Trump Discusses a Back-Stabbing

 

Trump: If I don’t win this election.. the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that if that happens pic.twitter.com/N9skHU0hnu

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 20, 2024

This reminds me of so much history that as human beings, we all should shudder to repeat. Trump has moved on from how US Jewish people would be crazy not to support him, to possibly threatening them that they should support him, if they understand what's up. 

There's an ambiguity there, as the threats of strongmen sometimes contain--a plausible deniability, Maybe the "blame" won't be repaid by anyone associated with Trump at all.  But maybe he wants people thinking about that. 

Here's what I'm not going to do--pretend I don't notice it. That was a threat. Maybe he meant that a Democratic administration would not be as supportive of Israel as his would be--but that is also conflating Jews with the state of Israel--not the same thing at all. He's basically saying what a "good Jew" is vs. someone who might "have it coming." 

I need not tell you what it reminds me of because most of us won't ever forget. 

Trump is Showing Us Who He Is--Again

 

Trump tells Black journalists that Kamala Harris "is of Indian heritage ... is she Indian or is she Black? ... she became a Black person." Note the audience laughing at him. pic.twitter.com/PAhmgr1yBS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 31, 2024

Trump sat for 35 minutes for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists that was supposed to last an hour, but his own team advised them to wrap it up.  Ending an interview halfway through is exactly what a campaign would do when their guy is "crushing it"--right?

Of course not. Trump put on a racist shitshow because he is a racist shitshow. That's not actually new. What is new is, I think, is the laughter. He is ridiculous beyond belief.

He's befuddled by the idea of someone being able to claim two cultures. (He does not know, I think, where to send her back to.) He projects his inability to grasp the concept on her--it's something she's doing, right? In so doing, he's trying to cast doubt on Kamala Harris' authenticity--where have we seen that before? 

Birtherism. He did the same thing to Barack Obama. And to be completely honest, that should have ended his political career right there. But here he is, running for president--again. Displaying his astonishing ignorance and arrogance--again. And his fellow Republicans and some of his little friends in the media will let him do this again. Maybe for an encore, Trump will request Harris' college transcripts.

More Listening to the Felon

 

Ingraham asks Trump about his comments telling Christian backers they won't have to vote again in 4 years. Trump responds by saying Jews should have their heads examined if they vote for Dems. Ingraham presses him & Trump doesn't exactly quell concerns he wants to end elections. pic.twitter.com/khGeauqp9S

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2024

I'm just going to leave my comment at this--if Trump's response to an obvious question to get him to ameliorate his "Christians won't have to vote again" sentiments is to bash Jews, I think that's a good indication he is NOT walking back his anti-democratic Christian Nationalist inclinations.

And it isn't a one-off. Not at all.

The Elephant at the Protest

 

I am completely opposed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, I genuinely think the Rafah operation will be a bloodbath and should be reconsidered, and I am highly skeptical that the eradication of Hamas is fully possible without what already are proving to be unacceptable human casualties. I want to believe that in a different political situation, Gazans might want something more like Fatah (which Hamas exterminated in that region) leading them in an autonomous state. I support the free speech rights of the protesters at various colleges, even to the extent that I am dubious of the effect of the protests and don't truly believe they are as well-informed as they need to be.

I do not want a recap of National Guard breaking heads at Berkeley, or Kent State. Reactionaries are looking for the opportunity to have hardhat riots and so on, and some people are openly fantasizing about the Democratic National Convention being another 1968. 

Given my feelings about all of the above, let me be that wet-blanket Gen X asshat who wants to tell the children, ever so delicately--the hell you are doing the same thing my parents' generation did. When pro-Palestinians all say "Genocide Joe", maybe they think they are just echoing their grandparents' asking LBJ how many kids he killed that day. But Joe isn't dropping the bombs, and Israel is getting incoming missiles all the time from Hamas, Hezbollah, and there is a threat of war from Iran.

Which leads me to point out that young man in the picture above with the Hezbollah flag--with a machine gun on it. Almost a gentle hippie, just repping something that is by no means a peace movement, but terrorism. 

When 1968 begat Nixon, he prolonged the Vietnam War. No, really. My dad's generation was drafted. He (Nixon) on the advice of Kissinger, prolonged the war. 

As Goes Ohio? Kansas? Arizona?

 

If Nikki Haley, who dropped out weeks ago, is pulling 20% in the GOP primary against Trump in Ohio--this is a worrisome thing for him. Here's what I'm thinking--it's well-educated and female voters who realize that Trump is an appalling person. Some of these people will end up voting for Biden. Some will stay home. But this is an issue that Trump actually CAN'T address. 

What do I mean by that? Take the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. He counter-sued and lost, because what in the hell is the difference between assaulting someone digitally vs. with a penis? He's going back in against ABC and George Stephanopoulos because Nancy Mace kind of made him do it.  So we are now going to be talking about Trump's being a rapist and Trump INVITED it. 

We are going to go back to the Ukraine issue in the first impeachment because Trump invited that, too. We are going to se him condition Jewishness as it relates to Zionism, for a degree of Zionism that truly is anti-Palestinian. We are going to question what he REALLY wants done at the border because he stopped the border deal. We are going to question whether he understands foreign policy because after all--Russia is being expansionist, dare I say, imperialistic? And there's stupid tyrant fanboy Trump, wanting to be recognized by the Big Kids Dictator Club. 

Clickbait, Context and Code Pink

 

The above picture is a screenshot of a 25 second video that got a lot of clicks--10M views! A lot of well-meaning people had a strong response to it and so did I--just, not the same one they did. See, in light of the comments that Nancy Pelosi made Sunday which I alluded to in my previous post, it's possible for some people to assume Pelosi had become unhinged or something--what is she even talking about?  Russian influence, now "go back to China"? You could forgive someone for assuming that protesters were trying to get commentary out of her just NOW over what she said in the interview. 

As for me, I thought it might be the case. but it's just a 25-second clip with no context. If someone showed up to protest me at my home, after it had been my spouse not so long ago attacked by a madman in my home, I'd be rude as hell to uninvited "guests". "Go back to China" sounded to me maybe like a way to suggest these guys were commies or something. 

But it's from an earlier protest and the protesters are Code Pink, who ARE funded by CCP money. And Pelosi is used to them haunting her lawn--they did it in 2007, and they do it today.  And my humble opinion is they are assholes. 

The Freedom Mommies are Being Weird Again

 

So, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, Bridget Ziegler and her husband, who happens to be the chair of the Florida GOP, were in a relationship with a third party, a woman who claims she had been sexually assaulted by the husband, Christian Ziegler. If there was a book about this, no one in Florida would be allowed to read it. 

I don't find it hard to believe a GOP official is capable of sexual assault: my word! I'm not the one who will pretend for a minute Republicans are actually moral exemplars--actually, they are kind of fucked up. Just a little bit ago, it was revealed that a spokesperson for the Freedom Mommies in Philadelphia (my home!)  was a registered offender. 

Look, the sexual morality thing is just a grift. Take poolside threesome aficionado Jerry Falwell Jr. as an example. "We're saving kids from being sexually tempted and confused--like we are! So ban books!' 

It's just anti-intellectualism with a spicy homophobic and sex-negative twist, It's not new, and it's dumb. But just so I can sort it out in my mind--is it not queer for the same-sex business to be happening so long 2/3rds of the people are openly Christian and straight-married? Is it less than two mommies queer? Is it more than two daddy penguins raising a baby penguin queer? 

Or is it Anne Frank wants to compare breasts with another adolescent female queer? Because teenagers are curious, but banning Anne Frank's diary has farther reaching concerns. Anti-Semitic ones. Because despite their vehement protestations, The Freedom Mommies are associated with Proud Boys. Though they want to sink that connection. But they stay "Klanned Karenhood" in my mind and so many others.

Heritage, Not Hate, You Guys

 

There were lovely peace marches today around the world only somewhat marred by counterprotests and, you know, antisemitic hate messages under the guise of liberation. I'm a simple human, so I have to ask you all: if you knew that for Israeli Jews, and for the founding statements of Hamas and as was actually dropped from the PLO platform back in the 1980s, that "from the river to the sea" actually was literally intended to mean "throw Jews into the sea because this is Arab land"--would you be shocked if many people interested in peace thought that slogan was uniquely unhelpful? Would you try to retcon it to mean something different? Can we make that statement more "All Lives Matter"-ish? 

Sure, it's got a rhyme and a good marching cadence, but would it be helpful? Would people chanting about "intifada" be helpful, or no? If it literally antagonized the people you want peace with who also have a fear of genocide? What does the chant "Palestine 48" mean to people? Why throw red paint like blood at the White House? 

See, I get that for people who have gotten deep into this conversation, anti-Zionism means a lot of different things, but Israel is as old as my dad. To me, 75 years old is old enough to have earned the right to be acknowledged. If Zionism is basically the thing where there is a Jewish state in the Middle East: here it is! There are people there! They have a government and guess what: the people know that what the Netanyahu government is doing is wrong and are protesting it. They want to acknowledge human rights and Palestinian dignity--not all Israelis are right-wing settler colonialists. Like, we can't at this point argue about Jews living there. They do. The alternative to that is a war crime. 

PSA: You Are Not a Cat

 

There is a phenomenon that has been well-documented on the internet, the place where people document things happening to cats: when you place a cucumber behind an unsuspecting cat, it will lose its ever-loving little furry shit. Multiple gifs and YouTube videos of this phenomenon exist. Cat + cucumber= YIPES!

For most people (not Mike Johnson or Ken Hamm or assorted creationists) this can be explained by evolution. Cats only have so much bandwidth in their little brains and some snakes are DANGEROUS. They aren't hardwired to leisurely inspect long green things to figure out whether they are snakes or inoffensive vegetables. They are hardwired to get away from the weird thing sort of shaped like a snake that seems to have just slithered up to them. 

That's cats. They don't do a whole lot of thinking. If you've ever pulled one out of blinds, or a Christmas tree, or unhooked their claws from your pants leg, you are aware that despite their occasional grace and agility, they can be weird little clowny guys. They literally bite the hand that feeds them. They try to fit their whole behinds in a Kleenex box. They evolved to be a better mousetrap, not to build one. 

There is a phenomenon that has been documented on the internet, and all of recorded history, of human beings making a categorical error of confusing identities with morality. Individual humans make decisions and take actions that may be morally sound or not. Whole groups of people do not become suspect because of the individual behaviors of other people based on their identities: not their ethnicity, their nationality, their religion, their gender-identification, their sexuality, their political affiliation (for the most part) or what hand they use to eat with. (Is that last thing still a thing?) 

The Terror by Night

I think about the Bible sometimes. When the Internet was cut off in Gaza, and the electricity, I thought about the "terror by night"--the nameless and wordless horrors of the obscured, when the beasts come out after sundown, and you can barely make out the face of friend from foe. The thieves and knives come out at night. 

That terror is called "pachad". It is the terror for one's life. What is also to be feared? The arrow by day. 

That arrow pierces to the quick, because the target is seen. There is nothing done under cover of night that doesn't come out in the daylight.

I worry about people who want to use the Bible about this conflict. A lot of the ancient of days stuff is just outdated, and I don't think it's right that we hear a chant of "Khaybar, Khaybar" in pro-Palestine marches, or references to Simon of Trent. 

TWGB: You Don't Have to Hand it to Hezbollah

Trump's reckless stream-of-consciousness diatribes are sometimes more revealing than he thinks they are. What does it say about the man when he feels the need to say that "Hezbollah is very smart" and that he has some beef with Netanyahu going back to the US strike on Iran's General Soleimani? You have to wind of the tangled thread of his speech; he might not know that Hezbollah is based in Lebanon making striking Israel in the north sort of logical: what should they do, go around?  He mentions the failure of Iran's intelligence. He says Netanyahu was unprepared...

Many people are saying, as the formulation goes, that Trump is really actually made at Netanyahu for acknowledging Biden's win over him in 2020 and for his gratitude at US support now. Trump is, in other words, jealous and feeling upstaged. This might make sense of another weird detail of Trump's ramblings lately, his insistence that Barack Obama is Joe Biden's boss. He needs to credit the competence of his political rival to someone else.

NBC Cleaning the Augean Stables with a Squirt Gun

 

It's all very well to feature a four-time indicted adjudicated rapist and racist serial liar on your television program to lie to your audience for an hour or so, and if that four-time indicted adjudicated rapist and racist serial liar is a former president and the front runner for his party's 2024 presidential nomination, it might even be newsworthy, but I think if that's the person you're hosting, be upfront:

"We are hosting a serial liar so you can see the things he is lying about." 

That he is all of those things is more important than his self-serving babble, is it not?

Because a little after-the-fact fact-checking isn't even where you need to begin. Our man Trump is a veritable Augean Stable Genius, the result of decades-worth of unshoveled livestock excrement. He is a man I'm almost certain who watches himself with the sound turned off because the bare fact of his fame is enough for him. What he says hardly matters. He doesn't want to be loved so much as he wants to be inescapable.  Omnipresent. He is without shame.

So, he can spit out a firehose of lies and possibly even incriminate himself? He can be partially rebutted and yet, even fact-checking him turns up little kernels of truth that his fan club can seize on: See? He's not all wrong. And people can argue whether he was mistaken or "fumbled" or just exaggerates. 

The above screencap is from a post on Truth Social from Trump to Jewish Americans wishing them a Shana Tova in his unique way. by basically calling liberal Jewish people traitors. He hopes they have "learned a lesson" which doesn't at all sound like a threat, right? Or does it sound like a threat when it isn't the first time? When prominent figures increasingly have been scapegoating minorities (including migrants, Blacks and LGBTQ folks?)

Can a practically mundane, respectful interview speak to that? Can it do so more than a decade after the national media as a whole seems to have given him a pass for birtherism, which truly always was racism?  

I don't think these particular stables get cleaned out until "justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." 

Kennedy, Caviezel, and the Conspiracy Theories

 

I was prepared to just dedicate a little space to the "surprise" movie of the summer, a little action picture (I guess it's action?) starring Jim Caviezel (whose work on "Person of Interest" was quite all right) and which is just a bit controversial. You know, in the way that the movie is at least thematically related to Qanon, and Jim Caviezel is a big old Q-Krazy. As in, when he promotes the movie, he adds a dollop of adenochrome discussion which is a descendant of the gnarly old anti-Semitic blood libel, which itself can be traced back to "the Jews killed Jesus".

So of course it's being promoted to Christian groups and conservatives with a "pay it forward' scheme that seems to be plumping its box office totals, in rather the way mass book-buys aid conservatives on the best-seller lists. 

Now, as for me, I don't like to criticize art I haven't sampled and don't mean to yuck anyone's yum over wanting to see the movie--which may very well be worth it at the price! I'm just naturally skeptical over something that might very well be soft-peddling hard bullshit that misrepresents human trafficking and how to combat it. It also strikes me as really odd that just as focus has come upon the real-life group formed by Tim Ballard who inspired the movie--he's checking out for a while. That may or may not be anything sketchy. 

But I'd hate to see anyone fall unawares into any of the Qanon-related "rabbit-holes".  Or decide to freelance to combat human trafficking because they think they are "helping".

(I do have to say that this "raising awareness" of human trafficking with a look of earnestness reminds me a bit of the "Kony 2012" viral video from nearly a dozen years ago. I recall one of the makers of that video was briefly checked into a health clinic or something in the surrounding attention. And some very cringe music videos surfaced.) 

The Minivan Taliban Are Being Fascist Again

 

Oh hey! Um, the freedom mommies went fascist again, and this time, they singled out Jewish people as if the Jewish people who are Americans weren't really Americans because they think this is a Christian nation and I guess they think all the Jews should go live in Israel and be Meggido'd. But I'm also going to be exactly the kind of person who points out that the last thing the quote says is seriously 14 words-compatible. 

They are talking about the survival of the Christian nation and their kids not being exposed to information that makes them doubt the cult of anti-science bullshit they are about to be raised in. 

The freedom mommies started by being bullshit about vaccinations, masks and school shutdowns (and I could go on a rant about fascist eugenics and the cult of clean blood but I could write a book about that and won't), probably because having kids at home impacted on their ability to daydrink and parent badly. Now, these assholes want to be fucked up because they have to explain complicated facts to their kids like gay people just love people who are the same sex as them and transpeople also use bathrooms. You know--easy explanations for shit that isn't hard. 

This is why they decided Jews are scary and probably pogroms will have to happen. Because they got momentarily inconvenienced into caring for their fucking kids, and they still don't, because they are doing this signifying shit, and probably have no idea where their kids are while they are being about FREEEEEDUMB!. But they RILLY RILLY care about their kids so much. They won't do anything about like, school shooters or poor kids getting fed or shit like that. But they will totally stop your LGBT kid from feeling like a loving community exists and probably make your POC child feel like something is missing from their history lesson, but not from their schoolyard bullying. Also too, they love quoting Hitler and being Hitler adjacent. Apparently.

(We love this game. Conservatives get to be fascists, and pretend that when you call them out on the fascism, they were only playing. It has never been cute.) 

These idiots are the reason I will never, never feel like a selfish monster for not having kids. These special beings squirted out kids and suck so hard. 

Climbing One Hill After Another

 

A Florida School Has Banned the Poem Read at Biden’s Inauguration

Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb is restricted after just one parent complained about it.https://t.co/AMLRSaUSOA #BannedBooks #IStandWithTheBanned

— PEN America (@PENamerica) May 23, 2023

There is some back and forth over what we count as a "ban" for purposes of conversation--so let's go with "restriction". One parent complained about this poem. One confused parent, who thought it was written by Oprah Winfrey (which right there is a bit of a red flag--no?) And so it was decided on the basis of one opinion that maybe the younger ones would be "confused" or "indoctrinated" by a poem that was read at a presidential inauguration for all the world to hear. 

So, let's talk about the parent--who apologized for promoting the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a notorious anti-Semitic hoax that still has a lot of play among a certain set of conspiracy theorists. She admits she's not much of a reader. One could argue what sort of thinker she is. But the point is--she's one person.

And she has the ability as a parent to restrict her own's kids' reading. I can wonder about what sort of strange, unwell bonsai her kids' curiosity might be pruned to as a result. But my own parents pulled messy romance novels and Mad Magazine out of my sweaty little hands as a kid--it was their right. At issue is whether a very few, and possibly very cranky few at that, should have veto power over all the kids' reading. 

After all, just eleven people filed most book bans across the country. Maybe these people need new hobbies, because that sounds like an industry, if not its own agenda.

I can't say age restriction is wholesale bad--I definitely question things of a sexually explicit nature being in the hands of kids and think maturity restrictions do make sense, in context. But, for example, nudity was used as a reason for banning the graphic novel "Maus" in a context that had no sexual conten. And I can see where there are challenges to LGBT+ content on the basis of "sexual references" where nothing is explicit. (I want to put out there that not all "coming of age" novels are for the people who are coming of age themselves, but for people who have also been through it.)  But also, just because something is contentious doesn't mean it's wrong, as in the case of, I dunno, the grand sweep of American history.

Those decision aren't one hill to climb--but one after another. And shouldn't be lightly decided just because school officials can't be bothered to fend off random cranks.

Fox, Untucked

 

You know, the sweetest thing about Tucker Carlson getting the axe was he didn't even seem to know he was on the block. He closed out Friday's show clearly expecting to be back on Monday, and apparently only found out he was going, going, gone ten minutes before Fox News officially announced it. So as far as the mutual agreement to part ways goes, it sounds like Fox wanted him to depart and Tucker Calrson wasn't starting it with the security taking his shit out of the building. 

So what makes a huuuuugggge cable media company part with their most recognizable figure? Oh, let me count the ways--wait a minute, how about I don't, but just suggest that the ledger, even if it suggested losing Carlson was a big loss, was nothing compared to his potential liability. The Dominion settlement was a big hit, the Smartmatic one promises to be even bigger, Carlson's former booker is suing, and Ray Epps already sent a cease and desist letter. 

The Spirit of 2016 and the Illegal Meme

 

For some people, it's never stopped being 2020, and for the immuno-suppressed and their families, I get that. For me, it's never stopped being 2016, when begun, the meme wars were. The 2016 presidential election had an extraordinary amount to do with digital presence, and I don't think we've yet absorbed all of the lessons from how foreign influencers and Pepe-heads took over the conversation and suppressed part of the vote or rendered the importance of the franchise to "vibes". 

I have talked about the Brad Parscale/Internet Research Agency dual strategies at targeted voter suppression a few times in the course of TrumpWorld Grab-Bags because the similarities in tactics were tandem and synergetic. The Trump campaign in 2016 deliberately worked to target Black voters and peel them off of from the Democratic candidate. The same thing was done with the IRA. 

So if we take a look at recently convicted Douglass Mackey, who created voter suppression memes during 2016 as part of his online "Ricky Vaughn" persona, we see an individual not necessarily directly associated with a campaign or foreign influence, who nonetheless tried to influence an election through fraud. The text message, the option to vote via text, was inauthentic. The line was real, if not a valid way to vote. 

The (Book) Free State of Florida

 

There's something rotten in the state of Florida, and DeSantis is all over it--his state has purged books, of all things, from school libraries. Because you never know what might be lurking in books. Ideas. Hope. Emotions. Freedom of thought. Freedom of speech. Non-conformity. There might be something there to challenge the youthful mind to do something more than hear and obey. And in DeSantis' Free State of Florida, that just isn't something he wants to see. 

Yeah, I'm here to tear up his stupid circumlocution called the "Free State of Florida". When you introduce a kind of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for teachers and students and whoever else is connected to schools, how dare you call whatever the fuck you are doing "freedom"? When you start a war against "woke" (anti-racism and anti-homophobia/transphobia, anti-systemic oppression of minority rights, apparently)--what is freedom to you?

Is it just another word for nothing left to lose? 

I don't mind calling a person who muses about how to make the death penalty easier to apply a whole ass fascist. He throws his little shit about making pedophilia subject to the death penalty in there to libel opponents of his bullshit as being pro-pedo instead of anti-death penalty. But I see him. And I don't have a hard time believing the stories that his time in the service attached to Guantanamo and adjacent to the SEALS in Fallujah were about finding legal loopholes to circumventing human rights. (You can do your own research, because I don't know whether what I see is true or not, I only know what I find DeSantis capable of. And I would bet it's a lot) 

I Feel Bad for Fatima Devolder

 

I don't know much about George Santos' mother other than what fact-checkers have had to debunk. Above, I posted a screenshot of two Tweets from George Santos about his mother's passing: that her life was claimed by 9/11 and that she had died in 2016. This doesn't strike me as so necessarily conflicted--of course, people who were near Ground Zero succumbed, even years later, due to disease from the toxic fallout of the rubble. If she contracted cancer from that, however later, it is just as much a case of 9/11 claiming her life as if she had passed when the Towers fell. 

Only--Santos says she was an executive working at a major financial institution, and it appears she was actually a domestic worker or home health aide. So how was she even there? Was she?

We can question whether his need for assistance with the burial matches his bio--and I will say, I believe he had financial problems.  I can see with my own eyes the struggle was real. But why did he have to lie so much about his mother? 

He concocted from nothing at all a story about her family and variously said she was from Belgium, or that her ancestors were Ukrainian Jews with the family name "Zabrovsky". He said his mother fled socialism in Belgium (which is not a socialist country) and also that his Ukrainian Jewish forebears fled the Holocaust because of socialism (because the whole "First they came for the socialists" thing is entirely lost on people whose life of the mind is entirely constructed of fables). 

George Santos, Caucasian, Jew-ish and Black (because he claims Angolan ancestry via his father) never seems to think his own story is good enough. Or that his own mother's story was good enough. He name-checks the Holocaust, 9/11 and even fabricated employees that died in the Pulse shooting as if only major events give meaning to one's life. 

His actual story, as a first-generation American who had a loving mother who protected him even though he was a check-stealing shit back in Rio de Janeiro, was not enough. That he now pretends he made a fortune just a minute ago in something he refers to as "capital introduction" can only make us wonder who introduced this ne'er-do-well to the kind of capital that finances a successful congressional campaign--and investigators are gonna be on it. (I always suspect Russians but Dark Money is a real thing, too.)

His lies about who he is and who she was fall around her--unable to say one word because she isn't alive to say her piece.  But I think she deserved better. Who she actually was should have been enough. 

UPDATE: Is he a chronic liar because he had a brain tumor or did he have a brain tumor because he's a chronic liar? 

3 years ago, he claimed he had a brain tumour and received chemo… pic.twitter.com/fBclHQjrps

— Ravin Boodram (@rvbdrm) December 29, 2022

How the whole hell?  I mean, how the whole hell? 

 

Eric Swalwell Nails It

 

Kevin McCarthy can’t denounce Trump’s dinner with known white nationalist Nick Fuentes because if he did, McCarthy would also have to call out his new boss MTG pic.twitter.com/qjihmRc67l

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) November 26, 2022

You know it's true. He needs a bigoted conspiracy theorist's support to become Speaker. He isn't interested in what he accomplishes as Speaker, he only knows that to do any of it, he needs to not alienate his own party's worst members. 

And it is the same bargain the whole party makes with Trump. They have been mainstreaming evil.

UPDATE:  Per Axios, GOP spokespersons for major Republican electeds had no comment because of course they didn't. Speaking out against evil isn't about who has got your back, sometimes it's just about whether you can find your own spine.