CNN’s Daniel Dale sets the record straight on Trump’s grotesque insults toward the Fulton County DA: Former President Donald Trump has launched a barrage of attacks, many of them dishonest, against the Georgia district attorney who is prosecuting him over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. Both before and after he was indicted Monday in Fulton County, Trump targeted District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, in speeches, social media posts and a television ad released by his 2024 election campaign, which Trump also posted on social media. Below is a fact check of two of his false claims, an inflammatory claim for which there is no evidence, and a misleading claim from the campaign ad. The legitimacy of the 2020 election Trump has repeatedly accused Willis of refusing to investigate the supposed theft of the 2020 election. He wrote in a social media post on Sunday: “The only Election Interference that took place in Fulton County, Georgia, was done by those that Rigged and Stole the Election, not by me, who simply complained that the Election was Rigged and Stolen.
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This is a good piece about Pence from JV Last. I know I should feel more compassion for the man but it’s really hard. All those years of being a cruel right wing theocrat and then eagerly sucking up to the crude libertine Donald Trump makes it impossible for me to see him as anything but a hypocrite — at best. There is a theory I cannot test, but which I believe to be true: If Mike Pence were to walk through the crowd at a Donald Trump rally—for instance, the recent giant event where 50,000 Trump supporters swamped the town of Pickens, South Carolina—he would need a security detail. He would not be safe without one, and he might not be safe with one either. In fact, I have a hard time believing that any Secret Service team would agree to go along with such an excursion. Enough Trump supporters hate Pence that much. By contrast, I believe Pence could safely walk through the crowd at a Joe Biden event—like his June 17 rally in Philadelphia—without any security.
The American right lost its religion Pondering the collapse of the simulacrum of conservative faith in God and country, Hemmingway’s account of how one goes bankrupt comes to mind: “gradually and then suddenly.” Digby and then Will Bunch remarked on the NPR interview last week with Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today magazine, about his new book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America.” The openness with which holy, coal-rolling Christian nationalists rejected both Jesus and the nation’s founding principles is only a surprise to those who have not been keen observers of the political and religious right. Their pas de deux has spun on since the 1970s, their steamy embrace growing closer with the decades. “The increasingly dire, near-death experience of American democracy has felt like the proverbial frog in boiling water,” Bunch begins. But it’s not just democracy at risk. Evangelicals and American conservatives have lost their faith, gradually and then suddenly.
How will Judge Tanya Chutkan respond? Ten days and a second stern warning later, the toddler threw his spoon again early this morning (Politico): Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case. In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote. What followed is in all caps, of course. He’s daring her to do it. The deranged teetotaler is so drunk on himself, he thinks he’s bulletproof. Trump was alluding to Chutkan’s remark during the October 2022 sentencing of Christine Priola of Ohio. Chutkan admonished Priola, before sentencing her to 15 months in jail, about the Jan. 6 mob’s threat to the peaceful transfer of power. “I see the videotapes.
It looks like Sidney Powell is the preferred fall guy Make room under that bus: JACK SMITH’S LATEST indictment of Donald Trump isn’t yet two weeks old, but the alleged “co-conspirators” it identifies are already beginning to turn on each other — and some of them aren’t even being subtle about it. A number of the ex-president’s chief lieutenants and alleged co-conspirators in the plot to overturn the election, such as conservative attorney John Eastman, have insisted the effort was perfectly legal and based on sound evidence. Others, however, have recently sought to distance themselves from the efforts of others, implicitly heaping the blame for any potential criminal conduct onto fellow participants in Trump’s attempted coup. “It is the ‘please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail’ strategy that was sure to come up at some point or another,” says one attorney working in Trump’s legal orbit.
Why is RFK Jr bothering? I honestly can’t understand what he’s getting out of this: Democratic presidential hopeful and known anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that he would support a national ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy if elected, only to walk back the stance hours later alleging he “misunderstood” repeated questions from NBC News on the topic. “Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by an NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair,” a spokesperson said, clarifying the candidate’s stance on abortion as “always” being the woman’s right to choose. Kennedy “does not support legislation banning abortion,” the spokesman added. But Sunday morning, Kennedy was much more specific, telling NBC: “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life.” Pressed on whether that meant signing a federal ban at 15 or 21 weeks, he said yes.
The utter gall of these Republicans never fails to astonish me. They outdo themselves. And yes, I have to say that it’s a little bit weird that the Democrats didn’t take a deeper look at this when they had the majority in the House. And the last I heard, they have the majority in the Senate. But I guess Trump’s kids are still off limits, even the ones who were his closest White House advisers while he was president. Nice for them.
… what else is new? That didn’t take long: After U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan made explicit Friday that she will do whatever is necessary to protect the integrity of the proceedings in the Jan. 6 case of U.S. v. Trump, the former president resumed his public attacks on her and her proceedings. In posts and reposts on his Truth Social platform, Trump impugned Chutkan, her motives, and the proceedings against him. Not surprising or unprecedented to anyone who has paid even a smidge of attention to Trump’s history of acting out in legal matters, but no less damaging or destructive or corrosive to the rule of law. The latest attack last night: An earlier repost by Trump from the weekend: What will be done about it? What can be done about it? Judge Chutkan can haul him into court and read him the riot act, she can impose further restrictions on his out-of-court statements, and she can ultimately hold him in contempt, even remand him into custody pending trial.
Very rarely do I review a book and find that the best way to convey its significance is to quote, verbatim, its first four paragraphs: In 2020, during the darkest hours of the global coronavirus pandemic, the US government spent $3 trillion to help rescue the country’s – and, to some extent, the world’s – … Continue reading "The Paradox of Debt, by the Tycho Brahe of Credit"