I’m sure you’ve heard Trump bellowing his fatuous nonsense about how everyone always wanted Roe overturned so it could go back to the states where people can vote on it and “it’s a beautiful thing.” I’ll admit that I was derelict in seeing where this was going. Leave it to Ron DeSantis to show the way: Florida voters who signed a petition to place a pro-choice abortion referendum on the ballot this November say they have been visited by police who are investigating claims of fraud at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, the Tampa Bay Times reported Saturday. Last year, DeSantis, a Republican, signed into a law a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. In response, pro-choice campaigners gathered and submitted nearly one million signatures to place on the ballot Amendment 4, a referendum that would overturn the ban and restore reproductive rights in the state. Now Florida’s Department of State is claiming it suspects fraud in the signature-gathering process.
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Trump goes all but “Off with their heads!” Heather Cox Richardson is hardly the only one to notice that as the prospect of losing the election (and facing criminal judgment) haunts Donald Trump’s every waking moment, he’s going full apocalyptic. Trump on Saturday warned that not even his rallies are safe spaces in a country “overrun by criminals.” He promised that expelling migrants en masse “will be a bloody story.” But that’s only the beginning. Trump is going full Queen of Hearts: Then, tonight, Trump posted on his social media site a rant asserting that he will win the 2024 election but that he expects Democrats to cheat, and “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.
Trump excited the crowd yesterday with promises of bloodshed with his mass deportation policy. They wouldn’t have it any other way. Just as a reminder: Two former officials who handled immigration issues for then-President Donald Trump say that a “whole of government” approach costing billions would be needed to mount the “largest deportation effort in American history” promised in the Republican convention platform if Trump is re-elected. The exact number of people who would be deported in a second Trump administration is hard to pin down. During the June 29 presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. One of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million. The last official estimate in 2022 was under 11 million, but when you count the American children and other Americans caught up in the raids by mistake, they can probably get to 20 million or so.
The idea of the unaccountable criminal president began that day. Look where it brought us.
Lord High Overseer of Gibberish A friend owned an outdoor equipment store near me when I was in my 20s. When I stopped in to browse, Jim would smile and greet me like a stranger, saying mock-formally, “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?” Glancing through the glass counter at backpacking accessories on display, I replied with meandering nonsense. It was a running gag. “Yeah, I’m looking for one of those narrow, square, round things that’s kind of, you know, yellow with the, the purple pointed part that’s rounded on one side, with the, the, clippy thing that hooks onto the other part. You know. They’re about this long, but shorter, so they’ll nest inside if you have another one so you can put two of them together?” Jim would grin and answer, “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, we just sold the last one.” Among new employees looking on, heads would explode. A large fraction of the American electorate wants to hire a president who talks like that for real. Behold. Donald Trump answers questions from the Economic Club of New York: Trump’s uncle worked at MIT, dontcha know. Genius is in his genes.
They know nothing, nothing! By now you’ve read that the Department of Justice has indicted two employees of Russia’s RT network for spending nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russian propaganda into the U.S. digital mindstream: “The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.” “Our approach to combating foreign malign influence is actor-driven, exposing the hidden hand of adversaries pulling strings of influence from behind the curtain,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
It seems like only yesterday that the elite media were extremely concerned that President Joe Biden had mistakenly referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico. In the course of an otherwise cogent discussion of foreign affairs, he’d made that mistake in passing but it caused a huge uproar and spawned yet another round of critical reporting about his age and mental capacities. No one in the press blew off the gaffe and the substance of his comments went virtually unreported. That press conference came in the shadow of the Hur report, in which the Special Counsel had made a gratuitous comment about Biden being an elderly man with a bad memory. From that moment on almost every story about Joe Biden was framed in terms of his advanced age and the question of whether he was up to the job. The drumbeat continued for months until Biden’s disastrous debate performance validated their narrative and it continued until the day he withdrew from the race. No one in the media cut Joe Biden any slack for his performance.
Trump held another unhinged “press conference” (at which he took no questions) today: Trump today: “I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?” Well.. Trump 2005 Access Hollywood: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful women — I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” He went on for an hour like that. My favorite part was when he trashed his own legal team (standing behind him) and got mad that they didn’t bring up “the dress” in the hearing today. Apparently, he didn’t understand that this was an appellate hearing and there would be no new evidence presented. (The dress was disallowed at his original trial.) He was obviously very upset. Here are some excerpts: (It was not AI generated) Aaaand like clockwork:
Everyone’s been waiting for this so naturally it’s a dud: The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan postponed his sentencing until after Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House. In a ruling on Friday, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cited the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in” and rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26. He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency. “This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.” Yes it does. But once again, Trump gets the benefit of being a criminal who is running for president in order to evade accountability for his crimes. What a sweet, sweet scam this is.
The Trump spawn are in over their heads as usual It looks like the two oldest Trump boys are following the footsteps of their father the online media mogul whose stock will soon be worthless. They’re going to lose a lot of people a lot of money with this scam too: Plans by former president Donald Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to launch a crypto startup have set off alarm bells among even his staunchest allies in the sector, according to a new report in Politico. The two brothers have spent recent weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-be-launched, shrouded-in-secrecy cryptocurrency firm. But a string of mishaps, including Trump family members getting hacked by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep connections to a blockchain firm that lost $2 million because of security shortfalls, has some arguing they should pack it up before they begin. “This is a huge mistake,” Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer, told Politico.