The Conversation -- September 1, 2024
Gabe Guitierrez of NBC News: "President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were not invited to Arlington National Cemetery by Gold Star families last week to commemorate the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate, a White House official and a Harris aide told NBC News, refuting separate claims made Sunday by GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.... [Cotton and Gabbard criticized Biden and Harris. Trump] said he didn't initiate the [thumbs-up] photo, adding: 'While I was there, I didn't ask for a picture. While I was there, they said, "Sir, could we have a picture at the grave?"'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is no excuse. The families do not have the authority to direct or invite anyone to violate the law or impinge upon the privacy and dignity of other fallen service members and their loved ones.
Margaret Sullivan, after speaking with former New York Times reporter James Risen, deplores the Times' both-sider report in which the authors liken Harris's plans to ease the housing crisis to Trump's "plan" to ensure more available housing stock: deport tens of millions of people. Risen at first thought the report was meant to be parody. Sullivan: "Stories like this run rampant in the Times, and far beyond.... [The Times'] politics coverage often seems broken and clueless -- or even blatantly pro-Trump.... Nearly 10 years after Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, the media has not figured out how to cover him.... And what's more -- what's worse -- they don&'t seem to want to change. Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don't see the problem as they normalize Trump."
~~~ Thanks to RAS for the link.
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Presidential Race
Bill somewhere near San Jose -- with a little help from Danielle Allen of the Washington Post -- has figured out a way to mitigate the weight small states enjoy in the Electoral College. By his calculation, his method would have made Al Gore president in 2000. I invite you to check out the theory and proof Bill lays out at the end of yesterday's thread. And if anyone has time to do the math for 2016, I'd be interested to see the results.
Neil Vigdor & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: "Vice President Kamala Harris excoriated ... Donald J. Trump on Saturday for his visit on Monday to Arlington National Cemetery, where his campaign's filming of him in a heavily restricted area caused a confrontation between one of his political aides and a cemetery official. In her first public comments on the situation, Ms. Harris said that Mr. Trump had desecrated a solemn place that should be free of politics.... 'Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,' Ms. Harris wrote on X. Ms. Harris wrote that she had visited Arlington National Cemetery several times as vice president and that she would never attempt to use that setting for activities related to the campaign." The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Trump's excuse for the visit, repeated by him and his minions, is that the families of two of the interred men invited him. Well, the families didn't invite him to bring along a photographer and film crew, they didn't invite him to give a happy thumbs-up at a fallen soldier's grave, and they didn't invite him to make a campaign video featuring footage from his visit and a voiceover criticizing his political opponent. Moreover, there are some 400,000 military men and women buried at Arlington, and their families didn't invite him at all. Those families have the right to expect their loved ones to rest in peace. My parents are buried in a military cemetery, and the thought of Donald Trump's desecrating their gravesite makes me feel sick. ~~~
~~~ Chris Cameron of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump isn't the first candidate to run afoul of the ban on partisan activity in Arlington National Cemetery. But no one else has responded as hostilely as his campaign has." Cameron cites John McCain and former Louisiana gov. John Bel Edwards, whose campaigns put brief shots of Arlington in campaign ads, then quickly removed the shots and apologized when they received complaints. Prof. Peter Feaver of Duke University said, "What is unusual in this instance is how the Trump team reacted when they were called out for it. Instead of apologizing or claiming it was all a misunderstanding, they doubled down."
David Smith of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has claimed that when he was president he wanted to appoint his daughter, Ivanka, as America's ambassador to the UN but she opted to instead to work on job creation and hired 'millions of people'.... 'She said, daddy, I don't want to do that, I just want to help people get jobs. She would go around -- not a glamorous job -- but would go around to see Wal-Mart, to see Exxon, to see all these big companies to hire people and she had hired, like, millions of people during the course of her stay.'... The Republican nominee for president in 2024 made the bizarre comments during a 'fireside chat' on Friday night in Washington at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has led efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ identity and structural racism out of classrooms. In a long, zigzagging and at times incoherent conversation, Trump ricocheted between topics including his parents' marriage, Scotland, his reality TV show The Apprentice, Elon Musk ('a super genius guy'), his debates against Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and his upcoming contest with rival Kamala Harris, whom he described as a 'Marxist' and 'defective person'." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Here's something that puzzled me. Trump said of Ivanka, "She may be my daughter but nobody could have competed with her, with her rat-rat-rat you know she's got." What is "rat-rat-rat" other than three disgusting rodents? And how does it qualify one to be ambassador to the United Nations?
Carl Gibson of AlterNet: "On Friday, a rally ... Donald Trump was hosting in Johnstown, Pennsylvania briefly erupted into chaos when one of his supporters lunged into the press area to attack journalists. Video of the incident shows the ex-president actively encouraging the man as he was being tackled by security. In the video -- which was tweeted Saturday morning by former NBCUniversal senior executive Mike Sington -- three angles of the incident are shown simultaneously... As one of his supporters lunged over the barricade, [Trump] paused to watch, and remarked that it was 'beautiful.' 'That's alright. That's OK. No, he's on our side,' Trump said as the man attacking journalists was taken down.... 'We get a little itchy, don't we? No, no, he's on our side.'" ~~~
“That’s okay.” Man tries to violently attack the press at Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Trump, who often denigrates the press and promotes violence, defends him, says “that’s beautiful” and “he’s on our side”. pic.twitter.com/brDNXXROY5
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) August 31, 2024
Jonathan Swan & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Since [2022], when Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterm elections, Mr. Trump has been privately emphatic with advisers that in his view the abortion issue alone could kill their chances of victory in November. And he is willing to make as many rhetorical and policy contortions as he deems necessary to win. It is through that narrow political lens that Mr. Trump has been weighing the subject, despite his role in reshaping the Supreme Court that overturned the landmark 1973 abortion decision. The results have been confusing and fluid, a contradictory mess of policy statements as he has once again tried to rebrand himself on an issue that many of his supporters view in strict moral terms, and had come to believe that he did, too." (Also linked yesterday.)
Marcy Wheeler: "In 2016, Donald Trump bragged, 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?' This election, Trump wants to hide from voters details of how he almost killed his Vice President, Mike Pence, and his claim that doing so was an official act protected by presidential immunity. That's the primary thing you need to know about the joint status report presented to Judge Tanya Chutkan in Trump's January prosecution last night." (Also linked yesterday.)
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what's going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, "What the hell happened? Who did this to me?" They say, "Who did this to me?" It's incredible. -- Donald Trump, Friday, at Moms for Liberty chat
Trump questions acceptance of transgender people during Moms for Liberty gathering. -- Los Angeles Times headline
That headline should say 'Trump says public schools are performing transgender surgeries on students.' That's what he said. And it should be the top story in America. But it isn't. In fact, if it's mentioned it's only in passing. They have normalized this freak show and I don't know what it's going to take to restore society to a place where someone who says something this insane is no longer someone that almost half the country respects enough to put into the most important job in the world. -- digby
The headline should say, "In confusing, disjointed ramble, Trump falsely claims public schools are performing transgender surgeries on students." -- Marie
Thanks to RAS for the link. See also RAS's comment in today's thread.
As we all know, JD Vance is a best-selling author. Now Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post has discovered a new manuscript by JayDee, this one a rom-com. Shame on Petri for copyright infringement, but here's an excerpt: "'It is best for society if I reproduce with you,' he informed the female. 'But in your case, in addition to being a duty, it will be a pleasure.' 'Thank you,' said the female of childbearing age. Its epidermis glistened faintly, like the exterior of a fresh can of Diet Mountain Dew."
Jon Gambrell of the AP: "The United States military and Iraq launched a joint raid targeting suspected Islamic State group militants in the country's western desert that killed at least 15 people and left seven American troops hurt, officials said Saturday.... The U.S. military's Central Command said the militants were armed with 'numerous weapons, grenades, and explosive 'suicide' belts' during the raid Thursday, which Iraqi forces said happened in the Anbar Desert." (Also linked yesterday.)
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Israel/Palestine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.
Niha Masih & Joanna Slater of the Washington Post: "The family of Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had been kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, confirmed that he has been killed, they said in a statement late Saturday, hours after the Israeli military announced it had located a number of dead bodies in Gaza.... President Joe Biden confirmed the news in a statement, adding that he was 'devastated and outraged.' He said the bodies were found in a tunnel under the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.... Goldberg-Polin's parents spoke at the Democratic National Convention last month, sharing their son's story and making another appeal to bring the hostages back. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, said his 'left forearm, his dominant arm, was blown off before he was loaded onto a pickup truck and stolen from his life -- and me and [his father] Jon -- into Gaza.'" ~~~
~~~ President Biden's statement is here.
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Reader Comments (19)
A lot of the media seem to have the same mindset as a lot of Republicans, it won't happen to me. Trump has spent years priming his cult to hate the press. He has used them as a prop in this carnival show. Pointing at the caged reporters in back of his rallies and drawing the ire of the crowd at his perceived enemies. Many of those reporters are the same ones who act as Trump whisperers as they take his garbled half sentences and half thoughts and finesse them into semi-coherant ideas. Making Trump sound like an eccentric instead of the lunatic that he is. The LA Times had the headline, "Trump questions acceptance of transgender people at Moms for Liberty gathering" when what he actuality said was the completely batshit “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’ It’s incredible.”
Not even fear of their lives and the lives of their colleagues can get the media to continually tell the unvarnished truth about who Trump is and what insane things he is actually saying on a near daily basis. I think most of them will continue to believe, "It won't be me" even as they see someone climbing over the railing with hatred in their eyes. And so we will continue to receive biased, slanted Trump stories that paint a rosier picture even as violence hovers just a campaign stop away.
RAS,
Exactly why that woman at Arlington National declined to press charges against Trump and his goons who attacked her. Who wants the fear of being doxxed, followed, threatened, attacked in even worse ways, or of potentially losing one’s life?
Like all despots, Trump has learned the value of instilling fear of violent retribution should citizens not bow to his wishes. But is that what is promoting millions to vote for this kind of country? In a way, yes. As you say, they believe the violence will never touch them. But they dearly hope it will be visited upon those they hate.
Us.
Bill’s idea seems an excellent one, one that has the value of being both logical (number of representatives not having been changed in over a century despite huge growth in population) and serving as an antidote to the vicious minority rule that currently stymies progress and threatens democracy with extinction.
The Gore v Bush contest, however, would have been settled just fine without any changes. Gore won, fair and square. But the PoT Supreme Court had other ideas.
The present version is much, much worse. Should the outcome of this year’s election be pulled into its vile orbit, an electoral victory for Harris—and democracy and rule of law—will disappear faster than a proton in a black hole.
Marie,
My understanding of the fat man’s description of how Princess Ivanka would take care of business at the UN required that onomatopoeic description to be translated as “rat-a-tat-tat”, meaning, I guess, she’d machine gun uncooperative ambassadors. Although that would necessitate her continued presence.
“Working” (ie, grifting) in the White House, she and that other startlingly unqualified nepotism hire, 666 Jared, would beat feet out of town, to places like Aspen, on a regular basis when things got dicey, “dicey” being a near constant state during the Trump Debacle.
Still, remember that time Fatty showed up at the UN to toot his own horn about being the greatest president ever and they all laughed at him? One can easily imagine him thinking “If I started shooting these fuckers, they wouldn’t be laughing.”
Okay…getting inside the tattered orange dome causes instant synaptic explosions. Must stop that.
Akhilleus,
The fear of violence and humiliation are two primary reasons that Trump has avoided consequences for crossing lines and his criminal behavior up to this point. Many of the women that he assaulted said they didn't come forward earlier because they knew they would be dragged through the tabloid mud, thanks Mr Pecker, and it wasn't worth the price they would have had to pay to get justice against him. Trump has been using those threats to get away with his despicable behavior his whole life. He also used his daddy's money as a weapon to wield against many threats of exposure and deliberately encouraged a reputation for using lawsuits as a weapon. Making it as financially painful as possible to hold him to account. That reputation has served him well as he has continually been given a pass for his behavior. Now he also has an army of followers to wield. Multiple crimes were committed in Arlington. One done in front of cameras and then released by his own people. But because of his reputation and the victim's justifiable fear there again will be no consequences.
Here it is the first day of meteorological fall, and we already have a for "stupidest headline of the season", from WaPo editors:
"Harris and Trump are different. They need to explain how different."
I didn't read the editorial, fearing stupidity to be contagious.
Maybe people who are paid to inform readers could, you know, objectively write about the differences.
@Patrick: Okay, I did scan the editorial. Not surprisingly, the editors notice neither presidential candidate has shared much in the way of policy prescriptions, so they insist that Harris "lift up her campaign by going deep on substance."
As for Trump, they don't seem to care. This seems to be one of the advantages of lying about everything: no use asking Trump what he proposes because whatever he answers will be a lie.
To their credit, the editors do at least admit Trump has "a troubling agenda," such as it is.
Yeah, I had to check out that “Must explain differences” thing too.
It’s like a first grade quiz. Class, here’s a picture of a bright sunny day. Here’s a picture of New Orleans during the peak of Hurricane Katrina. Now class, please say how they are different.
As Marie points out, they criticize both candidates for lack of details on policy proposals. Here’s how they do it.
“Trump hasn't said much. But Harris! Blah, blah, blah, and she’s ‘coasting on vibes’ and her novelty is ‘wearing thin’ and she’s not that different from Trump on a lot of issues, and hang on, there’s more….blah, blah, blah…but she might have a good idea. She just has to explain it. Then maybe we’ll say something really useful. But don’t hold us to that.”
Yeah. Stupidity is definitely contagious.
This is how it’s gonna be. “Trump may not be the best, but Harris? Hmmm…I dunno…”
Those first graders probably did a much better job.
Fake city ordinances
"When Birmingham resident Nikki Sapiro Vinckier adorned her front yard with campaign signs promoting Kamala Harris for president, an anonymous neighbor said they had to come down. Having a batch of signs violated city ordinances that stipulate just one sign, according to the neighbor, who stuck a list of intimidating rules about signs in Sapiro Vinckier’s mailbox.
The rules looked real. But Birmingham’s mayor and city manager both said, in effect, “Nothing doing
The happy Harris fan ordered a whole lot more signs and planted them in her front yard."
It is becoming abundantly clear why Junior and Eric were so enthused about getting Vance on the ticket with daddy. Vance's deep seething hatred of women is weird and disgusting. It is also not an act for the MAGA crowd. It is one hundred percent who he truly is. This loser spent tons of time in green rooms with journalists over the years. How did they not pick up on this misogynist creep? Or did they just not care?
RAS,
For many of them, Vance looked like a moderate winger, he didn’t like Trump, he was an intellectual, he wrote a book, they made it into a movie, a movie by a real director with stars who weren’t fifth rate MAGA losers, he was a millionaire VC guy who went to Yale!
And until he ran for the senate, no one really cared about what a misogynistic weirdo he was.
Now he’s a few million votes and a floofy heartbeat away from running the country.
Yes, he’s a dangerous fraud, but so are many so-called journalists.
“Harris has to explain how she’s different from Trump, and give us way more stuff to criticize her for, then we might take her seriously. After we beat the crap out of her and guarantee that Project 2025 replaces the constitution.”
Political cartoonist Darrin Bell time lapse of Trump at Arlington National Cemetery
As I pulled out of the driveway today, some radio lady was reporting on DiJiT's latest excretions re Florida's abortion referendum. She reported that he had finally settled on being against the referendum, after having been earlier against, then for, then waffling, then for again. She presented this as if DiJiT actually has considered positions that have any meaning at all. I could not detect sarcasm or mockery in her tone, so on NPR the news was "here's DiJiT's view" rather than what we all know, "DiJiT again demonstrated that he has a mouth, larynx and diaphragm and can therefore utter word-like sounds."
They (national media) are never going to turn the corner on this. They just can't do it.
But Jesus, god, are we lucky that AG put his crack investigation team on the Arlington National debacle. The NY Times found out that OTHER GUYS DID IT TOO…and one of ‘em was a DEMOCRAT governor! So Trump’s not that bad after all.
Both sides.
Patrick,
I’d say we just gotta get over it. The corporate media (and NPR as well) are constitutionally incapable of portraying this crooked, racist, appallingly dishonest felon, rapist, and traitor as anything other than a serious, thoughtful politician who has, ya know, like, a valid point of view.
This is a dick waggling clown show gussied up to look like a Royal Shakespeare Company production. And corporate media is selling tickets and taking care of all the promotions.
I’d LIKE to say we just gotta get over it. But I can’t. It’s an absolute disgrace.
Akhilleus,
You know I couldn't agree more, but I wish you hadn't concluded with a word TFG long ago ruined for me.
There are many others, of course. Traitor is one that comes immediately to mind.
Senility is not the only reason I'm losing my vocabulary.
WaPo changed the "stupidest headline." This is how it now reads (Sunday 1650):
"Opinion America has two presidential candidates. Let’s compare them."
Maybe they read RC?
Nah
Patrick,
Maybe someone at the Post said “Hmmm, know what? Maybe we should be the ones taking a crack at explaining the differences between Trump and Harris.”
This will very quickly be followed up with “Well, Trump has some good ideas. Harris might, but she hasn’t sat down with us for a third degree “interview”, sooo…”
I avoided this stuff for the better part of two days, then just sat down to read RC today. Holy crap. I guess we are all so tired of saying "I can't believe..." etc on reading what the Dungmeister said now...but seriously, high school academic teachers and administrators are now doing major trans surgery at school, without parental permission? AND NO ONE screamed out what a piece of lying excrement this idiot is??? And everyone nodded and said oh yes it's true...?? The name of the outfit he was talking to should be Moms for Mayhem and Trashtalking...Has anyone in the MAGA world demonstrated he or she has a brain?? Don't even get me started on so-called journalists. It used to be generally the fault of the headline suppliers, and now it's just all of them. Not one of the employees of WaPo or New Yolk Dimestores seems to realize how dreadful her or his writing is. And I can't ever again listen to S***-For-Brains Vance or whatever name he is using this week. I agree. He deeply hates, distrusts and would like to imprison or molest all women cuz-- they don't like that gross beard-like brush on his fat little face, I guess...gaacchh. He makes me upchuck. (But don't they all??)