Republicans are running a skeleton campaign I’m sure many in the media will say this must mean that Joe Biden is in trouble. Isn’t everything? But it just ain’t so. This is not good news for Trump I don’t care what anyone says: Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign called itself a “juggernaut” in May of that year, on par with a planet-destroying Death Star that was “firing on all cylinders.” Trump’s 2024 campaign has traded Star Wars metaphors for talk of a “leaner” and “more efficient” operation, with less real estate, fewer employees and greater dependence on outside groups. “We’re focused on quality over quantity. I mean, how novel a concept,” top strategist Chris LaCivita told the crowd of top donors May 4 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., according to attendees. The shift comes as President Biden’s campaign and its allies, buoyed by incumbency, have been moving in the opposite direction, building a more expansive operation sooner than in 2020.
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He was whining. Of course. Here’s the whole comment: Q: You were with World War II vets in their 90s today. Did you consider wearing a mask when you were with them? Trump: The wind was blowing so hard in such a direction that if the plague ever reached them, I’d be very surprised. It could’ve reached me too. You didn’t worry about me, you’re only worried about them He is a monster.
It was good enough for British loyalists “By what right does a judge put a former president in prison?” asks former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Why … why, that judge was appointed! Donald Trump appointed nearly twice as many judges in four years as Barack Obama did in eight, but who’s counting? Newt’s on a roll. Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, was born in Columbia. And we know what Team Trump thinks of immigrants and immigrant judges, even if they’re not immigrants. Now this Columbian-born, immigrant judge appointed by that notorious yankee state of New York may send Trump to jail for contempt of court. The effrontery! “By what right?” asks Gingrich of Georgia does a judge dare apply the same law made for commoners to the MAGA king? Jon Stewart recently suggested that if Republicans are going to insist on such “monarchy shit” they should at least signify by wearing red coats. Gingrich is hardly alone in assailing the heirs of Blackstone and equal justice.
“It’s about trends” — former Sen. Claire McCaskill Signs don’t vote, say campaign veterans when anxious partisans freak out over seeing large numbers of opponents’ signs around the neighborhood. On the other hand, they can be an indication of how the neighborhood is trending. Right now, “signs” are trending Joe Biden’s way. Quinnipiac: President Joe Biden leads former President Donald Trump 50 – 44 percent in a head-to-head matchup, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University poll of registered voters in Wisconsin released today. Democrats (97 – 2 percent) and independents (50 – 43 percent) back Biden, while Republicans (95 – 3 percent) back Trump. CNN describes 6 points as “a slim lead.” Explain that one. The race is too close to call with third party candidates included in Quinnipiac’s accounting. On MSNBC, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) was measuredly optimistic. Individual polls are not important. “It’s about trends.” And right now, things are trending Biden’s way.
Instead of being on the campaign trail Donald Trump flew down to Mar-a-Lago to host a dinner for people who bought his NFTs. I assume he made money on the party. NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are part of a suite of non-campaign-focused ventures that Trump has been balancing with his White House run and his legal issues throughout 2023 and 2024. After Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, the former president told reporters that he’d like to be campaigning as opposed to being tied up in a courtroom. Over the last three years, Trump has used naming rights agreements with Florida-based LLCs to personally profit off his name and likeness. Financial disclosure statements showed that Trump made at least a six-figure dollar amount from his previous “superhero” NFT digital trading cards. Trump has previously used similarly structured LLCs to promote and sell a Trump sneaker line, a Trump branded perfume and cologne, and a pricey copy of the Bible.
Scratch his back and he’ll scratch theirs The Washington Post reports: As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year. Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people He doesn’t need to hide it because he knows that nothing will ever happen to him. He has “immunity” from accountability for everything in life and always has.
Not yet… Nikki Haley won 22% of the vote (over 150,000 people) in the Indiana GOP primary this week. It’s an open primary so it’s possible that a bunch of them were Democrats meddling, but that would mean that Democratic turnout was very high. She was out of the race before early voting began so it’s not that. There are Republicans who are still protesting the Trump nomination in pretty high numbers. So what’s Haley up to? Nikki Haley is easing back into public life after dropping out of the Republican presidential race in early March, but has no immediate plans to endorse Donald Trump. The former South Carolina governor is attending a retreat in Charleston, S.C., on Monday and Tuesday to thank about 100 of her biggest donors, a person close to Haley told The Wall Street Journal. She isn’t expected to discuss her political future or encourage them to give to other campaigns. The person said there is no pending endorsement of Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee. The two didn’t speak when she got out of the race on March 6 and haven’t done so since, this person said.
Stormy Daniels appears to have done very well on the stand today. According to observers I head on TV, she was composed and poised under withering questioning from Trump lawyer Susan Necheles basically slut shaming her and claiming that she’s a nutty, grifter who extorted Trump with a lie. Most people seem to think that may have not landed well. The reason she was called was to testify that the even actually happened which, if Trump had just stipulated that they did have sex, would not have happened. (As Andrew Weissman has said, she was essentially an exhibit in the case, not a witness to actual crime. ) But he couldn’t. He says that none of the women who have accused him of wrongdoing every happened. None of it. They are all liars and so is Daniels. I doubt anyone believes that. The classic moment from the morning: Necheles: You have a lot of experience making up phony stories about sex. Daniels: That’s not how I would put it. The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.
The NY Times’ Thomas Edsall looked into this question of why liberals are allegedly so much unhappier than conservatives. Why is it that a substantial body of social science research finds that conservatives are happier than liberals? A partial answer: Those on the right are less likely to be angered or upset by social and economic inequities, believing that the system rewards those who work hard, that hierarchies are part of the natural order of things and that market outcomes are fundamentally fair. Those on the left stand in opposition to each of these assessments of the social order, prompting frustration and discontent with the world around them. Ok. I would put it slightly differently. Conservatives don’t have empathy for anyone who doesn’t look like them. And many of them take joy in their enemies’ suffering so these inequities make them happy since they consider people of color, LGBTQ, feminists etc their enemies. Lots to celebrate if that’s how you see the world.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, expert on authoritarianism, succinctly analyses what statement and I think it’s right on: This as yet another loyalty performance for an audience of One, who is addressed as though he is still the head of state. We are also dwelling in the “upside-down world” of authoritarianism, as I call it. “Accountability” means stopping investigations into abuse of power, and “a threat to our entire system” = a threat to Republican plans to convert America to an autocracy under Trump’s lead. That’s the most telling phrase. This is what it’s all about. The “you can believe me or you can believe your eyes” and “I know you are but what am I” and the rest of these crude descriptions of the intensely frustrating inversion of reality in which these people live is all in service of authoritarianism. Trump isn’t an intellectual or an academic and neither are most of his followers. They are authoritarians who are simply following their own instincts. It’s not uncommon among our species.