Nicolle Wallace Slams Wall Street Journal’s Condemnation Of Trump
Lee Moran – October 4, 2022
The conservative Wall Street Journal’s condemnation of Donald Trump over his latest violent rhetoric rang somewhat hollow for MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
On Monday’s broadcast of “Deadline: White House,” Wallace welcomed the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s denunciation of Trump’s suggestion on his Truth Social platform that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “DEATH WISH” for supporting “Democrat sponsored Bills.”
But the Journal was “seven years too late to the parade,” Wallace said, pointing out its past support of Trump. The Journal has repeatedlyflip-flopped on Trump and last year even published a letter to the editor from him containing unchecked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
The Journal did “more laundering and legitimizing of Donald Trump’s presidency than perhaps any other outlet,” said Wallace, who was the White House communications director for former President George W. Bush.
“They’re as culpable as any news organization in this country for his presidency and his ongoing viability as a political figure,” she added.
In its editorial, the publication’s board warned of real-life consequences to Trump’s words.
It wrote:
Mr. Trump’s apologists claim he merely meant Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn’t what he wrote. It’s all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell. Many supporters took Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Pence all too seriously on Jan. 6.
The Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine says that more than 2,000 Russian soldiers have contacted them over the past few weeks asking for an opportunity to surrender.
Source: Andrii Yusov, representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence, on the Freedom TV channel
Details: Yusov said there had been a surge of requests after the successful counteroffensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast and the announcement of partial mobilisation in the Russian Federation.
Quote: “Then we started getting phone calls not just from soldiers who were on the territory of Ukraine as part of the occupation army, but also those who had just been mobilised and were still on the territory of the Russian Federation, or their relatives, or even people who suspected that they might be mobilised and were checking just in case.
In a few weeks, we have already [received] more than 2,000 such requests.”
Background: The state project called I Want to Live is designed to help military personnel of the Russian army safely surrender to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To receive information on how to surrender, Russian military personnel or their relatives and friends should call the 24-hour numbers:
+38 066 580 34 98;
+38 093 119 29 84.
Russians are guaranteed civilized treatment, in line with the norms of the Geneva Conventions.
Russia’s Small Nuclear Arms: A Risky Option for Putin and Ukraine Alike
David E. Sanger and William J. Broad – October 4, 2022
FILE – In this April 9, 2019 file photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures while speaking at a plenary session of the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Putin’s threats to use “all the means at our disposal” to defend his country as it wages war in Ukraine have cranked up global fears that he might use his nuclear arsenal, with the world’s largest stockpile of warheads. (AP Photo, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WASHINGTON — For all his threats to fire tactical nuclear arms at Ukrainian targets, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is now discovering what the United States itself concluded years ago, U.S. officials suspect: Small nuclear weapons are hard to use, harder to control and a far better weapon of terror and intimidation than a weapon of war.
Analysts inside and outside the government who have tried to game out Putin’s threats have come to doubt how useful such arms — delivered in an artillery shell or thrown in the back of a truck — would be in advancing his objectives.
The primary utility, many U.S. officials say, would be as part of a last-ditch effort by Putin to halt the Ukrainian counteroffensive, by threatening to make parts of Ukraine uninhabitable. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe some of the most sensitive discussions inside the administration.
The scenarios of how the Russians might do it vary widely. They could fire a shell 6 inches wide from an artillery gun on Ukrainian soil, or a half-ton warhead from a missile located over the border in Russia. The targets could be a Ukrainian military base or a small city. How much destruction — and lingering radiation — would result depends on factors including the size of the weapon and the winds. But even a small nuclear explosion could cause thousands of deaths and render a base or a downtown area uninhabitable for years.
Still, the risks for Putin could easily outweigh any gains. His country could become an international pariah, and the West would try to capitalize on the detonation to try to bring China and India, and others who are still buying Russian oil and gas, into sanctions they have resisted. Then there is the problem of prevailing winds: The radiation released by Russian weapons could easily blow back into Russian territory.
For months now, computer simulations from the Pentagon, U.S. nuclear labs and intelligence agencies have been trying to model what might happen and how the United States could respond. It is no easy task because tactical weapons come in many sizes and varieties, most with a small fraction of the destructive power of the bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
In a fiery speech last week full of bluster and menace, Putin said those bombings “created a precedent.”
The modeling results, one official familiar with the effort said, vary dramatically — depending on whether Putin’s target is a remote Ukrainian military base, a small city or a “demonstration” blast over the Black Sea.
Great secrecy surrounds Russia’s arsenal of tactical arms, but they vary in size and power. The weapon Europeans worry the most about is the heavy warhead that fits atop an Iskander-M missile and could reach cities in Western Europe. Russian figures put the smallest nuclear blast from the Iskander payload at roughly one-third of the Hiroshima bomb’s explosive power.
Much more is known about the tactical weapons designed for the U.S. arsenal back in the Cold War. One made in the late 1950s, called the Davy Crockett after the frontiersman who died at the Alamo, weighed about 70 pounds; it looked like a large watermelon with four fins. It was designed to be shot from the back of a jeep and had about one-thousandth of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
But as the Cold War progressed, both the United States and the Soviets developed hundreds of variants. There were nuclear depth charges to take out submarines and rumors of “suitcase nukes.” At one point in the 1970s, NATO had upward of 7,400 tactical nuclear weapons, nearly four times the current estimated Russian stockpile.
By that time, they were also part of popular culture. In 1964, James Bond defused a small nuclear weapon in “Goldfinger,” seconds before it was supposed to go off. In 2002, in “The Sum of All Fears,” based on a Tom Clancy novel, a terrorist wipes out Baltimore with a tactical weapon that arrives on a cargo ship.
The reality, though, was that while the blast might be smaller than a conventional weapon would produce, the radioactivity would be long-lasting.
On land, the radiation effects “would be very persistent,” said Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s former top civilian official for counterinsurgency strategy. In the 1970s, Vickers was trained to infiltrate Soviet lines with a backpack-sized nuclear bomb.
Russia’s tactical arms “would most likely be used against enemy force concentrations to stave off a conventional defeat,” Vickers added. But he said his experience suggests “their strategic utility would be highly questionable, given the consequences Russia would almost assuredly face after their use.”
For deadly radiation, there is only one dramatic, real-life comparison on Ukrainian soil: what happened in 1986 when one of the four Chernobyl reactors suffered a meltdown and explosions that destroyed the reactor building.
At the time, the prevailing winds blew from the south and southeast, sending clouds of radioactive debris mostly into Belarus and Russia, although lesser amounts were detected in other parts of Europe, especially Sweden and Denmark.
The radiation dangers from small nuclear arms would likely be less than those involving large reactors, like those at Chernobyl. Its radioactive fallout poisoned the flatlands for miles around and turned villages into ghost towns. Eventually the radiation caused thousands of cases of cancer, although exactly how many is a matter of debate.
The ground around the deactivated plant is still somewhat contaminated, which made it all the more remarkable that the Russians provided little protection to troops that moved through the area in the early days of Moscow’s failed bid to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in February and March.
Chernobyl, of course, was an accident. The detonation of a tactical weapon would be a choice — and likely an act of desperation. While Putin’s repeated atomic threats may come as a shock to Americans who have barely thought about nuclear arms in recent decades, they have a long history.
In some respects, Putin is following a playbook written by the United States nearly 70 years ago, as it planned how to defend Germany and the rest of Europe in case of a large-scale Soviet invasion.
The idea was to use the tactical weapons to slow an invasion force. Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalled being sent to Germany in 1958 as a young platoon leader, where his primary responsibility was tending to what he described in his memoir as “a 280-millimeter atomic cannon carried on twin truck-tractors, looking like a World War I Big Bertha.”
Decades later, he told a reporter “it was crazy” to think that the strategy to keep Western Europe free was for the United States and its NATO allies to risk using dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons, on European soil, against advancing forces.
The very name “tactical weapons” is meant to differentiate these small arms from the giant “city busters” that the United States, the Soviets and other nuclear-armed states mounted on intercontinental missiles and pointed at one another from silos, submarines and bomber fleets. It was the huge weapons — far more powerful than what destroyed Hiroshima — that prompted fear of Armageddon, and of a single strike that could take out New York or Los Angeles. Tactical weapons, in contrast, might collapse a few city blocks or stop an oncoming column of troops. But they would not destroy the world.
Ultimately, the large “strategic weapons” became the subject of arms control treaties, and currently the United States and Russia are limited to 1,550 deployed weapons each. But the smaller tactical weapons have never been regulated.
And the logic of deterrence that surrounded the intercontinental missiles — that a strike on New York would result in a strike on Moscow — never fully applied to the smaller weapons. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration feared that a terrorist group like al-Qaida might get a nuclear weapon and use it to destroy the New York subways or irradiate downtown Washington.
The CIA went to great lengths to determine whether al-Qaida or the Taliban had obtained the technology for small nuclear bombs, and the Obama administration held a series of “nuclear summits” with world leaders to reduce the amount of loose nuclear material that could be turned into a small weapon or dirty bomb, essentially radioactive waste that could be dispersed around a few city blocks.
As the Cold War ended, NATO admitted publicly to what insiders had long concluded, that the rationale for any nuclear use was exceedingly remote and that the West could dramatically reduce its nuclear forces. Slowly it removed most of its tactical nuclear weapons, determining they were of little military value.
Roughly 100 are still kept in Europe, mostly to appease NATO nations that worry about Russia’s arsenal, estimated at 2,000 or so weapons.
Now the question is whether Putin would actually use them.
The possibility that he would has sent strategists back to examine a war doctrine known as “escalate to de-escalate” — meaning routed Russian troops would fire a nuclear weapon to stun an aggressor into retreat or submission. That is the “escalate” part; if the enemy retreated, Russia could then “de-escalate.”
Of late, Moscow has used its tactical arsenal as a backdrop for threats, bullying and bluster. Nina Tannenwald, a political scientist at Brown University who studies nuclear arms, recently noted that Putin first raised the threat of turning to his nuclear weapons in 2014 during Russia’s invasion of Crimea. She added that, in 2015, Russia threatened Danish warships with nuclear destruction if Denmark were to join NATO’s system for fending off missile strikes. In late February, Putin called for his nuclear forces to go on alert; there is no evidence they ever did.
Last week, the Institute for the Study of War concluded that “Russian nuclear use would therefore be a massive gamble for limited gains that would not achieve Putin’s stated war aims. At best, Russian nuclear use would freeze the front lines in their current position and enable the Kremlin to preserve its currently occupied territory in Ukraine.” Even that, it concluded, would take “multiple tactical nuclear weapons.”
But it would not, the institute concluded, “enable Russian offensives to capture the entirety of Ukraine.” Which was, of course, Putin’s original goal.
How the US might respond to a Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine
Ellen Mitchell – October 4, 2022
As concerns grow over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling amid continued losses in Ukraine, what a U.S. response would look like has become an increasingly urgent question.
U.S. officials since the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine have stressed there are plans being developed to counter a range of moves by Moscow but have kept specifics under wraps.
While the administration says there are no signs that the Kremlin has made moves toward a nuclear strike — and that Washington has not changed its own nuclear position — experts say the potential U.S. options could turn into a very real scenario given Russia’s floundering military campaign and an increasingly frustrated Putin.
Mark Cancian, a former Pentagon official-turned-defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a U.S. response to a major Russian attack would be twofold — one military and one diplomatic.
“If the Ukrainians kept fighting, we would continue our flow of aid and we’d probably take the gloves off” in terms of weapons provided to Kyiv, he told The Hill.
At the top of Ukraine’s wish list is the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), a surface-to-surface missile that can travel four times farther than anything Kyiv has now in its fight against Russia. The embattled country has pressed the U.S. for the system for months, but Washington has been hesitant to provide it over fears it could escalate the conflict.
However, should Moscow use a tactical nuclear weapon on Ukrainian troops or civilians, or even detonate such a device away from populated areas, Cancian predicted the administration would finally allow Kyiv to have ATACMS or “anything else they wanted” to go after Russian targets.
On the diplomatic side of things, meanwhile, Russian use of nuclear weapons could very well prompt countries such as India, China and Turkey — the latter a NATO ally — to put pressure on Putin economically, according to Cancian.
“A nuclear strike would really, I think, put them under a lot of pressure to go along with the sanctions and take a tougher line towards Russia, so Russia would lose these lifelines that they’ve been clinging to and nurturing,” he said.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan last week said there would be “catastrophic consequences” should Moscow deploy nuclear weapons and said a more specific ultimatum had been delivered to Moscow privately.
President Biden has said since the start of the war that U.S. troops will not be sent to Ukraine, and experts warn that a nuclear response to a nuclear attack could quickly escalate into a nuclear world war.
Retired Gen. David Petraeus offered a prediction of how the U.S. would respond to a Russian nuclear attack on Sunday, though he noted that he had deliberately avoided speaking with Sullivan about it.
“I mean, just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” he said.
Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said Tuesday that U.S. officials “have continually consulted with allies about the Russia threat, and the nuclear threat that Russia poses is just one aspect of that, and certainly the NATO forum is our premier forum for consultation on these issues.”
One Austrian official told The Hill that it’s offered the country as a neutral ground for difficult negotiations and is ready to host de-escalation talks and maintain channels with Russia.
Though Putin’s national televised speech last month was not his first time raising the specter of nuclear war, current and former U.S. officials have raised new alarms over the Kremlin’s increasingly bellicose nuclear rhetoric as it moves to annex four regions of Ukraine.
Putin threatened on Aug. 21 that Moscow would deploy its massive nuclear arsenal to protect Russian territory or its people — which could now include the four Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions. However, both Kyiv and Washington have said they will not be deterred from continued fighting to take back those regions.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in an interview with CNN aired Sunday, said that while he hasn’t seen intelligence to suggest the Russian leader has chosen to use nuclear weapons, “there are no checks on Mr. Putin.”
“To be clear, the guy who makes that decision, I mean, it’s one man,” Austin said.
John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said Monday that the U.S. is “closely” watching Russian activity at the Zaporizhzhia power plant — another location Putin could choose to attack to escalate the war.
And former national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Sunday said Putin is “under extreme pressure” due to battlefield failures and domestic outcry over a mobilization order that could send hundreds of thousands of reservists into the war.
“I think the message to [Putin] is If you use a nuclear weapon, it’s a suicide weapon. And the response from NATO and the United States doesn’t have to be nuclear,” McMaster told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on CBS.
Fears were further stoked this week when an online video emerged of a train in Russia appearing to carry equipment from a Kremlin military unit that handles nuclear weapons. The video, which Pentagon officials could not confirm, shows military vehicles allegedly from the secretive 12th Main Directorate of the Russian ministry of defense being transported on the train, according to Konrad Muzyka, an aerospace and defense analyst focused on Russia and Belarus.
The Kremlin unit is responsible for nuclear munitions, their storage, maintenance, transport and issuance, Muzyka tweeted Sunday.
“I have seen these reports. I have nothing to corroborate,” Cooper told reporters Tuesday when asked about the video.
Pressed on whether the Pentagon has seen anything to indicate that Russia is contemplating the use of nuclear weapons, she said officials “have certainly heard the saber rattling from Putin” but “see no signs that would cause us to alter our posture.”
Cooper also declined to answer questions on whether the U.S. has seen any movement of Russia’s nuclear forces, citing the protection of U.S. intelligence.
Some, including Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, have urged the administration to increase its nuclear readiness in Europe and move additional missile defense assets into the region.
“This administration needs to step up its game on missile defense,” Turner said on Fox News over the weekend. “We have assets in Europe, and we need to engage them so that we can provide protection to our allies.”
Much speculation has also been given as to the exact kind of weapon Putin might potentially use, with fears he could resort to using tactical nuclear weapons — meant to be used in a battle or on a specific population center to try to bring an end to the conflict.
“We always have to try to take the threat of nuclear use seriously and so we do, and that’s why we are watching very closely, and that’s why we do consult closely with allies,” Cooper said.
“But at the same time, at this point, [Russia’s] rhetoric is only rhetoric, and it’s irresponsible saber-rattling that we see at this point,” Cooper said.
For now, the U.S. will respond to Russian aggression by continuing to pour weapons and other aid into Ukraine, including four more of the advanced rocket systems Kyiv has credited with greatly helping its offensive begun at the start of this month.
The soon-to-be delivered High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems — used by the Ukrainians to target bridges, roads and munition storage areas Russia uses to supply its forces — are part of a new $625 million lethal aid package announced Tuesday.
Asked later on Tuesday whether the United States will provide anything to help the Ukrainians protect themselves against a possible nuclear strike, Cooper said Washington has already provided “a considerable amount of protective equipment against chemical, biological and radiological threats.”
She pointed to a military aid package from earlier this year that included “a number of personal protective equipment items” as well as “significant quantities” of such equipment given as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
Hurricane Ian aftermath: Tour of damage shows parts of Naples look like “a war zone”
Laura Layden, Naples Daily News – October 3, 2022
In a drive around the city, Naples Police Lieutenant Bryan McGinn pointed to some of the worst and costliest damage caused by Hurricane Ian.
On Friday, he whizzed around the city streets, as much as he could, driving through sludge, stopping at every dark traffic light and dodging clean-up and repair crews — and a slew of curious onlookers wanting to see the destruction for themselves.
Scene of Gulf Shore Boulevard North of stranded, flooded cars.
Sludge still filled much of the road, patio furniture lay tangled in the median, cars sat angled in front of condos, a sign of the powerful, unexpected surge that put them completely under water. A crooked boat sat in a parking lot, moved from its perch, with another halfway submerged in waters nearby.
A boat displaced from its dock on Gulf Shore Boulevard North.
Residents had started the clean-up, dragging everything from drenched carpet to soaked couches to the curb. Along with a snarl of landscaping.
Clearly, there’s much more work to be done in the Moorings, Park Shore and elsewhere in the city. With gobs of debris started to make it to the curb.
City residents are picking up the pieces from Hurricane Ian after extreme flooding.
Boats uplifted from their docks
At the Village Shops on Venetian Bay, business owners worked to deal with the mess, a stranded boat sat in the parking lot, with no name on it.
“Unfortunately, there was a lot of water surging,” McGinn said. “That storm came in real fast.”
It wasn’t just water that roared onto the shore in the city. It was loads of sand and sediment from the Gulf of Mexico and Naples Bay, which did plenty of damage of its own.
That sand and sediment turned into a slippery, sticky muck that covered city streets — and the insides of homes and businesses. Some have complained about its stench.
During the tour, McGinn pointed to an extra-wide, steel mobile mini storage container sitting near the intersection of 8th Street South and Broad Avenue, feet from the Cove Inn On Naples Bay, that mysteriously appeared there, likely from a construction site nearby, taking up the entire corner.
“That storage container doesn’t belong there,” he said.
Storage container deposited roadside by surging waters in Naples at 8th Street South and Broad Avenue South.
Its weight is in the thousands of pounds, showing the power of the surge.
In Crayton Cove, McGinn took a turn toward the City Dock, rebuilt a few years ago at a cost of $7 million. He happily reported it fared well.
Businesses are picking up the pieces
Nearby businesses, however, weren’t as lucky, including The Dock, a Naples landmark. It’s still standing, but crews worked busily to clean up its insides, which clearly saw a heavy impact from the storm surge.
Across the way, Napoli On The Bay, didn’t look so good either, with a water line stain halfway up the door.
On Third Avenue South downtown, store owners scrambled to pick up the pieces. Chain saws roared, vacuum trucks rumbled as they sucked out water, and power washers echoed, as owners, employees and hired contractors worked to wash down all the sediment left behind on everything from parking lots to plant pots.
Water stains again showed just how high the water got.
Some business owners have lost virtually everything.
On Third Street and nearby Fifth Avenue South, shops, restaurants and other businesses have scrambled to reopen, if possible.
“Fortunately, our city is resilient,” McGinn said. “So, many business owners are making a push. They want to be able to help people. That’s what they do.”
Businesses are picking up the pieces on Third Street South in downtown Naples.
As soon as it could, Liki Tiki, the local “Tiki Bar” and classic BBQ restaurant on U.S. 41, reopened on Thursday, serving drinks only — because that’s all it could do.
“It was packed,” McGinn said. “It’s a good sight to see. It’s good camaraderie.”
Port Royal may have fared better than others
In Port Royal, known as one of the priciest neighborhoods in America, the damage didn’t seem as great. Signs of water intrusion were harder to spot, but landscaping took a hit, with a near-constant buzz of chain saws.
“A lot of these are new construction homes,” McGinn said. “So, maybe they did fare a little better.”
The Port Royal Club sustained damage.
Closer to the coast, surging waters forced some residents to their roofs, for higher ground, to wait out rescue crews.
“I’m sure there were lives lost,” McGinn said. “But we won’t know how many for some time. It’s hard to tell.”
Some of the stranded cars still spotted around the city, he said, are the result of residents driving around during the storm, failing to heed warnings. They had to walk or swim away, abandoning their vehicles, McGinn said.
“People were still out and about, not listening to shelter in place,” he said, or evacuation orders.
After the storm, vehicles blocking streets were taken to Baker Park, but eventually, the city ran out parking spaces for them.
Mansions on the Gulf could have seen extensive damage
On Gordon Drive, it’s hard to tell how much damage multimillion-dollar mansions sitting directly on the Gulf of Mexico took, but McGinn said the water and sand likely did a lot of damage to them.
Parts of Gordon Drive were still blocked on Friday, with piles of sand dropped by Ian still in the road.
Much of the city saw flooding.
“Even areas like Lake Park had several feet of water in their homes,” McGinn said, after the Gordon River flooded.
The Naples Pier is heavily damaged, but not destroyed.
“It’s sad,” McGinn said.
Treasure hunters and curious visitors at beach, near Naples Pier, damaged by Hurricane Ian, on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.
While beach ends, or public access points, haven’t reopened, residents and visitors alike have flocked to them, to see the damages with their own eyes shooting photos and videos to document the storm.
“This is how well people listen,” McGinn said. “I get it. Everybody wants to see how the city of Naples fared. It all comes from a good place.”
At the Horizon Way beach access in Park Shore, he pointed to what looked like structural damage at St. Croix Club condominiums, but it was hard to determine the extent of it.
“That’s no bueno,” McGinn said.
Parts of Naples look like a “war zone”
In the Moorings area, Regency Towers looked like it took a heavy hit too — along with other condos and homes.
“It looks like a war zone up here,” McGinn said.
While water wiped out the contents of condos, homes and businesses, he said, structural damage might not be extensive since winds weren’t as extreme as with past storms.
“Their personal property is gone,” McGinn said. “But they can be replaced over time.”
Looking over all the damage in Naples, it’s hard to fathom how bad others had it just one county over, McGinn said.
“What’s crazy is we are not even the hardest hit area,” he said.
“If Republicans return to Washington’s business as usual, if we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to America’s collapse, we don’t deserve to govern,” Scott wrote in the plan’s introduction. “We must resolve to aim higher than the Republican Congresses that came before us. Americans deserve to know what we will do.”
Scott’s decision to put his name to a series of specific proposals for what Republicans could and should do if they retake the Senate and House this fall stands in direct contrast to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has pointedly refused to offer an alternative policy agenda.
When asked last month what the GOP’s agenda would be if they took control of Congress, McConnell told reporters: “That is a very good question and I’ll let you know when we take it back.”
Scott seems to acknowledge the fact that he is rebelling against his party leadership, writing: “Like the ‘Contract with America’ before it, the Washington insiders will hate this plan.” (The Contract with America was the Republican agenda unveiled during the 1994 midterms, when the GOP won control of the House.)
Why did Scott do it then? Well, at least in part (a large part) because of politics. Scott, the former governor of Florida who was elected to the Senate in 2018, has his eye on bigger prizes. He’s currently serving as the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm and has done very little to knock down talk that he would be interested in a presidential bid down the line.
This plan feels like the sort of thing that could become the basis of a Scott presidential run, whether in 2024 or 2028.
So what’s actually in the plan? A fair amount of it is just red-meat rhetoric sure to make the base of the party happy. But amid the spin – and the attacks on Democrats, “wokeness” and the media – there are some actual policy proposals. Let’s go through them.
1. Kids in public schools would say the Pledge of Allegiance and be required to stand for the National Anthem. They also would have to “honor” the American flag.
2. The Department of Education would close. “Education is a state function,” wrote Scott.
3. The government would never be able to ask you to disclose your race, ethnicity or skin color “on any government form.” (On a related note, the US Census Bureau is on line one, Sen. Scott.)
4. The US military would engage in “ZERO diversity training” or “any woke ideological indoctrination that divides our troops.”
5. If a college or university uses affirmative action in admissions, it would be “ineligible for federal funding and will lose their tax-exempt status.”
6. “Strict” mandatory minimum sentences would be required in every case in which a police officer is seriously injured.
7. Any “attempt to deny our 2nd Amendment freedoms” would be strongly opposed.
8. The wall along the US southern border would be completed and named after former President Donald Trump.
9. Immigrants to the US would not be able to collect unemployment benefits or welfare until they have lived in the country for seven years.
10. So-called sanctuary cities would be stripped of all federal funding.
11. The federal budget would be balanced and, if not, members of Congress would not be paid.
12. All Americans would pay some income tax “to have skin in the game.” (At present, roughly half of Americans do not pay taxes because their taxable income doesn’t meet a minimum threshold.)
13. Federal debt ceiling increases would be prohibited unless accompanied by a declaration of war.
14. All federally elected officials, as well as all federal workers, would be subject to a 12-year term limit.
15 All federal legislation would have a sunset provision five years after it passes. (People currently on Social Security or Medicare might be particularly interested in that one.)
16. Funding for the IRS, as well as its workforce, would be cut by 50%.
17. Politicians would be banned from becoming lobbyists when they leave office.
18. Voter ID would become the law of the land. “All arguments against voter ID are in favor of fraud,” according to Scott.
19. Same-day voter registration would be banned.
20. “No federal program or tax laws will reward people for being unmarried or discriminate against marriage.”
21. No government form would offer options related to “gender identity” or “sexual preference”
22. Biological males would be banned from competing in women’s sports.
23. “All social media platforms that censor speech and cancel people will be treated like publishers and subject to legal action.”
24. No tax dollars could be used for “diversity training or other woke indoctrination that is hostile to faith.”
25. No dues would be paid to the United Nations or “any international organization that undermines the national interests of the USA.”
26. “The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.”
There’s more in there, but those are the main points.
It’s an attempt – both rhetorically and from a policy perspective – to make permanent many of the changes that Trump ushered in during his four years in office. It’s a promise of all the things you liked about Trump without some of the bombast and unpredictability. It’s a blueprint for Trumpism without Trump.
Expert: If Putin uses nukes, U.S. could wipe out Russian forces in Ukraine
Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent – October 3, 2022
WASHINGTON — If Russian President Vladimir Putin makes good on his threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States would likely respond with a sweeping economic embargo combined with a massive conventional attack on Russian military positions that could quickly wipe out the Russian president’s invading military forces, said Joseph Cirincione, a national security analyst and leading expert on nuclear warfare.
President Vladimir Putin speaking at the Kremlin about Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Sept. 30. (Contributor/Getty Images)
But Cirincione also acknowledged that such a direct U.S. or NATO military strike against the Russian military — even in response to the Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield — could also spiral out of control. “There are no good responses once you start down the nuclear path,” he said. “It’s extremely difficult to terminate it for the same reason that a poker player losing a hand is hesitant to fold. They keep thinking there’s one more move they could make, one more bet they could raise to try to cause the other side to fold. So there’s no good responses.”
Cirincione said that if Putin were to actually make good on his threat to go nuclear, it would not be a large-scale thermonuclear bomb attack, but a more limited deployment of tactical weapons — far more limited in scope but still a major and unprecedented escalation. And Cirincione said that the U.S. military response would not be limited to the battlefield. There would also likely be a sharp escalation in psychological warfare such as was used to unnerve Iraqi generals on the eve of the U.S. invasion of that country. “The U.S. was calling Iraqi generals in their home and telling them to stand down. And they did that for two reasons. One, to let them know we know where you live, right? Two, we can reach out and touch you,” said Cirincione, predicting that the U.S. might well adopt such a tactic in the Ukraine crisis.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that U.S. officials have warned that the Russians there would suffer “catastrophic consequences” if they used nuclear weapons, though he did not without specify what those were.
But even as Sullivan has gone public on the issue, Cirincione acknowledged that the threats have not deterred Putin from talking up a nuclear scenario. Last Friday, Putin gave a speech at the Kremlin in which he announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine mostly occupied by Russia but where it is getting pushed back by Kyiv’s forces. Putin said that Russia would use “all means available” to defend its territory. In a chilling passage, he noted that the United States was the only country to use nuclear weapons in wartime — dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards the end of World War II — and then added: “By the way, they created a precedent.”
When asked about the fact that U.S. warnings have not in any way curbed Putin’s talk of nuclear weapons, Cirincione replied: “It tells me that he’s desperate and he’s convinced of his own power and that the pressure on him is not enough yet. So you’re absolutely right. He hasn’t stopped. Would he really do this? I think the answer to that is we don’t know.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
But one reason to be alarmed, said Cirincione, is that Russian military doctrine now explicitly contemplates the use of nuclear weapons, not just to respond to a nuclear attack on the country, but also in the event of a large-scale conventional military attack that endangers Russia’s national security. “They call this strategy ‘escalate to deescalate,’” said Cirincione. “We will use a nuclear weapon in a variety of ways.” As the Russians see it, if they used tactical nuclear weapons in such a scenario, they would argue: “‘We won’t be starting a nuclear war. We’ll be ending a conventional war,’” said Cirincione. “That’s how their thinking goes. And that’s why you have to worry about this more and more as Putin continues to lose the war in Ukraine. It’s exactly in these kinds of circumstances that the use of nuclear weapons comes into play in doctrine and in Putin’s thinking.”
“I consider Putin a fascist,” he added. “I think he has built a fascist regime in Russia. We have never seen a fascist regime with nuclear weapons before. We’ve had authoritarians. We’ve had some brutal dictators, but nothing on this scale before. So this is very dangerous territory.”
‘DEATH WISH’? What Trump and his wannabes did in one weekend should scare us all.
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – October 3, 2022
In the Republican Party of Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, only those faithful to Trump’s cult-like MAGA movement are safe.
Democrats are called the enemy, labeled killers. And even Republicans who don’t embrace MAGA dogma – any lost election was stolen, Trump is always right . – have a death wish.
Trump, the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination should he decide to run, took to Truth Social on Friday night and attacked Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell because he voted for legislation sponsored by Democrats: “He has a DEATH WISH.”
Trump threatens McConnell, hurls racist nickname at Elaine Chao
Trump then launched a racist attack on McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served in Trump’s Cabinet when he was president: “Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, in 2020.
We know from Jan. 6, 2021, that Trump has potentially violent followers who take cues from him, so there’s no way to see the “DEATH WISH” comment as anything more than a veiled threat.
With racist garbage about the wife of a high-ranking member of the party Trump claims to represent, the former president shows the world his true nature for the 10 millionth time. And by misspelling “advice” as “advise,” Trump shows the world, also for the 10 millionth time, that he can’t be bothered with little things like attention to detail.
Michigan Republicans line up to kiss Trump’s ring
This is dangerous rhetoric, but rather than stand up to it, many Republicans remained silent over the weekend. In fact, several Republicans joined Trump at a Saturday rally in Michigan, including GOP candidates for the state’s three highest offices: Tudor Dixon, running for governor; Matthew DePerno, running for attorney general; and Kristina Karamo, running for secretary of state.
Greene, of Georgia, was also there and, as if to impress Trump with violent rhetoric of her own, told the crowd: “I’m not going to mince words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings.”
That is absolute insanity. And like Trump’s comments directed at McConnell, it’s sickeningly dangerous. Not to mention false.
Trump and Greene make it clear that no one disloyal is safe
Saying a Republican has a “DEATH WISH” because he did his job and voted for legislation puts a target on the back of that Republican. Saying Democrats “have already started the killings” provides a justification for violence against anyone who happens to be a Democrat. Openly spouting a racist nickname against a woman of Asian heritage tells people, during a time of rising anti-Asian hate crimes, that it’s OK to be hateful.
Former President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at a golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J., on July 30, 2022.
And this all happened over the course of TWO DAYS!
Republicans keep their mouths shut in face of Trump’s hatefulness
How courageous. Republican leaders won’t say a thing, even to defend themselves, even when it’s clear Trump and his MAGA minions have loyalty only to themselves.
For the sizable swath of voters and politicians who remain loyal to Trump despite his falling approval numbers, this is not the behavior of a political party. This is the behavior of a cult: fealty to one individual; zero tolerance for any who stray from the core beliefs; threats of violence toward any who step out of line; characterizing those who disagree as existential threats.
MAGA followers think you are not a Democrat; you are a member of a party now actively killing Republicans. You are not a mainstream conservative; you are a person with a death wish.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2022.
How can Americans of good conscious not come together to shut this down?
How is it possible those of us who see how wildly messed up this all is can’t come together as one in condemnation? How is it possible for Republicans to continue supporting a malignant figure who would unleash his hateful hounds on them in a heartbeat?
As Trump and pathetic wannabes like Greene have committed outrage after outrage after outrage, each time sinking to new depths, there’s a common refrain: Ignore them. Don’t give them the attention they crave.
Like it or not, Trump and Greene have power and stand to gain more
That’s fine if you’re fending off a meaningless internet troll, but as I’ve said already, Trump is likely to be the next Republican candidate for president. And he is, of course, a former president. He’s not nobody.
Greene is a big-time fundraiser for Republicans and someone routinely praised by Trump and revered by his loyal followers. As much as we’d like her to be nobody, she’s not.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
These cartoonish MAGA knuckleheads have power, and if we don’t denounce them, if we don’t vote them into oblivion, they stand to gain more. Real danger could follow because as they made clear over just one weekend, they will come for you if you’re an apostate Republican. They will come for you if you’re a Democrat because they’ll be told you’re coming for them.
Let’s stop dancing around it and call the MAGA movement what it is
They will come for any who question them. Because they’re not a political movement..
They’re a dangerous and swiftly worsening cult.
And they need to be denounced by everyone, including Republicans who still value basic human decency. Then they need to be rejected by voters, en masse and with thunderous force.
Marjorie Taylor Greene deceptively tells Trump rally that Democrat ‘killings’ of Republicans have already started
Joshua Zitser – October 2, 2022
Majorie Taylor Greene waves to the crowd before she makes speaks during a Save America rally on October 1, 2022 in Warren, Michigan. Emily Elconin/Getty Images Marjorie Taylor Greene deceptively tells Trump rally that Democrat ‘killings’ of Republicans have already started
Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at a rally for Donald Trump in Michigan on Saturday night.
A video shows her accusing Democrats of murdering Republicans, saying the “killings” have already begun.
She referenced two local stories, neither of which appear to back the claim that Republicans are being hunted down.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene deceptively claimed at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Warren, Michigan, on Saturday that Democrats are murdering Republicans.
“I’m not going to mince words with you all,” Greene said. “Democrats want Republicans dead. They’ve already started the killings.”
Greene, who has repeatedly spread bizarre conspiracy theories, went on to reference two local news stories to support her baseless claim that Democrats are hunting down GOP voters.
“An 18-year-old was run down by a Democrat driver who confessed to killing the teenager simply because he was a Republican,” said Greene. The claim was met with boos from the crowd.
Greene appears to be referring to an incident in North Dakota in which a man fatally struck a teenager with his SUV. The 41-year-old suspect, who fled the fatal crash scene, told police that he believed the 18-year-old victim was “part of a Republican extremist group” and had been “threatening him,” per Dailymail.com.
However, North Dakota Highway Patrol Captain Bryan Niewind told Fox News that his department’s investigations have “uncovered no evidence to support the claim” that the murder had anything to do with politics or that the victim was a Republican.
Greene also referenced an 83-year-old woman in Michigan who was “shot in the back for advocating for the unborn.”
It refers to another local story in which a Michigan man reportedly shot an elderly pro-life volunteer who he said refused to leave his property. The unnamed canvasser got into a “screaming” match with the man’s wife over abortion, per Fox News. The Michigan man, speaking to News 8, said he shot the 83-year-old by “accident” after accusing her several times of trespassing.
It is not known whether the Michigan man is a Democrat. The elderly woman survived. Michigan State Police is investigating the incident.
Greene continued her speech by making additional incendiary remarks. “Joe Biden has declared every freedom-loving American an enemy of the state,” she said.
“We will take back our country from the communists who have stolen it and want us to disappear,” she continued. “We will expose the unelected bureaucrats, the real enemies within, who have abused their power and have declared political warfare on the greatest president this country has ever had.”
Insider contacted Greene for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
As the high court readied itself for another consequential term, Kagan used a series of public appearances to describe how she believes the court should function – and to warn that Americans will lose faith if the institution is viewed as another political branch.
But one need not squint too hard to see Kagan’s meaning.
“The court shouldn’t be wandering around just inserting itself into every hot button issue in America, and it especially, you know, shouldn’t be doing that in a way that reflects one ideology or one…set of political views over another,” she said Sept. 19 during a question-and-answer session at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan addresses the crowd alongside Jim Ludes, vice president for strategic initiatives at Salve Regina University, during a visit to the school’s campus on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022.
“A court does best when it keeps to the legal issues, when it doesn’t allow personal political views, personal policy views to an affect or infect, its judging,” said Kagan, who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2010. “And the worst moments for the court have been times when judges have allowed that to happen.”
Her remarks come after a term in which the court’s 6-3 conservative majority consistently decided the biggest cases – on abortion, guns and religion – in ways that aligned closely to conservative political ideology. The rulings caused outrage on the left, led to protests outside some of the justices’ homes and sent the court’s approval rating into a tailspin.
Chief Justice John Roberts defended the court’s work last month, arguing that while its opinions are open to criticism from the public, the institution’s legitimacy shouldn’t be called into question “simply because people disagree with an opinion.”
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan participates in a panel discussion with Hari Osofsky, dean of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, in the Law School’s Thorne Auditorium, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022.
“Lately, the criticism is phrased in terms of, you know, because of these opinions, it calls into question the legitimacy of the court,” Roberts said at a judicial conference in Colorado. “If they want to say that its legitimacy is in question, they’re free to do so. But I don’t understand the connection between opinions that people disagree with and the legitimacy of the court.”
That view has drawn pushback from critics who say it’s only partly about the outcome of individual cases. It’s also the case, they say, that the high court repeatedly upheld its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision until former President Donald Trump nominated and won confirmation for three justices, giving conservatives a super majority. Trump repeatedly promised to nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Without mentioning Roberts, Kagan indicated her point was broader: That Americans need to have confidence the Supreme Court’s decisions are based on judicial philosophies and doctrines that are applied evenly – regardless of whether the outcome matches the party platform of the president who nominated the justices in the majority.
“The thing that builds up reservoirs of public confidence is…the court acting like a court and not acting like an extension of the political process,” she said.
“I’m not talking about the popularity of particular Supreme Court decisions,” Kagan said at the Northwestern event last week. “What I am talking about is what gives the people in our country a sort of underlying sense that the court is doing its job.”
