F**king Mondays: America On The Precipice, Positive Polls For Biden, And Trump Evades Justice (Again)
Your favorite column to start the week off!
Note from Ben: We’ve had a huge influx of new subscribers to The Banter over the past few days, so I wanted to welcome you all and give you a quick rundown of what to expect from our corner of the interwebs. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, you might not agree with everything we write here. I say this given we’ve lost, and gained large numbers of subscribers over things we’ve written in recent weeks.
Generally speaking, Bob Cesca, Justin Rosario and myself cover politics from a center left perspective, although not uniformly. I am generally opposed to left wing identity politics, while Bob and Justin are more sympathetic. I have argued Biden should step down in favor of another candidate. Bob and Justin have argued the opposite. We also have differing views on the Israel/Palestine conflict and a number of other issues.
We do however agree that the alt political movements on both sides are terrible, and that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is an existential threat to America. If that sounds like your cup of tea, read on!
Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays,” a roundup of stories to get your week started!
On the precipice
I updated the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast with my thoughts on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday. Here is the transcript:
At this moment we know very little about the suspect. According to the AP: “The FBI named Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspected shooter behind the assassination attempt. Law enforcement officials told AP that bomb-making materials were found inside the vehicle of the suspect and inside his home.”
From what we know, he was a registered Republican and used an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle. His motivations are unknown.
First of all, this was a terrible, terrible event. Political violence, and particularly assassinations are bad in every way. We do not want to be living in a country where this kind of violence is normal.
Of course this is America, and it has a long and storied history of political violence. But the country has come a long way, and political violence is, at least relatively speaking, rare.
The assassination attempt on Trump was, I believe, catastrophic for the election.
While I am glad Trump survived the shooting, there is no doubt that it will quite significantly shift the race in his favor. The former president has cast himself as a persecuted hero, a victim of the Deep State, fighting the Woke Elite dedicated to destroying him. Regardless of who the shooter was, or their political affiliation, Trump will shamelessly use it to further that narrative. He will help spread baseless conspiracy theories, monetize it, and use it to mobilize his base like never before. Right wing Twitter was in full conspiracy mode last night, lionizing Trump for surviving the shooting, and blaming Democrats and Joe Biden for — wait for it — “violent rhetoric”.
The truth of course, is that Trump and the MAGA movement is overwhelmingly responsible for violent rhetoric in politics. Trump has routinely threatened political opponents, encouraged violence, and even incited a violent attempt to overthrow the US Capitol. The left is not entirely innocent, but study after study paint a very clear picture of who is perpetrating political violence in America. And it isn’t even close. A recent University of Maryland study showing that right wing extremists are almost twice as likely to use violence than left wing extremists.
Unfortunately in the social media era, facts and evidence count for little. Reality is dictated by who controls the narrative. Unfortunately for the country, Donald Trump now controls that narrative, and the only job Democrats now have is to wrestle it back in time for November.
After president Biden addressed the nation yesterday evening, I haven’t changed my mind completely, but I do think it will benefit Biden, potentially significantly. Biden gave a calm, reassuring speech urging Americans “to cool it down."
"The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated," Biden said. "Politics should never be a battlefield or, god forbid, a killing field."
The Biden campaign immediately stopped running campaign ads against Trump, outlined a plan to independently investigate the shooting, and Biden even called Trump to wish him well. This of course is far more than Donald Trump would have done if the roles were reversed, and yet another reminder of why it is important to have rational adults running the government. Biden’s speech was very presidential and will likely dent Democratic efforts to get him to step aside.
I am still deeply worried about how this will effect the election given the reaction by the right. I spent a lot of time monitoring Twitter and was dismayed by what I saw. Even as facts about the shooter emerged, the MAGA crowd refused to deviate from their new narrative: this was an orchestrated attempt by the DNC and the Deep State to take out Donald Trump:
And that was from a sitting member of Congress.
I am continually amazed by the alt right’s ability to invert reality. Trump could have been shot by Steve Bannon and his supporters would maintain Joe Biden was responsible. The election will again be a verdict on which reality America wants to accept: actual reality, or the alt universe as dictated by Donald Trump.
Viral posts
A note I posted on Substack in the aftermath of the shooting on Saturday has gone seriously viral for reasons best known to the internet Gods:
I’m getting a lot of pushback from my post from the MAGA set, because apparently calling Trump a wannabe dictator caused him to get shot:
Just a quick reminder: Trump has repeatedly praised dictators, sided with Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine, tried to overturn a democratic election in his own country, incited a violent coup on the Capitol, pledged to use the justice department to lock up his political enemies, and refused to accept the vote in November before any ballots have been cast.
It’s a shame Trump got shot, but let’s not pretend he is an American hero.
It’s the Electoral College, duh.
While much of the polling looks pretty grim for Joe Biden right now, this Five Thirty Eight simulation has Biden winning the Electoral College by 14 votes:
The race is, and always was, about eking out a victory in the swing states, so despite Biden’s terrible approval numbers, there are some real positives to double down on. A lot of this movement is no doubt due to the extremely shrewd strategizing of Jennifer O’Malley Dillon who has been busy building a network of formidable ground organizations in the swing states. The Biden campaign is pouring money into ads too, and it looks like the strategy is starting to pay off.
Trump evades justice (again)
Donald Trump may be the luckiest man alive. Not only did he dodge a literal bullet on Saturday, his hand picked judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified documents case today on the extraordinary basis that “the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution.” Via The New York Times:
A federal judge dismissed in its entirety the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump on Monday, ruling that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution.
In a stunning ruling delivered on the first day of the Republican National Convention, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, found that Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel was improper because it was not based on a specific federal statute and because he had not been named to the post by the president or confirmed by the Senate
The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was put on the bench by Mr. Trump, flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era. And in a single swoop, it removed a major legal threat against Mr. Trump just as he is set to formally become the Republican nominee for president.
The decision will be obviously be appealed given Cannon’s ruling is transparently ridiculous, and there is little chance it will stand. But appeals can take a very, very long time, and when a ruling occurs Trump could very well be president again. With a Trump run DoJ, the case will be dropped and Trump fully exonerated. This of course was Cannon’s plan all along.
If you want to understand how fascist takeovers occur, the corruption of the legal system is often the first step. Trump’s first term laid the groundwork for this corruption, and now we are seeing the results.
See you next week!
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Glad to see new subscribers, as the erosion of a fraction of your readers spotlighted the situation all media platforms are in, in terms of telling the truth OR appeasing their readers and feeding them the content they want to hear. Did FOX ever actually pay the judgement to Dominion? Or is that on endless appeal? I see the same compromises with my NYT and WaPo subscriptions, truly top notch journalism sitting side by side with awful and uncontested op-eds meant to placate the Right. WaPo in particular has been using their Style and Culture pages to prop up MAGA talking points and paint their extreme nut jobs in a sympathetic light (style puff pieces on Boebert, Noem, MTG). As for today's news, at first I was afraid -- I was petrified -- that Cannon threw out the lawsuit, but then realized this FINALLY gets it outside her control where it can be appealed. No matter what, the case is gone if Trump wins in November, but if DEMS prevail, at least Smith has a chance of moving it out of Cannon Purgatory.
“While I am glad Trump survived the shooting, there is no doubt that it will quite significantly shift the race in his favor”
I’m glad he survived, too. It is ESSENTIAL that he stand trial, be found guilty (as the evidence shows he should) and, most importantly, that all his cultists see that without a doubt there are consequences. That they are NOT immune.
I disagree strongly on the attempt advantaging Trump at all let alone significantly. Those already planning to vote for him will still do so. Those supporting Biden are not going to say “I was opposed to Trump, but now I feel sorry for him so I’ll vote for the fascist.”
The undecideds are of course the pivot point (damn their indecisive stupidity) and I don’t see this changing much of their minds either. Not with Project 2025 starting (finally!) to make news and Republicans inevitably over playing their “we’re the victims card”. Their hypocrisy on “violent rhetoric of Democrats” is already getting notable pushback. And a few well made ads by Dems could pound that home.