You’ll note that person is still anonymous. Is he keeping his options open in case Trump wins a second term? A man’s gotta make a living, amirite? What’s a little traitorous behavior between friends? This is all obvious, of course, to any sentient being. And yet millions of people think Trump is the better choice for president again over Biden who has done an excellent job in difficult circumstances, even some who voted for Biden in 2020. (Lead in the water? What?) This is the man they think is so terrific:
Uncategorized
Slightly left of centrist U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia Democrat, will run for governor in 2025, the Associated Press reports this morning: Spanberger, a three-term Democrat, made the announcement in a campaign video, highlighting the importance of lowering prescription drug prices, growing the middle class and easing inflation. In a video titled “What Matters Most,” Spanberger also emphasized the importance of recruiting and retaining teachers “and stopping extremists from shredding women’s reproductive rights.” “Our country and our Commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms, and to our democracy,” Spanberger said. “While some politicians in Richmond focus on banning abortion and books, what they’re not doing is helping people.” Spanberger’s run for governor has been rumored since July. Let’s hope she has a Democrat lined up to run competititvely in 2024 for her 7th Congressional District House seat. The former CIA officer and law enforcement officer for the U.S.
Dual threats We raised the alarm yesterday both about Donald Trump’s Nazi-adjacent eliminationist rhetoric and his “concentration” on creating detention camps in a second term. We have also spread lots of pixels describing the New Apostolic Reformation that views Trump as an instrument of God. Trump and Stephen Miller want to lock up and deport all immigrants not to their liking, and to eventually cut off paths to immigration for the same. That’s the political cleansing of America they seek. But the Seven Mountains people backing Trump want religious purification as well. They will dismiss any and all his personal, political, and criminal failings to advance that end. All of them, they don’t want to govern, they want to rule. There will be cracks on the road to Christian Dominion and local infighting, as Fred Clarkson details at Salon. Plus a healthy dose of wishcasting and Christian soldiers cosplay. But right now these people hold actual political power in the Speaker of the House. Janine Melnitz : Yes, of course they’re serious… Think they’re not serious? Remember Jan. 6?
Caligula next? I suppose he’ll either have to build a whole lot of mental institutions or send them (us?) to the homeless internment camps where he promises there will be plenty of mental health facilities. So it’s all good.
Double Down I agree whole heartedly with Good. They need to keep pushing a national ban with no exceptions. That’s what the people want and they should be willing to give it to them. Don’t hold back! In all seriousness, I doubt most GOP pols will take this tack. They know they’ve caught the car and it’s dragging them face down through every election where it’s an issue. But any division among the wingnuts with the evangelicals for whom this is their organizing principles is welcome.
Following up on the post below, this is fun. I’d love to see the press do more of it: Meanwhile, a little family dissension in MAGAland: I assume Roger is Roger Stone. I’d love to know what turned him away, He was a major MAGA cultist at one time. Here’s a story about Joe in 2022: Joe Flynn was getting animated. Standing in the sanctuary of the Living Hope Church in Englewood, a giant cross hanging on the stone wall behind him, Flynn was telling a crowd of 75 people gathered for the Liberty Tree Patriots meeting about his efforts to overturn one election and influence another. Flynn is the brother of former President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Both now live in Englewood in southern Sarasota County. The brothers helped lead a push to overturn the 2020 election based on unfounded voting fraud claims. Having failed, the Flynns increasingly are turning their attention to influencing elections in 2022 and beyond. They could be a potent force in GOP politics locally, statewide and nationally, one determined to influence public policy.
Nothing else matters Philip Bump takes on the age old question of whether Trump is pushing fascism because he believes it or if he’s just a sadistic narcissist who gravitates to it like a moth to flame without understanding any of it. I vote for the latter: There’s a forgotten moment from Donald Trump’s history that I think about with some regularity. About two decades ago, Trump got into a fight with the town of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., over a flagpole he installed at his golf course there. The pole was installed without a permit and the height violated local codes. This was not the fight he had centered on an oversized flag installed at Mar-a-Lago — a story that became part of the Trump-as-patriot lore of his followers, with details exaggerated in service to the idea that he put the display of the flag above all else.
Dan Pfeiffer talks about the public’s view of Trump’s mental acuity in his newsletter today: The fact that Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in news reports from The New York Times and other sources is puzzling for many of us. How could a chaotic criminal who spews conspiracy theories be on the cusp of returning to the White House? There’s not just one simple answer to how we ended up in this situation; it’s a combination of Biden’s low approval rating, divisions in the democratic coalition, dissatisfaction with the economy, a historic level of cynicism and institutional distrust, and radicalization of the Republican Party. The polarization and demographic makeup of the Electoral College mean that upcoming elections will continue to be closely contested. However, one specific finding in The New York Times/Siena College poll explains Trump’s strength and offers a particular strategy for defeating him again in 2024. There is no sugarcoating it: Joe Biden’s age is a significant political obstacle.
Yesterday, Trump referred to fellow Americans as vermin , evoking the Third Reich. Former President Donald J. Trump, on a day set aside to celebrate those who have defended the United States in uniform, promised to honor veterans in part by assailing what he portrayed as America’s greatest foe: the political left. Using incendiary and dehumanizing language to refer to his opponents, Mr. Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Mr. Trump said Saturday in a nearly two-hour Veterans Day address in Claremont, N.H. As far as I can tell, only Kristen Welker on on Meet the Press mentioned it in passing to Ronna McDaniel and the only two mainstream newspapers to headline it are the NY Times (who only discussed it in the story, not in the headline above), in a small article and Forbes. CNN’s is here and coverage of the comment is 2/3rds of the way down the article.
All they lacks are railcars The headline on Masha Gessen’s New Yorker conversation with psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton promises to reveal how one maintains hope in an age of catastrophe. It is a fascinating conversation with a man who has studied human depravity, literal fallout from it, and what differentiates “the helpless victim and the survivor as agent of change.” As for how one maintains hope today, the headline is a tease. “Lifton is fascinated by the range and plasticity of the human mind, its ability to contort to the demands of totalitarian control, to find justification for the unimaginable—the Holocaust, war crimes, the atomic bomb—and yet recover, and reconjure hope,” Gessen writes. Amidst the bickering over the war in Gaza, less tease and more how-to would have been nice. Given the obvious trajectory of the Trump cult, what’s needed is a way both to avoid being a victim and needing to be change agents after the fact of a period of “psychic numbing” and “malignant normality” that leads to unspeakable evil by banal men and women.