Cast Iron Brains is here once again with a discussion about the escalating crisis of governmental legitimacy the nation has faced over the last thirty years, before we turn to far more amusing subjects about an hour in—including talk of the latest shameful, misogynist attack on a successful woman, an important question of ethical import around a poker game, and exciting news about forthcoming CIB merch. Enjoy!
Apologies for the delayed show note. Blame the weather. Blame the lack of power. Blame a lazy host who chose to play Dr. Mario Tuesday night instead of writing this thing up.
Here’s Stephen Miller on Fox and Friends from Monday morning, if you’re up for a few minutes of self-harm.
On all the legitimacy stuff, I’m just going to copy/paste my notes and links from the other, unofficial show note:
In 1992, some raised questions about the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s election, but it was mostly a question of mandate--Clinton received only 43% of the popular vote, with Republicans complaining that were it not for Ross Perot, their boy would have won. Bob Dole, then minority leader in the Senate, insisted at the time that there was no mandate for Clinton’s agenda, because he did not garner a majority of the votes. Still, most people didn’t question the “legitimacy” of Bill Clinton--they just fucking hated him.
In 2000, George W Bush was elected president after the Supreme Court stopped a Florida recount that, there is reason to believe, might have ended up going for Al Gore had it been properly completed. There was a good bit of “NOT MY PRESIDENT” stuff among Democrats, if not among Democratic leadership, at the time. There were protestors at the inauguration holding signs to that effect, but it wasn’t being said on cable television every night. This despite the fact that Bush had lost the popular vote, too! Al Gore wasn’t ringing that bell--just the opposite, in fact. 9/11 fairly well squashed any legitimacy crisis Bush faced on that front, as did his reelection in 2004. The public would eventually turn on him due to a perception that he bungled the Katrina response and the flagging popularity of the Iraq war, among other things, and there were calls for his impeachment. Still, most people didn’t question the “legitimacy” of George W. Bush--they just fucking hated him.
Barack Obama, of course, became the subject of a direct claim of illegitimacy with the whole birther controversy. But it wasn’t just Donald Trump and birther types--Obama was effectively given the FULL BOB DOLE by Mitch McConnell, who worked with other Congressional Republicans to block or subvert everything he tried to do. Rush Limbaugh--who last week was entertaining the possibility of REAL SECESSION on his radio program--spent inauguration day 2009 saying that he “hopes Obama fails.” He couched this in terms of a disagreement about politics, but he made no room for the possibility that Obama’s success could be the country’s success. Any honest reflection of the GOP attitude and behavior toward Obama would conclude that they largely did not see him as legitimate. McConnell’s refusal to give Garland a vote in the Senate was the cherry on top. Exit polls in 2016 showed that more than half of Trump voters did not think Obama was born in the US, matching polls that for years suggested that well more than half of Republicans believed the birther conspiracy.
Outside the Republican party, Donald Trump’s presidency was widely seen as illegitimate. Crucially, though, and despite the fact that she would later say that Trump was an “illegitimate president,” Hillary Clinton conceded the election on election night and gave a concession speech the next morning. John Lewis said that he didn’t “see the president-elect as a legitimate president” before Trump’s inauguration. This was not an uncommon position among Democrats, who cited Russian interference--largely exaggerated or entirely made up--as the main reason for his illegitimacy. In 2017, 57% of millennials viewed Trump’s presidency as illegitimate.
Recent polling from YouGov has 88% of Trump voters saying that Biden did not legitimately win the election. Trump is explicitly saying that Biden will be an illegitimate president, and not acknowledging the loss. So are his supporters in the media, so are his supporters in Congress, with some exceptions. It is now a question of partisan alignment whether or not you think the president is a legitimate president.
Here’s that USA Today article about the DOCTOR JILL BIDEN kerfuffle that we read from so extensively. And here’s the Epstein piece itself. And here’s almost all you need to know:
Here’s Dan Crenshaw’s latest attempt to cosplay as fucking Tom Cruise, because that’s apparently a thing that appeals to the REAL MEN of CONSERVATIVE AMERICA.
