I wondered why there were no anti-Trump protesters appearing at these red-tie costumed clown shows. I guess they finally showed up today:
Trump’s surrogates are attempting to address the media outside Manhattan criminal court, but they are being drowned out by anti-Trump protesters: pic.twitter.com/oVHI08xOPe
I only recognized a couple of the people who showed up today so they’re really scarping the bottom of the D-list now. No Tim Scott yet. No DeSantis. No Marge. Ex-felon Bernie Kerik was there and the former head of the NY Hells Angels were there, though. And they were all dressed the same, came into the room late again, lined up right behind Trump and made a scene. Is it some sort of weird intimidation tactic to scare the jury???
Trump’s foreign policy henchmen are going around the world sabotaging America
I’m pretty sure that this “visit” with Netanyahu was to simply reassure him that if he can just hold out until January 20, 2025 Trump will take care of him:
Three former U.S. foreign policy officials in Donald Trump’s administration met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other public figures in Israel on Monday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The delegation was comprised of Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s fourth and final national security adviser, as well as former Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates John Rakolta and former Ambassador to Switzerland Ed McMullen, said the person, who requested anonymity as the trip’s itinerary was not public.
In addition to Netanyahu, the delegation met Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and several other Israeli officials, the person said.
Among the main goals of the trip was to obtain a better understanding of Israel’s complex domestic political situation, said the person familiar with the visit. Netanyahu’s coalition is beset by internal disagreements, with many Israelis blaming his government for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
It was a rare case of Trump allies traveling abroad as part of an organized delegation to meet foreign officials. It took place amid strains between Israel and the Biden administration about Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
They probably told the opposition what they wanted to hear too. That’s how the Trumpers roll.
The last thing Trump, the Republicans, Netanyahu and Hamas want is for this war to end before the American election. For a variety of reasons, they all feel that it’s important to sabotage Joe Biden and keep the suffering going in Gaza. It’s sick.
Today in Dallas at the NRA convention, Trump’s teleprompter stops scrolling & he has absolutely no idea what to do except shake his head, pissed off, until it restarts.pic.twitter.com/qSbt72fgIx
‘My Speech in Dallas this weekend at the NRA’s ‘Endorsement of President Donald J. Trump,’ was attended by a Record Crowd of very enthusiastic Patriots,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“The Biden Campaign, however, put out a Fake Story that I ‘froze’ for 30 seconds, going into the ‘Musical Interlude’ section, when in actuality, the 30 to 60 second period of silence is standard in every one of my Speeches where we use the Music,” he went on, “Check out any of my Speeches!”
“The reason they came up with this Disinformation is that Biden freezes all the time, can’t put two sentences together, and can rarely find his way off the stage without help,” he claimed.
“Donald Trump doesn’t freeze! It is a MADE UP Biden Campaign story, put out in a dying Newspaper that I never heard of, and every Reporter knows it, including the large group that was there….” he added.
Here’s the thing. Nobody’s ever mentioned that his speeches always contain a weird 30 second pause right in the middle when the music comes on. I’ve never seen it and I’ve watched a bunch of them. This 30 second pause came abruptly in the middle of his speech and it made no sense.
The obvious explanation is that the teleprompter went out. He’s had that problem elsewhere recently and he made a big thing of it and got roasted on social media because he’s always claiming that Biden can’t speak without a teleprompter. So this time he just waited for it to come back but can’t admit it happened.
The man is a very disturbed individual. He’s actually making it easier for people to suggest that he’s losing his mind with nonsense like this.
By the way, Trump has always railed against other politicians using the teleprompter:
“Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn’t even look presidential!” Trump tweeted the day of Clinton’s speech.
“She’s just reading it off a teleprompter. Believe me, they write that for her,” Trump said of Clinton in March.
Clinton “has the biggest teleprompters I’ve ever seen,” Trump said at a Massachusetts campaign rally in January.
“I don’t use teleprompters,” he said in that speech.
“I’ve always said, if you run for president, you shouldn’t be allowed to use teleprompters,” Trump said in October. “Because you don’t even know if the guy is smart.”
He has relentlessly mocked Biden for his use of a teleprompter insisting that he doesn’t need one.
And here he is railing against his teleprompter. It happens a lot:
The Washington Post reports today that consumer sentiment softened this month. That’s true enough. But they also say this:
That pessimism is altering consumers’ spending habits. McDonald’s, Home Depot, Under Armour and Starbucks all recently reported disappointing earnings, as people cut back on fast food, kitchen renovations, sneakers and afternoon lattes.
….Employers are adding fewer jobs, wage growth has decelerated, and Americans are holding off on big purchases like homes, cars and washing machines.
Come on, folks. Do we have to keep doing this? Nobody has to guess at consumer buying habits by looking at fast food, kitchen renovations, sneakers or afternoon lattes. Why? Because every month the government publishes a nice, tidy summary of all consumer spending. Here it is through March:
If the Washington Post thinks the government is rigging the statistics they should say so. But maybe they don’t know about government statistics. Maybe someone should tell them.
Kevin concludes:
And guess what? The government also publishes lots of other handy statistics! I’ll spare you the charts, but real wage growth has been up steadily; home sales are down from their 2021 boom year but have increased lately; auto sales are up and have been steady lately; and durable goods consumption is up. Inflation has been hovering around 3% for an entire year, which is not especially dire. Hell, even consumer sentiment, which sparked this article in the first place, has been steadily up except for the single month of May—so it’s a little early to be pretending there’s some kind of downward trend.
It’s hard not to feel like giving up sometimes. This is not arcane information. It’s all easily available in a matter of minutes from FRED or the agency websites. So why does the Post publish a jumble of misleading or outright incorrect economic statistics instead of just looking them up first? I will never figure this out.
I think they have decided that “vibes” are all that matters. It stems from the idea that if they send an expedition into the wilds of America and a bunch of right wing men in an Idaho diner complain about prices, that’s the story. It’s not actually new except for the fact that they used to at least pay some attention to the actual statistics.
It’s either that or they feel such a need to prove that they aren’t liberal that they are purposefully sabotaging Biden’s re-election. It wouldn’t be the first time.
For many months former president Donald Trump’s henchmen pushed the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an agent of chaos and a boon to Trump’s latest bid for the presidency. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte presciently called out their strategy in a piece last May called “Of course Steve Bannon and Alex Jones love RFK Jr. — he’s a great weapon for their war on reality.” At that time Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary and it was easy to dismiss the right wing “support” from the likes of Bannon and Jones as well as former Trump admirer and QANON adherent Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Trump henchman Roger Stone as partisan mischief. But it was more than that. They touted Kennedy as a perfect Trump running mate — a “dream ticket” ostensibly to attract low information, liberal anti-vaxxers and environmentalists to the GOP.
Unfortunately for the Trumpers, their tactics appear to have backfired.
Bannon worked this idea hard, suggesting that a Trump Kennedy ticket would win in a landslide. In one of his podcasts last spring he told his audience that when MAGA crowds heard him say that Kennedy would be an excellent choice for Trump’s V.P., he would get a standing ovation. (Kennedy denies that they ever spoke about it.)
In the beginning, Trump was very complimentary, calling Kennedy a “very smart guy, and a good guy. He’s a common-sense guy, and so am I. So, whether you’re conservative or liberal, common sense is common sense.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while he was still in the primary, said that he would appoint the conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer to run the FDA or the CDC. Even Tucker Carlson declared that Kennedy was not an extremist, extolling his character as “deeply insightful and above all honest.” The House Republicans called him to testify about censorship (because twitter had banned him for spewing dangerous vaccine disinformation.) They all just loved the guy.
When Kennedy dropped out of the Democratic primary to run as an independent, the assumption among the political pundits was that this was yet another disaster for the Biden campaign. He had been garnering around 15 to 20% in the primary polls and the glittering Kennedy name was considered a massive draw among Democratic voters. If he could hold that 15% in a general election Trump would win. Maybe that bizarre Trump-Kennedy ticket wasn’t going to happen but Bannon looked like a hero in that moment for drawing Kennedy into the race anyway.
But then a funny thing happened. Right after he announced his independent bid , NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist , conducted a poll that found Biden would beat Trump in by 49 to 46%, but when Kennedy entered the mix, Biden’s lead over Trump jumped to 7 points. (Biden lost 5 points, but Trump lost 10.) It turns out that the “common sense guy” who pushes a raft of conspiracy theories is more appealing to the right than the left. Who could have guessed?
In case you’re wondering, here’s a very small sample of his cracked beliefs. Setting aside his decades-long disinformation campaign against vaccines, he has also said that mass shootings are caused by antidepressents and that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a neocon and CIA operation. He promises to seal the border permanently and thinks that kids are swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals that cause them to become transgender. And he thinks 5G cell towers are going to control our behavior and Bill Gates want to genetically modify humanity. That’s just for starters. This “common sense guy” is a full fledged conspiracy freak. It stands to reason that he would be popular among Republicans. They “do their own research” too.
That polling has not changed in the intervening months. A recent NBC poll showed that Trump leads Biden by two points but with Kennedy in the race, Biden leads by the same number. Trump’s favorite pollster, John McLaughlin, showed an even more alarming result among Independents in its new survey. In the head to head, Indies preferred Biden by 4. But with Kennedy on the ballot, it’s Biden 29%, Kennedy 23% and Trump 22%. All of this explains why Donald Trump has suddenly gone on the offensive against Kennedy in a big way.
He first tried to spin this on a Truth Social video by saying that Kennedy has “got some nice things about him” and “I happen to like him”, but he’s really “more in line with Democrats” and he believes that he “will do very well” and take a lot of votes from Biden. He offered that if he were a Democrat he would vote for him. That’s what passes for subtlety from Donald Trump.
But those numbers must be getting worse because now he’s taken off the gloves and poor junior isn’t a nice guy after all. In one of his most “up-is-down” rants ever, Trump filmed another Truth Social video claiming that RFK Jr is a “Democratic plant” and a “Radical Left Liberal who’s been put in place in order to help Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, get Re-Elected.” As we’ve seen, if he’s a plant he’s a Republican plant, coaxed into the race by Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. And Trump actually had the audacity to issue one of the most ridiculous whoppers ever. He said that Kennedy isn’t a real anti-vaxxer:
Donald Trump is worried he is losing his anti-vax supporters to RFK Jr:
“He said that vaccines are fine…Those of you who want to vote because you think he's an anti-vaxxer, he's not really an anti-vaxxer.” pic.twitter.com/PJnuY6OXqG
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) May 9, 2024
You think he’s an anti-vaxxer, he’s not really an anti-vaxxer. That’s only his political moment. He said the other night he’s okay with a vaccine. RFK’s views on vaccines are fake, as is everything else about his candidacy.
Say what you will about RFK Jr, but he isthe nation’s foremost anti-vaxxer and has been for many years. If that’s your jam, he’s the real deal. Trump, on the other hand, is the guy who is yearning to take credit for the COVID vaccines for green-lighting the sped up development, but he can’t because he gets booed by his cult followers. He’s the fake anti-vaxxer.
Over the weekend Trump sounded uncharacteristically desperate at the NRA convention on Saturday slamming Kennedy again, saying that he calls the NRA a terrorist group and comparing him to a fly that was driving him crazy.
Trump: RFK Jr. calls you a terrorist group.
His family is angry at him (for registering Independent). They won't talk to him. We can't waste any votes.
I'll be meeting with Libertarians…we have to join with them because we need their votes. We can't take a chance on Biden. pic.twitter.com/5YCnDLWwyv
There’s no way of knowing if Kennedy will get on the ballot in all the swing states or if people will actually vote for him or one of the other third party candidates in November. It would be better not to have them running when the stakes are so high. But it would be poetic justice if Steve Bannon putting an anti-vax conspiracy theorist into the mix proved to be Trump’s undoing. Live by the rat-f***k, die by the rat-f***k.
Jonathan Last on Friday made sure readers saw clearly that for Republicans “law and order” has a very, very narrow meaning. Last was commenting on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, convicted and sentenced to 25 years for the vigilante murder of Garrett Foster during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.
Last recounts the details that put Perry, a racist murderer, behind bars, but the key detail is Abbott’s pardon:
There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out.
The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.
Texas last year passed a law allowing the removal of “rogue” elected district attorneys like the one who brought charges against Perry, and like the ones removed in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
While pardoning Perry, Gov. Abbott claimed that Garza had “demonstrated unethical and biased misuse of his office in prosecuting Daniel Scott Perry.”
Texas Republicans are not content to allow Perry’s murder of Garrett Foster. They also want to send a message that even using the law to bring charges against members of the ingroup who kill members of the outgroup is verboten.
That is what “law and order” means to Republicans. And it is all perfectly legal.
Will Bunch tells Philadelphia Inquirer readers that the Perry pardon “was a gross injustice in a former Confederate state that reeked of the bad old days of Southern jury nullification, a modern update on the impunity with which white men lynched Emmett Till and then laughed at justice.” This was not simply another warning light on the dashboard of democracy, a “Check Engine” light we’ve learned to ignore:
In this sprawling state of just over 30 million people, supposedly First Amendment-protected protests for causes like Black civil rights or against the slaughter of civilians in Gaza can, and probably will, expose you to arrest or state violence, risk your schooling or your job, or — when all else fails — leave you in danger of deadly vigilante justice. Abbott’s pardon was the last bootheel on Texans’ right to dissent.
Administrators at the public University of Texas-San Antonio were caught on video by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) telling students that they’d be turned over to police if they merely chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It hardly seemed an idle threat after Abbott had sent state troopers clad in riot gear to UT’s main campus in Austin to forcefully shut down a large pro-Palestinian protest as soon as it began.
Texas’ overly harsh, militarized approach to protests is an inevitable outgrowth of the Lone Star State’s hyper-aggressive response to migrants at its southern border. The Abbott administration has spent an astronomical $11 billion, and counting, on maintaining a massive Texas army of soldiers who’ve threatened the federal government’s supposed hegemony over border issues.
The governor’s tin soldiers have — unlawfully, federal courts have found — strung razor wire and other barriers on the Rio Grande to deter asylum seekers. The wires have slashed desperate kids and pregnant moms, and efforts to evade them have been blamed for several migrant drownings — joining the Air Force veteran Foster in the rising body count of a U.S. state in thrall to violent authoritarianism.
Coming soon to state near you, Bunch warns, “Texas is merely the leading edge of the storm.”
Republicans are signaling daily that the law only applies to out-groups as they define them, driven by their “instinctive revulsion against the leveling of hierarchies and social change.” Those of a certain age recall religious and political conservatives railing against the supposed moral relativism of the 1960s left. Nowadays, they view the application of law as relative to one’s place on the social ladder, determined at its coarsest grit by the color of one’s skin, and more subtly by the color of someone’s politics.
“Nowadays” is generous. Jim Crow enforced that legal regime for 100 years. It just went underground for fifty or so years since the Civil Rights movement.
Everything that’s happening in Abbott’s Texas — the relentless war against liberalism and education itself, the influence of a corporate oligarchy, the surge of Christian nationalism, the war on feminism that features its strict abortion ban, and its own state military and militarized cops now deployed against its own people — is textbook fascism. The crackdown on dissent is the flame that keeps this downward spiral going. Knowing that attending a protest can expose you to legalized vigilante murder is just pouring more Texas crude on the fire.
It’s important to remember that — whether or not you agree with the cause — state violence currently directed at pro-Palestinian protests from Brooklyn to Austin is merely a trial run for what could come if Trump is sworn in for a second presidency in January. He has already pledged to send out troops to crush any Inauguration Day protests. But the best way to stop full-blown autocracy in 2025 is to speak out against the police-state authoritarianism we have now.
Speaking out is not enough. Get active. Donate to local campaigns. Knock doors. Turn out voters. That is, if you expect to get another chance.
Update: Removed a line about Foster’s race. Misremembered that and did not check. Thx: AR.
International alliances are sometimes untidy affairs. Some are built on ideological or cultural common ground. Others on trade or security interests. Or a mix. We Americans like to think of ourselves as the good guys allied with other good guys, but that’s a flattering oversimplification.
Our WWII alliance with the Soviet Union under Stalin’s murderous regime was one of strategic necessity that lasted long enough to defeat Nazi Germany, and no longer. When the Saudis murdered and dismembered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Americans expressed appropriate outrage for an appropriate interval and then went about our business. Because the Saudis are good for U.S. business.
Now Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists and its toll on civilians in Gaza is straining U.S. relations with its longtime ally. It’s about to get more strained. This is breaking news (New York Times):
The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, said Monday that he had requested arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct. 7 attack and the war in Gaza.
In a statement, Mr. Khan said he was applying for arrest warrants for Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. He also said he was requesting warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
Why it matters: The move, by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, will further isolate Israel internationally and increase pressure on the Biden administration to press Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza. It could also trigger legislation by Congress against the ICC.
This is the first time the ICC seeks arrest warrants against a major U.S. ally, as well as the first time it has issued warrants for the leader of a democratic country.
Israel is not a member of the ICC.
A panel of judges will decide whether to issue the warrants.
The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, and the Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who was facing an arrest warrant from the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity at the time of his capture and killing in October 2011.
So grab your RE50s, D.C. press corps, and prepare for a morning of maximum posturing by spokespersons from MAGAstan. (At least from those not making a pilgrimage this morning to the Donald Trump trial in Lower Manhattan to stare into that human abyss.) They’ll want to issue fist-shaking threats against the ICC for failing to heed their previous fist-shaking threats.
A dozen Republican senators have warned the International Criminal Court against issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials over the nation’s conduct during the war in Gaza.
In a letter led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the senators warn ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, citing reports that the court may be considering issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.
Such actions are “illegitimate and lack legal basis,” the lawmakers wrote, warning they would result in severe sanctions against Khan and the ICC.
“Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” the senators wrote in the letter sent April 24.
“You have been warned,” the letter concluded.
D’you hear that, Khan? “Severe.” Also sprach Tom Cotton, et al.
What Hamas did in its murderous rampage against Israeli civilians on October 7 was monstrous. And the carnage, destruction and starvation the Israeli military has since wrought against the people of Gaza in fighting monsters? Netanyahu might have consulted Nietzsche before staring into the abyss.
Donald Trump accusing Joe Biden of being a Manchurian candidate who deserves the electric chair for taking money from China and Russia is the ultimate projection.
Biden doesn't owe hundreds of millions to the CCP.
— thee nasty rougarou in the machine (@theerougarou) May 19, 2024
You’ll notice at the end of that ridiculous rant he also complains that Biden says he’s a “threat to democracy” plaintively wailing “what did I do?” He says he had “no wars” which is a lie. He didn’t get out of Afghanistan as he promised and his drone war was lethal. He had American troops in war zones all over the world.
But be that as it may, asking “what did I do?” to deserve being called a threat to democracy is a very stupid thing to say. He is the only president to have ever illegally tried to overturn an election so that he could stay in office and incite an insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power during a joint session of congress. Maybe his cult members in the NRA don’t believe that was a threat to democracy but it most assuredly was.
I confess to feeling a little bit disoriented lately by the flagrant gaslighting we are suffering through in this election. It’s worse than ever and it’s hard to force yourself to pay attention to it. I can’t say I blame the average voter for tuning it out.
A few more highlights from his NRA speech. It was a doozy.
Trump says he will appoint extreme MAGA judges who are as young as possible so they will be in power for “50 years” if he wins pic.twitter.com/5dBy4x02sD
There is no doubt that Alito and Thomas will retire if he wins.
Trump: And honestly, there's been no president since Abraham Lincoln, perhaps in a certain way including Abraham Lincoln, that has done more for the Black individual in this country than Donald J. Trump. Nobody. Not even close pic.twitter.com/EoEFTRZPrf
Trump: Even I say to myself ‘you’re a genius.’ I had an uncle, the longest-serving preside— professor in the history of MIT. He was a real genius. I believe in the racehorse theory. Fast horses produce fast horses. pic.twitter.com/WjEZbcV0js
Trump on his rambling tales of old phone calls: There is a genius to this. It all comes back into a beautiful picture. Did you notice? It all comes back into a beautiful picture! Great memory. It is a beautiful thing. pic.twitter.com/pUnghSGjjc
Trump: They asked him who is a better physical specimen, is it Donald Trump, or is it Obama? He said it is not even close, Donald Trump, not even close, I said I love this guy. Dr. Ronny Jackson pic.twitter.com/G8vIkc8d9D
“The Texas spirit of proud independence was forged by cowboys and cattle hands, ranchers and rangers, oil workers, soldiers and brave, brave, brave, pioneers,” Mr Trump told the crowd of gun owners.
“Many came here with nothing but the boots or their feet, the clothes on their back, and the gun in their saddle. Together they helped make America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world.”
At that moment, Mr Trump suddenly froze as music played. At one point in the lengthy pause, the former president shook his head.
“But now we are a nation in decline,” Mr Trump then continued. “We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 58 years, where banks are collapsing, and interest rates are skyrocketing.”
BREAKING: Donald Trump just glitched out and froze at his rally tonight. He is clearly unfit for office. Retweet so every American knows Trump is senile. pic.twitter.com/QTa5qKNy8H
He was 2 hours late for that speech with no explanation.
Just a reminder from that time he went to Walter Reed with no notice:
President Donald Trump posted a baffling tweet Tuesday declaring that he has not had a series of “mini-strokes” — and he had the White House physician release a statement backing up his claim.
“It never ends! Now they are trying to say that your favorite President, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes. Never happened to THIS candidate – FAKE NEWS,” Trump tweeted.
No major media outlet appears to have reported in recent days that Trump had a series of mini-strokes.
Trump: So when we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as being a good thing. I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it's a badge of honor pic.twitter.com/C3KpBVWUon
Q: Why haven’t you announced a plan to get 36 million unemployed Americans back to work? You’re overseeing historic economic despair. What’s the delay? Where’s the plan?
When the greatest crisis of his presidency hit — a global pandemic the likes of which hadn’t been seen in one hundred years — he failed miserably. How anyone can think this man should be back in the White House is mind boggling and once he is dispatched next November, this nation is going to have to undergo some very serious soul searching to figure out what has happened to it and what to do about it.
Four years ago today, Trump said he would only support an economic stimulus bill if he could sign his name to it
