A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
This Sunday, Andrew Ross Sorkin — one of the most trusted financial reporters of our time — discusses his new book, “1929,” which examines the market crash a century ago and explores whether history is about to repeat itself during the presidency of Donald Trump.
The episode airs Sunday Oct 12
Source: CBS News
July 28, 2024
Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.
I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly.
That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.
But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once.
At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime.
In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.
The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement.
And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution.
The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….”
And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights.
Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.
And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy.
But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive.
And then something fans them into flame.
In the 1760s it was the Stamp Act, which said that men in Great Britain had the right to rule over men in the American colonies. In the 1850s it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the elite enslavers the power to rule the United States. And in 1929 it was the Great Crash, which proved that the businessmen had no idea what they were doing and had no plan for getting the country out of the Great Depression.
The last several decades have felt like we were fighting a holding action, trying to protect democracy first from an oligarchy and then from a dictator. Many Americans saw their rights being stripped away…even as they were quietly becoming stronger.
That strength showed in the Women’s March of January 2017, and it continued to grow—quietly under Donald Trump and more openly under the protections of the Biden administration. People began to organize in school boards and state legislatures and Congress. They also began to organize over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and newsletters and Zoom calls.
And then something set them ablaze. The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision stripped away from the American people a constitutional right they had enjoyed for almost fifty years, and made it clear that a small minority intended to destroy democracy and replace it with a dictatorship based in Christian nationalism.
When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He passed it to us.
It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.
It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.
July 6, 2024
This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
Other federal courts have tested this argument and dismissed it, but Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, suggested earlier this month that it could be the basis for getting rid of Jack Smith. Cannon cited Thomas repeatedly in her decision.
When he left office in January 2021, Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago hundreds of pages of classified national security documents, some of which bore the highest level of classification. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where by law presidential papers must be deposited, noted that many documents were missing from the materials Trump released to them and, in May 2021, emailed Trump’s lawyers to get them back.
When his lawyers tried to push him to do as the law required, they told FBI investigators, Trump answered: “It’s not theirs, it’s mine.” Finally, in December 2021, after Trump had personally gone through the documents, a Trump representative told NARA that they had found “some records,” and in January 2022, NARA retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago. Archivists found more than 150 documents marked classified, making up hundreds of pages of classified national security information.
By April the Justice Department had convened a grand jury to investigate Trump’s removal of the documents. Trump’s lawyers tried to keep those documents out of the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by claiming they were covered by executive privilege, but in May 2022, NARA gave the FBI access to the records. In June 2022, Trump representative Christina Bobb certified that “a diligent search” at Mar-a-Lago had turned up nothing more and that they were returning “any and all documents” they had found. Concerned about the sheer number of documents turning up, the Department of Justice subpoenaed security video tapes, which showed people moving the documents.
Federal officials obtained a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. When they executed it in August 2022, they found 13 more boxes with classified documents: a total of more than 11,000 government documents and photographs. They also found 48 empty folders labeled “classified,” but they did not check a locked closet on which Trump had recently changed the lock, or a “hidden room” in Trump’s bedroom. They found that the boxes, which contained the most valuable intelligence of the United States government, had been stored haphazardly in public areas, including a ballroom stage and a bathroom.
In November 2022, after Trump announced his presidential candidacy—an early announcement that many thought was an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution—Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the two federal investigations that touched on the former president, thus deliberately moving those investigations outside the department so they could not be seen as part of the presidential race.
In June 2023 a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, including scheming to conceal documents; three more charges were added the following month. Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence). He was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.
The case fell randomly to Cannon, who has appeared to be trying to delay the case since it came into her hands. Today, she threw it out altogether.
Former attorney general Eric Holder called Cannon’s dismissal “so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd.” Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called it “an extreme outlier view with no basis in precedent” and noted that “Cannon’s indefensible opinion will still serve its purpose of delaying this trial indefinitely.”
Global politics scholar Brian Klaas wrote “Trump appoints judge. Trump does something that virtually all legal experts—including Trump’s own former Attorney General—see as a clear-cut felony. Judge that Trump appointed dismisses case.” Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor wrote: “if this happened in another country, the DC establishment would immediately point to the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith has said he will appeal Cannon’s ruling.
Trump responded to the news exactly as yesterday’s Republican demands that Trump’s opponents stop calling out his lawlessness suggested he would. He posted: “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to
END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”
The Thomas opinion on which Cannon relied was his concurrence in the July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, the Supreme Court overturned the central principle of American democracy when it said that the U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties.” Cannon’s decision echoes the idea that Trump cannot be held accountable even for what is allegedly the most serious breach of our national security in our history. Indeed, MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) posted a picture of Cannon on social media with the heading: “Future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.”
Legal analyst Keith Boykin listed the many excuses and arguments Trump enablers have made over the years. “He can’t be prosecuted in office,” Boykin wrote. “He can’t be impeached because the courts should decide. He’s immune from prosecution after office. He can’t be prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ because that’s ‘lawfare.’ And he can’t be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator.”
Legal analyst Norm Eisen noted that Cannon’s decision will boost Trump on the first day of the Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from Monday through Thursday of this week. So will the weekend’s shooting, which has inspired MAGA Republicans to insist that all their party members must rally around Trump.
While Trump has been the presumptive nominee for years, that anointment was contested. Around 20% of Republican primary voters, who tend to be the most loyal and fervent partisans, consistently voted for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley rather than Trump. Those voters seemed to be concentrated in the suburbs, thus making up a constituency Trump needs to win.
On the other end of the party’s spectrum, the fringe right has been saying that Trump is too soft for them. Antisemitic white nationalist Nick Fuentes has told his followers that he and his “groypers” are fed up with Trump because they are sick of “battling the Jews in the White House, battling the neocons, battling the Israel-firsters.”
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and right-wing provocateur Ivan Raiklin have speculated for months that removing Trump from the running—they speculated about assassination—would open the way for Trump’s far-right former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and appeared to be putting pressure on Trump to name Flynn as vice president. Yesterday, Raiklin posted on social media a “Trump/Flynn 2024” graphic with the legend “FAFO,” under the words “Assassination-Proof.”
This afternoon, perhaps in hopes of avoiding an embarrassing floor fight, Trump dashed the hopes of both ends of the Republican spectrum by naming Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick. Vance is 39 and was elected to the Senate in 2022 with the help of $10 million from right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel. In the short time he has been in office, he has echoed Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 presidential race was stolen, has said that he does not believe in rape or incest exceptions for abortion bans and that people should stay in violent marriages, and has praised Project 2025. He is pro-Russia and against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
It “will be interesting to see how the RNC attempts to spin Vance as a candidate of Unity,” journalist Anne Applebaum wrote. The Fox News Channel helpfully reminded viewers that Vance has, in the past, said that Trump “might be America’s Hitler,” “might be a cynical a**hole,” and is “cultural heroin,” “noxious,” and “reprehensible.”
Still, factional differences might not matter in today’s Republican Party. This afternoon, in the hall of the RNC convention, attendees chanted, “Fight, fight, fight,” as they punched an arm in the air, in an eerie echo of Germany in the 1930s.
July 6, 2024
For all that certain members of the media continue their freakout over Biden’s electability after his appearance in last Thursday’s event on CNN, it is Trump and his Republicans who appear to be nervous about the upcoming election.
Journalist Jennifer Schulze of Heartland Signal noted today that as of 8:00 this morning, the New York Times had published 192 pieces on Biden’s debate performance: 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces. Trump was covered in 92 stories, about half of which were about the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Although Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, none of the pieces mentioned Trump’s mental fitness.
But for all of what independent journalists are calling a “feeding frenzy,” egged on by right-wing media figures, it seems as if the true implications of Project 2025 are starting to gain traction and the Trump campaign recognizes that the policies that document advocates are hugely unpopular.
On July 2, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts assured Trump ally Steve Bannon’s followers that they are winning in what he called “the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” In March, Roberts told former Trump administration official and now right-wing media figure Sebastian Gorka about Project 2025: “There are parts of the plan that we will not share with the Left: the executive orders, the rules and regulations. Just like a good football team we don’t want to tip off our playbook to the Left.”
This morning, although Roberts has described Project 2025 as “institutionalizing Trumpism,” Trump’s social media feed tried to distance the former president from Project 2025. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” the post read. Despite this disavowal of any knowledge of the project, it continued: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
In what appeared to be a coordinated statement, the directors of Project 2025 wrote on social media less than two hours later that they “do not speak for any candidate.”
Aside from the fact that “[a]nything they do, I wish them luck,” sounds much like the signaling Trump did to the Proud Boys when he told them to “stand back and stand by,” Trump’s assertion and Project 2025’s response can’t possibly erase the many and deep ties of the Trump camp to Project 2025. Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News noted that Trump’s name shows up on more than 190 pages of the Project 2025 playbook.
Rebekah Mercer, who sits on the board of the Heritage Foundation, was one of Trump’s top donors in 2016; her family founded and operated Cambridge Analytica, the company that misused the data of millions of Facebook users to push pro-Trump and anti-Clinton material in 2016. Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has appeared in a Project 2025 video. Trump’s own super PAC has been running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it “Trump’s Project 2025,” and many of its policies—killing the Department of Education, erasing the separation of church and state, ending renewable energy programs and ramping up use of fossil fuels, deporting immigrants—are also Trump’s.
Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, as well as both of its associate directors, Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, were in charge of personnel in Trump’s White House, and the theme of Project 2025 is that “people are policy,” by which they mean that hand-picked loyalists must replace civil servants. Trump’s former body man John McEntee, who reentered the White House as a senior advisor after having to leave because he failed a background check, was in charge of hiring in the last months of the Trump White House; he helped to draft Project 2025. Key Trump ally Russell Vought wrote the section of Project 2025 that called for an authoritarian leader; he is also on the platform committee of the Republican National Convention.
If indeed Trump knows nothing about Project 2025 and has no idea who is behind it, his cognitive ability is rotten. As former chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele wrote, “Since [Project 2025] is designed to institutionalize Trumpism and you know nothing about it, then why do you echo some of its policy priorities during your rallies? Coincidence? And how exactly don’t you know that Project 2025 Director Paul Dans served as your chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and Associate Director Spencer Chretien served as your special assistant and associate director of presidential personnel? And folks say we should be worried about Biden.”
Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025 indicates just how toxic that plan is with voters. As political scientist Ian Bremmer dryly noted, it seems that “the second [A]merican revolution apparently [is] not polling as well as the first in internal focus groups.” Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson was even more direct, saying that Trump was trying to distance himself from Project 2025 because “most of it polls about like Ebola,” the deadly virus that causes severe bleeding and organ failure, and has a mortality rate of 80 to 90%.
The extremism of the MAGA Republicans was on display in another way today as well after The New Republic published a June 30 video of North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, currently the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, saying to a church audience about their opponents—whom he identified in a scattershot speech as anything from communists to “wicked people” to those standing against “conservatives”—”Kill them! Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad!… Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.”
Today the Vatican turned against one of those extremists when it excommunicated pro-Trump archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was the Vatican’s diplomat to the U.S. from 2011 to 2016, for “schism” after he refused to recognize the authority of Pope Francis. Viganò has repeatedly attacked Francis’s Catholic Church for being “inclusive, immigrationist, eco-sustainable, and gay-friendly.”
Also today, Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing Trump’s criminal trial for retaining hundreds of classified documents, to dismiss charges that can no longer be prosecuted in light of the Supreme Court’s decision that a president cannot be charged for crimes committed while engaging in “official acts.” They also called the case “politically motivated” and asked Cannon to stop the case entirely in light of Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion that Special Counsel Jack Smith was not properly appointed.
The other big news today was that the U.S. added 206,000 jobs in June, bringing the total number of jobs created under this administration to 15.7 million. Last month’s numbers were, once again, higher than economists expected and, according to economic analyst Steven Rattner, above job growth levels before the pandemic. He added that these jobs are not simply a bounceback from the depths of the pandemic: 6.2 million more Americans are employed now than before Covid hit.
Poking fun at the calls for Biden to step down, conservative lawyer George Conway posted: “Biden needs to RESIGN NOW before any more of these terrible job things are created.”
In a speech today in Madison, Wisconsin, Biden vowed to stay in the race, and the speech appeared strong enough that right-wing extremists, including Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and activist Laura Loomer, posted on social media—falsely—that he was having a medical emergency aboard Air Force One. Tonight, George Stephanopoulos of ABC interviewed Biden without a teleprompter or notes, focusing only on Biden’s age without any questions about policy. ABC News posted the interview transcript with the president’s conversation portrayed the “g”s dropped off the words and with other colloquial pronunciations spelled out, as if it were dialect. Trump, whose words the press tends to turn into clean prose, has refused to do an interview under the same conditions.