Former DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone at Thursday night’s taping of The Bulwark Podcast (Hannah Yoest)
Last night, we held our first live in-person event, and let me tell you how wonderful it was for us to meet so many members of the Bulwark community. (One of you even came all the way from Alaska to DC.) We few, we happy few… turn out to have a lot of friends. Who knew?
The place was full and the crowd was savvy, smart, and very much engaged. Later today, you’ll be able to hear my discussion (LANGUAGE WARNING) with Officer Michael Fanone, who described what happened on January 6, discussed his new book, and had a few words for the politicians who enabled, rationalized, and tried to cover it up. (I don’t think today’s podcast is likely to be on Kevin McCarthy’s playlist, but you can feel free to forward it to him if you are so inclined.)
In particular, we talked about what Fanone recently told Rolling Stone about the would-be Speaker of the House:
“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall. They did some fucking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump. What the fuck, dude?”
We’ll post the whole thing later today on the Bulwark Podcast. (Please subscribe, if you haven’t already done so.)
(Hannah Yoest)
Also stay turned for the replay of the panel discussion with Amanda Carpenter, Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller (who wore a hat). The gang covered everything from semi-fascism to some edgy mid-term predictions….
(Hannah Yoest)
(Hannah Yoest)
If you are catching up before the weekend, here are some things that are worth your time:
The lettuce has won. Last week, when it became clear that the writing was on the wall for Liz Truss—now officially our shortest ever standing prime minister at 45 days in office—the Daily Star newspaper set up a lettuce on a live feed to see who could last longer, the PM or the vegetable. As of 1:30 p.m. today, Truss is out and the lettuce is still edible. More tinpot cretin than Iron Lady, Truss and her premiership were so short that a significant number of people in the United Kingdom spent a full 2 percent of her time in office standing in the Queue to see the Queen’s coffin. A book charting her surprise rise to power that was due to be published in December will now presumably have to be pulped.
Elon Musk told prospective investors in his deal to buy the company that he planned to get rid of nearly 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 workers, whittling the company down to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.
The ruling means that Mr. Graham, at some date after the Nov. 8 midterm elections, will most likely have to travel to the Fulton County courthouse in downtown Atlanta to answer questions about phone calls he made to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in the weeks after the 2020 election.
And, ICYMI, The Federalist is done with “conservativism” — and even semi-fascism. In a quasi-manifesto titled “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives,” the Federalist urges the New Right “to forge a new political identity that reflects our revolutionary moment.”
Since there is nothing left to “conserve,” the article insists that rightists “should stop thinking of themselves as conservatives (much less as Republicans) and start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.
I don’t really have the space here to summarize the whole thing, but my colleague Tim noted a few of the highlights: “This article calling for conservatives to unite behind fascism is so deranged that it's hard to know where to start, but the lamentation of gay marriage paired with recognizing the ‘merits’ of arranged marriage and trial by combat does stand out.”
It’s worth keeping in mind that this is one of the New Right’s favorite zines, and is headed up by Trump fan-girl and Bradley Prize winner Mollie Hemingway. So, as wooly as it might be, attention ought to be paid.
His question: WTAF?
In today’s Bulwark, Will Saletan takes a deep-dive into the polls.
Let’s start with the good news: Most voters in these states don’t think the 2020 election was stolen. Two months ago in Pennsylvania, 49 percent of registered voters said “election officials in Pennsylvania correctly counted the state’s vote in the 2020 Presidential election”; 41 percent said they didn’t. In Arizona, 53 percent of voters said they were extremely or very confident that “the votes in Arizona were cast legitimately and counted accurately”; only 28 percent said they weren’t confident at all. Last month in Michigan, 54 percent of likely voters said “Joe Biden won the election fair and square”; only 35 percent chose the alternative answer, “Joe Biden and Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump.” And in Wisconsin, 61 percent of voters said Biden was “the legitimate winner”; only 26 percent said Trump was the legitimate winner.
The bad news is that candidates who peddle the stolen-election myth are polling well above those numbers. In the Arizona survey, taken for Fox News, Lake drew 44 percent of the vote. In the Wisconsin poll, taken for Spectrum News, Michels also drew 44 percent. In the Michigan poll, taken for the Detroit Free Press, Dixon got 40 percent. Since then, all three candidates have risen. In the latest FiveThirtyEight poll averages, Dixon is at 42 percent, Michels is at 44 percent, and Lake is at 47 percent.
In other words, many people who don’t think the election was stolen are supporting candidates who claim or imply that it was.
Tim’s latest, “Not My Party”:
Ted Johnson in today’s Bulwark:
With the midterms just weeks away, MAGA Republicans have been busy playing up racial stereotypes and hurling invective. During a Trump rally in Nevada on Oct. 8, Senator Tommy Tuberville declared in a frenetic ramble that Democrats are “pro-crime” and that black Americans are “the people that do crime.” Not to be eclipsed, the next day Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd in Arizona that “Joe Biden’s 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you . . . replacing your culture”—echoing the central premise of the conspiratorial “Great Replacement” theory.
The crudeness of MAGA race rhetoric starts at the top: Donald Trump leapt into politics by becoming the chief proselytizer of birtherism, falsely asserting that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. He began his campaign in 2015 by saying Mexican immigrants to the United States are mostly drug dealers and rapists. He continued as president to make racist remarks, including notorious comments about “shithole countries” sending immigrants to America and about how the black and brown congresswomen of “The Squad” should “go back” to the countries they came from (even though all but one were born in the United States). Trump’s references to COVID-19 as the “kung flu” and the “Chinese virus” were no fluke, either; he described Elaine Chao—who served as his transportation secretary and is married to Mitch McConnell—as the senator’s “China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
The dwindling days of dog whistle politics are upon us. Instead of using veiled racial messages to evoke resentment toward specific groups, Republican politicians seem increasingly willing to “say the quiet part out loud.”
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How it started.
How it’s going. Via Oliver Darcy:
Logan in Loonyland: Lara Logan has gotten herself banned from yet another network. After being dumped by Fox News for comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to an infamous Nazi doctor, the one-time "60 Minutes" correspondent appeared on Newsmax and went full QAnon, claiming that "the open border is Satan's way of taking control of the world" and that the elites "want us eating insects [and] cockroaches" while they "dine on the blood of children." In a Tuesday evening statement, Newsmax said that it "condemns in the strongest terms the reprehensible statements made by Lara Logan" and that the channel has "no plans to interview her again."
