Click the image above to read the moral vision the Commander-in-Cheat revealed to the Grey Lady during a recent two hour sit-down in the Epstein Oval Office.
Res ipsa loquitur
Category Archives: January 6 MAGA riot
The madness of Donroe
The Donroe Doctrine sounds about right for this idiot and his “views” on “international” “law”. The far-right, and everybody who loves absolute power, are crazy about a good doctrine or theory to cover their irrational, exploitation-justifying ideas. The Unitary Executive Theory [1], the Political Question Doctrine, “Originalism”, “Textualism” “Birtherism”. Makes you feel real smart, and infallibly reasonable, citing to a learned theory or doctrine, even if it’s pulled directly out of some insane zealot’s ass.
The president’s National Emergency shock troops, ICE, have openly murdered a protester in Minneapolis. She was shot seemingly complying with ICE’s order to move her vehicle, she was moving away slowly when she was shot in the face. You can watch the entire hideous event on video. The ICE agent was shooting into a car moving away from him, in self-defense and to protect fellow officers and the public, as puppy killer Kristi Noem insisted in a very dignified news conference. The doctrine or theory of why this was a righteous shooting is forthcoming.
Meanwhile, these genius theoreticians have successfully turned a deadly riot, in the minds of roughly a third of the population, into an innocent, praisworthy display of loving patriotism. No plaque for obstructionist, woke Capitol police overrun by the good guys that day! MAGA Mike Johnson will not allow it, not while he gets the final say.
Day of Love — kissing booth
Nowhere does Trump’s conviction that he, and he alone, has the right to run the United States show more clearly than in the White House’s rewriting of the history of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were Trump supporters determined to overthrow the free and fair election of Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes in 2020, replacing him with Trump by virtue of their belief that no Democrat could be fairly electedT.
But the official White House website reversed that reality today, claiming that the insurrectionists who beat and wounded at least 140 police officers, smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol building, and called for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence were “peaceful patriotic protesters.” The real villains, the White House wrote in bold type, were “the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” source
Meanwhile, the entire DOJ is working around the clock, to the exclusion of everything else, on hiding the incriminating sections of the Epstein files. The Department of Justice does this in open contempt of the 534-1 bipartisan bill Trump himself signed into law in November.
You can argue with Nazis, but it won’t help you. An idiot disposed to violence is always right, no matter what. Ask Donroe.
[1]
Since first hoisted by President Ronald Reagan’s second-term Attorney General Edwin Meese, the unitary executive banner has flown as an originalist imperative, catchily articulated by wordsmith-in-chief Justice Antonin Scalia. Quoting t he so-called vesting clause of Article 2 of the Constitution—“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States”—Scalia spun that text to “not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” Scalia’s chestnut bred an asserted (though not demonstrated) corollary: that to effectively deploy this sweeping authority, presidents must hold an indefeasible power to remove senior executive officials, certainly agency heads, at will, for any reason or no reason. source
Criminally insane idiots & incoherence
Adam Serwer wrote a book during MAGA’s first term in the White House entitled The Cruelty is the Point. Very true. Millions of those who are devoted to Trump love his cruelty, which they believe is not a sign of painful weakness by one of strength. Killing over 100 unarmed men in small boats on the ocean, and almost that many during an illegal FBI/military incursion into Venezuela to render its president to a US court, is heedlessly, idiotically cruel. His people love that he does this kind of shit.
Trump accuses Venezuelans of smuggling fentanyl into the US and has Hegseth kill them a thousand miles from our shores, blowing up and sinking their small boats and then killing survivors. When the corpses wash up on land, along with pieces of their boats, not a trace of fentanyl is found. Smuggling drugs is not a capital offense, even if proved with a mountain of seized fentanyl. Even if you are a strongman dictator like Rodrigo Duterte, currently cooling his jets in a prison at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for his extrajudicial executions of suspected drug dealers. Still, the cruelty of this random, impossible to justify mass murder, and the unappealable violence of it, excite the grievance-drunk lynch mob that is Trump’s electoral base.
The cruelty is certainly the point, but equally essential to fascism is incoherence. If your explanation for your illegal, murderous actions is completely incoherent, self-contradicting, ridiculous, stupid, senseless, plainly false, a series of constantly changing brazen lies — well, congratulations you have escaped the trap of Reason. No argument can succeed against relentlessly asserted incoherence. Incoherence embraced by the faithful, unchallenged by trusted mass media, equals absolute control.
Ask the Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Diet Coke bringer Little Marco Rubio [1] what the legal authority for a bloody extraction of a foreign leader is. That this violent, murderous attack on a sovereign nation violates the UN Charter the US signed is beyond question. It is an act of war to kill 80 more people, including civilians, to seize and render the head of a foreign country, and his wife, to “face the wrath of the American justice system” as cruel idiot Pam Bondi styled it. The Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Ethics Advisor/cheerleader will mumble and fumble and give no hint of any legal authority for the mass killing in Venezuela, or the kidnapping, except to speak of leverage and whatever evasive drivel happens to seep out. He will blandly deny the assertions of his commander-in-chief while dodging questions and becoming increasingly indignant. Corporate media will not embarrass him too many follow ups, particularly once the guy gets testy and defensive. And so it goes.
The cruelty is the point, it frightens the opposition and thrills millions of sadists whose only real pleasure is the deliberately inflicted pain of others. The incoherence is also the point. There is no argument with a willful tyrant who wields incoherence as his final rationale. Ask Mr. Hitler.
Epstein at Trump’s second, or third, wedding.
From The Onion, America’s finest news source.
[1] Little Marco’s actual titles: Secretary of state. Acting administrator of the (dismantled, defunded) U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration. And now interim national security adviser to President Trump.
Whatever they say, whatever proof they claim to have, it never happened, none of it!!!
“[Trump], in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true. He made false statements to state legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.”
If this testimony had been aired live, two days before the law required all of the Epstein files be made public, imagine the shit show, even on Bari Weiss’s CBS. That’s why it happened behind closed doors, why Trump’s puppets waited until New Year’s Eve to release it. Jim Jordan, a belligerent cretin whose claim to fame is that as a college wrestler he was impossible to pin (like when he was assistant coach watching college wrestlers being sexually abused by his boss, and since) was completely overmatched by Jack Smith. Smith made the clear case against Trump for conspiring to overthrow election results after losing the election in 2020. There is no doubt that the events were set in motion for the benefit of one man, Donald, and the amoral billionaires who are his chief benefactors/beneficiaries. To wit:
Here are the two slam dunk federal cases against Trump, in a nutshell. He violated the Espionage Act by illegally taking classified documents with him when he left the White House. He “negotiated” with the Department of Justice and the National Archives for a year about retaining the documents, lied about having classified documents, claimed he could declassify them with his mind, had his lawyer lie in a false affidavit that he’d already returned them all. There was probable cause for a judge to issue a search warrant. The FBI found file boxes full of illegally retained government documents, including classified ones. There is not anything alleged about any of this. His obstruction of justice, his lies, his lawyers’ lies, his illegal retention of the documents, all matters of public record. Only Clarence Thomas, in a note to Venezuelan-American judge, lame duck Trump lifetime appointee Aileen Cannon, got Trump off the hook for this one, by declaring Jack Smith illegally appointed (spoiler alert, he wasn’t, he was only appointed too late to do his job).
The Washington D.C. case is equally straightforward. Trump knew he’d lost the election, he was told several times by his closest advisors, as they later testified under oath. He continued to lie about iihht (and $50,000,000 was dumped into an ad campaign to promote this lie). He worked with fake electors from several states in a scheme to throw the election to the GOP majority (by state) House. He called election officials to twist arms in states he lost. He had operatives accessing voting systems, bringing frivolous lawsuits, spreading knowingly false information. He called for a crowd to assemble in Washington D.C. for the morning of the certification of Biden’s win. He whipped up the crowd for an hour and urged them to parade (without a permit, which would have mobilized DC police to supervise it) to the Capitol to “peacefully” fight like hell or they won’t have a country anymore. As the riot unfolded, and before his allies fled for their lives, e called his allies in Congress urging them to execute the plan to illegally keep him in office. He watched the riot live on TV for hours. It was with great reluctance that he finally made a video telling the rioters to go home (none were arrested), that he loved them, that America would never forget this day of love.
Just to prove his great fuck you to democracy had been perfectly righteous, on his first day back in the Oval Office he pardoned all of the rioters who were found guilty of violent assaults on January 6th. A Day of Love. 2020 was a stolen election, ask any current GOP member, they all wriggle away from answering that Biden won. “Well, Biden was the president…” they will say. Yep, he was.
Meantime, a robust 1% of the Epstein files have been made public (with massive redactions) by the most transparent administration in US history under (and in defiant contempt of) the Epstein Files Transparency Act Trump himself signed into law. Do not compare the murderous, compulsively lying Mr. Trump to Mr. Hitler! How dare you?!! By all means, dude, illegally invade a South American country and render the leader and his wife to … CECOT? What could go wrong?
Editors do not have the right to edit, only Trump does
Trump Files $10 Billion Suit Against BBC Over Documentary
Trump, after shaking down ABC for $16,000,000 with a frivolous lawsuit over an on-air comment that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape (the judge in that case said as much, it is only an idiosyncrasy of New York State law, he explained, that differentiates “sexual assault” — no penis in vagina proved — and “rape”) and CBS for the same amount for doing what every TV station does — editing an interview, has also sued the NY Times and, the other day, the BBC.
The faltering, insanely litigious president ridiculously claimed, through his army of low rent Roy Cohns, that the BBC unfairly and viciously edited segments of his infamous January 6th speech to a crowd that stormed the Capitol moments later to make it falsely look like he had urged them to storm the Capitol.
Here are the highlights of his long harangue to the rioters on January 6th. You be the judge if there is a way to edit this incendiary speech where he is not telling the crowd he’s riled up for over an hour, with detailed lies about a “stolen election” he knew he had lost, to hit the Capitol, he promised he was going down there with them, “and we fight like hell or we won’t have a country anymore.”
You have to love the generally spineless NY Times’ last line in its report on this Hitlerian move on the part of Putin’s pliable puppet, Donald J. Trump, now suing the British Broadcasting Corporation, an outfit almost as despicable in his squinty eyes as our own Public Broadcasting Service. Here’s the Times, at its best:
The president also has a defamation lawsuit pending against The New York Times, which accuses the news organization of trying to undercut his 2024 candidacy and disparage his reputation. The Times says the lawsuit has no merit.
Speaking of Trump v. United States
“Conspicuously absent [in the dissent] is mention of the fact that since the founding, no President has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office. And accordingly no court has ever been faced with the question of a President’s immunity from prosecution. All that our Nation’s practice establishes on the subject is silence. . .”
Chief Justice John “Arbitration Clause” Roberts, writing for the 6-3 Federalist Society majority in Donald J. Trump v The United States (2024).
I finally read this stinking pile of rabidly activist partisan juridical offal, a July 4th pre-election present to the plaintiff, Mr. DJT, so that you don’t have to. Note the Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation/judicial activist approach taken by Chief Justice John “Balls and Strikes Umpire” Roberts and his ilk.
Take the result you want (no prosecution of Project 2025’s declared presidential candidate) and work backwards from there by narrowly following the desired path. Minimize the many damning specifics of this case, mere allegations, many of them baseless or constitutionally irrelevant, keep the ruling as abstract, narrowly legalistic and generic as possible (in other cases, do the exact opposite, obviously, whatever the desired result dictates). In Trump v. US, obviously, start by framing the constitutional question of a candidate indicted on dozens of federal felony charges not even arguably part of his “core official duties” as narrowly as possible, some MAY have been part of his official duties, like so:
We granted certiorari to consider the following question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
(note: for ease of reading I omit all citations. Decision, citations, concurrences and dissents can all be found here.)
On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted him on four counts for conduct that occurred during his Presidency following the November 2020 election. The indictment alleged that after losing that election, Trump conspired to overturn it by spreading knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the collecting, counting, and certifying of the election results. According to the indictment, Trump advanced his goal through five primary means. First, he and his co-conspirators “used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to . . . change electoral votes for [Trump’s] opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to electoral votes for [Trump].” Second, Trump and his co-conspirators “organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states” and “caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the Vice President and other government officials to be counted at the certification proceeding on January 6.” Third, Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to use the Justice Department “to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.” Fourth, Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to persuade “the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.” . And when that failed, on the morning of January 6, they “repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters, falsely told them that the Vice President had the authority to and might alter the election results, and directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding.” Ibid. Fifth, when “a large and angry crowd . . . violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding,” Trump and his co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification.” .Based on this alleged conduct, the indictment charged Trump with (1) conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U. S. C. §371, (2) conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of §1512(k), (3) obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding in violation of §1512(c)(2), §2, and (4) conspiracy against rights in violation of §241.[1]
Trump insisted nobody can do shit to him because of Article II. The district court disagreed. The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s decision. Here’s what John Roberts quoted from their decision:
The D. C. Circuit distinguished between two kinds of official acts: discretionary and ministerial (citation). It observed that “although discretionary acts are ‘only politically examinable,’ the judiciary has the power to hear cases” involving ministerial acts that an officer is directed to perform by the legislature. (citation). From this distinction, the D. C. Circuit concluded that the “separation of powers doctrine, as expounded in Marbury and its progeny, necessarily permits the Judiciary to oversee the federal criminal prosecution of a former President for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former President has allegedly acted in defiance of the Congress’s laws.” (citation). In the court’s view, the fact that Trump’s actions “allegedly violated generally applicable criminal laws” meant that those actions “were not properly within the scope of his lawful discretion.” (citation), The D. C. Circuit thus concluded that Trump had “no structural immunity from the charges in the Indictment.” Like the District Court, the D. C. Circuit declined to analyze the actions described in the indictment to determine whether they involved official acts.
We granted certiorari to consider the following question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
John Roberts includes this weighty consideration, properly enough, in deciding how much unaccountability a certain former president would enjoy (he does so in passing, of course):
We must, however, “recognize[ ] the countervailing interests at stake.”. Federal criminal laws seek to redress “a wrong to the public” as a whole, not just “a wrong to the individual.”. There is therefore a compelling “public interest in fair and effective law enforcement.” The President, charged with enforcing federal criminal laws, is not above them (citation). . .
And this is why Roberts is a fucking Nazi:
. . . Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution. Indeed, if presumptive protection for the President is necessary to enable the “effective discharge” of his powers when a prosecutor merely seeks evidence of his official papers and communications, it is certainly necessary when the prosecutor seeks to charge, try, and imprison the President himself for his official actions. At a minimum, the President must therefore be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” . . .
. . . As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. The principles we set out in Clinton v. Jones confirm as much. . .
. . .The indictment broadly alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators sought to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.”. It charges that they conspired to obstruct the January 6 congressional proceeding at which electoral votes are counted and certified, and the winner of the election is certified as President-elect. As part of this conspiracy, Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly attempted to leverage the Justice Department’s power and authority to convince certain States to replace their legitimate electors with Trump’s fraudulent slates of electors. According to the indictment, Trump met with the Acting Attorney General and other senior Justice Department and White House officials to discuss investigating purported election fraud and sending a letter from the Department to those States regarding such fraud. The indictment further alleges that after the Acting Attorney General resisted Trump’s requests, Trump repeatedly threatened to replace him. . . .
. . .The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were “sham[s]” or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials. And the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority. Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials. . .
. . .The indictment’s remaining allegations cover a broad range of conduct. Unlike the allegations describing Trump’s communications with the Justice Department and the Vice President, these remaining allegations involve Trump’s interactions with persons outside the Executive Branch: state officials, private parties, and the general public. Many of the remaining allegations, for instance, cover at great length events arising out of communications that Trump and his co-conspirators initiated with state legislators and election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin regarding those States’ certification of electors. .Specifically, the indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to convince those officials that election fraud had tainted the popular vote count in their States, and thus electoral votes for Trump’s opponent needed to be changed to electoral votes for Trump. After Trump failed to convince those officials to alter their state processes, he and his co-conspirators allegedly developed a plan “to marshal individuals who would have served as [Trump’s] electors, had he won the popular vote” in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, “and cause those individuals to make and send to the Vice President and Congress false certifications that they were legitimate electors.”. If the plan worked, “the submission of these fraudulent slates” would position the Vice President to “open and count the fraudulent votes” at the certification proceeding and set up “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.” According to the indictment, Trump used his campaign staff to effectuate the plan. On the same day that the legitimate electors met in their respective jurisdictions to cast their votes, the indictment alleges that Trump’s “fraudulent electors convened sham proceedings in the seven targeted states to cast fraudulent electoral ballots” in his favor. Those ballots “were mailed to the President of the Senate, the Archivist of the United States, and others.”.
At oral argument, Trump appeared to concede that at least some of these acts—those involving “private actors” who “helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding” at the direction of Trump and a co-conspirator—entail “private” conduct.
But then, during anal argument, the president had a shit fit. He agreed that he could send SEAL Team Six to kill the Biden Crime Family. All of his conduct was official, throughout his presidency, his reluctant post-presidency, during his first, second and third presidential campaigns and all the years leading up to, and including, the Apprentice, as well as his childhood and the years of his sexual maturity — all immune from any criticism, allegation or anything hurtful to his sense of self.
. . . On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. Of course, the President’s duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” plainly encompasses enforcement of federal election laws passed by Congress. Art. II, §3. And the President’s broad power to speak on matters of public concern does not exclude his public communications regarding the fairness and integrity of federal elections simply because he is running for re-election. Similarly, the President may speak on and discuss such matters with state officials—even when no specific federal responsibility requires his communication—to encourage them to act in a manner that promotes the President’s view of the public good.
“encourage them to act in a manner that promotes the President’s view of the public good.” Fuck you, John, seriously.
. . . Indeed, a long-recognized aspect of Presidential power is using the office’s “bully pulpit” to persuade Americans, including by speaking forcefully or critically, in ways that the President believes would advance the public interest. . .
Such as the public interest in violently storming the Capitol to prevent certification of an election result the electorally defeated president does not like.
. . .The essence of immunity “is its possessor’s entitlement not to have to answer for his conduct” in court. Presidents therefore cannot be indicted based on conduct for which they are immune from prosecution. As we have explained, the indictment here alleges at least some such conduct. . .
Trump claimed he couldn’t be prosecuted for the same things he was impeached and unsuccessfully removed for. Roberts, bravely calling balls and strikes (after getting ready to rule basically exactly this):
. . .The implication of Trump’s theory is that a President who evades impeachment for one reason or another during his term in office can never be held accountable for his criminal acts in the ordinary course of law. So if a President manages to conceal certain crimes throughout his Presidency, or if Congress is unable to muster the political will to impeach the President for his crimes, then they must forever remain impervious to prosecution. . .
Finally Roberts dismisses the doomsaying dissenters who seem not to want an openly corrupt president with a long criminal history to be immune for all criminal acts he can justify as falling within the outer limits of his core powers.
. . . As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today—conclude that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine “in the first instance” whether and to what extent Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity. . .
. . . Unable to muster any meaningful textual or historical support [1], the principal dissent suggests that there is an “established understanding” that “former Presidents are answerable to the criminal law for their official acts.” Conspicuously absent is mention of the fact that since the founding, no President has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office. And accordingly no court has ever been faced with the question of a President’s immunity from prosecution. All that our Nation’s practice establishes on the subject is silence. . .
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, dissented:
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power.
In the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, then-President Trump allegedly “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” despite being “notified repeatedly” by his closest advisers “that his claims were untrue,”.
When dozens of courts swiftly rejected these claims, Trump allegedly “pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors” in his favor. It is alleged that he went so far as to threaten one state election official with criminal prosecution if the official did not “ ‘find’ 11,780 votes” Trump needed to change the election result in that state. When state officials repeatedly declined to act outside their legal authority and alter their state election processes, Trump and his co-conspirators purportedly developed a plan to disrupt and displace the legitimate election certification process by organizing fraudulent slates of electors.
As the date of the certification proceeding neared, Trump allegedly also sought to “use the power and authority of the Justice Department” to bolster his knowingly false claims of election fraud by initiating “sham election crime investigations” and sending official letters “falsely claim[ing] that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome” while “falsely present[ing] the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors.” When the Department refused to do as he asked, Trump turned to the Vice President. Initially, he sought to persuade the Vice President “to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.”. When persuasion failed, he purportedly “attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D. C., to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results.”
Speaking to that crowd on January 6, Trump “falsely claimed that, based on fraud, the Vice President could alter the outcome of the election results.” When this crowd then “violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding,” Trump allegedly delayed in taking any step to rein in the chaos he had unleashed. Instead, in a last desperate ploy to hold onto power, he allegedly “attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” by pressuring lawmakers to delay the certification of the election and ultimately declare him the winner. That is the backdrop against which this case comes to the Court.
The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution. The majority thinks he should, and so it invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.
Or as John Roberts, and his five reactionary colleagues on the nation’s highest court, would say “I know you are, but what am I?” And it’s not like Trump has done anything illegal, corrupt, unconstitutional or stinking to high heaven since becoming the 47th president…
“The indictment paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power.”
[1] As corporate pantload Roberts himself notes, this is the first time the question of immunity for a criminal former president has ever come before the Supreme Court, so where is the precedent he chides the dissent for failing to cite supposed to come from? Once again, John, fuck you and the Nazi horse you rode in on.
The Madness of President Project 2025
Mr. Trump’s agitated, increasingly irrational dementia doesn’t get 1% of the media attention former president Joe Biden’s occasional gaffes, stumbles, age-related hesitations still get.
It’s as if by his longtime assertion of brash incoherence Trump has inoculated himself, perhaps with one of Dr. Brainworm’s non-harmful, anti-scientific health injections, against anyone questioning even the most insane things he says or does. It’s just Trump being himself. Take two Tylenol and call me in the morning, when you have autism.
Heather Cox Richardson, American historian writing for future historians, records some of the latest insane Trump actions, posts and pronouncements, in her most recent Letter from an American. If you don’t subscribe to her free nightly email, you really should, her perspective is super well-informed and often illustrated with fascinating historical parallels. She is also a brilliant writer. Here’s the last paragraph of last night’s impressive inventory of floridly insane actions by the Commander-in-Chief:
Late this afternoon, Trump praised his remodeling of the Oval Office to include copious gold fixtures, some of which match polyurethane appliqué available from the home improvement store Home Depot. On social media, Trump posted: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT”
Innocuous enough, out of context, perhaps, a vain compulsive old liar bragging about his impeccable 24 karat taste. But read along with everything else this increasingly mad, impulsive, vindictive man has done the last few days, weeks, months and years and the many objectively false things he repeatedly, angrily insists are true, it sends a chill up the old spine.
The good news, such as it is, is that in order to remain the smartest man in the room (always very important to Trump, as he has said, in moments of candor) he’s had to surround himself with fools and spinelessly ambitious people willing to meekly perform being even stupider than old Stupid Is As Stupid Does. To me, that collection of loyal incompetents is one of our greatest advantages in this perilous moment.
The cream of the wealthiest 1% who are dying for a permanent one party government run by a corrupt, pliable authoritarian, to protect their vast, inheritable privileges in perpetuity and screw everybody else, have a very problematic front man for their Project 2025 in America’s President Project 2025.
Stark Raving Mad
Heather Cox Richardson, not AI, describes the speech President Project 2025 delivered at the UN last week:
Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”
And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.
Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”
“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”
Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.
Great interview with an FCC commissioner
This piece by Chris Hayes lays out the mafia style shakedown by Trump appointed Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr [1]. Carr issued a direct threat to the parties who need FCC permission to make an $8,000,000,000 deal. He delivered his threat on a far-right podcast. Hayes talks with a sitting FCC commissioner (one of only three, the law requires five, but what does Project 2025 care? Brendan Carr wrote, and denies he wrote, the FCC chapter in Project 2025) who confirms that Carr’s actions are the audacious, unethical, dangerous, illegal actions of a lawless, partisan, rogue chairman.
Even Lyin’ Ted, who applauded the firing of Jimmy Kimmel (no friend of the Senate’s most hated member), deplored this mafia style demand on Disney, Nexstar and other mega-entities whose love of monetary profit erases all other considerations. Check out Lyin’ Ted’s cool imitation of a mafioso, wicked cool.
These are desperate acts by desperate men making a desperate run to overcome the will of the vast majority of Americans of all political persuasions, before their time for seizing authoritarian control runs out. They may be acting exactly like Nazis, but we call them Nazis at our peril, because Nazis always kill as many of their enemies as possible, even after they lose the war. This is not a time to hesitate out of fear, it is a time to remain clear-eyed and resolute in resistance.
Trump being Trump
Colin Ferguson, the now mostly forgotten LIRR mass murdering “gunman,” insisted on defending himself at his murder trial. The judge was unable to convince him of the folly of doing so. Ferguson, who didn’t show any skill representing himself (and later lost an appeal on “ineffective assistance of counsel”), asked the witnesses “do you see the man who opened fire that day?” and the witnesses each said, “yeah, it was you.” The jury, not being as credulous or transactional as our corporate mass media, or as blinded as the followers of a charismatic cult leader, convicted Ferguson who is not eligible for parole until 2309.
I thought of Ferguson as I read Trump’s immediate, idiotic, violence inspiring lies following the hideous murder of extreme right wing activist and organizer Charlie Kirk:
In the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump blamed the shooting on “the radical left” and vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.” source
As a man who has never angrily gone after every judge who ever ruled against him, or their family, or ever called one stupid or corrupt, or threatened a prosecutor, never fomented a violent attack on police protecting Congress, never used tear gas and mounted federal law enforcement agents to disperse a legal, peaceful protest for a strongman photo op, or done anything else bad, ever, I guess the poor demented fellow gets to say whatever he likes. It’s a free country, after all.
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