He chose not to believe anyone who wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Ken Chesebro was one of those who were happy to give him what he wanted. And Trump listened: Former Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro has been talking to all kinds of legal inquiries andit seems there’s always something new for him to say. Here’s one of the latest: Before a group of supportive lawyers entered the Oval Office for a photo-op with then-President Donald Trump in December 2020, they were given a clear instruction, according to one attendee: Don’t get Trump’s hopes up about overturning the election. One attorney, Jim Troupis, toed the line. He’d just finished leading Trump’s failed election challenge in Wisconsin, and bluntly told the president it was over in that state. But when the conversation shifted to Arizona, attorney Kenneth Chesebro deviated from the plan. He told Trump he could still win – and explained how the “alternate electors” he helped assemble in Arizona and six other states gave Trump an opening to continue contesting the election until Congress certified the results on January 6, 2021.
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“Wings Over the World.” That was the proclamation I quite thoughtfully had inscribed beneath my high school graduation yearbook photo. Because “Wings Over America” seemed a bit understated for how I truly felt about that band during those musically formative … Continue reading
America’s fascist, collaborationist past Russian meddling in the 2016 election will be a factor in Donald Trump’s trial on his (alleged) attempt to overturn the 2020 election. See, he had good reason to think 2020 might have been rigged (AP): To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president to focus on cybersecurity and had a good-faith basis four years later to worry that foreign actors had again meddled in the race. But to federal prosecutors, 2016 is significant as the year that Trump spread misinformation about voter fraud and proved himself resistant to accepting the outcome of elections that might not go his way. But for now forget about the former Liar-in-Chief’s motivations and focus on Russia’s (in a moment). “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man. Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” expands on her podcast‘s tale of U.S.
And these are just for starters Judd Legum came up with a good Top 10 Trump dictatorial promises. I might have put invading Mexico and destroying NATO in the top 10 but that’s just me. Anyway, the first is his explicit promise to be a dictator on Day One. The following are the other nine: Trump says election fraud in 2020 gives him the power to “terminate” the Constitution On December 3, 2022, Trump posted the following message about the 2020 presidential election on his social media platform, Truth Social: Following a backlash from some Republican elected officials, Trump later claimed reports that he was open to terminating the Constitution were “fake news.” Trump says he will issue “full pardons” to January 6 insurrectionists Trump has promised to issue pardons to those involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
He doesn’t have the requisite gaudy glamour but he’s got something else. Just look at the arrogance of this conspiracy addled freak show saying that someone else isn’t living in reality: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Monday dug into Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) recent remarks against sending further aid to Ukraine, calling the Ohio Republican’s comments “total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑.” Vance, in an interview with former White House aid Steve Bannon earlier Monday, claimed some lawmakers are looking to cut Social Security benefits for more aid to Ukraine that he argued will be used so one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ministers “can buy a bigger yacht.” When asked about Vance’s remarks later on Monday, Tillis told reporters, “I think it’s bull‑‑‑‑.” “If you’re talking about giving money to Ukrainian ministers — total and unmitigated bull‑‑‑‑,” Tillis continued.
Huzzah! Maybe that’s a little bit dark. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and read the papers and turn on the news and it takes a while for my sunny disposition to reassert itself. (Ok, maybe I’m not that naturally sunny…) But I have to say after being on this earth for a long time now and writing about politics every single day for over 20 years, I do think I’ve developed a pretty good sense of when the political culture is going off the rails and when it’s business as usual. This may be the worst period I’ve experienced. I have some recollection of the 60s but I was a little kid and mostly absorbed it through my older brothers, one of whom went into the navy and the other who was a draft resistor and activist — along with my father the military man. It was fraught, to say the least. The 70s were my coming of age period and they were not pretty. Economically it was just awful. But I was young and having fun and somehow I just thought that scrambling for coins in the couch cushions was the way it was. The 80s were what I think of as my coke, MTV and Reagan years. I spent much of them travelling and then trying to build a career.
The NY Supreme Court allows the Democratic majority to draw the congressional maps Whew! New York’s highest court ordered the state to redraw its congressional map on Tuesday, delivering a ruling that immediately threw New York’s political landscape into chaos and reopened a process with sweeping national implications. State Democrats are now widely expected to try to shift anywhere from two to six Republican-held seats, from Long Island to Syracuse, toward their party — a major pre-election intervention in the 2024 fight for the House that could alter a key battleground. Powered by a new liberal majority, the State Court of Appeals effectively wiped out the highly competitive map that helped Republicans flip four seats and win the House majority. It said the neutral lines, which it had imposed just last year, were meant only to be a temporary fix. By a four-to-three vote, the court directed the state to restart a mapmaking process that would ultimately return control over the state’s 26 congressional districts to the Democratic-controlled State Legislature. The court had stripped away that power in 2022 after an attempted gerrymander.
I don’t know if Lindsey Graham has ever been more inappropriate or more fatuous than he’s being now. Ukrainian president Zelensky went up to Capitol Hill where he was treated very disrespectfully by the House and lectured by Graham in the Senate: “The key is to get the commander in chief involved in the negotiations. Sen. Murphy — I have no confidence he’s ever going to get a deal we can live with, because he’s worried about selling it to the left,” Graham said. “The commander in chief — if there’s a deal to be made — is going to have to get involved in the negotiations. It’s his job above all others.” The South Carolina Republican, who has been part of border discussions in recent weeks, also complained that Murphy has been “very unhelpful” and that his “attitude about what’s going on is off base.” “We’re not holding the border hostage. We’re trying to protect the American people,” Graham said. Murphy declined to comment directly on Graham’s remarks, saying only that, “You’ll have to ask Sen.
Trump accuses DeSantis of trying to steal Iowa Ed Kilgore has the story: Donald Trump famously likes to allege voter fraud against Democrats; it was the centerpiece of his “stolen election” claims in 2020 and in turn became the centerpiece of his campaign of retribution in 2024. But it’s been a while since he’s accused fellow Republicans of “rigging” elections … nearly eight years, to be exact, since he accused 2016 Iowa Caucus winner Ted Cruz of stealing that contest via false rumors his campaign allegedly spread about Ben Carson dropping out (it was a complicated conspiracy theory, to be sure). Though the odds of Trump losing Iowa this year are very low, his campaign issued a statement on Friday accusing Ron DeSantis, his most formidable opponent in the state (per the polling averages), of trying to steal this one: The backstory of this charge is pretty clear; it stems from a joint appearance DeSantis and his wife, Casey, made on Fox News on December 8, as the Washington Post reported: This remark turned a lot of heads, and not just at Mar-a-Lago.
And welcome to our annual celebration of the Great War on Christmas Yes, it’s that time of year again when we all eat too many goodies, wear ugly sweaters and pose with Santa Claus alongside our semi-automatic weapons. It’s Christmas time in America. And here at Hullabaloo it’s the time of year I ask you, my loyal readers, to put a little something into the old stocking to keep us going for yet another year. I think you all know how vital political information is right now. In fact, it’s never been more vital. Back when I was a young person, the biggest problem for most Americans was trying to wade through the conventional wisdom of the establishment media to find out the truth of what our government was really doing. That’s still an issue today but in the last few years we’ve had to confront the overwhelming problem of cacophonous propaganda bombarding us from every direction via our now ubiquitous social media. It is very hard to sort through it all, even for me and I have no life! Take this, for instance, from just this past weekend: You can say this is just fringe, and it should be.