It's a lazy Sunday, and since I don't feel like
cooking up a substantial post from scratch today, I'm serving a
plate of reheated leftovers, in the form of updates on previous
posts.
Tony Baloney banks on luck o'the
Irish to stifle BuzzFeed News and Twitter
Earlier this year, on May 29 and June 22 to be exact, I wrote a
couple of posts about BuzzFeed News' ongoing series covering
accusations against selfish-help icon Tony Robbins. Robbins had been
accused by numerous parties of emotional, physical, and in some
cases sexual abuse and misconduct. He had repeatedly denied the
allegations and had threatened to sue BuzzFeed if they didn't
retract their stories and/or quit writing about him.
As I noted in an update to my June 22 post, but am bumping it up
here as well (along with some additional content), BuzzFeed
published yet another installment in its Tony Robbins series on
November 22, 2019 -- that's Part 6, for those who are keeping track. This latest story covered Robbins' alleged sexual
abuse of a minor female at a summer camp in Southern Cali way
back in 1985, when Tony was 25, but already rich and famous.
Following the publication of that piece, Tony, who denies those
allegations as well, had apparently had enough. He has now decided to SLAPP Buzzfeed with a defamation
flawsuit, and is currently threatening
to sue Twitter too in the bargain, apparently for allowing people
to tweet about the Buzzfeed series. But he's not suing in the
United States; rather, he's suing in Ireland, with his lawyer
rationalizing that Dublin is Twitter's European headquarters.
Here's a Scribd link to the complaint.
The Irish Times reported that Robbins is being represented by a Belfast-based
libel lawyer named Paul Tweed, who denies the claim that Robbins,
like other public figures who have filed unsuccessful defamation
suits in the United States, is engaging in "libel
tourism." Tweed also countered BuzzFeed's accusation that
Robbins was abusing the Irish courts, since BuzzFeed's
headquarters and primary audience are in the US. He noted that
the BuzzFeed journalists who wrote the articles are based in the
UK. But BuzzFeed spoksman Matt Mittenthal responded to that by
pointing out that Ireland is "a sovereign nation that hasn't
been part of the UK for nearly 100 years. This is a bizarre and
flimsy attempt to justify a transparent legal manoeuvre."
And Mike Masnick, writing on the TechDirt site on December 4, cut to the chase:
Of course, the real reason to sue in
Ireland is because either lawsuit would be laughed out of
court in the US. The bar to prove defamation against a public
figure like Robbins would make it nearly impossible for
Robbins to win a defamation lawsuit here, unless he could
somehow prove that Buzzfeed made up the reporting, which
seems highly unlikely. And, of course, Section 230 of the CDA
would protect Twitter. Even in Europe, it seems unlikely that
Twitter could be held liable for how other people tweeted,
just because Mr. Robbins is "aggrieved" about how
this story spread.
Meanwhile, BuzzFeed continues to stand by their
reporting.
Whinemaker Trump Junior gets triggered again
In late November I posted a lengthy snarkalysis about the reactions to Donald Trump Jr.'s first book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to
Silence Us, which had been
released earlier that month. The book quickly soared to the top
of some prestigious bestseller lists, but lots of folks were
crying foul in the wake of revelations that numerous
republican/conservative orgs, including the Republican National
Committee (RNC) made bulk purchases.
One point I made in my post was that even though sales of DJTJ's
magnum dopus were indeed artificially boosted by those mass
purchases, the book most likely would have done pretty well on
its own, thanks to the cult of Trumpism. I also pointed out that
although it's a given that the Trump family are scammers, bulk
purchasing isn't illegal and in fact is commonly done, by
scammers and non-scammers alike.
But I also made the point, as I have before, that right-wingers
and conservatives seem to be more easily "triggered"
(and hate-filled) than the lefties and liberals whom they're
continually accusing of being hyper-sensitive snowflakes. Junior
himself filled the pages of Triggered with his own
whining about how awfully he and his family have been treated. As
if to reinforce that particular point, on November 30 DJTJ uncorked another bottle of red whine on Twitter when he groused that airport bookstores operated by
Hudson News bookstores are refusing to sell Triggered.
He griped that he'd been in seven different airports that week
and hadn't seen it. "Why not have the #1 book?" he
tweeted. "Usual BS I suppose?"
The tweet, with its strong implication of a nefarious liberal
conspiracy to squelch the book, inspired his minions to flood Hudson News' social media
accounts, berating them for their
alleged participation in the conspiracy. But Junior's lament also
inspired a flood of snarky rejoinders from those who are, to put
it mildly, not supporters. One Twitter user responded to Trump's
complaint by saying that he thought the books were fully stocked
in the fiction section; another one, using the handle
@MuellerSheWrote, noted that "there are boxes and boxes of
them at the RNC."
Apparently Triggered is for sale on Hudson Booksellers'
website, but regarding its brick-and-mortar stores, Hudson didn't
respond to request from Newsweek for comment about Junior's
tweet.
I wonder if Junior also thinks it's part of the "usual
BS"/triggered-lib conspiracy that his book was pretty quickly bumped from its number-one spot on the New York Times bestseller list by a
scathing tome about his daddy, A Warning, By Anonymous.
Phony holiday wars continue
Just the other day I was nattering about the phony "war on Christmas," which
this year was joined, thanks to #NotMyPresident Donald John
Trump, by the phony "war on Thanksgiving." With my
usual gift for stating the painfully obvious, I predicted that
despite Trump's declaration that the Xmas "war" had
been won, the conservanoids weren't about to relinquish that
phony construct entirely.
And along comes right-wing nutcake/culture-wars veteran/Trump
ally/career hypocrite Newt Gingrich to
prove me right. He and another top Trumpanzee, former Acting Attorney (and scammer) General Matthew
Whitaker, have come right out and
stated that those demonic Democrats, with all of that impeachment
nonsense, are ruining Christmas.
#Impeachment is the new #HappyHolidays, I guess.
Newt went on Fox News to cry his crocodile tears about the
degradation of the holiday by the impeachment, which in typical
Trumpian form he described as "a modern-day lynch mob."
But as many others have pointed out, including Charlie Nash on
Mediaite, Newt himself participated in the ruination of Christmas
back on December 19, 1998 when he was
Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the House voted to
impeach President Bill Clinton.
Jack Holmes, writing in Esquire, also made
note of Gingrich's hypocrisy, adding:
...what tale of
shameless grandstanding would be complete without a
contribution from Matthew Whitaker, the former Big Dick Toilet Salesman whom the president once saw fit to make the
Acting Attorney General of the United States?
That's right, folks:
turn off that Bing Crosby. Shut down the Mariah Carey. Nix
the "Wonderful Christmastime"—which, contrary to blasphemous reports in this very magazine, is good. It's going to be all impeachment, all
the time. Give your Dad a congressional gavel in a box. (Or a
T-shirt from War on Christmas x Impeachment.) Of course, what
Whitaker's really saying is that people may be forced to
discuss the president's assault on the American Constitution
at some point this holiday season, which simply will not do.
Then again, this is the same guy who jumped on Fox News in
October to declare that
"abuse of power is not a crime." It is, however,
the most essential reason to impeach a president. Merry
Christmas.
Merry Christmas indeed. And a Happy
Impeachment.
That's it for now; more soon.
As impeachment proceedings
continue, #NotMyPresident aka #Dolt45 Donald J. Trump continues to
go on the defensive and the offensive (mostly offensive). One of
his latest gimmicks, launched earlier this month, is, in the view of some, both
defensive and offensive. It's a personalized "Impeachment Defense Membership Card," which can be yours -- with your own name on it and
everything! -- for the low, low price of only $35.
From Reuters, November 13, 2019:
The contrast between the president and
the Democratic field is a sign that Trump is betting the
Democratic-led congressional impeachment inquiry, which
entered a new phase on Wednesday with public hearings, could
help him win the November 2020 election. Public opinion polls
show support for impeachment is concentrated among Democrats.
[Duh]
Last Friday alone, the president sent out more than 400
Facebook ads asking for donations that would be rewarded with
a personalized “Impeachment Defense Membership Card.”
Chauncey DeVega, a politics staff writer at
Salon.com, sounded the alarm about the card in a November 14 essay. The
teaser blurb declared that while Trump's "Impeachment
Defense" team is a joke, Trump's true goal -- the
dismantling of American democracy -- is no joke at all.
DeVega begins his essay by making note of some of Trump's smaller
scams...
For example, Donald Trump continues to
run contests where in exchange for an online donation he
promises supporters that they can “win” an exclusive meal
with him. Apparently,
no one has ever received this prize.
Then he mentions the larger scams, such as
Trump University and the Trump Foundation, two scams that ended
up costing Trump many millions of dollars in settlements and
punitive fines.
But one of Trump's most lucrative and ongoing cons, DeVega adds,
is the "issuing of membership cards in exchange for campaign
donations from his cult-like followers." In addition to the
Facebook ads, the Impeachment Defense Membership Cards were
announced in a dramatic campaign email sent the same week:
Friend,
Did you see the President’s email?
He’s calling on his fiercest, most loyal defenders to come
together and stand firm against these nasty WITCH HUNTS from
the Left and the Lamestream media.
As one of his strongest supporters, he was disappointed to
see you hadn’t already activated your status as a Charter
Member and ordered your Official Impeachment
Defense Membership card.
We haven’t shipped out the first round of membership cards
yet because we wanted to give you ONE MORE CHANCE to become a
CHARTER MEMBER and to get on the FIRST list that we send
President Trump.
We are in the fight of our lives right now, and the President
is counting on YOU to be there with him on the front lines of
this nasty impeachment battle.
Remember, your card will be PERSONALIZED with your
information on it so that you can proudly display it and show
America that you stand with President Trump against the
baseless Impeachment Scam!
The deadline to become a Charter Member is 11:59 PM TONIGHT,
so you need to act NOW!
Please contribute $35 TODAY to get your Official Impeachment
Defense Membership Card which will be PERSONALIZED with your
name and Defense Member ID number.
DeVega continues:
Is this a grift? Absolutely. But it is
also something much worse and far more dangerous. Trump is a
lawless president who imagines himself to be a king or
emperor who is above the law. In TrumpWorld, he is the state
and nation. He is the law...
...Donald Trump’s “Official Impeachment Defense
Membership Cards” are a loyalty oath, sworn by those who
stand with Donald Trump against the rule of law, democracy,
and the U.S. Constitution. By implication, Trump’s
membership cards signify membership in a quasi-secret
organization that deems itself superior to outsiders.
There's a lot more to the essay than that, and
I think it's worth a read.
Unpresidential gimmick is not
unprecedented
As DeVega insinuated in the piece cited above, this is not the
first time that the Trump campaign has offered exclusive
"membership cards" to people gullible enough to send
him money. It's been done before.
Many of you may remember the Trump Gold Card, issued during the
2016 presidential campaign. Here's Ian Lang, writing in an August 17, 2016 post on the askmen.com site:
When you think of Donald Trump,
one word comes to mind: Deal. He opposes trade deals. He's
gonna make deals. He wrote The Art of the Deal. But
lest you think those are the extent of Trump's deal prowess,
think again — he's also keen to offer fabulous
deals to his friends and supporters.
Thanks to the Trump campaign text messages I signed up for
that have never ceased to be a source of unintentional
comedy, I was recently notified that for the low, low price of $49 (a discount
of over 75%!!), I could become a gold-card-carrying official
member of Trump's campaign.
That link in the second paragraph of the
snippet above no longer works. Fortunately Lang preserved the
basic info for posterity, not only posting a screen grab from the
Trump promo page, but also quoting the text in full:
Please know that not just anyone is
eligible for Executive Membership. It’s a power, duty, and
responsibility reserved only for those supporters who have
displayed a steadfast commitment to our movement.
They will be the reason we WIN. And I want YOU to join them.
Contribute $200 $49 to
become an Executive Member of the Donald J. Trump for
President campaign.
Lang mulled the meaning of it all.
It's not clear what perks... come with
being an Executive Member of Trump's campaign, nor are the
restrictions for membership beyond "having $49" and
knowing a bargain when you see one.
What is clear, however, is that the Trump
campaign shamelessly used a ploy well-loved by hucksters
everywhere: the fake discount, which arbitrarily listed a
struck-through "regular price," followed by a
"discount price." There was also the blatant appeal to
a (profoundly misguided) sense of elitism and exclusivity, i.e., an attempt to convince potential donors that they were Very
Special People. (Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, to cite just
one example, took this popular scammer strategy to new lows a few
years back with his massive Global Information Network (GIN) scheme, which he promoted as an exclusive club offering
seekrit knowledge previously available only to the world's
elite.) But that should come as no surprise to anyone who has
been following Donald Trump's own Scamworld career, which has
been documented by numerous journalists in recent years, but
was first seriously lambasted by my pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones.
Even the Trump U playbook drew on Scamworld traditions, as I mentioned in a May 2016 Whirled post. The surprise would have been if Trump and his minions
had run his political campaign in a non-scammy way.
One of the marks who fell for the Gold Card scheme ahead of the
2016 election was fake doctor/cancer quack/conspiracy
fan/neo-Nazi/hopelessly devoted Trumpanzee Leonard Coldwell. I made a
brief graphic reference to Lenny's Gold Card purchase in an October 2016 post, but
if you want more substantial proof than a composite photo-illustration created by someone who is
clearly neither a Trump nor a Coldwell fan (which of course is putting it mildly), Lenny provided
the proof himself. He boasted about his acquisition of this
exclusive gem, and shared a picture of it, in a brief blog post
on August 19, 2016, evidence of which you'll quickly see if you
Google "dr. leonard coldwell gold trump card." Alas, if
you follow the actual link, you
will be met with the disappointing message:
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try
refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate
the post.
But Google Image results still display the card
with LoonyC's name on it.
If you know anything about exclusive and elite people, however,
you know that they are never satisfied and are always in search
of something better. That's what makes them so elite, unlike all the rest of us loser sheeple. Accordingly, the Trump campaign came up with
an even eliter and more exclusive card than the Gold Card in
October 2016, as the campaign was coming down to the wire: the Limited Edition Trump Black Card. (And Trump has been lamely trying to play the black card ever since. But I digress.)
The Trump Black Card was more than likely a play on the American
Express black card, the Centurion Card, for which, at the time
the AdAge article linked to above was posted in October 2016, one
had to pay a $7,500 initiation fee and a $2,500 annual fee. But
an exclusively elite Trump supporter could obtain a Trump Black
Card for a one-time donation of only $35.00 or more. The
"more" part was definitely encouraged, and donors were
also given the option to make it a monthly donation. The ad copy
centered, not surprisingly, around attacks on Trump's opponent in
the 2016 race.
Mr. Trump also uses indelicate language
to suggest that the card signifies membership in a group that
will menace Hillary Clinton: "You'll be on a team that
will be sending a message to Crooked Hillary to watch out,
that we're coming for her," Mr. Trump continues.
What the Black Card was at its core, though,
was an indication of desperation as the campaign ran low on
funds. On November 1, 2016, a week before the disastrous election
that paved the way to the living-nightmare "reality"
show in which we're now participating, the Vice.com site posted a piece by Harmon Leon, looking at Trump's increasingly unhinged fundraising
emails. It traces the arc of Trump's campaign messages, from
essentially optimistic and rah-rah to "apocalyptic."
Early in the campaign, as you may recall, Trump continually
boasted about his wealth and the fact that since he was a
gazillionaire, he was self-funding his campaign and couldn't be
bought by special-interest groups and donors. Those of us who'd
been paying attention knew he was full of it even then, but as
the months went by, the money ran low, and the begging began.
Harmon Leon wrote:
By the end of June [2016]... the press
was reporting that the Trump campaign was dangerously low on cash. All of a sudden, the Trump of the emails
went from being a man on an amazing journey to being a man on
an amazing journey who wanted you to pay for it...
...Soon, the whole self-funding thing was forgotten. Trump is
first and foremost a salesman, and soon his fundraising
efforts—the MOST SUCCESSFUL fundraising in HISTORY, he
reminded me—had baroque bells and whistles attached. In
early August, I was being asked to become an Executive Member
of his campaign with a Trump campaign Gold Card, which could
be mine for a one-time induction fee of $100. Trump didn't
really specify what perks you'd get with a Trump Gold Card—but
I assume the card would confirm I hated ISIS and Hillary
Clinton...
By August, Leon noted, Gold Cards were cheaper;
you could now get one for only $35, down from $100.00. And, I
might add, down from even the $49 price that was supposedly a
discount from the original $200 price. I'm a little confused
about what the "original" price was really supposed to
be, but I guess it doesn't really matter, since more than likely
those prices were made-up numbers anyway. I'm pretty sure that
Loony Coldwell got his Gold Card at a fake discount,
since it was fake-discounted in August, and that's when he posted
about it.
Leon continued, noting that the Gold Card was replaced by the
Black Card in October.
(...Trump didn't explain what the
difference was between the Trump Gold Card and the Trump
Black Card—but he implied that the Trump Black Card was of
a higher status than the Trump Gold Card, which would make me
really angry if I already invested in a goddamn Trump Gold
Card...)
Oh, and I was also offered the chance to win a coffee with
Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower, or lunch with Eric Trump. This
is the sort of literal selling of access that is OK to do, I
guess...
There's more, and I urge you to read the entire
piece. In hindsight, though, and despite the implication at the
end of Leon's article that Trump would lose the election, the
unhinged fundraising campaigns did help push him to victory.
My point is that there's a definite precedent for the Impeachment
Defense Membership Card gimmick. This is not the first time Trump
supporters have been offered an "exclusive" card in
exchange for forking over some of their hard-earned bucks.
So what's different now? Isn't this
just another routine Trump grift?
Those are reasonable questions, as is the question
of how the Impeachment Defense Card, as silly as it might be,
differs from any campaign merch -- like a MAGA hat, a T-shirt,
or, for that matter, Elizabeth Warren's Billionaire Tears coffee mug.
As much of a fan as I am of Chauncey DeVega's writing, I think he
sometimes errs a bit on the side of drama, to the point of
alarmism. Even so, I think that, given the entire context of
Trumpism, he's right to be a bit alarmed by this latest
"membership card" scheme. I was pretty disturbed about it
myself, which is why I'm writing this post.
Back in April of this year, when the Trump campaign was
apparently reviving the Black Card, rebranding it as the Official 2019 Trump Executive
Membership Card, DeVega wrote another alarm post for Salon.com, "Echoes of history: Trump's 'movement' now has a
uniform and membership cards."
Granted, the "uniform" to which he alluded is at best
an unofficial one: MAGA caps and the infamous tan khaki pants
worn by so many of the "white supremacist hooligans in
Charlottesville and elsewhere." DeVega said then, as he's
saying now about the most recent Trump card, that these cards
function "both as a loyalty oath and marker of
belonging."
As per usual, the Trump campaign had promoted those
"new" Executive Membership Cards with an email blast
vilifying the liberals, the "witch hunt," and so forth,
and employing the usual inflammatory language. DeVega put it in
context:
When viewed in isolation Trump's
messaging is dangerous enough: these are clear threats to
America's democratic norms, an encouragement to political
violence against liberals, nonwhites, LGBT people and other
"enemies," and reinforcing a cult of personality
led by a man who has contempt for American democracy and the
Constitution, is clearly a pathological liar and is likely a
malignant narcissist who is unmoored from reality.
When viewed in total, however, this fundraising email is
something far worse. Trump is promising an authoritarian
"national renewal" to his white supporters through
a fake populism that nurtures feelings of grievance and
victimhood -- feelings that can only be remedied through
loyalty to the Great Leader and Dear Father...
And DeVega emphasized that this focus on
"movement" above party was used by the Nazis and the
Third Reich "to mobilize their base and its destructive
energies."
This is not a mere foray into Godwin's
law territory. (For that matter, even
Mike Godwin himself said that not every Nazi comparison breaks his famous rule. His declaration was a response to the 2017 Charlottesville awfulness.
And even before that, back in 2015, he didn't categorically dismiss the Trump/Hitler
comparisons. Not that Trump was
particularly bothered, at least in 2015, to those Hitler analogies .)
In any case, DeVega, whose April essay I also urge you to read,
is far from the only person who has compared Trump and America
under GOP leadership with Hitler and Nazi Germany. In October
2018, Christopher Browning, a respected historian specializing
in the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, penned an essay for The New
York Review of Books, noting
"several troubling similarities and and one important but
equally troubling difference" between then and now. Trump
isn't the only culpable one in Browning's essay; Browning
describes Mitch McConnell as "the gravedigger of American
democracy." Browning is clearly worried about the legacy of
Trumpism.
No matter how and when the Trump
presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to
haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will
remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed
by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial
appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division,
cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has
encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal.
Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign
spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an
unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income
disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less
reverse.
It's another essay that's well worth reading.
For those who defend Trump by saying that his
fascist/authoritarian talk is "just rhetoric"... well,
words can and do hurt, as Jonathan Chait pointed out in a June 2019 essay in New York's Intelligencer section. Chait concludes his short piece with a swipe at
right-wing double standards.
What is interesting is the way
conservatives have used the largely rhetorical nature of
Trump’s fascistic politics a defense. Trump can call the
media “enemies of the people” all day long, and we should
shrug because it’s just words. Fascist rhetoric is
meaningless, but anti-fascist rhetoric is an outrageous
slander. What reasonable case is there to hold the president
of the United States to the lowest standard of any public
official?
While left-leaning hyper-partisans often tend to
err on the side of histrionics when it comes to anything
involving Trump, and while I think that's a mistake, I also think
that it's an even graver mistake to err on the side of accepting all of the disruption and destruction as "the new normal." Granted, politics has
become ever more about tribalism in the past couple of decades, and more and more folks are donning partisan blinders and refusing to take them off. Trump didn't start that.
But he has undoubtedly amplified and accelerated the process.
Some insist that even political tribalism may have its limits, and that there still might be hope if people are
willing to emerge from their social media echo chambers. Maybe so, but the problem is pretty complex, and is intertwined with cultural and religious as well
as economic issues. That's a bit beyond the scope of this blog, or at least beyond the scope of a single post.
As things stand now, I think that Chauncey DeVega
and others who are sounding alarms are nailing it. Donald Trump's
latest "membership cards" awarded to his
"impeachment defense Army" may be just another gimmick,
a Trumpian grift modeled on so many other Scamworld schemes.
That's actually bad enough, or at least it's bad if you don't
care for scams. But there's a larger and more disturbing context
as well, and it goes far beyond the endless hawking of political
merch, which is common enough these days and mostly harmless --
although, I should add, there's a valid case to be made that
those infamous Trump MAGA caps aren't just campaign swag but are also
symbols of hate and divisiveness. I
hope I never reach the point where I accept the train wreck that
is Trumpism as "normal."
Related on this Whirled:
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