Jim Smith's personal blog: Heather Cox Richardson

Showing posts with label Heather Cox Richardson. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The ‘Big Lie’ Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving — for a Man With No Shame

By JIM SMITH

We learned last week that Donald Trump conned his small-donor followers out of $250 million on the pretext that the money would be used by an “election integrity committee” to fund challenges to Joe Biden’s election, when in fact no such committee existed and none of the money was even used for ballot recounts. It went to his hotels, the Jan. 6th rally, and mostly to his political campaign. His donors are, simply, suckers, reminding me of how he said that he loves uneducated voters and his “deplorables.” (Yes, although he attacked Hillary Clinton for using that term, he used it himself to describe his rightwing and racist followers.)

Whether or not he intended to use it long-term, when Trump saw the fundraising potential of the Big Lie, he decided to double down on it. Money, however, is not the only way the Big Lie has paid off for him.

Because his supporters believe anything Trump tells them and have been inoculated to dismiss any fact-checking as “fake news” paid for by the likes of George Soros, the Big Lie has generated the kind of misguided enthusiasm that could propel the Trump Party (formerly the GOP) to victory. The Democrats don’t yet have as much get-out-the-vote enthusiasm, and turnout is what wins any election. Besides, will getting the most votes even matter?

Steve Bannon brilliantly conceived a precinct strategy built upon the Big Lie and has already showed impressive success in getting Trump’s true believers to take over grass roots Republican precinct committees and school boards and to win nominations for the Secretaries of State who run elections.

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative (and Catholic) majority is dismantling abortion rights and the separation of church and state. Five of those six were nominated by presidents who did not win the popular vote.

The Trump Party is following the playbook of fascist movements in the past, convincing supporters that any fact-checking by mainstream media is part of the conspiracy against their beliefs because those media are owned by the “radical socialist Democrats.”

The latest strategy is to include a mention of Snopes and Factcheck.org within their emails, warning readers that they “will tell you this is not true, but don’t believe them!”

How can that many Americans be so easily conned into believing what the rest of us know to be obvious untruths?

Have we passed the tipping point in the rightwing takeover of our country? We’ll know that for sure if the Trump Party takes control of both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and wins Secretary of State races in battleground states. That’s all that’s required to steal the 2024 presidential election. After all, the US Constitution does allow for state legislatures to go against the popular vote and send their own electors to the Electoral College.

If they pull that off, Americans will be “up in arms” figuratively, but they will be outgunned literally by the storm troopers armed with AR-15 rifles, so I suspect it won’t matter. Death threats and the threat of violence are highly effective political tools.

Consider the following item from Heather Cox Richardson:

Today, June 20, 2022, a Republican candidate for the Senate in Missouri, disgraced former governor Eric Greitens, released an advertisement threatening those Republicans he considers too moderate, the so-called Republicans In Name Only… In the ad, Greitens is armed with a shotgun and flanked by military personnel as they burst into a house. “Today, we’re going RINO hunting,” he says. “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked with the stripes of cowardice,” he continues. “Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”

Of course, it’s the Trumpers who are the true RINOs. The above excerpt is a tacit acknowledgement that only the non-Trump Republicans can save us, but will they? On June 6, 1954, Boston attorney Joseph Welch brought down Sen. Joseph McCarthy with his televised line, “Have you no decency, sir?” When will other Republicans join Rep. Liz Cheney and speak out? When will they defy the death threats, stand up and say, “Have you no shame, sir?”

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My thanks to the readers who support this column through my GoFundMe campaign at www.FundTalkingTurkey.com

Friday, March 4, 2022

Trump Lovers Who Call Biden Senile Should Watch this 30-minute Interview of Biden by a Historian

We all get tired of watching politicians read prepared remarks on a Teleprompter. Who wrote it, we wonder? So it's refreshing to see how competent the president is in a totally unscripted situation not intended for broadcast. President Biden really showcases his intelligence, knowledge of American history, and competence in this interview with Heather Cox Richardson:

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Prof. Heather Cox Richardson's history lesson for today is a must-read

If you don't subscribe to her free newsletter, you really should consider it. For $5 per month, you can support it as I do.

Last night's "Letter from an American" really put our existential fight for democracy over autocracy in historical context. I consider it a must-read. Here's the link:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-26-2021/

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

A History Lesson on Voting Rights

I appreciate the perspective that Prof. Heather Cox Richardson brings to our political dilemma with her nightly email newsletter, Letters From an American.

Her Aug. 6th email will take you to school on the subject of voting rights in America. Here's a link for it at www.TalkingTurkey.online.

Monday, December 28, 2020

Vetoed Defense Authorization Bill Contained Ban on Shell Companies Used for Money Laundering, Including by Trump and Russians

Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson, for pointing this out in last night's "Letters from an American" (Subscribe here.) Here's what she wrote:

The National Defense Authorization Act this year does something else, though, that seems to me of far more importance to the president than the naming of military bases.

It includes a measure known as the Corporate Transparency Act, which undercuts shell companies and money laundering in America. The act requires the owners of any company that is not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The measure also increases penalties for money laundering and streamlines cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

America is currently the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company which enables them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes. The measure will pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists dug into leaked documents from FinCEN this fall, they discovered shell companies moving money for criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria.

Shell companies also mean that our political system is awash in secrecy. Social media giants like Facebook cannot determine who is buying political advertising. And, as Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) noted, shell companies allow “foreign bad actors” to corrupt our system even more directly. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” he reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.”

We know the Trump family uses shell companies: Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off Stormy Daniels, and just this month we learned that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner approved a shell company that spent more than $600 million in campaign funds.

The new requirements in the NDAA apply not just to future entities, but also to existing ones.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Some Say to “Move On” and Stop Talking About Trump. Here’s Why I Disagree.

We’ve heard it said by Winston Churchill and others, reportedly paraphrasing George Santayana, that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I agree, and we certainly don’t want to repeat the past four years.

We need to keep studying how Donald Trump came to power and, just as important, how he created and maintained the grip he continues to have on 30% or more of the American electorate.

Yes, we’re glad to put the Trump administration behind us, but I for one will continue to study the man, his techniques, and his followers. Like Germany, which suffered even worse from their own misguided leader in the 1930s and 1940s, we need to fully understand what just happened.

It’s primarily a psychological and mental health study, and I’m so grateful for all the primary sources, such as Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, his long-time fixer, Michael Cohen, and his longest-serving National Security Advisor, John Bolton, for the first-hand information and insights they have provided through their books about Donald Trump. There are more books to come, and, as a student of history, I welcome them.

I have said from the beginning that “history will not be kind to Donald Trump and those who have fallen under his spell.” The question remains as to how much damage, including violence by far-right, gun-toting extremists, might be done in the meantime.

We all recognize that Trump’s racist dog whistles have emboldened countless “deplorables” — a term coined by Hillary Clinton but also adopted with affection, we're told, by Trump himself — to come out of the shadows, as they did in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting too often in violence and death. By echoing conspiracy theories concocted by others, such as Q-Anon, he gave them legitimacy leading to yet more activism and violence.

An early expression of that was “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that the Clintons and other “Washington elites” were conducting a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza parlor (which doesn’t even have a basement). One man, infected by that conspiracy theory, showed up with his AR-15 to save the children he believed were being trafficked for sex. Fortunately he was arrested with no shots fired.

And just this Tuesday, the following event unfolded, as described by my favorite newsletter writer, Heather Cox Richardson:

In Houston, Texas, today [Dec. 15], police arrested a former police department captain for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in a misguided attempt to foil a massive voter fraud scheme. Sixty-three-year-old Mark Anthony Aguirre claimed to be part of a citizens’ group investigating voter fraud. Believing his victim was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck, Aguirre rammed the truck with his SUV and held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee in the man’s back until police came. Upon inspection, it turned out the truck was full of air conditioning parts. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, said “His alleged investigation was backward from the start — first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened…. [W]e are lucky no one was killed.”

We can’t pretend that once Trump leaves and sanity returns to the White House that these kooks will stop believing everything Trump has told them and will tell them in the future, including that the landslide election of Joe Biden was fraudulent. These people are deeply patriotic in their own minds and would go to war for this country. I cringe to think how that war will play out on American soil. Remember, there were death threats made against fellow citizens counting ballots and to the Secretaries of State for whom they worked.

Sen. Mitch McConnell is now being attacked and probably threatened by the same people for acknowledging that “the electoral college has spoken” and Joe Biden is president-elect.

This whole episode of our history is an embarrassment for our country, but it is also a serious threat. In light of this, the worst thing we could do, in my mind, is to “move on” and not address this threat directly — and I don’t mean by meeting violence with violence.

Fortunately, brave prosecutors will press their cases against the Trump organization and Donald Trump after he leaves the safe haven provided by the White House. I still believe that after he has preemptively pardoned everyone he wants to pardon, including his children, that he will step down, saying he wants to “honor” Mike Pence by giving him the opportunity to be president, whereupon President Pence will preemptively pardon Donald Trump to “put the baseless charges against him behind us.”

But pardoning Trump from federal crimes doesn’t lessen the many crimes he can be charged with by DAs such as New York’s Cyrus Vance, who this week won another victory in court to obtain financial records from the Trump Organization.

It has already been reported by the New York Times that our ex-president has $400 million in personal debts coming due in the next four years. We now know how he’s planning to pay some or most of those debts — by continuing to raise funds promoting conspiracy theories that he himself probably doesn’t believe but his gullible supporters do believe because he is voicing them. As I wrote in my Nov. 26 column, his actions in doing so make it clearer than ever that he puts his own interest ahead of the country’s — that it was always “Trump First,” not “American First.”

It’s really a sad and pathetic unraveling of his presidency, and I believe the unraveling needs to be documented and that Americans need to pay attention to it. If Germany could do it, so can the United States. Let’s learn from this history so we never repeat it.

As Trump's Path to Election Success Vaporizes, His More Extreme Supporters Get More Desparate and Violent

The following three paragraphs from Heather Cox's Richardson's overnight newsletter hint and the desparation and violence we can expect between now and January 20th:

The lies about the election spread by Trump and his loyalists are radicalizing Republican true believers, according to security officials and terrorism researchers. They worry that fringe conspiracy theories are going mainstream. Polls suggest that 77% of Trump supporters believe that Biden stole the election—although there is no evidence of fraud—and officials worry those true believers are turning to violence.

Elizabeth Neumann, who resigned from her job as Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy at the Department of Homeland Security in April out of concerns that Trump was exacerbating right-wing violence, noted that “the conservative infotainment sector makes money off… outrage.” Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who was a senior adviser in the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council, agreed with others that Trump is promoting radicalism by spreading conspiracies and disinformation. "Leadership matters," she said. "It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization. And it will really help when that is no longer the case."

In Houston, Texas, today [Tuesday, Dec. 15], police arrested a former police department captain for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in a misguided attempt to foil a massive voter fraud scheme. Sixty-three-year-old Mark Anthony Aguirre claimed to be part of a citizens’ group investigating voter fraud. Believing his victim was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck, Aguirre rammed the truck with his SUV and held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee in the man’s back until police came. Upon inspection, it turned out the truck was full of air conditioning parts. The district attorney, Kim Ogg, said “His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened…. [W]e are lucky no one was killed.”

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Here's a recommendation - Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter

Here are the first paragraphs of today's edition. You can subscribe at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

"The theme of the day was the palpable sense of rats leaving a sinking ship as Republicans, administration officials, and administration-adjacent people distanced themselves from the president.

"There was a foreshadowing of that exodus on Wednesday, when Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) let loose about the president in a telephone call with constituents. Sasse was an early critic of Trump but toned down his opposition significantly in the early part of the administration. On Wednesday, he reverted to his earlier position, saying he had “never been on the Trump train.” He complained about the way Trump “kisses dictators’ butts,” and went on: "The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor…. [He] mocks evangelicals behind closed doors...has treated the presidency like a business opportunity" and has "flirted with white supremacists." He said: “What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?"

Each newsletter includes links supporting every citation. Not surprising, since she's a professor of history at Boston College. She previously taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts. Here are the footnotes from today's edition of her newsletter:

Notes:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2020-10-14/william-barr-department-of-justice-doj

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/donald-trump-bill-barr-attorney-general/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/us/politics/regulatory-rush-federal-agencies-trump.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/10/16/biden-trump-townhall-ratings/

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