Nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies

Brother comes for a visit tomorrow. I probably won’t post again until the middle of next week. The nasty guy gave his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Of course, I didn’t watch or listen. He set the record for the longest of such speeches, another reason not to listen. Daily Kos has several articles about the speech. Go find them there or at your favorite news source if you really need more information. I’ll stick to just three articles. The first is by Kos of Kos. His major point is Republicans really need to have something to run on for the November midterm election. And the nasty guy very much did not give them that. Kos took a few paragraphs to highlight why the nasty guy’s approval rating is so low – voters definitely do not agree that now is “the golden age of America,” the phrase the nasty guy used to open his marathon speech.

But Trump didn’t just fail to connect with voters’ economic anxiety. He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies. At a time when the nation is still basking in the warm sportsmanship of American athletes at the Olympic Games in Italy, Trump lashed out at his perceived enemies, taking repeated and nasty shots at the Democrats, blue states and cities, and various ethnic groups. ... If anything, Trump’s overall message was, “The country has never been better, but WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

In the second article Lisa Needham of Kos noted the nasty guy did not mention Minneapolis and his “success” in removing the “worst of the worst.” Could it be because the effort was so massively unpopular? He did mention Minnesota, as in accusing massive fraud by Somali-Americans in child care subsidies for low income families. Of course, he used numbers ridiculously high. I heard about this in the morning news with NPR host A Martínez talking to reporter Matt Sepic. It again left me puzzled. When Republicans accuse federal programs of fraud they move to stop the funding, not to offer help in combating the fraud. In this case Gov. Tim Walz says they are already working to minimize the fraud. But they are having difficulty because most of the experts in combating fraud in the FBI have left in protest over the nasty guy’s actions after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In the last article I’ll bother with, Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the sanewashing perpetrated by mainstream media. They excused his behavior by saying he “put on a show” and had a “showman’s theatricality.” His blatant lies were described as a “reframe.” The low approval rating showed voters were merely “dissatisfied.” Republicans were said to be “breathing a sigh of relief” – well, they did praise the speech. Willis described the speech, saying, “When he wasn’t lying he was being racist.”

Since 2015, the mainstream press has worked overtime to present an image of Trump that doesn’t match up with reality. They simply omit his worst offenses or summarize his statements and actions without providing context to their audiences. When he makes disastrous mistakes, they are morphed into mere “blunders” and at moments like the State of the Union this drive to clean up after Trump goes into overdrive. Fortunately, this strategy isn’t really working among the public at large.

Needham looked at the Supreme Court decision that overturned some of the nasty guy’s tariffs. The whole thing was 170 pages, though the actual ruling was rather short, no more than 44 pages. It was the side commentary and dissents that added to the page count. Needham described those extra pages. Kavanaugh took 62 pages to show how smart he is, to flatter the nasty guy, and to offer a guide on how to keep tariffs going after the rest of the justices called them unconstitutional. Gorsuch, though in the majority, wrote a concurrence that “is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages.” Part of it was complaining that Congress needs to “get off their butts” as Needham paraphrased it. Odd, coming from a guy who has been giving the nasty guy all he wants so that Congress isn’t necessary. Thomas, in a brief 18 pages, explained how the nasty guy could institute tariffs without Congress. That was some mangling of definitions so Congress could give away its power. “That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that we know the FBI and Justice Department haven’t released all the Epstein files. We know that through reporting by NPR and confirmed by MS Now. We know it because one witness, who accused the nasty guy of sexual assault when she was 15 or younger, was reportedly interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019. However, only one of those interviews appears in the files that have been released. No surprise that the one that was released doesn’t mention the nasty guy. Einenkel provided a link to the NPR story, which is here. The audio is 3 minutes (I didn’t listen), though the associated article appears to be much longer. From the article:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents. ... In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

Kos of Kos discussed the latest from the Make America Healthy Again movement headed by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. They want support from the full Republican Party and to do that MAHA Action president Tony Lyons is trying to find the right message to turn “a toxic brew of wellness culture and institutional distrust” into an actual winnable coalition. So far they seem to relying on polls built on...

That’s “message testing.” You write a paragraph that makes your side sound like common sense and the opponent sound reckless, strip away party labels and governing records, and then treat the results like a revelation. ... If MAHA was truly a transformative political force, Republicans wouldn’t need to tiptoe around its core message—they’d be running on it. Instead, the memo urges nuance and careful phrasing, because they know the raw version doesn’t sell. Ultimately, the things MAHA claims to champion—safer drugs, healthier food, fewer environmental toxins—aren’t partisan tenets. This is generic stuff everyone cares about. The real divide shows up when it comes to science, regulation, and who actually confronts industry power in the real world.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jennifer Weiss-Wolff of The Contrarian. The quote is long so here’s my summary: When pregnant children are apprehended by immigration enforcement they are being sent to a facility in San Benito, Texas. Pregnant children were likely raped and likely have sexually transmitted diseases that make pregnancy dangerous. At San Benito they are less likely to get the care they need. Why San Benito? According to the Project 2025 playbook it is because Texas has banned abortion. Here’s another summary of a quote by Timothy Snyder writing in his “Thinking About…” Substack. “Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims.” But, the current attack on immigrants has produced stasis, not the jump from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright fascism. It has also produced sustained protest. So the nasty guy needs more:

To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran: but in the State of the Union, speaking about war preparations, he was looking around hopelessly and waving his hands. He is happy to talk about war with Iran, and hope somehow that others will deliver it. But he cannot do it himself. Americans do not want such a war. But that is not exactly Trump’s problem. Germans did not want a war with Poland in 1939, either. But Hitler fought one anyway, and won it quickly. Trump’s problem is that he does not know how to fight a war. And he flounders.

Snyder says the nasty guy must win that war. Snyder also says he doesn’t know how to fight one. That suggests if he does start one he’s likely to lose. I guess that’s a blessing? In the comments kurious linked to two news articles about the corruption in the nasty guy administration. One is from Bloomberg, the other from Daily News. Then he has a quote box, though doesn’t say which article he is quoting. Perhaps both. The box does list the corruption and crimes and some of them have links to sources. Murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, slandered them, and allowed their killers to go free. Violated the rights of citizens and non-citizens. Killed dozens on the high seas. Released the hundreds of Jan. 6 felons. Threatened to seize Greenland, a NATO ally. Called for the execution of members of Congress for telling military personnel of their duty to disobey illegal orders. Repeatedly violated court orders. Shaken down large universities.

Viewing the Trump administration as a massive crime syndicate allows us to be clear-eyed about what is coming down the road, and to plan accordingly. To take the most urgent example, there ought to be no question as to whether Trump will try to steal the midterm elections. Of course he will try to steal them. Criminals gonna crime. It is every patriotic American’s duty to oppose the coming effort to nullify the will of the voters.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, listed the winners of the Minnesota Department of Transportation contest to name its snowplows. Some of this year’s winning names:

Oh, for Sleet’s Sake Flurrious George K Pop Blizzard Hunter. O Brother, Where Art Plow? Minne-Snow-ta