David Corn's Blog, page 9

Pro-Trump Ad Touting American Workers Uses Photos of Workers Overseas

Right for America, a super PAC financed by a handful of billionaires that supports Donald Trump, recently released an ad that promotes Trump’s various tax proposals and celebrates American workers, particularly those who put in overtime. It’s full of photos and videos supposedly showing overtime workers—the “hardest working citizens in our country”—including a welder, a truck driver, and a hospital worker. Yet many of these shots are stock footage or photos of workers in foreign countries, and the ad is misleading overall, leaving out Trump’s past opposition to compensating employees who work overtime.

The 30-second spot, which is being aired in swing states, hails Trump’s vow to end taxes on Social Security, tips, and overtime pay. Not surprisingly, it avoids fundamental facts about these proposals. Budget experts have pointed out that eliminating taxes on Social Security would lead to Social Security and Medicare becoming insolvent earlier than what’s now forecast and increase the national deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Suspending the tax on overtime would cost $1.7 trillion over a decade. Ending taxes on tips is not likely to help most workers who depend on tips—many are low-income earners who don’t pay much in taxes—and could cause an assortment of problems.

There are two ridiculous aspects to the ad: The depiction of Trump as a champion of overtime workers and its incorporation of images of non-American workers. When Trump was president, his administration cut back a rule proposed by the Obama administration to compel businesses to provide overtime compensation to about 4.1 million workers. The Trump Labor Department rule covered only 1.3 million, screwing nearly 3 million American workers. The business community had fought fiercely against the Obama proposal, and Trump came to its rescue. As ABC News put it in a headline, “New overtime rules a ‘win for corporate executives,’ economists say.”

And as a businessman, Trump has been no champion of overtime workers. At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, last month, Trump discussed his experience as a businessman with overtime. “I know a lot about overtime,” he said. “I hated to give overtime.” He recalled that he would employ new workers to replace those who were supposed to work overtime. “I shouldn’t say this,” he added, “but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay. I hated it.”

Trump’s refusal to compensate workers and contractors has been widely documented. In 2016, USA Today reported that Trump’s companies had been “cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.” In 2019, the Washington Post broke the story that employees at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briar­cliff Manor, New York, were forced to work without pay after they clocked out. It was called “side work.” The Trump Organization denied this happened.

In addition to the misleading substance of the ad, the spot features slow-mo, heroic-ish imagery of supposedly American workers. But in several instances, these are not Americans but overseas workers. A photo of a welder comes from a stock image taken by a photographer in the Netherlands and available (at a low price) on a Portuguese site. Footage of a delivery man on a bicycle traces back to a stock image company in Thailand and was also available on the Portuguese site. Video of a woman dressed in surgical garb—she’s a doctor or a nurse—was produced by a Ukrainian company. And a clip of a chef in a kitchen is from a video made by a Spanish production company.

The creators of the Right for America spot could not be bothered to find real Americans for the ad.

Right for America is funded by a small group of billionaires who are pals with Trump. Its biggest backers are Ike Perlmutter and his wife Laura, who together have kicked in at least $20 million. He’s a former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and has a reputation as an eccentric tycoon who eschews being photographed. Other major donors include venture capitalist Douglas Leone, a former managing partner of Sequoia Capital; Robert Book, a co-vice chair of the board of Axxes Capital; and trash hauling magnate Anthony Lomangino. The Perlmutters and Lomangino are members of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club. The PAC is run by Sergio Gor, a friend of the Trump family once nicknamed the “Mayor of Mar-a-Lago.”

Right for America is just one of several billionaire-funded PACs that in the final weeks of the election are flooding TV, radio, and social media in swing states with ads to help Trump. According to Axios, it has booked about $40 million in ads through Election Day. And the New York Times reported that it has spent $500,000 to run this spot in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona and $360,000 to air a Spanish-language version, mostly in Arizona.

This ad, which shows video of Trump returning to his feet after a gunman fired at him at a campaign rally in July, claims that “for too long no one in Washington has been looking out for” overtime workers and declares Trump is the one man who will. It’s rich that billionaires are spending so much money to convince voters that Trump is an advocate for hard-working toilers when he has shafted them as a businessman and as a president. Their pitch is as phony as the stock footage used to sell it.

Is It Racist and Misogynist to Demean Kamala Harris?

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

Is it racist, misogynist, or misogynoirist for Donald Trump to refer to Vice President Kamala Harris as “retarded,” as he recently did during a dinner at Trump Tower with his fat-cat billionaire donors, according to the New York Times? His routine disparagement of her as “dumb” and “mentally disabled” comes across as bigotry. Now you—or someone—might say, this isn’t Trump being biased; he treats all his political foes that way and engages in equal-opportunity slander. But there’s something sharper here than his usual immature and false taunts. At a rally last month, he remarked, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way”—setting her apart in his fusillade of demeaning insults.

Slamming this accomplished Black woman with a long history of public service as a person born mentally inferior—see the recent Our Land issue on Trump and genes—seems a racist and/or misogynist act. Especially when it comes from a man with a lengthy and undeniable record of racism and misogyny. While such campaign rhetoric would have once been considered a campaign scandal—in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter accurately noted that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Ronald Reagan, the political press attacked him for being mean—these Trump comments cause Trump no political discomfort. They barely trigger any controversy.

Trump appears to have created a permission structure for bias-driven assaults on Harris.

In fact, Trump appears to have created a permission structure for bias-driven assaults on Harris. In right-wing media, commentators are having a field day. Writing for the American Spectator, a fellow named Scott McKay declared “Kamala Harris hates men” and “doesn’t seem to associate with any men worth respecting.” Referring to 55,000 American men who died in Vietnam—don’t ask why he even brought this up—he wrote,

Kamala Harris doesn’t give a damn about any of those 55,000 dead Americans.  

She doesn’t give much of a damn about the 330 million current live Americans. And she certainly doesn’t give a damn about the male subset of that population.

How could she? Nothing in Kamala Harris’ political background shows that she has any respect for, or appreciation of, masculinity.

The article raised crude speculations about her personal life and blasted Harris for having an affair with California politician Willie Brown while he was married. And McKay demanded to know if she ever had an abortion. Has the American Spectator treated Trump in similar fashion, branded him as dishonorable for his dalliances and requested he state whether he ever paid for or arranged for an abortion? (By the way, Harris dated Brown years after he separated from his wife.) McKay also insisted that Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, is “no male that any real man would respect,” citing his extramarital affair that ended his first marriage. (Apparently, Trump’s affairs are weighed differently.) And McKay ended by asserting, “We can see from [Harris’] rhetoric and her actions she has little to no respect for men.”

The American Spectator was trying very hard here. When it comes to not respecting an entire gender, does its editorial staff no longer remember this Trump ditty: “I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there…And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything”? (And since we’re talking about masculinity, here’s a pop quiz: Who wears more makeup?)

The double-standardizing is staggering. But it is open season on Harris for being a woman. On the far-right Front Page website, Mark Tapson—under the headline “Why Men Won’t Vote For Kamala. Hint: It’s Not Misogyny”—wrote that Harris has been unable to “garner the support of male voters.” And this is the reason why: “To be clear: no one, male or female, truly likes Kamala Harris, because as a politician she is unlikeable.” And he added, “She is not a leader.”

The managing editor of the far-right Federalist, Kylee Griswold, growled that Harris is “too stupid to be president.”

If this is not misogyny, Tapson was certainly judging her differently than Trump. No one likes Harris? In some polls, she’s ahead of Trump by a bit, but the race is essentially a toss-up at this moment. Someone must like her. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 51 percent of male registered voters backed Trump, and 43 percent favored Harris. That’s a significant gender gap. But look at women: 52 percent of female registered voters support Harris, and 43 percent support Trump. Her deficit with men is basically the same as Trump’s with women. Would Tapson cite Trump’s problem with women as a sign he’s not likable and is not regarded by voters as a leader?

At the Federalist, the hate is also boiling over. The far-right online publication’s managing editor, Kylee Griswold, growled that Harris is “too stupid to be president.” Asserting that “her whole personality is the color of her skin,” she maintained that Harris is “not smart, articulate, or likable…Democrats have fallen in line behind geriatric and mentally impaired candidates before. They’ll gladly fall in line behind a stupid one now.” Maybe this is not misogyny or racism (though I’m not certain what the reference to the “color of her skin” meant), but with this rant—which claimed Harris was dumb and inarticulate when it comes to discussing policy—Griswold was judging Harris on a scale the Federalist crew does not apply to the man in the race.

Conservatives have plenty of reason to criticize Harris for her assorted policy preferences. Yet right-wingers who worship at the altar of Donald Trump—and embrace him despite his lies, demagoguery, ignorance, racism, misogyny, violent and fascist rhetoric, mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, and incitement of the January 6 riot—feel compelled to follow Dear Leader in brutally debasing the first Black woman to become the presidential nominee of a major party. It sure smells of racial bigotry and gender prejudice—a stink that Trump has emanated for years. 

Trump Super-PAC Sent Out Bogus Medicare Cancellation Notice to Scare Voters About Kamala Harris

In Arizona, older people recently received a mailer declaring Medicare had been cancelled. It had a big red stamp that proclaimed, “Medicare Cancellation Notice.” Also emblazoned on its front was this: “Warning: Rates are going up & plans are being cancelled. Details enclosed.” Its return address was the “Department of Medicare Cancellation, Kamala Harris Administration.”

That return address should have been a tip-off that this was not an official notification—along with a scrawled add-on in cursive: “I hope you can afford to lose your insurance! — Kamala Harris XOXO.”

It’s hard to know whether any recipient saw this and received a shock, fearing their Medicare was being cut off. But the group that sent out this official-looking piece of campaign literature, Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, was spreading false and misleading information about Medicare and about Harris.

The mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. It is designed as a “Medicare cancellation notice,” but it’s a misleading piece of campaign literature.

The backside of the notice claimed that Harris is “destroying Medicare.” It said that due to Harris, Medicare premiums were skyrocketing and that she “has a new plan that would completely liquidate Medicare funds,” adding, “All the money you’ve paid into Medicare will be gone.” It dramatically asserted, “Your care [will be] cancelled.”

None of this is true. Medicare premiums are not skyrocketing. For instance, the standard monthly Part B premium went from $164.90 in 2023 to $174.70 this year. Harris has no “new” plan to “completely liquidate Medicare funds.” She recently proposed expanding Medicare to cover long-term, in-home health care and said the program would be paid for by negotiating lower drug prices. She also called for widening Medicare to include hearing and vision benefits.

The backside of the mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC.

The MAGA, Inc. mailer contained footnotes seemingly to back up its outlandish accusation. But they were vague and misleading. They appeared to point to references from years ago when Harris was a supporter of Medicare for All, which is no longer part of her policy agenda.

MAGA, Inc. is the top pro-Trump super PAC. It has raised over $300 million during the 2024 campaign, most of it from Republican billionaires, including Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager; Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner and real estate magnate who went to jail for tax evasion and for retaliating against a federal witness (and whom Trump pardoned); and Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who has pumped in over $150 million. (Mellon also gave $25 million to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s failed presidential campaign.) MAGA, Inc., according to a memo it released this summer, aims to spend at least $100 million in ads to portray Harris as “the most radical liberal ever to run for President.”

MAGA, Inc., since its founding in 2022, has been a critical player in Trumpworld. Its first executive director was Taylor Budowich, a former Trump White House aide, who refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee and who testified to the grand jury that investigated Trump’s alleged swiping of classified documents. He joined the Trump campaign in August. Other staffers have included Steve Cheung, now the Trump campaign’s combative spokesperson, and Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump’s current presidential bid.

Medicare is frequently a hot issue during a presidential campaign, in particular because seniors tend to vote at high rates. Harris’ campaign cites her accomplishments regarding Medicare, pointing out that the Biden-Harris administration capped out-of-pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries and limited the cost of insulin for recipients at $35 a month. It also provided Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prescription drug costs. And Medicare solvency improved during the Biden years.

Repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security or Medicare, though in March he did say in an interview, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” (When he was president, Trump did propose Medicare cuts.) Tax experts have noted that Trump’s proposal to exempt taxes on Social Security would lead to Social Security and Medicare receiving $1.6 trillion less in revenue in the next ten years and push each into insolvency sooner. (Project 2025—which Trump has tried to distance himself from—calls for changes in Medicare that would move more recipients into Medicare Advantage plans that are run by private insurance companies, and, according to Fortune, this could increase the financial pressure on Medicare.) 

Mother Jones contacted MAGA, Inc. and asked if the super PAC intended for the mailer to look like an official notice and if it was concerned a recipient might at first be scared, believing his or her Medicare had been cancelled. It did not respond.

Mailers often convey the most scurrilous political attacks. Yet they tend to receive little media attention and routinely escape fact-checking and rebuttal. (As I reported recently, in Michigan, Jewish Republicans mailed out campaign literature accusing Harris, whose husband is Jewish, of being bad for Jews.) So it’s unlikely that the seniors who saw this faux notice exclaiming Medicare has been shut down will subsequently receive a counter explaining that Medicare was not cancelled and is not being destroyed by Harris.

Political campaigns can be sleazy affairs. But there is something particularly odious about billionaires attempting to frighten Medicare recipients with phony messaging in order to persuade them to vote for a guy who has proposed Medicare cuts and who will shower the wealthy with large tax breaks. But to them, this must seem a solid investment.

Jewish Republicans Attack Harris, Who Has a Jewish Husband, for Being Bad for Jews

In Michigan, a key swing state, Republicans are mounting multiple smears against Vice President Kamala Harris. Most notably, they’re falsely accusing her of not caring about antisemitism, being soft on terrorism, and planning to confiscate guns and arrest gun-owners, if she becomes president.

These accusations are being hurled in a medium that often is off the national political radar screen and that frequently escapes fact-checking and rebuttal: mailers. In presidential contests, these pieces of campaign literature delivered by the US Postal Service are usually targeted to specific groups of voters and mainly deployed in swing states. Voters elsewhere can collect their mail without being barraged by this crap. With less scrutiny applied to these assaults, political operators often feel more empowered to resort to lies and extremist rhetoric within these communications.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff take part in a menorah lighting ceremony in celebration of Hanukkah in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on December 1, 2021. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

A Michigander—who happens to be Jewish—sent me several mailers received by his household. The first, sent out by the RJC Victory Fund, a super PAC associated with the Republican Jewish Coalition, depicts Harris laughing at the threats of “antisemitism at home” and at “terrorism abroad.” It declares she “does nothing” when there are “attacks on the Jewish people.” It adds that she appeases “antisemitic protestors” and is “weak” and “incompetent” when it comes to protecting Israel. The message: She is bad for Jews.

These are misleading and insulting attacks. They are also absurd. Harris has been part of an administration that has supported the Israeli government, as it has conducted extensive and brutal warfare in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilians, in response to the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The Biden-Harris White House has also not publicly objected to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.

Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration last year created the first-ever US National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. One of the leaders of this initiative is Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, who is Jewish. To suggest that Harris doesn’t care about antisemitism is silly and defamatory. Yet that’s the claim these Republican Jews are making. They are weaponizing antisemitism against the spouse of a Jew who is a leader in the fight against antisemitism.

The RJC Victory Fund did not respond to an email inquiring whether it is fair to characterize Harris as unconcerned about antisemitism given that her husband is a leader of a Biden-Harris administration program to counter antisemitism.

The Michigan Republican Party—which last year came under the control of MAGA extremists—waged a similar attack to portray Harris as trouble for Jews. A mailer it zapped out suggests that in response to October 7—during which 1,200 people “including Americans” were murdered, raped, and kidnapped—Harris said, “We must have to courage to object when they use that term—radical Islamic terrorism—which ignores how Muslims have overwhelmingly been the greatest victims of terror.”

Harris, however, did not say that regarding October 7. It was a remark she made during an Eid-al-Fitr service at the Islamic Center of Southern California in 2016, as she called for opposing Islamophobia. She was criticizing the use of a phrase that demeans an entire religion. Following the October 7 attack, Harris did not hesitate to refer to Hamas as “terrorists” and declared “terrorists will not be permitted to continue to threaten Israel.” The mailer does not mention that.

On the backside of this mailer, the Michigan Republicans assert that Donald Trump has been “outspoken against anti-Semitism,” though he famously supped with notorious antisemites (rapper Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes) and has made statements criticized as antisemitic. Last month, he said that American Jews would be to blame if he loses the 2024 election. The American Jewish Committee fiercely responded: “Setting up anyone to say ‘we lost because of the Jews’ is outrageous and dangerous. Thousands of years of history have shown that scapegoating Jews can lead to antisemitic hate and violence.” Trump has also refused to acknowledge antisemitism on the right and within the Republican Party.

A separate mailer produced by the Michigan Republicans screams in all-caps that Harris will “EMBOLDEN ANTI-SEMITES.” What’s the proof of this? The mailer quotes a newspaper story that reported that Harris rebuked Israel regarding the “humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”—as if expressing concern for the Palestinian civilians killed and injured during the ongoing war is antisemitic.

The Michigan GOP also sent out a mailer repeating one of the right’s big lies: Harris is coming for your guns—all of them. This mailer proclaims, “Own a gun? Kamala Harris will take them or arrest you.”

On the flip side, the mailer spells out this case: She promised to “enact gun confiscation” through a buy-back program, favors using “lists of gun owners to send police door-to-door to seize firearms,” and has argued a “total handgun ban is constitutional.” There are even footnotes that cite articles to substantiate the accusations.

But the citations do not support these broad allegations.

During the 2020 campaign, Harris said it was a “good idea” to revive the assault weapon ban and supported a “buy-back ” program for these weapons. (She did not advocate the confiscation of all guns.) In 2019, she noted that when she was California attorney general she permitted police to “knock on the doors of people” on a list maintained by the state of prohibited gun owners and people considered a danger to themselves or others. “We sent law enforcement out to take those guns,” she said, “because we have to deal with this on all levels.” (In this instance, Harris targeted only a small set of gun owners and did not authorize cops to seize firearms willy-nilly.) And in 2008, as San Francisco district attorney, she signed on to an amicus brief filed in a key Supreme Court case that supported the Washington, DC, ban on handguns. (The Supreme Court would overturn this law.) A libertarian law professor a dozen years later wrote, “Harris’s view in that case was that the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude total bans on handgun possession.” The stance he described—slightly different than the one presented by the mailer—was a mainstream position and supported by four of the nine justices. It was not a sign that Harris endorses a national ban on handguns or intends to arrest all gun owners.

No doubt, other mailers are flying around in Michigan and other swing states that cast ridiculous lies at Harris. This is an effective way to vilify a candidate. There is little opportunity for fact-checking, and it’s unlikely the target will spend the money for a counter-mailer that reaches the same recipients. It’s a wide-open avenue for peddling swill and disinformation. In this case, the Michigan Republicans and the Jewish Republican Coalition Victory Fund can falsely portray Harris as an enemy of Jews (though she’s married to one) and a gun-grabber (though she says she owns a Glock) and expect few, if any, consequences for disseminating their junk mail.

Tracking One of Elon Musk’s Many Big Lies

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

Every once in a while, it’s good to take a hard look at a particular lie of the many spewed by a narcissistic, dangerous, demagogic, and hate-feeding billionaire who has tremendous influence over the national political discussion. Of course, I’m talking about Elon Musk.

Musk literally jumped the shark this past weekend (see above) when he appeared with Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the July assassination attempt on the GOP nominee. Musk leaped about like a jester and fear-mongered when he got his time at the microphone. He falsely proclaimed of the Democrats, “The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote, effectively.” And he darkly warned that if Trump doesn’t win, “this will be the last election.”

Over the past year, Musk has slipped increasingly into the fever swamp of MAGAland and become a record-setting purveyor of disinformation (while also amplifying racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic posts). It’s even possible that he’s responsible for more false messages on social media than Trump. (Musk has zapped out numerous posts on X claiming Democrats are bringing illegal immigrants into the United States so these migrants can vote for the Ds—a baseless conspiracy theory.) A study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that in the first seven months of 2024, Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election generated 1.2 billion views. “Elon Musk is abusing his privileged position as owner of a small, but politically influential, social media platform to sow disinformation that generates discord and distrust,” said Imran Ahmed, the center’s CEO. (In March, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit Musk had brought against the center that blamed it for the loss of tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue after the center reported on the rise of hate speech and misinformation on X.) Last week, the New York Times reported that of 171 posts Musk put up on X in a recent five-day period, almost a third were false or misleading. These phony-baloney posts were viewed more than 800 million times.

I believe it remains important to explore how Musk concocts his lies, and one just happened to catch my attention a few days ago. I decided to dig in.

With all the lies and crap that Musk hurls at X users—and that the site’s algorithm seems to highlight—how can one pick a single falsehood to examine? And why even bother? Well, I believe it remains important to explore how Musk concocts his lies, and one just happened to catch my attention a few days ago. I decided to dig in.

On September 30, Musk tweeted that John Kerry, the former US senator and secretary of state, “wants to violate the Constitution.” Within a week, this post had received 19.2 million views. It included a clip of Kerry, who until this year served as a special climate change envoy for President Joe Biden, speaking recently at a panel on climate change at the World Economic Forum. John Kerry explicitly saying he aims to undermine the US Constitution? Really? How so?

I recalled I had recently seen that Matt Taibbi, the once Musk-friendly, lefty-turned-right journalist, had mounted a similar attack on Kerry. The day before Musk threw up this tweet, Taibbi had appeared as a speaker at the so-called “Rescue the Republic Rally” in Washington, DC, which featured a roster of fringe-ish dead-enders, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Brand (the onetime actor who has been accused of sexual assault—charges he has denied), Jordan Peterson (a manosphere influencer), and former Saturday Night Live not-so-funny-man Rob Schneider. The Wall Street Journal called it the “Coalition of the Weird.”

At this shindig, Taibbi slammed Kerry:

Disagreement is seen as threat, and according to John Kerry, must be “hammered out of existence.” The former presidential candidate just complained at a World Economic Forum meeting that “it’s really hard to govern” and “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to the important work of hammering out unhealthy choices…Kerry added that it’s “really hard to build consensus,” and told Forum members they need to “win the right to govern” and “be free to implement change.” What do they need to be free of? The First Amendment.

I don’t know how much attention Musk pays to Taibbi these days—Taibbi, at Musk’s behest, produced the misleading Twitter Files falsely asserting government censorship yet then had a falling out with the boy-billionaire—but Musk picked up on this point with his tweet slamming Kerry as a foe of the Constitution. Several days later, Musk went further, tweeting, “The Democratic Party is openly stating that they want to change the Constitution to end free speech!” In this post, he referenced an article from the Daily Wire, the far-right site run by Ben Shapiro. That piece claimed Kerry had said that if Democrats win the 2024 election, they will change the First Amendment to fight disinformation.

Let’s look at what Kerry did say:

The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growning and growing and growing. It’s part of our problem, particularly in our democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we use to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have been eviscerated to a certain degree. People self-select where they go for their news and for their information. And then you just get into a vicious cycle. So it’s really, really hard, much harder to build consensus today than at any time in the 45, 50 years I’ve been involved in this. There’s a lot of discussion now about how do you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But, look, if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.

So what we need is to win the ground with the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes so you’re free to be able to implement change. Now obviously there are some people in our country prepared to implement change in other ways…I think democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they could move fast enough or big enough to deal with the challenges we are facing. And to me that is what part of this race, this election, is all about. Will we break the fever in the United States?

It’s nuts for Musk, Taibbi, or anyone else to claim that Kerry was calling for killing the First Amendment.

Read that again. Is this a call from Kerry to undo the First Amendment? He clearly was bemoaning the fact that disinformation on climate change from many sources poisons the discourse on how to meet this challenge. (At the recent vice presidential debate, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, indicated he had no problem with Trump declaring climate change a “hoax.”) In fact, Kerry acknowledged that the First Amendment prevents the government from hammering disinformation “out of existence.” The only course of action, he said, was to win politically and achieve enough of a majority that will allow the government to take decisive action on this front (say, capturing the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate). His goal, obviously, was to change policies related to climate change, not to change the First Amendment.

It’s nuts for Musk, Taibbi, or anyone else to claim that Kerry was calling for killing the First Amendment. Yet they did so anyway. And several other conservative sites—including the National Review and Real Clear Politics—ran articles pushing the line that Kerry was down on the First Amendment. Sputnik, the Russian propaganda outlet, posted a story highlighting Musk’s claim that Democrats intend to “destroy” the Constitution. Musk had provided fuel for Moscow’s disinformation operation.

Musk and Taibbi were lying about Kerry. It was easy to fact-check them on this. But I don’t think they care about being caught mangling reality for political purposes. They both are driven by the need to push false narratives that demonize Democrats and progressives to make the topsy-turvy case that the Ds and the libs, not Trump (who refused to accept the election results in 2020, schemed to overturn them, and incited an insurrectionist riot at the Capitol), are the true threats to American democracy.

This one lie about Kerry—one of many falsehoods Musk, Taibbi, and their comrades peddle—shows how desperate they are to portray Democrats as censorious foes of the republic. (Remember Vance at the debate last week trying to change the subject from January 6 to Democrats smothering free speech?) They have little, if any, evidence of this, so they make stuff up. (Meanwhile, they have not much to say about Republicans banning books.) Like Trump, Musk imperils democracy by aiming a firehose of vicious lies at voters. These statements are readily debunked. Yet through his ownership of X, Musk creates a mighty flood of disinformation that perverts the national debate. He shows that the threat to the nation doesn’t come from those he (wrongly) claims to be enemies of free speech but from those who use their free speech privileges to purposefully spread false information to advance their own interests and a dangerous political agenda.

Trump Is Running a Disinformation Campaign, Not a Political Campaign

As Donald Trump attempts to return to the White House, he is not operating a political campaign as much as mounting a disinformation campaign.

The rough and tumble of American politics often includes false statements and lies—what once was called spin. Unfortunately, there has always been a degree of tolerance for campaign dissembling. Trump is no stranger to this mundane practice. He freely tosses falsehoods at the electorate. The economy when he was president was the best ever. He did a great job on Covid. The current rate of inflation is the worst in US history. The US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe. Every Democrat and legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. He was the smartest and most accomplished president the country has ever seen. And so on. It’s absurd braggadocio and a firehose of supposed but untrue facts—spewed to a degree far beyond what previous presidential candidates attempted to get away with.

Yet Trump’s dishonesty goes further than the usual campaign lying. He concocts and promotes utterly false narratives to shape voters’ perceptions of fundamental realities. His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties that Trump can then exploit to collect votes. And the political media world has yet to come to terms with the fact that Trump is heading a disinformation crusade more likely to be found in an authoritarian state than a vibrant democracy. This is unlike other presidential campaigns in modern American history—other than his own previous efforts.

Throughout the 2024 campaign and those earlier presidential bids, Trump has pitched numerous overlapping phony narratives. His false claim about Springfield, Ohio, has been the most obvious one in recent weeks. He has repeatedly said that this small city has been taken over by illegal migrants. He asserted that “20,000 Haitian immigrants have descended upon the town of 58,000 people, destroying their entire way of life. This was a beautiful community and now it’s horrible.” And, he asserted, these migrants are stealing and eating pets.

“Trump is one of the most successful propagandists in history. He managed to convince tens of millions that he won a national election working not in a domesticated media system or a one-party state but in a fully pluralist media environment in a democracy. No one has ever done that on that scale. Also look at what he’s accomplished with the perception of January 6.”

This absurd and false allegation about legal immigrants—debunked by the Republican mayor and the state’s Republican governor—dovetailed with Trump’s false meta-narrative: The US is being overrun by criminals from abroad who are making the nation unsafe and life a nightmare for citizens across the land.

During his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said that millions of these thugs are pouring into the United States every month—a vast exaggeration. (Illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border have dramatically decreased this year.) And he has repeatedly depicted this flood of immigrants as coming from prisons and “insane asylums,” which he described as “a mental institution on steroids.” Using racist imagery, he recently declared, “They come from the Congo in Africa. Many people from the Congo. I don’t know what that is, but they come out of jails in the Congo.” As numerous media fact-checks have established, there is no proof that migrants are convicts let loose from prisons; the Trump campaign has not been able to supply reporters evidence to back up this Trump contention. Most recently, Trump maintained that the Biden administration “stole” disaster relief funds and handed the money to illegal migrants rather than use it to assist the victims of Hurricane Helene. Another fabrication.

Not merely peddling a series of lies, Trump is knitting together a full story that is utterly bogus, trying to convince tens of millions of a reality that does not exist: They’re living in a dangerous hellhole in which they’re imperiled by barbarians, who happen to be people of color. And Trump then accuses Harris and President Joe Biden of purposefully orchestrating this purportedly deadly situation and the collapse of America. At a recent campaign stop, Trump presented a nutty conspiracy theory: “I will shut down all entries through Kamala’s migrant phone app. She’s got a phone app. It’s meant for the cartel heads. The cartel heads call the app, and they tell them where to drop the illegal migrants…It’s not even believable.” It’s not true.

The overarching goal of Trump’s disinformation efforts is to persuade voters that they should live in fear—and that only he can save them. At a campaign event in Wisconsin, Trump said of migrants, “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.” And elsewhere he brayed, “They’re conquering your communities.” He pointed to Aurora, Colorado, “where they’re taking over with AK-47s.” In another campaign speech, he warned it will get worse: “They’re going to take over a lot more than Aurora. They’re going to go through Colorado. They’re going to take over the whole damn state by the time they finish. Unless I become president.” This was another phony story. Crime in Aurora is not driven by migrant gangs. On a different occasion, Trump maintained these beasts were on the rampage across Middle America: “You see how bad it’s getting when you look at what’s going on with migrants attacking villages and cities throughout the Midwest.”

Trump has been depicting all of America as a place of tremendous peril: “You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be and you’ve seen it and I’ve seen it.” Yet crime rates across the nation are down this year, including for murder.

Trump’s effort to manipulate reality encompasses more than fear-mongering on immigration and crime. He regularly portrays America as in economic free fall: “A lot of great things would have happened, but now you have millions and millions of dead people. And you have people dying financially, because they can’t buy bacon; they can’t buy food; they can’t buy groceries; they can’t do anything. And they’re living horribly in our country right now.” While poverty remains an issue, as it always has, and prices for certain goods and services are high, traditional economic indicators show the US economy growing at a healthy clip and stronger than the economies of other Western nations. Still, Trump preaches doom-and-gloom: “Our country is a failing nation. This is a failing nation…We’re failing at everything we’re doing.”

A critical piece of his disinformation strategy is to present Democrats as perverse extremists—and baby-killers. At rallies, he lies to his supporters and says that in states run by Democrats it is okay to kill infants after they are born. There are no states where that is legal. He says that Harris “wants to legalize fentanyl.” No she doesn’t. He claims that schools are conducting gender-affirming medical operations on students without the consent of parents: “Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.” With this especially bizarre and crazy charge, Trump is striving to spark a moral panic: They are coming for your children and surgically altering their genders! There is no known instance of this, and schools don’t even perform such procedures with the consent of parents.

Trump throws many other baseless charges at Harris, some from the worn-out far-right playbook, others fresher. Trump claims that she plans to confiscate all guns if she becomes president and that she “wants to bring back the draft and draft your child and put them in a war.” And there’s the constant barrage of unfounded name-calling. She’s “mentally disabled.” She’s “a communist.” She’s “a fascist.” She is “a radical left person at a level that nobody’s seen.” Trump circulated an AI-generated meme of Harris addressing a communist event. And he exclaimed, “She destroyed San Francisco. She destroyed California as the A.G…She destroyed the state of California.” Fact-check: She did not destroy California.

It’s one bullshit story after another, with the malicious intent of dehumanizing and demonizing his political rivals and large groups of people. When Trump denounced legal migrants at one rally, the audience chanted, “Send them back!” It was a real-life version of the Two Minutes Hate from George Orwell’s 1984. All told, Trump is relentlessly presenting a dark and spurious view of America—even darker and more spurious than previous iterations of the American Carnage message he has hawked—and proclaiming himself the only available savior. He is perpetuating a fraud. His electoral success is dependent on his ability to poison the national discourse and turn his fictions into reality for tens of millions of voters. And he is enthusiastically aided by a right-wing media ecosystem, a conservative movement, and a GOP that all work together to echo and affirm Trump’s deceptions, for that is how residents of MAGA-land attain influence, power, and profit. They must endorse Trump’s deceit or face being excommunicated.

“We live in a world now in which, because of social media and foreign interventions, the truth is always under assault, and that’s bound to seep into political campaigns,” says Larry Diamond, a professor of sociology and political science at Stanford who specializes in studying democracy around the world. “But to have a presidential campaign doing it on this scale—we’ve never seen anything like it. But this is not new for Trump. It’s his persona and mode of operation. In this campaign, it’s getting more chronic and extreme.”

Diamond, author of Ill Winds: Saving Democracy From Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, points out that politicians routinely attempt to frame races and opponents. The Democrats in 2012 cast Republican Mitt Romney as a corporate raider who only wanted to fire people. The Republicans in 1988 depicted Democrat Michael Dukakis as a soft-on-crime weakling. What Trump does, Diamond notes, is different: “It’s more comprehensive. It’s more systemic. It’s more outrageous. Most of the stuff pulled by previous candidates had some relationship to a real thing. He’s completely making stuff up. It’s not just one or two lies or the twisting of the truth. This is, like that film, everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Trump’s extreme reality-distorting tactics—which he has deployed since he decried “Mexican rapists” when he announced his first presidential campaign in 2015 and which he applied to his 2020 loss and the subsequent insurrectionist riot on January 6—may be relatively new to American politics, but they have obvious comparisons. Benjamin Carter Hett, a history professor at Hunter College and author of The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, notes that “the individual components” of Trump’s disinformation campaign “are things we have seen before.” He explains: “After Hitler and Stalin, there wasn’t much more to add about the forms of political disinformation, and there is a recognizable lineage to a lot of what Trump and his running mate JD Vance say. I am not the first to note that the eating-the-cats-and-dogs thing is not far from the ‘blood libel,’ and of course saying that if I lose, it will be the Jews’ fault is a hardy perennial. Calling Democrats Communists or Marxists is at least as old as FDR (and very similar to Hitler’s rhetoric as well). It may be that the scale of this is different—the sheer volume of this garbage—and a free media can’t seem to root it out and put a stop to it.”

“Trump is running a disinformation campaign,” confirms Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University history professor who studies authoritarianism. “I also have long sustained that he is running a radicalization campaign, using his rallies since 2015 to change the way people perceive violence, to build his leader cult. It’s unprecedented even among most autocrats on the rise. People like Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, would tell lies about some things or target some subjects, but Trump lies about everything, on the model of the Kremlin (big surprise).”

The author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, Ben-Ghiat adds, “Trump is one of the most successful propagandists in history. He managed to convince tens of millions that he won a national election working not in a domesticated media system or a one-party state but in a fully pluralist media environment in a democracy. No one has ever done that on that scale. Also look at what he’s accomplished with the perception of January 6.”

Trump is not merely heading a campaign fueled by the routine lies of politics. He is endeavoring to use these and other lies to create an alternative reality for millions so they will vote on the basis of a false understanding of the world. “I get asked all the time how to counteract it,” Hett notes, “and I wish I had a better answer than ‘come with the truth and try to teach critical reading skills where and when you can.'” Diamond says, “What frustrates me is that I don’t know how to counter this. If you point out every single lie, it’s all you’ll be reporting. And still people will believe this.”

Trump’s disinformation con, boosted and abetted by a political party, an expansive media infrastructure, and an entire political movement, is a challenge for the United States and a test. Can his all-out war on the truth prevail? That depends on whether other media accurately portrays it, on how the rest of the political system responds to it, and on whether enough voters resist its pull. Trump has gotten far with this campaign, proving that disinformation delivered by the right carnival barker can be highly effective within America. The final vote count—and perhaps what happens afterward—will show if this nation can resolve its political divisions and differences within the realm of reason and rationality.

GOP Senate Candidate Larry Hogan Says His Democratic Foe Is Awful. He Once Praised Her as “Great.”

Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, has a tough task. As he now runs for the US Senate, he claims to be a reasonable, non-Trump Republican, hoping to win over Democrats and independents in a state Joe Biden won by 33 points in 2020. He repeatedly insists he is a “straight shooter” who eschews “performative politics” and asserts he is “fed up” with politicians who are “more interested in attacking one another than actually getting anything done.” Yet while he casts himself as a sensible moderate who rejects attack-politics-as-usual, Hogan has mounted fierce negative assaults on his Democratic opponent, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince Georges County. Moreover, he has pulled a giant flip-flop, assailing her performance in office as disastrous, even though Hogan had, prior to this campaign, praised her as a “great” leader and a highly accomplished county executive.

This summer, Hogan’s campaign launched a spoof website with the URL angelaalsobrooks.org that looked like her official site but slammed her on multiple fronts. The site was headlined, “Meet Angela Alsobrooks: Another partisan politician who doesn’t deliver.” It claimed she has failed “to deliver on even the most basic of government functions”—quite a harsh accusation. Echoing a dominant theme of Donald Trump’s campaign, the Hogan-backed site declared that crime in Prince Georges County has “increased to out-of-control levels.” (That was an exaggeration. Overall crime in the county was down as of this summer, though violent crime had ticked up, mainly due to a rise in assaults not involving a weapon and an increase in domestic violence. Carjackings were occurring at a lower pace than the previous year.)

Angela Alsobrooks, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Maryland, and Gov. Wes Moore, D-Md., greet voters in MayTom Williams/CQ Roll Call/ZUMA

The site also blasted Alsobrooks for “a lack of funding for police and firefighters,” though the budget the county passed on her watch contained an additional $200,000 to help the police fill vacancies and covered the creation of another 50 firefighting positions.

When asked about the misleading or inaccurate information on the site, Hogan said, “I would say that it’s—the whole purpose of the thing was to put out factual information, and it’s facts and nothing but the facts. There’s nothing misleading about it.”

It’s not only through this site that Hogan has bashed Alsobrooks. While campaigning, he has repeatedly lambasted her on crime, declaring that ever since she became county executive “it’s skyrocketed out of control.” Resorting to a routine political attack, he has accused her of being “very soft on crime.”

Yet not so long ago, Hogan was praising Alsobrooks. In an interview in March with Axios, Hogan was asked whether, when he was governor, he had a “warm working relationship” with Alsobrooks. He replied, “I do.” Queried about running against her, he said, “I think well, hopefully, it’ll be, you know, maybe something that’s missing in politics these days, where instead of just—you know, you can passionately disagree about issues without being disagreeable, or you can talk about your positions on issues without attacking the person. But I’ve, I’ve had a good relationship with her for a long time. I think she’s been a good county executive.”

Two years earlier, Hogan was even more of a fanboy for Alsobrooks. In April 2022, as governor, Hogan signed into law a measure to fund a major commercial development project in Prince George’s County. The next day he held a joint press event with Alsobrooks to celebrate, and he gushed about her: “I want to just thank the County Executive for her incredible leadership. This really is her vision that brings us all together here today… I want to sincerely thank you, Madam County Executive, for the incredible partnership that we’ve had through the entire time that you’ve been county executive. I want to say you’re doing a great job… I want to say the County Executive, Angela Alsobrooks, is also super bad.” He hailed this project, which she had championed, for bringing “more jobs and more economic development to the neighborhoods right here where I grew up.”

At this press conference, Hogan, whose father was the Prince George’s county executive from 1978 to 1982, laid it on thick: “I shouldn’t say this, because I’ll get in trouble, but my dad is a former county executive, and one of my best friends for many years was [county executive] Wayne Curry. And I’ll say, I can’t remember a better county executive than Angela Alsobrooks. Thank you so much for your leadership.”

That was quite an endorsement: better than dad.

During his gubernatorial stint, Hogan complimented Alsobrooks on other occasions. In a television interview in December 2022, he said, “She’s a friend. She’s a great leader.” The following month, he even commended her for her handling of crime: “Some people are taking it more seriously than others. In Prince George’s County, they’ve got a crime issue, but the county executive, Angela Alsobrooks, is taking dramatic action. She’s instituting curfews. She’s keeping kids off the streets so they’re not committing crimes, and seems to be supporting police in their efforts to break up some of these criminal gang activities.”

Hogan’s current attacks on Alsobrooks are the usual stuff of politics, nothing surprising. The problem is that Hogan has been selling himself as a different kind of Republican—he says he will be a “pro-choice” senator, though as governor he vetoed a bill in 2022 that would have expanded abortion access in the state—and a different kind of politician, one who who opts out of the “polarization” of the Trump era. (He vows not to vote for Trump, who endorsed him.) Yet Hogan has no trouble firing misleading charges and harsh rhetoric at a woman he recently lauded as the best Prince Georges county executive in decades. This flip-flop shows Hogan is nothing but the sort of politician he claims to despise.

The Brazen, Absurd, and Dangerous Hypocrisy of JD Vance

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

Hypocrisy is the fuel of MAGA. It decries “crooked” politicians, but its leader is a lying cheater and convicted felon who has flouted numerous ethics guidelines and been found to have engaged in fraud. It relies on the political support of conservative Christians who profess family values, but it worships a narcissist who has engaged in immoral and crass conduct (including sexual assault) that violates the core tenets of Christianity and who has demonstrated no sincere allegiance to faith. It claims to be a movement for hard-working, middle-class Americans, yet it embraces a politician and party that has provided whopping tax cuts for the wealthy elite and threatened to eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump and JD Vance have plunged neck-deep into the muck of hypocrisy, as they exploit the two recent attempted assassinations of Trump to accuse the Democrats of debasing the public discourse with harsh rhetoric that casts Trump as a threat to democracy and of encouraging political violence.

This is particularly rich after Trump and Vance whipped up the phony and racist claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were purloining pets and turning them into meals. Their baseless demagoguery—in which the pair demonized legal migrants as illegal—led to bomb threats against schools and government agencies in that town. Yet, as I noted a while back, Trump, like any autocrat-wannabe, is a master of rubber-and-glue tactics. So now his line is: I’m not a threat to democracy. The people calling me a threat to democracy are the real threat to democracy. He knows that he doesn’t need to win this argument to defuse this line of criticism. Trump only has to muddy the waters and create a debate over who’s a danger in order to undercut this fundamental argument against his restoration. Debating this may seem absurd. After all, if a fellow who refused to accept legitimate election tallies, secretly schemed to overturn the results, and with his lies incited an insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power isn’t a threat to democracy, who is? But this I’m-not/you-are bullshit could work, especially with low-engaged voters who might absorb the impression that there’s a fight to be had on this front.

Vance has taken point on this mission.

In a very long social media post, he slammed Democrats for degrading the national discourse by depicting Trump as a menace and blamed them for the assassination attempts: “The rhetoric is out of control…It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice…Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump…For years, Kamala Harris’s campaign surrogates have said things like ‘Trump has to be eliminated.’” And in the same breath, Vance defended his assaults on the Haitians and his circulation of the “the infamous pet stories—which, again, multiple people have spoken about (either on video or to me or my staff),” ignoring that these stories have repeatedly been proved false. He even had the chutzpah to suggest that criticism of his dissemination of this disinformation was the equivalent of censorship.

In a speech, he continued to try to claim the higher ground: “I do think that we should take this opportunity to call for a reduction in the ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric coming from too many corners of our politics…We can disagree with one another; we can debate one another. But you cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected it is going to be the end of American democracy.” (In response, CNN aired video of Trump on repeated instances decrying Harris as a “fascist” and a “communist.”)

For years—long before his campaign to vilify the legal immigrants of Springfield—Vance has eagerly engaged in culture warring that involved dehumanizing and delegitimizing his fellow citizens.

And in another venue, Vance proclaimed, “We need to remember above and beyond that we must love our neighbors, that we must treat other people as we hope to be treated…We must love our God and let it motivate us in how we enact public policy.”

Vance doesn’t believe this. For years—long before his campaign to vilify the legal immigrants of Springfield—he has eagerly engaged in culture warring that involved dehumanizing and delegitimizing his fellow citizens. You’re familiar, no doubt, with his condescending disparagement of childless women who own cats. But that’s mild stuff for him.  

I’ve reported on instances when Vance has adopted harsh rhetoric and characterized the neighbors he doesn’t like as evildoers bent on destroying the United States. In September 2021, Vance, then a Senate candidate in Ohio, appeared on a podcast hosted by a fellow named Jack Murphy who ran a secretive men’s organization that claimed all major American institutions—universities, the media, the government, unions, professional organizations, nonprofits, and corporations—have been “infiltrated, corrupted, demoralized” and aim to “control you forever.” Murphy also once declared, “Feminists need rape.”

During this interview, Vance excoriated “elite culture” as corrupt and maintained that his success as an author and his stint as a venture capitalist had landed him in the middle of a “garbage liberal elite culture” that teaches citizens to hate America and that is dominated by wokeism, globalism, and social progressivism—the enemies of “traditional American culture.” He contended that the entire elite stratum of the United States was a subversive and malignant entity that plots to undermine the nation. His prescription: “Rip out like a tumor the current American leadership class and then reinstall some sense of American political religion, some sense of shared values.”

Vance called for a purge, and he had a plan: “One model is what happened to Germany after the Nazis lost or what happened to the Iraqis after Saddam Hussein, after we threw Saddam Hussein out. De-Nazification, de-Baathification.” Vance was comparing his political foes to the Nazis of Germany and the Baathists of Iraq—and the right had to go to war against them: “We need like a de-Baathification program but like a de-woke-ification program in the United States.” He even told Murphy that if Trump returned to the White House, Trump should ignore and contravene the law to mount an illegal effort to cleanse the civil service of anyone who was not loyal to the Trump cause: “When the courts stop you, stand before the country…and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.” Vance cited Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as a role model for a second Trump presidency. 

“If we’re going to push back against it, we’re have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

Vance was not toning anything down. His message to Murphy was that desperate times require desperate measures: “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.” This was no call for a reasonable debate over policy. It was a demand for vilification and vengeance.

This summer, as I reported, Vance went further. He endorsed a new book that dubbed progressives “unhumans” and claimed they are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” to annihilate American civilization. The volume, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), co-written by Jack Posobiec, a well-known alt-right agitator and conservative media personality who promoted the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory, urged a crusade to wipe out the “unhumans.” The book termed them “people of anti-civilization” who are “ugly liars who hate and kill.”

This was hyper-othering of political rivals and rhetoric that certainly could provoke violence. The “unhumans,” the book maintained, were behind the Black Lives Matter movement, in charge of academia, and controlling corporations, the media, and even churches. “They just want an excuse to destroy everything,” Posobiec and co-author Joshua Lisec wrote. “They want an excuse to destroy you.”

Vance gave a thumbs-up to this hateful paranoia reminiscent of McCarthyism and provided a blurb that Posobiec and Lisec have used to peddle the book:

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

Repeating many of the assertions of the tinfoil-hat crowd, Posobiec (who was part of the fraudulent Stop the Steal movement) and Lisec insisted that the riot at the US Capitol was a “lawfare trap” sprung to “destroy” Trump’s followers and “make them an example to any other Republicans who want to get uppity in the future.” They maintained all was calm on Capitol Hill until guards “fired on the peaceful crowd with nonlethal munitions and flash-bangs.” They wrote, “It was all a trap” and the “insurrection hoax was used to begin a purge of Trump supporters from the military and from public life.” The rioters were “well-meaning patriots.”

Ponder this: The Republican nominee for vice president commended a book that praised violent dictators and held them up as role models for the American right.

The pair argued that the right must be vicious and adopt extreme and underhanded measures to defeat the “unhumans”: “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans. It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.” As examples of those who successfully fought against “unhumans,” they cited Francisco Franco, Spain’s fascist dictator, and Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s fascist dictator. These two men they championed each waged brutal political violence. The Spanish government estimated that 114,000 Spanish civilians disappeared and were presumably killed by Franco forces during the Spanish civil war and his dictatorship. Pinochet disappeared and killed thousands. The book described Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany, as “a great man of history.” And it justified the violence of Pinochet’s regime: “The story of tossing communists out of helicopter hails from Pinochet’s elimination of communism during the mid to late 1970s. Wherever Pinochet was, there was no communism.”

Ponder this: the Republican nominee for vice president commended a book that praised violent dictators and held them up as role models for the American right. By the way, this book was also extolled by Donald Trump Jr. (“teaches us how…to save the West”), Michael Flynn (“exposes their battle plans and offers a fifth-generation warfare system to fight back and win”), and Tucker Carlson (“Jack Posobiec sees the big picture and isn’t afraid to describe it.”)

Now Vance, who works for Trump, has the audacity to lecture others on the excesses of political rhetoric? He has demonized and demeaned his foes. He has called for purges. He has acclaimed a book that literally dehumanizes liberals and celebrates fascists who deployed horrific political violence. And there’s this: Not long ago, he told fellow conservatives, “The thing we have to take away from the last 10 years is that we really need be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.”

With his calls for illegal and ruthless action, his backing of Trump’s lies about 2020, and his support for right-wingers who hail political violence and condemn progressives as “unhumans,” Vance is himself a threat to democracy. Which is why he, like Trump, huffs that the actual threat is posed by those who point out how he and Trump endanger the republic. This hypocrisy is a crucial element of a con concocted to conceal their extremism. Trump and Vance are claiming the mantle of champions of democracy so they can attain the power to subvert democracy. And if the media doesn’t cover this adequately—and if not enough voters see through their cynical ruse—they may get the chance to do so.

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

Is the GOP Firing Blanks With Its Extremist “Young Gun” House Candidates?

As the 2024 election hits the final stretch, the Republican Party has been touting its “Young Guns,” a group of 30 non-incumbent candidates in competitive House districts. The party presents this bunch as hot prospects who will help the GOP not just protect its slim House majority but expand it. But anyone who scrutinizes the list will find an assortment of extremists, conspiracy theory-mongers, underfunded aspirants, and oddball contenders who might more accurately be labeled potential duds.

The Young Guns program has a mixed legacy. In 2010, the Republican Party concocted this sassy branding exercise to promote a supposedly new and different generation of House leaders, with an emphasis on three of them: Kevin McCarthy, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan. This trio even produced a bestselling book with the title Young Guns, and the promotional copy proclaimed these conservatives, more middled-aged than youthful, were “changing the face of the Republican party and giving us a new road map back to the American dream.” But the fate of the original Young Guns ended up more a nightmare for each. Four years later, Cantor was defeated in a GOP primary by a far-right tea partier. After an unsuccessful vice presidential run in 2012, Ryan reluctantly became House speaker, only to be essentially hounded out of that position by extremist Republicans in his caucus. And half-a-decade later, McCarthy managed to hold on to the speakership for only nine months before a mutiny waged by radical Republicans booted him.

Yet despite the sad tale of these three, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP outfit in charge of House races, has continued to use the “Young Guns” label to promote candidates. This summer it released a list of the contenders in its Young Gun program, with Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), the chair of the NRCC, declaring the Republicans will boost their majority in the House because “we’ve got really good candidates…really quality candidates.” Yet this roster of GOP House nominees is full of politicians weighed down by extremist baggage, fundraising challenges, and flip-flops.

Here’s a look at some of the Young Guns.

Caroleene Dobson. Running for an open seat in Alabama’s newly-drawn 2nd congressional district, Dobson is up against Shomari Figures, a former deputy chief of staff for Attorney General Merrick Garland. Dobson attended what’s known as a “segregation academy”—private schools established in Alabama that allowed white families to opt out of integrated schools—and she’s has been a fierce advocate of a generous school choice measure that critics say will divert public funds from majority Black public schools. An ardent foe of abortion who now says she supports exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, Dobson in April commended a draconian Alabama anti-abortion law that contains no exceptions. When asked by the Christian Coalition if she backed any exemptions, she did not express support for them. A poll in August showed Figures ahead by 12 points.

Scott Baugh. Competing for the seat in California’s 47th congressional district left open when Democratic Rep. Katie Porter ran (unsuccessfully) for the Senate, Baugh is a returning contender who lost to Porter by 3.4 points in 2022. In the 1990s, according to the Los Angeles Times, Baugh, then a state assembly member and an Orange County Republican, “was charged with four felonies, including falsifying campaign reports and persuading another person to commit perjury. He also was charged with 18 misdemeanors for allegedly concealing the source of campaign money.” He eventually paid a civil fine of $47,900 to resolve the case. In a speech to the International Christian Ambassadors Association last year, he decried so-called wokeism as the “greatest threat” to the United States in its history: “We were born in the Revolutionary War. We survived civil wars, World War II, World War I, a lot of wars, 9/11. None of those were that threatening to our country compared to the war that we’re fighting now. That war is about wokeism and the lack of common sense.” His Democratic opponent is state senator Dave Min.

Gabe Evans. In Colorado’s recently created 8th congressional district and up against Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the state’s first Latina House member, Evans failed to obtain the state party’s endorsement. The GOP’s pooh-bahs believed he was not a strong candidate. Still, he won its primary contest. During a July interview, Evans, an abortion opponent, curiously said he could not recall how he voted on a 2020 state ballot initiative that would have partially banned abortion. He also oddly said that his wife, who had experienced eight miscarriages, has tried to explain to him the “nuances to that female reproductive care stuff” that she learns about at her “doctors visits” but that he doesn’t attend those visits because “I don’t got the right parts.” In fundraising, Evans has so far been smoked by Caraveo. According to the latest Federal Election Commission filings, she raised $4.5 million and had $3.4 million cash on hand. Evans had collected $1 million and had $532,000 left to spend.

Joe Teirab. In Minnesota’s 2nd congressional district, Teirab, a US Marine vet and former prosector, is facing Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, who has won the past three contests. Teirab is another one of these Republicans who has had a tough time handling the abortion issue. As a student and Republican activist at Cornell University in 2009, he remarked to a reporter for the school newspaper that “the unborn have a right to life too, regardless of the conception.” As a candidate, he told an anti-abortion group that he recognized “a federal role in protecting unborn children.” And he serves on the board of a group that operates “pregnancy centers” that promote “abortion pill reversal”—a procedure the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has declared “unproved and unethical.” Yet he now insists that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother and says abortion “is a state issue, not a federal issue,” contradicting his previous stance. Craig has nearly outraised Teirab four-to-one and, per the most recent FEC records, swamping him $4.1 million to $535,000.

Yvette Herrell. In 2022, during what was supposed to be a “red wave” election, Herrell, then the one-term incumbent, lost to Democrat Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district by about 1,300 votes. She’s back for a rematch. In 2018, Associated Press reported that she “failed to disclose that her real estate company earned nearly a half-million dollars in contracts with two state agencies over five years” and noted this “could put Herrell at odds with state ethics officials.” And she, too, has been struggling to calibrate her position on abortion. In 2020, she said at a candidate’s forum, “I wish we could have eliminated all abortion in the state.” In Congress, she co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act that aimed to define “human being” as beginning with “the moment of fertilization,” with no exceptions for in vitro fertilization. Now, as HuffPost reports, “Herrell has cut all references to abortion from her website and campaign materials. Her campaign has emphasized that she believes abortion rights decisions should be left to the states.” A poll this month had Vasquez up by a whopping 9 points, while he has maintained a two-to-one advantage in cash on hand.

John Lee. In Nevada’s 4th congressional district, Lee, who served as North Las Vegas mayor from 2013 to 2022 and who was an anti-abortion Democrat until becoming a Republican in 2021, is challenging Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. At 69, Lee hardly fits the image of a Young Gun, but this NRCC program doesn’t mind a touch of false advertising. What’s odd about his campaign so far is money. As of the most recent campaign filings, covering the period up until the end of June, Horsford had raised $4 million and his campaign treasury had $2.2 million in it. Lee had pulled in $919,000 and was left with a measly $39,000 cash on hand. It’s true that Lee didn’t win the GOP primary until the beginning of June and spent all his money on that race. But unless he pulled in a big haul in the last two months, he will likely not be competitive. This week, the Nevada-based Daily Indy reported that the NRCC has not spent any money to help Lee—a sign it isn’t too hopeful about him. With help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Horsford has booked over $1 million in television ads. And a Democratic super PAC is kicking in millions more to help him and two other Nevada Democratic House members.

Alison Esposito. A former New York City cop, Esposito is running in New York’s 18th congressional district against Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, who won the seat in 2022 by 1.3 points. She is touting her career in law enforcement as a top selling point for her candidacy. But as a cop she was sued twice for wrongful arrests—and New York City taxpayers had to dole out over $100,000 to resolve these cases. In a 2005 episode, three Black women sued her and other NYPD officers for allegedly wrongfully arresting them on suspicion of shoplifting. The city paid $95,000 to settle that case. In 2017, she was sued for allegedly arresting and assaulting an “infant.” (In some legal proceedings in New York State, “infant” can mean a minor.) Settling that case cost the city $25,000. Her campaign lawyer has denied the allegations.

Orlando Sonza. In Ohio’s 1st congressional district, Sonza is taking on Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman, who in 2022 defeated Republican Steve Chabot, a 13-term incumbent. In his early 30s, Sonza, a lawyer, Army veteran, and son of Filipino immigrants, is gunning to become the youngest Republican House member. He, too, has a past as an anti-abortion absolutist. Last year, he told the Daily Mail that the United States “should be a place where there’s no abortion.” When he ran for a state senate seat unsuccessfully in 2022—he lost by 45 points—Sonza filled out a candidate questionnaire in which he declared he would support “federal and state legislation to ban abortion-on-demand from fertilization to birth.” He also said there should be no legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Last year, Ohio passed a state constitutional amendment enshrining reproductive rights that restored Roe v. Wade-era access to abortion. It pass with 57 percent of the vote. As of mid-summer, Landsman had $1.9 million available to Sonza’s $246,000

Derek Merrin. In Ohio’s 9th congressional district, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, now serving in her 21st term, is one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the House. The district twice voted for Donald Trump, and state representative Merrin, 38 years old, should have a good shot at bouncing her. But he is also an anti-abortion extremist. In 2019, he backed a measure to impose a total ban on abortion that would create “the capital offense of aggravated abortion murder and the offense of abortion murder.” Under this proposed law, a woman who sought an abortion, including someone as young as 13, or a health care provider who performed an abortion could be prosecuted, with the ultimate penalty being the death sentence. He also supported a six-week abortion ban that did not include exceptions for rape and incest that eventually passed. Last year, Merrin was deemed too extreme by 22 of his fellow GOP state representatives. They bolted the Republican caucus and cut a deal with the Democratic minority to elect a more moderate Republican speaker of the house instead of Merrin. In June, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has hailed Merrin as “an extraordinary candidate,” praised him for being a “runner-up” in that race for leader of the state legislature. As of the end of June, Merrin’s campaign had $408,000 in the bank, compared to Kaptur’s $2.6 million.

Mayra Flores. In Texas’ 34th congressional district, it’s another rematch. Flores, who won a special election in June 2022, served only a few months before being defeated that fall by 8.5 points by Democratic Rep. Vincente Gonzalez, a congressman in a neighboring district. Flores’ initial win was surprising, given she was a far-right extremist, climate denier, and conspiracy theorist. She was a passionate proponent of Trump’s big lie, tweeting that President Joe Biden should be “impeached immediately.” She supported the conspiracy theory that the January 6 riot was a setup (presumably orchestrated by the Deep State) and spurred by antifa. She has also hobnobbed with the loony QAnon movement, which claims a global cabal of satanic and cannibalistic pedophiles and sex traffickers (which includes billionaires, Hollywood elites, and, of course, prominent Democrats) is scheming to control the entire world. Business Insider reported that Flores has “openly affiliated” with QAnon. Media Matters noted that she has “repeatedly posted the QAnon hashtag and ‘#Q’ on Twitter and on Facebook, including in a Facebook ad. On Instagram, she repeatedly posted the QAnon slogan.” (She told the San Antonio Express-News that she has “never been supportive” of QAnon.) In May, her campaign sent out a fundraising solicitation that claimed the left was waging “disgusting attacks on Christian Americans” and forcing them to “worship in the shadows.” It included a poll with two choices: “Yes, I love God!” and “No, I am a Democrat.” And then there’s “Grubgate”—earlier this year Flores was caught swiping from the internet photos of delicious food offerings and posting them as her own concoctions. In this race, the fundraising has been close. Flores ] brought in $4.2 million through June, and Gonzalez $2 million, but as of that point, Gonzalez had more cash on hand with $1.7 million to Flores’ $1.1 million.

Joe Kent. In 2022, Kent ran against Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington’s 3rd congressional district and lost by less than 1 percent, and he’s returned to challenge her. Kent has been an anti-abortion extremist and a purveyor of various conspiracy theories. In the 2022 GOP primary, with the backing of libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, Kent, who had attended a rally to support January 6 rioters, knocked out one of the 10 Republicans who had voted to impeach Trump after the assault on the Capitol. Kent’s campaign that year was hindered by news stories on its ties to the Proud Boys and other white identity extremists. He has long supported a national abortion ban, calling the procedure “absolutely evil” and comparing it to slavery. Now he is softening his stance, saying that abortion is a “state issue” and that he will not support such a national prohibition. This year he called for pardoning January 6 marauders convicted of crimes. He claimed the Biden administration has been purposefully bringing undocumented immigrants into the United States to expand the Democratic voting base. And he has echoed Vladmir Putin’s false talking points about the Ukraine war. In July, Kent, who has often railed against the Deep State and urged defunding the FBI, suggested that Secret Service agents may have been “in on” the assassination attempt against Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. As of mid-July, Gluesenkamp Perez had $3.8 million in cash on hand, and Kent, as of late August, only had $585,000.

Though some of the GOP’s Young Guns may prevail—several of these races are tight—overall this is not an impressive band of candidates. Many of them are shape-shifters on abortion, running from their previous hard-core positions and vulnerable to accusations of flip-flopping on this top issue. Several champion the most noxious conspiracy theories. Polls and fundraising numbers raise questions about others. After eight years of Trump dominating the Republican Party, the best it has to offer as House candidates includes extremists and paranoia pushers with spotty records. But in what could well be a tight race for control of the House, any one of them could make a difference.

Is Trumpism a Supply or Demand Problem?

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

By now, you probably don’t need any more mastication about the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. This was an event that required little after-the-fact explication. Harris deftly maneuvered Trump into displaying his worse qualities and unfitness for office. If you want to see how I weighed in, you can check this out. But it was troubling that two polls taken following the debate that captured the obvious—a majority believed Harris had won—showed that about a third of the viewers said Trump had triumphed. (CNN put the number at 37 percent for debate watchers; YouGov placed it at 31 percent for registered voters.) This gives us a good idea of how many Americans are either part of the Trump cult or susceptible to its pull. It’s not a majority or a plurality, but it’s a large slice.

Looking at these numbers, I thought of a recent New York Times column by David French, a Never Trumper conservative who has had to bear particularly cruel attacks from far-righters for his anti-Trump views. He reported that on a recent trip to Chicago he passed by the Trump tower there, and this triggered a thought:

I was reminded once again that Donald Trump is a singular figure in American politics. There is no one like him, and that means that no one can replace him. While it’s always perilous to make predictions about American politics—or anything else—here’s one that I’m almost certain is correct: If Trump loses in 2024, MAGA will fade. He is the irreplaceable key to its success.

French pointed out to his readers that after a recent column in which he said he was voting for Harris in order “to save conservatism from MAGA,” the MAGA response “was, in essence: You’re fooling yourself. Trump or no Trump, we own the party now.” No, he retorted in this offering: “If Trump loses, MAGA will fade. It will not go away, of course. Reactionary populism is a permanent fixture of American politics, but don’t believe MAGA’s hype. Its national success depends on one man.”

Of course, it is premature to ponder the fate of the GOP and the radical right should Trump lose the election (even after this week’s thrashing). But columnists have to column-ize. (Ditto for newsletter-ists.) And it struck me that French was, in a way, peering through the wrong end of the telescope.

You cannot have selling without buying. You cannot have a con without a mark who wants to believe the con.

Indeed, Trump is an unparallelled politician: a celebrity reality TV star and billionaire full of braggadocio and personality disorders who somehow convinced tens of millions of angry Americans he is their hero. He does possess unique characteristics—including malignant narcissism and profound dishonesty—that have helped him trounce all GOP rivals and seize control of the party and the MAGA movement, as he has tossed the bloodiest of red meat to our Republican neighbors. Yet at issue here is not supply but demand.

I explained this in my recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. You cannot have selling without buying. You cannot have a con without a mark who wants to believe the con. Since Trump became a political figure on the right with his championship of the racist birther conspiracy theory, he has been a carnival barker peddling grievance, culture war, hate, bigotry, and paranoia—the same way he has pitched luxury apartments, steaks, vodkas, ties, tea, books (about himself), a board game (about himself), Trump University (a fraud), casinos (that failed), an airline (that failed), a social media platform (that is failing), and, more recently, sneakers, Bibles, pieces of his clothing, NFTs, trading cards, and, yes, crypto.

He has usually found an audience for his junk and his bunk. As I pointed out in American Psychosis, before he entered politics, the conservative movement and the GOP base had been radicalized for decades by an assortment of its leaders and outfits, from Joe McCarthy to Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon to the New Right and the Religious Right to Ronald Reagan to Pat Robertson to Sarah Palin to the tea party. Repeatedly, significant figures on the right made common cause with extremists to push the crass politics of hate and othering. The basic message has been that liberals, Democrats, progressive activists, civil rights and social justice advocates, feminists, environmentalists, academics, the media, and that entire ilk are all godless commies conspiring to destroy the real America—and they must be annihilated.

Republican voters had long been encouraged to cultivate a taste for demonization. Trump saw how easy it was to feed this beast and ride it to glory.

Over recent decades, conservatives with big megaphones—think Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and subsequently much of Fox News—have pressed increasingly harsh and divisive rhetoric. Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers. Barack Obama was a secret, born-in-Kenya socialist with a plot to destroy the economy so he could take over as a dictator. A feedback loop was established. Conservative thought leaders dished out the swill, riled up voters, were rewarded with lucrative gigs or votes, and, subsequently, intensified the poison. The impulse to exploit and boost the worst fears of right-leaning voters was incentivized and rewarded.

Trump saw this market opportunity and rushed in with his wares of rage and all his lies. Republican voters had long been encouraged to cultivate a taste for demonization. Trump saw how easy it was to feed this beast and ride it to glory. That is, self-glory. Canny as he can be, he realized there was a demand for Trumpism.

What happens to this demand should he lose? Part of that might depend on what occurs after such a defeat. Will he again generate chaos, chicanery, conflict, and violence? Let’s assume that he does go (somewhat) quietly—granted, a huge assumption. What becomes of MAGA? Without the pitchman, French believes, it withers. He notes that there is “no ready heir to his MAGA crown,” observes that MAGA candidates, such as Kari Lake in Arizona, have not fared well in recent elections, and says MAGA is generally a hot mess of weirdness and scandal (see JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene).

Will the craving for Trump’s politics of cruelty, carnage, conspiracy, and contempt evaporate? There may be no obvious successor. Yet with Trump gone, the radicalized base of the GOP will still be here. Certainly, there might be disruptive battles within the party among those who desire to claim the throne and no quick and clear resolution. (Tom Cotton versus Ted Cruz!) But the 30 percent or so of Republicans who believe the QAnon conspiracy theory that the government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation—a bonkers idea that Trump has legitimized and amplified—are not going away. Nor are the more than half of Republicans who still buy Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election. And their yearning for that red meat of hate and demonization may well remain.

MAGA was not a break from the GOP’s past; it was an evolution. Many anti-Trump right-wingers can’t come to terms with that.

I understand why French and other anti-Trump conservatives want to view MAGA as an anomaly and tie its dominance on the right to the machinations and success of just one extraordinary man. Get rid of that guy and the GOP has a shot at becoming once more a normal party. This absolves French and other lifelong conservatives of having spent decades within a party as its base was guided by GOP leaders and influencers into its extremism of today. MAGA was not a break from the GOP’s past; it was an evolution. Many anti-Trump right-wingers can’t come to terms with that. (One who has is Stuart Stevens, formerly Mitt Romney’s chief strategist, who acknowledged his own role in the GOP’s devolution in his book, It Was All a Lie.)

Trump is not the cause of the disease that ails French and the rest of us. He sussed out how to capitalize on dangerous sentiments that have been brewing and nurtured for years. He is just the symptom. It’s pretty to think that one election can rid the body politic of this virus. Preventing Trump from returning to power is a first step, but stronger and longer treatment will likely be necessary to cleanse this system of Trumpism.