Stephan: As I told you when the Trump debacle ended, the real story would come out in drips, and drabs, and best-selling books. I was in government at the time of Watergate, and witnessed the process play out as Nixon world ended. The difference between Nixon's and Trump's criminal administrations is that Nixon actually knew something about how government operated at the Federal level, Trump never understood government. I think it is notable that both are/were Republicans. Both men proved their criminal lack of integrity in part by the corrupt people their authority let them people the government with. You don't get Attorney Generals like Bill Barr and John Mitchell by chance. It is an expression of intent.
You cannot have a democracy without integrity. And where you do have integrity, democracy blossoms.
Two veteran Republican campaign operatives — including one who got a pardon from then-President Donald Trump one month before he left office — are charged in a new federal indictment with funneling $25,000 from a Russian national into the Trump campaign in 2016.
Jesse Benton, 43, and Doug Wead, 75, made brief appearances Monday at a video hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, pleading not guilty to six felony charges including facilitating a campaign contribution by a foreign national, acting as a straw donor and causing the filing of false campaign finance reports.
The grand jury indictment alleges that Benton and Wead worked together to accept $100,000 from an unidentified Russian national in order to get the foreigner a meeting with then-candidate Trump at a fundraiser in Philadelphia on Sept. 22, 2016.
Neither Trump nor his campaign are mentioned by name in the indictment, but details in the 19-page document make clear that the scheme involved seeking the donation in connection with the Trump event and an opportunity to get face to face with him.
Stephan: Today, as I was making my first pass through the media, and the professional academic literature, I encountered five stories about MAGAts creating social violence. A school board member who resigned because of the threats she has received from anti-maskers, and anti-vaxxers, a nurse retiring because she was accosted while with her grandchildren by MAGAts, and it terrified the kids; a woman in a grocery store who had a MAGAt confront her. I see these stories every day, but today as I read them, I thought the media is not really addressing the social violence that is one of the hallmarks of MAGAts, and that is badly damaging American social wellbeing. Are you okay with this?
MAGAt Benjamin Martin at the Capitol Credit Department of Justice
When most people think about “bias” in news coverage, they usually think of some kind of ideological bent, as if the Post, say, is trying to advance some kind of political agenda with its journalism. While this does apply to right-wing outlets, like the Washington Examiner, most of the rest of the press corps isn’t ideological as we would normally understand that word.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t bias, though.
The most prominent bias comes from journalists merely doing their jobs. Choices have to be made. Cover this story, not that story, for this reason, not that reason. In these choices, news outlets reveal their bias. The Times, for instance, is not center-left. It’s a publication of the very obscenely rich, that is, the American elite. When it comes to deciding “the news that’s fit to print,” the elites who work there tend to focus on other elites and what they think — to the exclusion of other points of view, because why be inclusive when you’re elite? This isn’t necessarily a bad […]
Stephan: The level of corruption in both American parties, but particularly in the Republican Party, is so overwhelming that I am constantly surprised that this is not regularly the A-bloc story on the cable channels and the lede in the major papers. Why do we see so little, proportionally, about this? The answer is that we are becoming an oligarchical kleptocracy because it is legal to bribe members of Congress, and they serve the rich and the corporations that spread the money around. You and I don't count, and as our democracy become more and more compromised we will count less and less.
Credit: Rollingstone
The two men stand shoulder to shoulder, posing for the camera almost like father and son. On the left is former President Donald Trump, flashing that money grin, the light glinting off his golden-yellow tie. On the right is the Republican congressman who, more than any other, has hitched his fortunes to Trump and positioned himself to fill the vacuum left at the top of the Republican Party after Trump’s 2020 defeat. To Trump, he’s known as “my Kevin.” To the rest of us, he’s Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.
For four years, McCarthy dutifully served as one of Trump’s most loyal wingmen in Congress, defending the president after the latest racist tweet, running interference in both impeachment cases, and generally making himself available to do whatever necessary to defend the MAGA cause. When Trump tumbled down the conspiratorial rabbit hole after the last election, McCarthy followed after him, adding his name to a long-shot lawsuit seeking to overturn the result in several […]
Stephan: Paul Krugman sees the same things I do and is equally concerned. I tell you if every single person who supports democracy does not vote in 2022 and vote for every Democrat they can, and the Republicans take control of the Congress by 2024 I am not sure any of us will recognize the country we live in. Be warned.
Paul Krugman Credit: The Oxford Union via YouTube
September 11 marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in United States history. With the Taliban back in control in Afghanistan, Islamist extremism has been in the news a lot recently. Examining the history of terrorism and extremism in the U.S., liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman does something that most of the far-right pundits at Fox News will never do: He looks at the big picture. And Krugman stresses that when it comes to terrorism in the U.S., most of the violence has come from domestic extremists — not foreign terrorists and radical Islamists.
“It may seem like a terrible thing to say,” Krugman writes, “but a fair number of people — especially in the news media — are nostalgic about the months that followed 9/11. Some pundits openly pine for the sense of national unity that they imagine prevailed in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. More subtly, my sense is that many long for the days when the big […]
Stephan: Dana Millbank has a view similar to my own. If the Republican party gets control of Congress, since they already control the Supreme Court, you can kiss American democracy goodbye. The country will look like Texas, and civil violence will follow as the Democratic states resist and the Republican states with their White gangs become increasingly violent.
A supporter of open-carry gun laws in Austin in January 2015. Credit: Eric Gay/AP)
Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote.
Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like.
This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up.
On Wednesday, a Texas law went into effect that bans abortions later than six weeks, after the Supreme Court let pass a request to block the statute. Because 85 to 90 percent of women get […]
