If you ever wondered how it came to be that people loathed and despised Hillary Clinton on such a visceral level, this is how. They did this over and over and over again for eight years screeching about “the rule o’ law!” and calling them the Clinton Crime Family. It’s very effective. It makes people who don’t have strong feelings about the person or knowledge of the facts figure there just must be something to it. In the face of Trump’s obvious criminality, it also has the effect of feeding into the cynical “they all do it” attitude which leads to apathy.
The Republicans spent decades degrading Clinton and it was only by a fluke that she lost the election in 2016. And, yes, misogyny played a part. But the constant drumbeat that she was a criminal going all the way back to the 90s took its toll and Donald Trump, the instinctive asshole that he is, took advantage of it. And too many Democrats and independents bought into it.
Luckily Biden is an incumbent president and Trump is going to be on the ballot so those dynamics are not going to be very strong. But never think it’s just a reflexive reaction to the charges against Trump. This is a patented GOP strategy. Character assassination is their go-to.
It stands to reason that once the Republicans succeeded in corrupting the Supreme Court confirmation process to pack it with far right justices they would turn their attention to the Justice Department. What good is having a partisan High Court if the Justice Department is going to refuse to do the bidding of whatever Republican is in the White House? If you want to corrupt a democracy you need to do it holistically to ensure that all the levers of power are working together.
It’s been a long time coming but it looks like they believe they’ve finally found their moment. They’re openly announcing their intention to discard all the rules and norms that have governed the arms length relationship between the president and the DOJ for the past 50 years. Donald Trump made that clear in his speech at his Bedminster Golf Club on Tuesday night:
Crowd chants “Lock him up!” after Donald Trump announces he will appoint "a real special prosecutor" to go after President Biden and his family if elected. pic.twitter.com/WR6ug04aGA
Donald Trump has always said he intended to do this, of course. He cried throughout his presidency “where’s my Roy Cohn?” the execrable lawyer who mentored the young Donald Trump (when he wasn’t serving every nefarious character in American life from Joseph McCarthy to Richard Nixon to John Gotti.) When he ran in 2016 he told Hillary Clinton to her face in a national debate that he planned to put here in jail and constantly demanded that the Justice Department prosecute his enemies.
The Attorneys General knew what the boss wanted. The White House counsels all knew what he wanted. In fact, everyone in America knew what he wanted because he openly demanded it in speeches, on television and on social media. The DOJ didn’t entirely follow through but they made a stab at it. As I wrote the other day, he was plotting behind the scenes against the advice of White House lawyers to make it happen and eventually former Attorney General Bill Barr did relent and assigned a US Attorney to review all the Clinton investigations. (He found nothing new.) And in an unprecedented move, Barr also stepped in to save two of Trump’s top cronies, Former National Security adviser Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and named John Durham as Special Counsel to investigate the FBI’s investigation of the Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But Trump was held back from doing his worst at various choke points in the system, particularly the rules and norms that have governed the relationship between the president and the Justice Department after the revelations that came out of the Watergate scandal. For 50 years the DOJ has operated as a quasi independent agency in which it was understood that the president would make general policy but would not be involved in individual cases. Now the Republican party has decided it’s time to change all that.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the new MAGA establishment, led by coup conspirator Jeffrey Clark and Russell Vought, Trump administration director of Office of management and budget (and Freedom Caucus guru) have some big plans:
Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency.
They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.
Republicans enamored of the “Unitary Executive” theory, such as Bill Barr, have always believed that those post-Watergate reforms were foolishly restrictive and unrealistic but they worried that the silly voters would react badly to blatantly hackish partisanship so they always kept up the pretense of an independent Justice Department. Both parties have complained about politicized DOJs over the years but it’s only the Republicans who’ve made it clear that they don’t even believe in the concept — when Republicans are in power, anyway.
Ironically, by engaging in blatant corruption and open criminal behavior as both a president and presidential candidate, Donald Trump has given them the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. The fact that he doesn’t try to hide his depraved indifference to rules, norms and laws means that the Justice Department under a Democratic administration was left with no choice but to completely abandon the rule of law or enforce it knowing that the Republicans will cynically stage a monumental tantrum so they can use it as an excuse to do what they want to do anyway. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
This goes way beyond Trump. In fact, I suspect they will be happy if Trump is convicted and they can wave the bloody shirt to justify removing any barriers to total control of the federal law enforcement. Certainly, the next generation of MAGA leaders are all-in on this idea. Take Florida Gov. Ron Desantis who has backed this vacuous claim of a “weaponized” Department of Justice and promised to follow the same program only on steroids:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been working for months on plans to tear down and rebuild both the Department of Justice and the FBI, consulting with experts and members of Congress to develop a “Day One” strategy to end what conservatives see as the weaponization of the justice system. The governor has privately told advisors that he will hire and fire plenty of federal personnel, reorganize entire agencies, and execute a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy to restore the Justice Department to a mission more in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.”
The plan is massively ambitious and apparently he believes he can do it all unilaterally:
This kind of innovation suits DeSantis, who takes a broader view of executive authority than is typical of constitutional conservatives and who has told advisors he “doesn’t buy” the idea that presidents can’t fire anyone on the federal payroll.
With a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness, the Governor who is banning books, abridging the speech of educators, firing elected prosecutors, creating his own police forces, attacking private businesses and much much more said, “You can’t have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn’t like.”
The fact is that the Republican Party’s alleged hostility to the “Deep State” is nothing more than a set-up to co-opt state power for themselves. They’ve chafed under the rules and regulations that preclude them from behaving like crooks and liars such as Richard Nixon and Donald Trump for the last 50 years. They don’t want to get rid of the “Deep state”, they just want to get rid of all the impediments to using it the way they believe it’s meant to be used: against their political enemies. Trump’s flagrant criminality has perversely given them exactly the excuse they need to do it.
“Hello, Ghostbusters. Yes, of course, they’re serious.”
If you follow The Daily Wire, you may know this guy. I don’t, but David Simon of The Wire does.
This clown below would like to see western civilization return to the customs and mores of 1220. Because only RINOs want to return to the 1950s. Only fauxnies like Grover Norquist (he married a Muslim!) want to return to the McKinley era. Real men, ball-tanning men, men who embody manly virtues (Tucker Carlson? Josh Hawley?) want to “get medieval on your ass,” America.
Yup. The Enlightenment ruined everything if you were white, male, straight, Christian and kissed the ass of whichever nobleman was going to win whatever war was ongoing to determine who rules you absolutely by divine right. Also, the Black Death willing, you might live past 30. https://t.co/BDznZ1HhxT
So much of the reactionary right is fueled by performative, over-the-top, in-your-face rejection of what the rest of us in Well-Adjusted America™ consider normal. MAGAs and incels tune in to shows like this for the rhetorical equivalent of WWE, monster trucks, and nitro-powered funny cars. Anything to get a rise (pun intended).
The problem is, as with professional wrestling and Trump rallies, some of the fans take the kayfabe seriously.
Abortion, Jan. 6, and your freedom are on the line
Here in our fortress of progressivism, it sometimes seems as if the rest of the country — the left-leaning part, anyway — is oblivious to broader trends at work behind current events. News junkies know, but that’s because we are news junkies. Forward scouts, I tell legislators engaged in trench warfare with authoritarians in the capitol.
Movement conservatism propelled the American right from the 1970s through the Reagan years to George W. Bush’s two terms. We might call what followed movement authoritarianism. Anat Shenker-Osorio, host of the podcast Words to Win By and messaging authority, found signs in a recent survey that the public has caught on (Slate):
In May, the Research Collaborative, a group that I advise, fielded a 1,400-person survey with Lake Research Partners on the Supreme Court. Voters agreed, by double-digit margins, that the Supreme Court “rules for wealthy and powerful few” and that its “decisions take away our freedoms.” Conversely, positive descriptors that the court “has made the right decisions lately,” that it “ensures everyone has equal justice under the law,” and that its “decisions protect our freedoms” were all underwater—most by double digits.
In a split sample experiment, among respondents asked whether a potential president’s Supreme Court nominations factored into their past voting decisions, 79 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independent voters responded affirmatively. These numbers rose to 90 percent and 76 percent, respectively, for respondents answering about whom they will consider for president in 2024. Similarly, 73 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of independents said they’d factor support for a Supreme Court candidate into how they voted in future congressional elections, up from 39 percent and 51 percent, respectively.
After hearing a list of recent and pending cases, we asked voters forced-choice questions in order to guard against acquiescence bias. Fifty-four percent “worry that the majority on the Supreme Court is taking away our freedoms,” as opposed to 33 percent who “believe that the Supreme Court is doing its job upholding the law and Constitution,” with 14 percent unsure. Moreover, by a margin of 52–29, voters believe that the Supreme Court is “part of a larger authoritarian movement” as opposed to “acting independently,” leaving 19 percent unsure.
While Florida’s authoritarian governor is making that movement headlines week after week, his presidential campaign is fading. There remains the risk that without constant reminders the threat could fade into background noise.
Shenker-Osorio suggests that Democrats need to message more and better on the stakes to people’s freedoms posed by that larger authoritarian movement, and the Supreme Court specifically. The survey found that the court’s underwater approval rating, “while still 2 points underwater—has recovered from its nadir of -8 percentage points in July 2022.”
The Dobbs decision to take away Americans’ freedom to decide and, of course, the constant public discourse that put this issue front and center. As soon as that pressure stops or slows, the court’s standing is given the unearned opportunity to recover.
The dark analogy I picked up somewhere comes from boxing. Once you’ve cut your oponent over the eye, work the eye. Don’t let up.
If there were anything for Democrats to learn from the averted “red wave” last year, it’s that you win debates—and elections—by setting the terms. Had the midterms been the usual referendum on the incumbent president and economic conditions, precedent and pundits would have been right and Democrats would have been doomed. But instead, in the places and races where Democrats prevailed, it was because they brought abortion, Jan. 6, and the need to protect our freedoms top of mind. We must once again apply that same wisdom to how we confront the MAGA justices on the Supreme Court—making clear to voters that our freedoms, our families, and our futures are still very much on the line.
As the teaser for Mark Joseph Stern’s Wednesday post for Slate put it, “The Next GOP Supreme Court Pick Will Make Brett Kavanaugh Look Like a RINO.” Compared to the judges Trump seeded into lower courts during his administration, “Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett may appear, at times, like lily-livered centrists,” Stern warns:
What Republicans want now are pugilistic partisans who are outright committed to the authoritarian project. They want fidelity to the party, its leaders, and its policies rather than some hazy devotion to “the law as written,” or even “democracy.”
Get serious about this. Remind friends and neighbors regularly that black robes matter.
What Rosenberg says is very important. DeSantis’ extremist positions are even losing him traction in the Republican party! It’s destroying him in a general election. I think that even if Trump doesn’t make it to the convention for some reason, DeSantis is too damaged to win. He can’t pivot away from fascism.
Of course, when Fox News initially tried to push an outrage cycle about this, they strategically cropped out images showing that the White House did have the US flag flying atop the building and above the Pride flag. https://t.co/IBLJYitfOf
Saturday was a tale of two flags. One was flown at the White House: a rainbow Pride flag, specifically the trans- and racially inclusive “Progress” variation. “Today, the People’s House—your house—sends a clear message to the country and to the world,” President Biden tweeted, alongside an image of the flag hanging from the south portico. “America is a nation of pride.” The other one was held aloft—or rather, several of them were—in a small demonstration outside the entrance to Disney World in Orlando, Florida: the Nazi swastika. Some of the demonstrators were reportedly with the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement, and they also held signs with anti-gay slurs that need not be reproduced here.
You don’t have to guess which flag the leading right-wing sycophants were up in arms about.
“America has been humiliated, debauched and debased. A warning about how civilizations unravel from within,” former Trump adviser Stephen Miller tweeted. “The ideological coup is complete,” said The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro. Benny Johnson, of the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA, decreed, “The enemy is inside the castle walls.” Several Republican members of Congress claimed Biden had violated the “flag code,” with Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana going on to deem it part of Biden’s “twisted agenda” and Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas calling it “a disgrace.” On Fox on Monday, Washington Examiner deputy editor Kaylee McGhee White claimed that the Biden administration was sending the message, “This ideology runs America.”
Rarely is the anti-LGBTQ crisis illustrated so clearly, where queer and trans people are being scapegoated and demonized by Republican officeholders and would-be stormtroopers alike. But there was a third flag of note on Saturday: A “DeSantis 2024” flag flew alongside the swastikas. That was no coincidence. DeSantis, more than any other Republican official today, stands for wielding the power of the state to enforce heterosexuality and eradicate transgender people.
Florida is the testing ground for sex and gender authoritarianism in the United States, with DeSantis now campaigning to “make America Florida” as president in 2024. DeSantis declared war on Disney after it opposed his signature “Don’t Say Gay” law, which has been used to chill any classroom discussion of queer and trans people. That combined with a raft of anti-LGBTQ laws passed by the state legislature has led queer and trans Floridians to leave the state, as The Washington Postreported this month. Florida is now at the vanguard of barring trans adults from gender-affirming care, by adding onerous requirements and restrictions like making it a crime to offer or obtain care via telehealth and allowing doctors and pharmacists to deny care outright. The goal is to dehumanize queer and trans communities. One Republican state lawmaker, Representative Webster Barnaby, likened trans people to “mutants” and “demons” this past session; another, Representative Randy Fine, called the anti-LGBTQ laws being passed part of their fight against “evil.”
Florida is also home to Moms for Liberty, who have galvanized if not kicked off the nationwide fight to remove books from schools and libraries for their LGBTQ content, and who are working to take over school boards and recruiting state legislators in their fight to mandate anti-LGBTQ policies in education and health care. This month, the Southern Poverty Law Center named them one of the leading extremist groups in the country, with links to Christian nationalists, the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” movements, and the Proud Boys. As just one example: Daily Salinas is a onetime DeSantis campaign volunteer who joined Moms for Liberty in disrupting a Miami-Dade school board meeting last year to demand the removal of sex ed curricula. She is also a supporter of the Proud Boys, appearing at their rallies and even greeting one released from the hospital.
Saturday is hardly the first time that pro-DeSantis and Nazi flags have stood side by side at demonstrations in the state. It happened in May 2022, also outside Disney World, and in July 2022 outside the Turning Point USA conference in Tampa. DeSantis has not condemned or even commented on the latest instance. If he does so, it will likely only be to distance himself: After other Florida lawmakers condemned two days of neo-Nazi demonstrations in January 2022, DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw asked, in a since-deleted tweet, “Do we even know they’re Nazis?” DeSantis, meanwhile, claimed the demonstrations were evidence that his opponents wanted to “smear me as if I had something to do with it.”
It was a nice gesture for the White House to celebrate Pride, signifying some measure of inclusion, especially this year, when symbols (like Target and its Pride merchandise) may matter more than before. In contrast, in Florida this year, Pride season opened with travel advisories from the NAACP and Human Rights Campaign, warning that the state is unsafe for queer and trans people. Several Pride events in the state were canceled or relocated as a result of the new laws, not to mention the threats posed by groups like the Proud Boys or the open neo-Nazis who took to Disney World. DeSantis may reject them yet, but he cannot deny that they see their struggle aligned with his: to rally others to join them in demonizing, driving out, and eradicating queer and trans people.
I need a drink…
Note the DeSantis 2024 flag among them.
Although this whole thing is stupid…also note that the Flag on top of the Capitol was flying.
I’ve long written that one of Trump’s great gift is that, for his followers, he makes politics fun. This NYT newsletter piece observes that phenomenon:
When Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges in New York City two months ago, I tried to make sense of the political fallout with my colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst. After poring over traditional markers about fund-raising and poll numbers, Nate mentioned another standard I’ve been thinking about over the past few days: Do Trump’s legal challenges make him more (or less) fun?
The question is awkward, as it suggests that the reasons some Americans are drawn to politicians are divorced from the seriousness of their office. But after Trump’s arraignment in federal court in Miami this week, I’m reminded of its importance. Nate wasn’t calling Trump fun as a self-evident fact, but rather identifying a set of voters who are attracted to showmanship and celebrity, are distinct from Trump’s base and follow politics only casually, if at all.
These voters matter for Trump’s 2024 campaign. Five percent of Trump’s voters in 2016 were disengaged from politics, a study by Democracy Fund, a pro-democracy group, found, and that is the type of margin that made a difference in such a close contest.
What distinguishes this group? Perhaps you have a friend who doesn’t care about politics, but can’t believe Trump said THAT. Or who recognizes the belittling nicknames he bestowed on Republicans in the 2016 primary, like “Little Marco” Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, monikers that have stuck beyond Republican circles.
Such awareness is part of the effect of Trump’s celebrity and ability to command attention in ways no other candidate can. When Trump was at his political peak, that quality extended beyond his most ardent supporters to political outsiders who were attracted to his style — or were at least entertained by it.
2024 challenge
Ahead of the 2024 election, though, Trump’s crusade for supporters is failing to live up to his 2016 effort. At both of Trump’s arraignments, the number of people who came to the courthouse to defend him was smaller than expected. I’ve heard from Republican leaders — on Capitol Hill and in early voting states like Iowa — who say they have gotten fewer calls defending Trump than they anticipated. Even his return to CNN, in a widely criticized town hall last month, fell short of the ratings that Trump once delivered for cable networks.
Perhaps most important, Trump himself looks miserable. Even as Republican voters have largely rallied behind him, and even as he remains the front-runner to secure the Republican nomination despite his cascading legal problems, he appears to be wrestling with the reality that his freedom is in jeopardy.
“Some birthday,” he grumbled in Miami this week, ignoring a clear attempt by supporters to cheer him up on the week he turned 77.
According to my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, who have closely followed Trump’s political career, his speech in New Jersey after his arraignment brought down the mood of the party instead of jump-starting it. Trump turned what was meant to be a moment of defiance into a familiar litany of grievances. He invoked the tone of personal victimhood that Republicans have told me cost them votes in the 2022 midterms, when Trump focused on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
It’s not just that the indictments distract Trump from laying out an affirmative vision for the country. They can also stop him from being the most free version of himself.
In a competitive Republican primary where another candidate can gain traction with the electorate (a possibility that remains to be seen), Trump’s inability to summon his freewheeling style is the type of difficult-to-quantify factor that can keep him from securing votes — and leave opportunities for opponents.
Trump can, of course, return anytime to the unconstrained approach that won him so much attention in 2016 and since. His Republican primary competitors are already dreading the amount of media coverage they will lose this summer to his indictments, my colleagues Jonathan Swan and Jonathan Weisman reported.
Yet these factors are part of the reason that many Democrats feel good about a potential matchup between President Biden and Trump. They argue that the electorate is simply exhausted with the chaos that he brought to national politics and that his legal troubles are a reminder of that aspect of his presidency. What was once fun (for some) no longer is.
I think this is an important factor. The Trump show has always been a huge part of his appeal. (God knows why…) If he gets too dour and too, dare I say, boring, there is a not negligible portion of his voters who may look elsewhere. Or, just as likely, not bother to vote. It’s not as if his rivals are Mr and Mrs excitement.
We’ll see. He may get his mojo back. But the only change he’s made to his act is to whine about his personal troubles and that may be getting old even for some of his ardent cult members. Self-pity isn’t a good look for anyone.
As the country reckons with an unprecedented federal indictment of a former president, one of the most significant hurdles to a public resolution is arriving at a shared set of basic facts and priorities. And that’s particularly a challenge with the American right.
Multiple polls focused on the Trump classified documents case suggest that many, if not most, Republicans don’t particularly appreciate the potential gravity of the situation or its details. And it can’t simply be explained by mere partisanship.
One of the inescapable facts of the situation is that Trump got himself in trouble not because he took the documents in the first place, but because he declined to return them. The indictment only charges conduct after the government subpoenaed Trump’s documents in May 2022. After that subpoena, Trump only returned some of his remaining classified documents before the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago turned up more. The Washington Post recapped how Trump’s fateful decision not to return the documents resulted from rejecting his lawyers’ advice.
But despite it being readily apparent that Trump didn’t do what the government asked, a new YouGov poll shows Republicans, by and large, maintain that he did. It shows 53 percent say Trump “cooperated in returning documents,” with just 15 percent saying he didn’t.
And in case you think this just boils down to partisanship, it doesn’t. In contrast to Republicans’ views of Biden’s supposed lack of cooperation, Democrats recognized Pence’s cooperation by a 50-12 margin.
Related to the above are views of intentionality. There is no public evidence that Biden knew he had classified documents and held on to them, and plenty that Trump did. That evidence long predates last week’s indictment. But a February Quinnipiac poll showed just 48 percent of Republicans believed Trump intentionally held on to the documents, compared to 71 percent who said the same of Biden.
We see similar findings when it comes to the gravity of the situation.
One of the most serious allegations in the indictment is that Trump had information that pertained to nuclear secrets. It’s perhaps the definition of the kind of information you would want to protect. But after the indictment, YouGov asked people whether it would be a “national security risk” for Trump to have such documents in his home. And remarkably, Republicans said it would not be, 54-46.
Similarly, a Monmouth University poll in January found just 14 percent of Republicans said they would be “very concerned” if the documents Trump had “fell into the wrong hands.” But 62 percent said the same of Biden’s documents. This despite Biden’s documents being significantly less voluminous and including far fewer “top secret” documents.
(And again, in the most analogous case to Biden’s, the Pence case, Democrats didn’t return the partisan favor. Just 20 percent of them would be “very concerned” if Pence’s documents fell into the wrong hands.)
That certainly points back to the information gap here. Regardless of Trump’s guilt, the known facts make it clear there’s simply no real comparison between his and Biden’s documents cases. But Trump has inoculated himself over the years by drawing his supporters — with the help of a compliant and siloed conservative media ecosystem — into waving away virtually anything bad as the latest lie from the “deep state” and the “lamestream media.”
It’s almost as if certain people are looking directly at classified documents and pretending they’re not there.
I’m pretty sure this is a characteristic of cult worship and brainwashing.
It’s very important to note the difference between how Democrats view these issues and Republicans and I wish the media would do more of it. It’s clear that much of the right is simply unable to believe their Dear Leader did anything wrong and the rest are in an information bubble. It’s a lethal combination and while it’s mostly due to the right wing media’s fealty to Trump it’s also due to the unwillingness of other GOP elected officials to tell the truth to their voters. It’s on them as much as it is on Trump.
Trump opted to decompress with a trip to Versailles in Little Havana. The iconic restaurant has long been a pit stop for politicians seeking to curry favor with Miami’s Cuban voters.
Trump and his entourage arrived at Versailles shortly after leaving the courthouse and made straight for the bakery.
The local press was on hand to capture footage of the large crowd milling outside to greet their man. Inside the bakery, Trump supporters fawned over their man, regaling the soon-to-turn-77-year-old with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” a day early and holding a group prayer. Former MMA fighter Jorge Masvidal, sporting a University of Miami ball cap, hailed Trump as “everybody’s favorite president of all time” after embracing the former leader of the free world.
A glad-handing Trump was heard to declare, “Food for everyone!”
So, New Times wondered, did Trump — who famously fancies his chicken from KFC and his steaks well-done and slathered with ketchup but isn’t exactly known for picking up the check — treat his fan club to a spread of croquetas, pastelitos, and cubanos chased with cafecitos?
It turns out no one got anything. Not even a cafecito to-go.
A knowledgeable source assures New Times that Donald Trump’s stop at Versailles totaled about ten minutes, leaving no time for anyone to eat anything, much less place an order.
I wrote about this a while back but since they seem determined to throw the election to Trump it’s worth reiterating. Here’s Rick Wilson on twitter:
Good morning.
If any of you are still bamboozled by Nancy Jacobsen and Mark Penn’s @NoLabelsOrg‘s actual intentions let me hook you up.
They claim to be moderate, centrist problem solvers who are running a 3rd part effort to “give Americans more choices.”
Nancy is one of DC’s most powerful, influential, and connected players. A Swamp Empress. Richer than God.
She and Mark Penn are angry, though. Very, very angry. At whom, you ask?
Well, Democrats.
They were exiled from Clinton world. Obamas, same.
They’ve been on a jihad ever since. Mark has dozens of Fox hits defending and praising Trump.
Their major donors are the EXACT same billionaires funding Ron DeSantis. (Yeah, Nancy hides her donors, but girl, your org leaks because your staff hates you.)
They formed No Labels as a long con, a way to break the Democrats, get rich doing it (and again, they are VERY rich), and punish their imagined enemies.
They branded it as “centrist problem solvers” buy their plan to run a 3rd party candidate this year was anything but.
They’re working to put a conservative Dem (Joe Manchin is their number one pony, but Sinema is also in the running if Joe falls off) on the ballot in key states to drain off votes from Biden.
Their math, maps, and polling are utter fantasy, an ever-changing target.
@ThirdWayMattB at Third Way and @Philip_Germain at LP have more stats, data, and proof of fundamental mathematical and polling dishonesty than you can imagine. NL *makes up the polling numbers* to fit their narrative.
When challenged how they’d get a candidate to 270, they argued their 3rd party goon could win in…Delaware. And Florida. And Washington State. And Utah. And um…well, you tell me if this is a serious map in your mind:
It’s all a fraud. They describe Joe Biden and Donald Trump as “equally unacceptable”…an assertion I’ll leave you to assess. The plan all along was to burn down Biden, and they’re getting on the ballot in key states to do just that.
We know the why but what about the how? Getting on the ballot is hard, and NL is fraudulently representing its petitions in many states and changing voter registrations. They’re in trouble in Maine and AZ already, with more to come.
But they’ll be on enough close states to drag off a % of conservative Dems and elect Trump or — and here’s the big reveal — they’ll drop out and not run a candidate if the Republican nominee is — wait for it — Ron DeSantis.
That’s right. Centrist, moderate, problem-solver, just trying-to-give-voters-a-choice @NoLabelsOrg gave away the entire game.
You know, Ron DeSantis, that noted moderate. You know, Smilin’ Ron, the nicest Republican.
We’re on final now, so bear with me. Why would they say that? The answer is “Dallas” and the answer is “Manhattan.”
Nancy has raised something like $70 million dollars (as noted prior) from the EXACT SAME billionaires backing DeSantis.
This donor set (including Sugar Daddy Harlan Crow) cares about 3 things; lower taxes at the Mt. Everest end of the income scale, carried-interest deductions, and oil-and-gas subsidies/write-offs.
They’ll get them from Trump, but DeSantis has marginally better aesthetics.
If they have to spend the $$$ to destroy Biden, they will…and @NoLabelsOrg is designed to be the vehicle for an ocean of dark GOP money dressed up as moderate do-gooderism.
They’re perfectly fine with Trump if it happens, and if it’s DeSantis they think it’s in the bag.
I implore DC media types to stop referring to @NoLabelsOrg as “centrist” or “moderate” for they are neither.
It’s the most cynical ploy in service to Trump and the MAGA GOP one can imagine.
Two other quick notes then I’ll let you get on with your day. The Ian Fleming Rule of Coincidences (look it up) of is always right.
Last week, NL heralded former NC Gov Pat McCrory as their new front man. Pat’s main advisor and close friend is Chris LaCivita.
For you folks playing at home, Chris LaCivita is also the lead strategist to another candidate running in 2024.
That candidate is Donald Trump.
So endeth the lesson.
They have been a blight on American politics since long before Trump. One of their founders is Joe Lieberman who started the group after Democrats hurt his feelings. Just like he tanked the public option in Obamacare because Democrats hurt his feelings. For Jacobson it’s money, for Penn it’s revenge and for Lieberman is about hurt feelings. There was a time when these people would just be useless (rich) gadflies. Today they are saboteurs.
