The sooner he’s consigned to the dustbin, the better Not a fan of Joe Scarborough, but he’s right about this. History, if it isn’t written by MAGAstan scholars, will come to revile Donald Trump and his authoritarian movement.
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Yes it is… Fox News anchor Julie Banderas on Monday curiously defended Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election by insisting that “hatching schemes to stay in office” while “claiming you won an election you know you lost” are not crimes. While serving as guest anchor on Monday’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus, Banderas interviewed former deputy assistant attorney general Tom Dupree about Trump’s attempt to move the Jan. 6 trial to West Virginia and force the judge to recuse herself. After Dupree said Trump’s legal team faced an “uphill battle” on both fronts, Banderas then raged about how it was “impossible” for the thrice-indicted ex-president to be “impartially” tried in that case. She also noted that Trump is expected to soon be indicted for a fourth time, this time in Georgia over his election meddling efforts in that state. “Politics written all over it,” she exclaimed. “Attorneys are supposed to represent the law, not politics, OK? Judges, same! Judges are the only ones able to recuse themselves, OK?
TNR: The last Congress, the 117th, which sat from January 2021 through January 2023, was controlled by Democrats on both sides of the Capitol. These lawmakers worked in concert with a new Democratic president, so naturally, we witnessed an unusual amount of legislative activity. Wanna guess how much? The 117th Congress passed, and Joe Biden signed, 362 laws. The 118th Congress—the current one; the one that opened with the clown show where Kevin McCarthy needed 15 ballots to be elected speaker by his own party—has not been quite the hive of productivity that its predecessor was. So far, seven months into its term, it has passed, and the president has signed, 12 bills. They’re on track, if they can possibly keep up this scorching pace for the next 17 months, to pass maybe 44, even 45 or 46 bills! They are not in the business of legislating. They have no agenda. They are in the business of helping Donald Trump enact revenge. After all, that busy Democratic congress also managed to impeach him twice. That will not stand…
You heard it here first kids. I wrote back in 2021, not long after J6 that they would impeach Biden. Trump would demand it. If there was time he would have them impeach him three times so that Biden would be the most impeached president in history rather than him. Look at the excuse their telling themselves: Republicans say if they don’t move forward with an impeachment inquiry now, it will create the impression that House Republicans have essentially cleared Biden of any wrongdoing over his ties to his son Hunter Biden’s business entanglements, allegations they say show a pay-to-play scheme when the elder Biden was vice president, even as they have yet to corroborate that provocative allegation. The real reason, as I said, is that Trump is demanding it. That’s all they need because they’re all sycophantic twats. But this is a good one too. They are telling themselves that if they don’t impeach it will somehow make people think that they were unable to prove he is corrupt. Which he isn’t. So they will impeach him instead? What?
It really is the big mystery. We know that Mike Pence testified before the Grand Jury. He’s now speaking out much more straight forwardly than he did before. But Mark Meadows is still missing in action and he doesn’t appear in the indictment.( He almost certainly should be an unindicted co-conspirator since he was on the horn to numerous people on the other end of the plot(s).) Is he cooperating? As much as we know from Jack Smith’s two criminal indictments of Trump and the forthcoming indictment in Georgia, we still know relatively little about the facts behind these indictments. That includes the vast amount of information and evidence gathered from the House select committee that investigated Jan. 6 (but had no subpoena power) as well as that gathered by Smith and Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis that almost certainly will not be shared with the American public until Trump faces a courtroom trial. For example, to this point we do not know how many individuals and groups were involved in the coordinated efforts across seven states and the District of Columbia to steal the 2020 election from the American people.
A true leader: Former President Donald Trump mocked Chris Christie, one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, over eating habits and weight Tuesday. “Don’t call him a fat pig,” Trump playfully admonished an audience member who shouted out during a speech at a high school gym in Windham, N.H. “You can’t do that.” Trump was apprising the audience of recent polls that show him leading when he first mentioned the former New Jersey governor, who was once one a close adviser. “Christie, he’s eating right now,” Trump said. “He can’t be bothered.” That’s when a man in the crowd shouted out to prod Trump. “Sir, please do not call him a fat pig. I’m trying to be nice. Don’t call him a fat pig,” Trump said. “You can’t do that.” Isn’t he cute? There’s more: He seems to think that he will be “proving” that the Big Lie was actually the truth in his trial. I doubt the court will allow that but in the event it does, he will regret it. Cheap, amateur propaganda like that is very easily rebutted.
For real Unindicted co-conspirator John Eastman gave an interview last week in which he discussed all the reason why the country is going to hell (transgender youth and ergonomic chairs are at the top of the list) and explained how that gave Trump the right to ignore the constitution. It’s worth reading in full to get a good sense of just how batshit this guy really is. Josh Marshall had some useful thoughts on this: There’s a lot of atmospherics in this interview, a lot of bookshelf-lined tweedy gentility mixed with complaints about OSHA regulations and Drag Queen story hours. But the central bit comes just over half way through the interview when Eastman gets into the core justification and purpose for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and overthrow the constitutional order itself. He invokes the Declaration of Independence and says quite clearly that yes, we were trying to overthrow the government and argues that they were justified because of the sheer existential threat America was under because of the election of Joe Biden.
Huffington Post published this last week. I can’t say it shocks me — or that I believe it’s the only example of this phenomenon: A prominent conservative writer, lionized by Silicon Valley billionaires and a U.S. senator, used a pen name for years to write for white supremacist publications and was a formative voice during the rise of the racist “alt-right,” according to a new HuffPost investigation. Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name “Richard Hoste” in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a “race realist.” He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed “miscegenation” and “race-mixing.” And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.
The US is going to hell is a lovely sentiment from someone who wants to be president. Kicking a sports team that represents America, especially a women’s sports team, when it’s down is especially thoughtful. You can certainly understand why 38% of Americans are just gaga over this man.
I don’t know quite what to make of all this but I’ll just throw it out there for you to mull over: Apparently, quite a few people think the indictments are simultaneously trying to stop Trump while also upholding the rule of law and defending democracy. I’m pretty sure that prosecutors trying to stop the Trump campaign would not be in keeping with either of those two things. I guess some people are confused. People may decide they don’t want an indicted criminal suspect for president but nobody is trying to stop him from running or stop anyone from voting for him. Are they suggesting that he shouldn’t be prosecuted because he is running for president even if there is evidence against him? This distinction between MAGA Republicans and Non-MAGA Republicans is not particularly useful at this point. If you are willing to vote for Trump then I fail to see the difference. Yep. 68% think Biden is illegitimate based upon nothing but bullshit from Donald Trump and his henchmen. That’s the ballgame. More Democrats than Independents or Republicans are concerned about both. That certainly says something, I’m not sure what.