He then said “Some people said I should have done it. Would have been very easy to do it. But I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country.” Philip Bump responds: This is nonsense. Trump’s administration did attempt to effect legal retribution against his opponents, including Clinton. It wasn’t that he didn’t try, it was that it wasn’t “very easy” to do. Trump came into office railing against the intelligence community and the FBI because of the investigation into Russian interference that was publicly reported soon after he won the 2016 election. He fired FBI Director James B. Comey in an explicit effort to kneecap that probe, resulting in the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Mueller ultimately determined that there were links between Trump’s campaign and Russian actors, and that the campaign embraced Russia’s assistance, but that there was no coordination that violated the law.
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Sadly, yes… Republicans used to call themselves the moral majority. Last week, Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony charges in the hush-money case against him. Compared to before the verdict, the biggest changes we found in a post-conviction poll conducted between May 31 and June 2 are in Republicans’ positions on felony, crime in general, and the presidency. They have shifted in a way that puts the verdict in a more favorable light and keeps Trump’s candidacy viable. For example, fewer Republicans think it should be illegal to pay hush money for the purposes of influencing an election than did a year ago, and more now say felons should be allowed to become president than did a few months ago. Sigh…
We are so much better off
We’re still fighting fascism June 6 is my parents’ anniversary. As a Boomer, I remember the date first for that. My father was too young for WWII. But my late father-in-law was not. He arrived in Europe after the D-Day invasion, but fighting as an infantryman and a scout for the 100th Infantry Division marked him for life. His shelves were filled with books on the war, on Hitler and the Nazis. As a young man, how could the rest of his life compare with that experience? But he rarely discussed the fighting. Post by @ajsandyman View on Threads Post by @therickwilson View on Threads In his things after he died, we found a Bronze Star Ken never mentioned. I discovered the Pentagon gave them out like party favors to soldiers who’d been in theater a decade or so after the war. So it was not something he’d brag about. He valued another medal more. We brought him to a Democratic fundraiser dinner once where Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia was the featured speaker. (You remember him. He lost three limbs in Vietnam.) They’d invited veterans. Our table was full of men Ken’s age.
This is really getting terrifying: Julie Adams, a member of the Fulton County election board, filed her lawsuit on May 22 with the help of lawyers from America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank. The lawsuit seeks access to voting records that Adams says she was denied by Fulton County’s election director, Nadine Williams, and also seeks the court’s ruling on whether Adams’ duty to certify election results is up to her discretion. Adams’ lawsuit specifically requests that the judge “clarify” that her “duties are, in fact, discretionary, not ministerial.” This MAGA flunky wants the “discretion” to overturn the election results. […] The Adams lawsuit is an attempt to pave the way for Republican election officials to deny election results en masse — a fundamental part of Trump’s strategy of baselessly questioning election results and making claims of widespread voter fraud. According to Axios, the Republican National Committee has been staffing up lawyers, legal observers, and poll watchers to “gather string for lawsuits challenging the results of the Nov.
Overwhelming corruption: Former Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner engaged in a “level of corruption that we’ve just never seen” when talking about his firm’s recent investments overseas. Rhodes made the comment when asked about The New York Times’s recent reporting that detailed that 99 percent of Kushner’s investment fund’s money came from foreign sources. The outlet also reported Kushner is working on developing hotels in the Balkans, specifically in Serbia and Albania, and noted that the firm has taken money from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “I mean, look, this is not subtle corruption that we’re looking at,” Rhodes told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner during his Wednesday appearance on “Alex Wagner Tonight.” “This is a guy, Jared Kushner, who had no expertise, no qualification whatsoever to be in the White House while he was there. He made it his account to work in the Gulf Arab states. He basically helped lead the cover-up for [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman].
Elections are about perceptions “Part of the psychology of the American voter is that they want, while there’s a dog fight going on, to see how much fight is in the dog,” says former Republican campaign adviser Rick Wilson. I saw that Politico article quoting anonymous Democratic “operatives” and “advisors” in “full-blown freakout” over Joe Biden and groaned. Just groaned. What were they thinking? Not Politico, the unnamed Democratic sources. How many times have I cited … well, how many times did Sylvester Stallone redeploy his successful formula for Rocky? Six times, just in the original franchise. Repetition is important. From Will Democrats Fight? I’ve noted before: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make? And they’re all the same movie. So why do people keep going? Because so many Americans themselves feel like underdogs. We want to root for the little guy with heart. Facing insurmountable odds. Risking it all. We want to feel the thrill up our spines and in the tops of our heads when Bill Conti’s trumpet fanfare introduces the training sequence. We want to hear that. Wait for it.
Here’s a sample of her “questioning.” She said that Dr. Fauci should be tried for crimes against humanity because of social distancing and mask wearing. I just can’t… Update: Here’s another one I guess this is their way of distracting their brainwashed followers from the fact that their Dear Leader is a convicted felon who was the guy in charge during the pandemic? They’re getting loonier by the day.
Aaron Blake at the Washington Post took a look at some of Trump’s threats of violence: In his first interview since being convicted on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, Trump this past weekend addressed the possibility of being imprisoned or put under house arrest by saying, “I’m not sure the public would stand for it.” “I think it would be tough for the public to take,” Trump told Fox News. “You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.” This is vintage Trump. He’s not explicitly advocating unrest. He’s not even explicitly mentioning unrest in this case. But he is suggestively pointing to something very bad around the corner if he doesn’t get what he wants. He’s good at that. And it suggests that he knows exactly what he’s doing. Consciousness of guilt. It’s just been demonstrated with his daft comment about never saying “lock her up.” He was usually cautious about not personally saying it, just smiling and nodding as his cult chanted it at his rallies. Being a criminal himself he knew that it could come back to haunt him. Consciousness of guilt.
That’s a quote from an article in the New Yorker about people who are sticking with Trump even though he’s a convicted criminal. I love the fact that he cites Tony Soprano, the ridiculously fucked-up, penny ante, murderous gangster. It fits but I didn’t think anyone would want such a fool to run the United States of America. I don’t think it’s any accident that he didn’t pick a more standard right wing anti-hero like Dirty Harry. He was a cop and they’re not really sure about them anymore. Best go with the straight-up mobsters. These people don’t actually want a “shock to the system.” They just want somebody to punish their enemies, period. And that’s you. And me. Amanda Marcotte had a great piece the other day on this subject: As the trial progressed, Trump escalated far beyond his tired litany of claims that everything was “rigged” against him, though he kept that pattern up. He’s been experimenting by trying to cast himself as a rakish outlaw. He wants voters to imagine his crimes are about standing up to a corrupt system.