The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

New rumblings are emerging about a new political party being concocted by betrayed MAGA luminaries, but according to the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America, these rumors actually pose a disaster for President Donald Trump and his allies, as well as "a gift to Democrats like you cannot imagine."

In the latest episode of the "Pod Save America" podcast, former Obama administration officials Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer touched on the emerging rumors that ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson might be plotting a run for president, as well as the rumors about a new political party that might coalesce around him. The rumors went into overdrive after former congresswoman-turned-Trump critic Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a photo to X of herself at Carlson's Maine compound, alongside Rep. Thomas Massie and Joe Kent, along with the caption, "The movement has begun."

"MAGA was betrayed. We all were. It's time for a new path forward," she added in another post.

While Carlson has denied any presidential ambitions, he did last week release a "10-point plan for America," outlining his vision for the future of the country, something that Favreau, Obama's one-time director of speechwriting, said "sounds pretty 'I'm going to run in 2028.'"

The hosts of Pod Save America, especially former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vieter, have long despaired about the possibility of Carlson running for president, given that his established popularity with the GOP base and his well-honed media skills could make him a highly effective "demagogue." In light of this news, however, Pfieffer, Obama's former senior communications adviser, argued that Carlson's political threat to Democrats was entirely neutralized and that he would instead become a major threat to MAGA Republicans.

"There's been a lot of talk of Tucker Carlson being a formidable presidential candidate because of his media skills, mainly because of his media skills," Pfeiffer explained. "That was always under the assumption he would be the Republican nominee, right? Tucker Carlson, a third-party candidate, is a gift to Democrats like you cannot imagine."

He continued: "There aren't a lot of potential John Ossoff, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro voters who are voting for Tucker Carlson, but there are a lot of disillusioned Trump 2024 voters who might vote for Tucker Carlson. That's how you win. So that would be very good news. Like, we should encourage this. This would be great... It does speak to how much the MAGA coalition has truly fractured under Trump's second term, right? Because of Epstein, apparently because of the war, there are these incredibly prominent people with large audiences who have soured on Trump."

Every day that the bastards are fighting amongst themselves and splintering is a good day, for Democrats and for democracy.

The bad:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected President Trump's 15-point peace plan for Gaza, saying Israeli forces will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is "genuinely disarmed."

"We are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament," he said at a meeting with government ministers Sunday.

Netanyahu's comments come just over a week after President Trump announced that his Board of Peace had reached a deal with the Palestinian militant group to completely give up its weapons.

"Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY," Trump wrote on social media in late July.

Under Trump's proposed peace deal, Board of Peace officials said Hamas and other militant groups would hand their arms over to a vetted international policing force.

But a senior Hamas official previously told NPR that the group would only hand over their weapons if Israel withdrew from parts of Gaza first...

Given that the Malignant Fascist is a pathological liar without the slightest knowledge base about the Middle East or skill in negotiation, combined with a toddler's attention span and attention to detail, it wasn't hard to imagine that the HISTORIC agreement he rashly trumpeted was just a creation of his desperate, diminished mind.  At best, he thought he could bum rush Netanyahu into agreeing to an agreement by making a premature announcement -- a classic Shart of the Deal move by him.  But he ends up looking like he got played like a fiddle (which he was).  He puts American prestige and lives on the line every day just to make his worthless orange self look as good as he can.  That this disgraceful behavior isn't called out for what it is every day in our credulous, broken media is another scandal of our times.

The ugly:

President Donald Trump has found a new way to go after politicians he doesn’t like: dragging their marriages into his political feuds.

On Saturday, the 80-year-old president unleashed a flurry of posts on Truth Social, including one targeting Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, 41, and his wife.

The post paired a photo of Trump and Melania Trump, 56, with one of El-Sayed and his wife, Dr. Sarah Jukaku, putting the two couples side by side beneath the typo-riddled caption: “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”

 

Trump also singled out El-Sayed’s full name, identifying him as “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed”—a pointed choice that echoes his repeated emphasis on Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein.”

When asked about Trump’s post on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, El-Sayed agreed that the two marriages represented “two very different Americas,” but turned the president’s jab back on him. He contrasted what he described as a marriage between “two people who don’t like each other” but are united by their shared interest in making “billions of dollars off of you” with his own relationship with Jukaku, which he said is rooted in genuine love, family, and even enjoying “some pancakes together.”...

The MF's completely on-brand racist, Islamophobic post got many more pointed rebukes from social media pointing out truths about his third wife and marriage, but JFC what a piece of shit we have representing our country, always in the most despicable ways possible.  Two very different Americas, indeed.

Islamophobe Travels To Saudi Arabia

Pathological liar and anti-Muslim bigot Donald "Rump" Trump is traveling to Saudi Arabia today, the first stop on a tour that he's already griping about. There, he's going to meet, dine and make nice with leaders of some 50 majority Muslim countries. It's hard to imagine the amount of hypocrisy that will be exhibited on both sides, with Rump's Muslim-banning Islamophobia and the Muslim leaders' tolerance of his bigotry against their religion. One of the goals is to sell more U.S. arms to the various kingdoms and principalities under the guise of creating an "Arab NATO" against Iran, but also to suppress their subjects. Of course, big oil is never far from the discussion (see: Sec. of State Rex "Rexxon" Tillerson, who will be with Rump). After the fall of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and with an Iran-friendly Shiite government replacing it, Sunni Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, have been pushing for more aggressive U.S. policies toward Iran, fearing a Shia ascendancy in the region. Notably, they opposed the Iran nuclear agreement almost as fiercely as the Likudniks in Israel.

The overwhelming irony, of course, for right-wing Islamophobes in the U.S. is that Saudi Arabia is the wellspring of the radical fundamentalist Wahabi sect that continues to preach jihad against the U.S. and its allies, and supplied support and 15 of the 19 terrorists that brought down the World Trade Center. You know right-wing Islamophobes here in the U.S. would be on their hind legs howling, howling if President Obama had made Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit, and were accepting the plaudits and a banquet from the Saudi royals.

On The Media -- Is They Learning? *

We might have to start calling it "The Washington Post" again.  From a story today in that paper with the headline "Trump's Rallying Cry: Fear Itself":

The machete-wielding man was quickly shot and arrested Friday morning by French police and soldiers, but from the vantage point of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was a crisis dire enough to put a nation 4,000 miles away on high alert. 

“A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.,” President Trump tweeted.
French authorities are indeed investigating the incident as possible terrorism. But other than the critical wounding of the assailant, there were no injuries, except a slight cut to the scalp of a soldier. 

Trump’s reaction to the Egyptian attacker who had shouted “God is great” in Arabic also stood in stark contrast to his public silence on the killing of six Muslim worshipers five days earlier at a mosque in Quebec City. 

The episode spoke loudly to the fact that stoking fear — a strategy that helped get Trump elected — is emerging as a central part of how he plans to carry out his governing agenda.

Perhaps some things are so obvious even the traditional "both sides" media are having a hard time ignoring the truth.

BONUS: More evidence?

BONUS II:  Good advice ... from a Republican.
___________________
* h/t George W. Bush, our edumacation preznit.

National Shame

You couldn't toss a rock this morning and not hit a news story, an editorial or op/ ed about neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump's un- American Muslim ban.

Our first order of business is to debunk Rump's and his cast of lying sycophants' claim that only 109 people are being affected by the Muslim ban. That would be off by a magnitude of several tens of thousands: it's more like 90,000.  Always remember these poor excuses for human beings are pathological liars.

Now, here are a few opinions that caught our eye (as always, please check out the full piece at the link).

Frequent blind squirrel and former Bush speechwriter Michael "Mushroom Cloud" Gerson rips Rump a new one:

The image of President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis, signing an executive order that (among other things) excludes Syrian refugees from the United States, is indelible. Three powerful American leaders, targeting and dehumanizing some of the most vulnerable people on Earth. A picture of bullying. A picture of cruelty. A picture of national shame.

You can skip Gerson's last paragraph, where he feels obliged to cite Ronnie Reagan as a counterpoint. Reagan, of course, is the spiritual father of these assorted white nationalists and nihilists running the show now. Look it up on Breitbart or WND ("wing nut daily"), Gerson. They see all kinds of similarities.

Catherine Rampell reminds us of the colossal cowardice and hypocrisy that's part of the Republican Party's DNA:

Where, exactly, is the red line for Republicans in Congress right now? 

We have a president with pronounced authoritarian tendencies, who believes he “alone can fix it”; who signs sweeping executive orders reportedly without even briefing relevant Cabinet members on the logistical, humanitarian and national security consequences; who directs his staff and surrogates to lie about the tiniest and most ridiculous and easily fact-checkable of details; and whose staffers brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis when they ignored federal court orders. [snip] 

A mere year ago, Republican leaders condemned Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) said it was “not conservatism.” Then-Gov. Mike Pence (Ind.) called it “offensive and unconstitutional.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) called it “completely and totally inconsistent with American values.” Senator and then-presidential-candidate Marco Rubio (Fla.) agreed, saying, “It violates a lot of the things that we think about our country.”

Maybe when perceive that their own skinny necks are on the electoral chopping block they'll suddenly see that "red line." Or not.

Jonathan Alter on "the least American president of the United States":

The most striking thing about President Trump’s first 10 days in office is that the ardent nationalist who pledged to put “America first” is emerging as the least American president of the United States. 

By least American, I mean least connected to the larger democratic values that define the country. 

Our national identity is unique in the world because it’s based not on race, religion, or country of origin, but on ideals that transcend party 

Such ideals are at odds with a president who lies promiscuously, destabilizes the government with impulsive, discriminatory, and inhumane policies backed up with jarring firings, and cannot allow his White House to apologize or admir error under any circumstances, even for neglecting to mention Jews in a Holocaust commemoration. Those are the telltale signs of a foreign dictator, not an American leader. 

This morning*, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to confirm as Attorney General slimy neo- Confederate weasel Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (KKK- AL) who is said to have had his hand in the Muslim ban order as well as other un- American actions by this White (supremacist) House junta.  With that knowledge alone, as we say in the post below, if there's one Democrat on the committee or in the full Senate who votes for this "thing," he or she should be written out of the Democratic Party.  Period.'

* The vote today was delayed, not in small part because the Russo Republicans couldn't keep their half-assed members in the room long enough to vote.

Sunday Reflection - "I Was Born Here"

“I think his words are very dangerous.  When these types of comments are made, no one thinks about how they really affect people. I’m African American. I don’t have another home to go to. My family was born here. I was born here. I’ve grown up in Jersey. All my family’s from Jersey. It’s like, well, where do we go?” --  Ibtihaj Muhammad, bronze medalist in the team sabre competition and the first American competing as a Muslim to win a medal in Olympics history, on neo- fascist hatemonger Donald "Rump" Trump's Islamophobic hate speech.  We're proud and fortunate to have people like Ms. Muhammad as fellow Americans. People like Donald Trump?  Not so much.

Trump Wants To Ban Muslims; Britons Want To Ban Him

Shorter Republican front-runner and deployed air bag Donald "Rump" Trump:  the only thing we have to fear is fear itself (but that will have to do for now!):

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has gone beyond opposing the entry of Syrian refugees to wanting to stop all Muslims from emigrating into the US, NBC News reported.

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that he is calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Meanwhile, some Brits are looking at banning an undesirable from their country:

The British Parliament could soon review a petition calling for U.S. presidential candidate and former reality TV star Donald Trump to be barred from entering the country on grounds that he has violated the U.K.’s laws against hateful and defamatory speech.

The Independent reported that a petition begun by Suzanne Kelly from Aberdeen, Scotland must gather 100,000 signatures before it can be taken up for debate by the House of Commons.

Good show!  Carry on!

BONUS:  Others react to Rump's demagoguery.

BONUS II:  Water seeking its own level.