Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic, and the mainstream press is still missing the plot.
Here’s the money quote of what he said last night to a gathering of evangelical religious leaders hypocrites once the press was gone:
“The level of hatred, the level of anger is unbelievable…Part of it is because of some of the things I’ve done for you and for me and for my family, but I’ve done them,” he said, per NBC News. “This Nov. 6th election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment….They will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently, and violently” if the GOP loses, Trump said, per the report. “There’s violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people.”
Here’s The New York Times thoughtful, considered headline for their report on this speech:
Trump Privately Urges Pastors to Help Him From the Pulpit in Midterms
And here’s its lede:
WASHINGTON — In remarks to evangelical ministers in the White House State Dining Room on Monday night, President Trump spoke in high-minded tones about religious liberty, abortion and youth unemployment. He noted a John Adams quote carved into the room’s fireplace: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house.”
But once reporters and television cameras were ushered out of the room, Mr. Trump turned to the more pragmatic concerns of how evangelical leaders can use their pulpits to help Republicans win in the midterm elections, according to an audiotape of his remarks provided to The New York Times by someone who attended the event.
Michael D. Shear, the author of the Times story, only takes notice of Trump’s claims that a Democratic victory in November will spark a violent attack on self-styled Christians in paragraph 18.
To be clear: the president’s assertion that his opponents are violent criminals is a pre-emptive justification for violence against them — us. In the context he uses, the alleged threat to a certain religious group or set of views, it is a pre-emptive justification for a religious war. It is, as usual, a de-humanizing of political opposition: his people are good, folks of faith. His antagonists and theirs are haters, prone to violence and too angry to reason with. This is how dictators frame those they want to unperson. This is Trump, and his base.
And yet, somehow, the finest journalistic minds of our generation (just ask them) can’t seem to recognize what’s actually going on. It’s a mystery — and I’m not being sarcastic. Shear and his colleagues are way higher up Trump’s enemies list than I am likely to be, and they don’t see it. Given the role The New York Times plays in our polity, that puts us all in real danger; them first.
Image: Philippe de Champaign, Triple Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, c. 1642. It’s deeply unfair to associate that subtle and effective political churchman with the bozos on either side of the podium at Monday’s event — but you have to admit it’s a hell of a painting.
Dork Vader
Trump? Evangelicals? TFNYT?
I guess I’m rooting for injuries.
Baud
I assume there was as much whining as when Ocasio-Cortez did this.
maeve
All I know about Richelieu comes from reading the reading The Three Musketeers – probably not an totally factual source :)
I wouldn’t say “Its a mystery” – I don’t think the “establishment” has ever woken up to when things fundamentally change – not necessarily from conscious bias, but when the established society is comfortable for you, you really don’t want to question it on a fundamental level.
condorcet runner-up
I would say the problem with them is not that they’re way higher up on the enemies list, but that they have their heads way high up their own asses.
Mary G
Yeah, this is scary shit and the press just seems to think “There goes Trump being Trump again. Ho hum” He’s trying to work up the not-so-tightly-wound supporters to fear that electing Democrats means they will be murdered in their beds.
Not to mention that he lied that the Johnson amendment is gone and they won’t get in trouble for outright campaigning for Republicans from the pulpit. Although they won’t get in trouble, because he will order the government to ignore it, it is still illegal.
Cheryl Rofer
In line with my previous post, Trump also told the pastors that the law against 403(c) organizations advocating politics has been removed. That sets them up to preach TRUMP from their pulpits, which will get them into trouble with the IRS, which Trump and they will spin as an illegal conspiracy against them and Christianity, thereby justifying their violence.
Beyond vile.
randy khan
They just don’t believe he means it. They don’t understand that it doesn’t necessarily matter if he means it (although on some level of course he means it).
Chyron HR
Why would Democrats be MORE violent if they win? Should Republicans be conceding all the races so we don’t get mad and kill them?
Kay
Such a bizarre pick for president. He has no redeeming qualities. None. His family members are fucking awful too, BTW. All of them.
schrodingers_cat
I will quote the Mirza Ghalib* couplet that describes the situation
Famous Urdu poet lived in 19th century in the waning days of the Mughal Empire
debbie
Donnie Boy, come down from the cross.
All your crying don’t do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross, we can use the wood
You gotta come on up to the house
Gravenstone
Those are not Trump’s words. He couldn’t pull that series of sentences out of his ass on his best day now. So who is he parroting and why? Pence? Any number of Pence’s Talibangelical fellow travelers?
debbie
@Kay:
Hey, Kay. Have you ever seen a worse campaign yard sign?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@maeve:
Fun Richelieu fact – he died from a botched hemorrhoid operation. In the end, Richelieu got it in the end.
mattH
It looks like a wanted poster.
A Ghost To Most
I’ve been warning about christian fascism for years. Maybe people will listen to Tom.
Redshift
Whether because of some masochistic tendency or just wanting to know what they’re up to, I didn’t unsubscribe from the White House email list at the end of the Obama Administration.
The subject line today is “‘I Have a Dream,’ 55 years on”. Naturally, the only relevant fact they can think of is to brag about record low African American unemployment. I suppose I should be great that the staffers who write the emails didn’t explicitly take credit for that in defiance of the fact that it continues a trend like from the Obama Administration…
I didn’t click through to Trump’s fill message. I’m definitely not that much of a masochist.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: LOL
Gravenstone
@debbie: That’s just begging for someone to photoshop Busted for Husted.
schrodingers_cat
NYT is complicit. Are they beholden to the Russian mafia?
Platonailedit
Typical rethug lie = their accusations are confessions.
Brachiator
It’s not just the press. Very few in the establishment, the Beltway, New York liberal circles, you name it, really take Trump at his word. America has seen foreign authoritarian leaders, but they still don’t think it can happen here. Media types, and political leaders have seen plenty of demagogues and blowhards, but they look at Trump and still see more showman than madman.
And, when you get down to it, some will admit that nonwhites, Muslims, and few others officially designated as “the most vulnerable” might take a hit. But they think that their race, income, position in society or political beliefs will ensure that they never be singled out.
But Trump has for a long time equated himself with the state, put himself forth as the answer to all questions, and ramps up the notion that an attack on him is an attack on the public body of America.
And the GOP leadership is convinced that they can still use or follow Trump to get what they want. But the question is, what does Trump want?
Some years back, a couple of friends asked my opinion about a business deal they were offered. I checked into it and told them that it looked like a Ponzi scheme. It was based on paying old suckers with money from new suckers, while asking the old suckers for more money. One person got out. Another stayed in, thinking that he would hold on until he made a little profit. Of course he lost his shirt.
The only person who knows when a con is over is the con man. Or maybe the cops if they are about to bust it up.
The media and the smart guys and women are playing Trump’s game. They think they can make a little before it collapses. This is a poor bet if the stakes are democracy itself. But here we are.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Considering they have been massively in debt and in need of constant cash infusions ever since they built their TImes Square Tower, is hey have probably had to get creative with their financing and rentals.
condorcet runner-up
@Platonailedit: It’s always projection with these guys. So much so that the easiest way to figure out what they’re planning (or what they’ve done) is to listen to what they accuse us of doing.
different-church-lady
Fuckin’…. I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR RELIGION! I CARE ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOU WANT TO HURT PEOPLE WHO AREN’T EXACTLY LIKE YOU!
JPL
@Brachiator: That is what scares me. Part of me is cheering for Kelli Ward tonight, because at least she is honest about her whacko beliefs. She’ll vote the same way as McCain, or Flake, or any other republican.
NotMax
Dorkemada*, essentially rooting for a non-metaphorical witch hunt.
*not a typo
Librarian
Richelieu was first minister under Louis XIII from 1624 to 1642. He is considered to be one of the builders of the French state.
Platonailedit
Plenty of good info at the link.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mary G:
Can the president unilaterally do this?
NotMax
OT.
Will Puerto Ricans displaced by Maria to Florida wield an influence on the primaries?
Sadly, the numbers say no.
gratuitous
Trump is giving his blessing to pre-emptive violence by evangelicals, and the justification could have come directly from the Nazis’ beloved 14 words: “We hit them back before they could hit us!” The same rationale Jeremy Christian used for slitting three throats on the Max train when decent people objected to his bullying Muslim girls wearing head coverings: “I had to kill those people, or they would have censored my free speech!”
azlib
I wonder who leaked this information?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@gratuitous:
I hope that piece of shit gets the death penalty.
The Moar You Know
The vast majority of liberal minded folk I talk to these days still think the NYT and NPR are liberal. They’ll still be parroting that line of bullshit when Trump’s Deplorables and Pence’s religious police are slitting their throats.
JR
Wouldn’t the Van Dyck of Charles I be a more appropriate triple portrait?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@The Moar You Know:
And the Bernie or Busters and the Steiniacs will piously assert, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Bernie/Stein!”, as they’re thrown from government helicopters.
Platonailedit
Why do these traitorous thugs think that other western nations will trust them with anything?
TenguPhule
This is my shocked face. : |
Ladyraxterinok
@maeve: He’s a major figure in Eric Flint’s 1632 series. One of the recent books is focused on his plots against the league of Gustavus Adolphus and the powerful state created by the people in the WV town that was plunked down in mid-Germany during the Thirty Years War.
TenguPhule
@Chyron HR:
Yes.
Oh, was this a rhetorical question?
Mary G
@azlib: Somebody recorded it and gave it to the Times. Still strong WH security! Possible a non-grifter pastor got past the screen? Or a staffer who’s had to listen to Twitler scream at them non-stop since the Manafort verdict and Cohen plea? Or one of the eighteen other countries who’ve got bugs in the office now? The list of suspects is long.
Platonailedit
gratuitous
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I hope he gets the fairest trial an accused murderer has ever gotten, with the best legal representation on the planet. Then, when he gets convicted, I’m satisfied that he spends the rest of his miserable, wasted existence behind bars. I’d like to send him a daily postcard of me getting on the Max train, walking along the waterfront, and doing a thousand other quotidian activities that he’ll never do again.
Platonailedit
fynyt should be asking this instead of kissing the totus ass 24×7.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Everything.
He wants it all.
And he’ll burn the world down to get it.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Planes.
Copters can’t carry enough to make it economical.
Platonailedit
@TenguPhule:
And the whole world will just sit back and take that? Fuck that shit.
Jeffro
Looks like Dana Milbank has been reading some Alexandra Petri lately…I almost like this piece!
Donald Trumpov, Constitutional Scholar
First, the low-hanging fruit:
Then it gets a lil’ better…well, I mean worse…I mean better about describing how Trumpov is worse:
Yeah, pretty much.
Take him out, IC.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
The deplorables don’t know what they’re asking for. No, they really don’t. They think things will continue on for them as they always have only POS will be put in their place and good paying jobs where the only qualification one needed was to be white and have a pulse will come back.
Trump’s supporters either don’t care or don’t realize that the same regime that Trump wants and likely would run would be just as likely to persecute them as it would Muslims, liberals, black people, or any other enemy. How? Authoritarian corruption at all levels and law enforcement authorities with vast power. You cross them or piss them off in any way, they could frame you for crimes you never committed and have you imprisoned or killed. In an authoritarian political system, due process doesn’t exist but perhaps for the well-connected.
@NotMax:
That’s old news
John Revolta
@Platonailedit: A better question might be: what was he hoping to talk to them about?
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
They reported that back in July. I don’t know what to say other then “get out of the way”.
Thoughtful David
@Platonailedit:
Were I MI6, I would have thought a meeting with Nunes would be a great chance to plant some misinformation and see where it shows up next.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Nah, they’ll be banished to Spacecatraz.
Gotta give the Space Force something to ward off ennui.
:)
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Assholes: “That’s our religion! Now die heretic scum!”
Villago Delenda Est
Exqueeze me, but the MAGAt evangelical worshipers of Mammon and Moloch and Donald will initiate violence against actual Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists. It’s the other way around. And it’s real.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Looks like Dick Whisperer got some fresh ammo. Me approve.
TenguPhule
@NotMax: There’s a webcomic where the traditional form of punishment is to be fired from a catapault in proportion to the severity of the crime.
Mass Drivers were ruled as technically being catapaults.
Captain C
@Platonailedit: They’re idiots high on their own echo chamber supply.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@gratuitous:
I agree about the fair trial part. It’s likely an open and shut case anyway. Normally, I’d agree with you about life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but I can’t for this guy. He killed three people, two for just standing up to him and pushing back on his verbal abuse. And he was proud of what he did after he was caught! He thinks he was right for murdering those people. His brazen defiance and self-righteousness is disgusting. No, he needs to die. I wish he would have died in 2003 when he was first shot by police for a robbery. Maybe if he had his three victims would still be alive today.
Perhaps I feel the way I do partly because I could see myself doing what his victims did. It disturbs me that I could be killed by some evil deranged maniac without warning if I confronted him for his horrifying behavior. Fuck him and his stupid, irrational justifications.
Platonailedit
@Thoughtful David:
They already know these traitorous pricks leak like an incontinent p**nis. No need of reconfirmation.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
I have suggested that C-130s would be used in the past. Helicopters are what Duarte and Pinochet used, I think.
waysel
@schrodingers_cat: I say ‘yes’.
Ladyraxterinok
@A Ghost To Most: People like me who grew up in a SoBapt church before fhe rightwing takeover led by Patterson and Presler (now both disgraced because of sex/abuse scandals) have watched this for a long time.
It’s been totally frustrating that the ‘liberal,’ ‘elites’ who pontificate on national politics have been unwilling to see whatxs been happening since the 70s.
I think they just viewed it all as the quaint meanderings of unimportant people. Falwell, Robertson were just kooks good for a laugh on slow-news days.
People at sites like talk2action kept warning, but they were laughed off. The site analyzed Palin’s ties to the NAR(New Apostolic Reformation) and the dominionist groups driving a large part of the political activism of the Evangelicals and the media said ‘Dominionist? What’s that? Never heard of it. You guys are just making stuff up to look important.’
Now of course everybody and his dog is writing about the influence of the Evangelicals, and many are acting as if they just appeared out of the blue.
danielx
Always, always, always with the projection.
Thoughtful David
@Platonailedit: True, but not my point. They could use the leaks to track who Nunes’s contacts are. That’s why you would give him misinformation– so you could identify it later.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ladyraxterinok:
Yup.
TenguPhule
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Pinochet used planes.
Duarte AFAIK just shoots them. Air disposal costs too much.
TenguPhule
@Platonailedit:
Nobody seems to believe this is really happening.
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s wrong to call them Evangelicals. Call them what they are: Pharisees.
Ladyraxterinok
@Brachiator: Deja vu. The industrialists backed Hitler because they thought he’d help their interests. They thought they could control him…… until it was clear they couldn’t. By then it was way too late.
The individual soldiers and each Lutheran church official had to swear an personal oath of loyalty to Hitler, NOT to the German nation. The Confessing Church (started by Barth and Bonhoeffer in reaction to this demand on the religious leaders) stated that their first loyalty was to God, NOT to Hitler.
Calouste
@azlib: My thought as well. I find it interesting that even in a meeting like this someone is recording and leaking.
Calouste
I’ve been to the estate of Cardinal de Richelieu in France. There’s very little left of the buildings, as they got torn down during the revolution and sold as building materials. The wine cellars still existed and consisted of three tunnels dug into a hill, the outer two about 12 feet in diameter and the middle one 20 or so, and about 100 feet long. The Cardinal must have been a thirsty fellow.
JMG
Don’t kid yourself. America’s elite political journalists are about one-third as smart as America’s NBA reporters. They skate by on connections, having gone to the “right” schools and on having sucked up to everyone above them since junior high.
Ladyraxterinok
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: In the last decade there have been many ministers/churches that have advocated for a candidate. IIRC someone has to report them and someone has to take action. I believe very few have been reported, and most of the reports were against liberal churches, ministers.
What about the RCC priests/bishops who tell parishoners they must only vote for candidates who oppose abortion.
And the protestant preachers who say ‘We are not supposed to advocate for candidates from the pulpit, but you all know where I stand.’
Or the churches who invite a candidate to the church and ask him to make a statement. Or the preferred local candidates sit in a prominent location, and the preacher welcomes ‘some notable
Christians visiting us today.’
Amir Khalid
@Thoughtful David:
Were I MI6, I would have sicced James Bond on Nunes. ;)
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
They boosted both European fascists AND AMerican fascists in the 1920s and ’30s. Right up until Pearl Harbor. Which Trump told Japanese PM Abe that he remembers, even though he wasn’t born at the time. I know about Pearl Harbor, but I don’ t remember it.
Duane
@A Ghost To Most: Claire McCaskill’s opponent for Senate Josh Hawley (MO-AG) annouced his support for churches to be PAC’s. Eliminate seperations of all kinds. Ivy League education and stupid as hell. My state attorney general .
Good grief already.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t share your level of hatred for the nytimes, but this is a meme worth spreading IMO. (I’d extend it to “or the Russian government”.) They should be in-their-face embarrassed by this shit (complicity) as much as possible.
A few reasons why I still tolerate them; weak paywall (delete cookies or whatever), a consistent stream of linkable articles, and Paul Krugman is on a serious roll recently, with some … edge … to his voice:
Why It Can Happen Here – We’re very close to becoming another Poland or Hungary. (Paul Krugman Aug 27, 2018)
For the linked PK opinion piece, I’d add fact-free attacks on the press (and today, Google, and some of the attacks on social media have been entirely counterfactuals.) These are right out of the Fascist takeover playbook, so obviously so that I’m sort of wondering if they’re hoping for a Nazi-comparison response.
Bill Arnold
@Platonailedit:
That’s seriously clueless on the part of Nunes. Besides his repeated demonstrations that he is not to be trusted with information, the British intelligence agencies are friendly with the US intelligence agencies, which Nunes and other (treasonous) Rs have been trying to weaken.
Nunes must be a bubble-boy.
Ramalama
A few family members are totally Evangelical and are also completely opposed and vocal about their loathing for Trump. I’m guessing they like Pence. I mean, what’s not to like, Mother? But they’ve written letters to their fellow religious members in extreme and articulate opposition to anyone supporting anything having to do with Trump. They talk to people. They are very active in their church. I guess we’ll see in November.
Tom Levenson
@Ramalama: Good to hear this.