Trump fatigue is real, but he cannot be ignored

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at the Waukesha County Expo Center in Wisconsin.

By Jessica Sutherland for Daily Kos

Walter Einenkel contributed to this story.

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday, May 05, 2024 at 5:00:11p MDT 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

It’d be understandable to want to skip right past this story, which explores the bizarre speech Donald Trump gave in Wisconsin on Wednesday night, a rare day off from his criminal election interference trial in Manhattan. The politician Trump has been unavoidable for nine years now, and at every turn, he gets worse. 

And Wednesday night was no exception. Hot off nine contempt of court violations and a disastrous Time magazine interview that he surely thought went very well, Trump continues to spiral. But as President Joe Biden begged at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the media must cover the realities of the threat Trump presents, not just the gaffes or the horse race polling. Those on the right side of history must expose the dangers and avoid the cynical amusement that contributed to Trump’s 2016 win. He cannot be ignored. To pay attention to what he’s saying at rallies—and how well it’s received—is a duty voters all share as the fight heats up to defeat him once and for all in November.

Because as awful as he sounds to so many Americans, he sounds wonderful to others. Americans suffering from Trump fatigue ignore him at the peril of themselves, their communities, and the nation. And people cannot fight the enemy they do not know. 

“America ain’t so great right now,” Trump told his fawning crowd, insisting the nation is “a laughingstock around the world.” It’s not a new refrain, but it’s a necessary one to ensure his movement’s MAGA acronym—Make America Great Again—makes sense. Voters must believe the nation under Biden, and Barack Obama before him, is in steep decline to believe that Trump is its savior. 

That terrifying prospect is what Trump needs to maintain to hold on to his dwindling base, much less grow it: the fear of a dying America that only he can save.

And so he fearmongers vaguely about Bidenomics and in deceptive detail about immigrants, who he insists are terrorists moving into suburban and rural neighborhoods. (“Congratulations,” he offered as a sarcastic aside).

He laments student debt relief while vaguely promising a similar effort. He praises toppling Roe v. Wade while telling his devotees it’s what everyone always wanted and only he gave it to them.

And amid all of it, he still insists the 2020 election was stolen. But perhaps the most telling thing about Trump’s speech isn’t what Trump said, but how people in the crowd responded. They cheered and they booed when Trump expected them to. They clapped and they screamed, they faded to silence and bated breath like orange clockwork. Trumpism is alive and well, folks, and it’s not just treading water—it’s spreading. 

And to ignore what this man is saying, six months out? That’s an overcorrection from the mistakes of 2016. And that’s how Trump wins. 

And that requires every one of us exposing them when they arise from the hellish depths of the Trump mind. 

Trump says states can monitor pregnant women

Abortion rights activists rally outside the Supreme Court, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington.

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 4:45:18p MDT

  

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

Donald Trump can't stop the abortion policy fallout he kicked into high gear earlier this month when he declared states should be the ultimate arbiters on reproductive freedom and the bodily autonomy of pregnant Americans. 

In a new interview with Time magazine's Eric Cortellessa, Trump dodged questions about whether he would sign a national abortion ban, okayed the idea of monitoring pregnant women, and revisited the possibility of prosecuting anyone who gets abortion care.

Asked specifically about the prospect of state governments monitoring women’s pregnancies, Trump was indifferent. 

"I think they might do that,” he said. “Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”

Ankle monitors for pregnant women? Sure, why not? It's open season at the state level. 

"The states are going to make those decisions," Trump said.

Except, of course, when a draconian law generates really bad press that could kill Trump's presidential bid, like in Arizona.

Mere days after he first backed so-called "states' rights" on abortion, Trump began pressuring Republican state lawmakers to do something about their Civil War-era abortion ban that might cost him the 2024 election.

While talking to Time, however, Trump didn't register the same concern about monitoring pregnant women or even punishing people who have abortions.

Pressed on whether he would be comfortable with “states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit,” Trump responded, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions."

Congratulations to Trump for making his 2016 remark that "there has to be some form of punishment" for pregnant Americans who have abortions extremely relevant again.

Trump bobbing and weaving repeatedly on questions concerning reproductive rights brought into relief yet again the peril he faces in unleashing anti-abortion zealots in GOP-led states to fashion the most restrictive, punitive, and life-threatening policies regarding abortion care. 

The attack ads practically write themselves: a patient on a gurney getting slapped with an ankle monitor as they are told they are pregnant; a tearful mother flashing back to an ER tragedy as it's revealed that she is sitting behind bars. These scenarios are no longer hyperbole amid Republicans' dystopian regulations on abortion, and they are there for the taking.   

Letting the states decide was never the silver bullet Trump and his campaign imagined it would be. He owns all of these state bans now, and the horrors they have unleashed will keep the issue percolating in the presidential contest straight into November. 

Trump might be all over the place on abortion, criticizing some laws while claiming state prerogative on others. But the bottom line is: Nothing is off the table, as he very clearly demonstrated in the Time interview. 

He might sign a national abortion ban, or not. He might be just fine with pregnant women wearing ankle monitors, and he might watch passively as states prosecute Americans who have abortions—even those undertaken to protect their health, their lives, and their families.

Who knows what will come under a Trump administration. Or as Trump is fond of saying: We'll see.

The NRA is falling apart, and the gun cult may finally be going with it

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff 

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 at 3:30:10p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

It would be hard to find an organization more corrupt and incompetent than the NRA, though a few individuals on a certain court sure come to mind. In January, chief executive Wayne LaPierre ended three decades of control when he resigned ahead of a trial over tapping organization funds to treat himself to yacht trips, African safaris, and regular use of a private jet. In February, that trial ended with LaPierre being ordered to pay back almost $4.4 million. 

In the wake of LaPierre’s resignation, the organization has reportedly descended into infighting. Finding a new leader has proven so difficult that not even Donald Trump Jr., who spent years talking himself up as the NRA’s next leader, is willing to take the job. Or at least, he says he wouldn’t, though no one has actually asked him to step in.

Leadership aside, the NRA now has only a fraction of the funds they had to sling around in past election seasons. They’ve declined from the $50 million they put into races in 2016 to only $11 million in their PAC and SuperPAC combined as of the last filing. Membership is also down by over a million, to around five million, which is half the goal LaPierre set for 2023 a decade ago. 

And that’s not all that’s declined. So have gun sales. So what does that mean for the gun lobby?

GOP candidates routinely place guns right next to God in their campaign material, and Republican Christmas cards feature every family member clutching a ridiculous weapon.

Rep. Thomas Massie’s 2023 Christmas card.  How very sick.

But it appears that Republican members of Congress aren’t putting enough guns in the hands of their adolescent children. According to the FBI, gun sales in the United States have declined for three straight years. The Trace estimates that Americans bought 665,000 fewer guns in 2023 than in 2022. That trend is continuing. Comparing year-over-year data, sales in March of 2024 were down 5% from the same month in 2023. 

There are reasons other than the declining influence of the NRA for that drop in sales. The truth is only about 6% of Americans hunt, and even for them an expensive assault weapon is rarely, if ever, the right tool. While an AR-15-style weapon may be the perfect tool for war, it’s a poor choice for personal defense. 

Buying guns like the trendy AR-15 can be an expensive hobby, especially for those who don’t use them beyond a temporary enthusiasm for the local gun range. A $650 Yeti cooler may at least contribute to a tailgate party, but a $1,000 assault rifle is just an expensive—and dangerous—decoration for the vast number of those who own them. 

In short, not every gun buyer goes on to be the industry's serial-killing dream customer. Many may not be inclined to buy another copy of a weapon they aren’t using, no matter how many guns Massie or Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert have on their Christmas cards.

With the NRA fading, there are other gun lobby groups working to gain more influence. However, none of them seem to have the level of influence, extensive finances, and highly effective lobbyists that the NRA had a few years ago. Those other organizations haven’t spent decades nurturing relationships with both politicians and deep-pocketed donors. The decline of the NRA seems like a genuine moment of weakness in the pro-gun lobby.

There is certainly no shortage of Republican-dominated state legislatures standing by to pass stupid laws. But hopefully, it doesn't matter how tightly Republicans dig in their cold, dead fingers. America may have passed Peak Gun.

But of course that doesn’t mean it’s time to relax about gun control legislation. It means that it’s time to push harder.

ABOVE: The way guns used to be back when the Second Amendment was passed.

BELOW: The way it is today, with gun nuts saying that Second Amendment still applies.

 

Kristi Noem's story of murdering her dog keeps getting worse and worse

 

Canine killer Kristi hangin' with the Donald.

Republicans can go pretty low, but this is a new bottom 

By Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, April 29, 2024 at 12:00:14p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Kristi Noem has done plenty of terrible things as governor of South Dakota. That includes disregarding COVID-19 safety rules and being among the first to treat the whole pandemic as a political opportunity. No pencil-pushing scientist was going to tell her what to do, even if that meant citizens in South Dakota had to be airlifted out of state for treatment due to overcrowding.

She’s banned from visiting 10% of the land in her own state because of her continuous disrespect for Native Americans. She insists on staging fireworks displays in the middle of a drought. And she’s currently being sued after doing a commercial for a cosmetic dentist in Texas to pay for her new set of teeth.

With all that, Noem had still barely made a dent in the national news until she told a grisly story of how she shot a family dog and tossed its body in a gravel pit when it failed to perform to her satisfaction. But just because she’s been revealed as an empathy-deprived monster, don’t assume that she’s not at the top of Donald Trump’s shortlist for vice president.

In 2008, I bundled our 17-year-old golden retriever named Tigger into my arms and took her to the vet. Tigger’s parents had been national champions with more initials after their names than a Harvard professor, but she had been born deaf, making her poorly suited for the whistles and voice commands of retriever trials and agility training. Instead, she came home with us, a tiny yellow fuzzball, to be my son’s dog through every level of school, steal slices of pizza from the table, and shed small mountains of yellow fur.

At 17, she was a two-time cancer survivor, missing her tail and with long surgical scars. Now the cancer was back again. For once, she didn’t even want a potato chip. She had been in pain for weeks, trembling, incontinent, and losing weight. But once we were in the room at the vet, she seemed to understand what was going on. She stood up straight, wagged her little nub of a tail, and gave me a look that said, “I’m fine. Let’s go home.”

That was, without a doubt, one of the hardest days of my life. I can’t think of it without worrying that I did something unforgivably wrong. 

A lot of people have stories like mine, which can make Noem’s casual admission about shooting her dog Cricket because it failed to meet her performance standards nothing short of horrifying. Truthfully, it sounds like Cricket was a hoot, and the fact that Noem’s child asked about Cricket the moment she stepped off the school bus certainly suggests that this was more than just one of a pack of hunting dogs that hung around the Noem farm.

Following Rolling Stone’s story about Noem’s book, there have been reactions, and reactions to those reactions. That includes Noem defending herself by pointing out that she didn’t just shoot a dog and a goat, she also put down three horses. On Sunday, Noem issued a statement saying that “South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down.” What she means by this is that Noem was silly enough to load an untrained dog into a truck and take it straight into the middle of a bunch of chickens. However, the operative word of that South Dakota law is “can.” Noem didn’t have to shoot the dog, she decided to shoot the dog. Because giving it proper training and attention was too much bother.

 What Noem did to Cricket is reminiscent of what Trump did to the Grand Ole Party.

That wasn’t her only incomprehensible decision. It’s bad enough that Noem took this action in making her life simpler by murdering an animal that depended on her. But what may be of equal importance is that Noem chose to tell this story. She may now be complaining that “some people are upset about a 20 year old story,” but she’s the one who decided to lift this incident out of her life and plop it on a page.

Did she think that people would not be upset? Did she think this would be seen as an example of her South Dakota toughness? The simple decision to tell this story, along with the way she told it, shows that her perceptions are badly skewed.

At Semafor, one Republican brushes Noem off as a lightweight and says they don’t want a “Kamala problem” (they wish), but anyone who thinks this incident is going to knock Noem from the list of Trump’s VP potentials should think again.

Noem may open her tale of pet murder by saying “I hated that dog”—which more than a little undercuts her excuses—but she’s not alone in that feeling. As GQ noted back in 2020, Trump also hates all dogs. When Trump wants to insult someone, he compares them to a dog. When he wants to demean someone’s death, he says they died like a dog. “In Trump’s tiny mind,” writes GQ, “dogs are venal, treacherous creatures.”

Trump isn’t going to throw Noem away over a dog. He may even give her a gold star. Because what Noem has generated is a lot of discussion and a metric shit-ton of disgust. She’s identified one of those things that would seem to be beyond the boundary of acceptable behavior.

You know, like insulting prisoners of war. Or demeaning Gold Star families. Or attacking the children of a judge.

Trump loves to find those boundaries and rip them apart. He revels in his ability to convince his followers to join in the destruction. It’s not hard to see Trump loving Noem’s story of dog murder. 

It may even make him a little jealous.

Judging from how babies feel about the Donald, a dog probably wouldn't be safe around him either.  And if Noem becomes his pick for veep, the GOP will have another Sarah Palin on their bloody hands.

In Court, Donald Trump Is a Very Old Loser—and Absolutely Alone (Except for One Visit by Eric)

 

Opinion by Mark Herrmann

The Daily Beast

MSNBC 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

If you were a rioter at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, you may have felt the whole world was with you—or the part of the world that supported what you did.

President Trump himself had urged you to march to the Capitol Building. A crowd walked alongside you down Pennsylvania Avenue. People chanted with you about attacking Mike Pence, crashed through the police lines with you, helped you to break windows and march through the building.

After your arrest, it turned out that you had always been alone. Your mob vanished. You had only your lawyer as companionship at trial. You had no friends as you sat at your sentencing hearing. You alone were imprisoned. You had not won. You were a loser.

Now Donald Trump himself knows that feeling—momentarily, because he may yet be acquitted in his hush money trial and go on to be re-elected president in November. As he sits, glowering in court in Manhattan, he himself may be reflecting that in 2020, he ruled the land. Republicans cheered him when he spoke. Marines saluted as he walked past. Air Force One jetted him around the world. People jumped both when he entered a room and to answer his phone calls. Masses of people packed his rallies. The Secret Service had to protect him from adoring crowds. He was what he aspired to be: a strong, and worshipped, man.

However, after his arrest, it turned out that Trump had always been alone. As the relatively empty streets outside court show, his mob has vanished. He has only his lawyer at his trial in Manhattan.

He has endured jury selection, listening endlessly to social media posts in which his fellow New Yorkers savaged him. He has sat through arguments about what subjects will be covered in cross-examination if he dares take the witness stand—the civil fraud judgment that cost him $400 million; violations of gag orders; the two verdicts in defamation cases that cost him $80 million; the settlement in which he dissolved the eponymous Donald J. Trump Foundation. If he took the witness stand, even conservative news outlets might find that cross-examination to be titillating.

Trump has listened to prosecutors deliver opening statements, meticulously summarizing the evidence of how he cooked the books of his company. He knows that the press will report these words accurately.

Trump has watched David Pecker, a friend for decades who published the National Enquirer, testify under oath about how he hid information from the American public to help Trump attain his highest achievement—the presidency of the United States. Trump has taken to Truth Social to vent his rage; he speaks to the press only about personal grievances; he fears that he will become what his father most scorned: a loser.

Indeed, for this moment at least, Trump knows deep in his heart that he is precisely that: a loser. Suppose that he is ultimately acquitted at trial. Suppose he wins the election. Suppose he is again sworn in next January. Does that erase the memory of these long six weeks of trial, when he knows, in his gut, that he has lost?

Friends or family of the accused attend some criminal trials to lend moral support to the suspect, and humanize the defendant to the jury. Not so—not yet at least—for Donald Trump. His family is nowhere to be seen. His wife, at least presently, is not to be seen at his side; his children have vanished; his loved ones have melted away.

After his arrest, he can no longer summon his mob. He asks the world to protest, but not a dozen supporters wave flags outside the courthouse. With only a lawyer for solace, he sits at the defense table, listening to the prosecutors explain his alleged offenses and hearing old friends and employees testify to his misconduct.

Trump was powerful, always among friends, and rich beyond measure. Now, in the words of Mother Teresa, he has learned that “the most terrible poverty is loneliness.”

Or perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre put it better: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

Cartoon: If David Pecker still ran National Enquirer

Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 5:58:07p MDT

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich.

Daily Kos

 

 

The Republicans Make a Shocking Discovery. The Car is Radioactive.

About sums it up.

By commander ogg

Community

Daily Kos

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 at 4:53:46p MDT 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog

Latest news out of Arizona:

Arizona state House passes a bill to repeal 1864 abortion ban

The issue now moves to the state Senate, which is also expected to vote to repeal the near-total ban the Arizona Supreme Court upheld earlier this month.

After decades of chasing the anti-abortion forced birth political clown car the Theocratic wing of the GOP finally caught it.

Much to the shock of the less crazy Republicans a strange thing happened: Support for legal abortion is the highest it has been in two decades of Quinnipiac University polling.

Who would of thought that the "Women folk" would get so enraged about taking away a Constitutional right they've had for 50 years? Who could possibly have predicted that the Dobbs decision would result in the Democratic Party over performing in the Midterms?

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer...credited the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade...as factors in his party expanding its majority this election.  

So here we are 3 years later and the GOP doesn't have a clue about what to do next. They are trying to solve the problem by not talking about it. Dark Brandon is killing that idea:

Then they pivot to maybe some abortions are okay. 15 weeks seems to be the latest talking point:

The Republican debate over abortion has centered around one number: 15. Backers of a 15-week federal ban tout it as a compromise measure, even in the face of recent electoral defeat.

Two immediate problems with this:
 

1. As pointed out by Senator Al Franken Republicans lie all the time. Once in power they will use every instrument of Government to pass a total abortion ban.
    
2. Even if they wanted to their base voters would not allow it.

The issue of reproductive health care was a useful tool (along with White Supremacy) for the 1/100th (of 1 percent) to startup and maintain the 2nd Gilded Age.

H*ll, I doubt if the billionaire bast*rds even cared one way or another, as long as they got their tax cuts, and were allowed to run their Companies with zero Government Regulations. 

They may start to care now.

Yes, Donald Trump IS using Adolf Hitler's playbook

Viewpoint

The Week

"When Adolf Hitler was convicted of treason on April 1, 1924, for leading an armed inurrection against Germany's democratically elected government, he discovered something remarkable: Courtrooms can make excellent soapboxes for political grandstanding.  

Hitler railed against Germany's democratic leaders and constitutionally anchored legal system.

"He chastened his judges.

"He threatened the prosecutors.

"He insisted it was not he who had committed treason against the state, but the Weimar Republic's political establishment who had betrayed the German people.

"History does not repeat itself, as the saying goes, but historical events can rhyme." 

Timothy W. Ryback in the Los Angeles Times