That is the number one cable news network in America.
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Trump is fighting tooth and nail to keep Jack Smith’s report from being released to the public and you have to wonder why. He beat them all. He’s not going to be prosecuted. But as Bill Kristol points out, there is a good reason for him to want to keep it out of the public record: Trump knows how crucial his rewriting of the history of January 6th was to his victory in November. If most Republicans had held to their original judgment of January 6th as a day of shame—if they had continued to believe that it was what Trump the very next day called a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy”—Trump would not have been the 2024 GOP nominee. If most Americans had thought January 6th not just an unfortunate event but a disqualifying disgrace, Trump wouldn’t have won the general election. The whitewashing of January 6th was key to Trump’s political comeback. And Trump has the sense—and I think he’s right about this—that he must make sure that January 6th stays whitewashed for the sake of his political success going forward.
Nobody voted for this Many people don’t have the stomach to follow politics these days after the disappointment of the last election and the return of the Trump three ring circus to Washington. It’s depressing and nerve-wracking even if you just hear snippets in passing or read a few paragraphs of a news story about billionaires at Mar-a-Lago or strange D-list celebrity political figures being lifted into positions of great responsibility. There’s only so much you can take. But I do wish that everyone could bring themselves to watch at least some of President-elect Trump’s press conference yesterday. Yes, much of it was the standard lunacy about shower heads and whales and windmills. He always plays his greatest hits. But he’s got some new material that I think people should be aware of. I’ve been saying for years that his schtick about being some kind of peacenik was a crock. First of all, it was obvious that he adopted that pose in order to position himself as the opposite of both Bush and Obama who were criticized for their foreign policy.
The Republicans are back, baby! They sound like the warmongering assholes we’ve always known and hated. I knew it was only a matter of time. I haven’t thought about Manifest Destiny since about the 8th grade. It’s a ridiculous concept in the 21st century but then virtually everything Trump is doing and saying is about returning to the 18th and 19th centuries. I have yet to read a good explanation of where Trump and his moronic followers are getting this stuff. We know Trump doesn’t read books. And while I certainly believe that he may have come up with the idea of taking over the world all by himself, the extolling of the gilded age and McKinley and all that has to have come from someone else. In the past I would have thought it was Steve Bannon but he doesn’t have trump’s ear anymore on this kind of thing. I wonder who does? Update — It’s on! I wonder why they bothered to delete it?
Trumpers whine incessantly about their victimhood. But in the face of actual tragedy that affects people they don’t see as Real Americans or even human. They are using the horror in LA as an excuse to treat the residents and its leaders like garbage: (FYI, everything Watters says is a lie. Of course.) More from the Asshole in Chief-elect, who has been tweeting garbage like this all day long: The idea of secession is sounding better all the time.
Fuck you Facebook. That was the first thought I had when I woke up this morning. Followed by: What ministry is Mark Zuckerberg volunteering to manage for the dictators of the world? All I could think of is how Orwell’s Ministry of Love is about hate. So what are we creating here? The Ministry of […]
I listened to James Carville Sunday morning on Jen Psaki’s show and read his Op-Ed in the NY Times. I got the impression from Psaki that his advice is being taken very seriously by Democrats. He believes that we need to stop caring about Donald Trump’s assault on reason and the Constitution and concentrate on kitchen table issues. He says that when people are suffering greatly nobody cares that he’s a corrupt criminal and an enemy of democracy so Democrats shouldn’t talk about it anymore. And he cautions that denouncing the other party and its voters is “no way to win an election.” (Donald Trump would like a word …) He says that Trump won on his economic message. Carville advised Democrats to focus on opposing Republican party economic policies but they also need to offer “wildly popular” economic policies that will appeal to people. He suggests issues such as the codification of Roe v. Wade, a higher minimum wage and support for H1B visas to “expedite entry for high-performing talent and for those who will bring business into our nation.” Obviously opposing the GOP economic message is vital.
Peter Baker in the NY Times: To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week. But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001. For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century. Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The New Republic takes a look at where the MAGA base is these days. They point out that generally a base movement loses momentum when their party is out of power but that it never happened with the MAGA cult. (I think that’s because its cult leader stayed on as party leader and was still in the public eye.) Now they’re building a new army of foot soldiers: [D]efying the odds, the MAGA movement continued to flourish under Joe Biden. Now, with Trump returning to the White House, the far right grassroots is barreling into 2025 with plenty of momentum, while their leader both helps set their agenda while sustaining it by crowd-sourcing their conspiracies and lies for his own use. The far right is currently animated by several themes, many of them interrelated. For several years, demonizing “DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) frameworks—which focus on identities, racial and otherwise—was an obsession. But the far right has gradually replaced DEI with “woke,” a vaguer and broader idea which can refer to the vast majority of left-leaning positions and be applied to any number of hot button, culture war topics.
Prepare to be gaslit From Brian Stelter’s bold-heavy Reliable Sources newsletter this morning: Mark Zuckerberg just announced sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters. Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting opinions that conservatives hold dear. The recent elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in a video that was shared first with Fox News. That’s one of the reasons why Zuckerberg said big changes are coming to Facebook, Instagram and Threads.