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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Are Big Money Fascists Coming Back To Team Trump?

Published by digby on November 29, 2023

They’re thinking about it

Rebekah Mercer with a few of Trump’s henchmen

The media breathlessly reported this week that the Koch Network, specifically their Americans for Prosperity Action fund, had finally decided who they would be backing for the GOP presidential nomination, former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. This was reported as if it was a very significant moment signaling the final blow to the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis whom Haley has been overtaking in some polls in the early states.

There’s only one problem. Both Haley and DeSantis are trailing the front runner, former president Donald Trump, by 50 points nationally which means all this hoopla over the Koch endorsement is about who is going to finish a very distant second place. This has to be the saddest example of horse race journalism in history.

The Koch network does have a lot of money, of course, and according to AFP, they’ve already been running negative ads against Trump since last winter when they announced that they were going to participate in the 2024 election, specifically against Trump. But it took them this long to decide to back a specific candidate, perhaps because the one considered most likely to beat Trump, Ron DeSantis, isn’t their cup of tea.

They come out of the libertarian wing of the party which favors immigration and international trade and doesn’t care for the idea of using state power to strong arm business. DeSantis is MAGA, the successor to the Tea Party which the Kochs bankrolled and astroturfed to victories during the Obama years. He hates everything they stand for (except tax cuts, of course.)

Haley, on the other hand, is a Koch Brothers dream. I’m sure she had them at “going to go after Social Security and Medicare.”

And here everyone thought that the cacophonous eruption of denials at the State of the Union address last year when President Biden said that’s exactly what they planned meant that the GOP had dropped their longstanding determination to end those programs.

As the NY Times Paul Krugman pointed out in his column on Tuesday, she’s a clever shape-shifting politician on the stump but when you look at her policies, she’s a standard issue corporate right winger. And that, of course, means she doesn’t stand a chance of winning the nomination even if she stands the best chance of beating Joe Biden. To paraphrase a famous Republican defense secretary, you go to war with the Republican base you have not the one you might wish to have and the base today has no interest in standard issue establishment Republicans. Her “lane” is the same lane that they all have: hoping for something to happen to Donald Trump.

The Kochs have a dubious record of choosing presidential candidates anyway. Recall that they had groomed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for years to be their own personal president and were ready to formally endorse him when he suddenly declared that he wanted to curtail legal immigration and then flamed out completely, leaving the race before it even started. Their network stayed on the sidelines from that point on. And you can be sure when the primary is over and Trump is the nominee they won’t be spending any of their loot to defeat him in the general. Like so many others of their ilk, they’ll pout and sulk a bit and then slink off to count all the money he saved them with his massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

But with all the talk about the Koch Network stepping into the arena on behalf of Nikki Haley, there’s been hardly a mention of another big bucks right wing family coming off of the sidelines for Donald Trump. CNBC reported last week that according to “people familiar with the matter” Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are considering getting back in the game after laying out since 2018. And they’ve got $88 million sitting in their private nonprofit, the Mercer Family Foundation, just waiting to be spent.

Just as the Koch Network is more ideologically aligned with Nikki Haley, the Mercers came out heavily for Trump in 2016, way ahead of most of the rich guys, pumping tens of millions into the campaign. According to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman they were originally motivated by their burning hatred of Hillary Clinton whom they believe is a murderer but once they got involved, their influence on the Trump campaign was huge.

Former Trump adviser and podcaster Steve Bannon said, “the Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump Revolution” and that is absolutely correct. They bankrolled Bannon’s publication Breitbart News which served as Trump’s online propaganda arm during the 2016 campaign and spent millions on Cambridge Analytica, Robert Mercer’s data firm, which was reportedly involved in all sort of chicanery in that election. They were personally responsible for putting Bannon and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in the campaign.

But their high profile involvement also brought them under intense scrutiny which they apparently didn’t like. They are very eccentric people and they soured on Trump for vague reasons and stepped out of the public eye after 2017. But they never stopped donating millions to their pet causes and other far right politicians. And as Salon’s Igor Derysh pointed out in this tour de force examination of the Mercers tentacles in all aspects of right wing politics, their influence and money was essential to the forces that brought the MAGA movement to its peak moment on January 6th.

And they have continued to help fund organizations and individuals that helped perpetuate the Big Lie. He quotes Mobashra Tazamal, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative which issued a report on the Mercers involvement back in 2021:

“By strategically funneling millions into known hate groups, platforms amplifying racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, and politicians who pushed forth outright lies of a stolen election, Rebekah Mercer played a role in inciting the violence by providing material support,” she said. “The billionaire family has used their extraordinary wealth to bankroll the rise of violent white nationalism in this country.”

This is what they believe in. This is what they care about. It’s no surprise that they have now decided it may be time to come out of the shadows and once again support Donald Trump. All his recent talk of mass deportations, detention camps, “poisoning the blood of our country” and expelling the “vermin” has to be music to their ears. They figure they may finally be about to get their money’s worth.

Salon

Royalists are royalists

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 29, 2023

So are radical evangelicals

MSNBC ran the recording of “Why is this happening?” featuring Rachel Maddow over Thanksgiving weekend. Maddow spoke earlier in the month with host Chris Hayes about her new book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.” The rise of fascism in the U.S. now echoes the Depression-era movement by Americans who saw fascism as an attractive alternative to democracy.

During the discussion Hayes referenced the views of presidents Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt who felt there were elites destined to rule over others. In that sense they were not small-D democrats. He references debates at the time about what democracy is and whether it is good. Or whether rule by some group or some person is preferable. Our sense of consensus was perhaps an illusion, and disagreement was always there.

Hayes referencing FDR got me to look again at FDR’s speech decrying economic royalists.

“In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy—from the 18th century royalists who held special privileges from the crown,” FDR said. He decried economic royalists who “carved new dynasties” to perpetuate their hegemony. But both FDR and Hayes view the struggle from within the confines of American history.

Royalists are royalists. The yearning to be led and the faith of others that they are destined to rule everyone else goes much deeper and is much older than the American Revolution. As old as feudalism. Perhaps DNA-level, metaphorically at least.

Having arrived in the South when a Baptist church on every streetcorner was (again metaphorically) still the norm, it was not hard to notice that conservative Christians especially are raised from a young age to yearn for the Savior’s return. “This, this is Christ, the King,” congregations will sing again this Christmas season in memory of his arrival. More radical congregations drink deep the eschatology of Revelations and look for signs of the Second Coming. The Bible promises His Church will co-rule the Earth with their King. But after two millennia, and especially as they see their cultural dominance slipping and a multicultural America rising, they’ve grown tired of waiting. They want to rule now.

This is the impulse behind the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that we’ve discussed plenty. A friend pointed yesterday to an upcoming book on the subject, “American Evangelicals for Trump Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times.” The book examines “the three main ideas inspiring NCP leaders who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020—Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and Eschatology (the End Times)—the book examines how these ideas have sustained the evangelicals close to U.S. political power in the Trump era.”

When you hear faith talk from Speaker Mike Johnson, this is where he’s coming from. The less religious on the right who have abandoned any pretense of democracy are secular royalists. They simply dream of a more feudal America in which they rule over you. Jesus-schmesus.

Denialists gonna deny

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 29, 2023

Hindsight won’t save them

The post above by Dave Weigel just resurfaced on Blue Sky. It reminds us how much in denial senior Republican officials were not simply about Donald Trump’s malevolence immediately after he lost the 2020 election, but before he won the nomination of his party in 2016. Party leaders thought by humoring this misanthropic sociopath Republicans might get what they wanted from him. In four years, they’d learned nothing.

“We don’t need someone who can think. We need someone with enough digits to hold a pen,” Grover Norquist told CPAC in 2012. Trump may have been a buffoon, but he could hold a sharpie. He delivered wish list item #1, a massive tax cut. It may cost them not only their party but their country. A growing list of them could lose their freedom along the way if he’s reelected.

Trump may be an idiot, a coward and a narcissist, but he has a feral instinct for survival they underestimated. Grossly.

Jared’s Latino “Outreach”

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

AKA: Jared’s flagrant pay-for-play to Univision

This shady new compact between Univision and Trump was orchestrated by Jared Kushner. Judd Legum reminds us of Jared’s strategy:

In 2021, Univision merged with Televisa, a Mexican media company. Televisa is known for its friendly coverage of Mexican political leaders, who have rewarded the company with favorable regulatory treatment and other benefits. The co-CEO of TelevisaUnivisio Mexico is Bernardo Gómez, a close associate of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. In 2019, Kushner met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at Gómez’s house. 

The Washington Post reported that Kushner “helped arrange the interview and was also in the room” during the interview at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Gómez was also present during the interview, along with two other TelevisaUnivisio executives, TelevisaUnivision CEO Wade Davis, and TelevisaUnivision co-CEO Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega. 

Trump praised the new owners during the Univision interview. “Look at the owners of Univision,” Trump said. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me.”

The Kushner media playbook

Kushner has a history of trading access to Trump for promises of favorable treatment. After the 2016 election, Kushner reportedly told a group of business executives that he “struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage.” Sinclair is the owner of many local affiliates in swing states. The agreement “gave [Sinclair] more access to Trump and the campaign” in exchange for a commitment that Sinclair would “broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary.”

Kushner boasted that Sinclair affiliates had a larger audience than CNN in states like Ohio. According to a Trump spokesperson, “the deal included the interviews running across every affiliate.” Sinclair did not deny that it had struck a deal with the Trump campaign but claimed it offered a similar arrangement with Hillary Clinton. There were no Clinton interviews aired on Sinclair stations during the campaign, however.

The Clinton campaign might not have been enthusiastic about granting special access to Sinclair because Sinclair is a conservative media company. An academic study found that “stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.”

It seems these Univision wingnuts are happy to downplay Trumps draconian 2024 immigration policies and they’re worse than ever. If Latinos don’t know about it will they inadvertently support it? It’s too depressing to think about.

Yes, The Media Is The Problem

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Kevin Drum is right:

Arin Dube thinks he knows the answer to an ongoing issue:

In other words, the answer is yes to both questions. People are concerned about their actual conditions and social media is making it worse.

But that’s wrong! The answer is no to both questions. The evidence is overwhelming that actual conditions are pretty good and that, generally speaking, people know it.

But— they are being overwhelmed by reports telling them how bad things are. And while it’s fashionable to blame everything like this on social media these days, Facebook isn’t at fault here. Fox News is, along with the rest of the conservative noise machine. You can’t get through a day of Fox News without hearing at least a dozen times that Joe Biden has wrecked the economy and produced ruinous inflation.

Why does it take so long to hammer this into people’s heads? We know people aren’t very upset about their personal situations because we’ve asked them. And we know that Fox News and the rest of the gang are infinitely more influential than Twitter or TikTok, especially among anyone over the age of 20. Come on, folks.

I know plenty of Democrats who are also bellyaching about the economy constantly even as they plan expensive vacations, buy new cars and shop like crazy. They also admit that they are doing great but are convinced that everyone else is in dire straits.

They aren’t getting this from Fox. They’re getting it from the other mainstream news sources like the networks, the newspapers and CNN/MSNBC. I watch them all the time and they relentlessly project doom and gloom in a circular feedback loop that tells them people are complaining about the economy so they must be unhappy so it’s important not to contradict something they don’t feel. But they “feel” this because of what the media is telling them.

It’s true that Fox presents the case in apocalyptic terms that you wouldn’t think any sane person would buy but we know that people who tune in to right wing media will believe anything. But the MSM isn’t all that much better. And it’s infected a whole lot of liberals and progressives too.

By the way:

It’s cheaper than it was under Trump.

Winning The Meme War

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Rachel Bitecover, who always has sharp insights on what the electorate is thinking and how to move them had this today in her newsletter:

Throughout 2024 I plan on highlighting core grassroots organizations working on the frontlines of the Democratic Party’s messaging revolution.

Now, maybe you think the word “revolution” is too strong, but trust me, moving a party away from approaching voters with wonky policy appeals and achievements to focusing on making sure regular Americans know what the modern GOP has planned for them is no small reform. It requires a revolution of thought based on the cold, hard, realities of the American electorate i lay out in the book.

In my forthcoming book Hit Em’ Where it Hurts: How to Save Democracy By beating Republicans at their Own Game I highlight the other massive problem that hampers Democrats in terms of message distribution.

You can have the greatest messaging in the world but it doesn’t do shit if no one sees it and folks, as I keep using google trend data to show how little Americans care about news and politics, no one sees it.

This is the fundamental flaw behind the White House’s efforts to lift Bidenomics: paid ads, speeches, and social content will never replace the ability of the right wing echo chamber to propel things, even false things like Joe Biden has dementia, to top-of-mind awareness which is what Democrats would have to accomplish to make voters responsive to Biden’s record.

Yes, message distribution is a tough nut to crack because it requires money, lots and lots of it. Which is why I want to talk to you today about something I call digital direct mail, but what you likely call memes and gifs.

Direct mail is a staple expenditure for competitive campaigns and often voters in swing contests receive plenty of it even if you never do.

In the book I highlight how much better Republicans tend to do with direct mail because they understand the target, the average voter, knows next to nothing about civics, cares even less, and will give the same direct mail your team agonized over for hours about 3 seconds of a glance before it is tossed directly into the recycling bin.

Republicans understand voters and have constructed their direct mail to deliver the main message in just that one glance using very little copy.

A rigorous direct mail campaign, one that targets voters with the multiple contacts research says voters need to actually show up and vote, easily runs l into the tens of thousands. It is expensive to produce and then distribution direct mail through the USPS.

But when you strip down direct mail to its purpose, delivering a message, it is easy to see that the internet creates a massive message distribution advantage if campaigns choose to see it as such.

That is why I’m delighted to introduce you to the Freedom Writer’s Collaborative and one of their dedicated grassroots volunteers, marketing strategist Yvonne Brandon. Yvonne joins me to talk about the ready-to-use messaging toolkits created with the also awesome folks at DemCastUSA where the meme that leads of this post was pulled from.

I hope you will consider using these toolkits, and even more importantly, getting your friends, family, and followers to do the same.

Whether your network is 15 people, or 150, everyone is an influencer. FWC makes it easy.

Pass it on.

Sarcasm For Dummies

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Trump’s cognitive decline is obvious if you watch him in action.

You be the judge:

How about this? Is he lying or did he forget?

Those are just a few of the examples DeSantis’ war room posted on twitter. He’s always rambled at his rallies, we know that. But there’s something different.

I wrote about this for Salon a while back. Trump’s father had Alzheimers and he’s terrified that he’s going to get it too. I think his dad was about the same age as Trump when he started showing signs.

Biden has always rambled but because he looks old (maybe he should start wearing make-up like Trump does…) it’s being portrayed as a sign of cognitive decline. In truth he’s still sharp — and Trump isn’t.

This Economy Sure Sucks

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

JV Last flagged that in his newsletter today. He notes:

I do not know what a car wash manager does, though I’m sure it is a big job. And yes, $125k doesn’t get you what it used to. But also, this seems pretty good? An indicator that salaries are moving in this tight labor market?

Also, the average price of Thanksgiving dinner was down 4.5 percent this year.

And then there are the skeletons.

Did you see any giant, 12-foot-tall skeletons on people’s lawns before Halloween? I’ll answer for you: Yes, you did. They were everywhere. Rich towns, poor towns; trailers and mansions. The skeleton is called “Skelly” and it’s a creation of Home Depot and it became an absolute craze.

These skeletons cost $299.

Not to belabor the obvious, but if you are spending $299 on a plastic skeleton for your yard then you do not actually believe that we are in the midst of an economic calamity. Regardless of what you say on a survey.

He goes to great length to assure readers that he’s not saying that everyone is doing well but instead that most people are doing well. He writes, “people are saying that the economy is bad, yet they are acting like the economy is good” which I agree with.

And he points to a piece by Economist Claudia Sahm on this bizarre dichotomy in which she wrote:

The majority of Americans are better off financially now than they were before the pandemic. Full stop. Not every American, but the majority. That’s true across demographic and income groups. It’s in the aggregate and individual-level data:

-Millions more good jobs.
-Bigger paychecks, even after inflation.
-Consumer spending back on strong pre-Covid trend.
-Historic increases in wealth, including at the bottom.
-Lowest debt burdens on record.

It’s become a controversial view, and frankly, if you had asked me in April 2020—when unemployment hit almost 15%—that three and half years later, we would be in a better place than February 2020, I would have said no. But much has happened since then, and information that we now have from a wide range of families suggests that most got ahead; among them, some who had been falling behind for decades.

You should read the whole thing.

I’ll be honest. This is driving me nuts. I know that when you go to the store some things are more expensive than they used to be. Your grocery bill is higher. Clothes aren’t as cheap as they used to be But I guess that being an old person this just doesn’t strike me as all that surprising. It’s been happening my whole life. There was a time in my life when movie tickets were $3.00. I remember getting a Big Mac super value meal for about $2.50. Gas was a bout $1.30 a gallon. My first apartment was $125.00 a month.

Yes, I’ve been around a while. And, granted, I didn’t make much money in those days when I was young so it wasn’t like I was rolling in dough. And I know that inflation takes a real bite out of people who are on fixed incomes, like older people on social security. It’s not all rosy and great for everyone.

But honestly, I don’t think any of this is really about the economy. It’s just that it’s become a mantra that symbolizes the discontent with everything else whether you are upset with “woke” drag queen story hours or right wing militias or Donald Trump or COVID or just the general sense that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. There are legitimate reasons for people to be unhappy. But they are blaming their unhappiness on the economy and I don’t think that’s really the reason. It’s frustrating to try to deal with that.

Here They Go Again

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Remember this?

Did you notice how they all wailed like wounded banshees that he was a liar when he suggested that they wanted to go after Social Security and medicare?

Yeah…

They will never stop trying to cut the programs. Never. It is in their DNA. Now Trump will say something like, “were not going to cut it we’re going to make a great program! Everyone will have more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives, buhleeve me.” But they’ll cut it. That’s their Holy Grail.

And note heroes Romney and Manchin are pushing it, reminding us that the old school Republicans and centrist Democrats weren’t worth a damn either.

Remarkably unremarkable advice

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 28, 2023

Take a deep breath, center, and focus

George Takei shares what politics has taught him in 86 years:

A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.

It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.

But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.

I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.

Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.

There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too.

That advice would seem unremarkable if not for the fact that so many with less patience speak with louder voices. How many disagreements have you had with your spouse without moving out and filing for divorce?