How RFK Junior's Farcical Campaign Betrays The Kennedy Legacy

How RFK Junior's Farcical Campaign Betrays The Kennedy Legacy

When a neophyte named Edward Moore Kennedy first ran for the Senate in 1962 at barely 30 years old, his primary opponent delivered a debate quip that still echoes.

"If your name were Edward Moore," cracked Ed McCormack, then Massachusetts attorney general, "your candidacy would be a joke." Ted Kennedy won that primary, ascended to the Senate, and then spent a lifetime winning over skeptics with hard work and liberal commitment.

But that harsh zinger could score a bullseye on a different target now: Uncle Teddy's errant nephew Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., the grifting anti-vax lawyer and conspiracy monger whose campaign for president of the United States should be a joke — and certainly would be if his name were merely Robert Francis.

The difference is that RFK Jr., seeking public office for the first time, isn't 30. He is 70, a senior citizen, with a long and checkered record whose bright spots are overshadowed by menacing darkness. Far from upholding the values his family represents or the legacy of his martyred father and uncle, Bobby Jr. is an opportunist whose ambition, greed, dishonesty and arrogance have led him far astray.

There was a time many years ago when, as an environmental lawyer, Kennedy did useful work — usually under the tutelage of wiser heads — after he emerged from the drug addiction that followed his father's murder. At one point, I even wrote an admiring magazine profile of him.

But not too many years later, Bobby began the deceptive anti-vaccine campaign that has marked his moral and intellectual decline ever since. Having authored articles claiming childhood vaccines cause autism, he clung to their refuted arguments and falsified data long after the magazines were forced to withdraw them. He insists those lies are true to this day — and the anti-vax propaganda from which he profits is leaving American kids vulnerable to disease.

How would his late uncle John F. Kennedy, whose memory he so often invokes in his current campaign, react to what Bobby has done? In 1961, President Kennedy worried that resistance to the polio vaccine, which was still rather new, meant millions of schoolchildren might contract that deadly and crippling virus.

At a press conference that April, the president said: "I hope that the renewed drive this spring and summer to provide vaccination for all Americans, and particularly those who are young, will have the wholehearted support of every parent in America."

The following year, JFK pushed through the Vaccination Assistance Act, which financed immunization drives in every state for polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. That massive campaign established the federal government as the central authority in establishing and coordinating immunization policy for the nation — a role Robert Kennedy Jr. has persistently sought to undermine or even abolish, at potentially enormous cost.

Bobby's betrayal of his family goes further with every step he takes in this campaign, and in every direction. JFK and RFK were both known for surrounding themselves with advisers whose intelligence and experience drew admiration; Bobby is drawn to intellectually null sycophants and boobs, including a large contingent of crooks like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, as well as the anti-vax scammers, some of whom are outright fascists. These are people his father and uncle would have privately mocked and publicly shunned.

Even worse, Bobby has become a shill for Russian propaganda and an opponent of American military aid to Ukraine's besieged democracy. We don't have to wonder what his uncle would have said, because history tells us.

In his inaugural address, JFK uttered this indelible sentence: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Liberty doesn't mean surrendering to Putin and abandoning our allies.

Lately, Bobby has been sucking up to the Libertarian Party, whose platform would tear down all the achievements of his father and both of his uncles in civil rights, education, health care, environmental protection, food security and a score of essential programs. He wants their ballot line, and he is willing to promote their destructive ideology for his own benefit.

In this campaign, he has reversed the old epigram about history and its personages. In the first act, he presents a farce — and in the second act, should he help to elect Donald Trump, he will bring forth a tragedy.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom formerly known as The Investigative Fund, and a senior fellow at Type Media Center.


Biden Delivers Forceful, Fiery And Optimistic State of the Union Address

Biden Delivers Forceful, Fiery And Optimistic State of the Union Address

President Joe Biden delivered a forceful, upbeat, and resolute State of the Union address on Thursday evening, not hesitating to remind voters of his administration’s remarkable achievements – or the perils that America and the world will face if Donald Trump returns to the White House.

Biden opened with his trademark warning about the danger confronting democracy both here and abroad, upbraiding the Republicans for their failure to support Ukraine in its existential battle with Russia and for their craven abandonment of American commitments to the Western alliance and world order. In the first of several references to Trump, whose name he did not utter, the president scornfully noted how his opponent kissed the ring of Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin.

“My predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.”

Biden then turned the focus onto Republican assaults against democracy at home, reminding them of their own perfidious whitewashing of the insurrection that Trump inspired.

“My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6. I will not do that…. Remember your oath of office to defend against all threats foreign and domestic.”

In a line that roused the evening’s strongest applause --lambasting the coup plot and efforts to overturn his 2020 victory that culminated in the attack on the Capitol -- he admonished the election deniers in the chamber: “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

The president dismissed the handful of hecklers from the Republican side with skill and cutting humor. When he recalled Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that his “predecessor” had failed “the duty to care, Rep. Derrick van Orden (R-WI) shrieked “Lies!” Biden waved him off with a smile. “Look at the facts,” he told van Orden. “I know you know how to read.”

When he raised the border legislation that House Republican leadership killed on orders from Trump, after their Senate counterparts spent months negotiating it, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) began yelling too. She had handed him a pin on his way into the House chamber bearing the name of Laken Riley, a young woman murdered by an undocumented migrant from Venezuela. Greene, who also sported a red MAGA hat in violation of House rules, began shouting “Say her name!”

“Laken Riley,” Biden replied, “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” using an offensive term that made for a discordant moment. But the heckling died as the president said he empathized with Riley’s parents as a father who had lost two children – and then went on. “I would respectfully suggest ... my Republican friends owe it to the American people: Get this bill done,” he said. “We need to act now…If my predecessor is watching, instead of playing politics and pressuring members of Congress to block the bill, join me in telling the Congress to pass it,” he added.

As he spoke, Sen. James Lankford, the conservative Oklahoma Republican who shaped the border legislation, could be seen nodding and saying, “It’s true.”

Sparring aside, Biden’s speech centered on a boldly optimistic message about what he has achieved so far and what he intends to pursue in a second term. He cited the bipartisan infrastructure bill – noting with a smile that some Republicans had claimed credit for local projects despite voting no – and his manufacturing and climate legislation, all of which have created jobs, keeping unemployment low and growth strong. He raked Trump for boasting about the overthrow of Roe v. Wade and vowed to enshrine abortion rights in legislation if he returns to office with Democratic Congressional majorities.

He promised a fairer tax system that required billionaires to pay their fair share while providing new tax breaks for first-time homeowners. He highlighted proposals for universal pre-school, reducing prescription drug costs, and prohibiting “junk fees” on credit-card bills. These plans, along with a broad panoply of proposals, won approval from focus groups observing the speech.

Biden closed by directly engaging voter concerns about his age:

“I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while.

And when you get to my age certain things become clearer than ever before.

I know the American story.

Again and again I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation.

Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.

My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy.

A future based on the core values that have defined America.

Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality.

To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.

Now some other people my age see a different story.

An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution.

That’s not me.

I was born amid World War II when America stood for freedom in the world.

I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont, Delaware among working people who built this country.

I watched in horror as two of my heroes, Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated and their legacies inspired me to pursue a career in service.

A public defender, county councilman, elected United States Senator at 29, then Vice President, to our first Black President, now President, with our first woman Vice President.

In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old.

Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures.

Our North Star.

The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.

And I won’t walk away from it now.”

Historian Who Predicts Presidents Says Biden Can 'Absolutely' Win In 2024

Historian Who Predicts Presidents Says Biden Can 'Absolutely' Win In 2024

On the eve of Joe Biden's State of the Union address, amid a chorus of Democratic bedwetters, the historian who has accurately predicted every presidential race over the past 40 years says that the president "absolutely" can win in November.

Indeed, Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor of history at American University whose methods of election analysis have proved successful for decades, went even further in a British Times Radio interview on Super Tuesday. While acknowledging that "it's way too early to make a final prediction," he said, "a lot would have to go wrong for Joe Biden to lose this election. I absolutely think Joe Biden can win a second term."

Biden can ‘absolutely’ win the US election | Professor Allan Lichtmanyoutu.be

Lichtman dismissed recent polls, several of which have shown Trump leading Biden. "Take the early polls and do with them what the great British philosopher David Hughes said you should do with works of superstition – consign them to the flames," said the erudite professor. "They have absolutely no predictive value. There is so much yet to come."

In 2016, he was among a tiny minority of analysts who predicted that the Republican would win, and received a signed photo from Trump after the election. He told The Sun newspaper that he doesn't expect any such appreciative gesture from Trump in November 2024. (The prospective GOP nominee may also recall that Lichtman wrote a book calling for his impeachment in 2017.)

As outlined in a Newsmax article on Lichtman, his keys to victory include"

  • Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (Not so in 2024, but Democrats beat the "red wave" in 2022 and are near parity.)
  • Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
  • Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
  • Third party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
  • Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
  • Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  • Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
  • Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  • Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
  • Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
  • Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
  • Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
  • Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

"Based upon the keys, a lot of keys would have to turn, over the next few months, against Joe Biden to predict his defeat," as Lichtman explained to Times Radio.

"By running, Joe Biden wins the incumbency key, one of my keys, he wins the party contest key because there's no battle. That's two off the top. Six more would have to go against him to predict his defeat.

"[If] Joe Biden doesn't run, they lose incumbency, they lose the party contest because there's no heir apparent and only four keys would have to fall to predict a Democrat defeat."

Lichtman is a serious scholar and acclaimed author who has written books on many topics, including an important 2008 history of the right, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.

Evidence Of GOP Complicity In Kremlin Assault On America Is Now Overwhelming

Evidence Of GOP Complicity In Kremlin Assault On America Is Now Overwhelming

On February 23, a federal judge in California ordered marshals to seize Alexander Smirnov at his lawyers' office only days after he had been released on bail by a different judge, with the clear implication that he might be preparing to flee the country. Smirnov is the much touted prime witness in the House Republican impeachment campaign against Joe Biden, accusing the president of having taken $5 million in bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs. It's all a lie manufactured by Russian intelligence.

Smirnov's initial arrest was ordered by special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed Republican investigating Hunter Biden, who has indicted the star witness for fabricating his entire story and lying to the FBI. In subsequent court filings, the prosecutor charged that the lies transmitted by Smirnov originated with Russian spies.In other words, the number one Republican witness in the public and repeated smearing of President Biden -- on the floor of Congress and in right-wing media -- was a knowing conduit for Kremlin disinformation. The intent is nothing less than to help elect Trump again.

What makes this scandal so much worse -- and so embarrassing to Johnson, if he were capable of shame -- is that Smirnov's deception emanated from the much broader Russian penetration of American politics that began ... when?

Perhaps with that Trump Tower meeting in 2015, when Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a Russian dossier on Hillary Clinton from a Russian intelligence operative. And then it continued with the Kremlin's cyber assault against Clinton in 2016, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's secret cooperation with a Russian spy named Konstantin Kilimnik. After Trump became president, he withheld weapons from Ukraine while demanding a phony probe of Biden. Trump's blackmail attempt triggered his first impeachment.

Along the way, a gang of Trump associates led by Rudy Giuliani worked with various Putin stooges in Ukraine and elsewhere to invent mendacious nonsense about the Bidens. Giuliani worked closely with Putin crony Andriy Derkach and other dubious characters, who were later indicted for attempting to interfere in the 2020 election.

For years, it has been blindingly obvious that the "investigation" of Joe Biden and Ukraine emanated not from any legitimate source but directly from this country's enemies. And yet while those accusers were repeatedly exposed and discredited, congressional Republicans insisted on pursuing the bogus case invented in Moscow.

But Johnson's undermining of American security has gone well beyond the assistance he and Republicans have provided to the Kremlin in subverting American democracy. Now refusing to fund U.S. military assistance to Ukraine in its courageous struggle against Russian invaders, they have helped Putin gain a critical victory in the battle of Avdiivka and jeopardized the Western alliance that is fundamental to European and American security. Johnson has admitted he's taking his orders from Trump, who worships Putin. The cowardice of Johnson and the Republicans has become crucial to Putin and his savage war.

Johnson has his own little Russian secrets. The speaker must still explain the laundered campaign funds from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian oligarch and confederate of confessed convicted Kremlin spy agent Maria Butina. She served a prison sentence here after the exposure of her successful scheme to penetrate the National Rifle Association and other right-wing groups, including some of the "Christian nationalist" outfits that Johnson promotes.

What attracts extremists like the House speaker -- and his puppet master Trump -- to the Russian dictator who looms above them is an authoritarian political orientation that smells of fascism. Putin is a threat from without, and they are a threat from within.

Joe Biden

Why Democrats Shouldn't Fear A Comparison Of Biden And Trump

Plainly visible behind the melodramatic release of a special counsel report on President Joe Biden's retention of classified documents — and its unprofessional partisan personal attack on him — are several basic facts that ought to be understood by every American.

First is the character of Robert Hur, the special counsel, a Trump Republican who abused Attorney General Merrick Garland's good-faith appointment of him. Hur larded his report exonerating the president with irrelevant remarks that were obviously designed to inflict political damage. By doing so, Hur clearly violated Justice Department protocols and has earned investigations of his own misconduct by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility and inspector general.

It is worth noting that Hur's ridiculously verbose, overwrought document is marred by its slovenly composition. To cite one glaring instance among many, he claims to have found "evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified documents," and then admits more than 200 pages later that "there is in fact a shortage of evidence on these points." (Did the special counsel, only 51 years old, suffer his own embarrassing memory lapse?)

Second is the failure of mainstream media to duly emphasize the memory blips and routinely incoherent blabber of Biden's principal opponent Donald Trump. When the former president wrongly identified Hungarian President Viktor Orban in a recent speech as the president of Turkey, his error received only brief mention on the major cable networks. His repeated mistaking of his primary opponent Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi in another speech got more coverage, but only because Haley kept mentioning it to mock Trump.

Not so long ago, in the trial that found Trump guilty of sexual assault, he gazed at a photograph of plaintiff E. Jean Carroll and told the court that it was a picture of Marla Maples, one of his former wives. Anyone who has looked at Trump's testimony in any number of cases, notably the lawsuits over his phony Trump University, will find dozens of instances when he claimed, under oath, not to remember events, documents and people he knew.

Third and most important is that any comparison of the performance of Biden versus Trump reflects very poorly on the latter — and quite positively on the current president. From a prolonged economic slump that was largely owed to Trump's mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, Biden has restored the U.S. economy. Although the country has suffered a spike of inflation that is now abating, it was far lower than in other developed nations and emanated from global supply problems, not his policies.

Economic growth and full employment have persisted strongly, crushing the dire and almost universal predictions of recession — and the financial markets, which Trump predicted would crash, instead have reached record levels. (Now the Republican politicians, who usually measure their life achievement by stock prices, tell us that doesn't matter.) Across the country, Biden's achievements in office are improving American lives and communities, with higher wages, lower drug costs, and the enormous infrastructure program that Trump promised and failed to deliver.

Biden's extensive record looks even better when contrasted with the latest embarrassing antics of Trump and his congressional Republican lackeys. Anyone worried by the arrival of thousands of undocumented immigrants ought to have welcomed the tough — indeed draconian — border control legislation agreed by Senate Republicans and Democrats in a deal that would have included defense funding for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, and humanitarian relief for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That bill, fashioned at the insistence of Republicans, required four months of negotiation, overseen by one of the Senate's most conservative members, James Lankford of Oklahoma.

At a time when Republicans constantly bemoan the threat supposedly embodied by an influx of migrants, Trump suddenly ordered them all to abandon that legislative effort — and vote down the same powers to close the border and mobilize more resources that he had demanded as president. It was an astonishingly irresponsible act that humiliated every Republican on Capitol Hill, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Mike Johnson down to the most obscure backbencher. Thanks to Trump, all of them, except the indignant Lankford, look like craven underlings who put politics above their own definition of national security.

Of course that is how Trump behaves in every circumstance. Constantly shouting and posting incomprehensible, loony outbursts makes him appear insane. And whatever "gaffes" Joe Biden may utter, whatever names he may forget, he still knows far more than Trump ever will — and he remains steady, reliable and devoted to the national interest.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund, and the author of several books, including two New York Times bestsellers. His forthcoming book isThe Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

They Yap About Taylor Swift, But They're Telling Us About Themselves

They Yap About Taylor Swift, But They're Telling Us About Themselves

You don’t have to be a follower of Taylor Swift or a fan of professional football to notice the very strange crusade that so-called “conservatives” have been waging against them. Those icons of music and sport, as American as they could possibly be, are suddenly tarred on right-wing media outlets as secret instruments of a plot by powerful hidden forces – in the Pentagon, the White House, or somewhere in “the deep state,” whatever that means.

It is now possible to watch otherwise normal-seeming people on television, including several with their own nightly shows, spreading insane rumors about Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. In a calmer time, anyone who persistently shouted such lurid nonsense would have been a candidate for long-term residence in what was euphemistically called “a nice home,” without access to sharp objects. With deinstitutionalization, they are now paid astronomical salaries to declaim their fantasies on Fox News and its cable competitors. (This is considered progress.)

For weeks, the airwaves and the digital space have been aflame with attacks on Swift and Kelce, promoting the notion that these two attractive, talented, and amazingly successful people are not what they seem to be. Consider the recent rant by Jesse Watters, a primetime host on Fox News, who insinuated that Swift isn’t a legitimate musical sensation, but merely a tool propped up by Pentagon military intelligence for mass manipulation. Watters called her a “psyop,” jargon for a government propaganda tool or event designed to influence public opinion and political behavior.

“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” he asked, questioning her popularity as a musician. "Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psyop for combatting online misinformation." Of course, like so many other events reported breathlessly by Fox fake news, that never happened. It was just a figment of Watters’ monkey mind, which he tried to pass off with a deceptively edited video clip.

It isn’t hard to see what inspired the vile slagging of Swift and Kelce (who also committed the offense of getting vaccinated against COVID-19, just as all the Fox hypocrites did when the company required it). She appears to be a Democrat and a supporter of reproductive rights, an opponent of racism, and perhaps worst of all, a symbol of female power and independence. She has backed a few Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden in 2020 – and Republicans dread the prospect that she’ll do it again this year. Ominously, from their perspective, she has already prodded tens of thousands of her fans to register as voters.

Indeed, the right-wing loonies are warning that the Super Bowl has long been “rigged” for the Chiefs to win, leading up to a romantic Biden endorsement by Kelce and Swift. Pretty sick and, dare I say, un-American.

The craziness is so stupid that it’s almost funny. Even some conservatives are begging for it to stop, because they fear the political consequences of angering the Swifties, as well they should. But it isn’t funny at all.

What thugs like Watters are telling Swift is that she will be punished for disputing their authoritarian and misogynist ideology. Her adversaries have not only viciously insulted her, but circulated AI-faked explicit nudes. Naturally, Watters seized on the faked photos as another opportunity to mock and shame a female body. (Don’t you hope he gets a chance to meet Travis Kelce in person someday?)

Whether Swift endorses Biden or not, she has performed a great service, simply by impelling the worst people in America to show who they really are – and how their uncontrollable hatred poisons everyday life in this nation. Let’s not forget.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting newsroom formerly known as The Investigative Fund, and a senior fellow at Type Media Center.

Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Trump Never Stops Insulting His Cult Followers

Supporters of Donald Trump often complain about the "liberal elites" who have disrespected them. It is a feeling of cultural grievance that their idol constantly exploits, both to enrich himself with their donations and to defend himself against his critics.

Whenever Trump finds himself under pressure — in a courtroom, an impeachment or an election — he tells those credulous followers that it is not he but they who are the true targets of the Democrats, the "deep state," the media, the Republicans in Name Only, the Biden White House or whomever. That was how he responded to the first impeachment brought against him in 2019 and that is how he answered the huge $83 million jury verdict delivered against him this week in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Trump makes this demagogic argument in full confidence that the MAGA cult will believe him — and with certainty that they will never realize how deeply he is insulting them.

"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way," he tweeted when Congress first voted to impeach him. But did that make any sense? It wasn't the MAGA voters who attempted to extort the president of Ukraine, attempting to trade American weaponry for his own political gain (and to frame a political opponent with a phony prosecution).

Surely most of Trump's fans would never consider such a brazen blackmail scheme. Unlike him, they don't have to worry about being impeached or prosecuted; they have neither the motive nor the opportunity to perpetrate the offenses that Trump repeatedly commits.

In the wake of the Carroll jury award, the former president's most devoted associates have adopted the same argument, adding their own frantic spin. Steve Bannon, the convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump in order to keep his mouth shut, and Matt Schlapp, the right-wing activist repeatedly accused of homosexual assault, declared that the verdict foreshadows "the end of America."

On the "War Room" online broadcast hosed by Bannon, Schlapp echoed Trump's baseless insistence that the Carroll lawsuit is a "very coordinated thing" and the product of a "weaponized government" — when in fact it is simply a civil lawsuit brought by an aggrieved citizen. But Schlapp went still further, warning the MAGA audience that the judgment against Trump in favor of the woman he assaulted would portend their own ruin.

What the verdict proves, according to Schlapp and Bannon, is that the government "doesn't just intend to destroy your career and cancel you on social media, they mean to impoverish you and destroy any opportunity you have in the future. ... If these things continue to stand, all of this unconstitutional illegal activity, we've got nothing left, Steve. I mean it's run to the mountains, run to the catacombs time. ... This $83 million — this is just the beginning. All of us will be paraded down this gangplank. We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."

Schlapp's panic is perhaps understandable, as he faces pressure to resign the chairmanship of the Conservative Political Action Committee -- a juicy grift -- because of sexual assault accusations that resemble Trump's offenses. And Bannon no doubt feels a twinge of sympathy as he faces continued prosecution by New York state authorities for the "border wall" scam that led to his federal pardon. (Three others involved in that racket went to prison, including a disabled veteran.)

But why would a normal person put any credence in such hysterical rants? There was nothing "illegal" or "unconstitutional" in Carroll's courageous effort to hold Trump accountable for assault, which resulted in a flood of personal abuse against her that included hundreds of death threats. More to the point, only an infinitesimal fraction of Americans has any reason to worry about being held responsible for an aggravated sexual assault - because unlike Trump, few have ever been accused of rape or assault, let alone by dozens of women.

It is remarkable indeed how many of our fellow citizens are willing to be implicated in the sociopathic conduct of the former president, who tells them every day that they are just like him.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

If Black Voters Abandon Biden, What Will They Get Instead?

If Black Voters Abandon Biden, What Will They Get Instead?

Should Donald Trump win the presidency in November, he will probably owe his victory to Black and Hispanic voters. If that prediction startles you, then perhaps you haven't been reading the most recent polls. Trump is maintaining a small but persistent lead over President Joe Biden in national averages — and the apparent reason is that those minority voters, who voted overwhelmingly Democratic in 2020, show much less enthusiasm for Biden in this election.

Waning support for the incumbent among his own partisan base appears to cross racial, generational and geographic lines, with many asking whether he should have stepped aside by now. Others blame him for inflation, although prices spiked across the developed world after the pandemic. But the dramatic decline in Black support for Biden is deeply puzzling — especially when the only alternative is returning Trump to power.

Exactly how Biden has disappointed those voters remains mysterious, given his own political history and behavior. He was the loyal vice president of America's first Black president and chose a Black woman as his running mate. He has named many Black appointees to top positions in government, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Other than Barack Obama, he is the most outspoken opponent of white supremacy ever to occupy the Oval Office.None of that appears to have made any impression on a substantial segment of Black voters, however, especially among the youngest — whose alienation is now growing because of Biden's support for Israel in Gaza. (One wonders what they, or anyone planning to abandon the Democrats over that conflict, believe Trump would have done or will do in such circumstances.)

But let's ask the question a different way and forget about Biden for a moment. What would happen to Black America — and other minorities in this country — if Trump regains power in 2025?

Begin by glancing back to the time when Trump entered presidential politics, even before he came down the escalator in his gilded tower to slander Mexicans as rapists and murderers. He first signaled those ambitions with his conspiratorial campaign claiming that Obama was not a native-born citizen, and therefore ineligible to be president, but a secret immigrant from Kenya. It was a big lie, the precursor of many more to come, culminating in the very Big Lie that the 2020 election had been "rigged" against him. And it was a racist falsehood, calculated to evoke the ugliest kind of hostility among the Tea Party Republicans who later swarmed into Trump's MAGA cult.

Since then, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly how he uses racial tension to promote himself and his politics. It is a habit that recalls his aggressive campaign to execute the since-exonerated Central Park Five, young Black men falsely accused of a gang rape, and continues today when he ridiculously proclaims that he could have "negotiated" the Civil War, a conflict over human bondage that was not subject to compromise.

The future that a Trump presidency would portend is bleak indeed for a diverse and multicultural democracy whose citizens hope to move forward together, not backward in division. Turning Point USA, the MAGA "youth wing," will mark Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday this month with an expensive campaign to demonize him and to persuade Americans that the landmark civil rights legislation he helped to win was "a huge mistake," according to its leader Charlie Kirk.

Kirk has used his organization and his close connection with Trump to enrich himself and his cronies, but that is hardly the worst of his offenses. His forthcoming crusade to roll back civil rights will be overseen by someone named Blake Neff, a Turning Point staffer who once worked on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show — until the exposure of his voluminous racist and misogynist online messaging. Try to imagine how bad those had to be for a Fox executive who described them as "abhorrent" when the network announced Neff's dismissal.That the Trump movement would aspire to repeal the Civil Rights Act, after everything their leader has done to undermine the rights of minorities and women, shouldn't surprise anyone who has been paying attention. "Make America Great Again" always carried a dubious undertone, loudly hinting this county was better when we lived under the stale hierarchies of a bygone century.

Come November there will be only one effective way to reject that mentality and its implications for us and our children. No American of good will, regardless of race, creed or color, should harbor any illusions otherwise.

Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo and editor-at-large of Type Investigations. He is a bestselling author whose next book,The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, will be published in 2024.

Biden's Challenge: Will We Choose Despotism Or Democracy? (VIDEO)

Biden's Challenge: Will We Choose Despotism Or Democracy? (VIDEO)

Ever since Donald Trump declared that he would run for president again, his attempt to seize illegitimate power by overturning the last election has loomed as a central issue in 2024. That is why the president he attempted to usurp squarely confronted the would-be dictator to mark the beginning of the campaign.

On the eve of the second anniversary of Trump's insurrection, President Joe Biden spoke near the Revolutionary War campgrounds of Valley Forge — where George Washington and his Continental Army troops spent a winter of privation and illness before pulling together to rid the new nation of monarchy and despotism. Biden sought to remind us of our connection to that history, of our responsibility to uphold and extend the democracy those freezing, hungry soldiers secured, and of the continuing threat to American values embodied by Trump.



In recent years, the president has mostly avoided speaking his opponent's name, but on this occasion he uttered it more than 40 times as he invoked the criminal conduct committed by Trump during his vain attempt to remain in office. Biden publicly arraigned Trump for Jan. 6, recalling how he had invited the armed mob to the Capitol and then did nothing to prevent or stop their violent assault on Congress as it prepared to certify the 2020 election, which he described as "the worst dereliction of duty by a president in American history."

To this day, Trump has never even attempted to justify his bizarre passive aggression during the hours of deadly violence, watching television and abandoning his role as commander in chief while his eldest son and others pleaded with him to act. But the reason for his inaction is surely obvious: He wanted death and destruction, possibly even the assassination of Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that would allow him to nullify the election he lost and declare martial law. It was a day when "we nearly lost America," as Biden noted in his speech.

But the events preceding that dark day, as we now understand them, show that the "Capitol riot" was the culmination of a plot against democracy that had started to unfold on election night 2020. As predicted a week earlier by his fascist aide Steve Bannon, Trump tried to claim victory before all the votes were counted. When the tally turned against him, he initiated a series of crimes — including attempts to intimidate election officials in several states and a conspiracy to subvert the Electoral College with fake elector certificates.

Those nefarious maneuvers told us everything about Trump and his cohort, including most elected officials of the Republican Party — who either overcame their initial horror at the Capitol assault or joined eagerly in the plot (even as they ran like cowards from the action). They have humiliated themselves without limit in the years since, inventing an incredible series of conspiracy theories, tall tales and outright lies to excuse the insurrection and protect their Fuhrer Trump. You can still hear them spout nonsense blaming antifascists dressed up in MAGA gear, alleged FBI informants, and even the brave police officers who defended Congress, some of whom lost their lives. It is frankly impossible to imagine that any elected official believes such garbage — although it is also clear that there are many deranged Republican voters who will literally believe anything.

Biden faces a daunting challenge in his effort to preserve democracy from the authoritarian machinations of Trump and his minions. And he is aware that too many Americans no longer recall accurately the convulsive Republican attempt to end this country's history of peaceful political transition. And he knows that if Trump loses, he will try to grab power again.

"When the attacks of Jan. 6 happened, there was no doubt about the truth," said the president. "But now as time has gone on, politics, fear, money have all intervened. And those MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and Jan. 6 have abandoned the truth and abandoned our democracy. They've made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice."

Will we be the generation that forfeits our democratic heritage to a modern despot? Biden is asking and only we can answer.

Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo and editor-at-large of Type Investigations. He is a bestselling author whose next book,The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, will be published in 2024.

Donald Trump

With Every False Accusation Against Others, Trump Indicts Himself

The lesson to be learned from the latest revelations about former President Donald Trump's misuse of highly sensitive classified documents concerns the character of the former president and his cronies: They constantly accuse their political adversaries of the crimes and misdemeanors they have committed — or will perpetrate — themselves.

And the more information that is uncovered, the less culpable Trump's targets appear to be - while his own guilt, and the guilt of his associates, is established ever more firmly.

Nobody who has read the lengthy Florida indictment of Trump, which alleges more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act, can doubt his narcissistic attitude toward the protection of national security secrets. Nor is there any question that he repeatedly lied and conspired to conceal his violations of the law.

But where his behavior once seemed mysterious, we now can see at least one clear motive behind his bizarre and dangerous conduct: the desire for revenge against everyone who had sought to uncover the truth about Russia's illegal support for his 2016 campaign. The "Crossfire Hurricane" folder that disappeared from the White House during the final days of his administration has never been located, which has raised grave alarm in the intelligence community over the potential exposure of sources and methods to our adversaries in the Kremlin.

It is no exaggeration to say that those concerns include the possibility that Trump himself might expose those sources to his friends in the Putin regime. His loyalty to the West is questionable and his debt to the Russian dictator is undeniable.

Yet as the underlying events of Crossfire Hurricane unfolded, Trump and his campaign were shrieking incessantly about Hillary Clinton's emails — urging federal authorities to "lock her up" for these supposed offenses against national security. The facts that have emerged since then have proved that the number of classified documents jeopardized by her actions amounted to exactly zero.

The same pattern of false accusation and true culpability applies to the Clinton and Trump foundations. In 2015, the far-right "strategist" and publisher Steve Bannon, who then became Trump's campaign manager, launched a multimillion-dollar smear campaign against the Clinton Foundation that succeeded beyond his wildest dreams — including a ludicrously false accusation featured as an "investigation" on the front page of The New York Times. The real achievements of the Clinton Foundation in saving many millions of lives and stemming the AIDS epidemic were submerged beneath a sewage outflow of phony conspiracy claims.

Largely ignored amid Bannon's publicity jihad against the Clinton Foundation were the grotesque abuses of the Trump Foundation, which accomplished no good works and more closely resembled a racketeering conspiracy than a nonprofit charity. Trump's self-serving manipulation of nonprofit tax laws was both comical and shocking. And then a few years later, Bannon himself established an abusive nonprofit — "We Build the Wall" — from which he and his criminal confederates admittedly stole millions donated by naive conservatives. He's an unrepentant crook and may yet go to prison, despite the pardon bestowed on him by Trump.

Making a hollow accusation to conceal suspicious behavior (or actual crimes) remains the modus operandi not only of Trump and Bannon, whose corruption is well established, but of the Republican Party leadership they have suborned. That is why congressional Republicans have mounted a fake impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, despite the complete absence of any evidence that he profited from his son's foreign business dealings — or that those dealings had any effect on public policy while Biden served in the White House.

There is nothing to those charges, as the Republican investigators have inadvertently proved with their bumbling displays of malice. But several indiscreet politicians have disclosed the Biden impeachment's real purpose: to distract voters from the pending indictments against Trump — not to mention the massive profiteering by Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner during their years in the White House.

Every accusation they utter is an indictment of their own misconduct.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Joe Biden

Wake Up And Look At What's Really Happening In The Biden Economy

You may have noticed in recent weeks that alarming headlines about inflation – specifically, those ubiquitous stories about the cost of gasoline, or eggs, or other household goods – have vanished. Media outlets no longer feature those fearsome charts with arrows zooming skyward, or video loops displaying the latest eye-popping gas station signage.

Much as the mainstream media seemed to enjoy scourging President Joe Biden with the bad news about raging hikes in the price of everything, that depressing theme has disappeared because inflation is falling.

In October, what economists describe as “core inflation,” meaning the price of goods and services other than food and energy, declined to 2.0 percent – the target set by the Federal Reserve. And what they understandably call “headline inflation,” the more volatile measure of prices that include all consumer purchases, including groceries and gas, dropped on a monthly level to zero.

Got that? Zero. Year over year, the rise in personal consumption expenditures has plummeted to three percent.

So encouraging were those numbers to the financial sector – and presumably the central bankers at the Federal Reserve – that some now forecast a cut in interest rates. Dropping rates would likely prevent the recession that has been forecast (with glee) by many Republicans – and bring America in for a “soft landing” from the pandemic recovery.

Will Biden get any credit for this improvement? Not from most media organizations, nor from pundits who wrongly blamed him for the inflation spurt in the first place, when they knew that other countries were suffering much worse price increases in the pandemic’s wake. Indeed, too many outlets are barely even noting that inflation has collapsed.

At the same time, the president’s “Bidenomics” program has brought continued steady growth and strong employment, with the annualized gross domestic product topping 5.2 percent in October – and unemployment steady at 3.9 percent. Economists have long tended to view a four percent jobless rate as “full employment,” essentially the best that can be achieved in a capitalist system without spurring inflation. Our current unemployment level is among the lowest in the G-20 industrialized countries.

The reason is so simple that even a wingnut can understand: Under this president, the United States has seen an unsurpassed record of job creation, with 14 million new positions since he took office, far more than the last three Republican presidents combined. The social impact of high employment is profound, which is why traditional Democrats like Biden consistently promote infrastructure, education, environmental, and income support policies that boost jobs. As California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom explained during this week’s Fox News debate with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis (whom he crushed), the nation is now seeing the lowest rate of poverty in our history, as employment among Blacks, Hispanics, and women have reached new peaks.

Are you starting to see a fuller picture here? Let’s add a few more features: Personal income rose over five percent in the first quarter of this year and contined to go up into the second and third quarters. Consumer spending rose 3.6 percent, while housing investment increased to 6.2 percent, almost half again what had been predicted.

You may well retort that polling consistently shows – and the media persistently emphasize – that most Americans say they are unhappy with the economy and blame the president, resulting in poor approval ratings and endangering Biden’s reelection prospects. And that’s undeniably true, as far as it goes. But more than one expert now wonders why, if so many of our neighbors feel pessimistic and even angry, they keep buying stuff as if everything is working out just fine.

Economist Dean Baker suspects the influence of slanted news coverage and can imagine a very different political scenario. “If we had the exact same economy, and Donald Trump was in the White House,” Baker says,”Trump would be endlessly saying ‘greatest economy ever.’ Every Republican politician in the country would be amplifying the claim and all the political pundits would be writing that the strong economy will make Trump almost a sure bet for re-election.”

Sooner or later, the majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Joe Biden has not only protected us from recession but has created the conditions for a generation of prosperity. Let’s hope they figure that out before it is too late – and vote to defend the future from Trump’s madness.

Harris Poll Isn't What It Used To Be -- Now That It's The 'No Labels' Pollster

Harris Poll Isn't What It Used To Be -- Now That It's The 'No Labels' Pollster

No sooner did four new national polls show President Joe Biden edging past Donald Trump -- reversing the results of recent weeks -- than a fifth survey emerged that purported to show the opposite. In that poll, released by Harris X, Trump was still ahead of Biden by a few points.

But on closer inspection, that fifth poll raises some suspicions – and some questions about how news organizations should treat polling by Harris X. Billed as an “exclusive” on The Messenger website, it brandishes the name Harris, once a polling outfit with a respected pedigree. Yet that name is no longer what it was – because Harris X, as the firm now calls itself, is actually a subsidiary of Stagwell, Inc. And Stagwell is owned and controlled by one Mark Penn.

That name may be familiar from Penn’s days as a political consultant to Bill and Hillary Clinton, with whom he has long since broken. He is better known now for his connections to No Labels, the dubiously “independent” pseudo-party that is threatening to nominate a presidential ticket on a third line – thus potentially swinging the election to Trump. No Labels is run by Penn’s wife Nancy Jacobson, and No Labels has a cozy arrangement with Penn and Stagwell for polling by Harris X.

As Thomas Byrne Edsall recently noted in the New York Times, most elected Democrats and more than a few Republicans now suspect that Jacobson and Penn – who has cultivated Trump assiduously – are operating No Labels as a covert effort to re-elect the former president.

So whenever Harris X polls the presidential race, it confronts a glaring conflict of interest, or perhaps several. Its polls need to show that Biden is weaker than Trump to justify entering the race with a third-line candidate. Never mind that No Labels refuses to disclose its donors – many of whom have been exposed as pro-Trump Republicans – or its candidate selection process.

But these sore points may not faze The Messenger, whose founder and CEO is one James Finkelstein, a close associate of Trump and Rudy Giuliani since New York days whose brother Andrew Stein, a failed New York Democratic politician and convicted tax evader, was a longtime Trump confidant and adviser. The masthead of The Messenger is littered with political editors who formerly worked for such Trumpist outfits as the New York Post and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review..

Maybe their poll was conducted according to best practices and is on the level. Maybe Mark Penn and Nancy Jacobson and No Labels are on the level too. And maybe not.

Joe Biden

Four New National Polls Show Biden Gaining Traction Over Trump

Everyone knows – or should know – that polls measuring the outcome of an election that will occur almost a year from today have scant predictive value – and yet over the past month, media outlets have persistently touted surveys showing Donald Trump edging Joe Biden as if the former guy has already defeated the current president. And indeed several polls did show Trump slightly ahead in a potentially disturbing trend that reinforced the dominant narrative about Biden’s weakness.

But within the past few days, four fresh polls published by reputable organizations have showed the opposite trend. Last week’s Morning Consult poll showed Trump up over Biden by three percent; this week, Morning Consult puts Biden ahead by one percent, a four-point shift in a matter of days. The Economist and YouGov released a poll last week that had Trump up by one percent; the same poll has Biden up by two percent this week, 44 to 42. A second YouGov poll that asked about voting for a third alternative also had Biden ahead by two points, 39 to 37. And a poll taken by The Canadian Press and Leger, one of the largest surveyors north of the border, likewise found Biden up 37-35 in a potential three-way race.

The details of those polls – all conducted since the temporary ceasefire and hostage release in the Gaza conflict -- matter less than the small but encouraging trend they represent. What they suggest is that if the president can extend the ceasefire as more hostages are released, while pressuring Israel to stop killing civilians, he can regain some of the crucial support that has diminished among Democratic base voters.

Nobody familiar with our “liberal media” will be shocked to learn that those four polls received little attention – although every blip that favors Trump gets headlines. No doubt they will continue in that vein, a habit that mainstream journalists seem unable to overcome. But that doesn’t mean you have to believe them, especially when the data starts to point another way.

Joe Manchin

The Mighty Achievements Of Senator Joe Manchin

When Joe Manchin announced his plan to retire from the United States Senate, he offered the following explanation: "I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia." Manchin went on to add that while serving out the remainder of his term, he will also be "traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in building a movement to mobilize the middle, finding common ground and bringing Americans together."

Which was another way of saying that, although nominally a Democrat, he will consider running as a third-party candidate for president on the "No Labels" ticket, possibly drawing enough votes away from President Joe Biden to return former President Donald Trump to the White House.

The stated purposes of the No Labels enterprise, which supposedly aims to bolster democracy while conducting its business behind closed doors, without accountability or transparency, are not plausible at all. Its principal leaders are Mark Penn, the pollster best known for being thrown out of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and his spouse Nancy Jacobson, both amply discredited already. The company they keep (or purchase), including such figures as former Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Nation of Islam official Ben Chavis, will not improve their operation's image.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that the financiers of this dubious outfit are the usual Republican billionaires whose real aim is to bring back Trump. They're the same fat cats who have become the biggest donors to Manchin in recent years. These rich right-wingers find the West Virginia senator charming, despite that "D" next to his name, because he is actually a wealthy coal baron. He opposed the child tax credit because, he told colleagues, parents in his state would use the money to buy illegal narcotics — a very Republican remark, just brimming with compassion.

What remains puzzling is why the No Labels grifters would expect Manchin to have any great appeal as a national candidate. In the Senate he helped to kill voting rights, opposed abortion rights and did what he could to frustrate Biden's clean energy agenda. So he won't draw young, minority or female voters away from the Democrat.

For that matter, why would anyone support Joe Manchin? In departing the Senate, he boasted about a long list of political triumphs. But on closer inspection, that vaunted record consists chiefly of the federal spending projects he brought to his home state — an argument that cuts sharply against his claim to have protected the nation from Biden's "excessive spending." (That spending looks quite wise at this point, since it boosted employment and protected us from the horrendous recession predicted by so many alleged experts.)

"I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia," said Manchin as he patted his own back. What did he accomplish, though? The Mountain State is still impoverished, underinvested, poorly educated and lacking in most of the things that people need to thrive — and that government is supposed to help provide.

The latest state rankings by U.S. News & World Report, a nonpartisan news outlet, tell the dismal story of what Manchin has in fact accomplished. In short, not much. West Virginia ranks at or near the very bottom in public health and health care quality, infrastructure, transportation, employment, economic opportunity, education and income inequality. Although the state is a top producer of coal and natural gas, it even ranks near the bottom in power grid reliability. And Manchin's beloved state is at 46 in overall livability.

Of course, life is a lot better if you're a West Virginian like Joe Manchin, who is worth a fortune, drives a Maserati and lives aboard a $700,000 yacht on the Potomac River. Yes indeed, he did a wonderful job as senator, at least for himself. It will be amusing to hear him explain why the average West Virginian's life improved so little despite his herculean efforts — and why he felt that job was done — if and when he runs for president.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Mike Johnson

The Perverse And Hidden World Of Mike Johnson's Culture War

House Speaker Mike Johnson, lately elevated to one of the most important posts in the federal government, is nothing if not a fervent culture warrior. If Johnson had his way, not only would abortion and homosexuality be absolutely outlawed, with severe criminal penalties as punishment for any infraction, but so would contraception and what he calls "no-fault" divorce.

It even seems likely that he would require everyone's children to pray to his deity in schools, where the teaching of evolution also might no longer be permitted, since Johnson says he believes that actual science leads people to devalue life and commit mass shootings. Both his extreme policy views and his absurd ideas about dinosaurs on Noah's Ark and other such superstitions have become notorious since his GOP colleagues unanimously chose him as their leader.

The hermetic world of far-right religion where Johnson has prospered is a very strange place, not well known to most Americans. It is a world where the homosexual behavior he considers "deviant" has often been concealed and protected, even or especially when that conduct involves the exploitation of minors — just so long as the perpetrators are powerful white men. And there is no doubt that Johnson knows all about this sinister sanctimony.

We know that he knows because the new speaker's resume, which traces his rapid ascent from obscurity on a legislative backbench in Louisiana to the pinnacle of congressional leadership, omits a certain telling episode: his brief service as the dean ofa scandal-ridden "Christian law school" that never opened. Envisioned as a competitor to the highly successful (and profitable) Liberty University law school, the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law at Louisiana College was named for a reactionary Texas jurist and far-right activist in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Its first dean was Mike Johnson, then a young lawyer pursuing the culture war in lawsuits against gay rights and marriage equality. He reportedly had been selected for the job with the approval of Pressler himself, who assisted Johnson in raising money for the law school.

Before it could enroll a single student, however, the law school disintegrated under murky circumstances that reportedly involved financial mismanagement, possible corruption, and failure to win accreditation. The college president was fired and Johnson resigned, going on to win election to the state legislature and then, only two years later, a safe Republican seat in Congress.

That was not the end of the Paul Pressler saga, however. In 2017, Pressler was sued in Texas courts in a civil case that eventually came to include allegations of rape and abuse by several men who say he repeatedly assaulted them, with some of the allegations dating back to their childhood. Subsequent revelations in court documents and press reports showed that the allegations against Pressler had emerged as early as 1978, when he was expelled from a Houston church for sexual misconduct. What also emerged was that Pressler's law partner, a Houston attorney who led the Harris County Republican Party for 12 years, had known of harassment and assault allegations against Pressler since 2004 — and had lied publicly to cover up the scandal.

After all, Pressler was not only an eminent figure in the Southern Baptist Convention, where he served as national vice president, but in Texas Republican circles and in the secretive Council for National Policy, which has long functioned as a kind of central committee for the American far right. In other words, he was too important to expose — even after he paid an enormous financial settlement to silence one of his accusers.

As Southern Baptists learned to their dismay a few years ago, during an investigation long resisted by denomination leaders, the kind of abuse that Pressler inflicted on young members of their congregation, both male and female, was far more widespread than anyone had suspected. It grew from the hierarchical, authoritarian, and hypocritical culture at the highest levels of their faith.

The most disturbing aspect of the scandals that have afflicted both the right-wing church and the Republican right is how little Mike Johnson and his ilk have learned from them. They might spend less effort persecuting Americans whose ideas about life and faith differ from theirs, and more time considering what the words of Christ really mean.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson Seems Nice -- Until You Take A Closer Look

Mike Johnson, the four-term Louisiana representative just elected as House speaker, makes a pleasant first impression. That may be why his fellow Republicans chose such an untested politician, with no obvious qualifications, to fill that demanding post. Or they may have simply succumbed to exhaustion and embarrassment after the procedural fiasco that left Congress in limbo for weeks.

Whatever their motivations, it is now clear that Johnson's sudden elevation was a wildly irresponsible act. Behind his thin biography and bland smile is a fanatical mindset that will threaten constitutional order and the democratic process. Throughout his public career, the new speaker has espoused the ideology of Christian nationalism, which marks him as hostile to religious pluralism, rational inquiry and personal dignity.

His perspective sets him far outside the mainstream of American life. Which is not too surprising, because he appears to exist in a far-right dimension of fantasy.

Consider the most obvious stain on Johnson's record, which alone ought to have disqualified him from such high office, namely the starring role he played in former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Billing himself as a constitutional lawyer, he crafted a legal brief, signed by congressional Republicans, that aimed to disqualify millions of votes in four key states because of fake "fraud" claims.

Those claims had already failed and the Supreme Court swiftly rejected Johnson's arguments. Then he voted against certifying Joe Biden's victory on the House floor.

Presumably that was why Trump, the chief saboteur of democracy, endorsed him for speaker. But Johnson went all the way, voicing the discredited conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems equipment that eventually cost Fox News Channel nearly $800 million in libel damages. "The allegation about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with the software by Dominion — look, there's a lot of merit to that," he said on a Louisiana radio show, describing Dominion's product as "a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela."

Those accusations were unequivocally false, as Johnson could easily have discovered for himself. Either he didn't care whether what he was saying about a free and fair election was true — or he was eager to repeat lies because they had been uttered by Trump's lawyers.


Underneath his mild-mannered persona, Johnson is afflicted with a dogmatic temperament that prizes partisan and sectarian belief over factual evidence. He has proclaimed his confidence in the "creationist" superstition that proclaims Earth is only six thousand years old, because the Bible appears to say so, and not 4.6 billion years old as determined by astronomers and geologists. Indeed Scripture, or at least his interpretation of it, provides his all-purpose intellectual guide.

To anyone who asks, "What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?" he offers a simple reply. "Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that's my worldview. That's what I believe and so I make no apologies for it."

Where this strict adherence to Biblical law and lore will lead him on economic or foreign policy questions remains to be revealed, although the precedents are ominous. Christian "charity" is not characteristic of Christian nationalists, who have shown an inclination to torment the poor and working class that Jesus would not approve. And owing to their obsession with other people's sex lives, we already know what he thinks about gays and lesbians and anyone else who doesn't conform to his notions of morality.


Yes, Mike Johnson is one of those people who feels obliged to denigrate people defined as "deviant" by his religious sect. He would outlaw their sexual lifestyles and punish them severely, much like the Iranian regime or the Taliban. In his worldview, too, deviance is a sin that extends beyond homosexuals and transsexuals to anyone who has sex outside the bounds of marriage or who asserts the right to reproductive freedom. He has declared that the state has a compelling interest in suppressing such "damaging" conduct, including contraception.

What were Republicans thinking when they installed this bigot as speaker of the House? Did they expect Americans to welcome his rigid ignorance and aggressive prejudice? They've made Trump happy, but before long they will answer to voters for this mad insult.

Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo and editor-at-large of Type Investigations. He is the author of several books, including two New York Times bestsellers. His latest book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers And Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism, will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2024.

trump

The MAGA Culture Of Menace Is Not A Surprise

When Republicans claim to be shocked by threats of violence that have repeatedly marred their party's contest for speaker of the House, it is hard to suppress a bitter laugh. The malignant direction of their party over the past several years is no secret — and although many of them are too cowardly to identify the poison's source, everyone knows his name.

That would be former President Donald J. Trump.

Everyone knows because Trump has hardly tried to conceal his increasingly sinister conduct and has tried not at all to pacify the legions of goons who menace his perceived enemies. What once might have been described as an undercurrent of brutality and bullying in the MAGA movement has long since become its dominant theme. Not "patriotism" and not "conservatism," but much closer to fascism and sadism, which have always slithered along together.

Nobody should have been surprised, least of all Republican elected officials, when supporters of Rep. Jim Jordan, Trump's selection for speaker, began a sickening campaign to terrorize his opponents. Wholly unqualified for that constitutional post by temperament or achievement — he has never authored a successful bill in 16 years on Capitol Hill — Jordan deserved no consideration, and it is hard to say how many of the votes he received were somehow coerced. But the campaign that culminated in his humiliating rejection by the GOP conference began with a familiar pattern: an escalating pattern of threats that the MAGA gang dismissed, excused and encouraged, before cynically pretending to urge a return to decent behavior.

We have seen and heard all this before, too many times, ever since Trump first excreted his racist imprecations and calls for violence during the 2016 presidential campaign. The tape of a Jordan supporter uttering obscene threats to "molest" the wife of a dissident Republican congressman is the soundtrack of Trumpism.

And after CNN anchor Jake Tapper played that tape for Rep. Michael McCaul, a Jordan backer, he said, "Calls like that started happening immediately. Jordan didn't denounce it until last night. What is going on in your party?" McCaul's feeble response that "this is the level of discourse in our country" evoked a bluntly honest retort from Tapper: "No. In your party, sir; in your party."

Over and over again, the MAGA cult within the Republican Party has promoted, excused, and even celebrated savagery against the opponents whom it has dehumanized. It was Democrats who censured Rep. Paul Gosar after he posted a video that depicted him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and it was Rep. Kevin McCarthy, then the minority leader, who tried to defend him from the mild rebuke of censure. It is Democrats, with a few exceptions, who have sought to hold the January 6 mob accountable for that deadly coup attempt — and it is Republicans who promised to pardon them. Out in their districts, Republicans encounter constituents who talk openly about killing Democrats, and rarely have the guts to rebuke them.

Having spent years inciting that bloody mindset, Trump has warned of the unprecedented destruction that will consume the country if he and his supporters are angered. He frequently declares his critics and opponents worthy of death — as when he suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, a highly decorated military officer who served at the highest rank, should be executed. He makes morbid and disgusting "jokes," as when he recently mocked the near-fatal assault on Paul Pelosi, the elderly husband of former speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Indeed, the catalogue of Trump's brutish declarations is almost as lengthy as his lies. But what has transformed the Republican Party from a democratic institution into a harbinger of authoritarian cruelty is the failure of its elected members to speak up for decency. After all that Trump and his minions like Jordan have done to defile their political traditions, the great majority of Republican officeholders still line up obediently.

Now the monstrous entity that they nurtured has turned on the Republicans themselves. But very few of them have the wisdom — or the character — to learn from that chilling experience.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.