Craig Unger is the author of House of Bush, House of Saud and House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. His Twitter handle is @craigunger
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CNN’s Cuomo: GOP All-in on Trump’s Lie — ‘There Are Not Good People on Both Sides’
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said Monday during the opening of his show “Cuomo Prime Time” that Republicans were “all-in” on former President Donald Trump’s claims he won the 2020 election.
Cuomo said, “We’ve never seen one party in this damnable two-party system that we insist on go all-in on a lie. So half of your political system is invested in a lie. That’s happening. It’s not just Trump. The whole party practically backs actively or passively, selling that the election was not legitimate.”
Referencing Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) not answering directly after being asked repeatedly by “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace if the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, Cuomo said, “He can’t say it. You could ask him a hundred times. The point is to go to why he won’t say it, and that is because he’s banking on the lie to motivate scared almost exclusively white voters.”
On Democrats’ objection to elections, Cuomo said, “Questioning is different than finding no proof and then lying and refusing to certify. That’s what Trump and Co. did. There are not good people on both sides of this argument. And I will be dammed if I sit by and don’t say this as plainly as possible because this will be remembered. There are not good people on both sides. This is not a good faith dispute. It is bad faith. They know the election was not rigged. They know it was legitimate. Anyone telling you with full knowledge that they have no proof and yet the election wasn’t legit is part of an effort that may lead us to an all-time low.”
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Trump, flanked by Republican officials, delivers fascist screed at Iowa State Fairgrounds
Nine months after his January 6 coup attempt, former president Donald Trump, flanked by leading Republican Party officials, delivered a nearly two-hour fascist rant at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Saturday before a crowd of several thousand far-right supporters.
Trump’s speech served as the unofficial kick-off for his 2024 presidential campaign. Prior to and during the speech, Trump was embraced by leading members of the Republican Party establishment, confirming that the right-wing party is continuing its transformation into a fascistic party under the personalist leadership of Trump, with paramilitary militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers serving as armed auxiliaries.
Pitching himself to the financial oligarchy as a bulwark against socialism and savior of capitalism, Trump began his speech by agitating against immigrants, absurdly claiming that Biden was pursuing a policy of “open borders” and facilitating an invasion of “violent gangs and drug cartels.”
Staying on the theme of a country under siege, Trump hissed: “After just nine months under Biden, violent criminals and bloodthirsty gangs are taking over our streets. Illegal aliens and deadly drug cartels are taking over our borders. Inflation is taking over the economy, China is taking over our jobs, the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan, lunatic leftists are taking over our schools and radical socialists are taking over our country. We will not let that happen.”
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Senator Chuck Grassley made remarks prior to Trump’s appearance. In the course of his speech, Trump called Grassley to the stage and ostentatiously endorsed the senator’s bid for an eighth term in the 2022 midterm elections.
The 88-year old Grassley accepted the endorsement of the man he had condemned earlier this year for encouraging “his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.” Grassley struck a much different tone Saturday night. “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart,” he quipped.
Trump’s endorsement of Grassley followed last week’s release of the Senate Judiciary Committee interim report on the January 6 storming of the US Capitol. The report details Trump’s numerous, criminal efforts to enlist the Department of Justice in his effort to overthrow the results of the November 3, 2020 presidential election, which he lost by a wide margin to Democrat Joe Biden.
Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, released a counter report that cherry-picked from the voluminous email exchanges, congressional testimony and confidential documents reprinted in the majority report and divorced them from their broader context in order to claim that Trump did nothing wrong. According to Grassley, Trump’s efforts to pressure election officials and Justice Department attorneys were a legitimate response to “reports of crimes.”
Facing a growing wave of strikes and protests by workers in response to the ruling class’s homicidal “herd immunity” pandemic policy as well as rising inflation and the self-enrichment of the pandemic profiteers, substantial sections of the political establishment are dispensing with all pretenses of democracy and embracing fascism under the banner of “America First” and “Make America Great Again.”
Both Grassley and Reynolds in their own speeches borrowed Trump’s fascistic rhetoric, especially in relation to immigrants. Grassley declared that under Biden the US had “no border” with Mexico, while Reynolds attacked Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for not visiting the border.
In his speech, Trump returned to the theme of immigration numerous times, while attacking Biden’s wholly inadequate and rapidly dwindling “Build Back Better” social welfare and climate bill as a “radical left $5 trillion spending spree to end America as we know it.” Trump claimed that the bill, which does nothing to challenge the fortunes of the corporate oligarchs, would bring about the “socialist transformation” of the country.
Trump devoted the bulk of his remarks to reiterating his groundless claims that the election was rigged. “I’m telling you,” he said, “the single biggest issue, as bad as the border is… the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election.”
Earlier in the week, Trump, claiming executive privilege, instructed four of his main co-conspirators to refuse to comply with subpoenas issued by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt. One of the four, former Breitbart editor and White House special advisor Steve Bannon, announced his defiance of his subpoena. In one of his daily “War Room” podcasts, he said he would have 20,000 “shock troops” prepared to “take over the administrative state and deconstruct it” once the Republicans reclaimed Congress in the 2022 elections and the White House in 2024.
In a letter sent to the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, and reported by Politico, Trump wrote that the information sought by the committee contained information shielded by “executive and other privileges, including but not limited to the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”
“Should the committee persist in seeking other privileged information, I will take all necessary and appropriate steps to defend the Office of the Presidency,” Trump wrote.
That Trump, along with his Republican accomplices and operatives, is able to ignore the committee’s demands, avoid prosecution for the January 6 coup and continue openly to cultivate and build a fascist movement is entirely due to the fecklessness and complicity of the nominal opposition party, the Democrats.
Beholden to the same financial oligarchy and capitalist system as the Republicans, the Democrats, and their various pseudo-left adjuncts, are entirely focused on blocking and suppressing the growth of social and political opposition to their class agenda of ruthless exploitation and “herd immunity” at home and the preparation of “great power conflict” against China.
That is why Biden continues to appeal for “unity” with the Republicans, even as they solidarize themselves even more firmly with Trump. Speaking last week in Michigan to promote his “Build Back Better” plan, he chided his “friends on the other team” for opposing token tax increases on the rich.
Meanwhile, the Democrats and the Democratic-aligned media, led by the New York Times, continue to cover up the significance and scale of the January 6 coup plot and the role of high-level operatives in the police, military and intelligence apparatus in the drive to establish dictatorial rule.
On Friday, California Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House Select Committee on January 6, told National Public Radio that the panel had yet to receive any “written communication” from Trump conspirators Bannon, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former deputy chief of staff for White House communications Dan Scavino, or Kashyap Patel, who was chief of staff for former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, all of whom were served subpoenas by the committee.
Speaking to Politico, the chairman of the committee, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, said he would like the committee to wrap up its “investigation” by next spring, which would give Trump’s co-conspirators more than enough time to fight their subpoenas in court without ever having to testify. The committee has held only one public hearing since its formation on July 1, consisting entirely of testimony from police officers who came under attack from Trump’s insurrectionists on January 6. It has scheduled no further hearings or business meetings.
Interim Senate Judiciary Report confirms Trump’s repeated attempts to enlist Department of Justice into January 6 coup attempt
On Thursday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin (Illinois) released an interim report on the repeated, criminal, attempts by former President Donald Trump, along with his allies within the White House and Republican Party, following his electoral defeat, to coerce top officials within the Department of Justice (DoJ) to support his bogus claims of a fraudulent election in order to carry out a fascist coup.
The explosive report, titled “Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election” confirms several episodes detailed over the last year on the World Socialist Web Site concerning Trump’s scheming leading up to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. These include repeated attempts by Trump and White House allies to have the DoJ officials publicize non-existent investigations into alleged fraudulent activity concerning illegal voting by minors in Georgia, as well as Italian spy satellites and Dominion Voting Systems machines being enlisted in efforts to miscount or alter vote totals in support of Biden. The report covers the crucial period between Trump’s November electoral defeat to Joe Biden through a pivotal “2–3 hour” January 3 meeting in the Oval Office at the White House during which top officials throughout the DoJ threatened a mass resignation in response to Trump’s attempt to oust acting Attorney General Jeffery Rosen.
In December, Rosen replaced the recently resigned Bill Barr and after resisting efforts from Trump to “investigate” Trump’s election lies, Trump sought to replace Rosen with acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division Jeffrey Clark.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who also threatened to resign, told Trump that his efforts to fire Rosen and install Clark amounted to a “murder-suicide pact,” former acting Deputy Attorney General Richad Donoghue told the Committee.
Clark, as the report details, completely backed Trump’s lies and, unlike Rosen, was willing to sign onto a letter (which he drafted) that was to be sent out to key battleground states in order to pressure state legislatures into electing a new slate of electors to overturn the Electoral College vote. Underscoring how deadly close the United States came to a fascist coup and possibly civil war, Durbin, in comments made to the media and from the Senate floor, claimed, “We were a half-step from a full-blown constitutional crisis.”
Speaking to CNN, Durbin said that this crisis would have erupted “had it not been for Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donoghue and eight members of the Department of Justice who stood up and said, ‘We’ll resign if you take Rosen out of the picture and put Jeffrey Clark in.’”
He continued, “If those efforts weren’t made, we could have seen a collapse of that Department of Justice into a political entity. They [Trump and his allies] already had their handpicked successor, a man named Jeffrey Clark ready to take over, and he was involved in areas he should not have touched as leader of the Civil Division.”
The report details nine specific instances in which Trump pressured DoJ leadership to back his fraudulent claims of a stolen election, beginning on December 15, 2020, and continuing through January 3, 2021. The report noted that Trump’s repeated efforts to enlist DoJ attorneys in perpetuating his election lies “arguably violated the criminal provisions of the Hatch Act, which prevent any person—including the President—from commanding federal government employees to engage in political activity.”
The nine instances in less than three weeks included White House meetings and phone calls during which Trump badgered either Rosen and Donoghue separately or together, to initiate investigations and file lawsuits on Trump’s behalf. While speaking with the DoJ attorneys, Trump generally lamented the fact that the Department was not doing enough to address “election fraud,” the report noted.
The report drew attention to the key role played by former Republican congressman and Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in pressuring the DoJ. The report claimed that Meadows’s conduct violated “longstanding restrictions on White House–DoJ communications about specific law enforcement matters.” The report noted four different times Meadows reached out to Rosen to suggest he investigate bogus claims of election fraud in Georgia, Italy and New Mexico.
The report notes that after meeting with Trump to discuss the overturning of the election, Jeffrey Clark told Rosen that Trump was looking to replace him since he would not go along with Trump’s plans. However, if Rosen agreed to hold a press conference in which he would announce he was investigating Trump’s bogus election fraud claims and send out a letter to state legislatures previously drafted by Clark, suggesting that certain states reappoint new electors in favor of Trump, he would decline Trump’s offer to replace Rosen.
As has been known since at least last November, the report confirmed that Trump worked in concert with the “Stop the Steal” movement to pressure the DoJ into helping Trump overturn the results. Trump was aided in these efforts by Republican lawmakers including Representative Scott Perry (Pennsylvania, 10th District) and Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator, also from Pennsylvania.
The report confirmed that Perry introduced Clark to Trump and that Perry directly communicated with Donoghue on bogus election fraud claims. Mastriano, like Perry, also talked to Donoghue regarding alleged election fraud. Mastriano also paid thousands of dollars to bus in Trump supporters for the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which Mastriano participated in.
The report also made special note of Trump campaign legal adviser Cleta Mitchell. Mitchell supported Trump’s stolen election claims and participated in the January 2, 2021, call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he implored Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
“These ties warrant further investigation to better place Trump’s efforts to enlist DoJ in his efforts to overturn the presidential election in context with the January 6 insurrection,” the report states.
For the report, several leading officials under Trump within the DoJ were interviewed, including Rosen, his deputy Donoghue and former US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Byung Jin “Bjay” Pak, who was forced to resign by Trump after failing to substantiate Trump’s claims that fraudulent ballots were being tabulated at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Trump circumvented the line of succession after Pak’s resignation and tapped Bobby Christine, who was already serving as US Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, to take Pak’s place. Donoghue testified to the committee that Trump told him he did this because he liked Christine and thought he would “do something” about Trump’s claims.
While several high-ranking officials within the DoJ made themselves available for the Committee’s report, Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s agent within the DoJ, has refused repeated voluntary requests to be interviewed by the Committee. In a testament to the raging internecine conflict taking place within the capitalist state, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), charged with preserving White House records, has yet to comply with a May 20 request from the Committee for Trump’s White House records. The report noted that “the delay in transitioning electronic Trump records from the White House to NARA may prevent the Committee from obtaining a response for several more months.”
In response to the report, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa released his own report, which claimed Trump did nothing wrong.
“The available evidence shows that President Trump did what we’d expect a president to do on an issue of this importance: he listened to his senior advisors and followed their advice and recommendations,” Grassley said in a statement.
The report is a confirmation of the Marxist analysis presented on the World Socialist Web Site. In contrast to the pseudo-left, including the Democratic Socialists of America and other “socialists,” who sought to downplay the first fascist coup attempt in US history, claiming it was just an isolated right-wing demonstration that got out of hand, the report confirms that the attack on the Capitol was the culmination of a definite political strategy, orchestrated by Trump and carried out by his loyalists within the Republican Party and capitalist state, including the police, military and intelligence agencies. Working in concert, these elements carried out a legal and political strategy along with facilitating the security stand-down of the Capitol, which allowed fascist militias hours to search out and kidnap lawmakers as part of Trump’s effort to delay the certification of the election.
The stunning confirmation of Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election have been met with a stony silence by the so-called “progressive” caucus and the left face of the Democratic Party. As of this writing, a review of the social media accounts of Senator Bernie Sanders, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Pramila Jayapal and Katie Porter shows no mention of the damning Senate report. Instead of warning their followers and the working class of the imminent and ongoing fascist threat, the capitalist politicians are focusing all their efforts on promoting illusions in the Biden administration and the wholly inadequate and rapidly dwindling “Build Back Better” plan.
The meager social spending package has been whittled down from $6 trillion to somewhere between “$2.3–$1.9 trillion” in order to appease the most right-wing members of the Democratic Party and their “Republican colleagues” who continue to defend the fascist Trump.
Trump declares January 6 insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt a martyr of his fascist attempt to seize power
On Sunday, former US president Donald Trump continued his efforts to cultivate and grow his fascist movement by delivering a video eulogy for his deceased foot-soldier, Ashli Babbitt.
In a pre-recorded video that was played at a sparsely attended event in Freeport, Texas celebrating what would have been Babbitt’s 36th birthday, Trump offered his “unwavering support” to the family of Babbitt and called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reopen its investigation into her death.
Trump said it was a “great honor to address each of you gathered today” and that Babbitt, an adherent of the far-right anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracy theory and ardent supporter of Trump and the “Stop the Steal” movement, was “a truly incredible person.”
Trump, presenting the insurrectionist as a patriotic soldier, glorified Babbitt’s military service: “She defended our nation overseas including in Iraq to fight in the War on Terror.”
In a complete whitewash of the events of January 6, Trump said: “On that horrible day of January 6, Ashli arrived at the United States Capitol, innocent, she was shot and tragically killed. There was no reason Ashli should have lost her life that day.” He added, “We must all demand justice for Ashli and her family.”
As a point of fact, Babbitt did not just “arrive” at the Capitol. A self-described libertarian and QAnon follower, she had written on January 5, “Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours ... dark to light!”
“The storm” is a reference to the QAnon perspective that Donald Trump was sent by God to exterminate Democrats and other political opponents, and that members of the cult would take part in that physical settling of accounts. She then flew across the country from California to Washington D.C. to join in the effort to keep Trump in the White House regardless of the results of the election.
As to her “innocence,” there is no doubt Babbitt committed multiple crimes, including criminal trespassing and interference with Congress in the performance of its constitutional duties, and only her death prevented her from participating in much bloodier crimes. Babbitt was shot as she was attempting to climb through a broken window into the Speakers Lobby where dozens of lawmakers and their staff were hiding from the far-right mob of militia members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Babbitt was engaged in a tactic employed several times by members of the attacking force, breaking through a window adjacent to a barred door, then opening the door from the inside. If successful, she would have let the mob through. It was the last door separating the crowd of Trump supporters from the members of the House of Representatives and their staff, who were seeking to escape to safety through the rear of the House chamber.
There is no doubt the aims of the angry mob. They were there to capture, and possibly kill, lawmakers in order to block the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory.
A preliminary DOJ investigation completed in April, and follow-up internal probe completed this past August, cleared Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd of any wrongdoing in the shooting of Babbitt.
“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber,” federal prosecutors with the Justice Department wrote in an April statement.
Despite Byrd being cleared of any wrongdoing, in the months following his failed coup, Trump and Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, one of the principal advocates in Congress of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, have held up Babbitt as a martyr for the fascist “Make America Great Again” movement and presented Byrd’s actions as unprovoked and unjustified..
During a House Oversight Committee hearing held in May of this year, Gosar, a long-time ally of the fascistic Oath Keepers, provocatively asked former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen whether Babbitt was “executed” by Capitol Police. Gosar claimed that the DOJ was “harassing peaceful protesters and veterans” and that the real conspiracy theory was the suggestion that Republican legislators, such as himself, had aided far-right militia members prior to the coup.
In a June hearing featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray, Gosar again said that Babbitt was “executed” and that the cop who shot her was “lying in wait” and “gave no warning before killing her.”
Gosar repeated the same themes in his video eulogy to Babbitt on Sunday. As he has in past speeches, he demanded “full transparency and accountability surrounding the murder of Ashli” and vowed that he would not stop asking questions or “demanding justice for Ashli.”
Trump, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, and Gosar, a demented fascist, are continuing to follow in the footsteps of the German dictator. In 1930, Horst Wessel, a Nazi storm trooper and propagandist who routinely participated in violent assaults against communists, socialists and workers, was shot and killed by two members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, used the shooting of Wessel to promote the Nazi party. A march for which Wessel had written the lyrics was renamed in his honor and became the official anthem of the Nazi party, which Hitler described as “a battle hymn for millions.”
Goebbels himself eulogized Wessel in his newspaper, Der Angriff, in overtly Christian tones:
“A Christian Socialist! A man who calls out through his deeds: ‘Come to me, I shall redeem you!’... A divine element works in him, making him the man he is and causing him to act in this way and no other. One man must set an example and offer himself up as a sacrifice! Well, then, I am ready!”
As Hitler and the Nazis used Wessel to cultivate and incite fascists and lumpen elements of society against socialism and the working class, Trump, Gosar and the rest of the Republican Party, who continue to back the big lie of a stolen election after the failure of the January 6 coup, are elevating Babbitt into a martyr of the “America First” movement.
The line from Trump and Gosar is that Babbitt was innocent, because January 6 itself was not a coup, but simply a “free speech” demonstration in support of “election integrity.” This is why Gosar, and fellow “America First” fascist lawmakers, like Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) Andy Biggs (Arizona) and Mo Brooks (Alabama), all of whom participated in Trump’s coup plots and voted against certifying Biden’s victory, claim that the militia members imprisoned for their actions on January 6 are “political prisoners” and should be set free.
Continuing to agitate against the election results and the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency, Trump announced last week that a “Big Michigan Rally” would take place in Lansing at the state Capitol on Tuesday, October 12. Last April, fascist militia members, on the orders of Trump and Republican billionaires, who would later participate in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, stormed the building in a prelude of the attack in Washington D.C. on January 6.
In his statement issued last week, Trump called on “Patriots” to rally in Lansing and “demand a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam. The Voter Fraud is beyond what anyone can believe.” Trump listed the names of several Republican Party officials, including representative Steve Carra, aspiring Michigan attorney general Matthew DePerno and Kristina Karamo.
Carra, DePerno and Karamo have all been endorsed by Trump. All have falsely claimed that Trump won Michigan (he lost by 155,000 votes) and all have challenged the legitimacy of Biden’s victory.
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