Trump Appeasement Syndrome, Part I: Cassidy Hutchinson

All his adult life, Donald Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants he can control, and whose only job is to stroke his... ego and tell him exactly what he wants to hear. And now that he runs the entire federal government, whose vast resources are actually owned by the American people and supposed to be used on their behalf, he has put in place Cabinet members and agency heads who understand that their sole job description is to keep Trump happy. And keeping Trump happy is a full-time job since he is so mercurial and likes to keep everyone around him guessing. Displease him and you're likely to find yourself out of a job or sent to the equivalent of Siberia. The most reliable way to stay in his good graces is to: (1) investigate, prosecute or otherwise harass anyone he believes has crossed him; (2) keep litigating the 2020 election, making periodic announcements that he didn't really lose and (3) use the government to make him money. Ideally, one can do all three at the same time.

FBI Director Kash Patel understands the assignment and, in the words of his agents, is "desperate" to please Trump. Yes, "desperate" describes just about everyone in Trump's orbit, but the Justice Department is especially subservient. Just in the last few days, there have been numerous examples of abuses of the vast power of the DoJ. For his part, Patel is working overtime to find something that might look fishy about the 2020 election. Resources are being diverted from actual crime-fighting to chasing shadows and long-debunked conspiracy theories. Agents are alarmed about what they are being asked to do and seeking advice on how to push back on what they may be asked to do around the midterm elections. Elections are sacred and agents are trained that federal law enforcement must be especially careful to not give even the appearance of interference. There's real fear that the laws and regulations around elections will be ignored. Normally, the FBI has briefings and trainings to protect election locations and the election officials. Instead, this year, the only training they received was on non-citizens voting. As we have pointed out many times, this is not a thing.

Over in the Civil Whites Division, er, Civil Rights Division, chief Harmeet Dhillon is showing her own desperation. She has decided her office should investigate Cassidy Hutchinson, checking off #1 of the list above. She's pursuing criminal charges of lying to Congress, based on the fact that Hutchinson relayed to the 1/6 Committee an account of Trump's behavior in the Beast on January 6. Please be clear, Hutchinson was recounting what she was told. She never said she witnessed anything firsthand. This is yet another sham investigation to harass someone who dared cross Trump and tell the truth about events on January 6.

Not to be outdone, there is Todd Blanche, who is desperate to prove to Trump that the Dear Leader controls the media and that the first amendment is soooo 20th century. So, his office has initiated an antitrust investigation into the media outlets who shut down their pool coverage of Trump in solidarity with the media outlets that Trump kicked out of the White House (CNN, MS NOW and Politico). What do antitrust laws have to do with free speech? If you said "nothing," you would be right. This is just a pretext to issue subpoenas and use other investigative tools to harass people Trump hates and force the organizations to spend money and resources defending themselves. The "investigation" is being led by Stanley Woodward, whom readers may remember from such roles as counsel for Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira in the classified documents case that Aileen Cannon dismissed. Without a hint of irony, after denigrating the "lamestream" media, the administration has suddenly decided these outlets are "major networks" whose collective action in boycotting Trump harms... someone or something.

If Democrats retake Congress, they will have their hands full in holding the Trump White House accountable for a wide array of corruption, but one of their first priorities should be the DoJ and putting a stop to the officials initiating these bogus and abusive investigations of Trump's perceived opponents. (L)

Trump Appeasement Syndrome, Part II: Ilhan Omar and Lisa Cook

Did you think that the previous item was going to be the only "the Trump Administration is abusing its investigative powers" piece today? Ha! Not by a long shot.

The Cassidy Hutchinson investigation, and the other actions in the above item, were announced over the weekend. The big news yesterday, meanwhile, was that early in the morning, agents working for DHS searched the house of Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN).

Let us pause here to offer the obligatory acknowledgment that there might be some real cause of action behind this raid. Sometimes members of Congress are crooked—former senator Bob Menendez leaps to mind, as do many others. In fact, here is a pretty exhaustive list of federal officials convicted of crimes.

With that said, we are very skeptical that the Omar investigation is legitimate. And we have reasons for feeling that way. To wit:

• Omar has been a particular bugaboo for Trump throughout his entire time in office. She is brown, she is Muslim, she is an immigrant, she is a woman, she is liberal. That is like a "greatest hits" of things the President hates. If someone wanted to please the boss—someone like, say, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin—then Omar is the ideal target.
  
  
• The administration has been fuzzy about Omar's alleged crimes, claiming that there is unprecedented fraud going on in Minnesota (hand wave, hand wave) and that Omar is somehow part of it (hand wave, hand wave). No evidence has been offered for either claim. Heck, Team Trump hasn't even offered a compelling explanation for how all the pieces fit together.
  
  
• Since it is DHS, that means "immigration crimes." This has been a general line of attack against Omar, from the Trump administration, and also in conspiracy thinking, for years. It is hard to believe that evidence of such crimes would come to light now, especially since this hypothetical evidence is now 5-10 years more stale than it was when Omar first came under scrutiny.
  
  
• It is DoJ policy to refrain from going after officeholders 60 or fewer days before an election. It is 22 days until this year's election, which—last we checked—is fewer than 60. At very least, it suggests unethical behavior. At most, it looks like they rushed it to try to influence the outcome of (maybe) Omar's race. That said, she's in a D+32 district, and it's kind of hard to imagine anything that could derail her. More likely is that this is an attempt to influence the (much closer) Senate race in Minnesota.
  
  
• Current DoJ/DHS leadership is well aware of the 60-day policy, and they are very committed to it. Or, they were when it worked to the benefit of Trump ally and former New York City mayor Eric Adams, at least.
  
  
• This is an administration that has no issue with going after enemies on a spurious basis. It hasn't happened once, or twice, it's already happened dozens of times. At a certain point, they no longer get the benefit of the doubt.

So yeah, we're really not buying it. Here is what Omar wrote in a post made to eX-Twitter yesterday:

Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.

I will not be silenced.

By all evidences, she has the right of it.

And there is yet another investigation commenced by the White House this weekend. This one, by an amazing coincidence, also targets a woman (and a woman of color), namely Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who has been ordered to appear at the executive mansion and testify before a "committee of inquiry." The committee's Grand Inquisitor leader will be Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett. He will be joined by Keith Sonderling, the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics and also the Secretary-of-Labor designate, and by Andrea Lucas, the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The question that the committee will be looking into is whether or not Cook committed fraud on her mortgage application. The administration has already lost in court, several times, on this very point.

Are they really deluding themselves that a hacky "blue ribbon" panel can succeed where, for example, U.S. government attorneys could not? We think the answer to that question is almost certainly "no." These various witch hunt-y investigations and prosecutions—Hutchinson, Omar, Cook—are clearly designed with certain purposes in mind. The first, as (L) notes above, is to curry favor with the Mad King. The second is to muck around in the elections as much as is possible, and maybe try to win a few more votes to the Republican banner.

And the biggest purpose, in our view, is to fire some shots across the bow, in anticipation of the next 2 years, which figure to be rocky ones for Trump and his acolytes. By going after Hutchinson, the White House makes clear that anyone who is now, or once was, a part of the administration, and who testifies before Congress, could themselves end up under investigation. Even if the person is guilty of no crimes, it still costs a lot of money to hire the lawyers needed to protect oneself against the might of Uncle Sam. By going after Omar, it sends the same basic message, except to the House members who plan to investigate Trump. Between the two women, that's the Committees AND the witnesses who might talk to them, which is the whole ball of wax.

The purpose of targeting Cook, meanwhile, is to warn anyone who works for any of the (few) remaining independent federal agencies that they are not safe, either. To be more precise, this is a message for new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who has not yet followed the Trumpy line (i.e., reducing interest rates), and who is being told he better fall into line, pronto. Otherwise, he better hope he has no skeletons in his closet.

It is improbable that this campaign of intimidation will work. None of these people (not to mention other witnesses who might come forward, other members of Congress, and Warsh and his colleagues) seem likely to yield to something so obviously authoritarian and dictatorial. In addition, Warsh can't deliver even if he is so inclined; he may be chair, but he's also only one vote. And if the other Fed governors don't want to lower interest rates, then Warsh has no power to overrule them.

And that concludes today's American fascism update. (Z)

Trump Doubles Down on the $5,000 Checks

Donald Trump thinks he has a winner with this offer to send $5,000 checks to all adults if the Republicans "win" the midterms. And yesterday, he reiterated that he is "serious" about it, posting a 33-second video on the subject to his social media platform for lies, damned lies, and damned liars.

We can't find an embeddable version of the ad, though you can click through the link, if you really want to see it. Here's a transcription:

I'm going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000. Democrat policies won't allow this to happen. In fact, the opposite. They're going to raise your taxes. If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression. If the Republicans win, you will each have $5,000 in your pocket and economic success for our country like we have never, ever seen before.

This is so nonsensical as economic policy, it's hard to know where to start. He obviously won't deliver on his promise, no matter what happens on November 3. However, even if he did plan to do so, how would he come up with that much money without raising taxes? And how would he distribute it without causing big-time inflation, and thus risking a recession? Won't these issues occur to people who might be tempted to change their vote in search of $5,000? OK, maybe not everyone, since you'd need to have some basic familiarity with economics. But even if you know nothing at all about how economies work, there's still a very obvious question sticking out like a giant sore thumb. And that question is: "Mr. President, if you have the ability to deliver 'economic success for our country like we have never, ever seen before,' why aren't you doing so right now?"

We continue to believe that this "Hail Mary" attempt isn't going to move the needle, and isn't going to help Republican prospects on Election Day. The only real significance here, as far as we can see, is that it's a reminder that Trump is getting more and more desperate, day by day. So desperate that he's barely trying to disguise the fact that he wants to use federal funds to buy people's votes. We are not sure if he's being so brazen because: (1) the Supreme Court granted him so much leeway to abuse his powers, or (2) it's hard to prosecute someone for bribery (and associated crimes) unless they actually make the bribe (which, again, isn't going to happen because he will never, ever follow through with this).

And as long as we are on the subject of commercials, let's mention something that probably doesn't merit its own item, but that will serve as a nice dessert for this item. As readers know, PACs can spend unlimited amounts of money on ads, but they cannot directly coordinate with campaigns. The campaigns are pretty good at getting their instructions out there indirectly, though—say, by posting a list of their opponent's weaknesses to the campaign website. Then the PACs know what to put into their commercials.

The campaign of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is very good at this non-coordinating coordination, since there are several Collins-allied PACs that help her out every time she runs for office. One of those allied PACs is Defending Main Street, which got the message that it would be quite helpful if voters in Portland saw a commercial warning them about "Taxin' Troy" Jackson. So, the PAC made that happen. Unfortunately, the PAC and the campaign failed to coordinate on one rather key detail: Which Portland to air the ad in. And so, viewers in Portland, OR, this weekend were very confused as to why they were getting ads for a Senate race on the other side of the country.

Cue the sad trombone. And thanks to reader J.G. in San Diego, CA for bringing this story to our attention. (Z)

The Texas Senate Race Has Become a Soap Opera

We have been trying to get to this item for about a week. And the damn thing is that, every time we delay, the whole race becomes even more wild and crazy.

We suppose we'll start with the relationship between Donald Trump and GOP candidate Ken Paxton, a relationship that is probably best described as "co-dependent." Trump, for his part, needs Paxton. The President wants as many Republican votes in the Senate as is possible, and he also does not want to be criticized for throwing a Senate seat away, if Paxton loses in a way that makes clear that, had the candidate been Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the GOP would have kept the seat. On top of that, Paxton kisses major rear end, and Trump likes that.

On the other hand, Trump clearly does not like or respect Paxton. We are not sure exactly what the issue is, but part of it is certainly that Paxton has a lazy eyelid, and so looks a little odd. Trump hates people who look odd. We suspect it's also that Paxton is not trouncing Democrat James Talarico. Trump has little regard for people who lose, or might lose, elections Trump thinks they should win easily. In any event, whatever the cause of the disrespect might be, Trump has developed a habit of regularly badmouthing Paxton, including at rallies and other events ostensibly intended to goose support for the Republican candidate. Trump even did that at the midterm "convention," which was held in Texas primarily so that Paxton would benefit.

Paxton, for his part, certainly needs Trump. After all, the Texas AG is going to need every MAGA vote if he hopes to defeat Talarico. And the only one who can rouse MAGA Nation to action is Trump (certainly Paxton, who is a lousy campaigner, can't do it). In addition, the Paxton campaign is having money trouble, and really needs help from Trump's PAC, which is MAGA Inc.

But despite being firmly attached to Trump at the hip (and possibly some other body parts), Paxton keeps getting recorded saying snotty things about Trump and his policies. At various times, the would-be Senator has said that the Iran War is dragging the GOP down, that the midterm convention was not helpful and may actually have done damage, and that Trump is hurting Republicans with moderate voters. These things are probably all true, but you don't help yourself in MAGA world by criticizing the throne. In the latest "What? Someone was recording me?" moment, Paxton griped about how he has little control over his campaign, and it's being run out of D.C. Paxton being caught on tape so many times suggests that he's either stupid or that he's passive-aggressively trying to poke Trump in the eye. Of course, it could be both.

And now, let us move on to... the flu. Talarico contracted a nasty case about 2 weeks ago. He is also a Type I diabetic. And so, he decided to suspend his campaign for about 10 days in order to give himself time to get better. That was preferable, in his view, to pushing through and letting the illness linger on through Election Day. This is hardly an unprecedented choice, either. Perhaps most famously, Richard Nixon took an extended break when he developed a leg infection during the 1960 presidential campaign.

When Nixon got hurt, John F. Kennedy had the grace to suspend HIS campaign, so as to not gain an unfair advantage. There is no way that Paxton has that kind of class. But, failing that, the smart play was for Paxton to take the 10 or so days where he was the only one campaigning, and to make the most of it.

As readers should know by now, Paxton rarely makes the smart play. So, what he did was try to squeeze the Talarico illness for extra juice. The original approach was to try to turn it into a Mitch McConnell-type situation. The Paxton campaign put up "wanted" posters, and the candidate did a lot of bloviating about how Talarico has a duty to make himself available to the people of Texas. Because what the people of Texas want, apparently, is to be infected with the flu.

You don't have to think long about the Talarico-McConnell comparison before the whole thing starts to fall apart. First, McConnell was absent for multiple months; with Talarico, it wasn't even multiple weeks. Second, McConnell was almost wholly invisible; Talarico was still doing some interviews and phone calls. Third, and most importantly, McConnell is being paid to do a job on behalf of the people who elected him, people who were going partly un-represented as long as he was on his extended sojourn. Talarico is not being paid to campaign, and no voter is being harmed by his absence until such point that he's an actual U.S. Senator, not just an aspiring U.S. Senator.

Perhaps because this angle was silly, eventually the Republicans began to change course, advancing the conspiratorial claim that Talarico wasn't actually suffering from the flu, but that instead he had checked into a mental institution. This theory was ostensibly given further credence when two right-wing operatives released audio footage of a phone call to Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, OH, in which a hospital employee seems to confirm that Talarico was a recently discharged patient.

All we can say here is that if you're going to tell this outlandish a lie, knowing the scrutiny it will get, you need to do a much better job of it if you actually want to sell it. Not surprisingly, the audio was carefully edited. In the full recording, the hospital says Talarico was not a patient there, and never had been (and management later called a press conference to reiterate that). Talarico, for his part, says he has never been to Ohio at all, in any capacity. Further, his campaign released timestamped video footage of him at home, during the times he was allegedly in the mental hospital. Even worse, the night he was "discharged" (according to the phone call), Talarico was already back on the campaign trail and was doing a rally in Texas. Not so easy to be in two places, 1,000 miles apart, at exactly the same time.

In short, the conspiracy imploded, Eric Schmitt-style. But not before Donald Trump found a way to make things just a little bit worse. Here is the message Trump posted to social media:

Ladies and Gentlemen, upon information and belief, James TalaFREAKo, who is running for the United States Senate in Texas, is MISSING IN ACTION! No one has seen him for an extended period of time. Where is he? What is wrong with him? Bad rumors are coming out. He should immediately report to a Debate Stage against Ken Paxton, who is ready, willing, and able, one of the best Attorney Generals in the Country, and will soon be, hopefully, a United States Senator representing the Great People of Texas! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Trump rarely met a conspiracy theory he does not like, particularly if it involves Democrats.

The reason that Trump's message makes things worse is that it reminds everyone that the candidate who is ready, willing, and able to debate is actually Talarico. He has not only agreed to do four debates, he's even agreed to let Fox host them. It is Paxton, who knows he would get eaten alive, who refuses to make any such commitments. Heck, Paxton won't even answer the question "Will you debate?" when it is Fox who is asking. Anyhow, as Paxton ducks, dips, dives and dodges, Talarico has scheduled an event for tomorrow called the CNN & Jubilee Town Hall. We thought that maybe it was some sort of religious revival, but actually it's just that the co-sponsor is Jubilee Media.

And to wrap it up, at least for now, let's talk commercials. Whatever money Paxton and his allied PACs have got, they are spending on ad time to try to save the candidate's bacon. Well, it's Texas, so his brisket. Last week, there was a digital-only ad starring a "mom of 5" named Miriam. Though it is certainly not made clear in the ad, Miriam is a longtime Republican operative. In the ad, she makes the outlandish claim that the Democrat not only supports "taxpayer-funded sex changes on kids," but that he favors "parents in jail if they do not support surgically transitioning their children." None of this is true, and the latter part, in particular, isn't going to pass the smell test with very many people. There was a lot of blowback, and the ad appears to have been yanked from circulation.

If at first you don't succeed, though, then try, try again. As you may have heard, Angela Paxton filed for divorce from her not-so-beloved husband Ken "on Biblical grounds." Maybe he shoved one cheeseburger or pork chop too many into his mouth, but we suspect not. It was probably some other portion of the Bible he ran smack into, and with a different part of his anatomy. To say the two do not get along well now is a Texas-sized understatement.

Surely any other woman in this situation would get revenge on her soon-to-be-ex by cutting an ad for his opponent saying what an untrustworthy, lying, despicable scoundrel he really is. Nope, that's not Angela. Instead, she cut an ad that walked a fine line. Here is her ad (starts at 0:12):

The ad carefully advises voters to vote a straight Republican ticket to prevent Democrats from running Texas. It doesn't mention Paxton or Talarico by name.

Have they reconciled? What's going on here? Well, Angela Paxton has been a Texas state senator since 2019. She is an ambitious woman and may someday seek a higher office than state senator. She is a good enough politician to know that if she were to back a Democrat in such a high-profile race, that would be the end of her ambitions for higher office and might end her career as a state senator. But she probably couldn't force herself to actually support her husband, who actually is an untrustworthy, lying, despicable scoundrel (who was impeached by the Texas House on 20 articles of scoundrelness). So her compromise was to take one for the team and say voters should look at the big picture and which party they want to control the Senate. This allowed her to dodge the "candidate quality" issue and yet remain loyal to the red team. We cannot imagine for a second that she really wants him to win, although that would get him out of Texas.

Talarico responded to the ad by saying: "Asking Texans to close their eyes and vote for a political party instead of the best person for the job is exactly what is wrong with today's politics. My team isn't any political party. My team is Texas." That's actually a pretty slick response.

Incidentally, many voters outside of Texas have seen this ad on their TVs, particularly if those voters were watching NFL football (e.g., the game this weekend where the mighty Green Bay Packers decimated the hapless Chicago Bears). In this case, it's not a "Which Portland is it?" thing, like with Susan Collins and Troy Jackson. It's that buying commercial time in Texas' many media markets is expensive and adds up quickly, such that a national ad was actually cheaper than just targeting local viewers.

Anyhow, Texas has been giving America the very best soap operas in the land for half a century, and it's good to see that it's still living up to its reputation. (Z & V)

Boy, We Really Hate This Question

Everyone knows that MS NOW is the liberal news network. However, they sometimes perform balance, to make their coverage appear "down the middle." So it was yesterday, when DNC Chair Ken Martin—aka The Most Boring Man in the World—was interviewed by anchor Peter Alexander. As part of that interview, Alexander asked "One, obviously Americans are fed up with Donald Trump, but they're not exactly glowing in their reviews of Democrats. The polls show 53% unfavorable in their view of Democrats, with 41% having a favorable view. How do you overcome that brand with Democrats?" This question, in various forms, is a fairly common one, one regularly asked of Democratic muckety-mucks like Martin, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), DSCC Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), etc. And wow, do we really hate it.

The first reason is that we are not thrilled by references to the Democratic "brand" or the Republican "brand." It's possible that, once or twice in the past, we ourselves have fallen victim to this bad habit. But thinking about it, such language feeds into the general notion—central to Donald Trump's campaign pitch—that the federal government is USA Inc. It is not, as Trump himself has proven, and we would prefer to see everyone move away from any verbiage that suggests that the government, the various organs of government, the various parties and party organizations, are business concerns.

Second, this is sloppy and misleading political analysis. When one choice on the ballot is "good" or "popular" and the other is "bad" or "unpopular" then it's an easy choice. But as everyone reading this knows, it's often a choice between the lesser of two evils. We are reminded of the old joke about the two guys who are camping. One of them goes to get water and, after a few minutes returns in a panic, and starts furiously lacing up his boots:

Second Guy: What's wrong?

First Guy: There's a bear down by the river, and he's headed this way!

Second Guy: What's the point of putting your boots on? You won't be able to outrun him either way.

First Guy: I don't have to outrun him. I just have to outrun you.

In other words, it is too bad for the Democrats that they are underwater, approval-wise. But what really matters is that they are less underwater than the Republicans are. And don't forget that more people identify as Democrats right now than at any point since the Barack Obama honeymoon era in 2008-09.

Third, there is absolutely nothing the Democrats can do before November 3 to "solve" this problem. There is no campaign ad, or slogan, or political position they can take that will magically change those approval numbers. We are very clearly living in an era where people are angry and frustrated with the entire power structure—the government, and the partisan actors who make up the government. People will continue to be angry and frustrated until one party or the other can show that they can make the government work for the people, and can actually solve some problems. It is at least possible that if the blue team gains control of at least one chamber of Congress, then passing some meaty bills will help improve people's opinions of the Party, even if they are filibustered in the Senate or Trump refuses to sign. That might give some people hope. More likely, however, is that the Democrats' numbers won't improve until they have the trifecta, and even then only if they get something meaningful done.

Fourth, and finally, the very worst thing that the Democrats could do is to lurch around wildly, trying to do things that will be "popular." This is the Donald Trump approach, and we are seeing the results in real time: Disastrous franken-government in which a policy is implemented in search of approval, and then a second policy is implemented to try to fix the problems the first policy created, and so forth. Again, the only option here is to pursue substantive change. Then, the Party can hope the popularity will flow from there.

In short, it's a stupid and un-illuminating question, and one that risks incentivizing bad behavior from the politicos. And now, we will climb down off our soapbox. (Z)

Today's Senate Polls

There hasn't been a lot of quality polling of Minnesota this cycle; hopefully that is in the process of changing. Meanwhile, in that Nebraska poll, independent Dan Osborn is at 43%. So, behind, but within the margin of error. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Minnesota	Peggy Flanagan	47%	Michele Tafoya	43%	Oct 05	Oct 07	Mason Dixon
Nebraska	No Democrat	0%	Pete Ricketts*	46%	Oct 02	Oct 05	NPA Polling

* Denotes incumbent

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