Donald Trump & the Iron Triangle
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Dawn Rolen, a flight attendant from Waxahachie, Tex., called Trump “my president” and lavished praise on him.
“I’m a Republican, but it’s not about the left and the right anymore,” said Rolen, 54. “It’s about good and evil. Trump is good, and the liberals, I don’t know what the hell happened to them. They are out of their mind.”
— kicker quote in a Washington Post essential read
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Let us stipulate, so there is zero confusion, that a once and potentially future president of the United States who falsely claims an election was stolen (and has regularly taken other steps to undermine truth and civic order) is much worse by every measure for America than the pernicious influence of the Iron Triangle made up of Democrats-Dominant Media-cultural institutions.
But that stipulation doesn’t solve the problem.
Let’s all be about solving the problem.
Start with The Presumption of Grace.
Then move to trying to see all sides, even if all sides are not created equal.
The Iron Triangle is obsessed with Donald Trump, in some cases in order to try to hold him accountable and to keep him from retaking the White House.
But in many cases the “obsession” is driven by the incentives in the system that have many Iron Triangle actors addicted to Trump, building their actions, rhetoric, and news products around him every chance they get.
Trump’s Saturday night rally discussion of potential pardons for 1/6ers and his call for mass protests to counter any legal action brought against him were horrible in every way. They should be reported and denounced.
But are they really worthy of the endless coverage they are both sure to get? Does harping on them on balance help America? Or does it help the clicks and ratings of a few places? There are “news” people who lead with or write about Donald Trump literally every possible chance they get, even making up chances that aren’t really there.
Again, there are no easy answers here. But we need to work together on some tactics and strategies.
Imbibe every word of that Washington Post essential read that uses Trump’s Saturday night rally as the prism through which to view the former president’s role in the midterms.
That’s a worthy topic, to be sure.
But this is about way more than the midterms. This is about the soul of a nation and trying to end the longest war in American history.
Here’s one bit from that story, a long quote filled with meaning from one of the deans of American political consulting:
Asked about Trump’s comments, Dave Carney, a top political adviser to [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott, said Trump is an unquestionable asset for Republicans including Abbott. He cited the former president’s popularity in Texas.
“Overall it was an excellent event for everyone involved,” he said. “Folks should worry about their own campaigns and let Trump be Trump. I don’t know why smart people think they can dictate to him. He has been successful. He wiped out 17 other folks. He crushed Hillary Clinton, and sometimes smart people spend too much time thinking about what he should say. Most people agreed with the president on the vast majority of things. Nobody agrees with someone 100 percent of the time.”
That quote contains equal parts wisdom, cynicism, and extreme danger.
Or check out the essential read of the New York Times, on coordinated efforts by MAGAville to elect Big Lie Republicans to secretaries of state slots in a bunch of states, including some Purple ones.
This is serious stuff. As a country, we can’t be neutral about the prospect that individuals who are either lying about or deluded about the 2020 election would become major election administrators in states that could pick the next president.
But we also have to appreciate that about half the country doesn’t see neutrality in how reality is shaped by the media.
Consider the current news cycle – and ask yourself how things would go in the news if the shoe were on the elephant and not the donkey:
1.
2. New York Democrats are on track to put in place a congressional redistricting map that is as aggressive and partisan as any Red state has tried – and Eric Holder’s silence can be heard from Albany to Albany.
3. The Dominant Media echo chamber on the latest New York Post exclusive on Hunter Biden (“Hunter Biden and associates received 2019 subpoena over business deals in China”) will contain about as much pickup as it did over the New York Times weekend exclusive on the left’s use of dark money to beat Donald Trump – again, about as much as Eric Holder will complain about the New York map.
Trump’s palace of lies is bad; the practices of the Iron Triangle are bad. They aren’t equally bad.
This never-ending cycle of recrimination is really bad.
Don’t just watch it happen.
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ESSENTIAL READING
1. The Washington Post nicely sets up the immediate Russia moment:
World leaders are applying diplomatic pressure on Russia ahead of a series of meetings over the Ukraine crisis, including a United Nations Security Council session Monday that U.S. diplomats say will offer a chance for Moscow officials to “explain themselves” on the international stage.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in coming days, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will also probably speak again this week, a senior State Department official said, after earlier efforts by the top diplomats to reach a resolution were unsuccessful.
2. The Wall Street Journal news section wanted to start the week by updating its readers on where Democratic efforts on Build Back Better stand.
A very practical, even lofty, goal.
However, the tragic-comic reality/impact of these three paragraphs (read them closely!) says less about the Journal than about the plight that Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer now faces:
Many Democrats see roughly $550 billion of incentives for reducing carbon emissions, which Mr. Manchin has indicated he supports, as core to the package, along with programs to lower prescription drug prices and subsidize health-insurance coverage. They also hope to include funding for universal pre-K and child-care subsidies, along with a series of tax increases on corporations and very-high-income Americans….
Absent from such a package could be provisions like funding for housing, Medicare coverage for hearing and an expansion of the child tax credit, which many Democrats have embraced as a central party goal….
“It looks like we will probably never pass Build Back Better, but we might be able to pass those things in Build Back Better,” said Rep. Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.), the No. 3 House Democrat. He added that his priorities were restoring the enhanced child tax credit and including provisions to make housing more affordable.
3.
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