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    Here's why Trump and the radical Republicans are out for revenge

    Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory
    February 13, 2020

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory

    The disturbing, divisive undercurrents of the impeachment continue to ripple through our political, investigative and legal systems.


    Even as voters were going to primary polls in New Hampshire, Team Trump was in overdrive. It was pushing the powers of the Donald Trump presidency exactly into the kind of abuse that drove efforts to unseat him.

    From all the on-the-street interviews in New Hampshire, the key figure was not Bernie Sanders, the narrow winner. Not Pete Buttigieg. Not the surging Amy Klobuchar. The key figure was Donald Trump. Democratic primary voters identified over and over the reason for turning out was to turn out Trump.

    Split television screens looked remarkable. Elections were on one side and another Team Trump attempt to undercut democracy on the other.

    Trump wants the record expunged that he ever was questioned. And yes, he wants heads on pikes, now.

    Trump showed he is interfering in a live federal criminal case. It is a trampling of any remaining bright-line meant to separate pursuit of politics and administration of law in this country. Trump is seeking to lighten federal sentencing for campaign ally Roger Stone. Attorney General William P. Barr, for Trump, moved to undercut what prosecutors seek as punishment.

    It is another breach of constitutional limits.

    It was not enough for Trump to win an acquittal vote in the Senate. Trump wants the record expunged that he ever was impeached. And yes, he wants heads on pikes, now, and continuing through the year.

    Might Makes Right

    It turns out the most American of values is an insistence on being right. No matter if it means continuing to flay at horses already declared dead multiple times over.

    For the White House, post-impeachment means opening all channels for revenge against anyone who dared to question Trump’s bad behavior in the Ukraine scandal. Trump allies including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Barr have green lights to go after perceived enemies.

    The hypocritical thing is that Team Trump’s efforts depend exactly on complaints about unjustified or poorly predicated investigation for which Trump sees himself and his associates as witch hunt victims.  But, then, they see the shoe on the other foot.

    Graham and Barr now say the Justice Department is ready to review any purported evidence from Rudy Giuliani. The president's personal lawyer has hinted there is enough information from various ousted Ukrainian leaders to suggest there is a corruption case to pursue, years later, against rival Joe Biden, son Hunter and Burisma, the Ukraine energy company that hired Hunter for a no-show job on its board. At the same time, each is trying to ensure that the process is important because the info may be hooey.

    Meanwhile, at least two Republican-majority Senate committees are threatening investigations on FISA-violation issues that already have been pursued by the Justice inspector general, even as they promise to out the original whistleblower who first reported Trump’s interest in a personal gain in Ukraine.

    At the same time, Democrats are already talking about continuing to investigate every unanswered aspect of the impeachment matters, with information from Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s henchman, and former national security adviser John R. Bolton still arriving and continuing to suggest a longer, broader Trump retribution campaign than outlined even in the impeachment charges.

    And all of this has nothing to do with Trump’s tax information, apparent business frauds, outstanding campaign finance violations, allegations of sex assaults and all the rest. It has little to do even with continuing to stiff Congressional calls for information to oversee his administration. If Trump wins in November, we can look forward to four more years of contention.

    Do Voters Even Care?

    There is a lot that is confusing in all this, including whether any voters actually care. The daily political play by play seems to suggest only that American voters have returned to their opposing corners. They are supposedly so sure in their beliefs and loyalties they will not be persuaded by anything different.

    On the legal front, it is confusing that Giuliani, reportedly under investigation himself for various overseas violations, has a front door to Barr. Giuliani delivers materials that others, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ukrainian officials, have just set to one side as useless. Even as he was announcing that Barr would now be accepting these documents, Graham insisted they may all be Russian-influenced hoaxes.

    If so, what are we doing, besides carrying out exactly what Trump wanted in the first place. He sought the announcement that someone was investigating the Bidens, even if there is no actual investigation.

    Other than Burisma and Hunter Biden having made the appearance of spectacularly bad decisions with worse coincidental timing, what are we saying here? On behalf of a slew of European nations, Joe Biden, then vice president, was calling for more investigation in Ukraine against corruption, not less, including involvement of companies like Burisma. If Joe Biden brought an aura of ickiness to his office, what does this possibly have to do with the case of Trump running a rogue foreign policy through Giuliani in Ukraine for personal political gain?

    But in doing so, Barr has announced separately that only he can decide whether there will be any investigation of presidential candidates this year. Given the Trump defense arguments in the impeachment proceedings, what does that do to any “investigations” by the Senate? Barr has established himself as a defender for Trump himself in all things. What happens next, when Biden claims the same blanket immunity for his time in office that apparently justified non-cooperation with the House during the impeachment process? Is Barr stepping into investigations already underway in the Southern District of New York involving Parnas and Giuliani?

    Biden Withering

    Then there is the political case in all this. Joe Biden is dying slowly all by himself, without particular help from any involvement in the Ukrainian scandals. Biden’s poor finishes in the disastrously run Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are a downward spiral.

    So, what’s the confusion here?

    The call for more investigations here seems aimed at embarrassment, not at uncovering information. The Senate soundly rejected the chance to hear from witnesses. That information could further indict the malfeasance of a president who sees no boundary between public and private concerns, political gain and some vague notion that he can do anything.

    The legal set-up is confusing because there is no clear goal by any of the players. The ethical land mines make clarity next to impossible.

    The moral case, by contrast, is very clear and very divided. Half the country thinks it is nuts that Trump can go around dismissing experienced national security employees whom he personally dislikes. The other half calls that draining the swamp.

    And as a practical matter, most people would rather re-argue the Oscars or count how many days until spring baseball.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    Do you approve of Biden's presidency so far?

    CPAC veers into neo-Nazi fantasy: Was it deliberate? That hardly matters

    Chauncey Devega, Salon
    March 02, 2021

    Once upon a time, the Conservative Political Action Conference was a relatively traditional and "mainstream" gathering of many divergent currents on the political right.

    This article first appeared in Salon.

    Fueled by the obsessive racist backlash against Barack Obama's presidency and paranoid fantasies about a bogeyman fictional version of "the left," the Republican Party rapidly became more extreme, contemptuous not just of "liberals" but of multiracial democracy and reality itself. During those years, CPAC came to resemble a political zoo or circus where assorted cast-offs, broken toys and fringe figures from the Republican Party and conservative movement could gather together and hatch their nefarious plots.

    As a result, during the Obama era CPAC became something of a bellwether or leading indicator of the Republican Party's embrace of right-wing extremism and anti-democracy fervor.

    Writing at the Washington Monthly, David Atkins summarizes this:

    But CPAC isn't a sideshow. It's the main stage of the conservative movement, predicting its future behavior in an era of widening asymmetric polarization. CPAC presaged the rise of the Party of Reagan over that of Gerald Ford and Dwight Eisenhower. It heralded the scorched-earth confrontational politics of Newt Gingrich in the Bill Clinton era. It elevated George W. Bush at a time when the mainstream GOP still saw itself more in the mold of John McCain. It celebrated the Tea Party before GOP legislators had fully embraced it. And it promoted openly racist birthers and conspiracy theorists like Donald Trump at a time when the the mainline GOP was producing superficially anti-racist autopsies and promoting candidates like Marco Rubio and Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush.
    So if we want to know where the Republican Party is heading today, we should pay close attention to CPAC.

    It is now an obligatory stop for Republican presidential candidates and others seeking high office to win the approval. This year's CPAC gathering — held in Florida rather than Washington, D.C. — was of course where the recently deposed former president and authoritarian cult leader announced his return to public life and plans to further dominate the Republican Party.

    Today's Republican Party did not slip and accidentally fall into neofascism and racial authoritarianism. Rather, it willingly leapt into that cesspool. CPAC has devolved into a "safe space" where such vile ideas are cultivated and normalized.

    In her landmark 1951 book "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt previewed the way today's Trump-controlled Republican Party has devolved into a fascist authoritarian movement, a cultural and political force that transcends voting, campaigns, elections and other forms of "normal" political behavior.

    On Twitter, author Jared Yates Sexton recently echoed Arendt with a contemporary warning:

    Continuing to pretend like we still live in a two-party representative system will only give room and cover to a fascist movement that is intentionally and systematically demolishing democracy and civil liberties. We must recognize the reality of the threat.
    What we've witnessed, over the past few years, is the reveal of the GOP as a fascist movement to protect the white, wealthy, and powerful, an angry and violent rejection of democracy and human dignity. There is no saving them, there is no unity, there's only avoiding tragedy.

    At this year's CPAC gathering, the escalation that Sexton describes became even more grotesque and dangerous. As reported by many reporters, journalists, and other observers, the main stage at CPAC was shaped like the Othala or Odal rune, an ancient proto-Germanic symbol worn more recently on the uniforms of some of Hitler's most fearsome soldiers, including the infamous Waffen-SS.

    In our own time, the Odal rune has also been adopted by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists in both the United States and abroad in an effort make their politics appear more palatable and normal to "mainstream" conservatives and other members of the right wing.

    Predictably, Matt Schlapp, the organizer of this year's CPAC gathering, denied any connection between the shape of the main stage and Nazism. Notably, Schlapp did not order the design of the stage changed after he was made aware of its ominous symbolism and history.

    Ultimately, it is not the physical design of the stage at the 2021 CPAC gathering that is concerning, but more importantly the white supremacist and other racist and anti-human values and ideas being shared and reinforced by the event's speakers and attendees.

    To better understand the relationship between the Odal symbol, Nazism, white supremacy, CPAC, today's Republican Party and the broader right-wing movement, I asked a range of experts from various backgrounds for their insights.

    James Scaminaci III, expert on right-wing politics and extremism

    Starting with the disclosure that Steve Bannon's Breitbart sanitized and mainstreamed neo-Nazi propaganda during the 2016 Trump campaign, that Trump himself retweeted neo-Nazi imagery during the campaign, and that within conservative media outlets there were "ghost" white nationalists, this shows that the infiltration has never stopped. Moreover, the displays are becoming even more overt.

    I suspect, in a similar vein with Trump's use of "88" notations, that this not initially intended for GOPers or conservatives who may or may not be aware of such imagery. Rather, it is intended for those on the left to notice and bring it out in the open, and then the right can have a culture-war fight about it. This reinforces their narratives of "cancel culture," and their persecution complex. I think it is part trolling, part "owning the libs," and using the libs to educate their own publics.

    Moreover, the neo-Nazis and Klan, since at least 2005, have used conservative gatherings to infiltrate and spread their message. They approached the Tea Party with sanitized messages, hid their Nazi tattoos, and tried to coax them toward their viewpoint. They did this during the nativist anti-immigration movement between 2005 and 2008. They mixed with middle-class protesters. They've done this with the "reopen" campaigns. There is also speculation that at least some of the boogaloo militia were disguised neo-Nazis pushing their accelerationist agenda. Neo-Nazis and the Klan have had a chance to mingle with conservative, Christian GOP voters. You can see this in the conflation of the neo-Nazi "white genocide" with the more sanitized "great replacement" conspiracy theory.

    Ultimately, what I see with the image at the CPAC conference is part of a long-term trend where neo-Nazis sanitize their rhetoric, sanitize their personal presentations and infiltrate the GOP, the Christian right and the "conservative" movement.

    Gavriel Rosenfeld, historian, and author of "The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present," "Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture" and "The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism"

    Whether or not the much-commented-upon use of an Odal rune was coincidental or deliberate in creating the CPAC conference stage, the GOP in recent years has flirted with symbols and images used by the American and European far right.

    GOP politicians, including the now ex-president, have earned warranted suspicion for playing symbolic footsie with right-wing extremists in the form of various social media postings, retweets, and other dog-whistle endorsements.

    Most of these endorsements have involved new symbols used by the far right: Pepe the Frog, the VDare/Lion Guard Lion symbol (proposed as a possible symbol of a future Trump-led Patriot Party), white power "OK" salutes, etc. Thus far, while many MAGA supporters overtly use Nazi-era symbols (black sun, SS runes, etc.) the GOP itself has rarely endorsed actual symbols used in the era of classical fascism.

    The most notable exception was probably Trump's retweeting of tweets smearing antifa with the Nazi-era red triangle sewn onto the uniforms of left-wing concentration camp prisoners.

    The Odal rune would be a notable exception to this, but at this point, CPAC has plausible deniability until better evidence surfaces.

    I'd say we are right to be vigilant about paying attention to (and calling out) the increasing willingness of the far right to "say the quiet part out loud" in terms of overt imagery, even if occasionally the fears are misplaced. For some time now, left-liberals are justified in being fearful of the increasingly unhinged right.

    Tim Wise, anti-racism activist, speaker, and author of the new book "Dispatches from the Race War"

    There are two ways of understanding this. The first is as a strange coincidence, in which a right-wing party whose leader has told white nationalists and assorted fascists to stand back and stand by, and claimed some among the Nazis in Charlottesville were "fine people," just so happens to design the stage at their signature event in the shape of a Nazi symbol.

    The second is as a deliberate wink and nod to those within the conservative movement who know the white nationalist base of their party and are signaling to it. But here's the thing: Whichever of these is true hardly matters.

    The Nazis will see this as a subtle endorsement of their ideology. That means more terrorism, more death and an ever-increasing threat to democracy. Which is why even if the design were innocent, this simply goes to show that the right has no interest in guarding against white racist terror by distancing itself from the kinds of people who stormed the Capitol or shot up the Walmart in El Paso or organized Unite the Right in 2017. Because if they wanted to disavow and distance from that bunch they would take pains to avoid things like this. They would work to avoid any sniff of Nazi impropriety. They want it both ways — to punch and then hide their hands. The rest of us must make it clear: This is who they are. It is who they have been for a long time.

    Jean Guerrero, journalist, investigative reporter and author of "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda"

    The use of Nazi iconography is clearly meant to thrill the GOP's increasingly racist base and to trigger the libs, as well as supporters of American democracy. No one should be surprised. They want people speculating about whether the symbol was used deliberately so as to distract from the now unquestionable reality, which is that the Republican Party is an extremist party. Mainstream Republicans have embraced white supremacist ideas that pose a danger to communities of color, just as they did in California during the '90s amid fears about the "browning of America." Stephen Miller is no longer a fringe figure of the party. He is the Republican Party.

    Miller is always laundering white supremacist ideas through the language about heritage. I'm not surprised by the use of this specific symbol. What it dog-whistles is "white heritage."

    Trump had to be talked out of endorsing loyalist in Ohio Senate race

    Travis Gettys
    March 02, 2021

    Former president Donald Trump was ready to jump into Ohio's 2022 U.S. Senate race, and had to be talked out of making an endorsement more than a year away from the midterm elections.

    The twice-impeached one-term president met with Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel last week at Mar-A-Lago, and she may have skirted bylaws against her involvement in primary campaigns by speaking positively of her good friend and Senate candidate Jane Timken, reported Axios.

    "Chairwoman McDaniel is good friends with Jane Timken and thinks highly of her," said RNC spokesman Mike Reed. "But, Chairwoman McDaniel did not make any recommendations on endorsements to President Trump and remains neutral in the primary."

    Trump asked McDaniel whether Timken -- until recently the chair of Ohio's Republican Party -- was "loyal" to him, and he discussed endorsing her over former state treasurer Josh Mandel in the GOP primary race to replace the retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH).

    The former president had to be talked out of getting involved in that race by top advisers, including Donald Trump Jr., saying it was too early to see how the campaign would unfold and pointed out that other candidates were loyalists.

    Timken demonstrated her loyalty this week by calling on her own congressman, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), to resign over his vote to impeach the former president over his role in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

    "It's way too early to make endorsement decisions in many of the races, particularly when primaries are more than a year away," Trump adviser Jason Miller told Axios. "This is much broader than any one race."

    Trump has already made some endorsements in the upcoming midterm elections, including Bob Paduchik's successful bid to succeed Timken as GOP chair, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) for re-election and his former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as candidate for governor of Arkansas.


    03 02 2021 05 55 13 www.youtube.com

    'He did it!': Why a surprisingly bold move from Biden is winning big cheers from the left

    Alex Henderson, AlterNet
    March 01, 2021

    In Alabama — a deeply Republican state known for its anti-union right-to-work laws — Amazon employees are voting on whether or not to organize a union. And President Joe Biden offered support for the push Sunday night in a pro-union video that many progressives and labor advocates are applauding.

    Workers in Alabama – and all across America – are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a… https://t.co/aNdHmYyFUb
    — President Biden (@President Biden)1614560506.0

    In the video, Biden declared, "I've long said that America wasn't built by Wall Street. It was built by the middle class, and unions built the middle class. Unions put power in the hands of workers. They level the playing field. They give you a stronger voice for your health, your safety, higher wages protections from radical discrimination and sexual harassment. Unions lift up workers, union and non-union."

    Although Biden didn't specially mention Amazon by name, the president mentioned "workers in Alabama" and stressed that workers who want to unionize shouldn't be intimidated by management.

    "Let me be really clear: It's not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union," Biden said in his video. "But let me be even more clear: It's not up to an employer to decide that either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers full-stop. Full stop. Today and over the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether or not to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important."

    The Democratic president went onto say, "There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. No supervisor should confront employees about their union preferences. You know, every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice."

    Here are some responses to Biden's video:









     
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