Politics

MAGA-friendly centrists are yada yada-ing over Trump’s threats

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

MAGA-friendly centrists are yada yada-ing over Trump’s threats

In a classic “Seinfeld” episode, George Costanza’s new girlfriend abbreviates her dialogue by saying “yada yada yada,” often eliding the most pertinent parts of a story. George adopts the habit, too, and he and his girlfriend end up yada yada-ing over “little” details like criminality and an untimely death. It’s hilarious and patently absurd — the conversational equivalent of burying the lede in journalism.

This is what a lot of self-identified heterodox political commentators do when they talk about former President Donald Trump. You can see it often on “Real Time With Bill Maher” panels, hear it on any number of “politically homeless” podcasts or read it daily on scores of Substack sites. These ostensible independents view “the establishment” — which includes everything from centrist Democrats to anti-Trump conservatives to non-right-wing media — as the true threat to freedom and the American way. They might concede Trump’s vulgarity is distasteful or that he’s sometimes incompetent and often incoherent, but when it comes to confronting his incorrigible criminality, corruption, racism and misogyny, and his relentless dishonesty on matters both trivial and existential, they typically yada yada past the gory details and pivot into pathological whataboutism and both-sidesism.

I could list so many more of his outrageous, inexcusable words and deeds, but it wouldn’t matter. Yada yada yada to all that, Trump’s useful centrists will argue.

In just the past 30 days, Trump has helped whip up a racist, xenophobic furor against Haitian immigrants in Ohio based on lies; suggested that people who criticize Supreme Court justices should be imprisoned; and mused that police should be allowed free rein to commit wanton violence on retail thieves over the course of “one real rough, nasty” day. I could list so many more of his outrageous, inexcusable words and deeds, but it wouldn’t matter.

Yada yada to all that, Trump’s useful centrists will argue. Only the humorless, Trump Derangement Syndrome-afflicted could possibly take the former president’s rhetoric seriously: “That’s just Trump being Trump, shooting from the hip, flying off the handle, being funny in his uniquely Trumpian way that triggers the hated establishment.”

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan released special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page brief laying out evidence that he says shows Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election was a private matter and not in the capacity of a sitting president. (The Supreme Court ruled this summer that a president acting in his or her capacity as president is essentially immune from prosecution.) It’s all there: Trump knew he lost the election very early, but Smith’s filing says he engaged in numerous criminal acts to overturn it anyway. Smith’s brief says he also encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, refused pleas from his own staff to call for calm, and after being told by an aide that Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger thanks to his own instigations, he reportedly replied, “So what?”

As I’ve previously written, if Trump hadn’t ever given his riot-inciting speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, he still attempted a self-coup through alleged fraud, intimidation and threats of violence. But high-profile MAGA-adjacent “independents” have spent the past four years yada yada-ing away the whole thing as an unfortunate and brief act of mob violence. Some have even suggested it might have actually been a trap laid by Democrats.

So don’t expect to hear anything louder than throat clearing about the Smith brief (if even that) from Trump’s useful centrists. They’re still having a fit over Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s stupid, discrediting lie about being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests (he was most likely in Nebraska at the time).

As someone who is actually without a political tribe — in that I don’t neatly fit into any ideological box and feel no need to carry water for either party — I’ve concluded that Trump is, by leaps and bounds, the greater threat to American democracy and rationality.

And yet, I still say go ahead and nail Walz on his lies. Make him squirm. Hold Vice President Kamala Harris’ feet to the fire on any of her untrue or misleading statements, too. Make all power-hungry politicians feel uncomfortably accountable when they mislead the public.

And then look back at Trump. On the ledger of politicians’ falsehoods, do statements like Walz’s mistruths about whether he was in China 35 years ago (he claims he “misspoke”) even remotely measure up to Trump’s attempted self-coup or his racist incitements against immigrants?

As someone who is actually ‘politically homeless’ … I’ve concluded that Trump is, by leaps and bounds, the greater threat to American democracy and rationality.

At the vice presidential debate last week, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, refused to answer the direct question of who won the 2020 election. You’d think a true political independent — no matter how much they’re triggered by the “woke” or the “establishment” — would see Vance’s nonanswer as a craven cop-out, given how thoroughly adjudicated the legitimacy of the 2020 election has already been. But not if you’re Free Press columnist Abigail Shrier, who lamented during the debate“Dear Lord, more January 6 questions?!”

Heaven forfend a candidate for the second-highest office in the land, whose running mate tried to steal the previous election, be asked about it. We nonpartisans really ought to just move on, I guess.

Many anti-anti-Trumpers yada yada’d through 2022’s”https://www.thedailybeast.com/your-grandkids-will-care-about-the-jan-6-hearings-even-if-you-dont” target=”_blank”>Jan. 6 Committee hearings — where remarkable video evidence and testimony from ex-Trump White House officials (including Trump’s own daughter) and other Republicans laid bare Trump’s grand conspiracy to overturn a free and fair election. Trump and his allies have also spent the past four years plotting to do it again — and thanks to state-level election overhauls and a sympathetic judiciary, they’re much better equipped to do so now. Also poisoning the discourse are pro-Trump billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thielwho publicly spread the fiction that Democrats are cheating — already, they say — to win the 2024 election. Axios recently reported, “Through public remarks, Truth Social screeds and more than 100 preemptive lawsuits, Donald Trump is assembling a detailed catalog of excuses for rejecting the results of the 2024 election — if he loses.”

Yada yada yada, Walz lied about parts of his biography.

I used to think Trump-sympathetic nonpartisans suffered from a failure of imagination. Ever since Trump’s escalator descent in 2015, warnings that Trump could do unthinkable things (like try to steal an election he lost, then preemptively discredit the next one) have been dismissed as the panicked bleatings of basic establishment Chicken Littles.

But Trump is a known quantity in 2024. He was president. He’s been the GOP nominee three consecutive times. He’s been convicted of felonies and found liable for sexual abuse. He’s threatening to use the Department of Justice to jail his political rivals.

At what point do Trump-sympathetic independents think it’s OK to take Trump at his word when he promises to do horrible things — like once again pre-emptively attempting to overturn an election based on nothing?

Go ahead and nail Walz on his lies. Make him squirm. Hold Kamala Harris’ feet to the fire on any of her untrue or misleading statements, too.

To be clear, I’m not here to police anyone’s political preferences. It’s perfectly respectable to be a nonpartisan who thinks Harris and Democrats are worse. But you can’t credibly make the case that Dems are worse by blithely waving away Trump’s most egregious offenses.

I’ve”https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-antifa-book-only-bougie-wimps-oppose-left-wing-violence-against-fascists?ref=author” target=”_blank”>unequivocally criticized left-wing excesses and liberal threats of censorshipas well as Biden’s and Harris’ records. And yet, I’m reminded of the late legendary libertarian humorist P.J. O’Rourkewho despite leaning right his entire adult life, explained his vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016 on the basis that “she’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

Yes, you can reject political tribalism and still choose a side in an election. But if your criticisms of Trump, MAGA and Republicans are rare, trivial and half-hearted — and you denounce Trump opponents (including those exiled from the center and the right) as TDS-afflicted liberals — you’re not politically tribeless and you’re not fearlessly independent. You’ve got a tribe; it’s Trump’s, and you’re a reputation sanitizer for his presidential campaign.

Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”