Biden launches ad blitz after Arizona abortion ruling Perhaps you’ve noticed. The Democratic president Donald “Now 88 Counts” Trump once called “Sleepy Joe” is hammering MAGA Republicans over their post-Roe revocation of women’s reproductive freedoms in state after state. Biden “plans to pummel Trump on abortion” (Politico): Joe Biden’s campaign plans to hammer Donald Trump for his role in erasing abortion rights largely by enlisting ordinary American women who have suffered from restrictions on the procedure, elevating their voices in place of the president’s own. This approach was immediately on display this week in a Biden campaign video featuring the story of a Texas woman released after Trump announced he would defer to state-level abortion laws, some of which impose draconian limits on women and physicians. Biden himself made no appearance in the ad, except to deliver a standard campaign finance disclosure line. As the reporters frame it, Biden is taking a back seat here because of his “complicated history” on abortion.
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President Biden has announced an order forgiving more student loans. It hasn’t been easy since the right wing Supremes knocked down his big initiative, but they’ve kept at it, chipping away, bringing relief to many people’s debt burden. They say they aren’t done yet. The wingnuts are having their usual fit about anything that might benefit people other than the rich and the fascist, caterwauling that it’s not fair to other Americans who didn’t take out loans or who paid them back already. Why shouldn’t they get a break too? Guess what? They’re special people who deserve it, we know that. The American people should be proud to subsidize them — they’re all millionaires, of course. Those scofflaws who haven’t paid back their student loans need to be taught a lesson.
It may very well work. Again. This is fascinating and sadly, it might just work: Steve Bannon no doubt thought he was being deviously clever. Speaking with The New York Times this week, he elaborated on a sophisticated plan that Donald Trump’s allies have developed for boosting third-party candidates, so they siphon votes from President Biden. A key part of this scheme, Bannon noted, entails boosting expected Green Party candidate Jill Stein by highlighting oil production under Biden to pull environmentally concerned voters away from him. As Bannon put it: Whoa, that’s some serious 11-dimensional chess, Steve! Except for one thing. If you think for a second about Bannon’s quote—that “oil production under Biden is higher than ever”—it entirely undermines one of Trump’s biggest lies: the claim that Biden’s effort to transition the United States to a decarbonized economy has destroyed the nation’s “energy independence,” leaving us weak and hollow to our very core. This saga captures something essential about how MAGA-world fights the information wars.
I have often wondered about this. There really is a stale sameness about Trump aesthetics and I wondered why more people just don’t get sick of seeing it. He’s been doing this since 2016, down to the same suit and tie and many of the same lines. It seems to me that it should be hitting the point that it’s a nostalgia act for a one hit wonder. But that’s just looking at it from a normal person’s standpoint. The MAGA cult is built on relentless repetition (indoctrination) and any deviation from that familiar cant is going to cause dissonance. These repetitive mantras, slogans and chants, the sameness of the events, Trump dressed exactly the same, the weird hypnotic nature of his speeches (which are now set to music) are what gives MAGA its power. I guess my bigger question is, to the extent there are any normal Republicans left, why aren’t they tired of it and loathe to sign on for four more years of it? Even more pertinent, why aren’t they creeped out by it? This whole thing is becoming more and more ritualized and devotional. Do they relate to this?
Republicans in disarray Republicans want desperately to control the national narrative around the presidential election. They need voters and the press focused on any number of subjects not-Donald Trump and his visible mental decay: an immigration “crisis,” inflation, the economy, Joe Biden’s age, sexual identity politics, election “fraud,” etc. It’s just that their MAGA base keeps spitting out the bit and Donald Trump cannot stay on his own message. Trump’s campaign finance criminal trial in Manhattan begins on Monday despite his every effort to derail it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-MAGA) threatens to oust yet another Republican speaker of the ungovernable House. GOP-controlled states keep tripling down on abortion restrictions. Arizona’s state Supreme Court just reactivated a Civil War abortion law.
It’s coming up on Monday. And he’s freaking out. There’s been some talk lately about Donald Trump’s light campaign schedule compared to President Joe Biden’s who’s been visiting swing states constantly even as he’s handling some very thorny legislative and foreign policy problems. The contrast has been sharp. Trump is spending much more time on the golf course than holding rallies and even his appearances on friendly right wing media have been scarce. Judging by his Truth Social feed, it’s fair to say that he’s stressed and it’s not about the campaign: he’s obsessed with the criminal trial that’s set to start next Monday. I suspect he never thought it would get this far — he’s tried every trick in the book to delay the proceedings and nothing so far has worked so he’s getting frantic, posting things like this throughout the day: It would seem that these outbursts serve as some sort of self-soothing exercise.
Despite what many in the MSM are saying There was quite a bit of punditry yesterday suggesting that despite the shock of the Arizona ruling reinstating a civil war era abortion ban the issue just doesn’t have salience to swing voters. The NY Times published this earlier today: Sigh. They spoke with 3 voters, two of whom are Trump voters. So, whatever. The Washington Post had a much better analysis: A near-total abortion ban slated to go into effect in the coming weeks in Arizona is expected to have a seismic impact on the politics of the battleground state, testing the limits of Republican support for abortion restrictions and putting the issue front and center in November’s election. Arizona’s conservative Supreme Court on Tuesday revived a near-total ban on abortion, invoking an 1864 law that forbids the procedure except to save a mother’s life and punishes providers with prison time. The decision supersedes Arizona’s previous rule, which permitted abortions up to 15 weeks. The developments in Arizona are part of a wave of state actions to reckon with the future of access to reproductive care after the U.S.
The Hill reports: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Tuesday interview that he does not need “primitive” ideas from former President Trump on ways to resolve the war with Russia. In an interview with Axel Springer media outlets, including Politico, Zelensky said he was open to hearing Trump’s proposals for the war, but, he said, “If the deal is that we just give up our territories, and that’s the idea behind it, then it’s a very primitive idea.” “I need very strong arguments. I don’t need a fantastic idea. I need a real idea because people’s lives are at stake,” Zelensky added. The interview comes after The Washington Post reported this weekend that Trump has privately said his plan to end the war in Ukraine would include pressuring the war-torn country to give up territory, including Crimea and the Donbas border region, to Russia. That’s actually a nice way of putting it. The more precise word is “stupid.” I don’t know if Trump thinks he can just tell Ukraine what to do but I wouldn’t be surprised.
He’s right. It’s outright corruption. This long expose of Jared Kushner’s corrupt foreign business dealings (NY Times gift link) will make you reach for the tequila. How are these people getting away with this stuff? Jared Kushner’s investment fund is not especially large by global finance standards. But as he gets it fully up and running, each step is bringing with it ethical issues that would only grow if his father-in-law, Donald J. Trump, should win another term as president. His $3 billion fund is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House. He has taken money from government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from Terry Gou, a founder of Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer, whose role in Mr. Kushner’s firm has not been previously disclosed. In total, 99 percent of the money placed with him by investors has come from foreign sources, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late March. Mr.
Fool me twice, etc. “No one in law enforcement should be caught off guard if trouble breaks out before, during, or after the November presidential election,” Juliette Kayyem begins in The Atlantic. It is not too soon for the Biden administration and the Department of Justice to start what-iffing a response, and to take seriously recommendations made by the January 6th Committee . It appears the administration means to get ahead of the next insurrection. “A show of readiness,” Kayyem writes, “can also deter people who might have learned the wrong lesson from the Capitol riot: that just a bit more violence might have changed the outcome of the 2020 election.” Because the most hardcore MAGA soldiers not already in jail (especially those with military training) will have learned from Jan. 6 how to do a coup and how not to. Kayyem adds: Any attempts to shore up the nation’s defenses against political violence might be misinterpreted—or intentionally misconstrued—by some of Trump’s supporters as an attempt by a Democratic administration to use federal power to interfere in the 2024 election.