Trump, Trumpism and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 “It ends with me.” Contemplating generations of family dysfunction that damaged him as a child and haunted his adulthood, a friend once vowed he would not pass “it” on to his children. America has yet to make that commitment and keep it. Donald Trump was formally charged in Washington, D.C. on Thursday with four federal crimes stemming from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Those efforts did not culminate with the violent insurrection he inspired at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump and his co-conspirators worked to subvert democracy that evening, even as police cleared the complex of rioters, and as hospitals treated the hundreds injured and processed the dead. The last of the charges special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment levied against Trump dates from the Reconstruction era. Will Bunch reminds Philadelphia Inquirer readers that President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 in response to a similar post-election riot in South Carolina the year before.
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Um, that’s a lot You remember these two? (The Tennessean): Four months after an expulsion vote thrust the pair into the national spotlight, Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson formally won reelection Thursday to their seats in the Tennessee General Assembly. Republicans voted to oust Jones and Pearson from the legislature in April after they interrupted House proceedings with a gun-control protest. But the two were quickly reappointed to the seats until this summer’s special elections. In Nashville, Jones defeated Republican opponent Laura Nelson with nearly 80% of the vote for the House District 52 seat. In Memphis, Pearson defeated Republican Jeff Johnston with more than 90% of the vote for the House District 86 seat. I had to read those margins again. Had a good laugh, too. “Today is a landslide victory by the people, for the people, and in community with the people,” Jones said in a statement to The Tennessean. “Republicans tried to expel our democracy and then tried to buy it, but the voters of District 52 sent a message to extremist Republicans: we will not be silenced.” Guess not.
The humanity He actually prefers “your majesty.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” It was a poet who said that, exercising occupational license. Some sage, it may have been I, declared in similar vein: “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treaties—if I can write its economic textbooks.” The first lick is the privileged one, impinging … Continue reading "The Day I Pranked Paul Samuelson"
Trump’s defenders slink to the occasion Donald Trump will be arraigned in a Washington, D.C. court this afternoon on charges spelled out in the indictment a federal grand jury handed down on Tuesday. He and his defenders will googolplex down on lies and distortions about those charges. First up from his defense team is that Trump is being prosecuted for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech. That is not a legal defense, but a political one for consumption and repetition by his supporters. They will do both. The former president’s alleged crimes are spelled out on the cover page of the grand jury’s indictment: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, Defendant. And in paragraph four (pg. 2). And at the top of page 3 (COUNT ONE). And at the top of pages 43, 44 and 45 (COUNTS TWO, THREE and FOUR). Chapter and verse.
“Hand-counting is typically expensive, inaccurate and impractical” NBC News: Some conservatives, including allies of former President Donald Trump, have pushed hand-counting ballots as a way to ensure the accuracy of election results. But Mohave County’s experience punctures that talking point, showing that hand-counting is typically expensive, inaccurate and impractical. In short, hand-counting ballots isn’t as easy as it sounds. Mohave County, home to an estimated 220,000 people in the northwestern corner of Arizona, is one of a handful of U.S. counties that has considered hand-counting ballots, thanks in part to election conspiracy theories that have driven distrust in ballot tabulators. After the 2020 election, the Arizona state Senate authorized a controversial hand-count audit of two races. The audit took months and cost millions, and — by its leadership’s own account in text messages obtained by The Arizona Republic — failed to result in an accurate count. Oh, right. Sure. That’s what the “experts” said, think MAGA conspiracy theorists.
Sadly, he’s been proven right The NY Times used to keep a running tally of his lies but I think it just became too hard after a while, but there is still analysis: Running through the indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election was a consistent theme: He is an inveterate and knowing liar. The indictment laid out how, in the two months after Election Day, Mr. Trump “spread lies” about widespread election fraud even though he “knew that they were false.” Mr. Trump “deliberately disregarded the truth” and relentlessly disseminated them anyway at a “prolific” pace, the indictment continued, “to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.” Of course, Mr. Trump has never been known for fealty to truth.
This piece in the Bulwark takes a look at the two main defenses that Trump’s lawyers are likely to employ when it comes to a trial. (If it comes to a trial.) I don'[t know if this is correct but it’s interesting.
As one twitter wag quipped: “Less than a year ago reporters were gushing over how ‘savvy’ DeSantis is.” DeSantis just wrapped up a three-day trip to New Hampshire, his first since downsizing his campaign due to financial problems. On the ground, it was clear the challenges he faces here remain significant, even as his chief rival confronts major legal problems. But on paper, Desantis’s path to winning the GOP nomination is clear, said Scott Maltzie, a Republican activist and DeSantis supporter from Concord. “We’ve got to convince the soft Trump voters not to vote for Trump,” he said, after DeSantis spoke in Rochester Monday. “And we’ve got to convince the people currently supporting the others that they have no chance in hell.” […] Throughout his trip to New Hampshire, he appeared bent on demonstrating that no candidate talks tougher.
Here on planet earth it was the opposite The transcript of the testimony earlier this week from Devon Archer has been released and Philip Bump has the details: Soon after Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer finished testifying before investigators working for the House Oversight Committee, two top House Republicans joined Sean Hannity’s Fox News program in prime time. Archer’s testimony was enormously damaging to President Biden, they suggested, with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) insisting that Archer’s testimony made the bribery allegation he’d first introduced two months ago “more credible.” That allegation centered on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden and Archer once sat on its board. Archer “said that Hunter Biden was under immense pressure while they both served on the Burisma board to call Washington, D.C., immediately and try to get Shokin fired,” Comer told Hannity. “That’s the Ukrainian prosecutor. And not many days later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine” — a trip in which he called for Shokin’s ouster.