Friday, September 02, 2022

TODD ZWILLICH

Deputy DC Bureau Chief, VICE News

Washington, D.C. Bureau
@toddzwillich

President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park September 1, 2022 in Philadelphia. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Asymmetrical normfare

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump said again that if he's reelected, he'll not only pardon Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police and stormed the Capitol but also apologize for their persecution on behalf of a regretful nation.

Also on Thursday, it was revealed that a right-wing activist—who's by the way the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice—lobbied yet another group of state officials to overturn the election just as she'd lobbied the White House chief of staff; that a failed GOP congressional candidate in Alaska insisted she'd won her election the instant she lost; and that the former president of the United States could soon be charged with obstructing yet another investigation.

Later in the evening, President Joe Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia, where he warned a (cable-only) TV audience that the Republican Party has been taken over by authoritarians who embrace violence, cynically abuse the rule of law, and reject fair elections.

"Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic," Biden said. He called for Democrats, independents, and Republicans of good faith to rally to the aid of fair elections, debate without violence, and democratic self-governance.

The speech was substantive, and stark. It was also political. A vital midterm election is nine weeks away. Now's the time when politicians, like presidents, lay out the stakes and give voters a choice, however limited, of who should govern. Biden also warned what many Republican experts echo: that Trumpist Republicans are working to install state officials who will help steal 2024 if they can. Pretty high stakes.

But for all the threats to democracy Biden identified, he left one out: the self-preserving habits of political reporters who helped Trumpism rise in the first place.

Within minutes of Biden's address, several prominent Washington journalists identified the part that deserved their audience's attention: the two Marines flanking Biden during the speech. Biden, for all his talk of democratic guardrails and norms, had just broken one himself. Presidents aren't supposed to use the military as political props. And, anyway, Biden wasn't supposed to give a political speech.

Never mind that all modern presidents stretch and violate this tradition when it suits them (when political practitioners nail it, it's considered a…"mission accomplished"). That several elite DC reporters watched the president identify the embrace of political violence, attacks on elections, and institutionalized lying, then pegged his disappointing choice of backdrop as a headline, is reason to worry that the press is still in the throes of dangerously bad habits.

The short and simplistic explanation is that journalists are most comfortable in the non-committed middle of political debates. A zero-sum power game determines who governs, and the reporter gets their credibility from calling the game without commenting on who's right. This is a pretty old idea.

What's new is the urgency. Every one of these reporters knows the gravity of the threat Biden identified, even if he did it in the context of politics (does a president even have another context?). All of them know that the GOP is effectively an anti-democratic party now, and that its authoritarian-populist momentum probably isn't subsiding any time soon, no matter what happens to Trump. Even though more and more of the press has grasped the emergency, bothsidesism is clearly alive and well.

NYU media critic Jay Rosen would call it a manifestation of the "mental furniture" of American politics in journalists' psyche: comfortable, functional, and difficult to rearrange. I think of it as a cognitive safe harbor. Honestly identifying the factual, practical threat to democracy requires recognizing who's threatening it. The next realization—that the political arena has become an asymmetrical confrontation with one side committed to undoing the rules to gain power—is psychically jarring. Avoiding the jolt of explaining that plainly to the audience and focusing instead on equalizing trivialities helps avoid the anxiety that asymmetry brings.

I want to say: I admire CNN's Brianna Kiellar, whom I linked to above, and consider her a friend. She provides clear-eyed coverage of democracy and calls out liars, and I've congratulated her for it publicly and privately. She defended her focus on military staging and gave it some nuance, so I don't want to ignore that, even if I disagree with her here.

But we're in a dangerous moment. A political election is approaching. Soon after, more than a few of Trump's cronies, and maybe even Trump himself, could be prosecuted. They've already used political violence to achieve corrupt aims, and they're warning that they're prepared to do it again. Intimidation and threats are rampant, and conspiracy-addled partisans are vying for control of elections.

Reporters don't have to choose a side between parties in order to know the difference between democracy and chaos.

We're reporting on democracy all the way to 2024, here, online, and on TV. Sign up your friends for Breaking the Vote!

Stay classy-fied

There's a long way to go before we find out just how much damage Trump may have done to national security, and his own legal exposure, by taking and hoarding hundreds of documents at Mar-a-Lago and possibly obstructing the government's efforts to get them back. But for our purposes here at Breaking the Vote, the mounting legal pressure on Trump is revealing, yet again, just how far he and his allies will go to destroy institutions and escape accountability.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who's fighting to avoid testifying in the criminal investigation of election interference in Georgia (more below), joined other Trump acolytes in making clear that the price of holding Trump accountable is violence. These warnings have become almost commonplace since concerted investigations of Jan. 6 began, and certainly since the FBI served the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago. But that makes them no less shocking, and even more stunning coming from a sitting U.S. senator.

"If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street," Graham said on Fox News.

Graham knows these two cases are not the same, and he also knows the damage he's doing by reducing Trump's case to a partisan binary where violence results if things don't go his side's way.

You'll be shocked to learn that Trump reacted to his deepening legal jeopardy by lashing out at almost every institution around him, including law enforcement and democracy itself. But he also soothed himself by boosting a dozen QAnon accounts during a social media tirade. VICE News' David Gilbert has the story of how Trump actually went "full Q" long ago.

T.W.I.S.™ Notes

From Mar-a-Lago to Fulton County to Wisconsin, we are living in the golden age of Trumpist summonses. Here's This Week in Subpoenas!

- Quashed away

Fresh off threatening mob violence if Trump is prosecuted for taking, mishandling, and hiding classified documents, it looks like Lindsey Graham might finally have to testify in front of DA Fani Willis' Fulton County grand jury. On Thursday a federal judge shot down Graham's argument that two post-election phone calls he made to Georgia election officials were off-limits to investigators because of the Constitution's prohibition against questioning lawmakers about official activities.

Graham will have to answer questions about the calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his deputy at the time, Gabriel Sterling. Graham says he was just doing legislative investigating when he inquired about tossing out votes from heavily Democratic areas, but the officials took it as Graham lobbying them to alter the election results. Other stuff that does pertain to official lawmaker activities—and not appearing to help steal elections—is off-limits, the judge ruled. More appeals are likely.

- Gone 'til November

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is also not getting out of testifying about how Donald Trump tried to get him to help overturn the 2020 election. But he also won't have to risk Trump's rage before his election in November. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled this week that Kemp can't quash his subpoena to appear and tell what he knows about the plot to steal Georgia.

But Kemp complained the appearance could damage him in his upcoming reelection bid in November, and McBurney was sympathetic. Kemp doesn't have to testify until his contest against Democrat Stacey Abrams is done. When Kemp finally does testify, chances are it's going to be interesting.

- How many Fifths can a Fifth taker take?

The Fulton County grand jury also played host to coup lawyer John Eastman this week, though it doesn't appear they got much out of him. Eastman claimed his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in parts, and invoked attorney-client privilege (the privileged client being one Donald Trump) in others, according to his lawyer.

Eastman also took the Fifth many, many times in front of the January 6 committee, and had his phone seized by feds looking into the coup attempt. Never forget his bad-ass belt holster!

Eastman is likely a target of the Georgia criminal probe, according to his lawyers, which would help explain the fulminant Fifthiness. Remember that Eastman helped invent the plan to have Mike Pence reject electors on Jan. 6 so that fake electors for Trump could replace them. Georgia was a big fake-elector target, and others in the coup plot schemed to take over the DOJ so it could mislead Georgia officials about the election plot.

- It's Newt

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has taken on a second life as a Trumpist TV propagandist and a font of stolen-election disinformation. So the January 6 committee would like to have a chat with him.

Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sits with his wife and conservative activist Virginia Thomas while he waits to speak at the Heritage Foundation on October 21, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

That man and Robin

Wisconsin's long, Midwestern nightmare is over, mostly. Michael Gableman's quixotic, taxpayer-funded quest to prove election fraud and invoke a Trumpian dream of rescinding the 2020 election has finally come to an end.

Senate President Robin Vos, who fell out with Gablemen and fired him two weeks ago, this week rescinded all the outstanding subpoenas from his election investigation. That means Gableman's targets from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and elsewhere don't have to show, but it also means it's harder for Republicans to carry stolen-election fever into the midterms. Which, come to think of it, is probably what Vos is hoping for.

Ginni's out of the bottle

In other Wisconsin news, Ginni Thomas urged Wisconsin lawmakers to ignore voters and choose fake electors for Donald Trump! The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sent the messages right after the November election, in addition to contacting 29 Arizona officials to urge them to overturn their state's election result.

And where are all those fake electors now? One of them is working for Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson's reelection campaign.

Believe it Ornato

The Secret Service official who allegedly told January 6 committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson about Trump's now-infamous SUV lunge-and-grab on Jan. 6 abruptly quit this week, just before he was supposed to answer questions in a separate probe.

Tony Ornato retired from the Secret Service two days before he was to meet with the Department of Homeland Security inspector general. Ornato denied, through anonymous sources, that he told Hutchinson about the alleged incident in which an enraged Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his armored SUV, and then went for an agent after being told he couldn't accompany an armed mob of supporters to the Capitol.

Ornato had a bizarre, only-in-Trumpworld career path. He was a member of Trump's presidential protective detail, where he had a reputation for excessive, bordering on unprofessional loyalty to Trump. Ornato was then installed as White House deputy chief of staff and then returned to a senior Secret Service job after Trump left the White House.

Karen doesn't have to answer your questions

The Republicans who launched Arizona's infamous Cyber Ninjas audit will get to keep their communications with the company secret, the state's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. A government transparency group sued to gain access to communications between GOP Senate President Karen Fann, other GOP legislators, and Cyber Ninjas staff and its chief, Doug Logan. But the court ruled that more than 1,000 emails, texts, and other communications were protected by legislative privilege, putting them off-limits to public disclosure laws.

Thousands of other documents about the partisan election review were disclosed by the Senate. But now we may never get to learn exactly what Republicans and Cyber Ninjas talked about as they looked across 2020 and saw everything but a Trump loss.

"We won pretty handedly."

— Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, just after losing this week's special election for Congress.

Who'll stop the arraign — Mesa County, Colorado, clerk-who's-banned-from-running-elections Tina Peters is finally set to be arraigned on nearly a dozen charges on Wednesday. Republican DA Dan Rubenstein said this week that his criminal investigation of Peters is complete, and he encouraged the feds to stay involved too. Recall that Peters' deputy, Belinda Knisley, pleaded guilty to three charges last week and has agreed to testify against her former boss.

Gosar misconduct — Three Trumpist Arizona politicians got slapped with a hefty fine for filing a harassment lawsuit against another Arizona state rep, who'd asked that they be investigated for their role in Jan. 6. An Arizona judge ordered secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, former state Rep. Anthony Kern and Rep. Paul Gosar, all Republicans, to pay $75,000 of Rep. Charlene Fernandez's legal fees.

You may also remember Gosar from such favorites as attending a white nationalist conference and releasing a cartoon depicting the murder of a congressional colleague.

Arrested developments — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a big deal when his brand-new Office of Election Crimes Security collared 20 convicted felons for allegedly voting illegally. It's true that those convicted of murder and sexual assault are legally barred from voting. But now things are getting… complicated. Turns out some of the people DeSantis made a show of arresting were given voting materials and told by the state they could vote. And now DeSantis is blaming local officials, while his elections chief says they did nothing wrong. Hmm…