RR Memory Bank (Late September 2020)
My introduction to QAnon
I began my newsletter in March 2020, just as the Covid pandemic was beginning. I started out writing far more regularly than today, often putting something out three to five times a week. It kept me sane. From time to time, I’m planning to continue to post some previous chronicles from that election year (mistakes and all intact), as a reminder of what it felt like to me at the time.
Here are some excerpts from my plague year posts. These are from almost exactly four years ago, as the campaign between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was heating up.
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Signs referring to the QAnon conspiracy theory — with a Q — appeared at rallies for President Donald J. Trump.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times
Sept. 21
“It affects virtually nobody,” President Trump said yesterday at a rally in Ohio. Maybe some elderly people with heart conditions, that’s all.
Virtually nobody. Or, as John Branch of the NYT put it in a retweet of an earlier comment by Dan Barry, also of the Times:
If about seven full 737s crashed in the US every day for the past six months, killing everyone aboard? About 200,000 lives lost. If people were told at some point that the crashes could be prevented by wearing a surgical mask when in a crowd, I imagine we’d probably do it.
@JohnBranchNYT
If you read one name every second (fast!) it would take 55.5 hours to read 200,000 names. If you spent 1 minute on each name to learn or reflect, it would take 139 days — from now until Feb. 7. Of course, by then, you’ll have lots more names. twitter.com/danbarrynyt/st…
Virtually nobody.
What was Trump doing as the pandemic grew and grew? It may be hard to recall after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but last Thursday Olivia Trope, who worked on the White House coronavirus task force, described Trump's role to Susan Glasser of The New Yorker just before going public with her information in a video for Republican Voters Against Trump.
I asked about her firsthand observation of the President during the crisis. She said that Trump was “disruptive.” That he could not “focus.” That he was consumed by himself and his prospects in November. “For him, it was all about the election,” Troye told me. “He just can’t seem to care about anyone else besides himself.”. . .
In the video, Troye recounts when Trump, a noted germaphobe, met with the coronavirus task force, early on in the crisis, and told its members that perhaps the pandemic was a good thing because he would no longer have to shake hands with all the “disgusting people” at his rallies and other public events. During our interview, I asked Troye if she could remember other particularly memorable times when Trump spoke privately to the group. She recalled how Trump refused several times to consider urgent business that the task force presented to him, deciding “to talk about himself and a preferred news network and how upset he was with them, instead of focussing on the agenda at hand.” Fox News coverage, in other words, preoccupied the President more than saving American lives. I asked Troye if that shocked her. “No,” she said. She remembered what she thought at the time: “This is exactly what you would expect.”
Exactly what you would expect.
Why did the Republican Party fall in line behind this man? Catherine Rampell, in her opinion column for the Washington Post, lays out one answer.
Was it worth it?
Republican lawmakers must ask themselves this question at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, whenever that is. Perhaps then they will finally inventory every misdeed they ignored or encouraged, every scar they seared into our republic and its institutions, in pursuit of their holy grail: another Supreme Court seat.
The prospect of another Supreme Court appointment was precisely how Republican senators assuaged their consciences these past four years. Judges (and tax cuts) were not merely the justification but their ultimate reward. They’re why these quisling lawmakers held their noses and accepted so much bad, sometimes criminal, behavior from this administration. . .
It’s how the “Party of Lincoln” excused overt bigotry against Muslims; against U.S.-born congresswomen of color who should “go back to” where they came from; against immigrants from “sh--hole countries”; against ethnic minorities who don’t share Trump supporters’ “good genes.” It’s how they brushed off his birtherism, his embrace of neo-Nazis at Charlottesville, his retweets of white supremacists, and the allegedly discriminatory housing policies that long predated Trump’s political career. . .
Even when it looked like the clock had almost run out on their tacit trade — American democracy, swapped for tax cuts and judges — GOP lawmakers kept their eyes on the prize.
And now they are about to get their reward: a solidly right-wing Court, writes Ed Kilgore in New York magazine, enshrined for a generation.
What can Democrats do about this? I know this is depressing and maybe there’s nothing that will stop McConnell and Trump from taking control of the third branch of government. But the other two branches are within reach and the first step is still to win the presidential election and take control of the Senate. That is looking more likely, both because nearly all the viable candidates are receiving more than enough money from contributors to draw their supporters to the polls, but also because there are signs that some voters on the edge can be pulled away from Trump. . .
My own experience with Trump supporters hasn’t always been so encouraging. Early this year, when calling voters in Maine to help identify people likely to vote Democratic, I ran across a couple of men who said they would never vote for Joe Biden because he was “a child molester.”
That was my first-hand introduction to the cult of QAnon, which Trump, with the help of Attorney General Bill Barr, is now courting for his campaign. Judd Legum, in his invaluable Popular Information newsletter, explains what is going on.
On Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr and Ivanka Trump visited Georgia "to highlight the administration’s efforts to protect human trafficking survivors." Barr and Trump visited the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy and participated "in a walking tour of the survivor care facility." Later, they participated in a roundtable discussion to "discuss the importance of public-private partnerships in the fight against human trafficking." They were joined by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.
Barr announced $100 million in grants to target human trafficking. A month ago, Barr and Trump appeared jointly to announce $35 million in human trafficking grants.
At first blush, there doesn't seem to be anything remarkable about this visit. But why, exactly, are two top members of the Trump administration making this trip without any new policy initiative to announce? Why are these relatively tiny grants being promoted heavily by the White House?
Human trafficking is a serious issue, but the event appears to be part of Trump's effort to court believers of the QAnon conspiracy, who have become an important part of the Republican base. QAnon's adherents believe that Democratic officials and celebrities — including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Hanks — are Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are running a secret sex trafficking operation. They believe that Trump is the only person who can stop them.
Last month, speaking from the White House briefing room, Trump praised the group. "I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate," Trump said. Trump also described QAnon as "gaining in popularity" and comprised of "people who love our country." Trump was asked by a reporter if he believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory — specifically that he "is secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals." Trump did not reject it. Instead, Trump said that "[i]f I can help save the world from problems, I'm willing to do it."
I don’t think we can survive another four years of the Trump cult.
Sept 22
Friends,
Donald Trump plans to steal the election he expects to lose. How do we know that? He’s telling us.
Here’s how Matt O’Brien put it in a Twitter post of Trump talking to reporters on the White House lawn about why he needs another conservative Justice appointed to the Supreme Court before Nov. 3:
Trump is like a Bond villain who can’t help but tell us about his plan to rig the election.
That's telling his supporters to vote in person so he wins the votes that cast on Election Day itself & then suing to stop absentee ballots from being counted. Bush v Gore 2.0 is the plan
Will it work? That depends on whether or not Democrats manage to get their supporters to vote in large enough numbers in the key battleground states of Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona to overwhelm all the Republican efforts to suppress the vote and fiddle with the results. Consider the latest dispatch in the NYT op-ed section from Tom Edsall, the brilliant, reliably pessimistic progressive journalist (unfortunately, he’s often right). The headline is, “Five Things Biden and His Allies Should Be Worried About.”
First, there are indications that Trump’s base of support — whites without college degrees — is more energized and committed to voting this year than key Democratic constituencies. And there is also evidence that polling does not reflect this.
Second, Latinos, who are key to the outcome in several crucial states — Arizona and Florida, for example — have shown less support for Biden than for past Democratic nominees. Many Hispanic voters seem resistant to any campaign that defines them broadly as “people of color.”
Third, absentee voting is expected to be higher among Democrats than Republicans, subjecting their ballots to a greater risk of rejection, a fate more common to mailed-in votes than to in-person voting.
Fourth, the generic Democratic-Republican vote (“Would you be more willing to vote for a Republican or Democratic candidate for Congress?”) through early July favored Democrats by more than 10 points, but has since narrowed to 6 points.
Fifth, the debates will test Biden’s ability to withstand three 90-minute battles against an opponent known for brutal personal attacks.
It’s a pretty scary list, but in the end, after weighing all the pros-and-cons of each of them, Edsall concludes that Trump’s most likely way to win a second term in office boils down to one choice:
If Trump is losing ground, as poll watchers increasingly suspect, it will be difficult for him to resort to anything other than his habitual fallback: cheating.
Trump has another thing going for him: Vladimir Putin is working on his behalf again. And again, Trump knows it.
I’ll let Heather Cox Richardson do the heavy lifting on Putin’s game plan. It’s a damning compilation of information, ending with this conclusion:
Meanwhile, Russia is trolling us. Today it released a deepfake of Trump, superimposing his face on another body while he talked as a special guest anchor on the government-controlled RT network. Using Trump’s own words, they showed him cheering on Russia. It was designed to irritate Americans and to demonstrate that America no longer commands respect.
And yet still Trump refuses to criticize Putin. Asked today who he thought poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, Trump replied: “Uhhhh ... we'll talk about that at another time.”
That’s enough on Trump and the election for now. After all, there are 40 more days to go and it's not like I won't be returning to the subject.
What else did I find worth reading lately? Plenty, but I’ll limit myself to two recommendations.
First is the latest analysis from the NYT on climate change, written by John Branch and Brad Plumer, better headlined in the print edition: “A Climate Crossroads With 2 Paths: Merely Bad or Truly Horrific.”
The Times spoke with two dozen climate experts, including scientists, economists, sociologists and policymakers, and their answers were by turns alarming, cynical and hopeful. . .
Their most sobering message was that the world still hasn’t seen the worst of it. Gone is the climate of yesteryear, and there’s no going back.
The effects of climate change evident today are the results of choices that countries made decades ago to keep pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates despite warnings from scientists about the price to be paid.
That price — more vicious heat waves, longer wildfire seasons, rising sea levels — is now irretrievably baked in. Nations, including the United States, have dithered so long in cutting emissions that progressively more global warming is assured for decades to come, even if efforts to shift away from fossil fuels were accelerated tomorrow.
Second is simply a great read in Wired by Brenden Koerner on “the cheating scandal that ripped the poker world apart.” Impossible to summarize, here’s just a taste:
[Justin] Kelly's co-commentator, 42-year-old Veronica Brill, did not share his sense of awe. She had been observing Postle up close for a while, both as an opponent at the table and a broadcaster, and she'd come to believe there was a nefarious reason for his success. For months she'd resisted mentioning her suspicions on the livestream, hoping that Stones would handle the matter behind the scenes. But the fold against Cordeiro struck her as so fishy that she could no longer keep quiet. Brill leaned back, gently shook her head, and took a half-step toward calling out God.
“It doesn't make sense,” she said, her soft monotone tinged with mockery. “It's like he knows. It doesn't make sense. It's weird.” Sounding caught off guard by his cohost's skeptical remarks, Kelly continued effusively—“Absolute insanity, guys!”—before managing to change the subject.
Late that night, as she drove in silence toward her Bay Area home, Brill turned the broadcast over and over in her mind. Her insinuation about [Mike] Postle, though subtle, had the potential to cause a stir. Fellow players would gossip that jealousy had driven her to smear a more accomplished rival, a decent man who'd just come through a harrowing family drama. Gliding west on Interstate 80, Brill realized she had no choice but to commit one of poker's cardinal sins.
Sep 23, 2020
Yesterday morning, I started my note saying that “Donald Trump plans to steal an election he knows he’s losing.” A few hours later, The Atlantic posted online their coming cover story by Bart Gellman, a deeply reported, deeply disturbing piece headlined:
“The Election That Could Break America: If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the results. Who will stop him?”
If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January. The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield. Collectively we will have made our choice—a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.
As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar. But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down. Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result. We have no fail-safe against that calamity. Thus the blinking red lights. . .
The worst case is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.
Please forgive me for writing, yet again, almost exclusively about Trump. I’m so looking forward to the day when I don’t have to think about him. But in the meantime, Greg Miller, writing in the Washington Post, provides yet another reminder of his true character.
In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.
After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.
Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.”
In New York magazine, Jonathan Chait takes Miller's original reporting and runs with it.
Miller’s reporting contains far more detail about Trump’s racism, nearly all of it already known publicly. It is revealing, though, that new evidence continues pouring out faster than he could keep track of it. Last night, Trump delivered a riff about Representative Ilhan Omar that was ugly even by Trumpian standards.
“She’s telling us how to run our country,” he announced. “How did you do where you came from? How’s your country doing? She’s going to tell us — she’s telling us how to run our country.” Omar immigrated as a child from Somalia. She obviously has no responsibility for civil strife in a country she fled as a child. But Trump is casually insisting that an immigrant who became a U.S. citizen cannot be an American. (Last year, he led crowds in chants of “Send her back!”)
If Trump officials confirmed off the record that Trump said this in the White House, his supporters would angrily deny it. But he said it on a stage in front of television cameras.
I rarely find David Brooks that interesting these days, but I don’t want to let a column from last week go unnoted. He’s writing mostly to Republicans, trying to persuade them why Joe Biden is not a threat to the American way of life. Hard to believe anyone thinks that, but that is where a steady diet of Fox News can do to your mind.
A Biden administration would not be further left than the Democratic voters out in the country or their representatives in Congress. Those voters are not mostly the urban gentrifiers who propel the left; they are mostly the “somewhat liberal” suburbanites and Black moderates who gave Biden the nomination. . .
You might have thought that the Democratic and Republican Parties are different versions of the same thing, but that’s no longer true. As Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has noted, the G.O.P. is no longer a standard coalition party. It’s an anti-political insurgency that, even before Trump, has been elevating candidates with no political experience and who don’t believe in the compromise and jostle of politics.
Right now, Republicans are a culture war identity movement that suppresses factional disagreement and demands total loyalty to Trump.
The Democrats are still a normal political party. In 2020 they rejected the “base mobilization” candidates who imagine you can magically create a revolutionary majority if only you go purist.
Biden is a man who doesn’t do culture war, who will separate the cultural left from the political left, reduce politics back to its normal size and calm an increasingly apocalyptic and hysterical nation.
The Democratic Party is an institution that still practices coalition politics, that serves as a vehicle for the diverse interests and ideas in society to filter up into legislation, that plays by the rules of the game, that believes in rule of law. Right now, it is the only major party that does that.
And now for something a little different. I want to pass on an essay by Ryan Holiday in Medium. It’s titled, “33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me,” and I found through Barry Ritzholtz, whose “Ritzholtz Reads” is an idea I stole (and then adapted) from the brilliant Wall Street investor. Here’s a few examples:
The legendary basketball coach George Raveling has said he sees reading as a moral imperative. “People died,” he said, speaking of slaves, soldiers, and civil rights activists, “so I could have the ability to read.” If you’re not reading, if books aren’t playing a major role in your life, you are betraying the legacy that they left for the generations after them.
Another one on reading: In his autobiography, General James Mattis points out that if you haven’t read widely, you are “functionally illiterate.” As Mark Twain said, if you don’t read, you’re not any better than people who can’t read. This is true for specific topics, too. I am functionally illiterate about many things, and that needs to be fixed.
The clinical psychologist and author Sue Johnson talks about how when couples (or people in general) fight, they’re not really fighting. Instead, they’re doing a dance, usually one that’s about attachment. The dance — you go this way, I go that way, you reach out, I pull away, I reach out, you pull away — is the problem. Not the couple, not either of the individuals.
The past year has revealed some things about a lot of folks that I know well — or at least I thought I did. But as I feel myself rushing to judgment, I think of the beautiful line from F. Scott Fitzgerald at the beginning of The Great Gatsby: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
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