Trump on Any Day Ending in "Y"

 

Trump announces he wants to throw “everyone on the [January 6] committee” in jail. pic.twitter.com/33hEYGByu1

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) December 8, 2024

Trump "Met the Press" and in his interview with Kristen Welker, he said all kinds of incredibly fascinating things. He still only had "concepts of a plan" with respects to health care. He's going to deport the "Dreamers" and is looking into ending birthright citizenship (which is actually in the Constitution). He lied about how many murders have been committed by undocumented migrants. He admitted he "can't guarantee" his tariffs won't raise prices (because they will).  He's going to get rid of Christopher Wray as head of the FBI for no other reason than wanting his own attack-dog there. 

Oh yes, and he wants the 1/6 Committee in prison for noticing he defrauded people by lying about the 2020 election and directed a crowd of rioters at the Capitol to "Stop the Steal (AKA the lawful certification of the election)" and then the Committee really went wild and pointed it out. 

TrumpWorld is always a bit more mad that people point out wrongdoing then that they are guilty of it. Trump is allergic to accountability. It makes him break out in vendetta.

Yesterday's Durham Hearing Was Interesting

 

MAGA wants Durham to be someone he is not and say something he cannot. pic.twitter.com/AJFhrKDf3a

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 22, 2023

There's the rub--at bottom, you can't actually deny the evidence of Russia interfering. What you can do, is ignore the evidence of willingness to accept that interference on behalf of the Trump campaign, but at the risk of seeming out of one's depths--as if it were possible to investigate an investigation and come up knowing nothing about it. Even fash-friendly five-head Matt Gaetz was wondering what Durham had been doing with this time. (ALthough he alleged a "cover-up".)

Or you can make false statements to congress because there are just some things you can't say about Trump and Russia--you know, like it never was a hoax. 

After all, Congressional Republicans just censured Rep. Adam Schiff for just that--telling the truth. And for what it's worth, for all the giddy Republicans who noted that Trump's poll numbers and fundraising could benefit from the indictments against him--how do they think a transparently unfair censure of Rep. Schiff is going to make loyal Democrats react? 

This is where the House GOP is now, Speaker McCarthy barely has a grip on his folks, and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were inches from a catfight over the privilege and pleasure of impeaching President Biden for...something. Eating crackers, I guess. (They also want to expunge Trump's impeachment, but we will always remember the "perfect phone call.")

What's that tv quote going around? These are not "serious people".

They Damn Well Should!

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on committee to investigate January 6th insurrection:

“If witnesses do not show up, we will hold them in criminal contempt.” pic.twitter.com/4P8bq0WlCT

— The Recount (@therecount) October 12, 2021

Because these little jackasses think it's funny and are still spreading lies every day.  (Reminder: it's really obstruction of justice. And Trump has a history of getting people to do just that.)

Heads on a Pike, Anyone?

TONIGHT: White House impeachment defense surrogate Mark Meadows (R-NC), alongside three GOP members of Congress, tells @NorahODonnell that he believes Republican senators will face political repercussions if they break with Pres. Trump; watch more at 6:30 p.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/uke5VOCEgg

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 27, 2020

I'm reasonably sure that the artificial pearls of the GOP Senators who balked at Rep. Adam Schiff's reiteration of a CBS news story are at least durable enough to withstand this assault upon their wide-eyed cherubic vision of the benevolence of President Trump and their boundless appreciation that he has not politically poleaxed any or all of them yet, amen.

See also:

Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2020

Oh jeepers creepers, there's no vengefulness here, oh my gosh no. I mean, unless you look at everything Trump does ever including the time he denied health insurance to his dead brother's boy and the long-standing feuds he continues with people even after they have died.

The correct response to this of a co-equal branch of government might, and I am not holding out hope, just offering suggestions, be to say "Fuck you, now it's war." He's guilty. Manifestly, even self-confessedly so in some ways. Mulvaney copped to the quid pro quo, Bolton is fixing to publish it, and Sondland spilled his heart out in the House testimony that everyone was in the loop. The picture will never get better, and there are "tapes".

But here's my epistle to the Republicans:

I hate to do the Bible stuff myself as a nonbeliever, but what price the presidency (the world) if the cost is your integrity (immortal soul)? Dems might even try to forget how much Pence is entirely in the loop if you sold the MF out.

Who stands for the truth? There's no reward in it. It isn't going to save your seat. It isn't going to make you a hero. It just makes you actually good.

If there was any other reason to ever run for the Senate than to be honest and do the right thing, I am so sorry. That reason was wrong. Just give a shit about the truth. Just do the right thing. At the end of the day, not having a government of moral monsters might just mean something, and if you ever wanted civility to return, you have to start with siding, even sometimes, against madness. These fellow party-members are saying the calculus is, serve Trump or politically die. And if you go along, you are already some kind of dead. Because you went with the flow, and followed a multitude to do evil.

Feck. I don't think the GOP Senate listens to me, a D-list blogger of The Left. And the schmaltzy moral smack-downs have already been flying fast and furious to no avail.

So here's another way of looking at it--you're not locked in here with President Trump, so much as he's locked in here with you. If you found your unified voice, you could peel the bark off his support. Wrong is just wrong. There is only so much shit any reasonable person can take, let alone a party of reasonable commonsense people who have been asked one nonsense thing too far.

I am not rooting for the Republican party. The Republican party has been the party of Kissinger and Watergate and Iran-Contra and laughing at AIDS patients my whole life. The party of misrepresenting MLK while promoting Voter ID and Crosscheck, the party of Gingrich and Hastert, and the party where after 40 years of knowing what was up the reality of the October Surprise and El Mozote massacre are finally being proven history. (Vindicating many journalists and human rights activists reportage at the time.)

Look, I never wished your party well. If the US had a Liberal Democrat and a Socialist party as our main two, I'd be satisfied. The Republican party is too insular and anti-multicultural to even be competent at diplomacy. You actually had 47 should-have-known better people sign a letter against the "Obama" (multilateral) Iran nuclear deal. Tom Cotton is a life-support system for an adam's apple, not a plausible foreign policy hand, but older, wiser people signed on to effectively troll....Dems. Against an actual plausible multilateral enforceable Iran antinuclear deal. Bravo. This was how you got Trump. By watching Fox News and believing it or thinking your constituents believing it mattered instead of showing leadership and cancelling them!

Let me tell you about cancel-culture--it's great! When some fuckhead news shill or other asshole signifies assholery, you counter them with facts and say they can't exist unless they get right. That's how you dominate your party's discourse, instead of Tuna Lamprey being out there on a national news network for some reason ever. What is her expertise? Like, what?

We are different, you conservatives and me. But we live on the same landmasses. What about admitting "orange man" (we know it is tv makeup which actually makes it sorrier!) actually is bad because all the things he does looks bad, and then we move on to how we talk like human beings with sense together from here? Your heads don't have to be on a pike. We get honest. You recognize Trump is a racist obnoxious pig who isn't relevant to our shared future.


Leftists love asylum-seekers. Treat us like the sympathetic bitches we are. Ditch that zero and be the hero you want to be. We will support you. Maybe. But Trump in power means everybody will eventually get just a little fucked. Some a lot. Is that your king?

Who Do They Think is On Trial?

"An impeachment trial without witnesses would be a stunning departure from this institution's past practice...The Senate has always taken its responsibility to administer a fair trial seriously." -@RepJeffries on hundreds of years of precedent for witnesses in impeachment trials. pic.twitter.com/PwNX601DdA

— House Intelligence Committee (@HouseIntel) January 22, 2020

With every 53-47 vote taken with respects to requesting additional witnesses or documents, a pattern begins to emerge: the Republicans in the Senate really, truly, do not want to have any pertinent information at this impeachment trial. I don't think this should be news, even though many very hopeful people called Senate offices thinking: "We only need four honest Senators and true." (Who are not afraid to discover things like, what, when, how, why, where and with who?)

But the exercise of making separate motions and demonstrating a case for each motion isn't a pointless bit of drudgery intended to wear out Senators making an awfully late night of it. (How ever they would have managed the two nights into the wee hours that McConnell originally suggested, I do not know.) They are breaking down the very case that was made in the House with the peripheral information that would be illuminated by the additional information and getting the Senate GOP on record as having rejected each thoroughly articulated case.

Getting them on record for what they are willing to defend or support from this President has a certain value. Republicans are treating President Trump like he might be a floatation device going in to the 2020 elections, but there is a solid probability that he could be a rotting albatross tied to an anchor.

I think Jennifer Rubin is right, here:

In his calm and methodical presentation, Schiff scored a victory: Democrats have effectively built the case that the Senate would be guilty of a coverup if it allows Trump to continue to conceal witnesses and documents. (Since the public already believes by huge margins that witnesses should be allowed, Schiff has the wind of public opinion at his back.)

People don't innately trust Trump, the Senate, and sure as heck not McConnell. A substantial number of people believe we need to know what is going on, but here the GOP are, trying to make sure people don't hear everything. That really does look like a cover-up.

And we know that can be more damaging than the crime. But insofar as we have abuse of power and use of government resources for basically his own campaign, the underlying crimes (like, violation of the Impound Control Act and extortion and basically using government personnel to be his oppo research team?) are also really bad.

And so far, no Republicans can even show an interest. Sad!


Also, and not for nothing, Trump's defense? He is not getting the best people.

UPDATE: It's like this--

"My colleagues are now on record. And they will be haunted by history and perhaps by the voters because they're on record against witnesses and documents." - Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Senate Republicans defeating a series of amendments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pic.twitter.com/CLFBqaQBis

— CNN (@CNN) January 22, 2020

what gnaws at me is that there is a certain optimism in the strategy--it's all very well to tell people outright that you have the eyes of the world upon you and are being judged, but I suspect the GOP side is depending upon apathy, confusion, and tribal loyalty. I want to believe people still know what a rat smells like when Senator McConnell is being one.

That said, Hugh Hewitt can get bent. Just entirely practice self-origami. And press down hard at the creases.

Playing with Matches

....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019

Trump has accused Rep. Adam Schiff of treason and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats of having an "Impeachment match", but it looks an awful lot like the president who is actually playing with matches in a gunpowder factory. He's reviving the Clinton email story both as a distraction, and to make examples of persons currently employed in the (fairly hollowed-out) State Department. He has also made statements about needing to know who his supposedly very partisan accuser (whom strident minion Stephen Miller made "Deep State" noises about--which I guess is one way of saying "career professional who analyzes security threats for a living") is. The individual may now be under federal protection.

Trump's "Civil War" comment is a quote from Pastor Jeffress (himself no stranger to making controversial statements), but using it feels like a threat. If his singling out of the whistleblower and the Democrats who are leading the inquiry into his impeachment carry the intention of intimidation, the Civil War reference feels like a threat against the rest of us. I noted earlier his request of assistance from the NRA--they, too, have made their share of "civil war" type statements. The threat of a "hot" culture war has long been lurking in the underworld of the American mythos, and the folks who really want it are armed. Is there any wonder Trump has had a hard time disavowing the white supremacist fringe (and his done a little bit to mainstream)? He likes the threat of violence, and the idea that he can, with a hint, make something "happen".

Especially if the right conspiracies are invoked.

One of the lessons to be learned from the 2016 election interference is that the US does have deep divisions that can be exploited, and Russia certainly worked with this knowledge in its digital attacks on us. A leader who cared about the security of this country would not want it to devolve into violence and would repudiate such thuggishness. Trump embraces it--with malice towards all.

Trump has compared himself, more than once, to our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. He is no Lincoln. If there is violence, he should be blamed, not rewarded for it.

TWGB: A Perfect Conversation

“IT WAS A PERFECT CONVERSATION WITH UKRAINE PRESIDENT!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019

This Tweet right here: "IT WAS A PERFECT CONVERSATION WITH UKRAINE PRESIDENT!" is about as close as anyone could come to sorting out what Donald Trump's whole freaking problem is. He doesn't see the problem with it. This is how he has done business his whole life. You just hint at the possible repercussions for someone who doesn't play ball, and they fall in line with what you want. Michael Cohen explained this in his testimony: Trump speaks in code. What he doesn't seem to understand though, is that if, say, Cohen, or President Zelenskyy, can figure out what he's trying to get at, so can the rest of us.

Trump indicated as much in a previous Tweet, before the summary of the explosive phone call and the whistleblower report were dropped. He asked if "anybody was dumb enough to believe" he would say anything inappropriate on a "heavily populated" phone call. As if, based on his previous behavior, people should believe anything else! It's almost like an extension of his assertions that he's not racist while blowing a dog whistle to racists--surprise, we can all hear the dog whistle, too! And we can also puzzle out what the word "favor" means in the context of this phone call:

The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.

Zelenskyy understands English pretty well. Trump wants him to find out something. I suppose, unless you speak "Fox News" dialect, all of that "Crowdstrike" and "server" stuff might be a little dense (boy, is it!), but the broad sense is there. What is he supposed to do? Find out something. Pin the DNC hacking thing on someone in Ukraine. And what else? This:

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

Two pretty clear asks. Get to the bottom of Ukraine involvement in the DNC hack (which doesn't exist, because Russia did it) and reopen an investigation into Biden's son (which shouldn't be necessary, because he wasn't involved in whatever the complaint against Burisma was, because it came from before Hunter Biden's involvement with the company). He's asking the Ukrainian president to help him bury the Russian scandal from 2016, and help him against a possible 2020 rival. Neither of these things is for the benefit of the United States or for Ukraine. They both are to help Trump. And Trump wants him to please contact his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his other personal lawyer, AG William Barr, with any details. Sweet.

Rake-Stepping in the Deep Schitt

After posting the above Tweet (which I've screen-capped several hours after the fact, on the off-chance that someone will decide it was a mistake, eventually) which reads: 

"So funny to see little Adan Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate, but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!"

Trump received high-fives from, like, half the kids in his fifth grade class. "Schitt", being a couple of letters off from Schiff, would be unfortunate enough for him to Tweet out if it were a typo. As an actual indicator of the President's level of maturity and "decorum" (a new favorite vocabulary word of his)--it's childish and sad. But it's typical of this President to lash out and demean people he suspects of being against him, whether it is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, or the former Navy SEAL who oversaw the mission that ended Bin Laden.

It's something of an inglorious capper to a week in which Trump perpetuated some of his voter fraud myths by somehow suggesting that anyone who buys cereal at the store has voter ID, and that Finland manages wildfires by raking the forest.  (He alleges he heard this from the President of Finland, but then again, he may believe the president of Finland is this "Tom Of" who has been recognized more and more.)

It would be pretty merciful to assume that "Schitt" is a typo, but he's deleted things that were typos before, and he definitely has referred to assorted public figures by crude nicknames before as well, so I am taking this to be an "on purpose" spelling. As to the rest of his tweet, it is not really true that Bob Mueller has not been approved by the Senate--he certainly was approved by the Senate, unanimously, when appointed by George W. Bush as FBI Director, which had been extended another couple of years under Obama. There is an Appointments Clause issue with respects to Whitaker that I'm probably not qualified to blather about, but I will say that the "highly conflicted" thing Trump wants to bring up about Mueller, as far as I know, is the dumb thing where he used to have a Trump golf membership, and then ended it.

I know, right? He just stopped paying a lot of money to play golf for some reason (like, it's a lot of money and maybe he never played that much golf?) --and to Trump, this is a highly personal thing. Worthy of Mueller now being like Ahab to Trump's big orange whale?

Maybe now that subpoena power is in the hands of House Democrats, and that Rep. Maxine Waters, who Trump has regularly delighted in calling "low IQ", has the ability to request his tax returns, it's Trump who has worries about being, not in "little", but "deep Schitt".  And maybe this fool, who threw absorbent towels at the victims of a flood, and now suggests Californians should have raked their forests (federally-controlled forests) during a national tragedy that has claimed dozens of lives and left over a thousand missing and tens of thousands homeless, should consider whether he wants to be raked over the coals yet again for his inability to appropriately respond to what is happening around him.

Because once again, he is falling for this "vehement disavowal" and denial regarding Prince Mbs and Khashoggi that he did regarding Putin and our elections at Helsinki and North Korea and their nuke program and who knows how many times he doesn't want to face things that make him feel sad. He'll even give plausible deniability to a natural disaster, if it only hurts people he doesn't care about.

It is sad but true that the loudest bullies are often the worst cowards and the most pitiful fools. This seems to be who Trump is. There is nothing better we can expect.