Page 7 of 92

Stewart to the rescue

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”  Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787

If I may be so bold as to raise a point with Mr. Jefferson, I wonder if he would still prefer journalism to government if he knew something of the state of the former in the 21st century. Generally speaking, the Founders’ confidence in the American people to govern themselves fairly and justly was based on a presumption that the people would be honestly informed about the issues of their day, and they had faith that a free press would do that.  Even the free press of their day, which was unabashedly partisan.  American journalism evolved, and not always to the good: in an effort to be, and to appear to be, non-partisan, there are elements of today’s journalism that won’t defend objective truth for fear of being labelled everything from unfair to slanted to (gasp!) liberal.

But there is hope: journalists could be in practice what they aspire to be in theory, finders and defenders of truth based on verifiable evidence.  Like the courts have done, in admirably turning so many lion-like defenders of a certain 34-times-convicted felon into cowering pussy cats because courts prioritize truth, while television prioritizes likeable personalities and access.

Yes you, the eager young fellow in front:

The center holds, for now

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The more things change – a U.S. president convicted of a felony offense for the first time ever – the more they stay the same – Donald “Trump calls trial a ‘scam,’ vows to appeal historic verdict.” 

The verdict in New York yesterday was historic: not only for being the first time an American president or former president was found guilty of having committed a felony, but for the American system of justice demonstrating that any American citizen can be held to account before a jury of his or her peers.  In spite of that citizen’s rank in society, or his attempts to undermine the system itself by waging “an all-out war against the judicial system before the verdict came in, hoping to blunt the political damage and position him[self] as a martyr.”

But amid the relentless offensive by Trump and his allies on the legal infrastructure holding him accountable, the trial came with a substantial cost, according to those who study democracy, with the ultimate impact likely to be measured in November.

(snip)

“The judicial system has taken a body blow from Trump’s assaults,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies the rise and fall of constitutional government. Forcing him to sit through the trial, follow orders and listen to evidence against himself meant that “his rage at being controlled by others is going to be directed at trying to bring the whole judicial system down with him.”

(snip)

But there was something different about Trump’s repeated complaints about this first criminal jury trial that made them even more potent, experts say. Whenever a politician is brought up on charges, “every single time that leader will scream up and down that this is a politicized process and his political enemies are out to get him,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University. “What’s notable here,” said Levitsky, co-author of the book “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” “is that the entire Republican Party is marching in lockstep, along with right-wing media, claiming that the legal process has been weaponized, and therefore eroding public trust in a really vital institution.”

(snip)

“The problem is that not even the best institutions in the world can function well in the context of extreme polarization, particularly when one party has turned against democratic institutions. And so extreme polarization and extreme radicalization will undermine and destroy even the best of institutions. And that’s what we’re seeing in the United States.” But even if Trump damaged the judicial system’s reputation through his complaints about the trial, to not prosecute “when there’s a strong sense that wrongdoing happened,” Levitsky said, would be more damaging. “That would hold the judicial system and the political system hostage to say that to prosecute will bring more blowback than benefit. If you give in to that, you have no rule of law.”

Did this trial and all the sideshows related to it diminish the American judicial process?  We can each answer that for ourselves.  I think not, and I don’t think it has for the many many millions of Americans who don’t take every childish taunt out of Trump’s mouth as gospel truth.  He was obviously trying to pre-rouse his supporters to doubt and reject any verdict against him, in the same way he tries to get them to believe that any election he loses had to have been rigged; the unfortunate thing is that it appears to work for many many millions of other Americans.  He promised a “news conference” this morning, and it was filled with more of the same lies as came before.  And, he took no questions…which to my mind makes this a campaign speech rather than a news conference.  Trump is not famous for engaging in a vigorous exchange of viewpoints.

(What he is famous for, among some, is being a TV star, and this morning I discovered an article in the Washington Post with some terrific background about that show.  It cites a recent essay in Slate by one of the producers on that show – who has just been released from a non-disclosure agreement and is free to talk about what he witnessed – and Bill “Pruitt describes choices about scripts and editing and challenges as efforts to present a particular, inaccurate image: the show’s star, Donald Trump, as an omniscient business leader. Looking back across the decades since the first season of the show was filmed, Pruitt clearly regrets having helped foster that perception.”  It’s worth your time to read.)

Trump says he will appeal the verdicts and that is certainly his right, but don’t expect that to bring a conclusion to the legal fight any time soon.  Trump is famously litigious when it comes to civil matters that are at bottom just about money; potential appeals in this case – to the trial judge, two levels of state appeals courts and (yes, possibly) the Supreme Court of the United States could take years to conclude.  Not that it matters, though: Trump, the convicted felon, is still allowed by law to run for president and to serve if he is elected.  And the first reaction to the conviction from among MAGA Nation was to shower him with tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions!

Does this conviction change the course of the presidential election?  No one knows yet, including the talking heads who are acting like they do know.  It seems plain that those who are brainwashed in the MAGA cult either don’t believe he did anything wrong or don’t care what he did, or think this whole thing is more evidence of the anti-Trump Deep State at work.  Those who were never going to vote for Trump before didn’t need this conviction to sway them.  For the rest, this might be what it finally takes for some Trump supporters to change their minds and some undecideds to choose a side.  It sure seems like it should matter, to everyone.  It wasn’t so long ago, I think, that it would have.

Fingers crossed, hoping for the best

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

A few thoughts while waiting for the New York jury to return a verdict in the business fraud/election interference trial of you know who:

I hate it every time a news report refers to Donald Trump’s “Hush Money Trial.”  Not only is it inaccurate and lazy, but it plays into his overheated claim that he’s being persecuted, that there was no crime committed.

  • It is NOT against the law to have sex with a porn actor.  Of the many things it may be (and you have your own list of the things that it is), “against the law” is not one of them.  I pray we don’t return to an age in this country where it is against the law for consenting adults to engage in some non-hurtful behaviors.
  • It is NOT against the law to pay hush money.  Blackmail is a crime, for the person committing it; it’s not illegal for you to pay money to keep someone from telling a secret about you.
  • It is NOT even a crime to use your private company’s funds to pay that hush money, provided your paper trail does not lie about the use of the money.  Your investors or directors probably won’t like it much and may take action against you, but it’s not business fraud.  (And if Trump is SOOO rich, as he claims, why didn’t he just write a check himself and not get the company money involved?  I know, hindsight is 20/20.)

BUT, if you doctor your company’s books to falsify the record about why the money was spent – like, saying it was “legal fees” when it was really reimbursing an employee for fronting you the hush money to conceal a private matter – that IS a crime.  It is business fraud in New York, and that is the crime the Manhattan district attorney is prosecuting.  It became a major felony when, in this case, the fraud was committed to advance another crime: improperly interfering with the 2016 presidential election by covering up information that could harm Trump’s chances.  (Man, isn’t it hard to get your head around the idea that it was Trump and Republicans who actually were committing the election fraud, not the liberals and the illegals?)

Lately I’ve been running across many clever, funny, and to-the-point posts that take the varnish off of efforts to obscure what Trump has done, and what he promises to do if elected.  On ABC’s This Week George Stephanopoulos had a terrific summary as the current trial began.

GOnN-WNXcAAD5my

Last week Jennifer Rubin had a good roundup of Trump’s pratfall-filled week leading up to the trial’s closing arguments, including his not-unexpected cop-out when it came to fulfilling his repeated promise to testify in his own defense (something that I know no defense lawyer wants a client with a total lack of self-control and a well-documented history of serial lying to do).

Finally, Trump predictably chickened out of testifying. He repeatedly boasted he would testify, but like so many other attempts to look tough, this one fizzled into the ether. The episode underscored his cowardice and fragility. At some level, he likely knew that if he had taken the stand, he would have wound up either perjuring himself, digging his own legal grave or both.

What explains these serial debacles? This is who Trump is. He cozies up to neo-Nazis and white nationalists, so naturally he attracts aides with the mind-set to borrow material from fascists. He has contempt for women and tries to please his white Christian nationalist base at every turn; unsurprisingly, he has no idea where to stop and how far is too far. And he bullies his lawyers, insisting on making dumb arguments and calling witnesses he thinks are swell but who implode under examination. (And because he surrounds himself with disreputable charlatans and yes-men, one can hardly be surprised when they reveal their true character.)

For all Trump’s braggadocio, it may be that he just isn’t all that bright, cannot think strategically beyond the moment and lacks any common sense. Without aides or family members empowered to stop him from colossal missteps, he racks up the blunders. And perhaps like a good many bullies, he really does fear taking a punch.

GONmYbbWgAAAmpP

GOR52y_X0AA1_J_

Trump’s family, which finally began to trickle in to the courthouse to act like they support him, joined in the family business – lying to our faces – when Eric Trump clearly and cleanly misstated the facts:

And beyond the current trial, the situation has become severe enough to get the historian and documentarian Ken Burns off the political sideline; he had this warning to America during a commencement speech at Brandeis University.

https://twitter.com/Mollyploofkins/status/1794455333764538763

Just a couple more..I can’t resist:

https://twitter.com/AnnieForTruth/status/1795772810520117719
https://twitter.com/TheReelRandom/status/1795769741593714898
https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1795848109752217919

The real majority rules

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It only lasted a moment.  An instant, perhaps.  But the spark grew into a happy realization: the U.S. House of Representatives can do something constructive after all, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary it has piled up since January 2023.  The headline on the email that popped in yesterday afternoon was “House approves $95 billion foreign aid bill” and it turns out that the speaker of the Republican-majority House accomplished it by working with Democrats to outvote the extreme MAGA wing of his own party.

It’s the sort of thing that almost never happens anymore.  Dating back to the mid-1990s, Republican speakers have rarely allowed full floor votes on bills that weren’t already supported by a majority of their own party.  Even in cases where a majority of the full House – Republicans and Democrats and independents – supports a proposal, no final vote is permitted; that keeps the opposition party from looking good by passing legislation with the help of a few renegades from the majority party.  In recent years it has also allowed smaller groups of GOP members with extreme views to prevent more moderate members – in concert with the hated Democrats – from passing legislation that the extremists oppose.  That has prevented a full House vote on, among many other things lately, a bill to send more American military assistance to Ukraine to support its war with Russia.

Part of the story here is what happened to change Speaker Mike Johnson’s mind on helping Ukraine.

When the House passed a $40 billion emergency funding bill for Ukraine in May 2022, support for Ukraine was largely still a bipartisan issue. But a little-known conservative congressman from Louisiana was one of the 57 Republicans to oppose it.

Now, just six months after his unlikely elevation to speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (R-La.) has pushed through a $60 billion effort to bolster’s Ukraine arsenal, along with funding for Israel and the Indo-Pacific.

The move marks a major victory and dramatic turnabout for the speaker who is trying to gain control of a bitterly divided Republican conference. The far right is fiercely against Ukraine aid — 112 Republicans, just over half of the conference, opposed it on the House floor Saturday and he had to rely on unanimous Democratic backing — and Johnson’s decision to greenlight a floor vote could come at great political cost. He could very well lose his job as speaker over it.

(snip)

“Look, history judges us for what we do,” said an emotional Johnson, holding back tears and with a quivering lip at a news conference last week in response to a question from The Washington Post. “This is a critical time right now, critical time on the world stage. I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.”

The Washington Post story goes on to explain Johnson’s evolution, which seems to boil down to the fact that he learned more about the situation and the stakes.  Good on him, an extreme conservative and evangelical, for not turning Speaker Johnson (1)his back on real-world, secular evidence that he might have been wrong in May 2022; maybe there’s a bit of accepting the responsibility of being a leader at work here, too.  “One Republican House member recalls: “I’ll never forget Johnson one time said, ‘I’ve gone from representing my district only to representing the entire [House] and the country.’ For someone to go from where he was to where he is now as quickly as he did … is remarkable.”

The other part of the story is the happy realization that brightened my afternoon: the evidence that the MAGA wing can be defeated, that the ignorant and selfish isolationists will not win if the rest of us stand up to them.  When we have leaders who put the best interests of the whole country first, who are serious about supporting America’s role as a leader of the whole world, a rump faction cannot take control.  And I do mean “rump.”

I also take this as an example of what the founders of Axios wrote about recently, the idea that American society and politics are not as irretrievably broken as it seems.

Here’s a wild thought experiment: What if we’ve been deceived into thinking we’re more divided, more dysfunctional and more defeated than we actually are?

Why it matters: Well, there’s compelling evidence we’ve been trapped in a reality distortion bubble — social media, cable TV and tribal political wars — long enough to warp our view of the reality around us.

The big picture: Yes, deep divisions exist on some topics. But on almost every topic of monthly outrage, it’s a fringe view — or example — amplified by the loudest voices on social media and politicians driving it.

  • No, most Christians aren’t white Christian nationalists who see Donald Trump as a God-like figure. Most are ignoring politics and wrestling with their faith.
  • No, most college professors aren’t trying to silence conservatives or turn kids into liberal activists. Most are teaching math, or physics, or biology.
  • No, most kids don’t hate Israel and run around chanting, “From the river to the sea.” On most campuses, most of the time, students are doing what students have always done.
  • No, most Republicans don’t want to ban all abortions starting at conception. No, most Democrats don’t want to allow them until birth.
  • No, immigrants who are here illegally aren’t rushing to vote and commit crimes. Actual data show both rarely happen — even amid a genuine crisis at the border.
  • No, most people aren’t fighting on X. Turns out, the vast majority of Americans never tweet at all.
  • No, most people aren’t cheering insults on Fox News and MSNBC in the evening. Turns out, less than 2 percent of Americans are even watching.

Reality check: But our politics are hopelessly divided, Jim and Mike! You’re naive!

  • Yes, current politics, and particularly the House, seem hopelessly dysfunctional. But this flows in part from majorities so narrow that fringe figures can hijack institutions, again particularly the House, and render them dysfunctional.
  • The actual dysfunction runs much deeper for structural reasons, such as redistricting, low voter turnout in off-year elections and geographic sorting (Democrats in cities, Republicans in rural areas).

(snip)

This new poll by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows a striking amount of agreement on some very big topics. Roughly 90% or more of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — agree the following rights and freedoms are extremely or very important to a functioning America:

  • Right to vote.
  • Right to equal protection under the law.
  • Right to freedom of religion.
  • Right to freedom of speech.
  • Right to privacy.

Hell, almost 80% think the right to own a gun is important to protect.

The last Republican candidate for president to win a majority of the popular vote was George W. Bush in 2004…barely, at 50.7%.  The last before that was the first George Bush, with more than 53% when he beat Michael Dukakis in 1988.  The guy at the top of the GOP ticket in the last two elections won less than 47% of the popular vote each time; in 2020 one-third of the voting age population didn’t vote at all, and almost 40% blew off the election of 2016.  Which means he was actually voted for by roughly 30% of Americans, at best: less than half of a bit more than half of the country.  Thirty percent is not close to a majority.  The MAGAs are loud and obnoxious, but they are not the voice of America.  It’s time we remember that, and promise to do the thing that they fear the most: vote them out!

No reservations on the crazy train

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

In the Unofficial Pat Ryan Register of All Things Known and Unknown, there is recent high concern that Donald Trump has dementia.  Or is just batshit crazy.  One or the other is used to explain some of demented and/or hallucinatory things he says at his rallies.  But such concerns aren’t new: in the 2016 campaign it even led to the development of an explanation of a candidate’s speech that you’d never expect to be considered positive: that one should take him seriously but not literally.

At a rally in Ohio earlierGJcwK0kaMAEBJeW this month, in a speech in which he referred to China and automaking, Trump said (amid a typical word salad) there would be a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win this November; sounds pretty ominous, and the Biden campaign claimed he was threatening actual violence.  But maybe he meant to convey that one result of him losing would be the continuation of Biden policies that would be devastating for the American auto industry.  In February, he told the Black Conservative Federation Gala that Black Americans like him better lately due to the many criminal and civil court cases against him: “I think that’s why the Black people are so much on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them. Does that make sense?”  (No, not really)

One way or another, the listener has to do a lot of work to try to figure out what the speaker really means.  It’s the speaker’s fault if he doesn’t make his message clear enough for the audience to understand it.  (I mean the audience of the general population; his MAGA followers seem to process the dog whistle messages just fine.)

Susan Glasser in The New Yorker: I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You

But there is at least one constant message in Trump speeches lately that doesn’t need much interpretation: his promise to free those convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.  Jonathan Chait sets the eerie scene in a great piece in New York Magazine:

At a recent rally in Ohio, Donald Trump stood at formal attention while an announcer instructed the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” As Trump saluted, the speakers played a version of the national anthem sung by imprisoned insurrectionists. “They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that, and everybody knows that,” Trump said at the outset of his speech. “And we’re going to be working on that as soon as the first day we get into office. We’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots.”

Over the last year, the insurrection has gradually assumed a more central place in Trump’s campaign. The J6 version of the national anthem has been playing at rallies since March 2023, and Trump has been referring to jailed insurrectionists as “hostages” since November. But the prospect of pardoning them, which he has floated for two years, has in recent days been made his highest priority. Trump’s promise to “save the country,” which before encompassed his array of domestic and international policies, now refers principally to vindicating the militia that tried to illegally install him in power and that more and more has come to resemble a classic paramilitary group in the Trump imaginarium, licensed to carry out extrajudicial violence on his authority alone.

Bad enough that Trump is promising he will ignore/overturn court cases that sent hundreds of domestic terrorists to jail; Chait finds a scarier reason for Trump’s using this new message, one that potentially drives away independents who might vote for him: his desire for a second term in the White House that is unrestrained by conventional politics or judgement.

But there is a perfectly cogent reason why Trump continues to press his most extreme demands, even at the cost of repulsing potential voters. He is no longer willing to accept the alliance of convenience with reluctant partners that held traditional Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Reince Priebus by his side during his first term. Trump has long demanded fealty from his party, which has made it harder to discern the acceleration and intensification of his work in the days since he effectively clinched the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday. Trump’s primary focus is not outward but inward, tightening his control over the GOP to almost unimaginable levels of personal loyalty.

Trump’s elevation of the insurrection to a matter of holy writ within the party is a matter of both conviction and strategy, consistent with his intention to stifle even the quietest forms of dissent. This is why Trump deposed Ronna McDaniel as head of the Republican National Committee in favor of election deniers Michael Whatley and Lara Trump. McDaniel had dutifully jettisoned her maiden name (Romney). She had strongly suggested the 2020 election was stolen, saying the vote tabulations had “problems” that were “concerning” and not “fair,” without quite stating as fact that Trump absolutely won. All her genuflections were not enough.

This is also why Trump is reportedly bringing back Paul Manafort, who served a prison sentence for bank and tax fraud, and witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and whose business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, was assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort’s skills are hardly irreplaceable. The point of bringing him back, other than the familiar mob logic of rewarding an underling who took his pinch like a man and refused to rat out the boss, is to signal that loyalty to Trump matters more than any other possible consideration. Normal politicians would distance themselves from staffers who committed crimes, especially crimes on their behalf. Trump regards this as the highest qualification.

(snip)

While Trump touts his first term as a historic success, he and his closest allies view it as largely a failure. Trump, in this view, was manipulated by staffers loyal to the traditional party into letting figures like Robert Mueller and Anthony Fauci undermine him. Mike Pence’s refusal to cooperate in Trump’s plot to steal the election was the ultimate betrayal. Trump’s project is to ensure that a second term faces no sabotage.

An effective Trumpist government has difficulty functioning under the rule of law. If Trump’s staffers and allies believe that carrying out his orders, some of them plainly illegal, will lead to prison or other punishment, they will again hesitate to follow them. That belief is one he has to stamp out, especially as he faces multiple criminal charges for his attempts to steal the election in 2020.

Chait’s conclusion is that Trump’s new focus is meant to shed his movement of all but the true believers; he doesn’t want to build a coalition of various interests and beliefs, he wants only those loyal to the boss, who will support and assist any grift the boss wants.

Among the true-believing Trumpists, there’s no confusion about what Trump’s relentless demands of cultlike submission are trying to accomplish. “The Judas Iscariots of the American Right need to understand that their betrayal comes at a cost,” rails a recent column in American Greatness, one of the new pseudointellectual organs that have sprung up in the Trump era to meet conservative audience demand for sycophantic content. “Excommunication is not enough. Their treachery deserves relentless psychic pain.” It adds that Mike Pence, the New York Times columnist David French, and others “should never be allowed back into respectable conservative company under any circumstances.”

Measured in traditional political terms, January 6 martyrdom may be a disadvantageous message for Trump. The stolen-election lie polls terribly with persuadable voters, and his fixation with it is one reason why Biden’s catastrophic approval ratings have resulted in only a small Trump lead. But by Trumpian logic, it is the perfect campaign theme. It forces his internal critics to swallow their last objection against him. It sends a message to his allies that they can act with impunity. By November, the J6 national anthem will be burned into our brains as deeply as any campaign jingle.

It doesn’t require high-levelGJiBgcnXcAAa-K4 interpretive skills to see the threat posed by a future President Trump in an administration without the likes of John Kelly or Mark Esper around.  They are among 40 of Trump’s 44 one-time Cabinet members who do not support him.  Think about that: of all the people Trump put in positions to lead the government – “the best people” – 10 out of every 11 of them now say no way do they want him in power again.  They haven’t all told us exactly what they saw on the inside of the Trump White House, but it’s enough for them to warn us not to repeat the mistake that was made in 2016.

GIZl3NnXYAAPZwv