I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America. I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B.
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That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago. He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat. The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,) Anyway, hold on to your hats: GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill. One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks.
MAGA GOP in disarray So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast): Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported. Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.” H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program. See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.
Trouble in paradise for Trumpy and Kim: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Vladimir Putin as his “dearest friend” in a New Year’s letter to the Russian leader praising close bilateral ties, state media said on Tuesday. The two countries have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and Kim repeatedly professing their personal closeness. Moscow and Pyongyang signed a landmark defense pact during Putin’s visit to the isolated North in June. The pact obligates them to provide immediate military assistance if the other is invaded and came into effect this month.
The legal beagles Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate fielded a question from a reader asking if Trump could really run for a third term as he often hints at doing? Bannon made some news the other day proclaiming that he was going to. Lithwick points out that the clear meaning of the 22nd Amendment says no. It says: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. It seems pretty clear to me. Of course if everything goes completely sideways, he stages a successful coup and the constitution is no longer relevant, who knows what he could do? Stern addresses one scenario the reader had posed: Tracey does point out one potential loophole in her letter: I think it’s clear that Don Jr. could run for president in 2028, with Donald Trump as his vice presidential candidate. And if they win, at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2029, Don Jr. can resign and Donald Trump will become the president.
So much for the Great Bipartisan Hope: The House committee charged with helping the U.S. confront China risks losing momentum and falling into irrelevance amid partisan infighting on the panel, legislative dysfunction and signs of significant disagreement with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The House China Select Committee — established two years ago to craft strategies and shape legislation to fend off Beijing — has had a rare reputation for bipartisanship and getting bills passed. That reputation may not last much longer. Already, partisan agendas have started to affect which legislation the group tries to push through. And the incoming Trump administration, while pledging to be tough on China, is expected to bring different priorities — making it difficult for the panel to get Trump-friendly Republicans on board with its proposals. As we saw with the continuing resolution chaos before Christmas, the problem was getting the Freedom Caucus rebels to vote for a bill that had been negotiated with Trump’s blessing (even though he pretended that he didn’t know about it) all because Elon didn’t like it.
Sununu: [Musk is] so rich he’s so removed from the potential financial influence Donald Trump sold himself as so rich that he couldn’t be bought. He would spend $600 million of his own money to win the presidency. “I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” he told ABC in 2011. And in the fullness of time, the man sold NFTs of himself and Trump sneakers and Trump Bibles and Trump scents. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) reassures CNN’s Dana Bash that Elon Musk is incorruptible like that. He’s got both hands in the Trump 2.0 administration, sure. But he’s not “doing it for the money.” He’s not into making money for the money but for the betterment of all mankind. Musk loves mankind from which “he’s so removed.” It’s people he can’t stand. How dare we ask him to pay more in taxes to benefit them? Three years ago, Paul Krugman wrote (gift link): Elon Musk doesn’t think visionaries like him should pay taxes the way little people do. After all, why hand over his money to dull bureaucrats?
In his newsletter today, Professor Timothy Snyder offers a new glossary of terms to use in the coming next few years: 1. Mump regime. Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. The real centibillionaire and the fake rich person in the proper order. 2. Mump oligarchy. The regime is an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy few. Trump is the oligarchs’ spokesman. He might stay or go. The oligarchs will remain. 3. Mump as illness. Physical illness: we are made sick and scammed blind (think of RFK Jr and Ramaswamy). Mumps is one of the diseases that will return without vaccines. Mental illness: Musk’s idea of prosperity is that he hurts you and you thank him. See my work on sadopopulism. 4. In Mumptopia, Americans spend our time in front of screens, instructed whom to hate and worship by algorithms curated by immigrant software engineers. We die pointlessly young on an overheated Earth with the word “Mars” on our lips. The Mump mage performs a ritual rocket dance, leaping a few inches over our graves. 5. Mump not MAGA. The MAGA folks somehow did not realize that they were giving power to a an illegal immigrant South African centibillionaire. This is not their regime. 6.
Random notes Before we issue a sure-to-be-ignored word of caution to MAGA, let’s set the scene. I get that, with the reelection of King D, MAGA types just might be feeling their oats about taking back America from, you know, THOSE PEOPLE. The Daily Show‘s Ronny Chieng discourses on patriotism and education. He was born in Malaysia (like you’d care), but how would you know? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Cahn (@karencahn) Let’s got to Politico: A Colorado man is facing possible bias-motivated charges for allegedly attacking a television news reporter after demanding to know whether he was a citizen, saying “This is Trump’s America now,” according to court documents. Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander. Forty miles.
He’s global: The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest. The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico. Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”. Translated, Musk’s piece said: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you?