Oh look, Trump’s nominee to head the DOD isn’t just an enthusiastic supporter of war crimes. He’s a full-fledge Christian Nationalist fruitcake. Those tattoos mean exactly what we thought they meant.
During the discussion about Hegseth’s book “Battle For The American Mind,” Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of “classical Christian schools” to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an “educational insurgency” to take over the nation.
“I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America,” said Sumpter.
“That’s what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation,” Hegseth agreed. “Policy answers like school choice, while they’re great, that’s phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp.”
“We call it a tactical retreat,” Hegseth continued. “We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao [Zedong] wrote about. We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way.”
Sounds great. And, by the way, this didn’t happen two years ago. He went on this show on Monday night, as the nominee to run the Department of Defense. This shows his excellent judgement…
I assume that most of you are aware that they went down to Mar a Lago last week to kiss the ring. They claim it won’t change their coverage but, come on.
Leave it to Jon Stewart 💥
Mika Brzezinski: “Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. And for those asking, why would we speak to the president-elect during such fraught times… I would ask back, why wouldn’t we?”
This makes me sick to my stomach although it probably shouldn’t considering the behavior of various billionaire media magnates before the election. Just like all the Republican officials before them, they are either cowards or opportunists. Either way, I wouldn’t count on the media to be saying “Democracy dies in darkness” this time. It’s clear which way the wind is blowing.
Poynter reports that Trump told Fox he has “an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press.”
And here drops the other shoe: “If not treated fairly, however, that will end. The media is very important to the long-term success of the United States of America,” Trump said.
Are we supposed to pretend that we don’t know who this cretin is after 8 long years of him dominating our days and nightmares? Come on. Nothing has changed. He will be exactly as he always is.
However, now that he has total immunity and a GOP that is subserviant to the point of grovelling, members of the press are apparently terrified of him, even extremely wealthy celebrities who could pick up and leave the country at a moment’s notice if they had to.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration.
Knowing that Trump has threatened retribution against his perceived political opponents, and that Trump has promoted lies about Scarborough and Brzezinski in the past, the MSNBC hosts decided to reach out to the president-elect, the sources told CNN.
The two sources generally agreed with Scarborough and Brzezinski’s impression of the situation at hand – namely, that the incoming Trump administration could use its wide-ranging powers to punish people deemed enemies. (Trump ally Elon Musk wrote on X overnight, in a post supporting Matt Gaetz for attorney general, that America needs Gaetz to “put powerful bad actors in prison.”)
Not exactly profiles in courage are they? Luckily, none of this changes my viewing habits since they are off the air before I turn on the TV. (A blessing of living on the west coast.) But this show sets the table for the political news cycle every morning. Their cowardice is very likely to spread.
Trump’s failed Truth Social company (DJT) brought in a little bit more than 2 million dollars this year and lost about 20 million but is nonetheless valued at over $7 billion. With a B. It’s has nothing to do with the company and everything to do with Trump in whom people apparently want to invest their money. Now DJT wantsto buy a crypto exchange. Why???
Crypto exchanges exist in a murky regulatory space. Some cryptocurrencies are considered by the government to be securities, and as such they fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC. Markets that function as clearinghouses for such crypto securities are similarly subject to SEC regs.
If a crypto exchange could guarantee that it would not be investigated by the SEC or become subject to any new SEC regulations, that would be a valuable asset.
Raise your hand if you think there is any chance—any chance at all—that under President Trump the SEC would dare to so much as look in the direction of a crypto exchange owned by DJT.
As it turns out this exchange is currently owned by a company called Bakkt a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and Bakkt is also unprifitable. But it has a Trumpy pedigree . According to the Financial Times:
Bakkt’s first chief executive was Kelly Loeffler, a former head of marketing at ICE and a Republican ex-senator for Georgia during Trump’s first presidency. She is co-chair of the committee organising his inauguration in January. She is also married to Jeff Sprecher, ICE’s founder, chair and chief executive.
Loeffler’s husband is the majority ownber of Bakkt.
Here’s Last:
Trump is looking to buy a moribund crypto exchange owned by the husband of one of his Republican sycophants/allies/donors. He’s going to pay for the acquisition with stock, the price of which is inflated to ludicrous levels by a combination of cultists, speculators, and people seeking to influence him.
The value proposition for this merger is that, as president, Trump can make sure the SEC doesn’t touch this exchange, while also giving actors who hope to influence him another way to shove money in his direction.
And all of this is so commonplace and unremarkable that no one is going to even pause for a moment to question it.
As he points out, this is pure banana republic stuff. He’ll ensure that this grift is unregulated by his SEC even as he’s providing his big money buddies with a nice easy way to pay him off. Win-win.
The first term was overwhelmingly corrupt. He made many millions from his hotels and resorts among other things. This second term, it’s going to be billions. And since he literally can do anything he wants without any fear of repurcussion there is no stopping it.
Representative-elect Sarah McBride is transgender. And that thirsty harpy Nancy Mace is in front of the cameras as usual behaving like the harridan she is:
REPORTER: Is this effort in response to Congresswoman McBride coming to Congress?NANCY MACE: Yes, and absolutely, and then some. Someone with a penis in the women's locker room — that's not ok. I'm a victim of abuse myself. I'm a rape survivor.
This was never about girls competing in athletics. It was always about shunning transgender people, embarrassing them, making their lives a living hell.
This is heartbreaking. There is no reason to do this to this person other than rank cruelty.
Oh, and by the way:
When Nancy Mace enrolled at The Citadel, they changed their bathroom policy ON HER BEHALF
President-elect Donald Trump signaled in a Truth Social post on Monday that he means to declare a national emergency as a component of his plans for mass deportations (CNN):
CNN reported over the weekend that Trump’s team is evaluating a national emergency declaration to unlock Pentagon resources and tailoring that declaration to pave the way for expanding detention space.
In his first term, Trump declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico to circumvent Congress and use Pentagon funds for his border wall—a move that was faced with numerous lawsuits.
The incoming administration’s sweeping immigration plans are beginning to come into focus, sources previously told CNN, including implementing strict border measures, striking down Biden-era policies and kicking off the detention and deportation of migrants at large scale.
People close to the president-elect and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise, including reviewing metropolitan areas where capabilities exist.
But they are also preparing executive actions that are a call back to his first term in office and could be rolled out as soon as Trump takes office, the sources said.
I remember when the right-wing panic of the day was mythical Obama FEMA camps. Digby reminded readers last February that the huge conspiracy theory died off as soon as Trump took office (like the stolen-election conspiracy this year). Also, detaining vast numbers of “undocumented Central American residents and 4000 American citizens whom the US Attorney General had designated as ‘national security threats’” was originally a Reagan-administration idea:
It’s a Republican thing.
Trump’s top henchman Steven Miller has been floating the idea of “deportation camps” and one of Trump’s big plans is to do sweeps in American cities and put the homeless into camps as well.
[Trump’s] team plans to stop issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents in a bid to end birthright citizenship.
David Badash, founder and editor of The New Civil Rights Movement, writes:
Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis last week said, “Birthright citizenship is a foundational concept in American constitutional law. It is a betrayal of the 14th Amendment to suggest otherwise or that it can be discarded with ease. We settled any doubt about this in Wong Kim Ark in 1898. We should not budge one solitary inch.”
But Trump himself has declared, “going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”
That would, as Professor Kreis notes, directly contradicts the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which also bans Americans who “have engaged in insurrection” from holding office.
If Trump is allowed to revoke the citizenship of some people born in the United States, what’s to stop him from expanding dispossession to anyone he deems insufficiently servile, including Black Americans for whom the post-Civil War amendment was principally written? What other amendments or clauses might Trump dismiss with a wave of his stubby fingers?
Defiance of the 14th Amendment regarding U.S.-born citizens sets up a showdown (or not) between the U.S. Supreme Court and Dear Leader. We’ve already established that if a Republican Senate confirms Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. to Cabinet positions, an utterly cowed GOP caucus will do anything their liege lord asks. (Trump made new health czar RFK Jr. eat McDonald’s, observes late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. “That’s what he does, these are subservience tests.”) Trump’s open defiance of the Constitution would leave the Court with an unsolvable problem once His Lordship’s actions are challenged in court.
They have immunized a man whose administration is openly toying with the idea of defying their authority.
Let’s think through this dynamic together.
If Trump were to pursue a case all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Court were to rule against him, and Trump were to decide not to abide by that ruling . . .
What happens next?
Sorry, wait: What happens next if the attorney general, the head of the FBI, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs and their general staffs are all personally loyal to Trump and Trump has both (a) blanket criminal liability for himself and (b) the power to pardon anyone who commits a crime he orders?
There’s your worst-case scenario.
So here’s the logic chain:
SCOTUS must understand that it has put itself in this box.
It also must understand that if it ruled against Trump on a matter of sufficient importance, then Trump might be inclined to defy its ruling.
And if the president exhibited such defiance, then the high court’s position in American politics would be utterly, irrevocably exposed.
Ergo, the chief justice would not—under any circumstances—allow the Court to rule against Trump if he believed that Trump might attempt to defy the ruling.
And that, my friends, is the sum of all fears. A system of government so fully perverted that it is not possible to chart a path back to liberalism and the rule of law.
Is this scenario likely? No.
Is it possible? Let’s call it 1-in-100 odds.
Then again, what were the odds you’d see a losing presidential candidate attempt to overthrow the election? What were the odds you’d witness a violent mob storm and sack the U.S. Capitol after battling police for hours while said loser watched on TV and did nothing? For that matter, what were the odds that a sitting president would threaten this little blog?
“If we assumed—just for the sake of argument—that Trump was trying to bring about this worst-case scenario . . . what would he be doing differently?” asks Last. “Nothing.”
Which is to say: Trump’s actions to date are entirely consistent with a man looking to remake our system of government. If he was intent on the worst-case scenario, there is nothing he’d be doing differently.
Should Trump attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, he will set up the nine SCOTUS justices to somehow accede his demand or else become legal eunuchs.
I’ve watched too many unimaginable scenarios play out in my life not to worry.
There is an interesting story about how the chicken of the 1930s (on the left) became the chicken of the 21st century (on the right). It’s not just a tale about how antibiotics created bigger chickens (presumably even your organic, no-antibiotics, free-rangers are a product of that selective breeding), but about how monopsony makes prices higher by eliminating competition, not among manufacturers but among buyers upstream of consumers (the Tysons and Perdues, and the ADMs and Walmarts, etc.)
Bloomberg’s three-part “Beak Capitalism” podcast explains how chicken farmers became Uber-style independent contractors before there was an Uber, and how Big Chicken learned to outsource its risk. Uber was late to that party.
Consolidation among chicken processors meant farmers had fewer places to sell their birds (um, the processors’ birds, actually) and had to become all-but employees of Big Chicken. Chicken farmers these days raise the birds as contractors.
Once chicken became a staple rather than a luxury (and under cover of the Covid pandemic), Big Chicken found it could raise prices and make more money selling to fewer customers. Without competitors in the market, they could simply set their own prices while blaming inflation, the inflation helped sink Kamala Harris.
That economic model is now everywhere. Like chickens, under a Project 2025 administration it’s likely to get even bigger.
A lot of early analysis of the 2024 presidential election has suffered from three overlapping problems.
First, that vote margins can be influenced by changes in turnout as well as changes in vote preference. If voters stay home, the candidate they would have supported receives fewer votes. And it looks like a lot of 2020 voters stayed home in 2024.
But — second — not as many as one might have thought in the first few days after the election. Many immediate analyses of what happened exaggerated the decrease in Democratic votes or suggested that Donald Trump won an outright majority of votes cast, both errors that were a function of failing to consider (particularly) California’s sizable, slow-to-count vote total.
The third problem is that the shift to Trump in the voting — real and widespread — is being conflated with broad support for Trump, which is far less dramatic. It’s the difference between noting that exit polls show Trump fared much better with voters under 30 than he did in 2020, and acknowledging that he lost that age group to Vice President Kamala Harris. He didn’t lose them by as much, but he still lost them.
Which, again, overlaps with other problems. Our analysis suggests that this improvement came as the number of younger voters fell relative to 2020. Harris lost votes relative to Biden; Trump got about the same number of votes from people under 30 that he got four years ago — according to exit polls, anyway, which is a big caveat.
He goes on to describe the strutting and chest pounding about Trump’s alleged landslide which is predictable. He said he wont 2020 in a landslide too. But even when it comes to the electoral college, it’s anything but a landslide:
In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote but won 57 percent of electors — thanks to fewer than 100,000 votes nationally. In 2020, Joe Biden won 57 percent of electors, thanks to a slightly larger number of votes in several states. Now, in 2024, current data indicate that Trump will win 58 percent of electors, thanks to 233,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Take those away (or see improvement to that extent for Harris) and Trump’s victory vanishes.
As the votes have come in we’ve now seen that Trump didn’t even win a majority. “It’s the narrowest margin for a Republican since 1968 — ignoring the two times since then that candidates (including Trump) won the presidency while losing the popular vote.”
Bump concludes:
We understand why Trump and his supporters want Americans to think that he is overwhelmingly popular and has received America’s acquiescence to do what he wants. He has that power, certainly, but he doesn’t have that mandate.
Sadly, power is all he needs.
By the way, as votes are still being calibrated, Trump’s popular vote lead conmtinues to shrink:
Newly tabulated ballots in New Jersey slightly narrow Trump's popular vote lead. Today's additions:
So, what do we do when we fight & lose? Never Give Up! Never surrender!
People admire that about a leader and a cause. We don’t just fight the fights we can win. You fight the fights that need fighting!” Martin Sheen, The American President (1995)
We expect people to follow the norms of losing. Like we do. Accept the loss. Don’t flip the board over.
And when we WIN? We are supposed to accept the win. So we stop fighting. We reach out to the losing side & shake hands. We follow the norms of winners. Say, “Good luck! It’s great to have a strong opponent!”
We aren’t supposed to be a sore winner! Don’t spike the football. Don’t mock them for losing. Don’t brag about the win everywhere. “Don’t get cocky kid!”
I’m getting into too many sports and movie metaphors here, so I want to talk about a specific win and why when we fight & win against RWers we must keep fighting, because the norms of winning aren’t enough against today’s RW.
Ruby Freeman & Shaye Moss won a $148 million judgement against Giuliani after he defamed them
Rudy delayed turning over his assets to them for over a year.
Inside court, under oath, Rudy & his lawyers were rebuked and chastised by the judge for their failures to follow the law. Rudy was threatened with contempt
Outside the court, when he was NOT under oath, Rudy lied about the case.
The MSM ran the video of Rudy lying. Those lies were shared everywhere on social media.
There was no video of the lawyer for Freeman & Moss reminding people of the harm Rudy did, his failure to comply, debunking his new and reoccurring lies, and what was revealed UNDER OATH in the court.
On Thursday of last week Rudy’s lawyers quit working for him. Rudy Giuliani’s Lawyers Tell Judge They Want To Quit On Him (This is a GREAT story about it by Brandi Buchman in the Huffington Post. She focused on how the victims were harmed. )
People think they quit because they were worried about getting paid, but I asked Glenn Kirschner about that Sunday and he said, judges don’t grant that kind of request, because they should have known that going in. More likely it was because they didn’t want to commit crimes for Rudy and they didn’t want to get disbarred, like Rudy.
Outside of court Rudy whined he didn’t have enough money to afford food, and his followers donated $127,000 to him. (Money that should be seized by the court and given to Freeman and Moss.)
Friday, we learned he’s been hiding over $40,000 in joint checking accounts in multiple LLCs, in court he didn’t want to tell the judge who was in those LLCs with him, but because it was in court, he was ORDERED to do it. (BTW, why did he say he couldn’t give their name? He claimed they would be threatened and harassed. They expect that the tactics THEY use to intimidate others will be used by the left.)
Rudy was ALSO supposed to turn over a signed, framed Joe DiMaggio jersey. That was supposed to be settled on Nov 15. But Rudy’s new lawyer didn’t turn it over and engaged in legal f*ckery.
See the Jolting Joe jersey hung over his fireplace in his penthouse apartment? Rudy got it in 2002 at the 3rd Annual Joe DiMaggio Awards Gala Honoring Rudy Giuliani. When the lawyer for Freeman and Moss got the keys to the penthouse, it wasn’t there.
There was a bunch of back and forth with Rudy’s lawyers about exactly where it was, asking for a list of inventory and how the Freeman/Moss lawyers could access them. The old lawyers quit, the new lawyer sent a letter saying something like,
‘Oh yeah, that framed Joe DiMaggio jersey that was in his penthouse apartment? According to OUR interpretation of the law in the state of New York, that shirt is ‘wearing apparel’ and is exempt.’
ARE YOU Fking KIDDING ME? WEARING APPAREL? RUDY LOST THE CASE! It’s been adjudicated! IN COURT! He did the crime, pay the fine!
What I see today is a lot of people giving up. I get it. When Trump never went to prison for his crimes, people think “What’s the point of fighting him?” It’s hard to think about fighting NEW fights over his lawbreaking, when we failed to punishing him for his OLD attacks. But I want to remind people to focus on the victims who have succeeded in fighting Trump, Rudy, RW media and MAGA nuts.
Learn from what they did right. Learn what to do when they refuse to accept defeat. Anticipate their doubling down. Know that winning in court is not the end of fighting them. They have to be fought OUTSIDE the court too.
Learn how knock back their own narrative in their own media and on social media when we win. “Political prosecution?! We’re the real victims here!”
But in civil cases, we can talk about the case while it is happening. We can comment about their lies right outside the courthouse. We can get the last word. We can remind people about what was said UNDER OATH in court, and who is the real victim.
These women were DRIVEN from their HOMES and neighborhood of the death threats based on the DEFAMATION of Rudy, OAN, Gateway Pundit and Donald Trump. They had to go into HIDING because people were POUNDING on their doors and pushed their way into their homes to confront them.
GA election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss speak after a jury orders Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million in damages for defaming the mother and daughter pair after the 2020 election.
I’ve looked at what kind of cases against Trump & MAGA have succeeded, the civil cases. One reason was there was a financial pay off for the people fighting, so that they can fund the ongoing case against an opponent, especially against one that uses delays & financial resources to overwhelm people.
At the highest levels on the right when someone does something immoral or illegal for Trump they have been getting away with it. But when he thinks someone is ripping him off or doing something that costs him money, THAT is when he gets pissed and will cut them loose. Trump expects to PROFIT from everything. If someone is a big earner, they can get away with ANYTHING.
Fighting Trump, the RW media & MAGA in this century requires us to understand what levers work on them and why. We have seen that when something costs corporations massive amounts of money, the change their behavior. (Then they buy politicians & change the laws so that it doesn’t cost them money anymore, but that’s another story)
With Trump, like a mob boss, if someone stops being a big earner for him they lose power in the organization.
When we win against them, we need ways to take their money and use it to build our side. That means, activists, our media, our lawyers, our influencers, our messaging experts or technology experts. We use that to build and win our future cases against them.
We work the narrative to show our side that when we win, we fight.
This piece by Roxanne Gay in the NY Times spoke to me. I‘ve included a gift link for the whole thing but here’s an excerpt:
Mistakes were made in the Harris campaign because mistakes are always made in presidential campaigns. Democrats are now reflecting on those mistakes and figuring out how to manifest a different outcome next time, if there is a next time. The recriminations have been numerous — too many celebrities, echo chambers, ignoring the economy, no alternative to the conservative media ecosystem, too much embracing of conservative politicians, too much identity politics, too big a tent, the price of eggs.
But to suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics, to suggest we should compromise on the rights of trans people, for instance, and all of the other critical issues we care most about, is unacceptable. It is shameful and cowardly. We cannot abandon the most vulnerable communities to assuage the most powerful. Even if we did, it would never be enough. The goal posts would keep moving until progressive politics became indistinguishable from conservative politics. We’re halfway there already.
Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.
We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.
These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.
Read the whole thing. Her view is not very optimistic but it is bracingly clear-eyed. Maybe Jamie Raskin’s Thomas Jefferson quote below will come true and this will all pass. But I suspect that won’t happen without a fight.
If you are a person of means who can move to another country I totally understand it,but I don’t know that that will save you. The world is a small place now and I don’t think there’s any escape. Withdrawing to gardening and Animal Planet (as I woud like to do) won’t work either. We’re just going to have to meet the challenge whether we like it or not.
