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The Felon/GOP Are Running Out of People to Blame

A year and a half into the Felon's second regime - after campaign promises to lower consumer prices and no foreign wars - prices and interest rates remain high, oil prices are surging again, and economic growth has slowed.  Meanwhile, America finds itself trapped in the Felon's war of choice with Iran with no exit strategy other than surrender. The other alternative is an endless war. In the face of their own disastrous policies, the Felon and his bootlickers in the GOP accept no responsibility for what they have wrought and seemingly can only blame Joe Biden and/or claim Democrats are communists. Insanely, one cabinet member this week expressed surprise at gasoline prices, ignoring his boss' war of choice as the obvious cause and leaving one to conclude that the individual is either stupid or a liar.  In addition, the Felon has just levied more tariffs against Canada (which will retaliate) that will only serve to drive prices even higher.  Given the Felon's abysmal poll numbers, sane Republicans - admittedly a rare species nowadays - are flailing in the blame game and are simply running out of others to blame for way the economy has been damaged.  A piece in Salon looks at the desperate position of many in the GOP:

Now that Donald Trump no longer has a White House press secretary with a ready cherubic smile and a ton of snark, we can all see that the paint is peeling off his delusional presidency.  I’m not just talking about the Reflecting Pool.

Republicans like Rep. Byron Donalds, now the GOP nominee to succeed Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida, has habitually and enthusiastically repeated and amplified Trump’s whims and still claims with a straight face — as he did on Fox News this week — that Democratic policy and the actions of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are responsible for the horror under which we currently live. Never mind the fact the Democrats currently hold no power in Washington and can’t implement any policies of any kind.

At least Republicans are finally, if obliquely, admitting that things aren’t so good in the country. Trump, however, isn’t ready to concede that. . . . We hear many in and out of government saying that his [the Felon's] presence ensures the outcome he predicted the Democrats would visit upon us all.  Like I say, the paint is peeling. 

On Wednesday, Trump was seen on the South Lawn praising a brand of fertilizer made by a company that, as he noted, had given him a sizable campaign contribution. Trump says it’s great stuff. Hey, they paid. He played. Very often, he is exactly as transparent as he claims to be. At the end of this live commercial he said that this fertilizer made for “happy grass.” He sounded like he’d been smoking some of that stuff. 

On the one hand, this is incredible corruption, but if you’re a CEO, having the president push your product directly in front of the White House isn’t a bad thing. You can’t blame business for doing what business does. You can blame the rest of us for not stopping it before it got this bad.

To overcome the absence of departed pep secretary Karoline Leavitt, Byron Donalds and the rest of Trump’s puppets have been dancing long and hard lately. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters the economy had taken off and was on its way into the stratosphere until we experienced this little detour “called Iran.” You could say he unwittingly justified every American’s anger over a pointless, useless war that is making all our lives more difficult and more expensive. He was trying to back up his leader, but accidentally threw him to the wolves. But was it really accidental? 

The key point here is that the GOP has been in charge in D.C. for more than a year and a half. Republicans control the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the presidency. They vowed they’d fix the economy and have only moved the needle backward. . . . Republicans are screaming about socialism ruining the country while those so-called socialists are pushing free healthcare. Who do you think the American public will listen to? The GOP’s pitch was, roughly speaking, that they could use extreme methods to take care of the cleanup on aisle seven. They have obviously failed. . . . If you got elected to fix the system and nearly two years later everything is much worse, then it’s time to hire a new plumber — and not the Richard Nixon type.

Making a sale to the electorate as a Republican this year is a difficult task indeed. Even the disorganized Democrats might be able to crawl over that low bar. We can’t say a GOP victory is impossible, but it seems conditional on a variety of narrowing possibilities, especially considering the accused criminals, domestic abusers and otherwise morally bankrupt candidates they are offering us. Then there are the Democrats. All the Republicans can do is accuse the party that’s out of power of somehow wielding the power, and doing so as part of a sinister communist conspiracy.

Trump’s gift in the past was the ability to sell an alternate reality. He now does that very poorly, and by asking the proper questions we might be able to clarify this country’s predicament — as if many of us haven’t already come to the conclusion that we’re terminally screwed.  

What could be more symbolic of the depths of depravity we’ve hit than a president literally giving a paid testimonial on the White House lawn for fertilizer? While the punchlines write themselves, I never had that on my bingo card. I never even imagined such a possibility. It’s a criminal act and an empty and meaningless prostitution of the office. It demeans the entire nation, and adds to the instability in the world.

And what can your average White House reporter do? Not much, beyond watching the turgid, disconcerting vomitorium we call politics with a jaundiced eye, careful of the manipulations and machinations of those who are out to feed their own greed while screwing the rest of us into the ground. It helps if we can laugh about it.  As we can clearly see this week, the paint is peeling and we have no way to fix it.  

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The White House Freak-Out Over Natalie Harp

Likely every White House administration has had some share of fluffers and sycophants who lack any true credentials or expertise, but the current regime of the Felon is a whole other matter.  Now, the regime consists of cabinet secretaries and other officials that owe their positions solely to having given large campaign contributions or loyalty to the Felon. Competence and detailed knowledge on a host of issues is lacking, if not viewed as a liability.  Giving flattery to the Felon and playing on his obsessions and prejudices are what truly count.  Which brings up the subject of Natalie Harp - who seeming does not have security clearance - a constant companion of the Felon who carries a portable printer so she can, at any point, dash out a paper copy of poll or news story that will please the Felon.  A Daily Beast piece has the following:

Natalie Harp’s intimate letters to Donald Trump are being revealed in full for the first time—showing her spilling her heart and saying she is “unworthy” of him. “You are all that matters to me,” Harp writes to Trump, “I don’t want to ever let you down.” The Daily Beast is publishing them amid swirling questions over the national security implications of 35-year-old Harp’s status as 80-year-old Trump’s most significant gatekeeper, even being used as a conduit to the president by foreign leaders.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when the Felon abandoned Airforce One in Turkey and left the press pool and a number of senior aids and cabinet secretaries as decoys for a feared Iranian attack, Harp was among the handful of people who snuck away in the catering truck. All of which prompted Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff to mention Harp at a campaign event.  The White House reaction has been borderline unhinged and has only served to make Harp more of a news story.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the new media scrutiny:

You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to.

I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign sound bites, slickly filmed by multiple cameras—unleashed a blistering indictment of President Trump’s leadership. Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who is generating 2028 buzz, denounced Trump’s handling of the Iran war this way: “While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

It was a pithy and well-structured attack, but not so different from the broadsides delivered daily by Democrats on the campaign trail or on MS NOW. But one new word stood out: Natalie.

The line got a knowing laugh from a handful of observers in the room, and it electrified a subset of political obsessives on social media, who took to their favorite platforms and group chats with some version of “Oh, he went there!” or “I can’t believe he did that!” But although Ossoff’s aside resonated with the junkies, the majority of Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought.

But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story. The White House inadvertently created news, as well as a permission structure for even the most cautious, fact-based media organizations to take on the topic. Which is why the name Natalie Harp is now everywhere.

In Trump’s second term, his White House is populated by true believers. And no one believes more truly than Harp, whose devotion to Trump is unparalleled. A cancer survivor who credits the president with saving her life, the 35-year-old aide seems firmly glued to his side, an adoring smile stretched across her face. Harp has become an Oval Office gatekeeper, a ubiquitous travel companion, and one of only a few people with the keys to the president’s social-media account. She’s become one of the most unlikely powerful people in the administration . . . . Harp largely stayed out of the headlines even as she became the subject of Washington gossip and some West Wing grumbling.

But things changed because of a Turkish catering truck. The Washington Post reported last week that Harp was one of a handful of aides chosen to join Trump when he was furtively whisked off Air Force One at the Ankara airport earlier this summer because of Secret Service concerns about a threat from Iran. The questions were immediate: Why did this young aide, whose official responsibilities remain murky at best, hide with Trump in the truck as the president secretly boarded a different aircraft, even as the secretary of state and the secretary of the Treasury were left on board what became, in essence, a decoy plane? . . . But it was the White House that pushed the story into the national discourse.

This White House rarely does things subtly—just look at all of the gold in the Oval Office or the maps depicting Canada as the 51st state. And when it comes to pushing back against a story aides don’t like, the two options are usually a) scorched earth or b) total obliteration. But even by that over-the-top standard, the outsize reaction was eyebrow-raising.

Suddenly, the story had life. A few hours later, the press pool was invited into the Oval Office for a photo op as Trump honored a heroic California lifeguard. The president prides himself on his accessibility to the media and took a few questions. Kristen Holmes of CNN asked, “Jon Ossoff said that you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp than build the ballroom and do your job as president. What is your response?” Trump responded with his standard, 1980s-vintage insult about Ossoff—he called him “Pee-wee Herman”—and then, well, he proved the senator’s point by launching into a several-hundred-word defense of the ballroom.

Meanwhile, White House aides and Trump allies began an all-out shielding of Harp. One of the president’s sons defended her, as did a Cabinet member and a congresswoman. With some prodding from the White House, a whole bunch of conservative media members and MAGA influencers joined them, I was told by one of the people who’d received a nudge.

If the goal was to shut down talk about Harp, it backfired spectacularly. Suddenly, media outlets that had ignored her felt the need to write about her. Questions about her security clearance came up, along with this one: When was the last time First Lady Melania Trump was seen in public anyway? (July 19, at the World Cup final.) And as more stories were written, West Wing aides got angrier, taking their cues from a furious president, . . . .

That furor, in a way, underlines Harp’s importance in Trump’s world. She is the president’s constant companion on Marine One, at Mar-a-Lago, and at summits across the world, those familiar with her position told me. They added that the president has described her to them as “my Natalie.” She’s also been nicknamed the “human printer” because she totes around a portable printer so she can, at any point, dash out a paper copy (Trump’s preferred form in which to read things) of a poll or a news story. . . . Some aides have quietly grumbled to those I spoke with that Harp is too inexperienced to have such unfettered access to the president.

Each item she prints, whether a positive poll of dubious origin or an attack on a political foe, reinforces Trump’s worldview. In Regime Change, a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump is depicted explaining to people that Harp is the only aide who loves him as much as his family does.

[T]here is no expectation that, despite the whirlwind week, Harp’s role will change; a senior official told me that Harp was “upset by the unfair attention” but would not allow it to deter her from her duties. But those in the West Wing are bracing for more scrutiny. And, it just so happens, Melania Trump chose today to make an appearance in public.

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Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP

For decades far too many voters have believed the myth that the Republican Party is better at handling the economy and fiscal responsibility.  If one looks at the actual data especially from Reagan forward, the actual reality is that the economy thrives more under Democrats, plus Democrat presidents don't get the nation embroiled in endless wars. Be it job growth or handling the deficit, Democrats out perform their Republican rivals who in truth only offer up warmed over versions of trickle down economics where the rich get richer and pay ever less in taxes while everyone else sees stagnation or worse. In the 2024 elections many voters for the Felon said they trusted him to handle the economy better and to bring down prices.  Of course, the exact opposite has been the case and inflation continues, oil prices continue to rise thanks to the Felon's war of choice, and the Felon's tariffs have further increased prices. A related myth is that Republicans care more about our men and women in uniform although I suspect those serving currently in the Middle East might beg to differ.  A piece in the New Republic looks at these false myths and the GOP's ability to use propaganda more effectively than Democrats.  Here are highlights:

It was heartening to see a couple of polls come out recently showing that, for the first time in a long time, Americans trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on the economy. It’s insane that this can come as a surprise, and that these two parties are even running as close to one another as they are is absurd. Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter.

For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it. I wouldn’t say that, for a range of ideological reasons, but I’m a liberal. I’m ready to admit, however, that your average person would say that about him.

But that’s a long, long time ago now. You have to be in your fifties at least to have any memory of it. But the last three Republican presidents—Bush, Bush, and Trump—have been disasters. The first Bush oversaw a double-dip recession and a massive savings and loan scandal that looted the treasury. The second Bush started a costly and tragic war based on lies and nearly brought the global economy to its knees. Trump, you know about—corruption, fascism, and staggering incompetence.

That’s four decades of failure. In fact, it goes back much farther. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my friend Simon Rosenberg, who has for years paid careful attention to the performance of the economy under Democratic and Republican administrations. In this email, he had a chart showing that going all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, monthly job growth has averaged 176,000 under Democratic presidents, and 59,000 under Republican ones. Trump’s average over both terms, because of the job loss during the pandemic, is actually in the red, minus 7,000. In his current term, Trump averages 44,000 a month. Joe Biden, you wonder? He averaged 336,000.

From 1989 to 2026, we’ve had Democratic presidents for 20 years and Republicans for 17.4 years. Care to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs created under Democrats vs. Republicans? Answer: It’s 49.8 million versus 1.9 million. That isn’t a typo. Fifty million to two, basically. Democratic presidents have also done far better than Republicans on median household incomes, GDP rates, the Dow Jones index, and even deficit reduction. Dramatically so on deficit reduction.

So why do people usually believe the Republicans are better for the economy? Three reasons.

First, the GOP benefits from being the party of big business, which just leads people to assume that they must have a better handle on profits and loss (they certainly do on the latter). People see that nearly every Wall Streeter and corporate honcho is a Republican, and they take their cues from that.

Second, the Republicans and their media propagandists are extremely skilled at reinforcing the above lazy misperceptions. When a Republican is president, they find the one piece of good economic news and flog it endlessly.

Third and I think most important, the Democrats do an awful job of talking about all this. To begin with, I’m not even sure most of them know just how wide the divergence on the economy is. I remember talking to a group of Democratic House members a few years ago. I started rattling off some of these statistics, and several of them grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and began scribbling them down. I could tell by the looks on their faces that this was news to them. That’s just indefensible—a total failure of the national party and congressional leadership.

Democrats and their consultants seem to have this belief that they shouldn’t bother attacking the perceived strengths of Republicans.

But that doesn’t mean the right line of attack and a pile of cash can’t change that. If you’re old enough to remember 2004, you remember what “Swift-boating” was. In July, the country saw John Kerry as a war hero. Three months and $22.4 million later, half the country thought he was a traitor or a coward or a little of both.

This is a lesson the GOP takes to heart: They went right at his strength, and they changed perceptions of him. When done right, it works. Democrats need to get this. And of course, they were lying about Kerry. And it still worked. But the Democrats just have to tell the truth.

In the current case, Democrats haven’t really done much to drive Trump’s approval down. They haven’t had to. Here, observable reality is doing a lot of the work. But between now and November 2028, it will be up to the Democrats to finish the job.

They have to start telling the country the actual story of the American economy over the last four decades—that every Republican president has left a mess that the Democrat had to try his best to clean up, and that every Democrat has left the country better off economically than he found it, usually far, far better. They should make sure every American knows the numbers 49.8 million and 1.9 million.

And by the way, another GOP strength they have to go after directly—this idea that the GOP is the pro-military party. Tell that to the mothers of the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine if what’s happening on that carrier had happened under President Kamala Harris? First of all, it wouldn’t have, because whatever her good and bad points, she would not have been stupid enough to start this stupid war because Benjamin Netanyahu put stupid ideas in her head. But if somehow it had, Jim Jordan would be screaming about impeachment, and Fox News programming would consist of little else . . . .

Add to that Trump’s utterly baffling announcement last week ordering the Navy to revert to old, steam-powered catapult systems on some carriers. (Where does he come up with some of this stuff?) Experts say these systems are badly outdated, less effective than the electronic systems currently in use, and will cost billions of dollars to install. To give credit where it’s due, I did like what Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had to say on this one: “He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

The Republican Party is not good for the economy. They screw it up every time. And the Republican Party is not pro-military. The last two Republican presidents have started completely unnecessary wars, gambling with the lives of service members. The next Democratic presidential nominee—moderate, socialist, man, woman, whatever—better say these things bluntly and repeatedly. And every Democrat needs to join them.

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