Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to direct the Federal Bureau of Intelligence, has never served in the FBI. But he has hosted Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Patel is a contributor at Real America’s Voice, the right-wing news network that produces Bannon’s show War Room, and has long appeared as a guest on the show. After top Trump adviser Bannon was imprisoned for four months earlier this year — on charges of contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a January 6 Committee subpoena — Patel stepped up to serve as an occasional guest host.
Crazy Eyes Kash Patel
To try and understand Patel better, I listened to every episode and clip tagged with “Kash Patel” on the War Room website — and a few others that Bannon’s team missed. The overwhelming impression is that Patel is a man whose entire worldview revolves around paranoid conspiracy theories — specifically, conspiracies against both America and Trump, which for him are one and the same. It’s a specific kind of obsession that reminds me of the FBI’s first director: J. Edgar Hoover, a man who infamously abused his power to persecute political enemies.
During his various appearances on Bannon’s show, Patel and/or his interviewees declared that:
- China is funding the Democratic Party and sending “military-aged males” across the Mexican and Canadian borders to prepare for a preemptive strike.
- Barack Obama directs a “shadow network” that is quietly directing the intelligence community and Big Tech to persecute Trump.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to throw “all of us” — which is to say, Trump allies — in prison.
And Patel is willing to go to extreme measures in response to these alleged threats.
In one episode, he called on the Republican majority in Congress to unilaterally arrest Garland — invoking an obscure legal doctrine called “inherent contempt” that has never been used in this fashion in the entirety of American history. In another, he outlined a plan for a MAGA blitz of American institutions focused on getting loyalists into high office.
Wednesday Reads
Posted: December 4, 2024 Filed under: abortion rights, American Fascists, just because | Tags: Abortion bans killing women, Kash Patel, martial-law, news, Pete Hegseth, politics, Portia Ngumezi, Ron De Santis, South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol 7 CommentsGood Morning!!
Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Care
There’s some breaking news from NYC. The CEO of United Health Care was shot and killed on the street, and it is believed to be a “targeted attack.” The New York Times has live updates.
The executive, Brian Thompson, was shot in the chest in what people briefed on the investigations said appeared to be a targeted attack.
The chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, was fatally shot outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning, the police said.
The executive, Brian Thompson, 50, was shot just after 6:45 a.m. at the New York Hilton Midtown on Avenue of the Americas near 54th Street, according to a police report. Mr. Thompson was taken to Mount Sinai West, where he was pronounced dead….
Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s transit system, said that the shooting did not impact subway or bus service during the morning commute….
Brian Thompson’s sister, Elena Reveiz, told The Times she is still processing the news of her brother’s death. “He was a good person and I am so sad,” Reveiz said when reached by phone. She said Thompson was a good father to his two children. She said she was on her way to see her sister, and to be with their family….
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota called the killing “horrifying news and a terrible loss for the business and health care community in Minnesota.” [….]
New York’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and Jeffrey Maddrey, chief of department, will hold a news conference at 1 Police Plaza at 11:30 a.m., the police said.
Another huge story broke yesterday from South Korea. Right wing President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and attempted a coup. Fortunately he failed.
Haeryun Kang at The Guardian: Martial law came to South Korea – and my friends and I doomscrolled through the night.
At 10.23pm on 3 December in Seoul, I was already in bed, alternating between reading a book and watching YouTube cooking reels. That was when Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, declared emergency martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1979.
In an unannounced televised address, Yoon said the imposition of martial law was “aimed at eradicating pro-North Korean forces and protecting the constitutional order of freedom”.
Immediately, my text messages and online chat forums flared up. What the hell is going on? Is this a joke? Can I keep drinking at the bar tonight? Can my children go to school tomorrow? What exactly is the emergency? Utter confusion ensued for the next six hours, until a dramatic sequence of events led to the end of martial law at 4.30am.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol
This was my first experience of martial law – if this short-lived circus can even be called that – something that, until now, I had only read about in history books. But even in that short time, I was terrified. The experience woke me up, once again, to the severe, unavoidable reality of Korean division. And I remembered how it can be exploited by our leaders to justify repression and control.
Thankfully, this time, Yoon’s antics were curbed. But the martial law fiasco is a testament to both the instability and resilience of South Korean democracy. It is a chilling reminder that the collective trauma of the 20th century dictatorship is not simply history.
It’s still unclear why Yoon took such an extreme measure. Martial law is defined as the temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, when civil authorities are deemed unable to function. In the past, dictators have declared martial law at times of widespread national unrest and turmoil, including the Korean war. This time, it was a business-as-usual Tuesday; earlier that evening I had been for a swim at a government-run public pool.
Yoon’s measure came at a time of personal and political turmoil for him. Corruption scandals have rocked him and his family; the opposition Democratic Party has just insisted on big cuts to the budget bill despite the ruling party’s protests; Yoon’s approval ratings are hovering in the 20s – all unpleasant, sure, but stories that don’t seem all that surprising in a relatively functional democracy.
In his speech declaring martial law, Yoon expressed clear vitriol for his political opposition, for its “anti-state activities plotting rebellion”. Most South Koreans are familiar with this insidious sort of rhetoric. I grew up with this language, and still live with it, through my very conservative family in Busan. It’s a regular reminder that there is a clear political and generational divide related to the Korean division.
If you want more first-hand reporting, check out this post by Sarah Jeong at The Verge: Six hours under martial law in Seoul.
Timothy Snyder at his Substack Thinking about…: Dictators for a Day, South Korea and America.
South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, invoked martial law, tried to install a military dictatorship — and failed completely. In his actions there are some likely similarities with the coming Trump regime, and some clear lessons for Americans to learn right now.
Yoon won a very narrow election, as did Trump. Like Trump, he refers constantly to “fake news” and calls his political opponents enemies of the state (as Trump says, “the enemy within.”) Yoon used this language to justify the imposition of martial law, as will Trump if he decides to invoke the Insurrection Act in the United States.
Like Trump, Yoon telegraphed his move in advance, and not only with such language. He surrounded himself with military men and intelligence officers who were characterized by personal loyalty. Trump is trying to do the same, now, with his proposals for Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Kash Patel as director of the FBI, and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense. He also wants to purge the top ranks of the armed forces.
Yoon’s main political opponent, Lee Jae-myung, had correctly predicted that Yoon would try to implement martial law. Trump makes this prediction rather easy. Trump has spoken openly of being “dictator for a day,” and of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military inside the United States.
The Insurrection Act is not quite the same thing as martial law. Under martial law, the military assumes the basic responsibilities associated with a civilian government. The Insurrection Act, in principle, only allows the American president to use the armed forces to assist civilian authorities to enforce some law in the presence of an insurrection. But the language of the law is quite vague. Trump makes it clear that he has in mind invoking the Insurrection Act to very broad purposes, essentially to change the regime.
In both South Korea and the United States, the legal basis for asserting greater presidential authority is antiquated. Martial law was declared in South Korea for the last time in 1979. Since the late 1980s, South Korea has moved quite decisively in the direction of meaningful elections and civil rights, thanks to the forceful activity of civil society, especially trade unions. In the United States, the Insurrection Act is an assemblage of laws passed between 1792 and 1871. It was last invoked during racial violence in Los Angeles in 1992.
Yoon’s actions, although rooted of course in his own personality and South Korean career, and enabled by South Korean law, were very trumpy. Indeed, it seems likely to me that the very presence of Trump on the international scene will make such attempts more likely, among America’s democratic allies (such as South Korea) and generally.
But Yoon failed, and very badly. His dictatorship for a day lasted only about six hours. What can Americans learn from his less-than-a-day dictatorship?
Read the rest at the Substack link.
Pete Hegseth
Back in the USA, It looks like Pete Hegseth will not be the Secretary of Defense. Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the devastating New Yorker article by Jane Mayer. Mayer reported in great detail Hegseth’s out-of-control drinking, his abuse of women, and his incompetence when trusted with leadership roles in small organizations.
Yesterday, NBC News reported: Pete Hegseth’s drinking worried colleagues at Fox News, sources tell NBC News.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, drank in ways that concerned his colleagues at Fox News, according to 10 current and former Fox employees who spoke with NBC News.
Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. Those same two people, plus another, said that during his time there he appeared on television after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.
One of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month and heard him complain about being hungover this fall.
None of the sources with whom NBC News has spoken could recall an instance when Hegseth missed a scheduled appearance because he’d been drinking.
“Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” one of the former Fox employees said….
Three current employees said his drinking remained a concern up until Trump announced him as his choice to run the Pentagon, at which point Hegseth left Fox.
“He’s such a charming guy, but he just acted like the rules didn’t apply to him,” one of the former employees said.
Trump is considering withdrawing the Hegseth nomination and appointing Ron De Santis instead. Marc Caputo at The Bulwark: Trump Talks to DeSantis About Replacing Hegseth.
DONALD TRUMP AND RON DESANTIS have personally discussed the possibility of the Florida governor becoming the next secretary of defense amid concerns that sexual assault allegations could engulf the president-elect’s current nominee for the post, Pete Hegseth.
The talks, relayed by four sources briefed on them, are in their advanced stages. They underscore the fears within Trump world about Hegseth’s ability to survive a Senate confirmation process—despite public posturing from Hegseth and allies that he remains committed to ending up at DoD.
“These discussions are real. It’s serious. I can’t say it’s definitely going to happen, but the governor is receptive and Trump is serious, too,” a top Republican source familiar with the conversations told The Bulwark on condition of anonymity.
The discussions around DeSantis involve untangling several different political threads. The governor is currently handling the fallout of a separate Trump cabinet pick: Marco Rubio’s nomination to be secretary of state. DeSantis is weighing whether to appoint Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to fill Rubio’s Senate seat. The possibility that the governor himself could end up at the Pentagon may factor into that decision.
Today Hegseth is again meeting with Republican Senators in a last ditch effort to convince them to support his nomination. Politico: Hegseth back on the Hill as Pentagon bid teeters.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s embattled pick to run the Pentagon, is back on Capitol Hill today as his nomination faces even more hurdles.
Pete Hegseth’s tatoos
Concerns over Hegseth’s personal controversies are driving Trump allies to think the Defense secretary designate may not survive further scrutiny. And his fight has been complicated even more by the news that the president-elect is weighing a rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to replace Hegseth, The Wall Street Journal was first to report. DeSantis, a former opponent in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries, offers a conservative military record and alignment with Trump’s views on “woke” military policies.
Hegseth — who has faced allegations of sexual assault and alcohol abuse — is expected to meet today with Republicans including incoming Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and the next majority leader, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
Hegseth’s most crucial meeting, though, is expected to be with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a Senate Armed Services member who has been noncommittal about Hegseth’s nomination and is seen as a potential swing vote.
Ernst was previously floated as a potential pick for defense secretary before Trump opted for Hegseth, though she was seen as a dark horse candidate. The Iowa Republican is a traditional defense hawk, clashing somewhat with the Trump team’s views. There may also be a political divide to bridge for Ernst — who took until March to endorse Trump’s 2024 White House bid after the former president nearly swept the Republican primaries and was on a path to clinch the GOP nomination.
Ernst, the first woman combat veteran in the Senate, has a long track record of legislation aimed at addressing sexual assault and harassment in the military. That would seem to put her at odds with Hegseth, who is not only the subject of sexual assault allegations but opposes women serving in combat roles.
Ernst has also been outspoken about her own experiences with sexual assault and domestic violence. Asked about the sexual assault accusations against Hegseth, she’s said: “Any time there are allegations, you want to make sure they are properly vetted, so we’ll have that discussion.”
Another problematic candidate, Kash Patel for FBI director is facing headwinds. I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more about him, but here are a couple of articles about him.
Zach Beauchamp at Vox: I listened to hours of Trump’s FBI pick on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Oh boy.
Read more at Vox.
David Corn at Mother Jones: Here Are the Republicans Kash Patel Wants to Target.
For years, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, and seller of pills he claims reverse the effects of Covid vaccines, who Donald Trump has announced as his pick to replace FBI Director Chris Wray, has made his mission plain: He wants to crush the supposed Deep State that has conspired against Trump. Last year, while appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, he vowed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” This was not an empty threat, for Patel has a list of specific targets for his score-settling. And that line-up includes not only Democrats but also prominent Republicans.
Patel laid out his plans in a 2023 book titled Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy. In this work, he breathlessly described the Deep State as a “coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation.” It is run “by a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security.” He added, “They are thugs in suits, nothing more than government gangsters.” And he inveighed that this is “a cabal of unelected tyrants.”
In his book, Patel, a supporter of QAnon and a promoter of assorted MAGA conspiracy theories (the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, the Trump-Russia investigation was a hoax, and the January 6 riot was sparked by “strange agitators” and federal agents), called for mounting “investigations” to “take on the Deep State.” Though he doesn’t specify what the cause for these inquiries would be, he has plenty of people in mind. In an appendix to the book, Patel presented a list of 60 supposed members of the Deep State who are current or former executive branch officials and who presumably would be the prey. He noted this roster did not include “other corrupt actors,” such as California Democrats Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, “the entire fake news mafia press corps,” and former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. (When Patel worked for the GOP-controlled House intelligence committee, he had run-ins with Ryan over the issuance of subpoenas and Patel leaking information to a Fox News reporter—which must mean that Ryan was a Deep State operative.)
Read the rest at Mother Jones.
Just one more story, this time on women dying because of anti-abortion laws. Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Republicans don’t care if women die from abortion bans — but they don’t want you to know about it.
After the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in 2022, there was a robust debate between pro- and anti-choice activists over whether or not banning abortion would kill women. Pro-choicers pointed to evidence, from both history and other countries, showing that abortion bans kill women. Anti-choice activists dismissed the record and pointed to toothless “exceptions” in abortion ban laws as “proof” that women could get abortions to save their lives.
Portia Ngumezi
The latter argument was frustrating not just because it was wrong but was generally offered in bad faith. Anti-abortion leaders know that abortion bans kill women. They don’t care. Or worse, many view dying from pregnancy as a good thing. In some cases, it’s viewed as just punishment for “sinful” behavior. Other times, it’s romanticized as a noble sacrifice on the altar of maternal duty. But conservatives are aware that this death fetish cuts against their “pro-life” brand. So there was a lot of empty denials and hand-waving about the inevitable — and expected — outcome of women dying.
We now have another proof point that abortion bans are about misogyny, not “life,” as the first deaths from red state abortion bans are being reported. Instead of admitting they were wrong and changing course, Republicans are behaving like guilty liars do everywhere, and destroying the evidence. In the process, they are also erasing data needed to save the lives of pregnant women across the board, whether they give birth or not.
ProPublica has published a series of articles detailing the deaths of women in Georgia and Texas under the two states’ draconian abortion bans. They most recently reported the death of Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two from Texas. Ngumezi suffered a miscarriage at 11 weeks but was left to bleed to death at the hospital, instead of having the failing pregnancy surgically removed. Multiple doctors in Texas confirmed that hospital staff are often afraid to perform this surgery, however, because it’s the same one used in elective abortions. Rather than risk criminal charges, doctors frequently stand by and let women suffer — or die.
Ngumezi’s youngest son doesn’t fully understand that his mother is dead. ProPublica reported that he chases down women he sees in public who have similar hairstyles, calling for his mother.
A day after this story was published, the Washington Post reported that the Texas maternal mortality board would skip reviewing the deaths of pregnant women in 2022 and 2023 — conveniently, the first two years after the abortion ban went into place. The leadership claims it’s about speeding up the review process, but of course, many members pointed out the main effect is that “they would not be reviewing deaths that may have resulted from delays in care caused by Texas’s abortion bans.”
This is especially noteworthy because it’s become standard after one of these reports for anti-abortion activists to blame the victims and/or the doctors, and not the bans. Christian right activist Ingrid Skop, for instance, responded to Nguzemi’s death by insisting “physicians can intervene to save women’s lives in pregnancy emergencies” under the Texas law. If she really believed that, however, she would desperately want the state maternal mortality board to review this, and other cases like it, so they could come up with recommendations for hospital staff to treat women without running afoul of the law. Strop, however, is on the Texas maternal mortality board. She was likely part of the decision to refuse to look into whether women like Nguzemi might be saved.
So the likeliest explanation is the simple, if brutal one: Anti-abortion activists do not want doctors to save women’s lives. The current situation, where doctors are afraid to treat women and have no guidance on how to do so safely, is a status quo they are fighting to preserve. We also know this because, as Jessica Valenti reported at Abortion Every Day last week, these same activists are lobbying to rewrite current abortion bans to remove the paltry “exceptions” that do exist. Instead of allowing doctors to abort pregnancies that are failing, they want to force them to induce labor instead. That is not just cruel but will kill women. We know this because that’s exactly how Nguzemi died; her doctor gave her a drug in hopes it would push the pregnancy out, rather than surgically remove it, as is the standard of care.
Read the whole thing at Salon.
That’s all I have for you today. Please take care of yourselves. We live at a very dangerous time.
Finally Friday Reads: Your Cassandra Daily
Posted: November 29, 2024 Filed under: American Fascists, corruption, Donald Trump, Regime of Chaos | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social, @repeat1968. John Buss, Donny Dotard and the Chaos Cult, Trump Cabinet = Rape Gang 7 Comments
Nothing says Thanksgiving to me more than the WKRP Turkey Drop! Thank you, John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
My first short story remains in my scrapbook in its purply blue mimeograph ink. It has my drawing of Cassandra and my interpretation of my favorite Greek Character, who was dedicated to the Greek God Apollo but was fated to make true prophecies no one ever believed. I was drawn to her in my 5th-grade mythology class. I remember my mother listening to me once and starting to question me before she interrupted herself by telling me this. “I don’t know why I question you; you’re almost always right.” I usually don’t believe everything I read, but I remember it. Prognostication is less godly and more mathematical these days, but when you know what’s likely to happen when you do that S-VAR model based on solid theory and a new hypothesis, you don’t always want to welcome the results.
I’ve been running around with my hair on fire since the Orange Demon started obsessing about tariffs again. He tried them during his last Reign of Terror and nearly drove our farmers out of business. Congress had to rescue them with huge subsidies that paid them for not selling their crops or livestock. Trump started a Trade War with China. He needed a visit from Herbert Hoover’s Ghost and to listen to the huge chorus of economists who warned him, but he persisted. Luckily, it didn’t take out the U.S. economy, but it ran up the deficit and jeopardized the Agriculture sector.
This warning is from the AP. “Trump’s tariffs in his first term did little to alter the economy, but this time could be different.” Trump’s misunderstanding of tariffs could wreck the economies of North America. This analsyis comes from Josh Boak.
Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries.
The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared.
This time, though, his tariff threats might be different.
The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he’ll do what he says and what the consequences could be.
“There’s going to be a lot more tariffs, I mean, he’s pretty clear,” said Michael Stumo, the CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group that has supported import taxes to help domestic manufacturing.
The president-elect posted on social media Monday that on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada until those countries satisfactorily stop illegal immigration and the flow of illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the United States.
Those tariffs could essentially blow up the North American trade pact that Trump’s team negotiated during his initial term. But on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that he had spoken with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and she had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States.
Trump also posted on Monday that Chinese imports would face additional tariffs of 10% until Beijing cracks down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl.
President Sheinbaum immediately denied Trump’s characterization of their conversation. This headline from HuffPo says it all. “Trump Mocked After Mexico’s President Blows Up His Brag About Their Call.” Josephine Harvey reports on the response.
Donald Trump seemed to offer alternative facts on Wednesday about his recent call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and was swiftly rebutted by the leader herself, prompting mockery on social media.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the U.S. president-elect declared that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Shortly afterward, Sheinbaum shared a Spanish-language message about the conversation, writing, “We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and communities.”
Both leaders characterized the call as positive. The two spoke after Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as soon as he takes office. Trump said, “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He also threatened to put an “additional 10%” tariff on goods from China.
This week’s news was somewhat reminiscent of Trump’s claim ahead of the 2016 election that he would make Mexico pay for “100%” of a proposed wall at the U.S. border. Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s president at the time, disagreed. Mexico did not pay.
Social media users sarcastically celebrated Trump’s fictional victory this week.
“All it took was one call. Donny deals,” journalist Sam Stein posted online.
Mike Nellis, a former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, said, “Trump thinks he convinced the President of Mexico to stop all migration across the border LOL.”
Olivia Troye, who was a White House official in Trump’s first term, offered a “Translation” of the president-elect’s comments about Mexico.
Just had a conversation with the President of Mexico who didn’t allow me to bully her, which left me confused about my charm…she pointed out that this is very bad…very bad for me if I do these tariffs…” Troye wrote.
China and Canada were also blunt about DonOld’s mischaracterizations of his conversations with their leaders. USA Today‘s Kim Hjelmgaard reported it this way. “‘Counter to facts and reality’: China, Mexico, Canada respond to Trump tariff threats.”
Officials in China, Mexico and Canada criticized Tuesday a pledge made by President-elect Donald Trump on social media to impose new tariffs on all three of the United States’ largest trading partners on the first day of his presidency.
Trump said the move, which appears to violate the terms of a free-trade deal Trump signed into law in 2020, is aimed at clamping down on drugs − fentanyl especially − and migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
The president-elect said he would sign an executive order immediately after his inauguration introducing a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on goods from China.
Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, a platform he owns. “It is time for them to pay a very big price!” He accused China in a separate post of failing to block smuggling of U.S.-bound fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
There was quick pushback to Trump’s comments from all three countries.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war” and “the idea of China knowingly allowing fentanyl precursors to flow into the United States runs completely counter to facts and reality.”
Mexico’s finance ministry said in a statement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a trade pact Trump sponsored during his first term, provided “certainty” for investors. “The response to one tariff will be another, until we put at risk companies that we share,” Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said, naming General Motors and Ford, among others. Sheinbaum said her comments, read aloud in a press conference, were sent in a letter to Trump.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said the tariffs would be “devastating to workers and jobs” in both the U.S. and Canada.
A tariff is effectively a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country. Oil is the top U.S. import from Canada, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The largest category of goods imported to the U.S. from Mexico is cars and components for cars. The U.S. imports a significant amount of electronics from China. Some goods are exempt from tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Businesses are already responding to the tariff threats. This will not be good for American Consumers. NBC News reports: “Here’s where consumers could feel the price pain if Trump’s tariffs go into effect. Trump has made threats about tariffs in the past. Businesses are nevertheless taking the latest threats seriously.” This guy hasn’t even taken the oath of office, and he’s already acting like he’s sitting in the Oval Office.
An estimate from The Budget Lab at Yale shared Wednesdaywith NBC News found that the cost to consumers from Trump’s proposed tariffs could reach as much as $1,200 in lost purchasing power on average based on 2023 incomes, assuming retaliatory duties on U.S. exports are put into place.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has already warned that any new tariffs imposed by the U.S. would be met with retaliatory ones by her country. Canada is similarly considering its own options, including possible tariffs on U.S. goods, according to The Associated Press.
America’s biggest import from Canada is oil — and any increase in energy prices would likely be felt throughout the economy.
“Another way to think about this is it’s 4 to 5 months of a normal year’s inflation in one fell swoop,” Ernie Tedeschi, The Budget Lab’s director and the former chief economist under the Biden administration, said in an email.
The three countries Trump has selected for a new round of targeted tariff proposals — China, Mexico and Canada — represent nearly half of all U.S. import volumes.
While Trump has insisted other countries end up paying the cost of tariffs, most economists agree those costs wind up getting passed on to shoppers. And at a time when rising prices remain a top concern, the types of goods that could see higher costs are the ones consumers interact with every day.
Some companies are warning that particularly import-heavy parts of the economy could be hit hard. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry warned Tuesday that any added costs on U.S. imports “will be shared by our customers.” Electronic goods account for the largest share of U.S. imports from China as of 2023.
“There’s very little in [the] consumer electronics space that is not imported. … These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” Barry said.
This is what happens when morons vote for a moron. David R. Lurie of Public Notice has this analysis on other Trump plans. These endanger our National Security. “Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s scheme to gut the intel agencies. It’s hard to envision a less suited intelligence chief. That’s a feature, not a bug.”
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Donald Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, former congresswoman and notorious Putin stooge, as his nominee for director of the office of national intelligence.
It’s difficult to imagine a candidate less suited to carry out the DNI’s mission, and that’s very likely just the reason that Trump chose her. Gabbard has virtually none of the experience or expertise required to competently assume DNI’s weighty responsibility of marshaling the information and analyses gathered by the nation’s intelligence agencies and coordinating their work.
Gabbard’s longstanding association with a shadowy rightwing cult, her history of suspicious uses of campaign funds, her habitual conspiracism and advocacy for the interests of bloodthirsty dictators (including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as Putin) all raise a multiplicity of red flags.
But, as Donald Trump made clear during his first term in office, national security is hardly at the top of his list of priorities. In fact, hobbling the nation’s intelligence agencies is one of his principal goals.
Marc Zuckerberg perfects his role as Surrender Monkey by dining with the Dotard at Mara Lardo. This is from the BBC. “Mark Zuckerberg dines with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.” It was definitely a Baboon butt moment.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has visited Donald Trump at his resort in Mar-a-Lago, further evidence of the apparent thawing in their once frosty relations.
The president-elect already has a close, high-profile relationship with another of the leading figures in tech, X owner Elon Musk.
Historically, though, there has been no such closeness between Trump and Mr Zuckerberg – with Trump barred from Facebook and Instagram after the Capitol riots, and Trump threatening the Meta boss with jail if he interfered in the 2024 presidential election.
However, there has recently been evidence those strained relations are improving, culminating in Mr Zuckerberg dining with the president-elect at his Florida mansion.
“Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming administration,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.
“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” the statement added.
The Detroit Free Press featured an Op-Ed by the AG of Michigan, Dana Nessel. It is difficult not to notice the incredibly large number of Sexual Predators Trump has been appointing to his Cabinet and other leadership positions. It seems like a feature and not a bug, “Michigan AG Nessel: Trump cabinet picks show disdain for victims of sex assault.” We continue to see a parade of the stupid and the lawless.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Only a third of the estimated 440,000 victims over the age of 12 each year will ever report, often due to negative emotions such as guilt, shame, and self-blame.
Survivors feel they won’t be believed, so why bother reporting, opening themselves up to ridicule, judgment and shame?
So what is it we are telling victims of these brutal, life-altering crimes, when our President-elect seeks to elevate alleged fellow perpetrators to cabinet positions and other high levels of power in our government?
To lead the Department of Defense, Trump has nominated Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who settled an accusation that he raped a woman and entered into a non-disclosure agreement with the victim. To lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been accused of groping a young woman who worked for him as a babysitter on several occasions. For Secretary of Education – responsible for ensuring the schooling of our nation’s children – he nominated Linda McMahon, who has been sued for criminal negligence for enabling the grooming and sexual abuse of children by employees of her organization. And as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, he nominated former Representative Matt Gaetz — who withdrew from consideration last week — the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation, following accusations he paid minors for sex. And Trump still has more nominations to make.
With these nominations, we are telling survivors of sexual assault that they don’t matter, that their trauma is meaningless and that they should stay silent.
And they will.
The American Prospect calls them “The Rape Gang.”
The presumptive Secretary of Education is married to a man whose former employee alleges he forced her to perform sex acts with his friend for an hour and a half after he defecated on her head. The presumptive Commerce Secretary preemptively sued his former assistant in 2018, after her lawyer threatened to publicize “not pretty” 2 a.m. text messages she’d received from him and his wife. The presumptive Health and Human Services director’s explanation for forcibly groping a former nanny’s breasts while holding her hostage in a kitchen pantry was that he “had a very, very rambunctious youth”; he was 46 at the time. The White House efficiency czar, currently a defendant in a putative class-action lawsuit filed by eight former employees who accuse him of perpetrating an “Animal House” work environment of “rampant sexual harassment,” and paid a quarter of a million dollars to a flight attendant who says he got naked and asked her to touch his erect penis in exchange for the gift of a horse.
And of course the presumptive Defense Secretary was accused of raping a woman who was tasked with monitoring what she described to police as his “creeper vibes” after a Republican women’s conference at which he was a keynote speaker, just a month and change after the birth of his fourth child with a woman who was not his wife at the time. (Reader, she married him.)
The aggressive rapeyness of the second Donald Trump administration is so tyrannical it’s almost enough to make a girl wistful for Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who withdrew his name from attorney general contention yesterday (to make way for the despicable Pam Bondi) amid an orgy of leaks from two investigations into his sexploits with a 17-year-old procured by a convicted sex trafficker friend. Multiple witnesses testified that Gaetz did not actually know the 17-year-old was underage, you see, and that he ceased having sex with her when he found out.
We definitely have a kakistocracy coming our way. We can see the incompetence, the total lack of knowledge of policy, and the complete inappropriateness of every candidate for Cabinet. It comes from the ultimate dotard. The only thing we have going for us now is our resolve and the fact that the Republican Majority in both Houses is narrow. Both houses have also had lots of experience in gumming up the works for Trump. Trump’s so-called mandate is a bald-faced lie. The LA Times asks, “As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?” Of course, Trump will be oblivious to all that, so he’s relying heavily on executive mandates that may or may not be legal.” Jenny Jarvis has the details.
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Though Trump overwhelmingly won the electoral college vote, his tally in the popular vote is hardly a landslide.
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In the last 75 years, only three other presidents had popular-vote margins that were smaller than Trump’s.
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When Trump exaggerates his presidential mandate, he is not an outlier but drawing from bipartisan history.
In his victory speech on Nov. 6, President-elect Donald Trump claimed Americans had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
It’s a message his transition team has echoed in the last three weeks, referring to his “MAGA Mandate” and a “historic mandate for his agenda.”
But given that Trump’s lead in the popular vote has dwindled as more votes have been counted in California and other states that lean blue, there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change.
The latest tally from the Cook Political Report shows Trump winning 49.83% of the popular vote, with a margin of 1.55% over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president-elect’s share of the popular vote now falls in the bottom half for American presidents — far below that of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, who won 61.1% of the popular vote in 1964, defeating Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by nearly 23 percentage points.
In the last 75 years, only three presidents — John F. Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon in 1968 and George W. Bush in 2000 — had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current lead.
“If there ever was a mandate, this isn’t it,” said Hans Noel, associate professor of government at Georgetown University.
There is a slim majority margin in the US House of Representatives. There is no mandate radical change there. This is from Politico, “Where the slim House margin might matter most.” The analysis is by Anthony Adragna.
Republicans are vowing an all-out war in the opening days of the next Congress against Biden administration regulations in areas as varied as energy, financial, housing and education policy.
They’re hoping for a redux of 2017 and 2018, when Republicans used their unified control of government and the powers of the Congressional Review Act to ax 16 regulations. With a coming 53-47 majority, GOP senators say they’re again primed to use the CRA, one of their most potent tools to undo Democratic policies — and one that tends to unite the often fractious Republican conference.
But — and it’s a major but — an extremely narrow House margin could make things hard to pull off, at least for the first couple of months of the Trump administration. While the GOP could lose as many as three votes in the Senate with Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) casting tie-breakers, the House very well be at a one-vote margin until early April (more on that math below).
Still, that hasn’t dampened Republicans’ enthusiasm around the CRA.
“We’re going to want to go and evaluate everything that fits into the jurisdiction” of the 1996 review law, incoming Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Inside Congress. Invoking it involves passing simple-majority votes in both chambers plus a presidential signature, no filibusters allowed.
President Joe Biden’s administration recognized this looming threat and prioritized early completion of rulemakings to shield them from congressional challenge. Still, dozens of regulations were finalized after Aug. 1, 2024, leaving them vulnerable to the CRA, according to Public Citizen, which closely tracks the potential use of the law. (That corresponds to the date identified by the Congressional Research Service after which rules might be vulnerable to revocation.)
Barrasso’s hardly alone with vows of aggressive use of the tool, which had only been successfully used once before Trump’s first term.
“We’ll do every possible regulation we can get to,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “It’s a wonderful tool for undoing the bureaucratic excess of the Biden administration.”
“On some of these crazy policies we ought to just get rid of them as fast as we can,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who said he’d instructed his staff to find regulations that may be good targets for challenges.
“This is the only time the Congressional Review Act actually has teeth, otherwise it’s a messaging vehicle,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said, referring to the first months of a new trifecta, since using the CRA effectively requires one party to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, a relatively infrequent occurrence in modern politics.
Hopefully, this turns into a Can’t Do Anything Congress.
Have a good weekend! Hope you had a great day for feasting! I’m off to eat a turkey sandwich!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Wednesday Reads: Send In The Clowns
Posted: November 20, 2024 Filed under: American Fascists, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Donald Trump, Kash Patel, Matt Gaetz, news, Pete Hegseth, politics, Trump, Tulsi Gabbard 9 CommentsGood Morning!!
Evil clown Trump
I had another sleepless night last night. It seems as if I have insomnia every 2-3 days; then I end up feeling exhausted for a couple of days and having to take naps to make up for the lost sleep. Of course it’s Trump’s fault. I didn’t sleep well during his first term, and now that I know what to expect–chaos, drama, and malevolence–I’m pretty sure my sleep will continue to be disturbed. Anyway, I don’t have much energy today. I just hope I don’t fall asleep on my computer keyboard.
Here’s the latest on Trump’s nightmarish Cabinet picks.
Josh Gerstein at Politico: Vance says Trump is interviewing FBI director replacements.
President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to end business-as-usual at the Justice Department apparently include replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray, Vice President-elect JD Vance indicated in a social media post on Tuesday.
Vance revealed he and the president-elect were conducting interviews for the crucial FBI position in a since-deleted post on X. The post was responding to criticism the vice president-elect received for missing a Monday Senate vote that confirmed one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance wrote. “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me.”
Trump nominated former federal prosecutor and Justice Department official Christopher Wray as FBI director in 2017 after abruptly firing his predecessor, James Comey.
However, in recent years, Trump and many in his orbit have soured on Wray, alleging that he hasn’t done enough to root out alleged corruption and political bias at the law enforcement agency. They also fault Wray for allowing his agents to participate in the court-ordered search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 that led to Trump’s prosecution on charges of hoarding classified documents and obstruction of justice.
It’s looking like Trump will nominate Kash Patel as FBI director. Patel is the guy who defended Trump in the stolen documents scandal, claiming that Trump could declassify any document by just thinking about it.
Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump loyalist Kash Patel in contention to be named FBI director.
Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up….
Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.
Clown Torture by Bruce Nauman
Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.
The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.
That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.
Click the link to read more about Patel. Basically, he’s a whack job and utterly loyal to Trump.
As everyone knows Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. Here’s the current drama over the pick.
NOTUS: Trump Is Calling Senators on Behalf of Matt Gaetz. It’s Not Going Well.
As Republicans circle the wagons around Matt Gaetz and his nomination to be attorney general, Donald Trump and his surrogates have started calling GOP senators to feel them out on the confirmation battle.
The calls are not going well.
According to three sources familiar with the conversations, Trump and his team are receiving an overwhelmingly negative reaction with regard to Gaetz. One of the sources told NOTUS that multiple senators have even told Trump and his team they won’t be voting to confirm.
There has been a healthy amount of skepticism about Gaetz becoming attorney general since the moment Trump announced his nomination. But the recent controversy over an Ethics Committee report that Gaetz dodged by resigning from Congress has only compounded the problems.
“This fake news will age poorly when Matt Gaetz is sworn in as the Attorney General,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition spokesperson.
Given the conversations, there’s growing doubt that Gaetz can actually be confirmed — either by the Senate or through a recess appointment.
“Matt Gaetz is toxic among House Republicans. Among Senate Republicans, he is radioactive,” one of the sources told NOTUS.
GOP senators themselves have intimated that Gaetz will have to go through the normal confirmation process and they have expressed that to Trump.
Will Steakin at ABC News: Gaetz sent over $10K in Venmo payments to 2 women who testified in House probe, records suggest.
The House Ethics Committee obtained records, including a check and records of Venmo payments, that appear to show that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who were later witnesses in sexual misconduct probes conducted by both the House and the Justice Department, according to documents obtained by ABC News.
The Venmo records show that between July 2017 and late January 2019, Gaetz — who was first elected in 2016 — allegedly made 27 Venmo payments totaling $10,224.02 to the two witnesses, who were over the age of 18 at the time.
Scary Clown, by Jennifer Anthony
The payments, which sources said were displayed during closed-door testimony, ranged from $100 to more than $700 each….
ABC News previously reported that House investigators had subpoenaed Venmo for Gaetz’s records and had been showing them to witnesses, asking if they were for sex or drugs. The Venmo records totaling over $10,000 in payments were shown to the witnesses, who testified that some of the payments were from Gaetz and were for sex, a source familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Gaetz, who was tapped last Wednesday by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as attorney general in the incoming administration, resigned from the House immediately following Trump’s announcement, just days before the House Ethics Committee was to set to consider releasing a report on its investigation into the Florida congressman, according to sources.
Michael Kaplan at CBS News: “Unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to Matt Gaetz depositions, source says.
An “unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to two dozen depositions of witnesses tied to the various investigations into former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, CBS News has learned.
The leaked materials are part of a civil defamation case filed by Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist who is close to Gaetz. These materials include the sworn deposition of the minor with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex.
According to a source familiar with the matter and an email viewed by CBS News, the person who gained access went by the name “Altam Beezley.” [….]
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and Justice Department, though federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against him last year. The Ethics panel was looking into allegations the former congressman engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other accusations….
An “unknown and unauthorized third party” has gained access to two dozen depositions of witnesses tied to the various investigations into former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, CBS News has learned.
The leaked materials are part of a civil defamation case filed by Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist who is close to Gaetz. These materials include the sworn deposition of the minor with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex.
According to a source familiar with the matter and an email viewed by CBS News, the person who gained access went by the name “Altam Beezley.” [….]
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and Justice Department, though federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against him last year. The Ethics panel was looking into allegations the former congressman engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other accusations. But Gaetz resigned his seat in the House last week after President-elect Donald Trump announced he had selected the Florida Republican to serve as his attorney general….
Because Gaetz is no longer a House member, the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction over him has ended.
At The New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have a theory about why Trump is offering so many insane candidates: Gaetz May Not Be Confirmed, Trump Admits. He’s Pushing Him and Others Anyway.
In his private conversations over the past few days, President-elect Donald J. Trump has admitted that his besieged choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has less than even odds of being confirmed by the Senate.
But Mr. Trump has shown no sign of withdrawing the nomination, which speaks volumes about his mind-set as he staffs his second administration. He is making calls on Mr. Gaetz’s behalf, and he remains confident that even if Mr. Gaetz does not make it, the standard for an acceptable candidate will have shifted so much that the Senate may simply approve his other nominees who have appalled much of Washington.
Clown, by Rosy Fernandez-Diaz
Mr. Trump’s choice to lead health and human services has made baseless claims about vaccines. His selection for defense secretary is a former Fox News host whose leadership experience has been questioned. His nominee for the director of national intelligence is a favorite of Russian state media.
Presidents do not normally approach cabinet selections this way. Historically, they work with their teams to figure out in advance what the system will tolerate, eliminating the possibility that skeletons in the closet of a nominee might emerge during Senate hearings.
Mr. Trump largely followed this risk-averse approach at the start of his first term. He appointed people like the four-star general Jim Mattis, who was confirmed with a 98-to-1 bipartisan vote to be Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.
But this time, emboldened by victory and the submission of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is innovating. He is using an approach that has been discussed in the past for judicial nominees, which is nominating so many extreme choices that they cannot all be blocked. The strategy has never been used for cabinet picks.
It is possible that enough Republican senators are willing to risk their careers to oppose Mr. Gaetz, although it is unclear what the backup plan would be should Mr. Gaetz falter. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is seen as a possibility.
For a deep dive on Trump’s plans for the DOJ, check out this post by Liz Dye at Public Notice: Trump’s corruption of the DOJ goes much deeper than Gaetz.
Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is a giant middle finger to anyone who believes in the rule of law. But his nominees for other key Justice Department positions may be both more consequential and potentially more dangerous for democracy.
That’s partly because Gaetz is a lazy fool who never tried a federal criminal case and is functionally a “liberal tears” meme made flesh. It’s not that he’s too stupid to be dangerous — he’s clearly going to do his damnedest to prosecute Trump’s enemies. It’s that he’s exactly the kind of venal wastrel who publicly Venmos women for sex. He’s not the type who is going to hunker down and do the hard work of overturning democracy.
Gaetz is the polar opposite of Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, Trump’s first-term AGs, both of whom felt at least some fealty to civic institutions and the rule of law. Sessions had been a US attorney in Alabama, the Alabama AG, and and US senator. Barr was attorney general in the first Bush administration and a consummate DC insider. They were stalwart Republicans willing to do terrible things, but each man reached a point when their own personal ethics prevented them giving Trump what he demanded — for Sessions it was refusing to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, for Barr it was overturning the 2020 election — and both eventually found themselves exiled from the garden.
Perhaps Gaetz’s fecklessness may protect us in the same way that the institutionalism of Sessions and Barr protected us the last time. It’s hard to imagine someone so internet-pilled having the deftness to bury a special counsel report. But this will certainly not be the case with Trump’s personal lawyers, three of whom have already been named as high-ranking Justice Department officials….
These are men (of course they’re all white men) who have some prosecutorial experience, but not a long career of public service. They understand how institutions work, but lack any interest in ensuring that they continue to do so.
Like Gaetz, their loyalty is to Trump. But unlike Gaetz, these guys are smart enough not to make stupid mistakes.
Read the rest at Public Notice.
Clown Group, 1975, by S.J. Mulak
Trump’s outrageous nominee for Secretary of Defense may be a bridge too far for the Trump gang, after he turned out to have a sordid history with women, including sexual assault.
Nia Prater at New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer: What We Know About the Sexual-Assault Allegation Against Pete Hegseth.
Last week, Donald Trump announced that he had nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and Army National Guard officer, to serve as secretary of Defense in his incoming administration. Hegseth’s selection was immediately met with skepticism with critics pointing to his lack of traditional military-leadership experience as well as his public push for pardoning servicemembers accused of war crimes and against women serving in combat roles.
But in the days since his nomination, it’s emerged that the conservative TV host was accused of sexual assault many years prior. Though Trump appears to be standing by his nomination, the news added another bump to Hegseth’s already rocky path to confirmation. Here’s what we know so far….
Vanity Fair reported last week that the Trump transition team had received word that Hegseth had been accused of sexual misconduct back in 2017. A source told the outlet that Trump attorneys and his newly appointed chief of staff, Susie Wiles, asked Hegseth about the incident, which he characterized as a “he-said, she-said.”
The incident allegedly took place during the 2017 California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey, where Hegseth was in attendance. Per the Washington Post, the transition team received a four-page memo detailing an alleged assault by Hegseth of a 30-year-old female staffer for a conservative organization at the hotel, written by a friend of the victim in question. The friend claimed that the woman, whom she only identified as “Jane Doe,” attended the conference with her husband and children, and the woman has since signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth. Adds the Post:
One of [the woman’s] responsibilities at the conference was to make sure Hegseth made it back to his room and left in time the next morning for the 90-minute drive to the airport, the memo said. At some point in the evening, the complaint alleged, Jane Doe received a text from two women at the bar who told her that “Hegseth was getting pushy about his interest in taking them upstairs to his room.” Jane Doe, who was nearby, came over and talked to those two women, and after they left, she “remembered sensing that Hegseth was irritated,” the memo said.
The woman allegedly couldn’t remember everything that happened after that:
According to the memo, Jane Doe “didn’t remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room and then stumbling to find her hotel room.” The memo said that her memory of six to nine hours “was very hazy,” and that her husband was searching for her and was relieved when she finally showed up. The following day, the woman returned home and “had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before, and had a panic attack,” the memo said. The woman then went to the emergency room, where she received a rape-kit examination that “was positive for semen,” the memo said. The woman gave county authorities a statement about what happened, according to the memo sent to the transition team.
In a statement, the City of Monterey confirmed that the local police department investigated an “alleged sexual assault” that occurred in 2017 between 11:59 p.m. on October 7 and 7:00 a.m. on October 8 at 1 Old Golf Course Road, the location of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel.
There’s more at the link, if you can get past the paywall.
And then there is Hegseth’s “Christian Nationalism.”
Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch: Pete Hegseth’s Plan To Create A Christian Nationalist ‘Educational Insurgency.’
When Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, concerns were raised immediately about Hegseth’s undisguised Christian nationalism.
Hegseth, who has admitted that his multiple crusader tattoos got him “deemed an extremist” by his own National Guard unit, has deep ties to misogynistic Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson.
Clown, by Bernard Buffet
On Monday, Hegseth appeared on the “CrossPolitic” podcast, which is hosted by Toby Sumpter and Gabe Rench, both of whom are closely tied to Wilson and his church.
During the discussion about Hegseth’s book “Battle For The American Mind,” Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of “classical Christian schools” to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an “educational insurgency” to take over the nation.
“I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America,” said Sumpter.
“That’s what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation,” Hegseth agreed. “Policy answers like school choice, while they’re great, that’s phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp.”
“We call it a tactical retreat,” Hegseth continued. “We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao [Zedong] wrote about. We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way.”
Rhian Lubin and Katie Hawkinson at The Independent: Trump transition team ‘quietly’ looking at alternatives to Pete Hegseth after he ‘wasn’t honest’ about past.
Donald Trump’s transition team is said to be “upset” with Pete Hegseth because he “hasn’t been honest” about the sexual misconduct allegation from his past – prompting insiders to consider other options to lead the Pentagon.
Hegseth was tapped last week to become Trump’s defense secretary but now those in the president-elect’s inner circle are “quietly preparing a list of alternative” candidates, Vanity Fair reported.
“It’s becoming a real possibility,” a source told the outlet’s special correspondent Gabriel Sherman.
The source said that the Trump team was taken by surprise after a serious sexual assault allegation against Hegseth came to light, which led Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles to question the former Fox News host on a call last week. Hegseth was never charged with a crime and denies the allegations.
“People are upset about the distraction. The general feeling is Pete hasn’t been honest,” a second source told Vanity Fair.
Maybe he can give the job to Kash Patel if he doesn’t get the FBI directorship.
Perhaps the scariest nominee so far is Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi is a flat out Russian asset, and she’s also close to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk.
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Representative Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created after 9/11 to remedy what American policy makers believed was a lack of coordination among the various national-intelligence agencies, and the DNI sits atop all of America’s intelligence services, including the CIA.
Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post (as are some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) She has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything.
Scary Clown, Tony Rubino
But leave aside for the moment that she is manifestly unprepared to run any kind of agency. Americans usually accept that presidents reward loyalists with jobs, and Trump has the right to stash Gabbard at some make-work office in the bureaucracy if he feels he owes her. It’s not a pretty tradition, but it’s not unprecedented, either.
To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States.
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood. Hawaii voters have long been perplexed by the way she’s positioned herself politically. But Gabbard is a classic case of “horseshoe” politics: Her views can seem both extremely left and extremely right, which is probably why people such as Tucker Carlson—a conservative who has turned into … whatever pro-Russia right-wingers are called now—have taken a liking to the former Democrat (who was previously a Republican and is now again a member of the GOP).
On the Putin connection:
Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner today:
She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.
When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched at Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia. When Hannity is trying to shepherd you back toward the air lock before your oxygen runs out, you’ve gone pretty far out there.
A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence. I have no idea why Trump nominated Gabbard; she’s been a supporter, but she hasn’t been central to his campaign, and he owes her very little. For someone as grubbily transactional as Trump, it’s not an appointment that makes much sense. It’s possible that Trump hates the intelligence community—which he blames for many of his first-term troubles—so much that Gabbard is his revenge. Or maybe he just likes the way she handles herself on television.
Mostly Monday Reads: He’s a Maniac
Posted: November 18, 2024 Filed under: A thread for Ranting, American Fascists | Tags: #DonOld, @repeat1968. John Buss, Elonia Musk, Orange Caligula, Trump Cabinet Weirdos 2 Comments
“Whenever I hear or read the word kakistocracy, this immediately comes to mind.” John (repeat1968) Buss
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I hope the ACLU and other NGOs will be up for the next version of #DonOld’s Reign of Terror. Get ready for mass deportations by the military. If only they would deport me and my animals to the south of France or even the old family home in Hastings, England, if it’s still standing! For a guy who insists he didn’t know what Project 2025 was about, he is certainly right on top of it! This is from AXIOS. “Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations.”
President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.
Why it matters: Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.
- A Truth Social post early Monday is the first time the president-elect has confirmed how his administration will execute the controversial plan.
Driving the news: Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”
- Trump reposted Fitton’s comment Monday with the caption, “TRUE!!”
The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump’s mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.
- Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.
- The president-elect’s team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.
- Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.
Zoom out: Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.
- This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his “border czar.”
- In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Go deeper: How Trump’s plan for mass deportations fits into U.S. history
I will expand the garden in my side yard and extend it back to the area which has fruit trees and ginger. If the courts don’t block this, I’m betting on higher food prices by the next harvest. Also, I don’t know how anyone in a state like mine, affected by hurricanes and damage, will be getting their homes fixed and cleaned. We’d have never recovered without the workers from South of our border. However, that will be only one of the problems this regime change will bring.
David Nir, writing for Public Notice, has this information on the possibility of recess appointments for the basket of unqualified deplorable he’s chosen for his cabinet. “How Johnson could make Trump’s recess appointments a reality. Talk of cutting out Dems — and GOP dissenters — is more than just idle rhetoric.” Surely, no one believes that what comes out of his anus-looking mouth is just idle rhetoric at this point!
Donald Trump’s plan to stock his cabinet with the most appalling MAGA nihilists hinges on the obeisance of one man in particular: House Speaker Mike Johnson. And given Johnson’s track record of cowardice, Trump may indeed get what he wants — and demolish a pillar of democracy along the way.
The crescendo of increasingly nightmarish picks like Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. almost makes Liz Dye’s take here at Public Notice — that Trump is trying to install the crowd at the Star Wars cantina — seem too kind.
So beyond the pale are Trump’s worst choices that even some Republicans in the Senate are balking. And it’s worth remembering that many Trump nominees during his first term in office withdrew from consideration in the face of GOP inaction or hostility.
But whether or not Republican senators are inclined to revert to subservience and greenlight these nominations, Trump is already armed with a plan to bypass the confirmation process entirely. He wants to fill vacancies without a confirmation vote by making so-called recess appointments when the Senate is not in session — a power granted to him by the Constitution. And he has a path to do it.
A will and a way
For many years, Congress has not actually taken a formal recess, precisely to deny presidents the ability to side-step lawmakers. Trump, though, has demanded that the Senate resume the practice of adjourning itself so that he can ram his picks through without any oversight.
The GOP’s new majority leader, John Thune, replied submissively to Trump’s demand, saying on Fox News last week that “all options are on the table.” And Johnson echoed that sentiment on Fox News Sunday yesterday, saying of recess appointments that “there may be a function for that.” (Watch below.)
It turns out that, even for a legislative body that often convenes for just three days a week, it’s surprisingly difficult for the Senate to take a proper, on-the-books break. Such an adjournment requires a majority vote, which even Thune acknowledged might be “a problem” for some Republican senators.
But even if Senate Republicans could muster a majority, a motion to recess can be amended, as Semafor’s Burgess Everett notes. That means Democrats could hold up such a motion indefinitely, unless Republicans were to unilaterally change Senate rules regarding recesses — a move Everett calls “a smaller-scale version of the ‘nuclear option'” that might also have a hard time garnering 50 votes.
The alt-media has been doing an excellent job tackling this garbage in and out of motivation and action. Politico has stated that the Ethics Committee in the House will discuss the report on Gaetz and his sex adventures with underage girls, also known as statutory rape. I firmly believe that if they don’t release it, someone will leak it. “House Ethics panel to meet Wednesday as Gaetz question looms. Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.”
The House Ethics panel will meet Wednesday and potentially vote to release a report probing sexual misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who Donald Trump tapped to be his attorney general, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
The meeting comes as Gaetz’s confirmation is in question, with some Republican senators wary of the controversial Florida Republican serving as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Speaker Mike Johnson is putting pressure on members of the Ethics Committee to keep the report under wraps, saying on Friday that he is “going to strongly request” the report isn’t released because “that is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Johnson furthered that stance in interviews on the Sunday shows and threw his support behind Gaetz to be attorney general.
Members rescheduled the Wednesday meeting from one last week where lawmakers were widely expected to vote on whether to release the report.
Whether or not to release the report, which some senators have said would be essential in deciding whether or not to confirm Gaetz, is placing intense pressure on the historically bipartisan Ethics Committee. Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told “Meet The Press” that the Senate should “absolutely” be able to see the report, but he said that doesn’t necessarily mean it should become public.
Gaetz, a fierce and loyal supporter of Trump’s, has a tough road to confirmation in the Senate. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she doesn’t “think it’s a serious nomination.” And fellow swing-vote Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the choice.
Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats in the next Congress, meaning they can only afford three defectors in the confirmation process.
As I mentioned, Trump’s lies about not knowing about Project 2025 are becoming more disprovable. This is also from Politico. “Playbook: Heritage comes out of the bunker.” Natalie Allison has the lede.
But now, with Trump as president-elect, Heritage is peeking back out from its metaphorical bunker.
Two of Heritage’s visiting fellows — TOM HOMAN and JOHN RATCLIFFE, who were contributors to Project 2025 — have already been named to top Trump administration posts. That book from Roberts that was supposed to come out in September? It was released last week. The think tank even marked its reemergence with an event this past week welcoming back the Washington cocktail circuit to the group’s Massachusetts Avenue headquarters on Capitol Hill. It was a D.C. coming back out party, of sorts, for an organization that is easing its way back into influence in what’s soon to be Trump’s Washington once again.
“We’re so back,” the Heritage official told Playbook, with a nervous laugh, while a crowd in the packed but modest-sized room milled around during a book party Thursday night for Roberts.
As GOP members of Congress — Playbook spotted Reps. RALPH NORMAN (R-S.C.), BRIAN BABIN (R-Texas), ERIC BURLISON (R-Mo.) and JOSH BRECHEEN (R-Okla.) there — sipped wine and grabbed hors d’oeuvres with a smattering of ambassadors, conservative staffers and reporters on Thursday, Roberts noted that he has lost a number of his “liberal friends” this year over “that larger book we’re famous for.”
But Heritage’s stint as a social pariah due to Project 2025 is effectively over.
“The entire political spectrum in the West is represented here,” Roberts said of the crowd he had assembled Thursday. “I won’t call anyone out, but those of you who are not exactly excited about everything that Heritage does — I’m very, very grateful that you’re here, and you’re here out of friendship.”Roberts spoke about the need for conservatives to “have a certain humility” in order to continue growing the historic coalition that’s returning Trump to the White House — while still trying to fully convert new faces in the movement to a robust conservative ideology more closely resembling his own.
“What the conservative movement did for a generation — I was guilty of this, sometimes I’m still tempted to be guilty of this — is to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to talk to you,’” Roberts said. He recalled scoffing the first time someone suggested that influential “populist conservatives” like himself should form a “political alliance with the tech bros.”
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? That’s crazy.’ Guess who was wrong? I was.”
Roberts, flanked on each side by panels quoting book endorsements from VP-elect JD VANCE and TUCKER CARLSON, noted that there are stark differences between his worldview and of some of the GOP’s newcomers, name-checking ELON MUSK and ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., who had been announced as Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services just hours earlier.
“I can be very grateful to Elon Musk for revitalizing free speech for the world, while also saying — very respectfully, civilly, maybe even with a smile on my face — it’s crazy to want to put microchips in the brain,” Roberts said.
And he intends to have what he said will also be a “civil” conversation with Kennedy on their differences on abortion rights. “We might agree to disagree,” Roberts said, “but we’re going to work on whatever we can that we agree on, and I will hold out hope that maybe I can change his mind.”
Roberts is sounding pretty optimistic again about the role of Heritage in Washington, about his own improving standing in Trump world, and, yes — about the likelihood of Project 2025’s much-maligned proposals getting closer to implementation. His organization, meanwhile, has prepared for the Trump administration a database of nearly 20,000 names of people who could fill jobs in the president-elect’s new federal government, a Heritage official told Playbook.
Elon Musk’s idea of free speech is anything that doesn’t personally attack him or his ideals, so let’s get rid of that notion. The Tech Bros funded this crazy train. This is from Oliver Darcy, who writes for Status. “The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s Big Tech enablers. “All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created.”” This is from Oliver’s interview with Patel.
What do you make of Elon Musk’s alliance with Donald Trump and what worries you the most about him playing such an outsized role in the Trump administration?
America now has an unelected defense contractor sitting in the White House doing ketamine and twiddling the algorithmic knobs of an influential right-wing echo chamber while fulminating against traditional standards-based journalism, threatening to revoke network broadcast licenses, and suing advertisers who don’t want to spend their money on his dwindling user base. What could go wrong?
On top of that, Trump’s most likely FCC Chairman is Brendan Carr, who was tasked in the first Trump government to crack down on platform moderation by taking control of Section 230, literally wrote the Project 2025 chapter laying out a plan to do so, and is now begging to punish NBC for having Kamala Harris on “SNL.”
To be as clear as I can be, the second Trump administration with Elon Musk embedded within it represents the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience. If you’re a media executive or editorial leader and you haven’t met with your legal team to understand the current landscape of First Amendment threats, let alone the ones to come, you’re already behind. Get on it.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, other Big Tech leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, etcetera) posted congratulatory messages on X. It struck me as much different to how Silicon Valley responded to Trump’s first election. Why do you think that is?
All of these men are now hopelessly trapped in a problem their own platforms and algorithms created: they have to manipulate Trump’s narcissism to secure tariff exceptions and regulatory largesse, while knowing that the vast majority of their employees and half of their customers will see any engagement as moral bankruptcy. There’s a reason Apple and Google would not confirm the calls Donald Trump claimed Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai made to him before the election — they didn’t want to be associated with him.
Now they have no choice. Tim Cook had been quietly setting the stage to retire — but he’s stuck kissing the ring and hosting fake factory openings for another four years to avoid disastrous tariffs on Apple products. Zuck is spending billions on Nvidia H100s manufactured in Taiwan in order to dominate A.I., but all that money comes from advertising for products made overseas — a double whammy of tariff issues. (And the entire influencer economy is built on Shein sponcon — that’s about to fall off a cliff.) Elon, Marc Andreessen, and J.D. Vance all think that Google should be crushed to bits with antitrust law — Vance has specifically said that he think Lina Khan is doing a good job.
Jeff Bezos? All that money for yachts and rockets comes from Amazon’s huge ecosystem of alphabet soup dropshipping companies. I hope Lauren likes having dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Here’s more on the FCC cabinet pick who edited Project 2025. This is from the AP. “Trump names Brendan Carr, senior GOP leader at FCC, to lead the agency.” Demons all the way down.
President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.
The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Every federal worker is going to need a lawyer at this point. Get ready for that Class Action lawsuit. This in-depth look at the weirdo that will head defense is not pleasant. But, he’s the guy who would work with whatever Generals remain in all parts of the country, sniffing out undocumented workers. Judd Legume and his team sniffed him out for Popular Information. “13 things everyone should know about Pete Hegseth. Just looking at him gives me the willies.
Hegseth is a military veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star and other commendations. He also served in the National Guard. But the largest organization that Hegseth has previously run is Concerned Veterans for America, a Koch-funded right-wing advocacy organization, where he served as Executive Director from 2012 to 2016. Concerned Veterans for America had a few dozen employees and a budget of around $15 million during his tenure. In that role, Hegseth hired his younger brother, who had just graduated college, to a well-compensated media relations position at the CVA. Hegseth founded a small PAC in his native Minnesota to support conservative candidates. It managed to raise about $15,000 over several years. One-third of the raised funds were “spent on two Christmas parties and reimbursements to Hegseth.”
Even Trump’s most loyal supporters acknowledge Hegseth’s lack of relevant experience. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, said that Hegseth has “never run a big organization” and is “kind of a madman.”
But while Hegseth has limited management experience, he has spent many years in the public eye and has a long record of punditry. Here are 13 things everyone should know about the man Trump wants to put in charge of the nation’s military.
His top priority is getting women out of the military.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said in a media interview on November 10, 2024. According to Hegseth, “[e]verything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, means casualties are worse.”
“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” Hegseth wrote in his 2024 book The War on Warriors. “We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat units.”
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said in a podcast earlier this year.
Women have formally been allowed to serve in combat roles since 2013 and have been involved in combat operations for decades. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page suggested Hegseth’s position is misguided because “women have shown they can perform well in many roles” in the military.
It gets worse from there if you want to read it. And I think that it’s horrifying for all of us for now. Be aware of all the places where havoc will reign. The stock market has already been rebooted. It’s nose-dived since the cabinet officers were announced. Big Pharma and anyone in the processed food business were particularly hard hit. This is the headline today from Stock Market Watch. “Stock Market Today: Dow flat, S&P 500 attempts bounce after worst week in over 2 months. It’s not like I didn’t warn y’all. Just get ready to hunker down like an Okie during the Dust Bowl. I have mad skills, having survived post-Katrina with the lessons my Nana and Dad taught me. This is not going to be an easy time for any of us.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Songs for dwelling on Trump and his appointments
Finally Friday Reads: We have a Kakistocracy* coming. Let’s not keep it!
Posted: November 15, 2024 Filed under: "presidential immunity", A thread for Ranting, American Fascists | Tags: @repeat1968, John Buss, Matt Gaetz Weirdo, Pete Hegseth weirdo sexual assaulter, RFK Jr Weirdo, Trump's Cabinet picks: Band of Misfits, We are Fucking Fucked 7 Comments
“Make America Garbage Again,” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
After sleeping through last week, I have finally decided that PTSD has kicked in, and I’m in survival mode. At least I woke up to find the word that best describes what we’re watching unfold. From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
*kakistocracy noun
kak·is·toc·ra·cy ˌkakə̇ˈstäkrəsē
plural kakistocracies
:government by the worst people
Greek kakistos (superlative of kakos bad) + English -cracy
The Cambridge Dictionary is more blunt. It evidently was coined sometime in the 17th century. Now we know how far we’re going to fall back.
A government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people in a state or country:Who rules in a kakistocracy?
Fewer examples:
- Kakistocracies are governments ruled by the stupid and ignorant.
- What we have here is the world’s only kakistocracy.
- The total lack of integrity of the administration is proof that we now live in a kakistocracy.
This is what we will have after January 20,2025, which is, ironically enough, not only the inauguration of the first felon to ever hold office but also the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King. Somewhere, the Greek Muses have entered the realm of Greek Tragedy. All we need is a chorus.
I turned to some TV news last night to watch the faces of the political class chatter about the proposed cabinet members with the look of teenagers stuck in a summer camp horror film. Yes, this all does feel like a very bad movie or dream that you want to be over when you awaken. However, it is more like the idea of the tyranny of the masses that Alexis de Tocqueville dreamed of while writing his book Democracy in America. He was very afraid of the unwashed masses, and now we know why.
The greatest danger Tocqueville saw was that public opinion would become an all-powerful force, and that the majority could tyrannize unpopular minorities and marginal individuals. In Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter 7, “Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and Its Effects,” he lays out his argument with a variety of well-chosen constitutional, historical, and sociological examples.
I love that last part because it comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is a history class curriculum prepared for teachers on the topic. Quick, go read it or get your copy of the book before both are banned and defunded. It’s an independent agency, like the Fed, and we’ll see how long into the kakistocracy that remains to be true for both. I imagine I would never get grants to be funded as I did in 1982 to bring Kate Millet and Betty Friedan to Omaha and funds to expand our Women’s Festival to include black women presenters. That was even during the Reagan years. He must have been damned woke or completely asleep, drooling on the Resolute desk to miss that opportunity.
“Matt is the man selected to hide all the criming, appropriate.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Okay, so let me really depress you now with some headlines. This is from Public Notice‘s Lisa Needham. “Trump moves to burn down the rule of law. His cabinet nominations are obscene and augur dark days to come.” And you thought I was being a bummer!
When the sordid history of the second Trump administration is written, should we all survive that long, it will be difficult to sort out which of his early cabinet picks were the most atrocious. And while handing over control of the military to a weekend Fox News host or putting an anti-vax creep in charge of America’s top public health agency are really bad, it will be hard to sink lower than Matt Gaetz being nominated as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
Let’s pretend, for just a moment, that Gaetz isn’t just being given this job because he’s a lib-triggering Trump crony and evaluate him on the merits. Gaetz’s legal experience, such as it is, seems to consist of a stint at a small firm in Florida, Anchors Garden, where he worked after graduating from law school in 2007. The firm currently has only nine attorneys, and Gaetz devotes precisely one line to the experience in his self-servingly weird House bio, saying, “Prior to serving in Congress, Matt worked as an attorney in Northwest Florida with the Keefe, Anchors & Gordon law firm, where he advocated for a more open and transparent government.”
Advocating for a more open and transparent government sounds pretty important, right? But while the firm does have a government affairs and public records practice, when Mother Jones did a deep dive into Gaetz’s experience there, what they turned up instead was that he working on things like debt collection and representing a homeowners’ association over a dispute about a beach volleyball net. It isn’t even entirely clear when Gaetz stopped working at the firm. His House bio skips ahead to his 2010 election to the Florida House, and his legal work is never mentioned again.
This is not the biography of someone you would hire to be an assistant district attorney in a mid-size American city, much less the head of the entire Department of Justice.
Compare Gaetz to Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general pick during his previous term. Sure, Sessions was so racist that he couldn’t get confirmed as a judge. But he also spent 12 years as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama and two years as the Alabama attorney general before being elected to four consecutive Senate terms. During his time in the Senate, he served on the Senate Judiciary Committee, becoming its ranking member in 2009. Sessions was a repulsive and retrograde choice for AG, but he wasn’t a demonstrably unqualified one.
That’s a sunny note to start your weekend on. Wait, there’s more! If you want to see real pearl-clutching, you must go to WAPO or NYT. But they’re a little too late for me. Here’s something from The Bulwark. I’ve suddenly gone all in for the alt-press like I did in 1970 when I started writing for Omaha’s underground Newspaper, The Aardvark, to write terrible things about Richard Nixon. “Gaetz Begins Lobbying Lawmakers, Hoping He Hasn’t Burned All the Bridges/ The congressman and his team are trying to convince Senators to overlook a potentially damning ethics report and his history of political histrionics.” This analysis is coauthored by Mark Caputo and Joe Perticone.
Though Trump has made a slew of controversial picks (the latest being Thursday’s nomination of anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services), Gaetz stands out as a singularly polarizing figure because of the investigations into his conduct, the accusations against him, and his strained personal relationship with fellow Republican members of Congress he has torched, including allies of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose ouster he masterminded.
“We have 53 senators and we might not have 50 votes to confirm right now. It’s really up in the air,” said a member of Trump’s team briefed on its preliminary vote-counting. “Gaetz can be a real asshole. But he can be a great guy. The senators need to see the great guy and kind of hear the asshole apologize and tell them why all this stuff about sex crimes isn’t true.”
The push to confirm Gaetz is the latest test of his ability to survive crises that would have ruined any other politician. It also will provide an early indication of Trump’s ability to bend the Senate to his will. The president-elect has quickly moved to force votes on high-profile nominees that no other person in his position would have dared put forward. And as a fallback, he is pressuring incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune into giving him the right to bypass the Senate to make temporary appointments.
Doing so would get Trump’s cabinet in place. But it could come at a political cost if it perceived that the president is jamming through highly-controversial nominees. On Thursday, ABC reported that the woman at the center of the sex-crimes case had told House investigators that Gaetz had paid to have sex with her in 2017 when she was a minor. Gaetz was also allegedly implicated in paying other women for sex, which he has denied, and in illicit drug use.
The succession of nominations and reporting left Republican senators in an uncomfortable spot. Some, including those on the Senate Judiciary Committee—which would first vote on Gaetz’s nomination—said they wanted to see the House ethics report into Gaetz.
A quick look at several of the appointments finds quite a few rapists and serial adulterers. Trump obviously wants mini-mes. The BBC has this list up to date and is waiting for more. “Who has joined Trump’s team so far?” Some of the appointees are not getting sanguine coverage.’
This article is specific to Gaetz and was written by North American Correspondent Anthony Zurcher. “Trump picking Gaetz to head justice sends shockwaves – and a strong message.”
Donald Trump’s nomination of congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general has arrived like a thunderclap in Washington.
Of all the president-elect’s picks for his administration so far, this is easily the most controversial – and sends a clear message that Trump intends to shake up the establishment when he returns to power.
The shockwaves were still being felt on Thursday morning as focus shifted to a looming fight in the Senate over his nomination.
Trump is assembling his team before he begins his term on 20 January, and his choice of defence secretary, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, and intelligence chief, former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, have also raised eyebrows.
But it is Gaetz making most headlines. The Florida firebrand is perhaps best known for spearheading the effort to unseat then-Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last year. But he has a history of being a flamethrower in the staid halls of Congress.
In 2018, he brought a right-wing Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, and later tried to expel two fathers who lost children in a mass shooting from a hearing after they objected to a claim he made about gun control.
His bombastic approach means he has no shortage of enemies, including within his own party. And so Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too – his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned.
Gasps were heard during a meeting of Republican lawmakers when the nomination for America’s top US prosecutor was announced, Axios reported, citing sources in the room.
Republican congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho reportedly responded with an expletive.
“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “This one was not on my bingo card.”
Gaetz is playing Rocky and is already running up and down the Capitol stairs trying to find the few people that like him. But even the New York Post is taking on the RFK appointment to HHS. I know, I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s even it’s Editorial Board. “Putting RFK Jr. in charge of health breaks the first rule of medicine.”
The overriding rule of medicine is: First, do no harm.
We’re certain installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services breaks this rule.
Maybe he’s sworn to focus narrowly on areas where he clearly can help — inspiring Americans to embrace healthier diets and more exercise, etc.
I wonder where eating roadkill and fish laded with mercury comes into that equation?
But wait! There are reasons to question every one of his appointments. This is from The Guardian. “Trump defense secretary nominee involved in 2017 sexual assault investigation, no charges filed – report.”
Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who Donald Trump nominated to be defense secretary, was involved in a sexual assault investigation in California seven years ago, but no charges were filed against him, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The incident happened in 2017 at a hotel and golf course in the city of Monterey, but there were few details of how Hegseth was involved, or what happened. Here’s more, from the Chronicle:
In a brief statement late Thursday, the city manager’s office in Monterey confirmed the sexual assault investigation, but provided few details.
The city said the incident was reported to have happened between almost midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. the next morning at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa on Del Monte Golf Course, less than a mile from Monterey Bay and across Highway 1 from the Naval Postgraduate School.
“The Monterey Police Department investigated an alleged sexual assault at 1 Old Golf Course Road,” the city said. It said the victim’s name was confidential and that the alleged assault was reported on Oct. 12, 2017. The city said no weapons were involved, but that there was a report of “contusions to right thigh.”
The city declined to release the police report, saying it was exempt from public disclosure, and said it would not make any further remarks on the probe.
The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office did not reply to a request for comment late Thursday, but an online database indicated no criminal charges had been filed against Hegseth in that county.
Vanity Fair reports that news of the allegation sent Trump’s transition team scrambling over the past few days:
Donald Trump’s transition team scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was presented with an allegation that former Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Defense Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. According to two sources, Wiles was briefed Wednesday night about an allegation that Hegseth had acted inappropriately with a woman. One of the sources said the alleged incident took place in Monterey, California in 2017.
According to the transition source, the allegation is serious enough that Wiles and Trump’s lawyers spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the meeting said that Hegseth said the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterized the episode as he-said, she-said.
On Thursday evening, Hegseth’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore said: “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it.”
Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said: “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”
That guy puts the sleaze in sleazy. Plus, he was investigated for war crimes and would be in charge of dealing with war criminals. This is from Time Magazine. “Pete Hegseth’s Role in Trump’s Controversial Pardons of Men Accused of War Crimes.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense in his second term has already stirred controversy.
Hegseth, a military veteran, staunch defender of Trump’s “America First” agenda, and an outspoken critic of what he calls the military’s “woke” culture, has built a career around challenging the military establishment. He held an influential role in advocating for Trump to intervene on behalf of service members in three cases involving war crime accusations in 2019—cases that divided the military and ignited fierce debates over the limits of executive power and military accountability.
Now, if he is confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense, Hegseth will oversee 1.3 million active-duty service members and manage military strategy at a time of global instability, raising questions about how his past approach towards accused war criminals will impact his military leadership and discipline.
During Trump’s first term in office, Hegseth lobbied for the pardons of Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance and Army Major Mathew Golsteyn, and pushed to support Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, each of whom were facing charges or convictions related to alleged war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hegseth’s advocacy on behalf of the three service members appeared to pay off: in Nov. 2019, Trump granted pardons to Lorance and Golsteyn, and reversed a demotion of Gallagher, citing Hegseth and Fox News when he tweeted about his decision to review one of the cases.
Hegseth’s vocal defense of these men as victims of overzealous prosecution raised eyebrows in the military community, where such interventions by civilians are seen by some as a threat to the integrity of the justice system. “These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Hegseth said on Fox & Friends in May 2019. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors.”
Lorance had been convicted by a military court in 2013 for the murder of two Afghan men during a military operation in 2012 in which he ordered his soldiers to open fire on a group of unarmed Afghan civilians he suspected of being insurgents. Lorance served six years of a 19-year sentence before Trump, after lobbying from Hegseth and others, granted him a pardon in Nov. 2019, arguing that he was unfairly targeted by military prosecutors and that his actions were justified in a combat environment where split-second decisions were often necessary for survival.
This is from Military.com. ‘He’s Going to Have to Explain It’: Surprise Defense Secretary Pick’s History Takes Center Stage.”
He has repeatedly called to ban women from serving in combat roles in the military.
He advocated extensively to gain pardons for troops accused and convicted of war crimes.
And he was one of a dozen troops turned away from serving on the National Guard mission to defend the Capitol, allegedly over tattoos that are popular with neo-Nazi and far-right groups.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise pick to be the next defense secretary, has an extensive history of combat in the culture wars that have been brewing over the military for the past decade.
Prior to Trump’s announcement Tuesday evening that he was nominating Hegseth, the National Guard veteran was most known as a co-host on the weekend edition of “Fox and Friends,” one of Trump’s favorite TV shows. But in choosing Hegseth, Trump landed on a defense secretary nominee with a record of public statements that line up with the promises Trump made on the campaign trail to root out alleged “wokeness” within the military.
Senators from both parties tasked with considering his nomination responded Wednesday by saying that they have a lot of questions about Hegseth’s history and those past statements, but broadly insisted they were reserving judgment.
“I’m going to have to visit with him about those remarks,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate’s first female combat veteran who was rumored to be in the running for Trump’s defense secretary, told reporters Wednesday when asked about Hegseth’s opposition to women in combat.
“Even a staff member of mine, she is an infantry officer. She’s back in Iowa now. She is a tumble. So he’s going to have to explain it,” Ernst added, though she did not answer when Military.com asked whether she would vote against Hegseth over the issue.
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