Every Republican is Trump, unless they say to the contrary. And they don't.

Republicans are under Trump's thumb. 

If Trump says "jump," they must jump. Or else. 

Trump is an enforcer. 

Oregon voters have their ballots in hand. Remember as you vote: 

Governor candidate Christine Drazan is Trump. Governor candidate Chris Dudley is Trump. U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz is Trump. State Senate candidate Brad Hicks is Trump. 

 

President Trump's first term was a learning experience for him. This term Trump himself decides what is true and what is legal. He appoints and supports people who do things his way.

Trump purges Republicans who show independence. The world is full of Republican roadkill examples: Vice President Mike Pence, Senators Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, and Thom Tillis, U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

I have been critical of my congressman, Cliff Bentz, who dutifully fell in line to disallow counting of the 2020 votes from Pennsylvania, and then voted to help Trump hide the Epstein files. Bentz voted to substantially reduce medical insurance for the working poor (though this district is the third most reliant on this benefit of the country's 435 districts); and he remains silent when Trump's tariff policies conspicuously injure the district's wheat farmers. Bentz is a toady for Trump. Perhaps I should be more kind. After all, he is under orders. If he voted his conscience he would be "primaried." 

Officeholders must obey the Trump script, or else, even when they know better. 

Click: YouTube clip

Republicans learned a script. Say that "Joe Biden was inaugurated," but never utter words that would contradict Trump's claim that the 2000 election was stolen. The script is a signal to Trump and Republicans. It demonstrates forward-looking obedience and fidelity to Trump. 

An election today in Indiana will show whether GOP primary voters will confirm the defenestration of eight Republican state senators who decided that the existing congressional maps in Indiana were reasonable and fair, and thus did not consent to the mid-cycle partisan re-draw that Trump demanded. We won't know the voter's verdict until tomorrow, but we know the conditions for the vote now. Trump condemned those eight state senators. Trump called them "WEAK" and "PATHETIC" and RINOs.

Voters frustrated with Oregon politics and potentially open to electing Republicans have a dilemma. Trump said, "We must keep the MAJORITY at all costs." Trump is demanding that Republicans take extraordinary steps, including this mid-cycle redistricting. He cited in a Truth Social post the pretext of a "Rigged Census" in Indiana. A Republican governor in Oregon could face a similar demand from Trump. A governor Drazen or Dudley might need to claim an excuse to void votes in Democratic-majority Portland. There are a million possible pretexts. As Trump said in Georgia, "Find 11,780 votes." Or perhaps more easily, disallow that many Democratic votes on a pretext. After all, win at "all costs."

A Republicans elected to the state Senate -- for example Brad Hicks -- would be under similar pressure. The local Republican Party voted for a resolution saying the 2020 election should be awarded to Trump. A Republican majority in the state senate might submit a GOP slate of electors for the Republican candidate, notwithstanding the actual vote. Really? Yes, really. That is what Trump demanded in Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other battleground states in 2020.  Kim Thatcher, a state senator and former candidate for Oregon secretary of state, the chief election officer in Oregon, led the fight in Oregon to join Texas' demand to void the 2020 election. She was not condemned by Republican voters as a dishonest danger to democracy. She was re-elected, and is a state senator today. She has a future in the Oregon GOP.

If elected, would a Drazan, Dudley, or Hicks create a pretext for following Trump's orders? That is the experience: Cliff Bentz did exactly that, and he remains in office. Kim Thatcher did, and she remains.

Trump understands how to exercise power and enforce his will. No other president in my lifetime is anywhere close to Trump in the ability to force his will. Trump is decisive and cruel. He rewards loyalty by pardoning people who committed criminal acts on his behalf. He punishes opponents by prosecuting them. He purges and vilifies members of his own party who dare be independent. He is vigilant. He notices what takes place in state legislatures, county commissions, and election boards. He is keeping a list of who has been naughty and nice.

Could Drazen, Dudley, Bentz, or Hicks act with independent integrity? They could. It is possible. But I do not see any evidence than any of them shows the tiniest bit of independence from Trump. How can they? They are Republicans running in a Republican primary. 

Until Republicans free themselves of Trump, voters need to conclude that any Republican they elect would be a grave risk to democracy. We don't have to imagine it. We see it.

[Note: I do not disapprove of Republicans as a group. Many were clients. Many are friends. I disapprove of Republicans who consent to being compliant with Trump when is dishonest and does blatantly unconstitutional acts. Trump has destroyed the GOP, as both Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz warned a decade ago.]

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Play to win.

Someone made a one-hour loop of Trump saying "winning" repeatedly. 

Trump thought it appropriate to put it up on the White House site, and post it on Twitter/X.

Winning: Click

Trump surprises. Trump offends. He is tiresome, but never boring. There is something new every day. As the DJs of my youth said on KYJC and KBOY, the local AM top-40 stations, "The hits keep on coming."

It took Trump several months into his 2016 campaign before he made winning the triumphant finale of his speeches. In the fall and winter of 2015-2016 he talked about immigration while criticizing Obama and Obamacare. But by March, 2016, I described a rally in Boca Raton, Florida:

He ended his talk assuring people that "You will start to win if I am elected.  Win. Win.  Win. You will win so much you will start to tire of it. But we will keep winning. You will call out to me, "Let's stop winning so much, we are tired of winning,but I won't stop. I will keep us winning and winning."

Trump frames relationships as a transaction, with a winner and a loser. It isn't just the theme of his book, The Art of the Deal; it is fundamental Trump and Trump-ism. Trump's casual disregard for alliances and trade relationships that had been built over decades is explained by that frame. Trump doesn't value cooperation and win-win arrangements. Win-win means half losing. One left "money on the table." 

Our political system was not prepared for Trump, although the writers of the Constitution presumed that a Trump-like figure would come along, so the tools are in place to use if Americans dare. Other presidents have overstepped their power, but they did not really test the system because they did it in bits and pieces, tentatively, carefully, and hypocritically. 

President Biden's attempt to forgive some student loans was an example, something he declared and tried, then got shot down by courts, with Biden promptly succumbing. President Obama faced the situation of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric and high-level Al Qaeda operative. Obama arranged a CIA-led drone strike against him in Yemen on September 30, 2011. There was no practical way to stop al-Awiaki through normal criminal police apprehension, removal to the U.S., and trial. Obama argued that he was an "imminent threat" and was in the act of waging war against the U.S. and therefore a legal military target. 

Trump doesn't care about normative fair-play boundaries and therefore doesn't tiptoe and nudge. He blasts past former norms and dares someone to stop him. He doesn't obey in advance. He disobeys in advance and demands that the courts, Congress or anyone else confront him if they are to stop him. 

Foreign powers have done a better job than domestic ones in saying "no" to Trump. Iran did not obey in advance. They are still fighting, not consenting. Denmark and the countries of NATO who moved warships toward Greenland did not obey in advance. Canada, which immediately started making side-deals with China did not obey in advance. The House obeyed in advance on the Epstein matter until, finally, a fifth GOP member stepped up, which meant there was a majority when added to Democratic votes to demand Trump release the Epstein files. When Congress played the cards it had, Trump folded. 

There is a huge difference between Trump 45 and Trump 47. In his first term, Trump's top people obeyed the rules of the game. In his second term his top people obey Trump.

If Congress doesn't impeach and convict him, he will continue to do as he pleases on tariffs. He will make war on Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland or anyone else if he can get away with it. 

Trump will assure that Republicans win every race in the 2026 midterm election if he can get away with it. He will assert whatever pretext serves his purpose. States with GOP control will let him. Ones without full GOP control will resist. Federalism is a partial check on Trump. Congress is not. 

Trump can be stopped, but he doesn't stop on his own. He plays to win it all. It requires opposition to Trump to have a play-to-win attitude as well, otherwise he will steamroll right over opponents.

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How Democrats can win elections.

Group-think has destroyed the GOP. President Trump is a strict enforcer. Try to get a Republican to say aloud that Trump lost in 2020.

I don't want group-think to destroy Democrats. They can evolve, if they dare.

On March 28 I suggested areas where Democrats need to wake up and change directions. It is OK. It is necessary. After all, Democrats have so screwed up their brand that Americans actually voted for Donald Trump -- a felonious, narcissistic, grifting autocrat -- rather than vote for a standard-issue Democrat. Kamala Harris' problem isn't that she is a woman or dark-skinned. It is that she voiced policies that Americans rejected.

What changes???

--  It is OK for Democrats to say that transgender male-to-female people are just fine, live and let live, but that they should not compete in athletics against biological women. The principle is fair competition. People understand that performance-enhancing drugs destroy fair competition. People value fairness. The position isn't anti-trans. It protects trans people.

--  It is OK for Democrats to insist that immigrants come here legally. It is OK to say aloud that immigrant scofflaws should go home, which requires ICE to do its job, but do it while respecting good police practices. Come up with a formula of who can stay and who must leave. There will be lines drawn, and some will be in and some will be out; that is inevitable. The country is waiting for someone to do this. Come up with something, then having done it, then defend and enforce those criteria. People want to know there is enforced order.

-- It is OK for Democrats to say that fossil fuels are transitioning out over the next decades, but that we still need them now, because we have millions of Americans who own a gasoline-engined car and they need to get to work. Cars bought today will run for 200,000 more miles. When the country has inexpensive and plentiful green energy, then Americans will happily switch to it, and junk those cars, and that is what Democrats should encourage. But don't bash the fuel that people buy every week. It is hypocritical and bad politics. 

--  It is OK to recognize that Americans dislike race-based preferences in everything: college admissions, hiring, promotions, and voting. Yes, voting, too. The MLK formulation that people should be judged by character, not skin color, is better principle, better policy, and better politics. Carving out congressional and state "black districts" probably made sense 50 years ago, but now is creating a backlash bigger than its purpose of encouraging fair representation. It is a form of race-based segregation -- done, Democrats think, for a good cause -- but fuels the anti-DEI feelings, even among Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters. The goal was to help Black people elect one of "theirs." That isn't working in the big picture on race in America. Race-based carve-outs have reversed the public consensus that made the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s possible. Gerrymandering on race turns out to be as destructive to democracy as is the extreme gerrymandering we are seeing done now in the mid-cycle districting happening now. Wouldn't it be nice if there were both Black and White candidates who competed for votes of people from the other race? Maybe mixed-race districts are a good thing, not a bad thing. 

--  It is OK for Democrats to criticize members of their own party. Joe Biden had no business running for reelection. Say so. The DNC subverted democracy by forbidding a competitive 2024 primary contest. It was stupid and wrong. Say so.  Kamala Harris spoke in vague generalities, which made her look afraid of leading. Say so. Chuck Schumer (yes, yet another college classmate) is weak and blind to the geriatric look of the party. He needs to get out of the way of the next generation. Say so. It is not disloyal to Democrats to tell the simple truth, the truth that nearly every Democrat secretly believes. Seriously, is there anyone who thinks Chuck Schumer is an inspiring leader?

Democrats hate to admit it, but they could learn something from Donald Trump. I am not saying Trump is good; he is bad, very bad He is a dishonest autocratic sociopath. He is dangerous. But he constantly gets judged to be more honest than Democrats because he appears to speak his mind, let the chips fall where they may. What he says is often vile and disgusting, but he says it. People like his frankness and confuse it with honesty.

My suggestions are not vile, disgusting ideas. A Democrat can say them proudly, voicing both good policy and popular policy. But they are politically incorrect to Democratic orthodoxy. The issues I mention were "Republican talking points" because, in fact, Republicans identified areas in which Democratic orthodoxy is contrary to what even most Democrats think.

My suggestion is to stop defending the indefensible. Its OK for parties to evolve.

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Oregon Senate, District 3: Who is raising money

Republican candidate Brad Hicks has raised the most money. 

Of course. Every four years the usual GOP PACS, business lobbies, upstate Republican candidates, and prominent local business leaders create million-dollar campaigns for their candidate.

The question is whether a Democrat has the credibility and connections to raise enough money to withstand the coming avalanche.  

Dan Ruby argues that Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba is that candidate.

On April 15 I published a snapshot of the money raised by the five Democratic candidates for Senate District 3, people hoping to take the place currently held by Jeff Golden (yet another college classmate). Money is an imperfect way of seeing who has a credible campaign, but it tells us something. We see who has an active, effective campaign. We see who has political allies and who they are.

Yesterday I received an email from Ashland, Oregon, school board member Dan Ruby. He wanted me to know that his favored candidate, Ruvalcaba has raised the most money. He said it was a sign of political capability, and that political capability is the safest way for local Democrats to decide who should be the Democratic nominee. 

I agree that political capability is important. I think all five Democratic candidates -- Ruvalcaba, plus Denise Krause, Tonia Moro, Kevin Stine, and Jim Crary -- have approximately the same political agenda. All want to "fix" health care. All want to stop ICE from employing brutal police tactics. All care about climate and the environment. All support reproductive rights. All care about public schools. All want Southern Oregon University to survive and thrive.

Dan Ruby (left) with Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba

Ruvalcaba has a patron: Oregon's association of nurses. He does not yet have a wide network of individual local donors. (That is the strength of Denise Krause, who organized the campaigns to reform county government in 2022, and made a lot of friends doing so.)  Nurses are a special-interest group --which is a negative -- but it is a good one to have if you are going to have a single big patron. The public likes nurses. We feel they are a "safe" group, basically "good people" in a helping profession. It is very different from how most people feel about the business PACs that fund GOP campaigns, e.g. the bank lobby, the car dealer lobby, the agricultural chemical lobby, and the timber industry lobby. We suspect predation from them; not from nurses.

Ruby put a good face on Ruvalcaba's campaign: Ruvalcaba has credibility with people who write large checks and that is necessary to win a general election. He has credibility with the right people, the nurses lobby now, and presumably other unions and policy associations later. Critics, of course, can put a negative face on Ruvalcaba's campaign: He doesn't show broad support from individual local donors, at least not yet.  But Ruvalcaba met an important threshold at a time of backlash against immigrants from Latin America and Asia; he shows that a sophisticated political gatekeeper thinks that a candidate with Ruvalcaba's name and background is electable. It is a signal.

Dan Ruby was the 2024 Democratic and Progressive Party nominee for U.S. House of Representatives and currently works as a strategic consultant for healthcare, climate, and housing initiatives. 

Guest Post by Dan Ruby

I am very invested in who will replace retiring and beloved public servant Senator Jeff Golden. This particular election is especially critical. Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba is my choice to be our next senator.

Doing the job of a legislator is one thing, but the job of getting elected is another entirely. I recognize that the Republican challenger is extraordinarily well-funded by corporate PACs and wealthy business-owner donors. Even with a district that is tilted slightly toward Democrats in registration, winning in the fall will require effectively motivating a new base, younger people and people of color. Cristian is proving that he is a capable campaigner who reaches folks who have been difficult for traditional Democratic candidates. We know that winning the general election means being able to match Brad Hicks’ money machine, at least within an order of magnitude. We see that Cristian is the only one that comes close.

The ORESTAR results are as of Thursday morning (4/30) and include the previous-year funds raised for each candidate, rounded to the nearest dollar. I didn’t disaggregate cash and in-kind.

Candidate Name	Days Since Filing	Receipts	Expenses	Cash on Hand	Raised per Day (Avg)
Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba	52	$107,720	$85,967	$21,753	$2,072
Denise Krause	143	$51,747	$36,286	$15,461	$362
Tonia Moro	64	$38,762	$3,023	$35,739	$606
Jim Crary	52	$15,850	$7,608	$8,242	$305
Kevin Stine	66	$8,125	$5,757	$2,368	$123
Brad Hicks	197	$257,952	$62,562	$195,390	$1,309

The best representative will be someone who understands intimately the problems faced by the people in this area, through academic and career practice and lived experience. It will be someone who knows that the more diverse brains and histories you have in the room, the better the chances of success. And someone who is proving his electability by his extraordinary success in rounding up personal and financial support from experienced people in the Oregon legislature and his fellow nurses in the Oregon Nurses Association, who have contributed over $87,000 so far toward his campaign.

Cristian can win the election and work for us over the next four years. That’s why I endorse Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba for Oregon State Senate, District 3 and urge others to give him your vote as well.

 

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Kevin Stine: A nation honors its veterans

     “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”
          Abraham Lincoln. These words became the motto of the U.S. Veterans Administration

     "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
          William Faulkner, 1951

Wars have a long, long tail.

I wrote yesterday about the orderly rows of headstones at the Eagle Point National Cemetery. 

The order is a sign of respect. 

People in military service submit to military discipline. They are commanded to do hard, dangerous things. There is a code of honor and duty. There is a process, the military way. That extends to the way a military funeral is performed. Kevin Stine is on a team that performs them.

Stine is a veteran of the U.S. Navy, having served for nine years, with tours of duty aboard submarines. He is now in the U.S. Navy Reserves. He is a graduate of Southern Oregon University. He teaches in Medford schools. He has been on the Medford, Oregon, city council for 11 years, including two years as council president. He is a Democratic candidate for State Senate in District 3. He wrote me yesterday with a comment to the guest post on cemeteries. 

A military funeral is a debt owed a veteran by the United States of America. Life is transitory, but patriotic service leaves a permanent mark. The headstone endures. The flag endures. The precision of the funeral endures. 

Guest Post by Kevin Stine

I am on the Navy Funeral Honors Team and have conducted around 700 services in honor of Navy veterans that have passed. Most lived nice, long lives, while others had the misfortune of the things that occur in life such as diseases and traffic-related accidents. The great majority of services are at Eagle Point National Cemetery as I am about a 20 minute drive away. Roseburg has a national cemetery as well, and I have completed a significant number there.

Services will happen wherever a family chooses to have the funeral honors performed. I have been to many churches and done gravesite services. I have been in backyards and to family plots. The honors itself does not change whether it be an E-1 or an O-10. We have a ceremonial playing of Taps, followed by a flag fold that is presented to the next of kin. The three-volley salute may be performed if the family or funeral home requests one, and an organization is available. Those are performed by the Veterans organizations such as the Marine Corps League, Vietnam Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

I will often walk around cemeteries and see the names and dates of headstones. Military cemeteries are uniform and don't allow much information other than name, dates of life, religious affiliation, branch of service, war zone, and simple identifying information such as being a husband/wife or father/mother. Spouses can be buried there as well. Sometimes you see one person's beginning and end date, then another with a beginning with no end, as they are widowed. My grandmother lived 25 years as a widow before passing away last year. She is now placed and headstone date is added to her husband, my grandfather.

For private cemeteries, you can see much more of the story. A picture of the person. The person's favorite sports team or activity. Items are left by family members that have come to visit. I see the dates and can imagine the world that they saw. People that grew up during the Civil War, and lived through WW1. Those that lived during the Great Depression and into the Nixon years.

Their specific stories are largely lost through history. For example, it is unlikely that you know your great-great grandparents names, let alone anything about them.

As I get older, there are more and more numbers in my phone that once belonged to a friend or acquaintance. I get Facebook notifications of it being someone's birthday, that has died some years ago. I'll read obituaries and think a bit more about life, from those that have lived theirs. With the exception of self-harm, we don't get to choose our end, or generally the health we have before it comes that time.

Cemeteries provide a final spot for our remains, and at 40 years old I haven't thought too much of where I'll go. It would be nice to have a picture, and a biography to read, for those that take a future stroll for whatever final spot on this Earth that I take.

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The long view.

"This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."

     Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem, 1887  

This blog began with a premise embedded in the name I gave it, UpClose with Peter Sage. 

I wanted to make a virtue out of watching presidential candidates up close in their presentations. I wanted direct observation of events. I wanted to be in traffic, amid the hustle. We are living in interesting times, and I thought that by being right there in the front row, watching something and writing about it that day, I would understand it better. 

College classmate Ben Beach caught my attention by saying he had prepared a guest post that he thought was appropriate for this blog. He said it was on cemeteries. What? But I caught his purpose. He pulls me out of the noisy moment and into a mental space measured in lives and centuries. 

I visit cemeteries and the graves of family and friends. The Eagle Point National Cemetery, set aside for veterans and their spouses, is beautiful and immaculate. It is orderly and quiet. Shipshape. Weed-free. Everything in its place.

The rows of headstones are set up in perfect alignment, straight in every direction, the way my vineyard rows are set up, posts aligned in every direction, on the land my dad grew up on and farmed and eventually turned over to me. Some of Dad's ashes are scattered everywhere at the farm. The army sent him off to Boston, then into the Battle of the Bulge in Europe. He survived it and made it back home where he longed to be.

Ben had a long career writing for The Wilderness Society. He began doing distance running in college and then over the next five decades he set a record for the most consecutive finishes in the Boston Marathon: 54. It was broken last year.

Guest Post by Ben Beach

As a teenager, when I had all the answers to society’s problems, I concluded that cemeteries were a waste of valuable space. These sprawling spaces could be baseball fields, for example. Our country should not devote another acre to such use.

Today, 60 years later, I believe I was dead wrong.

When were you last in a cemetery? I’m not what you’d call a “regular,” but I walk, run, or bike through a graveyard about once a month. I love the peace and quiet, nature’s greenness, the early dates on many headstones, and the art of those markers and the statues.

And the stories I imagine that the people underground could tell. Inventors could tell us about their aha moments. Detectives could explain how they cracked their toughest cases. Not to mention all the endearing love stories.

As I stroll through a cemetery, I am grateful for what everyone there contributed to building the country that we’re lucky enough to call home. Doctors, construction workers, soldiers, teachers, cops, electricians, and more.

In the beautiful Bethel Cemetery in my new hometown, Alexandria, Virginia, there’s a 12-foot-high monument that reads: “Erected to the memory of the Confederate dead of Alexandria by their surviving comrades. They died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed.”

I try to put myself in the boots of those soldiers, some of them teenagers, marching off to battle from that very spot in 1861. Did they believe in the cause? Did they expect to return home? Were they witnesses to the carnage at Gettysburg, Antietam, Chickamauga?

I don’t have close relatives whose gravesites I can visit easily. My parents are buried outside the church in New York State that we attended way back when, and it would be a 300-mile trip. I have a friend whose wife died of cancer, and most mornings in the months after her death he’d go to her gravesite with a cup of coffee and a chair and read her the day’s newspaper. Nice.

My interest in cemeteries may flow in part from my affinity for the death-related rock ‘n’ roll songs of my youth. One rather obscure one, “Laurie” by Dickie Lee, tells of a boy who met Laurie at a dance and walked her home afterwards. She said it was her birthday and then that she was cold, so he gave Laurie his sweater. As the boy headed home, he remembered the sweater and went back to retrieve it. A man answered the door and said, “You’re wrong, son; you weren’t with my daughter. How can you be so cruel to come to me this way? She died a year ago today.”

Dickie Lee tells us that “a strange force” drew him to the graveyard and, yes, you guessed it, there was his sweater lying on Laurie’s grave. His conclusion? “Strange things happen in this world.”

Dickie Lee also gave us “Patches.” Other greats are “Last Kiss” by J. Frank Wilson, “Ebony Eyes” by the Everly Brothers, “Billy and Sue” by B. J. Thomas, and “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson. If I’ve left off your favorite, please forgive me.

What would those buried beneath our feet think if they were to walk out of their graves? Some might ask if Martin Van Buren had been reelected. Or if cars were still electric, as they were in the early days.

At age 76, I know that my days are numbered. Much as I’m drawn to these peaceful plots, especially those small patches along rural roads (often on family farms), I’ve told my wife and children that I think I’d make great compost.

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Believe nothing.

Fool me once; shame on you. 

Fool me twice; shame on me. 

Try fooling me for seven straight weeks, back to shame on you. I am onto you.

Who is more credible on the question of whether Iran will allow ships to pass the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, or Trump? 

Iran of course. 

Trump just makes things up and changes his story repeatedly. Trump isn't the least bit reliable.

An idea is floating around in the zeitgeist, and it is a symptom of the aura of distrust. The idea is that the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner was staged by Trump. So was the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting. After all, the Butler shooting worked so well politically for Trump that the Hilton Hotel shooting was a useful sequel. 

I do not think that the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting was a staged event. The test of "Who benefits?" is the wrong one, even if the incident raises suspicion among the conspiracy-minded. The test is whether a secret plan of this kind -- involving shots fired, blood appearing on Trump's cheek, an audience member killed, and the shooter killed at the site -- could all have been choreographed, and then kept secret, all done in real time, all without a dress rehearsal, and there not be evidence of the fraud. I think not. It's impossible, and therefore, no, it was not staged.

But notice my thinking: It isn't that authority figures at the FBI and Secret Service and local law enforcement said that the Butler incident took place as described in official accounts. I presume that they would happily lie to present a dishonest but convenient narrative if they could get away with it. It is just that the event was too complicated to do as a staged assassination. It happened as described, and Trump got lucky.

Tucker Carlson openly doubts whether the Butler event was staged, and he hosts people who "just ask questions."  Marjorie Taylor Greene is suspicious and she, too, is "just asking questions."

Trump has no credibility on any issue with political valence. Trump and his administration happily assert narratives with no relation to the truth, or even the ability to ascertain the truth. Before any investigation was possible Trump and then-Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem asserted that the ICE shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti stopped terrorist attacks. They have not backed off their story. This weekend Trump asserted that Jimmy Kimmel caused the Hilton Hotel attack. (This week's apparent shooter travelled to Washington, D.C., days before the Kimmel show.)  He asserts that ABC must take Kimmel off the air anyway.  Administration officials fall into place. Blame Kimmel. It isn't true, but it is a useful, convenient narrative. 

Conspiracy accusations sow doubt. They de-legitimize. It works politically. Trump asserted that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii. Republican voters believe it. Trump asserts that he won the 2020 election in a landslide. Republicans believe it, or pretend to. Trump calls Black female politicians "low-IQ" regardless of their education or career successes. It plants a seed. It delegitimize them and gives permission for racists to feel aggrieved.

Trump opponents are doing trolling of their own. Iran has lego-figure propaganda video saying the Hilton Hotel shooting is fake. Social media chatter makes the same claim. This fifteen-second video pops up on TikTok:

Click to go to TikTok

Text:  "Does he really expect us to believe that Charlie Kirk was taken out by some sniper shit, but that every time its him it's some dude vying for the "worst fucking marksman ever" badge, literally the worst shot ever? I don't think so. It was all staged to get his ballroom."

Trump gave wings to the Hilton-shooting-is-fake meme by the way that he and media allies immediately made the shooting an excuse for a new ballroom. 

Left populism fears government and corporate elites. Drug companies are cheating us. Agricultural chemicals are poisoning us. Oil companies are killing the planet. The government is spying on us. Right populism fears the racial, religious, and ethnic other, plus government and corporate elites.

Nearly everybody thinks there is a certain amount of swamp out there.

Trump has a structural disadvantage on the issue of distrust of government. Trump is in power. In a world in which nobody can be trusted, certain facts emerge as set points of reality: Trump is awesomely, stupendously self-serving. Even MAGA Republicans see it. He cannot hide it because it is too big. What with crypto, real estate deals, private business deals with governments, gifts, strategic pardons, and using the power of government to protect himself, his family, and his friends, we see that Trump is neck-deep in the swamp. It is dark and mysterious, and it is worse than you know. It is very dirty.

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