Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications V
October 2, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 03, 2024
When moderator Margaret Brennan noted during last night’s vice-presidential debate that Republican nominee J.D. Vance had, once again, lied about the legal status of migrants in Springfield, Ohio, Vance retorted: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!” As scholar of propaganda Pekka Kallioniemi noted, this was “[t]he epitome of post-truth politics.”
Vance lied throughout the debate and has lied throughout this campaign, and in that, he is following the MAGA Republicans and Trump, who has become entirely untethered from reality. Aaron Rupar, who watches Trump’s rallies, and Noah Berlatsky wrote in Public Notice that Trump’s growing mental incapacity was obvious yesterday, as in two rallies he made a “wide-ranging journey through conspiracy theories, hatred, and nonsense.” He “seems ever more adrift in his own fog of hate and ego,” Rupar and Berlatsky wrote, “He mixes up world leaders, confuses countries, garbles pronouns, loses track of his nonsense talking points.”
Vance’s post-truth world did not dominate last night’s debate. A Politico/Focaldata snap poll afterward showed that while party voters overwhelmingly declared their party’s nominee the winner, 58% of Independents backed Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
Before the debate, political consultant Stuart Stevens posted: “If you want to know what the campaigns think of their VP candidates debate, just watch how they schedule the candidates post-debate. After Cheney VP debates, Lieberman and Edwards basically disappeared, banished to tiny markets. If Trump world believes America wants more Vance, they can put him in big markets in big states. I’m doubting that will happen. I suspect that [the] Harris campaign gets Walz in front of more voters after debate. He wears well.”
Today, Stevens noted that the campaign is ramping up Walz’s schedule, sending him through Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona and adding more media, including “two national TV interviews, a podcast and a late-night TV appearance,” and that Trump said he was “satisfied with Vance’s ‘fantastic’ performance.”
But Vance’s willingness to lie matters to Trump, and nowhere more than in his refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Vance has repeatedly said he would have done what Vice President Mike Pence would not: go along with Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, urging the states to approve “alternative” slates of electors than the ones that accurately reflected the choice voters made at the polls.
“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) responded, “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”
Vance’s stance was poorly timed. This afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan released the government’s motion for immunity determinations, special counsel Jack Smith’s legal filing laying out the government’s case against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The filing pulls from previously unreleased interviews, calls, and messages to paint a damning picture of Trump’s behavior as he tried to steal the presidency. Names in it are redacted, but journalists have already figured them out.
The filing is coming now because Trump and then the Supreme Court repeatedly delayed the case. After the Supreme Court decided that presidents are immune from prosecution for crimes committed as part of a president’s official acts, the court had to take on what constituted an official act. In today’s filing, Smith argued that where Trump “was acting ‘as office-seeker, not office-holder,’ no immunity attaches.” The government asks that “the Court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”
The facts of the case begin with a damning statement: “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Fundamental to those crimes was disinformation. The entire plan for keeping Trump in office depended on Trump and his loyalists lying to the American people, convincing them of a completely false story that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.
That effort started long before the actual election when it became clear to the Trump team that he was unlikely to win. They knew, though, that since Democrats were more likely than Republicans to use mail-in ballots, there would be an initial period when his numbers were higher than Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s.
In that case, Trump told advisor Roger Stone, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short, he would simply declare before all the ballots had been counted that he had won. In the meantime, he planted the idea that the election would be stolen from him, publicly saying, for example, that he would “have to see” whether he would accept the election results and saying that the only way he could lose would be if the election was rigged.
On October 31, advisor Steve Bannon, whose specialty was disinformation, told a group of supporters that Trump was simply “going to declare victory. That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner…that’s our strategy.”
That’s exactly what Trump did. He claimed there had been fraud in the election and that he had won. Then, as states continued to count votes, Trump’s operatives tried to create chaos at the polling places. When the vote count in Detroit swung toward Biden, for example, operative Michael Roman told a colleague there to “give me options to file litigation… even if itbis [sic],” apparently meaning “even if it is BS.” Smith noted that “[w]hen a colleague suggested there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election”—a riot in which Roger Stone had participated—Roman responded: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”
Even as Trump publicly claimed victory, his campaign staff told him his chances of prevailing were slim. To win, they told him, he must carry Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. When the campaign conceded its litigation in Arizona on November 13, it effectively admitted Trump had lost the election. As soon as his lawyers conceded in Arizona, Trump sidelined his campaign staff and turned to Giuliani and lawyers who would back the Big Lie.
To overturn the election results, Trump and his loyalists turned to pressuring Republicans in the states he had lost, especially Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as in states that used certain voting machines, to say the election had been fraudulent. When officials demanded proof of their claims, Trump and Giuliani threatened them, then accused them of betrayal and spread their names to angry supporters, who harassed them. Again and again, Republican officials told Trump his numbers were wrong and that he had lost the election. They begged him to stop spreading lies.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 03, 2024
When moderator Margaret Brennan noted during last night’s vice-presidential debate that Republican nominee J.D. Vance had, once again, lied about the legal status of migrants in Springfield, Ohio, Vance retorted: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!” As scholar of propaganda Pekka Kallioniemi noted, this was “[t]he epitome of post-truth politics.”
Vance lied throughout the debate and has lied throughout this campaign, and in that, he is following the MAGA Republicans and Trump, who has become entirely untethered from reality. Aaron Rupar, who watches Trump’s rallies, and Noah Berlatsky wrote in Public Notice that Trump’s growing mental incapacity was obvious yesterday, as in two rallies he made a “wide-ranging journey through conspiracy theories, hatred, and nonsense.” He “seems ever more adrift in his own fog of hate and ego,” Rupar and Berlatsky wrote, “He mixes up world leaders, confuses countries, garbles pronouns, loses track of his nonsense talking points.”
Vance’s post-truth world did not dominate last night’s debate. A Politico/Focaldata snap poll afterward showed that while party voters overwhelmingly declared their party’s nominee the winner, 58% of Independents backed Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
Before the debate, political consultant Stuart Stevens posted: “If you want to know what the campaigns think of their VP candidates debate, just watch how they schedule the candidates post-debate. After Cheney VP debates, Lieberman and Edwards basically disappeared, banished to tiny markets. If Trump world believes America wants more Vance, they can put him in big markets in big states. I’m doubting that will happen. I suspect that [the] Harris campaign gets Walz in front of more voters after debate. He wears well.”
Today, Stevens noted that the campaign is ramping up Walz’s schedule, sending him through Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona and adding more media, including “two national TV interviews, a podcast and a late-night TV appearance,” and that Trump said he was “satisfied with Vance’s ‘fantastic’ performance.”
But Vance’s willingness to lie matters to Trump, and nowhere more than in his refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Vance has repeatedly said he would have done what Vice President Mike Pence would not: go along with Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, urging the states to approve “alternative” slates of electors than the ones that accurately reflected the choice voters made at the polls.
“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) responded, “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”
Vance’s stance was poorly timed. This afternoon, Judge Tanya Chutkan released the government’s motion for immunity determinations, special counsel Jack Smith’s legal filing laying out the government’s case against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The filing pulls from previously unreleased interviews, calls, and messages to paint a damning picture of Trump’s behavior as he tried to steal the presidency. Names in it are redacted, but journalists have already figured them out.
The filing is coming now because Trump and then the Supreme Court repeatedly delayed the case. After the Supreme Court decided that presidents are immune from prosecution for crimes committed as part of a president’s official acts, the court had to take on what constituted an official act. In today’s filing, Smith argued that where Trump “was acting ‘as office-seeker, not office-holder,’ no immunity attaches.” The government asks that “the Court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.”
The facts of the case begin with a damning statement: “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Fundamental to those crimes was disinformation. The entire plan for keeping Trump in office depended on Trump and his loyalists lying to the American people, convincing them of a completely false story that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.
That effort started long before the actual election when it became clear to the Trump team that he was unlikely to win. They knew, though, that since Democrats were more likely than Republicans to use mail-in ballots, there would be an initial period when his numbers were higher than Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s.
In that case, Trump told advisor Roger Stone, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short, he would simply declare before all the ballots had been counted that he had won. In the meantime, he planted the idea that the election would be stolen from him, publicly saying, for example, that he would “have to see” whether he would accept the election results and saying that the only way he could lose would be if the election was rigged.
On October 31, advisor Steve Bannon, whose specialty was disinformation, told a group of supporters that Trump was simply “going to declare victory. That doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner…that’s our strategy.”
That’s exactly what Trump did. He claimed there had been fraud in the election and that he had won. Then, as states continued to count votes, Trump’s operatives tried to create chaos at the polling places. When the vote count in Detroit swung toward Biden, for example, operative Michael Roman told a colleague there to “give me options to file litigation… even if itbis [sic],” apparently meaning “even if it is BS.” Smith noted that “[w]hen a colleague suggested there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election”—a riot in which Roger Stone had participated—Roman responded: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”
Even as Trump publicly claimed victory, his campaign staff told him his chances of prevailing were slim. To win, they told him, he must carry Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. When the campaign conceded its litigation in Arizona on November 13, it effectively admitted Trump had lost the election. As soon as his lawyers conceded in Arizona, Trump sidelined his campaign staff and turned to Giuliani and lawyers who would back the Big Lie.
To overturn the election results, Trump and his loyalists turned to pressuring Republicans in the states he had lost, especially Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as in states that used certain voting machines, to say the election had been fraudulent. When officials demanded proof of their claims, Trump and Giuliani threatened them, then accused them of betrayal and spread their names to angry supporters, who harassed them. Again and again, Republican officials told Trump his numbers were wrong and that he had lost the election. They begged him to stop spreading lies.
Cont below
cont from above
As for the idea that voting machines had been compromised, Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, publicly posted that claims of election fraud through voting machines “either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” When Trump tried to get then–Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel to publicize a report that claimed machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had affected the vote, McDaniel declined, saying she had already discussed the report with Michigan’s speaker of the house, who had told her the report was “f*cking nuts.”
By late November, neither the legal challenges nor the threats had worked. So in early December the conspirators decided to get the people who would have been the electors if Trump had won to sign certifications saying that they were the legitimate electors and were casting their electoral votes for Trump. The lawyer who came up with the plan, Ken Chesebro, admitted that “the votes aren’t legal” but thought Congress could use them to challenge the real votes.
Many of the electors were wary of the plan, but Trump and his conspirators managed to get the slates of fake electors on December 14, the appointed day for real electors to meet. The plan was for Vice President Mike Pence, who as president of the Senate would preside over the counting of the electoral votes, to use the fake electors to say there were competing slates of electors and thus to “negotiate a solution to defeat Biden.” On December 19, Trump posted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!”
But the plan hit a snag. Pence maintained he did not have the power to do any such thing. The more Pence refused, the more insistent Trump became. After another argument on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence that “hundreds of thousands of people are going to hate your guts,” “people are gonna think you’re stupid,” and, finally, “You’re too honest.”
Trump, Bannon, and Trump’s lawyers all continued to pressure Pence, and Bannon normalized the plan on his podcast. Trump continued to talk publicly of fighting to make sure his opponents didn’t take the White House and continued to pressure Pence. On January 5—the day before the election certification proceeding—he talked to Bannon, and less than two hours later, on his podcast, Bannon told his listeners: “All Hell is going to break loose tomorrow” in Washington, D.C.
Concerned at Trump’s escalating fury at Pence, Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short alerted Pence’s secret service detail. Then, after Trump spoke with Bannon and lawyer John Eastman, who had come up with the legal argument for Pence’s power to affect the count, he simply lied on social media that Pence agreed the vice president could change the election results, then posted: “Do it, Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
When Pence continued to refuse, on January 6, Trump told his supporters at the Ellipse that Pence had let him down and then continued to lie that the election had been stolen, assuring them they would “never take back our country with weakness.” Then he sent the crowd to obstruct the proceedings.
Trump sat in the small dining room off the Oval Office watching the Fox News Channel and scrolling through Twitter as the crowd broke into the Capitol. At 2:24, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” A rioter read the tweet through a bullhorn for the crowd. A minute later, the Secret Service had to evacuate Pence to a secure location. When told of Pence’s danger, Trump answered: “So what?”
When Congress came back after the riot, Trump and Giuliani tried to delay further, calling senators and one representative to slow the process down. It didn’t work. On January 7, at 3:41 in the morning, Pence announced that Biden’s election had been certified.
It was all a lie.
One hundred and forty police officers assaulted, close to $3 million in damage, close to 1,200 people charged, more than 450 serving prison sentences, a poisonous political movement taking root, and voter suppression laws…all because Trump couldn’t bear to have lost an election.
“Post-truth politics” has real-world repercussions.
Last night, when a reporter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, asked him if trusted the electoral process this time around, Trump answered: “I’ll let you know in about 33 days.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-2-2024
As for the idea that voting machines had been compromised, Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, publicly posted that claims of election fraud through voting machines “either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” When Trump tried to get then–Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel to publicize a report that claimed machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had affected the vote, McDaniel declined, saying she had already discussed the report with Michigan’s speaker of the house, who had told her the report was “f*cking nuts.”
By late November, neither the legal challenges nor the threats had worked. So in early December the conspirators decided to get the people who would have been the electors if Trump had won to sign certifications saying that they were the legitimate electors and were casting their electoral votes for Trump. The lawyer who came up with the plan, Ken Chesebro, admitted that “the votes aren’t legal” but thought Congress could use them to challenge the real votes.
Many of the electors were wary of the plan, but Trump and his conspirators managed to get the slates of fake electors on December 14, the appointed day for real electors to meet. The plan was for Vice President Mike Pence, who as president of the Senate would preside over the counting of the electoral votes, to use the fake electors to say there were competing slates of electors and thus to “negotiate a solution to defeat Biden.” On December 19, Trump posted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!”
But the plan hit a snag. Pence maintained he did not have the power to do any such thing. The more Pence refused, the more insistent Trump became. After another argument on January 1, 2021, Trump told Pence that “hundreds of thousands of people are going to hate your guts,” “people are gonna think you’re stupid,” and, finally, “You’re too honest.”
Trump, Bannon, and Trump’s lawyers all continued to pressure Pence, and Bannon normalized the plan on his podcast. Trump continued to talk publicly of fighting to make sure his opponents didn’t take the White House and continued to pressure Pence. On January 5—the day before the election certification proceeding—he talked to Bannon, and less than two hours later, on his podcast, Bannon told his listeners: “All Hell is going to break loose tomorrow” in Washington, D.C.
Concerned at Trump’s escalating fury at Pence, Pence’s chief of staff Mark Short alerted Pence’s secret service detail. Then, after Trump spoke with Bannon and lawyer John Eastman, who had come up with the legal argument for Pence’s power to affect the count, he simply lied on social media that Pence agreed the vice president could change the election results, then posted: “Do it, Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
When Pence continued to refuse, on January 6, Trump told his supporters at the Ellipse that Pence had let him down and then continued to lie that the election had been stolen, assuring them they would “never take back our country with weakness.” Then he sent the crowd to obstruct the proceedings.
Trump sat in the small dining room off the Oval Office watching the Fox News Channel and scrolling through Twitter as the crowd broke into the Capitol. At 2:24, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” A rioter read the tweet through a bullhorn for the crowd. A minute later, the Secret Service had to evacuate Pence to a secure location. When told of Pence’s danger, Trump answered: “So what?”
When Congress came back after the riot, Trump and Giuliani tried to delay further, calling senators and one representative to slow the process down. It didn’t work. On January 7, at 3:41 in the morning, Pence announced that Biden’s election had been certified.
It was all a lie.
One hundred and forty police officers assaulted, close to $3 million in damage, close to 1,200 people charged, more than 450 serving prison sentences, a poisonous political movement taking root, and voter suppression laws…all because Trump couldn’t bear to have lost an election.
“Post-truth politics” has real-world repercussions.
Last night, when a reporter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, asked him if trusted the electoral process this time around, Trump answered: “I’ll let you know in about 33 days.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-2-2024
I don't blame Trump for this as much as MAGA ( or even opposers ).
Image of Donald Trump wading through flood water is AI-generated | Fact check
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/10/03/ai-image-trump-hurricane-helene-fact-check/75483588007/
I just wish everyone would be honest and allow people a choice based on the truth rather than bullshit. It's out of control out there.
Same thing was done to Kamala at an airport regarding an AI generated crowd ( they don't even allow crowds onto the tarmac due to security reasons ). Who really knows who did it and for what reasons?
Tina Peters woke up today facing 22 years in federal prison after being found guilty of 7 counts of election interference. She was sentenced to 9.
Body cam footage of her arrest: https://youtu.be/rBaJX9h-HIQ?si=ZCeuX7_cq7zf56yQ
The judge ( District Judge Matthew Barrett ) did not come to play. WOW! He saw right through her "charlatan" ass.
https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1841907807152435200/vid/avc1/1280x720/CWdA-tR03YaeOnus.mp4?tag=14
October 3, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 04, 2024
Former Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined Vice President Kamala Harris on a stage hung with red, white, and blue bunting and signs that said “Country Over Party.” As Cheney took the stage, the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Liz!” The two were on the campaign trail today in Ripon, Wisconsin, the town that claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was in that then-tiny town in 1852 that Alvan E. Bovay, who had recently emigrated from New York, called for a new political party to stand against slavery.
The idea of a new party took off in 1854 when it became clear the Kansas-Nebraska Act permitting the westward expansion of human enslavement would become law. When they met in February of that year, people in Ripon were early participants in the movement of people across the North to defend democracy. Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control.
In the face of this existential threat to the country, party divisions crumbled.
Pundits have described today’s event as a component of Harris’s ongoing outreach to Republicans, and in part, it is. That outreach, begun under President Joe Biden and continuing even more aggressively under Harris, is bearing fruit as in an open letter today, two dozen Republican former officials and lawmakers in Wisconsin endorsed Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz. “We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris,” the Republicans wrote. “But what we do agree upon is more important. We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”
Lately, there have been indications of what returning Trump to office might mean.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested that the U.S. soldiers who sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) when Iran attacked an Iraqi base where they were stationed were not truly injured, but simply had “headaches.” Trump’s statement brought back to light a 2021 CBS report by Catherine Herridge and Michael Kaplan that found the injured soldiers had not been recognized with a Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded or killed in the line of duty, despite qualifying for it. This slight meant they were denied the medical benefits that come with that military decoration.
The soldiers told Herridge and Kaplan that they were pressured to downplay their injuries to avoid undercutting Trump’s attempt to keep the casualty numbers in that incident low. With the story back in the news, Kaplan posted that after the report, the Army awarded the soldiers the Purple Hearts they deserved.
Journalist Magdi Jacobs recalled the argument of Trump’s lawyers before the Supreme Court that Trump could not prod a SEAL team to assassinate a rival because service members would adhere to the rules of their institutions. The Army officers’ bowing to Trump’s political demands proved that argument was wrong and set off “[m]ajor alarm bells,” Jacobs posted, suggesting that the military would not stand firm against Trump in a second term, especially now that the Supreme Court says a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of official duties.
Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank of Politico’s E&E News covering energy and the environment reported today that two former White House officials said that Trump was “flagrantly partisan” when responding to natural disasters. One said that in 2018 Trump refused to approve disaster aid after wildfires to California, perceiving it as a Democratic state. To get disaster money, the aide showed Trump polling results revealing that Orange County, which had been badly damaged in the fires, “had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”
Defending the Big Lie that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters in 2021 gave a security badge to a man associated with MyPillow owner Mike Lindell to enable him to breach the county’s voting systems in an unsuccessful attempt to find evidence of voter fraud. A jury found Peters guilty of four felonies related to the scheme. Today, District Court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison.
But there are other stories these days of what the government can accomplish when it is focused on the good of all Americans.
About 45,000 dock workers in the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Tuesday when the union could not reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping just as the areas hammered by Hurricane Helene desperately needed supplies. Dockworkers wanted a pay increase of up to 77% over six years and better benefits, as well as an end to the automation that threatens union jobs.
President Joe Biden reiterated his support for collective bargaining despite the threat to an economic slowdown from the strike. The Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriated Biden and the union, saying: “President Biden wants unions to have extortionary bargaining power, and he’s getting a demonstration of it on election eve. Congratulations.”
But today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 04, 2024
Former Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming joined Vice President Kamala Harris on a stage hung with red, white, and blue bunting and signs that said “Country Over Party.” As Cheney took the stage, the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Liz!” The two were on the campaign trail today in Ripon, Wisconsin, the town that claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was in that then-tiny town in 1852 that Alvan E. Bovay, who had recently emigrated from New York, called for a new political party to stand against slavery.
The idea of a new party took off in 1854 when it became clear the Kansas-Nebraska Act permitting the westward expansion of human enslavement would become law. When they met in February of that year, people in Ripon were early participants in the movement of people across the North to defend democracy. Rather than standing against slavery alone, those organizing in 1854 stood against an entire political system, opposing the small group of elite enslavers who had taken over the U.S. government in order to establish an oligarchy and were quite clear they rejected the self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal. Instead, they intended to rule over the nation’s majority, whose labor produced the capital that southern leaders believed only elites should control.
In the face of this existential threat to the country, party divisions crumbled.
Pundits have described today’s event as a component of Harris’s ongoing outreach to Republicans, and in part, it is. That outreach, begun under President Joe Biden and continuing even more aggressively under Harris, is bearing fruit as in an open letter today, two dozen Republican former officials and lawmakers in Wisconsin endorsed Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz. “We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris,” the Republicans wrote. “But what we do agree upon is more important. We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”
Lately, there have been indications of what returning Trump to office might mean.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested that the U.S. soldiers who sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) when Iran attacked an Iraqi base where they were stationed were not truly injured, but simply had “headaches.” Trump’s statement brought back to light a 2021 CBS report by Catherine Herridge and Michael Kaplan that found the injured soldiers had not been recognized with a Purple Heart, awarded to service members wounded or killed in the line of duty, despite qualifying for it. This slight meant they were denied the medical benefits that come with that military decoration.
The soldiers told Herridge and Kaplan that they were pressured to downplay their injuries to avoid undercutting Trump’s attempt to keep the casualty numbers in that incident low. With the story back in the news, Kaplan posted that after the report, the Army awarded the soldiers the Purple Hearts they deserved.
Journalist Magdi Jacobs recalled the argument of Trump’s lawyers before the Supreme Court that Trump could not prod a SEAL team to assassinate a rival because service members would adhere to the rules of their institutions. The Army officers’ bowing to Trump’s political demands proved that argument was wrong and set off “[m]ajor alarm bells,” Jacobs posted, suggesting that the military would not stand firm against Trump in a second term, especially now that the Supreme Court says a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of official duties.
Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank of Politico’s E&E News covering energy and the environment reported today that two former White House officials said that Trump was “flagrantly partisan” when responding to natural disasters. One said that in 2018 Trump refused to approve disaster aid after wildfires to California, perceiving it as a Democratic state. To get disaster money, the aide showed Trump polling results revealing that Orange County, which had been badly damaged in the fires, “had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.”
Defending the Big Lie that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters in 2021 gave a security badge to a man associated with MyPillow owner Mike Lindell to enable him to breach the county’s voting systems in an unsuccessful attempt to find evidence of voter fraud. A jury found Peters guilty of four felonies related to the scheme. Today, District Court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison.
But there are other stories these days of what the government can accomplish when it is focused on the good of all Americans.
About 45,000 dock workers in the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Tuesday when the union could not reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) employer group over a new contract. The strike shut down 36 ports from Maine to Texas, affecting about half the country’s shipping just as the areas hammered by Hurricane Helene desperately needed supplies. Dockworkers wanted a pay increase of up to 77% over six years and better benefits, as well as an end to the automation that threatens union jobs.
President Joe Biden reiterated his support for collective bargaining despite the threat to an economic slowdown from the strike. The Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriated Biden and the union, saying: “President Biden wants unions to have extortionary bargaining power, and he’s getting a demonstration of it on election eve. Congratulations.”
But today the International Longshoremen’s Association suspended the strike after USMX agreed to wage increases of 62% over six years. The two sides agreed to extend the current contract until January 15 to address the issues of benefits and automation. Administration officials White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, top White House economic advisor Lael Brainard, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg helped broker the temporary agreement.
Cont below
cont from above
The government’s power to make things better is also on display amid the rubble and ruin left behind by Hurricane Helene. Yesterday evening, after taking an aerial tour of western North Carolina to survey the damage and receiving a briefing in Raleigh, President Biden thanked both “the Republican governor of South Carolina and the Democratic governor of North Carolina and all of the elected officials who’ve focused on the task at hand. In a moment like this, we put politics aside. At least we should put it all aside, and we have here. There are no Democrats or Republicans; there are only Americans. And our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can.”
Biden explained that the federal government had 1,000 first responders in place before the storms hit, and that he had approved emergency declarations as soon as he received the requests from the governors. Yesterday he directed the Defense Department to move 1,000 soldiers to reinforce North Carolina’s National Guard to speed up the delivery of supplies like food, water, and medicine to isolated communities, some of which are accessible now only by pack mule.
He has already deployed 50 Starlink satellites for communication, and more are coming.
Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are offering free temporary housing, as well as delivering food and water. They are helping people apply for the help that they need.
While Trump and MAGA Republicans insist that Biden is botching the response to Helene, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale noted that the response has gotten bipartisan praise. Republican governors Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia both thanked Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
So today’s bipartisan event in Ripon suggests far more than Democratic outreach to Republicans. It appears to be a commitment to a government that advances the interests of ordinary people, and protects the right of everyone to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government. Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles.
“The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.”
"In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.
“And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president. I know…that…a president Harris will be able to unite this nation. I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law, and I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children—and if I might say so, especially our little girls—to do great things. So help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us, when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-3-2024
The government’s power to make things better is also on display amid the rubble and ruin left behind by Hurricane Helene. Yesterday evening, after taking an aerial tour of western North Carolina to survey the damage and receiving a briefing in Raleigh, President Biden thanked both “the Republican governor of South Carolina and the Democratic governor of North Carolina and all of the elected officials who’ve focused on the task at hand. In a moment like this, we put politics aside. At least we should put it all aside, and we have here. There are no Democrats or Republicans; there are only Americans. And our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can.”
Biden explained that the federal government had 1,000 first responders in place before the storms hit, and that he had approved emergency declarations as soon as he received the requests from the governors. Yesterday he directed the Defense Department to move 1,000 soldiers to reinforce North Carolina’s National Guard to speed up the delivery of supplies like food, water, and medicine to isolated communities, some of which are accessible now only by pack mule.
He has already deployed 50 Starlink satellites for communication, and more are coming.
Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are offering free temporary housing, as well as delivering food and water. They are helping people apply for the help that they need.
While Trump and MAGA Republicans insist that Biden is botching the response to Helene, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale noted that the response has gotten bipartisan praise. Republican governors Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia both thanked Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
So today’s bipartisan event in Ripon suggests far more than Democratic outreach to Republicans. It appears to be a commitment to a government that advances the interests of ordinary people, and protects the right of everyone to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government. Republican Abraham Lincoln articulated this worldview for his fledgling party in 1859 as it took a stand against oligarchs. Believing these principles accurately represented the aspirations of the nation’s founders, Lincoln called them “conservative.” People from all parties rallied to the party that promised to defend those principles.
“The president of the United States must not look at our country through the narrow lens of ideology or petty partisanship or self-interest,” Harris said today. “The president of the United States must not look at our country as an instrument for their own ambitions. Our nation is not some spoil to be won. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised: the nation that inspired the world to believe in the possibility of a representative government. And so in the face of those who would endanger our magnificent experiment, people of every party must stand together.”
"In this election, putting patriotism ahead of partisanship is not an aspiration. It is our duty,” Cheney said. “I ask all of you here and everyone listening across this great country to join us. I ask you to meet this moment. I ask you to stand in truth, to reject the depraved cruelty of Donald Trump.
“And I ask you instead to help us elect Kamala Harris for president. I know…that…a president Harris will be able to unite this nation. I know that she will be a president who will defend the rule of law, and I know that she will be a president who can inspire all of our children—and if I might say so, especially our little girls—to do great things. So help us right the ship of our democracy so that history will say of us, when our time of testing came, we did our duty and we prevailed because we loved our country more.”
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-3-2024
October 4, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 05, 2024
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”
Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.”
Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.
But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.
On Wednesday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in which FEMA is housed, told reporters that FEMA’s disaster relief fund is adequately funded for current needs. But, he warned, “extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity,” and we are not yet out of hurricane season. If another emergency hits, FEMA’s disaster relief fund will be stretched thin.
Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement:
“These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
As in Springfield, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are begging MAGAs to stop the disinformation, which is keeping people from accessing the help they need and gumming up relief efforts as workers and local and state governments, as well as FEMA, have to waste time combating lies. Scammers and political extremists are making things worse by spreading AI-generated images and claiming that the federal government is ignoring the people and emergencies the images depict.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Oct 05, 2024
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response.
But on Sunday, September 29, two days after the hurricane hit, the right-wing organization started by anti-immigrant Trump loyalist Stephen Miller posted: “Billions for Ukraine. Billions for illegal aliens. And what for the Americans? Reprogram every single dollar that FEMA has dedicated to support illegal aliens to go towards Americans who are facing unprecedented devastation!”
Yesterday, in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump echoed Miller, claiming that the Biden administration is botching the hurricane response because it has spent all the money appropriated for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on “illegal immigrants.” “They spent it all on illegal migrants.… They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them,” he said. Today, he claimed that “a billion dollars was stolen from FEMA to use it for illegal migrants, many of whom are criminals, to come into our country.”
Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.
But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.
On Wednesday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in which FEMA is housed, told reporters that FEMA’s disaster relief fund is adequately funded for current needs. But, he warned, “extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity,” and we are not yet out of hurricane season. If another emergency hits, FEMA’s disaster relief fund will be stretched thin.
Congress also appropriated money for a different fund, the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which is part of Customs and Border Protection but is administered by FEMA. Established under the Trump administration in 2019, SSP gives grants to states and local governments to provide shelter, food, and transportation to undocumented immigrants. After Trump’s accusation, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement:
“These claims are completely false. As Secretary Mayorkas said, FEMA has the necessary resources to meet the immediate needs associated with Hurricane Helene and other disasters. The Shelter and Services Program (SSP) is a completely separate, appropriated grant program that was authorized and funded by Congress and is not associated in any way with FEMA’s disaster-related authorities or funding streams.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post did not leave the story there. “Trump has a habit of assuming other politicians act in the same way as he would,” Kessler wrote. So he looked into why Trump would have accused Biden “of raiding the FEMA disaster fund to handle undocumented migrants. It turns out that’s because he did this.”
In the middle of hurricane season in 2019, Kessler explains, Trump took $155 million from the FEMA disaster fund and redirected it to pay for detention space and temporary hearing locations for immigrants seeking asylum. “No, Biden didn’t take FEMA relief money to use on migrants,” the article title reads, “but Trump did.”
As in Springfield, a bipartisan group of lawmakers are begging MAGAs to stop the disinformation, which is keeping people from accessing the help they need and gumming up relief efforts as workers and local and state governments, as well as FEMA, have to waste time combating lies. Scammers and political extremists are making things worse by spreading AI-generated images and claiming that the federal government is ignoring the people and emergencies the images depict.
Cont below
Cont from above
MAGA Republicans launched another major disinformation campaign today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released another blockbuster jobs report. It showed that the country added about 254,000 jobs in September, far higher than the 140,000 jobs economists expected. It also revised the job numbers for July and August upward. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% in August to 4.1%, and wages have outpaced inflation.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, wrote that the jobs report “cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets. The economy is creating lots of jobs across many industries, consistent with robust labor force growth, and thus low and stable unemployment. The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.”
Yet MAGA Republicans deny that the economy is strong. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) openly called the jobs report fake. And when a reporter asked Trump, “Jobs are up, the stock market hit that all-time high. Do you acknowledge that the economy is improving?” he answered: “No it’s not.”
But, apparently stung, this afternoon Trump posted on his social media site what appeared to be an announcement. After an emoji of a flashing red light, a headline read, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.” A representative for Dimon instantly denied such an endorsement, saying it is false. According to a spokesperson for JP Morgan, Dimon has neither contributed money nor endorsed Trump, or anyone else, in the 2024 presidential race. But Trump has not taken the post down.
Hugo Lowell of The Guardian notes that Trump has admired Dimon for a long time and likely craves his support. Trump has been unable to attract major endorsements, while celebrities throw their influence behind Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz almost daily. Yesterday, musician Bruce Springsteen endorsed Harris. Today, businessman and former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. endorsed her.
The firehose of lies is designed to make it impossible for voters to figure out the truth. The technique is designed so that eventually voters give up trying to engage, conclude everyone is lying, throw up their hands, and stop voting. Holding on to facts combats the effects of the storm of lies.
Finally, tonight, the X account of Trump’s team and the Republican National Committee—now run by the Trump family and loyalists—showed a clip of Biden unexpectedly entering the White House briefing room today, joking with reporters, and saying, “Welcome to the swimming pool.” Referring to “Biden (or whatever’s left of him),” the post suggested his “swimming pool” reference was a sign of mental incapacity.
In fact, the briefing room was indeed originally a swimming pool. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt added the pool to the White House in 1933 after he found swimming helped to keep him in shape after his 1921 bout with polio. Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (who had a mural by Bernard Lamotte installed around it), and Lyndon B. Johnson used the pool frequently. Richard Nixon did not. In 1970, Nixon had the pool covered and the space converted into the White House Press Room.
Nixon ordered the change made in such a way that it could be easily undone in case he got pushback for covering up FDR’s pool, but his successor, Gerald Ford, who was an avid swimmer, largely ended the conversation when he added a new outdoor pool to the White House complex in 1975.
Biden’s reference to the press room as a swimming pool was a historical joke rather than a sign of mental incapacity. This lie deserves the same scrutiny as the other whoppers from today, though, because as Glenn Kessler accurately observed, Trump’s common pattern is projection.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-4-2024
MAGA Republicans launched another major disinformation campaign today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released another blockbuster jobs report. It showed that the country added about 254,000 jobs in September, far higher than the 140,000 jobs economists expected. It also revised the job numbers for July and August upward. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.2% in August to 4.1%, and wages have outpaced inflation.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, wrote that the jobs report “cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets. The economy is creating lots of jobs across many industries, consistent with robust labor force growth, and thus low and stable unemployment. The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.”
Yet MAGA Republicans deny that the economy is strong. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) openly called the jobs report fake. And when a reporter asked Trump, “Jobs are up, the stock market hit that all-time high. Do you acknowledge that the economy is improving?” he answered: “No it’s not.”
But, apparently stung, this afternoon Trump posted on his social media site what appeared to be an announcement. After an emoji of a flashing red light, a headline read, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.” A representative for Dimon instantly denied such an endorsement, saying it is false. According to a spokesperson for JP Morgan, Dimon has neither contributed money nor endorsed Trump, or anyone else, in the 2024 presidential race. But Trump has not taken the post down.
Hugo Lowell of The Guardian notes that Trump has admired Dimon for a long time and likely craves his support. Trump has been unable to attract major endorsements, while celebrities throw their influence behind Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz almost daily. Yesterday, musician Bruce Springsteen endorsed Harris. Today, businessman and former Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. endorsed her.
The firehose of lies is designed to make it impossible for voters to figure out the truth. The technique is designed so that eventually voters give up trying to engage, conclude everyone is lying, throw up their hands, and stop voting. Holding on to facts combats the effects of the storm of lies.
Finally, tonight, the X account of Trump’s team and the Republican National Committee—now run by the Trump family and loyalists—showed a clip of Biden unexpectedly entering the White House briefing room today, joking with reporters, and saying, “Welcome to the swimming pool.” Referring to “Biden (or whatever’s left of him),” the post suggested his “swimming pool” reference was a sign of mental incapacity.
In fact, the briefing room was indeed originally a swimming pool. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt added the pool to the White House in 1933 after he found swimming helped to keep him in shape after his 1921 bout with polio. Presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (who had a mural by Bernard Lamotte installed around it), and Lyndon B. Johnson used the pool frequently. Richard Nixon did not. In 1970, Nixon had the pool covered and the space converted into the White House Press Room.
Nixon ordered the change made in such a way that it could be easily undone in case he got pushback for covering up FDR’s pool, but his successor, Gerald Ford, who was an avid swimmer, largely ended the conversation when he added a new outdoor pool to the White House complex in 1975.
Biden’s reference to the press room as a swimming pool was a historical joke rather than a sign of mental incapacity. This lie deserves the same scrutiny as the other whoppers from today, though, because as Glenn Kessler accurately observed, Trump’s common pattern is projection.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-4-2024
MAGA Republicans deny the economy is STRONG!!!
What absolute elitest tripe to push. The most egregious false narrative yet. The U.S. economy has been downgraded to 2 star from 3 star and over 150 countries have declared they will no longer trade in petro dollars. Interest rates are thru the roof, food and housings prices are unaffordable.
Even Kamala stated in her speeches that meat cost double it did 2 years ago. Mayorkas stated that there is no money left in FEMA for the rest of the hurricane season. Kamala said the government will give $750 dollars to families the same week over 17 billion was sent to foreign countries..
This is your regime's OWN WORDS said on camera.
Should I say they are lying.???
The completed lack of compassion and concern for the destruction of towns and the death of men women and children is astounding.
The only thing culture Marxists care about is spreading lies, locking up whistle blowers, like Tina Peters and eliminating by any means necessary their main political opponents
The world see everything you are doing. You are not fooling anyone.
What absolute elitest tripe to push. The most egregious false narrative yet. The U.S. economy has been downgraded to 2 star from 3 star and over 150 countries have declared they will no longer trade in petro dollars. Interest rates are thru the roof, food and housings prices are unaffordable.
Even Kamala stated in her speeches that meat cost double it did 2 years ago. Mayorkas stated that there is no money left in FEMA for the rest of the hurricane season. Kamala said the government will give $750 dollars to families the same week over 17 billion was sent to foreign countries..
This is your regime's OWN WORDS said on camera.
Should I say they are lying.???
The completed lack of compassion and concern for the destruction of towns and the death of men women and children is astounding.
The only thing culture Marxists care about is spreading lies, locking up whistle blowers, like Tina Peters and eliminating by any means necessary their main political opponents
The world see everything you are doing. You are not fooling anyone.
runaway-mindtrain said:MAGA Republicans deny the economy is STRONG!!!
What absolute elitest tripe to push. The most egregious false narrative yet. The U.S. economy has been downgraded to 2 star from 3 star and over 150 countries have declared they will no longer trade in petro dollars. Interest rates are thru the roof, food and housings prices are unaffordable.
Even Kamala stated in her speeches that meat cost double it did 2 years ago. Mayorkas stated that there is no money left in FEMA for the rest of the hurricane season. Kamala said the government will give $750 dollars to families the same week over 17 billion was sent to foreign countries..
Fair point this time, Runaway:
'The Fed fails
At yesterday’s end July meeting, the US Federal Reserve Bank held back from cutting its policy interest rate from the current high of 5.25-5.5%. This was despite recognizing that the US economy was ‘cooling’, unemployment was starting to rise and economic activity was weakening.'
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/08/01/the-fed-fails/
🇺🇲🇬🇧
What absolute elitest tripe to push. The most egregious false narrative yet. The U.S. economy has been downgraded to 2 star from 3 star and over 150 countries have declared they will no longer trade in petro dollars. Interest rates are thru the roof, food and housings prices are unaffordable.
Even Kamala stated in her speeches that meat cost double it did 2 years ago. Mayorkas stated that there is no money left in FEMA for the rest of the hurricane season. Kamala said the government will give $750 dollars to families the same week over 17 billion was sent to foreign countries..
Fair point this time, Runaway:
'The Fed fails
At yesterday’s end July meeting, the US Federal Reserve Bank held back from cutting its policy interest rate from the current high of 5.25-5.5%. This was despite recognizing that the US economy was ‘cooling’, unemployment was starting to rise and economic activity was weakening.'
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/08/01/the-fed-fails/
🇺🇲🇬🇧
My heart is just crushed over the misinformation being spread in regard to the relief efforts of hurricane Helene. ALL Republican Governors ( with the exception of DeSantis who stated they had everything they needed ) whose states have been affected have PRAISED this administration for their response and condemned Trump lies and MAGA's parroting of them.
Also—
I think it's fucking OUTRAGEOUS that Republicans are trying to play political games with the recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene amid so much loss and devastation.
ESPECIALLY since so many of them voted AGAINST supplemental FEMA hurricane relief before Helene hit.
Here's a full list of who voted against supplemental funding for FEMA:
North Carolina:
Representative Dan Bishop
Senator Ted Budd
South Carolina:
Representative Jeff Duncan
Representative Russell Fry
Representative Nancy Mace
Representative Ralph Norman
Representative William R. Timmons IV
Senator Tim Scott
Georgia:
Representative Richard McCormick
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
Representative Mike Collins
Representative Andrew S. Clyde
Florida:
Representative Daniel Webster
Representative Michael Waltz
Representative Bill Posey
Representative Cory Mills
Representative Anna Paulina Luna
Representative Laurel M. Lee
Representative Matt Gaetz
Representative Bryon Donalds
Representative Kat Cammack
Representative Gus M. Bilirakis
Representative Aaron Bean
Senator Rick Scott REFUSED TO VOTE
Tennessee:
Representative Tim Burchett
Representative Andrew Ogles
Representative John W. Rose
Senator Marsha Blackburn
Senator Bill Hagerty
Not one Democratic lawmaker voted nay.
FEMA's Rumor Response to Hurricane Helene:
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response
It's a damn shame they even have to publish this in regard to all the false rumors.
Rumor: FEMA will only provide $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.
Fact:
This is false.
This is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs. If you have questions about your disaster assistance application and what you qualify for, contact us at 1-800-621-3362 to speak with a FEMA representative in your language.
October 3, 2024
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response
Fact:
This is false.
This is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs. If you have questions about your disaster assistance application and what you qualify for, contact us at 1-800-621-3362 to speak with a FEMA representative in your language.
October 3, 2024
https://www.fema.gov/disaster/current/hurricane-helene/rumor-response
This is from one of my acquaintances who lives in Asheville. He used to work at the UW when I was their photographer.
The Swanannoa Fire Department needed boots. This got posted on Facebook. Today someone must have shown up with a shoe store, as the need is met in triplicate and in all sizes. This is how social media works well. Social media fails when the lie that FEMA has no money and can pay no claims. Our septic, rebuilt three weeks ago, failed. FEMA just put us in a hotel. And because it could take months to get someone to work on our septic, as plenty of septic systems were damaged or destroyed, we know we will be ok.
If you’re not living through this, don’t share things you can’t prove. In a disaster area, there is only one truth and only one set of facts.
Can you imagine going through this and instead of citizens pulling together in a bi-partisan manner it's become a political hell hole of misinformation?
I am sick to my stomach. Literally.
The Swanannoa Fire Department needed boots. This got posted on Facebook. Today someone must have shown up with a shoe store, as the need is met in triplicate and in all sizes. This is how social media works well. Social media fails when the lie that FEMA has no money and can pay no claims. Our septic, rebuilt three weeks ago, failed. FEMA just put us in a hotel. And because it could take months to get someone to work on our septic, as plenty of septic systems were damaged or destroyed, we know we will be ok.
If you’re not living through this, don’t share things you can’t prove. In a disaster area, there is only one truth and only one set of facts.
Can you imagine going through this and instead of citizens pulling together in a bi-partisan manner it's become a political hell hole of misinformation?
I am sick to my stomach. Literally.
Ahavati said:This is from one of my acquaintances who lives in Asheville. He used to work at the UW when I was their photographer.
Can you imagine going through this and instead of citizens pulling together in a bi-partisan manner it's become a political hell hole of misinformation?
I am sick to my stomach. Literally.
The lying has become so ferociously underhanded that I really wonder about the extent of their mental health issues.
Can you imagine going through this and instead of citizens pulling together in a bi-partisan manner it's become a political hell hole of misinformation?
I am sick to my stomach. Literally.
The lying has become so ferociously underhanded that I really wonder about the extent of their mental health issues.
