Donald Trump is a slow-witted bully, and his occupancy of the highest office in the land is more attributable to his dumb luck and others’ bad faith, greed and stupidity than any skill or strategic acumen on the part of Trump or the low-quality hires who surround him. But Trump does possess a certain low cunning. Absent that, it would have been the destiny of some other hate-filled buffoon to become the avatar of the dumb, angry, jingoistic, bigoted horde that comprises 40% or so of our citizenry.
Trump knows how to gin up hate based on the prejudices he shares with the MAGA horde, and he understands the wellspring of their self-righteousness, which is a staggeringly hypocritical and unlearned version of Christianity and a judgmental form of ersatz patriotism. This shallow patriotism exalts “the troops” and “our flag” and “the Constitution” and “the founders” in the abstract, but it exists primarily to exclude undesirables and enforce showy, Lee Greenwood-branded displays of fealty to the horde rather than the country as it actually exists.
I think Trump’s primal understanding of his followers’ shallow, phony version of patriotism is why he’s so threatened by the allegations in The Atlantic that he called America’s war dead “losers and suckers.” President Cornered Rat has never sounded so cornered as he did in these tweets denying the story:
It’s a lie — there’s video of Trump calling McCain a loser, and as always, there’s a tweet:
The bald-faced lies are standard fare. That Trump doesn’t understand the concept of service and is contemptuous of all non-transactional activities isn’t surprising either. Of course he has contempt for soldiers who are willing to risk or lay down their lives for low pay.
He’s contemptuous of his own followers too. They’re extras in his narcissistic drama, good only for providing the public adulation he craves on cue, handing over money to campaign hucksters and voting to keep him in power. Trump would order the strafing of the flag-waving MAGA horde in a New York minute if they dared to show up at Mar-a-Lago for an unscheduled event.
Given all that, the lies and hypocrisy are unremarkable. What is surprising is the tone of desperation in Trump’s response — the offer to swear on “whatever” or “whoever.” It reeks of flop-sweat and conjures an image of his piggy little eyes darting nervously in their pasty, white-rimmed sockets.
It’s axiomatic at this point that MAGAs cannot be moved but can only be outvoted. The scales are not going to fall from their eyes, ever, and waiting for them to finally realize they’ve been conned is as dumb and delusional as waiting for Trump to start acting like a “normal” president.
Still, it’s interesting how rattled Trump seems by these allegations. It’s as close to “A Face in the Crowd” moment as we’ve seen so far from the phony, elitist demagogue.
Open thread.
2,000 posts on insurance and more to come….
RepubAnon
Ask Trump to swear on the Koran… he did offer to swear on anything, right?
Or, perhaps, swear on a stack of $100 bills, as he worships money above all else.
Quinerly
Pentagon shuttering “Stars and Stripes” at the end of the month. Publication dates back to Civil War.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Spanky
I refuse to believe those tweets came from DJT’s fingers. Too coherent, though it looks like there’s sort of an attempt at faux incoherence, if you know what I mean
ETA as example, can you imagine hearing Trump use the term “quite the contrary”?
donnah
There is a sizable block of voters in the military and in our veterans population who have been unwilling to acknowledge Trump’s disdain for their service. This Atlantic article is not the first we’ve heard of his disrespectful attitude. But with further exposure and possibly more corroboration, they may feel compelled to reevaluate their loyalty to Trump. They insult themselves by supporting him.
raven
@donnah: There also is a sizable block of vets who were not enamored with John McCain.
Roger Moore
The question, though, is how many of the people who voted for him are true MAGA believers and how many are people who voted for him because he had an (R) after his name. I think some of the people who voted for him because they thought they’d get Generic Republican are probably reachable, though you’d hope they’d mostly have been reached by this point. In any case, we don’t have to turn his entire base against him to win; we only need to flip a few.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of campaign hucksters, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the difference in tone in the fundraising emails from the Biden and Trump teams could not be more stark. It’s just so clear the Trump people think the MAGAs are dumb as fuck (not that they’re wrong).
Ken
Couldn’t remember the words “Bible” and “God”, or (like the Devil in legend) can’t say them?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We’re in the midst of the quadrennial Great Excusening, when millions of mostly white voters who do not consider themselves right wingers search for excuses why they just cannot join Democrats in opposing fascism.
I know far too many military and ex/retired military who fall into the above category. They excuse themselves by voting glibertarian. Typical Embarrassed Republican abrogating any electoral responsibility for their inability to vote Democratic.
At least it’s “X” number of votes for the Orange Furby.
MattF
It’s not news that Trump is an asshole. The current ‘scandal’ is, though, a spectacular example of that fact. I do get a persistent déjà vu feeling that I’ve heard it before.
germy
@Quinerly:
Alexander Woollcott and Harold Ross both worked there, over a hundred years ago.
MomSense
I listened to Trump’s new Covid advisor interviewed by the BBC. Holy hell what an arrogant prick. They are going to do their damndest to kill us
Betty Cracker
@Spanky: I agree the “quite the contrary” is a rhetorical flourish that doesn’t sound like Trump. I wonder which genius decided they should explicitly state that McCain’s body was flown “in casket” to the capitol? Did they imagine we’d otherwise assume they’d strapped him to a seat?
The mind. It reels.
Falling Diphthong
The bit about approving McCain’s funeral is striking to me. Who out there is going to go all woobly kneed about Trump letting a funeral proceed? He seems to expect boot-licking thanks from someone for what is normally a very minor rubber stamp in the presidential duties.
Also I believe he skipped that funeral. In checking that, I came across this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47642335
As Trump publicly fumes about the ghost of John McCain not thanking him enough. Not that he cares about that! Which is why it’s the topic of his speech to factory workers.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You mean “-X votes” right?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
of all the metaphorical bricks walls I’ve literally been banging my figurative head against for the last five years (trying to summon Steve from the Wherever), this is one of the thickest. From his contempt for real religion to those moments when he slips in his railing against the elite to brag about how much nicer his apartment is…. When he won, he didn’t go to a diner in Long Island or a union hall on Staten Island, he went to 21 Club (a place I only knew about from old movies and TV shows, and assumed had gone the way of the Stork and the Latin Quarter and Club Babaloo) to promise tax cuts to people eating hundred dollar steaks and bask in their applause.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
@Spanky:
Yeah, that “quite the contrary” struck me as a little off, too.
He has one thing going for him, and that’s that his voters have a remarkable capacity for willing away reality. He’ll tell them it’s fake newz, it’s a lie, he never said it, and most of them will believe him. After all, there were no names in that story! Unnamed sources! Unnamed sources! Unnamed sources are only trustworthy when they get quoted telling us that they’ve seen things in Hawaii about Obama that you wouldn’t believe. Otherwise, they’re trash.
Falling Diphthong
@MattF: Re hearing it before, this is Trump’s version of “Crooked Hillary”–it sticks because it reenforces an existing damaging narrative. His supporters can’t insist that he never said anything like that, because he has done so on tape numerous times.
Elizabelle
I woke up more hopeful this morning. The Atlantic’s story is big and bad for Trump, and it rings true because we have witnessed this kind of behavior previously, over many incidents, with our own eyes and ears.
Trump and his crew of paid and/or grifting liars know it’s bad.
The FTF NY Times was slow in getting their story on The Atlantic up and — yes — they went with the horserace aspect in the headline, subhead, and first paragraphs. Although they also loaded in some well researched Trump greatest hits that I’d kinda forgotten. It’s a pretty good (and damning) story.
Trump Angrily Denies Report He Called Fallen Soldiers ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’
The report, in The Atlantic, could be problematic for the president because he is counting on strong support among the military for his re-election bid.
Cites Trump’s support for the military, and then:
Apparently the White House served up a scapegoat for the missed French cemetery visit, at the time, one Zachary Fuentes (more on him in a second comment — he turns out to be notorious, too).
[In TrumpSpeak, this is an outright admission: I didn’t want to go and decided not to. Let’s blame it on the Secret Service.]
I think the NY Times somewhat let Trump hang himself with his own words. So kudos there.
Hungry Joe
At least one of Trump’s former lackeys is going to have to step out from behind the Unnamed Source curtain if these revelations are to have any effect — i.e., peel away even a small slice of his base or sway any of the mysterious (mythical?) Undecided voters.
Meantime, the Trump fascist foundry continues to grind the glass, extrude the concertina wire, and strew the leftover LEGO pieces so many of us are willing to crawl over to vote. I’m writing more post cards today. How about the rest of you?
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I resemble that remark.
Elizabelle
@Falling Diphthong: Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral.
Although, former McCain best friend and current Trump toadie Lindsey Graham made sure to invite Ivanka and Jared to represent the Trump family. That was kind of gruesome, and it was interesting that it was reported frequently at the time that it had been Graham who issued the invite, not the McCain family.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: . I had to approve the funeral because he had a first-class, triple-A funeral.
who talks like that about a funeral? fercrissake
It lasted for nine days, by the way.
he can’t help himself, he always gives it away
Amir Khalid
@RepubAnon:
No, not the Quran. I do not want that sorry excuse for a human being defiling with his touch the holy book of my faith, or indeed of any faith. Make him swear on the one thing he loves and holds dear — a portrait of himself.
Danielx
Given his record of blowing off solemn agreements*, offering to swear to not saying something does not mean much.
*See: business agreements/contracts, marriage vows, oath of office, binding treaties…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The fact that Trump comes outright and calls vets losers doesn’t surprise me since Trump does Mafia wiseguy LARP and didn’t the mobsters call Micheal a sucker for joining the military in the Godfather? But what is really bizarre is Trump’s obsession with the American Civil War to the point he has a fake Civil War battlefield on one of his golf courses. Trump’s idea of history must be entirely based on movies.
raven
@Quinerly: I wonder what they’ll do with the archives? Some years ago I found this picture of my Drill Sergeant, Dallas Pinkney, on their site.
MazeDancer
Consider asking people you know if they have made a Voting Plan. Doesn’t take the courage of going on record about Trump, but you might have been hesitant.
But what if you can help? What if your friends need to talk through their options?
PostCardPatriots.com has the info you need to help.
And if you post your Voting Plan in this thread, it will soon be Illustrated and posted in the sidebar here.
schrodingers_cat
Do we know who is behind the latest leaks? Or are the anonymous.
schrodingers_cat
@raven: How is retirement coming along?
Omnes Omnibus
@Quinerly: It wasn’t a very good paper when I was in the army – mostly wire service articles – but it was always available and I read it every day. The International Herald-Tribune was much better but you pretty much needed to go to a major train station to get it so it wasn’t an every day thing. The Sunday Times was a big thing pre-brunch. In the field, S&S was always available and I got my Economist once a week in the mail. All this was pre-Internet, of course.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Anonymous.
JPL
@Quinerly: trump has nothing but respect for the military,and what better way to show it then by destroying their newspaper. If MSM reports that story, trump will deny it by the end of the day.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So true.
Patricia Kayden
Yep. Surprise!!!
Chyron HR
@Spanky:
Sure, although he would think it means “a big scam”.
JoyceH
I think someone is going to have to go public on this story. It will be someone who has already left the administration, and Trump will claim he was a loser who was fired ‘like a dog’.
What I want to know is – when can we expect the first ‘Trump paid for my abortion’ story to drop?
Leto
“first class funeral” JFC, he can’t stop the shitty business language. So many better ways to describe something but we have President Third Grade Vocabulary Ability and so here we are.
@Omnes Omnibus: It was invaluable for us deployed because even if we didn’t have internet at a site, someone would always bring us a S&S.
japa21
No, this story won’t sway hard core Trump supporters, but think of states that are close with a large military presence. States like NC, TX and GA. Not just members of the military but their families as well. This could definitely help putting them in the Biden column.
laura
Of all the shit-baggery that MAGA encompasses, the fetishization of the military really chaps my ass. Talking big about the military while doing everything in his power to dismantle the institution has been a daily “in plain sight” occurance and smells kinda russky to me. The base and the entire republican party seem fine with it and that is terrifying – they seem willing to go along with anything he does.
rp
@Roger Moore: Exactly. My guess is that…hmmm…maybe 13% of the electorate support him because he’s a republican but aren’t die hard MAGATs. This story only needs to move a few of those types to have a significant impact.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Not yet. There are at least four sources, and The Atlantic said that John Kelly declined to comment for this story.
My guess is that Kirstjen Nielsen might be a source for the Arlington National cemetery visit story; it’s got a lot of detail — although it could just be the unnamed retired four-star.
Josie
@MazeDancer:
I was planning to do a mail-in ballot, but my research revealed that Texas mail-in ballots are not counted until the national day of voting. I have decided to vote early in person to make sure my vote is reported that night. The more numbers we can rack up that night, the safer we are.
raven
@schrodingers_cat: Yesterday was the one year anniversary. I guess I’ll say it hasn’t been what I envisioned.
I thought of you when I read this in the NYT this morning.
The Forgotten Colonial Forces of World War II
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Meanwhile, Trump did not want the flags flown at half staff for McCain, and had to be pushed to agree to that.
That’s both funny and insulting.
PaulWartenberg
@donnah:
What is hurting trump with these revelations is the personal nature of them. trump’s previous attacks on military veterans and top brass could be and were excused away as partisan political gamemanship, his way of signaling to his voting base that he disregards the “experts” in favor of his own “sound judgment and guts”. But this is different: he is openly pissing on the regular troops, the enlistees who sign up for a few years or a whole career, the ones not in the Pentagon offices but the ones on the front lines. His refusal to show up for various veteran memorials was and is contemptible: his trashing of their voluntary dedication and sacrifice is more vulgar and obscene.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: @Elizabelle: Now that the bottom is falling out of the Orange Clown’s campaign effort, rats are leaving the sinking ship.
My guess is that it is one of the noble generals or their aides who served willingly under the Orangina.
schrodingers_cat
@raven: Thanks. I will read it.
Amir Khalid
POTUS Trump deals with Russia as if he were Putin’s man. He deals with the pandemic as if he were on the side of the coronavirus. Now, as hefaces the biggest fight of his brief political career, he’s just handed his rivals the Biden/Harris campaign a huge, unexpected gift.
I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Stock market averages are down big again today, in spite of not-as-bad-as-expected job numbers. President DJIA is going to have a very angry weekend
raven
@Leto: Internet! Ever use a field phone??
The Moar You Know
@Omnes Omnibus: Largely free of bullshit editorials and op-ed pieces. In that respect, it’s one of the best papers out there.
The closing of both VOA and the Stars and Stripes is enraging. That’s an order that’s obviously come straight from Putin in an attempt to weaken our international standing and media footprint.
PaulWartenberg
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The greatest trick
The DevilRoger Ailes ever pulled was convincing enough White Americans to never vote Democrat.Sloane Ranger
@Quinerly: Has it, perchance, run any articles recently that could be interpreted as critical of the Great Orange One?
raven
Here’s the full article on Sgt Pinkney and the Honor Guard.
PaulWartenberg
@raven:
JESUS CHRIST THEY’RE TOSSING POINTY THINGS.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: Exactly, it was a connection to what was going on elsewhere in the world. Getting rid of it is a horrible idea.
karensky
It seems to me that the cultists are <30% of us. Right on otherwise!
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Sounds rough. :)
Ken
Is Cohen’s book on sale yet? He’s the ones who handled the payoffs for Trump’s affairs.
Omnes Omnibus
@PaulWartenberg: It’s really just a complicated version of lawn darts.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: You have no idea.
Another Scott
FTFNYT from February 2016 – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/upshot/the-week-in-donald-trumps-twitter-insults.html
(OMG!! Insulting the New York Times!!11)
Poor, poor Donnie. Everyone else is so horrible, only He is worth anything.
Grr…
We, and the press, have known all this about his character for ages. Yes, The Atlantic piece is good and proper. But we as a country should never have had to put up with him in office in the first place…
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
@Baud: Not anonymous, off the record. The writer of the article knows who their sources are.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not unexpected. Markets are pricing in Trump’s self-destructive pathology, at long last.
Sab
So we put my dad in a nursing home memory care unit. He is an R. I put in a change of address to my house for his mail. Frank LaRose Republican Sec of State sent a letter to us about dad. I didn’t answer.
We just got our applicatioms for absentee ballots, even though dad didn’t respond to SoS inquiry. Would we have had the same result if dad was D? Why is he even on the voting rolls, and why at the wrong address he never registered at
ETA: If you move, shouldn’t you have to re-register? A change of address at PO shouldn’t be enough. Anyone can do those. My ex-husband’s ex-wife rerouted our mail for a few weeks twenty years ago.
Calouste
I wonder if someone is sitting on a tape of the shitgibbon having a chat with evangelical leaders and commending them on fleecing the suckers while calling Pope Francis a loser.
PaulWartenberg
@Roger Moore:
I had, based on pure anecdotal evidence, figured there was at least 24 percent of Republican voters who knew trump was a monster but still voted the party line (either from loyalty or fear of a Hillary timeline), about 30 percent of Republicans who only cared about profiting from a Republican regime, and about 44 percent who knew trump was a monster and cheered him on just to OWN TEH LIBS.
You won’t get the 30 percent who profit from GOP misrule, because it’s never in their interests to support a Democratic government that might tax or regulate them to their despair. The 44 percent are obviously gone. That 24 percent are the ones the Lincoln Project and Never Trumpers are trying to reach, with the hope that Biden is friendlier to them than Hillary was.
There is no guarantee the Democrats and Never Trumpers will reach that full 24 percent. But it doesn’t hurt to try (as long as Biden/Kamala speak well to the Liberal/Progressive factions in their own ranks). What IS as play are the less numerous but more significant Independent voters who favored trump over Hillary (46 to 42 percent) but now hate trump compared to Biden (35 to 53 percent). In the right states – the Midwest MI, IA, WI, even OH and PA, and AZ and FL, maybe even NC and GA – they can flip those places Blue and secure the Electoral College…
Leto
@raven: Yes! One of the first things we learned how to do in Block 6, HF fundamentals. Field phone and SATCOM phones. Seriously, ground radio troops were your best friends :)
PaulWartenberg
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The markets are responding to other economic factors (and good employment numbers never make the markets go up automatically). There’s stories about credit crunches and bank debt https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/ that may be causing the markets to pull back.
Jersey Tomato
Has Kelly commented yet? A denial from him would go a long way toward derailing this story, but I haven’t seen anything from him yet.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We’re watching them delude themselves on the covid damage to the economy just like they deluded themselves on covid. There are periods you have to act. Windows. Things won’t always wait around for the low quality, coddled and insulated mediocrities he hired to get some sense of what’s happening in the real world. By the time it breaches the wall of bullshit they’ve surrounded themselves with it’s an epidemic.
He should have spent the summer ordering the GOP in Congress to get some stimulus out the door. God knows they would have hopped right to it. They’re his employees and Pelosi did all the work. Instead he focused solely on racist appeals to his base.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PaulWartenberg:
that sounds… familiar…..
artem1s
Ellison to close foundation, focus on COVID-19 response
Well the grifters are lining up to con the US out of our tax money and hopping on Donnie’s promise to produce a vaccine by November 1. Ellison is well known for pledging big money and then retracting after the media bump is over. That he is closing shop is a pretty good sign he doesn’t like the legal framework of a registered foundation because it makes it harder for him to renege on pledges. creep. also,too Oracle sucks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jersey Tomato: He declined to comment. Make of that what you will.
Betty Cracker
@karensky: I used to think it was less than 30% too, but the fact that 40% or so consistently approve of this presidency in every poll taken despite every calamity that has befallen us on Trump’s watch caused me to revise my estimate upwards. Paul has an intriguing estimate at #68. Hmm.
Kay
@PaulWartenberg:
I keep waiting for auto loans to implode. I have never seen anything like it. They are rolling over the difference between debt and value into new cars with bigger loans and it is just not sustainable. We see 700, 800, 900, 1000 dollar monthly payments and so little value behind them. It must be billions and billions of dollars in unsecured junk. It’s imaginary. It has to fall down.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Still lots of brown and black people out there to hurt, so he still thinks he has a purpose in life.
Kay
Miles is obviously already “out” as someone who won’t cover for the douchebag but that’s a confirmation with a name.
SiubhanDuinne
Need a Betty Cracker portrait of Trump STAT!!
Sebastian
@RepubAnon:
I read on Twitter he should swear on his taxes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Not this time. This is he doesn’t want to admit that he let Trump slap him around like that, but he can’t deny it since there were witnesses.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: in the early days of this nightmare, I used to watch Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle’s show on MSNBC. She was fond of saying, “Not all trump voters are racist, my mom voted for trump and she’s not a racist!” One day she had her mom on the show, a well-groomed suburban lady. She said she liked trump’s policies, but “/disappointed mom face/ I wish he would tweet less.” We were well into our policy of torturing children at that point, but it would have been so terribly rude for someone, much less her daughter, to say: “You like babies in cages, you just wish he weren’t so very vulgar about it?”
I’m sure Mrs Ruhle The Elder has never used That Word, and disapproves of those who do, but I’d bet a kidney she’s used the phrase, probably around the bridge table, or when Chad and Karen from the club come for dinner, “Well, I don’t have a racist bone in my body, but you have to admit…” And with the tax cuts, they can finally put that addition on the house at the shore, or upgrade to the condo on the slope side of the building.
Sebastian
@Roger Moore:
There were also a ton of people in two groups: the ones who thought Hillary had in her bag and wanted to express their protest with “the system” and those who wanted a shakeup in Washington. Might be an overlap between those two, it’s really along a spectrum.
raven
@Leto: I guess I’m surprised they still have them.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And it gnawed away at him for each and every one of those days that someone else was getting all the attention.
Jersey Tomato
@Omnes Omnibus:
Truly, a profile in courage.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: They still have semaphores tucked away someplace.
clay
@Betty Cracker: The thing I keep going back to is the fact that Hoover got 40% of the vote in 1932. Trump having a constant 40% approval rating doesn’t seem odd in that context
EDIT: And that was without Fox News!
TS (the original)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This was the early CNN write up
Dow is now at -417 (1.5%)
HalfAssedHomesteader
I’ve been seeing a lot of comments elsewhere casting the anonymous sources as cowards. I’m not so sure. There’s likely some measure of self preservation to be sure, but I also think it’s a tactic of practicality. Putting their names out there gives Trump something to demonize and move attention off of the issue. And it’s an unfortunate fact of our media economics that having a shiny object in hand, they can’t resist chasing after a new one.
Elizabelle
Back to Zachary Fuentes, the scapegoat for Trump’s cancelling the 2018 visit to the American cemetery in France.
Maggie Haberman, December 2018: the knives were out for Fuentes:
NY Times: A Top Aide’s Exit Plan Raises Eyebrows in the White House
So, he cooked up a plot to escape the White House and ensure a cushy retirement:
Trump signed the budget bill without funding for the Coast Guard program but — surprise, surprise — the Coast Guard retirement program was reinstated “with a list of otherwise noncontroversial technical corrections to the bill,” after the fact, after a late-arriving written request. Inserted by Republicans.
No dice though, for Fuentes, with the USCG retirement plan. He soon found another source of revenue.
Pro Publica: The Feds Gave a Former White House Official $3 Million to Supply Masks to Navajo Hospitals. Some May Not Work.
[ProPublica adds that Fuentes retired from the Coast Guard “for medical reasons.” Uh huh.]
Matt McIrvin
@Josie: Are in-person early votes counted sooner than mail votes? In Massachusetts, they’re treated essentially identically–I suspect neither are counted until Election Night.
LurkerM
@Sab: I recently moved (same state, same county) and had to re-register with the new address.
Elizabelle
And, from June 25, 2020, on the ZOTUS Zach Fuentes watch: ProPublica again:
The Indian Health Service Wants to Return 1 Million KN95 Masks It Bought From a Former White House Official
The former official, Zach Fuentes, is refusing to take back the masks even though IHS said they did not meet FDA standards. His company’s lawyer says the IHS is trying to cancel the order for “political reasons.”
Stay tuned.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I hesitate to suggest that Florida does anything to do with voting better than another state, but it does count mail-in votes as they come in. I don’t see why any state would wait to tally them up on a single day. Seems like counting them as they arrive would ease the crush after the polls close.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: All ballots in one place being counted at one time.
Gin & Tonic
@Jersey Tomato: He hasn’t and he won’t. Kelly sold his soul a long time ago.
Amir Khalid
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
If the sources put their names out there, there’s a 200% chance Trump will seek to damage their careers rather than just trade insults with them. They have every right to avoid that, and it’s up to them how many fucks they have left to give.
Leto
@raven: AF Comat Communication Teams still have them because they’ll deploy to the more asture/remote sites to help setup bases and still need a way to talk. We’ve gone a lot more towards SAT communications because of security/portability, but they’re still there. The ancient shit never really dies.
Kay
It’s also completely believable that he’s terrified of rain because it really would make his ridiculous hairstyle dissolve. You can’t fix that on the fly. It’s a lot of work and product.
I read the funniest comment of my life from a hairstylist during the ’16 campaign. She does hair for rich men who are trying to deny they are balding, and she described how the “rat tail” of the long piece they have to arrange and lacquer in place collapses and snakes out when she shampoos them. Just the level of specificity and disgust in this recounting. Delightful!
piratedan
commented about this last night to a certain extent but for me it seems like the Atlantic article is acting something like a tiny fulcrum piece was removed that was keeping a humongous weight precariously in balance. What it says isn’t exactly new, the depth and detail and breadth of his disdain for the Military, those who served and his attitudes regarding service and who he thinks is a hero and who is not, is even more revelatory to his warped worldview.
What struck me as telling was the fact the media is behaving as if this is somehow different. Same anonymous sources, no one going on the record, but enough clues and breadcrumbs to speculate who the sources were (which is exactly the right type of cheese for certain members of our fourth estate). It the fact that someone bothered to check and confirm and were “shocked” to find that this was corroborated, with apparently little effort.
I’m still amazed at the bubble that journalists apparently inhabit themselves, it seems to be that their own inherent informational/professional biases are just as difficult to penetrate as those of our red hat wearing citizenry and that infuriates me for some reason. Most likely its my own naivete regarding what a journalist actually does and how apparently they really aren’t as informed about what they write about than I am, it’s just that they’re paid to break their delivery of information in small sentences rather than the rambling train of thought that I employ (eschewing the fourth wall breakage that I employ in my parens).
Seems that we have a LOT of reconstruction to do regarding a great many things in this country…
Jeffro
And yet, the scales have fallen from some of their eyes…otherwise he wouldn’t be around 41-42% nationally instead of the 46% he got against Hillz.
Keep pounding. Keep asking his supporters, enablers, and his excuse-writers in the media, “How can you support/enable/excuse this?” Vote by vote, it works.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I make of it that it’s a confirmation, by default. If it weren’t true, or if it were true but he wanted people to think it wasn’t, Kelly would have issued a flat denial.
sdhays
@Spanky: Oh, yeah. That stood out to me too. That phrase really isn’t in his current vocabulary.
Gin & Tonic
@Leto: Friend of mine was an AF com tech back in the old days. Left Saigon on the second-to-last helo.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
It varies a lot depending on the state. In Maryland we have paper ballots that are scanned and you feed it into a scanner right after you fill everything out, so I assume the counts are available somewhere. They are not released until the polls are closed, but they are released almost as soon as the polls are closed. For mail in ballots, the law is that they couldn’t be opened until the Wed after the election. I’m pretty sure they can match signatures and do other checking when the ballot is received so you can check to see that your ballot was received, but normally it wouldn’t be counted until more than a week after the election. There was a law passed that gave the governor the power to adjust deadlines and dates and now the election officials can start actually counting the mail in ballots on Oct 3, so in Maryland, most of the mail in ballot counts will be posted on election night.
catclub
Nope, it is just the same as the Khizr Khan case. Shitting on dead enlisted.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
We just learned our neighbor across the street died of Covid. We hadn’t seen much of him, but we never did. He was in his 70s and in poor health, and it was not unusual to see him taken away in an ambulance for some medical incident every once in a while. But we had been wondering about him since the last incident. We just ran into his relatives who had been cleaning out the house, and they informed us he died of Covid a couple of months ago.
So that’s literally hitting close to home. Because he was such a recluse I can’t imagine how he contracted it.
I haven’t had much direct contact with military since retiring (I was a civilian employee) in 2017, but I had the feeling that there a number of things that would have caused them to hate him over the last 3 1/2 years. For instance his favoring of war criminals and overriding of the chain of command to pardon them against the pleading of the military.
I used to work with a couple of retired Army guys (well, more than a couple but these two sat right next to me). One was a master sergeant, the other a captain and West Pointer. They definitely exemplified the political differences between enlisted and officer. The guy who’d been an officer was not exactly a wing nut, but he told me once that he considered himself a libertarian, hadn’t voted in 2016, and probably would have voted for Trump. That shocked me into not talking to him for weeks.
I would like to think that he’s no longer a supporter, along with the officers who still remember that they swore to protect the Constitution against all enemies.
The Pale Scot
Betty,
Take a look at this,
Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families across the county.
I don’t have time to read it now, articles that link to this article are getting 404ed
I got a pdf if that happens
Elizabelle
And: Trump never stops: a top story on Pro Publica. Illustrated with a photo of Princess Ivanka — in a mask — delivering a food box.
THE PANDEMIC ECONOMY
Now in Government Food Aid Boxes: A Letter From Donald Trump
Democrats say the letter violates the law against using government resources to campaign. It’s just the latest example of President Trump using his office to boost his reelection hopes.
FWIW, the letters may not be widespread. Spot checks have found some, but not in all boxes. And some food banks are taking them out of the box prior to delivering it to their customers, since they are not allowed to endorse candidates.
Further, the COVID avoidance procedures suggested in the Trump the letter do not comply with CDC guidelines. Trump urges food recipients to “consider wearing a mask”, where the CDC is more forceful on the point.
ProPublica has a copy of the letter. It sure reads like a campaign mailer (without the frantic demand for money). Starts off with lies in the first two sentences.
His signature is as large as any of the paragraphs of the letter.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud: I couldn’t remember who I stole it from.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: That is my conclusion as well.
patrick II
@Quinerly:
I was overseas for 3 years (1968-71) and the Stars and Stripes was our lifeblood to what was happening at home. To earn such rancor it must have been writing the truth at some point. It will be a loss bigger than Trump understands, or maybe he understands and wants to remove the troops most trusted attachment to reality.
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: Humayun Khan was a captain.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I am really surprised someone has not photoshopped Trump into the opening footage of David O. Russell’s American Hustle.
Where the Christian Bale character is carefully styling and spraying his big dyed hairdo.
It takes a lot of time and care. It shouts out the vanity involved.
How did that clip get missed? Wish I had the tech skills.
Kay
@piratedan:
It seems personal to me, in the sense that it isn’t designed to harm him politically but simpler than that, not a tactic. They want to get back at him. Damage him not so much as a candidate but as a person.
We look at it from political efficiency terms- will it move voters. Maybe they look at it differently. Maybe they don’t care if it moves voters. They just want to reveal what he is.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
I found a listing of the rules for each state on when processing and counting can begin. It is quite likely that adjustments have been made in many states (like Maryland) that overrides this listing, but at least it shows what the normal procedure is.
catclub
Too bad Henry did not think that about Thomas More ( Man for All Seasons), at least for T. More.
catclub
But WAY below getting re-elected.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
The Never Trumpers say they can’t understand how all these working class tough guys are stomaching the vanity and attention to appearance. They must know different working class tough guys than I do- they’re pretty vain and they spend a lot of time putting together those tough guy outfits. They are as expressive in their clothing choices and as brand-loyal as any emo teen. It often veers into “costume”. I think Harley Davidson makes more on the apparel than the motorcycles and unless I miss my guess, as someone who wears and appreciates a nice heeled boot, many of them are wearing cowboy boots or motorcycle boots because the higher heel gives one a longer leg :)
The gun is just part of the costume.
Just One More Canuck
@Amir Khalid: or one of Ivanka
Danielx
@raven:
I see what you did there. Field expedient.
MazeDancer
@Josie: Congrats on your Voting Plan!
Brachiator
Coming late to the thread to praise Betty Cracker’s latest take on Trump.
This is anticipatory misdirection. No one Trump cares about has criticized him or abandoned him. If he cannot get immediate praise for his bullshit, he will settle for sympathy, so he will play act at concern for others, but never offer contrition.
Just part of his low cunning.
And about those food box letters:
It’s free publicity and the Hatch Act is toothless. Of course Trump will continue to violate it. A core part of his re-election strategy is to make the ham-fisted point that anything good that the government has done is directly because of him. Expect to see this obnoxious bullshit intensify as we head to November.
If Trump suffers a convincing electoral defeat this November, he might not show us a total meltdown, but it will still be fun to see how he reacts. It won’t be pretty.
patrick II
@Elizabelle:
For something as important as a scheduled visit to the burial ground of American heroes fallen in war, barring a hurricane, a normal president with the appropriate respect for the fallen, would go on a rainy day. But Trump is not a normal president. He would have been uncomfortable, and most importantly it would have plastered that thin layer of hair to his head and made an image that lasted. He is smart enough to understand the importance of his vigorous image to his followers, it’s really all he has, but not smart enough to buy a broad-brimmed fedora for rainy days.
Sasha
On the subject of cornered rats, I oft refer back to this Doonesbury comic as a reminder of the fight we have on our hands.
Elizabelle
@patrick II: Even an umbrella would be good. Or the fedora. He is in his 70s. People would be fine with that.
Had Trump really wanted to go, he would have gone. It’s not like he was going to have to walk the 30 to 50 miles. In the rain. Two hours was too long a drive? He spends about that length of time every time he flies down to Mar a Loco. And back. (On the taxpayers’ dime.)
He did not want to go to the Belleau Wood cemetery. So his aides served up a scapegoat at the time, and Maggie Haberman wrote about the scapegoat.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
It’s axiomatic at this point that MAGAs cannot be moved but can only be outvoted. The scales are not going to fall from their eyes, ever, and waiting for them to finally realize they’ve been conned is as dumb and delusional as waiting for Trump to start acting like a “normal” president.
Yep. Trump knows that he has to work harder to wrangle the suckers.
Fortunately, I don’t personally know many Trump loyalists. But here and there I challenge them directly.
“Trump is corrupt, incompetent and a coward. He hates you and doesn’t care whether you die from the virus. He doesn’t deserve your vote.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: Here’s a link to a table that shows when each state counts mail-in or absentee votes. MA does it on election day starting at a time left to each district’s choice
Elizabelle
@Sasha: That’s a good cartoon. And it fits for Trump’s henchmen, too. William Barr. The Trump family. Giuliani. Anyone else who is kind of under Trump protection.
To the mattresses.
One weird point: Fox News might prefer that Trump loses, weird as that sounds. They can cover the criminal charges, the trials. They can aim their fire at Biden and Harris; complain incessantly that the Democrats are not doing enough about the virus and the economy.
H.E.Wolf
Postcards, and sorting a big batch of new volunteers for our State Democratic Party, so that the field organizers can get in touch with them. Lots of “phone bank – completed” in the volunteer records: good for them!
My hands are tired, but my soul is rested.*
* From the title of a book about the US Civil Rights movement: My Soul Is Rested – interviews with hundreds of participants. If you need something to bring you back from despair, this book is it.
opiejeanne
@MazeDancer:
Washington state is a “vote by mail” state and has been for years. They will mail out our ballots on October 16, and we will be watching our mailbox for their arrival. The minute they arrive we will drop what we are doing, fill them out, and drive them to the nearest drop box.
Kay
@Sasha:
I do feel like time becomes a factor for Trump campaign themes. They went all in on the “scary black looters” theme- they spent a solid month on it. If it doesn’t work as intended they can’t get that month back and it’ll be tough to launch a wholly new justification for keeping them in power in 60 days, less if you count early vote and I do because it may be as much as 40%.
They’re running out of time. They can’t lie about that. Tick tock.
Calouste
@Elizabelle: When it rains at a wreath laying ceremony, there’s someone standing next to the dignitary holding an umbrella for them (and getting wet themselves). Because it’s kind of hard to hold an umbrella and lay a wreath at the same time. They could have asked Queen Elizabeth for tips, she’s only done it for 68 years.
Elizabelle
@Calouste: In her marvelous hats with the wide brim, which stand in for a crown, and also keep the royal coiffure dry.
I love QE2. You can be sure she and her staff read The Atlantic story, and believe it.
StringOnAStick
@Kay: You’re exactly right on the Harley Davidson overpriced clothing. My late BIL was increasingly into it and my husband would buy him HD t-shirts from the places we vacationed. I remember paying $45 for a lower end t-shirt over 10 years ago; outrageous for a black shirt and single colour imprint.
The more he got into, the more solid black his wardrobe became. He wanted to be buried in his motorcycle outfit but the Jewish mortuary and cemetery explained that the rule is everyone is buried in a white shroud as a symbol that in death we are all the same but they could put his leather vest over it. The motorcycle buddies who came to the funeral came in their leathers because that is the tribal requirement. Yuck.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
I paid my last car payment in March – it was chunky, about $600 per month. So happy about that.
Biden is going to have to pencil whip “paid” on the student loans he controls, y’know. Whole damned market in automobiles, appliances, etc. requires it.
tokyokie
@germy:
Ted Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) and Al Gore are also Stripes alums, as I am as well.
SFBayAreaGal
@raven: I’m one of them.
Ella in New Mexico
Every single G-D time I SWEAR I cannot hate Trump anymore than I already do he proves that yes, my Hatred for Donald Trump Bank Account can see exponential growth.
I don’t think I’m ever gonna be free from this long 4 years of this “Never Before Dreamed-of Wretchedness He Hath Wrought on America” until I can let my dog take a giant stinking crap on his grave.
Ruckus
The scales are not going to fall from their eyes, ever, and waiting for them to finally realize they’ve been conned is as dumb and delusional as waiting for Trump to start acting like a “normal” president.
I believe that to his rabid followers, he is what they consider a “normal” president.
He’s racist as hell, as are they.
He sees things in a simpleton way, because he is. As are many of them.
He hugs the flag, acts like it’s worth dying for, although he’d never take actual risk. Again.
I believe the reality is that there are a lot more trumpian people in this world than anyone is comfortable thinking. These are people who believe their own press releases, the superiority they’ve assigned to themselves, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
They perceive that as their job, doing their damndest to kill us. Thin the herd to only their supporters. Their main problem is that they are saying and showing the quiet parts at the top of their lungs. Also most of them are/come from places of privilege, and never really had to do much to live, IOW their competency, whatever level they have is thin. They think they are a valuable and vital asset to the economy but most of them are not. Most of them can’t think outside a narrow box, have little to no real world skills. They pay for real world skills, but perform them? I believe that they think that their supporters will be able to follow their lead and take over the world, so they will be as rich as possible. Except their lead is faulty because it’s not actually leadership, it’s bluster and bullshit. shitforbrains is their leader because he’s all bluster and bullshit. Which can work in the dark, with susceptible people. In the light of day their support for only bluster and bullshit fades. shitforbrains is all bluster and bullshit and won by the narrowest of possibly illegal means and has shown exactly who and what he is since, as well as deteriorate rather a lot from that bullshit start.
Ruckus
@PaulWartenberg:
And there are a lot more of those people/votes in the lower ranks than 4 star generals who support him. I have no idea what it’s like in the enlisted military today, but if it’s anything like it was 50 yrs ago, those 4 star generals/admirals and their ideals are not the foremost thing in many minds on the posts and within the ships.
BlueGuitarist
@Elizabelle:
Yes, exactly!
And Betty: awesome as always
VFX Lurker
Hear, hear! My goal is to write as many Postcards to Voters as I can in the month of September and the first two weeks of October. Any postcards I write after that will be “Hail Mary” passes to pick off any procrastinating voters who have not yet cast their votes.
I’m too shy to phone bank or text bank, but I can write!
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: Yeah, that is frightening, about the number of trumpian people. Way too many. And they are sheep who fall for FB crap. No question that religion (or what they consider religion) is a gateway for a lot of them, although a lot of analysts do not want to go there.
(Apologies to sheep who are actually animals. They are doing the best they can.)
Tehanu
@Ella in New Mexico: I feel the same way, though my version is more, “I thought the previous outrage was the worst thing ever, and now this…” — from mocking a disabled man to babies in cages to ignoring the Russian bounties to … well, I hate to think what the next stop on the way down will be.
MazeDancer
@opiejeanne: Vigilance is excellent!
J R in WV
@raven:
That includes me.
Read his autobiography, in particular his contributions to the horrific fire on board the Forrestal – wherein he did everything wrong and ran away below deck leaving everyone else to fight the fire. Then the next day cadges a ride back to land for “some R&R”.
There are many reasons he never made flag rank even though both his dad and grandfather were highly decorated Admirals. Not qualified in any way, really, in his own words.
He was shot down because he didn’t follow the flight plan for his last bombing run, and flew right into a known SAM base, for another reason.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
In my hitch from 1970-73 I never saw a copy of Stars & Stripes. Ever.
ETA… But of course, I was just a swabbie, not an officer. Trying to do my hitch and get out alive and whole.
Chris Johnson
@Ruckus:
Yeah, but here’s the thing: they assume that he must love them, because they are fellow haters of the same things. They despise the same stuff. He MUST love them, they are on the same side!
He despises them too. He really does. He will never love them. They can DIE for him and he will only think they are saps. He’s that broken.
They need him to be evil. NOT ‘that broken’. That is beyond the pale. They’re thinking he’s basically human, but evil and sharing their hatreds, and of course he IS good at conveying how much he despises the libs. But he despises his own supporters too, and doesn’t love them at all, not one tiny little bit.
That is the part they can never face or consider. That’s the dealbreaker. To them he would be perfect if only he loved them back. And he’ll happily lie about it, but it is a lie. They need it to be true, and it is not.
ballerat
@Betty Cracker: Spot on, and exactly.
Whoever wrote that has a tin ear for Trump’s language tics and at the same time tries too hard.
Why, in casket, no less!
Like, how the fuck else if not in a casket? Stuffed into an overhead bin? Or zippered into a vietnam-era OD body bag and crammed in the plane’s wheel well?
Just trying too hard.
ballerat
@laura: Just about everything Trump does seems russky.
Riddle me this: If Trump was in fact a russky agent what would he do that is different from what he has done?
If he walks like a russky duck and quacks like a russky duck, he is for all practical purposes and in terms of actual effect a russky duck.