The NY Post editorial board is very much controlled by the Murdoch family. Yesterday’s straight-forward but savage slam against Trump should be read as part of the Murdoch agenda to elect Ron DeSantis president and as his media empire’s policy.
When Donald Trump teased a “major announcement” Wednesday, the MAGA boards went crazy with speculation. He’s going to be the next speaker of the House! He’s enlisted Ron DeSantis to be his vice presidential candidate! He’s finally found that voter fraud he’s been promising for two years!
But no, it was a digital card collection of Trump dressed up like a superhero. In other words, another money grab.
For those still inundated with Trump’s pleas for donations, which arrive three or four times a day with ALL CAPS emails and efforts to shame you into “not letting him down,” this is no surprise. Trump used to be in the business of hotels, golf courses, wine, and dubious universities. Now he specializes in political fundraising.
He raised nearly $100 million promising to “stop the steal” and spent almost none of it on lawsuits or inquiries related to 2020 — because he knew, despite his rhetoric, that there was no steal. He sent emails about how important the midterms were, then banked most of what he raised for his endorsed candidates. These war chests pay for the salaries of families and allies, private jets, and expenses— and get funneled into Trump’s other companies through hotel bills, consulting, and fees.
Crashing in the polls, facing countless legal threats, and opponents gaining in popularity, there is one area Trump can still try to assert his dominance — with money. He still holds sway over the Republican National Committee because he has the most sophisticated donor lists. There are various reasons he announced he was running for president two years early, but one is the idea that if he can build a large enough campaign bank account, he can clear the field.
Unfortunately for Trump, a number of large donors say they’re not going to give to him this time around. And how many of his small-dollar donors, tired of all this “winning” and burned by “major announcements” of the least desirable Pokémon, will finally send those email pleas to spam?
Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us 1,438 times, and it may finally be too much.
Did I mention that the headline of the editorial was an eye-popper: “Don’t give any money to con artist Trump.” It didn’t have the desired effect. As I expected, the whole NFT grift scheme sold out in 12 hours, bringing in $4.45 million to Señor Trumpanzee. But even Steve Bannon says he's fed up with Trump now. Bannon and some other key Trump advisors say they "have had enough of his latest stunts— demanding everyone behind his wacky NFT collection be “fired today... I can’t do this anymore,” an exasperated-sounding Bannon said Thursday on his show, the War Room, when discussing the widely derided collection the 45th president launched the previous day." Fellow fascists Sebastian Gorka and Steve Cortes agree with Bannon. Cortes said every working with Trump at Mar-a-Lago should be fired. "'Everybody who was involved in this video, and also everybody who was involved, or at least asleep at the wheel, while the dinner with Nazis happened,' he said, referring to Trump’s meeting with avowed Hitler lover Kanye 'Ye' West and his Holocaust-denying adviser Nick Fuentes. 'Those people— all of them— have to go. They have to go for starters,' said the ex-president’s one-time assistant. Cortes also stressed that 'we can’t absolve President Trump of his responsibility' for the fiasco."
Yesterday, Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) gave a farewell speech to Congress. It was very, very different from the psychotic ramblings in Madison Cawthorn’s farewell speech. “Had I known,” said Kinzinger, “that standing up for truth would cost me my job, friendships and even my personal security, I would, without hesitation, do it all over again. I can rest easy at night knowing I fulfilled any oath to the office. I know many in this institution who cannot do the same.”
He indicted his own party in no uncertain terms: “Where Republicans once believed that limited government meant lower taxes and more autonomy, today limited government means inciting violence against government officials… Our leaders today belittle and in some cases justify attacks on the U.S. Capitol as ‘legitimate political discourse.’ The once great party of Lincoln, [Teddy] Roosevelt and Reagan, has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance. Instead, it has embraced lies and defeat. The Republican Party used to believe in a big tent which welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breath free. Now, we shelter the ignorant, the racist who only stoke anger and hatred to those who are different than us. Our constituents voted us in based on our beliefs but we cannot use our faith as a sword and a shield while ignoring the fact that we are all children of God, that we are all Americans.”
He had some admonitions for Democrats as well and then asked his colleagues to look inside themselves for the sake of the country: “Unfortunately we now all lives a world where lies trump truth, where democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism. If we, America’s elected leaders do not search within ourselves for a way out I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”
Kinzinger serves on the J-6 Committee, which is going to have its final televised meeting on Monday (1PM, ET). The idea is to share the final report with the public and to discuss criminal and civil referrals against Trump and other key insurrectionists. They plan to reveal the executive summary and 8 chapters of the voluminous report and legislative changes for Congress to deal with. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) are working on which individuals besides Trump will be referred to the Justice Department.
Last night, Luke Broadwater reported that the referrals “would not carry any legal weight or compel any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes that the individuals cited committed crimes or other infractions. In the case of Trump, an official finding that a former president should be prosecuted for violating the law would be a rare and unusual step for the legislative branch to take.”
Crackpot attorneys John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Jeffrey Clark are almost sure to be referred to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Mark Meadows probably will be as well. Kevin McCarthy, on the other hand (who defied a subpoena), is likely to be referred to the Ethics Committee. Same goes for neo-fascist congressmmebers Gym Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Mo Brooks (R-AL), all of whom ignored subpoenas to testify.
Last week, writing for Roll Call, David Winston, a top adviser to congressional Republicans, wrote that the reason Republicans lost Senate races in Nevada, Arizona and Georgia in both 2020 and 2022 “was a group of imperfect candidates with bad messaging, bad campaigns and former President Donald Trump’s election denial crusade, which became a losing millstone around their collective necks… This party needs a serious messaging content audit to understand why the hundreds of millions of dollars of negative campaign advertising, pushed by a fee-driven consulting community, has once again turned off independent voters and cost Republicans seats they should have won. As the RNC’s post-election analysis committee begins its work, it’s important that it understand what these election results and data show: The party’s election problems are strategic more than tactical. Mail-in and early voting, while worth exploring, are convenient scapegoats that miss the bigger problems: an overreliance on outdated, negative messaging when voters want positive solutions to their problems, and campaign strategies based more on personality than policy.”
I don’t totally agree with Winston. After all, the Republican Party does have a message, standard conservative clap-trap— like cutting Medicare and privatizing Social Security and turning back the hands of time on issues of social equality. It’s just that they have to hide those issues or they would lose every election they fought since none of their policies are broadly popular. That’s why they're almost forced to run on hatred and bigotry. The greed part just doesn't fly to a general electorate. Winston should know that; he’s been part of it for decades. Besides, what kind of messaging could newly-elected Georgia state legislator, Daniel Rampey, a prototypical Republican politician, get from Winston that's going to make his grotesque Republicaness seem any more palatable to normal voters? (Yeah, that was the guy filmed burglarizing the homes of some of his Barrow County onstituents. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith: "We had a couple of instances of him on video taking the items and today we had one as well. We actually filmed him going into the residence and taking the items," items meaning prescription narcotics.