Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis Jockey for Position Ahead of Potential 2024 Showdown

I hope DeSantis wins the nomination.

At WSJ, "Former president paying close attention to Florida governor’s polling and fundraising; ‘Only Ron matters’":

HOLLYWOOD, Fla.—The current front-runners for the Republican presidential nod are both in Florida. Whether Palm Beach or Tallahassee is more likely to produce the eventual winner might depend on if GOP voters here and around the country want an encore from the party’s most dominant voice or prefer to hand the stage to its fast-climbing star.

Former President Donald Trump is very likely to run again in 2024, aides say, and he has said publicly that he is weighing whether he should announce before or after this November’s midterm elections. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has developed his own devout following and is one of the few potential 2024 contenders who hasn’t said he would defer to Mr. Trump, though there are several other high-profile candidates who could end up challenging one or both men.

Once close allies—Mr. Trump’s endorsement helped fuel Mr. DeSantis’s rise, and Mr. DeSantis lavished praise on him in return—the two Republicans have jabbed at each other across the state, particularly over each man’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. DeSantis is capturing the interest of some Trump voters, as well as party officials and donors.

Here in Hollywood, among 1,500 GOP activists at a guitar-shaped resort on Saturday evening, many said Mr. DeSantis should run for president because they like his brand of defiant conservatism.

“I haven’t backed down one inch and we are not going to back down,” Mr. DeSantis said at a political summit he hosted at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

That same night, Mr. Trump gave a speech to young conservatives in Tampa, Fla., and again teased a return, claiming falsely—to wild applause—that he had already won two presidential elections. “And now we may just have to do it again,” he said. The 45th president returns to Washington Tuesday afternoon for a speech before a policy group made up of members of his administration.

Their budding rivalry is top of mind for Florida GOP insiders—and in other key states—many of whom are torn over having to pick sides and would rather not see a clash arrive, though they expect one. Some hope Mr. Trump, 76, won’t run and some want Mr. DeSantis, 43, to wait his turn. Others fantasize about a Trump-DeSantis ticket.

Recent surveys have shown that Mr. Trump retains the backing of most GOP voters. But polling and interviews with voters in many states have shown signs the former president’s support has ebbed, and congressional hearings into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot have reminded Republicans of the controversies around Mr. Trump. A Quinnipiac poll this month found 69% of Republicans wanted Mr. Trump to run again, down from 78% last October, and a recent New Hampshire survey showed Messrs. Trump and DeSantis statistically tied in the state, leaving Mr. Trump fuming, advisers to the former president say.

Mr. DeSantis, who declined an interview request, is favored to win re-election in November, and he hasn’t joined the parade of candidates in other races around the country wooing Mr. Trump for his endorsement. The former president has asked friends about how Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist is performing in his bid to take on Mr. DeSantis in November—implying, according to people familiar with the discussions, he wants his understudy to sweat a little.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Mr. Trump said he would vote for Mr. DeSantis’s re-election in November but quickly turned to his role in helping Mr. DeSantis four years ago. “If I didn’t endorse him, he wouldn’t have won,” Mr. Trump said. “I get along with Ron very well,” he added, before mentioning “a very good poll this weekend”—an unscientific straw poll of young conservatives at the Tampa conference that showed him beating Mr. DeSantis by a wide margin.

A person close to Mr. Trump said he wasn’t concerned about other would-be 2024 candidates, including former Vice PresidentMike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and several conservative senators.

“Only Ron matters,” the person said.

Another Republican who talks to the former president said, “Trump wants to find something harder to say but really can’t because DeSantis has played it well.”

While President Biden’s advisers see an upside in a rematch with Mr. Trump, some are concerned over the prospect of the nation’s oldest-ever president facing the younger, more-disciplined governor, according to people familiar with the discussions. Messrs. Biden and DeSantis have often criticized each other’s policies in their public remarks.

Mr. DeSantis acknowledges Mr. Trump’s role in his rise, thanks to an endorsement over a better-known Republican in the 2018 governor race, and the two differ more on personality than substance. Mr. DeSantis, then a congressman from near Jacksonville, Fla., caught Mr. Trump’s eye through Fox News appearances attacking the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

After narrowly winning that contest, Mr. DeSantis, a Florida native who played baseball at Yale and has a Harvard law degree, has become one of the state’s most powerful executives ever. He has frequently won turf fights with the GOP-controlled Legislature while building a national profile for eschewing Covid-19 restrictions, battling the social advocacy of Walt Disney Co. and banning the instruction of critical-race theory from schools.

Mr. DeSantis has also won bipartisan support for his environmental record, including money for conservation and Everglades restoration. He has raised teacher pay and given bonuses to first responders. And he has frustrated Democrats by touting projects in the state funded by the Biden administration’s Covid-19 aid and infrastructure bills that he criticized.

In December, Mr. Trump was booed by supporters after saying he received a booster shot. The governor—who publicized his first vaccine shot—had refused to say whether he had received a second shot, prompting Mr. Trump to say politicians who wouldn’t disclose their status were “gutless.”

A few days later, Mr. DeSantis said on a conservative podcast that he wished he had spoken out “much louder” against the Trump administration’s calls for a nationwide shutdown at the start of the pandemic...

 

The DeSantis Dilemma

From Andrew Sullivan, at the Weekly Dish, "Is he the only politician who can save us from a second Trump term?":

“I would say my big decision will be whether I go before or after. You understand what that means?” Donald Trump told New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi this week. He likes to tease. But we know what’s coming. The deranged, delusional liar who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power is going to again. He still commands a huge lead in the GOP primary polls; he shows few signs of flagging energy; and the president who succeeded him is imploding in front of our eyes.

The preeminent question in politics right now is therefore, to my mind, a simple one: how to stop Trump — and the spiraling violent, civil conflict and constitutional chaos a second term would bring. To re-elect a man who attempted a coup is to embrace the definitive end of the American idea.

The Democrats, meanwhile, appear to have run out of fake “moderate” candidates, are doubling down on every woke mantra, presiding over levels of inflation that are devastating real incomes, launching a protracted war that may tip us into stagflation, and opening the borders to millions more illegal immigrants. They are hemorrhaging Latino support, and intensifying their identity as upper-class white woke scolds. And a Biden campaign in 2024 would be, let’s be honest, “Weekend At Bernie’s II.”

So get real: If you really believe that Trump remains a unique threat to constitutional democracy in America, you need to consider the possibility that, at this point, a Republican is probably your best bet.

One stands out, and it’s Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of Florida. And yet so many Never Trumpers, right and left, have instantly become Never DeSanters, calling him a terrifyingly competent clone of the thug with the bad hair. He’s “Trump 2.0” but even “more dangerous than Trump,” says Dean Obeidallah. “He’s dangerous because he is equally repressive, but doesn’t have the baggage of Trump,” argues a fascism scholar.

“DeSantis has decided to try to outflank Trump, to out-Trump Trump,” worries Michael Tomasky. He’s a clone of Viktor Orbán, says Vox, and on some issues, “DeSantis has actually outstripped Orbán.” Then there’s Max Boot: “Just because DeSantis is smarter than Trump doesn’t mean that he is any less dangerous. In fact, he might be an even bigger threat for that very reason.”

Jon Chait frames the case: “Just imagine what a Trumpified party no longer led by an erratic, deeply unpopular cable-news binge-watcher would be capable of.” Chait’s critique focuses at first on the fact that DeSantis is an anti-redistributionist conservative, and believes that pure democracy is something the Founders wanted to curtail. Sorry — but, whatever your view on that, it’s light years away from Trump’s belief in one-man rule.

On this, in fact, Chait acknowledges that DeSantis once wrote that the Founders “worried about the emergence of popular leaders who utilized demagoguery to obtain public support in service of their personal ambitions.” He meant Obama — not Trump. Unfair to Obama, of course. But the same worldview as Trump’s? Nah.

Chait then argues that DeSantis is an anti-vaxxer, or has at least toyed with anti-vaxxers, and out-Trumped Trump on Covid denialism. But like many criticisms of DeSantis, this is overblown. Dexter Filkins reports that DeSantis, after his lockdowns during the panic of April 2020, studied the science himself, became a skeptic of lingering lockdowns and mask mandates, and, for a while, risked looking like a crazy outlier.

But from the vantage point of today, not so much: Florida’s kids have not been shut out of schools for two whole years; the state’s economy beat out the other big ones except Texas; Covid infection and death rates were not much higher than the national average; and compared with California, which instituted a draconian approach, it’s a viral wash.

As David Frum put it in a typically perceptive piece:

The DeSantis message for 2024: I kept adults at work and kids at school without the catastrophic effects predicted by my critics. Because I didn’t panic, Florida emerged from the pandemic in stronger economic shape than many other states — and a generation of Florida schoolchildren continued their education because of me. Pretty powerful, no?

Very powerful in retrospect. And again: not Trump.

And this is a pattern: DeSantis says or does something that arouses the Trumpian erogenous zones, is assailed by the media/left, and then the details turn out to be underwhelming. His voter suppression law provoked howls; but in reality, as Ramesh Ponnuru notes,

the law includes new restrictions, such as requiring that county employees oversee ballot drop-boxes. But it’s also true that the law leaves Floridians with greater ballot access, in key respects, than a lot of states run by Democrats. Florida has no-excuse absentee voting, unlike Delaware and New York.

DeSantis wins both ways: he gets cred from the base by riling up the media, but isn’t so extreme as to alienate normie voters.

Ditto his allegedly anti-gay bigotry. Vox’s Beauchamp says DeSantis is another Orbán. But Orbán’s policies are a ban on all teaching about gays in high schools, a ban on anything on television before 10 pm that could positively show gay or trans people, and a constitutional ban on marriage rights. DeSantis’ policy is to stop instruction in critical gender and queer theory in public schools for kids under 8, and keep it neutral and age-appropriate thereafter. In other words: what we used to have ten minutes ago before the woke takeover.

And who but a few fanatics and TQIA++ nutters really oppose this? I know plenty of gay people who agree with DeSantis — and a majority of Floridians support the law as it is written. The fact that his opponents had to lie about it — with the “Don’t Say Gay” gimmick — and then resorted to emotional blackmail — “This will kill kids” — tells you how unpopular their actual position is.

Some more contrasts: Trump famously wanted to torture captured prisoners, steal the oil in occupied Iraq, and desecrate Islam to break down Muslim detainees. DeSantis, on the other hand,

was responsible for helping ensure that the missions of Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets [in parts of Iraq] … were planned according to the rule of law and that captured detainees were humanely treated. “He did a phenomenal job,” Navy Capt. Dane Thorleifson, 55, said of DeSantis … [describing him] as “one of my very close counsels that as we developed a mission concept of operations, he made sure it was legal. I respected him a lot as a JAG. He was super smart, articulate, resourceful and a positive part of the staff.”

Imagine Trump taking care to make sure anything is legal!

Trump ripped children from illegal immigrant parents. DeSantis opposed the policy. Trump launched his real estate empire with a “small loan of a million dollars” from his mega-wealthy dad. DeSantis grew up in a working-class neighborhood, scored in the 99th percentile on his SAT, and worked several jobs to help pay his tuition at Yale.

Trump is a teetotaler, and while in office “his administration made a number of hostile anti-marijuana actions — rescinding Obama-era guidance on cannabis prosecutions to implementing policies making immigrants ineligible for citizenship if they consume marijuana.” DeSantis ensured that Florida’s overwhelming vote in favor of legal medical marijuana was passed into law, and he even suggested that the drug be decriminalized — despite his distaste for the smell of weed in public.

Trump wings everything, and almost never delivers. He couldn’t even build a fraction of his wall. DeSantis is disciplined, studies issues closely, and follows through. On a good day, Trump is fun. DeSantis, to be kind, isn’t. He has a Nixonian edge.

Trump believes climate change is a Chinese hoax, and, given the chance, would cover our national parks with condos and oil rigs. DeSantis is a governor in a state where rising sea levels and floods are real, so Trumpian insanity is a non-starter. “I will fulfill promises from the campaign trail,” DeSantis said shortly after taking office:

“That means prioritizing environmental issues, like water quality and cleaning the environmental mess that has resulted in toxic blue-green algae and exacerbated red tide around the state. We will put Everglades restoration into high gear and make it the reality that Floridians have been promised for three decades.”

This year he followed through — with more than $400 million in funds for containing rising sea levels. And last year, Filkins noted,

DeSantis signed into law a remarkable piece of environmental legislation that could become a model for the rest of the country. The project will establish the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a blueprint for the state to connect all of its large national and state parks with tracts of open land.

The corridor, once complete, would create an unbroken swath of preserved land from the Alabama state line all the way to the Florida Keys, nearly eight hundred miles away. It would insure that a population of wildlife — whether it be black bears or panthers or gopher tortoises — would not be cut off from other groups of its species, which is one of the main drivers of extinction.

So far, DeSantis is not that far from the “Teddy Roosevelt conservationist” he claimed to be. Yes, he’s mainly focused on responding to, rather than preventing, climate change — “Resilient Florida” is the slogan. And he’s allergic to green uplift or catastrophism. But another Trump? Nope.

His authoritarianism? He certainly gives off vibes. He picked a fight with Disney, for example, over their belated opposition to his parental rights bill — and punished them even after the law had passed. Using executive power to target companies for their free expression is not conservatism. (It’s worth noting, however, that in this case, the “punishment” was ending very special state treatment for the company.)

There is also disturbingly vague wording and vigilante enforcement in his parental rights bill — which is why I opposed it. He has tried to curtail free speech in colleges in ways that will almost certainly be struck down by the courts. Three state university professors were prevented from testifying against state policies (DeSantis denies any involvement). His comments on tenure are chilling. He said something dangerous about the role of child protective services in punishing parents for taking their kids to raunchy drag shows. Parental rights for conservatives, but not for liberals?

His spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, is Trumpian in her provocations, reviving the ugly trope that gays are pedophilic “groomers” until proven otherwise. DeSantis wages the power of government in the culture war — and with alacrity. There’s a pugilism to his style that comes off as bullying at times, so he can, quite clearly, be a charm-free prick. He’s been a coward over January 6 and Trump’s Big Lie. And as Tim Miller notes, he hasn’t exactly declared he would not be another Trump in his contempt for constitutional democracy (although such a stance now would effectively sink his bid to replace Trump). He’s said nary a word on abortion; and has ducked real questions about guns in the wake of Uvalde. Who knows what his position on Ukraine is?

I’m deeply uncomfortable with much of this...

 

If Held Today, President Trump Would Win the #GOP Primaries

He's got a huge plurality of supporters in this this new poll out from the New York Times.

See, "Half of G.O.P. Voters Ready to Leave Trump Behind, Poll Finds":

Far from consolidating his support, the former president appears weakened in his party, especially with younger and college-educated Republicans. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is the most popular alternative.

As Donald J. Trump weighs whether to open an unusually early White House campaign, a New York Times/Siena College poll shows that his post-presidential quest to consolidate his support within the Republican Party has instead left him weakened, with nearly half the party’s primary voters seeking someone different for president in 2024 and a significant number vowing to abandon him if he wins the nomination.

By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of tending to wounds opened by his alarming attempts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump appears to have only deepened fault lines among Republicans during his yearlong revenge tour. A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary.

Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, appears to have contributed to the decline in his standing, including among a small but important segment of Republicans who could form the base of his opposition in a potential primary contest. While 75 percent of primary voters said Mr. Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election,” nearly one in five said he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.”

Overall, Mr. Trump maintains his primacy in the party: In a hypothetical matchup against five other potential Republican presidential rivals, 49 percent of primary voters said they would support him for a third nomination.

The greatest threat to usurp Mr. Trump within the party is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who was the second choice with 25 percent and the only other contender with double-digit support. Among primary voters, Mr. DeSantis was the top choice of younger Republicans, those with a college degree and those who said they voted for President Biden in 2020.

While about one-fourth of Republicans said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about Mr. DeSantis, he was well-liked by those who did. Among those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, 44 percent said they had a very favorable opinion of Mr. DeSantis — similar to the 46 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump.

Should Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump face off in a primary, the poll suggested that support from Fox News could prove crucial: Mr. Trump held a 62 percent to 26 percent advantage over Mr. DeSantis among Fox News viewers, while the gap between the two Floridians was 16 points closer among Republicans who mainly receive their news from another source.

The survey suggests that Mr. Trump would not necessarily enter a primary with an insurmountable advantage over rivals like Mr. DeSantis. His share of the Republican primary electorate is less than Hillary Clinton’s among Democrats was at the outset of the 2016 race, when she was viewed as the inevitable front-runner, but ultimately found herself embroiled in a protracted primary against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont...

Still more.

And Bill Schneider suggested the other day that Trump might announce his 2024 run before the November midterms. We'll see. That's not unprecedented. Howard Dean formally announced his bid for the 2004 Democratic nomination June 23, 2003, but he was campaigning way before then, in the second half of 2002.

If Trump's able to raise a massive war chest --- to the tune of say $2 billion or so --- then he'd certainly scare off much of the competition. But let's see how much DeSantis is able to raise in 2023, should he throw his hat into the ring. He's the one on fire right now. I like him. I hope he's the nominee. He'll crush any Democrat in the 2024 general election.

Carl Hoffman, Liar's Circus

At Amazon, Carl Hoffman, Liar's Circus.

The Meaning of Patriotism

From Andrew Sullivan, "This July Fourth, two Republican women are keeping the flame of this republic alive":

To see what is in front of our noses is a constant challenge, and perhaps never more so in a time of such awful post-truth polarization. But what happened in the January 6 hearings this past week will, in my view, be seen one day as a watershed moment either in the history of this country’s revival as a liberal democracy or in this republic’s rapid collapse.

Two women, Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson, went back and forth, asking and answering questions, slowly, calmly, and methodically laying out a story of an actual attempt by a president of the United States to rally and lead an armed mob to assault the Congress to overturn an election. Yes, I just wrote that sentence.

Hutchinson’s testimony added critical facts to the record: that Trump knew full well what the mob was intending to do in advance; and knew that they were armed: “You know, I don’t fucking care that they have weapons. They’re not there to hurt me.” He knew what he was attempting was criminal; tried physically to lead the mob in their rampage; and when he was foiled, egged on the attack, and refused to quiet or quell the mob for hours — even as it threatened to kill his own vice president. There is no way now to deny that Trump was behind all of it, uniquely responsible.

In the face of this, so many Republican men have kept quiet, caved, slunk away, equivocated, or changed the subject. So many, like Tucker Carlson, have responded with smears and foul lies. So many have refused to testify, or dodged subpoenas. These sickening cowards wouldn’t vote to impeach after the grossest attack on the Constitution in history; and wouldn’t cooperate with the committee.

But two Republican women faced our hideous reality this week — even if it meant the obliteration of their careers, and being subject to real threats of violence. And let us pause to note just how Republican these two women are. Cheney is the daughter of the former vice president, a man who once defined Republicanism; she represents Wyoming, the most Republican state out of 50; she’s pro-life, defended torture, never saw a war she didn’t want to start; opposed even her own sister’s same-sex marriage; and voted with Trump 93 percent of the time, more than the woman who ousted her from House leadership, Elise Stefanik.

Hutchinson, for her part, was at the heart of the Trump world. She ascended from mere intern — working in the offices of both Ted Cruz and the House minority whip — to become the primary assistant to Trump’s chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows. If she dyed her hair blonde, she could read the news on Fox.

Hutchinson had a lot to lose by testifying — as women seem to in general compared to men:

[T]here is evidence that women suffer more direct retaliation as whistleblowers. One study in 2008 found that women who reported wrongdoing within their organizations experienced more retaliation than men who did the same. And, while higher-ranking men who reported wrongdoing experienced less retaliation, higher-ranking women were not as insulated.

And notice the tone of the exchange between the two women. In a world of hyperbolic, pontificating males, Cheney asked clear, direct, empirical questions, and Hutchinson replied with the same attention to detail, the same surety of voice, the same care not to exaggerate, and to get things right. Yes, some of it was hearsay — but Hutchinson herself took pains to note when it was. And both, it seemed to me, understood their grave responsibility.

This is the Republican Party I used to respect. This is the conservatism I believe in. A conservatism whose first tasks are the defense of the Constitution, the rule of law, and a belief in objective truth.

Like Margaret Thatcher in her day, Liz Cheney has a steel stronger than most men, and similar courage. In her superb speech at the Reagan Library this week, Cheney also emphasized the feminine qualities that made this week historic:

I come to this choice [between Trump and the Constitution] as a mother, committed to ensuring that my children and their children can continue to live in an America where the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed.

And she paid tribute to the women, often low on the DC totem pole, who rose to the challenge of citizenship, when so many powerful men failed:

I’ve been incredibly moved by young women who have come forward to testify, some who worked on the Trump campaign, some who worked in the Trump White House, some who worked in offices on Capitol Hill, all of whom knew immediately that what had happened must never happen again … Little girls across the country are seeing what it really means to love your country, what it really means to be a patriot. And so I want to speak to every young girl who may be watching tonight. The power is yours and so is the responsibility.

Listen to it all...

 

Batya Ungar-Sargon Interview With Megyn Kelly (VIDEO)

They're talking about the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. Batya rattling off all the polling data on abortion rights is compelling.

WATCH:

Ace Has Questions

Following-up, "Did President Trump Really Grab the Steering Wheel?"

At AoSHQ, "In Explosive Testimony at the January Sixth Committee, a Twenty-Five Year Old Chippie [Tramp; Prostitute] Says She Heard From Her Friends That 'The Walls Are Closing In'."

Did President Trump Really Grab the Steering Wheel?

Following-up, "Cassidy Hutchinson's Explosive Testimony Before the January 6th Select Committee (VIDEO)."

A lot of skepticism on Twitter.

From Jack Posobiec: 

Cassidy Hutchinson's Explosive Testimony Before the January 6th Select Committee (VIDEO)

I watched. This was extraordinary testimony, and brave.

At the New York Times, "A White House aide testified that Trump ordered security lifted on Jan. 6 though the crowd was heavily armed."

And more:

Hutchinson provided many bombshells. The shocking description of Trump wrestling the Secret Service for control of his car on Jan. 6 so he could go to the Capitol. Portraying Meadows, her former boss, as a man who abdicated responsibility to the nation and hoped to be pardoned. And saying Trump knew that his supporters had dangerous weapons when he asked them to march on Congress.

Cheney ended the hearing on a solemn note, saying that democracy is preserved by people “who know the fundamental difference between right and wrong.” People of high rank and power have refused to talk about that distinction with the committee, but Hutchinson, a low-ranking official, didn't shy from it today.

Lots more at Memeorandum.

President Trump's Lasting Legacy After the Supreme Court's Ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson

Something I noted last Friday on Twitter. If this is the most consequential Supreme Court ruling in 100 years, then doesn't that mean Donald Trump's the most consequential president as well?

At the Los Angeles Times, "News Analysis: Trump’s lasting legacy grows as Supreme Court overturns Roe":

WASHINGTON — President Biden rarely mentions his predecessor by name. But as he spoke to a nation processing a seismic shift in the rights of women, he couldn’t ignore Donald Trump’s legacy. “It was three justices named by one president — Donald Trump — who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said Friday after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark ruling from 1973 that provided constitutional protections for women seeking abortions.

The abortion decision marked the apex in a week that reinforced the former president’s ongoing impact in Washington more than a year and a half after he exited the White House.

A court that includes three Trump-appointed conservatives also decided to weaken restrictions on gun ownership. And across the street at the Capitol, which was ravaged by a mob of Trump supporters in the final days of his presidency in 2021, new details surfaced of his gross violations of democratic norms. The House’s Jan. 6 committee used a public hearing last week to spotlight the intense pressure that Trump put on top Justice Department officials to overturn the 2020 election, along with discussions of blanket pardons for cooperative members of Congress.

The developments were a reminder of the awkward political bargain social conservatives embraced to achieve their grandest ambitions. In refusing to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee during the final year of his presidency, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ensured that the next president would be able to make his mark on the court. As Trump pledged to transform the Supreme Court’s ideological leanings — even providing a list of the judges he would choose from — reluctant conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians rallied behind Trump, a thrice-married man who had previously described himself as “very pro-choice.”

“When he ran in 2016, he promised that he would appoint conservative and pro-life judges to the federal courts starting with the U.S. Supreme Court. And he kept his word,” said Ralph Reed, an evangelical leader and chair of the the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who was criticized in some corners for his embrace of Trump. “Those in the faith community that felt it was worth taking a chance on Donald Trump in 2016 have been vindicated.”

The GOP is now at something of a turning point in its relationship with a man who has fundamentally transformed the party with his populist, “Make America Great Again” agenda and his fight against the establishment Republicans who used to control the party. There’s a growing debate within the party about whether Trump’s resonance is beginning to fade as lays the groundwork for a third presidential run in 2024.

Other leading Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump’s former secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo, are taking increasingly bold steps toward White House bids of their own. And many of Trump’s own supporters are eagerly embracing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as Trump’s natural successor as they look to the future.

Pence, Pompeo and DeSantis are among those who have made clear that a Trump candidacy would not influence their own decisions about whether to run. If they do run, they will all be competing for support from the same conservatives who fueled Trump’s rise.

Trump himself seems somewhat uncertain about how to navigate the political fallout from the past week, particularly the abortion ruling. He has privately expressed concern to aides that the decision could energize Democrats going into the November elections, the New York Times first reported.

Indeed, in a Fox News interview after the abortion opinion was released, Trump said that, “in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.”

Asked about his own role in the eventual decision, Trump responded that, “God made the decision.”

Trump grew more emboldened as Friday unfolded, raising money off the court ruling and issuing a statement in which he took full credit for what he called “the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation.”

He said that it and “other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. It was my great honor to do so!”

At a Saturday night rally, Trump took another victory lap to cheers from the crowd...

He Was Just a Bitter Man With a Mob

From Andrew Sullivan, "A Man And A Mob: Our Constitutional crisis is due to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump alone":

“Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” - former veep Mike Pence.

There is a tendency, and I understand it, to view the crisis of democratic legitimacy in this country as multi-determined. The rank failure of elites this century, the intellectual barrenness of the pre-Trump GOP, the ever-further radicalization of the left, along with the cultural impacts of mass immigration and free trade, all count as contributing factors. You can tell the story in many different ways, with varying emphases, and assignations of blame.

But this complexity misses something important — the contingent importance of individuals in human history. And the truth is: we would not be where we are now without Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone. He is unique in American history, a president who told us in advance he would never accept any election result that showed him losing, and then proved it. He tried to overturn the transfer of power to his successor by threats and violence. No president in history has ever done such a thing — betrayed and violated the core of our republic — from Washington’s extraordinary example onwards. The stain of Trump is as unique as it is indelible.

Without Trump, January 6 would never have happened. It was his idea, and his alone. No one in his closest inner circle believed he had won the election on November 3. They all knew that the Trump presidency was “the rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d, / Nor tackle, sail, nor mast.” None of them would have attempted to keep it afloat.

And, thanks to the January 6 Committee, we now know this for certain. Mike Pence, his vice president, didn’t believe Trump had won, let alone by a landslide — for which he was targeted to be hanged by the mob Trump gathered. (A new detail: Trump — after the violence had already broken out — incited the mob against Pence directly, and they surged to get within 40 feet of him.)

His daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner also didn’t believe Trump had won — and we now know they planned to move to Miami only 24 hours after Trump declared he had been robbed. Trump’s beloved Hope Hicks didn’t believe he’d won. His campaign manager Bill Stepien didn’t either, and in a lovely understatement said he “didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional.” Even Kellyanne “alternative facts” Conway didn’t think he’d won.

Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, didn’t think he’d won either, and told him so: “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. And I didn’t want to be a part of it.” Here’s how Trump responded to his top cop telling the truth: “This is killing me. You must have said this because you hate Trump, you hate Trump.” For Trump, there is no objective reality; no actual facts to be considered. There is only his subjective reality, where non-facts are asserted with the intensity of a madman.

Who did believe that Trump had won? A shit-faced Rudy Giuliani on election night; the fruitcake — and now disbarred — conspiracist Sidney Powell; QAnon nutter Lin Wood, who wanted the vice president to face a firing squad for doing his job; and another deranged flunky, Peter Navarro. Then there was the disgraceful John Eastman, who crafted a legal strategy that he knew was unconstitutional, illegal and could lead to riots. “Garbage in, garbage out,” was how Trump’s former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, described the clique and their plots.

The cockamamie scheme these oddballs constructed aimed at bullying Republican state legislators to provide alternative electors who would back Trump in the Electoral College, despite the votes in their states, and to coerce Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election on January 6, so they’d have time to overturn the results. (A freelancer to the fiasco, Ginni Thomas, wife of Clarence, pressed 29 legislators in Arizona to change their slate of electors.)

This required harassment of GOP officials in the states to simply “find” more votes for Trump. At this point, it’s only Trump, his new inner circle of nut-cases, Fox News, and mobs around the country. Nothing was ruled out. At one point, they considered seizing voting machines and calling out the military. Trump tweeted threats to individual office-holders to get them to bend the knee. Here is an account by one, a Republican commissioner in Philly, who looked into Giuliani’s claim that 8,000 dead people had voted in his city, found none, and said so:

[P]rior to that [tweet from Trump], the threats were pretty general in nature. Corrupt election officials in Philadelphia are going to get what’s coming to them. You’re what the second amendment is for. You’re walking into the lion’s den. All sorts of things like that.

After the President tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic, and included not just me by name but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home. Just every bit of detail that you could imagine.

That’s Trump leveraging violence against election officials for defending the integrity of the vote. No surprise then that he repeated this strategy against his own “pussy” vice president and the Congress itself — egging on a mob he had summoned to ransack the Capitol building to stop the certification (“it’s going to be wild!”), and refusing repeatedly to intervene throughout the day to stop the violence, even as others begged him to. The night before the mayhem, Trump had left the White House door open — highly unusual for him. And this was winter in Washington. According to Costa and Woodward, when Trump was asked to shut it by shivering staffers, he responded: “I want to hear my people. Listen. They have courage. Listen.”

He was emphatically told he’d lost the election. He was told what he was trying to do was illegal and unconstitutional, days before he directed the mob. But he didn’t care and did it anyway. Eastman for his part knew he was committing a crime against the Constitution, a crime which might have set off rioting in the streets, which is why (we now know) he sought a preemptive pardon for his malfeasance. How’s that for an admission of guilt? But he didn’t care and did it anyway.

There are simply no precedents in history for this kind of assault on the core principles of the American republic. None. And there is no precedent for a president, having been exposed as a fantasist, to carry on, insisting that his fever dream remains reality, attacking the very legitimacy of our democracy, day after day. The idea that he could run again — or again become president — could only be entertained by those who wish to end the American experiment.

Peruse the 12-page letter Trump put out in response to the hearings. It is the work of someone with no grip on reality, absurd lie after lie after lie, barely literate, the kind of thing you’d think was written by a lunatic if you received it in the mail. Any other president would have conceded on election night. Others with a real case (unlike Trump’s) — Nixon in 1960, Gore in 2000 — knew what their duty was. They cared more about the republic than themselves — a concept simply outside Trump’s cognition. In four years, he never acted as a president. He only ever acted as Trump.

In the bitter end, he was just a man with a mob. Not a Republican. Not a politician. Not a president. Not a member of any political party but his own cult. A mindless, raging, bullying thug. The hearings have methodically and calmly revealed this, masterfully led by a Republican, Liz Cheney, through testimony supplied by Republican after Republican witness.

And yet just this week, Trump acolytes repeating his lies won primaries in Nevada and South Carolina. Republican election officials in some states have said they will decide the results of future elections — and not the voters. Steve Bannon has encouraged a wave of new candidates in positions overseeing elections to foment chaos. The crisis Trump — and Trump alone — has created is not over. Biden’s legacy — an abandonment of his mandate for moderation, soaring inflation, an imminent recession, yet another new war, and woker-than-woke extremism — has only deepened it.

So it’s up to Republicans to save us. In the words of Michael Luttig, “as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war.” And here I just want to appeal to any conservatives or Republicans who might read this. You know I’m not a flaming liberal. You know I agree with many of you on the threat from the far left. So hear me out: The party of Lincoln cannot coexist with the cult of Trump. What Trump did to the republic has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism. It’s the antithesis of conservatism, a revolutionary act to create a constitutional crisis, an assault on tradition, an attack on America itself. You may soon have a chance to run the country again. Don’t throw that away for the sake of a man who cares about nothing but himself...

To Trump's True Believers, January 6th Was an Act of Faith, Ashli Babbitt's a Martyr, and White Is Not Only a Race, But a Spiritual State

Following-up, "Georgia Election Worker Shaye Moss, And Her Mother and Grandmother, Terrorized by Trump Followers After 2020 Election (VIDEO)."

At Vanity Fair, "January 6 Was Only the Beginning":

"Although no one believed in civil war, the air reeked of it…" — Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, recalling 1860.

1. It’s Cool

We watched her die before we knew her name. We watched almost in real time, or soon enough after, her death looped and memed before the fight was over. But then, the fight’s still not over. A video gives us a crowd throbbing against two wooden windowed doors, one reinforced glass pane spiderwebbing, three Capitol Police officers, standing between the glass and members of Congress on the other side. We don’t yet know to look for her, but she’s there on the screen, the only woman, up front (“a firecracker,” her friends will say), screaming at cops. (“Joking,” her defenders will claim.) There’s a knife in her pocket. She shouts: “Just open the door!” It’s barricaded. “Break it down!” chant the men. One screams at the cops, “You lied!” The cops said there was nobody on the other side. They can see them. Congressmen. Traitors. A young man wearing a black T-shirt and $325 Canada Goose aviator fur hat, shouts “Heyyy!” He stretches out his arms, pulsing veins—he has already punched the glass, hard—and opens his hands. “Fuck the blue!” shouts the crowd. A man wearing a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag tied like a bib beneath his MAGA hat hands Goose a black helmet with which to hit the glass.

Goose lines the helmet with his hat, to cushion his fist. The cops slide out of the way. (“Escape route,” one will later tell investigators; they thought they were going to be killed.) “Go! Get this shit!” the videographer shouts. They get that shit—pounding the reinforced glass.

“Gun!” the videographer yells. Two hands emerge from behind a pillar on the other side, aiming.

Fourteen seconds left. Does she hear them shout “gun”? Can she make out the warnings Michael Byrd, a plainclothes lieutenant in the Capitol Police, will say he delivered? That the man standing beside her will say, “She didn’t heed”? “Please,” Byrd will say he shouted. “Stop! Get back!” She doesn’t. He aims. There are more videos. There she is, bobbing up and down, straining. Her long, smooth face, her dark golden hair, her golden skin. She has come to this moment—seven seconds—from Ocean Beach, California, where she lived in a bungalow beneath avocado and lime trees. Little woman. Five foot two, 115 pounds, her mother will say. One hundred ten, according to Representative Paul Gosar, the Arizona Republican who’ll make her name into a martyr song, “#onemoreinthenameoflove.” She’s 35; or in her “20s,” one witness will say; or “16, supposedly,” guesses another man, each aging her backward, into the imagined innocence of girlhood.

Goose smashes the glass.

“Go!” she shouts. She’s boosted up. She crouches on the sill, her Trump flag like a cape tucked under a red-white- and-blue backpack, like some absurd American bird.

The gunshot sounds like a cannon. Glock 22, .40 caliber. Big gun. One boom.

She falls back. Her hands fly up, open, empty, raised to her temples. As if rather than a bullet there’s an unsettling thought.

Nobody tries to catch her.

“#Sayhername,” the patriots will tweet, delighting in their appropriation of a campaign created for Black women. It’s grotesque. But the dead are the dead, no matter what they died doing. So, yes, her name: Ashli Babbitt. She wasn’t a hashtag. As a girl in rural Lakeside, California, she’d ride her horse to the 7-Eleven. She was a scrapper. “She just did boy things,” her brother will say. She joined the Air Force at 17. Two wars, eight deployments, 14 years. Her favorite movie was The Big Lebowski. Her thing was the shaka. “Hang loose,” thumb and pinkie. (Her last words, as she bleeds on the Capitol floor, according to a witness: “It’s cool.”) She did not climb the ranks, but she did marry, and then divorce, and in between she voted for Obama, and she fell in love with a Marine named Aaron Babbitt, and there was some trouble with his ex, who in 2016 claimed Ashli rammed her car three times, but Ashli was acquitted and anyway, maybe love is like that sometimes, at least for Ashli in 2016, since that was when she fell hard for Donald J. Trump. “#Love,” she wrote beside his name that Halloween, in the first of more than 8,000 tweets. “She was all in,” says Aaron, who did not share her devotion. She believed Trump was “one of gods greatest warriors.” She thought she’d be his “boots on the ground.” She wanted to be “the storm.” She had a husband and together they had a girlfriend; she had four younger brothers and parents who loved her, and in the end, she left them all. What’s left is a meme, “Ashli Babbitt,” on Twitter and Fox and Newsmax and Telegram, where she dies on permanent repeat for a man who won’t, in fact, say her name for half a year, until the day it proves useful, when the Trump Organization is indicted for tax fraud. He’ll issue a one-sentence statement: “Who shot Ashli Babbitt?” That he knows is beside the point. Who shot her? They did. The enemy.

2. Sacramento, California

The Justice for Ashli Babbitt Rally opens with a prayer, asking God to bless Ashli’s family, sitting in a row of white “Justice 4 Ashli” T-shirts, and to work on the hearts of the “opposition,” which, whether I like it or not, is me. Ashli’s mother, Mikki Witthoeft, has already told me this morning that she wouldn’t talk to me. “Media,” she’d growled. “Goddamned media,” she’ll clarify when she takes the podium.

Leading the prayer is a “patriot” pastor called JP. He looks like an especially dangerous mushroom. JP wears a black floppy sun hat, mirrored shades, a stars-and-stripes gaiter, green half gloves, and utility-belted jeans that puddle around his ankles. His black T-shirt features in golden letters a “battle verse” popular with patriots, Joshua 1:9. “Be strong and courageous,” the Lord instructs Joshua as he readies to storm Jericho and, at God’s command, to slaughter all—“man and woman, young and old.”

We’re on the west side of the California State Capitol. The rally was called by a group named Saviors of Liberty, hatched in a pickup truck three weeks prior by a couple of white dudes drinking beer and thinking about all that was wrong in the world and how they might fix it by building a supergroup of right-wing fraternal organizations. They’d need new T-shirts. Lady Liberty bleached white on a field of black, looking in sorrow on a red-and-black American flag, vertical so that its stripes appear to bleed. Packed into these T-shirts are muscle-bound men, some bulked up by bulletproof plates, many flexing studded leather gloves. Many are Proud Boys.

A rally organizer keeping a lower profile is a woman named Chelsea Knight, an administrator of Placer County, California, for Trump and a co-administrator, with her husband, Victor Knight, of a Telegram chat group called 1488, which surely has nothing to do with the “14 words” embraced by white supremacists—prattle about protecting white children—and 88, as in the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, which times two in the idiot math of fascism equals “Heil Hitler.” That’s Victor’s thing. He’s the one with an SS Totenkopf skull tattooed on his left fist. Victor’s here too, and that plus the 90-something-degree heat on the sunblasted concrete, plus antifa’s promise to disrupt, may explain the low turnout.

Antifa does arrive. A column of mostly black-clad, black-masked protesters coming from a rally on the other side of the Capitol for what should have been Breonna Taylor’s 28th birthday. The Saviors are ready. A Savior in a skull mask takes the first shot at the tallest antifa, a beanpole in black but for his fists and the pale skin around his eyes. Saviors call him Nosferatu. He’s skinny but he knows how to take a punch; it bounces off his head, and you can almost hear him smile beneath his mask. “That’s a pussy-ass move right there,” Nosferatu says.

Another Savior throws a punch. The cops observe. Then an antifa protester takes a swipe. The cops charge—at antifa. An antifa cries to the police even as they shove her backward.

“Shut up, fat ass!” a right-wing streamer screams.

“Fuck yourself, faggot!” she answers.

“These cops want to let us go at ’em,” comments the man next to me. It’s one of the speakers, Jorge Riley, an indicted J6er.

“They don’t have any worries about what the outcome would be,” says a Savior.

Riley smiles. He wears his black hair in a ponytail and a black leather vest over a black T. “I’m a French-speaking Native American Jew,” he likes to say. “For Jesus,” he sometimes adds. He waits for a laugh. He invaded the Capitol with three white feathers braided into his hair, three streaks of black paint running down each cheek. In a video, he boasts: “I may or may not have rubbed my butt on Nasty Pelosi’s desk.” Before January 6, Riley held positions in the local Republican establishment. Two days after the insurrection, he posted his address on Facebook: “Come take my life. I’m right here. You will all die.” The FBI, he thinks, didn’t get it. The “joke,” the threat, was for antifa. “I got six charges,” he crows. He says he likes cops, except the cop who shot Babbitt.

“You feel like the cops are on your side?” I ask.

“Obviously!” He swings his arms open. “They’re here protecting me.” He turns to a woman beside him and asks for the name of the officer who killed George Floyd. “And they only prosecuted him,” continues Riley, “because these people”—the protesters—“threw a fit.” A white cop’s nine-minute knee on a Black man’s neck? “Somebody doing their job.” A Black cop’s split-second shot at a white woman leading a mob? “Assassination,” Riley agrees with another of the speakers today.

Such is the seesaw reality of January 6. “No cops were hurt,” Riley says. More than 150 were hurt. Five would die. Riley says it was a lovefest, J6ers and cops hugging it out after a friendly tussle. Delusion? No—his smirk bespeaks self-awareness. Disinformation? Too obvious. More like lucid dreaming: a deliberately surreal assault. I think of a Telegram message one of the Proud Boy organizers sent on January 6: “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today.” It wasn’t their own crimes that thrilled them, it was the prospect of drawing the many into their boogaloo vision. The city still stands. But in my mind—in the imagination of anyone who even now marvels at how close we came; how close we still are—it burns. The coup was a bust. The psyop? Victory.

Here, in Sacramento, the speaker at the podium, a former TV host named Jamie Allman—taken off the air of a St. Louis ABC affiliate after he tweeted his desire to “ram a hot poker up the ass” of a Parkland shooting survivor—declares January 6 “one of the most beautiful days I’ve seen in America.”

In the back of the crowd, protesters challenge patriots to define “Nazi.”

“We love America,” says one.

“If Ashli Babbitt were here,” continues Allman, “I guarantee you she’d be out there”—on the edge of the fighting—“talking to those people.”

“Scum!” a patriot screams at the protesters.

“Ashli Babbitt does not want you to be afraid,” Allman says, “ever again.” Present tense. Ashli Babbitt lives, in the hallucinatory. Allman says the patriots will return to Washington, to remember her. Ashli Babbitt dies, in perpetuity.

“I suffered,” says Riley. “But I didn’t pay the price Ashli did. I’m like the guy from 300. I lived to be able to tell her story.”

At the podium, Allman: “What her death does, when we compare it to Crispus Attucks, is—it calls for a revolution!”

“It calls.” The myth of history is calling the patriots. The “spirit of 1776” and 300, the 2006 CGI blood opera, 300 Spartan warriors’ battle against an overwhelming Persian horde until all but one Spartan falls. Attucks, the first man to die in one war, and the fictional Spartan warrior who was the only survivor of the latter, the source material of which is a comic book. Sacrifice stripped of history. “Trial by combat,” as Rudy Giuliani promised on January 6, hours before the mob made it real. “The first Patriot Martyr of the Second American Revolution,” an Oath Keeper posted before anyone knew who the martyr was, only that hers was the mythical victimhood of a white woman, killed by a Black man, they could now claim...

Keep reading.

What happened to Ashli Babbitt, and the official whitewashing after her death, is the most infuriating thing about January 6th.

Georgia Election Worker Shaye Moss, And Her Mother and Grandmother, Terrorized by Trump Followers After 2020 Election (VIDEO)

Citizens' fear from the repercussion of voting isn't a thing I've ever contemplated. I always thought the intimidation and violence of Southern Blacks was historical, like marchers being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama during the King Years.

It's cliche at this point to say American politics is ugly and vicious. I know personally from the left's lying, low-down attempts to cancel me, to get me fired ten years ago from my teaching position, that ideological hate drives political polarization. I was physically attacked when I covered the Hamas/International ANSWER demonstrations in Los Angeles. I finally quit reporting them, it got so bad. You get a target on your back.

But I've never been targeted at my home. I've never had to relocate to a safe house for months because of my politics and teaching. Imagine the nightmare that Shaye Moss and her family have been living since November 2020, when President Trump called her out by name during his efforts to overturn the Georgia election results. His words set off mobs of MAGA supporters on campaigns of terror. I want to continue loving President Trump for his time in office before the 2020 election. But everything that happened after that makes me sick. 

The more I see of it, of Trump's very own words, on audio and video, broken down and put in context, makes me hope that he's not the GOP nominee in 2024. Right now I favor Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and pray to God he wins and that the conservative movement can start over and rebuild under new leadership. 

There's too much hate in this country. Had not the "Big Lie" taken over Republican politics after the election, and had not January 6th not happened, I'd be the world's biggest supporter for Trump 2024. Now I just can't.

The story's at the New York Times, "‘There Is Nowhere I Feel Safe’: Election Officials Describe Threats Fueled by Trump":

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?’’ Ruby Freeman, a Black election worker from Georgia, told the Jan. 6 committee.

WASHINGTON — Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House, braced every weekend for hordes of Trump supporters, some with weapons, who swarmed his home and blared videos that called him a pedophile.

“We had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside,” he said. She died not long after, in late January 2021.

Gabriel Sterling, a top state election official in Georgia, recalled receiving an animated picture of a slowly twisting noose along with a note accusing him of treason. His boss, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, recounted that Trump supporters broke into his widowed daughter-in-law’s house and threatened his wife with sexual violence.

And Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two Black women who served as election workers during the pandemic in Georgia, suffered an onslaught of racist abuse and were driven into hiding after Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, lied that they had rigged the election against Mr. Trump.

“I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman said, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

Election official after election official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday in searing, emotional detail how Mr. Trump and his aides unleashed violent threats and vengeance on them for refusing to cave to his pressure to overturn the election in his favor.

The testimony showed how Mr. Trump and his aides encouraged his followers to target election officials in key states — even going so far as to post their personal cellphone numbers on Mr. Trump’s social media channels, which the committee cited as a particularly brutal effort by the president to cling to power....

Ms. Moss, who goes by Shaye, and her mother became the targets of Trump supporters after Mr. Giuliani falsely accused them in a Georgia State Senate hearing of passing around USB drives like “vials of heroin or cocaine” to steal the election from Mr. Trump.

What her mother actually handed her, Ms. Moss testified on Tuesday, was a ginger mint candy.

But Mr. Giuliani’s claim — later elevated by Mr. Trump himself, who referred to Ms. Moss by name more than a dozen times in a call with Mr. Raffensperger — tore across far-right circles of the internet. Soon after, the F.B.I. informed Ms. Freeman that it was no longer safe for her to stay at her house.

The urgency of that warning became clear after Trump supporters showed up at the door of Ms. Moss’s grandmother. They forced their way into her home, claiming they were there to make a citizen’s arrest of her granddaughter.

“This woman is my everything,” Ms. Moss testified about her grandmother. “I’ve never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life, and she called me screaming at the top of her lungs.”

While in hiding, Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman continued to face threats explicitly invoking their race, including a comment that Ms. Moss and her mother should “be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.”

“A lot of them were racist,” Ms. Moss said. “A lot of them were just hateful.”

Both women testified that nearly two years later, they were still haunted by the threat of violence. Ms. Moss recalled listening to the audio tape of Mr. Trump attacking her and her mother and immediately feeling “like it was all my fault.”

“I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job,” she testified, growing emotional. “And being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing not one election. I just felt like it was — it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, quietly responded from the dais.

Ms. Freeman testified that she no longer went to the grocery store, and felt nervous every time she gave her name — once proudly worn bedazzled on T-shirts — for food orders.

“There is nowhere I feel safe,” Ms. Freeman testified. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one.”

'Orange Man Bad!'

At the Other McCain, "‘Orange Man Bad!’ Trump Still Living Rent-Free in the Left’s Collective Head."

Quoting Glenn Reynolds, who quotes the article on the "Progressive Meltdown":

Woke white people are annoying, stupid, and frequently vicious. Fortunately they’re also usually self-destructive and incompetent. But ultimately, this is just Trump exercising a magical power to destroy his enemies via their own ideology:

Sooner or later, each interview for this story landed on the election of Trump in 2016 as a catalyst. Whatever internal tension had been pulling at the seams of organizations in the years prior, Trump’s shock victory sharpened the focus of activists and regular people alike. The institutional progressive world based in Washington, D.C., reacted slowly, shell-shocked and unsure of its place, but people outside those institutions raced ahead of them. A period of mourning turned into fierce determination to resist. Spontaneous women’s marches were called in scores of cities, drawing as many as 5 million people, a shocking display of force. (Their collapse in a heap of identitarian recriminations is its own parable for this moment.)

 

The January 6th Committee Is Pure Political Theater (VIDEO)

From Julie Kelly, at American Greatness, "January 6 for Non-Dummies":

During another public hearing on Monday, the January 6 select committee featured a witness so irrelevant that his appearance should prompt even the most ardent defender of Nancy Pelosi’s illegitimate inquisition to question the committee’s real purpose. Former Fox News talking head Chris Stirewalt, fired by the network shortly after the Capitol protest for calling the state of Arizona for Joe Biden early on election night, told his sob story to a presumably slim viewing audience.

The washed-up commentator, however, is the last person with any insight into the events of January 6, 2021. Stirewalt’s performance—similar to the overwrought speechifying by committee members last Thursday—is another headfake designed to turn attention away from the truth about what happened that day and in the months leading up to the brief disturbance that resulted in the deaths of four Trump supporters.

A well-oiled fog machine operated by the Department of Justice, congressional Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and the national news media is once again pumping lie after lie into the body politic in a last-gasp attempt to destroy Trump and the powerful political movement he created.

For nearly 18 months, American Greatness has covered this issue like no other outlet. So, as the committee continues its dog-and-pony show on Capitol Hill this month with an eye toward producing a long list of legislative “fixes,” the Justice Department inexorably moves to criminally charge Donald Trump for his alleged involvement, and the media takes another extended nap on its purported fact-checking duties, American Greatness here provides the definitive list of what people need to know about January 6, 2021, and related hype...

Keep reading.

 

GOP Primaries Test Limits of Trump's Influence (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "G.O.P. primary victories in Nevada set the stage for Trump-centered battles in the fall":

Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday elevated conservative candidates who have ardently embraced Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud, turning a key swing state into a contest this fall between embattled Democrats and Republicans who insist President Biden stole the 2020 election.

The victories in the Nevada primaries for Mr. Trump capped a series of elections on Tuesday that saw one South Carolina Republican lawmaker who had crossed Mr. Trump go down in defeat, another survive her Trump-backed challenge and a Hispanic Republican grab a South Texas House seat vacated by a Democrat.

Those results gave mixed signals about Mr. Trump’s continuing grip on the party even as the scrutiny of his actions following his 2020 defeat intensifies. At the same time, the elections on Tuesday suggested that Republicans remain on course for strong gains in November’s midterms.

By flipping the Rio Grande Valley seat of former Representative Filemon Vela in Texas, Mayra Flores became the first Republican to represent the majority-Hispanic district in the seat’s 10-year history, and she became the first Republican Latina the state has ever sent to Congress.

In the sheer number of tossup contests, few states will rival Nevada this fall. Republicans see chances to unseat a host of Democrats, including Gov. Steve Sisolak; Lt. Gov. Lisa Cano Burkhead; three Democratic members of the House; and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.

Among the Republicans who won their primaries Tuesday were Adam Laxalt, a Senate candidate and former Nevada attorney general who led Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, and Jim Marchant, a secretary of state candidate who has pressed conspiracy theories about voting machines and hopes to oversee the state’s 2024 election.

Election night on Tuesday started with the defeat in South Carolina of Representative Tom Rice by a Republican primary challenger endorsed by Mr. Trump, even as another South Carolina Republican, Representative Nancy Mace, survived.

Both Mr. Rice and Ms. Mace had crossed the former president as he struggled to maintain power after the Jan. 6 attack, which is now under the spotlight of congressional hearings. Mr. Rice, a staunch conservative in a conservative coastal district, was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the riot. Ms. Mace, in her first speech as a newly elected freshman, said Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the deadly mayhem, though she did not vote to impeach him.

In turn, Mr. Trump backed Katie Arrington, a former state lawmaker, to take on Ms. Mace and State Representative Russell Fry to challenge Mr. Rice. Mr. Trump, who turned 76 on Tuesday, called on South Carolina voters to deliver him “a beautiful, beautiful birthday present” — twin defeats of both Ms. Mace and Mr. Rice.

The South Carolina contests had their own dynamics — Mr. Rice was defiant and contemptuous of Mr. Trump to the end, while Ms. Mace tried hard to regain the good graces of Trump administration officials if not Mr. Trump himself. The outcomes of both races could hold deep meaning to the party as it considers whether to renominate the former president for another White House run.

“This took a little bit of time, but we are finally here,” Ms. Mace told those gathered for a victory party in Charleston, as she thanked Ms. Arrington for “stepping into the arena.” She added, “this is going to make our campaign even stronger in November.”

The elections on Tuesday represented something of a midpoint in a Republican primary season that has delivered decidedly mixed signals to party leadership. Mr. Trump has claimed some significant wins, propelling his chosen Senate candidates to primary victories, such as J.D. Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. However, his endorsed candidates have lost primary showdowns for governor in Georgia and Nebraska as well as a key secretary of state race in Georgia.

Still to come are contests that rank high on his vengeance list, such as Representative Liz Cheney’s primary in Wyoming on Aug. 16...

 

Photos Capture Election-Night Tension at White House as Trump Family, Aides Watch Lead Fade Away (VIDEO)

Watch, at ABC News, "They reflect what advisers told the Jan. 6 committee despite Trump's claims":

A series of photos taken on election night 2020 inside the Trump White House captures the tension as Trump's family and his top aides track election returns and see Trump's early lead fade away.

The photos, taken by a White House photographer and published exclusively in the book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," are a visual representation of the testimony of senior Trump advisers who told the House Jan. 6 committee that they did not believe Donald Trump should declare victory on election night.

The photos show Trump's family and campaign team camped out in the Map Room of the White House.

The room, located in the basement of the White House residence, is where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tracked the movement of Allied Forces during World War II.

It's called the Map Room because some of the maps used by FDR are framed and on the walls.

For election night, however, Trump's political team transformed the room in to a campaign war room, installing large-screen televisions and placing them over FDR's maps. 

The photos capture the apparently pained expressions on the faces of Trump's inner circle...

They're all at the link.

'Stop the Steal' Republicans Now Dominating State Legislators (VIDEO)

Wyoming's state Republican Party chairman isn't a particularly "stop the steal" guy, or at least not from what I read at the story from the other day, "W. Frank Eathorne Shakes Up the Wyoming Republican Party (VIDEO)."

But Eathorne's a Trump man through and through, and that goes for a lot of another state party political leaders as well (regardless of gender).

At the New York Times, "How Trump’s 2020 Election Lies Have Gripped State Legislatures":

LANSING, Mich. — At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times.

The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The Times’s analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.

357 lawmakers took concrete steps to discredit or overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. That amounts to 44 percent of the Republican lawmakers in those states.

23 percent took steps to delay the vote count or overturn the election by supporting lawsuits or by signing letters to Congress or former Vice President Mike Pence.

11 percent supported sending alternate slates of electors to Congress that would override the choices of voters in those states.

7 percent supported a legally dubious theory of “decertification” of the 2020 election, which legal experts say has no basis in U.S. election law.

24 percent of the Republican lawmakers voted for an outside, partisan review of the 2020 election (often referred to as an “audit”). The reviews have been used to justify new voting laws and efforts to decertify the 2020 election.

Legislators in Florida and North Carolina did not face as much pressure to overturn the election because Mr. Trump carried both states. In Nevada, Democrats control the Legislature, and though the state Republican Party pushed for alternate electors, no legislators took action...

Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.

In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.

The Times’s review provides only a glimpse of the ways that state legislatures fueled the movement to deny and challenge the 2020 results. The analysis focused on concrete actions and did not include lawmakers’ posts on social media or statements they made in campaign speeches.

Some legislators who were among the most vociferous in their support of subverting the election have tried to use their 2020 efforts as a springboard to higher office, all while still pledging to further remove democratic guardrails...

 

W. Frank Eathorne Shakes Up the Wyoming Republican Party (VIDEO)

I've been watching Amazon Prime's "Outer Range," where the setting is the wide-open Wyoming ranchland. If you haven't checked it out it's a pretty good Sci-Fi Western, and all of Season 1's eight episodes are available if you're a stream-binger.

I mention all this because I just came across this article at the Casper Star-Tribune, which really says a lot about politics in the Equality State, the least populated state in the U.S., and very Western. 

See, "Wyo GOP chairman quietly assumed power as party fractured":

A working rancher with a reputation as a soft-spoken charmer, [W. Frank] Eathorne’s journey to political power has not been without controversy: He had a short, questionable career as a Worland police officer, worked as a Terminix pest exterminator in northwest Wyoming and served as a parole officer in south Texas. He returned to Wyoming in 1999 to take over the family ranch and for a period accepted federal agricultural subsidies. Now, he sits at the top of a party that’s been described as both dominant and dysfunctional while emerging as the tip of the spear in Donald Trump’s furious drive to unseat perhaps his greatest political opponent: incumbent Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

First-name basis

After Cheney voted to impeach Trump in January 2021, Eathorne helped to orchestrate Cheney’s censure by the state GOP central committee. The move seemed to catch Trump’s attention. After the censure vote, they were on a first-name basis.

“Frank has censured the incompetent Liz Cheney!” Trump announced in an April 2021 statement. “Frank has my complete and total endorsement for his reelection. He will never let you down!”

Since then, Eathorne has solidified his position at the helm of the state party and with Trump.

When the former president decided to appear in Casper at an upcoming Memorial Day weekend rally for Cheney opponent Harriet Hageman, Eathorne said Trump called him personally with the news. Eathorne, a longtime Hageman friend and party ally, then informed the state central committee.

Multiple people said the understanding amongst Wyoming politicos is that Eathorne revels in rubbing shoulders with Trump and Washington elites.

[Former State House Speaker Tom] Lubnau said as much.

“I heard somebody say, and I can’t remember who, that Frank just likes going to those Washington, D.C. parties and wearing cowboy hat and hobnobbing with the elite.”

Although state statute dictates that party leadership not take sides before the August Republican primary, Eathorne has arguably helped Hageman’s campaign by leading successful — although largely symbolic — state and national efforts to censure Cheney and expel her from the party.

In his most recent push, at the February Republican National Committee meeting in Salt Lake City, Eathorne authored a resolution — which national delegates overwhelmingly approved — to censure Cheney and Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger and “cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior.”

Before she announced her campaign for Congress, Hageman had worked closely with Eathorne in party leadership. She and Eathorne toured historic sites together in Washington, D.C. when they attended national meetings.

“Frank has been a strong leader for the Wyoming Republican Party,” Hageman said in a statement for this story. “He recognizes that his role is to implement the agenda of the grassroots, and that is what he has done. He adheres to the GOP Platform and has represented our state well while serving on the RNC.”

Tent size

But through these efforts, Eathorne has also emerged as a polarizing figure in the GOP.

Eathorne has said as much himself: “In Wyoming, we don’t necessarily embrace the idea of a big tent,” he said on Fox News earlier this year.

The “big tent” approach has been one of the cornerstones of the nation’s Republicanism, espoused by Ronald Reagan as far back as 1967. “Twenty years ago, the state party convention had a ‘big tent’ Republican atmosphere where you had social conservative Republicans, libertarian Republicans or Rotary Club Republicans who had a unified front pulling together to get Republicans elected,” said Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs.

Few in Wyoming have a more established Republican Party pedigree than Casper oilman Diemer True, who served two terms as state chairman and in both the Wyoming House and Senate. He contends Eathorne’s small-tent approach is a divisive force that has alienated major segments of the party, especially in the population centers of Laramie, Natrona and Campbell counties.

“Frank has failed in a colossal way,” True said. “He is probably the worst chairman that I’ve ever seen in my 50-plus years of being involved in Republican politics. His is absolutely a failed leadership.”

True’s concern centers on Eathorne’s hard-line, “purist” approach to state politics, in which longtime loyal party members are labeled RINOS — Republicans in Name Only — because they disagree with Eathorne and other current party leaders.

“This Republican purity is a good way to become the Republican minority,” True said.

Mary Martin, chairman of the Teton County Republicans, likes Eathorne personally, she said, describing him as amiable and “well mannered.” Like Eathorne, she is upset with Cheney’s criticism of Trump and Cheney’s insistence that the former president is responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

“My disappointment in Frank is that he hasn’t been able to come up with a process to keep the Republican Party with more of a big-tent approach,” she said. “We have a couple of people who come to the Wyoming party meetings who are absolute bullies.”

In addition to Lubnau’s publicized exit, Doug Chamberlain, a former member of party leadership, specifically put his departure from the party on Eathorne.

“Your leadership in regards to how you treat me has ‘crossed the line I have personally drawn’, beyond which I will not allow myself to be treated,” Chamberlain wrote in a September 2020 letter that was marked confidential but eventually leaked. “As a result of these various incidents and issues I will no longer offer my volunteer services as ‘Acting Parliamentarian’ and ‘Acting Treasurer.’

“Thank you for the opportunity to serve you and the WRP. It has been enjoyable and rewarding until recently,” he concluded.

April Poley is campaign coordinator for state Sen. Anthony Bouchard’s, R-Cheyenne, House run against Cheney and a former member of state GOP leadership under Eathorne. When she told state party leadership that she was backing Bouchard, she was “instantly” removed from the group text chat used by elected leaders of the party.

“It was like I was excommunicated from a church,” Poley said.

Poley hasn’t been the only party operative to find themselves on the outside looking in.

“Twenty years ago you’d have more than 400 delegates to the state convention, whereas this last Saturday [May 7] you had 285 delegates to the convention,” Stith said.

At the same time, the Wyoming Republican Party’s focus on purity has coincided with some significant legislative victories. Conservative lawmakers sought for years to pass a Voter ID law in Wyoming. The effort finally succeeded last year. Prior to the 2021 session, the Wyoming Legislature had only passed two abortion-related bills in 30 years, according to an analysis by the nonprofit news site The 19th. Since then, it has passed three including a so-called “trigger bill,” that will eliminate nearly all abortions in the state if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which appears likely.

Eathorne’s most avid supporters in the party view him as a galvanizing force who is willing to stand up against what they view as assaults from the left and failures to deliver from establishment Republicans. One of Eathorne’s staunchest backers is Karl Allred, the Uinta County GOP chairman who first rose to prominence in Wyoming for suing then-Gov. Matt Mead over renovations at the Wyoming Capitol.

Allred believes that if a person identifies as Republican but can’t agree with at least 80% of the state party’s platform, “you oughta look somewhere else.” He sees many of the Republican members of the Legislature as “Democrats that are now in the Republican Party.”

Still, Eathorne’s grip on the party doesn’t always translate to legislative success. Even with vocal support from Trump and conservative Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, for example, the Eathorne wing of the party failed in several attempts to block “crossover” voting in the state primary that allows voters to change their party affiliation at the polling place. Hageman supporters contend the practice could benefit Cheney. Similarly, GOP party leaders went into a special legislative session — which Eathorne personally pressed for in a letter to legislative leadership — with an ambitious set of 21 bills opposing federal vaccine mandates but were able to pass only one relatively meek measure limiting federal enforcement.

The most recent example of party tensions came during the May state GOP convention, when most members of the Laramie County delegation were refused seats over a rules violation. Earlier, most of the delegates of Natrona County had been excluded because of a dispute over party dues.

Both counties have clashed with party leadership, leading some observers to question whether the rule violations were really an excuse to punish those who, in the eyes of the party, hadn’t toed the line.

When rule violations by other — albeit smaller — counties were brought to light, the party declined to take similar actions, even going so far as to remove a rule from the bylaws that smaller counties had violated...

Keep reading.  

Twitter, the Supreme Court, the Progressive Revolution

From Caroline Glick, at the Jewish News Syndicate, "As long as revolutionary progressives maintain their control over key U.S. national institutions, Republican election victories will be insufficient to save the U.S. and restore liberty to its citizens":

May 8, 2022 / JNS) America is in the throes of a revolution. As historian Victor Davis Hanson has noted, progressives now control nearly every national institution. They control Wall Street, Silicon Valley, universities, local school boards, the teachers’ unions, the entertainment industry, the vast majority of the media, the Justice Department, the FBI and the U.S. military, and currently, the White House and both houses of Congress.

Progressives use their control over these institutions to change both the character of the United States and the rules of the game in a manner that will enable them to perpetuate their power regardless of the sentiments of the American people.

Progressives are rewriting American history. They are taking aim at God and believers, and at the nuclear family, while indoctrinating children against their families and their country. There is no area of human endeavor that progressives have not politicized.

One of the last national institutions where the conservatives hold sway is the Supreme Court. And last Monday, the Supreme Court came under a malicious assault whose clear goal is to subvert its independence. In a move without precedent in U.S. history, Politico published a draft Supreme Court decision written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito is a member of the Court’s conservative majority.

Today’s Supreme Court comprises five conservatives, one centrist and three progressives. Alito’s draft explained why the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which removed the power of states to determine the legality of pregnancy termination, making abortions legal nationwide, was unconstitutional and overturned it. If Alito’s decision, which is supported by his fellow conservative justices, becomes final, the power to determine the legality of pregnancy termination will devolve back to the individual states.

Second, the leaker sought to incite righteous rage among progressives, that will pressure the two remaining moderates in the Democratic majority in the Senate to vote to abrogate the Senate filibuster. By preventing Republicans from using the filibuster, the razor-thin Democrat majority will be able to ram through radical legislation ahead of their expected losses in the congressional elections in November.

Among other things, unfettered by the filibuster, progressives will be able to expand the number of justices on the Court from nine to 15. And if they move fast enough, President Joe Biden will be able to pack the court with an additional six progressive justices and thus effectively seize permanent control of the high court.

As for those elections, all major polls foresee progressives suffering crushing, historic defeats in both houses. Until Obama’s presidency, when progressives seized control of the Democrat Party, polls like the current ones would have compelled the Democrats to abandon their progressive policies and make a ninety-degree turn to the center. But today, every demonstration of public opposition to progressive policies convinces progressive revolutionaries to double down. When last year parents began protesting anti-American, racist and increasingly pornographic indoctrination of their children in K-12 schools, Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed the FBI to treat protesting parents like “domestic terrorists.”

Progressive-controlled state and local governments have responded to public outcries against skyrocketing crime rates by passing laws banning pre-trial detention and bail, sending violent criminals back on the streets.

In every sphere of public endeavor, progressive politicians, bureaucrats and activists have met public opposition and protest with tyranny and rebuke.

One of the main weapons in the progressive arsenal is disinformation—the deliberate distortion of information to advance an agenda...

This disinformation campaign brings us to Twitter, the social media platform purchased last month by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Over the past decade, Twitter became the social media network with the largest influence on the public discourse. No self-respecting journalist, activist or policymaker can afford not to have an active account.

Twenty years ago, the internet and the social media platforms it generated became the largest free market of ideas in human history. They were also the engine for political victories for conservative politicians in the United States. For the first time, the internet gave conservative candidates the ability to communicate directly with voters, without the mediation of liberal/progressive media behemoths. All of this began to change during Obama’s presidency, as more and more conservative voices suffered a spectrum of sanctions, from shadow bans, which blocked their audience from seeing what they were posting, to banishment from Facebook and other social media platforms.

The process accelerated and became more extreme in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Trump’s victory was a grave embarrassment for the Silicon Valley oligarchs. Clinton blamed them for her loss. Her basic claim was that had Facebook, Twitter and Google not permitted the Trump campaign more or less the same use of their platforms as they ostensibly offer everyone, Trump would not have won. As Clinton and her supporters put it, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and their colleagues were supposed to prevent Trump and his supporters from “disseminating disinformation,” that is, campaign materials, on their platforms. Freedom of expression, Clinton and her supporters insisted, wasn’t for everyone.

Chastened, to prevent Trump’s reelection in 2020, Zuckerberg donated $340 million to election non-profit groups he founded for the purpose of increasing Democrat vote numbers in key swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia. At the same time, Facebook and Twitter initiated a censorship campaign against Trump and his supporters the likes of which no one had ever experienced.

That censorship campaign reached its height weeks before the election, when the New York Post published the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. President Joe Biden’s son, a crack addict, had abandoned his laptop in a repair shop in Delaware. After his efforts to return the laptop were unsuccessful, the owner of the store turned its contents over to the FBI because the computer contained evidence that Biden and his family may have committed several felonies.

At a minimum, the contents of the laptop exposed that Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from foreign firms with direct ties to the Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian governments. Hunter Biden seemed to implicate his father in the influence-peddling operations in several of his emails.

The Post story was explosive because it was entirely true. It was Hunter Biden’s laptop. All the details of the deals were authentic. They exposed a web of influence peddling with hostile governments that made clear that Biden and his family were ripe for extortion by those governments. Yet, rather than allow their platforms to be used to inform the American people of this information, Twitter led the way in preventing the public from hearing about it. Twitter de-platformed the New York Post and private users who dared to link to the story. Facebook followed suit. Fifty retired U.S. intelligence and security chiefs proclaimed the story was “Russian disinformation.”

It took a year for the New York Times and Washington Post to admit that the laptop was indeed Hunter Biden’s laptop and that the New York Post stories were entirely true. In the meantime, in the name of fighting “disinformation,” Twitter, Facebook, Google and other internet giants had denied the American people access to information that, as post-election polls made clear, would have swung the election in Trump’s favor.

Since its first days in office, the Biden administration has openly pressured technology giants to increase their censorship and block conservative voices, claiming that such silencing and suppression is necessary to fight racism and fake news...