Trump has always been a sloppy speaker. But he’s not the same person he was, that’s clear. Someone pointed out the other day that the past and the present seem to be merging in his mind at times. The stuff where he’s talking about golden showers and how his wife took it and constantly saying that Obama is president are tells that something is off in his sense of time and place.
Here are a couple more excerpts from speeches he gave this weekend. They are bizarrely disjointed even for him. Some are just the usual misspeaking but he doesn’t seem to realize he’s done it. In the past he would do some verbal gyration to cover it (of course, he would never say “excuse me” and correct himself as normal people do) but he just sails past this stuff now.
Trump totally out of it again. At rally in Iowa, while sweating profusely, he says he saved Obamacare, while bragging about trying to remove it. (Video: Newsmax) pic.twitter.com/R5Pvvw1QRZ
Trump last night: “Thank you very much for being here. They wanted to use the place … this place is packed. We don’t let people use Mar-a-Lago very much because, as you know, we hold very important documents here.” pic.twitter.com/jyIlDVrZN0
Muslim Americans in several swing states are scheduled to gather in Michigan on Saturday to start a campaign they’re calling #AbandonBiden, a reflection of their outrage over President Biden‘s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Arab American and Muslim American anger could hurt Biden’s re-election prospects in most of the 2024 swing states he won in 2020, as those groups have been heavily Democratic.
Muslim American leaders from Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are expected to meet in Dearborn, Mich., to start the new campaign.
“This #AbandonBiden 2024 conference is set against the backdrop of the upcoming 2024 presidential election and the decision to withdraw support for President Biden due to his unwillingness to call for a ceasefire and protect innocents in Palestine and Israel,” the group said in a statement.
“Leaders from swing states will work together to guarantee Biden’s loss in the 2024 election.”
The campaign primarily will focus on social media for now, organizer Jaylani Hussein of Minneapolis tells Axios.
Hussein said Muslim leaders acknowledge that not supporting Biden could result in the re-election of former President Trump, who is disliked by many Muslim Americans because of his racist retweets about them and his efforts to ban Muslims from migrating to the U.S.
“We recognize that, in the next four years, our decision may cause us to have an even more difficult time. But we believe that this will give us a chance to recalibrate, and the Democrats will have to consider whether they want our votes or not.”
I guess if you’re in a detention camp there’s lots of time to “recalibrate.” Nice to have that “chance.” But at least this will result in helping the people of Gaza.
Democratic 2024 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson compared the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Florida Democratic Party to the now defunct Soviet Union, telling Newsweek on Saturday that their actions ahead of the primaries are “essentially authoritarian.”
Williamson, along with fellow Democratic contenders Cenk Uygur, a political commentator and creator of the The Young Turks, and Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, has slammed the Florida Democratic Party’s decision to not include their names on the primary ballot. Instead, Democratic voters in the southern state will only see Biden’s name listed—unless the decision is reversed.
In an earlier story, Newsweek reminded readers that Uyger is ineligible to serve as president. But that’s an aside. As for the Florida Democratic Party, it’s been a mess for some time. Not that we can talk here in North Carolina where Democrats in 2022 opposed Green Party recognition. Unwisely, I think. I hope that’s changed.
As for Democrats nationally and the DNC, let’s review. There is no The Democrats (from 2020):
One of the leaders of North Carolina’s Bernie Sanders delegation to the 2016 national convention in Philadelphia called to say he’d just come out of his first caucus meeting with the convention’s 57 delegations.
Fifty-seven? Right. Fifty states, the territories, the District of Columbia, and Democrats Abroad. As often as critics condemn the Democratic Party, the call brought home that there is no The Democrats. There are 57 party organizations that trickled into the union over nearly two centuries, each with its own charter and bylaws, local history, and local languages and customs (not all of them European). The Democratic National Committee may organize the quadrennial convention and administer the national voter file, but it is not the One Ring that rules them all. Chairman Tom Perez runs the DNC. He does not run the party.
Beyond those 57 delegations are several other major players pursuing independent agendas.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) recruits and raises money for state legislative candidates.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) recruits and raises money for congressional candidates, including for reelecting its congressional incumbents.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) recruits and raises money for U.S. Senate candidates, including for reelecting its Senate incumbents.
See a pattern?
Guess what the Democratic National Committee’s primary job is? And it’s not running the other 60 organizations. That it does is an internet rumor, an urban legend.
That’s not to say that a lot of thinking among the old boys in many of those groups is not medieval (and defensive when it needs to be aggressive). But changing that won’t happen by changing the top. Change happens from the bottom up.
The first time I heard colonizer used was (IIRC) in Black Panther (2018). Since then the smear has caught on a bit, and not in a Martin Luther King sort of way. But that single word of dialogue served in the film to instantly replace the European view of Africa with an African view of Europeans. It carries racial connotations, but is anchored not as much in skin color as behavior, on what Europeans do.
We’ve used enablers in the past to describe Donald Trump’s allies inside and outside of government. Former Rep. Liz Cheney offers on “CBS Sunday Morning” a more pointed term for Trump’s confederates based on what they do. They are collaborators, and she doesn’t mean colleagues. She deploys collaborators as the French Resistance might against the Vichy government.
“If you look at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can’t do it by himself,” Cheney tells John Dickerson. “He has to have collaborators. And the story of [Speaker] Mike Johnson is the story of a collaborator.”
"If you look at what Donald Trump is trying to do, he can't do it by himself."
Former Republican Wyoming Congresswoman @Liz_Cheney tells @jdickerson that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was a collaborator in Trump's attempt to overthrow the last election. TOMORROW. pic.twitter.com/qSejH6W0Mm
“The Speaker of the House is a collaborator to overthrow the last election,” Dickerson suggests in this clip.
But Cheney means more. Johnson, et al. are collaborators in Trump’s plan for overthrowing the United States Constitution should he get reelected. Trump is blunt about his plans.
“One of the things that we see…is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States.”
"One of the things that we see…is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States."
Liz Cheney forewarns John Dickerson if Donald Trump is re-elected, it could mean the end of the republic & expresses concern about her party's comfort with Trump and his lies. pic.twitter.com/JBh7nKkbfP
Humans have an incredible ability to underestimate how much worse life can get for them personally, and to rationalize themselves as the exception to what would come from putting people like this in charge of the apparatus of government
Yes, I know. That’s an oddly generic (some might even say silly) title for a post by someone who has been scribbling about film here for 17 years. Obviously, I like movies. That said, I am about to make a shameful confession (and please withhold your angry cards and letters until you’ve heard me out). Are you sitting down? Here goes:
I haven’t stepped foot in a movie theater since January of 2020.
There. I’ve said it, in front of God and all 7 of my regular readers.
It turns out that it is not just my imagination (running away with me). A quick Google search of “Seattle rain records” yields such cheery results as a January 29th CNN headline IT’S SUNLESS IN SEATTLE AS CITY WEATHERS ONE OF THE GLOOMIEST STRETCHES IN RECENT HISTORY and a Feb 1stSeattle P-I story slugged with SEATTLE BREAKS RECORD WITH RAIN ON 30 DAYS IN A MONTH. Good times!
February was a bit better: 15 rainy days with 4.1 hours a day of average sunshine. But hey-I didn’t move to the Emerald City to be “happy”. No, I moved to a city that averages 300 cloudy days a year in order to justify my predilection for a sedentary indoor lifestyle.
In fact it was a marvelously gloomy, stormy Sunday afternoon in late January when I ventured out to see Japanese anime master Makato Shinkai’s newest film Weathering with You (yes, this is a tardy review gentle reader…but what do you expect at these prices?). Gregory’s Girl meets The Lathe of Heaven in Shinkai’s romantic fantasy-drama.
That excerpt is from my review of Weathering With You, published February 9, 2020. If I had only known of the more insidious tempest about to make landfall, I would have savored that “…marvelously gloomy, stormy Sunday afternoon in late January” (and every kernel of my ridiculously overpriced popcorn) even more.
Of course, I’m referring to the COVID pandemic, which would soon put the kibosh on venturing to movie theaters (much less any public brick-and-mortar space in general) for quite a spell. Keep in mind, I live in Seattle, which is where the first reported outbreak of note in the continental U.S. occurred; I think it’s fair to say that the fear and paranoia became ingrained here much earlier on than in other parts of the country (and justifiably so).
Well, that’s all fine and dandy (you’re thinking)…but hasn’t the fear and paranoia abated since everything “opened up” again in (2022? 2021? I’ve lost track of the time-space continuum)? Here’s the thing-even before the pandemic, I had been going to theaters less and less frequently due to physical issues. I won’t bore you with details, suffice it to say I had both knees replaced (the first in 2014, the second in 2016)…but it didn’t quite “take”. And admittedly, I still mask up whenever I go to any public venue (including the grocery store). Perhaps that all adds up to “functional agoraphobia” (maybe one of you psych majors can help me out here?).
And you know what? I’m also tired of dealing with traffic, parking hassles, fellow theater patrons who are oblivious to people with disabilities, and astronomical ticket prices (add the $7 box of Junior Mints, and it’s cheaper to wait several months and just buy the Blu-ray).
And get off my lawn, goddammit.
Anyhoo, I haven’t been dashing out on opening weekend to see many first-run films in recent years; at least not the major studio releases that are playing on a bazillion screens. But thanks to “virtual” film festival accreditation, I am still able to screen and review a number of “new” movies (albeit many that have yet to find wider distribution).
So that is my long-winded way of explaining why I have decided not to entitle this (obligatory) end-of-year roundup as “the best” 10 films of 2023. Rather, out of the new films I reviewed on Hullabaloo this year, here are the 10 standouts (no Barbies, no nukes, no capes). I’ve noted the titles that are now streaming …hopefully the rest are coming soon to a theater near you!
Adolfo – Strangers in the night, exchanging…cactus? Long story. Short story, actually, as writer-director Sofia Auza’s dramedy breezes by at 70 minutes. It’s a “night in the life of” tale concerning two twenty-somethings who meet at a bus stop. He: reserved and dressed for a funeral. She: effervescent and dressed for a party (the Something Wild scenario). With its tight screenplay, snappy repartee, and marvelous performances, it’s hard not to fall in love with this film.
Downtown Owl – It took me a while to get into the rhythm of this quirky comedy-drama, which begins with a nod to Savage Steve Holland (palpable Better Off Dead energy) then pivots into a more angsty realm (as in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm). Adapted from Chuck Klosterman’s eponymous novel by writer-director Hamish Linklater (no relation to Richard), the story is set during the winter of 1983-1984 in a North Dakota burg (where everybody is up in everyone else’s business).
Julia (Lily Rabe) is a 40-ish, recently engaged, self-described “restless” soul who has just moved to Owl to take a teaching position at a high school. Episodic; we observe Julia over a period of several months as she acclimates to her new environs. She strikes up a friendship with a melancholy neighbor (Ed Harris) and pursues a crush on a laconic buffalo rancher (I told you it was quirky). There’s a sullen high school quarterback, and a pregnant teen (it’s a rule). All threads converge when a record-breaking blizzard descends on the sleepy hamlet. A bit uneven, but it grew on me. (Streaming on Plex)
Hey, Viktor! – In 1998, a low-budget indie dramedy called Smoke Signals became a hit with critics and festival audiences. It was also groundbreaking, in the sense of being the first film to be written (Sherman Alexie), directed (Chris Eyre) and co-produced by Native Americans. The film was a career booster for several Native-American actors like Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal and Adam Beach. For other cast members, not so much …like 11-year-old Cody Lightning, who played Adam Beach’s character “Victor” as a youngster.
Fast-forward 25 years. Cody Lightning plays (wait for it) Cody Lightning in his heightened reality dramedy (co-written with Samuel Miller), which reveals Cody has hit the bottom (and the bottle). Divorced and chronically depressed, his portfolio has dwindled to adult film gigs and half-finished screenplays about zombie priests. When his best friend and creative partner Kate (Hannah Cheesman) organizes an intervention, Cody has an epiphany…not to stop drinking, but to make a Smoke Signals sequel. All he needs now is a script, some of the original cast, and (most importantly) financial backing.
Reminiscent of Alexandre Rockwell’s In the Soup, Hey, Viktor! is an alternately hilarious and brutally honest dive into the trenches of D.I.Y. film-making (I was also reminded of Robert Townshend’s Hollywood Shuffle, in the way Lightning weaves issues like ethnic stereotyping and reclamation of cultural identity into the narrative). The cast includes Smoke Signals alums Simon Baker, Adam Beach, Gary Farmer, and Irene Bedard.
I Like Movies – To call Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), the 17-year-old hero of writer-director Chandler Levack’s coming of age dramedy a “film freak” is an understatement. When his best bud ribs him by exclaiming in mock horror, “I can’t believe you never masturbate!” Lawrence’s responds with a shrug, “I’ve tried to, but…I’d rather watch Goodfellas or something.” Levack’s film (set in the early aughts) abounds with such cringe-inducing honesty; eliciting the kind of nervous chuckles you get from watching, say, Todd Solondz’s Happiness (a film that Lawrence enthusiastically champions to a hapless couple in a video store who can’t decide on what they want to see).
Lawrence, who dresses (and pontificates) like a Canadian version of Ignatius J. Reilly, is obsessed with two things: Paul Thomas Anderson’s oeuvre, and the goal of getting into NYU film school in the fall (despite not even having been accepted yet, and that he’s not likely to save up the $90,000 tuition working as a minimum wage video store clerk over the summer). Wry, observant, and emotionally resonant, with wonderful performances by the entire cast,
L’immensità – Emanuele Crialese’s semi-autobiographical drama about a dysfunctional family (set in 1970s Rome) combines the raw emotion of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence with the sense memory of Fellini’s Amarcord. Penélope Cruz portrays a woman in a faltering marriage struggling to hold it together for the sake of her three children, to whom she is fiercely and unconditionally devoted. Her teenage daughter Edri identifies as a boy named “Andrea” (much to the chagrin of her abusive father). Buoyed by naturalistic performances, beautiful cinematography (by Gergely Pohárnok) and a unique 70s Italian pop soundtrack. (Streaming on Amazon Prime)
The Mojo Manifesto – How do I describe Mojo Nixon to the uninitiated? Psychobilly anarchist? Novelty act? Social satirist? Performance artist? Brain-damaged? Smarter than he looks? The correct answer is “all of the above.” “Mojo Nixon” is also, of course, a stage persona; an alter ego created by Neill Kirby McMillan Jr., as we learn in Matt Eskey’s documentary. The film traces how McMillan came up with his “Mojo Nixon” alter-ego, which provided a perfect foil to embody his divergent inspirations Hunter S. Thompson, Woody Guthrie, 50s rockabilly, and The Clash. Not unlike Nixon himself, Eskey’s portrait may be manic at times, but it’s honest, engaging, and consistently entertaining. (Full review) (Streaming on Amazon Prime)
Next Sohee – Writer-director July Jung’s outstanding film is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s High and Low, not just in the sense that it is equal parts police procedural and social drama, but that it contains a meticulously layered narrative that has (to paraphrase something Stanley Kubrick once said of his own work) “…a slow start, the start that goes under the audience’s skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and don’t have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks.”
The first half of the film tells the story of a high school student who is placed into a mandatory “externship” at a call center by one of her teachers. Suffice it to say her workplace is a prime example as to why labor laws exist (they do have them in South Korea-but exploitative companies always find loopholes).
When the outgoing and headstrong young woman commits suicide, a female police detective is assigned to the case. The trajectory of her investigation takes up the second half of the film. The deeper she digs, the more insidious the implications…and this begins to step on lot of toes, including her superiors in the department. Jung draws parallels between the stories of the student and the detective investigating her death; both are assertive, principled women with the odds stacked against them. Ultimately, they’re tilting at windmills in a society driven by systemic corruption, predatory capitalism, and a patriarchal hierarchy.
Once Within a Time – Billed as “a bardic fairy tale about the end of the world and the beginning of a new one”, this visually arresting 58-minute feature (co-directed by Godfrey Reggio and Jon Kane) represents an 8-year labor of love for Reggio (now 83), who is primarily known for his “Qatsi trilogy” (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi). He re-enlisted his Qatsi trilogy collaborator Philip Glass to score the project. Glass’ score is quite lovely (and restrained-I know he has his detractors) with wonderful vocalizing provided by Sussan Deyhim.
Ostensibly aimed at a young audience, the film (a mashup of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Tron, 2001, and Princess Mononoke) utilizes a collage of visual techniques (stop-motion, puppetry, shadow play, etc.) with echoes of George Melies, Lotte Reiniger, Karel Zeman , Rene Laloux, George Pal, Luis Buñuel, The Brothers Quay, and Guy Maddin.
A small group of children are spirited away to a multiverse that vacillates (at times uneasily) between the lush green world, future visions of a bleak and barren landscape, and the rabbit hole of cyberspace; surreal vignettes abound. Unique and mesmerizing. (Full review) (Currently playing in select theaters)
One Night With Adela – Volatile, coked to the gills and seething with resentment, Adela (Laura Galán) is wrapping up another dreary late-night shift tooling around Madrid in her street sweeper. However, the young woman’s after-work plans for this evening are anything but typical. She has decided that it’s time to get even…for every wrong (real or perceived) that she’s suffered in her entire life. Galán delivers a fearless and mesmerizing performance. Shot in one take (no editor is credited), writer-director Hugo Ruiz’s debut is the most unsettling portrayal of alienation, rage, and madness I have seen since Gaspar Noe’s I Stand Alone. Definitely not for the squeamish.
Ride On -It’s interesting kismet that Ride On (written and directed by Larry Yang) opened in the U.S. on Jackie Chan’s 69th birthday, because on a certain level the film plays like a sentimental salute to the international action star’s 60-year career.
That is not to suggest that Chan appears on the verge of being put out to pasture; he still has energy and agility to spare. That said, the shelf life of stunt persons (not unlike professional athletes) is wholly dependent on their stamina and fortitude. It’s not likely to shock you that Chan is cast here as (wait for it) Lao, an aging movie stuntman.
While not saddled by a complex narrative, Ride On gallops right along; spurred by Chan’s charm and unbridled flair for physical comedy (sorry, I had a Gene Shalit moment). And the stunts, of course, are spectacular (in the end credits, it’s noted the film is dedicated to the craft). In one scene, Lao views a highlight reel of “his” stunt career; a collection of classic stunt sequences from Chan’s own films; it gives lovely symmetry to the film and is quite moving. (Full review) (Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV, and Google Play)
Friday night, Judge Chutkan rejected Trump’s “big” argument that he couldn’t be criminally prosecuted for acts committed during his presidency because he had blanket immunity. We discussed the motion when he filed it in early October (read here if you want a refresher on its substance). At the time, I characterized the argument as a flawed one, likely to be a swing and a miss.
Judge Chutkan agreed. “The Constitution’s text, structure, and history do not support that contention [that the charges should be dismissed],” she wrote in her opinion. “No court—or any other branch of government—has ever accepted it. And this court will not so hold. Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.’” Read her entire opinion here.
She wrote: “Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.” That is what his lawyers argued, that Trump was above the law. As much as the delays and the timing insert an element of uncertainty into all of this, increasingly, there are signs we have judges who believe in this fundamental American principle and are committed to putting it into action.
Judge Chutkan also ruled against Trump’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that his conduct was protected by the First Amendment. “It is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime, and consequently the Indictment—which charges Defendant with, among other things, making statements in furtherance of a crime—does not violate Defendant’s First Amendment rights,” she wrote. In other words, if Trump pointed a gun at a random passerby and said “stick ‘em up” as a prelude to robbing them while president, he could be prosecuted for that crime and his words would be evidence of and part of the commission of the crime.
The Judge did not rule on Trump’s other pending motions, including ones to dismiss on statutory grounds and due to alleged selective and vindictive prosecution. We discussed all of the dispositive motions in some detail here. She could issue her order on the remaining motions at any time. They are even less likely to be successful than the ones dismissed tonight.
But the Constitutional issues Judge Chutkan has ruled against Trump on are the ones he can appeal in advance of trial. By ruling promptly, She has set that process in motion. Appeals mean delay—not the sort of strategic, excessive delay that is Trump’s hallmark in court proceedings, but delay as a necessary incident to the process. That doesn’t make it any less concerning as the clock continues to tick. But in another interesting development today, that may suggest an appeal could be concluded promptly, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled against Trump on the presidential immunity issue in a civil case that has been pending for about a year. Although one case is civil and the other criminal, the legal issue is based on the same notion of immunity, that presidents can’t be prosecuted for conduct committed in the scope of their presidency.
In its decision Friday, the appellate court wrote, “When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act.” They held the case would move forward and that while Trump could be permitted to argue that the official nature of his conduct means he can’t be held civilly accountable for it, he can’t end the case at this point on that basis.
As we have often noted here in a variety of legal proceedings where he has raised this issue, President Trump may have been entitled to immunity, but candidate Trump is not. The panel wrote, “In the proceedings ahead in the district court, President Trump will have the opportunity to show that his alleged actions in the run-up to and on Jan. 6 were taken in his official capacity as president rather than in his unofficial capacity as presidential candidate.” Good luck convincing a jury that trying to prevent state’s tallies of their citizen’s votes from being counted falls within the scope of presidential duties.
By analogy, the appellate court, with this precedent now on the books, could rule that Trump cannot dismiss the indictment at this point in the proceedings. That would let the case proceed to trial, where Trump can raise his defenses. And the appellate court in DC could do that quickly, with an expedited briefing schedule, as the legal issues were comprehensively briefed before the district court.
[…]
Democracy is on the ballot in 2024, but it’s also on the docket—the courts’ dockets. Their job is to make sure there is a process for Trump that is fair and efficient, but also one that gets the criminal cases in position, consistent with due process concerns, for juries to decide the question of Trump’s guilt, or not, in each case. That’s how our system works. Excessive delay, whether it’s a Trumpian strategy or court condoned/imposed is unacceptable. Americans need to know how juries of our peers assess the evidence against the former president before we vote in 2024. Only the courts can make sure that happens.
I wish I felt confident that any of these cases were going to go forward before the election or that Trump will be found guilty if they do. But this is a good sign, at least as far as it goes. Let’s see if the appellate courts cooperate. Fingers crossed.
Philip Bump takes the time to outline all the ways that Trump has already shown that he will fulfill the plans he’s touting on the campaign trail
[T]his would not be comparable to his inauguration in 2017, an event that took most people by surprise and demanded that he quickly figure out what, exactly, he was going to do. Positioned between the base that devoured his hostile rhetoric and the party that facilitated his election, he split the difference, bringing with him advisers (Stephen K. Bannon and Reince Priebus, respectively) from each camp.
He learned his lesson. The latter camp encouraged him to respect the informal (and, of course, formal) boundaries that accompanied the job. The former camp let him do what he wanted. By the end of his term, nearly all that was left was those enablers, and he’d discovered that most of the boundaries he’d been encouraged to respect were transparently thin. That’s the recognition that he’d take into January 2025.
Trump’s rhetoric, as the likelihood of his being renominated increases, has been less constrained even than it was on the campaign trail in 2015. He promises in explicit terms to use government power against his opponents and in support of himself. He talks about the presidency as though it is meant to be returned to him rather than as something for which he is offering himself as a candidate.
The likelihood of his renomination and his musings about what he would do if given the power of the presidency have spurred discussion about how he might use his position should he win next year. But this discussion ignores an important point: Many of the fears people have raised about what Trump might do reflect things that he did or tried to do the first time around.
We can very obviously begin at the end. Would Trump be content with two terms in office or would he seek to retain power after his second term? Well, as you’ll recall, he and his allies worked tirelessly from Nov. 3, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, on retaining his position despite his having lost the presidential election. He deployed nearly every tool he or his allies could think of to subvert the electoral college votes cast by states he lost. He entertained theories about special investigations, seizing voting machines and upending federal law enforcement. He pressured state actors to overturn the results without success, though at a far more substantial cost to those state officials than he has yet paid.
This is informative particularly because it shows how little attention Trump paid to institutional boundaries in a moment where he had few dissenters on his team. Oh, the 22nd Amendment says that presidents can serve only two terms in office? Rest assured that Trump can find some pliant attorneys willing to argue that there’s wiggle room. He’ll just wait in the White House until the dispute has been resolved.
Trump also entertained the idea of deploying federal troops to aid his efforts to retain power, using the authority given to him under the Insurrection Act. (Given the tumult that would have followed, there probably would not have been much time spent considering the irony of using the act to foment an insurrection.) The Associated Press recently explained how the act might allow Trump to use federal troops should he again be elected. But it’s not as though he hadn’t explored the idea while in office.
When protests emerged in the late spring of 2020, Trump repeatedly suggested that he wanted to deploy troops against the (mostly left-wing) protesters; he has subsequently stated that he wished he had. His administration deployed unidentified law enforcement officers into the streets to tamp down the unrest. When Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper publicly objected to using the act, Trump was reportedly incensed. Concern was so widespread in the last days of Trump’s administration that senior military officials released a statement reminding those in the military of their duty to defend the Constitution.
[…]
Trump has also recently mused that the various indictments he faces — including one for trying to overturn the 2020 contest — give him leeway to deploy federal law enforcement against his political opponents. But here, too, we’ve already seen Trump cross a putative boundary.
He entered office under the cloud — using his word — of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump was frustrated that the Justice Department didn’t do more to curtail the probe. He fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the 2018 midterms and nominated former attorney general William P. Barr to take his place. Barr had been publicly critical of the Russia probe and quickly appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to conduct an investigation into the investigation.
The Durham probe ended up lasting longer than the Russia investigation itself, extending into Biden’s presidency under the protection of Durham’s being appointed special counsel. But it failed; Durham showed no significant new evidence that the Russia investigation should not have been undertaken or was a function of anti-Trump bias. Durham obtained an indictment against a lawyer linked to Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, but the lawyer was acquitted at trial.
That’s just one point of leverage Trump’s administration deployed. His former chief of staff also revealed that Trump sought to have the IRS target his political opponents with audits.
One way in which Trump hopes to reduce friction in a second term in office is by overhauling the federal bureaucracy, allowing him to install sympathetic actors more broadly. This, too, he tried to effect during his term in office. In October 2020, he signed an executive order making it easier to fire longtime government workers, but he ran out of time to implement it.
The Biden administration tried to institute a safeguard against Trump’s policy change, but it probably would be trivial for a second Trump administration to sidestep it. It is therefore safe to assume that Trump would move more quickly to upend the bureaucracy should he win in 2024.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested on social media that the government should “come down hard on” MSNBC “and make them pay for their illegal political activity” — casting the channel’s frequent criticisms of him and his politics as somehow violating federal regulations. He’s long been outspoken in his dislike of the media and critical coverage, including by disparaging reporters personally. But there were also reports during his presidency that he aimed to use government regulators to block a merger involving the parent company of CNN, one of his most frequent targets.
There are other things that could be collected in the category of “warnings that Trump has already manifested,” like his use of pardons to benefit himself. But the point has presumably been made: Trump already did or explored doing many of the things that observers now warn he might do during a second term in office.
And, importantly, he has to date paid little to no cost for doing so. He learned that he could do what he wanted and still retain power, still be his party’s nominee. So why not try again?
He’s not just blowing smoke or talking trash on the trail. I would hope we’ve learned by now that assuming he’s just a harmless entertainer is absurd. Yes, he’s full of shit with the bragging and the lying. But he has taken actions that should prove that when he says he’s going to do something, he means it. In the past he was unaware of just how much power he could wield. You can bet that if he were to reclaim the White House he will believe that it is unlimited.
“Trump is no longer a man, he’s a superhero to a vast swath of America. Superhero, Superman, Batman, Elvis, and the Beatles rolled into one! Trump is our last stand. The evil cabal in power wants Trump dead, disqualified or imprisoned for life.” pic.twitter.com/OkPfjHCB9z
President Joe Biden took aim at corporations for charging prices he said were artificially high even though the rate of inflation has slowed and some shipping costs have fallen.
“Any corporation that has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even as the supply chains have been rebuilt, it’s time to stop the price-gouging,” Biden said at the launch of a new White House supply chain initiative. “Give the American consumer a break.”
While it’s true that the annual rate of inflation has cooled from its high last summer, this doesn’t translate directly into falling consumer prices. It only means that prices are rising at a lower rate.
Prices for some everyday goods have fallen over the past year, a reality reflected in lower Thanksgiving costs this year, for example. And lower costs have in turn left some consumers with more money in their budgets for things like Black Friday shopping, which rose 7.5% this past weekend over a year ago.
Now it’s true that prices aren’t likely to actually come down for most things. It’s just not how it works unfortunately. But certain things do, like high gas and egg prices, the latter of which, it turns out, were a result of price gouging, and they are goods that virtually everyone buys. So the idea persists and in this dog-eat-dog world of economic propaganda, I see no harm in Biden ginning up a little populist corporation bashing for the greater good. And besides, they really could lower prices and, in fact, some are because of competition.
