Maybe there is hope for Susan Collins after all.......
 

U.S. Senator Collins defends Romney, Cheney from Republican attacks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Susan Collins, a leading moderate Republican in the U.S. Congress, warned on Sunday against intolerance of differences within her party and pushed back at intraparty attacks from the right against Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Liz Cheney.

Collins, who won re-election in Maine last year despite a strong Democratic bid to oust her, said she was dismayed that Romney had been booed by fellow Republicans in his home state of Utah, and defended Cheney, who like Romney has been attacked from within the party for criticizing former President Donald Trump.

"We need to have room for a variety of views," Collins told CNN's "State of the Union" program. "We are not a party that is led by just one person."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-senator...172430322.html

What the hell is the matter with these idiots........
 

Marooned at Mar-a-Lago, Trump Still Has Iron Grip on Republicans

Locked out of Facebook, marooned in Mar-a-Lago and mocked for an amateurish new website, Donald Trump remained largely out of public sight this week. Yet the Republican Party’s capitulation to the former president became clearer than ever, as did the damage to American politics he has caused with his lie that the election was stolen from him.

In Washington, Republicans moved to strip Rep. Liz Cheney of her House leadership position, a punishment for denouncing Trump’s false claims of voter fraud as a threat to democracy. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas advanced sweeping new measures that would curtail voting, echoing the fictional narrative from Trump and his allies that the electoral system was rigged against him. And in Arizona, the state Republican Party started a bizarre re-examination of the November election results that involved searching for traces of bamboo in last year’s ballots.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/marooned-...145045740.html

Will we ever see these two in Orange Jumpsuits I wonder!
 

Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen predicted that his ex-boss won’t give Rudy Giuliani “two cents” for legal fees to defend himself against any charges that might arise from a current federal investigation.

“Let me be very clear: [Giuliani’s] going to get stiffed,” Cohen told Joy Reid in an MSNBC interview Friday. “Donald Trump does not pay legal bills. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything other than himself.”

Giuliani’s advisers earlier this week reached out to Trump’s team to shake loose some of the former president’s $250 million in campaign cash to reimburse Giuliani for his work attempting to overturn the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. But Cohen said there’s no way that will happen. “Donald in his crazy mind actually believes” that money is his “to do with” as he wishes, Cohen told Reid. Giuliani now has a “better chance of sling-shooting himself to the moon” than getting a big pay day from the former president, Cohen added.

“Donald Trump wouldn’t pay him two cents because his feeling is it’s an honor and a privilege to go to prison for him, to do his dirty work,” he said.

Cohen should know. He was sentenced to three years in prison for a variety of crimes committed while he was Trump’s lawyer, including lying to Congress during its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, campaign finance violations, and tax fraud.

Now Giuliani’s in the hot seat for work he did in Ukraine to dig up unflattering information about now-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election. In their effort to find communication between Ukrainian officials and the Trump administration, federal investigators last week seized more than 10 computers and phones from Giuliani’s Manhattan home and office. The Justice Department is reportedly focusing in part on Giuliani’s efforts to oust Marie Yovanovitch from her job as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She was reportedly unpopular with some Ukrainian officials because of her strong stance against corruption. Trump booted Yovanovitch from her post in 2019.

Cohen believes Giuliani will eventually act out of self interest, though. Late last month on CNN, he said: “Do I think Rudy will give up Donald in a heartbeat? Absolutely. He certainly doesn’t want to follow my path down into a 36-month sentence.”

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/micha...235400782.html

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, is there any amount of brown noising you won't do?!
 

In booting Cheney, 'My Kevin' leads GOP back to Trump....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Kevin McCarthy is leading his party to an inflection point, preparing to dump Rep. Liz Cheney from the No. 3 House leadership position and transform what's left of the party of Lincoln more decisively into the party of Trump.

The GOP leader argues that ousting Cheney has less to do with her very public criticism of the former president's lies about his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden than her inability to set aside personal convictions and do her job. As conference chair responsible for communicating a unified party message, Cheney has lost the confidence of rank-and-file lawmakers, he said this week.

But in tossing aside Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president and as close as it gets to GOP royalty, and promising a “big tent” to win back power, McCarthy is hollowing out a cadre of lawmakers intent on governing while he is elevating the people and personalities most loyal to Donald Trump. In one stroke, he is amplifying the former president’s false claims about the election and seeking to mend his own tattered relationship with Trump, reasserting himself as Trump’s man in the House.

It’s a transformational moment for McCarthy, who resurrected his political career by attaching himself to Trump — who called him “My Kevin” — and is now on a glidepath to become House speaker, second in line to the presidency, if Republicans win control in next year's elections.

Race for NYC Mayor
 

I didn’t catch the first debate of candidates for NYC Mayor, but I see that Maya Wiley did well according to the NYTimes. I like her a lot but am not familiar with most of the other candidates. Looked like Andrew Yang is doing well but I’m not convinced he’d be good for NYC.

Sen. Johnson on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack: 'By and large, it was peaceful protests'...
 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has been downplaying a mob’s attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results for months, and on Wednesday night he went on Fox News to continue asserting that there was not an insurrection.

“Calling it an insurrection ... it wasn’t,” Johnson said in an interview with Laura Ingraham. “I condemn the breach, I condemn the violence, but to say there were thousands of armed insurrectionists breaching the Capitol, attempting to overthrow the government, is simply a false narrative.

“By and large, it was peaceful protests except for there were a number of people, basically agitators, that whipped the crowd and breached the Capitol, and that’s really the truth of what’s happening here,” Johnson added.

So far, over 400 people have been arrested for crimes tied to the Jan. 6 riot, which resulted in several deaths.

NOW you speak up!
 

Paul Ryan slams Trump in speech about future of Republican Party.....


IF only "little Eddie Munster" of had a backbone when it really counted!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-ryan...053116596.html

Ted Cruz blasted for opportunism for visiting homes in Israel after fleeing his own state during storm...
 

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is facing renewed criticism of his travel habits after spending the weekend in Israel touring damage from Hamas rocket strikes.

The firebrand Republican senator, who earlier this year was embroiled in controversy after it was reported that he traveled to Mexico for a family vacation amid a devastating winter storm that left millions in his state without power, now faces similar criticism after tweeting a video of himself inside an Israeli home damaged by rocket fire.

In the video, Mr Cruz discussed the death of an elderly woman’s caretaker in Ashkalon, Israel, resulting from a Hamas rocket strike that hit a residential home. Mr Cruz gives a brief tour of the damage in the home, and explains how the elderly resident was able to make it out of the home in time.

“I’m in Israel and I'm seeing the results of Hamas terrorism. A Hamas rocket destroyed this home and killed an elderly woman's caretaker,” reads the video’s caption.

Under the video, the senator was excoriated by angry Texas residents who demanded to know why he had not reacted similarly to the devastation wrought by the winter storms that largely shut down the state’s power grid in February.

“How much is this photo op costing us, Rafael? Did I miss the tour of frozen Texas homes?” wrote one commenter, who referred to the senator’s given name.

If there’s one thing that Donald Trump is good at is generating headlines, the latest news circulating has the former president telling those in his inner circle that he will be back in power by August, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. And of course, he has the support of his QAnon followers, who have been parroting the theory that the election was stolen from the 45th president, even though he lost the electoral and the popular vote in November 2020.

This all comes on the heels of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who suggested that a Myanmar-like coup should happen here in the U.S. while at a QAnon-affiliated conference in Dallas. He swears he never made those comments, even though they were caught on video. He went on to set the record straight later saying, “I am no stranger to media manipulating my words, and therefore let me repeat my response to a question asked at the conference: There is no reason it (a coup) should happen here (in America),” he wrote on the messaging app, Telegram, per The New York Times.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/asse...xlarge-169.jpg

If Larry Elder loses in California today, as suspected, then I think Trump may have found his next running mate.

I still think Nikki has a shot at running on Trump's 2024 ticket, but Trump can work with Larry a lot easier than he can Nikki.

Joe Manchin Should Stop Talking About ‘Entitlement’
 

Joe Manchin Should Stop Talking About ‘Entitlement’

By Jamelle Bouie
New York Times Opinion Columnist

https://i.postimg.cc/02Z5mHK7/06bouie1-super-Jumbo.jpg
Joe Manchin. Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been coy about what he wants from the Democratic reconciliation bill meant to pass as much of the president’s agenda into law as possible. Other than a number — he wants to shrink the Biden administration’s Build Back Better proposal from $3.5 trillion to $1.5 trillion — Manchin has not said much about which policies he would keep and which he would cut.

Manchin does, however, have one red line.

“I’m just not, so you know, I cannot accept our economy or basically our society moving toward an entitlement mentality,” Manchin said last week. “I’m more of a rewarding, because I can help those who are going to need help if those who can help themselves do so.”

He repeated the point on Wednesday, criticizing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who wants a larger bill. “I’ve been very clear when it comes to who we are as a society, who we are as a nation,” Manchin said. “I don’t believe that we should turn our society into an entitlement society. I think we should still be a compassionate, rewarding society.”

I find this incredibly useful not because it says anything about what Manchin wants but because it makes clear that this is a dispute over values as much as — or even more than — a dispute over policy.

In previous statements, Manchin used debt and inflation to justify his opposition to spending that went beyond his comfort level. “The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future,” Manchin wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month. “Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future. I disagree.”

It should be said that Manchin’s case is not very persuasive. Interest rates are low and have been for the past decade. The Congressional Budget Office expects interest rates to stay low until at least the 2030s. For the government, then, borrowing is cheap, and there’s little risk that the additional debt will overheat the economy or crowd out private investment. We can, and should, spend much more than $3.5 trillion, especially since — when spread out over 10 years — that number would be 1.2 percent of our projected national income over the same period.

But the reality of America’s fiscal capacity isn’t the point. For as much as he talks about debt and spending, Manchin’s objection is more moral than it is practical. To say that you don’t want to foster an “entitlement” mentality among America’s able-bodied adults is to make a statement about the proper order of things, as you understand them.

Take tuition-free community college, one of the proposals tucked into President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. Where Biden sees a pathway to opportunity for ordinary American families, Manchin seems to see another lane on the road to dependency, to a world where most adults do not have to work to receive benefits.

Indeed, even just using a word like “entitlement” speaks to a particular critique of the welfare state — in particular the view that a capitalist economy will not work without the threat of poverty and immiseration. If the market runs on the promise of reward and mobility, then to reward individuals without work is to undermine the very engine of the American economy.

As with so much of our national political discourse, this isn’t a new idea. In “Free Enterprise: An American History,” the historian Lawrence B. Glickman shows how proponents of “free enterprise” and laissez-faire capitalism used the language of entitlement and dependency to condemn the economic guarantees of the New Deal.

“For the first time in my lifetime, we have a president who is willing to mislead the people on fundamental questions of finance,” Robert Taft declared in a 1936 speech to the Women’s National Republican Club, “who is willing openly to attack the very basis of the system of American democracy, who is willing to let the people believe that their problems can be solved and their lives made easier by taking money away from other people or manipulating the currency, who is willing to encourage them to believe that the government owes them a living whether they work or not.”

Or, as Strom Thurmond put it in 1949, when he was the governor of South Carolina, “Nothing could be more un-American and more devastating to a strong and virile nation than to encourage its citizens to expect government to provide security from cradle to grave.”

This “hiving of the country into productive makers and unproductive takers,” Glickman notes, “formed the basis of the traditional American belief in ‘producerism,’ the idea that people who made and grew things deserved pride of place in the republic.” In the 19th century, this producerist ideology fueled labor and agrarian revolts against concentrated power in finance and industry. The great orator and three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan captured this in his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago:

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country, and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer.

For conservative opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, however, the makers and takers were reversed. “Rather than an artisan, the maker was now described as a company,” writes Glickman. “The taker was no longer an unscrupulous employer or an enslaver who unfairly took the fruits of labor from the worker but the government, which now did the same through its system of confiscatory taxes and extravagant spending.”

It is this right-wing producerism that, I think, is the most relevant antecedent for Manchin’s fear of an “entitlement” society. Although, in fairness to him, there was a point — in the very recent past — when his views were the dominant ideological position within the Democratic Party, both a consequence of and a driving force in the neoliberal transformation of the United States.

Ronald Reagan was, of course, an important part of this development. He brought right-wing producerism into the mainstream, captivating the voting public with a simple story of undeserving takers and welfare cheats, social parasites who undermined the “hard-working people” who “put up with high taxes,” as he put it during his 1976 campaign for president.

Inextricably tied up in race hierarchy — to be white was to be a worthy taxpayer, and to be nonwhite, and specifically Black, was to be dependent — this producerism was the “common sense” behind the austerity and deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s, from Reagan’s tax cuts to Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform.” Americans would receive a “hand up” — a tax cut or a tax subsidy — and not a “handout” in the form of direct benefits.

These ideas don’t just fade away, and the extent to which they are recapitulated by the media, politics and, most important, the material conditions of our society, all but guarantees their continued potency, especially when the rising costs of housing, education and health care encourage zero-sum competition for every available advantage.

It is this potency that we see in the present debate, from Manchin’s resistance to an “entitlement” society to a public that appears not to want Congress to renew the child tax credit — a no-strings-attached benefit for almost every American family — in its current form.

We can also see it in Donald Trump’s appeal to broad swaths of the American electorate. Trump made his name as a builder in America’s largest city, then leveraged that celebrity in a popular television show that sold him as the nation’s greatest businessman. Years before he entered politics, Trump embodied the producerist ideal of a man who dominates but is never dominated.

At $3.5 trillion, Biden’s Build Back Better plan is more ambitious than anything offered during the Obama administration. If, to win the votes of Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrats have to scale their bill back to under $2 trillion, it will still be one of the largest spending bills to ever come out of Congress under a Democratic majority.

From that perspective, it might seem odd to speak of the influence of conservative producerist ideology on present-day American politics. And yet a major ideological obstacle to the social democracy progressives hope to build is this sorting of people into winners and losers, deserving and undeserving. “The myth of opportunity for energetic individuals,” Irving Howe once wrote, “has taken on a power independent of, even when in conflict with, the social actuality.” Manchin, in other words, is not the only American who fears an “entitlement” society.

In which case, the ideological challenge for progressives is to redefine what it means to be “entitled” — to return, in a sense, to that older meaning, in which it is the owners of capital who are the takers and the ordinary citizens of this country who are the makers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/o...hin-biden.html

Former Trump officials' new career ventures
 

Former Trump officials' new career ventures suggest very little changed after leaving White House

Their business practices didn't progress much past the questionable tactics that haunted the Trump Administration

By MEAGHAN ELLIS
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 17, 2021 4:30AM (EDT)

https://i.postimg.cc/05MZmXxn/mnuchin-trump-kushner.jpg
H.R. McMaster, Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner (Getty/Zach Gibson)

Now that former President Donald Trump's reign is over, the members of his administration have been forced to take their careers in different directions. So, where are the members of the Trump administration now? According to The Intelligencer, many are doing an array of different things; some of which are synonymous with the questionable activities that long-haunted the Trump Administration.

Here's where the top Trump White House officials are now:

1. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is still trying to distance himself from the kidnapping of Julian Assange. According to Pompeo, he had nothing to do with it.

Pompeo is adamantly denying any involvement in the plot to kidnap Assange. A report published by Yahoo! News back in September, suggested that Pompeo was livid when he learned Assange divulged U.S. national-security secrets. In fact, the report also claimed that he participated in discussions with members of the Trump administration on how to get retribution.

However, Pompeo is still suggesting the reports are not true. "There's pieces of it that are true," Pompeo said during an appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. "We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, absolutely, yes … We're not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

2. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been milking his access to the Secret Service.

Thanks to Trump's order extending the use of the Secret Service to members of his administration, Mnuchin has used the professional perk to his benefit. The publication reports that in his first six months out of office, Mnuchin has racked up the highest Secret Service tab. The Washington Post detailed how Mnuchin managed to rack up more than $150,000 in Secret Service expenses:

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home. They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital…

Mnuchin's travels with the Secret Service weren't all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump's presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin is planning to use the $2.5 billion he has raised traveling so he can invest in technology and cybersecurity investments, along with "new forms of content." It remains unclear what Mnuchin specifically describes as "new forms of content" but "many big tech companies are pushing virtual- and augmented-reality hardware and content products and digital gaming."

3. Wilbur Ross is reportedly fantasizing about putting "Trump condos on the moon."

Back in February after the Trump administration transitioned out of the White House, Ross spoke with Bloomberg and shared his upcoming post-government plans; which involve "Trump condos on the moon."

On this particular afternoon, he's sitting in the living room of his 80-year-old home filled with Magrittes and Picassos, sipping a cappuccino, dressed in cashmere sweater, slacks and velvet slippers embroidered with octopuses.

Ironically, it's while ensconced in this paradise of earthly delights that Ross is gearing up to invest in space, among other possibilities. He sees opportunity in extraterrestrial tourism, manufacturing, research and habitation.

Habitation? When asked whether space would be a gold-plated real estate opportunity for Trump, Ross didn't disagree.

"Why not Trump condos on the moon?" he quipped back.

Ross' remarks came just months after the U.S. Commerce Department's inspector general released a scathing report about the former Trump official's behavior. According to The Washington Post, the IG's report "concluded that Ross had made many inaccurate statements to federal officials about his assets before taking office, though he did not willfully violate conflict-of-interest laws."

4. Ben Carson is launching a venture similar to Boy Scouts of America.

After departing Washington, D.C., Ben Carson —the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary— launched an organization called the American Cornerstone Institute. Carson's new think tank reportedly places an emphasis on discovering "commonsense solutions to some of our nation's biggest problems."



Carson has also created the Little Patriots program, which is described as a partisan organization for children. Speaking to The Washington Post, Carson explained the organization's initiative. "It will be something like the Boy Scouts," Carson told the publication. "But heavily exposed to the real history of America.

"You probably notice when ISIS goes into a place, they destroy the history, they destroy the monuments," Carson explained. "History is what gives you identity."

5. Elaine Chao contributed to calls for Kroger to be boycotted.

Chao —wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former transportation secretary— worked for several of the country's top corporations prior to her role with the Trump administration. But Intelligencer reports that "she and other Trump Cabinet alums were having a hard time finding cushy landing spots after exiting the administration. 'The feedback was 'It's too soon,' said one of the headhunters involved in an unsuccessful effort to find companies willing to work with Chao."

Despite her struggles to re-enter the corporate world, Chao was appointed to Kroger's board of directors. But given her history of abusing her power and position with the government, social media users quickly expressed outrage and urged Kroger to drop the former Trump cabinet member from its board.

6. Alex Azar is reportedly conspiring against his former colleagues.

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is at odds with many of his former colleagues. In fact, several of them including —former FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield, former Medicare chief Seema Verma, and former White House COVID coordinator Deborah Birx— have reportedly joined forces to prepare their statements regarding the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19.

According to Politico, they've done so out of caution and concern about Azar possibly using them as "scapegoats" to clear themselves.

"I know the way this goes — everyone has a different perspective," Hahn said in an interview. "I wanted to tell what it was that happened and why it happened and the perspective that we had."

In calls and text messages, members of the group have swapped notes, compared recollections, and sent updates on media requests and interview opportunities, four people with knowledge of the matter said …

And in a nod to their individual battles with Azar, some have jokingly referred to the group in private as "AAA," or Alex Azar Anonymous, according to a person in direct contact with multiple members.

From the looks of it, many Trump administration officials are still conducting shady business as they did while in office.

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/17/for...after-leaving/

on my mind...
 

The political turbulence of corruption exhibited by long-standing members of executive branch officials and the peril our country is enduring. It is terribly worrisome and deeply concerning. It feels like our country is under attack from the inside and on every imaginable front.

:vigil::vigil::vigil:

it’s good to see Obama on the campaign trial stumpin for democrats. Have gotten my voting papers in order so I can vote in 2022.

"Little Patriots" started by Cabinet Secretary sounds a little like "Hitler's Youth."

We even have to keep an eye on Biden's Administration. Don't get me wrong, I voted for Biden. He is turning out to be a war-monger. He ended the long lost war in Afghanistan just to pick a war with China of all nations.

Biden has also hinted at a war with Cuba. Cuba is all alone with no nearby allies.

Hands off China and Cuba.

"Little Patriots" started by Cabinet Secretary sounds a little like "Hitler's Youth."

We even have to keep an eye on Biden's Administration. Don't get me wrong, I voted for Biden. He is turning out to be a war-monger. He ended the long lost war in Afghanistan just to pick a war with China of all nations.

Biden has also hinted at a war with Cuba. Cuba is all alone with no nearby allies.

Hands off China and Cuba.

The Shadow of Ronald Reagan Is Costing Us Dearly
 

The Shadow of Ronald Reagan Is Costing Us Dearly

By Claire Bond Potter, Guest Essay, New York Times Opinion Piece
Ms. Potter is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research.
Nov. 11, 2021

https://i.postimg.cc/qqPx491L/08-Pot...uper-Jumbo.jpg
Eiko Ojala

With Build Back Better, President Biden has attempted to revive a New Deal ethic that entwines human and physical infrastructure. No one likes taxes, but building a nation where Americans know that their families are safe and cared for is popular across party lines. It shouldn’t have been a hard sell.

But here we are. The reconciliation package has shrunk to about $2 trillion. And something else is gone: a chance to change the American narrative of what good government does. The legislation was once billed as a plan for sweeping once-in-a-generation social change, but aspects of it that warranted that hyperbole, like dental and vision coverage for Medicare recipients and free community college, have disappeared. Paid family and medical leave have been sharply reduced.

Other industrialized nations provide a far more robust safety net than the one we have and even the one Mr. Biden proposed. Yet Republicans and at least one Democrat insist that such social welfare spending endangers the nation’s fiscal and moral health.

How did we get to a point that doing less for Americans is a virtue, and comprehensive social welfare a privilege?

It goes back to Jan. 20, 1981. On that cold, windy day, Ronald Reagan, who had scoffed at mythical female welfare cheats on the campaign trail, a trope he had revisited since his 1966 campaign for governor of California, took the oath of office. The defeated Democratic President Jimmy Carter, also on the dais, shared some of Mr. Reagan’s distaste for social spending. During his presidency, Mr. Carter charged Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano Jr. with creating “pro-work and pro-family” rules for recipients (though they never went through).

Mr. Reagan went further. In his inaugural speech, he linked government itself to national decline. The economic crisis of the 1970s, he declared, was “proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.” Social programs were wasteful. Worse, they lured families into dependence.

In other words: The government that helps families most helps them least. It was an idea that became an American ethic, with staying power through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Attacks on social programs portrayed poverty as a moral failure and exploited racist stereotypes to mischaracterize social welfare as a magnet for criminal, failed and indolent Americans. The belief that successful families helped themselves remained an article of faith in both parties until the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders ran for president.

Under Mr. Reagan, conservatives were finally able to begin dismantling the New Deal state and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. In 1981 and 1982, Mr. Reagan made more than $22 billion in cuts to social welfare programs, including federal student loans and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a modest program that paid businesses to train and hire economically disadvantaged people.

The federal deficit grew anyway, as Mr. Reagan cut taxes and accelerated military spending. Inheriting a national debt of about $995 billion, he nearly tripled it. But conservative activists still cheered.

In fact, Mr. Reagan’s welfare reforms just made the poor poorer. When a three-year recession hit in 1980, six million more Americans fell into poverty. By 1989, employment recovered, but a weak social safety net meant that workers were an illness or an accident away from hardship.

Democrats were complicit. In 1992, although he would try (but fail) to pass national health care, Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it.” Looking to a second term, he later blasted big government. The bipartisan Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 put mothers to work at low-wage jobs without health care benefits, linked food aid to work, established a five-year lifetime limit on benefits paid by federal money and funded sexual abstinence programs, not reproductive health. By 1999, single mothers on “workfare” had sunk deeper into poverty.

Progressive Democrats did only marginally better. In 2012, Republicans accused President Barack Obama of unwinding decades of welfare-to-work provisions, with a new system of waivers, work requirements and block grants that states had to follow. And while his Affordable Care Act passed narrowly, under pressure from both parties, he abandoned universal health care.

Today the poverty rate hovers around 11 percent, about where it was in 1973, and economic insecurity now envelops the working poor and middle class. Some economists now argue that the misery caused by decades of failure to support working families paved the way for Donald Trump’s presidency.

That may be true. Left to fend for themselves in poorly regulated markets, by default, working Americans do care for themselves — often on credit. Medical debt was recently pegged at $140 billion and student loans at over $1.7 trillion. Thirteen million workers have more than one job.

Americans work hard, but in the United States it costs money even to go to work. Child care, if parents can find it, can cost more than a mortgage payment. Elder care? Even more. Despite the Affordable Care Act, 28 million Americans are left uninsured.

Cutting social programs failed, yet this ethic dogs us to this day. Why? First, since the New Deal, conservatives have promoted the falsehood that universal welfare programs reward Americans for not working. Second, when Great Society programs failed to eliminate poverty, rather than make federal aid more accessible and inclusive, some liberals implicitly tied welfare to work and implied that the inability to make ends meet was a moral problem.

Thus Reagan-era bromides are alive and well, even in the Democratic Party, and they are undermining good-faith efforts to help a besieged middle class, too. While Senator Joe Manchin has said that he is not against paid leave, some of his comments continue to perpetuate the myth that comprehensive social welfare programs are a national moral hazard. “I cannot accept our economy or basically our society,” Senator Manchin declared as he demanded more cuts in human infrastructure, “moving towards an entitlement mentality.”

And, while the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a campaign donor to Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, supported the hard infrastructure bill, it blasted the earlier $3.5 trillion human infrastructure proposal as “an existential threat to America’s fragile economic recovery and future prosperity.” So it’s no accident that what remains in the reconciliation bill mostly pumps new funds into existing programs: a child tax credit, universal pre-K, climate spending, the Affordable Care Act and affordable housing.

These things are not insignificant. But what Mr. Biden wanted, and America required, won’t happen: a universal safety net that covers the needs of Americans as a right, not a privilege, and a revised tax structure that asks the wealthiest Americans to support the work force that made them rich.

Ten years ago, Americans were already sicker, less educated and poorer than the citizens of most other industrialized countries. This year an estimated 18 million Americans said that they still could not afford a drug prescribed by their physician. Health care providers and patients juggle catastrophic expenses from Covid-19. Of the more than four million women who dropped out of the work force to care for family members during the pandemic, nearly 2 million are still missing in action.

The myths of American individualism planted and nurtured under Mr. Reagan continue to cost us dearly as a nation. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” he insisted in that first inaugural.

The time is long overdue to reverse that equation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/o...l-welfare.html

The ongoing traumatization of GOP party politics and the lack of blowback on racist actions by those who aid and abet racist politics. In the months ahead, I want Jan. 6th commission to draft and pass solid guard rails so another (or the same) demagogue-type person can't upend Democracy.

I want a Democracy that does not reward corruption. I want a Democracy that does not elect racist members of society to important positions. I want a Democracy that values truth over lies. I want a Democracy that boots racism and political corruption to another galaxy. I want a Democracy that cares about its people enduring hardships and goes to bat for people, no matter the sector of society in which they represent others like them (women, LGBTQ, POC, etc). I want a Supreme Court that cares about protecting the rights of members of society and not undoing hard-won battles that protect a women's right to vote or get an abortion or equity in pay or any other number of rights that protect us from being assaulted by those who do not care for the female segment of society.

I sincerely hope people are doing all they can to make sure that the Cult of Personality (t-p, et al) do not ever stand a chance to upend Democracy ever again.

:vigil: :vigil: :vigil:

https://i.postimg.cc/2jFmqLxD/tumblr...rcqvq2-640.jpg

Deb Haaland (New Mexico's first district) and Sharice Davids (Kansas' third district) shared a tearful embrace, as new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated the 116th Congress for taking up office.

Haaland is a member of the Laguna people, and Davids is from the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) nation.

Davids is also a lesbian, making her the first ever LGBT member of Congress from the state of Kansas.
_______________________
Old news but good news to rehash. Now we need to get some American Indians and lesbians on the Supreme Court. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Racist America strikes again. Not that it ever stops. I'm not surprised that white boy vigilantism is considered to be okay but I am thoroughly disgusted.

They should (not done) be ashamed of the ruse Senator Kennedy R-LA pulls on the American people, I can see why he is being re-elected repeatedly He is Harvard and Oxford educated, but fools his constituency into thinking he's just a "good ol' boy."

McCarthy is an idiot. Shut up and sit down. Get out and vote when it is your turn folks we have to keep the Dems in office

I find it terribly worrisome and hugely concerning that women (and our allies) are not mobilizing to address harrowing concerns over the possibility that Roe vs Wade could be overturned by current judges occupying seats on the SCOTUS.


Also deeply concerning is people with conduct disorders, personality disorders and sexual misconduct disorders, who exist deep within the American fabric and hold positions of power.

Big red flags all over the political landscape.


Super scary stuff. (w)(w)(w)

Politics-whats on my mind?
 

I would like to shake all the Canadian fools that voted Trudeau in again as PM. Without a though for all of us he allowed Canadians abroad to come back and THEN put out a ban on arrivals from 3 other countries. The new virus is already here you bloody jerk.

That worries me as well, why aren't they mobilizing and speaking up?

I think as I see it, they are too busy arguing with each other over other stuff, they can't set aside time to coordinate to mobilize. However their male counterparts are no bettter, all they do is bicker.

I'm learning that the whole facet of the USA government doesn't truly care about us, in any form.

smh

Keeping fingers crossed....
 

~~
Democrat Stacey Abrams announces 2022 bid for Georgia governor.

Hopefully she'll get a fair shake this time around!

Turn the TV on MSNBC, you will see the throngs of people protesting the "right to life" movement and pro-women's reproductive rights.

It is sad for this very important and life-saving vote to occur after a horrible presidency and the fear it might return plunging us into Fascism again, a pandemic that has killed many Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and untold numbers Caribbean Island residents and Cuban citizens, and untold numbers of catastrophic weather phenomenon causing much disaster.

It would not surprise me if very few protestors showed up at SCOTUS, but there are those hearty souls who show up at the SCOTUS and The Capitol to stand up for those of us unable to show-up in person.

Thank You to those well, able, with housing and food unlike many up in my neck of the woods. I am warm, feed, without any major worries. ;)

I was speaking on the women in the government mobilizing together! I rarely see them come together because they are too busy bickering and such on petty stuff, while the men do the crap deeds!

Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming
 

Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming
Rebecca Solnit

The American right might win the occasional battle – but they will never win the war against progress

https://i.postimg.cc/JzJ5TfJ6/4485.jpg
‘We are dismantling the trophies of the ugly old world of sanctified inequality and erecting monuments to heroes of justice and liberation.’ Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

While their fear and dismay is often regarded as rooted in delusion, rightwingers are correct that the world is metamorphosing into something new and, to them, abhorrent. They’re likewise correct that what version of history we tell matters. The history we tell today lays the groundwork for the future we make. The outrage over the 1619 Project and the new laws trying to censor public school teachers from telling the full story of American history are a doomed attempt to hold back facts and perspectives that are already widespread.

In 2018, halfway through the Trump presidency, Michelle Alexander wrote a powerful essay arguing that we are not the resistance. We, she declared, are the mighty river they are trying to dam. I see it flowing, and I see the tributaries that pour into it and swell its power, and I see that once firmly grounded statues and assumptions have become flotsam in its current. Similar shifts are happening far beyond the United States, but it is this turbulent nation of so much creation and destruction I know best and will speak of here.

When a regime falls, the new one sweeps away its monuments and erects its own. This is happening as the taking down of Confederate, Columbus and other statues commemorating oppressors across the country, the renaming of streets and buildings and other public places, the appearance of myriad statues and murals of Harriet Tubman and other liberators, the opening of the Legacy Museum documenting slavery and mass incarceration and housing a lynching memorial.

There was no great moment of overthrow, but nevertheless we are dismantling the trophies of the ugly old world of sanctified inequality and erecting monuments to heroes of justice and liberation, from the Olympic track medalists of 1968 making their Black power gesture at San Jose State University to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Maryland. All those angry white men with the tiki torches chanting, in Charlottesville in 2017, “You will not replace us” as they sought to defend a statue of Gen Robert E Lee were wrong in their values and actions but perhaps not in their assessment.

White people are not being replaced, but in many ways a white supremacist history and society is. The statue of the general was removed earlier this year and will be melted down to be made into a new work of art under the direction of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. They call the project “swords into plowshares”, a phrase suggesting that this marks the end of a war – perhaps the civil war in which the north never fully claimed its victory, the south never accepted its defeat.

What’s happening goes far beyond public monuments. The statues mark the rejection of old versions of who we are and what we value, but those versions and values matter most as they play out in everyday private and public life. We are only a few decades removed from a civilization in which corporal punishment of children by parents and teachers was an unquestioned norm; in which domestic violence and marital rape were seen as a husband’s prerogative and a wife surrendered financial and other agency; in which many forms of inequality and exclusion had hardly even been questioned, let alone amended; in which few questioned the rightness of a small minority – for white Christian men have always been a minority in the United States – holding almost all the power, politically, socially, economically, culturally; in which segregation and exclusion were pervasive and legal; in which Native Americans had been largely written out of history; in which environmental regulation and protection and awareness barely existed.

You have to remember how different the past was to recognize how much has changed. Frameworks such as indigenous land acknowledgments that were unheard of and maybe almost inconceivable a few decades ago are routine at public events. Land acknowledgments are not land return, but they fortify the case for it.

The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964; in 1965, with Griswold v Connecticut, the supreme court overruled state laws criminalizing birth control and laid the groundwork for Roe v Wade six years later; only in 2015, Obergefell v Hodges established marriage equality for same-sex couples (while equality of rights between different-sex couples had also gradually been established as marriage became a less authoritarian institution). The right is trying to push the water back behind the dam. With deregulation and social service and tax cuts, they have succeeded in reestablishing an economy of extreme inequality, but not a society fully committed to that inequality.

They have succeeded in passing laws at the state level against voting rights and reproductive rights, but they have not succeeded in pushing the majority’s imaginations back to 1960 or 1920 or whenever their version of when America was great stalled out. They can win the battles, but I do not believe they will, in the end, win the war.

While the right has become far more extreme and has its tens of millions of true believers, it is morphing into a minority sect. This has prompted their desperate scramble to overturn free and fair elections and other democratic processes. White Christians, who were 80% of the population in 1976, are now 44%. Mixed-race and non-white people are rapidly becoming the majority. On issues such as climate, people of color are far more progressive; if we can make it through the huge backlash of the present moment, the possibilities are dazzling.

These are relatively concrete changes. Others are subtler and more recent, but no less important. Even in the last decade there has been an epochal shift in our expectations of how we should treat each other, and the casual cruelty and disdain targeting women, queer people, Bipoc, the disabled and those with divergent bodies that pervaded entertainment and daily life are now viewed as repugnant – and are met with consequences in some contexts.

A regular experience of this era (for those of us who were around for the last one) is to revisit a song, a film, a book and find that we have now become people who can see better the insults and exclusions that were so seamlessly woven into it. Some of the old art has not weathered well and will fall out of circulation, as some old culture always does; some will be interpreted in new ways; some neglected treasures will move from margin to center. We – a metamorphosing “we” – are sifting through an old and building a new canon.

Even more profound than this is a shift in worldview from the autonomous individual of hypercapitalism and social darwinism to a recognition of both the natural and social worlds as orchestras of interdependence, of survival as an essentially collaborative and cooperative business. Disciplines from neuropsychology to economics have shifted their sense of who we are, what works, and what matters. Climate change is first of all a crisis, but it’s also a reminder that the world is a collection of interlocking systems. The just-deceased bell hooks talked about a “love ethic” that included “a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet”.

Birth can be violent and dangerous, and sometimes one or the other of the two involved die. There is no guarantee about what is to come, and the shadow of climate chaos hangs over it all. We do not have time to build a better society before we address that crisis, but it is clear that the response to that crisis is building such a society. So much has already changed. The river Alexander described has swept away so much, has carried so many onward.

It has come far; it still has dams to overtop and so much farther to go.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-change-coming

Opinion: Biden is quietly erasing one of Trump’s cruelest legacies
 

Opinion: Biden is quietly erasing one of Trump’s cruelest legacies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...IMLY.jpg&w=916
President Biden on Dec. 22. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

It has been overshadowed by months of Democratic infighting and the searing national debate over Jan. 6, but the Biden administration is quietly erasing one of the cruelest legacies of Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a genuine achievement, in both symbolic and practical terms.

On Thursday, the administration rejected Georgia’s proposal to impose work requirements and premiums on Medicaid recipients. This was effectively the last nail in the coffin of Trump’s zombie attempt to make Medicaid more cumbersome and bureaucratic, in hopes of knocking as many people off health coverage as possible.

When Biden took office, nearly 20 mostly Republican-controlled states were in the process of crafting work requirements for Medicaid, on which 76 million Americans rely.

Now, Medicaid work requirements are all but dead in all those states.

That erases a legacy of the Trump administration, which had invited states to submit proposals to impose such requirements. Proposals were eventually approved for 12 states — all with Republican legislatures, governors or both — while a half-dozen others were pending when Trump left office.

In the most visible case, under Arkansas’s 2018 requirements, nearly 17,000 people lost health coverage. That wasn’t necessarily because they weren’t working. It was mainly because it was so difficult to satisfy all the reporting requirements.

Which is a feature, not a bug, of work requirements. By forcing recipients to prove they’re working and navigate a bureaucratic maze to stay in the program, the state gives itself an excuse to kick off those who make a paperwork mistake or miss a reporting deadline.

Biden’s reversal began just after he took office. In February, the administration informed states that it was preparing to withdraw approvals for work requirements granted under Trump.

One by one over the following months, those approvals were either rescinded by the administration, held up by court challenges, or delayed by state governments that expected the policy reversal (in Utah, officials suspended requirements due to the pandemic). Georgia was the last state where approval for this policy was still in force, though Republican states may still wage court battles.

Legacy of cruelty

Trump’s effort to impose Medicaid work requirements was part of a much larger campaign to undermine and roll back our country’s fitful advance toward universal health care. This constituted an even broader legacy of cruelty, and arguably outright betrayal.

That’s because Trump campaigned in 2016 as a corrective to Paul Ryan-style Republicans who had treated destroying the social safety net as a quasi-religious calling. Trump vowed that “everybody’s got to be covered,” and insisted no one would die on the street, uninsured.

But once in office, Trump embraced GOP anti-safety-net zealotry by going all in on the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Driven by hatred of Barack Obama, he endlessly raged that the ACA was a “disaster.”

That culminated in the 2017 repeal attempt, which fortunately failed. Stymied in that effort, which would have taken coverage away from millions on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, Trump sought to weaken the safety net via other administrative means, such as these Medicaid work requirements.

And so, in erasing those requirements, Biden is also erasing a larger hangover of Trumpian cruelty.

The ACA is expanding

This legacy is being erased in another way. Under Biden, the same ACA that Trump tried to destroy is expanding and moving toward realizing its potential. A record number of more than 13 million people have signed up for 2022 coverage on the exchanges.

A key reason for this is that the covid-19 rescue plan that Biden signed in March expanded the number of people eligible for ACA subsidies and beefed up subsidies for those already eligible. As Margot Sanger-Katz details in the New York Times, this is a real achievement: It substantially reimagines and expands the ACA amid a pandemic, meaning the ACA is rising to an emergency occasion.

Still, this achievement is at risk. The ACA expansion in the rescue package expires at the end of next year, and while Democrats want to extend it in the Build Back Better bill, a certain West Virginia senator remains opposed. That would be a policy and political disaster for Democrats.

“If Democrats aren’t able to extend it, millions of people will get notice of huge premium increases right before the midterm election,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told us.

Making progress

In short, the pandemic has not dimmed the GOP desire to roll back that ACA expansion and undermine Medicaid, even as we face a new covid surge. But now, with the Georgia decision, work requirements are effectively dead — as long as a Democrat remains in the White House.

Biden has made serious mistakes with the pandemic, in particular the failure to secure enough covid tests when need has exploded. But he’s making progress in getting more Americans covered, replacing the Trumpian impulse to impose suffering for the sin of being poor with the principle that every American ought to have access to health care.

“Biden has quietly been moving us closer to universal coverage, picking up on a cause Democrats have been pursuing since the early 20th Century,” Jonathan Cohn, author of an excellent history of the ACA, told us. “A big part of that has been undoing the legacy of Trump.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...-trump-policy/

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene rants against ‘fake religion’ Kwanzaa as Black holiday begins.

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has denounced Kwanzaa as a “fake religion” just as millions of Black people start to celebrate the weeklong holiday.

The far-right Georgia lawmaker berated the national College Republicans for “pandering and BS” after the GOP group tweeted a seemingly innocuous happy holiday message. “Stop. It’s a fake religion created by a psychopath,” Greene said. “People are tired of pandering and BS.” She was apparently deriding Kwanzaa founder Prof. Maulana Karenga, who was convicted of felony assault in the 1960′s in what he says was a politically motivated prosecution spurred by his involvement in Black nationalist politics.

Greene suggested that the College Republicans should avoid political correctness if it wants to galvanize the conservative base of the GOP. “You aren’t bringing in new voters, you are turning them away,” she added.

The College Republicans did not respond to Greene’s criticism about the tweet, which itself misspelled the name of the holiday as “Kwanza.”

Kwanzaaa, which lasts for seven days, is a holiday festival, not a religion as Greene claims. It was created in 1966 as a way to allow Black people worldwide to celebrate their common African roots.

Former President Trump tweeted a similar “Happy Kwanzaa” message during his stint in the White House, but Greene did not criticize her political hero for the greeting it should be noted!

What a difference a year makes...

AND if you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you...
 

Jacob Chansley, the convicted Jan. 6 rioter also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” now claims he was just trying to help during the insurrection.

“I actually tried to, on more than one occasion, calm the crowd,” he told “Inside Edition.” “But it just didn’t work.”

Chansley also said that he regrets not doing more to keep the peace as supporters of former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of the 2020 election results. However, multiple videos and images showed him howling and chanting his way through the Capitol and inside the Senate Chamber.

Prosecutors said he yelled, “Times up, motherfuckers,” and left a note on then-Vice President Mike Pence’s desk that said, “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming.”

Again what a difference a year makes! This loudmouth MotherF*^$er has turned into a sniffling little bitch!

Dick Cheney returned to the House and received a warm welcome . . . from Democrats. Including me. Who knew the day would come?

This has had me thinking of one of my favorite SNL openings ….



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF3dnVCTxBY

I didn’t anticipate the level of fury and aggression I would feel on Thursday's anniversary. I’m still spiraling through perseverating revenge fantasies.

Once I talked myself down off the ledge, however, I was able to enjoy this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_IxT2ei9gU

Twist of Fate Could End Democrats’ Control of the Senate...
 

The list of what threatens to end the Democrats’ control of the Senate is familiar: History says the White House’s party usually loses seats in midterms. The president’s low approval ratings in battleground states — even lower than his weak national ratings — portend trouble. Voters now say they prefer Republican control of Congress. And in several states, Republicans have made it harder to vote and are placing partisans in control of the vote-counting.

But there’s another possibility that should also have the Democrats reaching for the Maalox: A random act of fate could turn the Senate over to the Republicans not next January, but next summer, or next month, or next week. An illness or death could well trigger a political earthquake — by almost instantly switching control of the nation’s top legislative body.

States have a range of laws about replacing a departed senator, but the large majority — 37 — call on the governor to pick a successor. Of those, only seven require the governor to pick someone in the same party. So there are 30 states where the governor can pick whatever new senator he or she wants.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...manchin-526755

While that's true, an illness or death of a Republican Senator could give Democrats the advantage.

Several things have been on my mind:

A) Will Sen. Liz Cheney (R) become the front runner of the GOP bid for becoming the first woman president of the US (?);

B) Will the Jan. 6th commission draft laws and get these new guardrails into position so Cpt. Chaos and his followers cannot ruin our country ever again(?);

C) Will Sen. Manchin be held publicly accountable for his coal company profiting off legislative processes that enriches his pockets (?);

D) Will the GOP be held accountable for their gross efforts to undermine voting processes before it's too late? The 5-alarm fire on voting processes has been burning since before our late Senator John Lewis (D) passed, last year.

How NPR’s Steve Inskeep cracked the code for interviewing Trump
 

How NPR’s Steve Inskeep cracked the code for interviewing Trump

The veteran host used a ‘truth sandwich’ approach to counter the former president’s election lies

By Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
January 14, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...2EKE.jpg&w=916
Donald Trump speaks on the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. One year later, NPR’s Steve Inskeep deftly challenged the former president’s election lies in an interview Trump ended abruptly. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

How can journalists interview Donald Trump — or other politicians who consistently spread misinformation — without magnifying their lies? It’s been a challenge, and a problem, for years.

One answer arrived Wednesday when NPR aired its long-sought chat with the former president, conducted a day earlier by Steve Inskeep, a host of “Morning Edition.” The interview has drawn plenty of attention because Trump abruptly ended the call after nine minutes, cutting short what was planned as a 15-minute chat.

“So Steve, thank you very much,” Trump said, mid-conversation and without warning, after attempting to deflect or ignore some of Inskeep’s questions. “I appreciate it.” With that, he hung up.

But to me, the interview was less notable for its sudden ending than for what it accomplished. Although noncombative in tone, it still managed to give listeners an accurate picture of the subject matter: Trump’s insistence on promoting an evidence-free and thoroughly debunked argument that the 2020 election was rigged and that he should have been granted a second term as the rightful winner.

Inskeep and NPR demonstrated that they were fully aware of how damaging such fabrications can be — and that they are unwilling to hand a big megaphone to that “big lie.”

Throughout the interview, Trump kept coming with his misleading rhetoric, offering one fleetingly plausible-sounding but utterly false idea after another about a supposedly fraud-ridden election.

But Inskeep kept coming, too, pushing back at each of these statements. “Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud,” the host corrected Trump at one point. “They said in court they had no evidence of fraud, and the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.”

It was a great example of what I’ve been advocating for years: the “truth sandwich” approach to covering false claims, not a new problem but certainly a pervasive one in the Trump era. The idea is to avoid magnifying lies; and the technique is to surround false statements with established truths before and after, thus blunting the effect of what can amount to propaganda.

It helped, immensely, that NPR’s interview was taped. It meant that Inskeep was able to lead into his piece with almost five minutes of reporting, including archived interviews with election officials and others. So, when listeners heard Trump, they could keep in mind what they had heard just minutes before. After the conversation with Trump came yet another voice — that of Mara Liasson, an NPR national political correspondent, who talked with Inskeep for a minute or so to provide valuable perspective and another helping of truth.

“A master class in contextualization,” Richard Tofel, longtime president of ProPublica, called the interview. And, he added, a reminder of “why Trump and fellow Big Liars should be interviewed on tape rather than live.”

Inskeep said Thursday that a taped interview was always the plan and that Trump and his handlers had no objection when they agreed to the interview, NPR’s first with Trump since he became a presidential candidate in 2015. Inskeep has been requesting one regularly since then.

The host was not only well-prepared to counter, in real time, what Trump probably would say during the interview. He was also well aware of the possible pitfalls. “The whole genre of newsmaker-interviews is broken,” Inskeep told me.

Too many interviews make the newsmaker “the narrator of the story,” he explained — and particularly in these political times, “sometimes they are unreliable narrators.”

Presenting these conversations as raw Q&A’s means that the public is deprived of the necessary context. Deprived, too often, of truth. “You need extra voices, extra facts, extra context,” Inskeep said.

As the first snippets of the recorded interview were played for listeners just after 5 a.m. Wednesday, some essential context came in the form of an introductory dialogue between Inskeep and co-host Rachel Martin. At one point, Inskeep bluntly characterized his conversation with Trump with this straightforward observation: “He repeated his lies a lot.”

Crucially, NPR had chosen not to rush the long-awaited interview onto the airwaves, giving Inskeep and his team time to produce the segment smartly, with all the necessary background. “There’s almost no story that isn’t improved by holding it for a day,” Inskeep said. That isn’t always possible of course — sometimes the news won’t wait. But in this case, the extra time paid off.

Some observers challenged the entire premise of the interview: Why give Trump more attention, given the misinformation he spreads so relentlessly?
Even if Trump weren’t eyeing another run for president, the answer would be simple: The massive campaign to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election is a crisis for our nation and undeniably newsworthy.

Trump is at the center of it all, given his dominance in American politics and his grip on the Republican Party. In thrall to him, Republican politicians and operatives are day after day finding ways to make it more difficult for Americans to vote and easier for partisans to overturn valid voting results. Democracy itself is on the line.

The role of mainstream journalists is significant, and, overall, their record has been far less than stellar. Too many, whether in a one-on-one interview or at larger sessions with a number of reporters, have failed to push back in a way that matters. Trump is such a facile talker — one who specializes in dazzling displays of distraction, ad hominem attacks and repetition — that challenging him effectively in real time can be almost impossible.

Those journalistic failures have not served the public.

As George Lakoff, a linguist and a proponent of the “truth sandwich,” told me in 2018: “Trump needs the media and the media help him by repeating what he says.”

With all-important midterm elections this year, and the 2024 presidential campaign ready to erupt soon after, journalists need to finally figure out how to cover Trump and his acolytes effectively.

They could do a lot worse than to follow NPR’s example.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media...ump-interview/