Many Republicans Besides Just Louie Gohmert Are Public Health Threats

I'm sure you know by now that Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19... in between chatting, maskless, with William Barr (also maskless) and boarding AirForce One for a flight to Texas with Trumpanzee, the reason he was tested. He was then rejected as a passenger. Louie, a general all-around neo-fascist three-ring circus, was one of the leaders of the House Anti-Masque Caucus. He's so anti-mask, in fact, that he now claims he got COVID by wearing a mask, which he rarely does. He was the last straw for Pelosi, who finally instituted a mask mandate on the chamber floor last night.

Jake Sherman, who broken the story about the now COVID-infected Gohmert received an e-mail from a nameless Gohmert staffer: "Jake, thank you for letting our office know Louie tested positive for the Coronavirus. When you write your story, can you include the fact that Louie requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that ‘we could be an example to America on how to open up safely.’ When probing the office, you might want to ask how often were people berated for wearing masks."

Sherman wrote that most people in DC are taking masking up seriously, "but not everyone. And all it takes is one irresponsible person-- an armchair scientist who decides masks aren’t for them, or their entire office should work in person in the middle of a pandemic-- for many of us to get sick with a virus that could kill us. Members of Congress arrive here from all over America nearly every week. They can’t conduct their business from afar-- fair enough... The Capitol has superspreader written all over it. People are coming off planes, out of cars, and many of them can’t be relied upon to follow basic masking rules that are mandatory across the country. Gohmert went back to his office after he tested positive to talk to his staff!"

As Mike Tillis reported for The Hill, that Steny Hoyer "hammered Gohmert and Rep. Gym Jordan (R-OH), another conservative Freedom Caucus member who refuses to wear a mask, saying they jeopardized the health of everyone around them. '[Gohmert] came into the room without a mask on. Jordan did the same. Totally irresponsible behavior, not for themselves-- clearly irresponsible for themselves-- but irresponsible to everybody else who was in that room. Everybody else they've come in contact with, Hoyer said." His point is that these anti-mask Republicans are a public health threat.

For members of a Republican Party that often touts the importance of personal responsibility, those lawmakers have exhibited "no personal responsibility or consideration for others," Hoyer charged.

"Very frankly, too many Republicans have continued to act extraordinarily irresponsibly," Hoyer told reporters on a press call.

Reporting for the Washington Post Griff Witte, Ariana Eunjung Cha and Josh Dawsey wrote had Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) was one of the first governors to take medical advise and grok what the pandemic was all about. He moved a lot faster and a lot smarter than Cuomo or Newsom in shutting down his state. But when he tried mandating masks, the far right freaks flipped out. "The backlash," they wrote, "came instantly. An avalanche of abuse on social media. Calls from anguished citizens. Angry recriminations and threats. The next day, a chastened DeWine backed down. Asking people to wear a mask 'is offensive to some of our fellow Ohioans,' the Republican declared somberly. 'And I understand that.' It would be three months-- plus tens of thousands of cases and thousands of deaths-- before the governor would try again.





The catastrophe that DeWine averted in March with his early efforts have been erased by the lunatic fringe. The state is a COVID-hotspot now. Tuesday, the state reported 1,325 new cases, 11th worst in the country, and yesterday Ohio reported another 1,362 cases, bringing the state total to 87,893, which translates to a steadily increasing 7,519 cases per million Buckeyes. Many Republicans in this state run by Republicans refuse to wear masks.

The mask is the simplest and among the most effective weapons against the coronavirus in the public health arsenal. Yet from the start, America’s relationship with face coverings has been deeply fraught.

Faulty guidance from health authorities, a cultural aversion to masks and a deeply polarized politics have all contributed. So has a president who resisted role modeling the benefits of face coverings, and who belittled those who did.

The result, experts say, is a country that squandered one of its best opportunities to beat back the coronavirus pandemic this spring and summer. In the process, the United States fell far behind other nations that skipped the fuss over masks, costing lives and jeopardizing the recovery heading into the fall.

“Some countries took out their masks as soon as this happened,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist from the University of California at San Francisco, “and their rates of death are very low.”

In a coronavirus response that has been full of missteps and unforced errors, delayed acceptance of universal masking, Gandhi said, may be the single biggest mistake the United States has made.

In interviews, elected leaders, health specialists and mask advocates say it did not have to be that way-- and very nearly wasn’t.

The country hit a tipping point on widespread mask use only this month, with a majority of states and the nation’s largest retailers all mandating them. But the science has long been pointing toward the efficacy of masks-- even if the guidance from health authorities wasn’t.

...In the last week of March-- as the official case count was approaching 100,000-- the CDC presented what was then considered a radical proposal to the White House, recommending routine masking by the public. Senior administration officials, particularly members of the vice president’s office on the coronavirus task force, pushed back, arguing it was unnecessary.

The new guidance was somewhat of a compromise. It encouraged-- but did not require-- people to cover their faces in “public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”

On April 3, President Trump stood at the White House podium and issued the recommendation. “It may be good” advice, he offered. But he immediately undercut the guidance by announcing he would not be wearing a mask himself.

“Somehow sitting in the Oval Office, behind that beautiful Resolute Desk” as he met with “presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens,” Trump said, “I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself.”

Initially, some Trump aides said they did not like the idea of him wearing a mask publicly because they believed it would be bad politically and make the president look weak. They thought it might lead others to panic or think the pandemic was worse than it was. There were also fears among some in the president’s circle that his supporters would rebel against anything that smacked of a government directive.

Among some of Trump’s most ardent fans, anti-mask insurrections were already brewing. In dark corners of the Internet, mask conspiracy theories took shape. On the steps of state capitol buildings, activists shouted their objections to a masked attack on “liberty.”

Some of the president’s advisers, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, expressed repeated skepticism of masks and whether they made a difference, campaign and White House officials said. Trump campaign masks were produced and presented to the president but never sold. Some aides were fearful of selling merchandise he did not wear and appearing to profit off a pandemic, officials said.

“The President’s position has been consistent on this,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said in a statement. “In late March, before there was even a recommended but not required guidance given by the CDC on mask-wearing, he supported facial coverings.”

With little hope for progress at the White House, Howard had begun to make his data-based case for masks to the governors, focusing especially on Republicans who had shown a willingness to embrace a scientific approach to attacking the coronavirus. DeWine was at the top of his list.

The 73-year-old Ohioan had won plaudits from public health experts for the speed with which he shut down gatherings, businesses and schools in March when the coronavirus began to spread in the state. Cases stayed low, even as the economic damage rippled.

As pressure intensified on DeWine to reopen the state in late April, the governor seized on a mask requirement in stores and other businesses as a way to do so safely.

Masks would not be “forever,” the governor announced April 27, “but if we want to get back to work, we have to protect our employees.”

Within hours, as protests over the governor’s assault on “freedom” poured in, DeWine knew it had been a mistake that would need to be reversed.

“After 40 years of representing Ohioans in many different jobs, I’ve got a pretty good ability to gauge these things,” he said in an interview. “And with the pushback we got, my instinct was that this was too far.”

Unlike closing schools-- which could happen with the stroke of a pen-- requiring masks would involve getting “millions of Ohioans making individual decisions dozens of times a day.”

And unlike in Asia-- where DeWine had traveled pre-pandemic and seen the widespread use of face coverings to ward off disease-- there was no culture of mask-wearing for public health benefits in the United States.

The president’s unwillingness to set an example by wearing a mask didn’t help.

“I would have liked to have seen the president do that,” DeWine said.

Also unhelpful, the governor said, was guidance from some public health authorities that continued to be contradictory, even as the science behind masks became increasingly clear.

Studies suggesting masks could be effective in curbing the risk of transmission continued to accumulate. But the WHO-- which has been criticized throughout the pandemic for being slow to respond to emerging data-- took until June 5 to issue a mask recommendation for the general public. Even then, it was tepid and full of asterisks, with the global health body insisting the change was consistent with its original guidance.

U.S. officials have been more forthright in acknowledging their advice has shifted, arguing it was in response to shifting data.

“If you acted on the best information you had at the time and then later you get new evidence that points in a different direction, does that mean what you did three months ago was wrong? Well, existentially, yes it was. But it was based on the evidence we had at the time,” Fauci said in an interview Friday.

Once policy did shift, Fauci said, medical officials were united in getting behind the new recommendation. But other senior administration officials weren’t on board.

“That was a problem,” he said.

Trump was foremost among those who weren’t interested in promoting masks.

When, in late May, he toured a Ford plant in Michigan where masks were required, he refused to put one on in front of the cameras. “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he said.

Over Memorial Day weekend, he retweeted a mocking criticism of his election opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, for wearing a mask.

Videos began going viral as Americans squared off on what to do about customers in stores who refused to mask up. Social media groups devoted to casting doubt on their efficacy proliferated. Face coverings had become debate points in the U.S. presidential campaign and potent symbols in the culture war.

Public health specialists could only shake their heads.

The debate radiated through big cities and small ones as the coronavirus began a resurgence in June, with many areas that had dodged the first round of infection getting hammered this time.

Joplin had no active cases at the start of June. Weeks later, the city of 50,000 in southwest Missouri had one of the nation’s fastest rising infection rates.

For five hours in late June, the city council debated whether to mandate masks, only to defeat the motion by a single vote.

Two weeks later, with hospitals hitting their capacities, the council voted again. This time, the mask mandate passed 6 to 3.

Mayor Ryan Stanley was among those who changed his mind. He had initially thought that a mandate was unenforceable and that, in a deeply conservative, pro-Trump region, it would only encourage defiance. But when he visited local businesses the weekend after the requirement kicked in, he was astonished by what he saw.

“We were getting 15 percent adoption before. I was crossing my fingers and hoping for 50 to 60 percent,” he said. “But now it’s at 90 to 95 percent. It’s certainly doing its job.”

Stanley said mask opponents had been loud-- staging noisy demonstrations and dominating the debate. But they hadn’t actually been that numerous.

Public opinion polls bear that out, with large majorities of voters overall favoring mandates, although Republicans are less supportive.

Policies have begun to match those attitudes. A cascade of states-- including Ohio-- have instituted requirements in recent weeks, with DeWine identifying compliance as critical to the state’s hopes of bringing down infection rates and opening schools.

Major retailers such as Walmart have as well, making shopping trips difficult without a mask.

Evidence shows the mandates are working.

“There were seat belts in cars for decades. There were lots of public service announcements, people saying, ‘Wear seat belts’” said David Keating, who worked with Howard to found the nonprofit advocacy group #Masks4All. “But it’s when the law started requiring it that seat belt usage soared.”

Even the president has joined in-- though still somewhat tepidly. On a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center earlier this month, he wore a mask in public for the first time. Last Tuesday, he tweeted a photo of himself in a mask with the explanation that “many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance.”

Trump wore a mask again on Monday while touring a biotechnology plant. But as recently as last week, he was barefaced while in public at his hotel in D.C., despite local rules that require a face covering.

Political advisers and campaign officials say there has been a concerted effort around Trump-- from aides to family members to advisers to lawmakers-- to show that wearing a mask is the right thing to do. Aides have encouraged people to praise the president for wearing a mask, hoping that he will continue to embrace it, officials said.

It had been clear for months-- as America’s coronavirus case count has climbed above 4 million and the death toll closes in on 150,000-- that masks are a public health imperative. But with grim polls showing Trump trailing in almost every key state, they have now become a political one, too.

“He was basically on an island even among his own supporters,” said Brendan Buck, a longtime Republican operative who last worked for then-Speaker Paul D. Ryan. “It doesn’t take a genius to understand that this pandemic is why he’s losing so badly.”

I travel a lot and I've been wearing masks on planes for a couple of decades. When I got back from Thailand last January and understood that what was starting in Wuhan would soon be in the local Trader Joe's in my neighborhood. By the first week in February I had stopped going out without a hospital mask, even though I would invariably get bad vibes. By the end of February I stopped fooling around with the hospital masks, laughed at the cloth masks that do almost nothing and started wearing an N-99 (better than an N-95), along with wrap-around goggles and disposable latex gloves. In grocery stores there was a fantastic bonus-- people fled when they saw me walking down the aisles. About a month later half the people in my neighborhood were wearing masks. Then it became mandatory in L.A. and soon after mandatory in California. Unfortunately, it was too late for almost 9,000 dead Californians (almost half of whom are Angelinos). Too bad Newsom didn't have the guts to do what the 6 Bay Area counties did in mid-March.

Today 11 governors of states with out-of-control pandemics still have not issued statewide mask mandates. Can you guess what they all have in common, besides lots of dead and dying constituents?

• Doug Ducey (R-AZ)- 168,273 cases (23,118 per million Arizonans)
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 451,423 cases (21,018 per million Floridians)
• Tate Reeves (R-MS)- 55,804 cases (18,750 per million Mississippians)
• Brian Kemp (R-GA)- 178,323 cases (16,795 per million Georgians)
• Henry McMaster (R-SC)- 85,846 cases (16,673 per million South Carolinians)
• Bill Lee (R-TN)- 100,822 cases (14,763 per million Tennesseans)
• Kim Reynolds (R-IA)- 43,277 cases (13,717 per million Iowans)
• Pete Ricketts (R-NE)- 25,157 cases (13,005 per million Nebraskans)
• Kristi Noem (R-SD)- 8,641 cases (9,768 per million South Dakotans)
• Kevin Stitt (R-OK)- 34,623 cases (8,750 per million Oklahomans)
• Doug Burgum (R-ND)- 6,227 cases (8,171 per North Dakotans)

Not Yummy-- Republican Stew

Recall when Lev and Igor were caught laundering Russian money into the Trump campaign and the campaign of dozens of Republicans in Congress? Yesterday, Christian Berthelson reported that Lev-- one of the Giuliani criminal associates was handed a million bucks from Putin in September "a month before he was charged with conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. political campaigns. The DOJ-- though obviously not William Barr-- is asking the courts to withdraw his bail and throw Lev in the clink, technically for understating his income and assets. Their filing with the court: "Parnas failed to disclose, in describing his income to the government and pretrial services, the fact that in September 2019, he received $1 million from a bank account in Russia into Account-1. The payment raises provocative new questions about the nature of the work Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were doing and who they were doing it for. Much about the nature of their work remains unclear."

Greg Olear reminds us that the House has already found William Barr in contempt of Congress. Now he is urging Congress to "take him into custody until he 1) releases the full Mueller documents to the House Intelligence Committee and 2) allows all the president’s accomplices to honor their subpoenas... Trump, with Barr as his first mate, has steered the country into uncharted territory. It’s time for the good guys to take back the helm." From Prevail, Olear's blog, this morning: "He seems so nice. Unlike Paul Manafort, who presents as the mobbed-up asshole he is, or Roger Stone, who arrayed himself like a comic-book villain, or Corey Lewandowski, who comes across as the drunken lout rooting for the other team behind you at the game, Bill Barr doesn’t look like a bad guy. He has a kind face, gentle eyes, a full head of hella-good hair, bookish glasses, and an avuncular manner. His pleasing plumpness is more Kris Kringle than Jabba the Hutt. In a word, he’s cuddly. But make no mistake: the once and current Attorney General is the most dangerous man in America. He may well be the Devil himself."

The third and most effective of Trump’s Attorneys General follows the same pattern. The man who leads the Department of Justice does not believe in justice—at least, not the American version of it. Indeed, Barr does not seem to believe in democracy at all. “Might makes right” is his credo. And he has made it his mission to ensure that the president’s might rivals that of a Saudi king, medieval Pope, or Roman emperor. He is, at best, a monarchist, and at worst, a raging Fascist. He is not just a traitor. He is an apostate, rejecting completely the prevailing faith of his countrymen—our American faith in democracy.

Donald Trump is a monarchist, too, in that he sees himself as some sort of king. But that is a function of his own narcissism and insecurity, not a coherent worldview. Barr is different. In a nation founded by revolutionaries, by patriots, he is a Tory-- a redcoat. It is not difficult to imagine him dolled up in white wig and fancy get-up, grovelling before George III.

His treachery is so obvious as to be indisputable. But Barr is unique among the Trump loyalists for two reasons: First, he’s competent. Second, his motives are more opaque.

OK, now I want you to add something else to a brew you can probably already tell is going to be very toxic. Wednesday deranged Texas Trumpist, Louie Gohmert publicly named the whistleblower during a Judiciary impeachment hearing, illegally endangering his life.

Three faces of today's Republican Party

Next ingredient: As of Friday since his defeat, outgoing-- as in defeated-- Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin granted 428 pardons and commutations to typical Republicans, like one convicted of raping a child, another who hired a hit man to kill his business partner and a third who killed his parents. But the big news was how Bevin pardoned Republican Patrick Baker who was convicted of reckless homicide, robbery, impersonating a peace officer and tampering with evidence-- whose family threw a fundraiser for Bevin and raised him $21,500 towards retiring his campaign debt. Commonwealth’s Attorney Jackie Steele, who prosecuted Baker and other defendants for the 2014 death of Donald Mills, noted that "two of Baker’s co-defendants are still in prison. 'What makes Mr. Baker any different than the other two?' he asked. Answering that question, he said he believes Baker was pardoned while the others remain locked up because Baker’s family has given generously to Bevin. State records show that Victoria Baker, who lives at the same Corbin address where the fundraiser was held, donated $1,000 in 2015 and that Kathryn Baker gave another $500 to Bevin’s reelection in March"... Bevin commuted his sentence to time served and gave him a pardon."





Yes, I'm concocting a recipe for today's GOP. And it would be a big mistake to not include Fox in that recipe-- a more than key ingredient. In an e-mail to his supporters, Florida garden variety Democrat Lois Frankel wrote that 47% of residents in her D+9 South Florida district watch Fox News, "more than in any other congressional district in the entire country." She whined that "wth Fox News ramping up their propaganda efforts in our district, we need your help" to reelect her. "Republicans are raising big money to defeat Democrats in Florida, and with the Fox News propaganda machine on their side, it’s going to take a real grassroots effort to fight back."

Wired went much further, noting that Fox News is now a threat to national security. Garrett Graff reported that "the network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous."

Sean Hannity, who had long trumpeted the forthcoming inspector general report and expected a thorough indictment of the behavior of former FBI director James Comey and other members of the “deep state,” had a simple message for his viewers during Fox’s Monday night prime time: “Everything we said, everything we reported, everything we told you was dead-on-center accurate,” he said. “It is all there in black and white, it’s all there.”

Except they weren’t right and it wasn’t there. But Fox News’ viewers evidently were not to be told those hard truths-- they were to be kept thinking that everything in their self-selected filter bubble was just peachy keen.

Over on Fox Business, Lou Dobbs said the mere fact that the IG found no political bias in the FBI’s investigation of Trump and Russia in 2016 was de facto proof of the power of the deep state.

John Harwood, long one of Washington’s most respected conservative voices in journalism, summed up Fox’s approach Monday night simply: “Lunacy.”

It’s worse than lunacy, though. Fox’s bubble reality creates a situation where it’s impossible to have the conversations and debate necessary to function as a democracy. Facts that are inconvenient to President Trump simply disappear down Fox News’ “memory hole,” as thoroughly as George Orwell could have imagined in 1984.

The idea that Fox News represents a literal threat to our national security, on par with Russia’s Internet Research Agency or China’s Ministry of State Security, may seem like a dramatic overstatement of its own-- and I, a paid contributor to its competitor CNN, may appear a biased voice anyway-- but this week has made clear that, as we get deeper into the impeachment process and as the 2020 election approaches, Fox News is prepared to destroy America’s democratic traditions if it will help its most important and most dedicated daily viewer.

The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.

In the impeachment hearings, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill and other witnesses made clear how those who, like Fox News hosts and the president, advance the false narrative that Ukraine meddled in the US election are serving the Kremlin’s interests. Russia is playing a weak hand geopolitically-- its economy is sputtering along and its population shrinking-- and so its greatest hope is to stoke internal discord in the West. Robert Mueller warned of this; James Clapper has warned of it; and now Fiona Hill has done the same. “Our nation is being torn apart,” she said. “Truth is questioned.” Yet Fox, and the GOP more broadly, has warmly embraced almost every twist of Kremlin propaganda, up to and including the idea that Russia never meddled in the 2016 election to begin with.

Fox’s clear willingness to parry the wingnuttiest ideas in service of the president, long-term implications to the United States be damned, should worry all concerned about the state of the United States. The Ukraine myth is hardly the only example; for years, it has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media. (To say nothing of Fox’s long-term commitment to undermining and questioning climate science, leaving the US both behind in mitigating the worst effects of climate change and also ill-equipped to face the myriad security consequences of a warming planet.)

...[A]s the year has unfolded, Fox’s evening talk shows and its presidentially endorsed morning show have proven to be a particularly egregious and odious swamp of fetid, metastasizing lies and bad faith feedback loops that leave its viewers-- and, notably, its Presidential Audience of One-- foaming at the mouth with outrage and bile.

It’s hard not to think that the increasingly odd behavior and untethered-to-reality pronouncements of the president’s two top lawyers-- Attorney General Bill Barr and personal defender Rudy Giuliani-- have not been deeply influenced by the filter bubble on the right created, fostered, and fertilized by Fox News. As Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey tweeted after Barr set out on his Quixotic quest to prove the deep state was behind the FBI’s 2016 investigation, “The Attorney General is a fully-committed Fox News conspiracy theorist.”

The network’s pantheon of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, and the rotating couch-cast of Fox & Friends’ morning show dunces-by-choice together represent a level of ill-informed demagoguery that would make Father Coughlin and Huey Long wince.

More than simply embarrassing themselves by spouting obvious falsehoods, though, Fox News’ incendiary, fanatical rants serve to delegitimize to its viewers the very idea of a political opposition. Every Democrat is evil. Every person who disagrees with President Trump is an enemy of the state. Every career federal employee is a member of a deep state opposition.

As writer Gabe Sherman, who authored a history of Fox News, tweeted over the weekend, “Been thinking a lot about why Trump will survive impeachment when Nixon didn’t. For 20+ years Fox News (and rightwing talk radio) has told GOP voters that Democrats are evil. As lawless as Trump is, Republicans believe Dems are worse. That’s the power of propaganda.”

These pronouncements-- uttered around the clock on weekdays and doubled down on weekends by hosts like the president’s favorite, Jeanine Pirro-- are an attack on the very ideals and foundations of the American experiment.

The founders settled on political parties as a mechanism to institutionalize channels for ongoing debate. As historian Joseph Ellis wrote in American Creation, political parties “eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in an endless argument.” It is that willingness to view opponents as legitimate that has long allowed America to hold together even under trying political times and to deal with political disagreements in the political arena, rather than resorting to violence against national leaders. For all of Fox News and President Trump’s daily declaration of coups and attempted coups against the administration, American history has actually been shockingly free of actual coups.

...That tradition and idea of American politics as an ongoing conversation, an endless argument, is key to preserving our democratic experiment. The idea that you will be in power sometimes, and out of power other times, is what preserves norms and traditions, and curbs the worst abuses and impulses; politicians traditionally understand that actions taken in the majority could serve to bite them if and when they return to the minority.

Donald Trump, who rose to prominence trumpeting the very “birther” falsehood that McCain once batted away, seems bent on undermining that tradition; he has proven he’s perfectly willing to burn down political norms for short-term gain. Fox News seems intent on helping him-- and on a daily basis, they’re telling their viewers he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him is less than human. Trump’s lies are the one constant and consistent position of his presidency (13,000 and counting!), and Fox News has gone all in.

We, as a democratic society, cannot survive such consequences-be-damned, winner-take-all, facts-don’t-matter politics. Fox News has upended Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous proclamation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Its daily programming seems driven by the idea that everyone might be entitled to their own facts, but that there is only one correct opinion: President Trump’s.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote his imagined dystopian regime “told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” but Fox News has actually figured out a tactic even more pernicious: Fox News’ own masters of Orwellian doublespeak, its Hannitys, Carlsons, and Doocys, the ones who smugly declare down up and up down, aren’t even bothering to tell their viewers to ignore their eyes and ears, because the truth never even approaches their airtime.

Let’s hope that Fox News today, unlike in Orwell’s world, doesn’t manage to succeed in transforming our country from a functional democracy into an authoritarian cult.

Louie Gohmert Is Sincere... And Batshit Crazy, Utterly Delusional

When I was a sophomore in college I was smitten by a junior, the most beautiful girl in the school, artistic, sophisticated, mature... but I could barely get her to notice me. I was the chairman of the Student Activities Board and she mentioned to me that her favorite album in the world was Song to a Seagull by a new young singer I had never heard of. It had just been released by Reprise Records and I managed to get someone there to help me book her to play a concert at the school. It got me a couple of dates with the girl I was in love with. And I met that singer, who I became friends with years later when I became president of Reprise Records who she was, over 2 decades later, still recording for.

I was enthralled by her-- by her immense talent as a songwriter-- the world's best-- and as a singer and guitar player and as a painter. But was she kidding when she told me there were CIA agents living in her basement and spying on her? How will I ever know? If she was joking, she never let on.

I would be anything she truly believed it then and probably still believes it now, even if the agents have moved out now. And some people believe if not for them, we'd be at war with North Korea now.

The first time I met Bill Clinton it was about a very specific piece of business. He was friendly, attentive and charming but only wanted to talk about one thing, that same singer, (also, I found out, years later, Alan Grayson's favorite singer). After Bill was done taking about the singer, he quickly foisted me off on a very powerful, very crooked congressman whose son soon came up to me and blatantly asked me for a large bribe to get my business attended to. That congressman was caught doing something crooked and was forced to retire early. I never heard from that horrible son again. But Alan Grayson and I have become friends. I was always curious why he was also friends with crackpot Republican Louie Gohmert of Texas. I asked him. He said he felt that Gohmert was very sincere and that nothing was a put on. First and foremost he was sincere about his Christianity. I think Grayson admired that sincerity in the midst of all the insincere snakes that infest Congress.

So when I read something like this, I know it isn't because Gohmert is making it up. I know Gohmert believes it in his heart. And I know Gohmert needs psychiatric treatment. He believes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is spying on him.

"I’ve been told in the past there’s been great concern about who I saw, what I did and that I was being monitored and was even told they know everybody that walks in your office," Gohmert said Monday in an interview on Fox Business's Lou Dobbs Tonight."

Gohmert echoed similar sentiments last week in an interview with WMAL’s Morning on the Mall radio show.

"I don’t doubt for a minute that he has people who have been looking into my background. I’ve been told as much by some other folks," Gohmert said in that interview, referring to Rosenstein.

Gohmert has yet to provide any evidence to substantiate his suspicions... Gohmert has called for Mueller to be fired and said earlier this year he is open to impeaching Rosenstein.

Who else is delusional? Facebook, who rejected this song for an ad yesterday as "too political." It's by the Wes Cook band and it doesn't sound "political" to me at all. You?

2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 10) Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls. Round 3

-by Noah

Except for the times that Republicans start speaking complete gibberish, it’s not really hard to understand what they’re saying. What is difficult is understanding how they got the way they are. Did their moms drink way too much alcohol when they were in the womb? Were the water pipes in their childhood homes made of corroding lead? Were things like greed, hate, thugishness, and nihilism just drilled into them by horrid parents? Any or all of these things are possible. The cause doesn’t really matter. Only the soulless result matters.

Here’s Round 3 of things that Republicans actually said in 2017. You just can’t make this stuff up. It’s who, and what, they are.

1. Attorney Marc Kasowitz: Kasowitz is a longtime lawyer for Señor Trumpanzee. Back in April, Bill O’Reilly had finally been booted from FOX “News” for an amount of serial sexual harassment that was too much even for them. FOX was, and probably still is, a petri dish for sexual harassment, but Bill-O’s escapades had gone way too public and had become too expensive in more ways than one. Advertisers were leaving in droves. Already, Roger Ailes had been tossed for the same thing. Rupert Murdoch’s sons were gaining more say about things at FOX and Ailes was no longer there to protect O’Reilly. His “Sell by” date was up and it was long past time to remove the putrid rotting goods from the store.

But, none of that mattered to Kasowitz. To Kasowitz, Bill-O had done no wrong. Bill-O’s end at FOX “News” was all the result of a “liberal conspiracy.”

Bill O’Reilly has been subjected to a brutal campaign of character assassination that is unprecedented in post-McCarthyist America. This law firm has uncovered evidence that the smear campaign is orchestrated by far-left organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons.

In Trump and Bill O’Reilly, Marc Kasowitz has the best clients; matched bookends of lunacy. I love the first eleven words of the above quote. In addition, I note the use of two of O’Reilly’s nightly standard, clichéd tools of commentary “smear’ and “far-left.” As for “character assassination,” well, don’t you need character first, if it’s going to be assassinated?

Never the less, most Republicans yelled and belched along the same lines about O’Loofah boy’s “character” being smeared, but, then these are the same people that nominated and voted for President Pussy Grabber. Was O’Loofah smeared? No. He is who he is and he has proven it repeatedly. His lack of decency simply zoomed past its sky high tipping point. Hey, It’s not like anyone accused him of murdering 300 people and running a pedophile ring out of a pizza place.

Back in Boston in the 1970s, Bill-O was known for, among other things, viewing the city’s school busing crisis through a pair of racist lenses. But, that’s probably what Rupert Murdoch liked about him in the first place. O’Reilly always was perfect lead-in for Sean Hannity, but, Murdoch need not have worried. FOX had a whole stable of replacement wackos already in house. Had Harvey Weinstein been a Republican, he would have been a natural for the job. Instead, the Murdochs had to settle for a smarmy pole-dancing retread called Tucker Carlson.

Once O’Reilly had been yanked from the big chair of pomposity, all FOX staffers were ordered to undergo sensitivity training. Think about that. Think about a white supremacist like Sean Insanity in a sensitivity training class. Think about a simpleton like Steve Doocy trying vainly to get his miniscule brain around the concept. Think about what the hell FOX “News” might even consider to be sensitivity! I imagine it to be something along the lines of a Grand Wizard learning to say thank you to the minority worker who washed his hood.

2. White House Asylum Faker Donald J. Trump: There isn’t much else to say about this treasonous assclown, this week. So, Let’s just go straight to the quote:

No collusion. No collusion!

Trumpanzee says this one so much that it’s now obvious that they will be the last words he ever utters. They are the equivalent of O.J. Simpson saying that he will “find the real killers.

In one of my dreams about Trump, he is standing before a firing squad, having been found guilty of treason. When asked if he has any “last words”, he sputters out “No collusion. No collusion! These words will end up on his gravestone. Have you ever wondered if he knows what they mean? Warning to the gravestone carver: Don’t expect to be paid.

3. Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert: Louie Gohmert is commonly called “the dumbest of all House members.” That makes you single digit IQ dumb. But, it’s more than that. Gohmert’s grain of sand-sized brain has led him to believe that, had Hillary Clinton ended up as president, she would have put him in jail because he brands himself as a Christian. Also, when Judge Roy Moore held his last rally (In a barn. How perfect!), there was Louie Gohmert on the stage at Moore’s side. Yep, he’s another Christian who doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with pedophilia. So, maybe he’s right. Maybe he would end up in jail, but not for being a Christian, per se.

I’ve never been able to do an end of the year review without mentioning a quote or two by Louie “the bestiality guy” Gohmert. Each time, I wonder how long he will be around to quote. After all Michele Bachmann is gone, at least for now. But, Gohmert sticks around like filthy sidewalk gum on your shoe. That’s because Gohmert represents a congressional district in Texas, our biggest nut state. He truly does represent them. He is them. They are him. In Texas, Gohmert probably finished at the top of his high school class. Yeah, I know it’s hard to imagine that such a dullard made it past the 5th grade, let alone how he found his way home every afternoon without arrows painted on the sidewalk.

It’s also hard to pick just one quote from the mind of Gohmert. Someday, someone might write a “Little Red Book Of Gohmert Quotations.” May it’ll be me. Anyway, here’s my choice for this year. It’s vintage conspiracy theorist Gohmert plying his scrambled moonbat “thoughts” on the FOX Business Channel. It represents Gohmert’s twisted view that the violence in Charlottesville, VA that erupted out of the Confederate statue removal issue was all due to a conspiracy by Democrats:

Well, this has been stirred up, and I think the Democrats- I mean this needs an investigation. And the president, or through him the Attorney General can appoint an independent council- this is so political. This is being driven by forces of evil that are beyond what normal people can think about. How do you have instances of people with KKK shirts and Black Lives Matter shirts getting off the same bus? I mean somebody’s stoking this…

When the FOX Business host says “So that’s your claim?” Gohmert replies:

No, no it’s not my claim. I’m telling you there are witnesses out there.

Yeah. Something’s out there alright. Out to lunch. Which is it, Louie? In Gohmert’s mind, people from both sides were, somehow, able to peacefully ride on the same bus, and then break out in violence once they got off the bus. To Batshit Crazy Louie, the whole thing was a plot, hatched by Democrats, including Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer to make white supremacists look bad. After all, didn’t Herr Trump himself say they were “very fine people?” And, what in Gohmert’s short-circuited mind tells him that only external forces can make white supremacists look bad? They are bad by nature, but not to Gohmert and like-minded republicans like Trump. To Gohmert, Nazis need defending.

Note to Louie: One of your “very fine people” plunged a car into the crowd and killed a woman, yet you use the whole incident to whine and promote Republican crackpot “theories.” You need treatment, asap.

Gohmert’s conspiracy theory illustrates a basic problem with today’s Republican Party. Angry older white men are dying off as a percentage of the total population. The demographics of the country are changing and not in the Republican Party’s favor. Hence, their desire to place limitations on which citizens can vote, and, to defend and appeal to any groups they see as voters who will support them, including Nazis. That Nazi beliefs dovetail nicely with core Republican beliefs is a bonus. For decades, they’ve tried to be a little quiet about it. Now, they can’t afford even a grain of subtlety. They need Nazi votes and they have no problem merging with virulent white supremacy groups to get them.

4. Tony Perkins, Professional Bigot: Here’s professional bigot Tony Perkins of the notorious hate group, Family Research Council, as he celebrated Senor Trumpanzee’s attempt to ban transgender soldiers from serving our country. This is a very sick man, a malignant tumor growing in our society.

The military has never been and should never be used as a vehicle to advance civil rights, political correctness, or workplace fairness.

Yeah, like when President Ike Eisenhower sent those troops to Little Rock in 1959 to assure the integration of the city’s schools. Can’t have that now, can we Tony. Fuck you! And, I’d like to see you say the same thing to those skeletal survivors at Auschwitz when Ike sent our troops there at the end of WW2. Where do Republicans get these people?

5. Georgia Rep. Karen Handel: Handel represents Georgia’s 6th Congressional district in the House of Representatives. Well, at least that is her job description. Here’s Handel in her debate with Democrat Jon Ossoff:

I do not support a livable wage.

Georgia’s current minimum wage is a viciously mean $5.15 an hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. According to M.I.T.’s Living Wage Calculator, the minimum wage for Georgia’s 6th District should be $12.01. All minimum wages are sociopathically out of date, in many cases by decades. http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/13/locations Handel won the race and is now part of Speaker Paul Ryan’s team of warriors in the war against the middle and working classes. The people in Georgia’s 6th District voted for low wages for themselves and tax cuts for the rich. What’s that they say about keep them poor and keep them stupid? The Republican Party crushed their 1956 platform into the dirt long ago.

This concludes the 2017, A Hell Bound Year In Review series. Let’s all hope that 2018 brings better news for America and the rest of civilization. Here’s also hoping that there is a 2019.

1. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year.html

2. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-2.html

3. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-3.html

4. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-hell-bound-train-part-4-look-at.html

5. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/12/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year_31.html

6. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-in-review-hell-bound-train-of-year.html

7. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-7-is.html

8. http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2018/01/2017-hell-bound-train-of-year-part-8.html

Louie Gohmert-- Not A Shred Of Human Decency... Like Trump

Louie Gohmert is a reactionary neanderthal from northeast Texas, in a district with no cities-- Tyler has around 97,000 people and Longview has 80,000 and Nagodoches 33,000-- bordering on Louisiana and a lot closer to Arkansas than to Houston. Last year the PVI was R+24, the 17th reddest congressional district in America. This year the PVI is even worse-- R+25. Louie Gohmert was elected in 2004 when a legally dubious mid-decade gerrymander by Tom Delay shoved Republican-leaning Smith and Gregg counties into the district, allowing Gohmert to beat Democratic incumbent Max Sandlin. In 2012 Obama didn't even get 30% of the vote and last year Hillary fared even worse, Trump beating her 72.2% to 25.3%. Gohmert's lowest ever reelection number was 68%.

As far as I know, Gohmert, a rabid anti-healthcare extremist, didn't attack Ted Cruz wen Cruz announced he would vote against the latest version of TrumpCare. Instead, Gohmert went on Fox & Friends Monday and called for Arizona to recall John McCain, couching his sick idea in humanitarian guise. McCain had just reported that his doctors had given him "a very poor prognosis" of recovering from glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, the same type of cancer that Ted Kennedy in 2009. On 60 Minutes Sunday night McCain said that he thinks about Kennedy a lot and said that Kennedy continued to work despite the diagnosis and "never gave up because he loved the engagement." Gohmert wants to take that engagement in his last months away from him, even though it would have no impact on actually being able to pass TrumpCare. Gohmert's a monster. "He’s got cancer, it’s a tough battle," he said piously on Fox & Friends yesterday. "But stress is a real inhibitor to getting over cancer." Yeah, what about the stress of a recall election?

“I think Arizona could help him, and us. Recall him, let him fight successfully this terrible cancer, and let’s get someone in here who will keep the word he gave last year,” Gohmert said.

...“If he had said last year what he was going to do, Kelli Ward would have beat him,” Gohmert said, referring to the former Arizona state senator who ran against McCain in the primary, losing by 11 points. Ward is challenging Arizona’s other GOP senator, Jeff Flake, next year.

Gohmert is not the first Republican lawmaker to connect McCain’s medical status to his opposition to his party’s efforts to repeal and replace the health care law.

In August, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson suggested McCain’s cancer could have affected his decision to cast the decisive “no” vote the previous month.

“Again, I’m not going to speak for John McCain-- he has a brain tumor right now-- that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning, some of that might have factored in,” Johnson told a Chicago talk radio show on Aug. 8.

The Wisconsin Republican later walked back his remarks, but not before he was criticized by McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo.

“It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and friend,” she said in a statement. “Senator McCain has been very open and clear about the reasons for his vote.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Empathy-- a sobriquet sometimes used to describe Señor Trumpanzee-- was on the Rick & Bubba radio show in Alabama Monday morning attacking McCain and calling his decision to back Arizonans rather than the party line on healthcare "a tremendous slap in the face to the Republican Party." And all for naught, since McConnell couldn't muster the voters to pass the thing and after a Republican lunch today, called off the vote, effectively killing any chance of the Republicans repealing Obamacare this year.

Sure, we say it every four years, but isn't THIS the craziest presidential election in memory?

He-e-e-ere's Speaker Louie! DailyKos caption: "Now, doesn't this inspire confidence?" Yeccch! My proposed new Louie Rule: From now on, the only living Louie to be acknowledged publicly will be Louis CK.

"Whoever comes next will have the task of restoring respect for the law and a common adherence to the Constitution -- the heaviest of burdens, even for a candidate prepared by training and disposition to carry it."

-- David Bromwich, in the new (Nov. 10) NYRB

by Ken

I mean, here we are watching the far-right-wing crazies defending -- as only far-right-wing crazies can, viciously and with a strong whiff of impending violence -- their boy the Billion-Dollar Loser, who isn't even a conservative. Unless you count where he sort-of-plays one for totally cynically selfish reasons on the, you know, campaign trail.

Here's Kerry Eleveld at DailyKos:

Step aside Paul Ryan, Hannity has announced your replacement as Speaker: Rep. Louie Gohmert

Fox News host Sean Hannity is all out auditioning to be chief correspondent of the loons once the new Trump-bart debuts. And first on the chopping block after Trump is roundly defeated by overwhelming majorities at the polls: Paul Ryan, whom Hannity called a "saboteur" of Trump's campaign. Allegra Kirkland writes:

Speaking to the Washington Post in the spin room after the final presidential debate, the devoted Donald Trump ally hinted that the intra-party war between far-right conservatives and their more moderate counterparts would continue regardless of who wins the presidential race on November 8.

Hannity told the Post that Ryan, who has offered only tepid support for the Republican nominee during the 2016 race, “needed to be called out and replaced.”

Nice! Ryan, who hasn't even had the guts to disavow Trump, is now responsible for the miserable failure of a campaign Trump has run. Sorry, Paul.

Hannity also had a lot of good ideas about members of the House Crazy Caucus who could unite the party (ahem) upon Ryan’s ouster: Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (chair of the Crazy Caucus), North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows (who devised the wildly popular 2013 government shutdown), and Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert! LOL. Gohmert! The wackiest of the wack jobs, who has called Hillary Clinton "mentally impaired." Speaker Gohmert! ROFLOL.

REALLY NOW, WHERE TO BEGIN?

I mean, Sean Hannity threatening to take Paul Ryan down for being insufficiently conservative? PAUL RYAN??? Wouldn't you think that if there's one thing Speaker Paul doesn't have to answer for, it's being insufficiently conservative? Has anyone in our public life done more to drag us back to the 16th century? And I include Sean Hannity, who's all mouth, whereas Speaker Paul is the, er, "brains" of the Far Right politicos, providing a steady stream of actual legislative proposals to do the deed.

In fairness to Shifty Sean, what he lacks in brains -- which sure seems to be quite a lot -- he more than makes up for in savagery, uninhibitedness, dishonesty, and naked self-promotingness. Still, to plug some of the evident gap in ideological awareness, here's some of what David Bromwich has to say in a compendium of ten frequent contributors' thoughts "On the Election" running through the new (Nov. 10) issue of the New York Review of Books:

From the first debates of 2015, Donald Trump stood out because he wasn’t one of the usual suspects. He was the to-hell-with-it candidate. If you dislike politics generally, don’t study or understand them but are sure the country has declined and that the future looks worse than the past, Trump is your man. He doesn’t know politics any better than you do, but he says (reassuringly) that it is a mug’s game, and he ought to know. He comes from money, lives for money, and before he entered the race he was in the business of buying favors from the mugs.

Who better to avow that the system is rigged? Everyone admits that the Clinton Foundation has done good works. But anyone with a nose can tell that it uneasily mixes philanthropy and aggrandizement. Trump took his cue and blew it up and—since Hillary Clinton is known to have met with donors while she was secretary of state—he called the foundation itself a pay-to-play scheme. Trump the insider has the best and biggest nose for such things; and in the mood of perpetual disquiet these last two years in America, the undeniable blots on his character have made people strangely trust him more.

Comparisons with Reagan are misleading. Reagan was intimate with politics and political interests as far back as his presidency of the Screen Actor’s Guild. He tricked his opponents into underrating him, right up to the election of 1980, but the reason wasn’t the lack of a consistent ideology or a coherent personality. Reagan was undeviating in his overall views: the people who supported him knew what they were getting. With Trump, they prefer not to know, and he panders to wishful ignorance by saying that whatever he does in his first days as president, he’ll do it good and do it fast. The vagueness, bloat, and feckless reiteration of the promises (the height of the wall with Mexico, the total ban on Muslim immigration, the vow to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”) go against the grain of a representative government based on checks and self-restraint.

Trump the post-political billionaire can seem refreshingly heterodox only if one performs a drastic curtailment of common judgment. The right-wing anti-imperialist Pat Buchanan thinks that Trump has the mind-set and stamina to extricate the US from our half-dozen wars in the Greater Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia). On the evidence, one would guess that Trump indeed has a less hearty appetite for wars than Hillary Clinton, but his solutions often sound like “Bomb them back to the Stone Age” rather than the reasoned noninterventionism this branch of apologists are looking for.

For the record, the other NYRB "On the Election" contributors are: Russell Baker, G.W. Bowersock, Mark Danner, Andrew Delbanco, Elizabeth Drew, Benjamin M. Friedman, Diane Johnson, Nicholas Lemann, Jessica T. Mathews, Darryl Pinckney, Marilynne Robinson, Garry Wills. (Yes, they're presented alphabetcially!) And to be clear, David Bromwich continues with a powerful takedown of Hillary Clinton, including this:

[H]er stated positions and political history leave her unequipped to repel [Trump's] charges against immigration, the American jobs lost through trade deals, and the scenes of disorder in American cities that followed the killing of black men by police and the killing of police by black men. Hillary Clinton is the reverse of a popular politician—she is more like an ideally dutiful chair of a committee—and it has been an odd feature of the campaign to advertise her as “the most qualified person ever to run for president.”

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, WE MIGHT JUMP
AHEAD TO BROMWICH'S CONCLUSION

Which is decidedly mournful:

The domestic state of the nation is so unpropitious in October 2016 that one may pity the winner of this election as much as the loser. We are living in a country under recurrent siege by the actions of crowds. There is the Tea Party crowd with their belief that global climate disruption is a scientific hoax; there is the Black Lives Matter crowd with their ambiguous slogan “No Justice, No Peace”; and there are more ominous developments, such as the acts of serial defiance of the federal government by the Bundy family in Nevada and Oregon. Whoever comes next will have the task of restoring respect for the law and a common adherence to the Constitution—the heaviest of burdens, even for a candidate prepared by training and disposition to carry it.

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