Gaetz Speaking For Others

In my last post, I mildly criticized one of the tweets of former US Representative Matt Walsh of Illinois, However, he has (and still does) admit "I was part of the Trump cult- and I got out of the Trump cult." One of his tweets from Saturday, August 13 closely reflects remarks of his from eighteen months ago.

I come from the Republican Party base. I left the base. But I still engage with the base daily. I’ve said often that the GOP base has become radicalized. What Gaetz says here is what I’ve heard from the base repeatedly for the past few years. America needs to wake up to this. https://t.co/Rnj7VfNSXU

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 13, 2023

Donald Trump took a few questions from the crowd at the Iowa State Fair as he made his way to a scheduled meeting with supportive GOP legislators.  On the stage with the ex-President, U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida remarked

Mr. President, I cannot stand these people that are destroying our country. They are opening our borders. They are weaponizing our law enforcement against patriotic Americans who love this nation as we should. We are having a great time at the fair. We love standing with you. But we know that only through force do we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington, D.C. 

And so to all my friends here in Iowa, when you see them come for this man, they are coming for our movement and they are coming for all of us. As hard as you see him work, I need you to work ten times harder, a hundred times harder, we're going to win Iowa....

Obviously, Gaetz is mistaken in most of this. Just as obviously, the most dangerous remark is "only through force do we make any change" in the federal government.

As Walsh recognizes, "force" is not negotiation, persuasion, or even mild intimidation. It is a call to violence, and it resonates with the GOP base. Nonetheless, in his many tweets, Walsh blames party politicians even more than he does the base, which is in part responding to the red wall of complicity  characterizing the response of Republican politicians to the hateful, bigoted, violent rhetoric of their leader.

In an interview conducted in February of 2022 by Chauncey Devega of Salon, Walsh had stated

I hear from thousands of Republican voters every single day. If there's one message that I try to convey to the MSNBC viewers of the world, it is the following: These people, the Trump folks, the Republican voters of today, they would happily burn this country down to get the country they want. They would happily do it. And they tell me that. I don't think the folks who watch CNN and MSNBC every night really understand that fact.

There is an echo-chamber effect among Democrats, liberals and progressives, the NPR and MSNBC types. They refuse to accept that the people living in TrumpWorld and the MAGAverse really believe what they are being told. Those Trumpists don't think they are sick. They don't think they're confused. They don't think they're lost. They think that you folks, the Democrats, the "liberals,"  are the sick and confused ones. The MAGAverse is the real world to them, and all your interventions will not help them…. 

They are not nuts. All the good New York City liberal types — the elites, I will call them — they just laugh and think all these people are nuts or that they are all bigots. They are not. They're dead-set on what they want to do. Their country, they believe, their 1953 America, has been taken away from them. In the form of Donald Trump, they have somebody who is going to bring it back, step by step. These Trump followers are taking the long view. The MSNBC crowd does not understand that fact at all.

Walsh suggested to Devega that most of them are not primarily motivated by bigotry. I would add to Walsh's critique that liberals and to a lesser extent centrists believe the "MAGAverse" may be nuts or bigots- or dopes. Very few are "nuts" or crazy. 

More of what the ex-Tea Party stalwart referred to as "the MSNBC crowd" now understands the Trump enthusiasts. Warning on Saturday that in advocating "force" Gaetz was preaching to the crowd, Walsh does not characterize the base other than as "radicalized." Yet, perhaps he realizes that there is at work something even darker than he explained eighteen months ago. Even with that left unsaid, his message begs to be heeded. 

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An Obama-Biden Lesson

Obviously, there is a (small) nugget of truth in what the former Republican congressman, now an Independent and fierce critic of Donald Trump, says here. However, it also is disturbingly misleading.

When a young black man points a gun at Cops & refuses to follow their commands, the right says “It’s his own fault. He didn’t obey.” When an older white guy does the exact same thing, the right goes after the Cops. Hmm. https://t.co/evqz7hI2Ds

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 11, 2023

Walsh is referring to the report that

A Utah man fatally shot by the FBI on Wednesday was armed when FBI agents confronted him at his home, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News. Authorities said he pointed his weapon at agents and did not respond to their commands.

Officials said the FBI fatally shot the man, who was identified in charging documents as Craig Deleeuw Robertson, as they were serving a warrant at his home in Provo on Wednesday.

He had allegedly made threats against President Joe Biden, saying he would need to prepare his camouflage and sniper rifle for Biden's visit to Utah this week. He also openly plotted online the assassination of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whose office is prosecuting former President Donald Trump….

The shooting occurred at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday as agents were trying to serve arrest and search warrants at Roberton's home, the FBI said in a statement. It said that no agents were injured and that the incident was under review by the agency's Inspection Division.

 

There are white ultra-conservatives who would be upset that law enforcement shot and killed this man for at least three reasons, the least significant being that the deceased is white. He was gunning for the likes of Merrick Garland, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, as well as the District Attorney who was the first individual to obtain an indictment against Donald Trump, a godly individual to individuals who would support such a would be assassin.

Additionally, Robertson was not killed by "Back the Blue" or "Blue Lives Matter" local or state police. He was killed by federal law enforcement officers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a masterly case of gaslighting, the right has successfully convinced much of the country that the FBI- a conservative, Republican-leaning organization- is actually guardian of the Democratic political establishment.

Walsh misses a larger point when he suggests that the right condones an old white man confronts police with a gun while being outraged when a black man refuses to obey commands of police. But the impact of race is not always what this ex-Republican and most liberals and progressives think it is.

When Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee for President and while he was in office, many individuals, public figures and otherwise, implied, inferred, or blatantly claimed that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than in the United States.  We called these people "birthers," blasted them as racists, and were self-righteously convinced that a white President never would be subjected to such ignorant, narrow-minded hatred.

Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, USA, was slammed as not being an American. Those were the good times. It took the election of Joe Biden- a white man- before the far right would stage an insurrection, a violent attempted coup, to prevent a Democrat from assuming the presidency he won by election. Months later, all House Speaker Kevin McCarthy still wouldn't admit Donald Trump lost an election.

 

All Kevin McCarthy could concede is "Joe Biden is the President."  Whatever could have been his first clue?

With numerous other Republicans of accomplishment and stature refusing to acknowledge that Joe Biden was legitimately elected President and that Donald Trump is wrong to claim otherwise, it should not be surprising that

The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believe that President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was not legitimate has ticked back up, according to a new CNN poll fielded throughout July. All told, 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaners say Biden’s win was not legitimate, up from 63% earlier this year and through last fall, even as there is no evidence of election fraud that would have altered the outcome of the contest.

Take a good look at that picture above. The man taking the oath of office, whose election is still contested by GOP officials as well as Republicans in the street, is white.  While the right won't admit he's a President in good standing, nary will liberals, progressives, centrists, or moderates acknowledge they were wrong about the ongoing attack against President Barack Obama. 

Barack Obama was hated by a tremendous number of conservatives. His race was the most obvious aspect to latch onto but the enmity wasn't due to his color. The major factor he and President Biden have in common is not their race. They are both Democrats. And absent a coming to Jesus moment for the GOP, the next Democratic President will be unfairly, dishonestly, and viciously excoriated by the Republican Party, whatever the individual's ethnic background.. 

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More Than Black and White

An accomplished veteran journalist and a former high executive at the office of the Manhattan District Attorney are infected with a virus which has widely infected American liberalism.

Sound points: https://t.co/JX50h8Rr7a

— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) August 6, 2023

They believe this is acceptable:

Donald Trump is not being treated with kid gloves because he is white. He benefits from being very intimidating; likely to incite a successful riot(s) if not always given the benefit of the doubt; able to use attorneys to manipulate the criminal justice system because of his extreme wealth; and charged with a federal-rather than a state or local- offense. Were he black (or a Muslim) and those conditions prevailed, he still would be at liberty and attacking with seeming impunity judges, prosecutors, and everyone else not named "Donald J. Trump." 

Kai Cenat, who must be presumed not guilty in a court of law, needed to be arrested. On Friday, we learned

A YouTuber is facing charges after thousands of people piled into a New York square for a console giveaway event that turned into a riot.

Sixty five people were arrested at the gathering that promised free PlayStation 5s on Friday afternoon (4 August).

The organiser, Twitch gaming streamer Kai Cenat, faces charges of inciting a riot and unlawful assembly among other charges, the NYPD chief of department Jeffrey Maddrey said following the chaos.

A YouTuber is facing charges after thousands of people piled into a New York square for a console giveaway event that turned into a riot.

Sixty five people were arrested at the gathering that promised free PlayStation 5s on Friday afternoon (4 August).

The organiser, Twitch gaming streamer Kai Cenat, faces charges of inciting a riot and unlawful assembly among other charges, the NYPD chief of department Jeffrey Maddrey said following the chaos.

Video footage of the hyped-up event shows fights breaking out in Manhattan’s Union Square, with rioters hurling stones and chairs at police officers, climbing onto a subway station entrance and tearing down metal barriers.

“Our officers were attacked, we were crushed, we were pushed, I had officers on the floor,” Mr Maddrey said. “You had people were walking around with shovels, axes... a lot of young people got hurt.”

It appears the safety of Cenat, the "influencer" who set the riot into motion, may have been prioritized inasmuch as

Maddrey said Cenat at some point in the afternoon was removed “for his safety” and police were in contact with him. Videos posted on social media and taken from news helicopters showed the streamer being lifted over a fence and out of the crowd and then placed in a police vehicle.

Police didn't whisk this fellow off to safety because he's black. But neither did they neglect to do so because he's black. That's not surprising because, as Johnston, Agnifilo, and some others fail to understand, not everything is attributable to race.

The individuals obsessed with race who believe, incredibly (in the literal sense of the term),  that Donald Trump is being handled with kid gloves because he is white need a better understanding of the criminal justice system. They might acknowledge that prosecutors in federal court face greater obstacles than in state or municipal courts and that a greater proportion of defendants in the latter are black. They'd understand that our system thereby imposes a greater impact upon blacks and Latinos than upon whites, for reason(s) apart from color.

Of course, that same system therein disadvantages poor and working class people of all races, whose representation as defendants in state/municipal courts is greater than in federal court. However, that gets us to the bottom line reality that income and wealth are greater factors in the justice system than is race.  And a lot of people on (even) the right, but more notably in the center and the left, simply won't go there.

(This blog is going on hiatus. Please return on 8/12/23.)

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Revoking Bail

A former NFL offensive lineman in seven words has an idea which few if any of the alleged legal experts on our favorite center-left cable news networks (or, obviously, Fox News) ever give voice to.

Prosecutor should seek to revoke his bail. https://t.co/TA8p9ZkoOj

— Jumbo Elliott (@JumboElliott76) August 5, 2023

Obviously, it's not quite that easy, which could be explained by the innumerable lawyers- guests or hosts- on MSNBC or CNN, if any of them cared to address the issue at all.  Fortunately, we still have a remnant of print media to tell us what we won't hear on broadcast media. An Associated Press  reporter notes

Prosecutors asked U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a protective order in the case a day after Trump pleaded not guilty to charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and block the peaceful transition of power. The order — which is different from a so-called "gag order" — would limit what information Trump and his legal team could share publicly about the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.

Such protective orders are common in criminal cases, but prosecutors said it's "particularly important in this case" because Trump has posted on social media about "witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him."

A protective order is necessary, though probably not sufficient. A gag order should apply to the former President. Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman provide critical context when they write

At a court hearing in Manhattan in April, Justice Juan M. Merchan, who is overseeing Mr. Trump’s state prosecution on charges stemming from a hush payment to a porn actress, warned the former president to refrain from making comments that were “likely to incite violence or civil unrest.”

Justice Merchan’s admonition came after Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social saying that “death and destruction” could follow if he were charged in the case in Manhattan.

That same month, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who was presiding over a federal rape and defamation lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll against Mr. Trump, criticized the former president for posting messages about the case. The ones he had already written were “entirely inappropriate,” the judge said.

Mr. Trump had derided the case on social media as a “scam” and personally mocked Ms. Carroll.

The former president has often ignored such warnings and continued to post threatening or spiteful messages with impunity.

After the hearing in front of Justice Merchan, Mr. Trump returned to Florida and to his customary practice, calling the district attorney who brought the New York charges against him, Alvin L. Bragg, a “criminal,” and Justice Merchan “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.”

Days after Judge Kaplan’s admonition, Mr. Trump attacked him, too, saying on a trip to one of his golf courses in Ireland that the judge was “extremely hostile.”

So Judge Merchan in Bragg's Manhattan's case directed Trump to avoid remarks "likely to incite violence or civil unrest," after which Trump publicly condemned the District Attorney "a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family."  In the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, Judge Kaplan criticized Trump for "entirely inappropriate" comments, after which Trump in Ireland attacked the Judge as "extremely hostile."

Neither judge took action against the defendant, presumably because no order was entered- even requested- barring him from making prejudicial or incendiary remarks about a pending case.

Nothing was done because Donald Trump, who already has assailed the indictment filed in the District of Columbia on 8/1/23 as "a witch hunt," is held to lower standards than is everyone else. The "protective order" would

prevent Trump and his lawyers from disclosing materials provided by the government to anyone other than people on his legal team, possible witnesses, the witnesses’ lawyers or others approved by the court. It would put stricter limits on “sensitive materials,” which would include grand jury witness testimony and materials obtained through sealed search warrants.

There is nonetheless danger in granting the request. Judge Chutkan must be willing to enforce any such order. And as Mr. Elliot hints at, enforcement probably would entail revoking bail.

That would lead directly to the arrest of Donald J. Trump. It would not be like any of the arrests the ex-President may or may not have sustained thus far. Presumably, Trump would be placed inside a jail cell.

Oh, it's possible that a protective order is issued, the defendant violates it, and is brought to court for a Susan Collins-style stern warning, a fine Trump would never pay, or other such action which allows the judge feel she is accomplishing something and delights the anti-Trump lawyers paraded before the audiences of MSNBC and CNN.  Maybe it would be a half-measure such as excites this frequent contributor at MSNBC:

Free speech is one thing, but this is over the line. As a prosecutor, I'd be sorely tempted to make a motion to revoke Trump's pre-trial bond & put him in custody. Let him explain it to the judge. pic.twitter.com/qEhiXtVFnu

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) August 4, 2023

Explain it to the Judge! (And then what?)  Place him in custody! (Been there, done that.)

If Judge Chutka issues an order in this manner and it is violated, there is only one remedy which Donald Trump wouldn't, in private, laugh about. It would be placing him inside a jail cell, just as would happen to any other American who has been warned by judges previously about this behavior and has with forethought chosen a different course.   

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They Were Slaves

The woke and politically correct, now-Independent conservative is cute and clever. (The "x" is a shot by George Conway against Elon Musk's rebranding of Twitter as X.)

Wait till he explains how enslaved people learned medicine by having to treat the welts on their own backs https://t.co/qvDZzyDOiA

— Xeorge Xonway (@gtconway3d) August 2, 2023

It's a point well-made. However, there is no shame in being descended from slaves or having been a "slave." The shame should be absorbed by the enslavers and not in the enslaved, as it is attached to the victims by refusing to acknowledge there were "slaves."

It is an inadvertent sanitization of slavery. a whitewashing (however minimal) of American history.  There was little demand from the generational African-American community to cancel- eradicate, if you prefer- the word "slavery."  

"LatinX" fortunately has gone by the wayside, never having gained a wide audience wherein people could become substantially annoyed with a word even the Latino community never liked. Voters take notice as more and more words or phrases are substituted for traditional, non-pejorative terms., and they know whom to blame.  Spoiler alert: it's not Republicans or conservatives. 

It could be strategic, intentionally or otherwise, for someone like Conway to use such phrases.  He split with the GOP over Donald Trump and nothing else and generally seems to be waiting in the wings for a conservative such as Chris Christie who will fight for tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate deregulation, and anti-labor values without explicit bigotry toward blacks and immigrants.

Rarely if ever is George Conway challenged on cable news regarding any issues aside from Trump, and his skepticism about the Republican Party seems limited to the ex-President's existence. If he invokes "enslaved people," it is unlikely a host or guest on MSNBC (on which Conway frequently appears) will spoil the party by asking him what he believes about actual issues.

Of course, the estranged husband of Trump loyalist Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway is not the only individual who uses trendy language instead of talking simply and clearly.  However, its use by a conservative lawyer should highlight the superficiality of much of the language currently and transiently in vogue.

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The Myth of "America's Mayor"

It's the stuff of urban legend.

Adam Kinzinger compares the Capitol riot to Sept. 11th: "You think of Rudy Giuliani...America’s mayor after 9/11 that’s not only not caring about this really craziest attack since 9/11 to happen in this country, he's actually fueling it." pic.twitter.com/ovLh0epXFE

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 2, 2023

Sixteen years ago, Rudolph Giuliani, the media-designated "America's Mayor" hero of 9/11, was leading the pack in the race to be the Republican nominee for President. It was at that time that Kevin Baker, journalist and author of a trilogy of novels about New York City, spoke to Jon Weiner of The Nation. Weiner wrote

"Most of 9-11 was actually a debacle for the city government," Baker told me in an interview, and "Giuliani bears a great deal of the responsibility." The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993, but Giuliani had "learned none of the lessons that could have been learned. There was no serious attempt to coordinate the radios between the police and fire departments, or even to insure that the fire department had its own communications that would work inside buildings." The consequences? "Probably hundreds of unnecessary deaths that day."

The second failure: Giuliani insisted on locating his emergency control center in the World Trade Center complex, even though that had been the target of the 1993 attack. "He did that against the advice of virtually all the security experts he consulted," Baker explained. "He put it on the twenty-third floor of a forty-seven-story building, World Trade Center Tower 7. It included an unprotected, 7,000-gallon fuel source on the seventh floor, a sort of a fuse to set the building off. When the building was hit by debris on 9/11, that did indeed bring the whole building down."

What if Giuliani he had been in his new command center on 9/11?

"He was within a few minutes of dying right there that day," Baker said. "Instead he ended up having to spend most of the 102 minutes between when the first plane hit and when the second tower came down simply walking around the area with staff members, looking for someplace to set up a new command center."

What should he have been doing?

"Other things badly needed to be done," Baker said. "Realizing there was no communicating with the firemen who were in these towers, maybe they could have set up a trail of runners or something to tell them they should get out of there, the towers are coming down. Nothing like that was done."

Giuliani told the 9/11 Commission that the firemen in the towers died because they refused orders to come out. He said they wanted to save lives of people trapped inside.

"That's a demonstrable lie," Baker told me. "The firemen in the buildings were simply waiting for orders. They never got the word. It's easy to second-guess people in such a traumatic event, and anybody could be forgiven for not making the right decisions in the middle of everything. But to go to Congress months later and lie about this — I find that despicable."

The workers at Ground Zero in the following months, we now know, were exposed to significant health hazards. How much of that is Giuliani's responsibility? "He made no real attempt to determine the safety of working there," Baker said. "That was also the responsibility of Christie Todd Whitman, was the EPA Administrator at the time."

So what did Giuliani do after 9/11?

"He very quickly took the disaster of 9/11 as a great opportunity," Baker told me. "He proposed that his term in office be extended to give him more time to deal with things, and he tried to put his mistress of the time, who later became his third wife, Judith Nathan, in charge of a fund set up to give money to survivors and victims' families. Right from the beginning he was trying to exploit this. The words he said on TV were wonderful, but they weren't backed up by any actions at all."

Unlike in his earlier days, Giuliani has in his old age become a crude, comical and criminal character, a worthy subject of alliteration.  But he was always- always- Rudy Giuliani.

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Watters

If you're looking for a good liar, look no further than Jesse Waters.

Donald Trump is an outlier. The best liars are ones who make statements which few individuals, especially few individuals, in the audience will know are inaccurate. So if you're looking for a good liar, look no further than Jesse Waters of Fox News (of course).

Jessica: For the 80th time, Victor Shokin was not fired to protect hunter Biden. It had the opposite effect. There's so many articles… The IMF, the E.U.

Watters: Who runs the imf? We do. pic.twitter.com/X1V3RpFnin

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 31, 2023

It's very likely that Watters knew his statement was false. The International Monetary Fund consists of 190 members of the United Nations.  As the world's largest economy, the USA contributes a disproportionate amount of the organization's finances and holds 16.50% of the IMF's votes .Its Chief Economist currently is Pierre-Olivier Gourinhas of France and its Managing Director is Kristalina Georgieva of Bulgaria. Whatever its influence, the USA does not own nor even control the International Monetary Fund.

Of course, this is Single-A ball next to Trump's constant stream of lies, with a substantial number believed by a majority of his fans, which is nearly a majority of the nation's voters.  Nonetheless, it is the sort of thing which should reinforce Water's status as one of Fox News' stars.

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