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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: An insane press conference from an insane president [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-08

Associated Press:

Takeaways from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago press conference Less than two weeks before taking office, President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday took some of his most audacious claims and promises of the transition period and amped them up to new levels. Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump would not rule out using military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, citing national security interests. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a longtime U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO. Washington relinquished control of the canal to Panama, another ally, in 1999. Trump also criticized the late President Jimmy Carter just as his remains were being transported from the Carter Presidential Center in Georgia to Washington for three days of state funeral rites in the capital. And he escalated his threats against Hamas, warning anew that, “All hell will break out in the Middle East” if the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza are not returned before he takes office.

I list a few news stories to watch the evolution over the next few months/years of Trump’s sanewashing by the press.

New York Times:

Dripping Faucets and Seizing Greenland: Trump Is Back and Chaos Ensues President-elect Donald J. Trump’s news conference at Mar-a-Lago was a reminder of what the next four years may have in store. Mr. Trump’s family and supporters like to say “We are so back!” and they are, without doubt. Yet as the man who will be president again spun out threats and angry denouncements of the Biden administration and personal grievances for more than an hour on Tuesday in the living room of his Mar-a-Lago club, something else was back: the chaotic stream-of-consciousness presidency. Mr. Trump has returned to our daily national cognizance, even though one could argue he never really left. Tuesday’s news conference was a reminder of what that was like, and what the next four years may have in store.

Independent:

Trump kicks off rambling press conference by airing grievances — then starts threatening U.S. allies Trump suggests he could use force — economic or military — to turn American allies into vassal states The former president turned president-elect had ostensibly called a small group of reporters from a hand-picked selection of news outlets to his Mar-a-Lago residence to announce a new $20 billion investment in American data centers by an Emirati billionaire, Hussain Sajwani, with whom his eponymous real estate and hospitality firm has partnered on several Trump-branded projects in the Persian Gulf region. After pledging to ensure that any facilities built as a part of the project would get “expedited review” for permitting and unspecified exemptions from environmental regulations, Trump began accusing President Joe Biden of sabotaging the transition process by using rarely-invoked presidential authority to permanently shield 625 acres of ocean floor from oil drilling efforts. He accused Biden of attempting to “block the reforms of the American people and that they voted for” and claimed that the president’s actions, which legal experts say would take an act of Congress to overturn, “will not stand,” pledging to reverse them “immediately” even though he may not have the authority to do so legally. He also blamed the 46th president for a host of ills, real or imagined, some new, some familiar.

x This is super interesting - and I would hypothesize that the ability to just switch to conservative news outlets means that Republicans (on average) have a stronger connection to their party & what it stands for.



I heard a ton of "I don't like [x Republican] but I just can't… https://t.co/VoPwkD0Yc6 — Natalie Jackson (@nataliemj10) January 7, 2025

POLITICO:

Jan. 6, 2021 is in the rearview. The battle to define it for history is in full swing. Donald Trump and his allies are attempting to rewrite history. Democrats vow no one will forget. The battle of Jan. 6, 2021 was physical, a hand-to-hand fight on Capitol turf to stave off an insurrection aimed at keeping a defeated Donald Trump in power. The battle of Jan. 6, 2025 is psychological, a struggle by Democrats, prosecutors and victims of the violence to prevent a victorious Trump from erasing the harrowing reality of that day. That clash over how America will remember the Jan. 6 attack raged Monday even as the actual proceedings at the Capitol — in which Vice President Kamala Harris presided over a drama-free certification of Trump’s election — seemed an afterthought.

Ruth Braunstein/Religion News Service:

Jan. 6 and the right's contingent support for democracy As we celebrate today's peaceful transfer of power, we shouldn't be so naive as to believe that the extreme right has embraced democratic norms and institutions. This peace reveals a darker truth. The right’s support for democratic institutions like elections has always been contingent. Specifically, it has been contingent upon those institutions maintaining a traditional social hierarchy. For the past decade, large shares of white Christians have lamented the demographic and social shifts that have made them a minority in “their own country.” Trump rose to power, in part, by promising this group that he would return them to a position of power and privilege in a country they believe God intended for them to rule. The MAGA movement has coalesced around this political theology of hierarchy, which sanctifies a social order resting on hierarchies between social groups—racial, religious, gendered and moral. Moreover, it asserts that the nation’s very survival depends on the maintenance of this hierarchical social order in which conservative white Christian men are at the top. But one need not feel invested in all of these forms of hierarchy in order to embrace the general package Trump offers, or to feel anxious about threats to this hierarchical system in general. The MAGA movement has masterfully stoked fear that threats to any one prong of this hierarchical system augurs social collapse.

x (Also that the first one might not pass) — Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) January 7, 2025

Michael A Cohen/Truth and Consequences:

The Verdict On January 6 Is In ... And It's Not Good One of the worst days in American democracy is becoming yet another partisan football I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when it comes to January 6, the truth got knocked out, and it ain’t getting off the canvas. Like everything else in America, January 6 has become yet another partisan issue — aided by Trump and abetted by his Republican allies and those in conservative media who want Americans to ignore the president-elect’s culpability in inciting a political insurrection. For example, look at some of the recent polling numbers on January 6. According to a new CBS/YouGov poll, there has been a gradual shift in the number of Americans who disapprove of the actions of those who stormed the Capitol. All this is benefiting Trump. Less than 40 percent of Americans say Trump holds a great deal of responsibility for what happened that day.

David Schleicher/Slate:

Schools and City Governments Rely on Property Taxes. What Happens When Homeowners Revolt? Property tax reforms may address local government inequities. Today’s property tax revolt is a series of nested ironies. The first is that it is largely driven by property owners who are angry about how much their properties have increased in value. Most of the reforms are likely to make the problems of the contemporary property market worse. That is, they’re likely to make the housing market more sclerotic, make it harder for young families to afford homes, and increase inequality. But, deep in the most radical policy proposals, there is another irony. Reforms intended to achieve other goals may end up addressing a long-standing problem: the inequality of local governmental resources.

Cliff Schecter on the snubbing of Kamala Harris by Sen. Deb Fischer’s husband:

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