To Counter the 'Hope Hicks is a victim' narrative, Lawrence O'Donnell sums it up perfectly.

Hope Hicks and Donnie: Two happy clowns.

 

Lawrence O'Donnell

"You get monsters like Donald Trump thanks to people like Hope Hicks."

By jai2

Community

Daily Kos

Monday, May 06, 2024 at 11:05:37a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

The diary on the rec list about Hicks being groomed and the media obsession with her crocodile performative tears IMO is waaayyyy off the mark as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell explains. 

Lawrence starts as follows:

"Today's courtroom was a tale of two young women describing their work in government: one described her dedication to a difficult job done honorably under intense pressure with high stakes with the best of motivations in pursuit of an ideal, and the other was Hope Hicks."

TRANSCRIPT

Today's courtroom was a tale of two young women describing their work in government one described her dedication to a difficult job done honorably under intense pressure with high stakes with the best of motivations in pursuit of an ideal, and the other was Hope Hicks.

Hope Hicks was preceded on the witness stand today by a young woman who appeared to be about the same age as Hope Hicks was when she started working for presidential candidate Donald Trump. I wish I could tell you the young woman's name because it's a beautiful name that any parent or fiction writer would be proud to create, but I won't tell you her name because homicidal Trump supporters are all too eager to threaten the lives of all of us who they despise.

They especially like to do that on social media and this young woman's job in the district attorney's office is to study social media and prepare social media for use as evidence in criminal trials. That job became the worst job in the district attorney's office when, a year and a half ago, she was assigned to the investigation of Donald Trump and had to read as many as10,000 social media posts, mostly by Donald Trump but also by Michael Cohen and others involving this case.

Imagine having to keep up with, in real time, the poison Donald Trump spews on social media every day and having to reach back in time for Trump tweets that are relevant to this criminal investigation as far back as 2016 and beyond.

She has saved about 1,500 posts on Instagram, Twitter, truth social and other sites for the District Attorney's Trump evidence file. She testified that she has analyzed about 30 social media accounts in the process.

Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyers tried to object to her testimony that laid the groundwork for introducing social media posts by Donald Trump but her testimony was so technically flawless and so convincing to judge Juan Merchan…that the judge overruled every objection the Trump lawyers raised to try to block her testimony and block her introduction of the exhibits.

She won; she beat the Trump lawyers at the game of admitting evidence. She described the elaborate and exacting process she had to go through with each piece of social media to fit the complex requirements of introducing even a single tweet as an exhibit in court, and thanks to her painstaking adherence to those legal rules and requirements the jury was shown this tweet by Donald Trump.  

 "I've never said I'm a perfect person nor pretended to be someone that I'm not I've said and done things I regret and the words released today on this more than a decade old video are one of them anyone who knows me knows these words don't reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize."

October 8th 2016, that was the one and only time Donald Trump has ever apologized in his life. It was immediately after the Access Hollywood tape was released in October 2016 in the last weeks of Donald Trump's first presidential campaign.

The thousands of hours of work done by that young paralegal assistant in the DA's office to allow the introduction of exhibits like that paid off today. Her dedication and professionalism was obvious to everyone in the courtroom especially judge Merchan. She is the lowest paid person who has spoken in that courtroom. She will never be applauded. Never publicly thanked. She doesn't get to fly on private jets like Hope Hicks did when she started her campaign job, or on Air Force One like Hope Hicks did when she worked in the White House.

This Witness was one of the unsung heroes in the machinery of American justice. That's her job – justice. That is one of the motivators for putting in those long hours. That is the ideal, she gets to pursue in her work – justice. The DA's office does not pay her enough jobs like that never pay enough but she gets to take home more than a paycheck she gets to take home her pride. Pride, the thing Hope Hicks sold to Donald Trump.

At 11:23 a.m, an assistant district attorney said, "The people call Hope Hicks."  Dressed in a black suit, she walked past the defense table within arm’s reach of Donald Trump without ever looking at him, and he did not look at her as she walked by.

She began her testimony with a bit of biography, saying she was a 2010 graduate of Southern Methodist University who then began working for the Trump organization in 2014. She told her first lie about 10 minutes into her testimony. Now some people will think lie is too harsh a word for what I'm about to read to you, but it does show what a casual Trumpian relationship with the truth Hope Hicks lives by.

She described Donald Trump under oath as quote "a very good multitasker and a very hard worker." He is not and never has been a hard worker. Everyone knows that isn't true, but most of the press corps on the campaign trail and in the White House who covered Hope Hicks easily accepted those lies. Lies of that size from Hope Hicks all the time without any of those lies diminishing their view of her in any way.

She was on that witness stand as she has always been, the picture of privilege. She laughed out loud in the courtroom at the very idea of Donald Trump offering her a job she was unqualified to do – press secretary for a presidential campaign. That is what privilege looks like. She had never been a press secretary for anything. She had no idea how to be a campaign presidential campaign press secretary.

Like everyone in the Trump campaign, no serious campaign would hire them to do anything. Hope Hicks lives on the Donald Trump side of our politics where people rant endlessly about attributing things like the failure of Boeing's manufacturing and maintenance of aircrafts to some kind of liberal oriented hiring program that gives jobs

There has never been a more unworthy candidate for Hope Hicks job in the presidential campaign or in the White House than Hope Hicks. She didn't need either one of those jobs. She was born rich in Connecticut. She could have tried to do something more worthy with her life, or at least do something that wasn't harmful. But she chose to help Donald Trump become president of the United States.

That's what she chose to do and that job came with a motto: "deny, deny, deny." That's what she wrote in an email when the Trump campaign team of incompetence was trying to respond to David Fahrenthold's brilliant reporting at the Washington Post which revealed the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Donald Trump is shown bragging about his favorite method of sexual assault.

David Fahrenthold rocked the Trump campaign on October 7th, 2016, when he sent an email to Hope Hicks asking for a comment about the Access Hollywood video, which he came into possession of before the Washington Post would publish it. David Fahrenthold included a transcript of the video in that email but not the video itself.

Question: did you read Mr. Trump the email you received from Mr. Fahrenthold?

Answer: I read him the email and I have a vague recollection of starting to read the transcript and then he finished reading it himself I believe.

Question: Did you hand him the email for him to read?

Answer: Yes, that's my recollection.

Question: And what, if anything, did he say?

Answer: He said that that didn't sound like something he would say and so on.

The basis of that lie told to Hope Hicks by Donald Trump "that that didn't sound like something he would say," Hope Hicks told the team that the strategy was deny, deny, deny. Meaning lie, lie, lie. Hope Hicks did a lot of that. Anyone who knows Donald Trump knows the Access Hollywood video does indeed sound like something he would say.

Hours later the video was out there and Hope Hicks could watch him say it herself, and so the jury heard Hope Hicks describe Donald Trump lying directly to her, quote, “He said that that didn't sound like something he would say.” That was a very harmful line of testimony about Donald Trump.

Juries are always wondering if this witness is telling the truth, would this person lie to us, and now they know that Donald Trump lied to Hope Hicks right there in that line about that video when that video came out, proving that Donald Trump said every word that was in that transcript.

That was enough for John McCain. Senator McCain turned against Donald Trump. Then that was enough for Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan who canceled a campaign event with Donald Trump. Republican Congressman Jason Chaitz came on this program that night for the one and only time in his life and retracted his endorsement of Donald Trump in the name of his daughters.

That very night Republicans were rushing away from Donald Trump because of what they heard him say and do on that Access Hollywood video, but not Hope Hicks.  Not Hope Hicks. If you don't quit then, when do you quit, Hope Hicks? Answer was never.  

Hope Hicks was there in Washington on the White House payroll on January 6^th making no attempt at all to get Donald Trump to do the right thing during the attack on the capital. To stop that attack and what did she do after January 6^th? Nothing. She eventually did an interview with the January 6 committee where she said as little as she possibly could and offered no significant help to the committee. Very little that they could even use in their public revelation of their evidence.

Compare that to Cassidy Hutchinson. They both took the same oath of office as White House employees to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Hope Hicks who had direct access to Donald Trump whenever she wanted it didn't say a word to Donald Trump on January 6. Didn't even try to, while Cassidy Hutchinson, who did not have direct access to Donald Trump, was desperately trying to get her boss Mark Meadows, the white house chief of staff, to convince Donald Trump to stop the attack on the Capitol.

Cassidy Hutchinson became the January 6 committee's most important witness. Cassidy Hutchinson has been urging Americans not to vote for Donald Trump. Nothing like that from Hope Hicks. Nothing. I've never seen anyone in the White House treated the way the White House Press Corps treated Hope Hicks. Talk about privilege. There is video of White House reporters kissing her, social kissing, as they're greeting at White House press briefings. That doesn't happen unless you are Hope Hicks.

She cried. That's the big news of the day out of the courtroom. No one knows why she cried at the very beginning of cross-examination. I heard three different theories for the tears from reporters on the way out of the courtroom today and you'll hear some theories during this hour from people who are in the courtroom with me today and are more perceptive about that.

I don't know why she cried and I don't care. I know she didn't cry for the 628 children who were held at the southern border in custody by Donald Trump who was then unable to find their parents and reunite them. Hope Hicks didn't cry for them.

And we can be sure that Hope Hicks has never cried when her motto of deny, deny, deny, took hold in the Supreme Court, deciding to deny women a right they had for 50 years in this country. Longer than Hope has been alive.

I'm sure she didn't cry for that 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to leave the state after being raped to receive abortion services in Indiana.

Hope Hicks kept working for Donald Trump to become the president of the United States after she knew that deny, deny, deny was a lie, a lie she told. Hope Hicks watched the Access Hollywood video and thought yes, yes that's who I want to keep working for tonight. That's who I want to be president of the United States and I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can to make that man on that video bragging about sexual assault become the next president of the United States.

That's my mission and that is who Hope Hicks wanted to be reelected as president of the United States after he recommended injecting bleach into your veins to cure covid. That's who Hope Hicks wanted to keep in the White House.

We had a monster in the presidency, not because of Donald Trump, but because of the people who voted for Donald Trump, and because of the people who worked for Donald Trump's campaign to get him there.

You get monsters like Donald Trump thanks to people like Hope Hicks.  People who White House reporters social kiss in the White House Press briefing room. Reporters whose acceptance of Donald Trump is warmed by the charms of Hope Hicks.

Witness, Hope Hicks got off the witness stand today without being asked the most important question of her life. She wasn't asked that question because it wasn't an important question in this trial. And that question is…why didn't you quit?  Why didn't you quit that presidential campaign in 2016 when it was so obvious to all of us that you were working for a pathological liar and a dangerous person? Why didn't she quit is a much more important question than why did she cry.

Ain't she sweet?

 

ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING: Nine of Trump’s most disturbing responses from his terrible Time magazine interview

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich.

Article By Aldous J. Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Daily Kos 

Saturday, May 04, 2024 at 4:50:09p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The best way to interview Donald Trump is to … not interview him.

Unless you’re a particularly ardent supporter of vicious, kindergarten-level lies—such as “I won the election because I was ahead on election night” or “immigrants ate my health care plan”—there’s really no reason to listen to, much less solicit, any of his so-called opinions. But Time magazine did just that.

Since his latest fibs are just fragrant fish heads in a whopping seafood ‘n’ BS paella, it’s important to at least take a taste if we want a full picture of his depravity. Or a sniff. Or, if possible, a six-month-long nap until this is all over and Joe Biden is reelected.

Ah, but there’s no sleeping on Trump and his march to Putin-style autocracy, so we have to stay awake. And—hoo-boy—did he ever just give an eye-opening interview. 

RELATED STORY: 3 ways Trump dodged a ‘yes or no’ question on abortion

In case your time is short and you don’t have 83-minutes to read the raw transcripts, here’s a summary of the interview from Eric Cortellessa, the Time staff writer who took precious minutes out of his day to probe the mind of the crotch grabbing, four-times indicted coup plotter-cum-business fraudster.

What Cortellessa describes are the “outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”

To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.

In addition, notes Cortellessa, Trump would “gut” the U.S. civil service, send the National Guard to U.S. cities “as he sees fit,” close the White House pandemic-preparedness office (because apparently we were more than adequately prepared last time), and “staff his administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

In other words, he wants to be a dictator on Day One … and day two … and day 365 ... and every day after that until God decides to reincarnate him as a severely undernourished infant forcibly taken from his mother at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ah, but reading is believing. With that in mind, here are nine of the most frightening excerpts from Trump’s Time interview. (And in case you’d prefer to skip ahead to the fact check, that’s here.)

1. 

Asked whether he’d override the Posse Comitatus Act, which makes it illegal to use the U.S. military against civilians in order to deport immigrants, Trump said this:

Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. They're coming in by the millions. I believe we have 15 million now. And I think you'll have 20 million by the time this ends. And that's bigger than almost every state.

Of course, if anyone should know what a “civilian” is, it’s Bonnie Prince Bone Spurs. As Time noted in its fact check, “a civilian is commonly defined as anyone who is not an active member of the armed forces. Immigration status does not factor into whether someone is a civilian. Any person in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, may be entitled to many of the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens.”

Also, not sure why you’d want to deport the very people who’ve helped make our economy the “envy of the world,” as the far-left Wall Street Journal recently described it.

Then again, Trump appears far more interested in empty xenophobic gestures than actually helping the economy grow.

2. 

Trump wants more tariffs, and to this day no one’s been able to dislodge from his head the (extremely) false notion that the cost of tariffs falls on exporters rather than importers. That said, it’s clear he’s been told that tariffs represent an added cost to consumers, because in this interview he attempts to preemptively debunk that fact:

I also don't believe that the costs will go up that much. And a lot of people say, “Oh, that's gonna be a tax on us.” I don't believe that. I think it's a tax on the country that's doing it.

Well, Trump also believes windmills kill whales and exercise is bad for you. (Neither of those things is true, but if Trump is elected again you can expect the NIH to spend millions of taxpayer dollars studying those theories.)

Of course, listening to Trump is bad for the health of your economy. As Mary Amiti, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote in 2020 for the New York Times, “U.S. tariffs continue to be almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers.”

So if you like the pandemic-related inflation we saw after Trump left a flaming bag of fiscal poo on Joe Biden’s doorstep in 2021, you may be in luck. Trump wants to bring it back—and make it permanent—by deporting millions of willing workers and adding unnecessary costs to thousands of consumer goods.

3. 

Of course, if Americans decide to resist mass deportations and/or the White House’s unilateral decision to make everything more expensive, they can expect an emboldened police force to push back. Because Trump wants to give police a lot more leeway to take matters into their own hands:

Police have been—their authority has been taken away. If something happens with them, even if they're doing a very good job, they take away their house, they take away their pension, they take away their, I mean, essentially, they end up losing their families over it. They take away everything. They prosecute people. And we have to give the police back the power and respect that they deserve. Now, there will be some mistakes, and there are certain bad people and that's a terrible thing. But there are far more problems with what's happened now, where police are standing outside of a department store as it’s being robbed and 500 mostly young people are walking out carrying air conditioners and televisions and everything else. And the police would like to do something about it. But they're told to stand down. They said don't do it. And if you do anything about it, if you stop crime, we're going to go after your pension, your home, your family, your wife or your husband. And you know, police are being prosecuted all the time. And we want to give them immunity from prosecution if they're doing their job.

Yes, clearly the problem with police these days is they’re far too accountable. But you know what they say: You can’t run a police state without police. It’s right there in the name! What ever will we do if every police officer who murders a citizen is simply shipped off to jail? It would be anarchy!

By the way, if police are really standing around watching 500 people cart air conditioners and TVs out of department stores, they should probably be fired. And I’m as liberal as they get.

4.

There’s been some really good news on crime lately. Following a spike in violent crime that began under, erm, Trump, crime has dropped precipitously. But this is bad news for Trump, who wants to pretend crime is worse than ever. His solution? Claim the decline isn’t happening. (You may recall he pulled this same nonsense with respect to official unemployment figures while running in 2016—before suddenly becoming a believer in government data the moment he stepped into the White House.)  

Violent crime is going down throughout the country. There was a 6% drop in—

Trump: I don't believe it.

You don’t believe that?

Trump: Yeah, they’re fake numbers.

You think so?

Trump: Well it came out last night. The FBI gave fake numbers.

I didn't see that, but the FBI said that there was a 13% drop in 2023. [Editor's note: This statistic refers specifically to homicides.]

Trump: I don’t believe it. No, it’s a lie. It’s fake news.

Sir, these numbers are collected by state and local police departments across the country. Most of them support you. Are they wrong?

Trump: Yeah. Last night. Well, maybe, maybe not. The FBI fudged the numbers and other people fudged numbers. There is no way that crime went down over the last year. There's no way because you have migrant crime. Are they adding migrant crime? Or do they consider that a different form of crime?

“Do they consider that a different form of crime?” You were president, dude. You don’t know?

Of course, since migrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates than native-born Americans, welcoming more immigrants into the country would only serve to lower crime rates. As it is, we don’t know exactly why crime rates went down under Biden. We just know they did. Maybe the improved economy has made it easier for people to maintain their $2,000-a-month horse paste habits, and so they no longer need to gather 499 of their friends together to steal shit from Big Lots. Or maybe people are just a lot calmer since that big orange head stopped screaming at them from the TV every day.

5.

Of course, just because violent crime is down doesn’t mean Trump can’t ratchet it up a notch or two. Assuming he loses the election … again. 

Mr. President, in our last conversation you said you weren't worried about political violence in connection with the November election. You said, “I think we're going to win and there won't be violence.” What if you don't win, sir?

Trump: Well, I do think we're gonna win. We're way ahead. I don't think they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don't think we're going to have that. I think we're going to win. And if we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election. 

Got that? There will only be violence if Trump loses. Because if he loses, the results will obviously be fake. Dictators always win, after all. Hasn’t America figured that out by now?

6.

Of course, Trump is such a diligent crime fighter, he’d be fine with states monitoring women’s pregnancies to make sure they don’t get abortions. And he still somehow thinks “everyone” wanted to see Roe v. Wade struck down. 

Do you think states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban?

Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states. And that was a legal, as well as possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some, a moral decision. But it was largely a legal decision. Every legal scholar, Democrat, Republican, and other wanted that issue back at the states. You know, Roe v. Wade was always considered very bad law. Very bad. It was a very bad issue from a legal standpoint. People were amazed it lasted as long as it did.

Sheesh. Every time this dingbat sings, a Democratic attack ad gets its wings.

7.

Meanwhile, Trump is promising another big announcement in just ... two weeks! And because he announced the arrival of his announcement during the first part of this two-part interview—and since the two interviews were conducted two weeks apart—for once we get a timely update!

Do you think women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone?

Trump: Well, I have an opinion on that, but I'm not going to explain. I'm not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I'll be releasing it probably over the next week.

Well, this is a big question, Mr. President, because your allies have called for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail. The Biden Department of Justice has not enforced it. Would your Department of Justice enforce it?

Trump: I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days.

Two weeks later …

Last time we spoke, you said you had an announcement coming over the next two weeks regarding your policy on the abortion pill mifepristone. You haven't made an announcement yet. Would you like to do so now?

Trump: No, I haven’t. I’ll be doing it over the next week or two. But I don't think it will be shocking, frankly. But I'll be doing it over the next week or two. We’re for helping women, Eric. I am for helping women.

So his answer to “did you formulate the policy that you promised, two weeks ago, to tell us about in two weeks?” was … “I’ll let you know in two weeks.”

Something tells me his answer will arrive six weeks after the heat death of the universe.

8. 

Of course, while President Biden has been careful not to interfere in DOJ decisions, Trump has no such qualms. In fact, he’s outright promised to go after Biden. In this interview, he kinda, sorta, but not really walked that back:

Okay, so sir, you said that you would appoint a real special prosecutor to go after Biden and his family—

Trump: Well, it depends what happens with the Supreme Court. Look, a president should have immunity. That includes Biden. If they've ruled that they don't have immunity, Biden, probably nothing to do with me, he would be prosecuted for 20 different acts, because he's created such. You take a look at not only his criminal acts of taking a lot of money and being a Manchurian Candidate.

In other words, if Toddler Trump doesn’t get immunity for trying to end America and refusing to return top secret government documents, Biden shouldn’t get immunity for all the crimes Trump wants to pretend he committed. And the charges Trump believes Biden will face over all that nothing will “probably” have nothing to do with him.

Very reassuring. It’s clear how much this guy loves liberal democracy and the rule of law—or would, anyway, if he knew what either of those things were.

9. 

Meanwhile, Trump is certain that all the cases against him were orchestrated by a shrewd and calculating Joe Biden, the senile old man who doesn’t know he’s alive. 

His head of the Justice Department, one of the top few people, was put into the DOJ. Fani, Mr. Wade, Fani’s lover, spent hours in Washington with the DOJ working on my case. The DOJ worked with Leticia James on my case. The DOJ worked with deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged person on my case. No, no, this is all Biden—

In case you’re wondering why nearly that entire excerpt is hyperlinked, well, it’s because it’s all bullshit. And it directs the reader to this fact check:

In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Counsel overseeing the federal investigations into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office. The announcement came shortly after Trump announced he was running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Special Counsels are appointed to ensure the independence of prosecutors when there is the potential for a conflict between the attorney general, who is a political appointee, and the subject of the investigation.

AND A BONUS

Of course, no rundown of Trumpian madness would be complete without his threats to destroy the post-World War II order that’s preserved decades of peace in Western Europe. But in this excerpt, Trump unwittingly (does he ever do anything anything wittingly?) makes his opponents’ argument for him. Because not only would other NATO countries come to our help if we were invaded, the only time NATO did act to defend one of its member states was when America was attacked. 

Do you want to maintain 80 years of American leadership in defending the West, especially Europe, or do you want to change the architecture of the post-war world that has kept us out of a World War for the last 80 years?

Trump: I want them to pay their bills. Very simple. NATO is fine. See, the problem I have with NATO is, I don't think that NATO would come to our defense if we had a problem.

You don't?

Trump: No, I don't believe that. I know them all. It's a one-way street, even if they paid. I want them to pay. But I believe if we were attacked, NATO wouldn't be there. Many of the countries in NATO would not be there.

Time’s fact check:

Since its adoption in 1949, Article 5 has only been invoked once: immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. The other 18 member nations of NATO launched a number of operations in response, including the deployment of air forces to secure the skies over the U.S. and naval anti-terrorism efforts. NATO members also participated in the ensuing ground war in Afghanistan.

Gee, maybe we owe them money. Nah, because NATO dues aren’t a thing. You’d think someone who was president might know that, huh? You’d think.

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL BRAIN, MAYBE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BRAIN IN THE WORLD: "Well, I have an opinion on that, but I'm not going to explain. I'm not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that."

 

Trump fatigue is real, but he cannot be ignored

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at the Waukesha County Expo Center in Wisconsin.

By Jessica Sutherland for Daily Kos

Walter Einenkel contributed to this story.

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday, May 05, 2024 at 5:00:11p MDT 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

It’d be understandable to want to skip right past this story, which explores the bizarre speech Donald Trump gave in Wisconsin on Wednesday night, a rare day off from his criminal election interference trial in Manhattan. The politician Trump has been unavoidable for nine years now, and at every turn, he gets worse. 

And Wednesday night was no exception. Hot off nine contempt of court violations and a disastrous Time magazine interview that he surely thought went very well, Trump continues to spiral. But as President Joe Biden begged at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the media must cover the realities of the threat Trump presents, not just the gaffes or the horse race polling. Those on the right side of history must expose the dangers and avoid the cynical amusement that contributed to Trump’s 2016 win. He cannot be ignored. To pay attention to what he’s saying at rallies—and how well it’s received—is a duty voters all share as the fight heats up to defeat him once and for all in November.

Because as awful as he sounds to so many Americans, he sounds wonderful to others. Americans suffering from Trump fatigue ignore him at the peril of themselves, their communities, and the nation. And people cannot fight the enemy they do not know. 

“America ain’t so great right now,” Trump told his fawning crowd, insisting the nation is “a laughingstock around the world.” It’s not a new refrain, but it’s a necessary one to ensure his movement’s MAGA acronym—Make America Great Again—makes sense. Voters must believe the nation under Biden, and Barack Obama before him, is in steep decline to believe that Trump is its savior. 

That terrifying prospect is what Trump needs to maintain to hold on to his dwindling base, much less grow it: the fear of a dying America that only he can save.

And so he fearmongers vaguely about Bidenomics and in deceptive detail about immigrants, who he insists are terrorists moving into suburban and rural neighborhoods. (“Congratulations,” he offered as a sarcastic aside).

He laments student debt relief while vaguely promising a similar effort. He praises toppling Roe v. Wade while telling his devotees it’s what everyone always wanted and only he gave it to them.

And amid all of it, he still insists the 2020 election was stolen. But perhaps the most telling thing about Trump’s speech isn’t what Trump said, but how people in the crowd responded. They cheered and they booed when Trump expected them to. They clapped and they screamed, they faded to silence and bated breath like orange clockwork. Trumpism is alive and well, folks, and it’s not just treading water—it’s spreading. 

And to ignore what this man is saying, six months out? That’s an overcorrection from the mistakes of 2016. And that’s how Trump wins. 

And that requires every one of us exposing them when they arise from the hellish depths of the Trump mind. 

Trump says states can monitor pregnant women

Abortion rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington.

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 4:45:18p MDT

  

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

Donald Trump can't stop the abortion policy fallout he kicked into high gear earlier this month when he declared states should be the ultimate arbiters on reproductive freedom and the bodily autonomy of pregnant Americans. 

In a new interview with Time magazine's Eric Cortellessa, Trump dodged questions about whether he would sign a national abortion ban, okayed the idea of monitoring pregnant women, and revisited the possibility of prosecuting anyone who gets abortion care.

Arizona Supreme Court won't reconsider ruling on

1864 abortion ban

Asked specifically about the prospect of state governments monitoring women’s pregnancies, Trump was indifferent. 

"I think they might do that,” he said. “Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”

Ankle monitors for pregnant women? Sure, why not? It's open season at the state level. 

"The states are going to make those decisions," Trump said.

Except, of course, when a draconian law generates really bad press that could kill Trump's presidential bid, like in Arizona.

Mere days after he first backed so-called "states' rights" on abortion, Trump began pressuring Republican state lawmakers to do something about their Civil War-era abortion ban that might cost him the 2024 election.

While talking to Time, however, Trump didn't register the same concern about monitoring pregnant women or even punishing people who have abortions.

Pressed on whether he would be comfortable with “states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit,” Trump responded, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions."

Congratulations to Trump for making his 2016 remark that "there has to be some form of punishment" for pregnant Americans who have abortions extremely relevant again.

Trump bobbing and weaving repeatedly on questions concerning reproductive rights brought into relief yet again the peril he faces in unleashing anti-abortion zealots in GOP-led states to fashion the most restrictive, punitive, and life-threatening policies regarding abortion care. 

The attack ads practically write themselves: a patient on a gurney getting slapped with an ankle monitor as they are told they are pregnant; a tearful mother flashing back to an ER tragedy as it's revealed that she is sitting behind bars. These scenarios are no longer hyperbole amid Republicans' dystopian regulations on abortion, and they are there for the taking.   

Letting the states decide was never the silver bullet Trump and his campaign imagined it would be. He owns all of these state bans now, and the horrors they have unleashed will keep the issue percolating in the presidential contest straight into November. 

Trump might be all over the place on abortion, criticizing some laws while claiming state prerogative on others. But the bottom line is: Nothing is off the table, as he very clearly demonstrated in the Time interview. 

He might sign a national abortion ban, or not. He might be just fine with pregnant women wearing ankle monitors, and he might watch passively as states prosecute Americans who have abortions—even those undertaken to protect their health, their lives, and their families.

Who knows what will come under a Trump administration. Or as Trump is fond of saying: We'll see.

The NRA is finally falling apart, and the gun cult may be going with it

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff 

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 3:30:10p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

It would be hard to find an organization more corrupt and incompetent than the NRA, though a few individuals on a certain court sure come to mind. In January, chief executive Wayne LaPierre ended three decades of control when he resigned ahead of a trial over tapping organization funds to treat himself to yacht trips, African safaris, and regular use of a private jet. In February, that trial ended with LaPierre being ordered to pay back almost $4.4 million. 

In the wake of LaPierre’s resignation, the organization has reportedly descended into infighting. Finding a new leader has proven so difficult that not even Donald Trump Jr., who spent years talking himself up as the NRA’s next leader, is willing to take the job. Or at least, he says he wouldn’t, though no one has actually asked him to step in.

Leadership aside, the NRA now has only a fraction of the funds they had to sling around in past election seasons. They’ve declined from the $50 million they put into races in 2016 to only $11 million in their PAC and SuperPAC combined as of the last filing. Membership is also down by over a million, to around five million, which is half the goal LaPierre set for 2023 a decade ago. 

And that’s not all that’s declined. So have gun sales. So what does that mean for the gun lobby?

GOP candidates routinely place guns right next to God in their campaign material, and Republican Christmas cards feature every family member clutching a ridiculous weapon.

Rep. Thomas Massie’s 2023 Christmas card.  How very sick.

But it appears that Republican members of Congress aren’t putting enough guns in the hands of their adolescent children. According to the FBI, gun sales in the United States have declined for three straight years. The Trace estimates that Americans bought 665,000 fewer guns in 2023 than in 2022. That trend is continuing. Comparing year-over-year data, sales in March of 2024 were down 5% from the same month in 2023. 

There are reasons other than the declining influence of the NRA for that drop in sales. The truth is only about 6% of Americans hunt, and even for them an expensive assault weapon is rarely, if ever, the right tool. While an AR-15-style weapon may be the perfect tool for war, it’s a poor choice for personal defense. 

Buying guns like the trendy AR-15 can be an expensive hobby, especially for those who don’t use them beyond a temporary enthusiasm for the local gun range. A $650 Yeti cooler may at least contribute to a tailgate party, but a $1,000 assault rifle is just an expensive—and dangerous—decoration for the vast number of those who own them. 

In short, not every gun buyer goes on to be the industry's serial-killing dream customer. Many may not be inclined to buy another copy of a weapon they aren’t using, no matter how many guns Massie or Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert have on their Christmas cards.

With the NRA fading, there are other gun lobby groups working to gain more influence. However, none of them seem to have the level of influence, extensive finances, and highly effective lobbyists that the NRA had a few years ago. Those other organizations haven’t spent decades nurturing relationships with both politicians and deep-pocketed donors. The decline of the NRA seems like a genuine moment of weakness in the pro-gun lobby.

There is certainly no shortage of Republican-dominated state legislatures standing by to pass stupid laws. But hopefully, it doesn't matter how tightly Republicans dig in their cold, dead fingers. America may have passed Peak Gun.

But of course that doesn’t mean it’s time to relax about gun control legislation. It means that it’s time to push harder.

ABOVE: The way guns used to be back when the Second Amendment was passed.

BELOW: The way it is today, with gun nuts saying that Second Amendment still applies.

Kristi Noem's story of murdering her dog keeps getting worse and worse

 

Canine killer Kristi hangin' with the Donald.

Republicans can go pretty low, but this is a new bottom 

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, April 29, 2024 at 12:00:14p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Kristi Noem has done plenty of terrible things as governor of South Dakota. That includes disregarding COVID-19 safety rules and being among the first to treat the whole pandemic as a political opportunity. No pencil-pushing scientist was going to tell her what to do, even if that meant citizens in South Dakota had to be airlifted out of state for treatment due to overcrowding.

She’s banned from visiting 10% of the land in her own state because of her continuous disrespect for Native Americans. She insists on staging fireworks displays in the middle of a drought. And she’s currently being sued after doing a commercial for a cosmetic dentist in Texas to pay for her new set of teeth.

With all that, Noem had still barely made a dent in the national news until she told a grisly story of how she shot a family dog and tossed its body in a gravel pit when it failed to perform to her satisfaction. But just because she’s been revealed as an empathy-deprived monster, don’t assume that she’s not at the top of Donald Trump’s shortlist for vice president.

In 2008, I bundled our 17-year-old golden retriever named Tigger into my arms and took her to the vet. Tigger’s parents had been national champions with more initials after their names than a Harvard professor, but she had been born deaf, making her poorly suited for the whistles and voice commands of retriever trials and agility training. Instead, she came home with us, a tiny yellow fuzzball, to be my son’s dog through every level of school, steal slices of pizza from the table, and shed small mountains of yellow fur.

At 17, she was a two-time cancer survivor, missing her tail and with long surgical scars. Now the cancer was back again. For once, she didn’t even want a potato chip. She had been in pain for weeks, trembling, incontinent, and losing weight. But once we were in the room at the vet, she seemed to understand what was going on. She stood up straight, wagged her little nub of a tail, and gave me a look that said, “I’m fine. Let’s go home.”

That was, without a doubt, one of the hardest days of my life. I can’t think of it without worrying that I did something unforgivably wrong. 

A lot of people have stories like mine, which can make Noem’s casual admission about shooting her dog Cricket because it failed to meet her performance standards nothing short of horrifying. Truthfully, it sounds like Cricket was a hoot, and the fact that Noem’s child asked about Cricket the moment she stepped off the school bus certainly suggests that this was more than just one of a pack of hunting dogs that hung around the Noem farm.

Following Rolling Stone’s story about Noem’s book, there have been reactions, and reactions to those reactions. That includes Noem defending herself by pointing out that she didn’t just shoot a dog and a goat, she also put down three horses. On Sunday, Noem issued a statement saying that “South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down.” What she means by this is that Noem was silly enough to load an untrained dog into a truck and take it straight into the middle of a bunch of chickens. However, the operative word of that South Dakota law is “can.” Noem didn’t have to shoot the dog, she decided to shoot the dog. Because giving it proper training and attention was too much bother.

 What Noem did to Cricket is reminiscent of what Trump did to the Grand Ole Party.

That wasn’t her only incomprehensible decision. It’s bad enough that Noem took this action in making her life simpler by murdering an animal that depended on her. But what may be of equal importance is that Noem chose to tell this story. She may now be complaining that “some people are upset about a 20 year old story,” but she’s the one who decided to lift this incident out of her life and plop it on a page.

Did she think that people would not be upset? Did she think this would be seen as an example of her South Dakota toughness? The simple decision to tell this story, along with the way she told it, shows that her perceptions are badly skewed.

At Semafor, one Republican brushes Noem off as a lightweight and says they don’t want a “Kamala problem” (they wish), but anyone who thinks this incident is going to knock Noem from the list of Trump’s VP potentials should think again.

Noem may open her tale of pet murder by saying “I hated that dog”—which more than a little undercuts her excuses—but she’s not alone in that feeling. As GQ noted back in 2020, Trump also hates all dogs. When Trump wants to insult someone, he compares them to a dog. When he wants to demean someone’s death, he says they died like a dog. “In Trump’s tiny mind,” writes GQ, “dogs are venal, treacherous creatures.”

Trump isn’t going to throw Noem away over a dog. He may even give her a gold star. Because what Noem has generated is a lot of discussion and a metric shit-ton of disgust. She’s identified one of those things that would seem to be beyond the boundary of acceptable behavior.

You know, like insulting prisoners of war. Or demeaning Gold Star families. Or attacking the children of a judge.

Trump loves to find those boundaries and rip them apart. He revels in his ability to convince his followers to join in the destruction. It’s not hard to see Trump loving Noem’s story of dog murder. 

It may even make him a little jealous.

Judging from how babies feel about the Donald, a dog probably wouldn't be safe around him either.  And if Noem becomes his pick for veep, the GOP will have another Sarah Palin on their bloody hands.

In Court, Donald Trump Is a Very Old Loser—and Absolutely Alone (Except for One Visit by Eric)

 

Opinion by Mark Herrmann

The Daily Beast

MSNBC 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

If you were a rioter at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, you may have felt the whole world was with you—or the part of the world that supported what you did.

President Trump himself had urged you to march to the Capitol Building. A crowd walked alongside you down Pennsylvania Avenue. People chanted with you about attacking Mike Pence, crashed through the police lines with you, helped you to break windows and march through the building.

After your arrest, it turned out that you had always been alone. Your mob vanished. You had only your lawyer as companionship at trial. You had no friends as you sat at your sentencing hearing. You alone were imprisoned. You had not won. You were a loser.

Now Donald Trump himself knows that feeling—momentarily, because he may yet be acquitted in his hush money trial and go on to be re-elected president in November. As he sits, glowering in court in Manhattan, he himself may be reflecting that in 2020, he ruled the land. Republicans cheered him when he spoke. Marines saluted as he walked past. Air Force One jetted him around the world. People jumped both when he entered a room and to answer his phone calls. Masses of people packed his rallies. The Secret Service had to protect him from adoring crowds. He was what he aspired to be: a strong, and worshipped, man.

However, after his arrest, it turned out that Trump had always been alone. As the relatively empty streets outside court show, his mob has vanished. He has only his lawyer at his trial in Manhattan.

He has endured jury selection, listening endlessly to social media posts in which his fellow New Yorkers savaged him. He has sat through arguments about what subjects will be covered in cross-examination if he dares take the witness stand—the civil fraud judgment that cost him $400 million; violations of gag orders; the two verdicts in defamation cases that cost him $80 million; the settlement in which he dissolved the eponymous Donald J. Trump Foundation. If he took the witness stand, even conservative news outlets might find that cross-examination to be titillating.

Trump has listened to prosecutors deliver opening statements, meticulously summarizing the evidence of how he cooked the books of his company. He knows that the press will report these words accurately.

Trump has watched David Pecker, a friend for decades who published the National Enquirer, testify under oath about how he hid information from the American public to help Trump attain his highest achievement—the presidency of the United States. Trump has taken to Truth Social to vent his rage; he speaks to the press only about personal grievances; he fears that he will become what his father most scorned: a loser.

Indeed, for this moment at least, Trump knows deep in his heart that he is precisely that: a loser. Suppose that he is ultimately acquitted at trial. Suppose he wins the election. Suppose he is again sworn in next January. Does that erase the memory of these long six weeks of trial, when he knows, in his gut, that he has lost?

Friends or family of the accused attend some criminal trials to lend moral support to the suspect, and humanize the defendant to the jury. Not so—not yet at least—for Donald Trump. His family is nowhere to be seen. His wife, at least presently, is not to be seen at his side; his children have vanished; his loved ones have melted away.

After his arrest, he can no longer summon his mob. He asks the world to protest, but not a dozen supporters wave flags outside the courthouse. With only a lawyer for solace, he sits at the defense table, listening to the prosecutors explain his alleged offenses and hearing old friends and employees testify to his misconduct.

Trump was powerful, always among friends, and rich beyond measure. Now, in the words of Mother Teresa, he has learned that “the most terrible poverty is loneliness.”

Or perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre put it better: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

Cartoon: If David Pecker still ran National Enquirer

Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 5:58:07p MDT

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich.

Daily Kos