Jane Mayer: The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees

The American Accountability Foundation (A.A.F.’s) approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, and underscores the growing role that secret spending has played in deepening the polarization in Washington.

Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden’s legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site, bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies. And the A.A.F. hasn’t just undermined nominees for Cabinet and Court seats—the kinds of prominent people whose records are usually well known and well defended. It’s also gone after relatively obscure, sub-Cabinet-level political appointees, whose public profiles can be easily distorted and who have little entrenched support. The A.A.F., which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women.

Tom Jones, the A.A.F.’s founder and executive director, is a longtime Beltway operative specializing in opposition research. Records show that over the years he has worked for several of the most conservative Republicans to have served in the Senate, including Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Jim DeMint, of South Carolina; and John Ensign, of Nevada, for whom Jones was briefly a legislative director. In 2016, Jones ran the opposition-research effort for Cruz’s failed Presidential campaign. When I asked Jones for an interview, through the A.A.F.’s online portal, he replied, “Ms. Meyers . . . Go pound sand.” Citing an article that I had written debunking attacks on Bloom Raskin from moneyed interests, including the A.A.F., he said, “You are a liberal hack masquerading as an investigative journalist—and not a very good one.” Jones subsequently posted this comment on his group’s Twitter account, along with my e-mail address and cell-phone number. https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees

Bess Levin: Saudi Arabia Concluded Jared Kushner’s Investment Firm Was A Joke, Gave Him $2 Billion Anyway

Jared Kushner did a famously bad job as a senior adviser to the president of the United States, so much so that the “Controversies” section on his Wikipedia page should be titled “F-ckups You’ve Probably Heard About.” From the prolonged government shutdown and a Middle East peace plan that involved calling Palestinians “hysterical and stupid,” to the initial dismissal of COVID-19 as not actually being a public health emergency and the scrapping of nationwide testing because the virus was primarily affecting Democratic states, all of young Kush’s hits would be there, and the takeaway would be that on a near daily basis, he screwed up big time.

As we’ve noted a number of times around these parts, though, the one exception to the “Jared Kushner is bad at this” rule was when it came to the task of cultivating friendships with some of the world’s worst human-rights abusers. Specifically, Kushner was a huge fan of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom he texted via WhatsApp and built a relationship that one congressman told Vanity Fair’s Abigail Tracy “stunned” him, saying, “It looks bad. It smells bad. It is bad.” In addition to seemingly having no problem with the prince’s decision to jail his own family members, or the disastrous Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, Kushner defended MBS amid the murder of Saudi dissident (and U.S. resident) Jamal Khashoggi, and he reportedly urged Donald Trump to support the prince, arguing that the whole situation—wherein a man was kidnapped, killed, and dismembered via bone saw—would blow over. And while that level of of ass-kissing and murder-excusing would keep a person with a functioning moral compass up at night, for Kushner it has paid off—literally.

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that just six months after leaving the White House, the former first son-in-law’s newly formed private equity firm, Affinity Partners, was awarded a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is led by MBS. That the kingdom would fork over that kind of cash to Kushner is obviously ridiculously shady and, as Nick Penniman, the founder and chief executive of good-government organization Issue One, told The Times, “swampy and seemingly hypocritical.” But the cash alone is not even the funniest part, and by funniest we mean insanely unethical and wildly corrupt. No, the unethical and corrupt part is that the people who perform due diligence for the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund concluded Kushner’s firm was a joke and that he might make them look bad…and then the board, headed by MBS, gave him the money anyway. Because…y’know. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-2-billion-investment

Jonathan Chait: If Trump Was Still President, Ukraine Would Be So Screwed Right Now

A month ago, Trump’s close friend and supporter Sean Hannity tried repeatedly to coax him to call Vladimir Putin a bad person or admit his slaughter of civilians was wrong. Trump kept refusing. After Trump declined the first opportunity, Hannity offered another: “You came under some fire when you said that Vladimir Putin is very smart. I think I know you a little bit better than most people in the media, and I think you also recognize he’s evil, do you not?”

After Trump declined again and boasted of his closeness with Putin, Hannity tried suggesting Russia was an “enemy” Trump was strategically keeping close. Trump declined that opportunity, too, saying, “I got along with these people. I got along with them well.”

Hannity just tried again. Referring back to their previous conversation, he asked Trump if Russia’s invasion was “evil.” Trump declined, instead ranting about the weakness of NATO: “I think in a hundred years, people are gonna look back and they’re going to say, ‘How did we stand back, and NATO stand back?’ — which, in many ways, I’ve called a paper tiger.” He did not concede Russia was morally wrong to invade.

NATO allies have increased their military spending in response to Russia’s invasion. But rather than acknowledge this success — the outcome he supposedly wants — Trump continued to bash them as worthless leeches. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/if-trump-was-still-president-ukraine-would-be-so-screwed.html

Amy Walter: It’s Still Trump’s Party

The best way to see that the party remains fixed in the Trumpian mold is to, well, see it. In hundreds of TV ads, GOP candidates and outside groups that support them, are highlighting their commitment to Trump's policies and persona. The advertising analysis firm AdImpact captures and categorizes political ads from around the country. Since the beginning of the year, the term "Trump" appears in 164 ads that collectively total $26M worth of spending. Almost all of those ads — 152 of them — and that spending ($24M) came from the Republican side.

Most of these GOP ads feature not just images of the former president, but also many of the terms associated with Trump, like "fighter," "conservative outsider," and "America First." Many feature pledges to complete or finish "Donald Trump's wall" at the southern border and to defeat “radical socialism.”

In the contests where Trump hasn't endorsed, GOP candidates eagerly present their Trumpian bonafides in their advertising. In the Alabama Senate race, where Trump has yet to endorse another candidate after rescinding his support of Brooks, candidate Mike Durant boasts that he is a "conservative, pro-Trump" candidate who is "ready for the fight." Katie Britt, the former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby, bemoans the high level of illegal immigration and promises to 'finish Trump's wall" at the southern border. https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/its-still-trumps-party

Jackie Calmes: Biden isn’t misspeaking about Putin. He’s speaking for the American people

Excuse me if I don’t join the tut-tutting about President Biden, after he once again departed from diplo-speak, this time to accuse Russia of genocide.

The president’s truth-telling on Tuesday followed undiplomatic remarks last month condemning Putin as “a war criminal,” before the Biden administration had officially applied that label, and ad-libbing about the Russian leader in a speech in Warsaw: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

French President Emmanuel Macron led the critics, telling French television that Biden’s remarks were unhelpful to peace-making. As if Putin shows any sign of wanting peace.

It was Macron, not Biden, who stepped in it: “‘Genocide’ has a meaning,” the French leader said, that might not apply between Russians and Ukrainians because “these two peoples are brothers.” The diplomatically self-righteous Macron essentially parroted Putin’s propaganda — echoed with genocidal overtones from the Kremlin and state-controlled media — that has long denied the national identity of Ukrainians to justify Russia’s subjugation of them.

Yes, words matter, especially the words of a U.S. president. And words like “genocide” and “war crimes” have distinct meanings, defined by international law dating to the Nuremberg trials of German Nazis. The United Nations’ 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide describes genocide as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”

That’s clearly what Biden had in mind when he said in Iowa on Tuesday that Putin “is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian.”

The experts and diplomats tell us that, for all the evidence of war crimes, identifying and prosecuting the Russians responsible will be difficult. They say Putin most likely will never sit in the dock as Hitler’s henchmen did, even if he’s charged.

But we know what we’re seeing, and naming and shaming is not nothing. Let Biden be Biden. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-04-15/joe-biden-genocide-war-crimes-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-invasion

Annie Gowen: Censorship battles’ new frontier: Your public library

In early November, an email dropped into the inbox of Judge Ron Cunningham, the silver-haired head chair of the governing body of Llano County in Texas’s picturesque Hill Country. The subject line read “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries.”

“It came to my attention a few weeks ago that pornographic filth has been discovered at the Llano library,” wrote Bonnie Wallace, a 54-year-old local church volunteer. “I’m not advocating for any book to be censored but to be RELOCATED to the ADULT section. … It is the only way I can think of to prohibit censorship of books I do agree with, mainly the Bible, if more radicals come to town and want to use the fact that we censored these books against us.”

Wallace had attached an Excel spreadsheet of about 60 books she found objectionable, including those about transgender teens, sex education and race, including such notable works as “Between the World and Me,” by author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, an exploration of the country’s history written as a letter to his adolescent son. Not long after, the county’s chief librarian sent the list to Suzette Baker, head of one of the library’s three branches.

“She told me to look at pulling the books off the shelf and possibly putting them behind the counter. I told them that was censorship,” Baker said.

Wallace’s list was the opening salvo in a censorship battle that is unlikely to end well for proponents of free speech in this county of 21,000 nestled in rolling hills of mesquite trees and cactus northwest of Austin. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/17/public-libraries-books-censorship/

Walter Russell Mead: The End of Russia’s Empire?

“As the war exposes the darkness inherent in Mr. Putin’s regime, and as atrocities abroad and repression at home impress the mark of Cain ever more deeply on its brow, it is impossible not to hope for a Russian defeat. Nevertheless, caution is in order. Mr. Putin and those around him know that in Ukraine they aren’t fighting only for an adjustment of frontiers. They are fighting for their world, and it may be psychologically impossible for them to accept defeat until every measure, however ruthless, and every weapon, however heinous, has been brought into play. For Vladimir Putin and the people around him, the stakes in Ukraine are almost infinitely great.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-russia-empire-ukraine-war-eastern-slavic-national-identity-invade-soviet-czar-putin-ussr-11650307491

Jennifer Rubin: Mike Lee has some explaining to do

CNN released nearly 100 texts from Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the 2020 election. The two sets of texts, coming on the heels of the 2020 election, illuminate the difference between a partisan (but ultimately patriotic) Republican congressman and a GOP senator willing to overthrow the will of the voters — so long as he has a fig leaf of legal protection from state lawmakers.

Lee, starts by pressing for information for election challenges. On Nov. 7, he sends Meadows a striking message to convey to the president: “We the undersigned offer our unequivocal support for you to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections.”

On Nov. 9, he signals that he is supportive of Sidney (“Kraken”) Powell and on Nov. 10 asks for the number of rejected ballots in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. By Nov. 19, Lee has watched Powell’s news conference and soured on her tactics. (“Unless Powell can immediately substantiate what she said today, the president should probably dissociate himself and refute any claims that can’t be substantiated.”)

On Nov. 22, in a pathetic show of subservience to Trump, Lee pleads with Meadows: “Please tell me what I should be saying.” By Nov. 23, Lee, too, has latched onto Eastman’s theory.

On Dec. 8, he writes, “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.”

On Jan. 3, Lee seems at a crossroads: “[A]ll of this could change if the states in question certified Trump electors pursuant to state law. But in the absence of that, this effort is destined not only to fail, but to hurt DJT in the process.” In short, so long as they get those alternate slates — backed up by nothing — they can aim to overturn the election. He repeats this theory: “We simply have no authority to reject a state’s certified electoral votes in the absence of a dueling slates, with the Trump slate coming from a state legislative determination.”

On Jan. 4, he seems to effectively confess to pressuring state legislatures to send an alternate slate no matter what the factual basis (again, no fraud has been found):

“Every good lawyer — and Mike Lee is a good one — knows that there are limits to the arguments that you are allowed to make and serious consequences if you go beyond those limits,” former House impeachment counsel Norm Eisen tells me. “This one was way over the line: because there was no fraud, there was no factual basis to claim that the state legislatures could step in and there was no legal basis. I think the new evidence shows a betrayal of his duty as an attorney and his oath as a senator.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/18/mike-lee-disqualify/