Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
Let’s go!
First news item
Trump is Trump is Trump and he will never change:
When Donald Trump claimed. . . in a combative onstage interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, that Kamala Harris had adopted her identity as a Black woman in an effort to gain political advantage, he drew appalled gasps from the audience. “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said. This was an inaccurate slur as well as a bizarre one. Harris has always been proudly biracial: she is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black, Jamaican father, both of whom immigrated to the U.S. She attended Howard, a historically Black college, where she joined one of Black America’s most storied sororities. Nonetheless, Trump doubled down on this particularly Trumpian form of hate speech. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he wrote, “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!” That evening, in a rally in Pennsylvania, his campaign even projected an old news headline proclaiming Harris the first Indian American U.S. senator. Trump’s embattled Vice-Presidential nominee, *J. D. Vance, joined in, too, calling Harris a “total phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her.”
. . .
By Thursday morning, as the liberal commentariat feasted on its horror over his remarks and right-leaning pundits struggled to explain and excuse it, Trump mocked them all, posting an old photo of Harris alongside relatives on the Indian side of her family. He wrote, “Thank you Kamala for the nice picture you sent from many years ago! Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated.” In another post, he circulated the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer’s idea that, because Harris’s birth certificate says her father’s “color or race” is “Jamaican,” not Black, she is a “liar” who is “NOT black and never has been.”
How much clearer does it have to get? America, you are being trolled.
*Pot meet kettle.
Second news item
What is remarkable is how surprised the Trump campaign seems to have been by Ms. Harris. Why? Smart people understood Joe Biden would eventually have to step aside, and she was his most likely replacement. Why have they responded as if shocked? We have a trough of videos of her talking, it’s devastating. Where is it? Is that all you’ll need to make a coherent case? When are you going to locate the meaning of this thing?
“San Francisco liberal,” “way too radical.” All that feels tired, the reflex of an aged muscle. It sounds like the 1990s. This isn’t the ’90s. New ages need new arguments, or at least arguments freshly cast.
Can Mr. Trump shift gears? He grew up, as I did, watching “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I’m sure it was on every Sunday night at 8 at the Trump house in Queens. On that show you saw every week the great Borscht Belt comics of 1950-70. Their timing—“Take my wife—please!”—is ingrained in him. What he does now is shtick, because he likes to entertain and is a performer. The boat’s sinking, the battery’s spitting, the shark’s coming! As Hannibal Lecter said, “I’d love to have you for dinner!”
This works so perfectly for those who support him. For everyone else it’s just more evidence of psychopathology. He has to freshen up his act. Can he?
No, I don’t think he can change his act. He remains the corrupt host of a reality television show, trying to look tough when barking “You’re fired!”. Why isn’t he using this moment to focus on the proposed policies of his potential future administration and contrasting those with Harris’s (via the Biden administration)?? Simply put: he can’t. He has never been able to. He is unable to stay on point about the things that matter, or should matter. And sadly, his loyal supporters don’t want or need him to be able to talk coherently about policy proposals. They want to be entertained. And he wants to entertain. So, if it’s talking about whether his opponent is really black, Hannibal Lecter, “Fake News,” “Witch Hunts,” or any of his usual offerings, his supporters go crazy with glee and everyone leaves his latest rally satisfied with the interaction between circus ringleader and his adoring audience.
Third news item
The U.S. State Department said Thursday that it is recognizing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia as the rightful winner of Venezuela’s presidential elections.
Why it matters: President Nicolás Maduro has claimed, without evidence, that he won Sunday’s contest. The U.S. government says there is “overwhelming evidence” González won.
And here’s where it now stands:
Maduro announces the creation of two maximum security prisons for political prisoners. He says that they will be re-education camps and include forced work.
Venezuela is now a Stalinist police state.pic.twitter.com/9hMMfj5VUG
— Daniel Di Martino 🇺🇸🇻🇪 (@DanielDiMartino) August 1, 2024
Fourth news item
The first batch of long-awaited F-16 jets have arrived in Ukraine, Lithuania’s foreign minister and a U.S. official said on Wednesday, an effort Kyiv has said will help rebuild its depleted air force. . . A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the delivery had been complete.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine needs more than 100 F-16s to combat Russia’s huge air force and has called the quantity of jets Ukraine is receiving “insufficient.” “The decision on the F-16 is strategic,” he said this month. “The number is not yet strategic.”
Fifth news item
Oh:
ON NOVEMBER 13, 2023, the political action committee Democratic Victory emailed out a fundraising solicitation expressing concerns about its financial wellbeing.
“We’re falling short of last week’s goal by 18%,” the group’s note read. “If we can’t make up that gap asap, it’ll mean we can’t send full support into battleground states to help President Biden and Democrats win.”
The email asked recipients to chip in $20 or more.
That same day, federal disclosure records show that Democratic Victory also filed an expense. But not to Biden or any other Democratic candidate. Instead, it spent $213,093.83 on lodging at the ARIA Resorts & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada as well as $11,300 for venue rental at the same on-the-Strip hotel.
And it wasn’t done there. Democratic Victory would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building out a November event in Vegas around the Grand Prix, one of the most highly anticipated, lavish, and expensive races on the Formula 1 calendar. Among its purchases: $736,545 for “event space rental,” $41,235 for help putting together “a VIP private viewing suite,” and thousands of more in separate hotel fees—all as the group was telling prospective donors it was struggling to meet its fundraising goals.
Sixth news item
Project 2025 isn’t what either side claims:
Over the course of my visit, I came to see that the emptiness of the Project 2025 offices at Heritage headquarters was a good metaphor for the project as whole. On both the left and the right, Project 2025 had been portrayed as a vast and well-orchestrated operation — either to rationalize and systematize Trumpism, according to some conservatives, or to undermine democracy and implement an ultra-disciplined reactionary regime, according to some liberals.
Instead, what I discovered — during my visit and in my conversations with conservatives involved in the project — was a shoestring operation struggling with internal disagreements, political miscalculation and questionable leadership. Project 2025 had set out to turn Trumpism into a well-oiled machine; instead, it had created an engine of the same sort of political disorder that defined the first Trump White House.
Read the whole thing.
MISCELLANEOUS
This performance at the Olympics was a delight to watch. After waiting for two hours to do his routine, American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik took off his *glasses and got to work. His performance on the pommel horse clinched a medal for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team for the first time in 16 years.
Stephen Nedoroscik had to score big on pommel horse for Team USA in the last rotation…
AND HE DID. 🤯
📺: NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/hkhiHpovyh
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 29, 2024
From an interview with Stephen’s parents:
His mother, Cheryl, joined “Fox & Friends” alongside her husband, John, to discuss how the Olympian competes with strabismus – a genetic condition which hinders his ability to see clearly.
*“His pupils don’t constrict. They stay dilated all the time, and he has a section of his iris that’s completely missing,” Cheryl said on Wednesday. “It’s just pupil all the way to the edge, and with that… you can have sight issues. It doesn’t necessarily mean you will, but in his case, as well as I, we always had glasses. But we’re very, very sensitive to light, and some people actually are blind in the eyes, when they have coloboma, but fortunately, ours we can see.”
Have a great weekend!
–Dana
