The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[River]

Although it drifts even further off topic, I just can't resist noting a new report that Oxman plagiarized from Wikipedia. That is in fact something I caught that J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia contributor doing (although most of that long encyclopedia entry lifted instead from Humphrey Carpenter).

Just saw a thing on Twitter in which Ackman went on for multiple paragraphs claiming that his wife was basically just using Wikipedia as her dictionary for her dissertation.

I have written and defended a dissertation and all I can say is "WTF" and "You're making it worse, shut up." At that level, you really ought to be beyond looking up your topic in Wikipedia. You ought to have a few hundred references stacked away and such a good grasp of running literature searches that you can just pull whatever you're lacking out of the aether and add it to your pile. The only involvement you should have for Wikipedia articles in your field of study is editing or writing them, not lifting verbiage.

[N.E. Brigand]

Mark Esper, who was Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump from July 2019 until November 2020, today reminded people that Trump wanted the military to shoot protesters in the streets in 2020 and warned that if returned to the White House, Trump will "be able to enact his policy of revenge that he’s been talking about and retribution. And look, it’s quite a dangerous time for our democracy if that were to happen."

Donald Trump's final Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, said yesterday of Trump that "I do regard him as a threat to democracy."

[Sunsilver]

As I said earlier, in another thread, revenge is very important to Trump! https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politics ... index.html

[N.E. Brigand]

On Friday, marking three years since Donald Trump's insurrection, President Biden gave a full-throated campaign speech in Valley Forge defending democracy:



A number of news outlets both-sided the subject, with headlines saying merely that Biden and Trump differ on the meaning of Jan. 6th.

I'm pleased to see that Biden nonetheless seems to be continuing to champion important principles, because today:

"Biden to visit site of white supremacist murders to claim a Trump-led hate agenda."

He'll be speaking at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine parishioners (all African American) were shot to death in 2015. Following that tragedy, President Barack Obama famously gave a moving speech at a memorial event. Biden "will emphasize that it is the job of a president to root out hate and extremism and to bring the nation together -- turning horror and tragedy into action and progress." He'll also "remind the American people that the same hate that plagued the Mother Emanuel Church years ago hasn't gone away" and that "it is incumbent on our elected officials to do their part in rooting out hate, extremism, and division in our country."

[N.E. Brigand]

In a campaign speech last week, Donald Trump said that magnets don't work when they get wet.

[N.E. Brigand]

The late and unlamented Jeffrey Epstein is back in the news following the release of a further tranche of documents that were part of a lawsuit brought by one of Epstein's alleged victims. Very little in the documents is new, which is one reason the judge permitted their release. What's most notable is how the news is being misused online by liars falsely claiming that it shows people unconnected to Epstein (like President Biden)* figure in the case. For some reason, Aaron Rodgers, the infamously vaccine-averse quarterback for the New York Jets football team, joked on ESPN yesterday that talk show host Jimmy Kimmel would appear in the documents. Kimmel quickly denounced Rodgers and threatened legal action, and in fact, his name was not there. But there are many social media posts claiming otherwise.

*Unlike Biden, Donald Trump is known to have flown with Epstein on his plane. But as I said before, that doesn't make Trump an accomplice to Epstein's awful behavior. (Though of course, Trump engaged in plenty of similarly awful behavior on his own and was found liable for sexual assault in a trial.)

Citing here because of Trump: the New York Post, a conservative tabloid, just published an update on the ongoing release of these documents:

"Epstein accuser claims pedophile had sex tapes of [Donald] Trump, [Bill] Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson."

The documents are from the discovery in a defamation lawsuit, since settled, that one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, brought against Ghislaine Maxwell. It should be emphasized that as before, some of this has been known already and that Susan Ransome, the woman whose emails are now being cited, told a Post columnist in 2016 that "I would like to retract everything I have said to you and walk away from this" because "only bad things" and "pain for my family" would result from her accusations being made public and that she told a New Yorker reporter in 2019 that she "invented the tapes to draw attention to Epstein’s behavior." Also, if the tapes did or do exist, they apparently show separate extramarital but consensual encounters between the four named men and another adult woman. At this point, I'm not sure that would affect people's views of Trump in the least.

Edited to note that Donald Trump Jr. shared this news in a tweet that omits his father's name:



(He may yet delete it, so I'll note that what he wrote is "This seems like a big deal and if true why has nothing been done about it? Breaking News: Court documents allege Jeffrey Epstein recorded sex tapes of Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Sir Richard Branson.")

[N.E. Brigand]

Biden was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters during his speech in the South Carolina church today, but he handled it well.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump said tonight that he believes the U.S. economy is going to crash and that he hopes it happens this year.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump also said in that interview that the price of gas now is as much as $8 per gallon.

A quick search shows that that the highest price right now is $4.68 per gallon in Hawai'i. The national average is $3.27 per gallon. (I paid $2.68 yesterday.)

[RoseMorninStar]

It's only about $2.60 here, which is about as cheap as I can recall.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yesterday a Detroit News poll in Michigan found Donald Trump well ahead of Joe Biden, leading 47%-39%. Biden won that state by 3% in 2020.

Today a Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania finds Biden leading Trump 49%-46%. Biden won that state by less than 2% in 2020.

[N.E. Brigand]

A few days ago, Donald Trump said that he hoped the U.S. economy crashes before the election in November. Brian Beutler fears that Trump is going to do his utmost to make it happen (possibly with the assistance of his friends in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates).

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Donald Trump also said in that interview that the price of gas now is as much as $8 per gallon. A quick search shows that that the highest price right now is $4.68 per gallon in Hawai'i. The national average is $3.27 per gallon. (I paid $2.68 yesterday.)

Today Trump backed down a little -- without acknowledging that he was wrong earlier -- and claimed that gas costs $4.00-$5.00 per gallon. As noted above, it costs $5.00 nowhere, but it does cost $4.00 or more in a few places. But the national average is now $3.07.

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During tonight's Republican televised debate on CNN between former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and current Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Haley said plainly that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

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Donald Trump once again skipped the Republican debate and instead participated in a solo town hall event on Fox News. There never has been a good explanation for why he sniffs so much during these events. Does he always have a cold?

Anyway, among other things he promoted a lab leak theory for the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to be fair, he said it was probably "incompetence," which I agree would be the likeliest mechanism if the lab was the point of origin (i.e., if it came from there, it wasn't deliberately released). It may be worth nothing that President Biden was saying four years ago that the U.S. needed to apply all pressure on China to get an international team of scientists into Wuhan to investigate this. Trump never made that happen.

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Over the past day, Donald Trump has been pushing gross conspiracy theories claiming that Nikki Halley -- whose parents were immigrants from India -- was not born in the U.S., rather as he did for years (and with some success) concerning Barack Obama.

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During today's ridiculous hearings in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Florida, argued that Hunter Biden should be prosecuted for violating the Mann Act, which forbids transporting a person across state lines for the purposes of prostitution. (Ironically, one of the famous people that Donald Trump pardoned, in this case posthumously, was the boxer Jack Johnson (1878-1946), who was convicted of the Mann Act in 1913.) In response, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, brought out a picture of Donald Trump with convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and noted that Trump had said, years before Epstein was outed as a sexual predator, that Epstein liked younger women. Moskowitz asked how it was that Trump was aware of that.

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Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie tonight dropped out of the presidential race, but not before he was caught earlier in the day on a hot mic disparaging both Haley and DeSantis. Josh Marshall points out that this is part of a pattern for all the Republican candidates not named Trump:

Every day is a new opportunity for every one of these candidates to toss the zigzag obfuscation aside and actually run against Trump. I’m not saying they would win. Trump owns the party. But it would at least be clear, coherent. And I’m pretty certain that person would do better than any of these existing candidates has. Let’s be honest. It’s an easy claim since how could they really do worse? But I mean it more than in just that obvious guaranteed-to-be-true way. They could but they don’t. They fail because they come from the rot that made Trump possible.

Of course I never thought Chris Christie would be the Republican nominee. But I did think he would do better than this. I don’t mean that he would have polled better necessarily. I thought he would make a more respectable go of it. If there’s one thing I should have been able to trust Chris Christie to do it’s be a smart, nasty bully. He knows Trump because he’s a lot like Trump. But he’s not pathological and predatory like Trump. Wind him up and point him at the right target and there’s a righteousness to it.

I was shocked in the very first Republican debate that he just didn’t bring it. He promised and promised and promised. And then nothing. He had like one answer where he more or less attacked Trump. But that was it. In subsequent outings he barely did more. To this day I don’t really understand why he didn’t. He didn’t have it in him.

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Mind you, Christie has had some harsh words about Trump over the past six months. The Biden-Harris campaign has been sharing this video:



Biden's team has also been distributing this video of Trump tonight boasting about having ended Roe v. Wade: "I'm proud of it. It was a miracle."

Meanwhile others are making much of Trump tonight justifying taking $8 million from the governments of China and other nations -- despite the prohibitions on such payments found in foreign emoluments clause -- by saying "I was providing services" for his foreign guests.

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Politico reported comments today from French European Commissioner Thierry Breton about a 2020 conversation between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. Trump told von der Leyen: "You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you," and he added, "By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO" (my emphasis).

[RoseMorninStar]

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Donald Trump once again skipped the Republican debate and instead participated in a solo town hall event on Fox News. There never has been a good explanation for why he sniffs so much during these events. Does he always have a cold?

Did you mean sniveling? All snark aside, that's been a question for a very long time. There are many articles regarding his sniffling.

There are claims that he uses adderall. Tom Arnold and GOP strategist Rick Wilson have alleged that Trump snorts the drug. Comedian Noel Caster recently claimed that Trump snorted Adderall on the sets of Celebrity Apprentice, the Miss USA pageant and the Miss Universe pageant.

Some have commented that whenever Trump is focused and stays on teleprompter, he has the sniffles, but when he goes on wandering rants, the nasal drip seems to disappear. Adderall is often used for focus and energy. It has also become a niche party drug.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Iowa caucuses are next week. A new poll in that state finds Donald Trump comfortably leading (54%), with Nikki Haley a distant second (22%) and Ron DeSantis third (13%), although DeSantis leads Haley among second choices. Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, endorsed DeSantis long ago. Today the New York Times noted that she's even been using a second Twitter account -- not previously known to be hers though it does have her name on it (there are lots of people named Kimberly Reynolds) to boost DeSantis content:



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Meanwhile in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell told Republicans that even if Donald Trump wins the presidency, they won't strike a better deal with Democrats on border and immigration issues than the one that's been negotiated with Joe Biden.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Iowa caucuses are next week. A new poll in that state finds Donald Trump comfortably leading (54%), with Nikki Haley a distant second (22%) and Ron DeSantis third (13%), although DeSantis leads Haley among second choices. Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, endorsed DeSantis long ago. Today the New York Times noted that she's even been using a second Twitter account -- not previously known to be hers though it does have her name on it (there are lots of people named Kimberly Reynolds) to boost DeSantis content:



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Meanwhile in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell told Republicans that even if Donald Trump wins the presidency, they won't strike a better deal with Democrats on border and immigration issues than the one that's been negotiated with Joe Biden.

Edited to add: speaking of the U.S.-Mexico border, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, said today that "only thing we're not doing is shooting people" crossing the border because "the Biden Administration would charge us with murder." Well, yes, because that would in fact be murder.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump said tonight that he believes the U.S. economy is going to crash and that he hopes it happens this year.

In these remarks on Tuesday, Trump added that he doesn't want to be thought of as Herbert Hoover.

I had forgotten that in September, Joe Biden observed that the only two presidents who left office with fewer Americans employed than when they started were Herbert Hoover and Donald Trump. It's not an easy thing to do. Even in tough economic times, the U.S. population is almost always growing.

Edited to add: and Biden repeated that point today.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile others are making much of Trump tonight justifying taking $8 million from the governments of China and other nations -- despite the prohibitions on such payments found in foreign emoluments clause -- by saying "I was providing services" for his foreign guests.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has sent Donald Trump a letter demanding that he repay the federal government the $7.8 million in foreign emoluments that he is known to have received during his presidency.

(As others have noted, the actual amount Trump received is probably much larger. This is scandal that already dwarfs anything that Hunter Biden is alleged to have done.)

[Sunsilver]

I'm reading Cohen's book, and he says Trump would routinely have him buy bots to inflate poll numbers. He did this even before Trump ran for election - there was a poll about the most influential businessmen in America, and Trump wanted to place first, or at least in the top 10! So, he asked Cohen to figure out how to make that happen, and Cohen arranged it by buying bots. Then when it came time to pay the bill, Trump stiffed the provider on the bill.

[N.E. Brigand]

Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, said today that "only thing we're not doing is shooting people" crossing the border because "the Biden Administration would charge us with murder." Well, yes, because that would in fact be murder.

And it appears that Greg Abbott may have killed two children on Friday (via negligence).

[RoseMorninStar]

Greg Abbot, Republican governor of Texas, also claims to have a very strong Christian faith and has fought, among other things, to have the 10 commandments posted in schools. I really struggle with the hypocrisy.