Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The last time Trump skipped a debate was January 28, 2016. Remember this?

Those were the days. I’m going to guess that won’t happen this time. Ron DeSantis has been admonished not to go after Trump and instead take on Vivek Ramaswamy and he’s already sinking like a rock in the polls. Chris Christie will likely be the lone Trump critic and he’ll probably be pretty harsh. But what difference does it make? This debate is basically a death watch pageant to determine who will be in position to step in if Trump is unable to run?

Nothing will ever beat this moment, however.

He’s so dignified.

The good news for Trump lovers is that he’ll be with Tucker Carlson on his Xitter show:

The interview between Carlson and Trumpalmost didn’t happen, according to two people familiar with its planning.The men had been talking informally for two months about possibly setting up an event to draw attention away from the Fox-hosted debate.

But Carlson was scheduled to be out of the country this week for interviews with Hungary’s autocratic Prime Minister Viktor Orban and with Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, making it difficult to schedule the interview.

Trump had been going back and forth about whether he would show up onstage for the Wednesday RNC debate, or any other. He had dined with Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and the network’s president, Jay Wallace, at his Bedminster Club earlier this summer and left them with the impression that he may participate in the event,according to three people familiar with the dinner.

But Trump has long complained that the network appears to have turned on him,with Foxgiving at-times favorable coverage to rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Fox co-founder Rupert Murdoch has encouraged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to enter the primary.

Two weeks ago, Trump and Carlson fixed a date for the interview andCarlson’s team made the last-minute decision to “bang it out” right before heading to Europe, according to someone familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Carlson began posting his shows to his account on Twitter in June.Elon Musk, X’s owner, has been personally involved in developing features that Carlson’steam believes will make their videos more accessible, including making it possible to play X videos on television sets using Apple’s Airplay feature,according to a person close to Carlson.Carlson’s team also pushed X to develop a “picture in picture” feature that allows users to continue watching an X video while using other features on their phone, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump did not want it to become public that he had taped the interview and instructed his team to keep it a secret, advisers said. Trump’s team tried to keep signaling he might still attend the Fox debate, with aides refusing to confirm he was considering sitting for a Carlson interview that he had already recorded. Even then, he kept polling people on whether he should attend the debate.

For its part, Carlson’s team did not see the Bedminster sit-down as a guarantee that Trump wouldn’t also decide to attend the debate this week.

Trump did not officially tell RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel of his decision to not appear onstage until Sunday, even after word of the Carlson interview had become public. Trump toldMcDaniel that the decision was not meant to spite her, according to people familiar with his calls.

Trump told advisers he didn’t want Carlson’s interview to appear on X because it is a competitor to Truth Social, Trump’s social media network. But Carlson and his team have been building a relationship with Musk for months and told Trump that they did not think Trump’s own platform had the necessary reach.

Carlson has echoed and amplified Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, while also advancing a theory that the “Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

But Trump has long accepted a level of criticism from Carlson that he didn’t from most of the other Fox hosts, according to people familiar with the dynamic between the two men.

While at Fox, Carlson interviewed Trump multiple times but maintained a more independent posture than some of his fellow hosts, such as Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro.

After Carlson’s texts excoriating Trump were released as part of Dominion’s litigation against Fox, Carlsonattempted to assure the former president that he had been blowing off steam afterhaving been misled by Trump aides.

In one such incident, Carlson had to correct an error in a segment about dead people supposedlyvoting in the 2020 election in Georgia. The information had come to one of Carlson’s producers from a Trump aide purporting to have proof of voting irregularities in the state, and has been widely debunked. Carlson railed privately against the unreliability of the information peddled by Trump’s team.

But Carlson’s show has always carried enough Trump-friendly commentaryto remain in the former president’s good graces.

Even after Carlson’s texts became public in March, Trump signaled that he was happy with Carlson’s special that was running on the network’s digital streaming service. The program argued that the Jan. 6 attack was not a “deadly insurrection” and that the violence of the day had been overblown. Multiple people have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack. Four people in the crowd died, a Capitol Police officer died after being beaten by rioters and four Capitol Police officers who served on Jan. 6 died by suicide in the days and months after.

Trump shared an article about Carlson’s special and wrote, “he doesn’t hate me, or at least, not anymore!”

Soon after, Carlson invited Trump to come on his Foxshow and Trump agreed. Carlson and his production team traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida to conduct the interview. “For a man who is caricatured as an extremist,” Carlson said of Trump, in his introduction to the interview, “we think you’ll find what he has to say moderate, sensible and wise.”

After Fox canceled Carlson’s show, the network’s ratings took a hit. In the four weeks before Carlson’s exit, Fox averaged 2.6 million viewers in prime time; in the four weeks after, Fox averaged just 1.6 million — still at the top in cable news but down 39 percent. The network has recovered some of those viewers with a new prime-time lineup, which has boosted its average total viewers in prime time to 2.2 million.

Trump has complained to his aides that Carlson was not friendly enough to him at times during his presidency. But he also maintained a respect for Carlson’s high ratings, later telling advisers he couldn’t believe Fox fired Carlson.

Fox has not yet released Carlson from his contract, which expires in December 2024. The company has informed Carlson he is in breach of his contract by releasing videos on X. Carlson’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, has in turn accused Fox of violating Carlson’s right to freely express his views on current events.

The two men don’t have additional events planned together. While Carlson is at work trying to stand up a new company, rebuilding studios in Maine and Florida, he wants to maintain some distance from Trump, whose false denial of the results of the 2020 election frustrated Carlson and helped make Fox the target of costly legal battles.

But Carlson continues to enjoy Trump’s company, to a point. “Do I like Trump? I love him. But there are many levels to Trump,” Carlson told his authorized biographer Chadwick Moore. “He was a completely ineffectual president. He couldn’t manage my household. He’s not a manager, and that’s very frustrating to watch.”

“But Trump on the level of guy? To have dinner with Trump is one of the great joys in the world. If you were to assemble a list of people to have dinner with, Trump would be in the top spot,” Carlson said.

“In the end, Trump is just the maitre’d, a wonderful host. Funny, outrageous, absolutely on his own planet.”

I’m pretty sure that’s not really a compliment. Not that Trump cares. He just wants to stick it to Fox and going on Tucker to be broadcast during the debate is the perfect way to do it.

Republicans trust their doctors to make health recommendations. That’s good…

But nearly 75% of Republicans trust Donald Trump to make health recommendations. They trust him over the CDC.

Here’s where we are. Trump pushed Operation Warp Speed and took the vaccine but he isn’t allowed to take credit for it because his people have been brainwashed against them:

America’s growing anti-vaxx crisis has been laid bare in a national poll that shows huge chunks of the country believe in conspiracy theories about safe shots. 

One-quarter of adults said they believe the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism – a widely studied and discredited claim that emerged in the 1990s.

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll also found that a third of adults believe that the Covid shots caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people.

The vaccine-skeptical movement across the country intensified after the Covid pandemic, linked to pushback against Covid vaccine mandates and increased misinformation as people spent more time online.

A good quarter of our countrymen are completely addled by conspiracy theories enabled by leaders like Donald Trump. I feel sorry for their children.

Former president Donald Trump won’t be appearing at tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee Wisconsin. He says he has no need to participate because he’s so far ahead in the polls. And he’s right. He’s also very busy. He needs to get ready to be arrested on Thursday when he turns himself in for booking at the Fulton County jail. He’s got a lot on his plate. It will be interesting to see if any of the challengers will summon up the nerve to attack Trump for failing to show up or go after him for his legal problems.

I’m sure we’ll hear something about Hunter Biden since this will be broadcast on Fox and they apparently have some sort of contractual obligation to discuss the “Biden Crime Family” every ten minutes or so. I expect the candidates will all be eager to participate. The question really is whether any of the challengers will take the opportunity to tell the audience about the “Trump Crime Family’s” global pay-to-play operation.

I’m not expecting much but it’s possible that Chris Christie could bring up Jared Kushner’s $2 billion payoff from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund almost immediately after leaving the White House. He’s done it before. But I haven’t heard anything about the Trump family started hosting the Saudi backed LIV golf tournament or the very lucrative agreement with a Saudi real estate company for a Trump hotel in Oman in the early months after Trump was sent packing back to Mar-a-Lago. Considering all the hand-wringing over Hunter’s laptop you’d think someone in that group of misfits would see it as a useful criticism of the front runner.

What we do have are these preposterous declarations from Donald Trump’s number two son, Eric:

Eric Trump: “The only family in US history that didn’t enrich themselves when they went into government is the Trump family.” pic.twitter.com/uJ9p8gcGuF

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 19, 2023

It’s a struggle not to laugh hysterically at that bold-faced lie. Trump refused to divest his businesses as other high office-holders have done, and instead ran his business out of the White House. According to Forbes Magazine, he left office $2.4 billion richer than when he went in:

If not for the pandemic, there would have been even more. Trump’s business was hauling in about $650 million annually during the first three years of his presidency. But in 2020, revenues plunged to an estimated $450 million as Covid infected the business. “It’s hurting me, and it’s hurting Hilton, and it’s hurting all of the great hotel chains all over the world,” Trump said in a March 2020 press conference at the White House. “It’s hurting everybody. I mean, there are very few businesses that are doing well now.”  

That couldn’t have been a motivation for him refusing to admit that the crisis was as bad as experts were saying or pushing for normality even as tens of thousands were dying each week, could it? Who could ever suspect such a thing?

Most of Trump’s profits during that period came from his hotels and clubs where people were paying vast sums for access and foreign governments lavishly lined Trump’s pockets. The NY Times reported last fall that the governments of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and China spent millions at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC “at crucial times in 2017 and 2018 for those countries’ relations with the United States.” They added that “Republican lobbyists working on behalf of these countries — some operating without registering as foreign agents, as required by law — spent tens of thousands more at the Trump hotel during the same periods.”

He promoted his properties every chance he got, spending one out of every three days at one of them. He even announced that he was hosting the G7 meeting at his Doral Country Club at one point and only backed down when some of the people he counted on to bail him out of his impeachment were unhappy with the arrangement.

It wasn’t just foreign governments that lined Trump’s pockets. American taxpayers did too. Eric Trump, acting as spokesman for the Trump Organization had assured the media that the company had only charged the government the actual cost of any lodging and amenities:

If my father travels, they [Secret Service agents] stay at our properties free — meaning, like cost for housekeeping. The government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50,

He lied. The (Democratic)House Oversight Committee released records showing that the government had spent more than $1.4 million for Secret Service to stay at Trump properties since 2017 and had charged as much as $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents.

This week Eric Trump once again demanded that the American people believe him or their lying eyes, asserting that the Trump family was scrupulous about avoiding conflict of interest despite mountains of evidence to the contrary:

Eric Trump: “If somebody came into one of our hotels while my father was president & they were from a foreign country, a government official from a foreign country – you know what we’d do? We’d donate all the money from that margarita they bought at the bar to the US Treasury.” pic.twitter.com/dxU537XY0b

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 22, 2023

The Trump organization is on record returning $151,470  to the federal treasury in 2018, $191,000 in 2019 and $105,465  in 2020 ostensibly representing all the “profits” they received from foreign governments. It’s a joke. There was no public record provided to back up the amounts and when the House Oversight Committee investigated it was clear the “donations” represented a very small percentage of the take. Maybe it was just the Margarita bill.

It’s even questionable if he donated his last year’s 400k presidential salary to the government as he’d done in the three previous years (and bragged about incessantly.) It’s totally believable that he decided to keep the 2020 salary after everything that happened after the election.

All that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include Trump pressuring foreign governments to change laws to benefit his properties, Don Jr being received in India like a visiting potentate to sell access and condos, Trump’s Indonesian resort project getting backing from Chinese investors and on and on. The level of blatant corruption by the Trump family is mind-boggling.

For reasons that have never been clear, nobody ever seemed that interested in this story despite the full bore press against Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the family’s global charity and Biden’s son’s banal influence peddling. If any Republican candidate wants to open up a new line of criticism of Donald Trump that one’s ripe. Considering the GOP’s Hunter obsession, maybe the Democrats should give it a whirl as well.

Salon

This is just sad:

When Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee began a push in April to address public safety, his family was grieving the loss of two close friends, both educators killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school.

His call for millions of dollars to harden school security was embraced by Republicans in the legislature, who flanked him during a formal announcement.

But days later, when Mr. Lee, a Republican, decided to go further and ask for an order of protection law that could temporarily restrict an individual’s access to firearms, he stood alone for the announcement. The legislature would wrap up its work by the end of the month without taking a vote to pass it.

Now, Mr. Lee has summoned lawmakers back to Nashville on Monday for a special session on public safety that could include consideration of a limited version of the law. But without the support of most in his own party, that measure appears, once again, destined for failure, underscoring the power dynamics of a Republican supermajority driven by a right-wing base hardened against any potential infringement on gun ownership.

They won’t even go for a temporary restriction on firearms. They’ll agree to fund more mental health, toughencriminal penalties for threats of mass violence, target juvenile crime and incentivize he safe storage of firearms. But they will NOT do anything a outy the guns. Nothing. But at least they’ve found a way to put more Black kids in jail so that’s good.

This sickness lies at the heart of what can only be described as America’s rapid decline. We are a very irrational people in general but this is insane.

It’s not just a “Once in a Lifetime” question

“Huh, I wonder what happened in 1980?” Dissent magazine’s Matthew Sitman snarked on Tuesday. He referred to a chart posted by David Leonhardt.

I consider this chart to be the clearest indictment of our country’s path over the last several decades: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country: pic.twitter.com/GhUIn9fzdb

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) August 22, 2023

“Reaganland” author Rick Perlstein replied, “Folks stopped getting a free ride. Now only can enjoy long life if they honor the natural order of things as dictated (if religious) by the Almighty; or (if secular) the almighty market. Or else, they had it coming. Order having been restored, conservatives are satisfied now…”

But not really. Not until they’ve fully restored the monarchy on these shores. Barring that, reinstated feudalism will suffice. Surely the peasants will rejoice.

Leonhardt has been working on “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.” The book that analyzes how over the last half-century “our society has abandoned working-class people – of all races – in crucial ways. Their incomes have stagnated, as has their life expectancy. They no longer trust either political party or other institutions. They are frustrated, with good reason.”

He explains:

My basic argument is that the past century has seen a struggle between democratic capitalism and rough-and-tumble capitalism. Democratic capitalism respects both the power and the weaknesses of the free market. Rough-and-tumble capitalism keeps taxes low and regulation light.

I like the term “democratic capitalism” because it captures the symbiotic relationship between the two ideas under the best of circumstances. Democratic governance prevents the excesses of capitalism, while rising living standards foster the good will on which democracy depends.

Democracy can strengthen capitalism, and capitalism can strengthen democracy.

If you’re tempted to give up on our political system as hopelessly rigged, I would urge you not to be. Every successful political movement of the past century did not give up on the political system. It set out to change that system.

Except it was the changes wrought by the Civil Rights and liberalizing movements of the 1960s that provoked the last half-century of conservative backlash.

“Not one step back,” insists Bishop William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign. Arrayed against him are well-financed, rough-and-tumble capitalists determined to restore “the natural order of things” in which (at a minimum) their economic, political, and cultural supremacy is unchallenged once more.

With apologies to the bishop, the natural order of things is two steps forward, one step back. See chart at top.

My God, what have we done?

Thickly but not well enough

Amanda Marcotte comments on the Roger Stone video that “The Beat with Ari Melber” on MSNBC has been reporting on this week. The show ran excerpts of video of Stone shot by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen for “A Storm Foretold.” 

The clips provide further proof that the Trump plot to overturn the election did not arise from a “sincere” belief that the election was “stolen.”

Marcotte writes:

The video captures Stone’s aggravation at finding he’s been barred from speaking at Trump’s January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington D.C. 

“I don’t understand how they want us to lead the march but can’t even tell us where to go,” Stone whines, adding that he’s not speaking directly to Rudy Giuliani or the rest of Trump’s inner circle. He complains that it’s “very clear that I was never on their list.”

“It’s just childish and it’s amateurish. That’s why they lost. They don’t know what they’re doing,” he snipes. 

Here is the clip:

NEW TAPE: Roger Stone admits Trump “lost” and slams Trump’s campaign. pic.twitter.com/uvUvGVo5Xb

— The Beat with Ari Melber 📺 (@TheBeatWithAri) August 21, 2023

Marcotte, however, focuses on Stone’s comments that contradict the narrative that the Jan. 6 march to the Capitol was spontaneous:

On MSNBC and elsewhere, the coverage has been focused on Stone’s admission that Trump lost, adding to the already large pile of evidence that Trump and his co-conspirators never believed the Big Lie. But what struck me in that clip is the part right before it, where Stone indicates he’s expected to “lead the march” but that the team directly around Trump has gone incommunicado. Despite Stone’s claims that this is “amateurish,” it actually suggests Trump and his lawyers were being quite savvy. Cutting off contact in the days before the riot means no traceable communications between them and the people who were going to storm the Capitol that day. 

One of the most frustrating aspects of the various investigations into January 6 is nailing down Trump’s role in the violence. On one hand, it’s obvious that the riot was integral to Trump’s “fake electors” plot. He and his co-conspirators wanted to exploit the chaos to argue for substituting fake votes for real ones. He behaved all day like he expected it and his public communications, while draped in plausible deniability, also communicated his expectations of violence to his followers. Plus, as White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified during the House hearings about January 6, Trump seemed to have planned to join up with the rioters, and was only thwarted by Secret Service not driving him to the Capitol as he demanded. 

On the other hand, no one has turned up any evidence that Trump directly communicated his wishes for a violent insurrection to groups like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, who took it upon themselves to lead the charge. All the evidence shows is him riling people up with speeches and tweets, and simply trusting his followers would know what he wanted. Alas, without that direct communication, special prosecutor Jack Smith can’t make insurrection charges stick in court, which is likely why he’s avoided filing them. 

A lifetime of avoiding writing things down, of not using email, of speaking in code, and of keeping his inner circle small served to keep Trump out of jail. But he courted disaster in seeking the White House: too many courtiers.

Even then, Trump managed to insulate himself behind layers of intermediaries, especially between himself and those planning to assault the Capitol. “That way, if the insurrection failed, he could plead ignorance of the riot’s planning,” Marcotte suggests.

So rather than charge Trump with insurrection, Smith had to Eliot-Ness a Trump indictment on “conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.“

This Stone video is some of the best evidence yet that Trump and his gang both knew that the Capitol riot was coming, but also that they couldn’t risk directly communicating with the people leading the charge. As Stone’s comments indicate, the downside of this “no direct communication” policy was that Trump and his legal team were taking a gamble, hoping that Trump’s followers could take a hint. Unfortunately, it seems that their big bet worked out in most ways. The rioters obviously picked up what Trump was putting down and didn’t need explicit commands. Trump has been able to muddy the waters around the question of his responsibility for the riot, to the point where he can’t be charged for inciting it, even though we all know that’s what he did. And so far, he’s been able to keep questions about his eligibility to run at bay, though hopefully this effort to legally bar him will gain momentum.

Meaning, these efforts:

Trump ineligible to run for any office, scholars argue

Trump ineligible to run for office, more experts agree

They may yet keep Trump from running in 2024. But they’ll cue up yet another constitutional crisis for us to weather, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace on Tuesday. May we be successful.

We still don’t know what’s going on with him. This is an interesting discussion about it:

He knows it all…

Another GOP train wreck is coming to town

They just can’t help themselves:

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.

 The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense.

“We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement.

“Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”

Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.

“If you think we’re going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.

Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don’t vote for the measure.

They’re mad at MyKevin McCarthy for folding on the debt ceiling. This is their payback. Will they follow through this time? Who knows? But it’s an election year and every time these wingnuts have pulled this stunt they have been blamed. My Kevin and Mitch know it but Trump doesn’t care. Get ready.

This is a very useful piece about the timing of good economic news from Bill Scher:

Despite near-record low unemployment, respectable Gross Domestic Product growth, wages outpacing inflation, and disposable personal income rising, Joe Biden’s job approval numbers have been stuck in the low 40s. Even more perplexing, approval for his handling of the economy is usually a tick worse than his overall job approval.

In turn, several commentators are openly wondering: Why hasn’t Biden gotten credit for the improving economy?

But the better question is: How long does it take for any president to get credit for an improving economy?

We don’t have a pat answer because every president’s economic circumstances differ. But we have evidence to suggest that credit does not come quickly.

Ronald Reagan experienced a sharp recession early in his first term, from July 1981 to November 1982, with the unemployment rate peaking at 10.8 percent a month after the recession officially ended. For all of 1982, the Gipper’s job approval in Gallup polling was in the 40s, and in January 1983, it briefly sunk to the 30s.

Throughout 1983, however, the GDP grew like gangbusters, with annualized rates of over 8 percent in the latter three quarters. While unemployment dropped steadily almost every month, it only reached 8.3 percent by year’s end. Reagan’s approval remained mainly in the low 40s until November 1983, after the public applauded a successful military operation in Grenada. From then on, Reagan enjoyed job approval above 50 percent until the Iran-Contra scandal midway through his second term.

George H. W. Bush was hit with a recession that technically lasted from July 1990 to March 1991. But Bush could never claim credit for improved GDP growth in 1992, primarily because, as often happens in recoveries, the unemployment rate kept rising for a time. Before the recession began, the unemployment rate was at 5.2 percent, then peaked in June 1992 at 7.8 percent, edging down only slightly before Election Day. Also unhelpful to Bush: disposable personal income slid in the three months before Election Day. His job approval plummeted into the 30s, and he decisively lost his re-election bid.

Bill Clinton won that election by promising to focus like a laser on the economy, a shot at Bush, who he portrayed as distracted by foreign policy. By 1994, it would seem that the Arkansan had. GDP growth was strong, and unemployment declined to 5.8 percent the month before the 1994 midterms. Yet the public was not yet willing to give Clinton much credit either. During much of that year, support for Clinton’s handling of the economy in CBS News/New York Times polling was in the low 40s (which, granted, was an improvement from most of 1993, when that number was in the 30s).

Clinton didn’t get out of his polling doldrums until Republicans instigated an unpopular government shutdown at the end of 1995. After Clinton refused to accept GOP demands for deep budget cuts, his overall job approval in Gallup polling cleared 50 percent and stayed there for the rest of his presidency. But in CBS/New York Times polling, his approval on the economy still lagged, with disapproval usually outrunning approval. Only after June 1996, following three-and-a-half years of continued GDP growth on Clinton’s watch, did public approval for Clinton’s economic management consistently stay above water.

After his honeymoon faded, Barack Obama’s first-term approval on handling the economy never reached 50 percent, even though upon entering office, he quickly addressed the Great Recession, which began in 2008, with the stimulus package known as the Recovery Act. The quarterly GDP growth mainly turned positive but sustained high unemployment hampered his ability to brag. Then one month before the 2012 election, the unemployment rate dropped below 8 percent for the first time in his presidency. Mitt Romney—already reeling in late September after derisive comments about the “47 percent” of lower-income Americans were caught on video and leaked to Mother Jones—had to scrub from his stump speech that Obama was presiding over “43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent.” Obama abruptly narrowed the gap between approval and disapproval of his economic record in New York Times polling, from a 15-point deficit in August to two points in September and a single point in October, helping him eke out re-election.

The biggest weak spot of Biden’s economic record has been high inflation, not high unemployment or anemic economic growth. The year-to-year change in the Consumer Price Index was an overheated 9.1 percent in June 2022, far higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target and the highest level in 40 years. Most Americans had, until that point, no personal memory of high inflation. But inflation has been coming down since its Biden-era peak, and as of June, it is at 3 percent. (Though the Fed pegs its inflation target to a slightly different metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index excluding food and energy, which dropped from a Biden-era peak of 5.4 percent in February 2022 to 4.1 percent as of last June.) Most impressively, prices have cooled without triggering a recession or higher unemployment, raising hopes of an economic “soft landing.”

But to expect Biden to reap immediate political benefits is unrealistic, considering recent history. Prices have been rising for over two years. During that period, wages have outpaced inflation only in the last two months (even though, as Washington Monthly contributing writer Rob Shapiro has noted, inflation-adjusted disposable personal income has been rising since the middle of last year). Past presidents have needed much longer stretches of good economic data before the public gets generous with political credit.

Furthermore, what people feel about the economy often differs from what the data shows. A mid-1990s survey project conducted by the Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University found that in the summer of 1996, when GDP growth was robust, 42 percent of respondents felt the economy was only growing slowly, while another 37 percent believed the economy was either stagnant, in recession, or depression. So even if you are dismayed, don’t be surprised by the newly released July CNN poll showing that 51 percent think “the economy is still in a downturn.”

Biden is hardly the first president to face a public that doesn’t want to accept the good news. “The inability of Mr. Clinton to ride the economy’s coattails is confounding his political advisers,” reported The New York Times in June 1994. Obama would later dub Clinton the “Secretary of Explaining Stuff” because the charismatic yet wonky Clinton seemed to effortlessly weave a compelling narrative of Obama’s first-term economic record. But for a long while as president, Clinton struggled to make his case.

Many Democrats this week are probably chewing their fingernails down to the nub after seeing the New York Times/Siena College poll finding Biden and Trump in a dead heat, despite the positive economic news and Trump’s mounting legal problems. But in August 1995, at the same point in the 1996 election cycle as today, the CBS/New York Times poll had Clinton trailing the Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole by six points. He would soon beat Dole by 8.5 points.

Today’s deep political polarization makes another 14-point swing unlikely; general election trial heats between Biden and Trump have been stubbornly close for months. But there’s little reason to fret that Biden can’t pick up the support needed to win re-election, so long as the current economic trajectory continues through next year. Swing voters tend to vote with their pocketbook and stick with presidential incumbents in almost every instance.

The Post/Kaiser/Harvard researchers offered several possible reasons for the disconnect between positive economic data and public acceptance, one of which was “the media tend to emphasize the aspects of the economy that are getting worse and to pay less attention to the evidence that the economy is improving.” That’s why presidents should aggressively sell their own story, as Biden has begun to do with his “Bidenomics” strategy, and not expect the press to connect the data points.

So just because the Bidenomics promotion of recent weeks hasn’t dramatically changed his poll numbers doesn’t mean the public relations effort is futile and the incumbent fatally flawed. Selling economic recovery following economic trauma has always been harder than it looks. Patience and persistence should carry the day—and the Electoral College.   

I don’t honestly know if historical precedent means anything anymore. But if it does, this should be a bit comforting.

Donald’s Trump’s threats on social media MIGHT finally lead to legal consequences for him. Woo hoo! Today it was revealed that in Trump’s pretrial conditions in the Georgia RICO case he is forbidden from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community,” including in “posts on social media or reposts of posts” by others on social media.

Wow. It took a long time to get here, especially considering all the other times he intimidated and threatened witnesses on social media. Remember Alexander Vindman? Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukrainian? But now, because he’s under pretrial conditions and protective orders issued by a judge in our legal system, he MIGHT be charged with witness tampering. It’s one of the reasons that we needed to get him in this position. It’s the difference between lying to the media and on social media to the public, vs lying in court under oath.

Keep Normalizing Jail For Trump

Every time these conditions are set I watch the cable hosts and legal analysts talk about how pretrial jailing is not going to happen. But some, like Glenn Kirschner, have said, “It’s time to detain Trump pending trial.” Kirschner has made some videos with the compelling reasons Trump should be put in jail. The legal experts and the media are finally starting to discuss the possibility that pretrial detention is more and more likely. Good! I’m on board the “Jail Trump” train. But before that, what else can the judge do? Last week i wrote about what happens when Trump violates his protective order or pretrial conditions.

Today I heard former Federal prosecutor Will Rollins explain to Brian Tyler Cohen that a judge can forbid Trump from posting anything on social media or require Trump to provide all his social media posts ahead of time to his defense attorneys to certify they aren’t being used for witness intimidation. If they do, the attorney can lose their bar card. HA! That would be fun to see.

I like the idea of Trump physically in jail because it would stop HIM from threatening people on social media, since he won’t personally be able to post on #TruthSocial, his own personal social media platform. He also won’t be able to threaten people at a rally. And, unless he gets to do a jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson, there will be no live interviews.

Trump’s constant use of threats works for him politically and if we can’t stop them completely, we need a way to limit them. So it’s great that a judge FINALLY imposed a gag order on Trump in his Georgia RICO case.

Now, when he keeps making threats, we look for ways to make it hurt him and those people who knowingly and intentionally aid and abet Trump in the commission of his witness tampering.

What’s The Strategy to Beat Trump on Social Media?

Trump uses social media to talk directly to the public. It lets him set the narrative. One of his current narratives is that Biden and “big tech” is trying to limit his free speech. But threats of violence are not protected speech. We need to keep educating everyone on what is and is not protected speech.

We also need to remember that private entities can restrict what is said on their platform.

Remember how Facebook and Twitter give Trump special treatment until it was no longer possible to ignore his threats? Then he used Twitter to incite violence on January 6th. After January 6th, Twitter and Facebook banned him.

Facebook made some changes, put in some new guidelines and welcomed him back. Do you think “the temperature” has gone down? No! But he doesn’t need to post directly on Facebook. He has his own social media platform. And, in addition, it’s repeated on Twitter/X, Facebook and in the MSM. (Marcy Wheeler reminds us not to run his posts without breaking them up. Don’t be a data mule for his messages! )
Because of the reposting TFG gets all the benefits of the big social media platforms without the possibility of restrictions. Nothing he says will be removed. But it’s not as if Truth Social doesn’t have Terms of Service, they do!

In Truth Social’s Terms of Service it says:
“your contributions do not advocate or incite, encourage, or threaten physical harm against another. And, “your contributions do not violate any applicable law, regulation, or rule.”
They have consequences for people who violate their TOS and posting threatening speech.

And before you say, “They’ll never enforce any TOS on their contributors”. You should know that Truth Social gave law enforcement info on the man in Utah who threatened Biden. (In fact, they acted when Meta/Facebook did not!) Truth Social alerted the FBI about a user threatening Biden and other Democrats. Facebook seemingly failed to even moderate the violent posts.

So, will they enforce their Terms of Service on Trump? They should. If they don’t, this is where we look at the laws that apply to people or companies that KNOWINGLY and WILLINGLY participate in witness tampering.

You might recall how Musk fought a subpoena about turning over evidence to Jack Smith, He wanted to violate the rules of the subpoena that said NOT to tell the subject that their data was being subpoenaed. They were fined $350,000. Look, I don’t want to go all Fani Willis RICO here, but we can’t just let the social media companies enable Trump’s crimes and the crimes of his followers.

We know that Zuckerberg kept people on Facebook who made threats because they had political connections and/or high engagement. We know that Elon Musk has replatformed and is now PAYING Nazis to post on X. If Devin Nunes, the CEO of Truth Social, is asked to remove Trump’s witness tampering posts and does NOT, could that be considered aiding and abetting Trump in the commission of a crime?

There are specific laws that could compel Truth Social to remove witness tampering threats. These laws exist. Here’s the law enforcement process for Truth Social. The process for Facebook/Instagram is described under Legal Removal Request.

I listened to a Twitter Space, I mean an X Space, the other day about Elon Musk’s proposal to ban the block button. Some fan boys and girls talked about how it was a very very smart business decision. But other women and men talked about the very real impact of threats and harassment on the platform have on people. I heard stories of subpoenas being issued by law enforcement to remove threats of violence and the company had to comply. The non-fan boys pointed out that this wasn’t “a few flamers” in the comments section with differences of opinions. They were serious, true threats to people.

Finally, when Donald Trump breaks his pretrial conditions and protective orders, by witness tampering people on social media, he will be sanctioned, up to and including jail. Then we keep fighting. Because we can’t let the social media companies off the hook when they don’t manage their own platform while it is being used to harm people.

How to help the victims of harassment and threats on social media

In April I suggested that the City of New York should monetize the threats Trump and his people make. This would be a civil case in addition to the criminal trial.

The people on the various jurys around the country who are being threatened and intimidated by Trump and his followers should be able to sue in a civil court. The jurys are going to be anonymous, but the CITIES will know who they are, they should be prepared for the threats against them.

And it’s not just Trump, there are others doing the intimidation. Junior, Marge, And Eric Trump Go After Judge’s Daughter. These harassers, defamers and threateners have jobs, assets & are connected to people with money. They aren’t lone wolf RWNJs. Trace them, record them, find them, arrest them and charge them. Then make them pay. This is possible. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss won their multimillion dollar defamation case against One America News. They are on their way to winning their case against Rudy Giuliani.

St. Luke’s Hospital won their harassment and defamation case against Ammon Bundy, his co-defendant, their two mob organization and Bundy’s Campaign for Governor. They were ordered to pay $52.5 million dollars. Then, when Bundy didn’t, they put him in jail.

Cross posted on Spocko’s Brain. Will Trump’s threats on social media send him to jail?