David Corn's Blog, page 11

JD Vance Attacked AOC for Promoting a “Sociopathic Attitude” About Children

When JD Vance appeared as a special guest at the 2021 summer conference of the Napa Institute, a Catholic organization that seeks to “advance the re-evangelization of the United States,” he was weathering a storm for a talk he had given that week to a conservative group in which he assailed the Democratic Party for being led by childless people. He had also proposed that parents be granted more of a say at the ballot box than people without kids. During that speech, he had called out Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being non-parents. (Harris was a parent to two stepchildren, and Buttigieg adopted twins the following month.) Asked at the Napa Institute event about these remarks, Vance did not blanche. He doubled down and even singled out AOC for promoting what he called a “sociopathic” view of the family.

Vance, then a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, told the crowd of Catholic activists that he had gotten into “trouble” for his earlier comments. But he stood by his remarks, saying “My basic view is that if the Republican Party, the conservative movement stands for anything… the number one thing we should be is pro-babies and pro-families.”

NEW: In an unearthed video, JD Vance goes on another tirade against journalists and Democratic leaders who are “childless.” Then he targets @AOC, saying she has a "sociopathic attitude towards families." pic.twitter.com/kDwWEQMusS

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) August 1, 2024

He emphasized that not enough Americans were procreating: “We have, I believe, a civilizational crisis in this country, where we have unhealthy families, we have families falling apart. We have the rise of childhood trauma. And even among healthy intact families, they’re not having enough kids, such that we’re going to have a longterm future in this country.”

Vance then went even further and claimed that childless people were responsible for the rottenness of the nation’s political discourse: “So many of the most miserable and unhappy people in our media and in our public life are people without kids. And I think that they were trained to chase credentials, to chase degrees, to chase money, when the thing that is ultimately going to give you the most fulfillment in life is your family.”

Vance turned this into a partisan issue, blaming the left and Democrats:

My goal here is to not criticize every single person who doesn’t have children. My goal is to point out a very simple fact that it’s one thing to have a society where some people don’t have kids. It’s another thing to build an entire political movement that is explicitly anti-child and anti-family. And thats what the left in this country is. It is anti-child and anti-family.

Vance ignored the fact that the Democrats have long pushed for education, childcare, health care, family leave, and other social programs that assist families and young people. To make his case, he singled out AOC:

Just one example. One of the politicians that I criticized is AOC. Maybe AOC hasn’t found the right person, whatever the case may be. AOC has said basically—if you look at her public remarks on this—that it’s immoral to have children because of climate change concerns. Right? This is, let’s just be direct, a sociopathic attitude towards family.

The audience applauded.

Vance did not cite a specific comment from Ocasio-Cortez to support his assertion that she had taken a “sociopathic” stance by saying it was wrong to have kids because of climate change. Two years earlier, during an Instagram Q&A, she had addressed this subject. She noted that unless extensive action was taken to reduce emissions, there was little hope for the future. And she remarked, “It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?” AOC had not declared it immoral to bear children.

Vance continued his dig at the Democrats:

And I think somebody just has to point this out. And it’s a little bit weird….What does it say about our civilization that so many of our leaders don’t have kids? What does it say about the incentives that are built into the Democrats’ entire movement that they reward the young people who don’t have families instead of the young people who do? I think it’s just pretty sick… and it suggests something pretty broken.

More applause.

Vance did not address the fact that most of the Democratic presidential candidates of 2020 had children and that the Democratic leaders of Congress were parents.

Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to a request for comment regarding Vance’s attack on her. But on Monday, she posted a tweet that seemed to reference Vance’s remarks about “childless” Democrats: “Punishing people who don’t have biological offspring is creepy.”

A few years prior to his talk at the Napa Institute conference, Vance, with the success of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, had emerged as a public intellectual of a center-right bent who focused on the intersection of cultural norms and economic matters. But by the time of this event, Vance was running for the Senate as a hard-right political warrior, bashing the left and Democrats for supposedly being the enemies of families. Casting his foes as malevolent and childless extremists, Vance had himself become an extremist.

JD Vance Once Said “Some People Who Voted for Trump Were Racists”

In early February 2017, just as Donald Trump was settling into the White House, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics snagged a special guest for an event: JD Vance. His bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy had been published the previous summer, and in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, Vance was widely seen in political and media circles as someone who could explain Trump’s surprising win and the Americans who had supported the former reality TV star. As part of IOP’s series called “America in the Trump Era,” journalist Alex Kotlowitz posed questions to Vance, who at that point was positioning himself as a center-right public intellectual who, as an Appalachian native, had emerged from Trump land and could be a guide for those mystified by Trump’s success.

In a newly uncovered video from 2017, JD Vance says, "Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons." He goes on to say that the alt-right and Steve Bannon—but not Trump—helped make the 2016 election "hyper-racialized." pic.twitter.com/pPlJ7uNW5h

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 29, 2024

Kotlowitz began with queries focused on the book. Then he shifted to the 2016 election and asked Vance, “Where do you think race played into all this? Because I think the sort of myth is that all these Trump supporters are vehement racists and anti-immigrant. And so where do you think it played?”

Vance replied:

Race definitely played a role in the 2016 election. I think race will always play a role in our country, It’s just sort of a constant fact of American life. And definitely some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons.

Vance was unequivocal on this point: an undetermined amount of Trump voters were racists.

But he added that he did not believe that racial animus motivated all of Trump’s voters and that he thought the country had become less racist:

I always resist the idea that the real thing driving most Trump voters was racial anxiety or racial animus, partially because I didn’t see it. I mean, the thing that really motivated people to vote for Trump, first in the primary and then in the general election, was three words: jobs, jobs, jobs. Right?… And so it strikes me as a little bizarre to chalk it up to sort of racial animus because, one, the country is less racist now than it was 15 years ago, and we weren’t electing Donald Trump 15 years ago. And, two, that wasn’t the core part of his message and that wasn’t what a lot of his voters were really connecting with.

Still, Vance conceded that the 2016 election had been “hyper-racialized.” Yet he didn’t blame Trump or his electorate for that. Instead, he pointed a finger at extremists within the conservative movement.

There were all these alt-right people, and I’m in an interracial marriage, and I got a lot of stuff directed at me and my wife on online message boards and Twitter and so forth. So I definitely buy this was a racialized discourse unlike any that we’ve had in a really long time. But I don’t blame Trump’s voters for that. The people that I blame for that are actually typically well-educated coastal elitists, people like [avowed white nationalist] Richard Spencer and the alt-right. It’s telling that the alt-right is driven by primarily very well-educated, relatively smart, relatively stable people. It’s not driven by people in the Rust Belt who go on 4chan and talk about Michelle Obama in these really nasty ways. It’s 2,500, I mean whatever the number of people is, I’ve heard estimates up to like 100,000. But these are people who are really well educated and are cognitive elites in their own weird way.

“Like Steve Bannon?” Kotlowitz asked. Vance replied, “Right.”

Vance did not spell out how Bannon and this small band of conservatives had injected racism into the 2016 campaign. (In 2016, before Bannon joined Trump’s campaign as a strategist, he was running Breitbart News and referred to it as the “platform for the alt-right.”) But it was odd that Vance held only the alt-right responsible, rather than Trump, whose rhetoric had appealed to racists and other extremists.

Vance also noted that he was no fan of the “Muslim ban” that Trump proposed during the 2016 campaign: “As soon as he talked about a Muslim ban, all of a sudden a lot of voters actually supported the idea of a Muslim ban. I just don’t think that’s surprising because, again, people follow the rhetoric of their politicians. And so I did worry about that. I continue to worry about that.”

Vance’s remarks at the IOP event were in keeping with his general stance at that time. He was a moderate Never Trumper who had told NPR in 2016 that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” He had written that Trump was “cultural heroin.” Privately, he had compared Trump to Hitler.

Vance was walking a fine line those days. He was a Trump critic but wouldn’t go too far in blasting Trump in public. His value was his ability to interpret Trump and his voters for those puzzled by Trump’s win. And he often talked about the need to respect Trump voters.

But on this occasion, Vance acknowledged that a portion of Trump’s base was comprised of racists. And he slammed the alt-right, a slice of the conservative movement long accused of racism that had enthusiastically embraced Trump.

These days, Vance, now a Republican senator from Ohio and Trump’s running mate, is fully aligned with the extreme far right (including whatever remains of the alt-right) and Bannon, the imprisoned former Trump aide who serves as an informal strategist and cheerleader for the Trump movement. It’s inconceivable that Vance would now characterize a chunk of Trump’s voters as racists or badmouth Bannon and his followers. That’s not because the dynamics of Trump’s electorate have changed. It’s because Vance has.

J.D. Vance Says He Gets Bad Press Because Most Journalists Are “Childless Adults”

GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance was slammed this week when a video of a 2021 Fox News appearance emerged in which he smeared Vice President Kamala Harris: He described her as being one of a “bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” Vance faced an onslaught of bad press, as many commentators—including Harris’ step-daughter, Taylor Swift fans, Democratic officials, actor Jennifer Aniston, and several conservative women pundits—decried his comment.

Yet Vance, a Republican senator from Ohio, might have had an easy way of dismissing the criticism, for not so long ago, while speaking to a group of conservatives, he blamed the negative media coverage he often received on “childless” reporters.

A newly uncovered video shows J.D. Vance didn't just go after Kamala Harris as a "childless cat lady." At the 2021 event, he said he got bad press because most journalists are "unhappy," "miserable," and "angry" because they are "childless adults."

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/INSyGNXAB0

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 26, 2024

It turns out that his remark about Harris was not a one-off soundbite. This dig was part of a larger schtick that Vance has deployed to explain the challenges faced by the conservative movement, including derogatory stories in the media. In 2021, Vance presented the full pitch when he spoke at a conference outside Washington, DC, organized by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a rightwing outfit co-founded by William F. Buckley Jr. to promote conservative thought on college campuses. During this talk, Vance said he had been victimized by childless journalists. But first he noted that the conservative movement was screwed:

We have lost every single major cultural  instiution in this country—Big Finance, Big Tech, Wall Street, the biggest corporations, the universities,  the media, and the government. There is not a single institution in this country that conservatives currently control. But there’s one of them, just one that we might have a chance of actually controlling in the future, and that’s the consitutional republic that our founders gave us. We are never going to take Facebook, Amazon, Apple and turn them into conservative institutions. We are never going take the universities and turn them into conservative institutions… We might just be able to control the democratic institutions in this country… This is a raw fact of cynical politics. If we’re not willing to use the power given to us in the American constitutional republic, we’re going to lose this country.

To achieve that control, he said, right-wingers needed to “take aim at the left, specifically the childless left.” He added: “The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and the most evil thing the left has done in this country.”

Vance blasted the “next generation” of Democratic leaders—Harris, Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—for not having children. (Harris is stepmother to the two children from her husband’s previous marriage; Buttigieg adopted twins in 2021.) Vance ranted that that the Democratic Party had “become controlled  by people who don’t have children” and that “the leaders of our country don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring.” He howled, “Not a single one of them actually has any physical commitment to the future of this country.”

He then focused his attack on the media:

It’s honestly true of lot of folks in our press and in our media. Very often I will read a [negative] story about me….and I’ll think a little bit about the people who wrote those stories, and what you find consistently is that many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults. Let’s just be honest about it. Because, look, the elite model—the American dream to the elites—is get as much credentials as you can, get as much money as you can, get the most prestigious job, and that’s where you’re going to find you self-worth. But I have to be honest with you. Most of our mainstream reporters are not impressive enough to find a lot of self-meaning in their jobs. They’re just not good enough at it.

So it’s not just politicians who are to be dismissed because they have no kids; it’s journalists, too. Vance went on:

What society has built its entire civilization—the flow of information, the leaders of its country, political and governmental and also corporate—around completely childless adults? It’s never happened. This is a new thing in American life, probably a new thing in world history. It’s not good. It’s not healthy. You see the obsessive, weird almost humiliating aggressive posture of our media and you wonder how could these people be so miserable and unhappy. Well, the answer is because they don’t have any kids. Kids are the ultimate ways that we find… self-meaning in life.

Vance bemoaned low birth-rates in the United States, noting this was a “civilizational crisis.” He praised Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban for providing loans to newly married couples that are forgiven once they have children. He also proposed that parents be given more voting power than non-parents—a remark that has received attention in recent days.

When Vance dissed Harris as a “childless cat lady,” he was not speaking off the cuff. This runs deep for him. The right, as he sees it, has been outmaneuvered by the left on various fronts, and its only target of opportunity is the government. To win that battle, conservatives must target Democrats as foes of the family. And if the media don’t give Vance or his allies good coverage, well, you know why: reporters are wallowing in self-loathing because they’re not changing diapers, carpooling kids to soccer games, or worrying about college tuition.

Vance likes to pose as a big thinker, but this is a weird and simplistic way to see the world: dividing it into haves and have-nots regarding children. And it seems that many, it not most, elected officials, CEOs, and reporters are parents. (FYI, I have two children.) Still, Vance is relying on a skewed view of reality, as he draws up his master plan for the right. At least this distortion can help him dismiss any criticism from the media.

J.D. Vance Endorsed Book That Calls Progressives “Unhumans” and Praises Jan. 6 Rioters

During his acceptance speech at the Republican convention last week, Sen. J.D. Vance, the GOP vice presidential candidate, praised Donald Trump’s call for “unity.” But this year, Vance endorsed a new book co-written by a far-right conspiracy-monger that calls progressives “unhumans” and claims they are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” against American civilization.

The book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), was written by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec. Posobiec is a well-known alt-right agitator and conservative media personality who promoted the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Lisec is a professional ghostwriter. And their book professes to be a history of communist and leftist revolutionary abuses over the decades—but with a twist. They claim, “For as long as there have been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been the ugly liars who hate and kill.” And these “people of anti-civilization” have always gone by different names: communists, socialists, leftists, and progressives. The pair contend these folks—be they the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade—are better called “unhumans.”

The book is a far-right declaration of war that accuses conservatives of not understanding that the left cares only about one thing: revolution.

“With power, unhumans undo civilization itself,” Posobiec and Lisec write. “They undo order. They undo the basic bonds of society that make communities and nations possible. They destroy the human rights of life, liberty, and property—and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.”

It’s a hard-edged message. The foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the wrong policies but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They “rob” and “kill,” Posobiec and Lisec maintain: “They don’t believe what they say. They don’t care about winning debates. They don’t even want equality. They just want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse to destroy you.”

Vance apparently found this Manichean view worthy of his endorsement, and he provided a blurb that Posobiec and Lisec have used to peddle their volume:

In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.

The book (with a foreword written by Steve Bannon) is a far-right declaration of war that accuses conservatives of not understanding that the left cares only about one thing: revolution to achieve total control. The unhumans aim to “kill the people who have more” than they do. As they put it, “On a base level, unhumans seek the death of the successful and the desecration of the beautiful.” They decry the far left atrocities of the past (the French Revolution and the communist revolutions in Russia, China, and elsewhere) and claim the same malignant force is shaping the present, noting that the “chief institutions of consensus-making” in today’s society “are controlled by radicals and infiltrated by unhumans.” The book comes across as modern-day McCarthyism: This dark menace has infiltrated nooks and crannies across America, from the boardroom to the classroom to even churches. No surprise, Posobiec and Lisec have plenty of praise for Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

In their view, the dangerous unhumans are everywhere. The Civil Rights movement? Mounted by unhumans. Critics of hate speech? Unhumans. The Black Lives Matter protests? Organized by unhumans. In fact, they compare the BLM protests of 2020 to the terror of the French Revolution, noting, “There is no way to reason with those who manipulate the have-nots en masse to loot and to shoot. They simply hate those who are good-looking and successful.” (Yes, they wrote that.)

Vance’s thumbs-up to Unhumans is an indicator of how deep his roots are within the conspiratorial alt-right.

Vance’s thumbs-up to Unhumans is an indicator of how deep his roots are within the conspiratorial alt-right. The book features the conservative movement’s paranoid allegations about Big Tech being in league with leftists to help pave the way for a fundamental reshaping of society. “The terrible truth is that there is a distinct revolutionary movement we are witnessing in the modern-day West,” the pair assert. And they have a fancy name for it: “The Irregular Communist Revolution.” Wokeness, of course, is a major element of this.

And this bring us to the noble counterrevolution: January 6, 2021. Posobiec, who was part of the fraudulent Stop the Steal movement, and Lisec insist that the riot at the US Capitol was a “lawfare trap” sprung to “destroy” Trump’s followers and “make them an example to any other Republicans who want to get uppity in the future.” They contend all was calm on Capitol Hill until guards “fired on the peaceful crowd with nonlethal munitions and flash-bangs.” They write, “It was all a trap,” and the “insurrection hoax was used to begin a purge of Trump supporters from the military and from public life.” The rioters were “well-meaning patriots.”

Posobiec and Lisec repeat many of the falsehoods of the tin-foil right, including the claim that Trump had pre-authorized 10,000 National Guard troops and that assistance had been rejected. “There was indeed an insurrection on January 6, 2021—against President Trump and his supporters,” they proclaim.

Finally, the pair argue that the right must adopt extreme and underhanded measures to defeat the unhumans: “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans. It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.” This means state governors, county sheriffs, and district attorneys must wage crusades against the unhumans. Elon Musk’s war on political correctness must be supported. Unhumans in education and media must be publicly named and shamed. Law enforcement in red areas should target antifa, BLM, and NGOs affiliated with billionaire George Soros.

Does Vance believe that Democrats and progressives are part of a centuries-long march of unhumans looking to destroy civilization? Does he believe an “Irregular Communist Revolution” is currently being waged in America?

Vance has echoed Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was rigged and that the January 6 insurrectionists were unjustly prosecuted. He has also said that had he been vice president that day he would have recognized the phony Trump electors from states where Trump lost. But does he also believe that Democrats and progressives are part of a centuries-long march of unhumans looking to destroy civilization? Does he believe that an “Irregular Communist Revolution” is currently being waged in America and that conservatives ought to not follow the rules in combatting this supposed threat?

I asked the Trump-Vance campaign these questions and whether Vance read the book before giving it a thumb’s up. It did not respond.

Nevertheless, Vance opted to boost Unhumans. Considering Posobiec’s notoriety, Vance could have guessed that this book contained extreme notions.

The book has also been extolled by Donald Trump Jr. (“teaches us how…to save the West”), Michael Flynn (“exposes their battle plans and offers a fifth-generation warfare system to fight back and win”), and Tucker Carlson (“Jack Posobiec sees the big picture and isn’t afraid to describe it”). A publicist for Lisec has used Vance’s endorsement of the work to whip up media interest in the book and secure interviews for Lisec.

With Unhumans, Posobiec and Lisec are attempting to dress up the right’s long-running demonization of liberals and progressives with warped history and a heaping of fancy jargon, lumping all left-of-center action into a paranoid brew that depicts the right’s political foes as diabolical monsters seeking to obliterate all that is good within the civilized world. Vance’s approval of this dreck is yet another indicator of how this politician who once compared Trump to Hitler has come to embrace the extremism of the Trumpian far right.

Attempted Trump Assassination Triggers a Flood of MAGA BS

It is hardly surprising that a political movement that has as its godhead a convicted felon and inveterate liar who attempted to overturn an election and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to retain power would within nanoseconds exploit the assassination attempt at a Donald Trump rally that left one attendee dead. But the utter brazenness of this effort has been stunning. Before crucial details were known—who’s the shooter? why did he do this?—MAGA was out in full-force to blame President Joe Biden, Democrats, and progressives for this shooting by stirring up anti-Trump sentiment. Leading the way in unhinged right-wing responses, Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) called for Biden to be arrested for “inciting an assassination.”

Even after it emerged that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the alleged shooter, was a registered Republican (who apparently made a $15 donation to a liberal political action committee in 2021), the crap kept coming. Sean Parnell, a right-wing commentator who in 2021 suspended his Senate campaign in Pennsylvania after his wife accused him of spousal and child abuse, tweeted at Biden: “It happened because of this sort of BS rhetoric from you & the rest of your party. It’s sickening. It needs to stop.”

I was with the President 30 minutes before the assassination attempt. I was 20 feet from him when it happened. 15 feet away from two folks who were shot right behind me & my wife.

It happened because of this sort of BS rhetoric from you & the rest of your party.

It’s sickening.… https://t.co/jgS895xfyC

— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellUSA) July 14, 2024

At this point, there was not yet any indication the shooter had been influenced by anything any politician had stated.

J.D. Vance, the ultra-thirsty Republican senator from Ohio who is angling to be Trump’s veep pick and who once compared Trump to Hitler, said the same: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Today is not just some isolated incident.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) July 14, 2024

On CNN, GOP consultant Scott Jennings remarked, “The rhetoric around him over the last few weeks, that if he wins an election our country will end, our democracy will end, it’s the last election our we’ll ever have. These things have consequences.”

Scott Jennings is blaming Democrats for the attack on Donald Trump on CNN. pic.twitter.com/F3FaHy3GnN

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) July 14, 2024

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) quickly proclaimed that Biden “is responsible” for the shooting. She then went further than blaming the Ds for their anti-Trump rhetoric and retweeted a post from a MAGA activist who explicitly accused the Democrats of being behind the shooting: “The Dems realized it’s too late to switch out their candidate so they attempted to kill ours instead.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene voiced the same dastardly message: “Democrats wanted this to happen. They’ve wanted Trump gone for years and they’re prepared to do anything to make that happen.” Greene’s remark suggested the Democrats were somehow involved in this attempted assassination.

No shocker, the Kremlin chimed in and echoed the MAGA talking points, saying the Biden administration had created the “atmosphere around candidate Trump” that “provoked” the shooting.

These comments from the Republicans and MAGA extremists were reckless and absurd. For years, Trump has been pushing an ugly narrative: Joe Biden and the Democrats are in league with antifa, Black radicals, and communists to destroy the nation. Trump has said this zillions of times. In both the 2020 and 2024 campaigns, he has exclaimed that if Biden is elected “we may not have a country anymore.” He has repeatedly preached an apocalyptic sermon casting his political rivals as bent on annihilating the United States. He has depicted Biden and his allies as an existential threat to America.

And, of course, Trump has repeatedly encouraged violence—most infamously on January 6. But with this shooting his MAGA allies quickly spotted an opportunity for a rubber-glue propaganda campaign to characterize the Dems as the true threat to democracy and civility and concoct a massive deflection. One of Biden’s chief lines of attack on Trump is that he presents a danger to the republic. Now the Trump crew had a chance to turn the tables and they eagerly grabbed it. Ultimately, the MAGA crowd doesn’t have to win the argument that Biden endangers democracy. They merely need to use it to muddy the waters and undercut the Democrats’ main case against Trump.

There was other ridiculousness from the right. Dave Rubin, a conservative commentator, tweeted, “Assuming it turns out to be true that this sick fuck was an Antifa member, Antifa should be labeled a terrorist organization immediately. And that should’ve happened years ago, actually.” And Elon Musk, who after the shooting issued a full-throated endorsement of Trump, responded, “Absolutely.” When it turned out, the alleged shooter was a Republican, neither called for labelling the GOP a terrorist outfit (as liberal commentator Keith Olbermann noted.)

As did many, Marco Rubio brought God into this, asserting the Almighty had “protected” Trump.

God protected President Trump pic.twitter.com/96UKVdjF3A

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 13, 2024

Naturally, this led many on X to wonder why God had not done anything to protect the rally attendee who was killed—or Abraham Lincoln.

On Sunday morning, Ed Martin, a stalwart MAGA-ite who leads a right-wing outfit called Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and who is deputy policy director for the GOP’s platform committee, issued a bizarre social media post claiming “Big Government, Big Tech and Big Media and the Democrat party are trying to rewrite the narrative” by not describing the shooting as an assassination attempt. Yet the chyrons on all the major news networks plainly labeled this event as such. Martin was promoting some crazy conspiracy theory about what he called the #Narrative Machine. (Yes, this man is involved in crafting policy for the Republican Party.)

The attempted assassination of Trump was a horrific event that claimed the life of one person and further traumatized American politics. It also triggered a flood of bullshit. The MAGA world rushed to take advantage of the shooting to remake Trump, who has essentially condoned political violence by vowing to pardon January 6 rioters, into a martyr of political violence and to portray Democrats as the perpetrators of such violence. It is a foul act but a true reflection of the black-is-white reality-denialism of Trump and and his MAGA following.

The cause of this tragic shooting has yet to be determined. But one thing is certain: Only one of the candidates in the 2024 contest incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to overturn an election and still threatens American democracy. What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, does not change that.

Joe Biden or Kamala Harris: Which Risk Is the Better Risk?

By now, anyone who follows presidential politics has an opinion on what President Joe Biden should do following his debate meltdown that raised questions, concerns, and fears about his mental acuity. So far, a small number of Democrats have urged him to withdraw from the 2024 race. A larger number of pundits have done the same. Major funders are fretting. And the White House and his campaign have insisted Biden is up to the job and can carry on. On social media, his diehard supporters have raged against the commentariat and the apostate Democrats, asserting that Donald Trump, his lies and multiple liabilities, and the threat he poses to American democracy ought to be more the focus than Biden’s age.

No surprise, there’s no consensus in the Democratic world.

After speaking with numerous people within the Democratic cosmos, I have thoughts about this mess and possible steps forward. And I’m immodest enough to believe they might be worth sharing.

Let’s look at this as a decision tree. The first branch: What does Biden’s debate debacle mean? Many of his supporters and his own team have dismissed it as merely one bad night, with some pointing toward President Barack Obama’s disastrous first debate with Mitt Romney. But Obama’s poor performance was due to his lack of preparation and his arrogant decision to not approach Romney as a worthy adversary. It said nothing about his abilities or health.

Biden’s debate prompted the question: Was this an one-off (due to a cold, fatigue from grueling travel, or whatever) or an indication of a worrisome condition that could—or probably would—manifest itself again. If the latter, this meant his reelection bid—and the effort to prevent Trump from returning to the White House—was in great danger. One more public appearance like this one would likely end Biden’s campaign. And if such an event occurred after the convention, the Democrats would be dead ducks. Burdened with a candidate seen as in severe cognitive decline, the party could take a wallop that would include losing the Senate and failing to retake the House. The authoritarian-minded Trump would rule again, with a Republican-controlled Congress.

So here is the first decision. If you’re in the one-bad-night camp and still ridin’ with Biden, your calculating is done. You’re going to have to white-knuckle your way through the next four months.

If you believe the debate revealed a potentially existential threat for the Biden effort, then you move on to other branches on the decision tree. The next question is, if not Biden, whom?

Before proceeding, let’s note that under Democratic rules, there is no way for the party at this point to deny Biden its presidential nomination. He holds a majority of delegates to next month’s convention in Chicago, and they are pledged to vote for him. For anything else to happen, Biden would have to withdraw from the race. If he sticks with it, the rest of this what-iffing is irrelevant.

As of now, it appears pressure from Democrats on Biden to ride off into the sunset is slowly building. There could come a time when a consensus does form among the Democratic Establishment (which doesn’t really exist as an organized entity) that Biden is toast. How this position is presented to Biden could affect his decision. One obvious path is to shower Biden with love: You’ve had a wildly consequential and successful presidency, having passed tremendous pieces of legislation and having steered the nation out of a horrific pandemic. We can celebrate that at the convention. You saved us from Trump once by beating him. Now you can save us again from Trump by stepping aside. And, alas, if you continue as the nominee and lose, that will overshadow the wonderful legacy you have built.

For this exercise, let’s assume that Biden ousts himself. We’re back to what—or who—is next. The question then is: Does he anoint his successor and call on his delegates to vote for this person, or does he leave it up to the delegates at the convention to select someone else?

If Biden wants to be the decider, he has no choice other than Vice President Kamala Harris. To throw her to the curb would create a serious rift in the party, alienating a loyal voting bloc: Black Americans, in particular Black women. The cleanest scenario would be for him to announce his withdrawal and simultaneously call on the delegates to back Harris.

If Biden doesn’t do this, there will finally be what political journalists and junkies have long yearned for: an open convention. That means anyone could enter the race and compete for the nomination. Potential candidates include Govs. Gavin Newsom (California), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), J.B. Pritzker (Illinois), and others, as well as Harris. The convention could be conflict-ridden and chaotic. The party would indeed be in a degree of disarray. And if there is discord outside the convention hall due to protests over the Gaza war, the impression conveyed to the American public could be Democrats-equal-disorder.

So which is better for the Democrats: a quick shift to Harris or a drawn-out fight among several or many candidates that could split the party? And, once again, if Harris loses this battle, a large segment of Democratic voters could be mightily pissed off.

What if you prefer the open-convention scenario? The result could well be a nominee who has never run a national campaign and who has not yet built a national apparatus for a presidential run. And this person, largely unknown to voters (especially the low-information and less-engaged voters who will likely decide this race), would immediately confront hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads as part of a smear campaign designed to define him or her in the worst way imaginable. This would be the Mother of All Swift-boating. Moreover, anyone but Harris would not be able to inherit the campaign war chest amassed by the Biden campaign. (Money from the Biden campaign probably can be transferred to a super PAC to support a new non-Harris candidate, but that could lead to a clunky operation.) This new candidate would have only about 10 weeks to pull it all together.

Compare this to the Harris-anointed scenario. There would more likely be smooth-sailing at the convention—at least, inside the hall. No Democrats-in-Disarray narrative. There could be a true celebration of what Biden and Harris have accomplished in their first term and excitement about her vice presidential pick. (One out-of-the-park option could be Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.) And she’d have all that money.

At this decision branch—Harris or a free-for-all—a big factor is this: Can Harris be an effective candidate and beat Trump? Sure, subbing her in for Biden might be the easiest course of action, but does that boost the party’s chances or not?

Harris has been an erratic politician. She had bright moments as a senator and as a candidate in the 2020 race (including when she schooled Biden on racism). But her presidential endeavor floundered. As vice president, she has often been seen as a non-entity, perhaps because the Biden team kept her reined in or assigned her impossible missions, such as resolving the border crisis. But in the wake of the Dobbs decision ending a woman’s right to an abortion, she has been a fierce and vigorous campaigner on that issue, which is an animating element of this election. She’s younger than Biden (59) and more vibrant. She has been a prosecutor and could well skewer Trump in a debate and elsewhere. And she has already taken plenty of incoming from the MAGA attack machine. She’s been fully vetted; she’s no newbie.

Back to the decision tree: a known quantity or a convention brawl that produces who-knows?

With Harris, alas, an ugly question arises: Can a Black women win enough of the key swing states that will determine the outcome: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia? For many people, the answer will depend on their view of human nature and the power of racism and sexism. The polls show that overall Harris is as competitive—or close to—as Biden in a match-up against Trump. But that could easily shift one way or the other. If she campaigns fiercely, her numbers might go up. If the right-wing noise machine finds effective lines of attack (racist, sexist, or otherwise), her standing could slide.

If you care what I think, at this point, I lean toward Harris as providing the Democrats their best shot rather than a turbulent tournament at the convention that churns out an untested candidate. Others might favor the way of chaos, hoping it produces the contender they prefer or another nominee with a different set of liabilities than Harris.

It’s important to keep in mind that every path available to the Democrats now carries a fair amount of risk. What’s the risk of Biden zombie-ing out again? What’s the risk of Harris campaigning poorly? What’s the risk of a helter-skelter convention that turns into an internal civil war? And what’s the risk associated with whoever emerges from that tumult? No route will be risk-free.

Having decided in favor of Harris over a let’s-nominate-anyone contest, I move toward assessing the risks of the first two of those options. They are of different natures. The risk with Biden is akin to that of a titanic natural disaster. If what one fears about Biden happens to occur (after the convention), then all is lost for the Democrats. Game over. (Technically, the Democratic Party might be able to replace him following the convention, but there are plenty of logistical hurdles to that.)

With Harris, the risks are more conventional. They are related to her talents as a politician and her ability to win over voters in those crucial states. These are matters that can be addressed—though certainly there’s no guarantee they can be surmounted.

At the bottom of this decision tree, we are left with two alternatives, each presenting these different risks. A Biden who is one bad moment away from a total campaign crash, or a Harris who has a set of ordinary flaws and who would have to overcome powerful forces of racism and sexism.

The Democrats do not have an easy way out of this situation that Biden and his crew have created. He has presented his party with one helluva dilemma. And, ultimately, he may resolve to stay on the horse and afford his party no agency regarding this critical decision.

Whatever happens, there is no perfect or even close-to-perfect avenue for the Democrats. It ends up being a question of which risk you want to live with: Biden further showing decline; Harris poorly campaigning; or the convention becoming a circus that spits out a not-well-known candidate with his or her own faults. For me, on this particular day, the Harris option seems the better risk for Democrats to take. Still, I possibly could be talked out of it. But until Biden gives up his dream of a second term, none of these calculations matter—though considering them at this point is a good way to prepare for what might be a wild and profoundly important ride ahead.

How RFK Jr. Falsely Denied His Connection to a Deadly Measles Outbreak in Samoa

Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, “I’m aware there was a measles outbreak…I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.”

Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy. Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vax outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans. Moreover, in early 2021, Kennedy, in a little-noticed blog post, hailed one of those vaccination foes as a “hero.”

In the interview for this film, Kennedy, as he has frequently done, was downplaying his actions as one of the most prominent anti-vax conspiracy theorist in the world who has worked with and bolstered anti-vaxxers around the globe.

In the years prior to 2019, measles had not been a problem in Samoa. But in 2018, two infants died after receiving the measles vaccine. The country quickly placed its vaccine program on hold, as vaccine opponents, including Children’s Health Defense, exploited theses deaths to raise questions about the safety of vaccines. The vaccination rate plummeted from in the 60-to-70 percent range to 31 percent. But the problem, it turned out, was not with the vaccine. Two nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant. Once this was revealed, CHD did not update social media posts suggesting the vaccine was the culprit. (Those posts are now longer available.)

During the stretch in which the vaccination coverage was dropping in Samoa, Kennedy visited the nation in June 2019 and gave a boost to anti-vaxxers there who had used the death of those two infants to help cause the drop in vaccination rates. He had a meeting with Taylor Winterstein, a prominent Samoan Australian vaccination foe. In an Instagram post featuring a photo of her with Kennedy, Winterstein wrote, “I am deeply honoured to have been in the presence of a man I believe is, can and will change the course of history. This was a divinely timed, once in a lifetime opportunity and I will forever cherish the conversations and moments we shared together in Samoa.” She added hashtags used by anti-vaxxers. Public health experts complained Kennedy’s visit to Samoa helped amplifly anti-vax voices.

Kennedy later claimed his encounter with Winterstein was a chance occurrence. But he acknowledged his trip to Samoa had been arranged by coconut farmer Edwin Tamasese, another prominent Samoan anti-vaxxer, and paid for by Children’s Health Defense. The point of the trip, he insisted, was to discuss with government officials “the introduction of a medical informatics system that would allow Samoa’s health officials to assess, in real time, the efficacy and safety of every medical intervention or drug on overall health.” This would include questioning the value of vaccinations. In an 2021 interview with the Samoa Observer, Kennedy said he and Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi had talked “a limited amount” about vaccines.

Despite the impression Kennedy gave in the Shot in the Arm documentary, his trip was at least in part related to the use of vaccines in Samoa.

After the measles outbreak struck in November 2019 and the Samoan government implemented an emergency compulsory anti-measles vaccination program to contain the spread, Winterstein and Tamasese opposed the effort with misinformation and harsh rhetoric. Winterstein compared the operation to Nazi Germany. Tamasese called it a “killing spree.” He declared the vaccination operation “the greatest crime against our people” and suggested the vaccine itself was the cause of the outbreak. Tamasese advocated against the use of conventional medicine and antibiotics and urged people to rely on papaya leaf extract and vitamins instead of the vaccine and antibiotics.

During this outbreak, Kennedy’s group wrote to Prime Minister Tuilaepa, and he encouraged Samoa officials to examine the measles vaccine to “determine, scientifically, if the outbreak was caused by inadequate vaccine coverage or alternatively, by a defective vaccine.” So Kennedy, like Tamasese, was suggesting the vaccine itself might be responsible for the thousands of cases and scores of deaths.

The Samoan government declared a state of emergency and ordered anti-vaccination advocates to stop discouraging people from vaccinating. For his loud public opposition to the government’s initiative, Tamasese was arrested and charged with incitement against a government order. Samoa’s Communications Minister Afamasaga Rico Tupai told TVNZ, “The anti-vaxxers unfortunately have been slowing us down.” Days after his arrest, Tamasese was granted bail and banned from online activities. In December 2020, a judge dismissed the charges against Tamasese, noting he that had been improperly charged and that the prosecution and police had done a sloppy job presenting the evidence against him.

Soon after that, Kennedy wrote a blog post for the CHD site that called Tamasese a “medical freedom hero.” He referred to the 2019 blast of measles in Samoa as merely a “mild measles outbreak” and praised Tamasese for having “infuriated the Global Medical Cartel.” He suggested that the vaccine, along with lousy hospital protocols, had caused the deaths. A photo accompanying this post showed Kennedy posing with both Tamasese and Winterstein, and the post included Tamasese’s self-serving account of his actions during the outbreak. (A few months earlier, during a podcast with Winterstein, Kennedy lauded her as the “leading voice of dissent” in Australia.)

The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a query containing questions about his visit to Samoa, the measles outbreak there, his praise of Tamasese, and his comments to the filmmakers. Children’s Health Defense also did not reply to a message seeking comment.

The Samoa episode fits Kennedy’s M.O. As an anti-vax champion, he has decried vaccinations as unsafe and ineffective—repeating the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism—and he has boosted attempts throughout the world to convince people to eschew vaccines. Yet when he has been questioned critically about these efforts, he has issued false denials and contended that he’s just raising questions and calling for more research. In July 2023, at the invitation of House Republicans, he appeared at a congressional hearing and declared, “I have never been anti-vax. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.” Yet that same month, during a podcast interview, he asserted, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”

Kennedy, as he claimed in the interview for Shot in the Arm, may not have publicly urged Samoans to refuse the measles vaccine. But he encouraged those who did, and the group he led helped spread misinformation to discredit vaccinations there. After the tragedy was over, he dismissed the outbreak as not serious and extolled the anti-vaxxers who helped bring it about. The Samoa chapter provides a clear case study of how Kennedy threatens public health and slyly sidesteps responsibility for that.

“The President Is Now a King”: The Most Blistering Lines From Dissents in the Trump Immunity Case

In response to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision ruling that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for “official” acts, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson issued blistering dissents. They blasted the reasoning of the six conservative justices who essentially created a new power for presidents. Each contended this decision poses a fundamental threat to American democracy and the rule of law.

This is how Sotomayor put it:

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.

Jackson made a similar and distressing point:

Thus, even a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics, or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new Presidential accountability model.

They each argued that the conservatives, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, had elevated the presidency to something akin to royalty. Sotomayor wrote:

The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

Here are some of the most impassioned excerpts from their minority opinions:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.  It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.

The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.

Whether described as presumptive or absolute, under the majority’s rule, a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution. That is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless. Finally, the majority declares that evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. . That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical.

The historical evidence that exists on Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution cuts decisively against it. For instance, Alexander Hamilton wrote that former Presidents would be “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” For Hamilton, that was an important distinction between “the king of Great Britain,” who was “sacred and inviolable,” and the “President of the United States,” who “would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace.”

This historical evidence reinforces that, from the very beginning, the presumption in this Nation has always been that no man is free to flout the criminal law. The majority fails to recognize or grapple with the lack of historical evidence for its new immunity. With nothing on its side of the ledger, the most the majority can do is claim that the historical evidence is a wash.

Our country’s history also points to an established understanding, shared by both Presidents and the Justice Department, that former Presidents are answerable to the criminal law for their official acts… Consider Watergate, for example. After the Watergate tapes revealed President Nixon’s misuse of official power to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation of the Watergate burglary, President Ford pardoned Nixon. Both Ford’s pardon and Nixon’s acceptance of the pardon necessarily “rested on the understanding that the former President faced potential criminal liability.”

Today’s Court, however, has replaced a presumption of equality before the law with a presumption that the President is above the law for all of his official acts.

Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.

Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation.

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

With that understanding of how our system of accountability for criminal acts ordinarily functions, it becomes much easier to see that the majority’s ruling in this case breaks new and dangerous ground. Departing from the traditional model of individual accountability, the majority has concocted something entirely different: a Presidential accountability model that creates immunity—an exemption from criminal law—applicable only to the most powerful official in our Government.

Thus, even a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics, or one who indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup, has a fair shot at getting immunity under the majority’s new Presidential accountability model.

In the majority’s view, while all other citizens of the United States must do their jobs and live their lives within the confines of criminal prohibitions, the President cannot be made to do so; he must sometimes be exempt from the law’s dictates depending on the character of his conduct. Indeed, the majority holds that the President, unlike anyone else in our country, is comparatively free to engage in criminal acts in furtherance of his official duties.

[T]he Court has unilaterally altered the balance of power between the three coordinate branches of our Government as it relates to the Rule of Law, aggrandizing power in the Judiciary and the Executive, to the detriment of Congress. Second, the majority’s new Presidential accountability model undermines the constraints of the law as a deterrent for future Presidents who might otherwise abuse their power, to the detriment of us all.

After today’s ruling, the President must still “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” yet, when acting in his official capacity, he has no obligation to follow those same laws himself.

If the structural consequences of today’s paradigm shift mark a step in the wrong direction, then the practical consequences are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government. The majority shoos away this possibility. (accusing the dissents of “strik[ing] a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today”). But Justice Sotomayor makes this point plain, and I will not belabor it.

Having now cast the shadow of doubt over when—if ever—a former President will be subject to criminal liability for any criminal conduct he engages in while on duty, the majority incentivizes all future Presidents to cross the line of criminality while in office, knowing that unless they act “manifestly or palpably beyond [their] authority,” ante, they will be presumed above prosecution and punishment alike.

From this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please—including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.

[T]he seeds of absolute power for Presidents have been planted. And, without a doubt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. “If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny.” Likewise, “[i]f the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” I worry that, after today’s ruling, our Nation will reap what this Court has sown.

Stated simply: The Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself. As we enter this uncharted territory, the People, in their wisdom, will need to remain ever attentive, consistently fulfilling their established role in our constitutional democracy, and thus collectively serving as the ultimate safeguard against any chaos spawned by this Court’s decision.

The majority of my colleagues seems to have put their trust in our Court’s ability to prevent Presidents from becoming Kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new Presidential accountability paradigm. I fear that they are wrong. But, for all oursakes, I hope that they are right. In the meantime, because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.

Trump Was the Trump We Know. Biden Was the Biden We Feared.

Joe Biden had his shot—a chance to dispel concerns about his age and his abilities. But in his first debate with Donald Trump, he stumbled through 90 minutes, muffing answers, often looking uncertain, speaking in a low, gravelly voice that did not convey strength. This was not only a missed chance. It was a disaster. Afterward Democrats had good cause to be in despair and to wonder if disarray was on its way.

While Biden’s State of the Union speech earlier this year showed him vigorously on his game—perhaps a surprise to his detractors—this appearance, within minutes, provided a ton of ammo to those who contend Biden is not up to the job. In the Oval Office, he may be able to do the work of a president well. But if a vibrant public performance is necessary to win the confidence of uncommitted or loosely committed voters, Biden failed miserably.

The bottom line was obvious before the first commercial break: Trump came across as the Trump people know and either love or hate: boastful, brash, disingenuous, demagogic. Biden was not the Biden that Democrats wanted.

Biden accurately slammed Trump for Trump’s stint in the White House: historic deficits, a supersized tax cut that benefitted the rich, mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. Yet he often muddied his remarks with not just his usual stutter but with half-sentences and misspoken words. There’s no denying this: Biden did not come across as commanding. Any voter who has wondered about the abilities of this 81-year-old-man would not be reassured.

Trump stuck to the usual stuff. He was combative and dishonest. He repeatedly stated the United States had the best economy in its history when he was in the White House. He claimed Democrats want to allow abortions after birth. He insisted that he did more for veterans than Biden and that vets “can’t stand” Biden. He hailed his handling of Covid and said he would end the Ukraine war immediately after being elected. (Why not share this plan before?) He blamed Nancy Pelosi for January 6, insisting (falsely) that he had offered 10,000 troops to protect the Capitol that day. He said polls rated him “one of the best” presidents ever. It was his customary blend of lies and bluster.

Biden got his licks in—and it often got ugly. Referring to Trump’s recent New York City criminal trial and the verdict in a civil case that found Trump liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll, Biden called him a “convicted felon” and said he had “the morals of an alley cat.” Biden pounded Trump for inciting January 6, doing nothing to stop the violence that day, and vowing to pardon the rioters who have been prosecuted and found guilty.

Trump gave no ground on this front. When CNN host Jake Tapper asked Trump if he had violated his constitutional oath that day by not intervening to halt the rioting, Trump did not answer the question and instead attacked Biden for being a weak leader. And when Biden turned to Trump and asked him to denounce the rioters, Trump would not, showing that Trump remains the champion of violent domestic terrorists.

If the debate was merely just about the sentences said, Biden would have racked up points. But too often his delivery was faltering. He couldn’t stick it. He even looked befuddled, whether or not he was.

Trump more effectively channeled his anger and hatred. For some voters, that will make him seem fierce and forceful. He lied and lied—claiming he had “the best environmental numbers ever” and was responsible for lowering the price of insulin—but he did so with fervor. Just as he relentlessly decried America as a decaying “third-world nation” that people around the world are laughing at.

Trump’s main line of attack was fear: Millions of migrants—from prisons and mental institutions—are pouring into the country and destroying it, and Biden is either orchestrating or allowing this. “They are taking over our schools, our hospitals, and they will be taking over Social Security,” he bellowed. And crime, crime, and crime. “If Biden wins this election…we probably won’t have a country left anymore,” Trump brayed. Moreover, he added, Biden “will drive us into World War III.” And Trump threw in glancing references to made-for-Fox conspiracy theories about Biden and his son Hunter. He called Biden a “criminal” and assailed his competency: “We’re trying to justify his presidency…The worst presidency in the history of this country.”

Biden kept trying to land punches. He pointed out Trump’s falsehoods. “He hasn’t done a damn thing about the environment,” Biden exclaimed. He declared that Trump doesn’t understand American democracy. He noted that many former Trump White House officials and cabinet officers have refused to back Trump in this race. He had a particularly good moment when he turned to Trump and said, “You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time…you continued to promote this lie…There is no evidence of that at all… Something snapped in you when you lost last time.”

But Biden was trodding through a maelstrom with unsteady steps. He coughed. He blinked a lot. His sentences often trailed off. This is not trivial stuff—not when his age, fairly or not, has become a critical issue of the campaign. Voters don’t get to watch a president at work in the Oval Office. Public appearances matter. Shortly into the debate, his team began telling reporters that Biden was fighting a cold. But that explanation will not help.

When the candidates were asked about the age issue they each face, Biden recited a list of his accomplishments: job creation, new manufacturing jobs, investments in computer chips. “We are the envy of the world,” he said. It was not the most convincing retort.

Trump bragged that he had aced two cognitive tests (really?) and had recently won two golf club championships. (Factcheck: He cheats at golf.) He absurdly asserted he was in as good physical shape as he was 3o years ago. He claimed Biden couldn’t pass these tests or hit a golf ball 50 yards. Then the two bickered about golf-playing, with Biden deploying this zinger: “I’m happy to play golf with you if you carry your own bag.” But like most all of Biden’s attack lines, this one bounced off Trump. There was no oomph. No verve. For most of the night, Biden was verveless.

Minutes into the debate, without even checking with Twitter, you could tell what the reaction was going to be. There would be no way to spin this: a bad night for Biden and the Democrats. A debacle. And one didn’t need a crystal ball to know that there would soon be—maybe before the debate was done—renewed chatter about the possibility of replacing Biden as the Democrats’ nominee. (How that can happen without a complete mess is tough to envision. Would Vice President Kamala Harris inherit the nomination? If she went for it and was challenged by one or more candidates—California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—would that lead to a civil war within the party and offend a key constituency: Black voters?)

Bill Clinton used to say that strong-and-wrong beats weak-and-right. With his performance on Thursday night, Biden created a perfect test case for that proposition.

Here’s How Biden Could Rattle Trump in Their First Debate

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

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My opponent likes to pose as a tough guy. But where I come from—and it may be old-fashioned—if you lose, you take the hit. You don’t whine and cry about it and blame everybody else. You take responsibility, you move on. That’s what a real man does. And by the way, why does a fellow who tries to be so macho wear as much makeup as a drag queen? Can anyone explain that to me?

President Joe Biden has four main objectives in his upcoming debate with Donald Trump scheduled for Thursday. He needs to champion his performance in office (bipartisan legislation, a trillion dollars in infrastructure investment, the expansion of domestic computer chip manufacturing, climate change policies, a better economy than other Western nations, the Covid vaccination distribution, and more); to share compelling aims for a second term; to defend himself against the expected attacks (age, inflation, incompetence, and supposedly heading a devilish cabal that aims to destroy the United States); and to assail Trump as a threat to democracy and the world. On that last point—a drop-dead serious matter—I am hoping that he and his advisers realize the value of strategic derision.

Like most bullies, Trump cannot bear humiliation. His whole act is an act. He pretends to be strong and the best in everything—with the “best words” that come from a “very, very large brain.” But his malignant narcissism is clearly interlaced with deep insecurity. Real stable geniuses don’t have to brag about being stable geniuses. Trump might best be attacked not with frontal assaults about his lies, shortcomings, and misdeeds but with mockery. One goal Biden ought to have during the debate and afterward is to provoke Trump into the most erratic Trumpish behavior so voters are reminded of the perils of placing this guy in charge again. Ridicule can be quite useful in this regard.

One goal Biden ought to have is to provoke Trump into the most erratic Trumpish behavior so voters are reminded of the perils of placing this guy in charge again.

The point of a presidential debate is not to score debate points but to bolster a narrative and message. The most effective debate lines have tended not to be facts-driven. Look at the first face-off between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980. During that debate, Carter criticized Reagan for having begun his political career by campaigning against Medicare. This was an absolutely true charge. In 1961, Reagan had declared that socialized medicine would lead to an American dictatorship, ominously and absurdly saying if Medicare were implemented, “We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

How did Reagan respond to Carter’s jab? He cocked his head and said, “There you go again.” He was implying that Carter was lying. And the media and the political world gobbled this up, thinking it was just the best damn retort ever uttered. It was of no concern that Reagan lied when he said that he hadn’t opposed the principle behind Medicare. His reply was viewed and portrayed as a slam-dunk put-down of Carter. The Democratic incumbent had Reagan dead to rights. That didn’t matter.

Twenty years later, something similar happened when Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush met for the first time on the debate stage. Gore accused Bush of pushing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthy and a budget plan that would not secure Medicare funding. He vowed to place Medicare in a “lockbox.” Bush countered: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math.”

My memory is that the audience chuckled at this and that Gore, who overall performed poorly in the debate by sighing too much and acting too smug, looked perplexed. The veep clearly knew the policy better than the Texas governor, and his attack was justified by the facts. Yet Bush’s aw-shucks jibe about fuzzy math—which played off the unjustified criticism that Gore had once falsely claimed to have invented the internet—landed better. Bush had made Gore seem like a jerk.

These two retorts were false and—let’s face it—not feats of oration. Yet they were successful pokes aimed at core components of the targets: Carter’s self-righteousness and Gore’s know-it-all superiority. They were derisive. And that’s a good lesson for Biden.

Trump offers many opportunities for derision. Biden should look for chances to demean the blowhard.

Trump offers many opportunities for derision. I’m not suggesting that Biden use the specific line above about makeup. But he should look for chances to demean the blowhard.

Hey, Mr. Master Builder, how many Infrastructure Weeks did you have in which nothing happened? It was like a fake reality show. I passed $1 trillion in infrastructure spending. How much did you?

Remember all the times you bragged that you only hire the best people? Your former vice president, your former chief of staff, your former defense secretary, your former press secretary, your former White House counsel, your former communications director, your former national security adviser, and members of your Cabinet say they won’t vote for you. Why do so many people who worked with you keep saying, “You’re fired”?

Yeah, I know, some folks say I’m a bit on the old side. But I’ve never fallen asleep in the middle of a criminal trial in which I was found guilty. Can my opponent say that?

You promised Americans a health care plan that would be cheaper and better than the Affordable Care Act. But you never delivered one. Were you too busy writing love letters to the North Korean dictator? Which reminds me: Why did you call Vladimir Putin your BFF? What’s with this thing you have for murderous autocrats? Is it too hard for you to make friends with world leaders who are not tyrants?

Why can’t you take credit for the one big thing you did right during the Covid pandemic: encouraging the quick development of the Covid vaccine? Are you afraid of all the anti-vaxxers out there?

On January 6, while rioters attacked the Capitol, you sat there, did nothing, and watched television. We’re all curious: What did you have for lunch that day?  

You get the picture. You can concoct your own lines. Biden doesn’t need a long list of derisive assaults. Just a few. I bet Trump would take the bait. In the first debate of the 2020 campaign, Biden took a slap at Trump when the former reality TV host wouldn’t stop interrupting: “Would you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.” He also referred to Trump as a “clown” and a “racist.” Biden was able to be sharp in his parries with Trump. Belittling him could yield the best payback.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in an expanded paperback edition.