Today's Press Poodle

I have no idea what GOP this guy's been watching. Thinking and rethinking aren't high on the list of Republican attributes - if they're on the list at all.

It doesn't matter what the truth is. It doesn't matter what actually happens. Republicans are going to spin up whatever bullshit they think will stoke the rage boner enough to keep the rubes firmly cemented in their little fantasy world.

As inflation falls, GOP may have to rethink attacks on Biden economy

Soaring prices have given Republican lawmakers a powerful talking point, but its potency may begin to fade

Soaring egg prices. Gas for more than $5 per gallon. Used cars that cost 30 percent more than they had the year before.

For most of President Biden’s term, the fastest inflation in four decades provided Republicans with no shortage of ripe targets for political attacks over his economic stewardship, emerging as the central talking point of their 2022 midterm campaigns and the early 2024-presidential election campaigns.

But now that message may no longer be as powerful. Inflation has eased to 3 percent on an annual basis, down from 9 percent last year, and workers’ earnings are beginning to outpace rising costs. Economists’ fears of an imminent recession have abated as well, and Biden administration officials are eager to tout the billions of dollars in private investment unleashed from legislation on semiconductors and clean energy that they pushed through Congress.

These developments have led Republican analysts to begin early discussions about whether, or how, the party should adjust its attacks on Biden to account for the new economic reality. For now, most are convinced that the scars of inflation remain deep enough for the issue to serve as a central electoral message a year from now. But some conservatives acknowledge that may be shifting as the rate of price hikes levels off.

“Honestly, I’m hearing many more complaints about Biden now that are about something else. It’s beginning to fade as the key issue,” said Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in frequent communication with GOP policymakers. “There’s a sense that Biden’s economic message can be attacked anyway, but it’s instead becoming more of one topic among many.”

Falling inflation will lead Republicans to adjust from highlighting the annual rate of inflation to highlighting price hikes since Biden took office, said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Donald Trump administration. But the bigger messaging adjustment would have to come if “real wages” — earnings accounting for inflation — continue to grow, Mulligan said.

Inflation rose faster than earnings for most of Biden’s presidency, meaning most Americans were getting poorer. But for the past two months, real wages have risen, although economists caution the trend has just begun and could be reversed.

“I think the thing that would change their message — and I know this from working in the White House — is what happens to real wages. If inflation stops at the highest price level, and wages continue to march ahead, you’re in a very different situation,” Mulligan said. “If that were to happen, that would shift the narrative — no doubt.”

Democrats have reason to be optimistic that change is occurring. Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, found that inflation-adjusted wages have already caught up to their pre-pandemic trajectory for “nonsupervisory workers,” a category that encompasses 80 percent of workers.

Frank Luntz, the longtime GOP pollster, said it would take as much as a year for voters to react fully to the fall in inflation, because it takes time for the public mood to catch up to the new economic reality.

“But if it continues to come down as it is, it won’t be nearly as potent in 2024 as it was in 2022,” Luntz said.

To be sure, most Republicans still ridicule as absurd the notion that they will have to change course. Inflation may have come down, but consumers are still facing price increases of 3 percent that exceed recent norms. Despite the cooling economy, the 16 percent price hikes over the past two years “are still embedded,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank.

The Republican National Committee has continued over the past week to criticize Biden over inflation-adjusted wages, even as they move in the right direction.

“I still hear about inflation everyday — that’s what I hear from friends, family and voters,” said Doug Heye, a GOP political consultant. “They’re still talking inflation, and they’re still going to.”

And that has nothing to do with the fact that wingnut media hammers on that point every fucking minute of every fucking day?

The polling data, for now at least, appears to suggest little immediate softening in attitudes. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation, according to a Monmouth University poll released last week, and there is scant evidence that has substantially budged. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment surveys, after months of strikingly negative findings, finally ticked up in July, but consumer attitudes remain sour.

Historically, political science research suggests that voters base their election year decisions on economic performance over the prior year. That would mean how the economy fares from now until the election may matter more than how it’s done up to now. But it’s unclear how voters will react to inflation that was high but is falling, leaving experts guessing as to exactly how the economy will influence the 2024 campaigns, said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

“We seem to be in a position where people are staying dour, and if that continues into the election that could disrupt the historical pattern,” Grossmann said. “I don’t know if we have a firm grasp on whether inflation moving in the right direction will be enough.”

OK - But For How Long?

Here I am saying it again - 

For 35 years, the smart guys have been warning us that this shit was headed our direction.

For the last 5 or 6 or 8 years, the western half of this country has caught fire regularly in the summer, and then, when the rain finally shows up - a year or ten later - they get smashed with floods and mudslides because there's no vegetation to help the dirt hold all the water.

This year, the fires in Canada have made it inconvenient (and maybe a little scary) for the Cocktail Party Set from Boston to Atlanta, and now flash floods have come to the states where they love to exile their bratty little legacy puke offspring for a month every summer, so all of a sudden, the Press Poodles are all over it.

Here's my question: It's finally becoming fashionable to be worried about the negative effects Climate Change is bound to have on the New York Social Calendar, so what can we expect a bunch of privileged little Tinker Bells to do about it?

And my next question: How long before the Poodles get tired of running the storries?

These fuckin' people.

Climate Disasters Daily? Welcome to the ‘New Normal.’

Around the United States, dangerous floods, heat and storms are happening more frequently.

Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware.

A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration. This week, they are happening simultaneously as climate change fuels extreme weather, prompting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, to call it “our new normal.”

Over the past month, smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed major cities around the country, a deadly heat wave hit Texas and Oklahoma and torrential rains flooded parts of Chicago.

“It’s not just a figment of your imagination, and it’s not because everybody now has a smartphone,” said Jeff Berardelli, the chief meteorologist and climate specialist for WFLA News in Tampa. “We’ve seen an increase in extreme weather. This without a doubt is happening.”

It is likely to get more extreme. This year, a powerful El Niño developing in the Pacific Ocean is poised to unleash additional heat into the atmosphere, fueling yet more severe weather around the globe.

“We are going to see stuff happen this year around Earth that we have not seen in modern history,” Mr. Berardelli said.

And yet even as storms, fires and floods become increasingly frequent, climate change lives on the periphery for most voters. In a nation focused on inflation, political scandals and celebrity feuds, just 8 percent of Americans identified global warming as the most important issue facing the country, according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

As climate disasters become more commonplace, they may be losing their shock value. A 2019 study concluded that people learn to accept extreme weather as normal in as little as two years.

“This is not just a complicated issue, but it’s competing for attention in a dynamic, uncertain, complicated world,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Lilian Lovas, a 77-year-old lifelong Chicagoan, said she has seen climate change affect her hometown, but that she avoids the news in order to stay positive.

“It used to get so cold here in the winter but now we only get a couple real bitter days a year,” she said. “I vote and do my part but things are really out of my hands.”

Kristina Hengl, 51, a retail worker in Chicago, said she wasn’t so sure the weather extremes were anything that hadn’t happened before.

“I’m not a scientist so it’s hard for me to make a judgment call,” she said, before offering an inaccurate explanation. “Our planet has always had changes and this may be just the cycle of life. You have to consider that deserts used to have lakes, Lake Michigan wasn’t always a lake.”

In spite of the growing alarm among climate scientists, there are few signs of the kind of widespread societal change that would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously heating the planet.

“Even though storms and other extremes of the climate are happening, if they are at a distance, we just as soon pretend it doesn’t affect us, because we don’t want to do the things that are needed to deal with this threat,” said Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon who specializes in the psychology of risk and decision making.

“More and more people recognize climate change as a problem, but they don’t like the solutions,” Mr. Slovic added. “They don’t want to have to give up the comfort and conveniences that we get from using energy from the wrong sources, and so forth.”

Last Thursday, on what researchers say was the hottest day in modern history, a record number of commercial flights, each one emitting more planet-warming gasses, were in the air, according to Flightradar24.

As wildfires and sea level rise wipe out communities from California to North Carolina, residents continue to rebuild in disaster-prone areas.

And while more electricity is being generated by wind, solar and other clean energy, the world is still largely powered by fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, the primary sources of planet-warming emissions.

The cumulative effects of all those greenhouse gases are now on terrifying display around the globe. The planet has warmed by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, fueling a dizzying array of extreme weather events.

Studies show that the deadly flooding in Pakistan last year, the heat dome that baked the Pacific Northwest in 2021 and Hurricane Maria, which battered Puerto Rico in 2017, were all made worse by climate change.

“Climate change is here, now,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not far away in the Antarctic and it’s not off in the future. It’s these climate change fueled extreme weather events that we are all living through.”

Weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion in damage are on the upswing in the United States, according to a Climate Central analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1980, the average time between billion-dollar disasters was 82 days. From 2018-22, the average time between these most extreme events, even controlled for inflation, was just 18 days.

“Climate change is pushing these events to new levels,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central. “We don’t get breaks in between them to recover like we used to.”

Human activity has had such a significant impact on the planet’s ecosystems and climate that scientists are now discussing whether to declare that Earth has entered a new interval of geologic time: the Anthropocene.

And with emissions still rising globally, scientists are warning that there is only a short amount of time to drastically change course before the effects become truly catastrophic.

“This is the last slap upside the head we’re going to get when it might still matter,” said Bill McKibben, a longtime climate activist. “It’s obviously a pivotal moment in the Earth’s climatic history. It also needs to be a pivotal moment in the Earth’s political history.”

In the United States, climate change is a partisan issue, with many Republican leaders questioning established climate science, promoting fossil fuels and opposing renewable energy.

Climate scientists and environmentalists hold out hope that each new hurricane and hailstorm could nudge Americans toward action.

A survey of adults this spring found a majority are now concerned about climate change and support federal action to combat global warming and promote clean energy, according to a recent survey by Yale.

Even in Florida, a state that has grown more conservative in recent years, a growing number of residents believe humans are causing climate change, including a record number of Republicans, according to a survey by Florida Atlantic University.

“The polling data has shifted over the last few years, and I would bet that it’s going to lurch again,” Mr. McKibben said. “At a certain point, if you see enough fires and floods, who are you going to believe?”

Ms Dowd

None of our irritations with the perceived inadequacies of the media should ever allow us to suggest even faintly that the independence of the press could be compromised or coerced.

A bad free press is preferable to a technically good subservient press.

-- Nelson Madela

Is it possible the Sulzberger family has finally gotten the message?

It's unlikely, but even though Maureen Dowd starts her piece out like she usually does (hiding the razor blade deep in the apple, by "cleverly" disguising the Both-Sides bullshit as a cute little anecdote about Eugene Debs - inviting the inference that of course the situations involving Trump and Debs are exactly the same - oy).

She starts to redeem herself a bit when she finally gets around to saying there's no comparison (5th paragraph - I guess "columnists" are subject to the whole journalism thing.)

The problem I have with NYT is that they seem to think they can sit there in their Manhattan condos and pretend they have no dog in the fight - that no matter what happens, they'll be totally insulated from the shit that will roll down on them if the more radical of the plutocrats prevail.

And of course, some will thrive under a new regime because they've become extraordinarily adept at their sycophancy. (like the David Spade character in The Coneheads - total suck up to whoever has the power - sorry, I couldn't find a good video clip)

Bathroom Reading at Mar-a-Lago

WASHINGTON — It’s shocking how easy it is to imagine Donald Trump campaigning for the presidency from prison.

He’d have the joint wired, like the mob guys in “Goodfellas.” He’d be enjoying all kinds of privileges, DJing Elvis and Pavarotti; getting a steady flow of Viagra, cheeseburgers and conjugal visits (not from Melania). Maybe he’d even be able to smuggle in his special Tang-colored hair bleach.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried for the White House from the Big House. In 1920, after being imprisoned on sedition charges for excoriating American involvement in World War I, which he considered a capitalistic war, Eugene Debs won about 900,000 votes as the Socialist Party nominee.

“I will be a candidate at home in seclusion,” he joked when asked how he would campaign. “It will be much less tiresome, and my managers and opponents can always locate me.” He was allowed to give one bulletin a week to the United Press. With Trump, it will be Newsmax.

Trump wouldn’t be in prison for sticking by his principles, though. He’d be in prison because he has no principles. We’re watching him spiral down to his essence. At bottom, he’s a humongous, dangerous liar and a criminal. As Logan Roy would say, this is not a serious person.

The dramatic unsealing of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is a fitting switch. Until now, it has been Donald J. Trump v. United States of America. He tried to engineer a coup against the government he was running. I bet Jack Smith will be bringing those charges later.

The special counsel made it clear that this isn’t just a “boxes hoax,” as Trump called it. You can’t purloin classified documents; leave them in the gilt-and-crystal glare of the bathroom, shower, bedroom and ballroom at Mar-a-Lago; and show them off to remind people how important you are. Trump’s ego is his greatest weakness. He couldn’t resist self-aggrandizing. Hey, I got these secret documents.

The indictment — charging Trump with violating the Espionage Act and other laws — offered devastating photos of America’s secrets stacked up like something on “Hoarders,” spilling out under the dry cleaning, a guitar case and other items.

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” the indictment said. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Well, that’s bad.

The indictment is based on information from Trump’s own lawyers, staffers, phone records and security cameras. This isn’t the work of some insider or Trump hater who’s out to get him. And it makes clear that there was a very deliberate effort by Trump to hold on to and conceal these documents that he was going to use for heaven knows what and show to God knows whom.

The former president directed his valet, Waltine Nauta (named as a co-conspirator with Trump), to move about 64 boxes from a storage room to Trump’s residence and bring about 30 boxes back to the storage room — without informing the Trump attorney who was supposed to be reviewing the material.

On top of that, the attorney said, Trump later encouraged him to go through the documents that he did review and pluck out anything really bad. Trump even made a plucking motion.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump was always boasting about his devotion to protecting classified information, to mock Hillary. The prosecutors thoughtfully included some of his old comments, like this one: “In my administration I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

Those statements obviously carried the same weight as his 2016 comments vowing to be so busy as president that he would never play golf. What an utter phony.

The Republicans who jumped out in front of the indictment to defend Trump should be ashamed. Unfortunately, shame is long gone from the Republican Party, except for a vestigial smidge in Mitt Romney’s office.

Up until now, Trump has managed to slink away from innumerable seamy episodes, from bankruptcies to vile personal misconduct, by proclaiming himself a victim.

I was trepidatious, after watching the lame performances of James Comey and Robert Mueller. But Jack Smith seems to be bringing an impressive skill set and temperament to his prosecution of Trump. Maybe he developed them in his years nailing war criminals at The Hague.

In his brief appearance at the Justice Department Friday afternoon, Smith emphasized the risks that this kind of mishandling of sensitive information poses to the people who have volunteered to protect us.

He praised the F.B.I., the agency that Trump and the Republicans have been trying to tear down and defund, saying the agents there work “tirelessly every day, upholding the rule of law in our country.”

Republicans used to embrace the rule of law. Now, many describe the Jan. 6 rioters as martyrs and say Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted. Kevin McCarthy called the indictment “a dark day for the United States of America.”

But Smith is intent on reminding Americans that the rule of law is a fundamental tenet of our country.

Trump ranted on Friday about Smith being “a deranged psycho.” Naturally, he also attacked Smith’s wife, the award-winning documentarian Katy Chevigny, who produced a documentary about Michelle Obama and contributed to Joe Biden’s campaign, as “the biggest Hater of them all.”

But Smith is not likely to be cowed. The guy’s tenacious. In an interview a few years ago, Smith discussed his passion for Ironman competitions. He talked about the time he got hit by a truck while riding his bike and fractured his pelvis. He was back doing a triathlon 10 weeks later.

Today's Press Poodle

No, CNN, you have to stop reporting on this in a passive neutral way.

At the very least, the headline editor should be fired yesterday. Because you cannot find defensible middle ground between democracy and dictatorship, which is exactly the inference that headline invites - as well as the first four paragraphs.

Four fucking paragraphs before you mention Russia's brutality, and Xi's belligerence towards practically everybody in Asia.

These assholes are assholes, with asshole ambitions and asshole intent. Say that or STFU.

Russia and China hit back at a G7 that saw them as a threat

Moscow and Beijing lashed out against the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, where leaders of major democracies pledged new measures targeting Russia and spoke in one voice on their growing concerns over China.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Saturday slammed the G7 for indulging in their “own greatness” with an agenda that aimed to “deter” Russia and China.

Meanwhile China’s Foreign Ministry accused G7 leaders of “hindering international peace” and said the group needed to “reflect on its behavior and change course.”

Beijing had made “serious démarches” to host country Japan and “other parties” over their decision to “smear and attack” China, it said.

Both Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine and how to handle an increasingly assertive Beijing have loomed over the three-day gathering of the world’s leading industrialized democracies taking place in Japan – just across regional seas from both countries – where Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise, in-person appearance.

G7 member countries made the group’s most detailed articulation of a shared position on China to date – stressing the need to cooperate with the world’s second-largest economy, but also to counter its “malign practices” and “coercion” in a landmark joint communique Saturday.

Leaders also pledged new steps to choke off Russia’s ability to finance and fuel its war, and vowed in a dedicated statement to ramp up coordination on their economic security – a thinly veiled warning from members against what they see as the weaponization of trade from China, and also Russia.

The G7 agreements follow a hardening of attitudes on China in some European capitals, despite differing views on how to handle relations with the key economic partner, deemed by the US as “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.”

Countering China’s ‘coercion’

Beijing’s retort later Saturday urged the G7 “not to become an accomplice” in American “economic coercion.”

“The massive unilateral sanctions and acts of ‘decoupling’ and disrupting industrial and supply chains make the US the real coercer that politicizes and weaponizes economic and trade relations,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values,” it continued.

G7 member countries are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union also joins as non-country member.

A number of non-G7 leaders also attended the summit, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Albanese on Sunday said he has been concerned “for some time” over China’s activity, including its military activities in the South China Sea, and called for “transparency” by Beijing over the detention of Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

China’s image in Europe has taken a severe hit over the past 15 months as leaders there have watched China’s Xi Jinping tighten ties with fellow authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as Moscow’s invasion sparked a massive humanitarian crisis and Moscow’s leader was accused of war crimes by an international court.

Beijing’s increased military aggression toward Taiwan – the self-ruling democracy the Chinese Communist Party claims as its territory but has never ruled – and economic penalties against Lithuania following a disagreement over Taiwan have also played a role in shifting sentiment.

Concern about such incidents was reflected in the G7 statement on ensuring economic security and countering economic coercion, which did not explicitly mention China.

The G7 leaders’ ability to sign on a statement “so specifically directed at Beijing” would have been “hard to believe” two years ago, according to Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

“The bottom line is that the G7 has shown it will increasingly focus on China and will try to maintain a coordinated policy approach. That’s a major development,” he said.

War in Ukraine

The G7 agreements land as China has been marshaling its diplomats in a concerted attempt to repair ties with Europe, largely by recasting itself as a potential agent of peace in the war in Ukraine, even if that claim has been met with widespread skepticism among Western nations.

Last week as European leaders headed to Asia, Chinese special envoy Li Hui began his own European tour billed by Beijing as a means to promote peace talks.

Li, who was dispatched after Xi late last month made his first call to Zelensky since the Russian invasion, visited Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday, where he fronted China’s vision of a “political settlement.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the G7 Summit at the Grand Prince Hotel on May 20, 2023 in Hiroshima, Japan.
G7 talks culminate Sunday with in-person appeal from Zelensky
That calls for a ceasefire but not for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory first – a scenario which critics say could serve to cement Russia’s illegal land grab in the country and runs counter to Ukraine’s own peace plan.

Zelensky’s travel to the G7 in Asia is also “a way of putting pressure on China,” according to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an emeritus professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

The message to China is for it “to be more more outgoing in its support for a solution” that aligns with Kyiv’s interests in terms of its territorial integrity and Russian troops pulling out from Ukraine, he said.

When asked about the possibility of China playing a role in ending Russia’s war, a senior White House official on Saturday said the US hopes that Xi views this week’s summit as a signal of “resolve.”

“We would hope that what President Xi and the (People’s Republic of China) extract from what they’ve been seeing here … is that there’s an awful lot of resolve to continue to support Ukraine … and that China could have a meaningful role in helping end this war,” the official said.

Neutrality Is Not Neutral

Neutrality in the face of efforts to kill democracy is no different from outright support for those efforts.

CNN, like a lot of their fellow Press Poodles, seems to think they can stake out some nonexistent middle ground in the fight against creeping authoritarianism - that all they're supposed to do is report on the wildfire - when what they're actually doing is supplying fuel and oxygen to it, and then reporting what a surprise it is that there's such a big fucking fire all over the joint.

Here's a thought, CNN:

Try recognizing and living up to your obligation to help us extinguish that fire, instead of using it as a platform to sell more dick pills and panty liners.

Morrow saw Joe McCarthy for the slug that he was - he said so, and that was the end of McCarthy.

Cronkite saw Vietnam for the loser proposition that it was - he said so, and that was the end of Vietnam.

It's possible that CNN boss Chris Licht doesn't have some kind of malicious intent when he pulls a stupid stunt like putting Trump on the air and letting him lie to 3 million people, but Licht's motivation makes no fuckin' difference. He put Trump on the air and let him lie to 3 million people - for over an hour - in prime time.

“Predictably disastrous,” ... “Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punchlines … and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”

CNN leadership under fire after ‘disastrous’ Trump town hall

A furious backlash raised questions about the future of chief executive Chris Licht and the larger challenges facing the news media going into the 2024 election

CNN’s prime-time broadcast of a raucous town hall with Donald Trump propelled a tsunami of criticism from inside and outside the network Thursday — and renewed questions about how the news media will handle the challenge of covering the serial falsehoods of the Republican Party’s leading candidate going into the 2024 election.

The former president repeatedly dodged or sneered at questions from CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, during the live, 70-minute forum at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. He doubled down on false claims that “a rigged election” led to his 2020 ouster and referred to writer E. Jean Carroll, who just prevailed in her lawsuit against him for defamation and battery, as a “whack job,” to cheers and laughter from the audience, made up of local Republican voters.

And when Collins pressed him on why he removed classified documents from the White House, he replied: “You are a nasty person.”

“Predictably disastrous,” wrote former network TV news executive Mark Lukasiewicz, part of a chorus of media critics and political observers who bemoaned the on-air spectacle. “Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punchlines … and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”

At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall. That was a big boost over CNN’s typical 8 p.m. telecast, but a smaller audience than CNN’s town hall with President Biden last summer (3.7 million) and six previous Trump town halls carried by Fox News — calling into question both CNN and Trump’s drawing power.

The more profound impact, however, may be the damage done to the reputation of the network that has long promoted itself as “the most trusted name in news.” It also raised questions about the future prospects of chief executive Chris Licht, who replaced Trump-friend-turned critic Jeff Zucker last year and is charged with striking a more neutral tone at a cable channel that exploded with impassioned commentary during the Trump years.

Journalists at CNN and others outside the organization called the town hall a “debacle,” a “disaster” and “CNN’s lowest moment.” On Twitter, the hashtags and phrases BoycottCNN, DoneWithCNN and ByeCNN trended late Wednesday.

The thrust of the criticism is that CNN’s format, which it has used for other candidates over the years, enabled Trump’s filibustering and thwarted real-time fact checking, allowing him to present a dishonest rehashing of his record. “In terms of sheer control of the stage and WWE-style platform dynamics, the horrible truth is that this outcome was preordained,” tweeted veteran political writer James Fallows. Some compared the program to a modified Trump campaign rally — the kind that CNN sometimes aired live during the 2015-16 campaign cycle, which Zucker later said he regretted.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tried, and tried, to rebut Trump’s election lies

Licht defended the decision to host Trump in this format during his regular morning meeting with network staff on Thursday.

“I am aware that there have been people with opinions [and] backlash, and that is absolutely expected,” he said, according to an audio recording. “And I’ll say this as clearly as I possibly can: You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say we didn’t get them. … America was served very well by what we did last night. People woke up and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way they didn’t the day before.”

Licht also hailed Collins’s “masterful performance” as moderator and called her “a rock star.”

Licht, however, was hammered by his own journalists. “We did it wrong,” said an on-air personality. “We treated him like a normal politician who could be fact-checked. We ended up dancing around a demagogue.”

“It should have been a taped interview where you could fact-check him,” said one CNN correspondent who, like the on-air personality spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships and careers. “The audience was laughing at his comments about Jean Carroll. Disgraceful.”

In his meeting with staff, Licht defended the decisions that led to a cheering, partisan audience: “That was also an important part of the story because the people in that audience represent a large swath of America. And the mistake the media made in the past is ignoring those people exist.”

Another staffer, also speaking on background to avoid retaliation, suggested Licht and other executives who approved the event should resign.

It seems an unlikely outcome — for now. Publicly at least, Licht has had the backing of his boss, Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive David Zaslav. Asked for comment Thursday, a company spokesperson pointed to Zaslav’s interview on CNBC last week in which he stood by his lieutenant and brushed off some of the criticism that erupted after the town hall was announced. (“We have a divided government. Right? We need to hear both voices,” Zaslav said at the time. “All voices should be heard.”)

One executive close to Zaslav said that both the board and the executives understand that the news business is difficult right now and that they are prepared to give CNN ample time to find its footing.

Nevertheless, the Trump town hall is shaping up as another disappointment under Licht’s watch. Despite his tinkering with CNN’s daily lineup and a mandate to reposition the network as a neutral purveyor of news, Licht has been unable to stop its ratings from sliding to historic lows.

Licht’s signature programming effort, the remodeling of CNN’s morning program, has largely fallen apart with the firing of co-anchor Don Lemon last month. Collins, a rising star at the network, was also moved to mornings to anchor with him last fall. People within the company expect that she will be promoted to the 9 p.m. hour, which has not had a permanent host since CNN fired Chris Cuomo in December 2021. And a person close to the decision-making said that the town hall controversy will not alter Licht’s plans for her.

CNN’s daily media newsletter, Reliable Sources, was blunt in its assessment of Wednesday’s event. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” reporter Oliver Darcy wrote Wednesday night.

But the squadron of analysts and commentators that CNN put on the air late Wednesday to assess Trump’s performance in the town hall (“We don’t have enough time to fact-check every lie he told,” said anchor Jake Tapper) said nothing about the network’s own decision to host the forum.

At least one of the network’s paid commentators went public with his objections before the Trump special aired. Michael Fanone, a D.C. police officer who was injured while defending the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, wrote an essay published by Rolling Stone that indicted the programming decision.

“Putting him onstage, having him answer questions like a normal candidate who didn’t get people killed in the process of trying to end the democracy he’s attempting to once again run, normalizes what Trump did,” Fanone wrote. “It sends a message that attempting a coup is just part of the process; that accepting election results is a choice; and that there are no consequences, in the media or in politics or anywhere else, for rejecting them.”

In an interview last week, CNN political director David Chalian justified the event by noting that Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, and that his “unique” status as a twice-impeached, criminally indicted former president who incited the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, didn’t change the network’s journalism mission.

“You’d be hard-pressed to say [the format] is less revealing than a one-on-one interview,” he said.

Chalian did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. CNN spokesman Matt Dornic said in an email, “I think Chris captured our position well in this morning’s [editorial] meeting.”

Trump, for one, expressed satisfaction with the event. “Hope everyone enjoyed CNN tonight,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “The New Hampshire audience was AMAZING. Thank you!”

But inside CNN, the mood was dark.

“I can’t believe anyone thought this was a good idea,” said one staffer, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid career repercussions. “I’ve been a CNN journalist for many years. I’ve always been so proud to say that. I’ve never, ever been ashamed of CNN until tonight.”

So, looking for the silver lining, maybe this latest regrettable episode will help us get a bunch more people to stand up and push back hard against the Middle Ground Fallacy.

The Reverse Razor-In-The-Apple Trick

The NY Times is notorious for their bullshit horse-race both-sides approach to political coverage and commentary.

You have to have that wishy-washy above-it-all attitude to get any of the prime slots from the Sulzberger family, and Peter Baker is a Poodle Among Poodles. He can hide a razor blade in an apple with the best of 'em.

But what happens when you look at polling and find:

1. Could be big trouble for Biden
2. But polling is just a snapshot in time
3. And that poll looks kinda bogus

???

You've got the perfect opportunity to make yourself look like an ace reporter while saying practically nothing. So you lead with the razor blade, then surround it with apple, and then make it go poof - nothing here at all really. Just 1500 words of public masturbation material that might get Mr Baker on MSNBC a coupla more times. 

Biden Casts Himself as the Trump Beater. Polls Suggest That’s No Sure Thing.

While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.

WASHINGTON — Boiled down, President Biden’s argument for running for a second term rather than ceding the ground to the next generation is that he is the Democrat most assured of beating former President Donald J. Trump next year.

But a striking new poll challenged that case in a way that had much of the capital buzzing the last couple of days. Taken at face value, the poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch, raising the question of whether the president is as well positioned as he maintains.

No single poll means all that much, especially so early in an election cycle, and the president’s strategists as well as some independent analysts questioned its methodology. But even if it is an outlier, other recent surveys have indicated that the race is effectively tied, with either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump holding narrow leads within the margin of error. Taken together, they suggest that the president opens the 2024 campaign facing enormous challenges with no guarantee of victory over Mr. Trump.

- more -

Sick of you constantly pimping the drama, Press Poodles.

Trump, and his MAGA gang, and the plutocrats backing them, are a major threat to American democracy. Maybe you could just come out and fucking say that.

And somebody - please, somebody - tell Donna Brazile to fuck off already.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen

Here's the Jonathan Weisman piece:

In Fog of East Palestine’s Crisis, Politicians Write Their Own Stories

The train derailment in Eastern Ohio has spawned conspiracy theories and contradictory narratives, with politicians from both parties parading through town to further their agendas.

To Democrats, the train derailment and chemical leak in the hamlet of East Palestine, Ohio, is a story of logic, action and consequences: Rail safety regulations put in place by the Obama administration were intended to prevent just such accidents. The Trump administration gutted them.

All of which is actually true, but notice how the phrasing invites the inference that it's really just a political opinion on the part of the Dems.

And that's an important preface, cuz here comes the Both-Sides Razor-Blade-In-The-Apple:

To Republicans, East Palestine is a symbol of something far larger and more emotional: a forgotten town in a conservative state, like so many others in Middle America, struggling for survival against an uncaring mega-corporation and an unseeing government whose concerns have never included the likes of a town of 4,718 souls.

Carrying those irreconcilable narratives, politicians have begun parading through East Palestine with their own agendas to pursue. On Wednesday, it was the former president and current presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, handing out branded water and campaign hats, while assuring the supportive crowd, “You are not forgotten.”

On Thursday, three weeks after 38 Norfolk Southern rail cars carrying toxic chemicals skipped the tracks in East Palestine and, days later, a plume of vinyl chloride was intentionally released over the town, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arrived, having spent days jousting with Republicans over safety regulations.

“What I’m really proud of is the community that I saw here,” he told a retinue of right-wing reporters shouting questions at him. “You’ve got federal agencies, you’ve got local first responders, you’ve got states, but most of all you’ve got a community that’s been through a lot, that I think is pretty frustrated with people trying to take political advantage of this situation.”

In some sense, both sides are right, both sides are wrong and, in the bifurcated politics of this American moment, none of the arguments much matter.

In 2015, after the deadly derailment of an Amtrak train traveling too fast outside Philadelphia, President Barack Obama moved to mandate the installation of lifesaving automatic braking technology by 2023 over the protests of the largest rail companies. In 2018, as part of a broad regulatory rollback, Mr. Trump repealed the rule.

But, according to the website PolitiFact, the rule would have had no impact on the East Palestine derailment. The Norfolk Southern train would not have been covered because it would not have been categorized as a high-hazard cargo train. Besides, the National Transportation Safety Board initially pointed to the failure of a wheel bearing, not the train’s speed, as the cause of the derailment.

Such details did not stop the White House from issuing a formal statement on Wednesday with the headline, “Republicans, stop dismantling rail safety and selling out communities like East Palestine to the rail lobby.” Nor did it dissuade the anti-Trump Lincoln Project from releasing a video on Wednesday squarely blaming the former president.

Still, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, called the accident “100 percent preventable” at a news conference on Thursday in Washington.

“I don’t understand why this has gotten so political — this is a community that is suffering,” she added.

Republicans have simply ignored that debate, instead pressing the seemingly contradictory cases that the Biden administration cares more about Ukraine than East Palestine and that the White House concocted the downing of three unidentified flying objects to distract attention from the derailment — which would imply that, in fact, officials care a lot.

The derailment’s aftermath coincided with Mr. Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine — by rail — and his speech in Poland, in which he pledged billions of dollars more in military support for Ukraine. That fed the Republican narrative that, for all his talk of caring for blue-collar workers, the president would rather deal with geopolitics than a domestic problem.

Neglect and the late arrival of assistance became the dominant talking points about Eastern Ohio on Fox News and in an array of other conservative news outlets, even as the Biden administration said repeatedly that federal officials had arrived on the scene of the accident within hours.

And in Columbiana County, where East Palestine sits, Republicans have been playing on their home field. Mr. Trump won the county with 72 percent of the vote in 2020, against Mr. Biden’s 27 percent.

“On Presidents’ Day in our country, he is over in Ukraine,” Mayor Trent Conaway of East Palestine fumed this week. “That tells you what kind of guy he is.”

Conspiracy theories have only deepened the trauma, bouncing around far-right podcasts and conservative celebrities’ social media accounts before reaching Congress via Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the once-fringe Republican from Georgia whose alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy has brought her to the center of congressional power.

“East Palestine, Ohio, is undergoing an ecological disaster because authorities blew up the train derailment cars carrying hazardous chemicals and press are being arrested for trying to tell the story,” she wrote on Twitter over dramatic footage of the fiery plume and its aftermath. “Oh but UFO’s!”

The Trump campaign on Thursday abetted the narrative with a day-by-day timeline of “Neglect and Betrayal,” including “Feb 5: Shoots the spy balloon down” and “Feb 13: Dodges questions about unidentified objects downed on Sunday,” followed by, “Feb 16: Delivered a response to unidentified objects in the sky and screened the movie ‘Till.’”

Batting down another conspiratorial rumor, the East Palestine fire chief, Keith Drabick, had to spend time this week assuring people that medical identification bracelets being passed out to residents in case they showed signs of debilitation were not tracking devices for the government.

The fever pitch of distrust was understandable for a community that saw what appeared to be an apocalyptic plume of chemicals rise from the wreckage on the rail line, then filmed dead fish and frogs in East Palestine’s streams and complained of headaches, sore throats, coughing and skin rashes — all as government officials assured them the air and water were safe.

But if East Palestine felt ignored in the immediate aftermath of the derailment, its travails are now playing out on a vast national tableau of partisan politics.

The environmental activist Erin Brockovich is planning a town hall event on Friday at the town high school. Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman-turned-conservative-gadfly, took a spin through the town earlier in the week, then rushed to the television cameras to describe it.

The Fox News anchor Bret Baier did concede that visits to train derailments by transportation secretaries, including Mr. Trump’s, Elaine Chao, were rare, especially when the accidents did not cause fatalities.

But more broadly, the derailment has been a chance for Republicans and their supporters in the conservative news media to showcase the white, working-class voters who flocked to Mr. Trump, and whom Mr. Biden has struggled to win back — and the power that Mr. Trump and other celebrities who remain in his orbit still hold in places like East Palestine.

After Mr. Trump on Wednesday praised John Rourke, the owner of the Florida-based company Blue Line Moving, for his relief efforts in Ohio, Tucker Carlson invited Mr. Rourke onto his top-rated cable news show to let him rip into the current president.

“The fact that President Biden has refused to come to this small town when he’s supposed to be Scranton Joe, a small-town hero of the working man, and he can’t even show his face in a town of American citizens that need his leadership, that need the government’s help terribly, he proved what everybody, I think, already knew in this country, is that he’s not the leader for this country,” Mr. Rourke said Wednesday night. “Donald J. Trump is the leader that we all know he is, and he is the leader of this country.”

On Thursday, Mr. Buttigieg showed up after weeks of Republican taunts demanding to know why he had not bothered. But it was Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump confidant, who garnered much of the attention from residents and local politicians as he toured the accident site and signed memorabilia.

“Politicians come in and they make a big show and then they don’t come back,” he said, promising, “This is a come-back situation.”

It's The Stoopid Economy

In case you were wondering, there's always a recession coming up ahead of us - or gathered around us - or falling off behind us.

ALWAYS

As far as we know - and it's all but a slam dunk certainty in economics - nothing expands forever, nothing stays the same forever, and nothing contracts forever. 

At this stage in our lives, how can it be that more of us don't know a few basic things about Capitalism and Markets and stuff?

U.S. economy grew 2.1 percent in 2022, ... (⬅︎ yay - great news - here's an apple for ya)

      ... but recession fears linger (⬅︎ razor blade in the apple)

GDP report shows six months of solid growth, including 2.9 percent expansion in the most recent quarter, though many economists say a slowdown may be near

The U.S. economy grew by 2.1 percent in 2022, notching six months of solid growth despite widespread concern that the country might be on the brink of a recession.

Those fears have been assuaged — at least for now. The economy posted another consecutive quarter of steady expansion between October and December, with economic activity increasing at a 2.9 percent annual rate. Consumer spending contributed to the strong fourth-quarter showing, especially given the slumps in large parts of the economy, including housing and manufacturing.

Still, the figure was a cool-down from 3.2 percent growth in the previous quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday.

The latest figures point to a resilient but slowing economy that has been tempered by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive efforts to control inflation. The central bank raised interest rates seven times last year in hopes that higher borrowing costs would lead businesses and households to cut back enough to slow the economy and curb price increases.

While some of those rate increases have already had a chilling effect — most notably in the housing market — economists say it could be months before inflation returns to normal. Many major banks are forecasting an economic downturn this year.

“You may see [growth] and think the economy is out of the woods, but that would be entirely the wrong read,” said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities America who expects a recession midyear. “There are a lot of variables that are all pointing in the same direction: There’s a housing recession. Manufacturing looks like it’s approaching recession. We’re seeing weakness in temp hiring. And it’s doubtful we’ve felt the full effects of all of the Fed’s rate hikes.”

The snapshot of economic strength is welcome news for the White House at a time when the economy continues to loom large among Americans’ top concerns.

House Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) on Thursday lauded the “strong and stable” economic report and attributed recent growth to lawmakers’ efforts to lower costs, create jobs and invest in infrastructure. He also warned that a failure by Congress to raise the national debt limit in the coming months could lead to “an unprecedented economic catastrophe.”

Wall Street also cheered the data as a sign of the economy’s resilience. All three major stock indexes were up midmorning, and some analysts said they were hopeful the Fed could engineer a so-called “soft landing” by bringing down inflation without triggering widespread job losses or recession.

The report was also welcome news for the Fed, but isn’t likely to change its plans. The central bank is expected to raise interest rates again next week and possibly a few more times this year.

“Momentum has already begun to slow in response to rate hikes, but the bulk of the slowdown is yet to come,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, wrote in a note to clients. “The Fed’s goal is to let growth stall out in 2023.”

The 2022 economy was, in many ways, defined by stubborn decades-high inflation. Higher prices on housing, food and gas strained family budgets and cut into corporate profits. The economy unexpectedly shrank in the first half of the year — setting off a flurry of recession fears — then returned to growth in the second half.

In the most recent quarter, continued consumer spending on services such as health care and utilities helped lift gross domestic product, which sums up goods and services produced in the U.S. economy. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of GDP, making it a crucial part of the equation.

An increase in federal government spending also contributed to the gains.

But the economy was dragged down by a fast-cooling housing market, particularly a drop in construction of single-family homes, according to the report. Exports also decreased, and business spending slowed as companies grappled with higher interest rates.

The 2022 GDP figure marks a return to pre-pandemic growth rates after two years of wild fluctuations. The U.S. economy grew by a whopping 5.7 percent in 2021, after shrinking 3.4 percent the year before.

More broadly, in the decade following the Great Recession, the U.S. economy grew between 1.5 percent and 2.9 percent each year. Although 2022 growth falls squarely within that range, economists say the seesawing numbers behind that average — two quarters of contraction, followed by two quarters of expansion — mask a host of unusual and conflicting data points.

“Unlike most recessions, where the bottom essentially falls out everywhere, we’re in a period where the pain is hitting pockets of the economy at different times,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “Everything isn’t pointing in the same direction, which isn’t the norm. It’s unique to the covid era.”

In recent weeks, a number of the country’s biggest tech firms, including Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce, have announced thousands of layoffs. Although those cuts have not yet spilled over into the broader job market, economists worry a slowing labor market could lead families to begin pulling back on purchases, which would further blunt the economy. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Already, there are signs that Americans are beginning to think twice about spending. Retail sales, which were robust for most of the year, began falling in November and continued their descent through the end of the year. Families are also working through their covid-era savings and beginning to rely more heavily on credit cards. Meanwhile some are putting off big-ticket purchases altogether.

Luke Cole, who builds custom wood furniture in Wilmington, N.C., says sales are down about 30 percent from a year ago, as economic jitters lead many of his clients to put off new purchases.

Although demand had doubled during the pandemic — in large part because so many people were moving into new homes — a slowing housing market has also put a damper on orders for new tables, chairs and benches.

“I’ve definitely seen a slowdown since the summer,” Cole said. “It hasn’t been a massive drop, but you can tell inflation and the looming possibility of recession are beginning to take their toll.”

The housing market, which is already in free fall, could face additional turmoil if laid-off workers do not find new jobs and are forced to sell their homes, economists said. Overall residential investments fell nearly 20 percent in 2022, with new home construction notching its first yearly decline since 2009.

Home sales, meanwhile, have fallen for 11 straight months, according to the National Association of Realtors, as a result of higher borrowing costs. Average mortgage rates more than doubled last year, from 3 percent to 7 percent, making homeownership considerably more expensive for would-be buyers.

At JayMarc Homes near Seattle, sales slowed for much of last year, then came to a complete halt in the last quarter of 2022. The home builder, which typically sells 20 properties a year, did not sell a single house between October and December.

“We were one of the fastest markets in the country — people were begging us to sell them houses — and then suddenly it stopped,” said chief executive Marc Russo, who laid off 10 of his 50 employees in the fall. “No one could predict that interest rates would go up threefold in a matter of eight months.”

This year, though, he says business has improved: He has sold five homes in the past three weeks. But Russo is not rejoicing yet.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “The macroeconomy is out of our control.”

Bye Bye Jesus?

I hesitate to let Maggie Haberman into my little domain, and you'll see little bits of the reason why scattered through this piece.

It's mostly the use of the passive voice that bugs me, as if Trump and the radical Evangelistas are just another silly little faction in America's great big nutty system of politics, and it'll all come out in the wash anyway, and isn't it fun for me to sit way up high where I can pretend nothing bad could ever happen cuz I'll always have my job and if the rabble get a bit too uppity, all I have to do is unleash the mighty power of my rapier-like rhetorical flourishes and blah blah blah.

Haberman is Press Poodle Royalty because she plays the Both Sides Game so well.

I guess I could maybe stop calling her a Press Poodle, and go with The Chameleon Queen.

Can Trump Count on Evangelicals in 2024? Some Leaders Are Wavering.

The former president, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty” and blamed them for Republicans’ disappointing midterm performance.

On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.

The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.

The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.

If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.

“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.

Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”

Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll in October, before the midterm elections, nearly half of Republican voters said that they preferred someone other than Mr. Trump to be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. But the same poll showed that 54 percent of evangelical voters said they planned to support him.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to comment. Paula White, the televangelist who led Mr. Trump’s evangelical advisory board while he was president, could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Trump tapped Mr. Pence to be his running mate in 2016 in part to assure wary evangelicals that a New York businessman could be trusted to keep his campaign promises.

Many evangelicals set aside their skepticism of Mr. Trump’s sometimes scandalous behavior and focused on a long list of policy pledges from the candidate, a thrice-married reality television star. In one memorable moment, Mr. Falwell celebrated his 2016 endorsement of Mr. Trump by posing for a picture with him in front of a Trump Tower office wall that included a framed copy of a 1990 Playboy cover featuring the brash real estate developer.

The uneasy alliance between Mr. Trump and evangelical leaders showed signs of strain during an interview he gave with Real America’s Voice, a right-wing streaming and cable network.

Asked about Pastor Jeffress’s neutrality in the 2024 race, Mr. Trump said he did not care, then declared that it was “a sign of disloyalty.” The former president pointed to the Supreme Court ruling last year overturning the federal right to an abortion — a decision led by three of Mr. Trump’s appointees — and said he was “a little disappointed” in some evangelical leaders who “could have fought much harder” during the midterms.

“A lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t really around to fight,” Mr. Trump said. “And it did energize the Democrats, but a lot of the people that wanted and fought for years to get it, they sort of — I don’t know — they weren’t there protesting and doing what they could have done.”

Mr. Trump’s interviewer, David Brody, who is also a longtime commentator for the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared to sense the potential effect Mr. Trump’s comments could have on evangelical voters. He told the former president that some anti-abortion activists had taken exception to being blamed for midterm losses.

“Do you want to clear that up at all?” Mr. Brody asked.

Mr. Trump doubled down.

“It’s sort of what I explained to you,” he said. “I just didn’t see them fighting during this last election — fighting for victory for people that were on the same side as all of us.” He added, “The only rallies were the rallies I gave.”

In reality, Mr. Trump, a former Democrat who once called himself supportive of abortion rights, has often been uncomfortable discussing the issue, going back to his 2016 campaign. He privately viewed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as problematic for Republicans, and he rarely spoke about abortion during his 2022 campaign rallies.

Mr. Vander Plaats suggested that Republicans’ failure to win control of the Senate in November was due in part to Mr. Trump’s support for candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who did not make abortion a central focus of his candidacy.

“Having an instinct to go after a very loyal base that you’re going to need in the Iowa caucuses, in the Republican primary, that’s just a bad instinct or it’s really bad advice,” Mr. Vander Plaats said, adding that “it’s time to turn the page” and put Mr. Trump’s movement behind another candidate.

Evangelical leaders and voters may have several other Republican options. One of them is Mr. Pence, a longtime evangelical who has visited churches in various states and has been outspoken in support of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Another is Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and C.I.A. director under Mr. Trump. There is also Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who a number of donors are hoping will enter the race.

Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence and his former chief of staff, suggested that faith leaders recognized that the former vice president “is one of them.” He said that Mr. Trump “confuses their appreciation for what he did” in office with “their commitment to Christ and their congregations, first and foremost.”

Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a conservative advocacy group, said Mr. Trump was right to be frustrated about the political response from conservatives after the Supreme Court’s decision in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Democrats had a plan to attack Republicans over the ruling, Mr. Reed said, while Republicans struggled to mount a political defense.

“Too many Republican candidates tried to stick their heads in the sand, ignore the Dobbs decision and talk singularly about inflation and gas prices, with predictable results,” Mr. Reed said.

“Trump is correct that if the party is going to succeed in 2024 and beyond, it has to own this,” he added. “We’ve got to have a plan, get on offense and portray the Democrats as the extremists.”

Pastor Jeffress said in an interview that he did not view Mr. Trump’s comments as a personal attack. The pastor of a 16,000-member church, Pastor Jeffress was one of the few political veterans who anticipated the sea change in conservative politics six years ago and was one of Mr. Trump’s early, prominent endorsers.

But, even now, he is hedging his bets in his neutrality.

After telling Newsweek in November that he was withholding an endorsement because “the Republican Party is headed toward a civil war that I have no desire or need to be part of,” Pastor Jeffress said on Wednesday that he had not endorsed a 2024 candidate in part because Mr. Trump had not asked.

Pastor Jeffress predicted that evangelicals would eventually coalesce around Mr. Trump, who, he said, “is most likely going to be the 2024 nominee.”

“I just don’t see the need for an endorsement right now — not because of any lack of enthusiasm for President Trump, but I think keeping my powder dry might be the best thing for the president,” Pastor Jeffress said. “Timing is everything, and I think it might be a little early to do that.”

Maybe the saving grace here - for us, not for Maggie Haberman - is that a lot of his followers have decided they can play Trump's divide-n-conquer game - or at least they're willing to take a shot at it. And maybe they're running up against another competing faction that wants to "get things back to normal".

Or or or.

Whatever it is, the thing that remains constant - for me - is this:

Plutocracy is definitely what we want,

we just had the wrong plutocrat.