Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone

People with higher profiles have warned what could happen to this country under Donald Trump if he were reelected to the White House. I did so myself in 2024 here and here and here. Those three posts all referenced Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” his celebration of selfless dedication, essentially, in public service by geeks more interested in mission than in money. Blasphemy!

In a few short weeks, America will embark on a journey into the unknown. Dave Neiwert published “Alt America” in 2017 about the rise of the eliminationist alt-right movement. Trumpism, an expression of that movement, seeks not only to eliminate non-white immigrants but those very civil servants who make the nation you know the nation you know.

Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein consider what it means that Trump 2.0 will be staffed with incompetents and cronies chosen more for their loyalty to one man than to stewardship of the republic that will be 250 years old in 18 months. What Trump and those backing him intend for this country is not new, inventive, or an improvement on popular sovereignty. They intend “an assault on the modern state as we know it” by figures committed to its undoing (New York Times gift link):

Eviscerating modern state institutions almost always clears a path for a different type of political order, one built on personal loyalties and connections to the ruler. The German sociologist Max Weber had a word for this type of regime: patrimonialism, based on the arbitrary rule of leaders who view themselves as traditional “fathers” of their nations and who run the state as a family business of sorts, staffed by relatives, friends and other members of the ruler’s “extended household.”

Social scientists thought that patrimonialism had been relegated to the dustbin of history. And for good reason: Such regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by the expert civil services that helped make modern societies rich, powerful and relatively secure.

But a slew of self-aggrandizing leaders has taken advantage of rising inequality, cultural conflicts and changing demography to grab power. The result has been a steep decline in the government’s ability to provide essential services such as health care, education and safety.

My gripe here is with patrimonialism, ten-dollar word for cronyism and/or nepotism.

Trump 2.0 will not actually downsize the alleged “deep state.” They will repurpose departments run by the sort of public servants Lewis met that are the “foundations of both public and private life” and make them serve Dear Leader’s and his billionaire buddies’ bottom lines.

Hanson and Kopstein conclude, “The threat we face is different, and perhaps even more critical: a world in which the rule of law has given way entirely to the rule of men.”

I’ve long described men like Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Koch network, and their ilk as members of the Midas cult. They believe like Midas that everything that might be turned into gold should be. Their bottomless greed, like Midas’s will kill the golden goose that brought them riches and bring them to ruin. But perhaps not before they ruin the rest of us. They will, as Hanson and Kopstein observe, destroy “the predictable enforcement of laws essential to modern capitalism.”

My warning to the kleptocrats and kakistocrats and to American voters who handed them the keys to our government is the timeless lesson of Midas: be careful what you wish for.

Kaecilius: What have you done?
Dr. Stephen Strange: I made a bargain.
Kaecilius: What is this?
Dr. Stephen Strange: Well, it’s everything you’ve ever wanted. Eternal life as part of the One. You’re not gonna like it.
[Kaecilius and his Zealots are sucked into the Dark Dimension]
Dr. Stephen Strange: Yeah, you know, you really should have stolen the whole book because the warnings… The warnings come after the spells.
[Wong laughs]

Thank you everyone for hanging in with me and the rest of the Hullabahooligans this past year. 2025 is going to be tough but we’ll get through it together!

cheers!

digby

I think we may have found out why Trump is suddenly talking about territorial expansion. Somebody mentioned a little history over dinner and YMCA at MAL and he got all excited.

Trump has posted about Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal today. pic.twitter.com/2ajxe0cB5O

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 30, 2024

He thinks it will be his Louisiana Purchase and he’ll go down in history as bigger than Alexander the Great.

Apropos of nothing:

If you live with or care for someone with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), you’re likely familiar with the signs:

• a pattern of grandiosity
• a general lack of empathy
• the constant need for admiration

These characteristics can intensify with age, particularly for someone who has dementia.

You’ll be glad to know that his minions are hard at work normalizing this lunacy:

Kayleigh: Could the American flag be adding another star in 2025? Trump's idea of making Canada great again by turning it into the 51st state is gaining some serious traction especially from Canadian citizens pic.twitter.com/tLsYBnwOS0

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 31, 2024

The NY Times published a fun feature called “11 Data Points and Discoveries That Surprised Us in 2024.” I thought this one was particularly pertinent to Democratic navel gazing about the election:

Special elections really were all about turnout, and thus meant little for November

Why were Democrats doing so well in special elections, even though polls showed Joe Biden doing so poorly? I collected and analyzed data on who had been voting in special elections, and this chart was my “eureka” moment. On the y-axis: how well Democrats fared in a special election, compared with the 2020 election result. On the x-axis: our estimates for the 2020 vote choice of the same special electorates, based on exactly who voted and our previous estimates for the likelihood that registered voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. As you can see, there’s a decent one-to-one relationship, implying that these election results were mostly a function of turnout, not persuasion.

The biggest surprise, for me, wasn’t simply that there was a decent correlation between turnout and results. The surprise was how clearly it could be detected, given the paucity of data on these idiosyncratic, ultra-low-turnout elections.

Separate data showed Donald J. Trump doing very well with infrequent voters, the kind who may show up for presidential races but rarely for special elections.

The answer on special elections was clear: The aggregate Democratic advantage in these elections was simply a turnout advantage, and they didn’t mean much for Mr. Biden’s (or Kamala Harris’s) chances in November. — Nate Cohn

That’s one way of looking at it. I would also question whether the turnout advantage in the presidential is specific to Donald Trump or would apply to any Republican. We won’t know until he takes his final bow but my suspicions is that those infrequent voters are participating in American Idol: The President! not politics. Unless they can come up with another celebrity demagogue with Trump’s peculiar talents I’m not sure these results tell us anything more meaningful about presidential turnout.

What is meaningful is that Democrats are getting higher turnout in off years and special elections which means that those college educated suburban voters who habitually turn out may have made the full transition to the Democrats. After all, if their switch was all about Trump there’s no reason they couldn’t vote for Republicans in those elections. So the big question is really whether those “infrequent” voters will show up for some stiff like DeSantis or Vance. I wonder…

Good Lord. According to the NY Times the Feds have arrested a nut who had what they call the largest cache of finished explosive devices ever found in FBI history:

The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said.

They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said.

No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram. The movement’s adherents promote “targeted attacks, mass killings and criminal activity” and have “historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse,” according to a threat assessment released in August by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

Apparently, the FBI were alerted by a neighbor who told them that the man was stockpiling weapons. He told them that Spafford said he and his friends were “preparing for something” that he couldn’t do alone. He also said that the man used pictures of president Biden for target practice and said that assassinations need to make a comeback and that he hoped a shooter “wouldn’t miss Kamala.”

Aaand:

Some scholars of far-right extremism believe it takes its name from a song entitled “No Lives Matter,” by the pro-Trump Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald.

I will not be surprised if Trump says this guy is a political prisoner and should be pardoned.

But what in the hell is this #NoLivesMatter ideology? Self-harm and animal abuse? This stuff just gets more and more cult-like. Here’s that dispatch on the group from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security:

No Lives Matter (NLM) will use encrypted messaging platforms to recruit like-minded individuals, partner with white racially motivated extremists (WMRE), and publish tactical guides. To grow its network and provide updates to its extremist messaging, NLM primarily operates online via Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform with limited content moderation, where violent rhetoric and extremist content can reach target audiences. 

• In July 2024, a user in a NLM Telegram channel posted a list of updated group entry requirements, which included attacking the “mundane,” committing arson, and vandalism. Another user stated, “we are looking for more soldiers to join our ranks, true misanthropic individuals,” and “we only accept people that do irl [in real life] action.” In April 2024, NLM posted clarifications on acceptable submissions for membership which specified that self-harm acts like “simple cutsigns” would no longer suffice for admission into NLM, stating “we need deep bloody cuts that represent us.” Users in the channel shared photos of graffiti and a vandalized vehicle, highlighting acts that led to the acceptance of past members.
  
• In July 2024, NLM shared a post on its Telegram channel to announce a partnership with Mordwaffen Division (MWD)—a European neo-Nazi group—stating “NLM x MWD deadly alliance” and “Support your local nazi terrorists.” In 2023, NLM partnered with a Russia-based WRME group, Maniac Murder Cult (abbreviation MKU based on Russian translation) to co-author the NLM Kill Guide, which provided attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Several pages in the guide reference MKU, calling the group its “brothers in arms” and stating “NLM x MKU we can strike anywhere, at any time.”
  
• In June 2024, NLM released two extremist publications called the Terror Guide and the Manhunt Guide, both of which provide TTPs for members to “sharpen” their skills.” The Terror Guide includes instructions for making poison and constructing various improvised explosive devices. The guide also provides operational security (OPSEC) practices, weapons preferences, fighting techniques, and instructions for “manhunting” victims. The Manhunt Guide provides additional tactical guidance and OPSEC techniques while providing “manhunt requirements” such as recording “brutal” beatings.

No Lives Matter (NLM) follows an accelerationist extremist ideology and promotes targeted attacks, mass killings, and criminal activity, and has historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse. NLM states that “societal standards should not exist. They are to be crushed by any means possible. If they comply to the societal standards[,] they are mundane,” and encourages the “spread of terror to all who are mundane.”

In April 2024, NLM publicly rejected further association with the online violent torture and sextortion network, 764. NLM stated that it “was originally formed as an ideology…for 764 to follow,” but the “alliance” with 764 was discontinued due to the network’s ties to Satanism and pedophilia. Since disassociating with 764, NLM provided clarifications on its ideology, highlighting that it is returning to its “misanthropic” ways and that it is “back to the mundane killing ideology.” 

I don’t think nihilism is adequate to describe that sociopathic freakshow. This article from West Point’s combating terrorism center goes into the connections between this group and the Russian group M.K.Y. (called MKU above.) The West Point analysis also connects it to something called 764, an online child sex cult, which is so creepy I can hardly believe people like this exist.

It certainly is curious that so much of this disgusting stuff is projected from the right onto the left. I guess we know where this sick stuff is coming from.

Happy New year????

Everyone knows who is running this show: President elect Musk.pic.twitter.com/frwJkaBHOk

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) December 20, 2024

The NY Times reports that Musk has pretty much moved in to Mar-a-lago which explains why Trump was so upset when he didn’t see him around that he mistakenly posted a private text to him on Truth Social telling him he misses him. It’s such a sweet relationship. Trump is elderly, you know, and it’s about time for him to turn over the family business to his son:

Elon Musk plays many roles with President-elect Donald J. Trump. He is Mr. Trump’s most important donor, most influential social media promoter and a key adviser on policy and personnel. For most of the time since Election Day, he has also been Mr. Trump’s tenant.

Mr. Musk has been using one of the cottages available for rent on Mr. Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago, the former Marjorie Merriweather Post home in Florida that Mr. Trump converted into a members-only club and hotel in the 1990s, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement. The cottage where he has been staying, named Banyan, is several hundred feet away from the main house, according to a person who knows the property.

Staying right on the grounds has helped provide Mr. Musk with easy access to Mr. Trump. He can drop in on Mr. Trump’s dinners, such as one he had recently with Mr. Musk’s rival, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Mr. Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election cycle to help elect Mr. Trump, has attended personnel meetings in the Mar-a-Lago Teahouse, sat in on phone calls with foreign leaders and spent hours with Mr. Trump in his office. Mr. Musk’s employees from his various businesses have also been integrally involved in the transition, vetting prospective candidates for senior administration jobs, in interviews at the Trump transition headquarters in West Palm Beach.

[…]

Mr. Musk moved into the cottage around Election Day and watched the returns at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Trump. He left the property around Christmas and has been expected to return in the coming days.

Mr. Musk is known around the club to make requests like meals outside the normal kitchen hours. While staying at Mar-a-Lago, he has been accompanied by at least two of his children — Mr. Musk has at least 11 — and their nannies. One of the mothers of his children, Shivon Zilis, who worked for Mr. Musk at his brain implant company Neuralink, has also been photographed at Mar-a-Lago, after the election.

He hasn’t just replaced Uday and Qusay, he’s also got himself a new Jared. Maybe even a new Ivanka.

Speaking of Musk’s kids with several different women, some of whom are his employees, I just learned that most of them have been conceived through IVF and not because of infertility. He says he doesn’t have time for sex and anyway, IVF makes it easier to “control” the pregnancy (by which I assume he means it makes it easier to choose the sex?) Basically, he finds smart women who work for his companies and asks/pays them to bear his offspring to better populate the world with his genius.

He really is a Bond villain.

Trouble in paradise for Trumpy and Kim:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Vladimir Putin as his “dearest friend” in a New Year’s letter to the Russian leader praising close bilateral ties, state media said on Tuesday.

The two countries have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and Kim repeatedly professing their personal closeness.

Moscow and Pyongyang signed a landmark defense pact during Putin’s visit to the isolated North in June. The pact obligates them to provide immediate military assistance if the other is invaded and came into effect this month.

Kim’s latest message described Putin as his “dearest friend and comrade,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.newsNorth Korean Soldiers Suffer 1,100 Casualties in Ukraine War, South Korean Military SaysRead more

The North’s leader sent “warm greetings of best wishes to the fraternal Russian people and all the service personnel of the brave Russian army on behalf of himself, the Korean people and all the service personnel of the armed forces of the DPRK,” it said, using an acronym of the North’s formal name.

Kim also expressed “his willingness to design and push ahead with new projects” after their “meaningful journey in 2024.”

In a possible reference to the war in Ukraine, Kim also hoped that 2025 would be the year “when the Russian army and people defeat neo-Nazism and achieve a great victory.”

Isn’t that sweet? The man does write a beautiful love letter.

I have no doubt that some of this is trolling Trump. They know what a fatuous imbecile he is and that he values his love affairs with Vlad and Kim more than anything. He thinks it’s going to get him the Nobel Peace Prize. They’re doing this to yank his chain.

By the way, this Russia-North Korea alliance isn’t new. Putin is the one who convinced Trump to cancel the military exercises with South Korea and whispered in his ear all the reasons that S. Korea should be on its own.

They both know exactly how to play him. Not that it takes any great genius to figure it out. He’s got all the guile of a five year old.

From H1B to H5N1

We move now from the MAGA civil war over H1B visas to the H5N1 bird flu. (It’s getting hard to keep the abbreviations straight without a bound reference.)

CDC:

December 18, 2024— A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus (“H5N1 bird flu”) infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States.

[…]

A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected; avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death. No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected. This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low.

No need to panic. Donald Trump will be in the White House again on January 20. And a pale horse will be loose in the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s set to “go wild on health.” So, no worries.

Unless you own cattle in California (The Independent):

A dozen more dairy herds in California have been stricken with bird flu as the virus continues to infect animals and humans around the U.S.

Nearly 700 herds in the state — or 71 percent of all herds — have caught H5N1 since late August, forcing Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency and the government to announce new testing.

While California, the nation’s top milk-producing state, has the most infections in dairy herds, more infections were reported in Michigan, and the number of confirmed human cases has inched closer to 70, according to health officials.

A virus sample from the infected person in Louisiana, the CDC announced after Christmas, showed signs of genetic mutations. One of them was found in a teenager in British Columbia in November who was in critical condition for weeks.

Intelligencer asked Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, for her assessment of the potential risk. She believes the mutations occured in the patient over the course of the infection and not in the wild. “So it was unlikely to be transmitted onto another person, and it’s not actually emerging in the birds that this person became infected by,” she advised:

I don’t know what it would take to turn H5N1 into a pandemic virus, and I don’t think anybody does. I can’t say when or if it will happen. I mean, it’s something that could happen tomorrow, and it’s something that could never happen. But the chances of it happening are continuing to increase, and that’s what gives me cause for a lot of concern.

Don’t handle dead or sick birds, for starters. Or drink raw milk. Avoid bird droppings, etc.

As a virologist, do you think this feels like a slow-motion disaster unfurling?
It feels like a slow-motion disaster. The cattle outbreak has spread far and wide. We still don’t know how many cows and herds are affected. There are some states where there’s been almost no testing, so we may well see new states popping up on that positive map. There’s no way that you can contain an outbreak if you don’t know the full scale and scope of that outbreak.

Adding to the problem, there are multiple genotypes of the virus circulating. The case in Louisiana was associated with birds, which is different from the cattle virus. It’s not that big of a distinction to the general public, but what that means is that there are essentially multiple sources of this virus. So you could get it from cows, but you could also get it from birds. You could get it from domestic birds, or you could get it from wild birds. In fact, that’s how a lot of the domestic poultry operations are getting infected, because wild birds fly in there and the next thing you know, you’re having to cull a flock. So there’s a lot of the virus around just in nature. It’s also now getting into wild mammals, including ones that live in close proximity to people, like skunks and foxes and raccoons. It’s also getting into pets. It just feels like there are so many different pathways for this to go terribly wrong.

Mark Sumner at Uncharted Blue cautions:

This is not the time to panic and begin stocking up on toilet paper and canned goods. However, it may be an excellent time to make sure you following the news (no matter how unpleasant that is these days), have a supply of masks, and are prepared to deal with a return of “social distancing.”

The big problem may be that, if H5N1 does break through into the human population, almost everything that comes next is heavily dependent on the government response–a government response that’s set to be determined by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr.

And unless there’s an outbreak of responsibility and common sense in the MAGA GOP when and if an H5N1 outbreak occurs, we’ll have a pale horse loose in the DHS and Panama Orange holding daily briefings again in the White House Press Briefing Room.

Have a stiff one this New Year’s Eve.

MAGA GOP in disarray

So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast):

Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported.

Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.”

H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program.

See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.

“The workers that are here on H-1B visas should be deported at the same time we’re deporting the 15 million illegal aliens Biden brought across the border to suppress wages to low-income workers,” Bannon said. “American workers should be hired immediately to fill those gaps, and then we should start the discussions on reparations, on what they knowingly did to American tech workers.”

Government requiring that people wear face masks during a deadly pandemic is tyranny. Government dictating that private employers hire less-skilled workers for specialty jobs and paying them reparations puts America first. Not that there’s anything central-planning about that.

Sociopathic overlords

Capitalists, Bannon railed, “always wanna go to the lowest-cost production.” Bannon the reactionary means to nip capitalism in the bud (Crooks & Liars):

“This is just about a compensation in indentured servants, basically quasi-slave labor in our own country by the enlightened oligarchs of Silicon Valley,” he continued. “This is like the Borgias or the Medici’s from Renaissance Italy, kind of these nation-states where Silicon Valley and these oligarchs are the feudal lords or the, as Ben Harnwell says, sociopathic overlords.”

[…]

“They bring indentured servants over here,” he said. “So you’re gonna be an indentured servant, just like many of our great, great grandparents did coming in the 19th century, before we broke indentured servitude. And we’re gonna break it here.”

“There need to be massive reparations from the sociopathic overlords,” he added.

Kris Goldsmith, the neo-Nazi hunter next door and founder of the Task Force Butler Institute, believes the Musk v. Bannon fight inside MAGA is a bigger phenomenon than many realize. Bannon built “a popular movement around right-wing extremist white nationalism.” Trump was a tool. Bannon, Goldsmith believes, could provoke the MAGA base to turn on Trump over the immigration issue Trump has run on from the moment he rode down his golden escalator.

@krisgoldsmith85 The MAGA Civil War isn’t about the base vs. billionaires. It’s Steve Bannon vs. Elon Musk. And Bannon will win. #CapCut #MAGA #DOGE #oligarchy #elon #elonmusk #trump #vicepresidenttrump #immigration #presidentelonmusk #h1b #h1bvisa #h1bvisas #vivek #vivekramasamy #stevebannon #warroom #bannon @Walter Masterson @David🤙🏽Boomer @CFH unfiltered @just-a-little-off-grid2 @MeidasTouch @The Ken Harbaugh Show ♬ original sound – Kristofer Goldsmith

The Republican Party already looks ungovernable, suggests a former GOP lawmaker. What does the MAGA civil war means for the reelection of Speaker Mike Johnson?

Another post from Daily Beast:

“When you look at people like the Chip Roys, the Tom Massies, the Andy Harrises; they drink their own bathwater. They don’t really drink Trump’s bathwater,” former GOP lawmaker Denver Riggleman explained on Bloomberg TV. “A lot of people call the Freedom Caucus a Trump protection caucus. But in reality, there are people there that are very idealistic, right? They’re ideologues, and they’re also going to do their own thing… I don’t think it guarantees Mike Johnson the speakership at all.”

Riggleman said the first day of Congress on Friday was going to be “miserable,” and he pointed out that this would be the easy part. Once they actually try to pass some laws in the deadlocked House, he said: “Legislation’s gonna be a sh–show.”

But you knew that.

I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America.

I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this:

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

That story was just revealed last year, 43 years later.

They sabotaged Carter’s re-election. I recall thinking that it was obvious when they released the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration but the Republicans and the media all said it was because America’s enemies feared Ronald Reagan’s manly strength and thought Carter was weak. But the truth is that Reagan secretly cut a deal. Then they later did Iran-Contra. Surprise!

Trump didn’t invent this stuff. It’s a deep vein in the Republican party. (His crude gambit with Zelensky was just another version of this kind of dirty trick.) He just recognized it and brought it all to the surface — unlike his predecessors, he seemed to instinctively understand that at least half the country would admire him for it.