Monday, July 26, 2021

Why Violence in South Africa?

Following-up, "South Africa Violence (VIDEO)."

A damned astonishing situation down there. 

At the Guardian U.K.:



Patricia Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights

Patricia Williams, Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor.




New Vehicles for Disinformation Spread Unreality Online

A very interesting piece.

At NYT, "Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming":

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal. A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.

They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.

“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”

Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India’s ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela.

Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.

In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country.

A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.

Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer.

Job postings and employee LinkedIn profiles associated with Fazze describe it as a subsidiary of a Moscow-based company called Adnow. Some Fazze web domains are registered as owned by Adnow, as first reported by the German outlets Netzpolitik and ARD Kontraste. Third-party reviews portray Adnow as a struggling ad service provider.

European officials say they are investigating who hired Adnow. Sections of Fazze’s anti-Pfizer talking points resemble promotional materials for Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.

For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments.

The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years.

An Open Frontier

The trend emerged after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, experts say. Cambridge, a political consulting firm linked to members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was found to have harvested data on millions of Facebook users.

The controversy drew attention to methods common among social media marketers. Cambridge used its data to target hyper-specific audiences with tailored messages. It tested what resonated by tracking likes and shares.

The episode taught a generation of consultants and opportunists that there was big money in social media marketing for political causes, all disguised as organic activity.

Some newcomers eventually reached the same conclusion as Russian operatives had in 2016: Disinformation performs especially well on social platforms.

At the same time, backlash to Russia’s influence-peddling appeared to have left governments wary of being caught — while also demonstrating the power of such operations.

“There is, unfortunately, a huge market demand for disinformation,” Mr. Brookie said, “and a lot of places across the ecosystem that are more than willing to fill that demand.”

Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services.

Last summer, Facebook removed a network of Bolivian citizen groups and journalistic fact-checking organizations. It said the pages, which had promoted falsehoods supporting the country’s right-wing government, were fake.

Stanford University researchers traced the content to CLS Strategies, a Washington-based communications firm that had registered as a consultant with the Bolivian government. The firm had done similar work in Venezuela and Mexico.

A spokesman referred to the company’s statement last year saying its regional chief had been placed on leave but disputed Facebook’s accusation that the work qualified as foreign interference...

Still more. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

At Amazon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.




Toyota Bet on Hydrogen Power. Now It's Fallen Desperately Behind

A very interesting and informative piece.

There's a bit of muh for me though. 

I haven't driven a Toyota since the mid-1980s, when I drove a maroon little Toyota pickup. Once that thing wore out, my wife and switched to Honda, and we only recently switched makes: My wife now drives a KIA, and I'm cruising all cool and macho (and old) in my Dodge Challenger. *Wink.*

At NYT, "Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now Critics Say It Works to Delay Them":

The Toyota Prius hybrid was a milestone in the history of clean cars, attracting millions of buyers worldwide who could do their part for the environment while saving money on gasoline.

But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, has quietly become the industry’s strongest voice opposing an all-out transition to electric vehicles — which proponents say is critical to fighting climate change.

Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota’s opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks.

Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells — a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries — with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company’s market share and bottom line.

The recent push in Washington follows Toyota’s worldwide efforts — in markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia — to oppose stricter car emissions standards or fight electric vehicle mandates. For example, executives at Toyota’s Indian subsidiary publicly criticized India’s target for 100 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030, saying it was not practical.

Together with other automakers, Toyota also sided with the Trump administration in a battle with California over the Clean Air Act and sued Mexico over fuel efficiency rules. In Japan, Toyota officials argued against carbon taxes.

“Toyota has gone from a leading position to an industry laggard” in clean-car policy even as other automakers push ahead with ambitious electric vehicle plans, said Danny Magill, an analyst at InfluenceMap, a London-based think tank that tracks corporate climate lobbying. InfluenceMap gives Toyota a “D-” grade, the worst among automakers, saying it exerts policy influence to undermine public climate goals.

In statements, Toyota said that it was in no way opposed to electric vehicles. “We agree and embrace the fact that all-electric vehicles are the future,” Eric Booth, a Toyota spokesman, said. But Toyota thinks that “too little attention is being paid to what happens between today, when 98 percent of the cars and trucks sold are powered at least in part by gasoline, and that fully electrified future,” he said.

Until then, Mr. Booth said, it makes sense for Toyota to lean on its existing hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles to reduce emissions. Hydrogen fuel cell technology should also play a role. And any efficiency standards should “be informed by what technology can realistically deliver and help keep vehicles affordable,” the company said in a statement. Last year in the United States, a group of leading automakers reached a compromise on tailpipe emissions standards with California, which sought to impose tougher emissions standards than the Trump administration wanted. Toyota didn’t join that compromise agreement.

More recently, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry lobby group, argued in closed-door meetings in Washington that the California compromise, which is expected to be a model for new standards from the Biden administration, is in fact not feasible for all of its members, according to two of the people with direct knowledge of the discussions. The chairman of the alliance is Mr. Reynolds, the Toyota executive.

The Biden administration wants to use tougher emissions rules to rapidly increase sales of electric vehicles. Congress could also approve billions of dollars for construction of charging stations as well as tax incentives for electric cars and trucks.

 

The Year of the Woke Revolution

It's Lee Siegel, at City Journal, "Year Zero: The roots of the woke revolution":

On the day in March that eight people were murdered in a massage parlor in Atlanta, six of them Asian-American, a Cherokee County, Georgia, police captain gave a media briefing after the alleged murderer was caught. He described the suspect’s motivation as follows: “He was pretty much fed up, and at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

Indignation erupted. How, people cried, could the police captain attribute the murders to someone merely having a bad day? Having determined that the crime was motivated by anti-Asian hatred, the Internet furies concluded that the captain had spoken callously because of his own anti-Asian bias.

Leave aside that anyone who had seen a police movie could recognize as tough-guy talk the captain’s seemingly casual description of an unspeakable act. And never mind that just a few weeks later, President Biden described the slaughter of eight people in a FedEx facility not as a human tragedy but as a “national embarrassment,” as if it had been a messily disputed election. Consider instead what the policeman’s critics cared about. Imagine that the captain had appeared before the media and had said that he believed that the suspect was motivated by anti-Asian hatred and that this hate was the true virus ravaging us all. Would he have been lauded? Yes. But what if he gave this briefing while the suspect remained at large, giving him time to flee? In reality, the entire Atlanta police department was on the scene almost immediately. The suspect was caught shortly after the shootings, before he could harm anyone else. Even if the police captain had been insensitive, why should this matter more than his and his officers’ actions?

Words are crumbling under the weight of moral one-upmanship. One cannot, for example, call both Hitler and Donald Trump “fascists” without the term losing its meaning. But for four years, an imminent fascist revolution sponsored by the Trump movement was a liberal obsession. (Hard to make a fascist revolution, though, without having the military on your side, and Trump spent four years insulting both the military and the state’s intelligence apparatus.) Nor does the term “systemic racism” mean anything if it describes both the structure of apartheid in South Africa and slavery in the antebellum American South and the circumstances we live in today. Apartheid South Africa was systemically racist. Georgia in 1860 was systemically racist. But the New York suburb where I live—Montclair, New Jersey—has a black mayor who succeeded another black mayor; a black superintendent of schools; a black assistant superintendent of schools; several black school principals; a black deputy chief of police; a self-conscious enclave of wealthy black bankers and black lawyers; and accomplished black residents, from a world-famous jazz bassist to a former head of Homeland Security. Montclair is more racially, socially, and economically diverse than any neighborhood in New York City. Yet cries of Montclair’s systemic racism have now swept the town, as well as its public school curricula.... 
... We are now living in a new golden age of American racism. So long as you talk the proverbial talk—and, if you really need extra cover, make the obligatory accusations and issue the compulsory condemnations—you can actually indulge racist impulses. You can inveigh against racism at your local school board meeting and then, a year or two later, quietly move your children into the whitest private school you can find. You can fawn so fulsomely over your white daughter’s black friend that the friend will never return to your house. You can be so excessively polite yet calculatedly distant with black people that you will ensure that none will enter your life. If you are a Coca-Cola executive, you can declaim against the new Georgia voting laws, even as you market your product extra-aggressively in poor black neighborhoods, where the obesity and diabetes caused in part by regular soda consumption has by now afflicted generations of black children. Maybe the hope among Coca-Cola executives is that, thanks to the new rhetoric of morally superior denunciation, you can start addicting liberal white kids in the suburbs, too: “Woke Goes Better with Coke.” And why not? Apple tells me that in order to “protect the environment,” it will no longer include a power adapter and earphones at no extra charge with its new phones. However, Apple will gladly sell them to me.

Excellent piece (emphasis added).

Keep reading.


Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved

At Amazon, Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice.




Detroit Residents Far More Worried About Public Safety Than Police Reform (Which is Really Defunding the Police)

The ratio's 9:1 in favor of public safety.

And don't forget, Detroit's population is almost 80 percent black. Folks up there obviously think crime's a major problem.

At USA Today, "Exclusive poll finds Detroit residents far more worried about public safety than police reform."


Anti-Racism at Berkeley and UCLA

The "big lie" of university admissions --- and it's hurting the life chances of black and brown students.

Here's John McWhorter, on Substack:





In Rhode Island, Parents Push Back Against Critical Race Theory (VIDEO)

It's a grassroots revolt.

At Legal Insurrection:



Border Patrol's Mission Evolves

On Twitter, Bill Melugin below, who's been at the border for a few days, recording first handout the scale of the crisis. (Scroll down his feed for lots of videos.)

At LAT, "Why Border Patrol is doing more to rescue and identify missing migrants":


FALFURRIAS, Texas — A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent scrutinized video of a dying migrant on her cellphone, trying to match the background to the ranch she was searching for his body last month.

“Can I see the picture real quick, the background?” another agent asked.

Agent Nancy Balogh held out her phone. In the two minutes of video, 25-year-old Yoel Nieto Valladares lay on the sandy ground, shirtless and sweating, jeans cinched with a rectangular metal belt buckle. Nieto was barely able to sip from a Coke as another man fanned him with a black cap. The dying man’s hands twitched, a tattoo of his father and younger brother’s initials visible on his arm. His eyes rolled.

“How do you feel, guy? Hey, how do you feel?” the man filming asked, panning to show a dozen others dressed all in black, the color favored by smugglers working at night.

Nieto shushed him, smiling.

“This is bad, he’s delirious,” said the man filming.

The dying man groaned.

Moments later, in a second minute-long video, Nieto’s black polo shirt was on and his arms lay atop it, limp. His eyes were open, staring.

A smuggler had sent the videos to Nieto’s family with GPS coordinates. “I really hope we find him,” Balogh said.

Several years ago, the U.S. Border Patrol launched a Missing Migrant Program in Arizona — though the agency’s primary mission remained apprehending migrants — that has since expanded border-wide. Their relationship with migrant advocates had grown strained. In recent years, the Border Patrol had even helped prosecute some who left water and other supplies for migrants in the desert.

But the agency’s approach has now evolved amid an increase in migration and deaths.

Brooks County — about 75 miles north of the Rio Grande Valley — has become the Border Patrol’s laboratory, a place to test approaches they’re already extending across the border. A three-person missing-migrant team trained in forensics is working with an intelligence officer to help identify migrant remains.

The agency also added equipment and technology to help locate stranded migrants faster. It installed more than 1,400 rescue signs across the region labeled with GPS coordinates. Agents obtained GPS coordinates for more than 22,000 landmarks that can be referenced during a migrant’s 911 call — from power poles to windmills, pipelines and cattle guards. And they positioned 30 mobile, solar-powered rescue beacons in remote areas with little to no cellphone reception. The beacons are equipped with cameras that have already led to the rescue of a migrant.

By summer’s end, the beacons will alert agents’ cellphones directly. By year’s end, they plan to have 170 beacons nationwide, which can be used to rescue migrants and investigate, Supervisory Agent Brandon Copp said.

Despite the summer heat, which usually decreases migration, the number of migrants arriving at the border last month — 188,829 — was the largest in years. The busiest area for crossings was south Texas, where agents earlier this month stopped 736 migrants in three groups near the Rio Grande. As of last month, they had helped recover more than 324 migrant remains and conducted 9,201 rescues nationwide, 81% more than all of last year.

“If we get facial recognition of a guide, we can tie them to that migrant’s death,” Copp said.

Like many of Texas’s 254 counties, Brooks — population 7,100 — doesn’t have a medical examiner. Death investigations are handled by justices of the peace unless the county pays an outside expert. Local funeral homes historically cut corners burying migrant dead. Researchers investigating unmarked migrant graves at a local cemetery in recent years found multiple migrant bodies buried together, some in plastic bags and milk crates. They had to exhume and catalog DNA in international databases to help identify them.

Now the sheriff’s office is working with the Border Patrol to more quickly identify and release migrant remains without sending them for autopsies or DNA testing, which can be expensive and time-consuming. The sheriff just got a secondhand refrigerated trailer on loan from the state funeral home association, used for COVID dead during the pandemic. Deputies and Border Patrol agents now store unidentified bodies there as they investigate.

Because of changes in county ordinances, some of the Border Patrol agents in south Texas, El Paso and Tucson have trained to photograph dead migrants’ fingerprints to help consulates identify them. They also learned to recover fingerprints from bodies that have decayed or been submerged in water...

Still more


J.Lo Celebrates No. 52

Honestly, she doesn't look a day over thirty. 

She certainly celebrates in style, in any case. On Twitter (scroll through her feed for more).

See, "Inside J.Lo’s 52nd Birthday French Yacht Celebration."

Also, Bella Thorne and Abella Danger.

And at the Hostages, "Big Boob Friday: NSFW."




Sunday, July 25, 2021

Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson

This links to the paperback book, of which I own a copy. 

It's bit expensive, though (to say the least), so perhaps click on the hard-copy version, which is selling for as low as $3.51.

At Amazon, Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson.




Judge Jeanine Slams Extremist Left's Attack on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (VIDEO)

I used to post Judge Jeanine's opening monologues quite often.

She's a real treasure (and doesn't take any crap). 

At Fox News:



San Francisco Considers 'Congestion Tax' on 'High Earning' Drivers

This is a total scam.

As if Frisco couldn’t drive out residents any faster. *Eye-roll.*

At Fox Business, "San Francisco considering congestion tax on high-earning drivers: The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying the prospect of congestion fees."


'I Love You More Today Than Yesterday'

Here's Spiral Staircase:



Herschel Walker's Prospective Senate Campaign May Be Hampered by Alleged Past Incidents of Threatening Behavior

At Business Insider, "As Herschel Walker eyes Senate run, a turbulent past emerges."


Trump Rallies His Base with Endorsements Ahead of 2022 Midterms

Following-up, "Trump Endorsements Reshape Republican Party (VIDEO)."

This woman fears Trump will rally his base and primary her for 2022, and she's not stupid, putting her finger to the wind.

At the New York Times, "Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted":

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace had just delivered the kind of red-meat remarks that would ordinarily thrill the Republican voters in attendance here on a recent sweltering evening, casually comparing liberal Democrats to terrorists — the “Hamas squad,” she called them — and railing against their “socialist” spending plans.

But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.

“I didn’t like that she back-stabbed Trump,” Ms. Brockbank said. “We have to realize that she got in because of Trump. Even if you do have something against your leaders, keep them to yourself.”

Ms. Brockbank was referring to Ms. Mace’s first weeks in office immediately after the Jan. 6 riot, as the stench of tear gas lingered in the halls of the Capitol and some top Republicans were quietly weighing a break with President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Mace, a freshman congresswoman, placed herself at the forefront of a group of Republicans denouncing Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election that had fueled the assault and appeared to be establishing herself as a compelling new voice urging her party to change its ways.

But these days, as Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they have no intention of turning against Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace has quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold. Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to “stop fighting with each other in public.”

After setting herself apart from her party during her first week in office by opposing its effort to overturn President Biden’s victory, Ms. Mace has swung back into line. She joined the vast majority of Republicans in voting to oust Representative Liz Cheney from leadership for denouncing Mr. Trump and his election lies. She also voted against forming an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot.

And rather than continuing to challenge party orthodoxy, Ms. Mace has leaned in to the most combative Republican talking points, castigating Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top health official who is a favorite boogeyman of the right, accusing Democrats of forcing critical race theory on children, and publicly feuding with progressives.

Her pivot helps explain why the Republican Party’s embrace of Mr. Trump and his brand of politics is more absolute than ever. It is not only the small but vocal group of hard-right loyalists of the former president who are driving the alliance, but also the scores of rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him, as Ms. Mace has — who have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge him.

“She’s a little bit like a new sailor; she tried to get her sea legs, but she’s also looking out over the horizon, and what she saw was a storm coming in from the right,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist in South Carolina. “So she immediately started paddling in another direction. The problem is, is that everything you say and do, there’s a record of it.”

Ms. Mace declined through a spokeswoman to be made available for an interview, but said in a statement that “you can be conservative and you can be a Republican and be pissed off and vocal about what happened on Jan. 6.” (Ms. Mace’s most recent statements regarding the Capitol attack have been explanations of why she opposed commissions to investigate it.)

“You can agree with Donald Trump’s policies and be pissed off about what happened on Jan. 6,” Ms. Mace said. “You can think Pelosi is putting on a sideshow with the Jan. 6 commission and still be pissed off about Jan. 6. These things are not mutually exclusive.”

Ms. Mace is facing a particularly difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston, which she won narrowly last year when she defeated Joe Cunningham, a Democrat. Her immediate problem is regaining the trust of the rock-ribbed conservatives who make up her base. It is all the more pressing because political observers expect Republicans to try to redraw Ms. Mace’s district to become more conservative, and possible primary challengers still have a year to decide whether to throw their hats in the ring.

Her predicament bubbled below the surface on a recent evening here at a pork-themed “End Washington Waste” reception overlooking the Charleston Harbor and the docked Yorktown, a decommissioned Navy aircraft carrier. Voters signed the hocks of a paper pig urging Democrats to cut extraneous spending from the infrastructure bill and exchanged printed-out “Biden bucks” for cocktails, as some reflected on Ms. Mace’s balancing act...

Still more.

 

Trump Endorsements Reshape Republican Party (VIDEO)

Remember Michael Wolff had an essay up at the New York Times the other day, "Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024."

At the video, Trump's rally in Phoenix yesterday

He'll be traveling the country holding "Stop the Steal" rallies like this right up to next year's midterm elections.

More, at the Los Angeles Times, "Mar-a-Lago primary: Trump wields power with endorsements, but some in GOP fear midterm damage":


WASHINGTON — Former President Trump, again upending American political norms, is moving to remake Congress and the Republican Party in his own image.

Since leaving the White House, he has issued a spate of endorsements of House and Senate candidates for next year’s crucial midterm election, including an array of political outsiders, conspiracy theorists and others who — like Trump himself — break the traditional mold.

While most former presidents have steered clear of politics, Trump is intervening in Republican primaries like an old-style ward boss: rewarding allies, punishing enemies and trying to use his vast popularity among Republican voters to keep himself and his agenda at the center of the GOP.

Targeting one of his most prominent Republican critics, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Trump plans to meet this week at his New Jersey golf club with Wyoming Republicans who are running against her. His goal: to endorse one, clear the field of others and set up a head-to-head contest.

But Trump’s heavy hand in GOP primaries carries risks for his party. Some Republicans fear that some of his endorsements — those based not on electability but on candidates’ loyalty to him and his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen — could make it harder for the party to win in swing states.

“If we as Republicans continue to relitigate a past lost election, we will not position ourselves to win in the midterms,” said John Watson, former Georgia Republican Party chairman. “We have the issues on our side if we will just get out of our own way.”

A former NFL star Trump is promoting for a potential Senate run in Georgia — Herschel Walker — is beloved in the state where he started his career as a Heisman Trophy winner. But he is an untested political novice, and it’s been decades since he lived in Georgia.

In North Carolina, Trump is backing Rep. Ted Budd to replace the state’s retiring Republican senator. Budd, a gun store owner, is an ardent defender of the former president but has trailed in early polling and fundraising.

In Arizona, many Republicans believe Gov. Doug Ducey would be the best candidate against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. But Ducey, who has been pummeled by Trump for not doing more to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, has said he won’t run.

Trump derided him on Ducey’s own turf Saturday, recalling in a Phoenix speech his reaction to Ducey’s possible candidacy. Trump said he was asked, “Sir, would you like him to run for the Senate?” and replied, “He’s not getting my endorsement, I can tell you.”

Trump allies argue that the party would face far graver political problems if he were not so engaged. Many see him as essential to motivating GOP voters in 2022’s high-stakes election, especially since turnout usually drops in midterms.

“This is largely going to be a turnout-based election. If the candidate is Trumpy, that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said a person familiar with the former president’s thinking. “The wishy-washy vanilla candidate is going to be problematic in a race that is really all about energy and turnout and excitement.”

The aggressive endorsement strategy also is a gamble for Trump himself: If his candidates lose, he may end up looking like a paper tiger...

More.

 

Democrats Are Bankrupting America (VIDEO)

Wyoming Senator John Barraso: