Mostly Monday Reads: What to do with the Tempest in the Gold-plated Trump Pot

“Now he’s going after the Grey Vote.” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s tough to understand why the rapist, racist, Orange Fraudster continues to be supported by anyone other than the insane right wing of this country. Trump’s speeches and social media posts are that of a madman with advanced dementia. It’s even more challenging to understand why so much of the media still can’t figure out how to report about him. This is from Stephen Robinson, who wrote in Public Notice. “The media is still selling a fantasy version of Trump. We should all know better by now.”

Yes, major news outlets, including the New York Times, are now more likely to acknowledge that Trump outright lies than simply makes “false” statements, but the press still resists definitively calling him out for the terrible and dangerous person he is. Because their baseline assumption is that Trump is erratic and malevolent, it’s not generally regarded as big news when Trump does awful things, such as mocking Biden’s speech impediment during a speech over the weekend. (Watch the footage below, though it should be mentioned that the NYT published an article noting that Trump mocked Biden’s stutter.)

Implicit in the media’s ongoing coverage of Trump is the idea that he might suddenly stop behaving like Donald Trump. Case in point was an absurd article Axios ran last week from national politics reporter Sophia Cai with the headline, “Top Trump advisers try to steer him off personal drama.” The top of the article is bad enough, as it presents Trump’s unhinged vendettas like a “Sex and the City” brunch scene, but the low point is Cai’s suggestion that Trump is “toning down” his rhetoric as he attempts to woo college-educated voters.

On what was once Twitter, the caption above Axios’s article read, “Looking to November, Trump tempers his claims about the 2020 election — a little.” (An earlier version of the tweet that didn’t hedge as much and was widely criticized was deleted — see it at top of the post.) Cai wrote, “In some recent speeches, Trump has used different terms in describing his typical complaint that the 2020 election he lost was ‘stolen’ — saying, ‘We were interrupted,’ or ‘something very bad happened.’”

These are obvious euphemisms for Trump’s ongoing election lies, but Cai’s assertion isn’t even true. He told supporters at a North Carolina rally just days before the Axios article that “what happened at that last election is a disgrace, and we’re not going to let it happen again. Did you ever notice they go after the people that want to find out where the cheating was — and, by the way, 82 percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election, OK? You can’t have a country with that.” (Surprise! Trump’s “82 percent” claim is a lie.)

I don’t have much hope for the New York Times, but maybe the Washington Post is coming around. This analysis popped up on the Memorandum feed.  “Trump’s freewheeling speeches offer a dark vision of a second term. A close examination of one appearance in Rock Hill, S.C., offers an anatomy of a signature rally by the former president.”  Three authors share the byline;  Ashley Parker, Marianne LeVine, and Ross Godwin.

A Donald Trump rally is a freewheeling extravaganza. A festival of grievance and retribution. A dystopian vision of darkness and despair. A political rock show. A bacchanalia of lies and mistruths. A pitch to voters.

Since bursting onto the presidential scene in 2015, Trump has transformed the American public’s conception of a political rally, taking the stage after hours ofeardrum-shattering decibels of a self-curated playlist and offering a spectacle that changes depending on the place, the news cycle and the former president’s mood.

On the last Friday in February, the day before the South Carolina primary, Trump took the stage in Rock Hill, S.C., where he spoke for just over an hour and a half. A close examination of his remarks that day offers an anatomy of a Trump rally speech.

Like many of his recent speeches, it was long and laden with resentments, offering a dark vision for the nation that terrifies Democrats and animates his Republican base. It touched on recurring themes, including his election denialism, his promise of a sudden transformation in another Trump term and his claims of persecution and martyrdom.

Perhaps more importantly, Trump’s stump speech provides a road map of what a second Trump term might look like — fulfilling his promises to root out the so-called “deep state” of civil servants, harshly cracking down on illegal immigration and crime, and pulling back from the world stage. It also reveals many of his weaknesses as a candidate, such as sometimes slurring his words, confusing names of world leaders and attacking minorities in offensive ways.

At times, Trump hews to a teleprompter, while at others he careens gleefully off script. He can channel both comedy and rage,charisma and revenge.

Over time, his stump speech has evolved, though certain hallmarks remain. One constantis that it is certain to contain a slew of falsehoods and mistruths, ranging from hyperbole to outright lies, like his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

The one specific prop at any Trump rally is the assortment of disheveled, obviously low-education, wipipo misfits behind him, with the occasional black man who is either a paid prop or seriously deluded. Well, this is South Carolina, the state of perpetual revolt. But Trump voters don’t have their wits about them, and that’s if they possess any.  I am very tired of getting way too much information on cult behavior. But seriously, how do you explain this analysis from the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump last week? “A fifth of Trump supporters think he committed a serious crime.”

Juries will — or, perhaps, may — decide whether former president Donald Trump committed serious federal crimes. He faces trial in Washington, D.C., and Florida on felony charges, and, unless he’s reelected to the presidency or cuts a deal with prosecutors, those will result in verdicts adjudicating his guilt.

Most Americans, though, already think he has committed serious federal crimes. A poll conducted by Siena College for the New York Times found that more than half of registered voters thought he’d done so. That includes more independents, nearly all Democrats and even a fifth of Republicans.

It also includes a fifth of people who say they plan to vote for him in November.

He goes on ad infinitum about the same damn things. The one thing you think he would shut up about is E. Jean Carol.  But he doesn’t, he isn’t, and he won’t. This is from CNBC. “E. Jean Carroll lawyer suggests third Trump defamation lawsuit possible after new comments.”  The story is reported by Kevin Breuninger.

Donald Trump on Monday once again denied allegations by E. Jean Carroll that he raped and defamed her, despite facing nearly $90 million in civil penalties for making similar statements about the writer.

Carroll’s attorney quickly responded that they are closely monitoring Trump’s latest remarks about her — and suggested that a third defamation lawsuit could be in store for the former president.

Trump in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” claimed that several civil court judgments against him in New York — two of them in Carroll’s favor — will cause companies to leave the state.

“People aren’t moving into New York, because of the kind of crap they’re pulling on me,” he said.

They’re “the most ridiculous decisions,” Trump said, “including the ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman,’ a person I’d never met.”

Carroll has said Trump raped her in a dressing room in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

“I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued,” he said in Monday’s interview. “From that point on I said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, what this is.’”

“I got charged, I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation,” Trump added, referring to the bond he secured in recent days to guarantee a judgment in Carroll’s favor.

The interview echoed remarks Trump made about Carroll over the weekend at a campaign rally in Georgia, where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee accused her of making “false accusations.”

After the CNBC interview aired, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan in a statement obtained by NBC News said, “The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years.”

“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client, E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan said.

https://twitter.com/VABVOX/status/1767170121158590744

So, we know from the moment that Trump started down that escalator and the first words out of his mouth that Trump has no shame.  The Atlantic‘s  John Hendrickson has this to say on Trump’s second mocking of a disabled person. “Trump Finds Another Line to Cross. The former president used to exercise a modicum of restraint around Joe Biden’s stutter. No longer.”

Former president Donald Trump, perhaps threatened by President Joe Biden’s well-received State of the Union address, mocked his opponent’s lifelong stutter at a rally in Georgia yesterday. “Wasn’t it—didn’t it bring us together?” Trump asked sarcastically. He kept the bit going, slipping into a Biden caricature. “‘I’m gonna bring the country tuh-tuh-tuh-together,’” Trump said, straining and narrowing his mouth for comedic effect.

Trump has made a new habit of this. “‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” Trump said in his vaudeville Biden character at a January rally in Iowa. That jibe was also a response to a big Biden speech—one tied to the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. (Guess who the he was in that sentence.)

More than Trump’s ugly taunt, one thing stands out to me about these moments: the sound of Trump’s supporters laughing right along with him. This is a building block of Trumpism. The man at the top gives his followers permission to be the worst version of themselves.

Those who are used to somewhat civil discourse continually feel beaten down by all this nastiness.  What is it about the Trump Cult that digs it?  Here are some strong statements from analysts in the media that are finally coming to print. This first report is from Chauncey DeVega at Salon.  He argues that the only way we defang the Trump Cut and the Fascist Christian Right is to kill the Republican Party. “The GOP can’t leave MAGA — “Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party”. An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable.”

What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump’s neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one.” The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.

Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.

In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”

If Dr. Gartner and the other medical professionals I have spoken to, both here at Salon and off the record, about Trump’s apparent mental and emotional challenges are in fact correct about how the corrupt ex-president will only get worse and not better, the American people will then be confronted by a horrible reality where Donald Trump will be both a dictator and a mad king. In total, there will be a horrific synergy between an American pathocracy and how the worst people seek political power and a leader who appears to have a diseased mind – which makes Trump easily manipulated by individuals and forces who are even more malevolent and dangerous than he is.

Philip Bump gave this analysis at WAPO today.  “The twin challenges of warnings about Trump’s support of authoritarianism.”

Donald Trump welcomed Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to his Mar-a-Lago home last week, offering unqualified praise for Orban’s strongman approach to politics.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s fantastic,” Trump said during a reception Friday evening. “He does a great job. He’s a noncontroversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss.”

This sort of rhetoric is exactly what President Biden and others warn about with Trump’s elevation to his party’s presidential nomination. The former president has repeatedly made obvious his support for centralized, hard-line executive power in the United States and elsewhere, something that is clearly at odds with American democracy and divided government.

Because Trump has effectively framed Biden as behaving as an autocrat to his supporters and because modern autocrats don’t necessarily look like those in the past, many Americans are likely to consider those warnings hollow.

“Starved for attention, that one.” John Buss @repeat1968,
Me: “Truck Stop Tart”

Chris Lehmann of The Nation adds this. “The MAGA Aesthetic Is Beginning to Rot. The stable of imagery associated with the far-right insurgency no longer seems as fresh as it did when Trump first donned his red cap.”  It was rotten from the beginning, but at least more of the media is pointing at it.

For headline writers and Beltway pundits, the takeaway from last week’s State of the Union address was clear: Despite ongoing speculation about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, he delivered a pugnacious, energetic, and policy-driven speech, which served as the unofficial debut of his 2024 reelection pitch. But beyond the forensic attention devoted to Biden’s delivery from the podium, there was another pronounced theme amid the SOTU pageantry: the corresponding enfeeblement of the MAGA aesthetic, which played such a central role in Donald Trump’s surprise election to the presidency in 2016.

The MAGA brand crisis was telegraphed most dramatically in the immediate run-up to the speech, as Biden did the traditional presidential slow-walk toward the podium, greeting assembled lawmakers along the way. Georgia GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene approached Biden wearing a red MAGA hat and handed the president a badge commemorating Laken Riley, the Georgia nurse allegedly murdered by a suspect who entered the country illegally. Greene also sported a “Say Her Name” T-shirt, again in reference to Riley. When Biden espied Greene’s ensemble, he delivered an astonished double take as eloquent as any line in his speech.

Biden’s shock no doubt stemmed in part from the knowledge that such overt electioneering is illegal in the Capitol. More than that, though, it registered a broader truth: The stable of imagery associated with the right-wing Trump insurgency is showing signs of wear and tear. Where Trump-branded messaging and merchandise once had the power to upend establishment mores and expectations, they now feel like the political equivalent of a rock ensemble’s county fair tour: a purely formalist effort to satisfy the nostalgic longings of a diminishing fan base.

What was most telling about Greene’s stunt wardrobe was the date on the hat: Instead of being minted for the looming 2024 general election, it came from Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, which—despite the lies of Trump, Greene, and other MAGA leaders— he lost decisively. And make no mistake: Greene, a perfect specimen of do-nothing right-wing congressional service, lives for these camera-ready moments of political theater. She certainly didn’t descend to the same level of sartorial carelessness back when she dressed as a Chinese spy balloon.

Amazingly, Greene’s get-up wasn’t even the most outlandish clothes-themed show of MAGA sympathies in the chamber. That honor fell to Texas Representative Troy Nehls, who wore a “Never Surrender” T-shirt featuring Trump’s mugshot and displayed a Laken Riley badge of his own on his lapel. To pull the look together, he sported an American flag bow tie. The outfit didn’t evoke a fearless mustering of Real American patriots so much as a Chippendale dancer gone to seed.

CNN’s Jim Sciutto has a new book out. Josephine Harvey at HuffPost has this to say about that. “John Kelly Shares His ‘Theory’ On Why Trump Likes Dictators So Much: New Book. The book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto also contains quotes about the former president’s reported “admiration” of Hitler.”

John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, discussed the former president’s apparent dictatorial aspirations for a new book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

“My theory on why he likes the dictators so much is that’s who he is,” Kelly said, according to an article published Monday about the forthcoming book by the CNN anchor and chief national security analyst.

Kelly told Sciutto, “Every incoming president is shocked that they actually have so little power without going to the Congress, which is a good thing. It’s Civics 101, separation of powers, three equal branches of government.”

“But in his case, he was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send U.S. forces places or to move money around within the budget,” the quote continued. “And he looked at Putin and Xi and that nutcase in North Korea as people who were like him in terms of being a tough guy.”

Kelly was one of several former Trump administration officials who spoke to Sciutto for his book, “The Return of Great Powers,” reportedly warning that Trump is ill-prepared to lead the country in the current global climate, and that “they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.”

The book also revisits previously reported allegations that Trump praised Adolf Hitler, including Kelly’s claim that the former president lamented that his senior staff were not as loyal to him as the Nazi leader’s officers were.

“He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do,” Kelly told Sciutto.

Sciutto writes this at CNN. “Former advisers sound the alarm that Trump praises despots in private and on the campaign trail.”  I’d like to think this might get into the thick skulls of some people but then I’ve become quite jaded over the last decade or so.

To Donald Trump, Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán is “fantastic,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping is “brilliant,” North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy,” and, most alarmingly, he allegedly said Adolf Hitler “did some good things,” a worldview that would reverse decades-old US foreign policy in a second term should he win November’s presidential election, multiple former senior advisers told CNN.

“He thought Putin was an OK guy and Kim was an OK guy — that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, told me. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”

Trump’s lavish praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán while hosting him at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, just days after all but sealing the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, shows it’s a worldview he’s doubling down on.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said, adding, “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

The former president’s admiration for autocrats has been reported on before, but in comments by Trump recounted to me for my new book, “The Return of Great Powers,” out Tuesday, Kelly and others who served under Trump give new insight into why they warn that a man who consistently praises autocratic leaders opposed to US interests is ill-suited to lead the country in the Great Power clashes that could be coming, telling me they believe that the root of his admiration for these figures is that he envies their power.

“He views himself as a big guy,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, told me. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”

“He’s not a tough guy by any means, but in fact quite the opposite,” Kelly said. “But that’s how he envisions himself.”

I just hope it’s not too late but it feels less toothy now then it would’ve had they done something when he was still in office.  So this is my first post on my new PC and I’ve advanced to the bigger screen, bigger key board part of aging.  It feels great!  Now, I just gotta pay for it.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?