American democracy is under threat
["It's a Bible." Quotation and photo of then-President Trump holding a Bible in Lafayette Square featured in the New York Times June 2, 2020.]
This message is from the man whom the Christian right has rallied around. I miss the days when character mattered to these folks.
Or at least that's what they said. Remember, "by their fruits ye shall know them"?
[Image: Joe Biden hogtied from video on Donald Trump's Truth Social account.]
Donald Trump, former president, under criminal indictment in four separate jurisdictions, has reveled in attacking his perceived enemies, including members of both political parties, and particularly folks associated in his mind with his criminal and civil court cases. This week Judge Juan Merchan, presiding over the New York hush money case, slapped a gag order on Trump. While Trump's attorneys claimed the presidential candidate had the First Amendment right to unfettered criticism of his political opponents, the judge observed regarding Trump's previous screeds:
Yet these extrajudicial statements went far beyond defending himself against "attacks" by "public figures". Indeed, his statements were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating, and the targets of his statements ranged from local and federal officials, court and court staff prosecutors and staff assigned to the cases, and private individuals including grand jurors performing their civic duty. The consequences of those statements included not only fear on the part of the individual targeted, but also the assignment of increased security resources to investigate threats and protect the individuals and family members thereof. Such inflammatory extrajudicial statements undoubtedly risk impeding the orderly administration of this Court.
Judge Merchan's gag order did not include himself, the prosecutor, or their families; Trump then posted a series of posts attacking the judge's daughter.
Step back to consider: a former president is attacking the daughter of a judge on social media. (Examples: one, two, three. It's hardly a surprise that the basis of the attacks is questionable.) She has, of course, nothing to do with the case. The ranting aims to divert attention from the former president's own culpability and to discredit the judiciary. And Trump's unhinged rhetoric has proven to put people in danger with real world threats and actual violence from folks under the MAGA spell.
On Friday, U. S. District Judge Reggie Walton (appearing on CNN) spoke out about his concerns regarding Trump's attacks, explaining that "it’s very disconcerting to have someone making comments about a judge. It’s particularly problematic when those comments are in the form of a threat, especially if they’re directed to ones family. I mean, we do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law. And the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of physical harm."
Judge Walton (appointed to the federal bench by both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush) has experienced threats in the past. (They have increased dramatically since January 6 cases began landing in his court.) Once a threat to himself was followed the next day by a threat to his daughter, by name, and mention of his home address -- so someone "had done some research" -- though no physical harm came in that instance. He noted that other judges, whose children and other family members have been killed by litigants, were not as fortunate.
I think it’s important in order to preserve our democracy that we maintain the rule of law. And the rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are in fact enforced and that the laws are, you know, applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse. And I think it’s important that as judges we speak out and, you know, say things in reference to things that conceivably are going to impact on the process – because if we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently, then we have tyranny. And I don’t think that that would be good for the future of our country and the future of democracy in our country.
The same day, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig (appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by Bush the elder) assailed Trump's attacks on X/Twitter: "The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man – the former President of the United States." He continued:
In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgiveable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.
Later on MSNBC, Judge Luttig elaborated on the institutional harm brought by Trump's attacks:
We all have to understand that the first time that the former president began his attacks, vicious attacks on the federal courts and the state courts and their individual judges, his objective was to delegitimize those courts. So that when and if they ruled against him in the various matters that he’s been charged with, then at least his followers, if not a good part of the nation, would dismiss those rulings against him as having been politically inspired and motivated.
In particular, in most of these instances, politically inspired by President Joe Biden and his administration, and Merritt Garland and the Department of Justice. That led into what we have today, which is the fact that the former president is now actually campaigning for the presidency again on the delegitimization of America’s institutions of democracy and law. Now he’s the only one at the moment claiming that those institutions are no longer legitimate. But many of his followers believe it today. And they will cast their votes in favor of Donald Trump in November on the basis that our institutions of law and democracy are no longer functioning.
That’s the tragedy. That’s the tragedy that the nation faces right now. We’ve acquiesced in that to date. Acquiesced meaning no one, not one single person in a position of responsibility to address this issue has done so. For want of courage and want of will. And until and unless we as a nation address this issue, then we’re careening toward the effective end of the rule of law in America.
Judge Luttig acknowledged that Trump has already done great damage to the nation: "As I’ve said over the past month, Donald Trump has largely succeeded in delegitimizing both America’s democracy and elections, as well as its Constitution and rule of law."
Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney also spoke out this week, warning of the danger of a second Trump term, which she suggested would be much different than his first:
I think it’s important for people to remember is the kinds of people that he will appoint. One of the things that we learned in the select committee was how often it was good and responsible, good and responsible Republican officials at the state level, also around Donald Trump, who stood up to him and said, No. And … who told him again and again, What you’re saying about these elections, what you’re saying about fraud, what you’re saying about the election having been rigged – It’s not true. They told him repeatedly and with specificity.
Those kinds of people won’t be around him again in a second term. And I think that’s also important for people to understand. He will appoint people who will do his bidding. He will appoint people – and if they are nervous about doing his bidding, he’ll offer them pardons. And he won’t, he won’t leave office. I mean, just think about – we know he tried once not to leave office. And he will have no incentive to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power and to leave office if he’s elected again.
Ms. Cheney, who served in the House leadership beside Kevin McCarthy and watched him rehabilitate Trump after initially condemning him for the violence on January 6, explains the dynamic that led elected Republicans to embrace -- and enable -- a lawless, autocratic leader.
You have some elected Republicans who believed that he would just disappear. Who thought, you know, we don’t have to speak against what he did. We don’t have to actually stand up to him because, you know, certainly he will fade away. And obviously that didn’t happen.
And I think when people look back at this time, at the history of this time, those elected officials who know the danger that he poses, who know that what he’s saying is a lie, who know that he threatens fundamentally our democratic system, but yet have enabled him and have gone along, you know they will be judged very harshly by history. Because he can’t succeed without them. And the role that they’re playing is very irresponsible and reckless and dangerous.
The elected leaders' actions convinced the Republican base. (This represents the critical failure of the Republican Party, as described by Levitsky and Ziblatt, leading to erosion of our country's democratic institutions. "Put simply, political parties are democracy's gatekeepers." The GOP didn't push back to close the door to lies and threats of violence.) Exit polls from Super Tuesday reveal 58- to 65-percent of Republican voters believed that Trump won the 2020 election. Cheney again:
I think that what we saw happen was sort of this notion Republican elected officials excused the behavior, enabled the behavior. And by doing that it sort of, it created a situation where I think voters thought, Well, you know it must not be that he’s that dangerous. Because if he were then, you know, you would have more people saying so.
And, look, I think the Republican Party leadership itself had to make a choice. Many times they were faced with a choice between, you know, doing what was right, between furthering democracy and the Constitution, or embracing Donald Trump. And they chose Donald Trump. And it’s that, that is situation that we haven’t, we have not seen before in the history of the country.
In November the country will choose. It will choose between a small-d democratic candidate, committed to the Constitution and the rule of law, and a man who has based his campaign on lies, celebrations of violence, and repudiation of our democratic institutions.
As Jonathan Chait notes, Trump's racist attacks, threats of revenge, and howls that his election losses, past and future, are illegitimate have elicited this response from the GOP establishment: his campaign is undisciplined, which is pointlessly alienating swing voters.
But Trump's strategy, in embracing insurrectionists with promises of pardons and pledging to jail opponents (while sweeping aside allies displaying insufficient zeal), is to crush out any traces of dissent within the party. His aim is clear. He is signaling to all who will heed, especially those who will serve in a second Trump administration. He won't be bound by Constitutional or legal constraints. And neither will those who do his bidding.
An effective Trumpist government has difficulty functioning under the rule of law. If Trump’s staffers and allies believe that carrying out his orders, some of them plainly illegal, will lead to prison or other punishment, they will again hesitate to follow them. That belief is one he has to stamp out, especially as he faces multiple criminal charges for his attempts to steal the election in 2020.
Colorado, among a number of states, has sought to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot based on a straightforward reading of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment -- the insurrectionist clause. Yesterday, in Trump v. Anderson, the court ruled 9-0 that no state had the authority to do so. This was a victory for the former president who strived mightily to overthrow the results of his 2020 election defeat, but the five Republican men on the court gave him (and his and their party) a bigger victory. Their decision went much further than necessary to settle the dispute at hand.
And in the course of unnecessarily deciding all of these questions when they were not even presented by the case, the five-Justice majority effectively decided not only that the former president will never be subject to disqualification, but that no person who ever engages in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States in the future will be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Disqualification Clause — as the concurrence of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson witheringly explain. -- J. Michael Luttig
The concurrence of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, objecting to the aggressive overreach of the majority, begins by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts (from the Dobbs decision): “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.” The five Republican men were intent on deciding more (as Judge Luttig noted).
Reaching aggressively well beyond necessity is a pattern with the current Republican majority on the Roberts/McConnell Court. As Nina Totenberg suggested, “You do see something of a court that on some issues is very aggressive. And you’ve seen that in other areas where there isn’t even a decision by a court, and they take the case to review it. Now that’s weird.”
Weird? Well, no. That suggests something odd or even anomalous. By seizing Occam's razor we can carve out a better explanation: partisanship. Totenberg resists asserting that the court is partisan, but partisanship provides an account that's simpler and more clarifying than weird does and is thoroughly well-supported. An explanation that fits this Republican majority like a glove.
At one time, conservative judicial principles included judicial restraint, stare decisis, and respect for the elected branches of government. That's not in fashion at this court. Not by a longshot. Instead of limiting its decision to what is necessary to dispose of the case, it went much further, as Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson write in their concurrence:
Today, the Court departs from that vital principle, deciding not just this case, but challenges that might arise in the future. In this case, the Court must decide whether Colorado may keep a Presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist and thus disqualified from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles. That is enough to resolve this case. Yet the majority goes further.
Even though “[a]ll nine Members of the Court” agree that this independent and sufficient rationale resolves this case, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, JACKSON, JJ., concurring in the judgment 2 TRUMP v. ANDERSON SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and JACKSON, JJ., concurring in judgment five Justices go on. They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy. Ante, at 13. Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.
In other words, straying from the text of the amendment and imposing a judgment unsupported by any ruling precedent, the five Republican men precluded any action based on the 14th Amendment's prohibition to disqualify Trump or any other oathbreaking insurrectionist from the ballot apart from the five-man majority's specified "appropriate legislation" by Congress. They invented this constraint. That might seem weird to the uninitiated. But we can see that it serves a partisan purpose.
The 14th Amendment states that the disqualification of insurrectionists can be overcome by a 2/3 majority vote by both the House and the Senate. The justices, yesterday, ruled that if a majority in either house can block appropriate legislation, then the insurrectionists may serve. That's a perverse result, hardly faithful to the words or intent of the 14th Amendment. (These Republican justices often ignore, dilute, or distort the Civil War amendments.)
And as we know, near the end of the McConnell era when it takes 60-votes to pass legislation in the Senate, a minority of Senators may block appropriate legislation. In the other chamber, the Republican Speaker refuses to even bring up legislation that would pass with comfortable majorities, but is opposed by his far right colleagues. Minorities in both houses can block the will of majorities. There will be no appropriate legislation anytime soon. This 5-4 decision debilitates the insurrectionist clause.
The court ruled, without a case before it, that in any future case, no other federal court could enforce the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. Even if, say, an oathbreaking insurrectionist were to be convicted of his/her actions in a court of law, no court could rule him/her off the presidential ballot. The Republican Supreme Court majority has preserved for itself the authority to decide -- ruling out of order a number of other possible paths to making a decision in a democracy, including by Congressional action (apart from "appropriate legislation" by the lights of the five Republican men) -- and ruling in a way that transparently offers an advantage to the candidate of the political party that appointed the five men in the majority.
The five-man majority is doing the bidding of the Republican Party, the party that planned and participated in the January 6 riot at the Capitol and conspired by other means over many months to overturn the 2020 election. If any elected officials participated in actions in that riot or that conspiracy, the five Republican men on the court have rendered it impossible to bar them from a ballot for president based on the insurrectionist clause.
The court reached out beyond what was necessary to decide the case in order to preclude accountability (most especially for the "petitioner," Donald Trump): "They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy."
To reiterate, this is a pattern. In another 14th Amendment case, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Roberts Court decreed that gerrymandered legislative districts that gave one political party an advantage -- no matter how extreme -- over another, passed constitutional muster, ruling that the subject was thereby removed from the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Americans were denied constitutional remedies to these undemocratic assaults on voting and elections. Like yesterday's decision, this one favored the Republican Party, which in 2024 relies heavily on voter suppression and gerrymandering to maintain its power.
The decision in Trump v. Anderson is equally outrageous. It seeks to help Donald Trump, who still refuses to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and is putting on a clinic on delay-delay-delay for escaping legal accountability for criminal conduct. The Supreme Court has invented in this case a new firewall for him -- and for any and all oathbreaking insurrectionists (who in the Trump era reside overwhelmingly in the Republican Party). In reaching beyond what was necessary to decide this case, the Republican majority has tied the hands of Trump's political opponents.
Let's step back for a minute to look at the big picture: The Republican Party, which has won the popular vote for president once in the past 20 years -- George W. Bush's 2004 victory -- increasingly relies on the courts, the unelected branch of government, to secure public policy victories. And at the top of the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court, which Republicans have packed with ideologues, increasingly places constraints on the public policy options available to elected officials and individual citizens.
In a previous post, I quoted Jan-Werner Müller's book What Is Populism? Müller describes how Fidesz, Victor Orbán's political party, crafted a partisan constitution in Hungary. The result of their efforts: "the constitution sets a number of highly specific policy preferences in stone, when debate about such preferences would have been the stuff of day-to-day political struggle in non-populist democracies. Moreover, it excluded opposition parties in a double sense: they did not take part in writing or passing the constitution, and their political goals cannot be realized in the future, since the constitution highly constrains room for policy choices. In other words, under the new regime, the constitution makers can perpetuate their power even after losing an election."
As I wrote then:
Whether or not we regard the contemporary Republican Party as populist, Republicans -- long before the Trump era -- have followed the populists' strategy described by Müller: crafting constitutional constraints and commands to favor their party and to disadvantage their political opponents. The GOP has not, of course, sought to re-write the words of the United States Constitution. Instead, the party, through capture of the courts -- and domination of the nation's highest court -- has sought to constrain opponents of the Republican agenda through wholesale reinterpretations of the constitution, creating novel constitutional rights (that advance the Republican agenda), while brushing aside well-established constitutional judgments (effectively ruling Democratic policy choices out of order).
The rulings of SCOTUS's Republican majority too often foreclose change through the political process as practiced in a democracy. Campaigns and elections (and much more) are the stuff of politics. The process ensues as the winners, determined at the ballot box, endeavor to put public policies in place to fulfill their commitments. Yet a determined 6-3 or 5-4 majority, acting with indifference to election outcomes, may short-circuit "the stuff of day-to-day political struggle" (as Müller put it) . . .
This Republican majority has shed the conservative commitment to judicial restraint and stare decisis, it has endeavored to preclude constitutional remedies to assaults on voting, elections, and legislative apportionment, and it has diminished the authority of the other two branches of government to address public policy issues.
That's not weird. That's partisan. It is also profoundly undemocratic.
The Republican majority on this Supreme Court continues to craft a partisan constitution.
Donald Trump has hitched his 2024 campaign for president on denial that he was the loser in November 2020. This is a lie. He lost by millions of votes and Biden defeated him in the Electoral College.
Trump's Department of Homeland Security reported that, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, concluded after the election, "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election." Furthermore, of the 62 lawsuits filed by January 6, 2021, Trump lost 61; the lone victory, a small one in Pennsylvania, didn't change his loss there.
The Big Lie has been oft repeated by many MAGA fanatics. The My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, has been among the most clamorous liars, going so far as to offer a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove him wrong. Someone did: a cybersecurity expert (who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020). Lindell doesn't want to pay up, but less than two weeks ago, a court ordered him to do so.
Last month a prominent election denying group, Georgia's True the Vote, admitted in court that, contrary to its claims that it could prove voter fraud, it had no evidence at all to establish this falsehood. True the Vote's lie was the basis of Dinesh D'Souza's "2000 Mules," his fraudulent 'documentary.'
Keri Lake, who continues to promote Trump's lie about 2020 also continues to deny her 2022 defeat for governor of Arizona. Steve Bannon, who acknowledged before the November 2020 election that Trump would claim voter fraud, also continues to promote Trump's 2020 lie. At CPAC last week, Bannon ranted that Joe Biden is "an illegitimate regime-head. He's a usurper . . . ." He was just getting warmed up. After pronouncing Donald Trump as among the three greatest presidents in U.S. history (with Washington and Lincoln), who is destined to "drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he declared: "Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, okay."
But Bannon has also followed Lake in denying another, more recent GOP defeat. Last month a Democrat won the special election in New York to replace Republican fabulist George Santos. This election result was entirely uncontroversial. There is no evidence of fraud. There were no claims of fraud, until Bannon, who spun a conspiracy theory to deny the result: "They stole this election in New York."
Why the lies? Because election denialism -- expressed again and again in strident terms; not just about one election, but about election after election when the GOP loses -- is critical to the authoritarian project, in which Bannon plays a leading role. He is in the vanguard of the white nationalist movement to bring down democracy.
The continual stream of lies riles up the base. Many MAGA adherents are sealed within an information bubble so they may actually believe the lies, while others don't bother with truth or falsity, they're just onboard with the fight. The lies delegitimize MAGA opponents: the "vermin," the "trash." Democratic victors are "illegitimate," "usurpers." But there's something else more fundamental:
Elections themselves are delegitimized. When the GOP loses, that's proof of fraud, of a rigged outcome, of being cheated out of victory. And proof as well that the opposition is vile, unworthy of respect, deserving the contempt that MAGA leaders heap on them. Delegitimizing elections serves to dehumanize political opponents.
Democracy depends on losers agreeing that they lost, fair and square. Accepting defeat, but striving to win the next time around. Democracy depends on regarding ones opponents as fellow Americans with whom one has differences, not as vermin or trash.
Free and fair elections are the coin of the realm for democratic governance. Deny legitimacy, refuse to concede defeat, and democracy loses. Trump, Lake, Bannon and other MAGA leaders spread their lies to undermine trust in elections.
When an angry faction of Americans loses trust in elections, then they are more likely to find recourse in illegal, even violent action. That's one lesson of January 6. It's a lesson that hasn't been lost on the evangelists of election denialism. These tribal leaders are paving the way to violence.
In December, the Justice department asked the Supreme Court to rule on Trump's immunity claim on an expedited basis. The court sat on its hands. The case went to the Sixth Circuit, where a three-judge panel ruled unanimously against Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. That decision was widely regarded as well reasoned. Moreover, most legal observers regard Trump's claims as farfetched and certainly lacking any support from the Constitution or 235 years of American history.
The Supreme Court is within its lane in deciding to weigh in on this issue, but 4 votes would have been sufficient to take the case on appeal. At least 5 votes were required to grant a stay -- freezing all activity in Judge Chutkan's courtroom on Trump's January 6 indictment.
When the court received the appeal of the Sixth Circuit judgement, it waited two weeks to respond and scheduled oral arguments for late April. A decision is not expected before June, at the earliest. This timeline makes a trial this summer or late fall, before the November election, highly unlikely (though still possible, depending on the decision and a host of other factors).
Should we suspect that the Republican-appointed justices are deliberately acting so as to aid and abet the delaying strategy of their party's presidential candidate? What else are we to think?
The Roberts Court, circa 2024, is far and away the most partisan Supreme Court in my lifetime (1950-present). Republicans hated judicial activism during the heyday of the Warren Court, but -- hey -- he was a Republican. The court's controversial decisions, from Brown v. Board of Education to Reynolds v. Sims to Miranda v. Anderson, et al., were not decisions that boosted the agenda of one party over another. Though they may have been regarded as liberal, this was the era of a Democratic Party of the Solid South. Republicans had not yet adopted the Southern Strategy and abandoned civil rights. The decisions were not partisan.
Even as recently as Bush v. Gore, when the Rehnquist court stepped in to stop the State of Florida from counting ballots and decided the 2000 presidential election, giving it to George Bush, it was not yet considered a partisan court by most observers. This, even though it was dominated by Republican-appointed justices and a Republican majority. Red vs. Blue America was just becoming a thing. Al Gore didn't hesitate to endorse the court's ruling, which he considered legit.
Those days are past. The Trump/McConnell Court has been shown to be highly partisan. Even before the Trump justices were put into place, it had become clear to conscientious observers that harmony with the agenda of the Republican Party, not strict constructionism, textualism, or original intent, most often carried the day with the court. In the Roberts era, in many controversial decisions -- District of Columbia v. Heller, Citizens United, Shelby County v. Holder, among a slew of for instances -- the GOP agenda won 5-4, with Republicans in the majority in each case. A bit later, with a change in the justices in place, the winning rulings for the GOP often became 6-3.
By 2024, the Federalist Society; dark money campaigns; scripted talking points by Republican members of Congress, FNC, and lesser conservative media; billionaires providing the taste of an oligarch's lifestyle to selected justices; the McConnell maneuvers in the Senate; and the extinction of Republican-appointees who more than rarely strayed from the party line to vote against the GOP agenda -- all this has brought us a court that is indelibly Republican. Not conservative: Republican. We can see it every term in their decisions, as they roll back precedents and, looking backward at what they imagine as a more glorious American past, impose their views on all of us who share the country today.
These justices understand the context of Trump's appeals. They know the stakes riding on his bid to return to the White House. They're not stupid. They could have acted with some alacrity so he was more likely to face a criminal trial for his bid to overturn his loss in 2020 before he goes before the voters on November 5.
They chose to act otherwise. We have every reason to assume the worst of the Republican justices. They most assuredly do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
A brief note on the attention economy:
Remember the wild plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer? Two investigative reporters, who have been covering the story since it happened, discovered over time that it was "more complicated" than it had first seemed. This, because "an informant and one FBI agent were charged with crimes, another was accused of perjury, and a third was found promoting a private security firm." Did the extremists arrested for the plot pose an actual threat, or were they egged on by undercover agents and at least a dozen confidential informants?
Tucker Carlson and others on the right saw "a setup by the government" and leapt from there to a grand deep state conspiracy. The reporters, who describe painstakingly developing sources over several years to learn what was going on, are more circumspect, more closely connected to actual evidence. Describing a possible setup in Michigan doesn't entail losing oneself down an ideological rabbit hole. Some of their sources and erstwhile fans on the right were baffled, as one of the reporters explains (using a concept, the attention economy, that explains much of the appeal of the web):
There were a couple of moments where people on the right had taken that story and twisted it to fit their narrative. They would say things that I didn’t agree with, and I would challenge them on it. They’re DMing me and one of them expressed a genuine bewilderment and surprise that I didn’t agree with her. She’s like, “You and Jessica have done such amazing work on this story. How could you not believe that the whole thing was a dry run for Jan. 6? How could you not understand that this was part of the deep-state conspiracy?” She wasn’t trolling me. She genuinely was flustered and couldn’t understand why I didn’t see that. To me, it was a little glimpse into the way that the attention economy perverts these stories. This woman massively built up her social media profile based on ranting about this case for two years. And the way she talked about it has evolved and evolved to the point that it became just crazy talk. [My italics.]
Although I don't recall hearing the phrase 'attention economy' before, the idea is familiar. Our attention is a limited resource. We can only spend a finite number of hours on the web. Social media sites that make money on advertising, or have something to sell you directly, have strong incentives to keep you online -- to view the ads, to make online purchases, to increase your commitment day by day. To keep you coming back for more. Sophisticated algorithms play on human nature to hook you.
Once you're caught and looking at the same constellation of websites every day, you lose sight of alternative sources of information and broader perspectives. FBI abuses in a criminal case become an all-pervasive deep state conspiracy. Eventually, what you say becomes "just crazy talk."
The same principles of the attention economy that apply to the web are also applicable to Fox News Network and its cable rivals. Spend enough time there (while excluding dissonant points of view) and you'll end up uttering crazy talk.
Just days before the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis complained that conservative media, led by Fox News, were intent on pleasing their viewers (and readers) to keep ratings (and clicks) and profits high, which affected the network's (and websites') coverage of political issues. In other words, though DeSantis would be loathe to admit this: the conservative media's coverage is far from the standards that traditional journalism aspires to.
"He's got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media. Fox News, the websites, all this stuff. They just don’t — they don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”
Well, the guv hasn't changed his mind. From yesterday's Tampa Bay Times, reporting on remarks made by DeSantis to a small group of donors:
DeSantis said the conservative media’s “business model just doesn’t work if they offer any criticism of Trump,” according to NBC.
“I mean, he said at some point he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote,” DeSantis said. “Well, I think he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the conservative media wouldn’t even report on it that it had happened.”
That observation accurately critiques FNC et al. and the Trump cult that the Republican Party has become.
"Welcome to the end of democracy. We're here to overthrow it completely.
We didn't get all the way there on January 6, but we'll endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here"—holds up a necklace with a cross. "We will replace it with this, right here." -- Jack Posobiec at the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 22, 2024.
Posobiec, who regards Roger Stone as a mentor, "has worked with a global network of extreme far-right and pro-authoritarian figures in his activism." He "has collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites for years, while producing propaganda that Trump and his inner circle have publicly celebrated." The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has reported on his activities, credits him as perhaps "the most active spreader of disinformation among all internet performers in the far-right social media ecosystem." He is deeply involved in spreading conspiracy theories, disinformation, and Russian intelligence-linked propaganda. (These quotations are from a report by the SPLC; this link provides a wealth of additional details about Posobiec's activities and connections.)
Steve Bannon, who moderated the panel that included Posobiec at CPAC, laughed and responded, "All right. Amen," after Posobiec spoke.
They were both smiling, but it is not a joke. Posobiec believes that a Christian-led nation, even by a man hardly emblematic of Christ (and followers whose views are antithetical to the Gospel), is preferable to a democratic republic. They couldn't be more serious. Their views are steeped in white nationalism. They are prepared to overthrow America's democratic institutions to get their way.
“It’s time for real Christians to stand up and take this country back. … This country is not ours. This country is his. He is king. God is king. Christ is king. And, the minute we get that back, we get our country back.”
National Security, Vladimir Putin, and the MAGA Republican Party
One of Donald Trump's 'sir' stories, which casts doubt on its veracity, nonetheless clearly expresses his contempt for our NATO allies. If Trump were to decide that an ally wasn't pulling its weight, and that country was attacked by Russia, Trump would encourage Putin's troops:
"I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want."
This is Trump, playing the tough guy, while sidling up to Vladimir Putin. The NATO alliance has protected European democracies for 75 years, first as a defense against the U.S.S.R., later against an authoritarian Russia intent on seizing the territory of its sovereign neighbors.
Trump has often sided with Putin. When Putin was described as a killer, Trump responded, "There are a lot of killers. There are a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?" In Helsinki he accepted Putin's word over the U.S. intelligence community regarding election interference. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be." And Trump's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was, "This is genius." He admired Putin's misdirection in declaring Ukraine "independent" and pledging to "keep the peace": "You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
Since Trump has come to dominate the Republican Party, the bipartisan consensus on American leadership in the world has disintegrated. The GOP has fallen in line, while unconvincingly dismissing the significance of the capitulation. Senator Lindsey Graham responded to Trump's remarks on NATO: “Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump", adding, “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody." While Senator Marco Rubio said, “I have zero concern, because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance."
The murder of Alexei Navalny
The murder of Putin's critics and rivals is nothing new. In February 2015, Boris Nemtsov -- a politician who advocated increasing political and civil freedom in open opposition to Putin and was organizing against a military incursion into Ukraine -- was assassinated, shot four times from the back as he crossed a bridge in Moscow. Many of Putin's opponents have suffered violent deaths, both in Russia and abroad. Guns, nerve agents, radioactive tea, falls from high buildings, and airplane crashes have silenced them.
“In the years since Nemtsov was murdered, Russia has transformed — to use the language of political science — from a dictatorship of deception to a dictatorship of fear and then, after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, into an outright dictatorship of terror, akin to the one that exerted an iron grip on the Soviet Union for much of the 20th century." -- Alexander Baunov
In recent years, Alexi Navalny has been Putin's most prominent political opponent. His story is a familiar one. The most recent chapter: Navalny's death in a Siberian gulag. By poisoning in all likelihood. While many prominent political leaders across the globe immediately denounced the death and laid the blame on Russia's dictator, Donald Trump was silent for several days. Then this, a lame comparison of his losses in court (where he is finally being held accountable) with the "sudden death" of the courageous opponent of a ruthless dictator:
This fatuous drivel was repackaged for Fox News. "It's a form of Navalny."
While a number of Republican elected officials have condemned Navalny's killing, this hasn't stopped the party from blocking American aid to Ukraine, which -- without further help from the United States -- is literally running out of ammunition to repel the Russians.
All-in with Russian propaganda
Meanwhile, House Republicans' efforts to gin-up a presidential impeachment inquiry were dealt a blow when the source of what they regarded as the critical evidence against the president was charged by the Hunter Biden special counsel with lying to the FBI by passing along disinformation from Russian intelligence officials. The court filing reveals that Alexander Smirnov's lies continue, as he “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”
In other words, Russian interference in U.S. elections, ongoing by 2016, is continuing. Smirnov's disinformation has fueled the cynical impeachment inquiry, while other sources (including a number of criminals) of Republican talking points have had ties to Russian intelligence. Putin and the GOP often walk in lockstep.
Conservative media universe meets Comedy Central
Why? How have MAGA conservatives come to admire a brutal Russian dictator? Jon Stewart, on a Comedy Central television series, has provided a clear, crisp, solidly truthful answer.
This month Tucker Carlson, fired from Fox News, regained a spot in the limelight with an exclusive interview with Putin -- what Politico called a "2-hour love-in with the Russian president." Carlson also played the oh-so-impressed visitor in Russia. In the pre-Trump, pre-MAGA era this would be baffling. Today, while easy to lampoon, it is hardly inexplicable.
Stewart critiqued Carlson's broadcast, which (as he explained) sought to portray life in Russia as not so much different from life in the U.S. -- and perhaps a bit better (because of Russian subway stations, shopping carts, escalator ramps, wonderfully smelling bread, and cheaper grocery prices). What Carlson failed to acknowledge, Stewart highlighted via a clip from the CBS morning news, showing scenes of Russians, placing flowers at makeshift memorials, being dragged away and arrested as screams are heard: "In Vladimir Putin's Russia, political repression is everywhere. And hundreds have been arrested for daring to honor Navalny so publicly."
Stewart explained why Carlson is so diligently engaged in his duplicitous project: "It's because the old civilizational battle was communism versus capitalism. That's what drove the world since World War II. Russia was the enemy then. But now they think the battle is woke versus unwoke. And in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right. He's their friend."
And that, of course, is why Hungary's Viktor Orbán, known for slowly, methodically snuffing out institutions that have preserved democracy in Hungary, has become a conservative icon. As Hungary has become more authoritarian and less free, MAGA Republicans have rallied around him. Although Trump's expressions of admiration have been confused at times (“He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”), Republicans have followed his lead. Carlson first among them. CPAC as well.
The contemporary Republican Party has ceased to cherish freedom at home or abroad. The party has become enamored with undemocratic strongmen who impose traditional values (where one ethnic group rules over others, and men over women). It has deliberately chosen to reject democratic governance if it cannot win free and fair elections. While past Republican icons, such as Ronald Reagan, celebrated immigrants, the party now fears them.
The Christian right, dominated by white evangelicals, espouses a contorted view of religious freedom (a concept formed only by severing the establishment clause from the First Amendment) -- for itself, never mind other faiths or philosophies. The Dobbs decision, which stems from a religious view, is the first of many to come. Texas has led the way in suppressing a woman's right to make medical decisions regarding pregnancy, even when her life is at stake. The Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding "extrauterine children," a decision that said frozen embryos have the same rights as living children (while as a result women have fewer), is the latest assault. The concurring opinion of Alabama's chief justice is revealing.
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.
“Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”
The GOP circa 2024, sad to say, has quite an agenda. Come November, I don't believe a majority of Americans will endorse it.