David Corn's Blog, page 21

With a Softball Interview of Trump, “The Messenger” Launches by Legitimizing Extremism

Democracy dies in the darkness—so goes the slogan of the Washington Post. It can also perish when authoritarianism is normalized with a thousand nicks. A new website called the Messenger demonstrates how such normalization is becoming ever more normal. 

Days after CNN handed Donald Trump a town hall platform that cast him as a conventional political candidate and allowed him to spread his democracy-undermining lies about the 2020 election (and much else), the Messenger launched this week as a site that boasts it will offer only “impartial and objective news.” In a brief howdy-do, editor Dan Wakeford, formerly editor-in-chief of People and editorial director of Entertainment Weekly, declared, “People are exhausted with extreme politics and platforms that inflame the divisions in our country by slanting stories towards an audience’s bias. Our talented journalists are committed to demystifying the onslaught of misinformation and delivering impartial and objective news.” Sounds good. But its opening day Big Piece—an interview with Donald Trump—signals that the Messenger may be just another media outlet that enables extreme politics and the inflaming of divisions. 

The article based on an “exclusive” interview and written by Marc Caputo treats Trump—who tried to overturn a national election, who incited violence, who called for suspending provisions of the Constitution so he could be installed as president, who supped with antisemites and a white supremacist, who was recently found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll, and who is facing multiple investigations for a variety of alleged wrongdoing—as a typical pol. It focuses not on his dangerous authoritarian impulses but on the 2024 horse race and Trump’s not-so-deep thoughts about it. To call this interview a softball-fest would be an insult to anyone who has ever hit, thrown, or caught the sphere with a 12-inch circumference. (Caputo, who previously worked at Politico and NBC News, has a strong reputation as a sharp political reporter who has specialized in covering the Sunshine State.)

The story leads with Trump crowing about the ratings he drew on CNN, and it offers this supposed scoop: After the CNN town hall, Trump resolved to do more media appearances beyond his usual love chats with right-wing outlets. So what? If Trump does more of these hits, we will all see them. How much news value is there in Trump’s desire to win airtime on other major news outlets?

Next the Messenger allows Trump—big surprise!—to once again bash Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presumed opponent for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. “He’s got no personality,” Trump says of DeSantis. “And I don’t think he’s got a lot of political skill.” On abortion, Caputo was unable to get a squirrelly Trump to utter anything definitive regarding what restrictions he would support. 

What’s missing from the interview could fill an entire article. For example, there is nothing about the recent jury decision in the Carroll case that backed her allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her. A major political candidate and former president who is the Republicans’ top 2024 contender at the moment was just pronounced a sexual predator by a jury in his hometown—and nada from the Messenger.

Here was a typical question from Caputo: “Was [the CNN town hall] a win for you?” Now how do you think Trump answered that. (For those of you without any imagination: ” Everybody the radical left, fascists, Marxists, communists, and normal people—have said that it was a total complete victory for Trump.”) And when Trump (once again) claimed the 2020 election was rigged against him, Caputo let him bray on about this false and dangerous claim. Caputo did point out that Trump’s campaign conducted two studies that found no signs of significant fraud. But Trump steamrolled over this, and Caputo made it clear he did not want to engage in a forceful exchange over Trump’s firehose of falsehoods. “I need to find a way to discuss the 2020 elections without sounding like I’m debating it [with you],” he told Trump. 

Moments later, Caputo stepped away from this topic, remarking, “How about we set aside the debate or the discussion on voter fraud?” He did so without addressing Trump’s multiple efforts to overturn the election results. There was nothing about Trump’s scheme to force the Justice Department to falsely declare the 2020 election was fraudulent or Trump’s attempt to pressure state election officials to reverse the results. Nothing about the fake elector plot or Trump’s Georgia phone call (“find 11,780 votes”). And nothing about January 6—Trump’s incitement of the violence, what Trump did or did not do while his brownshirts were ransacking the Capitol, or Trump’s vow to pardon January 6 rioters, a move that basically endorses the assault. 

Instead, Caputo plowed ahead with this query: “Are you the establishment now? Is Donald Trump the establishment of the GOP?” To which Trump gave a reply that told us nothing new about the guy: “No, I’m the person with common sense.” Caputo asked if Melania Trump was going to participate in Trump’s latest campaign. Important stuff, right? And what would you expect Trump to say? Maybe something like this: “She’s very enthused—very, very enthused about it.” Which is what he said. 

Caputo only had 30 minutes for this interview. That’s hardly enough time to press Trump on all the controversies and scandals that envelop him. But rather than ask Trump about his apparent theft of White House documents, his mishandling of the Covid pandemic, his support for the January 6 marauders, his refusal to condemn Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine, his praise of Michael Flynn, a QAnonish superspreader of conspiracy theories, or any of Trump’s other affronts to the rule of law and facts-based politics, Caputo queried Trump about artificial intelligence and Trump’s failure to release all the remaining files on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Yet all he squeezed out of Trump on these fronts were nothing-burger replies: “a very dangerous subject” and “I will release everything else [if returned to the White House].”

Jimmy Finkelstein, the media entrepreneur and longtime Trump pal who has founded the Messenger, has told folks that he wants his new outlet to play it “down the middle,” according to several sources familiar with the start-up of the site. He has bemoaned the current media for being too partisan. (Finkelstein himself was a participant in a right-wing plot to spread disinformation about Joe Biden and Ukraine.) But when this down-the-middle approach is applied to a political extremist, the result is not objective journalism but the amplification and legitimization of extremism—and that can threaten honest political discourse and even democracy itself. With its initial offering, Finkelstein is sending the message that the Messenger is not up to its self-proclaimed task of healing the nation’s political discourse. It may even be part of the problem. 

Santos Indictment Leaves Many Lies, Mysteries, and Scandals Unaddressed

Thirteen criminal counts later, there’s still a lot we don’t know about George Santos. Where did the more than $700,000 he loaned his most recent campaign come from? Were some of the top donors to his 2020 congressional bid as fake as his volleyball career? Did Santos’ campaign treasurer know about his many schemes? These are some of the questions that aren’t answered by the indictment unsealed on Wednesday.

But federal prosecutors have already revealed more than enough to potentially send Santos to prison. He is now in custody at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, and is expected to be arraigned this afternoon. The Justice Department has said that the top counts on the indictment carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.

The indictment can be divided into three sections. The first focuses on how Santos allegedly conned donors into giving money to a company he claimed was a super PAC supporting his campaign. That was not at all true, the indictment states. Santos allegedly pocketed the donations then used the money to buy luxury goods, make car payments, and pay off personal debts. The potential contours of this scheme were first revealed in a January report from the New York Times.  

The second section focuses on previously unknown unemployment insurance fraud. In 2020 and 2021, Santos worked as a regional director at Harbor City Capital, an investment firm that was shut down by the SEC for allegedly running a $17 million Ponzi scheme. According to the Justice Department, Santos received more than $24,000 of pandemic-era unemployment insurance between June 2020 and April 2021 after falsely claiming to be unemployed. The indictment states that he was making about $120,000 per year at the time while working at “Investment Firm #1,” an apparent reference to Harbor City. 

The final part of the indictment focuses on false statements Santos allegedly made in his 2020 and 2022 congressional financial disclosures. In 2020, Santos allegedly failed to report income from Harbor City, while overstating the money he earned from a different company. In a September 2022 disclosure, Santos reported earning $750,000 in salary, along with between $1 million and $5 million in dividends from the Devolder Organization, a company he controlled. Santos also reported having between $1 million and $5 million in a savings account. The claims about this suddenly acquired wealth were not true, according to the indictment.

This is where it gets murky. The Justice Department has not said how much in cash and assets Santos really had. Did Santos own a home in Rio de Janeiro worth up to $1 million, as he claimed in the 2022 disclosure? Did he make anywhere close to the amount that would have been needed to loan more than $700,000 to his 2022 campaign? If not, where did the money for the loans come from? How did he convince the cousin of a Russian oligarch to become one of his biggest financial backers? The indictment does not say.

In January, we reported that more than a dozen of the biggest donors to Santos’ 2020 campaign do not appear to exist. Some had names shared by nobody in the United States, according to public records. Others lived at fake addresses. In a follow up story, we reported that at least one of Santos’ relatives did not make the $5,800 donation attributed to them. These are all potential crimes that have yet to be addressed.

A name that is conspicuously absent from Wednesday’s indictment is Nancy Marks, Santos’ campaign treasurer in 2020 and 2022. As the treasurer, she likely knows more than anyone other than Santos about potential campaign finance law violations. As Mother Jones has reported, Marks also had an unusual business arraignment with Santos through a campaign consulting company called Red Strategies USA. It’s not clear from the indictment what, if anything, Marks may have told federal investigators. 

Marks signed off on many hard-to-believe transactions, including a series of $199.99 expenses just below the federal threshold required for maintaining records to verify the spending. She also claimed in FEC reports that her family members gave Santos more than $30,000 during the 2022 campaign. That included her two children, who were 19- and 22-years-old at the time, each giving Santos the legal maximum of $5,800. “It is awfully hard to believe that whoever compiled and formally submitted Santos’ FEC reports believed that they were true,” Adav Noti, senior vice president and legal director at the Campaign Legal Center, told Mother Jones in January. “They are just, on their face, obviously false.”

These potential misrepresentations could pose legal problems for Marks. But like so much of the Santos story, prosecutors have left her out. At least for now.

Tucker Carlson’s Long Con

Tucker Carlson wasn’t always Tucker Carlson. Or maybe he was.

When I met the recently defenestrated Fox host in the late 1990s, he was stylizing himself as a facts-driven reporter who happened to work for the conservative Weekly Standard. His schtick was that he was a journalist, not an ideologue. Sure, he had right-of-center opinions, but he wanted to be known as a get-out-the-truth digger who reported on politics with panache and gonzo-ish attitude. He wore a bow tie. His most well-known article at that time was a 1999 profile of then-Gov. George W. Bush (R-Texas) for Tina Brown’s short-lived Talk magazine. It depicted Bush dropping multiple F-bombs and showed him mocking a plea for clemency from a murderer who while imprisoned had converted to Christianity and become a cause celebre for evangelicals. She was executed on Bush’s watch. (In those days, such profanity and disrespect were considered unbecoming for a presidential candidate, and this article prompted questions about Bush’s suitability for the White House—now a quaint notion.)

Carlson prided himself on a strategic use of nastiness in his journalism but insisted he was not a partisan hack in the tank for Republicans and right-wingers. He even feared being tagged a “wing-nut.” In an interview with Howard Kurtz, then the media reporter for the Washington Post, Carlson explained his creed, “You try not to distort the truth because someone you’re profiling you think is on the right side of abortion or trade or any other issue. That would be dishonest.” Bill Kristol, the founding editor of the Weekly Standard, praised his young star: “Some Republicans and conservatives think he’s a fellow conservative and he’ll give them a break. Tucker, to his credit, reports it like it is.” (Yes, Kristol, now a dedicated Never Trumper and foe of GOP authoritarianism, helped give us Carlson, as well as Sarah Palin.)

What happened to Carlson? Perhaps nothing. Maybe from the start he was nothing but an opportunistic guy on the make. A Sammy Glick of the right.

It all worked. Carlson was hailed by the punditry and rewarded with a gig on CNN. Eventually, he became a host of Crossfire, the network’s much-watched debate show. I occasionally filled in for the from-the-left cohost, Bill Press, and jousted on air with Carlson. While always a conservative, he was more ideologically independent than Pat Buchanan, another Crossfire host I once in a while battled with. Carlson was less interested than Buchanan in toeing the party line, and more focused on showing off his own smarts. His aim seemed to be boosting his image as an iconoclast, not leading the conservative movement. He went on to gigs at MSNBC and PBS.

Two decades later, I wonder if it was all a farce. Was Carlson playing a role that he believed would be warmly received by the Washington media establishment? After all, someone had to be the conservative journalist who conventional outlets and the DC establishment embraced? He came across as believing his own story. But what better way to sell it?

When I ask people who worked with and knew Carlson well what happened to him, mostly I get shrugs and puzzled looks. How did this fellow who professed to be an honest broker of truth become a racist demagogue and promoter of far-right disinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories? As evidence in the Dominion lawsuit revealed, there is no longer any question that Carlson sold his integrity. On air, he was a champion of Donald Trump and provided a platform for Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. Off air, he told his colleagues that Trump was a liar and that he despised Trump. No media figure as prominent (and as well-paid) as Carlson has been shown to be such a cowardly hypocrite. From crusading journalist to con man—that’s quite the trip.

Carlsonologists might have different theories to explain his descent. But one clear turning point came in 2010 when he and Neil Patel (a former aide to Dick Cheney) created the Daily Caller website, which was funded by a prominent conservative and GOP funder named Foster Friess. Echoing his earlier self-description, Carlson insisted that the Daily Caller would not be an ideological endeavor and that it would concentrate on “breaking stories of importance.” But that was not what happened.

The Daily Caller was launched as the Tea Party—a movement of racist grievance, tribalism, and conspiracy theory—was gaining control of the GOP and the conservative world, and the site embodied the spirit of that spreading right-wing extremism. Though the Daily Caller occasionally published investigative articles that could easily have appeared elsewhere, it mostly became a conservative outlet that blasted liberal targets, often wielding conjecture and poorly sourced information. It ran false articles about climate change. It aired misleadingly edited hidden-camera videos filmed by right-wing activist James O’Keefe. One of its editors published racist and antisemitic articles under a pseudonym in white supremacist publications. Several prominent scoops it touted turned out to be wrong or overblown. Its White House correspondent shouted at President Barack Obama, “Why’d you favor foreigners over Americans?” The site ran sensationalized articles about supposed Bill and Hillary Clinton scandals that were debunked. It published what it described as a nude selfie of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (It wasn’t.) The Daily Caller was what Carlson had claimed it wouldn’t be: a key participant in the alt-right echo chamber of reality distortion.

Columnist Mickey Kaus quit the Daily Caller after Carlson spiked a piece Kaus had written criticizing Fox’s coverage of immigration policy. (A great irony: Kaus was slamming Fox for not being tough enough on immigration and amnesty.) At the time, Carlson was a Fox contributor. Kaus revealed that Carlson had told him, “’We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.'” Soon after, Carlson began hosting his primetime weekday show on Rupert Murdoch’s network. So much for Carlson the great seeker of journalistic truth. He had become the type of media whore he had once deplored. (His 2003 book had been titled Politicians, Partisans & Parasites.)

The Daily Caller was a dependable media ally of Trump, pushing stories that boosted assorted Trump narratives and that assailed his critics. It was fully in sync with Carlson’s demagogic rhetoric on Fox. In June 2020, Carlson sold his stake in the Daily Caller. As Fox’s top loudmouth, he continued on his toxic course of amplifying noxious lies that encouraged right-wing authoritarianism and boosted Trump’s and the GOP’s war on democracy. In the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and afterward, he also functioned, wittingly or not, as a key ally of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign designed to weaken American support for Ukraine. (Remember this scoop I had—a Kremlin memo instructing Russian media to feature clips of Carlson?)

Back to the question at hand: What happened to Carlson? Perhaps nothing. Maybe from the start he was nothing but an opportunistic guy on the make. A Sammy Glick of the right. As a young reporter, he seized the opportunity to brand himself as a conservative journalist different from other right-wing scribes in the combative Age of Clinton. Years later, as that glow wore off (and his television career started slipping), he reinvented himself as an angry populist cheerleader of the Trumpish right. That’s where the audience and the big bucks were—and the influence. It’s possible that along the way he even convinced himself of some of what he was saying. But the likely explanation is that truth never mattered: It was all about status and money.

As I write, we don’t yet know all the details of what led Fox to toss cash-cow Carlson to the curb. But one thing is certain: It wasn’t for his perversion and poisoning of the national political discourse. That was his raison d’etre at Fox.  He was no truth-teller. He was a pro-MAGA, for-mega-profit propagandist. Carlson’s personal journey is a tale of the Trump era. Like the GOP, he was already on the path to right-wing demagoguery before Trump oozed down that escalator. As those dark political winds grew stronger, he eagerly raised the sails and exploited the Trumpfication of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. But by ending up a Fox cast-off whose phoniness has been thoroughly exposed, Carlson has finally provided something of a public service. He has both emblemized and revealed the fundamental truth of the network: We distort, and we divide. No journalist could have done that better.

Donald Trump’s Lawyers Just Made a Big Mistake

Last week, when Donald Trump filed a $500 million civil lawsuit in federal court against his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, legal experts scoffed and guffawed. Trump’s suit accused Cohen of breaching confidentiality and “spreading falsehoods” about the former president—that is, ratting out Trump. The timing of the filing was suspicious, given that it came shortly after Trump was indicted in the porn-star-hush-money case for which Cohen is a key witness. It seemed an act of revenge on Trump’s part. The Florida attorney Trump retained for this effort, Alejandro Brito, is a specialist in franchise disputes (not half-billion-dollar high-stakes cases), and the complaint was written in a bombastic and amateurish manner often associated with many of Trump’s legal efforts.

The lawsuit raised the boomerang-ish prospect of Cohen winning the opportunity to submit Trump to the discovery process and obtaining documents and testimony from the former failed casino operator. Beyond this misstep, Trump committed another strategic blunder with the complaint: He inadvertently bolstered the accusation that he was involved in the $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels at the time Cohen made the payment to keep the adult film star from publicly alleging before the 2016 election that she had an extramarital affair with Trump.

The background: In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to a variety pack of federal charges, including violations of campaign finance law related to the Daniels hush-money episode. He subsequently spent a year in a federal prison and then a year and a half in home confinement. Now Cohen is a central witness in New York district attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal investigation that led to the indictment of Trump for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up the Daniels payment and other so-called “catch and kill” operations during the 2016 election. If this case reaches a trial—no doubt, Trump’s lawyers will try to prevent that—Cohen won’t be the only witness, but he will be the star witness. Discrediting Cohen and his testimony will be Job No. 1 for Trump.

If this case reaches a trial, Cohen won’t be the only witness, but he will be the star witness. Discrediting Cohen and his account will be Job No. 1 for Trump.

Cohen’s story is that Trump was fully aware of the payment to Daniels when the details of this deal were being hammered out in the closing weeks of the campaign. Cohen maintains Trump was informed of the arrangement and approved the amount. When news of the hush-money accord first emerged in early 2018, Trump claimed he knew nothing about it. Later, his team said that Trump had learned about the agreement only after the election and had then reimbursed Cohen for the payments. It insisted Cohen had pulled this off at his own initiative.

To keep Trump out of the initial plot to silence Daniels, his lawyers and mouthpieces have mounted a fierce campaign to discredit Cohen (though there are other witnesses who can testify whether Trump was involved from the get-go). They have pronounced Cohen a liar whose account cannot be trusted. Indeed, Cohen did plead guilty to lying to Congress, making false statements to a bank, and tax evasion. Trump’s complaint against Cohen refers to him as a “serial liar” and a “totally unreliable” person who has “great difficulty telling the truth.”

But here’s where Trump’s legal team made an unforced error. In its effort to portray Cohen as deceitful, the complaint cites the sentencing memorandum submitted by the office of the US attorney for the Southern District of New York in Cohen’s criminal case. Seeking a tough sentence for Cohen, the prosecutors contended that Cohen had exhibited “a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life” and that his crimes involved “deception, and each were motivated by personal greed and ambition.” Those quotes are highlighted in Trump’s complaint, which also cites a public statement SDNY issued that slammed Cohen “as a lawyer who, rather than setting an example of respect for the law, instead chose to break the law, repeatedly over many years, and in a variety of ways.”

Looking to depict Cohen as a dishonest no-goodnik, Brito presents the SDNY’s sentencing memo as an important and credible source. Yet on page 11 of that 40-page document is a sentence that is highly problematic for Trump: “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination and at the direction of Individual 1.”

Individual 1 is Trump, and the payments refer to the funds slipped to Stormy Daniels and money paid to a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal by the National Enquirer to smother her story of an affair with Trump. With this sentence, the feds declared that Trump was an instigator and co-conspirator in the illegal Stormy Daniels hush-money caper. (By the way, as I explained here, Trump’s Justice Department and then–Attorney General Bill Barr impeded further investigation of the Daniels case after Cohen pleaded guilty—a move that certainly was beneficial to Trump.)

Brito is citing a memo that declared that Trump conspired with Cohen to commit a crime at the heart of Bragg’s case. This is not good lawyering. 

Brito doesn’t mention this incriminating sentence in the complaint against Cohen. But by referencing this document as a reliable source of information, he is lending credence to a document that undermines his client’s position in the ongoing criminal case. He is citing a memo that plainly stated that Trump conspired with Cohen to commit a crime at the heart of Bragg’s case. This is not good lawyering. 

In similar fashion, the complaint against Cohen also cites a separate sentencing memo submitted by special counsel Robert Mueller that noted Cohen had made “deliberate and premeditated” false statements to Congress. But Brito’s complaint also leaves out key elements of this document. The memo stated that Cohen lied to Congress to protect Individual 1—yes, Trump—and to downplay Trump’s clandestine attempt during the 2016 race to land a huge deal for a tower in Moscow that could have netted him hundreds of millions of dollars. Mueller’s memo also said that Cohen, who cooperated with his investigation, provided information that was “credible and consistent with other evidence.” It reported that “Cohen has taken responsibility for his wrongdoing” and told the judge this should be “a significant mitigating factor” in sentencing. That is, Cohen deserved a break for being a credible witness.

By basing part of Trump’s lawsuit against Cohen on these two memos, Brito clumsily endorsed investigations that concluded that Trump was in on the Stormy Daniels skullduggery, that when Cohen lied to Congress he did so to protect Trump’s covert business dealings with Russia, and that Cohen was a reliable source of information for Mueller. None of that is helpful for Trump’s defense in the hush-money case. This filing is yet the latest sign that when it comes to recruiting legal firepower, Trump still has trouble finding the very best people. 

Here’s What Happened After Clarence Thomas’ Benefactor Let Scholars Dine Near His Nazi Memorabilia

After ProPublica revealed that billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow spent decades lavishing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with pricey gifts and globetrotting trips, follow up stories noted Crow is an ardent collector of Nazi memorabilia and indigenous American artifacts. What’s on display at his Dallas mansion includes two Hitler paintings, a signed copy of Mein Kampf, and swastika embossed linens. Crow also has a death mask of Sitting Bull and a set of slavery-related items.

In 2014, Crow described his displays as “a historical nod to the facts of man’s inhumanity to man.” Several years later, members of a national bipartisan commission who attended a dinner at his residence were disturbed by the relics, prompting an organizer of the group to raise the issue with Crow, according to correspondence between Crow and this commission obtained by Mother Jones. Leaders of the commission now say it was a “mistake” to hold an event at Crow’s home.

In April 2019, the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, which had been created in 2018 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences “to explore how best to respond to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in our political and civic life,” conducted a meeting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The commission was comprised of accomplished academics, artists, government officials, and journalists drawn from across the country. The evening before the session, the members dined at Crow’s estate. 

“We were told he had a collection of Americana, some of it from the Revolutionary War,” says AAA&S president David Oxtoby, “and we thought that would be a nice connection.”

Crow welcomed the commission members at the door but he did not stay for the meal. The dinner was held in a section of Crow’s library where, according to Oxtoby, no offensive or controversial material was in view. But members were invited to examine the rest of the collection in other rooms, and several who did encountered disturbing items. This past weekend, danah boyd, the tech scholar and Microsoft employee who was a commission member, tweeted about that evening. She said she had been “deeply shaken by the Nazi memorabilia.” She added, “Years later, I still shudder thinking about the Nazi uniform decorations in Harlan Crow’s house. And the painting… And the ‘antebellum’ (pro slavery) artifacts.”

Ethan Zuckerman, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst professor of public policy, communication, and information, was also part of the group, and he echoed boyd’s reaction with his own tweets. He recalled, “What struck me was that Crow clearly knew there was controversy in deciding to keep Nazi artifacts in his house. In a display room off the balcony to his library was a set of swastika emblazoned dishes, silverware and linens,” he wrote, explaining that the items were behind a leather cover.

On the bus ride back to the hotel after the dinner, commission members expressed distress about what they had seen, according to Oxtoby, and its leaders decided to schedule a discussion about what had happened the following morning before diving into the established agenda. At that session, “we talked about how to make sure in a discussion of the hard points of history we can raise the issues of curatorial intent,” recalls Eric Liu, CEO of Citizen University and a commission co-chair. “Without context, you can go sideways.” During that meeting, Oxtoby says, it was decided that the commission would convey to Crow to their concerns about his collection. 

A few days after the dinner—before the commission had the chance to take any action—Crow wrote Oxtoby a letter with a preemptive and defensive tone:

I was distressed to hear from [commission member and Southern Methodist University anthropology professor] Caroline Brettell that someone or some persons were offended by some of the WWII-related stuff that they discovered in my library. 

For forty of [sic] fifty years now, I have collected mostly books and manuscripts but a few artifacts that relate to American history. It seems reasonably obvious to me that materials on American history would relate to the good and the bad of American history, so I do have books and manuscripts that relate to American slavery, Indian genocide, to people such as Benedict Arnold or James Earl Ray, and I have things that relate to some American opponents such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the communist states, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China, but none of these are presented in a way that would be easy or obvious for the public to see unless someone is opening cases or cabinets where we keep these materials. 

Crow seemed to be suggesting that commission members had been snooping. He continued: 

But, I understand that some people were offended by the presence of these materials, and I am sorry that anyone would be offended. Anyway, I suppose everyone has their own view on these materials.

I would very much hope it would be completely obvious that having anything that related to Nazis or slavery could not possibly be interpreted as support or glorification for those evils. 

Oxtoby replied in a gracious manner, thanking Crow for hosting the commission. As for the matter at hand, he diplomatically wrote,

As you noted in your letter, your collection contains items that shed light on many of these difficult chapters of our past. Several members of our Commission were distressed to find artifacts from Nazi Germany in your collection, which they saw because of your willingness to open your collection to our group. When the Commission discussed the experience, the members who raised concerns did so primarily around the fact that they encountered these items without any context from you or others that would have helped explain how they relate to the other materials on display. We should have done more work in advance of the meeting to understand the scope of your collection. 

Oxtoby turned lemons into lemonade, telling Crow that the “conversations occasioned by our experience at your home proved to be of real value to the Commission as we explore how to strengthen the practice of American democracy and the institutions that support it.” He added its work had, in a way, been bolstered by the members’ interaction with Crow’s collection: “Ultimately, our experience of your collection helped underscore the essential work of the Commission to recognize the complicated past while working toward a more engaged citizenry in the future.”

A month after the exchange between Crow and Oxtoby, the three chairs of the commission—Liu; Danielle Allen, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—wrote members about the issue:

Those of you who were in attendance will remember our visit to Mr. Harlan Crow’s library and his collection of historical materials and objects, as well as the ensuing conversation at the following day’s meeting that arose from the discovery by some members of our group of the presence of World War II-era Nazi material in Mr. Crow’s collection as well as of racialist material from the American South. We write now to follow-up on those conversations.

During the meeting, we had a productive discussion about curatorial standards for the presentation of material from hate-groups and other controversial material—including the need for careful contextualization. We spent some time discussing how curatorial best-practices could be disseminated more effectively in support of the development of the capacity of Americans to negotiate conflicting understandings of our own history and world history. And we co-chairs pledged that we would find an appropriate way to bring the matter to Mr. Crow’s attention.

The chairs reported to the commission members that Crow had written Oxtoby to “express dismay that his collections occasioned concern.” They added, “The larger issue of how Americans negotiate conflicting understandings of our own history and of world history was with us before our dinner in Mr. Crow’s library and continues to be an important focus area for our work.”

According to Oxtoby and Liu, there was no additional interaction between the commission and Crow about his collection following Oxtoby’s reply to Crow. They do not know if Crow made any revisions to his displays after Oxtoby raised the issue of context; Crow did not respond to a request for comment. 

“It was a mistake to go there,” Oxtoby now says. “We should have investigated it more thoroughly.” Liu seconds the sentiment: “It was a mistake to not understand what was at the house.”

The commission released Our Common Purpose, its final report, in 2020, offering 31 recommendations “to strengthen America’s institutions and civic culture to help a nation in crisis emerge with a more resilient democracy.” With the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States approaching in 2026, Oxtoby looks back on the commission’s work and remembers how “we had hoped, too optimistically, in 2019 that history could be a way to bring people together. But in recent years history has become a dividing force. Maybe we were too naive.”

“We thought it could be a step toward reconciliation,” he says. As for the Crow visit? “We learned a lesson.”

Revenge-Obsessed Donald Trump Is Pushing the Right to New Levels of Retribution Rage

Donald Trump loves revenge. Who says so? He does. For years before he became president, he gave speeches touting the value of vengeance and its critical role in his own personal success. And now, as the first ex-president to be indicted, arrested, and arraigned on criminal charges, he is once more turning toward avengement.

Trump has been straightforward about his affection for retribution and its importance in his life. In 2011, he spoke to the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, and explained how he had become rich and famous. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that had been essential for him. At the top of the list was this piece of advice he shared with the audience: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.” In other public appearances, he regularly voiced this sentiment. In 2013, he tweeted, “‘Always get even. When you are in business, you need to get even with people who screw you.’ – Think Big.” The following year, he tweeted an Alfred Hitchcock quote: “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.”

As a political candidate and a president, Trump put this into practice, constantly and loudly slamming and deriding—and often lying about—his foes and detractors, including aides and appointees who dared to cross or criticize him. He incited the January 6 riot that nearly led to violence against his own vice president, who Trump had privately castigated as a “pussy” for not assisting his plot to reverse the 2020 election results. At the Conservative Political Action Conference held last month, Trump told an adoring crowd, “And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” Avenging angel (mainly for himself)—that’s a routine pose for this man who has been haunted by insecurities and propelled by pathological narcissism his entire adult life. 

Though vengeful wrath has always been standard operating procedure for Trump, he has raised the danger level of such conduct by pulling other Republicans and conservatives into his crusade of revenge. In recent days, his defenders have issued calls for reprisals, urging an all-out political war.

Now the target—victim, he would say—of the New York City criminal justice system, Trump has let his revenge-rage run wild. Hours after he was arraigned in a New York courtroom—where supporters across in the street waved a “Trump or Death” flag—Trump appeared before a crowd of loyalists at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and ranted. Even though Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the Trump case, that day had warned Trump against making statements that could “incite violence or civil unrest,” Trump once again demonized his perceived enemies. He assailed New York district attorney Alvin Bragg as “Soros-backed,” a reference to Jewish billionaire George Soros, the target of many right-wing conspiracy theories. He also knocked Bragg’s wife. He attacked Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.” He claimed special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s retention (or theft) of classified White House records and probing the Trump-led efforts to overturn the election, was a “lunatic.” He referred to Atlanta district attorney Fani Wilis, who is investigating Trump for having pressured state election officials to flip the election results in his favor, as a “racist.” And he did the same for New York state attorney general Letitia James, who is investigating Trump for alleged business fraud. (“She’s put our family through hell,” Trump said of James. “It’s cost hundreds of millions of dollars to defend.”)

This was nothing new for Trump; he has long been grousing about the law enforcement officials on his trail. At Mar-a-Lago, he referred to these public servants collectively as “radical left lunatics” who imperiled the United States and metaphorically, if not literally, placed a bull’s-eye on their backs. Days prior to his arraignment, Trump had published on his social media site a photograph of him holding a baseball bat in a threatening manner that was alongside a photo of Bragg. (He also referred to Bragg, who is Black, as an “animal.”) After the arraignment, Donald Trump Jr. posted an article that featured a photograph of Merchan’s adult daughter. 

Though vengeful wrath has always been standard operating procedure for Trump, he has raised the danger level of such conduct by pulling other Republicans and conservatives into his crusade of revenge. In recent days, his defenders have issued calls for reprisals, urging an all-out political war that weaponizes law enforcement agencies. On Fox, Ari Fleischer, who two decades ago as White House press secretary helped sell the Iraq war to the American public with falsehoods, declared, “Here’s what I hope happens now… I earnestly hope conservative prosecutors in rural areas of America indict Bill Clinton, indict Hillary Clinton, indict Hunter Biden.” For what, he did not specify. 

Fox News' Ari Fleischer: "Here’s what I hope happens, Sean. I hope conservative prosecutors in rural areas of America indict Bill Clinton, indict Hillary Clinton, indict Hunter Biden." pic.twitter.com/vIBQbsAfM1

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 5, 2023

Conservative talk show host Jesse Kelly complained that “[n]ot one Republican DA in the entire country has announced impending charges against a major Democrat. Not one. We will never win until the Low T GOP starts hitting back. Ever. We give the communist [sic] zero incentive to stop or even slow down. Pathetic.” (“Low T” presumably means low testosterone.) He, too, did not specify what charges a “major Democrat” should face. 

Responding to Kelly’s demand for a partisan Defcon-1 blitz, right-wing commentator Matt Walsh tweeted, “Mutually assured destruction is the only way through this. Treat them like they treat us. Hold them to their own standards. It’s not pretty but it’s the only way. Either this or we bow down and surrender.”

Fleischer, Kelly, and Walsh are loudmouth pundits, easy to dismiss. But an influential member of Congress came close to endorsing this declaration of war. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, disclosed that on the day of Trump’s arraignment he took calls from Republican county attorneys in Kentucky and Tennessee who eagerly asked “if there are ways they can go after the Bidens.” Comer did not disavow their brazen proposals to abuse their powers for political purposes. 

James Comer on Fox & Friends says he took calls yesterday from county attorneys in Kentucky and Tennessee who are eager to "go after the Bidens" to retaliate for the Trump indictment pic.twitter.com/ZFsblpqiMb

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 5, 2023

Threats are on the GOP agenda. After Trump was indicted last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the QAnonish pal of white nationalists, issued a tweet that vowed retribution: “Our side chants ‘lock her up’ and their side is going to get a mug shot based on a witch hunt. It’s time to change that. Gloves are off.” (Appearing at a modest-sized Trump rally in New York City shortly before Trump’s appearance at the court house on Tuesday, she compared Trump to Jesus, noting both had been arrested.)

Lawyers usually tell criminal defendants to cool it and not attack the judge and the legal system while a prosecution and trial are underway. Trump could face contempt charges and perhaps earn a gag order (which is not often issued by New York city courts) if he continues to utter statements that can be viewed as threatening. That’s why one of his lawyers, Susan Necheles, tried (absurdly) to walk back Trump’s post-arraignment remarks, saying, “He’s not going after the judge. He has commented that he thought there were some issues that may cause a conflict. That’s not going after the judge. He is not threatening the judge. He is not going after the judge.” Well, he was going after the judge.

Overreaction on the right to Trump’s arrest was hardly shocking. WND published a commentary that condemned Trump’s arrest as “a Lefty Sieg Heil to the Rainbow Swastika” and that asserted this development showed that “the long LGBT cold war against Christians is now going hot.”Multiple conservatives called for Bragg’s arrest. In the immediate aftermath of the arraignment, Trump predictably signaled his desire to stick to his favorite mode of politics—scorched-earth—and he gave a green light to the right to mount an extreme counter-attack. For years, he has resorted to revenge to advance his own interests. Now Trump is doing so to rev up yet another potentially dangerous political clash and to undermine the American system of law and accountability to which he has been subjected.  

Trump’s Indictment Is Yet Another Stress Test for America

Editor’s note: The below article is a preview of the lead item in the next edition of  David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Please check it out.

Donald Trump has been a one-man stress test for the American political system. The framers did not envision such a dishonest, narcissistic scoundrel winning the highest office of the land. And the system of laws, rules, and norms that began with the Constitution and that has evolved in the past two centuries was not formulated to deal with a demagogue with a cult-like following who would baldly lie about anything and everything, who would aid and abet a foreign attack on the nation, who would flaunt numerous and brazen conflicts of interest, and who would try to blow up the nation’s constitutional order and incite violence to remain in power. But—so far—the nation appears to have survived the authoritarian threat Trump poses. Yet with his historic indictment in New York City on charges related to the $130,000 hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to prevent her from airing the story of her alleged sexual romp with Trump, the failed casino owner who became president is once again about to stress test the nation.

Never has the US judicial system contended with the criminal prosecution of a former president (who is also the leading GOP 2024 aspirant). That almost happened with Richard Nixon. But his handpicked successor, President Gerald Ford, granted the Watergate co-conspirator a pardon. Ford insisted that would allow the country to move on. But in retrospect, his pardon did the United States a disservice by not allowing the nation to establish a precedent for managing the sensitive matter of presidential criminality.

So after years of repeated brushes with the law and other sordid actions—from allegedly violating housing law to hobnobbing with mobsters to possibly committing perjury to mounting  assorted tax  dodges to obstructing justice to plotting multiple schemes for overturning an election—Trump is finally being prosecuted for a caper that involved paying off and silencing an adult film director and star. As did the January 6 insurrectionist riot, this will place tremendous pressure on American politics.

Trump's chaos machine has already been unleashed following his indictment. And now the system is about to be tested like never before, warns @DavidCornDC. pic.twitter.com/gjOn4ztrPR

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) March 31, 2023

It took a nanosecond for Trump and his tribe to decry the indictment in apocalyptic terms, denouncing it as a political hit-job cooked up to deny him the presidency once more and exclaiming this was a declaration of war from the left. They went straight to Defcon-1. Trump led the way with a social media post that was both farcical and threatening. Noting that “Thugs and Radical Left Monsters” had just “indicated” him (yes, he misspelled “indicted), Trump called this an “ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN.” The United States, he huffed, “IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE.” Others chimed in. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the QAnonish pal of white nationalists, issued a tweet that threatened retribution: “Our side chants ‘lock her up’ and their side is going to get a mug shot based on a witch hunt. It’s time to change that. Gloves are off.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin repeated the right’s favorite talking point of the moment, claiming the indictment was the “weaponization” of the legal system. (They asserted this before anyone had seen the particulars of the indictment.)

Eric Trump exclaimed the indictment was “third world prosecutorial misconduct. It is the opportunistic targeting of a political opponent in a campaign year.” And Donald Trump Jr. went further: “This is like communist-level shit. This is stuff that would make Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot—would make them blush. It’s so flagrant. It’s so crazed.” Yes, he was comparing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg to tyrants who each killed millions of people. Right-wing loudmouth Dan Bongino declared, “We’re in a police state.” Other Trumpists assailed the indictment as a sign the United States had become a “banana republic.”

Get a grip, fellas. Police states tend not to use grand juries. The autocrats in charge just arrest who they want to lock up. And in banana republics, there is no accountability when elites break the laws. In fact, as was widely noted on Indictment Day, many established democracies have investigated and/or prosecuted past or present leaders suspected of criminal activity. See Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, France and Nicolas Sarkozy, Italy and Silvio Berlusconi. That has not turned those nations into police states or killing fields. But there is method to the Trumpian madness. With other and perhaps more serious indictments possibly ahead for Trump—he could be indicted for stealing classified and sensitive White House documents, for pressuring Georgia officials to change the 2020 vote tally, for plotting to overturn the 2020 election, and for inciting the January 6 raid on the Capitol—he and his henchmen have a strong interest in stirring up as much tumult and discord over Bragg’s case, in the hope this might dissuade other prosecutors from indicting Trump.

In the aftermath of the indictment, Democrats, liberals, independents, and others who believe in the rule of law are in an asymmetrical battle with the Trump right. Trump and his minions will hurl heated rhetoric and inflame the conflict. Trump has always welcomed chaos, believing he can harness it for his advantage. Before the indictment, he stated his arrest could prompt violence—coming close to encouraging January 6-like action. He assailed Bragg, a Black man, as an “animal,” and, employing an antisemitic trope, he depicted Bragg as the puppet of Jewish billionaire George Soros (a line of attack loudly echoed by Trump’s defenders.) Consequently, it falls to non-Trump America to counsel calm and respect for the rule of law and to remind all that anyone accused, even Trump, is due the presumption of innocence.

That may not be easy to do in the face of the Trumpian onslaught. Trump’s lackeys are committed to weaponizing this indictment to provoke more tribalism and spark a cataclysmic political clash. They are calling for total political warfare. Trump Jr. proclaimed, “the fascist left won’t stop with Trump. They’re power-hungry & will do anything to crush their political opponents.” And following the typical demagogue’s playbook, Trump and his defenders seek to rile up the right-wing base by casting this indictment as a direct attack on Trump’s supporters. One pro-Trump conservative website put it this way: “Trump has been indicted and YOU’RE next.”

To make this point, Junior posted this old tweet from Trump:

It's more true now than ever before!!! pic.twitter.com/B3b58P3TEZ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 31, 2023

TrumpWorld wants to flip the switch. The issue, for its denizens, is not whether he was a sleazebag who cheated with Stormy Daniels and then tried to shut her up with a cash payment and falsified records to cover up his misconduct. Rather, they want to use this indictment to gin up fear and paranoia they can exploit for political gain and, perhaps, for personal profit. (Within hours of the indictment, Trump, Kevin McCarthy, and a variety of GOP and conservative outfits sent out fundraising emails denouncing Bragg and the radical left. ) Trump and his forces will now engage in an all-out blitz against the legal system and do all they can to intensify political polarization and division within a polarized and divided nation. He wants the system to pay a price for daring to hold him accountable. This furor will shape the 2024 election and the ongoing political fights on Capitol Hill and across the election. The indictment of Donald Trump marks the start of what will be an ugly and dangerous chapter in the ongoing case of Trump vs. America.

The Full Stormy Hush-Money Tale Features Plenty of Witnesses Who Could Be Trouble for Trump

With a possible indictment of Donald Trump, it’s a good moment to review how the porn-star-hush-money caper may make him the first president or ex-president ever to be charged with a crime. Such a refresher reminds us just how tawdry the Trump world has been, and it provides a cast of characters beyond Michael Cohen, the Trump fixer turned Trump foe, who might be star witnesses should this case reach a courtroom.

In a trial, the sleazy tale will be relentlessly scrutinized, and each side will try to shape the narrative to answer several critical questions in its favor: For what reason did Cohen pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 days before the 2016 election to stop her from airing the allegation that she and Trump had an extramarital (for him) tryst? Was it to protect Trump’s presidential bid or to spare Trump and his family personal embarrassment? (It certainly could be both.) Did Trump personally direct this payment of keep-mum money?

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg can only charge Trump with a felony if Trump’s alleged falsifying of business records related to the hush-money payment was conducted to cover up fraud or another criminal act. That means the case hinges on the issue of whether this payment was made to influence the campaign and qualifies as a possible campaign law violation. Trump’s legal team will likely contend the payment did not violate campaign finance laws, even though in 2018 Cohen pleaded guilty to a federal campaign law violation for buying Daniels‘ silence with these funds.

So what’s already known? Several sources chronicle the sequence of events that led to Trump’s consiglieri wiring $130,000 to an adult film director and actress, most notably a search warrant filed in Cohen’s case and Cohen’s own account in his 2020 book, Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. According to both, this episode was triggered by the worst moment in the 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nominee: when the Washington Post on October 7 revealed the existence of the Access Hollywood outtake in which Trump boasted that his celebrity afforded him the license with women to “grab ’em by the pussy.” For weeks prior to this explosive disclosure, Daniels had considered going public with the story of her alleged sexual affair with Trump, which supposedly began at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. She had been talking to various media outlets about selling her tale; this bombshell upped the value of her story and intensified her interest in profiting off her alleged romp with Trump.

Trump and Cohen had dealt with Daniels before. In 2011, a website called thedirty.com published an uncorroborated article claiming Daniels and Trump had a sexual encounter at a “golfing event.” After the piece was posted, a lawyer for Daniels named Keith Davidson contacted Cohen. Davidson, Cohen recounts in his book, wanted to stop the spread of this story—which had also reached a supermarket tabloid called Life & Style—and he asked if Trump would issue a statement denying the allegation to match a similar statement from Daniels. Cohen was surprised, assuming at first that this call would be part of a shakedown scheme. After consulting with Trump, Cohen drafted a statement from Trump denying the affair, though Cohen suspected the tryst had transpired. Cohen also called an agent who was peddling the Daniels allegation and threatened her, demanding that she stop. As a potential problem for Trump, the Stormy Daniels story faded away.

Until the Access Hollywood video appeared. The next evening, over the course of about 90 minutes, Cohen, according to the search warrant, had a flurry of calls with Trump, campaign aide Hope Hicks; David Pecker, a Trump confidante and president of American Media, Inc., (AMI) which published the National Enquirer; and Dylan Howard, its editor-in-chief. The search warrant doesn’t note what was said in these conversations. 

Months earlier, Cohen, Trump, Pecker, and Howard had banded together to silence a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006 and 2007. AMI paid her $150,000 in what tabloid business pros call a “catch and kill” operation—buying a story to smother it. Pecker was doing the Republican candidate a favor, and Trump was supposed to pay the money back. He didn’t. 

As Cohen recounts, the day after the Access Hollywood video emerged, Pecker informed him, “Stormy is back,” and she was “shopping” her story. Cohen thought the Daniels episode was done. After all, she had denied the allegation five years earlier. Pecker told Cohen she had passed a lie-detector test confirming the sexual encounter with Trump and that he had dispatched Howard to Los Angeles to review the polygraph results and initiate negotiations with Daniels’ team, apparently with the aim of smothering yet another incendiary revelation about Trump. At one point that night, after Cohen spoke to Pecker, he spoke to Trump for nearly eight minutes, according to the FBI search warrant. After that, Cohen spoke twice to Howard, and then Howard sent Cohen a text message: “Keith will do it.” That was a reference to Davidson, Daniels’ attorney, indicating he was amenable to crafting a deal.

A few hours later, at 3:31 a.m., Cohen texted Howard, “Thank you” It was followed by another Cohen text that marked the beginning of the agreement that would shut Daniels up: “Resolution Consultants LLC is the name of the entity I formed a week ago.” This was a corporate entity that could be used for a hush-money arrangement.

“What I think you should do is buy the story. We can write up an NDA together and stop the story again.” 

The texts continued that morning. Howard wrote Cohen and Davidson: “[C]onnecting you both in regards to that business opportunity. Spoke to the client this AM and they’re confirmed to proceed with the opportunity…Over to you two.” The client presumably meant Stormy Daniels. Shortly after that, Davidson texted Cohen, “Michael—if we are ever going to close this deal—[i]n my opinion, it needs to be today.” According to Cohen, in one of his subsequent phone conversations with Davidson, the attorney said, “What I think you should do is buy the story. We can write up an NDA together and stop the story again.” After a bit of back and forth, the two lawyers negotiated a price, settling on $130,000, which would allow Daniels to clear $100,000 after paying Davidson and her rep. 

Cohen, in his telling, had to inform Trump and get him to approve the hush-money accord. In Trump’s office in Trump Tower, the two men got Pecker on the line. “How bad do you think this could hurt me with the campaign?” Trump inquired, according to Cohen. “It can’t be good,” Pecker said. Referring to his wife Melania, Trump joked, “Let’s not forget about upstairs.” Trump told the pair that he wanted to think about the possible payoff overnight. The next morning, he gave his okay, according to Cohen, and told him to work out the specifics with Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, on how to get Daniels the money. In a conversation with Cohen and Weisselberg about the pending deal, Cohen writes, Trump speculated on how Daniels’ allegation might influence his supporters. 

At first, the deal was moving quickly. By October 10, the basic outline of the covert arrangement was forged. According to the search warrant, Daniels and Davidson signed a side-letter agreement that stated it was an exhibit to a “confidential settlement agreement and mutual release” between two people named “Peggy Peterson” and “David Dennison”—pseudonyms used to describe Daniels and Trump in the main agreement. The side letter identified “Peterson” as Daniels but made no direct mention of Trump. 

Cohen recalls that figuring out how to transfer the money to Daniels was a challenge. AMI wouldn’t foot the bill after having been stiffed by Trump in the McDougal episode. Weisselberg suggested a variety of creative schemes: invoicing one of the Trump golf clubs, or trading a Mar-a-Lago membership to a third party who would compensate Daniels. He wondered if someone having an affair at a Trump property could be encouraged to pick up the tab in exchange for discretion. None of these options was practical. Cohen asked Weisselberg to do it. But the CFO refused. Eventually, Cohen decided he had to do it himself by using his existing home equity line of credit to pay the porn actress. Trump, he says, assured him he would be reimbursed “right after the election when things calm down.”

The search warrant notes that starting on October 13, Cohen took steps to make the payment that included opening an account from which he could transfer funds to Davidson. But as the talks between the Trump camp and Team Stormy dragged out, Daniels and Davidson grew increasingly impatient. On October 17, Davidson emailed Cohen and threatened to cancel the deal if the transaction was not completed that day. Howard texted Cohen, “I’m told they going with DailyMail,” referring to the British tabloid. Cohen called Howard, then Davidson, and unsuccessfully tried to reach Trump. More calls and texts ensued between Cohen and Howard. The next day, The Smoking Gun website ran a story headlined “Donald Trump and the Porn Superstar” that alleged that Trump and Daniels had an affair, but it noted Daniels had declined to comment. 

For about two weeks, Cohen, according to his own account, slow-walked the deal, as he worked out the details for making the payment. During that time, Daniels became nervous, believing Trump was stalling until after the election when he might then refuse to pay. On the evening of October 25—two weeks before Election Day—Howard sent Cohen a text: “Keith calling you urgently. We have to coordinate something on the matter he’s calling you about or its [sic] could look awfully bad for everyone.” Cohen and Davidson spoke at least twice soon after. The next morning, Cohen had two phone conversations with Trump. Afterward, Cohen instructed his bank, First Republic, to open an account in the name of Essential Consultants, explaining this was a real estate consulting firm. (He had dumped Resolution Consultants as the vehicle for the Stormy Daniels payoff.) He then transferred $130,000 from his home equity line of credit into the account.

Throughout that day and into the night, there was a rush of calls and text messages between Cohen, Pecker, Howard, and Davidson. At 8:23 p.m., Howard sent an email to Cohen and Davidson with the subject line “Confirmation.” It stated, “Thank you both for chatting with me earlier. Confirming agreement on: Executed agreement, hand-signed by Keith’s client and returned via overnight or sameday FedEX to Michael… Transfer of funds Thursday AM to be held in escrow until receipt of agreement.”

On the morning of October 27, Cohen wired $130,000 to Davidson. Daniels’ lawyer emailed Cohen that “no funds shall be disbursed unless & until the plaintiff personally signs all necessary settlement paperwork.” In his book, Cohen observes that he and Pecker “were engaged in a parallel campaign, with the outcome of the 2016 election being decided in secret.”

The next day, a Friday, Cohen spoke to Trump for about five minutes around noon. In the evening, Davidson texted Cohen, assuring him “all is AOK” and promised to have the “notarized docs” on Monday, adding, “You should have them on Tuesday.” A few hours later, Cohen spoke to Hicks on the phone, according to the search warrant.

On November 1, a week before the election, the transaction was completed. “Peggy Peterson” (that is, Stormy Daniels) and Essential Consultants and/or “David Dennison” (that is, Donald Trump) had reached a settlement in which “Peterson” agreed not to disclose certain “confidential information pertaining” to “Dennison” in exchange for $130,000. A Federal Express package containing the signed agreement arrived at Cohen’s office. Davidson forwarded $96,645 to Daniels. The hush-money deal was done. 

Later that day, Davidson sent Cohen an email with an audio file. It was a five-minute recording of Davidson interviewing Daniels about recent allegations made by porn actress Jessica Drake that Trump had sexually accosted her a decade ago. On the recording, Daniels said she did not believe Drake’s accusation was credible. 

“Paying off the porn star was an open secret in the Trump campaign.”

That evening, with the Daniels matter settled, Cohen placed a call to Trump but did not connect with him. He then tried Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, and did not reach her, either. But she soon called him back, and they spoke for six minutes, according to the search warrant. In his book, Cohen says he wanted to inform Trump that the Daniels transaction had been successfully concluded. Conway told him, he recalls, that she would pass along the good news. “Paying off the porn star was an open secret in the Trump campaign,” Cohen writes. 

There was a sordid coda to this sordid business. On November 4, the Wall Street Journal revealed that AMI had paid Karen McDougal, the Playboy model, to bury her story. As that news hit, Cohen, Pecker, Howard, Davidson, and Hicks were calling and texting one another. In a text to Howard, Cohen wrote, “He’s pissed.” This was an obvious reference to Trump. At one point that night, Cohen texted Pecker that Trump was trying to reach him. The next morning, Cohen texted Hicks, “So far I see only 6 stories. Getting little to no traction.” Hicks replied, “Same. Keep praying!!”

Three days later, Trump was elected president.

The payment to Stormy Daniels did not become public until long after the election, when the Wall Street Journal reported the hush-money deal on January 12, 2018. In the weeks ahead, Cohen claimed that he had arranged the payment on his own, that Trump and the Trump Organization had not been a party to the transaction, and that neither had reimbursed him. Trump claimed ignorance, declaring that he knew nothing about the payment. But then—after FBI agents raided Cohen’s home and office and seized documents including paperwork connected to the Daniels payment—Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, acknowledged that Trump indeed had reimbursed Cohen. But he insisted that Cohen had paid off Daniels “on his own authority” and that Trump had been unaware of the payment at the time it was made. On Fox News, Giuliani told host Sean Hannity that Trump “didn’t know about the specifics of [the Stormy Daniels deal]…But he did know about the general arrangement. That Michael would take care of things like this.”

The publicly known details of the hush-money episode show there are multiple witnesses beyond Cohen who could address the key issues of whether Trump was aware of the deal and approved it in real-time, and whether a significant motive for arranging the payment was to keep a porn star quiet for campaign purposes. Cohen has been clear: Trump was in on it, and this was done to protect Trump from political fallout in the final weeks of the campaign. But all that will be challenged by Trump’s lawyers, if he is indicted. Unsurprisingly, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion, making false statements to a bank, and lying to Congress, has been relentlessly attacked by Trump’s legal team as a witness with no credibility. That will obviously continue should Trump be brought to trial.

But the case does not rest entirely on Cohen’s word. Howard, Pecker, Davidson, Hicks, Conway, and Weisselberg—who these days resides in a prison cell on Rikers Island after pleading guilty to tax fraud charges—can each provide crucial information about what occurred. Weisselberg was a cooperating witness in Bragg’s successful prosecution of the Trump Organization for tax fraud, and Conway, Hicks, Pecker, Howard, and Davidson each have met with Bragg’s prosecutors. Pecker and Howard also previously cooperated with investigators. In 2018, federal prosecutors announced a non-prosecution agreement with Pecker’s AMI, in which the US attorney for the Southern District of New York agreed not to charge AMI with any crimes related to the payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal in return for AMI’s cooperation in the investigation and its admission the payment was done in concert with Trump’s campaign to suppress damaging allegations about Trump.

The publicly revealed texts, emails, and phone records in the hush-money escapade do not provide all the evidence needed to definitively answer the major questions regarding Trump’s role in the scheme and related matters. But they make clear that there are participants beyond Cohen who know what happened and that this historic prosecution, should it occur, might not depend solely on a fixer who turned against the boss.

The Iraq Invasion 20 Years Later: It Was Indeed a Big Lie that Launched the Catastrophic War

Before there was Donald Trump’s Big Lie, there was George W. Bush’s Big Lie.

Twenty years ago this week, Bush and his sidekick Vice President Dick Cheney launched a war against Iraq. They greased the way to this tragic conflagration with the false claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that directly threatened the United States, and that he was in league with al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the horrific September 11 attack. Their invasion, which led to the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians—and the violence and instability in the region that resulted in ISIS—is now widely considered to have been a strategic blunder of immense proportions. Three months before he died in 2018, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), a leading advocate of the war and the post-invasion troop surge, published his final book, The Restless Wave, which included a self-damning verdict: “The principal reason for invading Iraq, that Saddam [Hussein] had WMD, was wrong. The war, with its cost in lives and treasure and security, can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

Other one-time cheerleaders for the Iraq war have voiced regret and, occasionally, shame. In a 2018 book, Max Boot, an analyst who was once deeply ensconced in the world of neocon foreign policy, wrote, “I can finally acknowledge the obvious: It was all a big mistake. Saddam Hussein was heinous, but Iraq was better off under his tyrannical rule than the chaos that followed. I regret advocating the invasion and feel guilty about all the lives lost.” Three years earlier, New York Times columnist David Brooks, who had been a loud (and naive) beater of the war drums in 2003, opined, “[T]he decision to go to war was a clear misjudgment.” Last week, in the Atlantic, David Frum, the pro-war speechwriter for Bush who coined the “Axis of Evil” phrase that justified targeting Iraq (and North Korea and Iran), noted the decision to invade was “plainly” unwise and that the war was a “misadventure.”

Let’s give one or two hurrahs for those who can declare they got it wrong. Yes, this conclusion is now obvious, given that no significant WMDs were found in Iraq after American bombs and troops were unleashed on the country and that the invasion, contrary to the assurances of the Bush-Cheney administration and its cocksure neoconservative allies, did not trigger a flowering of democracy in the Middle East.

Yet it’s one thing to acknowledge a misstep in policy judgment; it’s quite another to admit to abetting a fraud. Many of the Iraq War regretters insist they pursued the war in good faith predicated on solid assumptions and propelled by genuine concern for US security. What they don’t confess to is being part of an effort to purposefully bamboozle the American public and whip up support for the war with scare-’em tactics and disinformation. Frum, who has become a pal of mine during the Trump era, provides a good example. In his essay, he challenges the Bush-lied-and-people-died view, noting, “I don’t believe any leaders of the time intended to be dishonest. They were shocked and dazed by 9/11. They deluded themselves.”

“I don’t believe any leaders of the time intended to be dishonest. They were shocked and dazed by 9/11. They deluded themselves.”

This self-delusion argument—we believed what we said—is often packaged with the contention that the Bush-Cheney crowd rendered their decisions on the basis of flawed intelligence that stated Iraq had WMDs,  and, thus, these leaders did not intentionally misrepresent the threat. 

But this is a phony narrative. The intelligence assessments that suggested Iraq possessed significant amounts of WMDs and was close to developing a nuclear weapon—produced under tremendous pressure from the Bush White House—were often disputed by experts within the intelligence community. (And later, but before the invasion, these findings were challenged by UN WMD inspectors who were scrutinizing Iraq.) Yet Bush, Cheney, and their top aides (Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and others) embraced these problematic evaluations, as well as assorted and unproven (or disproven) reports, in order to justify the case for war and—here’s the key point—oversold these findings to the public. Meanwhile, they issued overwrought statements about the supposed threat from Iraq that either were unsupported by the faulty intelligence or utterly baseless. In short, Bush and Cheney did lie, and those that marched with them toward war were part of a campaign deliberately fueled with falsehoods. (At one point, Bush even discussed with British Prime Minister Tony Blair concocting a phony provocation that could be used to start the war.)

In our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Michael Isikoff and I chronicled numerous instances when Bush and his lieutenants mischaracterized the WMD threat and the purported (but largely nonexistent) tie between Saddam and al Qaeda. Let’s start with Cheney. In August 2002, as the Bush administration kicked off its campaign to win public support for an invasion of Iraq, the vice president, speaking to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, declared, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” But at that point, there was no confirmed intelligence establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation nor that he intended to strike the United States with such arms.

In fact, the most recent intelligence assessments at the time had concluded Iraq was not the dire danger that Cheney had claimed. The previous year, Secretary of State Colin Powell had testified to Congress that Iraq remained “contained,” that its military was “weak,” and that “the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful” in developing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. In late March 2002, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in little-noticed testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that the Iraqi military was “significantly degraded” and that Saddam possessed only “residual” amounts of WMD, not a growing arsenal. He made no reference to a nuclear program or any ties between Saddam and al Qaeda.

While Cheney was building up support for the invasion at this VFW convention, General Anthony Zinni, who had been commander in chief of the US Central Command, was on the stage. He was surprised by Cheney’s stark and harsh remarks about Iraq. Years later, he recounted his reaction in a documentary: “It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.” Put simply, Cheney was lying.

Of course, there’s more.

Cheney repeatedly cited a report that 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta had secretly met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. This was supposedly evidence of a nefarious plot linking Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet the CIA and the FBI had investigated and found no evidence that such an encounter had occurred. This conclusion was conveyed to Cheney, but he continued to publicly refer to the unconfirmed Prague meeting. Cheney was purposefully disseminating disinformation to bolster the impression that Saddam was in cahoots with the evildoers of 9/11. This is a damning example of Cheney knowingly citing discredited intelligence to score points. The 9/11 Commission later affirmed that the report of a Prague meeting was bunk.

Bush, too, pushed the Saddam-al Qaeda link. In November 2002, he stated that Saddam “is a threat because he’s dealing with al Qaeda.” Weeks earlier, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had asserted he possessed “bullet-proof” evidence that Saddam was connected to Osama bin Laden. In March 2003, Cheney insisted that Saddam had a “long-standing relationship” with al Qaeda. The intelligence did not show any of this; no “bullet-proof” evidence was ever revealed. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were making it all up. As the 9/11 Commission later noted, there had been no intelligence confirming significant contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. Here was another instance in which Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they were promoting false information.

They also deliberately overinflated the most dangerous piece of the supposed threat posed by Saddam: Iraq’s nuclear program. In September 2002, Cheney said there was “very clear evidence” that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons and pointed to Iraq’s acquisition of aluminum tubes that were to be used to enrich uranium for bombs. Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, echoed this claim, stating that these aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.” But Cheney and Rice neglected to disclose that there was a heated dispute within the intelligence community about this supposed evidence. The top scientific experts in the US government had concluded these tubes were unsuitable for a nuclear weapons program. Only one CIA analyst—who was not a scientific expert—contended the tubes were smoking-gun proof that Saddam was working to develop nuclear weapons. That was all the Bush-Cheney White House needed. It embraced the weaker case and ignored the more-informed analysis. Cheney and Rice were cherry-picking—choosing bad intelligence over good—and not sharing with the public the better information that undermined their ultimate objective.

That was just one of the falsehoods and exaggerations about WMDs that Bush and his crew deployed to rig the national debate in favor of war. In October 2002, Bush said that Hussein had a “massive stockpile” of biological weapons. But as CIA Director George Tenet noted in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers that Iraq may have possessed some lethal biological agents, but the agency had “no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile” was a fabrication.

And here’s another whopper: In December 2002, Bush declared, “We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon.” That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate produced that fall had stated. As Tenet would later testify, “We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.” Bush made it seem that US intelligence believed it was possible that Saddam already possessed a nuclear weapon when the intelligence was clear that Iraq, whatever nuclear program it might have maintained, had not reached that point. 

There are many other instances of Bush, Cheney, and their aides misrepresenting the facts to grease the way to war. (Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN in February 2003 that laid out the Bush administration’s rationale for war was full of false and misleading information. In 2016, he called it a “great intelligence failure.”) Yet Bush defenders and other commentators have insisted there was no deliberate effort to con the public. They point out that Bush and his national security team felt the threat was real and believed that Saddam had stockpiled WMDs and was in league with al Qaeda. On key fronts, they were convinced that they knew better than the available intelligence.

In his new book on the Iraq war, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq, noted historian Melvyn Leffler dismisses the question of Bush’s pre-war prevarication:

When critics blame Bush personally or his advisers more broadly…they tend to obfuscate the larger dilemmas of statecraft that inhered after 9/11. Bush failed not because he was a weak leader, a naive ideologue, or a lying manipulative politician…Tragedy occurs not because leaders are ill-intentioned, stupid, and corrupt; tragedy occurs when earnest people and responsible officials seek to do the right thing and end up making things much worse.

For Leffler, who based much of his book on interviews with Bush-Cheney officials, the war was a disaster but not a dishonest enterprise. It was a case of earnestness gone awry.

That lets Bush and Cheney off the hook. The war was a catastrophe falsely pitched to the American people. Whether or not their intentions were honorable, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and their comrades adopted dishonorable means to gin up popular support for the invasion of Iraq. Two decades later, it remains much easier for many to acknowledge the war was a miscalculation than a lie. Yet it was both. It was promoted by Bush and his minions with a reckless disregard for the truth and with hype that was fueled by falsehoods and designed to generate fear instead of serious and reasoned public discussion. Bush and Cheney sold it wrong and they got it wrong. Without all the misrepresentations, unfounded assertions, and exaggerations would this calamitous war have occurred? Perhaps. We will never know. But it should not be forgotten that this debacle of death and destruction was not only a profound error of policymaking; it was the result of a carefully executed crusade of disinformation and lies. 

Ron DeSantis’ War on Freedom

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Please check it out. And please also check out David’s new New York Times bestseller, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.

Freedom—it’s what Republicans and conservatives have long insisted they care most about. At campaign rallies and conservative shindigs, they get all weepy when Lee Greenwood sings, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” For decades, they have accused their political foes of seeking to destroy freedom by imposing socialism, communism, Bolshevism, collectivism, or whatever upon the US of A. This has been a ruse. The right has often been an enemy of freedom. For instance, conservatives have sought to limit the reproductive choices of women and prevent Americans from marrying the people they love. In recent weeks, we have seen a very specific assault on freedom in Florida waged by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is not yet a 2024 presidential candidate but who already seems to be competing with Donald Trump for the GOP leader most committed to authoritarianism—and who yesterday released a book with a highly ironic title: The Courage to Be Free.

Last week, two bills were introduced in the Florida legislature that would advance DeSantis’ crusade and limit important freedoms for Floridians. The first continues DeSantis’ long-running attack on the Sunshine State’s education system, which has included banning math textbooks that he claimed included “woke” ideology, prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, thwarting the introduction of an AP African American studies course (and threatening to kill all AP courses), and deriding “liberal indoctrination” in the school system. The laws he has already passed have led to book banning in some school districts.

This new measure would block public colleges and universities from offering major or minor degrees in gender studies, intersectionality, or critical race studies. (Several Florida schools offer gender studies majors; it’s unclear whether any does so for critical race theory.) The measure also would compel colleges to offer general education classes that do not “suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.” These courses must “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization.”

This legislation, filed by GOP state Rep. Alex Andrade, a DeSantis ally, establishes the state government as an education censor, preventing schools, faculty, and students from determining the contours of college education. Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, the union representing instructors at Florida schools, described the bill to Higher Ed Dive as a state-sponsored form of indoctrination. He called it “fascism in its purest form.”

The legislation would place the decision to hire faculty members at public colleges in the hands of campus governing boards that would ultimately be controlled by the governor. It would prevent schools from funding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

This is a power grab—and a mind grab. DeSantis is seeking control over what is taught. The legislation would require general education courses to “promote the values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic”—without fully defining these “values.” (Isn’t respect for diversity in a diverse country such a value?) These courses cannot describe American history “as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.” So what to say about the central role of slavery in the US economy and power structure? Even though the founding fathers were conflicted about slavery, the course material cannot reflect that? One main problem with legislation of this sort is that because it does not provide specific guidelines, schools and teachers will self-censor to avoid being called out by the Orwellian thought-police of the state bureaucracy. (You have undermined the “values necessary to preserve the constitutional republic.” Please come with us.) Which is precisely DeSantis’ goal. 

“This bill will be a gut punch to anyone who cares about public education in a democracy or academic freedom or the fact that our system of higher education is the envy of the world,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “Because higher ed in America is organized around the fact that research and teaching and decisions involving research and teaching are best made by experts and scholars in the field.”

The other anti-freedom measure—also introduced by Andrade—would make it easier to bring a defamation case against the news media, which DeSantis last year identified as a priority for his administration. This legislation would especially help plaintiffs who have been accused of prejudice. As the Tampa Bay Times reports, the bill could have “a chilling effect on news outlets reporting about people accused of discriminating against others on the basis of race, sexuality or gender identity, legal experts say.” The paper explains:

In cases involving a person reported to have committed sexuality-based or gender identity-based discrimination, the bill limits the defenses available to the publisher being sued. An outlet accused of defamation cannot prove its reporting was factually sound by citing the person’s religious or scientific beliefs, the bill says.

The bill is designed to render it difficult—and legally perilous—to call out racists, bigots, and misogynists. It also applies to social media. A tweeter could be slapped with a defamation suit for posting such an allegation.

There are other worrisome provisions in the bill. For instance, it would require that a statement provided by an anonymous source be presumed false for the purposes of a defamation case. This could dramatically inhibit the use of anonymous whistleblowers and witnesses by news organizations. Certainly, one can debate the value and over-usage of unidentified sources. But they are often necessary for journalism that scrutinizes powerful people and interests.

Kate Ruane, director of PEN America’s US Free Expression Programs, slammed this bill:

With this legislation, Florida politicians seek to insulate themselves from criticism and weaponize the courts to chill speech and attack journalists. It’s blatantly unconstitutional, but could still wreak tremendous havoc if it passes. The United States has a long tradition of open and robust political debate, which has been underpinned by a strong and free press that need not fear a lawsuit for doing their jobs. This bill will hobble reporters as they investigate the impacts of the implementation of policies like the Stop W.O.K.E. Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” Law.

DeSantis and his minions are mounting an assault on essential freedoms: academic freedom and the free press. In the ways of demagogues, he is trying to seize greater control of campuses and curb news outlets from investigating folks like him. The defamation bill even affords special protection to people accused of racism and gender bigotry. Whether or not he runs for president—this past weekend he assembled donors and political supporters for a conference that could be a prelude to an announcement declaring his candidacy—DeSantis is cruising full speed ahead to wage culture wars and impose MAGA extremism on his state, blazing the trail for other would-be autocrats.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mulvey of the American Association of University Professors says. “The future of higher education is at stake. If it works in Florida, you know it’ll spread to other red states.” Trump raised the bar for right-wing politicians who fancy authoritarianism—and DeSantis is clearing it.