Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.
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John Eastman
Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters
The ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news broadcasts have all ignored the revelation that one of then-President Donald Trump's lawyers authored a memo laying out how Trump could effectively pull off a coup.
John Eastman, a member of the conservative legal establishment who worked with Trump's legal team as the then-president sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, wrote the document in the days leading up to the January 6 counting of electoral votes. His plan lays out various ways then-Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans could use that
event to subvert the election, ensure that Trump remained in office, and terminate the American experiment with democratic rule.
Reporters at The Washington Post and CNN obtained a two-page version of the memo, which CNN published on Monday. On Tuesday, CNN reported that Eastman claimed that document was a "preliminary" version and published a six-page version dated January 3 that the lawyer had provided.
That longer version lays out a series of "alternatives" using the Trump campaign's false claims of widespread voter fraud and "illegal actions by state and local election officials" during the election as a pretext for Pence and congressional Republicans to throw out electors from as many as seven states that President Joe Biden won. His argument was legally preposterous, but dangerous ambiguities in federal law left the election vulnerable if Republicans were willing to act.
"BOLD, Certainly," Eastman comments in the memo after laying out the plot. "But this Election was Stolen by a strategic Democrat plan to systematically flout existing election laws for partisan advantage; we're no longer playing by Queensbury Rules, therefore."
That's the president's lawyer rationalizing a scheme to steal the election on his client's behalf.
The story has been widely covered on CNN and MSNBC. But the broadcast evening and morning news shows -- which generally have larger audiences, particularly in the evenings -- have ignored it. As of posting time, the memo has not been mentioned on CBS Evening News or CBS Mornings, on NBC's Nightly News or Today, or on ABC's World News Tonight or Good Morning America, according to a Media Matters review.
In fact, the only national network broadcasts to mention Trump's coup memo were the late-night variety shows hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers.
Eastman's memo was part of an extensive effort by Trump, his lawyers, and his supporters in the right-wing media and in the Republican Party to delegitimize and reverse the results of the 2020 election. That scheme culminated on January 6, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, convinced that the election had been stolen but that some version of Eastman's plan could be carried out to keep Trump in office. That evening, with the Capitol not yet secure, Eastman denounced Pence for refusing to carry out the plot.
Trump's coup failed. But that was not inevitable. And Trump's supporters have spent the months since laying the groundwork for future success. Such a stratagem requires political operatives and lawyers willing to concoct abstruse pretexts and legal arguments; media propagandists willing to trumpet them; a party base primed to disbelief unfavorable election results; and party officials willing to participate in -- or at least quietly go along with -- the theft.
And it requires one more thing -- a national press that looks the other way.
Methodology
Media Matters searched transcripts in the Kinectiq video database for all original programming on broadcast news affiliates for ABC, CBS, Fox Broadcasting Co., and NBC in all local U.S. media markets for the term "Eastman" within close proximity of any of the terms "Trump," "memo," "Pence," or "constitution" or the term "Trump" within close proximity of the term "lawyer" from September 20 through 22, 2021.
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17 Nobel Economists, Including Stiglitz and Shiller, Sign Letter Endorsing Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Plan
@alexvhenderson
September 23 | 2021
Reprinted with permission from Alternet
It remains to be seen whether or not President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" plan — which includes federal funding for health care, education, child care and combating climate change — will ultimately make it to his desk to be signed into law. The $3.5 trillion price tag is drawing resistance from Republicans as well as centrist Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. But 17 economists, all Nobel Prize recipients, have signed a letter endorsing the plan, which members of the Biden Administration see as crucial to his Build Back Better agenda.
The economists, reporter Nicole Goodkind notes in Fortune, also "came out in support of a proposed $2.9 trillion increase in taxes to pay for the program." The tax hikes, according to Goodkind, would "mostly impact the wealthiest Americans and large, multinational corporations."
The economists wrote, "While we all have different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we believe that key components of this broader agenda are critical — including tax reforms that make our tax system more equitable and that enable our system to raise the additional funds required to facilitate necessary public investments and achieve our collective goals. Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures."
The economists who signed the letter include Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Diamond, George Akerlof (who is married to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen), Sir Angus Deaton, Christopher Sims, Robert Engle, Edmund S. Phelps, Oliver Hart, Robert Solow, Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Paul Milgrom, Daniel McFadden, Paul Romer, Roger Myerson, William Sharpe and Robert Shiller
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