HCR on 1/20/25
Heather Cox Richardson writes about the day.
Half-staff
For obvious reasons.
One more commentary on the election
It’s by Rebecca Solnit: “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do.”
Choice bits from Jack Smith’s filing
I find some of the details of Mike Pence’s efforts to persuade Donald Trump to accept an election loss bizarre and illuminating. These moments make me think of a parent trying to soothe an angry, tantrum-prone toddler.
Yesterday in Wisconsin
Donald Trump, lying, rambling, and rasping his way through the day.
Prison for punctuation
Despots and wanna-be despots everywhere hate being mocked, don’t they?
Cleanup on aisle 45
Kamala Harris: “What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”
“Red flags for scholars of fascism”
Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism.”
Schaden meet Freude
The Washington Post reports that Project 2025 is ending its policy work. Why? The boss is angry:
Saving our democracy
“Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I‘ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation”: President Joe Biden, a few minutes ago.
“The complete embrace of violence”
Mary Trump: “My uncle and his allies in the corporate media want us to believe, with absolutely no evidence, that he’s a changed man. They want us to believe he cares about unity and ‘lowering the temperature.’ But the people he chooses to surround himself with make it crystal clear that nothing could be further from the truth.”
In the news
Plans for 2025, the Anti-Psychopath PAC, and the Seneca Project.
“One set of eyes” (Project 2025)
Despite Donald Trump’s know-nothing disavowals, there’s ample evidence of his campaign’s deep ties to Project 2025.The project’s creators are themselves explicit about those ties, in the first paragraph of the first page following the acknowledgments.
Timothy Snyder on political violence
“What to make of the assassination attempt?” Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, has some ideas.
“Leftist broadcasters” (Project 2025)
It’s extraordinarily dishonest to assert that NPR and PBS are noneducational or virtually noneducational, unless of course you’ve already restricted “educational” to programming for the very young. So Sesame Street is educational, but All Things Considered, American Masters, Finding Your Roots, and Frontline are not.
“Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead”
A lengthy piece from the New York Times editorial board.
Eleven suggestions from Robert Reich
Robert Reich offers eleven suggestions “to prevent America and the world from falling into fascism.”
Project 2025
Did you know that there’s a Project 2025 website? And a thirty-chapter agenda?
Jim’s question
Any kings in the United States?
HCR on Donald J. Trump v. United States
She cites Roberts, Alito, and Kavanaugh as having said that no one is above the law.
Of presidents and kings
Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent.
“We did not lose it”
Democracy, from a 1943 movie.
Avoiding the d-word
Avoiding talk of dementia and Trump.
The Alitos and revenge
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny) writes about “Modern revenge culture, explained by Mrs. and Mr. Alito.”
Eugene Robinson asks a question
“Is Trump okay?” The answer, which Robinson doesn’t quite voice: No.
187 years
In his Queeg-like ravings just now, Donald Trump suggested that he may be going to jail for 187 years.
The verdict
Guilty, on all thirty-four felony counts.
Another Alito flag
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mary Miller, shilling
East-central Illinois’s Mary Miller (IL-15) was one of the faithful yelling outside the courthouse today.
Someone wrote a letter
In the second episode of the Shrinking Trump podcast, someone suggests that this passage from a May 15 interview with Hugh Hewitt should be shared widely as evidence that Donald Trump cannot formulate ideas cognitively.