The advantages of earplugs and blinders

 

                                                                                                                                               Jack Doppelt 

                                                                                                                                               Feb. 12, 2021 

As the Trump impeachment trial team introduced its defense today of the former president for “inciting insurrection" by encouraging the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, maybe the GOP senators will discard their earplugs and blinders. The sensory protectors must be annoying to have to resort to. They apparently need them so they don’t hear or see what they can then deny without facing up to how utterly shameless and hypocritical they are. 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s incendiary “Stop the Steal” narrative and one of the 44 GOP senators who voted that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, said publicly yesterday that Trump shouldn’t be convicted because the House managers had not come "remotely close" to demonstrating that Trump's conduct on Jan. 6 constituted incitement. 

Kaleidoscope of dots
[Image: Part of Mandelbrot set -
Smily Kaleidoscope-
Creative Commons

I can appreciate that. If you don’t hear or see any of the statements or videos that clearly connected a kaleidoscope of dots leading up to Jan. 6, you too might think that there’s no difference between heightened, insensitive, angry or inflammatory rhetoric in political campaigns, in demonstrations or in the media on the one hand, and what happened on Jan. 6, on the other hand. 

“The right” mass produces the earplugs and blinders. Ken Starr fulfilled his consulting gig on Fox News in the morning. He characterized The House manager’s case as political theater and prepared us to anticipate that Trump’s defense team is “going to run the ‘First Amendment-free speech’ play.” 

Starr is a former Appeals Court judge who turned legal hit man for the right when he led the impeachment prosecution of Bill Clinton in 1998 and became one of Trump’s legal team in Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial. He was also one of an even more impressive legal team in 2008 that represented Jeffrey Epstein, the politically connected billionaire and sex offender. In a revealing interview on Fox News in July 2019, Starr called it “nonsense” that any of the abused women whose cases were compromised by a cozy non-prosecution agreement with Epstein were bowled over by the influential lawyers. Starr would know, he boasted. “I was in the room.” [where it happened, with homage to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hamilton]. Alexander Acosta, who was the then-U.S. Attorney who cut that deal, later stepped down as Trump’s Secretary of Labor because of the incident. As Starr put it, by resigning, “[Acosta] took one for the team.” A federal judge saw it differently. In Feb. 2019, Judge Kenneth Marra rebuked the phalanx of big name attorneys, including Starr, who had written Acosta at the time that it would be “wholly inappropriate” for the U.S. Attorney’s office to issue victim notification letters to the women, though failing to do so violated Florida law. 

With Starr pointing me to the play action, I listened closely to Trump’s defense team and focused on their videos. They summoned plenty of rhetoric by the likes of Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. All Democrats, of course. Similar rhetoric can be invoked of Republicans. Of course, speech and rhetoric can be heated. 

Trump’s defense presentation was a testament, as were some of the House managers videos, to harnessing the wonders of digital video searching and to the craft of selective editing. The word “fight” repeated hundreds of time…by Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris alone. How’s that different, the point was, from Trump saying the words “fight” 20 times in the paroxysm of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. 

Language like “fight like hell” and “don’t give up” and “you have to get your people to fight,” “punch him in the face,” “fights may need to be in Congress, in the courts and in the streets,” and “I want to tell you…you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.” 

The only two soundbites in the whole series of montages that pinpricked me were: CNN's Chris Cuomo: “Show me where protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” Chuck Schumer: “The patriots were protesters.” 

Once Trump’s defense rested, we were left where we expected we’d be. It takes 67 votes to impeach. The votes are not there. Trump will be acquitted. Despite the expected and caricatured “he says (without listening to her), she says (without listening to him)” nature of our political landscape, the call about whether he should be convicted is a tough call, with the 1st Amendment guarding the door.  

Did Trump intend to incite his MAGAs to commit “imminent lawless action” on Jan. 6 specifically and were those actions likely to happen then and there? As I wrote the other day, that’s where the virtues and ambiguities of the videos before and on Jan. 6 matter. We shouldn’t be punishing people or impeaching a president for speaking passionately. But Trump’s speech and actions on Jan. 6 were singularly unique. 

As Justice William Brennan wrote more than 50 years ago in New York Times v. Sullivan, which is one of America’s proudest exports to the world, “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” That freedom is defining of America. It is not absolute. People forfeit that freedom by perjuring themselves, by convincing co-conspirators to break the knees of mob victims, or by intending to incite people to commit “imminent lawless action” that is likely to happen then and there. 

Did Trump forfeit that freedom? Because if he did, he cannot avail himself of a First Amendment protection, and he should be impeached and not allowed the privilege to seek public office in the nation where I live. 

Maybe Bruce Springsteen put it best in “Dancing in the Dark”: “You can’t start a fire without a spark.” 

I believe with all the conviction of someone who sees before me not only a dangerous, unrepentant, charismatic demagogue who kicked down the 1st Amendment door, but almost half a Congress who’ve traded in their political pedigree as the Grand Old Party for membership in Gimme Only Partisans. They preserved the acronym. 

Please tell me, though, that there is hope that the 70 millions of my fellow citizens who were sycophantic believers in a con man no longer have use for earplugs and blinders. 

 #####

Where does "the right" get this stuff? The Impeachment edition

Jack Doppelt

 Feb. 9, 2021 

Again, I’m watching Fox News’ coverage, as I did on Jan. 6. I’m not watching to be convinced whether or not Trump should be convicted on one count of "incitement of insurrection" for encouraging the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. That’s about Trump.

I’m watching to fathom one underlying question that will define our futures as a nation: Where does "the right" get the stuff that has them believing dangerous nonsense? Of course, the media, including social media, propel this stuff. Yet, what stuff catches fire and why? 

A primer on one place where the right gets this stuff can be found in one program that aired the day before today’s impeachment trial. It aired on Newsmax, a fellow right wing network that is giving Fox News a run for its ratings. 

Co-hosts Sean Spicer (yes, that Sean Spicer) and Lindsay Keith interviewed Alan Dershowitz, whom they welcomed as a constitutional scholar, legal professor at Harvard and “author of a million books.” Bona fides to impress. 

Newsmax-Feb. 8, 2021

Dershowitz was on the team of lawyers who represented Trump at his first Senate impeachment trial. His novel argument in that hearing was that if Trump believed he was acting both in his own political interest -- and at the same time in the country’s interest in withholding military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine announced an investigation into then-former Vice President Biden -- those actions cannot be impeachable. As he put it, "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment," he argued. The irony was that his argument, laughably bizarre as it was, seemed to be what caught on with the GOP and the right. Bona fides enhanced. 

Spicer and Keith last night gushed over every word of Dershowitz. At the end of the interview, they thanked him for breaking things down so the audience could get the answers as they try to make sense of the impending impeachment trial. 

The simple answers Dershowitz divined were these: 

Trump can’t be impeached for speech. He claimed that Trump’s speech was no different from other speech, which of course is protected by the 1st Amendment. He went into professed con law mode by conceding at least that speech can go beyond 1st Amendment protection when it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” 

The issue clearly is whether Trump’s speech in the context of the election fraud buildup he harnessed for his electoral college day rally did that. Dershowitz pointed to the 1969 Brandenburg case about a Ku Klux Klan rally in Ohio to make his distorted points. He failed to say that the landmark holding in the case was directed at an Ohio law that went too far in limiting speech. In striking down a clearly over-broad Ohio law, the case rejected a doctrine that emerged from WWI called “clear and present danger.” 

The justices in Brandenburg were struggling with the line that preserves the advocacy of abstract ideas but can punish speech that incites imminent lawless action. Justice William O. Douglas recalled the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote prophetically in 1925: “Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth.” The justices warned: “Eloquence may set fire to reason… If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.” 

Without needing to refer to Trump’s incitement as eloquent, it had the power to “set fire to reason.” The incited Trumpers came to DC because he had provoked them “to stop the steal.” Still, they all had time to resort to their perverted reasoning in coming to DC or attending the rally. That took time. Trump’s persuasiveness had won those days with them, as his persuasiveness had attracted 74 million votes. That’s speech, and as the justices put it, “government has no power to invade that sanctuary of belief and conscience.” 

Once in DC with Trump ranting persuasively to his MAGAs, did he incite them to commit “imminent lawless action” and was action likely to happen? 

That’s where the virtues and ambiguities of the videos of Jan. 6 leave us. That’s what makes Jan. 6 and Trump unique, as they should be. We shouldn’t be impeaching or punishing impassioned speakers? 

Dershowitz actually claimed that Trump couldn’t have intended to incite “imminent lawless action” that was likely to happen. After all, as Dershowitz conjured, “most of the people who heard the president didn’t even go to the Capitol, most of the people who went to the Capitol didn’t go inside, most of the people who went inside didn’t destroy property, and hardly anybody killed people.” 

Apparently, it can’t be intended incitement to “imminent lawless action” if not everyone is fomented to act instinctively, lawlessly, violently and murderously? Pardon? 

Imminent lawless action needn’t result in people being killed. Though it did. Invading the Capitol, threatening people, destroying property, putting lawmakers, their staffs and their families in fear of their lives will do just fine. Watch the videos. Hundreds did that. 

Many of the lawbreakers chanted: “Stop the steal.” “Treason.” Defend your Constitution.” “Fight for Trump.” Listen to the videos. 

Trump had pledged as he dispatched his followers to the Capitol: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you.” He must have gotten waylaid after that. Like any ersatz movement leader, he abandoned them to march on their own. What good are lambs if they need to be accompanied to the slaughter? 

Dershowitz wants the right to believe that the impeachment trial is about run-of-the-mill speech, the kind that, as he puts it, could result in political activists from the right or left put at risk of government encroachment. 

Even more scary, Dershowitz envisions, is to allow impeachment any time an office holder leaves office. Who’s next, Nikki Haley? Be very worried, Republicans. Bill Clinton? Could happen to you, Dems. Dershowitz knows a straw man when he creates one. 

Trump is being impeached for actions he took and actions he fomented while he was president, not years before or after. 

To the credit of Democratic impeachment managers, they opened today’s proceedings by re-framing what the Dershowitzes and right wing “thinkers” call the unconstitutionality of impeaching a former official. 

What it really would be providing is a January exception that would allow a Trump-sort to do whatever he wants with impunity in the final days in office to prevent accountability because days later, he’s no longer in office. As we all know, Donald Trump would never reserve audacious acts like rampant pardonings until the final days in office. 

Dershowitz reserved his most virulent pent up anger yesterday for his legal scholar colleagues, led by his nemesis and Harvard colleague Laurence Tribe. Dershowitz seemed to hanker for a food fight with Tribe. To Dershowitz, the difference between himself and the Tribes of the legal establishment is that he, Dershowitz, is principled. 

The constitutional scholars, 144 of them of all political stripes, issued a public letter to Trump’s legal team [read it here], that, according to Dershowitz on both Newsmax and in The Hill, demanded, “in effect, that they not make arguments to the Senate regarding the First Amendment.” Dershowitz referred to the letter as blatant intimidation, as did The Hill’s headline: “Impeachment scholars are wrong to intimidate lawyers of Donald Trump.” Dershowitz characterized the letter as “threatening” in advising the Trump team that they “don’t you even dare” raise the First Amendment. “If you do, it will be unethical and subject you to disciplinary proceedings, including possibly disbarment,” he said raising his voice in emphasis, which elicited a Pavlovian snicker from Spicer. 

I don’t interpret the letter as intimidation. Moreover, I don’t find the quotes used by Dershowitz to be in the letter. What the letter says is, “No reasonable scholar or jurist could conclude that President Trump had a First Amendment right to incite a violent attack on the seat of the legislative branch, or then to sit back and watch on television as Congress was terrorized and the Capitol sacked.” 

The letter reads more like a petition, speaking of the First Amendment. 

Uncanny, though that Dershowitz would invoke the term “intimidation” when part of the argument to convict Trump of impeachment includes the lead up to the Jan. 6 events when Trump four days earlier called election officials in Georgia to convince them to find votes that would undermine Georgia’s election results. [Listen to excerpts or read a transcript from the Jan. 2 call here.] Trump had it all planned. The election was rigged, 11,780 votes need to be found, and if they’re not found and the election officials don’t report the missing votes, it’s a criminal offense and it will be incumbent on Trump to report their crime. 

Now that’s intimidation. the severity of which is being investigated by Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia.

As for Dershowitz, now that’s chutzpah (חֻצְפָּה), the attributes of which he prides himself as having.

https://www.facebook.com/jack.doppelt/posts/10159360929711098

 #####

Trump’s fitting final day from the pardon platform: A sketch

Jack Doppelt 

 Jan. 19, 2021

Pres. Donald Trump spent much of his final night in office doting on the pardons he worked out to say goodbye. 

He made sure not to watch the memorial ceremony that the successor he didn’t recognize held at the Lincoln Memorial with 400 candles commemorating 400,000 covid-19 deaths. The lighting cast a reflecting glow over the National Mall. 

He carefully wrote down names, handed them to aides to get word out over social media. That’s no longer an act he can do on his own, with a click on Twitter. 

He has aides who still have access. He selected one in particular whom he could trust. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whom Trump appointed in June, five months before the election, was to be responsible for transferring the pardons to the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Dept., which processes presidential pardons. 

There were more than 100 names on the list. According to the rules, an applicant must satisfy a minimum waiting period of five years before becoming eligible to apply for a presidential pardon of a federal conviction. A pardon is ordinarily a sign of forgiveness and is granted in recognition of the applicant's acceptance of responsibility for the crime. Those are the rules, but an executive pardon need not abide by them. Trump considered that as he determined who shall live (with immunity from federal prosecution, conviction or imprisonment) and whose petition shall die. 

Though there are rules, “the power to grant pardons is vested in the President alone.” No hearing is held, and none was. Documents relating to any cases are confidential. 

Feeling accomplished after he completed the sacred act of pardoning, Trump went to bed, anticipating the party he planned for 8 am at Base Andrews, the base outside DC where Air Force One is headquartered. His invitees, each of whom was free to invite up to five guests, arrived between 6:00 and 7:15 am. After the gathering, Trump flew to the Mar-a Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Trump landed in Florida at about the time Biden was inaugurated at noon, to find out that his signature needed to accompany each pardon. It’s not something that can be consummated with a message on social media. Trump had taken care of it. He’d made sure he signed each pardon petition. 

As it turned out though, Postmaster General Dejoy had neglected to file the documents before noon. They were invalid. 

Such is the revenge of the postman’s oath: "Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Dark Of Night Shall Stay These Couriers From The Swift Completion Of Their Appointed Rounds.” 

 #####

For courage and leadership, I take Twitter over politicians

Jack Doppelt 

 Jan. 9, 2021 

Everyone knows of Donald Trump's complicity in the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday. We may need to leave the question to courts and legal debates whether it is legally sufficient to constitute criminal incitement to imminent lawless action. Trump says it was “totally appropriate.” 

 If we want clarity and accountability, Twitter is a far better lodestar than politicians from either of the two parties. 

Twitter permanently suspended Trump's account Jan 8. It had 88.7 million followers. 

Other social media sites and platforms piled on in various iterations. All are being roundly criticized, particularly from the right flank, for squelching speech and singling out Trump. 

In the blog post justifying its action, Twitter accounted the reasons. 

Twitter took away Trump's privileges permanently and immediately. Immediately because his posts risk further incitement of violence. 

Twitter concluded that two of his recent tweets read together make it dangerously clear that he was speaking directly to the 75 million American Patriots who voted for him and who "will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future." He told them he was not going to the Inauguration on Jan. 20. 

Twitter invoked its published policy dating back to 2019 that bans the Glorification of Violence because the tweets could inspire others to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol.

When promulgated in 2019, the policy, in conjunction with related policies, was directed specifically at the actions of world leaders. The policies explained that Twitter will err on the side of leaving content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so to provide "a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable." The policies were focused on public officials who have more than 100,000 followers. 

Twitter did its homework in concluding from Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the inauguration is being received by supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and that he was disavowing his previous claim of an “orderly transition” on Inauguration Day that was tweeted by one of his deputy chiefs of staff. 

Twitter was concerned that the tweets "may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a 'safe' target, as he will not be attending, and that the use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those who committed violent acts at the US Capitol. 

Being attuned to dog whistles, Twitter concluded that Trump "plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election." 

Twitter advised that most menacingly, "plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on Jan. 17." 

It didn't help that Trump posted a video in the throes of the Capitol chaos that in telling his overzealous supporters to go home, he reinforced that the election was fraudulent, that it was stolen, that he won in a landslide, that "we can't play into the hands of these people," and that "we love you. You're very special." 

Twitter's decision on Trump's account was decisive, reasoned, immediate and permanent. 

That can't be said for our politicians, Republicans or Democrats. 

There are far too many Republicans for us to live in a civilized democracy who continue to publicly espouse the conviction that the election was stolen, that Trump won, and that Biden is not lawfully president. All are fire kindling, reporting for duty. 

They can be grouped by clusters of pretexts, with mouthpieces for each: 

• The Dems illegitimized Trump's presidency even before his Inauguration. They started it and this is payback. In convening a news conference after the election, on Nov. 20, to tout Trump's handling of the covid pandemic, his press secretary Kayleig McEnany said: "Trump was never given an orderly transition of power. His presidency was never accepted." During the current House debates, Cong. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), whom Trump rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, referred triumphantly to the session in 2017 that certified Trump’s election, railing against the hypocrisy of Democrats for complaining about GOP attempts to undermine Biden’s presidency now. Jordan continues to claim falsely he’s free from any culpability in formenting Trumpers to believe the election was stolen. Yet the attempt to challenge the certification of Trump's electoral win in Jan. 2017 was thwarted before it started by then-Vice President Biden who chaired the joint session. 

[Click on the photo to see and hear Biden during that session tell objecting House Democrats that “it’s over.”] That’s the same procedural session that 14 GOP Senators and 121 GOP members of the House set out to stop last week, and almost did with the timely actions of fomented insurrectionists. 

There's little doubt that the Democrats and thousands of others gave Trump little chance to govern without entrenched, vocal opposition, not because they challenged the legitimacy of his 2016 election but because of the draconian decisions he made, the executive orders he imposed, and the inhumane agenda he set out within his first hundred days in office. Minority leader Schumer referred to it then as “incompetence leading to chaos.” Meekly deferential, if you ask me. I wrote a piece then that appealed to Senate Republicans to give Trump a probationary year before holding a hearing on the first Supreme Court vacancy in his term to ensure that he's not impeached by then. 

• Only a handful of rioters breached the Capitol, and who says they were Trump supporters and not disguised Antifa anarchists, the all-encompassing shorthand the right uses for left-leaning protesters? Rudy Giuliani urged the agitated crowd before the Capitol onslaught to "have trial by combat” of the lawmakers about to vote to certify Biden as president. And on a podcast that has already been removed by YouTube, Giuliani said later that Antifa forces were to blame. "Believe me, Trump people were not scaling the wall. So there's nothing to it that he incited anything…And there's equal if not more responsibility on the fascists who run the Democrat Party.” 

 • The refusals to certify Biden's presidency are acts needed to memorialize bona fide objections to the election thefts in the key swing states. The Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fundraising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, sent out robocalls the day before the Capitol storming, encouraging people to march to the Capitol and call on Congress to stop the steal." [click on the link to listen to the robocall, as published by the watchdog group, Documented.] For weeks after the election, GOP lawmakers supported Trump's incessant claims of rampant election fraud, citing the American principle that everyone should have a chance to challenge elections in court and through recounts. After the courts and election officials ruled one by one without exception that there was no credible evidence of fraud or mis-counts, a different strategy emerged. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) seized onto the idea that one more avenue was paved for Trump’s grievances. He issued a statement in the name of the Conservative Action Project to protect the Republic on behalf of 21 named conservatives and the more than 50 million American voters “who believe the election was stolen or somehow illegitimate,” and called on the Senate to continue to contest the electoral votes from five swing states. He noted that substantial evidence has been presented to courts and state legislatures. Yet not one court, state legislature or election body found the evidence worthy of denying Biden’s certification. Three days later, his Senate colleague Ted Cruz (R-Texas) seized onto a legal strategy he was convinced would do the trick of postponing the certification of Biden for 10 days. He issued a statement with 12 other GOP Senators calling for postponement because the election “featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.” Cruz manufactured the illusion, knowing it to be the same flat lie that Hawley was propagating. “Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud.” That is precisely what courts and election officials spent weeks doing - hearing evidence and resolving all the allegations. Cruz’s home newspaper, the non-partisan, nonprofit Texas Tribune reported on the release of the statement as continuing to pursue unsubstantiated claims of a widespread voter fraud in "disputed states," despite no evidence of fraud. 

 • Trump's supporters are understandably frustrated by the rampant election fraud, and attempts to demonize or prosecute them will only deepen their justifiable frustrations. A base of 74 million people voted for Trump, and a month after the election, the Washington Times claimed that Fox News analyzed a poll that concluded that 68% of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump and that among Trump voters, 77% think he actually won. Lindsey Graham (R-S. Car.), Trump's friend when he chooses to be, ultimately decided not to contest Biden's certification. Two days later, he was greeted with shouts of "traitor" in a chance encounter at a Washington, DC airport. The tweet that has attracted more than 11 million visits shows a crowd yelling, "you know it was rigged." The shrill appeals were to AUDIT OUR VOTE. Those were tame recriminations compared to the "Hang Pence" chants leveled at the vice-president who had traded in his resolute support for Trump's stolen election conspiracy for a statement released the morning of the Capitol insurrection, that he could not stop the certification. True patriots are cowards to allow a rigged election without a fight. 

• This has gone too far and the country must be taken back from the election fraudsters, socialists, and dangerous Democrats by true American patriots like those who secured independence from Britain. Derrick Evans, a newly elected GOP legislator from West Virginia, who live streamed himself among those storming the Capitol, yelled, "We're taking this country back whether you like it or not. Today's a test run. We're taking this country back." Though he has since resigned, his grandmother selected Twitter to thank Trump for “invoking a riot at the White House.” [click to appreciate her heartfelt thanks] 

Each of the pretexts shares an entrenched, chilling and festering mythology that the election was stolen from Trump. The fervent beliefs reject the decisions of more than 50 courts, both state and federal, many composed of Trump-chosen and Republican judges, including the Supreme Court. They choose to overlook the inability of Trump's lawyers to produce any verifiable evidence of election fraud in any states. Instead, they choose to believe the election was stolen and Trump is the lawful keeper of the throne.

Can you blame thousands upon thousands of people for getting engulfed in a fire that is destined to spread with dry GOP kindling fueling it, with juntas of law enforcement embedded throughout the country, and with right-wing media outlets serving as accelerants? 

The Democrats are of course a horse of a different color. They can be clustered by the actions they are intent on taking now to make sure people don't conclude that Trump's actions are without consequences. Though Democrats don’t admit it publicly or have themselves become self-deluding, each action is symbolic, won’t stop or deter Trump from whatever he chooses to do before Jan. 20, and don’t seem to account for the legions of duped Trumpers who believe to the core that Biden isn’t a legitimate president. 

• Resignation – In recalling the successful attempts by Republicans in 1974 to cajole Richard Nixon to resign, Democrats tried to convince themselves that Trump has a similar incentive to do so. Resign and have Pence pardon him. Have they just met Donald Trump? He will not go quietly into that good night, as poet Dylan Thomas wrote. “Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying if the light. The man is the ultimate rager.

• 25th Amendment - The House introduced a resolution calling on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and vote with Trump’s cabinet to declare Trump unable to perform his duties. Trump has an opportunity first to declare he’s fine, thank you. The House will then give Pence 24 hours to decide with a majority of the cabinet that Trump is not fine. If they do, 2/3 of both houses also have to vote that Trump is unable to discharge his duties. Pence has stated publicly that he’s not game. Other than the actual existence of a 25th Amendment, this Democratic option reads either as a bad joke with no punchline or as the tantrums of a frustrated party that has tried and failed at every turn to suffocate Trump’s presidency. The two-year Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the first impeachment that culminated in Trumps’ acquittal in the Senate backfired badly. They energized Trump’s base, galvanized his fundraising, spiked his poll approval ratings, and set the stage for him to attract 74 million votes and almost win a second term in office. 

 • Impeachment – The House drafted one Article of Impeachment for “incitement of insurrection” and approved it by a mostly partisan vote of 232-197. Trump’s phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, the audio of which is recorded, that tried to get Brad Raffensperger to “find’ the votes that would boost Trump’s total over Biden’s wasn’t included in the article. Before the debate itself, the issue seemed to be fixed on whether an impeachment can be fast-tracked and resolved before Inauguration Day or if this second impeachment will encroach on Biden’s agenda as he opens his term in office. Now that it's been voted up by the House with all deliberate speed, outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated definitely that the earliest possible it can be considered on the Senate floor is Inauguration Day. It’s not, but he’ll make it be, even though at one point, he told associates that he believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses and he’s pleased the Democrats are following through on summary impeachment proceedings. 

The Democrats should overcome their frustrations and get on with the buildup to Biden’s presidency. Of course they’re frustrated, as Trump has said of his patriots. Frustration isn’t in short supply and it’s become a dangerous emotion.

In the short run, the sublimely fortunate short run, Trump has the Democrats outmaneuvered again. He is a master conman who has spent his life perfecting the con on bankers, foreign investors, his extended family and the IRS before strutting down the escalator with Melania and a thumb up in 2015 to open the game of using the presidency to con the public, the news media and Republicans who early on considered him to be “a malignant cow” [former Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.)], "unsound, uninformed, unhinged and unfit" [former GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty from Minn.)], "a con artist (who) is about to take over the Republican Party and the conservative movement and we have to put a stop to it," [Sen. Mark Rubio (R-FL)], "a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” [Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S. Car.)], and “the distraction.” [Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)] 

Take heed. Biden is president, two corrupt incumbent GOP Senators from Georgia have been defeated by two first-time Democratic challengers, and the Senate will no long be strangled by McConnell and his obstructionist GOP colleagues. Getting on with it is not communicating that Trump’s action have no consequences. 

Yes, there’s plenty Trump can and will do in the week he remains president. I expect he will issue 11th hour pardons to his most loyal associates, his entire family, himself and the patriots who honored him at the barricades. He may do more. If he does or doesn’t, Trump has set himself up to be prosecuted in multiple locations in the country. If he can pardon himself at all, it’s only for federal crimes. 

My concerns are about his legacy, as I noted above: 

• the juntas of law enforcement among the ranks of ICE, Homeland Security, sheriff’s offices, police unions and now Capitol police who are embedded throughout the country. Fortunately his efforts to recruit the military and the FBI failed. 

• right-wing media outlets that are spreading like kudzu on television, radio and social media. 

• the thousands of people who are building up a fierce resentment and distrust of Biden’s presidency, of science (during a pandemic), and of reliable information. 

 We have Twitter at least to thank for gumming up Trump’s works.

https://www.facebook.com/jack.doppelt/posts/10159268608171098

#####

Watching Fox News so you don't have to

Jack Doppelt

Jan. 6, 2021

I'm watching Fox News today as the results of the Georgia Senate runoffs settle in, as Congress meets to certify the electoral collage votes while a moronic Republican strain performs its challenge to Biden's election, and as protesters in DC gather to pump up Trump and his GOP sycophants in Congress.

I'm doing it to get a more visceral sense of the national divide as we move into a new era. You may not be  surprised by what you read, but you'll have details that will underscore the complexities of the road ahead.

---------------------------------

In speaking to the hordes in DC, Donald Trump, Jr. tried to jazz the crowd by punctuating something he said with "Amen." He followed with "A woman." Too cute apparently. He was loudly booed and tried to be quick on his feet by turning it around, saying that's how the Democrats would say it.

Right at 11 am Chicago time, Trump began his oration for his "Save America" rally. He opened by slamming the media, challenging them to show the hundreds of thousands of people who are there. On Fox News, they turned the cameras around and focused narrowly on the crowd. Viewers couldn't tell if there were dozens or hundreds or thousands in the crowd. Trump looked out, shielding his eyes from the sun and envisioned the crowd stretching beyond the Washington Monument. Maybe so. He's not one to be trusted on such matters.

He pledged to stop the steal. He boasted that he won the election in both 2016 and 2020. In 2020, he won by even more. A landslide. Does anybody believe that Biden had 80 million votes?  A resounding, no. He complained that the military should be allowed to come up on the stage with him. He's counting on Pence to do the right thing - to make sure that the states should have to re-certify, then he'd be president. He rambled and got the crowd to chant almost at will for a while. He went after the weak Republicans - Romney, McConnell, Georgia Gov. Kemp, Liz Cheney, and any others who don't support the day's agenda to trash the electoral college voting.

[It was during this part of the rant that word leaked out that Biden is nominating Merrick Garland to be the Attorney General. Garland was the judge whom then-President Obama nominated for the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Justice Scalia's death in 2016.]

Trump called on the crowd to march peacefully with him to the Capitol.

The chanting exploded when he called the late night voting results from state-to-state "bullshit." That got the crowd going. The chanting turned to "bullshit, bullshit." When he beseeched the crowd to applaud for Perdue and Loeffler, there was scant applauding. He tried to get the crowd to hoot and howl because he fought for increasing the covid relief package from $600 to $2,000. "Give em a couple of bucks," he said proudly. The crowd didn't go for it.

Where's Hillary? Later, where's Hunter? Not much response to either of those natural rousers.

Some of his preaching did hit the mark with the crowd. Mike Pence has to send the electoral college results back. The crowd came alive again. The chants rang out. "Send it back." Even "get rid of section 230" got some payback.

He warned the crowd he was going to lay out the case for fraud, and they don't mind staying on to listen, right? Murmurs at best. He asked again later. A handful of people responded. Some signaling yes; others no.

He was noticing that he was losing his people. It was hard to not see a crowd of people who were being held hostage in the cold. They had to stay on for the solidarity march to the Capitol. 

As a standup performer, riffing around his notes, he can tell when a crowd is abandoning him. The trick for him at this point is to sense what will get them back. A few attempts took. Most didn't. What he was doing was warming up the crowd.

As he appeared to be moving toward an end, bemoaning that he could go on for hours regaling them with the unprecedented fraud, the crowd gave him the adoration he needed. "We love you," they chanted. He had another half hour in him, which he continued to use to foment the crowd about the illegitimacy of the Biden presidency.

[One hour after Trump opened his "Save America" rally, Congress convened in joint session. Vice President Pence reminded the congresspeople that debate will not be allowed in the session. The limited role of the session, he announced, is for both houses to verify that the certificates of the counts in the states are authentic and appropriate in form. They proceeded through the count state by state in alphabetical order.]

Fox News continued with Trump live, and the congressional session in an adjoining screen with the sound off. Fox News advised its audience that they will switch to the audio in Congress when the roll call gets to Arizona to show the objection to the Arizona electoral count. They did and Pence announced that the two houses will adjourn into separate sessions to debate the Arizona vote. Fox stayed with coverage of the congressional setting. When the session recessed, Fox News introduced a panel to debrief on it. Before they went to the panel, one of the Fox announcers underscored that Pence was standing loyally behind the president now and has at every turn. Another Fox announcer intervened to add that Pence issued a letter to Congress, indicating that he wasn't go to follow Trump's line in the sand.

I had no idea at this point if Trump was aware during the rally of the Garland nomination or of Pence's apparent shift in position to limiting his role and doing it against Trump's wishes.

Fox News would not return to the audio of Trump's rally. Their coverage would stay with the affairs of Congress. At one point, they showed in an adjoining screen the Trump rally moving to the hill and reported that in some cases, trying unsuccessfully to get into Congress.

As the GOP faction of Trumpers were making their case in both houses simultaneously, in the Senate, Mitch McConnell staked out a clear yet unexpected position that the election wasn't even close that it isn't Congress' role to nullify the votes of the electoral majority - of some 80 million people, of the states and of the many courts that have concluded that the voting was lawful. He reinforced that with all the objections to the elections state-by-state, the Trump forces have not managed to provide any evidence of fraud. He described the move by the small fraction of GOP Trumpers as pushing democracy into a "death spiral."

When Ted Cruz spoke in the Senate, he argued for an electoral commission to investigate for ten days the legitimacy of the elections in the swing states. He repeated his contention that half the country, not just Republicans, believe that the presidential election was rife with fraud. His point was that the public needs to be reassured that there was no fraud that would have changed the results. 

Not for a moment did he consider the obvious indisputable truth. The huge numbers of the public, probably millions, who believe that the presidential election was rife with fraud believe it not based on any evidence but on the barrages of disinformation propagated by Trump, fellow Republicans, Fox News and their companions in the far right media. There is no guarantee, not even a likelihood, that Trump's band of miscreants will change their tunes or give up the ghost. As Trump put it before the rally ended, "We will never give up, we will never concede."

Shortly after Cruz spoke, all hell broke loose, or more accurately, all hell broke in. The crowd that seemed to swell off camera on the way from the mall to the hill had breached the meager law enforcement presence at the gates, entered the halls of Congress and begun strutting down the halls. Congress halted the proceedings and took cover. 

All hell had broken in.

[Read on Facebook]

                                                               #####

Fountain of Yahoo

                                                                                                             Jack Doppelt

Dec. 3, 2020

The Fountain of Youth may be a mythical spring that restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in it.

“Drinking the kool-aid” may be a grotesque reference that reminds us of the 900 people who died in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 when Jim Jones, the cult leader of the Peoples Temple movement turned on his followers and on a congressman who visited to investigate the settlement that was preying on Americans.

We are now in the throes of the unseemly phenomenon of millions of Americans drinking with blind faith from the Fountain of Yahoo. They are the sympathizers of Donald Trump who in the month since the Nov. 3 election has stepped up his fundraising campaign that is driven by the need for him to play into the stoked beliefs that he was elected President and has been defrauded of his rightful place as the incumbent winner. To bilk as much as he can out of these believers, one surefire way is to prolong his unremitting conga line of lawsuits.

Within two weeks of the election, Trump and his henchmen hatched the coordinated plan that seamlessly converted his official campaign site into the Official Election Defense Fund. Go to the campaign site, click to donate and it takes you and others thirsting to support to the defense fund site, which in only a couple of weeks has raised more than $170 million, far more than his campaign did over any similar period before the election. Now he’s being victimized. As his claims of election fraud become more insistent, they are debunked by anyone with a shred of dignity or a grip on reality.

It only matters that the blindly faithful cling to his visions of grandeur. In one interview after another, the small-dollar donors are fine with the idea that their contributions don’t go toward recounts or legal expenses to challenge the election results. They’re fine in being told not one of the lawsuits has succeeded. Their blind faith is reinforced by Republican officials at the highest levels and by Fox News and other conservative outlets. They assert his victory being snatched from him with the same apparent certainty and indignation as Trump. If 75% of each contribution goes to Trump’s future or into his pockets, no matter what he chooses to do with it, so be it. They trust him to do what’s best.

The “drinking the kool-aid” reference is a harsh reminder, often used lightly. When Trump was interviewed by Bob Woodward for his book Rage, Trump's reaction to his question about the responsibility of white, privileged people to help understand the motivations of Black Lives Matter protesters, Trump said: "You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you?”

I hope fervently that Donald Trump’s careless use of his presidential and charismatic powers of persuasion will not result in anything unthinkable from some of his sympathizers acting in his name. Many well-meaning people dread the possibility.

I prefer at this juncture to caution people to not drink from the Fountain of Yahoo he’s offering.

Yahoo, aside from being a social media provider, is a word that conjures the image of a rude person, or as used originally in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver's Travels, a book many of us read in school, a Yahoo is a primitive creature obsessed with digging in the mud whom Swift invoked to represent distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism.

Stay clear of the fountain.

#####

A personal get well soon to President Trump

                                                                                                                                                  Jack Doppelt

                                                                                                                                                 Oct. 30, 2020

I wish you a speedy recovery from the flu, as you’ve often referred to COVID-19. 

You have the best, most comprehensive health care system at your disposal. It affords for hospitalization for a few days even for “monitoring” or for an "abundance of caution" or for those pre-existing conditions you may have. 

I am joined in my wishes, I’m sure, by the millions of fellow Americans, uninsured, undocumented, elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, and those like you with pre-existing conditions. 

At some point, as you said back in February, the flu will go away. It will disappear like a miracle. So I’m not worried about you. 

In the meantime, it must be disconcerting to have to be away from family and to have to wear a mask. We know how deeply you and your family’s convictions run against masks. During your debate with Joe Biden the other day, it was exhilarating to see your whole family act in solidarity by whipping off their masks after being seated for the debate. The act of resistance was particularly patriotic and courageous in that the debate took place in a medical clinic. Rules are meant for suckers. As you said to Biden, masks are ok when needed, but you wouldn’t wear a mask like Biden who shows up "wearing the biggest mask I’ve ever seen." [click on the link-you'll love hearing yourself put it to him]

As you entered Walter Reed Hospital, you had on a mask suitable for being hospitalized among medical teams who were in place to monitor you, whether they signed non-disclosure agreements or not.

By all appearances, it’s possible you may have others join you in your Presidential COVID-denial sycophant movement. Your wife will loyally join you; as may your campaign manager Bill Stepien; Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; your former adviser Kellyanne Conway; Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson; Utah Senator Mike Lee; North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis; Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and of course your confidante Hope Hicks, all of whom have clung by your side and dutifully tested positive for the flu. 

As you tweeted, we will get through this TOGETHER!” 

It is customary in the Jewish faith to wish a person a “refuah shlema,” a renewal of body and an epiphany for a spirit of empathy. 

Amen. 

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=115486880454667&id=101931588476863

 #####

Is the American Creed adopted by immigrants of other people, by other people, and for other people?

                                                                                                                                               Jack Doppelt 

                                                                                                                                              April 30, 2019 

[A version of this talk was delivered at the Wilmette Public Library on April 30, 2019]

Possibly the most controversial legacy of the last few years will be that a nation of immigrants is being replaced by nation of enough immigrants. Should something be done about it and if so, by whom? It’s a slippery slope caked with mud. 

American Creed, a documentary by Sam Ball and Randy Bean, examines through profiles of diverse people what constitutes The American Character. 

It has challenged me to work with a different lens. My lens for ten years has been to sustain an online network for immigrants, refugees, their families and communities. Our network is stoked by the personal stories that emerge from the multiple immigrant communities in and around Chicago, to find threads that connect them with one another. We came up with weavable threads – stories of back home, culture shock, family, fearing the law, identity, learning the language, problems with papers, the migration, and experiences with work, jobs and money - and we’ve been at it ever since. The immigrant experience is historically one of isolation and insecurity, and the sharing of stories and information is a time-honored antidote. 

American Creed got me to pull back to see beyond the vivid, often tattered tapestry of immigrants, refugees, their families and communities to explore the sets of beliefs and principles that delimit "we the people.” Who's in, who's out? Who decides? Are there core values that pull Americans, or that can pull Americans, together?

One line that sticks with me is all we have to hold us together is a story. To that I add other stories that emanate and resonate from there. What stories do we want to endure? That’s a not too distant echo from what I’ve focused on with immigrants. 

One of the core principles of American Creed is that we are a nation of immigrants. Are we? Or has the American Creed evolved like manifest destiny or the great frontier and shifted to a nation of enough immigrants. 

As Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace would say, “let’s do the numbers.” The countries with the highest percentage of immigrants (foreign borns) other than islands and Vatican City are gulf states (United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Kuwait-over 70%), small European countries (Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland), middle east countries (Jordan, Lebanon), and Singapore. The U.S. and Germany are about the same-14%.  The UK- 13%. Russia-7%. 

In terms of sheer numbers though and that’s what “we the people” may notice and feel more, only four countries have more than 10 million foreign born residents. The U.S. has by far the most, with 46+ million. Germany (12 mil),  Russia (11 mil), and Saudi Arabia (10 mil) are next. Other hugely populated nations such as China (4 mil), India (5 mil) and Brazil (700,000) are much more insular. Japan has 2 mil or less than 2% of its population and Mexico, 1 mil or less than 1%.

Any wonder the U.S. is a nation of immigrants? That realization may also make it more understandable that there are plenty of Americans, a movement of them, and an easily fomented movement, who believe the U.S. should be a nation of enough immigrants? 

At his juncture, in a nation in which living room conversations occur, when they do, in encampments of like-minded, isolated creeds, there are dueling storylines. 

Hordes, terrorists, drug-dealers, rapists, criminals, job takers, and benefit leaches, from hell hole countries. 

The slippery, mud-ridden slope is in place. 

That slope is what Donald Trump appealed to when during his first hundred days in office, he issued a flurry of executive orders that, in addressing immigration and refugee policies, staked out a vision of the American Creed:

• Removals (Deportations) 

• Hire 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents 

• Hire 10,000 additional immigration officers, who shall complete relevant training and be authorized to perform the law enforcement functions described in section 287 

• Empower State and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law under the 287(g) program 

• Those who entered US fraudulently (knowingly lying on papers) 

• Detain individuals apprehended on suspicion of violating Federal or State law, including Federal immigration law, pending further proceedings regarding those violations; 

• Expedite determinations of apprehended individuals' claims of eligibility to remain in the United States 

• Ensure the detention of aliens apprehended for violations of immigration law pending the outcome of their removal proceedings or their removal from the country to the extent permitted by law. 

• Border crossings now being treated as federal criminal misdemeanors –illegal entry - people get mass due process - so immigrants who cross the border illegally are considered criminals. They weren’t before. That way, anyone who’s undocumented in the U.S. is a criminal too. For a sense of how that worked, listen to This American Life's All Together Now, which documented that 74 of 74 people pleaded guilty – included asylum seekers. After pleading guilty, most got sentenced to time served for the time they already were in detention. Phase 1 – if done a 2nd time, they can be tried for felonies. 

• On a weekly basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any (sanctuary) jurisdictions that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens. 

• Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information. 

In summary, just those initial executive actions resulted in:

1. More arrests, more detentions as cases pend;
2. Public shaming of undocumented and welcoming cities;
3. Priorities for enforcement shifted from criminals convicted of felonies to those -
• convicted of any criminal offense;
• charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;
• committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense;
• engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency;
• abused any program related to receipt of public benefits, such as subsidized housing, free education, English lessons, free school breakfast and lunch, urgent medical care, prenatal and postpartum care for pregnant women under the Women, Infants and Children program, and food stamps for families with U.S.-born children;
• in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security. 

Of course these measures left people and communities without the American Dream they prized. For a nation of immigrants, the measures appeared at the least to strip any vestiges of the American Creed from those in the country who'd already come to cherish it.

The nation of immigrants seemed to be evolving into a nation of enough immigrants. If immigrants and refugees sought a better life, they should take their business and families elsewhere. Maybe the American Creed they'd adopted of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity were of other people, by other people, and for other people.

#####

Let the negotiation pretense begin: Trump floats a deal on immigration to build a wall in exchange for deportation protection and ending the federal shutdown

Jack Doppelt

Feb. 17, 2019

[A version of this article was published as Let the negotiations begin: The President’s made-for-TV offer is as good as the Twitter feed it’s written on on Immigrant Connect]

President Trump’s offer on Saturday is worth negotiating, and I’d like to make my good offices available to shepherd it through. The president’s opening made-for-TV offer, it seems, is $5.7 billion dollars in funding for a wall in exchange for three years of protection from deportation for 700,000 Dreamers and 300,000 TPS holders, with some other elements thrown in. 

If he’s using the same round numbers as I am, of the 700,000 DACA recipients, more than 550,000 are Mexican-Americans; and of the 300,000 TPS holders, 200,000 people came from El Salvador, 50,000 from Honduras and 50,000 from Haiti and have stayed in the U.S. on temporary protected status. 

What the president didn’t say when he touted his offer as “a common-sense compromise both parties should embrace” is that he’s under federal court orders to continue the DACA program and that since October, he’s under a different court order that prohibits his administration from deporting Salvadorans and Haitians on TPS status while a judge looks over email exchanges between Trump administration officials to determine if the decision to deport them is “based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants.” Sounds like the same scenario that got the Trump administration in a ringer on the census citizenship question. They talk too much and the courts take notice. 

The Supreme Court signaled the other day that it is not going to hear the DACA case this term, so thanks to the courts, much of what Trump is offering for DACA recipients, he has to do anyway…for now. 

Still, let the negotiations begin. They will take time. The Democrats’ answer seems to be that the offer is a non-starter and that they won’t negotiate until Trump releases the federal employee hostages first. 

Democrats, don’t forget that in addition to holding 800,000 federal workers hostage, Trump is also holding hostage 550,000 productive young Mexican-Americans, 200,000 Salvadorans, 50,000 Hondurans and 50,000 Haitians who’ve lived and worked legally in the U.S. for years. 

.

My unsolicited advice to the Democrats is to begin negotiating. Demand that the shutdown end, but if Trump doesn’t end it, at least negotiations will be on the table. He wants $5.7 billion to save face. Ridiculous. But use it. In return, good people who’ve been in the country for years should get a path to citizenship. Sublime. 

Negotiations that run from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

I don’t need to tell anyone that if a deal were to emerge with the president, don’t trust it. Don’t even just verify. Build in irrevocable terms that start immediately. Though the president didn’t actually write the Art of the Deal, he wrote the book on The Art of the Reneged Deal. 

#####

A Nation of Immigrants at the Hands of Master Propagandists

 

                                     Jack Doppelt

Feb. 28, 2018

[A version of this article was published as How Master Propagandists Linked Immigrants to the Florida School Shooting in Yes! Magazine on Feb. 28, 2018]

Ann Coulter, and the bizarre link between the Parkland, Florida, shooting and America’s missing “promise as a nation of immigrants.”

No, Nikolas Cruz is not an immigrant. But his name has helped people like Ann Coulter stir the xenophobic melting pot.

Beneath the surface of our wrenching national conversation in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida, is a case study in how propaganda works in the hands of masters to sow demagoguery at the expense of basic humanity. 

After the Valentine’s Day school onslaught that left 17 people dead, conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote a column. 

Coulter is one of only 45 people whom President Donald Trump follows on Twitter, according to a

Huffington Post piece, “Who Is Ann Coulter And Why Is She So Friendly With Donald Trump?” Coulter and Trump share similar social media ambitions—“stirring up the pot,” as Coulter puts it, and being noticed. As a conservative megaphone, she is Trump’s most vocal supporter who matters. 

At the time Coulter’s book In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! was released in 2016, she warned Trump that she’d be riding him on immigration. She’s kept her promise. 

In response to the Parkland shootings, Trump stirred the pot with fulminations about arming teachers. But Coulter had a different mission. Her column, “Amazing New Breakthrough to Reduce Mass Shootings!” was syndicated widely among conservatives via Breitbart, Townhall, Free Republic, Trapshooters, Fort Bend Herald, Trendolizer, Glock Talk, The Patriot Post, Infowars, and Veterans in Defense of Liberty. 

In it, Coulter identified “16 immigrant mass shootings” since 2000. That’s out of a total of about 34 mass shootings, as she counts them: 47 percent. The number plays into the polarizing characterization of immigrants as a scourge on safe American communities. A fuller characterization is this: Immigrants commit fewer crimes than the population at large and are a driving force of American growth and productivity. Even the Cato Institute, the conservative think tank, knows that.

So who are these immigrants prone to mass shootings? She claims they are first- and second-generation immigrants. 

What’s a second-generation immigrant? It’s an odd, confusing term that seems oxymoronic. It’s a person born in the U.S. I thought we referred to them as Americans. Some have one immigrant parent, some have two, some have naturalized Americans as parents and have immigrant grandparents. 

According to the Pew Research Center, that’s about 20 million adults and another 16 million minors, or 15% of the U.S. population, who apparently aren’t “real” Americans, according to Coulter, and their numbers are growing. They tend to earn more and are better educated than their immigrant parent or parents. They are less likely to live in poverty. 

As Ann Coulter insinuates convincingly to those who see the world as she does, mass shootings would be cut in half and the FBI would not be as incompetent if it weren’t chasing immigrants who should be deported. As it is, the deported just get replaced by others in the perpetual motion immigrant chain. 

I have to admit that all this hits close to home. I’m one of those second-generation immigrants, though I’ve never thought of myself that way. Born in Chicago and all. 

I wonder if it hits close to home for Trump, who is a second-generation immigrant, thanks to his Scottish mom. Or to his wife, Melania, who is a first-generation immigrant. 

I wonder if it hits close to home for Ann Coulter, too. Don’t get me wrong. She doesn’t have immigrant parents to stain her pedigree that on one side goes back to the American Revolution. 

But she did have a father, John Vincent Coulter. So let’s follow her in another equally ridiculous direction. If I get her line of reasoning, a second-generation immigrant is an immigrant (rather than a first-generation American) because he/she/they are one generation removed from an immigrant and live in the same house. 

Coulter is one generation removed from her father, and they lived in the same house, which according to my calculations, makes her, among other identities, a second-generation male. 

I’m no more an immigrant than she is a male. 

The irony, or the mastery, is that Coulter wrote the column in response to the Parkland school killings, which appear to have been perpetrated by Nikolas Cruz. Nikolas? Not a common American name spelled that way. Cruz? Hispanic. Could be Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, Honduran, Nicaraguan, or American, in that it’s the 12th most common surname in Puerto Rico and the most common surname of all in Guam, according to the lifelong learning site ThoughtCo. 

When the name Nikolas Cruz emerged on Feb. 14 as the perpetrator in the shootings, alarm bells were set off on far-right websites, Twitter feeds, and chat groups. Of course, he’s an immigrant. Some said he was a Dreamer, which means an immigrant with illegal status in the U.S., and that he is a DACA recipient, which means to the far-right that he is being allowed to stay in the U.S. because of a suspect executive order by President Obama. Craig Brittan, the far-right Republican candidate to replace Jeff Flake as U.S. Senator from Arizona, jumped on. 

It turns out that Nikolas Cruz is not a DACA recipient or a Dreamer or an illegal immigrant or an immigrant, even a second-generation immigrant, as far as anyone knows. Cruz was adopted in infancy by the Cruz family, who had recently moved from Long Island to Florida. It is not publicly known who Cruz’s biological parents were before Lynda Cruz and her husband adopted and named him.

Among the accounts of Nikolas Cruz’s social media outbursts are those in the private Instagram chat group Murica, on which Cruz talked about keeping Blacks in chains, cutting their necks, killing Mexicans, and hating gays and Jews, and his affiliation with the Republic of Florida, a White nationalist militia that has advocated for a White-only state in Florida, according to the Associated Press. CNN added that during one of Cruz’s chat group rants, he said, “My real mom was a Jew. I am glad I never met her.” 

No, Nikolas Cruz is not an immigrant, though his name ensures that Coulter, a touchstone for millions of alienated, angry Americans who are few generations removed from their own immigrant forebears, can keep Trump’s feet to the fire by blowing on the Nikolas Cruz dog whistle. The dog whistle works, no matter how off-key it is. 

Long after we’re sapped of mourning, and the urgent voices of both gun control advocates and 2nd Amendment rights defenders have become hoarse in anticipation of another round, masters of propaganda like Coulter will have stretched the web of inhumanity that weaves together illegals, immigrants, second-generation immigrants, chain migrants, terrorists, Muslims, refugees, and troubled 19-year-olds with names like Nikolas Cruz into one xenophobic melting pot. 

I’m being alarmist? 

The mission statement of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is to administer “the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.” It says so right on the agency webpage. 

The page was amended last week, on Feb. 22. Before that, it included the phrase “USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants …” 

Replaced mission statement above.

New statement, as of Feb. 22, below. 

Is that promise really gone? 

It will be up to this nation of third- and fourth- and fifth- and sixth- and seventh- and eighth-generation immigrants to make sure this “nation of immigrants” is not replaced by “nation of enough immigrants.” 

#####