The Wealthiest Parts Of Beverly Hills-- Where Greed And Selfishness Trump Humanity-- Voted Fascist Last Tuesday

 

Los Feliz, where I live, is an old L.A. neighborhood, originally a Spanish land-grant to corporal José Vicente Feliz. The birthplace of Disney Studios (and home of Walt Disney) and the West Coast headquarters of ABC, Los Feliz was the original Beverly Hills. The other day a friend came over for a little hike in the neighborhood, the only way I've gotten together with friends since March. The election was over but hadn't been called for Biden yet. We passed a house-- a house I pass every time I go for a hike-- and there was a huge 20 foot wide banner hanging from the balcony. In the middle of a neighborhood where basically every house has a Biden-Harris sign, the banner was a Trump-Pence one. I was shocked, horrified. In my neighborhood!??! Everyone votes for and supports Democrats around here. This area just voted out a solid progressive incumbent, David Ryu, to replace him with a Democratic Socialist, Nithya Raman, 52.46% to 47.54%. Our congressman, Adam Schiff beat well-financed ($3,649,968) Republican Eric Early 218,101 (73.28%) to 79,544 (26.72%). In my immediate neighborhood (Precinct 900067A) Biden got 1,147 votes to Trump's 209.

But in the actual Beverly Hills, things went far worse than a Trump banner hanging from a balcony. Keep in mind that in 2016 Trump won Los Angeles County with 23.4%. Votes are still being counted but Trump increased his support in L.A. (so far) to 26.9%. And, according to L.A. Times reporter Lila Seidman, Trump increased his support in Beverly Hills to the point where two precincts-- like Trousdale Estates area, where the average home sale price is currently more than $15 million-- gave Trump majorities! "The two precincts," she wrote-- "both above Sunset Boulevard in the areas synonymous with wealth-- stick out like a red thumb among the blue sea representing what has traditionally been seen as Los Angeles’ liberal stronghold on the Westside. They are some of the county’s most affluent areas, yet they backed Trump more than neighboring luxury areas such as Bel-Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Holmby Hills, which went to Biden along with other parts of Beverly Hills... But neighboring precincts-- which run roughly from Trousdale Estates to the Los Angeles Country Club, with the Beverly Hills Hotel in the middle-- voted for Trump 56% to 44%, according to data from The Times.

When it came to light that one of the same neighborhoods, or precincts, in 2016 voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton, it was seen as an anomaly. This time around, no one seemed shocked to learn that an even wider swath of the small, affluent city of about 34,000 went red.

“Trump has been very good for rich people,” Steel said, “and I think that sometimes people forget to think about human life and human policies versus what’s good for your wallet.”

Walking his dog near Will Rogers Memorial Park, just south of Sunset Boulevard, resident David Shapiro said he voted for Trump for the first time this year-- abstaining in 2016-- because of his economic and tax policies, as well as his support of Israel and tough stance on China.

A Jewish emigree from Moscow, Shapiro, 65, said that Trump was not cozy with Russia as many people thought and that America was not seen as a friend in his home country.

“He’s good for international relations,” said Shapiro, a businessman. “We don’t have any war-- the problem is there will be war in the Middle East. And he’s good to Israel.”

Beverly Hills Mayor Lester Friedman said he didn’t see the expansion of Trump voters to two neighborhoods as indicative of a trend.

“I don’t really sense a big change in political outlooks, just that they’re more vocal,” Friedman said by phone Friday afternoon.

As some residents noted, pro-Trump supporters have gathered every week for nearly four months along one of Beverly Hills’ main thoroughfares to proclaim their support for the president. Rally organizer and resident Shiva Bagheri said in late October that the events empowered people like her to go from “the silent majority” to the “loud-lion majority.”

On Saturday morning, a handful of Trump supporters gathered at a park where the rally usually kicked off at 2 p.m. A man and a woman who declined to comment were standing behind a sign calling for the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom, as neighborhoods just a few miles away were celebrating Biden’s victory by dancing in the street, cheering and honking their horns.

Contrary to the notion of a louder electorate, many Trump and Biden supporters said they felt they could not speak fully on the record for fear of retribution from neighbors or potential negative impacts to their business. One man from Bel-Air went off on Trump but then declined to give his name, saying, “I have to work in this town.”

Trump Will Lose Tomorrow-- And It Won't Be Close

 

Red America by Nancy Ohanian

The foundation to any Republican presidential victory is Texas. Bottom line: if Trump loses Texas and its 38 electoral votes tomorrow, game over. But he's not likely to lose the state. It's still just too red. But the fact that Trump looks so weak in recent polls-- ahead of a nothing like Biden by just 2.3 points according to the most recent Real Clear Politics average-- is a testament to what a disastrous presidency he's presided over. And while those weak numbers may not deny Trump Texas' 38 electoral votes, they may well presage half a dozen or more GOP congressional losses in "safe" red districts. It's likely that TX-10 (McCaul), TX-21 (Roy), TX-22 (Olson), TX-23 (Hurd), TX-24 (Marchant), TX-25 (Williams) could all flip blue tomorrow.

Over the weekend, one of the Mike Siegel campaigners told me that 366,000 people had already voted early in TX-10, more people than had ever voted in an election in that district totally. Black voters, Asian voters, first-time voters and young voters all set new participation records. (301,200 voters participated in the TX-10 congressional race in 2018.) Siegel is expecting a big turnout tomorrow as well. Big turnouts are not what Republicans encourage. And those new voters and young voters and voters of color are not who Trump is trying to appeal to now.

In fact, Toluse Olorunnipa and Josh Dawsey reported for the Washington Post that Trump's madcap super-spreader rallies are focusing exclusively on his base of uneducated white racists. They wrote about episodes likely to turn off swing voters but enthuse his beloved "poorly educated," noting that in a frenzied burst of campaigning in the last days of the presidential race, Señor Trumpanzee has "accused doctors of fabricating coronavirus deaths for money, pantomimed a physical fight with Democratic rival Joe Biden, mocked a Fox News host for wearing a mask and celebrated his supporters for using pickup trucks to ambush a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway... [H]is closing message is a classic display of the kind of red meat tailored specifically to animate his most faithful supporters. Convinced that it’s too late to change the minds of voters who are not yet sold on Trump, the president’s advisers are intensely focused on turning out those who are. Trump’s decision to forgo a broad, unifying closing message and instead double down on appealing to a narrow but enthusiastic slice of the electorate is a gamble. Whether it pays off or becomes a cautionary tale will not be known until the polls close Tuesday and the votes are counted."

It doesn't look good for Trump. His polling numbers are falling and COVID-19 infections are rising, particularly ones that are tied specifically to his super-spreader rallies, which caused at least 700 deaths, not counting Herman Cain. Yesterday 71,321 new cases were reported, bringing the U.S. total to 9,473,911-- as well as 399 new reported deaths for a total of 236,471. Swing states, many with Republican governors and or legislatures who have followed Trump's anti-science line, are being hammered. Yesterday's swing state new cases (with number of cases per million residents):

• Texas +4,193 (33,140 cases per million residents)
• Florida +4,865 (37,593 cases per million residents)
• Wisconsin +3,493 (39,307 cases per million residents)
• Ohio +3,319 (18,738 cases per million residents)
• Iowa +2,394 (41,320 cases per million residents)
• Minnesota +2,200 (26,717 cases per million residents)
• North Carolina +2,057 (26,382 cases per million residents)
• Pennsylvania +1,684 (16,755 cases per million residents)
• Arizona +1,527 (34,000 cases per million residents)
• Georgia +1,192 (34,093 cases per million residents)

Trump is in his own fantasy world though, gaslighting his rallies 'til the very end. He spread COVID to his Pennsylvania supporters in 4 rallies on Saturday. The first was on Newton where he told the crowd, "A great red wave is forming. As sure as we’re here together, that wave is forming. And they see it, they see it on all sides and there’s not a thing they can do about it."

In front of large crowds that defied public health guidelines in the middle of a pandemic, Trump offered a defiant closing message about the forces he battled during his first term, claiming that his willingness to fight them is one reason he deserves a second term.

“We did not come this far and fight this hard only to surrender our country back to the Washington swamp,” Trump said Friday in Waterford Township, Mich.

That event kicked off a four-day stretch of rallies taking him to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Wisconsin. By the time he holds his final rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Monday night, Trump will have given his stump speech to tens of thousands of potential voters.

The president’s allies say he is smart to make a bet on rallying his troops at this stage of the campaign, with few undecided voters left and more to be gained from juicing turnout than from winning converts.

“The weekend before election, you’re not changing minds,” said Bryan Lanza, an adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition. “You’re not IDing supporters, you’re just turning them out. That’s where we are. Persuasion is done. He’s got to turn out what’s there.”

Trump is under more pressure to turn out his base voters in the last days of the race due to the unprecedented partisan split between Americans who vote early and those voting on Election Day.

More than 90 million Americans have already voted early or by absentee ballot, according to data maintained by the U.S. Elections Project, a nonpartisan early-voting tracker. Democrats have an edge over Republicans in several swing states, and Trump has explicitly told his supporters to cast their votes in person on Tuesday.

...The president’s strategy carries risks. His embrace of the conspiracy theories spread by his most ardent supporters about the coronavirus pandemic has driven away potential supporters, according to polls.

Trump has increasingly used his rallies to promote misinformation about the deadly virus, downplaying it and bemoaning the fact that it continues to dominate news coverage. He has told supporters that the country was “rounding the turn” on the virus even as the case count soars to record levels, and claimed without evidence that a vaccine has been held up until after the election due to politics. On Friday, he mocked Fox News host Laura Ingraham for wearing a mask to his crowded Michigan rally.

“No way!” he said from the stage. “She’s wearing a mask? She’s being very politically correct!”

During the same rally, Trump made the baseless accusation that doctors are inflating the number of patients who died of covid-19 to “get more money.”

“Now they’ll say, ‘Oh that’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true,” Trump said of his false allegation. “It’s like $2,000 more, so you get more money.”

The American Medical Association called the claim “malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided” in a statement Friday, without naming Trump.

Trump’s conspiratorial approach to the pandemic comes as the number of Americans dying each day has begun to increase, along with the rising caseload and hospitalizations.

More than 230,000 Americans have died of covid-19, and more than 9 million have been infected.

...[H]e has veered away from his prepared remarks to offer controversial running commentary to his supporters. He has fed off crowds chanting “Lock him up!” about Biden and “Superman!” about him. Shortly before his fourth rally of the day in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of several of his supporters forming an intimidating vehicle caravan around a Biden campaign bus as it attempted to drive down a Texas highway.

“I LOVE TEXAS!” the president wrote.

On Saturday, Keith Collins, Trip Gabriel and Stephanie Saul took NY Times readers on a trip into the 20 Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin counties across the country where they claim, inaccurately, that the battle for their states' electoral votes are fiercest. Let's follow along anyway:

Miami-Dade, FL-- A Democratic stronghold, it is not a county Mr. Trump would hope to win. But this majority-Hispanic county was a disappointment for Democrats in 2018, especially in heavily Cuban-American precincts. Younger Cuban voters have started identifying as Trump Republican here.

Disappointment in 2018? The Democrats targeted 2 congressional seats in Miami-Dade and won both. Gillum won with 59.9% and Nelson won with 60.6%

Pinellas County, FL-- Perhaps the biggest swing county in the state, which backed Mr. Trump after twice backing Barack Obama, it is a Florida microcosm: solid Democrats in St. Petersburg and Midwestern retirees elsewhere.

2018 was good for Dems in Pinellas-- Gillum won with 50.7%, Nelson won with 52.6% and Charlie Crist was reelected with 57.6%

Osceola County, FL-- Part of the greater Orlando area, it is increasingly Hispanic. Conservative retirees have been joined by hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, who did not register in expected numbers to give Democrats an advantage in 2018, and so far, are lagging behind other groups in early voting.

Osceola was another good county for Dems in 2018-- Gillum 58.4%, Nelson 59.7%, and it performed for mediocre Rep. Darren Soto D+26. It would have been way more interesting to include Polk County  

Union County, NC-- In 2016, Mr. Trump easily won this suburban Republican bastion near Charlotte. Republicans remain dominant, but signs of disaffection with the president, along with an upswing in “unaffiliated” voters, give Democrats hope they can trim Mr. Trump’s margin.

Union is one of those counties where Republicans routinely steal votes

Wake County, NC-- One of the nation’s fastest-growing counties, Wake has shifted steadily leftward over the past 20 years, supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 by more than 100,000 votes. An influx of out-of-staters since then stands to boost the Democrats even more, potentially offsetting high Republican numbers in rural areas.

Robeson County, NC-- A former Democratic stronghold, this economically depressed county went for Mr. Trump in 2016. The prize will likely go to the candidate most popular among the Lumbee Indians, the county’s largest group. Mr. Trump held a rally here in October, and both campaigns pledged to support the tribe’s quest for federal recognition.

Robeson delivered for Democrat Dan McCready in 2018 (D+15)

Westmoreland County, PA-- Typical of other counties where Mr. Trump outperformed with white working-class voters four years ago, this area near Pittsburgh is where he must win even bigger margins to counter a likely Democratic surge in the suburbs.

Hillary screwed the pooch but 2 years later Tom Wolf took 46.4% and Bob Casey took 43.9%-- which is all Biden needs to do there and in places like it to be sure of winning Pennsylvania

Chester County, PA-- Democrats must continue their 2018 midterm surge in this suburban Philadelphia county, especially with college-educated women, or Mr. Trump could carry Pennsylvania again.

In 2018 Dems all did better than Hillary had-- Casey drew 59.2%, Wolf took 61.3% and the county performed as a D+18 for Democrat Chrissy Houlahan 

Erie County, PA-- One of three counties in the state that Mr. Trump flipped in 2016, its mix of a working-class post-industrial economy and rural towns makes it “the oracle of Pennsylvania,” in the words of a Democratic strategist.

Erie Co. regretted going for Trump in 2016 and made up for it 2 years later-- Bob Casey 55.7%, Tom Wolf 59.8 and the county is the biggest one in PA-16 and performed at a D+20 level for Democrat Ron DiNicola

Philadelphia County, PA-- The big question here is whether Mr. Biden can re-energize Black voters-- Democrats’ core supporters-- after Hillary Clinton’s lackluster showing in 2016. Mr. Biden will have to boost the numbers to counter Mr. Trump’s margins with rural white voters. The Trump campaign has taken on aggressive tactics, like videotaping voters at ballot drop boxes.

Macomb County, MI-- Heavily unionized and mostly white, the state’s third largest county has picked the statewide winner in the last seven elections for governor and president.

In 2018 Stabenow did 8 points better than Hillary and Whitmer did slightly better than Stabenow. The county performed at a D+19 level for Andy Levin

Oakland County, MI-- Once solidly Republican, it is a more affluent neighbor of Macomb County and has been trending Democratic. It is a prime example of the changes that are taking place in many of the nation’s suburbs. In 2018, it gave Gov. Gretchen Whitmer the biggest margin for a Democrat in 20 years.

Oakland was good for all the Dems running in 2018 and will be for Biden tomorrow

Kent County, MI-- This traditional Republican stronghold-- home to Grand Rapids, where President Gerald Ford was raised-- has moved away from the Republican Party in the Trump era.

Mentioning Ford is the most hawkish possible thing to say about Kent. He served from 1949 to 1973-- 100% irrelevant. Maybe they should have mentioned current Rep. Justin Amash. Stabenow and Whitmer both won the county in 2018

Brown County, WI-- Among the top counties that will decide the state’s winner is the home of vote-rich Green Bay. It’s a swing county that in 2018 voted for the Republican candidate for governor, Scott Walker, and the Democrat for Senate, Tammy Baldwin. Mr. Trump won blowout margins here compared with Mitt Romney in 2012.

Waukesha County, WI-- It is the largest of Milwaukee’s suburban counties. Long a Republican stronghold, the county underperformed for Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden has forged inroads here, but it’s not clear how deep they are.

Don't get excited; Biden has not forged any inroads in Waukesha. The writers had nothing so say so they made it up

Dane County, WI-- This is home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it’s where Democrats surged in an April 2020 race for the State Supreme Court. Nearly as many votes were cast here as in Milwaukee County, even though Dane has less than 60 percent of Milwaukee’s population. Heavy turnout in early voting suggests Mr. Biden is claiming those votes.

Grant County, WI-- Emblematic of southwest Wisconsin, it is one of the state’s swingiest regions, where weak partisan identity saw voters shift from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump.

In 2018 it swung back blue-- Tony Evers beat Scott Walker by about a point and Tammy Baldwin beta her GOP opponent by 9 points

Maricopa County, AZ-- Home to Phoenix and more than 60 percent of the state’s electorate, it is Arizona’s most important county. It went narrowly for Mr. Trump in 2016, but two years later supported a Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, for senator. The question is whether the county’s changing demographics will tip the state to a Democratic president for the first time since 1996.

Pima County, AZ-- The home of Tucson, Democrats typically run up the score here.

Pinal County, AZ-- The state’s third-largest county is a Republican redoubt. Mr. Trump will have to turn out enough rural white voters to help protect the 3.5-point margin he won the state with in 2016.

The End Of Civics Classes = The End Of American Democracy?

 

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is preparing for civil unrest and violence at polling states in November. I don't think that ever happened before-- at least not since I was born. And you wouldn't be off base if you pointed out that that's a uniquely Trumpian thing.

How Trump got into the White House, though, is something different. That's on the voters, our neighbors and fellow countrymen. Whenever I hear someone-- like Jordan Klepper-- interviewing Trump supporters at one of his rallies, I mourn the loss of civics classes in public schools. Watch this (random) one for example:





A couple of years ago Brookings attempted to answer the question "How well l are schools preparing students to be effective citizens, voters, and members of their communities?" They put together a report delving into what constitutes a high quality civics education. They came up with 10 recommendations:

1 Classroom instruction in civics, government, history, law, economics, and geography
2 Discussion of current events
3 Service learning
4 Extracurricular activities
5 Student participation in school governance
6 Simulations of democratic processes and procedures
7 News media literacy
8 Action civics
9 Social-emotional learning (SEL)
10 School climate reform

Mother Jones published a piece, Why Teaching Civics in America’s Classrooms Must Be a Trump-Era Priority, premised on how "the testing craze and resegregation stripped schools of a key mission: creating engaged citizens." Most politicians don't seem to care. Kristina Rizga wrote that "In 2011, all federal funding for civics and social studies was eliminated. Some state and local funding dropped, too, forcing many cash-strapped districts to prioritize math and English-- the subjects most prominently featured in standardized tests. A study by George Washington University’s Center on Education Policy found that between 2001 and 2007, 36 percent of districts decreased elementary classroom time spent on social studies, including civics-- a drop that most affected underfunded schools serving working-class, poor, rural, and inner-city kids."

And why is this coming into focus now, since Trump and his anti-democratic Regime occupied the White House, more than it has in recent decades? Rizga: "Extreme views can be socially contagious, especially among young people, who are more susceptible than adults to being influenced by their peers. As a journalist, I report on schools, and teachers have been telling me that violent rhetoric is more common, and that they’re struggling to find the right approaches to root it out. But some educators are also part of the problem. In a 2015 survey, 1 in 5 Muslim students in California said they experienced discrimination by a school staff member. According to a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union last year, when a Muslim sixth-grader from Somalia raised his hand to answer a question, a teacher at a school in Phoenix snapped, 'I can’t wait until Trump is elected. He’s going to deport all you Muslims…You’re going to be the next terrorist, I bet.'"





Think about that! I'm not a big fan of California Governor Gavin Newsom. He's a big poseur and a quintessential neoliberal corporate shill who will always do the wrong thing if he thinks he can get away with it. (He also has no backbone whatsoever.) Reporting for the L.A. Times yesterday, Nina Agrawal wrote about how he vetoed a high school ethnic studies requirement the legislature had passed.

Under the bill vetoed late Wednesday, written by Assembly Member Jose Medina (D-Riverside), all public high school students in California would have had to take at least one semester of ethnic studies in order to graduate, beginning with the class of 2029-2030. A separate bill, written by former Assembly Member Luis Alejo (D-Salinas) and signed into law in 2016, requires the state to create and adopt a model curriculum for ethnic studies courses by March 31, 2021.

In his veto message, Newsom said he values the role of ethnic studies in helping students understand the experiences of marginalized communities and that he supports schools and districts offering such courses. But, he said, there was too much uncertainty about the content of the model curriculum and he wanted to be sure it “achieves balance, fairness and is inclusive of all communities.”

Since its founding half a century ago, ethnic studies has been defined as focusing on the experiences, histories and contributions of four racial/ethnic groups that have historically been marginalized and oppressed in the United States: African Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, and Asian Americans. Coursework emphasizes “auto-ethnography,” encourages students to “tell their own stories,” and engage in social justice, according to descriptions from curricula and teachers.

Theresa Montaño, a professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge and a member of the advisory committee that helped develop the first draft of the ethnic studies model curriculum, said Thursday that Newsom’s veto message was “painful.”

“White people in this society can still with the stroke of a pen say to children of color in this state that your history doesn’t matter and that the only way your history will be told is if we get to sanitize it, scrutinize it and approve it before it gets to you. That I think is to me the most painful,” she said.

Medina, the bill’s sponsor, said Thursday that his bill’s intent to make ethnic studies a standard component of high school education got confused with the debate over how inclusive an ethnic studies curriculum should be.

Under his bill, courses developed off the model curriculum would have met the requirement, but so would other ethnic studies courses.

“Some of the discussion that I saw that took place this time made a lot of reference to where the curriculum was a year ago. And that is certainly very different from where the curriculum is now,” he said.

In the summer of 2019, state education officials released a first draft of the model curriculum to intense controversy, particularly from Jewish groups, including the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, whose members objected to their lack of inclusion and a perception that the curriculum and sample lesson plans were anti-Semitic. After a lengthy public comment and revision process, officials issued a new draft in July, which the caucus said “addresses the most critical concerns raised by our community last year.”

But when it later became clear that the curriculum would include a sample lesson on Arab Americans, many Jewish and other ethnic groups once again mobilized.

Sarah Levin, executive director of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, said her group supports “high-quality, rigorous ethnic studies” but wants to see the curriculum include “balance in its portrayal” of Middle Eastern communities and “equitable representation” for other groups, such as Iranian Americans, Kurdish Americans, and Mizrahi Jews. She said also that the curriculum should include a lesson plan on anti-Semitism.

“Let’s continue improving this and getting this to the right place where we’re all content and where we all feel like we’re meaningfully included,” she said.

Daniel Thigpen, a spokesman for the California Dept. of Education, said it had received at least 9,000 letters from the public on the latest curriculum draft.

At the crux of the challenge, Thigpen said, is how to balance that feedback and demands for inclusion with fidelity to the definition of ethnic studies.

“The position of the department right now and how we’re navigating that is by listening,” he said.

The department is currently synthesizing the public comments, reviewing additional materials and sample lesson plans, and working to produce another revision of the curriculum ahead of the next meeting of the Instructional Quality Commission in November. The commission can then either adopt that version or modify it further before opening it up for another 45-day public comment period and forwarding it to the State Board of Education.

Medina said he plans to reintroduce his bill as soon as he returns to the Legislature in December.

“California is the most diverse state in the United States. We should have it within our ability to teach students differently from what we’ve done for the last 50 years,” he said. “I am very hopeful that we get there next year.”

I guess John Oliver's show is like a national civics class (with serial f-bombs).

A Vote For Trump Is A Vote For Radical Right Terrorism

A new poll by the Military Times of active-duty service members shows Trump job favorability underwater, just 38% saying he's doing a good job. Officers have the most unfavorable view of Trump-- 59.1% disapproving. As for voting... Biden's ahead among all service members by nearly 6 points.

And this was even before it came out that Trump has been knowingly been accepting at least 30 campaign contributions from American Nazi movement leader, Morris Gulett-- and other known Nazis. And before it came out that Trump has been stoking vigilantism and violence in American cities to cause chaos. Washington Post reporters David Nakamura, Matt Viser and Robert Klemko wrote Sunday that Trump spent the weekend fanning the flames of partisan tensions between his supporters and social justice protesters in Portland and Kenosha, underscoring the threat of rising politically motivated violence.

In tweeting a video of the caravan on the move, Trump called the participants “GREAT PATRIOTS!” The reaction marked a sharp contrast to his silence during a large and peaceful civil rights march on Friday in Washington that drew thousands to the Mall, where some speakers denounced his leadership.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “unequivocally” condemned the Portland shooting and accused Trump of “fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters.”

“We must not become a country at war with ourselves; a country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you; a country that vows vengeance toward one another,” Biden said. “But that is the America that President Trump wants us to be, the America he believes we are.”

The violence has escalated as Trump has seized on the social justice protests as a campaign wedge, attempting to tie Biden to “radical” elements on the left. Eager to shift the political debate from the rising deaths and economic toll of the pandemic, Trump has relentlessly attacked Democratic mayors and governors for failing to quell protests, and he dispatched federal law enforcement authorities into cities to help arrest demonstrators.

...Trump aides, including White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, asserted recently that the violence and chaos will help his reelection bid.

“The only people to blame for the violence and riots in our streets are liberal politicians and their incompetent policies that have failed to get control of these destructive situations,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “This President has condemned violence in all its forms. Americans want peace in their streets and for their children to grow up in safe neighborhoods, and only President Trump has shown the courage and leadership to achieve law and order and deliver results.”

Trump’s conservative supporters, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have seized on Rittenhouse as a figure of sympathy, suggesting that he acted legally and in self-defense. The president on Sunday appeared to offer his support by liking a tweet from a self-described former liberal activist who cited Rittenhouse as a reason to vote for Trump.

Conservatives also rallied around the Trump caravan in Portland, where the man who was killed was wearing a hat bearing the words “Patriot Prayer,” the name of a far-right group organized in 2016 to bring pro-Trump rallies to liberal strongholds.

In a tweet, Trump referred to Biden as a “puppet” of “crazed leaders” on the left who envision the Portland chaos as emblematic of “Joe Biden’s America.”

“This is not what our great Country wants,” Trump wrote. “They want Safety & Security, and do NOT want to Defund our Police!”

Biden has stated that he does not support efforts of some liberals to drastically cut funding for local police departments and instead has outlined a proposal that would increase funding for community policing programs by $300 million as long as local departments agree to conditions such as adopting new use-of-force standards and increasing diversity among their ranks.

In recent months, Trump has increasingly used official White House events, along with campaign rallies, to vilify protesters as violent and to fan fears along racial lines.

During his renomination acceptance speech, delivered Thursday on the South Lawn of the White House for the Republican National Convention, Trump attacked Biden for failing to condemn “rioters and criminals spreading mayhem in Democrat-run cities” even though the former vice president had already spoken out against the violence and looting, saying the day before that “violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community-- that’s wrong.”

“Trump has been inciting violence for years and with deadly effects,” said author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian regimes. She pointed to a mass shooting in El Paso last summer by a gunman who cited anti-immigrant views with echoes of Trump’s rhetoric in a manifesto.

In 2018, Cesar Sayoc, a Trump supporter, mailed inoperative pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, a crime for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. And in 2017, a white nationalist in Charlottesville drove a car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer as she protested the extremist “Unite the Right” march-- a movement the president failed to condemn unequivocally.

“Now he’s trained his aim on Black Lives Matter protesters and antifa,” said Ben-Ghiat, referring to a loosely connected set of left-wing, anti-fascist groups. “So what is happening now with an escalation of violence is something beneficial to Trump. Strongmen leaders incite crises so they can pose themselves as the law-and-order solution.”

...Homeland security experts said the combustible mix of sharply polarized and ideologically minded agitators mixing on the streets in cities where law enforcement authorities are strained and, in some cases, inadequately trained is a recipe for potential violence.

“It’s important for government leaders at all levels to calm everyone and keep political rallies peaceful,” said Tom Warrick, an Atlantic Council expert who left government service last year after serving as a career official at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

“The problem is that things can quickly get out of control and the uncertainty and chaos become weapons in the fight,” Warrick said. “Merely the uncertainty that it will take days, or weeks, to sort out something that’s happening in itself becomes a tool for division of the country, rather than the unity.”

Yesterday, another Post team, Joshua Partlow and Isaac Stanley-Becker, reported that some local police departments-- which don't even try to screen out facsists and racists-- are supporting neo-Nazi Trump supporters, militants and vigilantes. Many people think officers in the Kenosha police department should be charged with abetting and encouraging the Kyle Rittenhouse murders in Kenosha.

The trio wrote that "As protesters march against racism and police violence in cities and towns across the nation, they are being confronted by groups of armed civilians who claim to be assisting and showing support for police battered and overwhelmed by the protests. The confrontations have left at least three people dead in recent days: In addition to the two protesters killed Tuesday in Kenosha, a man thought to be associated with a far-right group called Patriot Prayer was fatally shot late Saturday in Portland, Oregon. Both incidents have drawn complaints that local authorities abetted the violence by tolerating the presence of these self-appointed enforcers with no uniforms, varied training and limited accountability. The stated motives of these vigilante actors, who are virtually indistinguishable from one another once massed on the streets, range from protecting storefronts and free speech to furthering White supremacy and fomenting civil war."

Many sheriffs and police chiefs, including in Kenosha, have disavowed these armed civilians, saying police don’t want their help. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said he responded “hell no” when asked to deputize civilians. And Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian said this week, “I don’t need more guns on the streets in this city when we are trying to keep people safe.”

But elsewhere, local authorities have at times appeared to support people who took up arms against protests that have occasionally turned violent and provided cover for vandals and looters. In Snohomish, Washington, the police chief was ousted in June after welcoming dozens of armed men, including one waving a Confederate flag, who responded to false Internet rumors that “antifa” looters planned to ransack the town, referring to a loosely knit movement of far-left activists.

In Hood County, Texas, a constable in May encouraged the Oath Keepers-- an armed group that claims to have thousands of members of current and former law enforcement and military members-- to defend a Dallas hair salon after rumors of possible looting. And in Salem, Oregon, a police officer was captured on video in June advising armed men to “discreetly” stay inside while police began arresting protesters for violating curfew.

On other occasions, police officers have been photographed smiling or fist-bumping with members of far-right armed groups. Even in Kenosha, individual police officers seemed to welcome the help of armed civilians, including Rittenhouse, a member of police and fire cadet training programs who said on video before the shooting that it was “our job” to help people and protect property.

We were welcomed very warmly,” said Kenosha Guard leader Kevin Mathewson, 36, a former city alderman who summoned men with guns to gather in Kenosha on the night of the shooting. “I was at the entrance to my neighborhood. [Police] rolled down their windows and said, ‘Thanks for being here. We can’t be everywhere.’”

Mathewson has said that he does not know Rittenhouse. The teen, from the nearby town of Antioch, Ill., has been charged with first-degree homicide. His attorneys say he acted in self-defense after being “accosted by multiple rioters.”

In a letter last week to Kenosha officials, Mary B. McCord, legal director at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said “the bloodshed . . . throws into sharp relief the danger posed when private and unaccountable militia groups take the law into their own hands.”

McCord has called on police and prosecutors to enforce laws that prohibit private militias from usurping law enforcement functions. In her letter, she noted that “several provisions of Wisconsin law prohibit private paramilitary and unauthorized law enforcement activity.”

Raul Torrez (D), the district attorney in Bernalillo County, N.M., agrees. In June, one person was shot after members of an armed group that calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard clashed with protesters trying to tear down a monument to Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate in Albuquerque. Torrez filed suit against the militia, seeking to block it from assuming law enforcement duties.

“I don’t think a lot of Americans understand how fragile democracy is,” Torrez said. “One of the early signs of a troubled democracy is when people decide that they’re no longer going to address their political differences at the ballot box-- or in elected legislatures or in Congress-- but they’re going to do it on the street, and they’re going to do it with guns.”

“Police officers, district attorneys, leaders in law enforcement here and across the country have to make it unambiguously clear to anyone that it is not their job-- it is the role of law enforcement-- to” defend property, Torrez said. Militia groups are “not hearing that message from enough leadership in law enforcement. And this takes us down a very, very dangerous path.”

While racial justice protests typically condemn police behavior and include calls for defunding police departments, militia-style groups are predominantly pro-police and often rally behind slogans such as “Blue Lives Matter” and “Back the Badge.” In Portland and other places, law enforcement has been accused of treating far-right groups more leniently than leftist protesters.

“The vigilantes will come out, and their rally will be ‘Back the Blue,’” said Alexander Reid Ross, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right, a London-based group.

Ross has compiled a database of 497 public appearances of militias and far-right groups in about 300 U.S. counties since May, including 56 that he says suggest collaboration with police.

This summer, for instance, a commissioner in Bonner County, Idaho, called on residents to mobilize against a Black Lives Matter protest planned for Sandpoint, the county seat. His Facebook post asked people to “help counter anything that might get out of hand,” drawing a rebuke from Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad, who called it “grossly irresponsible.”

The commissioner, Dan McDonald, said he stood by his message, despite critics who derided the assemblage as “Dan’s private army.”

“Most of the guys that showed up-- I would bet because I know some of these folks-- are former law enforcement, former military,” he said. “They’re well trained and continue to train just for their own self-defense.”

Elsewhere, local officials have advised civilians to be prepared to use violence to defend themselves. At a June news conference responding to rumors on social media of possible riots, the sheriff in Polk County, Fla., warned would-be lawbreakers that local residents “have guns. I encourage them to own guns. And they’re going to be in their homes tonight, with their guns loaded.”

The sheriff, Grady Judd, also encouraged people to shoot intruders.

“Shoot them so much you can read the Washington Post through them,” he said in an interview last week, adding: “I want people to take matters into their own hands when they’re protecting their homes.”

...“Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said last week. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

Let me turn to the student newspaper of Louisiana State University, Reveille and writer Gabrielle Martinez, who had a few things to say over the weekend about Tucker's racism and hate-mongering on Fox. "With an average audience of 4.33 million viewers each night," she wrote, "frozen dinner heir and political pundit Tucker Carlson consistently spews hate through misinformation and misdirection as the host of the highest-rated program in U.S. cable news history, Tucker Carlson Tonight. A defining trait of the millionaire’s TV persona is his hatred for the American 'elite.' He repeatedly discusses his distaste for the 'pompous' rich, like Barack Obama, to an almost anti-capitalist degree; ironically, it’s estimated Tucker Carlson Tonight has sold $108.3 million in commercials alone this year, making up 16 percent of Fox’s billion-dollar ad revenue. Yet Carlson still attempts to portray himself as a figurehead of America’s working class. A supposed patriot, he wants the best for the United States-- or at least enough to relentlessly push Fox’s ultra-conservative narrative on their elderly white viewership."

To Carlson, "maintaining order” apparently means murdering two innocent people, a crime even our current president refuses to condemn. This is the result of Carlson’s inability to distance himself from radical far-right rhetoric in turn for higher ratings and publicity.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Carlson is intentionally pushing a narrative that he himself is writing. While it’s humorous to acknowledge as an outsider, it’s dangerous to the people who actually take his word seriously and believe the liberal left wants to destroy the American way of life.

While the left advocates for race equality and climate change, Carlson somehow twists these movements into what he views as socialist corruption. Instead of acknowledging things as they are, Carlson falsely portrays himself as a heroic character trying to save America from ruin. This tactic only heightens dramatics to further divide the country along race and party lines.

Oh, and John Oliver is... on fucking fire! Please do not miss this clip-- and all the way to the end!

Leave It To Trump To Turn Masks Into A Divisive Political Weapon To Kill Americans

Back To School With Betsy And Donald by Nancy Ohanian

There are 22 states without statewide mask mandates. How the hell is that even possible? Well, let's begin by pointing out that of the 22 states, 20 have Trumpist Republican governors, one (Wisconsin) has a cowardly moderate Democrat who got barked at by the Republicans in the state legislature and state supreme court so he announced he was "giving up" and one (Wisconsin) has a worthless conservative Democratic governor who served in Congress as though he was a Republican anyway. Several of the states have pandemics that are completely out of control and dangerous not just for their own states but for the entire country, if not the world. These are the states without mask mandates, along with how many new cases each reported on Monday-- and the number cases they have per million residents.

• Florida +10,347 (16,780 cases per million Floridians)
• Georgia +2,452 (13,711 cases per million Georgians)
• Tennessee + 1,639 (11,678 cases per million Tennesseans)
• Arizona +1,559 (19,946 cases per million Arizonans)
• South Carolina +1,459 (cases per million South Carolinians)
• Mississippi +1,251 (14,747 cases per million Mississippians)
• Ohio +1,230 (6,519 cases per million Buckeyes)
• Minnesota +903 (8,353 cases per million Minnesotans)
• Wisconsin +703 (7,388 cases per million Cheeseheads)
• Indiana +635 (8,497 cases per million Indianans)
• Missouri +603 (5,836 cases per million Missourans)
• Iowa +527 (12,441 cases per million Iowans)
• Utah +409 (20,769 cases per million Utahns)
• Idaho +393 (8,542cases per million Idahoans)
• Oklahoma +168 (6,427 cases per million Sooners)
• North Dakota +107 (cases per million North Dakotans)
• Nebraska +264 (11,811 cases per million Cornhuskers)
• Alaska +75 (2,664 per million Alaskans)
• South Dakota +37 (8,979 cases per million South Dakotans)
• Wyoming +61 (3,779 cases per million Wyomingites)
• New Hampshire +46 (4,596 cases per million Granite Staters)
• Vermont +10 (2,180 cases per million Vermonters)

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp demands to go down in history as the worst governor of all... by suing cities and counties that pass their own mask mandates. And just as Señor T finally tweets out a picture of himself in Lone Ranger drag! That was the day after he got the crap kicked out of him by Chris Wallace in the middle of the Trumpanzee heartland: Fox News. Wallace was gentle compared to what Maddow of Chris Hayes would have done but he landed punch after punch right in that ugly face, as we noted yesterday. It must've shocked more than a few Fox viewers. "One of the greatest frustrations President Trump’s foes have," wrote Aaron Blake for the Washington Post "is how infrequently he’s called out-- in person-- on his bizarre theories and his 20,000 falsehoods and misleading claims. While journalists fact-check Trump relentlessly, there are relatively few instances in which he has received pushback to his face, in part because it takes a certain deftness and, arguably in even larger part, because he submits to so few interviews outside the Fox News and conservative media bubble." But on Sunday Wallace called him out on his lies and gaslighting.

The president has for months lodged and repeated a series of false statistics and dodgy ideas about the coronavirus outbreak. And in a matter of minutes, Wallace cast a spotlight on almost all the big ones.

Trump pushed back on questions about the ballooning number of cases we face, as he often has, by wrongly suggesting that this was a matter of increased testing. Wallace noted that the rising test-positivity rate and the comparisons we see in most other countries-- particularly Western Europe-- show our situation is particularly bad.

Trump then reverted to his fallback-- the number of deaths we’ve seen-- and things quickly went off the rails for him.

When Trump claimed the United States had one of the lowest mortality rates in the world-- or even the lowest-- Wallace made him prove it. Trump couldn’t, because it isn’t true.

The below is a lengthy exchange, but it’s worth [watching] in full:





Or not. Not only didn’t Wallace claim the United States had the worst, but Trump didn’t prove the opposite either. Wallace cut to a voice-over.

“The White House went with this chart from the European CDC, which shows Italy and Spain doing worse, but countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better,” Wallace said. “Other countries doing better, like Russia, aren’t included in the White House chart.”

So not even the cherry-picked data that the White House furnished backed up Trump’s claim. (In fact, the U.S. mortality rate ranks on the high end of all countries, according to Johns Hopkins University.)

Apparently unchastened by this, Trump later decided to repeat another false claim-- and was again exposed.

Trump again claimed, as his campaign ads have, that Joe Biden wants to defund the police. In fact, Biden has said explicitly that he disagrees with that idea.

“Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders,” Trump said. “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”

But just as with the mortality rates, Trump promised proof that didn’t exist. As Wallace said in yet another voice-over, “The White House has never sent us evidence that Bernie-Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police, because there is none. It calls for increased funding for police departments that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs like mental health counseling.”

Republicans have indeed tried to substantiate Trump’s claim by noting that Joe Biden called for redirecting police funding-- arguing that’s in line with the defunding movement. But even if you accept that strained argument, the proof Trump offered didn’t at all prove what he claimed.

The confidence Trump displayed in his false claims was truly something to behold. (“Ready?” “I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate.”) The question has often been whether he truly believes his own hype or is just committed to the lie. Either way, Wallace laid it bare.

In between these rare live fact checks was arguably an even worse moment for Trump.

Trump has downplayed the coronavirus threat from the very beginning, but rarely has his dismissiveness been revealed so plainly. Trump continued to press Wallace on the metric he argues is most important, and he challenged Wallace to show a chart on deaths. Wallace noted that we’re seeing around a thousand per day, at which point Trump reverted to another fallback: blaming China.

“They should’ve never let it escape; they should’ve never let it out,” Trump said. “But it is what it is.”

It is what it is. With nearly 140,000 deaths. Expect that to feature in some anti-Trump campaign ads.

Wallace’s ability to reinforce Trump’s constant lack of specificity stretched into a conversation about schools. Wallace asked Trump what would seem to be a pretty simple question: He noted that Trump said schools are teaching students to hate America, and he asked where Trump was seeing that.

“Now they want to change 1492, Columbus discovered America,” Trump said. “You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 Project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know."

The reference was to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which has been a lightning rod in conservative circles for its portrayal of slavery’s role in our country’s origins. Wallace quickly noted, “It’s slavery,” not redefining when our nation was founded.

“That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know,” Trump said. “They just want to make a change.”

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Wallace later raised Trump’s attacks on Biden’s sharpness, and when Trump trotted out his claims to acing a cognitive test, Wallace was ready. As The Post's Philip Bump has noted, the kind of test Trump has bragged about is remarkably simple because it aims to ferret out obvious mental impairments. Wallace noted that he can attest to this, because he took a similar exam.

“It’s not the hardest test,” Wallace said. He noted that one question asked him to identify an elephant by looking at a picture of one.

Trump then conceded that some questions are easy but then remarkably contended that some are difficult as the test goes on: “But I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t. They get very hard, the last five questions.”

Wallace shot back: “Well, one of them was count back from 100 by seven.” He began counting: “Ninety-three.”

In other circumstances, this could have come off as overly adversarial. But Wallace was putting his finger on the ridiculousness of the claim-- just as he had so many times previously in the interview.

These were the kinds of things that have been pointed out ad nauseam outside the audience of the president; Wallace just had the venue and the wherewithal to actually press him on them. And the result was something unlike we’ve seen thus far in Trump’s presidency.