Trump is a loser. Tell a friend.

January 11, 2024

Readers frequently comment on my newsletters by writing, “You used word X; you should have used word Y.” Sometimes the comments are well-taken, but much of the time, my (silent) reaction is, “We aren’t going to change the course of history through vocabulary.” But Trump's effort to return to power may be the exception.

Trump is a loser. A spectacular one. He is the living embodiment of the punchline to the joke, “How do you make a small fortune in New York real estate?” Answer: “Start out with a large one.” His companies have been through half-a-dozen bankruptcies. The failure of his Taj Mahal Casino helped turn Atlantic City into a “ghost town.” He is such an unreliable credit risk that American banks stopped dealing with him in the 1990s.

Trump is a loser. He is the only president ever to be impeached twice. He is the only major presidential candidate to lose the popular vote twice. He is the only major presidential candidate to be indicted once—let alone four times. He is the first president in nearly a century to lose the House, the Senate, and re-election. He is the only major presidential candidate who has been adjudged (in a civil case) to have raped a woman.

Trump is a loser. When he traveled internationally as president, foreign leaders laughed at him behind his back. When he addressed the UN Assembly, world leaders laughed at him to his face. He has made some of the most ignorant comments ever by a US president, suggesting that Covid victims “inject bleach” and that they “shine a light inside their bodies.” And during an eclipse visible from Washington, D.C., Trump did the one thing that observers of eclipses are NEVER supposed to do—he removed his protective eye gear to look directly at the sun.

Despite the fact that Trump is a historic loser, he has somehow convinced tens of millions of Americans that he is “a stable genius” who would defeat a combined presidential ticket of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We should not add to Trump's false mythology by unintentionally ascribing stature or influence he does not have.

Two days ago, readers of this newsletter posted a link in the Comment section to an article by Jason Sattler published on the Substack blog, Framelab. The article is entitled, Why Trump wants you to compare him to Hitler | Because then you’re not calling him a loser.

Sattler’s article is brilliant, and I highly recommend it. But in case you don’t get around to reading the article, the gist of Sattler’s argument is that Trump wants us to compare him to Hitler—because that comparison normalizes the notion that Trump will regain power as an autocratic strongman.

Sattler writes:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism, seems to think the Hitler stuff is a trial balloon. Trump is seeking to “dehumanize immigrants now so the public will accept your repression of them when you return to office.”

[T]hat thought gets us talking about exactly what Trump wants on our minds — him in power. He’s preemptively framing himself — as a strongman, an agent of revenge, and the ultimate enforcer of unsustainable hierarchies.

Sattler goes further, asserting that we are doing a favor for Trump by calling him Hitler:

When you’re calling Trump a dictator, think about what you’re not calling him.

You’re not calling him a loser who never has and never will win the popular vote. A fraud. A traitor. Instead, you’re repeating his slander of immigrants and propping up his stature. You’re doing him a huge favor.

Basically, we’re getting fooled again.

There is wisdom in Sattler’s analysis—to a point. We should not fall into the trap of assuming that Trump will succeed in becoming a Hitler-like dictator who will impose martial law on “day one” of his second term in office. If we do that, we make it more likely that Trump will succeed in his effort to be re-elected.

In other words, we should not grant Trump superpowers he does not possess. The man is a loser and a miserable human being who is disliked by almost everyone who has the misfortune of dealing directly with him.

But Trump is not only a small, insecure, petulant loser; he also exercises outsized influence over tens of millions of Americans. It would be foolish to stop talking about the existential danger that Trump presents to our democracy. For example, we know that Trump asked his former Secretary of Defense why federal troops couldn’t “shoot protestors” on the National Mall protesting the murder of George Floyd.

Two things are simultaneously true—and they are not in contradiction: Trump is a loser and he is a dangerous threat to our democracy. We can prevent him from becoming Hitler’s protege by reminding voters that he is a loser who has lost more than any other presidential candidate in history—and that he will lose again in 2024.

Don’t build an aura of inevitable victory around Trump. Instead, build an aura of inevitable defeat around Trump. He is a loser. He has always been a loser. And he will always be a loser.

Licensed via Getty Images.  

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Speaker Mike Johnson fails key test.

Before legislation can be moved to the floor of the House for a vote, the Speaker of the House files a procedural motion to establish the “rules” for voting on the legislation on the House floor. The vote on “the rules” is pro forma and entirely partisan: The majority party votes in lockstep to approve the motion and the minority party votes against it.

But on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson could not muster members of the GOP caucus to provide a majority vote to pass the rule. Indeed, twelve Republicans voted against a pro forma procedural motion. You will recall that a similar procedural failure preceded the removal of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. See The Hill, Conservatives tank procedural vote in revolt against Johnson’s spending deal.

After Speaker Johnson attempted to persuade the GOP caucus to support the spending bills according to the levels agreed to by Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Schumer, some members of the caucus left the meeting muttering that Johnson was the wrong guy for the job. Johnson immediately fled to Fox News, asking for Trump to rally the Republican members around Johnson. See Talking Points Memo, Johnson Forced To Beg For Trump’s Mercy.

What will happen? The votes will become more difficult and create more hard feelings in the GOP caucus. In the meantime, Congress has a budget to pass. It is not clear how that is going to happen. Stay tuned!

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Chris Christie drops out of 2024 presidential race by dropping truth bomb. 

What happened? Chris Christie dropped out of the 2024 GOP presidential primary. In doing so, he dropped a series of truth bombs that should make for uneasy sleep for hundreds of Republican elected officials who have lined up behind Donald Trump. The remarkable speech by Christie is here: C-SPAN, Chris Christie Makes Campaign Announcement in Windham, NH.

Christie launched a broadside attack on his competitors for the nomination, saying that Donald Trump won the nomination the moment that all of them (except Christie) raised their hands to say they would support Trump for president even if he is convicted of a crime. Christie continued,

[A]nyone who is unwilling to say that he is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.

Christie also called his colleagues in the GOP cowards and hypocrites, saying

[A] ll they did was voice their opposition in private, behind closed doors, quietly, so no one could hear. That's not leadership. That's cowardice. It's cowardice and it's hypocrisy.

As a party, we need to be willing to take the responsibility for the part we have played in getting here. Our country is angry. It's divided. It's accomplishing little. And it is leading our citizens to be exhausted.

[J]ust look at what's happening just in the last few days. Good people, who got into politics for the right reasons—people like Senator John Barrasso and Congressman Tom Emmer—stand up and endorsed Donald Trump. They know better.

Why it matters. Christie said out loud what millions of Republicans and Independents are thinking and saying behind closed doors. If his words move a fraction of those voters to change their loyalties away from Trump (or cause them to stay home), that may make the difference between victory and defeat in swing states.

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An analysis of the D.C. Circuit hearing on presidential immunity.

George Conway (a Supreme Court practitioner), has penned an analysis of the oral argument before the D.C. Circuit on Trump's presidential immunity appeal. See George Conway, The Atlantic, Trump’s Lawyer Walked Into a Trap. Larry Tribe recommended this article in a post on Twitter, so I read the article—which was worthy of Professor Tribe’s recommendation.

Conway’s analysis is superb, in part because he makes an observation that has eluded other commentators. It is this: Trump makes two weak arguments—that he is absolutely immune from prosecution and that the Impeachment Judgment Clause prohibits prosecution of a president unless the president is impeached and convicted in the Senate.

Obviously, those two positions are in conflict—one posits absolute immunity, and the other posits qualified immunity. When Judge Pan questioned Trump's attorney about the Seal Team Six assassination hypothetical, Trump's attorney conflated the two positions in an attempt to wriggle out of Judge Pan’s hypothetical. That was a mistake. Trump's attorney inextricably tied the fate of the two arguments to the weaker argument. Or, as Conway writes,

[A]ppellate courts usually don’t find convincing a litigant’s efforts to combine two weak points in order to make a stronger one. Usually, the weakness in one bad argument bleeds into the other, and vice versa—producing a sum that is even less than its parts. And that’s what happened here.

Conway believes that the Court of Appeal will find that it has jurisdiction but rule against Trump on the merits. That seems like a high-probability outcome. Trump will then appeal to the Supreme Court.

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Communicating to younger voters through TikTok, Instagram, and other social media.

Readers frequently bemoan the difficulty of reaching younger voters. I occasionally get feedback from readers that says, “You’re preaching to the choir.” While that seems like an unfair criticism of a newsletter where readers need to voluntarily subscribe, I take the point that each of us has an obligation to reach younger voters.

DemLabs has published an informative note about TikToks made by interns for Students for Justice. The TikToks are then converted into Instagram posts. See Deepak Puri, DemLabs, Student activists make great TikToks.

The paid interns are from Students for Justice (SFJ), which was created in 2020 to engage college students in the struggle to fight systemic voter suppression and to turn out the vote.  SFJ is an initiative of the Center for Common Ground.

Two points: First, check out the post by DemLabs (above) to see if you are interested in getting help in creating social media for your organization. DemLabs will help your organization pro bono. Second, if you are interested in donating to Students for Justice so they can continue to make high-impact social media posts that reach tens of thousands of voters, check out the links in the DemLabs post, above.

 

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Opportunities for reader involvement.

See the following post from 31st St Swing Left about an important initiative to create an alternative media narrative to the anti-incumbent narrative dominant in most major media.

As readers know and lament, Republican lies achieve a media drumbeat with frustrating regularity due to the echo chamber of right-wing outlets. On Wednesday, January 17, 7:00 p.m. Eastern 31st St Swing Left will host a fundraising Zoom in hopes of raising $120,000 to support a project fueled by Courier Newsroom’s journalism to create comparable drumbeats for facts in Pennsylvania in 2024.

Join us for a case study from the recent PA Supreme Court election in which Courier reporting (“content organizing”) led to sustained abortion rights messaging across multiple media channels. Voters—including younger voters reached through TikTok influencers—found the depth and breadth of the messaging very compelling.

Courier Newsroom is growing to be a pro-democracy media powerhouse. In a one-two punch for the truth, 31st St.’s support for PA content organizing complements funds raised by Focus For Democracy for recruitment of subscribers to Courier’s email newsletters.

Click here to join our fundraiser: Wednesday, Jan. 17, 7pm ET or Donate Here!

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Concluding Thoughts.

We face a complicated situation. We must be strong, aggressive, and unrelenting in our efforts to preserve democracy. It cannot be otherwise—because those who seek to end democracy will stop at nothing to achieve their goals—including resorting to violence, corruption, judicial intimidation, and lies.

We must match the anti-democratic forces stride-for-stride in determination, effort, and persistence. But we must not become them. Our efforts must be honest, transparent, and above board—because we are fighting for the hearts and minds of decent Americans who seek a democracy worthy of the Constitution. They will neither believe nor trust us if we stoop to the level of those undermining democracy.

What words should we use? All of them—especially the good ones. They should be short, solid, and powerful. And true. We must say the most important thing first. Set aside artifice. Speak plainly. Know when to speak, when to stop, and when to listen—and when to move on to more fertile ground.

As I said, it’s complicated. And simple. Donald Trump is a loser. Joe Biden is a good and decent man working to save democracy. Biden needs our help. Let’s give it to him.

Talk to you tomorrow!