The Laura Loomer Problem Is the Same as the Vladimir Putin Problem
At about the same time that several of Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters were warning that Laura Loomer’s access to the former President threatens his presidential bid, Tim Walz was in Grand Rapids mocking how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump.
Kamala Harris was able to, in a matter of a few seconds, use this guy’s inflated ego and narcissism to bait him into melting down on a national stage in front of 60 million.
You don’t think Vladimir Putin could do that?
You don’t think Xi Jinping could do that?
Jewish space laser conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene scolded Loomer about attacking Kamala Harris for her Indian ancestry (after which MTG went back to making racist attacks on migrants again).
Lindsey Graham, a sometime hawk who makes excuses for Trump’s apologies for Russia, agreed that Trump should distance himself from Loomer and the incendiary comments she makes.
“We have policy disagreements but the history of this person is just really toxic,” Graham told HuffPost on Thursday. “I mean, she actually called for Kellyanne Conway’s daughter to hang herself. I don’t know how this all happened, but, no, I don’t think it’s helpful. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”
[snip]
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” Graham said.
“I think what [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that,” he added. “I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing. I mean, to call for someone’s daughter to hang themselves. Yeah, no, I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”
The backlash comes after Trump brought Loomer, a 9/11 conspiracist, with him to the 9/11 memorial in New York. It comes as many of Trump handlers are trying to find someone, someone besides themselves, besides the candidate, to blame for his disastrous debate performance.
When asked about Republican complaints about Loomer the other day, Trump offered word salad.
Well, I don’t know what they would say, Laura has been a supporter of mine, just like a lot of people have been supporters. And she’s been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign — I’m not sure why you asked that question, but Laura’s a supporter. I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. Look. I can’t tell Laura what to do. Laura’s a supporter. I have a lot of supporters. So I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to. … I just don’t know. Laura’s a supporter. I don’t know. She is a strong person. She’s got strong opinions. And I don’t know what she said but that’s not up to me. She’s a supporter.
Shortly after this pathetic response from Trump, a Truth Social post was released over Trump’s initials, bearing none of the roughness of a post the man wrote himself. The post disavowed unspecified “statements she made.”
All that, in turn, has led to insinuations and whispers about precisely what kind of access Loomer has to Trump.
No one can keep former President Donald Trump away from Laura Loomer.
Throughout his third presidential campaign, aides and advisers have done their best to shield him from Loomer, a far-right social media influencer, and similar figures who stroke his ego and stoke his basest political instincts.
They lost that battle this week, as Loomer traveled on Trump’s jet to his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and to Sept. 11 memorial services Wednesday. Her presence at the latter infuriated some Democrats and Republicans because one of the many conspiracy theories she has promoted is the false notion that the terrorist assault on the U.S. was an “inside job.” It wasn’t.
[snip]
[H]er presence reflects Trump’s loss of faith in his campaign aides and their concomitant fear of upsetting him in a time of crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. Last month, he tapped his 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be an adviser to his top advisers — a move widely viewed as a rebuke of the existing leadership crew.
A senior official from Trump’s 2020 campaign team said that helps explain why Loomer is no longer being kept at arm’s length.
“The people that have the authority to stop it are hanging on to their jobs,” the former official said. “So are you going to pick that fight with him?”
A lot of this is manufactured controversy. Loomer is little different than all the other far right nutbags Trump surrounds himself with. Why blame Loomer for the cat-and-dog screech when Trump’s chosen Vice Presidential candidate — chosen with the considerable input of Trump’s dumbass son — has a much more central role in magnifying this hoax, when Trump has employed Stephen Miller to engage in such fearmongering both inside and outside the White House, for years?
And Marjorie Taylor Greene, lecturing other people about being racist? You have got to be fucking kidding me.
As described, what distinguishes Loomer is her access. I even joined in, speculating that as she traveled on his plane to the Philadelphia debate, handlers may believe she tainted the killer immigration attack coached by upstanding, reasonable people like Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, creating the screech.
The unspoken (except by Drudge) suggestion they’re fucking is the invented explanation for what might make Loomer more dangerous than the other racists and conspiracists who populate Trump’s inner circle. Me, I’m more interested in whether the problem with Loomer is that she’s so close to Roger Stone, whom campaign officials perennially attempt to keep separate from Trump during presidential elections. Ali Alexander served as Roger’s surrogate during the 2020 election; perhaps Loomer is doing so now.
Whatever it is that has Republican members of Congress and campaign officials blaming Loomer for Trump’s failures, it is also a concession.
The complaint being offered is that none of Trump’s advisors can prevent someone — in this case, Loomer — from getting Trump to parrot the most outrageous beliefs simply by inveigling herself into his closest circle and flattering him enough to stay there.
The complaint being offered is that Loomer’s mere fawning presence will lead Trump to say and do things that will disrupt the carefully cultivated illusion that he is a sane, effective leader.
Trump’s anonymous aides are making the same argument that Tim Walz did: that anyone who strokes Trump’s ego enough can win him to their view. Trump’s boasts about how valuable Viktor Orbán’s adulation is have nothing to do with Orbán’s real stature on the world stage. Rather, Trump boasted about Orbán’s “endorsement” because Orbán has serially sucked up to Trump, repeating back to Trump Trump’s own fantasy that he can deliver “peace” in Ukraine with a snap of his fingers.
The problem isn’t Laura Loomer. She’s little different than all the other extremists who remain in Trump’s good graces by performing near-perfect sycophancy.
The problem is precisely what Tim Walz warned: Trump’s narcissism and his ego make him weak, vulnerable to any person willing to use flattery to win their objectives.
Trump’s aides are making the same argument Tim Walz is: that Trump doesn’t have the self-control to protect against extremists making him their ready tool.
I do get the sense that there’s something more going on. Lindsey Graham is not getting the vapors because Loomer is nuts, or because she reveals (or even draws attention) that Trump is susceptible to manipulation by flattery. Nor am I convinced that Graham, or MTG, are concerned that Loomer’s influence coarsens Trump’s campaign rhetoric, if such a thing were possible.
Now, if someone were to suggest that there is a power struggle at work “behind the scenes” (or highly visibly) between the semi-covert fascist wing of the GOP and the overt Q-friendly Nazi-wannabe wing, I’m probably persuadable.
IOW, I don’t think the Loomer thing is about content or public perception, I think it’s an argument about WHO gets to manipulate the Republican candidate for president.
Of course, as Dr. Wheeler points out, that’s exactly the problem.
My speculation is that she’s sleeping with him, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone knows it. MTG seems jealous, and maybe Graham is, too. They’re worried that she’s going to go “psycho mistress” on him.
The idea that that 78 old year, unhealthy, man is actually having sex with the 31 year old is so laughable that it brings to mind some of Catullus’ poems about old men and young women.
No-one is saying active.
Sorry. Just made myself ill….
The ghost of Nelson Rockefeller begs to differ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Rockefeller#Death
Read about the libido of Sumner Redstone. He was suffering from dementia but still had a strong sex drive in his 90s. Some people like Loomer will do anything for fame, power and money.
“Every old ox wants to chew tender grass.”
Su Shi Dongpo teases his friend Zhang Xian, a thousand years ago:
“An eighteen-year-old bride, an eighty-year-old groom, white hair against red makeup. They spend the night together in a brocade quilt, a pear blossom tree weighs down the sea of red.”
76 “Retruths” … LOFL.
Shouldn’t there be at least some particle of truth in a statement before it can be “retruthed?”
Regurgitated would be a more accurate description.
This is kind of cryptic. Maybe you could re-formulate?
Look at the bottom of the screen capture of Trumps “Truth” Social post, the one with the big red “X” across it. BTW, “Truth” is purposely in quotation marks. It is anything but.
To ensure the statement is appropriately construed, perhaps you could refabricate.
I’m getting, “They shouldn’t call them ‘Truths’ and ‘Retruths’; they should call them ‘gurgitations’ and ‘regurgitations’.”
spews and re-spews
Good one.
“Detruthing” is actually what’s going down there.
Just as he did after losing in 2020, Trump is pushing away anyone that tries to get him to see reality and surrounding himself with kooks.
Loomer is Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell plus boobs.
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I’d say she has less facial hair and less hair dye than Rudy or Lindell but I can’t be certain of either.
What I love about her worming her way into his lair is that, as a 911 truther, Rudy was a prime target of her CT mania.
Trump and Loomer’s (near-certainly) sexual relationship is almost beside the point. In any other campaign, sure, it would be disqualifying and draw out lots of handwringing and moral high-ground condemnation. Yet the sheer avalanche of “sinful” behavior from Trump that regularly gets brushed aside by his evangelical fanclub makes it not even fun to point to one more instance of their hypocritical double standards.
I’d love to take glee in yet another example of how much the evangelical wing is happy to look the other way to get their easily-manipulable proxy back into the White House. But what’s even the point, when they hear him screeching daily about mass deportations of people fleeing violence and war and are unmoved about the suffering he wants to compound? Where’s the delicious little schadenfreude hit when the Jesus Squad has already been ignoring his efforts to punish poverty and illness with more poverty, more illness, more suffering, for nine-plus years already? Man. Trump even takes the fun out of told-you-so.
There must be something that will move at least some of MAGA to see their idol for who he really is. Clearly his overt racism and threats of violence against the “Other” is not going to do it, on the contrary this is more likely to increase his support. Maybe something like the scene from The Dead Zone where Greg Stillson holds up a child as a human shield against a would be assassin?
I don’t even know. At this point it feels like Trump himself could be executing newborn babies live on TV and still get 42-47% of the vote.
The evangelicals looked the other way in 2016 and got a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v Wade. I’m sure they feel it was well worth the trouble.
Don’t miss an opportunity to use a little political jiu-jitsu here. Instead of clutching our pearls about the impropriety of Trump having sex with Loomer, the premise should be dismissed as hilariously improbable.
To my eyes it is less about ‘having sex’ as the provocative illusion that he could arouse sexual desire in anyone. That turns him on – and the fact that she plays an Ivanka type big boob rubbing on his body dance….well how can he turn away. She must not have a very strong sense of smell. Whatever it is if he thinks it means he is attractive – that’s all it takes to give her full access to plant mind bombs.
Trump reposts lewd remarks re Clinton and Harris, bj’s.
As we all know, Trump always projects.
“All accusations are confessions.”
I heard that somewhere.
However intimate or not it may be, this new touchy-feely relationship between an old has-been on the slippery slope of decline, increasingly dependent on sensationalist media stunts, on the one hand, and a physically attractive young female nut job with a once-in-a-lifetime chance for mainstream influence on the other, this is surely a match made in heaven. (Or hell, more accurately.) It will likely end in tears, but meanwhile, amidst a court of sycophants who fear for their positions and salaries, who on earth will dare interfere in this budding romance? Gaetz and Gabbard must be grinding their teeth in frustration.
With Trump, there is always the outside chance of a campaign melt down. After Kamala’s hit job, it becomes somewhat more likely. But an eventual win for Kamala+Tim still hangs by a thread, given that the result in this broken system may ultimately depend on the votes of a distracted few in very few places. While they will surely win the popular vote by a mile, a successful outcome may depend on strong Dem turnout, non-Dems who can truly put America first, and even on some MAGAworld disillusion, not least in places where it matters the most.
Plus, not to forget that for MAGA-GOP, their campaign will only really start in earnest when the votes are being counted. A legion of lawyers eager for payoff are already “standing back and standing by”, besides the goons.
Whatever the actual activities between Trump and Loomer might or might not be, it does appear that he’s enjoying and encouraging her company. This has the attention of lots of people who want Trump’s attention and feel they aren’t getting enough of it as long as he’s got Loomer close.
This election is still scarily close. But it’s not just scary for Democrats, it’s also very scary for the Republicans. They have a lot to lose, but particularly they have a lot to lose if the Trump campaign goes into total meltdown and takes the party with him. A 50-50 Senate would be bad enough for them, but a 52 seat Democratic Senate caucus could bring in things like court reform & all manner of other stuff with the filibuster killed.
So each of them has ideas of how Trump’s campaign should be run in order to avoid disaster and for all of them having Laura Loomer in the Eva Braun seat is the wrong direction. This is the case even when they disagree among themselves about the right direction. They DO know that Tuesday’s debate wasn’t the right one.
How much do have have to pay foxnews and xityer to run front page pix of loomer-trump chest rub?
TY Marcy.
Whether it’s Putin or an extremist Laura Loony, Trump is the quintessential Useful Idiot.
Unfit is an understatement.
Just the latest in a long series of excellent posts. Thank you for the insight and sanity you bring to the circus.
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Foul, unseemly, but possibly crazy like a fox, like much of Trump’s behavior —
HCR’s Letters from an American emphasizes the point of the “pet-eating Haitians” of Springfield hysteria is to tip the OH senate race for GOP candidate and assist regaining GOP control of the US Senate.
In the spotlight glare of presidential races, it’s typically overlooked that the downticket matters as much, sometimes even more. Not least where Congress is concerned. As Kamala herself implicitly pointed out in the debate, it’s Congress that will have to fix the almighty mess that MAGA-SC has left of Roe v Wade; all she as President can and needs do is (gladly!) sign the eventual bill into law.
Yes, HCR’s Letters from an American is particularly strong, today…
and that’s saying something.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-13-2024
I dissent. The probability that a 78-year-old man with Trump’s “health” habits could achieve and sustain an erection to climax is, like his, uh, hands, vanishingly small.
It isn’t the climax. It’s the stroking of the ego.
Precisely, he’s a weak pathetic creature playing the strongman. That makes him dangerous – and it’s not as if we haven’t seen this weakness before, and the consequences.
Ask Israel how they felt about his bragging in the WH to Russians, for example.
He’s a Useful Idiot.
Viagra?
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I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Putin’s influence comes from knowledge of — and ability to prove — crimes involving Trump with Putin’s cronies. The largest category could be money laundering, and I’d first look for that at Trump’s European golf courses. All of them have been in operation for 10+ years, and none has ever turned a profit, yet he neither sells them nor shuts them down.
You know what has gone yet unexamined by the media *again*?
Trump’s financials. Nothing about the forever audits, nothing about his overseas income, nothing about the transfer of cash between his campaign and his personal wallet. Nothing about the USD$10 million in cash Egypt wanted to give him for his campaign in 2016.
When a red line was drawn during the Mueller investigation making Trump’s financials off limits, that’s when the media should have gone extra hard on his finances, because we now know about the hinky $10 million. There’s surely more.
That includes the golf courses, Europe and American, his licensing deals related to golf, all of it. Ditto LIV golf — who’s he working for now? The Saudis by providing them venues?
Welcome to emptywheel.
I was really disappointed Trump wasn’t asked about the Egypt $10mil in the debate. I know it would have invoked even more screeching about “biased moderators” than there already was, but they’re going to do that anyway so might as well go for it! Then again, they did ask him point blank about 2020 results, accepting a potential loss in 2024, and whether he actually wants Ukraine to win. And the beautifully pathetic “concepts of a plan.” So I can’t be too disappointed.
I was surprised Harris did not mention Trump’s desire to open a hotel in Moscow when talking about his fealty to Putin. The resulting dissociative rage would have been fun to watch.
How could that point have been made succinctly, convincingly and effectively within the context of this debate?
Debates involving setting strategic goals, and creating within the debate tactical opportunities to advance those goals, with effective attacks on the opponent for the purpose of getting positive messages across, and the most effective attacks are ones which induce self sabotage.
Making the accusation you suggest without laying the groundwork, and finding a way to relate the point to the underlying strategic goals of the debate, all of which would have used up an inordinate amount time, for an uncertain outcome. seems like a fools errand to me.
A glance at the media today shows they’re too busy click-baiting the latest dead cats Trump has thrown on the table to examine and expose his financial corruption.
“I can’t tell her what to do.”
Feeling that BDE. Way to keep your pimp hand strong, Tiny.
That’s what Sammy ALITO said, too, about his wife Martha-Ann
about “her” insurrection flag.
I disagree with emptywheel, unfortunately. They are unconsciously or quasi consciously creating debate within themselves, within the ranks of maga mindset, to create spectacle. The fight is what gets the attention. So, why not fight within the group, then you control the narrative, basically a reality show. And what is fomented, promoted, pushed, heaped, and shoved into our general streets and towns is racism.
The fact that the Republican Party, whatever it is right now, is allowing a racist psychotic to speak into the media is horrifying. I am frightened. Is Tim Walz gonna say something about Trumps vulnerability? Honestly, wake up Tim, Americans are vulnerable right now!
Would this election just end. I am sick of it. It is disgusting.
If it ends with Trump as president, you’ll really be sick.
You can hide under a rock until it’s over or do something to help ensure Harris/Walz win. The choice is yours.
I am hiding under a rock. Yep, I was poor as a child and young man, and finally as a teacher my immediate family is middle class now. That rock was safe for me. What else am I supposed to do? Would you like me to voice my opinion against the entire Republican/Democratic monopoly and the media machine that promotes them? What I am I going to say? What exactly are the right words to turn this insanity around.
And woe, I do not take it lightly that Harris wanted to debate him again, perhaps giving the coward another chance at humiliating and entire race of people. Like, sure, put a microphone in front of a psychopath while Harris laughs at him.
There is an entire city in this country that is under dangerous, precarious, and unsafe conditions simply because of the rhetoric of a presidential debate. Put that under a rock.
You give Trump’s inner circle too much credit. His claims to the contrary, he manifestly does not hire the best. They have no ability to restrain Trump’s chaos. They can only react to it. They’re fairly good at it.
Tim Walz is doing fine, as is Kamala Harris. Responding to Trump is not their most important purpose. That’s to set out a framework for what they would do.
An effective response to Trump’s outrage is laughing derision, rather than serious counterpoint. People will remember the former, and tune out the latter. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t point out the harm he’s doing, but the focus of that should be on those he harms, not Trump.
What do you think is going to happen after this election? Think really hard. The results are going to hang, it is going to go to the supreme court, and we are going to have unrest in this country.
Please give Putin some credit.
If you mean to say we should acknowledge Putin has caused and continues to cause both demoralization and destabilization through Trump and other useful American idiots, hello, yeah.
I know you’ve only published five comments here to date but take a good look through tags and categories here. There are roughly 90 posts tagged with “Vladimir Putin,” another roughly 90 tagged “Russia,” and north of 233 under category “Russian Hacks.” We know exactly what Putin is capable of doing.
We’re not going to give Putin credit as you insist. We’ll give attribution.
“Think really hard?” You may have wandered into the wrong website.
He doesn’t need to create spectacle for attention, his MAGA media does it for him.
Need and desire are not the same thing. Sometimes, they don’t even overlap.
Agree that Loomer is a shiny object, a lightning rod set atop Trump’s burning barn. Will he put out the fire? Nope.
If she and Trump are intimate, it might make it into the Guinness book of recordds. But Trump would leak word of it to bolster the claimed size of his crowd. Stormy Daniels was unimpressed with it two decades ago. Crowd size does not grow with age. Loomer, on the other hand, would not be doing anything that her colleagues do not figuratively do for Trump every day of the week.
It’s all a distraction from the hate, resentment, fear, and lust for violence that overwhelm Trump, and which he survives only by passing on to others, like a plague carrier. We are all living in Springfield, OH, now.
There are different types of narcissistic supply. I knew Loomer’s “brand” when she popped up again – but not her age – she’s only 31.
A love/sex interest is a huge need with his pathology, and it is more desperate compulsion and image preservation, than wanting to bond, even over white supremacy or how he’s the greatest, or to hook up. The campaign stress would make it worse, as does Kamala’s attractiveness and his wife’s non-participation. Susie Wiles and MTG can’t fill the need. Alina Habba was playing the role during his legal appearances, but is on the back burner during the campaign (and married). Other women on the campaign, in addition to looking their parts, apparently have other jobs to do. It might have been enough for him (at 78 y.o.) to have Kristi Noem as his VP, but instead he has JD.
Loomer is Trump 2024’s Hope Hicks (which in and of itself gives you an indication of how diminished a candidate he is). If Loomer’s a channel to Stone, that would be icing on his cake. Also, campaign chaos is a distraction from how unfit he is. It’s notable that Graham’s comments were made via HuffPost.
In case anyone needs evidence/a memory jog, here’s a 2017 Nicholas Kamm/Getty image of the 29 y.o. Ms. Hicks via Vanity Fair.
Yes, Habba is married and so is Trump. So? I am confident Trump has granted himself and married women immunity from the sixth/seventh commandment (adultery). After all, he’s been sent by God.
“So?” Image, not reality. She plays the role of potential mistress, and acts as a fan, attractive mouthpiece, and maybe, strategist or confidant, but she gets paid as an attorney and goes home to her husband and children.
It’s one thing for a woman to be a courtesan of a nameless hedge fund guy or other assorted sorts of millionaires but it’s another thing entirely to be one for the most famous person in the world. I am including ‘arm candy’ as a courtesan.
Arm Candy 1: An attractive, seemingly romantic companion who accompanies a person in public simply so that one or both of the individuals can gain attention, enhance social status, or create an impression of sexual appeal.
Looney I can understand. Hope Hicks I cannot. She could have had a hedge fund guy years ago, or two or three. She just snagged one in her home town, Greenich CT. In terms of self interest or even sanity why attach yourself to Donald Trump. Ick Then there was Rob Porter.
And this makes Melania the woman scorned [again].
Wasn’t there a rumor early in trump’s presidency that Melania had renegotiated her pre-nup after the Access Hollywood debacle?
Yes, there were lots of those rumors, stoked by her atypical, long delay in moving into the White House.
I hope she succeeded in renegotiating it in her favor, and in getting what she would be owed pre-funded and put into a separate segregated account or trust that Trump can’t touch. He’s not a guy known for keeping his promises.
That assumes she isn’t happy for him to have a courtesan to keep him the hell away from her. Her absence from the scene speaks as many volumes as does Loomer’s omnipresent canoodling.
“…The problem is precisely what Tim Walz warned: Trump’s narcissism and his ego make him weak, vulnerable to any person willing to use flattery to win their objectives.”
Fertile soil, absolutely. But it isn’t only flattery which makes him say the things he does.
What he says is who he is. Flattery only encourages him to say the worst of it out loud in public: the general public, not only at his rallies, or in private.
Trump is an example of where this country went wrong when it elected a Hollywood movie star to be President: choosing created image for a mass entertainment culture who accepts fantasy over reality, i.e., deep thinking and contemplation about what government is designed to do and the qualifications for a president to be the executive-in-chief to fulfill the requirements. Reagan, at least, had been a governor of a very big state. Trump was only, and ever will be, a developer-turned-tv-entertainer. His qualifications and preparations for being president were absolutely nil. He wouldn’t be able to discern the difference between the Constitution and expensive toilet paper.
The Loomer story ironically highlights how easy it is to stroke and manipulate Trump into doing whatever you want. It’s his ego that needs attention, not the body parts he hasn’t seen in a couple of decades.
Xi, Kim, Putin, Orban, and JD Vance are not the only people, foreign and domestic – looking at you, billionaires – who know how to expertly manipulate him. They are a bigger threat than whomever Trump sleeps with.
The whole lot of them just waiting for him to dismantle the American Republic so they can et tu Brute him and lay claim to the empire that swims in their imagination.
I don’t know about that, but JD Vance would be the first guy to expect and hope for Donald’s untimely demise. But only after he’s elected. Because JD would never get the top job on his own. Nor would he wield it on his own, addicted as he is to taking orders from Pete Thiel.
For those familiar with the amazon series The Boys, the Homelander/SF romance is an amusing parallel here.
A romantic liaison with someone younger than Ivanka would put another nail in the campaign coffin. And Trump is megalomaniac enough not to care.
But Gov. Walz is right. The story of the debate is not that Harris successfully baited Trump into self-defeating ramblings but that Trump wasn’t capable of not taking the bait. Self-discipline, control of your emotions, and intelligence to realize what your opponent is doing are needed to avoid the trap. That the editors and media (not Medea) execs won’t admit that Trump’s manipulability is a serious threat to national security is hard to understand. They may have believed that Trump could be contained in his first term. But they shouldn’t be suffering under those illusions after Trump’s post-election coup attempt. Or maybe they think that they can manipulate Trump as well.
Are you kidding? MAGAs think his affairs prove what an alpha stud he is. They love to see how “masculine and powerful” he is. They love when he breaks the rules to get what he wants.
The MAGA crowd isn’t enough to elect him. He needs evangelicals and independents.
I agree with you that getting elected is the big picture. I’m just saying that the people who support him despite his grabbing and raping and stealing and fraud certainly won’t hold his lechery against him.
The above clip of Tim Walz shows what a powerful thoughtful speaker he is, a great addition to Kamala’s team. This team is building strength and momentum at exactly the right time. Trump’s campaign is weakening and spinning out of control. It’s a good day for a walk at the beach
“I don’t think it’s helpful. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”
Laura Looney Tunes suggests Claudia Conway should ‘hang herself,’ and that’s the response from Miss Lindsey ‘Ladybugs’ Graham. Utterly unhelpful in and of itself.
Meanwhile, Springfield, OH, remains in lockdown, owing to its third day of bomb threats. The state of Ohio will need to up the $2.5 million it seems to have promised Springfield. Heightened Trump-induced public administration costs seem likely to exceed that. Private economic losses certainly will.
The costs and liability that JD Vance – OH’s junior Senator, who grew up nearby – and Donald Trump have generated are growing like the chains and boxes Marley’s Ghost drags around for eternity.
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/14/third-day-of-bomb-inspired-by-lies-sends-springfield-hospitals-into/
What are the remedies of law, of government, and of society available to counter successfully this kind of stoking of violence?
i need* you and rayne to school me in the rhetorical means to counter/defuse this, apart from calling in the national guard!
(Which, for all we know in OH, is well seeded with JD Vance’s followers.)
*maybe i shouldnt phrase it as “need,” but would appreciate your perspectives.
You’re right, I wouldn’t express it as “need.”
The remedies are political, not legal, unless a speaker violates the First Amendment’s limits, and starts explicitly advocating for the immediate physical harm of his targets. So far, I don’t think they’ve crossed it.
If the infamously Republican OH legislature picks up part of the tab here, well and good, and kudos to Gov. Mike DeWine for making them do it, if they do. Same when it happens elsewhere. But only political juice would make them do it.
[re-commenting from a previous thread, as it seems appropriate here]
“… the lies on the right are so pervasive and entrenched that it is impossible to counter or dislodge them.”
One approach is to target someone more likely (one can hope) to feel shame: J.D.Vance, as a Yale Law School graduate knows that:
— “murder” (the killing of another with malice aforethought), must not be used to describe the death of someone in a traffic accident (a term he used to describe the actions of a driver who, by crossing the center-line, caused the death of the child riding the school bus). Doing so is unethical.
— to say “Communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town”, presupposes a verifiable and easily accessible public health data-point (one which I could not find). He is duty-bound to cite the evidence for this assertion. J.D. Vance, as an attorney, knows this.
Pretty sure JD Vance cast shame aside, as a form of middle-class morality (h/t to Alfred P. Doolittle) that he could not afford. Like Trump, he’s gone farther, and embraces using that morality against his critics.
That he is duty bound as a lawyer to certain conduct might be one reason he left the practice of law after less than two years, to become a venture capitalist. They and practitioners of what’s known as private equity admit to no standard they are duty bound to observe.
The same thing happened with Covid in January 2020. The White House was crawling with libertarian supposed experts insisting there would be minimal deaths of 1,000 or less in total. They manipulated Trump’s desperate need to be seen as the champion of the stock market, and as a result their own rigid opposition to public health programs led him to waste critical months blocking the government’s efforts to prepare, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives.
It’s worth noting that insider political reporters like Maggie Haberman knew about these people spreading their fantasies to Trump, and that their advice ran counter to what public health experts were pleading for.
The White House reporters still deliberately slow walked coverage of the manipulation campaign because they didn’t want to upset their cozy relationships, and weren’t smart enough to realize that when the dire warnings came true their primacy at their outlets were going to be wrecked anyway. All those Hope Hicks beat sweeteners they were planning were going to be forgotten, but they went ahead focusing on that kind of trivia all the same.
Hatefest campaign full of insults feeding off of each other – it’s hateful.
Did I mention she was a supporter?
I am a little worried about the number of comments about the loomer-trump relation here, and probably elsewhere in the democratosphere. It looks like something that she can deny, in a teary press conference saying it is the democrats that are such pervs to even think about that, she is a good girl yes sir, and that will somehow wipe away a lot of the well constructed arguments about trump weakness for flattery, a bit like the pee tape wiped away everything else about the russia-trump relation. It would be so much better if it was left untouched. But of course, we will see.
Well, Loomer was the explicit subject of this post.
Leaving the subject untouched would be an own goal and solve nothing. Reframing the purpose of Loomer’s role and the leaks around it, as EW has tried to do, might well do something.
The NYT will let us know what lines we crossed soon enough!
The NYTpitchbot (@dougjballoon) is keeping it in-bounds though:
x.com/DougJBalloon/status/1835003967723688225
Good post. Loomer only matters on the Republican side. On the Democratic side voter registration and GOTV matter.
Caputo made the observation that Ms. Wheeler repeats, that the Springfield, OH story came mainly from Vance.
I look forward to Ms. Wheeler returning to the subject of so called polls and her analysis of why they are simply wrong.