On Tuesday night, Donald’s Mar-a-Lago club and unauthorized classified document ballpit hosted a fundraising event for a QAnon-premised “documentary” on sex trafficking. The ABC News story on the event noted in particular the presence of prominent QAnon wackadoodle Liz Crokin, who says she used her time at Club Treason to talk about “Pizzagate,” the still-bubbling far-right conspiracy theory that claimed national Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a nondescript Washington, D.C., pizza joint that never had a basement to begin with. (You might remember that theory as being the reason a far-right conspiracy believer went to aforementioned pizza shop and started shooting the place up in an effort to free the children who were not there from the basement that never existed.)
QAnon claims have repeatedly caused violence or near-violence, but the cranks who use the theories to boost their own careers, for example by fundraising to produce fake documentaries designed to incite the insufficiently hinged into similar acts of faux-heroism, have continued on their merry path. And that includes, of course, holding fundraisers at Donald Trump’s personal club.
Liz Crokin celebrated her appearance in a social media post, reports ABC: “Tonight I had the privilege and honor to speak at America’s Future fundraiser to combat child trafficking at Mar-A-Lago.”
Well, you can’t argue with the phrasing. Good job, ya weirdo. Crokin was also important enough to get the “standing beside Trump while Trump did his thumb thing” picture that Trump’s mid-tier supporters consider to be an honor equal to being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame or whatever the Palm Beach equivalent might be.
Now, back in the olden days there was always a great game to be had in political circles whenever an important political person was caught hanging out with (1) racists, (2) criminals, (3) creeps, or (4) absolute batshit scenery-chewing trolley-off-the-tracks lives-in-an-alternate-plane-of-existance societal cancers. If you were to so much as neglect filling out the proper tax forms for a gardener or nanny in your employ, other Important People would have to bring fainting couches out onto their front lawns, then lie down on them to recover from the scandal of it all. It goes without saying that this sort of thing went on your permanent record.
That largely went away after the Republican Party decided that Actually, a little sex trafficking or flagrant tax fraud or extortion of foreign governments or attempted coup against the United States government itself was just fine now. The tics of those earlier days remain, though. Was the important person hanging out with the malevolent, horrible person accidentally, or on purpose? Will they denounce the person they were photographed with, or would a denouncement be too destructive to their plans to court equally malevolent, horrible people?
Hosting neo-Nazis, civil-war-advocating white supremacists, or conspiracy grifters whose fictions have incited real-world violence might be a real problem, if Donald Trump wasn’t at least half of those things himself. “Oh no, the sponsor of an attempted coup against the government is hanging out with assholes,” says nobody.
So, ya know, fine. Yes, Donald Trump, who says he is running for president again, possibly because the FBI took back all his stolen classified documents and he’s uncontrollably mad about that, is hanging out with America’s worst human beings.
Did Donald Trump know Crokin was a dangerous conspiracy promoter? Listen buddy, I’m not sure Donald Trump could pick Ivanka out of a crowd at this point, asking him to identify figures in the conspiratorial right would be like asking him the name of his grandkids.
Did Donald Trump know the fake documentarians were dangerous conspiracy promoters when they booked his club? See above, but let’s have a look at his welcoming message to the group:
“You are incredible people, you are doing unbelievable work, and we just appreciate you being here and we hope you’re going to be back,” he told the gathered crowd.
Pfft. That’s the speech he gives to anyone willing to give him five dollars and the time of day. That’s what he regurgitates when he has no idea who you are or why you’re there. This is the same speech he gives when he’s asked to talk about Frederick Douglass or the nuclear triad. Incredible people, the nuclear triad. They’re doing unbelievable work.
What we have here is Donald Trump in his natural habitat. Figures on the far-right want to suck up to him and give him money; Donald wants people to suck up to him and give him money. The ranks of people willing to do either have dwindled greatly, thanks to that whole attempted coup thing, and it’s now down to neo-Nazis, conspiracy cranks, and Republican members of Congress.
Does any of this get him closer to returning to the presidency? Not so far. The only thing we know with absolute certainty is that this cretin has absolutely nobody left who can do even the barest possible vetting of the people he’s been inviting into his for-profit home and club. Secret Service don’t care. His political aides don’t care. His family don’t care.
It’s just Donald and the “Pizzagate” blubberers against the whole wide world, and the “Pizzagate” blubberers are there only because they were willing to pay him money. Tune in next week, when he hosts the corpse of Jim Jones and points a stubby thumb up while being photographed with a racist jar of olives.
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Election season overtime is finally winding down, so Democratic operative Joe Sudbay joins David Nir on The Downballot as a guest-host this week to recap some of the last results that have just trickled in. At the top of the list is the race for Arizona attorney general, where Democrat Kris Mayes has a 510-vote lead with all ballots counted (a mandatory recount is unlikely to change the outcome). Also on the agenda is Arizona’s successful Proposition 308, which will allow students to receive financial aid regardless of immigration status.
Over in California, Democrats just took control of the boards of supervisors in two huge counties, Riverside and Orange—in the case of the latter, for the first time since 1976. Joe and David also discuss which Democratic candidates who fell just short this year they’d like to see try again in 2024, and what the GOP’s very skinny House majority means for Kevin McCarthy’s prospects as speaker.
