“It is a mistake to think of the first two and a half weeks of President Trump’s second term as a series of discrete and separate constitutional and legal crises. It is one crisis, with many manifestations. Think of Trump’s second term as a kind of legal Hydra, in which the defenders of the Constitution are facing one body with many heads, and those heads are acting in concert.” — David French
As I was saying…
David French was my last guest a year ago, so it only seems fitting that he would also be my first guest on the new podcast. You have a number of options for watching/listening. You can listen/watch it right here, or: Watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed. (If you move quickly, you may actually be the first real-life subscriber to the new feeds.)
Happy Sunday.
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Quick update on the MAGA Trinity
Perhaps you remember this post from the House Judiciary Committee GOP:
It’s almost as if we were warned. But an update seems in order today. ICYMI: The GOP’s bromance with Ye continues to age poorly: “Kanye West Goes On Antisemitic Rant Online, Says Hitler Was ‘So Fresh’.”
West, who lost his lucrative Yeezy deal with Adidas and other partnerships after antisemitic rants on Twitter and Instagram that started years ago, posted to X that he was “NEVER APOLOGIZING FOR MY JEWISH COMMENTS.”
His posts included dozens of comments about Jewish people and the Holocaust, including “I LOVE HITLER NOW WHAT B*****ES,” “IM A NAZI,” “Hitler was sooooo fresh,” and “I’m going to normalize talking about Hitler they way talking about killing n****s has been normalized.”
And Elon? Besides inspiring a generation of curious minds to google things like “ketamine-besotted-oligarchs” and “demented man-child with a hammer in a china shop,” Musk spent time this week defending — and rehiring — a DOGE employee who had ranted online, “I was racist before it was cool” and “normalize Indian hate.”
“You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” Marko Elez, a 25-year-old Musk functionary wrote on X many years ago when he was just a kid last September.
After the WSJ reported on Elez’s screeds, the Vice President of the United States took time out from whatever weighty duties he doesn’t have to rush to the young bigot’s defense. “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” wrote JD Vance (who spent much of the campaign touting lies about Haitian immigrants, and whose wife is the daughter of Indian immigrants). “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.” Consistent with his other efforts to make America Safe for Wooly Bigotry Again, Trump quickly joined the chorus.
But, as the NYT noted:
“Vance’s comments ignored the inherent contradiction in dismissing a young staff member’s racist comments as a youthful indiscretion at the same time he was part of a team being granted vast powers to slash billions of dollars in government programs and spending.”
So Elez is back to work with the other kids — including the 19-year-old hacker known as “Big Balls”1 — fiddling with sensitive Treasury data and dismantling the federal government.
And Musk? The world-bestriding paladin of Free Speech Absolutism demanded that the journalist who broke the story about his racist minion be fired. After right-wing troll Mario Nawfal posted (falsely) that “WOKE JOURNALIST KATHERINE LONG WHO DOXXED DOGE STAFFER HAS TIES TO USAID,” Musk declared that “She should be fired immediately.”
In other words, jibed Andrew Fleischman on X, Musk was saying: “I’m a free speech absolutist who thinks reporters should be fired for discovering unflattering information about public officials.”
**
Meanwhile, Darren Beattie — who Xeeted, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men” — remains the face of public diplomacy of the United States of America.
Once again, of course, GOP leaders reacted with denunciations of this blatant racism complete silence.
**
BONUS: We award no points for subtlety. While shutting the door to refugees across the globe, Trump/Musk signed an executive order this weekend to prioritize refugee resettlement of White Afrikaners from South Africa.
Trump alleged in his order that White South Africans are now the targets of oppression by the country's government, citing a law that U.S. conservatives like Trump adviser and billionaire Elon Musk have said allow racially motivated seizures of land owned by White South Africans. Musk was born in South Africa.
Sunday dogs
Because you really want to know: “Big Balls” is a teenager named Edward Coristine. Reports WIRED: One of Coristine's ventures, Tesla.Sexy LLC, registered when he was just 16, manages dozens of web domains, including Russian-registered sites. One of these, still operational, offers Helfie, an AI-powered Discord bot operating in Russia, which could present security clearance challenges.
“Professional and online history call into question whether he would pass the background check typically required to obtain security clearances, security experts tell WIRED.”…
Coristine also briefly worked in 2022 at Path Network, a network monitoring firm known for hiring reformed blackhat hackers. Someone using a Telegram handle tied to Coristine also solicited a cyberattack-for-hire service later that year.
What could go wrong?
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