12 Republicans broke with the President in this border emergency vote. But what jumps out to me is that Cory Gardner, almost certainly the most vulnerable Republican in 2020, voted for Trump. Thom Tillis of North Carolina did too, though he’s in a much better position for reelection than Gardner. He even penned an oped opposing the President on this before flipping. Read More

The Southern Poverty Law Center has fired its founder, Morris Dees. Dees cofounded the SPLC in 1971.

Violence has always been at the root of Trumpism.

This was Beto O’Rourke’s big day. But I think it went pretty badly for him, though perhaps not in ways that will be immediately obvious.

This may sound odd since he got some good press, got the ritual insult from the President and landed a number of endorsements right out of the gate. But it’s the endorsements themselves that suggest a problem. Right out of the gate O’Rourke won the endorsement Kathleen Rice, the Long Island Rep most recently notable for leading the Moultonite faction which tried to deny Nancy Pelosi the Speakership by threatening the vote against the caucus’s choice on the House floor. Read More

Some seemingly off the beaten path efforts have a powerful impact. Check out this story on Unicorn Riot, a media collective that began as a project to highly social justice-related stories but has become a powerful repository of leaked transcripts from the various platforms where white supremacists and neo-nazis chat, plan and plot.

A chilling example of what I explained in the post below. Fox analyst and former Trump middle east advisor Whalid Phares calls what the gunman in New Zealand did “very understandable … on a political level, obviously it’s horrific and it should be condemned completely on the action level.” In other words, reasonable goals but he went about it the wrong way. Watch.

I read through the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto. It is, in so many words, 75 pages of “Great Replacement” ideology.

Most of the first half or so is rambling and looks written quickly. It includes a faux Q&A with himself, explaining his background, motivations, aims. Along the way there are a few jokes, a number of allusions to racist internet memes and even quotes.

The first half has a casual, rushed quality. The second half almost reads like it’s written by a different person. The writing is tighter and more portentous. It reads kind of like a “Great Replacement” version of Mao’s Little Red Book. It’s made up of single page sections, with text usually a paragraph or two long, aphoristic, each with an explanatory headline repeated at the end for effect. Perhaps relatedly he says that the People’s Republic of China is his ideal among modern nation states and the closest to his political and social values. Read More

We should note we’re back to the standard Trump dance in which he needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to call what happened in New Zealand “terrorism” as opposed to just some senseless, unfortunate thing. A short time ago Mercedes Schlapp, White House Director of Strategic Communications, went on Fox to insist that Trump had privately called the incident an “act of terror” even if he wouldn’t do so publicly. “I just spoke with the President, he made it very clear this is an act of terror.” Read More

Really quite remarkable. We’ve now seen the first portion of the President’s comments. He gave a generic condemnation of the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand and then proceeded to give a meandering speech about foreign “invasion”, i.e., immigrants “rushing our border”, calling them “murderers and killers”. In other words, moments after denouncing the massacre he went on with a lie-laden screed much of which was indistinguishable from the attacker’s manifesto. Read More

I felt it was important to transcribe President Trump’s exact words in which he dismisses the problem of “white nationalism” and suggests it’s unclear whether the Christchurch gunman is even part of the white nationalist or supremacist movement.

REPORTER: “Do you see today white nationalism as a rising threat around the world?”

TRUMP: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess if you look at what happened in New Zealand perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet. They’re just learning about the person and the people involved. But it’s certainly a terrible thing, a terrible thing.”

Video of this exchange after the jump. Read More