Sorry, World
Introducing the least diplomatic diplomat ever.
There are two reasons for picking nominees: competence and fealty. Does anyone seriously believe that Trumps nominees have been chosen for their expertise?
You can almost hear the Donald screaming "IN YOUR FACE!!!"
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
(Last June, in a TBR Sunday Read for paid subscribers, I took a deep dive into the toxic waters of Rep. Elise Stefanik. Since Trump has decided to foist the nightmarish Stefanik on an unsuspecting world by naming her UN ambassador, today I'm making this story available to everyone for free. As always, thank you for supporting my work. —Andy)
Let me start by saying something nice about Elise Stefanik: She went to Harvard. Then again, so did the Unabomber. You might think it's unfair to compare Stefanik to the Unabomber, and it is—to the Unabomber. For all his flaws, he was way more ideologically consistent than Stefanik.
There really are two Elise Stefaniks: Original Recipe and Extra Crazy.
Original Recipe Stefanik was first elected to Congress in 2014, when she was often referred to as a moderate Republican. Nowadays, "moderate Republican" means anyone to the left of Heinrich Himmler. But back then, before the extinction-level event known as Donald Trump, there were still some House Republicans who could pass as rational beings. Stefanik belonged to her party's centrist Tuesday Group and was ranked by Georgetown's Lugar Center as one of the House's most bipartisan members. (At the time, she touted both distinctions; today, each has been deleted from her congressional website like an embarrassing ex cropped out of a profile pic.)
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Stefanik continued to exhibit signs of sanity. She supported the candidacy of someone with government experience—Ohio Governor John Kasich—and criticized the foreign policy "knowledge" of the former reality show host running against him. In October 2016, she said of Trump, "His statements regarding NATO, his statements regarding Putin, regarding some of the positions in regards to Iraq that he made, regarding the oil fields—I absolutely oppose those." But one month later, Trump won—including in her upstate New York district, which had gone for Obama twice. And so began the congresswoman's rapid devolution into a Donald Trump tribute act.
TV viewers got their first taste of Extra Crazy Stefanik during the 2019 impeachment inquiry. She ran roughshod over committee rules, then lambasted Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, for having the nerve to enforce them. Her obnoxious performance must've made the people at the Lugar Center wonder if the formerly bipartisan lawmaker was now snorting meth. "A new Republican Star is born," Trump tweeted, underscoring his enthusiasm with random capitalization. But she was just getting started.
In December of 2020, a month after Trump lost to Joe Biden by over seven million votes, Stefanik signed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the results in four battleground states. As if this weren't enough to establish her cred as an election-denier, on January 6 she voted to decertify Biden's win in Pennsylvania.
Embracing the Big Lie might've sucked for democracy, but it was amazing for Stefanik's career. When the House GOP ousted Liz Cheney as conference chair for voting to impeach Trump, Stefanik jumped to succeed her—and earned an even more erratically capitalized shoutout from the Big Liar: "Liz Cheney is a warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party Leadership... Elise Stefanik is a far superior choice, and she has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for GOP Conference Chair. Elise is a tough and smart communicator!" Despite those amazing communication skills, in her victory speech she neglected to mention that, in two previous conference chair elections, she'd nominated Liz. This blend of opportunism and treachery earned her an enemy-for-life in Cheney, who came to love trolling Stefanik as much as her dad digs waterboarding.
Their feud came to a boil after Stefanik appeared on "Meet the Press" on January 7, 2024, and said of those imprisoned for the Capitol riot, "I have concerns about the treatment of January 6th hostages." This bold attempt to equate the QAnon Shaman with Nelson Mandela was apparently too much for Cheney, who called Stefanik a "total crackpot." Cheney tweeted out a copy of a statement Stefanik had issued at the time of the insurrection, in which Original Recipe Stefanik seemed to briefly reappear: She decried the "violence and destruction" at the Capitol and called for the rioters to be brought to justice. Confronted with evidence of her hypocrisy, Stefanik met the moment: She quickly deleted the statement from her website.
Lest you think Stefanik's disdain for elections and fondness for insurrectionists mean she's anti-democracy, she has called out autocracy when she's seen it—namely, in the form of Dr. Anthony Fauci. In the early days of the pandemic, she showed respect for the celebrated epidemiologist, tweeting that her followers should "tune in to Dr. Anthony Fauci during federal press briefings" and praising him for his "incredible job educating the public." But once she realized that these pro-science tweets weren't finding favor with GOP voters who thought COVID could be cured by taking horse medicine and ingesting bleach, Stefanik again hit "delete," by now the most beloved button on her keyboard.
In October of 2021, when Fauci urged caution about Christmas gatherings, she shivved him like he was Liz Cheney in a lab coat. "Fauci has lost all credibility with the American people," she posted on Facebook. "We aren't waiting on his permission to celebrate Christmas together." In the ultimate homage to her demented mentor, she sent out a fundraising email with a subject line in all caps: "FIRE FAUCI."
Fearing, perhaps, that her debasement wasn't complete, she pandered to one of the most important constituencies in today's Republican Party: white nationalists. She voted against holding alt-right parade float Steve Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress and became a regular guest on his podcast, often railing against "The Biden Crime Family." Hoping to reach Nazis who don't listen to Bannon's show, she ran a Facebook ad sharing her highly derivative version of "The Great Replacement" theory. This paranoid fever dream, an obsession of the "very fine people" who marched with tiki torches through Charlottesville in 2017, envisions Jewish conspirators plotting to replace white voters with non-whites. On Facebook, Stefanik claimed that Democrats were fomenting "permanent election insurrection by granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants." Apparently, Stefanik only likes insurrections when they're led by white people.
With such a stellar record of election denying, rioter loving, and hate spewing, Elise Stefanik has burnished an almost flawless MAGA CV. Why do I say "almost"? Well, Stefanik was so busy checking all those fascistic boxes that when it came time to support a congressional candidate in the most recent midterms, she didn't do her homework.
On August 11, 2021, she tweeted, "MAJOR ENDORSEMENT ALERT: Excited to endorse my friend and fellow America First conservative George Santos for Congress in #NY03. @Santos4Congress will take on NYC liberal elites and bring a new generation of GOP leadership to NY and America. He has my full support!"
How full? According to a GOP strategist who spoke to CNN, "Stefanik's team was laser focused on electing Santos to Congress—more than just about any other race in the country." On May 23, 2022, she tweeted, "WOW! Great lunch event for @Santos4Congress! We raised over $100,000 to help George FLIP #NY03 George has my complete and total endorsement and come November Yorkers will send George to Congress! #SaveNewYork #SaveAmerica"
After Santos's septic tank of lies overflowed and fellow Republicans called for his resignation, Stefanik's loyalty to him remained unshakeable. Alas, she never got a chance to raise additional dough for her bestie. After Santos was charged with nearly two dozen felonies, the House voted to expel him. Standing by her man to the bitter end, Stefanik voted no. I give her credit for impostor solidarity, but Stefanik's steadfast allegiance to a man who falsely claimed that his mother died on 9/11 isn't exactly a resume booster. Looks like she's got more deleting to do.
Note: I emailed Rep. Stefanik for an interview, but she did not respond. It's possible that she googled me.
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Matt Gaetz?
Dumbfounding....
Yeah, I don't get it at all...
Do you think he's trolling?
Maybe a promise along with the expectation he won't be confirmed?
Not exactly... but close.
He's demonstrating to the world that fealty to him is all that counts.
Correct.
“Matt Gaetz?”
Making the dubious choices to date seem at least understandable for those fulfilling their loyalty oaths….now how low can we go as the bar has been razed..,
The bar is underground.
gaetz being confirmed as AG is one way to beat a child sex trafficking rap ...
Learned that from Trump.
Agree. Only a total demented idiot would pick someone so totally unqualified for such a serious position, as well as someone who is such a black-eye on America.
But, considering the one who chose him for that position it it makes sense. What most of his choices don't seem to get, is that Trump is picking his scapegoats to pass blame on when he screws up, which is a forgone conclusion.
This works also, and in so many more ways.
When self importance/greed overrides their character this is what you get….a couple of fricking slugs.
good thing trump had a revolving door installed on the cabinet entry his last term ...
I will be glad when that lying waste of life is no longer my congressional representative.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Well there is that silver lining anyway.
Word is Gaetz has referred to Noem as a "fine bitch". Nothing yet on what he thinks of Stefanik's body.
Thousands of years ago the Roman poet Juvenal coined the expression "bread and circuses", with the meaning of keeping the common folk happy with their government, and oh, how it appears to be happening today. I was thinking about how the Chinese government is keeping the people here happy, and they have certainly done a good job of it with "bread" by eradicating abject poverty, making sure that everyone has a roof over their head, food on the table, modern health care and free education for their children up to high school graduation. Rural citizens have been taught to use modern techniques, mechanization and technology to maximize production of their produce and most everyone is pretty happy here, but in order to absolutely maximize the happiness of the Chinese people, the "circuses" can now be opened and watched by the Chinese people, like watching a comedy TV show, by opening up the American news media that has been blocked here and allowing the Chinese people to watch for themselves, not needing to be limited to propaganda, but now the virtual circus, the carnival, the massive chaos, that is already starting and will become a tsunami for the eyes and ears of the Chinese people, in order for them to realize how much better off they are than the American public. There has already been for all enough access to American and world media to fill my days with enjoyment, and if I can see it, so can everyone here, but now I will NEVER (at least until the beginning of 2029) have to consider watching a comedy movie in order to earn and cause my laughter. Go to it, America, the whole world is watching.
Tell us about health care. I know American and French... and a bit about the other Europeans, but I know nothing about health care in China.
I think this will explain it.
LINK -> How does China’s healthcare system actually work? - Focus - China Britain Business Council
As I am not a Chinese citizen, only an invited guest with a renewable visa, I do not qualify for the benefit of free or subsidized healthcare here and am too old to get insurance at an affordable price, if at all, so I pay cash for everything, but I can afford it because everything is so much less expensive here. In Canada I had free healthcare and free prescription drugs.
For a country that was "third world" just a few decades ago, that's amazing.
If you were to tour China's big cities, been witness to the fantastic developments in technology, were aware of the education level and ESPECIALLY the civility and peacefulness of the people, taken into consideration its advanced astronomy (largest radio-telescope in the world) and space travel - yes they put a lander on Mars and sent back info gathered by it, the most fast rail trains and tracks in the world, the modern hospital equipment (no waiting time for an MRI), look at the bridges and highways, the fantastic architecture, you would wonder, as I do, how China can call itself a "developing country". You have no idea how glad I am that I don't drive here....
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But that's a few examples of what's modern, can you imagine the traditional? We're looking at 5,000 years of civilization.
We visited China twice, about 2000 and 2020. The evolution was spectacular.
It's only those who have never been to China who say nasty things about it or its government, but what do they know other than the shit that's published about it? China spies on the USA? As if the USA DOESN'T spy on China, LOL, or says it adheres to the One China Principle and arms Taiwan and sends its lawmakers there instead of to Beijing. Hypocrisy in spades.
“…the "circuses"…
We are living in the ‘theatre of the absurd’ with every single clown being type cast.
I do wish you the best of luck. IMO it is going to be needed unless one is already a multi-millionaire or better.