‘What A Jackass!’: Joe Scarborough Stunned By Donald Trump’s Latest Lie
Lee Moran – February 12, 2024
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday morning went to town on Donald Trump’s latest story involving an unnamed “sir,” a verbal habit of the former president that commentators have previously noted pretty much means he’s about to lie.
“It’s not even a good lie for Donald Trump,” said the anchor.
Over the weekend, Trump railed against the NATO military alliance at a campaign rally and claimed, “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”
Watch Trump’s speech in the video here:
Trump: One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, Well, sir, if we don't pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said.. No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. pic.twitter.com/2RPVDFZIXy
Scarborough highly doubted Trump’s version of the events.
“Nobody is saying that. What a jackass!” he said. “How stupid would you have to be in that audience to go, ‘Oh, well, did they really say that? That’s amazing. I can’t believe a big country president would say that.’ It’s just stupid.”
The “Morning Joe” cohost suggested Trump was “now so desperate to support [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and undercut America’s allies in Europe, he’s making up a ‘sir’ story?”
“It’s not even a good lie for Donald Trump. Like, this is you can tell he’s losing it,” he said, later adding it was the kind of story that even a third-grader would question.
Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.
But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.
As most people know by now, Robert Hur, a special counsel appointed to look into allegations of wrongdoing on Biden’s part, concluded that the president shouldn’t be charged. But his report included an uncalled-for and completely unprofessional swipe at Biden’s mental acuity, apparently based on the president’s difficulty in remembering specific dates — difficulty that, as I wrote on Friday, everyone confronts at whatever age. Hur’s gratuitous treatment of Biden echoed James Comey’s gratuitous treatment of Clinton — Hur and Comey both seemed to want to take political stands when that was not their duty.
It’s a case of bureaucrats overstepping their bounds in a way that’s at best careless and at worst malicious.
Yes, it’s true that Biden is old, and will be even older if he wins re-election and serves out a second term. I wish that Democrats had been able to settle on a consensus successor a year or two ago and that Biden had been able to step aside in that successor’s favor without setting off an intraparty free-for-all. But speculating about whether that could have happened is beside the point now. It didn’t happen, and Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.
It’s also true that many voters think the president’s age is an issue. But there’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. And yes, he speaks quietly and a bit slowly, although this is in part because of his lifetime struggle with stuttering. He also, by the way, has a sense of humor, which I think is important.
Most important is that Biden has been a remarkably effective president. Trump spent four years claiming that a major infrastructure initiative was just around the corner, to the point that “It’s infrastructure week!” became a running joke; Biden actually got legislation passed. Trump promised to revive American manufacturing, but didn’t. Biden’s technology and climate policies — the latter passed against heavy odds — have produced a surge in manufacturing investment. His enhancement of Obamacare has brought health insurance coverage to millions.
If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips.
And what about his opponent, who is only four years younger? Maybe some people are impressed by the fact that Trump talks loud and mean. But what about what he’s actually saying in his speeches? They’re frequently rambling word salads, full of bizarre claims like his assertion on Friday that if he loses in November, “they’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”
Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.
As I also wrote last week, Trump’s speeches make me remember my father’s awful last year, when he suffered from sundowning — bouts of incoherence and belligerence after dark. And we’re supposed to be worried about Biden’s mental state?
Over the past few days, while the national discussion has been dominated by talk about Biden’s age, Trump declared that he wouldn’t intervene to help “delinquent” NATO members if Russia were to attack them, even suggesting that he might encourage such an attack. He seems to regard NATO as nothing more than a protection racket and after all this time still has no idea how the alliance works. By the way, Lithuania, the NATO member that Trump singled out, has spent a larger percentage of its G.D.P. on aid to Ukraine than any other nation.
Again, I wish this election weren’t a contest between two elderly men and worry in general about American gerontocracy. But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Tucker Carlson Defends Putin, Says ‘Leadership Requires Killing’ | Video
Sharon Knolle – February 12, 2024
Tucker Carlson had a curious defense of Vladimir Putin in his first interview since interviewing the Russian autocrat, saying “Every leader kills people, leadership requires killing.”
Carlson’s remarks were made at the 2024 World Government Summit in Dubai, where he was interviewed by Egyptian journalist Emad Eldin Adeeb.
Adeeb asked Carlson why he neglected to ask Putin about such pressing topics as the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “I’m not going to lecture you, but you should challenge some ideas,” said Adeeb. “You did not talk about freedom of speech, you did not talk about Navlny…”
Carlson replied that other journalists had already posed such questions to Putin, adding, essentially, that it’s not news that Putin has ordered hits on his enemies. “Every leader kills people, leadership requires killing,” said the former Fox News anchor. (Carlson’s comments that “leadership requires killing” appear about 17 minutes into the 26-minute segment.)
Although Carlson did ask Putin about the potential release of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich during the interview that took place in Moscow, he told Adeeb that his primary goal was to “let Putin talk” and “hear his thoughts.” Carlson said that positioning himself as the “good guy” to Putin’s “bad guy” would “not be fruitful.”
When Adeeb asked about Carlson’s response to the criticism leveled at him over his Putin interview, Carlson responded,”I don’t like the internet and I haven’t seen any of the reactions.” Adeeb asked specifically if Carlson had heard Hillary Clinton’s summation that he had proved “a useful idiot” to the Russian dictator and he claimed not to have heard about it.https://www.youtube.com/embed/mMXikZM_O80?feature=oembed
“She’s a child, I don’t listen to her,” he said of the former Secretary of State.
While Carlson insisted several times that he is “not flakking for Putin,” he did praise Moscow for being better than any current U.S. city. “Moscow is so much nicer than any city in my country, cleaner and safer and prettier. I grew up in a country that had cities like Moscow and Abu Dhabi, and Singapore and Tokyo, and we no longer have them.”
Decrying the “filth and graffiti” found in American cities and people “begging for drugs” in London, Carlson seemed to be saying that if he were in charge, those kinds of things would not happen: “My children don’t smoke marijuana at the breakfast table because I don’t allow them.”
In Tucker Carlson interview, Putin’s plans for Ukraine appear to echo Trump’s
Kim Hjelmgaard and Rachel Barber – February 9, 2024
Former Fox News host and divisive conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson on Thursday released a lengthy and carefully stage-managed interview with President Vladimir Putin − the first Western media figure to do so since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago.
Carlson published the video interview on his personal website. It was also posted on his X social account. The interview took place in a gilded hall at the Kremlin palace in Moscow.
It covered a variety topics from the war in Ukraine to President Joe Biden, from the fate of detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to Elon Musk. The interview did not break meaningful new ground. Carlson has consistently spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. He’s also been a strident critic of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.
“If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons,” Putin said when asked by Carlson about the prospect for peace in Ukraine, referring to Western aid. “It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it.”
Putin said he didn’t see a point in calling Biden, whom he had not spoken to since before the invasion. Biden has refused to speak to the Russian leader unless genuine conditions for negotiating a peace deal are put forward.
Instead, Putin’s answers about the fighting in Ukraine seemed to echo with the U.S. president he said he had a positive relationship with: Donald Trump.
Putin called on the U.S. to “make an agreement” to end the war, likely involving Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a Manchester, New Hampshire, rally last month.
Trump has not explained how he would achieve this.
The interview comes as momentum on the battlefield appears to have swung in Russia’s favor while fresh U.S. aid for Ukraine remains uncertain in Congress. Polls show the majority of Americans believe the U.S. should be supporting Ukraine, but many are concerned it may be doing too much at the expense of domestic priorities. Republicans are far more skeptical than Democrats over the utility of sending Ukraine more wartime aid.
At times, the interview, which lasted more than two hours, became somewhat confrontational. However, Carslon did not explicitly challenge Putin’s many false assertions, nor did he push Russia’s leader on his military’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine or political repressions at home.
When Putin said he believed Russia and the U.S. could potentially reach a deal to free Gershkovich, an American journalist Russia detained last year, Carlson pressed him: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super spy, and everybody knows that.”
Putin’s government has been holding Gershkovich for more than a year for reporting on the invasion. Gershkovich has been charged with espionage, an allegation he and the U.S. State Department deny. The U.S. government has determined that Gershkovich is being wrongfully detained.
The U.S. made an offer late last year to secure Gershkovich’s release but said Moscow rejected it. Putin appeared to indicate Thursday that he would consider swapping Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin who killed a Georgian-born dissident in a park in Berlin in 2019. Krasikov followed his victim to the park on a bicycle. He’s serving a jail sentence in Germany.
Putin dominated the conversation. He also appeared to occasionally joke and snarl at Carlson’s expense.
“Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?” Putin said in response to a question about why he had previously said he believed the U.S. could, via NATO, launch a “surprise attack” on Russia.
“Your basic education is in history, as far as I understand,” Putin added. “So if you don’t mind, I will take only 30 seconds or one minute to give you a short reference to history to give you a little historical background.”
Putin then went on to speak for more than 20 minutes about the history of Eastern Europe, including references to Catherine the Great, the 18th century empress of Russia.
Carlson struggled to interrupt Putin during his personal overview of Russian history.
At one point, the conversation took a turn to discussing the U.S. reputation in the international community. Putin claimed the U.S. is more afraid of a “strong China” than it is of a “strong Russia.”
And he lavished praise on Tesla’s founder, who also owns X.
“I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk,” he said.
In a social media monologue prior to releasing the interview, Carlson said he wanted to sit down with Putin because “most Americans are not informed” on how the war in Ukraine is “reshaping the world.” He blamed U.S. mainstream media for this, alleging that “no one has told them the truth.” He has previously claimed, without providing evidence, that the U.S. government has thwarted his attempts to sit down with Putin.
Carlson said Western journalists have, by contrast, interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy many times. He described these interviews as “fawning pep sessions” aimed at amplifying Ukraine’s need for more U.S. weapons and ultimately directed at getting the U.S. more involved in the war.
There was no immediate official reaction to Carslon’s interview with Putin from Ukraine’s government.
International media outlets have sat down with Zelenskyy dozens of times since the war’s start. However, there is little merit to Carlson’s other claims. Journalists in Russia face extreme reporting restrictions. They can be arrested for labeling Russia’s invasion a “war”; instead, they have to call it a “special military operation.”
Russia’s crackdown on free speech extends to regular citizens as well as journalists. They can be arrested or fined for criticizing the war in Ukraine. Carlson promotes his show on social media platform X as a defender of free speech. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, has issued an arrest warrant for Putin. It accused him of war crimes in Ukraine including deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
Since news of the interview broke, many Western journalists have been posting on social media how they have repeatedly attempted to secure interviews with Putin over the last two years. The last time Putin was interviewed by an American journalist was in June 2021 with NBC’s Keir Simmons.
“Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour wrote on X. She called his claim “absurd.”
Putin himself has made many speeches and public appearances during which he’s commented at length on the war in Ukraine and his “objectives.” At various times, he’s described these as “denazification, demilitarization and its neutral status.” There is no evidence to indicate that Ukraine has a systemic problem with neo-Nazis. Putin has long been vehemently opposed to Ukraine and other neighboring nations joining NATO.
Putin has said that Western countries have been “stupefied” by anti-Russian propaganda.
Before the interview ran, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Americans shouldn’t believe anything Putin said in the interview.
“Anybody (who) watches that interview you need to make sure to remember that you are listening to Vladimir Putin. You shouldn’t take at face value anything he has to say.”
As the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, Carlson was one of the network’s biggest stars. The show was canceled last year following a series of controversies. Carlson drove ratings at the network but, his critics say he pushed extreme right-wing views and trafficked in racist and misogynistic themes and conspiracy theories.
“Tucker Carlson isn’t a journalist, he’s a propagandist,” wrote Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy, on X.
“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.” Carlson described Ukraine as a “a pure client state of the United States State Department” and the then looming war as a “border issue.”
Prior to his interview with Putin, one of the topics Carlson addressed on his X account, which posts material from his subscription streaming service, was about male-pattern baldness.
Republicans are sticking to Trump — they’re about to reap the whirlwind
Brian Karem – February 8, 2024
Donald Trump; Mike Johnson Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Welcome to the whirlwind.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional lawyer, says he doesn’t believe the Republicans can win this fall. “They are floundering to find something to run on,” he said. “They’re losing all over the place. They don’t want solutions, they want problems. With them it’s rule or ruin. Either they want to rule everything or ruin our chances of progressing. That’s a fascistic strategy.”
According to Raskin, the Republicans won’t accept the result of elections unless they win, and are using immigration as a campaign issue for Donald Trump — who may well be ineligible to run for office. “I don’t think he’s legally qualified to be on the ballot,” Raskin said. “It’s clear to me that section 3 of the 14th amendment disqualifies Donald Trump because he participated in an insurrection or rebellion. He violated his oath.” Raskin hopes the Supreme Court will come to the “unavoidable” conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency.
Like I said, the whirlwind.
In 1984, in a place called Rio Bravo just south of Laredo, Texas, a double-wide trailer burst into flames.
As the flames grew in intensity they became a whirlwind of fire that consumed the trailer and another structure nearby.
That serves as an apt metaphor for today’s Republican politics, and not just on the southern border.
The trailer owners were unable to do anything about the fire because the subdivision they lived in had no running water, or even electricity. At the time of the fire they were also busy fishing a friend’s trailer out of the Rio Grande, where it had been swept after a sudden deluge of rain.
Rio Bravo was, at the time, a subdivision situated next to the Rio Grande, carved out of rented land by a greedy Texas land developer who sold parcels in “open contracts” to undocumented immigrants. Business was so good, he opened a second illegal subdivision (later called “colonias” — a common term in Mexico — as they became popular throughout the Southwest). He named the second one “El Cenizo.”
That’s right. He called the second one “The Ash.” You can’t make that up.
Covering the border between Texas and Mexico was one of my earliest assignments as a reporter. One of my first run-ins with the Trump administration occurred because of Trump’s incredibly obtuse policies regarding the border. At the time I confronted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders — now the governor of Arkansas — about the practice of caging young immigrant children.
She, of course, claimed to be a Christian and also claimed to be more credible than most reporters. She lied then. She lies now. And Don the Con did not understand, either then or now, the root cause of illegal immigration or how to solve that problem. Trump is not alone. It is an emotional issue, one that nearly every politician has fumbled and few of us understand. It isn’t about criminals marauding through the countryside. It is about hope, despair and disinformation. The U.S. government and the businesses that want a constant supply of cheap labor are responsible for continuing the problem.
There has been no meaningful legislation concerning illegal immigration since the Simpson-Mazzoli Act in 1985, which, for the first time, made it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants. In the 40 years since that became law, few if any large companies have ever been prosecuted for hiring any of the millions of immigrants who work in agriculture, construction, thoroughbred racing and numerous other industries. It’s the promise of jobs and a chance to live out the American Dream that drives the “crisis” on the border that has been with us for at least 40 years.
America needs cheap labor. Immigrants from Mexico and Latin America (and other places much farther away) need jobs. In response, there has been a steady deluge of political garbage out of every White House since the Reagan administration, aimed at criminalizing a story of hope in search of votes.
As the rain continued to fall in Los Angeles this week, causing catastrophic mudslides and flooding, the political rain in Washington also continued, and with similar results.
It engulfed the GOP shortly after sunset on Tuesday, when the House failed by four votes to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — for reasons that even some Republicans could not fathom. Rep. Tom McClintock of California, for instance, voted against impeachment for the simple reason that House Republicans failed “to identify an impeachable crime that Mayorkas has committed.” To proceed, he said, would “stretch and distort the Constitution.”
The world is in disarray right now. But nothing is in more disarray than the Republican Party, as it suffers both the whirlwind of fire brought about by its own need to generate issues for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the deluge of stupidity unleashed by those who do his bidding in Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene led the charge in that latter deluge, one of the few things she does with aplomb. She even claimed that Democrats had hidden members on the House floor to confuse the GOP majority as they voted to impeach Mayorkas. Apparently she can’t count to four even if she uses all of her toes. House Speaker Mike Johnson is so inept that he appointed Greene as a spokesperson. He also can’t count votes. Majority Whip Tom Emmer couldn’t find a way to get four more votes from his own caucus. Republicans have vowed to go after Mayorkas again once they figure out how to count. Is there a better definition of incompetent?
None of this has anything to do with “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional necessity for impeaching officeholders. There is nothing more grimly amusing than watching the GOP’s three-ring circus — which is both led by Donald Trump and staged exclusively for his benefit.
Trump lost twice on Tuesday. He couldn’t get the votes he wanted to impeach Mayorkas and he lost his bid for “total immunity” in his Jan. 6 criminal case, when three judges on the D.C. Circuit Court delivered circuit judges offered a unanimous and airtight opinion against him.
To understand the depth of Trump’s despair, you may be tempted to count the ketchup bottles at Mar-a-Lago. Or you could read at least part of the 57-page court decision which found that Trump can be criminally charged. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn’t muster anyone brighter than Greene to speak up about it. “When they came to Washington to protest, you called that an insurrection,” she said. “But when Biden was inaugurated and this Capitol was surrounded with National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection.”
The congresswoman from Georgia proves, once again, that you can be a whirlwind of fiery rhetoric while deluging the populace with extreme ignorance. Oh, and she wants the House to pass a resolution stating that Trump was no insurrectionist. So there is that.
At the same time the House GOP was trying to impeach Mayorkas, it was also just saying no to a Senate compromise bill that would provide more money and infrastructure on the border along with more support for both Ukraine and Israel. A standalone bill to fund aid to Israel, backed by the GOP, also failed on Tuesday. The border bill failed in the Senate Wednesday, and now that robust body, dominated by aging white men who suffer from incontinence, will have to take up separate funding bills for Ukraine and Israel.
“All of this is just to give Trump something to run on,” Raskin told me. “My colleagues in the Republican Party are subverting the process for a man who embraces fascism.”
The failures keep mounting, but don’t expect Mike Johnson to take any responsibility for his part in the fiasco on the House side. He told reporters, “I don’t think that this is a reflection on the leader, I think this is a reflection on the body itself.” Well, here’s a reminder: He’s the head of that body.
Johnson has promised that any bipartisan legislation sent to the House from the Senate regarding immigration will be “dead on arrival.” Of course Johnson says the border is “an overwhelming emergency” and should be dealt with promptly — but apparently not so much of an emergency that the GOP is willing to accept a compromise solution to a problem that has been ongoing since the last century. The Senate plan — negotiated by James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican; Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat; and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent — would strengthen border security and reduce illegal immigration. The Border Patrol union even supports it – and those folks are not liberal Democrats.
Don’t expect a solution anytime soon. We will get nothing but empty words as Trump’s tempest in a very nasty teapot continues. He wants to delay border legislation indefinitely, so he can run on the issue and take credit for any solution — but only after he wins, which is looking increasingly uncertain the closer we get to Election Day. The decision to deny him immunity seems ironclad, and relies on one of the oldest landmark Supreme Court cases — Marbury v. Madison — to do so. That decision gives courts the ability to strike down laws deemed unconstitutional. So it could be argued that if the Supreme Court takes up Trump’s immunity case and rules in his favor, it will overturn more than 200 years of judicial decisions and eliminate the Supreme Court as an equal partner in government.
To quote the D.C. Circuit decision: “As the Supreme Court has unequivocally explained: No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. … That principle applies, of course, to a President.”
The court also found that the president is “amenable to the laws for his conduct,” and “cannot at his discretion” violate them.
Finally, the court found that Trump was a “citizen,” not a king: He “lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.”
Harry Litman of the Los Angeles Times offered an explanation on X of what took the D.C. circuit so long: “They opted, probably from the start, to make it per curiam — basically one voice. That gives it even added force. And that might have required extensive compromising negotiation to get it just right.”
That means the Supreme Court might actually refuse to hear Trump’s appeal on the immunity case — something he fears and that many court watchers say is possible now that the D.C. Circuit has done the heavy lifting and penned an exquisite opinion. At any rate, even if the Supreme Court takes up the case, many experts believe Trump will still face a criminal trial, at the latest, by fall.
In the short term, do not expect any legislation regarding immigration to pass the Senate or House. Expect Donald Trump to use the time to raise money while he continues to fight his battles in court and keeps his political party running interference for him.
Trump’s last wild ride in the public domain is in its death throes. His whirlwind is consuming him. His supporters are holding on, and those who need him the most, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are defending him so they can stay as relevant as possible (and perhaps evade criminal charges) in a world that increasingly sees Trump and his minions for what they are; soulless hacks with a need and desire for great personal power at the expense of humanity.
What this means for the GOP is obvious: After Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson; after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; after its inability to pass any legislation, the party is undeniably broken, unable to lead and woefully lacking in common sense. It is dedicated to the edification and protection of one of the worst politicians ever to rise to prominence in our republic.
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, described him as “a person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.”
Lead? The GOP is incapable of that. Follow? It won’t follow anyone except Trump, and it will never get out of the way — unless we collectively kick it to the curb. Or right into that whirlwind.
The ‘Nuclear’ Election Conspiracy Doc Trump Cited In Court Is A Sign Of Things To Come
Hunter Walker – February 7, 2024
The true believers were buzzing.
It was Jan. 2 and former President Trump had just used his “Truth Social” platform to release a 32-page “Summary of Election Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election in the Swing States.” The document rehashed thoroughly debunked claims, promoted blatantly false information, and repeatedly cited other reports that do not actually appear to exist to make the patently absurd assertion there is “no evidence Joe Biden won.” In other words, it was everything many hardcore Trump supporters who refuse to accept his defeat had been waiting for.
On the site formerly known as Twitter where election dead-enders have taken advantage of Elon Musk’s permissive attitude towards right-wing conspiracy theories, a few thousand pro-Trump activists spent nearly 13 hours in an audio chat discussing the document, which they dubbed “The Nucleus File.” But the report was more than an object of fascination for the pro-Trump fringe.
Along with becoming a hot topic in delirious Twitter Spaces, the report was cited in a Jan. 2 federal court filing by Trump’s attorneys, part of a wild strategy to argue he was immune from prosecution in the election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
The use of a questionable anonymous document to incorporate election conspiracies into his defense raised eyebrows from legal observers, even those who had grown familiar with the former president’s everything-at-the-wall approach to his defense. One lawyer who previously worked for Trump described the move to TPM as not just unlikely to help his case, but akin to bringing up an “alien abduction” before a judge.
“That’ll never get off the ground,” said the lawyer, Ty Cobb, a veteran defense attorney who was special counsel on Trump’s White House legal team during the Mueller investigation and who has since become an outspoken Trump critic.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Trump’s team on Tuesday and allowed the prosecution to move forward at the district court level. In their decision, the circuit court panel stuck to the question at hand and completely ignored the assertion from Trump’s legal team that the 2020 outcome was up for debate. Instead, the court flatly declared Trump both an election loser and a danger to the democracy.
“Former President Trump’s alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government,” the judges wrote.
The document may not have had any impact in court, but there are many indications it is part of a larger — and ongoing — project for Trump’s presidential campaign that his activist allies describe as a “nuclear” assault. The promotion of the document by the former president and its use in his legal defense ultimately served as proof that Trump is making the fever dream that he won the last election a part of the current one. Trump is dragging all elements of his political universe with him down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, including his campaign team, an army of attorneys, Republican Party leaders, and the activists who have driven the false narrative online and are increasingly targeting election infrastructure in the real world.
Former President Donald Trump — flanked by attorney John Lauro, left, and D. John Sauer, right — speaks to reporters and members of the media at the Waldorf Astoria hotel after attending a hearing of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals at the federal courthouse on Tuesday, Jan. 09, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)More
Early on in the marathon Twitter discussion about the file, a right-wing streamer who has amassed a six-figure following using the handle “Behizy” took the virtual stage.
“What’s up my fellow conspiracy theorist election deniers?” Behizy declared, with evident sarcasm oozing over any potential hint of self awareness.
“I saw the report,” he said. “Who wrote it? Does anyone know?”
“We’re trying to figure that out,” replied Pablo Martinez, the chairman of the Republican Party in McKinley County, New Mexico, who was one of the hosts of the conversation.
“Behizy” actually seemed pleased not to get an answer to his question.
“I like that the author is anonymous because we know the mainstream media will attack the messenger before actually addressing the message,” he said. “So, I think it’s just smart that they intentionally omitted their name from the report.”
The report, however, wasn’t entirely anonymous. One person whose name was all over the document — David Cross — spoke to the crowd a few minutes later. Cross, who is a financial adviser in Georgia, has emerged in recent years as one of several self-styled experts and sleuths who have taken it upon themselves to question the 2020 presidential election results and the integrity of the country’s election systems. Corporate records show Cross is one of three executives at an outfit called the Election Oversight Group, a supposed watchdog organization, along with a man named Kevin Moncla. The EOG has helped file complaints with elections officials in Georgia and created research documents and videos based on debunked allegations. Cross, Moncla, and their organization were cited seven different times in the document shared by Trump and, on the Twitter broadcast, Cross hinted it was just the beginning.
“One of the things that everybody needs to realize about this report is that this is a summary. There’s a bigger report that’s going to be coming later and it’s going to be like dropping a nuclear bomb on all of these states and with all of the ways that elections are manipulated,” Cross declared. “So, that’ll be the next thing that’s coming. So, you’re kind of getting a taste of the big picture in looking at this report. There’s more to come.”
Cross, who did not elaborate on his apparent inside knowledge, then went on to encourage other activists to obtain positions working within election infrastructure. However, he cautioned them to erase their “pro-Trump” digital footprint beforehand.
“You need to be involved as an election worker on Election Day and, if you are going to do that, then go on to your Facebook account and eliminate as much conservative stuff as you possibly can because you will be profiled,” he said. “They will not hire you.”
“Put stuff about, like, you know, your cats, and your flower garden, or your dogs, or fishing. I don’t care, just not political stuff,” Cross said, adding, “Get your ass hired so that you can be part of this and be part of the solution.”
The strategy was an example of how election conspiracy-theory activists are taking their message offline and into the polling places and offices where America’s votes are counted. After outlining his idea for a stealth mission, Cross returned to the report and seemed to indicate he had a hand in writing it.
“We have to close all possible loops for cheating and malfeasance, and I think we’ve done a really good job of exposing that in the report that everybody’s reading or the summary that you’re reading,” Cross said.
Despite seeming to take credit on the Twitter broadcast, Cross denied playing any role writing the report shared by Trump during a phone conversation with TPM on Feb. 2.
“My involvement in that report is just that my work was cited in it, so I didn’t actually write the bullet points that are in there, because what you’re looking at is a summary,” Cross said. “But I am aware that there’s going to be more, because, like I said, you’re looking at a summary, you’re not looking at all the details.”
Former President Donald Trump acknowledges supporters as he leaves the stage at the conclusion of a campaign rally at the SNHU Arena on January 20, 2024 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Trump campaign clearly played a role in publishing the report. On Jan. 6, four days after Trump shared the “election fraud” summary and his legal team cited it in the reply brief, the Washington Post published a story about the document that claimed “Trump campaign spokesperson Liz Harrington wrote the report.” The Post cited people “familiar with the matter.” Along with reportedly being produced by a Trump staffer, the document was hosted on a URL associated with Campaign Nucleus, a platform used by the campaign. That official web address is what led the excited activists to dub the document “The Nucleus File.”
Harrington did not respond to requests for comment on record. Cross also initially denied being in contact with anyone on Trump’s campaign team, but later admitted the pair had been in contact.
“Liz is really private, and so, I’m not really comfortable talking about what she’s doing or anything like that,” Cross said. “I mean, I can tell you that I’ve had a couple of conversations with her, but it’s all fairly general.”
The Post described Harrington as a “polarizing figure in Trump’s orbit” due to her interest in 2020 election denial. Overall, the reporters framed the publication of the report as evidence of “divisions” on Trump’s team, where some of the staff have tried to tamp down on the election conspiracy theories. A senior former Trump campaign official echoed that notion in a conversation with TPM where they described Harrington as a source of “craziness” and a “challenging” figure for those trying to steer Trump away from the false voter fraud narratives.
Of course, while Harrington or other individual staffers might be interested in election conspiracy theories, at the end of the day, it is Trump himself who shared the report and his lawyers who cited it in a court filing. Still, Harrington seems to be a central figure connecting fringe election activists with the Trump campaign.
Last August, Trump announced a grand plan to unveil a separate report on “the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia” during a press conference at his New Jersey golf club. According to the New York Times, that report was a more than 100-page document “compiled at least in part by Liz Harrington, a Trump communications aide who is often described as among the true believers in his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.”
Despite Trump’s announcement, the press conference never took place and that Georgia-specific document has, thus far, never seen the light of day.
The Georgia report that Harrington supposedly worked on seems like it may have been referenced in the “Nucleus File,” which contained multiple citations referencing a “Report on Widespread Fraud in the Georgia 2020 Presidential Election” that does not appear to exist anywhere else online. In a conversation last week, Kevin Moncla, David Cross’ partner in the Election Oversight Group, told TPM he is aware of a report on Georgia that is based, in part, on the pair’s research.
“The Georgia portion of that report I know includes some of our work,” Moncla said.
Like Cross, Moncla was somewhat coy when asked about his ties to Harrington.
“I’ve contributed my work,” Moncla said. “I’ll just leave it at that.”
Georgia’s 2020 election result, which has been the focus of much of Cross’ and Moncla’s work and skepticism, has been affirmed in three separate counts overseen by officials from Trump’s own party. The factual issues and logical leaps that plague their work aren’t the only things that make the pair potentially problematic associates for a presidential campaign. Last year, Georgia election officials asked the FBI to investigate a series of aggressive emails they received from Moncla in conjunction with complaints he filed related to the administration of the vote. At least one of those complaints is still being reviewed by the State Election Board. Moncla has also had personal legal troubles. In 2004, Moncla pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge related to secretly videotaping his former wife and other guests in the bathroom of their home.
When asked about the call for an FBI investigation, Moncla said, “I’m not going to get into the status of it.” And he dismissed the voyeurism charges as an issue that came up in a “personal divorce case.”
“My work stands for itself, I don’t care what people think of me,” Moncla said.
Along with showing links between fringe activists and the Trump campaign, the “Nucleus File” connects the conspiratorial politics to the former president’s legal team. The filing that cited the document used it as an example of evidence that prosecutors are ignoring “the vigorous disputes and questions about the actual outcome of the 2020 Presidential election — disputes that date back to November 2020, continue to this day in our nation’s political discourse, and are based on extensive information about widespread fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election.” Trump’s attorneys, who have argued he has immunity for his conduct on Jan. 6, brought that point up to argue prosecutors had made “legally and factually incorrect” statements in the case. The lawyers who filed the brief citing the report did not respond to requests for comment.
Attorneys for former U.S. President Donald Trump Todd Blanche (2nd R), John Lauro (R) and Gregory Singer (L) arrive at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House August 28, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Cobb, the veteran defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who once worked for Trump, theorized to TPM that the inclusion of election conspiracy theories is likely an effort directed by the former president to “relitigate that and complicate the criminal case.” Cobb predicted that strategy would be an utter failure since it is “irrelevant” to the question of whether Trump tried to obstruct an official proceeding.
“As a criminal defendant, you’re basically allowed to say it was an alien abduction,” Cobb said.
While Trump and his attorneys might be able to bring up election conspiracy theories in pre-trial hearings, Cobb predicted the judge would not allow them to take these issues to trial.
“You can get away with a lot argumentatively pretrial, but that’s why this would be a pretrial exercise. … He needs to get through her to be able to raise this at trial,” Cobb said, referencing U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, “and he won’t be able to do that.”
Though Cobb does not expect “The Nucleus File” will make it further into Trump’s case, its inclusion in the filings so far does seem to shed light on the figures surrounding the president. On both his campaign and in his defense Trump has found people who are willing to indulge in the 2020 election fantasies promoted by the former president.
For his part, Cobb said he would refuse to file this type of information for a client and would “withdraw” if they insisted on it.
“There’s right and wrong, and the importance of ethics, and having a duty of candor with the court,” Cobb said, adding, “You don’t perpetrate a fraud upon the court and you try to stop shy of letting your client do it. So this is the kind of thing I would just say no to.”
Trump’s current legal and political operations clearly have no such qualms.
Biden blames Trump for sinking bipartisan immigration bill
By Steve Holland – February 6, 2024
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the bipartisan immigration bill is falling apart under political pressure from Republican rival Donald Trump and vowed to hit the road to remind voters who was to blame if it fails.
“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? The simple reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said. “Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically.”
Concerns over immigration have become a top issue in this year’s election campaign, with Trump preparing for a likely November rematch with Biden. Trump has been pushing congressional Republicans to reject the bipartisan border security deal unveiled on Sunday.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s vow to make the Republican ex-president’s efforts to kill the bill a major theme of his reelection campaign is a risky bet given polls showing that Americans give Biden low grades for his handling of border security and immigration.
The Democratic president’s approval rating sank to 38% in January as concerns over immigration flared, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during his presidency. Republicans contend that Biden should have kept the restrictive policies of Trump.
In December, encounters averaged more than 9,500 per day, according to U.S. government statistics, but have dropped steeply in about the last month.
Biden will test whether blaming Trump for thwarting a bipartisan compromise can help change American minds.
“I’ll be taking this issue to the country and the voters are gonna know that…just at the moment we’re going to secure the border and fund these other programs Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Biden said at the White House.
The $118 billion bill, which also includes aid for Israel and Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, is quickly losing support on Capitol Hill. House of Representatives Republicans have declared it dead on arrival, and more than 20 Republican senators have said the measure is not strict enough.
Several Democrats have also opposed the bill because they say some of its measures treat migrants too harshly.
Biden didn’t mention the Democratic opposition, but blamed Republicans for buckling under the pressure from Trump, who he said was reaching out to Republican lawmakers to “intimidate them to vote against this proposal.”
“Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right,” Biden said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday also took aim at Trump over the mounting opposition to the border security deal.
“Donald Trump would rather keep the chaos at the border so he can exploit it on the campaign trail instead of letting the Senate do the right thing and fix it,” Schumer said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jarrett Renshaw; Writing by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Trevor Hunnicut and Leslie Adler)
Negotiators in the Senate have produced a draft agreement on immigration and asylum. The deal delivers on Republican priorities. It includes changes to federal law to discourage asylum seeking. It shuts down asylum processing altogether if too many people arrive at once. Those and other changes send a clear message to would-be immigrants: You’re going to find it a lot harder to enter the United States without authorization. Rethink your plans.
The draft agreement offers little to nothing on major Democratic immigration priorities: no pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented immigrants, only the slightest increase in legal immigration. The Democrats traded away most of their own policy wish list. In return, they want an end to the mood of crisis at the border, plus emergency defense aid for Ukraine and Israel.
Yet Republicans in the House seem determined to reject the draft agreement. They appear poised to leave in place a status quo that one senior GOP House leader has described as an “invasion” and an “existential and national security threat.”
So if no deal results, what truths will we learn from this process?
The first is that Republicans don’t really care all that much about the situation at the border. A real “existential threat” cannot wait for some later date. People who perceive an existential threat don’t delay. In fact, a good many Republican legislators are very happy to allow a continuing flow of laborers across the border.
Consider that Florida’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work eight-hour days during the school year. Or that the Republican governor of Arkansas has signed a bill that relieves the state of having to certify that teenage workers aged 14 and 15 may work. Or that Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature may soon pass a law allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work as late as 9 p.m. on school nights. Or that Republican legislators in Wisconsin are pushing to allow 14-to-17-year-olds to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants. Consider also that all of these changes are written with teenage migrants very much in mind: Almost 40 percent of recent border-crossers have been under 18, a fivefold increase since the late aughts.
Those teenagers are traveling both alone and in family groups. They are coming to the U.S. to work. When state legislatures relax the rules on employing under-18s and under-16s, they’re flashing a giant we’re hiring sign to job-seeking teenagers around the world. The legislators know that. The teenagers know it. American voters should know it too.
A second truth concerns what Republican priorities really are. When Mike Johnson was elevated to the House speakership, he claimed that he genuinely wanted to help Ukraine but that aid had to wait until Congress passed new laws to harden the U.S. southern border. He wrote to President Joe Biden as recently as December 5 that further aid to Ukraine was “dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our nation’s border security laws.” When Senate negotiators produced exactly what Johnson said he wanted—a transformative bill that Congress could enact—he responded by reversing his demands. Johnson no longer wants any law at all. But one thing is constant: no aid to Ukraine—which suggests that “no aid to Ukraine,” not “defend the border,” is the true priority here.
A third truth is suggested by the angry reaction of House Republicans to the work of Senate Republicans: The very act of negotiation is mistrusted. Along with their speaker, House Republicans radically altered their position from “there must be a new law” to “there must be no new law,” and from “the president must sign our bill exactly as we wrote it” to “the president must act unilaterally by executive authority only.” How does anyone negotiate with a House majority that can so abruptly and totally pivot? The true goal revealed is failure and chaos.
And this points to a fourth truth, maybe the most important one of all. Donald Trump has sold his supporters the dangerous fantasy that democratic politics can be replaced by one man’s will. No need for distasteful compromises. No need to reckon with the concerns and interests of people who disagree with House Republicans. Just somehow return Trump to the presidency: He’ll bark; the system will obey.
Of course, such fantasies have no basis in reality. As the Cato Institute reported last November:
The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has removed a higher percentage of arrested border crossers in its first two years than the Trump DHS did over its last two years. Moreover, migrants were more likely to be released after a border arrest under President Trump than under President Biden. In absolute terms, the Biden DHS is removing 3.5 times as many people per month as the Trump DHS did.
Altogether, about 1.1 million unauthorized border-crossers were released into the United States during the Trump presidency and not removed by the end of his term. Glowering and yelling do not in fact accomplish much. But to many Trump supporters, glowering and yelling are the whole of it. They don’t care how little gets accomplished, so long as that little is done in the most offensive manner possible.
In their 1981 study of negotiation, Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury stress the importance of understanding the opposite party’s point of view. Among the benefits of doing so is helping a negotiator recognize when he’s received the best offer he’s likely to get—and then say yes rather than press for more and arrive at no.
Arriving at no is what’s happening now among the House Republicans. Because they refuse to understand the other side, they cannot appreciate a good offer and recognize when to accept it. They’re going to arrive only at no—no for America, and no for Ukraine. But no is what they want.
Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.
But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it reminds everyone I know, of the 2016 furor over Hillary Clinton’s email server, which was a minor issue that may well have wound up swinging the election to Donald Trump.
As most people know by now, Robert Hur, a special counsel appointed to look into allegations of wrongdoing on Biden’s part, concluded that the president shouldn’t be charged. But his report included an uncalled-for and completely unprofessional swipe at Biden’s mental acuity, apparently based on the president’s difficulty in remembering specific dates — difficulty that, as I wrote on Friday, everyone confronts at whatever age. Hur’s gratuitous treatment of Biden echoed James Comey’s gratuitous treatment of Clinton — Hur and Comey both seemed to want to take political stands when that was not their duty.
Yes, it’s true that Biden is old, and will be even older if he wins re-election and serves out a second term. I wish that Democrats had been able to settle on a consensus successor a year or two ago and that Biden had been able to step aside in that successor’s favor without setting off an intraparty free-for-all. But speculating about whether that could have happened is beside the point now. It didn’t happen, and Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.
It’s also true that many voters think the president’s age is an issue. But there’s perception and there’s reality: As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties — completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail. Of course, most voters don’t get to see him up close, and it’s on Biden’s team to address that. And yes, he speaks quietly and a bit slowly, although this is in part because of his lifetime struggle with stuttering. He also, by the way, has a sense of humor, which I think is important.
Most important is that Biden has been a remarkably effective president. Trump spent four years claiming that a major infrastructure initiative was just around the corner, to the point that “It’s infrastructure week!” became a running joke; Biden actually got legislation passed. Trump promised to revive American manufacturing, but didn’t. Biden’s technology and climate policies — the latter passed against heavy odds — have produced a surge in manufacturing investment. His enhancement of Obamacare has brought health insurance coverage to millions.
If you ask me, these achievements say a lot more about Biden’s capacity than his occasional verbal slips.
And what about his opponent, who is only four years younger? Maybe some people are impressed by the fact that Trump talks loud and mean. But what about what he’s actually saying in his speeches? They’re frequently rambling word salads, full of bizarre claims like his assertion on Friday that if he loses in November, “they’re going to change the name of Pennsylvania.”
Not to mention confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and mistaking E. Jean Carroll for one of his ex-wives.
As I also wrote last week, Trump’s speeches make me remember my father’s awful last year, when he suffered from sundowning — bouts of incoherence and belligerence after dark. And we’re supposed to be worried about Biden’s mental state?
Over the past few days, while the national discussion has been dominated by talk about Biden’s age, Trump declared that he wouldn’t intervene to help “delinquent” NATO members if Russia were to attack them, even suggesting that he might encourage such an attack. He seems to regard NATO as nothing more than a protection racket and after all this time still has no idea how the alliance works. By the way, Lithuania, the NATO member that Trump singled out, has spent a larger percentage of its G.D.P. on aid to Ukraine than any other nation.
Again, I wish this election weren’t a contest between two elderly men and worry in general about American gerontocracy. But like it or not, this is going to be a race between Biden and Trump — and somehow the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent.
As I said, until just the other day I was feeling somewhat optimistic. But now I’m deeply troubled about our nation’s future.
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.
Democracy is losing support in the world and in the US. Just look at El Salvador | Opinion
Andres Oppenheimer – February 6, 2024
The landslide re-election of popular authoritarian President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador’s Feb. 4 elections seems to confirm a global trend toward the loss of support for democracy. It seems to be happening everywhere, including in the United States.
Bukele announced on election night that he won by more than 85% of the vote, and 58 of 60 seats in the Salvadoran congress. That will give him near-absolute power during a second, five-year term.
The Salvadoran Constitution prohibits two consecutive terms, but Bukele packed the Supreme Court with loyalists and changed the rule to be able to run for re-election. Pre-election polls showed that he has a 90% popularity rate, more than any other president in the region, thanks to his effective campaign against the violent drug gangs that used to terrorize his country.
“This will be the first time where one party rules a country in a completely democratic system,” Bukele said on election night. “The entire opposition has been pulverized.”
But the big question is whether there can be democracy without an opposition. In a growing number of countries, voters don’t seem to be losing sleep over this issue.
Elected authoritarian leaders have won or are poised to win elections in India, Turkey and several other countries, despite concerns about their abuses of power. In Mexico, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday presented a bill to change the Constitution in ways that would weaken controls on the government.
In the United States, former President Donald Trump is likely to be nominated as the Republican candidate and could win the November elections, despite his support for the Jan. 6, 2021, failed insurrection that tried to overturn the 2020 election results. He recently stated that “I’d be a dictator on day one.”
An alarming new Gallup poll shows that only 28% of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the country, down from 60% in the mid-1980s.
In Latin America, a poll in 17 countries conducted by Latinobarómetro found that only 48% of Latin Americans agree with the idea that, “Democracy is preferable to any other form of government,” down from 63% in 2010. High crime rates, corruption and stagnant economies have driven up support for messianic leaders, the study says.
Salvadorans truly appreciate Bukele’s decision to build mega-prisons, and to put more than 75,000 presumed gang members behind bars. Although violent crime rates had begun to fall since 2015, they have plummeted since he took office in 2019, turning El Salvador from one of the most violent to one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America.
Problem is, many of those in prison were arrested without fair trials under a state of emergency imposed by Bukele’s government in early 2022. Many young Salvadorans were arrested by police just for having tattoos, without evidence that they belong to any drug gang.
El Salvador’s security forces have committed “widespread human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture, “ the Human Rights Watch advocacy group says.
And the current peace may not last long. Bukele has made deals with drug lords to stop the violence, but the drug gangs are still alive, critics say. Bukele’s mega-prisons, rather than eliminating violent crime, may become training grounds for new and more powerful drug gangs, security experts say. The best-known Salvadoran gangs were born in the jails of Los Angeles, they say.
Bukele has now become a hero to many people in Latin America’s crime-ridden countries. But the fact that he governs at his whim should raise alarm bells everywhere. Latin America has given plenty of examples that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Virtually all Latin American dictatorships have ended badly. If Bukele keeps holding absolute power and bragging about having “pulverized” the opposition, I don’t think that his government will be an exception to the rule.
Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 9 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Blog: andresoppenheimer.com
