No one should be surprised that Russia has gone deep into the MAGA end zone to influence the outcome of this election. Republican Congress members are among Putin’s most useful idiots. Russia has always been fond of trying to corrupt U.S. elections by using anything to turn us against each other. The DonOld’s political career trajectory shows how successful they have been recently. We will undoubtedly hear more about the Russian hoax from the dotard since his mind seems incapable of being cogent this election. However, this should get people thinking more.
Again, we must rely on independent media to hear the entire story. Lisa Needham of Public Notice has this succinct article today on the recent DOJ indictment of Tenet Media. “Russia’s useful idiots. The MAGA influencer ecosystem is even shadier than we thought.”
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice indicted two employees of RT, formerly Russia Today, a Russian state-run media outlet, for covertly shoveling millions of dollars at MAGA influencers happy to do Russia’s bidding.
This has led to the delightful specter of high-profile rightwing commentators loudly insisting they were too stupid to know that Russian money was behind the wildly exorbitant sums they received for producing content.
While watching Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson scramble is hilarious, the indictment is no joke.
Indeed, it confirms that Russia continues to manipulate American politics via willing right-wingers — the exact thing Trumpers have long insisted isn’t happening.
The indictment names Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, aka Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, aka Lena, as the RT employees who laundered close to $10 million through foreign shell companies, ultimately raining all that money down on an unnamed American media company, US Company-1, who then passed it along to unnamed commentators 1-6.
Though unnamed, the company and several commentators are easily discernible to anyone paying attention to the rightwing media grift. The company is most definitely Tenet Media, and its founders are most definitely Lauren Chen, who was also at BlazeTV until the indictment dropped and they fired her, and her husband, Liam Donovan.
And the commentators? Tenet’s ridiculous website describes them as “heterodox commentators” and “creators who question institutions that believe themselves to be above questioning.” That would be Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Matt Christiansen, and Tayler Hansen.
I watched some of these Russian-backed videos on the news yesterday. These guys are basically Russian Limbaughs but are pleading ignorance about their Russian Payroll Masters. This is from Mother Jones today. “Tenet Media Shutters After Being Accused of Taking $10 Million in Covert Kremlin Funding
Nothing to see here!” Senior Reporter Anna Merlan has the lede.
Tenet Media’s founders, Canadian conservative YouTuber Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, have not publicly commented on the allegations against Tenet. Nor has Canadian far-right activist Lauren Southern, a Tenet contributor who appeared in many of their videos. Other prominent contributors to the site, including far-right commentator Tim Pool, described themselves as “victims” in the Tenet scandal, who were unaware that employees of RT, the Russian state media entity, were secretly funding the company. Pool announced on Thursday that he has been contacted by federal investigators, writing, “The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and have requested a voluntary interview. I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”
The Daily Beast reported that Chen’s contract with Blaze TV, where she also made regular appearances, has been terminated. The company has also deleted her page on their website and wiped episodes of her podcast, “Pseudo-Intellectual,” from Spotify.
YouTube told NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny that it had deleted Tenet Media’s channel and four others operated by Chen in light of the indictment and “after careful review,” writing the steps were part of “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”
For now, Tenet Media’s Twitter profile, Instagram page, TikTok, and Rumble pages all remain online—though none have been updated since the indictment was announced.
You may remember that last April, a Republican Congressman complained his colleagues were spouting Russian Propaganda on the House floor. “GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Russian propaganda is ‘being uttered on the House floor.’ House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner on Sunday said several of his GOP colleagues have repeated Russian propaganda on the House floor.” It’s evident that Putin’s plan is succeeding and that Republicans are besotted with Russian talking points. The news story was reported by NBC News.
GOP Rep. Mike Turner said Sunday that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even “being uttered on the House floor.”
“We see directly coming from Russia … communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not,” he added.
…
McCaul, a Texas Republican, told Puck News that he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”
Turner and McCaul each tied Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, to other authoritarian leaders, including President Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea.
“[The propaganda] makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is,” Turner told CNN, adding, “President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified as such.”
McCaul described explaining to colleagues that the threat of Russian propaganda is similar to threats made by other U.S. adversaries.
“I have to explain to them what’s at stake, why Ukraine is in our national security interest,” he said. “By the way, you don’t like Communist China? Well, guess what? They’re aligned [with Russia], along with the ayatollah [of Iran]. So when you explain it that way, they kind of start understanding it.”
The committee chairs’ remarks about Russian propaganda came as they spoke about the need for Congress to approve more military aid to Ukraine.
I found the Tenet Media story the most disturbing this week, although what really caught my attention was the speech DonOld made to the Economic Club of New York. This is from Phillip Bump at the Washington Post. “Following Trump’s train of thought as it derails on a child care question. Trump sought out an applause line as if it were the sole exit in a flame-filled room.” The audience is supposed to have knowledge in the fields of finance and economics. Their clapping was disturbing as he rattled on about childcare as if it were an abstract notion, and his take on tariffs is basically the opposite of reality. He rambled on with a series of incomplete sentences and just weirdness. Tariffs are a tax on consumers. Period. They caused the Great Depression. The folks in the room know better. They should say something.
I’m sure these folks are getting richer by every tick of the Wall Street clock and know we’re not in an economic disaster. They’re also aware that what’s driving the entire thing is record corporate profits, too. The last equity market highs were set just 7 days ago. But, hey, tax cuts for billionaires are where it’s at! Back to Phillip Bump.
On Thursday, his push to be elected for a second term as president brought him to the Economic Club of New York. The organization prides itself on its sober, informed assessments of the economic and political worlds, meaning that Trump was already somewhat disadvantaged. His politics are not predicated on his grasp of policy but on appeals to the politically disaffected. His descriptions of how things are working are much more effective with people who don’t know how things work.
But the question that tripped him up, the one that launched a thousand criticisms and not a few memes, was one focused on something that he should theoretically have had a grasp on: child care.
“If you win in November,” a panelist asked, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable and if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Here is Trump’s entire answer, verbatim.
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio [(R-Fla.)] and my daughter, Ivanka, was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.”
“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t — you know, it’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.”“But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.”
“Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have — I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country — because I have to say with child care, I want to stay with childcare, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.”
“But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”
“We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about: Make America great again. We have to do it, because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question.”
I know I have a doctorate in Financial Economics, teach it at the graduate level, and have worked in the industry during the Dark Reagan years, but really, as just a mother with that issue back in the day, WTF? This is one of those questions that every working family deals with and knows the parameters. This man stumbled through because he undoubtedly had children but didn’t have to think of childcare because wives and wealth. The answer was buffoonish and completely unintelligible. Digby says it all here at Salon.”Donald Trump’s incoherence makes the media’s double standard hard to hide. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris curiously don’t get the same coverage.”
It seems like only yesterday that the elite media were extremely concerned that President Joe Biden had mistakenly referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico. In the course of an otherwise cogent discussion of foreign affairs, he’d made that mistake in passing but it caused a huge uproar and spawned yet another round of critical reporting about his age and mental capacities. No one in the press blew off the gaffe and the substance of his comments went virtually unreported.
That press conference came in the shadow of the Hur report, in which the special counsel made a gratuitous comment about Biden being an elderly man with a bad memory. From that moment on almost every story about Joe Biden was framed in terms of his advanced age and the question of whether he was up to the job. The drumbeat continued for months until Biden’s disastrous debate performance validated the narrative and it continued until the day he withdrew from the race. No one in the media cut Joe Biden any slack for his performance.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been speaking nonsense and spouting gibberish on the campaign trail and the media is covering for him by pretending that his verbal incontinence actually makes sense or by ignoring it altogether. Yes, there’s been some mordant chuckling in the media over his bizarre comments about “the late great Hannibal Lecter” and his meandering tales about electric boats and shark attacks. Those stories are all delivered with a twinkling eye-roll as if to say “Oh that wacky Trump, there he goes again” as if it’s just a funny little anecdote, apropos of nothing.
And it’s true that he’s always done this to some extent. His speeches and press conferences are surreal windows into his undisciplined, puerile mind. Despite his regular protestations that he’s “like, really smart,” he communicates at a 4th grade level (the lowest level of any of the past 15 presidents going back to Hoover) and uses the same handful of words and phrases over and over again to cover for the fact that he never really has any idea what he’s talking about.
But Trump’s getting worse and the press is failing to properly report it. Over the past couple of weeks, the problem has gotten more acute and there has been very little recognition of it. Because political reporters have normalized his unfit intellectual and emotional characteristics for so long they’re just continuing to cover him as if they are perfectly ordinary even though he is rapidly deteriorating,
The good news is here at CNBC. “Eighty-eight corporate leaders endorse Harris in new letter, including CEOs of Yelp, Box.” Looks like some business leaders want their business to thrive and not just their personal portfolios.
A New York judge has delayed former President Donald Trump’s sentencing date in his criminal case for a second time, allowing Trump to wait until after the election to learn his fate after his conviction in his “hush money” case.
Trump had been scheduled to be sentenced in the case on Sept. 18. His attorneys asked on Aug. 14 for his sentencing to be pushed back until after the presidential election, arguing that a delay is necessary to resolve ongoing legal challenges to his conviction.
Justice Juan Merchan issued an order on Friday delaying sentencing until Nov. 26.
Merchan wrote that he made the decision “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching Presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he continued, adding that the postponement “should dispel any suggestion that the Court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or to create a disadvantage for, any political party and or any candidate for any office.”
Trump was convicted in May by a unanimous jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors said Trump signed off on a scheme to hide reimbursements to a lawyer who wired a $130,000 “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election. Trump denied the encounter and pleaded not guilty.
Merchan has wide leeway in determining Trump’s sentence. The charges carry a maximum sentence of up to four years in jail, but Merchan can also hand down a sentence that involves a variety of alternatives to incarceration, including probation. Most legal observers expect Trump to avoid jail time, given his status as a first-time offender and sentences handed down for the same crime in other cases.
Trump was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, but that date was pushed back after he filed a motion seeking to set aside his conviction following a landmark Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. The judge’s decision on that effort is expected on Sept. 16.
Chutkan didn’t sound impressed with Cannon’s July 15 ruling, which cited Justice Clarence Thomas’ solo concurring opinion in which he questioned Smith’s appointment just a couple of weeks earlier in the immunity decision. Chutkan said on Thursday, “You have an opinion filed by another district judge in another circuit which, frankly, this Court doesn’t find particularly persuasive.”
Still, the Republican presidential nominee’s legal team is pressing the issue in the Washington, D.C., case, alongside their immunity claims and other arguments. It makes sense for them to do so, even though there’s binding precedent in the D.C. Circuit that knocks down the unlawful appointment claim. While that precedent means that Trump is unlikely to prevail on the subject in Washington lower courts as he has in Florida (so far), it would be strange for the defense not to press the issue at this point, especially after a Supreme Court justice raised it.
Evidently, the defense team considers Justice Clarence Thomas to be part of its team. The Judge was not amused. We’ll probably hear more analysis today and over the weekend on both cases.
So, there is certainly a lot going on right now. One bit of good news since polling will start being a little more relevant now. I just tend to see if there’s a trend vs. just random variation, which is normal in every data series over time. Emerson College Polling released this today. ” September State Polling: California, Florida, Ohio, Texas.”
New Emerson College Polling/The Hill statewide polls find Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris by ten in Ohio, 53% to 43%, five in Florida, 50% to 45%, four in Texas, 50% to 46%, while Harris leads Trump in California 60% to 36%. Races in Florida and Texas are within the polls’ margin of error, while California and Ohio fall outside the polls’ margin of error.
Here’s the take from The Hill‘s Jared Gans. “New poll shows Florida, Texas within margin of error in Harris-Trump race.”
The results are a bit closer than what some other polling has found on the races but not completely out of sync with recent polls that have shown a tighter race in those states.
Not much independent polling from major institutions has been done on Texas and Florida since Harris became the Democratic nominee.
Winning either Florida, which Democrats had carried in 2008 and 2012 before the state voted for Trump twice in a row, or Texas, which Democrats have held increasing hopes about flipping blue in recent years, would be an uphill battle for Harris.
The forecast model from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ gives Trump an 83 percent chance of winning Texas and a 75 percent chance of winning Florida. But Florida is only rated as “lean Republican,” and some polls for both states have had Trump leading by single digits.
A Florida Atlantic University poll from last month had Trump’s lead in the Sunshine State at just 3 points, and a poll from two Texas universities had Trump leading in the Lone Star State by 5 points.
The Emerson poll showed Harris just behind Trump in favorability rating for the states. His net favorability rating was positive 2 points in both, while the vice president’s in both was negative 2 points.
I just think it’s good news that both Florida and Texas are at play. The Harris/Walz campaign is covering rural areas and all bases in these now in play states. This NPR article is important if you’re still following the Arlington Cemetary debacle. “Trump deputy campaign manager identified in Arlington National Cemetery dustup.”
The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.
Caporale is a one time aide to former first lady Melania Trump who left the White House to work for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before returning to the Trump campaign. He was also listed as the on-site contact and project manager for the Women for America First rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 where Trump urged the crowd to “stop the steal” before some of them stormed the U.S. Capitol.
After Trump participated in a wreath laying ceremony on the third anniversary of the deadly bombing at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan that killed 13 U.S. service members, Trump visited Section 60 at the invitation of some family members and friends of the fallen soldiers.
ANC rules, that had been made clear to the Trump campaign in advance, say that only an official Arlington photographer can take pictures or film in Section 60. When an ANC employee tried to enforce the rules, she was verbally abused by the two Trump campaign operatives, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Picard then pushed her out of the way according to two Pentagon officials.
I think the Trump campaign has basically let all the rabid dogs off their leashes and that the former “guard rails” have left the building. I imagine it’s going to get worse the closer we get to the election. I just hope the nation has had it with this nasty, incompetent, incoherent orange thing. Wow, this post is long! Have a great weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
This is getting ridiculous. On August 27, Trump staged a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, supposedly to commemorate the deaths of 13 soldiers in a suicide bombing that took place during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. This was not an official event, even though Trump tried to pretend it was. He was apparently invited to the private ceremony by 2 of the deceased soldiers’ families.
As we all know by now, a woman representative of the cemetery tried to stop Trump’s people from filming and photographing in Arlington’s Section 60, because federal law forbids it. Two Trump staff members verbally abused the woman and roughly pushed her aside. Later they claimed that she was mentally ill.
A report was filed with police, but the woman declined to prosecute because she feared reprisals from Trump’s goons and thugs. There are still many questions about this incident, chief among them: why has no reporter or other witness revealed the names of the staffers who attacked the woman? And why has the army refused to provide any further information?
Arlington National Cemetery
Now, a week later, Trump himself is claiming the incident never happened. David Kurtz from TPM’s Morning Memo: Trump: ‘It Was A Made Up Story.’
Since we last touched base on Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery fiasco, none of the big six outstanding questions have been answered – but Trump may have given himself a new self-inflicted wound.
With the Army declaring the case “closed” after the cemetery staffer in fear of MAGA reprisals declined to press criminal charges over the alleged incident and with a holiday weekend allowing attention to drift away from the story, Trump took the curious step of reigniting the firestorm by publicly issuing a complete denial Tuesday that any kind of altercation took place.
Not only did it not happen but the story was “made up,” Trump claimed, by “Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad.” It was, in Trump’s telling, just a “BEAUTIFUL DAY OF HONOR” with “no fights or problems.”
Former President Donald Trump denied Tuesday there was a conflict or “fighting,” during his visit to Arlington National Cemetery last week, calling it a “made up story,” though Army officials said one of their employees “was abruptly pushed aside” by Trump campaign officials.
“It was a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website using the sobriquet he has coined for Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. “She made it all up to make up for the fact that she and Sleepy Joe have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS for the INCOMPETENT AFGHANISTAN Withdrawal – THE MOST EMBARRASSING DAY IN U.S. HISTORY!!!”
Back to David Kurtz at TPM:
So now we have a situation where the Trump campaign disparaged the cemetery staffer has having a “mental health episode,” said she shouldn’t be in her job, suggested she suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome – and now Trump himself is claiming nothing even happened.
At the same time, the Army seems desperate to make this all go away.
The Army is currently sitting on the police report filed by the cemetery staffer recounting her version of the incident where she was reportedly verbally abused and shoved aside by two Trump campaign staffers when she tried to enforce cemetery rules against political activities.
As of late last week, Democratic staffers on the Senate Armed Services Committee “have been directly communicating with Army officials about the incident, and are in the process of seeking and receiving the information in the report and about what happened,” according to Greg Sargent.
At the at same time, House Democratic staffers attempting to looking into the matter are “frustrated” about resistance from the Army they’re running into, Sargent reports:
“Meanwhile, senior House Democrats are privately pushing Army officials to say more clearly what laws or regulations they think may have been broken and to reveal more details about what happened, another aide says, noting that Democratic staffers are encountering resistance, leaving them frustrated.”
With Trump issuing a blanket denial of any incident even occurring, is the Army going to release the police report and provide more details about the incident or leave the cemetery staffer twisting in the wind?
Apparently, even the U.S. Army is intimidated by Trump.
….[D]espite a week of headlines, there’s one critical aspect to this story I feel is being ignored, even though it is central to the very essence of Trump’s warped campaign.
The people closest to Trump allegedly shoved and verbally abused a woman — because that’s what they do.
And when the woman complained in a formal statement to the U.S. Army, Team Trump gaslit her by accusing her of being a psycho — seemingly part of an intimidation campaign which was meant to scare the accuser from pressing criminal charges.
Steven Cheung
This blatantly sexist bullying of the Arlington employee has worked — just as it’s worked so many times for Trump himself during his decades-long trail of sexual abuse and harassment allegations, and just as violence and gross mistreatment of women hasn’t thwarted the careers of Trump’s male-dominated inner circle.
We shouldn’t let the other unseemly aspects of Trump’s behavior at one of America’s most sacred places obscure the fact that rank misogyny is the lifeblood of this authoritarian crusade to retake the White House, and that contempt for women saturates everything they do. It runs the gamut from taking away reproductive rights and ridiculing any female who doesn’t become a “tradwife,” to the inner circle’s 100% tolerance policies toward sexual harassment, to the ultimate goal of creating doubts that any woman — first Hillary Clinton, now Kamala Harris — is fit to lead the United States.
In the Arlington affair, the circumstances and setting are different, but the Team Trump response carries powerful echoes of practically every time Trump or his subordinates have been accused of misconduct involving women. Consider the best-known case: that of Manhattan writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department-store dressing room in 1996 and has won civil court judgments over both the assault — which the judge characterized as a rape — and the campaign of defamation surrounding it.
In both the Carroll case and the physical attack at Arlington, Trump insisted the woman was making it all up. And you can hear the echoes of what Trump and his lawyers falsely said about Carroll — that she was a lying political operative — in spokesman Steven Cheung’s outrageous claim about the cemetery employee that she was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” and in campaign chair Chris LaCivita branding her as “despicable.”
These aggressive deny-and-defame tactics have enabled a billionaire-turned-president to brush off more than two dozen credible allegations of sexual harassment or assault over his career, and — in a demoralizing moment of clarity about the brute force of misogyny in America — defeat the first major-party woman nominee in 2016, even after he was caught on tape bragging about his propensity for grabbing female private parts.
Of course J.D. Vance fits in with this gang of woman-haters, as Bunch goes on to discuss.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres says “it’s going to be a challenge” for Trump to chip away at Vice President Harris’s big lead among women.
“The real challenge right now for Republicans is whether they can perform sufficiently well among men to overcome the deficit among women. Given the prominence of abortion in this year’s race and Trump’s past statements about women, the traditional gender gap could become a gender chasm,” he warned.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday showed Harris with a huge lead over Trump among women, 54 percent to 41 percent, while Trump enjoyed a more modest 51 percent to 46 percent lead over Harris among men.
Especially concerning for Republicans, the ABC/Ipsos poll showed Harris’s standing among women had jumped significantly compared to before the Democratic convention in Chicago, when she led Trump by only 6 points among women.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Thursday also showed Harris with a 13-point lead among women, 49 percent to 36 percent, and Trump with a smaller lead among men voters.
Both polls showed Harris with a 4-percentage point overall lead nationwide.
Trump has tried to win over college-educated and suburban women by moderating his position on abortion and backing free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
But those proposals are meeting a backlash from anti-abortion conservatives, and GOP strategists are skeptical about how much they will influence women who have already moved away from Trump….
“We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they took over that disaster.”
— Former president Donald Trump, in a video of him at Arlington National Cemetery speaking to the families of U.S. troops killed at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, posted on TikTok, Aug. 28
This TikTok of Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington, where he marked the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan overseen by President Joe Biden,has been viewed more than 11 million times. Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries, but Trump’s entourage pushed past a cemetery employee who tried to prevent Trump’s aides from bringing cameras, according to the Army.
Trump senior adviser Chris LaCivita
Those cameras appear to have recorded Trump saying these words to the Gold Star families. (The TikTok shows him talking to families as the words are spoken as a voice-over.) In his phrasing, it sounds as if no troops were killed in Afghanistan during the last 18 months of his presidency. That’s false, though as we will show, there was an 18-month gap with no fatalities across Trump’s and Biden’s combined presidencies.
The Facts
A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to queries about why Trump says there were no fatalities over 18 months. Using the Defense Casualty Analysis System, we first reviewed every 18-month period in Trump’s four years as president, looking only at deaths in hostile action in Afghanistan during Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, not accidental deaths such as in a vehicle or helicopter crash. There was no such period.
Then we focused on the last 18 months of his presidency — July 20, 2019, to Jan. 20, 2021. That makes the most sense since Trump referenced Biden’s taking over. The Defense Department database showed 12 deaths from hostile action in that period. We double-checked with the news releases issued by the Pentagon in that period and confirmed the 12 names.
The last two deaths occurred on Feb. 8, 2020. Javier Jaguar Gutierrez of San Antonio and Antonio Rey Rodriguez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, both 28, werefatally ambushed by a rogue Afghan policeman. Trump, along with Vice President Mike Pence, flew to Dover Air Force Base when the bodies arrived in the United States.
Kessler also notes that Trump initially agreed with Biden’s withdrawal policy, and he (Trump) also bragged that he was the one who set up the process of withdrawal.
In March 2020, Trump approved an agreement with the Taliban (not the Afghan government at the time) for all U.S. forces to leave the country by May 1, 2021. He sealed the deal with a phone conversation with Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of its political office in Qatar. “We had a good long conversation today and, you know, they want to cease the violence,” Trump told reporters at the time. “They’d like to cease violence also.”
Despite abandoning many of Trump’s policies, Biden honored this one, just stretching out the departure by a few months in 2021.
Trump even celebrated Biden’s decision to stick with the withdrawal. “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible,” he said in a written statement after Biden announced he would continue the departure set in motion by Trump.
At a political rally on June 26 that year, weeks before the collapse of the Afghan government, Trump bragged that he had made it difficult for Biden to change course. “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process,” he said. “Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.”
A federal judge on Tuesday swiftly rejected Donald Trump’s request to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, spurning the former president’s attempt at an end-run around the state court where he was convicted and is set to be sentenced in two weeks.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling — just hours after Trump’s lawyers asked him to weigh the move — upends the Republican presidential nominee’s plan to move the case to federal court so that he could seek to have his conviction overturned in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling.
Trump’s lawyers challenged the decision, filing a notice of appeal late Tuesday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Trump and his lawyers “will continue to fight to move this Hoax into federal court where it should be put out of its misery once and for all,” his campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said in a statement.Hellerstein, echoing his denial of Trump’s pretrial bid to move the case, said the defense failed to meet the high burden of proof for changing jurisdiction and that Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records involved his personal life, not official actions that the Supreme Court ruled are immune from prosecution.
Trump has been doing everything he can to avoid his upcoming sentencing in New York, with his attorneys filing a last-ditch motion last week to get the hush money case transferred to federal court. Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith filed a new superseding indictment that adjusts for the Supreme Court’s landmark presidential-immunity decision.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg
A few days later, Trump’s attorneys responded by proposing a timeline for resolving the Jan. 6 federal case that extends well beyond the November election.Last week, the former president’s attorneys filed a removal notice that requested that his hush money case be transferred to federal court and out of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s hands, about two weeks before his scheduled sentencing on Sept. 18.
This is the second time Trump’s defense team has asked to transfer this case; a district-court judge denied its first attempt earlier this year. However, this time around, Trump’s team has the Supreme Court’s presidential-immunity decision to point to. In a 65-page notice, the lawyers argue that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case was “flawed” and that he used evidence that should not have been admissible because it’s related to “official acts” covered by presumptive immunity.
“Post-trial removal is necessary under these circumstances to afford President Trump an unbiased forum, free from local hostilities, where he can seek redress for these Constitutional violations,” write Trump’s attorneys.Just three weeks ago, his attorneys also requested that Merchan delay Trump’s Sept. 18 sentencing. Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to get the judge to recuse himself from the hush money trial as well. On Tuesday, Bragg’s office responded to Trump’s removal request, noting that proceedings in state court can continue even as the federal courts consider the request.
That case appears to be decided, but apparently Trump is trying to appeal once again. Back to the Slate article:
The Special Counsel Files a New Indictment
The Supreme Court’s presidential-immunity decision was considered a big win for Trump, but Jack Smith isn’t giving up yet. Last week, the special counsel filed a new superseding indictment in his federal election-interference case against the former president.
The indictment raises the same four counts against Trump as the original did, including for obstruction of an official proceeding, a charge that could be affected by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Fischer v. United States. That decision narrowed the scope of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act—it included a section that seemed to broadly outlaw any obstruction of an official proceeding, and the justices ruled that it should apply only to interference with official documents. Smith’s determination to keep the obstruction charges indicates he’s willing to risk litigating the issue further in court.
The superseding indictment also eliminated any mention of former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark and cut back significantly on how much it discusses former Vice President Mike Pence’s role. (Trump’s conversations with former DOJ officials and advisers are now considered “official” acts that are covered by absolute immunity and thus cannot be used as evidence, while his conversations with Pence appear to be covered by presumptive immunity.) [….]
Judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled a hearing Thursday to determine the next steps in this case. Her biggest priority will be to conclude what portions of Smith’s indictment fall under core official presidential acts and what do not. In order to make those decisions, she could find that evidentiary hearings are necessary and require that witnesses testify, though Smith has reportedly been hoping to avoid this kind of minitrial….
The special counsel and Trump’s attorneys filed a joint proposal late last week that laid out two very different timelines for Smith’s federal election-interference case. The former president also indicated that he plans to file a series of motions challenging Smith’s superseding indictment and his appointment to special counsel.
Trump’s attorneys suggested a timeline in which Chutkan considers a series of motions through the end of this year—stretching well past November’s presidential election. Their timeline would have Chutkan considering a motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity in mid-December and pretrial litigation continuing through spring and fall 2025. The defense also acknowledges Smith’s new superseding indictment, arguing that it “correspondingly requires time to review the new charging instrument as [Trump] determines what steps and procedures to undertake regarding, among other motions, his Presidential immunity defense.”
We are going to have to get Kamala Harris elected if we want any chance of Trump finally facing legal accountability.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.
Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”
Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.
Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”
Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.
After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.
Have a nice Wednesday, everyone!!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
“This is Based on a rough I drew months ago and was waiting to clean up and finish when Donold’s Truth Social Stock dipped below $20. Seems rather symbolic in many more ways today.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Watching Donald Trump trying to have it both ways on abortion would be hilarious if the prospect of his election didn’t signal the end of democracy in America (and if the media wasn’t simultaneously trying to make a big fuss out of Kamala Harris moving to the center on some issues).
As it is, watching Trump change his mind three times in 24 hours about one of the central issues of the race is simply grim. But that’s exactly what played out last week, with Trump being unable to clearly state how he would vote on Florida’s Amendment 4, which would provide constitutional protections for abortions in the state.
Trump’s problem is the same as the one the GOP writ large faces: the party wildly miscalculated what would happen after they succeeded in their decades-long goal of reversing Roe v. Wade, destroying the constitutional right to abortion. Due to the echo chamber that is the hallmark of the modern right, they got high on their own supply and convinced themselves the nation wanted Roe gone as badly as they did.
That’s never been true. Abortion rights are resoundingly, durably popular. Pew Research has surveyed Americans on the issue since 1995, and support for abortion being legal in all or most cases has fallen below 50 percent just once, back in 2009. Pew’s most recent research shows that 63 percent of Americans — including 41 percent of Republicans — believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The Associated Press found that in June 2021, before Roe’s demise, roughly half of Americans thought abortion should be legal for any reason. That jumped to approximately 60 percent in the last two years.
Now, heading into the home stretch of the 2024 election, abortion is becoming the top issue for more voters, especially women. A New York Times poll conducted last month found that women under 45 report that abortion is now the most critical issue to them, eclipsing even the economy.
A functioning political party led by someone with actual policy goals might consider recalibrating their stance on this issue in order to find a more electable middle ground. Or, a functioning political party could simply dig in, fully embracing the anti-choice side and hoping that the party base would turn out in ample enough numbers. But this is the GOP, and Trump is Trump, so they’ve instead settled on a mishmash of lies and backtracking and are hoping that carries the day.
However, he’s doing so well in the Fascist Ass-Licking event to the point that even Team Republican officials are horrified. (Not that they’ll do anything.) This is from Politico.”Former GOP officials sound the alarm over Trump’s Orbán embrace. Groups seeking the former president’s favor have highlighted pro-Russian Hungarian leaders and talking points.” Heidi Przybyla and Nicholas Vinocur share the lede.
The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nerve center for incubating policies for a second Trump administration, co-sponsored a discussion in October 2022 about how to bring “peace in Ukraine” featuring Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto.
Audience members included conservative policy and national security officials and GOP strategists, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Once seated, they were given pamphlets pushing unabashedly pro-Russia talking points.
“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” warned the document, which was given to POLITICO by a participant. “U.S aid to Ukraine must be severely constricted and Ukrainian President Zelensky should be encouraged by U.S. leadership to seek armistice and concede Ukraine as a neutral country.”
We finally have a new view on what passes as “conservative” in this century.
CPI itself is a major arm of Trump’s MAGA movement raising significant sums of money. Its roster includes some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists, such as Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.The Heritage Foundation, whose president, Kevin Roberts, calls Orbán’s leadership a “model for conservative governance,” has openly lobbied for influence in a future Trump administration through its Project 2025 andplayed a lead role in lobbying Congress to end congressional funding to Ukraine.
“They [Orbán allies] say things people want to hear about issues they care about. It’s ‘woke this and woke that,’ and then they pressure them with what they really want,” which is to end the Ukraine war on Putin’s terms, said a person familiar with the meetings who still works in government and asked for anonymity to speak freely about the situation.
That person isamong many members of the more hawkish Republican foreign-policy establishment who said they were concerned about how Orbán is manipulating MAGA themes to achieve Orbán’s pro-Russian aims.
The pamphlet distributed at the “peace in Ukraine” conference illustrates how “corrupt authoritarians are accessing and abusing our system to undermine U.S. national security,” said Kristofer Harrison, who was a Defense and State Department adviser during the George W. Bush administration.
Ian Brzezinski, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy under Bush, said of the pamphlet: “It looks like it was written by the Kremlin.”
Never fear; DonOld is lapping up all the Hungarian attention he can get.
Orbán Political Director Balazs Orbán said in an emailed statement that he does not wish to participate in granting “legitimacy” to this story by answering questions about whether Hungarian think tanks are advancing the interests of Russia through collaborations with U.S. think tanks. But Orban the prime minister is publicly confident about his influence over Trump.
Late last month, Viktor Orbán claimed in a speech that Hungary has “deep involvement” in the “programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team.” He opened by warning that if Europe does not change its policy of “supporting the war” by financially backing Ukraine, then “after Trump’s victory it will have to do so while admitting defeat, covered in shame.”
Harrison, the former Bush administration adviser, suggested that the Hungarian government is leveraging its role as a global intermediary for practical reasons more than a commitment to global conservatism.
“Orbán carries water for Russia because they’re the highest bidder,” said Harrison. “Same with China,” he said, referring to billions that China is investing in Hungary.
These are just a few snippets, but the bottom line is pretty shocking.
Of any foreign leader, Trump is arguably closest to Orbán. He calls Orbán his “friend” and a “great man.” In accepting the GOP nomination in Milwaukee, Trump singled out Orbán as a “very tough man” and noted that Orbán credits him for keeping world peace because everybody “was afraid” of Trump.
The admiration is mutual. Hungary, which recently assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, is using as its slogan “Make Europe Great Again.”
If you can get through the Rolling Stone Wall, there’s more on this, as reported by Peter Wade. “Trump Praises Authoritarian Viktor Orbán and Even Republicans Are ConcernedThe Hungarian prime minister has visited Trump in Florida twice this year and boasted that he has influence over Trump’s policy proposals.” It discusses the Trump interview with Fox News that aired Saturday night.
“Viktor Orbán… I mean he’s strong. They consider him strong. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Runs a strong country,” Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Saturday night.
Given their shared ideology, including affinity for Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposition to arming Ukraine, it’s no surprise that Trump is cozying up to Orbán, whose country currently occupies the rotating role of European Union president. As EU president, Orbán adapted Trump’s campaign phrase, promoting an agenda to “Make Europe Great Again.”
But as Politico reports, some Republicans are worried about Trump and Orbán’s deepening relationship. Orbán has visited Trump twice this year in Florida, and the prime minister has spent billions of dollars funding Hungarian conservative foundations and paying U.S. journalist “influencers,” hoping they will influence policy in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. In 2022, Hungary partnered with the Conservative Partnership Institute and distributed materials with clearly pro-Russian talking points.
“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” a document obtained by a participant who shared it with Politico. “U.S aid to Ukraine must be severely constricted and Ukrainian President Zelensky should be encouraged by U.S. leadership to seek armistice and concede Ukraine as a neutral country.”
In July, Orbán bragged that he was involved in writing Trump’s policy proposals.
“They [Orbán allies] say things people want to hear about issues they care about. It’s ‘woke this and woke that,’ and then they pressure them with what they really want,” a source in government told Politico. And what they really want is the end the war in Ukraine with a victory for Putin. The source added that many in GOP foreign-policy circles are worried that Orbán is using the MAGA ethos to achieve pro-Russia goals.
Orbán has boasted about his influence on Trump, saying in a speech last month that Hungary has “deep involvement” in the “programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team.”
This is certainly enough to indicate that DonOld is not on Team America. We’ve always known he’s out for himself and cozies up to the guys who control their countries by undemocratic means. He’s also doing well in the questionable event of Rally Holding in the Most SunDown Towns. Newsweek National Correspondent Khaleda Rahman got this tip from TikTok. “Former President Donald Trump is facing backlash for holding rallies in places described as “sundown towns.”
A TikTok user pointed out a “troubling pattern” in the locations of Trump’s recent rallies in a video that has gone viral on social media. It was also shared on X, formerly Twitter, where it amassed millions of views.
“Howell, Michigan; La Crosse, Wisconsin; Johnstown, Pennsylvania,” the man said in the video. “What do these places have in common? They’re all sundown towns.”
He added: “This is where Donald Trump is choosing to hold his rallies… You got a presidential candidate for the GOP doing a sundown town tour around the country, not looking for political gain. He’s f****** rallying the troops.”
The term “sundown towns” dates back to the segregation era, referring to communities with a wholly white population where Black people were considered unsafe after nightfall. Black people were prevented from living in those communities through discriminatory policies or intimidation and violence. Today, many of these communities with racist histories remain predominantly white.
The Trump campaign has been contacted for comment via email.
On social media, many shared their belief that the locations of Trump’s recent rallies could not be a coincidence.
Trump’s campaign “is intentionally visiting ‘sundown towns’ which violated federal law to be ‘whites only,'” journalist Jim Stewartson wrote on X.
“This isn’t a dogwhistle, it’s a KKK hood over every single person who supports Donald Trump or the GOP. ENOUGH.”
Marcy at emptywheel takes on the Washington Post for an editorial today. It purports what they believe is a strategy for Harris to win the debate by covering her policies because Trump has none. Marcy calls this “The Soft Bigotry of No Expectations on Trump.”
Trump has been running for 21 months; his campaign is more than 90% over. The Vice President has been running 43 days; her campaign still has almost 60% to go.
And yet they’re putting demands on the woman in the race, making no such demand on the white male former President.
The press has gone 21 months without throwing this kind of tantrum with Donald Trump. Given that, this column says more about the failures of journalists to hold Trump accountable than it does any shortcoming on Kamala’s part.
At some point, the traditional media needs to explain why it is so much more rabid about getting policy from Kamala than Trump.
Journalists need to come to grips, publicly, with why they apply this soft bigotry of no expectations to Donald Trump. Is it because they know he’ll deny them access if they make similar demands on him? Is it a (justifiable) fear he’ll sic a violent supporter on them, as he did the other night in Johnstown, with Trump observing, “beautiful, that’s beautiful, that’s alright, that’s okay, no, he’s on our side. We get a little itchy, David, don’t we? No, no, he’s on our side,” as the man was tased? Is it a resignation to the fact that Trump will just lie anyway?
Whatever the explanation for why the press applies so much lower expectations on the former President, who has been running for 21 months, than it does on Kamala Harris, just over a month into her campaign, the explanation is a far, far more important story to tell voters than precisely how the Vice President plans to restore the Child Tax Credit.
The only thing this comparison has done is make visible WaPo’s — and the press corp’s, generally — soft bigotry with Donald Trump, the double standard they are applying in their expectations for Kamala Harris as compared to none for Trump.
The lesson of this editorial, contrary to WaPo’s preferred punchline, is that the press is misdirecting where their attention should be focused.
We see this in all the legacy media. They no longer try to provide a public service but just find other ways of enriching and centralizing power to those who don’t need anymore. The people in power profit from clicks and reads and not by ensuring their reporters report in a way that shows people what’s happening. And in that spirit, how about this headline from The Hill’s Miranda Nazzaro. “Trump says he had ‘every right’ to interfere in election.” Bad Old DonOld always blurts the quiet part out for everyone to hear but few to report on. Notice that he’s describing what they’re trying to do in every swing state in the country.
Former President Trump in an interview broadcast late Sunday argued he had “every right” to interfere with the 2020 election while repeating his claim the criminal election interference cases against him are politically motivated.
“It’s so crazy, that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up. When people get indicted your pull numbers go down,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Life, Liberty and Levin.”
Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was responding to a suggestion from host and lawyer Mark Levin that President Biden or Vice President Harris could have told the attorney general to “knock it off,” in reference to the federal election interference case.
The former president faces federal charges in Washington for his alleged actions to subvert the 2020 election results. He is separately charged in Georgia with racketeering and other state counts over an alleged scheme to overturn the state’s election results.
“Well, this is the worst case of election interference that anyone’s ever seen, certainly in our country,” Trump said during the Fox News interview. “They do this in Third World countries, they have some of it in South America, they don’t do it a lot, believe it or not. But they do it.”
“And it’s such a bad precedent because people are going to think about it differently, and they’re going to think about it differently. And it’s very sad, actually,” he added.
He went on to argue those prosecuting the cases against him are politically biased against him.
“They put people in the DA’s office,” Trump said. “This was all coming out of the Department of Justice in order to get their political opponent — me.”
You can read more of the insane things he said at the link.
I hope you’re having a good Labor Day Weekend. We have Southern Decadence down here, so the Quarter is hopping with costumes and parades. The Black Man of Labor Parade is also today. It crosses the St. Claude Bridge over the Canal from the Lower 9th to the Upper 9th Ward. That’s about 5 blocks up towards the Lake from my little kathouse and always a treat. I’m sure there are many Labor Day Parades near you and around the country as we celebrate the gains we have made and bring attention to the changes we need to ensure all working people get their share of the benefits of their hard work. President Biden’s legacy and our next President Harris’s policy support the working class and an economy offering opportunities for all Americans.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery scandal is still alive and kicking. This is unusual for Trump. The media generally works to normalize even his grossest violations of laws and norms. In fact, the major media have mostly ignored this episode too, but independent outlets and social media have kept it going. So I’m still reading, thinking, and writing about it.
Berlatsky’s argument is that we may not yet be at the point of being ruled by a dictator, but people are acting as if fascism is already here, because they are afraid of standing up to Trump. hey know he and his thugs will make their lives a living hell. Berlatsky writes that “Fascist vigilante harassment chills resistance.”
This week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump oozed orangely into Arlington National Cemetary to take a picture of himself standing over veteran’s graves with an oleaginous smile and a big thumb’s up.
You may think this is tasteless. And you’d be correct. It’s also illegal. It’s against federal law to campaign in Army National Military Cemeteries.
An Arlington official attempted to enforce the rules, and told Trump he couldn’t take his grotesque pictures there. Trump campaign thugs then verbally abused the official and pushed them. When the official filed an incident report, the Trump campaign issued a statement insulting them and claiming they were mentally ill.
The official decided not to press charges, because they were afraid that if they did, they would be targeted, harassed, and worse by Trump supporters, according to the New York Times.
Again, an Arlington official, doing their job, tried to enforce rules that are supposed to apply to all. They were roughed up and insulted. And they are afraid to stand up to Trump and his campaign because they know that if their opposition to Trump becomes public, their life will be destroyed.
This isn’t an idle fear. Trump has sicced his fascist dittohead minions on election workers whose only crime was refusing to throw the election for Donald Trump. They were doxed and harassed at their home, and one had to go into hiding. Trump also organized a violent coup, in which his supporters attacked the capital building, terrorizing representatives and workers, and five people died. News organization have found a list of incidents in which Trump supporters committed violence explicitly in his name.
Standing up to Trump is frightening. If he singles you out, his supporters will try to hurt you and your loved ones.
Trump and his campaign flaks are quite aware of this dynamic, and they use it to their advantage. The campaign said it could release video backing up its version of events. It hasn’t done so, probably because the video shows that the Arlington worker was in the right. But if the video shows the Arlington worker’s face, that worker will be tracked down by Trump supporters. “We have video” isn’t evidence; it’s a threat.
And Trump’s threats, implied and otherwise, worked. The official was scared to challenge the leader of a fascist movement for fear of fascist abuse.
Berlatsky argues that “the press is intimidated too.” Is that why the fact checkers have been bending over backwards to explain away Trump’s false claims? I hope you’ll read the rest at the Substack link above.
The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands’ tombstones as lots of children run about.
I like your hair, by Natalia Shaloshvili
Karen Meredith knows the saddest acre in America only too well. The California resident’s son, First Lieutenant Kenneth Ballard, was the fourth generation of her family to serve as an Army officer. He was killed in Najaf, Iraq, in 2004, and laid to rest in Section 60. She puts flowers on his gravesite every Memorial Day. “It’s not a number, not a headstone,” she told me. “He was my only child.”
The sections of Arlington holding Civil War and World War I dead have a lonely and austere beauty. Not Section 60, where the atmosphere is sanctified but not somber—too many kids, Meredith recalled from her visits to her son’s burial site. “We laugh, we pop champagne. I have met men who served under him, and they speak of him with such respect. And to think that this man”—she was referring to Trump—“came here and put his thumb up—”
She fell silent for a moment on the telephone, taking a gulp of air. “I’m trying not to cry.”
For Trump, defiling what is sacred in our civic culture borders on a pastime. Peacefully transferring power to the next president, treating political adversaries with at least rudimentary grace, honoring those soldiers wounded and disfigured in service of our country—Trump long ago walked roughshod over all these norms. Before he tried to overturn a national election, he mocked his opponents in the crudest terms and demeaned dead soldiers as “suckers.”
But the former president outdid himself this week, when he attended a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 13 American soldiers killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul during the final havoc-marked hours of the American withdrawal. Trump laid three wreaths and put hand over heart; that is a time-honored privilege of presidents. Trump, as is his wont, went further. He walked to a burial site in Section 60 and posed with the family of a fallen soldier, grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up for his campaign photographer and videographer….
A cemetery employee politely attempted to stop the campaign staff from filming in Section 60. Taking campaign photos and videos at gravesites is expressly forbidden under federal law. The Trump entourage, according to a subsequent statement by the U.S. Army, which oversees the cemetery, “abruptly pushed” her aside.
Trump’s campaign soon posted a video on TikTok, overlaid with Trump’s narration: “We didn’t lose one person in 18 months. And then they”—the Biden administration—“took over, that disaster of leaving Afghanistan.”
Trump was unsurprisingly not telling the truth; 11 soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in his last year in office, and his administration had itself negotiated the withdrawal. But such fabrications are incidental sins compared with what came next. A top Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, and campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung talked to reporters and savaged the employee who had tried to stop the entourage. Cheung referred to her as “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering a mental-health episode.” LaCivita declared her a “despicable individual” who ought to be fired.
Once again, I have to ask why anyone would vote for this repulsive creature for any office, much less president?
Of course, Trump has taken no responsibility whatever for his disgusting behavior. In fact, yesterday he even claimed that he had no idea who posted the video ad on his TicTac account. He suggested that the gold star families who invited him may have done it–or maybe it was Vice President Harris’ campaign!
By Rakhmet Redzhepov
Rep. Jamie Raskin is now demanding answers about the events in Arlington Cemetery.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, demanded Friday a “full account” of a reported incident between Donald Trump and his campaign and their collective appearance this week at Arlington National Cemetery.
Trump and his campaign faced intense backlash following a reported physical altercation with a cemetery official and faced questions over whether they may have violated federal law banning campaign materials from being photographed or filmed in certain sections of the cemetery.
A TikTok video showed Trump in Section 60, where the altercation purportedly occurred, smiling and giving a thumbs-up. Trump has said the family of a soldier laid to rest in the section invited him, and his campaign has said they were allowed to ring a photographer.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in the statement.
laws were violated.
In a letter to Christine Wormuth, secretary of the Army, Raskin referenced reports of a “verbal and physical altercation” between members of the Trump campaign and cemetery staff.
“It appears that the Trump campaign refused to abide by Arlington National Cemetery’s absolute prohibition on ‘filming for partisan, political, or fundraising purposes’ and ‘abruptly pushed aside’ Cemetery staff trying to ‘ensure adherence’ to these rules,” he said in the letter obtained by Punchbowl News.
In doing so, he asked the Army secretary to hand the committee an incident report and deliver a briefing on what happened, “including whether Trump campaign staff violated federal law or Cemetery rules and whether the Trump campaign informed the families of servicemembers buried at the Cemetery that their gravestones would be used in Mr. Trump’s political campaign ads.”
Here’s an example of how Trump intimidates the media. At a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday a Trump supporter actually broke down the barriers to the press area.
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke and was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies before eventually being subdued with a Taser.
The incident Friday came moments after Trump had criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz….
The man made it over a bicycle rack ringing the media area and began climbing the back side of a riser where television reporters and cameras were stationed, according to a video of the incident posted to social media by a reporter for CBS News. People near him tried to pull him off the riser and were quickly joined by police officers.
The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”
Moments later police handcuffed another man in the crowd and led him out of the arena. It was not immediately clear whether that detention was related to the initial altercation.
At the time of the incident, Trump was criticizing the media for its coverage of his campaign and the election more broadly—and, in particular, attacking CNN’s recent interview with his opponent, Kamala Harris.
As the man was detained and removed from the rally, the former president quipped, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?” per the Associated Press.
Trump is right to be worried about the Harris-Walz interview on CNN. It got great ratings.
It was a strong night for CNN, which has struggled recently to reach the ratings of Fox News or MSNBC. Although it’s a much lower audience rating than Harris and Walz’s big DNC speeches, it’s still a promising stat for the Harris campaign, continuing a trend of her events receiving higher viewership than those of her opponent.
When Trump gave a town hall on CNN in May 2023, one of his first proper campaign events of the 2024 election cycle, only 3.3 million viewers tuned in. And more recently, when Trump did his first joint sit-down with running mate JD Vance in July, they drew an estimated 4 million viewers. All of those cable ratings, however, still trail the average audience for the network’s nightly news broadcasts, which tend to bring in around 7-8 million viewers.
The Harris-Walz campaign can also boast a more popular national convention this year; 20.1 million people tuned into the third day of the DNC where Walz gave his speech, for instance, while only 17.9 million viewers turned in for JD Vance’s big moment….
The ratings gap seemed particularly disappointing for Trump, considering how much pride he openly took in his RNC ratings. After his speech this year, he posted on Truth Social that his ratings were the “best and most successful in history,” even though viewership was trailing behind both his 2020 and 2016 performance.
Meanwhile, Harris’ convention ratings actually outdid Joe Biden’s in 2020. It’s a performance that gives credence to the idea that the Harris-Walz campaign has more energy and enthusiasm behind it, whereas that long-speculated Trump fatigue might have finally started to set in.
Trump fatigue set in for me long ago. If only he would just disappear.
There are a couple of interesting articles on J.D. Vance today. I got into the NYT even though I cancelled my subscription, apparently because I clicked the link at Memeorandum.
Donald J. Trump knew that JD Vance could take a punch. But during their first week together on the campaign trail, the former president wondered just how many hits his new running mate could absorb.
The volume and velocity of attacks from Democrats stunned even Mr. Trump. He was unaware of the most incendiary remarks that opponents were rapidly unearthing from Mr. Vance’s past, and the former president told allies that he was troubled by the idea that more comments would come to light as Democrats savaged his heir apparent as weird and anti-women.
A month later, polls show that the number of Americans who dislike Mr. Vance continues to grow — but Mr. Trump could not be happier.
The reason: Mr. Vance’s relentless pace of full-throttle performances as Mr. Trump’s well-trained attack dog has pleased the former president and instilled a sense of stability inside a campaign still shaken by President Biden’s sudden exit from the race.
Mr. Trump had instructed his young sidekick to fight forcefully through those initial attacks, and later said Mr. Vance’s execution exceeded his expectations, according to three allies who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In a quintessentially Trumpian display of bravado, the former president has privately praised Mr. Vance by comparing himself to Vince Lombardi, telling people that his eye for political talent was now on par with the Hall of Fame football coach’s ability to find Super Bowl-caliber players.
But beyond Mar-a-Lago, early returns on Mr. Vance are less enthusiastic. Polls show that he effectively amplifies Mr. Trump’s political strengths but that he also magnifies his weaknesses. Mr. Vance’s approval rating improved by nearly double digits among the nation’s least educated and poorest voters since joining the Republican ticket — but plunged by even wider margins among college graduates and independent women, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
How those conflicting opinions either resolve themselves or become further inflamed will help determine whether Mr. Trump ends the race in less than 10 weeks with a second presidential term or a second electoral defeat.
There’s more at the link, if you can get past the paywall.
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.
The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.
Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.
In an emailed response to the Guardian, Omar slammed what she called the “ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Mr Vance” as “dangerous and un-American”.
Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.
Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.
Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.
On the newly found interview:
In the 2021 interview Vance also claimed men and boys in the US were “suppressed” in their masculinity and made racially charged remarks about American cities and his political opponents.
By Sharyn Bursiic
Of Afghans who assisted US troops during the occupation of that country who were now seeking to come to America, Vance asked whether “certain groups of people can successfully become American citizens”, and said those hostile to Minneapolis’s Somali American community “don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in [their] own community”.
At the same time, Vance claimed that “the left uses racism as a cudgel”, and that he had been a “little too worried” in the past about such accusations because they can be “career-ending” and “destroy a person’s life”.
Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.
“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”
“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.
I can see why Trump likes Vance. They both hate women. There’s more at the link, and The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What’s on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
I wish I could say that this is the usual Labor Day Weekend start of the Silly Season heading toward the election, but I can’t. The first establishment media interview with Vice President Harris and Governor Walz went to Dana Bash, who is not exactly in the bag for MAGA but just a poor interviewer. CNN used to be the place to go for news. Now it’s the place to go for yawns and gotcha questions. I didn’t see the interview, but their follow-up panel was sleep-inducing. I did see bits and pieces last night. I waited for the Transcript and the video this morning to take in more than just the CNN-chosen ‘highlights.’ There were only two questions and comments that grabbed my attention.
BASH: On that note, you had a lot of Republican speakers at the convention. Will you appoint a Republican to your Cabinet?
HARRIS: Yes, I would.
BASH: Any one in mind—
HARRIS: Yes, I would. No, no one in particular in mind. I got — we got 68 days to go with this election, so I’m not puttin’ the cart before the horse. But I would. I think — I think it’s really important. I — I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican.
BASH: Speaking of Republicans, I want to ask you about your opponent, Donald Trump. I was a little bit surprised, people might be surprised to hear that you have never interacted with him, met him face to face. That’s gonna change soon, but what I want to ask you about is what he said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.
HARRIS: Yeah.
BASH: Any—
HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)
BASH: That’s it?
HARRIS: That’s it.
It allowed Harris to share her priorities and discuss Biden/Harris’s achievements. The gotcha moments came over the misunderstanding of her role in border negotiations in North Central America, fracking, and the ‘affordability crisis.’ She answered these questions directly and succinctly. That’s not stopping the Trumplican Media from saying the interview was a Dumpsterfire. But then, it’s doubtful any of the MAGA faithful actually watch CNN. I didn’t think any of the gotcha questions landed, but then I operate in a world where I don’t want White Male Christian Dominance with a token Tulsi Gabbard and Vivek Ramaswamy added as props.
BASH: You talk about — you call it the opportunity economy. You are well aware that right now many Americans are struggling. There’s a crisis of affordability. One of your campaign themes is, “We’re not going back.” But I wonder what you say to voters who do want to go back when it comes to the economy specifically because their groceries were less expensive, housing was more affordable when Donald Trump was president.
HARRIS: Well, let’s start with the fact that when Joe Biden and I came in office during the height of a pandemic, we saw over 10 million jobs were lost. People — I mean, literally we are all tracking the numbers. Hundreds of people a day were dying because of COVID. The economy had crashed.
In large part, all of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America. And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%. A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation around the world.
But you are right. Prices in particular for groceries are still too high. The American people know it. I know it. Which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries. For example, dealing with an issue like price gouging.
What we need to do to extend the child tax credit to help young families be able to take care of their children in their most formative years. What we need to do to bring down the cost of housing. My proposal includes what would be a tax credit of $25,000 for first-time home buyers so they can just have enough to put a down payment on a home, which is
part of the American dream and their aspiration, but do it in a way that allows them to actually get on the path to achieving that goal and that dream.
BASH: So you have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?
So, my answer would be, “D’oh, I’m Vice President, and my job is to implement President Biden’s policy, you know.” But she’s classier than me and answered this way.
HARRIS: Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was gonna do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it.
So now, and I — as I travel in the state of Georgia and around our country, the number of seniors that have benefited, I’ve met — I was in Nevada recently. A grandmother who showed me her receipts. And before we capped the cost of insulin for seniors at $35 a month she was paying hundreds of dollars, up to thousands of dollars a month for her insulin. She’s not doing that any longer.
BASH: So you maintain Bidenomics is a success.
So, my answer would be: “Look at the damned economic, inflation, and job numbers, you stupid bitch!” But, again, she’s classier than me, and I guess I would have to maintain a modicum of dignity, being an economics professor and all. I would not say that to my class, but they are students, and she’s an overpaid talking head with a penchant for too much one hand then the other hand journalism even when the other hand is stealing us blind and wants to be a dictator.
HARRIS: I maintain that when we do the work of bringing down prescription medication for the American people, including capping the cost — of the annual cost of prescription medication for seniors at $2,000; when we do what we did in the first year of being in office to extend the child tax credit so that we cut child poverty in America by over 50%; when we do what we have done to invest in the American people and bringing manufacturing back to the United States so that we created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, bringing business back to America; what we have done to improve the supply chain so we’re not relying on foreign governments to supply American families with their basic needs, I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.
But hey, what about? That came next. Read more at the link or watch the video.
Today, I was delighted by a Washington Post Op-Ed by Dana Milbank, which was witty and true. It was a definite dig at that horrid thing at the New York Times earlier in the week. In a test of character, Trump shows his true grift. In his disorientation, the GOP nominee and former president retreats to his instincts.”
The New York Times ran a fine specimen of unintentional comedy this week: an essay by conservative writer Rich Lowry titled “Trump Can Win on Character.”
The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been under the byline of Stormy Daniels.
Lowry’s argument itself wasn’t quite as absurd as the headline. He was only suggesting that Trump repeatedly call Vice President Kamala Harris “weak,” which Trump probably won’t do, because he’s too busy calling her a communist, a copycat, stupid, a recent conversion to being Black or someone with a crazy laugh who is not as good looking as he is.
Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument.
As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:
Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)
Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.
Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.
Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”
Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents, and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career.
On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”
That last bit still has me peeved. I have relatives buried in Arlington National Cemetary, and my Dad chose to be buried in a Washington State Veteran’s Cemetery, where the Pilot and Navigator of his World War II B-25 bombing crew is also buried. I am incensed about this for my family, who served in the Military from the Revolutionary War forward, including the winning side of the Civil War. Historian Heather Cox Richardson puts this into perspective in her Substack, Letters from an American.
And now the U.S. Army has weighed in on the scandal surrounding Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, after which his team shared a campaign video it had filmed. The Army said that the cemetery hosts almost 3,000 public wreath-laying ceremonies a year without incident and that Trump and his staff “were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and [Department of Defense] policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds.”
It went on to say that a cemetery employee “who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside…. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the… employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. [Arlington National Cemetery] is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”
“I don’t think I can adequately explain what a massive deal it is for the Army to make a statement like this,” political writer and veteran Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, noted. “The Pentagon avoids statements like this at all costs. But a draft dodging traitor decided to lie about our armed forces staff, so they went to paper.”
The deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the Department of Defense is “aware of the statement that the Army issued, and we support what the Army said.” Hours later, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita reposted the offending video on X and, tagging the official account for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, said he was “hoping to trigger the hacks” in her office.
In Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reported that the Trump campaign’s plan was to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the 13 members of the U.S. military killed in the suicide bombing during the evacuation of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2021. They intended to film the event and then attack Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for not “showing up” for the event, which they intended to portray as an “established memorial.”
She has also some good news to share from the Financial World. I can only say that Janet Rivlin’s hands are all over this. Good for her!
Another major story from yesterday is that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has finalized two rules that will work to stop corruption and money laundering in U.S. residential real estate and in private investment.
This is a big deal. As scholar of kleptocracies Casey Michel put it: “This is a massive, massive deal in the world of counter-kleptocracy—the U.S. is finally ending the gargantuan anti–money laundering loopholes for real estate, private equity, hedge funds, and more. Can’t overstate how important this is. What a feat.”
The White Stripes are the latest band telling the DonOld Campaign to cease and desist! “‘Fascists’: Jack White threatens to sue Trump campaign over use of music. White Stripes singer angered after Trump aide shares social media post using clip of band’s hit Seven Nation Army.” I wonder if it’s too late for Chachi to record something dismal? The display of privilege in all these acts of theft of dignity and expression is just the latest in the NepoBaby news.
Another bit of Trumplican Justice and Karma from The Hill. “Georgia election workers seek control of Giuliani’s assets to collect on $146M defamation judgment. Two Georgia election workers have asked a federal judge for control over Rudy Giuliani’s assets to collect on the $146 million defamation judgment against him for baselessly claiming they engaged in election fraud in 2020.”
The request from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss comes just short of a month after the ex-New York City mayor’s defunct bankruptcy, filed in the aftermath of the staggering judgment, was formally closed.
“Mr. Giuliani has spent years evading accountability for his actions — first in litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and then in chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that Mr. Giuliani commenced in this District,” Aaron Nathan, an attorney for the mother-daughter duo, wrote in a Friday court filing. “Now that Mr. Giuliani’s bankruptcy case has been dismissed, Plaintiffs are finally in a position to receive a measure of compensation by enforcing their judgment.”
Freeman and Moss asked the judge to order Giuliani to turn over personal property in his possession and to give the women the power to take possession of and sell any property he does not turn over.
“Those remedies are overwhelmingly justified under New York law,” Nathan wrote. “And they are all the more appropriate in the context of this case, where Mr. Giuliani has proven time and again that he will never voluntarily comply with court orders, much less voluntarily satisfy Plaintiffs’ judgment.”
After a trial in December, a jury ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss more than $148 million, though after attorneys fees and other adjustments, the judgment was formally entered just under $146 million.
The election workers testified to their lives being turned upside down by a torrent of racist and violent threats after Giuliani, the ex-personal lawyer of former President Trump, baselessly claimed they committed widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Giuliani froze the judgment, and other pending lawsuits against him, by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the judge’s dismissal of that case enabled the two election workers to collect on the judgment — even though they are likely to recover far less than $146 million, given Giuliani disclosed only $10.6 million in assets to the bankruptcy court.
Well, y’all have a great long weekend and remember how many lives it has cost to make this country what it is and can be. We can’t afford to let them all down now.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I watched some of these Russian-backed videos on the news yesterday. These guys are basically Russian Limbaughs but are pleading ignorance about their Russian Payroll Masters. This is from 
You may remember that last April, a Republican Congressman complained his colleagues were spouting Russian Propaganda on the House floor. “GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Russian propaganda is ‘being uttered on the House floor.’ House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner on Sunday said several of his GOP colleagues have repeated Russian propaganda on the House floor.” It’s evident that Putin’s plan is succeeding and that Republicans are besotted with Russian talking points. The news story was reported by NBC News.
The snips I saw on news media yesterday were primarily Tim Pool screaming that Ukraine was our enemy and that we owed Russia an apology. He was pretty hysterical and shrieked a lot about our soldiers going there to die shortly. 
Here is Trump’s entire answer, verbatim.
The good news is here at CNBC.
News on his federal election interference case also became available this week. 
Evidently, the defense team considers Justice Clarence Thomas to be part of its team. The Judge was not amused. We’ll probably hear more analysis today and over the weekend on both cases.
I just think it’s good news that both Florida and Texas are at play. The Harris/Walz campaign is covering rural areas and all bases in these now in play states. This NPR article is important if you’re still following the Arlington Cemetary debacle. 
However, he’s doing so well in the Fascist Ass-Licking event to the point that even Team Republican officials are horrified. (Not that they’ll do anything.) 
Never fear; DonOld is lapping up all the Hungarian attention he can get.
If you can get through the 
This is certainly enough to indicate that DonOld is not on Team America. We’ve always known he’s out for himself and cozies up to the guys who control their countries by undemocratic means. He’s also doing well in the questionable event of Rally Holding in the Most SunDown Towns. 
Marcy at
We see this in all the legacy media. They no longer try to provide a public service but just find other ways of enriching and centralizing power to those who don’t need anymore. The people in power profit from clicks and reads and not by ensuring their reporters report in a way that shows people what’s happening. And in that spirit, how about this headline from
Here’s a bit 
A month later, 
Good Day,
It allowed Harris to share her priorities and discuss Biden/Harris’s achievements. The gotcha moments came over the misunderstanding of her role in border negotiations in North Central America, fracking, and the ‘affordability crisis.’ She answered these questions directly and succinctly. That’s not stopping the Trumplican Media from saying the interview was a 
So, my answer would be, “D’oh, I’m Vice President, and my job is to implement President Biden’s policy, you know.” But she’s classier than me and answered this way.
So, my answer would be: “Look at the damned economic, inflation, and job numbers, you stupid bitch!” But, again, she’s classier than me, and I guess I would have to maintain a modicum of dignity, being an economics professor and all. I would not say that to my class, but they are students, and she’s an overpaid talking head with a penchant for too much one hand then the other hand journalism even when the other hand is stealing us blind and wants to be a dictator.
That last bit still has me peeved. I have relatives buried in Arlington National Cemetary, and my Dad chose to be buried in a Washington State Veteran’s Cemetery, where the Pilot and Navigator of his World War II B-25 bombing crew is also buried. I am incensed about this for my family, who served in the Military from the Revolutionary War forward, including the winning side of the Civil War. 
She has also some good news to share from the Financial World. I can only say that Janet Rivlin’s hands are all over this. Good for her!
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments