Tag: GOP the cult of Trump

Grievance, rebellion and burnt bridges: Tracing Josh Hawley’s path to the insurrection

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From his teenage writings to his incendiary support for false 2020 election claims, the Missouri senator is staking out a place in today’s far-right Republican Party

LEXINGTON, Mo. — Joshua Hawley was 13 years old, living comfortably as the son of a bank president, when his parents gave him a book about political conservatism for Christmas.

Hawley became enamored with the ideology. He began writing columns for the local newspaper that seethed with resentment against the political power structure. Even domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building, killing 168 people, sparked him to speak up for groups that express anger toward the government.

“Many of the people who populate these movements are not radical right-wing pro-assault weapons freaks as they were stereotyped in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote.

Observers report ballots and laptop computers have been left unattended in Arizona recount, according to secretary of state

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Ballots have been left unattended on counting tables.

Laptop computers sit abandoned, at times — open, unlocked and unmonitored.

Procedures are constantly shifting, with untrained workers using different rules to count ballots.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) on Wednesday sent a letter outlining a string of problems that she said observers from her office have witnessed at a Republican-led recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona’s largest county. Continue reading.

‘Shameful’: Fox News cuts away from Senate trial as shocking footage emerges

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As other networks airing Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday showed chilling new video footage of the deadly January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol incited by the former president, Fox Newsopted to cut away to cover different stories. 

Even the fiercely pro-Trump One America Network aired Trump’s trial. Fox, however, decided to run segments on stories including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s decision to forego the national anthem at his NBA team’s home games, and the viral video of a Texas attorney’s “I’m not a cat” Zoom courtroom filter fail.

Fox‘s decision to cut away from the trial was lambasted as “f*cking shameful.” Continue reading.

‘Traitors to the president’: Conservatives fear public preparation for Biden term

Because Trump won’t concede, many conservatives have found they can’t be open about their plans to counter Biden’s agenda. Some have already faced blowback.

The conservative movement has become handicapped.

Organizations can’t sound the alarm about President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda. Conservative reporters won’t take pitches about Biden’s rumored Cabinet contenders, insistent on covering evidence-deficient claims of voter fraud instead. One conservative group involved in policy advocacy backed off from hiring two soon-to-depart Trump administration officials after growing concerned about the consequences.

And it’s all because of an unspoken rule set by President Donald Trump: Do not acknowledge Biden’s imminent White House takeover. Continue reading.

Most Republicans avoid challenging Trump on election

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Republicans are largely avoiding any challenges of President Trump over his refusal to concede the election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled the game plan during a Monday address on the Senate floor while giving his members cover.

McConnell’s remarks were disparaging of Democrats and the media, who have projected Biden as the winner but have no constitutional role in the process, the Kentucky Republican noted. McConnell, who is poised to be his party’s top official in Washington when Biden takes office, also said Trump was well within his rights of challenging the close results and asking for recounts. Continue reading.

The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump’s Convention

Using the White House as his prop, the President makes war on Joe Biden, and pretends the pandemic is all but defeated.

For four years, Donald Trump has been asking us to believe the unbelievable, to accept the unthinkable, to replace harsh realities with simple fantasies. On Thursday night, using the White House as a gaudy backdrop, the President made his case to the American people for four more years. His speech capping the Republican National Convention was long, acerbic, untruthful, and surprisingly muted in comparison to the grandeur of the setting, which no chief executive before him has dared to appropriate in such a partisan way. “We will make America greater than ever before,” he promised.

Even for a salesman like Trump, it was never going to be an easy deal to close, what with a deadly pandemic, mass unemployment, nationwide protests over racial injustice, and even a killer hurricane smashing into the Gulf Coast hours before his speech. Some seventy per cent of Americans currently believe that the country is on the wrong track, according to recent polls. Who can blame them?

This should be devastating context for a President, any President, seeking reëlection, a true picture of American carnage to replace the false one that Trump conjured four years ago. Yet the strategy of Trump and his team is now clear: to talk about how bad things would be in Joe Biden’s America, a violent socialist ruin in which freedom itself will no longer exist and rampaging protesters, like those now committing “rioting, looting, arson, and violence” in “Democrat-run cities,” will be coming soon to a suburb near you. “The hard truth is, you won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” Vice-President Mike Pence said on Wednesday night. “No one will be safe in Biden’s America,” Trump said on Thursday night. To say this sounded a bit off in actual America, Trump’s America, does not do justice to the bizarre dissonance of this year’s Republican Convention. Continue reading.

What Happens When QAnon Seeps From the Web to the Offline World

New York Times logoA city council member in California took the dais and quoted from QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory about “deep state” traitors plotting against the president, concluding her remarks, “God bless Q.”

A man spouting QAnon beliefs about child sex trafficking swung a crowbar inside a historic Catholic chapel in Arizona, damaging the altar and then fleeing before being arrested.

And outside a Trump campaign rally in Florida, people in “Q” T-shirts stopped by a tent to hear outlandish tales of Democrats’ secretly torturing and killing children to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood. Continue reading.

Worried Trump might weaponize the presidency? He already has, many times.

Washington Post logoWorried that President Trump might use the power of his office to punish personal enemies?

Hate to break it to you, but you’re three years too late.

In a bilious hour-long rant Thursday afternoon, Trump ranted against the “scum” and “very evil and sick people” he blames for his impeachment. And he was not the only West Winger making ominous comments about what might become of those who’ve wronged him. Continue reading.

A GOP senator trafficked in flimsy allegations to impugn Alexander Vindman. And then Trump retweeted it.

Washington Post logoRepublicans have repeatedly argued that the impeachment evidence against President Trump is thin. They’ve said it is based upon “hearsay” that wasn’t corroborated by people more intimately involved with the Ukraine effort (whose testimony the White House has blocked). They’ve suggested, despite numerous witnesses testifying to similar things, that the witnesses weren’t credible and that they might have axes to grind.

But on Thursday, with House Democrats playing video of those witnesses’ testimonies during Trump’s impeachment trial, a Republican senator launched her own thinly sourced attack on one of those witnesses.

And then Trump retweeted it.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who along with every other senator serves as a juror in the impeachment trial, took to Twitter and impugned the patriotism of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Continue reading.

Republicans Attack House Democrats on Impeachment, and Democrats Change the Subject

New York Times logoOne party is running ads about what’s happening in Congress. The other is happy to stick to health care.

For the past two months, television ads across central Virginia have sounded a lot like President Trump’s Twitter feed.

“A rigged process. A sham impeachment. No quid pro quo. But Pelosi’s witch hunt continues,” an ad from the Republican nonprofit group America First Policies cried, as images of Abigail Spanberger, who represents the region in Congress, flickered onscreen.

Like many of her fellow freshmen Democratic colleagues, Ms. Spanberger has faced a barrage of attack ads from the Republican National Committee, nonprofit groups and super PACs aligned with President Trump. Continue reading