Donald Trump and some of his co-defendants scored a win on Wednesday when a Fulton County judge dismissed six counts in the Georgia RICO case.
Continue reading “Judge Tosses Six Counts In Trump’s Georgia RICO Case”Biden’s Options
There’s a good article in Haaretz today about the limits of U.S. sway over Israel with any kind of cut-off in U.S. weapons supplies. The piece is paywalled, so you can’t read it if you don’t have a subscription. But the gist covers a lot of ground we’ve discussed. Israel can make a number of the weapons itself, just not as quickly or cheaply. Most big-ticket items either aren’t being used in Gaza or don’t need to be replaced — aircraft, for instance. What Israel really needs are various munitions. But in the absence of those it might be forced to use bigger and more lethal bombs in Gaza. There’s even the risk that it might boomerang and strengthen Netanyahu at home.
Continue reading “Biden’s Options”Don’t Be Lulled Into Thinking Trump II Will Just Be A Repeat Of Trump I
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
We Have More Than An Inkling Of What’s To Come
After many months of very explicit promises from Donald Trump about what a second term as president would look like, Morning Memo still encounters folks who think it will merely be a repeat of his first term. Been there, done that. If we survived it once, we can survive it again.
That is an enormous misjudgment. It misunderstands the nature of the threat. It is an error of degree in that it wildly underestimates what can happen. It’s a failure of imagination because it takes Trump I as a starting point and can’t foresee beyond it. But it’s ultimately a category error, putting Trump II in the wrong bucket.
While we see Trump I as buckling institutions and eroding norms that barely held on for four years until the threat passed, Trump himself sees those same institutions and norms as too strong; and unlike in his first term he is directly targeting any potential constraints of his power and his whims. In his first term he bumped into and often unknowingly bulldozed through guardrails; in his second term, guardrails and anyone who would impose them are the enemy.
Trump I exploited the grievances of older white Americans. Trump II will be all of Trump’s own personal grievances – for losing in 2020, for being indicted, for being humiliated by woman prosecutors, for being successfully sued multiple times, for any manner of personal slight and ego-wounding – coming home to roost in the Oval Office, with all the powers attendant to it.
Trump will see his re-election as a vindication of all of his prior grievances, a green light for all his plans and proposals, a ratification of his promise of retribution. He is putting it all out there for voters to accept or reject. If they accept it, he will be imbued with enormous powers both in his own mind and in fact.
Trump’s retribution will be mean. It will be ugly. It will be merciless. It will not just be performative in a pro wrestling way, like so much of Trump I was. Just in the past few days, we have witnessed Trump’s adoration for strong men, learned that he praised Hitler for doing “some good things,” and seen him promise to “free” the Jan. 6 defendants.
Trump is currently purging the RNC in the same way he’s promised to purge the federal government. We know Trump wants to place loyalists throughout the federal government, that he wants lawyers who will abide by his desires and not raise legal objections to his conduct, that he sees his first term as not aggressive or unconstrained enough, blocked by the Deep State, RINOs, and others with loyalties to anything other than himself.
Trump’s plans are no mystery, and they’re no secret. It’s time to wake up to the threat directly in front of us. It’s not going to be what you think it is. It will be much worse.
The Hur Hearing
The testimony of Special Counsel Robert Hur yesterday on the Hill was a hard-to-watch shitshow, but it’s important to remember that while for you and me the context for it is the Mar-a-Lago classified docs case against Donald Trump, from which the Biden probe indirectly grew, for House Republicans the context is their great white whale: a Biden impeachment.
There’s some tension for the House GOP in trying to bootstrap the Hur report into their quest for evidence of Biden committing some kind of graft with his son Hunter. But that is the context in which they seized on Hur as part of the impeachment push.
The upshot, however, is that the impeachment push in the House is darn near DOA:
- Politico: As Biden impeachment stalls, House GOP turns to backup plans
- Punchbowl: Will the Biden impeachment inquiry ever end?
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, kind of gave up the game in an interview with Punchbowl: “If [impeachment] is a messaging of his wrongdoing, then let’s be honest, and say that we’re impeaching him as a message,” Issa said. “I don’t think we’ve been able to convince the other side of the aisle that as [Richard] Nixon needed to go, this man needs to go.”
Ron Klain Was Locked Out Of His Office On Inauguration Day
In an interview with TPM’s Hunter Walker and Luppe B. Luppen, former Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain for the first time recounts showing up early at the White House on Inauguration Day 2021 at the invitation of outgoing Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows only to find no Meadows and the office suite locked.
Is Ken Buck Trying To Block Lauren Boebert?
The sudden resignation of Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), effective at the end of next week, may be an attempt to thwart Rep. Lauren Boebert’s run for his seat.
Here’s the deal:
- Buck had already announced he wasn’t seeking re-election.
- Boebert, in a tight race in her own district, decided to switch districts and run for Buck’s empty seat instead.
- Buck’s immediate resignation forces a special election to be held in Colorado, now set for June, the same day as the already-scheduled GOP primary contest to serve a full term in the seat.
- A local GOP committee will offer up a nominee for the special election, and given her carpetbagging Boebert is not likely to get the nod.
In the pungent words of AP reporter Nick Riccardi, this seems like a “baroque effort” by Buck to stymy Boebert.
2024 Ephemera
- Clinched: Biden and Trump each sealed the deal Tuesday, winning enough delegates to secure their respective party nominations.
- Orbán-Trump fallout: Hungary hauled in the U.S. ambassador for a dressing down after President Biden accused Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of wanting to run a “dictatorship” in the wake of his meeting over the weekend with Trump.
- The GOP’s Abortion Conundrum: The WSJ got ahold of a briefing memo on abortion from the National Republican Congressional Committee and it neatly demonstrates what a colossal political problem Republicans have on their hands and their inability to deal with it.
- Spoiler alert: RFK Jr. is floating future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, the one-time pro wrestler, as potential running mates. He has reportedly already decided on his choice and will announce it in the next two weeks.
Big Legal News
The policymaking body of the federal court system made a big move to try to rein in the blatant judge-shopping that has given Trump judges in far-flung small divisions massive power, TPM’s Kate Riga reports.
When Your Governor Is A Dental Influencer
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is doing infomercial-style promos for a Texas dental practice … while serving as governor:
More On the Trump-Musk Relationship
Donald Trump made a bid last summer to get Elon Musk to buy Truth Social, the WaPo reports.
‘Wear The Right Fucking Colored Coats’
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Federal Courts Crack Down On Legal Strategy That Has Given Trump Judges Massive Power
The Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts, announced Tuesday that it would take action against the judge-shopping that has let right-wing litigants funnel cases to friendly, often Donald Trump-appointed judges.
Continue reading “Federal Courts Crack Down On Legal Strategy That Has Given Trump Judges Massive Power”Josh Replies to the Slings and Arrows of Those Claiming Digital News Advertising Is Going Great!
So I was very interested to see what seemed yesterday to be a promised vivisection of, well, me, after my post last week about the collapse of programmatic advertising and how it’s affected the news business. That is the post that included the chart of rapidly declining programmatic ad revenues. Gawker alum Foster Kamer linked to a promised takedown from Ben Smith in which Kamer is quoted and calls on everyone to stop “losing their minds at the death of media” because it’s a “very dumb chart.” (That’s yours truly’s chart: cue to Josh rending his garments.) But when I looked at the Ben Smith column it basically just repeated the points I made in the original post. So having been promised that I would be flayed alive, it turned out that wasn’t the case at all. Total low-energy move basically. But the comments did raise a few other issues that I thought worth mentioning.
Continue reading “Josh Replies to the Slings and Arrows of Those Claiming Digital News Advertising Is Going Great!”Everybody Tries To Circumvent House Republicans And Get Aid To Ukraine
The White House and House Democrats both made moves Tuesday to get aid to Ukraine, a burning priority for Democrats that Republicans are blocking in the House.
Continue reading “Everybody Tries To Circumvent House Republicans And Get Aid To Ukraine”Feast Upon The Outfits At This Year’s Oscars
The Oscars come only once a year, so we might as well take this opportunity to feast upon the fashion that was served this past Sunday night on the red carpet.
Emma Stone In Louis Vuitton
Lilly Gladstone In Gucci
Colman Domingo In Louis Vuitton
Robert Downey Jr. And Susan Downey In Saint Laurent
Margot Robbie In Versace
Cynthia Erivo In Louis Vuitton
Greta Gerwig In Gucci
Jon Batiste In Zegna
Yancey Red Corn
Emily Blunt In Schiaparelli And John Krasinski
Da’Vine Joy Randolph In Louis Vuitton
Sterling K. Brown In Dior
Nicolas Cage And Riko Shibata
Carey Mulligan In Balenciaga
Charlize Theron In Dior
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai In Dolce & Gabbana And Quannah Chasinghorse In Red Berry Woman
Bradley Cooper In Louis Vuitton
Florence Pugh In Del Core
Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves In Versace
Ryan Gosling In Gucci
Issa Rae In AMI Paris
Cillian Murphy In Versace
Zendaya In Armani
Anya Taylor-Joy In Dior
Odile Corso and Bill Corso
Melissa McCarthy In Christian Siriano
Billie Eilish In Chanel
Ron Klain Thinks The Biden ‘Alliance’ Is Strong Enough To Withstand Gaza And Trump
There were two hours to go before Ron Klain would officially become President Biden’s White House chief of staff, and he was locked out. Klain was about to become arguably the second most powerful person in the West Wing, but he ended up standing alone in a hallway outside the office he was set to occupy after an unsettling and odd saga that unfolded as former President Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, attempted to hold on to power during their final weeks in office.
Continue reading “Ron Klain Thinks The Biden ‘Alliance’ Is Strong Enough To Withstand Gaza And Trump”Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?
I just noticed a write up on Trump stumbling into saying there’s lots you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare. The Biden campaign and other Democrats were promptly all over those comments, as you’d expect. But it raises a point that is too little discussed in the campaign dialog. Trump has two big advantages right now. The first is simply that he’s not Joe Biden and Biden’s approval has been low since the fall of 2021. The other is a general sense that things were better before the pandemic. You might say, wait, the pandemic happened on his watch and the worst of it took place during his presidency. But that’s not really the public memory. In any case, those are his two big advantages. And they could get him elected.
What this has tended to obscure, however, is that politically he is very, very rusty. Even in Trumpian terms his speeches these days are disjointed, weird, discordant. And again — not by the standard of who you might want within a mile of the Oval Office. I mean even in terms of Trumpian politics. He’s not the same.
Continue reading “Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?”Experts Place New Secret Society Squarely In The Christian Nationalist Revival
A men-only, Christian-only, right-wing secret society with the aim of installing certain kinds of Christians in a future U.S. government does not want to be called Christian nationalist.
Continue reading “Experts Place New Secret Society Squarely In The Christian Nationalist Revival”