Among the Witches: Inside the Republicans' bunker.

[Rhiannon12866]

By Olivia Nuzzi

"It’s hard to be worried when you don’t really like the guy.” That’s what one senior Republican Senate aide had to say when I asked how concerned conservatives are about Donald Trump’s fate.

The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition that knows no party, and many Republicans are as tired of this shit as anybody else. That’s not to say they’re outraged, or motivated to Make a Difference. They’re just tired. You can live inside the right-wing bubble in a state of depression, resigned to the fact that, yeah, every five minutes or so, the president is probably going to do something norm-shattering or potentially impeachable, and no, you probably won’t or can’t do anything to change that. Sad!

“I’m totally bored by the story,” one person who speaks regularly with the president told me. “There’s nothing to it. I already know all the details.” This person is bored more generally, too — with the topic of Donald Trump. When we talk about what it would take for the president’s defenders to turn on him, this crucial piece is missing: You can’t feel outraged if you can no longer feel anything at all.

“This isn’t that much different than the other crazy shit he’s done in the last three years,” the senior Republican Senate aide said. “In some ways, people are both pissed off about it but then it’s also like, Are we gonna go crazy over this incident when we’ve seen so much other stuff? Not to minimize the seriousness here, but what came out in the call transcript is not exactly shocking. If I were to describe Republicans one way, it would be weary. Weary and numb. It’s been a long three years for Republicans on the Hill. Not to say we’re the real victims — Yeah, start passing around the collection plate for us!”

Even insiders, like Rudy Giuliani, can find themselves in sudden darkness and uncertainty. Speaking to reporters on October 11, Trump said he wasn’t sure the increasingly problematic former mayor was still representing him—echoing language he’s often used for his staff before he whacks them. I talked to Giuliani via text, where he insisted, “I am still his lawyer until he tells me I’m not … All I can tell you is that I still represent him as I have since April 2018. End of story.” (He closed by sending me the stop-sign emoji, after I asked if he’d be surprised if the president threw him under the bus in the end.)


Read more: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/trump-impeachment-inside-the-republicans-bunker.html

[JHB]

1. "Not a dime's worth of difference" -- real version

Not a dime's worth of difference between Trump cultists and "normal" conservatives, that is. Oh, the poor dears are tired and bored, but they'll go on backing him no matter what, until the Trumptanic is making its final plunge. Then maybe they'll try to jump off. Let him take them all down. Burn the lifeboats.

The White House is just like, ‘Oh, Trump will handle everything.’ Which is crazy — but it seems like that’s their strategy,” the senior Repubican Senate aide told me. “It’s a depressing time.”

I asked if anything would change for conservatives, if there was any significance in those predictable reports, like the one I’ve written here, about how, privately, some of them feel bad, even if they never pipe up publicly.
“It’s all bullshit until it’s not. At this point, it is bullshit. Obviously it could change, but it hasn’t. So who cares?”

[Scarsdale]

2. Please, please

find someone willing to give him a bj, so we can impeach him for THAT serious crime.

[underpants]

3. Great graphic

Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow. Photographs: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images (Trump head); Peter Dezeley/Getty Images (whistle)

[hatrack]

4. Gripping! Here are some cynical jaded fucks who don't care about anything!!

[Lonestarblue]

5. Republicans fiddle while Trump burns down the country.

Trump is turning the US into a pariah country. No ally will trust us again for decades because of what Trump—and through him the US—has done to the Kurds. Trump has helped Russia gain international influence to the detriment of the US. China is playing its usual long game, and Xi is intelligent enough to string the man-child in the White House along until the next election, or he’ll take advantage of Trump’s weakness to gain huge concessions for China.

The Republican game of using racism and hatred of immigrants, who are portrayed as changing our culture and overturning the white culture, is destroying our country. We may never be able to overcome the partisan division we see today, which is manifesting itself into more violence. The right-wing video of Trump murdering his opponents is just one example of how at least some of his supporters think. I never thought I would move in this direction, but I’m beginning to think that a separation into two countries would be a solution. The logistics of making that work would be horrendous, but I think a lot of taxpayers in blue states are getting really tired of the red states taking our money and then sending people to Washington who think they’re above the law and who enact policies that benefit only the ultra wealthy and punish the poor and the middle class.

I’m tired of the abortion wars, the hateful treatment of minorities, the lack of healthcare, the highest drug prices in the world, the lack of serious attempts to address climate change, the taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel companies, the money for infrastructure investments never materializing, a defense industry taking more and more of our money, and a Congress that doesn’t work. Republicans refuse to work with Democrats on anything that benefits average people. Instead, they see their role as obstructing any progress just to make Democrats look bad, as McConnell did in obstructing Obama’s policies to end the Great Recession. They didn’t care that people were losing their jobs and homes—they just wanted Obama to look bad.

Sorry for the early rant, but I’m just appalled by Trump’s decision green lighting Turkey’s massacre of the Kurds and exhausted by Trump and his Republican sycophants doing nothing but lying and trying to spin utter incompetence into nothing more than an illegal attack by Democrats.

[tanyev]

6. Marking to read later.