Silly me, here I’d been fantasizing about a soft military coup preventing the Braggart-in-Chief from starting World War III. Surely the Pentagon has procedures for removing emotionally-incapacitated commanders, and Trump’s generals, as he calls them, must have made contingency plans.
Or maybe not.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that arguing with a four-star Marine general like White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is almost sacrilegious. Americans haven’t always thought so. I had two uncles who’d served under Gen. Douglas MacArthur—one in the Philippines, the other in Korea. They considered him a vainglorious blowhard who was reckless with his men’s lives.
They’d have agreed with President Harry S. Truman’s explanation for why he’d cashiered MacArthur in 1951: “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President,” Truman told Time. “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”
Service as grunts in the Pacific had also persuaded my uncles that going into Vietnam was folly. They were keen to convince me that it wasn’t necessary to go to war to be a man—advice that, like Donald J. Trump, I was eager to hear. No bone-spurs here, merely educational deferments.
I do not apologize.
History teaches that while military virtues are real—duty, honor, sacrifice and courage—so are military vices: chief among them authoritarianism and an inability to admit error. Generals spend the first half of their careers polishing apples, and their command years getting their apples shined. That can lead to an inability to see other people’s point of view—particularly those of lower rank.
Hence Gen. Kelly’s unfortunate role in Trump’s latest degrading Twitter feud—exchanging insults with a congresswoman in a silly hat over the president’s ill-fated attempt to console a 23 year-old war widow.
Ill-fated because this president utterly lacks compassion, and pretty clearly bungled his effort to deliver the script Kelly offered him. The general’s dignified, moving description of a friend’s advice about how to talk to bereaved families evidently came out very differently in Trump’s mouth.
Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow Myeshia recalled the president saying that her husband “knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. And it made me cry. I was very angry at the tone of his voice, and how he said it.”
One can certainly question Rep. Frederica S. Wilson’s motives for making a political issue of so intimate a moment, but everybody who overheard the exchange on speaker-phone as Sgt. Johnson’s people drove to the airport to collect his remains heard it the same way.
Trump struck them as cold and unfeeling.
At that point, a normal man—even a normal politician—would apologize for expressing himself clumsily, praise Sgt. Johnson’s heroism, offer further condolences to the families of all the Green Berets killed in Niger, petition God to bless the United States of America, and put it behind him.
But that’s now how Donald J. Trump rolls. So he began attacking the “WACKY” congresswoman, and sent his pet general out to double down on her. Or maybe Gen. Kelly volunteered.
Either way, he gave a lacerating account of a speech delivered by Rep. Wilson at the dedication of a new FBI building in her district in 2013.
“A congresswoman stood up,” Kelly told reporters,“and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down. And we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.”
Trouble was, apart from the fact that Rep. Frederica Wilson did, indeed, speak at the FBI building dedication, everything Kelly said about her speech was completely false—and was proven so when the Florida Sun-Sentinel published a video recording.
Wearing her trademark cowgirl hat, Wilson said nothing about securing funding for the building, because she hadn’t. She never mentioned President Obama at all. She did praise GOP House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who helped her to get the building named for two fallen FBI agents whose heroism she extolled at length.
I doubt Kelly lied, but something about Rep. Wilson clearly set off the retired general. Democrat? Woman? Black woman? Or maybe it was just the damn hat. Whatever, he owes her an apology, but I doubt she’ll get it.
See, when generals go off half-cocked, everybody has to salute.
But John Kelly’s not in uniform anymore.
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Supporters of Donald Trump who are most likely to reconsider their support if he is convicted in his Manhattan hush money trial have very Joe Biden-friendly profiles, according to a CNN poll on Americans’ views of the criminal proceedings.
While three-quarters of current Trump supporters said a criminal conviction would be immaterial to them, 24 percent said they "might reconsider" their support. In other words, of all the voters supporting Trump in the survey, 76 percent were MAGA diehards, while roughly a quarter were more malleable.
So let's take a look at a profile of these squishier Trump supporters, according to the survey:
- They are younger: 64 percent who said they might reconsider were under 50.
- They are less likely to be white: 49 percent who said a conviction could matter were people of color, while just 17 percent of whites said the same.
- 63 percent said Biden legitimately won 2020.
- 20 percent said they backed Biden in 2020.
- 49 percent are independents.
- 50 percent are ideological moderates.
"These are the exact voters who propelled Trump to his very narrow lead in the polling average. Younger voters, independents, Black and Latino voters are groups Trump struggled with in 2020 but is doing better with now,” points out Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director for the Obama administration.
The 2024 presidential race is effectively even now, with the 538 aggregate giving Trump just a one-point advantage. Both camps need to persuade more voters into their corners to cement a win, but Biden even more so given Republicans' built-in advantage in the electoral college. And a candidate always wants the pool of voters they need to woo to be predisposed to supporting them in the first place.
For Biden, that means he wants those squishy Trump supporters to generally be younger, voters of color, people who view themselves as moderates, people who believe he won 2020 legitimately, and people who voted for him last time. That includes everyone from the poll who could be persuaded to vote for Biden if Trump is convicted.
Perhaps more importantly, CNN may have located the exact profile of the Trump supporters who have enough doubts about him to admit as much to a pollster. That alone suggests that they could be open to other Democratic arguments against Trump, so the Biden campaign could begin its persuasion efforts even before a verdict comes down.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake hopes to secure a US Senate seat this year with the help of her longtime ally — Donald Trump — but the ex-president's support isn't promised, according to The Washington Post.
In January, Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit abruptly resigned after Lake "warned that she would 'leak additional recordings of their private conversations.'
When she later publicly endorsed fellow MAGA supporter Gina Swoboda to replace DeWit during a Republican event, Lake "was met with 'boos and jeers as she took the stage.'"
The Postreports:
Trump’s top advisers were furious after a Lake ally released a recording of then-Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit encouraging her to stay out of the Senate race, which embarrassed the party chairman and led him to resign.
Trump was more surprised than angry when told about the January incident, according to three people familiar with his reaction. 'She tapes everything?' he asked, sitting in a New Hampshire hotel suite before taking the stage on the night he won that state’s primary. 'That’s good to know.'
Now, the newspaper reports, "Since Lake jumped into the race, Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about her political prospects in a state he sees as key to his bid to return to the White House, and has shown annoyance with her frequent presence at his Florida resort, according to five people close to him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his comments."
Furthermore, the Post notes the incident "killed any desire by some elected Republicans in the state to communicate with her, fearing they could be secretly recorded."
One top Arizona Republican told the Post, “Whether they end up voting for Kari Lake or not, they don’t trust her. They think they’re being recorded and it’s a running joke.”
The newspaper emphasizes, "So far, there has been no public schism between Trump and Lake, and the Senate candidate was at Mar-a-Lago again this month for a fundraiser. But Trump’s frustration with Lake has only increased over the past year, heightening the tension between the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and one of his most prominent followers — casting doubt on whether Republicans can present a sufficiently united front to win a key U.S. Senate contest and a presidential battleground state."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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