Step Up and Accept Your Trophy, You Twisted, Gaslighting Tools.
Posted by Ed Folsom, July 18, 2024.
The “Act Blue,” “Progressive Turnout Project” Pod and its Connection to Juan Merchan’s Judicial Ethics.
President Biden placed judicial ethics back in the public spotlight yesterday with his announcement of planned actions that include an ethics code for the U.S. Supreme Court. Speaking of judicial ethics codes, what political act do the following people all have in common: Trump’s attempted assassin, Matthew Thomas Crooks; the trial judge in Trump’s New York “hush money” trial, Juan Merchan; and congressional baseball game shooter James Hodgkinson? Answer: They all made political contributions to Democrat causes through “Act Blue.” Crooks and Merchan each specifically earmarked their contributions for the “Progressive Turnout Project” – Crooks in the amount of $15.00 in 2021, and Merchan in the amount of $10.00 in 2020. As for the judicial ethics code part, Merchan violated New York’s judicial ethics code to make his contribution. He also earmarked another $10.00 unethical contribution to “Stop Republicans” on the same date.
Of course, Merchan didn’t use a gun against any Republican politicians. So, is it fair to mention him alongside Crooks and Hodgkinson? Here’s the thing — with judicial ethics back in the news, it’s important to keep in mind that a judicial ethics code doesn’t do much to protect against partisan hackery unless the code is taken seriously. In Merchan’s case, New York’s code prohibited him from making political contributions. But he did it anyway. The ethics panel dismissed the complaint and cautioned Merchan.
One of Merchan’s contributions was earmarked for Joe Biden’s campaign. O.K., so he liked a particular politician and contributed to his campaign. That shouldn’t be horribly unsettling to anyone appearing in a case before him.
But Merchan’s second contribution was earmarked for “Stop Republicans.” That should be very unsettling to any Republican politician who appears before him. It signals not just that Merchan favors a particular politician from the other major political party but that he actively seeks to “stop” their own political party.
And Merchan’s third unethical political contribution was to the “Progressive Turnout Project.” Now we are told that Trump’s attempted assassin, Thomas Crooks, made only one political contribution in his life, which also happened to be to the “Progressive Turnout Project.” It’s a bad look for Trump’s New York trial judge to have made an unethical political contribution to the only political organization Trump’s would-be assassin ever donated to.
It’s a bad look that Merchan could have avoided simply by adhering to his code of ethics. Or, he might at least have recused himself from sitting on a criminal case against former President Trump, leader of the party that Merchan contributed money to “stop.” But judicial ethics codes are only as good as their enforcement teeth and the ethics of the judges governed by them, as Merchan demonstrates.
So much for judicial ethics codes. Now let’s return to the shootings and attempted murders of Republican politicians and to “Act Blue” contributors Crooks and Hodgkinson.
The “Progressive Turnout Project” did not get off the ground until the 2018 election cycle. For that reason, Hodgkinson never had the chance to specifically earmark an “Act Blue” contribution for the “Progressive Turnout Project.” Hodgkinson didn’t make it to 2018. Instead, he was killed by police in June of 2017 while shooting up a congressional baseball game, but not until he managed to shoot Republican Congressman Steve Scalese and four others.
Going under the assumption that Crooks probably wouldn’t have tried to shoot Donald Trump in the head if he wasn’t a Trump hater, Crooks and Hodgkinson had Trump hatred in common, too. Hodgkinson was a former campaign volunteer for Bernie Sanders who was very active on social media. According to CNN, in March of 2017, he posted on his Facebook page: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”
Before that, in February of 2017, Hodgkinson posted, “Republicans are the Taliban of the USA.” CNN also reported that “His favorite television shows were listed as ‘Real Time with Bill Maher,’ ‘The Rachel Maddow Show,’ ‘Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” And, “He had also joined several anti-GOP Facebook groups, including ‘Terminate The Republican Party;’ ‘The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans;’ and ‘Join The Resistance Worldwide!!’”
The Same TrumpHate that infected Hodgkinson has been washing over “progressives” all around us.
Now, let me tell you about my neighbor. He is a fairly typical local guy who has been bathing for years in the same Blue TrumpHate that once bathed James Hodgkinson. To protect my neighbor’s identity, I will call him Zeke. One day this spring, while Zeke was ranting against Tucker Carlson and Republicans who he claimed obstructed Democrats’ attempts to secure the southern border, Zeke blurted out, “Trump is worse than Hitler.”
Zeke and I live in a middle to upper-middle class suburban neighborhood of single-family homes. He has been steadily employed in a white collar job at the same well-respected company for well over 20 years. Outward appearances do not immediately give him away as a bomb-thrower or a person likely to spout the lunatic proposition, “Trump is worse than Hitler.” Yet during the George Floyd riots of 2020, Zeke put up a Facebook post calling for people to “Burn it down,” or maybe it was, “Burn it all down.” And there he was within the past few months, spouting exactly the lunatic proposition that “Trump is worse than Hitler.” What could possibly make him think that talking that way won’t mark him as a lunatic and get him ostracized from polite society? Answer: It is his in-group norm to spout such lunacy. It’s a tribal virtue signal.
Of course, lots of people have been smearing Trump as a Hitler figure for years now, including President Biden and his campaign staff. It’s a time-worn Democrat tactic. They did it to George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon too. But Zeke said Trump is worse than Hitler. And in my experience, Zeke doesn’t come up with his leftist political talking points on his own. When Zeke spouts political lunacy, it’s the same lunacy that so-called “progressive” Democrats are spouting nationally.
For example, when Zeke posted “Burn it down,” it was in the heady days of the BLM/Antifa riots, when leading-edge “progressives” put out the call to burn it down – when they were in the streets actually burning things down. Later, in 2020, when then-President Trump was released from the hospital after being treated for a COVID-19 infection, Zeke was angry. He told me that he had been hoping Trump would die. Those were the days when social media was full of lefty celebrities wishing death on people who failed to sufficiently toe their party line on COVID-19. On a personal note, I got suspended from Twitter back then for replying to a tweet by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin who gleefully gloated when Herman Cain died with COVID-19. I said she was a “ghoulish wench.” Twitter suspended my account until I removed the tweet. Conversely, Rubin’s tweet celebrating Cain’s COVID death stayed up.
That, I suspect, is the kind of thing that emboldened Zeke to just come right out and pronounce his anger that Trump did not die from his COVID-19 infection. The “progressives” who set the terms of appropriate public discourse by example led Zeke to believe it was perfectly acceptable to root for Trump’s death. In fact, when I asked him, later on, how he rationalized it to himself, he told me he had thought about it and that it just reflects how much he cares. Any good and decent person must also want Trump dead, you see? What’s wrong with you that you don’t want Trump dead? After all, Trump is “worse than Hitler.”
Could it be that, in our discussion this spring, Zeke was taking his lead from leading “progressives.” Is it possible that “progressive” leaders have been spouting that Trump is actually worse than Hitler? Sure enough, it’s entirely possible. There’s footage out there of Democrat Claire McCaskill, former Senator from Missouri, on MSNBC, explaining that Trump is more dangerous than Hitler and Mussolini because he doesn’t have an ideology like they did – instead, he only wants to look in the mirror and see himself as president. I guess McCaskill thinks it’s a good thing Mussolini had his Italian Fascism and Hitler had his National Socialism. Otherwise, there would have been serious trouble.
Is McCaskill incoherent? Sure. But the important thing for her is to make the claim – “Trump is more dangerous than Hitler and Mussolini!” Bait the boobs! Fire up the mob! Definitely, the boobs have been baited — the mob has been fired up.
Actually, the Democrats started baiting and firing up their boob mobs against Donald Trump long before they started saying in public that they wanted him dead from COVID-19. Back in 2017, when Hodgkinson shot Scalese and four others after ranting on social media about destroying Trump, the 3-year Trump/Russia collusion hoax was in full swing, stoked by the Hillary Clinton-commissioned Steele dossier, with collaboration from the FBI and a media complex that told us daily that the smoking gun evidence of “Putin stooge,” “Putin puppet” Trump’s collaboration with Russia to steal the 2016 election was about to drop, any minute. Oh, that scourge! That wrecker of Our Democracy™! That Trump, who hacked the 2016 election in collusion with Putin’s Russia!
And even before that, on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump was inaugurated as President, Madonna stood in front of a crowd of protesters clad in “pussy hats,” in Washinton D.C., to declare the she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House” now that it was occupied by Donald Trump.
Then, in May of 2017, alleged comedian Kathy Griffin posted a photo of herself on social media holding a fake severed Donald Trump head by the hair. Shortly after that, the Shakespeare in the Park festival in New York’s Central Park ran a version of Julius Caesar in which a Trump look-alike Caesar was stabbed to death (see for yourself, here). In what circles is this stuff so acceptable that all these leftists were at ease expressing their death wishes and homicidal impulses publicly and without shame? “Progressive” circles. Socialist circles. Democrat circles.
And now that Trump has been shot and just barely missed having his head blown apart, Biden and the Democrat/media complex tell us it’s time to tone down the rhetoric “on both sides.” Both sides?
- As if celebrities, the media, public figures, and Donald Trump have been running around telling everyone that Joe Biden is the next Hitler or Mussolini, an existential threat to Our Democracy™ who must be stopped at all costs.
- As if any theater company anywhere in America has staged a play in which Biden gets murdered.
- As if any conservative celebrity has appeared in a photo holding the severed head of a dead Joe Biden.
- As if any conservative celebrity would dare to speak in public, let alone feel entirely comfortable talking openly, about blowing up the White House or expressing open anger or disappointment that Biden’s health conditions haven’t killed him yet.
- As if anyone with a history of social media rants about destroying Democrats and stopping Biden has shot up a group of congressional Democrats.
- As if anyone who contributed to a conservative political organization ever shot Joe Biden.
Both sides, indeed. Sure, Trump caused himself to get shot. As the Babylon Bee put it in a spoof headline: “Trump Indicted for Inciting Assassination Attempt.” The Democrat political/media apparatus will never give up the game on itself. They have laid everything on their TrumpHate strategy and they have no intention of abandoning it. It’s all they’ve got.
Won’t the “atmosphere of hate” champions just accept their trophy?
I went to college at the University of Maine, Orono, where they offered a minor in Marxist studies. They offered no program in fascist or national socialist studies. Back then, I met quite a few people who called themselves Marxists, but I have never met anyone who claimed to be a fascist or a national socialist. My roommate during my senior year of college received the Spartacus Youth League newspaper, a communist publication. I have never known anyone to receive a fascist or a national socialist publication. In the 1980 presidential election, Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party U.S.A., was on the U.S. presidential ballot as the Communist Party candidate. I have never seen anyone show up on a presidential ballot running as a fascist or a national socialist. When I attended the University of Maine School of Law, I went to a recruitment presentation by the National Lawyer’s Guild, an organization once described in a congressional report as “the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, its front organizations, and controlled unions.” Maine Law has never held a presentation by anyone described in a congressional report as being connected to a fascist or a national socialist organization, let alone as its foremost bulwark.
Fascists and national socialists have always, rightly, been shunned and ostracized anywhere I have ever been — anywhere you have ever been, too, in all likelihood. Meanwhile, Marxists and other leftists have walked openly among us, occupying positions of power and influence. And yet, we are constantly told that the greatest threat we face is from right-wingers, Nazis, fascists, and white supremacists, and that Donald Trump is the embodiment of them all. In fact, leftist are hideously dangerous people, not least because they sugarcoat their ruthless ambition as humanitarianism and because much of their flock believes it like it’s their religion. The historical death count for leftists is stratospheric. They’ve been champions of hatred for a long time.
None of us has any idea whether Team Blue’s Operation TrumpHate had a role in Matthew Crooks’ decision to try assassinating Donald Trump last weekend. For all we know, Crooks might just have been another nihilist lost boy, out to make a big splash as his final act. But the left talk incessantly about the ill effects of “atmospheres of hate.” They either believe what they preach or they don’t. They know damned well that they have created a rarefied “atmosphere of hate” toward Donald Trump. In fact, they couldn’t have done it more intentionally.
Both sides? When it comes to creating atmospheres of hate, you guys are the champs. Step up and accept your trophy, you twisted, gaslighting tools.
