Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Alabama is on the hunt for the best killing ritual

Horrifying:

Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used. [Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia.]

Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation. […]

Alabama has been working for several years to develop the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, but has disclosed little about its plans. The attorney general’s court filing did not describe the details of the how the execution would be carried out. Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters last month that a protocol was nearly complete.

The United States of America is allowing states to experiment on prisoners now to determine if their ritualized method of killing them is humane enough. WTF is that?

Yesterday there was another horrific hate crime perpetrated down in Florida when a racist walked into a Dollar Store and gunned down 3 people because they were Black:

“This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening.

Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack.

All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black.

Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border.

Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities.

But Waters said by the time authorities were alerted about the manifestos, the gunman had already started the attack in the Dollar General.

Last week a California shop keeper who flew a pride flag on her storefront was gunned down:

The man who shot and killed the store owner last week over her display of a pride flag outside her store was a far-right conspiracy theorist who shared deeply anti-LGBTQ and antisemitic content on his social media accounts.

Travis Ikeguchi, 27, shot Laura Ann Carleton, 66, on Friday after “yelling many homophobic slurs” about the store’s pride flag, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said at a news conference Monday.

The shooter fled the scene but police officers tracked him down later on Friday. When confronted, police said in a press conference, the 27-year-old fired at multiple patrol vehicles with an unregistered semi-automatic handgun before he was shot in what was described by officials as a “lethal force encounter.”

Authorities said they are continuing to investigate the murder as a possible hate crime. While they believe the shooter acted alone, authorities are continuing to look into the possibility that he was affiliated with  a hate group.

But a review of 27-year-old’s social media accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and the far-right social network Gab, show that the shooter had fully embraced a wide range of conspiracy theories—from claiming the 9/11 attacks were staged to suggestions that former first lady Michelle Obama is a man to denying climate change. He also posted content opposing gun control measures.

The shooter spent much of his time online sharing anti-LGBTQ content, reposting and responding to content shared by right-wing figures like commentator Matt Walsh and fringe networks like One America News. His pinned tweet, posted in June, simply showed a rainbow flag on fire with the caption: “What to do with the LGBTQP [sic] flag.”

On Gab, one of his pinned posts was even more explicitly threatening to the LGBTQ community. “We need to STOP COMPROMISING on this LGBT dictatorship and not let them take over our lives,” he wrote. “Stop accepting this abomination that the government is forcing us to submit to these mentally disordered tyrants.”

Another pinned post on Gab featured a link to a video entitled: “When Should You Shoot a Cop,” along with the caption: “There will come a time that we have to do this.” While the shooter’s X profile remains active, his Gab profile was removed late on Monday. X and Gab did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The majority of the suspect’s posts are infused with an overt Christian nationalism, which quickly gives way to virulent antisemitism in much of the content he shared online.

The shooter only followed 19 people on X, including One American News, former President Donald Trump, and conspiracy theorist David Knight, who once worked with Alex Jones. The shooter also followed and boosted rightwing professor and conspiracy theory promoter Jordan Peterson, antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the right-wing satirical website the Babylon Bee.

Trump has said nothing about any of this, of course. He’s too busy bragging about his golf game. DeSantis took a moment on the campaign trail to call the Florida shooter a scumbag. Ramaswamy said “The reality is we’ve created such a racialized culture in this country in the last few years so that right as the last embers of racism were burning out, we have a culture in this country …. that throws kerosine on that racism.” If only everyone would shut up about racism everything would be fine.

Racism was almost gone until people started talking about it in the last few years. Ok then.

Here’s the latest from the man tens of millions of Americans worship like a god. I just thought you ought to know even if you don’t want to.

In case you were wondering, Trump always cheats at golf. Here’s an excerpt of one of many, many stories about it:

Jack O’Donnell worked with Donald Trump for four years as vice president of Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City. O’Donnell’s dad was one of the founders of Sawgrass, the iconic Pete Dye golf course near Jacksonville, Fla. “My dad always told us to respect the game,” O’Donnell says. “That’s the one part of the game that tells me what kind of person you are. You play the ball where it lies.” So when O’Donnell’s office colleague, the late Mark Eddis, came back after his first round with Trump, O’Donnell couldn’t resist asking.

“So, does he improve his lie?”

Eddis looked at him and threw his head back in laughter. “Every shot but the tee shot.”

Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”

“I played with him once,” says Bryan Marsal, longtime Winged Foot member and chair of the coming 2020 Men’s U.S. Open. “It was a Saturday morning game. We go to the first tee and he couldn’t have been nicer. But then he said, ‘You see those two guys? They cheat. See me? I cheat. And I expect you to cheat because we’re going to beat those two guys today.’… So, yes, it’s true, he’s going to cheat you. But I think Donald, in his heart of hearts, believes that you’re gonna cheat him, too. So if it’s the same, if everybody’s cheating, he doesn’t see it as really cheating.”

Okay, but …

a)  Everybody isn’t. Except for an occasional mulligan on the first tee and accepting a gimme (a short conceded putt) from an opponent, 85 percent of casual golfers play by the rules, according to the National Golf Foundation.

b)  To say “Donald Trump cheats” is like saying “Michael Phelps swims.” He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching, and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf, that’s how he learned it, that’s how he needs it, and whether you’re his pharmacist or Tiger Woods, if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.

I know you are well aware of how nuts he is. But I believe it’s important to remind ourselves of it often. He’s a very disturbed individual and yet he has tens of millions of followers. Will they ever be reprogrammed?

Is it too much to ask?

Heather Cox Richardson posts, “Reading a paper today and it gave me a crazy idea: how about interviewing some Democratic voters for a change? Maybe that’s just too out there to be on the table, though….”

Other than mocking lefties for eating avocado toast, the press doesn’t view them as newsworthy subjects of inquiry unless they occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office, that is, when they show up where political reporters normally do their jobs. There are few political reporting safaris to where Democrat-leaning voters hang out in cities large and small unless they are on college campuses or represent the lunatic fringe. But angry right-wingers at school board meetings? That bleeds. Even when it doesn’t.

Are there no coffee shops? No book stores?

Marianne Williamson visited one in little Aiken, SC recently (in a county that went 61-38 for Trump in 2020). Local papers reported the press release. Nothing on the rarities who showed up with opinions.

Trump couldn’t pass a job interview

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (IIRC) last week observed that Republicans are seriously considering nominating for president a man facing four federal and state indictments on 91 felony counts who, the last time he held office, tried to end the republic as we know it and sent a mob to sack the U.S. Capitol.

Ben Rhodes, former Obama deputy national security advisor, commented Thursday night on “the steady radicalization of the Republican Party and the trivialization of politics.” Regarding Donald Trump’s interview last week with fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Rhodes wrote that “the GOP frontrunner talked at length on this platform about vicious mosquitos, conspiracy theories, and general nonsense. A man who said those things in a job interview for just about any other position in the world wouldn’t get hired.”

Trump is also, you may have heard, 6′-3″ and 215 pounds of rippling muscle.

The height and weight on Donald Trump's booking records is the same that Chris Hemsworth was while filming his role as Thor in #TheAvengers https://t.co/VrTzeP48Ru

— JustJared.com (@JustJared) August 25, 2023

Mmmkay! And I'm 110lbs and a virgin 😂! I'm not a scale or a doctor but I have spent some time beneath 215lb men and Tiny was not one of them.

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) August 25, 2023

BTW, Trump this week declared himself the winner of another golf tournament (at a club he owns) in which he totally did not cheat. Trust him on that:

The worst thing, to me, is that he believes people will believe it — and is right. pic.twitter.com/hneFuxPyCK

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) August 26, 2023

The Trump phenomenon was only possible, Rhodes added, “because of a Republican party that descended into grievance based insanity after the Obama election, and too much (not all) political media that cares only about performative nonsense.”

(To be blunt, plenty of registered Democrats, likely driven by the same grievances, also voted for Trump. Twice.)

Regarding the candidates on the GOP debate stage last week, Rhodes wrote:

Consider the fact that Vivek Ramaswamy, a man who has precisely zero interest in performing any functions of the U.S. presidency, is heralded for a performance in which he mainly demonstrated his complete lack of fitness to run for any office, nevermind the most powerful one.

Meanwhile, what’s at stake? The livelihoods of Americans. A world in which there is the biggest European war since World War II and the potential for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers in East Asia. The survivability of the planet.

We’re unpaid extras inside The Twilight Zone. Except those episodes were over in 30 minutes.

You’re about to get hit with a barrage of propaganda from Fox News about Biden and Burisma (again.) In case you’re not sure of what this is all about, Media Matters offers a primer:

On August 25, Fox News previewed an interview of former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by network host Brian Kilmeade that is set to air in full on August 26. In the preview segment, Shokin accused President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden of “corruption” and “being bribed” to push for the prosecutor’s removal from office in 2016. In fact, there was widespread agreement at the time across the political spectrum in the United States and the European Union that Shokin should be fired for being soft on corruption, including State Department allegations that Shokin himself was corrupt.

Additionally, at the time of his removal, Shokin wasn’t actively investigating Hunter Biden or Burisma, an energy company that had hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board of directors. Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer recently testified that it would have been better for Burisma if the Ukrainian government had kept Shokin because he was unlikely to move against the company.

Shokin’s claims are part of a longstanding smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani on behalf of former President Donald Trump, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Fox News knew Shokin’s claims were baseless then and continues to know it now, but the network is airing Shokin’s baseless allegations regardless.

Pushing for Shokin to be fired was the policy of not only the United States, where it was supported by leading Republicans, but also the international community

European nations, the United States, and over 100 members of Ukrainian parliament had pressured the Ukrainian government for months to fire Shokin. The international community concluded that Shokin was “turning a blind eye to corrupt practices” and “defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite.” [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2/11/16; The New York Times, 3/29/16]

In 2015, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called Shokin “an obstacle” to anti-corruption efforts. Ukraine’s refusal to act on anti-corruption measures, including keeping Shokin, resulted in the International Monetary Fund threatening to withhold $40 billion in aid. The European Union applauded his removal. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Protests in Ukraine demanded Shokin’s removal after he launched an investigation into an anti-corruption watchdog group and had fired various anti-corruption prosecutors. The group, Anti-Corruption Action Center, had publicly criticized Shokin. [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3/28/16; Kyiv Post, 3/25/16]

In 2016, Republican Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk and Ron Johnson and Democratic colleagues addressed a letter to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, calling for him to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s office and judiciary.” The bipartisan letter was also signed by five Senate Democrats, underlining that removing Shokin was the consensus view in Washington, D.C. — not a pet project of the Biden family. [CNN, 10/3/2019]

Johnson would later lead a committee that investigated Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma and failed to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing. The New York Times noted, “In fact, investigators heard witness testimony that rebutted those charges,” and Johnson acknowledged there were no “massive smoking guns” in the report. [The New York Times, 9/23/20]

George Kent, the State Department’s expert on Ukraine, testified during Trump’s first impeachment trial that Shokin’s corruption led to his removal. Shokin was fired over corruption allegations and was not actively investigating Burisma when he was removed. The Washington Post reported in 2019 that Kent confirmed that Joe Biden called for the removal of “a corrupt prosecutor general … who had undermined a system of criminal investigation” into Ukrainian corruption cases, and “destroyed the entire ecosystem that we were trying to create.” Kent, who was the No. 2 official in the embassy at the time, explained that Biden was following the official U.S. government position that Shokin must be removed because he was “an impediment to the reform of the prosecutorial system, and he had directly undermined in repeated fashion U.S. efforts and U. S. assistance programs.” In fact, Kent testified that the idea to fire Shokin originated in the State Department before being pitched to others, including then-Vice President Biden. [The Washington Post, 11/19/19; Media Matters, 11/12/19]

At the time of his removal, Shokin was not actively investigating Burisma, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of an investigation into the company

Former Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Kasko said in May 2019 that the investigation into Burisma had been “shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.” Shokin had stalled investigations into Burisma and its co-founder Mykola Zlochevsky. In 2014, he undermined an attempt by British authorities to freeze $23 million worth of Zlochevsky’s assets. [Bloomberg, 5/7/19]

Devon Archer testified that he was not aware of any Shokin-led investigation into Burisma. He also testified that he had no reason to believe that then-Vice President Biden called for Shokin’s removal “was driven by anything other than the U.S. Government’s anticorruption policy in Ukraine,” and confirmed that firing Shokin “was bad for Burisma because he was under control.” [Media Matters, 8/3/23]

Investigations involving Burisma targeted Zlochevsky, who had been accused of “abuse of power, illegal enrichment and money laundering,” rather than the company itself. Shokin had allegedly “dragged his feet” on these investigations, and Hunter Biden, as a board member, was not a target. [The Wall Street Journal, 9/22/19]

Fox News knew its sourcing on the Ukraine conspiracy theory was unreliable

Conservative writer John Solomon was a key distributor of Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories regarding Shokin’s firing. From March 20, 2019 — when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory — through October 2, 2019, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times, including 51 appearances on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show [Media Matters, 10/17/19]

During that period, Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy produced an internal “research briefing book” that “openly question[ed] Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an ‘indispensable role’ in a Ukrainian ‘disinformation campaign,’” according to The Daily Beast. Murphy’s research came from what was known as Fox’s “Brain Room,” which the network later disbanded, and described Solomon as having “played an indispensable role in the collection and domestic publication of elements of this disinformation campaign.” [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Murphy’s research book also advised that Giuliani had a “high susceptibility to disinformation” that was being fed to him by unreliable Ukrainian sources. [The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Fox News continues to accuse Joe Biden of taking bribes regarding Shokin’s firing even when confronted with contradictory evidence. On August 9, a panel discussion on The Five descended into chaos after co-host Jessica Tarlov attempted to get her co-panelists to acknowledge recent testimony from Hunter Biden business associate Devon Archer. Archer “was asked, if someone concluded … that Joe Biden was bribed, would you disagree with that? ‘Yeah, I would.’ Devon Archer said that,” Tarlov said to the panel. [Fox News, The Five, 8/9/23]

Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who would later be arrested for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was the lynchpin to the entire scheme

Solomon’s reporting laid the groundwork for Giuliani’s investigations in Ukraine, which ultimately led to Trump’s first impeachment. Some of Solomon’s key sources were “disgraced former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko and the allies of Dmytro Firtash, an indicted Ukrainian oligarch and accused high-level Russian mafia associate,” who “have been seen as forces driving Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump’s political enemies.” [Media Matters, 10/17/19; The Daily Beast, 2/6/20]

Giuliani ultimately sent his findings to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, complete with “with unproven allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden” with the goal of undermining a future Biden presidential run. Giuliani used his documents “to bolster unproven allegations that Biden pressured Ukraine in order to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who has been involved with a business interest there, and that the Obama administration was using Ukraine to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” [NBC News, 10/3/19]

After Trump’s phone call attempting to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was revealed, Giuliani engaged in a press strategy to redirect the focus back to the Bidens. Some mainstream outlets took the bait, with headlines like “Scrutiny over Trump’s Ukraine scandal may also complicate Biden’s campaign” and “Why Trump’s Ukraine scandal could backfire on Biden.” [Media Matters, 9/23/19]

This whole thing was the basis of trump’s first impeachment. They just won’t let go of their ridiculous smear campaign because they believe the American people must eventually believe that there’s something to it. It’s Whitewater, Benghazi all the rest, which just shows it isn’t Trump — it’s the GOP. They were at this particular form of conspiracy mongering long before he came along.

Watters: I say this with an unblemished record of heterosexuality. He looks good and he looks hard. pic.twitter.com/jlNQ2YyZXM

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2023

This thread by Ben Rhodes echoes my thoughts:

During my 20 years in politics, two destructive trends stand out: the steady radicalization of the Republican Party and the trivialization of politics, particularly the way it is covered by US media and how politicians respond to that dynamic.

The Republican debate stands out for how unsurprising it was that a stage full of people acted like a bunch of kids trying to get admitted to some fascist costume party. Kill people at the border! Prohibit women from any agency over their bodies! Side with Putin! Etc. Etc.

The bridge between radicalization and trivialization (as always) is Trump. Last night, a group of accomplished adults refused to condemn someone who has broken laws related to overthrowing the U.S. government, stealing classified information, violating campaign finance laws, etc

If I told you 20 years ago that a guy who was facing 91 felony charges, including trying to overthrow the U.S. government, would be the overwhelming favorite for the Republican nomination and none of his opponents would dare to criticize him, well…

There’s a lot to say about the radicalization of the Republicans. I’ve written two books that were largely about that. Frankly, there’s nothing more to say. We have a radical right-wing party. It is what it is now.

But the trivialization of politics demands as much attention and is just as important. Because without it, the radicalization would be impossible.

Last night, for instance, the GOP frontrunner talked at length on this platform about vicious mosquitos, conspiracy theories, and general nonsense. A man who said those things in a job interview for just about any other position in the world wouldn’t get hired.

Trump’s hack of political media has always been that he mirrors their complete lack of interest in any substance, in favor of political optics, news cycle stupidity, and performative bullshit. He is both a creation – and conductor – of the stupidity of political coverage.

It is jarring to consider how impossible Trump would have been 20 years ago. He is only possible because of a Republican party that descended into grievance based insanity after the Obama election, and too much (not all) political media that cares only about performative nonsense

Consider the fact that Vivek Ramaswamy, a man who has precisely zero interest in performing any functions of the U.S. presidency, is heralded for a performance in which he mainly demonstrated his complete lack of fitness to run for any office, nevermind the most powerful one.

Meanwhile, what’s at stake? The livelihoods of Americans. A world in which there is the biggest European war since World War II and the potential for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers in East Asia. The survivability of the planet.

Until we see that these things are not trivial or entertaining; that they are serious challenges to the underpinnings of our Republic and global stability, then the radicalization will continue.

A common thread to these two trends is money – the enormous amount of money poured into corrupting our politics since Citizens United has served to fuel both radicalization and nonsense in order to serve very specific ends. That, too, is hiding in plain sight.

Meanwhile, many Americans suffer a crisis of belonging, a vulnerability to conspiracy theory, an understandable inability to make sense of it all. Because the blending of radicalization (Us v Them) and trivialization (nothing matters) leads to the destruction of objective truth.

To defeat both radicalization and trivialization, we need to get back to a democracy in which debate, disagreement, and even division can be based upon an objective reality that recognizes the stakes involved. Because all of this DOES matter. A lot.

I couldn’t agree more. But I have no idea how that might happen. I guess I just keep hoping that a series of defeats will force a majority of Republicans to realize they have to change and will take up the project of deprogramming the far right. I wish I felt more confident that this will happen.

Shocker:

Donald Trump was wounded, and Ron DeSantis was building a juggernaut.

When POLITICO launched its 2024 Republican presidential candidate tracker in March, the GOP was still smarting over a weaker-than-expected midterm election thanks to Trump’s influence. DeSantis had emerged as Trump’s top challenger and was marshaling his resources to launch a giant-killing campaign.

But five months later — a span that’s seen four indictments, three DeSantis layoff sprees and one Trump-less debate — it’s Trump unambiguously on top.

And everyone else, DeSantis included, way behind.

That’s why we’re reshuffling the candidates on the tracker. The biggest move: DeSantis drops down a tier, leaving Trump as the sole candidate in the “Frontrunners” category.

I am really starting to think he won’t make it to Iowa. I guess he’s got a ton of money so maybe he’ll just brazen it out until he is forced out. But really, why bother?

"This will create a constitutional issue that the country has never seen and that's exactly what Donald wants. He's pushing the line every single day… He knows what he's doing."@MichaelCohen212 speaks to @AliVelshi about how Trump plans to avoid legal accountability. pic.twitter.com/nX7wAFF9qH

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 26, 2023

Cohen points out the obvious problem with this idea that Trump is still liable for state charges even if he becomes president again. He asks, “how are they going to get him?Are they going to send local authorities to arrest him?” which is a good point. As he says it would cause a constitutional crisis — a local authority coming to arrest the president of the United States? Cohen believes that Trump is well aware of this — “he knows what he’s doing” — and fully recognizes that his only way out of this mess is to win the presidency.

The Republican Party refuses to stop him, thinking the Democrats will get them out of this mess and they can preserve all the benefits of what Trump brings them without all the mucky muck. He’s not going anywhere. And if he is defeated once more, you can bet that he will attempt to raise his mob again as a last ditch effort to stay out of jail. If that happens our only hope is that they are tired of all this and don’t answer the call.

Think how much time you could save if Trump was always covered so succinctly: https://t.co/pVmj2nnQGi

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) August 26, 2023

It was actually much creepier than that. Here’s an excerpt from David Corn’s newsletter on that interview:

[N]o one is more cynical than Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News golden boy.

As you know, Trump eschewed the debate and instead sat down for an interview with Carlson that was posted on the Social Media Site Formerly Known as Twitter. It was tough to watch. Such profound toadyism is unnerving, even when coming from a champion charlatan, such as Carlson. As Donald Trump reiterated the same ol’ false complaint—“The election was rigged. It was a rigged election…. They used Covid to cheat…. We have so much on it. It’s like so easy”—Carlson gazed at him adoringly. There was no retort from the interviewer.

But we know, thanks to the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox, that Carlson didn’t buy Trump’s bunk. In private messages revealed during that case, Carlson indicated he didn’t accept the Trump team’s claims that the 2020 election was marred by rampant fraud. He also repeatedly expressed his disdain for Trump. In one text message, he said, “I hate him passionately.” In another, written on January 4, 2021, he wrote, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights” and that “I truly can’t wait.” He called Trump’s four years as president a “disaster.”

Carlson shared none of his anti-Trump sentiments at the time with his Fox viewers. On air, he hailed Trump as a “great” president. For obvious reasons. One message he sent in the post-2020 election period shows that he feared speaking the truth about Trump. Trump’s talent, he wrote, is to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” That is, sucking up to Trump—and his devoted following—was the business plan for Carlson and Fox. If Fox had acknowledged that Trump lost and was lying, it would have pissed off its audience, and viewers would have fled. So screw the truth. It’s all just propaganda for profit.

Now Carlson is pretending that he was not exposed as a total fraud. And he’s back to serving King Con.

This is hardly surprising, given Carlson’s record as a white supremacy-pushing, Putin-supporting disinformationalist. But an episode like this shows us just how debased the political culture of the right has become. Carlson, whose misogyny apparently triggered his firing, pays no price within the conservative cosmos for his rampant phoniness. He remains in good standing, as long as he keeps slinging the Trumpish swill. Especially when the Trump rubes—trubes?—want to keep being rubed.

Actually, allowing Trump to spread the Big Lie once more was hardly the worst of Carlson’s transgressions during his sit-down with the most indicted ex-president in US history. (Yes, the only indicted ex-president.) Early in the chat, Carlson asked Trump a dangerous question:

I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015 when you got into politics for real and then won. It started with protests against you…by the left, and then it moved to impeachment twice, and now indictment. The next stage is violence. Are you worried they’re going to try to kill you? Why wouldn’t they try to kill you?

Here Carlson was suggesting that Trump’s political foes are conspiring to kill Trump. In a divided country at a divisive moment, this is reckless and irresponsible. He was fueling hatred and paranoia. Imagine the actions that Trump devotees might consider if they were convinced Democrats, liberals, prosecutors, the media, and others were bent on killing Trump?

Trump, of course, played along with this nonsense and referred to his opponents as “savage animals. They are people who are sick, really sick.” Carlson, who seemingly detests Trump when off-camera, was hailing him as a grand martyr for America and pushing a false storyline with potentially horrendous consequences.

The Trump-Carlson lovefest was full of inanities. As Carlson beamed at his pal, Trump, who spent a gazillion hours on golf courses while he was president, derided President Joe Biden for taking a trip to the beach and called him a “Manchurian candidate” controlled by China. For his part, Carlson said of Vice President Kamala Harris, “she seems pretty senile.” (What?) At one point, Trump did speak a truth: “We have a country that’s very fragile now.” Indeed. And both Trump and Carlson are brazenly exploiting that fragility for their own benefit, with no regard for the perils they provoke. Two peas in a rotten pod.