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babylonsister
babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
July 14, 2020
Posted July 13, 2020
Florida Democrats announce over 1 million Democrats have enrolled in vote-by-mail since March 17th
Posted July 13, 2020
Florida Democrats also increase vote-by-mail edge over Republicans to more than 400,000 voters.
Today, the Florida Democratic Party announced over 1 million Democrats have enrolled or renewed their vote by mail enrollment since the March 17th Presidential Preference Primary.
Additionally, Florida Democrats now hold a 423,379 voter vote-by-mail enrollment advantage over the Florida GOP. Two weeks ago, Florida Democrats published a memo touting a 300,000 vote-by-mail enrollment edge. In 2016, Florida Democrats held a slim 8,800 edge in vote-by-mail.
Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo released the following statement:
In order to drive up vote-by-mail enrollment, the coordinated campaign to elect Democrats in Florida has:
In addition, Florida Democrats continue to out-register Republicans, growing their voter registration edge by 15,000 voters over 2018.
Florida Democrats announce over 1 million Democrats have enrolled in vote-by-mail since March 17th
https://www.floridadems.org/news/florida-democrats-announce-over-1-million-democrats-have-enrolled-in-vote-by-mail-since-march-17th-presidential-preference-primaryPosted July 13, 2020
Florida Democrats announce over 1 million Democrats have enrolled in vote-by-mail since March 17th
Posted July 13, 2020
Florida Democrats also increase vote-by-mail edge over Republicans to more than 400,000 voters.
Today, the Florida Democratic Party announced over 1 million Democrats have enrolled or renewed their vote by mail enrollment since the March 17th Presidential Preference Primary.
Additionally, Florida Democrats now hold a 423,379 voter vote-by-mail enrollment advantage over the Florida GOP. Two weeks ago, Florida Democrats published a memo touting a 300,000 vote-by-mail enrollment edge. In 2016, Florida Democrats held a slim 8,800 edge in vote-by-mail.
Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo released the following statement:
“In an election that will be decided on the margins, the Florida Democratic Party is committed to making sure every single voter in Florida is able to vote safely and securely this November. Our team has been working tirelessly to organize thousands of volunteers to do the important work of enrolling their friends and neighbors into vote-by-mail. We are thrilled by the incredible energy we are seeing on the ground and today we are proud to announce that one million more Democrats have enrolled in vote-by-mail to elect Joe Biden this November!”
In order to drive up vote-by-mail enrollment, the coordinated campaign to elect Democrats in Florida has:
Made more than 3.8 million phone calls
Texted 4.1 million voters
Completed 19,404 volunteer shifts
Texted 4.1 million voters
Completed 19,404 volunteer shifts
In addition, Florida Democrats continue to out-register Republicans, growing their voter registration edge by 15,000 voters over 2018.
July 14, 2020
Press: Trump's final presidential pardon: himself
By Bill Press, Opinion Contributor — 07/14/20 07:15 AM EDT
Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon.
In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a full prospective, presidential pardon to the person who has been the most unfairly investigated and persecuted by our corrupt system of justice: Donald J. Trump.”
Donald Trump pardons himself? Don’t laugh. Admit it. You know as well as I, that’s exactly where this whole clown show is headed. I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet the ranch on this one: that somewhere in White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s office is a file on presidential self-pardons. The historical and legal research has already been done. The plan’s already in place. And the commutation of Roger Stone is only Trump’s first step in carrying out that plan.
snip//
First step: Deny the legitimacy of the Trump-Russia investigation by branding it a Democratically-inspired “witch hunt.” Blame it on Ukraine, instead. Get Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to hold Senate hearings. Tell Bill Barr to conduct his own DOJ investigation. All underway.
Second step: Do whatever’s necessary to secure the loyalty of anybody on the inside who could tell the truth. Buy Roger Stone’s silence with a commutation. Promise a pardon to Michael Flynn, if he needs it. Fire the U.S. attorney for New York to keep Rudy Giuliani from having to testify under oath. Again, all underway.
Trump’s third and absolutely certain final step: Get ready to pardon himself. He knows he has to do it. He will do it. It’s not a question of if, but of when.
Bill Press: Trump's final presidential pardon: himself
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/507070-press-trumps-final-presidential-pardon-himselfPress: Trump's final presidential pardon: himself
By Bill Press, Opinion Contributor — 07/14/20 07:15 AM EDT
Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon.
In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a full prospective, presidential pardon to the person who has been the most unfairly investigated and persecuted by our corrupt system of justice: Donald J. Trump.”
Donald Trump pardons himself? Don’t laugh. Admit it. You know as well as I, that’s exactly where this whole clown show is headed. I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet the ranch on this one: that somewhere in White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s office is a file on presidential self-pardons. The historical and legal research has already been done. The plan’s already in place. And the commutation of Roger Stone is only Trump’s first step in carrying out that plan.
snip//
First step: Deny the legitimacy of the Trump-Russia investigation by branding it a Democratically-inspired “witch hunt.” Blame it on Ukraine, instead. Get Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to hold Senate hearings. Tell Bill Barr to conduct his own DOJ investigation. All underway.
Second step: Do whatever’s necessary to secure the loyalty of anybody on the inside who could tell the truth. Buy Roger Stone’s silence with a commutation. Promise a pardon to Michael Flynn, if he needs it. Fire the U.S. attorney for New York to keep Rudy Giuliani from having to testify under oath. Again, all underway.
Trump’s third and absolutely certain final step: Get ready to pardon himself. He knows he has to do it. He will do it. It’s not a question of if, but of when.
July 14, 2020
"Everybody just assumes no one is going."
They should shout it from the rooftops!! 
https://politicalwire.com/2020/07/13/another-bonus-quote-of-the-day-18/
Another Bonus Quote of the Day
July 13, 2020 at 8:02 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
“Everybody just assumes no one is going.”
— Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), quoted by the New York Times, on the Republican National Convention.
— Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), quoted by the New York Times, on the Republican National Convention.
July 14, 2020
Rich people ask to be taxed to fight coronavirus pandemic
By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News |
Jul 13, 2020 at 5:53 PM
Sounds like a good deal.
A collective of rich people called “Millionaires for Humanity” penned an open letter Monday asking that they be taxed to help stem the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
Among the Americans who’ve already signed on are entertainment heirs Abigail and Tim Disney, businessman Ron Guillot and Stanford University educators and philanthropists Carol and Terry Winograd. The list spans several continents.
The letter is addressed “To Our Fellow Global Citizens.”
Rich people ask to be taxed to fight coronavirus pandemic
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-millionaires-rich-people-tax-please-coronavirus-20200713-enr5lisxhbe2fau52qebejhw2e-story.htmlRich people ask to be taxed to fight coronavirus pandemic
By Brian Niemietz
New York Daily News |
Jul 13, 2020 at 5:53 PM
Sounds like a good deal.
A collective of rich people called “Millionaires for Humanity” penned an open letter Monday asking that they be taxed to help stem the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
Among the Americans who’ve already signed on are entertainment heirs Abigail and Tim Disney, businessman Ron Guillot and Stanford University educators and philanthropists Carol and Terry Winograd. The list spans several continents.
The letter is addressed “To Our Fellow Global Citizens.”
“As Covid-19 strikes the world, millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world,” it reads. “No, we are not the ones caring for the sick in intensive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances that will bring the ill to hospitals. We are not restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door. But we do have money, lots of it. Money that is desperately needed now and will continue to be needed in the years ahead, as our world recovers from this crisis.”
That missive states that simply giving cash to charity will not address the pandemic effectively, which is why the millionaires involved are asking government officials worldwide to act now and take them up on their offer.
“So please. Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. It is the right choice. It is the only choice,“ the letter reads. “Humanity is more important than our money.”
That missive states that simply giving cash to charity will not address the pandemic effectively, which is why the millionaires involved are asking government officials worldwide to act now and take them up on their offer.
“So please. Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. It is the right choice. It is the only choice,“ the letter reads. “Humanity is more important than our money.”
July 13, 2020
Mary Trump’s Book Shows How Donald Trump Gets Away With It
The problem with a fraud as big as this president is that once you start collaborating with him, it’s impossible to get out.
By Dahlia Lithwick
July 13, 2020
5:52 PM
snip//
The bulk of the book focuses on the tale of Mary and her brother Fritz’s abandonment by the rest of the Trump clan. Her father, Freddy, the scion and namesake, failed to be the storybook heir to her grandfather’s real estate empire, instead collapsing into a tragic black hole of alcoholism, illness, and despair. Donald Trump, Freddy’s younger brother, not only helped push Freddy down but also stepped on his sinking shoulders on his way into the empty, Freddy-shaped space to become his father’s successor. And as Freddy’s parents and three other siblings altered their lives and priorities in order to orbit around Donald, Mary and her brother were eventually written out of the wills, the empire, and the family story, as payback for their father’s perceived weakness and failures. This is all tragic in its own right, but it also makes Mary, who has been let down by the so-called adults in the room almost since her infancy, perfectly positioned to explain and translate what happens to otherwise high-functioning adults—her aunt Maryanne, a competent federal judge; the lawyers and accountants tasked with fulfilling Donald’s whims and hiding his failings; the sycophants and Republicans and evangelical Christians who support his campaign unquestioningly; and the officials who now populate the Senate, the Cabinet, and the Oval Office. All of them appear to be reasonably mentally sound. Yet they all cover for Donald, at the expense of real suffering and genuine human loss, just as the Trump clan ignored Freddy’s disintegration and death. Mary Trump’s childhood trauma has become America’s trauma, and she really wants to know how that came to be. Again.
The section of the book that has garnered the most attention is likely Mary’s claim that Trump cannot be evaluated for pathologies because he is “in the West Wing, essentially institutionalized” and that he has in fact “been institutionalized for most of his adult life. So there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.” We are not used to seeing entities like the White House described in this way—a “very expensive and well-guarded padded cell”—as a means of protection for the broken man inside rather than as a platform from which a leader can change the world. And her ultimate point is that even a shattered psyche, buffered from the real world, can still do irreparable damage to it. But the most interesting assessments she offers are reserved for those inside the “institutions,” the people who might have saved us and certainly have not, from the nuclear family, to the Trump businesses, to New York’s bankers and powerful elites, to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Jared Kushner. They all knew and know that the emperor has no clothes, even as they devote their last shreds of dignity to effusive praise of his ermine trim and jaunty crown.
Mary Trump seems to answer the question of why they do this in a section late in the book about Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. In describing Fred’s growing realizing that his fair-haired boy, Donald, was a fraud, Mary explains that, yes, Fred himself was a master at fattening his wallet with taxpayer funds, committing tax fraud to benefit his children. (Mary admits she was the one who leaked the family tax information to the New York Times in 2018 for its blockbuster story.) But as it became clear that Donald had no real business acumen—as his Atlantic City casinos cratered and his father unlawfully poured secret funds into saving them—Mary realized that Fred also depended on the glittery tabloid success at which Donald excelled. Fred continued to prop up his son’s smoke-and-mirrors empire because, as Mary writes, “Fred had become so invested in the fantasy of Donald’s success that he and Donald were inextricably linked. Facing reality would have required acknowledging his own responsibility, which he would never do. He had gone all in, and although any rational person would have folded, Fred was determined to double down.”
Mary Trump’s words there could just as easily be true for John Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, or Melania Trump. And as Mary Trump is quick to observe, the sheer stuck-ness of his enablers means that Trump never, ever learns his lesson. Being cosseted, lied to, defended, and puffed up means that Donald Trump knows that, “no matter what happens, no matter how much damage he leaves in his wake, he will be OK.” He fails up, in other words, because everyone around him, psychologically normal beings all, ends up so enmeshed with his delusions that they must do anything necessary to protect them. Trump’s superpower isn’t great vision or great leadership but rather that he is so tiny. Taking him on for transactional purposes may seem like not that big a deal at first, but the moment you put him in your pocket, you become his slave. It is impossible to escape his orbit without having to admit a spectacular failure in moral and strategic judgment, which almost no one can stomach. Donald Trump’s emptiness is simply a mirror of the emptiness of everyone who propped him up. It’s that reflection that becomes unendurable. This pattern, as Mary writes, “guaranteed a cascade of increasingly consequential failures that would ultimately render all of us collateral damage.” Nobody, not even Mary, who signed on briefly to ghostwrite one of his books, ends up just a little bit beholden to Donald Trump and that includes his rapturous supporters who still queue up, maskless, to look upon his greatness. As she concludes, his sociopathy “reminds me that Donald isn’t really the problem at all.” That makes hers something other than the 15th book about the fathoms-deep pathologies of Donald Trump: It is the first real reckoning with all those who “caused the darkness.”
Mary Trump is, among other things, a brisk and gifted writer, and she is a fact witness to, and also a victim of, a family that elevated a mediocre and vicious man, at the expense of justice, fairness, and truth. Her real beef is not with her uncle Donald, who has always been exactly as we have long known him to be; that’s why a smattering of new details about his business failures and meanness were never really the point of this book. We’ve read that book before. The perspective of this book is made possible exactly because Mary Trump was one of the first children to be written out of the will, cast out of the family, and denied the support and love that should have been hers, as a result of her father’s perceived failures. It is this—because she was ousted rather than being forced to remove herself—that allows her to see clearly why everyone else stuck around. And what she reveals is a devastating indictment of all the alleged adults who stick around Donald Trump, who came together to fail America, to leave vulnerable populations to fend for themselves, and who continue to lie and spin to pacify his ego. They do it because they can’t admit the payoff is never coming, and to save themselves from the embarrassment of having to admit they were catastrophically wrong.
Dahlia Lithwick: Mary Trump's Book Shows How Donald Trump Gets Away With It
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/mary-trump-book-psychoanalysis-enablers.htmlMary Trump’s Book Shows How Donald Trump Gets Away With It
The problem with a fraud as big as this president is that once you start collaborating with him, it’s impossible to get out.
By Dahlia Lithwick
July 13, 2020
5:52 PM
snip//
The bulk of the book focuses on the tale of Mary and her brother Fritz’s abandonment by the rest of the Trump clan. Her father, Freddy, the scion and namesake, failed to be the storybook heir to her grandfather’s real estate empire, instead collapsing into a tragic black hole of alcoholism, illness, and despair. Donald Trump, Freddy’s younger brother, not only helped push Freddy down but also stepped on his sinking shoulders on his way into the empty, Freddy-shaped space to become his father’s successor. And as Freddy’s parents and three other siblings altered their lives and priorities in order to orbit around Donald, Mary and her brother were eventually written out of the wills, the empire, and the family story, as payback for their father’s perceived weakness and failures. This is all tragic in its own right, but it also makes Mary, who has been let down by the so-called adults in the room almost since her infancy, perfectly positioned to explain and translate what happens to otherwise high-functioning adults—her aunt Maryanne, a competent federal judge; the lawyers and accountants tasked with fulfilling Donald’s whims and hiding his failings; the sycophants and Republicans and evangelical Christians who support his campaign unquestioningly; and the officials who now populate the Senate, the Cabinet, and the Oval Office. All of them appear to be reasonably mentally sound. Yet they all cover for Donald, at the expense of real suffering and genuine human loss, just as the Trump clan ignored Freddy’s disintegration and death. Mary Trump’s childhood trauma has become America’s trauma, and she really wants to know how that came to be. Again.
The section of the book that has garnered the most attention is likely Mary’s claim that Trump cannot be evaluated for pathologies because he is “in the West Wing, essentially institutionalized” and that he has in fact “been institutionalized for most of his adult life. So there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.” We are not used to seeing entities like the White House described in this way—a “very expensive and well-guarded padded cell”—as a means of protection for the broken man inside rather than as a platform from which a leader can change the world. And her ultimate point is that even a shattered psyche, buffered from the real world, can still do irreparable damage to it. But the most interesting assessments she offers are reserved for those inside the “institutions,” the people who might have saved us and certainly have not, from the nuclear family, to the Trump businesses, to New York’s bankers and powerful elites, to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Jared Kushner. They all knew and know that the emperor has no clothes, even as they devote their last shreds of dignity to effusive praise of his ermine trim and jaunty crown.
Mary Trump seems to answer the question of why they do this in a section late in the book about Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. In describing Fred’s growing realizing that his fair-haired boy, Donald, was a fraud, Mary explains that, yes, Fred himself was a master at fattening his wallet with taxpayer funds, committing tax fraud to benefit his children. (Mary admits she was the one who leaked the family tax information to the New York Times in 2018 for its blockbuster story.) But as it became clear that Donald had no real business acumen—as his Atlantic City casinos cratered and his father unlawfully poured secret funds into saving them—Mary realized that Fred also depended on the glittery tabloid success at which Donald excelled. Fred continued to prop up his son’s smoke-and-mirrors empire because, as Mary writes, “Fred had become so invested in the fantasy of Donald’s success that he and Donald were inextricably linked. Facing reality would have required acknowledging his own responsibility, which he would never do. He had gone all in, and although any rational person would have folded, Fred was determined to double down.”
Mary Trump’s words there could just as easily be true for John Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, or Melania Trump. And as Mary Trump is quick to observe, the sheer stuck-ness of his enablers means that Trump never, ever learns his lesson. Being cosseted, lied to, defended, and puffed up means that Donald Trump knows that, “no matter what happens, no matter how much damage he leaves in his wake, he will be OK.” He fails up, in other words, because everyone around him, psychologically normal beings all, ends up so enmeshed with his delusions that they must do anything necessary to protect them. Trump’s superpower isn’t great vision or great leadership but rather that he is so tiny. Taking him on for transactional purposes may seem like not that big a deal at first, but the moment you put him in your pocket, you become his slave. It is impossible to escape his orbit without having to admit a spectacular failure in moral and strategic judgment, which almost no one can stomach. Donald Trump’s emptiness is simply a mirror of the emptiness of everyone who propped him up. It’s that reflection that becomes unendurable. This pattern, as Mary writes, “guaranteed a cascade of increasingly consequential failures that would ultimately render all of us collateral damage.” Nobody, not even Mary, who signed on briefly to ghostwrite one of his books, ends up just a little bit beholden to Donald Trump and that includes his rapturous supporters who still queue up, maskless, to look upon his greatness. As she concludes, his sociopathy “reminds me that Donald isn’t really the problem at all.” That makes hers something other than the 15th book about the fathoms-deep pathologies of Donald Trump: It is the first real reckoning with all those who “caused the darkness.”
Mary Trump is, among other things, a brisk and gifted writer, and she is a fact witness to, and also a victim of, a family that elevated a mediocre and vicious man, at the expense of justice, fairness, and truth. Her real beef is not with her uncle Donald, who has always been exactly as we have long known him to be; that’s why a smattering of new details about his business failures and meanness were never really the point of this book. We’ve read that book before. The perspective of this book is made possible exactly because Mary Trump was one of the first children to be written out of the will, cast out of the family, and denied the support and love that should have been hers, as a result of her father’s perceived failures. It is this—because she was ousted rather than being forced to remove herself—that allows her to see clearly why everyone else stuck around. And what she reveals is a devastating indictment of all the alleged adults who stick around Donald Trump, who came together to fail America, to leave vulnerable populations to fend for themselves, and who continue to lie and spin to pacify his ego. They do it because they can’t admit the payoff is never coming, and to save themselves from the embarrassment of having to admit they were catastrophically wrong.
July 13, 2020
‘Adapt immediately or find a new job’: Senate GOP confronts fundraising emergency
Democrats' online fundraising has again caught fire, giving them a boost in November's fight for the Senate majority.
By ELENA SCHNEIDER, JAMES ARKIN and ALLY MUTNICK
07/13/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee prepared a slideshow for Senate chiefs of staff full of bleak numbers about the party's failure to compete with Democrats on digital fundraising. For anyone not getting the message, the final slide hammered home the possible end result: a freight train bearing down on a man standing on the tracks.
The slideshow, obtained by POLITICO, painted a grim picture of the GOP’s long-running problem. Republican senators and challengers lagged behind Democrats by a collective $30 million in the first quarter of 2020, a deficit stemming from Democrats’ superior online fundraising machine. Since then, Democrats' fundraising pace accelerated further, with the party’s challengers announcing huge second-quarter hauls last week, largely driven by online donors giving through ActBlue, the party’s preferred fundraising platform.
The money guarantees Democrats nothing heading into November 2020. But with President Donald Trump’s poll numbers sagging and more GOP-held Senate races looking competitive, the intensity of Democrats’ online fundraising is close to erasing the financial advantage incumbent senators usually enjoy. That’s making it harder to bend their campaigns away from the national trend lines — and helping Democrats’ odds of flipping the Senate.
snip//
During the lunch meeting with senators’ top aides, NRSC staffers warned that if Republicans don’t improve — by investing in list-building, advertising regularly on Facebook and increasing email solicitations — the outlook was bleak not just for 2020, but for 2022 and 2024.
more...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/13/senate-gop-fundraising-emergency-358864
'Adapt immediately or find a new job': Senate GOP confronts fundraising emergency
‘Adapt immediately or find a new job’: Senate GOP confronts fundraising emergency
Democrats' online fundraising has again caught fire, giving them a boost in November's fight for the Senate majority.
By ELENA SCHNEIDER, JAMES ARKIN and ALLY MUTNICK
07/13/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee prepared a slideshow for Senate chiefs of staff full of bleak numbers about the party's failure to compete with Democrats on digital fundraising. For anyone not getting the message, the final slide hammered home the possible end result: a freight train bearing down on a man standing on the tracks.
The slideshow, obtained by POLITICO, painted a grim picture of the GOP’s long-running problem. Republican senators and challengers lagged behind Democrats by a collective $30 million in the first quarter of 2020, a deficit stemming from Democrats’ superior online fundraising machine. Since then, Democrats' fundraising pace accelerated further, with the party’s challengers announcing huge second-quarter hauls last week, largely driven by online donors giving through ActBlue, the party’s preferred fundraising platform.
The money guarantees Democrats nothing heading into November 2020. But with President Donald Trump’s poll numbers sagging and more GOP-held Senate races looking competitive, the intensity of Democrats’ online fundraising is close to erasing the financial advantage incumbent senators usually enjoy. That’s making it harder to bend their campaigns away from the national trend lines — and helping Democrats’ odds of flipping the Senate.
snip//
During the lunch meeting with senators’ top aides, NRSC staffers warned that if Republicans don’t improve — by investing in list-building, advertising regularly on Facebook and increasing email solicitations — the outlook was bleak not just for 2020, but for 2022 and 2024.
“It’s a slow-moving trainwreck,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican consultant who led Marco Rubio’s digital strategy in the 2016 presidential campaign. “The warning signs are flashing right now, and they’re ignoring it.”
more...
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/13/senate-gop-fundraising-emergency-358864
July 13, 2020
‘He Is and Always Will Be a Terrified Little Boy’
Mary Trump has not indicted her uncle. She has indicted the whole family. And that could give it a "seismic imprint."
By MICHAEL KRUSE
07/13/2020 04:30 AM EDT
snip//
Mary Trump, to be sure, is a partisan (a registered Democrat who’s expressed public admiration for Hillary Clinton) with an ax to grind (she and her brother were all but excised from passed-down riches), and she writes, too, with palpable sadness and anger stemming from the long-ago loss of her father. The White House, meanwhile, predictably has dismissed her account as rife with “falsehoods” and “ridiculous, absurd allegations.” But she also holds a Ph.D. in psychological studies. And in these taut 211 pages, she puts us in new rooms, shows us new scenes with new details and lets us hear from members of the president’s nuclear family who have been conspicuously and obstinately mum. She is, after all, and by blood still, one of them—and “the only Trump,” as she puts it, “who is willing” to dish on what she calls “my malignantly dysfunctional family.”
Too Much and Never Enough (at least on its own) is not likely to hurt the president politically. (There’s plenty else at this point that’s doing that.) It’s not going to lead immediately to any legal jeopardy he doesn’t already face. It’s almost certainly not going to “take Donald down,” either, as she characterizes her impetus—first, she reveals, by having been foundationally helpful to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation, then by writing the rest of what she herself has written. But what this book does do is help us understand him, offering the most incisive rendering yet of why he is the way he is.
No matter what happens in November, historians will have to contend with the influences that forged the personality of one of the most consequential presidents ever—and in Mary Trump’s telling, the current occupant of the Oval Office, the man just shy of 63 million voters thought was the most preferable choice to lead their nation, is “a narcissist” whose “pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for,” whose “deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in.” She says he is “a petty, pathetic, little man.” She says he is “ignorant” and “incapable” and “lost in his own delusional spin.” She says deep down he “knows he has never been loved.” She says his reelection “would be the end of American democracy.”
snip//
She presents her uncle as fundamentally and profoundly incapable of an empathetic or merely effective response to the challenges of this or any other era. “Donald,” she concludes, “withdraws to his comfort zones—Twitter, Fox News—casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative or literal bunker. He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy.”
'He Is and Always Will Be a Terrified Little Boy'
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/13/mary-trump-book-godfather-358841‘He Is and Always Will Be a Terrified Little Boy’
Mary Trump has not indicted her uncle. She has indicted the whole family. And that could give it a "seismic imprint."
By MICHAEL KRUSE
07/13/2020 04:30 AM EDT
snip//
Mary Trump, to be sure, is a partisan (a registered Democrat who’s expressed public admiration for Hillary Clinton) with an ax to grind (she and her brother were all but excised from passed-down riches), and she writes, too, with palpable sadness and anger stemming from the long-ago loss of her father. The White House, meanwhile, predictably has dismissed her account as rife with “falsehoods” and “ridiculous, absurd allegations.” But she also holds a Ph.D. in psychological studies. And in these taut 211 pages, she puts us in new rooms, shows us new scenes with new details and lets us hear from members of the president’s nuclear family who have been conspicuously and obstinately mum. She is, after all, and by blood still, one of them—and “the only Trump,” as she puts it, “who is willing” to dish on what she calls “my malignantly dysfunctional family.”
Too Much and Never Enough (at least on its own) is not likely to hurt the president politically. (There’s plenty else at this point that’s doing that.) It’s not going to lead immediately to any legal jeopardy he doesn’t already face. It’s almost certainly not going to “take Donald down,” either, as she characterizes her impetus—first, she reveals, by having been foundationally helpful to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation, then by writing the rest of what she herself has written. But what this book does do is help us understand him, offering the most incisive rendering yet of why he is the way he is.
No matter what happens in November, historians will have to contend with the influences that forged the personality of one of the most consequential presidents ever—and in Mary Trump’s telling, the current occupant of the Oval Office, the man just shy of 63 million voters thought was the most preferable choice to lead their nation, is “a narcissist” whose “pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neuropsychological tests that he’ll never sit for,” whose “deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he’s soaked it in.” She says he is “a petty, pathetic, little man.” She says he is “ignorant” and “incapable” and “lost in his own delusional spin.” She says deep down he “knows he has never been loved.” She says his reelection “would be the end of American democracy.”
snip//
She presents her uncle as fundamentally and profoundly incapable of an empathetic or merely effective response to the challenges of this or any other era. “Donald,” she concludes, “withdraws to his comfort zones—Twitter, Fox News—casting blame from afar, protected by a figurative or literal bunker. He rants about the weakness of others even as he demonstrates his own. But he can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy.”
July 13, 2020
Posted on Sun, Jul 12th, 2020 by Jason Easley
Lindsey Graham Just Made A Huge Mistake By Letting Mueller Testify
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will allow Robert Mueller to testify because he thinks he can discredit Mueller and help Trump, but he has made a big mistake.
snip//
Graham isn’t breaking with Trump. With whispers growing that Graham’s seat could potentially be in play in South Carolina, The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is allowing Mueller to testify as a Hail Mary to earn points with Republican voters in South Carolina while trying to help Trump by changing the subject away from the pandemic.
Sen. Graham thinks that he can steamroll Mueller, but the former special counsel might be free to say a lot more before the Senate now that his work is done, and he has no further ongoing obligations than he could when he testified before the House.
It is a massive blunder to put a giant spotlight on the Trump/Russia connection as Trump is actively soliciting election interference from foreign governments.
The fact that Graham is willing to take this risk shows how dire the situation is for Trump and the Republicans. The odds are that Mueller’s testimony will backfire on Graham and cause more damage to Trump and his fading reelection prospects.
Lindsey Graham Just Made A Huge Mistake By Letting Mueller Testify
https://www.politicususa.com/2020/07/12/lindsey-graham-mueller-testify.htmlPosted on Sun, Jul 12th, 2020 by Jason Easley
Lindsey Graham Just Made A Huge Mistake By Letting Mueller Testify
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will allow Robert Mueller to testify because he thinks he can discredit Mueller and help Trump, but he has made a big mistake.
snip//
Graham isn’t breaking with Trump. With whispers growing that Graham’s seat could potentially be in play in South Carolina, The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is allowing Mueller to testify as a Hail Mary to earn points with Republican voters in South Carolina while trying to help Trump by changing the subject away from the pandemic.
Sen. Graham thinks that he can steamroll Mueller, but the former special counsel might be free to say a lot more before the Senate now that his work is done, and he has no further ongoing obligations than he could when he testified before the House.
It is a massive blunder to put a giant spotlight on the Trump/Russia connection as Trump is actively soliciting election interference from foreign governments.
The fact that Graham is willing to take this risk shows how dire the situation is for Trump and the Republicans. The odds are that Mueller’s testimony will backfire on Graham and cause more damage to Trump and his fading reelection prospects.
July 12, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-wanted-to-sell-puerto-rico-after-hurricane-maria-former-homeland-security-head-says?ref=home
Trump Wanted to Sell Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, His Former Homeland Security Head Says
ISLAND FOR SALE
Blake Montgomery
Updated Jul. 11, 2020 5:12PM ET /
Published Jul. 11, 2020 5:10PM ET
Trump Wanted to Sell Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, His Former Homeland Security Head Says
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-wanted-to-sell-puerto-rico-after-hurricane-maria-former-homeland-security-head-says?ref=home
Trump Wanted to Sell Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, His Former Homeland Security Head Says
ISLAND FOR SALE
Blake Montgomery
Updated Jul. 11, 2020 5:12PM ET /
Published Jul. 11, 2020 5:10PM ET
President Donald Trump raised the possibility of selling hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico to his Secretary of Homeland Security in late 2017, The New York Times reports. Elaine Duke, a Republican who served as acting head of Homeland Security from July to December 2017, told the Times in an interview, “The president’s initial ideas were more of as a businessman, you know: Can we outsource the electricity? Can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?”
Duke said the idea didn’t come up in a serious way after Trump’s initial proposal. Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico in September 2017, causing billions of dollars in damages that the island nation is still recovering from.
Duke said the idea didn’t come up in a serious way after Trump’s initial proposal. Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico in September 2017, causing billions of dollars in damages that the island nation is still recovering from.
July 12, 2020
Never Trumpers Become a Force
July 11, 2020 at 7:07 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
Never Trumpers Become a Force
https://politicalwire.com/2020/07/11/never-trumpers-become-a-force/Never Trumpers Become a Force
July 11, 2020 at 7:07 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
Washington Post: “Groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump emphasize guerrilla tactics and scathing ads as they troll the president. The movement seeks to build a national political operation to oust both the president and his supporters in Congress, with a particular emphasis on convincing white suburban voters who consider themselves true Republicans to break from the president, according to interviews with more than a dozen anti-Trump advisers and allies who are involved in the planning, some of whom requested anonymity to describe private discussions.”
“As the campaign unfolds, the movement’s influence will be tested, however, as many Republicans rally around the embattled president and as former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, becomes a more high-profile target of GOP attacks.”
“A Friday memo from the group obtained by The Washington Post argues that ‘Arizona and Colorado are off the board for Republicans’ and says South Carolina, Kansas, and even Alabama could be in play.”
“As the campaign unfolds, the movement’s influence will be tested, however, as many Republicans rally around the embattled president and as former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, becomes a more high-profile target of GOP attacks.”
“A Friday memo from the group obtained by The Washington Post argues that ‘Arizona and Colorado are off the board for Republicans’ and says South Carolina, Kansas, and even Alabama could be in play.”
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