max boot

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ah never trumper

MERRI OK

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Writing for the Washington Post, a conservative "defense hawk" confessed to feeling "sticker shock" over President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion military funding request, trashing the Pentagon for trying to spend such an outlandish amount on "funding boondoggles and sweetheart deals."

Max Boot is a Russian-American author who has in the past written about walking away from the American conservative movement after Trump's takeover of the Republican Party. In his new piece for the Post, he wrote that he has "long been in favor of more military spending," even backing the $1 trillion budget that the Pentagon reached this year. Despite that, however, even he now balks at the $1.5 trillion requested for next year.

"In inflation-adjusted terms, that 50 percent increase would result in the largest defense budget ever — exceeding even the World War II peak," Boot explained. "And this comes at a time when the federal budget deficit is at $1.8 trillion and federal debt is nearly $40 trillion. On its current trajectory, public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product in 2030 will exceed the record set in 1946."

Boot further noted that Congress has not been "rushing to rubber-stamp the staggering defense budget," with the House passing a measure that would provide $1.15 trillion, and an extra $73 billion for the Iran war. The Senate has opposed this measure, however, meaning the military budget as of October 1 will likely be the $838 billion set by a continuing resolution. This state of affairs, Boot argued, is entirely the fault of Trump's administration.

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has no one but himself to blame," Boot continued. "He has been contemptuous of Congress, so it’s hardly surprising that its members are not rushing to hand him a massive pot of cash. If Hegseth wants to win bipartisan support for the defense budget — something that was taken for granted in years past — he needs to start briefing Senate Democrats, not just Republicans. And he needs to do a much better job of addressing lawmakers’ concerns about controversies such as the unexplained firings of general officers, the lawless attacks on alleged drug boats, the deteriorating conditions aboard an aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East and the failed war with Iran."

He added: "No one denies the need to replenish missile stockpiles running low because of the Iran conflict, but the very fact that the United States has used up such a large part of its missile arsenal so quickly is a damning indictment of years of defense misappropriations that long predate President Donald Trump. You would think that $1 trillion would buy enough missiles to fight China or Russia, but it turns out that we don’t even have enough to fight Iran. The Iran war also revealed that the military was woefully ill-prepared to fight an enemy equipped with low-cost drones; Iran’s drones and missiles have done serious damage to U.S. military installations in the Middle East. It’s true that the new defense budget has a lot more money for drones and drone defenses, but it also includes massive boondoggles that can’t be justified on the merits.

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AN 2 26

Conservative columnist and historian Max Boot explained on Monday that President Donald Trump has “become toxic” even among right-wing movements in Europe analogous to his MAGA movement in the United States.

“I've been covering Trump's unprecedented interference in foreign elections, and what strikes me most is how brazen it's become,” Boot wrote for The Washington Post. “We're not talking about subtle diplomatic preferences here—Trump is issuing formal endorsements in other countries' elections as if they were Republican primaries back home.”

After listing the foreign politicians to receive Trump’s endorsement — including Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the UK’s Boris Johnson, Giuseppe Conte in Italy, Javier Milei in Argentia, Karol Nawrocki in Poland, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Sanae Takaichi in Japan — Boot wrote that the first problem is that it continues “Trump’s unfortunate habit of personalizing relations with other countries: He rewards leaders he likes and punishes those he dislikes.” Not only does this risk “making an enemy of the political opposition in their countries,” as happened when Trump “all but endorsed Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre” only for Poilievre to lose to Liberal Party leader Mark Carney, but it also could boomerang against Trump in areas where he is very unpopular.

“Now Trump is inviting a similar backlash in Europe, where he has become toxic with his tariffs, his attacks on European digital regulations and immigration policies, his attempt to take over Greenland, and his insults about European soldiers supposedly shirking combat in Afghanistan,” Boot wrote. “A poll released last month by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that only 16 percent of Europeans now consider the U.S. an ally. In Denmark, 84 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States.”

Boot added that “Vice President JD Vance was booed at the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Milan, even though Italy has a Trump-friendly prime minister” in Giorgia Meloni. Meloni even joined the rest of Europe in rebuking Trump last month for his Greenland threats, a fact which further demonstrates even the European far right does not necessarily want to be associated with the American president.

“A Politico poll in December found that in France and Germany, only a third of the people who support right-wing parties have a favorable view of Trump,” Boot wrote. “Little wonder that far-right leaders in Europe denounced Trump’s attempted takeover of Greenland and sought to distance themselves from the American leader.”

He concluded, “A president who zealously guards America’s sovereignty should show more respect for the sovereignty of other countries.”

Boot is not alone in raising the alarm about Trump’s meddling in other nations’ politics. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Susan B. Rogers has repeatedly met with far right parties in Europe and characterized efforts to marginalize extremists as anti-free speech, prompting criticisms from the British publication The Guardian. Vice President JD Vance has encouraged Germany to allow the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party to have a greater role in its political life, which was roundly denounced throughout Germany.

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BS rr bk 1 25

Honey, I Forgot to Duck — Bunk History

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an ah 10 22 max boot

The United States has had more than its share of disturbing political headlines in the weeks leading up to the Tuesday, November 8 election, from death threats against election workers to a break-in at the campaign headquarters of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (who is running for governor against far-right MAGA Republican Kari Lake), to a violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, October 28. During the invasion of the Pelosi’s San Francisco home, the intruder demanded to know, “Where is Nancy?” before attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer — indicating that the attack could have been politically motivated rather than a robbery attempt. “Where is Nancy?” is a phrase that some of the rioters used during the January 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol Building.

The attack on Paul Pelosi came before a weekend of attention-grabbing political headlines around the world, from thousands of fascists descending on Predappio, Italy, Benito Mussolini’s birthplace, to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Il Duce’s rise to power to left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s narrow victory over far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2022 election. Some of Lula’s supporters fear that with Brazil having become so bitterly divided — not unlike the U.S. — the country could suffer political violence from pro-Bolsonaro authoritarians.

In a column published on Halloween, Never Trump conservative and Washington Post opinion columnist Max Boot speaks candidly about far-right violence in the U.S. — stressing that it is disingenuous to use “both sides” rhetoric when discussing the United States’ problem with political violence, most of which is coming from the far right rather than the far left.

“The same day as the Pelosi attack, a man pleaded guilty to making death threats against Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.),” Boot explains. “Two days earlier, three men who were motivated by right-wing, anti-lockdown hysteria after COVID-19 hit were convicted of aiding a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). In August, another man died after attacking an FBI office because he was so upset about the Bureau’s search of Mar-a-Lago."

Boot continues, “Then there are all the terrible hate crimes, in cities including Pittsburgh, El Paso and Buffalo, where gunmen were motivated by the kind of racist rhetoric — especially the ‘Great Replacement theory’ — now openly espoused on Fox ‘News.’”

Boot goes on to say that many journalists, in the interest of being “fair-minded,” will write something along the lines of, “To be sure, political violence is not confined to the right. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in 2017 by a gunman with leftist beliefs, and in June, a man was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after becoming incensed about court rulings on abortion and guns.”

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, following the assault on Paul Pelosi, said, “Violence is up across the board.” But Boot finds such comments disingenuous, as most of the political violence in the U.S. is coming from the far right rather than the far left.

“Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period,” Boot writes. “But we can’t allow GOP leaders to get away with this false moral equivalency. They are evading their responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that all too often motivates extremist actions. The New America think tank found last year that, since September 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists.”

Boot continues, “A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists. A Washington Post/University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats. There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of (Donald) Trump.”

Boot wraps up his column by emphasizing that it is disingenuous to claim that in 2022, the left and the right are the same when it comes to political violence in the United States.

“Please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing ‘both sides of the aisle,’” Boot warns. “Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.”

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an 922

From Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to former President Donald Trump, MAGA Republicans have been claiming that Democrats are undermining the U.S. military by trying to make it as “woke” as possible. Cruz, in a May 19, 2021 tweet, praised the Russian military for not being “woke” and “emasculated” — a tweet that received a scathing response from Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

But the MAGA narrative claim that Democrats and so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) are harming the U.S. military by making it “woke” persists. And Never Trump conservative Max Boot, in a September 26 opinion column for the Washington Post, argues that some disturbing motivations are behind this MAGA narrative.

“Donald Trump Jr., for example, claims a ‘militant female’ can become an admiral or general in today’s military ‘for no other reason other than they’re probably female,’ or “if you can say: Hey, I’m trans,’” Boot explains. “Tucker Carlson asserts: ‘It has been one calculated humiliation after another for the U.S. armed forces: vax mandates, anti-White ideology, sex changes, drag shows. Whatever is necessary to telegraph to the United States military you are worthless.’”

Boot continues, “Needless to say, these fanciful descriptions from bomb-throwers who never served in uniform bear no relation to reality. The U.S. military remains one of the most conservative institutions in America, with traditions dating back centuries. That the military now welcomes African-Americans, women and LGBTQ people — all groups that were kept out in the past — only strengthens an institution that needs to draw on the talents of the whole country to defend it. So, why are cartoonish inhabitants of the Fox News Cinematic Universe caterwauling about a ‘woke military?’”

The conservative columnist answers his question by arguing that the “MAGA brigades want to populate the military with far-right officers who will do whatever Trump or a Trump mini-me commands, no matter how illegal.”

Boot notes that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “became anathema to Trump & Co. not by embracing ‘critical race theory,’ but by making clear that the military would place loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to Trump.”

“All of these attacks against the military for being too ‘woke’ should be seen as part of the MAGA strategy to harness the armed forces — ‘the guys with the guns,’ as Milley put it — to advance their authoritarian agenda,” Boot warns. “Blake Masters, the ultra-MAGA Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, has even advocated firing all the generals — ‘they’re left-wing politicians’ — and replacing them with ‘the most conservative colonels.’

Unfortunately, there would be little to stop a President Trump or a President Ron DeSantis from doing precisely that as long as the Senate confirms their new generals. A MAGA president could even summon back to active duty loony retired generals such as (Gen. Michael) Flynn or Don Bolduc, the GOP Senate nominee in New Hampshire, and appoint them to senior commands as long as the Senate consents…. The growing chorus of MAGA complaints about the ‘woke military,’ nonsensical as they are, indicate that the challenges will only grow. A homegrown extremist movement that has already captured control of one of the two major political parties is now trying to bend the armed forces to its supreme leader’s malign will.”

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less gender more ranger, chuck norris

an 8 22

Last Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas. His speech glittered with antisemitic, homophobic, and white supremacist rhetoric including “replacement theory." Orbán even railed against a “mixed-race world," and his address was met with a standing ovation by the audience.

CPAC itself was a weekend jam-packed with right-wing lawmakers and celebrities including former President Donald Trump, who overwhelmingly won its 2024 presidential straw poll.

But according to conservative columnistMax Boot, Orbán's keynote appearance at CPAC's opening night personified the Republican Party's abdication of liberal democracy.

"Something profound has changed in recent years," Boot wrote in an editorial in Monday's*Washington Post.* "Ten years ago this month, Republicans nominated a national ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan, a centrist former governor and a budget policy wonk. Now we have the coup-coup caucuscheering Viktor Orbán. This is the Trump effect: The former president has made the marginal into the mainstream of the Republican Party, and vice versa."

The evidence of the GOP's descent into fascism, Boot explained, is unmistakable.

"Republicans are nominating far-right fanatics who claim that the 2020 presidential election — and any election that they lose, for that matter — was 'rigged.' By refusing to accept electoral defeat, they embrace authoritarianism," Boot said, noting that candidates for secretaries of state in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania "deny the legitimacy" of President Joe Biden's landslide victory over Trump.

"Two of those candidates, Arizona secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem and Pennsylvania governor nominee Doug Mastriano, were outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. If elected, they are no more likely to certify a Democratic victory in 2024 than they are to embrace critical race theory," Boot noted. "Meanwhile, most House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection are being driven out of Congress. Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer was the latest to lose a primary last week to a proponent of the 'big lie.'"

Trump-backed hopefuls for governorships and United States Senate are also attempting to out-MAGA each other.

"Guns have become a de rigueur accessory in GOP campaign commercials. Arizona U.S. Senate nominee Blake Masters wants to lock up Anthony S. Fauci for trying to slow the spread of COVID-19. And Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake wants to lock up her opponent for certifying Biden’s election victory," Boot continued. "Masters and Ohio U.S. Senate nominee J.D. Vance are both bankrolled by tech tycoon Peter Thiel, who has concluded that freedom and democracy aren’t 'compatible.' Thiel’s 'house political philosopher' is far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin, who is also close to Masters and Vance. Yarvin has mused that we may need an 'American Caesar' to take control of the federal government. Trump is auditioning for the role; his henchmen are plotting to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with ultra-MAGA loyalists in 2025."

Boot then lamented that "the libertarian-leaning Republican Party I grew up with in the 1980s is long gone and not coming back." The party, Boot added, has weaponized the concept of freedom to further its extremist agenda.

He pointed out that GOP voters at large "want Americans to be free to carry weapons of war or spread deadly diseases but not to terminate a pregnancy or discuss gender or sexuality in school," and that "Republicans, once suspicious of government power, are now eager to use it to impose their agenda."

Boot alluded to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – widely believed to be eyeing a presidential run in 2024 – as an example of how far the GOP has strayed from the mainstream and its "small government" credo.

DeSantis, Boot said, "is establishing his culture-war credentials by, most recently, suspending an elected prosecutor who vowed not to 'criminalize personal medical decisions,' such as abortion or 'gender-affirming healthcare.' DeSantis even threatened to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows."

Boot concluded his piece by recommending a new label for what the Republican Party has become.

"The most apt phrase for this American authoritarianism is the New Fascism, and it is fast becoming the dominant trend on the right," Boot wrote. He also warned that "if the GOP gains power in Washington, all of America will be in danger of being Orbánized."

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921

anarchists and authoritarians are two different things. While authoritarians want a heavy-handed government — whether they're far-right fascists or far-left communists — dedicated anarchists have an intense disdain for government in general. But Never Trump conservative Max Boot, this week in his Washington Post column, argues that MAGA Republicans have managed to combine elements of anarchy with far-right authoritarianism.

Boot, a former Republican who supported now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, writes, "Are Republicans anarchists or authoritarians? They are both…. Most on the right refuse to accept the authority of any institution they do not control,and they will go to any lengths to undermine it…. Once right-wingers take command of an institution — whether the Supreme Court or the 23 states where Republicans control the governorship and both chambers of the legislature — they will do everything possible to ensure compliance with their diktats.[twt]

51-year-old Boot is politically right-wing himself, but he believes that the Republican Party took a dangerously authoritarian turn when it embraced Trumpism in 2016. The Post columnist has often said that one doesn't have to be a liberal to support liberal democracy. And in his Post column, Boot argues that the Trumpified GOP is combining elements of anarchy and far-right authoritarianism — at least for now — in the hope of establishing a "white Christian" state in the U.S. But they would gladly do away with the anarchy part after taking control, according to Boot.

"Republicans are fighting…. to establish a state in which conservative white Christians are in charge," Boot explains. "But until that happens, they will undermine every institution that they perceive as being under the control of their progressive foes. That is a long list, since Republicans are ludicrously convinced that the left has hijacked even institutions such as big business and the military."

MAGA Republicans, according to Boot, behave like anarchists when they support "attacks on the police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6" and "even oppose mask and vaccine mandates while COVID-19 is ravaging red states." But they show their authoritarianism, Boot writes, by supporting Texas' draconian new anti-abortion law, which forbids abortion after about six weeks even in cases of rape or incest.

"What can appear to be a contradictory outlook is actually typical of authoritarian movements," Boot observes. "When they are out of power, they will attack the state with every weapon at their disposal. Once they take power, however, they will entrench their own authority and repress dissent. Look at the right-wing ruling parties in India, Turkey, Hungary and Poland, which the GOP increasingly resembles. Like them, Republicans combine support for the free market — or at least crony capitalism — with an illiberal social agenda."

Boot concludes his column by warning that Trump "came perilously close to overturning the 2020 election results."

"Republicans could achieve greater success in toppling U.S. democracy in the future under a more disciplined demagogue," Boot warns. "They are maligning and undermining one 'liberal' institution after another so they can enshrine in power a regime that imposes the values of white, rural, conservative America on a fast-changing, urban, diverse and progressive nation that will soon be 'majority minority.' You might say they are practicing tactical anarchism with the strategic goal of instituting right-wing authoritarianism."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/how-ron-desantis-has-positioned-himself-as-a-leading-maga-culture-warrior-conservative/

although Florida is a swing state, Gov. Ron DeSantis has not governed as a moderate conservative like Maryland's Larry Hogan, Massachusetts' Charlie Baker or Vermont's Phil Scott. DeSantis has governed from the far right, making it abundantly clear that he is a Donald Trump loyalist through and through. Never Trump conservative Max Boot, in his June 22 column for the Washington Post, describes DeSantis as a strident culture warrior and lays out some of his possible political motivations for being so devoutly Trumpian.

"The winner of 'The Apprentice: Culture Warfare Edition,' so far, appears to be Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Trump's new home state of Florida," Boot explains. "He is setting himself up as Trump's running mate or successor byshowing a genius for appealing to every disreputable prejudice of the GOP base. This man knows how to outrage Democrats and therefore, delight Republicans."

Some of the Republicans who were scathing Trump critics when they ran against him in the 2016 presidential race are now afraid to say one word against him — Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example. The problem with Rubio and Cruz, Boot argues, is that they come across as less "authentic" than DeSantis.

"Former President Donald Trump is America's premier culture warrior," Boot observes. "No other modern politician has displayed as much talent at dividing Americans, peddling disinformation, demonizing minorities and exacerbating social problems. Many have tried to imitate him only to fall short because their performances were inauthentic and unconvincing. I'm looking at you, Marco Rubio; you, too, Ted Cruz."

In 2020's presidential race, Boot was among the anti-Trump conservatives who endorsed now-President Joe Biden over Trump — and he was highly critical of the Trumpified Republicans who turned the coronavirus pandemic into a culture war battle. DeSantis, according to Boot, was more concerned about playing the MAGA card than dealing with the deadly realities of COVID-19.

"Other governors saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health crisis," Boot observes. "DeSantis, following Trump's lead, saw it as an opportunity to score populist points with the base. He was one of 16 governors never to issue a statewide mask mandate, and he banned municipalities from punishing people who refused to follow local mask orders. In September 2020, even while the pandemic continued to rage, he allowed restaurants and other businesses to reopen at full capacity."

Boot continues, "Last month, he signed an executive order and legislation preventing businesses from insisting that customers be vaccinated. This caused a showdown with cruise lines that want to use "vaccine passports" to lure travelers. DeSantis acts as if mask mandates and vaccination passports — both sensible precautions — are actually 'Deep State' plots that must be resisted at all costs."

In Florida's 2018 gubernatorial race, the far-right DeSantis narrowly defeated the liberal Democratic nominee: former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. But as close as that race was, DeSantis hasn't reached out to Democrats in his state — and he is still playing the MAGA card at every turn.

"Now, as the pandemic fades, DeSantis is scoring points on other issues of concern only to the Trumpist base," Boot observes. "Appealing to Trump voters who think that the 2020 election was rigged, DeSantis went on Fox News to sign a bill making it harder to vote in Florida. DeSantis won't say if he thinks President Biden won legitimately. Appealing to right-wingers mad that Trump has been kicked off Twitter and Facebook, DeSantis signed legislation that would fine social media companies that suspend state or local candidates close to an election and make it easier to sue tech companies."

It remains to be seen whether or not Trump will run for president in 2024. DeSantis is being mentioned as a possible running mate if Trump runs — or as someone Trump is likely to endorse if he stays out of the race.

Whatever happens in 2024, Boot emphasizes, DeSantis is making sure that MAGA voters know how much of a Trump loyalist he is.

"Mask mandates, vaccine passports, voter fraud, tech company censorship, transgender athletes, undocumented migrants, Critical Race Theory — DeSantis pushes every single right-wing hot-button issue," Boot writes. "He understands how to demonize and polarize for political advantage — and he doesn't care about how much collateral damage he inflicts. Little wonder he is being talked about as the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination if Trump doesn't run — and maybe even if he does."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

This Trump supporter could be the first Floridian prosecuted under Ron DeSantis' new anti-protest law

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fbi 250K$ reward for KK?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/trump-russia-campaign/

max Boot, a Russian-American author and historian and a fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations,says the U.S. Intel Community's just-released report on Russia's attack on the 2020 presidential election is "evidence of cooperation" – at least – between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

The report details that Russian President Vladimir Putin once again interfered in the election, again to help President Donald Trump, and to hurt now-President Joe Biden.

"I would say this is certainly evidence," Boot says, "it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."

Boot praised the Biden administration for authorizing the release of the report, which he says Americans would not have seen under the Trump administration, while singling out Acting Trump DNI and DNI Rick Grinnell and John Ratcliffe, who "consistently tried to minimize and downplay Russian election interference."

Importantly, Boot notes the report shows "just how closely the Russian messaging during the election echoed the messaging of the Trump campaign of Fox News and this kind of whole right wing media industrial complex."

"It's fascinating to see the extent to which the Russians were pushing the same messages about alleged Biden corruption, about his supposedly corrupt son, about you can't trust mail-in ballots, that the Democratic Party is trying to interfere with the election. These were the things that Trump was saying, but these were also the things that the Russians were saying, and in fact, the report highlights the close ties between Russian agents of influence like Andrii Derkach from Ukraine. Ukraine and Rudy Giuliani the president's lawyer, Konstantin Kilimnik is another one, who is a former business partner of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, so these ties are a copious and disturbing and to use a word we haven't heard in a few years, I would say this is certainly evidence. If not, it may be evidence of collusion, but it's definitely evidence of cooperation and and congruence between the Russians and the Trump campaign."

Watch...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/ralph-nader-here-is-trumps-top-betrayal/

...Devastating critics like Dana Milbank, Republican Michael Gerson, Eugene Robinson, Margaret Sullivan, and conservative Max Boot of the Washington Post, or Charles Blow, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times have cogently taken Trump apart on very serious matters since 2017, yet they leave their readers without the obvious conclusion -Trump has to go. A clear daily peril to innocent Americans “I’m in total control”, why not try bleach, etc. The country cannot wait until January 2021 – assuming dictatorial Donald and his determined GOP don’t criminally suppress enough votes to postpone Trump’s departure until January 2025.

,,,

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/how-right-wingers-and-trump-apologists-could-get-people-killed-with-coronavirus-disinformation-columnist/

no lnx

How right-wingers and Trump apologists could ‘get people killed’ with coronavirus disinformation: columnist

Written by Alex Henderson March 10, 2020

As the death toll from coronavirus continues to climb — passing 4,200 worldwide on Tuesday, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore — many figures in the United States’ right-wing media believe that their job isn’t to provide accurate information but to defend President Donald Trump at every turn. And by doing so,Never Trump conservative Max Boot asserts in his Washington Post column, they are helping to make a bad situation even worse.

“President Trump has been widely and correctly excoriated for the way he is dealing with the novel coronavirus,” Boot notes. “By minimizing the danger, he heightens it. Even on Monday, Trump was comparing covid-19 to the ordinary flu — even though its mortality rate appears to be many times higher and its economic effect infinitely greater.”

Boot quickly adds, however, that “Trump could not spread disinformation all by himself.”

“A herd of right-wing pseudo-journalists has jumped the shark along with him,” Boot writes. “They are promulgating narratives so at odds with reality that they are likely to get people killed.”

Boot goes on to cite some examples, including familiar Trumpistas at Fox News and Fox Business.

“On Monday,” Boot notes, “Trish Regan was on Fox Business denouncing coronavirus concern as ‘yet another attempt to impeach the president.’ In her demented view, Trump’s opponents are deliberately inducing stock-market losses — presumably, Democrats don’t own 401(k)s — in an attempt to ‘to demonize and destroy the president.’Naturally, Trump — Fox News viewer No. 1 — retweeted her diatribe.”

Breaking911

@Breaking911

Fox Business’ Trish Regan says coronavirus is a “scam” to “impeach the President”

Embedded video

Boot is equally critical of Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who insisted on Monday that the president’s critics are trying to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax” and that they are “scaring people unnecessarily.”

“To a lot of viewers,” Boot asserts, “it will sound as if Hannity is calling the virus a hoax, even if that’s not what he intended.”

Boot also slams radio host Rush Limbaugh as “irresponsible” for claiming that reporting on coronavirus is a plot to hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. However, one right-wing media figure who Boot cites as an “outlier of sanity” on coronavirus is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Boot points out that although Carlson is “often the most rabid host on Fox,” he hasn’t been downplaying the severity of coronavirus and has correctly warned his viewers, “This is real.”

Boot concludes his column by stressing that whenever right-wing media figures try to make coronavirus seem less dangerous than it is, they are putting their more gullible viewers or listeners in danger.

“The ‘conservative’ media have long shown their contempt for facts and science — for instance, by playing down the danger of climate change or Russian election attacks,” Boot warns. “Never has their contempt for the truth been more dangerous than it is today. To defeat coronavirus, we must first combat the mental afflictions — irrationality, conspiracy-mongering and Dear Leader-like devotion to Trump — spread by exposure to right-wing media.”

Rick Santorum slammed by conservative Max Boot in CNN clash over ‘loyal lickspittles’ for Trump Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

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819 AN

no linx

Naval War College professor details the ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump sycophants: ‘They’re screwed and know it’

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story August 14, 2019

The conservative National Review, a longtime cornerstone of the conservative movement’s intellectual wing, quickly fell in with President Donald Trump after his election, and most recently has published a series of pieces clashing with Never Trump conservative Max Boot over the American right’s white supremacy problem — calling him and his supporters “self-loathing whites … paralyzed by intersectional deference.”

As another Never Trump conservative, Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols, put it, this is a microcosm of the “Trump-compliant right’s” realization that there is no way to divorce their supposed principles from Trumpism — and the future of their place in conservative thought looks bleak.

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

From the attack on @MaxBoot in @NRO to the latest faux-Gibbon raving from Michael Anton pumped out by @ClaremontInst, the Trump-compliant right is having a nervous breakdown - as it should. Many conservatives once saw themselves as part of an intellectual movement. Now? No. /1

@RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

For years, intellectual conservatives thought: "Look, we're smart, we're conservative, the liberals are just wrong." (Hell, I still feel that way most days.) But the intellectual cons who have surrendered to Trumpist populism are screwed and know it. /2

746

4:02 PM - Aug 13, 2019

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Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Replying to @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

These intellectuals tried to adopt the camouflage of bib-overalls and Hee Haw straw hats; this was a very, very bad gamble. They now know, without a doubt, that they're in a shrinking minority, dead-ended, and stranded with no way back. /3

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Replying to @RadioFreeTom

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

Sure, they figured they could tough it out, get their judges, and then disavow Trump when he self-destructed. They partied with the rubes in hopes no one would notice the college degrees and the cufflinks. But Trump ate the movement before they could bail out. /4

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

When today's conservative writers signed up in the 1980s and 1990s, they could imagine their core audience being well-off and educated people politely having dinner at the Union Club while hearing a lecture on an important subject from a intelligent person. /5

Tom Nichols

@RadioFreeTom

By the time this is over, all that'll be left is Gorka, Anton, and the last few editors of NR at CPAC trying to clap along gamely while someone explains how Q is going to swoop in and arrest the abortion-loving gays during their attempts to make stem cells into omelettes. /6x

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/the-trumpification-of-conservatism-how-a-new-feud-exposes-the-right-wings-collapse-into-the-depths-of-white-supremacy

white ppl not vics of discrim

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/lazy-stupid-and-dangerous-this-ex-republican-explains-how-he-enabled-right-wing-populism-and-it-went-completely-off-the-the-rails/

...“I used to think right-wing anti-elitism against the intellectuals — in contrast to the left-wing anti-elitism against the rich — was innocuous and even well-warranted,” he wrote. “While warning of the dangers of populism, I sometimes indulged in this kind of posturing myself. Like a lot of conservative eggheads, I imagined that, even though I lived among the coastal elite, I was expressing the wisdom of the heartland.”

He added: “I now realize that these stereotypes are lazy, stupid and dangerous.”

It’s dangerous, of course, because anti-intellectual rhetoric is a common tool of authoritarians seeking to undermine anyone who could challenge them. Boot noted that Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong all demonized and went after intellectuals they feared. These actions mirror Trump’s attacks on experts and the media, whom Trump calls “the enemy of the people,” echoing Stalin himself.

Of course, intellectuals and commentators aren’t without their faults. Boot himself, as a backer of the Iraq War, would be a prime example of their failings. But anti-intellectualism — denunciations of the “chattering class” — was itself a disturbing trait of the second Bush administration as it devised to bring the country to war, with horrifying consequences. Public intellectuals aren’t above criticism, but a political ideology that denounces them as illegitimate should be feared.

When someone like Trump wields anti-intellectualism and hostility to public figures who can challenge him, it’s a clear sign we’re on a perilous path.

“In the United States, to be sure, it will not lead to Stalinist show trials, a Cultural Revolution or the ‘killing fields,’ but it could conceivably lead to the kind of soft authoritarianism that Viktor Orban has imposed in Hungary,” wrote Boot. “President Trump shows his eagerness to imitate the dictators by calling the news media ‘the enemy of the people’ and denouncing his critics as traitors. The president’s hateful rhetoric encouraged one supporter to mail pipe bombs to prominent liberals and journalists, and could yet spark greater violence.”

He also speculated that Trump’s anger toward the media and others comes not just from cynical political motives but arises from his fragile ego.

“More than a political threat, the chattering classes are a psychological threat: They feed Trump’s insecurities because he knows they view him as a buffoonish ignoramus, not as the that he so desperately wants to be,” said Boot.

...

booktv

Max Boot, The Corrosion of ConservatismColumnist & CNN global affairs analyst Max Boot recounted his journey to…

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dark-underside-conservatism-ex-republican-reveals-how-he-finally-realized-racism

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Trump isn’t an aberration': Paul Krugman reveals how the GOP's 'moral rot' laid the groundwork for Trumpism

By Cody Fenwick, AlterNet

He's the embodiment of the worst parts of the party. READ MORE»

With the death of President George H.W. Bush, many conservatives and former Republicans are nostalgic for the old days of the party and bemoan the dark turn the GOP has taken under President Donald Trump. But as economist Paul Krugman argued Monday, the groundwork for Trumpism had been laid long before his rise.

Trump's habit of denying reality and spinning baseless conspiracy theories that fit his preferred vision of the world is a direct outgrowth of the GOP's denial of climate change science, according to Krugman.

"Donald Trump isn’t an aberration, he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for years," he wrote.

Bush the elder does, though, come off relatively well in Krugman's recounting of events.

"The G.O.P. wasn’t always an anti-environment, anti-science party. George H.W. Bush introduced the cap-and-trade program that largely controlled the problem of acid rain," he wrote. "As late as 2008, John McCain called for a similar program to limit emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming."

He continued:

But McCain’s party was already well along in the process of becoming what it is today — a party that is not only completely dominated by climate deniers, but is hostile to science in general, that demonizes and tries to destroy scientists who challenge its dogma.

Trump fits right in with this mind-set. In fact, when you review the history of Republican climate denial, it looks a lot like Trumpism. Climate denial, you might say, was the crucible in which the essential elements of Trumpism were formed.

Because so much of the media tries to play the part of a neutral arbiter in politics, the parties get painted as mirror images in many respects. This is true even while much of mainstream media acknowledges, at least at times, that it's the Democratic Party's views that accurately reflect the reality of climate change, and that Trump really does spread misinformation constantly.

But they'll still refer to the problems of "partisanship" as if its a problem of equal weight for both parties. It's just not true, though. Both parties and every faction of the American political debate have their problems. But it's the Republican Party and the conservative movement that have deeply buried their heads in the sand with regard to climate change in a way that no other major party across the globe has done. The left-wing has its biases, but the right-wing has a unique problem with the truth.

And then there's the problem of industry-funded corruption.

"The truth is that most prominent climate deniers are basically paid to take that position, receiving large amounts of money from fossil-fuel companies," Krugman wrote. "But after the release of the recent National Climate Assessment detailing the damage we can expect from global warming, a parade of Republicans went on TV to declare that scientists were only saying these things “for the money.” Projection much?"

A related point was made separately by ex-Republican Max Boot in a column for the Washington Post on Monday.

Industry lobbying, he observed, "influences ordinary conservatives who fall for the shoddy 'studies' and shallow op-eds designed to minimize the threat of climate change.I ran some of those articles myself years ago when I was the op-ed editor at the Wall Street Journal."

It's a deep point about the Republican Party, but the country has yet to grapple with the basic point: The GOP is fundamentally opposed to fundamental facts, and it's not going to get better on its own.

Thursday night, a highly regarded conservative lawyer — and friend of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh — spun an unhinged defense of the judge against the accusations of sexual assault that have thrown his nomination into doubt.

Ed Whelan, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted a widely panned tweet storm on Twitter using the thinnest possible evidence to try and claim it's more likely Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser, was attacked by another friend of theirs in high school who supposedly looked like Kavanaugh. Whelan presented no solid evidence for this and faced major blowback for insinuating that someone might be guilty of sexual assault with so little basis.

Conservative writer Max Boot, who has previously been favorable to Kavanaugh's nomination, viewed this defense/meltdown as a devastating sign for the conservative movement.

Personal life[edit]

Boot was born in Moscow.^[3] His parents, both Russian Jews, later emigrated from the Soviet Union to Los Angeles, where he was raised.^[3][4] Boot was educated at the University of California, Berkeley (BA, History, 1991) and Yale University (MA, Diplomatic History, 1992).^[1] He started his journalistic career writing columns for the Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian.^[5] He later stated that he believes he is the only conservative writer in that paper's history.^[5] Boot and his family currently live in the New York area.^[1]

Career

Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to other publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times.^[1] He has bloggedregularly for Commentary Magazine since 2007,^[6] and for several years on its blog page called Contentions.^[7] He has given lectures at U.S. military institutions such as the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College.^[1]

Boot worked as a writer and as an editor for The Christian Science Monitor from 1992 to 1994. He moved to The Wall Street Journal for the next eight years.^[2] He wrote an investigative column called "Rule of Law" about legal issues. After a four-year career with the column, he rose to the position of editor of the op-ed page.^[8]

Boot left the Journal in 2002 to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies.^[2] His initial writings with the CFR appeared in several publications, including The New York Post, The Times, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune.^[9]

Boot wrote Savage Wars of Peace, a study of small wars in American history, with Basic Books in 2002.^[2] The title came from Kipling's poem "White Man's Burden".^[10] James A. Russell in Journal of Cold War Studiescriticized the book, saying that "Boot did none of the critical research, and thus the inferences he draws from his uncritical rendition of history are essentially meaningless."^[11] Benjamin Schwarz argued in The New York Times that Boot asked the U.S. military to do a "nearly impossible task", and he criticized the book as "unrevealing".^[10] Victor Davis Hanson in History News Network gave a positive review, saying that "Boot's well-written narrative is not only fascinating reading, but didactic as well".^[12] Robert M. Cassidy in Military Review labeled it "extraordinary".^[13] Boot's book also won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as the best non-fiction book recently published pertaining to Marine Corps history.^[14]

Boot wrote numerous articles with the CFR in 2003 and 2004.^[15][16] The World Affairs Councils of America named Boot one of "the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy" in 2004.^[2]He also worked as member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2004.^[17]

He published the work War Made New, an analysis of revolutions in military technology since 1500, in 2006.^[2] The book's central thesis is that a military succeeds when it has the dynamic, forward-looking structures and administration in place to exploit new technologies. It concludes that the U.S. military may lose its edge if it does not become flatter, less bureaucratic, and more decentralized.^[18] The book received praise from Josiah Bunting III in The New York Times, who called it "unusual and magisterial",^[19] and criticism from Martin Sieffin in The American Conservative, who called it "remarkably superficial".^[20]

Boot wrote many more articles with the CFR in 2007,^[21] and he received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism that year.^[2] In an April 2007 episode of Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, Boot stated that he "used to be a journalist" and that he currently views himself purely as a military historian.^[22] Boot served as a foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain in his 2008 United States presidential electionbid.^[23] He stated in an editorial in World Affairs Journal that he saw strong parallels between Theodore Roosevelt and McCain.^[24] Boot continued to write for the CFR in several publications in 2008 and 2009.^[24][25]

Boot wrote for the CFR through 2010 and 2011 for various publications such as Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Weekly Standard among others. He particularly argued that President Obama's health care plans made maintaining U.S. superpower status harder, that withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq occurred prematurely while making another war there more likely, and that the initial U.S. victory in Afghanistan had been undone by government complacency though forces could still pull off a victory. He also wrote op-eds criticizing planned budget austerity measures in both the U.S. and the U.K. as hurting their national security interests.^[26][27]

In September 2012, during a stint as a fellow with the New America Foundation, Boot co-wrote with Brookings Institutionsenior fellow Michael Doran a New York Times op-ed titled "5 Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now", advocating U.S military force to create a countrywide no-fly zone reminiscent of NATO's role in the Kosovo War. He stated first and second that "American intervention would diminish Iran's influence in the Arab world" and that "a more muscular American policy could keep the conflict from spreading" with "sectarian strife in Lebanon and Iraq". Third, Boot argued that "training and equipping reliable partners within Syria's internal opposition" could help "create a bulwark against extremist groups like Al Qaeda". He concluded that "American leadership on Syria could improve relations with key allies like Turkey and Qatar" as well as "end a terrible human-rights disaster".^[28]

Boot's book, titled Invisible Armies (2013), is about the history of guerrilla warfare, analyzing various cases of successful and unsuccessful insurgent efforts such as the fighting during the American war of independence, the Vietnam War, and the current Syrian Civil War. He states that traditional, conventional army tactics as employed by the American military under the administrations of President Bush and President Obama against guerrilla organizations have produced strategic failures. Boot has discussed his book in various programs such as the Hoover Institution's Uncommon Knowledge series, appearing on it in January 2014.^[29]

Political beliefs[edit]

In general, Boot considers himself to be a "natural contrarian".^[30] He identifies as a conservative, once joking that "I grew up in the 1980s, when conservatism was cool".^[31] He is in favor of limited government at home and American leadership abroad. He strongly opposed Trump's presidential candidacy in 2016^[32] and has been highly critical of the Republican Party.^[33] Boot was critical of the nomination of Rex Tillerson to the position of Secretary of State, believing him to be problematically pro-Russian, and subsequently called on Tillerson to resign.^[34]

In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his views thusly: "I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-immigration. I am fiscally conservative: I think we need to reduce the deficit and get entitlement spending under control. I am pro-environment: I think that climate change is a major threat that we need to address. I am pro-free trade: I think we should be concluding new trade treaties rather than pulling out of old ones. I am strong on defense: I think we need to beef up our military to cope with multiple enemies. And I am very much in favor of America acting as a world leader: I believe it is in our own self-interest to promote and defend freedom and free markets as we have been doing in one form or another since at least 1898."^[35]

In December 2017, also in Foreign Policy, Boot wrote that recent events—particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president—had caused him to rethink some of his previous views concerning the existence of white privilege and male privilege. "In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender—and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it."^[36]

Bibliography[edit]

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (Liveright Publishing Corporation/W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2018), ISBN 0-871-40941-0
Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (Liveright, 2013), ISBN 0-87140-424-9
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Gotham Books, 2006), ISBN 1-59240-222-4
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002), ISBN 0-465-00721-X
Out of Order: Arrogance, Corruption and Incompetence on the Bench (Basic Books, 1998), ISBN 0-465-05375-0

max boot

Rick Santorum slammed by conservative Max Boot in CNN clash over ‘loyal lickspittles’ for Trump Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

Personal life[edit]

Career

Political beliefs[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

See also[edit]

Max Boot - Wikipedia

I left the Republican Party. Now I want Democrats to take over. - The ...

Top stories

Web results

Max Boot - The Washington Post

Conservative Columnist Max Boot: 'I Want Democrats To ... - HuffPost

Conservative columnist Max Boot calls Republicans 'white-nationalist ...

'I Can't Take It Anymore': Conservative Max B

max boot

Rick Santorum slammed by conservative Max Boot in CNN clash over ‘loyal lickspittles’ for TrumpTom Boggioni / Raw Story

Personal life[edit]

Career

Political beliefs[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

See also[edit]

Max Boot - Wikipedia

I left the Republican Party. Now I want Democrats to take over. - The ...

Top stories

Web results

Max Boot - The Washington Post

Conservative Columnist Max Boot: 'I Want Democrats To ... - HuffPost

Conservative columnist Max Boot calls Republicans 'white-nationalist ...

'I Can't Take It Anymore': Conservative Max B

Rick Santorum slammed by conservative Max Boot in CNN clash over ‘loyal lickspittles’ for Trump Tom Boggioni / Raw Story