Josh Marshall
Ashli Babbitt And Trump’s Stab In The Back Myth
If you haven’t read I hope you will read Josh Kovensky’s excellent write up of the racist storyline behind Trumpite efforts to create a martyrdom narrative around the death of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot to death as she tried to storm the Speaker’s Lobby during the January 6th insurrection. In the context of U.S. political culture this is a story about anti-Black racism and cultural revanche. But many have also recognized the broader context, which is that this is part of an evolving Big Lie “stab in the back” narrative which has been percolating on the right since soon after Trump’s defeat and took on a more certain shape after the January 6th insurrection.
Most of us know generally what “stab in the back” mythology refers to but it is worth understanding in the particulars where the idea comes from and how it relates to today.
With your indulgence, a quick history.
The President as Coup Plotter
We’re seeing a raft of stories yesterday and today about a new book from two Washington Post reporters which among other things provides Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley’s account of the aftermath of the 2020 election. In short, he says he and his colleagues were seriously concerned that the defeated President was plotting a coup to remain in office and did everything he could to stand against it.
Milley is a critical and fascinating player in this whole drama. You’ll remember that he accompanied the President on his Lafayette Square photo op debacle and then felt compelled – rightly – to apologize for having done so. But long before that the word was that Milley had gotten the top job in significant part because he had leaned more forward in ingratiating himself with the President than the other top contender for the job. More recently he’s been having a bit of a moment with Democrats. There was that exchange he had in his Capitol Hill testimony pushing back against anti-Critical Race Theory hysteria. And there have been a series of reports over recent weeks which hint at these new revelations.
Remember that little more than a week ago Donald Trump was revving up his rally crowd to go lynch the Capitol Police officer who shot the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt as she broke the last barricaded door protecting fleeing members of Congress. “Now if that were on the other side, the person who did the shooting would be strung up and hung. Now they don’t want to give the name. Who shot Ashli Babbitt? It’s got to be released.” The right wing media has been going full tilt identifying the officer as a black man.
Josh Kovensky digs deeper into the racist fury behind the Ashli Babbitt martyr narrative.
Scratching your head about the inner workings of the Senate? Wondering what on earth is going on with infrastructure and the filibuster? For Inside members, tomorrow at 3pm eastern I’ll be talking with Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii. Please join us live and ask your own questions. Register here.
In Tennessee’s hard move away not only from COVID vaccine outreach but all vaccine this directive stands out to me: “no outreach whatsoever regarding the HPV vaccine.”
I’m seeing lots of mainstream press commentary that Bernie Sanders had to scale back his ambitions a lot, essentially take a loss agreeing to a $3.5 trillion reconciliation framework. He wanted $6 trillion but had to settle for $3.5T. This seems to me a wildly blinkered view, verging on oblivious or tendentious.
You don’t negotiate by starting with what you’ll settle for or even what you want. You start with a high bid as Sanders clearly did here. That’s not a loss. That’s negotiating. The other point to keep in mind is that when you add up $3.5 trillion plus the bipartisan mini-bill plus the spending on the China/innovation legislation you come to a total number pretty close to Biden’s high end original set of proposals.
McAuliffe Baits Youngkin To Lean Into Trump
Republicans have a good model with winning out-year governors races in state like Virginia and New Jersey that hold their elections off the even numbered two year cycle. Bank on the energy of hungry Republicans partisans looking to win and election while presenting themselves to the electorate at large as a salt-of-the-earth problem-solver just looking to lend a hand. (Dems of course have their own version of this playbook.) But the situation in Virginia today shows how the Trump era may pose some problems for that model.
Glenn Youngkin is a former private equity CEO who played hard for Donald Trump’s endorsement to be the Republican nominee for Governor in Virginia. It worked. He got Trump’s endorsement and the nomination. But he’s generally eschewed the Republican label in the general election campaign and certainly not leaned into Trump and all that goes with him.
As noted, fired Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul’s decision to show up for work on Monday as though nothing had happened was deprived of some drama and charge since he was logging on from the home office in his mansion in New York. He found his login credentials had been revoked. “I’m here to do the job, but I can’t do anything with the communications shut down.”
The Filibuster Should Be Like What’s Happening Now in Texas
We’re witnessing another of these state legislators abscond across state lines dramas in Texas. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, it hearkens back to a similar drama in 2003 which presaged much of our current politics. But I’d like to take this in a different direction. What we’re seeing right now with these efforts to short-circuit the legislative process is what the legislative filibuster in the Senate should be like.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we move to a system where Senators run off to Canada or I guess in some cases Russia. It gets a bit more complicated in jurisdictional terms. But Texas Democrats clearly believe these laws are of an extraordinary character. Texas legislative Democrats get outvoted all the time. But they view this law as different from other laws they oppose. And most critically their actions are public and self-limiting.
Trump Demands Republicans Embrace the Insurrection
A week ago I noted that Donald Trump’s Sarasota campaign rally demand for freedom for indicted insurrectionists signaled the central theme of the 2022 midterm campaign. Trump also demanded retribution against for the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt as she broke through the final line of defense protecting fleeing members of Congress. The subsequent week has only confirmed that prediction as Trump has escalated his demands and fine-tuned his rhetoric.
Trump returned to the theme twice yesterday, first in an extended interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News and then in a speech to CPAC in Dallas. With Bartiromo he declared the insurrection “a lovefest between the Capitol Police and the people who walked down to the Capitol” and repeated his demand that “they have to release the people that are incarcerated.”