Labor Day Reads: Game of Radical Flip-Flopping

“This is Based on a rough I drew months ago and was waiting to clean up and finish when Donold’s Truth Social Stock dipped below $20. Seems rather symbolic in many more ways today.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good  Day, Sky Dancers!  Happy Labor Day!!!

Just when I thought all the Olympiad festivities were over, DonOld finds some new activities to entertain us.  Lisa Needham of Public Notice describes his performance thusly: “Trump’s weekend of radical flip-flopping.  It’s hard to say you’re against abortion bans when you’re literally voting for them.” His performance in pandering took on some new lows, too. My guess is there will be only the medals he produces and sells. No authentic ones.

Watching Donald Trump trying to have it both ways on abortion would be hilarious if the prospect of his election didn’t signal the end of democracy in America (and if the media wasn’t simultaneously trying to make a big fuss out of Kamala Harris moving to the center on some issues).

As it is, watching Trump change his mind three times in 24 hours about one of the central issues of the race is simply grim. But that’s exactly what played out last week, with Trump being unable to clearly state how he would vote on Florida’s Amendment 4, which would provide constitutional protections for abortions in the state.

Trump’s problem is the same as the one the GOP writ large faces: the party wildly miscalculated what would happen after they succeeded in their decades-long goal of reversing Roe v. Wade, destroying the constitutional right to abortion. Due to the echo chamber that is the hallmark of the modern right, they got high on their own supply and convinced themselves the nation wanted Roe gone as badly as they did.

That’s never been true. Abortion rights are resoundingly, durably popular. Pew Research has surveyed Americans on the issue since 1995, and support for abortion being legal in all or most cases has fallen below 50 percent just once, back in 2009. Pew’s most recent research shows that 63 percent of Americans — including 41 percent of Republicans — believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The Associated Press found that in June 2021, before Roe’s demise, roughly half of Americans thought abortion should be legal for any reason. That jumped to approximately 60 percent in the last two years.

Now, heading into the home stretch of the 2024 election, abortion is becoming the top issue for more voters, especially women. A New York Times poll conducted last month found that women under 45 report that abortion is now the most critical issue to them, eclipsing even the economy.

A functioning political party led by someone with actual policy goals might consider recalibrating their stance on this issue in order to find a more electable middle ground. Or, a functioning political party could simply dig in, fully embracing the anti-choice side and hoping that the party base would turn out in ample enough numbers. But this is the GOP, and Trump is Trump, so they’ve instead settled on a mishmash of lies and backtracking and are hoping that carries the day.

However, he’s doing so well in the Fascist Ass-Licking event to the point that even Team Republican officials are horrified.  (Not that they’ll do anything.) This is from Politico.”Former GOP officials sound the alarm over Trump’s Orbán embrace. Groups seeking the former president’s favor have highlighted pro-Russian Hungarian leaders and talking points.” Heidi Przybyla and Nicholas Vinocur share the lede.

The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nerve center for incubating policies for a second Trump administration, co-sponsored a discussion in October 2022 about how to bring “peace in Ukraine” featuring Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto.

Audience members included conservative policy and national security officials and GOP strategists, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Once seated, they were given pamphlets pushing unabashedly pro-Russia talking points.

“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” warned the document, which was given to POLITICO by a participant. “U.S aid to Ukraine must be severely constricted and Ukrainian President Zelensky should be encouraged by U.S. leadership to seek armistice and concede Ukraine as a neutral country.”

We finally have a new view on what passes as “conservative” in this century.

CPI itself is a major arm of Trump’s MAGA movement raising significant sums of money. Its roster includes some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists, such as Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.The Heritage Foundation, whose president, Kevin Roberts, calls Orbán’s leadership a “model for conservative governance,” has openly lobbied for influence in a future Trump administration through its Project 2025 andplayed a lead role in lobbying Congress to end congressional funding to Ukraine.

“They [Orbán allies] say things people want to hear about issues they care about. It’s ‘woke this and woke that,’ and then they pressure them with what they really want,” which is to end the Ukraine war on Putin’s terms, said a person familiar with the meetings who still works in government and asked for anonymity to speak freely about the situation.

That person isamong many members of the more hawkish Republican foreign-policy establishment who said they were concerned about how Orbán is manipulating MAGA themes to achieve Orbán’s pro-Russian aims.

The pamphlet distributed at the “peace in Ukraine” conference illustrates how “corrupt authoritarians are accessing and abusing our system to undermine U.S. national security,” said Kristofer Harrison, who was a Defense and State Department adviser during the George W. Bush administration.

Ian Brzezinski, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy under Bush, said of the pamphlet: “It looks like it was written by the Kremlin.”

Never fear; DonOld is lapping up all the Hungarian attention he can get.

Orbán Political Director Balazs Orbán said in an emailed statement that he does not wish to participate in granting “legitimacy” to this story by answering questions about whether Hungarian think tanks are advancing the interests of Russia through collaborations with U.S. think tanks. But Orban the prime minister is publicly confident about his influence over Trump.

Late last month, Viktor Orbán claimed in a speech that Hungary has “deep involvement” in the “programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team.” He opened by warning that if Europe does not change its policy of “supporting the war” by financially backing Ukraine, then “after Trump’s victory it will have to do so while admitting defeat, covered in shame.”

Harrison, the former Bush administration adviser, suggested that the Hungarian government is leveraging its role as a global intermediary for practical reasons more than a commitment to global conservatism.

“Orbán carries water for Russia because they’re the highest bidder,” said Harrison. “Same with China,” he said, referring to billions that China is investing in Hungary.

These are just a few snippets, but the bottom line is pretty shocking.

Of any foreign leader, Trump is arguably closest to Orbán. He calls Orbán his “friend” and a “great man.” In accepting the GOP nomination in Milwaukee, Trump singled out Orbán as a “very tough man” and noted that Orbán credits him for keeping world peace because everybody “was afraid” of Trump.

The admiration is mutual. Hungary, which recently assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, is using as its slogan “Make Europe Great Again.”

If you can get through the Rolling Stone Wall, there’s more on this, as reported by Peter Wade.  “Trump Praises Authoritarian Viktor Orbán and Even Republicans Are ConcernedThe Hungarian prime minister has visited Trump in Florida twice this year and boasted that he has influence over Trump’s policy proposals.”  It discusses the Trump interview with Fox News that aired Saturday night.

“Viktor Orbán… I mean he’s strong. They consider him strong. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Runs a strong country,” Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Saturday night.

Given their shared ideology, including affinity for Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposition to arming Ukraine, it’s no surprise that Trump is cozying up to Orbán, whose country currently occupies the rotating role of European Union president. As EU president, Orbán adapted Trump’s campaign phrase, promoting an agenda to “Make Europe Great Again.”

But as Politico reports, some Republicans are worried about Trump and Orbán’s deepening relationship. Orbán has visited Trump twice this year in Florida, and the prime minister has spent billions of dollars funding Hungarian conservative foundations and paying U.S. journalist “influencers,” hoping they will influence policy in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. In 2022, Hungary partnered with the Conservative Partnership Institute and distributed materials with clearly pro-Russian talking points.

“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” a document obtained by a participant who shared it with Politico. “U.S aid to Ukraine must be severely constricted and Ukrainian President Zelensky should be encouraged by U.S. leadership to seek armistice and concede Ukraine as a neutral country.”

In July, Orbán bragged that he was involved in writing Trump’s policy proposals.

“They [Orbán allies] say things people want to hear about issues they care about. It’s ‘woke this and woke that,’ and then they pressure them with what they really want,” a source in government told Politico. And what they really want is the end the war in Ukraine with a victory for Putin. The source added that many in GOP foreign-policy circles are worried that Orbán is using the MAGA ethos to achieve pro-Russia goals.

Orbán has boasted about his influence on Trump, saying in a speech last month that Hungary has “deep involvement” in the “programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team.”

This is certainly enough to indicate that DonOld is not on Team America. We’ve always known he’s out for himself and cozies up to the guys who control their countries by undemocratic means.  He’s also doing well in the questionable event of Rally Holding in the Most SunDown Towns.   Newsweek National Correspondent Khaleda Rahman got this tip from TikTok.  “Former President Donald Trump is facing backlash for holding rallies in places described as “sundown towns.”

A TikTok user pointed out a “troubling pattern” in the locations of Trump’s recent rallies in a video that has gone viral on social media. It was also shared on X, formerly Twitter, where it amassed millions of views.

“Howell, Michigan; La Crosse, Wisconsin; Johnstown, Pennsylvania,” the man said in the video. “What do these places have in common? They’re all sundown towns.”

He added: “This is where Donald Trump is choosing to hold his rallies… You got a presidential candidate for the GOP doing a sundown town tour around the country, not looking for political gain. He’s f****** rallying the troops.”

The term “sundown towns” dates back to the segregation era, referring to communities with a wholly white population where Black people were considered unsafe after nightfall. Black people were prevented from living in those communities through discriminatory policies or intimidation and violence. Today, many of these communities with racist histories remain predominantly white.

The Trump campaign has been contacted for comment via email.

On social media, many shared their belief that the locations of Trump’s recent rallies could not be a coincidence.

Trump’s campaign “is intentionally visiting ‘sundown towns’ which violated federal law to be ‘whites only,'” journalist Jim Stewartson wrote on X.

“This isn’t a dogwhistle, it’s a KKK hood over every single person who supports Donald Trump or the GOP. ENOUGH.”

Marcy at emptywheel takes on the Washington Post for an editorial today.  It purports what they believe is a strategy for Harris to win the debate by covering her policies because Trump has none.  Marcy calls this “The Soft Bigotry of No Expectations on Trump.”

Trump has been running for 21 months; his campaign is more than 90% over. The Vice President has been running 43 days; her campaign still has almost 60% to go.

And yet they’re putting demands on the woman in the race, making no such demand on the white male former President.

The press has gone 21 months without throwing this kind of tantrum with Donald Trump. Given that, this column says more about the failures of journalists to hold Trump accountable than it does any shortcoming on Kamala’s part.

At some point, the traditional media needs to explain why it is so much more rabid about getting policy from Kamala than Trump.

Journalists need to come to grips, publicly, with why they apply this soft bigotry of no expectations to Donald Trump. Is it because they know he’ll deny them access if they make similar demands on him? Is it a (justifiable) fear he’ll sic a violent supporter on them, as he did the other night in Johnstown, with Trump observing, “beautiful, that’s beautiful, that’s alright, that’s okay, no, he’s on our side. We get a little itchy, David, don’t we? No, no, he’s on our side,” as the man was tased? Is it a resignation to the fact that Trump will just lie anyway?

Whatever the explanation for why the press applies so much lower expectations on the former President, who has been running for 21 months, than it does on Kamala Harris, just over a month into her campaign, the explanation is a far, far more important story to tell voters than precisely how the Vice President plans to restore the Child Tax Credit.

The only thing this comparison has done is make visible WaPo’s — and the press corp’s, generally — soft bigotry with Donald Trump, the double standard they are applying in their expectations for Kamala Harris as compared to none for Trump.

The lesson of this editorial, contrary to WaPo’s preferred punchline, is that the press is misdirecting where their attention should be focused.

We see this in all the legacy media. They no longer try to provide a public service but just find other ways of enriching and centralizing power to those who don’t need anymore. The people in power profit from clicks and reads and not by ensuring their reporters report in a way that shows people what’s happening.  And in that spirit, how about this headline from The Hill’s Miranda Nazzaro.  “Trump says he had ‘every right’ to interfere in election.”  Bad Old DonOld always blurts the quiet part out for everyone to hear but few to report on.  Notice that he’s describing what they’re trying to do in every swing state in the country.

Former President Trump in an interview broadcast late Sunday argued he had “every right” to interfere with the 2020 election while repeating his claim the criminal election interference cases against him are politically motivated.

“It’s so crazy, that my poll numbers go up. Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up. When people get indicted your pull numbers go down,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Life, Liberty and Levin.”

Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, was responding to a suggestion from host and lawyer Mark Levin that President Biden or Vice President Harris could have told the attorney general to “knock it off,” in reference to the federal election interference case.

The former president faces federal charges in Washington for his alleged actions to subvert the 2020 election results. He is separately charged in Georgia with racketeering and other state counts over an alleged scheme to overturn the state’s election results.

“Well, this is the worst case of election interference that anyone’s ever seen, certainly in our country,” Trump said during the Fox News interview. “They do this in Third World countries, they have some of it in South America, they don’t do it a lot, believe it or not. But they do it.”

“And it’s such a bad precedent because people are going to think about it differently, and they’re going to think about it differently. And it’s very sad, actually,” he added.

He went on to argue those prosecuting the cases against him are politically biased against him.

“They put people in the DA’s office,” Trump said. “This was all coming out of the Department of Justice in order to get their political opponent — me.”

You can read more of the insane things he said at the link.

I hope you’re having a good Labor Day Weekend.  We have Southern Decadence down here, so the Quarter is hopping with costumes and parades.  The Black Man of Labor Parade is also today.   It crosses the St. Claude Bridge over the Canal from the Lower 9th to the Upper 9th Ward.  That’s about 5 blocks up towards the Lake from my little kathouse and always a treat. I’m sure there are many Labor Day Parades near you and around the country as we celebrate the gains we have made and bring attention to the changes we need to ensure all working people get their share of the benefits of their hard work.  President Biden’s legacy and our next President Harris’s policy support the working class and an economy offering opportunities for all Americans.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?