importance, instead saying what’s clear: addressing Trump’s conduct in trying to overturn the election is obviously of public interest.

“It requires no extended discussion to confirm that this case—involving charges that respondent sought to thwart the peaceful transfer of power through violations of federal criminal law—is at the apex of public importance,” Smith wrote.

I do not want to get my hopes up on this. I can easily see the high court either refusing to hear it which would likely delay the case, possibly even beyond the election. They may be saying to themselves that we have an election coming up and that means the people will decide, sort of like Mitch McConnell’s fatuous reasoning in delaying filling the Scalia case on the court. Of course, just as he did when he filled the Ginsburg seat within six weeks of the election, they will find a reason to do the opposite if this question comes up again. I’d guess they might assume that is highly unlikely so they don’t need to worry about it.

I’m honestly not counting on the courts being able to do much to enlighten the public about Trump’s criminality before the election. If we are lucky, the Court will decide to take their jobs as protectors of the rule of law seriously. But I see little evidence so far that this right wing majority has any commitment to doing that.

In the end, the denouement of this crisis has always been the election next November. It all comes down to that.

And welcome to our annual celebration of the Great War on Christmas

Yes, it’s that time of year again when we all eat too many goodies, wear ugly sweaters and pose with Santa Claus alongside our semi-automatic weapons. It’s Christmas time in America.

And here at Hullabaloo it’s the time of year I ask you, my loyal readers, to put a little something into the old stocking to keep us going for yet another year.

I think you all know how vital political information is right now. In fact, it’s never been more vital. Back when I was a young person, the biggest problem for most Americans was trying to wade through the conventional wisdom of the establishment media to find out the truth of what our government was really doing. That’s still an issue today but in the last few years we’ve had to confront the overwhelming problem of cacophonous propaganda bombarding us from every direction via our now ubiquitous social media. It is very hard to sort through it all, even for me and I have no life!

Take this, for instance, from just this past weekend:

You can say this is just fringe, and it should be. But this kind of thing is filtering into the mainstream of American life in truly disturbing ways, sometimes helped by the mainstream media that doesn’t always know that it’s enabling the authoritarian right wing movement that’s benefiting from all this. The feeling of chaos this is creating is is the reason so many people are freaked out and may be looking for a strongman to fix it.

For reasons I will never understand, many of them seem to believe that Donald Trump, the make-up wearing, hairspray addled, narcissistic blowhard — the man who thought injecting disinfectant might cure COVID — is the guy we need to do it. Again, this is due to propaganda and the failure of the media, at least until recently, to recognize what’s happening and take action to inform the public.

But if you’ve been reading this site, you know better. We have been pounding on this threat since January 21, 2021 knowing that Trump’s exile to his Mar-a-Lago beach club was temporary and that he would be back with a vengeance in 2024. Literally.

As we enter the crucible of this epic election year, it’s never been more important to sort through the lies and the propaganda that comes across our screens. My morning man Tom and I aren’t perfect in our ability to see through all of it but after doing this for so many years we have pretty good bullshit detectors. We will follow this god-forsaken news cycle closely seven days a week and try to analyze and synthesize the important political stories along with those that add context and color to help all of us get through this fraught time.

I still feel confident that the American people are not going to put that sociopath back into the White House, despite the current polling. But it’s going to be a tough fight. If you can, I hope you will help us keep this site going for another year so that we can continue the mission.

I can’t tell you what your support has meant to me over the past years. If you can do it this year, it would mean the world.

cheers,

digby

And Happy Hollandaise everyone. We’ll get through this!

*Keep scrolling for new stuff. 🙂

The media finally caught on to his plans

U.S. Presidents have been accused by their political rivals of wanting to be kings or dictators ever since the very beginning of the Republic. It’s even a charge that’s had some merit from time to time. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson charged John Adams with acting like a king when he expanded federal power and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which basically made it a crime to criticize the government. But Adams lost his re-election and gracefully conceded, establishing the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power that until very recently was observed by every president.

Then there was Andrew Jackson whom his critics assailed as a would-be king for wielding his veto pen for political purposes and challenging the primacy of the Supreme Court to decide constitutional matters, among other things. But he too left peacefully after eight years. Abraham Lincoln was repeatedly accused of being a dictator during the Civil War for implementing numerous extreme measures including the suspension of habeas corpus and the jailing of journalists. And in the 20th century both wartime presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were called dictators for expanding the powers of the presidency. Roosevelt even ran for four terms, precipitating the 21st Amendment after he died limiting future presidents to only two.

A few years back, President George W. Bush jokingly said, “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator” but except for that quip I don’t think there’s any example of a president or someone running for president actually saying that he planned to be a dictator … until Donald Trump. Not that anyone should be surprised by that. He is, after all, the president who plotted a coup to stay in office and fomented an insurrection to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.

Last week, Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump a simple question: “Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever have any plans if you are re-elected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people” and Trump said, “like they are doing now” and went on to talk about how he’s been indicted more than one of the greatest criminals of all time, “if you happen to like criminals” — Al Capone.

Hannity pressed the question again:

I want to go back to this one issue, though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you. Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.

Trump’s answer was, “except for day one.” Hannity was taken aback. Trump explained, “He says you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no. Other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator. Okay?”

Actually, it’s not ok. If Hannity were anything but a Trump flunky he would have at least followed up and asked him exactly what plans he had to accomplish those two things on “day one.” But he didn’t because he knew that Trump was trying to be clever and have it both ways. He admires dictators and it’s clear from his stated agenda that he plans to implement it through the use of dictatorial powers. But he smugly said he just wants to use them for rather mainstream Republican policy goals rather than revenge which Hannity quickly acknowledged and then moved on. After all, the crowd loved it.

It was clear from Hannity’s question that he was worried about the fact that the media has finally focused on the threat of a second Trump term. He did everything he could to give Trump the opportunity to say, “Of course I’m not going to abuse my power or become a dictator, that’s ridiculous” but he couldn’t do it.

It’s starting to concern other people around him as well. Many of the stories last week featured background quotes from people dropping names of potential cabinet picks and other personnel choices which clearly spooked the campaign. Axios had reported that people like Tucker Carlson were on a short list for VP while cronies Steve Bannon and Kash Patel were named for other important posts in the administration. Patel immediately appeared on Bannon’s podcast to declare that they certainly did have big plans, one of which was to go after the media, “whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” He told Bannon that they had a “bench” of “all-American patriots” that would get the ball rolling immediately.

This is likely what led senior campaign advisers senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita to issue a statement on Friday, saying that “no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official” unless it came from them. This was on the heels of a similar statement from a couple of weeks ago after the first flurry of reports about the planned dictatorship started appearing in the mainstream media, in which they proclaimed that “any personnel lists, policy agendas, or government plans published anywhere are merely suggestions.”

But that’s not true at all. Agenda 47, right there on his campaign web site, is hair raising. Here’s just one of the more recent videos in which he promises “take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy” where there will be no wokeness or jihadism allowed.

[THE URL : https://rumble.com/v3ur3mp-agenda47-the-american-academy.html]

Wiles and LaCivita can try all they want to distance the campaign from the likes of Bannon and Patel but they aren’t the problem. The candidate is.

You might have thought that Trump would press pause on all the dictator talk considering that his campaign is obviously getting very nervous about it. But no. He appeared before the New York Young Republicans over the weekend and repeated his “dictator on day one” line, making even less sense than before:

Trump: You know why I wanted to be dictator? I want a wall and drill, drill, drill..

Crowd and Trump: build the wall

Trump: We did pic.twitter.com/6ugNSwAFnw

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 10, 2023

Wiles and LaCivita wrote in their statement that “he is not interested in, nor does he condone, selfish efforts by ‘desk hunters” but that doesn’t seem to be the case:

Former U.S. president Donald Trump embraces Steve Bannon at the New York Young Republican Club’s Annual Gala at Cipriani’s Wall Street in New York City. Photo by @bing_guan pic.twitter.com/EXEgwiKf0t

— corinne_perkins (@corinne_perkins) December 10, 2023

The few professionals in the Trump campaign understand that it’s lethal for Trump’s chances in the general election if the public is actually informed of what he plans to do. Now that the press is no longer under the illusion that ignoring what he says is the best way to cover him, those pros are starting to realize that they can’t control Trump or the people around him. They aren’t the first to have that rude awakening. It would be a big relief if they were the last.