Playing Footsie with Fascism

 

Trump posts a new ad foreshadowing a second Trump term that says he will create a “UNIFIED REICH,” echoing Nazi Germany pic.twitter.com/z4ZmMSWuRH

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 21, 2024

So, it feels like it's just Monday, right?  Trump posts a video to Truth Social proposing that his second term will be a "UNIFIED REICH"--look, I've been keeping track (here's a sampler from just one particular year) of the giggling "vice-signaling" that Republicans do--effectively winking "We're just playing at being Nazis, you're so silly" when the punchline is: "Oh hell yeah, we are doing totally Nazi stuff given the chance."  Rounding up and deporting people in quantities. Monitoring pregnant people for signs they have taken steps to end their pregnancies. Banning and burning books Culture war. 

With Trump, it's attention-seeking, and not. It's a show of what he can get away with. It's the sort of thing he does --just like his Goon army in front of the NY courthouse that undermines the rule of law--and you never know who might show up:

Dr. Oz Didn't Stumble When He Said This

 

Holy shit: Oz says his abortion position: should be between "a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders" #PASenDebate pic.twitter.com/UDiJvDYHYo

— Pat Dennis (@patdennis) October 26, 2022

I personally do not think my uterus is any place for a city council meeting, thanks! This wasn't a case of being inarticulate, this candidate is not in any way impaired, but he said this. Out loud where we all could hear.

Local political leaders, Dr. Oz says, belong in your personal business. Playing chicken with the reaper, with your mental or physical health on the line, with your future fertility and economic security on the line, your ability to take care of the children you may already have on the line, having a debate about something as personal to you as your own body and its future. Grandstanding for political points over your well-being. Appealing to local church leaders for future political support over your well-being. Appealing to right-wing donors, or even basic misogyny, over your well-being.

The Executive Privilege Spell: Invoke Often

 

Newsmax is reporting tonight that Trump will invoke executive privilege in an attempt to block all the subpoenas for former members of his WH staff issued by the bipartisan Select Committee on J6. pic.twitter.com/a86Y9wenla

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 7, 2021

Did you know that Trump was no longer president? Courts of law recognize it, and even his own lawyers sort of do.  He isn't president. He isn't. He lost the popular vote badly. He lost the electoral vote badly, by his own terms of what badly would look like. He isn't an executive of anything but the FAILING Trump Organization. Which is doing poorly because he was a bad president and people hate him. Many people are saying this. 

Also, if the Select Committee is trying to uncover business having to do with Trump's 2020 campaign LOSS, how was the Trump campaign a part of his official business? While it is true that Trump didn't separate the duties of supporting his campaign and serving the business of state among people in his employ, so much so that Kayleigh McEnany wore two hats as both a WH press secretary and a campaign spokesperson, was it the job of Trump as president to ensure his 2020 victory, or was it his job to follow the Constitution? 

Enquiring minds really want to know, because the answer should be, this MF really tried it and no court should be the one to accept it. Trump didn't try to put America First here, he put himself first. He tried to use the DOJ to give himself a victory. He thought the SCOTUS justices he picked would give him a second term. He even, in a deep cut, used his privileged position to run foreign policy to extort the President of Ukraine to help him get a leg up in a race against Joe Biden and thought if he didn't get convicted by the Senate, he was all good. He has now been impeached twice.

Oh hell no, does this guy still have any kind of executive privilege. While he's still using his fat mouth to undermine our democratic institutions? Mr. Make America Great Again, Again, is right this minute as invested as anyone could be in America not doing well so he can capitalize on it, and that should be seen as disqualifying. 

This man is the proof of what privilege unchecked gets away with, He needs to have it denied because the nation needs to know what those he employed tried to do for his benefit. 

He can invoke it all he wants. but acting as if isn't a magic trick, and he is a former president, to all of our shame--those who already know how shameful he was, and those who still need to learn it. 

The Smokin' Crater Party

 

Marge Greene says in 2022 she is going to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” then blows up a car with “socialism” on it with a 50-caliber rifle she is auctioning off for contributions. pic.twitter.com/b10wGwVVW2

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 18, 2021

I'm not brand new, so I know that one of the points of an ad like this is outrage and getting liberals to point to it and here I am, Pavlov's liberal, pointing. Does she even have to run ads in her extremely red district? (But of course, shhhh, this is about fundraising and whatnot). But leaving aside the Palin-crosshairs-style violence indicated and the McCarthyist claim of anything she doesn't like as socialism, and it's really just distilled trolling. Because she believes trolling is her job.

No kidding. She recently told Steve Bannon that she's the "most effective member of Congress." That's objectively nonsense. She lost her committee seats. She's responsible for no legislation. What the heck is effective--did she mispronounce "defective"?  But she trolls and gets a response. It doesn't have to be a good response. 

Not every Republican trolls at MTG's level, but they all have the same basic idea of what governing is about--do stuff libs hate, but do things that are actually...useful? No. Absolutely not. So if Governor Abbott in TX wants to concentrate on the border instead of the power grid, or MS Gov. Reeves acts bemused when challenged on his state's lousy COVID-19 numbers, it's makes sense to realize that the ad above is the goal. Ask not what good government can do for you, ask what you can do to troll the libs. 

And you get to "govern" over a smoking crater for your trouble. 

That Was Certainly a....Campaign Event

Fact check: President Trump makes at least 19 false or misleading claims in wild anti-Biden monologue https://t.co/eDlcZCOs6Q pic.twitter.com/lHTQMFtCln

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 15, 2020

I'm just not exactly sure who Trump was campaigning for. I mean, he did his level-best to identify his rival, former Vice-President Joe Biden, with any number of smears, but when he's babbling things about how zero-carbon emission buildings means no windows and seems to not exactly understand how infrastructure is funded as a part of the congressional budget process, brings up Hunter Biden (and reminds us all of how his own dumb ass got impeached) and says nakedly race-signaling things like desegregation of the suburbs will destroy them, it does seem to come off as an advert for the candidate who hasn't told twenty thousand lies and counting and who would know better than to use the Rose Garden at the people's house for an attempted campaign rally speech (perhaps to make up for the one that was called on account of very possible rain or maybe probable poor attendance?).

I understand Trump needs to vent a little. He has a tough job that he doesn't seem to do very well, but shamefully, needs to be seen doing well at. Today, I read Mary Trump's book which in some ways explains the psychodrama of Trump's upbringing and just how it is that he came to congratulate himself for even his failures and blame other people for the damage done. Trump wants out from under the responsibility for the poor COVID-19 government response while still being the chief executive of this country, and so warms to the batshit ravings of advisors like Pete Navarro, who has made assertions about the virus being "weaponized" by China that certainly haven't been supported by intelligence or science and has gone out of his way to smear Dr. Fauci.

Peter Navarro. This Peter Navarro? The guy with an imaginary friend, Ron Vara. A goober within his own discipline who has some nerve taking on someone very well-regarded in their own.

Did anyone try to tell Trump this would reflect badly on him? No. Actually, one of the White House's favorite CNN reporters (not!), Jim Acosta, summed up the situation at the White House pretty succinctly:

CNN’s Jim Acosta: Trump White House "down to Kool-Aid drinkers and next of kin" https://t.co/OhHRldMg75

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 15, 2020

Trump is surrounded by the worst kind of people--weaklings who can't say shit because their mouths are already too full of it. The only good thing I can find in this kind of shitshow is that hopefully this connivance towards Trump's worst instincts proves his undoing. But oh, the fucking wreckage we have to wade through before this is all going to be over.

UPDATE:

The Peter Navarro op-ed didn’t go through normal White House clearance processes and is the opinion of Peter alone. @realDonaldTrump values the expertise of the medical professionals advising his Administration.

— Alyssa Farah (@Alyssafarah) July 15, 2020

Looong admiring whistle. Yeah, but that op-ed is sure out there in the public view now, isn't it?

Mr. Trump's Tragedy Tour

Travel pool was told Trump’s hospital visit was closed to pool because this is “about victims...not a photo op.” But it took the WH just a couple hours to release its own video highlights and photos. https://t.co/rPHYrsrJeP

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) August 7, 2019

Although there were people who did not want President Trump to visit either Dayton or El Paso because of a sense that he would make things worse, it always helps to consider that Trump can be on at least reasonably good behavior if there is some promise that it will pay off for him later. As in, he can later say he did something presidential by showing up. His photos from the consolation episode of his presidency are Very Good, even if some of his comments and tweets today were Very Not Good.

Being presidential all the time (or even just basically decent) isn't as easy as some people have made it look, apparently.

This will probably be followed up by being more horrible than usual, because this is another thing I have observed about Trump--when asked to not be terrible, he sort of saves his terribleness up. He is also probably not going to do anything about gun control or domestic terrorism (of the white supremacist variety--I do think he has plans for Antifa, which he pronounces rather exotically, I think). I would love to be proven wrong. My title is harsh but I don't think it's undeserved.

The people surrounding Trump are also very special pieces of work.

Trump's Shutdown is Off the Wall

George Conway shared a very special message he received from Trump (well, the Trump 2020 campaign, right?) that is very informatively fundraising off of the wall promise. Trump informs his pigeons that this is not a political game. We are more generally informed that it is, nonetheless, very political. Because he expects his campaign to make bank on it.

So, just based on the shutdown of last three weeks, and the speech Trump gave which did not declare an emergency, and the fundraising, what should we gather about Trump's strategy, here? He's made pains to describe his wall as a "barrier" and seems to think that building it from steel rather than concrete makes a serious difference, but that sort of sounds to me like a real estate developer trying to win over investors in a project. And that's weird, because his campaign was practically built around "Build the wall!" Yet, it began as just a gimmick.

Shouldn't he have had some ideas about what kind of wall he wanted before now? For that matter, during the first two years of his presidency, shouldn't he have built more of the wall than zero (0) additional miles by now?

Despite some handwringing about the net effect of Trump being able to broadcast more lies to the American people, I'm not sure that anything very effective was accomplished by his Oval Office speech. Unlike at his campaign rallies, this setting has him stiff and scripted, more prone to sniffing and seeming uninterested in the content. The result actually is that even Fox News is fact-checking him. What he has said is basically misinformation that has been repeatedly debunked before, but more to the point, he appealed to Congress to end the shutdown because he feels he politically can't (and other members of his party understand this as well.)

Still, despite all that his been personally invested by Trump in this shutdown over wall funding, it seems like he's handed his political future to Democrats just after having a very rough midterm election. And he privately, per NYT, acknowledges that the speech and visiting the border are unlikely to change anything. He left it to Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi to contrast his untruthful statements about border security with the real problems caused by the shutdown.

If he had given himself any room on this, he could have magnanimously agreed to end the shutdown, and promised to work out the wall/barrier/fence funding later, talking up how he was ending the "real" crisis of badly divided government. But he hasn't given himself that room, almost entirely casting it as a loss if he doesn't get his way. He continues to own this shutdown, and sill has not gotten a wall.

UPDATE:

Trump isn't much for optics.

Speaking at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the Capitol, Pres Trump throws a 'USA' hat into crowd: pic.twitter.com/kTRupbfrfG

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) May 15, 2017

The longer I look at Trump, the more certain I am that he just isn't fit--the "USA" is a brand and a self-promotion to him. He is horrible yet believes everything is about and for himself.

Working People Like Who?

So there's an ad where the Trump Campaign is trying to imply that Hillary Clinton derided so many people with her "deplorable comments":



But this might not be the greatest argument when juxtaposed with some enthusiastic Trump supporters:




Inviting people to identify with the "Make my burrito, bitch" guy might not actually work out. Trump rallies have gained notoriety for what can happen at them. Some of these people may just be working people--but they are also working at being horrible people. Deplorable, even.

The Trump campaign is making the argument that there isn't any difference between the white supremacists and sexists and homophobes that Clinton actually called deplorable, and the rest of those fine working folks out there. All I know is, saying that the people she called "deplorable" are "like you" says an awful lot about who they think "you" are.

View From Night Three at the RNC 3

I am looking at this picture of Trump smooching Pence, and I am deep in acceptance. Yeah, this is happening. This is totally happening. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I see this picture, and if you are a Republican, I am sorry. This is happening. Trump is so big and smoochy, and Pence is so small and it's happening. And there are flags and Republicans, but it doesn't even matter, now. It's happening. And Mike Pence is going to understand that Judas also was kind of a kissy person. And I will laugh about all of this.