Clear and Present Danger

Let’s recap.

It wasn’t a Democrat.
It wasn’t a liberal.
It wasn’t a Marxist.
It wasn’t a communist.
It wasn’t a socialist.
It wasn’t a gay person.
It wasn’t a trans person.
It wasn’t a drag queen.
It wasn’t a black person.
It wasn’t a Muslim.
It wasn’t an atheist.
It wasn’t a Jewish person.
It wasn’t an illegal immigrant.
It wasn’t any of the people he said are poisoning the blood of Americans.

He was white and Christian and male and a registered Republican.

No doubt Republicans are very upset that the shooter was not any of these:

An illegal immigrant
A member of “Antifa”
A black man
A Middle Easterner
A democratic activist
A climate activist
A volunteer to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign
A registered democrat

The shooter is none of those things. He now appears to be an isolated white young man with his father’s AR-15. It is a story told over and over and over again.

The howling hyenas in the Republican Party who came out last night blaming President Biden, Democrats in general, the gall of Democrats to point out the threat of Trump’s Project 2025, and DEI are never going to apologize. That is a given.

Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story: “His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. “This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”

Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has tried to distance himself from the radical extremist blueprint outlined in Project 2025, spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Today, videos surfaced of Trump cheering the project on from the start. At a Heritage Foundation dinner in 2022, Trump, slurring his words, said: “Our country is going to hell…. This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do…when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”

On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have “tremendous” overlap. “There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it’s actually good,” Roberts said. “I mean, we’re gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.” He said that Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was “a political tactical decision.” Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that Trump is “very bought in with this.”

The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention.

Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House “by force.” It said that Biden and his administration could “circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.”

There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden: Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021.

Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 34 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment.

While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.

This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer.

Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, “We don’t eat bacon any more.”

Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be.

Luscombe reported that the crowd “appeared mostly subdued,” yawning and playing on their phones.

Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is “the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy.” “If the [Republicans] had any decency left,” it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as “a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.”

Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America, and urged voters “to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”

There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had collected more than $1 billion in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS.

Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible.

Today’s inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by 0.1%, as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers’ wages continue to grow more quickly than prices.

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO executive council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: “Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they’ve never wavered in their commitment to working people.” The Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union quoted that statement and added: “BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.”

In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that “none of you thought that would happen.”

In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs, Biden answered press questions directly and fully, not only on his health but also on foreign affairs. He reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other president,” adding: “And by the way I handed in my notes.” This was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move, Trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

At the same time that Biden was holding a press conference that focused on NATO and foreign affairs, Trump was meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Putin ally Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. On social media this evening, Trump indicated that he is trying to conduct his own foreign policy, although the Logan Act prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, and reiterated his support for Putin’s call for “peace” in Ukraine. Their plan calls for giving Putin the eastern regions of Ukraine that were central to his 2016 support for Trump; Trump’s 2016 campaign manager promised Trump would look the other way as Putin absorbed them.

Orbán, who has openly called for Trump’s reelection, posted: “Peace mission 5.0[.] It was an honour to visit President [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make [peace]. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

Today’s Letter from an American by history professor Heather Cox Richardson had some red flags for the voting public to look out for as we head into these final months before election day. Here are some of the highlights:

Trump’s plan for revenge: Ivan Raiklin. Remember that name. He lives in northern Virginia and tried to run for U.S. Senate in 2018. Heather wrote:

“Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared ‘Secretary of Retribution,’ has compiled a ‘Deep State target list’ of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for ‘treason’ if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

“Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story: ‘His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.’ The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. ‘This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?’ ”

This is not American. This is not even legal; at least, not yet. These are the things we need to hear and read in the news.

Project 2025: I’ve asked before and am asking again – what happened to the Heritage Foundation? Heather wrote:

“On a right-wing podcast yesterday, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that Trump’s agenda and Project 2025 have ‘tremendous’ overlap. ‘There are some quibbles and differences of opinion here and there, which not only is okay, but it’s actually good,’ Roberts said. ‘I mean, we’re gonna be able to sort those out once the presidential administration declares what their priorities are.’ He said that Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the project was ‘a political tactical decision.’ Media Matters uncovered a video in which Project 2025 director Paul Dans said that Trump is ‘very bought in with this.’

“The Heritage Foundation, the key author of Project 2025, is a sponsor of the Republican National Convention.

“Today the Heritage Foundation preemptively accused the Biden administration of cheating in the 2024 election and warned that Biden might try to hold the White House ‘by force.’ It said that Biden and his administration could ‘circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.’

“There is no indication that Biden, who has repeatedly said he will accept the election results, will try to launch a coup against the United States government. In contrast, Trump, who has refused to say he will accept the election result unless he agrees with it, has already done exactly what Heritage is trying to pin on Biden: Trump tried to stay in office against the will of the voters in 2021.”

As I read over the list of author names for various articles of Project 2025, there was former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli writing about Homeland Security. That is not a good thing.

Trump is a convicted felon: He is the Republican 2024 presidential nominee. Heather wrote:

“Trump is currently under criminal indictment for that attempt, although the Supreme Court’s eye-popping July 1 decision in Trump v. U.S. declaring that a president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s ‘official duties’ means Trump can challenge those indictments. Indeed, in the wake of that decision, Trump’s lawyers have filed a motion to vacate the jury’s conviction of Trump on 24 felony counts related to the falsification of business records in his attempt to skew the 2016 election, and to dismiss the indictment.”

NATO: Trump tried during his administration to take the U.S., a founding member, out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He failed then but if given another chance he will go at it again. Heather wrote:

“While the U.S. and our allies celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Erin Banco of Politico reported yesterday that Trump advisors have told foreign officials that Trump plans to scale back U.S. cooperation and support for NATO, including reducing the sharing of intelligence with NATO countries.

“This seems likely to be related to the news that the U.S. intelligence discovered a series of Russian plots to assassinate executives from European defense companies that are supplying arms to Ukraine. Americans took that intelligence to Germany and foiled a Russian plot to kill the chief executive officer of a German arms manufacturer.”

My number one issue is national security. While others claim pro life or other movements as their reason for politics, I have one thing to say: None of that would be possible if you had bombs dropping on your head. Think about September 11, 2001. NATO is essential to maintaining peace in the world, and Trump’s coziness with Putin – the Russians! – to pull the U.S. out cannot happen.

After two weeks on the golf course, Trump reappeared. Here’s what Heather wrote:

“Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, ‘We don’t eat bacon any more.’

“Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be.

“Luscombe reported that the crowd ‘appeared mostly subdued,’ yawning and playing on their phones.”

If you are truly interested in what is going on, I urge you to sign up for Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, Letter from an American. In it, she cites her sources so you can look them up yourself.

This election is vitally important to the future of our country. I pray we go in the correct direction.

Why is “the media” ignoring this extensive report from the White House physician, including a full neurologic workup in February 2024?

Health-Summary-2.28

An extremely detailed neurologic exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy. This exam did again support a finding of peripheral neuropathy in both feet. No motor weakness was detected. He exhibits no tremor. either at rest or with activity. He demonstrates excellent fine motor dexterity. But a subtle difference in heat/cold sensation could be elicited as it was last year. This heat/cold sensation deficit was detected a couple inches higher on his ankle/calf this year, which is not unexpected. There may, in fact, be day to day subjective variation of these findings, as during last year’s exam, this area of sensation deficit was actually found to be smaller than the year before.

A combination of significant spinal arthritis, post-fracture foot arthritis and a sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet are the explanation for the subtle gait changes which I was investigating.

 

Let’s revisit some comments made by Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and architect of Project 2025, when he learned Democrats were making plans to take on Project 2025. Roberts said, “Project 2025 will not be stopped,” and that Democrats are “more than welcome to try” to stop it. He concluded by saying, “We will not give up and we will win.”

Now he’s back at it. On Tuesday, Roberts was on Steve Bannon’s War room. It was minus Bannon, of course, because he’s in federal prison. Instead, Roberts was on with a guest host, Dave Brat.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts told Brat.

Is Roberts threatening violence against people who speak out? What if they protest? What if they vote? He’s saying it will get bloody. The more we learn about Project 2025 and the people behind it, the worse it gets.

You can see the video here.

Roberts’ comments are not something we can just move on from. They must be taken seriously. It’s one thing for conservatives to like some of the policies Trump espouses. It’s an entirely different thing to suggest they’ll use violence against people who don’t agree. Roberts’ words come in a context and that context is Project 2025.

Roberts wrote a 17-page introduction to Project 2025 called “A Promise to America.” It starts on page 34 in this document and you should find time over the long weekend when we celebrate Independence Day to read it. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t recognize Roberts’ vision of America. He seems to live in a fact-free parallel universe where conservative grievances, like these, run wild:

• “Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent.”
• “The noxious tenets of ‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children.”
• “the Dobbs decision is just the beginning.”
• “A combination of elected and unelected bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency quietly strangles domestic energy production through difficult-to-understand rulemaking processes.”
• “Woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon force troops to attend ‘training’ seminars about ‘white privilege.’”
• “When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.

This is just a smattering of the pithy comments Roberts weaves into his argument for a militant brand of authoritarian Christian nationalism. Read that last excerpt again—pursuit of blessedness.

Roberts styles today’s conservative movement as the heir of Ronald Reagan’s conservative movement, something it’s hard to believe the former president, a staunch proponent of the rule of law, would appreciate. Roberts billed himself as “an early American historian” who “love[s] the Constitution” on the War Room podcast. Given that, he seems shockingly unconcerned with abandoning the peaceful transfer of power and ignoring the will of the voters, because that’s what he’s talking about. He’s talking about using violence if the majority of American voters don’t agree with his vision for our country. He’s endorsing another January 6, a bloodletting if liberals won’t cave into his view of how the country should be run. If the left won’t “allow” him to have his way, he’s going to make us give in. That’s the man behind Project 2025.

Kevin Roberts and his comments warrant more than just a quick moment in the news cycle. Roberts is telling us, authoritatively, what’s in store for us if Trump returns to the White House. If you’re talking with friends about what Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 look like and they don’t believe you, if they say you’re overwrought and it won’t be all that bad, tell them they don’t have to believe you—they can hear it from the horse’s mouth.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Let that sink in for a minute.

Okay, I let it sink in.  I served 30 years in the Army, including a year on a place called Vietnam (it’s a couple of paragraphs in the history books) where I carried an M-16 rifle and use it daily for its intended purpose.

You want violence, asshole?  I’ll show you violence.