Strangers on a Train 🌻 🌻 🌻

Dinner for Schmucks: Trump’s dinner companion, Nick Fuentes is a 24 year old white supremacist who has achieved star status among the far right for using racial slurs when referring to Black people, calling homosexuality “disgusting,” asserting that the Republican Party is run by “Jews, atheists, and homosexuals,” saying it would be better if women couldn’t vote, comparing himself to Hitler while hoping for a total “Aryan victory,” claiming the First Amendment wasn’t written for Muslims and saying that Jim Crow is better for “them (presumably Black people),” us and in general.  Upon returning from their Thanksgiving break some prominent Republicans finally spoke out about his dinner with Trump and that other charmer Ye.  Some of them, like Senators Mitt Romney and Bill Cassidy, two who voted to impeach Trump, managed to directly criticize Trump, but most focused only on how inappropriate it was for Fuentes to be at Mar a Lago with a few like Senators John Thune and Tillis exonerating Trump while blaming Fuentes’ attendance on whomever it was who let him onto the premises, suggesting that person should be fired. For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that there was no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy, adding anyone meeting people advocating that point of view are highly unlikely to ever be elected President of the United States, a particularly absurd remark given the host in question already was elected president with McConnell’s help.  Then there’s GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, fearful of offending Trump whose support he desperately needs to become Speaker, he lied, hoping  against hope that no one would notice. He said ”he didn’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes.” Fine, but then he added that Trump had come out “four times and condemned” Fuentes.  The problem with that is that Trump had not and still hasn’t condemned Fuentes though he did finally say that Fuentes views would not have been accepted if they’d been brought up at dinner, as if anyone believes that they weren’t.  All the pearl clutching about Fuentes aside, what matters is what the dinner episodes exposes, that the Republican party needs the support of far right haters in order to win national elections, and if that means kowtowing to the Fuentes of the country and giving in to the demands of politicians like Margie Q and Paul Gosar, two who have been featured speakers at Fuentes’ annual American First Political Action Conferences, meetings of the fringiest of the fringe haters, they’ll all do it because it’s not like they care about anything other than tax cuts and judges and anyway not so deep in their hearts, many of them share some if not all of Fuentes’ views.  Proof of that need to keep the right wing on their side is the outcome of yesterday’s Senate vote on codifying same-sex and interracial marriage.  The watered down bill that has many outs for religious institutions and others of “conscience” passed the Senate with 12 Republicans including Senators Roy Blunt, Richard Burr, Thom Tillis, Shelly Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Cynthia Lummis, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney and Todd Young joining all of the Democrats except Raphael Warnock who was given a pass so he could continue to campaign.  Great that the bill passed, sad that most Republicans didn’t support it over fears of alienating those they need for primary and in some cases, general election wins.  Notably Mitch McConnell was a “no” vote even though his wife is Asian and Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey who are both leaving the Senate didn’t vote.      

Social Networking:  When speaking of hate think also of Elon Musk. It’s not just that he’s been doing weird and disruptive things to Twitter, the Chief Twit has also been hate-tweeting.  Over the past few days, he’s tweeted 88, the white supremacist code for Heil Hitler, used the Jewish Puppet master trope while posting a “wink” to anti-Semites by sharing the Pepe the Frog cartoon they commonly use, both in reference to Alexander Vindman whose family fled the former Soviet Union to escape anti-Semitism.  Musk also posted a picture of his bedside table adorned with two guns, attacked CNN, attributing a demonstrably false headline to the media giant and is pre-emptively picking a fight with Apple, who he fears is seriously considering banning Twitter from its App store, something that Apple has done to other purveyors of hate.  An Apple Twitter ban would be hugely damaging and could even kill Twitter even faster than Elon’s own efforts but would also incur the ire of a lot of Republican politicians, some of whom have already started squawking, which at this point could be the thing that’s holding Apple back.    

Midterm Madness:  The pollsters and pundits are still calling the Georgia Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker a toss-up.  That said, Democratic optimists are positively giddy about the record setting numbers of people who’ve already taken advantage of early voting, something that Democrats do far more than Republicans. That’s probably a good omen but remember what happened in Texas where similar reports were supposed to point to a good outcome for Beto O’Rourke but didn’t. Officials in Cochise County, Arizona have still not certified their election results and are now being sued.  Ironically, Cochise voters lean heavily Republican so excluding the county’s votes won’t change the outcome of statewide races but could affect some local races, even flipping one red House seat to blue. Arizona’s Attorney General race is headed to a recount, which is the reason that a court threw out a lawsuit by the RNC and Republican AG wannabee Abe Hamadeh, they didn’t rule on merits of the case, they just ruled that absent the results of the recount, the suit was premature.  And it’s not just Arizona, officials in Lucerne County, Pennsylvania also held up the certification of their votes on Monday but as the result of some “research” by one of those who initially voted against certification are expected to reconvene and certify today.  And there’s a special election on the horizon as Virginia Congressman Donald McEachin passed away from cancer this week.  McEachin was a Democrat and it’s likely that his seat will remain in Democratic hands, but it’s also likely that Republican Governor Youngkin won’t rush to schedule the special election needed to fill his seat because McEachin’s death gives Kevin McCarthy a little more wiggle room at a time when he needs as much as he can get.

Legal Morass:  The DOJ got a big win yesterday after a Federal jury in Washington found Oath Keeper founder and Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, another member of the far-right organization, guilty of the rarely applied charge of seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6 insurrection.  Three other Oath Keepers were found not guilty of the more serious seditious conspiracy charge but were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting. Also yesterday, Kellyanne Conway and former Secret Service Agent/one time Trump deputy chief of staff, Tony Ornato both testified in front of the House January 6^th Committee.  Ornato’s appearance was a repeat performance triggered by the testimony of White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson who testified about how Trump tried to force his way to join the Capitol Hill insurrectionists. Stephen Miller made an appearance in front of one of the DOJ’s grand juries and a South Carolina Supreme court order Trump’s last chief of staff Mark Meadows to show up and testify in front of Fani Willis’ Fulton County, Georgia grand jury, the one looking into Trump’s demand for 11,000 more votes.       

And:  Keep an eye on the trains.  If Congress doesn’t intervene quickly, a strike is likely.