Category Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump aspires to be a warlord. He publicly admires despots, tyrants and other authoritarian leaders who kill their enemies and take away the rights of anyone who oppose them. Mental health professionals have repeatedly warned that Donald Trump is likely a sociopath with an erotic attraction to violence and mayhem.

He has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for the rule of law, democracy, human rights or other restrictions on his behavior. He encourages his followers and allies to engage in acts of terrorism and other violence on his behalf. The most notable example came, of course, on Jan. 6, 2021.To this point, Trump has been limited by his cowardice. He prefers to have others engage in violence on his behalf instead of directly ordering such acts or participating in them himself.

Matters are now in flux. Trump is under investigation by the Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies, and may face serious consequences for his lawbreaking for the first time. As George Conway described in a recent conversation with Salon, Trump is ready to lash out:

Trump is basically a cornered animal. He's got all these legal proceedings bearing down on him. In addition, he is losing his touch and his connection to his public, because his act has become very tiresome. That explains why Trump is embracing the QAnon conspiracy. He's doing that because of his narcissism: He's feeling attacked, and for the first time in his life, he is facing real consequences for his actions. The DOJ and other investigations have caused Trump to suffer a narcissistic injury.

Trump is in a downward psychological, emotional and physical spiral. His embrace of QAnon shows how extreme his deterioration is. But here is the problem for the rest of us: Donald Trump is not going to go away immediately. He is going to try to use the electoral process, and threats of violence, to regain power and influence. Then Trump will say that he can't control what people do because they are so angry at how he is being treated by Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, the DOJ, the various prosecutors and judges, the news media and so on. Trump is going to make things much worse in this country before things finally get better.

Ultimately, as Donald Trump becomes more desperate, he will reveal more of his true self: a violent predator who will almost always attack instead of retreating or otherwise surrendering.Last Saturday, Donald Trump took one more step on this journey when he threatened the life of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump accused McConnell of having a "death wish" because he has (on a few specific occasions) supported legislation sponsored by Democrats.Trump also used a racial slur to describe McConnell's wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, calling her "his China loving wife, Coco Chow!"

Political scientist Brian Klaas, author of "The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy," wrote on Twitter that Trump's threats were "[t]otally detached from reality, inciting political violence putting a target on a senior member of the U.S. Senate and a new racist nickname. We can't just pretend this isn't happening, because these posts are radicalizing more and more extremists every day."

In a recent interview with MSNBC, Mary Trump, who is a clinical psychologist as well as Donald Trump's niece, and author of the family memoir "Too Much and Never Enough," offered this ominous and direct warning: "Everything Donald has done is a prelude to worse things to come."

As usual, the mainstream media largely avoids covering Trump's threats with the seriousness they demand.Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin observed that neither McConnell himself nor other senior Republicans have even condemned Trump's statement:

That's the state of today's MAGA movement, where decency toward fellow Americans, loyalty to one's spouse and support for democratic values all take a back seat to cult worship and the unquenchable thirst for power. And once again, the mainstream media is failing to rise to the moment.

One might expect the media to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians after their "big lie" about a stolen election, their ongoing whitewashing of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, their attacks on the FBI and their indifference if not assent to racism. Alas, there is little sign that mainstream outlets have dropped their addiction to false equivalence and willful, moral blindness.

These and countless other interviews illustrate the urgent need to reimagine coverage of the GOP. Refusing to confront and expose MAGA Republicans' betrayal of democratic values doesn't make members of the media "balanced." It makes them enablers.

Donald Trump's aspiration to warlord status is guided by his malicious gifts as an entrepreneur of violence.In an interview with Salon in March,political scientist Barbara Walter, who is the author of the book "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them," explained this concept:

One of the challenges that violent extremists have is how to expand their base of support. If they don't expand their support base, they just remain fringe movements forever. One way is to provoke a harsh government response. Let's say that there are peaceful protests, but then there are provocateurs there who try to get the police to open fire or to bash a few heads. Violence entrepreneurs will use those actions as evidence that the police or the government or the opposition are evil and intent on crushing them.

That tactic is often successful in radicalizing at least some portion of average citizens. It pushes them towards the extremists. Donald Trump is what I would describe as an "ethnic entrepreneur." He and his loyalists want to regain power. He is an autocrat. Trump has no interest in ruling democratically. But Trump is not going to get that power back without the support of the average white American. This means that Donald Trump has to convince them somehow that his is a worthy cause to defend.

Understanding Trump and the Republican-fascist movement requires a broader sense of their social and political context, which in turn renders their behavior both predictable and readily understandable rather than something "shocking" or "surprising" and therefore unknowable. For the most part, the mainstream news media has refused to use such a framework, which would require some candid discussion of the fact that the Republican Party and its supporters no longer support democracy. For most of the media, that's an existential challenge they are not willing to consider.

Beginning with his 2015 campaign and then throughout his presidency and beyond, Trump has used the technique known as stochastic terrorism to incite violence against his designated enemies. At his rallies and other events Trump has urged his followers to attack protesters. He wanted the U.S. military to crush the civic dissent that took place across the country in response to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Hisregime created a concentration camp system where nonwhite migrants and refugees were imprisoned in violation of their civil and human rights.

Borrowing from language used by the Nazis and other fascist regimes, Trump attacks the free press as "enemies of the people" in an attempt to intimidate journalists into silence.

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Trump has repeatedly threatened Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats with prison or worse. Republicans he deems disloyal (such as Rep. Liz Cheney or former Vice President Mike Pence) have also been subjected to his violent threats and wanton disregard for their safety.

As president, Trump praised right-wing paramilitaries, white supremacists and other street thugs as "very fine people." His administration maintained an arm's-length friendship with right-wing paramilitaries and other violent extremists. During the 2020 campaign, Trump refused to condemn those groups and after that election they played an integral role in his coup attempt and the Capitol attack.

Trump has suggested several times that his followers will descend upon majority Black and brown "Democrat-controlled" cities if he is indicted for his many apparent crimes. He has made barely-veiled threats against Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI, implying that he only can save the country from the violence and mayhem that will occur if he is prosecuted.

Trump's acolytes are often even more explicit with their threats of violence then he is.

During Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's speech at Trump's rally last Saturday, she claimed that "Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings." President Biden, she said,"has declared every freedom-loving American an enemy of the state. We will take back our country from the communists who have stolen it and want us to disappear."

These are of course inflammatory lies, based in projection and inversion. As the House Jan. 6 hearings have revealed, Trump envisioned a crescendo to the Jan. 6 uprising, perhaps with him personally arriving at the Capitol amid the mayhem and destruction to declare himself an American Caesar.

Trump has continued to embrace the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy cult, with its threats of revolutionary violence and destruction. QAnon believers claim that the "Storm" will return Trump to power, and along the way there will be mass executions of "global elites" and their agents, a laundry list of villains that includes all leading Democrats, numerous Hollywood celebrities, liberal donors and the supposedly sinister forces of antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the gay and lesbian rights movement.

Trump's escalating threats of violence fit disturbingly well with the model of eliminationism and genocide seen before in Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Most concerning is how Trump's threats of political violence also fit the model of eliminationism and genocide seen in such countries as Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany.The human rights organization Genocide Watch warns that genocide "develops in 10 stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it.The process is not linear.Stages occur simultaneously.Each stage is itself a process.... As societies develop more and more genocidal processes, they get nearer to genocide.But all stages continue to operate throughout the process":

America is further along that path than most of us are willing to admit. In the same interview quoted above, Barbara Walter warned that Donald Trump and retired Gen. Michael Flynn "are preaching violence," not through code words but direct statements:

You can quote them on it. If you read what they are saying, it is shocking. Yet few people seem to know about it. If I were to show what Trump and Flynn are saying, their actual words, to the average American, they would say, "You're making that up, it can't be true." Thus we have a situation where these things are happening, but the information is not being shared with the general public, or if they are hearing what is happening then it is being distorted or not fully represented in a way that leaves most Americans ignorant of what is really going on.

Historically, the side that wants to do these horrible things and put themselves in a position of power, to lead a dictatorship or start a "race war" or commit acts of genocide for example, to kill all the Jews in Europe will spend a lot of time investing in propaganda because they understand that if they can control the narrative they can control the average citizen. That is exactly what is happening now in the United States.

Aspiring warlord Donald Trump has told America and the world exactly what he and his movement intend to do. Unfortunately, the mainstream news media and other hope-peddlers have deluded themselves into thinking that it's all a misunderstanding or harmless hyperbole. We should take Trump at his word. On these issues, he does not prevaricate or tell lies. It will do no good to protest that you couldn't possibly have known. We all knew this was coming, and now it's here.

Read more

about Donald Trump's downward trajectory

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Political warlord Trump now targets his enemies and Mitch is first on the list - Salon

WILMINGTON, N.C., Oct. 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorneys Patrick Mincey, Stephen Bell and Phil Brewster were recently discussed in a Miami Herald article regarding their representation of a whistleblower who exposed alleged securities violations involving Trump Media & Technology Group Corporation ("Trump Media"). Former President Donald J. Trump is the majority owner of Trump Media, which is the parent company that operates the conservative social media platform Truth Social. As discussed in the Miami Herald article, the whistleblower was one of the original founders of Truth Social, which was founded shortly after former President Trump's permanent suspension from Twitter because of the events of January 6, 2021.

The Miami Herald article describes how executives from both Trump Media and its merger partner Digital World Acquisition Corporation allegedly violated SEC regulations in the still-pending merger transaction. The article describes how Trump Media and DWAC have acknowledged investigations into the merger transaction by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. The proposed transaction is intended to take Trump Media public in a deal originally valued at over $1 billion.

"Our client remains committed to assisting investigators with his referral to the SEC Office of the Whistleblower," Mincey, Bell and Brewster jointly said. "He also looks forward to an opportunity to work with members of Congress in their oversight capacity."

Attorney Patrick M. Mincey founded and leads the White Collar, Government Investigations & Special Matters Group at Cranfill Sumner LLP in North Carolina.

Attorney Stephen J. Bell is partner in the White Collar, Government Investigations & Special Matters Group at Cranfill Sumner LLP in North Carolina.

AttorneyPhil Brewster is the founding partner of Brewster Law Firm LLC inWinnetka, Illinois, a firm dedicated to whistleblower matters and government investigations.

ABOUT CRANFILLSUMNERLLP

Cranfill Sumner LLP serves clients in 28 practice areas. For more information, visit http://www.cshlaw.com.

ABOUT BREWSTER LAW FIRM LLC

Brewster Law Firm LLC is dedicated to whistleblower matters and government investigations. For more information, visitwww.brewsteradvisory.com.

SOURCE Cranfill Sumner LLP

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Whistleblower Attorneys Issue Statement Regarding Investigation Involving Former President Donald Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group, the...

Rap star Kanye West called former President Donald Trump a friend and my boy in his latest interview, but also said he still feels used by him.

In a wide-ranging interview that aired Thursday night on Fox News Channel, Mr. West said that older White people are quick to classify a Black person only by the fact were Black and recounted one conversation with one older White person.

Even Trump, a person wed consider to be a friend of mine isnt immune to racialized using, he told host Tucker Carlson.

After a notorious White House visit on criminal-justice reform, Mr. West said he called Mr. Trump to help get someone out of jail.

One of the things he said to me is Kanye, youre my friend. When you came to the White House, my Black approval rating went up 40%, Mr. West recounted.

For politicians, all Black people are worth is an approval rating. The Democrats feel that they dont owe us anything. And Republicans feel that they dont owe us anything. Blacks have never demanded something for our vote, he maintained.

He was generally positive about Mr. Trump in the interview, the first of two parts to air on Thursdays and Fridays episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight.

For example, he said he became suspicious of Hollywood liberals because of how they leaned on him and used his then-wife Kim Kardashian to toe the party line on the former president whose name is generally mud in the entertainment industry.

He also suggested that Mr. Trump was being held back by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Kushners brother Joshua, whom he called overrated venture capitalists.

After talking to them and really sitting with Jared and sitting with Josh and finding out other pieces of information I was like wow, these guys mightve really been holding Trump back and being very much a handler. They love to look at me or look at Trump like were so crazy and that theyre the businessmen, Mr. West said.

The rap star and multiple Grammy winner said the Kushners never brought anything of value other than so-called being a good venture capitalist. I have a major issue with that and it makes me feel like they werent serving my boy Trump the way we could have.

He also said that Mr. Trumps flaws dont mean he wasnt the right president and perhaps was even on a divine mission like Mr. West said he himself is on.

Trump wanted nothing but the best for this country Moses stuttered. God isnt always going to bring the most perfect personality. A lot of times the most fake people, their job is talking and making people feel comfortable. And the realest people are gonna make you feel uncomfortable at first, he said.

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Kanye West, on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight,' suggests Donald Trump used him - Washington Times

One of the many things weve learned in the Trump era is that a lot of the people in positions of power are either cynics or nihilists or both.

This is true on both sides of the political aisle, but its especially true on the right at the moment. Thats not a partisan statement, even if it may sound like one. The reality is that ever since Donald Trump took over the party in 2016, there are many people working in Republican politics who dont believe in what theyre doing, who know that Trump is and was a dangerous figure, and yet theyve plowed ahead anyway.

The question is: Why?

A new book by Tim Miller called Why We Did It gives about as good an answer as youll find. Miller is a former political operative who worked at various levels of Republican politics since he was 16 years old. He broke ranks with the party when Trump won the nomination and his book is a genuine attempt to grapple with his own contradictions and make sense of the people he left behind. The result is an unusually insightful glimpse behind the curtain. Thats why I invited Miller to talk about his book on the latest episode of Vox Conversations.

Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. As always, theres much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Your journey in Republican politics is the core of the book and I just wanna start there. You started working in Republican politics when you were 16. Were you just a political junkie that early in your life?

Total political junkie. I dont know why, my parents werent. My grandmother was really into Republican politics, and so we would talk about politics and we gambled on the 1992 presidential race. I took Bill Clinton. She took George H.W. Bush. She had to mail me $1 with my winnings, which I was extremely proud of in fifth grade. And that was the last time I supported a Democrat until Hillary Clinton in 2016. So, you know, I kind of went full circle there.

The Republican Party has changed a lot since you were 16. But for reasons youve suggested it was always an awkward home for you. Youre gay, and you talk about how easily you contorted yourself to defend homophobes for years.

You call it championship-level compartmentalization in the book. That sounds like a really difficult pose to maintain for so many years.

Actually not really. It wasnt that difficult and thats the thing that makes it so gross. It makes me feel so bad about it.

I think that its important for me to explain that because if I could work for homophobes, when the people that I was working for were literally trying to use the law to deny me the things that are the most important things in my life right now my husband, my child well, then, think about how easy it is for somebody to justify working for Donald Trump when none of the impacts of his policies hurt them.

Like, they arent kids on the border. Theyre not gonna be the ones that are punished by the new abortion laws. So thats why I tried to make this parallel and try to make you really understand my mindset.

What was your eureka moment? When did you finally realize that you had had enough, that this whole thing had gone too far and you werent a Republican anymore?

I fucking knew it with [Sarah] Palin. I knew it.

And this is why the first half of the book is me in a hair shirt. I come to these interviews and they are like, Why is it Why We Did It? You opposed Trump from Day One. Which I did.

But its Why We Did It because I sat there for seven years as this beast kind of grew and grew and became more and more dangerous. And I knew it.

I leave the McCain campaign, I move to DC, I come out of the closet, and Im working for a PR firm. I still can see whats happening clearly. I was like, the crazies are taking this over. John McCain is a good man whos trying to manage the crazy and making some good choices, some bad choices while he does that. But the power, the energy is with the reactionaries. And I saw it then, and yet I still just keep getting sucked back in.

And the first way I get sucked back in is kind of earnest, actually I go to work for Jon Huntsman and Im like, I kind of know this guys gonna lose, but Im a moderate Republican, and Im gonna go work for this moderate. But I get addicted to the competition of it again, and then kind of slowly start going down the path to working for more and more gross people.

The second half of the book is really about actors behind the scenes in the Republican Party, the functionaries, the spin doctors, the campaign hacks. These are the people who often know what theyre doing, often know they shouldnt do it, and just do it anyway. And the reasons they do it are as banal as they are depressing.

One thing that comes across is that it really is a game for a lot of these people. And if you really push them on it, what you find is that theres no real moral core behind it. Its just careerist, jockeying for influence and attention.

Its really depressing. The characters in the book, almost all of them, with one or two exceptions, in the second half about the Trump era, go along with it anyway.

So the question is, why? This is gross in a different way, but you almost want it to be because theyve really bought the bullshit about how we need to have a secure border to help wages. Or they just are so hard line on protecting fetuses or so hard line on whatever.

And some of those people exist in real America. But in the DC class? None of em, and that includes the named people in the book. I also interviewed a bunch of people I didnt name and nobody nobody got passionate talking about any policy issue. Thats all a feint, its all bullshit.

The only time I would sense any emotion in their voice when they were explaining why they went along with Trump, besides the banal careerist reasons, was that theyve really started to really not like you, Sean. I mean, not you, but, like, your people, right? The liberal media elites theyve developed a very deep well of hatred and resentment and jealousy of them.

Of all the characters in the book, all the operator types, some of them you know personally, some of them you dont which of them sticks out to you the most in terms of just like abject nihilism or cynicism?

Its Elise for me. Elise Stefanik.

Can you say who she is?

Yeah, sure.

So just going all the way back, I worked with her on the Republican autopsy. People might remember, after Mitt Romney lost, we put together this document that basically had a bunch of blocking and tackling recommendations for how the party can catch up to Obamas data nerds, but also said that we should soften our rhetoric around immigration and other issues.

Elise was the editor of that document. And I was the spokesperson at the time. So I was working with her very closely.

So Elise then runs for Congress as a very moderate Republican climate change is a problem, gay marriage, immigration reform. You know, as moderate of a Republican as you have in Congress when she wins in 2014. 2016, she runs for reelection with Trump on the ballot, wont say his name. Literally cant even spit out his name.

In 2018, something happens. Trump comes to campaign in her district, huge crowd. She gets this huge applause on the stage. She starts to reassess her power trajectory. Paul Ryan, who was kind of her mentor, retires. So her little path up through the normal establishment ranks in Congress started to seem not as likely.

And she flips on a dime. And in the first impeachment becomes Trumps most rabid defender with the most absurd defenses. She was like a foreign policy neocon Republican who wouldve been very much arm the Ukrainians against the Russians, flips on it, sides with Trump against Zelenskyy. And is now literally indistinguishable from a MAGA troll.

And there was no policy anything about this. I interviewed tons of mutual friends. She wouldnt talk to me. She emailed me saying that she sees my tweets and is not interested in participating in the book. And didnt reply to any other of my entreaties.

So to me, she is the worst because its just the most brazen. It also is the worst at some level because its paying off for her. I truly think shell be on a VP shortlist for Trump, cause hell want a woman if he runs in 2024. And if not that, I think shes on a speaker of the house trajectory.

Part of me is perversely fascinated by some of the people you talk to, the ones who really, truly hate the cultural left so much, so that they pretend that theres just two choices, right? Wokeness or fascism.

How common is that sentiment?

Its pretty common.

So in all those drunk off-the-record conversations, people kept bringing this up. Literally this was the thing that people were volunteering, these Republican staffers.

The formulation that you just laid out is not an exaggeration. [One source] said, My wifes friends think Im a racist. My kids are getting these DEI packets. Theres cancel culture everywhere. And as a white male, like, sometimes I feel like my only choice to combat the wokeness is to just think about the one or two things that I agree with Donald Trump on and ride with him.

Thats not the direct quote, cause I dont have it in front of me, but like thats very close to his direct quote.

Thats a common sentiment. Thats how they all soothe each other, by expressing something to that same effect, maybe not quite as brazen.

Thats why I dont have a last chapter in the book what do you do about this? What do you do about petty, privileged, white dudes resentments, and willingness to go along with Donald Trump over them?

I dont have a good answer to that question.

Who do you thinks actually steering the party now? Is it Fox News? Is it the base? I mean, the politicians themselves seem to be totally hostage to both of those things.

No, theyre totally hostage to the base. Look at Trump getting booed over the vaccine thing. I thought that was a very telling moment. It was like one time where he kind of had to back off his own he doesnt even get to talk about it, one of the one good things that happened while he was in there: Operation Warp Speed. He cant even talk about it without getting booed.

Im stealing this from my other Bulwark colleague, Sarah Longwell, credit where due. Its a triangle of doom. The bases grievances are underlying. Some of them are legitimate, by the way, others are illegitimate.

The conservative media is stoking the illegitimate grievances mostly. But occasionally theyre legitimate grievances about the hollowing out of certain parts of the country.

And then the Republican politicians are riding the wave of that grievance-mongering. And rather than caring at all about responsibilities of leadership or checks on excesses, have now just totally accepted it.

And so, all three are responsible and, somewhere along that, you have to break it. But where? Who? The politicians arent, like the conservative media isnt. Is the Republican base gonna get less radicalized? Thats kind of hard to see.

You say something I think very true and profound at the end of the book about politics and identity. And I just wanna read it aloud here.

You say, For gay people, coming out of the closet is hard because of this change of your identity. Its not only how you look at yourself, but how other people look at you. People you love, your dad, your high school bestie. Youre worried that theyre going to now see you differently because your identity is changed in their eyes. And so if politics becomes like skin color, like sexuality, untangling that is a lifetime of work. And its therapy. And we should really think about it like that.

This to me is absolutely one of the most challenging problems. These cultural divides have mapped neatly onto political divides. That means our political views are wrapped up with our core identity in really powerful ways. And that means people are entrenched. Theyre not reachable by facts or arguments or policies because thats not what identity is about.

And even some of the cynical careerists you write about in this book, you can see how their professional identities are bound up with their partisan politics. And the price of leaving that behind is enormous. And most arent willing to pay it. Its who they are now. Its their friends, its their whole lives.

I dont know what to do about that, Tim. But that seems like a chasm that may be unbridgeable.

Its something that Ive thought about a lot. The fact that I had to come out of the closet and had to experience that I think in some ways helped me be more comfortable with this, right?

And it ended up being the best thing I ever did in my life. It was the best choice I ever made. My life trajectory wouldve been horrible had I decided to, like, stay in the closet and marry the one girlfriend I ever had (sorry, Stephanie).

So I knew that I could do this. For these other folks, to your point the bars they go to. The poker night. The church. Their friend group. Their dogs name is Reagan. Changing all that is very challenging. So thats the DC class. And I think it explains it doesnt excuse, but it explains why its so hard.

Last week, I was with someone who works for Liz Cheney. And I was like, hows life? Hes like, I still get invited to parties, but I dont go. Because its really awkward.

So thats hard. Thats challenging for people.

That is also happening now out in America though. Which is something that is kind of relatively new and is not totally Trump era, but has gone on steroids in the Trump era which is the voters out there see themselves as Republican partisans, the same way like political operatives do.

And so their identity changing that is very hard, right? Thats why theres no quick fix to this.

But the one nice lesson I have is that, well, I showed and want to show no grace to the Republican collaborators who knew better in Washington. The actual people out in America who have gotten kind of sucked into this do need grace and time to be kind of pulled away from that identity.

Because its very hard and its entangled in there in a much deeper way than I think their voting identity was in the era where we grew up.

I live in Mississippi. I grew up here. I love it here. I love the people here and I felt the instinct more and more to defend my friends, from around the country, who want to shit on this part of the country.

But theres like a woman down the street, an older woman who has a giant ass flag in her yard that says Karens for Trump still, still! Like, thats not an affirmative statement about what she wants to see in the world or about tax policy, whatever. That is a giant middle finger to everyone on the other side.

There is sanity and decency underneath so much of that. But its now been swallowed by tribalistic bullshit. And it is very hard to engage in ways now that dont activate these defenses.

I dont have the answer for that.

Me neither, man. I wish I did.

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Tim Miller on Donald Trump, Elise Stefanik, and the Republicans who pretend being MAGA - Vox.com

Editors note:This column by David Corn first appeared in his newsletter, Our Land.But we wanted to make sure as many readers as possible have a chance to see it. Our Landis written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a monthbut you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Landhere. Please check it out. And please also check out Davids new New York Times bestseller: American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.

Those of us paying attention the past few years know that the answer to the oft-repeated question have we reached the bottom of Trumpism?is, theres no bottom. Donald Trump and the Republican Party proved that once again in recent days, as Trump merged MAGA extremism with the conspiratorial lunacy of QAnon, and nary a Republican batted an eye.

In retrospect, the melding of MAGAism with QAnonand toss in a helping of Christian nationalismseemed inevitable. The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that the world is controlled by a cabal of satanic, baby-eating, sex-trafficking pedophileswhich includes, of course, top Democrats, assorted elites, Hollywood celebrities, and the Popeand that Trump is engaged in titanic combat behind the scenes to crush this evil power and save humanity (and lots of babies). Under assorted variants of this nuttery, Trump is being aided by John F. Kennedy Jr. (who did not die in a 1999 plane crash), and he will be restored to power in a final cataclysmic battle that involves mass arrests of Lucifers allies (lock em up in Gitmo!) and televised executions. Trump fully embraced the QAnon insanity last week, and this means that the Republican Party now supports a man who advances a dangerous derangement that exceeds his Big Lie about the 2020 election and that further delegitimizes American democracy and debases political discourse. And this party has a good shot at gaining control of Congress in seven weeks.

For years, Trump had played footsie with QAnon, claiming he didnt know much about it but praising its adherents supposed patriotism, their opposition to pedophilia and, naturally, their cultish love of him. Offered the chance to denounce this perverse craziness, he bobbed and weaved, sending the signal to QAnonerswho are always looking for signalsthat they did indeed possess the hidden truth. With nods and winks, he validated their paranoia and detachment from reality, as QAnon conspiracism led tonumerous acts of violence.

QAnon flags and symbols blossomed at Trumps 2020 campaign rallies, and they were present at the insurrectionist January 6 assault on the US Capitol. In the way previous Republicans over the years had encouraged and exploited right-wing extremisma story I tell in my new book,American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went CrazyTrump capitalized on this bizarre and bonkers internet phenomenon without endorsing it. His plan looked obvious: take advantage of this brainsickness and boost his base of supporters without being tarred as a champion of this looniness.

No more. He went full QAnon the other day when he posted online a photoshopped image of him wearing a Q pin. To make the message clear, this picture proclaimed, The Storm Is Cominga QAnon catchphrase referring to that ultimate showdown between Trump and the evildoers. And it contained the abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, where we go one, we go all.

The insanity of a former (and possibly future) president bear-hugging QAnon cannot be overstated. And this was no one-off, late-in-the-night shitposting from the former guy. He zapped out other posts with QAnon references. Then four days later, at a rallyin Ohio, he delivered an apocalyptic speech against the backdrop of music resembling the QAnon theme song. It was here that Trump supporters raised their hands and pointed a fingerpossibly signaling one, in an allusion to that QAnon slogan.

The supposed purpose of the event was to whip up support for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance. But the gathering demonstrated the fusion of MAGA extremism with QAnon and Christian nationalism. The crowd cheered as Trump proclaimed the country had become a hellhole with a crumbling economy, rampant crime, and no freedom of speech. It was all lies. But the fervor of the crowd and the arm waving were reminiscent of a religious revival meeting. Trumps movement has morphed into QMaga. The irrationality has spread from the evidence-free belief that sinister players (China, Venezuela, the CIA, the media, Democrats, voting machine companies) conspired to steal the election from Trump to the conviction that American politics has become a clash between patriotic Christians and cannibalistic Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

The Ohio arena was not full, and the empty seats indicated that Trumps mix of conspiracism, cult of personality, end-times ravings, and fundamentalism may not be a bestseller. But many of the GOP election denialists running in state elections this yearincluding gubernatorial candidates Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania) and Kari Lake (Arizona)have ties to QAnon. Both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were QAnoners before they were elected to Congress in the last election. But perhaps of greater concern is that the entire GOP, which has supported Trumps authoritarian Big Lie crusade, is now willing to follow Trump further into the depths of fearmongering and madness.

Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, bestselling author, and venture capitalist (who once referred to Trump asAmericas Hitler) certainly knows QAnon is crap. But he eagerly lapped up Trumps support at the rally. No prominent GOP official has come out and declared that Trump is guiding the party into the land of crazy. With their silence, they are legitimizing Trumps promotion of an absurd delusion. Just as their silence regarding Trumpsrecent vowto pardon the domestic terrorists who attacked Congress legitimizes political violence and likely will encourage more of it.

A few weeks ago, President Joe Biden excoriated MAGA extremism and election denialism as semi-fascism and warned the nation of the threat they pose. Republicans and conservativesturned snowflakes and cried foul. Since then, the danger has grown. As every pundit will tell you, the Republicans remain poised to win the House in the November elections and possibly the Senate. That will place in power a party that accepts and supports QMaga (and that backs as its leader a man who now excuses political violence). Without more media attention and more warnings from Biden and the Democrats, QMaga will spread into the halls of Congress not by mob violence but by the ballot box. A storm is indeed coming.

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Donald Trump and the Birth of QMaga: The Storm Is Coming Mother Jones - Mother Jones

Can you believe these are my customers? Donald Trump once asked while surveying the crowd in the Taj Mahal casinos poker room. Look at those losers, he said to his consultant Tom ONeil, of people spending money on the floor of the Trump Plaza casino. Visiting the Iowa State Fair as a presidential candidate in 2015, he was astounded that locals fell in line to support him because of a few free rides in his branded helicopter. In the White House, he was sometimes stunned at his own backers fervor, telling aides, Theyre fucking crazy. Yet they loved him and wanted to own a piece of him, and that was what mattered most.

Almost immediately after his defeat in 2020, Trump began fundraising off his claims of fraud, turning to his ardent fans for support. Plenty of people donated small amounts of money to continue a fight he swore was valid and building toward action. It was difficult to discern, though, whether Trump actually believed what he was saying about the election.

I learned in the spring that Trump was repeating a claim from one of his most vocal allies, the self-made pillow-company CEO Mike Lindell, that Trump would be reinstated as president by August 2021. Trump liked the idea, telling aides he did not want to have to sit through another three and a half years of a Biden presidency. He quietly encouraged some conservative writers to publicize the idea in their own voices, telling the National Review editor Rich Lowry as well that he anticipated being reinstated by August 2021. Trump encouraged Lowry to write about it, saying it could help the magazine. When Jenna Ellis, his former adviser, protested on Twitter the notion that Trump could be reinstated to office, Trump told Ellis that her reputation would be damaged. She took that as pressure to reverse her statement. Trump conceded to her that the scenario was almost impossible, but that he wanted to keep the idea alive.

Other moneymaking opportunities arrived, ostensibly tied to the reverent memory of the Trump presidency. The most audacious plan was for a social-media company of Trumps own. In the days immediately following the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump was suspended from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube; he spent most of the next year insisting that he did not care about being banned while also suing the companies to get his accounts restored. In October, he announced that he would launch his own social network as part of a merger with a so-called blank-check company, whose stock price shot up when the merger was announced. The funding mechanism, which sparked an SEC investigation prior to the platforms launch, was completely opaque.

None of this came as any surprise to me. For much of the past decade, reporting on Trump has been my full-time job as a correspondent for The New York Times. To fully reckon with Donald Trump, his presidency, and his political future, people need to know where he comes from. The New York from which Trump emerged was its own morass of corruption and dysfunction, stretching from seats of executive power to portions of the media to the real-estate industry in which his family found its wealth. The world of New York developers was filled with shady figures and rife with backbiting and financial knife fighting; engaging with them was often the cost of doing business. But Trump nevertheless stood out to the journalists covering him as particularly brazen.

I have found myself on the receiving end of the two types of behavior Donald Trump exhibits toward reporters: his relentless desire to hold the medias gaze, and his poison-pen notes and angry statements in response to coverage. His impulse to try to sell his preferred version of himself was undeterred by the stain that January 6 left on his legacy and on the democratic foundations of the countryif anything, it grew stronger. He had an almost reflexive desire to meet with nearly every author writing a book about him. Trumps aides offered me an interview, and I asked for two additional ones.

Trump typically welcomed visiting authors for interviews in an indoor area at Mar-a-Lago that gets converted to a dining room at night, where a model of the redesigned Air Force One sits proudly on a low table. But after the headiness of being at the center of the worlds gaze, his time after the White House made him seem shrunken. He often played golf and then went to his newly built office at the club for meetings with whoever traveled down to seek his approval. He would watch television before going to dinner, where club members would sometimes applaud him, and then it would start all over again the next day, so removed from the daily rhythms of the broader world that he was oblivious to holidays on the calendar and staff had to remind him.

When I arrived for the first interview, in March 2021, I was ushered away from the usual room to a smaller area where Trump sometimes dined with guests. I learned as we wrapped up that the club was empty because it had been closed off after a COVID-19 scare, but Trump decided to have us sit there regardless, without checking to see if I was vaccinated. COVID, Trump said as he described the clubs closure, turns out, not good.

Trump greeted me cordially before taking a seat across the table from me; he was in sales mode, not combat mode. His history in New York was the focus of our interview. He thought back to the first major political figure he had observed up close, the Democratic Party boss Meade Esposito, who dominated Brooklyn politics when Trump joined his fathers real-estate business. Meade ruled with an iron fist, Trump said. And he was a very strong leader, to put it mildly. And when I came to Washington, I said, Oh, well, this is now the big league. So as tough as they were, this must be even tougher. But I said, How could anybody be tougher than Meade? Meade had a cane at the end. He used to start swinging the cane at people. I mean, he was wild.

Trump had seemed to try to emulate Espositos style in his post-presidency, receiving visitors who came to kiss his ring, and picking favorites in primaries to try to determine the outcomes of those races. Trumps view of strength never changes, regardless of the context, flattening all situations so they appear the same. He used identical languagewith an iron fistwhen describing how Esposito presided over his boroughwide fiefdom and when he praised Chinas President Xi Jinping after his own term ended.

I asked him if he had expected the presidency to function the same way. Rather, Trump said, that is how he thought congressional leaders would act on his behalf: Well, I figured that the Mitch McConnells would be like him, in the sense of strength. There were plenty of factual problems with the criticism. In fact, McConnell had kept Republican senators in line over and over to advance Trumps policy and personnel concerns and generally protect his political standing as the leader of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, Trump said to me in another session, using his favorite new nickname for McConnell, The Old Crows a piece of shit.

Trump also complained to me about senators successfully practicing this type of power politics against him, as Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz had when they persuaded Trump not to back a challenge to a colleague, Nebraskas Ben Sasse; Trump gave a surprise endorsement to Sasse, who then, after winning reelection, voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment. Like a schmuck, I went along with it, Trump said.

Trump was clear that he did not believe he would have faced any of the same legal problems that had dogged him if Manhattans longtime district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, had still been in office. No. He was a friend of mine. He was a great gentleman. He was a great man. He was highly respected. No. And I run a clean organization. This is a continuation of the witch hunt. He added, Bob Morgenthau would not have stood for this. The investigation by Morgenthaus successor, he insisted, was part of an attack on the Republic. He was perhaps even more dire when describing the threat he had faced from the special counsel investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia. It forced him, he said, to perform two jobs when I was president, running the country and survival.

At one point, Trump made a candid admission that was as jarring as it was ultimately unsurprising. The question I get asked more than any other question: If you had it to do again, would you have done it? Trump said of running for president. The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because heres the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are. He then went on to talk about how much easier his life would have been had he not run. Yet there it was: Reflecting on the meaning of having been president of the United States, his first impulse was not to mention public service, or what he felt hed accomplished, only that it appeared to be a vehicle for fame, and that many experiences were only worth having if someone else envied them. (When I asked him in a later interview about what hed liked about the job, he replied, Getting things done, and listed a few accomplishments.)

We met for a follow-up interview five weeks later, again at Mar-a-Lago, again in the late afternoon. He was not in a good mood. By way of greeting, he told me, Im watching the Arizona situation very carefully. A private company called the Cyber Ninjas was conducting a so-called audit of Maricopa County ballots and tabulation equipment that had been handed over by the Republican-led state senate. He had talked about his claims of widespread fraud in our first interview, but not about trying to undo the results. He seemed to be going backward. I learned later that hed tried getting the Republican National Committee to fund the audit in Arizona, to no avail (the audit ultimately affirmed the results of the states election).

He was at his most animated when I asked about why he had trusted Sidney Powell, given the concerns his other advisers had had about her. Since then, Powell had faced libel suits from voting-machine manufacturers she had accused of corruption; her defense had been, essentially, that no one should have taken what she had to say seriously. I was very disappointed in her statement, Trump said. That is so demeaning for her to say about herself. Then he essentially read stage directions on how to use public claims in lawsuits. All she had to say, he said, was Upon information and belief, I think such and such. Now all she says there, was take a thousand stories that were written over the last 10 years long before all of this, that are bad stories, he said, and that is information and belief, she read them. And thats the end of that case. Thats true for everybody: Its upon information and belief and lets go to court to find out if its true.

I pressed him on what, at that point, was one of the persistent mysteries of January 6, which would become central to the congressional select committees investigation: what he had been doing in the hours when the Capitol was under assault from his supporters. He insisted that he was not watching television, despite volumes of witness testimony and other evidence to the contrary. I didnt usually have the television on. Id have it on if there was something. I then later turned it on and I saw what was happening, he said. He lied throughout that bit of our interview: I had heard that afterward and actually on the late side. I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. I was not watching television.

Our third meeting was at the end of the summer, which he had largely spent at the quarters that he kept on the grounds of his New Jersey golf course.

When I arrived at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, I waited in a small room off the front entrance. I spotted Lindsey Graham outside, in golf pants; it was the second time I had encountered him in Trumps vicinity that year. Trump eventually entered the room, having lost a noticeable amount of weight since I had seen him last. Graham followed a minute later and gestured toward Trump. The greatest comeback in American history! Graham declared. Trump looked at me. You know why Lindsey kisses my ass? he asked. So Ill endorse his friends. Graham laughed uproariously.

I was curious when Trump said he had kept in touch with other world leaders since leaving office. I asked whether that included Russias Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping, and he said no. But when I mentioned North Koreas Kim Jong-un, he responded, Well, I dont want to say exactly, but before trailing off. I learned after the interview that he had been telling people at Mar-a-Lago that he was still in contact with North Koreas supreme leader, whose picture with Trump hung on the wall of his new office at his club.

He demurred when I asked if he had taken any documents of note upon departing the White Housenothing of great urgency, no, he said, before mentioning the letters that Kim Jong-un had sent him, which he had showed off to so many Oval Office visitors that advisers were concerned he was being careless with sensitive material. You were able to take those with you? I asked. He kept talking, seeming to have registered my surprise, and said, No, I think thats in the archives, but Most of it is in the archives, but the Kim Jong-un letters We have incredible things.

In fact, Trump did not return the letterswhich were included in boxes he had brought to Mar-a-Lagoto the National Archives until months later. The Washington Post reported on it in early 2022; the Justice Department began investigating how the classified material made its way in and out of the White House residence. (In one of our earlier interviews, I had asked him separately about some of the texts between the FBI agent and the FBI official working on the Robert Mueller investigation whose affair prompted the agents removal from the case; we had learned the night before Bidens inauguration that Trump was planning to make the texts public. He ultimately didnt, but he told me that Meadows had the material in his possession and offered to connect me with him.)

Over the course of our conversations, he appeared reluctant to take shots at many of those people on whom I knew him to have been toughest behind closed doors. His campaign manager Brad Parscale spent money unwisely, he said, but he did not criticize him beyond that. I asked why he had given Jared Kushner expansive power. I didnt, Trump said, although he had done exactly that. When I pressed, Trump said, Look, my daughter has a great relationship with him and thats very important. (In the fall of 2016, ahead of the election, Trump once tried to call Kushner to complain about why the situation in Florida was bad for him. Kushner, who usually didnt answer his phone on the Sabbath, was unresponsive. Fucking Shabbat, Trump groused, asking no one in particular if his Jewish son-in-law was really religious or just avoiding work. When I later asked him about this, he denied that he had said it.)

He was not so sanguine about Mike Pence, who had begun to defend his own actions on January 6 with increasing stridency, prompting Trump to escalate his condemnation of his former vice presidents judgment that day. I said, Mike, you have a chance to be Thomas Jefferson, or you can be Mike Pence, Trump recounted to me, repeating an inaccurate comparison to the election of 1800. He chose to be Mike Pence.

I brought up another potential future primary rival, by mentioning that he had been compared to New Jerseys feisty Governor Chris Christie before the two men faced off in the 2016 primary. Trump replied, I was compared to him? Why? I didnt know I had that big of a weight problem. A small smirk followed. Then: Hes an opportunist. I heard that Trump was describing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in similar terms, calling him fat, phony, and whiny, while claiming credit for making his candidacy in 2018.

Even as he talked about launching another campaign for the presidency, Trump was more comfortable looking backward than forward. When I told Trump I wanted to talk about 2024, he asked, quizzically, 2024?

By the time we spoke at Mar-a-Lago, I had covered Trump as a political figure for many years, and little was surprising. And still the choreography of in-person interviews could reveal moments of unintended candor. He started to explain why he doesnt like when audiotapes of his interviews are released. Being on camera was much different, he said. Whereas, he said, in a written interview, Ill repeat it 20 times, because I want to drum it into your beautiful brain. Do you understand that? He repeated himself again. One of the things Ill do, if Im doing, like with you, for the written word, is I got to drum it into your head. So Ill repeat something six times.

His interest in repetition was not news to me, but his self-awareness of it was notable. At another point, he was going on a stem-winder about New Yorks then-outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio canceling a contract with the Trump Organization to manage a public golf course in the Bronx after January 6. De Blasios choice to replace Trump was deeply controversial, and a judge later ruled in Trumps favor.

Its like communism, Trump said, asking what the word was for when someone takes your property. (It came to him 20 minutes later. Confiscate is the word, he declared in the middle of another thought.) I tried redirecting him, but he cut me off. Let me just finish it, he said. Just let me do this, and then Im going to tell you. He seemed to hear himself, and smiled. Then he turned to the two aides he had sitting in on our interview, gestured toward me with his hand, and said, I love being with her; shes like my psychiatrist.

It was a meaningless line, almost certainly intended to flatter, the kind of thing he has said about the power of release he got from his Twitter feed or other interviews he has given over the years. The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatristsreporters, government aides, and members of Congress, friends and pseudo-friends and rally attendees and White House staff and customers. All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling. He works things out in real time in front of all of us. Along the way, he reoriented an entire country to react to his moods and emotions.

I spent the four years of his presidency getting asked by people to decipher why he was doing what he was doing, but the truth is, ultimately, almost no one really knows him. Some know him better than others, but he is often simply, purely opaque, permitting people to read meaning and depth into every action, no matter how empty they might be.

This article is adapted from Habermans forthcoming book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

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Maggie Haberman: A Reckoning With Donald Trump - The Atlantic

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney said she would do whatever it takes to make sure former President Donald Trump is not the GOP presidential nominee during the 2024 elections, including stumping for Democrats running against election deniers running as Republicans.

When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith if she would consider running for president toward that end, the Republican congresswoman reiterated she would do everything in her power to prevent the former president from representing her party in the next presidential election.

I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn't anywhere close to the Oval Office, Cheney said during the closing night of The Texas Tribune Festival.

Cheney, who lost to a Republican primary challenger in August but will continue as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 Committee until she leaves office in January, said she continues to identify as a Republican, celebrating the legacy of the likes of Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But she said she would no longer be a Republican if Trump gets the partys nomination in 2024.

I'm going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he's not the nominee, Cheney said. And if he is the nominee, I won't be a Republican.

Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trumps legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.

Cheney excoriated Trump for his failure to call off rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said without equivocation that any decision by the investigating committee about whether there should be criminal prosecution would be unanimous across the seven Democrats and two Republicans. She did not say whether the committee would decide in favor of a criminal prosecution.

One of the things that has surprised me the most about my work on this committee is how sophisticated the plan was that Donald Trump was involved in and oversaw every step of the way, Cheney said. It was a multipart plan that he oversaw, he was involved in personally and directly.

While leaders in Congress were begging him, Please, tell the mob to go home, Donald Trump wouldn't, Cheney said. And just set the politics aside for a minute and think to yourself, What kind of human being does that?

The committee is gearing up to wrap up its work in the coming weeks and is slated to meet this Wednesday for another public hearing, offering no details about what will be discussed then. She said next weeks hearing is unlikely to be the committees last, despite committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., suggesting the opposite earlier this week.

When asked if she would like Trump to testify before the committee, she paused for a moment before offering the following: Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalty of perjury.

Cheney suffered a precipitous loss in the Republican primary for her Wyoming seat for her role on the committee, and she said Saturday that she would not vote for the Republican nominee for her seat, Harriet Hageman, in the general election.

But she challenged the audience not to question her ability to keep fighting against Trump after she leaves the House.

When asked about her own presidential ambitions, Cheney demurred.

It's really important not to just immediately jump to the horse race and to think about what we need as a country, Cheney said.

Her criticisms arent limited to the former president. Cheney also flatly said she does not believe House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy should ever become Speaker of the House, which would put him second in line to the presidency behind the vice president.

At every single moment, when our time of testing came and Kevin had to make a decision hes made the politically easy-for-him, or the politically expedient, decision instead of what the country needed, she said.

But Cheney didnt give up hope in her party, saying: I think we have to have a Republican Party that can be trusted to fight for issues such as limited government and strong national security.

Cheneys father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is another vocal opponent of Trump. He called the former president a coward and the greatest threat to our republic in history in a campaign ad supporting his daughters primary run. Liz Cheney said that her father offered her a piece of advice on New Years Day this year: Defend the republic, daughter. And I will, she said.

View original post here:

Liz Cheney says she will do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump from the White House, even if it means leaving the GOP - The Texas Tribune

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Politico founding editor John F. Harris declared "The Best Way To Save The Constitution From Donald Trump Is To Rewrite It" in a Thursday column.

Harris claimed that the former president, though "a constitutional menace," exploited the Constitutions "defects" in order to hold his position. For the sake of holding back a second Trump term as well as promote several progressive causes, he wrote that working around the Constitution might become a necessity.

"Correcting or circumventing what progressives reasonably perceive as the infirmities of the Constitution, in fact, seems likely to be the preeminent liberal objective of the next generation. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to ensuring that technology giants act in the public interest will hinge on creating a new constitutional consensus. Trying to place more sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court is not likely to be a fully adequate remedy," Harris wrote.

He added, "There are more fundamental challenges embedded in the document itself in particular the outsized power it gives to states, at a time when the most urgent problems and most credible remedies are national in character."

Facimile of The Constitution for the United States of America dated September 17, 1787. (Fotosearch/Getty Images)

PROFESSOR FINDS MOST STUDENTS CANT DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN US AND RUSSIAN CONSTITUTIONS

Harris also complained how Trump supporters hold an almost divine perspective of the Constitution.

"Expressing solemn reverence for the Constitution has become a way of signaling right-mindedness across the political spectrum, even among Trump supporters whose actions plainly undermine constitutional order. In much of this rhetoric, the Constitution is elevated from a secular document to a sacred one, infused with mystical dimensions," Harris wrote.

While Harris did acknowledge there was something "wondrous and enduring" about the document, he didnt hold the same reverence for the Constitution.

We The People - An old USA Constitution on parchment paper lying on a old American flag. (iStock)

"Another answer, however, is: Who cares what [the Founders] thought then? The Constitution was written at a time when states were indeed foundational a central part of peoples identity and way of life. This has not been true for nearly a century, as both national government and national identity have become stronger," he wrote.

POLITICO EDITOR SLAMS JOURNO FOR NOT REPORTING RBGS POOR HEALTH AND HELPING SAVE ROE V. WADE

Harris continued on to list several amendments, most of which were framed around liberal priorities, that could already gain "majority support" from the nation including "altering or abolishing the Electoral College, term limits for the Court, creating some check on abuse of the pardon authority" and cleaning up "the infuriatingly murky language of the Second Amendment."

Progressive activists have increasingly called to amend or ignore the Constitution. (istock)

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Within the last year, several media outlets and pundits have criticized or called for amending the Constitution after the failure to promote several progressive causes. In August, the New York Times featured a guest essay insisting that liberals stop caring about the "broken" Constitution.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

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Constitution must be rewritten to stop Donald Trump, Politico's founding editor writes - Fox News

Happy Monday, OnPolitics readers!

Without being a candidate for any federal office, former President Donald Trump is trying to reshape the Republican Party into a movement focused on devotion to him rather than to ideological principles.

At the top of the agenda for the former president is enlisting loyalists to help him settle his grievances over his loss in the 2020 presidential race.

Trumps vehicle for this is a fundraising machine called Save America. Started just after he lost the 2020 election and at the height of his efforts to overturn the results, the PACs surrogates routinely send out misinformation including conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the FBI's search of Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to rake in donations from the public. It operates like a veritable slush fund, paying for personal expenses like luxurious hotels and even a fashion designer.

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The money given directly to the candidates by Save America usually $5,000 each is a lever that the former president can pull on to encourage loyalty and exert influence.

Save America has backed 28 candidates for state office in nine states. In three of those states, Save America has backed candidates for state legislature, a level virtually unheard of for a PAC of a former high-ranking federal official. At the federal level, Save America has backed candidates for 131 seats in the House and 18 seats in the Senate. The vast majority are election deniers.

And theyve been largely successful. Two-thirds of Save America candidates running at the state level won their primaries, including all of them in Arizona and Texas. All but a handful of the PACs federal candidates have advanced from their primaries and will be on the ballot Nov. 8.

For a breakdown of PAC-supported campaigns by state, check out this interactive map at the bottom of the story.

It's Amy with today's top stories out of Washington.

What's next On Politics: The next hearing for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitolresumes Wednesday. Check back at USATODAY.com tomorrow and Wednesday as the news develops. -- Amy

Excerpt from:

How Donald Trump's Save America PAC is influencing the 2022 midterms - USA TODAY

The social media app will be developed by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).

Rafael Henrique | LightRocket | Getty Images

Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank-check company looking to take Trump Media and Technology Group public, has changed its listed address to a UPS Store in Miami.

The change from a Miami office building to a UPS address came with DWAC's regulatory filing on Friday disclosing that some investors pulled out tens of millions of dollars.

The company said it had lost $138.5 millionof the $1 billion in financing from private investors in public equity, also known as PIPE, to fund Trump Media after the merger. The contractual obligation for those investors to contribute to former President Donald Trump's media company after the deal had expired last Tuesday, allowing them to pull their funding.

One of the former private investors told CNBC that it pulled financing from DWAC because of the many legal obstacles facing the company. The investor,who declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of the matter, was also underwhelmed by the popularity of Trump Media's Truth Social app as measured by Donald Trump's follower counts.

Trump had more than 80 million followers on Twitter. On Truth Social, which he founded after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, he has 4.1 million. The app is also currently barred from the Google Play store.

Representatives from DWAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After DWAC failed to garner enough shareholder support to extend its deal deadline earlier this month, CEO Patrick Orlando contributed $2.8 million from his company Arc Global Investments II to push back the deadline to December.

The merger delay comes as Trump Media and DWAC are the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into whether alleged discussions between the two companies prior to the merger violated securities laws.

Trump himself is also the subject of multiple investigations, including civil allegations of fraud from New York's attorney general, as well as criminal investigations relating to the removal of sensitive documents from the White House, his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and attempts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

DWAC's address change was first reported by the Financial Times.

Shares of DWAC were trading around $17 after hours Monday, down significantly from their $97 peak in March of this year.

Read more here:

Trump-linked SPAC changes address to UPS Store as investors pull more than $130 million - CNBC