Showing posts with label steve schmidt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steve schmidt. Show all posts

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Incompetence, Ignorance, Ineptitude & Old-fashioned Stupidity

Our old friend Steve Schmidt had some time on his hands this morning:







Apologies for the repeated tweet here, when they're threaded on Twitter 
sometimes the cut-and-paste goes awry. 


Days until the election: 136
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Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Random Thoughts On Impeachment Day - Updated

I'll be posting interesting things periodically throughout the day. To start us off, how about an interview with Donald from 11 years ago. He says nice things about Nancy Pelosi then wonders why she didn't impeach George W. Bush for getting us into the war. (Apparently that wouldn't have been overturning an election.) Separate from that, the contrast between Donald's ability to speak clearly 11 years ago, and his ability to do so today, is striking:



This is how Morning Joe opened the show this morning:




Joe Scarborough also said that a big reason why Donald is getting impeached today is that he listened to Rudy Giuliani:   

"Isn't it fascinating that Donald Trump gets so angry when somebody works on his campaign and makes a few dollars here and a few dollars there off of his campaign or off of his name, it drives him crazy, it always has. And yet he is being impeached today in large part because Rudy sold him a bill of goods while Rudy was trying to get even richer off of inside deals in Ukraine. People all around the president, people in the White House didn't want the president to listen to Rudy but he bought it hook, line and sinker because Rudy said you know what, I can get at the one thing that exasperates him the most, that irritates him the most, the 2016 election. I'll sell him a bill of goods that this was about Ukraine and not Russia. He'll blow the entire country apart and I can go into the chaos and make millions of dollars off of these inside deals. Donald J Trump is getting impeached today in large part because he bought Rudy's nonsense, hook, line and sinker."

In an article titled "We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated," George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson co-wrote the following in the NYT:

Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad.

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.

The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.

The American presidency transcends the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. Their personality becomes part of our national character. Their actions become our actions, for which we all share responsibility. Their willingness to act in accordance with the law and our tradition dictate how current and future leaders will act. Their commitment to order, civility and decency are reflected in American society.

Mr. Trump fails to meet the bar for this commitment. He has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. His vision is limited to what immediately faces him — the problems and risks he chronically brings upon himself and for which others, from countless contractors and companies to the American people, ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

But this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.

Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.

Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet. In a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters reported that they consider Mr. Trump a better president than Lincoln.

Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers daily undermine the proposition we as a people have a responsibility and an obligation to continually bend the arc of history toward justice. They mock our belief in America as something more meaningful than lines on a map.

Our peril far outstrips any past differences: It has arrived at our collective doorstep, and we believe there is no other choice. We sincerely hope, but are not optimistic, that some of those Republicans charged with sitting as jurors in a likely Senate impeachment trial will do likewise.

American men and women stand ready around the globe to defend us and our way of life. We must do right by them and ensure that the country for which they daily don their uniform deserves their protection and their sacrifice.

We are reminded of Dan Sickles, an incompetent 19th-century New York politician. On July 2, 1863, his blundering nearly ended the United States.

(Sickles’s greatest previous achievement had been fatally shooting his wife’s lover across the street from the White House and getting himself elected to Congress. Even his most fervent admirers could not have imagined that one day, far in the future, another incompetent New York politician, a president, would lay claim to that legacy by saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.)

On that day in Pennsylvania, Sickles was a major general commanding the Union Army’s III Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his incompetence wrought chaos and danger. The Confederate Army took advantage, and turned the Union line. Had the rebel soldiers broken through, the continent might have been divided: free and slave, democratic and authoritarian.

Another Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock, had only minutes to reinforce the line. America, the nation, the ideal, hung in the balance. Amid the fury of battle, he found the First Minnesota Volunteers.

They charged, and many of them fell, suffering a staggeringly high casualty rate. They held the line. They saved the Union. Four months later, Lincoln stood on that field of slaughter and said, “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome. (This is the article in its entirety.) 

Who, exactly, are these guys? This is the blurb that was attached to the article; it doesn't mention that George Conway is married to Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald's closest advisers: 

George T. Conway III is an attorney in New York. Steve Schmidt is a political strategist who worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Weaver is a Republican strategist who worked for President George H.W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. John Kasich. Rick Wilson is a Republican media consultant and author of “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and the forthcoming “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats From Themselves.”


A striking picture of Donald. You know he's not having a good day:


A little karma for Don Jr.:





And finally, this is what Donald will see when he reads the papers tomorrow: 















Update on Thursday afternoon:

Image


Update #2 on Friday afternoon. A great story about Doug Mills, the New York Times photographer who took the black-and-white picture of Donald above:




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Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Will Donald Dump Pence? - Updated

Steve Schmidt took a break from commentating/punditing to work for Howard Schultz while he pondered running for president. Ultimately Schultz said no, which means that Steve is back to his old job, and he had some interesting things to say on Morning Joe this morning. The topic was Nikki Haley's new book and her ambitions to be Vice President. Not in 2024, next year. Here's how Steve sees it:

"She wants to be Vice President, she wants to be Vice President on the Republican ticket in 2020. I think there's an overwhelming chance that Trump will dump Pence to put Nikki Haley on the ticket."

Willie Geist: "Really. Why do you say that?"

Schmidt: "He has an enormous problem with women, suburban women particularly. He's entirely transactional, loyalty is a one-way street, and so she's clearly angling for the job and when you look at the politics of it, she would serve his immediate political interests in a way that Pence can't. So I would suggest that he's going to be gone and she'll be in. I think this book's about that."

Thoughts: In 2008, Schmidt was a top adviser to John McCain's campaign and was a key part of the decision to put Sarah Palin on the ticket. The McCain brain trust thought Palin, as a woman, might attract some of Hillary Clinton's voters. Wrong. Way wrong. As I've said here before, even if Palin had turned out to be a lot smarter than she is, there's no way Hillary's Democratic/liberal/progressive voters would vote for someone with Palin's far-right ideology. I believe there's a similar dynamic today. Women who don't like Donald are not going to be impressed, distracted or fooled by someone who's as closely aligned with him as Haley is.

For what it's worth, in August Haley herself shot down such talk:





... but hey, a girl can change her mind.

Steve Schmidt is also not a fan of Mike Pence and that may be influencing his view of Pence's place in the world. In this clip from May, 2018, he calls Pence the house butler at Mar-a-Lago and a titanic fraud:





Finally, and this is a nitpick, but I don't like the subtitle of Haley's new book: "Defending America with Grit and Grace". Saying that someone is doing something "with grit and grace" is usually meant as a compliment, i.e., something you say about someone else. It's grating to see her describing herself that way. 

Image result for With All Due Respect Haley


Update on Friday morning. There was a time when Nikki Haley wasn't a fan of Donald:




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Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Steve Schmidt Leaves The Republican Party

Steve Schmidt is (was) a Republican strategist who has worked for George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was the chief strategist for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign (and one of the key decision-makers responsible for putting Sarah Palin on the ticket, although he later fell seriously out of professional love with her.) He was never a fan of Donald Trump and has spoken out/tweeted about the 45th president in a very critical way. Today Steve renounced his membership in the Republican party with some choice words as he walked out the door:


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Thursday, May 10, 2018

The House Butler At Mar-a-Lago - Updated




In a blog post this morning I said that in an article about the break-up of the president and Rudy Giuliani, Rick Wilson was having fun with words. This afternoon, (possibly former) Republican strategist Steve Schmidt had his own fun with words while talking about Vice President Mike Pence:

"He is a titanic, and I mean Titanic, fraud, ...on his moral high horse, ...his moral preening is famous throughout the land, ...the most obsequious, ...his slobbering servility, ...the weakness that oozes out of this guy, ...he acts like he's the house butler at Mar-a-Lago"

Fascinating.

Friday morning update: More from Steve Schmidt. He's referring to the White House staffer who said that John McCain's thoughts about the nominee to head the CIA don't matter because "he's dying anyway."


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