THE TIMES HATES THE DEMOCRATS WHO'VE CHALLENGED BIDEN BUT SEEMS FASCINATED BY A REPUBLICAN WHO TROLLED HIM

At The New York Times, it isn't just opinion writers -- Bret Stephens, David Brooks, Ross Douthat -- who despise the non-centrist Democrats in the 2020 presidential field. It's also -- unsurprisingly -- reporters such as Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin on the politics desk.

The Democratic debates this past week provided the clearest evidence yet that many of the leading presidential candidates are breaking with the incremental politics of the Clinton and Obama eras, and are embracing sweeping liberal policy changes on some of the most charged public issues in American life, even at the risk of political backlash.

... But with moderate Democrats repeatedly drowned out or on the defensive in the debates, the sprint to the left has deeply unnerved establishment Democrats, who have largely picked the party nominees in recent decades. They fear that advocating a government-run health care system could alienate suburban and upper-income voters who are otherwise eager to eject Mr. Trump from office, while the most progressive immigration policies might turn off the working-class white voters who backed Mr. Trump after twice supporting former President Barack Obama.

Kamala Harris impressed many voters in last week's debates by taking on Joe Biden, but the word from the flagship newspaper of the so-called liberal media is that she and other non-moderates might kill the party.

Harris and the other Democrats who challenge Biden from the left are unsettling -- but do you know who impresses the Times? The guy who made this:

For much of the last three months, the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website has been a slick little piece of disinformation that is designed to look like the former vice president’s official campaign page, yet is most definitely not pro-Biden.

From top to bottom, the website, JoeBiden.info, breezily mocks the candidate in terms that would warm the heart of any Bernie Sanders supporter: There are GIFs of Mr. Biden touching women and girls, and blurbs about his less-than-liberal policy positions, including his opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1970s and his support for the Iraq war. Pull quotes highlight some of his more famous verbal gaffes, like his description of his future boss, Barack Obama, as “articulate and bright and clean.” The introductory text declares, “Uncle Joe is back and ready to take a hands-on approach to America’s problems!”

Biden's progressive challengers are a real threat, but this site -- created by a 30-year-old GOP operative named Patrick Mauldin -- is "slick" and done "breezily." Mauldin is a "mischievous" "rising star" who's "on point":

Inside the campaign, Mr. Mauldin, 30, is seen as a rising star, prized for his mischievous sense of humor and digital know-how, according to two people familiar with the operation. He also appears to be very much on point in his choice of targets: Mr. Biden is the Democrat polling strongest against Mr. Trump and has been repeatedly singled out on Twitter by the president.

In fact, as the Times story (by Matthew Rosenberg) makes clear, the site hasn't actually been working very well:

Mr. Mauldin boasted in the interview that he had fooled people into thinking his Biden website was the real campaign page. Some offered to donate money, he said, and others wanted to volunteer.

... One person wanted Mr. Biden to speak at her son’s school. Another suggested the former vice president look to an old soul group, the Fifth Dimension, for his campaign song.

If the point of your site is to deter people from supporting Joe Biden and they're responding to it by requesting a personal Biden appearance or offering to volunteer for the campaign, you're failing.

Also note that the site has been up for three months and Biden has remained at the top of the Democratic polls throughout that period, while he's contnued to crush Trump in head-to-head polling.

It's Harris who seems to have damaged Biden in the polls:

BIG upward movement for Harris (8% -> 17%) and downward movement for Biden (42% -> 32%) in our polling with @MorningConsult after the debates. https://t.co/KtQVHEszol

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 28, 2019

But she and the other liberal and progressive Democrats are a menace, whereas Maudlin, despite a certain wariness about his spoofing, is humanized so thoroughly by the Times that you'd think he was a neo-Nazi cooking pasta:

Sipping a Crown Royal and Coke at a bar in downtown Austin, Mr. Mauldin bore little resemblance to the boasting troll he played on Reddit. He is slight, and has boyish features....

Mr. Mauldin grew up in eastern Texas, and described his political views as “closest to libertarian.” He studied marketing at Texas A&M, and taught himself digital design skills, building on a childhood love of drawing.

He and his brother founded Vici after helping a family friend win a state representative race. Their big break came in June 2016, when the Trump campaign’s digital operation, short of manpower and scrambling, hired Vici.

Mr. Mauldin quickly impressed. His specialty was making the kind of viral videos that riffed on pop culture and were relentlessly pumped out on social media by the Trump campaign.

He's so creative! And boyish!

Unless Biden or another left-centrist manahes to take the nomination, all the "liberal" media coverage is going to be like this between now and November 2020. A left-leaning Democratic nominee will have to beat the mainstream media as well as Trump.

JUST A REMINDER TO BRET STEPHENS OF WHICH RECENT U.S. PRESIDENT SPOKE THE MOST SPANISH

Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, and Joaquin Castro spoke Spanish in the first Democratic presidential debate this week. The response from Bret Stephens: Speak English or die.

Amigos demócratas,

Si ustedes siguen así, van a perder las elecciones. Y lo merecerán.

Translation for the linguistically benighted: “Democratic friends, if you go on like this, you’re going to lose the elections. And you’ll deserve it.”

Channeling Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, Stephens continues, decribing the Democrats as

a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.

And who exactly are "they" and "we"?

They speak Spanish. We don’t.

Yes, it's horrible when candidates speak Spanish in debates. Regular Americans are morally offended by it, and it instantly seals a candidate's electoral doom. No Republican would ever do such a thing, and any Republican who did would lose the party's nomination instantly....



That was George W. Bush in a debate in Arizona on December 6, 1999. He won that nomination, and was the next president of the United States. As president, he spoke Spanish on a fairly regular basis.



Here he is delivering an entire radio address in Spanish:



But it's okay if you're a Republican, of course.

I singled out "They speak Spanish. We don’t," but that's just the beginning of a paragraph that starts white nationalist and continues as the classic corporatism you'd expect from a former Wall Street Journal editorialist:

They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We’re asked to write it off. They don’t pay the premiums for private health insurance. We’re supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn’t start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation. We’re expected to join the candidates in demonizing the job-creators, breaking up their businesses and taxing them to the hilt.

Enterprises! Innovation! Job creators! Yeah, why can't the Democratic candidates talk more like that nice Mitt Romney? Ordinary Americans loved his campaign!

Elsewhere, Stephens writes:

What conclusions should ordinary people draw about what Democrats stand for, other than a thunderous repudiation of Donald Trump, and how they see America, other than as a land of unscrupulous profiteers and hapless victims?

Well, most Americans also despise Donald Trump. And as for "unscrupulous profiteers," ever seen the Gallup polling numbers on taxing the rich and corporations?




I keep reading that Americans think the economy is going gangbusters. Polling seems to confirm that, but Americans know there's no level playing field. Maybe that's why, despite all the happy-days-are-here-again talk from Trump and Republicans, the public still answers the question "Is the country on the right track?" with a solid no:



It's possible that Democrats are tacking too far to the left for many voters on some issues. But Stephens think "we" are living the good life in America and those damn Democrats want to take it away. He thinks "we" are all debt free. He thinks "we" are all adequately insured.

I thought it was Democrats who were supposed to be the out-of-touch elitists.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TAKE MARIANNE WILLIAMSON SERIOUSLY

Please, make it stop...



It's true that Williamson had many bestselling New Age books ... twenty or so years ago. Her fame, such as it was, has declined since then. Now, why does Alex Pareene think we should take her seriously?

If you were going to imagine a Democratic version of Donald Trump, what would it look like? ...

We might say ... that a Democratic Trump would be a proper outsider, with a great deal of TV experience giving her both name recognition and some degree of respect among the “base” despite the “establishment” not taking her seriously. She may have been initially a fairly apolitical figure, but she is canny enough to understand that entering politics means not promising to be above the fray, but acting determined to defeat the villain occupying the White House. She could dabble in fringe views—she may even have a history of dubious tweets the elites send around to scoff at—but her pre-politics status as a mass pop cultural figure has the odd benefit of inoculating her against the political media’s attempts to define her as outside the mainstream.

Let's unpack that. First, Williamson was never "a mass pop cultural figure" in the way Trump was. Trump had a network TV show that was, at least for a time, quite successful. Williamson had ... a few bestselling books (a bestselling book is rarely as popular as a hit TV show, especially one from the days before streaming), as well as some guest appearances on television.

A certain segment of the populace, which may include a number of Democrats, likes (or at least used to like) Williamson's ideas. But most of us don't. Pareene's link on the phrase "a history of dubious tweets the elites send around to scoff at" goes to this tweet:

God is BIG, swine flu SMALL. See every cell of your body filled with divine light. Pour God's love on our immune systems. Truth protects.

— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) April 30, 2009

Alex, most Democrats believe in science. We reject the idea that you can beat swine flu with divine light. We reject Williamson's vaccine skepticism.

The larger point here is that there's no evidence that Democrats want a Trump of our own -- a standard-bearer who flaunts ignorance (or a belief in misinformation) as a middle finger to "the elites." We like people who know stuff. Even when we've rallied around a candidate with a relatively short political résumé -- Barack Obama, Bill Clinton -- we've wanted that person to demonstrate knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of ideas. Among the politicians in the current field, Beto O'Rourke is losing favor precisely because he doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on the issues, while Pete Buttigieg has gained ground because he seems to know what he's talking about. Democrats don't like know-nothings. Unlike Republicans, we don't believe that supporting a know-nothing is the best way to smite our enemies.

Pareene writes:

And while it is fun to scoff at her hokey spiritual woo and self-help bromides, it is easy to forget that hokey spiritual woo and self-help bromides are extremely powerful and popular among a massive subset of Americans, many of whom represent the exact sort of voters who decide Democratic primaries.

You know who decides Democratic primaries? Older black women. New Age nostrums aren't what they're looking for in a candidate. Even in Williamson's home state -- California, the epicenter of "hokey spiritual woo" -- she could do no better than fourth in a congressional jungle primary. She's not going to be a contender in this race.

DEMOCRATS: DAMNED IF THEY DO, DAMNED IF THEY DON'T

During last night's debate, Kamala Harris confronted Joe Biden on his 1970s opposition to school busing. Also during the debate, every candidate pledged to provide health care for undocumented immigrants. (The explanation I wish someone had offered: We're having a lot of measles outbreaks in this country -- primary because some native-born citizens aren't vaccinating their children. If undocumented people are living here and measles spreads to their communities, do we not want them to seek medical care? Do we just measles to spread if it reaches those communities?)

So what's happening now? Democrats are being attacked as too friendly to Those People.



But they're also being accused of being the party of racism.

Joe Biden & Kamala Harris are helpfully reminding Americans that the Democrats were the party of slavery, secession, & segregation. By contrast, the Republican Party was founded on & has always stood for the natural equality of all men & women.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 28, 2019

Diamond & Silk essentially suggest that being a Democrat makes Kamala Harris a race traitor: "How is Camilla (sic) supporting the same party that segregated her and her family? ... The Democrats are the party of segregation and she supports it!" pic.twitter.com/lPI901VLrj

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) June 28, 2019

The channeling of Dinesh D'Souza seems to be confined to the Murdoch media and folks like Cotton who channel its tropes, but the scary-woke-radical line is near-universal. Here's Politico's Jeff Greenfield:

As a policy matter, [health care for the undocumented] makes sense; leaving sick people untreated is both cruel and a public health menace. As a political matter, it is an open invitation to President Trump and his campaign to brand the Democrats as a party offering “free stuff” to millions of people who broke the law to get here in the first place.

He adds:

Right now ... all of the candidates ... have put themselves clearly on the record for sharply liberalizing immigration, and none appears to be willing to say anything with any specificity about one question: Should there be any limit on who gets to come to the United States? Is there room enough, are there jobs enough, is there health care funding enough, to accommodate everyone? Right now, it seems clear that if either of the last two Democratic presidents had shown up Thursday night and advocated their positions from five or 20 years ago—the ones that helped them win a general election—they would have been booed off their own party's stage.

There's such a narrow corridor for Democrats -- Barack Obama found it, but many Democrats are declared to be too wishy-washy centrist or too radically McGovernesque. The rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates is rarely parsed this way -- for instance, Are they going too far with that talk about no abortion, even for victims of rape or incest? The media doesn't call GOP tax cuts for the rich budget-busting "free stuff."

If, say, Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris is the Democrats' 2020 nominee, it will be said that pledges made in these debates will haunt the general election campaign. But why can't they get away with having a few ideas that the public might believe are a bit much? Donald Trump horrified most of America with the things he said in 2016, and he won the presidency. But oh, right -- his opponent was unusually unpopular. Well, he's unusually unpopular now. Why doesn't the Democrat have some leeway to say risky things?

Trump got the benefit of the doubt because he was part of what the entire political world considers the Normal Party, the party of regular Americans -- surely he couldn't be too extreme. Democrats are still regarded as the Freak Party -- if they venture out of the bland center, chaos could ensue. At the national level, only Barack Obama in this century has found a way to beat this whammy. Even bland left-centrists -- Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry -- couldn't, because we were told they were beyond the pale.

It's hard out here for a Democrat.

PHONY TULSIMANIA: WHAT'S THE INTENDED RESULT?

Tulsi Gabbard's numbers in Democratic presidential polls are very low, but trolls made her the winner in unscientific online polling after last night's debate:

Users from pro-Trump communities on 4chan and Reddit implored fellow members to vote for lower-polling candidates in online polls, specifically Tulsi Gabbard and Bill de Blasio, in the hours after Wednesday’s Democratic debate....

Users on 4chan’s anonymous far-right /pol/message board repeatedly posted links to polls across the web, encouraging one another to “blow the polls out” for Gabbard....

The posts pointed users toward polls on national news websites like the Drudge Report, The Washington Examiner, and Heavy.com, but also polls from local news providers like NJ.com, which posts from several newspapers in the state.

Simultaneously, certain right-wingers seem to be expressing genuine admiration for Gabbard:

More than any other Democratic candidate, Gabbard has developed a favorable presence in the right-wing media. She’s made appearances from time to time on Fox News shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight, and her unorthodox candidacy has attracted praise from those farther to the right as well....

Breitbart News devoted a lot of its debate coverage to Gabbard, writing several articles about her. Breitbart writer Joel Pollak livestreamed his exchange with Gabbard in the spin room after the debate, the only candidate who got that treatment....

She’s been on Trump world’s radar for years. Former Breitbart News chair and Trump official Steve Bannon reportedly brokered a meeting between Gabbard and then-president elect Donald Trump after the 2016 election, and recent leaked documents showed that the Trump transition team had vetted her for an administration position.

Mike Cernovich, the “new right” social media personality, tweeted Wednesday night about the increase in Google searches for Gabbard, writing, “Tulsi Gabbard was breakthrough star of the night.”

And as NBC noted back in February, Gabbard has fans overseas, too, especially in one country in particular:

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii ... has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016....

Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line....

The coverage devoted to Gabbard, both in news and commentary, exceeds that afforded to any of the declared or rumored Democratic candidates despite Gabbard's lack of voter recognition.

But what's the plan here? Gabbard's more controversial views (e.g., her support for the Assad regime in Syria) are rejected by the vast majority of Democrats, but she's not doing a very good job of trolling the race, if that's what she's in it for. Mostly she's just being ignored. After this flurry of stories about her specious poll wins, she'll probably go right back to being ignored again.

Are Coulter, Breitbart, Cernovich, and others trying to persuade her that there'd be support for her if she ran third-party? Are they trying to create a sense that she's exciting and newsworthy, in the hope that she'll do that and pull anti-Trump votes away from the Democrats?

If so, I seriously question the strategy. I've been angry at Ralph Nader's voters since 2000, and at Jill Stein's since 2016, but I've started to believe that the too-cool-for-the-Democrats bloc is fixed in size -- obviously some of these people will stay in the fold if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, but many of them simply won't, and there's no persuading them. They don't need a particularly exciting candidate in order to reject the Democrats -- they're just itching to do that, and they'll pick anyone who's on the ballot in order to feel that delicious sense of purist superiority. Or if there's no one on the ballot to their liking, they'll just write in Bernie, or Donald Duck, or themselves.

So if this is a right-wing/Russian ratfuck, I don't see it accomplishing very much. Hey, trolls, go for it. Waste your time trying to make Tulsi Gabbard a thing.

ON THE CITIZENSHIP QUESTION, THE DAMAGE IS ALREADY DONE

A small, perhaps only temporary victory at the Supreme Court today:

The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt an unexpected blow to the Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, ruling that official explanations for the move were implausible and legally inadequate.

In a surprising decision, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s liberals on that point. The high court returned the case to lower courts for further action, raising doubts about the administration getting the go-ahead to add the question before upcoming deadlines to finalize the census questionnaire....

Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that the administration’s rationale appeared to be “contrived“ and suggested that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross presented a misleading reason for adding the question when he said it had been requested by Justice Department officials to protect the rights of minority voters.

Slate's Richard Hasen believes that the Trump administration could simply get a do-over -- in effect saying, "Oh, those blatantly dishonest reasons we gave you for putting the question in the Census weren't our real reasons. Here are the real reasons" -- and get a ruling in its favor from the Court in time to print the forms.

But even if that doesn't happen, I'm not sure it matters. The administration has made clear to non-citizens -- and to citizens who could be mistaken for non-citizens -- that it's gunning for them. It's also clear that the administration wants to strengthen the voting power of whites no matter what.

Keep in mind, even if the citizenship question isn't asked, the Census Bureau has committed to releasing citizenship data, created by matching individuals' responses to administrative data. States could still then draw districts out of equalizing citizen-voting age population

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) June 27, 2019

Yes, states will probably be permitted to draw districts based on numbers of citizens rather than residents -- but in addition, residents who would have been targeted by the citizenship question are probably still afraid to participate in the census, despite this ruling.

So the GOP doesn't really need the citizenship question anymore. Large numbers of residents are already deterred from participating, which was the point of the question.

****

Today's other major ruling is unambiguously bad:

In a 5-4 decision along traditional conservative-liberal ideological lines, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is a political question — not reviewable by federal courts — and that those courts can't judge if extreme gerrymandering violates the Constitution.

The ruling puts the onus on the legislative branch, and on individual states, to police redistricting efforts....

"The Supreme Court's decision has made one thing clear: The only way we'll end partisan gerrymandering is by voting Republicans out of power in state legislatures," said Jessica Post, executive director the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which focuses on helping Democrats win statehouse races.

But the problem is self-perpetuating: In states where Republicans have legislative districts gerrymandered, even significant Democratic majorities in statewide voting are frequently not enough to flip control of the legislatures. How big do the Democratic blowouts have to be in order to undo the rigging?

So: an awful ruling and a ruling that just barely crosses into not-awful territory.

DOES ELIZABETH WARREN HAVE A PLAN FOR TAKING ON THE "LIBERAL MEDIA"?

Democrats had their first presidential debate last night, and the message in much of the "liberal media" coverage is Holy crap, are these candidates left-wing!

Here are Vera Bergengruen and Philip Elliott in Time:

That sound you heard in Miami on Wednesday evening? El partido demócrata dando un fuerte giro a la izquierda. The screech of a Democratic Party swerving hard to the left.

Here's Dan Balz in The Washington Post:

On a range of issues, including immigration, climate change, health care, the economy and more, the Democratic candidates were unabashed in their enthusiasm for more government activism....

And here's the lead New York Times story, from Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns (headline in the print edition: "Democrats Split on How Far Left to Nudge Nation").

The strength of the party’s progressive wing was on vivid display in South Florida, starting in the first minutes of the debate when Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts branded the federal government as thoroughly corrupt....

Joining Ms. Warren in driving hard from the left were two lesser known candidates — Julián Castro, the former housing secretary, and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York — who sought to jump-start their campaigns by confronting rivals who hesitated to match their progressive demands on immigration, health care and national security policy.

The debate ... underscored just how sharply Democrats have veered in a liberal direction since Mr. Trump’s election.

Deep in their story, Martin and Burns isolate what they believe was a key moment:

Ms. Warren’s repeated denunciations of economic elites and Washington’s governing class won repeated ovations. But her unabashed willingness to terminate private health care, a question she had evaded in the past, alarmed some members of her own party who fear that embracing a single-payer system would hand Republicans a political weapon in a country where nearly 60 percent of people are on private plans.

Two commentators, both putatively liberal, have all but concluded that if Warren wins the nomination, she sealed her general-election doom in that moment. First, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait cites polling that shows most Americans don't want Medicare for All if it means the elimination of private insurance:

Warren might think she can talk the public into it, but the other side gets a chance to talk too, and the history of using the bully pulpit to move public opinion is short and discouraging.

... Warren ventured boldly, perhaps foolishly, onto a shaky limb. She may have just filmed the most effective attack ad against herself.

And then there's Jeff Greenfield in Politico, who notes that elimination of private insurance was denounced by fellow candidate John Delaney on the debate stage as dangerous for the health of hospitals:

This raises the specter of a serious threat, should Warren or Sanders emerge as the nominee. You can call it the “your own man says so!” rule, named after schoolyard ballgame disputes, where the acknowledgment by a member of one team that his or her teammate was out settles the argument.

... a year from now—an eternity in campaign time, but not too long to keep the issue warm in a big oppo file—it wouldn't be hard at all for Donald Trump, on Twitter and in ads and on a debate stage, to point out that a member of Warren's own party, sharing the same stage, implied that her health care ideas would be dangerous for America....

Republicans have spent most of the last hundred years leveling Democratic social programs as “socialist” or “dangerous." As a general proposition, those attacks have fallen on barren ground. But in suggesting that a major plank of two potential nominees could wreak havoc on the system, John Delaney may have left ticking time bomb on his party’s hopes for the White House.

Elizabeth Warren has plans. She can explain in detail how she wants to take on the powerful in the interests of ordinary people.

But what's her plan for taking on the media? The press is highly critical of Donald Trump, but the right-wing caricature of mainstream journalism as radically left-wing is preposterous. The press wants the next president to be a centrist -- culturally tolerant, maybe, but hardly a boat-rocker in any other area. The "liberal media" doesn't want someone like Elizabeth Warren to win. What's her plan if she gets the nomination and the press -- as I feel is inevitable -- routinely denounces her? Democratic voters trust mainstream news outlets. What's Warren's plan when those outlets set out to sanbdbag her campaign?

RESPONSE TO BRIAN BEUTLER

Brian Beutler, advocating for impeachment again:

Losing an election, even by a landslide, carries none of the stink that removal from office would, or even that impeachment without removal does. Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed, and it contributed to a widespread desire to change partisan control of the White House in 2000 and eventually to a mass cultural rethinking of Clinton’s qualities as a man and a president. George Herbert Walker Bush lost his re-election campaign to Clinton and our public institutions canonized him. News channels ran live footage of his casket traveling by train to its final resting place in College Station, TX.

Well, news channels might well run live footage of Clinton's casket as well, when the day comes.

Bush lost badly, but Clinton won far less than 50% of the vote, so that contest didn't seem like the classic one-on-one drubbing we generally describe as "losing an election by a landslide." I'd compare the "stink" of Clinton's impeachment to the "stink" of Jimmy Carter's loss in 1980. Carter was humiliated. On the right, he's still regarded as a pariah. It's only a post-presidential career as a living saint that's removed that stink.

(Yes, that was a three-way race, too, but Reagan cleared 50% and won a massive number of electoral votes.)

I'd be delighted to have Donald Trump lose a 1980-size landslide. But that won't happen. No Republican will ever lose that badly. There are too many tiny states with three electoral votes each that will never vote for a Democrat.

And so I'd like to see an impeachment, because it seems like the only way to end Trump's career in a manner befitting him. But a landslide drubbing, if it could happen, would be just as good.

TRUMP IS SO FULL OF GRIEVANCES THAT HE HAS TO TWEET THEM IN NESTED FORM

If you were wondering whether the president of the United States has grown on the job, let me point out that he has now learned how to post multiple connected tweets in thread form -- hey, it's not negotiating a Middle East peace plan, but it's something. This morning, at a time when most normal presidents would actually be working, he delivered this multi-tweet rant, correctly threaded:

Women’s soccer player, @mPinoe, just stated that she is “not going to the F...ing White House if we win.” Other than the NBA, which now refuses to call owners, owners (please explain that I just got Criminal Justice Reform passed, Black unemployment is at the lowest level...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2019

....in our Country’s history, and the poverty index is also best number EVER), leagues and teams love coming to the White House. I am a big fan of the American Team, and Women’s Soccer, but Megan should WIN first before she TALKS! Finish the job! We haven’t yet....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2019

....invited Megan or the team, but I am now inviting the TEAM, win or lose. Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team. Be proud of the Flag that you wear. The USA is doing GREAT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2019

The tweets refer, of course, to soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who told an interviewer yesterday that she doesn't plan to go to the White House after the Women's World Cup is over:

“I’m not going to the fucking White House.” - @mPinoe pic.twitter.com/sz1ADG2WdT

— Eight by Eight (@8by8mag) June 25, 2019

Many people who read Trump's thread had this reaction:

He thinks she’s black, I guess? Nobody tell him.

— Mass for Shut-ins (podcast) (@gin_and_tacos) June 26, 2019

I don't think Trump believes Rapinoe is black. It's just that his collected grievances are coming at him so thick and fast that he has to nest them in a complicated sentence that includes a parenthetical passage running across two tweets, because it's the only way he can get all of them in.

Rapinoe dismissed the possibility of a White House visit. This angers Trump, and reminds him of his anger when Danny Green of the NBA champion Toronto Raptors rejected a White House invitation. That leads Trump to another grievance, namely this:

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA will look to move away from the use of the term "owner" to describe those with controlling interest of teams in favor of terms like "Governor of the team," "alternate Governor," or even "Chairman."

... the change was made due to concerns that the term "owner" can be viewed as racially insensitive in a league where the vast majority of players are African American and the majority of those with ownership stakes are Caucasian.

We can be fairly certain that Trump is aware of this story because last night Tucker Carlson brought on a black Fox commentator, Lawrence Jones, to discuss it. Jones called the move -- let's all say it together, kids! -- "political correctness gone wild."

And that leads Trump to another grievance: his low standing in the polls among African-Americans. After all he's done for them! Criminal justice reform! A booming economy! (Never mind that the trend lines are a continuation of Obama's.)

And then, coming out of the parentheses, we have "leagues and teams love coming to the White House" -- which is Trumpspeak for "Pay no attention to the stories saying that many champions don't want to come to the White House! It's all just fake news and totally not a documented fact."

Wow, that's a lot of grievances, and there they all are, in one big-ass sentence. Who says Trump's mind isn't sharp as it used to be? Our president still remembers what's truly important.

WAKE ME WHEN THE NRA IS REALLY DEAD

I'd like to feel triumphant about this:

The National Rifle Association has shut down production at NRATV.

The N.R.A. on Tuesday also severed all business with its estranged advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, which operates NRATV, the N.R.A.’s live broadcasting media arm, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

While NRATV may continue to air past content, its live broadcasting will end and its on-air personalities — Ackerman employees including Dana Loesch — will no longer be the public faces of the N.R.A....

The development is the latest in what has been a tumultuous year for the N.R.A. It has struggled to right its finances; faced investigations in Congress and by Letitia James, the New York attorney general; and witnessed a leadership struggle that pitted Oliver North, the N.R.A.’s former president, against Mr. LaPierre. Last week, The Times reported that the N.R.A. had suspended Christopher W. Cox, its longtime second-in-command, after a legal filing by the N.R.A. implicated him in a failed plot to oust Mr. LaPierre.

However, it reminds me of this:



Like Murdoch, the NRA will find a way to survive. As the Times story notes, NRATV wasn't a critical part of the NRA operation:

The site’s web traffic was minuscule, with 49,000 unique visitors in January, according to a report provided by Comscore.

The videos that went viral did so on the left, where we were horrified by them.

After all the massacres and inflammatory NRA rhetoric in recent years, the group is still seen favorably by a majority of Americans, according to Gallup -- 53% in a 2018 poll, with 42% viewing the group unfavorably. Being pro-NRA has little to do with guns -- it's a way of saying, "I'm not a politically correct Eastern coastal elitist. I go to church and listen to country music." (And yes, also: "I'm white, and I live in a mostly white community and think that's what all of America should look like.") The desire to sign on to that tribal message isn't going away anytime soon.

The NRA becomes more popular among Republicans every year, even as (or perhaps I should say because) it becomes less popular every year among Democrats. In that 2018 poll, 88% of Republicans regard the NRA favorably -- but although its popularity has declined on the other side, 24% of Democrats still see the group favorably.

The 2020 Democratic candidates will make a lot of folks believe they need to renew their NRA memberships -- and if a Democrat wins the presidency, membership will skyrocket again. So let's hold off on the wake for the NRA. It's not dead yet.

And as for Dana Loesch, I'm sure she'll land on her feet. She's telegenic and an excellent demagogue. Some right-wing media outlet will give her a high-profile job soon -- and if not, there are always openings in the Trump administration.

IT'S OKAY IF YOU'RE A WHITE GUY WITH A GUN

Eric Boehlert writes about Republican members of the Oregon senate, who fled the state last week to prevent majority Democrats from having the quorum they need to pass a cap-and-trade bill. The Republicans' departure has been accompanied by threats of violence:

The story took a dangerous and ominous turn when far-right militia groups let it be known that they would be protecting the Republican lawmakers. "We have vowed to provide security, transportation and refuge for those Senators in need,” the Oregon Three Percenters wrote in a Facebook post. “We will stand together with unwavering resolve, doing whatever it takes to keep these Senators safe." One Oregon militia source told The Daily Beast that their members were “willing to put their own lives in front of these senators’ lives.” The source noted that the militias would defend the Republicans “at any cost.”

... The open militia threats in Oregon came as one Republican state senator, Brian Boquist, made an explicit promise of violence if Republicans were forced by law enforcement to return and vote. "This is what I told the superintendent,” Boquist said, referring to Oregon State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton. “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple."

And yet this isn't national news.

The New York Times ran an article on June 20 about the "tumult" surrounding Oregon Republicans who fled to Idaho, but only posted a one-paragraph update to the piece when fringe militia groups, according to the Oregon State Police and its superintendent, threatened “the safety of legislators, staff and citizen visitors" to the statehouse....

In an online CNN report, the fact that militia threats against Democrats closed down the statehouse wasn't mentioned until the ninth paragraph....

Between June 17 and June 24, there were fewer than 60 mentions of the story on cable news, according to the monitoring site TVeyes.com. As for Oregon stories that included a mention of "militia," there were fewer than 10 cable news reports.

Boehlert is right about this:

To flip the script, if Black Lives Matter activists of color had forced a state capitol to shut down because of reported threats of violence against Republican legislators, do you think that would be covered as Very Big News for days on end, with virtually every elected Democrat being forced to answer for the activists' radical behavior? The answer, of course, is yes.

Unsurprisingly, he believes there's a double standard because the media persists in the belief that Republicans are basically fine people:

The press clings to its preferred narrative about how the GOP is filled with honest brokers who are waiting to work in good faith with Democrats.

But I think it's also because the mainstream media believes heartland white men are genuine and elemental and are the real Americans, in contrast to the racially diverse and in many cases culturally sophisticated urbanites and suburbanites associated with the Democratic Party. The election of Donald Trump persuaded the press that burly men in rural diners are the font of all American wisdom, but it's an idea that's been reflected in mainstream media coverage of our political and culture wars ever since Republicans began "working the refs" by accusing the media of liberal bias. The press has believed for years that it neglects the people who used to be called NASCAR voters, so it has overcompensated by romanticizing those voters, though never more so than in the period since November 2016.

Threats of violence from non-whites are regarded as scary and menacing by the media, liberal or non-liberal. But rural whites are seen as Real Men and Real Americans; when they threaten violence, they're just getting back to their frontier roots. So of course these Oregon right-wingers are getting away with it.

RIGHT-WINGER ARE MORE CONVINCED THAT BIDEN IS A WINNER THAN I AM (updated)

How concerned is the right about Joe Biden's electoral chances? Concerned enough to run an ad against him more than a year before the general election:

Club for Growth, a conservative political group, will launch new attack ads against Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden targeting his past statements about race that will run during his first debate appearance next week.

The decision by Club for Growth to attack Biden is based on internal polling the organization conducted that was viewed exclusively by Reuters. The ad will air on MSNBC and NBC stations in Des Moines, Iowa, according to the organization....

Club for Growth’s poll found voters are less inclined to vote for Biden if they were told he previously had taken positions that include opposing slavery reparations and busing of school children as part of desegregation systems.

You can look at the poll results here. The ad hasn't been released, but the messages deemed "most effective" on race, according to the poll, are the following:

Joe Biden opposes reparations for slavery, saying “I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”

Joe Biden has a troubled history of race relations. Biden even sided with southern leaders to oppose busing, a key
step to desegregating public schools, and ridiculed the idea that in order to learn, “your child with curly black
hair, brown eyes, and dark skin...needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.”

There are also messages that are presumably being saved for later, such as:

Joe Biden is anti-woman. As recently as 2015, Joe Biden said that “life begins at conception” and he even said that a woman should not have “sole right to say what should happen to her body.” Biden voted to allow states to
overturn Roe v. Wade and repeatedly voted to restrict federal employees’ access to reproductive care.

Joe Biden said gay people working for the federal government were “security risks” and Biden voted to ban same-sex marriage and ban gay Americans from joining or serving in the United States military.

Club for Growth wants to knock Biden out of the race early, on the assumption, presumably, that he's the hardest Democrat to beat. (I worry that Michelle Goldberg is right -- he's not a strong speaker and he's running an uninspiring campaign, which is not what we need against Trump.) But Biden does seem to have some Teflon, as Politico notes:

Biden remains the front-runner in national polls and in the four early states. And according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll taken several days after his comments about the racist lawmakers made headlines, his most recent flap isn’t hurting his chances in a significant way.

After hearing about Biden’s comments on working with multiple segregationists, 41 percent of likely primary voters said it would make no difference to them and 29 percent said they would be more likely to vote for him. Just 18 percent said they would be less likely to vote for him. The numbers were about the same for black voters: 30 percent said they would be more likely to vote for Biden, 20 percent said less likely and 27 percent said it made no difference.

I think Biden voters, like Trump voters, reject the process of trying to disqualify a candidate for words or deeds that go over certain lines. I'm sure they see it as "political correctness." Republicans didn't care if Trump said or did terrible things because they were sure he was going to be a mean sonofabitch on their behalf. Older Democrats (of all races) don't care about Biden's past positions or more recent gaffes because they think he's basically good-hearted. (In terms of decency, the parties want opposite things.)

I think Biden could beat Trump, but I think he could simultaneously weaken the Democrats' hold on the next generation of voters. I don't know what happens after that -- the young gravitate toward splinter parties? A genuine socialist party and maybe a white nationalist/Jordan Peterson party?

I'll back Biden if he survives the primaries, but I'd rather have another nominee, even if the Club for Growth is part of the reason he loses the nomination.

****

UPDATE: Here's the ad.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR, DONNIE

From The Hill this evening:

EXCLUSIVE: Trump vehemently denies E. Jean Carroll allegation, says 'she's not my type'

President Trump said Monday that writer E. Jean Carroll was “totally lying” when she recently accused him of raping her during an encounter in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

In an exclusive interview with The Hill, the president vehemently denied the allegations just hours after Carroll detailed the alleged incident during a cable news interview.

“I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” the president said while seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Why does that sound familiar? Oh, yes, I remember this from March of last year:

President Trump Griping to Friends That Stormy Daniels Is 'Not My Type': Report

President Trump has reportedly told his friends that adult film star Stormy Daniels just doesn't do it for him.

"The president even has griped to several people that Daniels is not the type of woman he finds attractive," The Washington Post reported Monday.

... And, of course, there was this in October 2016:

Donald Trump on Friday called himself a "victim" as more women continued to come forward on Friday accusing him of sexual assault and harassment....

Trump also attacked the women who have accused him of inappropriate behavior, calling Jessica Leeds, the woman who accused him of groping her on a plane in the early 1980s, a "horrible woman," apparently suggesting she was not attractive enough for him to grope.

"When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, 'I don't think so! I don't think so!'" Trump said.

Trump never changes.

****

ALSO:

Here's Trump in October 2016 saying a woman who accused him of sexual assault is too ugly for him. 63 million Americans voted for him days later. pic.twitter.com/eQtqh2xBng

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 25, 2019

SO WHY WASN'T THE E. JEAN CARROLL STORY COVERED WIDELY THIS WEEKEND? (updated)

in a New York magazine story published online Friday, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll told us that she'd been raped by Donald Trump in the mid-1990s. The story was widely ignored by major media outlets:

As Columbia Journalism Review's Jon Allsop writes, after the allegation was published, neither The New York Times, nor the Wall Street Journal, nor the Los Angeles Times, nor the Chicago Tribune put the story on its front page the following day. Among major papers, only the Washington Post did so, but in a small item below the fold. The New York Times did run a story on the same day — but in the Books section, and never featured it on its website homepage.

There was a similar pattern in TV coverage. Some liberal cable news hosts ran items on it, and CNN had Carroll on its "New Day" morning show on Monday, but the big five Sunday talk shows almost totally ignored it — not bringing the subject up to any of their marquee guests, including Vice President Mike Pence.

Here are some folks who argue -- plausibly, I think -- that the story was kept off the Sunday shows and the front pages for very petty reasons:

I wonder if part of this is the fact that E. Jean Carroll told her own story, in her own words, instead of having it reported and written about by a journalist? NYMag fact-checked it, but my sense is that many journalists trust other journalists as gate-keepers. https://t.co/udzVTPMv38

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) June 24, 2019

I think that’s a huge part of it

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 24, 2019

Really? More likely reason, I suspect, is that it was a NY exclusive. Editors are petty that way. I'll bet that everyone believes it but everyone also thinks it will have no impact. And they're right. That's the real tragedy.

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) June 24, 2019

I'm reminded of something Josh Marshall wrote last week, after The New York Times published a lengthy but not at all groundbreaking story about the curious connection between Jerry Falwell Jr., his wife, and a former pool boy whom the couple befriended and then set up in business. The Times published the piece long after other outlets got to the story.

It’s a classic Timesian piece, the kind fellow journalists often grind their teeth over. The Times comes in late, largely with other people’s reporting and makes the whole thing official with [a] splash of Times holy water.

I think that's what the Times, at least, might be planning to do with the story -- a week or two or maybe a month or two from now, the paper will re-report it. Reporters who covered the Harvey Weinstein beat will probably be involved. As far as the Times is concerned, only then will it be a real story.

Or maybe not. I suspect that many media outlets regard Trump's sexual predation as a story that's already been aired and litigated -- charges against Trump were publicized in 2016, but he won the election, so any subsequent story seems like double jeopardy to many editors. We're talking about rape, and yet editors think they should defer to (a minority of) voters when deciding whether to take allegations seriously.

Also, the media is still disproportionately male. The Carroll allegations probably don't seem particularly important to many editors. Though I should add a #NotAllMen footnote here: The one major outlet that gave the story any kind of front-page coverage is the one edited by Marty Barron, the man who oversaw the unmasking of widespread Catholic Church sexual abuse when he was at The Boston Globe.

We may see a second wave of articles after other outlets have had a chance to sprinkle this story with their "holy water." Or the allegations might be memory-holed, because they seem prurient and trivial rather than horrific to many editors, and because no sexual assault allegation ever sticks to Trump.

****

UPDATE, THURSDAY: Well, here's the Times holy water: an exclusive interview with the two women who have corroborated Carroll's story. The interview is conducted by Megan Twohey, from the Times team that won a Pulitzer for the paper's Harvey Weinstein coverage.

TRUMP-HALEY 2020? NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, OBVIOUSLY.

Andrew Stein, the allegedly-still-Democratic former Manhattan borough president and onetime Ann Coulter main squeeze who's also a convicted tax evader, has an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today arguing that President Trump should dump his running mate.

I’m proud to have founded the Democrats for Trump movement in 2016. President Trump’s pro-growth policies have revived the stagnating U.S. economy, and he deserves a second term. But to have the best chance of re-election, he should replace Vice President Mike Pence on the ticket with Nikki Haley.

... [Pence has] given Mr. Trump all the help he can. He inspired his fellow evangelical Christians to take a chance in 2016. But in 2020 they’ll already be repelled by the Democrats’ embrace of infanticide. Mr. Trump’s greater obstacle to re-election comes from politically moderate suburban women, many of whom see him as divisive.

... Nikki Haley on the ticket could tamp down the antipathy for Mr. Trump that seems to afflict so many moderate and Republican-leaning women. President Trump needs the prospect of a Vice President Haley to help recapture the White House.

This would probably work -- the mainstream media isn't wild about Pence, but it seems likely to embrace Haley. (Here's the ed board of The New York Times telling us, at the time of her resignation as UN ambassador, that "Nikki Haley Will Be Missed"; here's a Haley puff piece in Vogue.)

But it won't happen, and not just because presidents don't dump their vice presidents anymore. (The last to do it was Gerald Ford, whose VP was Nelson Rockefeller but who ran in 1976 with Bob Dole. The last to dump a VP who'd previously been on the ticket was FDR, who did it twice.) It's clear that Trump doesn't respect norms and has no problems with personnel chaos; he'd dump Pence if he wanted to.

But he doesn't want to. For all that he's done to please right-wing evangelicals, Trump clearly feels insecure about their support. Even though they'd pick him over any other candidate because the Democrat will be pro-choice and pro-LGBT, he still thinks he's vulnerable. And why would he want Pence gone? Pence couldn't be more servile.

And Haley, although she calls herself a Methodist now, was raised Sikh by her Indian-born parents. (She was born in South Carolina.) This doesn't always go over well.

Yes, raised Sikh by my parents and very proud of it.

— Archive: Ambassador Nikki Haley (@AmbNikkiHaley) May 20, 2018

She's also been chastised by Breitbart for saying nice things about immigrants:

“Immigrants are the fabric of America,” the former governor of South Carolina said on the May 5 Ben Shapiro podcast, effectively dismissing Americans and their children. She continued:

It’s what makes us great. We need as many immigrants as we can. We need the skills, we need the talent, we need the culture. We need all of that.

Haley did not try to explain why roughly 215 million adult Americans and their 65 million children need legal immigrants or temporary migrants, including the roughly 500,000 Indian visa workers who have taken white-collar jobs from Americans, often after getting workplace training from the Americans they replaced.

Trump also says nice things about legal immigrants sometimes, but he's white and of Northern European extraction. Haley isn't. She'd win moderate voters, but alienate Trump's base, especially the overt racists. She might be a net plus for him, but he'd never make the move.

HOW ARE RIGHT-WINGERS LYING TO US THIS WEEKEND?

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeted this yesterday:

Louis Farrakhan calls Hitler a "great man" and says Jewish people are "satanic."

But Cory Booker talks about him like he's a saint.

He even says he'd meet with him.

Will Democrat leaders ever stand up to anti-Semitism?pic.twitter.com/XkqYd3kTwf

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) June 22, 2019

In this clip, does Booker really talk about Farrakhan "like he's a saint"? No, and Ronna Romney McDaniel knows that. She assumes that even though the clip is only 48 seconds long, her intended audience is so primed to hate all Democrats that they'll never click on it -- they'll simply accept her characterization.

Here's what Booker says when asked whether he'd have be willing to have an "audience" with Farrakhan:

You know, I have met-- I live in Newark, so we have famous Mosque 25, we have Nation of Islam there. As mayor I met with lots of folks. I've heard Minister Farrakhan's speeches for a lot of my life, so I don't feel like I need to do that, but I'm not one of these people that says I wouldn't sit down with anybody to hear what they have to say. But I live on a neighborhood where I'm getting guys on the streets offering and selling his works. I'm very familiar with Minister Louis Farrakhan and his beliefs and his [inaudible].

In Booker's position, I wouldn't meet with Farrakhan at all. Farrakhan is a hatemonger. But the characterization of Booker in this tweet is wrong. He's not praising Farrakhan in any way. He's saying that Farrakhan is a man of some influence (which he is), that he doesn't feel any need to meet with him, but also that he doesn't like to categorically reject meeting with people.

Ronna Romney McDaniel has the opportunity to call Booker on hypocrisy -- he chastised Joe Biden after Biden patted himself on the back for working well with segregationist senators -- but she doesn't even bring up the hypocrisy angle, because Booker is talking about a black, anti-Semitic hatemonger. In the GOP ranking system, anti-Semites score much higher on the hate scale than those who hate black people. But the bottom line is that Booker never talks about Farrakhan "like he's a saint."

****

Now we move on to Jim Hoft's brother Joe at Gateway Pundit:

VIDEO: Democrat Leaders Pelosi and Schumer Caught on Camera Doing Victory Dance After They Thought They Goaded Trump into War with Iran!

... On Friday before President Trump decided not to drop bombs on Iran for knocking down a US drone, the President met with Congressional leaders in the White House to discuss the situation.

After the meeting, Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer from New York and Democrat Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, could be seen cheering outside the White House. As they approached their cars, Schumer raised his hands in victory and Pelosi was smiling and cheering on Schumer....

Well now we know why Chuck and Nancy were celebrating last night. They thought the Deep State had goaded Trump into war, exactly as they planned with their FF. Trump outsmarts them again! #WRWY #GreatAwakening #WWG1WGA #Qanon #MAGA #MEGA #WeThePeople pic.twitter.com/njd1OmOlIu

— FmrBetoBro (@FmrBBronie) June 21, 2019

The Democrat leaders clearly wanted President Trump to make a wrong move so they could criticize him endlessly for getting America into another bloody war. They don’t care about protecting the US, standing for justice or protecting innocent lives.

It is clear that the Democrats are not about protection of human lives or what is best for the USA. These leaders seek power. What wicked people.

Is that really why Schumer was exultant? No. A Washington Post reporter explains what was really going on:

Schumer was telling Pelosi he was overjoyed because his mother had just been released from the hospital and is OK. Pelosi had asked how his mother, who had been rushed to the ER, was doing. https://t.co/X3BxJOqzuH

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) June 20, 2019

They just lie and lie and lie.

E. JEAN CARROLL'S REVELATION WAS AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY, BUT NOT FOR THE REASON SHE EXPECTED

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll claims she was raped by Donald Trump in the dressing room of a Manhattan department story in the 1990s, when she was in her early fifties and he was approximately fifty. She's now revealing the rape in a New York magazine excerpt from her new book, but she says she never previously reported it for several reasons: fear of Trump's lawyers at the time, and, more recently, her recognition that many other women had accused Trump of attacks, only to be met with his denials. Also:

I run the risk of making him more popular by revealing what he did.

His admirers can’t get enough of hearing that he’s rich enough, lusty enough, and powerful enough to be sued by and to pay off every splashy porn star or Playboy Playmate who “comes forward,” so I can’t imagine how ecstatic the poor saps will be to hear their favorite Walking Phallus got it on with an old lady in the world’s most prestigious department store.

But they don't believe it happened, and that's their measure of how impressive a Walking Phallus he is. They don't believe he's a sexual ubermensch who had his way with E. Jean Carroll. They believe that because he's a sexual ubermensch, he wouldn't (as they see it) stoop to her level.

At Free Republic, a commenter posts a photo of Carroll from a couple of years ago, when she was seventy-three. At the time she was dying her hair a bright orange:



And so the sniggering begins -- and I warn you, this gets nasty:

Anybody who would jump her, even when she was 30 years younger and presumably better looking, would have to have some serious issues (and not be getting any, which pretty much rules out the young Donald Trump).

After looking at that picture again, I may have to start drinking even earlier than usual. Ugh.

****

No Way. In her dreams maybe. She looks like a geriatric Raggedy Ann. Trick or Treat.

****

Yeah. Someone needs to post a Melania pic. STAT. Eye bleach.

****

trump should claim she was begging him for sex...

****

That’s a man, baby!

****

Actually, to be accurate, Raggedy ANDY.

****

I’m pretty sure President Trump has better taste in women than that. ROTFL. More lies from a lefty.

There's more of this at Townhall:

Well, Ms. Carroll, we're all sorry for you that your wild fantasies of our president could never be a reality for you. Seems like you had the hots for him, like another horse face we know.

****

another dired up useless cumdumpster trying to sell a narcissistic book that no one will ever read. Go away ugly cow, your day in the sunshine has passed. We aren't buying your decades old lies to sell a book.

****

Now lets think about this for a moment. Take a look at Melenia, then look at E. Jean Coatrack. Even on a bad day Trump had more taste than to go into a dressing room in a major NY Department Store, find a woman he doesn't know, allow her' to engage him about buying lingerie, ensures that he follows her to the dressing room, allegedly assaults her, then causally walk away? Then she doesn't tell anyone (other then a couple of gal pals), no noise, no clamor, no scandal - in NYC? So, in the end of the day, was she at the same party that Ballsy Ford went to, or did she mentor Jussie Smollet to grow up to be the liar he is?

That's the other argument made by the commenters: Evil libs lie all the time -- Christine Blasey Ford is invoked repeatedly as a proven liar -- and this just is just more of the same. (Trump is the real victim here!)

Gosh, I can't imagine why more women don't report sexual assaults, especially against powerful, admired men.

DID TRUMP GIN UP A NEAR-WAR BECAUSE HE COULDN'T BEAR CEDING THE NEWS CYCLE TO DEMOCRATS?

The Trump administration, I assume, sent a drone into, or awfully close to, Iranian airspace, in the hope of ... what? Giving the administration an excuse to start a war? But the president passed on an opportunity to launch retaliatory strikes, claiming he learned at the last minute that the attack would kill 150 civilians.

Why did this happen now?

I keep thinking about a Politico story I quoted earlier this week:

Donald Trump wants his Democratic competitors for the White House to introduce themselves to the American public next week on his terms.

Ahead of the first two Democratic presidential primary debates next Wednesday and Thursday, the president and his political team are angling to dominate the news cycle with carefully released tidbits meant to keep the public hooked on the machinations of the commander in chief....

Just as Trump has dictated so much of the political narrative over the last four years, the president’s team is hoping the two Democratic debates simply morph into liberal candidates reacting to the president instead of putting forward their own visions for the country, policy proposals or personal stories.

Is that the explanation for the Iran saber-rattling? Also, is that the explanation for why this is about to happen now?

President Trump has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct a mass roundup of migrant families that have received deportation orders, an operation that is likely to begin with predawn raids in major U.S. cities on Sunday, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans.

The “family op,” as it is referred to at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to target up to 2,000 families in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and other major immigration destinations....

Trump hated the Iran nuclear agreement, and he began promising to round up undocumented immigrants during the 2016 campaign, so these developments were inevitable. But the timing seems suspicious. Trump can't stand giving up the spotlight. I qwonder what else he has planned for the next few days.

(It's also possible that all this was meant to distract from advice columninst E. Jean Carroll's bombshell claim that Trump raped her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s, which was published today, and which Trump undoubtedly knew was imminent. Or it could be happening for both reasons.)

A prediction about the Iran attack: Trump will eventually say he's surprised that Democrats aren't praising him for aborting it. Recall what he's said about firing James Comey:

... everybody wanted him fired, all the Democrats. I mean, virtually everybody, the Democrats thought he was horrible. The Republicans thought he was horrible.

And I said, you know, this is going to be wonderful. I’m going to fire this guy. When he gets fired, I think it would be popular. It thought it was go going to be bipartisan firing.

And he got fired and the Democrats sat back and they though, and the same people that two days earlier saying how horrible he was, were saying, oh, this is a terrible thing.

The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

If there's never an attack on Iran, I predict Trump will say that about the Democrats: They were against an attack, but when I stopped it they were still upset! The ingrates!

WINGNUT FIND A CULPRIT FOR THE IRAN CRISIS: JOHN KERRY

Major news outlets are reporting that President Trump ordered a strike on Iran, then canceled it just as it was about to take place. At Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit, many of the commenters think they know who's responsible for the tension in the region: John Kerry.

... I think the Iranians are working under the advice and consent of Kerry, Feinstein, Obama, the EU and the globalist, communist, islamist, antiWhite, antiMale, antiAmerican, antiLife, multinational corporate and financial cabal. The world knows there is absolutely no possibility of unseating PDJT if they are running against peace and prosperity. They also know if he wins in 2020 they are done.

****

And you win the internet for the day!!! Kerry was just over there and quite POSSIBLY passed on information about this through sources....Turds need to be taken out with extreme prejudice...

****

I expect that eventually we will learn that Kerry, Obama and Brennan are working with Iran and are behind this whole crisis.

****

... I believe, John Kerry advised iran's leaders, how to motivate our President. That was Kerry's purpose when he broke federal law, Logan act in his recent visit to the muhlars a while back.

Not only would a retaliatory action ordered by Trump, provide addition ammo for the dems impeachment efforts, it would serve as a distraction from the Barr, DOJ investigations. of obozo, fbi, nsa, cia, fisa courts.

A active conflict between the US, Iran wold allow the msm to actively attack Trump...

****

Kerry is working closely with Obama. Both need grounding, like in a prison cell.

****

Trump probably suspects this was a deep state false flag effort to drag him into a war with Iran.

****

Kerry being the point man.

****

... BUSH< HILLARY KERRY< OBAMA and other members of the deepstate behind this false flag event

Kerry has acknowledged meeting several times with Iranian foreign minister Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif since Trump's inauguration. He's trying to reduce tensions, as he explained to Hugh Hewitt last year:

"... What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better,” claimed Kerry. “You know, how does one resolve Yemen? What do you do to try to get peace in Syria? I mean, those are the things that really are preoccupying, because those are the impediments to people, to Iran’s ability to convince people that it’s ready to embrace something different.”

“I’ve been very blunt to Foreign Minister Zarif, and told him look, you guys need to recognize that the world does not appreciate what’s happening with missiles, what’s happening with Hezbollah, what’s happening with Yemen,” continued Kerry....

Kerry has been attacked by Trump, by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and others for this.

It's likely that many of the Gateway Pundit commenters had been listening to Rush Limbaugh. Yesterday on his radio show, Limbaugh all but accused Kerry of being responsible for Iran's drone shootdown. Limbaugh started by spreading some disinformation:

So, I got an interesting email. “Mr. Limbaugh, what do you think or who do you think is really stirring up this business with Iran?” It’s a good question, ’cause you know who’s buddy-buddy with Iran and who has been over there attempting to undermine Trump administration on policy with Iran is none other than John Kerry — the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam.

I think that his daughter married some Revolutionary Guard assassin or something, some such thing. His daughter married somebody from over there. The foreign minister’s third cousin, I don’t know what, but there’s some family tie now.

This is a lie spread by, among others, former congressman and war criminal Allen West. In fact, as Snopes notes, Kerry's daughter Vanessa Bradford Kerry is married to a U.S.-born neurosurgeon of Iranian descent.

Limbaugh continued:

And, of course, the Iran deal in the Obama administration was one of their great things, they believe, and Trump has come in and has summarily ripped it apart and backed out of it....

So they’re ticked as they can be over sanctions and Trump’s relegating them to this secondary status, and the fact that John Kerry (you can put Obama in this sentence or not) has been actively advising the Iranians on how to deal with Trump... (interruption) Well, no, they shoot down the drone....

We know that John Kerry has been attempting to undermine — let’s say “advise” the Iranians on how to deal with — Trump. We know that the Obama administration’s got to be livid over what happened to the Iran deal, because look what they were doing. They were running out telling everybody that the Iran deal was gonna prevent the Iranians getting nuclear weapons. It was one of the greatest signature achievements of the Obama Regime.

... I guarantee you, you do anything to humiliate the Obama administration or start unraveling, unraveling, unwinding some of their policies and they’re not gonna be happy. So until I hear otherwise, I’m not gonna rule out this as a possibility. I’m not alleging it, either.

I’m just answering a question that I got.

So there you go: Limbaugh was seriously-not-seriously accusing Kerry and Obama of being responsible for the drone shootdown and the war that might still result.

But relax: Limbaugh did -- eventually -- acknowledge that his information about Kerry's daughter was incorrect. Twice, in fact.

... BREAK TRANSCRIPT

By the way, I’m told that John Kerry’s daughter’s not married to some Iranian Revolutionary Guard assassin. It’s a myth. I guess I fell for that. I take it back! I didn’t mean it if it’s not true. Notice I’m correcting it right away, the moment I find out about it. I thought it was true. I had not heard it debunked. I’m being told it’s been debunked.

... REAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Again just to make sure there’s no confusion about it, I admitted that I erred. Kerry’s daughter is not married to an Iranian anything, Revolutionary Guard, assassin, or whoever. I corrected that back 10 minutes ago, and I’m getting emailed, (impression) “You you you you’re not right, that’s not right, she’s not...” So I’m correcting it again. John Kerry’s daughter is not married to an Iranian anything of the sort. It has been debunked.

Yeah, he walked it back -- but first he got it out there, then he got the words "Revolutionary Guard" and "assassin" into both of his walkbacks.

And your right-wing relatives, along with millions of other voting Americans, listen to this bastard every day.