Uh-huh Can we stop parroting that we can’t normalize Donald Trump? Or autocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy, etc.? Look around. Anyone who says, “Well, that’s never going to happen,” to warnings that some batshit insane event might happen under the coming Trump administration has not been paying attention over the last decade. “Well, that’s never going to happen” keeps happening. A brief review (in no particular order): After all of the above and much, much more — and yet still more — Americans elected Donald John Trump as president for a second time on Nov. 5, 2024. Let’s contemplate some of what may come next. Look, fighting back against what’s coming is not just righteous, but patriotic. I’m tired. You’re tired. We’re all tired. But for all its flaws, the ideal of America that MAGA Republicans want to unmake with extreme prejudice is worth fighting for. I’m sorry I’m not more upbeat about it like James Fallows or Rebecca Solnit. That doesn’t lessen the imperative, especially since there is no guarantee how low the foes of freedom won’t stoop once they get rolling.
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Is this a funciton of people turning off the news? If so, maybe we should turn it back on… Mandate? Looks like it … 46% not motivated? That’s a bad sign: Maybe people are just tired. I’ll refrain from freaking out for a while on that one. But I’m worried that he’s so fully normalized that most people won’t react at all to what he does: Will this matter or will everyone ust move on to the next thing? Pay no attention to the partisanship when you analyze whether or not “economic anxiety” is the explanation for election outcomes, especially GOP partisanship. Obviously, that’s completely meaningless. The Cabinet: Note that more than half the people think they should be loyal to Trump. Slowly but surely it’s happening… Only a little over 50% approve of Trump’s tariffs. But this is just depressing although earlier polls showed this so we shouldn’t be surprised: I guess we should be happy that more don’t support using the military — for now. Trump will have a honeymoon it appears. And if Project 2025 is any gyude, and it should be, they are planning to take full advantage of it.
The NY Times reports: This is a good first clue that Trump has no intention of even pretending to follow the law this time. And why should he? He knows he has immunity: President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term. Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government. Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts. Those seeking to curry favor with the incoming administration now have the opportunity to donate directly to the winning candidate without their names or potential conflicts ever entering the public sphere.
Via Mediaite: Gorka opened the video saying “I knew this day would come, but I didn’t expect it so soon,” crowing about Trump’s order allowing Attorney General Bill Barr to declassify information about the 2016 election. “The Kraken has been unleashed,” Gorka declared in his signature affected bellow. “Watch, in the next two days, the rats, the hyenas, start to eat each other.” A large light source appears to be placed behind the camera for Gorka’s monologue, overexposing the video which seems to be inspired by villainous monologues from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. If you’re unfamiliar with this fruitcake: Sebastian Gorka, the pugilistic commentator who leveraged fears about Islam as a threat to Western civilization into a short-lived role in the first Trump administration, is poised for a second run inside the White House. Gorka was tapped to serve as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism, president-elect Donald Trump said Friday night.
Timothy Snyder lays out the case against Pete Hegseth. It’s worse than you think: 1. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has no qualifications for the job. He has never run a large organization and has no national security expertise. 2. Hegseth has zero notion of which other countries might threaten America or how. In his books this is simply not a subject, beyond a few clichés. 3. Hegseth does not believe in alliances. For him, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” 4. Hegseth wants a political army that bans women from combat roles, is purged of “cowardly generals,” and is anti-woke. 5. Hegseth never notes that the politicized Russian army meets all of his standards perfectly, but is is ineffective and commits war crimes. 6. Hegseth never notes that the Ukrainian army, which does have women in combat, and is not politicized in the way he would like, has overperformed. 7. Hegseth has almost nothing to say about the most significant armed conflict of our time and has not visited Ukraine or learned anything about it.
How many Trump supporters share his agenda? Adam Serwer considers how easily voters he spoke to across the South dismissed Donald Trump’s worst traits as media propaganda: During the last weeks of the campaign, when I was traveling in the South speaking with Trump voters, I encountered a tendency to deny easily verifiable negative facts about Trump. For example, one Trump voter I spoke with asked me why Democrats were “calling Trump Hitler.” The reason was that one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, the retired Marine general John Kelly, had relayed the story about Trump wanting “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” and saying that “Hitler did some good things.” “Look back on the history of Donald Trump, whom they’re trying to call racist,” one Georgia voter named Steve, who declined to give his last name, told me. “If you ask somebody, ‘Well, what has he said that’s actually racist?,’ usually they can’t come up with one thing.
Tom wrote about the the ever slipping “mandate” this morning, quoting from that NY Times piece “The Landslide That Wasn’t.” Mar-a-lago is hopping mad: Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Friday took aim at Politico and The New York Times for reporting on the fact that President-elect Trump didn’t win the popular vote by some resounding majority. It was not massive and it was not historic. In fact, Harris has now received almost a quarter of a million more votes than Trump did in the higher turnout election of 2020 — you remember the ine he bragged about being the highest number by any incumbent in history? Basically, we’re back to crowd size arguments. And if you ask a Trump supporter what’s going on they’ll either say the votes counted since election day are all fraudulent or that it’s fake news. Deal Leader got the greatest victory in the history of the world. Everyone knows that.
Also, our numbers matter Heading into Season 2 of “The Apprentice Goes To Washington,” we are already seeing Donald Trump’s flacks insisting he won a mandate bigger even than his first inauguration crowd. Even without Sean Spicer around to parrot it, you know know the line by heart: “Like nobody’s ever seen.” There will be big strong men with tears in their eyes agog at Dear Leader’s yuge mandate, etc. Not so. The New York Times subhead reads: “The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century.” But if Trump is still breathing, he’s still selling the rubes crap like Trump steaks and Trump sneakers and Trump NFTs and Trump Bibles: The disconnect goes beyond predictable Trumpian braggadocio. The incoming president and his team are trying to cement the impression of a “resounding margin,” as one aide called it, to make Mr. Trump seem more popular than he is and strengthen his hand in forcing through his agenda in the months to come. […] With some votes still being counted, the tally used by The New York Times showed Mr.
Trump is choosing people based on how they defend him on television and (surprise!) that’s not the best way to vet people for big jobs in the government. He’s already lost Gaetz. Who’s next? The Wall St. Journal sez: Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team were blindsided by the latest details to emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing their frustration with the man nominated to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter. The transition team, which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room. The Monterey police said a redacted version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021.
Steve Ratner tweeted this, commenting: The Omicron wave of covid was 10x more deadly for unvaccinated Americans — empowering anti-vaxxers like RFK is clearly a threat to American public health. If we have another pandemic RFK Jr will tell us that it’s a government conspiracy and recommend that we take some snake oil cures. If he has his way there will be no experts at the CDC or the NIH who can investigate the disease, track cases, communicate with scientists around the world, develop strategies and treatments. All of that is going to be compromised by this fruitcake conspiracy theorist who is completely unqualified for anything other than collecting roadkill which is he apparently very good at. I’m somewhat horrified by the Democrats likie Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Sen Cory Booker saying that RFK isn’t such a bad guy because he’s in favor of healthy eating and wants to improve the food supply. Those are good things. But this guy has spent a lifetime trafficking in conspiracy theories about diseases and demonizing science. And he’s fucking crazy.