This is insane even for a Trumpian RNC. It means that everyone in the place — every researcher, lawyer, fundraiser, receptionist — is an avowed election denier. How does the Committee ever recover from this?
Maybe the answer is it shouldn’t.https://t.co/qiQeguUh6a
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) March 27, 2024
The warlord has been driven into exile, at the moment, but he — and more importantly his backers — still hope to regain control of his former empire. While they regroup for the next battle, the ‘impure’ are purged, and the hoped-for future satrapies are divided…
I owe someone a hat tip for this gift link. Josh Dawsey, at the Washington Post — “Was the 2020 election stolen? Job interviews at RNC take an unusual turn”:
… In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states — and who are reapplying for jobs — about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the applicants are based in key swing states.
“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.
The query about the 2020 election startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question, according to the people familiar with the interviews. A group of senior Trump advisers has been in the RNC building in recent days conducting the interviews…
President Biden’s reelection campaign on Wednesday sharply criticized the RNC’s practice of asking prospective employees whether the 2020 election was stolen.
“In Donald Trump’s America, elections are only fair when he wins and nothing is off the table to stay in power — including violence like on January 6th and being a dictator on day one,” Biden spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “And, now, Donald Trump is demanding fealty to his extreme, anti-democratic beliefs to be part of his Republican Party.”
Instead of having employees based in Washington, Trump advisers have told prospective employees that many will be expected to move to Palm Beach, Fla., to be near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, hollowing out the RNC headquarters. RNC officials have said it is about combining the operations of the campaign and the committee for maximum use ahead of the general election…
This is great news for the media’s horse-race touts! Tina Nguyen, at Puck — “Trump’s Transition Circus Heads to Palm Beach”:
The polling and prediction markets may show Joe Biden and Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat, but fortune favors the drape-measurers, and for Trump allies and hangers-on eying roles in a putative Trump II administration, the jockeying has begun. As I reported in October, there are currently two dueling conservative groups working to staff the next Trump regime: Project 2025, spearheaded by the storied Heritage Foundation, with the participation of every right-wing organization under the sun (the Tea Party Patriots, Stephen Miller’s legal firm, Moms for Liberty, etcetera); and the America First Policy Institute’s Transition Project, featuring a who’s who of Trump has-beens (Kellyanne Conway, Hogan Gidley, Larry Kudlow, Pam Bondi, etcetera etcetera). Both organizations, each obviously headquartered in Washington, D.C., are focused on vetting the next generation of Trump-aligned foot soldiers to parachute into federal agencies on Day One.
But the real action of staffing a Trump White House will be occurring closer to Trump himself. Presidential candidates typically establish transition teams in Washington, where they are separate from the campaign, and where staffers can meet and evaluate the thousands of potential employees required to run the federal government. Trump, however, plans to establish his transition directly from the comfort of Mar-a-Lago, according to three people in the know. Also unlike previous transition teams, I’m told, staffers on the committee will have direct access to Trump, too. As a result, whomever ultimately chairs the group is more likely to be a gatekeeper than a true decision-maker—though gatekeeping is a tall order given the fates of his four White House chiefs of staff. “They’ve learned nothing,” sighed a former Trump administration official, predicting more 2016-style mayhem.
Trump allies remember well the chaos of that first transition, led first by Chris Christie, then tossed to Mike Pence, and then hastily taken up by Jared Kushner when Trump actually won, surprising even members of his campaign. Infighting and division were rampant, and by the second day of his presidency, Trump had filled only 500 of the thousands of open positions. The result was a first-year revolving door of firings and defenestrations (Flynn, Comey, Dubke, Spicer, Priebus, Bannon, Scaramucci, Gorka, and a dozen others) and ineffective policy-making, too. The latter is the raison d’être of the dueling turnkey staffing outfits, both of which believe a fully vetted and prefabricated MAGA government—staffers, policy playbooks, and all—can truly effectuate the Trump vision…
Granted, there’s some truth to the notion that the third Trump campaign is a far more buttoned-up, practically leak-free enterprise compared to its previous incarnations. But it’s much easier to impose discipline on a campaign of several hundred people than it is to staff the entire federal bureaucracy. Hence the growing apprehension in some quarters that housing the transition team operations at Mar-a-Lago and having Trump micromanage it—or worse, hand it to some faction they personally dislike—could be a recipe for chaos. “You have to hire 6,000 people. That is an immense, immense undertaking,” a Trumpworld consultant told me. “You have to vet probably 15,000 people and find 6,000 people capable of running our government. And you’ve got to do it in five months.”
Previous transition efforts for George Bush, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney were staffed and run by people who either had extensive Washington connections or experience running major operations in the private sector. (Boston Consulting Group, in fact, put together a 271-page guide for finding the right people to staff a transition.) But one person’s extensive experience is another person’s establishment swampiness, especially when the “ideal candidate” knows better than to tell Trump that a desired action would be improper, illegal, or unconstitutional. “He doesn’t want somebody who’s gonna do a completely—I hate to say it—professional job of putting together a transition,” a Republican insider put it. “He wants somebody to be closely in communication with him to basically do what he wants, day to day, all the time. And personnel-wise, he wants people whose only mantra is: Whatever the president wants, we’re gonna do.”…
The key reason to keep the transition at Mar-a-Lago, however, has little to do with what exactly a potential appointee could bring to the administration, and more to do with weeding out people who are likely to directly contradict Trump—whether out of disobedience, self-righteousness, or self-preservation. “Trump’s overall thing that he has learned from his last go-round as president is that he’s like, ‘I don’t want people who are going to tell me no, and I don’t want people who are gonna say, ‘This is not feasible, Mr. President,’” the insider told me. “Like, ‘When I want to have a military parade in Washington, D.C., I don’t want Jim Mattis saying, “We can’t have tanks going down Constitution Avenue because it’s gonna tear up the streets and it’s just gonna be too expensive.” I don’t want that. I want yes.’”
Baud
“Dance for me.”
mrmoshpotato
Oh – it shouldn’t.
mrmoshpotato
No cult! No cult! You’re the cult! You’re the cult!
Betty Cracker
Oh great, more assholes on their way to Florida. I guess Trump will expect them to migrate to Jersey when he does.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: My condolences, BC.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe there’ll be a hurricane.
lollipopguild
Trump has no need to LEARN anything, he is never wrong and when you are never wrong there is nothing to learn.
mrmoshpotato
@lollipopguild: There’s a term for that – it’s “narcissistic pile of goose shit.”
BC in Illinois
@Baud:
Maybe a hurricane will hit Mar-A-Lago and do millions of dollars worth of improvements.
Percysowner
Well this is a fine pickle President Joe Biden could face legal hurdle to get on the 2024 Ohio ballot this November Gift link
Baud
@Percysowner:
Is August 7 a new date or are the conventions later this year?
ETA: I seem to recall conventions in August in the past.
Percysowner
@Baud: The article didn’t say, but considering the Democrats are asking why the Heck didn’t Ohio send a letter earlier, I’m guessing they changed the date. The Democrats usually aren’t THAT sloppy. I’ll try and track down more info.
Timill
@Baud: The dates are normal: the RNC in 2020 was Mon, Aug 24, 2020 – Thu, Aug 27, 2020.
There was no problem getting Trump on the ballot then
ETA: The deadline in 2020 was Sept 4th (60 days before election)
https://www.ohiosos.gov/globalassets/publications/election/2020electioncalendar_12x18.pdf
Princess
Toddler-in-Chief.
it will always boggle my mind that there are millions of people who look at him and see him as the embodiment of masculinity and leadership and who say, yup, that’s what I want. I know there are millions who are just in it for the tax cuts and abortion laws and I get that. But people who actually admire the man? I can’t parse it. Too depressing.
Baud
@Timill:
Thanks. That’s what I thought.
Baud
@Percysowner:
Joe Biden is an easy name to write in.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: Or an earhquake, epicenter deepunder Mar-a-Lago?
Princess
@Percysowner: They don’t need to move the date of the convention. All they need to do is do the formal nominating business before the deadline. Like someone who gets civilly married and a few weeks later has the big reception and a legally meaningless ceremony.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Maybe gators will get a couple of them.
Baud
@Princess:
Yeah, they’ll fix it. But still smells fishy.
Percysowner
@Princess: That’s good. Certainly it looks like Ohio Republicans tried to get sneaky. At least they didn’t send the letter on August 5.
Scout211
Re: Ohio ballot. Link
Maybe the DNC thought the change was permanent. They still should have known, though. The state party should have been on it.
Scout211
On the other hand, if this glitch in Ohio happened to Trump, the TNC (Trump National Committee) would just start filing lawsuits and Trump would whine about how unfair it is to him.
Baud
The 2016 conventions were in July. The 2012 Dem convention was in September! And the Republicans in late August.
Percysowner
@Scout211: Yes, they should have known and kept track. I expect we will find out more. Either the Republicans will change it quickly, or the Democrats will do a quick nomination and then throw the party afterward.
artem1s
LaRose is the shitheal who decided to force a special election in August last year – that Ohio law strictly prohibits – just to screw with the abortion referendum in November. I suspect he’s bending the interpretation of what constitutes a formal nominee quite severely in a way that not even Ken Blackwell would have tried. I’m sure in the in the past a place was held on the ballot without naming the candidate – and it was done for both parties.
kalakal
@Baud:
No too many other people would get hurt. A nice big sinkhole would do the trick.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I expect that someone at the DNC is now frantically verifying the deadlines for all 50 states, just to be sure.
Timill
@artem1s: I expect a visit from the Provisional wing of the DNC will help him see the error of his ways…
Scout211
More history of Ohio ballot certification. This is third time it has happened. They passed one-time changes twice before
Percysowner
@WaterGirl: They sure should be AND they should make it a requirement that it be checked every election from now on. Someone in the DNC is in big trouble.
@Scout211: That assumes that THIS Supreme Court will make it a priority as opposed to setting it for the Docket in the Fall.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
Girl power. Massive viewing for game that started at 10 PM Eastern on a Friday nite.
Chet Murthy
@Scout211:
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority: “the card says moops”.
Baud
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch:
👍🏀⛹️♀️
Baud
@Percysowner:
Based on the story above, I’m not sure the DNC didn’t understand the law. The SoS may just be playing games.
Scout211
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: And tomorrow’s game is on ABC. More records could be broken.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
mrmoshpotato
I’d feel sorry for them getting fucked over, but Dump is such an obvious conman – and has been for decades.
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard is planning to use the RNC as a slush fund for his growing legal bills. We approve that message!
Kay
I don’t think it’s true of Tina Nguyen at Puck- the article is funny – but I DO think major media are drape-measuring for Trump and that’s part of why we’ve seen such consistently negative coverage of Biden.
It annoys me but I also think they’re wrong – I think Biden will win – so I’m looking forward to their big stupid plans to gain “access” to the next Trump shit show imploding when Biden is re-elected :)
ColoradoGuy
The Republican Party is dead, although the pundits and TV networks may not acknowledge it. No platform, no National Committee, nothing. The famed Grand Old Party, the winner of the Civil War, gave up without a fight, afraid of Mean Tweets.
It’s the Trump/Putin Party now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
This seems to be real. I found it on Blue Skies.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
27 years in prison works for me.
Scout211
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I was about to post that. I saw it on CNBC. It was a post on his Truth Social that he or his social media minions posted.
bbleh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: @Scout211: pure bluster. can only see him actually doing something like that if it’s much later in the game and he’s clearly losing. which could happen! (knock on wood)
Timill
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Your offer is acceptable”.
A late friend of mine, who did four years for drugs offences including time in Dartmoor, reckoned that the first week was the worst. After that, you know what to expect and can handle it.
I’d be happy for him to have a few days inside to get confused.
Dan B
@Baud: The eastern tropical Atlantic is three months ahead of normal warming and the prediction is an extremely active season – 24 hurricanes. One name on the list is Debby who’s predicted to
hitdo Dallas and another named Raphael who might hit Cruz.Baud
Can we also put him in one of those Hannibal Lector outfits?
mrmoshpotato
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: It was a great game. Looking forward to tomorrow.
Scout211
It would be an honor!
bbleh
@Baud: handcuffs and a ball gag would suffice. (unless he’s into that, but I doubt it.)
raven
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: And they are actually playing in a basketball arena instead of these stupid fucking modified football arenas.
kindness
Trump & the right wing groups are getting the cart before the horse. Joe Biden is going to win by a bigger margin than he did last time. Trump will whine this election was stolen to. That’s what he does.
Martin
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: Thank Title IX for that. We fucked up not passing the ERA, but we made the US women’s athletics pipeline the strongest in the world by a pretty clear margin.
Tenar Arha
@ColoradoGuy:
Yep. Though they’ll still call it the GOP, but it’s only the right wingers who’ve pledged fealty to the cult and the Trumps now. Incoherent/zombie Trump will siphon every ounce of money and influence out of it, maybe even run it until he’s dead. He’ll probably be willing it to his heirs too, even if there’s just a mailing list and the name left.
Geminid
@Tenar Arha: I took Karl Rove’s recent denunciation of Trump for praising the J6 defendants as a good sign. Or at least, my cynical self asked, “Would Rove be saying that if he thought Trump was gonna win?”
hueyplong
@Baud: Yes, I’ll take my chances against a 104-year old Trump.
Bill Arnold
Threadreader rollup for a long twitter thread. (If you don’t see images try turning off some privacy plugins.) A well-done Rogues’ Gallery.
Biden-Harris HQ@BidenHQ
Tonight, Donald Trump is holding a billionaire fundraiser to pay his mounting legal bills.
Here are some of the scammers, racists, and extremists funding Trump’s failing campaign.
Jay
@kindness:
I don’t think the key goal of the current form of the ReThug party, for many members is to get TIFG elected. Instead, I think their key goal is to burrow White Nationalist Fascism so deeply into the ReThug party that it can’t be dug out.
Odie Hugh Manatee
TFG is a variant of a hole in space, but orange instead of black. The Orange Hole strangely looks like a sphincter with orange clown makeup on it. The Orange Hole doesn’t have to draw things into it, instead fools and suck-ups along with their money willingly dive into it. A unique feature of the Orange Hole is that we are able to see what happens once something has jumped into the hole and it ain’t pretty. The Orange Hole has flexed, causing the Republican party to jump into it and now the Orange Hole has complete control.
Now it’s time for the Orange Hole to concentrate his power directly under his purview in Florida and rake in that delicious cash and accolades. I’m hoping for a great show this fall when the Orange Hole loses and the losers start to abandon him, fracturing the party.
Buy popcorn!
mrmoshpotato
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
And the gravitational pull sucks Kremlin asshole.
Geminid
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Last year in a Politico story about demoralized Republican Trump opponents, one was quoted as saying they they had to go down into the storm shelter, and then come out after the tornado passed to “rebuild the neighborhood.” But what if the neighborhood is full of zombies?
Brachiator
This is, I suppose, the first step. Next, Trump will do all he can to get people on board who will try to steal the election for him. And, when he loses, who will be willing to go down in flames for him.
This almost seems more cartoonish than a further attempt by Trump to soft pedal a goofball authoritarian state. And I keep asking myself if conservative Americans, supposedly a hard headed people, are really this stupid?
But here’s Trump building his echo chamber, his hall of mirrors reflecting only his cracked reality.
Are you a young Earth creationist? A flat Earther? Believe in Bigfoot? You’re hired.
And that the Republican leadership is going along with this so passively and eagerly is astounding. Putin must be asking himself where he could find such a fine bunch of toadies.
Trump is the most psychologically damaged individual to ever run for the presidency or maybe any public office of the United States. And he is surrounding himself with riff raff and villains.
I kinda hope he keeps it up.
MagdaInBlack
@Geminid: I agree. He’s trying to resurrect himself and somehow be relevant ( save his ass )
“The Professional Left” podcast had some choice thoughts about Rove’s sudden turn.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack:
Haven’t listened all the way through yet. But driftglass and bluegal definitely have the receipts.
NotMax
FYI.
2024 Atlantic hurricane names list.
Martin
@Jay: Yeah, Trump offered himself up to be the vehicle for that. Trump is using them to save his ass, and they’re using him to get the David Duke party that they missed out on in 1992.
The real problem the GOP has isn’t Trump, it’s their base. Trump got the fascists to the polls and now the party is stuck with them. No fucking idea how they unscramble that egg.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mrmoshpotato:
It seeks financial nourishment from the Putin Hole!
@Geminid:
I predict that there’s gonna be lots of zombies this fail, I mean fall.
Chris T.
@LiminalOwl:
That would be a “hypocenter”; an “epicenter” is always at the surface, the same way “epi”dermis is the surface of the skin and you need a “hypo”dermic needle to go in underneath it.
(In any case, I prefer the sinkhole-swallows-it-up version 😀)
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Does Dump have to shut his disgusting, orange, fascistic face for the rest of his sad, fascistic, pathetic, hated-by-his-asshole-father life?
NotMax
The RNC will find hosing for them in “only the best” trailer parks.
//
NotMax
#71: hosing = housing.
Jay
@Martin:
The MaGgAT’s, Nazi’s, ruZZians and QAnon have buried themselves so deeply in the rotting Corpse of the ReThug Party that the only option for the semi sane ReThugs, after their loss in November, to try to be relevant again, is to form their own 3rd Party.
I hear No Labels is available.
Jackie
@Martin: Anyone not MAGA is a RINO – and the “RINOs” have only themselves to blame for winking and looking the other way for the sake of tax breaks for the top 2%.
Que sera, sera…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jay:
Maybe they can start a new party named “Insert Label Here”…
mrmoshpotato
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Not just financial nourishment, but Dump wants to be Putin.
ColoradoGuy
If the GOP is dead, what can the successor be called? The LowTax Party? The Know-Nothings? Oligarchs4ever?
wjca
Mexico breaks diplomatic ties with Ecuador over embassy raid
For those who missed it, Ecuador seems to have decided it is so worked up over a corrupt ex-vice president that it has to break into an embassy. For comparison, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Embassy in Washington was allowed to pack up, and the embassy staff (and all their stuff) were all transported across the US to take ship for Japan. I guess we weren’t as upset as Ecuador is.
mrmoshpotato
@ColoradoGuy:
The SucksFascists’Assholes party?
wjca
“Whigs” is available.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
The Restapo?
Jay
@ColoradoGuy:
The ReThug Party won’t be dead after the Rovember Election, they just won’t be even close to being the other party, in a two party system They will be a minority party filled with whackaloons.
Cheney et al, won’t be able to take the Party back, and will have to from their own.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mrmoshpotato:
Let’s hope to hell that this fall he becomes an old guy who makes pooting noises as he shits his pants at his loss.
If he loses it’s going to be fun watching the RNC trying to extricate itself from the Orange Hole and wash the taint off as it’s being assaulted by millions of Orange Hole Zombies.
NotMax
@Jay
Have an inkling the Happy Shiny Fun Party will not come under consideration.
//
LiminalOwl
@Chris T.: Thanks for the correction! Makes perfect sense, but I’d never thought about it. Obviously.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: That’s too nice.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Brachiator: You’re right in thinking this bunch of useful idiots are recruiting couriers. It makes me think of everyone in the bunker in “Downfall” – the true believers clinging to the idea that Hitler would somehow save the day, Russian artillery notwithstanding.
We live in interesting times.
mrmoshpotato
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
That should’ve happened in 2016.
Oh, the RNC is never escaping from the monster (not Dump, but the Base) that they spent 40+ years creating.
Screaming about abortion being baby killing, tax cuts paying for themselves, Medicare and Social Security being “entitlements,” etc.
They have been a pile of shit for decades and really opened generations’ eyes with repealing Roe v Wade.
ETA – and I add Paul Ryan’s grave to my list of toilets.
wjca
@LiminalOwl:
Reports on quakes routinely include language like “The epicenter was 2 kilometers below [location].” Which is easily absorbed on a subconscious level.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@NotMax: You were right the first time.
Tony Jay
@ColoradoGuy:
The National Patriotic American Citizens Party?
Or just the National Constitutionalist Party, or Nat-C Party for short.