The Red Line for Journalism

 

I wonder why Speaker Johnson is so passionately weighing in on the Ronna firing… oh… https://t.co/Ek1OdMBDyN pic.twitter.com/uh7JEewLpr

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) March 28, 2024

This is what I was talking about: the GOP would take the opportunity to read McDaniels' firing as being about cancelling Republicans when it is really about not giving a platform to election deniers and insurrectionists. Maybe she was "normie" by the standards of today's GOP, where asking if the 2020 vote was legitimate is now a qualifying question. But what if we just altogether derided the absolutely batshit claims that got us here--the Venezuelan voting machines, the German servers, the Italian satellites, the Chinese thermostats, that absolutely shit-pilled people seem to have believed in and are now losing their livelihood for--

I'm talking about Jeff Clarke, for whom this shit was that real. 

Or maybe for Mike Lindell. 

Ginni Thomas doesn't have a "job" per se, but she believed in the German severs.

There is a lot of rubbish otherwise sane people seem to have believed or pretended to. All of it pretty loosie-goosey bullshit.

These ideas are toxic waste, and were deployed by the Trump administration as if they were actually real, when they look like, in the clear light of day, nonsense.  Why in the world would any reputable news outlet support anyone who lent support to so much bullshit? 

UPDATE: The RNC is considering limiting NBC's access because of the McDaniel firing. But, but--they fired her first? LOL. 

John Eastman and the Republican Fantasy

 

I wanted to expand a little bit on the admission of John Eastman that he did want an insurrection, actually.  His belief that the 2020 election was stolen is uninteresting to me, because I think it means nothing more than Eastman feels that there are some people whose right to vote he can't respect because they are doing it wrong. Once you let the franchise get beyond the possession of white, landed males, surely mistakes will be made. He voices desperation that the country will survive a Democrat in office. 

Well, why not? That's the Flight 93 election theory, isn't it? And John Eastman is a Claremont man. 

It's the idea that the Declaration of Independence is what gives the Trump Administration sanction to encourage an insurrection (or to be more precise, an autogolpe) that startles me. Of course, the Declaration is a fine historic document important to the revolutionary history of the United States. And he's citing it's provisions to...

Deny the right of some of the citizenry to representation because he has bad vibes about it? Let Donald Trump play the part of King George III and put down what Eastman and others assumed would be the actual "insurrection" for which the Insurrection Act would need to be called. (Jeffrey Clark is assumed to be co-conspirator 4 in the Trump indictment, who suggested that the Insurrection Act would be needed to put down the rioters in the places whose votes were denied. You know, like Detroit. Atlanta. Philadelphia. Places with certain demographics. Not dissimilar to the demographics of Washington D.C., where Trump really would prefer not to be tried for his attempt to deny some people their vote being counted.)

But that's what Claremont war-gamed. And maybe that's why some conservatives still want to think antifa or the Deep State was responsible for 1/6. The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, now found guilty of conspiracy and sedition, sure thought the Insurrection Act was about to get called on--not them, but the leftists who didn't have any reason to be there. 

TWGB: Some Indictments for Those Incitements

 

The waiting for Trump's indictment over the attempted overturn of the 2020 presidential election is over, and I encourage everyone (even Ron DeSantis if he still hasn't!) to go ahead and read the indictment. It's not long, and it is pretty thorough in laying out the case that despite no evidence of voter fraud, Trump spread that lie and attempted to overturn the election by means of litigation alleging fraud, encouraging state legislatures and slates of alternate electors to act on the alleged fraud, to halt the lawful proceedings of Congress on 1/6 and to encourage Trump's faithful to wreak havoc on the day. 

Trump lost. There was no proof of voter fraud that would have changed the result of the election. And no, Trump's belief is completely irrelevant, because whether he chose to believe he won or not, he was informed on various occasions that his theories of fraud ("conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership") were bogus, as outlined in pages 6 through 8.

If Trump persisted in his belief, he was delusional, and we should not excuse people on the basis of being delusional--nor should we continue to entertain whether they are fit to lead a country if they are. 

It's also irrelevant whether he understood the law well enough to know exactly what he was violating--ignorance of the law has been determined to be no excuse long before this. 

TWGB: The Criminalization of Politics?

 

One of the themes of today's 1/6 Committee hearing was "Roasting your Insurrectionist Co-Workers" because they brought the receipts that when Trump intimated to Richard Donoghue that he just wanted the DOJ to declare that the 2020 election was corrupt and he and his Republican congress people would take it from there, they really committed to "taking it from there" whether there was any proof of voter fraud or not. Those same pontificating lying "just concerned about the accuracy of the vote" people turned around and asked for pardons. 

Rep. Kinzinger, bless his normal-person heart, thinks the only reason he can think of for requesting pardons is consciousness of guilt. But there are Republicans who exist in the world who will tell you that is not the only reason. No, you have to go deeper--they say: like Mo Brooks who wore armor to the 1/6 rally at which he spoke, who sent a letter requesting pardons because the socialist leftist Dems were surely going to be out to get them.  How dare they violate the ability of folks to just hang out, and talk about--

Trying to fucking Ocean's Eleven a whole ass fucking Presidential election! Because I'm sorry, but things like criminal conspiracy aren't just basic right to assemble once you are assembling to dissemble to tell people there was voter fraud when there wasn't, to reinstall a presidential candidate that didn't win! Your Constitutional rights are totally valid up and until reasonable cause exists to think you literally engaged in acts already determined to be illegal as fuck. After which you get due process--we can happily assume you are innocent and should have a vigorous defense, but sweetums, you better have a better defense than "No fair judging!" Because you will be subject also to a rigorous examination of the facts.