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Thom Hartmann: Scams, Corruption and the Election

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2024 //
6

Thom Hartmann encourages readers to beware of political scams right before the elections. The economy is cooling off. Why isn’t the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates? Is it because the chair of the Federal Reserve is a Republican? Did you know about Trump’s increase in wealth during his presidency? I don’t agree that Trump wants to get elected to make money; I think he wants to stay out of jail. But we may both be right.

He writes:

—  Is the Fed Chair “trying to get Donald Trump elected” by keeping rates high? The anti-corruption watchdog group Revolving Door Project is claiming that lifetime Republican and former commercial banker Jerome Powell, now the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is “trying to get Donald Trump elected.” Fully two months ago, Powell noted that “this is no longer an overheated economy” and “the labor market appears to be fully back in balance.” Yesterday’s jobs numbers — lower than expected new jobs (144,000) and a jump in unemployment to 4.3% — suggest the economy is on the verge of tipping into recession, an event that Trump yesterday pointed out and proclaimed is happening because of “Kamalanomics.” The Project’s Executive Director Jeff Hauser was explicit: “That Powell’s Fed still refuses to lower interest rates—after Trump said that rates shouldn’t be lowered before the election—raises questions about the central bank’s independence. Whether the Fed keeps rates high or brings them down, one of two presidential candidates will benefit. While lower rates would provide much-needed economic relief to the American people, Powell has instead chosen to stick it to the people and give an electoral boost to Trump.” Senator Elizabeth Warren yesterday called on the Fed chair to “cancel his summer vacation” and “lower interest rates now.” The warnings signs are flashing bright red — with worldwide declines in stock market indexes — and if Powell and the Fed don’t lower interest rates at least a half point within the next few weeks, it’ll be safe to conclude that Hauser is exactly right in his diagnosis of this situation. 

— Did Egypt give a $10 million bribe to Trump? The Washington Post published a blockbuster report yesterday, detailing how the Egyptian government pulled together $10 million in cash in 2016 right after Donald Trump sought out Egyptian dictator El-Sisi and promised him a presidential visit (which he fulfilled) right after his inauguration. The Department of Justice found out about it in 2019 and the FBI began an investigation, but Attorney General Bill Barr — one of the most publicly corrupt senior government officials in modern history — put the kibosh on the investigation. As a result, nobody knows if or how the money was delivered to Trump, although right around the time it would have been delivered Trump took the unusual step of putting exactly $10 million of his own money into his campaign. Saudis and Russians own large parts of Trump Tower and multiple nations funneled millions to Trump by booking blocks of rooms in his DC hotel and then just leaving them empty. Forbes estimates that Trump’s businesses brought in $2.4 billion during his four years as president; hundreds of millions of that came from foreign governments and from his charging the Secret Service and our US government a small fortune for their stays at Trump properties around the world. His entire presidency, it turns out, was a giant grift; no wonder he wants back into office. 

— Senate Republicans tell us who they are. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan increased child tax credits in a way that lifted an estimated 30 million children out of poverty, cutting the US child poverty rate in half. They expired last year, and legislation to reinstate them passed the House with roughly equal votes from both Democrats and Republicans. Iowa Senate Republican Chuck Grassley famously opposes help to poor families, saying “passing a tax bill that makes the president look good mailing out checks before the election, means he could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.” Senate Republicans got the message and killed the bill on Thursday afternoon, keeping child poverty in America at a higher level than any other developed nation in the world.

Republicans say that the child tax credits are an effort by Democrats to buy votes. Maybe they are but when they were in effect, they cut child poverty rates in half. That’s reason enough for both parties to support them.

Categories Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Fraud, Republicans, Trump

Dan Rather: Elon Musk Pushes Lies and Fake News

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2024 //
7

Dan Rather warns about the danger of one-man control of a major social media company. He had Elon Musk in mind. Musk is supporting Trump, and he is using Twitter, his personal megaphone, to help Trump and smear Harris.

I have been locked out of Twitter since mid-July, because Twitter says I am underage. Really! So I am no longer influenced by Musk propaganda. But millions of other people are.

Rather writes on his blog “Steady”:

Imagine having the ability to instantly lob information, true or not, to millions of people across the globe. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), has that ability. One would hope that with that power would come responsibility. In a perfect world, the owners of social media companies would be fair-minded and objective. Alas.

For all the talk of social media reform after 2016 and the Facebook fiasco when misinformation ran rampant across that platform, it now appears that Musk has decided not only to support the Republican candidate for president but to personally help spread misinformation about voting and the election.

Plus, in 2024, Musk has more powerful tools than Facebook ever imagined eight years ago. Artificial intelligence is coming into its own, and the dangers it presents to our democracy are profound.

Musk has recently released an AI chatbot, which, if you don’t know, is basically a computer that can simulate a human conversation. Musk named his Grok, and within hours of President Biden bowing out of the race, it created a post that read: “The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. The message suggested that Kamala Harris had missed the filing deadline to get on the ballot in those states.

This is 100% false and was shared with millions of users on X.

Secretaries of state in five of the nine states have written a letter to Musk urging him to “immediately implement changes” to Grok. I’m not holding my breath.

When Grok was launched late last year, Musk called it the anti-“woke” chatbot — his characterization. He said he wanted the AI search assistant to “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” Those other AI systems, powered by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, are specifically designed to avoid controversial topics.

But it’s not just Grok that is pushing out lies. Musk himself reposted a manipulated version of Harris’s first campaign video. It featured an altered voice track that sounds just like Harris. In it “she” says she didn’t “know the first thing about running the country” and that she is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk tagged the video as “amazing” and didn’t include a disclaimer. His post has garnered 135 million views, so far. It has not been taken down.

Talk about strange bedfellows. Over the years, there has been no love lost between Musk and Donald Trump. As recently as May, Trump was a vociferous and vocal proponent of the oil and gas industry. Remember the Mar-a-Lago get-together where he promised to end Biden’s green energy initiatives, including his electric vehicle policies, in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions?

Apparently Musk and Trump have mended some pretty tall fences. For his part, Musk has promised lots of cash to the pro-Trump America PAC. Maybe Trump didn’t get what he asked for from his oil and gas friends.

The Musk-backed America PAC is already helping Trump in swing states. The PAC’s website is tricking people into sharing personal data. The site promises to help people register to vote, but when a user enters a zip code in a battleground state, after also giving their name and phone number, they are directed to a page that says “thank you.” They are then asked to “complete the form below.” But there is no form. And there is no redirection to a voter registration site.

In exchange, Trump now thinks electric vehicles are “incredible.” What a shocker. At a rally in Georgia on Sunday, Trump told his supporters, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be because, you know, Elon endorsed me very strongly. So, I have no choice.”

The Michigan secretary of state is investigating Musk and the PAC. “Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said.

In 2022, President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University about the dangers of artificial intelligence, foreseeing that “regulation has to be part of the answer” to combating online disinformation. His closing thought is a reminder that AI can be a help as well as a hindrance — but that it can’t exist in a vacuum.

“The internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. At the end of the day, tools don’t control us. We control them. And we can remake them. It’s up to each of us to decide what we value and then use the tools we’ve been given to advance those values,” Obama said.

For all intents and purposes, social media has become our town square — but unlike most communities, it has no sheriff, and it very much needs one. In his or her absence it is up to us, social media’s users, to be wary consumers.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Propaganda

Texas: The Fight Against Vouchers Continues

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2024 //
10

Texas Governor Greg Abbot said last year that voucher legislation was his top priority. Was it because Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass gave him $6 million to vouchers through the legislature? A score of Republicans from rural districts voted against vouchers. They knew that their district schools would be crippled by vouchers. Although Governor Abbot called multiple special sessions, although he offered bribes and threats, the rural Republicans defied him and said no to vouchers. The people who taught in their local public schools were their sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, children and friends.

So Governor Abbot took Jeff Yass’s $6 million and used it to fund extremist Republicans who would vote for vouchers, putting their local public schools at risk.

Many of the Yass extremists won, paving the way for Abbot to win his vouchers.

Democrats are challenging Abbot’s puppets in November, the ones that Jeff Yass paid for.

The Pastors for Texas Children have not given up the fight.

Their leader Charles Foster Johnson post the following on Twitter:

As we write this, we are in the hearing room with our pastors. We are told the committee will hear testimony tomorrow, too.

 This written testimony by PTC Trustee Bill Jones is superb! It is a sterling example of what effective written testimony is. It is not too late for you to submit written testimony. You may do so here.   

#######

 I am Bill Jones, a resident of Collin County for the past 37 years. My state representative is Jeff Leach. I have three grandchildren in Frisco ISD and one in Allen ISD. My daughter is a schoolteacher in Frisco ISD and formerly taught for many years in Plano ISD. Both of my children grew up in Plano ISD schools. I am a trustee of Pastors for Texas Children, where I have served since 2013, and a member – since 2004 – of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, where I serve on the Christian Advocacy Committee.

 With respect to your August 12 hearing on “educational opportunity” proposals, I testify to oppose any bill that would transfer public taxpayer funds to private entities. Public taxpayer funds should go ONLY to public schools that benefit all, not to private schools that benefit only a privileged few. Any bill that would give public funds for the support of private schools would drain funds from our children’s and grandchildren’s neighborhood public schools, which are already gravely underfunded.

 Any claim by voucher proponents that vouchers benefit the underprivileged is an outright lie. The vast majority of parents who would take advantage of vouchers – as has been the case in other states – are those whose children are already in private schools. They go to parents who are able to afford the private school tuition, and the voucher is merely a supplement to reduce their expense. Voucher amounts are never even close to sufficient for those who cannot afford private schools in the first place. They benefit the well-to-do.

 Above all, I do not want my tax money to go to support someone else’s religious indoctrination any more than I want the tax money of those of other faiths to support mine.

 In addition, private schools are not accountable to the state – their teachers do not have to be certified; their curriculum is not subject to oversight; and they are free to refuse applications from, for example, special needs children, which they almost always do. Public schools, on the other hand, are required to meet state standards, and they must take ALL children, including those with special needs. We should not be further draining them of the resources needed to serve children of every type of need, every faith, every color, every ethnic background.

Voucher plans, no matter what name or euphemism is attached to them, are bad policy, hurting our children and grandchildren, and the dedicated public servants – schoolteachers, principals, superintendents, and other staff – who serve them.

Please vote against any bills that provide public taxpayer funds for the support of private schools.

Donate to PTC

PO Box 471155, Fort Worth, Texas, 76147

Categories Billionaires, Education Industry, Elections, Texas, Vouchers

Lawrence O’Donnell: Wake Up, Reporters! Do Your Job

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
24

Lawrence O’Donnell appears nightly on MSNBC at 10 pm EST. I love his show because he is so smart.

This episode is a must-watch.

As a bonus, here is Robert Reich wondering why the media doesn’t report honestly about Trump’s dementia.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Media, Trump

The New Republic: Tim Walz Is the Best Antidote to the Poison and Lies of FOX News

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
45

I don’t know how any self-respecting journalist could work for FOX News. It offers a good job in a competitive industry, but why sell your soul to the devil? I have recently seen tweets by Megyn Kelly, viciously attacking Kamala Harris, and every time I do, I remember Trump saying of her in 2016, after the first GOP debate, that she had blood coming out of her orifices. Yet still she is his sycophant.

In The New Republic, Thom Hartmann writes that Tim Walz may be the perfect antidote to FOX’s vitriol. If you want to reprogram family members, introduce them to Tim Walz. He is a good man, a decent man, not a FOX liar.

Hartmann writes:

All across America families are in mourning: Their parents and grandparents, particularly the men in their lives, have been stolen from them by the right-wing hate and rage machine.

Jen Senko produced a movie—The Brainwashing of My Dad—about losing her own father to Fox “News”; it was also made into a book of the same title. She’s been a guest on my radio show a few times, and her story is one replicated across America millions of times. Her father—a totally normal Midwestern guy—began watching Fox “News” when he retired, and within a year had become withdrawn, bitter, angry, and filled with hate.

Jen and her family staged an intervention and locked Fox out of Dad’s TV with the child lock option built into her cable system; within a few months, back to watching normal TV news like CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC, Dad made a full recovery from the temporary mental illness Murdoch’s infamous hate machine had thrown him into.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick, is America’s intervention against the mind poison that Trump, Fox “News,” and right-wing hate radio have infected our nation with.

He’s a normal guy, who joined the Army National Guard right out of high school at 17, rising to the rank of Commander Sergeant Major and becoming a top advocate for America’s veterans during his decade in Congress.

He used the G.I. bill to go to college, getting his master’s degree and going on to teach high school social studies. He coached his school’s football team, taking it to the state championships for the first time ever.

He smiles. His students love him, as does his family. He’s a normal guy. He’s the father everybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family wishes they had. He’s the grandpa everybody who’s lost one to Fox “News” wishes could sit down with their own and set him straight.

He carved butter at the state fair. He helped start his school’s first gay-straight alliance back in the 1990s when homophobic hate was still widely accepted; he said the coach doing so would be a powerful statement of support. He loves his country, his community, his family, and his nation.

No purchased bone-spur X-rays for Tim Walz; he embodies the very definition of patriotism that I grew up with in the Midwest. He reminds me of my own dad, who joined the Army at 17 to go fight Nazis in World War II, an echo of the past that most Americans recognize.

His contrast with Trump’s infidelities, con jobs, and constant angry bitterness is a sunlight-like disinfectant for our body politic. He shows up J.D. Vance—with his creepy obsessions with women’s genitals and birth rates and fealty to his billionaire patrons—for the weird guy that he is. He even highlights jokes about Vance, saying: “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”

Trump and Vance are riding a wave of hate, fear, and bigotry made acceptable and even viral by a multibillion-dollar media machine that emerged from the Reagan years.

To steal the minds of America’s grandparents, President Reagan fast-tracked citizenship for Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch in 1985 so Murdoch could legally purchase U.S. media properties; Reagan ordered the Federal Communications Commission to stop enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, and Republicans in Congress later gutted the Equal Time Rule.

In this, Reagan knew what he and the GOP were getting: Murdoch had by that time already flipped both Australian and British politics toward the hard right using frequent and lurid stories featuring crime by minorities.

Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald (the Australian equivalent of The New York Times), former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing news operations “the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.”

Fox and Murdoch’s power in Australia came, Rudd says, from their ruthlessness.

It’s the same here. When Fox and Tucker Carlson set out to rewrite the history of the treasonous January 6 coup attempt at our nation’s Capitol with a three-part special alleging it could have been an inside job by the FBI, two of their top conservative stars, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, resigned in protest.

Text messages released by Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the committee that investigated the January 6 attempt to overthrow our government show that the network’s top prime-time hosts were begging Trump to call off his openly racist and murderous mob while at the same time minimizing what happened on the air.

Even worse, revelations from the Dominion lawsuit show that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham all intentionally lied to their viewers for over two years with the encouragement of Rupert Murdoch himself. While they were privately ridiculing Trump and acknowledging he was a “sore loser,” they said the exact opposite to their audience.

Along with its relentless attacks on America’s first Black president, Fox’s support of Trump’s Big Lie helped tear America apart and set up the violence and deaths on January 6—while also making billions for Murdoch and his family.

Steve Schmidt, a man who’s definitely no liberal (he was a White House adviser to George W. Bush and ran Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign as well as John McCain’s 2008 campaign), has been blunt about the impact of Fox “News”:

Rupert Murdoch’s lie machine is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, the poisoning of our democracy and the stoking of a cold civil war. There has never been anything like it and it is beyond terrible for the country. Bar none, Rupert Murdoch is the worst and most dangerous immigrant to ever arrive on American soil. There are no words for the awfulness of his cancerous network.

While Biden press secretaries Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre have been humorous in their dealing with Fox’s Peter Doocy’s attempts at gotcha questions in the White House press room, there’s nothing funny about inciting attacks on our country and then openly lying on the air about “antifa” to cover it up, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented that Fox “News” did.

Tim Walz is the antidote to the Fox “News” poison that is now so widely imitated across the right-wing media ecosystem, stealing the hearts and minds of millions. He’s America’s everyman, a welcome dose of sanity, and a wake-up call about how badly our country has been damaged by billionaire-funded right-wing hate.

So let the dad jokes begin!

As Liz Gumbinner points out, Seth Meyers’s head writer, Sal Gentile, summarized it brilliantly on X: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your carburetor, replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door, and put a new chain on your lawnmower.”

And God willing and we all show up to vote, he’ll soon be vice president of the United States.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Goodness, Lies, Walz, Tim

North Carolina: Republican Candidate for State Superintendent is an Extremist and Crackpot

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
2

CNN reported that Michele Morrow, the GOP candidate for State Superintendent of Schools in North Carolina, filmed a video on January 6 urging Trump to “put the Coonstitution to the side” and use the military to stay in power. Morrow was in DC for the January 6 rally but she says she never entered the Capitol.

In a deleted Facebook livestream she filmed from her hotel room, Morrow called for mass arrests of anyone who helped certify the 2020 election. “And if the police won’t do it and the Department of Justice won’t do it, then he will have to enact the Insurrection Act,” said Morrow. “In which case the Insurrection Act completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, now the military rules all.”

Morrow was at the Capitol as the attack occurred, according to public videos reviewed by CNN that show her in a restricted area on the northwest side of the Capitol. CNN has seen no evidence that Morrow entered the Capitol building that day or that she engaged in violence, and she was not charged with any crimes.

In March’s Republican primary, Morrow defeated the incumbent North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, a job that manages the state’s $11 billion budget for K-12 public schools and helps set education priorities and implement curriculum standards.

That same month, CNN’s KFile reported Morrow had previously called for the public execution of Barack Obama and the death of Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats in comments on a since-deleted X account.

“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” Morrow wrote in a since-deleted post from May 2020 about Obama. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

Morrow home-schooled her children. She previously lost a local school board election. She is running now to take control of the education of all the children in North Carolina.

A terrifying prospect.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, North Carolina, Privatization, Trump

Washington Post: A Biased View of Tim Walz’s Record on Education

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2024 //
11

Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson wrote about Governor Tim Walz’s record on education in Minnesota. In making decisions, Walz relied on his own knowledge as a veteran public school teacher and very likely on research, but The Washington Post misleadingly attributed his views to “the teachers’ union,” the bugbear of the far-right.

The article is saturated with bias against teachers unions and presents the pro-education Walz as a tool of the union, not as a veteran educator who knows the importance of public schools. Walz grew up and taught in small towns. They don’t want or need “choice.” They love their public schools, which are often the central public institution in their community.

The 2019 state budget negotiations in Minnesota were tense, with a deadline looming, when the speaker of the House offered Gov. Tim Walz a suggestion for breaking the impasse.

They both knew that the Republicans’ top priority was to create a school voucher-type program that would direct tax dollars to help families pay for private schools. House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, floated an idea: What if they offered the Republicans a pared-down version of the voucher plan, some sort of “fig leaf,” that could help them claim a symbolic victory in trade for big wins on the Democratic side? In the past, on other issues, Walz had been open to that kind of compromise, Hortman said.

This time, it was a “hard no.”

He used his position’s formidable sway over education to push for more funding for schools and backed positions taken by Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union of which he was once a member. His record on education will probably excite Democrats but provide grist for Republicans who have in recent years gained political ground with complaints about how liberals have managed schools.

Teachers and their unions consistently supported Walz’s Minnesota campaigns with donations, records show. And in the first 24 hours after he was selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, teachers were the most common profession in the flood of donations to the Democratic ticket, according to the campaign.

During the chaotic 2020-21 pandemic-rattled school year, Walz took a cautious approach toward school reopening that was largely in line with teachers, who were resisting a return to in-person learning, fearful of contracting covid.

Critics say that as a result, Minnesota schools stayed closed far too long — longer than the typical state — inflicting lasting academic and social emotional damage on students.

As a former teacher, Walz knew that teachers were reluctant to return to the classroom until safety protocols were in place.

Walz also advanced his own robust and liberal education agenda. He fought to increase K-12 education spending in 2019, when he won increases in negotiations with Republicans, and more dramatically in 2023, when he worked with the Democratic majority in the state House and Senate. He won funding to provide free meals to all schoolchildren, regardless of income, and free college tuition for students — including undocumented immigrants — whose families earn less than $80,000 per year. He also called out racial gaps in achievement and discipline in schools and tried to address them…

And as culture war debates raged across the country in recent years, Walz pushed Minnesota to adopt policies in support of LGBTQ+ rights…

In the 2022 elections, Walz was reelected, and Minnesota Democrats took control of the Senate. Democrats now had a “trifecta” — governor, House and Senate — and a $17.6 billion budget surplus.

After taking his oath of office in January 2023, Walz said Minnesota had a historic opportunity to become the best state in the nation for children and families. His proposals included a huge increase in K-12 education spending.

“Now is the time to be bold,” he said.

The final budget agreement in 2023 increased education spending by nearly $2.3 billion, including a significant boost to the per-pupil funding formula that would be tied to inflation, ensuring growth in the coming years. Total formula funding for schools would climb from about $9.9 billion in 2023 to $11.4 billion in 2025, according to North Star Policy Action. The budget also included targeted money for special education, pre-K programs, mental health and community schools.

Walz also signed legislation providing free school meals for all students — a signature achievement — not just those in low-income families who are eligible under the federal program…

In his 2023 State of the State address, Walz drew a pointed contrast between the culture wars raging in states such as Florida and the situation in Minnesota.

“The forces of hatred and bigotry are on the march in states across this country and around the world,” Walz said. “But let me say this now and be very clear about this: That march stops at Minnesota’s borders.”

Through his tenure, he repeatedly took up the causes of LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.

He signed a measure prohibiting public and school libraries from banning books due to their messages or opinions, and another granting legal protection to children who travel to Minnesota for gender-affirming care.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Minnesota, Teacher Pay, Teachers and Teaching, Unions, Vouchers, Walz, Tim

USA Today: The Musk-Trump Lovefest on Twitter

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2024 //
12

For three weeks, I was locked out of Twitter because of a snafu that’s not worth recounting. Every time I tried to log on, I received a notice saying I was underage and not allowed to engage on Twitter. I have been on Twitter since 2009. So, even though I have been an active participant on Twitter for 15 years, Twitter concluded I had not yet passed my 13th birthday!

I have been active on Twitter for 15 years, but the great X decided I was not yet 13. Should I feel complimented or insulted?

Anyway, I didn’t watch or listen when Elon Musk held a conversation with Trump last night. I did notice, however, that the topic “slurring” was trending, and I discovered hundreds of comments about Trump slurring his language in the conversation, which led to comments about weird things Trump said: congratulating Musk for firing workers who dared to strike; brushing off climate change and rising seas, instead saying that he would get “more oceanfront property” and that our real worry should be “nuclear warming.” Many more non sequiturs.

Rex Huppke of USA Today wrote about the Musk-Trump show and summed it up well: it was a disaster. Worse, it was boring.

It started 40-45 minutes late, due to technical problems.

It was downhill from there.

For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid.

Former President Donald Trump had loudly trumpeted a planned Monday night interview with Musk that would stream on X. But much like the disastrous X-platformed launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, the Musk/Trump interview failed to launch, leaving social media users laughing at the collective incompetence.

Since Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, Trump’s reelection campaign has been flailing. His childish attacks against her aren’t working. His racist comments about her mixed-race heritage have repelled all but his most loyal supporters. His vice presidential pick, JD Vance, becomes less likable every time he speaks.

So his answer, weirdly, was to sit down with Musk and talk to what would undoubtedly be a very online audience that doesn’t represent the broader electorate. Had the conversation gone off without a hitch, it still would have been odd and largely useless for Trump’s effort to halt Harris’ momentum….

Forget the glitches, Trump’s X interview got worse when he started talking

Of course, things didn’t get better for Trump once the interview was able to proceed. …

He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind. He was also badly slurring his words, raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being.

He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck…

I’m not going to quote anything Trump said in the interview because it was either too stupid to merit transcription or a mere repetition of the nonsense he spouts at every rally he holds.

A big part of Trump’s problem right now is he has become almost unbearably boring. Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.

So for Trump, sitting down with a rich weirdo few people like and slurring his way through an interview that failed to launch was, in the words of one Donald J. Trump, “a DISASTER!”

Musk, with his social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance, made DeSantis look like a fool. And now he’s done the same to Trump.

Categories Elections, Media, Stupid, Trump

Trump Sues the U.S. Justice Department for $115 Million for Documents Search of His Home

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2024 //
5

Trump has the same reaction to every adverse circumstance in his life: Sue. Sue. Sue. He has been involved in literally thousands of law suits in his life. That’s his style. Sometimes the threat of a lawsuit is enough to frighten away an adversary. Sometimes a lawsuit forces a settlement, which works to his advantage.

Now he is suing the Justice Department for searching Mar-a-Lago for top-secret documents which he falsely claimed were his personal property. He no doubt expects the lawsuit to go before a friendly pro-Trump judge or the U.S. Supreme Court, which usually rules in his favor. If he is lucky, it will land in Judge Aileen Cannon’s court.

The New York Daily News reported:

Former President Trump is reportedly planning to sue the federal government for $115 million over the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, accusing the Department of Justice of unconstitutional “political persecution.”

Even though the search turned up hundreds of classified documents and led to his indictment on federal charges, Trump says prosecutors improperly targeted him in hopes of damaging his campaign to win back the White House.

“What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself — he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law,” Daniel Epstein, a lawyer for Trump, told Fox Business News.

Trump is demanding $15 million in compensation for his legal costs, plus $100 million in punitive damages.

Trump accuses Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray of failing to implement normal procedures for getting back the documents in order to carry out the search and humiliate the Republican ex-president….

The filing sets the clock ticking on a 180-day period during which Trump and the government can seek to work out a settlement. If no deal is reached, a federal judge will hear the case in south Florida.

This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
APThis image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (AP)

Trump admits taking the documents with him to his Florida estate after leaving the White House in January 2021, but claims he had the legal right to do so.

He returned some of the documents when hit with a subpoena to give them back.

Suspecting Trump was hiding more documents, the feds asked a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, which was carried out on Aug. 22, 2022.

Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate the case after Trump announced he would run for president again in 2024.

Trump was indicted on a string of charges accusing him of improperly retaining the documents and obstructing justice. Two Mar-a-Lago workers were also charged with moving boxes of sensitive documents to hide them from investigators and even Trump’s own defense attorney.

Judge Aileen Cannon recently dismissed the case on the grounds that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. The prosecution is appealing that decision to a higher court but it will likely wind up being decided by the Supreme Court.

Categories Corruption, Elections, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Report: The Worst Three Weeks of Trump’s 2024 Campaign

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2024 //
9

Two top political reporters at The New York Times, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, dug deep into the worst three weeks of Donald Trump’s campaign. Until the day President Biden stepped aside, Trump and his aides thought he was cruising to victory. They spent millions preparing to display Biden’s every gaffe and stumble. The failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania turned him into a martyr, then the worshipful Republican Convention showed the party completely solidified behind him. His pick for VP, JD Vance, he believed, guaranteed MAGA control of the party far into the future. He was unstoppable, he thought.

But then Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Kamala Harris. Then JD Vance’s past remarks about “childless cat ladies” surfaced, followed by a furor. Allies urged Trump to replace Vance, but Trump doesn’t admit error.

Trump sneered at Kamala Harris, but she attracted huge crowds. Trump couldn’t understand. He insisted that photos showing her enthusiastic crowds were fake, created by artificial intelligence. He views her with contempt, “dumb,” “low IQ.”

Haberman and Swan wrote:

The Aug. 2 dinner at the Bridgehampton, N.Y., home of Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, was a high-powered affair. Among the roughly 130 people who dined under an air-conditioned tent were some of Donald Trump’s wealthiest supporters, including the billionaire hedge-fund financier Bill Ackman, who sat next to the former president, and Omeed Malik, the president of another fund, 1789 Capital.

Some guests hoped Mr. Trump would signal that he was recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes. He did not.

Before the dinner, answering a question that voiced concerns about the upcoming election during a small round-table discussion inside Mr. Lutnick’s house, Mr. Trump said, “We’ve got to stop the steal,” reviving yet again his false claims about the 2020 election — claims that his advisers have urged him to drop because they don’t help him with swing voters.

According to two people present, Mr. Trump himself also brought up his remark, made two days earlier at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, in which he had questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.

It had been a display of flagrant race-baiting that was egregious even by Mr. Trump’s standards, and it instantly reprogrammed America’s TV news chyrons: He falsely claimed that Ms. Harris had only recently decided to identify as Black for political purposes.

But Mr. Trump showed no regret. “I think I was right,” he told the rattled donors that Friday night.

Later, at dinner under the tent, Harrison LeFrak, the scion of a New York real-estate family, whose father is an old friend of Mr. Trump’s, asked how Mr. Trump planned to take the narrative back from Democrats, and what his positive vision for the country would be. It appeared to be a request for reassurance.

Mr. Trump provided none. Instead, he criticized Ms. Harris on a range of fronts, before adding: “I am who I am.”

Trump is furious that Harris is drawing large, enthusiastic crowds. For the first time, he is facing an opponent who gets more news coverage than he does.

He is beginning to realize that if he wants to win, he has to work for it. Not so easy for a 78-year-old man. He would rather be playing golf.

He is angry. He’s lashing out at people he needs, like Governor Kemp of Georgia. He is focused on re-litigating his loss in 2020.

Last night, he spoke at length with Elon Musk on Twitter. Many who listened responded that he was “slurring” his words. The term “slurring” was trending on the site.

In his anger, he is even more unhinged and bitter than ever.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump
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