After being scraped out of the White House and deposited back at
Mar-a-Lago, it didn't take long for Donald J. Trump to begin holding
for-profit events that looked and sounded a lot like campaign rallies
but have, in fact, been nothing but personal cash grabs. Donald likes
yelling his grievances at a live audience; if weird and
sedition-friendly Americans want to pay Donald to complain at them
inside sweaty arenas with other like-minded masochists, Donald's going
to take the money and yell the things.
We're all accustomed to this game by now, so if you assumed that
Donald Trump getting paid was going to turn out to be connected to
nearly everyone else involved in the effort getting screwed, you get no
prize. Sure enough, the "American Freedom Tour" has been failing to pay
its bills, canceling events, and leaving speakers not named Donald Trump
wondering if they're ever going to get their money.
The Washington Post brings us that news,
and it's filled with the sort of details that really bring home what a
thoroughly Trumpian operation this thing has been. American Freedom Tour
is the company that's been organizing these Trump rallies, and the Post reports that Donald Trump personally
appears to be getting paid his full amount for every appearance. The
same isn't true for the company's "vendors, investors, and employees,"
as the company cancels events and promises everyone that the money's
coming real soon now.
"In addition to Trump, the shows featured right-wing celebrities such
as Candace Owens and Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as motivational
speakers offering personal finance courses," notes the Post,
which immediately raises the question: How close do you have to be to
Donald, personally, to get your money? Candace Owens probably won't be
seeing any cash, but does dating one of Trump's children improve your
odds?
Yeah, I'm betting no. I'm pretty sure Donald Trump would hate you
forever if you proposed giving Donald Trump slightly less money so that
you could pay anyone else, including Donald Trump Jr., a dime.
Those names are also a reminder that, despite the high ticket prices,
these events weren't exactly posh affairs. Trump is the headliner, and
everyone else is "people that you'd never, ever pay money to hear from."
What's not clear from the Post's story is why the company is
canceling events. A company spokescreature cites "unforeseen scheduling
issues," which might mean that Donald Trump keeps having to nix event
dates because they've been conflicting with his ongoing series of crimes
but could also mean that Trump's draw—recent pictures from attendees
have shown venues that might be half full, if you're being generous—has
so faded that it's become hard for the events to turn a profit.
In fact, it's almost certainly that. The company has been putting on
Trump for-profit Trump rallies and yet can't pay its bills. That means
it’s not selling enough tickets to make its business plan profitable.
Trump can draw a gaggle, but Trump can't draw a crowd. We also know
that Trump has been demanding that donors and other suckers pay for his
flights to and from events, and you know whatever speaking fee he's charging is one far steeper than what the ticket sales can justify.
So that's a little treat. Everything Trump touches dies; everyone who
works with Donald Trump ends up getting stiffed. You'd think after
decades of this, the world would run out of suckers, but no. No, there
are always more people who think, "if I partner up with Donald J. Trump,
I won't lose my shirt."
Donald Trump’s recent open embrace
of the QAnon conspiracy cult that deifies him has predictably
metastasized into full-on identification. This became clear at his Sept.
17 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, where QAnon fans in the audience raised their fingers in a coded salute while Q-derived theme music played over the loudspeakers. Over the past couple of weeks
on his Truth Social chat platform, he has repeatedly posted and
reposted Q-derived memes and hashtags, including ominous suggestions of
future Jan. 6-style insurrectionist violence.
Just as predictably, those hordes of QAnon cultists have been
rapturous over what is now his open public embrace and how it normalizes
them. After Trump posted an ominous Q meme—one reading, “Nothing can
stop what is coming. Nothing”—a popular Q account reposted it, saying: “It doesn’t get more Q affirming than that. It’s almost like he’s trying to tell us something. Boom!”
While Trump’s Truth Social platform—intended to be a MAGA alternative to Twitter—has been a financial fiasco,
his account there nonetheless has over 4 million followers. And in
recent weeks, Trump’s account has produced a steady diet of openly
QAnon-based content.
Trump’s recent QAnon-based post on Truth Social.
One post
featured a video clip that opens with an image of his face with a large
“Q” superimposed over it, accompanied by the text: "Information
Warfare. It's time to wake up." The video then proceeds to show a montage of memes
featuring Trump: “Moves & countermoves, the silent war continues.
Q.” “Stand by, shit is about to get real.” “WWW1WGA” [the popular
hashtag for the QAnon war cry, “where we go one, we go all”]. “We know
all, we see all” [with an image of Trump holding a card with “Q” on it].
One of the memes shows Trump talking on a phone. “Empty it totally,”
its text reads. “I said drain it, completely. Yes, the globalist
traitors, commies, thieves, satanists, pedos, all of ‘em!”
Another meme tells his followers to prepare for a "storm" and then
displays a graphic showing the U.S. Capitol: "It's going to be
biblical." (QAnon fanatics played a central role in organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection.)
Experts who track QAnon conspiracism seem to agree that Trump’s
motives for embracing the cult are fairly transparent: It’s about
politics, and particularly Trump’s desperation to rally his troops amid
the multitude of legal troubles he currently faces, believing he still
has a shot to regain the presidency. Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm is Rising, told Salon’s Kathryn Joyce that his loyalists have become his only constituency:
I think it is desperation, and trying to keep faith with the people
who have been in his corner the most fervently. He's losing support;
people are walking away from this. They're just sick of it. And you also
have to remember that he's doing this on Truth Social. This is not a
widespread mainstream application; nobody's using it other than Trump
people. So he's signaling to the people who are already in his
corner—knowing that they love him, that they will do anything he asks
them to do—because those are the only people he's got left, really.
“If we think it’s in Trump’s best interests to really heighten the
polarization in the country and cast everything in these sort of
doomsday terms if Democrats retain power, then I think it makes a lot of
sense for him to promote QAnon,” Will Sommer of the Daily Beast told Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson. “They literally think this is a battle between heaven and hell.”
Rothschild observes that QAnon has shifted dramatically since Trump
lost the 2020 election, becoming far less dependent on “Q drops” from
the original anonymous “Q” who posted material on the 4chan and 8kun
message boards with cryptic claims about Trump and the supposed global
pedophilia ring that is at the heart of their conspiracy theories.
Nowadays, their topics of paranoid conversation are more likely to
originate with LibsofTikTok, Christopher Rufo, or Fox News.
“A lot of the really weird stuff has been left behind, but QAnon's
ideas are much more mainstream than they ever were before,” Rothschild
says. “The idea of an all-powerful government that conspired to keep
Trump out of office, and staged COVID-19 just to make sure that there
could be mail-in voting fraud, and then that the election was stolen.
All of these things are now mainstream Republican tenets. You can't be
successful in the modern GOP if you think that the 2020 election was
fair. And a lot of that comes from the normalizing of conspiracy
theories that you got with QAnon.”
As Sommer explains,
this fits Trump’s political agenda for returning to the presidency,
primarily by subverting if not overthrowing democratic institutions:
I think Trump sees QAnon as the sort of ultimate Trump fan club.
These are guys who by comparison make many Trump devotees look pretty
lightweight. The average Trump fan thinks he was the greatest president
ever and can save America, but these are people who see him as a
messianic figure who is basically going to defeat the devil. Of course,
they also think all of the people opposed to him are satanic pedophiles.
We can’t see inside his head, but I think he’s in these kind of dire
straits legally, potentially politically, and I think he’s trying to
throw some bait to rev up his hardest core fans.
MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem observes that in many regards, this has always been the inevitable endgame for Trump’s war on American democracy:
It's because this isn't about winning by democratic means. It seems
likely that Trump recognizes that QAnon followers represent his best bet
at forming a militant vanguard for his ever-increasingly authoritarian
political movement. Dozens of QAnon believers have already committed
acts or attempted acts of vigilante (and domestic) violence. They were
key players in the Jan. 6 insurrection. And they're at the center of a
new kind of politically infused spirituality that blends proto-fascist
thinking, conspiracy theory and Evangelical Christianity. As ... Anthea
Butler describes it, these followers "imagine themselves part of the
'end times' and saving the nation." They're primed to do whatever it
takes to restore Trump to power, out of a belief that it's essential for
civilization and humanity.
Rothschild explains that, while QAnon’s narrative is absurd and its
followers ridiculous, this isn’t a frivolous matter, because its
real-world consequences have become so wide-ranging, and its spread has
become normalized:
So this is now a movement that has transcended the person or people
who started it. It doesn't need Q drops anymore. In fact, it's arguably
better if there are no more Q drops, because the Q drops tend to be
cryptic and weird and they keep people away. If a movement really wants
to grow, you don't want anything like that. You want it to be very
obvious, very approachable. You want anybody to be able to fall into it,
and that really happened during the pandemic. A lot of people came to
QAnon without any knowledge of what the Q drops were, without any
particular affinity for Donald Trump. They just knew something was wrong
and somebody was lying to them. So the biggest danger in QAnon is how
adaptable it is to discarding its previous self and adapting into
something new.
Also these ideas have now become so mainstream in the Republican
Party that you can completely radicalize yourself into QAnon without
ever having read a Q drop or knowing anything about Q. You just fit into
this world and it turns you on to more and more conspiracy theories.
This brings to mind a recent University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats report
identifying an active American insurrectionist movement comprising some
21 million people. These radicalized Trump followers believe that “Use
of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency” and
that “The 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate
president.” About 63% of them believe in the Great Replacement theory,
while 54% subscribe to far-right QAnon conspiracism.
It also notes that this insurrectionist movement is made up of
“mainly highly competent, middle-aged American professionals,” leading
the researchers to warn that their continuing radicalization “does not
bode well for the 2022 midterm elections, or for that matter, the 2024
Presidential election.”
Bad movies relax me. I still enjoy watching the early ’80s Christian paranoia film, Rock: It’s Your Decision. It’s
an anti-rock music film featuring a boy who becomes warped by his
fundamentalist parents into becoming a judgmental jerk. It’s not enough
that he decides to no longer listen to what he considers “evil” music,
like Barry Manilow, but he demands that all of his friends and
classmates stop listening as well. He yells at them, calls them sinners,
and then casts himself as a persecuted victim when they ignore him.
(So, no, these people don’t ever change.)
The evangelical war on music seems ridiculous now, but it actually helped lay the groundwork
for today’s nonstop culture wars. This initial foray into morality
politics laid the template: Construct outrage around a perceived
inherent evil force designed to disrupt the "traditional" family and
national values.
Pornography is another issue popularized by evangelicals in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan even established a commission on pornography
to try to “stamp it out.” The attacks more or less fizzled by the
1990s, when Republican moralists tried to take down Bill Clinton with an
impeachment fixated on his sexual exploits. Instead, his popularity soared, and Democrats gained seats in the House.
The war on pornography limped along for the years that
followed, being replaced by focused attacks on gay marriage and
reproductive freedom. Then, in what has got to be the most egregious
display of hypocrisy, evangelical leaders briefly suspended their fight
against porn because they feared it would lead to attacks on Donald
Trump. Trump was not only a porn aficionado who spoke in lustful terms about his own daughter,
but had also used campaign money to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels,
whom he slept with during his wife Melania’s pregnancy. Yet the
religious right excused, and even justified, his behavior. (Just as they are doing right now with evangelical Republican Dennis Hastert and Rep. Matt Gaetz.) As a direct result of evangelicals’ glorification of Trump, pornography was able to “enter the political and cultural mainstream.”
Evangelical leaders were brutally mocked by late-night comedians for “normalizing porn” over Trump. The GOP had essentially given up on pornography as a culture war. In the 1970s, Jerry Falwell, who led the Moral Majority, went to war overPlayboymagazine,
saying Jimmy Carter’s interview lent “credence and dignity” to what he
considered a vulgar publication. Yet when Trump was campaigning in 2016,
Jerry Falwell Jr. posed
for a photo of himself and Trump in front of a framed cover of that
exact same magazine with a provocative photo. (This was also long before
Jerry Falwell Jr.’s own sex scandals became public knowledge.)
Even when Christian nationalists finally decided it was time to
try to renew their crusade against pornography after Trump left office,
they didn’t quite know how to do it. After all, most Americans now believe pornography is morally acceptable,
and they don’t take kindly to being lectured on morality by hypocrites.
Moralist lectures and propaganda films simply don’t work anymore, if
they ever did, which is why we will never see a film with the name Pornography: It’s Your Decision. (Actually, there are a few low-budget Christian anti-pornography films, but they are really bad.) Instead, they did something much more sinister, but effective.
One of the biggest Christian anti-porn lobbies, Morality in Media, the one that pushed for Reagan to declare war on pornography, figured it was on the side of a losing battle. This is a group that has stated,falsely, that pornography is a public health crisis, and still classifiesCosmopolitanand the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue as “hardcore pornography.”
However, they decided they could be effective if they managed to
disguise their agenda, so that’s exactly what they did. Morality in
Media completely rebranded into the National Center on Sexual
Exploitation (NCOSE)—which was meant to sound similar to
the legitimate nonprofit called the National Center for Missing &
Exploited Children. The NCOSE website was scrubbed of any mention of
morality or religion.
Their rebranding ploy worked, as they are now often quoted by mainstream media, and even get an audience with Democratic politicians.
Instead of preaching about general moral decay, this group succeeds by
conflating consensual sexual expression with serious sexual crimes that
everyone agrees are bad, such as sexual abuse and human trafficking.
By deceptively rebranding as an organization to fight sex crimes as opposed to policing pornography, their budget and spending have exploded. This has allowed them to host conferences, workshops, and seminars for other organizations so they can copy their model. Theyteach their questionable strategies
about not disclosing religious origins, make false comparisons of porn
to human trafficking and slavery, and constantly (and falsely) claim
that pornography is a public health crisis. One of their apprentice
organizations was a shady evangelical group called Exodus Cry.
Scene from “God Loves Uganda”
Exodus Cry started as a prayer group tied to a church in the
Charismatic Christian community. Charismatic Christians believe people
can manifest physical, supernatural experiences such as prophecy, spirit
healing, speaking in tongues, and—within some factions—even snake handling. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett identifies as a Charismatic Christian, which some refer to as a cult within Christianity.
The church was called the International House of Prayer, or IHOP. (And yes, they were sued for that.) The church is famous for being featured in the documentaryGod Loves Uganda,
which detailed a church leader’s pressure on Uganda to not just condemn
homosexuality, but to promote the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that allowed the death penalty for gays and lesbians. Sadly, American evangelical missionaries have strongly pushed anti-gay messaging in Africa for decades, including prominent evangelical leaders like Rick Warren and John Ashcroft.
They were at their most effective when it came to supporting two laws, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act
(SESTA), which were sold to lawmakers as a way to fight sex
trafficking. In reality, these laws amended the Communications Decency
Act of 1996 to remove the protection granted to websites for the content
of its users if that content is found to “promote or facilitate the
prostitution of another person.” In other words, under SESTA-FOSTA, any website with any
sexual content could be feasibly held legally liable for sex
trafficking, a term that is very broadly defined in the legislation. But
what the laws don’t do is anything to target actual illegal sex
trafficking.
The laws are written vaguely enough so that anti-porn groups have been successfully going after payments of creators using cryptocurrencies or credit cards. Legal internet videos and escort services
have also been targets. Although the laws are supposed to focus on
prostitution only, anti-porn activists were able to define pornography
as "performance prostitution." This means a platform has to be worried
about being sued if a striptease artist performs online.
These laws also mandate a 25-year prison sentence for anyone
who “acts with reckless disregard that such conduct contributes to sex
trafficking.” This is why personal ads disappeared on Craigslist.
Yet these laws were so bad that they damaged how the internet
is governed, since the laws didn’t bother to differentiate between
consensual and nonconsensual sex work. Taking down consensual sex work
sites means sex workers could not vet or choose clients online, which is much saferthan working on the streets. Platforms
that had groups for sex workers, such as spaces where they could list
dangerous clients to avoid, were also taken down.
FOSTA-SESTA also allowed NCOSE to go after OnlyFans. This is an
online platform that allows people to create content in the form of
photos, videos, and livestreams and sell them via a monthly membership.
Most creators are fitness trainers and models, but some make “adult
content.” The site exploded in popularity during the pandemic, as many
unemployed people turned to the site to survive.
However, the new legislation nearly succeeded in shutting this site down by pressuring banks and payment processors to sever ties. Going
after banks and payment processors is part of the latest coordinated
anti-porn campaign by these Christian activist groups, and this tactic
has proven extremely effective. After credit card companies dropped
Pornhub, it removed over 10 million videos—over 80% of its content.
Joy Rider performs during a burlesque show at the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender in Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 16, 2022.
OnlyFans was temporarily forced to ban the posting of any
sexual material, but was able to fight back and restore their status.
Most people on OnlyFans use it to supplement their income, yet they
suddenly found themselves targeted by the anti-porn crusaders.
“Camming,” which is when someone is requested to perform certain
activities (sexual or nonsexual) on a webcam for paying clients, is by
far one of the safest types of sex work as it’s done in the safety of
their own home. Shutting that down forces sex workers who need money to consider taking more risks,
like going back to meeting strangers in public without being able to
vet them. Going after people on OnlyFans doesn’t help anyone; It just
takes away a safe environment and criminalizes sexuality.
Slatetalked
to a woman who was a burlesque performer, which generally includes
provocative and creative stripping, but was locked down in her New York
apartment during COVID-19. Not being allowed on sets or events, OnlyFans
saved her from becoming homeless and greatly supplemented her lost
income. Right-wing organizations and politicians are trying hard to ban
people like her from working, but have never expressed interest in
helping them if their ploy to ban these sites succeed.
The anti-pornography bills are part of a unique conservative
strategy that was labeled Project Blitz, which is modeled after the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC provides model draft
legislation for conservative politicians to push through their
respective state legislatures in order to pass a right-wing agenda. Project Blitz uses the same strategy, but for Christian Nationalism:
Chief on Project Blitz’s agenda—which they laid out in a 148-page 2018 “playbook”—was
enabling religious-based discrimination against LGBTQ+ people,
promoting the Bible in public schools and plastering the words “In God
We Trust” across license plates and government buildings.
But they’re also expressly concerned with destroying all forms of
porn, sex work and premarital sex. In their playbook, they claim that
states would “benefit” from public policy that limits sexual intercourse
to “only between a married, heterosexual couple,” and erroneously
associate any other type of interpersonal gyrating with an undefined,
yet “enormously expensive disease.”
I should mention that not all Christians believe pornography is evil. There’s the pastor who left her church because she felt called to become a stripper. One prominent OnlyFans Christian creator, Nita Marie, stated her belief that “Jesus would have loved sex workers.” There are also several Christian OnlyFans models, such as Lindsay Capuano, who makes over $200,000 a month, but insists she is a devout Christian.
Again, there are legitimate concerns about real sex crimes,
such as human trafficking and revenge porn, that need to be addressed.
Yet time, money, and resources are being devoted to attacking healthy,
consensual sexual relationships.
The same people who want to tell you what books to read, what
medicines to take, what films to watch, what states you can travel to,
and what you can do with your own body are the same ones screaming about
freedom. This is all about having power over people, and turning our
democracy into an authoritarian Christian nationalist society. It’s why
evangelical leaders openly embrace someone with such moral failings as
Trump, because he promised them power.
There has never been much of an interest from the right in
fighting sex trafficking, but there has always been an interest in a war
on sex. That is all about control. More specifically, this is another
front in the war on women. Just as Christian men have had no issues with
abortion when it’s their mistress or wife, they also have no issues
with pornography when they are using it or benefiting from those who do.
It’s everyone else who is the problem.
As always, there is a misogyny angle in the religious right’s
war on pornography. Whether you agree with pornography as an industry or
not, you must admit that it is primarily female-dominated. Content
creators, such as on OnlyFans, are mostly women making videos for their
customers, who are overwhelmingly white, straight, self-identified
Christian men. In fact, the top nine states for pornography are all in the Bible Belt.
If Republicans truly hate OnlyFans, which they don’t, they are
free not to use it. One big reason that sites like OnlyFans are popular
is that they provide the creator with a revenue stream they can use to
either live off of or supplement their income. The creators have sole
discretion over their content. They have power over their craft and
their lives, and can make a living off it in a safe environment.
There is an argument to be made that many creators would prefer
another line of work, but this would require a guaranteed living wage,
affordable housing, food security, and access to health care. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called attention to this when conservatives, along with the New York Post, tried to shame a medic who used OnlyFans to literally make ends meet.
Yet the reality is there would still be people who do it
because they want to, and that’s fine. Our religious, patriarchal
society has been conditioned to treat sex like a dirty secret. Then,
when men get caught watching porn, it feeds into that dirty-secret
mentality. Too many religious leaders treat consensual sex like it’s a
problem that needs to be eradicated. The problem has never been porn or
sites that provide it, but the inability to deal with sex in a healthy
way. Sadly, there is no law that can help with that.
Lindsey Graham is a 67-year-old man who has never married — or
even been seen on a date with a woman. So, of course, people speculate
he is gay. They need to stop. Graham’s sexuality is irrelevant. What is
relevant is that he is not much of a man. This is ironic as he belongs
to a party that bemoans the loss of masculinity in America — apparently
because not enough men are shooting (topless), wrestling (shirtless), or
getting their testicles tanned (completely naked). Video courtesy of
the giggling doughboy, Tucker Carlson, click here.
Graham lacks masculinity because he has no pride or principles.
He is a suck-up and an ass-kisser, amoral and weak, an embarrassment.
And yet the “real men” — and women — of South Carolina have elected him
their Senator four times. If he represents the “flower of Southern
manhood,” I am not impressed.
It was in his home state that Graham's shortcomings were first
nationally exposed. In 2015, during the pre-primary phase of the GOP’s
2016 candidate search, reality TV star Trump went to South Carolina and
lacerated Graham in front of his homies. The orange pestilence called Graham,
“a disgrace,” “one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen,”
“one of the worst representatives of any representative in the United
States.” Adding “I don’t think he could run for dog catcher in this
state and win again.":
During the contest, he gave out Graham’s cellphone number. And
after Graham dropped out, Trump piled on by pointing out Graham’s
inadequacies and questioning his sanity.
“He ends up at zero [percent]. Zero. Here’s a guy running for
the presidency — he’s at zero. He leaves in disgrace, in my opinion.”
Adding,
“I saw him on television this morning, and I think he lost it.
He said ‘Donald Trump, he’s’ — he couldn’t even talk. He was shaking.
The hatred. They say, ‘What do you think of Donald Trump? Well, waahhh.’
He went crazy. The guy is a nut job.”
Graham fired back, asserting that if Trump became the nominee,
"The Republican Party will get killed, we’ll get creamed, we’ll lose, we’ll deserve it." Adding,
“I’d rather risk losing without Donald Trump than try to win with him, because it will do more damage over time," And,
Trump has run “a campaign on xenophobia, race-baiting, religious bigotry – that cannot be Republican conservatism.”
One man won. One man lost. But while the loser was bloodied, he
was unbowed. Sadly, not for long. And this is why Graham is like a meth
addict. A junkie will do anything to get their fix. Offer sex, steal
from their family, shoplift, beg — whatever it takes. Graham’s drug is
relevance. And the only way to stay relevant in the GOP today is to
appease the 2020 loser. No matter the cost to reputation.
It is hard for the non-addict to understand the compulsion that
drives the user to sacrifice everything for their drug. Many have to
hit rock bottom before they find the will to quit. And others never find
the will and simply die. Graham’s desperate need to be somebody
manifests itself in his abasement. It is too bad he never married anyone
or had children through sex or adoption.
I am not saying that his lack of family has doomed him to his
fate. Many single people live rich and meaningful lives. But they are
people who are comfortable in their skin. Psychologically healthy, they
do not need the affirmation of another. Graham’s make-up is too fragile.
He needs someone to look after him. When John McCain died, Graham lost
his father — again. He needed a substitute. OK. I have probably gone too
far (let me know in the comments).
Regardless, Graham was soon carrying the man’s golf bag and
saying with pride Trump “beat him like a dog.” I cringe as I write this.
How does a man value his honor so little that he will trade it for a
pat on the head? Does Graham not see the scorn he has engendered? Not
just from his political rivals but from his own party? He does not.
Because he does not care what Democrats think. And Republicans are all
doing the same thing.
Ted “your wife is ugly” Cruz, “Liddle” Marco Rubio, and Kevin
McCarthy are just three desperate piglets fighting to latch onto the
orange sow’s teats. These spineless opportunists have made a Faustian
bargain. And in return for kissing the ring, they hope to receive the
blessing of a man who is as equally likely to be in jail in 2025, as he
is to be President. (Note: In June 2020, Graham pocketed Trump’s “my Complete and Total Endorsement!”. And in April 2021, Rubio scored his “Complete and Total Endorsement.” Because Trump's vocabulary tops out at c.100 words.)
But Graham is feeling the inconstant nature of Trump’s
approval. In February, Graham reasonably observed that insurrectionists
rioting through the halls of Congress ought to go on trial.
in return, Trump called him a RINO and said “Lindsey Graham doesn’t
know what the hell he’s talking about.” Note the use of the full name.
It is like a parent who is so mad at their miscreant progeny they use
the kid’s full name.
Now in the face of an enormous backlash against the Supreme
Court's decision to deny women agency of their uteruses, Graham has
decided the time is right for national abortion restrictions. The man was for states’ rights until he was not. He also claims, despite his pitiful presidential run that "The people are with me!" And
the GOP, who were once betting on how overwhelming their majority would
be in Congress, are now desperately holding on to fading hopes.
It is one thing to indulge your misogyny in red states but
pushing purple states towards the Democrats is political malfeasance. So
why did Graham do it? For the publicity - to get on TV. He works on the
principle that it is better to be reviled than ignored. And reviled he
is.
What will his gravestone say? “Here lies a nobody, who thought he was a somebody.”
Republicans just can’t help themselves. They just can’t stop talking
about how they want to end Social Security and Medicare. Sen. Rick Scott
(R-FL) did it when he released his dystopian platform that would sunset the programs after five years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has a plan to
put the programs on the chopping block every year, making them compete
with all the other programs and, inevitably, face cuts.
However hard Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has worked to
make these guys shut up about Social Security and Medicare, these guys
just won’t. He slapped back at Scott’s plan, saying,
“We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on
half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within
five years. That will not be part of the Republican Senate Majority
Agenda.”
A few months later, up pops Sen. Lindsey Graham arguing
that because “we are not a social nation,” we need to start making some
cuts. “Entitlement reform is a must for us to not become Greece,” he
said in a June debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders. By “reform,” he means
cutting benefits and disqualifying people.
McConnell doesn’t just have these guys to deal with—he’s got a bunch of would-be senators running for office who also just can’t stop going there. Even when they know it turns off voters and alienates the people they need the most: older voters.
Take New Hampshire’s nominee for the Senate, Don Bolduc. He told an
August town meeting crowd that privatizing Medicare “is hugely
important,” and said that he often talks about how important it is to
“reform” Medicare and Medicaid, “Getting government out of it, getting
government money with strings attached out of it.”
Bolduc’s spokesperson, Jimmy Thompson, insisted to Politico that
since Bolduc made that statement six weeks ago, he’s changed his mind
and now opposes privatizing Medicare, as well as Social Security and
Medicaid. That’s quite the reversal for the guy who insisted he always
tells people how important “getting government out of it” is.
Then there’s Arizona candidate Blake Masters, the guy who keeps
wrecking McConnell’s train in that state. Back in June, he said in a
candidate forum “We need fresh and innovative thinking. […] Maybe we
should privatize Social Security. Private retirement accounts, get the
government out of it.” As if Republicans haven’t been talking about
doing that for decades—“fresh” thinking. A few months later, he called
Social Security and Medicare “the Gordian knot” that has to be cut for
younger generations.
At least he didn’t make his spokesperson walk those statements back. Last month he revised that.
Okay, he more than revised it. He reversed it. “I do not want to
privatize Social Security,” he told azcentral. “I think, in context, I
was talking about something very different.” It’s hard to see how “we
should privatize Social Security” can be understood in any other
context, but sure.
He really doubled down on this effort to convince us he’s really
reformed and would never, ever think again about privatizing these
programs or harming them. “We can’t change the system. We can’t pull the
rug out from seniors. I will never, ever support cutting Social
Security,” he insisted. Of course, this was also the guy who was “100% pro-life” until he wasn’t. He might just be lying here.
And in Ohio, J.D. Vance once cut his political teeth
on arguing that “Medicare and Social Security […] are the biggest
roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.” Now, he told HuffPost via
email, “I don’t support cuts to social security [sic] or Medicare and
think privatizing social security is a bad idea.” Sure.
If it’s any consolation to McConnell, and it’s probably not because
good lord what are these people thinking, House GOP leadership has joined the bandwagon with their “Commitment to America” plan that was accidentally prematurely leaked Wednesday.
The platform promises to “save and strengthen Social Security and
Medicare,” though it gives no details on what exactly that means. But
they already worked it out, as HuffPost explains. They had a June
meeting of the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee where the
discussed cutting both coverage and benefits to seniors under the
programs. Also the Republican Study Committee has put out its proposed
2023 budget that massively cuts Social Security.
Just to make sure seniors understand that Republicans really don’t
want to help them, the new plan from leadership attacks the Medicare
drug cost-cutting provision in the new Inflation Reduction Act as a
“drug takeover scheme” that “could lead to 135 fewer lifesaving
treatments and cures.” That’s a very specific number of future drugs
that won’t be available. Which suggests they are just making shit up to
try to scare people into thinking that saving money on their
prescriptions is actually a bad thing.
There’s actually one party in America that has proven itself ready
and willing to end Social Security and Medicare as we know them: the
Republicans. Under former President George W. Bush they tried, really
hard, to privatize Social Security. And failed miserably. But they just
can’t give it up. They won’t give it up.
Which means we just have to keep electing more and better Democrats to keep them at bay.
"They
Can't Take That Away From Me": Oh yes they can, and that's exactly what
a Republican congress has promised to do. And they don't care that you
paid for it.
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