I don’t think people realize that exit polls are just polls. They’re good, as polls go, because they ask a lot of people what they think and what they voted for on the day of the election. But it takes several months for the numbers crunchers to adjust and analyse the data alongside the actual results and it is often substantially different than what we thought on the morning after the election. Anyway, Ryan Cooper at the American Prospect suggests that we put our hair shirts in the closet for the time being and deal with the fact that half of the American public has no idea what they’re in for: Now that Donald Trump has won, again, a furious debate on the left side of the political spectrum has erupted, as Democratic Party factions jostle for position by casting blame on everyone but themselves. For my part, while I can’t help but have some suspicions, it will be six months before we have detailed data on where demographics actually landed, and at time of writing California is not even done counting. Any serious conclusions are premature at this point.
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Mr. Insecurity picks a Fox News host for SecDef Donald Trump proved critics right again on Tuesday. All this time I thought one of strongest motivators for Donald (Mr. Insecurity) Trump’s was to get the world to stop “laughing at us” (him). It’s considered one of the reasons he ran for president after sitting through some skillful mocking at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Saturday Night Live” comedian Seth Meyers and President Obama (Did you know he’s Black?) both roasted Trump as unserious. “Donald Trump has been saying he will run for president as a Republican — which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke,” Meyers jabbed as Trump sat stone-faced. “That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world,” wrote Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns after the 2016 Super Tuesday primaries. “And it captured the degree to which Mr.
I don’t know about you but this strikes me as very bad. Remember this is the guy who pardoned war criminals in his first administration and overruled the military chain of command to do it. He has expressly said that he wants to use the military to shoot protesters and round up immigrants. If we are depending on the military to resist illegal orders I’m not sure there will be any left to do it: The Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership. If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.
Chris Hayes has this one right. Nobody should think they have the “one true analysis” of the election or the “one true path” going forward. Shit happens.
Oh. My. God. When I heard this I thought it was a joke. It is not a joke. Trump nominating Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz and Tusli Gabbard is nothing more than a gauntlet thrown in America’s face: “waddaya gonna do about it?” Those on Trump’s enemies list should probably be looking for legal representation right away. Matt Gaetz will have no interest in doing anything but prosecuting them. Update — About those recess appointments: If Johnson and Thune must agree in order to stop Trump from doing this, I think he will do it. There is no universe in which Johnson doesn’t do what Trump wants whether Thune wants to resist or not. Fasten yout seatbelts.
Who’s your daddy? President-elect Donald Trump spoke with his mentor: During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. The two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,” one of the people said. Unlike Trump, Vladimir Putin is in control of himself. He waited to end the call before laughing out loud. Trump kids himself that he’s the world’s greatest dealmaker. What sort of deal might he accept for Putin’s ending his aggression in Ukraine? Half the country? The U.S. exiting NATO? Hardly, Trump’s on the verge of doing the second on his own. He understands how the NATO alliance works the way he understands tariffs. Putin’s got Trump’s number. He had it in Helsinki.
“Who Goes Nazi?” The Niemöller Countdown has started. The Krassenstein Brothers spell it out: BREAKING: Trump will appoint Tom Homan, a Project 2025 architect, as his Border Czar. But don’t worry—he says he won’t separate families; instead, he plans to deport them together. Does this include U.S.-born children of immigrants? Those born in the U.S., who have never even been to countries like El Salvador, will now have to be “deported” there if they want to see their parents again. View on Threads It’s now oh-so familiar. Donald Trump’s xenophobic litany dates from his golden escalator ride in 2015. The mad king doesn’t know the difference between seeking asylum and being committed to one (in Venezuela). So Trump’s incoming administration is poised to purge the country of immigrants. Heads up. They won’t stop there. Journalist Dorothy Thompon knew what she was witnessing as early as 1931. Greg Olear writes about it at his Substack: No American was more vociferously opposed to fascism than the foreign correspondent turned columnist and radio broadcaster Dorothy Thompson.
The New York Review of Books offered a Q&A with this person: In Joseph O’Neill’s first essay in our pages, he warned readers that “the Republican Party enjoyed a mystifying presumption of legitimacy,” contrasted with “the curious timidity of Democrats.” In that instance, he was describing the 2000 presidential election fiasco in Florida, but he has made clear in his subsequent writing to what extent that dynamic has dogged American politics ever since: from an article about Democrats’ failure to win statewide elections—“Their core mission is to practice a ceremonial innocence about the unshakable virtue of American conservatism—and to do so even as the worst, full of passionate intensity, are cleaning their clocks”—to his analysis of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s campaign. “What will they do?” he asked in October. “Stick with the cautious, timid posture we saw at the veep debate, or go on the offensive? It seems extraordinary that this is a question at all.” There’s a lot to it and I don’t agree with all of it.
He’s also a very sensitive guy: And Trump just loves him: Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club has been brimming in the last 48 hours with two kinds of people: those angling for a job in the president-elect’s incoming administration, and those trying to influence him into hiring their picks for the top spots. But the one person who has loomed over it all and has exerted a great deal of influence is Elon Musk, according to multiple sources. The tech billionaire has been seen at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, almost every day since Trump won the election last week, dining with him on the patio some evenings and hanging out with his family Sunday at the golf course. Musk has been in the room when multiple world leaders have phoned Trump, and he’s weighed in on staffing decisions, with the SpaceX and Tesla CEO even making clear his preference for certain roles. In one instance, Musk was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called to congratulate the president-elect the day after the election, according to a source briefed on the call.
I don’t think Trump will be celebrating suckers and losers day this way over the next four years. What’s in it for him?