thebulwark--2020-07-08--The Conspiracy Theorist Trump Wants to Install in the Pentagon

The news that the Trump administration has directed the Defense Department to appoint the once-dismissed conspiracy theorist , Rich Higgins , to a major Pentagon job has so far received little coverage in the major press .
In 2017 , Higgins was a staffer in the strategic planning office of the National Security Council ( NSC ) when he wrote a seven-page memo titled “ POTUS & Political Warfare.
” A paranoid pastiche of far-right conspiracy theories about the president ’ s “ adversaries , ” the memo resulted in the dismissal of Higgins and several others from the NSC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the president wants Higgins to serve as the chief of staff to the incoming undersecretary of defense for policy .
( The president ’ s nominee for that undersecretary position is , as a recent Bulwark article explained , ill suited for the job . )
The selection of Higgins and the rush to have him take office is an ominous turn by the Trump administration .
The culture war fight he recommended in his 2017 memo is now being put into practice by the president , as the nation has seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rushmore and his July 4 address from the White House .
Indeed , the acceptance of Higgins ’ s playbook by Donald Trump and his acolytes is far more dangerous than what Senator Joe McCarthy did in the 1950s .
McCarthy had managed to gain significant support for his witch hunt to root Communists out of the government , until his overreach led a bipartisan group to turn away from him .
The Senate finally condemned him on Dec. 2 , 1954 by a vote of 67 for and 22 against .
McCarthy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his pleas for a massive purge of “ Reds ” in the government failed to materialize .
Now , it is President Donald Trump who is calling for a purge of supposed traitors and fifth columnists .
With both the bully pulpit and the powers given to the president by the Constitution , Trump ’ s seeming adaptation of Higgins ’ s McCarthyite playbook can not be ignored or pushed to the side .
It is worth taking a moment to look at the history of Higgins ’ s memo and how it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Michael Flynn ’ s departure in 2017 after less than a month on the job , President Trump appointed H.R .
McMaster his new national security advisor .
Several people inside the administration ( including Steve Bannon and some Flynn holdovers on the National Security Council , such as Higgins ) started a smear campaign against McMaster , joining forces with figures outside of the administration : major Trump supporters on the fringe of American politics , such as Mike Cernovich , a perpetrator of conspiracy theories such as “ Pizzagate ” ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ editors and writers of Breitbart News and David Horowitz ’ s website , Frontpagemag .
It was in this context that Higgins wrote and circulated his memo , which accused McMaster in all but name of working for America ’ s enemies .
This left McMaster no choice but to ask Higgins to resign , or if he did not , be fired .
( Higgins resigned . )
McMaster served until March 2018 .
Higgins has never repudiated , and in fact seems to stand by , what he wrote in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shudder .
Higgins painted a picture of how conspiratorial members of the “ deep state ” were subverting the administration , and even worse were conscious adherents of “ cultural Marxist memes.
” This secret cabal of government Marxists supposedly schooled in the doctrine of Weimar-era Germany ’ s Frankfurt School were composed of “ ‘ deep state ’ actors , globalists , bankers , Islamists , and establishment Republicans.
” It is hard to imagine establishment Republicans studying or even knowing about the work of Herbert Marcuse , Theodor Adorno , Franz @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intellectual descendants today .
Nevertheless , as I noted in a 2017 Daily Beast article , Higgins believes that Trump ’ s opposition , including Republicans , operates according to “ cultural Marxist drivers ” and consciously uses a “ Maoist insurgency model ” to take power away from President Trump .
Their strategy , Higgins believes , is to create false narratives : Along with the Democrats , he writes , “ the Republican Establishment accepts and enforces cultural Marxist memes within its own sphere of operations.
” And along with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America , “ both as an ideal and as a national and political identity , must be destroyed.
” Certainly , many of the ’ 60s-era members of the New Left read the Frankfurt School writers and some were highly influenced by this group—but I can ’ t think of any of them who became establishment Republicans or Trumpists , with the exception perhaps of Larry Kudlow when he was a student radical and SDS president at the University of Rochester .
Writer Bill Berkowitz summed up the belief that cultural Marxism has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing our nation , noting that the attack on the Frankfurt School contains more than a hint of anti-Semitism : Higgins , however , explains his view of what the Frankfurt School stands for in this way : “ Cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism , Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School .
The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory .
The result is induced nihilism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the belief in nothing.
” At this point , Higgins most likely lost his readers , since it seems he has himself adopted the largely incomprehensible sentences often found in contemporary pseudo-Marxist and postmodernist writing , an irony that obviously escaped him .
Others have argued more cogently that the Frankfurt School ’ s ideas in fact do a lot to explain the phenomenon of both Donald Trump and the new populist-nationalism .
Writing in the New Yorker , Alex Ross points out that what adherents of the school provide is great insight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump was able to become president .
Ross notes that , in the 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality , Adorno and his coauthors discuss the type of personality that set the stage for a “ potentially fascistic individual ” —and , implies Ross , by drawing on this theory , someone who held an “ accumulation of racist , antidemocratic , paranoid , and irrational sentiments ” could gain a great following in America .
This is not what the Trumpists expect you to learn from the Frankfurt School .
In the conspiratorial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ running America includes the mainstream media , the deep state , globalists , corporatists , the bankers , the Democratic leadership , the Republican establishment whose politicos echo Frankfurt School Marxist memes , and finally Islamists and all those who support these evil forces—virtually the entire liberal-left in America .
Arguing as if he alone knows what Trump stands for , Higgins uses Gramscian theories about forging a historic bloc that could gain hegemony over society .
Higgins writes : Therefore , Higgins asserts that Trump had become “ an existential threat to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural narrative , those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction .
For this cabal , Trump must be destroyed.
” They wage , he believes , “ a political warfare effort that seeks the destruction of a sitting President.
” To stop them , that president must go to war against them before he is destroyed .
Higgins ’ s dismissal from the NSC by McMaster therefore became for Higgins more proof that the deep state conspiracy to overthrow Trump by preparing a Marxist-Islamist coup exists .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s enemies seek “ the forced urbanization of the populace , thereby necessitating a larger , more powerful government.
” In summary , this is a “ form of population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/Islamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state.
” Defending himself in the pages of the Wall Street Journal this past February , Higgins actually compared his dismissal from the NSC staff to that of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman after he testified before Congress in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ In contrast to Col. Vindman , ” Higgins wrote , “ I lost my job because I was loyal to the president.
” Higgins ’ s op-ed stresses the one thing Trump values more than anything : loyalty to himself .
Knowing this , Higgins ’ s job application—which is what his memo really is—worked .
Just a few months after writing the op-ed , and three years after his ouster from the NSC staff , Higgins was rewarded by Trump with his pending Pentagon appointment .
Trump is now following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and having Trump appoint him to a major Pentagon job makes a good deal of sense .
In his Wall Street Journal op-ed , Higgins acknowledges that his May 2017 memo was intended to by “ read by people with the power to take action—perhaps even by the president himself.
” Higgins is still fuming that Congress did not ask him to testify about his firing and that “ editorialists and pundits didn ’ t express outrage ” about it .
It is Col. Vindman , he suggests , who was being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while in uniform.
” It is telling that in his attack on Col. Vindman and in his explanation of his own rationale for being the good guy , Higgins leaves readers unaware of the conspiratorial nature of his original memo , which even one of his supporters in the administration admitted “ reads a little crazy , but it ’ s not wrong.
” And crazy it is .
In my Daily Beast article , I compared Higgins to Joe McCarthy , noting the latter ’ s infamous Senate speech of June 14 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Gen. George C. Marshall—an American leader beloved by the entire nation—had as secretary of state handed China over to Mao Zedong and the Communists .
Communism ’ s strength , McCarthy said , “ must be the product of a .
.
.
great conspiracy , a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.
” Two months earlier , in debating another controversy on the Senate floor , a McCarthy ally had declared that America was in the hands of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by agents of the Soviet Union.
” The country would not know their names unless President Harry S. Truman were impeached , and only then would Americans find out “ who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction.
” Replace the phrase “ secret invisible government ” with “ deep state ” and you ’ ve more or less got the paranoid rhetoric of today ’ s Trumpists .
Back then it was Secretary of State Dean Acheson , McCarthy said , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ British Labour government , and his “ secondary allegiance [ was ] to the Kremlin.
” To Higgins , the NSC under McMaster was loyal to America ’ s current enemies as Higgins defined them .
McCarthy said that under Truman and Eisenhower , America had lived under “ twenty years of treason.
” Today it is our president himself who is branding his opponents with words like those used by McCarthy .
Trump recently claimed that Barack Obama had spied on him and his campaign and secretly taped them .
He told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that what Obama did was “ treason.
” He is also fond of bandying about that accusation on Twitter .
That is why Higgins ’ s new appointment means two things .
First , it is yet another example of how Trump is appointing—in various departments—loyalists who agree with his agenda to clean out the “ Marxists , ” thugs , destroyers of our entire way of life , and their leftist supporters .
An ardent Trump supporter puts it this way , referring to Trump ’ s two speeches on July 3 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unapologetically in defense of America ’ s unique heritage even as mobs of evil anarchists and violent Communists rabidly tear down monuments and statues to some of America ’ s greatest heroes.
” Higgins isn ’ t the only NSC staffer McMaster fired whom Trump has hired back .
Higgins ’ s NSC colleague and fellow Trumpist Ezra Cohen-Watnick , whom McMaster also dismissed , is now at the Pentagon as the deputy director of defense for counter-narcotics and global defense .
Another concerning recent hire : Michael Pack , who now runs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and whom Trump appointed because he publicly said that Pack would “ clean up ” the radio networks like Voice of America , which the president accused of running Chinese government propaganda .
Immediately upon taking office , Pack removed the chiefs of the news agencies under his control , a move that critics allege was intended to clear jobs for pro-Trump executives .
As Jeffrey Gedmin , the former CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , recently noted here at The Bulwark , it is not clear whether Pack will follow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump .
Pack defended himself in a recent interview , claiming that the dismissals were simply part of “ a very fair , let ’ s-start-over process.
” But Gedmin is right to wonder whether Pack ’ s acts were “ part of the wider Trump war on the ‘ deep state.
’ ” The second thing we can read into Higgins ’ s appointment involves the president ’ s acceptance of Higgins ’ s argument .
Trump ’ s recent claims that the left will destroy America if his Democratic opponent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if the left wins , “ America is at risk ” and that the “ Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed , America , both as an ideal and as a national and political entity , must be destroyed.
” It is the 2016 “ Flight 93 ” argument all over again—i.e.
, should the Democrats win , America will come to an end .
Higgins says this claim has been proved by the left ’ s attacks on group and personal identity ; “ hence the sexism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s problem , and that of all Trump supporters today , is that he believes the media “ relentlessly characterize [ ] Trump as unfit ” when they say the president is “ illegitimate , ” “ corrupt , ” and “ dishonest.
” Unfortunately for Higgins , it is clearer than ever that Trump is in fact corrupt and dishonest , if not illegitimate .
The realization of this by so many Americans accounts for his daily collapsing poll numbers .
Higgins concluded his memo writing that the left seeks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead [ sic ] to his election ” ( his emphasis ) .
Thus , “ the defense of President Trump is the defense of America.
” That would mean , if we follow Higgins ’ s logic , that Americans who do not defend him for a myriad of reasons are in fact un-American .
He ends by telling Trump that it is “ time for him to drive ” events , and not be driven by them .
Trump seems daily to be making the very points Higgins argued in 2017 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is why Higgins will likely once again have an important government position , as will others who agree with him and constantly reiterate the conspiratorial points in his memo in their own manner .
With these appointments , the country will move further down the path to authoritarianism .

The news that the Trump administration has directed the Defense Department to appoint the once-dismissed conspiracy theorist, Rich Higgins, to a major Pentagon job has so far received little coverage in the major press. In 2017, Higgins was a staffer in the strategic planning office of the National Security Council (NSC) when he wrote a seven-page memo titled “POTUS & Political Warfare.” A paranoid pastiche of far-right conspiracy theories about the president’s “adversaries,” the memo resulted in the dismissal of Higgins and several others from the NSC staff.
Now, three years later, the president wants Higgins to serve as the chief of staff to the incoming undersecretary of defense for policy. (The president’s nominee for that undersecretary position is, as a recent Bulwark article explained, ill suited for the job.) The selection of Higgins and the rush to have him take office is an ominous turn by the Trump administration. The culture war fight he recommended in his 2017 memo is now being put into practice by the president, as the nation has seen in his July 3 address at Mount Rushmore and his July 4 address from the White House.
Indeed, the acceptance of Higgins’s playbook by Donald Trump and his acolytes is far more dangerous than what Senator Joe McCarthy did in the 1950s. McCarthy had managed to gain significant support for his witch hunt to root Communists out of the government, until his overreach led a bipartisan group to turn away from him. The Senate finally condemned him on Dec. 2, 1954 by a vote of 67 for and 22 against. McCarthy had created fear and suspicion, but his pleas for a massive purge of “Reds” in the government failed to materialize.
Now, it is President Donald Trump who is calling for a purge of supposed traitors and fifth columnists. With both the bully pulpit and the powers given to the president by the Constitution, Trump’s seeming adaptation of Higgins’s McCarthyite playbook cannot be ignored or pushed to the side.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
It is worth taking a moment to look at the history of Higgins’s memo and how it led to his firing. Soon after Michael Flynn’s departure in 2017 after less than a month on the job, President Trump appointed H.R. McMaster his new national security advisor. Several people inside the administration (including Steve Bannon and some Flynn holdovers on the National Security Council, such as Higgins) started a smear campaign against McMaster, joining forces with figures outside of the administration: major Trump supporters on the fringe of American politics, such as Mike Cernovich, a perpetrator of conspiracy theories such as “Pizzagate”; radio conspiracymonger Alex Jones; and the editors and writers of Breitbart News and David Horowitz’s website, Frontpagemag.
It was in this context that Higgins wrote and circulated his memo, which accused McMaster in all but name of working for America’s enemies. This left McMaster no choice but to ask Higgins to resign, or if he did not, be fired. (Higgins resigned.) McMaster served until March 2018.
Higgins has never repudiated, and in fact seems to stand by, what he wrote in the 2017 memo. Rereading it makes one shudder. Higgins painted a picture of how conspiratorial members of the “deep state” were subverting the administration, and even worse were conscious adherents of “cultural Marxist memes.” This secret cabal of government Marxists supposedly schooled in the doctrine of Weimar-era Germany’s Frankfurt School were composed of “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans.”
It is hard to imagine establishment Republicans studying or even knowing about the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Franz Neumann, Max Horkheimer, or their intellectual descendants today. Nevertheless, as I noted in a 2017 Daily Beast article, Higgins believes that Trump’s opposition, including Republicans, operates according to “cultural Marxist drivers” and consciously uses a “Maoist insurgency model” to take power away from President Trump. Their strategy, Higgins believes, is to create false narratives: Along with the Democrats, he writes, “the Republican Establishment accepts and enforces cultural Marxist memes within its own sphere of operations.” And along with the globalists and Islamists, they think that America, “both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed.”
Certainly, many of the ’60s-era members of the New Left read the Frankfurt School writers and some were highly influenced by this group—but I can’t think of any of them who became establishment Republicans or Trumpists, with the exception perhaps of Larry Kudlow when he was a student radical and SDS president at the University of Rochester.
Writer Bill Berkowitz summed up the belief that cultural Marxism has become the one-stop explanation of the threat facing our nation, noting that the attack on the Frankfurt School contains more than a hint of anti-Semitism:
In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of “Marxism” that took aim at American society’s culture, rather than its economic system. The theory holds that these self-interested Jews—the so-called “Frankfurt School” of philosophers—planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values—Christianity, “family values,” and so on—are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left.
Higgins, however, explains his view of what the Frankfurt School stands for in this way: “Cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism, Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory. The result is induced nihilism, a belief in everything that is actually the belief in nothing.” At this point, Higgins most likely lost his readers, since it seems he has himself adopted the largely incomprehensible sentences often found in contemporary pseudo-Marxist and postmodernist writing, an irony that obviously escaped him.
Others have argued more cogently that the Frankfurt School’s ideas in fact do a lot to explain the phenomenon of both Donald Trump and the new populist-nationalism. Writing in the New Yorker, Alex Ross points out that what adherents of the school provide is great insight to why and how someone like Donald Trump was able to become president. Ross notes that, in the 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and his coauthors discuss the type of personality that set the stage for a “potentially fascistic individual”—and, implies Ross, by drawing on this theory, someone who held an “accumulation of racist, antidemocratic, paranoid, and irrational sentiments” could gain a great following in America. This is not what the Trumpists expect you to learn from the Frankfurt School.
In the conspiratorial view of Higgins, the evil cabal running America includes the mainstream media, the deep state, globalists, corporatists, the bankers, the Democratic leadership, the Republican establishment whose politicos echo Frankfurt School Marxist memes, and finally Islamists and all those who support these evil forces—virtually the entire liberal-left in America.
Arguing as if he alone knows what Trump stands for, Higgins uses Gramscian theories about forging a historic bloc that could gain hegemony over society. Higgins writes:
Candidate Trump’s rhetoric in the campaign not only cut through the Marxist narrative, he did so in ways that were viscerally comprehensible to a voting bloc that then made candidate Trump the President; making that bloc self-aware in the process. President Trump is either the candidate he ran as, or he is nothing.
Therefore, Higgins asserts that Trump had become “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction. For this cabal, Trump must be destroyed.” They wage, he believes, “a political warfare effort that seeks the destruction of a sitting President.” To stop them, that president must go to war against them before he is destroyed.
Higgins’s dismissal from the NSC by McMaster therefore became for Higgins more proof that the deep state conspiracy to overthrow Trump by preparing a Marxist-Islamist coup exists. As he wrote in his memo, Trump’s enemies seek “the forced urbanization of the populace, thereby necessitating a larger, more powerful government.” In summary, this is a “form of population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/Islamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state.”
Defending himself in the pages of the Wall Street Journal this past February, Higgins actually compared his dismissal from the NSC staff to that of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman after he testified before Congress in the lead-up to the Trump’s impeachment. “In contrast to Col. Vindman,” Higgins wrote, “I lost my job because I was loyal to the president.” Higgins’s op-ed stresses the one thing Trump values more than anything: loyalty to himself. Knowing this, Higgins’s job application—which is what his memo really is—worked. Just a few months after writing the op-ed, and three years after his ouster from the NSC staff, Higgins was rewarded by Trump with his pending Pentagon appointment. Trump is now following Higgins’s arguments to a T, and having Trump appoint him to a major Pentagon job makes a good deal of sense.
In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Higgins acknowledges that his May 2017 memo was intended to by “read by people with the power to take action—perhaps even by the president himself.” Higgins is still fuming that Congress did not ask him to testify about his firing and that “editorialists and pundits didn’t express outrage” about it. It is Col. Vindman, he suggests, who was being “dishonorable” by practicing “resistance while in uniform.”
It is telling that in his attack on Col. Vindman and in his explanation of his own rationale for being the good guy, Higgins leaves readers unaware of the conspiratorial nature of his original memo, which even one of his supporters in the administration admitted “reads a little crazy, but it’s not wrong.” And crazy it is. In my Daily Beast article, I compared Higgins to Joe McCarthy, noting the latter’s infamous Senate speech of June 14, 1951, in which he argued that Gen. George C. Marshall—an American leader beloved by the entire nation—had as secretary of state handed China over to Mao Zedong and the Communists. Communism’s strength, McCarthy said, “must be the product of a . . . great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” Two months earlier, in debating another controversy on the Senate floor, a McCarthy ally had declared that America was in the hands of a “secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union.” The country would not know their names unless President Harry S. Truman were impeached, and only then would Americans find out “who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction.”
Replace the phrase “secret invisible government” with “deep state” and you’ve more or less got the paranoid rhetoric of today’s Trumpists.
Back then it was Secretary of State Dean Acheson, McCarthy said, whose “primary loyalty” was to the British Labour government, and his “secondary allegiance [was] to the Kremlin.” To Higgins, the NSC under McMaster was loyal to America’s current enemies as Higgins defined them.
McCarthy said that under Truman and Eisenhower, America had lived under “twenty years of treason.” Today it is our president himself who is branding his opponents with words like those used by McCarthy. Trump recently claimed that Barack Obama had spied on him and his campaign and secretly taped them. He told the evangelical TV station CBN in July that what Obama did was “treason.” He is also fond of bandying about that accusation on Twitter.
That is why Higgins’s new appointment means two things. First, it is yet another example of how Trump is appointing—in various departments—loyalists who agree with his agenda to clean out the “Marxists,” thugs, destroyers of our entire way of life, and their leftist supporters. An ardent Trump supporter puts it this way, referring to Trump’s two speeches on July 3 and 4: “He spoke out unapologetically in defense of America’s unique heritage even as mobs of evil anarchists and violent Communists rabidly tear down monuments and statues to some of America’s greatest heroes.”
Higgins isn’t the only NSC staffer McMaster fired whom Trump has hired back. Higgins’s NSC colleague and fellow Trumpist Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom McMaster also dismissed, is now at the Pentagon as the deputy director of defense for counter-narcotics and global defense.
Another concerning recent hire: Michael Pack, who now runs America’s global news media institutions, and whom Trump appointed because he publicly said that Pack would “clean up” the radio networks like Voice of America, which the president accused of running Chinese government propaganda. Immediately upon taking office, Pack removed the chiefs of the news agencies under his control, a move that critics allege was intended to clear jobs for pro-Trump executives.
As Jeffrey Gedmin, the former CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, recently noted here at The Bulwark, it is not clear whether Pack will follow the course laid out for him by Donald Trump. Pack defended himself in a recent interview, claiming that the dismissals were simply part of “a very fair, let’s-start-over process.” But Gedmin is right to wonder whether Pack’s acts were “part of the wider Trump war on the ‘deep state.’”
The second thing we can read into Higgins’s appointment involves the president’s acceptance of Higgins’s argument. Trump’s recent claims that the left will destroy America if his Democratic opponent is elected echo Higgins’s argument that if the left wins, “America is at risk” and that the “Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political entity, must be destroyed.” It is the 2016 “Flight 93” argument all over again—i.e., should the Democrats win, America will come to an end. Higgins says this claim has been proved by the left’s attacks on group and personal identity; “hence the sexism, racism and xenophobia memes.”
Higgins’s problem, and that of all Trump supporters today, is that he believes the media “relentlessly characterize[] Trump as unfit” when they say the president is “illegitimate,” “corrupt,” and “dishonest.” Unfortunately for Higgins, it is clearer than ever that Trump is in fact corrupt and dishonest, if not illegitimate. The realization of this by so many Americans accounts for his daily collapsing poll numbers.
Higgins concluded his memo writing that the left seeks to destroy “the vision of America that lead [sic] to his election” (his emphasis). Thus, “the defense of President Trump is the defense of America.” That would mean, if we follow Higgins’s logic, that Americans who do not defend him for a myriad of reasons are in fact un-American. He ends by telling Trump that it is “time for him to drive” events, and not be driven by them. Trump seems daily to be making the very points Higgins argued in 2017 and putting them up front.
That is why Higgins will likely once again have an important government position, as will others who agree with him and constantly reiterate the conspiratorial points in his memo in their own manner. With these appointments, the country will move further down the path to authoritarianism.


thebulwark--2020-07-08--College Football in a Pandemic—and What It Could Mean for the Election

In 1950 , longtime University of Oklahoma president George Lynn Cross testified before the state legislature about why the school needed more money .
When one state senator asked him to be more specific about how the funding would improve the school , Cross wryly replied that “ I would like to build a university of which the football team could be proud.
” Public university presidents have long had to navigate the relationship between their schools and their big-money interests , with state legislatures often the connection to keep everyone happy .
And for the better part of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team has been part of the deal .
College football and the political world will be testing their relationship in the coming weeks , as the harsh realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and college football collide like two huge linemen .
As of this writing , there has been no clear guidance from either the federal government or the NCAA—but the schools and football conferences will soon have to decide if it is safe for the scholarship players to suit up about a dozen times a year , or perhaps punt this season @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Already , the numbers are lining up in such a way that the NCAA and school athletic directors are thinking that postponing the season from fall to the spring might be for the best .
Just yesterday , the states of Texas , Florida , and Arizona—which have a combined ten universities with big-time football—reported a combined 265 deaths from COVID-19 and about 21,000 new cases .
The 10 political swing states—Georgia , Florida , Arizona , Texas , Iowa , Michigan , Ohio , North Carolina , Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with big football programs—yesterday reported 426 deaths and nearly 29,000 new cases .
Those figures represented 43 percent of the deaths recorded nationwide yesterday , and more than half of the new cases .
So far , hardly anyone from college football has taken a stand on whether the season should proceed .
The NBA , MLB , and NHL professional leagues are each trying to go forward with various adaptations—with NBA players sequestering in Disney World—and the NFL is fast approaching the point at which it will have to decide how to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major difference is that players in those leagues are paid big money and the college football players are not .
Their playing is at the center of a vast economic swirl involving billions of dollars because the college games are very valuable TV content and the universities have structured themselves to depend on that money .
But with less than two months before the season is supposed to start , it is quite obvious that the players are at higher risk for becoming infected by the disease if the games do happen .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their movements restricted on campus .
“ What I ’ m really worried about is , campus by campus , across the country , students coming back on the campus and spreading [ the virus ] like wildfire in their living situations , ” said Paul Pottinger , an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Washington , in an interview with Yahoo Sports .
A member of a COVID-19 advisory committee to the Pac-12 conference , Pottinger said that “ unless we get past that , unless we can break that cycle , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campuses even opening up for the fall—for any purpose , much less for athletics.
” How this situation will play out is anyone ’ s guess right now , as the decision brings together a treacherous combination of conflicting interests : schools , conferences , health care experts , cities , counties , state legislatures , national TV media conglomerates , TV advertisers , and shady college football boosters in the background with cash in hand .
And then there ’ s this : How might the decision about whether and how college @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national presidential election ?
President Donald Trump is interested in sports , and his interview in May on NBC showed that college football in the fall is important to him and his base : If college football were played fully this fall as scheduled , President Trump could make the case during the election season that he deserves credit for this symbolic return of “ normalcy ” in American life .
He can also blame the elite academics and snarky Democrats for having tried to keep Saturday afternoon college TV football away from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close to that , having tweeted a few days ago that “ Corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats don ’ t want to open schools in the Fall for political reasons , not for health reasons !
They think it will help them in November .
Wrong , the people get it !
” It ’ s too early—and too contingent on other circumstances—to know whether this argument would sway anyone .
But again , let ’ s look at the schools and the key swing states .
There are 65 teams in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ten , Big 12 , Pac-12 , and SEC .
These schools split some huge media money—a combined $ 6 billion per year .
Add to that the amount of local money generated by games : a recent analysis of six college football programs found that , on average , there was $ 13 million in economic activity in the home town for each home game , which comes to $ 91 million locally for the entire season .
Every political consultant and public office holder knows that keeping $ 91 million in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and everyone will want to take credit for that regardless of any downside .
The 10 swing states mentioned above have 23 of the big-money college football teams—about a third of the national total .
Those states also have 179 electoral college votes .
All 10 of them have Republican-led legislatures , and six have GOP governors .
All of which suggests that state political pressure to play football and help the party for the presidential election could be a factor in those key states .
The latest polling numbers have presumptive Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those states , with Trump up slightly in Texas ( 1.2 percent ) and dead even with Biden in Iowa .
While lots of press attention has been focused on Trump ’ s need to win again the three swing states—Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin—that in 2016 he won by just a combined 77,000 votes , he could also lose the election if he keeps those three states but loses Florida and Arizona .
Florida and Arizona have five college football teams in the Power Five .
The number of daily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the counties where these schools reside .
And the numbers of new cases recorded in the last seven days in the home counties of the schools in the Power Five conferences are higher than the week before in 47 out of the 65 schools .
Yes , some smaller counties—like Tuscaloosa County for the University of Alabama and Lubbock County for Texas Tech—have had only small increases .
But some big urban universities have had huge increases : Texas Christian University in the DFW area , Vanderbilt in Nashville , Miami University in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Arizona State University in Phoenix , and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles have seen the recent numbers break records .
The question politically is whether to put about 100 college football players per team—along with coaches and sideline attendants who carry water and health care officials who normally make sure knees work right—at greater risk for the sake of TV money .
The players line up at the line of scrimmage inches apart , and “ if you ’ re out of breath and breathing really hard , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ probably expel more respiratory droplets than others would , ” Mark Hurst , the Ohio health department ’ s medical director , told the Columbus Dispatch .
The fans in favor of a normal college-football season can be expected to get louder in the coming weeks : Just quarantine the players , don ’ t let fans into the stadiums , and remember , the disease is much worse for old people than for young people .
But we can also expect opponents to get more vocal : The players can pass on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and traveling to hotspot areas could be a disaster .
“ The silence of college presidents and trustees in the face of such insane behavior is deafening , ” Donna A. Lopiano , professor of sports management at Southern Connecticut State University and Andrew Zimbalist , professor of economics at Smith College , wrote in Forbes in late June .
They continued : An additional confounding factor : Identifying which institutions have control over which aspects of the situation .
The NCAA says the college sports conferences have authority .
The conferences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the schools say they have to get the green light from local and state government agencies .
Then again , state legislatures wield massive control over university budgets , so their approval matters .
It ’ s easy to see how political pressure might be brought to bear without anyone leaving clear fingerprints .
Still , there is good reason that many savvy observers are skeptical .
“ The only people who are selling delusion and hope right now are folks who run college football , ” said ESPN ’ s Paul Finebaum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about on-time beginnings and full stadiums , but they ’ re all full of crap .
.
.
.
The push to get players back on campus is fine , but it ’ s reality time now .
Anyone who believes the college football season is in good shape is wrong .
”

In 1950, longtime University of Oklahoma president George Lynn Cross testified before the state legislature about why the school needed more money. When one state senator asked him to be more specific about how the funding would improve the school, Cross wryly replied that “I would like to build a university of which the football team could be proud.”
Public university presidents have long had to navigate the relationship between their schools and their big-money interests, with state legislatures often the connection to keep everyone happy. And for the better part of a century now, a successful college football team has been part of the deal.
College football and the political world will be testing their relationship in the coming weeks, as the harsh realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and college football collide like two huge linemen. As of this writing, there has been no clear guidance from either the federal government or the NCAA—but the schools and football conferences will soon have to decide if it is safe for the scholarship players to suit up about a dozen times a year, or perhaps punt this season into next and cancel the 2020 games.
Already, the numbers are lining up in such a way that the NCAA and school athletic directors are thinking that postponing the season from fall to the spring might be for the best. Just yesterday, the states of Texas, Florida, and Arizona—which have a combined ten universities with big-time football—reported a combined 265 deaths from COVID-19 and about 21,000 new cases. The 10 political swing states—Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Texas, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which have a combined 23 universities with big football programs—yesterday reported 426 deaths and nearly 29,000 new cases. Those figures represented 43 percent of the deaths recorded nationwide yesterday, and more than half of the new cases.
So far, hardly anyone from college football has taken a stand on whether the season should proceed. The NBA, MLB, and NHL professional leagues are each trying to go forward with various adaptations—with NBA players sequestering in Disney World—and the NFL is fast approaching the point at which it will have to decide how to proceed with its season. But the major difference is that players in those leagues are paid big money and the college football players are not. Their playing is at the center of a vast economic swirl involving billions of dollars because the college games are very valuable TV content and the universities have structured themselves to depend on that money. But with less than two months before the season is supposed to start, it is quite obvious that the players are at higher risk for becoming infected by the disease if the games do happen. They will have to be quarantined and their movements restricted on campus.
“What I’m really worried about is, campus by campus, across the country, students coming back on the campus and spreading [the virus] like wildfire in their living situations,” said Paul Pottinger, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Washington, in an interview with Yahoo Sports. A member of a COVID-19 advisory committee to the Pac-12 conference, Pottinger said that “unless we get past that, unless we can break that cycle, then it’s hard to imagine campuses even opening up for the fall—for any purpose, much less for athletics.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
How this situation will play out is anyone’s guess right now, as the decision brings together a treacherous combination of conflicting interests: schools, conferences, health care experts, cities, counties, state legislatures, national TV media conglomerates, TV advertisers, and shady college football boosters in the background with cash in hand.
And then there’s this: How might the decision about whether and how college football gets played this fall affect the national presidential election? President Donald Trump is interested in sports, and his interview in May on NBC showed that college football in the fall is important to him and his base:
We want to get it back to where it was. We want big, big stadiums loaded with people. We don’t want to have 15,000 people watching Alabama-LSU as an example. And we want to have where you have the masses, we want to have big crowds.
If college football were played fully this fall as scheduled, President Trump could make the case during the election season that he deserves credit for this symbolic return of “normalcy” in American life. He can also blame the elite academics and snarky Democrats for having tried to keep Saturday afternoon college TV football away from the fans. He is already coming close to that, having tweeted a few days ago that “Corrupt Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to open schools in the Fall for political reasons, not for health reasons! They think it will help them in November. Wrong, the people get it!”
It’s too early—and too contingent on other circumstances—to know whether this argument would sway anyone. But again, let’s look at the schools and the key swing states. There are 65 teams in the Power Five conferences—the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC. These schools split some huge media money—a combined $6 billion per year.
Add to that the amount of local money generated by games: a recent analysis of six college football programs found that, on average, there was $13 million in economic activity in the home town for each home game, which comes to $91 million locally for the entire season.
Every political consultant and public office holder knows that keeping $91 million in local coffers is a political plus, and everyone will want to take credit for that regardless of any downside.
The 10 swing states mentioned above have 23 of the big-money college football teams—about a third of the national total. Those states also have 179 electoral college votes.
All 10 of them have Republican-led legislatures, and six have GOP governors. All of which suggests that state political pressure to play football and help the party for the presidential election could be a factor in those key states.
The latest polling numbers have presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden clearly leading in eight of those states, with Trump up slightly in Texas (1.2 percent) and dead even with Biden in Iowa. While lots of press attention has been focused on Trump’s need to win again the three swing states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that in 2016 he won by just a combined 77,000 votes, he could also lose the election if he keeps those three states but loses Florida and Arizona. Florida and Arizona have five college football teams in the Power Five.
The number of daily new reported infections is going up in the counties where these schools reside. And the numbers of new cases recorded in the last seven days in the home counties of the schools in the Power Five conferences are higher than the week before in 47 out of the 65 schools. Yes, some smaller counties—like Tuscaloosa County for the University of Alabama and Lubbock County for Texas Tech—have had only small increases. But some big urban universities have had huge increases: Texas Christian University in the DFW area, Vanderbilt in Nashville, Miami University in South Florida, Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Arizona State University in Phoenix, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles have seen the recent numbers break records.
The question politically is whether to put about 100 college football players per team—along with coaches and sideline attendants who carry water and health care officials who normally make sure knees work right—at greater risk for the sake of TV money. The players line up at the line of scrimmage inches apart, and “if you’re out of breath and breathing really hard, you can see that’s going to probably expel more respiratory droplets than others would,” Mark Hurst, the Ohio health department’s medical director, told the Columbus Dispatch.
The fans in favor of a normal college-football season can be expected to get louder in the coming weeks: Just quarantine the players, don’t let fans into the stadiums, and remember, the disease is much worse for old people than for young people. But we can also expect opponents to get more vocal: The players can pass on their infections to their family and friends, and traveling to hotspot areas could be a disaster.
“The silence of college presidents and trustees in the face of such insane behavior is deafening,” Donna A. Lopiano, professor of sports management at Southern Connecticut State University and Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College, wrote in Forbes in late June. They continued:
Higher education has lost its mind and its morality. Why? Because the monetary fruits of commercialized college sports have trumped the integrity of higher education, its obligation to provide a safe educational environment and its duty to demonstrate respect for human life.
An additional confounding factor: Identifying which institutions have control over which aspects of the situation. The NCAA says the college sports conferences have authority. The conferences defer to individual schools. Many of the schools say they have to get the green light from local and state government agencies. Then again, state legislatures wield massive control over university budgets, so their approval matters.
It’s easy to see how political pressure might be brought to bear without anyone leaving clear fingerprints.
Still, there is good reason that many savvy observers are skeptical. “The only people who are selling delusion and hope right now are folks who run college football,” said ESPN’s Paul Finebaum last week. “They’re talking about on-time beginnings and full stadiums, but they’re all full of crap. . . . The push to get players back on campus is fine, but it’s reality time now. Anyone who believes the college football season is in good shape is wrong.”


thebulwark--2020-07-08--Trump’s War on the Press Is a War on All of Us

What is a reporter ?
What is “ fake news ” for that matter ?
And why does the president of the United States considers me the enemy of the people ?
The last two questions are easy enough to answer .
When Donald Trump says “ fake news ” he means that it is news he doesn ’ t want to hear .
When Trump calls the press the “ enemy of the people , ” it is a tactic aimed at getting his supporters to ignore anything anyone else says .
By naming an “ enemy of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is the best friend of the people .
After all , he called out the enemy .
Anyone see my dog whistle ?
But answering that first question is a bit harder .
So , what is a reporter ?
A loose definition is simply that a reporter is any person trying to communicate information to the rest of the herd .
Scientists will tell you the development of language , and particularly written information , led to greater cooperation among homo sapiens and thus enabled our species to conquer the planet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than a gossip in the beginning , such a role is still necessary in developing communities and civilizations .
Our Founding Fathers found it so essential to survival as to enshrine its guarantee first among the amendments to the Constitution .
Accordingly , since we first learned to communicate there have been those among us who found it profitable to manipulate communications among and between people .
History calls them press agents , politicians , con men , writers , lovers , members of the clergy , members of the media .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ evolved to fact check themselves before publication .
So , what is a reporter ?
A single black male coming out of college .
An older white guy with a growing bald spot and a passion for Led Zeppelin and Richard Pryor .
A black single mother with two children .
A white single mother with two children .
A young white male .
A middle-aged female .
An editor who smokes cigars .
An editor who wears a Turban .
A brilliant middle-aged woman with an incredible sense of wit and humor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A lesbian from Missouri .
A transgender woman from Virginia .
A red headed kid fresh out of school working on the border who can ’ t speak Spanish .
A gambler .
A guitar player .
A PTA president .
A football coach .
Over the course of my career I ’ ve actually worked with all of these people and many others .
So what is a reporter ?
Someone who corrects their mistakes and owns up to them .
We ’ re all human .
We all make mistakes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them and move on .
Doing so enhances our credibility .
It does not damage it .
Only in refusing to admit our mistakes do we give rise to suspicion and rightly so .
A reporter is also innately curious and can enjoy extended time rummaging through online county records chasing a lead .
A reporter is many times one of the only members of the general public attending a city or county council meeting in person .
A reporter covers high school football and little league sports .
A reporter covers county @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business openings and neighborhood association meetings .
A reporter covers wars .
A reporter covers riots .
A reporter covers protests .
A reporter covers natural disasters .
A reporter covers science .
A reporter attends luncheons and visits hospitals .
A reporter covers ballet , theater and the music scene in local bars .
Reporters tell us these stories .
The people decide what to do with the information .
But reporters should provide it all .
The government doesn ’ t get to decide for us .
So what is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media dominated world , anyone with a cellphone and access to the web can be a reporter – at least on occasion .
They can be at the scene of news and broadcast it to the world raw – and more importantly before politicians can put their spin on it .
So , if anyone can be a reporter , what does it really mean when Trump calls the media the enemy of the people ?
It means that in addition to getting people to doubt anyone but him , he specifically wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We are not the enemy of the people .
We are the people .
The enemy is the one waging war on us .

What is a reporter? What is “fake news” for that matter? And why does the president of the United States consider me the enemy of the people?
The last two questions are easy enough to answer. When Donald Trump says “fake news” he means that it is news he doesn’t want to hear. When Trump calls the press the “enemy of the people,” it is a tactic aimed at getting his supporters to ignore anything anyone else says. By naming an “enemy of the people,” Trump is therefore implying he is the best friend of the people. After all, he called out the enemy. Anyone see my dog whistle?
But answering that first question is a bit harder.
So, what is a reporter?
A loose definition is simply that a reporter is any person trying to communicate information to the rest of the herd.
Scientists will tell you the development of language, and particularly written information, led to greater cooperation among homo sapiens and thus enabled our species to conquer the planet. Enter the reporter. Maybe nothing more than a gossip in the beginning, such a role is still necessary in developing communities and civilizations. Our Founding Fathers found it so essential to survival as to enshrine its guarantee first among the amendments to the Constitution.
Accordingly, since we first learned to communicate there have been those among us who found it profitable to manipulate communications among and between people. History calls them press agents, politicians, con men, writers, lovers, members of the clergy, members of the media . . . you know—everyone.
Reporters therefore evolved to fact check themselves before publication.
So, what is a reporter?
A single black male coming out of college. An older white guy with a growing bald spot and a passion for Led Zeppelin and Richard Pryor. A black single mother with two children. A white single mother with two children. A young white male. A middle-aged female. An editor who smokes cigars. An editor who wears a Turban. A brilliant middle-aged woman with an incredible sense of wit and humor. A gay man from South Carolina. A lesbian from Missouri. A transgender woman from Virginia. A red headed kid fresh out of school working on the border who can’t speak Spanish. A gambler. A guitar player. A PTA president. A football coach. Over the course of my career I’ve actually worked with all of these people and many others.
So what is a reporter? Someone who corrects their mistakes and owns up to them. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. When we do we should admit them and move on. Doing so enhances our credibility. It does not damage it. Only in refusing to admit our mistakes do we give rise to suspicion and rightly so.
A reporter is also innately curious and can enjoy extended time rummaging through online county records chasing a lead. A reporter is many times one of the only members of the general public attending a city or county council meeting in person. A reporter covers high school football and little league sports. A reporter covers county and state fairs. A reporter covers business openings and neighborhood association meetings. A reporter covers wars. A reporter covers riots. A reporter covers protests. A reporter covers natural disasters. A reporter covers science. A reporter attends luncheons and visits hospitals. A reporter covers ballet, theater and the music scene in local bars.
Reporters tell us these stories. The people decide what to do with the information. But reporters should provide it all. The government doesn’t get to decide for us.
So what is a reporter? In today’s social media dominated world, anyone with a cellphone and access to the web can be a reporter – at least on occasion. They can be at the scene of news and broadcast it to the world raw – and more importantly before politicians can put their spin on it.
So, if anyone can be a reporter, what does it really mean when Trump calls the media the enemy of the people? It means that in addition to getting people to doubt anyone but him, he specifically wants us to doubt an essential truth: We are not the enemy of the people. We are the people.
The enemy is the one waging war on us.


thebulwark--2020-07-08--The Racial Tribulations of Trump Agonistes

Even a visitor from Mars , admitted to the White House , would swiftly perceive that America ’ s biggest problem is not this overblown pandemic , but unreasonably ungrateful African-Americans who disrespect our storied history and the capacious spirit of our dear leader .
Not all African-Americans , of course—there ’ s always Herman Cain .
Who is , sadly , another victim of overzealous testing for COVID-19 after attending the president ’ s exhilarating rally in Tulsa .
But in general too few appreciate that , as President Trump has so eloquently explained : “ I think I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community than any other president , and let ’ s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good , although it ’ s always questionable , you know , in other words , the end result.
” What did the president mean about the questionable “ end result ” ?
Only a cynic would think that he was talking about terminating slavery .
More likely this was a compassionate reference to Lincoln ’ s unfortunate encounter at Ford ’ s Theater with a well-meaning southern patriot – another misunderstanding which , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once told of it , had “ good people on both sides.
” If only everyone had our leader ’ s generosity of spirit and appreciation for nuance .
The truth is that black lives matter so much to America ’ s president that some seem to be immortal .
Back in 2017 , he informed a group of African-Americans that “ Frederick Douglass is an example of someone who ’ s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more , I noticed.
” This was a truly revealing moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Douglass as well as Trump does .
Douglass may have died in 1895 , but his legacy is ever alive in Donald Trump ’ s heart and mind .
Still , as a leader of all the people , President Trump is deeply attuned to our shared heritage .
How appropriate , then , is the report that “ aides say Trump has been focused most intently in meetings on the issues surrounding statues and monuments.
” Here , his unyielding patriotism is informed by a deep appreciation of American history that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Trump ’ s bracing repudiation of their contempt for human liberty , as expressed at Mount Rushmore , can only be regarded as Churchillian : Which beautiful monuments is the president talking about ?
The statues of heroic Confederate luminaries , of course -the men who fought so bravely for a cause now lost to history .
Hasn ’ t everyone seen Gone With The Wind ?
The desecration proceeded apace .
Mississippi precipitously ripped the Confederate battle insignia from its state flag and the city of Richmond rudely toppled an enormous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mayor of Richmond , a benighted stranger to our president ’ s farsighted perspective , offered this woefully subjective response : “ If he would put himself in my shoes , as a black man in the South , he ’ d recognize that these monuments .
.
.
serve a purpose to demonstrate to those black and brown residents that ‘ we ’ re still in charge.
’ Essentially , white supremacy.
” So ?
Isn ’ t white supremacy a big part of our history ?
A lot of people died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stonewall Jackson and Emmett Till .
Nonetheless , cowering from political correctness , the lemmings in Congress redoubled this national vandalism—which , properly understood , is the spiritual cousin of the contagious looting and rioting which is spiking in every corner of our land .
This cowardice compelled President Trump to take another brave and lonely stand : threatening to veto a $ 741 billion Pentagon authorization bill that gratuitously proposed renaming military bases which currently commemorate our most gifted Confederate generals .
Deploying his unique gifts of language , President Trump enriched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noteworthy Native American : Now there ’ s a thought which should give any true patriot pause : Could we have beaten the Nazis if Fort Lee had been named , say , Fort Crispus Attucks ?
.
But , as ever , there are those agents of intolerance who relentlessly concoct bogus charges of racism in a crusade to crucify our president : When Trump announced that the unemployment rate for June had fallen to a modest 13.3 percent , he humanized the moment with a touching remembrance of George Floyd : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now and saying this is a great thing that ’ s happening for our country .
There ’ s a great day for him.
” Unbelievably , his usual carping critics called this insensitive .
But what better way of showing that black deaths truly matter ?
When Trump tweeted out a video of old folks confronting each other over racial issues at a senior center , intending it as an uplifting instructional video in the use of golf carts by the elderly , his enemies seized on the fact that one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Is there no end to their resolve to capitalize on coincidence and grasp at straws ?
When Trump tweeted another video of a white man and woman pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters as they passed their compound , he was merely affirming that time-honored American maxim : “ A white man ’ s McMansion is his castle.
” Why else would he contemplate repealing an Obama-era fair housing mandate except , as he put it , to honor “ the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a native of Somalia , of “ telling us how to run our country , ” didn ’ t his critics in the Fake News Media appreciate his sensitivity about unskilled immigrants who take jobs held by good native-born Americans—men like Louie Gohmert and , until recently , Steve King ?
But , as Donald Trump well knows , upholding American values is a long twilight struggle against the insidious forces of authoritarianism .
As he warned us while standing beneath his peer group on Mount Rushmore : Or , worse yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such a mob , our national will erodes .
Take that spineless NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell , a craven coward beholden to that monolithic pack of Radical Marxist Democrats who own professional football franchises .
Appearing in a virtual hostage video , Goodell squeaked out a pitiful apologia for the quislings who kneel during our National Anthem , saying that “ Protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence , inequality and oppression of black players , coaches , fans and staff.
” Players ?
Those rich and pampered prima @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Or that manipulative attention-seeker , Colin Kaepernick , who pales next to the hundred-plus extraordinarily gifted quarterbacks who currently grace professional rosters ?
Once again , it took a man of Donald Trump ’ s unquestioned moral and physical courage to denounce these thugs : One must feel sympathy for a man so selfless that , faced with a country devolving into carnage , he gave America the gift of himself .
But perhaps , if enough Americans listen to him closely , he can yet inspire us to lighten his terrible @ @

Even a visitor from Mars, admitted to the White House, would swiftly perceive that America’s biggest problem is not this overblown pandemic, but unreasonably ungrateful African-Americans who disrespect our storied history and the capacious spirit of our dear leader.
Not all African-Americans, of course—there’s always Herman Cain. Who is, sadly, another victim of overzealous testing for COVID-19 after attending the president’s exhilarating rally in Tulsa. But in general too few appreciate that, as President Trump has so eloquently explained: “I think I’ve done more for the black community than any other president, and let’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good, although it’s always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result.”
What did the president mean about the questionable “end result”? Only a cynic would think that he was talking about terminating slavery. More likely this was a compassionate reference to Lincoln’s unfortunate encounter at Ford’s Theater with a well-meaning southern patriot – another misunderstanding which, as our commander-in-chief no doubt instantly grasped once told of it, had “good people on both sides.”
If only everyone had our leader’s generosity of spirit and appreciation for nuance.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The truth is that black lives matter so much to America’s president that some seem to be immortal. Back in 2017, he informed a group of African-Americans that “Frederick Douglass is an example of someone who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed.”
This was a truly revealing moment, if only his audience had understood Douglass as well as Trump does. Douglass may have died in 1895, but his legacy is ever alive in Donald Trump’s heart and mind.
Still, as a leader of all the people, President Trump is deeply attuned to our shared heritage. How appropriate, then, is the report that “aides say Trump has been focused most intently in meetings on the issues surrounding statues and monuments.”
Here, his unyielding patriotism is informed by a deep appreciation of American history that is alien to those of so-called liberal sensibilities. Trump’s bracing repudiation of their contempt for human liberty, as expressed at Mount Rushmore, can only be regarded as Churchillian:
The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, beautiful monuments, tear down our statues and punish, cancel and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute control. This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans.
Which beautiful monuments is the president talking about? The statues of heroic Confederate luminaries, of course -the men who fought so bravely for a cause now lost to history. Hasn’t everyone seen Gone With The Wind?
The desecration proceeded apace. Mississippi precipitously ripped the Confederate battle insignia from its state flag and the city of Richmond rudely toppled an enormous statue of Stonewall Jackson himself. The mayor of Richmond, a benighted stranger to our president’s farsighted perspective, offered this woefully subjective response: “If he would put himself in my shoes, as a black man in the South, he’d recognize that these monuments . . . serve a purpose to demonstrate to those black and brown residents that ‘we’re still in charge.’ Essentially, white supremacy.”
So? Isn’t white supremacy a big part of our history? A lot of people died for it, after all, like Stonewall Jackson and Emmett Till.
Nonetheless, cowering from political correctness, the lemmings in Congress redoubled this national vandalism—which, properly understood, is the spiritual cousin of the contagious looting and rioting which is spiking in every corner of our land. This cowardice compelled President Trump to take another brave and lonely stand: threatening to veto a $741 billion Pentagon authorization bill that gratuitously proposed renaming military bases which currently commemorate our most gifted Confederate generals.
Deploying his unique gifts of language, President Trump enriched his trademark historical references by mentioning a noteworthy Native American:
Seriously failed presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, just introduced an Amendment on the renaming of many of our legendary Military Bases from which we trained to WIN two World Wars. Hopefully our great Republican Senators won’t fall for this! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2020
Now there’s a thought which should give any true patriot pause: Could we have beaten the Nazis if Fort Lee had been named, say, Fort Crispus Attucks?.
But, as ever, there are those agents of intolerance who relentlessly concoct bogus charges of racism in a crusade to crucify our president:
When Trump announced that the unemployment rate for June had fallen to a modest 13.3 percent, he humanized the moment with a touching remembrance of George Floyd: “Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. There’s a great day for him.” Unbelievably, his usual carping critics called this insensitive. But what better way of showing that black deaths truly matter?
When Trump tweeted out a video of old folks confronting each other over racial issues at a senior center, intending it as an uplifting instructional video in the use of golf carts by the elderly, his enemies seized on the fact that one of the seniors shouted “white power.” Is there no end to their resolve to capitalize on coincidence and grasp at straws?
When Trump tweeted another video of a white man and woman pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters as they passed their compound, he was merely affirming that time-honored American maxim: “A white man’s McMansion is his castle.” Why else would he contemplate repealing an Obama-era fair housing mandate except, as he put it, to honor “the request of many great Americans who live in the Suburbs.”
And when Trump accused Representative Ilhan Omar, a native of Somalia, of “telling us how to run our country,” didn’t his critics in the Fake News Media appreciate his sensitivity about unskilled immigrants who take jobs held by good native-born Americans—men like Louie Gohmert and, until recently, Steve King?
But, as Donald Trump well knows, upholding American values is a long twilight struggle against the insidious forces of authoritarianism. As he warned us while standing beneath his peer group on Mount Rushmore:
In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate board rooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished.
Or, worse yet, defeated for reelection.
Faced with such a mob, our national will erodes. Take that spineless NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a craven coward beholden to that monolithic pack of Radical Marxist Democrats who own professional football franchises. Appearing in a virtual hostage video, Goodell squeaked out a pitiful apologia for the quislings who kneel during our National Anthem, saying that “Protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence, inequality and oppression of black players, coaches, fans and staff.”
Players? Those rich and pampered prima donnas forever sniveling about traumatic brain injury? Or that manipulative attention-seeker, Colin Kaepernick, who pales next to the hundred-plus extraordinarily gifted quarterbacks who currently grace professional rosters?
Once again, it took a man of Donald Trump’s unquestioned moral and physical courage to denounce these thugs:
Could it be even remotely possible that in Roger Goodell’s rather interesting statement of peace and reconciliation, he was intimating that it would now be O.K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the National Anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country & our Flag? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2020
One must feel sympathy for a man so selfless that, faced with a country devolving into carnage, he gave America the gift of himself.
But perhaps, if enough Americans listen to him closely, he can yet inspire us to lighten his terrible burdens.


thebulwark--2020-07-09--No, Teens Are Not Having ‘Coronavirus Parties’

The story stank from the beginning .
Reports said reckless teenagers in Alabama were staging parties with contests to see who could catch the coronavirus first , with the winner taking home a cash prize in addition to a debilitating illness .
No one cared that the sourcing was thin .
A Tuscaloosa city council member said she ’ d heard about it from the fire department .
The fire chief said he ’ d heard from doctors that some kids had attended parties knowing they had COVID-19 symptoms , which , somehow , was confirmation of a contest to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ councilor claimed , “ the state confirmed they also had the same information.
” On this basis , the tale of the coronaparties was picked up and reported across the country .
The Associated Press carried it , and many other outlets circulated the AP story or their own versions .
Reporters and editors didn ’ t ask if such a contest was possible .
How would you run the game ?
Recruit players , collect money , verify winners , and issue payouts ?
Surely , such an undertaking would leave evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actual teenager or two to interview .
It ’ s no surprise the story quickly fell apart .
In a statement released on Twitter , the Alabama Department of Public Health said it “ could not verify any parties where persons tried to contract ” COVID-19 .
So there is no confirmed evidence of anything .
Not the contest .
Not even that teenagers attended parties knowing they were sick .
The AP released a second report walking back the first .
The COVID contest story is the latest example of adults jumping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Since the mid-2000s , rumors have swirled about “ pill parties , ” in which teens supposedly swap prescription drugs swiped from their parents , and “ rainbow parties , ” where boys receive multiple sex acts from assembled girls .
Even when there is evidence for the existence of a troubling trend , credulous news outlets can exaggerate the problem—as when , two years ago , a handful of teens really did eat Tide pods , leading to overblown fears of a supposed nationwide poisoning fad .
Evidence that these parties and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but when teens are involved , who needs facts ?
Teenagers are a mystery—their minds a black box—but everyone knows they do stupid things .
Getting sick on purpose is exactly the kind of stupid thing they ’ d do .
The assumption that adults can ’ t understand teenagers has nothing to do with biology .
It ’ s a byproduct of teen culture and how it developed in America during the Great Depression , World War II , and the postwar Baby Boom .
The word “ teenager ” was rarely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to catch on in the 1940s as a way to denote a then-emerging youth culture , characterized by things like distinctive music , clothes , and language .
But teenagers were created not by hormones but by the push in the 1930s to get children into schools and out of the workforce where they competed with men for scarce jobs .
As high school education became nearly universal after the war , young people became socialized by their peer group rather than the mixed-age groups common in the factory or on the farm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found new customers in teenagers with disposable income and an urge to feel simultaneously special and just like the kids at school .
Marketing experts grasped that adolescent tastes could be catered to and shaped in ways that separated young people from their money and reinforced their peer-based concerns .
Upon its founding in 1944 as a fashion magazine for teenage girls , Seventeen pitched itself to advertisers as indispensable to capturing the youth market .
Girls wanted to “ look , act and be just like the girl next door , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a group of “ teenmates , ” the magazine promised , “ and the chances are you ’ ll sell them all.
” The perceived distinctiveness of teens intensified in the postwar period until the 1960s “ generation gap ” made it official : Parents and their baby boomer children didn ’ t understand each other—couldn ’ t understand each other—because they just weren ’ t part of the same generation .
Opposition between teenagers and adults was always baked into the performance of teen culture , but the mutual incomprehensibility was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rebellious Sixties , social scientists found that parents and children generally shared similar values , though their tastes in clothes and music differed .
The real gulf , then as now , was between parents and other adults , which was replicated in the disparity of opinions between teenagers and other teenagers .
If adults have so much in common with teenagers , then why are older people so eager to believe wild stories about them ?
The perception of difference allows adults to project anxieties onto a group that doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worried about .
Everyone is anxious about the pandemic .
It looked like the worst was over and we could socialize again .
Now , the infections have roared back , and the future is uncertain .
Rather than dealing with the uneasiness , it ’ s easier to blame idiot teen “ superspreaders ” for ruining our return to normal .
Maybe teenagers are more cavalier toward the pandemic than adults are .
But they ’ re not aliens , and there ’ s a surefire way to find out what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .

The story stank from the beginning. Reports said reckless teenagers in Alabama were staging parties with contests to see who could catch the coronavirus first, with the winner taking home a cash prize in addition to a debilitating illness.
No one cared that the sourcing was thin. A Tuscaloosa city council member said she’d heard about it from the fire department. The fire chief said he’d heard from doctors that some kids had attended parties knowing they had COVID-19 symptoms, which, somehow, was confirmation of a contest to get sick. And, the city councilor claimed, “the state confirmed they also had the same information.”
On this basis, the tale of the coronaparties was picked up and reported across the country. The Associated Press carried it, and many other outlets circulated the AP story or their own versions.
Reporters and editors didn’t ask if such a contest was possible. How would you run the game? Recruit players, collect money, verify winners, and issue payouts? Surely, such an undertaking would leave evidence. Or, at least, an actual teenager or two to interview.
It’s no surprise the story quickly fell apart. In a statement released on Twitter, the Alabama Department of Public Health said it “could not verify any parties where persons tried to contract” COVID-19. So there is no confirmed evidence of anything. Not the contest. Not even that teenagers attended parties knowing they were sick. The AP released a second report walking back the first.
The COVID contest story is the latest example of adults jumping to conclusions about teenagers and panicking. Since the mid-2000s, rumors have swirled about “pill parties,” in which teens supposedly swap prescription drugs swiped from their parents, and “rainbow parties,” where boys receive multiple sex acts from assembled girls. Even when there is evidence for the existence of a troubling trend, credulous news outlets can exaggerate the problem—as when, two years ago, a handful of teens really did eat Tide pods, leading to overblown fears of a supposed nationwide poisoning fad.
Evidence that these parties and trends were ever real is scarce, but when teens are involved, who needs facts? Teenagers are a mystery—their minds a black box—but everyone knows they do stupid things. Getting sick on purpose is exactly the kind of stupid thing they’d do.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The assumption that adults can’t understand teenagers has nothing to do with biology. It’s a byproduct of teen culture and how it developed in America during the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar Baby Boom.
The word “teenager” was rarely used before WWII, but it began to catch on in the 1940s as a way to denote a then-emerging youth culture, characterized by things like distinctive music, clothes, and language. But teenagers were created not by hormones but by the push in the 1930s to get children into schools and out of the workforce where they competed with men for scarce jobs. As high school education became nearly universal after the war, young people became socialized by their peer group rather than the mixed-age groups common in the factory or on the farm.
At the same time, businesses found new customers in teenagers with disposable income and an urge to feel simultaneously special and just like the kids at school. Marketing experts grasped that adolescent tastes could be catered to and shaped in ways that separated young people from their money and reinforced their peer-based concerns. Upon its founding in 1944 as a fashion magazine for teenage girls, Seventeen pitched itself to advertisers as indispensable to capturing the youth market. Girls wanted to “look, act and be just like the girl next door,” Seventeen observed. Sell to one girl in a group of “teenmates,” the magazine promised, “and the chances are you’ll sell them all.”
The perceived distinctiveness of teens intensified in the postwar period until the 1960s “generation gap” made it official: Parents and their baby boomer children didn’t understand each other—couldn’t understand each other—because they just weren’t part of the same generation.
Opposition between teenagers and adults was always baked into the performance of teen culture, but the mutual incomprehensibility was always overblown, too. Even in the rebellious Sixties, social scientists found that parents and children generally shared similar values, though their tastes in clothes and music differed. The real gulf, then as now, was between parents and other adults, which was replicated in the disparity of opinions between teenagers and other teenagers.
If adults have so much in common with teenagers, then why are older people so eager to believe wild stories about them? The perception of difference allows adults to project anxieties onto a group that doesn’t have to be understood, only worried about.
Everyone is anxious about the pandemic. It looked like the worst was over and we could socialize again. Now, the infections have roared back, and the future is uncertain. Rather than dealing with the uneasiness, it’s easier to blame idiot teen “superspreaders” for ruining our return to normal.
Maybe teenagers are more cavalier toward the pandemic than adults are. But they’re not aliens, and there’s a surefire way to find out what they’re thinking about COVID-19: Ask them.