The Real Meaning of El-Sayed's Victory It's not what you're hearing .......... Corporate Democrats — such as Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries — aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed them campaign money. They won’t criticize the billionaire class. They refuse to see how big money has corrupted America........... Yet it’s big corporations and the billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s neo-fascism. They’ve sucked up to Trump for corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence, and war contracts. They’ve given Trump hundreds of millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his superPAC. .......... Jamie Dimon and Wall Street; Elon Musk and his billionaire bro’s; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Ellisons — all have sold their integrity for huge profits. They’ve created media empires that won’t criticize Trump, financial empires that feed Trump’s crypto, energy empires that feed off Trump’s war, and legal empires that allow Trump to ride roughshod over the rule of law. ......... The Democratic Party isn’t being taken over by Democratic Socialists. There’s no civil war between progressives and moderates. This isn’t about Israel or Netanyahu. We aren’t witnessing an ideological battle between the “left” and the “center.” .......... We’re seeing America wake up to the tyranny that’s engulfed us, and to a crisis of affordability that’s causing most Americans to struggle financially while fueling the biggest stock market rally in history. ........... When corporate America and Wall Street are unleashed — when the president of the United States has made an implicit deal with the moneyed interests to back him and his authoritarian regime in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, monopolization, and pay-to-play corruption — of course prices soar and wages stagnate. ........... Tyranny is the handmaiden of the moneyed interests.
............. The Democratic Party’s mega-donor class may be horrified by the rising tide of progressive populism overtaking more than a few primaries this cycle. It spent tens of million of dollars on Stevens — making the Michigan primary one of the most expensive in American history. .......... Too bad. It’s time that the Democratic Party’s mega-donor class recognizes that its real choice is between democracy and tyranny, between an economy that works for all or one that works for a small sliver at the top. If the mega-donor class chooses the latter, it may be acting in its narrow self-interest, but it will also be acting against the future of this nation.
Who's Responsible for This Mess? The media must name names ......... The New York Times says the “Justice Department struggles” with Trump’s demands that it prosecute his enemies. .............. In normal times, the White House and federal departments are also institutions containing professionals with expertise hewed over decades of experience, guided by institutional norms for making decisions and the insights and perspectives that come with their unique roles in the federal government. (I should know. I headed one.) .......... But we’re no longer in normal times. Trump and his sycophants are actively destroying the professional integrity, expertise, norms, and unique insights and perspectives of all these institutions. ............ This characterization hides a crucial reality: The fund doesn’t belong to the Justice Department. It wasn’t even an official offspring of the Justice Department. Instead, it emerged from meetings between Trump’s personal lawyers and acting attorney general Todd Blanche (who was once also a personal lawyer for Trump) over how to dispose of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. .......... It was never the “Justice Department’s” fund. It was Trump’s fund, right from the start. The same with his deal to immunize himself from IRS audits. ................ Trump had insisted for months that vandals were responsible for the damage, which gained national attention when the pool bottom began to peel and algae blooms turned the pool from blue to green. .............. But in Friday’s court filing, Pirro conceded that problems plaguing the newly renovated pool were caused by a “botched installation not vandalism” and that, had the Department of the Interior “been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”
The Good News Trump Won’t Mention Crime is plunging, but he can’t handle that truth ........... every one of Trump’s bombastic claims was completely, verifiably false
. .............. crime has been plunging. Jeff Asher reports that the number of murders, which rose in the aftermath of Covid but has been declining ever since, is now approaching lows not seen since the 1960s in a number of big cities, with New York probably the safest it has ever been ............. First, Trump (along with much of his party) hates American cities, and isn’t open to hearing anything good about them. Second, he (again along with much of his party) has an image of what life is like in our cities that is 40 years out of date. Finally — and again in accord with his party — he wants to punish people, and acknowledging good behavior would get in the way. ............ About city-hatred: During a Monday White House event Trump went off on a tangent about “blue cities” in which he declared ........... What do they have in common? They’re all dirty. They’re filthy, dirty. Their streets are dirty. Their streets smell. Their storefronts are broken. Their trees are all gross. Everything about the place is dirty............. This wasn’t really a comment about “blue cities,” it was an attack on American cities in general, since almost all major cities — 9 of the top 10, with 95 percent of their combined population — have Democratic mayors. And as usual, try to imagine any public figure saying something similar about rural America. ............... And if one wants to inflict pain — deporting, imprisoning, and, yes, shooting people — it’s necessary to claim that those people are doing terrible things. They’re dirty, they’re disgusting, they’re criminals. Acknowledging that crime is plunging, even while falsely claiming credit, would undermine the case for cruelty. ............. So Trump can’t talk about the fact that crime is down, not even falsely to claim credit, even though falling crime is one of the few ways in which America really is doing much better than it was a few years ago. Instead he must claim that “Radical Left” pollsters — like, for example, Fox News — are hiding his immense popularity, and that his Iran debacle was a great victory.
