400 Rich People Pay $40K to Hear Trump Glorify Cop Assailants
On Saturday, a bunch of people paid a lot of money — at least $40,000 apiece, and one or two people took Trump up on an offer to speak if they gave $1 million — to hear Trump glorify cop assailants.
Both WaPo (with bylines from Marianne LeVine, Josh Dawsey and Maegan Vazquez) and NYT (Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher) dutifully gave Trump the headline he would have wanted.
Biden = Gestapo
By doing so, they accept as a both-sides question whether legal investigations Biden has nothing to do with make him a Nazi.
Five paragraphs in, NYT describes that Trump featured the recording made with then-accused, now convicted, January 6 felons; Maggie describes those detainees as “people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
Mr. Trump entered the event to the recording of the national anthem that he made with a group of people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to disrupt the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral college win. Mr. Trump praised the song.
There’s no mention that most of these men assaulted cops and one of the handful who didn’t is a Nazi who likes dressing up as Hitler.
400 rich people paid what could be an average person’s annual salary to watch Trump glorify violent cop assailants, and NYT didn’t mention the violence part. WaPo didn’t mention the video at all and only mentioned political violence when describing the Biden campaign response.
NYT did describe that Trump celebrated Rod Blagojevich and WaPo described Trump claiming that Henry Cuellar was only charged with bribery because he is tough on the border.
Compare that treatment to USA Today Zac Anderson’s, which focuses the entire story on the recording and includes three paragraphs discussing the significance of Trump’s focus on it and two more explaining how we can be sure most of the singers were accused of assault.
The recording is part of Trump’s efforts to whitewash what happened when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.
The attack on the Capitol led to Trump’s second impeachment and contributed to felony charges being filed against the former president for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Yet Trump has embraced the Jan. 6 defendants on the campaign trail, calling them “unbelievable patriots” and “hostages” who have “been treated terribly and very unfairly.”
[snip]
It’s not clear which Jan. 6 defendants participated in the recording that Trump plays at his rallies, but many of the defendants held in the Washington, D.C., jail around the time when the recording apparently was made were accused of assaulting officers.
An analysis published by Just Security, an online forum hosted by the New York University School of Law, found that the vast majority of Jan. 6 defendants held in the D.C. Jail on March 13, 2023, were accused of assaulting officers. An individual who advised the group that made the recording told the Washington Post that it was made in February of 2023 at the D.C. jail, but said she did not know who the singers are.
USA Today also managed to avoid taking Trump’s bait to equate Biden with the Gestapo, not even in the body of the story.
400 people paid a lot of money to watch Trump celebrate men who assaulted cops. All 400 of those people are directly supporting a culture of political violence. They need to be held accountable for their role in supporting political violence.
When that part gets suppressed — when those 400 people are given a pass for the political violence their dollars help to fund — it normalizes political violence.
That, not Trump’s manipulation of easy marks to get a headline detrimental to Joe Biden, is the story.
Great post! Short and to the point. Trump’s pandering to these criminals and the people who support them is appalling. As always, thanks for the links!
The abusive and grievance campaign continues catering to criminals.
Is there a guest list anywhere?
Great minds think alike. The greater mind thinks it first – or gets it to print first. Unflattering exposure now.
Yes. The NYT is on it. They support fascism. The have for some time.
The FEC disclosures will show who gave the $$.
Thanks, Marcy!
I just noticed a TYPO – too many zeros in the dollar amount.
TY. Got carried away.
LOL! Understandable.
FEC disclosures are often tardy and partial. The monitoring is lax, if non-existent. So how can we be sure we’ll learn the truth?
Every outlet has the option of covering the story as USA Today does. They can either cover what’s actually happening or be willing participants in disinformation.
No news outlet that respects this country should indulge Trump’s ludicrous deep conspiracy accusations or pass on uncritically his claim that the prosecutions are politically motivated. There is zero real evidence supporting these constant attempts to undermine confidence in our government. This goes well beyond the ordinary policy discussions that constitute political debate. The rot of both-sides is feeding anti-government sentiment, and it’s using propaganda tactics to do this. A news outlet shouldn’t just happily play along with propaganda.
And if they pretend they cannot tell the difference, they should retire.
This.
Can we call those happy few the prospective Gauleiters of the New Orange Republic of Crooks, Thugs and Whores? Or will Meloni send her idiot brother-in-law after us as well? (Guardian, 5/6/24)
hey now, that not really fair to sex workers, it’s a hard job!
… in fact that reminds me of Stormy Daniel’s campaign slogan when she ran for office back in 2009 “Stormy Daniels: Screwing People Honestly”
So yeah, no need to include them in with crooks and thugs, it’s a legit profession that screws people directly, instead of stabbing everyone else (and democracy) in the back!
Top NY Times editor Joe Kahn was just interviewed by Ben Smith and Kahn said he had no idea what option he had between letting polls dictate coverage and becoming Biden’s Pravda.
Ironically, Kahn wrongly claimed immigration was the #1 issue voters care about, when concerns about democracy are even higher in polling than immigration.
What’s more, nobody except GOP insiders is pitching softball coverage of donors and Trump. If Kahn was serious about following public opinion, this story and 75% of the content in the paper wouldn’t see the light of day.
Every day Kahn and his editors are making deliberate, subjective decisions about what they think their audience ought to hear about. He’s incredibly disingenuous to the point of being an embarassment.
where can we find the interview? sounds illuminating.
Concern about women having autonomy over their own bodies is actually the #1 issue that voters care about.
Republicans have completely removed that right in many states at trump’s behest.
Time for the DOJ to just stand by, or should I say sit by, Trump puts America on notice again: If he loses, he won’t go quietly https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-puts-america-notice-100022877.html
But is this piece overstating just some playfulness?
Yesterday the Paper of Record’s Peter Baker authoritatively (and presumably with objectivity, no?) assured the nation that what Trump does is merely “flirtation with authoritarian figures and language.”
Joke. Joke. Truth.
The point is not whether Trump is “flirting,” by using such language. The point is that Trump is repeating it so often and the media are repeating it so often that it becomes the background noise that confuses busy people, who do not take the time to research and digest the history of such kinds of “language.” (The lie told often enough it becomes the truth.)
I agree, and it would be irresponsible for me not to point out what Trump seems to think “flirting” includes … when you’re a star, they LET you do it.
This, then, would be gaslighting with a purpose.
The point is not just for press to contextualize that crap in coverage of it by providing international historical background (which they DO do) with emphasis on how it works (not so much) -‘saying’, but to, with more emphasis, defy how it works by ‘doing’ the opposite. To, within political journalism, “re-center” (as Ruth Ben Ghiat says), what that crap –that political violence- is designed to drown out, exhaust, to put on defense (as cued*), intimidate into submission, and paralyze.
The point is to show, not tell, how democracy works better: accurate, main emphasis on non-superficial coverage of Democratic vs Republican parties’ policy priorities, records, goals, arguments and legacies. To have faith in and commitment to how democracy works better. This is what Maggie the PR queen Haberman buries. This is what her sidekick Michael Schmidt’s wife, 8 year Cheney-Bush Admin PR queen Nicolle Wallace buries.
*Cued by relentless serial attack on ‘identity groups’ to engage in identity politics; to frame politics as vapid, static power struggle; horse race.
I hope your first sentence left out the snark tag. It’s easy to tell when the NYT is not reporting, but normalizing something. For starters, it puts Peter Baker on it.
Besides, Trump doesn’t flirt, or even know how. He just grabs what he wants by the genitals and calls it foreplay.
Joe Kahn falsely frames his choices as normalizing Trump’s Fascism or becoming a Pravda for Biden. He almost cleverly leaves out a more likely explanation: he and the owners of his paper agree with Trump and want him re-elected.
Apologies for not indicating original post was sarcasm.
I had assumed it would be immediately recognized as such by the use of the words “Peter Baker” (reference to “objectivity” was intended to celebrate yesterday’s kerfuffle involving nepo baby at Stanford).
Generously using snark tags is a kindness to busy readers. Thanks.
MAGA = Christian nationalism = antisemitism
See? I can do math, too.
Bass virtuoso MonoNeon mocks Trump by turning his speeches into music. Check out his youtube channel.
A confirming shout-out to Mononeon; the new George Clinton!
Also his work with Larry Goldings’ funk group Scary Goldings.
This strikes me as Trump holding his hand out to folks who sympathize with the J6ers in jail, and asking them to pony up if they truly want Trump to pardon these people.
Is Trump soliciting a bribe?
This event did not just automagically happen. It took planning. Other people played significant roles. One of those people has a very long history of hiding in the shadows. But I am totally convinced that she plays an immense role in how the NYT and WaPo stories emerge.
I can’t emphasize enough how her behind the scenes work in my own civil case (which involved white supremacist milita members) led one of my attorneys to believe she intervened in a manner that appeared questionable; possibly even unethical, corrupt, and unlawful. A couple of weeks ago, I shared an article titled, “The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America” – Michael Kruse, 4/26/24. Today I share a different one:
“Trump campaign chief urges Republican megadonors to ignore Trump’s words, focus on primary lead, sources say” – Brian Schwartz, 1/31/24
“A top advisor to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has a message for some of the wealthiest Republican donors in the country: Don’t take the former president’s divisive rhetoric too seriously.”
“Susie Wiles made the pitch Tuesday at a private gathering of the American Opportunity Alliance, a group of Republican megadonors led by Elliot Investment Management founder Paul Singer.”
…..
“In Palm Beach on Tuesday, Wiles’ pitch appeared to work, at least on some of the participants. After Wiles’ remarks, aides to some of the American Opportunity Alliance members were overheard asking Wiles for her contact information, in case their bosses wanted to donate to Trump, the sources said.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/31/trump-campaign-chief-urges-republican-megadonors-to-ignore-his-words.html
That last quote from CNBC is for the rubes. Or have these reporters never been to a meet and greet, or a lobbyists’ party? Saying nice things and asking for names and cards is de rigueur. It would be embarrassing if an attendee failed to do it. It doesn’t merit the implied willingness to donate the reporter or editor gives it.
Maybe some enterprising person might cross reference the FEC disclosures with Paul Singer’s American Opportunity Alliance. A little background info from about 8 years ago:
“Hedge Funder Paul Singer is spearheading a network similar to the Koch Brothers’ group.”
“The Singer-led Alliance, which now boasts some 40 big donors who pay $50,000 a year to belong, is similar in respects to the older and much larger and flusher Koch donor network. The two networks share many — but not all — donors, including Singer himself. But as one GOP operative familiar with both networks put it: The 2-year-old Alliance “gives potential donors a new place to play and shows that the Koch network isn’t the only game in town.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/paul-singer-marco-rubio_n_5640ca23e4b0411d3071b673
You might want to keep in mind that Singer has been the sole funder of Free Beacon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Free_Beacon
In pouring over all the recently unsealed filings and exhibits in the FL case, it is very clear that investigators were/are interested in Wiles (Person 49). Particularly in combination with Epshteyn (Person 5). There is a telling exchange between Investigators and Chamberlain Harris, her prior attorney being replaced by John Irving just days prior, and this decision being made by Person 49 and person 5, without any input from Ms. Harris.
NYT publisher AG Sulzberger ought to stop sulking because Biden’s team has rejected the premise that only the NYT can determine if Biden is fit to serve another term. The Grey Lady has previously demonstrated its fealty to good reporting with Walter Duranty on the Ukrainian Holodomor.
Sulzberger said the quiet part out loud. He’s personally irritated he can’t get what he wants. What he wants is clickbait revenue, and Biden fodder he can criticize while sucking up to Trump. Doing only the latter doesn’t enhance his revenue as much as doing both. His stance has SFA to do with better informing the public, or even with reporting.
I really don’t think Sulzberger is operating according to any serious revenue generating principles.
I think he’s gotten insulated by puzzle and food subscription revenue and is treating the news side like his own sandbox.
It’s the same basic model of the press barons of old, who counted on The Yellow Kid, horse racing results and the society pages to fund their xenophobic rants.
I have a strong feeling that everyone below Sulzberger is obsessed with revenue, even if that doesn’t seem obvious when looking at how much the NYT pays to its cringe-worthy array of radical right “opinion” writers.
My read on the internal politics at the Times is that there are basically two sets of people, and only one of them is accountable for audience numbers. And it’s not the ones who sit at the cool kids table.
There are the ones who get to spend a month writing a news-free beat sweetener, and the ones who are expected to file a dozen articles a month.
I think one of the many reasons why the top execs are immune to complaints that it’s all about the clicks is that they can name a set of reporters on beats they consider prestige subjects which are immune to the usual audience requirements.
Sometimes it’s even justified – you could argue that assigning someone to report on Sudan is important even when it doesn’t generate a lot of interest. But a lot of times it represents overkill, with classic examples like the time they filed six different articles about Alan Dershowitz’s complaints that he was shunned on Martha’s Vineyard.
Haberman obviously is burying news that would generate much greater reactions than what she actually files, and I don’t think it’s an accident. She’s there in large part to squelch interest, not generate it.
Earning money, saying the “right” things, and avoiding giving coverage to the wrong things are as old as news coverage.
I am so fucking terrified that we are going to lose democracy after November. To the point where I am exploring options to leave the country.
Leave now, get your privileged butt out of our way with this demoralizatsiya.
Sure. Shit on the people that take the unfiltered posits of this blog as gospel. There is a bigger spectrum out there.
You have no room to speak about shitting on people here. None.
That’s rich, coming from you who called an expat “unamerican.”
Ok, sorry Rayne. Please do not conflate fear with negativity. All I can say is that, as a pretty old dude, I find the current situation more frightening than any time in my life. Goldwater? Nixon? I would take them a dozen times over the possible outcome.
Also, I have worked in NYC construction/development for more than three decades now. I knew who this guy was long before he entered politics.
Clearly what you knew about Trump did the rest of the country no good. Imagine if you spent more time advocating against him and encouraging voters to do better instead of dumping your emotions here.
Marcy has warned people to do something to fight fascism. Do it or get out of the way.
Fair statement. I fear for my grandchildren more than myself. My wife and I have options that they do not have.
But full disclosure. I do advocate. To the point where I am completely estranged from a pretty large number of family members. Some have not spoken to me in years. I stay engaged with others under the proviso that we don’t discuss politics, but they know where I stand.
I contribute to campaigns where I can.
I honestly have had little success penetrating MAGA bubbles. But I do try. It’s a lot harder than it should be. I am an engineer. I deal in facts. What do you do when facts are no longer relevant?
I did not mean to start a fire. I hope you have a great week, Rayne. Really.
It is disheartening when one is not heard, even more disheartening when what one has to relate is about possibly fleeing the scene. Some will not flee. Others cannot. If you can do a better job of preserving US representative democracy from outside the US then that’s to be applauded.
Suffice to say that little sympathy will be found for random personal journal comments on someone else’s focused website. (Ask me how I know at my peril!)
The key to this November isn’t persuading MAGA voters to switch (though, sure, that’s not unwelcome) — it’s in convincing the noncommittal and/or unlikely to vote.
I remember when USA Today first came out and was mocked for being “McPaper,” a junk food alternative to real journalism for unsophisticated rabble.
It is a Gannet publication with no regional identity… a veritable boy band of printed news, and would seem to be a likely candidate for having all the worst trends of recent journalism applied to it.
Has it done something unusual to resist the general atrophy of journalism in the US, or have the other pubs always been this bad regardless of the macroeconomics?
I have a job where I have spent a ridiculous amount of time in hotels over the last 30 years, so I read it often. It’s quality improved steadily, and I credit Susan Page. She is/was a really exceptional journalist.
It’s definitely shining brightly as the lights dim. The question is how much more brightly it shines than it did before the lights had dimmed significantly. Personally, I’ve found it somewhat improved from where it was 30 years ago.
I am hoping this was tongue in cheek. “USA Today also managed to avoid taking Trump’s bait to equate Biden with the Gestapo, not even in the body of the story.” I think mentioning this goes to show how off the rails he really is. It’s Trump who wants a Gestapo.
How long was Trump there? How did he sound when he was speaking? In other words, who is he now? Because in his days in court it is reported that he falls asleep. He admits he is having thermoregulatory problems. And it reported that his digestive organs emit foul odors. That suggests that there are drugs involved, A doctor or a pharmacist might have a good guess about the drugs.
A journalistic outlet such as the New York Times that doesn’t accurately describe Trump as an old, semi-coherent man is most likely protecting Trump and putting the nation at risk.
I ignore that stuff:
It can be very hard to stay awake in a courtroom
Sleepiness can make a person feel chilly, and you have to sit, and sit, and sit
Aging does affect the digestive tract (Ben Franklin was 76 when he wrote “Fart Proudly”)
To me, that kind of stuff is like Marco making fun of Trump’s hands at the debate. What are we, 9 year old boys on the playground?
The clothes, the tie (the scotch tape on the back of the tie), the stupid makeup, the stupid hair, sure–that’s all stuff he does no purpose.
late edit: of course he has a purpose, should say ON purpose
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Does Trump plan on mathematically winning the election? Or does he know he will lose and intends to cause as much disruption and violence just as the last demonstration of his power?
The Republican Party has been pretty clear on the plan.
1) line up “alternate elector” slates in specific states
2) recruit “election observers” for specific states
3) generate chaos at polling places
4) declare “irregulaities” in voting that require the legislature to appoint electors for the only vote that matters
If it goes to the Supreme Court, the same justices who used that case about keeping Trump off the ballot to claim the states had no right to interfere in a federal election will remember Article 3 says something about the state deciding how to select electors. Find. The 1st 2 steps have been discussed publicly, the rest is conjecture.
On Sunday Meet The Press potential Trump VP Tim Scott refused SIX TIMES to answer whether he would accept the election results no matter who wins.
We’ve been down this road before.
In a healthy democracy, refusing to say in advance that you would accept the results should be utterly disqualifying for any candidate. This is one of the many many norms that Trump has shattered over the previous eight years.
An old friend (not really, I inherited him when my spouse died) lives in a spare bedroom in my house. He came down this morning to inform me that we have no Democratic candidate for Gov. That scared me, until I remember that yes we do. It’s symbolic–legislature has 125 GOP and 16 Dem-NPL (that’s Non-Partisan League, from back in our glory days).
However–a Starbucks here just unionized. We may be holding on by our fingernails, but we are holding on.
Number 4 is a no go. Democrats made changes to the Electoral Count Act that essentially removes state legislatures from appointing Presidential Electors after the general. Which is constitutional since Congress (through law) decides when those electors are appointed.
My suspicion is that he is counting on the republican state infrastructure assuring he is elected; voters be damned.
TFG started out by asserting “we have to cheat better than they do.”
It always is an open question whether or not TFG uses a brain trust to particularize his desire to win by hook or by crook. This would mean literally plotting out ways to suppress urban swing state votes; disrupt vote tabulation and stop counting; forcefully leverage state-level legislative and judicial partners; disrupt and derail the Federal protocols and mechanics (such as the safe harbor/Electoral College/Certification; and what a contingent election could require.
Does he also have ‘spear sharpeners’ working on how a mob might help overturn a Biden win?
TFG presents a paradoxical organizational agent: a micro-manager who doesn’t develop and plan in detailed, deliberate ways. At the same time he possesses feral ‘smarts’ about how to create the conditions for the kinds of magical fusions cults require.
The irony of course is that to avoid legal jeopardy he needs to legitimately win. Yet, he says it out loud: “we need to cheat!”
Buckle up.
My humble opinion is that there is a “brain trust” (or multiple) advising trump directly and his campaign on how to message.
While he flails and appears to go off-the-rails at many times, the messaging may be much more coherent than it appears when we get it in these small bites (after digestion by the NYT, etc.)
There are methods to his madness. Multiple prospective positions on the chess boards are played before he gets his morning McMuffin.
It was long known that Dan Scavino helped with his Twitter account and it was reported from his current trial that he has a team to handle his social media messaging.
BTW, has anyone assembled and released a usable transcript from the trial (ie. not single pages)?
Clarification request:
Are you using quotation marks here as direct quotes of what candidate Trump has said? If so, please post a link to the direct quote. If you are not directly quoting the Presidential candidate for office than maybe write in a more clarifying manner.
What I mean is that if we should all be up in arms about a direct quote, we should know that information. If it is just your personal rewording of a sentiment then that needs to be clarified.
As an aside (and I don’t remember where I got this from), it was my understanding that double quotes were used to interpret direct speech and action, while single quotes were used to explicate personal thought/self-talk/internal speak as verb object.
Mildly pedantic. I’m sure the Internets is full of answers, if that’s what you want, including more than two rules to distinguish between single and double quotation marks, and how to use them for writing, rather than grammatical, effect. Or maybe the commenter is being inconsistent.
So…did Trump actually say “we need to cheat better than they do” or not? Seriously, this is very annoying that someone can assert that without some sort of link to a verifiable reference… as they appear to have now disappeared into the ether?
I don’t want to diddle and spend energy rn on a dissertation.. Just safe to say that this territory has been covered extensively here, and that the Grand Old Narcissist maintains a symbiotic, transactional relationship between the monied donor class & their thinktanks
Not a mystery no mystery mobile required on that front
The criming and racial violence, the product of the Trump operation, requires sleuthing
So no, your question of ‘tump and/or some brain trust’ is not a very ‘open question’ or topical. That question more falls under motive and prosecutorial discretion. And sentence
And as to your question,
‘Does he also have ‘spear sharpeners’ working on how a mob might help overturn a Biden win?’
We’ve been over this in Act I.
Try if you’re Trump, sharpening your spear on a Roger Stone
‘Boogaloo’ as used by violent dt supporters is a thinly veiled racist use of the term. There’s your civilian-side ‘spear’
So yes, he’s got that covered. Long time ago. I can sense Stephen Miller giving the nod.. Pretty sure that all is being looked after.. Ongoing resource acquisition and development, so to speak
Your comment reflects back the topic of this EW piece (Trump and the moneyed backing of political violence) in a very vague and general way, and then concludes by mystifying dt’s political agency because he is a ‘paradoxical agent (I’m summarizing here) of feral smarts, with the gift for magical cult fusion’. Let’s try and never mystify Trump in this way because it is misleading and wrong.
This stuff is studied and understood, and flushed out in greater framing, detail and nuance here than in most other places. Your comment is in the exact opposite direction
Not cool bruv
What??
Didn’t you get the, Not cool bruv, memo? The AI bot usually delivers it with the boxes of 25 cent wine spritzer. /s
Well this is galling, and on topic. The NYT and WaPo each just won 3 Pulitzers.
https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year
Maybe you readers already follow Dave Troy; he wrote a piece for the Washington Spectator and a thread about the Council for National Policy, Cleta, Fitton cooking up the January 6 to keep Trumpo in charge. Dave was an early guy to connect these billionaires wanting to bring gold standard back. The Proud Boys and Oath Keeps were their hired help to make it so. His latest claim is an impending wedge that will be created around aliens, creating distrust of the government.
Sambucus makes a lot of sense.
His point of view is well taken.
Thanks, it is good to hear your voice
Did you notice what the topic of this post was? Or are you here just to stir the pot? I suspect the latter since you were in such a hurry to post your comment you didn’t even put your reply in the right place.
400 RICH PEOPLE PAY $40K
That’s $16M. These days that’s barely enough to pay for a week’s worth of fluffers & lawyers
And now he’s stuck having to go to Barron’s goddamn HS graduation.
Filed under ‘journo-play’
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