Category Archives: Donald Trump

Former President Donald J. Trumps eldest son sent the White House chief of staff a text message two days after Election Day in 2020 that laid out strategies for declaring his father the winner regardless of the electoral outcome, people familiar with the exchange said on Friday.

The text, which was reported earlier by CNN, was sent two days before Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner of the election. The recipient, Mark Meadows, turned a cache of his text messages over to the House committee investigating the events leading up to the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as the Electoral College results in Mr. Bidens favor were being certified.

Its very simple, Donald Trump Jr. wrote to Mr. Meadows on Nov. 5, 2020. He wrote at another point, We have multiple paths We control them all.

The message went on to lay out a variety of options that Mr. Trump or his allies ultimately employed in trying to overturn the results of the election, from legal challenges to promoting alternative slates of electors to focusing efforts on the statutory date of Jan. 6 for certification of the Electoral College results.

In a statement, the younger Mr. Trumps lawyer, Alan Futerfas, confirmed that the text message was sent but suggested it was someone elses idea that Donald Trump Jr. was passing along.

After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others, Mr. Futerfas said. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.

Still, the text message underscores the extraordinary lengths that Mr. Trumps allies and official aides were already exploring right after Election Day to keep Mr. Trump in power if the voters throughout the country failed to do so.

Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric called on Republicans to keep fighting on their fathers behalf in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, as votes were still being counted in a string of close races in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Arizona.

The total lack of action from virtually all of the 2024 GOP hopefuls is pretty amazing, Donald Jr. wrote on Twitter the same day he sent the text to Mr. Meadows. They have a perfect platform to show that theyre willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. Dont worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!

The House committee is investigating what led to the assault on the Capitol and the various efforts to try to thwart Mr. Bidens victory, all of which failed. Ultimately, a mob of supporters of Mr. Trump stormed the Capitol during the certification. At least seven people died in connection with the riot.

The effort to disqualify insurrectionists. New lawsuitswere filed against three Arizona officials, including Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, to bar them from office under the 14th Amendment. This is part of a larger legal effort to disqualify G.O.P. lawmakers from re-election if they participated in events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack.

Contempt charges. The House voted to recommend criminal contempt of Congress chargesagainst Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino Jr., two close allies of former President Donald J. Trump, after the pair defied subpoenas from the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Ivanka Trump testifies. The former presidents daughter, who served as one of his senior advisers, testified for about eight hoursbefore the Jan. 6 House committee. On the day of the riot, Ms. Trump was in the West Wing. She is said to have tried to persuade her father to call off the rioters.

Justice Department widens inquiry. Federal prosecutors are said to have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigationto examine the possible culpability of a broad range of pro-Trump figures involved in efforts to overturn the election. The investigation was initially focused on the rioters who had entered the Capitol.

Mr. Trump and a number of his advisers pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role in the Electoral College certification to upend the process, something Mr. Pence was adamant was beyond his authority.

The text message that Donald Trump Jr. sent to Mr. Meadows acknowledged that scenario, which was championed by a lawyer advising President Trump, John C. Eastman. We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021, the text message said.

The younger Mr. Trump also texted with Mr. Meadows during the riot, urging him to move the president to act as the violence played out.

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Donald Trump Jr. Text Laid Out Strategies to Fight Election Outcome - The New York Times

As he spoke, however, a tension became apparent in the room. Trump and his aides and allies may be living up the moment. Some may have their eyes on the potential of a presidential run in 2024. But on Tuesday night, like many others since Trump left the White House, they remained consumed by what happened in 2020.

Theres a great anger at what took place and because of a rigged election, Trump said, standing inside a mirrored jewel box of a ballroom next to the pool. We now have Ukraine it would have never happened. We now have inflation the likes of which nobody ever thought possible.

Trump is in limbo, needing to focus on the future but incapable of letting go of the past. It was evident all around him on Tuesday. Like a dysfunctional family reunion, Trump donors, allies, aides and advisers reminisced about days gone by. It was the old crew, there through times good and bad. Corey Lewandowski, once cast out of Trumps circle over accusations he assaulted a donors wife, was greeted with open arms as he buzzed around the room. Hope Hicks, who shies away from the public eye, flitted from table to table, hugging old colleagues. And Reince Priebus maneuvered himself through friends as he held fizzy drinks for himself and Kellyanne Conway, who razzed him about how he would be remembered in her upcoming memoir.

That a memoir would be the vehicle of ribbing was fitting in a way. The currency of Trumpland is often grievance dished out in a variety of forms, from the anonymous leak to the social media blast, to the dishy tell-all available for advance order on Amazon. And if its not directed at one another then it is focused predominantly on the 2020 election, which, against all prevailing evidence, Trump continues to insist was rigged against him alone.

Under glittering crystal chandeliers, guests sipped Trump-brand wine, nibbled puff pastry hors doeuvres and speculated about who might be Trumps next running mate. Among the special guests were conservative media stars like Fox News Katie Pavlich, former OAN host-turned-champion of election falsehoods Christina Bobb,and Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief at Breitbart News Network, who was given free rein.

Mr. Boyle is allowed to roam he is a guest, a press wrangler said to the media, which was instructed to stay put in a roped-off corner.

Trump and his crew were gathered on Tuesday to see Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump, a new documentary from Trump ally and Citizens United head Dave Bossie about the 2020 election that tries to draw a line between Facebooks grant funding in certain parts of the country and Democratic turnout. Trump, who was interviewed for the film, along with a cast that includes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), said he was eager to see how the flick came out.

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, reacts to the crowd as he shakes hands with co-host David Bossie at the Freedom Summit in Greenville, S.C., in 2015.|Rainier Ehrhardt/AP Photo

I really liked Citizen Kane. Gone With the Wind was fantastic. Titanic was fantastic. But this is the one Im really looking forward to seeing, Trump said to the crowd gathered at his very own Xanadu.

The past had gripped him again, this time in cinematic form.

Those Republicans who support Trump but are one step away from his inner circle find the scene that unfolded Tuesday night to be counterproductive. At a time when the ex-president could be focused on propelling the Republican Party toward the upcoming elections, Trump is still anchored down by conspiracies and anger over losing the last one. At a time when President Joe Bidens own weaknesses make him an easy political target, Trump and his political apparatus instead seem to be unable to move past the abyss of election-fraud lies.

Some of the people here not here, but maybe in the back corner there, Bossie said, gesturing to a small group of reporters, say that we shouldnt be talking about 2020. I think its vital that we do. Because if we dont find out what happened in 2020, how are we going to stop it from happening?

Unlike some of the election-fraud conspiracies propagated by Trump and his allies, Bossies film examines the publicly documented $400 million that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spent via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative on the 2020 election in charitable giving. The film does not lay out any illegal activity but looks at the spending by two nonprofit organizations in places like Arizona and Georgia where Biden won by narrow margins.

Sophisticated graphics and ominous music are interwoven with soundbites from election-fraud backers like Cleta Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer who advised Trump on how to protest the 2020 results, and Trump, who claims Zuckerberg himself was working to make it impossible for a Republican to win. It all has a stiff whiff of nefariousness, except that its not unexplored ground. The Zuckerberg conspiracy has been around for months, with nothing untoward yet proven. In fact, election officials have said the funds were critical for ensuring they could operate under the crazy conditions of the pandemic. But it is the latest target by the right, with dozens of proposed bills in state legislatures now taking aim at outside donations for election purposes.

In full transparency, Mark [Zuckerberg] and [his wife] Priscilla [Chan] announced their support for this effort well in advance of the election, so this documentary is neither new nor newsworthy, said Brian Baker, a spokesperson for Zuckerberg and Chan, in a statement to Fox News last week. This film appears to feature the same people advancing the same claims that have been debunked by multiple federal and state courts and respected news organizations, only this time, set to dramatic music.

The impacts of Trumps eagerness to live in the realm of 2020 conspiracy are visible in obvious and subtle ways. There are the movies screened at Mar-a-Lago and the guests invited there, among them Mike Gableman, the former state Supreme Court justice leading Wisconsins GOP-ordered review into the 2020 election. Theres the fact that a large portion of Republicans continue to deny that Biden rightfully won the presidency, and that following the elections, at least eight Republican-controlled state legislatures actually passed bans on money given to election offices from outside organizations an implicit reaction to Zuckerberg.

And then there is the talk around Trumps own future. After the former president walked down a short velvet rope line, shaking hands and flashing his trademark thumbs-up, Bossie was asked why so much time and money is being spent talking about 2020 rather than laying out the case against Biden.

We do plenty of that, Bossie said. We have to uncover what they did to do two things: make the American people understand that the president didnt lose a fair election, and they changed the rules.

But once Bossie had stepped away, one attendee, a political aide, came over to the news media to vent frustrations about the lack of a forward-looking vision, a change in course or plan of action to make sure a 2020 loss doesnt happen for the Republican Party again.

Until we have a reckoning and a conversation, I dont know what we are doing here, said the attendee, who like many of the guests in the room was well versed in talking to journalists and immediately asked to go on background to speak anonymously.

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Trump's fixation on the past puts his political future in limbo - POLITICO

Douglas P. DeFeliceGetty Images

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blogs Favorite Living Canadian)

On Friday afternoon, the federal prosecution in the alleged plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer utterly fell apart. Two defendants were acquitted on all charges, and the jury hung on charges against the two other accused conspirators. The court declared a mistrial on the latter. So the government took the ol horse collar on this prosecution. An Oh-fer. 0-4. From the Detroit News:

As one might imagine, the reaction from Whitmers office was scalding. From WXYZ:

Putting aside for a moment the fact that western Michigan is a place where the wild things roam, sometimes in and out of jury pools, it seems likely that one of the things that torpedoed the case was some bungling by the FBI. In that event, there would be something undeniably heinous about this acquittal.

After the initial burst of publicity following the arrests, the case began going sideways a year ago.

Of course, the government will likely re-try the two defendants who were not acquitted, who also are the alleged ringleaders. And one does suspect that, had these guys been hapless immigrants talking loosely about stealing the Pentagon, the feds would have been able to get a conviction. Still, this was a serious case. Everybody needs to do a lot better.

Chip SomodevillaGetty Images

They were all crooks and they were crooks for the working day. From CNN:

And Sluggos mouthpiece is trying out some new material.

Elderly hound snoozes on porch. Declines to pursue wild game.

Moral high ground.

These guys are killing me.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: Eat That Chicken (King James and the Special Men): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: This Thursday was National Beer Day so, in celebration, from 1932, here are 100,000 New Yorkers, led my Mayor Jimmy Walker, in a 10-hour parade demanding an end to Prohibition and, as the Brit narrator says, demanding beer, glorious beer. Hard to argue with a man who once said, A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat. History is so cool.

A singularly wonderful event has happened in the Substack universe. My friend and onetime NPR running buddy, Roy Blount, Jr., has joined in and people should support him. Anyone who can write a piece entitled, "My Sister Is Glued To The Dry Cleaners" ("This glue could stick Sinatra to the Chinese Army") deserves our encouragement.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Guardian? Its always a good day for dinosaur news!

This was a dino that heard the thundering roar of the asteroid and then looked up and saw the end of existence coming. An eyewitness to extinction. This demands respect, even 66 million years later.

And this was the day that began the long process by which dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

Ill be back Monday to see if Lindsey Graham has found his necktie yet. What a putz. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn mask, get the damn shots, especially the damn boosters. Spare a kind thought for Ukraine.

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Donald Trump Jr. Text Floats Ways to Overturn 2020 Election - Esquire

Former President Donald Trump will stop in Austin on May 14as part of his "American Freedom Tour."

His appearance will come 10 days ahead ofthe Texasprimary runoffs, whenseveral Trump-endorsed candidates are hoping to secure victory. On May 9, he will headline a fundraising dinner hosted by theNational Republican Congressional Committee in Dallas.

The location of Trump's Austin event has not been announced, but the tour's website promises a slew of "insiders and influencers" at the event.

More: Fact check: Did Trump vote by mail for the 2020 election?

The lineup includes Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend KimberlyGuilfoyle, a former Fox News host and presidential adviser, as well as conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza.

Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state and CIA director under Trump, also is scheduled to appear.

Tickets for the event range from $9 to $2,995; top-level donorscan participate in a roundtable discussion with Pompeo. Other price tiersget attendees photo ops with Trump Jr. and a seat at a"Q&A breakfast" with D'Souza.

Trump has backed five candidates competing in runoff contests, including embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton who is seeking a third term and is facing Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

Trump also weighed in on the GOP runoff in the race to replace Bush, putting his support behind state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, over Tim Westley, a pastor.

More: Ken Paxton, George P. Bush come out swinging as Texas attorney general race heads to runoff

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Donald Trump to speak in Austin ahead of the May primary runoffs - Austin American-Statesman

Why question Trump aboutgolf?

I don't understand why anyone would question whether Donald Trump actually hit a hole-in-one. Donald Trump spends more time playing golf than any former president; he spent more time playing golf,despite his claim that he wouldn't. Given how much golf Trump plays, it is not surprising that he would eventually hit a hole-in-one. Besides, in light of his documented habit of cheating at golf, and his penchant for making false claims, if he were going to lie about something like this, he would have done so long ago. The truly unbelievable thing about this story is that anybody cares.

Michael J. Kirshner,WestPalm Beach

Disney World Florida opposes"The Dont Say Gay bill. If so, would they pledge to not give financial support in the upcoming elections to any state representative who voted for the bill and to donate to those who voted against it? That would be a real stand.

Paul LaKind, Palm Beach Gardens

Russia invades Ukraine. The war continues for a few months, and it is suggested that an attempt be made to negotiate a settlement. Since negotiation infers a give and take process, in attempting to reach a settlement, what does Russia have to give?

Now, let us suppose that Canada invades the U.S. over a perceived or real difference. The conflict continues for several months and Canada manages to occupy substantial territory in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Can you in your wildest dream think that we would give any land to a country that had invaded our border? When you add to it the negotiation Russian atrocities, there is nothing to discuss, except letting the rest of the world decide a suitable punishment for war crimes.

Burt Edelchick,Hobe Sound

Re the House GOP members vote down their own bill over red herring: The failure of 10 Florida congressional Republicans to rename the federal courthouse in Tallahassee after the first Black Florida Supreme Court Justice is yet another example of GOP cowardice, hypocrisy and their inability to genuinely pledge allegiance to the republic for which they supposedly stand. This is the same party where the majority of its elected officials reimagined the events of Jan.6, and now theyre doing a hatchet job on Joseph Woodrow Hatchett who, against all odds, passed his bar exam during the Jim Crow era and worked his way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

The decision to renounce a bill that theyinitially co-sponsored, based on Judge Hatchetts support of the Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution, is unconscionable. According to Frank Cerabino, despite several unsuccessful efforts in the Sunshine State to allow government sanctioned prayer in schools, Were still dancing around the subject Judge Hatchett decided 34 years ago. You can pray all you want in public school. But you cant subject other peoples children to your prayers. One would think that the party thattouts The Free State of Florida and Parental Rights in Education would realize that politicians forcing kids to pray is the antithesis of liberty and that the failure to honor Judge Hatchett flies in the face of justice for all.

Nancy Chanin,Delray Beach

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Letters: Is Trump's hole-in-one the Big Lie? - Palm Beach Post

As an academic historian, I never expected to find myself in a videoconference with Donald Trump. But one afternoon last summera day after C-SPAN released a poll of historians who ranked him just above Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan, our countrys worst chief executiveshe popped up in a Zoom box and told me and some of my colleagues about the 45th presidency from his point of view. He spoke calmly. Weve had some great people; weve had some people that werent so great. Thats understandable, he told us. Thats true with, I guess, every administration. But overall, we had tremendous, tremendous success.

I am the editor of a scholarly history of Trumps term in the White House, the third book in a series about the most recent presidents. A few days after The New York Times reported on the project, Trumps then-aide Jason Miller contacted me to say that the former president wanted to talk to my co-authors and mesomething that neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama had done. For someone who claimed indifference about how people in our world viewed him, Trump was spending an inordinate amount of timemore than any other ex-president that we know oftrying to influence the narratives being written about him. My co-authors and I werent the only people he reached out to. According to Axios, Trump conducted conversations with more than 22 authors, primarily journalists, who were working on books chronicling his presidency.

Tim Naftali: The worst president in history

But if anything, our conversation with the former president underscored common criticisms: that he construed the presidency as a forum to prove his dealmaking prowess; that he sought flattery and believed too much of his own spin; that he dismissed substantive criticism as misinformed, politically motivated, ethically compromised, or otherwise cynical. He demonstrated a limited historical worldview: When praising the virtues of press releases over tweetsbecause the former are more elegant and lengthierhe sounded as if he himself had discovered that old form of presidential communication. He showed little interest in exploring, or even acknowledging, some of the contradictions and tensions in his record.

The former president sat at a wooden desk in his Bedminster Golf Club with an American flag beside him. Over the first 30 minutes, with a single sheet of white paper in front of him, Trump reminisced about his underappreciated negotiating talent in handling the economy, the coronavirus pandemic, and the leaders of China, North Korea, and Russia. Nobody was tougher on Russia than me, he maintained. With regard to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Trump recounted how he had compelled other allied nations to pay higher dues after decades when they had not paid their fair share. Many of Trumps anecdotes came back to how he had talkedor intimidatedpowerful actors into doing things that no other president would have been able to. The former president claimed that he had reached a tentative deal with the South Korean government to contribute more to its own defense. (In telling the story, he imitated the accent of South Korean President Moon Jae-In.) The historic deal, Trump alleged, was scuttled once Joe Biden became president, after the 2020 election was rigged and lost.

He seemed to measure American politicians primarily by how they treated him. Even many of those elected officials who criticized him in public sang a different tune, he insisted, when the television cameras were off. Trump vented about governors who continually expressed during private meetings how impressed they were with his COVID policies (I hope you can get the tapes, Trump said) yet proceeded to knock the hell out of me in public: So unfair.

Right as I was about to open the virtual floor for discussion, Trump took a surprising detour, spending several minutes telling a convoluted story about how price overruns and poor design plans had marred the Navys $13 billion supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. Calling the project the stupidest thing that Ive ever seen, Trump explained how during a presidential visit, he warned that the technologically advanced vessel was a mistake. He recounted how the hardworking crew members who had been servicing ships for years (out of central casting) thought key features of the Navys design, including aspects of the catapult system that assists in launching planes, made no sense to anyone who had experience in aerial military operations. On the USS Gerald R. Ford, you would have to be an Albert Einstein, one crew member had complained, to fix things that once would have been extremely easy to repair.

I glanced at the puzzled faces of my colleagues in their Zoom boxes as Trumps story unfolded. But his point soon became clear. He was taking a jab at the experts. For the historians who were writing a first draft of his presidency, Trump had a message: The best and brightest didnt always know what they were talking aboutunlike hardworking people who lived by common sense, as he did.

Our entire meeting suggested that Trump sometimes does care about expertise, despite his vitriol toward the academy. After all, he was the one who had decided to reach out to a group of professional historians so that we produced an accurate book. As he has done many times before, Trump proudly mentioned his uncle who was a professor at MIT. While talking to us, Trump was working to influence the narratives that were told about himas hed done repeatedly during his time in the Oval Office. Indeed, he had even closed out his term peddling the case that he was not a failed one-term president, like Herbert Hoover or Jimmy Carter, but someone who had victory stolen from him.

Quinta Jurecic: The evolution of Trumps threat to America

When the Yale historian Beverly Gage brought up the presidents relationship with the FBI and the intelligence communitythe subject of her chapter in our bookhe eventually turned to the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. According to his memory, the expert opinion was off. The real story, Trump argued, has yet to be written. When Congress met to certify the Electoral College results, Trump told us, there had been a peaceful rally, more than a million people who were full of tremendous love and believed the election was rigged and robbed and stolen. He made a very modest and very peaceful speech, a presidential speech. The throng at the Capitol was a massive and tremendous group of people. The day was marred by a small group of left-wing antifa and Black Lives Matter activists who infiltrated them and who were not stopped, because of poor decisions by the U.S. Capitol Police when some bad things happened.

During our hour together, Trump didnt have many questions for us. Even in his attempt to correct the record, Trump mostly didnt acknowledge or engage with informed outside criticisms of his presidency. He did, however, admit to having sometimes retweeted people he shouldnt have, and at one point he said, when I didnt win the electionphrasing at odds with his false claim that the 2020 vote was stolen.

But his goal was to sell a group of historians on his side of the story. Im looking at the list, its a tremendous group of people, and I think rather than being critical Id like to have you hear me out, which is what were doing now, and I appreciate it. In preparation for the meeting, his staff had already supplied us with documents that portrayed him as a conventional president with a moderate record.

He seemed to want the approval of historians, without any understanding of how historians gather evidence or render judgments. Notwithstanding the C-SPAN polls, our goal is not to rank presidents but to analyze and interpret presidencies in longer time horizons. We want to understand the changes that take place to public policy, democratic institutions, norms of governing, and the relationship between White House officials and political movements. Though we are always eager to read oral histories by participantsand hear directly from a former presidentthese sorts of comments play only one small part in works that are checked and cross-examined with other contemporaneous sources. In practice, professional historians gather their evidence by reviewing essential written and oral documents stored in archiveswhich is why so many in my profession shuddered upon learning that boxes of material were initially carted off to the former presidents home at Mar-a-Lago rather than given directly to experts at the National Archives.

Trump could help historians evaluate his presidency by sitting for public questions from people other than Fox News hosts and Conservative Political Action Conference audiences, and preparing a thoughtful, revealing, and honest memoirone that might offer historians insights into his personal and political evolution as well as key decisions made in his time in office.

After answering our questions for half an hour, Trump ended the conversation by thanking us: I hope its going to be a No. 1 best seller! It was certainly an upbeat way to sign off, though I wasnt quite convinced he meant it. A few days after our meeting, Trump announced that he would stop doing interviews with authors, because they had been a total waste of time. He added: These writers are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda. It has nothing to do with facts or reality.

The video above is embedded courtesy of Special Collections, Princeton University Library. The full video can be found here.

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What I Learned When Trump Tried to Correct the Record - The Atlantic

As Salon's Kathryn Joyce reported on Friday,Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who fashions himself "the new master strategist of the right," is not a man afraid of the spotlight. On the contrary, he's surprisingly candid for a man whose policy ambitions, such as destroying public education as we know it, are deeply unpopular. He loves to brag, on social media and into any microphone you'll put in front of him, of how he cynically concocts baseless moral panics with repeated false claims about everything from "critical race theory" to conspiracy theories about Disney "grooming" children for pedophilia.

But there's one thing that Rufo is surprisingly mum about: Religious faith.

Rufo's agenda is obviously being set by the religious right. He works closely with Hillsdale College, a fundamentalist school that functions as the Christian right's war room. His goals are aligned directly with long-term religious right targets. Searching his Twitter account, however, one swiftly finds that he never talks about his religious beliefs. There's no real mention of God or Jesus or the Bible. When he does speak about Christianity, it's only in the context of pushing conspiracy theories about how white Christians are victims of ethnic oppression by "woke" forces. His conspiracy theories are clearly designed to get Christian conservatives in particular riled up. For instance, he heavily hyped ridiculous claims that children are being taught to pray to Aztec gods in public schools but he carefully avoids getting theological with it.

RELATED:The guy who brought us CRT panic offers a new far-right agenda: Destroy public education

It wasn't always this way with the religious right. During the George W. Bush years, Republicans tended to wear their Bible on their sleeves. The God talk was frequent and explicit. Bush himself spoke of being "born again," and frequently did evangelical events thick with fundamentalist jargon that was impenetrable to outsiders. The public school fights weren't over "critical race theory" and false claims that kids were being taught sex acts in kindergarten. Instead, it was over whether schools should replace science with creationism and replacesex ed with abstinence-only texts that had been written by religious organizations. This public piety from Republicans was more muted during the Barack Obama administration, but only slightly. Throughout those years, the difference between a church service and a Republican fundraiser was often undetectable.

The best way to impose theocracy on Americans is to dress it up as a secular movement.

Then Donald Trump became president. On paper, Trump appeared to be as much of a supplicant to the relentless Jesus talk on the right as every other Republican. He hit up the same evangelical schools for speeches, waved Bibles around in public, and even did photo-ops where a bunch of grifty ministers prayed over him. But, as far as I can tell, almost no one was actually fooled by this. Trump's ignorance of Christianity was absolute. He wasn't even aware that the central tenet of his supposed faith was a focus on penance and forgiveness. He called Christians "fools" and "schmucks" behind their backs. But no matter how often Trump's evangelical base was reminded that he is not one of them, they stuck by his side. They believed, correctly, that he could deliver them the policy outcomes they desired: A rollback of reproductive and LGBTQ rights, the destruction of public education, and an end to the separation of church and state.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Turns out that Trump is the most powerful religious right leader of all, precisely because he so obviously isn't a believer. He created a "secular" cover that allowed the Christian right to hide in plain sight. Now he's out of office, but the lesson was learned well: The best way to impose theocracy on Americans is to dress it up as a secular movement.

Nowadays, the main public discourse on the right about Christianity is focused on identity, not theology. Fox News pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity talk about Christianity mainly in demographic terms, as part of a larger conception of what it means to be a "real" American. It's less about what you believe, and more about what tribe you belong to. Across the country, Republicans are passing laws that are clearly designed to advance the Christian right agenda, from abortion bans to the "don't say gay" law in Florida. But the Jesus talk has taken a backseat to QAnon-inflected fantasies about pedophilia and litter boxes in schools.

RELATED:Salon investigates: The war on public schools is being fought from Hillsdale College

That the QAnon-style conspiracy theories would work better than lots of public praying seems weird at first blush. But it works for one simple reason: The Christian right has terrible branding.

Church ladies waving crosses around are nobody's idea of a good time. A lot of Americans, even Republican-voting Americans, don't go to church very often, if at all. What Trump understood, and the GOP, in general, has glommed onto, is that people want to have fun or at least create the illusion of being fun people. Packaging misogyny and homophobia as religious faith may give it a moral justification, but it's also a drag. Putting those ideas into the mouth of someone like Joe Roganor Carlson in his current "naughty boy" persona, however, makes it feel transgressive, cool, and exciting.

Trump gave the right permission to stop trying to dress up their ugly views in Christian piety. He pushed calorie-free bigotry. You get the pleasures of being a bully, but you don't have to pay the price of doing boring crap like going to church. Of course, it sells well.

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The confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett is a perfect illustration of this shift. Barrett has a long history of public piety in the Bush mold. It's why Trump chose her so that the religious right would feel absolutely secure that she will be the vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. But during her confirmation hearing, when Democrats tried to make hay over Barrett's lengthy record of super public religiosity, Republicans cried foul, pretending that Barrett's beliefs were an entirely private matter that had no impact on her jurisprudence. This bad faith was aided by the fact that Barrett happily stood by Trump's side in public, apparently indifferent to his long history of adultery and repeated divorce. That willingness to be in the same room with Trump, perversely, only helped bolster her image as a "reasonable" person who had no intention of forcing her fundamentalism on the American public. But, of course, that's exactly what she was hired to do.

Right now, the nation is being swept by a tidal wave of theocratic legislation, and the situation only looks like it's getting worse. So far, however, the public mostly doesn't seem to take much notice. The various abortion bans barely make a ripple in the public discourse and the threats to hard-won LGBTQ rights aren't really raising many alarms either. Part of that is due to Democratic complacency after President Joe Biden's 2020 win, of course. But part of it is that people respond, especially in our short-attention-span era, to aesthetics more than substance. The Christian right has stopped looking like the Christian right and instead embraced the secular-seeming vibe that Trump, because he's godless, embodies effortlessly. It's hard to convince the public that fundamentalists are coming for them when the fundamentalists have gotten so good at pretending to be someone else.

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Hiding in plain sight: How Donald Trump became the most powerful religious leader on the right - Salon

A look at some of the top headlines trending online today including the latest updates on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Donald Trump and coronavirus news and much more.

Russian attack on railway station in eastern Ukraine leaves dozens dead, officials say (Fox News)

Ukraine Calls for More Arms, Girds for Heavier Fighting Against Russia in East (WSJ)

Russian troops discussed killing Ukrainian civilians in radio transmissions intercepted by Germany, source says (CNN)

Zelenskyy says situation in Borodyanka is much worse than in Bucha (CBS)

Food prices soar to record levels on Ukraine war disruptions (AP)

Senate confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court (NPR)

New York Attorney General asks judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt for stonewalling on documents (CNBC)

Criminal investigation into Trump and his company continues as prosecutors review new evidence, NY DA says (CNN)

Trump says Secret Service blocked him from joining Jan. 6 march to the Capitol (Politico)

US likely to see a surge of Covid-19 in the fall, Fauci says (CNN)

New wave of Covid cases hits U.S. officials, rattles Washington (NBC)

Pelosi tests positive for COVID-19 a day after event at White House with Biden (PBS)

Federal appeals court upholds Biden vaccine rule for all federal employees (CBS)

Tiger Woods pleased with 1-under 71 in return at Masters, but knows long way to go at Augusta (ESPN)

Opening Day in MLB: New No. 21 patches, NL DHs and Guardians (AP)

Pink Floyd reunite for Ukraine protest song (BBC)

Ferrero recalls some Kinder chocolates from U.S. over salmonella fears (Reuters)

The rest is here:

Ukraine updates, Donald Trump, coronavirus & more: Whats trending today - cleveland.com

Kid Rock, the man that ain't nobody gonna tell how to live, has predictably gotten a video from former U.S. President Donald Trump to play at his live shows. In the video, Trump says everyone at the Kid Rock show is the "true backbone of our great country" before calling them "hard working, God-fearing, rock and roll patriots."

Rock and Trump recently made headlines when Rock revealed that Trump once asked him for advice on what to do about North Korea. In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Rock said he and Trump were "looking at maps. I'm like, you know, like, 'Am I supposed to be in on this shit?' Like I make dirty records sometimes. I do. 'What do you think we should do about North Korea?' I'm like, 'What? I don't think I'm qualified to answer this.'"

Rock's politics have hardly been a secret lately either, especially with his latest track "We The People" and its "Let's Go Brandon" chants.

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Of Course KID ROCK Has A Video From DONALD TRUMP To Play At Live Shows - Metal Injection

Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., February 28, 2021.(Joe Skipper / Reuters)

Jonathan Chait is nothing if not a consistent barometer and leading public indicator of which Republican partisan Democrats fear the most. In 2016, it wasnt Trump, which is why he wrote a now-infamous column on the eve of the New Hampshire primary at the very point when both a Trump nomination and a Trump loss to Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio seemed possible entitled Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination. In 2021, he was pushing back against anyone who wanted Republicans to move on from Trump. In recent months, he has been refocusing to attack Ron DeSantis, making the inevitable and much-predicted turn to arguing that DeSantis is worse than Trump. Chait even dedicated the launch of his newsletter to this theme.

His latest profile is full of now-familiar Chait hobbyhorses, but the most unintentionally funny part is the (to him) ominous opening, describing a DeSantis press conference in February, which he illustrates with a photo array:

As DeSantis spoke, he looked like a man who had been mimicking Donald Trumps speeches in front of the mirror. He performed a series of hand thrusts, in which he drew his thumbs together until they were almost touching, then jerked them apart in quick horizontal motions, as if he were playing an invisible accordion. After five such accordion pulls, he swung his right hand, thumb pointing up, in a semi-circular motion back inward to the center. DeSantis tweeted out the clip, and any MAGA fan watching, even without the sound on, would have grasped the gist just through the eerie physical impersonation.

I would submit to the reader that Donald Trump did not actually invent Italian-Americans talking with their hands. A writer forNew York should know that.

Read more from the original source:

Jonathan Chait Thinks Donald Trump Invented Italians Talking with Their Hands - National Review