Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Celebrities actually do help

I have to admit that this surprised me. Not that I don’t think celebrities should be able to support whomever and whatever they choose.They’re citizens too. But I’ve never been sure that it makes any difference. Apparently, it does, which means the left has a huge advantage. The right has far less support among artists, athletes and celebrities in general.

Former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump brought out Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock to the RNC last month, while Megan Thee Stallion, George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston are among the star-powered artists who have voiced support for Vice President Kamala Harris in her White House bid.

But do election efforts by celebrities move the needle? Or is it all just hype?

A new study by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, shared first by CNN, found that celebrities do play an influential role in promoting civic participation.

“While some polling shows that people claim they aren’t influenced by celebrity voices when it comes to politics, more rigorous evidence indicates that these voices are incredibly powerful,” according to the Harvard study.

When celebrities promote calls to action, the study found that nonprofits report higher rates of online voter registration and poll worker sign-ups.

“Celebrities are uniquely positioned to empower everyday Americans to use their voices and exercise their civic rights,” the report states. “Celebrities are an unparalleled force in American culture, informing what we buy, what we wear, and what we talk about. With their significant influence and reach, they are powerful advocates for social and political causes.”

The study didn’t track partisan activities but rather looked at voter registrations and issue advocacy and the results are pretty profound. I’m guessing the same dynamic is at work in partisan politics as well.

[…]

“This study focused on nonpartisan civic engagement and the ways to help empower young people to make their voice heard at the ballot box,” Ashley Spillane, the study’s author and co-founder of the Civic Responsibility Project, told CNN, adding that celebrities can help create “a culture around participation, making it fun and making it something you should care about doing.”

That’s a message that could prove critical in turning out first-time or younger voters, who “face barriers to their participation, largely due to a dearth of easily available information about the basic mechanics of casting a ballot in their state,” the study found.

“Celebrities have a unique ability to connect with younger generations in ways that mainstream media and other get-out-the-vote efforts may not be able to,” the study states. “Their control of and presence on social media positions them as centralized sources of information to be tapped into and utilized by those looking to increase voter participation.”

This campaign season has exploded across social media, with younger voters sharing cat memes (a nod to Trump’s running mate, JD Vance) and coconut tree emojis (a calling card for Harris supporters). British pop star Charli XCX boosted Harris’ Gen Z appeal with one single tweet that read, “Kamala Is Brat.” Trump sat down earlier this week with 23-year-old online streamer, Adin Ross, for an interview on the social platform, Kick, after his teenage son, Barron Trump, said he was a fan of the influencer.

Gen Z and Millennials, who will comprise the largest US voting block by 2028, spend an average of 180 minutes and 157 minutes daily on social media, respectively, which is their primary source of news, per the study.

The pro-Harris TikToks are fun and engaging. They aren’t pulling any punches about Trump and Vance. They could be a very potent element of this election,

There’s stupid and then there felony stupid:

Georgia Republicans are having a bad case of déjà vu.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again taken to attacking Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, leaving GOP leaders and strategists fearing that the public and ugly intraparty feud could hurt Trump’s chances in this battleground state.

Trump’s loss here in 2020 left the state’s Republican Party deeply fractured, with Trump blaming Kemp and other statewide GOP officials for refusing to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Republican officials have blamed the feuding for repeated losses in Senate races.

“I thought any kind of bad blood had blown over, and I don’t know why President Trump would want to reopen that wound and attack a very popular governor,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III , a member of the Georgia Senate GOP’s leadership.

Trump, at an Atlanta rally recently at Georgia State University, called Kemp “a bad guy.”

“He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp,” Trump said. 

Walker called Trump’s comments “definitely unproductive and unwarranted,” adding: “If we continue with this kind of feud, it will make it more difficult” to win Georgia.

Ryan Mahoney, a longtime Georgia political strategist who has worked for Kemp and other Republicans, called it “political suicide.”

Mahoney added: “We’ve seen this movie before, and the former president’s baseless and ill-advised remarks will make it damn near impossible for Republicans to prevail in November.”

Only weeks ago, with Biden in the race, some state polls showed Trump up by 5 percentage points. Since the president dropped out, Georgia polls show Vice President Kamala Harris running a much closer race, with some surveys finding Harris and Trump tied. Two major political handicappers now rate Georgia as a tossup after previously rating it “Lean Republican.”

Trump pressured Kemp and others publicly in 2020 to overturn his loss. He also made telephone calls to state leaders, pressing them to find evidence of election fraud, including an infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to “find” votes for Trump. Investigations and audits found no evidence of widespread fraud. In August 2023, Democratic Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis announced an indictment against Trump and others, charging them with operating a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election. The case is ongoing.

During Trump’s Atlanta rally, a crowd of thousands booed at the mention of Kemp’s name. Trump said he didn’t want Kemp’s endorsement, adding, “In my opinion, they want us to lose…If we lose Georgia, we lose the whole thing.”

He then posted similar attacks on Truth Social, his social-media platform, calling Kemp “a bad guy” and Georgia’s economy “average.”

“Brian Kemp should focus his efforts on fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party!” he wrote.

Kemp, pathetically, says he’ll be voting for Trump anyway. How embarrassing for him. But then he’s no different than most elected Republicans Trump has insulted. They all say “thank you sire, may I have another” and in doing so make Trump even stronger among their own voters who despise them for being so weak. Their obituaries are going to be scathing.

I’m not one to quote Maureen Dowd but when she’s right, she’s right:

From the first time I went on an exploratory political trip with Trump in 1999, he has measured his worth in numbers. His is not an examined life but a quantified life.

When I asked him why he thought he could run for president, he cited his ratings on “Larry King Live.” He was at his most animated reeling off his ratings, like Faye Dunaway in “Network,” orgasmically reciting how well her shows were doing.

He pronounced himself better than other candidates because of numbers: the number of men who desired his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss; the number of zoning changes he had maneuvered to get; the number of stories he stacked on his building near the U.N.; the number of times he was mentioned in a Palm Beach newspaper.

By his mode of valuation, if his numbers aren’t better than his rivals’, he’s worthless.

That’s why Trump is always obsessing on his crowd numbers and accusing the press of lowballing head counts.

And that’s why he couldn’t admit he lost the election. If Joe Biden put more numbers on the board, Trump was worthless. The master huckster’s whole identity revolves around having higher numbers, even if they’re fake. (He always pretended his skyscrapers had more stories than they did.)

So, of course, seeing Kamala’s crowds and polls soaring drives him nuts.

He’s totally lost his mind and I think he’s going to come apart. He is old and has lost his resilience. He simply cannot cope with another loss.

The training videos

The Heritage Foundation published their 900 page plan to create a fascist state some time ago. But one of the primary purpose of the project and the Heritage Foundation itself is to train operatives to carry out their plans. This time, in order to hit the ground running, they are already drawing up lists of people to fill all the jobs left open after their planned purge of the Executive Branch and have a full transition and first 100 days battle plan which they have assiduously avoided making public.

And they have been “training” people for months, including some of the people at the center of Trump’s inner circle. Pro-Publica got a hold of some of the training videos:

ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees “to be ready on day one.”

Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and its allies for a future conservative presidential administration, has lost its director. In recent weeks, it faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump, whose campaign has tried to distance itself from the effort.

But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy remains on track. Video trainings like these are one of the “four pillars” of that plan, says Spencer Chretien, the associate director of Project 2025, in “Political Appointees & The Federal Workforce.”

For transparency, we are publishing the videos as we obtained them.

The Heritage Foundation and most of the people who appear in the videos cited in this story did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”

There is no daylight between the Trump campaign and Project 2025. Karoline Leavitt herself is featured in one of the videos.

Check them out. They will send chills down your spine but it’s important to know what they’re up to. Don’t get complacent. If he manages to pull out a win like he did in 2016, they’re going to do this, no doubt about it.

More here:

Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.

One centerpiece of that program is dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. The vast majority of these videos — 23 in all, totaling more than 14 hours of content — were provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to them.

The Project 2025 videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.

In one video, Bethany Kozma, a conservative activist and former deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration, downplays the seriousness of climate change and says the movement to combat it is really part of a ploy to “control people.”

“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Kozma says.

In the same video, Kozma calls the idea of gender fluidity “evil.” Another speaker, Katie Sullivan, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Trump, takes aim at executive actions by the administration of President Joe Biden that created gender adviser positions throughout the federal government. The goal, Biden wrote in one order, was to “advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity.”

Sullivan says, “That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications.”

Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, falsely saying that he knew nothing about it and had “no idea who is behind it.” In fact, he flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025. And in a 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

A review of the training videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”

The Trump campaign says that it was hacked by what they suspect were foreign agents agents. The hacked emails were sent to Politico and The Washington Post which decided not to publish them.

You read that right. They received hacked documents from suspect origins which have been authenticated by the campaign itself and they are choosing not to publish.

Can you see the problem here?

Will Bunch said it so succinctly I have no need to go further:

 The hot mess that was the political media in 2016 continues to slime America 8 years later

In 2016, there was no reasoned debate about the ethics of publishing Russian-hacked documents. Not that it’s not a tough call, morally — but the debate wasn’t even held. The documents were just published without any thought. Only after the election did anyone wonder so much regard was given to the (mostly inconsequential) leaks and so little to shockingly illegal methods to obtain them. So now.. 

I’d agree Politico and other news media are technically correct to consider the source and the motive before deciding whether or what to publish.

The problem is this: 

The lack of any ethical debate in publishing the Russian hacks greatly benefited one candidate: Donald Trump

Eight years later, the media restraint in not publishing this alleged Iranian hack benefits one candidate: Donald Trump

Public distrust of the media is off the charts in part because many voters suspect, with some good reasons, that the media is in the tank for Donald Trump.

Not publishing the hacks will reinforce that suspicion

If the media hadn’t screwed this up so badly in 2016, they would not be in this bind -30- 

He is absolutely right about the double standard being deployed here and it’s maddening that for some reason Trump always seems to be the beneficiary of these things. Why is that?

But that’s the media story which is still unfolding. Marcy Wheeler spots some other aspects of this story which should have the media delving into this a lot further than we’ve seen. Apparently, the Trump campaign didn’t report this to the FBI. And there are reasons …

The question of how to approach this news, if it is further confirmed, goes well beyond the question of whether to publish the documents allegedly stolen by Iran. In significant part because Trump refuses to maintain boundaries between his political life and his criminal life, hacks from Iran could create real damage to the United States beyond what they do to Trump’s campaign.

And that’s because Trump’s operation is sloppy and inept. As usual. I highly recommend you read Marcy’s post.

.@maggieNYT describes the angry phone call she got from Trump as he insisted he has flight records of his helicopter trip with Willie Brown, who says the flight never happened. pic.twitter.com/JHJzjOvyLa

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 10, 2024

As you have probably heard, Trump mixed up Brown with another Black California politician named Nate Holden who was from LA and had nothing to do with Kamala Harris.

He has memory issues.

Now get to work

This time next Sunday, I’ll be in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Don’t expect to see much from me in this space for a few days.

At a dinner last night, several people asked if I’m excited. I disappointed them. Not really. I’m more about the business than the hoopla. When returns come in on Election Night and our candidates win, others pump their fists, scream and jump. I go quiet so I can savor the moment and a job well done. To each their own.

For now, savor this. Then get to work.

Wow. This is Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s not a concert. It’s a Kamala Harris & Tim Walz political rally — people are dancing, singing, and happy. Truly magical. https://t.co/4P6tyrPciv

— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) August 10, 2024

And this.

BREAKING: Kamala Harris is about to take the stage at this packed arena in Las Vegas. Kamala Harris has filled up stadiums all across the swing states as Donald Trump has sat at home fuming. Retweet so all Americans see the energy and momentum. pic.twitter.com/ySKfInMrjA

— Kamala’s Wins (@harris_wins) August 11, 2024

“Some are calling our rally the largest in Arizona political campaign history,” the Harris campaign tweeted.

“At some point media is going to notice that for once a major political party delivered what people really, really wanted and in doing so, ignited a civic renaissance just in time to save American democracy,” added strategist Rachel Bitecofer.

This has got to be ominous for Arizona Republicans, and Republicans elsewhere. But don’t get cocky. Here’s the current voter registration spread in AZ:

Republican: 35.41%
Other (independent, non-third-party): 33.95%
Democrat: 29.10%

But for now, savor this.

Las Vegas Harris/Walz Rally pic.twitter.com/CMPBOxKX9T

— LA In LV (@lily_arce) August 10, 2024

Note to self: pack ear plugs.

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MAGA goes back to the drawing board

So the whole fake electors and Green Bay Sweep did not work as Trumplandia planned for overturning the will of the voters in 2020. And since the coup plan counted heavily on Republicans holding the vice presidency, and since Congress reformed the 1887 Electoral Count Act in 2022 to prevent a recurrence, the enemies of democracy went back to the drawing board for 2024.

Sure, red-state legislators have since erected every new hurdle to voting they could conjure and pass. But what’s a MAGA Republican to do if troublesome citizens still manage to muster enough votes to elect a Democrat and not Donald Trump to the White House in 2024?

Monkey-wrench election certification, that’s what.

As a Rolling Stone investigation explained, “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials” stand ready to question “the validity of elections” and to delay or refuse to certify results as mandated by law. At least 22 have done so in the past, injecting themselves as election arbiters into what is an essentially “ministerial” function. Election challenges are the job of state boards, district attorneys and courts.

The slapdash quality of the Green Bay Sweep has been replaced with a more sophisticated effort.

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in 2024, Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias told Rolling Stone. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

Then there was that creepy moment at an Aug. 3 rally when Trump name-checked three state Georgia Elections Board Republicans (the majority) for “doing a great job” as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

This is election denier-in-chief Donald Trump we’re talking about. Why would he praise election officials?

An election subversion war machine

Washington Post:

All three members of the board — Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jaffares and Janelle King — have, like Trump, questioned the results of the 2020 election. And the trio came under fire recently from a good government group for quietly holding a meeting without the other two members in an attempt to pass new election rules that would increase the number of partisan poll watchers.

Georgia’s election deniers this month did indeed pass “a raft of new rules that critics say could void valid votes, place onerous burdens on overtaxed election workers and potentially delay the certification of results.”

Elias warns at Democracy Docket that with “fewer than 100 days until the election, Republicans are building an election subversion war machine.”

This is not the white-knuckled volunteer effort to challenge voters’ eligibility that I reported at Crooks & Liars in 2013. This scheme involves election officials challenging the results.

Elias writes:

They have sacrificed traditional get out the vote activity to fund and recruit for their massive voter suppression program. They have a constellation of well-funded legal groups supplanting these efforts with unlimited money and grassroots volunteers. They are sending their lawyers into courthouses around the country to lay the groundwork for their anti-democratic plans.

Regarding the new Georgia rule, A.B. Stoddard adds at The Bulwark:

Election experts say the new rule could disrupt the entire process across the state by allowing local partisans to reject results. And Georgia appears to be at the center of Trump’s plans. Casting doubt on Fulton County, which makes up the bulk of Democratic votes in the state, will help him claim he won the Peach State as the rest of the results come in red.

But even without an explicitly permitted “inquiry” like the new Georgia rule provides, Republicans in other swing states still plan on acting at the county level to slow or stop certification. Because questioning the outcome at the very start of the process will create delay. Any doubt and confusion, and perhaps even violence, makes it easier to miss essential deadlines and can threaten the chance that the rightful winner prevails.

Enough confusion and delay ultimately could mean throwing the election to the U.S. House of Representatives. There, where each state gets one vote, the red-state majority could — legally — hand back the Oval Office to the MAGA king, end the republic as we know it, and damn the will of the people.

What’s to stop them?

The North Carolina State Board of Elections in March 2023 removed two Surry County election officials for co-signing a letter declaring “I don’t view election law per NCSBE as legitimate or Constitutional.” One refused to certify the results of a November 2022 municipal election; the other agreed on a technicality, reported ProPublica. Similar efforts to thwart certification have lost in court in other states. But that’s all after the fact. Delay is the pro-autocrat’s friend.

Stoddard offers:

The Washington Post reported in June that “in some states, election administrators have already identified voters in each county who could serve as plaintiffs in emergency lawsuits to force county boards to certify results. In others, state administrators are sending detailed instructions to county officials laying out the limits of their power to block certification.”

It’s crucial that these plans are widely publicized. And they can be. Just like Project 2025, which was virtually unheard of and is now in the forefront of the political debate. Putting a media spotlight on this issue will force Republican officials to address what they are well aware of and are refusing to call out.

Indeed, that is one reason I’m writing this today. An alarmed friend called Thursday to insist such a preemptive publicity campaign is what’s necessary. Prophylactic publicity. Threats of lawsuits against election officials who obstruct certification. Threats, even frivolous ones, are Trump’s preferred strategy, aren’t they? Because they often work. We know.

Work the refs. (They do.) Show up in numbers to public meetings of your local elections board and direct questions to Republican members about certification. Make them sweat enough to think twice about throwing the process into chaos.

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Trump is blatantly tampering with witnesses. Nobody cares.

Pro-Publica with another expose that nobody notices:

Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.

The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his average monthly pay double, from $26,000 to $53,500. Another employee got a $2 million severance package barring him from voluntarily cooperating with law enforcement. And one of the campaign’s top officials had her daughter hired onto the campaign staff, where she is now the fourth-highest-paid employee.

These pay increases and other benefits often came at delicate moments in the legal proceedings against Trump. One aide who was given a plum position on the board of Trump’s social media company, for example, got the seat after he was subpoenaed but before he testified.

Significant changes to a staffer’s work situation, such as bonuses, pay raises, firings or promotions, can be evidence of a crime if they come outside the normal course of business. To prove witness tampering, prosecutors would need to show that perks or punishments were intended to influence testimony.

White-collar defense lawyers say the situation Trump finds himself in — in the dual role of defendant and boss of many of the people who are the primary witnesses to his alleged crimes — is not uncommon. Their standard advice is not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties to such employees. Ideally, decisions about employees slated to give evidence should be made by an independent body such as a board, not the boss who is under investigation.

That wouldn’t be the Trump way. He doesn’t have a board. He has himself and his criminal spawn.

Until now, no presidential candidate could get away with this. But, as we know, Trump is special. He does what he wants.