#gop are narcissists

[drbibliophile]

Kind of loving the Democrats response here. The GOP have brought the clown show and the utter ridiculousness and embarrassment of a Speaker vote. Very much a reason to bring the alcohol and popcorn.

Kevin McCarthy losing four five six consecutive Speaker of the House votes (so far) is legitimately one of the funniest things to ever happen. This is 2023's boat stuck in the Suez Canal. Something important has ceased working for the most hilarious possible reason and we are all watching desperate attempts to get it working again while secretly hoping it does not, and I think that's beautiful

[tomorrowusa]

« Donald Trump is going to -- if he starts losing -- he's going to take everyone down with him. I mean psychologically that's what he's going to do. He's not going to want to -- he's never going to support somebody who beats him.

So, it's sort of a difficult situation for the Republicans. They have this man who needs to win at all costs basically to stay out of prison, and at the same time he's such a personality. He's a narcissistic sociopath, and he -- he is not going to let anyone else win without trying to destroy them. »

— Conservative anti-MAGA contributor to The Atlantic George Conway on CNN in conversation with Jim Acosta and David Gergen.

Trump has a Götterdämmerung aspect about him. If he can't win then he's going to take everything and everybody down with him.

Trump almost certainly won't lose the Iowa caucuses. But if his totals are below expectations, he will lash out at everybody imaginable.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, qqueenofhades!

I just want to say, that ever since I discovered you in the week following Biden stepping down, you've actually made me not dread talking about politics. I look forward to your thoughts on what's going on, and I want to thank you for that.

I would love to know: What do you think of the apparent exhaustion from Republicans/MAGA about Trump? People leaving his rallies (and that's not even covering how few are even coming at all or his supposedly needing to pay people to come), and the slew of formers we see at the DNC openly talking about their change in sides. Do you have any ideas about what might be causing this shift? Was it Harris? Was it Jan. 6th? Was it one singular reason, or multiple at once?

Hope you're having a good day.

I think it's a lot of reasons. First, as I said earlier, the whole theme of the DNC is about reclaiming the USA FREEDOM message from the Republicans, who have had a monopoly on it for the past three decades at least and used it to justify even more antidemocratic fascist militant theocratic hard-right turns. The scenes of joyful people talking rousingly about hope, compassion, morning in America, and breaking out into regular USA! USA! chants appeals a lot to the average American, who doesn't want to hear constant violent and negative bile from the Orange Felonious Traitor, because that is literally the only thing he has to offer and it's getting openly more deranged and dangerous every day. The whole Tough Talking Populist Outsider shtick worked in 2016, when Trump didn't have four years of incompetent chaos as the actual president and was just a theoretical concept who a lot of people thought would "smarten up" and take it seriously if he actually won. Likewise, the backlash of white grievance against Obama and the complacency that Trump didn't actually stand a chance was able to be leveraged against the decades of smears that the GOP had already leveled on HRC. Of course, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million-plus, but the Electoral College did what it's designed to do and he snuck in anyway. But it wasn't a rousing landslide or a thumping victory.

As such, a lot of Reagan Republicans are now turning to the Democrats as the actual pro-USA party, because Trump trash-talks America, calls it a shithole third-world country, bellows about WWIII and the Great Depression, cozies up to foreign dictators, etc etc. Reagan also pitched the sunny message of America as the shining moral hero of the world (he in fact used the Make America Great Again slogan that Trump repurposed), and that likewise resonated with people after the chaos and unrest of the 1970s. Now, we all know that I hate Reagan's ass and I hope he's burning in hell for so many reasons, but his message was effective because it gave people a soaring rhetorical vision to believe in (even while he was often stripping away their economic prosperity in particular behind the scenes, all together now, FUCK REAGAN). But the Republicans who joined the 1980s party are now seeing Republicanism become a tawdry cult centered on, as Geoff Duncan (GOP former Lt. Gov. of Georgia) put it yesterday, the worship of a felonious thug. Trump is wildly anti-America; he only uses it as a vehicle to get what he wants, because Donald Trump is all that Donald Trump cares about. Yes, there are still plenty of brainwashed cultists in numbers great enough to make this election far, far closer than it should ever be in any sane universe, but increasingly even his own cultists don't want to hear it anymore. They keep leaving before the event is over and he's drawing far smaller crowd sizes than in 2016, which as we know is pretty much all he cares about. He has a desperate need for attention and approval to feed his damaged narcissistic-sociopath dementia-riddled brain, and he's just not getting it, while the very real prospect looms that if he loses this election (and it looks more and more like he will) he will go to jail for the rest of his life. Terrifying.

That's why we have the unprecedented spectacle of lifelong Republicans and former Trump voters flocking to Harris in large numbers. We've had Republican speakers at the DNC every night, and they keep playing video montages of former Trump voters disavowing him or explaining that they won't vote for him. If you consider what propelled Trump in 2016 -- conservative white grievance against a black guy named Barack Obama -- the willingness to unhesitatingly embrace a black/mixed-race WOMAN named Kamala Harris is incredible. Many of them were already planning to vote for Biden before he dropped out, but it was no certain thing that they would move from being willing to vote for an establishment old white guy to also being willing to vote for a woman and a person of color. The fact that we've had so many high-profile affinity group Zoom events for Harris, including from truly unbelievable quarters (Republicans for Harris, Mormons for Harris, EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS for Harris), shows that there is a country-wide exhaustion with Trump's poisonous selfish grievance performances, where he's willing to do anything to anyone and turn the USA into a fascist dictatorship if it will exempt him, personally, from the consequences of his odious actions. That is not a message that any sane person can support, and more and more, they don't. As I have said before, that is why fascist movements always sow the seeds of their own destruction. They work for a while, but eventually they're boring, they're mean, they're exhausting, and they offer nothing for anyone but being angry all the time at everyone. Most humans don't like that, and eventually, they drift away.

I also think that part of the reason Kamala absolutely nailed it with Tim Walz as VP is because Walz is the literal anti-MAGA in every way. We have seen a lot of similar straight white military-vet football-coach-type Middle America older men drift into MAGA grievance politics because it offers a home for guys like them and feeds on fear of the future and fear of the other. They feel like they're being heard and understood, even if they aren't, and they vote Republican because they've grown up with Republicans being the pro-America party (however defined). But because Walz is a straight white married military-vet football-coach guy who actually models a joyful and compassionate masculinity, an openly emotional and supportive masculinity, who talks movingly about his love for his wife and children, who is a hunter and gun owner who nonetheless loves kids more than guns, who has taken his small-town rural-America values and become an effective and genuinely progressive politician focused on making ordinary people's lives better, he offers a total antidote to MAGAism. He shows that it is possible to be a traditionally manly American straight white guy who is not a gibbering conspiracy theory-addled shitbag dedicated to trampling on everyone else out of reactionary fear. He shows those guys that they can embrace the diverse future and not have to fear it, and he gives them a permission structure to vote for Democrats because it's the right thing to do AND feel that the Democrats are now the real pro-America party.

Basically, right now, Walz is the most popular member on either ticket, and he's crushing Vance into oblivion (there's something like a 27-point difference in their favorable/unfavorable spreads) because Vance is a horrible robotic hateful gremlin and Walz is an authentic and genuine person who a lot of traditionally Republican-affiliated men (and women!) can identify with. He's also the guy who came up with the devastating "weird" attack line that the GOP can do nothing with except splutter and whine, like playground bullies, that no YOU'RE THE WEIRD ONE. He models that it's actually normal to want your leaders to be compassionate human beings who want to use power to make your lives better, and not hateful fascist alt-righters dedicated to making you also hate everyone and be steeped in doom and gloom. That is why people responded so well to Obama in 2008 after the turmoil of the Bush Jr. years, and why this feels even more monumental than Obama. We won't know until the votes are counted, but this giant tsunami just rose out of nowhere when Harris took over, and it's speeding forward in a really incredible way. We've got to do the work and we've got to vote, but if we do, we could absolutely pulverize Trump and MAGA to smithereens in a way that means it wouldn't be able to come back for a good long while, and oh, what a glorious day that would be. So yes.

[ralfmaximus]

You see, if people are led to believe it is tied, then it must also be true that half of America thinks it’s somehow okay to pick Trump, despite everything we know about him. It normalizes him. It tells us all that these horrific things don’t matter, and we begin to believe that because the polls are telling us so. But the polls are bunk. The GOP knows from internal polling that Trump’s in trouble, and that they have to shore him up. That’s why they’re flooding us with partisan polls—60 GOP leaning ones, all paid for by Republicans and dropped into the mix recently, all in the battleground states.

LOTS of new election polls just dropped in the last few days, and all of them seem to show the race is all tied up! Holy smokes! Trump and Harris are in a dead heat!

But that's bullshit.

Turns out, it's a coordinated disinformation campaign by Republicans propping up their dangerously weird, dementia-ridden narcissist of a candidate.

[drbibliophile]

Yes. This is what disturbs me and disheartens me the most. These people don’t want to govern. They just want to cause chaos and problem no matter the consequences. They just don’t think they’ll have to deal with the consequences and to hell with the rest of us who do. It’s so fucking infuriating

If you’re a Republican, the last few days have been a humiliating disgrace. If you’re a Democrat, they’ve been a frustrating farce. For all Americans, this GOP – a motley collection of traditionalists, extremists and chaosmongers failing repeatedly and historically to choose a House speaker – is previewing two years of even worse: incompetence, immaturity and irresponsibility that will hammer the whole country.

[simply-ivanka]

To @TheDemocrats

This is my career suicide note, but it’s also a thank you from someone who is done with careerism. I’m a lifelong member of your party and I’m voting for Donald Trump. Why? It’s not just your industrial-scale censorship or your endless wars or the fact that you disenfranchised millions of Kennedy voters through lawfare. If that were all I had, it would be sufficient, in terms of conscience and rage, but there’s more to this story than anger. Your hatred and censorship has taught me to admire DonaldTrump and to love my fellow working-class Americans, and for that I thank you.

This vote is for all the traumatized people who have been canceled and banished just for saying no to the establishment. This vote is for the surveyor, the farmer, the HVAC man, the nurse, the hairstylist, the Deadhead, the veteran, and my fellow adjunct professors who have told me their stories about being bullied by the Democrats in their friends and family and their colleagues at work. This is for the young Black woman in my class last year who, on the day of Kamala Harris’s visit to campus, said, “You’re going to hate me, Dr. Armstrong, but I’m not going. I’m voting for Donald Trump.” Why would she think I would hate her for the way she votes? What has happened to our country?

Somehow, Donald Trump has changed my mind. Where I once saw a cartoon white supremacist, warmonger, and narcissist, I now see the man who renegotiated NAFTA and the only president in the twenty-first century not to start a new war. Where I once saw the pal of the neocons, I now see a man who has awoken from his slumber and disavowed Dick Cheney, George Bush, and John Bolton, even as my own party embraces these “men.”

Why has the greatest entrepreneur of my generation (@elonmusk) risked his career to side with Trump? Why has the most consequential grassroots environmentalist of my time (@RobertKennedyJr) sacrificed friends, family, and reputation to side with “The Orange Menace?” Why has the most courageous peace activist of the twenty-first century (@TulsiGabbard) left our party? Because Tulsi, Bobby, and Elon see what I see. Donald Trump is resilient and he’s risking his life to change the fate of our nation. Trump is transforming the Republican Party into the party of peace, free speech, and the working-class. He has converted George Bush’s billionaire boys club of Big War, Big Ag, and Big Pharma into a party that cares about public health and embraces regenerative agriculture.

Now I don’t think the GOP is all the way there yet, but they’re clearly the party that embraces dissent, and dissent—brave speech—is the fuel for evolution. So, for the first time in my life, I’m voting Republican. In the name of peace in Ukraine and free speech here at home, I’m casting my vote, as a Kennedy Democrat, for Donald Trump.

[foreverlogical]

How is this changed if the actions taken by Musk caused the deaths of soldiers in the alliance America is part of? And how is this changed if after having calls with Vladimir Putin, Musk starts advocating publicly for Ukrainian surrender? And what if he is making money off this? 

And what do we do with the reports that Musk privately acknowledged that he was “in” the Russia-Ukraine War—but not, per the evidence we currently have, on the same side as America?

Is there some reason the House GOP is scared to investigate this? Or DOJ? What am I missing here? 

How is all this inflected by the data confirming Musk complies with the demands of hostile foreign governments at a far higher rate than his Twitter predecessors did? And how is that inflected by the fact that his Twitter coowners are autocratic Saudi butchers allied with Russia? 

And in the midst of all this he comes out publicly and tells 150 million followers to vote Republican? At a time we know both the Russians and the Saudis have secretly interfered in American elections on behalf of the Republicans? And then he starts making all sorts of changes... 

...to what is more or less a public utility (even if it is privately owned) that benefit hostile foreign governments, agents of hostile foreign governments, American disinformation agents operating as “useful idiots” for hostile foreign governments, and anti-American Kremlinists? 

And as I recall, didn’t he at one point threaten to stop providing resources to the American government that he’d previously provided *while* he was simultaneously advocating for a Ukrainian surrender following multiple phone calls with Vladimir Putin? Like—that seems really bad? 

Again, I’m not an expert in this, but I’m asking at what point Musk runs afoul of FARA? Or the Logan Act? Or something rather more serious that relates to military conflicts in which the United States is involved? All of this seems really serious to me and everyone’s ignoring it. 

America just went through an eight-year period in which a narcissistic sociopathic far-right White male billionaire colluded with Russia and the Saudis to interfere in our elections and advance illegal Russian adventurism. Is it just me or is the exact same thing happening again? 

(PS) Obviously I’m leaving a ton of things out here, e.g. the fact that Musk, like Trump, has repeatedly been accused of fraud, or that Kremlin policy inside the U.S. is to foment racial and religious divisions to weaken America... and Musk has been doing exactly that on Twitter. 

(PS2) Are we sure we’re not in the middle of a national security situation here? Is it wrong to think the Senate Intel Committee should be holding hearings to find out what Musk has been doing secretly with the Russians—and whether or how it’s connected to Twitter and the Saudis? 

(PS3) If Elon Musk will do the bidding of Vladimir Putin in terms of disabling Ukrainian military equipment and proposing that Ukraine surrender a good portion of its land area to Putin and his war criminals, what *else* is he doing at the bidding of the Kremlin or Saudi royals? 

(PS4) When we see Musk simultaneously pushing the “Ban the ADL” hashtag even as hostile foreign agents intending to cause chaos in the U.S. are doing the same thing, and we know who Musk is holding secret calls with... uh, isn’t that all super concerning from a NatSec standpoint? 

(PS5) And not for nothing, but many of you will remember the major media report I just posted in which Musk confesses that he wants to “take over the world’s financial system.”

Uh, for whom? Will he seek to benefit Russia and Saudi Arabia and harm the United States in that, too? 

(PS6) Remember how Trump led with racism and antisemitism and other forms of ethnic and religious bigotry that caused *chaos* in the United States, only for us to learn he was in cahoots with Russia and the Saudis?

Does that not feel... familiar, now?

I have some concerns here. 

(PS7) I’ve never claimed to be an expert in these particular areas, which are a subspecialization within federal criminal practice that very rarely comes into play. But I certainly—as a citizen and voter—am wondering why the *hell* we’re not having congressional hearings on this? 

(PS8) There’s no question whatsoever that Congress has an obligation to exercise its oversight responsibilities very aggressively here—as if I’m understanding correctly Elon Musk has a defense contract. The revelations in the new book about him are therefore very f*cking serious. 

(PS9) And remember how Trump always accuses others of what he has just done or is about to do? Just as concerns that Musk could be doing the bidding of hostile foreign nations arise, he starts threatening to sue others for “controlled speech.” We have seen this playbook before...

(PS10) I would think the FBI, DOJ, FTC, FCC, NSA, SEC and *many* others would want to be all over this situation right now. Instead we are getting radio silence. Or, not radio silence, but Musk and his allies pushing racial and religious division inside the U.S. on a daily basis. 

[eva-knits12]

GOP Gets FRIED Over Latest Attack On Kamala Harris

The only reason behind this is because Trump and his team are trying to dig up whatever dirt they can. They found Kamala’s resume. She did work on McDonald’s, and it’s not on there. If it was, it was most likely on her first few job applications and resume before. She was working at McDonald’s like lots of high school and college students to help put herself through school, and earn some money. I can’t help but think that this was Madame Vice President Kamala Harris’ first job. Quite often, as you get older, and have to update your resume, your first job isn’t on there. You put your most recent jobs on your resume, so your first job at McDonalds, at Walmart, at Target, at Kroger’s, at Claire’s is just that-a blurb in your adult working life. My first job isn’t on my resume, either. It’s just that-a blurb that was part of my adult working life.

Trump claims to have started McDonald’s-a claim that is a blatant lie. Why would he do this? Trump is a misogynist, a crook, a criminal, a rapist, a misogynist, a sexual predator, a pedophile, a xenophobe, a racist, and a narcissist. Trump never worked a minimum wage job a day in his life! All of his failed business ventures were all because of his dad! 

Let me ask you this:  Do you have your first job on your resume? 

[drbibliophile]

Shocking that the party that doesn’t want to govern isn’t governing. Just shocking.

And yes, the next two years are going to be a shitshow and yes, it will be the GOP’s fault. Not, it’s their goddamn fault. They won’t govern, they won’t compromise, they won’t do anything other than hold the country hostage with their temper tantrums. It’s all a load of bullshit and I am so sick and tired of it.

Sorry to interrupt your nostalgia trip but watching the chickens the gop ordered up come home to roost is HIGH-larious.

[contemplatingoutlander]

ACT.TV (Aug. 21, 2020): #TheyKnew who Trump Really Was All Along. Conservatives in their own words.

All These Conservatives Knew Who Trump Really Was All Along: Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pompeo, Glenn Beck, Rick Perry, Susan Collins THEY CALLED HIM THESE THINGS... liar, narcissist, race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot, mean spiritedness, con artist, orange faced windbag, kook, unfit for office, AND MORE...

I thought I would repost this old video as a reminder that most prominent Republicans have KNOWN for years that Trump is corrupt.

Despite what they have known about Trump, now that Trump has been indicted by the DOJ, once again many prominent Republicans are choosing to defend Trump and to mislead Americans about the righteousness of the DOJ classified documents case against him.

This hypocritical GOP defense of Trump is particularly galling given the reality that:

If enough Republicans had voted to convict Trump during at least one of his impeachment trials, we as a nation would have been rid of him.

Consequently, it is the hypocritical, power-hungry, corrupt Republican Party that is to blame for Trump's continued destructive influence on our nation.

And THEY will be to blame if we have to suffer through another four years of Trump in the White House.

[edited]

[kira-ani-mcgrath]

To @TheDemocrats ,

This is my career suicide note, but it’s also a thank you from someone who is done with careerism. I’m a lifelong member of your party and I’m voting for Donald Trump. Why? It’s not just your industrial-scale censorship or your endless wars or the fact that you disenfranchised millions of Kennedy voters through lawfare. If that were all I had, it would be sufficient, in terms of conscience and rage, but there’s more to this story than anger. Your hatred and censorship has taught me to admire @realDonaldTrump and to love my fellow working-class Americans, and for that I thank you.

This vote is for all the traumatized people who have been canceled and banished just for saying no to the establishment. This vote is for the surveyor, the farmer, the HVAC man, the nurse, the hairstylist, the Deadhead, the veteran, and my fellow adjunct professors who have told me their stories about being bullied by the Democrats in their friends and family and their colleagues at work. This is for the young Black woman in my class last year who, on the day of Kamala Harris’s visit to campus, said, “You’re going to hate me, Dr. Armstrong, but I’m not going. I’m voting for Donald Trump.” Why would she think I would hate her for the way she votes? What has happened to our country?

Somehow, Donald Trump has changed my mind. Where I once saw a cartoon white supremacist, warmonger, and narcissist, I now see the man who renegotiated NAFTA and the only president in the twenty-first century not to start a new war. Where I once saw the pal of the neocons, I now see a man who has awoken from his slumber and disavowed Dick Cheney, George Bush, and John Bolton, even as my own party embraces these “men.”

Why has the greatest entrepreneur of my generation (@elonmusk) risked his career to side with Trump? Why has the most consequential grassroots environmentalist of my time (@RobertKennedyJr ) sacrificed friends, family, and reputation to side with “The Orange Menace?” Why has the most courageous peace activist of the twenty-first century (@TulsiGabbard) left our party? Because Tulsi, Bobby, and Elon see what I see. Donald Trump is resilient and he’s risking his life to change the fate of our nation. Trump is transforming the Republican Party into the party of peace, free speech, and the working-class. He has converted George Bush’s billionaire boys club of Big War, Big Ag, and Big Pharma into a party that cares about public health and embraces regenerative agriculture.

Now I don’t think the GOP is all the way there yet, but they’re clearly the party that embraces dissent, and dissent—brave speech—is the fuel for evolution. So, for the first time in my life, I’m voting Republican. In the name of peace in Ukraine and free speech here at home, I’m casting my vote, as a Kennedy Democrat, for Donald Trump.

#TrumpVance2024 #MAGA #MAHA #TeamUnity #HealTheDivide #Peace #Iraq #Ukraine

[sethshead]

Indeed, in sharp contrast to the media narrative, it would be a mistake to regard Abandon Biden as a wholly left-leaning initiative. Khalid Turaani, a radical Islamist and terror-tied founder of the Abandon Biden movement, openly argues for a Trump presidency, calling it a "short-term pain for long term gain." Indeed, as a few others have noticed, Turaani in fact has a long history of GOP involvement.

Other leading Abandon Biden figures include Hassan Shibly, who refers to leftism as "quite frankly...antithetical to prophetic teachings."

[…]

The divide has led to extraordinary new axes and enmities, with Muslim politicians such as Ilhan Omar becoming the subject of jeers at Islamist rallies organized in cooperation with the GOP; popular mainstream imams being ambushed on camera by Islamist hardliners armed with Trumpian-sounding rhetoric about weak liberals; a growing Islamist embrace of far-Right and "alt-Right" activists; and panicked internal Islamist arguments about interfaith dialogue, LGBT politics, abortion, among other matters.

[…]

As one Muslim-American blog put it following the end of the Trump administration: "Donald Trump is gone from the White House, but let's face it: The Donald was good for business for the Islamist groups who claim to represent us. No more Muslim travel ban. No more urgent federal civil rights lawsuits... And perhaps not as many donations to CAIR."

The Uncommitted movement is a perfect storm of GOP ratfucking, right-wing Islamists, and left wing accelerationists. It is wrongheaded, counterproductive, and a road directly to disaster. Not that the activists care: they’re focused on their own narcissistic internal squabbles, power struggles between different shades of Hamsawi, to be worried about fascism. They’re happy to see the whole country burn down if it means they can impose absolute rule over an acre of ashes.

If you care about the future of American democracy, of immigrants and migrants, of civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, repreductive rights, voting rights; of secularism, economic justice, racial justice, equal justice; of the rule of law, of our international alliances, of the environment, employment, technological innovation; hell, if you care about the actual Palestinians, about their lives and aspirations for a state, then you won’t touch Abandon Biden and its promoters with an 870 foot minaret.

[reasoningdaily]

Donald Trump’s notorious inability to acknowledge a mistake – even when everyone else can clearly see how wrong he is – will now probably cost him a big bundle of money in yet another court case.

It should cost him support from Black and Latino voters, too.

You may recall the names Antron Brown (formerly known as Antron McCray), Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise by the undeserved moniker slapped on the Black and Latino teenagers 35 years ago ‒ "The Central Park Five." They now prefer to be known as the "Exonerated Five" since their convictions for a pair of attacks and a rape in 1989 were vacated in 2002.

They sued Trump in federal court in Philadelphia on Monday for defamation after he falsely claimed during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month that they pleaded guilty after being charged and had killed someone. They pleaded not guilty and nobody died in the attacks that sparked the controversy.

New York acknowledged the travesty in the treatment of the five, who were ages 14-16 when they were arrested, by paying them $41 million to settle a lawsuit in 2014. In a statement, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio said: "The City had a moral obligation to right this injustice."

Trump could never muster the kind of character it takes to meet any notion of moral obligation. It is now and always has been far outside the range of his ego-driven, narcissistic personality.

Donald Trump can't stop accusing the Central Park Five of a crime

Trump, who used the 1989 Central Park attacks to draw attention to himself, ran full-page ads in New York newspapers in the weeks after with the banner headline, "BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY." Trump has a long history, laid out in the complaint filed Monday, of continuing to accuse the five men of criminal behavior even after they were exonerated.

Harris made that point during the Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News during a segment on "race and politics." her opponent, of course, turned defensive and then said a bunch of things that were not true.

"They admitted ‒ they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately," Trump lied from the debate stage.

The complaint filed against him Monday notes that Trump has attacked a documentary about how the men were exonerated, which means he had the facts at his disposal and could have told the truth.

Opinion:In an unpredictable election, one thing is certain – Trump will lie about it

But this would require Trump to acknowledge he was wrong. He lacks the character for that.

Shanin Specter, a lawyer for the five men, said they didn't bother to give Trump a chance to apologize for what he said in the debate or issue a retraction because they knew, given his history since their exoneration, that "there was no chance of that happening."

"He has been single-minded about this for the last 35 years," Specter told me. "And he has not let the facts get in the way of his narrative."

Trump challenged to respond to lawsuit by lawyer who filed it

Trump's reelection campaign was oh so eager to prove the attorney's point, responding to the complaint by dismissing it as "just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists" while trying to connect it to Harris and her campaign.

Specter told me the complaint, written in a way that avoids any extraneous political language, was about seeking "redress in the courts."

"It would have been nice if Mr. Trump would have had his lawyer respond to it to say whether it was true or false," Specter said.

Opinion:Michigan and Wisconsin are key for Harris. GOP groups want to help her win them.

Trump does have plenty of lawyers and he keeps them very busy.

Some of them lost the May 2023 civil case where Trump was held liable for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million by a New York jury. Trump's lawyers also lost the follow-up defamation case Carroll filed against Trump, who was hit in January with an additional $83 million judgment.

So Trump, whom a jury found had sexually assaulted Carroll, has spent years falsely accusing the Exonerated Five of sexual assault and other violence. He is exactly the kind of person he claims to despise.

Will Trump ever be held accountable for this?

Two things can be true at the same time. This lawsuit can be unrelated to the election. But it can have consequences as Trump attempts to expand his support among Black and Latino voters.

Trump's appeal to hate in his 1989 newspaper ads always had the stench of racism, an undercurrent in his bid for attention just below the surface. His public pronouncements were bait for racists, the beginnings of his base.

Maybe the time has finally come for him to be held accountable for that, after 67 million debate viewers saw Trump repeat his lies about the Exonerated Five.

"It's devastating for them," Specter said. "They have to clear their name all over again. Now it's been defamed to 67 million people. And it just never stops."

Salaam, now 50, is a New York City Council member. He came to Philadelphia for last month's debate and tried to speak with Trump afterward in the "spin room," asking whether he would "apologize to the Exonerated Five."

"Ah, you're on my side then," Trump responded, in what feels like the one millionth moment of proof that his mind has turned to mush. He then waved and wandered away as Salaam repeated his request for an apology.

I hope we get the whole Trump show here ‒ a trial with an elderly defendant unable to remain awake until a jury holds him responsible in the only way that gets his attention: by squeezing him for cash. Trump won't be able to wander away from that.

[porterdavis]

"A Test of Character"

Tom Nichols is a conservative writer who spent 20+ years as an instructor at the Naval War College, not a particular bastion of left-wing loonies. His article for The Atlantic is behind a paywall, but available for free if you subscribe to one of the magazine's newsletters, so I don't think it's totally out of bounds to reprint it here. It's a #long-read, but worth every second of your time.

(tl;dr -- we face a moral character test for the second time in seven years. We failed miserably the first time)

"Donald Trump went to CPAC and gave a speech that was, even by his delusional standards, dark and violent. Much of it was hallucinatory. Amusing as it is to listen to President von Munchausen and his many “sir” stories, Trump is the former commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces and the current front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024. He is as  dangerous as ever to our democracy and to our national security.

But I also want to turn attention from Trump’s evident emotional issues to consider a more unsettling question: How, in 2023, after all we know about this man and his attacks on our government and our Constitution, do we engage the people who heard that speech and support Donald Trump’s candidacy? How do we turn the discussion away from partisanship and toward good citizenship—and to the protection of our constitutional order?

In the past, reporters have approached such questions gingerly, poking their head into coffee shops, asking for comments at rallies, and claiming to overhear conversations at gas stations, all in the service of trying to understand Trump voters. (Only The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper has ever managed to get anywhere in such interviews, and the answers he elicits are often terrifyingly dumb.) These respectful conversations with Trump voters have produced almost nothing useful beyond failed theories about “economic anxiety” and other rationalizations that capture little about why Trump voters continue to support a posse of authoritarian goons.

In 2016, Trump supporters could lean on a slew of hopeful arguments: Trump is just acting; he’ll hire professional staff; the “good” Republicans will keep him in line; the job will sober him up. All of these would be disproved over time. (It didn’t help that the alternative at the time was Hillary Clinton, for whom I voted but whose campaign was a tough sell to many people.) But by 2020, Trump, along with his enablers at Fox and other right-wing outlets, had created a kind of impermeable anti-reality field around the GOP base. This shell of pure denial defeated almost any argument about anything.

Media, flummoxed by having a sociopathic narcissist in the Oval Office, treated Trump like a normal political leader, and soon we all—even me—became accustomed to the fact that the president of the United States routinely sounded like the guy at the end of the bar who makes you decide to take your drink over to a table or a booth. When Joe Biden won, I hoped that this strange fever gripping so many Americans would finally pass. But the fever did not break, not even after January 6, 2021, and the many hearings that showed Trump’s responsibility for the events of that black day.

And now Trump has kicked off his attempt to regain office with a litany of lunacy. His speech at CPAC has been recounted by my Atlantic colleagues; John Hendrickson notes Trump’s return to the classics of grievance, and McKay Coppins describes how Trump has managed to become part of the typically boring CPAC kitsch.

But we shouldn’t mistake Trump’s gibbering for harmless political glossolalia. As Charlie Sykes said this morning, CPAC is “a serious threat masquerading as a cultic circus cum clown car,” and revealed “what a Trump 2.0 would look like.” This is a former president whose pitch included “I am your retribution.” Retribution for what, exactly, was left unsaid, but revenge for being turned out of office is likely high on the list. The Trumpian millennium turned into a tawdry four years of grubby incompetence and an ignominious loss. If Trump wins again, there will be a flurry of pardons, the same cast of miscreants will return to Pennsylvania Avenue, and, this time, they won’t even pretend to care about the Constitution or the rule of law.

Imagine an administration where we’ll all be nostalgic for the high-mindedness of Bill Barr.

Trump also reminded us that he is an existential menace to our national security. He reveled in a story he first told last spring—almost certainly a fiction—about how he informed a meeting of NATO leaders that he would let the Russians roll over them if they weren’t paid up. (Trump still thinks NATO is a protection racket.) He then fantasized about how easily a Russian attack could destroy NATO’s headquarters.

We’ve all cataloged this kind of Trumpian weirdness many times, and I still feel pity for the fact-checkers who try to keep up with him. But I wonder if there is any point. By now it should be clear that the people listening to Trump don’t care about facts, or even about policy or politics. They enjoy the show, and they want it back on TV for another four years. And this is a problem not with Trump but with the voters.

It is long past time to admit that support for Trump, after all that we now know, is a moral failing. As I wrote in a recent book, there is such a thing as being a bad citizen in a democracy, and we should cease the pretend arguments about policy—remember, the 2020 GOP convention didn’t even bother with a platform. Instead, anyone who cares about the health of American democracy, of any party or political belief, should say clearly that to applaud Trump’s fantasies and threats at CPAC is to show an utter lack of civic character. (I might say that it is no better than applauding David Duke, but why invoke the former KKK leader when Trump has already had dinner with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who he seems to think is a swell guy?)

The man who bellowed and sweated his way through almost two hours of authoritarian madness is still the same man who instigated an attack on our Capitol (and on his own vice president), the man who would hand our allies to Russia if they’re behind on the vig, the man who thinks a free press is his enemy, the man who tried to wave away a pandemic as thousands and thousands of Americans died.

Stigma and judgment have a place in politics. There was a time when we forced people out of public life for offenses far less than Donald Trump’s violent and seditious corruption. We were a better country for it, and returning to that better time starts with media outlets holding elected Republicans to account for Trump’s statements—but also with each of us refusing to accept rationalizations and equivocation from even our friends and family. I said in 2016 that the Trump campaign was a test of character, and that millions of us were failing it. The stakes are even clearer and steeper now; we cannot fail this test again."

[qqueenofhades]

I can't tell if part of the reason people don't recognize Biden's accomplishments is because society is so shallow and easily swayed by loudness over depth, or because Biden is just too quiet and prone to focusing on the idea that his actions speak louder than his words.

Like yeah, the latter thing is important, but we live in a REALLY shallow society; maybe a bit more bragging about your substantial achievements would be helpful here.

I get what you're saying here, but this kind of thing always seems to hinge on "the Democrats need to be doing more/Biden needs to be saying more/the Democrats are not doing it right/etc," and I just don't think that's the actual problem. Yes, in the past the Democrats have relied on the tactic of just doing good things and hoping that people will notice enough to vote for them, but that TORPEDOED them in 2010 (they didn't aggressively defend/market the Affordable Care Act, the Tea Party crazies got to set the narrative about GOVERNMENT OVERREACH, and they got shellacked so badly that they didn't control the House again for the rest of Obama's time in office). Fortunately, they have awoken to the fact that we live in a corporate noise machine owned and operated by cartoonishly villainous billionaire oligarchs who don't care if the country is pushed into fascism as long as they get their tax breaks, and where the average voter is well conditioned by said media to accept the BOTH SIDES BAD narrative without question.

Whether it's true or not is beside the point; if you flood the zone with enough BS, people act as if it is. See all those polls about how people think the Democrats are "too liberal" more than they think the GOP is "too conservative," even though only one of those parties is actively trying to end democracy. See the people who think Trump and Biden are equally ethically compromised. Etc. etc. Biden has already been considerably vocal about his accomplishments, has given several major speeches about the danger to democracy (which he did just the other day), but it is already so filtered and twisted in a radioactively toxic media atmosphere that just talking more or trying to trumpet more isn't going to help.

The DC media is full of a bunch of narcissists who like to make false equivalences and also openly hanker for Trump to be back in office because it makes them more relevant; they get to break juicy exposes and shocking headlines and whatever else, that gets more clicks, they get more exposure, etc. Biden is (as noted) boring, as in he's not on Twitter every day saying something ludicrous (and if he said even ONE ludicrous thing, far less the nonstop stream of BS that Trump constantly spews and which somehow still makes the media yell about how BIDEN should be the one to step aside, he'd be toast), and just does the job. That's not very Sexy and Marketable. When he talks about how he's doing the job and what he plans to do next, the media is too busy commissioning a dozen bullshit Horserace!!! polls and talking about how, in case we haven't noticed, he is 80 and that is somehow, implicitly, a more disqualifying fact than Trump's 91 goddamn serious treason-level felonies, including for literally trying to overthrow the government. Our politics and civic society have been so irreparably poisoned that actual competence is completely beside the point and makes a normal president less appealing than one who's just insane all the time. Everything's just a game show! Everyone's opinions are equal! Live in all the alternate universes you want! Who cares if we accidentally end democracy? Just another headline!

This is likewise not helped by the fact that in this relentlessly commodified social-media universe, Republicans are constantly on message and united behind their candidates, no matter how openly fucking awful they are, while leftists/liberals/Democrats (and people who claim to be) are constantly tearing into and criticizing their candidates in a way that makes Joe and Jane Low Information Voter even more susceptible to believing the "Both Sides" narrative -- after all, if the Democrats are attacking the Democrats, they really must be bad! Yes, we are not in a cult and therefore are able to have an actual discussion about things, but this falls into the "We're Just Holding Them Accountable!!" line that is just an excuse for ripping the Democrats even more than any of those people ever criticize or actively oppose the Republicans.

Hence all these braindead takes about how Biden should step aside, Biden should drop Harris, Biden should do X Y and Z and this is all his fault, instead of anyone remotely trying to come to grips with the extreme polarization and fascism of the other side. I keep yelling about it, and a lot of other people I respect keep yelling about it, because yet again, we've learned fucking nothing from 2016 and we're teetering on a repeat of it. See how all these Online Leftists want to scream and yell about Biden ending the train strike, and then somehow never seem to have heard that he kept working with the unions for months afterward and got their sick days. Even the people who, in a remotely more functional political landscape and/or if they possessed one (1) working brain cell, would vote for the Democrats get their endless jollies and moral holier-than-thous by absolutely incinerating them. Who needs the Republicans, when these guys will do it for you?

Anyway. Because America is a land of morons manipulated by billionaire corporate interests, just doing the right thing and hoping people notice enough to vote for you is not enough. That's why, indeed, the Democrats have learned that you have to talk about it and push back and argue for what you've done. But when it still exists in this environment that will twist and taint and misrepresent and grind it into tiny pieces, because said billionaire corporate interests are genuinely afraid that the Democrats' current policy plans could dismantle their hegemony if allowed to continue, that's only a very small part of the problem, and we have to recognize that.

[thefatdood]

EVERYONE MUST WATCH THIS, HE'S DANGEROUS, IT'S IMPORTANT!

Many of us who are not associated with MAGA/GOP have been psychologically traumatized by the madness of this malignant narcissist. His image has become imprinted in our brains by way of non stop media coverage and normalizing a sick politician who has been on the collective radar since 2015. It is beyond belief that this guy won't go away. Many of us have increased levels of anxiety over the prospect of this sick person ending up back in the oval office

What calmed my nerves is hearing that when you remove the person suffering from mental disease from an environment, all the close people retrieves normalcy. I can't wait for that moment, when no one will hear him speak or speak about him. Let him be forgotten - except for medical or history purpose.