Autocracy, theocracy, and antidemocracy join hands Finding boldfaced italics in a column in a major newspaper is highly unusual. But these are unusual times. A former U.S. president faces a jury verdict in a criminal trial for the first time in our history. His flag-draped followers believe themselves the apex of patriotism even as the self-styled Real Americans™ dedicate their lives to a man starstruck by dictators, who incites mobs to violence, who derides the sacrifices of soldiers, who flaunts flouts the law and is prepared to void the country’s constitution if it serves personal ambition. His acolytes around the country are not as lazy as he, no. They are putting plans in motion to destroy the country. Patriotically, of course. Inspired by Dear Leader, they mean to shoot America in the middle of Fifth Avenue and expect no blowback. The bolded text that grabs my attention is in a Washington Post column by Jennifer Rubin commenting on the Ken Burns commencement address mentioned here on Sunday. Burns dropped his accustomed political neutrality to raise an alarm about the 2024 presidential election.
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Trump pins his hopes on one juror who might just be MAGA The Bulwark reports: “Whatever happens happens,” Trump told one person recently. “I have no control.” But there is one clear hope MAGAville clings to: a hung jury that results in a mistrial. If that happens, Trump allies suspect that it will be chiefly due to the one juror who has made friendly eye contact with Trump from time to time as the jury enters the room and walks right past the defense table. “There are eight people on that jury who definitely hate Trump. If there’s one person who doesn’t, it’s [this] juror,” said one court attendee who, like others for this story, relayed their observations on condition of anonymity to The Bulwark, which is also protecting the privacy and safety of the juror in question by not disclosing identifying details.
He’s going to go after Palestinians in America That would be a big mistake: Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York. “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event. When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat.
I predict Trump will be found guilty. Someone from the NY AGs office will make a statement on the steps of the courthouse. Then, instead of talking about the win for the rule of law, the focus of ALL the coverage in the mainstream media will be on the appeal. The legal experts will explain all the ways the ruling can be overturned and how an appeal can take years. The political experts will wonder if this will hurt Trump’s chances of being elected President. A New York Times poll will ask “Do you believe the conviction is legitimate?” 57% of the Republican will say no. Trump’s GOP sycophant’s will question the integrity of the “95% Democrat jury” and wonder “who was on that jury?” setting up their followers to dox them, threaten them and attack them physically. New attacks on Judge Merchan and his daughter will happen, then right before sentencing, there will be ANOTHER SWATTING attempt at someone’s home, but that won’t lead to any arrests until after the election. It’s easy to predict this, because we’ve seen this before.
Brian Beutler has some advice in his excellent newsletter OffMessage today for the Biden campaign that doesn’t include throwing up their hands and saying “Oh my God we’re so bad that we’re giving up and will open up the convention to anyone who wants to try for it!” This might actually be useful: At the outset we should stipulate that if Donald Trump were in office today—presiding over full employment at a time when Americans enjoyed more purchasing power than ever before, and inflation was hovering steadily around three percent—he and Republican officeholders across the country would claim credit for building the greatest economy in history. In fact, if Trump defeats Joe Biden in November, they’ll all sing from that hymnal by early 2025. The news media will scratch its head and finally notice, Gosh, this is a strong economy!
I wrote the other day about Trump’s weird “freeze” during his speech to the NRA, when he just stood there for 30 seconds making faces while the music rose. He claimed that he always did this and I contradicted it saying I’ve never seen it happen. Well, a reader pointed out that I have seen it happen, it’s just that usually there is cheering and applauding for that 30 seconds. A DKos member wrote this: He builds up to the line “greatest nation in the history of the world.” The music starts. He stands for about 30 seconds, looking around, as the crowds cheer wildly and chant his name. Then he proceeds with the “We are a nation in decline” line. ANGRY MARMOT [Dkos commenter]: See for instance the laboriously dramatic musical pause-for-effect from 1:26:57 to 1:27:23 here (Waco, March 25, 2023) and from 1:09:42 to 1:10:31 here (Greensboro, March 2, 2024), always before the “we are a nation in decline” line.
Tell a better story “The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” ― Richard Powers, The Overstory Actor Robert De Niro appeared Tuesday with retired Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone, Jan. 6 combat veterans, outside the Manhattan courthouse where closing arguments were underway in Donald Trump’s falsified business records trial. The Ink explains why the stunt was significant: When we spoke with writer and policy wonk Heather McGhee earlier this month, she pointed out that Democrats have a serious “meaning making” problem. Which is to say, Trump understands what Democratic leaders tend not to: that in today’s media environment and attention economy, an effective candidate needs not only to seek votes but also, crucially, to be an active, vigorous participant in the cultural process through which voters construct meaning. Voting is downstream; meaning making is upstream. Authoritarian leaders tend to be deft at working at both points of the river.
This has no relevance to the trial, which has now gone to the jury, but it’s relevant to anyone who has questions about whether it happened: The celebrity athlete, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, citing fear of harassment or retaliation, said he was close to Trump and Daniels while they socialized at the 2006 American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. Though Trump sometimes referred to Daniels indirectly as a “porn star,” the athlete said, he emphasized that it was understood among the golfers who heard the boasts that Trump, at the time best known as the host of reality TV show The Apprentice, was saying he had slept with Daniels.
Corporate profits have received much more scrutiny in recent years. High inflation provoked on-going debates about the role of profit margins with terms like “greedflation” and “price gouging” levelled at corporations. People recognized that, at minimum, corporations are profiting from inflation. Analysis of 4,550 publicly-listed corporations found that 33% had record operating profits in 2021 or 2022.[1] Further, corporations with [...]
For every holiday he has a similar message As usual, there is nothing on earth that isn’t all about him: He thinks it’s cute. He’s so brain damaged. By the way, here’s the boring old guy: