RFK Jr. announces he’s suspending his presidential bid and endorsing Donald Trump on August 23. (PBS)
Elections staffs across North Carolina had prepared over 100,000 absentee ballots to go into the mail on Friday as the law requires. A lawsuit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put a halt to it:
The State Board of Elections has appealed Friday’s order by the NC Court of Appeals, which required election officials to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from 2024 general election ballots and print new ones. The appeal was filed with the NC Supreme Court Friday afternoon.
As the Supreme Court considers the appeal, State Board staff will work through the weekend to begin the process of coding new ballots without Kennedy’s name and providing proofs of the new ballots to county boards of elections for review. There are 2,348 different ballot styles statewide for the 2024 general election. More than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed before the order by the Court of Appeals.
The State Board instructed county Directors to hold and not destroy ballots already prepared until the matter is resolved.
CNN Dana Bash challenged Democrats’ state chair, Anderson Clayton, Friday afternoon, presenting the “political argument.” Would Democrats be arguing for Kennedy’s name to remain on the ballot if they did not feel his presence would hurt Donald Trump? In trying to paint the matter as partisan wrangling, Bash misses the point.
Kennedy fought to get on the ballot, as Clayton noted. (Yes, Democrats in multiple states fought that, including in North Carolina.) Kennedy having won recognition of his We The People party, the state reprinted voter registration forms by the hundreds of thousands to include that identification as a choice for his voters.*
But Kennedy delayed withdrawing from the presidential race until August 23. The North Carolina State Board of Elections denied his formal request on August 29 to have his name removed, stating, “Approximately 2 million ballots statewide have already been printed with Kennedy’s name on them, and the first ballots will be sent to absentee voters in eight days.”
This week Kennedy turned his denied late request into a legal demand.
If the GOP-dominated state Supreme Court rules for Kennedy, those 2,348 ballot styles will have to be reformatted, reproofed, reprinted, mailings re-prepared by staff, and voting machines recoded in 100 counties. Boards of election are scrambling over the weekend to tally the unplanned costs in manhours and material to local boards and county taxpayers across the state. It’s the first question voters asked our local board (Buncombe County). The delay could cost weeks and impact voters as well.
“As of late Thursday afternoon, county boards of elections had received 130,400 absentee ballot requests, including more than 12,300 requests from military and overseas voters,” the State Board said in a press statement. More than 2.9 million ballots had been printed before the Court of Appeals’ order on Friday, reports WCNC Charlotte.
North Carolina’s absentee ballots are the first in the nation to mail out, but Kennedy’s eleventh-hour legal demands may impact other states as well. Michigan, for one (The Guardian):
In Michigan, a state appellate court also ruled on Friday that Kennedy’s name as the Natural Law party’s candidate must be stricken from ballots. The Michigan secretary of state’s office said it would appeal to the state supreme court.
Kennedy has been fighting to remove his name from ballots in swing states ever since dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump. Speaking to reporters after the endorsement, Kennedy said that his polling consistently showed he would “likely hand the election over to the Democrats” in battleground states where he was on the ballot.
Donald Trump is, of course, pleased with the delay (The Hill):
“And that sounds like a bad thing for him. It’s not, it’s actually a great thing,” Trump said Friday in remarks to leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte. “He’s an incredible team player.”
“Some people wouldn’t realize it, so rather than voting for us they vote for him, and that wouldn’t’ help us very much, would it?” Trump continued. “It means that all of those who love Bobby — and there’s a lot of them — and all that he stands for, especially regarding the health and well being of us, can vote for me now. So all of the Bobby people are going to vote for me.”
Kennedy’s presidential bid did not go as planned. Now he and Trump expect taxpayers to pay to cancel his vanity project no matter the public cost and inconvenience. That describes Republicans’ past efforts (and future plans) to throw sand in the gears of democracy across the U.S.
* Tom Fiedler of the Asheville Watchdog finds “In the eight weeks or so that [Kennedy’s] We The People party has been among the options for registering voters, the number of Buncombe County residents choosing to join is … 0. That’s zero. Zippo. None.”
Trauma Season is here. ❤️🩹 At this time of year, admissions to the @AustraliaZoo Wildlife Hospital triple. Spring means wildlife are more active, and they often come into contact with cars and domestic pets. While these interactions often have a devastating outcome, our team of… pic.twitter.com/HkjRVHEEwL
Meet Squeak! 🐨 This adorable little girl was attacked by a dog and her mum had no choice but to save herself. Thankfully, Squeak was raced to the @AustraliaZoo Wildlife Hospital and is in the best hands possible! 💞 pic.twitter.com/fIs3G7mdHG
Good news alert! 🚨 Squeak’s mum was found, and brought to us at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital. This is the adorable moment the two were reunited. They’ll both stay with us until little Squeak is well enough to be released! 💚🐨 Be sure to turn your sound up to hear Squeak… pic.twitter.com/fvHAD6ysOg
– Baby Koalas are known as ‘Joeys’. Scientists often refer to them using terms like ‘juveniles’, ‘pouch young’ and ‘back young’.
– Younger breeding females usually give birth to one Joey each year, depending on a range of factors. However, not all females in a wild population will breed each year. Some, especially older females, will produce offspring only every two or three years.–
– When the Joey is born, it’s only about 2 centimetres long, is blind and furless and its ears are not yet developed. On its amazing journey to the pouch, it relies on its well-developed senses of smell and touch, its strong forelimbs and claws, and an inborn sense of direction. Once in the pouch, it attaches itself to one of the two teats which swells in its mouth, preventing it from being dislodged from its source of food.
– The Joey stays in its mother’s pouch for about 6 or 7 months, drinking only milk. Before it can tolerate gumleaves, which are toxic for most mammals, the joey must feed on a substance called ‘pap’ which is a specialised form of the mother’s droppings that is soft and runny. This allows the mother to pass on to the joey special micro-organisms from her intestine which are necessary for it to be able to digest the gumleaves. It feeds on this for a period of up to a few weeks, just prior to it coming out of the pouch at about 6 or 7 months of age.
– After venturing out of the pouch, the Joey rides on its mother’s abdomen or back, although it continues to return to her pouch for milk until it is too big to fit inside. The joey leaves its mother’s home range between 1 and 3 years old, depending on when the mother has her next joey. You can adopt your own Joey here!
– Koalas are mostly nocturnal. Nocturnal animals are awake at night and asleep during the day. Koalas, however, sleep for part of the night and also sometimes move about in the daytime. They often sleep for up to 18-20 hours each day.
– An adult koala eats about 1/2 – 1 kilogram of leaves each night.
– There is a myth that Koalas sleep a lot because they ‘get drunk’ on gumleaves. Fortunately, this is not correct! Most of their time is spent sleeping because it requires a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy
– Each Koala’s ‘home’ is made up of several trees called HOME TREES. They visit these same trees regularly. The area covered by these trees is called the Koala’s HOME RANGE. Each Koala has its own home range, which overlaps those of other Koalas. Unless breeding, they don’t normally visit another Koalas home trees. The size of each home range depends upon a range of factors including the quality of the habitat and the sex, age and social position in the population of the Koala.
Michelle Goldberg takes on the latest rad fad on the authoritarian right: Hitler apologia and holocaust denial. You knew it was coming, right? She is responding to (yet another) right wing “influencer” and alleged historian named Darryl Cooper and his embrace by none other than Tiucker Carlson.
Some on the right found Carlson’s turn toward Holocaust skepticism surprising. “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” Erick Erickson, the conservative radio host, wrote on X. But Carlson’s trajectory was entirely predictable. Nazi sympathy is the natural endpoint of a politics based on glib contrarianism, right-wing transgression and ethnic grievance. . . .
For parts of the contemporary right, however, the social consensuses undergirding liberalism are artificial and even tyrannical. After all, the “Matrix”-derived metaphor of being “red-pilled” implies a realization that all you’ve been told about the nature of reality is a lie, and thus everything is up for grabs. And once you discard all epistemological and moral guardrails, it’s easy to descend into barbarous nonsense.
Candace Owens, another anti-woke right-wing celebrity who has lately become Hitler-curious, has also come to question received wisdom about the shape of the earth. “I’m not a flat-earther,” she said in July. “I’m not a round-earther. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.”
Obviously, not every red-pilled conservative ends up arguing, as Owens did, that Hitler gets a bad rap. But the weakening of the intellectual quarantine around Nazism — and the MAGA right’s fetish for ideas their enemies see as dangerous — makes it easier for influential conservatives to surrender to fascist impulses. When they do, they pay no penalty in political relevance, because there’s no conservative establishment capable of disciplining its ideologues.
Carlson has just embarked on a national tour with special guests at each stop. In addition to Alex Jones, he’s scheduled to appear with the vice-presidential nominee JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr.
Whitewashing Hitler is an interesting move for a pro-Russia, pro-Putin acolyte like Carlson. Does he know anything about Russian history, specifically what went down between it and Nazi Germany? He might want to bone up a little bit on that.
On the other hand, for all I know Putin is now a Hitler apologist too and all that mass death and destruction is water under the bridge. It would be a bit surprising if so. Russians usually have pretty long memories. But maybe the allure of der Führer has him in its grip as well.
Plans by former presidentDonald Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to launch a crypto startup have set off alarm bells among even his staunchest allies in the sector, according to a new report in Politico.
The two brothers have spent recent weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-be-launched, shrouded-in-secrecy cryptocurrency firm.
But a string of mishaps, including Trump family members getting hacked by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep connections to a blockchain firm that lost $2 million because of security shortfalls, has some arguing they should pack it up before they begin.
“This is a huge mistake,” Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer, told Politico. “It looks like Trump’s inner circle is just cashing in on his recent embrace of crypto in a kind of naive way, and frankly it looks like they’re burning a lot of the good will that’s been built with the industry so far.”
I don’t know about you but I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the Trump boys are scamming and being scammed because they have no idea what they’re doing. Just this week the social media accounts of Lara and Tiffany Trump were apparently hacked by people purporting to be members of the “team” guiding suckers to a fake web site.
The Politico article has the whole story which is even dumber than it sounds. And the fact that they are doing this in the run up to their dad’s presidential election is frankly pretty stunning. Just as Trump’s incoherence and intellectual defects are treated as normal so too is the corruption and conflict of interest everywhere in the Trump family.
The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan postponed his sentencing until after Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House.
In a ruling on Friday, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cited the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in” and rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26. He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.
“This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.”
Yes it does. But once again, Trump gets the benefit of being a criminal who is running for president in order to evade accountability for his crimes. What a sweet, sweet scam this is.
The courts are obviously not going to save us from him. Neither are the Republicans. It’s up to the voters to come out in big enough numbers to turn him back into just another con artist. The mere fact that it’s as close as it is should terrify us, not just because he might win but because so many of our fellow Americans want him to. The rot in our culture runs very deep.
Trump held another unhinged “press conference” (at which he took no questions) today:
Trump today: “I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?”
Well.. Trump 2005 Access Hollywood: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
'This woman, whatever her name is" — Trump is now bringing up additional women who have accused him of sexual assault and detailing the accusations pic.twitter.com/aDwmJtuQvl
He went on for an hour like that. My favorite part was when he trashed his own legal team (standing behind him) and got mad that they didn’t bring up “the dress” in the hearing today. Apparently, he didn’t understand that this was an appellate hearing and there would be no new evidence presented. (The dress was disallowed at his original trial.)
He was obviously very upset.
Here are some excerpts:
Trump suggests that a photo of him and E Jean Carroll together "could've been AI generated" (it is not AI generated) pic.twitter.com/VjIjx6YAsN
Trump on E Jean Carroll: "Somebody just makes up a story probably out of Law & Order — I don't know, she made it up out of somewhere — but check out the Law & Order episode that we're talking about." pic.twitter.com/ZpUfXS4EcK
Trump ends his trainwreck of a news conference: "It's a hoax. It's a scam, it's a political witch hunt. And some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Thank you very much, everybody." pic.twitter.com/WIktTEHYfh
CNN promptly sanewashes Trump's absolutely bonkers news conference. They'd be better off taking Trump live than whitewashing him like this. pic.twitter.com/CuNUzgke5V
It seems like only yesterday that the elite media were extremely concerned that President Joe Biden had mistakenly referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico. In the course of an otherwise cogent discussion of foreign affairs, he’d made that mistake in passing but it caused a huge uproar and spawned yet another round of critical reporting about his age and mental capacities. No one in the press blew off the gaffe and the substance of his comments went virtually unreported.
That press conference came in the shadow of the Hur report, in which the Special Counsel had made a gratuitous comment about Biden being an elderly man with a bad memory. From that moment on almost every story about Joe Biden was framed in terms of his advanced age and the question of whether he was up to the job. The drumbeat continued for months until Biden’s disastrous debate performance validated their narrative and it continued until the day he withdrew from the race. No one in the media cut Joe Biden any slack for his performance.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been speaking nonsense and spouting gibberish on the campaign trail and the media is covering for him by pretending that his verbal incontinence actually makes sense or by ignoring it altogether. Yes, there’s been some mordant chuckling in the media over his bizarre comments about “the late great Hannibal Lecter” and his meandering tales about electric boats and shark attacks. Those stories are all delivered with a twinkling eye-roll as if to say “oh that wacky Trump, there he goes again” as if it’s just a funny little anecdote, apropos of nothing.
And it’s true that he’s always done this to some extent. His speeches and press conferences are surreal windows into his undisciplined, puerile mind. Despite his regular protestations that he’s “like, really smart” he communicates at a 4th grade level (the lowest level of any of the past 15 presidents going back to Hoover) and uses the same handful of words and phrases over and over again to cover for the fact that he never really has any idea what he’s talking about.
But he’s getting worse and the press is failing to properly report it. Over the past couple of weeks the problem has gotten more acute and there has been very little recognition of it. Because they’ve been normalizing his unfit intellectual and emotional characteristics for so long they’re just continuing to cover him as if they are perfectly ordinary even though he is rapidly deteriorating,
Trump appeared with Sean Hannity for a pre-taped “town hall” in which he wondered how anyone could be voting for Biden. He has repeatedly made that mistake, declaring that he’s running against his former rival instead of his current one. That might have been an understandable gaffe in the early days after Biden withdrew but this has now been going on for a couple of months. I think we know that if Biden had done this we would have had screaming headlines.
— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) September 2, 2024
On Thursday Trump gave what was billed as an economic policy speech to the New York Economic Club. This was a room ostensibly filled with educated people who have a deep understanding of the way our economic system works. Trump attempted to deliver a rote teleprompter speech that derided Biden’s economy and discussed his plans to raise more tariffs, drill baby drill and lower more taxes. It could have been finished in 10 minutes. But Trump inevitably digressed to his usual meandering stump speech which he delivered in ever desperate tones to an audience that was more often silent than not.
But the memorable moment came when he answered a question about what specific legislation he planned to propose to deal with the crisis in child care by spewing an incoherent string of words that a sounded like a 4th grader giving a book report of a book he didn’t read. He clearly had no idea about child care and so he reverted to the only economic policy he’s ever known: tariffs, the cure-all for every economic ill.
Does that accurately describe Trump’s incomprehensible babble? I don’t think so but it certainly was nice of the NY Times to “interpret” his comments to mean that he “insist[ed] that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would take care of child care.” It’s very generous of them to help him out that way otherwise people might think that Trump had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and clearly has no economic “policy” other than tariffs (which he doesn’t understand either) even after having spent four years in the White House. Why, they might even conclude that he doesn’t have the mental capacity to be president. I guess that would be rude.
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote about this phenomenon which he calls “sane-washing” (coined, I believe, by Parker Molloy.) He speculates that the reason members of the media are unable or unwilling to characterize Trump as being unfit for the job is because they think calling Trump’s ignorance and irrationality what it is would require them to make a value judgement which interferes with their self-regard as unbiased, objective observers. If that’s the case, they are simply failing to do their jobs. As he writes:
Serial incoherence, lack of basic curiosity, pathological dishonesty, a tendency toward sadistic verbal abuses of many different kinds—all these things can also plainly be evaluated through the prism of whether they might impair someone from performing the job of president effectively. Journalists can say what they know to be true about Trump’s qualities on all these fronts.
They could but in all these years that Trump has been dominating the political culture they never have. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Trump’s “policy” speech (talk about light!) at the NY Economic club should have been reported as a train wreck. But the media covered for him as they so often do. He has the whole press corps acting as his ghost writer, sanitizing his babble for the public. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t so lucky. They have to campaign and govern in a world where they are held to the standard that requires a president to be able to demonstrate his or her fitness for the presidency
By now you’ve read that the Department of Justice has indicted two employees of Russia’s RT network for spending nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russian propaganda into the U.S. digital mindstream:
“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”
“Our approach to combating foreign malign influence is actor-driven, exposing the hidden hand of adversaries pulling strings of influence from behind the curtain,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences. The Department will not tolerate foreign efforts to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”
Russia paid those coopted “online commentators” (far-right podcasters) enormous sums for spewing Kremlin talking points.
According to the court documents, RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a state-controlled media outlet funded and directed by the Government of Russia. Over at least the past year, RT and its employees, including Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company (U.S. Company-1). In turn, U.S. Company-1 published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube. Since publicly launching in or about November 2023, U.S. Company-1 has posted nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone. Many of the videos posted by U.S. Company-1 contain commentary on events and issues in the U.S., such as immigration, inflation, and other topics related to domestic and foreign policy. While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, most are directed to the publicly stated goals of the Government of Russia and RT — to amplify domestic divisions in the United States.
Divisions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, in particular.
Though the company is not named in the indictment, prosecutors said that it describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” and features six commentators as its “talent.” Tenet Media uses the same phrase in its description on its website, and other details in the indictment align with the firm. Its website lists six right-wing personalities, including Dave Rubin, who has more than 2.4 million YouTube subscribers; Tim Pool, a podcast host with more than 1.3 million YouTube followers; and Benny Johnson, whose YouTube channel has nearly 2.4 million subscribers.
[…]
Records with the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office show that Tenet Media incorporated on Jan. 19, 2022, the same date of incorporation mentioned in the indictment, and is headquartered in Nashville. It was founded by Liam Donovan and his wife, Lauren Chen. The founders are referred to as Founder-1 and Founder-2 in the indictment and prosecutors said they jointly run the company.
Forbes offers profiles of the propagandists Russia allegedly funded. They claim not to have known who was paying them as much as $100,000 per week for creating Kremlin-friendly content.
Pool responded to the allegations on FKA Twitter. He’s an innocent victim:
FYI, this is Pool:
Johnson also claimed victimhood:
What time is it in Moscow?
The indictment offers this tidbit on Founder-2 on page 19 that suggests Tenet knew that “Eduard Grigoriann,” the investor Founder-1 represented as being Paris-based, was not, in fact, in Paris:
Founder-2 also used the Investor Discord Channel to, among other things, submit U.S. Company-1 ‘s invoices to Persona-I, and to press for payment of those invoices. For example, on or about September 11 , 2023, at approximately 8:07 p.m. Central Time, Founder-2 wrote in the Investor Discord Channel: “Today marks two weeks since I submitted the invoice for August. Any idea for the delay? We are signing the large contracts and need to be certain we will get the funding to pay these people.” Persona-I did not immediately respond. While awaiting a reply from Persona-I, Founder-I searched for the then-current time in Moscow. Specifically, at approximately 8:50 p.m. Central Time on or about September 11, 2023, Founder-I searched on Google: “time in Moscow.” The time was, in fact, approximately 4:50 a.m. in Moscow.
Here’s another tidbit from page 24:
a. On or about February 15, 2024, AFANASYEVA (as “Helena Shudra”) shared with U.S. Company-I a video of a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia. AF ANASYEV A posted the video in the Producer Discord Channel. Later that day, Producer-I privately messaged Founder-2 on Discord: “They want me to post this” – referencing the video that AF ANASYEVA had posted – but “it just feels like overt shilling.” Founder-2 replied that Founder-I “thinks we should put it out there.” Producer-I acquiesced, responding, “alright I’ll put it out tomorrow.”
Before signing on with Tenet, Commentator-1 (possibly Rubin) wanted some background on Eduard Grigoriann, the supposed Paris-based investor:
g. On or about April 21 , 2023 and again on or about April 24, 2023, Founder-1 performed Google searches for “Eduard Grigoriann” and for “[Bank-1] Eduard Grigoriann.” As of in or about August 2024, neither Google search returns any results for a person by that name, much less any webpages describing an “Eduard Grigoriann” as a finance professional affiliated with Bank-1.
What Commentator-1 eventually received was a fake bio (see page 13).
If an anonymous investor suddenly offered to invest in Hullabaloo at a loss of $100,000 per week (we take no advertising) to write what we’ve been writing daily, for free, for the last two decades, I’d be more suspicious about who it was and where the money was coming from and why. Maybe that’s just me.
Update: I meant to add a link to a post by Brian Klaas on the “Need for Chaos” voter, a unique personality trait researchers recently identified:
These individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone. Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.
As you might expect, this means that perceptions of a loss of status are really important. And if that’s true, then there will inevitably be a group that’s particularly worrisome, because they feel a relative loss of status in recent decades. That group, they found, is white men.
A friend owned an outdoor equipment store near me when I was in my 20s. When I stopped in to browse, Jim would smile and greet me like a stranger, saying mock-formally, “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”
Glancing through the glass counter at backpacking accessories on display, I replied with meandering nonsense. It was a running gag.
“Yeah, I’m looking for one of those narrow, square, round things that’s kind of, you know, yellow with the, the purple pointed part that’s rounded on one side, with the, the, clippy thing that hooks onto the other part. You know. They’re about this long, but shorter, so they’ll nest inside if you have another one so you can put two of them together?”
Jim would grin and answer, “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, we just sold the last one.”
Among new employees looking on, heads would explode.
A large fraction of the American electorate wants to hire a president who talks like that for real. Behold. Donald Trump answers questions from the Economic Club of New York:
Q: What specific legislation will you commit to to make child care affordable?
Trump: Well, I would do that and we're sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka… But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about… pic.twitter.com/v8gqLUHS2v
Trump’s uncle worked at MIT, dontcha know. Genius is in his genes.
“My job is to analyze policy,” tweeted Catherine Rampell, economics opinion columnist for The Washington Post. “I can’t even find a complete sentence in this.”
Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night blamed the rich people of the Economic Club of New York for inviting “the stupidest person who has ever spoke to them.” And he ridiculed “the stupidest rich people in New York” who applauded him for spouting gibberish.
Lawrence? If you’re reading this, a quip. The recommended response to the conservative taunt, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” is “If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?”
Chris Hayes assessed Trump bluntly.
"Donald Trump is 78 years old. If elected, he will be the oldest person to ever be sworn in as President of the United States. He is a man that is suffering from, I think, pretty obvious mental decline," says @chrislhayespic.twitter.com/c8SlFY7Vgd
“Obvious mental decline,” sure. But bullshit? Trump doesn’t need functional cognitive abilities to spout bullshit. All the career con man needs for that is muscle memory.
Trump was asked how his policies would affect the fiscal deficit, and answered by rambling on about the trade deficit, which is an entirely different thing. https://t.co/HbOAWup06M
NPR just reported that one of two staffers involved in the altercation at Arlington National Cemetery is a deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump’s reelection bid. The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.
I thought it was Chris LaCivita or Cory Lewandowski. One of the misogynistic a-holes on Donald Trump’s campaign staff pushed a female employee at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s probably Chris “I’m the a-hole who created Swift Boating” LaCivita, but it might be Cory “I don’t have to be honest with the media” Lewandowski. As of Sept 5th 2024, the DoD and the DOJ aren’t going after them for what happened at Arlington. Why?
Trump at Arlington. L to R Cory Lewandowski, Justin Caporale, Chris LaCivita
The FEC isn’t going after the Trump campaign for their use of campaign footage from Arlington in an ad. Why?
The outlet that broke the story, NPR, KNOWS exactly who did what, but they aren’t revealing that information. Why?
None of them are pursuing the Trump campaign for their blatant disrespect and law breaking for 3 reasons,
Fear of retaliation
Fear of losing favor in the future
They LIKE what Trump & his staff did
You probably read that the woman declined to press charges for fear of retaliation. But that’s also part of the reason behind why the Army, DOD and DOJ aren’t pushing to charge the Trump campaign.
I had a great conversation with a former military lawyer about what happened at Arlington National Commentary. I wanted to know why no one in the Trump campaign staff got in trouble for clear violations of rules, regulations and federal laws.
He walked me through the process of when a civilian commits a crime at Arlington National Cemetery. He explained which MPs are called and why. Because the Trump campaign staff pusher was a civilian, if charges were going to be pursued the Virginia Department of Justice folks in the Eastern District of Virginia and Alexandria would need to get involved.
What was fascinating to me was his explanation that someone in command at the military made a decision to let “the pusher” go home and then NOT press charges. The reporting is that the woman who was pushed decided not to press charges because of “fear of retaliation” and the Army considers the matters closed.
It’s 2024 and we all nod in agreement that “of course she will get death threats” for simply telling Trump’s campaign staff to respect the dead & follow the law. WTF? We have come to expect that because our system refuses to punish those who make the threats.
Second, as it was explained to me, the Army could have brought a case on her behalf, but made a decision NOT to, because they didn’t want to upset Trump. I know that there are Trump supporters in the military. But I would THINK that they would so upset by what happened that they would do something, like at least throw his STAFF under the bus. Trump has already used the Sargent Shultz defense
Compare this Nazi Actor saying he knows nothing to Trump
Trump, “I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it.” “I really don’t know anything about it.”
You know how in police procedurals when cops are talking to a witness they say, “We can protect you.” The person, who knows how the bad guys have infiltrated the police, will often say, “No you can’t. They can get to me anywhere.” The good guy cop knows the victim is right so he takes her to a private place, that supposedly nobody knows about & tells them “Don’t use your phone!” But of course some paid off cop leaks it, or the victim has to call her mother to tell her she is okay and then BOOM. Bad guy comes after them. (Then we have the exciting scene at the house where good guy show up just in time to stop the bad guy from killing the woman. The bad guy is either shot and killed, in American TV series, or arrested and charged, in British TV series.)
I’ve listened to Glenn Kirschner talk about how hard it is for witnesses and victims to go up against mobsters. The prosecution might have a good case, but they need the help of the witness and victims, and practically, sometimes trying the case puts the victim in danger. For prosecutors, we now see that Trump and his MAGA people are worst than mobsters, because the prosecutors are afraid to charge them. Imagine yourself in the same situation as the woman at Arlington.
Now imagine that 1/2 of the police force & millions of people on the internet want to find you and 100’s of them threaten to KILL you because you did the RIGHT thing to hold accountable someone worse than a mobster and his people that broke the law.
Even though you didn’t press charges, the millions on the internet STILL FIND you and 100s will start sending you death threats. This is what I imagine the call to the cops would be like. (BTW, this is based on actual cases of death threats to election officials and workers I’ve followed in the US.)
Good Guy Cop: We heard you aren’t pressing charges. We’re sorry people are threatening you. There’s nothing we can do, especially when they do it Musk’s platform that doesn’t ban people for making threats.
You: Can you at least arrest the people who are threatening to KILL me?
Cops: Well, that’s complicated because they threatened you in a general way, and we don’t know who they are, plus they did it publicly on social media and the platform doesn’t have a problem with how they threatened you.
You: But what about the ones that showed up OUTSIDE MY HOUSE with GUNS?
Cops: Well, it’s legal to protest with guns in your state.
You: PROTEST WITH GUNS? ARE YOU Fking kidding me? There was an armed mob outside my home!
Cops: Look lady, I don’t make the laws. I agree with you it sucks, but a bunch of guys I work with think YOU are the problem AND the top brass play golf with the guy you pissed off. His staff said you were having a “mental event” It’s their word against yours and they’re very powerful. If we had video you could sue them for defamation, but that will take years.
You: So I can sue them for defamation, but not the death threats or armed mob?
Cops: Yep, that’s about the size of it. Look into the Shaye Moss & Ruby Freeman defamation cases they’ve won a bunch of them. Good luck!
My brilliant friend Sara Robinson pointed out the military’s fear of losing favor in the future issue.
The Army command is no doubt terrified that Trump will take power again, and doing anything about this now will only aggravate him more than he’s already aggravated at them.
I can see their point, but my response remains the same: this is tantamount to coddling terrorists, which only means that the future will hold more of the same.
Will they also hold still when President for Life Trump physically shoves aside the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, claiming that he was having a mental episode?
Even the reporters who broke the story at NPR are afraid to put out the identities of the pusher and sexist bullies. The reporters have run bs statements from Trump campaign’s spokesman, Steven Cheung,
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” In a statement to NPR, Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s spokesman, strongly rejected the notion of a physical altercation, adding: “We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.” [snip]
“The Trump campaign declined to make that footage immediately available. On Wednesday the campaign released a video on TikTok that includes Trump’s Section 60 visit.”
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s spokesman. Eva Marie Uzcategui, Bloomberg via Getty Images
So Cheung says they’ll sue for defamation and says the campaign has footage to prove their case, but then, when asked to see it, backs down. (Come on Oddjob, show us the unedited footage! )
Cheung called the employee despicable and wrote “Whoever this individual is, spreading these lies are dishonoring the men and women of our armed forces.” Wow. Nice projection Cheung! As they say with Trumpers, every accusation is a confession.
On social media, the Trump campaign staff went on the attack first, to set the narrative. They set up the families to tell only part of the story, “We invited Trump. I didn’t see anything.” That interview leaves out it was the campaign staff who were briefed on ALL the rules & regulations ahead of time and didn’t follow them when at the grave site.
Two things to note: 1) The chief of staff of Congressman Brian Mast of Florida, who was at Arlington with Trump, WAS briefed. James Langerderfer said he told the Trump campaign staff and they agreed to the rules. When asked to verify it, Mast’s office said, “President Trump conducted no politics at Arlington National Cemetery.” (That’s just your opinion man, plus it still doesn’t excuse the shoving.)
2) Governor Cox apologized for making political and campaign use of a visit to Arlington
Governor Cox has since apologized for making political and campaign use of a visit to Arlington National Cemetery—but neither Mr. Trump nor his campaign have joined Governor Cox in apologizing for these blatant violations. AP, Hannah Schoenbaum, September 1, 2024
What is being done? Raskin & Connelly demand investigation
The activist side of me wants to figure out what can be done to stop them? What stops them so they don’t keep doing it? How do we beat these people? Who’s on the side of justice? The good news is that Reps. Raskin and Connelly have demanded an investigation.
When I see something like this happen, as we have seen for the last 8 years, I always want to know, “How are they getting away with this? Who is helping them? Why? Who is defending Trump and his staff? Why? What can we do to change that?”
I’ve learned the basic techniques they use. They attack with name calling, lying, gaslighting, hiding the evidence, going over people’s heads to their bosses. The play dumb, argue in bad faith, file frivolous lawsuits, harass people on social media, make threats of violence on social media, threats of violence on the phone and threats via email. The use financial threats and legal threats. When they are in person, they use physical intimidation and make threats of physical violence.
I’ve also learned over the last 8 years is that the people who do NOT go after Trump (or his people) have a number of valid reasons. They know Trump has a history of how he responds when someone tries to hold him or his people accountable. He’ll tie them up in court. He’ll go on the attack publicly on social media, he’ll lie and defame people at rallies and press conferences. He’ll get others to attack on his behalf. He will use threats. He’ll have others use threats on his behalf. He will get others to shut down stories or actions against him (Like Pecker of the National Enquirer ).
Remember, Michael Cohen’s JOB was to threaten people with legal problems on Trump’s behalf. Trump’s body guards and “security” physically threatened people on Trump’s behalf.
But WE HAVE to keep going after these people. They are wrong. Lots of people know they are wrong, but there are enough people who are afraid of them or who want something from them that they get away with it, again and again.
There is an appropriate response to the violations of the Arlington National Cemetery rules and laws. Make an apology and remove the ads, like Gov. Cox. For the battery? Possible criminal charges, a trial so all the facts can come out by people, under oath, I’m looking at you Cory Lewandowski. For the defamation? If the person who was shoved is identified, bring a civil case for enough money to pay for lifetime security from MAGA nutballs and to make up for possibly not being able to work at Arlington anymore, because of the unwanted attention from MAGAts.
Who are the people who could make these things happen? ” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin surprising a group laying wreaths at Arlington Cemetery (Photo via Toa O Samoa Facebook page)
The FEC should act. I suppose I should write a letter and ask them to do something, because even though the FEC is divided, a crime WAS committed and they ARE supposed to do something. The campaign should be busted on an FEC complaint. The ads should be forcefully pulled, like Gov. Cox voluntarily pulled his. And the Trump campaign should have to pay a fine.
The press needs to keep asking. “Who is the Arlington Shover?” Maybe I’ll ask if the good people at Task & Purpose who wrote the article about Defense Secretary Austin at Arlington to follow up on the violations of the rules and regulations at Arlington National Cemetery Maybe someone at will start a social media campaign demanding the Arlington Shover apologize.
We know that Trump NEVER apologizes. If he doesn’t throw someone under the bus, and no one apologizes, that is our cue to use it to drive a bigger wedge between Trump and the military, the vets and the families of the honored dead at Arlington.
