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Citation From the October 5, 2022, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): What do you mean property of the government? What the f are you talking about? Donald Trump is the government. When Donald Trump is the president and he's in charge of the executive, he is the executive. The executive is embodied in that man. This is the writing of our Constitution.

This is what you call a deep state. The deep state is the permanent state that's unelected that exists behind the democratic process, or above or below it - whatever you want to say. In heaven or in hell, definitely hell in my opinion. It exists below in the bowels, beyond our ability to correct it or to have oversight over it. Therefore, it is utterly unconstitutional.

The way that our Constitution is written is the American public, we the people are the arbiters of how our government is run and functions inside of a structure. That structure is being violated here, obviously, by the government saying we are the government we're not accountable to anyone. These documents we don't care who was the president these documents are ours. That's not the way it works. And it's not the way it worked for Obama, Clinton, Bush all of them had private and personal documents. And none of them were treated this way. Very, very interesting how this is going to shake out.

Link:
Newsmax's Benny Johnson on Mar-a-Lago documents: "Donald Trump is the government" - Media Matters for America

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

I am taken aback, and not for the first time, that terrible and shocking things now just flow over Americans as if chaos is part of a normal day. We dont have to accept the new normal.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

I began the morning, as I often do, with a cup of coffee and a discussion with a friend. We were talking about last weeks nuclear warnings from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and while we were on the subject of unhinged threats, I mentioned Donald Trumps bizarre statement over the weekend that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a DEATH WISH, with a racist slam on McConnells wife, Elaine Chao, added in for good measure.

Oh, yeah, my friend said. Id forgotten about that. To be honest, so had I. But when I opened Twitter today, The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwells tweet that we are still under-reacting to the threat of Trump jumped out at me. Shes right.

We are also, in a way, underreacting to the war in Ukraine. Our attention, understandably, has become focused on the human drama. But we are losing our grip on the larger story and greater danger: Russias dictator is demanding that he be allowed to take whatever he wants, at will and by force. He is now, as both my colleague Anne Applebaum and I have written, at war not only with Ukraine, but with the entire international order. He (like his admirer Trump) is at war with democracy itself.

And somehow, we have all just gotten used to it.

We are inured to these events not because we are callous or uncaring. Rather, people such as Trump and Putin have sent us into a tailspin, a vortex of mad rhetoric and literal violence that has unmoored us from any sense of the moral principles that once guided us, however imperfectly, both at home and abroad. This is the widening gyre W. B. Yeats wrote about in 1919, the sense that anarchy is loosed upon the world as things fall apart.

For many years, I have often felt this way in the course of an ordinary day, when it seems as if I am living in a dystopian alternate universe. A time of hope and progress that began in the late 1980s was somehow derailed, perhaps even before the last chunks of the Berlin Walls corpse were being cleared from the Friedrichstrasse. (This was a time, for example, when we started taking people like Ross Perot seriously, which was an early warning sign of our incipient postCold War stupor.) Here are some of the many moments in which I have felt that sense of vertigo:

Against all this, how can we not be overwhelmed? We stand in the middle of a flood of horrendous events, shouted down by the outsize voices of people such as Trump and his stooges, enervated and exhausted by the dark threats of dictators such as Putin. Its just too much, especially when we already have plenty of other responsibilities, including our jobs and taking care of our loved ones. We think we are alone and helpless, because there is nothing to convince us otherwise. How can anyone fight the sense that the center cannot hold?

But we are not helpless. The center can holdbecause we are the center. We are citizens of a democracy who can refuse to accept the threats of mob bosses, whether in Florida or in Russia. We can and must vote, but thats not enough. We must also speak out. By temperament, I am not much for public demonstrations, but if thats your preferred form of expression, then organize and march. The rest of us, however, can act, every day, on a small scale.

Speak up. Do not stay silent when our fellow citizens equivocate and rationalize. Defend whats right, whether to a friend or a family member. Refuse to laugh along with the flip cynicism that makes a joke of everything. Stay informed so that the stink of a death threat from a former president or the rattle of a nuclear saber from a Russian autocrat does not simply rush past you as if youve just driven by a sewage plant.

None of this is easy to do. But we are entering a time of important choices, both at home at the ballot box and abroad on foreign battlefields, and the centerthe confident and resolute defense of peace, freedom, and the rule of lawmust hold.

Related:

Why the Florida Fantasy Withstands Reality

Five years ago, after Hurricane Irma pummeled Floridas Gulf Coast, I rode a boat through the canals of Cape Coral, the Waterfront Wonderland, Americas fastest-growing city at the time. It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze and just a few puffs of clouds, so as I pointed to the blown-out lanais and piles of storm debris, my guide, a snowbird named Brian Tattersall, kept teasing me for missing the point of a magical afternoon. He said I sounded like his northern friends who always told him he was crazy to live in the Florida hurricane zone.

Come on. Does this feel crazy? he asked, as we drifted past some palm trees. Cape Coral is a low-lying, pancake-flat spit of exposed former swampland, honeycombed by an astonishing 400 miles of drainage ditches disguised as real-estate amenities, but to Tattersall it was a low-tax subtropical Venice where he could dock his 29-foot Sea Fox in the canal behind his house. When I asked if Irma would slow down the citys population boom, he scoffed: No way.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

Read. A new poem by Mairead Small Staid.

Though each night he cried out, each night / no angels came, no ministers of grace to save the son / from the spotlight glare of grief.

Watch. Hocus Pocus 2, on Disney+. The sequel wears its ridiculousness so proudly that its impossible to disdain.

Play our daily crossword.

My colleagues will be writing the Daily for the next few days; Im back on Friday. But I dont want to start off the week on such a grim note, so let me suggest a bit of light reading if youre looking for an escape from the news.

Often, when I see a reference to the Yeats poem The Second Coming (which includes the expression the widening gyre), I think of one of my favorite books, The Widening Gyrean entry in the Spenser detective series by the late Robert B. Parker. Spenser, an urbane and wisecracking Boston gumshoe, was played capably on television by Robert Urich (and later by a woefully miscast Joe Mantegna), but the books are a delight, especially if you read them in order. The Widening Gyre, however, is great as a quick stand-alone read. Written in the mid-1980s, its a political blackmail mystery set in Boston, Washington, and my hometown area of Springfield, Massachusetts. It has some wry laughs in it too: Spenser, good Bostonian that he is, rolls his eyes at Washingtons inability to deal with snow, protects his clients while calling himself a policy implementation specialist, and downs a thug with what he considers maybe the best left hook ever thrown in Springfield. Its a nice visit back to an earlier and simpler timeespecially in politics.

Tom

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

Go here to see the original:
Trump, Putin, and the Assault of Anarchy - The Atlantic

One of the many things weve learned in the Trump era is that a lot of the people in positions of power are either cynics or nihilists or both.

This is true on both sides of the political aisle, but its especially true on the right at the moment. Thats not a partisan statement, even if it may sound like one. The reality is that ever since Donald Trump took over the party in 2016, there are many people working in Republican politics who dont believe in what theyre doing, who know that Trump is and was a dangerous figure, and yet theyve plowed ahead anyway.

The question is: Why?

A new book by Tim Miller called Why We Did It gives about as good an answer as youll find. Miller is a former political operative who worked at various levels of Republican politics since he was 16 years old. He broke ranks with the party when Trump won the nomination and his book is a genuine attempt to grapple with his own contradictions and make sense of the people he left behind. The result is an unusually insightful glimpse behind the curtain. Thats why I invited Miller to talk about his book on the latest episode of Vox Conversations.

Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity. As always, theres much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Your journey in Republican politics is the core of the book and I just wanna start there. You started working in Republican politics when you were 16. Were you just a political junkie that early in your life?

Total political junkie. I dont know why, my parents werent. My grandmother was really into Republican politics, and so we would talk about politics and we gambled on the 1992 presidential race. I took Bill Clinton. She took George H.W. Bush. She had to mail me $1 with my winnings, which I was extremely proud of in fifth grade. And that was the last time I supported a Democrat until Hillary Clinton in 2016. So, you know, I kind of went full circle there.

The Republican Party has changed a lot since you were 16. But for reasons youve suggested it was always an awkward home for you. Youre gay, and you talk about how easily you contorted yourself to defend homophobes for years.

You call it championship-level compartmentalization in the book. That sounds like a really difficult pose to maintain for so many years.

Actually not really. It wasnt that difficult and thats the thing that makes it so gross. It makes me feel so bad about it.

I think that its important for me to explain that because if I could work for homophobes, when the people that I was working for were literally trying to use the law to deny me the things that are the most important things in my life right now my husband, my child well, then, think about how easy it is for somebody to justify working for Donald Trump when none of the impacts of his policies hurt them.

Like, they arent kids on the border. Theyre not gonna be the ones that are punished by the new abortion laws. So thats why I tried to make this parallel and try to make you really understand my mindset.

What was your eureka moment? When did you finally realize that you had had enough, that this whole thing had gone too far and you werent a Republican anymore?

I fucking knew it with [Sarah] Palin. I knew it.

And this is why the first half of the book is me in a hair shirt. I come to these interviews and they are like, Why is it Why We Did It? You opposed Trump from Day One. Which I did.

But its Why We Did It because I sat there for seven years as this beast kind of grew and grew and became more and more dangerous. And I knew it.

I leave the McCain campaign, I move to DC, I come out of the closet, and Im working for a PR firm. I still can see whats happening clearly. I was like, the crazies are taking this over. John McCain is a good man whos trying to manage the crazy and making some good choices, some bad choices while he does that. But the power, the energy is with the reactionaries. And I saw it then, and yet I still just keep getting sucked back in.

And the first way I get sucked back in is kind of earnest, actually I go to work for Jon Huntsman and Im like, I kind of know this guys gonna lose, but Im a moderate Republican, and Im gonna go work for this moderate. But I get addicted to the competition of it again, and then kind of slowly start going down the path to working for more and more gross people.

The second half of the book is really about actors behind the scenes in the Republican Party, the functionaries, the spin doctors, the campaign hacks. These are the people who often know what theyre doing, often know they shouldnt do it, and just do it anyway. And the reasons they do it are as banal as they are depressing.

One thing that comes across is that it really is a game for a lot of these people. And if you really push them on it, what you find is that theres no real moral core behind it. Its just careerist, jockeying for influence and attention.

Its really depressing. The characters in the book, almost all of them, with one or two exceptions, in the second half about the Trump era, go along with it anyway.

So the question is, why? This is gross in a different way, but you almost want it to be because theyve really bought the bullshit about how we need to have a secure border to help wages. Or they just are so hard line on protecting fetuses or so hard line on whatever.

And some of those people exist in real America. But in the DC class? None of em, and that includes the named people in the book. I also interviewed a bunch of people I didnt name and nobody nobody got passionate talking about any policy issue. Thats all a feint, its all bullshit.

The only time I would sense any emotion in their voice when they were explaining why they went along with Trump, besides the banal careerist reasons, was that theyve really started to really not like you, Sean. I mean, not you, but, like, your people, right? The liberal media elites theyve developed a very deep well of hatred and resentment and jealousy of them.

Of all the characters in the book, all the operator types, some of them you know personally, some of them you dont which of them sticks out to you the most in terms of just like abject nihilism or cynicism?

Its Elise for me. Elise Stefanik.

Can you say who she is?

Yeah, sure.

So just going all the way back, I worked with her on the Republican autopsy. People might remember, after Mitt Romney lost, we put together this document that basically had a bunch of blocking and tackling recommendations for how the party can catch up to Obamas data nerds, but also said that we should soften our rhetoric around immigration and other issues.

Elise was the editor of that document. And I was the spokesperson at the time. So I was working with her very closely.

So Elise then runs for Congress as a very moderate Republican climate change is a problem, gay marriage, immigration reform. You know, as moderate of a Republican as you have in Congress when she wins in 2014. 2016, she runs for reelection with Trump on the ballot, wont say his name. Literally cant even spit out his name.

In 2018, something happens. Trump comes to campaign in her district, huge crowd. She gets this huge applause on the stage. She starts to reassess her power trajectory. Paul Ryan, who was kind of her mentor, retires. So her little path up through the normal establishment ranks in Congress started to seem not as likely.

And she flips on a dime. And in the first impeachment becomes Trumps most rabid defender with the most absurd defenses. She was like a foreign policy neocon Republican who wouldve been very much arm the Ukrainians against the Russians, flips on it, sides with Trump against Zelenskyy. And is now literally indistinguishable from a MAGA troll.

And there was no policy anything about this. I interviewed tons of mutual friends. She wouldnt talk to me. She emailed me saying that she sees my tweets and is not interested in participating in the book. And didnt reply to any other of my entreaties.

So to me, she is the worst because its just the most brazen. It also is the worst at some level because its paying off for her. I truly think shell be on a VP shortlist for Trump, cause hell want a woman if he runs in 2024. And if not that, I think shes on a speaker of the house trajectory.

Part of me is perversely fascinated by some of the people you talk to, the ones who really, truly hate the cultural left so much, so that they pretend that theres just two choices, right? Wokeness or fascism.

How common is that sentiment?

Its pretty common.

So in all those drunk off-the-record conversations, people kept bringing this up. Literally this was the thing that people were volunteering, these Republican staffers.

The formulation that you just laid out is not an exaggeration. [One source] said, My wifes friends think Im a racist. My kids are getting these DEI packets. Theres cancel culture everywhere. And as a white male, like, sometimes I feel like my only choice to combat the wokeness is to just think about the one or two things that I agree with Donald Trump on and ride with him.

Thats not the direct quote, cause I dont have it in front of me, but like thats very close to his direct quote.

Thats a common sentiment. Thats how they all soothe each other, by expressing something to that same effect, maybe not quite as brazen.

Thats why I dont have a last chapter in the book what do you do about this? What do you do about petty, privileged, white dudes resentments, and willingness to go along with Donald Trump over them?

I dont have a good answer to that question.

Who do you thinks actually steering the party now? Is it Fox News? Is it the base? I mean, the politicians themselves seem to be totally hostage to both of those things.

No, theyre totally hostage to the base. Look at Trump getting booed over the vaccine thing. I thought that was a very telling moment. It was like one time where he kind of had to back off his own he doesnt even get to talk about it, one of the one good things that happened while he was in there: Operation Warp Speed. He cant even talk about it without getting booed.

Im stealing this from my other Bulwark colleague, Sarah Longwell, credit where due. Its a triangle of doom. The bases grievances are underlying. Some of them are legitimate, by the way, others are illegitimate.

The conservative media is stoking the illegitimate grievances mostly. But occasionally theyre legitimate grievances about the hollowing out of certain parts of the country.

And then the Republican politicians are riding the wave of that grievance-mongering. And rather than caring at all about responsibilities of leadership or checks on excesses, have now just totally accepted it.

And so, all three are responsible and, somewhere along that, you have to break it. But where? Who? The politicians arent, like the conservative media isnt. Is the Republican base gonna get less radicalized? Thats kind of hard to see.

You say something I think very true and profound at the end of the book about politics and identity. And I just wanna read it aloud here.

You say, For gay people, coming out of the closet is hard because of this change of your identity. Its not only how you look at yourself, but how other people look at you. People you love, your dad, your high school bestie. Youre worried that theyre going to now see you differently because your identity is changed in their eyes. And so if politics becomes like skin color, like sexuality, untangling that is a lifetime of work. And its therapy. And we should really think about it like that.

This to me is absolutely one of the most challenging problems. These cultural divides have mapped neatly onto political divides. That means our political views are wrapped up with our core identity in really powerful ways. And that means people are entrenched. Theyre not reachable by facts or arguments or policies because thats not what identity is about.

And even some of the cynical careerists you write about in this book, you can see how their professional identities are bound up with their partisan politics. And the price of leaving that behind is enormous. And most arent willing to pay it. Its who they are now. Its their friends, its their whole lives.

I dont know what to do about that, Tim. But that seems like a chasm that may be unbridgeable.

Its something that Ive thought about a lot. The fact that I had to come out of the closet and had to experience that I think in some ways helped me be more comfortable with this, right?

And it ended up being the best thing I ever did in my life. It was the best choice I ever made. My life trajectory wouldve been horrible had I decided to, like, stay in the closet and marry the one girlfriend I ever had (sorry, Stephanie).

So I knew that I could do this. For these other folks, to your point the bars they go to. The poker night. The church. Their friend group. Their dogs name is Reagan. Changing all that is very challenging. So thats the DC class. And I think it explains it doesnt excuse, but it explains why its so hard.

Last week, I was with someone who works for Liz Cheney. And I was like, hows life? Hes like, I still get invited to parties, but I dont go. Because its really awkward.

So thats hard. Thats challenging for people.

That is also happening now out in America though. Which is something that is kind of relatively new and is not totally Trump era, but has gone on steroids in the Trump era which is the voters out there see themselves as Republican partisans, the same way like political operatives do.

And so their identity changing that is very hard, right? Thats why theres no quick fix to this.

But the one nice lesson I have is that, well, I showed and want to show no grace to the Republican collaborators who knew better in Washington. The actual people out in America who have gotten kind of sucked into this do need grace and time to be kind of pulled away from that identity.

Because its very hard and its entangled in there in a much deeper way than I think their voting identity was in the era where we grew up.

I live in Mississippi. I grew up here. I love it here. I love the people here and I felt the instinct more and more to defend my friends, from around the country, who want to shit on this part of the country.

But theres like a woman down the street, an older woman who has a giant ass flag in her yard that says Karens for Trump still, still! Like, thats not an affirmative statement about what she wants to see in the world or about tax policy, whatever. That is a giant middle finger to everyone on the other side.

There is sanity and decency underneath so much of that. But its now been swallowed by tribalistic bullshit. And it is very hard to engage in ways now that dont activate these defenses.

I dont have the answer for that.

Me neither, man. I wish I did.

Our goal this month

Now is not the time for paywalls. Now is the time to point out whats hidden in plain sight (for instance, the hundreds of election deniers on ballots across the country), clearly explain the answers to voters questions, and give people the tools they need to be active participants in Americas democracy. Reader gifts help keep our well-sourced, research-driven explanatory journalism free for everyone. By the end of September, were aiming to add 5,000 new financial contributors to our community of Vox supporters. Will you help us reach our goal by making a gift today?

Read more:
Tim Miller on Donald Trump, Elise Stefanik, and the Republicans who pretend being MAGA - Vox.com

Former President Donald Trump's attorneys joked about his wealth in private emails leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The emails between Trump lawyers Bruce Marks and Kenneth Chesebro in December 2020 were among the evidence that attorney John Eastman, who helped craft Trump's Jan. 6 strategy, concealed from the Jan. 6 select committee, claiming they were covered by attorney-client privilege or attorney work-product privilege.

"A shame you are not in DC and could contribute to violation of the emoluments clause," Marks wrote to Chesebro on Dec. 30 referencing the allegations that Trump was using his D.C. hotel to receive foreign payments.

In response, Chesebro wrote that he was staying at Trump's D.C. hotel and doing his "part to curry favor" with Trump by lining his "empty" pockets.

Kyle Cheney, the senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, posted the email thread on Twitter with further updates on the matter.

On Monday, the Jan. 6 select committee urged U.S. District Court Judge David Carter to evaluate 562 still-unproduced documents that they believe may contain material that should have been disclosed to them months ago.

Eastman handed over a small number of emails last week as the select committee planned to ask for additional correspondences that he made while working at Chapman University in California while helping Trump overthrow the election.

The emails also revealed an attempt by Eastman to shield a signed Trump photograph of a rally crowd. "TIMES 50 SUCH EVENTS NO WAY THIS LOSES," Trump wrote. Eastman tried to withhold the email that delivered the image to Trump's White House administrative assistant Molly Michael, claiming it was protected as an attorney-work product.

The committee asked Carter to look through the final batch of undisclosed emails to ensure the privilege claims are legitimate, or whether he is using it as an excuse to withhold significant evidence in the case.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

When asked about the emails, Marks said the exchange was simply "tongue-in-cheek" banter and defended himself by referencing outdated limits on Congress' power to "expose for the sake of exposure."

"The January 6 Committee deliberately attempting to embarrass and intimidate President Trump's attorneys is no less Un-American than the [Joseph] McCarthy inspired tactics of the House Un-American Activities Committee," Marks told Politico. "The mid-term elections cannot come soon enough to sweep the Democrats out of power in Congress."

"At the time of the emails on December 30 and 31, 2020, Professor Eastman, Ken Chesebro, and I were representing President Trump in litigating a U.S. Supreme Court petition filed on December 23," Marks said. "These emails were part of a privileged exchange. Regardless of whether specific tongue in cheek emails were protected by the attorney-client privilege, they were clearly protected by First Amendment rights of political association and free speech."

The emails from Chapman University and the University of Colorado Boulder have become important pieces of evidence surrounding Trump's efforts to remain in power at all costs. The select committee is working to obtain more of Eastman's emails before the end of the current congressional session.

Eastman's emails show communication with aides to then-Vice President Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers. Carter previously said that Eastman and Trump likely conspired to commit felony and obstruction of Congress, and said that Eastman's claims of attorney-client privilege were invalid.

Go here to see the original:
Emails show Trump lawyers mocked his wealth then tried to block the emails from Congress - Salon

Letters to the Editor| The Columbus Dispatch

The Sept. 30 column, "Ryan's recent remarks brand Republicans as enemies of state," by Donald Trump Jr. turns my stomach.He touts a false equivalency between left and right extremists.

More:Donald Trump Jr: Tim Ryan's kill, confront movement remark makes MAGA 'enemy of the state'

The death of the 18-year-old in North Dakota is absolutely wrong and should not be used as cover for the rights far more extreme words and actions, i.e., the Jan. 6 seditious attack on the Capitol, packing the Supreme Court with religious extremists, Charlottesville, Kyle Rittenhouse, separating children from their parents, calling human beings at the border vermin, and on and on.

The column twisted Tim Ryans words into a lie and the Dispatch printed it.

Lawrence Roush, New Albany

Our president and vice president have represented us well the past couple of days.

First, our president, in a speech on Sept. 27, was asking for a deceased congresswoman to come on stage with him. Then, on Sept. 28, our vice president stated, "The United States shares a very important relationship, which is an alliance with the Republic of North Korea."

Think wisely as you consider your vote this Nov. 8.

Stan Fulk, Dublin

More:Vice President Harris mistakenly touts US 'alliance with the Republic of North Korea'

Share your thoughts:How to submit a letter to the editor for The Columbus Dispatch

In the Sept. 22 column, "EPA must tackleLakeErietoxicalgaecrisis," Janean Weber presents many valid points we need to tackle immediately.

I want to add the reminder that as the water sources in the western U.S. are drying up at unprecedented and unpredictable rates, they will be looking for new water sources.

More:You can't fish through an 'algal bloom.' Threat about more than drinking water| Opinion

We need to have clear and strong laws in place to govern the use of the lakes and input into them, now, before we are also waging this battle with other states and possibly other countries.

Susan Klun, Columbus

We are writing to express our support for Justice Sharon L. Kennedy for chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Justice Kennedys judicial philosophy is based on the Constitution, not personal feelings or political views. She says what the law says rather than what the law should be and decides only what is necessary to resolve the legal question before the court.

With our support, she will continue to honor the Constitution by upholding the law, not creating it or legislating from the bench.

More:Up for grabs: Poll shows close races for 3 Ohio Supreme Court seats

Justice Kennedy has over 37 years of service in the judicial system as a police officer, trial court judge, and justice. She has garnered the solid foundation needed to serve our great state.

She is trusted and fair and will work hard for Ohio. As small business owners in Allen County, we see a need for a chief justice we can count on to create and maintain a predictable environment for Ohio.

Please join us in voting for the Ohio Republican Partys endorsed candidate, Sharon Kennedy.

Ken and Linda Rumbaugh, Lima

See the article here:
Letters: Donald Trump Jr. column twisted meaning of Tim Ryan's words - The Columbus Dispatch