David Corn's Blog, page 13

Donald Trump’s Historic Hush-Money Trial Finally Begins

So, here we are. 

The first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president. Can it get more extraordinary than that? “He keeps setting new Guinness Records in terms of unprecedented history,” Mother Jones’ own David Corn explained in a new video outside a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s trial kicked off this morning.

Which case is this again? Good question. This one alleges that Trump falsified business records related to the hush-money scandal involving Stormy Daniels. As David explained in a curtain-raiser, the trial, though salacious in nature, is a very fitting symbol for Trump’s political rise and should be taken seriously.

“He is a creature of this trashy, celebrity, tabloid culture,” Corn says. “And that’s all going to be on display here in the next couple of weeks.”

Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 felony counts last month. Less than a day before Monday’s trial was set to begin, the former president attacked the presiding judge again on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling today’s proceedings a “Fake Biden Trial.” As my colleague Julianne McShane recounted, Judge Juan Merchan already hit Trump with a gag order for similar statements about potential trial witnesses last month. The gag order was then extended in April.

With four indictments, 88 counts, and a seemingly endless stream of social media posts, it might be easy to write off the Stormy Daniels trial as celebrity fodder. But don’t forget this is truly—and you’ll hear this word a lot—unprecedented.

Why a Porn Star Payoff Is Exactly the Right First Criminal Trial for Donald Trump

Out of the four criminal cases that Donald Trump faces, the one scheduled to begin on Monday in a New York City courtroom is not the prosecution that most addresses the threat he posed (and still poses) to American democracy. But it carries powerful symbolism, for of all Trump’s cases, this one reminds the nation that he emerged from a sleazy sewer that blended trashy celebrity culture and misogyny.

Prosecuting Trump for falsifying business records related to the hush-money pay-off made to stop porn star Stormy Daniels from blabbing about her alleged tryst with him (while Melania was home with 4-month-old Barron) may not seem as consequential and serious as placing the former president in the dock for allegedly swiping top-secret documents or for attempting to overturn American democracy so he could remain in power. Yet it seems appropriate that this history-making trial—the first time a former commander-in-chief will be prosecuted on criminal charges—arises from a tawdry and tabloidesque episode. How Trumpian.

Trump began climbing the ladder of fame in New York City in the 1980s as a brash, nepo-baby real estate developer and flashy womanizer. He boasted of his ways with the ladies, and, not surprisingly, his macho strutting was juiced by old-school objectification and brutal misogyny.

This was an image Trump assiduously created and nurtured. Often pretending to be a publicist and using an alias—John Miller or John Barron—he planted items in gossip columns about his love life. In one instance, he called a People magazine reporter, identified himself as Miller, and said of Trump, “Actresses just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” As Miller, he noted Madonna “wanted to go out with” Trump and that Trump, in addition to living with gal-pal Marla Maples, had “three other girlfriends.” As himself, he leaned on the editor of the New York Post to run a front-page story reporting that Maples had declared her romps with Trump were “the best sex I’ve ever had.” (The quote came from Trump, not Maples.) 

As a regular on shock-jock Howard Stern’s radio show, Trump paraded as a playboy and obnoxious chauvinist. When Stern referred to Alicia Machado, a winner of Trump’s Miss Universe contest who had gained weight, as a “fat pig,” Trump went along and referred to Machado as an “eating machine.” On another appearance, Trump said, “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10.” He criticized Kim Kardashian for having a “fat ass,” and he said the same of Jennifer Lopez. On one show, the pair discussed the danger of sexually transmitted diseases, and Trump remarked, “It is a dangerous world out there—it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

With Stern, he routinely rated famous women on their looks on a 1-to-10 scale. Shortly after the death of Princess Diana, Trump evaluated her physical appearance—her height and skin—and told Stern he believed he could have “gotten” her. Another time, Trump boasted that the National Enquirer had published a story saying, as he put it, “that in the history of the world, nobody has gotten more beautiful women than I have.” Promoting his Miss Universe pageant on Stern’s show, Trump said, “If you’re looking for a rocket scientist, don’t tune in tonight, but if you’re looking for a really beautiful woman, you should watch.”

When Stern hosted a show on E!, he also called on Trump to fill the airwaves. In one episode, Stern wanted to discuss—and drool over—Trump’s active dating life, and the tycoon obliged him. Trump acknowledged he judged women on their looks: “I tend to like beautiful women more than unattractive women. I don’t know, maybe that makes me bad.” A more telling exchange occurred in which Trump said he believed there was something “sick” about women that caused them to be attracted to men who treat them poorly.

Trump wanted to be seen as a rakish alpha male who triumphed over women and ruled within the world of the National Enquirer. It was part of his brand when he ran for president in 2016. His well-known history of tossing insults at women prompted then-Fox host Megyn Kelly to ask him at a debate about his attitudes toward women (which subsequently triggered a feud between Trump and her and her network). In that campaign, a super PAC run by a former Mitt Romney operative released a commercial featuring statements from Trump in which he derided women as “dogs” and declared his preference for women with large breasts. One Trump comment in the spot came from a 1992 magazine profile: “Women, you have to treat ‘em like shit.”

Being a jerk about women was not a bug for Trump but a feature. That’s why the emergence of the Access Hollywood “grab-’em-by-the-pussy” video didn’t blow up his campaign. His voters didn’t mind his crudeness. In fact, at his rallies, women wore t-shirts that said “Trump can grab me here” with an arrow pointing toward the crotch. 

Across decades, Trump pumped up his image as a swinger who viewed women as trophies and toys, with their value dependent on their looks. The Stormy Daniels case snugly fits into this narrative: Trump was a player who apparently cheated on his wife (a new mother) with a porn star. That could have been hard-core National Enquirer material—except that Trump was an important operator within the tabloid cosmos and a close pal of David Pecker, the president of the company that published the National Enquirer. Pecker and the magazine’s editor conspired with Trump to prevent Daniels from going public with her allegation right before Election Day in 2016. That resulted in the $130,000 hush-money pay-off to her. And that payment was falsely recorded on the Trump Organization books as a legal expense—which is the basis of the criminal case against Trump. The specific question at hand is whether this phony bookkeeping was done to cover up what might have been an illegal campaign expenditure concocted by Trump and his fixer Michael Cohen to influence the election. 

This caper did not arise from an abuse of power; it did not concern a serious governmental matter. But it casts a light on an important slice of Trump’s origin story: his cultivation of a sordid and crude celebrity infused with misogyny. Trump’s fame—which led him to his reality TV gig with The Apprentice, which led to his political career—was a product of schlock media that fed on his well-orchestrated bad-boy behavior and sexism. The jury’s job will be to decide whether Trump violated New York State law by attempting to hide the payment to Daniels as a business expense. But the trial will mean more than that and put on the witness stand the trashy world of Donald Trump.  

Why a Porn Star-Payoff Is Exactly the Right First Criminal Trial for Donald Trump

Out of the four criminal cases that Donald Trump faces, the one scheduled to begin on Monday in a New York City courtroom is not the prosecution that most addresses the threat he posed (and still poses) to American democracy. But it carries powerful symbolism, for of all Trump’s cases, this one reminds the nation that he emerged from a sleazy sewer that blended trashy celebrity culture and misogyny.

Prosecuting Trump for falsifying business records related to the hush-money pay-off made to stop porn star Stormy Daniels from blabbing about her alleged tryst with him (while Melania was home with four-month-old Barron) may not seem as consequential and serious as placing the former president in the dock for allegedly swiping top-secret documents or for attempting to overturn American democracy so he could remain in power. Yet it seems appropriate that this history-making trial—the first time a former commander in chief will be prosecuted on criminal charges—arises from a tawdry and tabloidesque episode. How Trumpian.

Trump began climbing the ladder of fame in New York City in the 1980s as a brash nepo-baby real estate developer and flashy womanizer. He boasted of his ways with the ladies, and, not surprisingly, his macho strutting was juiced by old-school objectification and brutal misogyny.

This was an image Trump assiduously created and nurtured. Often pretending to be a publicist and using an alias—John Miller or John Barron—he planted items in gossip columns about his love life. In one instance, he called a People magazine reporter, identified himself as Miller and said of Trump, “Actresses just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” As Miller, he noted Madonna “wanted to go out with” Trump and that Trump, in addition to living with gal-pal Marla Maples, had “three other girlfriends.” As himself, he leaned on the editor of the New York Post to run a front-page story reporting that Maples had declared her romps with Trump were “the best sex I’ve ever had.” (The quote came from Trump, not Maples.) 

As a regular on shock-jock Howard Stern’s radio show, Trump paraded as a playboy and obnoxious chauvinist. When Stern referred to Alicia Machado, a winner of Trump’s Miss Universe contest who had gained weight, as a “fat pig,” Trump went along and referred to Machado as an “eating machine.” On another appearance, Trump said, “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10.” He criticized Kim Kardashian for having a “fat ass,” and he said the same of Jennifer Lopez. On one show, the pair discussed the danger of sexually transmitted diseases, and Trump remarked, “It is a dangerous world out there—it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider.”

With Stern, he routinely rated famous women on their looks on a 1-to-10 scale. Shortly after the death of Princess Diana, Trump evaluated her physical appearance—her height and skin—and told Stern he believed he could have “gotten” her. Another time, Trump boasted that the National Enquirer had published a story saying, as he put it, “that in the history of the world, nobody has gotten more beautiful women than I have.” Promoting his Miss Universe pageant on Stern’s show, Trump said, “If you’re looking for a rocket scientist, don’t tune in tonight, but if you’re looking for a really beautiful woman, you should watch.”

When Stern hosted a show on E!, he also called on Trump to fill the airwaves. In one episode, Stern wanted to discuss—and drool over—Trump’s active dating life, and the tycoon obliged him. Trump acknowledged he judged women on their looks: “I tend to like beautiful women more than unattractive women. I don’t know, maybe that makes me bad.” A more telling exchange occurred in which Trump said he believed there was something “sick” about women that caused them to be attracted to men who treat them poorly.

Trump wanted to be seen as a rakish alpha male who triumphed over women and ruled within the world of the National Enquire. It was part of his brand when he ran for president in 2016. His well-known history of tossing insults at women prompted then-Fox host Megyn Kelly to ask him at a debate about his attitudes toward women (which subsequently triggered a feud between Trump and her and her network). In that campaign, a super-PAC run by a former Mitt Romney operative released a commercial featuring statements from Trump in which  he derided women as “dogs” and declared his preference for women with large breasts. One Trump comment in the spot came from a 1992 magazine profile: “Women, you have to treat ‘em like shit.”

Being a jerk about women was not a bug for Trump but a feature. That’s why the emergence of the Access Hollywood “grab-’em-by-the-pussy” video didn’t blow up his campaign. His voters didn’t mind his crudeness. In fact, at his rallies, women wore t-shirts that said “Trump can grab me here” with an arrow pointing toward the crotch. 

Across decades, Trump pumped up his image as a swinger who viewed women as trophies and toys, with their value dependent on their looks. The Stormy Daniels case snugly fits into this narrative: Trump was a player who apparently cheated on his wife (a new mother) with a porn star. That could have been hard-core National Enquirer material—except that Trump was an important operator within the tabloid cosmos and a close pal of David Pecker, the president of the company that published the National Enquirer. Pecker and the magazine’s editor conspired with Trump to prevent Daniels from going public with her allegation right before Election Day in 2016. That resulted in the $130,000 hush-money pay-off to her. And that payment was falsely recorded on the Trump Organization books as a legal expense—which is the basis of the criminal case against Trump. The specific question at hand is whether this phony bookkeeping was done to cover up what might have been an illegal campaign expenditure concocted by Trump and his fixer Michael Cohen to influence the election. 

This caper did not arise from an abuse of power; it did not concern a serious governmental matter. But it casts a light on an important slice of Trump’s origin story: his cultivation of a sordid and crude celebrity infused with misogyny. Trump’s fame—which led him to his reality TV gig with The Apprentice which led to his political career—was a product of schlock media that fed on his well-orchestrated bad-boy behavior and sexism. The jury’s job will be to decide whether Trump violated New York State law by attempting to hide the payment to Daniels as a business expense. But the trial will mean more than that and put on the witness stand the trashy world of Donald Trump.  

RFK Jr. Fundraisers Tied to J6ers, QAnoners, Christian Nationalists, and Far-Right Extremists

On March 23, Steve and Tracy Slepcevic hosted a fundraiser for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the San Diego area. Tickets started at $575, and those who paid $2,750 were to be treated to a “private sunset reception” before RFK Jr. would chat with the assembled and pose for photos. It was hardly surprising that the Slepcevics were supporting Kennedy, given that Tracy is a long-time anti-vaxxer prominent within the autism community. But the personal politics of the Slepcevics illuminate the weird currents propelling Kennedy’s White House bid, for the pair have hobnobbed with QAnoners, Christian nationalists, election deniers, and other pro-Trump extremists. Steve, who has a checkered past as a businessmen that includes an arrest (but not a conviction) for allegedly defrauding victims of Hurricane Katrina, was in the crowd of Trump devotees outside the Capitol on January 6. 

Last year, Tracy Slepcevic published a book called Warrior Mom about her years raising a son with autism that she blames on routine childhood vaccines. The book was endorsed by Kennedy and championed by Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser for President Donald Trump who has become a QAnon-friendly Christian nationalist and a leader within the far-right patriots movement. The Kennedy campaign sells signed copies of the book for $150 a pop. Tracy has been an ally of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax nonprofit that Kennedy ran before entering the 2024 contest. In November, she spoke at CHD’s annual conference in Savannah, Georgia, where she hawked her book and palled around with Kennedy, a longtime peddler of Covid and vaccine misinformation. On Facebook, she declared, “Had a great time at the CHD conference in Savannah with some amazing people…I’m so blessed to be on this journey with each and every one of them.” In promoting her book and activism, she has shared platforms with Stew Peters, a far-right anti-vaxxer who has been tied to QAnon advocacy and has spread (according to the ADL) antisemitic tropes, and with Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced scientist who wrote a discredited paper linking autism to vaccines. 

Tracy is a regular on the far-right conspiracy circuit. In November 2022, she joined the ReAwaken America tour as a speaker. This was a traveling road show that fused Christian nationalism, QAnonism, and MAGAism. It was a feast of election denialism and assorted conspiracy theories that featured as headliners Flynn, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, conspiracy-theory-monger Alex Jones, and Lara and Eric Trump. At these events, there was much talk of demons. (At one stop, Stone proclaimed “there is a Satanic portal above the White House” that appeared after Joe Biden became president.) Last June, Tracy attended the premiere of Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening, the third in a trilogy of conspiracy theory movies produced by an independent filmmaker named Mikki Willis. The first was loaded with debunked notions about Covid and vaccinations, and Facebook and YouTube each removed the film from its platform. The third one claimed Covid lockdowns were “synchronized tyranny” concocted to control the masses, decried a “purported plot” for one-world government, and dubbed Black Lives Matter a pro-communist organization. 

In February, the Slepcevics hosted what they called the “Autism Health Summit” in San Antonio. The speakers included numerous anti-vaxxers, including Willis, Judy Mikovits, another Covid conspiracy theorist, and Del Bigtree, a notorious anti-vaxxer who is now the communications director for the Kennedy campaign. Tracy has endorsed election denialism by promoting on her Facebook page 2000 Mules, the much-debunked documentary made by Dinesh D’Souza (a felon pardoned by Trump) that falsely claimed that during the 2020 election thousands of Democratic operatives were paid to illegally gather ballots and stuff them into drop boxes.

Steve Slepcevic, too, has traveled within the Trumpish far-right. Photos and videos taken on January 6 in Washington, DC, provided to Mother Jones by Capitol Terrorists Exposers—an anonymous group that has researched extremists involved in January 6—show he attended the rally on the Ellipse where Trump spoke that preceded the attack on the Capitol. One photo that Steve apparently posted on Facebook indicates he was in the crowd outside Capitol during the assault. In this post, he claimed that the “Fake News Media” was wrong to report that Trump supporters had stormed into the building, and he said that the riot was a “staged event.” (No evidence has emerged showing him inside the building that day.) 

Another photo he apparently posted captures him in the company of several members of the Three Percenters militia, including two of the four Three Percenters who were subsequently convicted of charges including conspiracy and obstruction for their involvement in the January 6 riot. 

In May 2021, on his Instagram feed, Steve promoted the We the People Patriots Day Rally in Stuart, Florida, which featured Flynn and Stone. The announcer at the event was a QAnon activist named DeAnna Lorraie, who was a host at Alex Jones’ InfoWars site. The rally, according to the ADL, was addressed by other QAnoners and a Christian nationalist.  

In 2022, Steve was billed as a guest speaker at an event headlined by former Sheriff Richard Mack that offered “US Constitutional Sheriff Training.” Mack is the founder of the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which asserts local law enforcement officials have the power to block federal officials and even to determine whether laws are constitutional. (Mack was one of the early leaders of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia-style outfit.) Other participants at the training, held at a Sheraton hotel outside Orlando, Florida, included Flynn and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock and a prominent 2020 election denier and ardent conspiracy theorist. (Byrne has been sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading false claims that it rigged the 2020 election.)

Steve Slepcevic’s business career as a disaster management entrepreneur has been a rocky one. In 2009, the Los Angeles Times mounted an investigation and “found dozens of fraud complaints, lawsuits and government investigations targeting Slepcevic and his Rancho Palos Verdes-based company, Paramount Disaster Recovery, spanning six states over the last decade. In California alone, insurance companies have filed 22 fraud complaints since 2002.” The newspaper described Paramount as part of “the world of ‘storm chasers,’ traveling contractors and insurance adjusters who descend on natural catastrophes, offering to help victims maximize their claims and rebuild.”

The paper reported that California had suspended Steve’s contractor’s license and that a judge had tossed out his petition for personal bankruptcy: “In the bankruptcy case, Slepcevic had acknowledged 21 claims against him or Paramount. But the U.S. trustee said in court papers that Slepcevic was ‘actively concealing’ a $200,000 fine by the California Department of Insurance and six related criminal charges for allegedly misrepresenting himself to victims of California wildfires.” The paper also noted, “Despite his legal and financial troubles, Slepcevic drives a Mercedes-Benz and lives in a $1.6-million Redondo Beach home with an ocean view. Over the years, he has earned up to $80,000 monthly, divorce records show. In addition to heading Paramount, Slepcevic runs the National Disaster Summit, a for-profit educational conference that serves as an advertising vehicle for disaster services. He charges other self-described disaster experts $3,000 for 45 minutes on stage.”

Steve told the paper that he had “made mistakes” and that his company had suffered from “management issues.” He insisted those problems were behind him. Speaking about the Los Angeles Times article 13 years later at a ReAwaken America event, Tracy called it a “smear job” and recalled, “We lost everything. My husband lost his business of 20 years. We lost our house.”

Two months after the Los Angeles Times piece appeared, Steve was arrested by the Louisiana State Police for allegedly participating in a “scheme that stole insurance proceeds from individuals and businesses after Hurricane Katrina.” The state charged that Steve and two associates swiped $355,461 from victims of the storm by negotiating insurance claims on their behalf, forging the signatures of the victims on settlement checks, and depositing the checks into the bank account of a company owned by Steve. The case was dismissed the following year. 

In 2014, Steve and Tracy Slepcevic incorporated a business in California called Strategic Response Partners, which, according to its website, helps “organizations respond quickly, efficiently, and appropriately to rapidly changing disaster-related situations.” He also started a Florida-based private security company called Sabre Defense Team. Its credo: “Survival is not just a skill set, but a mindset.” According to its website, “Sabre is an elite team of highly trained and uniquely skilled professionals equipped to assist with all facets of private security, paramedic, and emergency rescue and recovery services. When it comes to private security services, experience counts!” Until this week, the site said the company has been providing “proactive security” for “more than 25 years.” The firm was . After Mother Jones inquired about the company and its incorporation date, the reference to “25 years” was removed from the site.

Speaking at a recent conference, Steve noted that he had worked with Turning Point USA, a conservative outfit aimed at young people, and its leader Charlie Kirk (a Trump champion and election denier who has been in the news lately for making racist comments) to produce a documentary on the US-Mexico border. He also described how he escorted Kennedy to the  border last year and “set up all the interviews for him.” (The Kennedy campaign released a short film about this visit in which Steve appeared as an expert on smuggling at the border.) During this talk, he said that he would be providing security for a press conference at the end of May in Geneva that will feature government officials from countries who oppose the signing of a treaty obliging nations to share data and work together in the event of another pandemic. He noted his disaster management firm was collaborating with activists who intend to travel to the Swiss city to protest the accord and who are planning a similar event in Washington, DC, in September that will feature Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Russell Brand, and others. 

Neither Steve nor Tracy Slepcevic responded to multiple questions and requests for comment Mother Jones sent them. When a reporter for Mother Jones called Tracy, she answered the phone. After he identified himself, the line went dead. Subsequent calls went to voice mail. 

Mother Jones emailed the Kennedy campaign a list of questions about the Slepcevics and their associations. The queries included: How much money did the Slepcevics help raise at the recent fundraiser they hosted? Does the campaign plan to use them further in fundraising? How does the campaign feel about their ties to pro-Trump extremists? The campaign replied: “Your request for comment is under consideration and your deadline is noted. If the campaign has a response, we will let you know.” There was no additional response.

Political commentators have had a tough time characterizing Kennedy’s campaign. Is it a project of the left or the right? (Kennedy recently told CNN that he considers President Joe Biden a “much worse threat to democracy” than Trump.)  The campaign defies easy categorization. But the participation of the Slepcevics shows how RFK Jr.’s presidential bid can coexist with advocates tied to far-right extremists and Trump superfans. Beyond the fundraiser and the book sales, the Slepcevics have assisted Kennedy in other ways. In February, the campaign auctioned a one-hour coaching session with Tracy. The highest of the two bids that came in was $700. Last month, the campaign auctioned four hours of private firearms training with Steve. The buy-now price was $5,000. The winning bid was $1,325.

Donald Trump and the United States of Amnesia

Editor’s note: 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.

In the previous issue of my Our Land newsletter, I wrote about Trump Normalization Syndrome—a term I’m trying to popularize and a condition that demands greater recognition—and I observed that a major element of TNS is forgetting. After all, outrageous conduct that endangers American democracy cannot be easily minimalized or ignored, if the details remain fresh in our minds. And Donald Trump and his campaign are banking on the human inclination to cast aside or deemphasize ugly memories—to the extent that they have been absurdly asking voters, “Are you better off now than four years ago?” This is bonkers. Four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic that was killing thousands a week—by the end of April 2020, 60,000 Americans had died—and crushing the economy. It was a time of fear and food lines, as Trump downplayed and mismanaged the crisis.

It is amazing—and an indictment of the American political system—that the fellow whose mishandling of the pandemic resulted in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths could be in strong contention for a return to the presidency. Worse, Trump and his minions believe that they can use 2020 as a selling point. This has been flummoxing me. Then I read a recent article in the Atlantic by George Makari, the director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell, which sheds light on this. (Makari happens to be an old college chum.)

Makari and Friedman set off to answer a bit of a different question: Why is America in a funk? They point out that unemployment rates are low, and the stock market is high. Yet President Joe Biden’s approval rating is abysmal, and polls show that Americans’ satisfaction with their lives is near a record low. “And nearly half of Americans surveyed in January said they were worse off than three years prior,” they write. The pair note that experts and pundits have struggled to explain the malaise. Inflation (which soared but then dipped)? Ukraine? Gaza? The border crisis? They dismiss these possible causes and insist the experts are “overlooking a crucial factor.” Their answer: Covid. They write:

Four years ago, the country was brought to its knees by a world-historic disaster. COVID-19 hospitalized nearly 7 million Americans and killed more than a million; it’s still killing hundreds each week. It shut down schools and forced people into social isolation. Almost overnight, most of the country was thrown into a state of high anxiety—then, soon enough, grief and mourning. But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured. As clinical psychiatrists, we see the effects of such emotional turmoil every day, and we know that when it’s not properly processed, it can result in a general sense of unhappiness and anger—exactly the negative emotional state that might lead a nation to misperceive its fortunes.

In short, we went through a national trauma and have not fully reckoned with that. (An aside: The same could be said for January 6.)

More from Makari and Friedman:

The pressure to simply move on from the horrors of 2020 is strong. Who wouldn’t love to awaken from that nightmare and pretend it never happened? Besides, humans have a knack for sanitizing our most painful memories. In a 2009 study, participants did a remarkably poor job of remembering how they felt in the days after the 9/11 attacks, likely because those memories were filtered through their current emotional state. Likewise, a study published in Nature last year found that people’s recall of the severity of the 2020 COVID threat was biased by their attitudes toward vaccines months or years later.

When faced with an overwhelming and painful reality like COVID, forgetting can be useful—even, to a degree, healthy. It allows people to temporarily put aside their fear and distress, and focus on the pleasures and demands of everyday life, which restores a sense of control. That way, their losses do not define them, but instead become manageable.

Forgetting can be useful. This jibes with what I’ve been struggling to comprehend about Trump’s current standing. People yearn for the good old days…even when they were not so good. At the same time, unprocessed trauma creates an unease that affects current attitudes. So with Trump and the pandemic, many Americans don’t want to accurately recall that terrible stretch, but the unresolved issues from that horrific time yield a dissatisfaction with the current moment that Trump himself can exploit. Talk about a bank shot.

In part, Trump can (try to) get away with this because there was no post-pandemic establishment of a consensus Covid narrative. There were a few congressional hearings—mounted by Democrats—that examined the Trump administration’s actions during the crisis. But the Democrats failed to turn these sessions into high-profile affairs. And there has been no prominent blue-ribbon commission to investigate what was the worst public health emergency in a century. Accountability has been absent. That has made it easier to forget.

There has been no prominent blue-ribbon commission to investigate what was the worst public health emergency in a century. Accountability has been absent. That has made it easier to forget.

Makari and Friedman explain that “consigning painful memories to the River Lethe…has clear drawbacks, especially as the months and years go by. Ignoring such experiences robs one of the opportunity to learn from them. In addition, negating painful memories and trying to proceed as if everything is normal contorts one’s emotional life and results in untoward effects.” In extreme cases with veterans, this can lead to PTSD. (“We are not suggesting that the entire country has PTSD from COVID,” they state.)

Traumatic memories can affect how the brain functions and, thus, how the present is perceived. As they put it, “Traumatic memory doesn’t feel like a historical event, but returns in an eternal present, disconnected from its origin, leaving its bearer searching for an explanation. And right on cue, everyday life offers plenty of unpleasant things to blame for those feelings—errant friends, the price of groceries, or the leadership of the country.” We might not recall all the dreadful details of the early pandemic and the specific fears. (Will millions of us die?) “But,” Makari and Friedman assert, “the feelings that that experience ignited are still very much alive. This can make it difficult to rationally assess the state of our lives and our country.”

So if we’re all still reeling from those awful years of death and stress—and that is distorting how we view our current lives—what can be done about it? These two clinical psychiatrists say “you need to do more than ignore or simply recall it. Rather, you must rework the disconnected memory into a context, and thereby move it firmly into the past.” One remedy, they maintain, “is for leaders to encourage remembrance while providing accurate and trustworthy information about both the past and the present.” They see the politics of all this in similar fashion to what I’ve written: Trump, who bungled the response to the pandemic and who spread misinformation about Covid, has “become the beneficiary of our collective amnesia, and Biden the repository for lingering emotional discontent.” Yet they optimistically contend, “Some of that misattribution could be addressed by returning to the shattering events of the past four years and remembering what Americans went through. This process of recall is emotionally cathartic, and if it’s done right, it can even help to replace distorted memories with more accurate ones.”

I’m not certain that during an election year marked by record-high political polarization such an exercise could occur. Any attempt to revist those dark days to set the record straight would face a barrage of opposition from Trump, the GOP, and the conservative media, replete with shouts of “hoax” and accusations of Deep State plotting. See what happened when the Democrats tried to establish an account of what led to and occurred on January 6. There are no longer neutral observers (or observers who are widely considered neutral) in the political media world who could guide an endeavor of national remembrance and reconciliation.

It’s clear that Biden and his advisers have decided to steer clear of Covid—as a policy matter and a political issue. He rarely brings it up, and there’s not much of an effort on the part of his administration to promote booster shots or other anti-Covid measures. They seem to want to sidestep the divisive cultural wars that Covid triggered. Makari and Friedman, however, contend that reminding voters of the worst days of the pandemic need not “create more trouble” for Biden. They write: “Our work leads us to believe that the effect would be exactly the opposite. Rituals of mourning and remembrance help people come together and share in their grief so that they can return more clear-eyed to face daily life. By prompting Americans to remember what we endured together, paradoxically, Biden could help free all of us to more fully experience the present.”

I am stunned that Trump’s malfeasant handling of the crisis has not disqualified him for a return engagement. Then again, I could say the same thing about Trump’s Big Lie and January 6.

I’d like to believe this. And I’d like to see Biden try. As I’ve noted, I am stunned that Trump’s malfeasant handling of the crisis has not disqualified him for a return engagement. Then again, I could say the same thing about Trump’s Big Lie and January 6. We’ve often heard that the first step to recovery is recognizing the problem and resolving to address it. With both Covid and January 6, one half of the political system has no interest in such a process. It rightfully calculates that its survival depends on preventing this. Can Biden and the Democrats do this on their own? That would be quite the task.

While pundits have failed to fully explain the sour mood of the American public, Makari and Friedman have delivered us a smart diagnosis that helps us understand at least part of this unusual and upsetting political moment. (On Sunday, the New York Times published a smart piece that examined the current political impact of the pandemic.) Their article is a reminder that psychology is often crucial for comprehending voters’ attitudes. I wonder, though, if it’s too late to fulfill their prescription. I once heard Gore Vidal refer to this country as the United States of Amnesia. Our problem is that many of our fellow citizens are damn happy to reside there.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition.

Will RFK Jr. and Other Third-Party Candidates Help Doom Democracy?

In the summer of 2000, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the Democratic Party dynasty, took time out of his schedule as an environmental attorney to write an op-ed for the New York Times. In the piece, Kennedy hailed consumer advocate Ralph Nader as his “friend and hero,” but he lambasted him for mounting a third-party run for president. Nader could “siphon votes” from Vice President Al Gore, who was running against Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Kennedy warned, saying it was “irresponsible” for Nader to argue that there was “little distinction” between the Democratic and Republican nominees. A vote for Nader, Kennedy asserted, “is a vote for Mr. Bush” and for what he considered a disaster: the Republicans’ anti-environment agenda.

That was then.

Twenty-four years later, now an anti-­vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, Kennedy has broken with the Democratic Party and is running for president as an independent. He insists that unlike Nader, he’s no spoiler, and he dismisses the notion that his presence in the race will help either former President Donald Trump or President Joe Biden. Political analysts are uncertain which candidate will benefit more from Kennedy’s campaign. The Kennedy brand could hold appeal for some Democrats, but his paranoia-drenched attacks on the public health community could also be catnip for Trump voters. “I think Americans should have a choice,” Kennedy told NBC News, “that they shouldn’t be forced to choose the least of two evils.”

Democratic and Republican political pros have good cause to be jittery about how third-party or independent presidential candidates might impact this race. The reason is simple: The last two elections have been decided by extremely narrow margins in a tiny number of states. The odds are strong that this year’s contest will be similarly close. If so, there’s potential for one or more of the third-party or independent contenders already in the race—Kennedy, Green Party leader Jill Stein, or author and professor Cornel West—to influence the outcome by drawing a small slice of voters from Biden or Trump. Given the circumstances, it is far easier to view these outside presidential bids as potential threats to a major candidate rather than as well-intentioned movements to expand the horizons of American politics. That is especially true considering that an outsider campaign can be weaponized by other political players pursuing quite different agendas than those of the third-party candidates themselves. With the 2024 election shaping up to be a referendum on American democracy, a minor candidate might end up helping to determine the future of the republic.

For decades, voices across the political spectrum have railed against the party duopoly. Occasionally, a serious independent or third-party presidential candidate has emerged, but none have won a presidential contest—or even come remotely close. Only a few insurgents have significantly shaped the final outcome. Notably, Theodore Roosevelt’s post-­presidency run in 1912 under the banner of the Progressive Party (a.k.a. the Bull Moose Party) essentially doomed the reelection campaign of Republican President William Howard Taft and helped New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, win the White House.

Other third-party presidential candidates have fared worse but still gained notoriety and attention for their ideological agendas. Socialist Eugene Debs was on the ballot in five presidential races between 1900 and 1920. (During his last bid, he ran while imprisoned after being convicted of sedition for urging resistance to the military draft.) Progressive Wisconsin Gov. Robert La Follette sought the presidency in 1924. South Carolina’s white-­supremacist governor, Strom Thurmond, was the candidate for the States Rights Democratic Party (otherwise known as the Dixiecrats) in 1948. Twenty years later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace campaigned as the head of the pro-segregationist American Independent Party. Businessman Ross Perot’s independent 1992 bid drew 19 percent of the vote—the best outing by an outside-the-system candidate since Roosevelt. To this day, political scientists argue about whether Perot pickpocketed more votes from Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush.

The Nader effect was clearer. In 2000, running on the Green Party ticket, he pulled in 22,198 votes in New Hampshire, more than three times the 7,211 vote lead George W. Bush had over Gore. In Florida, where Bush edged out Gore by 537 votes, Nader bagged 97,488. While impossible to prove, it is a reasonable hypothesis that had Nader not been on the ballot, Gore, a noted environmentalist, would have picked up enough of those Nader votes to win. (Also complicating that election was ultra-conservative commentator Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party; his vote total in Florida was boosted by a poorly designed ballot in Palm Beach County that likely cost Gore more than 2,000 votes.) Had Gore triumphed in 2000, you can imagine the United States taking vigorous steps to address climate change—which President George W. Bush did not—and avoiding the catastrophic invasion of Iraq that yielded the deaths of more than 4,000 American troops and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians. In 2000, RFK Jr. was right.

During the 2016 showdown between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Trump, Green Party candidate Jill Stein bagged 1 percent of the national vote, and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson collected 3.3 percent. In key swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, these candidates’ combined vote totals exceeded the margin by which Trump beat Clinton. There’s no telling how many of the Stein and Johnson voters would have pulled the lever for Clinton had those other choices not been available. Stein justified her campaign by arguing Clinton and Trump were equivalent: “We have two ways to commit suicide here,” she said, “and I say no thank you to them both.”

The years since then have demonstrated just how stark the differences between those two candidates really were. The list of consequences of that election result is long and includes the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Trump inciting a mob to lay siege to the Capitol in an attempt to illegally remain in office.

“This combination of high public dissatisfaction with well-known candidates could fuel a significant increase in the protest vote against both Biden and Trump.”

The stakes are even higher this year, and outsider candidates may be better positioned to affect the outcome. “Third-party and independent presidential candidates could play a more significant role in 2024 than in most presidential elections in recent memory,” says Bernard Tamas, a political science professor at Valdosta State University and the author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties. He explains that the growth of third parties over the last 60 years is the result of “the rising contentiousness of a steadily more polarized conflict between the two major parties.” During the 2024 election cycle, the mutual hostility has escalated to the point where each party accuses the other of “subverting democracy.” The result? “This combination of high public dissatisfaction with well-known candidates could fuel a significant increase in the protest vote against both Biden and Trump,” Tamas says.

Understandably, then, the prospect of third-party spoilage is a source of dread for political strategists. For much of the past year, Democrats and never-Trumpers fretted over No Labels, a dark-money group that used millions of dollars raised from anonymous sources to win spots on state ballots for a supposed centrist, bipartisan ticket. (Mother Jones and other news organizations have revealed some of its funders; as a group, they tilt toward the GOP.) Founded by former Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson—her husband is Mark Penn (once a top strategist for President Bill Clinton), who advised Trump during his first impeachment—the No Labels project was generally seen by political insiders as unlikely to succeed in running a viable candidate and widely regarded as being more beneficial for Trump than for Biden.

Democrats and other anti-Trumpers who considered No Labels something of a pro-Trump front took steps to neutralize this venture, decrying the group, challenging its petition drives, and putting pressure on prospective donors. In response, No Labels called on the Justice Department to investigate its opponents for trying to prevent it from obtaining ballot access. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia and the potential No Labels candidate mentioned most often, eventually withdrew from consideration, noting that he did not want to help Trump win. That left the group with no obvious standard-bearer and the lingering question of whether it would field a surprise candidate or fizzle.

A less-organized and less-funded third-party endeavor still could throw sand into the gears this year and alter the course of the race. Once again, Stein is seeking the presidency as a Green Party candidate. (She skipped the 2020 election. Howie Hawkins, a longtime progressive activist and trade unionist, garnered a measly 0.3 percent of the vote for the Greens.) There’s no reason to believe Stein’s appeal has widened since 2016, but the Green Party does have ballot lines in at least 20 states and Washington, DC, including the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida. So she could be a factor in a tight race.

As could Cornel West. The celebrity academic (formerly of Harvard and Princeton), fiery anti-racism campaigner, and onetime leader of Democratic Socialists of America has mounted a long-shot bid as an independent. In January, he announced he also was forming the Justice for All Party to help him gain ballot access in several states, particularly Florida, Washington, and North Carolina—the last of which could be a key Biden–Trump battleground. (In some states, it’s easier for a party than a nonaffiliated candidate to win a line on the ballot, which partly explains West’s desire to form a party.) As of February, he had only qualified to be on the ballots of Oregon, South Carolina, and Alaska. His success in Alaska illustrates the strange-bedfellows world of third-party politics. His campaign paid $10,000 to Scott Kohlhaas, a state ballot access expert who has races for the US Senate and the Alaska legislature as a Libertarian Party candidate. Kohlhaas also has spearheaded an effort for Alaska to secede from the United States.

Per usual, the national Libertarian Party plans to have a candidate in the 2024 hunt. The party’s past efforts have been uneven. In 2016, the Libertarian ticket of former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld appeared on the ballots in all 50 states, but the party’s nominee in 2020 is now a trivia question for politicos (A: Jo Jorgensen). At the end of May, upward of 1,000 delegates will gather for a convention to choose to choose the party’s candidate. Kennedy has held talks with Libertarians about possibly heading their ticket, though there were wide ideological differences between his crazy-quilt collection of policy stances and the Libertarians’ anti-government positions.

It is Kennedy who may well be the true X factor in 2024, even if it’s unclear which candidate his presence could hurt more. When Donald Trump Jr. slammed Kennedy as a “radical liberal,” it suggested that the Trump camp feared his impact on the contest.

The Democratic National Committee is also worried. In February, it filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging that a super-PAC supporting Kennedy (which has received millions of dollars from a Trump funder) and his campaign had illegally coordinated their work—an allegation Kennedy’s campaign denied. The DNC also hired a veteran political operative to lead its opposition to third-party presidential bids, with Kennedy as a top concern.

Third-party and independent candidates always talk about the legitimate need to enlarge the political debate. But they also present the major parties, billionaires, and even foreign governments with opportunities for political mischief.

In 2000, a Republican group aired ads featuring Nader attacking Gore. Four years later, when Nader ran again and drew less support, conservative outfits helped him win ballot access, and Republican funders donated directly to his campaign. This was before Citizens United v. FEC, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited amounts of anonymous money from billionaires, corporations, and unions to pour into the political system. The profusion of dark money makes it easier for political connivers—domestic and foreign—to secretly influence elections, including by using third-party or independent candidates for their own ends.

These days, there are many ways to exploit such a candidate. Here’s a possible scenario: West makes it onto the ballot in North Carolina. Then, in the closing days of the campaign, a Republican donor—or several donors—sets up a private corporation, which doesn’t have to reveal its owners. This entity pours a large amount of cash into a newly created super-PAC. This super-PAC then uses those funds to air ads on radio stations in, say, Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Durham that slam Biden for not doing enough for Black voters and urge a vote for West. Could that cause several thousand voters to defect from Biden to West? Could a difference of several thousand votes decide the election in that state? Could the results in North Carolina swing the entire election? Sneaky moves like this could be attempted in any swing state.

Nor should we forget the history of Russian interference in our elections. In 2016, Russian trolls ran a social media blitz to boost Stein, as part of Moscow’s clandestine scheme to undermine the US presidential election and help Trump. This operation included the hack-and-leak operation that targeted Clinton, via the release of emails and documents stolen from the Democrats, and, no doubt, contributed to her loss. In 2020, Russian operatives colluded with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to spread false information about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s activities in Ukraine.

This year, Moscow will undoubtedly try to intervene in the American election. Third-party and independent candidates—who, of course, have the right to run and be considered on their merits—offer the Russians and other bad-faith actors avenues for meddling. These schemers can exploit attempts to expand democracy in order to undercut it.

Americans drawn to a third-party or independent candidate might have all sorts of worthy reasons for doing so. Some may see their vote as a blow against the duopoly, while others view it as a means to embrace a purer ideological agenda. Voting for an outsider candidate could be perceived as a way to express a particular frustration with a major-party candidate—say, with Biden’s approach to the Israel–Hamas war. A lifelong Republican who is fed up with a corrupt would-be autocrat who encouraged an insurrection might want an alternative that does not entail marking the ballot for a Democrat. Yet, given the hard-and-fast realities of America’s political system—and the ability of political operatives, big-money donors, and foreign governments to utilize these candidacies for their own purposes—a vote for one of these candidates could lead to results on Election Day and beyond that run counter to third-party voters’ aims for the nation.

It is inconceivable that a candidate who’s not a Democrat or a Republican could win the 2024 presidential contest. But it is not inconceivable that one or more of these outsider candidates could change the course of the election and determine the victor—in other words, be a spoiler. This will likely be a contest that hinges on a small number of swing voters in a handful of states. With the scales evenly balanced, it might not take much to tip them. And if the main choice is indeed between a candidate who threatens democracy and one who abides by its rules and norms, these other presidential wannabes—and their voters—may play a crucial role in deciding the fate of the United States.

It’s a Good Time to Start Worrying About Christian Nationalism

Editor’s note: 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.

In response to rising concern among liberals and others about the spread of Christian nationalism, conservative voices have been pressing a counterattack, claiming all this fretting is just lefty hysteria from secularists who are not willing to acknowledge the role of Christianity in American society and who want to brand all politically active Christians as extremists. Last year, the far-right Heritage Foundation published an article declaring that Christian nationalism is a term “mostly used as a smear against conservative Christians who defend the role of religion in American public life” and that the “lack of standard definition allows critics to bundle evils like white supremacy and racism with standard conservative views on marriage, family, and politics.” More recently, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, addressing liberal unease, wrote, “Today’s religious conservatives are mostly just normal American Christians doing normal American Christian politics, not foot soldiers of incipient theocracy.” He added, “It’s not clear to me that secular liberals should really fear Christian nationalism more today than in 2000 or 1980.”

Really?

By now, you’ve heard of Project 2025, the enterprise established by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing outfits to both set a radical-right agenda for a possible second Trump term and recruit Dear Leader loyalists for government posts in that administration. As I’ve noted, this venture has cooked up plans and measures with an authoritarian bent. It also has been preparing to inject Christian nationalist ideas into a Trump 2.0 presidency. One example from the Project 2025 handbook: “maintain a biblically based, social science–reinforced definition of marriage and family.” That does sounds a bit Gilead-ish.

The anti-anti-Christian nationalists’ effort to cast libs as the-sky-is-falling worrywarts is either naive or a purposeful effort to deflect attention from this threat to civil society. And though it usually is best to avoid dependence on one data point, allow me to zero in on a single tweet that appeared recently to highlight the danger.

Following President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union speech, William E. Wolfe, a midlevel official at the Pentagon and the State Department during the Trump administration and a Christian nationalism advocate, tweeted out his response. Here it is in full:

My response to the  #SOTU :

We need to see the deeper spiritual realities at play. This ain’t just a political fight, it’s a spiritual war. Heaven and Hell are real. Demons exist.

And there are two main demons being worshipped in America right now:

1) Molech, who demands child sacrifice (abortion)

2) Baphomet, whose demonic goat-like representation is gender-bending (LGBTQIA+) The “Equality Act” and “Reproductive Rights” aren’t just “policies” that the radical Left/Democrats support

  They are sacraments, acts of worship to their demon gods

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12   

It’s time for Christians to call on America to repent of our idol worship of demons and return to the One True Living God and His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ

Maybe God raise up more idol smashers for our days yet.

This tweet illustrates a basic component of Christian nationalism: spiritual warfare. That’s the notion that all that transpires in our world is a manifestation of the mammoth and eternal clash between God and Satan. The tussle over abortion is not an argument between fellow citizens with conflicting views on bodily autonomy or the question of when life begins; it is a battle between Jesus and Lucifer. Consequently, those who support reproductive freedom are demons or, at the least, in league with or controlled by demons.

Wolfe contends that Americans who champion reproductive rights are doing so as a ritual sacrifice to Molech, who in the Bible appears to be a Canaanite god (though there’s disagreement among scholars over who or what Molech is). And he insists that passing LGBTQ protections is a form of praying to Baphomet, a deity that the Knights Templar, a Catholic military order active early in the second millennium, were accused of worshipping that later became associated with the occult. (You might recall the Knights Templar from The Da Vinci Code and the Indiana Jones movies.)

Wolfe sees the political opposition to Trump, Christian fundamentalism, and conservatism as literally a satanic force. How then can he and his comrades expect to have civil discourse with it?

This is esoteric stuff and a bizarre and troubling political analysis. Yet it’s telling. Wolfe sees the political opposition to Trump, Christian fundamentalism, and conservatism as literally a satanic force. How then can he and his comrades expect to have civil discourse with it? You certainly cannot work with or strike legislative compromises with actual demons. And why should you accord them or their allies any civil rights or protections? These servants of the devil must be crushed by any means necessary to make way for a nation that is ruled according to the precepts of Christian fundamentalism, right? This is the core of Christian nationalism.

Now why should we care about the radical view of this one fellow? Wolfe is a close associate of Russell Vought, who was budget director for the Trump White House and now is president of the Center for Renewing America, one of the right-wing organizations behind Project 2025. As Politico recently reported, “Vought’s beliefs over time have been informed by his relationship with Wolfe. The two spent time together at Heritage Action, a conservative policy advocacy group. And Vought has praised their yearslong partnership. ‘I’m proud to work with @William_E_Wolfe on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism,’ he posted on X, then Twitter, in January 2023.”

Wolfe, who is now the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership (which battles liberalism within the Southern Baptist Convention) and who has advocated ending sex education in schools, surrogacy, and no-fault divorce, is far from a rando. He’s intimately tied to the fellow who is the architect of the next possible Trump administration and who has been mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff for Trump.

There are many carnival barkers within Christian nationalism. For instance, disgraced former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, who has embraced the banner of white Christian nationalism and proclaimed, “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.”

Michael Flynn tonight: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” pic.twitter.com/ShGVrsQ9hW

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 13, 2021

Or Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, who called on men to “fight for Jesus” so the world will be “dominionized” and “conquered” for Jesus.

This intense sermon would be disturbing enough coming from a random pastor.

It's even worse when you realize it's Oklahoma State Sen. Dusty Deevers calling on Christian men to go to war for Jesus. pic.twitter.com/4gZ0F1aQez

— Hemant Mehta (@hemantmehta) March 13, 2024

Yet the most devilish ones are those like Wolfe who are scheming to burrow into the government to advance their radical religious agenda.

Like Douthat and the Heritage Foundation, Wolfe dismisses liberal critics of Christian nationalism. “Apparently, any Christian who wants to see just laws grounded in biblical principles and Christian morality enacted in America these days is now a scary ‘Christian nationalist,’ according to secularists,” he wrote last month. What these detractors want, he added, “is nothing less than to silence politically engaged conservative Christians.”

Yet Wolfe himself goes far beyond the Christian conservatism that underlies the right’s opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, and much else. He is promoting a Manichean worldview that holds that only the Christians he deems true Christians deserve to serve in government. Dismissing criticism of Christian nationalism as a sneaky liberal ploy to attack all right-of-center Christians is profoundly disingenuous. But I suppose when you’re combatting Beelzebub in the name of Jesus, the Ninth Commandment is not operative.

Back to Douthat. In his column, he concluded that “religious conservatism” would “influence a second Trump administration,” but “it would be the influence of an important but weakening faction in a de-Christianizing country, not a movement poised to overthrow a secular liberalism.” He should spend some time with Wolfe.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition.

Here Are the Only Swing Voters You Need to Care About in 2024

Donald Trump’s criminal cases. Joe Biden’s age. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Migrants at the border. Food prices. There are many factors that can decide the 2024 presidential election and set the future course of the United States. But this titanic contest is likely to be determined by a tiny slice of the nation’s citizens—3 million or so voters. That’s less than 1 percent of the population. A repeat face-off between presumed nominees Biden and Trump holds potentially huge consequences for the nation. Will the executive branch be controlled by a deceptive demagogue with autocratic impulses who tried to overturn the last election? Will the US take the necessary steps to address the climate crisis? Will America continues to support Ukraine in its battle against Russia? Yet the mathematics of this election are rather simple and small. 

Let’s run through the numbers. Since the best predictor of the future is the past, start with the 2020 race.

There were seven states that year where the margin of victory was under 3 percent: Georgia (.3 percent), Pennsylvania (1.2 percent), Michigan (2.8 percent), Wisconsin (.6 percent), Arizona (.4 percent), Nevada (2.4 percent), and North Carolina (1.3) percent. Biden won six, losing only North Carolina. In 2016, Trump triumphed in six of these seven, with Hillary Clinton collecting the Electoral College votes of Nevada. These clearly are the key states for 2024. (Florida and New Hampshire were tight in 2016, but not in 2020.) Call this collection of states Swinglandia.

All told, there were 30.6 million votes in Swinglandia in the previous presidential election. Add them up and here’s the split: 15.4 million for Biden, 15.2 million for Trump. Tight as a tick. Biden collectively won this bloc 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent. That was much closer than the national tally: 51.3 percent to 46.9 percent for Biden.

These states will probably be where the election, once again, is decided. If Biden is victorious in any four of them, he will win (absent any major surprise elsewhere). If he places first in three, he will have to do so in a combination that yields him at least 41 electoral votes. (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin would do the trick for him, with three votes to spare.) If he only bags two of these seven states, he will be out of a job.

Trump needs to win an assortment of four of these states that provide 54 electoral votes (not all combos of four will do that). (You can do the math at home. Here are the states’ electoral votes: Arizona, 11; Georgia, 16; Michigan, 15; Nevada, 6; North Carolina, 16, Pennsylvania, 19; and Wisconsin, 10.)

In one way or another, these 30.6 million Americans hold the key to victory. But most of them are already spoken for—that is, they have made up their minds. This is hardly surprising, given Biden and Trump are known quantities. They’ve both inhabited the White House. They each have offered voters plenty of information and impressions on which to base a vote. Yet polls overall show that about 10 percent of voters are undecided at this point. That would indicate that about 3 million voters in Swinglandia are up for grabs. A slight tipping within this group of voters could determine who lands in the White House. 

This is, of course, nuts.

Billions of dollars are being spent to influence the 2024 election. (Fourteen billion dollars were funneled into the 2020 election.) Yet 3 million folks across seven states will be the main deciders. And we can presume that many of them are on the fence because they are not deeply engaged with the nation’s political debate. Those Americans who intensely or moderately follow politics will likely have a preference in this race between familiar candidates who offer stark differences regarding policy and temperament (though not age). Voters who haven’t yet made up their minds are probably people who don’t interact much with the political realm. 

This poses a challenge for the political pros: How do you reach these voters? They are probably not paying close attention to politics via the news media or social media. How do you make contact if you cannot hit them with ads or posts? How do you find the right doors to knock on, the right phone numbers to text or call? Moreover, if they are undecided at this point, after Trump’s four years in office (and his conduct afterward) and Biden’s three years (and his long stints as vice president and senator), it’s a good bet they won’t make up their minds until they must. That means weeks—or days—before the November election. Ads at this point—if they even are seen—might not be effective. 

Certainly, a major development—a Trump criminal conviction, a medical setback for either—could sway the yet-to-be-swayed. Absent that, it could well be money wasted to go after these voters months before Election Day. Smart political operatives at this point would be conducting the ground work for a persuasion campaign in the fall. Such an effort would include deep-dive, data-driven research efforts to identify the types of voters who now fall into the don’t-know category and building up social networks that are not primarily of an electoral nature but that can later be used to try to reach these voters with election-related messages. One Democratic strategist tells me that several progressive nonprofits are in the process of doing that, especially targeting women in rural areas, small towns, and suburbs in these key states, as well as young Black adults. 

Of course, there are plenty of reasons for the presidential campaigns, parties, and partisans on each side to spend money and organize throughout the country. There are key Senate, House, and gubernatorial races outside Swinglandia. And Biden and Trump want to make sure there are no slip-ups with states each of their teams already consider in the bag. Also, their campaigns need to make sure that their past voters in the battleground states stick with them and that they court the millions of new voters in these states who have turned 18 since 2020. Still, in the presidential race, much effort will be focused on those 3 million or so Americans in seven states who largely are too detached from American politics to now state a preference between these two well-known (for some, too well-known) and ideologically opposed candidates. 

Both sides have cast the 2024 election in apocalyptic terms. A fear-mongering Trump claims that a Biden reelection will cause the literal annihilation of America, while Biden and his allies accurately point out that Trump tried to overturn the last election, incited an insurrectionist riot, and, thus, poses a clear and present threat to American democracy. This showdown may well determine the future of the nation’s constitutional order. Yet with the highest of stakes, the election appears to be in the hands of a low number of less-engaged voters in only a few states. What reaches them—be it ads, headlines, memes, disinformation, rumors, the opinions of relatives and peers, organizing projects, the candidates’ performances on the campaign trail, or external events—will probably decide the final outcome. Those who don’t yet know which side they are on hold the fate of the United States in their hands—whether they know it or not.

Trump Considers Adding Paul Manafort—a “Grave Counterintelligence Threat”—to His Campaign

From the Nothing Matters News Desk comes this report: Donald Trump is considering bringing back Paul Manafort as a top campaign adviser.

In any time other than the Trump era, this might be shocking. Manafort is a disgraced political operator and lobbyist who was pushed out as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016 after allegations emerged that he had received millions of dollars in secret payments from a Russia-aligned leader of Ukraine. He was subsequently found guilty of assorted crimes, including bank fraud, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice and sentenced to more than seven years in prison—but pardoned by Trump in the final weeks of his presidency. And the guy Trump may put back on payroll is more than a sleazy wheeler-dealer; he was—and may well still be—a national security threat. 

In August 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan 966-page report investigating the Russian attack on the 2016 election. Manafort had a starring role in this document, which labeled him a “grave counterintelligence threat.” This exhaustive report depicted Manafort as a key point of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, and it undermined Trump and his crew’s false claim that the Trump-Russia scandal was nothing but a hoax.  In fact, the committee suggested that there was a collusion of sorts between the Trump camp and Moscow, with Manafort as the go-between. 

Across hundreds of pages, the report presented a sweeping account of Manafort’s many years of misdeeds. It noted that in the 2000s he started working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, as well as Ukrainian oligarchs connected to Russia. His jobs included running a “multi-million dollar political influence campaign directed at numerous countries of interest to Deripaska and the Russian government.” As part of this work, Manafort forged a close connection to Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the report identifies as a “Russian intelligence officer.” The troubling relationship between the two men, the committee stated, “endured to the 2016 U.S. elections and beyond.”

The report confirmed that while Manafort served as a Trump campaign adviser he secretly shared internal campaign information with Kilimnik. The panel also disclosed that it had obtained “information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected” to the Russian operation that hacked Democratic targets and leaked the pilfered material to help Trump. This raised the possibility the Trump campaign, via Manafort, was tied to the Moscow operation that sought to sabotage the American election for Trump’s benefit. 

Moreover, the committee concluded that Manafort schemed with Kilimnik to push out “narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S.” So not only was Manafort canoodling with a Russian spy during the campaign; he also conspired with him to cover up Vladimir Putin’s clandestine operation to swing the election to Trump. 

The intelligence committee did not mince words. Manafort, it declared, was a danger to national security:

Manafort’s presence on the [Trump] Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.

It added;

The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort’s access to gain insight into the Campaign.

This was a serious indictment of Manafort—and should be a red flag for anyone who would hire him. But, apparently, not for Trump..

The entire Manafort story within the report was full of intrigue and explosive revelations. According to the committee, Manafort worked with Kilimnik to advance a so-called peace plan for eastern Ukraine—Putin had seized Crimea in 2014—that would help Moscow. It pointed out that Manafort and Kilimnik had deployed various secret forms of communication to hide the content of their interactions. It detailed a ton of suspicious business deals that Manafort had with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, and it covered Manafort’s involvement in a pro-Russia disinformation campaign to blame the computer hacks of Democrats in 2016 on Ukraine not Russia. It also chronicled the infamous private meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 during which Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. huddled with a Russian emissary after being informed she was going to share with them dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a secret Kremlin effort to help the Trump campaign. This meeting signaled the Russians that the Trump crew did not mind Moscow meddling in the election. 

Most alarming, the committee stated that it had uncovered “two pieces of information…[that] raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.” Much of that portion of the report is redacted. And according to the the committee, the FBI in the middle of the 2016 campaign opened a counterintelligence investigation of Manafort. 

So Trump’s top campaign aide in 2016 was in a bed with a Russian spy and possibly tied to Putin’s covert assault on the US election. He was also found guilty on multiple charges of financial crimes related to his business dealings with Moscow-friendly oligarchs and politicians. And now Trump is weighing restoring him to a position of influence and power within his campaign. Talk about a swamp. 

During the Russian attack in 2016, both Trump and Manafort aided and abetted Putin’s clandestine war on American democracy by denying it was happening. The Senate Intelligence Committee report suggested that Manafort did even worse by maintaining a relationship with a Russian operative and posing a threat to national security. Yet Trump could soon be welcoming this discredited political player—and security risk—back into the fold. It ought to be a scandal. But it’s just another day in Trump World.

Justice Ginsburg’s Family Decries Bestowing RBG Award on Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch

On Wednesday, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation announced the 2024 recipients of the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award. The winners: businessman Elon Musk, right-wing media kingpin Rupert Murdoch, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, felonious Wall Streeter turned philanthropist Mike Milken, and actor Sylvester Stallone. The Foundation hailed these “iconic individuals” for their “extraordinary achievements.”

Veteran corporate lawyer Brendan Sullivan, who was Oliver North’s attorney during the Iran-contra scandal and who now chairs the RBG Award, noted, “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” And the chair of the foundation, Julie Opperman, a big Republican donor and the widow of publishing titan Dwight Opperman, who once was CEO of Thomson Reuters, remarked that the award embraces “the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”

Attaching Ginsburg’s name to Musk, who has amplified racist and antisemitic posts and ideas on X, and Murdoch, whose Fox News purposefully spread Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election and has repeatedly deployed falsehoods to challenge and undermine the values that Ginsburg fought for her entire life, seemed an odd and inappropriate choice. That’s what Ginsburg’s family believes. 

It has released a statement denouncing the awards:

The decision of the Opperman Foundation to bestow the RBG Women’s Leadership Award on this year’s slate of awardees is an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her legacy is one of deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies. As it was originally conceived and named, the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award honored that legacy by recognizing “an extraordinary woman who has exercised a positive and notable influence on society and served as an exemplary role model in both principles and practice.” This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.

The Justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the Justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse this award.

The statement noted that the Ginsburg family—the Supreme Court justice died in 2020—”fully supports the sentiments expressed” in a letter Trevor Morrison, a professor of law at New York University and a former clerk for Ginsburg, sent to Julie Opperman on Friday. He wrote that he was “appalled” by the news of these awards. Morrison pointed out:

Justice Ginsburg’s extraordinary legacy is one of a deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies. Beyond those substantive values, Justice Ginsburg had an abiding commitment to careful, rigorous analysis and to fair-minded engagement with people of opposing views.

It is difficult to see how the decision to bestow the RBG Award on this year’s slate reflects any appreciation for—or even awareness of—these dimensions of the Justice’s legacy. I will not single out any awardee individually, and I do not mean to raise the same objections about each of them. But I do mean to register in the strongest terms my concern that not everyone on this year’s slate reflects the values to which the Justice dedicated her career, and for which the Justice is rightly revered around the world.

According to Morrison, the foundation did not consult Ginsburg’s family about the awardees. He informed Opperman that Ginsburg’s two children, Jane and James Ginsburg, “have indicated to me that, unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored, they very much want their mother’s name to be removed from the award.” He added, “Each of this year’s awardees has achieved notable success in their careers, and each may well deserve accolades of one form or another. But the decision to bestow upon them the particular honor of the RBG Award is a striking betrayal of the Justice’s legacy.”

Julie Opperman according to Federal Election Commission filings, is a major Republican donor. In 2016, she donated  $50,000 to Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC founded by Paul Manafort and Tom Barrack—two top Trump advisers—to support the Trump presidential campaign. That year, she also donated $2,700, the legal maximum, directly to the Trump campaign. In 2020 Opperman contributed $200,000 to Republican campaigns and PACs, including a $100,000 donation to the Take Back The House 2020 PAC and $92,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. 

The awards are to be handed out April 13 at a gala at the Library of Congress that will be part of an “exclusive three-day event for 100 invited guests,” which, according to the foundation, is the “most anticipated” in Washington, DC. “With guests arriving from across the country and from around the world,” gala chair Amy Baier said, “we aim to make this as memorable an event for them as we are for these outstanding honorees.” Yet with the Ginsburg family absent, it will be little more than a high-rent farce and an insult to her legacy.