F - As in Fascism |
At a CNN Town Hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked by Anderson Cooper if she thought Donald Trump was a fascist.
“You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” To that question, Harris point blank stated, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”
Cooper’s question didn’t come out of the blue. Earlier in the day the New York Times and the Atlantic Magazine posted news accounts with former Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired U.S. Marine Corps general John Kelly said he believed the Republican candidate for president “met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”
Kelly also asserted that the former President:
Had spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler more than once,
Expressed a desire to have generals like Hitler’s, and
Believed military generals should be loyal to him above all else — including the Constitution.
.
Other former administration officials were quoted or named as sources for similar accusations in media accounts throughout the day.
This was a big deal. This F-word has been used in non-historical reporting less often than the other F-word.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg:
“It’s one thing for some leftist group to call you a fascist. Quite another when it’s a fellow Republican. And absolutely astonishing when it’s your own chief of staff.”
Now there is a candidate for president whose privileged existence has enabled him to embrace a philosophy rooted in the foundational premise of fascism, that some men are better than others and have the right and even the duty to rule over the majority. In case you haven’t noticed, Donald Trump really does think he’s better than the rest of us.
I can only hope that candidate Kamala Harris’ characterization of Gen. Kelly’s observations as a “911 call to the American people” breaks through all the noise and misinformation being aimed at the American people.
I strongly suspect that the rumor running wild on social media in the hours following the characterization of Trumps as a fascist was a ruse to push aside the story.
To wit: there was supposed to be a video –just about to be released– of Trump groping the daughter of a major donor at a recent event. It hasn’t been released and won’t be, I’d bet. And the credibility of critics on the Democratic side of things has been compromised. It’s a win-win for Putin’s disinformation campaign.
A credible story about a woman being pawed at by the candidate years ago after being “presented” by Jeffrey Epstein landed about the same time, adding to the noise level, and I’m sure it also played a role as the next shiny thing for the media to chase after, even if it wasn’t disinformation.
Meanwhile, the storyline of Trump being not suited for the Oval Office is continuing to be used in the Harris campaign in rallies.
Trump is “increasingly unstable,” Harris said, “and unfit to serve…. [T]he people who know Donald Trump best, the people who worked with him in the White House, in the Situation Room, in the Oval Office, all Republicans by the way, who served in his administration, his former chief of staff, his national security advisor, former secretaries of defense, and his vice president have all called him unfit and dangerous. They have said explicitly he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States. They have said he should never again serve as President of the United States,” she said.
When Trump talks about “the enemy within,” Harris said, “ [h]e's talking about the American people. He's talking about journalists, judges, nonpartisan election officials…. And he's going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution. Creating an enemies list.” In contrast, she said, she would have a “to-do list” to work on the things that matter to the American people.
Via Dan Pfeiffer:
Blueprint, a Democratic research organization, tested closing argument messages. The following was the best testing message:
Nearly half of Donald Trump’s cabinet have refused to endorse him. When Trump learned during the Capitol riot that his supporters were threatening to kill his own vice president, he said ‘so what?’ and refused to do anything to ensure the vice president was safe. Republican governors, senators, and House members have all said the same thing: we can’t give Trump another four years as president.
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There’s another storyline emerging that’s both familiar and concerning, namely that Donald Trump will claim victory no matter what the voters and/or the Electoral College say.
Early voting has brought to light an elaborate network of self-appointed election police bound and determined to find fraud–or at least get media coverage about allegations. Groups involved include: United Sovereign Americans, True the Vote (VoterAlert app), an Election Integrity Community” page on Elon Musk’s platform X, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
The Wall Street Journal’s review of documents filed with the Federal Election Commission and the IRS found a secretive network of GOP donors and conservative billionaires giving more than $140 million to nearly 50 loosely connected groups working on so-called election integrity.
The effort will encompass
“scrutinizing voter registrations on an industrial scale and working to slow down the vote count, bury local election officials in paperwork and lawsuits and elect like-minded politicians at the state and local levels who will support efforts to contest the vote.”
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So there will be an ever-louder chorus of voter fraud claims, like the one in North Carolina claiming that Federal Emergency Management Agency employees responding to the storm damage were actually there as part of a “ballot stuffing” scheme intended to swing the election. The post alleged FEMA would use stockpiles of donations “as a cover to bring absentee ballots” in with tractor trailers. (Needless to say, this has been proven false)
A Washington Post analysis has concluded:
…“nearly half of Republican candidates for Congress or top state offices have used social media to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election.”
“From Nov. 9, 2022, to Oct. 11, at least 236 Republican candidates posted or amplified a range of falsehoods or misinformation about election malfeasance. Many candidates baselessly accused Democrats of trying to sway the election through former president Donald Trump’s court cases or by registering noncitizens to vote. Others falsely likened Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination to a ‘coup’ or promoted misinformation about voter fraud.”
On election night, regardless of what the vote count is, Donald Trump is going to claim victory. The reality is that if it is a close election as predicted it will take days or even weeks to determine election results. This is a natural byproduct of state authorities being careful to correctly tabulate large amounts of ballots.
The Washington Post also got their hands on leaked Russian documents about a former Florida sheriff’s deputy living in Russia working directly with the Kremlin to produce deepfakes and misinformation targeting the Harris campaign
“Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee TIM WALZ … Since September 2023, posts, articles and videos generated by Dougan and some of the Russians who work with him have garnered 64 million views.”
The lead story in the New York Times today also focused on the overwhelming amount of misinformation being aimed at Americans. High on my personal list of bullshittery sources is Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Times notes:
Mr. Musk also, according to a recent study, played an outsize role in amplifying content promoted by Tenet Media, a news outlet that the Justice Department accused last month of covertly using $10 million in laundered funds from Russia to pay right-wing media personalities like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin.
It is not clear whether Mr. Musk knew of the Russian links — the influencers claimed they did not. He certainly engaged regularly with Tenet Media’s content, though, and Tenet regularly tagged him, presumably to draw his attention, according to the study, published by Reset Tech, a nonprofit research and policy organization based in London.
At least 70 times from September 2023 to September 2024, he responded to or shared accounts linked to Tenet and its influencers to his followers on X — many of them relating to this year’s election, the study found.
My personal attitude about all this noise is driven by lessons I learned as a 3x cancer survivor, namely: put one foot in front of the other every day and don’t be distracted by things you can’t control.
Besides confusing people, misinformation can serve as a wellspring for despair–but only if you let it.
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News You Outta Know
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America's absurd war on 'organized retail crime' - Target and CVS call them criminal masterminds. Most are homeless or mentally ill - via Amy Martyn at Business Insider
Despite all the effort spent prosecuting it, there's virtually no concrete evidence that retail theft — organized or otherwise — is on the rise. Data on retail theft provided to law enforcement and lawmakers comes exclusively from corporate retailers, or organizations funded by them, and is not independently vetted. Last year, the National Retail Federation was forced to retract its claim that organized retail theft cost its members "nearly half" of the $94.5 billion in lost inventory in 2021. One researcher put the actual figure closer to 5%. Even the guy who says he coined the term "organized retail crime" can't say how much is lost to it. "Nobody knows and probably will never know," says Read Hayes, who founded the industry-funded nonprofit Loss Prevention Research Council after retailers recruited him to back their anti-theft campaign with research. "It's like measuring the wind."
That hasn't stopped major retailers from blaming organized theft for their post-pandemic store closures. Victoria's Secret, which shuttered 250 stores in 2020, said last year that organized retail crime was "a significant component of the shrinkage we experience." But lost inventory is far from the company's biggest problem. Its market share has been dwindling for years. Investors and analysts blame the decline on the death of shopping malls, the company's out-of-touch marketing campaigns, and the public-relations crisis sparked by the close ties between the CEO of its former parent company and Jeffrey Epstein.
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Milei is taking a chainsaw to the state (Argentina’s version of Donald Trump) by Federico Rivas Molina, Mar Centenera and Javier Lorca at El Pais
Since December 10, 2023 — the day he was sworn in as president — Milei has shuttered 13 ministries and fired some 30,000 public employees, the equivalent to almost 10% of the federal workforce. He has also frozen public works and reduced the funds that are allocated to education, health, scientific research and pensions. The budgetary cuts have been especially hard on infrastructure (-74%), education (-52%), social development (-60%), healthcare (-28%) and federal assistance to the provinces (-68%).
In this scenario of widespread cuts, however, funds for the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) have grown by 216% since January of 2024 in year-over-year terms. And almost $350 million has been invested in the purchase of fighter planes.
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A beautiful gilded cage - The truth about Melania Trump that we don’t want to see -by Lyz at Men Yell At Me
Melania Trump defends her husband and ignores the truths that would contradict her narrative. Like her husband, she is both the victim and the hero. She is a long-suffering servant to her adopted country who has, in her view, never done anything wrong. If you think she has, well you are the cancel mob. You are “the media,” you are an enemy. You are the aide who didn’t vet her speech.
Coverage of Melania’s book has asked whether she’s using this moment as an attempt to distance herself from her husband. But this book isn’t a separation; it’s a continued pledge of loyalty. Other interpretations are condescending, infantilizing. Writing in 2017, Stassa Edwards noted, “Melania Trump is hardly a stand-in for American women, she is neither a victim nor is she lacking agency. Rather she’s an active participant working to construct Donald Trump’s narrative, readily available to put a gauzy domestic veil on his racism and misogyny. Melania Trump doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”
That’s true to this day. But I would argue that in some ways Melania is a stand-in for American women, specifically the white women who support Donald Trump.
