Monday, March 18, 2024

THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL WON'T SHOW MARK ROBINSON'S TRUE CHARACTER

A couple of weeks ago, North Carolina's sewer-mouthed lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, won the state's Republican gubernatorial primary. As I told you just after Primary Day, The New York Times responded to Robinson's victory with two mealy-mouthed articles that offered only a faint glimpse of the candidate's character and ignorant opinions.

Today, the Times seems intent on making up for that oversight -- but the new Times story isn't much better than the two that preceded it.

I see what happened. A decision was made to answer the question "How would Robinson govern?" rather than "What kind of person is Mark Robinson and is he fit to be governor?" The story implies that those who care about Robinson's character and fondness for extremely online verbal bomb throwing are focusing on the wrong things:
Mr. Robinson’s long history of inflammatory statements has generated a torrent of headlines since he became the Republican standard-bearer in this year’s most closely watched race for governor. But underlying his combative proclamations on race, abortion, education and religion is an exceptionally right-wing worldview — with deep roots in modern evangelical Christianity — that would make him one of the most conservative governors in America if elected.
News readers should be given a sense of how Robinson would govern if elected. But part of knowing how he would govern is knowing how he responds to cultural phenomena he disapproves of, since responding to cultural phenomena loudly and publicly has been such a huge part of his life. Saying he'd be a very conservative governor makes him seem like a normal politician -- maybe a Greg Abbott -- rather than the unserious Internet rage monster he actually is.

This piece, like the two that preceded it, provides a small taste of Robinson's rage without ever revealing it in full -- as if reading the Times is like going to a Hamptons cocktail party and quoting Robinson at length would be rude to the guests.

We're told:
[Robinson] has made comments widely seen as antisemitic. He once quoted Adolf Hitler on Facebook. He described the Parkland school shooting survivors who pushed for gun control as “spoiled, angry, know it all children.”
Let's start with the last example. Robinson didn't just call the Parkland activists "spoiled, angry, know it all children." He also called them "media prosti-tots" and compared them unfavorably to crying babies -- in a Facebook message (which is still up) that he posted less than two weeks after the shooting. Allow me to quote it at some length:
Let me see if I have this correct. A spoiled, angry, disobedient CHILD shot and killed 17 of his classmates, and now spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN are trying to tell law abiding ADULTS that we must give up our Constitutional RIGHT to own certain weapons. Cue Rod Serling because this must be an episode of the Twilight Zone? David Hogg and the rest of these silly little immature "media prosti-tots" need to grab a passy [pacifier], have seat in time out, and shut up. The very ideology of conservatism that your liberal mollycoddling string pullers have taught you to despise is exactly what you and your schools have desperately needed to prevent these massacres as well as the multitude of FAILURES that exist in public education. The conservative principles of excellence, hard work, self respect, RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE, and DISCIPLINE are what your schools need. Instead you have the liberal syndrome of rectal cranial inversion mixed with a healthy dose of just plain evil and stupid permeating your hallways. If, two days before this shooting, a hard nosed nonsense conservative had walked into that school and put into place the ideals and principles that would have avoided that massacre, you spoiled little bastards would have kicked and screamed like babies in a crib. That's what you are doing now. In fact you're doing less than that. A baby's cries are useful and necessary. You are simply making irritating noise.
As for the anti-Semitism, it's remarkable that the Times has published three news stories on Robinson since his primary victory and still refuses to quote his most notorious Facebook post (also still up):
It is at once funny and sad how African Americans need Hollywood to VALIDATE them. I have been bitting my tongue about this silly Black Panther comic book movie, but I can't any longer. It is absolutely AMAZING to me that people who know so little about their true history and REFUSE to acknowledge the pure sorry state of their current condition can get so excited about a fictional "hero" created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?
And yes, Robinson did quote Hitler, and that Facebook post is still up, too:
History who said it #1;
“Pride in one's own race - and that does not imply contempt for other races - is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves... They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong.”
In the current Times story, we are told this:
Mr. Robinson has often appeared at evangelical churches, where he espouses some of his most conservative views.

“That baby in your womb ain’t no clump of cells, and if you kill that child, you’re guilty of murder,” he said in August 2021 at the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh.

The same summer, he told congregants at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, N.C., that “there’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality or any of that filth. And yes, I called it filth.”
I sometimes think that the Times represents a sort of upmarket New York pseudo-liberalism -- pro-choice, in favor of rights for lesbians and gay men, but centrist or right-wing on most other issues (the Middle East, crime, taxes, the rights of trans people). What the Times has published on Robinson has done nothing to make me rethink that theory.

Is Robinson anti-Semitic? Who cares? He's not a pro-Palestinian college student. Is he a Trump-like ignoramus who gets all his ideas from Fox News and other right-wing meme factories? Maybe -- but he might win (the race is close), so he needs to seem as if he's within the pale or right-wing ref-workers will be angry at the Times.

To his credit, Frank Bruni, a North Carolina native, quoted Robinson's “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist” remark in a January 2023 Times newsletter. But the politics desk is still pulling its punches.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

NO EXTREMIST -- YOU'RE THE EXTREMIST

Donald Trump's speech in Ohio last night is getting a lot of attention. Here's the New York Times headline:
Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses
Here's an excerpt from the story:
Former President Donald J. Trump ... gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November....

He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

... If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

... He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”
Notice what's not in these stories: any evidence that Trump is claiming dictatorial powers.

Trump raised a lot of eyebrows in December when he said he wanted to be a dictator, but only on "day one" of his presidency. I think he knows that made him look like dangerous and scary. So what is he doing? He's focusing on the idea that his enemies are the ones who are dangerous and scary.

It's reminiscent of the moment in the third general-election debate in 2016 when Hillary Clinton argued that Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to win "because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States" and Trump replied, "No puppet. You’re the puppet." It's Trump as Pee-wee Herman: I know you are, but what am I?

Democrats say a second Trump presidency will lead to chaos in America? Trump says it's a Democratic victory that will lead to a "blood bath." Democrats say Trump is a danger to democracy? No, Trump says -- it's Democrats who won't allow any more elections to take place if they win. Crime: all the fault of immigrants, and therefore all the fault of Democrats.

Can this work? I don't know. Last month, Ezra Klein -- no not in that column -- quoted a pollster who thinks this could work for Trump:
Kristen Soltis Anderson, a co-founder of the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights, believes that the Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But she thinks they refuse to see that Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching, she said, is a “push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”
I'm sure this works for some people, so it's up to President Biden and his team to out-argue Trump on this. At least recognize that the line of argument allows Trump to sound overwrought and even deranged while claiming that he's worked up because he needs to be worked up to stop the chaos, not to create it. If you buy what he's selling -- and it's possible that some of the people who buy it won't be MAGA cultists -- then this justifies his personal style. So Democrats have to make the case all over again that he will be a chaos agent. They can do it, but they have to recognize that they need to. Trump = chaos might not be obvious to every persuadable voter.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

YOUR REGULAR REMINDER THAT WE KNEW ABOUT KATHLEEN PARKER'S BIGOTRY YEARS AGO

The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker thinks Democrats should dump Kamala Harris. That's a fairly common pundit opinion, but most anti-Harris pundits don't Go There. Harris decides to Go There:
The Democratic Party’s indulgence of identity politics has proved successful in building a diverse organization, but its strategy of courting (and pandering to) minority voters is the road to ruin....

The Kamala conundrum comes down to this: She was picked because she was Black and female, a combo tantamount to job security. Now that she has become a burden to the Democratic ticket, Biden can’t fire her. He can’t risk alienating his base. Full stop.
The "and female" part of "She was picked because she was Black and female" conceals Parker's real point here, which is to attack the Democratic Party for "its strategy of courting (and pandering to) minority voters" (women aren't a minority group). Harris was picked for her race, Parker says, and you can't fire Those People, amirite?

But we shouldn't be surprised at this. Remember what Parker wrote about Barack Obama in 2008:
"A full-blooded American."

That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

... Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?

... It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.
(That last sentence especially infuriates me. Parker seems to accept immigrant group who arrived here "last century" -- but a century ago, those immigrants were the new Americans ... and Parker would have thought they weren't "full-blooded Americans." They include my ancestors, who came to this country from Italy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Parker would consider me a real American, but I don't want her to feel that way about me when she obviously despises the current newcomers just the way so many Americans despised people like my grandparents and great-grandparents. And I'm not sure what this has to do with the native-born Barack Obama in any case.)

A couple of years later, in 2010, we found out that certain other Americans aren't fully American to Parker:
Elena Kagan is miles away from mainstream America

The magnificent author and son of the Great Santini, Pat Conroy, began "The Prince of Tides" with these words: "My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call."

... What is Kagan's geography? What is her anchorage, her port of call?

Coincidentally, she shares the same home town as the other two women on the court. Assuming Kagan is confirmed, all three women will hail from New York. Kagan grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Sonia Sotomayor is from the Bronx and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is from Brooklyn.

If diversity on the court is our goal, we may be missing a region or two.

These facts ultimately may be more anecdotally interesting than significant in terms of how a justice might perform. Then again, spending one's formative years walking past the infamously crime-riddled Murder Hotel en route to school, as Kagan did -- and, say, walking past the First Baptist Church to ballet class -- are not the same cultural marinade.

The latter hypothetical is proffered only for the sake of contrast and metaphor. It seems remote to unlikely that a woman whose life has involved Baptist churches and ballet slippers would find herself on a track to today's Supreme Court....
These Catholics and Jews ... they're perfectly nice people, don't get me wrong, but we're overrun with them! (And I would remind Parker that the person most responsible for packing the Supreme Court with Catholics is the Republican Party's judicial commissar, Leonard Leo. When he picked a woman for Donald Trump, it was Amy Coney Barrett, who's everything Parker wants except Catholic instead of Baptist.)

This is the genteel, moonlight-and-magnolias version of the Great Replacement Theory. At times Parker tried to suppress this side of herself, but it's always an inch below the surface, and it just rose up again.

Friday, March 15, 2024

THE WILLIS DECISION SEEMS LIKE HUR REPORT 2.0

NBC reports:
A Georgia judge ruled Friday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should not be disqualified from prosecuting the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants — with one major condition.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found the "appearance of impropriety" brought about by Willis' romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade should result in either Willis and her office leaving the case — or just Wade, whom she'd appointed to head the case.

The choice is likely to be an easy one: If Willis were to remove herself, the case would come to a halt, but having Wade leave will ensure the case continues without further delay.
The Washington Post calls this "a significant legal victory for Willis." Marcy Wheeler says, "The prosecution will go forward." But will it? And will Willis stay on?

Trump's lawyers clearly want to appeal the ruling:


And by astonishing coincidence, Georgia's governor just so happens to have signed a law this week that could be used to remove Willis:
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the fact that this decision frees Willis to proceed for now but criticizes Willis "tremendous lapse in judgment" and "the unprofessional manner of the district attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing" reminds me of the Hur Report's conclusion that Joe Biden mismanaged classified documents but couldn't be successfully prosecuted because he comes off as an "elderly man with a poor memory." It also reminds me of the original FBI report that cleared Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2016 while chastising her for "extremely careless" email handling. In each case, Republicans were able to continue complaining about pro-Democratic bias even as a Democrat's actions were condemned in a very public manner. Democrats get hobbled; Republicans get to continue playing the victim card. Rinse and repeat.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

VACCINE TRUTHER WHO IS ALSO A SANDY HOOK TRUTHER IS A 9/11 TRUTHER

CNN revealed yesterday that proud COVID vaccine critic Aaron Rodgers, the NFL quarterback who appears to be at the top of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s running mate short list, is also a Sandy Hook truther:
... in private conversations [Rodgers] shared deranged conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real.

CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.

Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.

When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times....

CNN has spoken to another person with a similar story. This person, to whom CNN has granted anonymity so as to avoid harassment, recalled that several years ago, Rodgers claimed, “Sandy Hook never happened...All those children never existed. They were all actors.”
But we already knew that in addition to believing conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and Sandy Hook, Rodgers has also Done His Own Research on 9/11, as Sports Illustrated reported in 2022:
During a recent interview, former Packers quarterback DeShone Kizer said that Aaron Rodgers once asked him whether he “believes in 9/11,” referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, during his first quarterbacks meeting with the team in ’18.

“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’s mouth was, ‘You believe in 9/11?’” he said on The Breneman Show podcast. “‘What? Do I believe in 9/11? Yeah, why wouldn’t I?’”

To which Kizer said that Rodgers simply responded with, “Should read up on that.” Kizer said Rodgers wanted him to do research on some of the conspiracy theories around the event.
Kizer continued:
What it ended up being was just like a real thought experiment where he wanted me to go back and look into some of the conspiracies around it and provoked a lot of great conversation, and we really bonded over that, and we started sharing some books and talking about some other things, and got into history and business and finance.
"History and business and finance"? I bet I know (((where that conversation went))).

Kizer continued:
“Inner Earth, moon landing, reptile people,” he said. “Y’all are laughing. Go do your research, I’m telling you. Go do your research.”

Last month, Rodgers and Joe Rogan expressed their mutual admiration for Alex Jones. You might have seen the excerpted transcript at Media Matters:
JOE ROGAN (HOST): That weird stuff, it used to be so easy to dismiss but now, you know it's the Alex Jones was right meme. Like you realize how many times that guy has been right? Like Jesus Christ, like how is he so good at predicting all of these things that are happening? Because the guy is balls deep in it all day long.

AARON RODGERS (GUEST): Yep.

ROGAN: You could call him right now and it's like "I'm doing a document uh I'm reading research right now this is sick. Here's what they're doing here's the plan." I talk to him all the time. We text each other. Every time something's crazy I'll text him, like what is this? And he'll send me all these documents."

RODGERS: He's talking about uh, I saw something he said the other day about, you know, how you gotta have your shit ready in case they turn the power off, turn the water off.
What that excerpt doesn't tell you is that this came up in the context of a discussion about the death of Stanley Kubrick, a long-time chainsmoker who died of a heart attack at age 70 shortly after completing the conspiratorial film Eyes Wide Shut. There are those who believe that Kubrick was "murdered by way of a Masonic Satanic poisoning in line with the subjects of the film," as Far Out Magazine tells us. Of course Rodgers and Rogan take the conspiracy theory seriously. Listen:



Rodgers also appeared on The Pat McAfee Show last year, when he was recovering from Achilles tendon surgery, and claimed that part of his healing process involved dolphin sex.
“There’s ideas that some of the noises from the dolphins when they’re love-making, the frequency of that is actually healing to the body,” Rodgers said.
It was also on McAfee's show that Rodgers slandered Jimmy Kimmel by suggesting without evidence that the comedian would be found on a list of Jeffrey Epstein's guests. (Kimmel wasn't on the list.)

So what's the latest from the man Robert Kennedy Jr. reportedly wants to put a heartbeat away from the presidency, in the unlikely event that he's elected president?


I wouldn't take any of this seriously except for the fact that Donald Trump's lead over Joe Biden in the polls doubles when Kennedy is included in the polling. Kennedy is polling in double digits, and even if that's three times his vote total in November, he could easily score in the mid-single digits and throw the race to Trump. The FiveThirtyEight polling average says Kennedy has a net favorable rating of +7.8. (Trump is at -10.2, while Biden is at -14.7.) The Biden campaign appears ready to go after Kennedy, but it's a shame he hasn't been attacked all along. He's nutty and dangerous, and I hope every voter understands that by November.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

I'LL SAY IT AGAIN: TRUMP'S NARCISSISM MIGHT BE THE REASON HE DOESN'T DESTROY AMERICA

David Graham of The Atlantic thinks Donald Trump is making the same mistake Barack Obama made:
[Monday] night, Trump’s handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge. The new regime ... fired about 60 employees—about a quarter of the staff—as part of “streamlining.” ...

But some things that are good for Trump are not good for the Republican Party over the long run. This is where Obama offers a cautionary tale.

... Upon winning the presidency, he moved key DNC functions to Chicago, his hometown and political base, despite the protests of party insiders who worried that downballot efforts would be overshadowed by Obama’s reelection campaign. He also created a group outside the DNC, Organizing for America, to support his political movement.

The result was a badly weakened DNC. The national focus led to a neglect of other elections....

As Matt Yglesias calculated in 2017, the Obama years saw Democrats lose 11 Senate seats, 62 House seats, and 12 governorships. The damage was especially bad at the state level. Democrats lost nearly 1,000 seats in state legislatures, the worst loss since Herbert Hoover dragged down the GOP. Republicans captured 29 separate chambers and gained 10 new trifectas—control of both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion....

Echoing Obama’s Chicago move, the RNC is reportedly already moving most of its operations to Palm Beach, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters. All of this makes sense. Trump is a narcissist who can’t and won’t separate his self-interest from the party’s or the nation’s.

Slashing the national footprint of the RNC may weaken the party at lower levels.
Trump's approach seems like Obama's, but pushed to an extreme Obama never approached. Obama may have changed the emphasis of the DNC to some extent, but Trump wants the RNC to be devoted to his interests exclusively.

Which leads me to a point I've made here in the past. It's widely assumed that Trump will gut the federal government if he's elected in 2024. An Axios story sees a link between Trump's RNC purge and his reported plans for the presidency:
President Trump's ousting of a huge chunk of the Republican National Committee's staff is a preview of what he plans to do with federal agencies if he's re-elected in November....

Trump has promised to gut the federal workforce by reintroducing an executive order known as Schedule F if he wins a second term.

As Axios has reported, a consortium of Trump allies are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government if he's elected.

The idea would be to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents and empower Trump to wield unprecedented power.
Yes, but the "consortium of Trump allies" -- the Heritage Foundation and similar organizations -- might be wrong to believe that Trump will use these powers to implement their agenda. What we're seeing at the RNC suggests that Trump will expect these newly installed bureaucrats to work for him, not the conservative movement. Do the members of the consortium want to dismantle the administrative state and turn America into a Christian nationalist country? If so, they shouldn't assume Trump is on board. Trump cares about Trump. If he does to the federal government what he's doing to the RNC, he'll turn it into a machine for doing his bidding, not the Heritage Foundation's.

At least that's my guess. It'll be bad, but not because it's the fulfillment of the conservative movement's darkest wishes. It'll be bad because it'll be a product of Trump's narcissism, not a right-wing extremist group's master plan. Trump doesn't really care about the extremists' theories of government. He just wants subordinates who are completely loyal and do what he wants.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

YOU DON'T THINK THE ROT GOES DEEP BECAUSE YOU DON'T BOTHER TO DIG

The conventional wisdom about the Republican Party tells us that it barely exists, and then only as a vehicle for the ambitions of Donald Trump. Here was that argument being made last week by the editrorial board of The New York Times:
The Republican Party ... has become an organization whose goal is the election of one person at the expense of anything else, including integrity, principle, policy and patriotism.... when an entire political party, particularly one of the two main parties in a country as powerful as the United States, turns into an instrument of that person and his most dangerous ideas, the damage affects everyone.
But the Republican Party is trying hard to elect many party members with extremely bad ideas, not just Trump. Yesterday, Media Matters told us about one awful candidate who hasn't otherwise received national scrutiny:
Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, frequently promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory in newly unearthed social media posts. She also referenced a QAnon-fueled conspiracy theory to suggest that actor Jim Carrey drinks the blood of children.

Morrow['s] ... history includes marching in Washington, D.C., on January 6 (Morrow said that she didn’t storm the Capitol) and attacking public schools as “socialist indoctrination centers.” She espouses anti-LGBTQ views, such as saying during Pride Month in June 2023: “As a nurse, I want you to understand something: There is no pride in perversion.”

Morrow is also anti-Muslim: She has written that the country should “ban Islam” and “ban Muslims from elected offices.”

... Morrow frequently engaged with the [QAnon] conspiracy theory in the lead up to the 2020 election.

One of the movement’s hashtags is WWG1WGA (“where we go one, we go all”). In 2020, Morrow posted the QAnon hashtag at least seven times....

Additionally, in 2020 she promoted the QAnon-fueled adrenochrome conspiracy theory in response to a post about actor Jim Carrey and added the hashtag “JusticeIsComing”. The conspiracy theory essentially claims that elites are harvesting and drinking the blood of tortured children to extend the drinkers’ lives.

Remember that some national media outlets couldn't be bothered to present a complete portrait of Mark Robinson, the anti-Jewish, anti-Black, anti-LGBT candidate who won the GOP gubernatorial primary the same day Morrow won her primary. So it's predictable that she's not getting national coverage.

Please note that Donald Trump has never been in the vanguard of QAnon propagandists -- he plays to the QAnon crowd at times, but QAnon developed without his input, although it has invoked him regularly. This is a reminder that Republican messaging isn't always about Trump. The widespread, ongoing belief in a massive global celebrity pedophile ring focused on adrenochrome doesn't depend on Trump at all, even if he's been seen as the man who'll save civilization from it.

It should be national news when a candidate for statewide office is a conspiracy-believing crackpot, especially in a battleground state and especially when she's running for a position involving the education of children. But the conventional wisdom in our media is that all the rot in the GOP is directly linked to Trump, so nobody cares about downballot candidates in far-flung states.

And now here's a story about a Republican student organization at UCLA that got social media attention yesterday but isn't national news:


This is a step beyond Trump's anti-immigrant message -- which, let's not forget, was the GOP vanguard's message in George W. Bush's second term, when nativists prevented a president of their own party from revising America's immigration laws. At a time when the mainstream media gets the vapors every time an elite Acela Corridor university's student body flirts with anti-Semitism (or even questions Israeli policy in Gaza), shouldn't this bigotry also receive saturation coverage? But it's not happening on the East Coast between Cambridge and D.C., so it didn't really happen.

Dig a bit and you find that the Bruin Republicans Twitter feed is a cesspool, and not always in a Trumpian way. The Bruin Republicans are very fond of Xi Jinping's China, for instance, mostly because it's authoritarian and anti-gay. And today the Bruin Republicans feed is full of praise for Andrew Tate, the Anglo-American ex-kickboxer and (alleged!) sex trafficker, who was arrested again in Romania yesterday:


And here are the Bruin Republicans using the language of the "manosphere"/incel culture to denigrate women at their school. ("Ran-through" is a particularly repulsive term referring to the physical damage manosphere members believe women suffer when they have sex with multiple partners.)


This is the future of the Republican Party, and if the press wanted to cover it -- and express horror about the state of our youth, as happens every time anti-Israel language on an East Coast campus gets heated -- we'd see many, many stories in The New York Times and elsewhere about the Bruin Republicans and similrly inclined GOP youth groups. But the press doesn't care. And so much of America believes that the GOP will be nice and normal once Trump is gone.