The question remains: Is Trump a Russian asset?

As Trump pressures Ukraine to basically surrender to Russia, it is worth noting that the so-called "28 Point Plan" resembles the one Paul Manafort was pursuing back in 2016. Heather Cox Richardson explains:

According to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, in summer 2016, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort discussed with his business partner, Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, “a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, the plan was for Trump to say he wanted peace in Ukraine and for him to appoint Manafort to be a “special representative” to manage the process. With the cooperation of Russian and Russian-backed Ukrainian officials, Manafort would help create “an autonomous republic” in Ukraine’s industrialized eastern region and would work to have Russian-backed Yanukovych, for whom Manafort had worked previously, “elected to head that republic.”

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018. Putin has been determined to control that land ever since. And now it appears Russia is pushing Trump to deliver it.

I want to zero in on that last sentence: Russia is pushing Trump to deliver control of eastern Ukraine to Putin - something he's been working towards since he first invaded Ukraine in 2014.

We've seen it happen over and over again. There have been interludes where Trump has hinted at holding Putin accountable. But he always caves and does the dictator's bidding. That's why, for almost a decade now, the question of whether or not Trump is a Russian asset remains on the table. 

MAGA has been trying desperately to discredit that question lately. That is precisely why, back in July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents claiming that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

To understand what's going on here, it is helpful to remember that, when it comes to Trump and Putin, there have been several questions raised since the summer of 2016.

1. Did Russia hack and leak DNC and Clinton campaign emails? Yes
2. Did Russia attempt to hack into state election machinery to change vote totals? No
3. Did Russia attempt to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump? Yes
4. Did the Trump campaign conspire with the Russian attempt to influence the election? Unknown (the Mueller report couldn't prove a legal conspiracy case, but that was because of the answer to question #5)
5. Did the Trump campaign obstruct justice during the Mueller investigation? Yes

The answers I've listed to those questions have been addressed by both the Mueller report and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. DNI Gabbard and other MAGA influences are intent on discrediting what those reports documented about question #3 (and, by extension, 4 and 5). As a refresher, here's what the Mueller report summarized about that question:

“[T]he Special Counsel’s investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents.”

What's interesting is that Gabbard and others completely ignore both the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report. Instead, they are going after an Intelligence Community Assessment  (ICA) that was released by the Obama administration on January 6, 2017 which stated the following:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

What we know from reporting by the Washington Post back in 2017 is that five months prior to that assessment, the CIA sent a "bombshell" report to President Obama.

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

Initially, President Obama was primarily concerned about the possibility that Russians would hack into state voting infrastructure (question #2 above). Over the course of September 2016, the intelligence community produced several reports stating that they had "no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”

So on December 7, 2016, Obama instructed the intelligence community to pull together the information they had on the tools Moscow used, the actions it took to influence the 2016 election, and an explanation of why Moscow directed these activities.” That led to the ICA that was released in January 2017.

Gabbard and others are trying desperately to undermine that assessment in order to prove that Putin didn't interfere to help Trump. They claim that Obama set up the whole "Russia hoax" by ordering the assessment, while Brennan, Clapper, and Comey conspired to use Hillary Clinton's Steele dossier as the source of their claims. 

None of that is true. As just one example, when Brennan sent the "intelligence bombshell" to Obama in August 2016, the Steele dossier was languishing inside an organized crime unit at the FBI’s New York field office. The FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team didn't even see it until September. According to everyone's sworn testimony, it was not used as a basis for the January ICA. But it was included in the classified annex because Comey insisted that - even though the dossier hadn't been verified - the president had asked for all of the information they had on Moscow's activities. 

This all might seem to be too much "in the weeds" for a lot of folks. But keep in mind that the current Director of National Intelligence - Tulsi Gabbard - actually accused President Obama and his cabinet officials of treason, claiming they initiated a years-long coup against Trump. And now, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones is leading an investigation into these claims. Apparently it's going about as well as the prosecution of Comey by Lindsey Halligan. 

All of this is designed to allow Trump and his enablers to claim that the president is a victim of the so-called "Russia hoax." But as he continues to do Putin's bidding by pressuring Ukraine to surrender to Russia, the question remains: Is Trump a Russian asset?

Is Vance a groyper?

Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't the only MAGA member breaking up with Trump. Nick Fuentes has taken things even further. Here's what he said about the president on his podcast last week:

Fuck you! Fuck you! You suck! You are fat, you are a joke, you are stupid, you are not funny, you are not as smart as you think you are.

If you watch my show, you know I’ve been very critical. I’ve never been this far. This just goes to show, this entire thing has been a scam. When we look back on the history of populism in America, we are gonna look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in American history. And the liberals were right, the MAGA supporters were had!

When we look back in history we will see Trump as a scam artist.

This is significant because Fuentes is the leader of a group commonly known as "groypers." It would take days to pull up every disgusting quote from this guy, but this clip pretty much sums up his overall viewpoint: 

Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise, it's that simple. It's literally that simple...we need white men running everything. OK?

That is the kind of bile Fuentes' supporters (mostly young men) are being fed of a daily basis. Therefore, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see a connection between the groypers and the Young Republicans whose text exchanges were recently made public.

MAGA author Rod Dreher was in Washington D.C. recently (he lives in Hungary these days because he loves what dictator Viktor Orban has done to that country). He wrote that a D.C. insider told him that  “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes. Dreher goes on to say that he talked to J.D. Vance about his concern regarding the groypers.  How did the VP respond? Dreher refused to tell us. 

I shared with him my views about the threat that Nick Fuentes and Groyperism pose to the country, to the GOP, and to him personally. He listened to what I had to say. And that is all I can say about it, out of respect for his privacy.

It's worth noting that when Vance was asked about the racist/sexist/anti-semitic texts from the young Republicans, he basically brushed it off with the equivalent of "boys will be boys." It sure sounds like he might have done the same thing with Dreher's warning. 

So let's compare the views of Vance to those of Fuentes. The former:

• told Tucker Carlson in 2021 that the country was being run by a bunch of "childless cat ladies."
• spread the lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
• embraced the white supremacist "blood and soil" view of American nationalism.
• embraced Gernany's Nazi party.

Jamelle Bouie noted these similarities and was left with one question.

Here’s my question for you: You can parse all the rhetoric you’d like, but what is the actual, practical difference between Vance’s call for the removal and potential expropriation of “illegal” immigrants — defined in terms of ethnic and racial difference — and Fuentes’s vision of a white ethno-state in what is now the United States?

They look about the same to me.

Another way of asking that question would be: "Is VP Vance a groyper?" My response to that one would be: "They look about the same to me."

But it's not just the racist/sexist/anti-semitic views that Vance shares with Fuentes. Here is what Dreher said about the groypers:

I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands). He said, “They don’t have any. They just want to tear everything down.”...

Compare that with what Vance said to Jack Murphy in 2021:

"Step one in the process is to totally rip out like a tumor the current American leadership class and then reinstall some sense of American political religion."

When asked by the host what that would look like, since elections are ineffectual, Vance brings up his buddy Curtis Yarvin.

As a reminder, Yarvin is the guy who says that our government has gotten stale and needs to be deleted. In the place of a deleted government, Yarvin says that we should install a "national CEO," otherwise known as a dictator. He then says that "if Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia."

Right now people like MTG and Fuentes (among others) are jockeying for positions in a post-Trump era. So is J.D. Vance. This is where all of that is headed - if Vance has anything to say about it.  

What the government shutdown did/didn't accomplish - and why.

The big story of the day is that on Sunday night, eight Democrats "caved" and voted to end the government shutdown. Even Steve Bennen - who usually maintains a clear focus on the Republican disaster - joined the chorus.

The public has blamed the president and his party; Democrats received a dramatic boost from the electorate five days before the Sunday-night vote, which should’ve stiffened spines; Trump’s approval rating is sinking; and GOP officials were increasingly divided against one another. The pieces, in other words, were in place for Democrats to stand firm in support of a popular cause. Eight of them folded anyway.

Of course, Bennen is right on all of those points. But as someone who tends to challenge conventional wisdom, I think there are a few other things to consider. 

Back in February, I wrote about how Democrats need to think like community organizers and do a power analysis. If we apply that to the way the government shutdown has been playing out, there are three ways the Republicans had leverage. 

The first is the one that Josh Marshall identified from the beginning of the year: Democrats are fighting an asymmetrical battle.

This is of necessity very much an asymmetric confrontation. It can’t not be. The White House has all the executive authority and, indirectly, the congressional power as well...to extend the metaphor — the Republicans have a big army and the Democrats have no army. Because of the 2024 election. So Democrats keep running out onto the open field with no power or defense and getting crushed, which creates these repeated set pieces of helplessness and impotence. That amounts to free programming for Donald Trump.

The second point of leverage for Republicans is something Barack Obama identified back when he was still a U.S. Senator. 

The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job.

The way this played out during the latest government shutdown is that Trump and Republicans are more than willing to let the American people suffer - whether that is fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to stop SNAP payments, disrupt air travel around the holidays, or take away people's health insurance. As a matter of fact, they're not simply willing to let people suffer during the shutdown. It is the core of their agenda.  

The third point of leverage for Republicans is that, as David Roberts wrote a few years ago, they regularly disassociate their rhetoric from their agenda/actions.

Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract, since Americans oppose them in the abstract even as they support their specific manifestations. They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics. They’ve realized that their rhetoric doesn’t have to bear any connection to their policy agenda.

Trump and the MAGA movement have taken that one to a whole new level. As an example, last month Speaker Mike Johnson said, "Let me look right into the camera and tell you very clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about healthcare. Republicans are the party working around the clock every day to fix healthcare. This is not talking points for us: we've done it." That would be laughable if it weren't so enraging. The only thing Republicans have done about healthcare is cut Medicaid and try to kill Obamacare more than 70 times. According to Project 2025, the Republican agenda is simply more of the same. As Roberts said, "their rhetoric doesn't have to bear any connection to their policy agenda."

It is that third point of leverage the shutdown effectively targeted. As Josh Marshall wrote, "The upshot of the shutdown is that Democrats now own the affordability issue, and they’ve focused it on health care coverage, which Republicans want to make more expensive or take away altogether."

I know that, in the midst of Trump's threats to almost everything we hold dear, Democrats are angry and want their representatives in Congress to "fight, fight, fight." But I'd suggest that we also need a strategy for winning those fights. Given those first two leverage points, I didn't seen an endgame for Democrats on the shutdown. If it had dragged on and on, Republicans would have been content to let the American people suffer, leaving Democrats to look weak and helpless to stop them. 

I'm not saying that I agree with the 8 Democrats who voted to end the shutdown. Their stated reasons simply sound weak and reactive. But I would suggest that the party needs to continue to grapple with finding their own leverage points and using them wisely. No one strategy is going to be foolproof and work all the time. While taking a stand for affordable healthcare didn't accomplish all we hoped it would, the willingness of Trump and Republicans to inflict pain on the American people was exposed to the light of day. Let's take that win and run with it.

The day the music died

In light of all the horrific things the Trump administration is doing, this one doesn't seem very significant. 

Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center and more than a month into its main season, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years, according to a Washington Post analysis of ticketing data from dozens of recent shows as well as past seasons. Tens of thousands of seats have been left empty.

I can't help but think about the fact that two of the biggest moments in music history over the last couple of decades took place at the Kennedy Center. First came this moment in 2012: 

 

Three years later, this happened:

 

Notice who is in the stands swaying to the music, wiping away a tear, and joining the standing ovation. 

I'm not a music historian, but I doubt there has ever been a presidential administration that did more to celebrate this county's musical heritage than Barack Obama's. I am reminded of this part of his speech at the 50th anniversary of Selma:

We’re the inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and rock and roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.

In addition to Obama's support for the Kennedy Center, the White House hosted eleven "Performances at the White House" honoring everything from country music to Broadway, Motown, and classical music. 

Did you know that six years before the first performance of Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda performed "The Hamilton Mixtape" for poetry/spoken word night at the White House? And before there was Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, there was Marc Anthony at the White House for Fiesta Latina.

The line-up for Red, White, and Blues night at the White House was extraordinary, featuring musicians like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Keb' Mo', Mick Jagger, and Jeff Beck. But of course, I was thrilled to see Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks in the line-up. That was the night that this happened:

Adding to the darkness that seems to have overtaken us these days is the fact that those kinds of moments aren't happening any more. That's why these words from Bruce Springsteen reached down into my soul and brought a tear to my eye.