No defense except offense A call for a lefty demagogue has popped up for the second time in a week. This time from Jonathan Last at The Bulwark. Trumpism represents a break from the old politics for which America has few defenses. Trump has “extrapolated existing dynamics while also transforming the public’s attitudes toward violence, democracy, and the rule of law,” he writes. So now what? Setting aside his ‘druthers (and morality, for the moment), how do we win elections in this environment? Joe Biden’s (and Democrats’) theory of the case was, as I’ve complained, same-old, same-old. Govern and run on kitchen tables issues, insists Nancy Pelosi’s generation. Democrats did, and delivered for red, rural areas in particular where Democrats have bled support. Who noticed? And Trump? Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are museum pieces, not guideposts, these days. A plurality of Americans is now more interested in pulling up the ladder behind them, Last suggests. (I’m reading between his lines.) They’d rather kick down than lift up latecomers to the threadbare American Dream. Making the pie higher is out. Zero-sum is in.
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Following up on my earlier post Journalism is not how I describe to people what we do here at ye olde blog. At best, it’s advocacy journalism. Somehow (with your help and indulgence) we’ve managed to hang on since the aughts, post-Facebook and post-Twitter, while traditional journalism has lost ground to propaganda-inflected social media and cultural influencers. I wince at “influencers,” but suppose they get traction the same way Digby explained bloggers did in our heyday (2007): If you have something to say you can say it–and if it touches a chord, people will return time and again to read what you’ve written and discuss the issues of the day with others who are reading the same things. […] Each of us finds their niche. I’m a blogger pundit, a role for which I am eminently qualified, since, exactly like pundits on television and in newspapers, I have opinions, I write them down, and a lot of people read them. (Yes, that’s all there is to it. Sorry Mr. Broder.).
These billionaires are the worst people on earth: Meta Platforms has donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the latest step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bolster his once-fraught relationship with the incoming president. The donation, confirmed by the company, is a departure from past practice by Zuckerberg and his company, and comes after an election campaign in which Trump threatened to punish the tech tycoon if he tried to influence the election against him. The contribution and efforts to court the incoming administration are emblematic of the balancing act for technology CEOs whose companies have often been the target of ire from Trump and other Republicans and whose workforces tend to lean strongly to the left. Now, with Republicans set to take control of the White House and both houses of Congress and calling for new regulation of tech, some executives are adopting a new posture toward Trump. They have more money than God, as masters of the universe they are safe and secure and yet they feel the need to kiss Donald Trump’s ass in the most obsequious way possible. What pethetic little men they are.
Run ads right now, every day On Meet the Press last weekend, Trump made this inane comment: He didn’t invent the word groceries. I don’t know what was rattling around his head when he said that. But he did use the word. A lot. And he promised that he was going to lower their cost over and over again. Yet in today’s TIME Magazine interview he said: If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure? I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. A quick reminder of his campaign promises: Trump before the election: vote for me, and I’ll lower the cost of groceries. Trump today, to Time magazine: actually, it's not that simple: “It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard." pic.twitter.com/nU36fg8y35 — Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 12, 2024 For the full Trump “weave” on the above of how he planned to lower the price of groceries, Philip Bump published the whole thing here.
The other day I just happened to watch one of the Bulwark podcasts and as it happened Sarah Longwell had just returned from participating in an event sponsored by the NY Times in which a number of media and political luminaries discussed the recent election. She seemed a little bit stunned as she explained that she couldn’t make herself sit there and take their nonsense so she aggressively confronted them, in particular Kevin McCarthy. I was hoping we’d get to see it because it sounded amazing. Here’s that moment: I would really love to see more people have the guts to do this. At the moment there’s not a whole lot of evidence that very many do. The Times article about the event said this: The 2024 presidential election isn’t over. While the vote count is official and President-elect Donald J. Trump will be the next occupant of the Oval Office, just about everything else, including how much of a mandate he has, why the Democrats lost and what the future of the two political parties — and the country — will look like, is still the subject of fierce debate. That came through strongly during a discussion on Dec.
And welcome to our annual victory celebration of the Great War on Christmas Yes, it’s that time of year again and the holidays have never been more welcome. If we ever needed a break it’s now. And here at Hullabaloo it’s the time of year I ask you, my loyal readers, to put a little something into the old stocking to keep us going for yet another year. This is a tough one, I know. Anyone can be forgiven for tuning out politics and spending their time doing something that doesn’t make them want to put their foot through the TV. Many people have cancelled their subscriptions to this site telling me that they just can’t stand to read about politics anymore and I totally understand it. For the first week after the election I pretty much only watched Netflix and Animal Planet. This is a grim time and we have to do whatever we can to keep our sanity. But it you are reading this it means that you are still engaging, at least with us, and I want you to know how grateful I am that you are. For me, it’s not possible to stop paying attention for long. It’s just who I am. I can’t look away.
Remember this? Probably not if you don’t watch Fox and I assume most of you do not. About that weaponization … If you spend much time watching Fox News, or if you look to social media sites such as X for information about American politics and the U.S. government, you have probably heard two specific claims over the past four years. First, that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was fomented at least in part by government actors, including from the FBI. Second, that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden took millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian businessman. You’ve probably heard those claims because each offers a different lens into the purported corruption of the Biden administration and/or the governmental Deep State — and because right-wing media organizations such as Fox spent months amplifying them. That claim about the bribes, for example, was hyped by Fox host Maria Bartiromo alone hundreds of times. The agent provocateur allegations about the Capitol riot, meanwhile, were a staple of Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show. Guess what? The DOJ inspector general released a report today showing it was all a lie.
Eric Trump at the Bitcoin Conference This is simply jaw dropping. They aren’t even pretending anymore. The presidency and Donald Trump’s personal finances are fully merged: Eric Trump flew across the world to headline a cryptocurrency conference in the United Arab Emirates this week and told thousands of enthusiastic attendees that he and his father, the U.S. president-elect, were effectively working in tandem to push crypto, a business sector the family is directly invested in. The message was notable because it contrasted drastically with the promise the family made when Donald J. Trump entered the White House four years ago, to keep business and government operations separate. Eric Trump said he had even phoned his father — “Pops,” he said he calls him — to celebrate when the price of Bitcoin hit $100,000 after the president-elect announced he intended to appoint a crypto-friendly lawyer as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the industry that the family now profits from. “You’re going to have the most pro-crypto president in the history of America,” Eric Trump told the crowd.
Will the Real Americans in Trump country put their money where their votes are or will they fight as hard as they usually do against Democrats when they make even the slightest attempt to have kids eat vegetables or go outside to play: The Archer Daniels Midland wet mill on the outskirts of Decatur, Ill., rises like an industrial behemoth from the frozen, harvested cornfields of Central Illinois. Steam billowed in the 20-degree cold last week, as workers turned raw corn into sweet, ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup. Three miles away, a Primient mill, which sprawls across 400 acres divided by North 22nd Street, was doing the same. To Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, this bedraggled city — set deep in Trump country — is the belly of the agribusiness beast, churning out products that he says poison America, rendering its children obese and its citizens chronically ill. To the workers here, those mills — the largest in the world — are their livelihoods.
And spaghetti against the wall Political skulduggery is born here and raised elsewhere. The North Carolina GOP should advertise. When Republicans won control of North Carolina’s state Supreme Court in 2022, the new 5-2 court quickly reversed a previous ruling and ordered a new redraw of the state’s congressional districts. The new map turned a 7-7 partisan balance in this evenly divided state into an 11-3 split favoring Republicans. Results borne out on Nov. 5 will be felt on Capitol Hill and across the nation. Down-ballot races matter. A lot. A month after Election Day, political power struggles continue in North Carolina. The GOP supermajority in the state House will attempt today to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill marketed as “disaster relief” for western North Carolina. Branded “a sham” by Cooper, the bill “appropriated no new money for areas hit by Helene, nor created the small-business grants requested by local business leaders and Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat.” But the measure does strip powers from Democrats elected on Nov. 5 to the state’s executive branch.