Trump digs deeper hole after vowing Christians ‘won’t have to vote ever again’

Donald Trump participates in a Fox News town hall with host Laura Ingraham at the Greenville Convention Center on Feb. 20, 2024.

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, July 30, 2024 at 12:00:05p MDT

  

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

On Friday night, Donald Trump appeared at the Turning Point Action’s “Believers Summit” to tell a crowd of conservative Christians that this was the last time they’d have to bother with voting.

"You won’t have to do it anymore,” said Trump. “Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Since Trump made this statement, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians have pulled out their Trump translators and tried to find a way to pass Trump’s words off as something other than a confession that he intends to do away with democracy. That includes telling everyone that there’s nothing to see here because Trump’s statement was “clearly a joke” according to Sen. Tom Cotton.

Then on Monday, Trump got the chance to sit down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and explain what he meant … and he made it so much worse.

In this interview, Trump made a lot of excuses. Once again he refused to debate Kamala Harris even though his previous excuse that Barack Obama had not yet endorsed her was no longer applicable. He once again demonstrated that he had no better line of attack on Harris than to complain about what he called her “crazy person” laugh.

Trump also tried to brush off JD Vance’s creepy focus on right-wing natalism in a way that doesn’t make it one bit less creepy.

Before giving Trump an opportunity to extract himself from the autocracy hole he dug at the “Believers Summit,” Ingraham primed Trump by saying that Democrats were attacking him for “ridiculous reasons.” Ridiculous reasons like repeating exactly what he said.

“They’re saying that you said to a crowd of Christians that they won’t have to vote in the future,” Ingraham said.

Trump first responded by claiming that Christians, and particularly Catholics were “persecuted” by the administration of Catholic Christian Joe Biden. Then he rambled into how any Jewish person voting for Harris—or “whoever is gonna run”—should “have their head examined.”

Finally, he got down to explaining his statement about Christians not voting.

“That statement is very simple,” Trump said. “I said vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group.”

“This time vote. I’ll straighten out the country. You won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote. You can go back to not voting,” he added.

This does not make things better. 

Ingraham was clearly frustrated by how she handed Trump a ladder and he only used it to dig the hole deeper. So she skipped right past allowing Trump to tell her what he meant and tried to get him to just repeat after her.

“You meant you won’t have to vote for you because you have four years in office,” Ingraham said. “Is that what you meant?”

Trump refused to pick up the lifeline and started talking about gun owners. So Ingraham broke out a full-sized life raft and paddled hard to rescue Trump from his babble. 

“Just to be clear–” she began. But by this point, Ingraham was clearly struggling to find a way to get Trump back to safety. “It’s being interpreted, you’ll be surprised to hear, by the left as ‘well, they’re never going to have another election.’” 

Ingraham put on her best mocking-the-left tone so that Trump would understand this is supposed to be a bad thing. But as she tried to bring it home, she was obviously concerned that Trump still may not understand what he was supposed to say. And she couldn’t think of how to say it any more clearly.

“He’s saying … he’s saying there’s a … he’s …” she tried before giving up. “So. So can you even just respond to that?”

“I said Christians,” Trump began. Then he gathered himself for another go. “I started off by saying ‘Just so you understand, you never vote.’ Christians do not vote well. They vote in very small percentages. Why, I don’t know. Maybe they’re disappointed in things that are happening, but for a long time—I’m saying, ‘You don’t vote. Go out. You must vote. November 5 is going to be the most important election in the history of our country. Whether you vote early or not …’” 

At this point, Trump wandered into talking about restrictions on voting like voter ID and the need for paper ballots. He finally came back around to the neighborhood of the original question.

“I said to the Christians in the room, thousands of them, I said typically Christians don’t vote. Why it is, I don’t know. They’re rebellious. Something’s going on. Don’t worry about the future, vote, you have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. Because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore. Because frankly, we will have such love if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s okay,” Trump said.

Love. It was love all along. Love and an end to pesky voting.

Then Trump put a cherry on top of all this by finishing with, “And I think everyone understood it.”

Despite what Republicans tried to claim, Trump clearly wasn’t making a joke. And despite Ingraham’s best efforts, he could not be dragged into saying something other than embracing what sure sounds like the death knell of democracy. Also, Trump’s claim that Christians vote in “very small percentages” is simply not true.

None of this will stop the Trump whisperers from suggesting alternative interpretations. And honestly, one set of tea leaves makes sense: Trump could be telling voters not to bother voting again in four years because he won’t be on the ballot.

Republicans don’t want to provide that interpretation, because it implies that Trump is concerned about no one other than himself and doesn’t care if the party ever wins a race again once he’s not at the top of the ticket. In fact, Trump would probably find it hugely pleasing to see that the party he had shaped into a worshipful mob could not survive without him.

Selfishness uber alles is not exactly the kind of motto that wins elections.

But even that interpretation beats the obvious conclusion: Trump is telling people not to worry about voting in four years because if he gets back in the White House, voting will never again be an issue.

If rising sea levels don't get her, Trump surely will.

Oldest Candidate Donald Trump Is Suddenly Running Scared — and He Ought to Be

   Donald Trump. (photo: MSNBC)

For 'Lyin' Donald, this is an unmitigated disaster

David Cay Johnston / Salon 27 July 30

Trump had been cruising toward what increasingly seemed might be a return to the White House. However, with Joe Biden’s withdrawal, Trump now faces a formidable adversary: a much younger woman, skilled at debating, and more vigorous.

Kamala Harris instantly ignited enthusiasm among listless and worried Democrats.

She excited independents who were concerned about individual liberty, and fearful of Trump’s promises of an authoritarian regime. Harris also created a political lifeline for roughly one in five Republicans who are Never Trumpers.

Worst of all for Trump, Harris is seen by many as heroic, as someone who can pull America out of the divisive Trump politics built on fear, hate, intolerance, misogyny, racism, retribution and revenge.

Trump promises mass roundups, prosecutions of his enemies, and pardons for insurrectionists — and others — who committed crimes on his behalf.

Should voters return Trump to the White House, I would not be the least bit surprised if, immediately after taking the oath of office, he points to Biden, Harris and others, and orders the military to arrest them. After all, under the recent Supreme Court ruling, he is immune from any official act.

In contrast, Harris promises a new era focused on ennobling the human spirit, the ideal articulated in the preamble to our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence from a tyrannical British king. Harris pledges to work for a better tomorrow and to build on what America enjoys right now: the most robust, most vibrant economy in the world.

Instead of facing off against an aging president with tremendous economic accomplishments but zero charisma, Trump now faces an experienced prosecutor with style, flair and courtroom experience, making a case against criminals who deny their crimes. Suddenly, it’s a real and fair fight, although House Speaker Mike Johnson has already said his party will try to keep Harris off the ballot in some states, and keep her from spending money Biden raised. Those are both legal losers, by the way.

Harris instantly rescued her party from the political doldrums. Instead of drifting, Democrats suddenly have a purpose, and see an opportunity with an exciting candidate.

Think of this abrupt change Sunday as the political version of Dinah Washington’s romantic song What A Difference A Day Makes.

In just 24 little hours, Harris hauled in not only the widely reported $81 million — an astonishing achievement — but in total almost three times that much, according to the New York Daily News. It reported that Harris raised $231 million in cash and pledges, including a $150 million “money bomb” from big donors.

Not only are the campaign money spigots wide open, but Harris can more than reasonably expect the flood of greenbacks to continue over the next three months, unless she makes some colossal blunder.

Also revealing was a Zoom call among Black women in politics. The organizers expected hundreds of women, but 44,000 logged on Sunday instead. The size of the audience overwhelmed Zoom, with some people reporting that they had lost their connection.

The Internet is alive with positive comments by both men and women about restoring women’s right to control their bodies rather than be forced to submit to a Trumpian government, not unlike what Margaret Atwood portrayed in her dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

For Trump, this is an unmitigated disaster. (It’s also terrible news for those who feed off Trump by selling anti-Biden caps, shirts and paraphernalia. Don’t you feel sad for them?)

Should Harris win both the popular vote — which is virtually assured — and the Electoral College vote, Trump will be utterly humiliated.

From Trump’s perspective, it’s one humiliation to lose to Joe Biden, a white man. That was so painful that Trump tried to overthrow our government.

Imagine the humiliation Trump will feel if he loses to not just a woman, but a woman of color, half Black and half East Indian. To Trump, that would be far more humiliating than his fragile ego can handle. He lacks the psychological strength to deal with what now seems the likely outcome of the November election.

He constantly lies that the 2020 election was stolen, even claiming he won all 50 states.

Harris is sure to hammer home that in five dozen court cases, Team Trump couldn’t produce a scintilla of evidence of wrongdoing. Trump has told this big lie so often, and has so many acolytes repeating it, that tens of millions of Americans believe this nonsense — even though Republican election officials and governors certified Biden’s victory.

Harris has the skill to weaken and perhaps destroy this facade of bald-faced lies. And she will undoubtedly go after Trump’s nonsense claims that his economy was better — it was below the post-World War II average — and that he created more jobs than Biden. In actuality, Trump lost jobs, while a record 15 million jobs have been added under Biden.

Trump also showed how he was scared, even terrified, within hours after Biden withdrew and endorsed Harris by pulling out of the September presidential debate.

On Sunday, Trump declared he won’t debate unless it’s Biden.

The fact is, Donald’s afraid to debate a woman.

Trump brags about sexual assaults, is a rapist under New York law, and paid off porn star Stormy Daniels over their less than one-minute encounter to corrupt the 2016 election. That last crime is why he is a felon with 34 convictions.

Emotionally, Trump has been trapped his entire life in confused junior high school boy emotions. He likes women — so long as they are subservient to him.

Women who stand up to him are vilified, called “dogs,” “fat pigs,” “ugly,” and many vile words, all of which are accentuated in Trump’s hateful mind when the person standing up to him is a woman of color.

A rude story that’s circulated for decades among Trump’s executives and casino competitors goes to his extreme selfishness, sinful lust for money and complete lack of regard for anyone else, even his wives and children.

The story goes that Trump is alone in an elevator. A gorgeous woman steps in, drops to her knees and offers oral sex.

Trump’s reply: “What’s in it for me?”

Trump’s total self-absorption contrasts with Biden’s focus on reviving the economy, reaching out to distressed people and ending his campaign. Harris promises to continue that.

In Harris, Trump faces someone who knows how to get under his skin. Harris knows how effective it is to mock Trump, to belittle his self-aggrandizing, to counter his lies that the economy is in shambles when it’s the strongest in the world.

Jekyll and Hyde

If Harris does it just right, she will make Trump so apoplectic, that his inner Edward Hyde will come out from under the orange facial makeup of this modern Dr. Henry Jekyll.

While Trump poses as a strong man, inside, he is still that scared 13-year-old boy who daddy sent off to a military academy known for physically and sexually humiliating newcomers.

Trump’s life has been a nightmare version of Groundhog Day. But instead of making himself over into a decent and talented human being, as the character played by Bill Murray did, Trump chose to become a con man. He has enjoyed extraordinary success, bluffing his way through business deals and politics, knowing all the time that there is no substance inside him, only the empty vessel he tries to fill with money and applause.

But that was his choice. He chose how to deal with his tyrannical father and cold, distant mother.

Be glad you are not Donald Trump. It is better to pity him and mock his pathetic and often juvenile behavior.

Insurrection Redux

Trump made clear, while Biden was still in the race, that unless he wins, we should expect another insurrection — even a civil war.

“The most important day in the history of our country is going to be November 5,” Trump told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade in March. “Our country is going bad. And it’s going to be changed on November 5, and if it’s not changed we’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Those last quoted words show how entirely self-centered Donald Trump is. In his mind, America is not a country with multiple viewpoints among people who go to the ballot box to choose who will represent them and shape our destiny. To Donald, it’s his country. He even refers to “his people,” and it’s all about just one thing: Donald Trump.

Don’t forget that.

"We the people" finally have our candidate.  Bring it, Kamala.

DAHLIA LITHWICK / SLATE: The Typical GOP “Jezebel” Playbook Is a Loser in 2024

   Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech in Houston on Thursday. (photo: AFP)

 

Dahlia Lithwick / Slate  

29 July 24

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

It’s been said a lot already—and it’s going to need to be said a lot more through November and potentially for the next four to eight years—but the attacks being leveled against Vice President Kamala Harris this week are just staggeringly sexist, misogynistic, and racist. This, despite the fact that Republican leadership continues to warn prominent party members that such attacks are likely to turn off key constituencies needed to win the election for former President Donald Trump. And yet the sexist and racist attacks on Harris for being a childless cat lady, a weird laugher, and a winsome slut who slept her way to power persist unabated.

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, called Harris a “DEI vice president,” and former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly tweeted: “She actually did sleep her way into and upwards in California politics.” 

Kellyanne Conway called her lazy, saying, “She does not speak well; she does not work hard; she doesn’t inspire anyone.” And Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman went with “intellectually, [she is] just really kind of the bottom of the barrel.” 

On Monday, Trump called Harris “Dumb as a Rock” on social media, and because Trump can’t stop himself from calling women “crazy,” he launched this brilliant salvo in his remarks in Michigan on Saturday: “I call her Laffin’ Kamala,” he said. “You ever watch her laugh? She’s crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She’s crazy. She’s nuts.” So. Crazy. 

Laughter. Lazy. Slutty. DEI hire. Stupid. That seems to be the brief. As Jill Filipovic pointed out earlier in the week, none of this was unexpected, none of it is actually true, none of it is even a little bit new. But of course some of it has historically worked against women candidates.

Yet there is one vital difference between a campaign in which Hillary Clinton was targeted and abused for being a woman in 2016 and the race for the presidency in 2024. The difference is that in 2022, with the Supreme Court’s ending of Roe v. Wade in around half the country, women began to experience punishment and threats for a class of actions that are, for the most part, wholly out of their control. They disliked it immensely. Targeting Harris as someone who is ostensibly a politician who has no control over her career and her success is the same exact play. Query whether it has succeeded with voters in the past couple of years.

Immediately after Roe v. Wade fell two years ago last month, we began to hear stories of women who nearly died because they were unable to get urgently needed medical care while pregnant; young girls unable to terminate a pregnancy that was the result of rape; and women allowed to die because they were given the wrong information about the risks of their pregnancies. 

We’ve learned about states banning in vitro fertilization and states overregulating mifepristone and jurisdictions attempting to prevent pregnant women from leaving the state for abortion care. We now know that the “conscience” rights of physicians seem to supplant the rights of women bleeding on their tables. And we’ve also met the bullies and sickos who would help husbands prosecute their wives for terminating a pregnancy. Of course, we have remet newly adjudicated sex abuser Donald Trump, and it seems his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, has zealously suggested that abortion is wrong even in cases of rape and incest and floated the idea that parents should have votes proportionate to the number of their children.

Nothing about this overt GOP platform of forced pregnancy, acceptance of one kind of birth and family, anticontraception rocket-natalism should surprise anyone. This stuff is, after all, the lifeblood of both Project 2025 (“Families comprised of a married mother, father and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society”) and the Dobbs decision. But what’s different for women voters in 2024, alongside Dobbs and Project 2025, is the recognition that a lot of men out there seriously don’t trust us to make good choices at all; that a lot of men think we are not actually moral agents in our own right; and that a lot of men still think of all women as chess pieces they can move around at their discretion.

What has changed, in short, since 2016, is that many women who still believe themselves to be the sum of their decisions have started to bristle at being told that we never truly had the power to make those decisions in the first place. Now look again at the most virulent attacks against Harris. There’s an invisible through line here, and it’s actually pretty consistent: Harris “slept her way to the top“? That suggests that it was California kingmaker Willie Brown who plucked her from obscurity and made her career. She’s an unqualified affirmative action baby and a mediocre DEI pick? 

 That suggests that a bunch of white men and party bosses pushed her up a ladder despite the fact that she never did anything to merit it. Even the tedious claims about women marrying late and about childlessness trade on the same old tropes measuring women based on not their life choices but their desirability to men, who boldly grab and impregnate women at their own pleasure.

One of the most vile attacks came from Jan. 6 enthusiast and Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau, who said on Monday that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel, and in a way that’ll be even much more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.” He thus also casts her as an object, a temptress, while only men remain the moral deciders. It’s the same dopey story every time: Every woman, in this telling, is just lined up against a wall, hoping against hope that some savior will come along to ask them to dance, then marry and impregnate them, then (if they are allowed to work at all) give them a job they don’t actually deserve, in service of some byzantine liberal plot to harm the other men.

The stunning rise of Kamala Harris from law school, to prosecutor’s office, to state elected office, to the U.S. Senate, to the vice presidency of the United States can thus be reduced by Republicans into a devious plot in which men used her for her entire life as she just floated along, laughing crazily. And one might suppose that—beyond the obvious racist dog whistle—this is why Vance is going with the line of attack that suggests she is somehow lazy, because, as he suggested earlier this week, she just sat around “collecting a government paycheck for the last 20 years.”

There is, to be sure, a cohort of voters who respond well to the message that women are all soft, silky bunnies who need to be cared for by their men, their government, their president, and their party. But after Dobbs, the number of women who reject the idea that because they can’t make good choices, male elected officials should step in to help them out has probably not increased. 

The women who put abortion on the ballot in state after state post-Dobbs, and who won abortion rights in every single one of those contests, seem not to respond well to the message that they are the sum of a man’s life choices, as opposed to the infinite possibility of their own. And as American women increasingly reject the imperative that has J.D. Vance sorting them on the basis of their fertility and Donald Trump sorting them on the basis of their hotness, the language of women as creatures who rise and fall based exclusively on the choices of men feels ever more airless.

It’s not just that Dobbs and IVF bans and the reviving of the Comstock Act and Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk took away women’s choices and replaced it with their own. It’s also that the language of women as the totality of male preferences in marriage, parenting, hiring, promotion, and mentoring isn’t a story of women and power. It’s a story of men and their female props. Whether or not Kamala Harris will speak to women as an epoch-shifting politician remains to be seen. The early numbers suggest that she certainly might. The real question is whether a set of attacks rooted in the idea that any woman who succeeds in America does so only because men desire her, sleep with her, promote her, and support her can be salient for women who don’t think of themselves that way. And if the reaction to Dobbs isn’t the answer, I’m not sure what is.

There are a thousand good reasons that going after Harris for her race and gender are stupid and should stop now. But from a purely strategic perspective, chief among these reasons is that every woman who votes has been told within the past two years that someone else—a doctor, a legislator, a husband, a Supreme Court justice—is better suited to make life choices for her than she is. I’m not sure they’re buying it. 

Reducing Harris this time around to a cartoon version of a person who never made any real choices because powerful men have been slinging her around the chessboard for 30 years is not a persuasive argument for the GOP, even while it’s a familiar one. Maybe Republicans think women resonate with being called lazy sluts who stand on the shoulders of powerful men for the entirety of their careers. But it seems to me that a failure to treat the putative next president as a moral and political actor in her own right signals a failure to believe that women voters are themselves moral and political actors as well.

Come November, it will be up to all these voters to purge the Republican Party of this notion, once and for all.

"Every woman who votes has been told that someone else—a doctor, a legislator, a husband, a Supreme Court justice—is better suited to make life choices for her than she is. I’m not sure they’re buying it."

Make America WHAT Again? How the GOP Platform Misaligns with Jesus

 

By George Templeton

Gazette Blog Columnist

July 28 2024

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The 2013 news by Megyn Kelly claimed that Jesus was a conservative white man.  Let’s look at the GOP platform’s alignment with this view of Jesus.

1.            Make America Rich Again (I’ll buy your vote): 

While the pursuit of wealth can be a noble endeavor, the 'Make America Rich Again' policy, with its implied Faustian bargain, raises concerns.  The Art of the Deal, which trades souls for wealth and power, should give us pause to think about the potential consequences of such a policy.

It is in the famous Sermon by Jesus: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God… But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation.  (Luke 6:20-25)

2.            Make America Safe (From Immigrants and Muslims) Again:

When a leader lets go of what he is, it opens the door to what he could be.  A strong leader’s concrete results, not measured by himself, speak truth to power.  When Loyalty is all that matters, the truth dies.

Jesus said: “… everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council; and whoever says, “You Fool” shall be liable to the hell of fire.”  (Matthew 5:21-22)

3.            Make America Strong Again (quarantining, punishing, and forcing instead of persuading):

Do we want to live in the world, with all its joy and sadness, with all its misunderstanding and controversy, or will we withdraw? 

Is tough smart?  Knowing that you don’t know is more important than thinking that you do.  The effective leader must take care not to see what he believes and then subsequently believe what he sees.  He must enjoy being wrong when it is in our favor.  He must remember that for every force, there is an opposite reaction that divides instead of bringing people together.

According to this analysis, a great president is one who embodies understanding and compassion in politics. He is quiet, contemplative, deep, inscrutable, philosophical, and professorial.  He has empathy because he has been in that situation himself.  He comes from what he manages over.  He is not a carnival barker.  He helps others understand themselves, invoking a sense of empathy.

Heidegger described it by saying, 'Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.' This emphasis on empathy and the meaning of life underscores the need for understanding and compassion in politics, which seems to be overlooked in the current political landscape.

4.            Make America Great Again (White, segregated, Christian, patriarchal, uneducated):

No leader can make us great.  That can only come from us.  We must humbly search for the “good” in America and work to continually improve it.

There is no smaller package than an America all wrapped up in herself.  We grow when we are selfless.  It is not a feigned love, contrived put-on, or stage show. 

Thousands of years ago, the big questions were “why” and “who”.  Now we must ask “what” and see “how” things work.  Our judgments should be based on facts and truth, not politics and religious dogma.  It is not a game or popularity contest.

Cause and effect could be fundamentally religious or a consequence of human perception. When God becomes the prime mover, controlling the minutiae of everyone’s life, there is no need for Newton’s laws or understanding anything academic.

There is a moral imperative not to neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith lest we become “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” as Jesus put it. (Matthew 23-24)

at July 28, 2024 No comments:

JD Vance isn’t the second coming of Sarah Palin: she's an idiot too, but he's also scarey dangerous

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 11:20:56a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

It’s been 10 days since Donald Trump selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate and America is not exactly feeling the “Vancementum.” What’s growing is an unease on the right, where even Trump’s staunchest supporters seem to realize that he did not choose wisely.

As one House Republican told Axios, Vance was “the only pick who wasn’t a safe pick.” Vance has no crossover appeal. He doesn’t bring with him suburban voters, or moderate Republicans, or independents looking for reassurance that Trump’s policies will be more measured. He sure doesn’t help close Trump’s gap in support from women.

The latest example: JD Vance insists his 'childless cat ladies are running the country' insult is 'true.'

 

According to CNN, Vance is the least-liked VP pick since 1980. He comes into the race with a net negative approval rating even before most Americans know who he is. 

Since he has hit the road as Trump’s new junior partner, things have only gotten worse. With clumsy speeches full of weird lines that fail to get a cheer even from a hometown crowd, and old statements resurfacing that are generating an angry backlash, even Republicans are starting to realize that Vance is a loser. Kind of reminds us of another controversial VP pick.

According to Trump, his reason for selecting Vance came down to “chemistry.” Which means simply that the inexperienced senator “liked me more than anybody liked me.”

Flattery will definitely get you somewhere with Trump. Flattery is all that counts.

Vance was also the favored candidate of the tech billionaires who have been bankrolling Trump’s latest assault on democracy. They see Vance, whose big break as an investment banker came in working for billionaire tech vampire Peter Thiel, as one of their own. Thiel was Vance’s biggest source of funds for his Senate campaign.

As OpenSecrets previously reported, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and groups tied to Thiel almost entirely bankrolled the pro-Vance super PAC. The billionaire tech mogul donated $10 million to Protect Ohio Values last March. A “dark money” group tied to Thiel, Per Aspera Policy, also donated $200,000 earlier this year, and Thiel donated another $5 million after Trump endorsed Vance.

That was just two years ago. Vance has only served in the Senate for 18 months, which makes him one of the least experienced candidates to run for high office—except for Donald Trump, of course. Vance has never had to balance a state budget. He hasn’t had to negotiate with legislatures or handle an emergency. Before being selected by Trump, Vance had been in exactly one political campaign, and in that campaign, he heavily underperformed against other Republican candidates in his state, despite the big cash infusion from techbros.

Axios notes that some of the other contenders for the vice president slot on the Republican ticket came with perceived benefits. Selecting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley might have shown voters that Trump was willing to compromise, made the slate more tenable to moderates, and done something to improve that women problem. Picking Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin might have at least given Trump someone who was good at campaigning and capable of plastering over extremist policies with a kind of faux moderation. Even North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum would at least come with a record that was largely a blank slate.

But that’s not Vance. This is a guy who wrote a whole rags-to-riches storybook whose big revelation is that people who are poor or drug-addicted are that way because they are lazy and apathetic. He’s the guy who called Trump “America’s Hitler” and whose flip-flop on Trump generated what might be the best line of the campaign to date from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

“The problem with J.D. Vance is he has no convictions,” said Beshear. “But I guess his running mate has 34.”

But Vance is not the second coming of Sarah Palin. When Sen. John McCain selected the Alaska governor capable of reading all newspapers while understanding none, he did so in an effort to expand his base in the party. Palin was viewed by the growing radical right as one of them. McCain was looked on suspiciously as a moderate in a party where the term RINO was just beginning to take off.

Palin was a bad choice, but not an altogether illogical one. It wasn’t until she was actually out on the trail—and skewered so effectively on “Saturday Night Live”—that the stars began to fade from reporters’ eyes.

But Vance’s base is just Trump’s base. Worse, it’s the meanest, weirdest, most extreme part of Trump’s base. Vance’s appeal outside of that base can be measured only with negative numbers.

Vance was a selection that Trump made when he thought he was headed for a landslide victory over a president unable to rally the Democratic Party. Vance is absolutely the last partner that Trump needs in trying to win moderate voters and independents from a younger, sharper, more hopeful candidate.

Compared to Vance, Palin was a brilliant choice.

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by Brian McFadden 

Daily Kos

There’s something missing from the news right now—or rather, someone

  

Attribution: AFP via Getty Images

Raindrops keep falling on his orange, comb-overed head.  Remember when he stood at the door of Air Force One and couldn't figure out how to close his umbrella so he could board? Ah, privilege!

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff 

Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 4:15:04p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

If you scan the front pages of the nation’s newspapers on Thursday, you’ll find that President Joe Biden's historic and moving speech is at the top of papers across the nation.

Biden’s call to defend American democracy, personal sacrifice, and passing the torch to a new generation is not just front-page news at The Washington Post, it can be found from coast to coast to coast to coast to coast.

And Vice President Kamala Harris is there receiving that torch. She's there on the cover of the Los Angeles Times, and she's front and center in The New York Times. She's there in Georgia, and North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Stories about Harris’ campaign and the enthusiasm and energy it’s generating are everywhere.

But something else is missing. There's something different about the headlines. Something that makes all these papers less gloomy, less angry, less ... orange.

Wait, here’s that missing something. It’s hiding inside The New York Times, where Maggie Haberman writes that Donald Trump "has lost his grip on the news cycle."

It’s an unfamiliar experience for Mr. Trump, who has monopolized America’s televisions, newspapers and smartphones for more than 12 months through indictments, primary victories, 34 felony convictions, an assassination attempt and a Republican National Convention at which he was celebrated as a quasi-religious figure.

Twelve months is an understatement. This may be the first time since Trump came down that golden escalator to start a campaign based on racist fear and the promise of violence that he has not dominated national news on an almost daily basis. Even when the nation was going through a pandemic that took more than 1 million lives, Trump took over what was supposed to be a regular medical briefing and made it all about him.

There have been bursts of light in the darkness, and certainly, Biden’s victory in 2020 seemed like a return of the sun after a long, cold winter. But this week … this week feels different. 

It feels like a cloud has been lifted. All of the ardor, all the fervor, all the passion seems to be with the Democratic Party—and especially with the 100,000 volunteers who have signed up to support Harris’ campaign for the White House.

For once, Trump is finding that no matter how many ugly insults he spews, he’s doing it just for the red-hatted hate squad gathered around him. The media has found something more interesting to write about. 

As Maria Cardon said Wednesday on CNN, Trump is having something of a “mental meltdown … because he doesn’t know how to run against someone like Kamala Harris.” As an attractive, accomplished, powerful woman of color and daughter of immigrants, Harris, said Cardon, is “a cauldron of all of the things Trump has nightmares about every single night.”

Trump and his advisers are baffled by how to go after Harris and frustrated by how she is capturing the media’s attention. It makes this moment nothing less than joyful.

But we shouldn’t start thinking that Trump's extended reality show has finally been canceled. This election is close. Every moment from now until November will be a fight. And it’s only a matter of time before every screaming headline is once again accompanied by the sight of spray-on tan and a snarling face.

Trump will find something to say that is so outrageous that it demands attention. He will make claims about Harris that try to put her on the defensive. And there’s little doubt that the media that has spent the last eight years circling the black hole of Trump’s ego will be pulled into that gravity well again.

Even today, it’s possible to scan all those papers and find a handful that still feature Trump front and center. But thank goodness it’s only a handful.

Enjoy this week of good political weather while it lasts, and use this moment to prepare against the storms ahead. Because there will be a lot of rainy days between now and the election.

Dominating the spotlight.

How to Explain Project 2025 in 60 Seconds

Trump Loyalists think THIS Makes America Great.

By jamess

Community

Daily Kos

Tuesday, July 23, 2024 at 5:42:33p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS: You know what RBG would say about Project 2025. 
 

Nikki Haley PAC endorses Harris

Go get 'em, gurl!!!

By sepiasiren

Community

Daily Kos

Monday, July 22, 2024 at 5:03:03p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

May this prescient Nikki Haley comment come true:

“The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election,” Haley said six months ago. —YAHOO NEWS

Fast forward to the present, and we find a Haley Super Pac has given Harris their full-throttled support.

A coalition of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley voters pledged their support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential bid on Sunday, hours after President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race.

Biden announced on Sunday afternoon in a letter that he will not be seeking a second term in this year's presidential election and threw his support behind Harris. The president's decision follows weeks of mounting pressure from people within his own party and from key Democratic donors urging him to step aside for the sake of the party's future after a disastrous debate performance last month against former President Donald Trump.

The political action committee (PAC), previously known as Haley Voters for Biden, which now features Harris' name, seeks to amplify the voices of former Haley voters in support of Harris' White House bid. — NEWSWEEK

This, right here, is what karma looks like.

They got NUTHIN'

I got a sneak peek of what the Right will run with regarding Kamala Harris attacks, and let’s just say Kamala is going to be fine.

So far, we have a nothing burger of Jussie Smollett’s tweet in which she stood up for the guy before he was presumably found to have made up his attack. I am still not so sure about what went down—I never trusted the police department's explanation of events, but that is neither here nor there.

https://x.com/StJamesStJames/status/1815243801096569029

That’s what you got—? A woman calling for tolerance after a man was allegedly attacked?

Ahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

They also used the plastic mannequin wanna-be Laura Loomer to harp on the alleged fact she may have been a very sexual woman at one time.

Pffffft—using sex against a woman to bring her down is so 1990s.

That’s not even the half of it—read more if you can stomach it: these folks are horrid!

And really?

They are going to run with something sex-related when their candidate slept with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and brags about groping women? Not to mention, Trump is an adjudicated rapist, a felon, and likely a child molester to boot.

A can of worms, to be sure, but by all means, proceed MAGA. I won’t interrupt you.

Also, dare I say it: Trump is an old man who poops in a diaper. Not trying to play the ageism card, simply using their own arguments against them—you know—turnabout and all that.

Kamala ain’t skurred

In fact, Democrats have been able to raise $100 million in 24 hours.

Ahahahhahaha part 2.

We are not only gonna do this thing, folks.

We gotta!

This also needs to be said…

Prior to the Kamala Harris announcement, many in the liberal pundit sphere were either already handing the keys to the kingdom to the GOP after the attack on Trump and/or finger-wagging those of us who were frightened by the Right’s attempt to ride this attack into the White House [edited due to folks putting words in my mouth].

That was depressing as fuck.

Many independent podcasters don’t seem to care or appreciate that people were infuriated, enraged, and downright depressed by what was happening.

Seriously, an evil, mean-spirited adjudicated rapist and credibly accused child molester sailed to an easy endorsement within a major political party.

Were we supposed to shrug that off?

Still, some on our side of the aisle mocked us as crybabies, whiners, and negative nellies for our fears and concerns. Sorry, but it is hard to remain optimistic in such dark times, especially if you belong to a marginalized group that finds their human rights on the ballot every fucking election cycle.

The message always remains, “Heck, we might allow you a human right or two but get too uppity, and we will yank them away.”

These liberal-left elitists have a kind of “Let them eat cake” attitude about all this and have no clue how frightening it can be to recognize that the very people who once lynched entire black families for being in the wrong place at the wrong time want the ability to do that again—legally.

**My political message below —under 3 minutes

Dude, give us a moment to freak out and then provide us with something to hope for.

Yes!

What we needed was hope.

Not lectures.

Not chastisement.

Not eye rolls.

HOPE.

The audacity…;-)

Thanks, Joe and Kamala, for providing it.

NOTE: You know, I am finally able to write about something other than Trump's nastiness and his alarming MAGA cabal.

May they both become mere nasty footnotes in American history.

What we needed was hope.

Not lectures.

Not chastisement.

Not eye rolls.

HOPE.

Now there's only one really, really old guy in this election: Donald Trump

 

And this is the face of a very old man, despite being doused with orange makeup and a spiffy comb-over.

 

Trump is the oldest presidential nominee in American history

By Kos

Daily Kos Staff 

Monday, July 22, 2024 at 9:00:06a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

It’s been the dominant narrative for the campaign cycle so far: Voters think both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old to run for president. It’s a narrative Republicans have avidly fueled, and in the end, it’s the narrative that forced Biden out of the race. 

But having firmly established that being old is bad, Republicans now have to confront that it is Trump who is the historically old candidate in clear cognitive decline. Democrats are giving voters what they asked for—a younger candidate—while Republicans are being led by an old, tired, and addled candidate. 

During his speech at the Republican National Convention last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency,” claiming that “[o]ur enemies do not confine their designs to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. We need a commander-in-chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week.” (Notably, Trump had the lightest schedule of any president since 1933, according to a Roll Call Factba.se analysis.)

In an ad from her candidacy to become the Republican presidential nominee, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “I’ll just say it: Biden’s too old. And Congress is the most exclusive nursing home in America.”

The Republican-controlled House even held hearings on the subject of Biden being too old. 

But here’s the cold reality: Trump today, at 78, is older than Biden was when he ran four years ago, making him the oldest presidential nominee in American history. (Note: Biden dropped out on Sunday as the presumptive nominee.) And voters didn’t just have doubts about Biden’s age. 

A Monmouth University poll from October 2023 found that 48% of voters thought Trump was too old to serve another term. A Gallup poll from January found that 66% of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate over the age of 80, which was part of Biden’s challenge. But 35% said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate over the age of 70. (That poll also found that 70% wouldn’t vote for a candidate convicted of a felony by a jury, and plenty are voting for one, so it’s a nice reminder that poll respondents aren’t always taking everything into account when they answer a survey question like that.) An ABC News/Ipsos poll from February found that 59% of Americans thought both candidates were “too old for another term as president.” And a July poll published by the Wall Street Journal found that 56% of voters, including 36% of Republicans, thought Trump was “too old to run for president.” 

Trump has benefitted from Biden taking the brunt of attention on the age question, and that’s fair enough. Biden is older, and as we saw at the debate, he wasn’t the same Biden we’d been used to seeing. The fact that he had good days didn’t detract from the horror show of the debate. But Democrats have turned a new leaf and are offering up that younger candidate voters claim to want. And what are Republicans doing? They’re sticking with their grumpy, weird, old guy, and he hasn’t been looking so good lately. Maybe the media will finally ask why Trump thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person, is “great,” and is “late” (i.e., dead), or maybe they’ll spend more time dissecting the plodding insanity of his speeches. 

And for the Republicans who built their presidential campaign around “Biden is old,” what happens when Democrats jiu jitsu the attack and pin it on the oldest presidential nominee in history? 

In response to Biden’s announcement, Trump is flailing. He spent Sunday afternoon whining on his Truth Social website about Democrats pulling off their stunning switcheroo: “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”

Don’t worry, Republicans will soon levy their sexist, racist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. That is absolutely ahead of us.

But for years now, they have built a narrative that being old is a bad thing. Heck, they just wasted a whole week at their convention railing against Biden’s age. 

Now, for the last three or so months of this campaign, they’ll get to wear that albatross around their neck.

"...having firmly established that being old is bad, Republicans now have to confront that it is Trump who is the historically old candidate in clear cognitive decline."