- Via HuffPo: Minnesota Senator Calls Elon Musk ‘A Dick’. No lies detected.
- Via Mediaite: ‘It’s Over!’ James Carville Tells Dan Abrams the Trump White House Will Suffer a ‘Massive Collapse’ in ‘Less Than 30 Days’. Not only does this sound like wishful thinking, but what does it really mean? Let’s assume that Trump’s approval numbers crater, does that lead to a fix for all the damage being done (and that can still be done even if his approval is in the tank)?
- From Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: Who Is Running the United States, Musk or Trump?
- Via WaPo: Justice Department deletes database tracking federal police misconduct.
- Via CNN: Elon Musk’s private security detail gets deputized by US Marshals Service.
- Via ProPublica: DOGE’s Millions: As Musk and Trump Gut Government, Their Ax-Cutting Agency Gets Cash Infusion.
- Via the NYT: Justice Dept. to Drop Discrimination Case Against Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
- Via Channel 10 in Philadelphia: Hundreds of Philly IRS workers laid off on Thursday, union says.
- Via WaPo: Trump again raises idea of running for an unconstitutional third term.
Comments
15 responses to “Tuesday Morning Tabs”
Carville, pimping for the same weak Democratic Party strategy that has really failed in three consecutive elections. That’s great strategizing, man! Just sit around and twiddle your thumbs until he’s broken everything! It’s like seeing someone stripping your car for parts on the street and suggesting that you just sit back because eventually they won’t be able to carry any more parts.
Democrats absolutely need to be out there – they need to appear strong, and they need to bury Trump’s awful decisions in everyone’s brains. Trump is weak right now, just a shell of a strongman trying to hold whatever he can. That’s why he’s increasing the bullying: he thinks that will bring him power. It appeals to the most idiotic of his fans.
The only way to fight him is to call it out, refuse to back down, and look for opportunities to – as MR would say – punch him in the mouth.
I have seen a lot of angry reaction to Carville’s advice to “play possum,” I think well justified. The voters have shown very clearly that they condemn Democrat passivity, that would just feed into that perception.
Democrats need to be speaking out, doing as much as they can to draw attention to all the horrors the Russian sycophants are doing as they go about wrecking the government and the economy.
Link to the Philadelphia IRS story is bad.
James Carville is the Dems’ Dick Morris. Just a few months ago he wrote an NYT piece titled “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win”–kind of an echo of Morris’s 2011 piece “No Way Obama Wins in 2012.” (It’s not the fact that they predicted the wrong presidential winners–pundits do that all the time–it was their smug certainty about it.) He also predicted Trump wouldn’t show up for the CNN debate last June with Biden. In 2020 he predicted Trump would drop out of the race.
Then there’s his classic book 40 More Years: How the Democrats will Rule the Next Generation, published shortly after Obama’s first win. Maybe not in quite the same category as Dick Morris’s 2005 Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race, but close enough.
@charontwo: Thanks for noting that. It should be fixed now.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It is remarkable how delusional some people are about Trump’s “business acumen,” a carefully constructed falsity to fit the pre-existing TV show concept that “The Apprentice” was created to realize.
Ignorance and stupidity come with consequences.
ETA: The show’s creators approached many New York big shots searching for someone to be the star, Trump was the only taker of the opportunity.
After all the evidence. Multiple bankruptcies, stiffing contractors etc. apparently there are still many suckers out there that think that Trump has business acumen.
Robert, when the leopard ate your face did you finally realize that Donald Trump lives
ONLY FOR HIMSELF and that you are just cat food?
@ptfe: I watched a fair bit of this and you are mischaracterizing what Carville said. He said wait 4 to 6 weeks and then you will have lots of opportunities, when they fail to pass a debt limit, and so on.
Thing is, I don’t think the debt limit is going to be an issue for them. Passing a budget will be, but CRs save the day.
Have his handlers located a body double that can walk around in front of the cameras in about four years?
@charontwo:
Trump supporters all have these vague reasons for lining up behind him, but none hold up to honest scrutiny. Peeling away the rationalizations, typically exposes that they were drawn to his “vibe,” a vibe that includes bigotry and an irrational abhorrence of all things that might be conceived as “liberal.”
Those two items: bigotry, libtard hatred plus a complete misread of Jesus Christ and naked opportunism are recurring themes.
Earth to Carville: We’re not in a Seldon Crisis.
@Jay L Gischer: When a dangerous opponent is faltering, you don’t roll the dice that they’ll take a tumble and not regain their footing, you push them down the stairs. If you don’t take the opportunity afforded you now, you leave Trump open to finding some other idiotic distraction. Media just cannot figure him out – they can’t quit him, they’ll just keep covering his deranged nonsense and operating like it’s not deranged – so Democrats need to exploit any and all openings.
A Dem message of “we’re not going to do anything, but oo boy you won’t believe what he’ll do come April!” signals that they also don’t care about governance, they just don’t care in a different way.
Why would anyone have a Come To Jesus moment to kinda sorta join a party that does absolutely nothing to appeal to them? “Democrats!” the brand is sullied by decades of Fox News absurdity, so people need to really, truly see how awful the Republican Party is and what it now represents. It’s saying, “This is the Republican Party letting billionaires seizing authoritarian power to rip down the US. Here’s how that’s harming you right now.” Once Republicans start to walk, our system affords them very few choices.
Carville’s strategy is essentially to hope they trip on their own toga, apparently under the delusion that Dems can’t dominate news cycles with their pro-democracy/pro-America message so they should just wait their turn or something.
I’m certain that suddenly laid off IRS employee and (former?) Trump supporter Robert McCabe can find a new source of income at the web site that just popped up on OTB that reads:
Go for it Robert!
Can’t be any worse than the huckster that you have trusted all these years that says:
“You can grab them by the pussy!”
@ptfe: It wasn’t really that I was agreeing with Carville.
Also, “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. I think Congressional Democrats have a much better idea whether they are making a mistake than you, I, or James Carville.
@Mister Bluster:
I still can’t get over the stupidity of that guy, taking the hunt for “waste, fraud and abuse” seriously, like this isn’t evergreen bullshit. And Trump’s “business acumen” – child, please, I don’t call extortion and stiffing contractor’s business acumen.