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Dan Rather: Trump’s Rambling Diatribes Not Normal

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2024 //
15

Dan Rather anticipates the debate between Trump and Biden by pointing out that Trump has repeatedly engaged in bizarre analogies and metaphors.

In the article below., he points to recent Trump statements that make no sense. The press ignored them, though they are ready to jump on Biden for any misstatement, no matter how trivial.

Rather writes:

First, let’s get something straight. The 90-minute political event airing Thursday night on CNN is not a debate. It is a joint appearance by two candidates running for president. A debate would be wonderful. I would welcome an actual debate, which is a discussion between opponents in which rival arguments are put forward directly. That is not what you will see on Thursday night, should you choose to watch. You will see two men answer questions, if we are lucky, in a kind of a dual press conference and television show. I’m pretty certain one will answer the questions. The other? It’s anyone’s guess.

Now, let’s talk about expectations. The MAGA media universe, with an assist from the mainstream media (more on that later), has been working overtime to paint Joe Biden as a senile old man who doesn’t have the mental capacity to be president. 

The problem with this strategy is that the bar is now so low for Biden that if he just walks on stage and waves he will have exceeded expectations. The right-wing media has painted themselves into a corner and is now thrashing to get out of it. 

To do so, Fox “News” and Donald Trump himself are telling anyone who will listen that the only way President Biden will be coherent is if he is “jacked up” on medical supplements. Trump even mentioned cocaine. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. A former president of the United States has accused the current president of taking illegal drugs. And that is not front-page news.

The expectations for Trump aren’t much better. If past is prologue, we have a pretty good idea of how he will perform. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Hillary Clinton described what it was like to appear on a “debate” stage with Trump.

“I know the excruciating pressure of walking onto that stage and that it is nearly impossible to focus on substance when Mr. Trump is involved. In our three debates in 2016, he unleashed a blizzard of interruptions, insults and lies that overwhelmed the moderators and did a disservice to the voters who tuned in to learn about our visions for the country.” 

In the ensuing eight years, we have seen actual evidence of cognitive decline in Trump. Recently it has been more of a plummet. His extemporaneous speeches have become a mishmash of incoherent tangents. Calling it word salad would be a disservice to lettuce.

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His recents rants have included confused musings about sharks and electrocutions, at the same time. At a Philadelphia rally on Saturday, he started talking about water. 

“You ever try buying a new home and you turn on – you want to wash your hair or you wanna wash your hands – you turn on the water and it goes drip, drip,” he said. 

The solution to not enough water is rain, he explained. “There’s so much water, you don’t know what to do with it. You know, it’s called rain. It rains a lot in certain places … There is a problem. They don’t want you to have any water. They want no water.”

At this point Fox, which was airing the speech live, cut to commercial. That may have been their programming plan all along, but considering Trump is ratings gold for the cable channel, the more likely reason is that they were protecting the convicted felon/presumptive presidential nominee from himself. 

Many say it is just Trump being Trump. No. Not any more. 

“In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness,” according to The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson.

Robinson went on to suggest that if President Biden had gone off on illogical diatribes about hand-washing or shark attacks, it would have led every broadcast and headlined every newspaper, questioning his mental stability. Congress would have called for hearings.

But Trump’s behavior has become so normalized that outlets like the Times and the Post sometimes fail to even mention nonsensical blatherings like the ones at the Philadelphia rally. 

Speaking of the mainstream media and coverage of the candidates: A case study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania concluded that “the choice of the Times to publish almost three times as many articles about Biden’s age as about Trump pulling the US out of NATO represents a clear example of biased coverage.”

Back in February, special counsel Robert Hur declined to indict Biden over classified documents he had removed from the White House while vice president. But Hur — a lawyer, not a doctor — said he found Biden a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Here’s how the Times covered it, according to the UPenn study: “During the week that the Special Counsel’s report came out, we examined the top 20 articles on the Times’ landing page every four hours. In that time, they published 26 unique articles about Biden’s age, of which 1 of them explored the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern.” Meanwhile, Trump’s threat to withdraw from NATO and “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” garnered only 10 unique articles in that timeframe. Ending 75-plus years of a military alliance and jeopardizing world stability? No big deal.

The New York Times is a great journalistic enterprise, one of the world’s best. But how can we allow the normalization of Trump’s behavior? It should be called out. Every time. If Trump is barking at the moon, report it, broadcast it. News organizations may be tired of the craziness, but we voters are not.  

If nothing else, being able to evaluate both men on a stage together at Thursday evening’s joint appearance will be a welcome relief from all the noise. One, or maybe both of them, could surprise us.

If you value independent journalism that brings you critical information when the mainstream media fails us, please consider joining as a supporting member. It allows me 

Categories Biden, Elections, Trump

Kathy Gebhardt Wins State Board Race in Colorado, Despite Dark Money

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2024 //
3

Kathy Gebhardt was elected to the Colorado State Board of Education, despite nearly $1 million behind a charter school candidate. Kathy says she is not opposed to charters, but she did stop a Hillsdale College Barney charter school from opening in her district. Governor Jared Polis, a charter enthusiast, backed her opponent; Polis opened two charters himself, years ago. Kathy’s experience was far more extensive that that of her opponent. The voters paid attention. Kathy won. Her election assures that the charter lobby will not control the state board of education.

For the background, read Peter Greene’s summary of the race and Carol Burris’s endorsement of Kathy, whom she has worked with.

Carol Burris wrote:

No one is more qualified to serve. Kathy is an education attorney with expertise in school finance, a long-time school board member, and has served on both state and national school board organizations. All five of her children attended public schools.

The Denver Post reported:

Former Boulder school board president Kathy Gebhardt won the Democratic primary for a seat on the Colorado State Board of Education on Tuesday, despite a group supporting charter schools having spent nearly $1 million to oppose her campaign and back political newcomer Marisol Lynda Rodriguez.

The preliminary results for the 2nd Congressional District seat on the state education board almost certainly ensure Gebhardt will win the seat in November as there is no Republican candidate in the race. She will replace board member Angelika Schroeder, whose six-year term ends in January.

“It shows that money can’t buy an election,” said Gebhardt, adding that the results so far showed that “people were stepping up for public education.”

As of 10:15 p.m., Gebhardt led with 43,156 votes, or 56% of the total. Rodriguez had 33,911 votes, or 44%.

Rodriguez told The Denver Post that she called Gebhardt to concede shortly before 9 p.m.

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Dark Money, Education Industry, Elections

New Hampshire: Why the GOP Is Determined to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2024 //
10

Every time I see New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu interviewed on CNN, he plays the role of the GOP “moderate.” Don’t be fooled. When it comes to education, he’s a clone of Betsy DeVos.

Veteran New Hampshire Garry Rayno pulls away the mask of “moderate” that Sununu wears in this article in InDepthNH.

This is an important article for everyone to read, no matter where you live. It explains succinctly the true goals of the privatization movement.

He writes:

Public education has been since its inception with the work of Horace Mann, the great equalizer.

Students from poor families have been able to compete with students from the other side of the tracks, maybe not in reality, but close enough to at least have an opportunity to excel.

Many of the founding fathers understood the need for an educated public if democracy was going to survive and thrive.

A responsible citizen is an informed citizen, and that appears to be the problem today. Too many people interested in power instead of governing don’t want a truly informed public. Instead, they want enough of the public spoon fed “alternative facts,” conspiracy theories, and outright lies to ensure they retain power although they have views that are both harmful to the majority of citizens and allow the tyranny of the minority to overturn the will of the majority.

At the heart of the minority’s transformation plan is the destruction of the public school system.

New Hampshire has had a front row seat to the war on education since Chris Sununu was elected governor and named his rival for the Republican nomination in 2016, Frank Edelblut, to be Education Commissioner, a man without any experience in public education, which was the first for someone holding that position in our lifetime.

If Sununu did not know what would happen when he put Edelblut in charge of this critical state department, shame on him, because Edelblut’s one term in the House was a roadmap for his actions during his two terms as commissioner, his second ending in March 2025.

Sununu has also packed the State Board of Education with school choice advocates instead of supporters of public education, so you have the two entities in the executive branch responsible for the state’s public education systems, maybe not anti-public schools, but certainly not advocates for the state’s public education system.

According to the statutes, the education commissioner “is responsible for the organizational goals of the department and represents the public interest in the administration of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative and instructional services to all public schools in New Hampshire.”

Notice it says public schools, not private schools or religious schools, or homeschooling, or learning pods, or any of the other non-public entities that are approved vendors under the state’s Education Freedom Account program, some with questionable philosophies or intent.

An attempt by lawmakers this year to better define the education commissioner’s qualifications and responsibilities to the public school system was defeated this term by the same element that pushed to establish the EFA program and then to expand it, although this year’s attempt to increase the income threshold to participate in the program failed on the last day of the session to act on bills.

The outright attacks on public education began in New Hampshire about a decade ago but gained more warriors as FreeStaters/Libertarians swelled the ranks of the House and Senate Republican members.

The attack on public education here has been much the same as it has been in other states, mostly in the south and the west, with claims of the indoctrination of students by leftwing faculty members.

They have also attacked educators directly and have tried to pack school boards — without much success — to undermine curriculum, educators and slash budgets as happened in Croydon several years ago when the annual school meeting was poorly attended due to a snowstorm.

The Republican majority in the 2021-2022 legislature passed the state’s divisive concepts law forbidding teaching controversial subjects such as institutional racism.

The law was recently found unconstitutional by a US District Court judge.

That was the same term the EFA program was approved after earlier unsuccessful attempts.

Both the EFA program and the divisive concepts law were included in the state’s biennial budget package because they were not likely to pass on their own.

The same folks also tied education into the trumped out recent outrage over the LGBTQ community and sold it as an attack on parental rights.

The intent was to start a war between parents and educators, although parents already have many of the rights touted by the anti-public school advocates.

The theory touted was that educators were keeping information from parents about their students and their sexual identification and that educators were urging students to explore different sexual identities.

Then came the book banning other areas of the country experienced like Florida where some school libraries were stripped of books.

The red herring advocates touted here came from a national app that contains almost every book published that students could access both in schools and at home, and not on school library shelves.

Some tried to enlist town and city libraries in the surveillance of children and what they read and accessed, but that did not go very far.

All of this goes to create the appearance that schools are hotbeds of leftist politics and anti-parental values, some fueled by Edelblut in an op-ed he sent to media outlets.

And despite all this ginned up controversy, local public schools that educate about 90 percent of the school age children in the state remain very popular with parents and the public at large.

If that is true, you have to ask what is behind the push to demonize public schools like political candidates demonize opponents.

Keep in mind this attack on public education occurs at the same time when the superior court’s latest education funding decision says the state does not provide enough money to cover the cost of an adequate education for every student and the way it raises its biggest contribution to public education — the Statewide Education Property Tax — is unconstitutional.

Education is governments’ —not just state government’s — single biggest expense, costing about $3.5 billion a year.

If you are a Libertarian or Free Stater who believes “taxation is theft,” destroying public schools will shift the cost directly to parents, and you could keep a lot more of your money to spend as you see fit and not for the good of society.

And if you espouse the philosophy of the Koch Foundation or former US Education Commissioner, Betsy DeVos, you not only keep more of your money, one of the largest union-backed workforces in the country will be dismantled when certified teachers are no longer needed.

Without a public education system, a child would receive the education his or her parents could afford and for many, particularly minorities, and the historically poor, that may not be much beyond the time they turn 16 and have to go to work to keep the family treading the economic waters.

And then maybe they will work for a lot less than if they had a high school, or even a college education.

And without even an adequate education, how informed will the general public be or how capable of the critical thinking needed to realize all those folks touting their parental rights really do not have their best interests at heart.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, New Hampshire, Privatization, Vouchers

Lithwick and Ornstein: A Last Chance for Democracy?

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2024 //
88

Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein are lawyers and close observers of national politics. In this article, they urge us to take Trump’s threats seriously. They are not just campaign rhetoric or empty promises. He means what he says. As Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Most of the mainstream media (MSNBC is an exception) attempts to normalize Trump, as though he’s just another in a long line of conservative politicians. He is not. He is an autocrat who longs to have total control and to use that control to get vengeance for his enemies (no “loyal opposition” for him).

The first term was a warning. Trump tried in some cases to pick good people, but they didn’t last long. He won’t make the same mistake. He will demand loyalty, total loyalty. Anyone he appoints will have to agree that the election of 2020 was rigged and stolen.

He says he will take bold steps to reverse the progressive gains of the past 90 years, which he will attribute to “communists, socialists, fascists vermin, and scum”

Lithwick and Ornstein write at Slate about The dangers posed by Trump:

Most would-be dictators run for office downplaying or sugarcoating their intentions, trying to lure voters with a vanilla appeal. But once elected, the autocratic elements take over, either immediately or gradually: The destruction of free elections, undermining the press, co-opting the judiciary, turning the military into instruments of the dictatorship, installing puppets in the bureaucracy, making sure the legislature reinforces rather than challenges lawless or unconstitutional actions, using violence and threats of violence to cow critics and adversaries, rewarding allies with government contracts, and ensuring that the dictator and family can secrete billions from government resources and bribes. This was the game plan for Putin, Sisi, Orbán, and many others. It’s hardly unfamiliar.

Donald Trump is rather different in one respect. He has not softened his spoken intentions to get elected. While Trump is a congenital liar—witness his recent claim that he, not Joe Biden, got $35 insulin for diabetics—when it comes to how he would act if elected again to the presidency, he has been brutally honest, as have his closest advisers and campaign allies. His presidency would feature retribution against his enemies, weaponizing and politicizing the Justice Department to arrest and detain them whether there were valid charges or not. He has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 violent insurrectionist rioters, who could constitute a personal vigilante army for President Donald Trump, presumably alongside the official one.

He has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The battle plan of his allies in the Heritage Foundation, working closely with his campaign via Project 2025, includes many of the aims above, and more; it would also tighten the screws on abortion after Dobbs, move against contraception, reinstate criminal sanctions against gay sex while overturning the right to same-sex marriage, among other things. His top foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, has reiterated what Trump has said about his isolationist-in-the-extreme foreign policy—jettison NATO, abandon support for Ukraine and give Putin a green light to go after Poland and other NATO countries, and reorient American alliances to create one of strongmen dictators including Kim Jong-un. Shockingly, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated sacred norms and endangered security by bypassing qualified lawmakers and appointing to the House Intelligence Committee two dangerous and manifestly unqualified members—one insurrectionist sympathizer, Rep. Scott Perry, who has sued the FBI, and one extremist demoted by the military for drunkenness, pill pushing, and other offenses, Rep. Ronny Jackson—simply because Donald Trump demanded it. They will have access to America’s most critical secrets and will likely share them with Trump if his status as a convicted felon denies him access to top secret information during the campaign. This is part of a broader pattern in which GOP lawmakers do what Trump wants, no matter how extreme or reckless….

We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do. We worry that every time we say “the system held” it implies that “holding” equals “winning” as opposed to barely scraping by. We worry that while Trump has armies of surrogates out there arguing that Trump is an all-powerful God proxy, the rule of law has no surrogates out there arguing for anything because nobody ever came to a rally for a Rule 11 motion. The Biden administration has largely taken the position that the felony conviction is irrelevant because it’s proof that the status quo isn’t in danger. But the reality is that Republicans are openly campaigning against judges, juries, and prosecutors. Overt declarations of blowing up our checks and balances and following the blueprints to autocracy set by Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, are treated with shrugs by mainstream journalists and commentators. What’s more, Republicans in Congress have shown a willingness to kowtow to every Trump demand. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.

“The system is holding” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was.

Please open the link and read the article in full.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Dana Milbank: Trump Plays the Fascist Card

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
14

Dana Milbank calls out Trump for repeatedly sending fascist signals to his base. When Congress holds hearings on anti-Semitism, they should call Trump to testify.

Dana Milbank writes about Trump in The Washington Post:

As you’ve probably heard, Donald Trump has once again raised a führer.

The former president’s Truth Social account posted a video posing the question “What happens after Donald Trump wins?” and providing a possible answer: In the background was the phrase “unified Reich.”

This follows Trump’s echoing Adolf Hitler in campaign speeches, saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and calling his opponents “vermin.”

And that, in turn, followed Trump’s dining at Mar-a-Lago with high-profile antisemite Ye (Kanye West) and white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes, who likened incinerating Jews to baking cookies.

Under the three-Reichs-and-you’re-out rule, Trump should be on the bench. Yet he keeps swinging — and this week provided a sobering measure of how numb we have become to his undeniably fascist rhetoric.

Almost exactly eight years ago, Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, then the district judge in the Trump University fraud case, saying that his “Mexican heritage” posed “an inherent conflict of interest.” In the uproar that followed, even Republican leaders were appalled, and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump’s statement was “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

This week, Trump did almost the same thing when he left court on Tuesday after his defense rested in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. “The judge hates Donald Trump,” he said. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from.” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan emigrated from Colombia as a child. But this time there was little outcry from the inured populace, and if Republican leaders had any complaints about Trump’s textbook racism (or on his third Reich moment of this campaign) I must have missed them.

Vilifying migrants is a standard fascist trope. So is the constant claiming of victim status. Trump falsely alleged in a fundraising email this week that his opponent conspired to kill him. “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” during the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for missing classified documents, Trump wrote. He separately claimed that Biden’s Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.” In reality, the FBI took extra precautions to avoid a confrontation by conducting the search when Trump was away and alerted the Secret Service. Agents were operating under the same standard rules of engagement they used when searching Biden’s home: Lethal force can be used only if in “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”

Also this week, Trump, asked by Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV whether he favored restricting Americans’ access to birth control, responded: “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly.” After the televised interview was broadcast, Trump said the notion that he would advocate restrictions on contraception was “a Democrat fabricated lie.”

That maneuver — floating an outrageous policy and then pretending he had done no such thing — is another tool that Trump routinely uses. After Trump’s Truth Social account shared the video with the slightly-blurred “unified Reich” message during a lunch break in Trump’s trial in New York, his spokeswoman claimed the video had been “created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the president was in court.” The campaign removed the post.

Sound familiar? During the 2016 campaign, Trump tweeted an image that had been used by white supremacists of a Star of David atop a pile of cash. The campaign removed the offending post and Trump said it had been posted by a staffer. He later told a crowd that his aides “shouldn’t have taken it down.”

During that same campaign, Trump also tweeted an image of an American flag containing an image of what appeared to be Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. The campaign removed this post, too, and blamed an intern.

The disavowal is part of the game, says Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who specializes in the rhetoric of fascism. “You do it and then you deny it and it’s just systematic, over and over and over again,” he told me in a phone call. “The people who want to hear it hear it, and it signals the direction you want to go in.” And for those uncomfortable with the extremism, the denial provides “a way of lying to themselves and telling themselves this is not what’s really going on.”

But it is. From Nazi Germany to Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Stanley says, people invariably thought the rhetoric of the rising authoritarian was exaggerated and just for dramatic effect. “Historically, people always, always don’t take it seriously,” he said. Perhaps they don’t realize that Trump is deploying the exact same tropes — against migrants, judges, gender nonconforming people, universities, the media, “Marxists” — now being used by autocrats in Russia, India and Hungary. “If you look at what Trump is saying … everywhere in the world the authoritarians are saying that.”

And yet we drift, placidly, into autocracy. Okay, Trump is unifying the Reich. But Biden is so old!

Trump’s fascist rhetoric is supported by an array of authoritarian polices, which he and his campaign have helpfully divulged.

Trump has said that his (false) election fraud claims justify “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He said he wouldn’t be a dictator, “other than day one,” when he would use absolute power to seal the border and drill for oil. He has proposed that those shoplifting from stores should “fully expect to be shot.” He said he would round up as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and, perhaps, put them in mass deportation camps, taking money from the military if necessary.

He said he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden, his family and “all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders and our country itself.” He said he would order prosecutors to “go down and indict” his political opponents if they are “doing well and beating me” — and he would fire prosecutors who don’t follow such orders. He said he would use the National Guard, and perhaps the regular military, to crack down on protests against him.

He would strip civil service protections so he could replace federal workers with Trump loyalists, and he might take over independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve. He suggested he would change laws to attack what he perceives as “anti-White” bias.

Speaking at the National Rifle Association on Saturday, Trump asked the crowd whether he should “be considered three term or two term?” Several in the crowd shouted out: “Three!”

Earlier this spring, the American Conservative published an article titled “Trump 2028” that argued the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms, “is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms.” The group is part of Project 2025, to which the Trump campaign has informally outsourced its policy planning.

Trump has hinted that he would pardon those sentenced for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He included in his courtroom entourage this week two convicted felons, Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner he pardoned, and Chuck Zito, a former Hells Angels leader. During testimony, defense witness Robert Costello showed the same sort of contempt for the judge as Trump did outside the courtroom. He rolled his eyes, talked under his breath, called the proceedings “ridiculous” and complained with a “jeez” when he disagreed with Merchan’s ruling.

Trump has promised “retribution” against his political opponents, and outside Trump’s trial this week, his allies amplified the threat. “They fear Donald Trump and they fear what’s going to happen if he becomes president again — and, I tell you, they should fear,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).

“Yes,” agreed Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.), at his side, wearing a necktie with Trump’s face printed on it.

Trump had one final thing to say before he left the courthouse this week. Just a day after his post about the “unified Reich,” he offered a message for “Jewish people that vote for Biden and the Democrats: They should have their head examined.”

Well, I have had my head examined, and it was found to contain the following memories of things Trump has said and done:

He told his White House chief of staff John Kelly that “Hitler did some good things” and complained that U.S. generals weren’t “totally loyal” to him the way Nazi generals were to Hitler. He spoke of the “very fine people” marching among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He closed out his 2016 campaign with an ad that singled out three prominent Jews with suggestions that they manipulate a “global power structure.” He was reluctant to disavow David Duke or supporters of his who harassed and threatened Jewish journalists. He has shared innumerable messages on social media from white supremacists. He has repeatedly questioned the loyalty of American Jews.

Long ago, Vanity Fair reported that Trump’s ex-wife Ivana said he read from a book of Hitler’s speeches, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed. Trump confirmed that he had the book but denied that he read it. By coincidence or design, there has been a startling overlap in their language of late.

Trump speaks of immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and “coming in with disease.” Hitler said that great civilizations died “as a result of contamination of the blood,” and he called Jews “the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls.”

Trump calls his political opponents “radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Hitler called Jews “an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

Trump says that “the enemies from within are more dangerous, to me, than the enemies of the outside. Russia and China, we can handle.” Hitler spoke of “the greater inner enemy” and said that when “the internal enemy was not recognized … all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain.”

Trump complains that “fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people.” Hitler complained of “the lying Marxist press” and said “the function of the so-called liberal press was to dig the grave for the German people.”

Trump claims that “we’ve never done worse than we’ve done now. … We’re so disrespected. The whole world is laughing at us.” And he warns: “If we don’t win this election, I believe we will no longer have a country.” Hitler claimed that “the Reich had fallen from a height which can hardly be imagined in these days of misery and humiliation.” He warned that “one year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany” and transform it “into chaos and a heap of ruins.”

Trump, at the end of his speeches, likes to say: “We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” Hitler spoke of a “world conspiracy” made up of “Jews and democrats, Bolshevists and reactionaries” and motivated by a “hatred” of Germans.

No, Trump isn’t Hitler, and the 21st century United States isn’t Weimar Germany. But Trump’s words, so obviously ripped from history’s darkest pages, lead no place good. The only thing poisoning the blood of our country is his copycat fascism.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

NYC Prosecutors Seek to Extend Trump Gag Order Because Of Death Threats

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
17

Anyone who stands up to Trump puts their life at risk. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has received hundreds of death threats since his prosecution began. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies because of his rigging the election by paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep his sexual encounter with her out of the news before the vote in 2016. While he throws around claims that Democrats “would rig the election” in 2016 and claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” it was he who rigged the election by paying Daniels for her silence.

Trump claims that his inability to attack the jurors and prosecutors violates his First Amendment rights. He is vile.

The New York Times reported today:

Prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that a judge should keep in place major elements of a gag order that was imposed on Donald J. Trump, citing dozens of threats that have been made against officials connected to the case.

The order, issued before Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial began in mid-April, bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and relatives of the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have sought to have the order lifted since Mr. Trump’s conviction in late May. But in a 19-page filing on Friday, prosecutors argued that while Justice Merchan no longer needed to enforce the portion of the gag order relating to trial witnesses, he should keep in place the provisions protecting jurors, prosecutors, court staff and their families.

The New York Police Department has logged 56 “actionable threats” since the beginning of April directed against Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, and against his family and employees, according to an affidavit provided with the filing.

Such threats, evidently made by supporters of Mr. Trump, included a post disclosing the home address of an employee at the district attorney’s office, and bomb threats made on the first day of the trial directed at two people involved in the case.

The 56 threats that were logged, prosecutors said, did not include the hundreds of “threatening emails and phone calls” that were received by Mr. Bragg’s office in recent months, which the police are “not tracking as threat cases.”

Mr. Trump was convicted on May 30 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payoff made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The money was meant to cover up a sexual tryst she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006, a decade before he was elected president. (Mr. Trump, 78, has continued to deny ever having had sex with Ms. Daniels.)

If he didn’t have sex with Daniels, why did he pay her $130,000?

Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Safety, Trump

“Democracy”: Where’s the “Conflict” in the Georgia Case Against Trump

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
39

I’m curious. Regarding the Georgia election case, where – exactly – is the Fanni Willis “conflict” that may have impaired, impinged or otherwise impacted the rights of those accused in that case?

The Associated Press reported this:

“A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty…Trump and eight other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.”

So, again, what EXACTLY is the “conflict” that infringes on the rights of the accused in the Georgia, some of whom have already – in fact pleaded guilty.

CNN reported this:

“In March, after what amounted to a mini-trial where attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants sought to prove their case against Willis and Wade, McAfee found there was not enough evidence to firmly prove Willis financially benefited from the relationship.”

So, the prosecutors were put on trial and the judge found that there wasn’t evidence to say that Willis got some kind of financial favor from Wade. But even if she HAD, where is the “conflict” that harms the right of the accused?

The Washington Post put it like this:

“McAfee ruled that Trump and the others had ‘failed to meet their burden’ of proving Willis’s romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade and allegations that she was financially enriched by trips the two took together were enough of a ‘conflict of interest’ to disqualify her from the case..

To put it differently, the “conflict” in this case was that Willis and Wade slept together and sometimes took trips together– they were “bad” — and thus that should disqualify them from the case. But, What. About. The. Case? What about the facts of the case? What about the specific charges and the charges to which others have pled guilty?

Sydney Powell – yes, her – pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.” She also agreed to help prosecutors in other cases.

Guess who was involved in the conspiracy and the other cases?

Kenneth Chesebro, charged with seven felony counts, pled guilty to “one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. ” False documents to be used to overturn the election results. Guess on whose behalf Chesebro filed those false documents? Chesebro agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in other cases too.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleased guilty in Georgia “to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She has already written an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, and she agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors as the case progresses.”

So, there’s a pattern here. 

But where – exactly – is the “conflict” in the other cases? The cases of the ringleader Trump, and dirty trickster Mike Roman? The cases of Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman? Of Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark and the rest?

Meanwhile, the findings of fact in the Colorado court decision by Sarah Wallace that declared Trump an insurrectionist, which relied heavily on the January 6 Committee Report and included testimony by officers attacked in the January 6 riot, have gone unchallenged by any credible evidence, including that put forth by Trump or his attorneys. As noted in the decision,

“while Trump spent much time contesting potential biases of the Committee members and their staff, he spent almost no time attacking the credibility of the Committee’s findings themselves. The Hearing provided Trump with an opportunity to subject these findings to the adversarial process, and he chose not to do so, despite frequent complaints that the Committee investigation was not subject to such a process. Because Trump was unable to provide the Court with any credible evidence which would discredit the factual findings of the January 6th Report, the Court has difficulty understanding the argument that it should not consider its findings which are admissible under C.R.E. 803(8).”

The Colorado Supreme Court found that because Trump was – in fact – an insurrectionist, he could not be on the Colorado ballot because the United States Constitution explicitly prohibited it under Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Seems pretty clear: “no person shall…hold any office, civil or military, under the Constitution who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…”

The United States Supreme Court ignored the findings of fact in the Colorado trial court and overturned the Colorado Supreme Court decision to take Trump off the ballot. The Court said “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

According former federal appellate judge Michael Lutting and constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, this was “a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation…Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-v-anderson-fourteenth-amendment/677755/

Three members of the Supreme Court were – in fact – appointed by a seditionist, an insurrectionist, who took lots of help from Russian intelligence agencies to win* the 2016 election, and tried to violently overturn the 2020 results. One other justice flies seditionist flags over his houses, and another has a wife who is an open seditionist.

It appears to me that the “conflicts” some people, mostly Republicans, are worried about are the absolutely entirely wrong conflicts.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Georgia, Justice, Trump

Thom Hartmann: The 50-Year Trump MAGA Reich?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
26

Thom Hartmann says that Trump fans are dreaming of a 50-year MAGA reich:

Horrified critics blast Fox’s Ingraham for suggesting a 50-year MAGA reich is possible. If Trump wins, this will be referred to as the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things are already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency.

Categories Elections, Fascism, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Which Candidate is “Fit” to be President?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
35

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin responded to a biased article in the Wall Street Journal that derided Biden’s fitness for the Presidency. Its primary sources: House Speaker Mike Johnson and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, both Trump lackeys.

Rubin wrote:

A president’s gait, verbal tics and minor recall errors have virtually nothing to do with the job of being president. The White House occupant is not a “Jeopardy!” contestant, a stand-up comic, a talk-show host or guest; the president is the head of the executive branch and commander in chief.

The job of being president is executive management, something with which political reporters (as opposed to business reporters) have virtually no expertise. We should be asking whether a candidate can absorb necessary details, make good personnel decisions, reach sound conclusions, evaluate risk and consider the consequences of actions. Can the president separate personal interests from the interests of the nation, of allies or even the planet? That is what the president does, day after day.

And we do not need to be armchair psychiatrists to evaluate that sort of presidential fitness. As I have written, Trump’s closest colleagues tell us that he is willfully ignorant, cannot grasp basic concepts, cannot absorb written material. As for his hiring decisions, by his own admission, he has hired a slew of dumb or incompetent people. He gloms on to ridiculous quack theories, and he channels the ideas and rhetoric of America’s enemies and of historical villains.

Trump cannot keep national secrets — or understand they are not “his.” He is incapable of grasping the values and ethos of military service. Because he is so susceptible to flattery and so thin-skinned, he cannot tell friend from foe. And as his former national security adviser John Bolton put it, “Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.”

Part and parcel of good decision-making is impulse control. If one cannot refrain from lashing out in anger at allies, spilling secrets to U.S. enemies, or launching personal attacks and threats against fellow Americans (in defiance of court orders, no less), one cannot be entrusted with the immense responsibilities of the presidency. (There might also be something seriously wrong with you, but that is beside the point.)

Moreover, we know how Trump’s decision-making turned out. He downplayed the coronavirus, and hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. He concocted the “big lie” about the 2020 election and, unable to admit losing, incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t want to reveal embarrassing sexual impropriety, so he broke the law in New York — 34 times.

You don’t need to make a specific medical diagnosis to see that the essential aspects of the presidency — judgment, reading comprehension, discretion, unselfish decision-making, appreciation for military sacrifice — are utterly beyond Trump.

At the most basic level, Biden, while three years older, can discern friend from foe, reveres the military, understands the value of alliances, generally hires capable advisers, puts together complex legislative deals and exhibits inexhaustible empathy for others’ suffering. He complies with the legal process (e.g., sitting down with special counsel Robert K. Hur), follows Supreme Court decisions (and then explores alternatives, as he did on student debt) and engages in successful international diplomacy. He talks in depth about policy.

It’s reasonable to conclude that, with age, Biden has gained immense experience, formed relationships and absorbed data that helps guide his current decision-making. Should we care that he walks more stiffly than he did 10 years ago? (FDR served 12 years in a wheelchair.)

In sum, the measure of a president — regardless of that officeholder’s level of spryness or eloquence — is the capacity to perform a singularly important job: making good decisions on behalf of others in keeping with our laws and national values. No reasonable person would conclude, based on all available evidence, that Trump can do so; no fair person would conclude that Biden’s age impedes him from doing so.

This article contains numerous links, none of which transferred to my blog. Please open the link to Rubin to see her extensive documentation.

Categories Bias, Biden, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Trump

What Trump Promised to Do for Israel if He Is Elected

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
20

Haaretz, a prominent daily in Israel, has been very critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu and of his failure to make a deal for peace. More than once, the journal’s writers have suggested that Netanyahu hopes to continue the war until after the U.S. presidential election, hoping that Trump wins.

In 2016, Trump’s biggest donor was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner. He and his wife Miriam gave $90 million to Trump. There was a deal. In return for the first $20 million, Trump promised to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When Trump won, he did just that.

Adelson died in 2021. His widow has an even bigger ask: she wants Trump to let Israel annex the West Bank. The West Bank is supposed to be the heart of a new Palestinian state. If Israel annexes it, there will never be a Palestinian state. She has let it be known that she will give more money to Trump’s campaign than she and her husband gave last time.

If Trump is elected, it will be a tragedy for Israel, for the Palestinians, and for peace in the Middle East.

Categories Elections, Trump
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