If President Biden knows Trump and his henchmen are sabotaging U.S. foreign policy for partisan gain, he should let the American public know before the election.
I think this is 100% right but I don’t get the impression that Biden would be likely to sit on this info for long. He may be reluctant to prematurely blow up the peace he is trying to negotiate (at the Dem fundraiser in NYC last weekend he spoke of the effort as one he’s actively involved in) but it it gets blown up for him by Trump he’s going to be really pissed off. And I really doubt that pissed off Biden is silent Biden. He despises Trump. He’s not going to cut him any slack at all.
And he shouldn’t. I could be wrong, but get the feeling that tRump’s need to be looked upon admiringly by Putin rests on his doing what Putin wants, both wanting to gain & maintain power. Trump is a danger to us all, please fellow Americans, vote for Biden, it’s a must if we’re going to survive.
So given bitter recent experiences ('her e-mails,' the Mueller report, the total failure of judicial accountability for January 6, etc.) one might hope that Democratic DC wouldn't cut him any slack, or that Joe Biden won't. However, there are too many examples of how resistance to any elite accountability--at all--is bone deep in the culture of both parties. The instinct to kick the can is a reflex triggered by even the lightest of touches. The threat of someone frowning at you at a cocktail party. Maybe Kathleen Parker might say something mean. The 'No Labels' folks might threaten a comity candidate. And then we'll do what we always do: hope that $100 million worth of advertising about job training programs and rural internet access will power us to electoral victory in 2024. Anything to avoid being frowned at on a Sunday show for doing something that's 'just not done.'
Sure they should expose Trump. And the response of the press will be: So, what else is new? They will normalize this transgression as they have normalized all the others.
I agree with Brian Beutler’s diagnoses, ALL of them, and I also agree with nearly all of his prescriptions.
But questioning whether Joe Biden is the right candidate for our time fails to be constructive, for two reasons: (1) I have yet to hear any one of these questioners propose an alternative to Biden, and (2) it is WAY too late even to LOOK FOR an alternative, even if there is one available. (The latest, closest thing we had to alternatives to Biden were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren back in 2020, but they split their own base of support in two, Biden beat them, and that was that.)
And rather than forcing Justice Sotomayor into retirement, which at best might replace her with a younger person who might be just as good if we’re lucky, we need to talk about ADDING more Justices to the Supreme Court. Six more Justices who, like Sotomayor, agree that the Voting Rights Act is a necessary law that should never have been weakened, and that Roe v. Wade was RIGHTLY decided and should never have been overturned, would make me feel better about the world.
What would be best, but is unrealistic, is if the biden team could find the leverage that would compel one of the foreign leaders with whom trump’s shadow government is meeting to out him and his motives. Biden or anyone Biden-adjacent warning us just brings more cries of “rigged” and “witch hunt”.
I would guess Trump’s main agenda with MBS is raising the price of gas before the election.
it doesn’t get much attention but 4 years ago when demand for gas plummeted because of COVID, Trump pressured MBS to cut production to jack up the price of oil- reportedly threatening to cut US military support, no? For different reasons now Trump is challenging an incumbent whose unpopularity has correlated with higher gas prices, I have to assume Trump is going back to the playbook. As Brian points out, Trump sabotaged a border deal so he could run on border chaos. He has said he hopes the economy crashes. No doubt he is using threats or offers of what he’d do in a second term to help drive up the price of oil
“We should all be snake-bit by misguided fealty to rules that mean nothing if both parties don’t abide by them.”
I take the view that this principle applies all the way down the line. No matter what happens, Trump should be prevented from being seated as president by any means necessary.
When Trump got permanent Secret Service protection, that saved him a lot of money on security, and put him in the unprecedented position of both having blackshirts (in the important sense that the legislative and executive act like he does), and unlike most fascists, he has little fear that normalizing violence will personally touch him.
If a mob formed around Mar-a-Lago, would it take three hours for backup to arrive, or would security be less shy about the use of automatic weapons against the unarmed?
Unlike what Johnson and Carter did by failing to respond to Nixon's illegal and likely treasonous actions regarding the Paris peace talks and Reagan's similar wrongs prolonging the Iranian hostage crisis.
Of course, an analogous version of this happened with the recent southern border legislation where the Democrats gave the Republicans what they wanted but - in order to preserve a campaign issue - Trump and the Republicans then moved the goalposts. And then resumed complaining about the border.
My question is what's in it for MBS? He would surely demand policy concessions and it would need to outweigh the current need for regional stability and containing the ongoing conflict. Anything MBS gets would surely be as, if not more, dangerous than what Trump gets. Exposing any foreign policy meddling seems the very least Biden should be doing.
The Abraham Accords: “The elite of several Arab states would like to normalize relations with the elite of Israel. Because Israel’s ruling faction will not tolerate autonomy for Palestinians before the sun burns out, the elites of the Arab states agree that the Palestinian issue will be negotiated dead last, when there will be no leverage at all, and thus the Arab leaders can say ‘Couldn’t make any progress, so sorry, we tried.’”
I think this is 100% right but I don’t get the impression that Biden would be likely to sit on this info for long. He may be reluctant to prematurely blow up the peace he is trying to negotiate (at the Dem fundraiser in NYC last weekend he spoke of the effort as one he’s actively involved in) but it it gets blown up for him by Trump he’s going to be really pissed off. And I really doubt that pissed off Biden is silent Biden. He despises Trump. He’s not going to cut him any slack at all.
And he shouldn’t. I could be wrong, but get the feeling that tRump’s need to be looked upon admiringly by Putin rests on his doing what Putin wants, both wanting to gain & maintain power. Trump is a danger to us all, please fellow Americans, vote for Biden, it’s a must if we’re going to survive.
So given bitter recent experiences ('her e-mails,' the Mueller report, the total failure of judicial accountability for January 6, etc.) one might hope that Democratic DC wouldn't cut him any slack, or that Joe Biden won't. However, there are too many examples of how resistance to any elite accountability--at all--is bone deep in the culture of both parties. The instinct to kick the can is a reflex triggered by even the lightest of touches. The threat of someone frowning at you at a cocktail party. Maybe Kathleen Parker might say something mean. The 'No Labels' folks might threaten a comity candidate. And then we'll do what we always do: hope that $100 million worth of advertising about job training programs and rural internet access will power us to electoral victory in 2024. Anything to avoid being frowned at on a Sunday show for doing something that's 'just not done.'
Sure they should expose Trump. And the response of the press will be: So, what else is new? They will normalize this transgression as they have normalized all the others.
I agree with Brian Beutler’s diagnoses, ALL of them, and I also agree with nearly all of his prescriptions.
But questioning whether Joe Biden is the right candidate for our time fails to be constructive, for two reasons: (1) I have yet to hear any one of these questioners propose an alternative to Biden, and (2) it is WAY too late even to LOOK FOR an alternative, even if there is one available. (The latest, closest thing we had to alternatives to Biden were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren back in 2020, but they split their own base of support in two, Biden beat them, and that was that.)
And rather than forcing Justice Sotomayor into retirement, which at best might replace her with a younger person who might be just as good if we’re lucky, we need to talk about ADDING more Justices to the Supreme Court. Six more Justices who, like Sotomayor, agree that the Voting Rights Act is a necessary law that should never have been weakened, and that Roe v. Wade was RIGHTLY decided and should never have been overturned, would make me feel better about the world.
What would be best, but is unrealistic, is if the biden team could find the leverage that would compel one of the foreign leaders with whom trump’s shadow government is meeting to out him and his motives. Biden or anyone Biden-adjacent warning us just brings more cries of “rigged” and “witch hunt”.
I would guess Trump’s main agenda with MBS is raising the price of gas before the election.
it doesn’t get much attention but 4 years ago when demand for gas plummeted because of COVID, Trump pressured MBS to cut production to jack up the price of oil- reportedly threatening to cut US military support, no? For different reasons now Trump is challenging an incumbent whose unpopularity has correlated with higher gas prices, I have to assume Trump is going back to the playbook. As Brian points out, Trump sabotaged a border deal so he could run on border chaos. He has said he hopes the economy crashes. No doubt he is using threats or offers of what he’d do in a second term to help drive up the price of oil
“We should all be snake-bit by misguided fealty to rules that mean nothing if both parties don’t abide by them.”
I take the view that this principle applies all the way down the line. No matter what happens, Trump should be prevented from being seated as president by any means necessary.
When Trump got permanent Secret Service protection, that saved him a lot of money on security, and put him in the unprecedented position of both having blackshirts (in the important sense that the legislative and executive act like he does), and unlike most fascists, he has little fear that normalizing violence will personally touch him.
If a mob formed around Mar-a-Lago, would it take three hours for backup to arrive, or would security be less shy about the use of automatic weapons against the unarmed?
Unlike what Johnson and Carter did by failing to respond to Nixon's illegal and likely treasonous actions regarding the Paris peace talks and Reagan's similar wrongs prolonging the Iranian hostage crisis.
Of course, an analogous version of this happened with the recent southern border legislation where the Democrats gave the Republicans what they wanted but - in order to preserve a campaign issue - Trump and the Republicans then moved the goalposts. And then resumed complaining about the border.
My question is what's in it for MBS? He would surely demand policy concessions and it would need to outweigh the current need for regional stability and containing the ongoing conflict. Anything MBS gets would surely be as, if not more, dangerous than what Trump gets. Exposing any foreign policy meddling seems the very least Biden should be doing.
The Abraham Accords: “The elite of several Arab states would like to normalize relations with the elite of Israel. Because Israel’s ruling faction will not tolerate autonomy for Palestinians before the sun burns out, the elites of the Arab states agree that the Palestinian issue will be negotiated dead last, when there will be no leverage at all, and thus the Arab leaders can say ‘Couldn’t make any progress, so sorry, we tried.’”