The Donald Trump Show (Immigration and Cannibalism Edition)

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Donald Trump on immigration:

Silence of the Lamb! Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? “Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner,” as this poor doctor walked by. “I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.

____________________

Image note: Donald Trump at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, 2024. Detail of photo by Win McNamee.

@Acyn. “Trump: Silence of the lamb! The late great Hannibal Lecter. It is a wonderful man.” X. 11 May 2024.

The Murmur and Buzz

Once upon a time, the question of what people were seeing on network news seemed an important reference point. It’s one thing to collect news nearly in realtime, as many do online, but even once upon a time when social media was not nearly so prominent in our lives, it seemed significant when a story made its way up from the murmer and buzz of alternate and specialized news into more mainstream sources like papers of record, evening news, and even the Sunday morning talk circuit. Toward which, George Stephanopoulos, on This Week:

Until now no American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation and sexual abuse. Until now, no American presidential race had been more defined by what’s happening in courtrooms than what’s happening on the campaign trail, until now.

The scale of the abnormality is so staggering that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflective habits, to treat this as a normal campaign where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power.

But that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.

____________________

Image note: George Stephanopolous appears on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News, 28 April 2024.

Stephanopoulos, George. “‘This Week’ Transcript 4-28-24: Trump’s Legal Landscape, State of Play in Battleground Georgia, and White House Natl. Security Comms Adviser John Kirby”. This Week with George Stephanopoulos. 28 April 2024.

Probably the End of Nothing

#WhereIsCricket | #WhatTheyVotedFor

It’s one thing to say something like, the partisan, Ron Filipkowki, observes―

I’m still trying to figure out the angle of why the puppy homicide details were in the book. To show toughness? Promote the 2nd Amendment? Ruthlessness? Ability to make difficult decisions? I’m trying to figure out where a positive arguably outweighs the obvious negative.

―but the way things are, we ought lend that word, partisan, only so much value. The former prosecutor, and former Republican, might be an anti-Trump activist, but consider what has happened if this sort of basic political analysis is somehow especially subtle.

It’s the sort of drum we can bang over and over on a slow march along a downward road, but history makes clear that some proverbial they really do never learn. There is no rock bottom for this self-inflicted spiral.

It is hard to share the faith that the terrible story of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem boasting about how she slew a puppy should kill a political career as dead as the dog. Or the goat. To the one, the last twenty years, at least, ought to make the point: There is no rock bottom. To the other, remember, these are Republicans. These are conservatives. It’s one thing if, as the saying goes, the cruelty is the point. But it is also important to consider what else people think Republican voters want to hear. Child labor? Birth control crackpottery? Children in labor? How long has it been since Milo said what, and still managed to stick around long enough to have a public Nazi scandal make him the poster boy for deplatforming¹, and things have only gotten worse. There is now a Nazi bloc in Congress, and the presumptive Republican nominee is an authoritarian with dictatorial ambitions, admirer of notorious strongmen, and has a long history of showing white supremacist and even neo-Nazi sympathies; meanwhile, his strongest GOP challenger wants to be a Nazi mom.

And toward all that, it is worth considering Charlotte Clymer’s suggestion that “Kristi Noem decided that she needed a way to set herself apart from other prospective Trump running mates by demonstrating to him that she can: 1) be ruthless and 2) ‘trigger the libs’ effortlessly.” Whether or not Noem miscalculated “that only liberals would be outraged, and she’d be able to laugh through it all” remains to be seen; while conservatives pretend outrage, the question will not be answered until it is time to either vote for her or not.

____________________

Image note: Cartoon by Matt Bors, 31 January 2017.

¹ A brief trend in alt-right and libertarian complaint almost immediately preceding “cancel culture”; despite the actual accuracy of the term, the complaint did not stick.

@cmclymer. “My theory: Kristi Noem decided that she needed a way to set herself apart from other prospective Trump running mates by demonstrating to him that she can: 1) be ruthless and 2) “trigger the libs” effortlessly.” X. 26 April 2024.

@RonFilipkowski. “I’m still trying to figure out the angle of why the puppy homicide details were in the book…”. X. 28 April 2024.

The Easy Joke

Okay, I confess, I don’t believe it: No true Maga would say, “At least Trump can put two sentences together.”

(Waiting on the narrator.)

____________________

Image note: Cartoon by Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 28 April 2024.

Our American Circumstance: How It’s Going

“We lift our heads. Something has changed. Somewhere, at some time in the destruction, something awful happened. We stopped our forward move toward being humane, and are slipping quickly backward to the state of animals. The trains still run nearly on time, but we do not. What sustained our hearts and hopes is gone.”

― Jack Cady

____________________

Image note: Cartoon by Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 20 March 2024

Cady, Jack. The American Writer: Shaping a Nation’s Mind. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

The Incontinence of Evil (Amateur Hour)

The incontinence of Evil aside, it occurs to wonder if, amid the constant stream of accusation, the Church ever takes a moment to sit back, sigh indulgently, raise a glass to Satan, and murmur, “Fuckin’ amateurs.”

____________________

Image note: After anticommunist activist Marion Smith warned that, “Evil appears to be incontinent in 2020”, the Church of Satan denied responsibility for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, explaining, “This is not a satanic ritual, nor does [it] have anything to do with Satanism.” Via Twitter, 19 October 2020.

Nothing New Under the Sun

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Steve Benen notes—

For what it’s worth, it’s not altogether clear why Trump and his team would find this so upsetting. There’s a limited universe of officials who have the experience, skills, and clearance necessary to work on highly sensitive intelligence matters. The idea of aides having a stint at the National Security Council, before making the transition to the staff at the House Intelligence Committee, isn’t especially odd.Indeed, the inverse happens, too. Kashyap Patel, who helped co-author the unintentionally hilarious “Nunes memo,” recently left his staff job on Capitol Hill to join—you guessed it—the National Security Council.So why is it, exactly, that Schiff’s personnel decisions “enraged” the president and some members of his senior staff? Is there concern inside Trump World about what former aides might say about their impressions of the White House’s work?

—and perhaps it seems strange, but, yes, Hot Fuzz, the Wright/Pegg comedy, comes to mind, and that somehow makes perfect sense.

What They Voted For (No, Really)

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

A couple points come to mind:

An evangelist pastor criticized religious leaders who are “trading their moral core” by supporting the Trump administration solely due to their stance on abortion.

Doug Pagitt, a Minneapolis-based pastor and executive director of Vote Common Good, wrote in USA Today Sunday that white Evangelicals are blindly support Trump and the GOP-led Congress.

(Gstalter)

First, the question of evangelicals cleaning up their own houses, as such, is fraught and grim.

And for a bonus, there is the mystery of what happened in the last copy edits of the first two paragraphs of the the article.

Image notes: Top — Detail of Corpus Hypercubus, by Salvador Dali, 1954.  Right — United States President Donald Trump reacts to being laughed at during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, 25 September 2018. (Image credit: FOX News)

Gstalter, Morgan. “Pastor tears into Evangelicals for supporting Trump due to abortion stance.” The Hill. 21 October 2018.

One of Those Moments (… cum Farce)

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

To the one, something goes here about unnamed sources; it’s a long question, by now. To the other, though—

For all the morning’s madness, there may have been an underlying logic. Over the weekend, as Brett Kavanaugh’s prospects appeared increasingly imperiled, Trump faced two tactical options, both of them fraught. One was to cut Kavanaugh loose. But he was also looking for ways to dramatically shift the news cycle away from his embattled Supreme Court nominee. According to a source briefed on Trump’s thinking, Trump decided that firing Rosenstein would knock Kavanaugh out of the news, potentially saving his nomination and Republicans’ chances for keeping the Senate. “The strategy was to try and do something really big,” the source said. The leak about Rosenstein’s resignation could have been the result, and it certainly had the desired effect of driving Kavanaugh out of the news for a few hours.

(Sherman)

—this is the Trump administration: What insanity will we be expected to believe, tomorrow? The question is how well a bit like this ages; certes, it makes a powerful headline, but the instinct to disbelieve seems largely reasonable.

And, again, to the other, this is the Trump administration. The idea of a T&A comedy presidency ought to be a really stupid joke. Something, something, Trump administration, right. This really is what they voted for, and no, it’s been more of a tragedy cum farce than any sort of comedy. It really isn’t funny.

____________________

Image notes: Top — Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifies to the House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., 13 December 2017. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)  Right — President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in Washington, D.C., 24 May 2018. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Sherman, Gabe. “‘The Strategy Was to Try and Do Something Really Big’: Trump Wanted to Nuke Rosenstein to Save Kavanaugh’s Bacon”. Vanity Fair. 24 September 2018.

Your Tweet of the Day: Cul-de-Sac

“social media is the cul-de-sac where ‘nuance’ & ‘irony’ crawl to die.”

―Joyce Carol Oates