(Traduce en español/translate to Spanish) By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 4, 2024 UPDATED July 12 2:10 PM EST with new polling in section 7 showing Biden is closing his gaps significantly nationally and in the main swing states; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—On a day in which we just learned President Joe Biden’s economy added a preliminary total of over 200,000 jobs in June—more than expected—and just hours before a crucial, possibly-make-or-break interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tonight (I think Biden will do really well in it), let me say: dear fellow Democrats and independents, Republicans, and anyone else who has been supporting or are considering supporting Biden: TURN OFF THE NEWS (except for Biden’s interview tonight).  Go do something not related to politics.  Wait until Biden’s public events, watch them live if you can, and see how our man does.  If he does well or even just ok consistently with a few hiccups here and there, we’re fine for now and the frequency and volume of panic will recede.  If he continues to do well after for the bulk of the remaining campaign, we will be competitive until the end.  Give him a few chances and we really should be ok and stop the internal hemorrhaging inside the Democratic Party caused by Biden’s terrible performance at the debate last week and amplified greatly by the absolutely hysterical media coverage of Biden’s performance.

Here are the main reasons why I am not giving up.

1.) Time

It would be one thing if this debate had happened in October or even September, but, people, we have four freakin’ months left in this campaign.  That is A LOT of time for Biden to change the narrative and to get a steady stream of new footage of himself being far more confident, capable, vigorous, and articulate than the disaster that was this first debate.  If there is far more footage that is more recent of Biden out there in the final weeks and days of the election that is much better, it is possible that the concerns spurred by this debate performance will be largely overcome, that performance seen by enough voters as an aberration.  And that is a lot more time for insurrectionist Trump to keep producing daily outrages that will only turn more and more voters off over time and add to his long list of negatives more and more.  Insurrectionist Trump will be insurrectionist Trump and as people pay more and more attention as the race gets closer and closer to ending, he will continue to give plenty of new reasons for voters to turn against him and pick Biden.

2.) Voters Themselves

There are characteristics of voters which can work very much in Biden’s favor.  The first is that many people are like Dory from Finding Nemo: they don’t remember or consider much that isn’t recent and forget a lot of things.  So, playing into the first element, this can really work well for Biden as long as avoids any repeat performances à la this debate or only has a few more such incidents, especially the closer we get to Election Day.

Additionally, voters, even many of the most stupid ones, have levels of complexity: they generally aren’t going to cast their vote based on one thing, the main exceptions being those voters who are single-issue voters (especially on guns and abortion).  For most voters, an array of multiple issues matter; character and truth-telling matter; the candidate not being a convicted-felon matters; the candidate not being an insurrectionist matters; the team the candidate will surround himself with and govern with matters; and preserving democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law matters.  And for many people—including, I am anticipating by the end, most independents by a good margin—insurrectionist Trump is far inferior to Biden on most or all of these.  One debate weighed against all this should not and will l not be what defines this election, nor be what decides people’s votes.

3.) Democracy

Unapologetic insurrectionist and fascist Donald Trump is, simply put, very likely an extinction-level event for our democratic republic and plenty of independent voters know this.  More and more people are learning about the terrifying and far-reaching Project 2025, the Republican Party’s blueprint for a fascist America, and, simply put, many voters will say having an old president who isn’t 100% all of the time and has occasional senior moments is a small price to pay to preserve our democracy, period.

4.) Character and the Truth

While Biden was confused and jumbled his facts during the debate, insurrectionist Trump gaslit the whole time he was on stage, deliberately lying in incredible ways and even taking credit for Obama and Biden programs. Americans know Biden is way more honest than insurrectionist Trump and most voters actually care about character, integrity and telling the truth.  Even though Biden performed worse than his opponent in the debate, he still contrasted well with him on telling the truth and on character (Biden did not cheat on his wife with an adult film actress/producer and—when his wife was pregnant—a Playboy Playmate…).  And throughout his political career, insurrectionist Trump has been known as a serial liar while Biden has always contrasted well with him in this way.  Many voters will prefer an old man who occasionally has serious senior moments to a man who has lied more than any other president in U.S. history by far.

5.) Issues and Substance

Again, while Biden performed more poorly than insurrectionist Trump, most of the time he gave coherent answers that actually addressed the questions he was asked and showed he understood the issues at hand, though the exceptions to that were certainly glaring.  His opponent, in contrast, was still terrible and answered almost nothing he was asked and demonstrated no understanding of policy, presented no substance.  The debate may have gone worse for Biden, but he still scored points on insurrectionist Trump on issues and character even in the worst moment in his political career.  The presidency is far more than public speaking, far more about picking and managing personnel, about behind-the-scenes engagement and policymaking, about forging and utilizing relationship, about crisis management, and about having knowledge and expertise on topics, not primarily performing well in a debate.

6.) People Don’t Just Vote for One Person, but a Team

It’s the Biden-Harris ticket with his solid cabinet with other great officials and the Democratic Party and their all-stars in Congress who are linked together in a common effort, led by Chuck Schumer and first Nancy Pelosi and now Hakeem Jeffries.  As I noted before, empirically they are the most unified political party in Congress in American history and with one of the best-performances of a party for the first midterm for a presidential administration of the same party.  If Joe stumbles or needs some help occasionally, he will never be alone in a quizshow/gameshow format, the country falling apart if Biden doesn’t have a quick quippy answer.  Many voters will know that Biden has plenty of solid people on his team who will be there to support him, who have helped him deliver the most substantive legislative results by far of any president since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, and will contrast them with the extremist wackos, weirdos, liars, felons, and dangerous fascists surrounding insurrectionist Trump now, who in his first term had some respectable people around him to restrain him and now seems to have mostly just sycophantic full MAGA cultists around him: there will be no adults in the room during a second Trump term.  While Team Biden Democrats governs and governs well, Team MAGA sows chaos and division.

7.) Polling

In the week since the debate, you might have thought there would be a big drop in Biden’s support and a big increase in insurrectionist Trump’s, but there has been no large drop for Biden and no large bump up for insurrectionist Trump.  If things were as bad as the media was claiming, you would think there would be a big change in the polling situation, but so far—as of the publishing of this article—there has only been a 2.2% shift towards insurrectionist Trump and away from Biden in the average aggregate of recent polling, per FiveThirtyEight’s weighted measure weighted measuring.  Of course, this could change, but the current leads are leaks that can be plugged and the ship is not doomed to sink.  If it does get worse, it may in part be because of a negative feedback loop created by the repetitive hysteria from the media.  And even if it does get worse, it can also still get better: historically, the polls tend to shift significantly from this point in a general election to the end and are far, far more accurate in the final few months of the race after both conventions.  We are nowhere near that yet and even after that disaster of a debate Biden is only averaging 2.4% behind insurrectionist Trump nationally (he was 0.2% behind him the day of the debate), with post-debate bumps in polls for a candidate perceived to have won a debate often disappearing not long after. UPDATE 7/12: Biden is now only 1.9% behind nationally, only a 1.7% shift in insurrectionist Trump’s favor post-debate, which was at its height on July 5 at 2.5%, meaning at most insurrectionist Trump gained 2.3% at Biden’s nadir and has lost 0.6% in his edge since then. And in all the key swing states, Biden is also gaining, recovering from post-debate nadirs:

• Arizona: 7/5 5.9%-7/12 4.1% +1.8%
• Georgia: 7/5 7.5%-7/12 4.8%, +2.7%
• Michigan: 7/5 2.7%-7/12 0.2%, +2.5%
• Nevada: 7/5 5.7%-7/12 4.4%, +1.3%
• North Carolina: 7/5 8.3%-7/12 5.8%, +3.5%
• Pennsylvania: 7/8 3.4%-7/12 2.9%, +0.5%
• Wisconsin: 7/5 1.9%-7/12 1.0%, +0.9%
• National: 7/5 2.5%-7/12 1.9%, 0.6%

Voters thus far are rejecting the media’s hysteria, telling them how to vote, distortion, and misframing of this election!

Also, crackpot conspiracy theorist and vaccine denialist Kennedy—unsupported by most in his own family, who mostly support Biden—only saw 1.1% in growth since the debate, but I fully expect his support to shrink a lot as people get more and more exposed to his sheer ignorance, insane ideas, and strange way of communicating and get beyond RFK, Jr.’s name recognition.  Additionally, I expect him to take more votes from insurrectionist Trump than Biden as voters get more exposure to him since they align on some key issues and since I suspect more liberals than those open to Trump are liking him from name recognition while those open to Trump are more likely drawn to him because of his stances (the Kennedys as a political dynasty are not exactly popular with MAGA Republicans); indeed, there is some solid polling showing RFK, Jr. does take more from insurrectionist Trump even if not all the polling shows this.

8.) Debate Was One of Least-Watched in History

This was the least viewed presidential debate since 2004, twenty years ago, and while over 51 million Americans watched the debate, and that may seem like a lot, in 2020, 73 million watched the first Trump-Biden debate and 84 million watched the first Clinton-Trump debate in 2016.   In fact, the only debates with fewer viewers were when Reagan debated an independent candidate—John Anderson, who only would end up receiving 6.6% of the vote—in 1980 before his debate with Jimmy Carter—both Clinton-Dole debates in 1996, all three Gore-Bush debates in 2000, and the second and third Bush-Kerry debates in 2004 (the third just barely so), but that’s it.   This means that it was the ninth-least-viewed presidential debate since all the other general election presidential debates since 1960 had more viewers, all in Americas with fewer, often far fewer people, ninth out of thirty-six total presidential debates.

This is also the earliest debate in U.S. presidential general election debate history, the farthest from the general election, so for this reason and the low viewership, it may be one of the least impactful debates: people simply tuned the debate out and will have four more months of inputs affecting their vote before casting their ballots.  Yet it is possible if the worries about Biden’s fitness grow dramatically, the effect of the debate might seem to grow in hindsight, but a week after, there has not been much movement in the polls, as noted.

9.) Not Many People Watch the News or Subscribe to Newspapers

The fact is that not that many people watch or read the major news outlets for a country of over 335 million people.  Earlier this month pre-debate, ABC’s main primetime news show got over 7.1 million viewers, NBC’s 5.7 million, and CBS’s only about 4.3 million.  As for cable news, earlier this month before the debate, only about 2 million people watch Fox News in primetime, less than 960,000 MSNBC, less than 465,000 CNN.  In all these cases, the vast majority of viewers are 55 or older.  Maybe older people will have more sympathy for Biden being… old?

As for newspapers, more than ten million subscribe to The New York Times, and less than four million to The Wall Street Journal, and about 3.6 million to The Washington Post.  Overall, newspapers around the country have been rapidly declining in readership.

The media may be trying to push Biden out, but how many people are listening?

10.) The Media Overhypes Its Own Debates

While it could be subconscious (but may not be), as presidential debates are televised by corporate media companies and moderated and covered by their journalists, these journalists and media are executives benefit from hyping presidential debates so it is in their interests to make the debates seem like crucial, decisive moments in campaigns.  And while they can be, that is hardly always the case and seems less so in recent years, so the media can very likely be overselling both how important the debate is overall and especially how important it is to voters, which consider them an input but often not the determinative one.  For the news media, selling the debate’s importance is selling their own importance, getting subscriptions from consumers and money from advertisers (this debate had several commercial breaks).  And debates are not something that are anything close to what a president does when he actually carries out his duties, only during election campaigns.  Media executives also likely would wager that that fueling speculation about Biden being unfit or needing to step aside will also draw viewers even if it is a fake, premature crisis fueled largely by the pundit class and its own debate.  Despite the media’s intense coverage of its debates, more often than not they are not game-changers.

11.)  An Unintentional Assist from the Rogue Radical Activist Supreme Court

Between the historically disastrous two Supreme Court decisions—Chevron v. NRDC gutting regulatory agencies and the even somehow-even-worse presidential immunity one—and the debate, this has been a historically bad week for the country, not just Democrats.  With the immunity ruling coming right on the heels of the debate, I think a lot of liberals are snapping, a lot of independents and even some principled Republicans are snapping, and I think, much like when Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and energized larger turnouts for Democrats and other pro-choice voters across multiple elections and referenda, a backlash and a reckoning Republicans are totally not expecting are on their way and it can only help Democrats and Biden.

12.) More than Inspiration from the UK’s Labour Party

All the way back in 2016, just after Brexit, I warned that that own-goal of Britain might very well portend bad things for we former colonials back here across the ocean in America, that a similar rise in the extreme right here could mean trends that might lead to a Trump victory.  Unfortunately, I was right. 

Now, the historic, roaring, total victory for Labour giving it a supermajority and obliterating the power of the Conservative Tories who blundered into one crisis after another from Brexit until the present can have the opposite effect of Brexit and portend good things for Democrats and Biden.  After all, the UK is more like the U.S. politically than any other European country.  It is the only European country (other than oddball Malta) with essentially a two-party system, both are majority-white countries with very high levels of immigration and immigrants, and both hail from a predominantly Ango/English culture and political tradition.  So it’s not crazy to suggest that the UK election results might be a preview of a strong showings for Democrats in November just as the disaster of Brexit was a preview of the horror show that was the Trump Administration.

Furthermore, voters richly rewarded a Labour Party led by a Sir Keir Starmer (now Prime Minister Starmer), who is largely regarded as boring and uninspiring and was not well-known, reminding voters that elections can be about parties and issues, not just one man.

13.) Joe Biden Has a Strong Record of Overcoming Being Underestimated

Will this be the time that Biden is not able to get back up after being knocked down?  Time will tell.  I was one of the only people who was bullish on Biden from the beginning of the primary back in 2019 and the only to predict basically exactly how the primary would unfold.  People were surprised Obama elevated him to the vice presidency.  People were saying it was naïve for Biden to try for bipartisan legislation as president only for him to get major, historic bipartisan legislation passed.  He has a long career of overcoming adversity, and, in the past, those underestimating him have been proven wrong repeatedly.  Don’t count joe out, not just yet.

Conclusion: Maybe 13 Lucky Reasons to Keep the Faith, Democrats?

Look, I am not going to sugar-coat it: I’m worried.  That debate performance has really set Joe Biden back and given him less room for error.  But we have to give Biden time to see if, as our captain, he can right the ship and get us through these troubled waters.  Things very much can get better and may very well—I believe they will—so, again, stop the hysteria and ignore the hysterical.

But things could get worse, and I can see scenarios after some time passes where it might be the best move for Biden to step aside in favor of his vice president, Kamala Harris (who has better approval ratings that are improving and is polling better than you might have been hearing from the “experts”; she and Biden poll better than the rest against Trump so far, other than Michelle Obama who has repeatedly made it clear she does not want to run).

But we simply are not there yet, the current calls are irresponsible panic and premature, and we have all these solid reasons to be hopeful that Biden can bounce back.  Only time will tell, but people need to give it time, as the Democratic National Convention is in late August and it’s only early July at the moment.  If Biden avoids having multiple major meltdowns like the one he had on debate night, I like the odds for this resilient candidate who hasn’t let us down yet when it comes to beating Donald Trump and overall leadership.  Ultimately, Biden will have to make his own decision and I trust him to make the right call as he has done so many times before.  The media “experts” who have done a terrible job of covering Biden and Democrats for years are certainly not the ones who will make that call, nor should they be.  This process has to play out and until it does, no one know what the outcome will be.

So, take a deep breath, give the old man some time to recover and show us the old Joe, and take heart for the reasons I outlined above.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!  This is part of a series of articles discussing my ideas to fix America as a future U.S. Senator.

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 2, 2024; *UPDATE 3/19: further discussion and a correction when it comes to the rarities and risks of a county executive as a U.S. Senate candidate; see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

SILVER SPRING—The two-frontrunners in this Senate race have shamelessly attacked each other not primarily on the issues, but on accusations they would not dare level against Ben Cardin, the man they are trying to replace, even though they are applicable to him and should not count as a negative.

We can’t replace a man of the stature and accomplishments of Ben Cardin with just anyone.  And we sure should not replace him with someone with relatively little national-level policy or no international affairs experience, as Cardin has long been a leader on both the national and international stage.

Disappointing David

I am writing about Rep. David Trone’s repeated attacks against County Executive Alsobrooks as a “career politician.” Well, let’s look at the amazing Ben Cardin’s career up until his successful U.S. Senate campaign: even before graduating first in his class at the University of Maryland School of Law, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates and began in 1967 what would be 20 years in the chamber, the last ten of which he served as its Speaker, only the second Jewish-American to do so.  He would then run for the U.S. House, where he began serving in 1987 for another 20 years.  That was 40 years of government experience he had, then, when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, winning the election and holding that office in the more than 17 years since then.  In each chamber—the Maryland House of Delegates, the U.S. House, and the U.S. Senate—Cardin was a leader and chaired multiple important committees, working on major issues of both national and international significance.  He has been a leader on, among others issues, environmental policy and international human rights—the latter including the landmark Magnitsky sanctions legislation he bipartisanly coauthored with the late Sen. John McCain, targeting Russian and other officials responsible for human rights violations.  This legislation of Cardin’s so drew the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin that his agents approached the Trump campaign in that infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016 to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for relief from the Magnitsky sanctions in effect (an odious incident I have written about in detail).  A career politician to be praised with a career to be proud of, to be sure.

But Rep. Trone attacks County Executive Alsobrooks for being a career politician.  Like Cardin, she also went to the University Maryland School of Law until graduating in 1996, after which she worked as a law clerk before becoming an assistant state’s attorney for Prince George’s County from 1997-2002, when she began working in various roles in the Prince George’s  county executive office from 2002-2010.  That year, she won election as the Prince Goerge’s County state’s attorney, a role in which she served the county from early 2011 to late 2018 for nearly eight years until she won election and began serving as its County Executive.

From Rep. Trone’s attacks, we are supposed to look negatively at Country Executive Alsobrooks’s nearly three decades of public service because she has made public service her career.  While using “career politician” as a pejorative—almost as a form of attacking identity as public servants—is commonplace in today’s politics, it is a non-sequitur and beneath Rep. Trone, distracting from his solid five* years of public service in the House.  Should we think less of him were this to be many years of service in the House as a “career?”  Is a career as a businessman running a major wine retail company superior to one of public service?  Do not many public servants constantly engage with their constituents, hearing directly from them and assisting them and making a difference in their lives?  Are assumptions that “career politicians” are “out of touch” and “don’t know how the world words” themselves non-sequiturs?  Again, these do not logically follow as lines of attacks and make no sense.  Rep. Trone should do better than that and engage with County Executive Alsobrooks on substance and the issues rather than denigrate public service.

Alsobrooks Also Guilty

Country Executive Alsobrooks cannot be said to be treating her opponent better, sadly.  A disappointingly large number of her campaign e-mails are fluff, simply asking for money, or attacking Rep. Trone by dismissing him simply as a rich guy “buying” the campaign with a lot of money.

Some history here is relevant: Bernie Sanders, of all people, outspent Hillary Clinton in 2016 and lost while she outspent future insurrectionist Donald Trump in the general election and lost; Biden was outspent in 2020 by Bernie and other rival Democrats, too, all who lost; and Trump was outspent by some of his rivals in the 2016 primaries who lost and has been outspent by some of his 2024 primary opponents who lost or will not win.  Increasingly, money doesn’t equal victory and a good or even better candidate with better-run campaign can defeat a much-better-funded opponent.  As for wealth, Senator Gracchus is instructive in Gladiator: “I don’t pretend to be a man of the people.  But I do try to be a man for the people.”  Some of the greatest American presidents—Washington and FDR, for example—were wealthy elites, as is Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the greatest Speaker of the House in American history.  John, Bobby, and Teddy Kennedy may all have been born with silvers spoons in in their mouths as part of a dynasty, but they fought hard for working class Americans and were some of the most beloved figures in modern American political history.  Such classist attacks are beneath County Executive Alsobrooks and avoid the real issues at hand.

Country Executive Alsobrooks has also attacked Rep. Trone indirectly in ageist terms in addition to the wealth issue: her pinned tweet—the message she and her campaign wanted to emphasize above all else—for quite some time until just days ago made a big deal about age, with text that reads: “The average U.S. Senator [sic] does not live like or think like the people they represent.  My name is Angela Alsobrooks and I’m in the fight for all of us because your concerns are mine too.  Vote for me on May 14th for U.S. Senate” with a video highlighting amidst a backdrop of mostly old, white, male faces that the average age of a U.S. senator is 64 (Trone is 68 and a billionaire through his Total Wine business).  The unmistakable takeaway of County Executive Alsobrooks is that “Old rich white men don’t represent you, so don’t vote for them, vote for me instead because I’m not those things!”  Alsobrooks is a 53-year-old African-American woman and much of her messaging is that her gender, race, and, it seems now, age are some of preferred reasons why she thinks she should be a senator and not Trone (I am 42 and have much less wealth than either Trone or Alsobrooks, does that mean I am a better candidate?).

I didn’t see Ben Cardin in Alsobrooks’s backdrop, but it may as well have been included. Certainly, Cardin had some wealth by 2006 and he was that exact average age of 64 highlighted by Alsobrooks when he ran.  Alsobrooks, then, may as well be attacking Cardin for being an old white man of wealth who, along with most other senators, “does not live like or think like the people they represent.”  So ageism is fair “political” game, as in the unfair and just-plain-inaccurate ageist attacks against Joe Biden, who despite his age (and in part because of his wisdom coming from it!) has the best first few years in office of any president in my lifetime and the most substantive legislative accomplishments in his first few years of any president since LBJ, myopic media coverage and the ignorance and irrational emotions of far too many voters be damned.  Speaker Pelosi also was subjected to unfair ageism; the way Alsobrooks attacks Trone, she may as well attack Pelosi and Biden while she’s at it.

To be clear, I absolutely know the obvious truth that we need a more representative Senate, along with many other institutions, and I have called for addressing the gross imbalances in Senate representation.  In principle, I welcome more diverse candidates, including those meeting Country Executive Alsobrooks’ demographic profile.  But candidates need to take a page from the historic candidacy of Barack Obama: not have one’s identity be the cornerstone of one’s sell in a political campaign (even if it is included), but ideas and vision.  Just ticking off a policy list in message focused on attacking an opponent based on his identity or privilege—not his ideas, values, or record—fails the Obama test and simply adds to the cynicism and an identity-focused politics that often (though not always) proves to be more shallow and divisive than focusing on the issues and the differences between candidates on them.

We Must Ask for Better: Consider Me a Third Option!

Both Trone’s and Alsobrooks’ attacks on each other not only do a disservice to each other, to voters, the Democratic Party, and the issues, but also to our amazing leaders like Biden and Pelosi who have led us exceptionally well through troubled waters, and, yes, those leaders include Ben Cardin, whose massive shoes they are trying to fill and seem ill-fit to do so based on these and other factors.

I am looking to quickly establish myself as the #3 Democrat in this race to fill Ben Cardin’s legendary shoes, giving the two sniping at each other discussed above some real competition.  I fully admit that I do not have anywhere near the relevant experience that Ben Cardin had when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, but neither do Rep. Trone or County Executive Alsobrooks.  I call on each to end their cynical attacks against each other not focused on the issues and policy, which need to be the center of the conversation.  They can do better, and so can we.  That’s why I am running, and while I mentioned that the three of us pale in our relevant resumes, that does not mean that do not I possess far more experience in relevant areas than either of the two frontrunners.

While I am impressed with Trone’s record from his one-and-a-half terms in the House—five* years in Congress—that is not very deep, and however impressive his much-longer record as a businessman running Total Wine is, I have always felt business experience is commonly overrated when looking at political candidates: it is notable that there have been only two major party nominees for the presidency in U.S. history who were businessmen with no serious public service experience—Republican Wendell Willkie who challenged FDR in 1940 (and who wasn’t such a bad guy) and, ahem, insurrectionist Trump (who is an absolutely terrible man)—and this is quite telling: a liberal version of Mitt Romney with less government experience is not ideal for the Senate.  For most of his life, Trone has been focused on his family and his business, and that’s great: that’s the American dream.  But I do not consider that a plus weighed against a career of public service or working on the major issues the Senate is tasked with handling, so though I am happy to have Trone in the House building on his new record of public service there, the Senate as a legislative institution benefits from more public policy experience in candidates.

*UPDATED DISCUSSION 3/19: And as impressive as Alsobrooks’s not-to-be-derided career as a public servant of Prince George’s Country for many years is, I looked and tried hard to find any example in U.S. history of a someone who went from leading a county to going directly into the U.S. Senate: I could not find one for some time with the search terms I used, but after weeks of back-and-forth, some Alsobrooks supporters themselves discovered and pointed out that Joe Biden in 1972 and Chris Coons in 2010 both went from being county executives in Delaware to U.S. senators (Coons beat the amateurish and laughable Tea Party Republican Christine O’Donnell, a former self-proclaimed practitioner of witchcraft, in the general election; Biden’s youthful campaign and historic win over half-a-century-ago over an old Republican incumbent who had been considering retirement was far more impressive and an exceedingly rare occurrence; Larry Hogan is certainly neither of these people and presents a far more formidable challenge). These two examples hardly change the reality that virtually no candidates goes from being county executives directly to being in the U.S. Senate. After all, there are over 3,100 county or county-equivalents in the U.S. (not including U.S. Territories) and the only two examples we came across were thus far were two people spread out over nearly forty years from one of the smallest states in the Union—Delaware—with just one single U.S. House representative and some of the smallest pools or both population and office-holders from which to draw U.S. Senate candidates (perhaps we can uncover a few more? Let me know if you do! But even if there were ten or more further exceptions, it would not change the underlying rareness). With over a century of direct popular elections for the U.S. Senate and thousands of county leaders each year as potential candidates, that only two are identified thus far by those Alsobrooks supporters does not make a strong case that county-executives in terms of their office and responsibilities are considered, generally, prime U.S. Senate candidates. And there is good reason for that: it’s not that county-level issues and workings are less important than state-level or federal-level ones—they are not: we need great public servants and policy at the local level as much as at the state, national, and international levels—it’s that we are truly dealing with apples and oranges. They are not legislators as state legislators are, with very similar roles and responsibilities.  The issues county executives handle are of vastly different scales, approaches, and mechanisms.  The learning curve would be extreme and far from ideal. If this were not the case, we would have seen far more county executives in U.S. history going directly into the U.S. Senate from those county leadership positions. But we almost never do (conversely, I also do not think most U.S. Senators would be ideal to handle Alsobrooks’ roles and responsibilities or those of any other county executive). This is not about Alsobrooks as an individual, then, but the different nature of the two offices. Given how extremely rare it is for anyone of any background, race, or gender to go from county executive directly to U.S. Senate, the burden is on Alsobrooks and her supporters to make the case as to why, specifically, the experience of a county executive is is particularly transferable to the U.S. Senate’s current environment—beyond simply stating how great they think she is—rather than the burden being on voters who are skeptical to justify their skepticism against popular well-known Larry Hogan who has a profile across the state that far exceeds that of either frontrunner and a lot of bipartisan support in his victories as candidate for governor. None of this means that it is impossible for Alsobrooks to beat Hogan (for now she is still polling far behind Trone, though), and if she won the nomination I would be proud to support her, but it does make her candidacy a far riskier one and anyone thinking this will not be an issue for many voters in the general election against a candidate of the stature of Hogan are deluding themselves; pretending this does not matter matter and refusing to deal with it in the primary before it would definitely become an issue in the general election does not serve to forge Alsobrooks into her strongest as a candidate and hardly puts her in the best possible position to defeat Hogan if she were to win the nomination.

Again, both Trone and Alsobrooks would be facing the popular recently-former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who has already shown his ability to win statewide office as a Republican in a heavily-democratic blue state.  But we need a strong Democrat to defeat him because to defeat MAGA Trumpist insurrectionist fascism, we don’t need Ben Cardin’s seat filled by the Joe Manchin of the Republic Party, not matter how moderate he is.

Yet the lack of both Trone’s and Alsobrooks’s experience engaging on national-level and international-level issues disturbs and worries me; it did before Hogan entered the race and it worries me more now.  The latest non-partisan poll showed Trone in a statistical tie with Hogan and Alsobrooks losing handily to Hogan (less-reliable campaign/partisan polls also show a muddied picture).  None presented a strong outlook for Democrats against Hogan, and while these numbers can change, this is not a good sign and a sign that voters are looking for something more.

That can be me.

Ben Cardin was a leader not just on national-level issues, but international ones.  I am the only one between myself and the two-frontrunners who has any serious international-level experience: both my academic and professional careers for over two decades have produced top-notch international affairs understanding and analysis.  From being a journalist, academic, and analyst to studying and living over five years in the Middle East (ask me about Israel and Hamas, and compare to what the frontrunners have or don’t have to say), from political work and consulting in the U.S. to working in Jordan in the NGO, international development, and humanitarian aid fields, I bring a type and longevity of experience on national- and international-level issues that both the frontrunners lack.  I have been published by numerous major institutions and publications in the U.S. and abroad, with a global audience and more Twitter followers than the two frontrunners’ campaigns combined (and let’s expand that lead!).  My expertise ranges from Russia’s war in Ukraine—my work on that being praised by former military leaders, a sitting congressman, and even Ukrainian government officials—and Russian election interference to gun violence and racism in America (I’ve been attacked by the NRA and Russian trolls for good reason!).

Perhaps most importantly, I have by far the most detailed plans and legislative proposals on a range of issues on my site compared to my frontrunners’ less robust policy sections on their sites.  And while I may not have held elected office, understanding the nuts and bolts, the inner workings, and complex dynamics behind Senate-level policymaking, international diplomacy, and war and terrorism can be just as valuable and even more so in making an elected office work, especially as a U.S. senator.

So if you want the person who will avoid petty attacks and with the longest record of engagement on national- and international-level issues and the most-detail plans to make talk of change a reality, vote for me, Brian Frydenborg, to represent Maryland in the U.S. Senate.

*Corrections appended: Rep. Trone has served five years in the U.S. House, correcting an earlier mistake of citing three years of service; after some Alsobrooks supporters pointed out two examples of country executives who went directly to the U.S. Senate (both from Delaware), I discussed that after earlier stating I had been unable to find examples.

Come see Brian debate other candidates, including the two frontrunners, TODAY in Silver Spring, moderated by Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. I wrote about why this debate is so important for me. Register here now as space is filling up! You can also sign up to watch via Zoom here! See related March 6 article Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 3, 2020 (conclusion slightly expand September 4)

SILVER SPRING—To be frank, part of me is ashamed that I am even writing about this.  But neither I nor sane people made Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to a hair salon the top story on rightist media the past few days or absolutely dominate Facebook’s top link shares.  And if there is one thing that 2020 should have taught us journalists, it is that nonsense that picks up steam must be confronted forcefully, in detail, and repeatedly.  Yet, as I have noted before, the media has not learned from its 2016-cycle mistakes and is currently repeating them.  Over the last few days, Trump himself tweeted no less than four times about this, and retweeted an additional two tweets about it and one of his own tweets regarding the same.

Today, White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany literally played a loop of video of Pelosi at the hair salon to begin today’s press briefing, because the Trump Administration feels this is the most important thing in America and the world today—not, say, the more than 1,000 American dead added to the coronavirus death toll yesterday or the more than 880,000 Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week—and, somehow, that makes complete sense in the dystopian America Trump and his enablers have inaugurated.

Hairgate: Another Fake Scandal Pushed by the Right

Today’s case in point: two months before the election, we are talking about Nancy’s trip to a hair salon.  And by we, I mean pretty much every media outlet, not just right-wing news, but CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, you name it.

My suspicion, after seeing Pelosi’s response, was that, whatever what the local salon operator did, Kious as the owner would have been one of the only people with access to the security footage who could have passed it on to Fox News and that this was, indeed, a setup, because no footage of me at a private business has ever made it to a news station; no, this was not some sort of official investigation, but video from a private business of a famous politician does not just land at the desk of a news organization hostile to that politician. 

And I was right: Kious did provide the footage to the media, specifically to Fox News, which has run wild with it since, as has the rest of the right-wing media.

In her interview from last night on Fox News, Tucker Carlson said her story of her fighting COVID restrictions and fallout from her sharing this video with Fox News “one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve heard in a long time, a long time”  (a comment made, mind you, in the era of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake, among others).  She has plenty of footage of Pelosi presumably, and yet we only see a few seconds of Pelosi walking just after her hair-washing, with a face-mask on but pulled down.  Pelosi (who has constantly taken serious precautions to wear a mask and practice social distancing when Trump the vast majority of the time—even at his own Republican National Convention—has not) claims she wore the mask when she was not having her hair washed and for a moment immediately after, but other footage has not been released.  It has been stated that she was the only customer in the salon, and the staff were wearing masks, so this was hardly an incident that endangered people in any serious way, unlike Trump’s speech in front of the White House on the final night of his convention with over 1,500 people present, most of whom were not practicing social distancing or wearing masks, and unlike, say, Trump’s summer rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at which it seems former Republican presidential candidate and Trump supporter Herman Cain may very well have contracted coronavirus, which killed him after quite a battle with the virus.

Pelosi has claimed this was a setup against her, stating she was not familiar with the specific regulations and that, when the salon, which she has frequented for years, accepted her appointment request, she assumed her visit would be in line with any regulations.  Kious makes the absurd claim in her interview with Carlson that it cannot be a setup, because she had a camera system for five years and because Pelosi’s assistant made the appointment, that it could not be a setup.  And yet, it was Kious who chose to share the video and to share it with Fox News and to speak, specifically, with Tucker Carlson in a live interview.

Guess who else thinks it was a setup by Kious?

In a statement released by his lawyer, Kious’s own contractor, Jonathan DeNardo, who ran the salon that day and did Pelosi’s hair, claims he had spoken with Kious the night of August 29^th about the request for an appointment from Pelosi’s office and said he would not take her appointment for the 31^st without Kious’s permission.  In the statement, it DeNardo claims that the fact that Pelosi was the one who wanted to come in drew “special interest” from Kious, who

made several vitriolic and incendiary comments about Speaker Pelosi and her purported responsibility for temporarily suspending operations of Ms. Kious’ business, despite such orders actually being put into place not by Speaker Pelosi, but by Governor Gavin Newsome and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.  Ultimately, Ms. Kious authorized Mr. DeNardo to proceed with Speaker Pelosi’s appointment.

If this is true, Kious and her story are both farces and she bears even more responsibility as the business owner for responsibility for allowing the appointment to proceed without even trying to have Pelosi informed that it would be in violation of the regulations, for Speaker Pelosi was still a paying, regular customer.  So, yes, this reeks of being a setup, despite claims by Kious that this is not about politics and a right-wing media eager to echo her framing.

Pelosi having the mask down for few second on video after her hair-washing surely helped Kious’s setup, but from Kious’s statement it was just the act of Pelosi coming in and making the appointment that really set Kious off, so even without Pelosi’s mask being pulled down for a few seconds on video, it seem quite likely that Kious would still have gone to Fox with news of the appointment to air the same grievances.

The legal statement on behalf of DeNardo continues to note that, contrary to Kious’s statements to Tucker Carlson, she has been frequently operating her business since April in violation of the restrictions, up to an including just a few days before Pelosi’s own visit, that Kious herself (unlike DeNardo in the video) was in multiple instances not wearing a masks or practicing social distancing and even encouraged her contractors to violate regulations “for her own financial benefit,” and that there is photographic, video, and witness evidence to substantiate these claims (as she declared she has been shut down, perhaps some enterprising sleuths will keep tabs on if she bothers to declare income from this period as legally required and if she will be held accountable frequent violations of state and local authority).

The statement’s last paragraph begins: “The fact that Ms. Kious is now objecting to Speaker Pelosi’s presence at eSalon, and from a simple surface-level review of Ms. Kious’ political leanings, it appears Ms. Kious is furthering a set-up of Speaker Pelosi for her own vain aspirations.  Mr. DeNardo’s name has now been dragged through the mud for simply following Ms. Kious’ recommendations.”

DeNardos’s attorney is right that “a simple surface-level review of Ms. Kious’ political leanings” reveals much: after even just a little research, there is an overwhelming chance she is in the MAGA/Trump crowd for different reasons, lending further credence to the idea that she would have set up Pelosi and sew the whole situation as an opportunity to create a scandal for U.S. House Speaker, whom Kious obviously does not like and, form her statements and actions, holds responsible for her frustrations even though, as the statement points out, Pelosi is neither the mayor of San Francisco nor the governor of California responsible for the restrictions in California.  Not least of the reasons is almost certainly among the Trump faithful is that she chose to go on Tucker Carlson’s show—one of the least subtly racist television shows on any major network, of all shows—to highlight this Pelosi incident and air her grievances, a decision that speaks volumes.

But there are other indicators that she is firmly part of the MAGA crowd.

Exposing the Political Motivations of a Salon Owner Who Entrapped a Paying Customer Over Politics

For one thing (and I know that this is wading into dangerous territory as some would say no one—especially men—should criticize a woman’s appearance), I will make an observation that I am certain I am not the only one to notice: that Erica Kious has that classic Fox News-fake-blonde, heavily-made-up-and-glammed look, could easily fill in for a number of the anchors reading scripts, and, certain to be a star now with the MAGA crowd, may very well have a future on Fox: she has already appeared on the problematic Tucker Carlson’s show just hours before I began writing this, and I am wholeheartedly convinced that if this had happened a few weeks ago that Erica Kious would have been a featured prime-time speaker at the Trump’s Republican National Convention cult performance art spectacle and already in the process of beatification by the MAGA faithful, with serious effort to groom her for a House seat gestating.

Additionally, while her social media presence is hardly ubiquitous and her business-sense as an owner was deep enough to keep her from posting publicly about Trump, what is out there in terms of her social media posts is pretty telling.

While truly working-class people have been devastated by COVID-19, Kious posted beaming pictures of what appears to be a vacation in Tennessee (including posting photos of firing guns at a shooting range, in which she included the hashtag “guns;” probably not [though possibly] the only-time she has been to a range given her other characteristics, with gun-loving being one of the more solid political-affiliation predictors) in August and another trip to Montana in July, writing “Montana was amazing-so fortunate to be there during the CA lockdown!!”  Keep in mind that Kious was fortunate enough to be spending long periods of time away from home on vacation during an economically devastating lockdown and yet, somehow, she was able to secure a federal Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan, which she tweeted about in late June in an angry responseto the Mayor of San Francisco, who tweeted about a delay in reopening based on “science and data.”  There was also another Tweet from Kious in July responding to the governor’s office in which Kious complained that San Francisco had not reopened yet. 

She also complained in a post against a proposed California tax increase extension, Proposition 55, that a $250,000 household income “is not rich here in the Bay Area with two kid [sic] in school and daycare cost-that’s low! This is bullshit!!!”  That’s right, this woman is complaining and stating that her family with two kids presumably making $250,000 a year should not be considered “rich.”  A quarter-of-a-million a year is “middle class” or “working class?”  I know the San Francisco area is not cheap, but over $250,000 in household income places you just above the 95^th percentile (the average is less than $90,000 and median is about $63,000) in household income.  Thus, her household is making more than at least 95% of other American households.  Even in the San Francisco-Oakland-Haywood conglomerate, $250,000 for household income is in the 83^rd percentile.  Again, typical of wealthy conservatives to downplay their wealth but even in a very wealthy area like the San Francisco Bay area, her household is making at least more than 83 percent of other households.  But the Trump Administration felt this woman was deserving of an emergency loan when so many truly small businesses were not granted them, with friends and family of the president and larger corporations taking money that could have gone to those who truly needed it. 

In two other recent Facebook posts, Kious also came out strongly against California Assembly Bill 5 (AB-5), which, controversially and in a complicated way, seeks to limit abusive corporate practices in which companies treat de facto employees as freelancers, denying them benefit and forcing double the payroll taxes on then because they incorrectly classify them as freelancers (as a freelancer myself, I will disclose that I am very much for forcing such companies, like Uber and Upwork, to treat their employees better, pay them higher wages, and cover far more payroll taxes rather than try to milk the advantages of using freelancers without allowing such freelancers to truly have the freedom  and lack of constriction that is supposed to come with being a freelancer).

Prior to the pandemic, she also put up one Facebook post mocking positive coverage of Jay-Z and Beyoncé expecting twins (seriously, who does not like Beyoncé [besides right-wingers]?), another post that was a typical right-wing shallow complaint about a DMV being understaffed in spite of “all the tax we pay and smog checks and all the money the state & DMV take from people,” and another mocking protesters taking to the streets in opposition to Trump just after his elec

Erica Kious does not by any means need to be canceled or boycotted, and there should be zero tolerance of any serious efforts at harassment, threats, intimidation or having her life ruined.  Neither should her family, friends, or business.  She has already established herself as another inane prop in our inane political-stage Kabuki-theater-drama, but after refuting and exposing her nonsense, let us not give her any more oxygen or attention other an occasional fleeting look or update here or there, without the formatting of big-type fonts or front/top-landing-page position.  As far as politics, she should be ignored as much as humanly possible, other than firmly and emphatically exposing the farce that is her disingenuous setup of Pelosi, period, full stop.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

As noted, Pelosi has been consistent in her use and advocacy of masks and social distancing and certainly more than the MAGA cult and the Dear Leader Donald (I am not trying to be cute: they and he truly act like a cult and a cult leader, respectively).  In the words of CNN media critic Oliver Darcy

It’s a perfect example of a story, pushed heavily by partisans, getting outsized attention in our current information ecosystem. In normal times, that would not be a great reflection on our media environment, but also unworthy of this screed. But with so many grave issues facing the country, it’s outrageous that this—of all the dire problems we face as Americans—is dominating the public conversation.

Beyond outrageous, it is incredibly pathetic, a true testament to how the right arranges its priorities, and a true indicator of how utterly and contemptibly stupid the whole Trump MAGA cult is.  Even now, I still wait to come across a single declared supporter of Donald Trump who expresses that—amidst a combination of national and international health, economic, and other crises not seen in any of our lifetimes except for those who are literally a century old or older—such a degree of focus on a trip to a hair salon is decidedly undeserving of so much attention or weight.  Kious is right in a sense that this is not about politics, but hardly in the duplicitous way she stated. These cultists must be driven from power as much as possible and serious, rational, sane adults who care about saving lives, jobs, democracy, and the global democratic order must prevail, with Biden–Harris as the only hope for those global forces to prevail.  And in this struggle, Hairgate exists not as a real scandal for Speaker Nancy Pelosi but only as evidence of the sheer bankruptcy of the Trump MAGA cult and the sheer mockery it has made even of the now long-hollow Republican Party that started on this sad, sorry path years ago, the shell of which has been coopted by the parasitic MAGA cult run by a the most unfit president ever to hold the office, installed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin weaponizing our own stupidity against us even as we may be allowing it to happen again. As I have pointed out before, a majority of the top “stories” on Facebook and varyingly large portions of stories on other platforms and networks in the final months, weeks, and days of the 2016 election were either fake news or garbage, with hairgate and other “scandals” like the Bidens-Ukraine-Burisma “story” (which I have discussed in detail) giving an awful sense of déjà vu in this election cycle.

Also, even though now Ted Cruz and pregnancy are trending together, I am too emotionally drained by the above to even take on that mountain of stupidity.  Apologies, but that baton can be handled by someone else.

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s latest eBook,Coronavirus the Revealer: How the Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes America As Unprepared for Biowarfare & Bioterrorism, Highlighting Traditional U.S. Weakness in Unconventional, Asymmetric Warfare, available in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and EPUB editions.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here and, of course, please share the hell out of this article!!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), March 7, 2019 (sad update March 8, see end of piece); reprinted in part by Al Bawaba March 10

AP

AMMAN — Sometimes commentary about Minnesota freshman Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar reveals more about the biases of the people commenting than anything about Omar.  She is much like her freshman sister-in-arms Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (dubbed AOC), with her every move receiving a highly disproportionate amount of attention, and we could say that, after Ocasio-Cortez and perhaps Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she has become the most polarizing figure on the left, at least in Congress.

I have read people of color, women, Muslims, and others tweeting that they are sick of criticism of Omar because, they say and/or clearly imply, she is only criticized because she is black and/or a woman and/or Muslim, not addressing—or even dismissing—the idea that her statements are problematic.  I’ve seen plenty of extreme, overblown criticism, too, with people deriding her as anti-Semitic or worse just for questioning U.S. policy towards Israel, just for criticizing Israeli policy, for wearing hijab in Congress, and even for what color hijab she is wearing (apparently, black cloth is terrorist-y).

The Need for More Productive Criticism

The one other Muslim in Congress, another freshman named Rashida Tlaib, took advantage of a teachable moment during the Michael Cohen hearing with the head of the conservative extremist Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows.  She criticized what she saw as a racist act when he produced a black woman who worked for Trump to stand behind him as proof that Trump could not be racist, and a fierce exchange ensued.  Tlaib was careful not to call him a racist during the hearing but stood by her comment that the act of producing a human black prop was racist.  The next day, Meadows and Tlaib “hugged it out” on the House floor. 

Critics of Omar should learn from Tlaib that we can decry her use of certain phrases that are clearly anti-Semitic but still overall give her the benefit of the doubt.  She has earned this, as, rather than remain defiant, she has eloquently expressed remorse and understanding for the pain she caused and has offered multiple apologies.

The Need for More Productive Understanding

Some of her defenders are correct in that being a Muslim black woman wearing hijab, Omar will be the target of criticism from some quarters no matter what, but it’s when she talks about Israel specifically that she has been getting into trouble, and the way in which she has talked about Israel has broadened the quarters from which criticism has been directed at her from extremists to the sane and fair-minded.

I grew up in Connecticut in a town with a large Jewish population.  Some of my earliest memories in school are from show-and-tell when some of the Jewish kids would talk about their grandparents escaping Nazi death camps—or dying in them—during the Holocaust.  In my English classes, a lot of the books we read through grade school were about the Jewish experience: Anne Frank’s diary, Number the Stars, The Chosen, etc.  Given what I learned growing up, as an adult I am uncomfortable even using the phrase “the Jews” in conversation or writing. 

My point is that being “woke” and aware about the specifics of anti-Semitism and its long, very-largely-Christian history (even in the U.S. ) was not something I learned by instinct.  Omar, on the other hands, grew up in Somalia until she was eight, fleeing war there in 1991 to refugee camps in Kenya, where she stayed until she came to the U.S. at age 12. When she came of age, Americans sympathized overwhelmingly more with Israelis than Palestinians (and still do, even if to a lesser extent), and, understandably, her heart was with Palestinians, with her fellow Muslims, at a time when few were speaking up on their behalf. 

The point here is that Omar is not from an environment and background like mine were one could expect her to be aware of the intricacies of anti-Semitic rhetoric or to make anti-Semitism one of her main causes.  At the same time, as a U.S. Congresswoman who plans to speak about both bigotry and Israel often, she needs to close her gaps in her understanding of anti-Semitism and adjust her rhetoric as soon as possible, or else see her platform, credibility, and ability to advance her causes severely diminished.  To her credit, she has repeatedly expressed a strong willingness to do this.

Omar also hails from the “progressive” wing of liberals in America, and they often have far too simplistic a view of how politics works.  From Bernie Sanders to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, these types tend to explain everything in terms of powerful interest groups corrupting politicians and media with money: the people would be united in supporting democratic socialism/”progressivism,” the Green New Deal, and Medicare for All (among other lofty ideas) if only, in their view, the special interests buying owning Congress and the press were held in check.  If you look at Sanders’s constant smearing attacks in 2016 against Clinton and how she was supposedly paid for and bought and controlled by special interest money along with most of the Democratic and Republican Parties, suddenly Omar’s quips about Israel buying and selling the American Congress makes a lot more sense in that context. 

The problem with that über-progressive/democratic socialist worldview is that it is rarely that simple on the scale they imply, and there are many other factors besides money at work with groups like ones as diverse as Congress.  This also goes for Jews and those who lobby to support Israel (most of the latter of whom in America are actually Evangelical Christians).  So part of the inaccuracy of some of Omar’s statements may well be at least partly explained by this oversimplistic worldview of how money controls politics, of black-and-white monolithic corrupting blocs, as opposed to traditional Western anti-Semitism about Jews, money, and control.

The Need for More Productive Engagement: A Way Forward

In the end, those who demand understanding from Omar about their outrage at her comments would do well to understand why she would, it seems, use these anti-Semitic tropes without being aware of their being dangerous or tropes, and her very appropriate apologies are solid evidence that she was not using them from a position of hate.  They would do well to not insist that her questioning the U.S.-Israel relationship or Israeli policy is “unacceptable” and instead offer respectful counterpoints to her critiques even while coming down hard on her clumsy and apparently clueless rhetoric.

For Omar’s part, she has made it clear she has made mistakes, want to do better, to hear people out and engage them (which she has done repeatedly) while still standing strong on her policy positions, which is a markedly different approach from President Trump and many Republicans who have been caught in similar situations, and for all her flaws, for this, Rep. Omar should be respected and held as an example of how to learn from mistakes so long as she follows through on her promises to do better. 

In a larger sense, defenders of Israel should call out criticism of Israel that is rooted in, or overtly, anti-Semitic while still making it clear that criticism of Israel in-and-of-itself is not inherently anti-Semitic, while critics of Israel should acquaint themselves with the long history of anti-Semitic tropes and rhetoric and take extra care and be extra cautious to make sure none of their criticisms even suggest the appearance—let alone partake in the serious trafficking—of anti-Semitism.  For an issue that is so deeply controversial, these would be minimum requirements in order to have a productive debate, and this goes for having that debate anywhere, not just America (I live in the Middle East, have for five years, and have spoken with many Arabs and Jews in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, and I can tell you that a strong majority of people on either side who live here use incredibly insensitive language when talking about the other side that would make Omar’s comments seem mild in contrast).

Especially with a clear historical link between words and violence, especially as growing extremist elements of an increasingly intolerant white American majority continue to become increasingly anti-Muslim and, over the last few years, have displayed a shocking rise in anti-Semitism (concurrent with similar rises elsewhere), disagreements over Israel need not make Rep. Omar and the American Jewish community—itself increasingly critical of Israeli policy and U.S. support for it—enemies.  Yes, Omar needs to do better, and if she can purge her rhetoric of anti-Semitic tropes and take pains to distinguish her criticism from those tropes, and if some of Omar’s Jewish and other critics can stop labeling all her criticism of both Israel and U.S. support for Israel as anti-Semitic and take her at her word that she wants to do better, they will find there are a great many issues on which they can be natural and productive allies.

UPDATE: March 8, 2019: Just hours after Omar, along with nearly the entire House (except for about two-dozen Republicans, including Steve King, who voted present), admirably voted for a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, white supremacism, and bigotry and racism in other forms and in general, she retweeted a vicious attack on Meghan McCain that also attacked McCain’s recently departed father, the late Senator John McCain, in a very distorted way, from Intercept far-left journalist Mehdi Hasan. Hasan’s tweet crudely attacked Meghan and her father after she cried and expressed clearly heartfelt worry on The View about the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and what Omar’s recent remarks represent to her and millions of other Americans: he claimed her emotions were fake and then attacked her father for past (later-transcended) hostile feelings and words for his former Vietnamese tormentors and captors, claimed and and took a comment of his about Iran out of context, and (fairly) blame him for elevating the odious precursor to Donald Trump, Sarah Palin; none of these things had anything to do with Meghan’s views expressed on The View.

Now, I wish that McCain could have shown the same emotion for other forms of bigotry that have been omnipresent of late, and I don’t think she is hard enough on Republicans overall for their lack of action on racism, but that doesn’t invalidate her points or make me question the sincerity of them or her emotions. For Omar to retweet this horrible, unfair attack (the retweet is still up half a day later) after all that had just transpired in the preceding hours, days, and weeks, is really beyond me. I still think Pelosi’s understanding of Millennial quick Twitter-fingers and activist passions is the best explanation. but this retweet makes me have doubts for the first time and makes it harder for all but her most hardcore defenders to continue to defend her after we just asked those who harbor doubts about her or are more hostile towards her to be patient, to appreciate that she comes from a different background and is learning (as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes mentioned), that she can and and will do better, when just after it seemed she had weathered the worst of this scandal, she instead does worse and undermined herself and her defenders. I still count myself among these defenders and stand by my above arguments and analysis, and still ask others for patience, but this retweet undermines all of that and empowers Trump, republicans, Islamophobes, and other bigots; she need to take down the Hasan retweet, start a public dialogue with McCain, and do everything she can to think more carefully before she tweets and speaks and avoid anything like this in the future. If she does not, she will undermine herself, the left, and the noble causes for which she fights (including holding Israel accountable), and it will become far more difficult, if not impossible, for non-extremists to defend her. See me related Twitter thread here.

Retweeting that Hasan tweet was wrong, beneath a U.S. Congresswoman and especially a Democrat so passionate about bigotry who has suffered so much form it, and a huge step back for Omar. Please, Representative Omar, do better!! We’re counting on and rooting for you!

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, no republication without permission, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981), February 6, 2019

Pool/Getty Images

AMMAN—If you’re looking for a State of the Union summary, or a play-by-play, you can find many of these elsewhere.  What I am going to get into here today is the overall meaning of what happened last night, or, rather, the lack thereof.

Aside from the many (and diverse) Democratic women proudly attired in white to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the national success of the suffragette movement getting women the right to vote in America, what stood out to me as a highlight was not anything President Donald Trump said or did, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s so-called “sarcastic point clapback.”  To appreciate this moment, we must understand that this State of the Union speech transcended “normal” such speeches (which in recent years have already become increasingly pointless, even with a master orator like President Barack Obama at the helm) into the realm of the theater of the absurd.  I say this because Trump made a call for civility and bipartisanship when he has been, more than anyone else in Washington, the destroyer of bipartisanship and civility, even in ways we cannot have conceived of until he went there. 

Trump issuing a call on these issues would be like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman giving a joint speech on press freedom or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivering a formal address on limiting civilian casualties in war. 

Sure, we can all say “I would never be able to sit through such an absurdity,” but what if you had to?  What if a sacred office you held required you to be there? 

We don’t have to think about this in the abstract, but can just consider the case of Speaker Pelosi instead.

Throughout the speech, Pelosi showed a level of respect and decorum Trump has more often than not chosen to not show her or her office—with Trump routinely calling the Speaker of the House just “Nancy” in public, absent her title, while she refers to him more respectfully, generally with the word “president” in the mix—and at the slightest hint members of her caucus might have reacted more vocally than is the norm, she batted her hand at them to simmer down and they did.  One can recall the wholly unjustified example of Rep. Joe Wilson (R), SC, shouting and interrupting President Barack Obama in a 2009 joint-session of Congress with a scream of “You lie!” (Obama did not lie) and consider that, during Trump’s State of the Union last night, Democrats would have been justified on a factual basis of screaming all throughout his speech the very same at him, even if not on a basis of decorum.  I have written before that I am worried the left is allowing itself to be dragged down into the muck of Trumpism and extremism (most notably Bernie Sanders and his Sandernistas), but last night, I can thankfully say that that was not the case with the Democratic Party.  And to this warm feeling, we all owe a debt to Speaker Pelosi, who knew some of the more interesting personalities in her caucus would relish a Joe Wilson-type moment and thusly made decorum a central theme for the event for her Democrats.

And yet, here she was, standing right behind Trump as he called for civility and bipartisanship when he has been the largest obstacle to both.  On the one level, of course we should all embrace such a call. On another, the messenger does actually matter.  So Pelosi clapped in support of the statement, but in such a way that she let it be known that the gross irony of the moment did not escape her.  It was the perfect combination of class of subtle snark, one that allowed Pelosi to not be co-opted into the theatrical absurdity but even allowed her to fight it without disruption.

And yes, that is the highlight for me.  I could write about Donald Trump’s uninspiring, tired words, and uninspiring, tired delivery.  I could write about some of the most obvious lies and deceptions, including the total fantasy about illegal immigration on the southern border, how Trump tried to claim credit for Obama’s energy policy that made the U.S. the world’s number-one producer of both oil and gas before Trump was even elected, or Trump’s ridiculous claim that his election is the only reason we are not at war with North Korea.  Yet these topics are well covered by countless copycat articles published in the past hours.  Perhaps besides these lies, anyone who was there, who saw or heard him barely manage to deliver a laundry list of overall lies, would have been struck most of all by the unmemorable quality of the whole address, save for moments of absurdity that were not intended effects on the part of speaker.  I have expressed privately many a time before the cost of such a lack of great, or even decent, rhetoric coming from Trump as president, an office that more often than not has been essential in transmitting memory and history to new generations of Americans.  Sadly, today we live in an era where people are reading less and less, and especially less actual literature.  Our critical thinking skills are also sorely lacking and declining, and most Americans don’t even know their nation’s history (and truly, what better way for such a huge portion of Americans to show utter contempt for the societal value of language, thinking, reality, and history—together some of the hallmarks of fascism, I might add—than voting for Trump, a man who makes George W. Bush seem eloquent and intellectually curious in relative retrospect?).  Regrettably, for far too many Americans, one of the only times they will hear any of the words or stories of our Founding Fathers, past presidents, and other great American historical figures is when a current presidents quotes them or tells their tales.  Trump did none of this in his State of the Union speech: not once in his entire long speech did he quote one of the great Americans of the past, and apart from brief mentions of WWII, he did not discuss history.

Obviously, Trump’s damage is hardly confined to the rhetorical presidency and historical memory.  I have long been quite upfront about the threat Trump is to Western democracy in general and democracy at home in the U.S., so on the one level, there is nothing surprising in this speech being yet another step on the downward-spiraling staircase that is our current era (even if I can certainly imagine worse States of the Union from him in the future).  But we must not become immune to these moments and acts of decline, and I write that as much for me as for the audience.  But that fact of the matter is that this is no small task, for Trump’s relentless war of attrition on decency and reality wearies the souls of those of us who have souls left and creates a numbing effect that is a common biological survival mechanism for engaging in deadly combat, and make no mistake: we are in deadly combat for the survival of the West, for democracy, for America.  As Freedom House just starkly noted the same day of Trump’s big speech, “the current president’s ongoing attacks on the rule of law, fact-based journalism, and other principles and norms of democracy threaten further decline.” 

In the end, as much as I am a fan of the oft-ill-covered Nancy Pelosi, I cannot claim the night belongs to her.  No, the night was still Trump’s, his meaningless words put together in meaningless sentences in a meaningless speech.  The speech—as bad and badly delivered as it was—did not inherently carry the quality of meaninglessness, no; that quality was entirely a result of the man who gave it and the Administration that helped craft it.  It was not even the lies that defined this speech.  No, more than anything else, the speech carried with it the searing awareness that we are listening to words come from the mouth of a man who keeps few promises or oaths, lies constantly both compulsively and in a deeply premeditated fashion, capriciously changes his mind on any given issue repeatedly in both the short and long-term, reneges on deals even to the point of causing multiple government shutdowns, and that, ultimately, this is all a farce.

As the late and singular Christopher Hitchens noted, “there is some relationship between the hunger for truth and the search for the right words. This struggle may be ultimately indefinable and even undecidable, but one damn well knows it when one sees it.” The problem with Trump is that we can damn well know he is not even engaging in this struggle.

In other words, this speech matters very little because more words from the mouth of that man will come that will surely contradict what was said last night (which contradicted who knows how many previous statements), and still more after that, to a point where we truly get to explore the word meaningless.  When the president’s words and actions change so rapidly that one must truly exert effort to keep track of, or define, a “position,” let alone a policy—on everything from the border “wall” to Syria—we really are in Game of Thrones’s Jon Snow trap, when Jon lamented: “When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies, and lies won’t help us in this fight” (video but big spoilers!).  We should lament, too, and, like Nancy Pelosi, solider on as gracefully as possible in dealing with that man, his words, and his actions, the meaning of which at times it seems no one, not even Trump himself, is capable of understanding.

© 2019 Brian E. Frydenborg, all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcomeI

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer and consultant from the New York City area who has been based in Amman, Jordan, since early 2014. He holds an M.S. in Peace Operations and specializes in a wide range of interrelated topics, including international and U.S. policy/politics, security/conflict/(counter)terrorism, humanitarianism, development, social justice, and history. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!