DMZ America Podcast #113: GOP Debate Kills DeSantis’ Candidacy, Trump Surrenders at Georgia Jail
Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) discuss the week in politics.
In the first of two segments, an analysis of the first Republican primary debate for 2024. Who were the winners, who are the losers? Where does this leave the state of the race? Was Donald Trump smart to skip the festivities? Ron DeSantis only had a fourth chance to make a good first impression; looks like his candidacy is dead.
In the second of two segments, former President Donald J. Trump surrenders and submits to a mugshot at the Atlanta jail in the charges filed by Fulton county Georgia district attorney, Fani Willis. Half the country celebrates with glee, while the other half seethes. Can this end well?
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 114 Sec 1: GOP Debate Kills DeSantis’ Candidacy
DMZ America Podcast Ep 114 Sec 2: Trump Surrenders at Georgia Jail
The Final Countdown – 8/24/23 – BRICS Announces Expansion, Invites New Members
The Final Countdown – 8/22/23 – Biden Arrives in Maui, Trump Saga Continues
After Impeachment, Clinton Paved the Way for Trump
The laws of political physics, it seemed, had been reversed.
The president had been exposed as a pathological liar and a serial cheater. The butt of relentless jokes on television comedy shows and online, his reputation and legacy in tatters, he endured the ultimate opprobrium a federal official can face under the American constitutional system, impeachment, as well as the worst indignity possible for a lawyer, disbarment.
The president, of course, was Bill Clinton. The year was 1998. But just when it seemed that he was doomed to slink off into the humiliation of single-digit approval ratings and Richard Nixon-esque oblivion, the opposite happened. Despite Monica Lewinsky and “it depends on the meaning of is” and impeachment, Democrats didn’t abandon him. To the contrary, they came to his defense.
Senate Democrats refused to ratify impeachment with a formal conviction. Liberal voters, including many whose support for Clinton had been tepid at best, rallied around a president they thought had been unfairly and excessively targeted by a partisan independent counsel, Ken Starr. They didn’t care that Clinton, an attorney, had lied under oath in a legal proceeding over a credible sexual harassment allegation. Republicans, they believed, had weaponized the legal system and the constitutional process over a minor personal matter in order to kneecap the leader of their party and, by extension, discredit liberalism as a whole.
As the impeachment process dragged on, Clinton’s team deployed political jujitsu embodied by Hillary’s description of the crisis as having been caused not by her husband’s affair with Lewinsky or his lying about it under oath, but by vicious Republicans and their “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Clinton’s approval ratings soared to 70%, an all-time high. “Clinton’s resilient popularity presents a puzzle,” Pew Research’s Molly Sonner and Clyde Wilcox of Georgetown University wrote in 1999. “Why, in the midst of a tawdry scandal, were his approval ratings so high?”
Now Democrats are asking themselves similar questions about Donald Trump, whose approval ratings among Republicans have increased following each round of criminal indictments, like a Hydra that grows several heads to replace each one you cut off. Republicans aren’t ditching Trump. They love him more than ever. To the New York Times, “These series of falling dominoes—call it the indictment effect—can be measured in ways that reveal much about the state of the Republican Party.”
“The rally around the flag is not a new phenomenon in American politics, but Donald Trump has certainly taken it to a new level,” Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster who works for Trump’s super PAC, told the Times.
Perhaps. But it was Bill Clinton, who socialized with Trump for decades, who first demonstrated that a clever politician, no matter how beleaguered or which party he leads, can frame specific charges against his person as a partisan attack against all his supporters. For Democrats in 1999, Clinton may have been a jerk—but he was their jerk, and they would be damned before they let the Republicans, whom they despised, destroy him.
Republicans in 2023 are playing out a similar dynamic.
Unlike Trump, who never admits fault, Clinton issued half-hearted apologies of the “I’m sorry you’re upset” variety. “I take my responsibility for my part in all of this,” he said after conceding that, after having declared that he had not had sex with “that woman, Monica Lewinsky,” in fact, he had had oral sex. “That is all I can do. Now is the time—in fact, it is past time—to move on,” he argued. To Republicans’ disgust, Clinton’s plea resonated with Democrats. MoveOn.org, the liberal policy group and PAC, began as an email petition group that asked Congress to “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation.” It was one of the first political viral sensations on the Internet.
By any objective standard, the Republicans’ impeachment effort backfired, beginning with the 1998 midterms. “The Republicans were all full of themselves going into the election,” then–Democratic Representative Martin Frost of Texas, who chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The Atlantic. “They expected to pick up 20 or 30 seats.” They got clobbered.
Most analysts cite 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore’s reluctance to embrace Clinton and understand that he had been rehabilitated as one of the vice president’s major campaign mistakes; indeed, Clinton might have won a third term had he been allowed to run again. In 2001 Clinton left office with the joint-highest approval rating of any modern president, along with FDR and Ronald Reagan. He became a sought-after speaker and eminence grise within his party. A recent YouGov poll finds that 49% of respondents like him, compared to 32% dislikes.
There are numerous differences between Clinton’s sex-tinged scandal and Trump’s legal challenges. But the reactions of their respective partisans—circle the wagons, stand by their man, ignore the facts, screw the other party—are strikingly analogous.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
DMZ America Podcast #113: How Hunter Biden’s Case Could Bring Down Joe’s Presidency, How Trump’s Georgia Indictments Impact the 2024 Race
Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the political Left) and Scott Stantis (from the political Right) are joined by eminent academic Charles Lipson, the Peter B. Ritzma professor of political science emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics and Security, is a Spectator World contributing writer as well as a regular contributor to Real Clear Politics.
Lipson has written extensively on the Hunter Biden case as it has unfolded, while it has been censored by corporate media. His sober analysis continues to be a bright light in these hysterical times. Lipson has pointed out time and time again that, while the mainstream media continues to ignore this story, there has been an awful lot of smoke and, perhaps, emerging fire. (For the record, Rall and Stantis have been saying the same thing ever since the discovery of Hunter’s now famously unclaimed lap top).
In their second segment, Rall, Stantis and Lipson explore the ramifications of the Hunter Biden case on the 2024 election as well as the mounting indictments against former President Donald Trump, who now faces 91 criminal counts in four jurisdictions.
(P.S. Ted Rall is still traveling in Canada, so this edition of the DMZ America Podcast is shorter and only two segments long. We hope Ted will return to the United States sometime soon but, as he seems to be having far too good of a time, our hope is dimming.)
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
DMZ America Podcast Ep 113 Sec 1: How Hunter Biden’s Case Could Bring Down Joe’s Presidency
DMZ America Podcast Ep 113 Sec 2: How Trump’s Georgia Indictments Impact the 2024 Race
The Final Countdown – 8/16/23 – Afghanistan Marks 2nd Anniversary of U.S. Withdrawal
Armen Kurdian– Retired Navy Captain and Entrepreneur
The show kicks off with Retired Navy Captain and entrepreneur Armen Kurdian, who shares his insights on the latest out of Trump’s indictment.
The second half of the first hour begins with media commentator and podcaster Mitch Roschelle sharing his perspective on the real estate industry in Hawaii, the impacts of tourism on the environment and economy, and rebuilding efforts.
The show closes with International Relations and Military Analyst Mark Sleboda who joins to discuss the two-year anniversary of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Final Countdown – 8/15/23 – Biden Slammed for Vacationing as Maui is Devastated by Wildfires
On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss top news, including the Maui wildfires.
Bob Patillo-Attorney, Executive Director of Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Angie Wong-Journalist
Steve Gill-Attorney, CEO of Gill Media
John Kirakou-Co-Host of Political Misfits
The show kicks off with Attorney Bob Patillo joining The Final Countdown to share his legal expertise on Trump’s 41 criminal counts. Then, journalist Angie Wong joins later to discuss the political ramifications.
The second hour begins with Attorney and CEO of Gill Media Steve Gill joining to share his perspective on the Biden Administration’s response to the Hawaii wildfires.
The United States is considering a plea deal that would allow the imprisoned journalist to return to Australia. Host of Political Misfits and Former CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou joins The Final Countdown to discuss the ongoing fight for free speech.
We Came, We Dithered, We Died
“We believe that the damage done to the ocean in the last 20 years is somewhere between 30 per cent and 50 per cent, which is a frightening figure. And this damage carries on at very high speed—to the Indian Ocean, to the Red Sea, to the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic…Everywhere around the world the coral reefs are disappearing at a very great rate, to such an extent we are not sure we will see anything like what we know now.”
Jacques Cousteau wrote these words in 1971, for an New York Times op-ed titled “Our Oceans Are Dying.”
No one listened.
No one cared.
No one did anything. So now, as Cousteau warned us would happen, our oceans are finished.
More than 90% of coral reefs on Earth will be dead in the next 25 years. What if we did…something? No. Reef extinction is irreversible, even if we were to stop emitting greenhouse gases right this second.
96% of all ocean life, fish big and small and everything that swims, will be gone as well. There’s nothing we can do to save them.
The cause is obvious and well-known: rapid and extreme global warming caused by humans, pollution and overhunting. We don’t have to look far to see that the ocean is boiling: at this writing, water temperatures off the Florida Keys have reached 97°. Caribbean waters are normally 82° all year around. The surprise isn’t that 96% of the ocean life is doomed, it’s that 4% may not be.
It will be soon.
Ironically, all this heat is about to start a new Ice Age. A new study concludes that there is a 95% chance that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a system of ocean currents including the Gulf Stream that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic will collapse between 2025 and 2095 because it is being blocked by cold water dumped into the northern part of the ocean from melting glaciers and ice caps. Without the AMOC, as soon as two years from now and no later than 70, Europe will be buried under sheets of ice, like in the disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”
Bummer. I liked Europe.
Several years ago, flying west from Istanbul to New York, my plane’s pilot announced that he and his colleagues could see that the Gulf Stream was breaking down—and had been for some time. As a result, we’d arrive earlier than scheduled. He explained why this was scary. He urged us to write our Congressmen. I wonder if anyone on board did. I didn’t. What would have been the point? Congress doesn’t care or help or act.
In a natural-disaster movie like “2012” or “Armageddon,” the world’s political and business leaders gather in a blue-lit situation room chock full of computer screens displaying cool infographics, some in business attire, others in exotic garb, all wearing somber holy-crap expressions as the camera pans around. Someone, either the U.N. Secretary General or the U.S. President (these are American movies), calls on nations to drop everything, set aside their differences and dedicate all their resources and attention to the existential crisis of climate change, the worst threat—by far—that humanity has ever faced.
Because this is a film, where politicians are sometimes evil but never total idiots, everyone nods in agreement, rolls up their sleeves and gets to work to save humanity’s ass.
(In the European version of this film, we all die in the end after waging a valiant and noble struggle.)
Actual politics, however, are not as logical or commonsensical as movies. Young people like the activist Greta Thunberg are, quite reasonably, appalled at the mess they’ve inherited thanks to decades of dithering: “Pretty much nothing has been done since the global emissions of CO2 has not reduced,” Thunberg told a 2020 climate conference. “[I]f you see it from that aspect, what has concretely been done, if you see it from a bigger perspective, basically nothing.”
I ask my smart friends why we’re so stupid. “It’s all about money,” they usually say, more or less. “Business and rich individuals profit from the current system.” But that doesn’t make sense. There’ll be no economy if we’re all dead. You can’t enjoy your wealth if you’re dead. Being dead, all of us as a result of environmental catastrophe, is a distinct possibility—for our grandchildren, our children, even for precious Us.
And yet—my smart friends are right. Capitalist idiots are so moronically capitalist that they’d rather be rich and dead than middle class and alive. The rest of us, the non- and anti-capitalist people who neither benefit from ecocide nor approve of it, are letting the greedy lunatics take us with them. We are, precisely because we believed Jacques Cousteau and did nothing to act or to react or to resist, even dumber than they are.
Darwin wins again.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
The Final Countdown – 8/14/23 – Ukrainian Offensive’s Shortcomings Causes ‘Blame Game’
Ted Harvey – Political Commentator and Former Colorado State Senator