Let’s be careful out there …

The political world is still processing Tuesday night’s debate. I understand the Harris campaign is putting out television ads featuring debate highlights. And not everyone on the Right is closing ranks around Trump. Some long-time GOP operatives — Frank Luntz and Karl Rove, for example — gave frankly accurate assessments that Trump got owned. Not that many people listen to Karl Rove any more.

My sense of things is that the effects of Tuesday night are still in play. Although Trump’s obviously impaired mental state still is not being as openly discussed as it ought to be, it is being discussed even in mainstream media outlets. I predict from here on Trump’s verbal disconnects from reality will not be so utterly “sanewashed” except in right-wing media. His mental state will finally become part of the narrative. No more ignoring the obvious out of some misguided sense of “fairness.” Let’s hope, anyway.

See also Philip Bump at WaPo, Donald Trump no longer knows how to talk to anyone outside his base. He’s so insulated and isolated inside his own MAGA-world he can’t function outside of it.

Programming note: The debate between Walz and Vance will be Tuesday, October 1. Given that it’s unlikely Trump would be able to fake his way through another presidential term, people who are still undecided really need to take a closer look at Vance.

One related story I haven’t been watching as much as I should have involves House Republicans. Nicole Lafond, Talking Points Memo:

Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are very proud of their plan to link a must-pass piece of government funding legislation to a bill that lays the groundwork for Trump to blame undocumented immigrants for his potential defeat in November. The only problem, we’re now learning, is that no one of any influence is on board with this plan besides the two of them.

Johnson hatched the plan at the beginning of the month, caving to pressure from members of the House Freedom Caucus (the Trumpy tail wagging House-Republican-conference dog) to attach the SAVE Act to any funding bills the House passes to keep the government open. The Act would outlaw non-citizen voting in federal elections, which is already illegal and statistically rarely happens, and require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote; experts say it is both unnecessary and would suppress the vote. For this reason, the bill could not pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, and so would risk a government shutdown.

The bill isn’t completely dead in the House, but Johnson apparently doesn’t have the votes. I take it one big impediment is that there are House Republicans with enough sense to realize they don’t want a government shutdown right before the election, which would be blamed on them, which is what would happen if a spending bill isn’t passed. They aren’t all taking orders from Trump, apparently.

And then after Trump absurdly called himself “the leader on fertilization,” in reference to IVF, Chuck Schumer is cornering Senate Republicans by introducing an IVF protection bill very similar to one they’ve already rejected. Repubicans can’t support IVF without angering the Fetus People, you know.

See also:

And we’ve had a request for the dancing banana …

I had a lot of fun this morning cruising around the Web and reading the reviews. Even right-wing sites admitted it was not a good night for Trump, although most blamed the moderators for being biased. (At least one also blamed Laura Loomer.) I’m sure most folks who didn’t watch are hearing that Trump bombed.

And then there’s this. I didn’t know Drudge was still online, but I guess he is.

CNN supports ABC:

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale appeared on TV screens soon after the Trump-Harris debate ended Tuesday night to give his preliminary verdict—and declared that Donald Trump had lied at least 33 times during the 90-minute face-off.

“This was a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former President Trump,” Dale told host Jake Tapper. “Just lie after lie on subject after subject. By my preliminary count, Jake, Trump made at least 33 false claims. Thirty-three!

“By contrast, by—again—a preliminary count, Vice President Harris made at least one false claim, though she added at least a few misleading claims and a few more that lacked key context.”

Dale, who has been fact-checking Trump for years, explained that the former president’s firehose of untruths was totally unprecedented in American political history.

“I think a lot of Americans say, ‘Well, all politicians lie,’” he said. “No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency. A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true.”

There’s a big difference between putting a spin on data by leaving out some context, which all politicians do, and quite another to say things happened that didn’t happen, like aliens eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. The claim about some states allowing an infanticide option for mothers who don’t want their babies was never true, either, even though Fetus People have been claiming that for years. (I understand it originated from the common medical practice of giving only palliative care to newborns with such severe birth defects they have absolutely no hope of survival for more than a few hours, a concept the Fetus People can’t seem to grasp.)

Trump’s other mistake is that he’s been telling his followers for weeks now that Kamala Harris isn’t very bright and wasn’t giving interviews because she can’t speak well in public. It must have been disorienting to watch this allegedly dimwitted woman mopping the floor with God Emperor Trump. But Kamala Harris probably is used to being underestimated.

Along those lines, see Jonathan Last at The Bulwark, What More Do You People Want from Kamala Harris?

Harris delivered the goods. You never know if a politician can play on the national stage until they do it. Sometimes a promising candidate pops. Sometimes they’re Ron DeSantis.

At every turn over the last seven weeks, Harris popped. From her first speech at the campaign HQ in Delaware, to the first big rally, to her convention speech, to the debate—she answered the bell every time.

She is not coasting. She is not simply existing as a non-octogenarian alternative to Trump. She is waging a smart, vigorous campaign and executing at a high level.

Even this morning I’m still seeing interviews with undecided voters who complain they don’t know where Harris stands on issues. This is something that’s been driving me bats for decades now. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how much information about  candidates’ stands on issues is readily available (see Harris’s issues page on her campaign website, for example). There will be some who will persistently refuse to understand how a candidate they don’t want to vote for stands on issues. Just ignore these people, I say.

Jonathan Last also said this:

Some conservatives seem to think that news networks exist to serve the interests of their preferred candidates. That is a misunderstanding.

A journalistic institution exists to serve its audience by giving them the clearest possible understanding of reality.1 The first duty of a journalistic institution is not to be “fair” to the politicians it covers. It is to make certain that its audience is presented an accurate view of reality.

The footnote says, “An institution which places consideration for politicians above the interests of its audience practices something other than journalism.”

Even so, Trump was allowed to talk a lot more than Harris.

KAMALA HARRIS
Spoke for: 37.1 minutes
Amount of times she spoke: 23
DONALD TRUMP
Spoke for: 41.9 minutes
Amount of times he spoke: 39

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 11, 2024

So who’s unfair? Anyway, there are so many good analyses of How Trump Screwed the Pooch Last Night to even begin to link to them all. Do see Steve M and David Kurtz for starts, though.

(I plan to watch and post comments through the debate, although I planned to do that last time and flaked out. Wish everybody luck. I am making no predictions. Consider this an open thread to talk about whatever.)

I’m here. Fingers crossed. Here we go.

Did she just bait him to bring up tariffs?

It’s painful to me to hear him talk. But I think she’s pretty good so far.

I had to mute Trump. I’m just watching Harris’s face now.

I’m still muting Donald Trump. He looks like he’s getting worked up, though.

OMG, she’s saying people leave his rallies early. He can’t stand that.

They’re eating the dogs!

She’s laughing at him.

He’s going to have sparks flying out of his head in a minute.

She’s definitely got him rattled. Whether low-information voters can tell when he’s lying I cannot say.

She’s on offense; he’s on defense.

Well,  she seems to be doing well to me.

Um, isn’t this thing about over? It was suppossed to be 90 minutes.

Josh Marshall:

 In any war, in any sport, you maintain the initiative and you’re on the road to victory. Harris has controlled the entire debate. She’s effectively baited him in a way no other candidate has ever been able to do. It’s not like she’s going to rocket into some big lead. People aren’t going to abandon Trump. But she needed to show she can dominate him, be the one in control. She has. It’s as simple as that. She’s also gotten him to spend most of the debate showing his most feral and angry self. This debate was a rout. I don’t think there’s any other way to put it.

Just on a presentation note, it struck me that Trump, with his inch-deep greasepaint on his face, looked “blacker” than Harris.

Okay, I feel better now. I think Harris did what she set out to do. She completely controlled the debate. He looked weak and angry and afraid. I wonder how many people watched?

In Axios, Generals come to Harris’ defense on Afghanistan. A bit:

“Without involving the Afghan government, [Trump] and his Administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban that freed 5,000 Taliban fighters,” the retired military officials wrote in a National Security Leaders for America letter first obtained by Axios.

The group accused Trump of leaving Biden and Harris with no plans to execute a withdrawal and little time to do so.

“This chaotic approach severely hindered the Biden-Harris Administration’s ability to execute the most orderly withdrawal possible and put our service members and our allies at risk,” they wrote.

Trump “continually disrespects those who serve in uniform, including wounded warriors, prisoners of war, and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice,” they added.

Will Bunch, Trump’s real Project 2025 was written for him in Moscow by Vladimir Putin’s men. The recently revealed payments from Moscow to right-wing influencers was just the tip of the iceberg.

Heather Cox Richardson’s latest on Trump’s continued deterioration is a must read.

See also today’s Morning Memo at TPM. Trump has been laying the ground work for “stop the steal” 2.0, already claiming cheating and “skullduggery” will cost him a victory. And he’s promising to punish the “cheaters.” He’s putting more effort into preparing for another coup attempt than he is in get out the vote preparation.

If I run into anything else juicy I’ll add it here.

Update — here’s another one, Is the Press “Sanewashing” Trump by Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Update: James Earl Jones, 1931-2024

Barring some unforeseen disaster the next big event will be the Tuesday night debate. And, just in time, we have a new term for how media have been covering Trump — sanewashing. See How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity by Parker Molloy at The New Republic. But John Stoehr writes at The Editorial Board that we’ve gone beyond sanewashing. The press corps is Trump’s assisted living program, he says. 

Trump is 100 percent responsible for doing the work of saying what he’s trying to say. But like some of my 18-year-old students long ago, he’s unwilling or unable to do it. He even expects the grown-ups in the room to do it for him. And so far, in his very long life in the public eye, political reporters have been happy to oblige him.

This is worth reading, btw. See also some wonderful snark by Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post. Surely the Washington Press Corps is aware of the criticism.

For something a little more meaty, see The far right actually hates America: Its dark ideology has foreign roots by Mike Lofgren at Salon. Lofgren pulls together what might be called the philosophical roots of MAGA and the “unitary executive” theory and the rest of the authoritarian ideology being pushed by the Right. You won’t be surprised to learn that a lot of the intellectuals who are revered by educated righties — Ludwig von Mises and Leo Strauss, for example —  have ties to fascism.

But there are old domestic roots to our domestic wingnuttery. I looked up Richard Hofstader’s classic essay from the mid 1950s, The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt. The country is in a very different place now than it was then, but in a lot of ways today’s MAGAs are the old pseudo-conservatives, alienated from the current social order and bristling with fear and grievance. One of my favorite quotes:

The pseudo-conservative, writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”

Regarding the new Russian influence-peddling scandal, see A MAGA meltdown by Jay Kuo. This tells the whole story of the company that was funneling Russian money to right-wing influencers to spread Russian propaganda. Very informative. And here’s more about it from Heather Cox Richardson.

Useless as ever, former President George W. Bush has announced he won’t be endorsing anybody in the election.

Judge Juan Merchan has decided to postpone sentencing in the Trump “hush money” case until after the election. This was done to allow time for a potential appeal of an expected immunity ruling. The news story at the link explains this as well as I can. The new sentencing date is November 26.

The last post inspired some comments on bias in media, and I wrote a long comment about that, but I might as well elaborate here. But first see Heather Digby Parton at Salon, Donald Trump’s incoherence makes the media’s double standard hard to hide.

See also Lawrence O’Donnell on Trump’s speech to the New York Economic Club.

I have read news stories about this speech — see this one from The Hill — that somehow creatively interpreted Trump’s gibberish to make it sound something like economic proposals. The Hill article is not uncritical of what Trump was made out to have said. But it didn’t accurately express how demented Trump sounded. Reporting from Fox News was even worse, of course.

The child care plan has been all over social media today, at least. Alternet has a transcription of Trump’s response to the (actually intelligent) question about affordable child care. And Trump’s answer is pure, straight-up dementia. This is not some clever bit of gaslighting or saying something without saying anything specific. It’s just gibberish. If you use your imagination you might cobble together that he thinks his tariff plan will raise enough revenue to subsidize child care and a lot of other things, but that’s crazy in and of itself. Trump has no idea how tariffs work. He seems to think that if he puts a tariff on goods from China, then the government of China has to pay it. It’s, like, free money in his mind. But of course, the tariff is paid by the importing company, and the cost of the tariff is added to the price the U.S. consumer has to pay. And this cranks up inflation and is a drag on the economy generally. I am sure that at some point someone tried to explain this to him, but it went over his head.

Regarding child care, J.D. Vance isn’t much better. He was asked about reducing the cost of day care, and his answer was an insult to working mothers everywhere.

“One of the things that we can do, is make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want,” the Ohio senator said. “One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of the pressure on people is… maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more. Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.”

“If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care,” he said.

Families are perfectly free now to choose whatever “model” they want from the “models” available to them. Turning to grandparents or other retired relatives who live nearby and are willing to become full-time babysitters is probably always the first choice. And there are no impediments whatsoever to making that choice if it’s an option. Vance seems to think this is some blazingly original idea that hadn’t occurred to anybody. The truth is most families just don’t have that option.

Anyway, back to Trump’s dementia — I’m sure a lot of us are hoping the full extent of Trump’s mental decline becomes apparent in Tuesday’s debate. Of course, I was hoping the same thing before the last debate. But if he ever does become visibly addled on live television, media can’t cover for him any more. And then maybe a “Trump’s dementia” narrative finally will take hold in media.

Oh, and this happened today.

In other news. In 2006 there was a shooting in an Amish school in Pennsylvania that took the lives of five children. And now it’s taken a sixth. Rosanna King was six years old when she was shot and was an invalid for the rest of her life. She could recognize family members and smile, but she could not talk, walk, or feed herself. She died recently of complications caused by her old injuries.

I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear that the father of the recent Georgia school shooting was arrested. He and the son appeared in court today and remain in custody. Prosecutors say he allowed the boy to have the firearm. This was after he promised authorities last year that he would keep the family guns out of the boy’s reach.

In more other news. Liz Cheney says her father, Dick the Dick, is voting for Harris. This might cause a rift in the time-space continuum, but okay.

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.

I’m still seeing updates on the Arlington scandal. Let’s start with this “fact check” article in WaPo by Glenn Kessler,  Trump appears to have misled Gold Star families on troop deaths in Afghanistan.

The gist of this is that Trump keeps saying that during his presidency there was an 18-month period with no hostile fire deaths of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. You can hear him saying this in the campaign video he made at Arlington. But that is not true. WaPo staff looked through DoD records. There was no such 18-month period during Trump’s administration. Even during the last 18 months of his presidency, which seems to be what he is talking about, 12 U.S. troops died from hostile action in Afghanistan.

The only 18-month period without hostile deaths was during the last 11 months of Trump’s presidency and the first seven months of Biden’s. Kessler carefully says that Trump merely “implies” that this period was all under his watch, but then quotes him saying things like  “We had no soldiers killed for 18 months while I was there because they knew — don’t play around with our soldiers.” (Rally in Asheboro, NC, Aug. 21, 2024). That’s more than “implying,” I believe.

Trump also is the one who set up conditions for the withdrawal by negotiating with the Taliban, which he still brags about in his rambling rally speeches. (Did you know the leader of the Taiban called Trump “your excellency”? Trump says he did. That makes Trump very special.)

Kessler doesn’t mention this, but Bill Scher at Washington Monthly documented last week that “65 soldiers died in ‘hostile action’ during the four years of the Trump administration, versus 13 under Biden through 2022, the last year tabulated.” I bet some of those 65 are buried in Arlington. Did Trump do his garish thumb’s up act over their graves?

Now let’s move on to David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo. Trump is now claiming that the altercation in which his staff shoved an Arlington employee never happened.

seems like it should be pretty easy to prove Trump is lying here given that the Arlington altercation was reported to police pic.twitter.com/xwZzJ9XIv2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 3, 2024

Kurtz writes,

So now we have a situation where the Trump campaign disparaged the cemetery staffer as having a “mental health episode,” said she shouldn’t be in her job, suggested she suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome – and now Trump himself is claiming nothing even happened.

At the same time, the Army seems desperate to make this all go away.

The Army is currently sitting on the police report filed by the cemetery staffer recounting her version of the incident where she was reportedly verbally abused and shoved aside by two Trump campaign staffers when she tried to enforce cemetery rules against political activities.

Democratic staffers in both the House and Senate are trying to get hold of the report. It seems to me that a police report should be public record.

Related to this, see Greg Sargent at The New Republic, from last week.

In his Michigan rant, Trump claimed he’d been invited to Arlington by the relatives of soldiers killed in the 2021 bombing at Abbey Gate, outside Afghanistan’s Kabul Airport. He then lashed out at the Arlington staffers who’d tried to prevent the Trump campaign from filming in a restricted area of the cemetery—in apparent violation of the law—which reportedly led a Trump aide to push aside one of those cemetery officials. In his speech, Trump linked the staffers—federal employees simply doing their jobs of guarding ground most Americans revere—to law enforcement prosecuting him for his various alleged crimes.

“These are bad people we’re dealing with,” Trump seethed. “They say I was campaigning,” he continued. “I don’t need the publicity.” Trump flatly dismissed the idea that he was at Arlington to “politick” in any way, and insisted he’d only been asked by relatives of the fallen to pose for pictures at a gravesite. 

Yes, there just happened to be a video photographer there, and somehow — nobody knows how — the video of Trump at Arlington was made into a campaign video with Trump himself doing the voiceover and posted on Trump’s vanity social media site within a few hours of the visit.

He’s changing the story as he goes along, in other words. Next he’ll deny he was ever in Arlington. And his culties will believe him.

And we still don’t know exactly how roughly the Arlington employee was treated and which Trump staffers shoved her.

The best thing I’ve read on the Arlington fracas is from Will Bunch at the Phileadelphia Inquirer.

The people closest to Trump allegedly shoved and verbally abused a woman — because that’s what they do.

And when the woman complained in a formal statement to the U.S. Army, Team Trump gaslit her by accusing her of being a psycho — seemingly part of an intimidation campaign which was meant to scare the accuser from pressing criminal charges.

This blatantly sexist bullying of the Arlington employee has worked — just as it’s worked so many times for Trump himself during his decades-long trail of sexual abuse and harassment allegations, and just as violence and gross mistreatment of women hasn’t thwarted the careers of Trump’s male-dominated inner circle.

We shouldn’t let the other unseemly aspects of Trump’s behavior at one of America’s most sacred places obscure the fact that rank misogyny is the lifeblood of this authoritarian crusade to retake the White House, and that contempt for women saturates everything they do.

This is taking us into a change in topic, but it cannot be denied that misogyny, more than anything else, is driving the American hard right. Racism is in there too, of course, but it’s there fear and loathing of women that’s pushing them into the extreme crazy these days, regarding abortion rights. Abortion criminalization is the hill they’re preparing to die on.

This fear and loathing appears to have taken a pure and undistilled form in J.D. Vance. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t release some old quote of his that shows him disparaging women with careers and no children. He really does seem to think that civilization will fall apart if women’s aren’t kept barefoot and pregnant.

I confess I never read Hillbilly Eligy and don’t intend to do so now. But from others I have heard that it’s a very angry book. And he is especially enraged against his mother. The mother never had a chance. She was impregnated at age 13 and married off to the older man who had impregnated her. That infant was stillborn, and then the her husband turned out to be a violent drunk, and she was a mess for obvious reasons. And J.D. found refuge with his grandparents, the ones who had raised his badly damaged mother in drunkeness and violence and chaos but in their old age had settled down a bit and provided some semblance of normalcy to young J.D. Meanwhile his mother divorced his father and got sober. J.D. is still palbably furious with his mother, readers of the book says. Not so much his father, oddly enough.

And the lesson J.D. somehow got from this is that women must be forced to have children and be married and give up all other ambitions.  If anyone was a walking candidate for intensive psychotherapy, it’s J.D. And clearly he is projecting his mother issues onto all other women, which is the commonest thing in the world for men who hate women to do, in my experience.

Back to Will Bunch:

Vance’s open contempt for women is the force that gives meaning to Trump’s MAGA movement, and it permeates everything they do. It certainly weighs down the policy blueprint for a Trump presidency known as Project 2025, which aims to shrink federal dollars for abortion and proposes restricting contraception, would strip all references to “gender equality” from government documents, and demands that the Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families be a “pro-life” political appointee.

It’s all of a piece.

You no doubt heard that the bodies of six Israeli hostages were discovered a couple of days ago in Gaza. They had been dead only a few hours. Juan Cole says that “Three of them had been designated as part of a hostage exchange with Hamas that the Hamas leadership had agreed to on August 3,” but Netanyahu had made other demands that soured the deal. “Many Israelis believe that if Netanyahu had accepted the hostage deal in early August, the six who were killed on Saturday would still be alive,” Juan Cole says. So yesterday there were massive demonstrations all over Israel, along with strikes and labor stoppages that continue into today. In brief, Israelis are massively pissed at Netanyahu.

Today Axios reports that “President Biden told reporters on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t doing enough to get a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.” From what I’ve been reading over the past several weeks Netanyahu really is a bigger holdup to a deal than Hamas. As I understand it, Netanyahu thinks his political fortunes depend on stoking conflicts with Hamas, not on making deals with them.

Axios continues,

The other side: A senior Israeli source said “it is puzzling that president Biden is pressing Prime Minister Netanyahu, who agreed to the U.S. proposal as early as May 31 and to the U.S. bridging proposal on August 16, and not Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who continues to vehemently refuse any deal.”

I regret I’m not following this closely enough to know who is doing what. So back to Juan Cole:

One of the protesters, a woman, mocked Netanyahu’s attempt to blame Hamas. He had said, “Whoever wants a deal doesn’t kill hostages.” But the demonstrator said he was speaking of himself, not Hammas, and was speaking of his cabinet members who voted, she alleged, to sacrifice the hostages. She underscored that “it was possible to get them back home alive.” She added, “The Israeli government and its leader deliberately sacrificed the hostages, leading to their deaths.” She pointed out that the six hostages had been left there eleven months, and killed only a week ago. The hostage families said they want a deal “now!”

I don’t trust Hamas, either, but as I said what I have been reading over the past few days puts more blame for the failure on Netanyahu than Hamas. Lindsey Graham disagrees and has suggested that the U.S. start bombing oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released. Um, maybe not.

This  morning Biden and Vice President Harris met with the national security team about Israel. WaPo, yesterday:

As I’ve said before, I think Netanyahu is trying to drag out negotiations in hopes Trump wins another term. Now that that possibility is looking iffier, maybe he’ll cave. Or not.

Once upon a time there was a very powerful Republican politician who climbed to that power by claiming the government was infested with communists. He issued more smears than anyone could fact check, and people believed him. It got so that even those in his own party dare not criticize him, because those who did became victims of his inquisition. His claims started with the State Department but then spread to other branches. But then one day he made the mistake of taking on the United States Army. And within a few months the Army destroyed him. That was the end of his political career.

I was thinking of Joe McCarthy yesterday when I read that Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita doubled down on dissing the Army. After the Army issued an official rebuke of the Trump campaign and its continued smears of the Arlington staffer they assaulted, LaCivita re-posted the campaign video made at Arlington with the words, “Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy.”

Of course, the normal thing for a campaign manager to have done was to issue some bland statement about regretting the misunderstanding or the miscommunication or whatever. I don’t expect the Army to respond to LaCivita. But there are already congressional inquiries.  LaCivita had better be hoping his client wins the bleeping election, because if he doesn’t I expect there to be public hearings on Arlingtongate in the next Congress. And then the Army will destroy him, and his client too. This is not something that can be allowed to stand.

I’m just now learning that shortly after the incident, J.D. Vance actually scolded the media and said, “You’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite.” And then Trump posted the campaign video/TV commercial he had made at a gravesite.

He literally posted a video using the footage. pic.twitter.com/H94qjkdRaV

— Dr. Temper Tantrum, PVT (@DrTemperTantrum) August 28, 2024

The other relic of the 1950s that came to mind this week was the song “Oh Sinner Man,” which was first recorded in 1956. You might remember that the song describes some poor damned soul who could find no refuge on Judgment Day. This week Donald Trump may have begun to learn there is no safe place to stand on the abortion issue. He keeps trying to find some sweet spot, some middle ground, that will get the issue off his back. But ain’t no such place.  There is no position that will keep the anti-abortion zealots happy that won’t also cost him support among nearly everybody else. Again, anyone familiar with the issue could have told him that.

I doubt Trump cares one way or another about the abortion issue. I doubt he has paid close attention to all the ways other politicians have tried to finesse the issue over the years. He seems to have believed that being the guy who finally killed Roe v. Wade would earn him everlasting campaign victory.

And then when the inevitable and long-predicted backlash began, he fell back on saying that abortion should be left to the states. That was the forced-birth movement’s disingenuous favorite talking point for years; let the states decide. It shouldn’t be a federal matter. Anyone who had watched them closely over the years knew that “back to the states” was just a first step, and that they would not rest until abortion was criminalized nationwide. But they wouldn’t admit that until the Dobbs decision really did “let the states decide.” Now, of course, all the anti-abortion organizations are calling for a nationwide ban. This was utterly and obviously predictable.

But it wasn’t predicted by Trump.

He’s using all his magic powers to make abortion go away. By early August he was declaring that abortions are “not a big factor” in elections any more, so we don’t have to talk about it. Nice try.

Over the past few days he’s been like the guy in the “Sinner Man” song, running to one place after another to escape the Judgment. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote in the New York Times how Trump Contorts Himself on Abortion in Search of Political Gain. I think it’s more like he’s trying to find the position that will do the least damage.

For example, several of his surrogates lately have declared that Trump would never sign a federal abortion ban. Now the wrath of the anti-abortion zealots is upon him to reverse that. A couple of days ago he vagely signaled he might vote yes on Florida’s abortion access referendum, because a ban after six weeks was too short. After hellfire rained down on him for a couple of days he appeared to have changed his mind. And he brilliantly promised free IVF for everybody! I’m not sure he understands why the anti-aborts are down on IVF.

See also Trump’s Latest Move to Avoid Abortion Is His Strangest One Yet by Michael Schaffer at Politico. This one features a conflict between abortion access in the District of Columbia and Trump’s promise to take over running the District himself. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation,” Trump himself said at a Florida rally this summer. “We’re going to take it away from the mayor. And again, that doesn’t make me popular there, but I have to say it.” You might remember that Trump’s beef with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser goes back to the Black Lives Matter protests, if not before.

The District also has very liberal abortion laws. It’s one of the few places with no gestational limits. And the Fetus People want Trump to change that. But recently Trump has decided that abortion is the one thing that the District can decide for itself. Politico:

“Democrats want to gaslight Americans and sow fear, but President Trump has long been consistent in supporting the rights of states, and the District of Columbia, to make decisions on abortion,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The “and the District of Columbia” part of that sentence marks a jaw-dropping departure from decades of GOP orthodoxy.

In Congress, GOP majorities have intervened to stop the locals from voting to legalize marijuana, administer a needle-exchange program, allow noncitizens to vote in city elections, update the municipal criminal code, and use hometown tax dollars to pay for low-income abortion care. The Project 2025 blueprint calls for prohibiting D.C.’s public schools from teaching critical race theory. There are ongoing Congressional efforts to do away with physician-assisted suicide and permit concealed carry in the city.

And, finally, see Cleanup on Aisle MAGA: Trump Bends to Conservative Abortion Critics by Marc A. Caputo and Andrew Egger at The Bulwark.

In other news:  See Trump Wants to Hide His Attempt to Assassinate Mike Pence from Voters by Marcy Wheeler.