For real Unindicted co-conspirator John Eastman gave an interview last week in which he discussed all the reason why the country is going to hell (transgender youth and ergonomic chairs are at the top of the list) and explained how that gave Trump the right to ignore the constitution. It’s worth reading in full to get a good sense of just how batshit this guy really is. Josh Marshall had some useful thoughts on this: There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.
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Huffington Post published this last week. I can’t say it shocks me — or that I believe it’s the only example of this phenomenon: A prominent conservative writer, lionized by Silicon Valley billionaires and a U.S. senator, used a pen name for years to write for white supremacist publications and was a formative voice during the rise of the racist “alt-right,” according to a new HuffPost investigation. Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name “Richard Hoste” in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a “race realist.” He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.
The US is going to hell is a lovely sentiment from someone who wants to be president. Kicking a sports team that represents America, especially a women’s sports team, when it’s down is especially thoughtful. You can certainly understand why 38% of Americans are just gaga over this man.
I don’t know quite what to make of all this but I’ll just throw it out there for you to mull over: Apparently, quite a few people think the indictments are simultaneously trying to stop Trump while also upholding the rule of law and defending democracy. I’m pretty sure that prosecutors trying to stop the Trump campaign would not be in keeping with either of those two things. I guess some people are confused. People may decide they don’t want an indicted criminal suspect for president but nobody is trying to stop him from running or stop anyone from voting for him. Are they suggesting that he shouldn’t be prosecuted because he is running for president even if there is evidence against him? This distinction between MAGA Republicans and Non-MAGA Republicans is not particularly useful at this point. If you are willing to vote for Trump then I fail to see the difference. Yep. 68% think Biden is illegitimate based upon nothing but bullshit from Donald Trump and his henchmen. That’s the ballgame. More Democrats than Independents or Republicans are concerned about both. That certainly says something, I’m not sure what.
I’m sorry, this still isn’t an unequivocal acknowledgement of reality: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday rejected Donald Trump’s claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election in his most forceful comments to date on the matter. “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner,” DeSantis told NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns in his first broadcast network interview since he launched his presidential campaign. DeSantis continued to discuss all the ways he believed the previous presidential election was not perfect. But pressed further, he clearly stated that Trump lost. “But respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question,” Burns said. “And if you can’t give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether or not he lost —” “No, of course he lost,” DeSantis said, adding, “Joe Biden’s the president.” Why is everyone acting like that’s a straight answer? He’s still trying to have it both ways and it sounds like mush.
So this is new From CNN’s 5 Things newsletter this morning (not online at this hour): Extreme weather More than 120 million people in the Eastern US are at risk of severe thunderstorms today, while heat waves in the South continue their record streaks. The worst of the storms are expected to impact a zone stretching from northern Alabama to southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charlotte, Washington, DC, Atlanta and Raleigh. The area is under enhanced risk, level 3 out of 5, for severe storms, forecasters said. Meanwhile, excessive heat warnings remain in effect “for the foreseeable future” across the southern part of the country, from southeast California into Florida, the National Weather Service said. And in Phoenix, Arizona, officials are trying a unique approach to reduce the temperature of pavement using a form of sunscreen, but for roads. Don’t forget to unplug your electronics. A guy who lived up near the ridge where Blue Ridge Parkway runs once related that that was standard practice when lightning was in the area.
Warping reality or just warped? Donald Trump faces a series of civil and criminal trials in the coming years that will tax both his Roy Cohn-ish practice of denying, deflecting and distracting and his Norman Vincent Peale-inspired approach to bending reality to his will. Not that he won’t send out his bargain-basement attorneys to sell us a dead parrot (New York Times): Appearing on five television networks Sunday morning, a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump argued that his actions in the effort to overturn the 2020 election fell short of crimes and were merely “aspirational.” The remarks from his lawyer, John F. Lauro, came as Mr. Trump was blanketing his social media platform, Truth Social, with posts suggesting that his legal team was going to seek the recusal of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the case, and try to move his trial out of Washington. Trump’s efforts to pressure his vice president and state elections officials into overturning the 2020 election results were merely aspirational. And the “Norwegian Blue” is just resting.
One of my recurring fantasies is to reanimate Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan on UK and Dutch trains, to tell them the year, and then ask them where they think they are—with only the ownership information and the performance and quality of the carriages to go on. The UK has privatised its rail system, the … Continue reading "Railroaded: Bring Back Thatcher and Reagan"
More smoke grenades It’s time to revisit some old posts about a tactic used by the right now being deployed against the supposed “Biden crime family.” It is a variety of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks (All the president’s lawyers; 9/7/22): It is a time-tested tactic on the right. Practiced and perfected. Gin up fake controversy over anything and everything. From tan suits to sloppy salutes. From Benghazi to emails. Pimp it like hell until the press can’t stop itself from reporting the controversy. Rush Limbaugh built a career on serving up a daily dose of outrage to his listeners until they would go into withdrawal if it stopped. I’ve described the decades-long, Republican phony effort to convince the public there is massive voter fraud as them lobbing smoke bombs into newsrooms. By the time the smoke clears and we discover, yet again, there was never a fire, all the public remembers is they saw smoke and heard someone yelling, “Fire!” Lather, rinse, repeat. Digby calls it the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” gambit.
The Cold War never ended for the American right Cliff Schecter posted the clip below last night and it’s a fine example of the conservative reflex for branding as communist everything and everybody they dislike. Three-plus decades after the end of the Cold War that they declared Saint Ronald of Reagan had won, they still can’t let it go. They’re still looking for commies in woodpiles and for Reds under their beds before they cower beneath the sheets. Upon review, I was surprised to see that Ed Kilgore wrote in response to Donald Trump branding his opponents communists that he “hadn’t heard a Republican call a Democrat a commie since the high tide of McCarthyism.” Looking at the clip Cliff posted, where’s Ed been all this time? Kilgore wrote in March 2022: It’s not just Trump throwing the term around.