(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Trump's 'brain trust' [1] [] Date: 2023-11-14 We begin today with Amy Gardner and Holly Bailey of The Washington Post describing the efforts of four ex-Trump allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, in a story first reported by ABC News. The description comes from a series of recordings obtained by The Post of the statements of the four defendants who have accepted plea deals in the Georgia case — recordings that they were required to make under the terms of their deals and that were intended to lay out what they know that could be used against the other defendants in the case. Although some of the recordings were garbled, the portions of the four statements that The Post was able to review — from Ellis, lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, and Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall — offered many previously undisclosed details about the effort by Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat. [...] Some of the details from the videos were first reported Monday by ABC News. [...] The audible portions of the Fulton recordings reviewed by The Post do not appear to directly implicate Trump. At one point in Powell’s interview, she said Trump really believed he had won — a statement that could help his defense. But Powell also said that Giuliani spoke of a plan to gain access to voting equipment at a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting with Trump and others in the Oval Office. And Hall appeared to implicate another defendant, lawyer Robert Cheeley, describing Cheeley as part of the “brain trust” planning the Coffee County scheme. Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman, asked to comment on the recordings, called the Fulton investigation a “farce” that should be dismissed immediately. A lawyer for Cheeley declined to comment. As far as Number 45’s increasing use of fascist rhetoric is concerned, I don’t think that his rhetoric has changed at all over the past eight years. Nor have Trump’s incitements to violence. Trump was endorsed for the 2016 presidency by the Ku Klux Klan. Tens of millions still thought that it was OK “enough” to vote for him. Millions more voted for Trump in 2020. He incited an insurrection against the duly elected American government because he’s a sore loser. Am I alarmed by Trump’s use of “vermin” this past weekend? Sure. But Trump is not the one that’s changed. He’s as consistent as he’s ever been. Jamelle Bouie/The New York Times It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may find eventually himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally. They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico. [...] Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that are hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen. And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it. Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson, also of The New York Times, that Speaker Mike Johnson may need the help of Democrats in order to pass legislation in order to prevent a government shutdown. The shifting alliances came as the House planned to take its first action on the bill as early as Tuesday. The legislation would fund federal agencies into early 2024 with two staggered deadlines, allowing lawmakers time to try to finish off the annual spending bills and putting off a debate over wartime aid to Israel and Ukraine. It was reminiscent of the situation in the House about six weeks ago. Kevin McCarthy, the speaker at the time, was facing right-wing opposition to a measure to keep federal funding flowing and was forced to turn to Democrats to push through a temporary extension. The move cost Mr. McCarthy his speakership. But Mr. Johnson — who is far more conservative than Mr. McCarthy — was not expected to face similar blowback from Republicans, who are not eager to repeat the dysfunction and paralysis that followed their last speaker’s ouster. Funding for federal agencies is now set to expire at midnight Friday if Congress does not extend the deadline again. In searching for a solution, Mr. Johnson, the Louisianian who was installed as speaker a few weeks ago, has confronted the same dynamic that Mr. McCarthy did: Hard-line conservatives would not support a spending extension without deep cuts or conservative policy provisions added. But such a measure could not make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, forcing him to turn to Democrats for help. Again. Chris Geidner of “LawDork” Substack says that the U.S. Supreme Court’s new “Code of Ethics” is barely a first step. Although all nine justices — including Justice Clarence Thomas, who has faced significant questions about his friendships and the work of his wife, and Justice Sam Alito, who has faced questions about his friendships and whether he would recuse himself from a case set to be argued on Dec. 5 (he said no) — signed the code, it isn’t much of a “code.” What the justices announced on Monday is more of a pledge, given that it is lacking any apparent enforcement mechanism. It also — likely as a way of getting all nine justices on board — included an introductory statement claiming that the reason for doing this is because “[t]he absence of a Code … has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.” The statement then repeats the “misunderstanding” language, concluding, “To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.” This is ridiculous, and the justices know that it’s ridiculous, or we wouldn’t be here right now. Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review criticizes the media for largely ignoring the complexity of local issues in the 2019 elections in favor of proclaiming state and local elections as having national (and presidential) significance. If the impact of the end of Roe emerged again last week as a clear national lesson—one that, in fairness, many major outlets did cover prominently in their post-election coverage, in among all the toplines about Biden—the elections, in other ways, also turned on local issues that were absent from much big-picture national coverage, even if their presence was sometimes paid lip service. Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor who won reelection in Kentucky, ran on them, a fact that the national coverage I saw explained more as a rebuke of Biden than any reflection on his positions and record. After Beshear won his first election, in 2019, I wrote that that result and others on the same day were not “all about Trump,” even as Trump and some pundits tried to make them so. Back then, some other pundits did note the local factors powering Beshear, including his name recognition (his dad, Steve, also served as governor) and the unpopularity of the Republican incumbent. This time around, Beshear was popular and was still his father’s son. And his victory was not “all about Biden,” even as some pundits tried to make it so. None of this is to say that coverage of local races should not extrapolate national conclusions at all—again, the ongoing salience of Roe looks like proof of that, and as I wrote in 2019, local politics is increasingly nationalized. But it shouldn’t drown out local complexity. And it shouldn’t be organized around the all-consuming prism of the presidential horse race. Since Beshear won last week, no few stories have touted him as a rising star and possible prospect for the 2028 race; we saw a similar phenomenon but in reverse out of Virginia, as various stories interpreted Democratic gains as bad news for the prospect that Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor, might make a late entry into the 2024 race (though numerous political journalists had long viewed that as unlikely). After Youngkin won the governorship, in 2021, I wrote that the coverage reflected the media’s obsession with what I called “America’s permanent election”—or the notion that electoral developments between the end lines of a given presidency are invariably overanalyzed for presidential significance. The next presidential vote is now two years closer. But it’s still a quarter of Biden’s term away. An awful lot can still change. Patrick Wintour of the Guardian examines the risks undertaken by British Prime minister’s appointment of former Prime Minister David Cameron as Foreign Secretary. There is a danger that Lord Cameron, with six years’ experience as prime minister and umpteen world summits under his belt, as opposed to Rishi Sunak’s single year, will be tempted not only to dominate foreign policy but to stray out of his lane and give very broad advice to his boss. But with only a year to go till the next election, and two of the biggest foreign policy crises to face the UK since the Iraq war, Sunak will hope that Cameron’s major contribution will be to bring a Carrington-style air of stability and authority to the UK’s contribution to foreign policy. The perception overseas has been that Britain has been a country at best suffering strategic drift, and at worst on the verge of a nervous political breakdown. Only the contribution in Ukraine – playing to British security and defence strengths – and the UK’s intangible soft power have prevented decline turning into something worse. Cameron, by being a big figure, can change that. But it contains risks for Sunak. At a moment of great geopolitical consequence, he is relinquishing responsibility for foreign policy to Cameron – just as Tony Blair largely relinquished domestic economic policy to Gordon Brown. Mohammed Daraghmeh of Haaretz reports that with the Israeli-Hamas war raging on in the Gaza Strip, hostilities continue to increase on the West Bank. We just marked the end of the first month of this new war between Israel and Hamas, and the number of Palestinians that have been killed in the West Bank is during this dark times is over 155 people, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry. It’s an unprecedented death toll for one month, more than in any month since the end of the Second Intifadah, twenty years ago. Some of the victims have been killed by settlers' bullets. Bilal Saleh, 40, was shot by a settler, a soldier on leave from the armyat the time, while harvesting olives. The goal of killing this farmer in his fields is clear: to spread fear in the hearts of all Palestinian farmers and olive pickers in the West Bank and drive them to leave their fields. Settler violence is a phenomenon we have seen grow since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in January, but even before the war broke out it their aggression was intensifying and now appears to be spiraling to new heights. Oren Ziv of +972 Magazine details the disinformation put out by a pro-Israeli website regarding Palestinian photojournalists accused of colluding with Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel. On Nov. 8, Honest Reporting, an organization that claims to monitor “anti-Israel” bias in the media, published an “investigation” accusing Palestinian photojournalists in the Gaza Strip of having advance knowledge about Hamas’ lethal October 7 attack on southern Israel. “What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning?” the report asked of the journalists, whose photographs of Palestinians breaching the fence encaging the Strip have appeared in some of the world’s most prominent news publications in recent weeks. “Was it coordinated with Hamas?” The report quickly gained traction, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office both sharing the report on their official X pages (the former has since deleted the post). Israeli leaders rushed to put out their own condemnations of the journalists, equating them with those responsible for the massacres. [...] It is difficult to accept that an unfounded investigation was accepted by large parts of the Israeli media as fact, went viral on social media, was quoted without reservation, and strengthened the incitement against those who are trying in impossible conditions to document the reality on the ground. Israel has killed at least 39 journalists in Gaza since the war began. The accusations made by Honest Reporting serve to legitimize their deaths and the bloodletting of others. Finally today, Hannah Seo of the Atlantic sees a correlation between acute loneliness and our relationship to nature. The Western world has been trending toward both biophobia and loneliness for decades. David Orr, an environmental-studies researcher and advocate for climate action, wrote in a 1993 essay that “more than ever we dwell in and among our own creations and are increasingly uncomfortable with the nature that lies beyond our direct control.” This discomfort might manifest as a dislike of camping, or annoyance at the scratchy touch of grass at the park. It might also show up as disgust in the presence of insects, which a 2021 paperfrom Japanese scholars found is partially driven by urbanization. Ousting nature from our proximity—with concrete, walls, window screens, and lifestyles that allow us to remain at home—also increases the likelihood that the experiences we do have with other lifeforms will be negative, Orr writes. You’re much less likely to love birds if the only ones around are the pigeons you perceive as dirty. The rise of loneliness is even better documented. Americans are spending more time inside at home and alone than they did a few decades ago. In his book Bowling Alone, the political scientist Robert Putnam cites data showing that, from the 1970s to the late 1990s, Americans went from entertaining friends at home about 15 times a year to just eight. No wonder, then, that nearly a fifth of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely much of the previous day in an April Gallup poll. Loneliness has become a public-health buzzword; Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calls it an “epidemic” that affects both mental and physical health. At least in the United States, COVID-19 has made things worse by expanding our preferred radius of personal space, and when that space is infringed upon, more of the reactions are now violent. [...] Relationships between racial and ethnic groups can have an especially strong influence on time spent in nature. In the 2022 study from Australia, Asians were less likely to go walking than white people, which the study authors attributed to anti-Asian racism. Surveys consistently show that minority groups in the U.S., especially Black and Hispanic Americans, are less likely to participate in outdoor recreation, commonly citing racism, fear of racist encounters, or lack of easy access as key factors. Inclusive messaging in places like urban parks, by contrast, may motivate diverse populations to spend time outdoors. I get that a connection with nature is important but I still don’t understand what qualifies as “loneliness.” Try to have the best possible day everyone! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/14/2205671/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Trump-s-brain-trust?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_9&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/