Posted: August 30, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: authoritarianism, Donald Trump, India Prime Minister Narenda Modinda Modi, Kamala Harris, mass deportations, Nobel Peace Prize, Trump's health issues, Trump's tariffs |
Good Day!!
I’m going to illustrate today’s post with another Space Cat adventure: “Space Cat Meets Mars,” by Ruthven Todd, drawings by Paul Galdone. A summary of the story from Amazon:
This is the third book in the Space Cat series, and the illustrations are great, IMHO.
I woke up at 3AM and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Naturally I picked up my phone and checked to see if anything was happening. It turned out that lots of people on Twitter (I don’t call it X) and Bluesky Social were discussing the fact that Trump had not been seen in Public since Wednesday, and even White House reporter had had no word from him for 48 hours. The conclusion of many posters (somewhat tongue in cheek, but hopeful) was that he must be having a health crisis or even have died. It was pretty funny. Sadly, Trump is golfing today, so it was a false alarm. There’s something wrong with him though, and I don’t think its just “chronic venous insufficiancy.” Some commentary:
Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: Alert the media: The White House is lying about Trump’s health.
Donald Trump held a bonkers press conference last Friday during which he lied about his authoritarian occupation of Washington DC and fantasized about sending troops to occupy other cities with Black leaders.
Given the stakes, it might seem inappropriate to focus on attire. Trump, however, was noticeably casual for an Oval Office event. Unless he’s on the golf course, he typically wears a suit with an obligatory red tie. But last Friday, he didn’t bother with a tie, and he wore a baseball cap that boasted “Trump Was Right About Everything.”
Trump’s boundless egomania is not unusual, but the head covering did raise larger questions. He also made a determined effort to hide the back of his right hand from cameras….
Flyball relaxes in hammock.
Trump wanted to hide his right hand for a reason. Pictures from Friday show it slathered with what seems like several coats of Sherwin-Williams. (I’m not going to post the photos; you can click the link to see them.) [….]
Trump’s hand still looked rough during a press event on Monday where his hand was no longer coated with makeup, but visibly bruised.
Something clearly is up with the 79-year-old president, and the official explanations don’t make sense. That’s not surprising given that Trump is a world historical liar surrounded by toadies who surrendered their shame long ago. But it’s past time for reporters to ask some questions.
The mainstream press is still in self-flagellation mode over how they purportedly “ignored” former President Joe Biden’s decline. (In reality, they never stopped talking about.) But this soul-searching is apparently only backward looking and exclusive to Democratic presidents.
Trump has never behaved in a manner you could reasonably define as “rational,” but since returning to power, he’s been more unhinged than ever — launching destructive trade wars, persecuting his political enemies, and sending troops into US cities. Biden’s age was an ongoing story even while he otherwise governed like a normal person, but so far the media has not even considered a connection between Trump’s disordered actions and his health.
I completely agree that the White House is lying. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a president’s health issues were covered up, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.
Read the rest at Public Notice.
Jon Passentino at Status: Burying the Bruises.
On Monday, press photographers gathered in the Oval Office to capture President Donald Trump meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung when one unusual detail stood out. A large bruise on the back of Trump’s right hand.
It wasn’t the first time the 79-year-old president was seen with a noticeable bruise. Just days earlier, Trump was photographed with a large smear of makeup covering the same hand as he spoke to reporters at the White House about the FIFA World Cup. The images circulated widely online, drawing speculation from tabloids and social media sleuths. “WHAT IS GOING ON? PRESIDENT HEALTH DRAMA DEEPENS,” the Drudge Report banner blared. Yet from the country’s most powerful newsrooms, there was little more than silence. No front-page write-ups. No broadcast packages. The visible health problems of the oldest president in American history barely registered in mainstream coverage.
Flyball floats in weightlessness.
The White House has offered narrow explanations but refused to put Trump’s physician before reporters. In April, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella issued Trump’s annual physical, declaring the president in “excellent cognitive and physical health” and “blood flow to his extremities is unimpaired.” But within weeks, photos showed Trump’s ankles swollen enough that the White House acknowledged a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common in older adults. In July, Barbabella released a short memo attributing the bruises to aspirin use as “part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen” and “minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking.”
Are we seriously expected to believe that? I asked Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the renowned cardiologist and professor of medicine at George Washington University who served as the cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney, for his thoughts on the matter.
“The president’s recent swelling in his ankles has been dismissed as being ‘chronic venous insufficiency’ (despite the fact that during his yearly physical exam in March it was reported that he had no swelling, making the current issue really acute venous insufficiency),” Reiner said. “His hand bruising was described as the result of aspirin therapy and hand shaking which is not a plausible explanation. (Particularly if he also has bruises on his left hand).” Sure enough, recent images show Trump with bruises on the back of his left hand as well, raising more questions about the White House’s explanation of supposed aggressive hand-shaking.
Reiner noted that bruising of this kind is often linked to the use of strong blood thinners for heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. “During his March exam the White House physician did not disclose that the president is taking a medication like that,” Reiner said. “I think the press should be asking these questions and the White House should make the president‘s medical team available to answer questions.” The press, however, has largely turned a blind eye to the matter.
When President Joe Biden ran for reelection at 81, his age and health were subjected to persistent scrutiny. Fox News and MAGA Media personalities relentlessly pumped out absurd claims about Biden’s health as if he was secretly on the brink of death and promoted “Dementia Joe” hysteria. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers published dozens of stories about his age and physical fitness. Cable news devoted endless hours to the topic. In Trump’s case—the oldest person to take the oath of office who regularly fabricates stories and misremembers names—the bruises and swelling have barely merited a wire-service brief. A review of cable news transcripts shows virtually zero mentions of Trump’s bruises all week. Some who served in the Biden White House now rightfully see it as a clear double-standard.
Read more at the Substack link.
One more on this topic from Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Conservative Strategist: ‘MAGA Hunger Games’ Taking Place as Trump Health Slips.
Conservative political consultant Rick Wilson says a “MAGA Hunger Games” is playing out in Washington as President Donald Trump, 79, shows his age.
Wilson said “rumors from the Trumpverse” indicate that Vice President JD Vance is “moving fast” in this shuffling of power behind the scenes, positioning himself to take over the MAGA movement sooner rather than later, according to Wilson’s Substack.
Flyball meets a Martian insect.
“Slow or fast, he’s headed down,” Wilson said of Trump. “The circle who knows what’s up is very, very small and very, very paranoid. JD Vance knows, and he’s moving fast.”
Wilson pointed to Vance’s interview this week with USA Today—in which he said he is prepared to take over the presidency, having received “on-the-job training” in the first seven months of this term—as further proof of jostling behind the scenes….
Publicly, both Vance and White House spokespeople have brushed off rumors that Trump’s health is slipping.
In the same interview in which he declared he was prepared to become president, the vice president said Trump “is in incredibly good health” and has “incredible energy.”
“While most of the people who work around the President of the United States are younger than he is, I think that we find that he actually is the last person who goes to sleep,” Vance told USA Today.
Vance continued, “He’s the last person making phone calls at night, and he’s the first person who wakes up and the first person making phone calls in the morning. So yes, things can always happen. Yes, terrible tragedies happen, but I feel very confident the President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of this term, and do great things for the American people.”
If that “terrible tragedy” takes place, Vance will have to stop taking so many vacations. Seriously though, he is so unlikable that I don’t think he would be able to appeal to Trump’s MAGA base.
Last night a federal appeals court ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
Doug Palmer, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Desrochers at Politico: Federal appeals court strikes down major chunk of Trump’s tariffs.
A federal appeals court on Friday struck down President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers granted by Congress to impose tariffs, opening the door for the administration to potentially have to repay billions worth of duties.
Flyball encounters a Martian metal covered mouse
The 7-4 ruling raises doubt about deals Trump has struck with the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other major trading partners to reduce the “reciprocal” tariff rates on their imports, from the levels the administration originally set in April.
“We conclude Congress … did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs” of the kind Trump imposed in his sweeping executive orders, the majority wrote.
The ruling also invalidates the tariffs that Trump has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico to pressure those countries to do more to stop shipments of fentanyl and precursor chemicals from entering the United States.
The decision, however, will not take effect until Oct. 14, giving the Trump administration time to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholds a May decision by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which concluded that Trump exceeded his authority under the 1977 law he invoked to impose both the fentanyl trafficking tariffs and his worldwide tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“We are not addressing whether the President’s actions should have been taken as a matter of policy,” the majority wrote in its ruling, which was in response to a combined set of cases brought by several small importers and multiple Democratic-run states. “Nor are we deciding whether IEEPA authorizes any tariffs at all. Rather, the only issue we resolve on appeal is whether the Trafficking Tariffs and Reciprocal Tariffs imposed by the Challenged Executive Orders are authorized by IEEPA. We conclude they are not.”
Read more at Politico.
Adam Gabbatt, Dominic Rushe at The Guardian: Here’s what to know about the court ruling striking down Trump’s tariffs.
Donald Trump suffered the biggest defeat yet to his tariff policies on Friday, as a federal appeals court ruled he had overstepped his presidential powers when he enacted punitive financial measures against almost every country in the world.
In a 7-4 ruling, the Washington DC court said that while US law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency”, none of those actions allow for the imposition of tariffs or taxes.
Flyball sees a Martian fish.
It means the ultimate ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, which were famously based on spurious economic science and rocked the global economy when he announced them in April, will probably be made by the US supreme court….
The decision centers on the tariffs Trump introduced on 2 April, on what he called “liberation day”. The tariffs set a 10% baseline on virtually all of the US’s trading partners and so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on countries he argued have unfairly treated the US. Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people in southern Africa, was hit with a 50% tariff, while Trump also announced a tariff of 10% on a group of uninhabited islands populated by penguins.
The ruling voided all those tariffs, the judges finding the president’s measures “are unbounded in scope, amount and duration”. They said the tariffs “assert an expansive authority that is beyond the express limitations” of the law his administration used to pass them.
Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress, but Trump claimed he has the right to impose tariffs on trading partners under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which in some circumstances grants the president authority to regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency.
The court ruled: “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”
Trump invoked the same law in February to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, claiming that the flow of undocumented immigrants and drugs across the US border amounted to a national emergency, and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Another legal loss for Trump, this time on his “mass deportations.”
Zach Montague at The New York Times: Judge Blocks Pillar of Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign.
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out fast-track deportations of people detained far from the southern border, removing, for now, one of the cornerstones of President Trump’s campaign to carry out mass deportations.
The case focused on a policy shift announced during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term that authorized the Department of Homeland Security to launch quick deportations, across the country and without court proceedings, of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have lived in the country for more than two years.
Flyball sees Moofa for the first time.
Such quick deportations, known as expedited removal, have been carried out for decades, but they were concentrated among people arrested at or near the southern border. The Trump administration sought to expand the practice nationwide, to hasten the removal of people arrested deep inside the country.
In a 48-page opinion, Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration had acted recklessly in a frenzied effort to quickly remove as many people as possible, likely violating due process rights and risking wrongful detentions.
She wrote that the administration had taken over a process that was once as simple as turning back migrants with negligible ties to the United States “after a single conversation with an immigration officer” near the southern border, making it a default practice in places as far away as New York.
“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” Judge Cobb wrote.
Dakinikat wrote yesterday that Trump cancelled Secret Service protection for former VP Kamala Harris. California Governor Gavin Newsom will pick up the slack.
The Los Angeles Times: CHP to protect ex-VP Kamala Harris after Trump pulls Secret Service detail, sources say.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris will receive protection from the California Highway Patrol after President Trump revoked her Secret Service protection, law enforcement sources said Friday.
California officials put in place a plan to provide Harris with dignitary protection after Trump ended an arrangement that gave his opponent in last year’s election extended Secret Service security coverage.
Fred, Moofa and a reluctant Flyball swim in the Martian canal.
Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday ending Harris’ protection as of Monday, according to sources not authorized to discuss the security matter.
Former vice presidents usually get Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office, while ex-presidents get protection for life. But before his term ended, then-President Biden signed an order to extend Harris’ protection beyond six months to July 2026. Aides to Harris had asked Biden for the extension. Without it, her security detail would have ended last month, according to sources.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who would need to sign off on such CHP protection, would not confirm the arrangement. “Our office does not comment on security arrangements,” said Izzy Gordon, a spokesperson for Newsom. “The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses.”
The decision came after Newsom’s office and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were in discussions Thursday evening on how best to address the situation. Harris resides in the western portion of Los Angeles.
Trump has alienated India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and may have driven him to align of China, Russia, and North Korea.
Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager, and Anupreeta Das at The New York Times (gift link): The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was losing patience with President Trump.
Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.
Fred and the cats walk to the spaceship Halley.
During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.
The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.
Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term.
The dispute has played out against the backdrop of trade talks of immense importance to India and the United States, and the fallout risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Mr. Modi is expected to travel to China this weekend, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Use the gift link to read the rest, if you’re interested.
I’ll end with this disturbing piece from Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian: Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode.
If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …
Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.
There’s something else, too. Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. It’s like being woken in the night by a burglar wearing a striped shirt and carrying a bag marked “Swag”: we would assume it was a joke or a stunt or otherwise unreal, rather than a genuine danger. So it is with Trump. We cannot quite believe what we are seeing.
Flyball and Moofa weightless and happy as kittens.
But here is what we are seeing. Trump has deployed the national guard on the streets of Washington DC, so that there are now 2,000 troops, heavily armed, patrolling the capital. The pretext is fighting crime, but violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low when he made his move. The president has warned that Chicago will be next, perhaps Baltimore too. In June he sent the national guard and the marines into Los Angeles to put down protests against his immigration policies, protests which the administration said amounted to an “insurrection”. Demonstrators were complaining about the masked men of Ice, the immigration agency that, thanks to Trump, now has a budget to match that of the world’s largest armies, snatching people from street corners or hauling them from their cars.
Those cities are all run by Democrats and, not coincidentally, have large Black populations. They are potential centres of opposition to Trump’s rule and he wants them under his control. The constitution’s insistence that states have powers of their own and that the reach of the federal government should be limited – a principle that until recently was sacred to Republicans – can go hang.
A bit more:
Control is the goal, amassing power in the hands of the president and removing or neutering any institution or person that could stand in his way. That is the guiding logic that explains Trump’s every action, large and small, including his wars on the media, the courts, the universities and the civil servants of the federal government. It helps explain why FBI agents last week mounted a 7am raid on the home and office of John Bolton, once Trump’s national security adviser and now one of his most vocal critics. And why the president hinted darkly that the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is in his sights.
It’s why he has broken all convention, and possibly US law, by attempting to remove Lisa Cook as a member of the board of the Federal Reserve on unproven charges of mortgage fraud. Those charges are based on information helpfully supplied by the Trump loyalist installed as federal housing director and who, according to the New York Times, has repeatedly leveraged “the powers of his office … to investigate or attack Mr Trump’s most recognisable political enemies”. The pattern is clear: Trump is using the institutions of government to hound his foes in a manner that recalls the worst of Richard Nixon – though where Nixon skulked in the shadows, Trump’s abuses are in plain sight.
And all in the pursuit of ever more power. Take the firing of Cook.With falling poll numbers, especially on his handling of the economy, he craves the sugar rush of an interest rate cut. The independent central bank won’t give it to him, so he wants to push the Fed out of the way and grab the power to set interest rates himself. Note the justification offered by JD Vance this week, that Trump is “much better able to make those determinations” than “unelected bureaucrats” because he embodies the will of the people. The reasoning is pure authoritarianism, arguing that a core principle of the US constitution, the separation of powers, should be swept aside, because all legitimate authority resides in one man alone.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Those are my offerings for today. Have a great Labor Day weekend!
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Posted: November 16, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: "presidential immunity", cat art, caturday, Democratic Politics, Donald Trump | Tags: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, news, politics |
Good Afternoon!!
By Katrina Pallon
I don’t think I’ve fully come to terms with the fact that we are once again faced with Donald Trump as “president.” Of course we really don’t know what is going to happen to our country or to us as its citizens, but we know it’s going to be bad.
The first Trump term was horrific, and that was when he believed he needed to listen to his advisers. He appointed somewhat competent people to top positions in his administration, and he occasionally listened to them. There were so-called “adults in the room” who were able to partially control his worst impulses, or sometimes just work around his demands.
This time will be different. He is nominating people who are loyal to him personally but have no expertise in the positions they have been chosen for. They have been picked to destroy the bureaucracies they will control.
Trump knows that some of these people could be rejected by the Senate, so he is demanding the power to use “recess appointments.” He wants the Senate and the House to be in recess after his inauguration so that he can install these loyal incompetents without involving the Senate’s “advise and consent” role. He also plans to grant security clearances to his chosen sycophants without FBI background checks. He means to destroy the independence of the Department of Justice, including the CIA and FBI. He also plans to take full control of the military and enforce loyalty to him, and not to the Constitution.
Thanks to the right wing Supreme Court, he may be able to accomplish these things. They have granted him immunity for anything he does in his role president, including crimes.
During his first term, Trump often praised foreign dictators. He expressed admiration for China’s Xi Jinping’s takeover in China, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He praised Xi for making himself president for life. He admires Erdoğan for ending democracy in his country and taking power for the long term. He repeatedly said he would like “my people” to behave obediently like Kim John Un’s audiences–by mindlessly applauding everything he says or does. And of course everyone knows that Trump admires and fears Russia’s Vladimir Putin. We now know that Trump even praised Adolf Hitler during his time in the White House. We have a very good idea of what Trump hopes to do to this country.
Why should we expect that Trump will now behave like any other U.S. president? Why should we be so sure that there will be meaningful elections in 2026 and 2028? The leaders that Trump has praised have made sure that any elections held in their countries are–to use Trump’s term–rigged? Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and Orban are still in control of their countries. North Korea, of course, is a family dictatorship. Perhaps Trump hopes to pass on control of the U.S. to one of his children. We need to be aware of what he may be planning–not imagine that we live in the previous U.S. in which laws and norms protected us from a wannabe dictator.
After the announcement that Trump would forgo background checks on his appointees, investigative journalist Dave Troy wrote (on Twitter, I won’t link to it)
Let me be clear: the country is gone. You may still think you have one, but it’s like phantom limb syndrome. Don’t look yet. It’s too painful. But when you’re ready, gaze upon it. For all its volume and noise and mass… it is but an illusion. What comes next is hell, and chaos.
We had a chance. But today, I think, is the day we lost it. The day the free world fell. We will go through motions and react and laugh, or not laugh, we will be serious and joking and call each other horrible things. But this was the day when the last bulwark fell.
By Lucy Almey Bird
I have to agree with him. Trump fantasizes about being president for life like Putin, Xi, and Orban. We are in serious danger of becoming another Hungary.
I hope I’m overreacting. Maybe PTSD is making me more fearful than I need to be. I know my sleep has been even more disturbed than usual lately. But I’d rather face what Trump is really up to than act like the Democrats, who seem to just assume that politics as usual will be restored after free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.
I am an optimist at heart, and I still have hope for the future. I hope that everything I’ve written above is wrong. But I’ll have to see it happen in order to truly believe it.
Here are some reads to check out today:
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the term Kakistocracy. This article by Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini in The Atlantic explores the idea: American Kakistocracy. Italy knows a thing or two about what the United States faces—but there are key differences between the two countries’ experiences.
Why is a regular guy attracted to a billionaire candidate? It’s simple: Because the candidate can play to people’s fantasies. The man knows his television, loves girls, hates rules, knows how to make a deal, tells jokes, uses bad language, and is convivial to a fault. He is loud, vain, cheeky. He has a troubled relationship with his age and his hair. He has managed to survive embarrassment, marital misadventures, legal troubles, political about-faces. He’s entangled in conflicts of interest, but he couldn’t care less. His party? A monument to himself.
He thinks God is his publicist, and twists religion to suit his own ends. He may not be like us, but he makes sure there’s something about him that different people can relate to personally. He is, above all, a man of enormous intuition. He is aware of this gift and uses it ruthlessly. He knows how to read human beings, their desires and their weaknesses. He doesn’t tell you what to do; he forgives you, period.
Here in Italy, he loomed over our politics—and our lives—for 30 years. He created his own party in 1994 (Forza Italia, a sort of Make Italy Great Again), and a few months later, he became Italy’s prime minister for the first time. He didn’t last long, but he climbed back into government in 2001, and then again in 2008. Three years later, he resigned amid sex scandals and crumbling public finances, but he managed to remain a power broker until he died last year.
Silvio Berlusconi, like Donald Trump, was a right-wing leader capable of attracting the most disappointed and least informed voters, who historically had chosen the left. He chased them, understood them, pampered them, spoiled them with television and soccer. He introduced the insidious dictatorship of sympathy.
By Steve Danielson
But Silvio Berlusconi is not Donald Trump.
Berlusconi respected alliances and was loyal to his international partners. He loved both Europe and America. He believed in free trade. And he accepted defeat. His appointments were at times bizarre but seldom outrageous. He tried hard to please everybody and to portray himself as a reliable, good-hearted man. Trump, as we know, doesn’t even try.
Berlusconi may have invented a format, but Trump adopted and twisted it. Trump’s victory on November 5 is clear and instructive, and it gives the whole world a signal as to where America is headed.
he scent of winners is irresistible for some people. The desire to cheer Trump’s victory clouds their view. They don’t see, or perhaps don’t take seriously, the danger signs. Reliability and coherence, until recently a must for a political leader, have taken a back seat. Showing oneself as virtuous risks being counterproductive: It could alienate voters, who would feel belittled.
American journalism—what is left of it, anyway—meticulously chronicled Trump’s deceitfulness. It made no difference, though. On the contrary, it seems to have helped him. Trump’s deputy, J. D. Vance, explained calmly in an interview that misleading people—maybe even lying to them—is sometimes necessary to overcome the hostility of the media.
Here’s a gift link if you’d like to read the rest at The Atlantic.
Adam Jentelson at The New York Times: When Will Democrats Learn to Say No?
When Donald Trump held a rally in the Bronx in May, critics scoffed that there was no way he could win New York State. Yet as a strategic matter, asking the question “What would it take for a Republican to win New York?” leads to the answer, “It would take overperforming with Black, Hispanic and working-class voters.”
Mr. Trump didn’t win New York, of course, but his gains with nonwhite voters helped him sweep all seven battleground states.
Unlike Democrats, Mr. Trump engaged in what I call supermajority thinking: envisioning what it would take to achieve an electoral realignment and working from there.
Supermajority thinking is urgently needed at this moment. We have been conditioned to think of our era of polarization as a stable arrangement of rough parity between the parties that will last indefinitely, but history teaches us that such periods usually give way to electoral realignments. Last week, Mr. Trump showed us what a conservative realignment can look like. Unless Democrats want to be consigned to minority status and be locked out of the Senate for the foreseeable future, they need to counter by building a supermajority of their own.
That starts with picking an ambitious electoral goal — say, the 365 electoral votes Barack Obama won in 2008 — and thinking clearly about what Democrats need to do to achieve it.
Democrats cannot do this as long as they remain crippled by a fetish for putting coalition management over a real desire for power. Whereas Mr. Trump has crafted an image as a different kind of Republican by routinely making claims that break with the party line on issues ranging from protecting Social Security and Medicare to mandating insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization, Democrats remain stuck trying to please all of their interest groups while watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party.
Achieving a supermajority means declaring independence from liberal and progressive interest groups that prevent Democrats from thinking clearly about how to win. Collectively, these groups impose the rigid mores and vocabulary of college-educated elites, placing a hard ceiling on Democrats’ appeal and fatally wounding them in the places they need to win not just to take back the White House, but to have a prayer in the Senate.
More at the NYT link.
Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer at The New York Times: Democrats Draw Up an Entirely New Anti-Trump Battle Plan.
Locked out of power next year, Democrats are hatching plans to oppose President-elect Donald J. Trump that look nothing like the liberal “resistance” of 2017.
Gone are the pink knit caps and homemade signs from the huge protest that convulsed blue America that year, as exhausted liberals seem more inclined to tune out Mr. Trump than fight.
By Lucy Olivieri
Washington is far different, too. The Republicans who stymied some of Mr. Trump’s first-term agenda are now dead, retired or Democrats. And the Supreme Court, with three justices appointed by the former president, has proved how far it will go in bending to his will.
As they face this tough political landscape, Democratic officials, activists and ambitious politicians are seeking to build their second wave of opposition to Mr. Trump from the places that they still control: deep-blue states.
Democrats envision flexing their power in these states to partly block the Trump administration’s policies — for example, by refusing to enforce immigration laws — and to push forward their vision of governance by passing state laws enshrining abortion rights, funding paid leave and putting in place a laundry list of other party priorities.
Some of the planning in blue states began in 2023 as a potential backstop if Mr. Trump won, according to multiple Democrats involved in different efforts. The preparations were largely kept quiet to avoid projecting public doubts about Democrats’ ability to win the election.
“States in our system have a lot of power — we’re entrusted with protecting people, and we’re going to do it,” said Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, who said his office had been preparing for Mr. Trump’s potential return to power for more than a year. “They can expect that we’re going to show up every single time when they try to run over the American people.”
The Democratic effort will rely on the work of hundreds of lawyers, who are being recruited to combat Trump administration policies on a range of Democratic priorities. Already, advocacy groups have begun workshopping cases and recruiting potential plaintiffs to challenge expected regulations, laws and administrative actions starting on Day 1.
More at the link.
NBC News: John Fetterman says Democrats need to stop ‘freaking out’ over everything Trump does.
In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, Sen. John Fetterman did something different than other Democrats.
He went on Joe Rogan’s podcast, a show Democrats had been urging Vice President Kamala Harris to do — and the kind of appearance Democrats feel their candidates need to get more comfortable making in the current media environment.
By Katrina Pallon
But Fetterman, who built a blunt, says-what-he-means brand, said Democratic setbacks in 2024 had more to do with unpopular positions progressives promoted than any lack of communication from the party’s center-left establishment.
“It’s not even what you might say as a candidate,” Fetterman said in an interview, adding “all of the very hard-left, kind of ‘woke’ things” Republicans used in advertising this year “are unloaded on the backs of all of us in purple states, and we’re paying for all of the things that our colleagues might say in these hard blue kinds of districts.”
That’s part of Fetterman’s broader post-election message for his party. Moving forward, he says, Democrats can’t get wrapped up in “freaking out” over every controversial move Trump makes, adding that has proven to be a losing formula for the party and its brand. He was speaking after Trump selected former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general and just before he tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I’ve said this before, it’s like, clutch those pearls harder and scold louder — that’s not going to win,” Fetterman, D-Pa., said. “And that’s been demonstrated in this cycle.”
In the interview, Fetterman detailed his thoughts on this month’s election, how he’s readying for his party’s life in the wilderness and whether he has interest in seeking the presidency in 2028.
Read the interview at the NBC link.
Anna Gifty at Public Notice: Kamala Harris’s hidden barrier. Her rise and fall illustrates the Glass Cliff.
Black women have long had to navigate being twice as good to get half the amount of credit. Kamala Harris’s presidential run was evidence of this.
Despite the stark difference in the tenor of each candidate’s campaign and the the quality of their policy proposals, many still questioned whether they could trust Harris’s leadership and opted for her opponent. Ultimately, an overwhelming majority of white voters voted Republican.
National exit polls showed that for white voters, their choice was largely a product educational attainment. Fifty-seven percent of college-educated white women voted for Harris, while 63 percent of non-college white women voted for Donald Trump. For white men, regardless of educational level, a majority voted for Trump. Contrast that with the 77 percent of Black men and 91 percent of Black women who voted for Kamala Harris.
The majority of the Black electorate, regardless of educational level, voted for Harris. But it wasn’t enough. The outcome reminded me of the Glass Cliff and the double standards for Black leaders that come along with it.
In my own experience as a Black woman studying economics and policy at Harvard, I’ve seen how leadership roles for women of color, especially Black women, come with a unique set of risks and pressures, especially when taken on during challenging times.
For instance, early this year, Claudine Gay, the former president of my university, resigned after just six months on the job amid a concerted effort by right-wing culture-warriors to force her out. Gay was more than qualified for her job, but she wasn’t given the benefit of the doubt when she was accused of plagiarism and her tenure as the first Black person to lead Harvard ended up being the shortest in history.
By Marcella Cooper
The Glass Cliff refers to situations where women from marginalized groups are promoted into leadership during times of crisis and/or when the risk of failure is high. For example, back in 2021, Yogananda Pittman became the first Black person and first woman to lead the Capitol Police as it faced criticism for its handling of January 6. Minorities and women getting promotions often face impossible circumstances. And if they succeed, the person who gave them the opportunity gets credit.
When Biden dropped out of the race in July, he left Kamala Harris with a challenge that no modern presidential candidate has faced. Biden was losing in the polls, Democrats were divided over his presidency and refusal to get out of the race earlier, and Harris had to compete against a man who not only had been running for president for years, but is also a seasoned purveyor of racism and sexism.
While pundits have busied themselves over the past 10 days nitpicking Harris’s campaign, one thing is abundantly clear: She was held to the highest standards of leadership while Trump was held to no standard at all. Where Harris was pressed to present concrete, detailed policy stances, Trump skated by with crude bigotry and mere “concepts of plans”.
Read more at Public Notice.
The New Republic: Trump Picks Man Who Helped Him Get Away With Crimes to Run the Courts.
Donald Trump has nominated his attorney D. John Sauer, whom you may remember as the lawyer who argued that the president should be able to kill his political rivals with impunity, to be the country’s next solicitor general.
Earlier this year, Sauer helped Trump win his presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, which undermined other federal legal battles against Trump, like the time he tried to overturn the government after losing the 2020 election. Now Sauer will oversee all federal lawsuits.
In a statement Thursday, Trump lauded Sauer as the “lead counsel representing me in the Supreme Court in Trump v. United States, winning a Historic Victory on Presidential Immunity, which was key to defeating the unConstitutional campaign of Lawfare against me and the entire MAGA movement.”
While representing Trump, Sauer argued that if the president ordered an assassination on his political enemies, he could not be indicted unless he had first been impeached.
When Justice Sonia Sotomayor drilled him about immunity in the case of assassinating political rivals, he replied, “It would depend on the hypothetical but we can see that would well be an official act.” When she asked if the same rule existed if the president executed people for “personal gain,” Sauer said that immunity still stood.
One more, from Politico: Biden’s White House stares down a Trump takeover.
The White House is finalizing plans to spend Joe Biden’s last months in office putting the finishing touches on his legacy — even as it welcomes a successor determined to tear it all down.
By Marcella Cooper
Senior Biden aides mapping out the remaining 65 days are prioritizing efforts to cement key pillars of the president’s agenda by accelerating manufacturing and infrastructure investments. They’re placing fresh emphasis on the major health and energy policies most at risk of repeal, while coordinating a Senate sprint to fill judicial vacancies. And in a move that could mark the last gasp of tangible American support for Ukraine, officials are rushing out $6 billion of remaining aid and preparing a final round of sanctions against Russia.
New measures targeting the nation’s lucrative energy industry are among the sanctions under consideration, a White House official granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations said, now that the administration is freed from pre-election anxieties over the potential impact on domestic gas prices.
The final flurry of work has provided a renewed sense of purpose within a White House unmoored by Donald Trump’s pending return to power, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen administration officials and outside advisers. Yet there’s also open acknowledgment that for all the activity, little they do in the next two months may matter after Inauguration Day.
Trump is poised to take a sledgehammer to much of what the administration leaves behind — and no amount of tending to Biden’s own reputation can stop it.
“The bottom line,” said Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert close to senior Biden officials, “is there just isn’t anything Biden can do today that isn’t reversible in 10 weeks.”
Those are my recommended reads for today. The good news is that the worst hasn’t happened yet. We are still living in a sort of democracy.
Take care, everyone.
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Posted: November 2, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday | Tags: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, news, politics |
Tokuriki Tomikichiro, Black Cat Three-Kittens Butterfly
Good Afternoon!!
There are just 3 more days to go until E-Day. I just hope what’s left of our democracy survives the election and whatever horrors the Trump people have in store if he loses. And I think he is going to lose; he certainly seems to be preparing for that outcome.
Things are looking good for Harris at the moment. The polls are definitely moving in her direction, and some experts are questioning whether the race is as close as the media wants to make it.
This is from The Times (UK): Kamala Harris ahead in enough swing states to win, Times poll says.
Kamala Harris is on track to become America’s first female president by a narrow margin thanks to the Democratic vote holding up in the rust belt of old industrial states, according to the final Times poll before the US election.
Of the seven swing states that will decide the White House, Harris is forecast to win three battlegrounds in the north known as the “blue wall”, as well as Nevada in the west, while Donald Trump is favoured to claim back Georgia and hold North Carolina, YouGov found. The two rivals are level-pegging in Arizona….
Of the rust belt states, Harris is four points ahead among likely voters in Wisconsin, and three points ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania. She is one point ahead in Nevada. Likely voters are evenly split in Arizona, and Trump is one point ahead in both Georgia and North Carolina.
The Times surveyed the seven swing states because the outcome in the other 43 states is far more predictable….
If the results after election day on Tuesday turn out like the YouGov poll, Harris would win the Oval Office by a margin of 276 electoral college votes to 262. This would make it the closest finish since the 2000 election, which was decided by 271 to 266 after a month of legal wrangling about Florida’s result was resolved by the Supreme Court.
Read more and see the data at the link.
The presidential race could very well be decided by women. I still believe that abortion is the number 1 issue in this election.
CNN: As women outpace men in early turnout, Trump’s challenge to win over female voters comes into focus.
When Alex Cooper, the popular podcaster behind “Call Her Daddy,” released her widely discussed interview with Democrat Kamala Harris last month, she revealed she had invited the vice president’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, to appear on her show as well.
“If he also wants to have a meaningful and in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ anytime,” Cooper told her millions of listeners, most of them women.
Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, What is for dinner?
Trump’s campaign had received an offer to join the show, according to sources close to the former president, but ultimately decided to pass. Instead, Trump doubled down on a strategy of speaking directly to America’s young men through appearances on right-leaning, male-dominated online shows. He will end his campaign Tuesday having largely avoided podcasts, YouTube channels and daytime TV shows tailored toward female audiences.
And if Trump’s third White House bid falls short, his approach to courting women – who narrowly outnumber men and are more reliable voters – may be among his campaign’s most scrutinized strategies. Trump advisers and allies had argued throughout the late summer and early fall that his appeal among men would make up for the lack of support from female voters, but in recent weeks the widening gender gap has caused alarm for some Republicans.
“We’ve seen a women problem for all Republicans, up and down the ballot,” one Trump-aligned GOP operative told CNN. “It starts at the top.”
Let’s face it. Trump never had much chance to win over very many women who aren’t evangelicals.
Trump’s uncertainty about how to appeal to women has been evident even in the final days of his campaign, leading to public disagreements with his staff over his messaging. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, he recounted advice from aides urging him to drop his repeated promise to be women’s “protector” because they saw it as inappropriate.
“‘Sir, please don’t say that,’” he said he was advised. “Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” Trump told the crowd….
Behind the scenes and on the phone with close allies, Trump will ask why women don’t like him, three sources familiar with the conversations said.
“He thinks women want someone who will keep them safe. Keep their children safe,” one of the sources said.
…[B]eyond his rallies, women do not appear to be responding to the former president’s attempts to reach them. The latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll showed Trump trailing Harris among likely female voters by 14-points – a margin that far outpaces his 6-point lead among men.
Adding to Trump’s challenges is a gender gap in early voting. In the seven most contested battleground states, women have cast 55% of ballots so far, while men account for 45%, according to Catalist, a Democratic-aligned data firm. This 10-point disparity representing nearly 1.4 million ballots, though slightly less than it was four years ago, nevertheless has Trump allies concerned.
Trump is really falling apart in embarrassing and humiliating ways. Last night he appeared to simulate oral sex during his rally in Wisconsin. He also spent about 5 minutes of one of his final chances to reach voters complaining about his microphone and threatening not to pay his audio staff.
And then there was the threatening language he used about Liz Cheney in an interview with Tucker Carlson. From the Washington Post: Trump embraces violent rhetoric, suggests Liz Cheney should have guns ‘trained on her face.’
Republican nominee Donald Trump faced a fresh controversy on Friday after he suggested former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) should have guns “trained on her face,” escalating his vilification of a prominent critic from within his party, as well as his use of violent imagery….
Cheney said Trump’s intent was to intimidate anyone who challenges him. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) said her office is investigating whether Trump’s comments could have violated state laws involving intimidation of public officials, spokesperson Richie Taylor said.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” Cheney, who lost her position in House Republican leadership for condemning Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and went on to serve as vice chair of the committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, said Friday on social media. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Relationship by Toshuki Fukuda
It appears that frontal lobe damage from his dementia has left Trump with absolutely no inhibitions or filter on what he will say or do in public.
Trump could face legal blowback from his remarks. 12 News Phoenix: Arizona’s top prosecutor investigating Trump’s comments about Cheney as possible death threat.
During his Glendale appearance, Trump suggested his Republican critic should face ‘nine barrels shooting at her.’
Arizona’s top prosecutor tells 12News she is investigating whether Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump violated state law by making a “death threat” against former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney during remarks Thursday night at an event in Glendale.
“I have already asked my criminal division chief to start looking at that statement, analyzing it for whether it qualifies as a death threat under Arizona’s laws,” Attorney General Mayes, a first-term Democrat, said during Friday’s taping of “Sunday Square Off.”
“I’m not prepared now to say whether it was or it wasn’t, but it is not helpful as we prepare for our election and as we try to make sure that we keep the peace at our polling places and in our state.”
We know that Trump will challenge the results if Harris wins, and there very well could be violence. The Harris campaign says they expect Trump to claim victory before all the votes are counted–as he did in 2020.
At the New York Times, Jim Rutenberg and Alan Feuer write: Trump, Preparing to Challenge the Results, Puts His 2020 Playbook Into Action.
Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.
This time, however, he is counting on reinforcements from outside groups built on the false notion of a stolen election.
With Election Day only three days away, Mr. Trump is already claiming the Democrats are “a bunch of cheats,” as his allies in battleground states spread distorted reports of mishaps at the polls to push a narrative of widespread fraud.
Mr. Trump and his most prominent supporters have pointed to partisan polling and betting markets to claim that he is heading for a “crushing victory,” as his top surrogate Elon Musk recently put it. The expectation helps set the stage for disbelief and outrage among his supporters should he lose.
Black Cat White Cat, by Toshuki Fukuda
And in a direct echo of his failed — and, prosecutors say, illegal — bid to remain in power after the 2020 election, some of his most influential advisers are suggesting he will yet again seek to claim victory before all the votes are counted.
Such a move ushered in his efforts to deny his defeat four years ago and helped set the stage for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In many respects, though, the effort that led to Jan. 6 never ended.
“It’s been four years of spreading lies about elections and recruiting volunteers to challenge the system, filing litigation,’’ said Joanna Lydgate, the chief executive of States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit group that works with state officials to bolster confidence in their elections. “What we’re seeing today is all of that coming to fruition.” [….]
In a statement, Dana Remus, a top lawyer for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, said, “It isn’t surprising that he is already questioning the results of a still ongoing election” and added, “He failed when he tried this in 2020, and he will fail again.”
The authors note that some things are different though.
For all the similarities, there are important differences between now and 2020, some of which reassure the coalition of civil rights lawyers, Democrats, Republicans and election administrators working to prevent a repeat of 2020:
-
Congress has passed a new law, the Electoral Count Reform Act, meant to make it harder to stop the final certification of the results by Congress on Jan. 6, as Mr. Trump tried to do four years ago.
-
Mr. Trump no longer has control of the federal government — which he sought to use to press his 2020 case. In the states, there are fewer like-minded Republicans in key positions of power than there were four years ago.
-
Some of the loudest clarions for stolen election theories have paid heavily for circulating them, including Fox News, which last year paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle a lawsuit over the network’s promotion of false theories that Dominion’s machines had switched votes.
-
And the experience of 2020, along with more recent clashes over voting issues, has taught election administrators lessons about fortifying themselves against a similar effort this year.
“You have the benefit of something having happened once before,” said the Pennsylvania secretary of state, Al Schmidt, a Republican. “You learn from it to guide you moving forward.”
Another story could affect the race, although it may be too late and to complicated–the tapes of Jeffrey Epstein talking about Trump that were just revealed. It’s shocking that many in the media have been sitting on these tapes for a long time.
The Guardian: Jeffrey Epstein details close relationship with Trump in newly released tapes.
A New York author and journalist has released audio tapes that appear to detail how Donald Trump had a close social relationship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein that he has long denied.
The tapes, released as part of the Fire and Fury podcast series by Michael Wolff, author of three books about Trump’s first term and 2020 bid for a second, and James Truman, former NME journalist and Condé Nast editorial director, include Epstein’s thoughts about the inner workings of the former US president’s inner circle.
Wolff says the recordings were made during a 2017 discussion with Epstein about writing his biography. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges two years later. Despite his crimes, the wealthy financier was at the heart of a social circle of the rich and powerful in the US and overseas that contained many famous names.
Wolff claims the excerpt tape is a mere fraction of some “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his longstanding, deep relationship with Donald Trump”….
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
The Fire and Fury tapes reveal Epstein recalling how then president Trump played his circle off against each other. “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.
The author names Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway as being among the acolytes and officials Trump played off each other like courtiers in a competitive court.
“He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’
“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”
Epstein continues his exposition of Trump’s approach to management: “So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon: ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”
In response to the podcast, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said, “Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics” and accused the author of making “outlandish false smears” and engaging in “blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris”.
This could be embarrassing for Trump, but I doubt if most voters be affected by it.
Tim Alberta has an important article at The Atlantic: Inside the Ruthless, Restless Final Days of Trump’s Campaign.
The Introduction:
At the end of June, in the afterglow of a debate performance that would ultimately prompt President Joe Biden to end his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump startled his aides by announcing that he’d come up with a new nickname for his opponent.
“The guy’s a retard. He’s retarded. I think that’s what I’ll start calling him,” Trump declared aboard his campaign plane, en route to a rally that evening, according to three people who heard him make the remarks: “Retarded Joe Biden.”
The staffers present—and, within hours, others who’d heard about the epithet secondhand—pleaded with Trump not to say this publicly. They warned him that it would antagonize the moderate voters who’d been breaking in their direction, while engendering sympathy for a politician who, at that moment, was the subject of widespread ridicule. As Trump demurred, musing that he might debut the nickname at that night’s event, his staffers puzzled over the timing. Biden was on the ropes. Polls showed Trump jumping out to the biggest lead he’d enjoyed in any of his three campaigns for the presidency. Everything was going right for the Republican Party and its nominee. Why would he jeopardize that for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult? (A campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the nickname “was never discussed and this is materially false.”)
By Toshiuki Fukuda
Over the next several days—as Trump’s aides held their breath, convinced he would debut this latest slur at any moment—they came to realize something about Trump: He was restless, unhappy, and, yes, tired of winning. For the previous 20 months, he’d been hemmed in by a campaign built on the principles of restraint and competence. The former president’s ugliest impulses were regularly curbed by his top advisers; his most obnoxious allies and most outlandish ideas were sidelined. These guardrails had produced a professional campaign—a campaign that was headed for victory. But now, like a predator toying with its wounded catch, Trump had become bored. It reminded some allies of his havoc-making decisions in the White House. Trump never had much use for calm and quiet. He didn’t appreciate normalcy. Above all, he couldn’t stand being babysat.
“People are calling this the most disciplined campaign they’ve ever seen,” Trump remarked to friends at a fundraiser this summer, according to someone who heard the conversation. He smirked at the compliment. “What’s discipline got to do with winning?”
It’s a long, detailed article. If you’re interested in reading the rest, here is a gift link.
One more before I wrap this up. Russell Payne has an interesting piece at Salon on the Congressional races: “Democrats are in a stronger position”: Election forecasters give Dems an edge in swing House races.
With much of the attention on the House gravitating towards the battleground states of New York and California, where Democrats are trying to push back GOP gains from 2022, a handful of races scattered around the country heading into Election Day could ultimately be the difference in which party holds the majority.
Logan Phillips, the founder of Race to the WH, has his eyes on a handful of races that he sees as potential flips, including the race in Maine’s Second District, Washington’s Third District and two swing districts the Pennsylvania, where he thinks might serve a bellwhethers.
In Maine’s Second District, Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, is defending his seat from the Republican challenger Austin Theriault. The race is closely watched because Golden has held onto the seat since defeating the incumbent Republican in 2018, even though former President Donald Trump carried the rural Second District in both 2016 and 2020. In 2022, Golden won by six points. Golden currently leads in FiveThirtyEight’s average by 1.9 points.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez is in a similar situation in Washington’s Third, as the freshman representative is attempting to hold onto her seat a district that also supported Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Gluesenkamp Pérez won in 2022 by less than a point. In FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, the GOP challenger, Joe Kent, leads by a point.
In general, Phillips gives Democrats a better chance of winning the chamber than other prognosticators. He currently gives Democrats a 70% chance of winning control of the chamber while most forecasters see it as a coin flip. While he cautions that he doesn’t see them as the overwhelming favorite to win, he was also among the most accurate forecasters in 2022, projecting that Republicans would win 223 seats. The GOP ended up winning 222.
“There are plenty of strong incumbents on both sides of the aisle. The reason I view democrats as favored is that Democrats have recruited stronger challengers,” Phillips said. “Democrats are in a stronger position to take on those incumbents.”
Read the rest at Salon.
That’s where things stand today. I guess a lot could happen in 3 days, but I think Harris is going to win. I hope and pray that I’m right.
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Posted: October 30, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: 404040, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, news, politics, Trump |
Good Afternoon!!
I’ve been having computer problems, so I’m even later than usual in getting started today. It might be nighttime before a finish this post.
I’m so stressed out about the election! I just hope I make it until next Tuesday.
I keep telling myself that Kamala Harris will win, and I do think she will; but then we’ll have to deal with the Trumpers who won’t accept the results. Even if we get by that crisis, the Supreme Could could step in. She has to win by 4 or 5 points so they can’t justify handing the presidency to Trump.
Fortunately, Trump hasn’t exactly helped his case over the past week.
Here’s the latest election news and views:
Timothy O’Brien at Bloomberg: Trump Has No Regrets About Garden Bile, Even If It Sinks Him.
Two full days have passed since Donald Trump presided over a Madison Square Garden rally meant to illuminate the high notes of his presidential campaign. In that regard, it was extraordinarily successful.
After all, the torrent of bigotry, hostility, upheaval, misogyny, lunacy, fratboy antics, propaganda, dread and racism that flowed out of the gathering have been Trump’s animating themes ever since he vaulted onto the political stage more than nine years ago.
Anyone watching the bonfire in the Garden got a visceral understanding of Trump’s worldview. So, mission accomplished. Educating and recruiting new voters, and reminding those already committed why they’ve climbed aboard, is a primary goal of any campaign. Sunday’s rally was a handy primer about what Trump is fighting for — and the former president and his fellow speakers were transparent about what they’re up to. Three cheers for honesty.
Bedlam, fascism and racism aren’t attractive calling cards for every voter, however, and Republican strategists who have tried putting Trump on a less frightening path certainly didn’t want the Garden’s narrative to define their candidate with Election Day fast approaching. Limited government, America first, tax cuts, deregulation, patriotism, prosperity and other varieties of spinach were on their preferred menu.
But questions about a long list of grotesqueries harvested from the Garden are now consuming the Trump campaign and may have significantly weakened its electoral odds. Team Trump couldn’t have anticipated that Fright Night at the Garden would wind up being a potentially debilitating October Surprise, but here we are. Three cheers for karma.
I like to think that most people would be horrified by the prospect of being publicly savaged for fomenting racism and chaos — and for hosting a Garden lineup that included shock-jock Tucker Carlson wrapping Kamala Harris in a shroud of plantation bigotry and a C-list “comedian” quipping that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.” Trump rolls without regret, however. He has had multiple opportunities to change course, disavow or apologize for the bile on display at the Garden, but he hasn’t done so — including on Tuesday during a nationally broadcast press conference in Palm Beach, Florida, and at a rally later in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Read the rest at Bloomberg. I didn’t encounter a paywall on this one.
Trump held a so-called “press conference” (he didn’t take questions) yesterday in Florida. I think his advisers told him to do damage control on his hate rally. Politico: Trump doesn’t address NY rally backlash in winding Mar-a-Lago event.
PALM BEACH, Florida — Donald Trump during remarks on Tuesday didn’t acknowledge that there was any backlash over a comedian who made disparaging comments about Puerto Rico at a recent rally in New York City.
“The love in that room, it was breathtaking — and you could have filled it many many times with the people that were unable to get in,” he said of his Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden.
Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott before the press conference that he wasn’t familiar with the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“I don’t know him, someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is,” he told ABC News.
His speech on Tuesday before an audience of hundreds of supporters in South Florida largely appeared to be geared toward counter-messaging the campaign rally Vice President Kamala Harris had set for Tuesday evening. The vice president is expected to deliver the closing message of her campaign on the Ellipse just off the National Mall in D.C.
Since Trump’s rally Sunday — when Hinchcliffe and other speakers at the event made racist and vulgar comments — Puerto Ricans, Democrats and Republicans have condemned the speakers and defended the island. Trump has not publicly condemned the comments, while Puerto Ricans, including the archbishop of San Juan and the Republican chair of the island, have called on the former president to apologize though he has not done so.
People of Puerto Rican descent in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, who number more than 450,000, have also denounced the comedian’s comments and some are planning to protest Trump’s rally Tuesday night in Allentown, which has one of the largest populations of Puerto Ricans in the state.
Trump called Harris’ political operation a “campaign of hate” and said President Joe Biden had been “out of it for a long time.” He did not take any questions from the media after speaking for about an hour and tore into some Democrats who’d compared his rally to Nazi Germany.
He also called the MSG rally a “love fest.” NBC New York: Trump says insult-riddled Madison Square Garden rally was a ‘lovefest.’
Urged by some allies to apologize for racist comments made by speakers at his weekend rally, Donald Trump took the opposite approach on Tuesday, saying it was an “honor to be involved” in such an event and calling the scene a “lovefest” — the same term he has used to describe the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump gathered supporters and reporters to his Mar-a-Lago resort two days after a massive rally at Madison Square Garden featured a number of crude remarks by various speakers, including a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe in which he joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” Some of Trump’s top Republican allies have condemned the remarks, and his campaign took the rare step of publicly distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s joke, though not the other comments.
But given the opportunity to apologize at multiple events and in interviews Tuesday, Trump instead leaned in. Speaking at his Florida resort, he said that “there’s never been an event so beautiful” as his Sunday rally in his hometown of New York.
“The love in that room. It was breathtaking,” he said. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
On Tuesday night, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he knows nothing about Hinchcliffe but said, “I can’t imagine it’s a big deal.” He later agreed, though, that “probably he shouldn’t have been there.”
Sorry, Donald. It was a big fucking deal.
Scene at the Ellipse
Last night, Kamala Harris made her closing argument at the Ellipse–the same spot at which Trump incited the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The Independent: Harris campaign says 75,000 people at Ellipse speech – 22,000 more than Trump’s Jan 6 crowd at same spot.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign claimed she drew a crowd of more than 75,000 people in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to hear her speech at the Ellipse, the site of Donald Trump’s infamous 2021 speech exhorting supporters to “fight like hell” in the moments just before the January 6 Capitol riot.
If its own early estimate is to be believed, the Harris event drew about 22,000 more people than the Trump speech, whose crowd was estimated by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot to be about 53,000 people….
Speaking at the Ellipse, a park between the White House and the National Mall, Harris sought to paint a clear contrast between herself and her Republican opponent and offer a “closing argument” to voters.
“America, we know what Donald Trump has in mind. More chaos. More division. And policies that help those at the very top and hurt everyone else. I offer a different path. And I ask for your vote,” Harris told the crowd.
“And here is my pledge to you: I pledge to seek common ground and common sense solutions to make your lives better,” she added. “I am not looking to score political points. I am looking to make progress.”
The message could not be more different than Trump’s speech at the site, where he made false claims about the election and railed against Republicans who would not go along with his plan to halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 win.
Though Trump told supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard, the Republican also used the speech to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to suspend the certification and called on MAGA fans to “fight like hell” to preserve their country.
The Hill: Harris on Ellipse: Time to turn the page on Trump.
Vice President Harris delivered a speech Tuesday on the White House Ellipse in Washington, D.C. — the very site at which former President Trump gave remarks to a crowd that later incited a riot at the Capitol.
Harris spoke to a fired-up audience that numbered in the tens of thousands, invoking many of the same warnings she’s made on the campaign trail about Trump in her speech —that he is a threat to democracy and is consumed by his grievances and desire for retribution.
She encouraged the crowd and voters to move on from the Trump political era — and rounded out her speech by calling him a “petty tyrant.”
“We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America,” Harris said.
Harris was flanked for her speech by large blue USA signs on either side of her with the White House lit up in the background. The Harris campaign estimated 75,000 people were on the National Mall just before she arrived.
Harris later in her speech said that patriots throughout history “did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives, only to see us cede our fundamental freedoms, only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.”
“The United States of America is not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised,” the vice president said.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: “Obsessed with revenge”: In dual rallies, Trump celebrated fascism, but Kamala exposed its true face.
In the days since Donald Trump‘s hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, what’s striking is the pettiness of the stakes MAGA defenders have laid out. In the final days of a dead-heat contest for the most powerful office in the world, Republicans argued we must elect a textbook fascist to protect the sacrosanct right of a white man to be rude without being criticized for it.
Most of the racist diatribes at Trump’s New York City rally were not jokes. But the comments getting the most media attention — especially calling Puerto Ricans “garbage” — were offered up in a joke-like cadence by podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe. This has allowed MAGA to pretend we’re having a national debate about tastefulness, rather than fascism. Hinchcliffe said liberals have “no sense of humor.” Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, said others should “stop getting so offended.”
Trump, however, dispensed with the fiction that we are debating the subjective quality of humor. At a Tuesday press conference, he simply reified the true MAGA belief at stake: that Trump and his allies get to say what they want, and everyone else must shut up about it. This mostly came in the form of griping that Michelle Obama was allowed to criticize him: “Obama, his wife was very nasty to me. That was not nice.” [….]
Vance did not ask Trump to “stop getting so offended.” [….]
One would hope that it’s self-evident that “revenge on liberals for not liking me” is both a pathetic and short-sighted justification for voting for a wannabe dictator with a criminal rap sheet the size of a Russian novel. But with the polls so tight, that’s apparently not the case. So Harris made her closing argument Tuesday night from an evocative location that underscored the actual stakes of the election: The Ellipse in Washington D.C. where Trump incited the January 6 insurrection.
MAGA spite might right now manifest mainly as racist trolling or bottomless bellyaching, she warned, but there’s real danger in putting a man “consumed with grievance” into the White House. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election,” she began. She noted that Trump has threatened “to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him” and “put them in jail.” For those who might scoff that Trump actually means these things, the location spoke for itself. It was less than four years ago that Trump stood at that same spot and sent a murderous mob after members of Congress and his vice president as punishment for not stealing an election for him.
Read the rest at Salon.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden made one of his trademarked gaffes yesterday, and the media are breathlessly reporting that he called Trump’s supporters “garbage.” The clip that Trumpers are circulating was edited though. The Guardian reports: Biden says ‘garbage’ remark was aimed at comedian, not Trump supporters.
Joe Biden put out a statement that he had “meant to say” earlier on Tuesday that a pro-Trump comedian’s “hateful rhetoric” about Puerto Rico was “garbage”. But in a video clip edited to a shorter version and already widely circulating on social media Tuesday evening, a phrase that came out of Biden’s mouth was “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters”.
Republican politicians and rightwing media outlets quickly picked up the clip to argue that Biden had called Trump’s supporters garbage, comparing his remarks to Hillary Clinton’s labeling of half of Trump supporters as belonging in “a basket of deplorables” in 2016, a comment that is widely seen as undermining her campaign.
Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage—which is the only word I can think of to describe it. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The…
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 30, 2024
Biden’s full comments on Tuesday are somewhat garbled, and some journalists transcribing the remarks argued that Biden really did seem to be trying to refer to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks, not all of Trump’s supporters, while others reported that the president had indeed suggested that Trump supporters themselves were garbage.
Biden’s comment came during a Zoom call with Voto Latino, in which Biden referred to Hinchcliffe’s comments and said the Puerto Ricans he knows are “good, decent, honorable, people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of things is unconscionable, and it’s un-American, and it’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done.” But it wasn’t entirely clear whether he had said the singular “supporter’s” or the plural “supporters”, describing Trump’s base more broadly.
In the official transcript of Biden’s remarks released on Tuesday night by the White House press office, the comment has an apostrophe: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s – his – his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”Nevertheless, Harris addressed the firestorm.
Nevertheless, Harris addressed the tempest in a teapot. CBS News: Harris “strongly” disagrees with criticism of people “based on who they vote for,” after Biden’s “garbage” comment.
Vice President Kamala Harris says she “strongly” disagrees with “any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” after President Biden on Tuesday made remarks in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” on a video call with Latino activists. Republicans seized on the comment, while the White House offered a different explanation of what Mr. Biden had said, and the president tweeted a clarification of his comment.
“Let me be clear, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters Wednesday morning, when she was asked about Mr. Biden’s “garbage” comment. “You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career: I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”
I’ll close by recommending two other important articles, one on the abortion issue, and the other on what could happen if Trump wins.
ProPublica: A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage.
Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.
Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.
Neither had wanted an abortion, but that didn’t matter. Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.
ProPublica is telling these women’s stories this week, starting with Barnica’s. Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”
Read the rest at ProPublica.
Rick Perlstein at The American Prospect: What Will You Do? Life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins.
What will you do if men in uniforms arrive in your neighborhood, and an immigrant neighbor gets a knock on the door and is led away in handcuffs?
Or if the uniforms are not police uniforms, and there is not even a knock?
What if the knock is for your daughter, and they’re coming for her because of a pill that she took? Will you open the door?
Or if your teenage granddaughter, alone and afraid, calls you and begs you to drive her to a state where abortion is legal? Your governor has signed a bill making such “abortion trafficking” illegal, stipulating a penalty of 15 years.
What will you do if you’re called to serve on the jury hearing the grandmother’s case? She is guilty beyond a hint of a reasonable doubt; no way around that. Do you vote to convict her, or do you hold out against 11 of your peers?
LET’S SAY YOU ARE AN ATTORNEY in North Carolina, working out of your home. You sometimes serve as a court-appointed lawyer. Mysterious figures from something called “Gov Ops” appear at your door and claim power to rifle through your files without a warrant or any deference to attorney-client privilege.
They do not say what they are looking for. It could be public records proving government malfeasance, or private medical records of a client seeking an abortion, or communications involving legislative redistricting, or anything else they want to take. This is all because of a provision snuck into the state budget by the Republican legislative leadership that authorizes this new secret police force to seize “any document or system of record” from anyone who does work for the state. You are also advised that if you say anything about this raid to anyone, you will be breaking the law.
What if you work in the North Carolina legislature, and your boss hands you a document to shred? It shows him to have broken the law. Given that the same budget provision lets any legislator unilaterally decide whether to “retain, destroy, sell, loan, or otherwise dispose of” any public record, what is your choice? [….]
WHAT IF YOU ARE IN THE ARMY, and are ordered to the border to transport children to deportation camps? Or shoot peaceful protesters?
What if you are a law enforcement officer ordered to arrest more Black people by a city administration that fears federal intervention should the police fall below a certain quota of minority arrests? After all, Project 2025 recommends that local officials face “legal action” if they “deny American citizens the ‘equal protection of the laws’ by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions,” and refuse to arrest “those who … actually commit crimes.”
What will you do if you are a federal prison guard shipped from Texas to police a protest in some faraway city, and are ordered not to identify yourself, nor wear any identifying badge? [….]
DONALD TRUMP SAID, BEFORE A JEWISH AUDIENCE this past September 19, that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do” with his loss, if he loses. Let’s say Donald Trump loses. You are a rabbi leading a congregation with prominent Trump supporters among its members. Now, for the Sabbath after the election, you have a sermon to write, which some of those members will be present to hear. Meanwhile, strange, scary men have been seen lurking about the grounds.
What do you say?
There’s much more, and it’s terrifying; but I think it’s important to read the whole thing.
That’s all I have for you today. Take care everyone and vote!
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Posted: October 26, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Afternoon Reads, American Fascists, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, news, Patrick Soon-Shiong, politics, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post |
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the shameful abdication of responsibility by the owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. The Times’s Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Post’s Jeff Bezos interfered with the plans of their editorial boards in fear of what another Trump presidency could mean to their bottom lines. Both owners decreed that their newspapers would not endorse a candidate for president in 2024.
At The Wrap, Ross A. Lincoln has a piece on the extensive project that the LA Times owner chose to shut down: LA Times Planned ‘Case Against Trump’ Series Alongside Kamala Harris Endorsement Before Owner Quashed It | Exclusive.
Alongside its endorsement of Kamala Harris, the Los Angeles Times editorial board had also planned a multi-part series against Donald Trump before the whole thing was quashed by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, TheWrap has learned.
According to internal memos viewed by TheWrap, the series, tentatively called “The Case Against Trump,” would have ran throughout this week. The endorsement of Kamala Harris would then have been published on Sunday.
However, Soon-Shiong ordered the cancellation 0f the series and the endorsement without explanation, current and now former staffers have confirmed, setting off a massive crisis for the 142-year-old paper.
The South African-American billionaire’s interference in his paper’s editorial independence has sparked a rise in canceled subscriptions and several high profile resignations, and there are also signs of growing unrest among staffers.
On Thursday, editorial writer Karin Klein, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene, both quit. They followed Editorial Editor Mariel Garza, who resigned in protest on Wednesday. Both Klein and Garza have specifically cited Soon-Shiong’s actions as the reason for their exits.
The owner “vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president,” Garza said in her resignation letter. And alluding to the fact that the LA Times has endorsed multiple local/state level candidates, she said canceling the Harris endorsement “undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races.”
“People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner,” she added.
In a dissembling statement of his own posted Wednesday on the social media site formerly called Twitter, Soon-Shiong blamed the editorial team itself for the lack of an endorsement, yet also essentially confirmed he had in fact shut it down. He said the board “was provided the opportunity” to effectively draw false equivalence between Trump and Harris in op-eds laying out the pros and cons of each candidate.
“Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the editorial board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” Soon-Shiong concluded.
“We pitched an endorsement and were not allowed to write one,” Garza shot back in a statement exclusively provided to TheWrap. And Klein, who also called Soon-Shiong a “chickens—,” stated plainly in a note explaining her resignation that “the board was not the one choosing to remain silent. He blocked our voice.”
This is what happens when billionaires control our media.
The Washington Post’s betrayal of their staff and their readers is getting the most attention, because of the newspaper’s long history of speaking truth to power. For example, without the Post’s reporting, Richard Nixon might not have been forced to resign.
When Marty Baron was editor in chief, he inserted the phrase “democracy dies in darkness” at the top of The Washington Post’s front page. Well, the Post has now died and officially no longer supports democracy. The Boston Globe: Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron slams newspaper for not making presidential endorsement.
Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post, blasted the newspaper on Friday for declining to issue an endorsement in this year’s presidential election, framing the decision as a win for Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.
“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” Baron, also the former editor of the Boston Globe, wrote on X. “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” [….]
Baron’s message followed an announcement from Post publisher William Lewis that the newspaper is “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”
The Post, which is owned by Amazon.com co-founder Jeff Bezos, had drafted an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris, Oliver Darcy reported on his newsletter Status. Top editorial page editors at the Los Angeles Times resigned this week after the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked a planned endorsement for Harris.
Baron led the Globe newsroom from 2001 to 2012 before taking the helm at the Post. He retired in 2021.
From members of the Post’s opinion page: Opinion: Post columnists respond.
The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.
At least The New York Times allowed their editorial board to endorse Harris: The Only Patriotic Choice for President.
It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.
Windy Day, Jamie Shelman
Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.
This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.
For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.
Most presidential elections are, at their core, about two different visions of America that emerge from competing policies and principles. This one is about something more foundational. It is about whether we invite into the highest office in the land a man who has revealed, unmistakably, that he will degrade the values, defy the norms and dismantle the institutions that have made our country strong.
As a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution, Ms. Harris stands alone in this race. She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.
The case for Harris:
Ms. Harris is more than a necessary alternative. There is also an optimistic case for elevating her, one that is rooted in her policies and borne out by her experience as vice president, a senator and a state attorney general.
Over the past 10 weeks, Ms. Harris has offered a shared future for all citizens, beyond hate and division. She has begun to describe a set of thoughtful plans to help American families.
While character is enormously important — in this election, pre-eminently so — policies matter. Many Americans remain deeply concerned about their prospects and their children’s in an unstable and unforgiving world. For them, Ms. Harris is clearly the better choice. She has committed to using the power of her office to help Americans better afford the things they need, to make it easier to own a home, to support small businesses and to help workers. Mr. Trump’s economic priorities are more tax cuts, which would benefit mostly the wealthy, and more tariffs, which will make prices even more unmanageable for the poor and middle class.
Beyond the economy, Ms. Harris promises to continue working to expand access to health care and reduce its cost. She has a long record of fighting to protect women’s health and reproductive freedom. Mr. Trump spent years trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and boasts of picking the Supreme Court justices who ended the constitutional right to an abortion.
Globally, Ms. Harris would work to maintain and strengthen the alliances with like-minded nations that have long advanced American interests abroad and maintained the nation’s security. Mr. Trump — who has long praised autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong-un — has threatened to blow those democratic alliances apart. Ms. Harris recognizes the need for global solutions to the global problem of climate change and would continue President Biden’s major investments in the industries and technologies necessary to achieve that goal. Mr. Trump rejects the accepted science, and his contempt for low-carbon energy solutions is matched only by his trollish fealty to fossil fuels.
As for immigration, a huge and largely unsolved issue, the former president continues to demonize and dehumanize immigrants, while Ms. Harris at least offers hope for a compromise, long denied by Congress, to secure the borders and return the nation to a sane immigration system.
There’s more at the link.
Commentary on these stunning events:
Dan Froomkin at Salon: Billionaires have broken media: Washington Post’s non-endorsement is a sickening moral collapse.
The shocking decision by The Washington Post not to make an endorsement in the presidential election — breaking with a decadeslong tradition — is an extremely powerful statement. A non-endorsement says Donald Trump is a reasonable choice.
It says: We are so terrified of a Trump presidency that we are bending the knee in advance. Most importantly, it makes clear that owner Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to lose government business in a second Trump administration.
I can’t imagine statements any more inappropriate from the newspaper of Watergate, the newspaper I spent 12 years working my ass off for. It’s heartbreaking. It makes me sick to my stomach.
To be clear: Every self-respecting journalist on both the news and opinion sides should be sounding the alarm about a possible second term for Trump. He poses a threat to democracy and a free press. On the news side, that requires brutally honest coverage of the threats Trump presents, with no false equating of the two parties — one of which has rejected reality and democratic values. The Post newsroom is hit or miss on that count. But on the editorial page, this shouldn’t have been a close call (and reportedly wasn’t, until Bezos got involved)….
The very opposite of sounding the alarm is throwing up your hands and saying “well, you decide.”
The Post’s decision Friday comes just days after the Los Angeles Times also decided to forgo an official endorsement. This is no coincidence. Both papers are owned by billionaires whose business and personal interests are paramount.
“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” the billionaire owner of the LA Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, told Spectrum News this week.
This makes it more clear than ever: You cannot be a truly independent news organization if you are owned by an oligarch.
No kidding. This disaster has been developing for decades as the media has become more and more centralized and controlled by corporations.
Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark: The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling.
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, the Washington Post announced that it would not be making an endorsement in the presidential race. After that, a number of things happened very quickly.
First, the paper’s former executive editor Marty Baron called the decision “cowardice.”
Second, at least one senior Post opinion writer resigned.
Third, it was leaked that the editor of the editorial page had already drafted the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris when publisher Will Lewis—who is a new hire, hailing from the Rupert Murdoch journalism tree—quashed it and then released a CYA statement about how the paper was “returning to its roots” of not endorsing candidates. The Post itself reported that the decision was made by the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Everything about this story feels like a tempest in a teapot, a boiling story about legacy media fretting over itself in the mirror.
It’s not.
It’s a situation analogous to what we saw in Russia in the early 2000s: We are witnessing the surrender of the American business community to Donald Trump.
By Evelyn Sarah
No one cares about the Washington Post’s presidential endorsement. It will not move a single vote. The only people who care about newspaper editorial page endorsements are newspaper editorial writers.
No one really cares all that much about the future of the Washington Post, either. I mean, I care about it, because I care about journalism and I respect the institution.
But this isn’t a journalism story. It’s a business story.
Following Trump’s 2016 victory, the Post leaned hard into its role as a guardian of democracy. This meant criticizing, and reporting aggressively on, Trump, who responded by threatening Bezos’s various business interests.
And that’s what this story is about: It’s about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump—and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world.
Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub.
Read on for Last’s comparison of what is happening here to Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia.
Benjamin Wittes at The Bulwark: The Washington Post Bends the Knee to Trump.
I NEVER EXPECTED TO SEE THE DAY when the Washington Post would kneel before Donald Trump.
These are not Senate Republicans or conservative donors. This is not a group of people who cower in the face of authoritarianism. The Post editorial board, the writers who write anonymous opinion essays in the name of the paper itself, is a group of bold, pro-democracy intellectuals who have traditionally taken—individually and collectively—courageous stands about democracy and human rights around the world.
The Post’s editorial page is also the institution in which I grew up professionally. I worked there for nearly a decade under both of the last two long-time editorial page editors, Fred Hiatt and Meg Greenfield. It is an institution I revere.
And it is one that has not previously wavered with respect to Trumpist authoritarianism.
Yet today we learn that the editorial board has been stripped of its authority to endorse presidential candidates, having previously decided to endorse Kamala Harris. Instead, the paper announced in a statement from the publisher, William Lewis, that “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” [….]
…[T]he Post kneels without offering a word of praise for Trump. It’s just that, for high-minded reasons that it doesn’t really bother to specify, it’s getting out of this whole presidential endorsement business altogether. That was its traditional position, it archly informs us, back in the good old days before Watergate sent the Post on an aberrant jag. And, you see, while it’s perfectly understandable why the Post betrayed its high-minded above-it-allness in the wake of Nixon—when emotions were running high and all—having thought about it, it’s time to once again remove ourselves to the heights of Olympus where we can peer down on the foibles of mortals:
We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions—whom to vote for as the next president.
Yet it is a submission nonetheless: One week before the mortals finish voting and might elect an authoritarian, one whose former chief of staff calls him a fascist, the Washington Post has decided that silence is the best way to guide its readers.
Silence, after all, will not offend the authoritarian should he win. Silence, after all, is more than Trump can reasonably expect from the Post. Democracy may die in darkness, as the Post’s motto goes, but silence is apparently a good hedge.
Read the rest at the Bulwark.
Tomorrow, Trump will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden, site of the famous 1939 American Nazi rally.
ABC News: Trump to rally in iconic Madison Square Garden.
In the final week of his campaign, former President Donald Trump will cross off a campaign bucket-list item on Sunday: a rally in the iconic Madison Square Garden. The avid Broadway enthusiast will deliver a matinee performance, complete with musical guests and a host of Republican allies.
It’s a moment Trump has long said he wanted to have in the state where he has faced criminal and civil trials, becoming a convicted felon and mounted a business empire.
“I think it’ll be a great time, and it’s going to be really a celebration of the whole thing, you know, because it’s coming to an end a few days after that. The campaigning; I won’t campaign anymore. Then I’ll be campaigning to make America great,” Trump said about the upcoming Madison Square Garden rally during a local radio interview with Cats & Cosby on Thursday….
In an arena format symbolizing confidence and celebrity status, Trump’s appearance will serve as his closing argument. In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris makes hers on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The former president, reminiscent of the last nine years campaigning for the highest office in the land, has coined the event as a “celebration of the whole thing.”
“Well, it’s New York, but it’s also sort of, it’s the end of my campaigning. When you think, I mean, I’ve done it now for nine years, we’ve had two great elections. One was better than the other,” Trump said.
On Sunday, Trump will be joined by several surrogates who have appeared with him on the campaign trail — including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy. House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik will also be in attendance as well as several family members and donors.
Supposedly Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk will also be there.
Eric Bradner at CNN: Madison Square Garden versus the White House Ellipse: where Trump and Harris are making their final pitches.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have honed their closing arguments – and now they’re both turning to famous venues to try to help those messages break through just 10 days from Election Day.
The former president is returning to his hometown on Sunday for a rally in one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, Madison Square Garden. Two days later, the vice president is holding an event at the Ellipse, the park just outside the South Lawn of the White House, where Trump’s fiery speech nearly four years ago set in motion the attack on the US Capitol.
The two events could deliver key moments in a race that is on a razor’s edge, with CNN’s final nationwide poll showing each candidate with the support of 47% of likely voters.
Both campaigns are urging supporters to cast their ballots early and attempting to reach the vanishingly small pools of undecided voters – or those who know which candidate they prefer but are not sure whether they will vote.
Harris and Trump have made clear the issues they’re highlighting in the campaign’s last days. Harris is leaning into her support for abortion rights, a political winner for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She’s also contrasting her character with Trump’s – a strategy aimed at reaching independents and moderate Republicans.
“Either you have the choice of a Donald Trump, who will sit in the Oval Office stewing, plotting revenge, retribution, writing out his enemies list,” she told reporters Thursday, “or what I will be doing, which is responding to folks, like the folks last night, with a to-do list.”
Trump is hammering the vice president on border security, using dehumanizing language aimed at undocumented immigrants as he focuses on an issue that’s been at the core of his political identity for all three of his presidential runs. It’s part of his broader case that Democrats in four years have undercut the stability and economic successes of his tenure in the Oval Office.
The goals of the two candidates for the rest of the campaign:
In staging a rally at Madison Square Garden, Trump is betting on his own showmanship and celebrity – expecting he can fill the arena in the deep-blue city and hoping that the spectacle will reach television and phone screens in all seven battleground states.
Previewing the final sprint to Election Day, a senior Harris campaign official said to “expect to see more” of the vice president invoking the former president’s description of political opponents as “enemies within” while also describing the race as a decision between Trump’s “enemies list” and her own “to-do list.”
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also deployed that framing for the first time Thursday, as he campaigned in North Carolina.
“She’s got a to-do list. He’s got an enemies list,” Walz said.
Harris’ star-studded rally Thursday night in Georgia – her first campaign appearance with former President Barack Obama, and one that featured several other celebrities – kicked off what the senior campaign official described as the homing in of the campaign’s closing argument. That argument illustrates what a Harris administration would look like compared with the threat Harris says Trump poses, the official said.
The vice president continued that celebrity-fueled push Friday night in Texas – a rare visit to a state that is not a presidential battleground.
I’m going to end there. I will add some other interesting stories in the comment thread. Take care everyone!
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