Yesterday was some news day. It hasn’t made headlines, but Trump did admit on camera that he lost the 2020 election.
Somehow he will persuade his culties that he didn’t really say what he said. However, white nationalist Nick Fuentes is furious.
While Fuentes wasoncea zealoussupporter of former President Donald Trump and even dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, the adoration has since faded, partially because Trump tapped Sen. J.D. Vance, who has a non-white, non-Christian wife, as his running mate. Recently, Fuentes openly declared war on the Trump campaign, vowing to deploy activists in swing states for the purpose of depriving Trump of votes.
Fuentes’ disgust with Trump only increased after the former president seemingly finally admitted that he lost the 2020 election, which contradicted everything Trump has said for the last four years and essentially destroyed the justification for the entire “Stop The Steal” effort. (Later in the same interview, however, Trump nevertheless called the election “a fraud.”)
There will be more on Trump’s inability to keep his stories straight later in this post.
Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris was welcome news, This could make some not-MAGA Republicans more comfortable with voting for Harris, I would think.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about yesterday’s school shooting in Winder, Georgia. For example, we don’t yet know how the 14-year-old shooter got his hands on the assault weapon he used to kill four people and wound nine more. Then we learned that the FBI had flagged this kid’s online activity a year ago, because he was posting about school shootings. The local police interviewed him but couln’t find a reason to “hold” him. Perhaps not, but maybe there’s an intermediate stage between “holding” and “ignoring.” Like “keeping an eye on him” and “making sure the boy is getting help and has no access to firearms.”
The presidential candidates’ responses were entirely different, as one would expect. Kamala Harris spoke at length about the ongoing tragedy of school shootings, ending with “This is a senseless tragedy — and it does not have to be this way. We must end the epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.” Her proposals for addressing gun violence include what might be called “enhanced” red-flag laws that might make a real difference in the case of people identified as possible shooters.
Trump issued a statement that called the shooter a “sick and deranged monster,” but he said nothing about addressing gun violence.
Whoa, here’s an update I just saw — the Washington Post is reporting that one of the shooter’s aunts is saying the boy was begging for help for months before the shooting.
The 14-year-old suspected of a mass shooting at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had been “begging for months” for mental health help before his deadly attack on Wednesday, according to an aunt of the suspect.
He “was begging for help from everybody around him,” the aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post. “The adults around him failed him.”
The parents had also promised law enforcement last year that he would have no unsupervised access to the firearms in the home.
Now, on to the Russians — David Kurtz writes at TPM,
The details that emerged yesterday in the new federal indictment announced by the Justice Department in the most high-profile of ways offers an extraordinary glimpse of how brazen Russia’s influence operations within the United States have been – and of the extreme gullibility of right-wing influencers who were the highly paid alleged victims of the Russian-backed scheme.
Rolling Stone has a pretty good background on the scheme. The influencers deny they knew they were working for Russians. I understand some of these influencers are prominent in right-wing circles, but I can’t say I can place any of them.
Today there was a hearing on Jack Smith’s election interference case. Judge Tanya Chutkan denied a Trump motion to hold off on any further activities in the case until after the election. “This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule,” Chutkan said. Per Politico,
Chutkan appeared inclined to give prosecutors a chance to lay out damaging evidence against Trump within the next few weeks — a timeline that would coincide with the ramp-up of early voting and the critical final weeks of the presidential campaign. …
… Special counsel Jack Smith, who was present in court, is seeking Chutkan’s permission to submit an extensive brief laying out the facts of the case against Trump, a response to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that granted broad immunity for “official” presidential acts and ordered Chutkan to evaluate whether Trump is immune from the allegations that he abused his power to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.
The brief and its potential public release raises the prospect of a series of damaging legal developments for Trump in the closing weeks of the 2024 election cycle, just as voters are casting early votes in key states. Trump is also slated to face sentencing for his conviction in the New York hush money case on Sept. 18.
Finally, about Trump’s not keeping his stories straight: Do read Greg Sargent at The New Republic, Finally: Top Journo Erupts at Media for Ignoring Trump’s Mental State.
“We have a damaged, delusional, old man who again might get reelected to the presidency of the United States,” Mike Barnicle, who served as a longtime columnist for The Boston Globe and other newspapers, said on Morning Joe early Wednesday. Barnicle continued that Trump frequently says “deranged” things in public that “you wouldn’t repeat” on “American television” or “in front of your children.”
“How did we get here?” Barnicle asked. Then he pointed a finger at his media colleagues. “Donald Trump can say whatever crazy things he wants to say, about submarines, and sharks, and electric batteries,” Barnicle said. He noted that such things are “not really covered” as a window into “who the man is” or a sign that he’s “out of his mind.”
Greg Sargent continues,
Let’s try to state what should be obvious: Trump’s mental fitness for the presidency deserves sustained journalistic scrutiny as a stand-alone topic with its own intrinsic importance and newsworthiness. Real journalistic resources should be put into meaningfully covering it from multiple angles, as often happens with other big national stories of great consequence.
This is not happening now, obviously. Some of Trump’s loopier utterances do make news sometimes, but usually are mostly fodder for the likes of Stephen Colbert. And, of course, Trump’s mental decline isn’t getting nearly the attention that President Biden’s frailties were getting. Do read the whole piece.
At Rolling Stone: "“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed,” Pool wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday."
"Rubin echoed the sentiment, writing in a statement on X that “tThese (sic) allegations clearly show that I and other commentators were the victims of this scheme. I knew absolutely nothing about any of this fraudulent activity. Period."
Ah, the Sgt Schultz defense. In this case, I think it's correct to blame the "victims".
So the shooters dad bought him an AR for Christmas, just what a 13 year old who had been questioned by the FBI for threatening to shoot up a school needs. It seems to fucking bizarre to believe? But I guess when you name your kid after a gun we shouldn't be surprised!
I think the gist of the admission was, "I lost by a whisker but there was massive fraud." Funny how that happened less than a week before the debate. If your recollection of the timing is different, speak up but Trump went on for years that Obama was born in Kenya and not eligible to be POTUS. Trump was always a week away from introducing proof Obama was from Kenya. Then, in the 2016 election, Trump rather quietly admitted Obama was born in the US, long after Obama released the long form of his birth certificate.
The point is: Trump will lie about something with conviction for a loooong time until the lie becomes a liability. Then he takes it back and wants everyone to ignore the issue. If ABC brings up the Big Lie in the debate, Trump will refuse to answer and say the moderator is being "nasty." But Trump has no proof that the election was stolen after almost four years. I repeat, NO PROOF." He doesn't have any explanation for how fraud so massive can be executed without leaving a trace.
IMO, ABC is well within the bounds of good journalism to ask Trump about recent earthshaking news. Trump, on the other hand, thinks that the admission before the debate moves the issue off the table. I'd like a follow-up question about whether Trump feels remorse for the death of Asli Babbitt since she was acting on the false claims Trump made before he dispatched the mob to the Capitol.
If ABC does NOT go there in the debate, Harris needs to, either in a reply to a different question or in her closing statement. But Harris has to put a spotlight on four years of the Big Lie. You can't just say, "I take it back." and make it go away. Harris might be able to provoke a confrontation before the debate by bringing it up forcefully and asking the media to get their heads out of the sand. (I cleaned that up.)
J6 is dangerous territory for Harris because there's criminal litigation that as POTUS she can't have a public opinion on. (Or she creates an opportunity forTrump to appeal.) I think Harris can safely cite the history – Babbitt dead and hundreds sent to jail for ransacking the Capitol Building. J6 was entirely about the Big Lie. Trump needs to take a specific stand. No matter what it is, it will cost him votes.
The art of writing or speaking totally devoid of meaning is not as new age as one might think. An acquaintance of mine loaned me a book by Paul Twitchell he raved about that was completely that, just words almost at random, lacking any logic or reason and communicating nothing at all. This was somehow supposed to be Spiritual and related to the ancient science of soul travel and Eckankar. He died in 1971 according to Wiki,
I mention this because the DonOLD is speaking more this way as he ages. Vance is younger but more advanced. Try to make sense out of Vance's attempt to order doughnuts.
The Greg Sergent piece was on target, except for Morning Joe and a few others Trump speaks much nonsense, and the media ignores this and more. How many times have I heard supposed journalists "interpret" his nonsense or "divine" what he really thinks.
The State of Kansas got into this "Spiritual" writing many years ago when it rewrote some "State Guidelines". They changed from clear and specific to what one might call vague and nebulous. By the time you finished reading the revision you knew less about how to comply with the law than when you started reading. An exercise in negative understanding. In my book a misuse and inappropriate use of any meaning the word spiritual. The Germans have better words that defy good translation. The best English can do is nonsense or the like. And as an after-thought, explain why an ancient science of soul travel could not be possible as anything but nonsense. No, the dinosaurs did not teach us how to soul travel when we lived with them.
The media coverage of Biden vs. Trump seems another episode in the old story of the mob preferring Barabbas. I saw clips of that debate. A geriatric politician weakly providing credible arguments poorly, vs another geriatric who wasn’t even bothering with credible arguments but telling nonsensical lies. While both deserved criticism on those merits, Trump was the obvious worse.
I worked in a couple places one after the other, where the best and brightest, by objective measures well known and well seen, were targeted, marginalized and ruined, while inferiors in both quality and character were retained. Management saw it all and allowed it to happen. Both events happened during the outsourcing craze of the late 90’s and at the end of each companies work runs, when it was obvious to all that they’d run out of contracts and layoffs were coming.
I get why management would prefer the inferiors. They’re removing threats to themselves. I’m wondering if this what human mobs do when stressed out. By empowering the obvious inferior, are they trying to unconsciously empower their own inferior selves?
"By empowering the obvious inferior, are they trying to unconsciously empower their own inferior selves"
That's pretty deep! I'm sure that is part of it but I really think that people support (magats) Stump because he comes off as dull and uninterested as they are. These people don't really understand politics, democracy or history they just know they need to be pissed off at something. They are the "inferior self". The GOP's war on education has been in full effect in this country for a few decades now and they are starting to see the fruits of their labor. That and the intensive misinformation structure led by FAUX news to dumb down the olds who should know better! As far as the treatment of Biden by the media you are correct much of our corporate media saw two old men and decided to attack the least marketable one and the one they knew wouldn't really fight back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ituFNPXAaE8
In spite of the decades-old canard that "the media" have a built-in liberal bias, there is documentation just as old that U.S. news media actually favor and protect right-wingers over lefties.
Back in the beginning of the blogger era, one of the first really big-time liberal blogs was called Media Whores Online. (Note that its archives have been preserved at the Library of Congress, but it seems you have to go there to read them.) MWO was online from 2000 to 2004. It was a running commentary on cable news talking heads and other well-known journalists for their uncritical acceptance of Republican talking points and favorable coverage of Republican politicians. The media might as well have been an arm of the Republican Party. Then in 2008 Eric Alterman published a book called What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News that also made, to me, an ironlad case that the media generally had a strong convervative bias, not a liberal one. The pattern for a long time has been to gently protect and softly cover conservatives but to slam liberals for so much as using the wrong fork. And this has been going on since the 1980s, if not earlier.
It's still going on today, although it's somewhat less blatant than it used to be. During the Bush II era if you tuned into a cable news discussion of political issues the conservative guests were allowed to talk inessantly over the "liberal" ones, who often weren't even that liberal. I remember remarking, probably on this blog somewhere, that if a particular liberal columnist who made frequent guest appearances on cable shows were ever allowed to finish a sentence, I could die happy. That particular "Crossfire" style of programming has gone out of style, thanksfully.
(Speaking of the old "Crossfire" prograam that used to be on CNN, the original idea was that there would be two hosts, one a liberal and one a conservative. In its last few years its two hosts were Robert Novak, who had gotten very conservative in his later years, and Tucker Carlson.)
What also has changed is that the big "mainstream" newspapers and cable shows, while still more often biased toward conservative positions, are not crazy right-wing enough to satisfy the MAGAts. That's because the mainstream media still more or less deal with facts and not absolutely made-up nonsense. So the wingnuts are getting their "information" from the likes of Fox and OAN, which is pretty much just infiltered propaganda.
But this gets back to why the conservative bias in media persists, and I suspect it has mostlly to do with pleasing the corporate overlords who write the paychecks. And also long-standing, ingrained habit, probably.
I’m old enough to remember SNL’s spoofs of the McLaughlin Group. “WRONG!”
McLaughlin was said to have thought them funny. It seems that something similar today would be taken quite seriously by MAGAs, if McLaughlin had become a MAGA (strictly for the money, of course). Talk about morphing from debating from the side of small government austerity, to WRONG!