The Lie Trump is Servicing

 

While people are wondering whether Ukrainian President Zelenskyy needs to do some backtracking to make proper amends and all that and get back to the table with the US, Russian foreign minister Lavrov is out here calling this man a traitor to the Jewish people and basically a "Nazi". This has been a big part of Russian propaganda. It is, for so many reasons, especially disgusting to project this made-up bullshit to this man, who comes from a heroic family that fought against the Nazis, for the very obvious reasons. 

If the reasons aren't obvious to you--get off the internet, read books, touch grass. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you believe stupid made-up shit just because it matches the thing you want to believe? Shouldn't what is actually true matter? 

Trump has proposed that Zelenskyy is somehow the reason, being elected to the presidency of Ukraine in 2019, for the invasion that started in 2014 and which his own good buddy Manafort knows a whole lot about. (I get why Trump faithful try to step around all that. It's messy for them, no?) 

Glory to the Heroes

 

I can't imagine anything more appalling than Jethro Dull Vance being the condescending haughty motherfucker who ended the leadership of the United States in the free world. But he was the one who, with his jumped-up ding-a-ling hauteur, who tried to interject a font of pure RU agitprop, and invoked Zelenskyy's need to set things straight and tell the bloody simple stupid truth, that Russia is never to be trusted, has broken ceasefires, and is the source of grotesque war crimes, at Bucha, at Izium.  Wherever the Russian army has had its way, mass slaughter has been their plan. 

It was always about genocide of the Ukrainian people--why else would Russia say they are not a country, and they haven't a proper language and try to stamp out their history? You can't surrender anything to a genocide. You just can't. The terms of peace are maybe you keep your right arm, except to the elbow-today. Until we don't like the look of your other arm tomorrow. And what about those dangerous legs? Will you defend freedom on stumps? 

President Zelenskyy told the truth--his people are truly being slaughtered. Sure, the odds are bad--but surrender is worse. Because of the rape, the mass graves, the kidnapping of children. And the Trump Administration response is to ask a man who almost certainly has reason to fear assassination from Russia---whose people every day have the threat of a bomb killing them, mothers and children--maybe even especially, since the enemy targets maternity hospitals and schools and all--to consider what if a bomb?! Landed on him?!

Is He Trying to Sabotage Himself?

 

Trump: We will build a missile defense shield.. We’ll put Herschel Walker in charge of that little sucker pic.twitter.com/ZN0yHTGf2M

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 4, 2024

We clearly don't have any need for the equivalent of the Iron Dome here in the continental US, but even if we did, would we want someone just walking around with CTE and a dollar store sheriff badge in charge of it? Because that would be the dumbest thing since putting roadkill-eater and brainworm-haver Bobby Kennedy in charge of anything at all to do with health--given that he has no education on the subject but "his own research" and a ton of basically shit opinions.  He'll ban fluoride, vaccines and abortion--and then, I think we might see some real fuckery. 

Look, I don't know what desperate and weird thoughts animate these kinds of celebrity stunt-casting proposals, but just like his odd McDonald's photo-op and his garbage truck bizarreness, these are things flailing campaigns might do. 

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.

TWGB: Wondering About His Super Seedy Ass

 

This could strike some as reminiscent of when Manafort obtained $16M in loans approved by bank CEO Stephen Calk, who was seeking positions in the Trump administration. Calk was convicted for that by a jury in Manhattan. Press release by DOJ ⬇️ https://t.co/WAFC0JBLQY https://t.co/TmGwu2K1s9

— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) March 8, 2024

It says a lot about Trump that when he finally does post a supersedeas bond to forestall collections activity in anticipation of appeal of the defamation civil case, instantly people go to work trying to find out the sketchy part: Who is the surety company? What's the catch? Does he have a cosigner? Isn't someone from that company a crony? Does that company have ties to Russia? Aren't they mentioned in his fraud trial?

So, um, yeah, there's something possibly sketchy in there--it's TrumpWorld. He wanted to waive having to put up a bond for this case altogether on the grounds that he was good for it, and then turned around and had paper filed in his fraud civil case implying no, he is not good for hundreds of millions of dollars. (You know, the one where he was accused of inflating his wealth and claimed he WAS SO worth hundreds of millions, liquid.) 

Did Russia Pay a "Meaningful Fee?"

 

Russian Telegram channels reported that the interview with Carlson and Carlson himself was not to Putin's liking, and the interview itself was considered a failure:

"The Kovalchuk clan sharply criticizes the idea of an interview with the American journalist Carlson. They say… https://t.co/sCql6QuhkW pic.twitter.com/iyPZDTP2JW

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 9, 2024

Well, I'm just throwing this bit from twitter here without knowing anything more about it--would I believe Tucker Carlson accepted a fee for a friendly interview? Let me think about that; it would be very unethical, so I'm going to go ahead and say yes, I do believe Tucker Carlson would do that. I also think he would do it for free, but getting paid if you can is so much nicer, isn't it? 

It also appears that Putin wanted to just give one of his history lectures, about which he is weird and wrong. The idea that Poland was basically asking to be invaded by Germany (and I guess USSR was just standing innocently by like choirboys) is the kind of peculiar revisionism that goes so well with authoritarian states.  There's an analogy there for Ukraine, I guess (about which Putin has his own badly contorted self-justifications) but I just think, if I were Poland, I would like Putin not to be mentioning Poland so much.

I'm not sure who exactly is fooled enough to think Putin is stopping at part of Ukraine. I mean, people might vocally express their "doubts"--I just find it hard to think they are "fooled." 

TWGB: The Hot Stove Lessons of Democracy

 

A couple of days ago, one of the insurrectionists sometimes called "Pink Hat Lady" (government name: Rachel Powell) took to Twitter to complain of her treatment.  She has apparently spent the last three years barefoot and mooning out the window like a princess in a tower...no wait, she was able to move about, but violated her pre-term release and got home confinement. She pretends she has no representatives, but she had lawyers. She exhorted her fellow 1/6 dopes to enter the Capitol that day--why isn't she being looked at as a possible "Fed" provocateur, huh?

She's living in a whole different universe from our reality. She went from saying on social media: “We will do what we want and there’s nothing the gov can do to stop us,” to asking, “Why should I go to jail? Over what? A broken window?”

Burglars break windows, too, and are felons. And apparently, the government actually DOES do something about that. These windows were broken because the stolen-election-believing sheeple who went to the capitol on 1/6 wanted to steal the election back for their Peerless Feeder. 

Will incarceration "fix" Rachel? Who knows? But maybe she educates others as an example to not be her. 

This is why I look at nattering nabobs like David Axelrod with disdain. OOoooooohhhh, taking Donald Trump off the ballot will divide the country, will it? Tell it to the fuckfaces who already thought we were in a Civil War on 1/6. A Civil War, because Trump's election is a Lost Cause that he keeps fighting, and maybe, just maybe, that shit needs to be removed from his grasp, and the people who lived through our bloodiest conflict on this soil understood that very well. 

TWGB: Trump and the Missing Binder

 

The recent story about a binder of raw intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election is--

Well, I would say shocking if I a) didn't already not put anything past the Trump Administration, b) didn't assume that was exactly the sort of thing that would disappear. The Obama Administration thought this was exactly the sort of thing Trump would make disappear and made a little list of items that would definitely be missed. 

And of course, Trump was trying to declassify what I've always assumed was some but not all of the Russian interference intelligence because that "Russia, Russia, Rusia" thing sat over the White House during his term no matter what denials he ever made about it. 

(It's very hard to deny something on Twitter, and then turn around and be like "Hey kids, let's do a joint cycbersecurity with Putin!" and not sound like your head was up Vova's ass. Or giving Israeli intelligence to Russia.  Or halting aid to Ukraine. Or any of the other "deliverables" Trump seemed to want to give Putin since oh, Day One of his first term, He'll be doing the same Day One of a second term as well, while also being a dictator.) 

TWGB: We're Never Leaving 2016, Right?

 

Hammered Junior interrupts Michael Flynn to riff on the allegations of his dad getting golden showers from Russian prostitutes. pic.twitter.com/2TyiLBQrW5

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 25, 2023

Heh, yes, the takeaway of the Steel Dossier is DEFINITELY the golden showers part. Jesus.  See, this is the ridiculousness of the Real Housewives of TrumpWorld that keeps me hanging on. Junior always looks like he wanders into rooms vaguely hoping someone cares enough about his ass to stage an intervention (they don't). Mike Flynn should have been x'd from a professional political campaign over fake news shit in 2016, but went on to be pardoned for lying to the FBI by the Trump Administration because my god. He's a Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population, but he's their Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population. 

They're bringing up the Steele Dossier because it didn't actually start the investigation into Russian interference and no one heard anything about pee tapes before Trump was already in office, but most people don't remember things linearly. It still scratches a very specific itch--the desire of Trump to exorcise the "Russia, Russia, Russia" demon with his own specific and frankly amusingly stupid counter narrative. 

Ukraine are the bad guys who helped Hillary Clinton by framing Russia and no they didn't, and despite all the obvious RIGGING! like in California, where Trump could have definitely won! um. Trump won in 2016 anyway. He had his little bullshit election fraud commission that found nothing and disbanded. Why does he need to pretend he was wronged? He had his opportunity. He fucked up COVID. He lost more jobs than like, Hoover. He got impeached twice! Why is he still here?

Why are we all still here in 2016? 

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

 

(A post also to be known as "Republicans in Disarray.) 

I don't know why I'm leading with the story that a resolution from Matt Gaetz drafted September 15th was found under a baby changing table in the restroom underneath the House floor.  I guess it's because of my astonishment that we didn't hear about such a resolution like, Friday. And who left it behind? Maybe Gaetz himself, setting up the changing table with a couple parallel o' grams of Bolivian Borax to chase away the Floridian palmetto bugs in his high-rise skull? I know Gaetz was opposed to McCarthy even being Speaker like he was a new stepdad threatening to be the boss of him. 

And of such drama is the current House GOP currently made. They can't pass a resolution on Pentagon spending. None of them know what they want. They want to cut the spending. They want to fund border defense. They want to strengthen the defense but maybe not fund aid to Ukraine (the Moscow Marge Caucus, I guess you'd call it). Kevin McCarthy can't count votes and he doesn't count in uniting his troops. And I seriously don't know who is supposed to be Speaker for the GOP if McCarthy isn't. Scalise? Maybe they don't want nobody to be the Boss of Them. 

They just want to shut down the government for no good reason and impeach the Democratic president for no good reason the year before the presidential election? Is that so wrong?

(YES?)

What it means is they can't govern. But take heart!

Um, Trump is the leader of their party and a hapless fuckwit, also, too. It seems like, while in my heart of hearts I wanted Trump's document investigation to reveal selling secrets or something very dire, the bare reality is Trump just apparently took boxes of paper to save trees, because clearly, there were clean bits you could still use. All of this lovely notepaper for grocery lists and whatnot--says a Mar-a-Lago employee. 

And the material is back in the hands of the government to review with his peculiar Sharpie handed seismic handwriting and all. He also obstructed justice by telling his secretary she didn't know anything about the boxes she saw, just like nobody was supposed to know about all the boxes. Of all the stupid, stupid things. 

Musk is a Dangerous Prat

 

There was a moment when I almost liked Musk. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, realizing climate change was a problem, wanting to spread our species across at least the solar system. It felt idealistic to me in a way--maybe I saw in him a touch of D. D. Harriman, I don't know. 

But then I realized he was a prat. 

It's the anti-woke stuff, you know. The idea that the "woke-mind virus" or diversity is going to prevent us from being a multiplanetary species is sheer twattery. We aren't actually going to be able to do it any other way.*

But anyway, Apartheid Clyde recently achieved a new low in a recent accelerating downward trajectory--no, not the thing where he's blaming ADL for his losing the multiple billions of dollars of value in Twitter that are actually his own stupid fault for letting the fascists and fucking child porn people back on his platform, but also destroying functionality (like analytics) and making people senselessly pay for things that were free and actually increased productive engagement. 

No, I mean the sabotage of a Ukrainian naval mission because he's a prat. 

Imagine being a contractor who decides to go so entirely outside of one's lane as to contact Russian authorities having been apprised of Ukrainian intent to do anything, and then believe the war criminals and just shut down the service they were contracted for. 

Do you think the heads of Lockheed Martin for a moment ever stop and go "You are using HIMARS for war stuff?! WTF!?" 

Unpardonable

 

I guess you could do a search to "Lowry", "Trump" and pardon to read whatever the argument behind this is, but I'm going to go ahead and give the counterargument, sight-unseen and link-unlinked:

Convicting a former president for crimes isn't a violation of norms but a necessary function of criminal justice. Pardoning Trump would give the impression that there was something right or permissible in Trump's continuing to have documents he had no business having, even obstructing justice to keep them. A pardon would send the message that what Trump did is somehow right--it was not.

TWGB: Sedition and Espionage

 

Before I talk Trump, I just want to discuss the sentences of Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs. The Oath Keepers were found to be guilty of a seditious conspiracy. They acted in the belief that it is acceptable in a civil society to take up arms in the case of a political disagreement over an election on the basis of lies--and I don't think they cared whether those lies were lies or not. The "tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots" types never seem to note that in a representative government, sometimes your particular flavor of "patriot" isn't winning elections and violence isn't so much a revolutionary action as a pity party gone badly wrong. They said, basically, "Fuck who voted for Biden, we want our Trumpy Bear," and somehow convinced themselves that was exactly on a par with what our founding fathers would have wanted. 1776, you guys! 

Stewart Rhodes, Yale-trained lawyer, was especially prolix on the subject of a "divided nation", and in reply, the judge pointed out that Rhodes presented an ongoing threat and raised the "t-word"--treason. To undermine our government because one can't fathom that other people differing in opinion are allowed to protest, speak, and vote, even win elections lawfully, and not have those elections overturned by the force of a determined few, heedless of the knock-on effects to our civil society, is an exceptional lack of a grasp on basic civics, let alone law. 

TWGB: Tuesday, He Says

 

Trump says Tuesday is when he's supposed to get arrested, and he also wants his little fan club to show out and protest his comeuppance, and none of the public info regarding the Manhattan case seems to be about to be announced and they are still sorting out the advance-work on possible Trump fuckery, because they are expecting fuckery.  So maybe Tuesday isn't the day.

As for me, I've got no idea when Trump will get arrested, and only know he really ought to be. Am I excited for Trump getting arrested Tuesday because Trump says that's when they are trying it? Are you mad? If Trump names a date, what does that mean? Does he want his redneck militia surrounding Mar-A-Lago expecting a siege situation? Does he want them lining the streets in front of the courthouse?

Probably all of the above. But is any of that likely knowing what the J6 arrestees so far have experienced and what more agitators on behalf of Trump are liable to expect?  Look, I think he just said a specific day because he wants to get his Insurection.2  Pointless Civil War Boogaloo stuff on. He doesn't know the day but is tired of waiting and won't do the obvious thing of turning himself in because he hasn't acceded to how fucked he already is. 

A Solemn Anniversary and the Ongoing Coup

 

Today, President Biden bestowed one of our nation's highest honors, the President's Civilian Medal, to people who held the line for democracy and the truth regarding the Big Lie in the face of the violence promulgated by the promoters of the voter fraud canard and those who did their part to prevent the coup attempt of 1/6 from prospering. 

His words bear some listening:

And let me close with this.  Eighty-two years ago, on this very day in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address that became known as his famous “Four Freedoms” speech, as he defined America’s place in the world. 

He reminded the American people of, quote, the “strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America.  Things that have toughened the fiber of our people, renewed their faith, and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect.”  End of quote.

Eighty years ago, after that speech, on this day two years ago, we were reminded about the most fundamental of things: democracy itself. 

As I’ve said before, we face an inflection point in our nation’s history.  On January 6th, it’s a reminder that there’s nothing guaranteed about our democracy. 

There is nothing guaranteed about our democracy. It's a truth our Founding fathers knew. They knew that the price of freedom (the "part where freedom isn't free") was eternal vigilance (regardless of who gets attributed the sentiment). Vigilance against the would-be tyrants, the demagogues, the inciters of crowds and promoters of smashed windows and shot-up homes.  The space where liberty is safe is where truth can gain on a lie even if the lie had a head start, where honest people don't fall for malarkey even when it comes with side-order of strong-arming, where people charged with the duty to protect and serve understand full well what to protect and who is served by it. That liberty isn't the mad abandon of a ravening crowd, but the peace of any citizen under their fig tree and vine, and none shall make them afraid. 

The saboteurs of our democracy want to anoint themselves as "patriots", and they may very well have the money and the barrels of ink behind them to try and rewrite the near-past to create a kind of "lost cause" mythos where maybe the rioters had a point--but they never did. This was not a Civil War, this was just brainwashed thugs supporting Trump because they wanted a reality show host to have another disastrous term because they don't understand how fucking government works. 

Look at right-wing media, or even just the bullshit going on with the Speaker of the House decision--the coup is ongoing, There is a significant part of the Republican milieu that opposes the concept of good government, democracy, that sees partisanship as a religion and opposition to Democrats as part of a holy war.  

Ideally, we would be better than this. It wasn't necessarily true in FDR's time, and it isn't now.  But we must be vigilant, and we must nevertheless hold the line. Just as these good folks who were awarded today had done. 

UPDATE: In a separate ceremony on the Capitol steps, only one Republican showed up to commemorate the day and the efforts of law enforcement in protecting those members and our democracy.  

And in separate news, Trump is still defaming Ruby Freeman, who had done absolutely nothing to him, and whose safety is impacted by his lying words.

These actions seem very revealing to me. The coup isn't over.

This Man was NSA Under Trump

 

Michael Flynn today gave his assessment of Ukraine: “Russia has achieved all of their objectives, and they’re now exposing .. bio labs that have been in there sponsored by the US. The guy that just showed up to speak to our Congress in a sweatsuit should’ve been thrown out.” pic.twitter.com/4RMYZcDgif

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 2, 2023

I'm pretty sure Russia's objective was not to have what they thought was going to be a three-day's war turn into over 300 days, nor lose over 100,000 personnel in the process, nor be down to getting their missiles from Iran and ammunition from North Korea, Nor be facing severe economic uncertainty as their falling currency value leaves them between the inflation and interest rates so steep already pressed (or is it--press-ganged?) people are still unable to make ends meet. 

But Flynn is like a faithful little cobbler's elf clinging to his last, isn't he? I mean: bio-labs! Are we all this stupid? This is a guy who told us they were putting vaccines in salad dressing. So, he's out here giving off a Russian derivative of the busted Iraq biolabs thing the US was putting on to play up a casus belli for the Iraq invasion nearly 20 years ago? 

Is his opinion of all our intelligence that low--or is it just him? 

Zelenskyy and the Free World

 

Ukraine President Volodymir Zelenskyy sat with both President Joe Biden today as well as spoke before the US Congress, and he represented his country and their struggle against the invasion and persistent oppression by Russia with sincerity and a good understanding of the culture and respect for the audience he was appealing to, He spoke about the fight Ukrainians are facing this winter--this Christmas, to have a light against the darkness of Russian totalitarianism. And me, I admired how a Ukranian Jewish man turned the struggle against Russia from a mostly Christian nation into a story about Christian rebellion against oppression, and paralleled the festival of lights with our Christian solstice story. 

Because we all must know--the light must survive. We preserve what is meaningful and good against the dark, the winter, the time of trial and tribulation.  We all understand the context of freedom versus oppression, the same as we understand the story of David versus Goliath. We know in our guts that there is a life worth fighting for, and sometimes it is even a life worth sacrificing against a regime that wants the deaths of so many of your compatriots. 

And because I love freedom, and hate oppression, I want to castigate the Zelenskyy haters, the Ukraine-averse, the oppositional defiant fuckfaces and kneejerk contrarians who see virtual genocide--the bombings of schools and maternity hospitals, and still think--maybe mad Vlad is still our political dad. And who venttheir oppostion to free Ukraine by challenging Zelenskyy's outfit, like he wasn't a world leader trying to rep his people at war and respect their privations by not wearing a suit. 

A degenerate former KGB guy who came to power with a murderous false flag and has formed alliances with Iran and Syria while encroaching on liberated former territories for fun and profit is their guy? Like, what the entire fuck? What do people like Thomas Massie, Andrew Clyde, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even Kevin Fucking McCarthy even believe about the balance of world powers? 

TWGB: It's Bad

 

The conviction of the Trump Organization for 17 counts of assorted tax fraud charges is, to put it mildly, a bit of a setback for the presidential candidacy of former president Donald J. Trump, although of course, he's appealing it. And we can look back and note that the sad ends of Trump University and the Trump Foundation didn't scathe Trump's image as a successful (and definitely not a con artist) businessman. (They totally should have.) It's hard to say that what should be a bit of a (to use a term) legal coup against a corrupt real estate scion is even the beginning of the end of Trump--the man, the myth, the mofo. 

But why not say it is? Because whatever is going down around him--it isn't good. 

I wonder about little gestures in TrumpWorld, like the revelation that Trump's lawyers have a team investigating whether there were still classified government documents to be found on Trump properties, and while they did find a couple in a storage unit, they are pretttttttyyy sure Trump's usual haunts are clean. 

My favorite bit is where the FBI decline to watch the search:

The team also offered the FBI the opportunity to observe the search, but the offer was declined, the people said. It would be unusual for federal agents to monitor a search of someone’s property conducted by anyone other than another law enforcement agency. Federal authorities have already searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s primary residence, and he spends almost all of his time at those three properties, advisers say.

They would like to watch a search at Trump Tower or Bedminster, is my guess, but doing it when expected is not how this is going to go down.  I just have the vague suspicion that this story is Team Trump trying to get out in front of something.  I mean, Trump;s lawyers say he's got all the clasified docs out of his sstem but they've been wrong before, right? 

TWGB: How is Trump Doing Today?

 

If your answer to the titular question is "ready to set fire to the Constitution", then yay! You got it in one. Today's manic post on Truth Social reads:

So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great "Founders" did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

So, I guess he's unhappy?

Now, far be it for me to put words into the mouths of the "Founders" (what is with Trump and the quotation marks?), but our elected officials swear an oath to the Constitution because without laws, we don't have a government, but anarchy. You might even say, if we throw out the Constitution, we "wouldn't even have a country," to use the refrain uttered by Trump and other "Flight 93 election" folks on the right.

It sounds like. once again, Trump is spouting a little too much "truth". Just as he acknowledged taking classified documents transparently, he is now telling us that he wants laws broken to restore him to office. He knows there's no Constitutional basis for any kind of a do-over. but it doesn't matter--he wants another chance and quickly.

It seems like this post coincides with the "revelation" of supposed Biden campaign-influenced suppression on social media of Hunter Biden stories in the "Twitter files" Elon Musk dropped last night. The funny old thing is--there isn't a there, there. To the extent there was any government influence, this happened during the Trump Administration, so whose government was it?  And many career IC officials felt, from experience, the Hunter Biden laptop story should be distrusted because it looked like disinfo.

Experience like the foreign disinfo campaign that went hard in 2016. In favor of Trump.  

It also coincides with another bad week for Trump in the courts,  As in:

Five members of the Oath Keepers were convicted for serious felonies relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that the former president instigated. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must testify in Georgia’s criminal investigation into his attempt to overturn the state’s results. And a federal judge denied Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity from civil suits.

And people are still talking about how his friend Ye is having a very public racist meltdown. And also, Pat Cipolone and Patrick Philbin testified before a grand jury Friday and an appellate court dismissed "Loose" Cannon's Special Master ruling. And the Ways and Means Committee has six years of Trump's tax returns. And the Trump Organization fraud case goes to a jury on Monday...

I'm sure Trump is writing a new Constitution on the Mar-A-Lago walls in ketchup at this point. 

But as the old saw about "taking Trump literally or seriously" goes, we've seen by now--after 1/6? I take him very seriously and literally. He definitely is encouraging the breaking of laws to get him reinstalled in office. That's why he has shown so much solidarity lately with those arrested and tried for their participation in the 1/6 insurrection. 

He still means to do terrible harm to this country, and that people still support him is appalling.

TWGB: Something Special?

 

With Trump's announcement that he was going to run in 2024 (not that I think that should have come as much of a surprise--although for my part, I was surprised to see that he not just announced, but also filed FEC papers), I don't think the appointment of a special counsel to insulate the investigate from claims of partisanship and political fuckery sound too far out of whack. 

I mean--it's pointless because Republicans have been crying partisanship and political fuckery all along. Trump's own announcement contained the claim that he was "a victim".  The announcement of the appointment of  a special counsel has GOP stalwarts in much umbrage--which is wild since the new GOP majority in the House has been crowing about how happy they will be to investigate Hunter Biden and impeach the current president. Public perception is a fine thing to talk about, but our national perspective is pretty far out of whack...and on a very particular side. (Although Trump's own AG, Bill Barr, the one who squashed the Mueller investigation, but also negated claims of mass voter fraud, admits that Trump is very likely headed for indictment--I say, he's partisan, but he is not a dummy.)

So really, it's about the end of the 1/6 Committee in the House and Merrick Garland being subject to the clown parade of a GOP-led Oversight Committee. Sure, there will still be some criticism from the right--but hopefully, things proceed from this point will all deliberate speed.

I don't have an opinion about Merrick Garland's or the DOJ's ideas about timing because, as always, I don't play a lawyer on this blog. I'm seeing on Twitter the usual war between the "there's a plan, just be patient" folks (who told us Mueller had it in the bag-- and I am old enough to recall folks wishing one another a very Merry Fitzmas) and the people who believe justice is being delayed and denied RIGHT NOW! Because obviously the man is guilty as a sonuvabitch and so are all his little friends!

It's dueling banjos. There are two things to look at--part of which I know hardly anything about, which is the time it takes to build a case that will be effective in a court of law, and the part I think I've got a handle on--the flagging attention span of the public and the easily-manipulated notion that if the man hasn't been indicted yet, then truly, they must have nothing on him. It might not be true, but it feels true. Because tell me, legitimately: if someone was behind a coup to overthrow the lawful government, or stole top secret documents, shouldn't their ass be under the jail by now?

This is how Trump goes around with his whole chest out telling people he "won't partake" in an investigation as if he was declining a glass of wine. Although there's plenty of evidence, as far as he's walking around able to run for president and be a pest about whether our elections are fair and running his various (under investigation) companies, he can claim he's as pure as the driven snow. 

He's pure as a driven slush fund. 

So, while I'm skeptical about results (after all this time), I don't think the appointment of Jack Smith has anything to do with slowing things down--he's being called up from where he's been prosecuting war criminals at the Hague, and that sounds to me like a guy who can handle a case against heavy hitters. He's not starting from scratch, and he will be getting what the 1/6 Committee already has. I don't have a reason to believe any of this is a set-up for failure.

But this case better move along with strength and speed, because it carries a lot of freight with it, including our national security and the future of democracy.