GOP betrays the country by endorsing a failed coup, yet wants to lecture Biden on national security?

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Dartagnan

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but historically those who’ve sanctioned and supported domestic rebellion against the United States government have not been allowed a public platform in government to continue spreading their policy views to a wider audience. Jefferson Davis was indicted for treason following the Civil War with Congress even going so far as to impanel a jury for his prosecution, and he remained under indictment until President Andrew Johnson issued a general amnesty in 1868. Afterwards he remained popular in the defeated South, contributing to the deliberate falsification of the war’s origins that eventually became enshrined by the heirs of the Confederacy as the “Lost Cause.” But his participation in the legitimate U.S. machinery of government was understood to be forfeit.

And those who don’t actively incite insurrection but otherwise betray their country aren’t afforded any deference in matters of national security either. Aldrich Ames, the former CIA case officer who chose to work for the Soviet Union, disclosing the names of both U.S. officers and Russian sources and thus directly causing their deaths at the hands of the KGB, is not, as far as I am aware, regularly consulted on foreign policy matters by the State Department. John Anthony Walker Jr., who sold inside information about our country’s nuclear submarine capabilities to the Soviets, was not thereafter permitted to critique our nation’s naval tactics at meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet somehow the incoming Republican Congress—the majority of whom on Jan. 6, 2021, voted to illegally disenfranchise the majority of the American electorate; several of whom have voiced or lent their support to groups planning armed rebellion against our democratic government; and still more who have made common cause with those who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6—seem to believe it still has some legitimate standing to criticize the current administration on matters of national security. For example, the newly elected Republican House majority has vowed to conduct investigative hearings about the process by which President Joe Biden ended our two-decade involvement in Afghanistan. Some of the very same voices involved in supporting and spreading Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that resulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection seem to believe that their criticism of President Biden’s manner of withdrawal of troops from the Afghanistan theater merits serious consideration by the American public. All of those harboring this astonishing misconception are, unsurprisingly, members of the Republican Party.

But they are grievously mistaken. By willfully aiding and abetting an attempted coup aimed at usurping a legitimately elected U.S. president—and thus attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected U.S. government—current Republicans have quite simply forfeited any standing they once may have had to criticize that president on any matter affecting this nation’s security. Not only have they forfeited that right, but any attempt by them to assert it—in staged, circus-like “hearings” or otherwise—should be met with the complete scorn it deserves.

What Republicans seem unable to collectively grasp, even at this point, is the sheer enormity of the treachery that their party committed on Jan. 6, 2021. Not only did the vast majority of them stand silently by while their party’s leader plotted and incited a violent uprising specifically engineered to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, but many of them were also directly involved in the plot itself. As the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks final report indicates, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, for example, was instrumental in Trump’s attempt to subvert any action by the Department of Justice to forestall the planned coup through the appointment of a sympathetic seditious-minded lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, to the post of attorney general.

Perry, who purportedly sought a pardon from Trump after committing this act of treachery, appears to have been well aware that was he was doing was illegal. For someone with Perry’s military background, however, it was even worse than that. There is fundamentally little difference between an attempt to erase a legitimate, democratic U.S. election and participating in an armed assault against one’s country. To put it in terms that Perry—formerly a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard—might understand? He could scarcely have acted with greater disdain for his country had he crossed the DMZ into North Korea at the 38th parallel and trained his weapon on American troops.

And that’s the problem here: the lack of any acknowledgement—or even cognition—of just how profoundly and depravedly un-American Republicans’ actions on Jan. 6 actually were. A majority of the GOP caucus, 147 House Republicans in all (most of whom are still sitting members of Congress), stood up right after having been assaulted by a violent mob of thousands that their own leader had spurred on against them and voted to disenfranchise over 80 million American voters. Those 80 million Americans justifiably expected their supposedly “sacred” votes would be legitimately counted. Republicans unilaterally declared that no, they should not be counted, for no legitimate reason other than their desire to keep Donald Trump in power.

My parents were among the votes that these Republicans sought to disenfranchise. My father is a former Marine. The idea that a cadre of wingtip-clad fops in suits would try to erase the votes he served this country to protect is literally so appalling that it’s beyond his comprehension. It would be beyond comprehension for the same soldiers who fought and died against impossible defenses just to secure and retain a narrow strip of beach in Normandy, France. Those soldiers died to preserve the very institutions of our democracy that were so blithely and carelessly disregarded by Republicans, and so casually desecrated on Jan. 6.

No, this was no ordinary betrayal, no ordinary expression of disapproval. It was a wholehearted, concerted, and collective effort by Republicans to attack this country’s foundation, one that brooks no excuses or justifications. It is a stain on the Republican Party that will last for generations. Maybe they didn’t all realize it at the time, but that’s exactly what it was, and it should continue to haunt every single one of those Republicans who has since tried to evade it, justify it, or otherwise explain it away.

This may be hard for some Republicans to face. It was only a few short decades ago that Republicans painted themselves as the party of national security while simultaneously painting Democrats as “soft” on defense. Those were times when the media worked hand in hand with Republican administrations to instill the myth of Republican supremacy in all matters properly allotted to the provenance of the so-called "daddy" party. They were times when people like former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, surfing the serendipity of the horrific 9/11 attacks, could darkly warn liberals and others that they ought to "watch what they say," lest they run afoul of Republicans' innate, heartfelt patriotism.

But that time is past. It went away for good when Republicans hitched their star to Donald Trump. The real moment of cognitive dissonance came in 2017, when Republicans found themselves faced with a stark choice. They could accept the fact that the man they'd just made their president had solicited and accepted the assistance of Vladimir Putin to get himself elected, or they could compartmentalize, rationalize, and deny that fact into oblivion, in effect accepting such treachery as their "new normal." In reality, they didn't make this decision wholly by themselves; they clicked on their soothing Fox News for comfort and reassurance. But winking at the perfidies of Donald Trump was one thing; it was enlisting in full-throated support of an insurrection against American democracy, parroting the Big Lie, and continuing to foster the corrosive poison of election denial that served to really seal the deal.

For that reason, Republicans have disqualified themselves from “investigating,” “critiquing,” or “criticizing” this president on any matter regarding national security. How can a political party that has sought to destroy democracy be heard to criticize the very measures intended to preserve it? Republicans don’t like how the administration handled the Afghanistan withdrawal? Think they can criticize it? They just no longer have that right, or the moral authority to do so.

Sorry, Republicans, but you threw out your right to criticize this president on such matters when you tried to overthrow the U.S. government. Your protestations, your criticisms, your “investigations” fundamentally do not matter, because coming from you, they are less than worthless. As a thought experiment, just imagine if a Democratic president, supported by a Democratic Congress, had attempted to subvert an election in this way, by voting to disenfranchise a clear majority of Americans after a violent, failed coup. Would Republicans give them the time of day and allow them to air a collection of vindictive conspiracy-mongering allegations against a legitimately elected president, or about national security and military matters?

No, they’d be laughed out of the hearing room. As any Republicans—who have the temerity and sheer gall to criticize this administration on any matters involving the security of the American people—rightly should be.

Conservative columnist explains why the GOP is so obsessed with Hunter Biden: Guilt over Trump

Posted on December 8, 2022 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

For seven long years, Republicans have serially debased themselves at the altar of Donald Trump—a ramshackle shrine that isn’t as ornate and gold leaf-gilded as you might think. Actually, it’s just like a traditional altar, except if God ever asked Trump to sacrifice his firstborn son on it, Trump would be elbows deep in failson viscera before Yahweh had a chance to tell him He was kidding.

But hey, some might say it’s out of bounds to go after an ex-president’s children—unless they work for his administration, campaign for him endlessly, or repeatedly show up on Fox News as his surrogate. So Barron is off-limits—at least until he’s caught on camera riding Rudy Giuliani around the West Palm Beach Spearmint Rhino like a horsey. Until that day, don’t you dare even mention his name.

But Republicans—they have no such forbearance. Their strategy for fighting inflation, creating jobs, and promoting democracy both here and abroad is single-pronged and simple: investigate Hunter Biden. After all, he has, well, nothing at all to do with his father's administration—but like millions of Americans, he’s battled a substance abuse problem, and so Republicans think they can embarrass our president to the point where he loses it and starts prescribing bleach shots for respiratory diseases and squirreling away top secret nuclear documents in his neck wattle.

Never mind that when it comes to Hunter Biden, all that Republicans are likely to find are some peccadilloes that are personally embarrassing—to Hunter Biden. Meanwhile, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner skipped town with a $2 billion loan from Prince Bone Saws, and No. 1 child Ivanka scored some sweet trademarks from China as her dad threatened and menaced its government with tariffs.

So why are Republicans doing this? Because they’re a waste of time, carbon, and oxygen? Yes, of course—but that’s only part of the answer. The real reason, according to conservative columnist Mona Charen, is pervasive guilt.

In a new column for The Bulwark, Charen argues that Trumpland is so up to its oleaginous teats in gaudy scandal, it has no choice but to paint its opponents with the same off-brand, lead-based paints its been marinating in for most of the past decade.

For seven years, the right has been explaining, excusing, avoiding, and eventually cheering the most morally depraved figure in American politics. That takes a toll on the psyche. You can tell yourself that the other side is worse. Or you can tell yourself that the critics are unhinged, suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” whereas you are a man of the world who knows nobody’s perfect. But then Trump will do what he always does—he’ll make a fool of you. You denied that Trump purposely broke the law when he took highly classified documents to Mar-A-Lago and obstructed every effort to retrieve them. And then what does Trump do? He admits taking them! You scoff at the critics who’ve compared Trump with Nazis. And then what does he do? He has dinner with Nazis! (And fails to condemn them even after the fact.) You despised people who claimed Trump was a threat to the Constitution, and then Trump explicitly calls for “terminating” the Constitution in order to put himself back in the Oval Office.

Yup. Whatever fever dream you can conjure about Joe Biden and his family, Trump’s real life will eventually top it. Guaranteed. And it’s not even close. So Republicans’ only option now—other than embracing truth and belatedly attempting to salvage some modicum of dignity (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha … whoo! … *wipes away tear*)—is to try to make Biden look just as bad as the guy they gifted with a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, Trump keeps fouling up their plans by continuing to breathe and speak.

President Biden is hardly the first president to have troubled family members. But Joe Biden didn’t hire Hunter at the White House, and if there is any evidence of the president using official influence on Hunter’s behalf, we haven’t seen it. The Department of Justice under President Trump opened an investigation into Hunter Biden. President Biden has left it alone. It’s ongoing.

So even though Hunter Biden’s alleged misdeeds have nothing at all to do with Joe Biden’s administration, the president has refused to intervene on his son’s behalf. Contrast that with Trump, who used the DOJ to spin the Mueller report, tried to use it to steal the 2020 election, and openly criticized his first attorney general for refusing to act as his mob consigliere.

The right has a deep psychological need for the Hunter Biden story. They desperately want Joe Biden to be corrupt and for the whole family to be, in [GOP Rep. Elise] Stefanik’s words, “a crime family” because they have provided succor and support to someone who has encouraged political violence since his early rallies in 2015, has stoked hatred of minorities through lies, has used his office for personal gain in the most flagrant fashion, has surrounded himself with criminals and con men, has committed human rights violations against would-be immigrants by separating children from their parents, has pardoned war criminals, has cost the lives of tens of thousands of COVID patients by discounting the virus and peddling quack cures, has revived racism in public discourse, and attempted a violent coup d’etat.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I couldn’t have said it better myself—because if I’d said it, I would have felt compelled to compare Trump unfavorably to a pumpkin-spiced whale placenta, and that may have lacked the necessary gravitas.

But whatever we on the American side of our country’s current political divide have to say, Republicans will likely go full Republican regardless. Their interminable Benghazi investigations surely contributed to Hillary Clinton’s eventual defenestration, and they can’t wait to perform the same black magic with Joe Biden’s troubled son.

The fact that there’s very little “there” there will hardly dissuade them. But maybe, just maybe, the American people will be wise to their tricks this time around. After all, Donald Trump’s trail of corruption is hard to miss—and Republicans will no doubt be slipping on that slug slime for many years to come, no matter how many distractions they try to throw in our path.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

This is the day the world changed: Three years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic began

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Mark Sumner

On this date three years ago, a man walked into Hubei Provincial Hospital in Wuhan, China, reporting flu-like symptoms. Within two weeks, there were 27 cases showing similar symptoms. Then, just four days before the end of the year, the head of the hospital’s respiratory department, Dr. Zhang Jixian, made a report to state health officials that the cases were caused by “a novel coronavirus.” At that point, the number of known infections was approaching 180.

Dec. 1 may have been the official start of the local novel coronavirus outbreak that would become a national epidemic that would become the COVID-19 pandemic. But it certainly wasn’t the first actual case. As early as March 2020, a review of health records suggested that the first case had actually been seen in Wuhan as early as Nov. 17, and that there had been a steady trickle of new cases for two weeks before that first official case.

It would take another two years before scientists were able to pin down what had been suspected all along—the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was almost certainly the “wet” market in Wuhan, where a wide variety of wild-caught animals were sold for food and traditional medicine. A similar market was the source of the original SARS virus in 2002. A combination of health care records and genetic information suggests that the virus made the jump from animals to humans at least twice in the closing months of 2019, though exactly which animal played host to the virus before it made the jump remains unclear.

With all that, it’s hard to give an official date for when the pandemic that has now generated at least 650 million cases and 6.6 million deaths around the world really began. But today is as good a day as any to say, “This is the day the world changed.”

To mark this third anniversary, it seems like a good time to hit some “highlights” of the pandemic’s early days and how it was covered at Daily Kos—much of which, I’m going to tell you right now, easily devolves into “look at all the stuff I got wrong.”

Dec. 31, 2019 — A doctor in China unofficially notifies World Health Organization (WHO) that it has detected a cluster of cases involving “a pneumonia of unknown etiology.” China would send an official notification to WHO on Jan. 3.

Jan. 21, 2020 — China confirms that the disease is spreading from person to person. At this point, the number of known cases in China is approaching 300, and there are single cases known in Japan, Thailand, and South Korea.

Jan. 23, 2020 — The first article on the outbreak at Daily Kos. That article got some things right.

The outbreak that began near the city of Wuhan is caused by a coronavirus, one of a number of viruses in a poorly understood group that also includes SARS. … The ease with which the new virus is apparently spread through the air, or through superficial contact, suggests that it may be transferred even more readily than the SARS virus, which killed at least 800 in its initial outbreak.

And some things very, very wrong.

...officials everywhere have been faster to act, faster to impose restrictions, and faster to identify the underlying cause of the outbreak than they had been in the case of SARS. Restricting the spread of an emerging disease remains a near-impossible task, but health officials around the world are giving it a really extraordinary try.

Jan. 31, 2020 — It would be a week before the novel coronavirus reached the front page of Daily Kos again. In our defense, there were a few things going on at the time—such as Donald Trump facing his first impeachment trial in the Senate. That second article actually came on the same day that the House impeachment managers wrapped up their case. Even at this point, what would become a very familiar theme was starting to emerge. And so was that theme of getting something right, followed by getting something else so very wrong.

... it is time to consider the possible effects of prolonged disruption from interrupted supply chains, shortages of items manufactured in China, or further restrictions of travel and trade. Companies, educational facilities, and city managers are already looking at what it could mean if there is an extended disruption of normal activities—not because the coronavirus is likely to have the devastating reach of the 1918 flu, but because the steps necessary to arrest its spread may mean taking unfamiliar actions.

At that point, the frequency of covered increased sharply—which included me providing now highly cringe-worthy praise of China’s management of the outbreak—and it wouldn’t be a week before the “P” word was being thrown around.

Feb. 5, 2020 — What had started with a tiny cluster of cases a month earlier was now approaching 25,000, and small numbers of cases had appeared in an astounding 24 countries. It was a testimony to both how easily the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be spread, and to how interconnected our world has become.

Still, 2019-nCoV is not yet a global pandemic. Despite some alarming cases, including a number of infections aboard a now-quarantined cruise ship, it remains an outbreak with just one real epicenter. However, keeping things that way is going to be difficult. And expensive.

Feb. 6, 2020 — Just a day later came news of the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, one of a group of doctors in Wuhan who had risked their careers to buck both local and state officials and get out the news about the initial outbreak. Li was a previously healthy 34-year-old. His death would make him not just a martyr to the case of transparency, but a signpost for how bad things might become. Even so, half of the post this day was devoted to staying hopeful that the outbreak in China was slowing down, that measures seemed to be preventing a similar outbreak elsewhere, and hey, didn’t SARS burn out just a few weeks after its first appearance?

It would be easy to present a version of this story that played up all the things that were right in these early articles—showing that this virus would be more transmissible than SARS, warnings about the need for quick intervention to isolate cases when detected, walking through the evidence to show that the virus was not the product of a weapons lab, and predictions about coming impacts to fragile international supply chains—but there was just as much wrong. That included praising policy in China that was not only brutal, but may have contributed to spreading the disease by encouraging people to hide symptoms. There was also a lot of happy, hopeful, “don’t panic” talk that utterly missed the boat on the real scale of the threat and the necessary steps to check the coming pandemic. Also, as happened way too many times over the next year, I repeatedly got lost in the statistics, grinding away at numbers to see if I could squeeze just one hint of a rainbow out of all those dark clouds.

The level of naivete can easily be expressed by this headline from Feb. 11, 2020.

Novel coronavirus deaths exceed 1,000. Are there more grim milestones ahead?

It’s safe to say the answer was “yes.” The number of deaths would double in one week, and of course, that was barely the start of a graph that would lead to 6,641,418, as of today.

Three years later, reviewing those early reports about what would eventually be the COVID-19 pandemic leaves me with a lot of embarrassment. It’s hard to find anything in there that seems all that prescient—or all that useful—this far down the line.

One thing that does stand out in these early reports is just how rarely Donald Trump gets mentioned in connection with the virus, because that’s how little he was involved in doing anything about it. It wouldn’t be until Feb. 26, 2020, that Trump finally got around to creating his infamous task force on the virus, the one that Mike Pence would nominally lead, but which Trump would turn into a platform for promoting quack cures and attacking science.

That came one day after what may have been the most accurate statement issued by any official to that point.

On Tuesday, Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that Americans can expect to see the COVID-19 coronavirus spread within the United States, and that “disruption to everyday life may be severe.“ Messonier acknowledged in a press briefing, “This whole situation may seem overwhelming,” before revealing that she had been warning her own children that they needed to prepare for what’s coming. “Ultimately, we expect we will see community spread in this country. It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more exactly when this will happen, and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

After making that statement, Messonier was carefully removed from public speaking roles, sidelined from her daily briefings, and not made a part of Trump’s task force.

But no one may have given a better summary of what was coming than she did less than two months after the first announcement from WHO.

Republicans roiled as McCarthy likely faces first floor fight over leadership in a century

Posted on November 28, 2022 (Updated November 28, 2022) by Joan McCarter

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy heads into this week on very shaky ground. The wannabe speaker will have a tiny majority—four or five seats, depending on the result in the last uncalled race un California’s 13th District. He’s already got five GOP opponents of his speakership, enough to scuttle it.

That could mean the first floor fight for speaker in exactly 100 years, when Republican Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts had to undergo nine votes over a number of days, with a lot of negotiations and many concessions along the way. The leader of the breakaway Republicans, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, challenged McCarthy in the full GOP conference vote for speaker earlier this month and isn’t going to stop fighting.

“He doesn’t have the votes,” Biggs, a leader of the Freedom Caucus, told NBC News. “Some of the stages of grief include denial, so there will be some denial, and then there’ll be the stage of bargaining where people are trying to figure out … will there be some kind of consensus candidate that emerges.”

Biggs and his cohorts—Reps. Bob Good of Virginia, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Matt Rosendale of Montana—are all publicly opposing McCarthy. Good told Politico that he thinks there are at least a dozen who are solid “no” votes. The tally from that secret balloting in the GOP conference was 188-31. That’s a long way from the 218 McCarthy’s going to need, and a lot of bargaining that Democrats are already branding as “corrupt.”

A nonprofit group called Facts First USA, chaired by former GOP Rep. David Jolly of Florida and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, has a memo circulating among Democrats to highlight just how much McCarthy’s going to cave to the maniacs in order to emerge victorious. The messaging in the memo could play to the Republican moderates, who could definitely play the spoiler role in this fight.

“Democrats should undertake a concerted messaging campaign over the next 5 weeks through January 3rd to brand McCarthy’s struggling campaign to win the speakership as a ‘corrupt bargain’ he is striking with ultra MAGA extremists in the Republican caucus to attain the 218 votes he needs to secure the job,” longtime Democratic activist David Brock wrote in the memo.

That’s not going to be hard, looking at what happened on Day One of the GOP majority. That was the day of the press conference from Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the expected Judiciary Committee chair, about their investigation into the Biden family and the whole QAnon Hunter laptop thing they’re into. Brock labeled it an “unhinged rant” in his memo, and he wasn’t wrong.

It’s not going to be at all difficult for Democrats to use this messaging, that McCarthy is going to make a “corrupt bargain with MAGA” maniacs and allow them to “run wild with any conspiracy theory investigation or impeachment in exchange for their vote.” We’re already there. He’s made the unofficial Q spokesperson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a part of his ad hoc leadership team and probably promised her a seat on the Oversight committee. Her pal Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, the white supremacist whisperer, is likely going to get his Oversight seat back—the one that was stripped in the current Congress because he is so dangerous.

Meanwhile, Democrats are in total array as the leadership passes from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to a new generation. They’re also relishing the prospect of watching the GOP civil war play out after McCarthy and crew did their best to derail Pelosi’s very slim—and very successful—majority of the past two years.

“They’re going to be fraught with fractures and friction and challenges and apostates. I wish them well in trying to manage that crowd,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia in a Politico interview. He predicted even worse problems for McCarthy than his predecessors faced. “Paul Ryan and John Boehner both had a bigger majority, and they couldn’t exercise control.” And they both were essentially forced out by the maniacs.

The good part, should House and Senate Democrats manage to get as organized and efficient together as possible, is that McCarthy and crew shouldn’t be able to create a lot of damage legislatively. “I don’t lie awake at night worrying about the bad legislation they are going to pass. Because I don’t think they’re going to pass it,” said Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia.

What’s going to make life even harder for McCarthy is his pledge to end proxy voting in the House. It’s been effect for almost all of this Congress because of the COVID-19 pandemic. McCarthy can’t not end it at this point—he had such a hissy fit over it he took it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to even hear it. He’s got to end it, and that means that on any given day, he would have even fewer votes available to accomplish anything.

Unless he strikes a bargain with moderates and Democrats, assuming he does end up with the speakership. It’s just possible that the corrupt bargain label sticks hard enough to McCarthy that moderates hold out and vote with Democrats on an alternative speaker. It’s not terribly likely, but it’s also not impossible.

Those 31 votes McCarthy didn’t get in the secret ballot aren’t all Freedom maniacs—a big chunk could be up for grabs to allow that 218 votes to go to a consensus candidate from Democrats and the few dozen GOP moderates. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

As the final results of the 2022 midterm elections came into focus this past week, the lack of clarity in the GOP’s leadership also became apparent. Kerry and Markos break down what this means for Democratic voters going forward and how Donald Trump’s campaign for president is a lose lose proposition for Republicans.

Embedded Content

Republicans don’t have an ‘energy agenda.’ They have a vendetta against Democrats

Pillow Man Mike Lindell is itching to challenge Ronna McDaniel for RNC chair

Posted on November 28, 2022 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

It’s crystal clear why Republicans had such a disappointing showing on Election Day. They didn’t harp on the 2020 election enough, didn’t embrace Donald Trump nearly closely enough (because when you do, hard candies and Happy Meal tchotchkes spill from his neck wattle like a piñata), and didn’t make it clear enough to Americans that a vote for GOP candidates was a vote for an elysian Christian dominionist future where abortion is universally acknowledged as an atrocity lying somewhere on the sin continuum between hanging Mike Pence and brutally profaning the name of Barron Trump.

Well, Pillow Man Mike Lindell, whose mustache pomade is almost certainly lead-based, is hoping to fix all that—by challenging Ronna McDaniel for chair of the Republican National Committee.

So McDaniel, who already gave up her name and what was left of her dignity to solidify her hold on the position, could now lose her job as well if Lindell has anything to say about it (which, to be clear, he really doesn’t. I mean, come on.).

Newsweek:

Prominent conspiracy theorist and pillow tycoon Mike Lindell is weighing up a challenge to Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel for leadership of the party following the GOP's underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

In an appearance on his "Frank TV" livestream this week, the MyPillow CEO asked fans whether they would support him pursuing a bid against the sitting RNC chairwoman, whom he has previously criticized for her lack of effort to overturn the results of a 2020 election Lindell baselessly claims was rigged against former President Donald Trump.

They overwhelmingly did and Lindell—who has faced federal inquiries for his connections to a Colorado-based effort to prove fraud in that state's election—said he would seriously consider challenging McDaniel.

Mike Lindell announces that he has been drafted by his fans and supporters to run against Ronna McDaniel for RNC Chair, but he has to pray on it first. pic.twitter.com/JPNBCoX6uk
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 24, 2022

LINDELL: “Guys, if you support me running for, against Ronna McDaniel, please email me. I’m not gonna be able to email you back, but I want to hear, I want to read all this. I want the feedback. I want to know anything you see negative about it. One of the things I will tell you, you know, there will never, ever stop to get rid of these machines and make this the best elections in world history in our country. … We need something, everybody, and I would, I’ll step into that if, God willing.”

God willing? God’s been letting your prayers go straight to voicemail for years, dude. At this point you’re more likely to get a restraining order from God than any kind of coherent answer.

Now, Lindell mustering his motley army of deludenoids to do anything more complicated than aimlessly loiter in a random field in Wisconsin seems pretty far-fetched. But so did “President Donald J. Trump.” And we all know how that turned out.

So let’s pray for this to happen. Because Republicans clearly have not learned their lesson yet—namely, that there’s no point in voting because all our elections are fraudulent, abortion is a winning issue for conservatives, and what every suburban mom really wants to see is the beatific visage of Donald John Trump shining through their front bay windows like a jowly Chernobyl yeti.

Because what the GOP really needs is at least two more years of this:

Mike Lindell says he is about to “expose everything” with “cyber evidence” about how every election in AZ, PA, and MI was stolen. “They’re caught!” pic.twitter.com/8VosgLT0RK
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 21, 2022

Godspeed, Pillow Man. Godspeed.

Sen. Raphael Warnock is still defending his Georgia seat, and the Dec. 6 runoff is coming fast. If you can—and if you aren’t too tired from saving America on Nov. 8—please rush a donation to Team Warnock now! You can also write letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward! Let’s finish up strong!

Democratic strategists launch ‘war room’ project to investigate and unmask GOP House inquisitors

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Dartagnan

If Hunter Biden’s alleged substance abuse issues, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 strategy and alleged relationship to China, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ immigration policies are fair game for exploration in House Republicans’ planned, upcoming Benghazi-style show trials, then it only seems fair that Rep. Jim Jordan’s alleged enabling of sexual predators, the ties of Rep. Paul Gosar and others in the Republican Party to virulent white supremacist organizations, even Rep. Matt Gaetz’s alleged afterparty cocaine antics get similar scrutiny. After all, the American people certainly deserve to be fully apprised of the character of the people most responsible for these hearings in order to best make an informed judgment.

Although they won’t have the ability to issue the subpoenas themselves, there is nothing stopping Democrats or their agents from researching public records or conducting detailed interviews with folks who have first-hand knowledge of the sterling character qualities of these House Republicans, all of whom appear so intent on highlighting their own moral authority in these hearings. It might also prove useful to understand exactly who funds their campaigns to satisfy American citizens that there are no hidden interests motivating them in their official duties.

Others appear to agree. As reported by Heidi Przybyla and Jordain Carney for POLITICO, Democratic strategists have launched a “war room” that’s dedicated to exploring, highlighting and publicizing the character and connections of the very Republican inquisitors (and their colleagues) who will be inflicting this investigation-o-rama upon the American people.

As Przybala and Carney write:

The newly relaunched Congressional Integrity Project initiative, details of which were shared first with POLITICO, will include rapid response teams, investigative researchers, pollsters and eventually a paid media campaign to put congressional Republicans “squarely on the defense,” founder Kyle Herrig said in an interview.

The “multimillion dollar” effort is designed to create an effective counter-narrative that will be impossible for anyone to ignore (except, perhaps, Fox News).

It’s designed to serve as the party’s “leading war room” to push back on House Republican investigations, Herrig said in an interview. He added that the project would “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work, and hold them accountable for ignoring the urgent priorities of all Americans in order to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump and MAGA Republicans.”

The project (which, according to POLITICO, has been cleared by Democratic House leadership) will “immediately” target the chairpersons and lead participants of these investigations. That laudable goal notwithstanding, there appears to be no reason for this project to limit itself to merely unmasking Republicans on the Oversight Committees alone. Hunter Biden, for example, is a private citizen whose name Republicans (like Gaetz, for example) have seen fit to drag through the mud at every turn.

Likewise, Fauci holds no elected post in government. If Republicans intend to score their political points at the expense of intruding on these people’s privacy and personal lives—or cast unfounded aspersions on their alleged motivations—they would appear to have forfeited the right to protest any counter-investigations and publication of the foibles of their own colleagues and associates:

As the old saying goes, “What’s good for the goose …”

One of the leaders of the project, Democratic strategist Brad Woodhouse, emphasized to POLITICO that their group will employ “every tactic available” in order to ensure that we Americans, forced to witness these spectacles, will have a clear picture of these Republican interrogators and their motivations. The project will also employ the services of former Obama administration officials, as well as senior aides and advisers from President Joe Biden’s transition team and former Senate office.

As Przybyla and Carney explain:

The Congressional Integrity Project is also aiming to raise funds for a paid media campaign, including dedicated websites, digital ads, mobile billboards, newspaper ads and, occasionally, TV ad buys. Its public opinion research will be shared with like-minded organizations and congressional allies to contrast GOP investigations with issues the American public cares most about, project leaders said.

Their overall goal is to ensure that the Republicans’ planned inquisition prompts a voter backlash from Americans dismayed at these pointless, staged fiascos, and specifically seeks to ensure there is no repeat of Republicans’ colossally wasteful, two-year “Benghazi” debacle.

So, by all means, let the games begin. No doubt there are some families of Ohio State alumni, at least, who might express an interest.

As Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock prepares for his Dec. 6 Senate runoff against Republican Herschel Walker, Warnock and the people of Georgia need all the help we can give. Click here to donate $3 or more to Team Warnock today!

Pelosi is right: It’s time to usher in a new era of Democratic leadership

Posted on November 18, 2022 by Kerry Eleveld

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a 1,000 headlines Thursday when she announced she would not seek reelection as Democratic leader in the upcoming Congress.

That declaration alone would have ushered in a new era for House Democrats after two decades under her leadership, but Pelosi also helped clear the decks entirely for a new, younger leadership team to take over. Not only is Pelosi leaving her post, so are her top deputies Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the number two and number three House Democrats, respectively.

Clyburn's statement celebrating Pelosi's tenure included a nod to the future as he pledged to assist "our new generation of Democratic Leaders which I hope to be Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar.” Baton passed.

Regardless of whether House Democrats' leadership transition will proceed that cleanly (as it appears to be doing), the Democratic caucus now gets an entirely fresh start to elevate leaders of their choosing. They can take stock of the times, their needs, and elect a team they trust to chart a new course to the future.

True to her brand, Pelosi appears to be making a pitch-perfect exit. From shattering glass ceilings as the first female speaker to becoming an anti-Trump icon, Pelosi demonstrated steely resolve throughout 45's tenure, stewarded President Joe Biden's historic agenda through a razor-thin majority, and will now stick around to mentor an upcoming Democratic class.

Meanwhile House Republicans are already dissolving into utter chaos as they anticipate a majority with roughly the same number of members Pelosi counted during Biden’s highly productive inaugural years.

what a contrast: incoming GOP Speaker (maybe) will have 221 members in his caucus & it's widely acknowledged it will be an unmanageable shit show outgoing Dem Speaker had 221 members and passed so many significant pieces of legislation to improve lives thanks @SpeakerPelosi
— Joe Sudbay (@JoeSudbay) November 17, 2022

Campaign Action

Frankly, Biden, Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York should be enormously proud of their work and buoyed by the results of a midterm nearly everyone had predicted would result in a Democratic drubbing.

Though the outcome fell short of a Democratic sweep, Senate Democrats could still pad their majority while their House counterparts enter the next election cycle already within striking distance of reclaiming the gavel.

Biden, who had been pilloried for his low approvals, never became the drag pundits had ordained him to be. In fact, Biden arguably proved to be a net plus by repeatedly pledging to codify abortion rights while reengaging young voters with student debt cancellation, historic investments in fighting climate change, and moving toward decriminalizing marijuana.

If anything, the midterms strengthened Biden’s argument for running for reelection in 2024. But it's time to consider the possibility that Pelosi has got this right: It's time for a changing of the guard.

Just like his congressional counterparts, Biden outperformed expectations by a lot. He showed up in states where he could be helpful, such as Pennsylvania, while keeping a low profile elsewhere. He ultimately gave the Democratic base lots of reasons to get to the polls. And toward the end of the cycle, Biden closed on a message of GOP extremism, warning voters of the threat the party now poses to democracy and the fact that Republicans planned to cut Social Security and Medicare. In an era that is completely unpredictable and defies historic precedent, Biden navigated the turbulent atmospherics just about right.

And yet the president continues to seem bewildered by an unrecognizable political landscape that constantly cuts against his core and offends his sensibilities.

As The New York Times' Peter Baker wrote just before Election Day:

These are frustrating, even perplexing times for Mr. Biden, who according to confidants had expected the fever of polarizing politics to have broken by now and was surprised that it had not. The presidency he envisioned, one where he presided over a moment of reconciliation, is not the presidency he has gotten. He thought that if he could simply govern well, everything would work out, which in hindsight strikes some around him as shockingly naïve if somewhat endearing.

“In the old days, when I was a United States senator, we’d argue like hell with one another, disagree fundamentally, and go down to the Senate dining room and have lunch together,” Mr. Biden reflected to an audience in San Diego last week. “Because we disagreed on the issues, but we agreed on the notion that the institutions matter.”

“Well, the institutions are under full-blown attack,” he added. “I’m already being told, if they win back the House and Senate, they’re going to impeach me. I don’t know what the hell they’ll impeach me for.”

After the country narrowly escaped Trump's treacherous clutches, it was perhaps soothing to be led by a president so firmly rooted in a bygone era of shared commitments and institutional collegiality. Biden’s mere presence recalls a time when U.S. lawmakers almost universally considered America’s enemies without to be greater threats than its enemies within. And based on the midterm results, Biden clearly rose to the occasion even though it's an occasion that has dismayed him. Looking back over the arc of Biden’s presidential speeches, they were far more aggressive, forceful, and on point than he got credit for.

But as Pelosi noted in her speech, "for everything there is a season."

"Now we must move boldly into the future, grounded by the principles that have propelled us this far and open to fresh possibilities," Pelosi said.

Democrats have always been about moving boldly into the future while Republicans nostalgically cling to the past. A recent PRRI poll found that two-thirds of Republicans agreed with the statement, "Since the 1950's, American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse."

PRRI pollster Natalie Jackson called the 1950s question a "key predictor" of a person's support for Donald Trump and/or the Republican Party.

So as Republicans descend into crisis over who is the true leader of the party of yesteryear, perhaps now is a good time to consider which Democrats might emerge to lead the party of tomorrow.

The midterms have served as a proving ground for plenty of breakout Democratic talent that runs the spectrum from unabashedly liberal to battleground tested. Some campaigned in shorts and hoodies while others donned T-shirts emblazoned with the words, "my body, my decision." Taken together with some standouts from the 2020 contest, Democrats have a wealth of barrier-breakers in the making in terms of gender, religion, race, and sexual orientation.

The advantages of incumbency are massive, and there's certainly an argument to be made that Democrats stand a better chance of keeping the White House in 2024 if they stick with a president who is already in it. That’s the case that is ultimately Biden’s to make should he choose to do so.

But in 2024, Democrats could face anyone from the thrice-defeated Trump to a fresher face like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Either way, Democrats must live up to being the party of the future. That's what we expect of ourselves, and that's what America needs from us.

One way or the other, Democrats will emerge united to defeat an illiberal anti-democratic GOP that hopes to impose its 1950s values on a 21st century country. But for now, we should be exploring both the best message and best messenger to carry us forward. Biden proved to be that person in 2020, but whether he will reclaim that mantle in 2024 remains to be seen.

How are we going to win the Georgia runoff? By helping nonprofit groups in frontline communities get out the Democratic vote. Chip in $1 today to each of these amazing organizations.

Election Night 2022 was full of surprises—mostly for people pushing the last couple months of traditional media narrative of a "red tsunami." The problem is that Americans are not super into the GOP. Markos and Kerry have been saying the media narrative was wrong for months, and on Tuesday, Daily Kos and The Brief team was validated.

Embedded Content

The 1950s question that is a key predictor of Trump/GOP supporters

'There was a lot of finger-pointing' at brutal hours-long Senate Republican meeting

The GOP reckoning at hand is long overdue. Naturally, Republicans will still manage to fail

Ex-MAGA mite Mo Brooks says Trump is ‘dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude’

Posted on November 15, 2022 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump, and for once it’s not just because he’s expanding. Republicans stuck with him through the Access Hollywood tape, Charlottesville, family separation, the Big Lie, the insurrection, two impeachments, interminable outrages, and tens of thousands of corrosive lies. But if there’s one thing Republicans won’t abide, it’s losing a chance at retaking the Senate and giving more tax breaks to billionaires.

And now one congressman—who found out too late that Trump is loyal only to himself, his appetites, and his gargoylish gonads—is saying what anyone with a functional brain stem has known for decades: Donald Trump is simply awful.

GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, who, acting on Trump’s behalf, was the first member of Congress to object to the 2020 presidential election results, has now gone full Michael Cohen on the ocher abomination. And it’s a beautiful sight.

Of course, Trump and Brooks’ relationship has been ice cold for some time. At an August 2021 rally, Brooks said voters should put the 2020 election behind them despite Trump’s continued obsession with somehow overturning it—which, of course, Trump asked Brooks to help him do, even after Biden had taken office. Eventually, Trump had had enough of Brooks’ insolence and un-endorsed him for Senate.

Well, now Brooks is warning his fellow Republicans about Trump in advance of Trump’s expected presidential announcement on Tuesday. Like they really need a warning after what happened last Tuesday. AL.com:

“It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” Brooks said in an interview with AL.com. “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”

A reference, of course, to virtual campaign events Biden held from his home in Delaware during the pandemic.

“It’s just the way it is,” Brooks said.

Ope! It’s almost like this whole Trump-as-president experiment was a disaster for everyone—his friends as well as his enemies.

So if you’re thinking of getting in bed with Trump, you should think twice. And I mean that figuratively, of course. If you’re thinking of literally getting in bed with Trump, you should hire an EMT to follow you around with an Igloo cooler full of penicillin for the next two decades.

So that’s one more right-wing Republican off the Trump bandwagon. If you keep losing people from an already losing coalition, things probably don’t look great for your future. Unless you can recruit a lot more liberal Democrats to QAnon.

Sure. Good luck with that, Sparky.

And here you thought the midterms were over. Oh, no. Raphael Warnock is still defending his Senate seat. If you can—and if you aren’t too tired of saving America—rush a donation to Warnock now. Let’s finish up strong!

Kash Patel given ‘limited immunity’ after repeatedly using 5th Amendment to evade testimony

Posted on November 3, 2022 (Updated November 3, 2022) by Mark Sumner

Kashyap Patel, former aide to Devin Nunes turned one of Donald Trump’s closest advisors, has been granted limited immunity to secure his testimony before the grand jury investigating the theft of classified documents and their illegal retention at Mar-a-Lago.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in an earlier appearance before the grand jury, Patel repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, making it impossible to gain meaningful information. Attorneys for the Department of Justice attempted to get the presiding judge to force Patel to provide information relevant to the investigation, and argued that none of the questions they were asking were directed at surfacing any criminal action by Patel, but the judge ruled that Patel could not be made to testify without immunity on the basis of possible future action. Now Patel will get that immunity and will make a second appearance before the grand jury.

When headlines announce that someone will testify on a grant of immunity, it is generally taken to mean that some kind of deal has been reached. That is not the case here. Patel does not want to testify. He remains a hostile witness. He’s just not being given any choice. And the fact that the DOJ is willing to give him immunity to hear what he has to say shows that this investigation has just one real target.

Campaign Action

Patel is the only person who claims to be a witness to Trump declassifying the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Speaking to Breitbart News, Patel said, “I was there with President Trump when he said, ‘We are declassifying this information.’”

It’s a fair bet that this unique claim was one of the first things that Patel was asked about when he was brought before the grand jury. And one of the first issues was he pulled out the Fifth Amendment. Now he will be facing that question again, and will have nowhere to hide. It’s a good bet that his answer will not match what he told Breitbart.

That is, if Patel chooses to answer at all. The fact that he declared he didn’t have to testify under the protection provided by the Fifth Amendment is interesting just in itself. Because it means that Patel did not try to slip testimony on the basis of executive privilege.

That could mean that the questions Patel was being asked all concerned issues that arose after Trump left office. Or it might mean that Patel was saving that executive privilege claim in his other pocket, for just this occasion.

Patel first gained the favor of Donald Trump by helping former congressman Nunes write a memo that put FBI sources and methods at risk in an effort to undercut the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Patel became a frequent visitor to the White House and joined Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine in attempting to find dirt on Hunter Biden. As his “Ukraine whisperer,” Trump made Patel an aide to the National Security Council. Trump considered Patel his Ukraine expert during the efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian government that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Patel next helped get Sec. of Defense Mark Esper fired by declaring Esper’s refusal to send the army against Black Lives Matter protesters “disloyal” to Trump. Trump rewarded Patel’s own loyalty by making him chief of staff to the new Secretary of Defense. Patel was reportedly Trump’s pick to head the CIA—a sharp rise from a congressional aide in just three years—when a little matter of getting tossed from the office got in the way.

During his time in Washington, Patel developed a well-earned reputation as a man who would cut any corner, and stab any back, to get closer to Trump. As a Pentagon official told The Washington Post last year, Patel was simply “a direct threat to lawful government.”

He also wrote the “worst children’s book of all time,” in which he is the heroic defender of good king Donald.

More recently, Patel has been in the news as one of Trump’s chief spokesmen on the classified documents that the FBI removed from Mar-a-Lago following a warranted search. Unsurprisingly, Patel has been the leader of the “Trump declassified them all, so he did nothing wrong” choir.

However, no matter how many times Trump has made that claim in public, he hasn’t done so in court. He hasn’t done it, because he knows that it’s a lie. As a quick check of just one recent and relevant case shows… “declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures.” Declassification of highly compartmentalized documents regarding the nuclear capacity of another nation must follow lengthy and detailed steps leading to declassification, none of which involves Trump “just thinking about it.”

The immunity grant for Patel took effect on Wednesday, signaling that his testimony before the jury has either already happened, or will happen soon. As with all grand jury testimony, it’s unlikely that any of it will be made public. However, should that jury issue indictments, Patel is likely to be given the opportunity for an encore.

Texting Democratic voters and helping them make a "plan" to vote is one of the easiest and most effective things you can do to help get out the vote. Click here to see what opportunities are available, and sign up for a get-out-the-vote texting shift now!

Want to ruin an insurrectionist's day? Chip in $5 to help defeat MAGA militants running for office in eight battleground states this November.

Ukraine update: Fiona Hill declares Ukraine invasion is ‘the end of the existing world order’

Posted on October 19, 2022 (Updated October 20, 2022) by Mark Sumner

Former National Security Counsel director Fiona Hill became a household name during her deposition for Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Her fearless, straightforward, no-nonsense testimony on both Trump’s actions and diplomatic issues has made Hill one of the nation’s most respected experts on international relations, especially when it comes to all things Russia. Now, in a new interview with Politico, Hill is bringing equally blunt about what’s happening in Eastern Europe.

“This is a great power conflict, “ said Hill. “The third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.”

The article itself is hidden behind a clickbait headline about Elon Musk, but while Hill does have something to say about the appeal of Putin to guys like Musk or Trump (“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.”), the more important message is that the battle going on in Ukraine isn’t a fight about who will control Crimea. It’s about who will own the future.

It was during that deposition for Trump’s first impeachment that Hill called Trump’s blackmail call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “really kind of my worst fears and nightmares” in terms of an “effort not just to subvert the national security process but to try to subvert what really should be a diplomatic effort.”

Hill’s insightful, informed discussion of the issues, and her explanation of how Russia and Ukraine both saw Trump’s efforts to manipulate the situation for his own benefit, made her a standout witness. In later interviews, Hill explained how she warned Trump that Vladimir Putin actually wants to use nuclear weapons and that Russia’s threats to Ukraine couldn’t be ignored, but needed to be met with a “major international response.”

This time, what Hill has to say isn’t all about Putin’s ability to manipulate men who are easily bullied, but about how Putin himself has defined the illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in a way that means the U.S., NATO, and the world can’t afford to step back.

As she points out, a hallmark of Putin is that when something he does turns out to be a failure, he doesn’t step away. He doubles down. “[Putin] always takes the more extreme step in his range of options,” said Hill, “the one that actually cuts off other alternatives. Putin has often related an experience he had as a kid, when he trapped a rat in a corner in the apartment building he lived in, in Leningrad, and the rat shocked him by jumping out and fighting back.” It says something that Putin identifies with that rat.

The Russian dictator insists on fighting even when, as in this case, “he’s also the person who puts himself in the corner.” In spite of extraordinarily high casualties (Hill notes that some estimates now show Russian losses at over 90,000), Putin isn’t taking steps to reduce future casualties. Instead he’s throwing more bodies at the situation. Russia ran through many of it’s best trained, best equipped forces in the opening weeks of the war. Now it is mobilizing untrained men, most of them out of shape, many of them elderly or ill, and forcing them to the front with only the slightest nod toward training. The families of some of those who were “recruited” following Putin’s big mobilization speech have already received death notices.

For Hill, Putin has launched himself into a no-win situation, but he’s unwilling, or even incapable, of stepping away. His only end game is one in which he leaves on his own terms. Putin doesn’t just want to win the war, he wants to crush Ukraine. To “cow” people into submission, erase their culture, obliterate their boundaries into “Novorossiya,” and “remove Ukraine from the map and from global affairs.” And just because what’s happening in Ukraine doesn’t fit the image people have for a World War III—one dominated by an exchange of strategic nuclear weapons—that doesn’t mean what’s happening is any more dismissible than the events that generated past world wars.

“We’re having a hard time coming to terms with what we’re dealing with here,” said Hill. “This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.”

Putin doesn’t accept the boundaries of the world as they are now drawn. He’s willing to drag the world into food shortage and an economic crisis, and he’s willing to at least threaten nuclear war to see that the boundaries are redrawn in his favor. These actions and desires are indistinguishable from those that drove World War I and World War II. Just like the men who kicked off those wars, Putin expected things to go easily and in his favor.

“I’m sure Putin thought he would have been unassailable with a quick, victorious war,” said Hill. “Ukraine would be back in the fold, and then probably after that, Belarus. Moldova as well, perhaps. There would have been a reframing of the next phase of Putin as the great czar of a reconstituted ‘Russkiy mir’ or ‘Russian world.’”

Only that didn’t happen. But it still could, if the U.S. and other allies falter in their support of Ukraine.

Hill: This goes back to the point I tried to make when I testified at the first impeachment trial against President Trump. There’s a direct line between that episode and now. Putin has managed to seed hostile sentiment toward Ukraine. Even if people think they are criticizing Ukraine for their own domestic political purposes, because they want to claim that the Biden administration is giving too much support for Ukraine instead of giving more support to Americans, etc. — they’re replaying the targeted messaging that Vladimir Putin has very carefully fed into our political arena. People may think that they’re acting independently, but they are echoing the Kremlin’s propaganda.

The full discussion with Hill is definitely worth a read.

Meanwhile in Russia: anger and disappointment fill the studio, as the viewers are being prepared for the loss of Kherson and other territories. Host Olga Skabeeva bitterly questions why Russia was so wrong in the beginning, believing that Zelensky would run & NATO wouldn't help. pic.twitter.com/sQpxokXDSv
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) October 19, 2022

If accurate, this would be less than a quarter of the pre-war population. (Note: “right bank” in this case means on the right when looking downstream, so the west bank of the Dnipro River at Kherson is also the right bank.)

About 50-60 thousand residents of the right bank of the Kherson region are planned to be transported to the left bank of the Dnieper, it will take about a week, Acting Governor Saldo said on the air of Solovyov Live pic.twitter.com/jJm4qCvu3r
— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 19, 2022

Ukrainian forces are still busy in Kherson.

🧵/ link in the last tweet. Together with @cxemu and @KOvsianyi we found a photo and a video of a Russian soldiers and equipment being evacuated from the right bank of Dnipro river to Nova Kakhovka by ferry. Ferries go unloaded to the right bank at least since Oct. 8th. pic.twitter.com/RU5owo3MyP
— Mark Krutov (@kromark) October 19, 2022

Update

Unclear how this relates to everything else going on, but if collaborators and Russian officials are loading onto those boats, the control of the occupation government may already be breaking down—particularly if the panic level is high.

News from #Kherson city, very heavy gunfights all around the #shumenskiy district this evening. We will try to keep you up-2-date.#SlavaUkraïni #FreeKherson @delangeleo @bayraktar_1love pic.twitter.com/IvKADNgpYT
— NLwartracker (@NLwartracker) October 19, 2022

Update: 11:15PM ET

Really hard to count but there are at least 12 units of YPR-765. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/r8dhIU0FTK
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) October 19, 2022