The hoped-for “October Surprise” that Trump has been hoping for hasn’t materialized, and it isn’t helped by revelations from Lev Parnas that Rudy Giuliani was frustrated in efforts to get dirt about the Bidens from Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma. Zlochevsky angered Giuliani during the latter’s “fact-finding” mission when, according to Politico, Giuliani asked him if he had“in any way with business deals or meetings with world leaders or any other assistance,” and “Zlochevsky replied curtly: ‘No.’ Asked to detail any contacts he had with Joe Biden from 2013-2019, and whether Hunter ever facilitated any meetings, Zlochevsky replied: ‘No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement.’”
Thus it isn’t surprising to see a few Republican senators now trying to abandon Donald Trump’s leaky ship, even as Trump threatens “retribution” against them if he is reelected; while that may be fun to watch, it isn’t a good enough reason to vote for Trump, so it is better to just imagine it what numskullery Trump and his familiars can dream-up that would land right back in their faces.
There are however those in the right-wing media who are engaging in their own pie-throwing contests, and that naturally includes Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who calls himself a “populist,” which these days is just another word for racist, far-right extremist nut-jobs who will eat their own for the slightest infraction. On Friday, this slobbering, wet rag of a Trump supporter advised voters in South Carolina that they should abandon Sen. Lindsey Graham completely. I would also like to see Graham replaced by a Democrat, but of course you can’t expect that to be the basis of Dobb’s reasoning:
“I don’t know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsey Graham. It is just outrageous. This is the guy who keeps saying ‘stay tuned.’ He said he would get to the bottom of Obamagate with the Judiciary Committee, which has been a year and a half, actually longer, of absolute inert, inert response to these pressing issues of our day.”
It doesn’t matter that there is no “there” in Dobb’s complaints. It is plain to thinking people that the flagging being done by Facebook and Twitter that Dobbs demands that Graham investigate NOW is a reasonable response to outlandish conspiracy theories and false information endangering the public health during the pandemic. The “Obamagate” shibboleth has already been investigated and debunked, yet Dobbs continues to foam at the mouth about it like a rabid dog. Frankly Dobbs is probably even more disgusting a human being than some of his other cellmates, like the Carlson/Ingraham/Hannity prime time trio.
Yet there was a time when there was some “confusion” about how to define him, whether he was a “populist” with the interests of the American “little people” in mind, or something else altogether, since his views on Hispanic immigrants might possibly even exceed that of Stephen Miller. In 2007 there was a profile in Mother Jones when Dobbs was still working for CNN, which allowed him a feature called “Broken Borders” on his Lou Dobbs Tonight show. The article was written by Sridhar Pappu, and it was at times too flattering a portrait. At times Pappu would observe that “if we’re to believe Dobbs, suffering from policies that have encouraged undocumented workers to cross the Mexican border only to depress wages, overwhelm public schools, and blaze the way for infiltrating terrorists,” while at other times he described Dobbs as being “amiable and funny, simply a decent sort of guy. The kind of man you’d like to meet up with for a drink, who seamlessly finds a way to open the door for you, and who’ll tap you on the shoulder and call you “pard’ner.”
The article noted, however, that Dobbs’ staff followed his orders and dug-up all the immigration-related stories they could find to fill out his hour long show. During this time The Guardian, reporting on “The Madness of Lou Dobbs,” noted Dobbs' claim that “cases of leprosy in the US had surged to 7,000” and this “invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans" had been debunked everywhere, and was just one of many false and misleading claims demonizing and dehumanizing Hispanic immigrants--often supplied from representatives from known hate groups Dobbs invited on his show. Yet CNN president Jon Klein defended Dobb’s racist conspiracy theories and refused to offer a rebuttal for the leprosy claim, instead defending Dobbs as someone who spoke for "ordinary" people:
If you think of political coverage, you typically think of Washington-based political reporting. But here’s Lou, in New York, primarily doing stories on the heartland, on the impact of policies on ordinary Americans, and that’s filtering back to Washington, That’s profound. It shows you something about the power media can have away from the centers of power. That’s one of Lou’s strengths. He speaks to the people and he also speaks to the influencers.
New York Times reporter David Leonhardt, reporting on Dobbs false claims at the time, wrote that "The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruth. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans."
Dobbs claims that he is a “populist,” but that is just another dog whistle word for racism these days. Dobbs once defended himself from the charge by noting that farm worker labor rights advocate Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration, but leaves out the fact that Chavez’s views on the issue changed over time, particularly when he realized he was out-of-step with evolving views that saw attacks on illegal immigrants as merely cover to express racism against Hispanics in general.
After the Democratic retaking of Congress in 2006, Dobbs--apparently suffering from some form of dementia--wrote an op-ed in which he seemed to take “credit” for it: “The Democratic victory last week has our political elites in both parties and in the national media squealing like stuck pigs. Way to go, America, we may be on the way. It seems nothing frightens our free trade and pro-illegal immigration orthodoxies more than putting the common good and the national interest above dominant special interests, corporate America and, of course, our darling elites in both political parties and the media.” He even reveled in what some media outlets were calling “the ascension of the “Lou Dobbs Democrats.”
There was never any such thing as “Lou Dobbs Democrats,” because if there were they would have voted Republican anyway. Today he has a fitting home on Fox News, and if there were still one or two left to fool, they don’t exist now. Most Americans support DACA, yet when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in June on Chief Justice John Roberts’ vote, Dobbs fumed “It looks to me like John Roberts has lost his mind. That’s some of the most tortured reasoning I’ve ever seen by a Chief Justice. It looks like the margin for his intellectual capacity diminishes each time he goes with the liberals.” Dobbs is just a fanatic who is full of hate. Even Lindsey Graham isn’t far enough on the right, or too slobbering enough in his past support of Trump, to satisfy a demented extremist like Dobbs, who fits right in the white nativist, nationalist vision of the world imagined by Trump.
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