So Far, Trump-Stoked Chaos And Anomie Are Not Helping Him With Voters

Rev. John Pavlovitz was frustrated when he woke up yesterday-- very frustrated. He wrote that he felt "done being represented by a needy, belligerent, barely literate mobster, done with unrepentant racists and anti-science religious zealots, done with confederate flags and Fox News and MAGA cultism, done with a grotesque Frankenstein Christianity wildly stumbling around without Jesus’ tender heart, done living in a nation, nearly half of which wants it to be more white, less diverse, and less kind." On second thought, he noted that dwelling on that frustration isn't what he needed to do as much as the fact that America is "he place we’re going to shout down the bigots, the place we’re going to outnumber the close-minded, the place we’re going to demand equity, the place we’re going to tear down the flags and the statues and mindsets that perpetuate white supremacy, the place we’re going to expand so that every hungry, exhausted, hurting soul finds rest, and the place we’re going to lock arms and dig in our heels and push back the terrified bullies trying to drag us backward."

Pavlovitz concluded that "The racists are growing desperate. I think their violence is going to get worse. I think they feel the head winds of History blowing fiercely against them and they are going to make one more frantic, brutal, ugly assault on diversity and decency-- and we’ll have to be here to be the line that will not be moved." He's ready "to be here to be the line that will not be moved... We have to make a stand."

Trump made a deranged and extremely worrisome appearance on Fox News with one of his worst media enablers, Laura Ingraham. You should watch this and see if you can count the lies (hint-- more than one every 20 seconds). Try to remember that almost a third of Americans-- many of them armed to the teeth-- believe whatever this sociopath says:





That was Monday. On Tuesday, on his way to stir up trouble in Kenosha, he was still carrying on about how "an entire plane" was "filled with looters, the anarchists, rioters, people looking for trouble. When reporters, trying not to laugh in his orange face, asked him to speak to a witness who TRump claimed was made to feel "uncomfortable" on the plane filled with looters and rioters and thugs, he told the reporters he will try to put them in touch with the person. "Maybe," he said, "they will speak to you, maybe they won’t."

Has Trump lost his mind-- or is he just gaslighting and feeding his low-IQ base the red meat they thrive on? Even Ingraham noted that some of this crazy off-the-top-of-his-head nonsense she was getting out of him was conspiracy theory stuff.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins explained where Trump got it. He wrote that the conspiracy theory that Señor Trumpanzee was pushing Monday about the plane almost completely loaded with thugs in "dark uniforms, black uniforms" ready to disrupt the Republican National Convention "was almost identical to a rumor that went viral on Facebook three months ago... There is no evidence of any such flight. When Ingraham asked for more information about the flight, the president said, 'I'll tell you sometime.' He then alleged the people had been headed to Washington to disrupt the RNC. Before mentioning the uniformed men who allegedly boarded the plane, Trump claimed that there are 'people that are in the dark shadows' and 'people that you haven’t heard of' controlling Democratic nominee Joe Biden." He also claimed "they control the streets" and are being paid by rich people and corporations.

Ingraham pressed the president for more details and said it sounded like he was alleging a conspiracy.

“They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets,” Trump said.

The claim about the flight matches a viral Facebook post from June 1 that falsely claimed, “At least a dozen males got off the plane in Boise from Seattle, dressed head to toe in black.” The post, by an Emmett, Idaho, man, warned residents to “Be ready for attacks downtown and residential areas,” and claimed one passenger had “a tattoo that said Antifa America on his arm.”

That post was shared over 3,000 times on Facebook, and other pages from Idaho quickly added their own spin to it, like the Idaho branch of the far-right militia group 3 Percenters.

One post claimed that “Antifa has sent a plane load of their people” and that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it. Within days, that version of the rumor picked up enough steam in Idaho Facebook groups that the Payette County Sheriff’s Office had to release a statement insisting that the viral rumor was “false information.”

Rumors of marauding bands of Antifa supporters have plagued local Facebook groups, chain emails and forwarded text messages since mid-May. One of the most viral rumors on an Antifa invasion into the suburbs was taken down after Twitter said it was created by a troll account with ties to white nationalists.

Some armed Americans took to town squares in several towns to fight off fictitious busloads of Antifa in June, spurred by false rumors on Facebook pages. Seven days after the original Idaho rumor went viral on Facebook, armed men stood guard over protests in Missoula, Montana, worried about the planeloads of Antifa supporters.

In his Washington Post column about Trump's flawed election strategy August 20th, David Byler pointed out that not only is "Trump's suburban pitch... off-key in an election dominated by the coronavirus," but that "Playing the race card is more likely to backfire now than in any time in a generation. In 2019, the libertarian Cato Institute found that 52% of Americans who live in the suburbs favor 'building more houses, condos and apartments' in their community while 46% oppose the idea. According to YouGov, 50% of suburbanites think Biden would be better at handling race relations than Trump, and only 28% prefer Trump to Biden... These communities are no longer all-White bastions where fathers work and mothers stay home with the children. These neighborhoods are racially diverse: According to a 2018 study, only 68% of suburbanites were White, 14% were Hispanic and 11% were Black. And no matter where they live, Pew Research Center found that the share of mothers who stay home with children declined from 49% in 1967 to 27% in 2016. The audience Trump believes he’s targeting-- White stay-at-home suburban moms-- may be smaller than he thinks.

Trump's bullshit about "saving Kenosha" is not being bought by voters, who are finally recognizing how Trump lies and manipulates to push his personal agenda. Even with support for Black Lives Matter sliding in Wisconsin, voters are still backing Biden, not Trump.

Yesterday, Chuck Todd's team at NBC News speculated that playing the race card "is-- at best-- break-even for Trump. And at worst, it’s another liability for him. According to our August NBC News/WSJ poll (conducted before the violence in Kenosha), Trump held a 4-point advantage over Biden when it comes to which candidate better handles crime, with 43 percent picking Trump and 39 percent Biden. But on uniting the country, Biden’s edge over Trump was 23 points, 49 percent to 26 percent. And on race relations, Biden’s lead over Trump is 24 points, 53 percent to 29 percent. So despite the conventional wisdom, it’s not clear at all this issue is a winner for Trump.

The new poll from Morning Consult that was released yesterday-- so post-conventions-- shows Biden ahead 51 to 43% nationally. 55% of voters view Trump negatively while just 46% view Biden negatively. But it's the swing states where the campaigns are in full gear that are most interesting. According to this set of polling, Trump is losing every swing state but Ohio and Texas. But what about that normal convention bounce? Well, there was some. Biden increased his support after the 2 conventions in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin-- stayed the same in North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado-- and lost one point each in Pennsylvania and Florida, each of which he is still leading in. Trump, on the other hand, had a bounce down in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, stayed the same in Wisconsin and Colorado, and increased his positions slightly in Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Minnesota-- in each of which he's still losing-- and in Ohio and Texas.

It's All About The Racism... And Fear

A new poll for ABC News by Ipsos, isn't indicating that the conventions changed anyone's mind about Trump or Biden. Ipsos concluded that among all all Americans who watched at least some of the GOP convention-- about half of the voters-- responses to the RNC are more negative than the DNC. "Slightly more than one in three Americans (37%) approve of what the Republicans said and did at their convention, compared to 59% who disapprove. After the DNC, 53% approved of the Democrats’ message... Biden’s and Trump’s standings, along with their running mates, remains unchanged from after the DNC. Currently, 31% of Americans feel favorable toward Donald Trump, unchanged from last week (32%) and similar to his standing before both conventions (35%). The same is true for Joe Biden: 46% feel favorable, virtually the same as last week (45%). However, more Americans feel positive toward Biden than negative, an improvement from earlier in August. Just over a third of Americans (35%) approve of how Trump is handling the response to the coronavirus, unchanged from the end of July (34%)."

So what's a Republican operative class gonna do? Fear's worked for them in the past... and it's a natch for Trump. And racism... another Trump forte. NBC News had a cute report up late last week about how Twitter is trying to stop a Trump campaign spam operation that pushes messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party.

The fake accounts were purported to be run by Black people whose viral tweets received tens of thousands of shares in the past month. One of the accounts, @WentDemToRep, logged over 11,000 retweets on a single tweet that claimed that the user was a lifelong Democrat who was pushed to vote Republican by the Black Lives Matter movement. The tweet was posted shortly after the account was created Tuesday.

The WentDemToRep account quickly tagged two other accounts in a reply, @PeterGammo and @KRon619, which were suspended at the same time Tuesday. The Twitter spokesperson said all three accounts were suspended for spam and, "specifically, artificially manipulative behavior."

Disinformation experts and national security agencies are gearing up for the election, anticipating that social media platforms will continue to be central to foreign and domestic efforts to mislead voters.

The fake accounts, which used the images of Black men for their profile pictures, had five separate posts with at least 10,000 retweets. Recent attempts to co-opt the identities of African Americans to simulate support for President Donald Trump in the run-up to the election have had success online, researchers say.

The profile picture from WentDemToRep was stolen from the Instagram page of Nelis Joustra, a model who worked to get the fake account deleted.

...Brandi Collins-Dexter, a fellow at Color Of Change, an online racial justice nonprofit, said trolls' simulating the identities of African Americans is a coordinated practice that has been a common trope over the last decade for those trying to delegitimize social justice causes.

"The point is to provide ammunition against Black people for policymakers so they can point to things that are being said, allegedly from a Black person's account, to reinforce the idea that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist threat and put them on equal footing as white nationalists in terms of content moderation," Collins-Dexter said.

There is a decades-long history of non-Black actors posing as African Americans on social media. In 2016, Russia's Internet Research Agency "troll farm" targeted Black voters to depress turnout for Hillary Clinton, according to American intelligence agencies and bipartisan House and Senate reports.

Collins-Dexter also noted a coordinated campaign from the extremist website 4chan in April to pose as African Americans on Twitter who had just received COVID-19 stimulus checks. The fake accounts would thank the president for the checks, then brag about using them on alcohol, in "an effort to perpetuate the 'Welfare Queen' myth," Collins-Dexter said.

With Trump encouraging his KKK-like supporters to bring chaos and violence into the streets, in the hope of causing enough fear and backlash to reelect him, Biden barely understands how to push back at all. He seems torn and uncomfortable and might prefer taking a more rote "law and order" stance himself.

Frank Rich is a pretty perceptive observer of contemporary politics and he's come to the conclusion that Trump and his Republicans have decided their best shot at reelection is to just play the racist card-- heavy... and to the exclusion of anything else. Rich wrote that "During a week of police violence and vigilante murder in Wisconsin, in a year of preventable deaths and growing poverty, the Republican convention emphasized loyalty to Donald Trump, casting aside matters of policy and campaign law in favor of grievance. Was the convention just another concession to his outsize ego, part of the strategy to energize the party’s base in the run-up to November, or an attempt to win over undecided voters?" Like many Americans, Rich is worried that Trump could win and worried that if he loses "he would stop at nothing to take an already teetering country down with him."

The RNC was so boring Wednesday night that Tucker Carlson cut away early on, ditching the nattering Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn so he could launch into his now notorious defense of Kyle Rittenhouse’s killing spree in Kenosha: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” At that instant, Carlson, implicitly speaking for Trump, the Republican Party, and its media enforcer, Fox News, crystalized what message mattered most about this convention and what message will matter most in Trump’s campaign over the crucial two months to come. As Trump would define it in a rare moment of focus during his endless drone of an acceptance speech, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote to “give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.” The corollary, stated directly by Carlson and repeatedly embraced by Trump, is that arms-bearing white Americans can’t be faulted for wanting to take the law into their own hands.

For “anarchists and agitators and criminals,” read “Black people.” This racially tinged “law and order” message is nothing new either for Trump or a GOP that has been pursuing a “Southern strategy” since Richard Nixon codified it half a century ago. As many have noted, Trump is at a logical disadvantage in using it since, unlike Nixon, he is the incumbent president and the disorder he keeps decrying is happening on his watch. But what grabbed my attention on the convention’s sleepy third night was how Trump, on the ropes in summer polling, is nonetheless determined to take that message to a new and even more dangerous level by fomenting racial violence if need be. He will not only continue to boost arms-bearing white vigilantes as he has from Charlottesville to Portland, but, when all else fails, unabashedly pin white criminality on Black Lives Matter protesters.

Literally so. While the unrest in Kenosha was referenced repeatedly on Wednesday night, no one mentioned that the violence was all committed by white men: Rittenhouse, and Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while his three young sons looked on. Then along came Pence to raise the ante in his closing address. While trying to pound in the fear that Biden will coddle and encourage violent thugs, he brought up the ominous example of an officer who had been “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California.” The implication, of course, was that the officer had been killed by black rioters in that “Democratic-run city” when in fact the victim was murdered by a member of the far-right extremist movement known as “boogaloo” boys.

Next to this incendiary strategy, the other manifest sins of the week, though appalling, seem less consequential as we approach the crucial post–Labor Day campaign. They did keep those of us in the press busy. The news media were unstinting in calling out every lie and alternative fact in every speech as well as every violation of the Hatch Act. Full notice was paid to every shameless rhetorical feint and stunt contrived to create an alternative reality in which the coronavirus and mask-wearing are in the past tense, the decimated economy is about to skyrocket, and Trump is a champion of both immigration (even from what he calls “shithole countries”) and health care covering preexisting conditions. But aside from the 42 percent or so who consistently approve of Trump no matter what he or those around him do, most other Americans will see for themselves whether COVID-19 has evaporated or their economic security has improved this fall. Those are realities that Trump, for all his subterfuge, cannot alter. But racial animus is a less tangible and more enduring factor in America’s political fortunes, and it has been a toxic wild card in every modern election.

...Biden had it exactly right when he characterized this plan on Thursday by calling out Trump for “pouring gasoline on the fire” and “rooting for more violence, not less.” That was true from day one of the convention, when the gun-toting St. Louis couple, the McCloskeys, were given a prominent spot in the festivities. The rifle that Mark McCloskey pointed toward Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis, an AR-15, was the same that Kyle Rittenhouse fired at protesters in Kenosha the following night.

But it’s not enough for Biden to identify the strategy that is being unleashed to derail him, and it shouldn’t have taken him most of the week to get to the point. He’s in a fight for his and the country’s life. A Democratic campaign that was pitched most of all on targeting Trump’s criminally negligent response to the pandemic must now pivot to combat the most lethal of all American viruses, racism, in its most weaponized strain.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Heck-uva-job, Donnie! Some plan you had there! You've had quite a rough week but, surprise, surprise, you weren't at all up to the job that you conned 62,000,000 fools into giving you (Plus, thanks to the abdication of responsibility by the Electoral College). Soon you will say that the market doesn't matter just like Cheney said deficits don't matter. Ordinarily I might have been sympathetic to a president who had this clusterphuck happen on their watch but you earned it. You willed it! You prided yourself on being The Chaos President. You're nothing but a damn psychopathic freakshow; you and your damn psychopathic freakshow party. Your party protected you every centimeter of the way. Putin clapped his hands and they jumped. They jumped for joy when the wire transfers of cash came their way. They jumped for joy when you expressed your oneness with their hate and bigotry with you comments and your judges. Now, they all share the putrid rotted fruits of your tax scam and your grossly incompetent stewardship of the economy. You're a real "Stable Genius" alright. Fuck you Donnie! Fuck your whole damn Republican Goofball Party. And fuck every other single asshole in Washington who is responsible, in any way, shape, or form for you still infesting the oval office.

The Most Dysfunctional Chaotic White House In History Is A National Security Threat

Probably everyone has read about Cliff Sim's new book, Team of Vipers by now, thanks in great part to the villain of the book screaming about it so loudly. Trump is sure to help lift Sims' first book into the annals of #1 best-sellerdom. I'm betting it will be made into a film or TV series as well. I wonder how many book sales a Trumpanzee Tweet is worth.

I'm sure a law suit is worth many more book sales. And the Washington Examiner reported that Trump is about to sue over the violation of one of Trump's laughable nondisclosure agreements, reverting to a pre-presidential business model. Trump almost never follows through on these moronic threats but everyone-- especially Sims-- sure hopes he does.

Who will play Stephen Miller-- aka, President Miller-- in the movie version? He's the evil shadow behind all of Trump's vile, anti-immigrant pandering. Sims revealed that Miller once told him he'd "be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America’s soil." (Miller-- who worked for fascist politicians Michele Bachmann, John Shadegg and Jeff Sessions before being scooped up by Trump-- comes from a penniless family of Russian-Jewish refugees fleeing a pogram. Rejected by his classmates, Miller became a dedicated, hate-driven Nazi and virulent racist while in high school in liberal Santa Monica. Working with Texas Republican Michael McCaul, he came up with Trump's child separation policies.

Sims credits Miller will knifing Steve Bannon, who brought him into Trumpworld, in the back undercutting him by whispering Trump's ear that "Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared. If Steve wasn’t doing that, I bet you’d be ten points higher."

Sims, then 32 years old, was brought into the White House after his successful run coordinating messaging on the campaign. There, he learned many of Trump’s quirks: how he preferred filming against dark backdrops because he didn’t like the way his hair looked against white ones. How it was best to always have a travel-size bottle of Tresemmé Tres Two hair spray on hand, just in case. And, perhaps most important, how Trump craved “normal” conversation. “I always tried to interact with him like a normal person,” Sims told me. “In between whatever work we were doing, I would look for opportunities to talk about what was in the news, or tell him about the latest gossip from entertainment or politics, or whatever.”

A level of ease and familiarity developed between the two, such that Trump wanted Sims in the room for meetings on a wide range of issues. He was present one afternoon in January 2018, for instance, when Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, was pushing Trump to sign off on a campaign to raise awareness of the opioid crisis. As Sims tells it, Conway wanted to film a video of Trump encouraging people to send stories of how the crisis had affected them personally.

Trump, though, had a different strategy in mind. “We need to scare kids so much that they will never touch a single drug in their entire life,” he told Conway, according to Sims. “Just give this to Cliff and let him make the most horrifying ads you’ve ever seen. Could you do that?”

Sims “just nodded.” “No, I mean it,” Trump continued. “We need people dying in a ditch. I want bodies stacked on top of bodies … Do it like they did cigarettes. They had body bags piled all over the streets and ugly people with giant holes in their faces and necks.

“Next thing you know,” he concluded, “the kids don’t want to be cool and smoke anymore.”

At times, Sims witnessed fellow staffers-- Conway chief among them-- take swipes at each other behind their backs. He calls Conway a “cartoon villain brought to life” who bad-mouthed colleagues to multiple reporters by the hour. He credits Stephen Miller’s survival to the speechwriter’s ability to play both sides of the “globalist/nationalist” divide in the White House. While then–chief strategist Steve Bannon viewed Miller as his “right-wing protege,” his ideological ally against the so-called globalists, Miller was cultivating a close relationship with perhaps the globalist in chief, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Sims writes of listening in on Miller “plung[ing] the knife” into Bannon’s back and “twisting it with relish” during a conversation with the president. “Your polling numbers are actually very strong considering Steve won’t stop leaking to the press and trying to undermine Jared,” Miller said, according to Sims. “If Steve wasn’t doing that, I bet you’d be ten points higher.”

He also watched as senior officials privately laughed off many of the president’s stranger requests. In his first few days as director of the National Economic Council, Sims writes, Larry Kudlow emerged from a meeting with the president looking flustered. He told Gary Cohn, his predecessor, that Trump ordered him to “stop” a “special deal” that he believed Amazon was getting from the U.S. Postal Service. “Gary laughed loudly,” Sims writes. “‘Welcome to the White House,’ [Cohn] said, shaking Larry’s hand … ‘It’s total bullshit.’” Cohn explained that Amazon was not, in fact, getting “some special deal.” “He’s just mad at [Jeff] Bezos for owning the Washington Post.”

Can More Trump Enablers In The House Be Beaten In 2020? Oh Yes

An Associated Press story on Friday, Trump's Presidency has Changed Washington, Defied Convention, sounds kind of good-- but is kind of horrible. The ignoramus Putin left, like a stinking pile of manure, on the White House steps, has blundered his way through 2 years of chaos and dysfunction. Jonathan Lemire wrote that he "has rewritten the rules of the presidency and the norms of the nation’s capital, casting aside codes of conduct and traditions that have held for generations." Trump has written or rewritten anything. A Republican-controlled Congress enabled him to behave in a way that should have resulted in impeachment and removal after a month in office. Trump is a TV clown. The Republican Congress wanted a pawn to sign their tax cuts and nominate their unqualified neo-fascist judges and remove regulatory safeguards that keep Big Business from exploiting--and even killing-- the rest of us, for the sake of profits, from which politicians get a cut.

Yesterday Reuters reported that Trump's EPA has decided that limits on coal plant mercury emissions are too expensive and "unnecessary" anyway. That's what Republicans like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell wanted-- and were willing to trade for tolerating-- and enabling a farting, windup Destructo Robot in the Oval Office.

Under the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, or MATS, enacted under former President Barack Obama, coal-burning power plants were required to install expensive equipment to cut output of mercury, which can harm pregnant women and put infants and children at risk of developmental problems. The Environmental Protection Agency left the 2011 emission standards in place but proposed using a different cost analysis to evaluate whether the regulation is needed, a move that paves the way for looser rules going forward. Its statement was issued on Friday during a partial government shutdown.

Since August, the Environmental Protection Agency has been reconsidering the justification for the rule. A coalition of electric utilities had said the looser rules were not needed since they have already invested billions of dollars in technology to cut emissions of the pollutant and comply.

EPA said it was “proposing that it is not ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate HAP (Hazardous Air Pollution) emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants... because the costs of such regulation grossly outweigh the quantified HAP benefits.”

It said its reassessment showed the cost of compliance with MATS was between $7.4 billion to $9.6 billion annually, while the monetized benefits were between $4 million to $6 million.

It also said the identification of unquantified benefits was not enough to support the standards. Among such benefits, environmentalists say are reduced healthcare costs, breathing cleaner air and drinking cleaner water.

“The policy (Acting EPA Administrator) Andrew Wheeler and Donald Trump proposed today means more pregnant women, young children, and the elderly will be exposed to deadly neurotoxins and poisons, just so wealthy coal and oil barons can make a few extra bucks,” Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt said in a statement. Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist.

“Virtually every coal plant in the U.S. has already met this lifesaving standard, and now Trump is recklessly trying to roll it back,” she said.

A study published this month by Harvard University’s School of Public Health said coal-fired power plants are the top source of mercury in the United States, accounting for nearly half of mercury emissions in 2015. It said the standards have markedly reduced mercury in the environment and improved public health.

...In July, electric utilities and utility groups favoring the rule asked the administration to keep it in place. They noted that billions of dollars in investments for anti-pollution equipment have already been made, and costs are being recovered from electricity customers through regulated pricing.

“This is like when your four-year-old kid tries to clean up your kitchen-- it actually makes things worse. Please stop helping,” said a utility industry lobbyist based in Washington, who asked not to be named. “The rule itself forced coal plant shutdowns, but they aren’t coming back.”

As Lemire emphasized, "In Trump’s Washington, facts are less relevant. Insults and highly personal attacks are increasingly employed by members of both parties... Taking a wrecking ball to decorum and institutions, Trump has changed, in ways both subtle and profound, how Washington works and how it is viewed by the rest of the nation and world.

“He’s dynamited the institution of the presidency,” said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. “He doesn’t see himself as being part of a long litany of presidents who will hand a baton to a successor. Instead, he uses the presidency as an extension of his own personality.”

Is this a one-president aberration? Or has the White House forever changed? Whether the trends will outlast Trump’s presidency is a question that won’t be answered until there is a new occupant in the Oval Office, but Brinkley predicts “no future president will model themselves on him.”

...Trump brought to the White House the same fact-challenged, convention-defying style that got him elected. From his first days in office, Trump pushed falsehoods about the size of the inaugural crowd and unfounded allegations about millions of illegal voters. He has not let up since.

The inaccuracies have been big and small: Trump repeatedly claimed in 2018 that he passed the biggest tax cut in history (he didn’t), that the U.S. economy is the best in history (it’s not) and that his Supreme Court choice Brett Kavanaugh finished atop his class at Yale Law School (the school doesn’t rank students). Just last week, after making an abrupt, unilateral decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria, Trump tweeted that Russia was “not happy” about the decision. Hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had cheered the move.

The cumulative effect has been to diminish the authority with which White House pronouncements are received.

...He has eschewed sweeping diplomacy in favor of transactional relationships. He has strained longtime alliances-- including with Canada, of all places-- and befriended global strongmen. He has skipped summits, including a gathering in Asia in November, that have long been fixtures on presidential itineraries. And world leaders have taken to heart that flattery, pageantry, golf and maybe some business at a Trump-owned hotel are the pathway to a good relationship with the president.

“He is a sui generis president,” said Brinkley, using the Latin for “unique.” ″Trump doesn’t know history and doesn’t model himself on any president ... but he’s all we can talk about.”

Voters sensed that in November and registered their displeasure with the biggest pounding a Republican president has received in generations. The GOP saw a net of 40 House seats flip-- and 2 red Senate seats, one each in Nevada and Arizona, are now blue. Are congressional Republicans going to continue enabling him? 2020 is coming. This is a list of Republicans still in the House who have voted most ardenty in lockstep with Trump-- between 98.9% and 100% of the time. Next to each of their names is the win percentage from November. I might add, that had they not been forced into retirement or defeated last month, Peter Sessions (R-TX), David Valadao (R-CA), Mike Bishop (R-MI), John Culberson (R-TX), Jeff Denham (R-CA), Ed Royce (R-CA), Karen Handel (R-GA), David Trott (R-MI), Mimi Walters (R-CA), Stephen Knight (R-CA) and David Young (R-IA) would all be on the list of congressmen whose voting records are most closely tied to Trump.

• Troy Balderson (R-OH)- 51.4%
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- 71.5%
• Michael McCaul (R-TX)- 51.1%
• Susan Brooks (R-IN)- 56.8%
• Ken Calvert (R-CA)- 56.5%
• Tim Walberg (R-MI)- 53.8%
• Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)- 59.1%
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- 56.3%
• John Moolenaar (R-MI)- 62.6%
• Glenn Thompson (R-PA)- 67.8%
• Austin Scott (R-GA)- unoppoded
• Steve Womack (R-AR)- 64.8%
• Michael Conaway (R-TX)- 80.1%
• Frank Lucas (R-OK)- 73.9%
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- 73.4%
• Brett Guthrie (R-KY)- 66.7%
• Mike Bost (R-IL)- 51.6%
• Bill Flores (R-TX)- 56.8%
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)- 69.3%
• Neal Dunn (R-FL)- 67.4%
• Mark Amodei (R-NV)- 58.2%
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 63.7%
• Chris Collins (R-NY)- 49.1%
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- 59.3%
• Tom Cole (R-OK)- 63.1%
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- 70.9%
• Devin Nunes (R-CA)- 52.7%
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- 58.3%
• Michael Simpson (R-ID)- 60.7%
• John Rutherford (R-FL)- 65.2%
• Harold Rogers (R-KY)- 78.9%
• Don Bacon (R-NE)- 51.0%
• Rob Woodall (R-GA)- 50.1%
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)- 54.8%

The Republicans in the list above whose names are in bold, are some of the obvious targets for 2020. Kara Eastman is running for the Omaha congressional seat again-- and against one of them-- Don Bacon-- and she's the first candidate Blue America endorsed for the 2020 cycle. Today she told us that "Congressman Bacon’s voting record has remained lock-step with Trump and Paul Ryan. Considering the make-up of NE-02 being split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with a quarter being registered Independents, he is out of step and out of touch with the district. Bacon does not represent working class Nebraskans, but rather monied interests and corporations who have reaped the benefits of his votes that have actually harmed the rest of us." Please consider giving her an end of the year contribution by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right. We hope to have it filled up more progressive like her soon. For now... it's just Kara.

We're hoping Mike Siegel will be one of the next couple of candidates we endorse. I'm betting he's just days or weeks away from announcing his 2020 candidacy. Remember, McCaul (TX-10) was considered "safe" until 2018, when Mike's strong and compelling grassroots campaign narrowed an R+19 congressional seat to an R+4. McCaul's voting record has him at a "99% Trump Score" and makes him increasingly vulnerable in a diverse, well-informed and educated district.

"McCaul hitched himself to the Trump wagon all the way," Siegel told us this morning. "He chaired Homeland Security and did nothing to stop family separation and inhumane 'icebox' detention centers. Now he backs the government shutdown, denying paychecks to federal workers during Christmas holidays, even though in 2016 he said a Border Wall will not improve border security. As much as anyone, McCaul sold his soul to stay relevant in a Trump America. As Trump falls, so will McCaul and many like him."

Even When Trump Inadvertently Does Something Right...

Jeremy Scahill is one of the best investigative journalists in the country. You might know his work, particularly on matters related to foreign policy, from The Nation or from The Intercept or from his books, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program or Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. Yesterday an early morning tweet storm may help people to understand their own mixed feelings about Trump's moves this week in regard to Syria and Afghanistan. Progressives want to end American involvement in those two tragic wars. But... Trump. Scahill:

1. I support withdrawing US troops from all these wars, overt and covert.
2. Trump is an unstable authoritarian who cannot be trusted.
3. “Mattis was an adult” is bullshit. He’s a hawkish war criminal.
4. It’s very telling that the war party in DC is furious.
5. This is an opportunity for progressive forces to assert an alternative vision for US foreign policy.
6. Trump is a crooked charlatan. But these withdrawals would represent a dent in the armor of the bipartisan war machine.
7. This chaos presents opportunity.

First off, who isn't critical of Trump's wag the dog motives in Syria? It's perfectly legitimate for anti-war progressives to criticize him and what's left of his tattered and corrupt regime for a lack of coherent strategy in regard to what apsses for a foreign policy. That's different from the pro-Military Industrial argument news outlets-- just watch MSNBC-- are making. Glorifying Mattis just because he called out Trump is as much a mistake as is glorifying U.S. policy of engaging in endless wars.

Remember, Bernie would also be withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East (albeit within a more coherent and clear policy agenda).

As soon as Trump made his announcement this week, Win Without War director Stephen Miles issued a statement that helps speak to how progressives looks at Trump's troop withdrawals.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the United States has gotten its response wrong every step of the way, and Donald Trump’s latest moves are no exception.

From day one, Win Without War has opposed a U.S. military response to a crisis with no military solution, and we continue to support the full withdrawal of American military personnel from Syria. However, Donald Trump’s plan to declare ‘victory’ and walk away from an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe-- one that the U.S. in part helped create-- is reckless, shortsighted, and wrong. Even worse, given that just yesterday a federal court judge chastised Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor for ‘selling out our country’ to Turkey, we are left wondering what secret deals and backroom arrangements with Turkey and other major players in Syria may actually be driving this Administration’s new plans in Syria.

...When Congress reconvenes in January, it must conduct the basic oversight of Donald Trump’s foreign policy that under Republican House and Senate majorities has thus far failed to provide. Congress must connect the dots between Trump’s web of foreign ties and questionable deals with a growing axis of authoritarian dictators. Any oversight initiative must also shine a light on the continued violence, instability, and human suffering caused by our military misadventures in nearly every corner of the globe.

The people of Syria have suffered immensely for our nation’s repeated fueling of war and limited efforts at peace. Now, as we bring our service-members home from the battlefield, we must not continue to repeat those very same mistakes.

Remember, the Republicans turning on Trump over Syria, Afghanistan and Mattis-- like Lindsey Graham, Kinzinger and Marco Rubio-- are not our friends and are not advocates of good policy. When someone who votes for all TRump's right-wing crap, like Ben Sasse (R-NE), says "This is a sad day for America," he means a sad day for the Military Industrial Complex he represents.

Yesterday, Eli Lake, in a column for Bloomberg News, wrote that "Trump may not know it yet, but his presidency is collapsing. [His] supporters may still feel unfazed, even confident. Trump has burned through two chiefs of staff, two national security advisers, a secretary of state and an attorney general in less than two years. He has survived. This resignation, though, is different... Mattis provided Trump with a powerful shield. Whatever you thought of his views, Mattis embodied military virtue and the spirit of public service. As long as he served the president, reluctant Republicans could point to the Pentagon and say: If Mattis supports Trump, then so do I. They can no longer do that." Well... we'll see if they do or they don't-- and for how long. My expectation from Republicans is... low.

Philip Rucker and Bob Costa reported in that Washington Post yesterday that Trump's decisions and conduct have led to a fracturing of his coalition. "Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Conservatives called him a 'gutless president' and questioned whether he would ever build a wall. Political friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in... Said one former Trump administration official: 'There’s going to be an intervention. Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow. He’s the most credible member of the administration by five grades of magnitude. He’s the steady, safe set of hands. And this letter is brutal. He quit because of the madness.'"

I hope you saw Marcy Wheeler's post yesterday, We Will Not Get Peace From The People Who Dismember Dissidents Alive. She warned that while she appreciates that Scahill really does capture this ambivalence [in that tweet storm], "far too many others welcoming a potential troop withdrawal are not recognizing the complexity of the moment. While we don’t yet fully understand the complex dynamics that led to it, Trump decided to withdraw from Syria during a phone call with a man who has spent two months embarrassing Trump, Trump’s son-in-law, and the corrupt Saudi prince whose crackdown Trump has enthusiastically backed by releasing details of how that prince lulled an American resident dissident to a third country so he could be chopped up with a bone saw while still breathing. And even while Erdogan was embarrassing Trump with those details about Khashoggi’s assassination, he was pressuring Trump to extend the same favor to him by extraditing Fethullah Gulen so he could be chopped up in some grisly fashion."

She asks how Trump's fondness for fossil fuels and arms sales can be countered and insists that "no withdrawal is going to lead to 'peace' or even a retreat of the US empire so long as Trump exacerbates an already unforgivable US addiction to fossil fuels and reliance on arms sales. Particularly with Saudi Arabia but also with Turkey, Trump has excused his fondness for authoritarianism by pointing to arms sales. And on these issues, Trump actually agrees with the “war party in DC,” which will make it far harder to counter them. Yes, many of the new Democrats entering Congress-- most of all Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-- don’t have these horrible habits. So what can you do to make sure her Green New Deal not only isn’t squelched by party leadership, but is seen as the alternative to Trump by centrists?"

No One Wants To Be Trumpanzee's Chief Of Staff. Can You Blame Them?

Eliana Johnson and Alex Isenstadt, in their reporting for Politico, reminded readers what a top of the pile DC job presidential chief of staff is. But for the two Trump has gone through, Reince Priebus and John Kelly? Both "left as diminished and arguably humiliated figures, unable to control the wild chaos" inside the monkey house: Mission Impossible is how people in DC see the job. Nick Ayers, a self-made multimillionaire, ex-male prostitute and former lobbyist, currently Pence's chief of staff and his closest confidant (after Mother), was Trump's first-- and only choice-- but Ayer's either:

• got passed over when someone told Trump he used to be a male prostitute or
• passed on the job when he realized he'd have to commit through the bitter, likely historic (in a very bad way) end, and what that would do to his future prospects or
• knew he'd be in trouble when the Senate started scrutinizing his personal finances and wormed out of the job or
• Trump found out Ayers had been gossiping about him and freaked.

We'll never know for sure which one or which combination is sending Ayers back to Georgia. What we do know is that a tough job in the best of circumstances, has turned into the worst job in the country-- and about to get worse: saving the Trump presidency from itself and keeping Trump and his family out of prison... while also running the United States government and trying to keep the economy from falling off a cliff.

Names being floated include neo-fascist North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, Blackstone managing director Wayne Berman, Citizens United president and Trumpets fanatic Dave Bossie, Chris Christie, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, Mick Mulvaney, the acting Attorney General who-will-never-be-confirmed Matthew Whitaker, and... wait for it... Reince Priebus. The Politico team says they made a round of calls last night about the chief of staff job and "heard the same thing over and over again: No one wants it this time, and it’s an exceedingly bad phase of the administration to take the helm. Whoever takes over right now would likely be at Trump’s side when special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s report drops, when Democrats on Capitol Hill start hammering him and as the market continues to slump."

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first-- and disastrous-- Chief of Staff, told the NY Times helpfully/smugly that "Someone needs to get the White House under control-- but the president won’t let it happen."

CNN released a new SSRS poll this morning with data from last week-- and, remember, it's been all bad news since then. Trump's job approval

• Approve- 39%

• Approve strongly- 30%
• Approve moderately- 9%
• Disapprove- 52%

• Disapprove strongly- 44%
• Disapprove moderately- 8%
• No opinion- 9%

Since Trumpanzee can't find anyone remotely qualified and willing to take the thankless job, it looks like John Kelly will stay on at least into January-- probably much longer-- despite Trump's foolish announcement Saturday that Kelly would be out before the end of the year. Trump's a moron and was bragging this morning about how proud he would be to shut down the government. Worth watching him meeting with Pelosi this morning-- Schumer was there as well-- and... that was not a Pence stuffed toy next to Trump; it actually was Mike Pence. I wonder why he didn't bother inviting Ryan, McCarthy and McConnell-- or at least McCarthy. (You can skip the first five and half minutes of Trump babbling sheer nonsense about the wall.) I bet Pelosi's approval numbers shoot up after this meeting.



What If Meadows Takes The Job?

Mark Meadows is a hard-right-- some would say neo-fascist-- asshole who chairs the Freedom Caucus. He represents North Carolina's 11th congressional district, the reddest district in the state-- with a PVI of R+14. Obama lost it both times and Trump beat Hillary 63.2 (his best showing in North Carolina) to 34.0%. The district includes all or part of 16 western North Carolina counties. The biggest, population-wise, Buncombe County, went for Hillary 55.7% to 41.1%. In the 2016 primary Buncombe was Bernie's strongest county in the state and he won it with 62.1%. In fact, Bernie won more votes on primary day than Trump did (30,913 to 8,430) and more votes than the entire GOP field did combined! The Republican legislature, however, managed to split Buncombe County up in a way as to prevent a competitive district from emerging. Most of the city of Asheville, the heart of Buncombe, was chopped off and grafted onto another ultra Republican district, Patrick McHenry's 10th, diluting the Democratic vote in both districts. The Buncombe part of Meadows' district voted D+10 last month and the Buncombe part of McHenry's district voted D+ 39.

District-wide, Meadows won 177,230 (59.2%) to 115,824 (38.7%) against Democrat Phillip Price. The counties bordering on Tennessee are among the most dependably Republican in the whole country. The 4 westernmost counties, Cherokee, Clay, Macon and Graham, routinely give Republicans massive leads in any contest. This cycle Meadows raised $1,773,788 to Price's $237,843. The DCCC ignored the race entirely.

I only bring this up to warn Democrats that if Trump picks Meadows, triggering a special election, it is a dead-end for Democrats. The district is designed to elect Republicans and until Republican gerrymandering is finally thrown out in court and Buncombe County reunited-- which will happen eventually-- NC-11 is off-limits to Democrats.

Strictly Wrapped Up In Himself— And Spinning Out Of Control

“A caged animal” is an awful way to describe even an illegitimate “president” if the United States. But it isn’t inaccurate. On Friday, Carol Leaning and Josh Dawsey reported for the Washington Post that Trump wrote his own answers to Mueller’s questions. I wonder what percentage of his own hard core base-- even the most drug addicted, low IQ Trump worshipping zombies-- believe that. The man is so far gone he can hardly string two sentences together any longer.

While his team of lawyers labored over the answers, Trump wrote tweets denouncing Mueller and the Putin-Gate investigation. This was his contribution to responding to the questions:

“You always have to be careful answering questions for people who have bad intentions,” he said of the team Mueller has assembled to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any possible coordination with Trump’s campaign. “I haven’t submitted them. I just finished them.”

The president’s comments, which he made to reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a bill signing, came after his lawyers surprisingly postponed submitting the answers as they had planned to on Thursday. Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, told the Washington Post that the legal team was still deciding whether some of Mueller’s questions they agreed to answer in September would cause legal problems for the president.

According to people familiar with the delay, Trump’s lawyers believe they have now resolved the problem they faced.

Trump stressed Friday that he answered the questions personally, not his lawyers.

“My lawyers aren’t working on it. I’m working on it,” Trump said. “My lawyers don’t write the answers.”

The president has met with lawyers nearly every day this week in sessions to review his answers, including a four-hour session Wednesday that was frequently interrupted by other business. Trump spent more than four hours meeting with his attorneys Monday, broken up by phone calls the president had to take, and 90 minutes Wednesday night, according to people familiar with the sessions.

Trump also was asked Friday about his recent tweets, which seemed to betray a sense of frustration, where he called the Mueller probe “illegal” and said, without evidence, that Mueller’s team was “screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.”

“I’m not agitated,” he said Friday. “It’s a hoax.”

The questions, roughly two dozen which focus on five topics, all predate Trump winning election. Trump’s lawyers have not yet agreed to answer a larger set of questions that relate to Trump’s time as president-elect and then as president, Giuliani said.

“There are some that create more issues for us legally than others,” Giuliani said Thursday. He said some were “unnecessary,” some were “possible traps,” and “we might consider some as irrelevant.”

Giuliani said the special counsel has not imposed a firm deadline, but he added that Trump’s answers could be submitted Friday. Another person familiar with the effort said they expect Trump to turn over the answers before Thanksgiving.

Trump-- barely able to spend 10 minutes in public because of all the Adderall he’s on-- claims he’s “not agitated,” because he is… agitated as hell and beyond agitated. They suspect that indictments are coming down for Jr. and possibly Kushner-in-law. People in touch with him claim he feels like the walls are closing in on him and many worry how he’ll lash out.

Jonathan Bernstein, in a Bloomberg OpEd yesterday, pointed out that the chaos is worsening and asked, rhetorically, if the distractions and disarray threatening to upend his presidency are damaging his already weak ability to stay focused? As we all can see clearly, the only thing he stays focused on his himself, never the country.

How chaotic are things now?

There’s no nominee to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was fired a week ago, and the acting attorney general is under fire from multiple directions. It’s already highly unusual to go this long without naming a new regular successor for such a critical post, and it’s not clear there’s any intention to choose one. There’s also no nominee to replace United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her resignation back on Oct. 9. Nor is there one for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been headed by Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler since July 9.

That’s three cabinet vacancies without a nominee.

And that’s not all. This week, the administration lost its deputy national security adviser-- the third person to hold that critical post over the 22 months Donald Trump has been in office. Perhaps Kelly Magsamen, a veteran of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, exaggerates when she says it’s the most important position in government. But Trump has also burned through three national security advisers, two chiefs of staff and two staff secretaries. (He’s still on his first director of the Office of Management and Budget, so I suppose that’s something.) If the various rumors circulating are true, those numbers may soon need updating.

That’s not to mention the serious possibility of new indictments from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, fallout from Trump’s other legal entanglements, or the certainty of tough oversight hearings from the Democratic House next year. Of course, Trump could ignore all that and focus on the job. But not even Bill Clinton, who specialized in what was then called “compartmentalization,” could really keep his mind on his official duties in the face of scandals blowing up around him. This president? I don’t think so.

It’s never easy to directly connect distractions at the White House with specific examples of letting the ball drop. And yet … does anyone really think that Trump has been actively supervising the disaster response in California? Is an administration that can’t manage to successfully pull off World War I commemorations in France really on top of what’s happening in Britain, in North Korea, in China, and on and on? Trump doesn’t even seem to have a strategy for passing the final spending bills for the current fiscal year, which must be completed by early December. He has sometimes threatened a government shutdown unless Congress funded his border wall. Is that another bluff? A serious ultimatum? Or has he checked out of the process and decided to sign whatever it is they give him to sign? If he has, what does that say about the administration’s role in legislating next year?

Yes, there’s always someone there to do the work even if Senate-confirmed nominees aren’t in place. And the federal bureaucracy keeps going even if the president is off sulking in his room. But the chances for slip-ups are increasing, and so is the likelihood that something will go seriously wrong.