Civil Commotion

Apparently, all that a prank podcaster needs to get The Donald on the phone is a little bit of nerve.

Comedian claims he tricked Trump
while impersonating Dem senator

Comedian John Melendez claims he tricked President Trump into believing he was New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) in a recent phone call.

In audio uploaded to “The Stuttering John Podcast,” a man who sounds like the president can be heard saying “Hi Bob.”

The man congratulates Melendez, believing him to be the senator.

I’m hoping this is a fraud, but don’t have any real difficulty believing it.

He needs money to defeat the media, the liberals, the illegals.

Democrats are willing to fight for ANYONE illegally crossing our border. But they too often refuse to fight for their own fellow American citizens who voted to Make America Great Again!

Too many on the Left push a message of anger, resistance, and violent rhetoric.

Our movement is about prosperity, security, and love for America.

Now let’s show the media and the Democrats how much love our movement has by making our end-of-quarter fundraising report our best one in HISTORY. Can I count you to make a grassroots contribution? [emphases in original]

This is squalid, disgraceful, the work of deformed and misshapen character. And exhibits a lot of what psychologists call ‘projection,’ too.

How is it even possible to be associated with this sort of gunk without squirming with shame?

And when we look around for a conservatism that would seek some moderation at this juncture, we see only cowardice from elected Republicans.

Andrew Sullivan

Once again: The Republican Party is not a conservative party in any meaningful sense of the word; it is a radical party animated by crude, anti-intellectual fundamentalisms and dedicated to vandalizing whatever is beyond its comprehension.

It is not the pragmatic, forward-looking realism of Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, even Richard Nixon. It is the unfocused and uninhibited malice of George Wallace.

When the news broke that a gunman had shot-up the newsroom of a daily newspaper in Maryland, my first thought was something like … “It’s begun.” After all, scarcely a day passes without the Buffoon-in-Chief attacking the press as “enemies of the people,” and I’ve been anticipating exactly this sort of event for a long while.

As it happens, the shooter felt aggrieved by a 2011 news story about a charge of criminal harassment filed against him. He unsuccessfully sued the paper for defamation, and has ever since held a grudge against the paper. So this wasn’t the political attack of the sort that the rhetoric of Trump and others has been implicitly urging.

Or maybe it was. Journalists covering his rallies have been spit upon and otherwise threatened and, for someone with a gripe and already a bit unstable, the slaughter of a newsroom in an environment stoked by Trumpian malice probably seems like a small step forward and something to be applauded.

Will Trump tone down his language? No, he will not. “Enemy of the people” has a long totalitarian pedigree, and it has worked pretty well for Trump. He cares no more for the dead Maryland journos than he cares for the would-be immigrant children he has ordered put into cages.

Will Republican lawmakers finally show some backbone and disavow any association with Trump? Some may, but most will not; after all, it’s their base who is spitting on reporters at Trump’s rallies. Many of them, undoubtedly, were gratified to learn that the people have a few less “enemies.”

A miscellany of things, in no particular order, that I’ve found myself thinking about in the past 24-hours.

• In view of the age of the Supreme Court, it was inevitable that Trump would have a second, and perhaps yet a third, nomination to the Supreme Court. Even so, the retirement of Justice Kennedy must be counted a dangerous event for the country; the Affordable Care Act, and Roe and Obergefell, are in immediate danger.

• Presidents are often disappointed in their nominees. Reagan would doubtless have regretted his appointment of Anthony Kennedy following his vote in Obergefell, George H.W. Bush expressed more than once his regret that he had nominated David Souter and, following his support for the ACA, I am sure that George W. Bush regrets his appointment of John Roberts.

  So Trump may accidentally appoint a decent man rather than an witless ideologue in the style of Clarence Thomas. I don’t predict that, mind you, but lightning does occasionally strike and it does no harm to keep our fingers crossed.

• The country’s best defense is two-pronged:

  1. The Senate vote on Trump’s Federalist-approved nominee must somehow be delayed till after the election, and …

  2. The whores who now comprise Republican office-holders must be turned-out — one and all. From community dogcatcher to village Mayor to Senator, Trump’s enablers, Republicans, must be defeated.

• Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin just a few days after an important meeting with NATO — which is “as bad as NAFTA,” according to Trump. Does anybody believe — Anybody? Anywhere? — that our allies will share important information, and speak freely, with Trump? They will not. Trump has smashed that bond, and his embarrassing obsequiousness toward Putin assures that NATO’s ties to the United States will not be restored while he occupies the Oval Office.

• Trump dances to Putin’s tune — and there is a reason. I suppose there is an outside possibility that Russia has achieved some sort of military superiority not disclosed to the American people, but I doubt that; some general or other would have gone public with that by now. I think it’s much more likely that the pee-tape is real.

• A stunning number of Republicans refuse to utter a peep of objection to Trump’s serial lies and offenses. Why? When we recall that Trump somehow inveigled Israeli security into attempting to dig-up dirt on the Iran deal negotiators, I can’t help wondering if he is blackmailing key Republicans.

• Mueller’s investigation has already established dispositively that the Trump campaign cooperated with Russia during the 2016 campaign; that the campaign did so amateurishly — perhaps amateurishly — is beside the point. Surely, cooperating with your country’s enemies to undermine a free election is at least flirting with treason.

  I’m kind of hoping that Mueller satisfies Republican demands that his investigation be wrapped-up and that he issues a publicly available report — a .PDF published to the Internet, say. September or October would be a good time for that, I’m thinking.

• More Americans need to exhibit the character and courage of Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant who declined to serve Sarah Sanders; only frank, no-nonsense scorn and ridicule will affect these people — and we’d better do it before the Supreme Court gives them yet more power.

  If you think that’s too dark a worry, recall that history’s worst tyrants — Hitler, for an egregious example, though he is hardly the only one — assumed absolute power legally.

  That is plainly Trump’s goal, and it could happen here, too.