BLAKE MASTERS - TRUMP ATF NOMINEE, PRAISED UNABOMBER
CALLED TED KACZYNSKI 'UNDERRATED THINKER'
CO-WROTE BOOK WITH PETER THIEL
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow just uncovered a concerning link between Donald Trump and the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter.
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Friends,
JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, will almost certainly be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028, regardless of whether Trump wins in November.
But who is JD Vance, really? An opportunist chameleon who once viewed Donald Trump as “Hitler” and is now his pit bull?
Or does Vance have an agenda over and above mere political ambition?
In one of the most important exchanges of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, Vance refused to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, and he downplayed the violent events of January 6, 2021. Vance also declined to rule out challenging the outcome of the upcoming election even if votes were certified by every state leader as legitimate.
Trump picked Vance for his vice president because Vance publicly stated he’d do what Mike Pence refused to do: overturn democracy and place America under MAGA control.
In response to a question ABC’s George Stephanopoulos put to Vance last February — “Had you been vice president on January 6th, would you have certified the election results?” — Vance said:
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”
In 2020, Vance alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” In 2022, he suggested that Democrats were attempting to “transform the electorate” amid an immigrant “invasion.”
Echoing the so-called “great replacement theory,” Vance told voters, “You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again.”
In contrast to Trump, who has no ideology except accumulating power and wealth for himself and taking revenge on those who would deny them to him, Vance does have an ideology. He’s the emerging leader of the anti-democracy movement in America.
Vance would never have become a senator from Ohio in 2022 were it not for billionaire tech financier Peter Thiel, who staked $15 million on Vance’s election — a major portion of all the funds that went into Vance’s race.
Thiel knew what he was buying. Vance had worked for Thiel’s California venture capital firm before running for the Senate and was part of Thiel’s libertarian community of rich crypto bros, tech executives, back-to-the-landers, and disaffected far-right intellectuals.
Because Thiel had been a major funder of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, he had significant influence with the former president when urging Trump to pick Vance for his vice president.
Why has Thiel been such a strong sponsor of Vance? Because Thiel sees in his protege a future leader of a political movement to turn America away from democracy. “For Peter,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking, “Vance is a generational bet.”
Thiel is a self-styled libertarian who once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power.
That’s the point. Thiel and Vance — along with Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone, blogger Curtis Yarvin, and others in the anti-democracy movement — believe that the only way true libertarians can win in America is for a Caesar-like figure to wrest power from the American establishment and install a monarchical regime, run like a startup.
Yarvin comes as close as anyone to being the intellectual godfather of the anti-democracy movement. He has written that real political power in the United States is held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream press, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding social order.
In Yarvin’s view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful; they should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime.
How to achieve Yarvin’s vision? The first step, as Vance offered in a 2021 podcast, is to replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say—” as did Andrew Jackson — that “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
Vance has been anointed by Thiel and the rest of the anti-democracy movement as the post-Trump president, tasked with replacing the American establishment with an authoritarian regime.
Make no mistake: The foundation for America’s first true anti-democracy president is being laid right now.
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Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows ordered by South Carolina’s Supreme Court to testify in Georgia election probe
The justices unanimously affirmed a lower court's order for Meadows to comply with the subpoena from a grand jury probing the illegal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Take Action: Expel the congressmen who tried to get Trump pardons for their role in Jan. 6th!
VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump official forced to answer brutal question live on air
The MAGA minion was confronted directly about Trump's blatant antisemitism and ended up squirming in front of the eyes of the world.
Take Action: Tell Congress to bring back the Expanded Child Tax Credit!
President Biden can kill Trump's disastrous oil pipeline project with the stroke of a pen!
Evergreen Action: A Trump-approved oil corporation's plan will pillage the Alaskan wilderness, pollute indigenous lands, and pump enough carbon into the atmosphere to undo all the progress Biden's green infrastructure investments will make. But President Biden can stop it without support from Congress!
Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strike, progressives move to add 7 sick days to railway deal
The railworkers are unwilling to budge on their reasonable demands for a mere six days of sick leave — so President Biden has asked Democratic leadership to intervene and force the contract they've already rejected upon them, rather than apply any kind of pressure or coercive energy towards the greedy rail conglomerates, whose CEOs personally earned over $200 million over the past three years. But all hope is not lost — Senator Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus have sworn to hold up the bill until an amendment adding in sick leave days passes, and they may even have some Republican support.
Take Action: Don't let Republicans starve critical investments in children and healthcare!
Twitter stops policing COVID-19 misinformation under CEO Elon Musk
It's not enough that the right-wing billionaire is driving the website into the ground by opening the floodgates to Nazis, insurrectionists and trolls, now he's going to actually get people killed as dangerous lies about the pandemic will be free to spread like the virus itself.
Take Action: Tell Elon Musk to keep Trump off of Twitter for good!
Senate passes bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriage over GOP opposition
With the specter of Republican theocracy rising, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bipartisan bill to shield the LGBTQ community and people of color from the worst deprivations of the GOP-controlled judiciary.
Take Action: Don't let Republicans starve critical investments in children and healthcare!
RNC commissions "review" of party tactics after disastrous midterm
The GOP has assembled a crack team of idiots and weirdos including Kellyanne Conway, anti-LGBTQ hate group leader Tony Perkins, guy who allegedly faked an "attack" on himself at a campaign stop Lee Zeldin and the deeply off-putting Thiel ghoul Blake Masters to explain why they lost. Their choices in choosing the review board already give them the answers they're looking for.
Elon Musk's far-right Twitter gamble backfires
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Whoa.
LAPD serves search warrants in investigation of who recorded racist City Hall leak
Rather than using tax dollars to actually stop crime and improve communities, Los Angeles detectives are desperately trying to hunt down the person who recorded a group of powerful local politicians engaged in deeply offensive conversation. Just one more argument for the need to slash police budgets.
Top DeSantis aides added in migrant flight lawsuit
Two top aides to the odious Florida governor were added as defendants in a potential class-action lawsuit stemming from the DeSantis administration's incredibly cruel and almost certainly illegal trafficking of 49 migrants from Texas to Massachusetts in September.
US gun death rates hit highest levels in decades
The US gun death rate last year hit its highest mark in nearly three decades, and the rate among women has been growing faster than that of men, according to a new bombshell study. The greatest increase has hit Black women the hardest, leaving us with difficult questions about the sickness afflicting American society and the reckless proliferation of murderous weapons to an irresponsible civilian populace.
US Supreme Court mulls Biden immigration enforcement shift
The justices heard arguments in the administration's request to overturn a judge's ruling in favor of Texas and Louisiana that halted DHS guidelines narrowing the scope of those who can be targeted by immigration agents for arrest and deportation. The court's three liberal members generally signaled support for the administration while the six conservatives appeared more divided, with Justice Samuel Alito embracing the arguments made by the states. Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that we must expand the court to neuter right-wing activism.
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We owe our historic midterm Senate hold to the youth vote. So many young people got out the vote this year, in fact, that it was the second highest youth vote in thirty years. It made Republicans so mad that some of them even started pushing to raise the voting age, so yeah— they’re a big deal. We need as many progressives in office as possible to preserve the rights we’ve been fighting so hard for — reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, gun-safety initiatives, justice reform, etc. Young people are a hugely important piece of the puzzle.
That’s why it’s as important for young people to get involved in getting out the vote as they are in voting. Swing Left is hosting a youth-centered phone banking event TONIGHT from 6-8pm EST for the Georgia run-off.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will face the historically despicable Herschel Walker in the runoff NEXT WEEK. It’s no secret that one more seat in the Senate could mean the difference between advancing our progressive agenda or watching Joe Manchin obstruct and disrupt any further progress over the next two years, so reach out to the young progressives in your life and tell them to join the call. They don’t have to be a seasoned professional or a registered voter in Georgia to join this fight — they just need to be ready to channel the late, great John Lewis and stir up some “good trouble.”
PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition to demand CBS News fire Trump's lying ex-chief of staff, and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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