Sorry for the delay of a few days. There are so many flagrant misuses of historical evidence in Slaughter and Cook, so little time. I decided to spend more time chasing down the new misuses, instead of repeating the same fact-checks of the old myths I’ve already identified and published elsewhere. I had strong suspicions that Chief Justice Roberts had misused the Papers of Jefferson and Madison, and those sources took longer to track down.

It turns out I was right.

For context, this fact-check picks up from my last fact-check: Hamilton’s Federalist No. 77 applied a symmetry rule: removal follows appointment, and thus, the Senate is necessary to remove (“displace”); and in case anyone (e.g., Chief Justice Roberts) might suggest that Hamilton meant otherwise, Hamilton himself clarified that he meant the plain meaning in 1789 — and the record suggests that his audience (the First Congress) shared that same understanding of Federalist No. 77. This symmetry rule returns here, because Chief Justice Roberts again misunderstood and misapplied it by relying on Jefferson’s 1780 Note.

Here is an “Executive” Summary, so to speak, on Jefferson’s 1780 Note:

1) The context of Jefferson’s Note: Its primary context was a military question during the Revolution, with a special focus on Gen. Charles Lee, who had been court martialed. As soon as Jefferson turned to civilian offices, he emphasized a mix of rules, including limits on any kind of removal. 

2) Jefferson explicitly recognized officers who “have freehold” hold their offices “during good behavior,” including “Judges—Register Clerks—Attorney General” as examples, and added that the Treasurer under the Articles of Confederation was removable by the legisture, not the executive. These are not just examples against executive removability at pleasure; these are examples in which there is no executive removal power at all –contradicting Roberts’s interpretation in Slaughter and confirming my research (e.g., as Justice Sotomayor cited in her dissent, “Indecisions of 1789,” “Venality,” and “Quasi-Judicial: A History and Tradition” (co-written with Beau Baumann), plus articles she did not cite, e.g., “Presidential Removal as Article I, Not Article II (with Gary Lawson).

3) Jefferson recognized that removal at pleasure was for “indefinite” offices, clearly implying that “definite offices,” i.e., offices for a term of years, were not removable at pleasure. This note is additional evidence consistent with the breakthrough research by Jane Manners and Lev Menand in “The Three Permissions,” a mountain of evidence explaining a default rule against presidential removal at pleasure.

4) Most obviously, these are Jefferson’s private notes from 1780, long before the Framers drafted the Appointments Clause in 1787. In 1780, the background was English (Royalist) practice of unilateral royal/executive office-creation and appointment power. In 1787, the Framers deliberately rejected this model in favor of shared power (congressional office-creation, shared appointment with the Senate).  A statement “he who appoints may remove” applies differently before 1787 vs. after 1787; and in royal England vs. the republican United States under the new Appointments Clause power share. In every documented reference to this symmetry rule from the Founding, whether in my research or offered by the unitary theorists, I have shown that the overwhelming application to Article II and the Appointments Clause was that it meant the Senate had to share in the removal power (and even the only exception ultimately rejected the presidential removal theory).

5) Finally, I think it is very likely that Chief Justice Roberts pulled these quotations from Ilan Wurman’s article “The Original Presidency” (2024) at p. 36 and/or his amicus brief and I think it is noteworthy that Wurman omitted the sentences contradicting his interpretation of these sources and did not acknowledge any of these glaring problems.

I attached the full document here so you can read the parts that Roberts omitted.  

First, here are Chief Justice Roberts’s two uses of this Jefferson source in Slaughter:

p. 8: “Jefferson wrote as early as 1780 that “[t]he power of appointing and removing executive officers [is] inherent in [the] Executive,” as “[h]e who appoints may remove.” 4 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 281 (1951)”

Roberts wrote on p. 12:

“Early Presidents of all persuasions, too, hewed to the Decision of 1789…  [citing Washington and Adams].  So did Jefferson. See 4 Papers of Thomas Jefferson, at 281 (the power to “remov[e] executive officers [is] inherent in [the] Executive”). So did Madison. See 2 Papers of James Madison 192 (D. Mattern, J. Stagg, M. Johnson, & A. Colony eds. 2013) (one of the “[c]onstitutional attributes of the Executive” is to determine “[t]he tenure of the office” of subordinates). 

[The Madison quotation is also highly misleading. Notably, Roberts provided no date, no context of what the source is, and he miscited it. It is not from “Volume 2” of the Madison Papers, it is only the second volume of the “Retirement Series” of Madison’s papers, confusing any reader who is trying to track it down. It turns out to be a private letter from 1820… when Madison was no longer president. And this letter also fails More on that later.]

Back to Jefferson: Chief Justice Roberts tells the reader the first time that the Jefferson quote was from 1780, but when Roberts asserts that presidents “hewed to the Decision of 1789,” he conveniently omits this date —  which was not only before 1789, but also long before 1787 when the Framers deliberately changed the balance of office-creation and appointment by taking away unilateral royal powers and sharing office-creation with Congress and appointment with the Senate.

Now let’s actually read the full source from Jefferson that Roberts cherry-picked and clipped, basically copy-and-pasting from Ilan Wurman’s outrageously wrong article from 2024 , “The Original Presidency”.  It is only a personal note – a private sketch, not a published or official document — and as the editors of the Jefferson Papers tell us, it is prompted by a military question, which explains why it is initially focused on military officers. Notice what happens when Jefferson broadens his discussion to civil offices:

Here’s the full source, undated but likely December 1780 :

Whether the Executive may remove officers of the line or staff. 

There may be a difference as to the Chaplains and such others as are not appointed by the Executive. But qu? 

Again as to officers of the line, it is highly probable that no such would ever be removed but on regular trial by a court martial: unless indeed the occasion was very great, as in the case of Geni. Lee where the sentence given by the court martial was against the universal sense of mankind. 

The question principally affects the Staff, whose rapacity, inattention and means of evasion require energetic superintendance. 

The power of appointing and removing executive officers inherent in Executive. Executive inadequate to every thing. Appoint deputies—qui agit per alterum &c. Ministerial office may be executed by deputy but not judicial. He who appoints may remove. 

Difference between an office and estate. 

An indefinite conveyance of an estate is for life—not to be accounted for ex vi termini, but historically from known progress of feuds. In their early state was not so. 

An indefinite appointment to office is during pleasure. Escheat —clerks of parliament—clerks of council &c. Otherwise if I employ a steward indefinitely he would have freehold. Ld. Coke’s opinion as to privy counsellor condemned by practice and general opinion. 

Law has so considered it. And where the officers of government should have freehold has declared they shall hold during good behavior. Judges—Register Clerks—Attorney General. 

Where not removable by Executive, reserved expressly to legislature or others. Aud. B. W. & T. [Boards of War and Trade] Treasurer. 

All the principles of law which may be retailed on this subject restrained to civil government.
The army, as such, not comprehended within civil constitution.

The freest governments in the world, have their army under absolute government. 

Republican form and principles not to be introduced into government of an army. Congress exercise powers of dismission—Geni. Lee. Consequences. Cannot dismiss nor suspend the most pettifogging and rascally officer. Forage masters—waggon masters—gardeners—purveyors— nurses — expresses—waggoners — smiths — carpenters — mercantile agents — ambassadors — Directors general—surgeons—surgeons mates—chaplains—Commissaries —Quartermasters—

Indolence, rapacity and means of evasion of Staff may account for the ordinary exercise of the powers of dismission on them, while those of the line, over whom the powers have been equal, have been submitting to the regular but more dilatory forms of trial by a military court. 

In the attachment, see the editor’s note from the sources Roberts cited clarifies the military context as the prompt. And Jefferson himself emphasized that there were differences between military executive rules and civilian executive rules:

“All the principles of law which may be retailed on this subject restrained to civil government. The army, as such, not comprehended within civil constitution. The freest governments in the world, have their army under absolute government. Republican form and principles not to be introduced into government of an army.”

Jefferson went out of his way to distinguish between the military context of the first section of the note vs. the middle-to-end of the note, which is about civil offices. He does not specify all the differences in such a brief note. The point is that any reader should avoid relying on this note for any general rules about civilian offices.

Moreover, when Jefferson writes that “appointment” and “removal” are “inherent” power in the executive, he specifies ministerial offices, in which the deputy stands in for the executive. (“Qui agit per alter” means “he who acts through another, acts for himself.” See vicarious liability and agency law). Many offices are not ministerial. “Ministerial office may be executed by deputy but not judicial.” This is not a statement of a closed universe dichotomy, “deputy” vs. “judicial.” There are other offices in between. Jefferson is simply saying that deputy/ministerial offices are removable, but he is leaving out other offices with more discretionary legal roles.

In fact, Jefferson clearly offer some examples of unremovable “freehold” civil offices:
“Judges-Register Clerks-Attorney General.”

Jefferson continues: “An indefinite appointment to office is during pleasure.”  This sentence implicitly confirms the Manners & Menand research here and here establishing that a definite appointment — a term of years — is NOT during pleasure, but is protected from executive removal. Their research is devastating to the unitary executive theory’s assumptions about English background, the Founding, and legislative default rules. And Roberts quoted a source without even understanding or acknowledging that other parts of the source conflicted with his interpretation, contradicted his interpretation, and – on balance – confirmed the historical research on the opposing side.

It is notable that Chief Justice Roberts did not acknowledge or address any of this research about the Anglo-American tradition of unremovable freehold offices or unremovable “term of years” offices.

Ilan Wurman’s article and amicus brief, which were the likely source for Roberts’s misuses of Jefferson, also omitted these sentences, obscured the context, and failed to acknowledge how the source actually contradicted his own argument. I have read more on presidential power and the removal power debates than any human should have to, and I’ve lived to tell the tale. And I’ve never seen anyone cite this Jefferson note from 1780 before Wurman. I addresssed Wurman’s misinterpretation of my research and my evidence in several places. I found this argument so plainly irrelevant to the meaning of Article II — and so contradicted by the text of Article II and the historical record of how the Founding generation actually interpreted the symmetry rule — that I did not think it needed to be addressed again in an amicus brief with such strict word limits.

I am astounded that Wurman’s misuse of Jefferson’s 1780 private note — omitting the context and sentences that contradicted his theory — so easily became Chief Justice Roberts’s misplaced reliance on Jefferson’s 1780 private note. And it is clear that if they had to rely on such a private note many years before the Appointments Clause was drafted and decisively changed the balance of appointment powers, they were hard pressed to offer actual evidence that would stand up when it was tracked down.

Here is Wurman, “Original Presidency,” at p. 36:

And in 1780 Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private note: “The power of appointing and removing executive officers inherent in Executive. Executive inadequate to every thing. Appoint deputies…. He who appoints may remove” (Boyd 1951, 4:281)

Here is Wurman’s amicus brief in Slaughter, p. 10

And in 1780 Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private note: “The power of appointing and removing executive officers inherent in Executive. Executive inadequate to every thing. Appoint deputies…. He who appoints may remove.” 4 PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, supra, at 281.

I have had to fact-check Ilan Wurman for repeated misinterpretations of the historical record, including changing the wording of Blackstone in articles and even a Supreme Court amicus brief to change Blackstone’s basic meaning, and I already had to fact-check this article on his general misuse of my research on the symmetry rule (removal follows appointment). To his credit, he cited my research as the source of his argument, but his re-interpretation of my argument is plainly contradicted by the sources I identified, as I explained here and here. I did not realize that And now Wurman’s misuse of a Jefferson note seems to have led to Roberts’s misuse of that same Jefferson note.

Chief Justice Roberts’s use of a Jefferson sentence is one of the most egregious misuses of a source I have encountered in this entire episode of the unitary executive myths. Some of the aspects of this misuse are recurring patterns: Many sources were obviously taken out of context (check). And Roberts and untiary theorists often ignore chronology (check). And specifically, this Appointments Clause argument (because “removal follows from appointment,” presidents can unilaterally remove) is an obvious embarrassment, as it is contradicted by the text and purpose of the Appointments clause (see Justice Scalia); it is contradicted by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, as Hamilton confirmed in 1789, as I noted in a previous fact-check last week; and as I have explained, no advocate of presidential removal offered this interpretation, and instead, when this symmetry rule was invoked, it was always interpreted to require Senate consent to remove (with only one arguable exception).

But in this case, this misuse is even worse. Two sentences are cherry-picked, but the sentences that contradict the theory are omitted. This is how the unitary executive theorists have built a myth — by misusing historical sources over and over again….

More on the misuse of the symmetry rule soon.

The original Jefferson private notes, 1780:

Donald Trump acts every day as if the presidency gives him the power to kill people at will. Here is the tell: yesterday in an interview on Fox News, he was asked about the bombing of the girls’ school in Minab, Iran, on the second day of the war that killed 168 people, over 100 of them school children. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever going to be able to say what happened there,” Trump said. He was asked if it was possible that the targeting was based on old intelligence about the Iranian Army compound that was next to the school. “It is, but it’s also possible that those images are AI-generated,” Trump asserted. “I know we’re waiting for a conclusive report — I don’t think there can be a conclusive report.” No real investigation. No report. No prosecutions. That’s now Trump’s Murder Inc. works.

Do you know where else there has been no conclusive reports about murders under Trump’s orders? The 64 strikes by the U.S. Navy on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans that have killed more than 200 people. The Trump administration asserts that the boats were smuggling drugs and the people on them were “narco-terrorists,” as if that somehow justifies the missiles and bombs that have sunk the boats and killed so many people. There is no evidence that the boats were smuggling drugs, no evidence that the people killed were drug smugglers. There have been no arrests, no charges have been brought against the survivors. A strike on June 21 in the Pacific killed two people on a boat. There were six survivors. All the Pentagon said about the survivors, these alleged “narco-terrorists,” was that the Coast Guard was “notified.”

Trump has said the boat strikes are part of an “armed conflict” with drug cartels from Mexico and Central and South America. If so, the strikes violate the international laws of war, because the U.S. was not responding to shots fired by the people on the boats at the time they were bombed and sunk.

The boat bombings and strikes using rockets are murders sanctioned and ordered by Hegseth at the Pentagon under orders from Donald Trump. Trump appears certain he can get away with the boat bombings and the bombing of the school in Iran because he is in charge of the Pentagon, which would investigate them, and his lackeys run the Department of Justice, which would be involved in prosecuting anyone accused of murder in the bombings. There won’t be any investigations. There won’t be any prosecutions. Donald Trump has been given a get out of jail free card by the Supreme Court, and he is using it to unleash his entire administration to break the law. Every contract signed in Washington D.C. for “improvements” on the Mall and for his White House ballroom has been a no-bid contract, breaking federal laws that govern how taxpayer dollars are spent by the government. But handing out theft-ready contracts to his friends is proverbial chicken feed compared to what Trump is doing with the Pentagon and ICE.

There have been no conclusive investigations or prosecutions in the two shootings of civilians by ICE in Minnesota. There was a report yesterday that after two more shootings of immigrants by ICE in Maine, the Department of Homeland Security ordered ICE to back off its campaign of out-of-control traffic stops. That lasted less than 24 hours. Trump came out today and announced that he wants more ICE traffic stops, not less. That’s like giving the ill-trained steroid-fueled ICE agents his get out of jail free cards. Kill all the immigrants and American Anti-ICE protesters you want, boys. It’s going down great with the base. Keep it up!

This is something new. Trump is using the Pentagon and a major department of the federal government to carry out murders. The two American citizens killed in Minneapolis did nothing to justify ICE killing them. They didn’t attack or interfere with ICE agents. They did not use violence as part of their protests against ICE. The immigrants who were murdered by ICE in Maine were not even the correct targets of their investigations and campaign of arrests. The immigrants were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were killed for it.

Trump has ordered more National Guard troops into Washington D.C. He has doubled the number of armed Guard soldiers in the nation’s capital to 5,000 and announced that the Guard deployment will last through inauguration day in 2029. The Guard is supposedly in Washington to fight crime, but they have no law enforcement powers. They cannot make arrests or handcuff suspects. They’re just on the streets as an authoritarian show of force by Donald Trump. It’s just a matter of time before a Guard soldier feels threatened and shoots someone. There might be a Pentagon investigation, but Donald Trump will make sure that there is no “conclusive report,” and if there is cell phone footage, he will claim it is AI-generated.

Trump has violated norms and the law since the day he took office in his first term in 2017. Now that the Supreme Court has removed the last restraints on his power, he believes the law does not apply to him or to anyone he designates as his agents, whether military or civilian. If we still lived in a nation of laws, murders under the orders of the President of the United States would not be taking place on the streets or on the high seas or in foreign nations he has gone to war against.

But this isn’t a nation of laws anymore. Trump is a mob boss, and he is running Murder Inc. and calling it a government. Tomorrow night, we will find out from him what laws he believes do not apply to him and his agents during the election in November.

Trump’s agents killed Alex Pretti and Rene Good in cold blood. If he thinks turning loose ICE on election day to prevent imaginary voting by foreigners will help Republicans, he’ll do it. If it ends up that citizen voters are killed in or near the polls, he will blame it on Antifa and claim any evidence that emerges is AI. That’s where we’re at.

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It is truly worth celebrating, what happened today when Donald Trump was finally forced by a court of law to transfer $5,625,005.48 to E. Jean Carroll’s bank account. We cannot forget the living hell she went through. E. Jean was sexually assaulted in a Bergdorf’s dressing room by Donald Trump. She was penetrated in such a way that it did not amount to rape under New York law but was declared a rape as “the word is commonly understood” by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presided over her defamation suit against Trump.

I don’t know of any way to calculate how much courage it took for E. Jean to sue the President of the United States. She filed suit in 2019, claiming that Trump had defamed her in an interview after her article in New York Magazine, “Hideous Men,” was published in June of that year. Trump denied knowing her, he called her a liar, and of course, as proof that it never happened, Trump said “she’s not my type.”

That’s not just a regular lawsuit to file. Trump was in 2019 the most powerful man in the world. He had the full force of the federal government behind him. In fact, one of the first things he did was claim that he was acting in his “official capacity” as president when he responded to Carroll’s claims in the New York article. Later, in 2021, with Joe Biden in office, Trump’s lawyers would make another claim that he should be defended by Department of Justice lawyers. So, throughout the early months of her lawsuit against Trump, E. Jean was facing the possibility that lawyers representing the federal government could be opposing her in court.

In 2022, Trump posted on Truth Social about Carroll’s lawsuit, calling her claims a “con job,” a “hoax and a lie,” and a “complete scam.” In November of that year, Carroll would file another lawsuit against Trump that came to be known as “Carroll II,” for defaming her in the Truth Social post and adding a claim of sexual battery and rape under the “Adult Survivors Act,” which had been passed earlier in the year. The law allowed survivors to file civil lawsuits beyond the statute of limitations. In the new lawsuit, Carroll claimed that Trump had pulled down her tights, groped her genitals and raped her.

The case went to trial in federal district court in 2023. Carroll testified and underwent a blistering cross examination by Trump’s lawyer. Several witnesses testified to support Carroll, including one woman who had been sexually assaulted by Trump on an airplane. Trump did not testify, but a video of his deposition was shown to the jury, during which he denied Carroll’s allegations and claimed that he had not even read her article in New York.

During all this time, E. Jean was photographed going in and out of the federal courthouse in New York. Cable news anchors and guests commented on her outfits, her hairstyle, her sunglasses, as if she was appearing in a television show rather than suing the most powerful man in the world for sexual assault and battery and defamation. On so-called “conservative” media such as Fox News and online commentators, Carroll was subjected to frequently brutal takedowns and criticism.

After a day of closing arguments, the case went to the jury, which took all of three hours to reach a unanimous verdict in E. Jean’s favor, saying that she had been sexually assaulted by Trump and that he had defamed her. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages. Trump appeared on CNN and called her a “whack job,” denied that he knew her and claimed the trial had been “rigged.”

A second trial was held in early 2024 on Carroll’s subsequent claim that Trump had continued to defame her. Trump attended this trial on some days. On the day that the trial began, Trump posted 22 times about E. Jean. Carroll again appeared as a witness on her own behalf. During her testimony, Trump could be heard at the defense table saying things like “witch hunt” and “con job.” Trump himself briefly testified, standing by his statements that Carroll’s claims were a “hoax” and a “con job.”

Again, the jury took just three hours to find, unanimously, on Carroll’s behalf, this time awarding her $7.3 million in emotional damages, $11 million in damages to her reputation by Trump, and $65 million in punitive damages.

Trump appealed the verdict in the first trial for three years, finally to the Supreme Court, which refused earlier this year to hear his appeal. He has filed appeals of the second verdict as well, which have not completed their journey through the court system.

But today, all Trump’s lies and bluster and power to damage E. Jean Carroll was found wanting, and she finally received the jury’s award in the first trial. She has put the money in an account until Trump’s appeals of appeals of appeals are finished so if there is some decision returning the money to Trump, it will be there. But soon, the $5.6 million will be unquestionably hers.

E. Jean Carroll did something that the leaders and members of an entire political party have refused to do. She stood up to Donald Trump, and she won. She will go down in history for this fearless act. It took a woman to bring Donald Trump to justice. E. Jean Carroll is that woman. She has much to be proud of, and we have much to thank her for.

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Donald Trump’s latest political stratagem is to label as “Communist” any disagreement with whatever passes as Trump’s ever-changing ideology.

Since Trump is repeating the label, we shouldn’t just dismiss it as a slip of the presidential tongue or misspeaking. He means it, and he expects voters to believe it and fear those who argue that there’s something wrong about a concentration of power and wealth in the upper tenth of a percent of Americans – a widespread polled opinion over time.

Of course, Trump seems to be targeting the few, but growing number of self-identified Democratic Socialists who have been winning elections since New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was such an overwhelming choice.

Three congressional candidates in New York City endorsed by Mamdani carried their primaries against otherwise “progressive” Democrats who have publicly supported aid to Israel. A Democratic Socialist upset a longtime Congresswoman from Colorado.  One of the two Senate candidates who appear tied in Michigan is a Democratic Socialist. Graham Platner’s campaign in Maine ran aground over his personal failures, but not because he espoused more access to health care and ending political rules  dictated by self-serving corporate interests.

The success of these Democratic Socialists has been as much about generational change and a desire to throw out entrenched politics of all parties as it has about specific policies.

In multiple recent speeches, Trump has warned of  a “resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” What Trump said is, “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.  Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”

Using the Communist label is raising a bogeyman that is incorrect, even dishonest, and his broad attack on “godless” anti-Americanism is at odds with what more than half the country’s voters say is upsetting them. Just as Trump demeaned “affordability” as a made-up complaint of Democrats, or his attacks on immigration that built this country as an existential evil, or his insistence on ridding the country of regulations on corporate behaviors, Trump is not only wrong but actively misusing even the label itself for partisan gain.

What is ‘Communism’?

Communism is an ideology that advocates for the elimination of capitalism in favor of government control of the economy. Democrats, including democratic socialists, seem to favor a capitalist system where there is a fairer way to share the costs through taxes. In the last 100 years, Communism has involved authoritarian politics in the former Soviet Union and China, human rights abuse and rationing food.  Democratic Socialists take the opposite view on all of that.

Dan Froomkin of Press Watch argues that the news media are being too blasé about not pointing out Trump’s historical and political errors or the delusion of the speaker.

The very meaning of the political theory of Communism as outlined by Karl Marx advocates for a society in which property is publicly owned, and individuals are paid according to abilities and needs. As a Democratic Socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders talks about Medicare-for-all health care, and Mamdani talks about rent freezes and childcare supports, not the U.S. takeover of Venezuelan oil fields from a vassal state that Trump has orchestrated.

As a recent MS-NOW op-ed notes, while political parties always target the opposition’s most extreme positions, the word “Communist” does not even speak to generations of voters born long after the Cold War and do not see it as a haunting specter.

It is Trump who openly admires Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, actual communists, who have pursued systematic adaptations over decades to open their economies, if not their government, to more capitalistic enterprise. Trump covets their authoritarian, centralized power – a direct result of Communist ideology as it has been practiced  in the real world.

It is Trump who has demanded financial interest for the government from steel and tech companies looking for favorable regulation from him; that is right out of the Communist playbook. And it is Trump who is seeking the silence of comedians and news broadcasters who air criticism of him.

Trump’s ‘Choice’

In recent years, polls show a declining approval of capitalism and slowly rising approval of whatever is being lumped into the socialism label.  As always, answers depend on who’s asking and how they are asking and may have little to do with the outcome of specific election races.

And, as always, there is inherent danger into accepting any label as universal or all-explanatory. We all might vote “yes” on eliminating singular political labels that mean little.

But make no mistake. Trump sees the rise of even a few Democratic Socialists as nearly fatal to the country – even as the practical effect may be for an incoming Democratic House Speaker Hakim Jeffries to keep his Democratic House coalition united through a variety of issues, including on war aid in the Middle East.

“The communists elected in New York City recently want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.” Communism “destroys everything,” Trump said, adding, “It’s happening right now in New York and California. You’ll live in squalor. There will be no food; there will be no housing; there will be no military; there will be no law and order; there will be no nothing. There will be no nothing. You’ll be a third world inhabitant in every way, and everyone will suffer or die.”

According to Trump, “assassinations of those who oppose them is a very important element of their ideology.” He demanded that we choose between “patriotism” and “hardcore godless communists.”

If that’s the choice Trump invites, I’m ready to vote.

Image at top courtesy of Alexander Popadin via Pexels. 

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The post Trump’s ‘Communist’ Label appeared first on DCReport.org.

You have hopefully by now read the Atlantic cover story The End of Reading. It says more or less exactly that: Americans are reading much, much less than they used to. We actually take in more words than we used to, thanks to algorithmic social media and doing everything on our smartphones, but actually reading things like books or even full magazine articles or news stories has become rarer and rarer.

The story contains many troubling anecdotes: The Harvard undergraduate who complained about a book written in Old English, and had to use Chat GPT to translate it; the book was A Clockwork Orange, written in 1962. The three-year-old who started preschool and cried every day for weeks — not for her mother, but for her tablet. It also contains some observations I haven’t seen as well-articulated anywhere else: That writing transformed the human brain and our consciousness, allowing for logic, rationality, analytical thought, deduction, complexity, and focus. This anecdote particularly stands out:

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Ong cited case studies by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, who traveled to remote villages in Uzbekistan and Kirghizia in the 1930s, when peasants were starting to receive rudimentary reading and writing instruction. Luria met his subjects at teahouses, in field camps, and around evening fires. There, he posed a number of questions designed to elucidate differences in how illiterate and literate peasants thought. Luria told the peasants: “In the Far North, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North.” He then asked them the color of bears in Novaya Zemlya. The literate peasants were able to complete the syllogism. But the illiterate ones refused to try, explaining that they had never been to the north and thus couldn’t answer. Achieving literacy seemed to have conveyed an ability to think logically and abstractly, not simply to read words.

Without reading and writing, the Atlantic piece argues, we wouldn’t have “philosophy, modern science, history as an academic enterprise, art criticism.”

Reading — really reading, and mucking through complex ideas, not just being spoon-fed single-sentence directives on social media or by AI — sharpens the mind and allows us to develop more complex cognition. Not reading, or decreasing how much we’re reading, allows those skills to atrophy, or never develop in the first place. Our current reality of social media outrage-baiting, easy-to-digest short-form videos, communication via text, reliance on AI to solve every-day problems (“using these ingredients, tell me what to make for dinner;” “make me a work-out plan for this week”), TV shows that have changed to meet our attention deficits — all of this adds up to brains that are more distracted but less engaged. We are more stimulated but less challenged.

This has political consequences.

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I like Thom Hartmann. I do. Despite having spent time on RT (Russia Today) before wisely leaving the Kremlin’s shitty propaganda network, Hartmann is unapologetically progressive without spending all of his time trying to keep Republicans in power. Unlike, for instance, Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks, a group of “progressives” who are openly opposed to the progressive agenda if it helps minorities and women and the homeless and the Trans community and and and.

One of the things I like most about Hartmann is that he focuses on wealth inequality, but not in a way that throws marginalized communities under the bus. Usually. There are other times, however, where he has a bit of a blind spot for who and what the American right wing really is.

Thank the gods he doesn’t take the alt-left position that our tent is so wide, we should have room for literal Nazis and other assorted monsters as long as they’re pro-universal healthcare. That is a core tenet of the liars who call themselves “progressives” and then go against everything actual progressives advocate for.

Hartmann does not do that. He does, however, think that if Republican voters could just see through right-wing propaganda, they would totally be on our side:

The entire con depends on voters on the right never turning around and realizing they’re mourning the same identical loss that progressive Democrats are trying so hard to repair.

The instant working people stop asking “who’s the enemy who looks, prays, or loves differently than I do” and start asking “who took my dad’s paycheck,” the whole game is over.

That’s the one conversation the billionaires and their bought-off lickspittle politicians are truly terrified of.

So have it. Have it at the summer picnic with your MAGA brother-in-law and your progressive niece sitting side by side, and watch what happens when you skip the slogans and ask them both what kind of country they actually want to live in.

You’ll find (outside of the unrepentant and largely unreachable racists) that they want the very same America back, the one where an honest week’s work bought a decent life.

And I get it. It seems like a really obvious truth. Right-wing voters, especially the poor and working class, are being fucked non-stop by the policies they vote for. Every year, they get a little bit poorer. Every year, a little bit more economically insecure. Every year, a hell of a lot angrier.

We all know why this is happening. Billionaires are looting the country, and the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Billionaire, Inc. The people screaming the loudest about being abandoned and ignored by the system are right-wing voters. They want economic justice! They want jobs! They want schools and roads and hospitals! They want a future! Our lives are a pile of shit, and we want something better!

Then they vote for the party who explicilty tells them that they’re going to cut taxes for the rich, kill millions of jobs, and close down their schools and hospitals. And take away their future.

Now, Hartmann believes this is because they’ve been conned by culture war issues in order to ignore the class war the rich have been waging on us for generations. It’s a really tempting narrative. It means that millions of Americans are just one revelation away from joining us in moving this country forward in leaps and bounds. If we can JUST reach them, everything will change.

But, I’m sorry Thom, that is just not going to fucking happen. Ever. I’d love to believe it could, but even though I will work to manifest a future where Republicans and ICE and CBP and the billionaires funding it all are dragged before tribunals and sentenced to life in prison or the gallows, I cannot engage in pure fantasy.

The cold, hard, and deeply depressing truth is that Republican voters are not being conned. Not really. For a con to be a con, you have to be unaware that you’re being lied to and manipulated. That simply is not the case here.

Republican voters know they’re being lied to. They know they’re being manipulated. They know the culture war stuff is bullshit. Obama’s tan suit? Hunter Biden’s laptop? Hillary’s secret pedophile sex dungeon? They know none of that was real or mattered. Republican voters know children are not getting sex change operations at school. They know Haitians are not eating cats and dogs. They know Central American drug gangs are not lurking around every corner.

Republican voters fucking know this is all bullshit or wild exaggerations. Their fuckwit of a Vice President literally told them he was making shit up: “Mr. Vance, who amplified false claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, said he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”

I know we all love to joke about how stupid MAGA is, and it’s true. They are willing to say the dumbest shit imaginable and insist it’s factual, no matter what the reality is. But a lot of that is performative nonsense. It’s an act. It’s a show of fealty to their tribe. It tells them that they belong and gives them permission to hate and oppress the people they fear.

Because the very foundation of who these people are is nothing more than fear and hate, and they goddamn well know it. These are the mediocre, racist white people who see every minority as a threat to the unearned privilege that keeps them in power. It doesn’t matter if it’s social, cultural, or economic power. They all respond the same way: With hate and rage at any minority that challenges their domination.

Black and Latino voters will vote for Black and Latino candidates. Not enough of those candidates will be champions of white supremacy.

Women have an annoying habit of not voting for misogyny and rape culture. How is THAT fair to mediocre white men? Won't someone think of THEIR needs?!

Muslims and Jews and atheists tend to vote for people who won’t force Christianity on them. But without JAY-zus, how will mediocre racist white people justify oppressing The Gays and stripping women of their reproductive rights?

Republican voters know full well that their party of pedophiles and traitors and grifters does not represent their economic needs. But at the same time Republicans are emptying the national treasure into the bank accounts of billionaires and their buddies, they will abuse their power to crush everyone the right hates.

They will pass laws targeting Trans kids. All 1% of the population of them.

They will pass laws turning women into breeding cattle to be disposed of at will.

They will pass laws making protests against fascism a crime.

They will pass laws making it legal to kill anyone as long as you are white and can pretend you were afraid.

They will pass laws stripping black voters of their rights.

They will pass laws to put Latino children in cages.

Republican voters see this, and they celebrate. The black empty void where their souls should be rejoices at the cruelty and violence and evil. They’ll tell themselves they’re the heroes of the story, but they don’t really care one way or another. As long as Those People suffer, Republicans can do literally anything.

Exaggeration? Cool. Riddle me this, then: The right spent years, fucking YEARS!, screaming their rage at the global cabal of pedophiles they KNEW for a fact existed. They thought the cabal was comprised of Jews and Democrats and liberal elites. What happened when they discovered that the cabal was actually real and a lot of Republicans, including their beloved Dear Leader, were among the names of the child rapists?

Well…is it really THAT important to see all of the Epstein Files? Can we really hold the Trump regime accountable for not releasing all of them? Aren’t Democrats really just as bad anyway?

Sure, the press keeps telling us that MAGAland is furious about the Epstein Files. Are any of them willing to vote for a Democrat to get them released? Are any of them looking to put Republicans in prison for obstruction and cover-ups?

Motherfucker, please.

Republican voters will make a big show of outrage and then pull that lever for any name with an "R" next to it. All of their big sobby tears vanish in the blazing heat of the racism and misogyny that really gets them up and moving in the morning. It has been this way since before the Civil War, when a handful of mediocre, racist slave owners convinced hundreds of thousands of medicocre racist white men to die horrifically, just to preserve their place in the racial hierarchy.

Medicocre, racist white people have been dying for racism for generations. Our generation is watching rural America be ravaged by opioids, and we’ll never know how many Republican voters died of Covid to “own the libs.” Then they voted for the party that murdered their friends and loved ones with a smile on their face and song in their hearts. Why? Because Trump promised them white nationalism, and that was more important than a prosperous future for themselves or their children. They traded it all away to hurt the people they hate, even at the cost of their own financial security.

So when Thom Hartmann says all we have to do is convince Republican voters that the racism and bigotry and misogyny are a con, I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. The hate is not the con. The hate is the entire point.

I wish it weren’t true, but we can’t pretend it’s not. These people are lost to us. Forever? Maybe. Maybe not. But until the pain of wallowing in hate becomes intolerable, they will never abandon those who promise to feed their addiction. Our job is to either cut off their supply or make the cost so high, they give it up. Nothing else will ever make them stop. They love it too much to walk away. They’re willing to die and sacrifice their own children to get more, and that’s the ugly truth Hartmann doesn’t want to confront.