Archives for category: Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Politico: Why the Kremlin Loves Social Media

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2024 //
20

Catherine Kim wrote a fascinating account in Politico of the Russian program to sow division in the United States and to influence the 2024 elections. Kim interviews a Finnish scholar of disinformation who says that Finnish children are taught media literacy in school to help them spot propaganda. His final advice: Turn off the computer; take a walk; play; live your life.

She writes:

A DOJ indictment on Wednesday alleged that content created and distributed by a conservative social media company called Tenet Media was actually funded by Russia. Two Russian government employees funneled nearly $10 million to Tenet Media, which hired high-profile conservative influencers such as Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin to produce videos and other content that stoked political divisions. The indictment alleges that the influencers — who say they were unaware of Tenet’s ties to Russia — were paid upward of $400,000 a month.

These “conservative influencers” were chosen because they have large and devoted fans who believe whatever content they create. They apparently didn’t know who was footing the bill, but were no doubt thrilled to be paid $100,000 for each video they produced, up to four per month. Why ask questions when the pay is so good?

Now that they know who their sugar daddy was, will they rethink any of their views?

Should we think about teaching our children to be discerning consumers of social media so they are not taken in by propaganda?

Categories Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, International, Media, Propaganda, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Goes Off the Rails

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2024 //
7

Historian Heather Cox Richardson usually takes Saturday nights off. Typically, she posts a beautiful photograph. But last night was different. She had to describe what happened, what Trump said at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. His speech was truly unhinged and apocalyptic. The thought that this man is tied with Kamala Harris in the Presidential race and has a strong possibility of being re-elected is terrifying.

The Constitution was absolutely correct in saying that an insurrectionist should not be allowed to run for high office; the Supreme Court was wrong to keep this insurrectionist on the ballot. The Founders wisely understood that if he did it once, he will do it again. The one time that we needed “originalists” on the High Court was the one time these pseudo-originalists decided that the Constitution does not mean what it plainly says in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Richardson writes:

By rights, tonight’s post should be a picture, but Trump’s behavior today merits a marker because it feels like a dramatic escalation of the themes we’ve seen for years. Please feel free to ignore—as I often say, I am trying to leave notes for a graduate student in 150 years, and you can consider this one for her if you want a break from the recent onslaught of news.

Yesterday, Trump ranted at the press, furious that the American legal system had resulted in two jury decisions that he had defamed and sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll. He was so angry that, with his lawyers standing awkwardly behind him, he told reporters: “I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you.”

Today, Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, a small city in the center of the state, where he addressed about 7,000 people. A number of us who have been watching him closely have been saying for a while that when voters actually saw him in this campaign, they would be shocked at how he has deteriorated, and that seems to be true: his meandering and self-indulgent speeches have had attendees leaving early, some of them bewildered. In today’s speech, Trump slurred a number of words, referring to Elon Musk as “Leon,” for example, and forgetting the name of North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who was on his short list for a vice presidential pick.

But today’s speech struck me as different from his past performances, distinguished for what sounded like desperation. Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism.

Trump told the audience that when he took office in 2017, military officers told him the U.S. had given all the military’s ammunition away to allies. Then he went on a rant against our allies, saying that they’re only our allies when they need something and that they would never come to our aid if we needed them. This echoes the talking points put out by Russian operatives and flies in the face of the fact that the one time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked the mutual defense pact in that agreement was after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in support of the U.S. 

He embraced Project 2025’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education and send education back to the states so that right-wing figures like Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson can run it. He reiterated the MAGA claim that mothers are executing their babies after birth—this is completely bonkers—and again echoed Russian talking points when he said these executions are happening—they are not—but “nobody talks about it.” He went on: “We did a great thing when we got Roe v. Wade out of the federal government.” 

He reiterated the complete fantasy that schools are performing gender-affirming surgery on children. “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump’s suggestion that schools are performing surgery on students is bananas. This is simply not a thing that happens. 

And then he went full-blown apocalyptic, attacking immigrants and claiming that crime, which in reality has dropped dramatically since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office after a spike during his own term, has made the U.S. uninhabitable. He said that “If I don’t win Colorado, it will be taken over by migrants and the governor will be sent fleeing.” “Migrants and crime are here in our country at levels never thought possible before…. You’re not safe even sitting here, to be honest with you. I’m the only one that’s going to get it done. Everybody is saying that.” He urged people to protest “because you’re being overrun by criminals.” 

He assured attendees that “If you think you have a nice house, have a migrant enjoy your house, because a migrant will take it over. A migrant will take it over. It will be Venezuela on steroids.” He reiterated his plan to get rid of migrants. “And you know,” he said, “getting them out will be a bloody story.” 

He went on to try to rev up supporters in words very similar to those he used on January 6th, 2021, but focused on this election. “Every citizen who’s sick and tired of the parasitic political class in Washington that sucks our country of its blood and treasure, November fifth will be your liberation day. November fifth, this year, will be the most important day in the history of our country because we’re not going to have a country anymore if we don’t win.” 

He promised: “I will prevent World War III, and I am the only one that can do it. I will prevent World War III. And if I don’t win this election,… Israel is doomed…. Israel will be gone…. I’d better win.” 

“I better win or you’re gonna have problems like we’ve never had. We may have no country left. This may be our last election. You want to know the truth? People have said that. This may be our last election…. It’ll all be over, and you gotta remember…. Trump is always right. I hate to be right. I’m always right.” 

Trump’s hellscape is only in his mind: crime is sharply down in the U.S. since he left office, migrant crossings have plunged, and the economy is the strongest in the world.

Then, tonight, Trump posted on his social media site a rant asserting that he will win the 2024 election but that he expects Democrats to cheat, and “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” 

Is it the Justice Department indictments that showed Russia is working to get him reelected [by paying rightwing influencers to attack Harris]? Is it the rising popularity of Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? Is it fury at the new grand jury’s indicting him for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in power? Is it fear of Tuesday’s debate with Harris? Is it a declining ability to grapple with reality?

Whatever has caused it, Trump seems utterly off his pins, embracing wild conspiracy theories and, as his hopes of winning the election appear to be crumbling, threatening vengeance with a dogged fury that he used to be able to hide. 

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Insane, Trump

New York Times Portrays Trump’s and Vance’s Incoherence re Child care Costs

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2024 //
17

The big story in the mass media and blogs over the past two days was the way Trump answered a question in an appearance in New York City about whether he would do anything to make child care affordable; he was asked to be specific. He gave a long (two minute) reply that was meandering and incoherent. He seemed to say that the money that the U.S. will collect from tariffs will be so huge that it will wipe out the national deficit and make everything possible, including the cost of child care, assuming that tariffs would produce revenue instead of raising consumer prices. He didn’t answer the question.

Meanwhile, in another setting, JD Vance was asked about child care. He responded that parents could ask grandparents or other relatives to help out; and he suggested lowering the certification requirements for child care providers.

The New York Times must have realized, based on the keen interest in this story, that its original reporting was inadequate. At 4:42 pm EST, the Times published a story by Michael C. Bender about what happened. With this article, The New York Times squelched persistent rumors that it was not reporting on Trump’s mental acuity.

This was the headline:

Trump and Vance Took Questions on Child Care. Their Non-Answers Said a Lot.

The former president and his running mate gave nearly equally confusing answers when asked separately this week how they would make child care more affordable.

But instead of a crisp, camera-ready reply from a seasoned three-time presidential candidate, Mr. Trump unspooled two of the most puzzling minutes of his campaign.

His answer was a jolting journey through disjointed logic about how the size of his tariffs would take care of all the nation’s children, which only raised a new, more complicated question about why he remains unable to provide straightforward answers about policies he would prioritize in a second term.

“Well, I would do that,” he said when asked if he would commit to supporting legislation to make child care more affordable, and how he would seek to do so.

“And we’re sitting down — you know, I was somebody — we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue,” Mr. Trump continued, referring to the pair’s previous push for paid family leave and expanding the child tax credit. “It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that — because the child care is, child care, it’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.

“But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.”

Mr. Trump has long portrayed himself as the nation’s economist-in-chief, a rich businessman-turned-politician now focused on increasing the wealth of everyday Americans.

He has spent two years campaigning against rising prices for Americans, from housing to food to, yes, child care. At times, he has spoken briefly about instituting “baby bonuses” for parents of newborns, and he has said that he would consider expanding the child tax credit but has not said by how much.

Mr. Trump’s rambling answer handed Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign an opportunity to press one of its central messages: that Mr. Trump is so out-of-touch with normal problems facing most Americans that he cannot be expected to find the solutions.

“He’s always been profoundly discursive, but this one is instructive,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “He immediately referenced the Rubio-Ivanka effort, which is actually the right answer. He just wasn’t involved or engaged in the details. So beyond that, he just pivots to a stream of consciousness about what he knows and cares about.”

Just a day earlier, on Wednesday, Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, responded to a similar question about child care with a nearly equally confusing answer at an event in Mesa, Ariz.

Mr. Vance, like Mr. Trump, acknowledged that the issue of affordable child care was “such an important question.” But his initial answer was that parents should get help from grandparents or aunts and uncles.

“Maybe Grandma and Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” Mr. Vance said.

But many parents cannot rely on help from relatives — and many relatives are not in a position to help with someone else’s children. Mr. Vance seemed to acknowledge that conundrum, and pivoted to calling for fewer regulations on child-care providers, falsely saying that child-care specialists were required to have “a six-year college degree.”

“Americans are much poorer because they’re paying out the wazoo for day care,” Mr. Vance said. “Empower working families. Empower people who want to do these things for a living, and that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Mr. Trump’s answer offered little additional clarity.

The former president seemed to outline a theory that his tariffs would result in such prosperity that the nation could wipe out its $6 trillion spending deficit and pay for additional benefits, like reducing child-care costs.

“As much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday.

But Mr. Trump’s answer ignored that most economists say that the burden of tariffs are largely shouldered by middle-class consumers in the form of higher costs. Left unsaid was that he spent twice as much borrowed money during his term in the White House as President Biden has, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Ms. Harris has called for restoring and expanding a child tax credit and proposed a new $6,000 benefit for parents of newborns. Her child tax credit proposal would increase the maximum to $3,600 per child, up from $2,000 now.

Joseph Costello, a Harris campaign spokesman, said in a statement that the tariffs Mr. Trump is proposing as part of his “‘plan’ for making child care more affordable” would raise costs on middle-class families. “The American people deserve a president who will actually cut costs for them, like Vice President Harris’s plan to bring back a $3,600 child tax credit for working families and an expanded $6,000 tax cut for families with newborn children.”

Thursday was not the first time that Mr. Trump has punted on the question of child-care costs.

In his debate with Mr. Biden this year, before the president dropped out of the race, the moderators asked Mr. Trump twice about what he would do to help with the affordability of child care.

In his first answer, Mr. Trump went off on a series of tangents related to earlier debate topics, defending his firing of retired Gen. John Kelly as his chief of staff, denying that he had called soldiers who had died in war “suckers” and “losers,” boasting about his firing “a lot of the top people at the F.B.I.,” accusing Mr. Biden of wanting “open borders” and denouncing him as “the worst president.”

Given an additional minute to address child-care costs, the topic of the question, Mr. Trump did not mention the word once.

“Just so you understand, we have polling,” Mr. Trump began. “We have other things that do — they rate him the worst because what he’s done is so bad. And they rate me, yes, I’ll show you. I will show you. And they rate me one of the best, OK?”

Categories Childhood, Elections, Funding, Parents, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Moms4Liberty Meet and Embrace Trump, Of Course

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2024 //
5

The AP wrote about the annual conference of Moms for Liberty, where the guest speaker was convicted felon Donald Trump. The organization is supposed to be “non-political,” to preserve its tax-free status, but its partisan political views are undisguised. The rightwing group favors censorship, book banning, and unhinged alarmism about teachers “grooming” students to be gay or transgender.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In her welcoming remarks at Moms for Liberty’s annual gathering in the nation’s capital on Friday, the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, urged members to “fight like a mother” against the Democratic presidential ticket.

Later that evening, after she had interviewed Republican nominee Donald Trump onstage, she made a point to say she was personally endorsing him for the presidency. Their talk show style chat was preceded by a “Trump, Trump, Trump” chant from the audience.

The weekend’s gathering, drawing parent activists from across the country, has showcased how Moms for Liberty has moved toward fully embracing Trump and his political messaging as November’s electiondraws nearer. The group is officially a nonpartisan nonprofit that says it’s open to anyone who wants parents to have a greater say in their children’s education, yet there was little pretense about which side of the nation’s political divide it has chosen.

A painting that was prominently displayed on an easel next to the security station attendees had to pass through before being allowed into the conference area showed Vice President Kamala Harris kneeling over a bald eagle carcass, a communist symbol on her jacket and her mouth dripping with blood. A Moms for Liberty spokeswoman said she hadn’t seen the gruesome painting and noted that the only official signage for the event included the group’s logo….

Many communities where Moms for Liberty candidates took over a majority of the school board have been frustrated by their laser-like focus on removing books, questioning lessons around race and rejecting LGBTQ+ identities. A lack of progress toward academic improvement has in turn led to a counter movement among more moderate and liberal parents and teachers unions.

Moms for Liberty says it won’t make an official endorsement in the presidential race, but it isn’t shying away from getting involved. The group’s founders recently wrote an open letter to parents warning that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school social studies teacher, would be “the most anti-parent, extremist government America has ever known.”

The group spent its first three years becoming synonymous with the “parents’ rights” movement in local school boards but recently has become more involved in national politics. It participated in the controversial conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, Project 2025, as a member of its advisory board. The group also has invested more than $3 million in four crucial presidential swing states. The money has paid for advertising in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, including messages critical of the Biden administration.

But, here’s some good news:

Around the country, some school board members backed by Moms for Liberty or who carry out the group’s agenda have been recalled in recent months by community members who say their policies have caused chaos.

In Woodland, California, north of the state capital, a school board member backed by Moms for Liberty members was recalled in March after she raised fears that children were coming out as transgender “as a result of social contagion ” during a school board meeting in 2023.

In Southern California, a trustee with the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Education was recalled after he and two of his colleagues voted to reject a social studies curriculum because it included a history of the gay rights movement.

And in Idaho’s heavily Republican panhandle, community members from across the political spectrum rose up to recall two right-wing members of their board last year who sought to root out critical race theory and institute a conservative agenda.

Katie Blaxberg, a Pinellas County candidate who will run against the one remaining Moms for Liberty-linked candidate for that county’s school board this fall, said the “nastiness” and “divisiveness” of the group “isn’t conducive to any sort of good wor

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Breaking News! Liz Cheney Will Vote for Kamala!

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2024 //
36

Liz Cheney broke her silence today: she declared before an audience of students at Duke University that she will vote for Kamala Harris.

Former Representative Liz Cheney, the onetime high-ranking Republican from Wyoming who torpedoed her own political career by breaking vociferously with former President Donald J. Trump, on Wednesday told students at a Duke University event that she would be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

“I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Ms. Cheney said. “As a conservative and someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

Ms. Cheney had remained silent until now, despite repeated outreach from the Harris campaign, which has been courting Republican endorsements and voters. Ms. Cheney chose not to speak at the Democratic National Convention, making the decision to wait for a stand-alone moment in September, closer to when early voting was set to begin.

It was a strategic choice to ensure her voice would not be lost in a sea of back-to-back convention speeches, according to three people familiar with her thinking.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Trump

Wow! Trump Admits That He Lost the 2020 Election!

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2024 //
11

During an interview on a podcast, Trump let slip that he lost the 2020 election. He claimed he lost the election “by a whisker.” In fact, he lost the popular election by 7 million votes. Perhaps he was thinking of the electoral vote, which he might have won if a few thousand votes in battleground states like Georgia had gone his way.

Nonetheless, he has falsely claimed for almost four years that he won in 2020 but the Democrats stole the election. Logic suggests that the party in power has the means to “rig” an election. He was in power. Republicans controlled Georgia, and Trump lost there.

He lost. He admitted it. Maybe it just slipped out. But he told the truth. For once.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Lies, Trump

John McCain’s Military Son Switches Party, Endorses Kamala

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2024 //
14

Senator John McCain’s son Jimmy was so disgusted by Trump’s actions at Arlington National Cemetery that he announced that he will vote for Kamala Harris. Jimmy McCain had ample reason to despise Trump for the way he insulted his father.

Jimmy McCain is a career military man.

CNN reported:

When former President Donald Trump held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery last week, 1st Lt. Jimmy McCain says he viewed it as a “violation.”

The youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain had already been moving away from the Republican Party — just weeks ago, he changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, he told CNN in an exclusive interview this week.

But he is speaking out now for the first time about Trump because of the former president’s conduct at the hallowed ground where several generations of McCain’s family, including his grandfather and great grandfather, are buried.

“It just blows me away,” McCain, who has served in the military for 17 years, told CNN. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” of whether to be a backdrop for a political campaign, he said.

“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently — that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country.”

McCain’s decision to speak out now is part of his broader shift away from the Republican Party and his family’s famously conservative roots. After years as a registered independent, he says he registered as a Democrat several weeks ago and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, adding that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help her campaign.

It’s a significant move for the son of a former GOP presidential candidate and Arizona senator. While other members of the McCain family have distanced themselves from Trump — including Jimmy McCain’s mother Cindy, who endorsed then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020, and his sister Meghan — none except Jimmy have publicly abandoned the Republican Party.

Despite her harsh criticisms of Trump, Meghan McCain indicated last week that she would still not endorse Harris. “I’m a lifelong, generational conservative,” she tweeted.

Jimmy McCain, who enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 and now serves as an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment, had until now deliberately sought to avoid entering the political fray. Trump’s attacks on his father — that he was “not a war hero” because he was captured in Vietnam, and his reported description of the elder McCain as a “loser” — were deeply hurtful on a personal level, but not out of bounds politically, Jimmy McCain believes.

“One thing about John McCain is that he chose a public life,” McCain said. “So to attack him is really not out of the realm of his job description.”

For the younger McCain, though, the Arlington episode and how the campaign has reacted to it represents a whole new level of what he perceives as Trump’s disrespect for the fallen. And he believes it stems from Trump’s own insecurities about not having served.

“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves,” McCain said. “They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country. And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”

McCain emphasized that he is speaking on his own behalf and his views do not represent those of the US Army. McCain received his commission and became an officer in US Army intelligence in 2022.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Dana Milbank: Trump Is Just Plain Vulgar!

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2024 //
45

Dana Milbank is a regular columnist for The Washington Post. He writes here about the essence of Trump: Vulgarity.

He began:

The New York Times ran a fine specimen of unintentional comedy this week: an essay by conservative writer Rich Lowry titled “Trump Can Win on Character.”


The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been under the byline of Stormy Daniels.


Lowry’s argument itself wasn’t quite as absurd as the headline. He was only suggesting that Trump repeatedly call Vice President Kamala Harris “weak,” which Trump probably won’t do, because he’s too busy calling her a communist, a copycat, stupid, a recent conversion to being Black or someone with a crazy laugh who is not as good looking as he is.


Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument.
As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:

• Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)


• Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.


• Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.


• Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”


• Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents, and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career.
On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”


Trump can win on character!

Trump isn’t a fan of military cemeteries, wherein rest those who died for their country and who Trump regards as “suckers” and “losers.” (Trump denies voicing those sentiments, which his former chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, attributes to him.) Trump canceled a visit to an American military cemetery in France in 2018, citing rain, and he skipped the presidential visit to Arlington on Veterans Day that same year. Just two weeks ago, he said the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom is “much better” than the Medal of Honor for military valor because those receiving the latter “have been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”

So why did he visit Arlington this week? There was something in it for him. He would use the fallen as a backdrop for a political attack against the Biden administration — specifically, attacking Biden for his handling of the Afghanistan pullout three years ago.


Army National Military Cemeteries cannot be used for political activities, but when a cemetery official tried to “ensure adherence to these rules” she was “abruptly pushed aside,” an Army spokesman said. Trump’s campaign accused the official of “suffering from a mental health episode” and Chris LaCivita, who is co-managing Trump’s campaign, called her a “despicable” person who shouldn’t represent the “hollowed grounds” of Arlington.

LaCivita knows something about making the hallowed hollow. He led the “swiftboating” of John Kerry 20 years ago and is now attempting to do the same to Harris’s running mate by disparaging Walz’s honorable service. And here was the Trump campaign desecrating Arlington’s Section 60, where Iraq and Afghanistan war dead lie, and posting photos and video of it across social media, with a voice-over by Trump attacking his political opponents.


Of course, Trump is the one who set the Afghanistan withdrawal in motion. Now, he’s setting another calamity in motion, by getting ready to force Ukraine to give up its fight against Russia’s invasion. “Look at what’s going on right now with Ukraine surging into Russia,” he complained this week, objecting to Ukraine’s recent success. “You’re going to end up in World War III and it’s going to be a bad one.”

Openly condemning an American ally’s success? Vladimir Putin couldn’t have said it better…

Kennedy’s crackpot ideas go well beyond covid to the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, that WiFi causes “leaky brain,” that chemicals in the water supply might turn children transgender, that AIDS might not be caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance. And that was before the world learned about his brain worm and the bear cub.
Trump this week said Kennedy has “got some very good ideas” that “turned out to be right.” And he says he’d rely on the judgment of both Kennedy and Gabbard to staff up his administration.

Trump can win on character!


Hello, everyone. This is your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, with some very exciting news. By popular demand, I am doing a new series of Trump digital trading cards!


So begins the infomercial Trump posted on social media this week. For just $99 apiece, Trump supporters can pay with credit card or crypto to own digital cards showing a young and muscular Trump on a motorcycle, holding a lightning bolt, and praying. (This third offering of cards, the America First Collection, follows the Mugshot Edition.) Those who cough up $24,750 or more will get two tickets to “a gala dinner at my beautiful country club in Jupiter, Florida” — and a “bigger” piece of his debate suit.


Proceeds go not to Trump’s campaign but to a company he created for the racket.
Don’t care for the cards? “I have a FANTASTIC new Book coming out in two weeks, ‘SAVE AMERICA,’” Trump also posted this week. “I hand-selected every Photo.” This one is $99, or $499 signed; proceeds go to a company founded by Donald Trump Jr.

These follow other grifting ventures by Trump: sneakers, bibles — you name it. But his biggest scheme by far has been convincing supporters to buy stock in Trump Media, the parent of Truth Social. Investors who bought at the peak have now lost about 75 percent of their money, as the market adjusts to the realization that the business is fundamentally worthless. (It loses millions of dollars and produces scant revenue.) But Trump’s 59 percent stake in the company is still valued at about $2.2 billion — and he can start dumping his shares on Sept. 20. Company executives have already begun cashing out. Loyal Trump supporters who bought in on his assurance that Trump Media is a “highly successful” company are left holding the bag.

Trump can win on character!

The former president is befuddled. “Kamala and her ‘handlers’ are trying to make it sound like I am the Incumbent President,” he protested on X. (His return to the platform is another acknowledgment of Truth Social’s failure.)
This is true: He’s no longer running against an incumbent president, and Harris has been skillful in making the campaign about Trump’s record. Trump keeps pining for Biden’s candidacy. At a stop in Detroit, he admitted that people are advising him “don’t waste your time” on Biden — even as he mentioned his former opponent five times.


In his disorientation, Trump retreats to his instincts.

He makes up stuff. He claims that the Biden administration is to blame for the assassination attempt, that the U.S. military has “no ammunition,” that his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
He is outrageous. This week, he shared QAnon slogans online (“nothing can stop what is coming,” “where we go one we go all”); doctored images of Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton, “crazy” Nancy Pelosi and others in orange jumpsuits; and proposals to indict members of the House select Jan. 6 committee for “sedition” and to prosecute Barack Obama in a “public military tribunal.” His country club in Bedminster, N.J., will host a fundraiser next week for participants in the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

And he’s obscene. This former president of the United States shared a photo of Harris and Clinton as part of a post associating both women with oral sex. This came as Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters, a Trump ally, fantasized on air about Harris “paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.” (Watters says he “wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature.”) Also, former Trump official (and Republican convention speaker) Peter Navarro responded on X to special counsel Jack Smith’s revised indictment of Trump to conform to a recent Supreme Court ruling: “What the f— is this Jacko? YOU are going to prison for election interference. You can have Merrick [Garland] as your bunkie.” (Navarro is just out of prison himself.)


“I always look for good words, highly sophisticated — I’m highly educated, I like sophisticated words,” Trump said in Detroit this week. But for his opponents, he went on, “there’s only one word I get. That’s stupid — they’re stupid people.”


In his reflexive name-calling, he confirms that there really is one word that describes him better than any other. Vulgar.

Categories Character, Elections, Trump

Margaret Sullivan: False Equivalence Between Harris and Trump in The New York Times

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2024 //
23

Margaret Sullivan was the ombudsman (public editor) for the New York Times. She writes a blog called American Crisis. There are so many amazing blogs these days that it’s hard to keep track. This one appeared in my email today, and it speaks to a debate among readers on this blog about whether the media, and most especially The New York Times, normalizes Trump’s behavior and ideas in an effort to be “fair.” I’m subscribing.

She writes:

I once asked Jill Abramson, the former top editor of the New York Times, to name the best reporters she had ever encountered.
I recall she mentioned her friend and co-author Jane Mayer — definitely on my list, too — and a few others. Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” about the Koch Brothers, is a classic of investigative reporting.

Another one was James Risen, the renowned investigative reporter formerly of the New York Times, and later at the Intercept. I agreed again, particularly because of an investigation that Risen did during the George W. Bush administration about the government surveillance of American citizens through warrantless wiretapping. (There’s quite a backstory there, but suffice it to say that Times editors held back the investigation for many months after the administration claimed that publishing would threaten national security; Risen eventually forced the hand of his editors, resulting in the publication of the blockbuster co-authored with Eric Lichtblau — and it won a Pulitzer Prize.)

I heard from Risen a few days ago, as I do from time to time; I got to know him while I was the Times public editor or ombudswoman. He wrote to express his outrage at his former employer for a recent story. I pay particular attention to him as a former Timesman himself and a journalist of integrity.

“At first, I thought this was a parody,” Risen told me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Even more unfortunately, the lack of judgment it displays is all too common in the Times and throughout Big Journalism as mainstream media covers Donald Trump’s campaign for president.

“Harris and Trump Have Housing Ideas. Economists Have Doubts,” is the headline of the story he was angered by. If you pay attention to epidemic of “false equivalence” in the media — equalizing the unequal for the sake of looking fair — you might have had a sense of what was coming.

The story takes seriously Trump’s plan for the mass deportation of immigrants as part of his supposed “affordable housing” agenda.
Here’s some both-sidesing for you, as the paper of record describes Harris’s tax cuts to spur construction and grants to first-time home buyers, and Trump’s deportation scheme.
“Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common …But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists.” The story notes that experts are particularly skeptical about Trump’s idea, but the story’s framing and its headline certainly equate the two.

There’s only one reason I disagree with Risen’s reaction. He wrote: “This story is unbelievable.”

I wish.

Stories like this run rampant in the Times, and far beyond. It matters more in the Times because — even in this supposed “post-media era” — the country’s biggest newspaper still sets the tone and wields tremendous influence. And, of course, the Times has tremendous resources, a huge newsroom and the ability to hire the best in the business. Undeniably, it does a lot of excellent work.

But its politics coverage often seems broken and clueless — or even blatantly pro-Trump. There’s so much of this false-balance nonsense in the Times that there’s a Twitter (X) account devoted to mocking it, called New York Times Pitchbot. 

Sometimes, sadly, it’s hard to tell the difference between the satire and the reality. Hence, Risen’s parody line.

At the same time, when Trump does something even more outrageous than usual, the mainstream press can’t seem to give it the right emphasis. Last week, NPR broke the news that Trump and his campaign staff apparently violated federal law — and every norm of decency — by trying to film a campaign video at Arlington National Cemetery and getting into a scuffle with a dutiful cemetery employee.

Of course, the story got picked up elsewhere and got significant attention. But did it get the huge and sustained treatment that — let’s just say — Hillary Clinton’s email practices did in 2016? Definitely not, as a former Marine, Ben Kesling, wrote in Columbia Journalism Review:

“Lumped together, the reporting this week left readers and listeners, especially with no knowledge of the military, at a loss to understand what actually happened — and crucially, why it mattered so much. The Trump campaign had successfully muddied the waters by alleging that the photographer had been invited to the event by family members of soldiers buried there.”

It came off, he wrote, “like a bureaucratic mix-up or some tedious violation of protocol,” not a deeply disrespectful moral failure, which it surely was. “The sacred had been profaned.”

The political cartoonist Darrin Bell, however, certainly got the point across in a time-lapse video cartoon. Check it out here. (Open the link to see this).

Why does this keep happening, not just in the Times but far beyond? 

Nearly 10 years after Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, the media has not figured out how to cover him. (My last major piece in the Washington Post laid out how coverage should change if Trump decided to run again, and I’ve also written recommendations here from the Media and Democracy Project.)

And what’s more — what’s worse — they don’t seem to want to change. Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don’t see the problem as they normalize Trump. Nor do they appear to listen to valid criticism. They may not even be aware of it, or may think, “well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.” Maybe they simply fear being labeled liberal.

American Crisis is a community-supported project where I explore how journalism can help save democracy. Please consider joining us! Subscribe

All of this matters immensely as the extraordinarily important campaign for president heads into its last couple of months. I’ll be continuing to monitor coverage here, and trying to find ways to improve it.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Propaganda, Trump

Biden and Harris Bring the Campaign to Pittsburgh for Labor Day

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2024 //
1

Watch President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as they speak to union leaders and members in Pittsburgh today!

Please note: President Biden is old and he shows it, but he is mentally sharp and animated.

The clips are contained in a post called “The Meidas Touch.” The speeches by Biden and Harris are the second of three videos. The third video is Governor Tim Walz in Wisconsin, speaking to union workers.

Sixty-six days until Election Day. Early voting starts in a couple of weeks. Will the nation build for the future or go back to the past?

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »