Mostly Monday Reads: Crazy from the Heat

I’m now convinced he is who we knew he was. John Buss, @repeat 1968″

Good Day, Sky Dancers!!

We’re having 2 weeks of unpleasantly hot weather here.  This weather is usually reserved for the Dog Days of Summer, not the precursor to Summer. We have another 10 days before it’s officially Summer.  When we got KKKLandry for Governor, we got a Climate Change denier who is even trying to run one of the great Climate Change Science researchers in the country out of one of our state universities. I’m reminded of this from The Guardian, published three months ago.  “What has Louisiana’s governor done his first month in office? Boost fossil fuels. Republican Jeff Landry, who has labeled climate change ‘a hoax’, has elevated fossil fuel executives to key environmental posts.”  MAGA Republicans simply don’t care about anything but their corporate overlords and the donations they receive from them.  They all are massive, selfish narcissists, as far as I can tell.

Donnie Dotard said the quiet part out loud in the 105-degree F heat of Nevada yesterday at a rally. This is from The New Republic, as reported by Talia Jane. “Trump Finally Admits What He Thinks of His Supporters.  Donald Trump revealed exactly how he feels about his supporters at his campaign rally in Las Vegas.”  How is this not a “horrible thing”?

“The press will take that and they’ll say ‘he said a horrible thing,” Trump accurately predicted after telling supporters in Nevada on Sunday, “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”

The comments came as Trump remarked on a passing breeze during a scorching outdoor rally in Las Vegas where temperatures climbed above 100 degrees. Six people were hospitalized, and 24 more were treated by EMTs on-site for heat-related illness. Sunday’s rally followed a similar event in Arizona on Thursday where at least 11 people were hospitalized for heat exhaustion, which Team Trump wrote off as “enthusiasm.”

Trump’s recent rallies, which either occur outdoors or involve long lines outside waiting to be let in, have been punctuated by people boiling in the sun. Team Trump has taken no efforts to mitigate the heat for his followers—and in fact booked the Nevada rally after his supporters collapsed in Arizona. This comes despite the fact that a third of Trump’s supporters are those most sensitive to heat.

Though Trump’s sun-fried supporters let out laughs at his remark, Trump has a history of despising his supporters. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump expressed gratitude for the highly contagious disease because it meant he didn’t have to shake hands with “these disgusting people.”

“He talked all the time about the people themselves being disgusting,” Olivia Troye, former homeland security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told The New York Times in 2020 while discussing Trump’s view of his supporters. “It was clear immediately that he wanted nothing to do with them.”

Eleven people were transported to hospital with heat exhaustion in Arizona. The event happened at an overcrowded Mega Church.  The Nevada Rally goers were a bit smarter.  A lot were walking out before his speech was over.  Maybe they were tired of his shark tales.  This is from Newsweek, as reported by Ewan Palmer. “Donald Trump Mocked Over ‘Bizarre Rant’ About Sharks.”

Donald Trump has been mocked online after going on a tirade against sharks and sinking boats during his recent campaign rally in Las Vegas.

During his speech in the key swing state of Nevada on Sunday, the former president posed a hypothetical scenario in which a boat with a large battery sinks while a shark was nearby.

“If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted?” Trump said. “Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?”

Author and frequent Trump critic Stephen King was one of those who criticized the former president for his remarks.

“This is like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink,” King posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Writer Ian Fraser described the moment as a “bizarre rant.”

The Independent also has delicious coverage of the event from Jim Bowden. “Trump tells rally-goers not to die in searing Vegas heat: ‘I don’t care about you, I just want your vote.’  Remark get laughs at the rally – but also draws raised eyebrows on social media as critics argue Trump was being truthful.”

Despite his humor, the ex-presiden’t couldn’t resist complaining about the heat as his rally went on.

“It’s 110, but it doesn’t feel it to me,” Trump said. “I’m up here sweating like a dog. They don’t think about me. This is hard work.”

Yes, yes, it’s always only about you.  Amanda Marcotte, writing for Salon, has this to say about recent outreach by Donald and his surrogates to black voters. “Donald Trump and Byron Donalds racial stunts are for white racists, not “outreach” to Black voters. Trump’s alliances with rappers and Donalds praising Jim Crow are about validating MAGA’s racist stereotypes.”

Because we keep hearing so much about how convicted felon Donald Trump is doing “outreach” to Black voters, much of the press assumed that was what was going on with a recent Bronx rally where Trump made a big deal of appearing with a few D-list rappers who are facing criminal charges of their own. “Courting Black Voters, Trump Turns to Rappers Accused in Gang Murder Plot,” declared the headline at the New York Times, which characterized the event as “clumsy” while taking Trump’s purported overtures to Black voters at face value. Most outlets did, even though the rally itself was rather small.

This follows Trump and his media allies repeatedly claiming that his 2023 mug shot, from his arrest in Georgia on charges related to his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election, would endear him to Black voters. “That’s why the Black people like me,” Trump said of his mug shot,” because they see what’s happening to me happens to them.” Fact check: While there are a couple of Black defendants who were in the conspiracy, the vast majority of people charged with crimes related to the coup or the January 6 insurrection are white.

Trump’s invocation of “the Black people” should be your first clue, but despite all the “outreach” chatter, such stunts and rhetorical gambits are not really meant to appeal to Black voters themselves. Sure, Trump would like to grab a few people of color caught up in these theatrics, but that’s not the intended audience for this. The actual target was neatly illustrated last week when dopey white bro icon, Joe Rogan, gloated on his disturbingly popular podcast, “So many rappers are showing support for Trump now. It’s crazy. Cause now he’s got a felony.” Fellow pasty white “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe, in a cloud of marijuana smoke, replied on behalf of the Black community with, “I don’t think they were counting on the black voter” supposedly relating to Trump being convicted for leading an election interference conspiracy.

In reality, polls show the opposite:  20% of Black voters who previously said they were backing Trump say they are now switching to Biden.

Here’s another public insanity display from Donald, reported by The Daily Beast. “Trump Demands Biden Remove Ad of Him Calling Dead Soldiers ‘Suckers’ and ‘Losers.’ The former president said only a “psycho” or a “very stupid person” would’ve made such statements.”

Donald Trump on Sunday called for President Joe Biden to take down an attack ad featuring a series of quotes attributed to the Republican in which he mocks dead soldiers.

The former president’s demand came on the same day that Biden honored fallen troops in a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, the burial ground that Trump chose not to visit in 2018 and was later reported to have done so while describing the site as “filled with losers.” Trump has denied making the remark—and another in which he allegedly called more than 1,800 Marines “suckers” for being killed—ever since The Atlanticfirst published his purported words in 2020.

Those denials continued Sunday, first at a rally in Las Vegas. “He said I stood over graves of soldiers and I said: ‘These people are suckers and losers, the dead soldiers from World War I,’’ Trump said, referring to Biden. He went on to claim the whole episode was “made up” and, despite the Biden campaign knowing it’s “phony,” they still “took an ad using it—these are sick people.”

Trump appeared to be referring to an attack ad launched by the Biden campaign on Friday during the president’s visit to Normandy for ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The video featured the reported “suckers” and “losers” quotes, along with audio of Trump mocking the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as being thought of as a “war hero” because he was captured during the Vietnam War. “I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump added.

“Donald Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about service to his country,” read a post on Biden’s X account featuring the clip.

The Rolling Stone has a not-so-shocking story on Just Ice Alito. “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised.’ In a new, secret recording, the Supreme Court justice says he “agrees” that the U.S. should return to a place of godliness.  The exclusive is reported by Tessa Stuart and Tim Dickinson.  You can read the basic information as reported by David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement. “‘Godliness’: Alito in Secret Recording Says No Compromise for ‘Fundamental’ Moral Differences;”  This should surprise no one.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in a secretly recorded conversation about morality in America says there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,” and agreed the nation needs to return to “godliness.”

The 74-year old Bush-43 appointee who has served on the nation’s highest court since 2006 was recorded by documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who also secretly recorded him in 2023. Windsor shared her audio on social media (below) but also exclusively with Rolling Stone.

Justice Alito spoke casually and unguardedly, prompted by Windsor who, according to audio she published, reminded him of their conversation last year “about the polarization in this country,” and, “everything that’s been going on in the past year.”

She identified herself “as a Catholic and as someone who like really cherishes my faith,” and added, “I just don’t, I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”

“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she concluded.

The Justice responded, saying, “I think you’re probably right.”

“On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know,” Alito continued. “I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Agreeing with him, Windsor adds, “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument, like people in this country who believe in God, have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you,” Alito tells her.

Read this article at The Atlantic and ask yourself why no one sees this? “The U.S. Economy Reaches Superstar Status’ No, really.”  This is written by Rogé Karma. I’ve selected a few choice bites here.  The big story is usually the GDP growth rate, which is super.

A recent analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, the lowest-paid decile of workers saw their wages rise four times faster than middle-class workers and more than 10 times faster than the richest decile. A recent working paper by Dube and two co-authors reached similar conclusions. Wage gains at the bottom, they found, have been so steep that they have erased a full third of the rise in wage inequality between the poorest and richest workers over the previous 40 years. This finding holds even when you account for the fact that lower-income Americans tend to spend a higher proportion of their income on the items that have experienced the largest price increases in recent years, such as food and gas. “We haven’t seen a reduction in wage inequality like this since the 1940s,” Dube told me.

Pay in America is becoming more equal along race, age, and education lines as well. The wage gap between Black and white Americans has shrunk to its lowest point since at least the 1980s. Pay for workers younger than 25 has increased twice as fast as older workers’ pay. And the so-called college wage premium—the pay gap between those with and without a college degree—has shrunk to its lowest measure in 15 years. (The gender pay gap has also narrowed slightly, but far less than the others.)

What explains this sudden boost in lower- and middle-class wages? The answer lies in the post-pandemic American labor market, which has been unbelievably strong. The unemployment rate—defined as the percentage of workers who have recently looked for a job but don’t have one—has been at or below 4 percent for more than two years, the longest streak since the 1960s. Even that understates just how good the current labor market is. Unemployment didn’t fall below 4 percent at any point during the 1970s, ’80s, or ’90s. In 1984—the year Ronald Reagan declared “It’s morning again in America”—unemployment was above 7 percent; for most of the Clinton boom of the 1990s, it was above 5 percent.

Could it be this good news that’s making Trump’s base boiling mad and causing CEOS to run towards him despite everything?  This is from Sam Sutton, who writes for Politico. “The Mooch’s warning to Trump’s new pals on Wall Street.”

Republicans on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley have reopened their hearts (and wallets) to former President Donald Trump. They should not expect a tranquil relationship, says former Trump supporter and hedge fund executive Anthony Scaramucci.

“I have empathy for them. I was there. I did it. I did exactly what they’re doing,” said Scaramucci, who was one of the first financiers to back Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I did the hopeless equivocation. I did cognitive dissonance. I’ve been through the cycle.”

Scaramucci was fired as Trump’s communications director in the White House after just 10 days in 2017. Two years later, the SkyBridge Capital founder publicly broke with Trump, saying he’d become too erratic and divisive to effectively lead. After supporting former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the Republican primary in 2024, Scramucci is now backing President Joe Biden in the general election.

Among GOP financiers, that political position has become exceedingly rare.

As your host reports, “Many high-dollar donors at banks, hedge funds and other financial firms had turned their backs on Trump as he spun unfounded claims that the 2020 election had been stolen and savaged the judicial system with attacks. Today, they’re setting aside those concerns, looking past qualms about his personality and willingness to bulldoze institutional norms and focusing instead on issues closer to the heart: how he might ease regulations, cut their taxes or flex U.S. power on the global stage.”

Three years after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, Trump’s return to the good graces of top-tier Wall Street financiers is a direct rejoinder to Biden’s claim that the former president poses a danger to the legal system that underpins the U.S. economy and its markets.

But many Republican donors – including those who had said they’d never support Trump again after Jan. 6 — believe the current regulatory climate for businesses is also an existential danger. Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City — a nonprofit organization representing the city’s top business leaders — said Republicans have conveyed to her that they consider that “the threat to capitalism from the Democrats is more concerning than the threat to democracy from Trump.”

One of these days, people will drop the philosophical rantings of the early 18th and late 17th centuries and realize there’s no such thing as capitalism or communism.  We all live in mixed markets, and ours is doing reasonably well even with the corporate greedos.

Anyway, that’s it for me today.  Have a great week, and see you on Friday!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?