Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: “I Dissent”

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2024 //
16

Ruth Marcus has been a writer for The Washington Post for forty years. Yesterday, she wrote a principled dissent to the decision of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who owns the newspaper, to stop the editorial board from publishing its endorsement of Kamala Harris. In addition, 16 opinion writers published a statement criticizing the decision.

She wrote:

I love The Washington Post, deep in my bones. Last month marked my 40th year of proud work for the institution, in the newsroom and in the Opinions section. I have never been more disappointed in the newspaper than I am today, with the tragically flawed decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential race.

At a moment when The Post should have been stepping forward to sound the clarion call about the multiple dangers that Donald Trump poses to the nation and the world, it has chosen instead to pull back. That is the wrong choice at the worst possible time.

I write — I dissent — from the perspective of someone who spent two decades as a member of The Post’s editorial board. (I stepped away last year.) From that experience, I can say: you win some and lose some. No one, perhaps not even the editorial page editor, agrees with every position the board takes. At bottom, the owner of the newspaper is entitled to have an editorial page that reflects the owner’s point of view.

In addition, let’s not overestimate the significance of presidential endorsements. As much as we might like to believe otherwise, they have limited persuasive value for the vanishingly small number of undecided voters. They are distinct from endorsements for local office, involving issues and personalities about which voters might have scant knowledge; in these circumstances, editorial boards can serve as useful, trusted proxies. A presidential endorsement serves a different purpose: to reflect the soul and underlying values of the institution.

A vibrant newspaper can survive and even flourish without making presidential endorsements; The Post itself declined to make endorsements for many years before it began doing so regularly in 1976, as publisher and chief executive officer William Lewis pointed out in his explanation for the decision to halt the practice.

If The Post had announced after this election that it would stop endorsing presidential candidates, I might have disagreed with that decision, but I would not consider it out of bounds. The practice of endorsements comes with some costs. The newsroom and the Opinions section maintain rigorous separation, but it is difficult to make that case to an official aggrieved by the failure to secure an endorsement.

This is not the time to make such a shift. It is the time to speak out, as loudly and convincingly as possible, to make the case that we made in 2016 and again in 2020: that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold the highest office in the land.

This was The Post on Oct. 13, 2016: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is dreadful, that is true — uniquely unqualified as a presidential candidate. If we believed that Ms. Clinton were the lesser of two evils, we might well urge you to vote for her anyway — that is how strongly we feel about Mr. Trump,” the editorial board wrote in endorsing Hillary Clinton. Trump, it — we because I was a member of the board then — said, “has shown himself to be bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies. As president, he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world.”

Every word of that proved sadly true.

This was The Post on Sept. 28, 2020: It — we — called Trump “the worst president of modern times,” in endorsing Joe Biden “Democracy is at risk, at home and around the world,” the editorial warned. “The nation desperately needs a president who will respect its public servants; stand up for the rule of law; acknowledge Congress’s constitutional role; and work for the public good, not his private benefit.”

What has changed since then? Trump’s behavior has only gotten worse — and we have learned only more disturbing things about him. Most significantly, he disputed the results of a fair election that he lost and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He encouraged an insurrection that threatened the life of his own vice president — leading to his second impeachment — and then defended the insurrectionists as “hostages.” He will not accept the reality of his 2020 loss or pledge to respect the results of next month’s voting, unless it concludes in his favor.

He has threatened to “terminate” the Constitution. He has demeaned his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as “mentally impaired.” He has vowed to fire the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against him and “go after” his political enemies. He wants to use the military to pursue domestic opponents — “radical left lunatics” like former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) or Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) — and rout out “the enemy from within.”

I could keep going but you know all this, and you get my point: What self-respecting news organization could abandon its entrenched practice of making presidential endorsements in the face of all this?

Lewis, in his publisher’s note, called this move “consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.” It was, he added, “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.”

But asserting that doesn’t make it so. Withholding judgment does not serve our readers — it disrespects them. And expressing our institutional bottom line on Trump would not undermine our independence any more than our choices did in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 or 2020. We were an independent newspaper then and, I hope, remain one today.

Many friends and readers have reached out today, saying they planned to cancel their subscriptions or had already done so. I understand, and share, your anger. I think the best answer, for you and for me, may be embodied in this column: You are reading it, on the same platform, in the same newspaper, that has so gravely disappointed you.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Freedom of the Press, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Orlando Sentinel Will No Longer Endorse Candidates for President, Governor, or U.S. Senate

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
26

On October 7, The Orlando Sentinel published the following editorial. Note that the newspaper is owned by Alden Global Capital, which has bought up many other newspapers and gutted their newsrooms.

The Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel will no longer endorse candidates in races for governor, Senate or president, including this year’s races.

This is a company-wide decision and very limited in scope. It applies only to endorsements in these two races. All other endorsements remain entirely within each newspaper’s discretion, and we are working hard on our endorsements for U.S. House, the Legislature, city and county commissioners and mayors and school board races.

Any public officials who are popping champagne at this announcement might want to re-cork their celebrations. Tribune Publishing’s two Florida papers, the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel, will continue our tradition of robust, well-researched editorials that hold Florida’s leaders responsible for their actions. When those decisions are not in the state’s best interests or driven by partisan ulterior motives, we will continue to say so.

This restriction is in line with corporate-level dictates in other media companies, some of which have eliminated endorsements entirely. It’s well within the long-standing tradition of American editorial pages, which leaves the final say on endorsements to each paper’s publisher.

Since Alden Global Capital took over Tribune Publishing in May 2021, its leaders have made it clear that they support robust, local editorial pages. This is the first time they have asserted their traditional role, but this discussion of which races to endorse in occurs at newspapers every day in the run-up to an election. Company leaders acted out of concern that contests for president, U.S. Senate and governor are becoming more national in character, and that our editorial advocacy is strongest locally.

Corporate leaders also worry that common ground is being lost to culture wars. We’ve all seen society become more polarized. Look at what’s happened since Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. Could we have imagined that we would be so deeply divided over how to handle the pandemic that we would see shrieking parents dragged out of school board meetings? Or that partisan voices on both sides of the divide would take turns decrying law enforcement and medical professionals as villains or heroes?

But we aren’t going to cede that common ground on the eve of a high profile, surprisingly competitive Senate race and a contest for governor widely seen as a prelude to the 2024 presidential election (with another likely player in his Palm Beach mansion).

Florida’s tradition of spirited journalistic debate is often shaped by editorials, but also informed by readers’ letters to the editor and columns by us, readers and public officials. They are the heartbeat of our opinion pages, and in the great Florida tradition, our readers are not shy about telling us when they think we’ve gotten it wrong.

We’ll continue our work of endorsing many candidates for local, regional and state office, judgeships, Congress, ballot questions and constitutional amendments. We’ll celebrate fact and expose fiction. And to quote Tom Petty, we won’t back down. Nor are we expected to.

Our corporate leadership has made that crystal clear. We know our readers will have plenty to say about this decision. You’ll find our letter guidelines at the bottom of this editorial.

At the end of the day, we suspect even our toughest critics will agree: We all love Florida at the top of our lungs, con mucho gusto. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Breaking News: The Washington Post Will NOT Endorse a Candidate for President!

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
33

The Washington Post announced that it will not endorse a candidate for president in the 2024 election. The Post is one of the most liberal newspapers in the nation. It was purchased in 2018 by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos hired Will Lewis from the Rupert Murdoch news empire to lead the paper.

In a choice between the Democratic candidate, who respects the rule of law, and the former President, who incited an insurrection, The Washington Post will not render an endorsement.

This is the will of the billionaire who owns the paper. I extend my deepest sympathies to the members of the editorial board for the loss of their voice and editorial independence.

CNN wrote:

New York— 

For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election, the newspaper’s publisher announced Friday.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Will Lewis said in a published statement. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since the 1980s. In his statement, Lewis referred to the Editorial Board’s past decisions to not endorse a candidate, noting that it is a right “we are going back to.”

“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis continued. “We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”

Ahead of the announcement, The Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley, told staffers that Lewis would be publishing a public note with the decision.

“The news is significant – and I know there will be strong reactions across the department,” Shipley wrote in a memo obtained by CNN.

The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Newspaper owners typically play a role in their publication’s endorsements and sign off on the editorials which reflect their views.

Marty Baron, a former executive editor of The Post, sharply criticized the decision Friday.

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Bezos (and others),” Baron wrote in a social media post. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The decision comes just days after The Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, leading to resignations from three editorial board members.

Two additional members of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times resigned to protest the newspaper owner’s decision not to endorse either candidate.

It’s shameful that two major newspapers have been prevented from expressing the views of their editorial boards by the fist of their billionaire owners.

I sadly add the names of the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times –Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos– to the blog’s Wall of Shame. They won’t know or care. But I do. It’s my small gesture of support for sanity and editorial independence .

In a news story about the WaPo’s decision not to endorse, this was reported:

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Harris, Kamala, Trump, Wall of Shame

Margaret Sullivan: Are the Media Fair? Should They Be?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
35

Margaret Sullivan was the ombudsman for The New York Times. She now writes a blog called American Crisis.

She writes:

With less than two weeks until the most consequential presidential election of the modern era, this is my evaluation of how the media has done — along with an 11th hour plea. 

There are, after all, still a lot of undecided or at least uncommitted voters, hard as that may be to believe. And the media, while it won’t determine the outcome, can make a difference.

I’ll grant, up front, that the national news media — Big Journalism — has done some good work. The reporting on Project 2025, while not pervasive enough, has been excellent, and some of the best of that has been in the New York Times. Daniel Dale at CNN has done great, helpful fact-checking. ABC News did a good job with the single presidential debate. The Guardian has been publishing a fine series and a newsletter called The Stakes. (I contributed a piece about what would happen to press rights.) The New York Times just launched a link to its extensive coverage of what a Trump presidency would mean, tagged “What’s At Stake.”

Some columnists have made sense of the nightmare for us, like Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer, who consistently nails what’s happening, providing reporting and big-picture context; and Jill Lawrence at the Los Angeles Times, whose most recent column was terrifyingly headlined: “Get Ready for President Vance.” And I see improvement from the Washington Post, as Parker Molloy noted in a New Republic piece about Trump’s town-hall dance party titled “The Washington Post Covered that Bizarro Trump Rally the Right Way.” 

But fundamentally, the media coverage writ large has fallen far short of what was needed to get the true stakes across to an entire nation of voters. And that’s been true not just recently, but for more than nine years, since Trump declared his candidacy in 2015. Too often, the coverage of Trump has been an embarrassing failure — sanewashing his lunacy, falsely equating him to his traditional rivals, or treating him as some sort of amusing sideshow. 

The economist Dean Baker, posting on X the other day, expressed it perfectly: “It says everything you need to know about the U.S. media that Trump’s clown show at the McDonald’s gets more attention than his former defense secretary and chair of the Joint Chief of Staff warning that Trump is a dangerous fascist with no respect for democracy.”

Exactly. And that is true of the mainstream, supposedly independent media! Now add in Fox News, the beating heart of the right-wing propaganda monster. 

Donald Trump talks to reporters after handing out food at a McDonald’s in a campaign stunt in Pennsylvania on Oct. 20 / Getty Images

New research from Media Matters notes that “Fox News gave nearly 500 times more coverage to McDonald’s stunt than Trump’s threats to Social Security.” (That’s two hours and four minutes for the stunt; 15 seconds for a report from a nonpartisan group showing that Trump’s policies would make the Social Security Trust Fund insolvent years before expected; Kamala Harris’s policy would not change the expected trajectory.) Bret Baier’s showily combative interview with Kamala Harris was one more example.

There are some — including prominent commentators — who are in dreamland, handing out helpings of false equivalency like Milky Way bars on Halloween. Here was the top piece in the New York Times opinion newsletter from Tuesday: “Keep calm and look at the polling averages.” The point of this piece from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Andersen was that you can reduce your stress by realizing that polls shift and change all the time. “The ups and downs that can come from seeing your preferred candidate pingpong back and forth, from day to day, became less stressful when placed into context.” 

Believe me, it’s not the shifting polls that are stressing me out; it’s the knowledge that if Trump is elected, American democracy may well be over. Her take reminded me of the infamous column from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post on Nov. 4, 2016: “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.”

Readers, we weren’t.

And we won’t be, if Trump wins. Those are the stakes.

So over the next two weeks — though it’s arguably too late — every media outlet should be trying to correct its long-term errors. It should be trying to get across to those mysterious individuals known as undecided voters that this really matters, and why. That Trump is a danger, declining by the day, and that the prospect of a radical, but much younger, President Vance is very real.

I’ll be keeping track here, and I deeply appreciate your joining me. Please let me know — in the comments or on social media — what you’re seeing in the media that strikes you as admirable or objectionable.

Getting it right in the last two weeks is probably too little, too late. But, in a very tight election, any improvement just might be enough to matter

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Will Saletan: Trump Is Running as a Fascist

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
7

Will Saletan writes for The Bulwark that Trump is openly, blatantly running as a fascist. In recent days, Trump has babbled on about his intention to break all the norms of American leadership. He will use his power to punish people who have challenged him. They are not his “opponents,” they are his “enemies.”

He begins:

DONALD TRUMP IS RUNNING THE MOST openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president of the United States.

That’s not hype; it’s a textbook application of the term. In 2021, Trump used violence to try to overturn an election; in 2022, he called for terminating the Constitution. Now, on the brink of returning to power, Trump is reaffirming his intent to take America deeper into autocracy.

Here are some of the threats and declarations he has issued in the past three months.

1. He says he’s legally immune to all current charges against him.

Four grand juries have indicted Trump on felony charges, and one jury has convicted him. But on August 15, Trump boasted that “the Supreme Court ruled recently on immunity, and I’m immune from all of the stuff that they charge me with.”

2. He claims the right to do whatever he wants as president.

On August 21, Trump asserted (falsely) that the criminal case against him for obstructing recovery of classified documents was invalid because “I had the Presidential Records Act. I had a right to do whatever I wanted to do.”

3. He advocates “one really violent day” of police action.

On September 29, Trump called for police violence against people who appear to be stealing from drug stores or department stores. He proposed an “extraordinarily rough” response: “One real rough, nasty day, with the drugstores as an example,” in which police would take on people who “start walking out with” merchandise. “If you had one really violent day,” said Trump, “one rough hour, and I mean real rough—the word will get out, and it will end immediately.”

4. He vows to indemnify police against “any prosecutions” for doing what he wants.

On October 11, Trump pledged to “indemnify” police officers against any prosecutions” for actions undertaken as part of his planned mass deportations. The next day, he added that when officers confront people walking out of department stores with what appear to be stolen goods, “we’re going to indemnify them against any problems they have.”

The fascists win by dividing the opposition. So join the best pro-democracy community on the internet by becoming a Bulwark+ member.

5. He threatens to use the military against “the enemy within.”

Trump says the New York Times, the Washington Post, “the press” generally, and Democratic politicians such as Rep. Adam Schiff are part of the “enemy from within” America.

On October 10, in a Fox News interview, Maria Bartiromo asked Trump whether criminals or terrorists from abroad might pose a threat to the United States on Election Day. Trump told her that “the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” not foreigners. “We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics,” said Trump. “And it should be very easily handled by—if necessary—by National Guard. Or, if really necessary, by the military.”

Later in the interview, Trump made it clear that the “lunatics” he was talking about included Democratic politicians. Bartiromo asked Trump how, as president, he would “guard against the bureaucrats undermining you.” Trump repliedthat “the enemy from within,” including “lunatics that we have inside like Adam Schiff,” was “more dangerous than China [or] Russia.”

Last Wednesday, another Fox News host, Harris Faulkner, invited Trump to clarify his meaning. He responded by adding former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the list. “It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” said Trump. “The Pelosis, these people—they’re so sick, and they’re so evil.”

6. He says some of his political opponents shouldn’t be allowed to run for office.

On August 23, Trump said that Ruben Gallego, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, “shouldn’t be allowed to even run in this election.” On September 27, he added, “Anybody that wants to defund the police is not qualified and shouldn’t be allowed to even run for president.” On September 28, he declared that due to Kamala Harris’s border policies, “she shouldn’t even be allowed to run.”

7. He says he could have jailed Hillary Clinton.

On August 8, Trump boasted, “With Hillary Clinton, I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin.” On August 15, he said he could have jailed Clinton “very easily.” On August 21, he repeated, “I could have put her in jail.”

In an interview that aired on September 3, podcaster Lex Fridman asked Trump about the temptations of the presidency. “If you become leader again, you’ll have unprecedented power,” said Fridman. “What does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?”

Trump responded by bragging that he could have jailed Clinton but had spared her. “I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky. . . . I could have done something very bad.”

Donald Trump is an ignorant, narcissistic sociopath.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

CNN Searched for the Maker of Trump Watches and Dead-Ended in Wyoming

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
4

Donald Trump is using his campaign as a platform to sell Bibles, sneakers, and other stuff. The revenues go to him, not the campaign. He made a video to plug “Trump watches” to his fans. The least expensive is $400, the most expensive is $100,000. The ad says they were made in Switzerland. CNN tried to trace their origin and ended up at a building in Wyoming that is the mailing address for hundreds of other businesses. Is it just another grift?

All of these corporations share the same “organizer,” Andrew Pierce, whose company serves as the registered agent and as the gatekeeper for more details about the business Trump is promoting in the final weeks of his third White House bid.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed watch experts, and they suspected that the Trump watches are made in China and vastly overpriced.

Categories Elections, For-Profit, Trump

Los Angeles Times: Owner Orders No Endorsement in Presidential Race; Editor Resigns in Protest

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
43

The Los Angeles Times has steadfastly criticized Trump as a “dangerous” and “dishonest” man. It is a liberal newspaper in a liberal state. Its editorial board intended to endorse native Californian Kamala Harris, as it did when she ran for Senate.

But on October 11, the owner of the newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, ordered the editorial board not to issue any endorsement. The Trump campaign reacted with glee, casting the non-endorsement as a rejection of Harris by the editorial board.

The editor of the editorial board, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest. Veteran journalist Sewell Chan wrote the back story in The Columbia Journalism Review, where he is now editor after a long career that included The Los Angeles Times.

This is Garza’s resignation letter, addressed to Terry Tang, the editor of the paper.

Terry,

Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence. 

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it. 

It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?

The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.

Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.” 

I still believe that’s true. 

In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.

Mariel

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Ethics, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Sarah Longwell: Trump’s Defenders Belittle General Kelly

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
5

General John Kelly did not want to speak out against former President Trump. He held his tongue about what he saw in the Oval Office as Trump’s chief of staff. But when Trump threatened to use the military against his critics, General Kelly believed he had to step forward. Sarah Longwell, a Republican turned Never Trumper and publisher of The Bulwark, wrote about the criticism of General Kelly by Trump’s defenders.

She wrote at The Bulwark:

WHEN GEN. JOHN KELLY WENT PUBLIC about Trump’s praise for Hitler and his fears about a dictatorial second Trump term, he joined a growing list of former Trump officials ringing the alarm.

He also sparked what has become a pathetic if not predictable pattern, in which a chorus of Trump sycophants obediently rush forward to explain away the alarming revelation and impugn the witness’s credibility.

Here’s reliable Trump lickspittle Scott Jennings telling us that Kelly probably made the whole thing up and that the real Hitlers are on college campuses. Trump apologist Ryan James Girdusky said, “I, honest to God, like most Americans, do not care about Gen. Kelly’s farewell tour.”

Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends said of Trump’s praise for Nazi generals: “I can absolutely see him go, ‘It’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis, or whatever.” (Not a parody.)

Trump confidante Mike Davis called Kelly “Gen. Christine Blasey Ford”—get it? Chris Sununu is unbothered: “We’ve heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote.” Sen. Bill Hagerty, on CNN, downplayed the entire revelation as a matter of personal dispute between two men. Kelly and Trump, he said, “were not a good fit.”

There is something deeply pernicious to this routine. These people want you to forget the cumulative weight of the accusations against Trump, especially when those accusations are coming from his own former employees—many of them high-ranking military officers. They’re doing so not because they don’t believe the accusations but because they know how harmful they could be.

You know how we know this? Because the claims of Kelly and others are backed up by what we’ve seen with our own eyes over the last nine years.

Are we supposed to be skeptical that Trump called soldiers “suckers” and “losers” when he said as much out loud about John McCain?

Are we supposed to be skeptical that he praised Hitler’s generals when he admires dictators, dined with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, calls people “vermin,” and talks about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America?

Are we supposed to believe he bears no responsibility for January 6th when we all watched him summon a mob and sic it on the Capitol?

Are we supposed to believe that this is all about some personal tiff between Kelly and Trump when so many others have so many similar accounts?

  • When Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, told us that “the American people deserve to know that President Trump asked me to put him over my oath to the Constitution” on January 6th?
  • When James Mattis said Trump’s “use of the presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice”?
  • When Mark Esper said Trump was “unfit for office,” and put “himself before country”?
  • When John Bolton warned that “this will be a retribution presidency”?
  • When Ty Cobb said Trump’s “conduct and mere existence have hastened the demise of democracy and of the nation”?
  • When Mark Milley called Trump “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country”?
  • When Bill Barr said Trump “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”?

I have another idea: Why don’t we accept the obvious truth that is staring us in the face? Trump is dangerous and unfit and all the responsible people who served in his last term have told us as much.

KELLY HAD BEEN RELUCTANT to speak publicly about his assessment of Trump. Previously, he said that speaking out against his former boss wouldn’t even get “a half a day’s bounce.” Trump’s apologists are trying to prove him right. We shouldn’t let them.

Kelly did the right thing. But it’s not enough. These messages need to reach people where they are, especially disengaged voters—not because they aren’t politically potent (they are) but because they fundamentally matter.

When someone of Kelly’s stature and proximity to Trump says the ex-president is a fascist and praised Hitler’s generals, it should send a great chill through our body politic. If this becomes a half-a-day story, it will be an indictment on all of us.

We are now in the home stretch. Millions of voters are—right this moment—making up their minds. This is the time when elections are won or lost. Those other former officials now have an obligation to do what Kelly has: come forward and offer their candid assessments of Trump.

They should do so not just to defend Kelly but to make a larger point: that we can, should, and must be honest about the threat Trump poses.

Trump’s defenders want us to doubt what we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. They want us to treat a White House chief of staff confirming that the former president praised Hitler and called members of the military “suckers and losers” as just another bit of campaign fodder—not evidence of something fundamentally rotten at the core of their movement. If we allow that to happen, it will be a stain on our politics akin to electing Trump himself.

ADDENDUM BY DIANE: SARAH FORGOT TO INCLUDE THE PUNGENT COMMENT ON TRUMP BY HIS FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE REX TILLERSON. HE SAID: “TRUMP IS A “F—— MORON.”

Categories Accountability, Character, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Generals John Kelly and Mark Milley Agree: Trump is a Wannabe Fascist

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
10

General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s Chief of Staff, and General Mark Milley, who was appointed by Trump as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s highest ranking officer), both warned in recent days that Trump is a fascist at heart.

Trump now calls both men stupid and incompetent, even though he appointed them.

Kelly told the New York Times that Trump should not be re-elected because of his desire to be an absolute dictator and his ignorance of the Constitution:

He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

Mr. Trump “never accepted the fact that he wasn’t the most powerful man in the world — and by power, I mean an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted,” Mr. Kelly said….

He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic...

When Mr. Kelly left the White House in 2019, he decided he would speak out on the record only if Mr. Trump said something that he found deeply troubling or involved him and was wildly inaccurate.

Mr. Trump’s recent comments about using the military against what he called the “enemy within” were so dangerous, he said, that he felt he had to speak out.

Using the Military Inside the U.S.

“And I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump was repeatedly told dating back to his first year in office why he should not use the U.S. military against Americans and the limits on his authority to do so. Mr. Trump nevertheless continued while in office to push the issue and claim that he did have the authority to take such actions, Mr. Kelly said.

General Mark Milley told author Bob Woodward that: “former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.'”

Trump had previously threatened General Milley with a court-martial on charges of treason, followed by execution.

The MSNBC website described General Milley’s concerns.

When Gen. Mark Milley retired last year, following more than four decades of military service to the United States, he delivered a retirement speech that included some language that did not go unnoticed. “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator — or wannabe dictator,” the retiring general said.

Many assumed, of course, that he was referring to Donald Trump, but the phrasing was at least somewhat subtle, and the four-star Army general did not elaborate. At least, he didn’t elaborate publicly at the time.

As The Washington Post reported, Milley apparently put subtlety aside when speaking to Bob Woodward for the longtime journalist’s new book.

Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley warned that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in new comments voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term, according to a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

Milley’s assessment of the Republican candidate is rooted in first-hand experience: Trump handpicked Milley to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the general worked alongside the then-president for more than a year.

“No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump,” the general told Woodward. “Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.”

Milley went on to note that he feared a possible court martial in a second Trump term — despite the fact that he’s now a civilian — and those concerns are well grounded. After all, according to Trump’s former Defense secretary, Mark Esper, Trump set out to have two highly decorated retired military leaders — Stanley McChrystal and William McRaven — court-martialed for saying things about the former president that he didn’t like.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Tennessee: Governor Lee Demands Vouchers for All Students, Rich and Poor Alike

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
5

Marta W. Aldrich reported in Chalkbeat that Governor Bill Lee will make universal vouchers his top priority in education this coming year. Tennessee currently has a voucher program that is limited to three urban districts and is not fully enrolled. The Governor, who is a graduate of public schools, wants all students, rich and poor alike, to have a public subsidy to pay for private and religious schooling.

Republicans have made universal vouchers a high priority, knowing that it will drain students and funding from their local public schools.

Governor Lee’s effort to pass universal vouchers failed last year because of opposition by urban Democrats and rural Republicans. However, some of the Republican opponents were defeated with the help of out-of-state money spent to elect voucher-friendly Republicans who were willing to undercut their local public schools.

The extremist Republicans were funded by an organization called 1776 Project PAC, whose purpose is to elect school boards who will oppose “woke” policies and support privatization. Its leader is a GOP operative named Ryan James Gidursky. Here is a video where he discusses “the Marxist takeover of America’s schools.” Check out the merchandise on their website, which says more about their purposes than the other parts of the website. The 1776 Project PAC was funded by a rightwing billionaire, Richard Uihelein, who wants to destroy public schools because they are “woke.”

From what we already know about vouchers, we can predict that the great majority of them will be used by affluent families whose children are already enrolled in nonpublic schools. In his recently published book, The Privateers, Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has shown that the low-income students who transfer to nonpublic schools do not make academic gains and frequently experience “catastrophic” declines in their outcomes.

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states….

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters”.

Categories Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Tennessee, Vouchers
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