This, from Simon Rosenberg, surprised me. Not mincing any words. It’s kind of shocking to see it put like this, but I can’t say I disagree.
In other news it is now undeniable that there is a Russian fifth column operating in United States trying to destroy the country and the global democracy movement from within.
In the last week Kennedy made it clear he is seeking to become a leader of this fifth column. https://t.co/f6GZvfSfab
— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) April 8, 2024
What do you guys think?
Citizen Alan
My first thought was to wonder what Andrew Sullivan thinks about the use of the phrase “Fifth Column.” Since, you know, that’s what he called anti-war protesters and most Dems after 9/11.
JPL
The icing on the cake for maga’s was when Kennedy said Biden was a greater threat to democracy. trump team will use that clip in a campaign ad.
WaterGirl
@JPL: Trump is trying to make sure that the crazy third-party guy takes votes only from Biden.
WaterGirl
Not enough but good news.
bbleh
IIRC there is a distinction between “agents of influence” and “operatives.” The latter collaborate actively with and/or take direction from the principal, sometimes willingly sometimes not. The former advance the principal’s interest for their own reasons, and they are assisted actively in doing so by the principal, but their cooperation is generally tacit rather than active, eg in the spirit of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I — and others — have long considered Trump to be an agent of influence of Russia. They have assisted him politically, but before that they assisted him financially, and he was a friendly voice for Russia well before he started his first campaign. I think the Kennedy operation is mostly the same. Of course, this doesn’t exclude the possibility of there being actual operatives in either organization — Manafort comes to mind — and it could be that the financial hold Putin has on Trump has escalated to the point of coercion (I don’t believe the pee-tape stories) — but I think it’s most likely neither of the two personally are taking direction. I think they’re both too egotistical for one thing.
But that said, the effect is a matter of degree: whether they’re cooperating tacitly or actively, they are cooperating, and the effect is indeed to advance Russia’s objectives — some of which, I would point out, could be accomplished in many ways, even ones in which Trump &/or Kennedy lost or were completely destroyed politically, as long as enough chaos and long-term damage resulted.
BeautifulPlumage
Did you see the insane “PAB as moon eclipsing the sun” ad that was out this morning. I saw it on Joe.My.God todayHere
Tony Jay
It takes considerable effort to be arguably the creepiest phoney in a Presidential campaign where one of the other contenders is Donald ’Stench’ Trump, but Rat Fucking Kook III is giving it 110%.
May all of his wrinkles be home to necrotic mould.
kindness
@WaterGirl: Kennedy may peel some middling Republicans to vote from him. Any Democrats that like his message were never going to vote for Biden anyhow. They are Rose Twitter Democrats. I don’t think RFK Jr. is any kind of threat to Biden. And I don’t think that he’ll peel enough votes from Trump to matter either. He seems to like and maybe believe the smoke they are blowing up his ass. Go figure!!!
WaterGirl
@BeautifulPlumage: Trump is delusional. I think he’s starting to believe his own bullshit.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That’s what happens when you stare into the abyss for too long.
Scout211
Since this is an open thread:
Appeals court judge denies Trump’s bid to delay next week’s hush money trial
A Ghost to Most
It’s nice of folks to finally catch up.
WaterGirl
Sheehy can blow off Democrats and others who are raising this issue, but can he blow off vets? Seems like that would not go well for him.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Maybe. I’m not persuaded that it makes any difference.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I thought he was the abyss. It’s a conundrum.
WaterGirl
@Scout211:
I would like to see that one-line ruling. Might it be a single word?
DENIED.
WaterGirl
@MattF: You think the folks who are in his camp no longer care. They have chosen their side and it doesn’t matter how crazy he is?
bbleh
@WaterGirl: “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” how long before the distinction ceases to be significant?
Baud
@WaterGirl:
An emoji.
🖕
Mick McDick
I’ve been screaming this for 8 years–the GOP is bought and paid for with rubles. I feel like Cassandra.
hueyplong
Answering WaterGirl’s question as to what we think about RFKJr as the leader of a fifth column, I think that if he were the leader of a fifth column, nothing would be different from what we’re seeing.
The good news is that it’s clownishly transparent and incompetent. The whole point of a secret mole fifth column campaign is ruined if you tell everybody more than half a year ahead of the election and, on top of that, take positions parallel to Trump’s so that Biden voters are repulsed and Trump voters intrigued.
So I’d call him a Mo Howard Fifth Columnist for now.
bbleh
@Baud: or 🤣
Baud
@Mick McDick:
Baud
@bbleh:
Classier.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, has anyone seen Allison Rose recently? I know a lot of people are active on Xitter and Bluegram and Instatock and Tickface and all, so maybe she’s migrated to another platform. I don’t do social media. Anyhow, haven’t seen AR in a while, and hope she’s okay.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Their faith frees them from the binds of doubt. They have confidence.
Leto
@WaterGirl: ever since the Supreme Court said that you can lie about your military service, people really don’t give a shit. Do you have an R behind your name? All that matters.
https://www.freedomforum.org/is-lying-protected-first-amendment/
WaterGirl
@hueyplong: Appreciate your response!
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
No. She’s been absent.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: She thanked Adam in the Ukraine threads for a while.
Chris Johnson
Yup. Been calling it since before it was fashionable. Absolutely.
They only got this obvious since Ukraine, but same old same old.
WaterGirl
@MattF: That doesn’t sound like a cult at all! //
William Capra
I regularly interact on FB with a libertarian who is ALWAYS interested in voting for whatever “third party” candidate pops up. He gets thoroughly annoyed when anyone points out that this is a strategy to withhold his vote from whichever major party candidate he would prefer and handing his vote to the major candidate he likes the least. The fact that this is just the way it works, has no sway. So I enjoyed very much bookmarking a Kennedy spokesperson saying the quiet part out loud. “Vote for Kennedy so Trump can win.”
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Answering because a lot of people have been asking.
Alison Rose is okay. I believe that she still reads the Ukraine threads, and she may read other BJ threads, I’m not sure about that, but she decided to stop commenting.
Every couple of years we delete the ban list. They get a clean slate and they either behave or they get banned again, following the procedures laid out in the comment policy. (comment policy is in the footer on every page)
We did that a month or two ago. It’s amazing how few people are repeat offenders after they are unbanned. Maybe they have moved on, or maybe they decide to follow the rules. Either way, it mostly works.
I believe that Alison Rose was not happy with that decision and decided to stop commenting as a result.
She is missed, and will hopefully return at some point.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Please excuse me while I go bang my head against a wall.
WaterGirl
@William Capra: That’s a dilemma – what do you think he’ll do this time?
prostratedragon
I think I’m glad someone in the political class is finally saying it. Been evident for a while, though I guess I can understand some, uh, prudence in talking about it openly. When Hilary Clinton said “puppet” I was sure she was right and not exaggerating. I think there were avenues being laid out through ostensibly right-wing oilmen as far back as the 1970s or maybe before.
Jeffro
This has been true for 8 years now (for those of us with eyes to see)
so, not surprising here
glad someone is noting it to wider audiences!!!
KSinMA
@Jeffro: Co-sign.
hrprogressive
It’s not a new take if you’ve been paying attention. This has been happening for the better part of a decade, if not longer. It’s just now much more brazen.
Falling Diphthong
I think Kennedy draws more support from Trump. If you like conspiracy theories but are exasperated with Trump (or expect him to flee the country with the RNC coffers, etc) then he appeals.
This was a poll from Quinnipiac that landed right as the media noticed RFK was the anti-Semitic and racist sort of conspiracy theorist, gollies how could they have known: 90% of Democrats were like “ugh that asshole” while 30+% of Republicans were like “some of his conspiracy theories intrigue me, definitely open to this direction.”
Ruckus
@Baud:
I thought it was because he stuffs his head up his back door on a regular basis. Yes THAT back door……
frosty
@SiubhanDuinne: Alison Rose has been saying thanks to Adam on the Ukraine poste but not much else lately. Haven’t seen her there for at least a week. I miss her comments.
ETA WG covered it above.
Ohio Mom
@BeautifulPlumage: That ad looks like a MAD magazine parody. But no doubt it’s floating some people’s boat.
I have said this before, but I will never get over Republicans — the people who who were the biggest boosters of the Cold War — flipping to be pro-Russia. The ones who cried, Better Dead than Red now can’t be red enough.
Chris T.
@bbleh:
Even Steele, who assembled the various stories, didn’t believe all of them. And yet every time someone found more information about each story, it turned out to be true, or at least “ever more likely to be true”. So there’s probably some truth to this one too: it’s probably distorted in some way, but contains a kernel of truth somewhere.
SiubhanDuinne
Thanks to everyone who responded to my question about Alison Rose. I miss seeing her, but I’ll stop worrying about her now.
Hob
When Trump recently posted a rant about RFK Jr. being a crazy leftist, I saw some people taking that as a sign that Kennedy was really competing for Trump’s voters and would be less of a threat to Biden. I’m not sure if anyone here had a similar take, but… I just don’t see how that follows. Maybe someone can tell me if I’m way off base to see it like this:
1. People who find Trump acceptable are going to vote for Trump, period.
2. To people who are anti-Biden on the right, but think Trump himself is unacceptable for whatever reason (likely to go to jail, senile, not openly bigoted enough)… it doesn’t matter whether Trump says Kennedy is a commie; they don’t respect Trump’s opinion.
3. To people who are anti-Biden and anti-Trump on the left (or people with no coherent ideology except being anti-vax cranks), Trump saying Kennedy is a commie helps to legitimize Kennedy. They would be more suspicious of Kennedy if Trump showed him any respect.
So, if there is any connection between the shit Trump writes on Truth Social and any kind of half-rational political intent (which I realize is a big if, but you’d have to assume the same thing in order to conclude that Trump’s rants are a reaction to Kennedy being a threat to him)… a “Kennedy’s a commie!!!!!” rant is not aimed at dissuading far-right voters from defecting from Trump to Kennedy. It’s aimed at encouraging low-information voters on the left to think of Kennedy as a rebel who makes both parties mad, and definitely not a stalking-horse for Trump. And I don’t think it’s rocket science or 11-dimensional chess, it’s a pretty basic move that even Trump could understand. Whether it would really have any significant effect is a different question.
Another Scott
@Chris T.:
NYMag.com (from November 2023):
Of course, like with the “Collusion” thing that he screamed about for months/years, he’s playing semantics. Nobody is saying that he (, a guy who got nauseated at the sight of blood at MaL,) “into” golden showers. They’re saying he paid women to pee on a bed while he watched.
He doth protest too much. Or, at least, if it makes him uneasy then people should continue to make him deny it…
Cheers,
Scott.
dirge
Well, now that the mask is off, and we can all see Russia for the kleptocratic cult of personality it is, of course they recognize a natural ally. What’s a little confusing is that they opposed the Soviet era kleptocratic cult of personality. I guess they somehow missed that nobody in Russia took Communism any more seriously than Republicans take Capitalism or Christianity.
Roberto el oso
“He’s not into golden showers, as they say they called it”. Ha ha ha ha ha ha, like he’s never heard the term before.