Category: IvankaTrump

The GOP needs to figure out their Trump problem now

Posted on (Updated by kos

On his way out the door, right before it hit him in his ass, twice-impeached madman Donald Trump said, “Have a good life. We will see you soon.” What might’ve been a throwaway line from a person incapable of surrendering the limelight received added context when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had discussed starting a new “Patriot Party” with his aides—a five-alarm fire that has Republicans panicking and Democrats licking their chops. In fact, it might be a major factor as Senate Republicans struggle with how to handle the impeachment trial. 

And yet I wouldn’t bet on it ever happening. 

First things first: Let’s stipulate that Trump never does anything for anyone except himself, and maybe Ivanka. While several Republicans would love to bask in its light—the Paul Gosars and Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the right-wing MAGA/Q fever swamp—Trump’s entire reason for building this party would be for the benefit of the TRUMP brand, and nothing else. And how could it not? There is no such thing as a Trump ideology (beyond “owning the libs”). There isn’t a cause that motivates him, a higher calling or purpose. He clearly didn’t even like the job of president! He barely showed up to work, didn’t read briefing papers, watched television all day, and said the dumbest shit ever said by a president … and that includes eight years of George W. Bush! 

All Trump cared about was the title, being the Big Man with his airplane and taxpayer-funded Big House and his precious bully pulpit, which he used to, well, bully people. For example, at a reelection rally in Ohio, Trump wasn’t making a case based on how he had improved people’s lives, or a policy vision for a second term (a question he was repeatedly asked during the campaign and he could never answer). Nay, he could only focus on the perks of being president. “[Air Force One has] more televisions than any plane in history! They’ve got televisions in closets, in bathroom, on the floor, on the ceiling.” 

So what would being a member of the Patriot Party entail beyond the further aggrandizing and enrichment of Trump himself? 

Forget any broader strategy of pressuring Republicans, again, on policy grounds. Trump is too stupid to formulate any real strategy, and too aloof to care about any outcome beyond “they better kiss my ring” and “send me more money to save America.” That last part may actually loom large. Trump saw the $200 million that he raised for his big “fight the steal” lie, and he wants more. His real estate empire is on the verge of collapse, with banks refusing to do further business with him. Mainstream television isn’t going to give him another show to bail him out financially. The MAGA rubes are his last chance. And sure, campaign finance law prohibits candidates from enriching themselves from campaign contributions, but since when has Trump cared about the law? He’d do what he wants and dare a toothless Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to do something about it. And if the FEC did act on it, he’d tie it up in the courts for years. 

Remember, Trump is a guy who couldn’t manage to get a platform for his own Republican Party convention—are we really going to pretend that his Patriot Party would have one? 

So what would the actual impact of this party have on elections? If smartly set up (ha ha), it might function as the Working Families Party, which endorses in primaries and supports candidates who back its agenda. Or maybe like the Democratic Socialists—again, focusing heavily on primaries, mostly on friendly territory, trying to push Republicans closer to Trump. There could be a “Patriots caucus” in the House that would push Q conspiracies, Putin’s agenda, and whatever other inanities whip up its white supremacist base.

At the presidential level, imagine Trump going on his own (or, hilariously, whoever emerged from the Patriot Party primary process—Don Jr. or Ivanka), splitting off critical votes from the mainstream Republican Party. If Republicans lost even 10% off their toppling (or flip it around: Trump got the bulk of base Republican support, 90% of it), this is what the electoral map would look like with a split right: 

Furthermore, Alaska and South Carolina would be competitive. And you can believe that the right-on-right rhetorical violence would be fierce in such a contest. The fireworks from a Ben Sasse vs. Donald Trump matchup could even render the Democrats an afterthought, with Joe Biden waltzing easily to reelection. It wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to us. 

Which is why it is in Senate Republican (and minority, ha ha) Leader Mitch McConnell’s interest to nip this shit in the bud. His best way to do it? Conviction. He takes away Trump’s ability to run again, and he removes 98% of the any impetus Trump might have for this party. Will Republicans have to deal with pissed-off MAGA assholes for several years? Of course, but it should be pretty clear at this point that Republicans need some time in the wilderness to rethink who they are if they are going be competitive at the national level. 

The demographic trends that flipped Arizona and Georgia this time aren’t ebbing. Republican Texas is next, and South Carolina and Mississippi three to four presidential cycles behind. Kansas doesn’t have the racial and ethnic diversity of other transforming states, but it has higher-than-average education levels and is also moving in the Democrats’ direction. All of those states would more than offset any Republican gains in the rust belt and Minnesota. 

Just flipping Texas and North Carolina alone keeps a Republican Party wholly dependent on white non-college evangelical voters so far from a presidential majority that it is doomed to eternal minority status. Republicans need college-educated whites (both urban and suburban), and they need to do better with growth demographics (Asian, Black, Latino, and Muslim). Trump Republicanism isn’t going to get that done. 

What’s worse, the GOP advantage in the Senate will erode over time. Arizona and Georgia both went from two Republican senators to two Democratic ones seemingly overnight (though it took a decade of hard organizing to make it happen, of course). Texas came close to flipping a seat, and Democrats will hold those seats before long.  

Susan Collins won’t be around forever in Maine. That seat will eventually be Democratic. South Carolina and Mississippi will be more competitive in the next two decades. Statehood for Washington, D.C. and maybe Puerto Rico would further erase their built-in advantages. And again, if Republicans retreated to a white evangelical base, they could still hold an easy 30-40 Senate seats, representing a fraction of the U.S. population, but that’s not going to get them a majority.

On the other hand, if Republicans excise the Trump cancer, wander in the wilderness for one to two presidential cycles, and start winning back college whites while eating away at Democratic dominance with voters of color, then you have a national party once again. 

By all indications, that’s where McConnell’s head seems to be. He’s done playing with Trump and his cult: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people." It doesn’t hurt that conservative mega-donors and corporate PACs are refusing to donate to Republicans until they clean house of the insurrectionists.

So for conservatives suddenly in danger of losing control of their party to American fascists, that might not be a bad course of action. They had a good run, got themselves an ill-gained 6-3 Supreme Court majority, some nice tax cuts, a few wars, and lots of environmental degradation and higher global temperatures. None of that would’ve been possible with a truly democratic America, one in which the Senate actually reflected people, not cow country, and one in which presidents got popularly elected by a majority of the American people, not just a handful of battleground states. 

And sure, it led to an actual insurrection and occupation of the U.S. Capitol by American Nazis, but all in all, I’m sure they’d do it all over again. It’s just that the bill has come due, and they now have to pay the price. 

Then again, they can roll the die some more. They can gamble that a deplatformed Trump won’t have anywhere near the juice to maintain his level of influence. They can gamble that they can still keep control of the Trump-only hidden deplorable crowd, that it was just a few “bad apples” and antifa infiltrators who caused the Capitol insurrection. They can guess (with good reason) that Trump is incapable of managing anything well, and that his party wouldn’t be any different. Remember, this is the guy who bankrupted a casino. This is a guy whose most successful investment is the one he had nothing to do with. He’s the guy who surrounds himself with hucksters and grifters like Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowski, and Brad Parscale.

For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc. In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time. pic.twitter.com/aJgCNfx1m0

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) May 7, 2020

They can try to blow kisses at Trump and hope it keeps him (and his MAGA/Q adherents) satisfied enough to keep him in the fold. This is the Sen. Lindsey Graham approach. "I hope people in our party understand the party itself. If you're wanting to erase Donald Trump from the party, you're gonna get erased," Graham said on Fox News. "Most Republicans like his policies, a lot of Republicans like his style. A lot of people are disappointed with him personally at times but appreciate the outcomes he's achieved for our country." Maybe if they stroke his ego enough, Trump will be stay happy until he loses interest and heads off to the golf course. 

And is there really that much danger? Trump can’t tweet his threats, and he doesn’t have a White House press office to distribute his proclamations. He was never able to generate small-dollar donations for other candidates, including his preferred primary choices. (Not that Trump would ever direct his supporters’ dollars anywhere but into his own pocket.) And anyone betting that this party will ever get off the ground and have enough juice to seriously impact Republican politics would be taking one hell of a risk. I wouldn’t take that bet. Trump just doesn’t have a track record of success.

But for Republicans, it’s an existential question: Do they cut the Trump cancer out, wander in the wilderness for a few cycles, then rebuild in the image of today’s America (more diverse, more educated, more secular), or do they keep going down the same path that cost them the House, the Senate, the White House, and the critical support of key growth demographics (not to mention, Arizona, Georgia, and soon, Texas), while at the same time remaining beholden to the whims of an egotistical madman? 

If I were them, I’d rip off the Band-Aid and start rebuilding today. 

Trump waited hours to tell his supporters to stop attacking the Capitol. There’s a reason for that

Posted on by Laura Clawson

On January 6, one prominent Republican after another called Donald Trump or the people near him, begging him to take decisive action to protect the U.S. Capitol from his mob of supporters, including by sending the message only he could effectively send convincing the mob to stand down. But Trump, transfixed by what he was watching on live television, didn’t respond for hours. In fact, early on, he tweeted an incitement to violence against Mike Pence. 

According to The Washington Post, Trump “didn’t appear to understand the magnitude of the crisis” and was “not initially receptive” to the idea that he needed to do something to tamp down the violence. Gee, why could that be? 

”He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV,” according to one adviser. “If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes the calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was just watching it all unfold.” That’s presumably why Fox News spent long stretches quoting a litany of Trump-supporting Republicans begging him to take action—in an attempt to get him to pay attention. But something else was going on here, and it needs to be said, and said again: Trump didn’t want the attack on the Capitol to stop. He was hoping it would succeed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who, trapped inside the Capitol, called Ivanka Trump to ask her to get her father to send a strong message to his supporters, urging them to go home. “It took him awhile to appreciate the gravity of the situation,” Graham told the Post. “The president saw these people as allies in his journey and sympathetic to the idea that the election was stolen.”

Despite knowing in a very personal way that Trump did not want to stop the domestic terrorists terrorizing Congress in his name, Graham is still opposing impeachment, because “It is past time for all of us to try to heal our country and move forward.” And to Republicans, the way to move forward is by emboldening the people who did this and letting them know there will be no consequences.

Trump did not want to tell his followers to back down, and at some point, responsible people have to say out loud that it was because he was waiting and hoping the terrorists would succeed in the coup they were attempting on his behalf. He’s a grown man. “He didn’t understand” cannot stand as an excuse for standing by while his supporters trashed the Capitol, threatened Congress to keep it from doing its constitutional duty, and killed a police officer. No matter how transfixing that live TV was, Trump was watching terrorism and violence, and didn’t want to put a stop to it.

Say it. Make the Republican members of Congress whose lives were at risk understand it, and understand that the way to get out from under the fear is not to cave and cave again but to make sure this terrorism doesn’t happen again. Donald Trump was willing to risk the lives of his supporters in Congress as he actively aimed a mob at Pence in retaliation for Pence once, in more than four years of subservience, saying no.

Members of the National Guard were seething in frustration as they watched the scene play out, waiting to be called in to protect the Capitol, and Trump’s Defense Department is trying to pass off responsibility—which should not be allowed to happen. The sergeants at arms of the House and Senate and the chief of the Capitol Police are all resigning over their failures. The Pentagon needs to undergo the same kind of house-cleaning for the willingness of its leaders to sit back and watch and say “not our responsibility.” There needs to be accountability everywhere. But one place most of all.

In the final analysis Trump is the first and most responsible—for spending months convincing his supporters the election was stolen, then for spending weeks building up the January 6 event, and, on the day itself, urging the crowd to march on the Capitol with rage as their guiding instinct. He rebuffed pleas from Ivanka and from his closest aides to do what he needed to do. Because doing the thing that was right and necessary was not in line with his goal: a successful coup.

Senate Intelligence Committee report confirms all charges about Trump’s connections to Russia

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was slipped out to the public with less fanfare than a new menu item at Captain D’s. And like the actual Mueller report, released weeks after Attorney General William Barr produced his whitewashed summary, Republicans are just hoping everyone will read their topline statements and ignore what the investigation really found.

Somehow, after Republicans have declared over and over that there was “no collusion,” they’ve been sitting on a report that shows that Donald Trump’s campaign manager was in constant contact with a Russian operative, that both WikiLeaks and Roger Stone knew they were part of a direct pipeline from Vladimir Putin, and that the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort was in fact a meeting with Russian spies designed to get information that could be used against Hillary Clinton. And that Ivanka Trump coordinated the daily drip of words from Moscow.

The Senate report, in fact, proves everything that had been said since before the election—Trump’s campaign directly collaborated with Russia, on multiple occasions and in various ways, to alter the outcome of a U.S. election. It also shows that multiple members of Trump’s campaign lied to investigators about these connections, and that Republican senators have been aware of these facts even as they have scorned the Mueller investigation and defended Trump and his campaign. So what are Republican senators doing about it now? Lying, of course.

The Senate report shows that Manafort was directly involved in passing along information to a Russian intelligence agent and accepting information from that agent. That’s collusion by the head of Trump’s campaign. The investigation could have stopped right there and moved on to providing information to the House for impeachment.

It didn’t stop there. It went on to explore how Ivanka Trump coordinated the use of stolen documents provided by Russia to make Trump’s attacks on Clinton more effective. How Stone helped Moscow coordinate WikiLeaks information to run cover for Trump. And how Manafort’s close coordination with Kremlin sources “represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” The report isn’t just damning, it’s damning to helling. It could not be more conclusive and more authoritative in showing that there was genuine coordination between the Trump campaign and Putin’s plans. Trump took everything Putin would give him, and begged for more.

Evidence in the report shows that Manafort’s chief contact, Konstantin Kilimnik, was connected not just with providing information to the campaign after the fact, but to the whole plot to break into DNC servers in the first place. The Trump campaign wasn’t the lucky beneficiary of a Russian plot that was already in effect. The whole thing—the break-in at the DNC, the distribution of emails through WikiLeaks, the false claims about Ukraine—was a joint Trump/Putin production from the start. They didn’t just collude, they were partners.

Why they were partners from the start is also underlined in the report, as the fifth volume contains information directly related to the leverage Putin had over Trump. That includes not just witnesses corroborating the existence of the “pee tape,” but a possible affair between Trump and a former Miss Moscow as well as a visit to a Moscow strip club. All of this, along with Manafort’s existing connections to Moscow, meant that Trump and other members of the campaign “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities,” according to the report.

Almost as an aside, the report shows that Donald Trump and his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen negotiated repeatedly to cover up evidence in exchange for a pardon—and then everyone involved lied about it to Robert Mueller. Though that part was already known.

So what are Republican senators going to do about a report—their own report—that lays bare Putin’s tawdry leverage over Trump, the openness of Trump’s campaign to foreign influence, and the lies that campaigns staffers told to investigators every step of the way? As Lawfare points out, Republicans have a very simple solution: lying. Over and over, Republican senators have issued statements repeating the idea that the report shows “no collusion,” in direct contradiction of the actual contents.

Republicans in the Senate deserve credit for allowing the investigation to run its course rather than doing a Devin Nunes and popping out a Trump-praising nonsense piece while claiming that everything is good. But they deserve zero credit for running away from their own report or for making claims that the report doesn’t show what it clearly shows.

And while Republicans are scanning Mike Pompeo’s stack of documents looking for possible avenues of attack against Joe Biden, Biden could do a lot worse than simply making advertisements out of segments of the report created by the Republican-led Senate.