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.
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We all know that Trump is nothing more than projection. He says that everything, from his legal problems to the 2020 election is rigged. Guess what? He rigged The Apprentice: The conversation turned to “The Apprentice,” Daniels remembered. Trump told her that she should be a contestant, to which she replied: “There’s no way that NBC would allow an adult actress on television.” “He said, ‘You remind me of my daughter, she’s smart and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,'” Daniels said. She added that Trump offered to tell her what the show’s challenges were ahead of time: “I can’t have you win … but you can at least make a good showing.” It was reality TV, which means it was scripted. He’s always lied and said it wasn’t.
One of the most inane of all MAGA Republican claims is the insistence by militant right wingers and insurrectionists that they are pacifists. Take, for instance, Marjorie Taylor Greene: Or Trump who often brags that he had no wars while he was president (unless you count Afghanistan and Syria and large numbers of drone strikes in various places.) They aren’t the only ones. And I think we can all agree that these are not people anyone would normally describe as flower children regardless of the fact that NY Times columnist once fatuously described the bellicose Trump as “Donald the Dove.” These are the most contentious people in politics and they only get away with proclaiming such nonsense because they have mastered the tactic of getting people to believe up is down and black is white. In recent days we’ve seen this ridiculous argument deployed by members of congress to justify their refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine as if fights off the Russian invasion of their country. Some, like Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance have asserted that Ukraine can’t possibly win so it’s a waste of time anyway.
And the propaganists who deny them Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) reflects on Judge Aileen Cannon effectively postponing Donald Trump’s documents trial until after the November election. She responded to the tweet below by Kyle Cheney with “Trump appointee bows to Trump demands, delays acccountability for stealing nuclear documents.” Marcy writes: By 11 my time (plus-5 from ET), it had gone viral, with 200k views, 47 QTs, 4.4k likes, 1.6k RTs, and 300 responses. The post is a good way to start thinking about the information economy that led us to a place where a Republican judge helps delay accountability for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in a closet normally storing campaign swag. This information economy creates an environment in which a former prosecutor like Aileen Cannon either believes, or claims to believe, outlandish claims of bias and ill-treatment solely because career national security officials — rebranded by Trump as the Deep State — did their job. The RWers were pissed, as she notes. This kind of viral response on Xitter is the point — right wingers have deliberately stoked such toxic viral responses for years.
The excellent Bolts Magazine is doing something called “Ask Bolts” allowing readers to ask questions of experts on various issues facing the electorate: Elections law expert Josh Douglas is the author of The Court v. the Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights, a new book that is set for release next week. The book dives deeply into high-profile cases that have undercut U.S. democracy in recent decades, from Citizens United to Shelby County. Now he has agreed to answer questions from Bolts readers. What do you want to know about how the Supreme Court has affected voting rights in recent decades? Ask him anything about how the court has upended the way states run their elections, how the damage can be repaired, and how the justices may end up further shaping democracy in 2024. And remember: No question is too in the weeds for Bolts! We’ll pitch them to him by May 10 and write up his responses Click over to fill out the form if you have questions and hopefully we’ll see the answers!
But does he have a stiff gait? If not, I don’t think there’s any problem. After all, look at Trump. The story is that Jr said that during a deposition in 2012 claiming he couldn’t afford to pay child support. He also said he had mercury poisoning. He’s running as the healthy young 70 year old guy.
The trial was pretty banal this morning, even though important: How do you prove a defendant caused others to make false business records where those with direct knowledge of his intent and involvement are limited to the defendant, a man now in jail for perjury, and Michael Cohen? You surround Michael Cohen’s expected testimony with a mountain of circumstantial evidence, an already substantial pile to which prosecutors just added excerpts from Trump’s books How to Get Rich and Think Like a Billionaire. Those excerpts reveal Trump as a micromanager who advised never taking one’s eyes off his checkbook, advertised he negotiated the price of everything “down to the paper clips,” trusted Weisselberg wholly, and boasted that he even loved signing checks. And best of all for the prosecutors? They are Trump’s own easy-to-digest, New York Times-bestselling words, perhaps amplified or made snappier by his ghostwriter, Meredith McIver, but nonetheless his. He has said many times that he liked to sign checks because that was how he kept tabs on what was being spent. Apparently, he kept doing it while he was in the White House.
Is Trump bleeding support yet? Tuesday was another bad one for Donald Trump, Boy King of the Red Hats. It ended in Indiana with Trump’s victory in the Republican primary. The former insurrectionist-in-chief won handily against South Carolina’s Nikki Haley who, Politico reports, “cleaned up in the suburbs.” A zombie Haley candidacy continued to punch above its weight in the Trumpiest of states: The former South Carolina governor is on track to break 20 percent for the first time since she dropped out of the race two months ago. Trump may have won Indiana’s 58 delegates, but Haley “posted above-30-point performances in places like Marion County, home to Indianapolis, and affluent Hamilton County, its suburb to the north.” Indiana is sure to go into the Trump column in November. But in a tight presidential contest, Trump cannot afford to lose even a fraction of Republican base voters who turn out for primaries. As one Twitter user observed, if President Joe Biden had lost 22 percent to a candidate no longer in the race in a deep blue state, it would be front page news.
This makes my head hurt. Today Biden will be in Wisconsin announcing a major new Microsoft data center on the spot where Trump promised to bring a new Foxconn plant that never opened. Trump will probably take credit for the Microsoft plant and people will probably believe him even though he’s been out of office for 3 and a half years. Why?
They only have themselves to blame Ding-dong the tea party is dead: FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump. “We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.” FreedomWorks’ board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to dissolve the organization, Brandon said. Wednesday will be the last workday for the group’s roughly 25 employees, though staffers will continue to receive paychecks and health care benefits for the next few months. The development brings to a close a period of turmoil for the organization. FreedomWorks laid off 40 percent of its staff in March of 2023, and as a result of a drop in fundraising, its total revenue has declined by roughly half, to about $8 million, since 2022, Brandon said.