Party? What Party?

I worry that I've self-bubbled - that I'm hell-bent on feeding my confirmation bias, insisting that all these Press Poodles are deliberately overlooking the 800-pound gorilla jumping up and down on the sofa.

I refer (as always) to Nancy MacLean's theory of radical libertarians working to tear down the institutions of democratic self government in order to replace it with a corporate plutocracy.

I'm not saying that's the only possible explanation for the kind of Republican fuckery that makes them look like idiots - smart people can do some really stoopid things. But it bugs the fuck outa me when I know in my bones that the pundits are aware of what I'm talking about, and still they dance around it.

The point of the exercise is to kill our confidence in government, and the standard play is Divide & Conquer. So it makes perfect sense to blow up the GOP once it's regained some power, just to demonstrate the generic premise that "government doesn't work".

The implication being: "This form of government doesn't work. We need to throw it over and let someone who's strong enough to make the tough decisions really take it all in hand and get everything back on track - then we can do that good ol' democracy thing again when we're really ready for it." 

So here's Ezra Klein, explaining (IMO) GOP problems 2, 3, and 4, while completely ignoring the #1 problem with the GOP.

Three Reasons the Republican Party Keeps Coming Apart at the Seams

For decades, the cliché in politics was that “Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line.” The Democratic Party was thought to be a loosely connected cluster of fractious interest groups often at war with itself. “I don’t belong to an organized political party,” Will Rogers famously said. “I’m a Democrat.” Republicans were considered the more cohesive political force.

If that was ever true, it’s not now. These days, Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart.

It’s not just the 14 votes Kevin McCarthy lost before promising away enough of his power and prestige to finally be named speaker. It’s his predecessors, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, who both quit the job McCarthy now holds. It’s the Tea Party repeatedly knocking off Republican incumbents. It’s Ted Cruz and the Freedom Caucus forcing government shutdowns their colleagues never wanted. It’s Donald Trump humiliating virtually the entire Republican Party establishment and becoming the erratic axis around which all Republican Party politics revolves. It’s House Republicans ousting and isolating Liz Cheney because she insisted on investigating an armed assault on the chamber they inhabit. Today, a gaggle of Republicans isn’t a party. It’s closer to a riot.

Perhaps the rise of small-donor money and social media and nationalized politics corroded party cohesion. But Democrats have been buffeted by all that, too, and responded very differently. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2008, but rather than exiling the Clintons to the political wilderness, he named Hillary secretary of state, and then supported her as his successor. In 2020, the party establishment coalesced behind Joe Biden. When Harry Reid retired from the Senate, he was replaced as leader by his deputy, Chuck Schumer. When Bernie Sanders lost in 2016, he became part of Schumer’s Senate leadership team, and when he lost in 2020, he blessed a unity task force with Biden. Nancy Pelosi led House Democrats from 2003 to 2022, and the handoff to Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark was drama free.

So why has the Republican Party repeatedly turned on itself in a way the Democratic Party hasn’t? There’s no one explanation, so here are three.

Republicans are caught between money and media.

For decades, the Republican Party has been an awkward alliance between a donor class that wants deregulation and corporate tax breaks and entitlement cuts and guest workers and an ethnonationalist grass roots that resents the way the country is diversifying, urbanizing, liberalizing and secularizing. The Republican Party, as an organization, mediates between these two wings, choosing candidates and policies and messages that keep the coalition from blowing apart.

At least, it did. “One way I’ve been thinking about the Republican Party is that it’s outsourced most of its traditional party functions,” Nicole Hemmer, author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s,” told me. “It outsourced funding to PACS. It outsourced media to the right-wing media.”

Let’s take funding first. Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez have documented the way money has flowed out of the Republican Party’s official organizations and into an “extra-party consortia of conservative donors” centered around the Koch network (which, importantly, is and long has been far bigger than the Kochs themselves). Between 2002 and 2014, for example, the share of resources controlled by the Republican Party campaign committees went from 53 percent of the money Skocpol and her colleagues could track to 30 percent.

What rose in their place were groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Heritage Action network and the American Legislative Exchange Council — sophisticated, well-financed organizations that began to act as a shadow Republican Party and dragged the G.O.P.’s agenda further toward the wishes of its corporate class.

What were the hallmark Republican economic policies in this era? Social Security privatization. Repeated tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Free trade deals. Repealing Obamacare. Cutting Medicaid. Privatizing Medicare. TARP. Deep spending cuts. “Elected Republicans were following agendas that just weren’t popular, not even with their own voters,” Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, told me.

But what really eroded the party’s legitimacy with its own voters was that the attention to the corporate agenda was paired with inattention, and sometimes opposition, to the ethnonationalist agenda. This was particularly true on immigration, where the George W. Bush administration tried, and failed, to pass a major reform bill in 2007. In 2013, a key group of Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to make another run at it only to see their bill killed by Republicans in the House. There’s a reason immigration was Trump’s driving issue in 2016: It was the point of maximum divergence between the Republican Party’s elite and its grass roots.

The failure of Bush’s 2007 immigration bill is worth revisiting, because it reveals the pincer the Republican Party was caught in even before the Tea Party’s rise. The bill itself was a priority for the Chamber of Commerce wing of the party. The revolt against that bill was centered in talk radio, which was able to channel the fury of grass-roots conservatives into a force capable of turning Republican officeholders against a Republican president.

It wouldn’t be the last time. As the Republican Party’s corporate class was building the organizations it needed to tighten its control over policy, the party’s grass-roots base was building the media ecosystem it needed to control Republican politicians. First came Rush Limbaugh and his imitators on talk radio, then Fox News (and eventually its imitators and competitors, like OANN), and then the blogs, and then digitally native outlets like Breitbart and the Daily Wire. The oft-missed secret of the right-wing media ecosystem is that it is ruthlessly competitive. If you lose touch with what the audience actually cares about, you lose them to another show, another station, another site.

Conservative media became, on one hand, the place that grass-roots discontent with the Republican Party’s leadership or agenda could be turned against the party’s elite, and on the other hand, the place where the party’s elite could learn about what the grass roots really wanted. It also — with the rise of online fund-raising — became a place rebellious Republicans candidates could find money even after they alienated their colleagues and repelled the Koch class. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of the 10 top fund-raisers in the House in the 2022 election cycle.

So that’s one explanation for what happened to the Republican Party: It’s caught between a powerful business wing that drives its agenda and an antagonistic media that speaks for its ethnonationalist base, and it can’t reconcile the two.

But notice a problem lurking in the language here. Talking about “the Republican Party” makes it sound like the Republican Party is, in each era, the same thing, composed of the same people. It’s not.

Same party, different voters.

A few decades ago, the anti-institutional strain in American politics was more mixed between the parties. Democrats generally trusted government and universities and scientists and social workers, Republicans had more faith in corporations and the military and churches. But now you’ll find Fox News attacking the “extremely woke” military and the American Conservative Union insisting that any Republican seeking a congressional leadership post sign onto “a new shared strategy to reprimand corporations that have gone woke.”

“The reason the Democrats are much more supportive of the institutions is because they are the institutions,” Matt Continetti, author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism,” told me. “Republicans are increasingly the non-college party. When Mitt Romney got the nomination in 2012, the G.O.P. was basically split between college and non-college whites. That’s gone. The Republicans have just lost a huge chunk of professional, college-educated voters — what you would have thought of as the spine of the Republican Party 40 years ago has just been sloughed off.”

The problem for the Republican Party as an institution is that it is, in fact, an institution. And so the logic of anti-institutional politics inevitably consumes it, too, particularly when it is in the majority. This was almost comically explicit during the speaker’s fight. “BREAK THE ESTABLISHMENT ONCE AND FOR ALL,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, in a fund-raising appeal tied to his opposition to McCarthy. Representative Chip Roy told reporters the aim was “empowering us to stop the machine in this town from doing what it does.”

The more that the anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party expresses itself, the more the party loses once-loyal voters inclined toward institutions and gains new voters who mistrust them. You can see this, to some degree, in the so-called Woo-Anon pipeline, where anti-establishment hippies found themselves, particularly during the pandemic, drifting into the furthest reaches of the right — in one case, going from teaching yoga classes in Southern California to joining the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Democrats are increasingly the party, when they’re in the majority, of the suburbs,” Continetti told me. “And to me, the American suburbs are the ballast of this country — they’re more small-c conservative than movement conservatives. The suburbs don’t want to rock the boat. So the Republican Party, as it’s become more rural and more non-college educated, they don’t have as much investment in the system. By that very reason, they become much more inclined to rock the boat.”

Suburban voters provided Joe Biden his crucial margin of victory in 2020 and saved the Senate for the Democrats in 2022. Depending on how you look at it, they’re a check on the Democratic Party’s radicalism or an impediment against its much-needed populism. Either way, the parties are pushing each other to become more distilled versions of themselves. The closer the Democrats come to the major institutions in American life, the more Republicans turn against them, and vice versa.

Republicans need an enemy.

When I asked Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review, what the modern Republican Party was, he replied, “it’s not the Democratic Party.” His point was that not much unites the various factions of the Republican coalition, save opposition to the Democratic Party.

“The anchor of Democratic Party politics is an orientation toward certain public policy goals,” Sam Rosenfeld, author of “The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era,” told me. “The conservative movement is oriented more around anti-liberalism than positive goals, and so the issues and fights they choose to pursue are more plastic. What that ends up doing is it gives them permission to open their movement to extremist influences and makes it very difficult to police boundaries.”

It wasn’t always thus. The defining consensus of the midcentury Republican Party was its opposition to the Soviet Union. “The Cold War was the engine driving the mainstream Republican Party to the left,” Gary Gerstle writes in “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order.” “Its imperatives forced a political party that loathed a large centralized state and the extensive management of private enterprise in the public interest to accept these very policies as the governing principles of American life.”

Gerstle’s point here is subtle. Anti-Communism made Republicans more than a purely anti-government party. Liberals sometimes frame this as hypocrisy on the part of Ronald Reagan and other self-styled conservatives — how can you hate government but love the military? — but in Gerstle’s view, fighting Communism kept Republicans committed to a positive vision of the role of government in modern life. It turned tax cuts and deregulation into questions of freedom. It turned highway construction into a question of national defense.

And so it’s no surprise that you first see today’s Republican Party — complete with government shutdowns, doomed impeachment efforts, bizarre investigations and vicious congressional infighting — in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union had fallen. Then came George W. Bush, and his initially listless administration, which was revived by Al Qaeda — another external enemy that lent focus and coherence to the Republican agenda. But that faded, too. And as that faded, the trends of the Gingrich era took hold. The enemies, again, became Democrats, the government and other Republicans.

There is an irresolvable contradiction between being a party organized around opposition to government and Democrats and being a party that has to run the government in cooperation with Democrats.

You can see this dynamic even now. The easiest route to bipartisan cooperation is to frame a bill as anti-China, like the CHIPS and Science Act. McCarthy’s first act with any bipartisan support was to create a new committee to focus on competition with China. But China isn’t our outright enemy in the way the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda was. It’s certainly not enough of a force to organize Republican Party politics around a positive agenda.

All of this suggests that McCarthy has won himself a miserable prize. To become speaker, he traded away many of the powers he would have had as speaker. He reportedly promised to give those who would destroy him plum committee assignments that will, in turn, give them more control over what comes to the House floor. He apparently agreed to spending caps and budgetary guarantees that will commit House Republicans to the kinds of brutal cuts and dangerous showdowns that make them look like a party of arsonists, not legislators. He made it possible for any member of his caucus to call a vote on him at any time. And most important, he was proved weak before he ever held the gavel.

“All McCarthy has is the title on the door above his office,” Skocpol told me. He’s a hollow speaker for a hollow party.

REMEMBER:

It didn't suddenly get all fucked up yesterday.

And we won't get it all un-fucked by tomorrow.

Today's Press Poodles

Maybe the title of this post should be "Today's Razor Blade In The Apple".

WaPo decided to run a story about how a current president was in possession of classified documents that he had no business possessing at the time he came to possess them, but instead of indicating anything that has anything to do with the real (possible) problems that might arise from such possession - including how maybe the whole government should be a tiny bit more careful with National Fucking Security - somehow the takeaway on the story - the headline - reads: "Man Often Goes Home After Work."

So I'm left to wonder:

• Are there glitches in the system bad enough to allow this kinda shit to just slip thru the cracks?
• Did WaPo editors need a good stiff Both Sides fix, so they had to equate Biden going to his house in Wilmington with Trump charging us thousands of dollars per night so his Secret Service detail can stay at a golf resort?
• Maybe they were trying to trivialize it with a little self-parody.
• Seriously - what in the blue-eyed buck naked fuck are you trying to say, WaPo?

Document discovery spotlights Biden’s frequent use of Wilmington home

The president spends many weekends at his Delaware residence, making it almost a second White House

WILMINGTON, Del. — President Biden had wrapped up a routine weekend visit to his home here in December, one that included pre-Christmas errands at a local strip mall, a stop at his nearby golf club and an evening Mass at a church that sits five minutes from his house. But the day after he left and returned to Washington, his lawyers alerted the Justice Department to some troubling news: Inside the garage, they had located a batch of classified documents that dated to Biden’s time as vice president.

That finding has set off a political furor and prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. But beyond that, it has drawn attention to what has become a de facto extension of the White House, a place where Biden goes most weekends in an attempt to maintain the routine he has kept throughout his political career.

It has been a dream home that he and his wife constructed. It has been a cozy retreat where he spent months of covid quarantine and ran a winning campaign. It has been the scene of family celebrations and family strife.

And now, it is the scene of a special counsel investigation.

Biden often travels with a National Security Council aide, and accommodations have been made on the property so that he can handle classified materials and conduct secure phone calls. Ironically, those security accommodations — where he as president is allowed to deal with classified matters — are on the same property as the garage that held classified materials he was not authorized to have.

That two-car garage is where he keeps his prized open-top 1967 Stingray Corvette, a gift from his father for his first wedding with the engine rebuilt by his sons for Christmas. In a video released by his campaign in August 2020, Biden is seen backing the car into the garage, where a messy pile of materials appears to include a cardboard box and a lampshade.

Asked this week why sensitive materials were found in the same area as he keeps his car, Biden retorted, “By the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage, okay, so it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street. As I said earlier this week, people know that I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.”

The idea of going home on the weekends, and even evenings, is hard-wired into Biden’s political identity. He started the practice when he first came to Washington — becoming a senator in 1973 shortly after his wife and daughter died in a car crash — when he took the train home each night to Delaware to be with his sons as they recovered.

Biden has largely kept that approach as president, using the White House as perhaps the country’s highest-profile version of corporate housing. He travels home most weekends, easing into a predictable routine of golf, family dinners and church.

When he was home in December, he stepped into a local Jos. A. Bank for the second time in several months. He made a brief stop at Fieldstone Golf Club and attended Mass on Saturday night before returning to his house. As his family that weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed his wife and daughter, he was joined by nearly everyone in his immediate family, including his son Hunter, daughter Ashley and a half-dozen grandchildren.

Biden left Wilmington that Monday, and the next day, Dec. 20, is when Biden’s lawyers informed the Justice Department that the additional documents had been found in the garage, according to Garland. That triggered the FBI to go to the home and secure the documents.

Biden was also at the house last weekend. On Wednesday, his lawyers said they had discovered another classified document in a room adjacent to the garage.

“Of course the president has facilitated access to his residence to his personal lawyers so they can conduct the searches to ensure any records are properly in possession of the government,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said.

Timeline of Biden documents

The White House on Friday did not respond to questions about whether the documents found at Biden’s home were left there when he was vice president, or were simply stored in his home after he left office. Biden himself was not involved in the discovery of the documents, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.

During his time as vice president, Biden also had a secure facility at his house that enabled him to handle classified information. That facility was decommissioned when he left office.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter Friday to the White House expressing concern that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, may have had access to the garage at a time when he was engaged in foreign business dealings, and he asked for information related to the documents. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is also launching an investigation and sent a letter to Garland on Friday saying it was looking into the Justice Department’s actions as it investigates the handling of classified documents.

Most presidents in some way return to their former homes during their time in office. George W. Bush often spent time in Crawford, Tex., Ronald Reagan visited his ranch in California, and Donald Trump traveled to his properties in New Jersey and Florida. John F. Kennedy rarely spent weekends at the White House, often traveling to Palm Beach, Fla., Hyannis Port, Mass., or the Virginia countryside.

But for Biden, home is closer to Washington, and he is unusual among presidents in going there so often — in some cases, just for a single night.

“In the modern era, presidents have spent a considerable amount of time away from the White House,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian and the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “What I think is remarkable about how he spends his time is how he concentrates his time in one non-White House getaway.”

“There’s no real downtime for a president. The presidency moves with the president,” Naftali added. “It doesn’t matter where they are. With the advent of secure videoconferencing, presidents can meet with their national security team practically anywhere.”

Biden has said he never desired to live in the White House and has spoken wistfully about his time at the Naval Observatory, the comparatively secluded vice president’s residence. He does not like the cloistered feeling of the White House, the idea that security protection might prevent him from fixing his own breakfast or walking around in his bathrobe.

“Living in the White House, as you’ve heard other presidents who have been extremely flattered to live there, has — it’s a little like a gilded cage in terms of being able to walk outside and do things,” Biden said in a CNN town hall a month into his presidency.

Two years into his term, Biden has spent all or part of 194 days either in Wilmington or at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, according to a tally by the Associated Press.

Biden’s presidency has transformed Wilmington’s leafy Greenville neighborhood, bringing security officers, barricades and armored vehicles traveling along formerly quiet roads. Still, it is not hard to feel distance from the bustle of Washington driving down the lush roads that lead to a home filled with light and family photos.

Biden has long had an obsession with real estate. Earlier in his life, he had considered being an architect, and when he first married, he was eager to find a place to raise a family.

“I’d thought about houses quite a bit already,” he wrote in his 2008 memoir “Promises to Keep.” “My idea of Saturday fun was to jump in the Corvette with Neilia and drive around the Wilmington area scouting open houses, houses for sale, land where we could build.”

“Even as a kid in high school I’d been seduced by real estate,” longing for a neighborhood with tall elms and oaks, manicured lawns and interesting homes, he added.

He spent his early money moving into bigger and more stately houses and upgrading furniture, and he spent weekends on improvement. Soon his personal homes became his political war rooms. For years, his advisers gathered at a Biden home they called “The Station.”

In 1996, the Bidens sold “The Station” and purchased lakefront property on 4.2 acres for $350,000. That is where they built their current Colonial-style home with a gable roof and hardwood floors, three bedrooms and four full baths, according to local property records.

The Bidens later added a two-story cottage to the property where Biden’s mother lived. After she died in 2010, Biden rented the space to the Secret Service, earning some $172,000 over about six years, according to purchasing orders from the Secret Service.

The property is meaningful to Biden, and when he openly talked about taking out a second mortgage to help the family of his son Beau with finances, then-President Barack Obama adamantly objected.

“I’ll give you the money,” Obama said, according to Biden’s 2017 book “Promise Me, Dad.” “I have it. You can pay me back whenever.”

The house has been the scene of important meetings, such as one where his grandchildren urged him to run for president. It has been the scene of trauma and angry confrontation, for example when Hunter stormed out angrily after his family staged an intervention to try to stem his drug addiction, as Hunter himself has recounted.

When Biden’s life, like most of America’s, was altered during the spring of 2020, he retreated to his home in Wilmington. He and his wife would walk at the track next door. His grandchildren would come over and Biden would toss them ice cream bars from the porch. Geese could at times be heard honking in the background during events on Zoom.

After a long week — one consumed with the new revelations around classified documents — Biden on Friday boarded Marine One, joined by one of his longest-serving aides and closest advisers, Steve Ricchetti, who was also his chief of staff at the end of the vice presidency. About 50 minutes later, they arrived in Wilmington, where Biden is spending most of the weekend.

Not The Same

If liberals spoke in the conservative vernacular:

They're called "entitlements" because I'm entitled to them. I earned them. They're mine.

So keep your fucking hands off my Social Security and Medicare. Because I will defend what's mine by any means necessary. And yes, that includes blowing your fool head off with the gun you insist I have every right to own, and to use as I see fit - especially in defense of me and mine, against a tyrannical plutocracy.

So don't fuck with my Social Security or my Medicare. It won't end well for you. I promise.

To be sure, I'm not going to shoot anybody, but this is the kind of crap we hear from "conservatives" practically all day every day, while pretty much never hearing anything like it from "the left".

But somehow, the Press Poodles have decided the nation is deeply divided - and of course equally divided - because of "the extremes on both sides".

More George

He fucking lied, goddammit

Be consistent

And notice how some of the rubes will simply not come to grips with the problem. The GOP has conditioned them to accept any and all fuckery in the name of tribal interests.

George Santos Faces Federal and Local Investigations, and Public Dismay

Prosecutors said on Wednesday that they would examine Mr. Santos, who has admitted lying about his work and educational history during his campaign.

Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Representative-elect George Santos committed any crimes involving his finances and lies about his background on the campaign trail.

The federal investigation, which is being run by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, is focused at least in part on his financial dealings, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investigation was said to be in its early stages.

In a separate inquiry, the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney’s office said it was looking into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos” during his successful 2022 campaign to represent parts of Long Island and Queens.

It was unclear how far the Nassau County inquiry had progressed, but the district attorney, Anne Donnelly, said in a statement that Mr. Santos’s fabrications “are nothing short of stunning.”

She added: “No one is above the law, and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on Wednesday. The office’s interest in Mr. Santos was reported earlier by ABC News, and the Nassau County inquiry was first reported by Newsday.

Both investigations followed reporting in The New York Times that uncovered that Mr. Santos had made false claims about his educational and professional background, including whether he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. The Times also found that Mr. Santos had omitted key details about his business on required financial disclosures.

Questions remain about how Mr. Santos has generated enough personal wealth to be able, as campaign finance filings show, to lend his campaign $700,000. Mr. Santos has said his money comes from his company, the Devolder Organization, but he has provided little information about its operations.

The statement by Ms. Donnelly, a Republican like Mr. Santos, added to the growing pressure on Mr. Santos, who was elected in November to represent northern Nassau County and northeast Queens in Congress beginning in January.

In interviews with several other media outlets on Monday, Mr. Santos confirmed some of the inaccuracies identified by The Times. He admitted that he had lied about graduating from Baruch College — he said he does not have a college degree — and that he had made misleading claims about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Santos also acknowledged not having earned substantial income as a landlord, something he claimed as a credential during the campaign. In making his admissions, he has sought to explain his dishonesty as little more than routine résumé padding.

But among more than two dozen Long Island residents interviewed on Wednesday, many, including some who said they had supported Mr. Santos, expressed disappointment at his actions and anger over his explanations.

Felestasia Mawere, who said she had voted for Mr. Santos and had given money to his campaign, insisted that he should not serve in Congress after admitting to having misled voters.

“He cheated,” Ms. Mawere, an accountant who lives in Manhasset, said. Of the falsehoods in his biography, she added, “He intentionally put that information knowing that it would persuade voters like me to vote for him.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Santos appeared to retain the support of many in his party, including those who are set to be his constituents.

Jackie Silver, of Great Neck, said she had voted for Mr. Santos and would do so again. Ms. Silver said that those calling for him to face further investigation, or even relinquish his seat, were only targeting him because he is a Republican.

“When they don’t like someone, they really go after them,” Ms. Silver, a courier for Uber Eats and DoorDash, said, before echoing Mr. Santos’s primary defense: “Everyone fabricates their résumé. I’m not saying it’s correct.”

Others who made financial contributions to Mr. Santos’s campaign did not appear ready to cast him aside, although only a few of about three dozen donors contacted for comment responded.

Lee Mallett, a general contractor from Louisiana and the chairman of the state contractors’ board there, said Mr. Santos’s immediate task was straightforward.

“He has to ask for forgiveness, and he’ll be forgiven,” Mr. Mallett, a registered Republican, said. He added: “He’s just making it way too complicated. It’s really simple.”

Barbara Vissichelli of Glen Cove, N.Y., said that she had met Mr. Santos while helping to register voters and had bonded with him over their shared love of animals. Ms. Vissichelli contributed $2,900 to his campaign and said she would continue to support him.

“He was never untruthful with me,” she said.

House Republican leaders have so far been silent amid the persistent questions about Mr. Santos, but he has gotten a tougher reception close to home. Ms. Donnelly is just one of several Long Island Republicans to show a willingness to examine him closely over his statements during the campaign and on his financial disclosure forms.

On Tuesday, Representative-elect Nick LaLota, a Republican who won election in a neighboring Long Island district, said the House Ethics Committee should investigate Mr. Santos. Nassau County’s Republican Party chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., said he “expected more than just a blanket apology” from Mr. Santos.

Another incoming member of New York’s Republican House delegation, Mike Lawler of Rockland County, sounded a similar refrain.

“Attempts to blame others or minimize his actions are only making things worse and a complete distraction from the task at hand,” Mr. Lawler said in a message posted on Twitter. He added that Mr. Santos should “cooperate fully” with any investigations.

Mr. Santos and his representatives have not responded to The Times’s repeated requests for comment, including to detailed questions raised by the newspaper’s reporting and to an email seeking a response to Ms. Donnelly’s statement.

In an interview broadcast on Fox News Tuesday night, Mr. Santos again asserted that he had merely “embellished” his résumé. The interviewer, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress who left the party in October, challenged him bluntly.

“These are blatant lies,” Ms. Gabbard said. “And it calls into question how your constituents and the American people can believe anything that you may say when you’re standing on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

On Wednesday, one more possible misrepresentation emerged. During his first campaign, Mr. Santos said on his website and on the campaign trail that he attended the Horace Mann School, an elite private school in Riverdale in the Bronx, but that his family’s financial difficulties caused him to drop out and get a high school equivalency diploma.

But a spokesman told The Washington Post that it could not locate records of Mr. Santos’s attendance, using several variations of his name. The spokesman, Ed Adler, confirmed that report to The Times. Mr. Santos’s press team did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, the news site Semafor published an interview with Mr. Santos in which he said his work with his company, the Devolder Organization, involved “deal building” and “specialty consulting” for a network of 15,000 wealthy people, family offices, endowments and institutions.

As an example, he said, he might help one client sell a plane or a boat to someone else, and that he would receive fees or commissions. But he provided no details on his contracts or clients to Semafor and has not answered similar questions from The Times.

Mr. Santos’s exercise in damage control has also involved cleaning up his personal biography, which was removed from his campaign website for most of Tuesday. By the time an updated version appeared on Wednesday, it had been stripped of several significant details.

Gone, for instance, was the claim that he had received a degree from Baruch College. (Another profile of him, on the House Republicans’ campaign committee website, said he had studied at New York University; that information is now gone as well.)

Mr. Santos’s campaign biography also no longer mentions work on Wall Street. A reference to Mr. Santos’s mother working her “way up to be the first female executive at a major financial institution” has also been expunged.

Mr. Santos also deleted a reference to past philanthropic efforts. He previously claimed he had founded and run a tax-exempt charity, Friends of Pets United. The Internal Revenue Service and the New York and New Jersey attorney general’s offices said they had no records of a registered charity with that name.

In an interview with the political publication City & State, Mr. Santos said he was not the charity’s sole owner and that he was responsible for the “grunt work.” But he did not address the lack of official documents related to the organization.

The revised biography now also omits any mention of where Mr. Santos lives, another detail thrown into doubt by the The Times’s reporting.

Today's Video

We take you now to the live feed as Americans react to the news that Maggie Haberman is widely considered "friendly" to the MAGA assholes.

Today's Press Poodle

I guess I shouldn't just dismiss this piece as more butt-hurt red state whining, but that seems to be Mr Cullen's whole fucking point. He wants us to know the big squishy American Middle is struggling - but he goes to great lengths to tell us the problem isn't really with the semi-idiot DumFux News faction of the American Right, it's all the fault of the Democrats who seem unwilling or unable to pander to these boneheads the way they long to be pandered to.

And don't get me wrong, most of us could do with the warm fuzzy feeling we get when the politicians do a little pandering, but these clod-hoppers don't just need a pacifier - they expect everybody the suck on it for them too.

Art Cullen knows all, sees all, and like the "good people" of North Bumfuck Iowa, he needs to get his head out of his ass just long enough to learn the Dems are (mostly) the ones who're keeping his readers afloat.

Want to Know Why Democrats Lose Rural America?

STORM LAKE, Iowa — Democrats are getting their derrières handed to them by the kickers and the Busch Light drinkers from out here on the edge of the Great Plains all the way to Appalachia, where the Republicans roam.

So what do the Democrats do?

Dump the Iowa caucuses into the ditch. At the hand of President Biden, no less. He decreed that South Carolina’s primary should go first on the presidential nominating calendar, displacing Iowa. The Democratic National Committee seems happy to oblige.

We get it. Let someone else take a turn up front. But discarding Iowa is not a great way to mend fences in rural America — where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable.

The Democratic big shots hated Iowa’s pride of place since the caucuses rose to prominence a half-century ago because money couldn’t control the outcome. Jimmy Carter broke through from Plains, Ga., with nothing but a toothy smile and an honest streak. Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously — you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects.

Candidates weren’t crazy about it. The media hated Storm Lake ice in January. We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer.

Iowa has its problems. We are too white. The caucuses are complicated, confusing and clunky. The evening gatherings in homes, school gyms and libraries are not fully accessible and not as convenient as a primary for people with jobs and kids at home.

But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House. Iowa actively encouraged Black candidates to challenge the white establishment. Mr. Obama beat Hillary Clinton here. Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle. Black, white or Latino, it’s organization that matters in Iowa. You have to herd your people to the caucus and keep them in your pen for an hour while other campaigns try to poach them. It’s town hall democracy. Mr. Obama won with it. Candidates who ran feeble campaigns have to blame something. Latinos in Storm Lake overwhelmingly caucused for Mr. Sanders. Julián Castro can complain all he wants.

The talking heads say Iowa messed up by not reporting the results quickly. The problem was that a cellphone app suggested to the Iowa Democratic Party by the Democratic National Committee crashed. The democratic process worked — the app didn’t.

Anyone looking for an excuse to excise Iowa and further alienate rural voters could find one. The time was ripe.

Mr. Biden doesn’t owe Iowa a thing. He finished fourth in the caucuses. He did owe Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, big time for an endorsement just ahead of the Palmetto State primary, where Black voters put Mr. Biden over the top. It was sweet payback. We get that, too.

Actually, the caucuses haven’t been the best thing for Iowa. The TV ads never stop. It puts you in a bad mood to think everything is going wrong all the time. We asked good questions, and the candidates gave good answers, then forgot about it all. Despite all the attention, nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared, and the undocumented dwell in the shadows. Republican or Democrat, the outcome was pretty much the same. At least the Republicans will cut your taxes.

So it’s OK that South Carolina goes first. Iowa can do without the bother. The Republicans are sticking with Iowa, the Democrats consider it a lost cause. No Democratic state senator lives in a sizable part of western Iowa. Republicans control the governor’s office, the Legislature and soon the entire congressional delegation. Nobody organized the thousands of registered Latino voters in meatpacking towns like Storm Lake. Democrats are barely trying. The results show it.

The old brick factory haunts along the mighty Mississippi River are dark, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and everyone else who sold us out for “free trade.” Keokuk, the gate city to the river, was once a bustling industrial and shipping hub but recently lost its hospital. Your best hope in rural Jefferson was to land a casino to save the town. You essentially can’t haul a load of hogs to the packinghouse in a pickup anymore — you need a contract and a semi. The sale barn and open markets are quaint memories. John Deere tractor cabs will be made in Mexico, not Waterloo. Our rivers are rank with manure. It tends to frustrate those left behind, and the resentment builds to the point of insurrection when it is apparent that the government is not here to help you.

It’s hard to feel from 30,000 feet. So Donald Trump landed in Sioux City on the eve of the midterm election to claim his stake before a large crowd buffeted by the gales out of Nebraska. “The Iowa way of life is under siege,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”

They loved him. The Democrats view the crowd as deplorable, and told Iowa to get lost.

Today's Press Poodle

To: WaPo Editors, for their outstandingly craven effort to attract eyeballs, and to Both-Sides the thing by inviting the inference: "Hey, maybe those idiot Republicans have a point there."

The story is trying to be an update about the guy who wanted to kidnap, torture and then assassinate Nancy Pelosi, and almost killed her husband in the process because she wasn't home at the time - while the headline is all about pimping a GOP talking point.

At the very least, WaPo could have taken the opportunity to clue people in on the simple fact that most "illegals" are not brown people who are here having "invaded" from the south. Most of them came here on airplanes, or in cars, from some very white, very Christian places, and have just not bothered to renew their visas, no matter how or when they entered this country, and maybe we could drop the bullshit about "The Brown Tsunami".

But no - we have to lede the story with "Illegal Immigrant". And then meander through 9 or 10 paragraphs (some admittedly rather informative) concerning immigration law - and then make a point about "sanctuary states" - before we get back to the part where DHS is still very worried about domestic terrorism swirling around the election, and that we can expect it to increase for 3 months after election day.

(pay wall)

Immigration officials confirm alleged Pelosi attacker was in the U.S. illegally

The man accused of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer is a Canadian citizen who was in the United States illegally and is facing possible deportation after his criminal cases are resolved, the Department of Homeland Security said late Wednesday.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” DHS officials said in an email.

ICE, which is under Homeland Security, sends “detainers” to state and local law enforcement asking them to notify the agency before releasing a foreign citizen who could also be deported. Deportations are civil proceedings that often take place after criminal cases are resolved, but immigrants also have been detained after they post bail.

DePape, 42, is facing state and federal criminal charges in the gruesome attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, early Friday morning, and for threatening Nancy Pelosi. DePape has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody.

Relatives have told the media that DePape grew up in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, but his trajectory to Northern California has remained a mystery.

Federal records show that DePape entered the United States legally on March 8, 2008, via Mexico. He crossed at the San Ysidro port of entry, an official border crossing that links San Diego County with Tijuana.

Canadians traveling for business or pleasure generally do not require visas, officials said, and he was admitted as a “temporary visitor,” traveling for pleasure, DHS said.

Canadians admitted for pleasure are generally permitted to stay for up to six months. DHS did not say precisely when DePape’s permission to stay in the United States expired.

The Canadian government confirmed this week that they were working on DePape’s case.

“Canadian officials are engaging with local authorities to obtain more information,” said Global Affairs Canada spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod. “Due to privacy considerations, no further information can be disclosed.”

California, home to millions of immigrants, is a sanctuary state and has passed laws limiting state and local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration officials, which has frustrated immigration officials seeking to deport immigrants arrested for crimes.

California has exceptions for people with serious criminal histories and it remains unclear how DePape’s case will unfold. State prosecutors have said he poses an extreme safety risk.

Federal authorities on Monday filed attempted kidnapping and assault charges against DePape, alleging he broke into the Pelosi home, bludgeoned her husband with a hammer in front of police, and then said he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps as a warning to other Democrats.

DePape also was arraigned Tuesday in San Francisco County Superior Court on state charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary, false imprisonment and threatening the life of or serious bodily harm to a public official.

Court records show DePape allegedly used the hammer to break into the House speaker’s San Francisco home early Friday and rousted her husband, who was sleeping upstairs.

“Are you Paul Pelosi?” DePape allegedly said when he confronted Pelosi, court records show, standing over him holding a hammer and zip ties. “Where’s Nancy?”

Paul Pelosi managed to call 911. But when officers arrived and told DePape to drop the hammer, he pulled free and struck Pelosi in the head, knocking him unconscious.

State prosecutors called the attack “near fatal.”

Paul Pelosi underwent surgery to repair a “skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” according to a statement issued by Drew Hammill, spokesman for Nancy Pelosi. The speaker has said her husband is making steady progress toward recovery.

DePape allegedly told police he was on a “suicide mission” and had created a target list of state and federal politicians in his quest to quash “lies” coming out of Washington.

DePape also had published hundreds of blog posts in recent months supporting far-right personalities and writing diatribes against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.

The attack added to the growing concerns nationwide about the threats posed by domestic violent extremists as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach.

The FBI, DHS and other agencies issued a memo last week warning that extremism could increase in the 90-day post-election period, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.

The memo said the most plausible threat “is posed by lone offenders who leverage election-related issues to justify violence.”

Worry about election-related violence prompted President Biden to make a speech in Washington Wednesday night.

“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” Biden said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”

Today's WTF

There's a double whammy effect on way too many aspects and revelations of Trump's fuckery and flat-out stoopid ineptitude.

The first WTF is the fact of his doing, or wanting to do, something horrendous. And the second one is the fact that Press Poodles know about all this shit, but wait to tell us about it until they can get their fucking books published.

I'd like to think we'll get this shit straightened up eventually, but it's looking like we won't get back to a decent "normal" for a quite a while.

In the meantime, we can look forward to more stories about the weird shit that Trump - and all those best people he surrounds himself with - thought were good ideas.

😱 Like bombing Mexico!?! 😡

(pay wall)

Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico, according to new book

The 607-page ‘Confidence Man,’ from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, details unusual and erratic interactions between Trump and world leaders, members of Congress and his own aides

As president, Donald Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico after one of his leading public health officials came into the Oval Office, wearing a dress uniform, and said such facilities should be handled by putting “lead to target” to stop the flow of illicit substances across the border into the United States.

“He raised it several times, eventually asking a stunned Defense Secretary Mark Esper whether the United States could indeed bomb the labs,” according to a new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. White House officials said the official, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir, often wore his dress uniform for meetings with Trump, which confused him.

“The response from White House aides was not to try to change Trump’s view, but to consider asking Giroir not to wear his uniform to the Oval Office anymore,” Haberman writes in “Confidence Man,” an extensive book about Trump’s time in New York and as president.

The 607-page book, which has long been awaited by many of Trump’s aides, is set to be published Tuesday. A copy was obtained by The Washington Post. The book details unusual and erratic interactions between Trump and world leaders, members of Congress and his own aides, along with behind-the-scenes accounts of his time as a businessman.

Presented with a detailed accounting of the book’s reporting, a Trump spokesman did not directly respond. “While coastal elites obsess over boring books chock full of anonymously-sourced fairytales, America is a nation in decline. President Trump is focused on Saving America, and there’s nothing the Fake News can do about it,” said Taylor Budowich, the spokesman.

When asked by The Post about the account of the Oval Office discussion, Giroir said in an email that he does not comment on such private conversations with Trump. He went on to criticize the flow of drugs across the border from Mexico and voice support for substance abuse treatment. “But these measures will not stop this mass murder of Americans,” he added. “Every option needs to be on the table.”

Haberman interviewed Trump three times for the book — in which he claimed to not have taken any important documents from the White House, among other statements — and it includes his written answers to her questions. The book delves into some of the most contentious episodes of his presidency, including his impeachment trials, the weeks after the election when he tried to overturn the results and his mishandling of the novel coronavirus, among other topics.

Throughout the book, Trump is portrayed as transactional and narcissistic — at times charming, at other times cruel — but always attuned to his own political fortunes, no matter the issue. During his meeting in the Oval Office with Barack Obama in 2016, he eschewed policy and asked Obama how he kept his approval ratings high, according to the book. He told advisers that he needs people such as Pennsylvania Senate nominee Mehmet Oz (R) in office in case the election is challenged in 2024 or they try to impeach him again.

When Trump first met British Prime Minister Theresa May, he soon turned the conversation to abortion. “Some people are pro-life, some people are pro-choice. Imagine if some animals with tattoos raped your daughter and she got pregnant?” he said, according to the book. Pointing to then-Vice President Mike Pence, he described him as the “tough one” on abortion. He soon moved the topic away from Northern Ireland to an offshore wind project he wanted to block near his property, the book says.

Trump was often crass and profane about world leaders and others in his orbit. He referred to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel as “that b----,” according to the book. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dying in 2020, the book says, Trump would sarcastically raise his hands to the sky in prayer and say: “Please God. Please watch over her. Every life is precious,” before asking an aide: “How much longer do you think she has?”

When former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) pressed Trump to more forcefully condemn white supremacists, particularly avowed white supremacist David Duke, during his 2016 campaign, Trump said he would — but he was in no rush. “A lot of these people vote,” Trump said, describing some of the white supremacists, before ending the call.

The book shows Trump frequently praising Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, for his strength and even “laughing” when aides grew mad that he tweeted a proposal for a joint cyber unit with Russia that would have “effectively let the Russians into the U.S. investigations of hacking,” Haberman writes.

In another part of the book, Trump shows his lack of care about classified markings. Aides tried to stop Trump from tweeting a photo of an Iranian facility until they could remove classified details, Haberman writes. But he liked how the image looked and proceeded. “If you take out the classification, that’s the sexy part,” he told aides, she writes.

And as Trump played down the coronavirus in early 2020, he privately acknowledged its severity and cast himself as the victim, according to Haberman’s book.

“Can you believe this happened to me?” he said, fearing the political impact on his presidency.

In detail, Haberman reports how Trump was fearful of dying and how his condition grew worse in the White House. “Deputy chief of staff of operations Tony Ornato warned the president that if he fell into a more dire situation, procedures to ensure the continuity of government would have to be set into motion,” Haberman writes.

Trump was appalled by the sight of protective face masks, telling aides to remove them in his presence throughout 2020. “Get that f---ing thing off,” he said during one meeting, according to Haberman’s book. Trump repeatedly wanted credit for vaccines but told aides he could not get the credit he deserved because of the “radical right,” referring to his own supporters.

He repeatedly encouraged aides to avoid the topic of the coronavirus because he viewed it as a political loser for him. “Don’t talk about it on TV,” he told the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, according to the book, even as the virus dominated the news. “Don’t make such a big deal out of this,” Trump said of the pandemic in one March 2020 conversation with then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D). “You’re gonna make it a problem.”

The book shows frequent attempts from advisers to tell Trump to tone down his behavior, fearful that he was going to lose his reelection bid because of his own personal conduct. He was repeatedly shown polling that his coronavirus news conferences were hurting him, in an attempt to get him to take the virus and his response more seriously.

“People are tired of the f---ing drama,” Attorney General William P. Barr told him in 2020. Barr was one of a number of aides who urged Trump to dial back his frequent attacks on others.

The book also shows how Trump regularly pitted aides and even family members against one another in the White House. For example, Trump frequently told then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he wanted Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to depart the White House, according to the book.

“In meetings with Kelly and [White House Counsel Don] McGahn, Trump gave instructions to essentially fire the pair. Kelly and McGahn resisted, expressing their fear that he would not back them once his daughter and son-in-law pushed back. At one point, Trump was about to write on Twitter that his daughter and son-in-law were leaving the White House. Kelly stopped him, saying Trump had to talk to them directly before doing so. Trump agreed, then never followed up with the conversation,” the book says.

Trump gave former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) control of his legal team because his other lawyers were not willing to go far enough to overturn the 2020 election, Haberman writes. “Okay, Rudy, you’re in charge. Go wild, do anything you want. I don’t care,” Trump said over the phone, as he pushed him to help overturn the results. “My lawyers are terrible.” He frequently berated White House counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the book.

In the aftermath of the election, Haberman describes a president who increasingly became enamored with conspiracy theories and staying in the White House, bringing in lawyers whom his core group of advisers saw as deluded — with some of his longest advisers effectively trying to hide and run out the clock.

And it shows how he relishes his role as a political kingmaker in the GOP. During one of her interviews with Trump, Haberman writes that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) came in and praised his golf game. “‘The greatest comeback in American history!’ Graham declared. Trump looked at me. ‘You know why Lindsey kisses my ass?’ he asked. ‘So I’ll endorse his friends.’ Graham laughed uproariously.”

More than many tomes about Trump, the book delves into his long history as a developer in New York, where Haberman talked with many of his former friends and executives about his tendency to speak in crass terms about women and skirt financial laws — and how he created a mystique around him that endured to the presidency.

Haberman traces Trump’s political career back to the 1980s, where she reports he frequently made comments that were homophobic, particularly toward gay men, and washed his hands immediately after meeting someone who had AIDS.

She describes Trump’s complicated relationship with his father and the ways they avoided paying taxes over the years. She writes that Trump mused about wanting Black judges for his cases because his late lawyer Roy Cohn said they could be manipulated. Even as a businessman, she said, he was looking at politics, getting polling presentations on his image as early as 1987.

Some of the book’s episodes border on the bizarre.

Haberman describes Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) getting a phone call from an unknown number. “When she answered, the man on the other end identified himself as a Washington Post reporter, and said he knew her husband from his investigations in Congress. The name he gave was not one she recognized. The man asked Dingell if she was looking for an apology from Trump. No, she replied, merely that people could be civil to one another. As the man talked, Dingell couldn’t shake the idea that his voice sounded like that of the forty-fifth president.”

“During preparations for the third debate in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s team was disrupted by a warning from the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said he had been told that Russians might try to poison Clinton through a handshake with Trump, to inflict a dramatic health episode during the debate,” Haberman reports.

She says Clinton did not take it seriously, and now-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who was helping with debate prep, questioned whether Trump could poison Clinton but not himself. “Her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, took the prospect seriously enough to check it out; the warning turned out to be mere speculation from a historian with no knowledge of Russian plans,” she says.

Haberman, a longtime Trump chronicler, concludes that Trump often says what he needs to get through the day — and that many people read more deeply into his motivations than he even knows at the time.

When asked if he is glad he ran for the presidency, Haberman suggests the answer reveals his motivations: “The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”

In the book’s final pages, Haberman reproduces several pages of Trump’s answers to her questions for the book. He sent back pages in all capital letters, handwritten in marker, “two weeks after the deadline had passed,” Haberman said.

“A FANTASY QUESTION!” he responds to a question about Trump having gold bricks wheeled into his office in the 1990s. “KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT,” he wrote in response to a question about delaying the transition to the Biden administration. “ACTUALLY THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN THAT,” he said to a question about him describing Melania Trump to others out of “central casting.”

The book closes with Trump, in black all caps, responding to a question: “FAKE NEWS — GOOD NIGHT!”

Poodling

I guess they're saying they missed the speech?

Or maybe - as is too often the case with the WaPo editorial board - they just chose to miss the whole point.

Allow me a moment to translate:

"Yes yes, someone has spiked all the tires, and we can't get where we're going unless we change them out, and I suppose Mr Biden is getting it done, but does he have to get so sweaty and dirty? And maybe if he had just asked a bit more politely, those scalawag vandals would be on their way to the police right now to confess their atrocious behavior. Tut tut goodness gracious sakes alive. Are there any more of those delightful crab puffs? Cook does those so divinely..."

Stoopid fuckin' Press Poodles.

(pay wall)

Opinion
Democracy is in danger. Biden should invoke patriotism, not partisanship, to make that point.

It is a depressing reflection of the dangerous political situation in which the nation finds itself that President Biden felt compelled to deliver a prime-time address decrying political violence and election denialism and calling on Americans “to unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy.” Indeed, democracy is under assault in the United States. Rallying to its defense is an urgent task, and it does the nation no service to pretend that this is a problem of bipartisan dimensions. The leader of one party peddled the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, incited his adherents to storm the Capitol, and continues to stir anger and unrest. As Mr. Biden put it in Philadelphia on Thursday night, “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”

The difficult, perhaps insurmountable, challenge that Mr. Biden confronted — just eight weeks before midterm elections that will determine the future course of his presidency — was how to convey the message of defending democracy in a way that summons patriotism rather than partisanship. Here, as much as we agree with the president about the urgency of the issue, is where he fell short, too often sounding more like a Democrat than a democrat. You don’t persuade people by scolding or demeaning them, but that’s how the president’s speech landed for many conservatives of goodwill.

Mr. Biden was wrong to conflate upholding the rule of law with his own partisan agenda, which he called “the work of democracy.” You can be for democracy but against the president’s policy proposals to use government to lower prescription-drug prices and combat climate change. “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Mr. Biden proclaimed. But many conservatives — not just “MAGA forces” — agree with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. It was disappointing that Mr. Biden chose to omit that the infrastructure, gun-control and burn-pits legislation he praised had passed with Republican votes. Pointing this out would actually have strengthened his effort to draw a contrast between “MAGA Republicans” and “mainstream Republicans.”

Moreover, Mr. Biden’s clarion call for democracy would carry more credibility if he were willing to call out his own party for its cynical effort to elevate some of the same “MAGA Republicans” he now warns will destroy democracy if they prevail in the general election. During the primaries, Democrats spent tens of millions helping dangerous election deniers defeat better-funded “mainstream Republicans,” including in Pennsylvania, where Mr. Biden, not coincidentally, chose to speak.

We offer these critiques of the president because we agree with him about the stakes involved. Mr. Trump announced during a radio interview just hours before Mr. Biden’s speech that, if he becomes president again, he will issue full pardons and a government apology to the Jan. 6 rioters. Mr. Trump also revealed that he met with Jan. 6 defendants in his office this week and that he is “financially supporting” some insurrectionists. “What they’ve done to these people is disgraceful,” Mr. Trump said. What’s truly disgraceful, and what formed the backdrop for Mr. Biden’s speech, is this: Mr. Trump’s continuing contempt for the rule of law; the complicit silence of the supposed leaders of his party, such as House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy; and the real threat that Mr. Trump could again be his party’s nominee in 2024.

Bonus

Oh, BTW - 

Must Read Alaska:

Track Palin popped for DUI in Wasilla

The adult son of Sarah Palin was arrested by Wasilla police on Saturday afternoon for operating a vehicle under the influence of a controlled substance. He was released and faces a out date “pending.”

Palin, 33, has had a number of run-ins with the law, ranging from domestic violence to resisting arrest and weapons misconduct, and he has spent time in prison.

In 2016, just as Palin was endorsing Donald Trump for the presidency, Track was arrested and charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime, and possessing a weapon while under the influence. The incident took place at the Wasilla home of Sarah and Todd Palin, after calls were made to 911 to report a domestic violence situation. Track’s girlfriend reported he had punched her in the eye and kicked her knee, and she thought Track was going to shoot himself.

Track was also a problem guest at a party in Anchorage in 2014, when members of the family got into a brawl at a party on the hillside. No charges were filed in that incident.

Track Palin’s ex says family pressured her to not report

Gotta make sure we Both-Sides it, dontcha know.

Track isn’t alone in the politics of getting arrested for DUI this summer. The executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party also was stopped and ultimately arrested for attempting to interfere with the law enforcement’s detection equipment.

The Democrats also had trouble with its former executive director, Jay Parmley, with reported incidences of sexual harassment before he came to Alaska.

Today's Poodling

I hate this Press Poodle crap:

"Democrats always promise to make it happen, yet they still haven’t succeeded."

That phrasing is dishonest.

Democrats keep bringing it up, but Republicans keep blocking it.

The Dems are trying to do something that 80% of us want done, but Republicans block it every time, and they don't even have to try to justify their obstruction because they can count on the Press Poodles never to hold them accountable for it.

Press Poodles, please add the following to your Style Books:

Democrats are not responsible for the lousy behavior of the GOP.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion

If GOP senators don’t fear this vote, what could possibly scare them?

Fear is a part of every elected official’s life. To keep their jobs, they must worry about whether something they do or say will anger their constituents. Many a bill has died because officeholders thought, “If I vote for this, my opponent in the next election will wrap it around my neck.”

But how do we square that universal fact of representative democracy with the struggle Democrats have had passing legislation that would reduce the cost of prescription drugs?

Or more precisely, why is it that Democrats are laboring to pass such a bill, while Republicans don’t fear opposing it?

Under current law, Medicare is barred from negotiating prices for prescription medicines; drug companies set the price, and Medicare must take it or leave it. Polls have long found that allowing Medicare to negotiate better prices is absurdly popular, with support sometimes exceeding 80 percent.

Democrats always promise to make it happen, yet they still haven’t succeeded.

Now Democrats are gearing up to vote for a new plan along these lines as part of an upcoming reconciliation package that will probably include extended Affordable Care Act subsidies as well. Democrats are anticipating passing this with no Republican votes.

The current plan would allow Medicare to begin negotiating drug prices and would cap the amount any senior pays for medicine at $2,000 a year. It would offer extra help to low-income seniors and forbid drug companies from raising prices on existing drugs beyond the rate of inflation.

But the bill has real limitations. It wouldn’t go into effect until 2026, and at first it would allow negotiation on only 10 of the most expensive drugs; the list would expand to 20 drugs in 2029. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime supporter of price negotiation, called it “a weak proposal.”

Even so, the pharmaceutical lobby is working hard to kill it. And one would think they’d have to offer powerful inducements for a legislator to risk getting pummeled relentlessly on an issue so important to voters, particularly to older voters who turn out at high rates.

Yet there are no indications Republicans will support the bill. Democrats seem genuinely flummoxed by the GOP’s willingness to stand against this proposal.

“This is the most straightforwardly popular thing we are doing, and we are being unanimously opposed by Republicans,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told us. “The attack ads write themselves.”

“This isn’t an issue with a ton of nuance,” Schatz added. “It’s about whether you want people on Medicare to go broke or not.”

But clearly, Republicans don’t agree.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, shed light on why Republicans might not fear this vote: They can argue that Medicare Part D costs far less than expected because of vigorous competition among drug companies for the business of seniors.

“If you say, ‘Drug prices are too high, do you think government should do something to lower them,’ it’s a no-brainer answer,” Ayres said.

But, said Ayres, Republicans can instead say: “Private sector competition has been successful at lowering drug prices without the deleterious effects of government price controls. Do you really think it’s better if a bunch of bureaucrats step in?”

“Government negotiation really means government price-setting,” Ayres said, noting that Republicans have tested these arguments over the years.

So put yourself in the mind of a Republican senator confronting such a proposal. As a believer in free markets, you probably have a philosophical objection to any government action that cuts into corporate profits.

And maybe you can tell yourself you won’t pay for opposing this bill; legislation is complicated, and most voters don’t pay much attention to it. You can toss around some of those anti-government arguments during floor debate. And perhaps by the time you’re up for reelection, everyone will have forgotten about it anyway.

You may also believe — not without reason — that Democrats aren’t very good at making Republicans pay for taking unpopular stances. There are lots of unpopular things Republicans do — cutting taxes for the wealthy, opposing action on climate change, trying to make abortion illegal — and much of the time, it doesn’t seem to affect Election Day.

Which suggests there’s a fundamental weakness in our system. We don’t want legislators beholden to the latest poll; we elect them to represent us, yes, but also to exercise judgment and be guided by their conscience. But when there’s something the public so clearly wants, and it’s so hard to get done, what does that say about our democracy?