The Daly Weekly (5/1)

Barack Obama, Trump-assassination denial, the SPLC, and more!

Hi everyone.

Welcome to this week’s Daly Weekly, where I answer whatever questions you throw my way.

Let’s get right to your questions…

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I was reading a lot of the deranged responses to your Obama post. It’s insane how many people still think it’s a racist to criticize him. — Ben G.

Ben, as usual, I’m now going to have to explain to people what you’re talking about. Lol. (It’s okay, I don’t mind).

I posted this the other day on X, and yeah, it go a lot of attention:

I’ve made the point a few times over the years, and seemingly whenever I do, a ton of Obama fans fly into my mentions out of nowhere to prove me right. I understand lefties not agreeing with my conservative critiques of Obama, but the inability of so many of them to even understand how needlessly divisive he was, in how he went about his politicking, is a true testament to the power of partisanship. Many of them truly believe Obama was a good-faith politician, who was nothing but unifying in his approach to his opposition, but had his hand repeatedly slapped away by Republicans.

Conservative economist, Jessica Riedl, agreed with me, and summarized the issue quite well:

This naturally led to a whole bunch of Obama fans calling the two of racists, because, in their minds, Obama transcended politics. He was, as Charles Krauthammer used to say, “always on the side of the angels.”

So far, the simplest explanation seems to be the case; the [WHCD] shooter was a loon whose rants about the Trump Administration and the complicity of anyone even allowing Trump to breathe same air, could come straight out of Bluesky, where he actually may have had an account, but turned out to actually be serious. He saw Trump the same way Mangione likely saw Thompson, that he was morally, even if not legally, culpable for people suffering and dying, and so deserved capital punishment.

I suppose though that it’s a good sign that most Bluesky Libs aren’t endorsing what to me is the obvious logical conclusion of the “Trump is an Evil Pedophilic Dictator and anyone who doesn’t actively oppose literally everything he does, they are Complicit” rhetoric. Instead, they are going with a “It Was Obviously Staged By Trump To Court Sympathy And Boost His Poll Numbers” conspiracy theory. (Team Trump, to be fair, has certainly fed into that by using the incident to shill for Trump’s ballroom project.)

But what also disturbs me, is that compared to the earlier Trump assassination attempt in 2024, or even the assassination of Charlie Kirk last year, there really hasn’t been any loud calls to rethink where we’re going or for all sides to eschew political violence. The vibe is instead, “This is what we are now, a country in which political violence is just something that happens, and we just have to live with it. Might as well just take advantage of these events and use them as ammunition against our political enemies.” Or maybe I am being too cynical? — Aylene W.

Hi Aylene. I’ll take this one point at a time…

First, I think it’s kind of weird that Bluesky is often singled out as a bastion of far-left extremism. From my perspective (I have an account there, though I don’t use it much), it’s no more wing-nutty and vitriolic than any other social-media platform. That’s not a defense of it, or anything; it’s just an acknowledgement that political extremism is represented on all of these major platforms. In fact, I’ve seen every bit the level of evil and insanity (and more of it) on X.

Anyway, your broader observations are largely the same as mine. Lots of people on both sides of the political divide reflexively go into conspiracy mode whenever some calamitous, high-profile event makes their political team look bad, and their political opposition look good. They’re so firm in their belief that they are the good guys, and their opponents are the bad guys, that they can’t bring themselves to accept the event as being authentic. The denial is basically a defense mechanism. That’s how a lot of lefties have convinced themselves that the assassination attempts on Trump were fake, and how a lot of righties have convinced themselves that Trump won the 2020 election, and that January 6 was some kind of false-flag operation.

To your last point, I agree that it does appear as though political violence is now tolerable or even excusable to a growing number of Americans. I think that’s a very worrisome cultural development. As I told Bernie on this week’s No BS Zone, I think both sides (especially their leadership) need to lower the temperature, stand firmly and vocally against political violence, and support strong legal punishment for those who commit political violence.

John: My brain wants to draw parallels between the Mike Vrabel – Dianna Russini story and SPLC’s federal indictment. Besides the gossipy story of two public people canoodling in a private resort (Vrabel and Russini are each married to others), the more important aspect is journalistic credibility. How can we trust a reporter who is literally in bed with one of her sources and subjects? Similarly, the SPLC’s credibility will be shot if they were truly encouraging (and paying for) the very racist behavior they were supposedly fighting. Will these stories and themes have legs beyond the current news cycle? — Steve R.

Hi Steve. This is not going to be a satisfying answer, but I haven’t had a chance to familiarize myself much with either of the stories you mentioned. But speaking in broad terms, a journalist sleeping with his or her source obviously goes against basic journalistic ethics. And yes, it absolutely violates the public’s trust. We’ll get a much better picture on the SPLC stuff as the case moves forward, but it feels pretty damning, and we might not even know the extent of the corruption at this point. I wish I had enough faith in the Trump DOJ to feel confident they’ve got the goods, but their track record thus far has been abysmal. We’ll see.

As for whether these stories/themes will have legs beyond the current news-cycle, it’s hard to say. It seems like every day, there’s some big, new, national story that wipes the previous day’s from the public conscience. Of course, partisan-media outlets will keep any such stories front and center, if it’s helpful to. So, there’s that.

Greetings Sir John — according to recent reports, that liberal bastion of anti-white supremacy and hatred has been donating large amounts of money to — wait for it —wait for it — RACIST HATE GROUPS! They allegedly have been funding the KKK and the Aryan Nation to name only two, and the virtuous LEFTIST LIBERAL SPLC also allegedly secretly funded the Unite The Right March in CHARLOTTESVILLE! Why, we ask? Well apparently that old Boogeyman of white supremacy just isn’t as prevalent or powerful as it once was, so in order to continue to push the narrative that white supremacy IS “the biggest threat to democracy today,” as Joe Biden himself noted, well it became necessary for the SPLC to give huge sums of money to those racist organizations to keep up and running so that the SPLC could continue to support the FALSE narrative that THEY THEMSELVES actually benefit from! As Claude Rains once said…”I’m SHOCKED! Absolutely SHOCKED!” (Sarcasm ON! I’m not shocked at all). What are your thoughts on these allegations? — “White Sheets WHITEWASH The SPLC” regards from The Emperor

This, of course, overlaps with Steve’s question this week. But yeah, if the allegations are indeed true, I think it’s absolutely terrible. I want to see what all comes out as the case moves forward. I think it’s a scandal either way, but the depth of it, I’m guessing, has yet to be seen.

Under Bernie’s Monday’s column one of the commenters claimed that Trump’s “Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” line from January 6 is what his critics claimed “sparked the violence” that day. Talk about a made-up accusation! I’m curious why didn’t comment it (you often do with that type of thing). — Alex D.

Hi Alex. I didn’t actually see that comment (or at least all of it) until I saw your question, and then I went back and checked it out. Yeah, it’s absolute nonsense, I can’t take people seriously when they play the “he said ‘peacefully’” card to dismiss Trump’s role in January 6. It’s always been a bogus excuse.

I offered my extended thoughts on this topic a while back:

In MAGA-world, that single canned utterance (written not by Trump but his speech-writer), read by the president as portions of the large crowd were already peeling off toward the Capitol, somehow discredits even the notion that Trump provoked the violence that followed. The argument is essentially that the word (which Trump consciously avoided in the buildup to that day) not only nullified every incendiary remark Trump made in that very same speech (including 20 mostly ad-libbed instances of the word “fight”), but also every inflammatory lie he had told in the weeks beforehand (about the election being stolen, our system of democracy being destroyed, and January 6 at the Capitol being the last opportunity to save the country from ruin).

Again, what was said in the previous two months (not just that day) was why thousands of angry Trump supporters ended up at the Capitol. The idea that eight weeks of provocation are rendered meaninglessness the moment the word “peaceful” is casually tossed out in the eleventh hour is absurd.

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Thanks everyone! You can send me questions for next week by leaving a comment in the comment section.