TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2026
No ridiculous claim left behind: The sitting president was deeply concerned about the return of the Communists.
Plainly, his fear was well founded. Two members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) had won the Democratic Party's nomination for seats in the United States House of Representatives.
A third candidate—the comptroller of the city of New York from 2021 through 2025—had also won the Democratic Party's nomination for a seat in the House!
If the two DSA members win their elections this fall, they will become members of the House. They will be two members, out of a total of 435!
As we noted yesterday, this led the president to say the following in a public address last Friday. He was speaking about the two nominees who belong to the DSA, along with the one who doesn't:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (6/26/26): These are not Social Democrats. These are hardcore godless Communists. They’re godless Communists.
All Communists are godless. They don’t believe in God. This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country.
It was the most serious threat in the nation's history, the president thoughtfully said. On Thursday evening, he had already offered this reassuring Truth Social post:
Truth Details
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The Communists are finally making their move. I’ve been waiting and preparing for this for a long time. It’s easy to be a Communist—All you have to do is say, “I’ll give you everything,” but that means you’re taking it away from others that have earned it. Over thousands of years, that Ideology has not worked once. The game is on. Enjoy watching! President DONALD J. TRUMP
He's been preparing for a long time—preparing himself for the day when Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (D-NY) might show up in the House of Representatives, scarily saying—among other things—that she supports Medicare for All.
Who the Joe Hill is Claire Valdez? The leading authority on that subject offers this overview:
Claire Valdez
Claire Valdez (born October 12, 1989) is an American politician and union organizer who has served as a member of the New York State Assembly for the 37th District since 2025, representing part of the Borough of Queens. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, she is the Democratic nominee for New York's 7th congressional district in the 2026 election.
Originally from Lubbock, Texas, Valdez moved to New York City in 2015 and lives in Ridgewood, Queens...
Valdez received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studying painting and art history. She worked a series of service jobs...before moving to New York City to pursue a career in art.
[...]
After graduating from college, Valdez worked as a program assistant in the visual arts department at Columbia University before beginning her term as an assembly member. While working at Columbia, she became an active member of United Auto Workers Local 2110 and was elected unit chair in the local.
Such information as that. Meanwhile, whether wisely or not, something in the range of 55-65% of Americans join Valdez in supporting Medicare for All. Polling results seem to turn on the way the survey question is asked.
As to what else Valdez might think, believe or support, we haven't seen anyone make a major attempt to ask. Despite that fact, and as we noted yesterday, her nomination triggered this reaction from the most watched individual in all of "cable news:"
WATTERS (6/24/26): This is a Third World takeover. This is what happens when you import the Third World.
Did you know that New York City is 70% nonwhite? 40% foreign-born? 50% of the apartments, they don't even speak English! Not even their first language!
These three women [sic] who Mamdani endorsed, weren't even born in New York City, weren't even raised in New York City. They're carpetbaggers. Carpetbaggers, Jessica!
...Communism is going to take over the Democratic Party, and then we're going to have to beat it, because you can't—
You can't do anything else besides beat it to a pulp.
In a series of agitprop manifestos last week, this corporate messenger boy almost seemed to be getting his brownshirt out.
"These people want to hurt us," the unusual fellow also said, speaking of Valdez and the two others. "The way we're going to react is going to make Trump look like a kitten."
(For the record, Watters said these things to Red America only. If you read the New York Times—if you subscribe to The Atlantic; if you watch MS NOW—you will not be told that this remarkable reversion is currently taking place.)
It may be time to name the (two or) three "godless Communists" who have been cast as such in this marketing play.
Two of the three nominees are members of DSA; the third nominee is not.. Only two of the three are women, though Watters, as you can see in the text above, seemed to think something different.
The three nominees are these:
Brad Lander. Member, New York City Council, 2010-2022. New York City Comptroller, 2022-2026.
As noted by the leading authority, "On June 12, 2025, The New York Times Opinion panel chose Lander as its top choice for the Democratic primary for mayor."
This is one of three godless Communists the president has been warning the nation about.
Claire Valdez: Member, New York State Assembly, 2025 to present. For more information, see above.
Darializa Avila Chevalier: According to the New York Times, "she is a Ph.D. student and an investigator in a public defender office."
According to that same profile, Avila Chevalier is "a relative political newcomer who emerged from the world of far-left activism...Some of Ms. Avila Chevalier’s views may be considered too extreme for mainstream politics, and should she be chosen to represent Upper Manhattan in Congress, her views could pose a challenge for the greater Democratic Party."
Those are the three nominees who have triggered the increasingly fevered remarks by performers on the Fox News Channel and by the sitting president. Ever vigilant, the sitting president has bizarrely said that the nomination of these three candidates constitutes "the most serious threat to our country" in the full sweep of its existence.
(As best we can tell, you don't know that the president has made that extremely strange claim if you read the New York Times. For whatever reason, the Times is strongly inclined to disappear the president's strangest remarks and posts.)
Of the three nominees, Lander was the Times editorial board's top choice for mayor! At this time, little is known about Valdez.
Meanwhile, everyone agrees that there are very few unusual statements which Avila Chevalier hasn't made, at some point, in the past several years.
We tend to agree with what Jessica Tarlov said about Avila Chevalier last Tuesday, on The Five. As for Assemblywoman Valdez, we saw her interviewed last Wednesday night by CNN's Erin Burnett.
Tomorrow, we'll show you what Tarlov said about Avila Chevalier, and we'll show you what was said when Valdez visited CNN. Also, we'll continue to show you what Watters is saying as he lays his brown shirts out for his mommy to iron.
A major reversion is underway as troupers like Watters keep making their claims. He's been beaming his scripts to Red America.
Over here, in Blue America, we simply don't get told.
Tomorrow: No Ridiculous Claim Left Behind
"We tend to agree with what Jessica Tarlov said about Avila Chevalier last Tuesday, on The Five. As for Assemblywoman Valdez, we saw her interviewed last Wednesday night by CNN's Erin Burnett.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow, we'll show you what Tarlov said about Avila Chevalier, and we'll show you what was said when Valdez visited CNN. "
Somerby made this same promise a few days ago and still has not fulfilled it. Why?
Somerby still has not told us what Tarlov said or what she said it about. No, a link to the transcript of the show is not sufficient.
These three candidates are obviously not communists. Why do we need to dignify Trump's partisan comment about them?
ReplyDeleteYes, Chevalier is a grad student (Ph.D. candidate) and yes, she may have said some intemperate things on social media. We typically give some leeway to students about that. But none of that makes her a communist, which Somerby knows, even if he will not say so in any definitive way.
Somerby has a mushy, wishy-washy way of refusing to directly say what he hints at. We have no idea what he is planning to say about Chevalier, despite days of hinting during which we have been marinating in Trump's claims about communists in NYC.
Somerby said little is known about Valdez, but she has a record from her terms in the state legislature. That means quite a bit is known about her. So why does Somerby downplay her past experience as a legislator? We all know the answer to that. She is female and she has a Spanish surname, although born in TX. Maybe that equates to "immigrant" for Somerby. Chevalier is black and female, so she gets the brunt of Somerby's negative attention.
Do any of these women (Landers is A-OK because he was endorsed for Mayor) need to be rehabilitated after Trump's claim that they are communists? Why does Somerby not direct his attention to Trump's mental illness using these entirely unsupported claims as evidence? Why must these women be proved to be NOT communists, instead of Trump and the right having to prove they ARE? That is the same dynamic as McCarthyism, guilty until proven innocent by showing they ARE NOT members of a secret society, in other words, thereby having to prove a negative.
Somerby's insistence on examining any of these candidates, instead of dismissing Trump's claims as more nonsense from the biggest psychopathic liar to hold office, treats Trump too seriously and fails to defend Democratic candidates in general. An actual defense of the party Somerby claims to support would consist of focusing on the ugliness of Trump's accusations, not any kind of examination of anything Vargas said on CNN or anything Tarlov said about any of them. Tarlov is not the Democratic Party official legitimizer of non-communistic tendencies.
Somerby is playing along with Trump's smear campaign, advancing the right wing talking points about NYC communist lefty candidates. That is Somerby's function here. Given that there is no substance to the attack on these three candidates, Somerby is stretching out the accusations as long as he can, pretending there is something to look closely at, some misbehavior that can be ginned up as a Blue America flaw, that Somerby can say the press is ignoring. And that is Somerby's game.
Just because Somerby has spent the last year and a half claiming Trump can't be held responsible for his criminal activities, bigotry, and fanboying of Putin---due to cognitive decline and rapidly on-coming dementia---doesn't mean Somerby won't repeat Trump's bullshit if he thinks it will hurt the Democratic Party.
Deleteanon 11:27, you are either stupid or have some type of "disorder", or probably both. TDH is mocking, ridiculing Trump here. Somehow you seem to have devoted your life to obsessively distorting whatever he says.
Delete"These three candidates are obviously not communists. Why do we need to dignify Trump's partisan comment about them?"
DeleteThere is a game the media have been playing since at least the Swift Boating of John Kerry. It goes like this: if you ignore some outlandish attack, you're letting it grow, and should have cut it off early. But if you refute it, you are "giving it oxygen," and should have refuted it. The end result is a heads you lose, tails you lose situation, where the winner is the media, because they have the ridiculousness to talk about and keep the 24 hour news cycle bubbling, even if it's with nonsense.
AC/MA, why is Somerby pretending there is anything communist about any of these candidates, to the point of teasing us with what Tarlov said about one of them, presumably Chevalier since she is the activist and thus more controversial?
DeleteDemocrat = Communist in right-wing speak. No Democratic candidate needs to justify any public statement as non-communist. Candidates have the right to make statements and change their minds about previous statements because that is part of campaigning and being a politician.
If Somerby is planning to tut-tut over something any of them said, using Tarlov as an excuse, he is furthering Trump's promotion of the right wing agenda.
AC/MA claims that Somerby is ridiculing Trump. I don't see it. Where does he do that in today's essay?
DeleteRepeating what Trump and Watters said is not ridicule. Somerby does describe the three candidates, and perhaps thinks that the facts about them should make it obvious that Trump and Watters are making "ridiculous" claims about them, but Somerby forgets that the past Communist witch-hunts claimed that communists masqueraded as regular people, deliberately hiding their party membership. Given the camouflage supposedly used by communists to conceal their affiliation, there was no way to prove one was not a communist, once accused.
Somerby repeats the background, but he doesn't explain how that exonerates them or makes it less likely they might be communists. So, Somerby is not convincing any Republicans about these candidates, and he is not explaining why Trump's statements are ridiculous either.
But Somerby actual role is not to address Trump's comments, or he might have told us what Tarlov said or even what Chevalier said, but he didn't do that. He used his space to chide Blue America again. And Somerby has still not explained how the communist-baiting of the 1950s worked and why Trump's remarks evoke that technique for attacking partisan opponents.
AC/MA, why would a nice guy like Somerby mock and ridicule a mentally ill person such as Trump. He has urged pity. Good decent people do not mock the disabled, and yes, mental illness is a disability. That's why I don't understand why Trump hasn't been removed from office via Article 25. This is plainly elder abuse, but Somerby has no time to call for that, since he is too busy complaining about Blue America.
From Tiedrich:
ReplyDelete[picture of Trump's proposed golden eagle to adornment the White House entrance]
"there are days when everything in the news is so profoundly idiotic that I don’t even know where to begin. yesterday was one of those days — so once again, I’m just going to drag out the Big Wheel of Moron™, give it a spin, and see where it lands. ready? here we go.
Subscribed
what. in the actual. fuck.
first of all, let’s all breathe a sigh of relief, because this vulgar abomination isn’t real — at least, it isn’t real yet. what Preznit Fuckwit’s shat out onto his crappy app is the product of some janky six-fingered plagiarism robot.
but the question must be asked: was the AI that ginned this up trained on a copy of The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich? it’s a legit question, because you know who else was in madly in love with eagles with their wings all spread out and shit? of course you do.
[photo of Hitler giving a speech from a podium under a spread eagle and Nazi swastika closely resembling Trump's proposed new eagle adornment]
oh look, it’s Adolf Hitler, giving a speech in front of a ginormous Nazi eagle, and everyone in the audience is sieg heiling to beat the band. which, as long as we’re on the subject, reminds us of —
[photo of Elon Musk giving a Nazi salute from a podium]
why does everything this administration does turn out to be something the Nazis did first?
nobody asked for this. nobody said, ‘gee, Donny there isn’t enough golden shit trashing up the White House yet. is there any way you can wedge some vulgar Nazi-themed eagle into the mix, maybe above the front door?’
it’s bad enough that all of Donny’s policies remind that he’s trying to build his own fucked-up Turd Reich, does he really have to steal all their symbolism as well?"
Check it out for yourself and see how closely similar the two images are:
Deletehttps://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/what-the-fuck-is-some-nazi-themed
There was a time when politicians actively avoided this kind of similarity but Trump seems to be flaunting it, a call-out to his Nazi bro following. Why do we, as a nation, tolerate this? Why hasn't Trump been impeached?
DeleteThat time is long since passed. I hate what Trump has done to this country
DeleteAnyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican Party almost 30 years ago.
DeleteI will remind readers that Somerby opposed the impeachments of Trump.
DeleteNot enough pity involved one presumes.
Hitler made some mistakes, but he was against communism.
DeleteTiedrich monitors the garbage so Somerby doesn't have to:
ReplyDelete"Dr. Oz has no freaking clue how insurance works, does he?
“of the people who signed up, 40% never use the insurance. let me ask you, John, you have health insurance — do you use it once a year? in Obamacare right now 40% of the people ostensibly signed up never use the insurance ... we have a lot of fake people on the policies.”
wait, what?
on what planet is paying for insurance and not using it proof of fraud?
now look. I pay X dollars a month for car insurance. I’ve never filed a claim, because I’ve never had an accident. according to Dr. Oz, that somehow means I’ve been defrauding that cute little Geico gecko for years. I would never do that. I mean, look at this little homey. he’s fucking adorable.
[image of Geico Gecko]
now, this would all be hilarious of Dr. Oz were merely some loudmouth drunk at the end of the bar, ranting about all those goddamned Obamacare fraudsters, before passing out face-down in a puddle of his own sick.
but Oz is the administrator of the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. that’s way too much power for any crackpot this ignorant to hold — and he’s going to use this counterfactual bullshit as an excuse to kick people off Obamacare."
Somerby used to point out things like this himself, but since Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, Somerby has no time for teaching critical thinking. Instead, he promotes right wing talking points and spends 0 time debunking Republican scams like Oz's nonsense.
Tiedrich leaves room to conclude that Oz is merely ignorant about insurance instead of deliberately scamming those foolish enough to listen to him with fake fraud claims. How stupid do the Republicans think their followers are? Pretty damned stupid.
Watters is a Fox News guy spreading fake claims about communism and false demographics about NYC. Dr. Oz is a member of our government:
Delete"Dr. Mehmet Oz serves as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In this role, he oversees the multi-trillion dollar federal agency that manages Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Marketplace."
Who do you think does more damage to our nation when he tells lies (and/or misrepresents how insurance works and what constitutes insurance fraud)?
Dr. Oz is committing fraud when he says stuff like this. Why are we as a nation tolerating this? Why hasn't Trump been impeached?
Oz went from respected CV surgeon to carnival barker years ago. He is in a sense more egregious than worm brain , having a degree and a career in medicine to his credit. Hawking supplements with bullshit science behind them earned him the rebuke of respected academics, who called for his firing by Columbia. Of course that didn’t happen.
DeleteIf God wanted Dr. Oz fired for being a charlatan, he would have made him poor.
DeleteGod loves charlatans.
Delete"Over here, in Blue America, we simply don't get told. "
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly does Blue America need to be told this time? We on the left, especially those who voted for those three candidates, know they are not communist, despite what Trump and Watters have said about them. The whole world knows that Trump is a big fat liar and Watters is his shill. We on the left are not morons.
Somerby is just typing empty, meaningless words these days. He is no longer coherent. Who cares what Tarlov said? Who cares what Somerby agrees with? Why doesn't Somerby write about something important?
What makes you think retaining racial, gender, and class hierarchies isn't important to Somerby?
DeleteThose are the three best hierarchies.
DeleteRepublicans have called democrats communists since FDR. What democrat or liberal isn’t aware of this?
ReplyDeleteSomerby is a hand wringer like James Carville.
ReplyDeleteCarville blew up the Reagan revolution. Gave us 8 great years. Beat that.
DeleteThat was 30 years ago. He’s wrong now in opposing more progressive candidates.
Deleteopposing the same people who crippled Hillary's one true shot to become the first woman President of the USA and handed the country over to Trump? yeah
Delete“Those people”, ie the “voters”, are enthusiastically voting in candidates right now. Makes little sense to piss on them.
Delete2:16,
DeleteI'm going to need some proof Carville is opposing Russian oligarchs and the white supremacists who voted for Trump.
I need some proof Carvill is pissing on voters who voted for a DSA in a fucking Democratic primary
Delete“ This is what happens when you import the Third World.”
ReplyDeleteJust because the Third World is predominantly people of color is no reason for liberals to call out the racism of this remark, because that would offend “the Others.”
Millions of people were imported from Africa, and we’re living with the results.
DeleteWe can’t fund Medicare for all because the ballroom needs to be built and the reflecting pool repaired from all that vandalism, plus no bid contracts to cronies and slush funds for traitors.
ReplyDeleteTrump promised us an amazing healthcare system. It was back in 2016, but I know he’ll come through.
ReplyDeletehe said he had "concepts of a plan" in his one debate with Kamala - 8 years later, and 78 million economically anxious non-racist voters crawled over broken glass to vote for the fucking felon .
Delete"78 million economically anxious non-racist voters"
DeleteThe corporate-owned, Right-wing propagandists (AKA the media) has entered the chat.
"78 million economically anxious non-racist voters"
Deletethat was sarcasm if you missed it