AG Report 8.1.2023
No analysis of the latest indictment was included because I have not had a chance to read it yet.
The Continued Smear of FL Education Standards
The smear became even more apparent last week as the media doubled down on the false characterization of the Florida standards and those who came up with them.
The Congressional Black Caucus, led by Rep. Steven Horsford, called for the Department of Justice to investigate Florida based on their false characterization of the education standards. Media outlets such as The Associated Press covered this demand uncritically while repeating the smear. However, when a member of DeSantis’s office pointed out that the AP course from the College Board, which the Biden WH promoted, used similar language, Horsford responded by inadvertently admitting he hadn’t even read the standards. Horsford asked if Florida would teach about lynching and reconstruction, topics explicitly required by the very same standards he wanted Florida to be investigated for.
This entire smear campaign blew up after Kamala Harris flew to Florida to rail against Florida’s education standards — similar to how Biden went to Georgia to accuse the state of promoting Jim Crow 2.0 by passing a tame bill expanding voter access. Yet now that DeSantis is pushing back against the smear, NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen decided to frame it as DeSantis picking a fight with Harris. Allen, who ran Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s PAC before returning to “reporting,” has been consistently dishonest in his targeting of DeSantis.
Purely by coincidence, two Black Republican Congressmen who endorsed Trump, John James and Wesley Hunt, sent tweets within an hour of each other joining the smear campaign. The Trump campaign then cited those attacks to further attack DeSantis, only they screwed up by feeding James and Hunt a phrase (“net benefit”) never used by the standards or DeSantis, which they both invoked in their attacks, thus making the coordination very apparent. The Trump campaign may have thought it was clever to promote the smear via African American surrogates, but Trump and those Republicans will inevitably soon be the target of similar false campaigns from the left and press and find those of us who noticed their participation here far more reluctant to defend them. Of course, this band-wagoning accomplished the desired result as the media then spent the weekend citing the criticism from those Republicans as evidence that the attack was legitimate without sharing the actual facts. In case anyone had any doubt about what was occurring in this instance, Hunt was caught again posting clearly coordinated anti-DeSantis talking points about how polls should dictate the primary outcome on Monday.
DeSantis has fired the last salvo in this saga by sending an open invitation to Vice President Kamala Harris to have an honest and open discussion with him and Dr. Allen about the Florida standards.
The Trumpian Right-Wing Con of Trump Supporters
Several recent developments emphasize that many of the post-2020-election claims and shenanigans were intentional lies aimed to manipulate and con Trump supporters. Many of those supporters ended up paying a steep price between criminal charges and hundreds of millions stolen as part of a made-up cause.
Rudy Giuliani has conceded that he made false statements about Georgia elections workers after the 2020 election to promote claims of voter fraud.
There is now audio from top Trump adviser Stephen Bannon on October 31, 2020 explaining the strategy of using Trump’s favorable election day votes to “declare victory” early and claim the election was stolen if mail ballots, which were heavily preferred by Democrat voters, shifted momentum to Biden. That’s the exact strategy Trump employed in the weeks after the election. Other Trump advisers admitted to knowing about the red mirage strategy.
New video clips from interviews during the Jan 6 investigation show that top Trump advisors like campaign manager Bill Stepien and senior advisor Jason Miller privately told Trump that he had lost despite publicly pushing the Stop the Steal efforts. Miller even testified that Trump’s own data team had alerted them that Trump lost before he declared victory. Trump’s campaign lawyers also testified that they had alerted the team that the “fake electors” scheme which is now being prosecuted in states like Michigan would not work and was potentially illegal, but that was never shared with the people who participated. Trump and his allies weren’t publicly lying to Democrats or opponents, but to their own supporters after the election.
The reason many Trump voters bought these falsehoods wasn’t only because they wanted to believe them, but also because right-leaning media was parroting them. You have to question whether those at right-wing outlets who went along with this detrimental manipulation of their own audiences were intentionally complicit or just marks themselves. The fact that many in that group are now repeating similar falsehoods trying to exonerate Trump of wrongdoing related to his numerous criminal charges, including the latest revelations of him trying to destroy evidence in the documents case, would suggest it is the former.
The con hasn’t ended either. Now we find out that the main pro-Trump PAC spent tens of millions of dollars on Trump’s personal legal fees in the first half of the year. The spending accounted for more than any other group utilized for the actual campaign during that period. That’s contrasted with the main pro-DeSantis PAC, which used 85% of its $33.8 million in spending on direct voter contact. The Trump PAC’s spending, which was overwhelmingly on legal fees, included over $1.5 Million for the attorneys that represented Trump in the recent E. Jean Carol civil suit. The spending also included $108K for Melania Trump’s stylist, an extra $33K in salary for the Trump aide indicted in the documents case, and $340k to cover Rudy Guliani’s bills in his Georgia defamation case. Retirees are giving their spare income for what they think is a worthy cause, but is really just to cover the legal fees of a billionaire who doesn’t want to pay them himself. From business partners to banks, Trump has a long history of letting others pay his bills. He views it as a smart financial strategy. This time it’s small Republican donors he’s leaving with the check.
It’s also worth noting that none of this money is going to help the Trump supporters who ended up in legal jeopardy after 2020 because they believed the falsehoods pushed by the Trump camp. The entire 2024 campaign is increasingly looking like a fundraising scheme to cover Trump’s legal fees, which will also inevitably mean that none of that money will be left to support Republican election efforts or build a turnout operation. Then the same people will once again try to fundraise using “stolen election” claims after the inevitable losses to come.
After news came out that the Trump campaign was using all of their donor money to pay his and his associates’ legal bills, the Trump campaign finally moved to open a separate legal defense fund. Though I suspect they will just go back to using the PAC money if that fund does not raise enough.
Georgia Opens First Nuclear Power Plant in 30 Years
In a very positive step for those concerned with the environment, Georgia Power announced Monday that its Plant Vogtle 3 nuclear reactor has entered commercial operation, becoming the first new U.S. nuclear reactor to come online in more than 30 years.
