"there is time yet for America to spit this obscenity out of its mouth". What a powerful phrase! I am going to get a T-shirt made with this to wear to the next No Kings and just around the house...with your permission, of course, Andrew (and with full attribution). It applies not only to this bit of egregious corruption but to the whole Trump mistake. People understand few outrages as quickly and clearly as unfairness and corruption. An anti-corruption message put Zelenskyy and Magyar in office and it will work here too, maybe even better.
The corruption is so obscene at this point that if Dems go before the voters and just recite the plain and incontrovertible facts, I'm afraid voters won't believe it and will think they must be lying.
I agree. Voters have not cared that Trump is a conman for over a decade. The corruption can be part of their pitch, but it should not be the number one issue they push.
It's really hard for me to know what pitch to use, honestly. Voters have been warned over and over about this guy for over a decade now, they have to know who he is, and a sufficient number of voters have consistently declared loudly and clearly that they either do not care that this is who he is or that they like that this is who he is.
There is no pitch. You either support fascism or democracy. Most Americans support fascism. Just the way it is. All of our efforts should go to breaking the back of the fascist propaganda factories, or else we'll get the same fate as 1940s Germany. But nobody will risk Rupert Murdoch's profits, not even to save lives.
I'm not sure most Americans support fascism. Minority rule is a feature of our set up and that gives the fascists a leg up. All the same, I agree with you about breaking up the propaganda machines.
Sometimes I wonder whether they engage in this bald-faced stuff to divert attention from their other schemes where the real money will be made: their stablecoin USD1 comes to mind: Do your deal with "Trump money" and things will go your way.
I doubt they’d be shocked. American voters have been told that government is inherently corrupt for generations. If Dems intend to mention the truly unprecedented corruption, the sentence still needs to end with an exhortation that this is all happening while gas and food prices go up for normal folk.
My (MAGA) congresswoman will be receiving a letter citing this statement and a link. I expect some gibberish in reply about Medicaid fraud in blue states. But at least I will have tried.
Think about it. For Trump, visiting Beijing is like his own personal Disney World. It's the world's happiest place! Everybody's waving flags in his honor. Standing stiffly at attention just because he's there! It's exactly the kind of adulation he'd love to have 24/7/365. Given the level of ego gratification, it is astonishing that Trump doesn't go to Beijing every two months.
yes indeed, our president is still not ready for middle school.
The “normies” (people who watch 0 news and just live their lives) cannot comprehend and or believe the level of corruption. They believe that there are still checks and balances to prevent what is currently happening. And then you have a cohort that is lost in the red fog, very hard to see when the fog is so dense.
Can we stop calling people who don’t watch the news as “normies?” That implies that we are abnormal and I reject that premise. Call them what they are - uninformed.
The fact you are posting a comment for a political newsletter puts you on the far edge of the bell curve. All of us are not the normal voter. Sarah touches on this a lot when she talks about the voters in her focus groups. Those voters are uninformed, but so are most voters.
And then there are ones who throw their hands up saying everyone is corrupt, Hunter Biden selling crappy paintings is the same as Kushner taking $2 billions while advising on Middle East politics.
Those are the people that are stuck in the red fog. You need constant reinforcement of propaganda to hold that belief. Normies had and still have no clue about Hunter Biden.
I agree here. I think the average voter has no idea how much of our politics depended on norms and that is why they voted Trump and Republicans to run Congress. They felt he'd be contained bc all their lives they heard checks and balances. Many of them never heard anything about Trump's insane desires in his first term that were stopped by members of his first term cabinet.
This reminds me of Tim on piers Morgan berating Dan Crenshaw that none of the people in the first term who stopped the crazy ideas will be in the second.
An astute comment. It is actually mind-blowing in its simplicity (I am not being facetious here), That is something that is layered into the tribal or Us/Them thinking that I take as a given, but don’t ever really talk about directly. Your question slaps us in the face with it.
The Way of the Tribe is always the Best way, the Right way, the way sanctioned by God (or the Gods). It is the Way Things Are Meant to Be.
If the radical left Democrat party takes control of the House, the New Golden Age will be replaced by apocalyptic darkness, as TRANTIFA will have a dirty bomb in two weeks.
(This is apparently only slightly exaggerated from an official Fed document issuing from Seb Gorka.)
The one thing that I will give Trump "credit" for is proving (beyond a shadow of s doubt) that we are not a nation of intelligent, thoughtful, rational, logical, beings.
The 77 million that voted for him, and the many millions that didn't vote at all, have allowed him to bring this country to her old, worn out, previously surgically repaired (civil war) knees. I am hoping we find a way.
In 10 incredible years, with a four-year interregnum to rest up, Trump, the GOP, and SCOTUS have taken the USA from world leader to also ran and damned-near pariah. Heckuva job, GOP voters, legislators, and jurists. I hope you choke on your unearned success while you burn through the capital WE created over the past 250 years. You aren't worthy of contempt.
"But the idea that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s IRS would fight as hard to keep money out of the hands of Bessent’s boss was laughable from the start."
Laughable? I'm having trouble seeing the humor in it. But predictable? Totally.
Who wants to look at sunken ships. Let's raise up the Arizona, plate in gold leaf, build VIP luxury suites inside the gun turrets and.... and.... a Ballroom on the aft deck!!
Ditto. And, the proposed weird arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery gives me the same reaction. I spent hours there the last time I was in DC. These people have no concept of honor or bravery.
After reading Andrew's post, my Rage Meter is pegged at 11. The corruption, the graft, the in-your-faceness to ordinary Americans... just enraging. My ire was increased when I saw the NY Times sanewashing headline about Trump's statement that he does not think at all about American's financial problems: "Is Trump Tuned Out to Americans’ Financial Needs? A Remark Suggests Yes." Suggests? Suggests?! What does he have to do to media outlets -- hit them over the head with a bullhorn while he screams "I don't give a **** about Americans' financial problems"? 🤬 I'm off to go chill out somewhere.
I applaud my fellow Bulwark readers who are still capable of rising to the challenge of commenting -- the daily grift, graft, insults, stupidity, arrogance, entitlement and a host of expletives -- leave me shell shocked, tongue tied and worn out.
Re: Cuba. In my view, the charge against Netanyahu and the IDF that is prima facie valid is that they cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza, at least for a time. To do that to a civilian population in war is a war crime; to do that to a population at all is a crime against humanity. How is that Trump and Rubio are allowed to get away with strangling an entire country by cutting off oil upon which they depend? How is it that threatening tariffs against any country who delivers oil to Cuba is still a credible threat, given the SCOTUS's recent decisions?
That's not good enough. When will Americans have had enough of his coconspirators, the entire Republican party? I've already had enough of the people who vote for them.
A $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump allies, J6 insurgents, and other parasitic MAGA sycophants? Do you think Don Jr. will qualify, perhaps, as someone “targeted by Biden”? It all depends on the impartial and wise judgement of the Trump-appointed commission of course. Maybe Melania? Bannon? We just don’t know!
But this grift does double duty. It subsidizes the victim mentality that the entire repugnant MAGA movement feeds on – a classic authoritarianism tactic, used by some of the GOATs (one rhymes with Mitler, another Hussolini). This trick maintains the dog-eat-dog in-group cohesion that justifies hostility to those dirty, filthy out-groups. And it’s that social perk that keeps them all in line, 100% uncritical loyalty to their dear leader. Well played Donny!!
"there is time yet for America to spit this obscenity out of its mouth". What a powerful phrase! I am going to get a T-shirt made with this to wear to the next No Kings and just around the house...with your permission, of course, Andrew (and with full attribution). It applies not only to this bit of egregious corruption but to the whole Trump mistake. People understand few outrages as quickly and clearly as unfairness and corruption. An anti-corruption message put Zelenskyy and Magyar in office and it will work here too, maybe even better.
Hopefully the Democratic Party makes corruption the main issue in the midterms.
The corruption is so obscene at this point that if Dems go before the voters and just recite the plain and incontrovertible facts, I'm afraid voters won't believe it and will think they must be lying.
I agree. Voters have not cared that Trump is a conman for over a decade. The corruption can be part of their pitch, but it should not be the number one issue they push.
Somehow the Dems have to convince the magat morons that they're not in on the grift but that they're the marks.
Yeah. We should find an example of someone doing this successfully. I know Steve Hassan has been talking about how hard this is to do for a decade.
It took a great deal of time and effort for Magyar to organize this message delivery in Hungary. It won't be easy.
It's really hard for me to know what pitch to use, honestly. Voters have been warned over and over about this guy for over a decade now, they have to know who he is, and a sufficient number of voters have consistently declared loudly and clearly that they either do not care that this is who he is or that they like that this is who he is.
There is no pitch. You either support fascism or democracy. Most Americans support fascism. Just the way it is. All of our efforts should go to breaking the back of the fascist propaganda factories, or else we'll get the same fate as 1940s Germany. But nobody will risk Rupert Murdoch's profits, not even to save lives.
I'm not sure most Americans support fascism. Minority rule is a feature of our set up and that gives the fascists a leg up. All the same, I agree with you about breaking up the propaganda machines.
Sometimes I wonder whether they engage in this bald-faced stuff to divert attention from their other schemes where the real money will be made: their stablecoin USD1 comes to mind: Do your deal with "Trump money" and things will go your way.
I doubt they’d be shocked. American voters have been told that government is inherently corrupt for generations. If Dems intend to mention the truly unprecedented corruption, the sentence still needs to end with an exhortation that this is all happening while gas and food prices go up for normal folk.
Among many other issues
Don't bet the farm.
This would be a great quote on some Bulwark merch!
Where can I pre-order?
MS: "Every member of Congress that retains a modicum of self-respect and love for the country should be shrieking from the rooftops about this."
Well, we know that won't be Lindsey, since he wants his fair share.
Meanwhile, MAGA's going, "But Hunter Biden!"
My (MAGA) congresswoman will be receiving a letter citing this statement and a link. I expect some gibberish in reply about Medicaid fraud in blue states. But at least I will have tried.
Not to mention Hillary's emails....
And Obama birth certificate
But...but...Hunter Biden failed to do business under a pseudonym to ensure that he would not benefit in any way from being the son of the VP...
Since it was under the Biden administration that Hunter Biden was prosecuted, seems like he should apply for some of this reparation.
My Democratic rep took this opportunity to ... vote yes on Trump's draconian laws to increase police powers. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5625
Think about it. For Trump, visiting Beijing is like his own personal Disney World. It's the world's happiest place! Everybody's waving flags in his honor. Standing stiffly at attention just because he's there! It's exactly the kind of adulation he'd love to have 24/7/365. Given the level of ego gratification, it is astonishing that Trump doesn't go to Beijing every two months.
yes indeed, our president is still not ready for middle school.
"It s a small world after all".
The fact American voters do not care (at least care enough to do anything) about corruption is something to behold.
The “normies” (people who watch 0 news and just live their lives) cannot comprehend and or believe the level of corruption. They believe that there are still checks and balances to prevent what is currently happening. And then you have a cohort that is lost in the red fog, very hard to see when the fog is so dense.
Can we stop calling people who don’t watch the news as “normies?” That implies that we are abnormal and I reject that premise. Call them what they are - uninformed.
The fact you are posting a comment for a political newsletter puts you on the far edge of the bell curve. All of us are not the normal voter. Sarah touches on this a lot when she talks about the voters in her focus groups. Those voters are uninformed, but so are most voters.
I have also been saying that we need someone to inspire the uninformed.
Beware what you wish for. Didn’t we get someone who inspired the uninformed? That was 2015.
Method proven
I think it's just a reminder to us that we are very much not the typical American voter.
And then there are ones who throw their hands up saying everyone is corrupt, Hunter Biden selling crappy paintings is the same as Kushner taking $2 billions while advising on Middle East politics.
Those are the people that are stuck in the red fog. You need constant reinforcement of propaganda to hold that belief. Normies had and still have no clue about Hunter Biden.
I agree here. I think the average voter has no idea how much of our politics depended on norms and that is why they voted Trump and Republicans to run Congress. They felt he'd be contained bc all their lives they heard checks and balances. Many of them never heard anything about Trump's insane desires in his first term that were stopped by members of his first term cabinet.
This reminds me of Tim on piers Morgan berating Dan Crenshaw that none of the people in the first term who stopped the crazy ideas will be in the second.
Somehow, even seeing all this, some 40% of the country still goes, "Yeah, but Dems are worse." WTAF.
Again, the other tribe is ALWAYS worse, because... that's why.
If the other side isn't worse, what would that make us?
An astute comment. It is actually mind-blowing in its simplicity (I am not being facetious here), That is something that is layered into the tribal or Us/Them thinking that I take as a given, but don’t ever really talk about directly. Your question slaps us in the face with it.
The Way of the Tribe is always the Best way, the Right way, the way sanctioned by God (or the Gods). It is the Way Things Are Meant to Be.
Difference/deviation from it is sinful/evil.
Because one time a blue haired coffee shop worker had a pronoun on the name tag asked for a tip.
They may illustrate their displeasure with the mounting outrages and grift by voting non-GOP in droves for the midterms. Fingers crossed.
Unfortunately their media will inform them of some cultural outrage to gin up the GOTV energy.
If the radical left Democrat party takes control of the House, the New Golden Age will be replaced by apocalyptic darkness, as TRANTIFA will have a dirty bomb in two weeks.
(This is apparently only slightly exaggerated from an official Fed document issuing from Seb Gorka.)
They cared about Hunter Biden a lot. They care tons about corruption in Minnesota, enough to support a police force that shoots VA nurses in the face.
They shot the poet in the face. The VA nurse they shot in the back, multiple times, while he was prone on the ground.
The one thing that I will give Trump "credit" for is proving (beyond a shadow of s doubt) that we are not a nation of intelligent, thoughtful, rational, logical, beings.
The 77 million that voted for him, and the many millions that didn't vote at all, have allowed him to bring this country to her old, worn out, previously surgically repaired (civil war) knees. I am hoping we find a way.
At this point I think it is 50/50
"Should it come to fruition, it would be not merely a miscarriage of justice but a sacrilege against it."
Sacrilege against justice. The one sentence synopsis of the Trump presidency in history books one hundred years hence.
In 10 incredible years, with a four-year interregnum to rest up, Trump, the GOP, and SCOTUS have taken the USA from world leader to also ran and damned-near pariah. Heckuva job, GOP voters, legislators, and jurists. I hope you choke on your unearned success while you burn through the capital WE created over the past 250 years. You aren't worthy of contempt.
At least we kept Trans out of women’s sports!
And how about those egg prices? They're practically free now. Sleepy Joe could never have accomplished that 500% reduction.
Trump is being paid by Putin to do this, I am convinced. He needs guidance to know which levers to pull to wreck our democracy.
S**t, he's being paid by everyone, including you and me, to rape and pillage.
"But the idea that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s IRS would fight as hard to keep money out of the hands of Bessent’s boss was laughable from the start."
Laughable? I'm having trouble seeing the humor in it. But predictable? Totally.
But what about Medicare and SNAP fraud by illegals???
Having trouble seeing the humor? Rewatch (or heaven forbid watch for the first time) Dr. Strangelove.
Next, Patel will be standing in the 9/11 Memorial standing under the water cascade in a bathing suit, saying he’s ‘inspecting’ it.
Steve Schmidt's take on Patel's desecration is worth a read: https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/snorkeling-over-the-war-dead
Thank you for sharing this. I just don’t understand the depravity of this administration, it’s as if they have no soul.
Fascism is a death cult.
I wonder if this gives DJT any thoughts about Up grading the memorial? ( maybe another arch or putting his name on it). :(
Who wants to look at sunken ships. Let's raise up the Arizona, plate in gold leaf, build VIP luxury suites inside the gun turrets and.... and.... a Ballroom on the aft deck!!
I wonder if Kash snorkeled with his Bourbon bottle in hand?
Thanks for the link!
The very idea of that creep desecrating that sacred graveyard makes my blood boil. And the bile rise in my throat.
Ditto. And, the proposed weird arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery gives me the same reaction. I spent hours there the last time I was in DC. These people have no concept of honor or bravery.
"Suckers and losers" DJT
1.7 billion dollar fund. 1600 J6ers charged with crimes. That's over a million per. Thuggery pays well when the boss has access to the US Treasury.
"Stand back and stand by."
And Trump will get his cut.
The biggest cut.
"First cut is the Deepest".
And cutting $1.5B from domestic HIV/AIDS funding to justify it. People will die.
After reading Andrew's post, my Rage Meter is pegged at 11. The corruption, the graft, the in-your-faceness to ordinary Americans... just enraging. My ire was increased when I saw the NY Times sanewashing headline about Trump's statement that he does not think at all about American's financial problems: "Is Trump Tuned Out to Americans’ Financial Needs? A Remark Suggests Yes." Suggests? Suggests?! What does he have to do to media outlets -- hit them over the head with a bullhorn while he screams "I don't give a **** about Americans' financial problems"? 🤬 I'm off to go chill out somewhere.
I applaud my fellow Bulwark readers who are still capable of rising to the challenge of commenting -- the daily grift, graft, insults, stupidity, arrogance, entitlement and a host of expletives -- leave me shell shocked, tongue tied and worn out.
Re: Cuba. In my view, the charge against Netanyahu and the IDF that is prima facie valid is that they cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza, at least for a time. To do that to a civilian population in war is a war crime; to do that to a population at all is a crime against humanity. How is that Trump and Rubio are allowed to get away with strangling an entire country by cutting off oil upon which they depend? How is it that threatening tariffs against any country who delivers oil to Cuba is still a credible threat, given the SCOTUS's recent decisions?
"America has had enough of this guy ..."
That's not good enough. When will Americans have had enough of his coconspirators, the entire Republican party? I've already had enough of the people who vote for them.
A $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump allies, J6 insurgents, and other parasitic MAGA sycophants? Do you think Don Jr. will qualify, perhaps, as someone “targeted by Biden”? It all depends on the impartial and wise judgement of the Trump-appointed commission of course. Maybe Melania? Bannon? We just don’t know!
But this grift does double duty. It subsidizes the victim mentality that the entire repugnant MAGA movement feeds on – a classic authoritarianism tactic, used by some of the GOATs (one rhymes with Mitler, another Hussolini). This trick maintains the dog-eat-dog in-group cohesion that justifies hostility to those dirty, filthy out-groups. And it’s that social perk that keeps them all in line, 100% uncritical loyalty to their dear leader. Well played Donny!!
"In an era of “great changes unseen for a century,” we have a child as our president. That’s one way to choose decline."
Let's not denigrate children. We have a "Chucky Doll" as our president...