An increasingly desperate establishment is cracking down on dissent, both on the right and on the left.
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The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) seems more interested in sweeping the story under the carpet — and shutting down other investigations — than uncovering the truth. Read here.
Convicted like you’ve never seen before It’s a first America doesn’t need, and yet it does. The Washington Post reports yesterday’s news: Donald Trump was convicted Thursday on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case, becoming the first former U.S. president to be tried and found guilty of a crime. All of America watched in the aftermath of the Great Recession as its architects in the finance industry took home bonuses even as they took back the homes of families to whom they’d sold “No income, no asset” (NINA) loans, a.k.a. “liar loans.” The Department of the Treasury under Barack Obama “foamed the runway” for the banks to prevent hard landings in the crisis. But it left homeowners out in the cold. The Department of Justice looked the other way.
Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, found guilty by a jury of his peers in the city in which he was born and raised and lived for the first 70 years of his life. The front page of his former hometown newspaper looked like this today: Republicans have all rallied in support of the Dear Leader by whining and complaining about the judicial system being used against a political opponent, apparently trying to convince the American people that anyone running for office should be immune from prosecution for their crimes. (That’s pretty rich coming from the crowd that chanted “lock her up” for four solid years.) Needless to say, every one of the lawsuits filed against him and the crimes he is accused of were being very publicly investigated long before he decided to run for president again. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that that’s why he did it. As the LA Times Doyle McManus pointed out back in October of 2021: As long as he’s running (or even sort of running), Trump can denounce every inquest and subpoena as just another part of a political vendetta.
Surprisingly? The right wingers are having themselves a good old-fashioned cry today. Or, more accurately, a full-blown tantrum. It’s just astonishing. This is my favorite take on that by Philip Bump. He asks Republicans a question I wish everyone would ask: “I’m running because far too often, we have two standards of justice — one for the rich and powerful and connected, and another for everyone else,” Bragg said in a video announcing his bid. “We must follow the facts wherever they lead, regardless of how influential the person under investigation is.” In the years since, the idea that there are two standards of justice has been embraced by Bragg’s most prominent target: former president Trump. In Trump’s formulation, the issue isn’t that people in positions of influence are getting away with crimes. Instead, it’s that he — and theoretical others on the right — are being unfairly targeted by an out-of-control criminal justice system. It’s an argument that holds enormous sway with Trump’s base of support and the broader right-wing media bubble that surrounds it.
Some random cuteness to cap a good week: Some other good news for DC: Since China first sent giant pandas to the National Zoo following the normalizing of ties with the U.S. in 1972, the iconic bears have been a sign of friendship between the two nations. But the number of giant pandas at U.S. zoos has dwindled as tensions between Washington and Beijing rose in recent years. D.C.’s last three pandas — Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and their cub, Xiao Qi Ji — returned to China in November per the terms of the zoo’s loan agreement with the Chinese government. A return was uncertain. Now, the many new bears China has pledged to send to the U.S. in recent months are a promising sign for “panda diplomacy.” Diplomatic goodwill was on full display during the National Zoo announcement, where Chinese ambassador Xie Feng dubbed the duo “our new envoys of friendship.” 🼠Meet the pandas: Bao Li is a 2-year-old male and the son of Bao Bao, the female panda born at the zoo in 2013, and the grandson of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, the two pandas who left the zoo last year.
The sickest thing you will read this week My God: DAYS AFTER DOZENS of Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes against displacement camps in Southern Gaza, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wrote “Finish them!” on Israeli artillery shells. Haley, who recently sputtered in her bid to defeat former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, toured a kibbutz ravaged by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel in the company of current Knesset member and former U.N. envoy Danny Danon. “If you think this will only be in Israel, if we are arrogant enough, this could absolutely happen in America too and this is the moral of this story,” Haley said at one point during the visit. Danon posted a collage of photos on Tuesday showing Haley writing on an artillery shell. “Finish them!
That was a moment, wasn’t it? Watching MSNBC’s Guilty/Not Guilty counter click its way up to 34 Trump guilty verdicts was a moment I won’t forget. I heard about the 9/11 attack in New York from a colleague who’d heard of it in a phone call from home. I thought it must have been an internet rumor. Then I couldn’t even connect to the internet to check. It wasn’t a rumor. Neither was yesterday’s verdict. So. What does it mean? Well, Donald John Trump is a felon 34 times over. His cult is pissed (Reuters): Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution. After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit. Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.
Sad! Julia Davis at the Daily Beast follows the Russian media. They’re even more distraught than the Republicans: Russian state-controlled media apparatus closely followed legal troubles of the former U.S. President Donald J. Trump, spicing up most of their coverage with pro-Trump clips from Fox News and Tucker Carlson. Russian propagandists were openly hoping for a hung jury and were visibly disappointed when Trump became a convicted felon on all 34 charges he was facing. On Friday morning, Dmitry Kulikov, host of Solovyov Live, the self-described “most patriotic channel” in Russia, said on-air, “They wronged our Donald Trump!” Malek Dudakov, a political scientist who specializes in America, said that the hope for a miracle—meaning a hung jury—was extinguished. He said, with Russia’s affectionate middle name usage, “The miracle did not happen. Our Donald Fredovych was found guilty on all 34 counts.” For that, Dudakov blamed the judge and the jury and baselessly claimed that all of them were prejudiced against Trump.