The Time before Confrontation
Meduza had a piece yesterday sourced to “a source close to the Russian government and one of the sources close to the Kremlin” that claims Putin’s crowd was more interested in seeing Kamala Harris get elected, followed by another January 6, than seeing Trump win.
In the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election, the Kremlin’s political team hoped the results might spark protests reminiscent of the January 2021 riot at the Capitol, insiders told Meduza.
“Society there is even more polarized now, and back then, protests escalated to the point of storming the Capitol. Protests could have been a logical outcome of that polarization [after this election]. The main bet wasn’t so much on any particular candidate winning but on the losing side refusing to accept the results,” said a source close to Putin’s administration. Another Kremlin insider confirmed this account.
According to these sources, the Kremlin hoped such a crisis would force American authorities to focus on domestic issues rather than their standoff with Russia.
I’m not sure how much I buy this, but it’s a useful reminder that Russia would always prefer to have a weakened puppet than a strong one; Putin’s goal is to destroy the Western world order, not to install an unreliable puppet.
Last month, I had a similar thought about the likelihood of violence: Even if Harris had a 50% chance of winning, I still thought there was a 10% chance that political violence would disrupt the transfer of power.
This is the kind of timing I can’t get out of my head. According to FiveThirtyEight, Kamala Harris currently has a 53% chance of winning the electoral college. That’s bleak enough. But based on everything I know about January 6, I’d say that if Trump loses, there’s at least a 10% chance Trump’s fuckery in response will have a major impact on the transfer of power.
There was even a point on election day, when Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk were imploring bros to get out to vote and Trump was tweeting out false claims of cheating in Philadelphia, where it seemed that Trump had started to kick off that second plan, stealing power again.
And then, instead, he won.
It took a bit of time before Putin publicly congratulated Trump, as if he were waiting to see if there would be political violence.
Viktor Orbán, though, is doing victory laps.
It has always been clear that Trump’s plan — or that of his more competent handlers — was Orbanism. It was right there, out in public, perhaps most symbolically in Orbán’s ties to Heritage and Project 2025 and CPAC’s Hungarian wing, but the implications of such ties were among the things that journalists and editors believed to be less important than Joe Biden’s stutter.
We know Trump’s more competent handlers will try to use zeno- and transphobia as a means to grab for more power. We know they will privilege and try to force Christianity, a mix of Evangelical and regressive Catholic doctrine. We know they’ll try to disempower universities and the press; tellingly, the GOP House has already had tremendous success in doing both with little discussion that that was what was going on. We know Trump will replace what Rule of Law the US has with a cronyism. We know they’ll turn the Deep State into the bogeyman they claim it was, a tool against America rather than one ostensibly used to protect it. We know oligarchs like Musk will begin eating away at the state.
What’s not clear is how they’ll implement it.
There was a moment, I guess, when the Kremlin, Trump, and I thought it might be political violence. Now it’s unclear what manufactured emergency will be used to push through authoritarian powers, though your best guess is an authoritarian crackdown in response to protests of an immediate turn to mass deportations. Notably, Johny McEntee is back in charge of personnel, and he used a willingness to invoke the Insurrection Act as a litmus test at the end of the last Trump Administration.
Rather than having immediate political violence with Joe Biden and governors calling out the National Guard, we have two months to understand what’s coming, figure out what tools and points of pressure we have, and try to undercut their most obvious plans.
This is one value, for example, of advance warning of things like a Special Counsel report on Trump’s crimes; it tells us that, rather than a symbolic firing on January 20, we’re going to get something that might feed media attention for a few hours before that, something that might even provide a focus for Democrats as they try to demonstrate Republican complicity with Trump. There are likely to be symbolic firings a few days down the line in any case, but those symbolic firings may serve as a way to make visible an assault on Civil Service protection. Sally Yates has been revered for years by people who are otherwise unfamiliar with her work because she took a stand against Trump’s first power grab, and it’s likely you don’t yet know the name of the person who will play that role this time. It won’t be adequate, but better to know to expect it than let it go to waste.
Had things gone differently on Tuesday, we would likely be in immediate crisis right now, as authorities tried to shut down political violence. Instead we have two months to assess what tools we have.
Thank you for this. I circled back to your immediately-previous post, because I’m trying to reconcile “don’t surrender in advance” with “don’t let Trump’s AG make decisions about how much of Jack Smith’s final report is released”.
Your observations in this post are clear, encouraging, and actionable. Again, thank you.
Right. I am virtually certain that both Smith and Garland would understand that the report must be released before Garland is gone. That’s part of the point of dissolving early, to make sure that gets out.
If Dems manage to eke out the House (unlikely) Dems could even hold a hearing between Jan 4 and Jan 20.
There will be violence. We have all the ingredients: a vengeful man, surrounded by obedient sycophants, unchecked by the courts, and a mostly compliant press.
In the darkest part of my heart I wish those that brought this upon us would suffer the consequences of their vote, but I know the collateral damage will impact us all. It’s a terrible place to be.
Marcy,
Recent AZ history under Sheriff Joe, was to set up road blocks in neighborhoods, people in cars had to produce documents or be arrested for driving, while being brown. Law suits proceeded, neighborhood road blocks ended and there’s a new sheriff in town. Trump’s EO, Muslim ban, was also challenged in courts. WAG, Trump 2.0 EO, addressing deportation without documentation will create “deportation” jurisdictional courts to streamline and avoid repeat of EO Muslim ban’s successful slowing and inhibition by the courts.
What are the hurdles to make the entire DOJ report about J6 public? Is this just in the hands of Garland? Like, just do it?
Along the same line of reasoning, I’ve been wondering if the best outcome from here would be a narrow trifecta for the GOP.
Let the US experience Trumpism without any ability to reasonably blame Biden or the Dems for the effects.
Importantly, this gives the US electorate a chance to reject Trumpism at the ballot box in ’26 hopefully while it is still possible to vote Republicans out.
ps Sen. Murkowski is in a very interesting position to be a spoiler IFF she is willing to do so
Do you honestly think there will be free and fair election in 2026?
I don’t know, which is why I used “hopefully.”
I think that even if Trump, with total GOP control, destroy everything, maga will trust Fox news over their own lying eyes. It will still be the fault of Democrats. There is no doubt blame will be shifted and believed.
I witnessed a possible trigger for manufacturing a crisis yesterday: stochastic provocation by MAGA followers. A jeep full of guys on the ragged outer edge of middle age, dressed in khaki militia ware and waving large MAGA flags drove through the Main St of a small town in SE Arizona renown for its liberal, artsy and LGBTQ friendly citizens. They seemed to enjoy taunting us locals as they drove through blasting air horns and shouting “we won” while some of us responded with raised middle fingers. This kind of boisterous provocation could easily escalate into a “crisis” that could be exploited by the incoming trump administration.
One of my biggest fears for this election was a nail biter 270EV Harris victory where the election was decided by a few thousand votes in PA, but the GOP won both houses of congress. I feared that the legitimate election would be overturned either by the MAGA Supreme Court similar to 2000 or by the GOP in congress tossing slates of electors or forcing a contested election to be decided in the House. This would have been the worst possible outcome where we would end up with a Trump presidency AND have the legitimacy of our electoral process forever compromised.
I fully believe the MAGA cult has the zeal to push the country to fascism and the rest of the servile GOP is willing to let them do it. I do not think this country is ready to grapple with that threat in 2024. I feared that the undermining of the legitimacy (or appeared legitimacy) of our elections would forever damage the ability for (small l) liberals to challenge the fascist threat.
I agree with what Marcy has been saying, the Democrats need to work on finding ways to break into the right wing propaganda bubble and force a confrontation with reality. Between now and the next election the Democrats need to re-evaluate their approach to interreacting with the traditional MSM as well as the Fox News ecosystem. I think the appearances of Pete Buttigieg and Harris on Fox can serve as a good starting place for a new approach to messaging.
Unrelated, Any thoughts on what is going to happen with Trumps sentencing in NYS at the end of the month? What happens if Merchan gives him 5 years in prison?
Agreed.
In a way, this follows the model of the unholy alliance for power between Putin and the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church promised Putin support for his invasion of Ukraine, and Putin promised to back the primacy of the ROC over the Ukrainian church. Non-ROC Christians in Russia have had to be much more circumspect, fearing that any attention given to them will result in crackdowns on leaders and the confiscation of their churches.
Trump & Co. pushing for this power-hungry rightwing vision of Christianity here makes voices from mainline Christians and moderate-liberal Catholics that much more important, as a pushback on this.
The “No true Scotsman” fallacy tries to separate Christianity into moderates and others. But isn’t the basis of a belief system what sustains the radicalization of a belief system, meaning Christian nationalists are progeny?
That’s a reasonable point. I would observe that we are only partially responsible for our *adult* progeny. Both as a belief system, and as actual parents.
The “no true Scotsman” fallacy is an argument in the field of logic, where someone attempts to redefine “Scotsman” to validate their own position and rule out anyone else’s. They look at a dataset and then set aside all the individual data points that would challenge their conclusion, and behold: “I am right!” That’s not what I’m talking about here.
The divisions within the Christian church through the centuries are all efforts to come to grips with what it means to be a follower of Christ. Some have chosen a path that is filled with hierarchical power plays, nationalism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism, while others try to choose a path that argues against those things.
To the extent that TrumpCo will use religion in general and their vision of Christianity in particular to motivate their followers and thus propel certain policies as “the Christian thing to do,” other Christians cannot let this go unchallenged.
I’m not sure why, but whenever this topic comes up,
I think of the phrase from Sermon on the Mount:
“By their fruits will you know them.”
“What’s not clear is how they’ll implement it.”
Through legislation, lawfare and executive order. They have control of the executive, legislature and the judiciary. Violence is unlikely to be required.
Marcy’s obvious point was that without violence in the streets, in the manner of Trump’s Jan. 6th lovefest, Trump and Congress need a pretext – such as Hitler’s Reichstag fire – for such “legislation, lawfare and executive order.” Congress all the more so, because its members will face the electorate again in 2026, whereas Trump is unlikely to do so ever.
The false flag will be something like that fake video of brown people rushing the border fence, or “they’re eating the dawgs”.
Once people realise, there will be exodus, brain drain…
When the roundups start, there will likely be skirmishes. Remember people have been programmed to think the 2A is to defend against government tyranny.
Then Trump will revoke the 2A (he already has grounds, with the 2 assassination attempts – 3 including Michael Sandford in 2016).
His follower and cult members are the 2A backers and absolutists.
Will no one notice the deafening silence about Democrats cheating in elections? MTG says something that is a logical fallacy, about election deniers?
“It doesn’t look like anything to me.” – Westworld
So it’s not possible there was cheating by the R in this election?
“It doesn’t look like anything to me.” – Westworld
They know it wasn’t the Dems cheating, not in the last 50 years.
If that’s what you’re suggesting, it flies like a ton of lead ingots.
This is why he won now. This is why Hilary lost then. It was well known in the Obama admin there was likely to be violence, Trump was already laying the groundwork for that. Maybe that’s why Bannon took over in August 2016. They didn’t count on Manafort being so desperate to pay back Deripaska though.
That, as much as I hate to say it, was likely the best outcome then though. Not sure it is now. But it keeps democracy “alive” for at least a bit longer. Hopefully the IC and the military brass have/are working on a plan.
How is this the best outcome?
There was violence on J6 and we managed to pull through even with Trump in charge.
With Biden in charge and plans laid ahead of time to handle any violence wouldn’t have gotten as far as j6 if it happened at all.
If KH had won there was a 10% there would have been violence.
So it’s better that she lost and now there 100% chance the US will become a fascist state.
Your poor math is the least suspect thing about your sarcasm.
Marcy:
We MUST use this time well.
I did a basic TL at the linked piece where Marcy writes above:
It was right there, out in public, perhaps most symbolically in Orbán’s ties to Heritage and Project 2025 and CPAC’s Hungarian wing
That rudimentary TL might come in handy now.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/12/transitive-transatlantic-authoritarianism-heritage-orban-trump/#comment-1060342
harpie:
When GW Bush’s staff took over, they found that Clinton’s staff had mischievously removed the “W” from typewriters. I hope that Biden’s staff and his Administration will use the interregnum as an opportunity to take more meaningful acts to harden democracy’s infrastructure against the barbarians at the gate. Will Biden and Garland meet the moment or revert to meaningless bromides about tradition, bipartisanship, and integrity of the institution?
Trump will look for the earliest possible excuse to use the military to tamp down a protest. He (or, his minions) will want that show of force to show that demonstrations against him will not be tolerated. Maybe look at rules regarding the military’s use in domestic order.
A counter to the Bush-Clinton typewriter story:
The White House vandal scandal that wasn’t
How the incoming Bush team nudge-nudged a credulous press corps into swallowing a trashy Clinton story.
https://www.salon.com/2001/05/23/vandals/
Did they? Because the only people who claimed that were all in the Bush43 administration.
My wife will kill me if I get hit in the head with a brick at a protest.
Not if they’re standing next to you when you do. :-)
What are the chances they can federalize an abortion ban after all the states that have voted on this (-FL by 3%) voted for protections? Is the “states rights” concept going to hold? Or will they have it both ways?
What do we think are the most pressing/likely immediate things they can do? I note the stock in prison companies has gone up after the election. Will they just build camps with tents and barbed wire? The cost of this is tremendous. Billions and billions. Will they just starve people like is happening in Gaza?
I admit I have not focused on P2025 enough.
I wonder what our NATO allies can/will do to protect themselves from the new US,
and if the Biden Administration can/will work with them on that.
Good piece!
Yes, once Smith writes both of his reports for Garland, one for the Florida Docs case and one for the J-6 Insurrection case, Garland should release both in their entirety,
Garland should not hold anything back. Release everything about everyone who was investigated, interviewed or interrogated.
Trump will pardon everyone associated with his Federal cases, so there is no reason to withhold information for use in future Federal trials of Trump associates. Get it all out and on the public record now.
As for Viktor Orbán, it has been well publicized for several years his relationships with Semion Mogilevich and Vladimir Putin.
Mogilevich was once on the FBI’s ten most wanted lists and his attorney of record was former FBI Director William Sessions, father of Congressman Pete Sessions.
The FBI has plenty of information on the Mogilevich Mafia crime syndicate in the US and abroad. Biden should declassify all that information as well before he leaves office.
In fact, Biden should release everything that pertains to Trump, Putin, Mogilevich, MBS, Netanyahu, Xi, Kim Jong Un, the JFK and RFK assassination, Bay of Pigs/CIA and US Mafia connection notes/docs, and all Jeffrey Epstein information before leaving office.
Once in office, Trump will have all this information destroyed, if he hadn’t already done so prior to leaving office in January 2021.
Good piece!
Yes, once Smith writes both of his reports for Garland, one for the Florida Docs case and one for the J-6 Insurrection case, Garland should release both in their entirety,
Garland should not hold anything back. Release everything about everyone who was investigated, interviewed or interrogated.
Trump will pardon everyone associated with his Federal cases, so there is no reason to withhold information for use in future Federal trials of Trump associates. Get it all out and on the public record now.
As for Viktor Orbán, it has been well publicized for several years his relationships with Semion Mogilevich and Vladimir Putin.
Mogilevich was once on the FBI’s ten most wanted lists and his attorney of record was former FBI Director William Sessions, father of Congressman Pete Sessions.
The FBI has plenty of information on the Mogilevich Mafia crime syndicate in the US and abroad. Biden should declassify all that information as well before he leaves office.
In fact, Biden should release everything that pertains to Trump, Putin, Mogilevich, MBS, Netanyahu, Xi, Kim Jong Un, the JFK and RFK assassination, Bay of Pigs/CIA and US Mafia connection notes/docs, and all Jeffrey Epstein information before leaving office.
Once in office, Trump will have all this information destroyed.