The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli
Trump’s speech last night was long and full of lies. I didn’t really watch or listen to it; I had it on TV with the sound muted. I turned it on when I noticed he was lying about Social Security, and then I tuned out again. Here’s what he had to say about the popular program that for 80 years has kept old people from starving on the streets.
We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.
Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.
In fact, Pam, good luck. Good luck. You’re going to find it. But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does — and it really hurts Social Security, it hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby.
Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 — and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty. By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families.
It seems pretty clear that Trump plans to destroy Social Security and leave millions of Americans to starve in the streets. Americans need to fight back, and force Democrats to wake up and actually see what is happening.
Rick Wilson posted a scathing review of the speech on his substack, “Rick Wilson’s Intel and Observations”: 100 Minutes Of Lies. Dear God, That Was Worse Than Even I Expected.
Well, that’s 100 minutes of our lives we’ll never get back.
Trump’s big Joint Address to Congress read as if the White House staff told ChatGPT, “Give me a State of the Union speech that’s Castro in length, Von Munchausen in facts, and Culture War Carnival Barker in style. Oh, and make it tendentious, boring, and ugly.”
What else did one expect?
Trump’s speech last night was dull yet terrifying. It was self-referential and self-aggrandizing yet vaguely desperate. It was Trump at his worst, but it also showed America that all he’s got is his base and his same tired bit, his greatest hits played over and over, louder and louder, to an audience getting older, poorer, and more vicious in its demands that their umber demigod give them that old-time religion.
It was divisive, terrible, and badly written, a speech so clunky and organizationally and rhetorically grotesque that even if Ted Sorenson, Ray Price, and William Safire rose from the grave and sat down with Peggy Noonan and Aaron Sorkin for a fortnight, they couldn’t find enough creative mayonnaise to turn that chickenshit into chicken salad. Almost every State of the Union speech ends up with a kind of freight-train problem; too many constituent groups inside the Administration need their paragraph, their nod to their importance.
This graceless bucket of rhetorical fish guts was a catalog of “Now That’s What I Call Culture War! Volume 27” tropes, riffs, and attacks on the usual Catalog of Imaginary Demons that informs MAGA belief and behavior. None of it was new or more shocking than the first 1,000 times.
But it was the stunning disregard for truth that set this speech apart.
Trump opened his lie hole and sluiced a torrent of outright lies into the willing maw of his dull-eyed, bovine audience watching at home hooked to their Fox feed of amygdala-stoking fear porn. The absurdity of his lies was rivaled only by their scope.
The rest is behind a paywall, but here are reports on the lies. (I can’t post excepts–there are just too many lies):
CNN Staff: Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress.
Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post: Fact-checking 26 suspect claims in Trump’s address to Congress.
Here is video from CNN of fact checking by Daniel Dale:
NBC News: Democratic Rep. Al Green removed after disrupting Trump’s speech.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was removed from the House chamber Tuesday night after he disrupted President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress.
Green, who has long pushed to impeach Trump dating to his previous term in office, stood and shook his cane toward the president in the opening minutes of his speech.
Other lawmakers cheered and booed Green, causing further chaos on the House floor as Trump paused. The uproar prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to read aloud from House rules.
“Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” Johnson said, an admonishment aimed at Green.
After Green refused to sit and allow Trump to continue, Johnson called for the House sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.
“Nah nah nah nah, goodbye,” Republicans chanted as Green was escorted from the room.
Outside the chamber, Green told NBC News that as “a person of conscience,” he believes Trump “has done things that I think we cannot allow to continue.”
What Green yelled at Trump was “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”
Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland. Politico: ‘Greenland is ours’: Greenland prime minister rebukes Trump pledge to acquire the territory.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede proclaimed that “Greenland is ours” in response to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress Tuesday night, where he said the U.S. will get Greenland “one way or another.”
“Americans and their leader must understand that,” Egede wrote on Facebook Wednesday, using the Greenlandic name for the island. “We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”
Egede’s remarks follow Trump’s pledge to acquire the territory — despite emphasizing Greenland’s self-determination — during his Tuesday speech.
“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said, stressing that acquiring the territory would improve U.S. national and international security.
“I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump added.
David Kurz at Talking Points Memo: Donald Trump Personally Thanks John Roberts For Keeping Him Out Of Jail: ‘I Won’t Forget It.’
It wasn’t Rep. Al Green (D-TX) being escorted out of the House chamber after his disruptive protest, and it wasn’t the long list of Trump absurdities cobbled together into an endless speech. Nope, it was Trump rubbing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ face in their mutual corruption:
“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” Trump says while shaking the hand of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts after the State of the Union.
— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T05:18:11.964Z
Let’s stipulate that we’re reasonable people who can see this for what it is: a reference to the Supreme Court’s disastrous ahistoric discovery of vast presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that saved Trump from going to jail.
Trump’s mob boss mentality has led to other moments like this, where he extravagantly highlights the moral and ethical compromises that a sycophant has made on his behalf as a way of demonstrating that they really are no better than he is and of lashing them even more firmly to his side. If they resist, he calls them out for being hypocrites, pointing to their compromised behavior and mocking their previous pretensions to ethical behavior.
But this time Trump did it to the sitting Supreme Court chief justice in public on the floor of the House. Whatever high regard John Roberts still held himself in has been directly challenged in the most excruciating and a dignity-robbing way. Trump has a way of doing that to everyone who comes in contact with him. Roberts had it coming. No pity for him.
Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: Trump’s Revenge Tour Finds Its True Target.
Donald Trump rambled, ranted and raved his way through the 2024 presidential campaign, but he was clear on one point. When he was elected, he would get revenge.
“I am your retribution,” Trump said to crowds of his supporters throughout the campaign.
This was not an abstraction. He had a few targets in mind.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” he said in 2023.
There were also the judges, prosecutors and politicians who tried to hold Trump accountable for his crimes, both the ones for which he was indicted and the ones for which he was convicted. He refused to rule out an effort to prosecute Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against him, and attacked Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, as “crooked.” Trump shared an image that called for the former Republican representative and Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney to be prosecuted in “televised military tribunals,” and he accused Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of treason, calling his actions “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”To get his revenge, Trump would turn the I.R.S., the F.B.I. and other powerful parts of the federal government against his political enemies. He would hound and harass them in retaliation for their opposition to his law stretching and lawbreaking.For once in his public career, Trump wasn’t lying. As president, he has made it a priority to go after his political enemies.
You all know the things Trump has done to get revenge in his brief time in office so far. But Bouie argues that Trump’s real revenge target is the American people.
Altogether, Trump has done more to actualize his desire for retribution than he has to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries or reduce the cost of housing. A telling sign, perhaps, of his real priorities in office.This fact of Trump’s indifference to most Americans — if not his outright hostility toward them, considering his assault on virtually every government function that helps ordinary people — suggests another dimension to his revenge tour. It is almost as if he wants to inflict pain not just on a specific set of individuals but on the entire nation.
Read the whole thing at this gift link. It’s very good.
By Mark Bryan
Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: Let’s Be Honest About The State Of The Union.
It wasn’t necessary to watch all of Trump’s speech last night to understand where we are as a country. The state of our union, as I noted Sunday night, is compromised. And that comes as no surprise to any of us. But two moments from last night are worth noting, as markers of where we are.
The Stupid: “I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight,” Trump said during his speech.
Only one problem. That’s not what the Justice Department has been telling judges in litigation involving the Musk-led effort to privatize government. They’ve been doing everything they can to claim Musk is not in charge of DOGE, including telling the judge that a woman named Amy Gleason, who was on vacation in Mexico when they made the representation to the court, is the Acting Administrator. It didn’t take lawyers long to point that out. Trump was barely finished when Kel McClanahan filed a “Notice of New Evidence” in Lentini v. DOGE, one of three cases that have been consolidated to hear claims about DOGE’s legality in the District of Maryland.
McClanahan argued that Trump’s statement about Musk “conclusively demonstrates that expedited discovery is urgently needed to ascertain the nature of the Department of Government Efficiency and its relationship to the United States DOGE Service.” The best outcome for Trump, following his epic foot in mouth, is that Judge Jia Cobb grants the motion to expedite which would make this the first case where pro-democracy lawyers would gain access to information about the inner workings of DOGE, likely a treasure trove that would further underscore the lawless manner in which Trump is acting.
The worst case is that someone gets held in contempt, either civil or criminal. That would open an entire can of worms about how the courts enforce their orders against a Trump administration that has at least suggested it might not comply with ones it doesn’t like. But that fight is, inevitably, coming, and judges don’t like it when parties lie to them, especially when it’s so explicit and when it’s the government doing it, here, rather uniquely, with the president’s involvement.
Hahaha!
Vance also comments on Trump’s behavior toward the SCOTUS justices:
The Corrupt: After his speech, Trump shook hands with people in the room, including the four active Supreme Court Justices who were present in their long black robes. Their tradition of dress is meant to ensure that no one mistakes who they are. It separates them from the political fray, even as they attend. That message, however, was lost on Trump.
The moment was captured on CSPAN. Trump thanks the Justices. He doesn’t say what for, but of course, we all know.
“Thank you very much, appreciate it,” he says to Elena Kagan, whose face is a mask in the moment. Then, he moves on to the Chief Justice. “Thank you again. Thank you again,” he says to John Roberts. Then he awkwardly slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Won’t forget it.” The moment has an almost classic mob boss feel to it in context.
Roberts, followed by Kagan, peels off and leaves without comment and immediately.
Wired: Some DOGE Staffers Are Drawing Six-Figure Government Salaries.
Some staffers at Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are drawing robust taxpayer-funded salaries from the federal agencies they are slashing and burning, WIRED has learned.
Jeremy Lewin, one of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has also played a role in DOGE’s incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed as making just over $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator within the General Services Administration.
By Mark Bryan
Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed as drawing a salary of $195,200 through GSA, where he is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that any “General Schedule” federal employee can make annually, including bonuses. “You cannot be offered more under any circumstances,” the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.
Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visible internal role interviewing GSA employees as part of DOGE’s work at the agency, is listed as being paid just over $120,500 per year. According to DOGE’s official website, the average GSA employee makes $128,565 and has worked at the agency for 13 years.
When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as “tedious” and noted that “compensation is zero.” WIRED previously reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied in part on a team of engineers associated with Peter Thiel and was carried out on platforms like Discord.
Since Trump took office in January, DOGE has overseen aggressive layoffs within the GSA, including the recent elimination of 18F, the agency’s unit dedicated to technology efficiency. It also developed a plan to sell off more than 500 government buildings.
Although Musk has described DOGE as “maximum transparent,” it has not made its spending or salary ranges publicly available. Funding for DOGE had grown to around $40 million as of February 20, according to a recent ProPublica report. The White House did not respond to questions about the salary ranges for DOGE
Reuters: Exclusive: Judges face rise in threats as Musk blasts them over rulings.
U.S. Marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels as tech billionaire Elon Musk and other Trump administration allies ramp up efforts to discredit judges who stand in the way of White House efforts to slash federal jobs and programs, said several judges with knowledge of the warnings.
In recent weeks, Musk, congressional Republicans and other top allies of U.S. President Donald Trump have called for the impeachment of some federal judges or attacked their integrity in response to court rulings that have slowed the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle entire government agencies and fire tens of thousands of workers.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has lambasted judges in more than 30 posts since the end of January on his social media site X, calling them “corrupt,” “radical,” “evil” and deriding the “TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY” after judges blocked parts of the federal downsizing that he’s led. The Tesla CEO has also reposted nearly two dozen tweets by others attacking judges.
Reuters interviews with 11 federal judges in multiple districts revealed mounting alarm over their physical security and, in some cases, a rise in violent threats in recent weeks. Most spoke on condition of anonymity and said they did not want to further inflame the situation or make comments that could be interpreted as conflicting with their duties of impartiality. The Marshals Service declined to comment on security matters.
As Reuters documented in a series of stories last year, political pressure on federal judges and violent threats against them have been rising since the 2020 presidential election, when federal courts heard a series of highly politicized cases, including failed lawsuits filed by Trump and his backers seeking to overturn his loss. Recent rhetorical attacks on judges and the rise in threats jeopardize the judicial independence that underpins America’s democratic constitutional order, say legal experts.
This one is for Dakinikat. The Wall Street Journal: The Two-Headed Monster Stalking the Economy Has a Name: Stagflation.
Stagflation has entered the chat.
President Trump’s decision to dramatically raise tariffs on imports threatens the U.S. with an uncomfortable combination of weaker or even stagnant growth and higher prices—sometimes called “stagflation.”
The U.S. has imposed 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and another 10% hike on China following last month’s 10% increase. They “will be wildly disruptive to business investment plans,” said Ray Farris, chief economist at Prudential PLC. “They will be inflationary, so they will be a shock to real household income just as household income growth is slowing because of slower employment and wage gains,” he said.
It is still unclear how long Trump intends to keep the tariffs in place. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested Tuesday afternoon on Fox Business that a rollback could be in the works.
Sentiment indicators and business commentary in recent weeks point to slumping confidence over the threat of higher prices.
By Mark Bryan
China and Mexico are the top two sources of consumer electronics sold at the retailer Best Buy, Chief Executive Corie Barry told analysts Tuesday. “We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely,” Barry said. The company’s shares plummeted 13% in the midst of a general stock-market retreat.
Brothers International Food Holdings, based in Rochester, N.Y., imports mangoes and avocados from Mexico and sells fruit juices, purées and frozen-food concentrates to food and beverage manufacturers. New tariffs are forcing the 95-person company to pass on price increases to its customers or accept lower profit margins….
Trump and his advisers have said some short-term pain might be warranted to achieve the administration’s long-term ambitions of remaking the U.S. economy. They have also said their steps to boost energy production could offset higher goods prices.
Nonetheless, tariffs are a particularly difficult economic threat for the Federal Reserve to address. Its mandate is to keep inflation low and stable while maintaining a healthy labor market. Tariffs represent a “supply shock” that both raises inflation, which calls for higher interest rates, and hurts employment, which calls for lower rates. The Fed would have to choose which threat to emphasize.
NBC News: Supreme Court rejects Trump administration’s bid to avoid paying USAID contractors.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday backed a federal judge’s power to order the Trump administration to pay $2 billion to U.S. Agency for International Development contractors but did not require immediate payment.
In doing so, the court on a 5-4 vote rejected an emergency application filed by the Justice Department after U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a series of rulings demanding the government unfreeze funds that President Donald Trump put on hold with an executive order.
The court delayed acting on the case for a week. In the meantime, the contractors have not been paid.
In an unsigned order, the court said that Ali’s deadline for the immediate payment had now passed and the case is already proceeding in the district court, with more rulings to come. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
As such, Ali “should clarify what obligations the government must fulfill” in order to comply with a temporary retraining order issued Feb. 13, the court said. Ali should consider “the feasibility of any compliance deadlines,” the court added.
Four conservative justices dissented from the denial of the application, with Justice Samuel Alito writing that Ali did not have “unchecked power to compel the government to pay out … 2 billion taxpayer dollars.”
“I am stunned,” Alito added.
The other dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
One more on the tariffs before I wrap this up. Eric Levitz at Vox: Trump doesn’t seem to know why he launched a giant trade war.
Donald Trump just imposed a 25 percent tariff on virtually all goods produced by America’s two largest trading partners — Canada and Mexico. He simultaneously established a 20 percent across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods.
As a result, America’s average tariff level is now higher than at any time since the 1940s.
Meanwhile, China and Canada immediately retaliated against Trump’s duties, with the former imposing a 15 percent tariff on American agricultural products and the latter putting a 25 percent tariff on $30 billion of US goods. Mexico has vowed to mount retaliatory tariffs of its own.
This trade war could have far-reaching consequences. Trump’s tariffs have already triggered a stock market sell-off and cooling of manufacturing activity. And economists have estimated that the trade policy will cost the typical US household more than $1,200 a year, as the prices of myriad goods rise.
All this raises the question: Why has the US president chosen to upend trade relations on the North American continent? The stakes of this question are high, since it could determine how long Trump’s massive tariffs remain in effect. Unfortunately, the president himself does not seem to know the answer.
In recent weeks, Trump has provided five different — and contradictory — justifications for his tariffs on Mexico and Canada, none of which make much sense.
Read all about it at Vox.
That’s all I have for you today. Please take care of yourselves in this terrible time for our country.
This is going to be a brief post, because I’m not feeling well today. It’s just a cold, but I’m really tired and not up to doing much.
The election is less than a month off. I got my mail-in ballot a couple of days ago, and I plan to send it in today or tomorrow. I can’t wait to vote for Kamala Harris. I would have done it already, but there are a bunch of ballot questions I have to read about first. One that I know I will vote for will end the practice of requiring students to pass standardized tests (MCAS) in order to graduate.
Kamala Harris and Howard Stern
Harris has given a bunch of interviews this week, and more are coming. Of course the mainstream media is not happy, because she chose interviewers who are likely to reach voters who don’t follow the news day to day like us politics junkies.
Alec Regimbal at SFGate: Kamala Harris’ viral interview appearances are really pissing off legacy media.
Politico opened its morning newsletter on Sunday with a gripe.
“DON’T CALL IT A ‘MEDIA BLITZ’ — After avoiding the media for nigh on her whole campaign, VP KAMALA HARRIS is … still largely avoiding the media,” the two authors of Playbook wrote.
The specific media the authors are talking about here is “legacy media,” also called the “mainstream media.” Think CNN, the New York Times or Fox News. Politico accuses Harris of skirting outlets like those in favor of alternative venues, such as podcasts and late-night TV.
The complaint comes after Harris’ team announced her latest media schedule. On Monday, she’s slated to appear on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” and then on Thursday, she plans to stop in Nevada for a Univision town hall. She was interviewed on the wildly popular sex and dating podcast “Call Her Daddy” in an episode that was released on Sunday, and later this week, she’s scheduled to appear on “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
The Playbook authors admit that the “60 Minutes” interview and the Univision town hall may offer some value to voters, but they take issue with the other appearances on her schedule.
“Let’s be real here: Most of these are not the types of interviews that are going to press her on issues she may not want to talk about, even as voters want more specifics from Harris,” the authors wrote. “Instead, expect most of these sit-downs to be a continuation of the ‘vibes’ campaign Harris has perfected.”
Harris and Stephen Colbert
Politico’s real gripe, though, is that Harris is doing a disservice to voters by avoiding difficult interviews with news outlets like, well, Politico. This is something that only news outlets like Politico care about. Voters don’t care. Anyone reading or watching exclusive news interviews with Harris is already an engaged voter and has probably already decided who they’re going to vote for in November.
Harris is employing a smart strategy. When your opponent in an election is Donald Trump, and tens of millions of people will vote for you based on the fact that you’re not Trump, you can afford to spend time courting, and possibly energizing, the folks who are less engaged with politics. “Call her Daddy” is the fifth-most popular podcast on Spotify. Is it really not worth an hour of Harris’ time to appear in front of that audience?
Politico says its criticism is warranted because somebody needs to ask Harris the tough questions that voters want answered. But she’s already doing that. CBS News released a preview of Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview, and it shows her talking about her proposed economic policies. What tough questions is she not answering? Politico never says.
Here’s a tough question: Who cares? To complain that a presidential candidate is not doing interviews with the same outlets that have had almost exclusive access to presidential candidates forever reeks of superciliousness. It’s also counterintuitive. Essentially saying to Harris, “Come do an interview with us so we can kick your ass” is not a persuasive argument. When I was in college studying journalism, my professors often warned that journalists tend to display a uniquely annoying type of arrogance. That’s exactly the type of self-important pretense that we’re seeing here.
Harris is doing exactly what she needs to do, and she’s not going to be intimidated by the likes of Politico, or even The New York Times. She was on 60 Minutes on Monday. Yesterday she went on The View, The Howard Stern Show, and Stephen Colbert. I haven’t heard/seen the first two, but I did watch Colbert’s show last night. Harris was great and the audience reaction was enthusiastic, to put it mildly. More interviews are coming.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the new book by Bob Woodward that is coming out next week. As usual, Woodward kept quiet about important information in order to increase sales. The biggest revelation is that Donald Trump sent Covid tests to Vladimir Putin during the time when Americans were desperate for tests and thousands of people were dying every day. In addition, Trump has stayed in contact with Putin since he left the White House.
Isaac Stanley-Becker at The Washington Post: Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says.
As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.
According to CNN, Bob Woodward’s latest book reveals that Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin as many as seven times since leaving the Presidency.
“In one scene, Woodward recounts a moment at Mar-a-Lago where Trump tells a senior aide to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
“According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward writes.
Woodward asked Trump aide Jason Miller whether Trump and Putin had spoken since he left the White House. “Um, ah, not that, ah, not that I’m aware of,” Miller told Woodward.
“I have not heard that they’re talking, so I’d push back on that,” Miller added.
Woodward writes that Biden’s Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines “carefully hedged” when asked about whether there were any post-presidency Trump-Putin calls.
“I would not purport to be aware of all contacts with Putin. I wouldn’t purport to speak to what President Trump may or may not have done,” Haines said, according to Woodward.”
According to WaPo’s version of the Woodward story the incident where Trump asked an aide to leave the room happened in early 2024.
This is unsurprising. After all, Trump has repeatedly described speaking to Putin in advance of the Ukraine invasion, including fairly explicitly during the debate with Joe Biden.
“When Putin saw that, he said, you know what? I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my – this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream. The difference is he never would have invaded Ukraine. Never.”
But the confirmation that Trump keeps speaking to Putin is important for several other reasons.
We still don’t know where all the stolen documents are
If Trump was speaking to Putin before the Ukraine investigation and at least as recently as earlier this year, he was speaking to him during the investigation into his stolen documents, during the period when Trump was hiding boxes from his attorney to make sure he could steal documents.
Trump was going back and referring to some of these documents during the period he worked with Putin.
And perhaps most importantly, there were presumably classified documents loaded onto his plane on June 3, 2022 that got flown back to Bedminster, and probably some remained hidden at Mar-a-Lago (the FBI failed to search a room off Trump’s suite).
The FBI has never found the missing classified documents.
Trump was charged with hoarding some of America’s most secret documents in his basement. And during that entire period, he was checking in regularly with the leader of a hostile foreign country, the one who keeps helping him get elected.
There’s more at the Emptywheel link.
Another strange Trump lie: he claimed to have spent time in Gaza. Daniel Dale at CNN: Fact check: No evidence for Trump’s claim he has been to Gaza.
Walter Chandoha’s daughter Marie and kitten.
Today’s illustrations are by Walter Chandoha, a famed cat photographer.
It’s difficult to believe that Trump’s lying could get any worse, but it has. He is now spreading outrageous lies at a level no one has seen before, to use one of his favorite phrases. And when Trump lies, MAGA Republicans follow his example. Lately, Trump has been spreading dangerous lies about the government’s efforts to aid communities devastated by Hurricane Helene.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson published a piece about this today at her Substack “Letters from an American.”
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”
Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.”
Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.
But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.
Walter Chandoha, The Mob
As always, Trump’s false claims represent projection of his own behavior onto others. Back to the Richardson piece:
Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
Unfortunately, Trump supporters actually believe his nonsensical lies, and that could lead to people failing to get the help they need from FEMA. Read more examples at the Substack link above.
WYFF4 in Greenville, SC, posted FEMA’s responses to several rumors that have been fed by the MAGAs:
Rumor: FEMA does not have enough money to provide disaster assistance for Helene.
Fact: FEMA has enough money right now for immediate response and recovery needs. If you were affected by Helene, do not hesitate to apply for disaster assistance as there is a variety of help available for different needs.
By Walter Chandoha
Rumor: FEMA is asking for cash donations and turning away volunteers.
Fact: This is false: FEMA does not ask for or generally accept any cash donations or volunteers for disaster response. We do encourage people who want to help to volunteer with or donate cash to reputable voluntary or charitable organizations. After a disaster, cash is often the best way to help as it provides the greatest flexibility for these reputable organizations working on the ground to purchase exactly what is needed. If you encounter someone claiming to represent FEMA and asking for donations, be careful as that is likely a scam. Government employees will never solicit money. Learn more about how to help after a disaster: How to Help After Hurricane Helene
Fact: This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.
Rumor: FEMA is confiscating donations for survivors.
Fact: Rumors about FEMA turning away donations, stopping trucks or vehicles with donations, confiscating and seizing supplies often spread after a disaster. These are all false. FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations. Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning, and distributing donated items. FEMA does not conduct vehicle stops or handle road closures with armed guards — those are done by local law enforcement.
And this one in particular could badly hurt desperate survivors:
Rumor: FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
Fact: This is false. One type of assistance that is often approved quickly after you apply is Serious Needs Assistance, which is $750 to help pay for essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify to receive once you apply for disaster assistance. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing and home repair costs. Learn more about the types of assistance available. If you have questions about your disaster assistance application and what you qualify for, contact us at 1-800-621-3362 to speak with a FEMA representative.
It’s sickening that Trump and his followers are pushing this nonsense, and they will continue to do so.
From Reuters, another article on Helene misinformation: US officials struggle to quash Hurricane Helene conspiracy theories.
In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene in the United States this week, a new storm emerged on social media – false rumors about how disaster funds have been used, and even claims that officials control the weather.
Local and national government officials say they are trying to combat the rumors, including one spread by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
By Walter Chandoha
One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
Republican Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X Thursday night: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
The conspiracy theories come at a pivotal time for rescue and recovery efforts following the storm, one of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes this century. And the presidential election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is just over a month away.
Republicans and Democrats alike say the rumors are causing problems.
“I just talked to one Senator that has had 15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. ‘fill in the blank,'” said Kevin Corbin, a Republican in the North Carolina Senate – a state that is one of the hardest hit by Helene. “98% chance it’s not true and if it is a problem, somebody is aware and on it,” he wrote on Facebook.
“I’m growing a bit weary of intentional distractions,” he added.
White House officials on Friday accused some Republican leaders and conservative media of intentionally peddling rumors to divide Americans in a way that could harm disaster relief efforts.
“Disinformation of this kind can discourage people from seeking critical assistance when they need it most,” a White House memo said. “It is paramount that every leader, whatever their political beliefs, stops spreading this poison.”
This piece on disinformation is from Jordan Green at Raw Story:
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Denver Riggleman, who served as senior technical advisor to the January 6th Committee, said he believes there is a significant risk of violence during the vote count of the Nov. 5, 2024 election because supporters of Republican nominee Donald Trump are so deeply immersed in conspiracy theories.
“They still have a plan to probably use lawfare to go after some of these certain states, but violence is certainly possible,” Riggleman told Raw Story. “I would say it’s actually probable. And I think it’s because you have people that are so riled up with these conspiracy theories and this good-against-evilvendetta that Donald Trump and I think a lot of the far right and the Christian nationalist type of individuals have been pushing into sort of the MAGA communications ecosystem.
Walter Chandoha’s daughter Marie feeding cats.
“It scares the hell out of me, as someone who’s dealt in counterterrorism for so long, to know that some of the same people who are around him — or a lot of the same people around him — for January 6th, 2021,” Riggleman added, “are the same people in his campaign today and the same people who were authors of Project 2025.”
A former Republican congressman and former military intelligence officer, Riggleman spoke to Raw Story after taping a message to North Carolina Republicans and independent voters on behalf of the Harris campaign at a recreation center in Greensboro on Thursday.
“Violence is bubbling right beneath the surface,” Riggleman said, citing the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the two assassination attempts on Trump this past summer. Riggleman identified variations on the QAnon conspiracy theory as a driving force of political violence.
“QAnon and that whole conspiracy theory mindset of ‘the Deep State’ or ‘globalists,’ or ‘false flags,’ that has bubbled into almost a mainstream belief, I would say within 30 to 35 percent of the Republican Party,” he said. “So, now it’s a battle of good against evil, as far as they’re concerned. The Democrats, independents and the RINOs — whoever they are — represent what’s evil. And I think that should scare the hell out of people. Because once you start dehumanizing people, that’s when violence is possible.
Read more at Raw Story.
Walter Chandoha, Cat and kitten
The Washington Post declines to use the word “lie”: As Trump makes false claims about hurricane relief, White House calls it ‘poison.’
EVANS, Ga. — Former president Donald Trump doubled down on misinformation about Hurricane Helene in an appearance in this storm-ravaged state Friday, repeating the falsehood that the White House used disaster funds for migrants.
Kamala Harris completely dominated Trump in last night’s debate, and in the process made him look like a foolish, angry old man. She threw him off at the outset by forcing him to shake her hand after he stalked to the podium, obviously trying to avoid her. Trump never looked at Harris once during the debate and never said her name, but she looked at him and spoke directly to him.
The moderators gave Trump more time to rant and rave, but Harris made good use of that by using facial expressions to demonstrate her disdain for his stupidity and his many blatant lies. Every time she had the floor, she mocked him mercilessly. She never once lost her cool.
Trump, on the other hand, lost control early on after she mocked his rallies and his obsessions with Hannibal Lector and windmills and then noted that people leave his rallies early because they are bored stiff by his repetitive, nonsensical rants. After that, he flew into a rage and never recovered.
I’m going to share some media reactions to the debate–mostly from independent writers, because I’m personally fed up with the mainstream outlets–especially the NYT and WaPo.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Kamala Harris Directly Confronted The Trump Menace In Our Midst.
Kamala Harris practiced a different kind of dominance politics in last night’s debate, confronting the menace of Donald Trump directly and taking him down a peg like you would a schoolyard bully.
After nearly a decade of Trump doing as he pleases with little accountability, a lot of appeasement, and very rare consequence, he was brought up short by an opponent who looked him in the eye, called him out, didn’t back down, and in the process threw him off his game and took command of the debate stage.
The emotional weight of her presentation was centered on confronting him with a combination of mockery, scorn, bemusement, disdain, and condescension. Yes, it got under his skin, Yes, he was rattled, Yes, it turned him into a fulminating old man. I’m less interested though in the stagecraft she used than in the catharsis it provided to viewers who have craved to see Trump get his comeuppance for so many years, only to be repeatedly and endlessly disappointed.
It was Joe Biden’s failure to confront Trump on this level during their debate in June that led to the existential crisis among Democrats. Biden failed in multiple ways in that debate, but the biggest letdown was his failure to stand up to Trump in a convincing fashion and instead let Trump run all over him.
In contrast, Harris confronted Trump repeatedly. She referred to him as a “disgrace” twice, as “dangerous and unfit,” as “confused,” and as lacking the right “temperament” to be president. She derided him to his face as someone dictators know “they can manipulate … with flattery and favors.” She often referred to him in the second person, a more charged and direct way of punching the bully in the nose. She called him out for warring against the rule of law and the Constitution and for his own criminally-charged conduct.
Kurtz posted a number of Harris’ facial reactions to Trump’s nonsense; click the link to see them.
From You Tube, Trump losing it and claiming immigrants are “eating the dogs.”
The Independent on Trump buying into this weird conspiracy theory: Bizarre debate moment Trump wildly claims Haitian migrants are eating pet dogs and cats.
Donald Trump’s false claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting pets and eating them during Tuesday’s presidential debate was quickly slapped down by ABC News moderator David Muir.
While on the debate stage in Philadelphia, the former president asserted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating dogs” and “eating the cats” while pushing his anti-immigration policies.
“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States,” the former president said.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” the former president claimed.
As he spoke, Harris looked in disbelief at the former president before laughing.
There is no evidence that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets.
Muir corrected the former president, adding: “ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Trump interrupted Muir and disputed him, claiming he saw it “on television.”
“Well, I’ve seen people on television. People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food,’ so maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager,” Trump said.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast on Harris forcing Trump to shake hands: Trump Tries to Dodge Harris’ Handshake Before Debate Starts.
Who saw that coming?
In a shocking slice of professionalism, or perhaps mind games, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shared an awkward handshake before Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Harris initiated the greeting, walking to behind Trump’s podium for the brief moment after they each took the stage—Trump from the left and Harris from the right on TV broadcasts.
Trump gave Harris a strong handshake and told her “good luck” before Harris returned to her podium. In photos of the encounter, Harris appears to be smirking and giving Trump a side-eye.
It’s the first handshake before a presidential debate since Trump and Hillary Clinton met for the first time on stage in 2016.
Aaron Rupar’s assessment of the debate at Public Notice: Kamala Harris dogwalks Trump. She put on a debate masterclass, triggering Donald into a tailspin.
Kamala Harris walked right onto that stage in Philadelphia last night, approached Donald Trump as he tried to slink away behind his podium, and shook his hand.
That subtle show of dominance (watch it below) set the tone for a debate performance from the Democratic nominee that was everything Democrats could’ve hoped for and then some.
After a June debate that left me feeling catatonic and made the terrifying prospect of a second Trump presidency more palpable than ever, last night served as a morale-boosting reminder that he’s very beatable — especially considering who he’s up against now.
Kamala Harris won and did so convincingly. And a frazzled Trump doesn’t seem to have answers….
Trump started the debate off calmly, but it didn’t last long. Things really started slipping for him after Harris hit him where it hurts by bringing up the fact that his fans are in the habit of leaving his rallies early.
The facial expressions Harris made as Trump responded by spewing a bunch of angry lies were priceless.
Trump was off balance the rest of the night. He threw JD Vance under the bus while serving up a word salad about his views on abortion. He defended his call decades ago for a group of Black teens to be executed for a crime they did not commit by insisting “a lot of people agreed with me.” He repeatedly refused to answer a question about whether he wants Ukraine or Russia to win the war his dictator buddy started, though he did at one point suggest disconcertingly that Putin might nuke the United States.
One of Trump’s worst moments came during the healthcare discussion. Asked by ABC moderator Linsey Davis if he’s developed any sort of plan over over the past nine years, Trump made clear that he still hasn’t, lamely saying that “I have concepts of a plan.”
Trump was so bad that even Fox News couldn’t sugarcoat it, and CNN’s post-debate panel was openly talking about his obvious decline. And while some of Trump’s troubles were self-inflicted, Harris deserves a lot of credit for masterfully dogwalking him all over the stage….
In addition to triggering Trump over crowd size, Harris pulled no punches during the foreign affairs portion of the debate, saying “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump” and military leaders think he’s “a disgrace.”
Trump then played right into Harris’s hands by touting his endorsement from Hungarian strongman Victor Orban.
Read more and see more videos at Public Notice.
At The Daily Beast, Lilly Mae Lazarus wrote about Harris’s hilarious facial expressions while Trump was talking: How Kamala Harris’ Face Told the Story of the Debate.
With mics muted during Tuesday night’s debate, there were few opportunities for cross-talk or clapbacks. (At least at the beginning of the night.) Kamala Harris didn’t need to say what she was thinking out loud, though. Her face did most of the talking for her.
The vice president abandoned any semblance of a poker face while Donald Trump rambled and rebutted. She cocked her brow, cringed, and served incredulous side-eye at her political opponent throughout the night. The GOP presidential candidate, meanwhile, did his best to maintain a stoic face.
Please check out the photos of the facial expressions at the Daily Beast link above.
Rolling Stone: Harris Does What Biden Couldn’t at Debate, Destroys Trump on Abortion.
When Donald Trump debated President Joe Biden in June, one of the most cringe-inducing moments was when Trump announced, unchallenged, the batshit insane lie that Democrats want to “kill” babies. “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth — after birth — if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this,” Trump said. “He said, ‘We’ll put the baby aside, and will determine what we do with the baby,’ meaning: We’ll kill the baby.’”
Biden couldn’t choke out a coherent sentence in response. On Tuesday in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris had the chance for a re-do after Trump again pushed the same lie. But even before she opened her mouth, ABC’s Linsey Davis — moderating the debate with her colleague David Muir — corrected Trump: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill the baby after it’s born.”
Harris went on to slam Trump for packing the Supreme Court with conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and detailed the horrific experiences of women living in states that have implemented strict abortion restrictions in the aftermath.
The vice president spoke of “Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest, calling on viewers to “understand what that means: A survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.”
She spoke of women bleeding out after miscarriages, afraid to get medical help, and children who are victims of incest being forced to carry pregnancies to term. She pledged, as she has repeatedly since becoming the Democratic nominee, to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade if she is elected with a Democratic majority. “If Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban,” she added.
A representative for Harris campaign, which aid it was monitoring the reactions of groups of undecided voters via dial groups in battleground states, said those voters had a strong response during the debate when Harris talked about abortion: “This really was off the charts, we rarely see dials go this high.” The represented added that in the 9 p.m. hour during the debate, 71 percent of their grassroots donors were women.
One more reaction from David Frum at The Atlantic: How Harris Roped a Dope. She stayed human when Trump went feral.
Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown.
She succeeded.
Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself.
He failed.
Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.
Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backwards-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a presidential debate hosted by ABC with Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.
Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.
Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.
Something every woman watching the debate probably noticed: Trump could not bring himself to say the name of the serving vice president, his opponent for the presidency. For him, Harris was just a pronoun: a nameless, identity-less “she,” “her,” “you.” It’s said that narcissists cope with ego injury by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the person who inflicted the hurt. If so, that might explain Trump’s behavior. Harris bruised his feelings, and Trump reacted by shutting his eyes and pretending that Harris had no existence of her own independent of President Joe Biden, whose name Trump was somehow able to speak.
Hemmed, harried, and humiliated, Trump lost his footing and his grip. He never got around to making an affirmative case for himself. If any viewer was nostalgic for the early Trump economy before its collapse in his final year in office, that viewer must have been disappointed. If a viewer wanted a conservative policy message, any conservative policy message, that viewer must have been disappointed. When asked whether he had yet developed a health-care plan after a decade in politics, Trump could reply only that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Almost from the start, Harris was in control. She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral. She had warm words for political opponents such as John McCain and Dick Cheney; Trump had warm words for nobody other than Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman whom Trump praised for praising Trump. It was an all-points beatdown, and no less a beating because Trump inflicted so much of it on himself.
Frum has come a long way since the GW Bush days. And face it; the guy can really write.
Even Republicans admit that Harris won the debate.
HuffPost: ‘Trump Had A Bad Night’: Conservative Pundits Declare Kamala Harris Winner Of Debate.
Conservative pundits acknowledged on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris got the better of former President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, citing her success in getting under his skin.
“Let’s make no mistake. Trump had a bad night,” Fox News host Brit Hume said. “We just heard so many of the old grievances that we all know aren’t winners politically.”
“She was exquisitely well-prepared, she laid traps, and he chased every rabbit down every hole,” added former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who often appears as a commentator on ABC News.
“Whoever prepared Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie said.
Trump lost his cool early in the debate, and never recovered.
Harris baited Trump by bringing up the attendance at his campaign events, saying people leave his rallies early out of boredom and exhaustion. She also got under Trump’s skin by bringing up his calls for the execution of the Central Park Five, the teens who were later exonerated in the 1989 rape of a jogger, calling him a weak person who is mocked by world leaders and questioning his mental acuity.
“We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible in the history of politics,” Trump shot back at one point, veering off his message on immigration.
Trump also got into trouble by again denying he lost the 2020 presidential election despite only days earlier acknowledging he lost “by a whisker.” But the most bizarre moment of the night may have been Trump bringing up false reports of migrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, which Republicans have seized on as a reason to crack down on migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Hill: House Republicans bemoan Trump debate performance: ‘Not good.’
House Republicans are bemoaning former President Trump’s performance in the first — and potentially only — debate against Vice President Harris, acknowledging that the Democratic nominee successfully got under her GOP opponent’s skin.
Several times throughout the more than 90-minute debate in Philadelphia, Harris appeared to try to bait Trump with attacks on matters that hit close to home — the size of his rallies, the magnitude of his family fortune, world leaders “laughing” at him — in an effort to thwart his composed posture. Some House Republicans say she succeeded.
“I’m just sad,” one House Republican who is supportive of Trump told The Hill. “She knew exactly where to cut to get under his skin. Just overall disappointing that he isn’t being more composed like the first debate.”
“The road just got very narrow,” they added. “This is not good.”
A second House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said “many” in the GOP conference were “disappointed” that Trump could not stay on message throughout the debate.
“She talks to us like toddlers but is doing a good job provoking him. He [is] right on policy but can’t keep to a message,” the lawmaker said. “Many are disappointed he couldn’t stay focused or land a punch. Not sure much changes but it wasn’t a good performance.”
“Lots of missed opportunities so far,” a third House Republican told The Hill in a text message during the debate. “It’s not devastating – but it’s not good.”
The final insult for Trump came after the debate, when Taylor Swift announced she will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice president. The Guardian: Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president in post signed ‘childless cat lady.’
Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, in a post on Instagram published minutes after the US presidential debate, saying the Democratic candidate would be the “warrior” to fight for the rights and causes she believes in.
“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can,” Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers late on Tuesday, adding: “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election”.
“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
In her statement, Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote….
Swift said she had watched the US presidential debate between Harris and Trump, and urged her fans to do their research on “the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most”.
She signed off “Childless cat lady,” a reference to comments made by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. The picture that appeared with the post was of Swift with her cat Benjamin Button, one of three she owns.
I’m going to end there, but I have a couple more articles that I’ll share in the comments. If you didn’t watch the debate, You can read the transcript at ABC News and/or watch the full debate on YouTube.
Have a great day!!
Last night, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz held their biggest rally yet in Glendale, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb. The crowd numbered around 15,000 people. Once again, the atmosphere was joyful and enthusiastic, with the crowd cheering lustily. Later last night, Trump spoke to a much smaller crowd, in a large venue with hundreds of empty seats. There was no joy at his sad rally.
The Guardian: Harris and Walz whip up crowd at packed Phoenix rally – but ‘we are the underdog.’
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz rallied a packed arena outside Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday – drawing perhaps the largest Democratic crowd of the election cycle this year.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, her running mate and the local leaders who joined them on stage whipped up the crowd, discussing immigration, abortion rights and Indigenous sovereignty.
Noting the Indigenous leaders in the room, Harris also said: “I will always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination.” Indigenous voters are credited with helping deliver Arizona to Joe Biden in 2020; the state is home to 22 federally recognized tribes.
At one point during her speech, Harris was interrupted by protesters chanting “free, free Palestine” and other messages in support of Gaza. She stopped her speech to address the protesters.
“We’re here to fight for our democracy, which includes respecting the voices that I think we are hearing from. Let me just speak to that for a moment and then I’ll get back to the business at hand,” she said. “I have been clear: now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage deal done. Now is the time. And the president and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire deal done and bring the hostages home.” Her statement represented a noticeable change in tone from her approach to Gaza protesters in Detroit on Thursday.
Harris and Walz took the stage at the Desert Diamond Arena, a venue that can hold 20,000 people. Although official estimates are not yet available, the Harris campaign confirmed that more than 15,000 people attended the Phoenix rally. On stage, in front of attendees waving signs that read “Coach!”, Walz said the rally “might be the largest political gathering in the history of Arizona”.
“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,” he added.
Other Harris campaign events this week that have drawn crowds of up to 15,000, invoking the ire of Donald Trump, who claims to have “spoken to the biggest crowds”.
The Harris-Walz rally represents a renewed push to put the Sun belt back on the map for Harris’s still young campaign. Before Friday night, the state appeared to be leaning red, with Trump leading Harris by single digits in recent polls. But by the evening of the rally, Harris and Trump appeared neck and neck in the state, with polling from FiveThirtyEight showing Harris’ 44.4% closely following Trump’s 44.8%.
Polls on Friday morning showed Harris narrowly leading Trump nationwide.
Harris also addressed immigration in her Arizona speech. AP: Kamala Harris makes an immigration pitch in Arizona as she fights to gain ground in the Sun Belt.
Vice President Kamala Harris drew on her prosecutorial background to make her first expansive pitch on immigration to border-state voters as she and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attracted thousands to a campaign rally in Arizona during their tour of battleground states.
Harris, the former attorney general of California, reminded the crowd that she, as a law enforcement official, targeted transnational gangs, drug cartels and smugglers.
Trump won’t be happy with the latest polls of swing states. Also from The Guardian: New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states.
“I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won,” Harris said in front of a crowd of more than 15,000 in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. “So I know what I’m talking about.”
Harris promoted a border security bill that a bipartisan group of senators negotiated earlier this year, which Republican lawmakers ultimately opposed en masse at Republican nominee Donald Trump’s behest.
“Donald Trump does not want to fix this problem,” Harris said. “Be clear about that: He has no interest or desire to actually fix the problem. He talks a big game about border security, but he does not walk the walk.”
Trump won’t be happy with the latest swing state polls.
The Guardian: New poll shows Harris four points ahead of Trump in three key swing states.
A major new poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump in three key swing states, signaling a dramatic reversal in momentum for the Democratic party with three months to go until the election.
The vice-president leads the ex-president by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50% to 46%, among almost 2,000 likely voters in each state, according to new surveys by the New York Times and Siena College.
The polls were conducted between 5 and 9 August, in the week that Harris named midwesterner Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and a former high school teacher, as her running mate for November’s Democratic ticket.
It provides the clearest indication from crucial battleground states since Joe Biden pulled out of the race and endorsed Harris amid mounting concerns about the 82-year-old’s cognitive wellbeing and fitness to govern for a second term. The results come after months of polling that showed Biden either tied with or slightly behind Trump.
Harris is viewed as more intelligent, more honest and more temperamentally fit to run the country than Trump, according to the registered voters polled.
The findings, published on Saturday by the Times, will boost the Democrats, as Harris and Walz continue crisscrossing the country on their first week on the campaign trail together, holding a slew of events in swing states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election….
While only a snapshot, Democrats will probably be heartened to see that 60% of the surveyed independent voters, who always play a major role in deciding the outcome of the race, said they are satisfied with the choice of presidential candidates, compared with 45% in May.
The swing appears to be largely driven by evolving voter perceptions of Harris, who has been praised for her positivity and future-focused stump speeches on the campaign trail. In Pennsylvania, where Biden beat Trump by just more than 80,000 votes four years ago, her favorability rating has surged by 10 points since last month among registered voters, according to Times/Siena polling.
Harris will need to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan – crucial battleground states that Biden clinched in 2020 – if the Democrats are to regain the White House.
There’s also good news out of Nevada. The Nevada Independent: New Nevada poll sees Harris with biggest lead over Trump yet.
A new poll of likely Nevada voters found Vice President Kamala Harris with a nearly 6 percentage point lead over former President Donald Trump — the largest lead for a Democrat in any presidential poll of Nevadans this cycle.
While Nevada polls have been relatively scarce since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, the vice president appears to have closed the gap that existed between Trump and Biden, who had not led Trump in a single public poll taken in the state since October 2023.
A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll of Nevada in late July found Harris with a 2 percentage point lead in the head-to-head matchup — Democrats’ first leading poll of the cycle — and the Cook Political Report moved Nevada back into the “toss-up” category Thursday after previously categorizing it as “lean Republican.”
This latest poll, conducted by Decipher Ai’s David Wolfson, a pollster and Columbia University lecturer, sampled 991 likely voters across Nevada from Aug. 3-5 in a SMS/text-to-web poll on the presidential and House races. The statewide margin of error is 3 percentage points and between 6 percentage points and 7 percentage points for House races….
On the presidential ballot, Harris garnered 49.2 percent support while Trump received 43.6 percent. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received only 3.9 percent of the vote. Kennedy’s vote share is lower than the 8 percentage points to 10 percentage points he had been receiving, on average, when Biden was on the ballot. In an interview, Johnston said Kennedy’s polling fade reflects what typically happens to third-party candidates as the election nears.
Harris’ lead in this poll may be an outlier, but it mimics Biden’s position at this point in the cycle in 2020 when FiveThirtyEight polling averages showed he led in Nevada by about 6 percentage points. Biden ultimately won the state by about 2.4 percentage points.
Harris has received some major endorsements. From CNN:
Harris gains major endorsements: The nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), has endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket. It is the first time LULAC has endorsed a presidential. candidate in its almost 100-year history. Culinary and bartenders unions in Las Vegas also endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket Friday.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) also endorsed Harris this week.
In her speech last night, Harris told the crowd that she worked at McDonalds one summer. The Independent: Kamala Harris could make history as the first president to work at McDonald’s.
More than 13 percent of Americans, or roughly 41 million people, have worked at a McDonald’s restaurant at some point in their lives. That includes Kamala Harris, who worked at a restaurant for a summer while she was in college.
Harris mentioned her brief stint on the fryer when she joined the picket line with fast food workers in Las Vegas in 2019 and during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in April. (Her order? “Quarter pounder with cheese and fries,” and barbecue sauce for dipping if she gets McNuggets).
Now, the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign is nodding to her summer job to highlight her upbringing and a platform to boost American workers that stands in stark contrast to her Republican rival Donald Trump, who “has no plan to help the middle class — just more tax cuts for billionaires,” according to a recent ad.
McDonald’s is all over influential Americans’ resumes (former House Speaker Paul Ryan and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also worked in McDonald’s restaurants), but service worker labor unions and fast food employees have been leading nationwide efforts to improve working conditions for lower-wage workers, including calls to boost the federal hourly minimum wage to at least $15.
They could soon have a powerful advocate in one of their former coworkers.
Harris — who has earned endorsements from several influential unions, including Service Employees International Union, which supported the nationwide Fight for $15 campaign — stood with striking McDonald’s workers and protesters as she was launching her first presidential campaign.
“If we want to talk about these golden arches being a symbol of the best of America, well, the arches are falling short,” she said from Las Vegas in June 2019. “We have got to recognize that working people deserve livable wages.”
“I did the french fries and I did the ice cream,” she told workers.
“There was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table and keep the bills paid by the end of the month,” she added. “But the reality of McDonald’s is that a majority of the folk who are working there today are relying on that income to sustain a household and a family.”
Harris also made a point of stopping “lock him up” chants from the crowd. Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News: Harris shutting down ‘lock him up’ chants shields Trump’s federal Jan. 6 case from even more delays.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ efforts to shut down “lock him up” chants targeting Donald Trump at Harris-Walz rallies this week may be an effort to avoid engaging in the type of rhetoric seen at Trump rallies in 2016.
But there’s also a very practical reason for Harris to avoid showing any support for that type of language: Any comments or signs of approval she makes could further delay or complicate the pending federal criminal charges Trump is facing. That includes the Jan. 6 and 2020 election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
If Harris wins the election in November, Trump’s Jan. 6 case — though weakened by the Supreme Court — will continue to move toward trial. As sitting vice president in the administration that appointed the attorney general with oversight of the case, any comments Harris makes related to the trial could be fodder for the former president’s lawyers to argue in court that her comments interfered with Trump’s due process rights. That includes any suggestion that locking up Trump would be an explicit goal (as Trump repeatedly said about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign).
When a “lock him up” chant broke out at a Harris rally in Wisconsin this week, she said to supporters, “We’re gonna let the courts handle that,” and used a similar line when the same chant broke out at another rally. “Our job is to beat him in November,” she said.
Harris, a former prosecutor herself, has been cautious in her references to the array of civil and criminal cases that Trump has faced in recent years. Harris is aware of the impact she could have on Trump’s pending federal cases and has surrounded herself with Justice Department veterans — including her brother-in-law, Tony West, a former top DOJ official, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who vetted her vice presidential candidates.
This is important, because Trump’s DC case on January 6 and election subversion is active again and back in the capable hands of Judge Tanya Chutkan.
Joyce Vance wrote yesterday at Civil Discourse: Jack Smith Asks for More Time.
Late today, lawyers in the Special Counsel’s office and lawyers for Donald Trump filed the joint status report that wasn’t due until tomorrow in the Trump election interference case in the District of Columbia. The Special Counsel advised the court that it “continues to assess the new precedent” laid down by the Supreme Court creating the doctrine of presidential immunity and went on to ask the court for an additional three weeks to file “an informed proposal regarding the schedule for pretrial proceedings moving forward.” Trump’s lawyers didn’t oppose Jack Smith’s request. Now the timeline is up to Judge Chutkan.
What does that mean, and why is the government asking for more delay in the case? Those are legitimate questions, but I would not be quick to criticize the Justice Department here.
Part of the answer comes in the pleading itself, where Smith relates that under the relevant portion of the special counsel regulations, he is required to consult with other components in DOJ before moving forward: “A Special Counsel shall comply with the rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies of the Department of Justice. He or she shall consult with appropriate offices within the Department for guidance with respect to established practices, policies and procedures of the Department, including ethics and security regulations and procedures. Should the Special Counsel conclude that the extraordinary circumstances of any particular decision would render compliance with required review and approval procedures by the designated Departmental component inappropriate, he or she may consult directly with the Attorney General.”
Here, the parties’ task is to provide the court with a schedule for moving forward, but it’s deciding what events belong on that schedule that is problematic. Smith has an indictment that consists of four counts, 45 pages of allegations, and a mountain of evidence.
Click the link to read the rest.
In Trump news, people are still talking about the former “president’s” so called “press conference.”
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: The Truth About Trump’s Press Conference. His obvious emotional instability is frightening, not funny.
Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.
And then, once everyone cleans up and shakes the debris off their phones and laptops, so much of what Trump said seems too bonkers to have come from a former president and the nominee of a major party that journalists are left trying to piece together a story as if Trump were a normal person. This is what The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described as the “bias toward coherence,” and it leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.
Consider Trump’s press conference yesterday in Florida. Trump has been lying low since President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, at least in terms of public appearances. But Vice President Kamala Harris, the new Democratic nominee, and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, are gaining a lot of great press, and so Trump decided it was time to emerge from his sanctuary.
Trump, predictably, did an afternoon concert of his greatest hits, including “Doctors and Mothers Are Murdering Babies After They’re Born,” “Putin and Xi Love Me and I Love Them,” and “Gas Used to Be a Buck-Eighty-Something a Gallon.” But the new material was pretty shocking.
Trump not only declared that mothers are killing babies in the delivery room—he’s been saying that for years—but added the incomprehensible claim that liberals, conservatives, and independents alike are very happy that abortion has been returned to the states. (When asked how he would vote in Florida’s abortion referendum, he dodged the question, which suggests that maybe not everyone is happy.)
He said (again) that the convicted January 6 insurrectionists have been treated horribly, but this time he added that no one died during the assault on the Capitol. (In fact, four people died that day.) He made his usual assertion that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he’d been in office, but this time he added how much he looked forward to getting along with the Iranians, despite also bragging about how he tanked the nuclear deal with them.
He claimed that Harris was sliding in the polls, a standard Trump trope in talking about his opponents, but he added that he was getting crowd sizes up to 30 times hers at his rallies. Harris recently spoke to approximately 15,000 people in Detroit; 30 times that would be nearly half a million people, so Trump is now saying that he’s having rallies that are five times bigger than the average crowd at a Super Bowl—bigger, even, than Woodstock—and somehow fitting them all into arenas with seats to spare….
“Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said. And then, referring to the crowd that gathered at his behest on January 6, he compared it to the 1963 March on Washington: “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours: same real estate, same everything, same number of people.”
The March on Washington drew a quarter million people, almost six times the number that showed up during the attack on the Capitol. Trump agreed that official estimates said his crowd was smaller than King’s. He pressed on anyway: “But when you look at the exact same picture and everything is the same—because it was the fountains, the whole thing all the way back to go from Lincoln to Washington—and you look at it, and you look at the picture of my crowd … we actually had more people.”
Nichols goes on to recount Trump’s story about going down in a helicopter with San Francisco’s Willie Brown (Brown says this never happened.) and also the media’s attempts to make sense of Trump’s rambling rants. He concludes:
The Republican nominee, the man who could return to office and regain the sole authority to use American nuclear weapons, is a serial liar and can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
Donald Trump is not well. He is not stable. There’s something deeply wrong with him.
Any of those would have been important—and accurate—headlines.
Politico has finally located the man who actually was in that helicopter with Trump years ago: The other Black politician who says he was with Trump in that near-fatal chopper crash.
The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.
It was Nate Holden, a former city councilmember and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.
“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.”
“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.
Holden, who is 95 years old, was in touch with Trump and his team during the 1990s when the flamboyant Manhattan developer was trying to build on the site of the historic Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Holden represented the district at the time and supported the project.\
In the interview, Holden said he was watching Trump’s press conference on Thursday when the former president claimed that Brown was aboard during the white-knuckle helicopter ride.
In fact, Holden says he met Trump at Trump Tower, en route to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where they were going to tour the developer’s brand new Taj Mahal casino. In the lobby at Trump Tower, Holden says he was greeted by several people as “senator,” salutations that miffed the host.
“He said, ‘You know I own this building but nobody seems to know who I am,’” Holden remembered the mogul saying.
Finally, I want to highlight this piece in Propublica by Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey: Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos.
Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda for a right-wing presidential administration, has lost its director and faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy on behalf of a future Trump administration remains on track.
One centerpiece of that program is dozens of never-before-published videos created for Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. The vast majority of these videos — 23 in all, totaling more than 14 hours of content — were provided to ProPublica and Documented by a person who had access to them.
The Project 2025 videos coach future appointees on everything from the nuts and bolts of governing to how to outwit bureaucrats. There are strategies for avoiding embarrassing Freedom of Information Act disclosures and ensuring that conservative policies aren’t struck down by “left-wing judges.” Some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does.
In one video, Bethany Kozma, a conservative activist and former deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Trump administration, downplays the seriousness of climate change and says the movement to combat it is really part of a ploy to “control people.”
“If the American people elect a conservative president, his administration will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere,” Kozma says.
In the same video, Kozma calls the idea of gender fluidity “evil.” Another speaker, Katie Sullivan, who was an acting assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice under Trump, takes aim at executive actions by the administration of President Joe Biden that created gender adviser positions throughout the federal government. The goal, Biden wrote in one order, was to “advance equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity.”
Sullivan says, “That position has to be eradicated, as well as all the task forces, the removal of all the equity plans from all the websites, and a complete rework of the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications.”
Head over to ProPublica to read the whole thing.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.
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