DHS’s Endless Trolling – TPM – Talking Points Memo

Hello, it’s the weekend. It’s the weekend ☕️

In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the DHS launched a media campaign. He featured secretary Kristi Noem, the former governor of Northern Dakota wishing to wear the uniforms and ice equipment, the Coast Guard and the other constituent agencies of the DHS while she organized apparently perpetual television successes.

The objective of the campaign was clear: to pass the word on efforts to make America again safe. The worst violations of civil liberties linked to administration immigrants were also serving a broader message: scare people.

The campaign made its debut in the spring and showed undocumented immigrants who had been accused of various violent crimes; Clips of El Salvador’s Cecot Detainees played in them while Noem Tonnant: “President Trump and I have a clear message to those of our country illegally: leave now. If you do not allow yourself, we will track you down, stop and expel you. ”

He combined the real crime, frightening tactics and smooth advertising techniques, partly to tell undocumented immigrants to leave, and partly like Noem with atrocities like Cecot. The campaign met in a way adapted to a Trumpworld project. There are few fractures between what he does to promote the agency’s work and attack the opponents of the GOP. The DHS spent around $ 200 million on the campaign, according to federal contract files. A contract went to a Louisiana company called People Who Think LLC, led by Jay Connaughton, a political consultant who worked with Noem Aide and his friend Corey Lewandowski during a campaign in 2023. Another contract went to a company called Safe America Media; Incorporated just a few days before solicitation without vehicles and recorded in a property belonging to another GOP consultant.

It is not clear to what extent these advertisements had an impact, if necessary. But compared to what Dhs does now, this effort seems well thought out and highbrow.

In recent weeks, DHS’s X account has alternated between the publication on Hunter Biden, the memes celebrating the expansion of the colonists in the western United States and the more standard prices (seasoning all undocumented immigrants as criminals or mocking them during arrest).

The meme of the colonist was the most shocking: he presented a famous painting of 1872 representing a manifest destiny called American Progress. It shows the Amerindians fleeing groups of white settlers moving through a covered wagon. The table was created while the United States has continued to fight wars to move and destroy the remaining Amerindian tribes. Some users have argued that the legend of DHS in the photo – “a heritage of which he is proud, a homeland which is worth defending” – was a deeper dog whistle.

I am struck here not only by the way it is strange for the American government to adopt this painting in the 21st century. This is the kind of ironic nervousness that really resonates: this is what you publish if endless Internet cynicism poisoned your brain. The difference is that we do not live in a world where it is only a messaging strategy; Incidents like Cecot show that the same trollish impulse also leads reality.

– Josh Kovensky

Here is what other TPM has to pressure this weekend:

• The Republicans of the Chamber apparently believe that there is no longer to be the subject of an investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
• This week brought a return to a vintage and small scandal of his first mandate: Sharpiegate.
• The DoJ has resumed what a civil servant described as “absurd” speculation that the prosecutor General Pam Bondi withdrew from a CPAC event because of the current drama of Jeffrey Epstein.

Crétons.

– Nicole Lafond

Guy who managed the Tour of January 5 group said that there is no more to investigate on January 6

Representative Barry Loudermilk (R -GA) presented a resolution on Wednesday to establish a new subcommittee selected to continue investigating – as the Republicans of the House put it – “events surrounding on January 6, 2021”.

The resolution must be approved by the Chamber, but if it will president of the subcommittee, which will be accommodated within the framework of the Judicial Committee of the Chamber.

Unless you lived under a rock in the past two years, you know that the attack on January 6 has already been the subject of a considerably investigation by the Congress and the Ministry of Justice, even led President Donald Trump to be charged with his presumed role in the attack.

But, according to the president of the room, Mike Johnson (R-La), who published a statement applauding the resolution, “there is clearly more work to do” on the question.

“The resolution introduced today will establish this selected subcommittee so that we can continue our efforts to discover the complete truth which is due to the American people,” said Johnson.

Loudermilk, you may remember, was examined while the room subcommittee on January 6 is investigating because the panel surfaced images of the Congress on January 5, 2021, visiting the Capitol complex to a group of visitors, at least one of which ended up participating in the riots the next day.

It is completely the timing for the GOP house to put pressure for another investigation into the events surrounding the attack of January 6 against the Capitol by a crowd of supporters of Trump. You will remember that Johnson closed the legislative session to go into playground at the beginning of the week while the Caucus separated in the middle of their internal battle on the Epstein files. Difficult not to think that it can be a distraction so that the Maga Allies, who asked for the publication of the files, focused on something else – a different conspiracy theory.

The house should consider the resolution of the subcommittee when the members are back from the long recess in August.

– Emine Yücel

Restruction: Sharpiegate Edition 🙄

President Trump and his administration officials apparently acted on one of his most petty grievances – who simmer in his mind, occupying him without rent since 2019, towards the end of his first mandate.

You may remember Sharpiegate, really Trump I’s most stupid scandal I do not count the moment when he got angry that people were disturbed that he was launching paper towels to the rescue hurricanes in Puerto Rico. In short: during the 2019 hurricane season, Trump took crazy efforts to hide the fact that he did not know what he was talking about with a hurricane path. When you mention states that could be affected by the Hurricane Dorian approach to the continent, Trump incorrectly included Alabama as one of the states that would be affected by the storm. He was known at that time that the Alabama was not on the way to Dorian and that the state meteorological office ended up making a statement to correct the president.

Trump could not manage this, so he made a lot of public remarks by insisting that he was right and, at one point, he showed a weather card to the journalists of the Oval Office which had been modified with a Sharpie marker to give the impression that the hurricane was really going to strike the Alabama.

Flash in front this week: two senior officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were placed on administrative leave, according to CNN, which cited the anonymous and current officials of the NOAA. The two civil servants were on leave if Steve Volz and Jeff Dillen, who conducted an investigation to find out if the NOAA scientific integrity policies were broken when Neil Jacob, then making the Noaa administrator, approved the Trump version of the Storm Way. The two found that Jacob, who was appointed as an administrator of the Noaa this quarter, had violated politics. By CNN:

“It is an interesting coincidence that less than a week before the vote of the senatorial committee of Neil Jacob, the two dedicated career civil servants who investigated him for violations of scientific integrity around Sharpiegate were rejected from the service,” said a former NOA official in CNN.

– Nicole Lafond

The Doj rejects “absurd” speculation on the absence of Pam Bondi of the event of the human beings of the CPAC

The Ministry of Justice provided more details on the absence of the Attorney General Pam Bondi during an event earlier this week.

Bondi was to participate on Wednesday in the International Summit of the CPAC against the trafficking in human beings. She bowed because of what she described as a “recently torn cornea”. This decision made the headlines, aroused speculation and inspired the mocking television segments in the middle of the in progress controversy surrounding the DoJ and the processing of files by the DoJ and President Donald Trump linked to the deceased financier and the sexual delinquent condemned Jeffrey Epstein.

An official of the DoJ who discussed the question with TPM called that speculation that Bondi has dropped the “absurd” question and said that Bondi was in fact in a federal medical center.

“It is absurd to suggest that the GA had to skip the event from the human trafficking on Wednesday – a problem that the GA devoted its entire career to fight – for any reason other than its torn cornea,” said the manager. “AG was an appointment with the doctor at Walter Reed.”

Bondi participated in another event the same morning, a ceremonial oath for the administrator of the DEA Terry Cole. The manager said that Bondi “immediately” had gone to Walter Reed after the oath

Bondi was replaced at the CPAC event by the associate prosecutor Matthew Galeotti, who read a note from the Attorney General explaining his absence.

“I’m sorry to miss all my friends CPAC today. … Unfortunately, I recover from a recently torn cornea, which prevents me from being with you. I really want to be able to join you and support all the work in progress on this critical question,” said Bondi in the note, adding: “I look forward to the next time I can be with you.”

The remarkable exit from the Attorney General of the Summit of Human Beings drew considerable attention because it was a central figure in the drama surrounding Epstein, a financier who was close to Trump in the 1990s and 2000.

The CPAC event conforms to the prolonged fixation of the extreme right on the sexual abuse on the child. This objective has included conspiracy theories such as Qanon as well as legitimate efforts to apply the law.

Epstein was a figure of immense interest in the types of Qanon and Maga concerned by the milking and mistreatment of children. In recent weeks, a lot of right has raged to Trump and leaps for their processing of files related to the Epstein case. The financier was sentenced in 2008 to have paid minor girls for sex. He died in 2019 when he was in prison for accusations of subsequent sexual traffic.

Over the years, when Trump has wing up and has gone on the head of Qanon, the president, who minimized his own relationship with Epstein and denied giving himself to reprehensible acts, suggested that there would be major revelations of the case. These Trump and his administration tips understood that Bondi declaring Epstein’s list was “sitting on my desk at the moment to revise” during an interview in February. Earlier this month, the DoJ contradicted these comments when he announced that an investigation concluded that Epstein had committed suicide and that there was no evidence that a list existed. This affirmation led to a revolt in the circles of Maga, including the Gop House.

– Hunter Walker