Letters from an American - March 10, 2024

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

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March 10th, 2024. As predicted, last week was an important one for the Republican Party. The Republicans' rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday stayed in the news throughout the weekend. On Friday, independent journalist Jonathan Katz figured out that a key story in it was false. Senator Katie Britt, a Republican of Alabama, described a 12-year-old child sex trafficked by Mexican cartel members, implying that the young girl was trafficked because of President Joe Biden's border policies. Katz tracked down the facts. Britt was describing the life of Carla Jacinto, who was indeed trafficked as a child,

but not in the present, and not in the U.S., and not by cartels. She was trafficked from 2004 to 2008 during the George W. Bush administration, in Mexico, at the hands of a pimp who entrapped vulnerable girls. Jacinto has become an advocate for child victims and has told her story before Congress, and she met Britt at an event for government officials and anti-trafficking advocates. Britt's dramatic delivery of the rebuttal had already invited parody and concern about the religious theme she demonstrated.

The news that a central image in it was a lie just made things worse. Everyone's effing losing it, a Republican strategist told the New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Hodling. It's one of our biggest disasters ever. one of our biggest disasters ever. On Friday, the Republican National Committee, or RNC, voted to replace former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, who resigned effective Friday, with Trump loyalist Michael Watley and Trump's daughter-in-law, Laura Trump. They will co-chair the organization and have made it clear their primary goal is to put Trump back in the White House. Friday night on Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr. recorded a video announcing that the old Republican Party no longer exists outside of the D.C. Beltway. The move that happened today, that's the final blow.

The move that happened today, that's the final blow. People have to understand that America First, the MAGA movement, is the new Republican Party. That is conservatism today. Just what that means was crystal clear on Friday night when Trump hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the Trump Organization's Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. The darling of the radical right, Orban has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, and hosted former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and his policies inspired the anti-LGBTQ plus legislation Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has championed. The right wing's fondness for Orban springs from his having rejected democracy and replaced it in Hungary with what he calls an illiberal state.

Orban and other far-right leaders working against democracy maintain that the central principle of democracy, equality before the law, undermines society. It permits immigration, which in their minds dilutes the purity of a people, and it requires that LGBTQ plus individuals and women have the same rights as heterosexual men. Such a world challenges the heteronormative patriarchal world traditionalists crave. Orban's takeover of the press, elimination of rival political parties, partisan gerrymandering, capture of the courts, and control of Hungary's government are not just ideological, though, but also economic.

Corruption and the capture of valuable factories and properties for cronies have allowed Orban and his allies to amass fortunes. There's nobody that's better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He's fantastic, Trump said on Friday. Trump said that Orban simply says, this is the way it's going to be. And that's the end of it, right? He's the boss and he's a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him. On Saturday, Republicans in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, censured Senator James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma, over his work negotiating the border security measure.

In January, state Republicans claimed they had passed a resolution strongly condemning Lankford. Others said the vote for the resolution was not legitimate and definitely does not represent the voice of all Oklahoma Republicans. Lankford is a far-right senator whom Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky, tapped to represent the Republicans in the negotiations. House Republicans had demanded the border security measure before they would allow a vote on a national security supplemental bill that funds Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion. Because the Democrats are desperate to fund Ukraine, they were willing to give up things they had never laid on the table

before, including a path to citizenship for those brought to the United States as children. Making the bill that emerged from the negotiations strongly favored the Republican position on immigration. The Border Patrol Officers Union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal all endorsed it. But the House Republicans' demand for a border measure

appeared to have been an attempt to kill the National Security Supplemental Bill altogether. As soon as it became clear that there would be a deal, Trump came out against it. He demanded that Congress kill the measure, and his loyalists agreed. Lankford, who had helped to produce the strongest border measure in years at the request of the nominal head of the party, has now been censured because he crossed Trump. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Biden signed into law one of the consolidated appropriations bills that must be finished to

fund the government. The other must be finished by March 22nd. Biden has continued to ride the momentum built by Thursday's State of the Union speech. His campaign has released a number of advertisements, and today he was in Georgia, where the largest political action committees representing communities of color, the AAPI Victory Fund, the Latino Victory Fund, and the Collective PAC endorsed him and pledged $30 million to mobilize communities of color to vote in 2024. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.