Very nasty and unfair of the NYT to quote us verbatim https://t.co/RXCeg27K1m
— Brian Tashman (@briantashman) February 4, 2022
I was pretty dark when I wrote this in January of 2021, I think in part because there was always the sense that the GOP would wind up where they've wound up on this. There's no other way they could be, because they've got nothing else to offer. https://t.co/lpu5RYDz5X
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) February 4, 2022
The sacred landslide!…
… The first time Trump ran, it was as the person who could and would avenge various offenses against his followers’ honor in ways that his opponents were too weak to do and too compromised even to attempt. When he ran again, during the second zenith of a plague that he’d alternately ignored and denied, he didn’t even bother making that pitch. He did not claim to have fixed the problems he’d done so much to create, or even to have an idea about how to fix them; he ran against those problems as he understood them, which was as if they were petty and jealous rivals unfairly trying to make him look bad, but mostly he ran as The President, and on the demand that what was his must be allowed to remain his, as it was his by right. Trump ran as himself and only as himself, which is to say he ran as the bulletproof avatar of a brutal, arbitrary, and manifestly untenable status quo that had finally collapsed into a grim loop of defiant public protest and unaccountable state violence. He got many more votes the second time around than he did the first, but this time he lost.
One of the most important things to know about Trump is that he never has a plan. He barely has an itinerary. He simply moves from one flubby gilded hustle to the next, dedicating each moment to whatever feels good or whatever he thinks looks strongest. What mess he leaves behind is by definition not his problem, and he’s always already somewhere else by the time the stain sets. Trump is used to having other people do what he says, because he is richer and more powerful than them; that people have almost always done just that has made him soft and weak and strange, but also it has seldom led to him being seriously inconvenienced. He’ll call that a win.
So of course Trump didn’t have a plan for losing the election. He expected that the people working under him—that is, the entire United States government—would find a way to stop the election that he’d lost from becoming official when he gave that order, but he had no sense of how that might work beyond them just somehow doing it. He promised evidence that would show he was right and then told other people to find it. It never came, but at some point he just started acting as if it had been delivered and denied, and began talking about how unfair that was.
It was his opinion that he’d won ten or so million more votes than he’d actually received, a victory that Trump, Trumpianly, called “a sacred landslide.” On Wednesday, after he told them to do it, hundreds of people who live to share Trump’s opinions overran the U.S. Capitol building on his behalf, because they believed they were doing their patriotic duty or at least serving their own unenlightened self-interest; it is a pillar of Trumpism not to recognize a distinction between the two. They were mostly following through on the promise that has always been at the heart of Trump’s appeal, which is that they would get to be a part of his greatest deal ever, and cut in ahead of every less-connected other person when it came time to share the winnings, and enjoy the premium luxury finishes and absolute personal impunity synonymous with the word “Trump.” …
As the clock ran out on his presidency, Trump began making demands that were more and more difficult and dangerous and degrading to fulfill, and when he stopped getting those things he simply demanded them again, this time more bitterly and with redoubled grandiosity. By Wednesday, the conflations were total—for him to lose the presidency was inherently unconstitutional, it was illegal, it went against God; the only truly patriotic thing to do was to keep the country under his singularly damp command, indefinitely; to save the nation, everything that was not Trump would need to be permanently replaced with him. “We’re going to walk down,” Trump told his people on Wednesday, “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.” Trump didn’t actually walk with his people down to the Capitol, because he doesn’t walk as a matter of course and because he doesn’t do his own errands. His loyalists rushed the Capitol and briefly, giddily, took it over and defaced it on his behalf; the president was driven home to watch it on television and complain on Twitter about all the people who had let him down…
On Trump’s behalf, at Trump’s behest, his people had done their part. But because anyone who spends enough time thinking about Trump comes to sound and think and fail like him, there wasn’t even really any demand to make beyond More Trump. There was no one around to threaten, even. These people had taken Trump and his abettors seriously, and answered the language that they used—the endless calls to fight, to avenge the great and dishonorable betrayals of an enemy that deserved no mercy—with commensurate action. They’d expected to confront their enemies, and find catharsis, and victory. But the chamber was empty, and there was nothing to do but shout and pose…
This was January 6th.
This is not “legitimate political discourse.” pic.twitter.com/lKgbVyVcJr— Rep. Liz Cheney (@RepLizCheney) February 4, 2022
“Legitimate political discourse.”
This party cannot be saved. https://t.co/2tXSFo5sBe
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) February 4, 2022
Dorothy A. Winsor – Tales of Rinland!
Nicole
Defector is such a good site and I say this as someone who has no interest in sports.
Xavier
So, Ms. McDaniel, was Jan. 6 “legitimate political discourse” or wasn’t it? If not, what was it?
The Dangerman
How will they explain all the previous guilty pleas and future convictions regarding this “legitimate political discourse”? One or the other, can’t be both…
germy
MagdaInBlack
I’m very confused. There she is saying it……but…
Ya, I’m very confused.
SiubhanDuinne
Ronna **ROMNEY** McDaniel makes me sick to my stomach. I honestly don’t know how she sleeps at night. It’s a good thing she and I are very unlikely ever to be in the same room at the same time, because I might say or do something that would
get me in troubleput me in jailsend me straight to hell.Cermet
These fools are beyond stupid if they thought for even a nanosecond that Rump would share any ‘spoils’ with those losers of Jan 6th. Like all the deplorables he has laughed at, once they served their use, he’d forget them
AS for Ronna, I know what Rump would call her once she serves no purpose – ugly and fat.
Rusty
germy
Have you all seen this?
Kirk Spencer
@The Dangerman:
Oh, that one’s easy.
Traitors and martyrsMartyrs and traitors, faced with and (respectively) standing firm against or yielding to the false attacks of the communist liberal gestapo arm of the demoncrats.(edit to correct the respective clause relationships.)
Chetan Murthy
I sure wonder what 2022 Joe Walsh would say about 2016-and-prior Joe Walsh. It might be fascinating to hear it. Then again, like Bill Kristol, he might have merely stood his ground on the spot he was in 2016. Which would be …. well, like Bill Kristol [trust him only as far as I can throw him, and sure won’t call him a friend].
germy
Once she’s finished with Trump, I think she’ll be going against Biden in 2024.
Scout211
McDaniel keeps trying. People just don’t understand what she meant. She meant that the committee should only investigate anyone who was violent. Leave those non-violent people aloooone! You know, like the planners and the donors and the lawyers and anyone who supported and funded the insurrection. And especially anyone with the last name Tr*mp.
(Bold added below).
Baud
Bros gotta stick together.
Mike in NC
The book came out a few years ago, but I’m reading “The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy”. The whole rotten party needs to die. Why wasn’t Ronna McDaniel shitcanned after losing the House, Senate, and Presidency on her watch? Just more GQP incompetence.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: I pegged him as an asshole a *long* time ago.
eclare
@germy: That would not surprise me.
Mike R
@Baud: Jon Stewart seems to have lost the track that the country is proceeding down. There is no way to negotiate with dishonesty and deceit. These people, he seems to think are reasonable, only apologize and change their story, are not motivated by good faith, but by the fear their money, power and position may be jeopardized.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: For a long time now, Jon Stewart’s primary claim to fame for many, has been his nurturing of so many excellent comedians who do a great job of skewering The Conservative Movement and all who ride in them. Sam Bee, Noah, Wilmore, Williams, Minhaj, and a ton of others, including of course Colbert.
He himself …. ugh, “Rally to Restore Sanity” … ugh.
MagdaInBlack
@germy: I’ve been thinking that for a long time.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
He helped get us through the Bush years. But then he just went off in another direction from us.
Baud
@Mike R:
Yeah, if Rogan is open to admitting he’s wrong, why hasn’t he yet?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: That’s clever
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: He worked to make sure that the 9/11 First Responders got their money.
You are right, though. He is not the voice that needs to be heard in the current moment.
debbie
@germy:
Heh. Repurposed from shortly after January 6th when we were asked to click on the boxes with “tourists.”
No they cannot be saved.
debbie
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, well they thought they could ride that dragon. Until they couldn’t.
debbie
@Scout211:
I think that’s what passes for a Republican pivot in 2022. ??♀️
debbie
@Baud:
Disappointing. Is Stewart disregarding Rogan’s usage of the N word many, many times?
Shalimar
@Chetan Murthy: Stewart has had a lot of great writers putting words in his mouth. I agree with you, the “Rally to Restore Sanity” was where he first exposed what an empty suit he is personally.
Ohio Mom
@MagdaInBlack: Me too. I’ve long considered it was a very good possibility the first woman president would be a Republican, given the quirks of American culture and politics.
If this happens, I will feel cheated that I can’t be happy I lived to see the glass ceiling shattered. I will content myself with memories of how wonderful it was to see Obama sworn in.
Mike in NC
“Sacred Landslide”, really? Who the fuck even speaks like that?
Ksmiami
There’s no living with this current GOP. The party needs to be crushed
Baud
@debbie:
This story looks to be a day or two old, so I’m not sure if the n-word issue had become news yet.
Shalimar
@germy: Republicans always fall in line, but 2024 is still rather quick to go from almost no support among the party elite to being their nominee. Maybe 2028 for Cheney, if the Trump faction gets their asses kicked in 2024.
MagdaInBlack
@Ohio Mom: She’s positioning as the “sane” face of the Republican party. I don’t doubt her sincerity, however much I dislike her. She ( and her backers) don’t much care for whats happened ( while ignoring their part in creating it, of course)
NotMax
Next on the agenda:
“Lee Harvey Oswald. Legitimate patriot.”
//
debbie
@Baud:
I just checked Twitter. If he hasn’t posted some sort of response by now, he probably won’t. Alas.
NotMax
@debbie
Instagram rather than Twitter.
Past shows of the bozo are disappearing, also too.
Kay
Having listened to Joe Rogan, his “secret” is it’s an easy interview. He doesn’t prepare, knows very little about the subject he haa invited the guest to expound upon, and asks no difficult questions at all: “Interesting! Is that true? Wow”
They like it because he has a huge audience and it’s a chance to expand their own reach that isn’t challenging or difficult at all for them. The idea that anyone would be “afraid” to go on that show because they will be somehow “challenged” is laughable.
debbie
@NotMax:
Busy boy with the apologies, isn’t he?
Brachiator
The lead article really nails it.
It is interesting, and sad, to see how much the presidency degenerated under Trump. George Washington was careful with the office, and understood that his choices would define the norms and expectations of the office of the president. And even though everyone knew that he was going to be the first president, he did not behave as though the presidency was his personal property.
Oddly, conservatives who claim to hold regular seances at which they divine the Founders’ will seemed happy to watch Trump run the country “like a business,” as though the US was a branch of Trump, Inc, and everyone who lived here were his employees.
The GOP had numerous opportunities to shake Trump loose. Instead they have bound themselves to him even more tightly. I don’t know if they even see that they have gone over the edge. They prattle and preen and try to declare themselves to be the only patriotic and legitimate political party of the US. Instead, they have become a danger to democracy.
Trump’s only strength is that he is 100 percent dedicated to the Grift. He can’t back down from a lie or bullshit. And he has a weird ability to attract losers and sucker who are willing to take the fall while he backs away and continues working the con.
Boris Johnson in the UK and maybe DeSantis of Florida are cut from the same cloth. It will be interesting to see whether BoJo can continue to play the British people for fools.
NotMax
@debbie
Tap dancing faster than Ann Miller.
Anyway
@Shalimar:
Stewart was so rude to many of Obama’s cabinet while sucking up to McCain and other Republicans — to establish his both-sides high-Broder bona fides. He lost the plot a long time ago.
debbie
@Brachiator:
Bolsonaro also. I’m sure there are others. Together, they’ve really fucked up the world.
eclare
@Anyway: So true. I remember when Kathleen Sebilious was on.
lowtechcyclist
Speaking of things that haven’t aged well, remember Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism?
Yeah, the true fascists are on the left. Sure, Jonah.
Kalakal
The GQP and their owners have spent many years pandering to the very worst of human instincts, funding astro turf movements, which thanks to MSM both siderism gained traction far than their numbers could ever justify. The coordination behind the bogus anti CRT uproar is an example. For many years this was, to them at least, a risk free winning strategy, they got the power to tilt the judiciary, pass tax cuts for their owners etc without having to really deliver on the demands of the far right loonies. In the last few years it’s become impossible to maintain that facade, the loonies, racists etc now are in control. They still have the msm both sideing it but they know in their gelatinous bones that now it’s MAGA all the way down if they wish to cling to their sinecures. Toe the party line or become the enemy, violence and threats have become the norm. They have become the party of blackmail* and have no way out. and now violent assault if their demands are not met is legitimate discourse. They are terrorists.
*In the original useage by the Anglo-Scots border reivers which amounted to “give us what we want or else”, as these were the people who gave us the word bereavement ( if you were visited by the reivers you were ‘bereaved’) the “or else” was pretty clear.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kalakal: Reivers, even worse than the Marcher lords.
Miss Bianca
@germy: Holy shit. That’s a good one.
I’m glad to see that Cheney and Kinzinger aren’t backing down, but doubling down. Normally I *don’t* like to see Republicans doing that, but…these are strange days indeed.
geg6
@Baud:
Gee, I wonder what happened after Bush?
Miss Bianca
@Kalakal: I’m a descendent of Border Reivers, I’ve come to discover. The name I was given, the family name my dad was so proud of? Apparently that family has a long and inglorious history as mobsters of the lowlands. Oh, joy!
TonyG
@Baud: I never watched his show, so I can’t say whether Jon Stewart is worse than he’s ever been. But he’s certainly worse than useless now.
RSA
@debbie: This afternoon in the Washington Post:
Spanky
Im’a just leave this here.
StringOnAStick
I just saw some tweets about Rogan prior to his Spotify perch, laughing uproariously with a guest about forcing young female comedians to give oral sex in exchange for stage time at a comedy club. It was also noted that Rogan’s stand up act from back them makes the current controversy seen a bit tame
Kalakal
@Miss Bianca: They were, to put it mildly, a tough bunch. The borders were also known as ‘the debateable lands’ because as long as Scotland and England were seperate states they weren’t really controlled by either but both were determined the other couldn’t have them. This suited the locals who switched nationality as it suited them. They were a lot more than just mobsters but really were hard as hell, each family operated as much as possible as if they were medieval baronies demanding tribute from their vassels long after the middles ages were gone. The family I’d be concerned about my ancesters belonging to wouldn’t be the Armstrongs, Kerrs etc but the Nixons, and yes he was. And that embarrasment wouldn’t be because of events in the 1600s
Kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: Well given one prominent family was the Nixons…
Patricia Kayden
I wish this was true.
phdesmond
@Kalakal:
i found this at etymonline.com:
bereave (v.)
Middle English bireven, from Old English bereafian “to deprive of, take away by violence, seize, rob,” from be- + reafian “rob, plunder,” from Proto-Germanic *raubōjanan, from PIE *runp- “to break” (see corrupt (adj.)). A common Germanic formation (compare Old Frisian biravia “despoil, rob, deprive (someone of something),” Old Saxon biroban, Dutch berooven, Old High German biroubon, German berauben, Gothic biraubon).
sounds generally distributed, rather than defined by and limited to the territory of the Reivers.
oldgold
Invictus Maneo.
Kalakal
@phdesmond: very interesting. I think maybe taht was where the term Reiver came from, I’m pretty sure it was applied to other groups and areas than the Anglo-scots borders, they just lasted a lot longer. Blackmail as a protection racket was I believe original to the border Reivers
smedley the uncertain
@Miss Bianca: ‘och, lassie, it a’ depends on which side of the border your on. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Border-Reivers/ Think of Willie…
My clan is away in the highlands.
Craig
@Mike R: Jon Stewart is a dipshit. Full Stop
AxelFoley
@Ohio Mom:
I heard years ago that the first black President would be a Republican, but as you mentioned, we saw Barack Obama sworn in.
The first female President will NOT be a Republican.
AxelFoley
@Ksmiami:
And driven before us so we can hear the lamentations of their women.
LongHairedWeirdo
You misspelled “because he’s too fucking scared to admit he wears gihugic shoe lifts, that leave him unable to walk down a ramp without prissy, teeny tiny steps, all because he’s pathetically insecure enough to put a diseased, mutated, rodent on his head to keep skullfucking him in some insidious plot where Trump get stupid, no one notices, and the rodent makes him look like he carefully, and deliberately, created a baldie hair style even uglier than the worst comb-over you’ve ever seen.”
You’re welcome.
Tony Jay
@AxelFoley:
And driven before us so we can hear the lamentations of their women.
Given the stark division between observable reality and their devolution into a Fluffer’s Union for DJ Trumptastic Productions, it’s arguable that McDaniels’ frantic pleas for “More Gaslighting!” are the lamentations of their women.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky: Hook up a generator to Sam Clemens’ grave, he should be spinning hard enough.
lowtechcyclist
Just a slight improvement. :-)
Freemark
@MagdaInBlack: I think D&D can give us a little clarification here. Trump and his minions are Chaotic Evil where as Liz Cheney is Lawful Evil. Those two groups often hate each other even though they have a lot in common.
Patricia Kayden
Paging Garland!
Geminid
@Freemark: A model I use is populist “Tea party Republicans” versus establishment “Chamber of Commerce Republicans.” The “tea psrty” label is stale even though that faction is still strong, so “radical populist” might be better.
Those two factions have been struggling for control of the Virginia Republican party since 2008 at least. Last year Glenn Youngkin managesd to unite the factions, and he could not have won the general election otherwise. He had a lot of money to spread around among Republicans and that helped make this possible. The party’s obscure “Disassembled Convention” nomination process was key to Youngkin’s success.
Other state Republican parties have to fight this internal war out in primaries. Two good ones to watch are North Carolina, where ex-Governor Pat McCrory faces Congressman Ted Budd in the race for Senate nominee, and in Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp has to beat ex-Senator David Perdue for the nomination to face Stacey Abrams.
Cheney is a fairly pure example of establishment Chamber of Commerce Republican, or as you aptly put it, “Lawful Evil.” Her Wyoming primary is not until August.
matryoshka
The Defender article defines what really drives the Trump train, even now:
“Here is the fact of it: the country’s leaders cannot quite bring themselves to say that the lives of people living in this country matter at all, let alone act as if they do. The state fails daily; it has somehow forgotten how to do anything but hurt and cannot even agree that it would be good to try to help. It does not tell the truth as a matter of course, which gives license to everyone adrift in this to believe whatever story they find most compelling. In the ways that matter most, in the places where it is needed most, the state barely exists. Where there is supposed to be strength is only power and brute force; what is supposed to be held in common has been openly looted; the triumphal national image is gnawed to bits by a frantically denied shame and raw fear.
The distance and defeat in this is awful to behold, and has created a nation that is both desperately strident and shockingly servile. In the absence of any capacity or will to demand more from it, politics just becomes what people argue about instead of what’s actually happening to them. It’s just a TV show, and people watch it as such.”
Trump merely reflects the great emptiness and passivity we have come to expect from politics. Biden is actually governing and repairing what he can, but in the current media environment, that just makes him look like a hapless sitcom character.
artem1s
@Freemark:
it makes me uncomfortable that there are so many who believe there is some one procedural offense that will finally return the GOP to sanity and make them turn away from chaos. the GOP is chaos. They are constantly using the frame of lawful vs. evil to veil their actions. American vs. Illegal expressed this pretty well. Cheney gets the label lawful as a birthright, not because she is actually believes in following the law. There is no administration in this country’s history that has wrought more racism, misogyny, chaos and unlawfulness on the White House and the DOJ than the Bush CABAL. They wiped away swaths of legal precedence and Constitutional adherence simply because it was inconvenient for their pursuit of power and money. The central tenet of the GOP NeoCons is chaos. They blithely trash the economy and start world conflicts and then claim the moral high ground based on their birthright of being Real Americans. There is no lawful evil when it comes to the GOP. It just happens that Cheney is focusing the chaos on a inner faction right now. She will gleefully return to dismantling our democracy as soon as that faction has been forced back into a submissive position. She’s no more lawful than TFG is.
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
It may be true, but if TFG gets nominated, who’s going to step in to say he’s not allowed to run?
NotoriousJRT
@matryoshka: The excerpt you cite stood out to me, as well.
WaterGirl
@germy: She is a mostly useful ally at the moment, but she is not on our side.
gene108
@Baud:
It’s interesting to me that the horror of Bush, Jr. & Co. brought out the best in so many entertainers, fledgling bloggers, etc.
But that wasn’t who they truly were. They just had a normal reaction the weird shit happening during Bush, Jr’s presidency.