TWGB: This Situation is not Hypothetical

 

In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection...

Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024

If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path where 1/6 does not happen because Trump can rest safe in his bed at Mar-a-Lago certain that no ill shall befall him, because he had immunity. So, he just gracefully turns over the keys to the established firm:

And maybe that even means he is just fine keeping those documents from the White House that he doubtless acquired during his presidency--several boxes of, in fact--and selling them, because we are just going to assume a president does official things officially, and not shady-ass criminal stuff because one has always been a shady-ass criminal? 

On a day where Justice Brown-Jackson noted that immunity (or should we rather call it, impunity?) would turn the Oval Office into a center of criminal activity, we received testimony that Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in contact--via their White House offices, with David Pecker regarding the election interference/hush money cover-up scheme. 

TWGB: Where's the Cavalry?

 

Trump's trial, in a way, involves a bit of myth-making--today we learned that, per an agreement between Trump and David Pecker of the National Enquirer, stories were placed in the paper regarding Trump's 2016 political opponents that were wholly false. So if you were wondering about Ted Cruz's dad, the mad assassin, or Marco Rubio's love child, well--they were bogus. This puts a real damper on the idea that the 'catch and kill" part of the deal, where the public did not read negative stories about Trump's wayward libido had something to do with Trump's desire to protect his family--it was about politics, i.e.--election interference.

Trump also seems to want to create another myth--that there ARE SO throngs of supporters who would be protesting the case against him right now, if they weren't being thwarted by...something. There just...aren't, though. And he's been telegraphing as hard as he can via his gag order violations that he wants someone to save him so bad, too! Where is the cavalry?

Yeah, about the gag order. Trump's lawyers didn't have a great defense for Trump's multiple gag order violations that survived actually looking at the posts Trump has made. But there's nothing accidental about the violations--I think they are very intentional. Trump is what could be called a "habitual line stepper" in any event, but he's smacking right up against witness intimidation and jury tampering quite deliberately, both to see how far he can go and to try and draw a penalty in the hopes it signals to his cavalry that the time has come. 

Morning Moment of Zen

 

Alina Habba gives a masterclass on how to saw celery. pic.twitter.com/XwUBmcGt2P

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 22, 2024

Seeing how this woman cuts celery makes me wonder if she decided it was better for her knives to be cute than sharp, because she could fake sharp (avoiding the obvious "sharpest knife in the drawer" joke). It also explains why she gets her carrots pre-cut.  

I don't know that how someone cuts celery tells us deep things about them. Maybe it doesn't. But I watched that more than a couple of times. 

Aid For Ukraine Passes in the House

 

Yesterday, the US House of Representatives finally passed a measure to send military aid to Ukraine after months of delay:

With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the separate bills forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

It's pretty hard for me not to take notice that more Republicans voted against aid than for it, and what this situation is about. It might not just be the Freedom Caucus, but it especially is. Especially, and performatively BIG MAD is MTG.

Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

TWGB: Cold Courtrooms and Old Farts

 

You are supposed to pity Trump at this point, the miserable wretch that he is, made to sit by his enemies in a freezing cold courtroom morning until night. But is the room literally cold, or just figuratively cold--a place where being faced with people who truly don't care for his demeanor, his policies or anything else about him say that pretty much to his face, where he is obliged to say nothing? I can certainly imagine a few reasons for a little shiver down his back. 

It's not that Trump doesn't have friends in low places, like Fox News, who won't help him try to tamper with the jury--he does. It's that Trump want to thuggishly take care of business himself and be seen like the mob boss he thinks he is, instead of being told to put his phone away like a naughty school child. It's realizing that racking up gag order violations may cost him his freedom--and if he doesn't like the temperature of a courtroom--? It's the pull of his overstimulated ID--needing to erupt in wrath, vs. his wounded narcissistic ego. 

But at least he has the political party he took over to keep him warm. And funded! For one thing, his campaign is definitely going to do more spending at his various properties. I guess he's always sort of done that--but this time it might just be ringing some bells regarding potential FEC violations. 

Does it look bad? Do I need to tell you if something looks bad in TrumpWorld, it probably is bad? 

And of course, there's the MAGA political candidates--his people! And if they want a piece of his coattails (which I insist are those of an unraveled bolero), they will need to kick back 5% of the takings. 

The Mayorkas Impeachment was Mercy-Killed

 

JUST IN: The Senate has killed a second article of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, ending the House GOP-led efforts to oust him https://t.co/rQYK9hn0cb

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 17, 2024

Republicans can say whatever they like about precedent and whether the vote has an impact on future impeachments (I say this just means they shouldn't be proposed frivolously without an actual crime or misdemeanor--and for a bad precedent, they can look to the two times they failed to convict Trump of things he absolutely did).

Democrats just spared the absolutely backwards dog and pony show that they were going to put on. Honestly, it was a gift. Now very valued House GOP stalwarts can get on with important business like spreading Russian propaganda, talking about "space lasers" and holding "Appliance Week".