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Dirty Coffee

Published by digby on September 2, 2023

CNN reports:

The breach of the Coffee County elections office can seem almost out of place in the 97-page Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump and associates.

The sprawling racketeering allegations spread from centers of power with pressure on the vice president to ignore the Constitution, reported calls to secretaries of state to change vote counts, and the creation of slates of fake electors for Congress. They also include the invitation of a tech team to a non-public area of a small-town administration building.

But to some people in Coffee County, deep in southern Georgia and far from interstates, the alleged crimes were merely the latest chapter in a local history of failing to secure the rights and votes of residents. And they worry it’s a history that will repeat…

Douglas is a majority Black city, and the surrounding Coffee County is about 68% White and 29% Black. Like many places in the South, Black citizens have had to fight for democratic rights in court – repeatedly suing for representative districts for the election of local officials since the 1970s. In the late summer, it’s unbearably hot – so hot that if you sit outside too long people ask if you’re crazy. If you have a latent southern accent, the town will draw it out.

When CNN asked local people how to put the alleged election office breach in the broader context of voting rights in the county, nearly everyone suggested we speak to “Miss Livvy.” Olivia Coley-Pearson is a Douglas city commissioner, the first Black woman elected to the position. She’s a tall woman who wore a Barbie-pink blazer when we met, and like many others CNN spoke with in Coffee County, she saw the involvement of her county in the alleged Trump scheme as part of a long local pattern of voter suppression and intimidation.

“There’s power – a certain amount of power and control when you’re in certain offices,” Coley-Pearson told CNN. “Some people will do whatever it takes to maintain it. … And if it takes voter intimidation to do it, some people willing to intimidate to maintain that power and control.”

Coley-Pearson, named a “human rights hero” by the American Bar Association, follows in the footsteps of her mother, who was a political activist in Coffee County in the 1970s, the decade after segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox had picked the county to host many of his speeches. Gladys Coley is commemorated with others in a memorial plaque for fighting for civil rights in Douglas and across the county.

Coley-Pearson is well-known for helping people who may need a ride to the polls. Not everyone around town appreciates her efforts, however. In a Facebook Live video posted a couple days before the alleged breach, Latham complained about Coley-Pearson’s get-out-the-vote efforts for Georgia’s runoff elections to the US Senate.

“Olivia Pearson’s up to her normal – handing out hamburgers and hot dogs … to people who voted and stuff,” Latham said, running her fingers through her cropped blonde hair in apparent exasperation. “So, all kinds of things happening in Coffee County just to get people to come vote. Yeah, it’s not a really good situation down here.”

Latham urged her viewers to vote. “We got to out-vote the fraud,” she said. She has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

‘Crooked Coffee’

Coley-Pearson had tangled with local officials over voter access several times. Georgia law allows people who are disabled or illiterate to get assistance in voting, and Coley-Pearson helped with that in the 2012 election. At the time, it seemed uneventful.

But Coffee County officials complained to the Georgia secretary of state’s office that she helped people who didn’t qualify for assistance. It led to a years-long investigation, and though the state didn’t prosecute her, she was charged locally with two felonies. After one trial ended in a hung jury, she was found not guilty in the second in 2018.

Then, during early voting in October 2020, Coley-Pearson asked a question about the buttons on a voting machine, sparking a confrontation with then-election supervisor Misty Hampton. Coley-Pearson says Hampton was “hollering” that she must not touch the machine. Hampton, who is White, has said in a deposition that she spoke in a “normal voice” and told Coley-Pearson she was being “disruptive.” The voter Coley-Pearson assisted said in a deposition she felt afraid of Hampton.

Coley-Pearson left the polling place to pick up another voter, Rolanda Williams. In the meantime, Hampton called the police. “She’s out here touching my darn machines,” Hampton told the police, as recorded in a police video. At one point, after saying Coley-Pearson had improperly touched the ballot, Hampton said, “I don’t care what I got to file, what I got to do, she is not to come back to my office. If I have to say I feel threatened I don’t care. Because I do!” Hampton has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

When Coley-Pearson returned to the polling place with Williams and stepped out of the car, she was met by police officers. They said she was banned from the property for yelling, she remembers. “I guess they didn’t like me asking why, and I got arrested. I was put in handcuffs,” Coley-Pearson said, beginning to cry at the memory.

“She was telling the cop that the handcuffs were too tight. And to me, he was trying to get them tighter,” Williams, the voter Coley-Pearson was driving, told CNN. When Williams went inside the polling place, she said Hampton began asking her questions. “She was asking me where I work – which, I felt was none of her business. … She actually pulled up a Facebook page of mine. And I felt like I was into some type of trouble or something.”

“I was scared and fearful,” Williams said. “I didn’t want to go back up there to vote. And I won’t go back and vote, because of everything that’s going on. I didn’t understand why they call this ‘Crooked Coffee.’ But now I understand.”

I think we all understand. That’s the old Georgia that’s trying to maintain its stranglehold on power. Donald Trump articulates that for them but they would do it anyway. They’ve always done it.

Biden in Florida

Published by digby on September 2, 2023

DeSantis wouldn’t be seen with him. Naturally.

Luckily some people in Florida still have good manners:

And here’s a surprise:

Heh. Somebody just stuck it to both Trump and DeSantis.

Truth Social on the brink of failure?

Published by digby on September 2, 2023

That’s pretty much what Truth Social is all about. Just Trump worship. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be enough:

The  complex deal to take Donald Trump’s social-media platform Truth Social public faces a crucial test next week that could determine whether it becomes a multibillion-dollar company that the former US president once vowed would stand up to “big tech” or instead languish in financial limbo.

Under the terms of the deal, announced in October 2021, Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group was destined to merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp, a special-purpose acquisition company, or Spac.

But shareholders in Digital World are now being asked to give the company another year to complete the deal. If they refuse to do so at a meeting on 8 September, the enterprise may never become the $1.7bn company it once envisioned.

The path to tech riches the deal floated for Trump and his supporters has not been smooth.

Jay Ritter, a University of Florida finance professor, told the Washington Post this week that the merger has “been pretty much unprecedented in terms of all of the glitches”. The Post published a detailed exploration of the platform’s current position, prompting Shannon Devine, a spokeswoman for Trump Media, to accuse the paper of posting “a heaping pile of bias”.

Soon after it was announced Digital World’s plan to merge with Trump Media was hit with allegations that conversations between the two had taken place before they were permitted under Spac rules.

In March, Patrick Orlando was fired as CEO by Digital World’s board and a former board member was accused of insider trading.

Deadlines for closing the deal have already been extended five times. Digital World is facing warnings from the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock exchange that its shares could be delisted over a reporting issue.

In July, Digital World’s shares rallied 93% before a preliminary $18m settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over accounting fraud charges.

Last month, the company and Trump Media urged investors to vote for an extension to prevent DWAC’s dissolution.

“If you are a DWAC stockholder who believes in Truth Social’s mission to reopen the Internet and give people their voices back, we strongly urge you to vote TODAY,” the notice said, Bloomberg reported.

But Trump Media has blamed regulators for the deal’s delays. Last year, it accused the SEC of working to “sabotage” the merger, telling the Washington Post that agency had tossed “the matter into a bureaucratic black hole of inaction” and violated its own charter.

Even his businesses whine and complain that everything is rigged against Trump. But if you look at that comment to Trump’s bleating above you can see that he’s such a martyr to his followers that it all serves to reinforce his position as the second coming.

Another DeSantis debacle

Published by digby on September 2, 2023

He seems to really loathe teenagers

We all know that Ron DeSantis has a real problem with kids. Scolding a little kid for eating ice cream because it has too much sugar was bad enough. Humiliating those high school students who wore masks waseven worse. Now this:

Quinn Mitchell has seen at least 35 presidential candidates in person since 2019, when he first started showing up at New Hampshire primary events to ask them questions.

Not a single one of them had ever treated the now-15-year-old as if he were a threat—until Ron DeSantis came to town.

It all started with a straightforward question. In June, when DeSantis stopped for a town hall event in Hollis, Mitchell raised his hand in the crowd.

“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power,” the teenager asked the governor, “a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?”

DeSantis dodged the question and said Americans shouldn’t get stuck in the past, but not before remarking—in a somewhat impressed, incredulous tone—on Mitchell’s age. “Are you in high school?” the governor asked.

The moment went viral, with DeSantis’ non-answer encapsulating how even Donald Trump’s lead primary rival could not bring himself to acknowledge the former president’s efforts to undo the 2020 election. CNN even played it during an interview with Chris Christie to tee up a question to the Trump foe.

[…]

Across all of the reboots and turmoil, a consistent thread apparently remained: the DeSantis team’s willingness to go to unusual lengths to prevent a teenage boy from having a chance to follow up with the candidate on his question—and, to hear Mitchell tell it, personally express regret that he made the governor look bad.

More broadly, the teenager’s story distills some key reasons why DeSantis’ presidential bid is struggling: a candidate with clear difficulty making personal connections, a team obsessed with managing every detail on the campaign trail, and a pervasive anxiety over the idea of alienating Trump voters.

Combined together, those factors may ensure DeSantis gets nowhere near the White House in 2024. In New Hampshire, they’ve already pushed a precocious and passionate teenager to consider quitting politics altogether.

“I may be older now and know I can handle this a lot more, but if they had done that to me a few years back, I don’t know if I could have handled that,” Mitchell said. “It’s unfortunate, because I just want to ask my question.”

In the nation’s first primary state, where individual voters can have an outsized impact on the process, Mitchell made himself a staple of the New Hampshire political scene before he was even a teenager.

A self-described political independent who loves history and politics, Mitchell sees it as his “civic duty” to show up to ask questions, especially on behalf of “people who live in other states and the people who want to ask those questions,” who “don’t always get the opportunity.”

Before DeSantis, presidential candidates have not just tolerated the teenager but seemed to genuinely appreciate him. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) met with Mitchell and later worked his enthusiasm for politics into her stump speech.

More recently, Christie not only gave him a shoutout during the CNN interview—“he goes to every town hall meeting… he asks really tough questions”—but was quoted in a recent USA Today profile of Mitchell. “Quinn, remember me when you are president,” the former New Jersey governor quipped.

‘They’re Watching You’

After his question about Jan. 6 blew up on DeSantis, Mitchell—who was not intending to land a punch on the governor—said he “genuinely felt bad about it.” A few days later, he woke up early for the hour-and-a-half drive to Merrimack, where he intended to personally say as much to DeSantis at the town’s Fourth of July parade.

Once there, the high level of security around the governor’s contingent stood out to Mitchell and other observers. Staffers for the super PAC, Never Back Down, “were nudging the security guys and pointing at me,” Mitchell said. “I actually had a reporter come up and just say, ‘They’re pointing at you and they’re watching you.’”

Unfazed, Mitchell patiently walked along as the candidate crossed from curb to curb, shaking hands with voters; each time he came close to DeSantis, however, the security guards would hold their arms out in front and parry him away.

Finally, Mitchell was able to get within earshot of the governor. When he passed by, he told him, “I’m so sorry that I got you in all that trouble,” and offered him a chance to give a different or more detailed answer to the question.

According to Mitchell, DeSantis nodded in response, at least acknowledging his question, and the two had a quick handshake. That’s when things went south: right after the handshake, Mitchell recalled his shock when he felt a firm tug on his shirt, pulling him away from DeSantis. Suddenly, all he could see were the outstretched arms of security guards and plain clothed aides.

“Usually what they do is they don’t push you or anything, but they put their hands out and kind of body you, so you just don’t move, basically,” Mitchell said, describing a shuffling motion more akin to an offensive line on a football team than a presidential candidate’s security detail.

If that were not startling enough, right after the fracas, a DeSantis security guard cornered Mitchell and ordered him not to move from the spot for another five minutes. In response, he did what almost any 15-year old would do.

He texted his mom.

Toward the end of the parade, Mitchell’s mother reunited with her son and then demanded an explanation from DeSantis for why his security detail was putting their hands on her boy, an interaction that was observed by a Boston Globe reporter on the scene.

What the Globe didn’t catch was the involvement of the second most important person in the DeSantis campaign: Casey, the governor’s wife and arguably his top political adviser.

Instead of diffusing the situation, however, the Florida First Lady suggested to Mitchell’s mother that she was overreacting—and that her son was fibbing.

“Well, I’m a mother, too,” Casey said, according to Mitchell and other witnesses, along with multiple sources who shared contemporaneous communications on the incident with The Daily Beast. “I know what you’re experiencing, and we’re all very afraid for our children—even if they’re exaggerating.”

As for the candidate himself, DeSantis told Mitchell he would “get to the bottom” of the one-sided encounter with security, and even told the teenager to come to his next event.

‘Got Our Kid’

Ahead of their August 19 event, a staffer for Never Back Down reached out to Mitchell. USA Today let the PAC know that a photographer wanted to come photograph Mitchell for the upcoming profile. The staffer just wanted to confirm he would be in attendance.

The teenager obliged. But after walking into the event, held in a firearm factory in Newport, he noticed something odd.

It wasn’t just that he saw a pair of security guards flanking him as he made his way to the far side of the venue. The weird part was that Never Back Down staffers were taking photos of him. It was notable to Mitchell, even before he learned of the ominous caption—“got our kid”—that one staffer was seen attaching to a Snapchat photo.

The governor kept audience questions to a tight 15 minutes, throwing Mitchell a glance but ignoring his outstretched hand, though the teenager now stands over 6 feet tall.

Security kept their defensive posture as Mitchell tried to make his way to stage right—where DeSantis was attempting to chat with voters and take selfies—blocking him from getting toward the group of voters waiting to chat with the candidate.

Even after Mitchell gave up on his months-long pursuit of a follow-up question to DeSantis about his views on Trump and the transfer of power, security prevented him from crossing the room to see a family friend, until they eventually relented.

Since the incidents, Mitchell has not heard from the DeSantis campaign, or the PAC, though he expected to. He could not reach an in-state contact for the governor’s team himself.

“The campaign, they could have called and said, ‘We’re so sorry, this should have never happened, we’ll get to the bottom of it,’” Mitchell said. “Never got a call like that. They never apologized to us for any of it.”

Mitchell often says that it’s a privilege to live in New Hampshire, a state where even a determined teenager can have the power to influence the presidential election in a small way. His dream is to become a political reporter, but he said the DeSantis events almost made him want to hang it up for good.

Whatever happens, Mitchell is likely to keep up his rigorous primary schedule—even if he’s unlikely to try to see DeSantis again anytime soon. But the teenager said if he ran into him “at conventions or a multiple candidate event, I will do my best to press him.”

I guess this is the sort of thing they’ve spent their hundreds of millions on. The campaign is like their candidate, creepy, paranoid and cruel. And I especially like that wife Casey shows up to claim the kid is a liar. Sweet lady. Really nice.

FAFO, mofo

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 2, 2023

We’re still waiting for Jan. 6 ‘masterminds’ to get theirs

HuffPost: Pam Hemphill was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days in jail for her involvement in the U.S. Capitol riot. She told Trump to stop using her story for personal political gain.

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Proud Boy leader Joe Biggs to 17 years in prison this week. Someone on “formerly known as Twitter” snarked that by the time he gets out of jail, Biggs will be a proud man.

The Lincoln Project is having fun with the fate of the furious.

Comeuppance is a guilty pleasure we were denied in the wake of the banking collapse of 2008. Those assholes got $1.6b in bonuses.

But these threats are not funny. We covered some of this nascent Rwanda talk on Friday. But threats of violence against election workers are widespread enough to deserve an Election Threats Task Force. At least some people are being charged:

More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a Justice Department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.

Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to former President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the federal government to do more to protect election workers.

The Justice Department created the Election Threats Task Force in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.

I got dispatched in 2022 to investigate reports that some guy with a weapon (unspecified) was spotted outside a local polling station standing (legally) just outside the electioneering limit. He was gone by the time I arrived. The photo I received on my phone was of some morbidly obese dude wearing a .38 revolver that looked so tiny on his hip that it might have come in a box of Cracker Jack.

He may have been a joke, but these real threats are no joking matter.

A Texas man was given 3 1/2 years earlier this month after suggesting a “mass shooting of poll workers and election officials” last year, charges stated. In one message, the Justice Department said, the man wrote: “Someone needs to get these people AND their children. The children are the most important message to send.” His lawyer did not return a message seeking comment.

One indictment unveiled in August was against a man accused of leaving an expletive-filled voicemail after the 2020 election for Tina Barton, a Republican who formerly was the clerk in Rochester Hills, Michigan, outside Detroit. According to the indictment, the person vowed that “a million plus patriots will surround you when you least expect it” and “we’ll … kill you.”

Barton said it was just one of many threats that left her feeling deeply anxious.

“I’m really hopeful the charges will send a strong message, and we won’t find ourselves in the same position after the next election,” she said.

Maybe. Maybe not. Although some of Trump’s followers who found out are figuring it out:

Pam Hemphill was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days in jail for her involvement in the U.S. Capitol riot. She told Trump to stop using her story for personal political gain.

A self-avowed “ex-MAGA Granny” who served jail time for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot has called out Donald Trump for “using” her story for political gain.

[…]

“Please,” she wrote in a tweet directed at Trump, “don’t be using me for anything.”

“I’m not a victim of Jan6, I pleaded guilty because I was guilty!”

How long, O Lord?

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 2, 2023

How long, O Lord?

Progressives? You’re not as smart as you think you are. As a friend said many times, “Republicans speak to create their own reality, through the constant repetition of their claims.” We find repetition boring.

Behold, a word from our proprietress:

A lot of stupid decisions? Name five. Stupider than not wearing a mask or talking up junk cures and drinking bleach?

The pandemic was declared in the last year of the Trump presidency.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pandemics-public-health-coronavirus-pandemic-f6e976f34a6971c889ca8a4c5e1c0068

A few more words on repetition:

The pandemic was declared in the last year of the Trump presidency.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/nation-records-400000-covid-deaths-on-last-day-of-donald-trump-presidency/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/us-coronavirus-response-donald-trump-health-policy
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1098543849/pro-trump-counties-continue-to-suffer-far-higher-covid-death-tolls
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/health/2021/03/29/pandemic-officials-say-trump-administration-marginalized-them–interfered–could-have-prevented-many-deaths
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-policy-failures-have-exacted-a-heavy-toll-on-public-health1/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/deborah-birx-donald-trump-covid-election-deaths
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/05/business/he-listened-trump-didnt-wear-mask-his-family-received-his-ashes-day-after-president-announced-his-covid-19-diagnosis/

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

Pathetic

Published by digby on September 1, 2023

Axios reports:

Each day, former President Trump‘s staff presents him with a stack of mostly supportive letters, op-eds and printouts of tweets. They’re meant to keep him informed — but perhaps just as important, to boost his spirits.

Trump, signature black Sharpie in hand, often scrawls responses on them and has his aides text a photo of the comments back to the writers. The Trump-signed hard copies are sent back by U.S. mail.

Why it matters: It’s an ego-soothing exercise for Trump that winds up creating a series of viral threads, as recipients of Trump’s comments — some of whom are essentially pen pals with large digital followings — post them on social media.

For Trump — whose online rants against critics, prosecutors and judges are escalating as the four felony cases against him proceed — the virality of such personal notes provides a constant chain of support, commiseration and shared anger.

Zoom in: Paul Ingrassia, a former Trump White House intern, says he’s received more than a dozen notes from Trump since October in response to supportive articles Ingrassia wrote for conservative outlets.

After he wrote Trump recently to flag an article “you may have overlooked,” Trump wrote back: “Never! Just posted” — Trump had reposted Ingrassia’s piece on Truth Social.

Recalling a visit Ingrassia had made to the former president’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump added: “Great seeing you — the man behind the great writing — you are looking good.”

Like many of Trump’s pen pals, Ingrassia posts the former president’s replies on his own social media accounts. He says Trump’s handwritten notes, which he’s framing, encourage him to keep writing articles.

Trump’s circle of flattery includes allies across the country who flag their own work, tweets, messages or video of their TV appearances to Trump aide Natalie Harp, senior adviser Jason Miller, communications director Steven Cheung and others, two people familiar with the process tell Axios.

Material deemed significant enough for Trump’s eyes is printed out aboard Trump’s jet or at one of his clubs to be presented to him.

One ally whose messages typically reach Trump is Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who narrowly lost a bid for the U.S. House last year in the district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“If [Trump] had people in his first term who were as loyal as I am, he wouldn’t have a lot of the issues” he has now, Loomer wrote to the former president’s staff recently, adding that she would “sniff out” the “traitors” to Trump.

“Laura, I hear you!” Trump responded in bold letters on a printout of her message.

“Sounds good to me,” he added beside Loomer’s line about traitors.

His reply was signed “Donald,” in Trump’s large, jagged signature.

Trump recently praised Garrett Ventry, a GOP strategist and former congressional aide who frequently goes to bat for him on Fox News, for a TV appearance after Trump was indicted on charges of withholding classified documents.

“Thank you Garrett, great job,” Trump wrote on printout of a text message from Ventry to a Trump aides.

“It’s a great pat on the back and it’s smart because it really doesn’t take him that much time,” Ventry said.

Between the lines: Trump’s handwritten responses have come to be coveted by young Republicans who haven’t gotten a response.

“How do I get one?” other young conservative influencers wrote to a Trump aide after a 17-year-old podcaster who goes by “GOP Josh” posted a reply from Trump on his social media account.

On the other hand: Trump’s notes also can be a lot like his dismissive, insulting posts on social media — particularly when his staff prints out a critical story for him to see.

Journalists are a favorite target, but Trump’s shots don’t always involve politics — sometimes they have the ring of a status-conscious New Yorker.

Emily Smith, former editorial director for the New York Post’s Page Six, posted a photo of a handwritten note she got from Trump last year about a story she’d written about him being snubbed from a wedding invitation.

“Fake news,” Trump wrote on top of a printed copy of the newspaper. “Not interested in going, never would have gone … just a made up PR hit job.”

Loomer and Ingrassia aren’t just “far-right activists. Loomer is certifiably insane and Ingrassia is an incel who worships trafficker Andrew Tate. I’m sure they’ll be in the cabinet in a second term.

The stupid is running strong these days

Published by digby on September 1, 2023

Cancun Ted is desperate for a Fox gig

The manly man being manly with his manly beard and his manly beer. And yet nobody can stand the guy, not even the people who vote for him.

Brothers in arms

Published by digby on September 1, 2023

If you have some time today, take a look at this video from a leading activist in Hungary about the growing ties between Viktor Orbán and the Republican Party. It’s not good:

This is the story of how has the far right ruling party of Hungary been building its connections with the Trumpist wing of the American Republicans. In our video, we show that Orbán’s party, the Fidesz, and its publicly funded political machinery have been consciously working for years on developing a network of lobby groups, think tanks and media organizations that creates and nurtures the international comradery between the hardline nationalists of Hungary and America. It is not a coincidence that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson visited Orbán and had been presenting Hungary in his interviews as the Trumpian Utopia Country, nor that the Hungarian PM was invited to speak at the CPAC Texas and Hungary hosted the first Conservative Political Action Conference held in Europe, nor that Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay Bill” has a striking similarity to Hungary’s anti gay law passed in 2021 – two years before Ron DeSantis had built up the courage to copy it in the US.