TWGB: Huh.

 

Fox's Mark Levin: "President Trump is 76 years old. If the Department of Justice gets its way, he will die in federal prison." pic.twitter.com/wH2gUJtWiM

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 9, 2023

I can't call Mark Levin a liar, here; we did find out earlier this week that Richard Hanssen, the most damaging US spy so far in our history, died in prison.  If this was a work of fiction, I guess we would call that foreshadowing. This country doesn't like people playing games with our secrets. We jailed Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner for fooling around with classified docs. It would honestly be a sign of a two-tier justice system, the weird phrase Trump defenders keep throwing around, if Trump's charges weren't taken seriously just because he was wealthy and well-connected (a former president, no less!). Call it vetting for a job that Trump is finally getting about 7-8 years too late to avoid this reckoning. 

Robert Jeffress, who threatened Civil War over impeachment not so long ago, seems to think the Durham Report (which does exactly nothing) immunizes Trump from something because--I dunno. Propaganda? 

Jeffress: I told Trump that he is immunized against any indictment because of the Durham Report pic.twitter.com/D5MCy0zzTB

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 9, 2023

 Of course, Jeffress is just a part of the long Religious Right-wing Jericho March to crumble the wall between church and state that might be personified by Pat Robertson, whose death was announced today, and who I will briefly note, loved himself a culture war, demonizing his political enemies, and once said that revolting against Trump was revolting against God's plan for America. Which, coming from a man  who regularly failed to announce the date of the world's demise and blamed hurricanes and earthquakes on queer people existing, was always obviously to be taken with a grain. I think the religious right have always seen Trump as a battering ram, not the tip of the spear exactly, but a blunt force object they could use. 

Trump's Revisionism Isn't Pretty

ICYMI: Trump says 'many generals' think Robert E. Lee is 'their favorite general' pic.twitter.com/OD3GVPJ1Fs

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 28, 2019

In the Twitter clip from Reuters, above, President Trump is explaining his "fine people on both sides" bullshit regarding what happened in Charlottesville by not just performing revisionism on what he had said, but also on what the Charlottesville demo was about, who was there, and, weirdly, also what Confederate General Robert E. Lee was about. It's like revisionism Inception, where you can see multiple layers of fucked-up thinking about what he was trying to say, who he's trying to appease, and the hazy southern strategy Confederacy whitewash all going on, like a dream within a nightmare within a delusion.

I'm going to have to treat Trump's statement that "many generals" think Lee is their favorite is a fib on a par with Sarah Huckabee Sanders' claims regarding the "many" FBI personnel who told her they were grateful and whatnot about the Comey firing--it isn't based on anything. It's a weird embellishment on the idea that the March to Unite the Right was primarily about boosting history appreciation by being all misty-eyed about Lee statues coming down--but the fact that the posters and the speakers and all were noted white supremacists should serve to remind us that, well, the Confederacy and the lost cause Lee served was also all about white supremacy, and shit, that was not great! and also, fuck everyone who turned up, (except for the antifascists who let them know they were opposed) including the anti-Semites who went on about Jews, because how was that even about Civil War history, amirite?

What did Trump do back then? Pretend the real baddies were Antifa, who he doesn't mind condemning because, I guess, violence against fascists really tears him up inside? And Trump apologists like Dana Rohrabacher and the Dilbert guy just ran with that. But a girl died because a fucking fascist ran his car into a crowd (also injuring many others), and neo Confederates physically beat an African-American man nearly to death. Those people were not there for any good purpose in the first place, and let's get one thing right even if this was only and primarily about Confederate statues--General Lee wasn't such a winner.

This guy, right here, was a jumped-up Southern aristocrat who didn't just have slaves but tortured them, violated his oath as a US military officer to support treason in the defense of slavery, and is best memorialized by the seizing of his land to create a consecrated space for actual US heroes. Statues raised to memorialize the losers of the bloody secession attempt have always seemed like a nostalgia for the continuation of good ole dirty people-owning and feeling good about it. Brought to you by the same people who want voter suppression and still prefer law enforcement that overwhelmingly punishes poc's.

Biden struck a nerve by calling out Trump about this, and Trump reacted after his native (ist) reflexes.  Good on Biden. Because Trump doesn't have a good answer for his behavior here and never ever will.

Cindy Hyde-Smith is Unreconstructed

There is a part of me that wants to understand the politics of the Deep South and how it would create a Confederate-signifying politician along the lines of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith--why it might not occur to her that strongly advocating, for example, on behalf of Confederate vets and monuments there-of, wasn't necessarily a great look.

There is another part of me that entirely gets it, having lived the last forty-six years. I am not too young to know Reagan launched his candidacy for president against a gentle evangelist of the New South in Neshoba County just this close to Philadephia, Mississippi. And he extolled "state's rights"--which I guess and assume to this day means the rights of Brian Kemp to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Georgians and invalidate some number of votes and turn people aside from easily voting because of voting machines that were not available for a value of available that means installed in an accessible voting location.

If someone was looking to capture the South on behalf of the one-time party of Lincoln, Reagan sorted out the means so to do. And Cindy Hyde-Smith, having come up in a segregated private high school (and sent her kid to one), knew exactly the footsteps to follow in: if Reagan was once a Democrat whose party had left him, she, a former Democrat, understood that the Democratic Party had also left her (as in, we would not still have an unreconstructed Confederate, I guess).

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Well, Georgia still has me upset, and Florida could make anyone lose their rest, and as for Mississippi?

Goddamn! There are lines for absentee ballots, for a runoff, which is amazing to see.

"Mississippi Voters Wait in Line to Vote Absentee for Senate" by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS via NYT https://t.co/JRH9sSwfn6

— Hellen Gehris (@hellengehr) November 24, 2018

Mississippi, look forward, not back.

The Campaign from 1964 and Draper Sterling

A lot of people might think that when the Trump Campaign fired Corey Lewandowski by phone, and he was escorted out by security due to some kind of coup arranged by the Trump children (especially Ivanka, who I guess is the brains of the group) that this was the news of the day--so not. That wasn't even the best bit of the day, even though it was ammmmaaaaaazzzing that Lewandowski could manhandle a reporter and even be arrested and charged, and it is like "No big"--until Trump falls behind Clinton in the national polls by so much! But yeah, that only looks cosmetically bad--presidential campaigns have personnel shake-ups all the time, especially when transitions are being made--and we think Donald Trump is going to PIVOT TO THE GENERAL ANY SECOND NOW.

Right?

But this weirdly addressed political campaign info dump on a Monday morning at the top of the news cycle makes no sense unless it was supposed to bigfoot some other, more awkward news--if I suspect that there is anyone kind of media-savvy in Team Trump, and based on the primary, could be. The sort of bad news--the Trump campaign is all kinds of broke--but this isn't new for them. The news that the Trump campaign only raised like $3.1 mill this month and has $1.3 mill on hand and owes something like $42 mill, and mostly uses Trump properties for its expenses meaning Trump is paying himself back--whoa! It's complicated, right? It's a lot like maybe the Trump campaign is just a giant funnel constructed to get GOP donations where Trump pretends to self-fund by "loaning" money to his campaign, but since the loans aren't forgiven--meh? The accounting stuff is probably boring to all y'all even if I think it's the most interesting thing I've seen in a forever. (Money nerd for life.)

But the cutesy thing where his web IT guys are "Draper Sterling"? Like from the tv series Mad Men? Are you shitting me?