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Trump's coup memo deserves 'the greatest possible outrage' -- but it's not getting enough attention: Ex-GOP strategist
September 27, 2021
Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt is wondering why the strategy memo that President Donald Trump's legal adviser crafted to overthrow the government is not a bigger deal.
Revealed in the book Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, the memo outlined a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to stop the congressional acceptance of the Electoral College votes for the 2020 presidential race and throw the election back to GOP state legislatures.
In an exchange on Twitter, Costa and Schmidt noted that Schmidt referred to it as being like the "Zimmermann Telegram," a 1917 secret diplomatic communication that proposed Germany ally with Mexico if the United States got into World War I. Schmidt said he can't understand why it's being ignored or downplayed in the media when it's clearly such a massive concern for the future of the United States.
"The coverage and meaning of the memo have been insufficient, grotesquely so. Winston Churchill wrote about this phenomenon in the Gathering Storm," wrote Schmidt on Monday. "During the opening chapters, he writes about Hitler and the rise of the 'Austrian Corporal.' He writes about the failed 1923 Munich Coup and Hitler's 14-month prison term during which he wrote his ideological treatise 'My Struggle.' Churchill points out that the first sentence of the book declares the necessity of Austria being merged to Germany.
"Churchill writes about the extraordinary gap between Hitler's stated intentions and Allied belief in their sincerity," Schmidt continued. "He records his dismay at French and British political leaders who were surprised that Hitler did exactly what he suggested he would do in clear prose. The willful blindness to danger, the hope that the worst is behind us, turns out to be a very human yearning, one that transits the generations. It has all been laid before us in writing. The one thing we will never ever be able to say honestly, is that we didn't or couldn't see it coming. The enemies of American democracy have been good enough to lay out the plan for us. In writing."
Costa responded, noting that it wasn't just a memo but something that was actually being passed around among officials in the Trump government. It was a "plan" that ultimately ended in the final meeting between the president, vice president and the author of the memo before the vote on Jan. 6.
It was then that Schmidt argued that the government needs to stop for a moment and actually give the "Trump Coup Memo" the attention it's due
"There is no other moment in American history where the revelation of such treachery would not have induced the greatest possible national outrage," said Schmidt. "American democracy is imperfect. That has always been so. There now exists in the public realm, documentary evidence, a written plan to kill it off and replace it with something new. It was written by the presidents attorney and presented to the president. Trump took that paper and turned it into a weapon, a poisoned shiv and stuck it into the rib cage of American Democracy. He twisted it, crazed with rage that he had been rejected and repudiated. His Confederates watched or joined in the plotting and the violence."
The result was a violent attack on the legislative branch of government by the president's supporters.
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'So sad': Former Trump official laments he didn't push vaccines more as data show COVID is killing his voters
September 27, 2021
Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah on Monday expressed sorrow that former President Donald Trump didn't do more to push the COVID-19 vaccine to his voters during his tenure in office.
Writing on Twitter, Farah reacted to data posted by The Intercept's Ryan Grim showing that heavy Trump-voting counties across the United States have lost nearly five times as many people per capita to COVID-19 since the end of June compared to heavy Biden-voting counties.
"So sad," she commented. "Many of us pushed for Trump to focus his final days in office on trying to convince as many of his supporters as possible to get vaxxed, rather than focusing on election denialism."
Farah resigned as White House communications director last December, and subsequently publicly criticized Trump for his role in inciting a violent riot at the United States Capitol building on January 6th.
In fact, Farah revealed earlier this year that she decided to step down when she got the cold shoulder from Trump officials when she floated conceding defeat in the 2020 election.
"I was advised by the campaign to stand down," she said. "That wouldn't be the message. We weren't going to be acknowledging the loss, and they were going to pursue avenues to reconcile that."
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South Dakota's Kristi Noem deflects from corruption allegations by accusing media of smearing her kids
September 27, 2021
Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) angrily lashed out at the media after an Associated Press report led to accusations that she corruptly abused her office.
According to the AP, Noem's daughter was denied a real estate appraiser license in 2020 by the South Dakota state employee who runs the agency. Noem then called the woman into her office, as well as her daughter.
It wasn't long after that Noem's daughter got her license. One week later, the Secretary of Labor called for the "retirement" of agency head Sherry Bren.
What became even more bizarre is that Bren filed an age discrimination complaint. She then was given a $200,000 check and Bren withdrew her age discrimination case.
"Exactly what transpired at the July 27, 2020, meeting in the governor's office isn't clear. Noem declined an interview request and her office declined to answer detailed questions about the meeting," said the report.
Instead of denying the claim or even saying that the governor wasn't involved in the Secretary of Labor's internal affairs, Noem's attacked the media for supposedly smearing her family -- even though the core questions surround Noem's own actions.
"The Associated Press is disparaging the Governor's daughter in order to attack the Governor politically – no wonder Americans' trust in the media is at an all-time low," Noem's spokesman Ian Fury said.
Noem then turned to Twitter to further attack the press, saying that they were going after her daughter and tried to make her daughter the focus of the scandal instead of her own efforts to use the government for her own personal purposes.
Listen I get it. I signed up for this job. But now the media is trying to destroy my children. This story is just a… https://t.co/SrYCNDrSK4— Kristi Noem (@Kristi Noem) 1632769661.0
Responses to the tweet overwhelmingly called her out for throwing her children under the bus and trying to make the scandal about her kids instead of being about her.
Others called out the hypocrisy of Noem's, by pointing to her attacks on President Joe Biden's son Hunter, who doesn't serve in government or work for the White House in any capacity.
Okay lady. https://t.co/2uEQpR1UV5— Schooley (@Schooley) 1632764056.0
Noem's name has been thrown around as a possible replacement of Vice President Mike Pence on the 2024 Donald Trump ticket if the former president attempts to run again.
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