The Conversation -- August 27, 2023
Fox "News" personality Jessica Tarlov of the Fox show "The Five" gave Fox viewers a taste of reality Friday. Stephanie Kaloi of the Wrap: Tarlov responded to a comment from her co-host Will Cain who opined that Donald Trump's mugshot was like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s. After pointing out that the reasons for Trump's and King's arrests were completely different, Tarlov turned her attention to "the many indictments that the former president still faces.... 'This wasn't Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people's most loyal base of voters continues to support him, the 'average American' doesn't seem to be a fan. As she noted, recent polling indicates that '62% [of Americans] think he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election.'... [When Cain said the public was concerned about a two-tiered system of justice,] Tarlov fired back, 'I don't think when they think of a two-tiered system of justice, they think of a white billionaire who tried to overthrow the election.'"
Russia. AP: "Russian authorities on Sunday confirmed the death of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, putting to rest any doubts about whether the wily mercenary leader turned mutineer was on a plane that crashed Wednesday, killing everyone on board. Genetic testing on the 10 bodies recovered at the crash site 'conform to the manifest' for the flight, Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. Russia's civil aviation authority had said Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants were on the list of seven passengers and three crew members. The Investigative Committee did not indicate what might have caused the business jet to plummet from the sky halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Prigozhin's hometown." The Washington Post's story is here.
Marie: I think I've linked a couple of stories that related Stupid Things Trump Said to TuKKKer during the GOP "debate," but to cover the whole fascinating interview in two minutes, RAS found this: ~~~
This is an annotated version of Tucker Carlson's interview with Donald J. Trump on the night of the first GOP Presidential debate. It's Trump without Trump. You won't have to listen to his voice. I break it down in 2 minutes. Trump was all over the place for this one. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/lZsMF8hOk6
— Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) August 26, 2023
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Aaron Morrison & Ayanna Alexander of the AP: "Thousands converged Saturday on the National Mall for the 60th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, saying a country that remains riven by racial inequality has yet to fulfill his dream.... A host of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies rallied attendees on the same spot where as many as 250,000 gathered in 1963 for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice and equality demonstrations in U.S. history."
Trump Family Crime Blotter
Indictments Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Trump's. Richard Fausset & Danny Hakim of the New York Times: "Even as ... Donald J. Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out. They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines.... All [of the defendants] bring their own agendas, financial concerns and opinions about their chances at trial."
[Donald Trump] has not learned yet that ... three people you don't want to throw into the bus like that: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic. Because one way or the other, you're gonna go down the hill and there'll be no brakes. -- Michael Cohen, former Trump lawyer who found himself under the wheels of the Trumpmobile ~~~
~~~ Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Alleged coup plotters, election subverters, and concealers of classified documents now find themselves under state and federal indictment. After doing the bidding of ... Donald Trump they risk not just jail for themselves and ruined reputations, but also financial ruin for their families.... Trump co-defendants Jenna Ellis (former Trump lawyer), Cathy Latham (former Republican Party chair of Coffee County, Georgia), John Eastman (former Trump lawyer), and Jeffrey Clark (former Department of Justice official) have all launched crowd-funding appeals to pay for their defense. Their piles are less than yooge. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is so short on cash for his defense that his son is organizing fundraiser dinners[.]... Co-defendant Harrison Floyd remains behind bars after a judge denied bail, Reuters reports: 'Harrison Floyd said at his first court appearance that he could not afford a private lawyer and had been denied representation by a public defender because he did not qualify....' [Judge Emily] Richardson denied Floyd bail because he is accused in a separate case in Maryland of assaulting an FBI agent who tried to serve him with a subpoena. She considers him a flight risk."
Jeremy Bailey of the Wrap: Social media users compared Donald Trump's mugshot to Stanley's Kubrick's maniacal characters: "Trump as jail bird joins a photo montage of villains from three of Kubrick's Warner Bros. classics -- Malcolm McDowell as Alex in 1971's 'A Clockwork Orange,' Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in 1980's 'The Shining' and Vincent D'Onofrio as Private Pyle in 1987's 'Full Metal Jacket.'" ~~~
"The Kubrick Stare" is one of director Stanley Kubrick's most recognizable directorial techniques. A method of shot composition where a character stares at the camera with a forward tilt, to convey to the audience that they are at the peak of their derangement pic.twitter.com/qd2XWc3oHU
— Cry-Baby Chloe 🦋 (@ChloeNumberIII) August 25, 2023
~~~ Marie: I have seen only one of the three films Chloe cited -- "The Shining" -- but my first visceral reaction to the Trump mugshot was, "Jesus, he's doing Jack Nicholson."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray. It should have shown Trump's corroding soul rather than his truculent face.... Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him.... Thursday night was performative for Trump: sweeping in with his private jet and giant motorcade that screamed two-tiered justice system, with law enforcement clearing the Atlanta streets, like centurions clearing the way for Caesar." (Also linked yesterday.)
Jen Psaki, in an MSNBC opinion piece, writes that Trump's promotion of his lovely mugshot will backfire. "He thinks this is a political winner for him. But as New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told me in an interview that airs Sunday, 'independents hate it.'... It is hard to imagine that this image, of Trump scowling into the police camera, will make him more appealing to anyone who is not already a hardcore supporter."
See also yesterday's Comments thread for thoughts on the mugshot seen 'round the world. Patrick, for instance, pointed out that Trump seems to think that scowling into the camera makes him seem Churchillian. And Akhilleus noted that not only did Trump just claim he didn't know what "mugshot" means, last month Trump also claimed he didn't know what a subpoena was. According to Wikipedia, "From the 1980s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts, including battles with casino patrons, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and over 100 business tax disputes." That means he and his businesses have received or issued more than 4,000 subpoenas over the years. I suppose the point of Trump's ridiculous claims of ignorance is to show that he is an innocent naif so unfamiliar with the justice system that he doesn't have even a passing knowledge of universally-known tools of the system.
MEANWHILE. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Donald Trump has turned his Georgia mugshot into a record-breaking fundraising haul. The former president has raised $7.1 million since he was booked at an Atlanta jail Thursday evening, according to figures provided first to Politico by his campaign. On Friday alone, Trump raised $4.18 million, making it the single-highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals. The campaign's fundraising has been powered by merchandise it has been selling through his online store."
Jack Shafer of Politico, in Politico Magazine, argues that [Donald] Trump's return to Twitter-currently-trying-to-be-known-as-X will prove he can never go home again. "Trump's [X-Twitter] post [of his mugshot], essentially concedes that his plan to build his own social media empire under the Truth Social banner is a bust.... But no man ever steps in the same river twice -- it's not the same river, and he's not the same man, as the sage said.... Thanks to inertia, changing technology, fickle tastes and Musk's determination to wreck it, the site has lost its cachet.... Trump became a Twitter star by two means. The first was the novelty of a presidential candidate popping off like a sloppy drunk at closing time.... [The second -- I guess, Shafer isn't clear -- is that journalists dutifully copied down & reported on Trump's tweets.] It's not the same press corps that transmuted his tweets into news stories back. They learned a lesson." (Also linked yesterday.)
Presidential Race 2024
A Bold Slogan Mocks Cowardly Candidates. Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "The word 'DEMOCRACY' was emblazoned in all-capital letters on the back wall of the stage at the Republican presidential debate ... on Wednesday, a seeming reminder of what is at stake in the 2024 election. Yet during two hours of bickering and disagreement among the eight participating candidates, the topic was never seriously addressed.... Perhaps it is no surprise that the party led by [Donald] Trump and those allied with it are uneasy about discussing the issue.... That the state of democracy and the threats Trump poses remain relevant was underscored by comments the former president made during ... his counterprogramming interview with Tucker Carlson.... He declined to condemn [political violence] outright or call for calm in the upcoming election and the trials he might face during the election year. 'There's a level of passion that I've never seen,' he said. 'There's a level of hatred that I've never seen. And that's probably a bad combination.'... He called [January 6, 2021,] a day of 'love and unity,' saying, 'People in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they ever experienced.' He claimed the events of the day were not reported 'properly' by the media."
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: on the first GOP "debate": "... the issue wasn't just that Trump was unavoidable; it was that none of the other candidates had much to say for themselves.... Trump's absence underscored the extent to which he is the only Republican of national stature with the political chops to appeal to Republican voters as well as a considerable chunk of the American electorate."
Several days ago, contributor RAS linked to a piece by Radley Balko in which Balko listed a number of very good questions that the Fox "News" moderators should have asked of those very flimsy candidates for president*. I don't expect the candidates would have come up with satisfactory answers, but that's the point.
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Kansas. Jonathan O'Connell, et al., of the Washington Post tell the story of the police raid on the Marion County Record and how small-town animosities led to an extraordinary -- and likely unconstitutional -- police action against a newspaper. The story gained international attention and condemnation from many free-press advocates. MB: One thing I find odd: the immediate catalyst for the raid was a local luminary's public -- but probably bogus -- assertion that the Record had unlawfully obtained information about her 15-year-old DUI conviction. The Record did not publish a story about the woman's DUI. Yet the article never mentions, as it explores the motivations other folks to act as they did, that the judge who issued the search warrant "was arrested at least twice for driving under the influence," according to NPR and other news outlets, including the Wichita Eagle. It certainly seems to me that this is a case of judging under the influence of the judge's own experience as a drunk driver. This appears to be a highly relevant element of the overall dynamic, and the Post reporters never mention how the judge's personal bias may have colored her decision to approve a questionable warrant. Meanwhile, if you think small-town life is the American ideal, this story will cause you to think again.
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Russia. Brutal Strongman v. Brutal Strongman. Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post: "Russians mourning the presumed death of Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin have set up makeshift memorials in nearly two dozen cities across Russia and occupied Ukraine in recent days, a sign of the commander's lingering popularity and potential challenge for President Vladimir Putin amid divisions within the elite and in the military over the conduct of the war.... The memorials ... showed Prigozhin's support across Russia in hard line pro-war circles, and highlighted the Kremlin's delicate task of managing potential anger among his supporters, with many in Russia's elite convinced Prigozhin's presumed death was an assassination ordered by the Kremlin." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The cult of Prigozhin is a reminder that Trumpbot delusion is not unique. I saw a CNN story in which Prigozhin fans were laying memorial flowers. One middle-aged woman told the reporter, "Russia needs another Stalin." It would seems there are millions and millions of people who have determined that it's better to have a dictator telling you what to do than to think for yourself about the messy problems humans face.
News Lede
AP: "A United States Marine Corps aircraft with 23 Marines aboard crashed on a north Australian island Sunday, killing at least three and critically injuring at least five during a multinational training exercise, officials said. Three had been confirmed dead on Melville Island and five were flown in serious condition 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the mainland city of Darwin for hospital treatment after the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey aircraft crashed around 9:30 a.m., a statement from the Marines said."
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Reader Comments (8)
I'm far from convinced they (the press) have learned a lesson. They just switched from copy-pasting Donnie's tweets to copy-pasting his Truth Social posts. Now Donny is going to give up on Truth Social (I guess?) and try to go back to Twitter? How well that'll work given Musk's ongoing face plants is just one aspect of it. Another (more important IMO) is, will the media simply return to copy-pasting Donnie's tweets back on his original platform?
Remains to be seen.
I'm not optimistic.
@David Chop: I share your pessimism. You may recall that in 2006, Stephen Colbert was the headliner comedian at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
Colbert dedicated a portion of his routine to knocking the White House press corps: "The President makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!"
Colbert knocked others in the room, including President Dubya, who sat only a few feet from him. The room was not amused, to say the least.
That was 17 years ago. There's been a lot of turnover in the press, but some of those reporters who were in the room then have moved up within the ranks and are more influential today than they were in 2006. Even where the bodies have changed, the copy-spellcheck-print methodology as well as "both-siderism" remain in evidence in even the best news outlets. In 2016, the NYT's overly-zealous coverage of "the emails!" as well as its credulous election-eve report that the FBI could find no clear link between Trump and Russia likely was enough to tip the election to Trump.
We don't know how the press will cover national politics over the next 14+ months, but if past is prologue, we have a damned good idea.
Marie wrote “…if past is prologue, we have a damned good idea.”
Accent on “damned”.
BUT…on the other hand…let’s go to our intrepid field reporter Offly Dimm who is in a Des Moines coffee shop interviewing Mr. B.J Smegma to get a better understanding of those all important MAGA voters. Take it away Offly!
OD: Mr. Smegma, please tell us, in your opinion what this country needs in these tense times.
BJS: Trump in White House. Biden dead.
OD: Trump in White House, Biden dead. Well, there you have it. Be sure to catch my seven hour in depth documentary tonight: “Election interference: Democrats do it too.” Back to you…
On messy problems: A draft of a Sunday Sermon...
Flipping channels with my grandson the other night, I paused on a news program featuring mugshots of the indicted Georgia 2020 election conspirators. When my grandson saw them, he asked a very sensible question: “Are they good or bad guys?”
I tried to answer him but soon ran into the wall of complexity. How to explain good and bad to a child who has little understanding of what led to the Georgia indictments? I pointed to a few mugshots and said that though they had not yet been tried, they were likely bad because there seemed to be a lot of evidence that they had conspired to deprive Georgia’s 2020 election voters of their right to have their votes counted.
I wanted to go further, to tell him about the 100 voter restriction laws passed in Republican states in recent years, but I saw I was losing him ((brennencenter.org). Good or bad was all he wanted to know.
He wanted a simple label.
The incident reminded me of the last line of a recent letter to the editor that warned of a future with "a single-party system"..(in which we) "become more like socialism.”
For the writer, the label was enough. Socialism was simply “bad." The unanswered question was exactly what “bad” the writer had in mind.
Roads? Schools? Fire and police Departments? Parks? Public Transit? The U. S. military? Social Security? Public Hospitals? Medicare? The ACA? Or enterprises not publicly owned, like labor unions or cooperative businesses that were formed to benefit the larger community, not individuals?
Or did the writer’s socialism simply mean taxing the well-off to support the poor?
When it comes to determining “good” or “bad,” details do matter.
I turned to the Mariners’ game, where good and bad are obvious. The answer is on the scoreboard.
@Ken Winkes: I'm not sure where your local correspondent gets the idea that if the U.S. had "a single-party system"... we would have a government that had "become more like socialism.” When you look at a map of democratic socialist countries, most have at least two active political parties, often more.
I have a feeling that person does his research on Fox & Facebook.
The Tucker interview decoded.
Ben Rhodes talks about "The trivialization of politics"
"It is jarring to consider how impossible Trump would have been 20 years ago. He is only possible because of a Republican party that descended into grievance based insanity after the Obama election, and too much (not all) political media that cares only about performative nonsense"
@Marie
Perhaps of little interest, but what I wrote was a response to a lady who objected to my earlier letter, the one about "aspirational facts." She is a local pro-life Republican who has swallowed the Republican dogma whole.
Best to ignore these people as I usually do, but her concluding line was too much for me, and I took the opportunity to remind her of just how "socialist" she was. Probably will make no difference to her but I thought it might to others....and I enjoyed--meanly I admit-- comparing her to a nine year old.
The paper would not have accepted what I was really thinking, which was more along the lines of "You fucking idiot."