Trump's New RNC Isn’t Sending Its Best
Trump's New RNC Isn’t Sending Its Best
Plus: With 229 days to go, how to stay motivated without going crazy?
A spot of good news this morning: The latest tentative government-funding bill, text of which was released yesterday, would authorize 12,000 additional special immigrant visas for Afghans who helped the U.S. as translators or in other ways during America’s war in Afghanistan. As we wrote earlier this month, the program was in danger of hitting its statutory cap of visas issued as early as this summer; this increase will provide some breathing room on that front.
Happy Thursday.
Party in the Front, Business in the Back
How will the new-look, post-purge Trump Superfriends RNC help the Trump campaign through its intense cash crunch? The party’s two recent polar-opposite legal hires—Charlie Spies and Christina Bobb—provide a clue.
Spies, who is coming aboard as the RNC’s chief counsel, would seem a bizarre pickup for a party that just remade itself to be more deeply Trumpy than ever. A normie Republican campaign finance lawyer par excellence, Spies’s resume is lousy with near-presidents: He was chief counsel for Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign, then counseled Romney’s super PAC in 2012, Jeb Bush’s in 2016, and Ron DeSantis’s last year.
That Trump’s RNC would bring Spies aboard—despite his resume, despite Trump’s stated fatwa on hiring ex-DeSantis staffers, despite the fact Spies even pushed back publicly against Donald Trump’s stolen-election lies in 2021—is an admission of grave need. Trump and the RNC are in a deep and unusual financial hole, trailing far behind Biden and the Democrats financially and with the additional burden of Trump’s large and growing legal fees. Spies, who practically wrote the book on modern candidates getting the most out of their super PACs without running afoul of election law, will be uniquely suited to help the GOP and its allied groups push money around.
But how to raise that money in the first place? That’s where the second lawyer comes in: Christina Bobb, the RNC’s new “senior counsel for election integrity.”
If you’ve followed the news in recent years around Trump’s many attempts to avoid the consequences of his own actions, from losing the 2020 election to fighting his criminal indictments, you’ve probably brushed past Bobb’s name a time or two. As an anchor for One America News Network after the 2020 election, Bobb slung enough lunatic conspiracy theories around that Dominion Voting Systems singled her out as a named defendant in its defamation lawsuit against the network.
Not content merely to evangelize for Trump’s attempt to steal the election, Bobb also quietly lent her talents to Rudy Giuliani’s work to recruit slates of fake electors in seven “contested” states. According to Dominion’s lawsuit, Bobb spent January 6th holed up at the Team Trump “War Room” with Giuliani, John Eastman, Steve Bannon, and others involved with the last-ditch effort to pressure Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election results. Later, she became heavily involved with dead-end “audit” efforts that vainly tried to uncover election fraud in Arizona.
In 2023, she resurfaced in West Palm Beach as an attorney representing Trump in his classified documents case, where she signed a letter attesting—incorrectly, it turned out—that a “diligent search” of Mar-a-Lago had been conducted and no classified documents remained on-site. (She later told investigators she had not conducted the search herself; showing admirable foresight, she had inserted several caveats into the letter to specify that she was only certifying “based upon the information that has been provided to me.”)
The new RNC is working hard to make its new “election integrity” division a core brand component: Party co-chair Lara Trump has been hitting the cable circuit since her takeover to trumpet the “massive resources” the party is devoting to “fight fire with dynamite.” It’s an attempt to reassure the base that the RNC “establishment” is all-in on the MAGA movement—which will hopefully get the small-dollar donations to the cash-strapped party flowing again.
And who better to be the public face of that division than a TV-friendly stop-the-steal lawyer who’s already shown she’s fanatically loyal to Trump?
—Andrew Egger
Man Plans and God Laughs
In this space a month ago, I suggested that we Americans could use a dash of the spirit, a dose of the determination, captured by the closing lines of the poem ‘Invictus:’
“I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.”
Some readers seemed to agree. I even received a Taylor Swift-esque friendship bracelet with INVICTUS spelled out on its beads.
I appreciated the gift, though I’ll acknowledge I haven’t been wearing it every day. My handlers here at The Bulwark were worried the friendship bracelet might not quite “work” for me, as they say in the fashion business.
But I’m tempted—in the spirit of Invictus—to overrule them. If I want to wear a friendship bracelet—hey, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul!
On the other hand . . . maybe not.
After all, Invictus isn’t perhaps the whole truth. As we look ahead, we can’t be at Invictus levels of determination and resolution every hour of every day.
What to do?
Well, while British schoolboys were reciting Invictus as they prepared to assume the responsibilities of self-government, not to say of empire, the Jews of Eastern Europe, who were trying mostly to survive and in many cases to get out, were wryly remarking to each other, “Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.” “Man plans, and God laughs.”
We need some of that spirit too, if we’re going to make it through the next 229 days: A wry sense of humor, a healthy kind of fatalism, an acceptance of the limits of what we can control.
Because God’s been having a good laugh at our expense recently, and I’m not sure he’s finished.
A few years ago he elevated—or allowed us to elevate—a shameless con man, a vulgar demagogue, to the presidency. America, the nation that has led the forces of freedom in the world for almost a century, was to be led by a nasty clown. But, as Charlie Sykes likes to say, a clown with a flamethrower. So a dangerous clown.
God laughed (I presume). We survived.
But now God has brought him back—or allowed us to bring him back—for another turn in the center ring. Even after January 6th, after the consequences of indulging this man and his movement, he’s now the presidential nominee for the third straight time of one of our two major parties, with a decent chance to become president again.
Obviously, dealing with this threat requires Invictus-like determination and hard work to see to it that this doesn’t happen.
But that probably needs to be tempered, for the sake of our sanity, with an acceptance and appreciation of God’s sense of humor.
Though I am tempted to say, as they said in the old country: Enough already.
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
Lev Parnas, ex-Giuliani associate, testified allegations against Bidens are false and ‘spread by the Kremlin’: NBC News
Biden expands his fundraising advantage over Trump: Politico
U.S. has submitted draft UN resolution demanding “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza in exchange for release of hostages, Blinken says: Axios
Biden cancels nearly $6 billion in student debt for 78,000 public service workers: NBC News
Trump eyes Sen. Marco Rubio as a potential VP pick: NBC News
Bankruptcy is one way out of Trump’s financial jam. He doesn’t want to take it: Washington Post
Quick Hits
1. Toward Trumpo-Reaganism?
Two former mid-level Trump NatSec guys, Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea, have a new book out, We Win, You Lose, arguing for what they call a “Trump-Reagan fusion” in foreign affairs. On the site today, Gabriel Schoenfeld breaks it down and picks it apart:
THE CENTERPIECE of Kroenig and Negrea’s treatise is devising a strategy for “winning the New Cold War with communist China,” the “most powerful adversary the United States has ever faced.” They assert that “one of Trump’s greatest accomplishments was making the tough decision to confront China after decades of a failed U.S. engagement policy.” And it is true that Trump did confront China in some arenas, slapping on tariffs in an effort to shift the trade imbalance between our two countries. But to draw a parallel, as the authors do, between this limited effort and Reagan’s comprehensive approach to the Soviet danger, is a bald misrepresentation.
At the heart of Reagan’s approach was the recognition that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire,” a regime that perpetrated aggression abroad and smothered human liberty at home. Reagan never for a moment refrained from engaging in an ideological struggle with the Kremlin, pitting America’s vision of freedom against Soviet totalitarian control. He was a president who spoke of “man’s instinctive desire for freedom and self-determination” and the “grim reminders of how brutally the [Communist] police state attempts to snuff out this quest for self-rule.”
Could there be a greater contrast between Reagan’s frontal challenge to the Kremlin and Trump’s groveling approach to China and its leader, Xi Jinping? “Look, I want China to do great, I do. And I like President Xi a lot, he was a very good friend of mine during my term,” said Trump on one recent occasion. “We love each other,” he said on another. And on yet another occasion, he poured praise on Xi for being “an exceptionally brilliant individual who governs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” According to Bolton, in a summit meeting Trump went so far as to tell Xi that he was “right” to detain China’s ethnic minority, the Uighurs, and “building the camps . . . was exactly the right thing to do.” Could there be anything less Reaganesque than this shameful endorsement of Communist repression?
2. Miranda’s Last Gift
Friend of The Bulwark David Frum shared terrible news a few weeks ago: His daughter Miranda died last month at the age of 32. His latest piece in the Atlantic is a tribute to her, a mini-memoir of their last years together, and a meditation on grief. It’s also an account of his complicated relationship with her dog. It begins:
I was at the kitchen counter making coffee when my daughter Miranda’s dog approached. Ringo stands about 10 inches high at the shoulder, but he carries himself with supreme confidence. He fixed his lustrous black eyes on mine. Staring straight at me, he lifted his leg and urinated on the oven door.
After the mess was cleaned up, I complained to Miranda, “I don’t think Ringo likes me.”
Miranda replied, “Ringo loves you. He just doesn’t respect you.”
Theoretically, Ringo is a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. You may have seen depictions of the breed peeking at you from portraits of monarchs and aristocrats. But the spaniels in the paintings are almost always the cinnamon-and-white variety known as a Blenheim spaniel. My wife, Danielle, has a Blenheim. The Blenheim Cavalier is a true lapdog: easygoing, obedient, insinuating. Ringo is very different. He is exactly the color of a cup of espresso, mostly black-haired with a little brownish tinge at his extremities. He’s commonly mistaken for a miniature Rottweiler. That confusion is less absurd than it sounds. If an unwelcome stranger steps in his way, 18-pound Ringo will stiffen and growl, murder in his eyes.
It’s a powerful and beautiful piece. Go read the whole thing.
Cheap Shots
Elizabeth Graham
From Democracy to Democrazy
In 1997, Putin was the PM of Russia and destined to be the 2nd President within a short period of time. This was the same year that the book called Foundations of Geopolitics was published in Russia. It is a long read - over 600 pages, but it tells the whole world about Putin's intentions as the next President of Russia. His list of goals includes (I am paraphrasing) (1) destruction of the U.S. democracy, (2) abolish Ukraine, (3) befriend France and Germany, (4) return the world order to pre-NATO time, (5) BREXIT, and (6) restore Russia to it's glory days before the collapse of the USSR. It also includes instructions on the post-communist timeframe and military exercises.
Putin is a lifelong Russian secret service agent who became President. His whole life has been dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. He blames us for the downfall of the USSR and he openly wants revenge. During the USSR timeframe, other countries were under Russia's control because they placed a man in power who was loyal to the Soviet leader - who was always a Russian. Putin has groomed Trump for decades and at some point in the 2000's Trump was compromised. He has clearly demonstrated his devotion to Russia - and if he didn't, he or a member of Trump's family would die. This is how Putin operates. Keep in mind, only a few months after Trump lost the 2020 election, Ivana Trump died due to a blunt blow to her head. While Trump did his very best to tell the world this was an accident - I strongly question her death because it resembles the same type of murders conducted by Russian KGB/FSB.
TIME 100 Edition (June 2022), was dedicated to the "most influential persons of 2021-2022." It says "Influence, of course, may be for good or for ill - a dichotomy never more visible than in this year's TIME100, which describes both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky." President Biden described Zelensky, and Alexei Navalny described Putin. There are two quotes from Navalny in this edition of Time 100 that I would like to share with readers:
(1) "Perhaps Vladimir Putin's true mission is to teach lessons. To everyone - from world leaders and pundits to ordinary people. He has been especially good at this in 2022. He reminded us once again that a path that begins with 'just a little election rigging' always ends with a dictatorship." When I read this statement, all I could think of was former President Trump's call (which was taped) to Brad Raffensperger (R) the Secretary of State for Georgia pressuring him to 'just find 11,780 votes' in order to overturn the GA election. If this is not election rigging, I am not sure what is.
(2) Navalny goes on to say "World leaders have hypocritically talked for years about a 'pragmatic approach' and the benefits of international trade. (My thought: This is because the World and the U.S. thought that the Cold War was over and we were living in global peaceful co-existence - a huge mistake.) In so doing, they enabled themselves to benefit from Russian oil and gas while Putin's grip on (international) power grew stronger. Between sanctions and military and economic aid, this war (with Ukraine) will cost hundreds of times more than these lucrative oil and gas contracts, the signing of which used to be celebrated with champagne."
As most of you know, Alexei Navalny was the Russian foremost presidential opposition leader until Putin first poisoned him and then imprisoned him and then murdered him in an inhumane gulag in Siberia. While Navalny himself decided to return to Russia after recouping in Germany from his near-fatal poisoning, our entire global community is responsible for his death. Let's be clear and honest for a change - Putin is a ruthless, blood-thirsty dictator - often compared to Stalin who murdered over 20 million humans. Our world is not living in peaceful co-existence and little has changed over 75 years.
The United States and other democratic countries have imposed sanctions on Russia that would normally cripple any thriving nation. These sanctions have not worked and will not deter Putin. The West and especially our country naively believed that the Cold war had ended and the West had won. This was a critical and momentous mistake. I was living in Russia during this timeframe, and have been repeating since 1993 that the Cold War DID NOT END. Having lived under the oppressive orthodoxy of Communism and having witnessed numerous frightening lessons on how Soviet/Russia official egoism and bureaucracy works, I understood that sanctions on influential and wealthy Russians - the oligarchs - has NO impact on Putin - yet the sanctions continue. Of course, Biden has few options - and Putin knows this. It is all out war against Putin and Russia or it is sanctions. I doubt that Biden will wage war, at least not before the 2024 election.
In 2004, the Beslan School incident was a shock to most Russians. Briefly, Chechen rebels held more than 1,100 hostages in an attempt to convince Putin to withdraw his troops from Chechnya. Putin refused to back down and he solved this issue by bombing the school. A total of 186 Russian children died as well as hundreds of Russian adults. Because Russian families, at that time, only had one child, all Russian children were/are normally highly protected and safeguarded. A Russian named Illarionov was Putin's economic advisor at the time. Because he could not bare the thought of these children's violent deaths , Illarionov left Russia and moved to the U.S. The following is a quote from him to the American people: "One of the greatest misconceptions in the West and in the United States is the role of the so-called Oligarchs in the Russian economy and its political system. These roles are next to zero. I've heard so much through all these years about the oligarchs, about how important it is to put sanctions on them . . . (thinking this will in turn influence Putin). If you would like to make life miserable for these people, it's OK. But if you think these sanctions would make changes in the decision-making process of Mr. Putin or the Kremlin, it's wrong. It's a mistake. The political regime in Russia is not like the United States . . . it is not a democracy. .and not even an authoritarian regime. . . Right now, it is a one-man show. You can punish 145 million Russians and it will not change the decision-making process of Putin. It has been Putin's dream for decades to destroy Ukraine.. . . His goal is to not stop in Ukraine, his goal is to move into Europe.. . Ukraine is just his testing ground. . . The West may not want to be at war with Russia, but they also may have NO CHOICE." He goes on to ask the West "How long should we (the U.S. and the world) tolerate the endless spiral of deaths produced by one person?" In Ukraine, Putin has targeted non-military targets - hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people have died. How long can we watch and tolerate this human carnage without our own souls crying out in pain?
We live in a country where the "rule of law" and not the "rule of one person" has governed. If Trump is re-elected, our democracy may die because this is a corrupt man who thinks only of himself. We also have half our country believing that Trump is a decent human being. They have ignored his six business bankruptcies, his 91 criminal charges, his convictions of both fraud and rape, his instigation of a violent insurrection against the legal transfer of power, and perhaps most importantly his obvious dedication to Vladimir Putin and Russia. In reality, this relationship is nothing more than subjugation of a stupid American who was caught in a typical Russian/KGB's trap. I know this process well and was subjected to the Russian "wining and dining" often. I was told that because I speak Russian, but had an American passport, that I could go into the U.S. Embassy and be useful to Russia.
The real problem our nation faces in this coming election, is the enormous number of voters who have succumbed to Trump's form of coercive mind manipulation. Brainwashing began in totalitarian countries 100 years ago, and has been widely used in dictator-led countries. Hitler converted an entire peaceful society/nation into mass murderers. He tortured and killed over 6 million people and perhaps another million died on the battle fields trying to stop him. He turned families and neighbors against each other, and he used speeches filled with repetitive lies, fear, threats and hatred. If this sounds familiar it is because Trump - a candidate for the Presidency of the United States - has used these same mass mind manipulation tools. There are ways to combat and detox brainwashed individuals - but this post is already too long.
I am very opinionated on this subject, so I apologize for the length of this message.
Elizabeth
A lot of the problems that we have are rooted in the difference between the expectations and image that Americans have of themselves (as built and expressed in American Mythology) and how the world actually is.
In other words, what we think we are, what we see as being the thing (the nation) is a long ways away from what the Mythology tells us.
The frontier closed over a century ago. Civilization advanced. You don't usually hunt to put food on the table these days. But guns are still somehow a central part of the American Mythology... even though there are no hostile natives to fight (we keep trying to reinvent those, in justification though--in the person of criminals and illegal aliens/terrorists/drug dealers/whatever). No militia can effectively stand against a modern, professional army--if that Army wants to win. And there are no longer any chattel slaves that are going to rise in rebellion (though we try and reinvent that too through BLM).
And the stupid justification that something that was an arm of the government in time of war (militia--so there did not have to be a standing army) is somehow a bulwark against tyranny. George Washington (the only US President to take the field as CinC) summoned the militia to crush the Whiskey (anti-tax) rebellion--so if anything it was a tool of tyranny.
The closing of the frontier also closed off an important societal relief mechanism. You could no longer pack up and leave to escape the government. No more cheap or free land to claim (or steal from the natives). Just less and less space (and higher cost) as time passed.
But we have a lot of societal myths and expectations that are built around that frontier mentality.
Throw on top of that the fact that after WW2, the US largely WAS the global economy as the last major power standing undamaged. GI bill, the rise of the middle class, suburbia, the rise of consumer society and credit... these things are largely the result of an extraordinary economic situation, NOT an ordinary one.
But we still have expectations built on that, too.
The inability to separate ourselves from or actually understand our past and mythology is one of the primary reasons we are approaching destruction.