Trump15bak

Trump says he’d consider Texas AG Paxton for US attorney general - Alternet.org

4/23

SEE TRUMP 16 VERDICT 6/24

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merri ok}:

see retaliation/ intimidation

prolly some neglect on legal (speculative)

see admin state

see bad trinity fox 1 24 bret b “town hall” softballs ~ gop debATE

see emoluments china arab $

// deep state

seeDQ disqual 14th

anti-gubmint

SEE LIE POWER ANY MEANS ALT FACT

see 2025 pjt}:

see fascism

rubber glue projection invenyor and still champ Biden assassination 5 24

see jack smith

~expertise

see reawaken tour for dead enders

see qanon = trumpistas

bak 5 24 v 13 fail

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an 5 24 post verdict

as supporters of Donald Trump flood right-wing platforms with threats against the jurors and judge following guilty verdicts Thursday in his criminal case regarding hush money payments, fears are growing that the influence the Republican presumptive presidential nominee has over his supporters will soon lead to violence.

"Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant," Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, toldReuters.

The former president gave no sign of accepting the legal process Friday as he held a press conference at Trump Tower, repeating claims that the case had been "rigged."

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdictin the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

READ:The GOP has chosen hell over America — and there should be no coming back from it

One commenter called for "someone in NY with nothing to lose" to "take care of" New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, while another on Gateway Pundit directed a threat at any and all opponents of Trump.

"Time to start capping some leftys," said the user. "This cannot be fixed by voting."

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump's "insistence that he is being mistreated."

Trump responded to the verdict on Thursday by telling reporters he is "a very innocent man" and calling the trial—one of four criminal cases against him—"a disgrace." He is expected to appeal the verdict. On Friday morning, the Trump campaign announced a $35 million fundraising haul following the guilty verdict.

Some Trump supporters signaled they are waiting for instructions from the former president, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in the November general election and is set to be formally nominated days after his scheduled sentencing in July.

On Patiots.win, one commenter called for 1 million armed Trump supporters to "go to Washington and hang everyone," while another said the former president "should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words...I'll take up arms if he asks."

While Republican lawmakers have not explicitly endorsed a violent reaction to the verdict that found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, many have joined Trump in making clear that they don't accept the trial's outcome.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has said she would not endorse Trump in the 2024 election, saidManhattan District Attorney charged Trump for politically motivated reasons and falsely claimed that he campaigned on prosecuting the former president.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the "charges never should have been brought in the first place," while House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Biden administration of the "weaponization of our justice system."

Progressives agreed with Trump on one point Friday, after he pledgedthat the hush money case is "long from over" and said that "the real verdict is going to be November 5" when U.S. voters go to the polls in the general election.

While celebrating that a jury of "everyday people" held the former president accountable and proved that "despite his worst efforts, Trump is not above the law," People's Action executive director Sulma Arias saidDemocrats "must beat him at the ballot box" to keep him from further eroding U.S. democracy, climate action, and other progressive values.

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mAGA Martyrdom Machine Portrays Felon Trump as Victim, Vows Revenge

Peter Montgomery | May 31, 2024 Kyle Mantyla | May 31, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, top Republican officials, MAGA movement leaders, and dominionist religious-right figures, all reacted badly to Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts. A jury of citizens found that he repeatedly broke the law while trying to prevent embarrassing information about his sexual dalliance with a porn star from hurting his 2016 presidential campaign.

Even before the verdict, Trump and his allies had denounced the trial as rigged, smeared the judge, and portrayed Trump as the victim of political persecution. When the jury’s verdicts were announced Thursday afternoon, the MAGA Republican martyrdom machinery went into full swing. Right-wing figures attacked the judge, jury, prosecutors, and President Biden, who they accused of masterminding the prosecution. Trump cultist Joey Mannarino accused them all of committing treason before taking to Twitter to have a vulgar meltdown.

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Trump himself denounced the trial as “rigged.” In a series of text messages tied to fundraising asks, Trump called himself a “political prisoner” and declared, “JUSTICE IS DEAD IN AMERICA! Our country has FALLEN!” Trump called on his supporters to mobilize “IMMEDIATE PUSHBACK SO MASSIVE IT WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY!” and added, “WE MUST MAKE JOE BIDEN REGRET EVER COMING AFTER US!”

Trump, his son Don Jr., and daughter-in-law Lara, all sent fundraising emails. In one of them, Trump said the trial was a “sick & twisted” effort to turn his supporters against him. “NOW IT’S TIME FOR ME & YOU TO SHOVE IT BACK IN THEIR CORRUPT FACES!” he ranted. Trump called the day of his convictions the “darkest day in American history!” Junior repeated the claim that his dad is a “political prisoner” and called America “a third-world shithole.” Lara called Trump’s conviction an “assault on America” and accused Democrats of “using a SHAM TRIAL to silence, imprison, and ERASE PRESIDENT TRUMP FROM HISTORY!” Right-wing media reported that the flood of contributions from Trump supporters overwhelmed his fundraising site.

Trump’s capture and corruption of the Republican Party is on full display. When the guilty verdicts were announced, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared, “Today is a shameful day in American history.” Johnson claimed the trial was “evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents”—some high-level gaslighting considering that is actually what Trump has been promising to do if he gets back into power. The Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell fumed that the criminal charges “never should have been brought in the first place.”

Right-wing Trump supporters went ballistic. Culture warrior Matt Walsh railed that he didn’t want to hear statements from Republicans condemning the verdict. “The only thing I want to hear from these people is which Democrats they will have arrested,” he posted on social media. “Don’t tell us that you’re sad about the verdict. We don’t give a shit about your feelings. We want to see corrupt Democrats frog marched on camera in handcuffs. If you won’t do that, then shut up.”

Eric Metaxas declared that the guilty verdict was “like a lynching” while fellow right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk proclaimed that “they just executed a legal assassination.” Far-right activist Ali Alexander claimed that “Today is January 6th for the entire nation,” and former Trump administration official William Wolfe welcomed everyone “to the United Soviet States of America.”

Mark Meckler, who heads the Convention of States movement to do a right-wing rewrite of the U.S. Constitution, demanded that officials in “deep red” parts of the country “bring immediate prosecutions of every Dem official they can tag with even the most spurious charges.” Meckler was so outraged that he even did an to demand that every district attorney in every conservative county in every red state bring “the most brutal changes we can possibly bring” against every Democrat they can.

Radio host Todd Starnes asserted that “There MUST be payback. The judge and the district attorney should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The House must immediately defund the Justice Department. Justice must be served.” Religious-right activist Carol Swain lamented that “for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my nation.”

Trump’s religious-right backers also rallied around him. “Jesus was a convicted felon. Convicted by political enemies,” declared dominionist Mario Murillo. Like many other far-right figures, Murillo predicted that the convictions would strengthen Trump by energizing his outraged supporters. He invoked the Japanese admiral who planned the World War II attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, who wrote afterward in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awake a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

“Apostle” Dutch Sheets, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, God to “strengthen President Trump” because “he is being martyred politically.”

Speaking of terrible resolve, far-right pastor Joshua Feuerstein asked, “At what point do we take up arms?” Never one to be outdone, far-right broadcaster Stew Peters, who has a record of calling for political violence, did so again, tweeting, “Our judicial system has been weaponized against the American people,” adding, “We are left with NO other option but to take matters into our own hands,” a statement he followed with an emoji of crossed swords. In case Peters wasn’t clear enough, he followed that up with a tweet that simply said, “It’s time” and featured a photo of a noose.

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May 31, 2024 RWW

• Glenn Beck reacted to the conviction of former President Donald Trump by recalling “something that Ben Franklin asked himself during the writing of the Declaration of Independence”: “As they were going through what they went through, he sat in his chair, and he had been looking at John Hancock’s chair, and it had a half sun on it. And he said, this whole time I had been sitting here thinking, wondering, praying, is that a setting sun or a rising sun? He deemed at the end that it was a rising sun.” That happened after the Constitutional Convention and it was George Washington’s chair.

• Charlie Kirk calls on attorneys general to respond to Trump’s conviction by “getting creative” and finding ways to bring charges against “Open borders NGOs, Democrat ‘Civil rights’ foot soldiers, Leftwing COVID tyrants, [and] Democrat 501c3s gaming our elections.”

• Someone should explain to Kandiss Taylor that “furries” is not “bestiality.”

• Just a reminder that Stew Peters is racist.

• Finally, Dalton Clodfelter finds out that being a racist, antisemitic streamer is not quite as great as it seems.

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MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

Trump found guilty:

mAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ & JOHN WHITEHOUSE

PUBLISHED 05/31/24

Fox News stars and other MAGA media commentators have responded to former President Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction in a New York court with apocalyptic rhetoric and demands for retribution.

On Thursday, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which were intended to prevent Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.

Right-wing media have followed the same time-tested strategy deployed in innumerable previous Trump scandals. Since the charges were brought, they have worked hand in hand with the former president to run interference, denounce Trump’s foes, and shape the way the GOP base perceives the events, thus keeping the Republican Party squarely behind him.

The convicted former president’s media allies responded to Trump’s indictment and arraignment last March by claiming that Trump was the victim of a politicized persecution that made the U.S. a “Third-World banana republic” and demanding legal retribution against Democrats.

Over the last seven weeks, the MAGA media sought to delegitimize every aspect of the trial. They attacked the judge, jury, prosecutors, and witnesses while pushing an array of false claims about the case.

• ### Following the guilty verdict, Trump’s media allies piled more attacks on the justice system

• Fox News co-host Jeanine Pirro claimed America had “gone over a cliff,” called the verdict “warfare,” and spoke of the country being “born of revolution.” Media Matters, [5/30/24, 5/30/24, 5/30/24]

• • War Room host Stephen Bannon claimed that Trump’s convictions for falsifying business records to cover up his affair with a porn star were really an attack on his viewers: “It's not President Trump they're trying to destroy — they're trying to destroy you.” Earlier in the show, he had reassured viewers about the damage Trump might take as a result of the verdict. *War Room*, [5/30/24, 5/30/24]

• • Prompted by a quote from actor Rob Schneider, Donald Trump Jr. argued that “we don't have a choice” and that the GOP will have to prosecute Trump critics as retribution. *Triggered*, [5/30/24]

• • On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity lashed out at Judge Juan Merchan. *The Sean Hannity Show*, [5/30/24]

• • Fox News guest Brett Tolman: “I really blame the judge.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [5/30/24]

• • A Newsmax host made clear that Trump jurors can never go anywhere without being harassed. Newsmax, [5/30/24]

• • Fox News reporter Shannon Bream hyped criticism of the judge’s jury instructions. Fox News, *Special Report*, [5/30/24]

• • Laura Ingraham speculated that two attorneys on the jury steered the rest of the jury’s deliberations. Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

• • A Fox News guest called Trump’s conviction a result of a “show trial” and said it shows why presidents “need immunity from criminal prosecution to do their jobs.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

• • Newsmax guest Joseph di Genova warned jurors to be “very careful.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [5/30/24]

*

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Steve Bannon: “It's not President Trump they're trying to destroy -- they're trying to destroy you”

05/30/24 6:19 PM EDT

Newsmax host says the jurors in Trump's hush money trial “can never go anywhere without worry about being harassed”

05/30/24 6:07 PM EDT

Reacting to Trump's guilty verdict, Jesse Watters promises to “vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic”

05/30/24 6:24 PM EDT

Fox News coverage of Trump's guilty verdicts

Fox co-host on Trump's 34 guilty verdicts: “Lawfare is far too soft. It's far too benign. This is warfare.”

05/30/24

Steve Bannon's initial reaction to 34 guilty verdicts: “This is not going to damage President Trump at all”

05/30/24 5:41 PM EDT

Watch Fox News' initial reaction to Donald Trump being found guilty of 34 felonies

05/30/24 5:35 PM EDT

The Fox News campaign to undermine the jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial

05/09/24 11:22 AM EDT

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Myths and facts: Debunking right-wing lies and misinformation about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

04/19/24 10:37 AM EDT

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How Trump's Fox News feedback loop powers his Manhattan trial defense

05/20/24 8:57 AM EDT

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fox Business host falsely claims New York trial and conviction of Trump “was Biden's idea” and is “election interference”](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-business/fox-business-host-falsely-claims-new-york-trial-and-conviction-trump-was-bidens-idea)

05/31/24 11:02 AM EDT

2. ### Megyn Kelly on Trump's 34 guilty verdicts: “The only way to save the republic now is to give them a taste of their own medicine”

05/31/24 10:57 AM EDT

3. ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, May 31

05/31/24 10:49 AM EDT

4. ### Fox guest brings up “stolen election,” “warfare” rhetoric in response to Trump conviction

05/31/24 10:44 AM EDT

5. ### MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

05/31/24 9:23 AM EDT

6. ### Newsmax guest tells the jurors in Trump's hush money trial to be “very careful”

05/31/24 8:38 AM EDT

7. ### Jesse Watters calls for an investigation into “whether Soros was involved” in Trump's conviction

05/30/24 9:34 PM EDT

8. ### Donald Trump Jr. promises that the GOP will “retaliate” for the conviction of Donald Trump

05/30/24 8:37 PM EDT

9. ### Watch Andrew Weissman eviscerate the MAGA attacks on Trump's conviction

05/30/24 7:57 PM EDT

10. ### Donald Trump Jr. calls Fox News' Shannon Bream a “fucking dolt” for questioning Trump's claim that his felony trial was partisan

05/30/24

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an 5 24

Trump is taking an overt transactional approach to his campaign fundraising, and experts say he's toeing the line of legality in how he's approaching donors.

According to the Washington Post, the beleaguered ex-president — struggling under the crushing weight of tens of millions of dollars in legal expenses — is now all but promising donors favorable policies in exchange for ever-larger campaign checks. When one GOP donor offered Trump $1 million and asked for a lunch meeting, the 45th president of the United States reportedly responded by not only telling the donor he wasn't going to have lunch with him, but that he expected more.

"You’ve got to make it $25 million," donors who attended the meeting recalled Trump saying.

READ MORE:**Trump probed over $1 billion 'quid pro quo' deal with Big Oil**

Trump has lately been telling wealthy donors that they should be motivated to donate large amounts to his campaign in order for them to have an extension of the $1.9 trillion tax cut package he signed into law in 2017 (which overwhelmingly benefited the rich). During the Republican donor meeting at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, Trump reportedly dangled the extension in front of prospective contributors, reminding them that the tax cuts would expire at the end of 2025, and that President Joe Biden likely would not extend them if he was elected to another term.

"[T]axes are going to go up by four times," Trump said, with the Post'sJosh Dawsey noting that his estimate was an exaggeration. "You’re going to have the biggest tax increase in history... So whatever you guys can do, I appreciate it."

Dawsey wrote that the overtly transactional nature of Trump's more recent entreaties to donors is "testing the boundaries of federal campaign finance laws." Veteran campaign finance lawyer Larry noble told the Post that federal law dictates that Trump can only solicit a maximum contribution of $3,300 per donor. However, his super PACs can accept contributions of any amount, provided Trump doesn't ask for those amounts directly.

"He can’t say, ‘I want you to give me $1 million,’" Noble said.

READ MORE: 'Mighty damn corrupt': Senate likely to investigate Trump's 'quid pro quo' with oil lobbyists

One recent meeting with oil industry executives and lobbyists, in which Trump promised concessions to the industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations, is now being investigated by the Senate Budget Committee.

Among the promises Trump reportedly made to the oil industry included repealing Biden's wind energy and electric vehicle credits and subsidies, and opening new oil and gas drilling leases in lands the Biden administration declared as off-limits. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who chairs the Budget Committee, said he was particularly alarmed over reports that the industry had already drafted executive orders ready for Trump's signature upon taking office that effectively amount to a policy wish list.

"Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt," Whitehouse said.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

READ MORE: 'Undisguised corruption': Critics slam Trump for 'selling the White House' to Big Oil

RSS Trump has now amplified QAnon-promoting accounts over 800 times on Truth Social](https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-has-now-amplified-qanon-promoting-accounts-over-800-times-truth)

05/23/24

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mma

the MAGA movement and the Trump assassination plot that wasn’t

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 05/29/24

Stephen Bannon’s Tuesday appearance on Alex Jones' show provided a perfect window into the state of the MAGA movement: It’s an unhinged echo chamber running on deranged conspiracy theories and wildly overheated rhetoric, aimed at fomenting grievance and seeking retribution, and it’s unwilling or unable to self-correct in the face of contrary facts.

Bannon, a key Trump ally, told Jones that the FBI’s August 2022 court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort had been a planned “assassination attempt,” promoting a conspiracy theory that the agents’ standard use-of-force orders revealed the search was part of a scheme by President Joe Biden to kill his predecessor.

“Let me be blunt: This was not a standard operating procedure. Alex Jones, you know that better than anybody,” Bannon told Jones, a notorious false-flag enthusiast.

The host replied that “they were hoping for a confrontation” in which the “Secret Service would think it was an attack.”

Bannon went on to claim that the FBI “had use of lethal force approved” and “wanted someone to bleed out. This entire thing was thought through in a high level of detail, and they weren’t absolutely sure Trump wasn’t going to be there.” He added, “They were looking to have a confrontation that would be an armed confrontation.”

Jones agreed, adding that the agents’ plainclothes attire, instead of uniforms, showed they were “looking for somebody to think it’s a burglary” and “make a mistake.”

In reality, the FBI reportedly picked a date when Trump would not be present for the search, contacted the Secret Service in advance of their arrival, and wore white polo shirts and khakis rather than their usual FBI jackets to avoid attracting attention from guests at Trump’s club.

Bannon subsequently claimed this assassination plot was part of a “vast conspiracy” that requires congressional investigations to “adjudicate” alongside the 2020 “stolen election” and the January 6 “Fed-surrection.” He concluded that when Trump is elected in November, “we’re going to take apart the administrative state brick by brick, and we’re gonna purge the deep state.”

Video

CitationFrom the May 28, 2024, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show.

The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search triggered an immediate MAGA firestorm in August 2022, with Trump’s media supporters comparing the bureau to the East German Stasi and Nazi Gestapo. They have not been deterred by revelations that the search uncovered a trove of highly classified documents Trump had refused to return, by special counsel Jack Smith charging Trump with 40 federal criminal counts, or by an armed and enraged Trump supporter’s attack on an FBI field office.

In their latest salvo, MAGA commentators used last week’s unsealing of filings in that case to argue that the FBI search had been part of a Biden plot to assassinate Trump. Their theory was facially absurd, and the evidence they cited — an unsealed court filing in the classified documents case which stated that the FBI agents conducting the search had been advised that they “may use deadly force when necessary” — was swiftly debunked. Reporters, legal experts, and the FBI itself pointed out that this “generic” language is part of “every FBI operations order” as part of the bureau’s “standard policy” — and had been similarly provided for document searches conducted at Biden’s own home.

After Trump responded to the MAGA frenzy by claiming that the FBI order showed Biden “was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” special counsel Smith noted that the former president’s statements “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents.” But neither the debunking of the assassination claim nor the potential danger to FBI agents is slowing down the likes of Bannon and Jones.

And they aren’t alone — Julie Kelly, the self-proclaimed “J6 conspiracy theorist” who launched the story in the first place, is still at it.

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This is sadly typical. The MAGA right is a constant font of zombie conspiracy theories which are spun up and maintained indefinitely, unaffected by the emergence of contrary facts.

The fervor ignited by their unhinged claims can have serious consequences, as Smith noted — consequences measured in massacres and an insurrection, a shot-up pizza parlor and gym bomb threats, threatened legislators and an assault on an FBI office. And at the end of that yearslong drumbeat, a Trumpist plot to overturn the 2024 election results if Trump loses is looming.

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mma 5 24

NO accident day after hush money def implodes after fox pushed fail guy?

over a handful of hours on Tuesday, the right’s conspiracy theory ecosystem concocted a sinister plot by President Joe Biden to assassinate his predecessor out of the banal fact that FBI agents received standard instructions on the use of force before conducting a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022.

Hundreds of pages of filings were unsealed on Tuesday in Trump’s classified documents case, revealing that the former president — who is charged with 40 federal criminal counts related to his alleged willful retention of documents after leaving the White House — had multiple documents marked “classified” in his bedroom that were discovered months after the 2022 search.

Credible outlets reviewed the documents and produced a wave of news stories detailing what a judge described as “strong evidence” of Trump’s allegedly criminal acts. Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA media supporters ginned up a counternarrative based on a credulous reading of a deceptive argument from Trump’s lawyers that was included in the unsealed documents.

The story that emerged from the right-wing media echo chamber posits that pro forma language provided to FBI agents before the 2022 search which stated that “law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary” was actually part of a Biden scheme to assassinate Trump. This is both a horrific accusation to make without evidence and facially absurd for any number of reasons. (Why would the Biden administration issue assassination orders in writing and then conduct the Mar-a-Lago search on a date specifically selected because Trump would be in New York instead?) But it spread quickly from its initiation by a key figure in the right’s January 6 disinformation community, through the ranks of MAGA influencers, to Trump himself, and then to the Fox News airwaves.

By Tuesday night, Trump’s campaign had issued a fundraising email in which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee alleged of the Biden administration, “You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The startlingly quick adoption of an unhinged conspiracy theory shows how the right-wing media apparatus operates, dreaming up convoluted but inflammatory nonsense and bombarding their audience with it. Here’s how it happened.

Right-wing fabulist turns standard FBI policy into “mind-blowing” story

The right-wing writer Julie Kelly, in a series of Tuesday afternoon posts on X (formerly Twitter), purported to reveal the “bombshells” she had uncovered by scouring the unsealed documents.

“Tons of new unsealed filings on classified docs case--I will try to post as much as I can (there goes the workout) but this is mind-blowing,” she posted at 1:21 p.m. ET. “FBI authorized the use of deadly force at Mar-a-Lago.”

She included a screenshot of a filing from Trump’s lawyers which stated that the FBI’s “Operations Order” for the Mar-a-Lago search “contained a ‘Policy Statement’ regarding ‘Use of Deadly Force,’ which stated, for example, ‘Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.’”

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Kelly went on to post the “Policy Statement” and claim that the instructions show that “the FBI risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests for a publicity stunt to make it look like Trump stole national security files.” She added, “People need to be arrested for this.”

In reality — and as more credible journalists pointed out — those instructions are standard for FBI searches.

“These are the rules that apply to FBI agents whenever they do anything,” Reuters reporter Brad Heath wrote in response to Kelly’s initial claim on X. He added, “Agents - like all cops - can use deadly force when met with a sufficiently serious threat. The policy the FBI followed here applies all the time; they are the same rules agents follow when walking down a sidewalk.”

“One clue that this is the generic DOJ use of force policy — not something cooked up for Mar-a-Lago, let alone ordered by the president — is that it talks about the use of warning shots in prison,” Heath noted in response to Kelly’s post with the “Policy Statement.”

The FBI would later issue a statement confirming that the bureau had “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.”

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Kelly is among the foremost proponents of the right’s January 6 counternarrative. She has argued that the violent rioting at the U.S. Capitol by Trumpists who assaulted scores of law enforcement officers “was probably the biggest instance of police brutality that this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement,” described a police officer who testified before the January 6 select committee as a “crisis actor,” and suggested that the FBI fabricated the pipe bombs discovered at the Republican and Democratic national headquarters that day because it is “an enforcement arm, a surveillance arm of the Democratic Party.” And her interpretation of the filings made no sense and was quickly debunked.

None of that slowed down the ranks of MAGA influencers, who quickly seized on her story.

MAGA influencers run with “assassination” nonsense

Within minutes, influential figures in the MAGA movement adopted Kelly’s interpretation and effectively began competing for the most overwrought response as they furiously posted on X. Many alleged that the document showed a Biden-directed assassination plot against Trump.

“The FBI authorized the use of **deadly force** when they raided Mar-a-Lago,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk commented. “You read that right. They were authorized to kill Trump employees, possibly even assassinate Trump himself, to exact their political revenge.”

“The FBI authorized the use of deadly force when they raided Mar-a-Lago?” wrote podcaster and former One America News host Liz Wheeler. “Were they hoping to assassinate Trump or his family or employees? This is insane.”

“So that was the real reason for the FBI raiding a president’s home: an excuse to use deadly force against Donald Trump,” offered The Federalist’s Sean Davis. “The court case was just plan B for the corrupt DOJ and FBI.” He added, “The FBI is a domestic terrorist organization.”

Trump ally Laura Loomer similarly argued that the document shows “a possible assassination attempt of President Trump by the Biden regime and FBI!”

Trump and the GOP lie that this shows Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY”

Trump and his campaign are very attuned to the nonsense his online supporters generate, and within hours they adopted their bogus narrative.

At 5:21 p.m. ET — just four hours after Kelly’s initial post — Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”

Trump’s campaign posted his comment to X, where it was quickly reposted by an arm of the Republican National Committee.

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The former president’s most unhinged congressional supporters chimed in.

“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light. Does everyone get it yet???!!!!” commented Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

His biggest media supporters were not far behind.

Fox “news” and “opinion” sides parrot the MAGA spin

Right-wing commentators have spent the last nine years figuring out how to respond to Trump’s massive lies. At this point, everyone who retains a major platform knows their role is to, at the least, soft-pedal his unhinged claims, and at most, to prove they are on board with the MAGA movement by treating them as truth.

That’s what played out on Fox’s airwaves after Trump declared that the FBI’s use of standard orders for the Mar-a-Lago search showed that Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

Fox could have provide credible reporting tamping down on the lies circulating online. The network employs people who report on the Justice Department and FBI and even has Kerri Kupec Urbahn, a former top aide in the Trump DOJ, on the payroll. If the network wanted to find out if the FBI orders were standard, it would be really easy to do so.

But Fox’s business model and its political agenda both depend on propagandizing for Trump, so that’s not what happened. Instead, around an hour after Trump’s Truth Social post, FoxNews.com sent the following push alert: “BREAKING NEWS New docs reveal Biden DOJ authorized ‘deadly force’ in Mar-a-Lago raid.’” Here’s how the story’s promotion looked on the website’s front page:

From FoxNews.com at approximately 6:23 p.m. on May 21, 2024.

When the network first discussed the story later that hour on the flagship “news” show Special Report, the segment focused on the same “deadly force” language Kelly had flagged.

Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, opened by highlighting that “former President Trump's attorneys argue the Biden administration Justice Department authorized the use of deadly force if necessary” during the Mar-a-Lago search. Correspondent Kevin Corke responded that the order is “quite shocking.”

Baier went on to downplay the notion that the FBI instructions were standard.

“There may be some people, Kevin, who say that this is just a policy statement of standard operating procedures put inside this operations order for this specific raid,” he said. “But obviously it's not standard operating procedure when you're going into the house of the former president, who happens to be protected by Secret Service.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 21, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report.

When Baier offered a similar comment later in the hour during a panel segment, contributor Byron York described the situation as “kind of worrisome” because the FBI was supposedly “loaded for bear and prepared for the possibility of some sort of violent confrontation with the Secret Service. … The idea that it was prepared for this way, as opposed to, say, worked out in advance, is really troubling.” (In fact, the FBI ensured that “the Secret Service would receive a heads-up a few hours before FBI agents arrived to avoid any law enforcement conflict,” The Washington Post has reported.)

Fox’s “opinion” hosts have been running with the story ever since.

CitationFox News screenshots, 5/21/24 and 5/22/24

“They were actually thinking of using deadly force, or it's on the table that might be necessary at Mar-a-Lago?” Laura Ingraham asked Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO). “Deadly force? OK. It’s really lawfare, it’s not funny. Something actually could have gone down I guess at Mar-a-Lago, beyond just looking for the documents.”

Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro went even further on Watters’ show, with the host declaring, “Authorized armed agents to use deadly force in the Mar-a-Lago raid. That is insane. Is there any justification for that?”

“Absolutely not,” Pirro replied, adding that “my mind as a prosecutor goes to maybe they wanted the engagement of physical force. Maybe they wanted to come in without FBI, without DOJ, without all of that identifying so that they could engage in deadly physical force.”

Sean Hannity called the “deadly force” language a “shocking new revelation.” He acknowledged it was “boilerplate language” but nonetheless asked, “Why was Merrick Garland prepping for a possible, what, shootout?”

Fox was still carrying Trump’s water on Wednesday morning:...

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note // new evidence on keeping docs illegally?

an 5 24

donald Trump and his allies are falsely claiming President Joe Biden, the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a plot to assassinate his top political rival, the ex-president, during the execution of a search warrant in 2022 at Mar-a-Lago. Critics, including law enforcement experts, are blasting Trump and his MAGA associates for the “dangerous” lie.

On Tuesday a U.S. District Judge unsealed court documents in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Espionage Act case against Trump where he faces 40 felony counts, most over his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return classified documents including some of the nation’s top nuclear secrets.

One of those filings, as The Washington Post reported, was a law enforcement documents that included a standard statement reminding FBI agents on the Bureau’s policy on the use of deadly force, “which says officers may resort to lethal force only when the subject of such force poses an ‘imminent danger of death or serious physical injury’ to an officer or another person.”

But on Tuesday, Trump explosively posted on Truth Social, “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”

READ MORE: Trump Adviser Scanned and Saved Contents of Box That Had Classified Docs: Report

Later, in a fundraising email Trump went much further.

“They were authorized to shoot me!” the subject line reads, according to an archive of political emails.

“TRUMP ALERT,” it begins. “BREAKING FROM TRUMP: BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!”

“You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable… Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

Attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa observed, “Including the deadly force policy [in] an ops plan is SOP [standard operating procedure]. But just so I make sure I’m following the plot, according to Trump’s position in court, what he is accusing Biden of would be perfectly legal and within the scope of his ‘official’ powers, right?”

Trump repeatedly has insisted presidents must have complete and total “absolute immunity.” His attorneys have argued in federal court and before the U.S. Supreme Court a president could order Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rival and it would be lawful, as was noted here:

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was among the top allies who falsely characterized the court filing.

“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light,” she posted to her official federal government account on X. “Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it?” hold my beer

She also wrote: “This is grounds for impeachment of Wray and Garland. Trump and team was cooperating the entire time with the FBI,” Greene claimed, both of which are false.

READ MORE: ‘Incomprehensible’: More Classified Docs Were Found at Mar-a-Lago, Unsealed Court Filing Reveals

“Was deadly force authorized against Biden for his docs? Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too??? Speaker Mike Johnson fully funded the DOJ and FBI plus new building and tied our hands behind our backs to hold them accountable. We have the power of the purse and Johnson has handed the purse to Chuck Schumer. All of this is unforgivable.”

Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo also promoted the false claims Wednesday morning:

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NBC News’ Ryan Reilly mockingly explained the situation: “GOP members of Congress think the feds wanted to assassinate Trump and so they did a raid on his place in Florida when they knew him to be in New Jersey because Mar-A-Lago was closed for the season.”

Meanwhile, critics are sounding the alarm on Trump’s and the GOP’s lies.

“This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene,” wrote conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg. “FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bullshit.”

“Trump wasn’t there,” said talk radio host Joe Walsh, a former GOP U.S. Congressman, responding to U.S. Rep. Greene’s remarks. “Everything was coordinated with Secret Service & local law enforcement. Even for you, this is a deeply irresponsible and dangerous thing to say.”

David Axelrod, the former top Obama strategist and White House advisor, remarked, “This is patently nuts…and dangerously provocative!”

Watch the videos above or [at this link]

:{:{//}:

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday claimed that President Joe Biden and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) planned to "assassinate" former President Donald Trump.

The MAGA lawmaker also claimed that she attempted to warn the ex-president of such matters.

"The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light," Greene wrote via X/Twitter. "Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it? I tried to oust our Speaker who funded Biden’s DOJ AND FBI, but Democrats stopped it."

READ MORE:Mike Johnson’s 'triumphant moment' doesn't mean GOP extremists are 'going away': analysis

She also claimed, "I made sure that he knew."

The Georgia Republican leader was responding to Truth Social post from Trump, in which he wrote: "WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the 'Icebox,' and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden's DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREATTO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE -25TH AMENDMENT!"

Retired FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi responded to Greene's claim, noting that "every FBI operations order contains a reminder of FBI deadly force policy."

The Dispatch Editor-In-Chief Jonah Goldberg commented: "This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene. FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bulls—t."

READ MORE:'Spectacular' defeat in Johnson battle leaves Marjorie Taylor Greene 'weak and feeble': analysis

Columnist Goldie Taylor's replied to Greene, saying, "Something is really wrong with you."

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an 5 24

similarly to his MAGA colleague — US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — on Tuesday US Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) claimed that President Joe Biden wanted to have former President Donald Trump killed during the FBI's raid on the Mar-a-Lago estate.

Referencing the statement, "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary ...." Gosar claimed via X/Twitter: "Biden ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago."

About an hour prior to the Arizona congressman's claim, Rep. Greene baselessly claimed that "Biden and the FBI planned to assassinate" the former president.

READ MORE:Greene hammered over claiming 'Biden DOJ and FBI' planned to assassinate' Trump and she 'knew'

ABC News Justice Department reporter Alex Mallon reported via X/Twitter, "FBI issues rare statement directly responding to this attack from Trump and his allies. Says 'standard protocol' was followed - 'No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter."

ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur noted: Anytime the fbi takes an adversarial action like executing a search warrant, there is a deadly force policy. If there is danger to you or public and there’s no alternatives, you are authorized to use deadly force. This is standard policy.

She added, "And of course they gave the Secret Seevice and local law enforcement a heads up. Authorized to use deadly force is not the same as 'planning to shoot people.' But every briefing has to include a deadly force policy that is acknowledged by every agent before they go in."

Adam Kinzinger replied: "Gosar is a clown."

READ MORE:'Incomprehensible': More classified docs were found at Mar-a-Lago, unsealed court filing reveals

Lawyer Bradley P. Moss said: "Per Trump, Biden has complete immunity"

A former CIA attorney under the account @secretsandlaws wrote: "As a general rule, I don't judge any lawyer for zealously representing a criminal defendant, but blatant distortions in legal filings like this were clearly designed to generate over-the-top responses from Trump's supporters, just like the one below. It's unethical and immoral."

Lawrence Hurley said: "Based on Trump's arguments in his election interference case, Biden could not be prosecuted if he had actually ordered this..."

Doug Thompson replied: "I try not to retweet nonsense but this is outrageous.Pre-authorization for use of deadly force is routine when issuing a search warrant. 'Go search for and seize evidence at the scene of a serious crime but go unarmed' would be absurd."

READ MORE:Trump adviser scanned and saved contents of box that had classified docs: report

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Trump says he’d consider Texas AG Paxton for US attorney general - Alternet.org

Inside Judge Cannon’s 'particularly problematic' exception in latest ruling: ex-US attorney - Alternet.org

Trump blasted for suggesting Biden 'would have been given the electric chair' at NRA convention - Alternet.org

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an 5 24

presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is known for liking physical printed copies of articles and social media posts, especially those that involve him in some way. According to The Bulwark's Marc A. Caputo, 32-year-old campaign aide Natalie Harp has done so much printing for Trump that others in Trump World have nicknamed her "The Human Printer."

One of Harp's main responsibilities, Caputo reports, is staying on top of Trump-related material and making sure the former president has easy access to hard copies.

"Whenever Donald Trump brandishes a stack of papers or reads a printout of a social media post, he's relying on the work of Natalie Harp," Caputo explains in an article published on May 22. "Harp, 32, occupies a unique role in the history of presidential campaigns: aide who travels with a portable printer — plus paper and rechargeable batteries in a large bag — whose job is to feed Trump a steady stream of information on 8.5x11 pieces of paper. That way, the 77-year-old doesn't have to strain his eyes on a smartphone to read all the news that's fit to print in MAGAville."

READ MORE:'Blatant racism': Joe Scarborough calls out 'bigot, fascist' Trump's attack on hush money judge

According to Caputo, Harp is "constantly around Trump": She can be seen "sitting close to the defense table" in the Lower Manhattan courthouse where Trump's criminal hush money/falsified business records trial is being held and has been traveling with him on weekends when he flies down to South Florida.

"Perhaps more than anyone else," Caputo reports, "Harp gatekeeps much of what Trump sees on social media and reads in the news."

California native Harp is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian who graduated from Liberty University in Virginia in 2015. According to Caputo, she "appears to have entered Trump's orbit in 2019" and worked on his 2020 campaign. It was also in 2020 that Harp became an anchor for the far-right One America News (OAN).

A campaign insider told The Bulwark, "No one spends as much time on this campaign around him as Natalie. If people think she's an airhead because of her looks, they don't understand how smart she is and how much the president relies on her."

READ MORE:Expert warns dark shift in Trump's tone is 'how fascists campaign'

*Read Marc A. Caputo's full article for The Bulwark at this link.

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no fam AT TRIAL ny HUSH NOW CLOWN CAR vp SAME RED TIES

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AN 5 24

Former President Donald Trump has long used the social media platform Truth Social to criticize anyone he views as an enemy, or a threat to his reputation.

Ahead of the start of his New York hush money trial on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, the MAGA hopeful urged his supporters to turn out in droves to protest the case against him.

A few days later, on April 23, the former president wrote via Truth Social that presiding Judge Juan Merchan is a "'highly conflicted' overseer of a 'kangaroo court.'"

READ MORE:'History is repeating itself': House Dem warns GOP laying groundwork for another January 6

Per a Thursday USA Today report, Trump's "rhetoric is inspiring widespread calls for violence."

MAGA fans "swiftly replied to his post with a blitz of attacks on Merchan," according to the report, and "the comments soon turned ugly," as some devoted Trump supporters "called for Merchan and other judges hearing cases against Trump to be killed."

One social media user wrote, "Treason is a hangable offense."

Another said, "They should all be executed."

USA Today reports:

In a review of commenters’ posts on three pro-Trump websites, including the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Reuters documented more than 150 posts since March 1 that called for physical violence against the judges handling three of his highest-profile cases – two state judges in Manhattan and one in Georgia overseeing a criminal case in which Trump is accused* of illegally seeking to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The newspaper also notes:

The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community, is also a frequent venue for Trump-inspired violent rhetoric. 'These judges and lawyers should HANG for perpetuating these fraud cases,' a commenter wrote on April 16, suggesting the executions would be '*an example for future generations of judges and lawyers.'

READ MORE:'Ready to start another insurrection’: Gaetz support for Trump echoes Proud Boys order

Former New York Police Department Director of Intelligence Mitchell Silber, according to the report, "compared the Trump supporters now calling for violence against judges to the Capitol rioters who believed they were following Trump’s 'marching orders' on Jan. 6, 2021."

Silber emphasized, "This is just the 2023-2024 iteration of that phenomenon. Articulating these ideas is the first step along the pathway of mobilizing to violence."

*USA Today's full report is availablehere

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an 5 24

in his new book, "The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy," historian/author Federico Finchelstein examines authoritarian movements around the world — and cites Donald Trump's MAGA movement as an example.

Casey Michel of The Human Rights Foundation applauds the book as informative, if imperfect, in a review published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 14.

Finchelstein, according to Michel, identifies four "primary characteristics" of fascism and lays out some reasons why "Trump and the other budding autocrats rising alongside him" are "so dangerous."

READ MORE:**George Conway: Trump’s New York trial is proving to be 'the perfect case'**

"As Finchelstein ably argues, it's only in properly defining Trump — and properly understanding his historical context, American and otherwise — that we can truly understand the threat he poses and navigate the world he’s ushered in," Michel explains. "Indeed, much of the book is devoted to definitions, and to identifying where the lines between populism and fascism truly lie.

The four pillars of fascism that Finchelstein identifies in his book are xenophobia, propaganda DISINFO], political violence, and dictatorship.

According to Michel, Trump has "clearly built out planks" of the first three but "has been unable to construct a full dictatorship."

"In that sense…. Trump is simply an aspiring fascist, rather than a fully realized one," Michel argues. "He is, as Finchelstein writes, a 'populist aspirant to fascism' — or…. a 'wannabe fascist.'"

READ MORE:**Trump's price for selling the planet: $1 billion**

Finchelstein's book, according to Michel, underscores the dangers of Trump possibly winning the United States' 2024 presidential election.

"Right now, with a U.S. election less than six months away, the American wannabe despot is eager to take power once more in Washington — this time without any need for a self-coup," Michel warns. "It's for Americans themselves to decide whether they'd like to offer Trump the opportunity, as a would-be fascist, to finally get what he wants."

READ MORE:**Expert warns dark shift in Trump’s tone is 'how fascists campaign'**

*Casey Michel's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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'Deeply troubling': Trump campaign accused of concealing settlement payouts to multiple women - Alternet.org

joe conason an 5 24

nobody likes Big Oil, a monopolistic and heavily polluting industry with a legendary history of abusing its excessive power that can be traced back over the past hundred years.

But Donald Trump has promised to be the oil industry's best friend -- if its bosses give him a billion dollars.

In the latest instance of the former president's mind-blowing corruption, he is reported to have entertained a group of two dozen top U.S. oil company executives at Mar-a-Lago. Over dinner at his Palm Beach sanctum, Trump is quoted as telling the chiefs of Chevron, Exxon, and Occidental Petroleum and their colleagues that if they collectively coughed up $1 billion to ensure his reelection, he would take very good care of their corporate needs.

According to The Washington Post, he promised to toss out all of President Joe Biden's efforts to mitigate climate changes, including new rules aimed at reducing automotive exhaust and promoting electric vehicles. For that measly billion bucks, he vowed to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, where we have already seen catastrophic well blowouts, rescind restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, pull down the windmills that he hates, and cancel the recent White House decision to pause new natural gas export permits.

"You'll get it on the first day," said Trump, according to someone who was present and blabbed to the Post. Speaking as crudely as any gangster, he informed the oilmen that they and their companies can easily raise that kind of money, and that paying him off would be "a deal" because of the high return on their investment.

No doubt they found it hard to argue with Trump's logic, since oil lobbyists are already writing dozens of executive orders that they want him to rubber-stamp if and when he returns to the Oval Office.

So is anybody surprised?

Only perhaps by the audacity of Trump explicitly soliciting a gigantic bribe, before a large group of witnesses, at a time when he is in fact on trial for campaign finance offenses and facing scores of additional criminal charges. But he has never felt abashed in displaying his venality. He lives in a world of miscreants who behave much the same way, from his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who sought and obtained an even bigger payoff from the Saudi dictator, to his adviser Steve Bannon, who will face criminal charges next fall for swindling the dopey donors to his fake "We Build the Wall" outfit.

As the eminent journalist Laurie Garrett observed on social media, Trump's attempt to extort the oil industry echoes one of the greatest government scandals in American history, under another Republican president owned by corporate power. Beginning in 1921, the Teapot Dome affair implicated officials of President Warren G. Harding's administration in the crooked leasing of public lands for oil exploration. Harding's Interior secretary Albert B. Fall ultimately went to prison for bribery, although none of the oilmen who paid him off did any time.

What we can expect from a second Trump administration is the most naked orgy of swindling and boodling that this country has ever seen. He thoroughly exploited the presidency during his first term, as outlined in my forthcoming book, "The Longest Con." But his second term, should such a disaster occur, would be the conman's last big chance to score, and he can be expected to enrich himself to the maximum -- at ruinous cost to the rest of us.

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an 5 24

former President Donald Trump recently made a controversial proposal to a gathering of oil executives and lobbyists at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida: Favorable policy in exchange for $1 billion in campaign cash. Now, it looks as if the U.S. Senate may launch an official inquiry into the ex-president.

That's according to the New Republic's Greg Sargent, who spoke to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) about Trump's recent entreaty to the oil industry. Whitehouse said it was "highly likely" that the Senate Budget Committee would investigate the former president over his brazen offer.

"The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’" Whitehouse said, adding that he was also concerned about a series of proposed executive orders oil lobbyists drafted for Trump and to have ready to sign on day one should he win a second term in November. "Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt."

READ MORE:'Undisguised corruption': Critics slam Trump for 'selling the White House' to Big Oil

Billionaire oil magnate Harold Hamm arranged the Mar-a-Lago event, which the Washington Post reported was designed to allow for the fossil fuel industry to be able to bring concerns over environmental regulations directly to Trump. At the meeting, Trump reportedly promised to overhaul President Joe Biden's policies relating to electric vehicles and wind energy.

"The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an 'existential threat,' and over the last three years, his administration has finalized more than 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters," wrote the Post's Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow. "In comparison, Trump has called climate change a 'hoax,' and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years."

Whitehouse, who chairs the Budget Committee, said Trump's proposal to oil executives was "practically an invitation to ask more questions." He added that the inquiry would hopefully shed light on the myriad ways in which industries like Big Oil exploit the campaign finance system and find ways to make the system more transparent and accountable. Noah Bookbinder, who is president of the anti-corruption watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said that while Trump's offer was technically legal, there is still plenty of work to do in cleaning up the grey areas in federal campaign finance laws.

"There’s a clear legislative purpose in determining what happened at the meeting,” Bookbinder told Sargent. "If this really constituted “an attempt to link significant campaign contributions with specific policy promises, that suggests a huge loophole that needs to be closed.”

READ MORE:'Corrupt': Jared Kushner's business deals under fire as Trump runs for president

Many of the environmental policies Trump suggested he would do away with in a second term are in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the $485 billion bill Biden signed into law in 2022 that included a swath of clean energy infrastructure initiatives and incentives for electric vehicle development. Economists projected the clean energy development grants could generate roughly $1.5 trillion in new economic activity, and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by five billion tons before the next decade.

Conversely, some of the executive orders the oil industry has prepared for Trump would undo the progress on climate Biden has made since taking office. Politico reported that some of the orders would lift Biden's pause on new natural gas export permits, open up new protected federal lands for more oil drilling and allow for more offshore oil drilling leases.

Trump casting Biden as an opponent of Big Oil is somewhat confusing, given that the United States officially hit record-high domestic oil production levels earlier this year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that in 2023, the U.S. produced 13 million barrels of oil per day on average, making the United States the world's largest oil producer.

Click here to read Sargent's full essay in the New Republic (subscription required).

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an ah 5 24

during a November 2023 interview, Michael Cohen — Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer and one of the prosecution's star witnesses in Trump's hush money/falsifying business records trial — that he will "absolutely" seek political asylum in another country if his ex-boss returns to the White House in January 2025.

Cohen warned that Trump "will exact revenge" on anyone he thinks "has done him wrong," telling ITV, "I fear for my safety. I fear for my life."

Similarly, — a scathing and outspoken Trump critic — told "Real Time" host Bill Maher he fears that "malignant, sociopathic narcissist" Trump will "come looking for me" and try to carry out some type of revenge if he wins in November. And Gen. Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he fears Trump would try to incarcerate him during a second term.

READ MORE:[Watch: Robert De Niro fears retribution from 'malignant, sociopathic narcissist' Trump if he wins

De Niro and Milley, unlike Cohen, haven't talked about seeking political asylum in another country. But the New York Times' Peter Baker, in an article published on May 5, reports that some Washington, D.C. insiders are flirting with the idea of leaving the United States if Trump defeats incumbent President Joe Biden in November.

"It has become the topic of the season at Washington dinner parties and receptions: Where would you go if it really happens?" Baker explains. "Portugal, says a former member of Congress. Australia, says a former agency director. Canada, says a Biden Administration official. France, says a liberal columnist. Poland, says a former investigator."

Baker continues, "They're joking. Sort of. At least in most cases. It's a gallows humor with a dark edge. Much of official Washington is bracing for the possibility that former President Donald J. Trump really could return — this time with 'retribution' as his avowed mission. The discussion is where people might go into a sort of self-imposed exile. Whether they mean it or not, the buzz is a telling indicator of the grim mood among many in the nation's capital these days."

According to former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor — a Never Trump conservative who is rooting for Biden — many D.C. insiders absolutely dread the possibility of Trump getting a second term.

READ MORE:[Defense expert details the 'theocratic fascist dystopia' that could follow 2024 election

Taylor told the Times, "I feel like in the past two weeks, that conversation, for whatever reason, has just surged. People are feeling that it's very obvious if a second Trump term happens, it's going to be slash and burn."

Former Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida) notes that Trump's extreme rhetoric is worrying both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C.

Murphy told the Times, "The rest of America may not take what he says seriously, but I think you're hearing the uncomfortable chatter in Washington among Democrats and Republicans because they understand, having worked with him in the past, that when he says something he means it."

According to CNN's David A. Andelman — who has lived in France before — some Americans who fear retribution from Trump are seriously looking into other countries to move to. Andelman told the Times that after he addressed that subject in a May 1 op-ed, 45 Americans contacted his real estate broker in France.

READ MORE:[Trump says GOP is the ‘party of fertilization’ — seems unaware of MI abortion amendment

*Read Peter Baker's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

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Johnson demands all Trump prosecutions cease, vows to use Congress 'in every possible way' - Alternet.org

aha pension plan for the cancelled?!

trump hires from TV fox audition, loyal // fascist mafia grifters

mma 5 24

eric and Donald Trump Jr. are assuming the position of “loyalty czars” within the Trump campaign, Axios reported on April 24, with the two eldest Trump sons aiming to “focus on vetting potential officials and staffers for ideology and loyalty” and to “take a lead in making sure government jobs are filled by Republicans aligned with Trump's vision for the party.”

Reporter Alex Thompson writes:

Don Jr.’s goal “is to keep the John Boltons of the world outside a second Trump administration,” a person close to him told Axios, referring to Donald Trump's hawkish former national security adviser who wrote a bestselling book lambasting the former president.

The New York Post similarly reported in March: “Should his father retake the Oval Office, Trump Jr. said he plans to take a ‘very active’ role in the the 2024 presidential transition team.”

“Mostly just to make sure we stop some of the D.C. swamp rats and the swamp creatures from getting in there and doing their thing,” he told the paper. “There are so many great people to choose from now with the first four years of the administration you have a good understanding of who would be great and loyal and implement the America First policies.”

On his Rumble podcast, Triggered, Trump Jr. has frequently taken recommendations from his audience and made his own suggestions of far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA loyalists who would fit into his vision for a second Trump administration:

• ## Laura Loomer
• Laura Loomer is a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who has said she is “pro-white nationalism,” celebrated the death of thousands of migrants, and dismissed the massacre of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. Angry White Men, [3/7/21; Right Wing Watch, 11/1/17; Twitter/X, 7/24/17; Huffington Post, 8/20/22]

• • Trump Jr. said that he wanted Loomer as his father’s next White House press secretary.On his podcast, Trump Jr. said he’d “love to see her as press secretary just to watch D.C. just explode.” Loomer responded on her own show, saying she would “gladly” serve as press secretary. Media Matters, [11/10/23; Rumble,Loomer Unleashed, 11/10/23]
• ## Mike Davis
• Mike Davis is a pro-Trump sycophant who has promised to wage a “reign of terror” against political enemies he would fire, indict, deport, or imprison under a second Trump administration.He has garnered attention in right-wing media for his excuse of Trump’s crimes, authoritarian leanings, and role in founding the Article III Project, which he described to The New York Times in 2019 as an effort for the right to “take off the gloves, put on the brass knuckles and fight back” on judicial issues. Media Matters, [11/10/23]

• • Trump Jr. said that “you almost have to” nominate Davis as attorney general. “Just put them in as interim even just to send that shot across the bow of the swamp, you know? Like — you want to play?” Rumble, *Triggered*, [11/9/23]
• ## Tucker Carlson
• Tucker Carlson is the disgraced former Fox News prime-time host whose nativist commentary normalized white supremacist talking points in conservative rhetoric.Carlson also has a history of claiming January 6 was a “false flag,” praising authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, and elevating bizarre pseudoscientific ideas to address an alleged crisis of masculinity. Media Matters [10/28/18, 12/19/22]

• • Trump Jr. said that Carlson would be his “first, second, third, fourth, and fifth choice for VP if I could decide right now.”He added, “He’d be great on a lot of issues and it would also drive the other side insane.” Rumble, *Triggered*, [11/9/23]
  • Trump Jr. reiterated that Carlson is his pick for vice president but indicated he would also “be great” for press secretary. The former Fox host “actually understands the issues, unlike most of these clowns in the media,” who are “not smart enough, most of them, to actually understand the details … so he would run circles around them,” he said. Trump Jr. added: “I had higher hopes for Tucker than press secretary, obviously, but, man, he’d be great in the role.” Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]

• ## Dan Bongino
• Dan Bongino is a Trump loyalist who amassed a right-wing following by attacking the Mueller probe, appearing on Alex Jones’ Infowars conspiracy theory outlet, and promising that “my entire life right now is about owning the libs.”Bongino is currently a Rumble-exclusive contributor and was previously a Secret Service agent, NYPD officer, thrice-failed congressional candidate, NRATV host, and Fox News personality. Media Matters, [5/21/21, 4/11/23]

• • Answering audience questions live on-air, Trump Jr. said Bongino “would be great” for vice president or another position “to just end nonsense … put him in charge of the FBI and getting rid of the crap down below there.”While reading other audience suggestions for his father’s potential future Cabinet, Trump Jr. previously said Bongino “would be a good one, that’d be fire on day one.” Rumble, *Triggered*, [1/18/24, 12/28/23]

• ## Vivek Ramaswamy
• Vivek Ramaswamy is an “anti-woke” entrepreneur and author who frequently appeared on Fox News and gained attention from his failed GOP primary campaign as part of the 2024 presidential race, though he remained a Trump loyalist.During his campaign, Ramaswamy attempted to appeal to the far right by endorsing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and suggesting that January 6 was an “inside job.” The New York Times, [2/21/23; The Associated Press, 1/16/24; New York Magazine, 1/3/24]

• • Trump Jr. said that he liked the idea of Ramaswamy for vice president but that he also saw support for making him the “blow-shit-up czar, basically, like just get in there and, you know, take down these institutions.”“By the way, both of which [are] important and interesting,” he added. Rumble, *Triggered*, [1/18/24]

• ## Alex Jones
• Infowars host Alex Jones is a 9/11 truther and conspiracy theorist who has been found liable for his false claim that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax; he has also platformed Holocaust deniers. Media Matters, [12/1/16, 11/3/23; NPR, 12/2/22; The Associated Press, 10/12/22, 11/27/23]

• • Trump Jr. floated Jones as part of a “day-one troll team” for high-level positions in the Trump White House. He went on to threaten that as “punishment” for “every time they just totally disregard the Constitution” or “start another sham impeachment,” Jones would be given an official position “for a month.” Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]
  • While reading audience suggestions, Trump Jr. said Jones would be a “fair” choice for press secretary in a second Trump administration. Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]

• ## Owen Shroyer
• Owen Shroyer is a convicted Capitol rioter and Infowars host who federal prosecutors said “helped create January 6.” The Washington Post noted that Shroyer had spread “2020 election conspiracy theories with calls for violence to a large internet following,” and during the January 6 insurrection, the Infowars host “trespassed on restricted Capitol grounds in violation of a prior court stayaway order for disruptive conduct.” The Washington Post, [9/12/23]

• • Listing Shroyer among audience suggestions for future Cabinet picks, Trump Jr. complained that the Infowars host “just did some jail time for nonsense” and said he would like to see Shroyer on an “FU tour in Washington, D.C.” Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]

• ## Jack Posobiec
• Jack Posobiec is a right-wing troll and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist with white supremacist ties.Posobiec promoted the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory accusing members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign of being part of a pedophilia ring that operated out of a D.C. pizza parlor. Media Matters, [8/15/17; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 4/26/24]

• • Trump Jr. said that Posobiec “would be a good one” to include in his father’s Cabinet. Posobiec has also appeared on Trump Jr.’s livestream to praise “the great men of means” such as those who founded conservative-leaning platforms like Truth Social and Rumble, encouraging “everyone at lower levels” to “be supporting those guys at all times, period, full stop." Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23, 4/1/24]

• ## James O’Keefe
• James O’Keefe is the disgraced founder and former leader of the right-wing media organization Project Veritas, a group that targeted progressive figures and organizations by covertly filming them and publishing deceptively edited videos to spread misinformation.O’Keefe’s previous plots included trying to push false stories of sexual abuse to The Washington Post, trying to undermine the 2020 election, and targeting Planned Parenthood. NPR, [2/21/23; Media Matters, 11/28/17, 1/4/21; The New York Times, 7/27/11]

• • Trump Jr. said O’Keefe would be “a good one” for a Cabinet position, adding, “That would drive some people crazy.” Rumble, Triggered, [12/28/23]

• ## Victor Davis Hanson
• Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and frequent Fox News guest who has written the book The Case for Trump and has invoked “great replacement” theory rhetoric. The New York Times, [3/5/19; Media Matters, 6/30/22, 5/9/23, 9/22/23]

• • Trump Jr. responded “that would be an awesome one” after one of his audience members suggested Hanson could be in charge of the Department of Education, saying, “That would drive them crazy but I’d love to see them argue with his academic credentials.”Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]

• ## Kari Lake
• Kari Lake is a failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and current senate candidate who has a history of election denial and courting extremist endorsements. Lake has embraced extremists such as Loomer and Posobiec and antisemites such as Jarrin Jackson and Stew Peters. AZ Central, [1/25/23; Media Matters, 10/24/23, 10/12/22]

• • Trump Jr. agreed that Lake would “drive a lot of people crazy” as a vice presidential nominee. Rumble, *Triggered*, [12/28/23]

===

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5 24 desantis endorsed trump, mcconnell, lindsey graham?

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5 24

'Solid use of public funds': Embattled Texas AG mocked for flying to NY to 'stand with Trump' - Alternet.org

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4 24

although Donald Trump's trial in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money/falsified business records case is in full swing, both of special counsel Jack Smith's criminal cases against the former president appear unlikely to go to trial before the November election.

Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly delayed Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case, and the special counsel's election interference case is in limbo while the U.S. Supreme Court examines Trump's absolute immunity claims. Oral arguments were held on Thursday, April 25.

Meanwhile, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) has filed an ethics complaint against Smith, claiming that his prosecutions amount to "illegal election interference."

READ MORE:[Elise Stefanik is going to 'cringeworthy lengths' to 'impress Team Trump': analysis

In a Tuesday, April 30 post on X, formerly Twitter, Stefanik shared a copy of a letter she had sent to Jeffrey Ragsdale of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility.

The former Trump critic turned Trump loyalist, who has described incarcerated January 6, 2021 rioters as "hostages," told Ragsdale, "I write today to request an ethics investigation of Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith for abusing the resources of the federal government to unlawfully interfere with the 2024 presidential election. Jack Smith's multiple attempts to rush to trial the federal January 6th case against President Trump violated long-standing, explicit Justice Department policy."

Stefanik's announcement has received many responses on X.

Luke Zaleski, legal affairs editor at Condé Nast, tweeted, "We're going to be gaslit into a dictatorship. It's time to recalibrate the presumption that the Republican Party hasn't been seriously compromised. They've been working exclusively for Trump and in ways that are counter to US interests and their own that just can't be explained."

READ MORE:GOP rep. calls out Elise Stefanik’s 'totally wrong' Jan. 6 claim: 'So completely incorrect'

Public relations/media veteran John L. Goodman, formerly of ABC News, wrote, "When wanting to be Trump's Vice President is more important than your self esteem and integrity... Rep. Elise Stefanik demands DOJ ethics probe into Jack Smith, accuses him of election interference."

Stefanik is reportedly on Trump's short list of possible running mates, along with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was also reportedly a top contender, but she has been drawing vehement criticism after describing, in her new book, an incident in which she shot and killed a puppy on a farm.

READ MORE:[Jack Smith must now make 'strategic choice' on Trump case with 'major consequences': column

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alternet-no lnx

Russian banker who loaned Trump’s Truth Social $8M reportedly has 'family links to Kremlin'

Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2019 (Creative Commons)

:{:{Alex HendersonApril 22, 2024}:

Even after X CEO Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump's @RealDonaldTrump account, the former president has continued to use his own Truth Social as his primary social media platform. Trump's last post on X was on August 24, 2023, but he uses Truth Social frequently.

Truth Social, launched in August 2022, is part of Trump Media and Technology Group — which is now publicly traded. One of Truth Social's backers was Anton Postolnikov, a 40-year-old Russian banker who loaned the outlet $8 million.

According to the Daily Beast, Postolnikov reportedly has "family links" to the Kremlin and made a lot of money with websites that sold "dodgy sex pills."

READ MORE:Putin, Trump and Netanyahu unveil the terrifying perils of strongman rule

"The flagship product sold by these sites, Vimax — which promises longer sex and a firmer erection — has prompted warnings from health regulators in the U.S. for containing hidden ingredients that may endanger health," journalists Matt Bernardini and Matei Rosca explain in an article published on April 22. "The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to buy the supposedly natural male enhancement supplements, and told anyone who had bought the tablets to throw them out."

The reporters add, "The sites where the pills were sold included vimaxtrialoffer.com, which was registered in the name of Anton Postolnikov, 40, according to public domain ownership records."

Postolnikov has a strong connection to MAGA politics.

In addition to helping Truth Social get started, he donated $30,000 to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, according to Bernardini and Rosca.

READ MORE: Wall Street is now betting on Trump’s Truth Social stock to fail

"In (2021), documents show that a company listing Postolnikov as its 'authorized person' owned two dwellings on Miami’s private Fisher Island worth $13 million," Bernardini and Rosca report. "The company that owns the luxury properties, 7812 Fisher Island LLC, is the subject of ongoing divorce proceedings in Florida where Postolnikov is splitting from Olga, a fellow native of St. Petersburg who describes herself as a photojournalist…. Before his alleged foray into Florida high finance, Postolnikov was involved in the selling of Vimax, which was sold via offshore companies in the U.S., Cyprus, and Mauritius, according to the products' websites."

READ MORE: Truth Social lost millions last year: SEC filing

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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'Subprime loan king' who posted Trump’s $175M bond has long history of 'shady business practices' - Alternet.org

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Fox highlighted Trump’s comments about a slain woman without noting the family says he lied about talking with them | Media Matters for America

Fox News' Charlie Hurt defends Donald Trump amid criticism he fabricated claims about speaking with murder victims family | Media Matters for America

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RSS gov cuomo endorse an 4 24 180?

mma mainstream media gushed over “vocal Trump critic” NH Gov. Chris Sununu, who has now endorsed Trump](https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/mainstream-media-gushed-over-vocal-trump-critic-nh-gov-chris-sununu-who-has-now)

04/16/24

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an 4 24

pres Joe Biden is taking action on Thursday that will close the “gun show loophole” by requiring tens of thousands of unlicensed gun dealers to perform background checks. It is an effort to reduce gun violence and mass shootings that lawmakers have attempted for a quarter-century, since the 1999 Columbine, Colorado High School massacre, the deadliest school mass shooting in U.S. history at the time. Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, where 12 students and one teacher were murdered.

Last August the Biden administration announced the new proposed rule to add an estimated 23,000 unlicensed gun sellers to the category that already includes approximately 80,000 dealers required to perform background checks, according to CBS News. Politico calls it “the most sweeping expansion of firearms background checks in decades.”

A bipartisan bill passed after the Uvalde, Texas elementary school mass shooting that left 21 people dead, including 19 children and two adults, made the rule change possible, Forbes reported last year.

The rule will become effective in 30 days.

In February, speaking at an NRA-sponsored event in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump vowed if elected in November he will immediately rescind all of President Biden’s efforts to curb gun violence.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said, Reuters reported at the time.

READ MORE: Arizona Republicans Block Democrats’ Bills to Repeal 1864 Near-Total Abortion Ban

The American public strongly supports closing the gun show loophole and expanding background checks to include private sellers.

According to PolitiFact, a 2021 Pew poll found more than eight in ten Americans (81%) support expanding background checks to include private gun sellers. Two other polls that year found even stronger majorities (84% and 89%) saying they support background checks for all gun sales.

“I first heard about ‘closing the gun show loophole’ after Columbine. It’s finally been closed a quarter-century later, thanks to the bipartisan gun legislation Biden signed in 2022,” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller noted Thursday.

“Weeks after the Columbine shooting,” the LA Times reported in 2008, Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg “introduced a proposal to close the gun-show loophole in federal law. It passed the Senate on Vice President Al Gore’s tiebreaking vote, but did not survive the House.”

“President Biden saved lives today,” said former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) on Thursday. “Gabby” Giffords was the victim of a 2011 assassination attempt, and was shot in the head. In that mass shooting, outside a local supermarket during an official public “Congress on Your Corner” event, six people were murdered and 12 others were shot.

“Since 2013, I’ve fought to close this loophole in our background check system,” said Giffords, who now heads the nonprofit “dedicated to saving lives from gun violence,” that bears her name. “Now, more gun dealers will have to conduct background checks and fewer people intent on doing harm will be able to buy guns, no questions asked. Thank you, @POTUS.”

READ MORE: Johnson Moves for Trump Protection Against Greene With Mar-a-Lago Joint Press Conference

President Biden in video announcing this new rule called on Congress to take additional action and pass universal background checks.

Watch below or at this link.

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an 4 24

americans who have purchased firearms since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic are far more willing to engage in political violence against their fellow citizens, according to a new study.

The Guardian recently reported on a study by the University of California-Davis' violence prevention research program dubbed "Firearm Ownership and Support for Political Violence in the United States." Researchers surveyed roughly 13,000 gun owners who bought their weapons over the last four years, and asked if violence was justified in order to accomplish political objectives. 39% of gun owners — a plurality — said yes, while 30% said no.

UC-Davis researchers warned that American gun owners in the survey could potentially be "arming up for anticipated civil conflict."

READ MORE:Robert Reich: The threat of 'fascist political violence' has 'clearly intimidated Republican lawmakers'

"Our findings strongly suggest that large numbers of armed individuals who are at least potentially willing to engage in political violence are in public places across the US every day," the study read.

More specifically, 42% of respondents who own AR-15 style assault weapons were in favor of political violence, along with 44% of more recent gun buyers. Additionally, 56% of gun owners who openly carry their firearms in public told researchers they would be willing to carry out political violence.

"Recent purchasers and always- or nearly-always-carriers were more willing to kill to advance political objectives," the study read.

The study was published Tuesday by Jama Network Open, which is a monthly open access medical journal published by the American Medical Association. Its principal author, Garen Wintemute, is a professor of emergency medicine at UC-Davis, and is approaching the problem of American political violence as a public health issue, according to the Guardian.

READ MORE:Jen Psaki slams Trump over 'embrace of political violence'

While the political violence that erupted on January 6, 2021 was initially widely criticized by former President Donald Trump (though only hours after his supporters initially breached the US Capitol) and Republican lawmakers, many have since done a one-eighty. Trump himself has promised on multiple occasions to pardon January 6 defendants, particularly those incarcerated in Washington, DC jail.

As New York University's Just Security publication recently reported, many of those defendants are incarcerated specifically for attacking police officers. The former president has reportedly been in contact with Micki Witthoeft, who is the mother of deceased January 6 participant Ashli Babbitt. A US Capitol police officer shot Babbitt after she broke past several police lines and attempted to leap through a broken window at several lawmakers huddling in the speaker's lobby just several feet away.

READ MORE:Nearly all J6 defendants Trump wants to pardon assaulted police officers: security experts

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AN 4 24

Former President Donald Trump needed someone to post a $175 bond while he appeals Justice Arthur Engoron's sanctions in New York State Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud lawsuit — and he found it in 80-year-old billionaire Don Hankey, chairman of the Knight Specialty Insurance Co.

Bloomberg News' Erik Larsen takes an in-depth look at Hankey in an article published on April 1, describing him as someone "whose fortune stems from car dealerships, real estate and financial services."

Hankey is richer than Trump. While Forbes has estimated Trump's total net worth to be around $2.6 billion, Forbes estimates that Hankey is worth $7.4 billion.

READ MORE:Trump already owed the billionaire who just helped him post fraud case bond

Larsen reports, "Hankey said Knight reached out to Trump's team to offer its services after hearing about the former president's trouble arranging a bond, which was initially set at 120 percent of the judgment, or about $540 million. The appeals court lowered the bond to $175 million after Trump said he didn't have enough cash."

Although Hankey has supported Trump politically, he doesn't know him personally.

The billionaire told Bloomberg News, "Yes, I voted for him in the past. But this is a business deal, and this is what we do. I have never met Donald Trump, nor talked to him on the phone."

Larsen notes that Knight Specialty Insurance Co. is "one of several affiliated companies that are part of the Los Angeles-based Hankey Group, a homegrown empire that also owns Westlake Financial Services, Hankey Capital and a Toyota dealership in North Hollywood."

READ MORE:[Legal experts expose the insidious design behind Trump’s attacks on judges’ family members

*Read Bloomberg News' full report at this link.

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AN 4 24

ne month after Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay $464 million at the conclusion of his New York civil fraud trial, a panel of New York Appellate Division judges last week granted the MAGA hopeful ten days to post a $175 million bond instead.

Trump attorneys previously claimed it would be "impossible" for Trump to put up the half-billion judgement.

On Monday, the former president posted the $175 million, meaning he "has likely avoided a worst-case scenario of frozen bank accounts and asset seizure," Axios reports.

READ MORE:Why Trump believes he can dodge 'any serious repercussions' in court: report

MSNBC reported last month New York Attorney General Letitia James said, "We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers, and, yes, I look at 40 Wall St. each and every day."

00:26

04:04

Keeping her word, she'd already begun to seize "Trump's golf course and private estate north of Manhattan, known as Seven Spring," last week.

"As promised, President Trump has posted bond," Trump lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement, according to ABC News. "He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict," she added.

According to MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, the former president already owed loans from two years ago back to the billionaire who helped him secure the $175 million.

READ MORE:Letitia James has already moved to start process of seizing Trump assets

Rubin reports via X (formerly Twitter), "NEW: The company that underwrote Trump's bond tonight in the NY Attorney General's civil fraud case, Knight Specialty Insurance Co., is owned by Don Hankey, the so-called 'king of subprime car loans.' But that's not all."

She continued, "Hankey, who is #128 on Forbes’s 2023 list and #317 on the 2023 Forbes billionaires list, made his money in auto services. But he is also believed to be the largest shareholder in Axos Bank. If Axos sounds familiar, it's because it's the financial institution that refinanced Trump’s loans on Trump Tower and Doral in 2022. Specifically, Axos has loaned Trump $100 million in his refinancing of Trump Tower and another $125 million for Doral."

Rubin noted, "Both loans are not due until 2032, according to the Office of Government Ethics disclosure Trump made in August 2023. The list of his liabilities, as it appears in that filing and which references both Axos loans, is pasted below here."

READ MORE:['We will come at them': Trump plotting 'vengeful' prosecution of Letitia James if elected

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an 3 24

the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will be hearing oral arguments both in favor of and against former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute broad presidential immunity in less than a month. And a significant number of groups have already submitted arguments to the Court asking that justices grant it.

According to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, 18 groups have submitted what he called amicus (meaning "friend of the court") briefs to SCOTUS totaling nearly 600 pages, all in relation to the immunity case. Nearly all of them are from far-right organizations and legal activists requesting that the nation's highest court accept Trump's "unhinged" argument that presidents are unbound by the rule of law while they're in office.

One such group is "Condemned USA," which is led by convicted January 6 riot participant Treniss Evans. In his March 19 brief, Evans argued that if Trump can be prosecuted for alleged election interference in the events that led up to the 2021 insurrection, then President Joe Biden should be able to be sued for the death of Laken Riley — a murdered nursing student whose alleged killer is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.

READ MORE:[Chutkan slams Trump in latest ruling rejecting immunity argument: No 'divine right of kings'

"If a President doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for his actions, what prevents Georgia murder victim Laken Riley’s family from suing Joe Biden for allowing her illegal migrant murderer into the USA? Or what if hundreds of families all sued, [one by one]?" the brief read.

Pagliery observed that Evans' brief described him as someone who "has been investigating and reporting events of January 6th since January 6th, 2021, and that he "was present at the Capitol on that day." In fact, Evans was identified by someone the Beast described as a "Facebook tipster," then arrested by the FBI and eventually sentenced to three years' probation. During his own court proceedings, Evans' lawyer asked the judge for leniency, saying his client was "quite self-reproving, sincerely remorseful and duly contrite."

Another conservative group, The Christian Family Coalition Florida (which supports Gov. Ron DeSantis' trans-exclusionary policies), submitted its own brief. Pagliery reported that the group downplayed Trump's actions on January 6 as "core political speech." A lawyer for the group specifically argued that presidents should have the ability to lie without being held accountable.

"For the sake of the presidency and the nation, criminal liability cannot turn on a mere factual dispute over whether an ex-president’s communications in challenging an election were ‘knowingly false,’" the brief read.

READ MORE:[SCOTUS is 'not doing its job' and 'only worried about itself': legal expert

One particular brief, however, disputed Trump's immunity claim. A brief submitted by three retired generals — including Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who was Trump's former acting national security adviser and Department of Veterans' Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie — threw cold water on the assertion that Trump could hypothetically order the murder of a political opponent with impunity.

"No—the president cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival and have the military carry out such an order," the generals wrote in their 18-page brief. "That a person is a political rival of the president is neither a justification nor an excuse for an unlawful killing. And deliberately carrying out an order to murder such a person would be acting upon a premeditated design to kill or an intent to kill. Therefore, any officer engaged in murder on the orders of a president would be subject to the death penalty or life in prison—and the officer would know it."

Click here to read Pagliery's full report (subscription required).

READ MORE:['Political and traitorous decision': Experts outraged by SCOTUS taking Trump immunity case

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DAILY BEAST no lnx $

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The Unhinged Arguments the Supreme Court Is Fielding on Trump Immunity

BUNKER MENTALITY

“Friend of the court” arguments are coming from across the political spectrum—and are showing the potential consequences of siding with Trump on immunity.

Jose Pagliery

Political Investigations Reporter

Published Mar. 30, 2024

Retired American generals vehemently say that no, Donald Trump cannot deploy SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival. Gun groups howl that the United States is turning into Communist China. And a convicted Jan. 6 rioter warns that President Joe Biden could someday get sued over the death of a jogger in Georgia.

These are among the 18 various groups that shared their wisdom with the Supreme Court earlier this month, filing amicus briefs on the same day that Trump told the high court why he should be able to dodge a federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election on false pretenses.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump has finally reached the nation’s highest judicial authority, which will determine whether the business tycoon can be put on trial. The timing of the nine justices’ eventual decision will determine if the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee is to face trial in court before Election Day in November.

But ahead of oral arguments next month, the Supreme Court is already getting inundated with all kinds of opinions about the main question in the case: whether a former president enjoys immunity for actions made while at the White House.

The Daily Beast reviewed the litany of uninvited legal arguments spanning 599 pages, ranging from breathless reiterations of Trump’s claims to head-turning warnings. Yet all bear the signs of a historic case that could determine the fate of the election, if not American democracy.

The most unusual and unexpected amicus brief comes from three former high-ranking military leaders: Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s own acting national security adviser; Robert Wilkie, who served as Trump’s Veterans Affairs Department secretary; and retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, who once led the Army’s elite commandos in Delta Force and Green Berets.

The three former military men felt it necessary to join together and address—in public and at the national level—one of the crazier Trump legal arguments: that Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution is so beyond question that it would allow him to order the assassination of his political enemies.

“No—the president cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival and have the military carry out such an order,” they clarified, marking the first time former military leadership has ever had to utter such a phrase in court.

The trio went further, pointing out that a Reagan-era executive order already prohibits anyone acting on behalf of the United States government from taking part in an assassination. They dedicated a significant portion of their 18-page court filing to making clear that military officers would be legally justified in refusing to even carry out an official order from their commander-in-chief, an assertion rarely made by military brass—and one that underlies just how stark their concerns are at this point.

“That a person is a political rival of the president is neither a justification nor an excuse for an unlawful killing. And deliberately carrying out an order to murder such a person would be acting upon a premeditated design to kill or an intent to kill. Therefore, any officer engaged in murder on the orders of a president would be subject to the death penalty or life in prison—and the officer would know it,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the other amici curiae—the so-called “friends of the court” who weighed in to give the Supreme Court their two cents—largely sided with Trump.

The right-wing nonprofit America’s Future—which screened a bonkers QAnon Hollywood conspiracy “documentary” at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week—joined forces with Gun Owners of America and similar firearms associations to warn the high court that Smith’s prosecution was making the United States look more like China, Russia, or Zimbabwe.

“The prosecution of President Trump by the Biden Administration has a parallel to a recent event in Communist China,” they wrote, recalling the way former Chinese President Hu Jintao has vanished from public view ever since he was mysteriously escorted out of a public ceremony where he had been sitting next to his successor, Xi Jinping.

The United States is heading down that same route, they warned, lamenting “the explosion of lawfare” aimed at Trump for doing what they deemed totally sensible political speech—an argument that rests, in part, on the gun-toting petitioners’ continued rejection of the 2020 election results. They referenced Trump’s “supposed” defeat in Arizona and Georgia.

The real danger here, though, is that while Trump is currently polling strong, the gun groups concede that “the effect of a conviction may be very different and could determine the outcome of the election.”

But it wasn’t the conglomeration of Second Amendment enthusiasts that made a veiled threat over the high court decision. That came from an Alabama electrical engineer who’s become a political financier.

In his court filing, Shaun McCutcheon describes himself as “a successful, self-made American businessman and constitutional patriot.” And he warned Supreme Court justices that the country’s MAGA loyalists aren’t going to suddenly start trusting the U.S. court system to select fair-minded jurors.

“The former President’s tens of millions of supporters cannot reasonably be expected to accept the typical legal fictions of voir dire under such extreme circumstances,” his lawyer wrote.

McCutcheon assigns malicious intent to the Special Counsel’s decision to indict Trump in the largely liberal District of Columbia—never mind that the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment ensures that a person will be subjected to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury drawn from the district where his alleged crime was committed, which in this case was the White House.

“A prosecutor appointed by a partisan presidential appointee of the opposing political party may prosecute a former president in a hand-picked venue deeply hostile to that former president, his beliefs, political expression, and legacy,” his lawyer wrote.

While the Supreme Court received various interpretations of presidential immunity that cast the Special Counsel’s investigations as a severe threat to the functions of the commander-in-chief’s job, the sharpest example came from someone who knows a thing or two about Trump’s insurrection.

In his brief, Treniss Evans argued that if Trump can be put on trial for allegedly masterminding a months-long and multi-pronged attack on U.S. democracy, then President Biden could be held personally responsible for the death in February of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, given that an allegedly undocumented Venezuelan man was arrested for her killing.

“If a President doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for his actions, what prevents Georgia murder victim Laken Riley’s family from suing Joe Biden for allowing her illegal migrant murderer into the USA? Or what if hundreds of families all sued, seriatim?” his lawyer wrote, using the Latin phrase that means “one-by-one.”

Evans made the filing through his “legal advocacy group,” which bears the emotionally charged name Condemned USA. He trivialized Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, but then went on to assert that Trump and his followers can’t possibly be accused of trying to stop certification of the election with a violent riot because technically Jan. 6, 2021, was just the official counting of the already certified votes before Congress.

The Supreme Court justices will get the sense that this topic is deeply personal for Evans. After all, his brief says right up top that “Mr. Evans has been investigating and reporting events of January 6th since January 6th, 2021. He was present at the Capitol on that day.”

In reality, he was in the violent crowd, held a bullhorn, and entered the Capitol—only to be identified by a Facebook tipster, arrested in Texas two months after the insurrection, and eventually sentenced to three years’ probation. To convince the federal judge to go easy on him, his other lawyer wrote that “Mr. Evans is quite self-reproving, sincerely remorseful, and duly contrite. He is embarrassed of this criminal conduct and the shame he has brought upon himself and his family. He has entered his plea of guilty voluntarily.”

But his March 19 brief before the Supreme Court doesn’t exactly hint at that remorse, nor does it morph into any critique of the man who called on him and others to show up that day and march on the Capitol Building.

Yet another legal advocacy firm asked the Supreme Court to give even more deference to Trump for the actions that led up to the disaster at the tail end of his presidency. The Christian Family Coalition Florida, a conservative Miami group that recently lent its support to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on transgender kids in girls’ sports teams, reduced Trump’s election interference efforts to merely “core political speech.” And it would give future politicians carte blanche to lie—and follow through with those lies—regardless of their claim’s merit.

“For the sake of the presidency and the nation, criminal liability cannot turn on a mere factual dispute over whether an ex-president’s communications in challenging an election were ‘knowingly false,’” a lawyer for the group wrote.

In this Trump case, justices also heard from a favorite villain of the American progressive movement: Citizens United, the nonprofit behind the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark decision that opened the door to having corporations spend unlimited funds on elections.

The group joined with two former U.S. Attorneys General: the Reagan administration’s Edwin Meese III, and the George W. Bush administration’s Michael B. Mukasey. Together, they tried to strip the current team of federal prosecutors going after Trump from any legitimacy.

They argued that Smith “wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design.” And they contend that’s something he can’t do without the Senate’s confirmation. Instead, they say, AG Merrick Garland should have taken the same approach he did with the separate Hunter Biden investigation and tap an existing, Senate-confirmed federal prosecutor in charge of a regional office, like Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

The two conservative former AGs and the nonprofit also claim that most cabinet officials have the authority to appoint officers—minus the Justice Department, a proposition that would give the heads of Agriculture, Education and Homeland Security departments more leeway than the nation’s attorney general. And they warn that Garland’s actions could “create by regulation an entire shadow Department of Justice.”

But leave it to a consortium of 18 state attorneys general—all pro-Trump Republicans led by Alabama AG Steve Marshall—to make the one point everyone can probably agree on.

“If he had not been president, none of this would be happening,” they wrote.

Political Investigations Reporter

@Jose_Pagliery

jose.pagliery@thedailybeast.com

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

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mma 3 24

The American Conservative, a right-wing blog and Project 2025 partner, published an article advocating to repeal the 22nd Amendment so that Donald Trump would be able to serve a third term.

The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits a president to serving two terms. It was adopted after former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a third and fourth term amid public concerns about a “long-term president.”

An article headlined “Trump 2028” published in The American Conservative advocates for the amendment’s repeal so that Trump could be eligible to serve a third term should he win the 2024 election. The American Conservative is a partner of Project 2025, the conservative movement’s comprehensive transition plan for the next Republican presidency. Project 2025 — organized and led by The Heritage Foundation, a leading right-wing think tank — is a policy and staffing initiative that threatens to weaken democracy, significantly roll back civil rights, and exacerbate climate change, among other issues.

Peter Tonguette, a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner who also regularly writes for The American Conservative, dubiously argues in his piece that the drafters of the 22nd Amendment could not have anticipated a president who would serve nonconsecutive terms, a possibility that he argues is a reflection of Trump’s supposedly unique popularity. (Polls show that the majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of the former president.) He says voters should not be “denied the freedom” to elect him to a third term.

He describes the 22nd Amendment as “plainly unfair” and places “artificial limits” on “voter choice.” From the blog:

As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now.

This is plainly unfair.

…

The case of Donald Trump, however, makes an even more forceful ethical argument against the Twenty-second Amendment and for its repeal: If a man who once was president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second nonconsecutive term—as Trump seems bound to do—to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play. If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?

He concludes: “Trump in 2028!”

Project 2025 is backed by a coalition of over 100 organizations and individuals, at least two-thirds of which receive funding from the Koch network or conservative philanthropist Leonard Leo. The project has also been heavily promoted by MAGA-connected media figures such as Steve Bannon, who has called it the “blueprint” for Trump's second term on his War Room podcast.

Tonguette is also the author of such luminary blogs as “Long Live the Common Cold,” which he describes as “one of life’s most valuable little trials,” and “My Mother Loved Donald Trump.”

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an 3 24

Former President Donald Trump is still seething at New York Attorney General Letitia James after losing his civil fraud case earlier this year. And if he's elected to a second term, his Department of Justice may throw the book at her.

Rolling Stone reported Wednesday that the ex-president's lawyers are planning a vengeance campaign against James in the event Trump gets elected in November and installs a far-right attorney general. Reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez wrote that "Trump and his MAGA legal brain trust — many of whom are informally auditioning for roles in his potential second administration — are serious about keeping their vengeful options wide open."

"Letitia James is not going to get away with it," Trump attorney Alina Habba said on Fox News. "We will come at them. We will come hard and we will literally fight until the truth comes out. There was nothing wrong. President Trump has done nothing wrong. All he has done is won a campaign. And that is scaring them because they know when he goes back in November 2024, he is going to clean house."

READ MORE:Watch: Trump blames Letitia James for Exxon leaving New York for Texas — in 1989

In order to appeal Judge Arthur Engoron's verdict in the bench trial, the former president owed a bond of $464 million, which included the $355 million in penalties and statutory interest. But a New York Appeals Court recently reduced that bond to just $175 million, and gave Trump another 10 days to come up with the money (he'll still need to pay the full judgment amount if he loses the appeal). But despite the multiple breaks he's received since the verdict, Trump is still planning to prosecute James under a federal statute.

Suebsaeng and Perez reported that Trump is specifically aiming to prosecute the New York attorney general under 18 U.S. Code § 595, which prohibits state officials from using their "official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President."

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti called the use of that statute a "non-starter," saying prosecuting James would be an "abuse of power" that would likely trigger impeachment hearings.

"James used her authority as Attorney General to enforce the laws of New York," Mariotti said. "To characterize that as ‘interference’ in an election raises obvious federalism concerns. It would essentially mean that state officials could not enforce any state law against an entity affiliated with a potential presidential candidate."

READ MORE:NY appeals court upholds Judge Engoron's ruling that Trump committed 'widespread fraud'

The Rolling Stone report pointed out that President Joe Biden could theoretically use that same statute to prosecute Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, given his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Suebsaeng and Perez also noted the irony of Trump complaining about "election interference," given his multiple documented attempts to interfere with the certification of election results.

"As it were, Trump has been charged in two criminal cases — one federal, one in Fulton County, Georgia — for actual election interference during his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden," they wrote.

Trump has made revenge the themes of his 2024 campaign. At his first official rally of the 2024 election season in Waco, Texas — the site of a deadly FBI raid on the Branch Davidian cult in the 1990s — Trump told the crowd he was their "retribution." He repeated that statement at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.

READ MORE:Trump owes almost $450M in judgments. Here's how much he'd get for selling his properties

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3 24 PENCE declined to endorse after djt clinched nom?! unprecedented? NYT buried it?

'Pence found his spine': Former VP praised on social media after refusing to endorse Trump - Alternet.org

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grenell as sos?

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rnc? whatley?

Even Trump-supporting 'hardline conservatives' are being purged by MAGA purists: report - Alternet.org

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Having once called him an “ignoramus,” Ben Shapiro now kisses Donald Trump’s ring | Media Matters for America

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mma 3 24

in a March 13 segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake explained how Trump’s use of the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill” points to a nonexistent problem pushed by right-wing media, namely that the U.S. is not producing enough energy.

In the segment, Haake points out, “The United States is producing more oil and gas right now than any other country has in the history of the world. We are producing more. We are importing less.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 13, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe

On March 11, Trump posted to his Truth Social account, “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”

This isn’t the first time Trump has listed oil and gas development as a top priority. As reported by The Washington Post, in February, Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, “There are two things I’m going to do. Number one is drill, baby drill.”

But as Haake pointed out, Trump would not actually be inheriting an energy crisis, despite the messaging that both his party and right-wing media have espoused. Fox News personalities have falsely claimedthroughout the Biden administration that President Joe Biden’s policies are making the U.S. “energy dependent” on foreign countries — particularly when it comes to oil — and that the administration is cutting production of energy.

“I think it's an attempt to kind of connect the inflation issue to something that, you know, voters — Republican voters, base voters — have known for a long time, this desire to increase energy production going back to 2008, 2009, 2010,” Haake said of Trump’s fixation on “drill, baby, drill.”

The slogan originated in 2008, prior to the shale boom, and was used by Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Sixteen years later, the energy landscape looks very different. The U.S. has been exporting more energy than it imports since 2019, though it still does, and likely always will, import some energy from abroad.

Scientists have said that in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, countries would have to start phasing out fossil fuels immediately. With current energy policies in place, global average temperatures are predicted to cross that threshold within the next decade.

//America is producing more energy than ever, but Fox News is attacking Biden over it anyway

03/07/24

2. ### Fox News pushes “energy independence” 329 times in first two weeks of Russia’s war in Ukraine, shaping coverage of energy policy on cable news

03/11/22

==

trump famously promised not to cut soc sec in 2016? 2020 b/c suidicdal, why flip now? instinct is to be tough strict ft, go right (tho now nikki is gone?) provocateur to get attn

see mma 3/15/24 trump frosh mumbles on cut soc sec so crm machine revs up to support eg

Ben Shapiro belly flops on Social Security: “Retirement itself is a stupid idea” | Media Matters for America

Right-wing media are coming for your retirement | Media Matters for America

After Social Security cut comments, Trump turns to Breitbart reporter who said he’d consider serving as his next communications director | Media Matters for America

Matt Walsh calls for Social Security to be "abolished" | Media Matters for America

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How Trump ends Social Security - Alternet.org

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START AHA DOH

DISRUPTER primary 3 24 on bannon

main chaos disruption is mostly about real stability in physical world, eg ~ global weirding but 

this is more about abstraction/ideas social system as of 11/20

see bannon trump admin state

see boom bust oscillation

hype fear/ anger to justify fascism urban migrant biden crime 2 24

tobacco fossil fuel want to sow doubt

putin wants to disrupt faith in elections

inequality --> instability, polarization --> demonization --> violence

gop rw wants to create doubt on ability of gov't to function

an 3 24

according to Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson, former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon will have an outsized influence on a second Trump administration despite no longer being a key architect of his rise.

In a deep dive into Bannon's strong influence on the MAGA movement, Wilson told the Guardian's David Smith that Bannon is a great believer in sowing "chaos" to achieve his goals and his ramping up his rhetoric as the former president makes his third bid for the Oval Office should set off alarms.

With Smith reporting Bannon harped on Trump winning the 2020 presidential election before an enraptured crowd at CPAC recently, he added, "It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility."

With that in mind, Smith suggested Bannon would cast " a long shadow" over a second Trump administration.

Former GOP strategist Wilson agreed.

“Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party," he explained. "He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”

Continuing in that vein, he was asked what Bannon likely has in mind for a second Trump go-around.

“Concentration camps," he replied. "This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”ENDIT

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problems on e jean carroll $ bond? he reofffended?

an 3 24

after US District Judge Lewis F. Kaplan denied his petition for a stay, former President Donald Trump finally posted a $91.6 million bond for his appeal of writer E. Jean Carroll's judgment on Friday.

That $91.63 million includes the full $83.3 million judgment, along with a 9% statutory interest the State of New York tacks onto surety bonds. That money has been set aside in a court-managed account to be paid to Carroll in the event Trump loses his appeal. The ex-president's bond was guaranteed by the Federal Insurance Company — a New York-based subsidiary of the company Chubb Group LLC, which is headquartered in Switzerland. In 2018, Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg served on a trade advisory committee in the Trump White House. The Washington Post reported that "it was not clear from court records what collateral Trump presented to obtain the bond from Chubb."

The environmental nonprofit group Rainforest Action Network (RAN) noted on its website that Chubb does business around the world, including with several major American adversaries. The group pointed out that Chubb is "insuring oil and gas extraction and transport in Russia, fueling Russia’s war on Ukraine."

READ MORE:['Very big can of worms': Ex-prosecutor says Trump may seek 'foreign' help to pay judgments

"In fact, Chubb called Russian oil and gas 'one of the most promising activities' of its Russian operations,'" RAN wrote. "The insurer was recently backing Nord Stream 2, a massive, controversial natural gas pipeline built by Gazprom, the world’s largest producer of gas and a majority Russian state-owned fossil fuel company (which also happens to be funded by JPMorgan Chase)."

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann tweeted Friday that while Trump is "$90M down, $400M to go," the details of the bond agreement are murky and that "the public has no idea who may have actually put up the money or provided a guaranty to support the bond."

"But one thing’s sure: Trump is beholden to someone for a lot of money," Weissmann wrote.

In response to Weissmann's tweet, attorney and journalist Daniel Miller expressed concern, opining that the bond guarantee was a "matter of national security," adding "the public has to know this information before voting in November."

READ MORE:[Trump owes almost $450M in judgments. Here's how much he'd get for selling his properties

Notably, the Post reported Chubb's CEO was vocal in his disdain for the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, condemning "the violence and display of demagoguery we witnessed in our nation’s capital."

"We should all hope for a new era of respect and decency as we meet the many common challenges facing our nation," Greenberg said the day after the capitol riot.

Trump has yet to post his bond for appealing the $454 million civil judgment that he's been ordered to pay to the State of New York after losing his civil fraud case. Earlier this week, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Trump may seek out foreign help to pay that judgment, particularly since American financial institutions may hesitate to give a loan to an adjudicated fraudster. In February, a judge denied Trump's request to pay a $100 million bond, suggesting Trump may not have the cash to cover the judgment on his own despite his multibillion-dollar net worth.

"What does that mean if a candidate for president is is on the hook for multiple, multiple millions of dollars to a foreign source? Because that, it seems to me, is the most likely source," Toobin said.

READ MORE:['Borders on pathological': Judge decimates Trump in fraud ruling

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aN 3 24

On Super Tuesday, voters in North Carolina picked their gubernatorial nominees to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper: State Attorney General Josh Stein on the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson on the GOP side.

Stein's campaign has a lot of political ammunition to use against Robinson, a far-right Holocaust denier and Christian nationalist who is stridently anti-gay, has called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a "communist," and believes that women should not have been given in the United States.

Likely 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has endorsed him, and Democratic strategists are hoping that having someone as extreme as Robinson on North Carolina's ballot will benefit President Joe Biden in the swing state.

READ MORE:['Cowardly': NY Times pummeled for ignoring NC GOP nominee’s Hitler and Holocaust remarks

In an article published on March 11, the Daily Beast's Dan Merica stresses that the Stein campaign has another issue to use against Robinson: health care.

Democrats have been slamming Trump for promising to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, if he returns to the White House in January 2025. But Merica points out that Robinson is even to the right of Trump on the ACA, which he considers a plot to "enslave everybody."

"Democrats are eager to focus the race on health care in the southern state, hoping to use Robinson's opposition to the Affordable Care Act and his more recent antipathy to the state expanding Medicaid as a focal point of attacks against the Republican, employing a similar strategy that worked for the party in 2018," Merica explains. "Robinson's particular complaint about the health-care law, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, was against one of the most popular provisions: the ability for children to stay on their parents' health-care plans until they turned 26 years old."

Trump had high hopes for abolishing Obamacare when the America Health Care Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2017, but the bill failed in the U.S. Senate. And in the 2018 midterms, health care was a strong issue for Democrats — who didn't retake the U.S. Senate that year but recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives in a big way.

"Robinson, with his history of bombastic comments, has even argued for a more conservative position on health care than Trump, who made repealing Obamacare a focal point of his successful 2016 campaign and attempted to do just that when he took office in 2017," Merica recalls. "Trump, in a bid to assuage critics who worried that taking away health care with no replacement would be politically detrimental to Republicans, often said he would replace the Affordable Care Act 'with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability'…. He ultimately got on board with a Republican alternative that was projected to kick 23 million people off health insurance, significantly raise prices for people with pre-existing conditions, and send health insurance markets — according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — into an 'unsustainable spiral.'"

READ MORE:[John Oliver smacks down Holocaust-denying GOP candidate and 'racist' Trump

Merica adds, "Robinson, however, advocated for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement — an even bleaker alternative."

Merica points out that Stein's campaign is already attacking Robinson on Obamacare.

Elisabeth Greenleaf, campaigns director for Progress North Carolina and a Robinson critic, told the Daily Beast, "I can only imagine he will continue to double down on this stance. And our work is educating voters on the impacts of that. It's going to be a big issue in this race."

READ MORE:Trump’s call to repeal Obamacare blasted as 'outlandish' as signups hit new record high

*Read The Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).

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an 2 24

before Donald Trump likened himself to Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, the former president frequently compared himself with a completely opposite personality – Chicago organized crime boss Al Capone.

During a speech in Nevada in December 2023, Trump painted himself as the victim of overzealous prosecutors who have treated him worse than one of the nation’s most notorious criminals.

“He got indicted once,”. “I got indicted four times. Over bullshit, I got indicted.”

In his never-ending attempt to politicize his substantial legal troubles, Trump’s exaggerated claims of victimhood are part of the appeal to his die-hard MAGA followers, who believe what Trump tells them: He is being persecuted by deep state bureaucrats because he is fighting for them.

“Never forget,” Trump said. “Our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom … they are not after me. They’re after you. And I just happened to be standing in their way.”

The message that Trump is serving as a protector against unexplained foes is part of the myth of an outlaw hero. Belief in such characters may explain his unwavering support and commanding lead in the 2024 race for the GOP presidential nomination.

American Robin Hoods?

In moments of high drama, the outlaw hero is a recurring figure throughout history.

Wherever they appear, outlaw heroes symbolize resistance to perceived changes to a way of life. Most often, these heroes emerge locally from humble roots and gather visibility and celebrity as a result of their daring, audacious acts that become the stuff of legends.

The common theme in all these outlaw hero legends is that they claim to be engaged in campaigns to restore justice by taking from the powerful and giving to the powerless at great personal risk.

The model for American outlaw heroes is England’s Robin Hood. As the legend goes, he stood against the corruption and tyranny of the Sheriff of Nottingham by robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

In America, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a series of outlaw heroes, from Jesse James and William “Billy the Kid” Bonney to John Dillinger and Al Capone, around whom similar legends developed – that they stood up to unjust authorities in ways that were daring, captivating the imagination of many Americans.

Photographs of Al Capone taken by Chicago police on Jan. 25, 1947.

But the reality of their lives was completely different than the myths.

They were constantly on the run from law enforcement authorities. While their daring jail escapes and bank robberies drew cheers from supporters, their lives were filled with dangerous shootouts, often ending in sudden deaths. In Capone’s case, it ended after years fighting dementia and other complications from syphilis.

John Dillinger, for instance, the notorious bank robber who gained fame during the roaring 1920s, was shot to death by FBI agents on July 22, 1934, after one such shootout.

Though these outlaw heroes may have targeted the rich and powerful, there is scant evidence that the riches they accumulated were ever redistributed to the poor. But the banks they robbed held the savings of ordinary people, and the violence they fomented took place in their local communities.

Capone is one example.

By the late 1920s, he had cultivated an image of a well-intentioned businessman who cared only about the welfare of his fellow Chicagoans.

In reality, Capone was the nation’s most visible mobster who violently protected his criminal enterprise of gambling and selling alcohol during the Prohibition era. Among the best examples of Capone’s ruthlessness was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on Feb. 14, 1929. Posing as policemen, members of Capone’s gang lined up seven rivals against a wall and machine-gunned them to death.

Throughout his life, Capone was indicted and convicted of several crimes, including tax evasion, contempt of court, carrying concealed weapons and bootlegging alcohol. He ultimately died on Jan. 25, 1947, at the age of 48.

Trump’s outlaw behavior

This disparity between life and legend exists because outlaw heroes were both celebrated by supporters and condemned by authorities. The result, then and now, is that each side has been baffled by the other’s inability to see the truth.

The key to understanding outlaw heroes, then, is that they flourish not in spite of but rather because of their rebelliousness. The more daring and rebellious the outlaw hero, the more commanding the figure becomes.

Such is the case with Trump.

Despite his personal and family wealth, Trump has been able to convince his blue-collar supporters that he is one of them. He presents himself as a persecuted figure who stands between them and politically motivated “witch hunts.”

As their champion, Trump has been excused for the kinds of behaviors that have brought down other political figures.

Those behaviors include marital infidelity and sexual abuse, evading taxes and avoiding military service, disparaging celebrated and wounded military veterans and threatening his political opponents with lawsuits, imprisonment or execution.

In addition, Trump faces four criminal indictments that range from his efforts to remain in power following the 2020 presidential election to his alleged willful retention of classified documents.

What most distinguishes Trump from earlier outlaw heroes is that he has actually captured the nation’s most powerful position and is now campaigning to reclaim it.

Though the final chapter of the Trump saga has yet to be written, there is the very real possibility that Trump, like outlaw heroes before him, will become larger in legend after death than he was in life.

David G. Bromley, Professor Emeritus of World Studies, *Virginia Commonwealth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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scotus win on immunity stall trials

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navalny murdered

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an 2 24

hat is happening in the hearts of former President Donald Trump’s supporters?

As an anthropologist who studies peace and conflict, I went to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to find out. I wanted to better understand the Make America Great Again faithful – and their die-hard support for Trump.

The event began on Feb. 21, 2024, in National Harbor, Maryland, with Steve Bannon’s routine, untrue banter about how President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, and it peaked with an angry speech from Trump three days later. In between, I sat among the MAGA masses listening to speaker after speaker express outrage about American decline – and their hope for Trump’s reelection.

Everywhere I turned, people wore MAGA regalia – hats, pins, logos and patches, many with Trump’s likeness. I spent breaks in the exhibition hall, which featured a Jan. 6 insurrection-themed pinball machine featuring “Stop the Steal,” “Political Prisoners” and “Babbitt Murder” rally modes and a bus emblazoned with Trump’s face. Admirers scribbled messages on the bus such as, “We have your back” and “You are anointed and appointed by God to be the President.”

Those on the left who dismiss the CPAC as a gathering of MAGA crazies and racists who support a wannabe dictator do not understand that, from this far-right perspective, there are compelling and even urgent reasons to support Trump. Indeed, they believe, as conservative politician Tulsi Gabbard stated in her CPAC speech on Feb. 22, that the left’s claims about Trump’s authoritarianism are “laughable.” This is because CPAC attendees falsely perceive President Joe Biden as the one who is attacking democracy.

Here are my top three takeaways from CPAC about Trump supporters’ current priorities and thinking.

people pray during the opening ceremony of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, 2024.

1. There’s a Reagan dinner – but CPAC is Trump’s party

Former President Ronald Reagan runs in CPAC’s DNA. Reagan spoke at the inaugural CPAC in 1974 and went on to speak there a dozen more times.

In 2019, the conservative advocacy group the American Political Union, which hosts CPAC, published a book of Reagan’s speeches with commentary by conservative luminaries. In the preface, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Political Union, says he often asks himself, “What would Reagan do?”

CPAC’s pomp gala, held Friday, is still called the “Ronald Reagan Dinner.” But Reagan is otherwise hardly mentioned at the conference.

Reagan’s ideas of American exceptionalism have been supplanted by Trump’s populist story of apocalyptic decline. Reagan’s folksy tone, relative moderation and clear quips are long gone, replaced by fury, grievance and mean-spirited barbs.

2. There’s a method to the madness

Many commentators and critics, including groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, view CPAC as a frightening or bizarre gathering of white nationalists who have a nativist agenda.

In 2021, commentators said the CPAC stage was shaped like a famous Nazi design called the Othala Rune, which is a hate symbol. Schlapp denied this claim and said that CPAC supports the Jewish community, but various commentators took note of the uncanny resemblance.

This year, CPAC refused to give press credentials to various media outlets, including The Washington Post, despite the organization’s emphasis on free speech.

Some speakers, including Trump, have been known to regularly voice support for white nationalism and right-wing extremism, including speakers who promote the false idea that there is a plot to replace the white population. I discuss this idea in my 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US.”

Indeed, the U.S.-Mexico border was a constant topic at this year’s CPAC, which included controversial anti-immigrant speakers such as the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party and a representative of Hungary, whose leader stated at the 2022 CPAC that Europeans should not become “mixed-race.” Hungary will also host a CPAC meeting in April 2024.

Many of the sessions have alarming titles like, “Burning Down the House,” “Does Government Even Matter” and “Going Full Hungarian.” There are right-wing, populist speakers like Bannon and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Overall, the program is informed by a conservative logic that largely boils down to God, family, tradition, law and order, defense and freedom.

Of these, God looms largest. As a result, CPAC’s hardcore conservative Christian orientation is anti-abortion rights, homophobic and oriented toward traditional family structure and what it considers morality.

Schlapp co-wrote a book in 2022 that warns of the dangers of “evil forces” – what he considers to be progressives, the radical left and American Marxists. Schlapp’s book title even dubs these forces “the desecrators.” Such inflammatory language is frequently used at CPAC, including by Trump during his Saturday speech.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, left, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, speak during CPAC on Feb. 22, 2024.

Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

3. Trump believers think he is their savior

CPAC’s love of Trump is shocking to many on the left. But at CPAC, Trump is viewed as America’s savior.

According to his base, Trump delivered on abortion by appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. They believe that, despite evidence of mixed results, Trump had wide successes at securing the border and creating jobs. For example, during Trump’s time as president, the U.S. economy lost nearly 3 million jobs, and apprehensions of undocumented migrants at the border rose.

Trump’s CPAC speech, like his campaign speeches, harped on such supposed achievements – as well as Biden’s alleged “destruction” of the country.

Conservatives roll their eyes at liberal fears of Trump the despot. Like all of us, they acknowledge, Trump has flaws. They say that some of his comments about women and minorities are cringeworthy, but not evidence of an underlying misogyny and hatefulness, as many critics contend.

Ultimately, CPAC conservatives believe Trump is their best bet to defeat the radical-left “desecrators” who seek to thwart him at every turn – including, as they constantly complained at CPAC, social media bans, “fake news” takedowns, rigged voting, bogus lawsuits, unfair justice, and lies about what they call the Jan. 6, 2021, “protest”.

Despite these hurdles, Trump battles on toward the Republican nomination for presidential candidate – the hero who CPAC conservatives view as the last and best hope to save the USA.

Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University - Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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cpac once about ideas and new ppl/voices/cans but now just trump show

:{:{try for underdog status? pretend never prez bc fail? / fox/gop party of no, no policies?}:

rubber glue? compared himself to Navalny?!}:

an 2 24

Donald Trump said something at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday that stood out to experts on democracy and authoritarianism.

The former president has consistently cast himself as the victim of Joe Biden, even going as far as to compare himself to the man who was purportedly killed by Putin because he stood up to the leader politically.

But Trump took that even further at the CPAC event, referring to himself as a "political dissident" being persecuted by Biden's regime.

"I stand before you today not only as your past and future president, but also as a proud political dissident," he said on Saturday, adding, "I am a dissident."

This didn't go unnoticed by Trygve Olson, the author of the Lincoln Democracy Institute's research project, the "Democracy Index." He said the comment "might be the most disgusting statement of Donald Trump this week which is saying something."

"Nelson Mandela was a dissident. Alexander Navalny was a dissident. My friends who are imprisoned in Belarus are dissidents," he wrote. "You sir, are not a dissident by any stretch of the definition."

The democracy expert then continued:

"The fact you even claim to be insults those around the world who are (or have been) persecuted for political reasons."

Trump's "dissident" line was also highlighted by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in authoritarians, fascism, and propaganda. She compared the comments to something Benito Mussolini might say.

"Going strong since Mussolini: the tyrant as victim," she wrote. "Now Trump is a dissident persecuted by the 'Biden regime.'"

Political analyst Sarah Reese had this to say on social media.

"Trump claims that he is a political dissident. I don't think he knows what those words mean."

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an 4 22

fomer Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark is getting a last-minute assist from former President Donald Trump in his disbarment proceedings that may derail the entire process.

According to a Tuesday report in Politico, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche recently sent a letter to Clark's attorneys asking him to keep silent about any private conversations with the former president while he was in the White House. Blanche asserted that those conversations could be protected by "Trump’s executive privilege and other related privileges, including law enforcement privilege, attorney client privilege and deliberative process privilege." He added that the ex-president reserves the right to "intervene in any litigation involving these privileges."

Should Trump decide to assert executive privilege in Clark's disbarment proceedings, Politico legal correspondents Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein wrote that it could "force months of litigation on the matter."

Clark is currently defending his law license in Washington, DC, where he is in the midst of a disciplinary hearing that could result in his disbarment over his efforts in helping Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election. He is also one of the co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis' sprawling RICO case against Trump and his associates for alleged election interference in the Peach State.

The former Trump DOJ official had previously sought to have his Georgia case moved from Fulton County to Washington, DC in an effort to have a friendlier venue, arguing that he was acting in his capacity as a federal government employee in DC. The judge who shot down Clark's bid to change the venue for his case also rejected former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' attempt to relocate his trial from Georgia to DC.

Jeffrey Clark isn't the only Trump aide to face potential disbarment. John Eastman — author of the infamous "Eastman Memo" that laid out the plan to challenge electors and install Trump for a second term — is in the midst of his own disbarment proceedings in California. State bar officials have brought 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman as part of his attempts to subvert election results. A decision is expected by February 29. Eastman is also facing felony RICO charges in Fulton County.

After his failed attempts to move his Georgia trial, Clark and Eastman will both stand trial along with the former president in Fulton County, where they will each serve up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. Willis has requested an August trial date.

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an 2 24

one name that has been heard a lot in right-wing media outlets is Tony Bobulinski, an investor who House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) and other Republicans have been touting as their greatest weapon against Hunter Biden.

Bobulinski, according to many MAGA Republicans, will be the downfall of Hunter Biden and, by extension, his father, President Joe Biden.

But in an article published on February 13, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Roger Sollenberger lay out some reasons why Bobulinski's "ties" make him a problematic witness.

READ MORE:'You have no balls': Nancy Mace launches explosive in-person attack against Hunter Biden

:{":{As Republicans examine Hunter Biden's questionable business ties," the journalists explain, "it turns out Bobulinski is connected to one particular character perhaps more unsavory than any other figure in the inquiry's constellation: Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg…. a Ukrainian-born energy magnate who's been a close ally of Vladimir Putin for decades.}:"

Bredderman and Sollenberger note that in 2017, Vekselberg "reportedly funneled $500,000 to an LLC run by Donald Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, supposedly with the intention of influencing the new administration to let Russia illegally occupy parts of Eastern Ukraine."

"U.S. law enforcement has placed sanctions on Vekselberg multiple times, citing Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election, Moscow's aggression against Ukraine, and the oligarch's ties to Putin," the Daily Beast journalists explain. "Vekselberg tried to evade those sanctions with the help of an American attorney. But Republicans are trying to look past Bobulinski's ties to Vekselberg, as they paint Hunter Biden — dishonestly and without actual evidence — as a corrupt figure facilitating payments to his father."

READ MORE:'Excuse me!' Marjorie Taylor Greene fumes as Hunter Biden walks out on her speech

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).}}:

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Watch: Marco Rubio slammed for 'pathetic' defense of Trump’s anti-NATO diatribe - Alternet.org 2 24 AN

INVITE PUTIN INVADE

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PFAW 2 24 YMAIL

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series that serves to remind us all of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.

This week’s Trumptastrophe brings into focus how Trump and his MAGA Republican enablers sow doubt about our elections – especially for those that they lose – and how it undermines our election integrity while fueling right-wing outrage that can sometimes lead to violence:

On February 9, 2017, President Trump told a group of senators that he would have won New Hampshire in the 2016 presidential election if it weren’t for “thousands” of people he claimed were bused in from Massachusetts to vote illegally in the state. Trump offered no evidence to back up his claim.

A few days later, Trump adviser Stephen Miller was asked about the bogus claim by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” Pressed repeatedly by Stephanopoulos on the lack of evidence for Trump’s claim, Miller doubled down, saying it’s “widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics,” and declaring, “It’s very real; it’s very serious.” Miller went on to claim that there are “massive numbers of noncitizens in this country who are registered to vote.”

Miller’s amplifying of Trump’s false claims led Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to respond on social media, “As everybody knows, Stephen Miller has no evidence of voter fraud in NH. This has been debunked.” She noted that Trump had not called for a recount in the state.

This wasn’t the first time since his inauguration that Trump made false claims about the election in which he lost the popular vote by about 2.9 million votes while winning an Electoral College majority. A few weeks earlier, he told congressional leaders that he only lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million immigrants had voted illegally, a claim the Associated Press noted at the time had previously been debunked....

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mma 2 24

Right-wing media responded to a federal appeals court ruling on Tuesday denying former President Donald Trump’s claims of absolute immunity by offering absurd legal arguments and demonstrating general confusion about the facts of the case.

The D.C. appeals court ruled that Trump can be prosecuted for his actions to overturn the result of the 2020 election, a major victory for special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. Trump is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

As Politico reported:

The judges concluded that longstanding doctrines of “immunity” for presidents from civil lawsuits related to their official duties did not extend to alleged criminal acts — and certainly not for a former president. Similarly, they concluded that the gravity of the specific charges against Trump weighed heavily against declaring him immune, even when balanced against concerns about the chilling effect it could have on future presidents.

Right-wing pundits reacted by attacking the decision, with some claiming it was partisan and that future Republican administrations should target President Joe Biden.

• OutKick’s Clay Travis claimed that if the case moved forward it would “violate DOJ precedent and put Trump on trial in the late summer and fall of an election year.”

• January 6 conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly called it the “least shocking thing ever,” painting the ruling as partisan and downplaying the charges against Trump as “vague”

• Daily Caller editor Vince Coglianese posted on X (formerly Twitter) that a sentence the order meant Trump was “not entitled to the presumption of innocence.” The very next sentence in the decision proved him wrong.

• Trump’s son and right-wing influencer Donald Trump Jr. wrote that the ruling meant future presidents would “be incapable of action for fear of future partisan reprisal,” which “endangers the United States and sets a terrible precedent.”

• Conservative judicial activist Mike Davis argued the judges “ignored the Constitution's separation of powers” and that a future Trump “Justice Department can prosecute Biden for his illegal release of dangerous migrants into the United States and the natural and probable crimes they commit.” In fact, the judges found that it was Trump’s argument that “would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches.”

• “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec echoed Davis, writing, “This presidential immunity ruling means Biden can be indicted right now for treason by aiding an invasion.”

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aha doh pseudo-populism

:

AN 2 24 JOE CONASAN

Supporters of Donald Trump often complain about the "liberal elites" who have disrespected them. It is a feeling of cultural grievance that their idol constantly exploits, both to enrich himself with their donations and to defend himself against his critics.

Whenever Trump finds himself under pressure -- in a courtroom, an impeachment or an election -- he tells those credulous followers that it is not he but they who are the true targets of the Democrats, the "deep state," the media, the Republicans in Name

Only, the Biden White House or whomever. That was how he responded to the first impeachment brought against him in 2019 and that is how he answered the huge $83 million jury verdict delivered against him this week in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Trump makes this demagogic argument in full confidence that the MAGA cult will believe him -- and with certainty that they will never realize how deeply he is insulting them.

"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way," he tweeted when Congress first voted to impeach him. But did that make any sense? It wasn't the MAGA voters who attempted to extort the president of Ukraine, attempting to trade American weaponry for his own political gain (and to frame a political opponent with a phony prosecution).

Surely most of Trump's fans would never consider such a brazen blackmail scheme. Unlike him, they don't have to worry about being impeached or prosecuted; they have neither the motive nor the opportunity to perpetrate the offenses that Trump repeatedly commits.

In the wake of the Carroll jury award, the former president's most devoted associates have adopted the same argument, adding their own frantic spin. Steve Bannon, the convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump in order to keep his mouth shut, and Matt Schlapp, the right-wing activist repeatedly accused of homosexual assault, declared that the verdict foreshadows "the end of America."

On the "War Room" online broadcast hosed by Bannon, Schlapp echoed Trump's baseless insistence that the Carroll lawsuit is a "very coordinated thing" and the product of a "weaponized government" -- when in fact it is simply a civil lawsuit brought by an aggrieved citizen. But Schlapp went still further, warning the MAGA audience that the judgment against Trump in favor of the woman he assaulted would portend their own ruin.

What the verdict proves, according to Schlapp and Bannon, is that the government "doesn't just intend to destroy your career and cancel you on social media, they mean to impoverish you and destroy any opportunity you have in the future. ... If these things continue to stand, all of this unconstitutional illegal activity, we've got nothing left, Steve. I mean it's run to the mountains, run to the catacombs time. ... This $83 million -- this is just the beginning. All of us will be paraded down this gangplank. We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."

Why would a sane person put any credence in that hysterical rant? There was nothing "illegal" or "unconstitutional" in Carroll's courageous effort to hold Trump accountable for assault, which resulted in a flood of personal abuse against her that included hundreds of death threats. More to the point, only an infinitesimal fraction of Americans has any reason to worry about being held responsible for an aggravated sexual assault - because unlike Trump, few have ever been accused of rape or assault, let alone by dozens of women.

It is remarkable indeed how many of our fellow citizens are willing to be implicated in the sociopathic conduct of the former president, who tells them every day that they are just like him.

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10% of campaign donations skilled off for lawyers? msnbc

'Highly unusual': Trump spent $50 million of supporters’ donations on his own legal bills - Alternet.org

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1 24

Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is currently weighing whether to uphold the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state's Republican primary ballot. One House Republican is attempting to sway that decision with legislation of his own.

According to Politico, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) is drumming up support for a resolution that declares the former president did not "engage in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." That's language lifted directly from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — also known as the "insurrection clause" — which was used to disqualify Trump in both Colorado and Maine.

The decisions from both Colorado's high court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to remove Trump from their respective ballot stems from his role in the January 6 siege of the US Capitol, which both entities referred to as an "insurrection." Those disqualifications cited Trump taking an oath "to support the Constitution of the United States," which they accuse him of violating by egging on his supporters on January 6.

Because SCOTUS issued a writ of certiorari agreeing to consider the Colorado ruling, a decision could be handed down anytime before June, when SCOTUS' current term ends. And even though the Court has a 6-3 conservative majority — which includes three justices appointed by Trump himself — a ruling in favor of Trump isn't guaranteed.

As University of Baltimore School of Law professor Kimberly Wehle wrote last month, the Colorado ruling is rooted in the same type of "judicial conservatism" that Republican-appointed jurists claimed in their confirmation hearings to follow while interpreting the Constitution. Trump-appointed Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are all proponents of "originalism" and "textualism," in which adherents interpret the Constitution with a plain meaning, rather than try to apply it in a more modern way.

"If the purportedly conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court are intellectually honest about their jurisprudential approach to the law, this case should not be hard," Wehle wrote in an essay for the Atlantic.

While Gaetz's anti-disqualification measure may pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, it's unlikely to go further than that. The insurrection clause stipulates that any disqualification of a candidate can be overturned by a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, which is virtually impossible given Republicans' razor-thin House majority and the Democratic-controlled US Senate.

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an 1 24

when Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) was first sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2015, she had a reputation for being a "pro-business conservative" along the lines of now-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and former New York Gov. George Pataki. And she was critical of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement during his 2016 campaign.

But Stefanik, now 39, has since flip-flopped, taken a far-right MAGA turn and become a strident Trump defender. In a scathing commentary for CNN in July 2021, Never Trump [vid] conservative[...slammed stef...k as a "shameless" and "disgraceful" opportunist who had totally abandoned her principles and become an apologist for the extremist who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

These days, Stefanik is describing convicted January 6 rioters as "hostages" — which, according to The Guardian's Peter Stone, is an example of the extremes she will now go to in support of the MAGA movement.

"As Donald Trump aggressively fights multiple legal and political threats," Stone explains in an article published on January 30, "New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has become his most powerful ally in Congress in key ways by echoing Trump's dangerous falsehoods and pushing outlandish conspiracy theories around the January 6 attack on the Capitol. To bolster Trump, Stefanik has mimicked Trump's calling convicted January 6 prisoners 'hostages,' declined in a TV interview to say she would certify the 2024 election in advance, and filed ethics complaints against two judges overseeing cases against Trump or his allies."

Stone continues, "Stefanik's emergence as a major Trump cheerleader has sparked sharp criticism from historians, ex-Republican members and Democrats for fueling election denialism and disinformation which weaken democracy. But it has earned Stefanik a notable distinction: Her name is frequently mentioned as Trump's potential 2024 running mate."

Interviewees for Stone's article laid some reasons why they find Stefanik increasingly disturbing.

Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University professor and co-author of the 2019 book "How Democracies Die," told The Guardian, "She scares me in several ways. Stefanik appears to be willing to go down Trump's authoritarian path wholeheartedly…. She's smart, politically savvy and skilled, unlike Trump."

READ MORE:'Unquestioning loyalty': Elise Stefanik’s 'outrageous' antics show desire to be Trump’s running mate

Levitsky added, "The most dangerous autocrats like (Viktor) Orbán and (Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan are politically skilled. Stefanik has shown signs she has some of those skills."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) is also quite scathing in his criticism of Stefanik.

Raskin told The Guardian, "Elise Stefanik is giving opportunism and sycophancy a bad name. She now mimics every move and word of Donald Trump…. Stefanik is clearly auditioning for the running mate slot by suggesting, à la Trump, that she'll reserve judgment on certifying the election."

The Maryland Democrat also said of Stefanik, "A hallmark of fascist political parties is that they don't accept the results of elections if they don't go their way. Stefanik is now embracing this tactic to prove to Donald Trump she's the most obsequious sycophant in the Republican Party and can bow and scrape even better than (Rep.) Marjorie Taylor Greene."

Donald Ayer, who served deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, told The Guardian, "Stefanik seems to have been someone who knew better beforehand, but she now has become one of the shock troops systematically distorting reality in support of Trump."

READ MORE:'Vile' Elise Stefanik facing wave of outrage for calling E. Jean Carroll a liar

*Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

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press suppress 1 24 mma

• former President Donald Trump’s campaign appears to have blocked NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard from covering New Hampshire primary events. This latest attempt to remove a reporter from his campaign trail is just one of many such incidents in Trump’s legacy of bullying and attacking members of the press.

• ## Trump has a long history of bashing journalists, and 2024 appears to be no different

• • After questioning Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on her thoughts regarding Trump’s alleged assault of E. Jean Carroll, NBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard was reprimanded by the Trump campaign and told he would not be allowed to travel with the campaign to New Hampshire primary events.Trump and Hillyard clashed in March 2023 as well when Hillyard attempted to question Trump on the ongoing Manhattan criminal investigation, spurring Trump to angrily demand the reporter be removed from the interview. The Guardian, [1/22/24; The Washington Post, 5/2/23

• • Over the course of Trump’s first campaign and presidency, he became notorious for his spiteful attacks against members of the press and “fake news.” A CNN montage of such attacks shows Trump labeling the media as “absolute scum,” the “enemy of the people,” and “disgusting,” among other insults. A study from the Committee to Protect Journalists showed that these sorts of attacks have had wide-ranging consequences, including emboldening foreign leaders to restrict media rights. The Hill, [6/30/18; VOA, 4/17/20]

• ## Trump has subjected journalists to a myriad of insults, calling them “dumb,” “slimeballs,” and “horrid”

• • Trump referred to former CNN political analyst April Ryan as a “loser” and “nasty” after she questioned him regarding claims of voter suppression.He also told her “repeatedly” to sit down and refused to respond to the question. The Baltimore Sun, [11/9/18]

• • Trump launched a series of personal attacks against MSNBC host Joy Reid, saying that she has “no talent” and “truly doesn’t have the ‘it’ factor needed for success in showbiz.” Mother Jones, [9/14/19]

• • Trump labeled NBC’s Peter Alexander a “terrible reporter” when Alexander questioned whether he was giving Americans “false hope” by promoting unproven medications for COVID-19.Trump ranted that Alexander was “doing sensationalism” and asked a “nasty question.” CNN, [3/20/20]

• • Fox News reporter Kristen Fox was ridiculed by Trump for “being so horrid in the way” she asked a question after bringing up lagging COVID-19 test results.Trump instructed Fox that she should say “congratulations, great job” instead. The Daily Beast, [4/6/20]

• • Trump celebrated when MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi was struck by a rubber bullet while reporting on George Floyd protests, calling it the “most beautiful thing.” The New York Times, [9/23/20]

• • After an Atlantic piece alleged Trump had cancelled a trip to the WWI Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Paris because it was filled with “losers” and “suckers,” Trump referred to the report’s author Jeffrey Goldberg as a “slimeball.” BBC, [9/5/20]

• • Trump gleefully implied that journalists who published the Supreme Court’s leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade should be subject to incarceration and sexual violence. Attendees at the campaign event cheered as Trump mentioned that these journalists could become the “the bride of another prisoner.” Rolling Stone, [10/23/22]

• • New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi was denounced by Trump as being a “shaky & unattractive wack job” after she wrote that members of his inner circle were hesitant about his re-election chances. Trump also called her “dumb as a rock.” The Independent, [12/27/22]

• ## Trump has also prevented journalists from attending events over personal vendettas

• • Over the course of Trump’s presidency, he repeatedly pressed for “retaliatory action” to be taken against journalists for “shouting questions” at him and bringing up topics he didn’t approve of. For instance, CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins was banned from a White House event after she questioned the president on his relationship with former attorney Michael Cohen. The Washington Post, [7/25/18, 7/27/18]

• • CNN sued the Trump administration after its White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials were removed over accusations that he had placed his hands on a White House intern who attempted to take away his microphone.Although the administration eventually backed down and reinstated Acosta’s credentials, Trump moved to implement a series of “regulations” for reporters to follow. The New York Times, [11/13/18, 11/19/18]

• • Trump’s re-election campaign refused to credential Bloomberg reporters after the outlet said it would not “investigate” Michael Bloomberg or other 2020 Democratic candidates. Then-campaign manager Brad Parscale said this would be the policy until Bloomberg News “publicly rescind[ed]” its decision to not investigate. NBC News, [12/2/19]

//

Trump is threatening to use the government to “come down hard” on the free press. Believe him. | Media Matters for America 2x?

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rww January 29, 2024

• Trump campaign troll Brenden Dilley is not happy with the Family Research Council’s David Closson for criticizing the cultish “So God Made Trump” video produced by Dilley’s “meme team.”: “You’re just bloviating about how you’re an expert on God and the Bible, but what you really are is a gigantic cunt.”
• Paula White, former President Donald Trump’s faith adviser, on the other hand, seems to be a big fan of the video.
• Ben Zeisloft claims that “the Second Amendment is a Christian proposition”: “The right to protect your life from evildoers flows directly from the inalienable right to life you have from your Creator.”
• Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers that the radical legislation he has introduced to abolish abortion, pornography, and no-fault divorce is unlikely even to get a hearing in the legislature.
• Finally, self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman says that “Jesus wasn’t some little limp-wristed, weak-kneed little guy that walked around.” How does Kunneman know this? “I’ve seen Jesus. He’s a man’s man!”

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fox trump pivot fail 1 24 mma

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no sure on date

'Bombshell' report raises questions about new possible Trump tax evasion: experts - Alternet.org

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GREATEST HITS

Trump’s call to repeal Obamacare blasted as 'outlandish' as signups hit new record high - Alternet.org

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AN AH 1 24

Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson's prediction that establishment Republicans would ultimately "bend the knee" to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election is proving to be spot on. Despite the fact that Trump is facing four criminal indictments, he has been endorsed by Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and many other prominent Republicans who aren't known for being ultra-MAGA.

With only two Republicans left in the GOP presidential primary — Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — much of the Republican Party is consolidating around Trump just as Wilson predicted.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on January 25, Never Trumper Tim Miller — another former GOP strategist — warns that establishment Republicans are being used to make Trump appear less threatening and "authoritarian" and normalize "raw fascistic Trumpism."

"There will once again be a group of patsies willing to be the Trump Administration's frontmen and frontwomen, offering themselves as tributes to the wannabe strongman," Miller explains. "They will be put forth as evidence that Trump will be constrained, that dictatorship is not imminent, that there will still be a few 'adults in the room.' Moreover, there will be mainstream, establishment figures who encourage 'good people' to serve because they still hold on to their belief that Trump can be reined in and the office must be protected."

The Never Trump conservative, a frequent guest on MSNBC, continues, "So brace yourself: In the weeks ahead, you are going to be introduced to 'Committee To Save America 2.0: We Protect. We Serve. We Care.' The new committee will be weaker and more pliant than its predecessor. But like the previous version, it will serve the purpose of comforting the Republican elites and Wall Street Journal-reading voters who want to go to bed at night without worrying that they might be accidentally ending the American experiment."

Miller cites Scott and Rubio as examples of establishment Republicans who have been "obsequious" in their support of Trump as he moves closer to winning the nomination.

"In the end," Miller warns, "a new Trump Administration would be far more radical and dangerous than the last one. And on balance, it would have a much higher percentage of MAGA true believers, from the cabinet all the way down to the interns buying pens and making coffee. Hell, even Vivek (Ramaswamy) could probably get a job. But Trump and his team are not oblivious to perception."

{READ MORE:Rob Reiner: Trump embodies the 'fascism' Norman Lear devoted his life to defeating}:

Miller adds, "The new Committee To Save America rollout is coming soon. Don't let the voters who might be persuaded by their act be fooled."

READ MORE:Trump is promising an 'authoritarian' Christian nationalist 'task force' within DOJ: analyst

*Tim Miller's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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Newsmax's Eric Bolling says if Donald Trump "is behind bars, he will be elected president of the United States, and then he can pardon himself" | Media Matters for America

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an 1 24 no lnx

'The fascist nightmare looms': Columnist says Trump’s election may end democracy worldwide

Carl Gibson January 20, 2024

If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, one columnist believes it could lead to the eventual rise of fascistic governments around the globe.

Rather than standing alone as a threat to American democracy, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall argued that the former president is instead part of a larger trend of far-right, authoritarian leaders taking control of Western democracies in the Americas and Europe. He noted that despite a relatively prosperous economy, liberal institutions today are "weak and discredited." He compared Trump's MAGA movement to Vladimir Putin supporters in Russia, as both have a pattern of "valuing charisma over character, preferring the strongman to the right man, and turning a blind eye to corruption and lies."

Tisdall pointed to Monday's Iowa Caucuses as an example of how Trump's "anti-democratic" strategy prevailed over the face-to-face strategy practiced by other candidates like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who invested tens of millions of dollars in a ground game that spread to all 99 counties, yet failed to win a single one.

"Trump’s approach to Iowa exemplified how anti-democratic anti-politics works. He mostly avoided rallies and meet-and-greets with voters, boycotted debates with rival candidates, and travelled, aloof, in a power-tripping motorcade of black secret service limousines," Tisdall wrote. "Yet his imperial mien, lavishly funded TV advertising and harsh take-no-prisoners policy agenda produced a record win."

When looking at democracies around the world, Tisdall observed that "enclaves of freedom" are "besieged" by authoritarianism as restless voters seek strongmen who will ensure "security, uniformity, conformity and social validation for the dominant majority at the cost of civic freedoms, legal accountability, independent media, diversity and minority rights."

"India is succumbing to one-man rule, beguiled by the intolerant Hindu nationalism of Narendra Modi. Israel’s democracy is presently self-destructing. In Africa, coups abound. In Europe, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, scrambled to shore up the national project last week against a surging far-right tide," Tisdall wrote. "In Germany, Italy and Hungary, much the same struggle against a reviving fascism is being fought (or conceded). So much so that Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, joined street protesters to urge resistance to the anti-migrant, Nazi-linked Alternative for Germany party. In the UK, alienation and an anachronistic voting system turn elections into charades."

Tisdall wrote that if Americans don't stand up for democracy in November, it could signal that "the liberal moment" has passed.

READ MORE: How the 'terror of autocracy' could make or break the 2024 election

"The fascist nightmare looms anew," he wrote. "Under darkly lowering skies, the post-democratic age dawns."

Read Tisdall's column in full by clicking here.

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omg

an 1 24

gop # get worse with time?!

46 GOP senators sign SCOTUS brief downplaying Trump’s role in January 6 insurrection

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Roy Blunt, R-MO., speaks with reporters prior to attending a Senate Republican lunch Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Carl Gibson

January 18, 2024

All but three members of the Senate Republican Caucus have signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) urging the Court to strike down the Colorado Supreme Court's disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the state's GOP primary ballot.

The brief — which was also signed by 130 House Republicans — argued that Trump's disqualification "tramples the prerogatives of members of Congress," which they say include "the enforcement and (if necessary) removal of Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment]’s 'disability' on holding office."

"Congress—not any state court—plays a vital role in regard to [the insurrection clause]," the brief read. "It is Congress that must pass implementing legislation authorizing enforcement of Section 3."

"[T]his Court should conclude that Section 3 determinations fall within the 'political question' doctrine because they are so clearly committed by constitutional text to another political branch, i.e., Congress," the amicus brief continued. "Under current law, Congress has implemented Section 3 only in the narrow context of requiring a criminal conviction for 'rebellion or insurrection,' and provided that those found guilty 'shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.'"

While the question of whether a presidential candidate can only be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment will ultimately be decided by SCOTUS, the actual text of the insurrection clause doesn't explicitly say enforcement only comes after Congress votes. Rather, the clause — which prevents anyone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US or who has "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof" from holding any "civilian or military" office — only states that disqualification can be reversed by a two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate. Even if all signees of the brief voted to exempt Trump from the insurrection clause, it would still fall well short of the two-thirds threshold laid out in the US Constitution.

Notably, the brief also minimizes the former president's role in the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot, with the brief falsely asserting that Trump "quickly" asked for peace and encouraged "disbandment" of the riot even though he watched events unfold over the course of several hours before telling his supporters to go home. The brief even quoted George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 to describe the actions of "enterprising state officials" trying to disqualify Trump as an example of the statement "peace means war."

The only GOP senators to not co-sign the brief were Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski. Notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) co-signed the brief despite condemning Trump's actions on January 6.

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Newsmax's Eric Bolling says if Donald Trump "is behind bars, he will be elected president of the United States, and then he can pardon himself" | Media Matters for America

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see jan 6 revisionism eg MTG

Here are the key right-wing media figures who rewrote the history of January 6 | Media Matters for America

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Judge orders Trump to pay New York Times nearly $400K for expenses in 'frivolous lawsuit' - Alternet.org

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Trump complains it was 'ridiculous' he had to 'follow the laws' and leave office - Alternet.org

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dictator-trump-says-cnn-and-nbc-should-have-their-licenses-taken-away-video

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After previously dining with Trump, Nick Fuentes gives Nazi salute and discusses his willingness to commit violence for Trump | Media Matters for America

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AN 1 24

Former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark is getting a last-minute assist from former President Donald Trump in his disbarment proceedings that may derail the entire process.

According to a Tuesday report in Politico, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche recently sent a letter to Clark's attorneys asking him to keep silent about any private conversations with the former president while he was in the White House. Blanche asserted that those conversations could be protected by "Trump’s executive privilege and other related privileges, including law enforcement privilege, attorney client privilege and deliberative process privilege." He added that the ex-president reserves the right to "intervene in any litigation involving these privileges."

Should Trump decide to assert executive privilege in Clark's disbarment proceedings, Politico legal correspondents Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein wrote that it could "force months of litigation on the matter."

Clark is currently defending his law license in Washington, DC, where he is in the midst of a disciplinary hearing that could result in his disbarment over his efforts in helping Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election. He is also one of the co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis' sprawling RICO case against Trump and his associates for alleged election interference in the Peach State.

The former Trump DOJ official had previously sought to have his Georgia case moved from Fulton County to Washington, DC in an effort to have a friendlier venue, arguing that he was acting in his capacity as a federal government employee in DC. The judge who shot down Clark's bid to change the venue for his case also rejected former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' attempt to relocate his trial from Georgia to DC.

Jeffrey Clark isn't the only Trump aide to face potential disbarment. John Eastman — author of the infamous "Eastman Memo" that laid out the plan to challenge electors and install Trump for a second term — is in the midst of his own disbarment proceedings in California. State bar officials have brought 11 disciplinary charges against Eastman as part of his attempts to subvert election results. A decision is expected by February 29. Eastman is also facing felony RICO charges in Fulton County.

After his failed attempts to move his Georgia trial, Clark and Eastman will both stand trial along with the former president in Fulton County, where they will each serve up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. Willis has requested an August trial date.

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AN 1 24

TACOPINO POW?

Former President Donald Trump's rout of his GOP rivals in the Iowa Caucus appears to not have worked to soothe the moods of three of his top lawyers who, until this week, were defending him in two separate high-profile trials.

The New Republic reports Trump attorneys Joe Tacopina, Chad D. Siegel and Matthew G. DeOreo, of the law firm Tacopina, Siegel and DeOreo, all filed a motion to withdraw as counsel in two of the former president's upcoming cases. The three lawyers had been representing Trump in his currently ongoing defamation trial in which plaintiff E. Jean Carroll is suing for $10 million in damages, and in Trump's upcoming March trial in Manhattan District Court over alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Former federal prosecutor Michael McAuliffe told Newsweek that while there are "a number of reasons" why an attorney might want to stop representing a client, Tacopina, Siegel and DeOreo may have dropped the ex-president out of frustration that their client wasn't properly following their advice.

"The attorney-client relationship might have suffered a fundamental breach of confidence, running in either or both directions," McAuliffe said. "A strong-willed client who thinks he or she is more of a lawyer than the actual lawyer can create an untenable scenario for that lawyer to continue representing the client’s interests."...

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judge rules no campaign BS 1 24

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Ex-Trump critic Marco Rubio ripped for 'cowardly gaslighting' after endorsement: 'No integrity' - Alternet.org

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AN 1 24

During a December 19 campaign event in Iowa, 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump promised far-right white evangelicals that if he returns to the White House in January 2025, he will set up a Christian nationalist task force within in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Trump told the crowd, "As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I'll also immediately end the war on Christians. I don't know if you feel it. You have a war. There's a war…. Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that's fair and equitable. Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America."

MSNBC's Sarah Posner, in an opinion column published this week, slams Trump's proposal as yet another example of Trump's "authoritarian" mindset and his emphasis on "the theme of Christian persecution."

Posner, author of the 2021 book "Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind," explains, "In recent campaign stops and on social media, Donald Trump has reprised lies aimed at inciting his Christian Right base against Joe Biden. These tirades, centered on the false charge that the Biden Administration is persecuting Christians, aren't just Trump's typically dubious claims. Much like Trump's lies about a stolen election, they are designed to immerse his loyalists in a grievance-laden alternative reality in which Trump alone can rescue them from an evil government threatening their freedom."

Trump, Posner warns, will continue to "feed the Christian Right’s persecution complex."

"One needs to look no further than Trump's efforts during his first term, combined with his 2024 pledges to govern like a dictator, to see the authoritarian steps he is taking when it comes to 'protecting' his base's religious freedom," Posner writes. "He is leaving little doubt that he will do whatever it takes to retain the loyalty of the base that has stood by him through an insurrection, two impeachments, and now, multiple criminal indictments. He is saying loudly and clearly that as part of his broader disparagement of the rule of law, he would shred everyone else's rights in the name of his loyalists' 'freedom.'"

READ MORE:'I won the election and he was the loser': Biden torches Trump

*Read Sarah Posner's full MSNBC column at this link.

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Laura Ingraham calls Donald Trump's civil fraud trial "corporate murder" | Media Matters for America

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mult judges swatted Bomb squad sent to judge’s home ahead of closing arguments in Trump civil fraud trial - Alternet.org also jack smith

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mma 1 24

as early as last summer, some of former President Donald Trump’s primary election competitors and other right-wing figures attracted a small amount of buzz as potential vice presidential picks, and now, with the Iowa caucuses approaching on January 15 -- another potential reminder of Trump’s presumed primary win -- the speculation begins anew.

Past rounds of the Trump veepstakes have floated some big names, like former Fox host Tucker Carlson, as well as known Trump acolytes like former local news anchor Kari Lake (who has since announced a U.S. Senate run instead). Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon even mentioned the conspiracy theorist and retired Gen. Mike Flynn as a possibility. The latest round is similarly combing the right-wing airwaves for known Trump allies who could fit the presumed mold.

Dr. Ben Carson

On January 3, Newsmax contributor Mercedes Schlapp told Newsmax host Eric Bolling that Trump should choose a “loyalist … someone who’s not worried about the 2028 election,” a clear shot at all of Trump’s 2024 competitors.

Schlapp suggested Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or retired surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, prompting her fellow panelist Sebastian Gorka to scream over her, “Yes! No, no! You’re stealing my thunder!”

“Ben Carson. Ben Carson all the way,” Gorka added, “and he’s a loyalist and he’s a patriot.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the January 3, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Eric Bolling The Balance

According to a November Newsweek article, hype around a potential Carson nomination began with an anonymous X account, which “claimed … that a source close to Trump said Carson—who was the only Black member of Trump's cabinet—is the leading frontrunner for his vice president.” Carson, a former Trump cabinet member and apparent 2024 campaign surrogate, did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL)

Donalds, a second term U.S. representative, is a prominent Black Republican guest on right-wing media and has historically been a frequent subject of Trump VP speculation. Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk floated the possible candidacy while asking viewers to tell him their preferred Trump VP pick.

“I just love the idea of the Donalds,” he fantasized. “Donald Trump, Byron Donalds, two alpha males. Boom! It’d be great.” (Kirk also briefly mentioned Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.)

A Vice President Donalds was also floated by Gorka and Schlapp on Newsmax, prompting Bolling to ask the congressman about it in a subsequent interview. “Congressman, you are the man of the hour. You know, shortlist has you on almost every single shortlist.”

Rep. Donalds gave a fairly standard nonanswer; after saying that he and Trump have not discussed the possibility, he loyally added that he’s “just committed to making sure we get him back in the White House. However that looks, I’m all for it.” In November, Donalds said that he would be Trump’s running mate if he was invited to join the ticket.

Gov. Kristi Noem

Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, is another frequent subject of the 2024 Trump veepstakes, and on January 3, Bolling told his Donalds-cheering panelists, “You’re wrong. I just -- I know it's Kristi Noem. She was on the show last night.”

The interview with Noem -- who, like Donalds, also has a large national profile thanks to right-wing media -- did not shed much specific light on her VP odds. Bolling congratulated himself for being “one of the first people who said you would be the perfect one,” and said that Noem has “got it going on” for the position over Carson. “Any more words? You wanna break it here by chance?”

Like Donalds, Noem demurred, saying that Trump should “pick whoever will help him win” -- and that that person was not former Ambassador Nikki Haley, already a despised figure in Trumpworld. However, even if Trump picked Haley for vice president, Noem said she would still support the ticket because “he’s still the president, and the president still makes the decisions.” With that, Noem once again passed what is likely Trump’s most important qualification for a vice presidential nominee: loyalty.

Trump’s fellow 2024 primary candidates

Conventional wisdom may suggest that the winner of a presidential primary would consider one of their defeated competitors. But Trump, a man obsessed with personal loyalty, may be unlikely to select anyone who attempted to snatch the GOP nomination from his grasp.

At a September rally, Trump suggested as much: “They’ll do anything: secretary of something, they even say VP,” he derisively said of the field. “Has anyone seen a VP in that group? I don’t think so.”

Trump’s rejection of the field is closely mirrored by pro-Trump media’s record of attacks against some of the primary candidates, notably including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Although the two were once politically close -- Trump’s 2018 endorsement carried DeSantis into the governor’s mansion in the first place -- they are now at bitter odds, ever since DeSantis first appeared to be challenging Trump for the nomination and media buzz (prominently including from Fox) suggested that the governor may actually beat him.

Trump media allies began calling DeSantis disloyal to the former president, as the Trump campaign aired humiliating ads about the governor’s purported personal habits.

Haley, who was also a Trump administration appointee, is another conventional possibility, though she is a non-starter for many of Trump’s closest media allies. Podcaster Steve Bannon has pushed a theory that the Republican establishment is trying to “force” Haley onto the ticket at the convention, to “allow her to try to run the administration from number two.”

Somewhat echoing Bannon, Donald Trump Jr. recently said that “I wouldn’t have her” as vice president, “and I would go to great lengths to make sure that doesn’t happen. … She’s a puppet of the establishment in Washington, D.C.”

A recent USA Today poll asked likely GOP voters for their preferred Trump vice presidential nominee. And although several of Trump’s primary competitors were named, the single biggest vote-getter, at 55%, was no answer, suggesting that voters “seem ready to leave the decision up to Trump.”

The same is likely true of right-wing media, an ecosystem thoroughly dominated by Trumpism for nearly a decade. Although there is some buzz about particular individuals, most of conservative media will embrace whomever Trump ultimately selects.

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an 1 24

In the months following the deadly US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, both chambers of Congress voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal — the highest civilian award in the United States along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — to US Capitol police officers who defended members of Congress during the attack. 21 House Republicans voted no.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who was one of those 21 no votes, defended his "no" vote on his official X (formerly Twitter) account on the third anniversary of the attack that killed resulted in five deaths of police officers with hundreds more injured.

"Did you know all but 21 US Representatives voted for a bill written by Nancy Pelosi that called the January 6th protestors 'insurrectionists'?" Massie tweeted, along with a link to the legislation. "I voted No and took a lot of heat for it."

Massie's objection to the bill was that it referred to supporters of then-President Donald Trump who breached the US Capitol building as a "mob of insurrectionists." The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an "insurrection" as "the act or an instance of revolting especially violently against civil or political authority or against an established government," and "the crime of inciting or engaging in such revolt." According to The Hill, Massie disagreed with the characterization of January 6 rioters as "insurrectionists" when the bill was being discussed.

"They were protesting. And I don’t approve of the way they protested, but it wasn’t an insurrection," Massie said at the time.

According to CNN, there were ultimately three medals awarded — one for the entire US Capitol Police Department, one for the entire DC Metropolitan Police Department, and a third to be displayed at the Smithsonian museum naming all of the law enforcement agencies that participated in the defense of the US Capitol during the insurrection.

The final vote on the bill was 406-21, with 218 "yea" votes from Democrats and 188 "yea" votes from Republicans. No Democrats voted against the bill.

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Fox News' Jesse Watters calls it a "hoax" that Donald Trump promised to rule as dictator on day one if elected president | Media Matters for America

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NEW REPORT BIG LIE BS NO NAMES

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trump-tells-iowans-to-get-over-school-shootings

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Fox’s purported “news side” glosses over report on Trump’s business payments from foreign governments | Media Matters for America

Jeanine Pirro says Donald Trump was "entitled" to receive millions of dollars from China while president | Media Matters for America

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Trump’s promise to pardon Jan. 6 rioters guarantees 'likelihood of more violence': experts - Alternet.org

Nearly 40 percent of Fox News viewers believe FBI organized deadly Jan. 6 riot: survey - Alternet.org

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yikes

MMA 1 24 MG

Three years after the January 6 insurrection, the initial broad agreement about that day’s depravity lies in ruins. That consensus didn’t unravel on its own — right-wing commentators deliberately dismantled it for power and profit.

Republicans have made their peace with the violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters that stormed the U.S. Capitol as the culmination of his plot to remain in office, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll the paper reported on Tuesday.

“Republicans are showing increased loyalty to the former president as he campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020,” the Post reported. “They are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.”

Right-wing propagandists engineered that shift in GOP views of the January 6 insurrection by creating a revisionist counternarrative out of lies they repeated over and over again. Their work created a permission structure for Republicans to stop caring about the assault of hundreds of law enforcement officers amid an effort to overturn a presidential election by force. That helped ensure that the mob’s leader would remain the GOP’s presumptive nominee in 2024, positioned to carry out the party’s top priorities of cutting taxes for rich people, banning abortions, building huge migrant deportation camps to expel undocumented immigrants Trump claims are “poisoning the blood” of the country, and deploying state power against left-wing “vermin.”

Trump’s 2020 election subversion effort received strong support among his media allies, many of whom backed his claims of a stolen election even as they privately acknowledged those claims were false. When Trump urged the violent mob he had summoned to Washington, D.C., to “fight like hell” to stop the steal — and they responded by attempting to do just that and attacked the Capitol — the right’s propagandists could have washed their hands of the then-president and his violent supporters.

They made a different choice. As I detailed last month:

The right-wing effort to minimize January 6 and Trump’s role in fomenting it began that very day. Fox hosts who knew better told their viewers that Trump’s supporters had been responding to reasonable fears that the election had been stolen, while any violence may have been caused by antifa interlopers.

In the intervening years, Trumpist media stars — led by former Fox host Tucker Carlson — cosseted their viewers with a slew of lies about January 6. There was no “insurrection,” just a “political protest [that] got out of hand” in which “the overwhelming majority” of participants were “orderly and meek.” The rioter shot and killed by law enforcement while trying to breach the speaker’s gallery was a martyr, while the officers who were nearly beaten to death during the attack deserve mockery. The violence was orchestrated by undercover federal agents as part of a sinister plot to imprison patriotic Americans for their conservative views. The events were comparable to staffers for a late-night talk show shooting an unauthorized video in the Capitol complex, or a Democratic congressman foolishly pulling a fire alarm, or progressive protests at state capitols.

Trump’s 2020 subversion effort ultimately failed — but he still claims that he won the election, and gives every indication that he could try again should he lose in 2024. Voters expect as much: Roughly 7 in 10 respondents say Trump won’t accept the results of the election if he is defeated, according to the Post/UMD poll.

After a yearslong right-wing drumbeat of stolen-election lies and insurrection revisionism, and the corresponding purges of dissident Republican leaders and terror campaigns against election workers, the battleground is more favorable to a second attempt to overturn an election through lies and violence.

Colorado, the 14th Amendment, and the right’s January 6 revisionism}:

:{:{12/20/23}:

2. ### Fox News is a loaded gun aimed at American democracy

:{:{05/14/21}:

3. ### Tucker Carlson’s insurrection alternate reality

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WIRE Michael Knowles: "I wanna hear every Republican candidate saying, yes, of course, we'll pardon Trump" | Media Matters for America

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kpfa 1/3/23 biden econ trump had wages raise before pand?

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an 1 24

Trump's efforts to arouse hate and undermine elections make him the worst president in U.S. history, according to a Washington Post columnist.

Jennifer Rubin, a self-described ex-conservative, writes that the 45th president and his MAGA mantra pines to return to a golden age back in time.

"Wielding nostalgia for a bygone era — one that is invariably mischaracterized — is a favorite weapon for fascist movements (Make America Great Again), harking back to a time before their nation was “polluted” by malign forces," she writes.

But Rubin contends too may are experiencing selective amnesia, propping up the good and erasing the bad of the 1950s, an era to which conservatives would like to see the nation return.

"The past was simply not 'better' by any objective standard," Rubin writes.

"Poverty, child mortality, deaths from virtually any major disease, workplace injuries, high school dropout rates, etc., were all much worse in the 1950s," writes Rubin. "Also, kids got polio, Jim Crow was in full swing, gays had to be in the closet and no one had cellphones, home computers or microwave ovens. Very few people had air conditioning or could afford to fly."

The main driver of her piece is that those that may believe the sun rises and sets in Trump don't realize that no other president has come close to testing democracy's resiliency more than Trump.

"What we have nothad before is a president who rejected democracy, attempted to retain power by force and wound up indicted on 91 criminal counts," according to Rubin. "So yes, four-times-indicted Donald Trump was worse than every president who preceded him.

"The resulting venom, violence and loss of faith in elections have taken a heavy toll on our democracy."

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an 12 23

one of the few foreign correspondents to be granted personal access to Adolph Hitler and his inner circle in the dark winter of 1933 was Welsh journalist Garreth Jones. Assigned by his home paper, the Western Mail,to cover Hitler’s push to absolute power, Jones accompanied the newly appointed chancellor and his entourage to Frankfurt for a massive political rally that was held on March 2 of 1933.

*This article originally appeared on Truthdig.

Jones’ eyewitness account of the event is bone-chilling because it looks so much like what we are seeing today at Trump rallies.

“For eight hours, the biggest hall in Germany has been packed with 25,000 people for whom Hitler is the savior of his nation,” Jones began his story. “They are waiting, tense with national fervor…I have never seen such a mass of people; such a display of flags up to the top of the high roof, such deafening roars. It is primitive, mass worship.”

Then Hitler took the stage to a “roar of applause and the thumping and the blare of a military band and the thud of marching feet.” Hitler, Jones observed, “is … a master in repeating [his] leitmotiv in many varied forms, and the leitmotiv is: ‘The republican regime in Germany has betrayed you. Our day of retribution has come.’”

As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist.

The rally closed with Hitler’s pledge to “complete the work which I began fourteen years ago as an unknown soldier, for which I have struggled as leader of the party and for which I stand today as Chancellor of Germany. We shall do our duty.”

“Again,” Jones wrote, “the hall resounds.”

Three weeks later, Hitler secured passage of the Enabling Act, bringing the Weimar Republic effectively to an end.

Flash forward some 90 years and you can hear echoes of Hitler’s Frankfurt address in the persistent messaging of Donald Trump. Speaking at the ultra-right Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 14^th annual “Road to the Majority” conference in Washington, D.C. on June 24, the former president proclaimed:

In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

Trump delivered a similar message earlier in June, telling an audience of enraptured supporters in Columbus, Georgia, that he was being persecuted by federal and state prosecutors. He insisted that the “deep state” was also out to get those who followed him. “In the end,” Trump complained, “they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.” This was the usual stuff of Trumpian spectacle. In a rambling tirade delivered on Veterans Day in New Hampshire, Trump vowed to “root out…the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Trump’s fixation on Hitlerian imagery, memes and tropes is not an accident. The orange-haired demagogue has had a longstanding fascination with Hitler. According to a 1990 Vanity Fair article, Trump’s first wife Ivana, who died last year, told her divorce attorney that the former president kept a compilation of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender remarked on Trump’s interest in Hitler in his book on the 2020 presidential campaign, “Finally We Did Win This Election.” Bender writes that Trump told his then-chief of staff Gen. John Kelly during a 2018 trip to Europe that “Hitler did a lot of good things,” particularly for the German economy. (Trump vehemently denied Bender’s account.)

The cult-like bond between the movement leader and his most ardent followers, a bond characterized by pledges of mutual aid, threats of revenge and shared delusions of victimization, is one of the bedrock features of fascism. This was graphically illustrated by the ascent to power of the two pillars of 20 ^th-century fascism, Hitler and Bennito Mussolini, whose personal style Trump is often said to emulate.

“Mussolini put his hands on his hips, thrust his chest, jutted his lower jaw,” Jonathan Blitzer wrote in a 2016 New Yorker article that profiled the work of New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of the fore most authorities on fascism. “It’s all about showing that he cannot be contained,” Ben-Ghiat told Blitzer. “It was the same with Mussolini.”

“I’ve been studying cult leaders for a hundred years’ worth of them,” said Ben-Ghiat in an appearance on Democracy Now last June. Trump “has all the signs. He is not a conventional politician of either the Democratic or Republican [Party]… He is a cult leader. And the GOP has long been…submissive to him. He put them under an authoritarian discipline, and then he made them complicit. And this is what corrupt, violent authoritarians do. They make you part of their crimes.”

As I have written before in this column, fascism is an emotionally loaded and often misapplied term. But if understood correctly, it can never be dismissed as a vestige of the past. As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist. There is no longer room for debate.

Fascism has deep roots in the United States, from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, to the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues, and, fast-forward almost a century, the election of Trump in 2016.

There’s a long-running class factor in the current of American fascism. University of London professor Sarah Churchwell’s June 2020 essay in the New York Review of Books exactly nails it when she quotes rabbi Stephen Wise: “The America of power and wealth is an America which needs fascism.”KPFA? POD? 12 23 WHEN INEQUALITY GETS TERMINALLY SKEWED Fascism is last/only defense

Churchwell’s essay, fittingly titled, “American Fascism: It Has Happened Here,” offers a working definition of fascism. She notes that while fascist movements differ from nation to nation, they are united by “conspicuous features [that] are recognizably shared.” These include:

*“[N]ostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration; paramilitary groups; the delegitimizing of political opponents and demonization of critics; the universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups; hostility to intellectualism and attacks on a free press; anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity; and a distressed sense of victimhood and collective grievance. Fascist mythologies often incorporate a notion of cleansing, an exclusionary defense against racial or cultural contamination, and related eugenicist preferences for certain ‘bloodlines’ over others.”

If he is reelected next year, Trump could make the January 6 coup attempt look mild. The Washington Post and Politico have reported that Trump and his allies on the extreme right hope to transform the federal government into a virtual presidential dictatorship. Trump and his allies, states Politico, are “collecting the ingredients and refining the recipe for an authoritarian regime.”

The fear is that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to deploy the military. This vision of horror includes Trump in the Oval Office using his immense power to quash civil unrest and dismantle civil service protections for government workers in order to secure their loyalty. And all this while weaponizing the Justice Department to do his bidding.

The New York Times warns that a second Trump term will be especially dire for undocumented immigrants, with mass arrests and the construction of detention camps on a scale not seen since the racist “Operation Wetback” of the Eisenhower era. The Times also reported that Trump plans to cancel the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Fascism thrives in moments of widespread social anxiety and moral panic, when large segments of the population are persuaded that liberal democracy no longer serves their interests. We are living in such a moment now. The urgency we face cannot be understated.

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Book reveals 'very senior' anonymous ex-Trump official deems him 'lethally incompetent' - Alternet.org

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MMA 12 23 no oann?

On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot, finding that he “engaged in insurrection” and therefore is not an eligible presidential candidate per the 14th Amendment. Right-wing media figures swiftly condemned the decision as “election interference” and “voter suppression,” criticized the “anti-democratic” ruling by a “corrupt Democrat cabal,” and falsely asserted there is no legal basis to remove Trump because he has not been convicted over the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

• Right-wing media figures claimed the ruling constitutes “election interference,” “voter suppression,” “judicial activism,” and disenfranchisement

• • Fox host Laura Ingraham opened her show by declaring, “Tonight, America is seeing the ultimate election interference.” Ingraham complained that “four unelected state judges all appointed by Democrat governors have ruled that Donald Trump must be kept off next year's presidential ballot.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle,* [12/19/23]

• • Ingraham also called the decision “judicial activism.” She explained, “They take the Constitution and turn it into a piece of Silly Putty for political ends. That is classic judicial activism, is it not?” Fox News,*The Ingraham Angle*, [12/19/23]

• • Discussing the Colorado Supreme Court decision, Fox host Jesse Watters said: “It's more than voter suppression and intimidation. It’s the elimination of the voter. You can't vote for the guy you want to.”Fox contributor Charlie Hurt said, “Democrats in Colorado are so afraid of allowing American voters to vote and pick the next president that they are willing to do extrajudicial things –- complete highway robbery here — in order to thwart the people's choice from being on the ballot. To them, preserving democracy requires destroying democracy.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [12/19/23]

• • Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett declared that the decision is “another example of election interference by Trump opponents” using “the equivalent of rigging the ballot box.”Guest host and former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the decision is “literally taking away the will of the people.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [12/19/23]

• • Podcaster and former Trump administration official Monica Crowley said that “the communists don't even pretend to disguise their revolution anymore.”She also posted, “ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” Twitter/X, [12/19/23, 12/19/23]

• • Fox News contributor Sara Carter wrote, “We can’t allow the courts and a weaponized bureaucracy make decisions for the American people - we should not as citizens accept this no matter how anyone feels about Trump.” She continued, “I watched it for years during my original reporting on him and the fake Russia collusion orchestrated by Hillary Clinton with the help of the very bureaucrats that are continuing to target him now. Who will be next ? imagine if he didn’t get elected - who would be sitting in the Supreme Court?” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• • Bigoted pundit and potential Trump press secretary Laura Loomer posted about the Colorado decision on X (formerly Twitter), writing: “This is ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• • Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller posted on X: “ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• • Right-wing pundit Tomi Lahren posted: “Who the hell do these hacks in Colorado think they are? Trying to disqualify Trump with some BS? Unacceptable. Election interference!!!” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• ## Right-wing figures condemned the decision as antidemocratic, calling Democrats “pro-tyranny” and “corrupt”

• • Former Trump White House press secretary and conservative commentator Kayleigh McEnany claimed that “it’s all in the name of democracy, that they are undermining democracy — incredible — and they are using a so-called insurrection as an excuse.” She said, “Four unelected judges are trying to preempt the will of voters, the will of the people of Colorado.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [12/19/23]

• • Newsmax host Greg Kelly said the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision was “lawfare,” “not democratic,” and “the only thing I can think is maybe they were high.” Kelly added, “What does the other side say all the time, that Trump, he is a threat to democracy? Remember, they just said the people of Colorado can't vote for who they want to vote for.” Newsmax, *Greg Kelly Reports*, [12/19/23]

• • Newsmax host Eric Bolling called the decision “an attack on our democracy” and an attempt “to punish the former president for a crime he most certainly did not commit.”Bolling said, “The Supreme Court of Colorado basically tried and convicted Trump, without an actual trial or a conviction. Apparently the decision was decided by a marijuana-smoking, crime-ridden state with a growing, massive homeless population that Donald Trump wasn't likely to win anyway.” Newsmax, *Eric Bolling The Balance*, [12/19/23]

• • Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk posted on X, “The ‘defenders of Democracy’ are always trying to destroy it because they’re frauds.” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• • Conservative radio host Dan Bongino called Democrats “obviously anti-democratic” and “pro-tyranny” for the decision.He posted, “Today is yet another example of the clear and present danger the liberal/progressive cancer presents to us all.” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• • Radio personality and Fox host Mark Levin posted, “Another corrupt Democrat cabal undermines our country. These are dark and grave times.”Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

• ## Right-wing figures claimed that the ruling has no legal basis because January 6 was not an insurrection and Trump was not found guilty of insurrection

• • Attorney and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley claimed that January 6 was “not an insurrection, it was a riot.”Turley argued that the Colorado court “just handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections, and it's very, very dangerous. This country is a powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it.” He added that “to call this an insurrection for the purposes of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [12/19/23]

• • On Fox’s The Ingraham Angle, former Supreme Court law clerk and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Chris Landau emphasized that “it was no accident from the very beginning that they insisted on calling this an insurrection,” calling the word choice “ludicrous.”He stated, “These seeds were planted by the Democrats on January 6 itself. It was no accident from the very beginning that they insisted on calling this an insurrection, right? I mean, again, what happened on January 6 was extremely bad news, right? But to say it's an insurrection, to say it's like the equivalent of the U.S. Civil War, which is what led to this clause in the Constitution, is ludicrous, OK. But I think they were very clever that they wanted to use that word, and I don’t know if you noticed that people were insisting from the very beginning, it was very important for them that it be called an ‘insurrection.’ How convenient, that's exactly the word the Constitution uses. This was all being set up, really, for the past two and a half years.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [12/19/23]

• • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said the decision “effectively would nullify the will of around 40% of Colorado voters,” arguing that special counsel Jack Smith “didn’t even charge Trump with insurrection.”He stated, “The court claiming Trump participated in inciting insurrection on January 6. Yet it's funny that Jack Smith, the biggest partisan hack who hates Trump more than anybody, didn't even charge Trump with insurrection. So the Supreme Court is convicting him of insurrection, and Jack Smith didn't even charge him with that.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [12/19/23]

• • Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted, “Fact check: Trump didn't engage in insurrection/rebellion -- plus the relevant 14th Amendment clause doesn't apply to the president.” Twitter/X, [12/19/23]

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AN 12 23

if Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.

Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:

Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.

Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.

Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.

His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.

In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”

In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.

All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.

In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:

“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”

Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:

“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”

Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.

In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:

“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”

Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.

Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.

First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.

“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.

He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:

“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”

In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.

They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.

Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.

Trump wants to do the same here in the US.

When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:

“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”

Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.

Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.

Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.

In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.

Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.

The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).

Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.

After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.

It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.

It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.

Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.

He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.

The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.

The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.

After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.

Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.

He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.

He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.

This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.

In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”

While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.

Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”

The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.

For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.

It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.

Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.

The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.

Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.

If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.

Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered to vote.

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an 12 23

cult vics

during the same week former Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay nearly $150 million to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defaming them, he declared bankruptcy Thursday.

MSNBC host Katie Phang spoke with political analyst and Democratic strategist Fernand Amandi on the latest episode of The Beast with Ari Melber, asking him whether or not there's "a limit" to the ex-New York mayor's "fall from grace."

He replied, "Katie, I don't think so, and think what you are seeing there — first off, I would say that the Rudy Giuliani OnlyFans isn't too far off in the future the way he is going. I don't think it will be much better than those supplements. But it just shows you what the cult of Trump looks like, and really any other cult throughout history. I know it's become a cliche over these years since Trump descended down those staircases in 2015, but this is no different than the Jim Jones Guyana cult and the Nazi cult of the 1930s and '40s."

Amandi continued, "Everything that Trump touches, as Rick Wilson famously said, will eventually come and die, and it's not just reputational ruin, financial ruin. Unfortunately, in the case of a lot of people, we saw this in the pandemic, they paid for the Trump cult with their lives believing the former president and not taking vaccines or not taking the medications, some cases taking horse fertilizer and they paid the ultimate price with their life. But in terms of Rudy Giuliani, this is the price you pay for selling your soul to someone like Donald Trump, and it's gonna get a lot worse for him and others."

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'Huge, systematic plot’: Trump’s Detroit audio 'sounds like a classic case of bribery': experts - Alternet.org

//

12 23 an

as Donald Trump's legal troubles continue to aggressively mount, The Detroit News issued a bombshell report by Craig Mauger revealing audio recordings Thursday of the former president pressuring two Michigan county GOP canvasser's not to certify the 2020 election results.

Per Mauger's reporting, Trump and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Wayne County canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann on the November 17, 2020 call that "they'd look 'terrible' if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county's election results, according to the recordings."

Special counsel Jack Smith's former colleague Karen Friedman Agnifilo and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, Ryan Goodman, during an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, insisted the recordings are "damaging" to Trump, and "powerful for Smith.

"[Trump] said, from Craig's reporting, that it would be 'terrible' if these two canvassers signed the documents," Burnett emphasized, noting the MAGA hopeful "continues to say, 'We've got to fight for our country. We can't let these people take our country away from us.' How big of a deal is this recording now that we know some of what's on it, Karen?"

Agnifilo replied, "For a prosecutor, there's nothing better than a defendant's own words on tape doing and saying the exact thing you accused them of doing. So for Jack Smith, this is extremely powerful evidence of Donald Trump's corrupt intention, and his pressure campaign on the local level, which is part and parcel of what he's charged with in this sweeping Jack Smith indictment — the January 6 indictment — there's a whole section on there on the pressure campaign to the states, including Michigan. And so this is just direct evidence for Jack Smith and will be front and center at the trial. I also think that the fact that he's saying, 'We'll get you lawyers. We'll pay for your lawyers' — In some ways, I would argue that that's evidence that he knows what he's asking them to do is illegal. And so I think it's extremely powerful evidence for a prosecutor."

Burnett asked, "Ryan, what's your takeaway?"

Goodman replied, "Similarly, I think that this is very damaging information against Donald Trump. The one line that also stuck out to me is Ronna McDaniel on that call says quote, 'Do not sign it, we will get you attorneys.' So, who's the 'we'? It's her and they're on the call with somebody else — President Trump at the time. 'We'll get you attorneys' means they're all aware that they're, at minimum, skating the line of illegality, if not going right over it. It fits in with the pattern of conduct that is the theory of the case for Jack Smith. And it's not only the pattern of conduct that's in the indictment in which Donald Trump is pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, pressuring [former] Arizona [Congressman] Rusty Bowers (R). But also [former Vice President] Mike Pence, which is a key part of the case, and here is the same kind of pattern of conduct. What is the president doing? He's pressuring the individual to do something that is completely outside the bounds of their legal authority to throw the election. I think that's the way in which Jack Smith will present it to the jury, and it's as Karen said, the fact that it's the defendant himself on audio, makes its incredibly credible for the jury."

READ MORE:Testimony from top Michigan Republicans links fake electors scheme to Trump reelection campaign

Watch the video below or at this link.

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many grf not here

mma 12 23 matt g

the failures of legacy news outlets paved Donald Trump’s path to the presidency in 2016.

Obsessive, spectacle-minded coverage from major broadcast and cable networks and print and digital publications helped push the real estate mogul and reality TV star ahead of the pack during the Republican primary, as their top executives touted the resulting boom in ratings and profits.

And while critical scrutiny of Trump’s bigotry and authoritarianism increased during the general election campaign, outlets remained wedded to a “both sides” vision of journalism which resulted in disproportionate coverage of relatively minor scandals involving Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton — particularly in the days just before the election.

The result was a narrow Trump victory, followed by four years of chaos, corruption, cruelty, conspiracy theories, mass death, proto-fascism, election subversion, and, ultimately, insurrection.

The twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former president is now seeking a return to office, with a stated goal of using the federal government to exact “retribution.” He has openly toyed with the “termination” of the Constitution’s limits on presidential power, promised to unleash the FBI and Justice Department on his enemies, and said he would act as a “dictator,” albeit only on “day one” of his term.

But for much of this year, the legacy news outlets that helped usher Trump to power were complacent. Nakedly authoritarian comments from the would-be president drew relatively muted coverage, while his potentially disastrous policy proposals were often ignored. If the press’s over-coverage aided Trump’s previous ascendance, this time around he has benefited from its relative neglect.

Media Matters is naming the legacy media our Misinformer of the Year for 2023.

The press plays an essential agenda-setting role in American politics. Decisions made by news executives, editors, TV newscasters and bookers, reporters, and pundits determine which issues the public sees, reads, and hears about, and the tone with which those topics are covered.

Media Matters produced a series of studies this year assessing the news coverage of Trump by the nation’s five largest newspapers by circulation (the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post); the Big Three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC); and the three major cable news networks (CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News). While the news media have become increasingly fragmented, those outlets feature relatively large audiences and both retain an outsized influence on and reflect broader trends in the industry.

Our studies found that while many individual journalists at those networks and publications produced vital reporting on Trump’s actions and plans, the overall coverage of the outlets often did not meet the moment.

Data: Major news outlets keep downplaying Trump’s incendiary remarks and hazardous policies

Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, in which his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election, is perhaps the single most salient aspect of his political career.

But after Trump launched his new campaign with two January rallies, 77% of cable segments, 62% of top newspaper articles, and all broadcast news segments about the campaign failed to mention that role.

After President Joe Biden announced his reelection bid in April, we found that media coverage would often highlight his age but not Trump's, even though the former president is only three years younger.

Reviewing five months of coverage in major newspapers, we found that of all the articles that mentioned the age of either candidate, all five papers mentioned Biden’s age a great deal more.

We further determined that cable news mentioned Biden’s age 4 times as often as Trump’s in a four-day period in September beginning with the release of a poll that included questions about both candidates’ ages and health.

Major outlets not only provided comparatively little coverage of Trump’s age, but they also downplayed a series of verbal gaffes and incoherent statements he made. In September and October, Trump mixed up the authoritarian leaders of Hungary and Turkey; confused his former Republican opponent Jeb Bush and Jeb’s brother, former President George W. Bush; mixed up a number of his Democratic opponents with former President Barack Obama; and made a garbled statement accusing Biden of leading the country into “World War II.”

None of those remarks were covered on broadcast news, and they received relatively light coverage from the cable networks.

We also found that Trump received relatively lax coverage for a series of unhinged, extremist comments he made over the last four months of the year.

When the former president and likely Republican nominee suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed for his criticism of Trump, the comments were ignored by the Big Three broadcast networks and Fox, and they received 21 and 41 minutes of coverage, respectively, from CNN and MSNBC.

We subsequently reviewed coverage after Trump complimented the terrorist group Hezbollah as “very smart”; accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country”; said that “liberal Jews” are voting “to destroy America”; and called for “ideological screening” of immigrants and the barring of those who don’t like “our religion.”

Only the Hezbollah remark received more than 12 minutes of coverage from a cable news network or any broadcast coverage at all (just over 1 minute of coverage combined across ABC and NBC).

Likewise, in November Trump repeatedly pledged to “root out” his political opponents, who he claimed “live like vermin within the confines of our country” and want to “destroy America,” drawing comparisons from experts on authoritarianism to the rhetoric of genocidal fascist dictators.

But the remarks were largely ignored, drawing significantly less coverage from major outlets than the outlets gave Clinton’s description of some Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” in 2016.

grf]

The legacy press did no better in covering some of Trump’s most consequential policy ideas this year.

Trump announced in August that he plans to impose a 10% tariff on all imported goods, the revenue from which his campaign team said would go toward tax cuts slanted toward the rich. Experts decried the tariff plan as “a disaster for the U.S. economy” that would raise prices for American consumers, particularly the poor and middle class, and potentially trigger “global economic chaos.”

But Trump’s tariff proposal received vanishingly little television coverage over the following month. ABC, CBS, and NBC did not cover it on their national morning, evening, or Sunday political talk shows. CNN and MSNBC each provided less than 1 minute of coverage, within a single segment, and neither addressed the potential impact for Americans, while Fox ignored the plan.

In November, Trump said that if he is elected he wants to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act, which provides health coverage to 35 million Americans and protects the coverage of many more with preexisting conditions. We found that the broadcast networks totally ignored Trump’s threat. While the cable news networks covered Trump’s threat in 35 segments, they largely ignored its potential consequences for the public.

2024 will push political journalism to the breaking point

There were signs of improvement as the year came to a close. The New York Times produced major investigations on the Trump team's radical, authoritarian plans for if he returns to power, while The Atlantic devoted an entire issue to analyzing what will occur “If Trump Wins.” Each set the agenda for the rest of the press, drawing substantial secondary coverage.

...

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// lindsey graham

sen-tuberville-said-trumps-nazi-rhetoric-needs-to-go-further-says-reporter

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trump said wd collapse if biden elected but see chris hayes 12/14/23 did bogus ceo presser ambushed ggl 1700 engr covid website unlike fail dig at aca but no idea and 1700 engr # fabricated, then mon 3rd biggest drop when exposed?

//

The Dow closed at a record high of over 37,000, exposing as hollow right-wing warnings that the stock market would crash if Democrats won elections | Media Matters for America

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in January 19, 2021, his last full day in office, then-president Donald Trump signed a memorandum ordering the declassification of “a binder of materials” containing raw Russian intelligence and various reports so highly-classified it was kept in a safe inside a vault at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

That 10-inch deep binder has been missing since Trump left the White House, according to a detailed CNN report which reveals the existence of the binder for the first time, outside of a memoir by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

“The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN,” the news network reported Friday. Its disappearance has been “raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.”

“The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office,” CNN’s report continues. “The former president had ordered it brought there so he could declassify a host of documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. Under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the binder was scoured by Republican aides working to redact the most sensitive information so it could be declassified and released publicly.”

In his memorandum, Trump states that he ordered the binder brought to the White House.

“At my request, on December 30, 2020, the Department of Justice provided the White House with a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the memo states.

“Portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public,” Trump continued. “I requested the documents so that a declassification review could be performed and so I could determine to what extent materials in the binder should be released in unclassified form.”

Under Crossfire Hurricane, the Bureau investigated the links between Donald Trump, the Trump campaign, and Russia, and whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia’s efforts to attack the U.S. election process to help Trump get elected. Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the investigation in what the nation later learned was a highly-controlled effort that Trump “tried to seize control of … and force Mueller’s removal.”

Trump’s top and most loyal advisors, including Attorney General Bill Barr, tried to stop Trump from declassifying the binder, which Trump believed exonerated him from allegations Russia had helped him win the 2016 election, allegations proven by the Mueller investigation and by a Senate Republican-majority Intelligence Committee investigation.

READ MORE: ‘Thoughts and Prayers’: Moms Group Releases ‘Devastating’ Ad on Sandy Hook Anniversary

Copies of the binder were made, to hasten the DOJ’s work to redact its declassified contents as necessary for national security so it could be released.

Cassidy Hutchinson, whose testimony before the nation during a primetime televised hearing of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack’s riveted the nation, “testified to Congress and wrote in her memoir that she believes Meadows took home an unredacted version of the binder. She said it had been kept in Meadows’ safe and that she saw him leave with it from the White House,” according to CNN.

“’I am almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows,’ Hutchinson told the January 6 committee in closed-door testimony, according to transcripts released last year.”

“A lawyer for Meadows,” CNN adds, “however, strongly denies that Meadows mishandled any classified information at the White House, saying any suggestion Meadows was responsible for classified information going missing was ‘flat wrong.'”

Read the entire CNN report here.

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the New York Young Republican Club recently held its annual gala in New York's financial district, and former President Donald Trump gave the keynote address with some of the global far right's most notorious political figures in attendance.

According to Talking Points Memo (TPM), the gala's attendees included not just American far-right politicians like Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Paul Gosar (R-Arizona), but also European right-wing extremists like Austrian politician Gerald Grosz and European Parliament member Susanna Ceccardi, who is from Italy's far-right Lega party. German politician Maximilian Krah — whose party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been criticized as a "neo-Nazi party" — was also at the event.

"Donald Trump rubbing elbows with Nazi-linked groups might be surprising if Trump’s last month wasn’t defined by him parroting Hitler and Mussolini, and promising to rule as a dictator so he can rip away Americans’ freedoms and round up millions of Americans into detention camps," said Ammar Moussa, who is the rapid response director for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign.

"The American people rejected Trump and his MAGA attacks on democracy in 2020, and it’s why he’s going to lose again next November," Moussa added.

Gerald Grosz was initially a member of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, which was founded by Anton Reinthaller — a former Nazi Party leader and SS officer. Grosz and his colleague Jorg Haider, who was the son of a Nazi stormtrooper who praised Adolf Hitler's regime, eventually joined a Freedom Party offshoot. While they all come from different countries, TPM described Grosz, Ceccardi and Krah as comrades-in-arms in movements that are "staunchly nationalist and anti-immigrant" in nature.

Prior to Trump's speech, he was introduced as the "45th, 46th and 47th presidents of the United States," which alludes to Trump's baseless conspiracy theory that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election. Trump doubled down on his "dictator" comments during his speech, repeating that if elected to another term he would assume dictatorial powers on day one of his administration to build a border wall and "drill drill drill."

The New York Young Republican Club's flirting with global far-right figures is in line with how international political scholars have described the modern GOP. In 2019, Harvard University political scientist Pippa Norris surveyed roughly 2,000 political experts around the globe on the authoritarian leanings of various modern far-right parties. She found that the American Republican Party has more in common with authoritarian, fascist-adjacent parties like Turkey's AKP and Hungary's Fidesz than with their counterparts in G7 countries like the Tories in the UK and the conservatives in Canada.

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Fox News' Jesse Watters excuses Donald Trump's declaration that he would be a dictator for a day | Media Matters for America

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as House Republicans race to cobble together legislation to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Democrats are pointing to ex-President Donald Trump, who appears to have engaged in the activity the GOP is accusing the current president of, despite having spent almost a year and been unable to provide any actual proof.

Republicans, who are pushing to hold an impeachment inquiry vote on Wednesday, claim that President Joe Biden took money from foreign countries via his son Hunter’s business dealings. They have, as some Republicans admit, found no direct proof of their allegations.

But as U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) told House Republicans during the Rules Committee markup of the legislation on Tuesday, Donald Trump actually did take money from foreign countries during his time – as President – a claim even Republicans have not made against Biden.

Referring to Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer, who testified in a closed-door session before the House Oversight Committee, Congresswoman Fernandez explained, “if you actually look at that transcript, Mr. Archer was very clear that while the father [Joe Biden] may have talked to his son, they never ever talked about business.”

READ MORE: GOP Votes Down Making Impeachment Inquiry ‘Transparent’ After Speaker Pledges ‘Transparency’

“They never ever talked about financial matters,” she continued. “And in contrast, when we were looking at issues about family business, I would like to enter into the record. Mr. Chairman, I seek consent to enter into the record, a [unrecognizable] that says Trump taxes show foreign income for more than a dozen countries.”

Rep. Fernandez appeared to be referring to a Politico article from December of 2022 that says: “Donald Trump’s tax returns show the former president received income from more than a dozen countries during his time in office, highlighting a string of potential conflicts of interest.”

“Trump’s returns,” Politico had added, “disclosed income from 2015 to 2020 from a wide range of foreign countries, including Canada, Panama, the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, among others.”

Fernandez explained, “I think this is our objection. I think that it is important you are making a big deal of the fact that Joe, that Joe Biden, as a private citizen, a lot of these things that you’re talking about happened when Joe Biden was a private citizen, but more importantly, that his brother and his son were separate.”

READ MORE: White Supremacist Who Dined With Trump Calls for ‘Death Penalty’ for Non-Christians: Report

“They did not have, their businesses were not commingled. It’s very clear from the evidence that they were separate. They were not the same. In contrast, we know from this article that says, Trump’s tax show foreign income, ‘Donald Trump’s tax returns show the former president received income from more than a dozen countries during his time in office,'” she said, emphasizing the fact that some of that income came while Trump was President.

Watch below or at this link.

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Donald Trump Jr. tells white nationalist that he “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time” | Media Matters for America

oops

Donald Trump Jr. interviewed antisemitic white nationalist Douglass Mackey — who was recently convicted of election interference during the 2016 presidential election — on the December 7 episode of his Rumble podcast, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., and said that Mackey’s suspended “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time.” Trump Jr. also suggested that he may have been in contact with Mackey in 2016.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Mackey had a Twitter account under the name “Ricky Vaughn.” HuffPost revealed his real name in 2018 and reported that the account was known for spreading “anti-Semitism and white nationalism,” such as using the antisemitic “echo” and tweeting that Jews had “control of the media” and were broadcasting “antiwhite messaging” in the mid-1900s. HuffPost also reported that Mackey had appeared on “numerous white supremacist podcasts.” Mackey has also reportedly spoken of his support for creating all-white communities and said he shuns interracial marriages “to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage,” and he has promoted Islamaphobic and anti-migrant content.

In October, Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison for “spreading falsehoods via Twitter … in an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2016 presidential election,” specifically by falsely posting that it was possible to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton by texting or posting on social media. (Trump Jr. indicated on his podcast that Mackey is appealing the decision.)

During the December 7 interview, Trump Jr. described Mackey as an “original MAGA meme lord” and misleadingly claimed that Mackey’s prosecution and conviction was “literally over a meme from 2016” (a claim other right-wing media figures have also made; in reality, the Department of Justice said that thousands of people tried to vote by texting to the number he distributed). While introducing Mackey, Trump Jr. also said that “we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs.”

Video

CitationFrom the December 7, 2023, edition of Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., streamed on Rumble

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): And with that, guys, joining us now is Doug Mackey. Again, if you guys were in the meme wars, like, early adapters like me back in 2015 and ’16, you’ll know him as Ricky Vaughn. But Doug, for the people watching — and it’s great to have you. You know, I know — we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs, and I’m sure we were put on lists way back then. But for the people watching, can you explain what happened here? I mean, you literally ran a Twitter account named Ricky Vaughn. And you got charged for posting a meme. What’s going on?

Later in the interview, Trump Jr. told Mackey that his Ricky Vaughn account was “awesome” and “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time” and “maybe the best of all time.” (Trump Jr. also lauded Mackey on Tim Pool’s show earlier this year.)

Video

CitationFrom the December 7, 2023, edition of Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., streamed on Rumble

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): But, hey, you had an awesome account. It may be my favorite Twitter account of all time. Now I’ll get in trouble for saying that because they’ll say, oh, he said something once that you must disavow. Like, it was hilarious, OK? Like, again, like I said, maybe the best of all time, but how’d you get into the idea of that account? How were you able to grow such a large following that put you on the radar of these people?

Trump Jr. also helped Mackey promote his legal defense fund, asking, “How much funds do you need to get through that next level if in fact you need to take it to the Supreme Court?” An on-screen graphic also told viewers to go to the defense fund’s site to donate. Trump Jr. ended the interview by thanking Mackey for “all of the entertainment over the years.”

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see attack on ERIC voting ref

Trump used right-wing media to push election fraud lies long before 2020 | Media Matters for America

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nice summary

an 12 23

no lnx

Dear GOP: America is not going to forget — and many Americans will never forgive

Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed after her attacks on Biden seem more like compliments

Image via Creative Commons.

Thom Hartmann

December 11, 2023

Dear Republicans,

After the corruption of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations crashed the world economy, kicking off the Republican Great Depression in 1929, it took your party decades to rid itself of the stink.

After Nixon extended the Vietnam War to get himself re-elected, unnecessarily killing over 20,000 American soldiers and a million Vietnamese civilians, and then got busted for Watergate and the bribes he solicited in the White House, it took you almost a generation to rid yourselves of the stink.

But you’ll never rid yourself of the stink of Donald Trump. At least never in the lifetime of anybody around today. Trump’s stench is a tragic part of American history that will last generations.

The entire world knows the foetor of his whipping up a crowd of thousands to try to assassinate the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House.

Trump’s minions urinated on the carpets in the hallowed halls of Congress, smeared feces on the walls, damaged priceless paintings from the founding era of our country, and murdered police officers protecting our nation’s Capitol. That stink will never fade, no matter how often his allies try to rewrite history, blur faces, or tell stories about bizarre “deep state” conspiracies.

Did you think Americans would forget the stink of the 30,000+ documented lies he told America and the world while he was president? Or the lies he routinely spouts every time he speaks in public, so frequent now that even Fox “News” has to correct the facts when covering him?

How about the reek of his dictator-like pronouncements that he will destroy the American Civil Service and fill our government with corrupt toadies, then imprison his political enemies and send the military into the streets like Maduro has done in Venezuela and tinpot dictators do all across the world?

Do you really believe that we would forget the stink of his sucking up to murderous dictators like Putin, MBS, and Kim? Now that effluvium is being smeared all over Republican politicians, one after another, as they follow Trump’s orders — which he no doubt received from Putin — to abandon Ukraine.

You are cowards, all. Covered in your wretched, cowardly, unpatriotic stink.

This is the man who tried to blackmail a democratic ally into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent, withholding aid to Ukraine in the face of Russian attacks. The stink of that crime was so heinous he was impeached for it.

What about the stink Trump created when he referred to mostly-Black nations as “shithole countries” and our veterans who’d died in war as “suckers” and “losers”? When he told General Mark Milley he didn’t want to again share the stage with an injured veteran because such heroes don’t “look good”?

Or when, at the height of the pandemic in April 2020, Trump ordered people back to work and began to ridicule wearing masks, leading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths (according to his own science advisors: the British journal Lancet put the number at around a half-million)?

At that time, most Covid deaths were in Blue states (CT, NY, WA, NJ) and Trump agreed with Jared that they could politically benefit by blaming the deaths on Democratic governors. An “effective political strategy” they called this decision redolent with the stink of mass death.

That same son-in-law, by the way, who Trump helped hustle $2 billion from the Saudis in exchange, apparently, for downplaying the murder of a Washington Post journalist and looking the other way at how they oppress women. Do you think we failed to notice the reek of nepotism and corruption?

Speaking of women, do you really believe that stink of your support of a man credibly accused of rape and sexual assault by over 20 women, including one as young as 13, would just go away? Even after he was found by a court of law to have raped the first woman whose case finally made it through the courts?

As average working Americans struggle to pay their taxes, Trump pushed through an odious $2 trillion tax cut for himself and his billionaire buddies, creating the largest budget deficit by any president in the history of the nation. Do you think America will forget?

Or the stink of his multiple business frauds? He was convicted and forced to pay millions in restitution to victims of his Trump University fraud; they shut down his phony New York charity; now he’s been found by a New York court to have committed bank, tax, and insurance fraud: they’re just trying to figure out how big the stink is so they can quantify it as a fine.

How about the overwhelming stench of tearing babies from their mothers’ arms at the border and then trafficking them into phony “Christian adoption” services that then vanished, leaving over 1000 grieving families still not knowing the whereabouts of their little girls and boys to this day?

Or the stink from the naked campaign lies he blithely told to get votes, promising a new national healthcare system, a revitalization of America’s infrastructure, or his claims that he supported organized labor at the same time his appointees to the Department of Labor were working to block unionization efforts across the nation?

Even worse, this adulterer — who had affairs outside his marriage with every one of his three wives and never goes to church but still claimed to be a Christian — told sincerely religious people he was their champion. Not noticing the sulfurous smell that surrounds Trump, many believed him and still do. In actual fact, he was only championing the hypocritical multimillionaire TV preachers who shared their hustle with him: he supported their violations of tax law in exchange for their endorsement from the pulpit.

Then he tried to overthrow an election he knew he lost by 7 million votes, and is today threatening to try it again. The whole world is aghast at the stink of that tinpot dictator effort, and terrified that he may succeed the next time.

Germans still struggle with the stink of a leader who referred to his political opponents as “vermin” and promised he was going to “root them out.” Who attacked the press because they told the truth about him. Who played on and amplified people’s fear of “the other.” You will, too, for generations after Trump himself has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Pathetically, you Republican members of Congress have now smeared yourselves with the slime that has surrounded Donald Trump his entire criminal life. Have you noticed how many of your colleagues are fleeing? Do you really think you can ever wash off yourself the reek of your association with treason, an attempt to betray and overthrow America, even worse than what Benedict Arnold tried?

Seriously, Republicans, do you not think America can smell what’s going on? Trump bragging that he ended women’s rights to bodily autonomy? His promotion of guns and assault weapons because the racist nutcases who follow him think they’re going to be soldiers in a coming civil war? His refusal to do anything about the climate change that is now killing Americans every day?

America has had a few truly awful presidents. Andrew Jackson “The Indian Killer.” Andrew Johnson who tried to undo Lincoln’s legacy. Warren Harding and Teapot Dome. Richard Nixon’s criminality, Ronald Reagan’s commitment to destroy America’s middle class, George W. Bush lying us into two wars as part of his 2004 re-election strategy.

But none stink as bad as this miserable cartoon of a man, with his bizarre orange spray-tan, absurd comb-over, and compensatory phallic-length red ties.

America is not going to forget, and many Americans will never forgive.

You will never wash the stink of Donald Trump off yourselves or your party. Never.

===

12 23 an

wall on golf course illegal?

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Trump 'intelligence officials unanimously rejected' his voting machine claims — Jack Smith reveals: report - Alternet.org

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KOCHADEMIA? NYU Stern School of Business accounting professor who on Thursday called allegations against Donald Trump “absurd” was paid “nearly $900,000” in legal fees by the former president’s defense, the Guardian reports.

NYU economics professor Eli Bartov on Thursday testified that Deutsche Bank “knew what they were doing” when they decided to lend Trump "hundreds of millions of dollars in loans … based solely on allegedly inflated financial statements,” Bloomberg reports. Bartov told the court it’s “absurd to argue that Deutsche Bank or any bank or any lender would make lending decision based on a statement of financial condition."

Bartov was testifying for Trump’s defense in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ fraud cause against the former president. James “claims Trump exaggerated the value of his assets by billions of dollars a year to get better interest rates from banks,” according to Bloomberg.

Per the Guardian:

*Eli Bartov, who’s making $1,350 an hour working on the case for Trump, testified Thursday in Manhattan that he did not believe Deutsche Bank AG or other Trump lenders would have made decisions … based solely on his allegedly inflated financial statements.

In one exchange, Bartov was asked about “the value of Trump’s Manhattan triplex apartment” which “nearly tripled from $80m to $180m in one year," the Guardian reports.

According to Bartov’s “reading of the documents,” there was “no evidence here of concealment,” according the Guardian's account of Bartov's testimony.

“It’s true this is an error,” Bartov said on the stand. “But it is no fraud.”

Bartov also argued that Trump’s auditors “had a duty to spot the errors,” according to the Guardian.

“My analysis shows the statements of financial condition for all the years were not materially misstated,” the professor said.

Bartov likewise told prosecutors in “[his] opinion,” the case has no merit.

Confronted by a lawyer from the state, who argued Bartov was espousing “pure speculation from someone hired to say whatever it is they want,” Bartov rebelled.

Per Bloomberg:

*“You should be ashamed of yourself talking to me like that!” Bartov shouted. “I’m here to tell the truth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” ... “I feel so bad I had to spend so much time on this engagement,” Bartov testified. “There was no justification for any of these allegations.”

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Mariana Alfaro @ The Washington Post: Trump says he wouldn’t be a dictator ‘except for Day One.’

Former president Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would not be a dictator upon returning to office “except for Day One,” as he largely deflected questions at a televised town hall event about whether he would abuse his powers to seek retribution against his political adversaries.

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12 23 // debate hannitize softball dictator only day 1 border drill baby

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Sean Hannity defends Donald Trump’s promise for “retribution” | Media Matters for America

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'Public humiliation' from losing the 2020 election drove Trump into 'delusional' rage: expert - Alternet.org

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attorney General Stephen Miller? Vice President Tucker Carlson? White House Chief of Staff Steve Bannon? CIA Director Kash Patel? A new report detailing a second Donald Trump presidency’s “loyalty first” potential cabinet nominees is sending shock waves over their extremist positions and in some cases an entirely insufficient level of experience for the job.

“Former President Trump, if elected, would build a Cabinet and White House staff based mainly on two imperatives: pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries, sources who talk often with the leading GOP presidential candidate tell Axios,” the news outlet reported in an exclusive Thursday morning. “If Trump won in 2024, he’d turn to loyalists who share his zeal to punish critics, purge non-believers, and take controversial legal and military action, the sources tell us.”

Some of these possible picks for the very top levels of government hold or have promoted white supremacist, Christian nationalist, authoritarian, or fascistic policies or beliefs.

Axios calls them “full, proud MAGA warriors, anti-GOP establishment zealots, and eager and willing to test the boundaries of executive power to get Trump’s way.”

READ MORE: Jim Comer Decimated by NBC Reporter in ‘Under Two Minutes’

“They want to target and jail critics, including government officials and journalists; deport undocumented immigrants or put them in detainment camps, and unleash the military to target drug cartels in Mexico, or possibly crack down on criminals or protesters at home,” Axios’ Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report, adding, “They want to scrap rules that limit their ability to purge government workers deemed disloyal.”

“Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — a former Army infantry officer known for his hard edge, and who wrote a New York Times op-ed in Trump’s first term supporting use of the Insurrection Act against civil disorder — would be considered to head the Pentagon,” according to Axios.

Most of the names mentioned in the Axios report are well-known, and they are being promoted by many surrounding the disgraced criminally-indicted ex-president.

“Donald Trump Jr. has floated [Mike] Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), to be Trump’s interim attorney general — saying it would be a ‘shot across the bow of the swamp,'” Axios reports. “In his public auditions for the job, the bombastic Davis has promised a ‘three-week reign of terror‘ in which he would ‘put kids in cages’ and jail prosecutors and journalists who have gone after Trump — even telling MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan that he has ‘his spot picked out in the D.C. gulag.'”

Meanwhile, Melania Trump is pushing for “booted” Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson to be Trump’s running mate.

Other vice presidential possibilities mentioned include Arkansas governor and former Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, U.S. Senator J.D Vance, and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Some close to Trump are promoting themselves for the vice presidential role, including U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL).

Axios also reports that “Johnny McEntee,Trump’s loyalty vetter and enforcer, [who] headed presidential personnel in the first term … might return to that role with even more power. He also could be Trump’s gatekeeper as head of Oval Office operations, or could be Cabinet secretary, riding herd on the White House liaisons to each department.”

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Likens Himself to Moses, Tells Christian Nationalists God Charted His Path to Speaker

“By late 2020, McEntee had explicit lists of top officials to fire and hire in a Trump second term, reaching far down the federal bureaucracy in a mission to truly ‘clean out’ the ‘Deep State.’ That project has continued outside of government with a $22 million presidential transition project led by the Heritage Foundation.”

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Axios’ Jim VandeHei, who co-authored the report, dove even further into how concerning these potential picks are, leading the Biden campaign to post a clip of a small portion of his remarks on social media:

IFrame Content twt?

Vandehei went on to say, “you might like that, then you’re going to be electrified by this group but if you don’t like it, you’re probably going to be horrified by some of the picks. But what’s in common with all of these people is they share at least a willingness to do all the things that Donald Trump would say.”

And he reminded that none of Trump’s previous team that guarded the American people against his worst instincts will be part of a second Trump administration.

“None of those shackles will exist. He’s going to come in with a group of enablers and a group of executors. So whatever you thought about the first term, he’s going to be able to do things at a velocity rate he wasn’t capable of because he didn’t really know how to govern,” Vandehei added. “Now he knows a little bit better, but he’s surrounded by people and there’s these multimillion dollar efforts outside of his own orbit at the Heritage Foundation.”

“It’s not necessarily about substance,” he said of how the people choosing who becomes part of any next Trump administration would be, “it’s basically an ideological litmus test. Are you willing to believe wholly in Donald Trump, serve loyalty to Donald Trump and then implement his view of what the world should look like? If you can pass that test you might be one of the 50,000 people who get to come into [his] government.”

Meanwhile, critics responding to the Axios report are voicing extreme concern.

“This is about the most dystopian article ever written,” observed The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. “Like asking ChatGPT to write about a fantasy Trump administration cabinet that blends Nazis and celebrities in the style of 2008 Politico playbook.”

Former Biden Commerce Dept. official Caitlin Legacki wrote, “This Axios reporting should be a 5-alarm fire. Terrifying stuff in here and it’s barely making waves.”

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) warned, “This is what is at stake in 2024 & lurking behind every single thing the extreme MAGA GOP is doing. Don’t lose the plot in their chaos or we will lose our democracy.”

New Jersey Treasury Dept. official Darryl Isherwood summed up what many seemed to be saying: “If this doesn’t scare you, you’re not paying attention.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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an ah 12 23

Donald Trump was hardly the first U.S. president to issue controversial pardons.

A month after President Richard Nixon's resignation, President Gerald R. Ford granted him a full and unconditional pardonfor any Watergate-related crimes he might have committed — a move that Democratic strategists used against Ford in the 1976 election. The 140 pardons that President Bill Clinton issuedon January 20, 2021 during the final hours of his presidency received plenty of scrutiny.

But to Donald Trump's critics, the controversial pardons that he issued during his four years in the White House were uniquely troubling.

Trump pardoned a long list of MAGA Republicans and loyalists who were either convicted of serious crimes or pled guilty to them, including "War Room" host Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort (Trump's 2016 campaign manager), veteran GOP operative Roger Stone, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

In a report published on December 2, Washington Post reporters Beth Reinhard, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Clara Ence Morse describe the prominent role that pardoned Trump loyalists are playing in his 2024 campaign.

The journalists report, "Donald Trump's clemency orders forgave more white-collar crimes than any other type of offense — tax scofflaws, health-care fraudsters, corrupt politicians and Ponzi schemers all benefited, The Post review found. Several had donated to Trump's campaigns or had the resources to do so in the future. The Post found 26 clemency recipients or their immediate family members have contributed to a Trump campaign account or a pro-Trump political committee. That means more than 1 out of 10 of the people who received pardons and commutations gave money either before they received clemency, afterward or in both periods, for a total of nearly $1.8 million."

According to Reinhard, Roig-Franzia and Morse, "Much of that tally comes from real estate developer Charles Kushner, the father of Trump's son-in-law, who pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns, witness tampering and lying to the Federal Election Commission and served time in prison in 2005 and 2006. He was pardoned in late 2020; he gave $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC this year."...

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/why-is-lindsey-graham-so-loyal-to-trump/

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50 pt lead?

11 23

an

ahead of the Iowa caucuses in January, GOP mega donors who are looking to replace ex-President Donald Trump as the leading 2024 GOP nominee are "starting to run out of time" — but not giving up hope, according to a Wednesday Axios report.

Some mega-donors, like Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus are certain the MAGA hopeful will prevail, though Trump is not his first choice.

"There are people I've spoken to that are still sitting on the fence, that don't know what to do," Marcus said to ABC News, according to Axios. "They dislike the person Trump, but they recognize that the talent is there."

Additionally, in a recent op-ed for Real Clear Politics, he wrote, "Let's face it: Donald Trump is going to win the nomination."

However, other major Republican donors are looking to help ex-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley take Trump's place.

Axios points out "Deep-pocketed establishment donors have been lining up behind Haley," such as GOP mega-donor Ken Griffin who said earlier this month that he is "actively contemplating" supporting Haley, and JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, who "has had private conversations with her."

Furthermore, "Americans for Prosperity Action, the leading political arm of the Koch network, said that Haley "will have the full weight and scope of AFP Action's unmatched grassroots army and resources," according to the news outlet.

Narrative Strategies founding partner Ken Spain emphasized, "The hope is this is increasingly becoming a two-person race with [former UN ambassador Nikki Haley] ... as the establishment alternative. It's still long shot, but a bet worth placing if you're an anti-Trump big money donor."

:{:{READ MORE:'Blatantly unconstitutional': Nikki Haley ripped for 'fascist' proposal to outlaw anonymity on social media}:

*Axios' full report is available here.

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Trump quietly moves millions from company account in direct violation of court order: report - Alternet.org

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[Trump unleashes on 'psycho' Judge Engoron and Letitia James in 2 AM Thanksgiving rant - Alternet.orgTrump unleashes on 'psycho' Judge Engoron and Letitia James in 2 AM Thanksgiving rant - Alternet.orgTrump unleashes on 'psycho' Judge Engoron and Letitia James in 2 AM Thanksgiving rant - Alternet.org](https://www.alternet.org/trump-unleashes-engoron-james/)

These 15 'un-American' Trump proposals are attacking 'basic principles of the Constitution': analysis - Alternet.orgThese 15 'un-American' Trump proposals are attacking 'basic principles of the Constitution': analysis - Alternet.orgThese 15 'un-American' Trump proposals are attacking 'basic principles of the Constitution': analysis - Alternet.org\\](https://www.alternet.org/trump-2666262441/)\\:\\(\s\t\y\l\e\=\"\f\o\n\t\\-\f\a\m\i\l\y\\:\M\e\r\r\i\w\e\a\t\h\e\r\"\\)\\:\\}\\:

['Fundamentally sadistic': Clinical psychologist explains the 'creepy depravity' of Trump’s 'fascism' - Alternet.org'Fundamentally sadistic': Clinical psychologist explains the 'creepy depravity' of Trump’s 'fascism' - Alternet.org'Fundamentally sadistic': Clinical psychologist explains the 'creepy depravity' of Trump’s 'fascism' - Alternet.org](https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-sadism/)

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Several major print and broadcast news networks did not cover former President Donald Trump’s amplification of a supporter’s call to place the judge and prosecutor in one of his myriad trials under citizen’s arrest.

On Monday, Trump reposted a Truth Social post calling for the citizen’s arrest of Judge Arthur Engoron and Attorney General Letitia James, who are overseeing and prosecuting the civil trial against the former president and his companies for fraud. The post accused the pair of “blatant election interference and harassment.”

That salvo came just days after Trump described his political enemies as “vermin” that he promised to “root out,” and as the institutional right lays the groundwork for him to carry out his top priority of arresting them. It drew harsh criticism from legal experts, with Los Angeles Times columnist and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman calling the repost “actual incitement to break the law and it greatly endangers the judge and AG,” and frequent Trump defender Jonathan Turley saying that an attempted citizen’s arrest “would most certainly constitute a criminal act.” It also follows the issuance of multiple gag orders against Trump due to what special counsel Jack Smith’s team described as the “pattern, stretching back years, in which people publicly targeted by the defendant are, as a result of the targeting, subject to harassment, threats, and intimidation.”

But the story did not break through to print coverage in any of the nation’s five highest-circulation newspapers — the LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today. Nor was it mentioned on the morning, evening, or Sunday political talk shows on ABC News, CBS News, or NBC News. The repost received roughly 25 minutes of airtime on MSNBC and 3 minutes on CNN — but none on Fox News — according to a Media Matters review.

This muted coverage is part of a pattern, as I noted last week in assessing reports on Trump’s “vermin” remarks:

The editors, producers, and reporters at major national news outlets signal the relative importance of various stories through the volume and prominence of the attention they give them. During the 2016 presidential election, for example, those notables treated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s email travails as the single most important story of the cycle. President Joe Biden’s age has likewise been a fixation for news outlets this year, even though Trump is only a few years younger.

But Trump’s extremist outbursts often draw little or no coverage from major news outlets. That is remarkable, particularly given how genuinely unhinged his remarks often are, and given that right-wing institutions are laying the groundwork for a future Trump administration to carry out top priorities like arresting his political enemies.

Methodology

Potential for threats from Trump in 14th Amendment case sways Colorado judge - Alternet.org

Trump’s defense secretary says the former president 'is a threat to democracy' - Alternet.org

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endorse trump,

george Santos models himself pretty directly off Trump

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › books › nov › george-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/28/george-santos-book-trump-mark-chiusano)

2 days ago — The New York fabulist faces expulsion from Congress. His biographer considers his rise, from Brazil to Long Island and Washington, ...

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Major news outlets ignored Trump amplifying calls for “citizen’s arrest” of his foes | Media Matters for America

several major print and broadcast news networks did not cover former President Donald Trump’s amplification of a supporter’s call to place the judge and prosecutor in one of his myriad trials under citizen’s arrest.

On Monday, Trump reposted a Truth Social post calling for the citizen’s arrest of Judge Arthur Engoron and Attorney General Letitia James, who are overseeing and prosecuting the civil trial against the former president and his companies for fraud. The post accused the pair of “blatant election interference and harassment.”

:{:{That salvo came just days after Trump described his political enemies as “vermin” that he promised to “root out,” and as the institutional right lays the groundwork for him to carry out his top priority of arresting them. It drew harsh criticism from legal experts, with Los Angeles Times columnist and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman calling the repost “actual incitement to break the law and it greatly endangers the judge and AG,” and frequent Trump defender Jonathan Turley saying that an attempted citizen’s arrest “would most certainly constitute a criminal act.”}:

It also follows the issuance of multiple gag orders against Trump due to what special counsel Jack Smith’s team described as the “pattern, stretching back years, in which people publicly targeted by the defendant are, as a result of the targeting, subject to harassment, threats, and intimidation.”}:

But the story did not break through to print coverage in any of the nation’s five highest-circulation newspapers — the LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or USA Today. Nor was it mentioned on the morning, evening, or Sunday political talk shows on ABC News, CBS News, or NBC News. The repost received roughly 25 minutes of airtime on MSNBC and 3 minutes on CNN — but none on Fox News — according to a Media Matters review.

This muted coverage is part of a pattern, as I noted last week in assessing reports on Trump’s “vermin” remarks:

The editors, producers, and reporters at major national news outlets signal the relative importance of various stories through the volume and prominence of the attention they give them. During the 2016 presidential election, for example, those notables treated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s email travails as the single most important story of the cycle. President Joe Biden’s age has likewise been a fixation for news outlets this year, even though Trump is only a few years younger.

But Trump’s extremist outbursts often draw little or no coverage from major news outlets. That is remarkable, particularly given how genuinely unhinged his remarks often are, and given that right-wing institutions are laying the groundwork for a future Trump administration to carry out top priorities like arresting his political enemies.

Methodology...

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The Economist names Trump #1 'biggest danger' in the world: 'Will wage war on any institution' - Alternet.org

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an 11 23

Campaign rallies for former President Donald Trump have gone way down in both frequency and attendance by supporters. However, aides close to the 45th president don't appear concerned.

"President Trump has all the momentum in the GOP primary,” an unnamed Trump aide recently told The Daily Beast. “He is dominating in fundraising, polling, and energy on the ground. The rallies serve as an opportunity to fire up his base, but aren’t necessary as he turns toward the general election.”

According to the Daily Beast's count, Trump held 323 rallies in 2016 between the Republican primary and the general election, and nearly 70 rallies between June of 2020 (when Covid-19 lockdowns ended) and November 3, sometimes doing as many as three or four each day. However, now Trump is only doing one or two rallies per month ahead of the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

One former senior adviser to Trump confided to the Daily Beast's Jake Lahut that the stark drop in frequency of rallies was likely a strategy by his defense attorneys trying to keep him out of the spotlight, given that the former president is facing 91 felony counts in three separate jurisdictions.

“Honestly, given [Trump] has legal risk on many fronts, I’d probably do the same just to minimize anything that would f*** up his legal defense,” the former adviser said.

The rallies have also proven to be both one of the riskiest and costliest parts of Trump's campaign, and his operation could be reducing the number of campaign rallies in order to save money. In 2020, for example, a sparsely attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma cost the campaign a hefty $2.2 million after accounting for staging, travel, venue rental, security, audiovisual components, and other costs.

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin holds a different theory: She believes the Trump campaign is holding fewer rallies and purposefully holding them in small towns, as most of his supporters have grown "bored" with hearing the same bluster from the ex-president.

READ MORE: Trump's people are holding his rallies in tiny towns because he can't draw big crowds: columnist

However, the lack of rallies could also be more simply chalked up to Trump not needing to fire up his base, as his lead over the remaining candidates in the Republican presidential primary field continues to widen. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average for the 2024 Republican primary, Trump currently holds a 47-point lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his nearest challenger.

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an 11 23

in the 2020 presidential election, a long list of prominent conservatives favored Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump — including Cindy McCain (the late Sen. John McCain's widow), former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, and media figures like The Washington's Max Boot, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes.

Anti-Trump conservatives have been part of the Biden coalition. But journalist Jonathan Chait, in an article published by New York Magazine on October 2, warns that there may not be enough of them to save Biden's 2024 campaign if Trump is the nominee.

Even some outspoken Trump critics in the GOP, Chait notes, won't rule out the possibility of voting for him in 2024 —including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

"Over the past week, Donald Trump publicly demanded that former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley be put to death for having confided to a journalist that Trump, as president, had proposed shooting peaceful demonstrators and a variety of other crimes," Chait observes. "He threatened government retribution against media companies that publish reporting he doesn't approve of…. And, of course, he continued his drumbeat of false claims of having legitimately won the 2020 election. This was all in a week."

Chait notes that despite Trump's history of making racist comments, polls show him "continuing to gain support from Black and Latino voters — gains that, if they materialize at the polls, would give him a chance to win the national vote outright."

"Since these trends have put a nakedly authoritarian demagogue on the precipice of regaining the presidency," Chait warns, "this is indeed a crisis for democracy."

Chait adds that there may not be enough outright Never Trumpers in the GOP in 2024 to make a difference.

READ MORE:'Epically dangerous': GOP analyst warns Trump declaring Milley deserves 'death' must be 'taken seriously'

Chait laments, "The dark reality is that the Republican Party is increasingly converging on the belief that Trump's main failure was not to have tried to use the government to shut down independent media and prosecute his enemies, but to have been unable to carry it out… The Republicans who genuinely object to authoritarianism have all been driven out of the party. Those that remain simply regard partisan defection as an unthinkable breach, even if the alternative is electing a literal raving-mad criminal who is openly vowing to use the presidency as an instrument of vengeance."

READ MORE:Joint Chiefs of Staff chair warns Trump will 'start throwing people in jail' in 2025 — himself included

*Read Jonathan Chait's full New York Magazine article at this link.

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AN 11 23

Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both the press and the public have largely just shrugged their shoulders.

As a political philosopher who studies extremism, I believe people should be more worried about this.

Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is guilty of “treason,” Trump said in September 2023, just for reassuring the Chinese that the U.S. had no plans to attack in the waning days of the Trump administration. And for this, Trump says, Milley deserves death.

And back in April, Trump said that his indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would result in “death and destruction.” Then, in early October, Trump urged people to “go after” Letitia James, the New York attorney general who filed suit against him for business fraud.

Trump’s prior rhetoric is also now on record as having inspired many of those convicted to engage in insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But it is not just government officials whom Trump suggests be targeted for extrajudicial killings. Mere shoplifters should be killed too. “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving,” Trump said to cheers at the California Republican Party convention in September.

Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

More than crazy bluster

This rhetoric may seem like crazy bluster, which is no doubt why many people appear prepared to ignore it. But put in its historical context, what Trump is doing is echoing views that are part of a long tradition of illiberal and outright fascist thought. For fascists have always seen the use of violence as a virtue, not a vice.

First, this is the natural result of the way that fascist communities define themselves. According to Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi and for a time the official legal theorist of the party under Adolf Hitler, one builds and maintains a community by identifying and vilifying its enemies. And in this kind of highly polarized environment, the threat of violence always hangs in the air.

Second, among fascists, machismo is much admired. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose own outrageous rhetoric has also encouraged violent behavior by his supporters, simply “beamed” when Russian President Vladimir Putin praised him for his masculinity.

Trump often acts as a sycophant for Putin too, and machismo also is a big part of Trump’s own public persona.

Third, fascists are obsessed with purity. They long for a world where they can live among their own racial, ethnic, religious and ideological kind on land they view as exclusively theirs.

But in the real world, people are too intermixed for this to occur naturally. True purity of community is an aspiration that can be made real only through violence and subjugation. Hence the Holocaust,genocide and ethnic cleansing, and other more limited attacks on minority and immigrant populations.

Violence as noble and intoxicating

Fascists, then, see violence as noble and intoxicating. For example, Julius Evola, a far-right intellectual active in Italy from 1920 to 1970 and the author, among other things, of “Fascism Viewed from the Right” and “A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth,” writes that violence “offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero that sleeps within him.”

Today, Evola is a favorite of the alt-right, and he suggests that a hero’s death is preferable to a life built on liberal compromise. “The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero,” Evola writes, “even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities.”

The ultraconservative Catholic authoritarian and opponent of the French Revolution Joseph de Maistre, who is recognized as one of the intellectual forefathers of fascism, goes even further.

“The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death,” Maistre writes. Indeed, without an executioner, the man who kills other men, Maistre claims society could not exist. For violence is necessary to satisfy “men’s natural desire to be destructive,” he writes; it leaves them feeling “exalted and fulfilled.”

Patriot Front – labeled a ‘white supremacist group’ by the Anti-Defamation League – marches in Washington, D.C., in May 2023.

Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Social disruption and destruction

These comments make clear that fascists see violence as something to be used for more than just personal retribution and intimidation. It is to be used to create wider social disruption and destruction. Not only are individuals to be subject to attack, but institutions and norms as well.

Consider “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy,” a work by two amateur historians popular on the far right.

The book is actually a restatement of Evola’s theory of historical regression, set forth in his “Revolt against the Modern World.”

The idea is that history moves in cycles, the first one being the best and each one thereafter representing a further decline. The fourth cycle is the worst, and it ends only when all existing social institutions are destroyed. This, in turn, is an application of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea that “one can build only in a space which has been previously razed to the ground.”

Then history will reset and cycle once again.

Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon admires these ideas so much he made a movie about them.

Trump appears to embrace these ideas too. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be, when we were great,” he says.

Viewed in this context, not taking Trump’s violent rhetoric more seriously seems dangerous indeed.

Mark R. Reiff, Research Affiliate in Legal and Political Philosophy, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Economist names Trump #1 'biggest danger' in the world: 'Will wage war on any institution' - Alternet.org

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'I’m your macho leader': Expert explains what Trump’s 'contempt for the rule of law' shows - Alternet.org

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rr an 11 23

as an ever-greater portion of the nation’s total wealth goes to the top, it’s hardly surprising that ever more of that wealth is corrupting American politics.

In the 2020 presidential election cycle, more than $14 billion went to federal candidates, party committees, and Super PACs — double the $7 billion doled out in the 2016 cycle.

Total giving in 2024 is bound to be much higher.

Most of that money is not supporting American democracy. Increasingly, it is supporting Donald Trump and his anti-democracy allies.

There is a certain logic to this.

As more and more wealth accumulates at the top, the moneyed interests fear that democratic majorities will take it away through higher taxes, stricter regulations (on everything from trade to climate change), enforcement of anti-monopoly laws, pro-union initiatives, and price controls.

So they’re sinking ever more of their wealth into anti-democracy candidates.

Donald Trump is going full fascist these days, and gaining the backing of prominent billionaires.

On Veterans Day, Trump pledged to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” whom he accused of doing anything “to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.” (Notably, he read these words from a teleprompter, meaning that they were intentional rather than part of another impromptu Trump rant.)

Days before, Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” The New York Times reports that he’s planning to round up millions of undocumented immigrants and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.

Trump has publicly vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “ go after” President Joe Biden and his family, and has told advisers and friends that he wants the Justice Department to investigate officials who have criticized his time in office.

This is, quite simply, full-throated neofascism.

Who’s bankrolling all this? While Trump’s base is making small contributions, the big money is coming from some of the richest people in America.

During the first half of the year, multiple billionaires donated to the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again Inc. Super PAC.

Phil Ruffin (net worth $3.4 billion), the 88-year-old casino and hotel mogul, has given multiple $1 million donations.

Charles Kushner (family net worth $1.8 billion), the real estate mogul and father of Jared, who received a late-term pardon from Trump in December 2020, contributed $1 million in June.

Robert “Woody” Johnson (net worth $3.7 billion), Trump’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom and co-owner of the New York Jets, donated $1 million to the MAGA PAC in April.

And so on.

But Trump is not the only extremist pulling in big dollars. Nikki Haley — who appears moderate only relative to Trump’s blatant neofascism — proclaimed in her campaign launch that President Biden is promoting a “socialist” agenda.

During her two years as U.N. ambassador under Trump, Haley was a strong proponent of his so-called “zero tolerance” policy, under which thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents and guardians. She supported Trump’s decision to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Though she briefly criticized Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Haley soon defended Trump and called on Democratic lawmakers to “give the man a break” when they impeached him for a second time.

Haley recently told Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that while Trump’s floating the idea of executing retired General Mark Milley might be “ irresponsible,” it does not disqualify him from running for the White House again.

Haley’s billionaire supporters include Stanley Druckenmiller, Eric Levine, and Republican megadonor Ken Griffin.

Notably, Haley has also gained the support of JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, who’s about as close as anyone in America comes to being a spokesperson for the business establishment. Dimon admires Haley’s recognition of the role that “business and government can play in driving growth by working together.”

The moneyed interests have been placing big bets on other Trumpist Republicans.

Peter Thiel, the multibillionaire tech financier who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” contributed more than $35 million to 16 federal-level Republican candidates in the 2022 campaign cycle, making him the 10th largest individual donor to either party.

Twelve of Thiel’s candidates won, including Ohio’s now Senator J.D. Vance, who alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “ more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is creating a new fundraising committee that will be soliciting contributions of up to $586,200 a pop.

Elon Musk is not a major financial contributor to Trump nor other anti-democracy candidates, but his power over one of the most influential megaphones in America gives him inordinate clout — which he is using to further the neofascist cause.

Witness Musk’s solicitude of Trump, his endorsement of antisemitic posts, his embrace of Tucker Carlson and white replacement theory, and his avowed skepticism toward democracy.

Democracy is compatible with capitalism only if democracy is in the driver’s seat, so it can rein in capitalism’s excesses.

But if capitalism and its moneyed interests are in charge, those excesses grow to the point where they are able to extinguish democracy and ride roughshod over the common good.

Hence the reason Trump’s neofascism, and the complicity of today’s Republican Party with it, are attracting the backing of some of the richest people in America.

What’s the alternative? A loud pro-democracy movement that fights against concentrated wealth at the top, enormous CEO pay packages, a politically powerful financial sector, and tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations.

And fights for higher taxes on the top (including a wealth tax) to finance Medicare for all, affordable housing, and accessible child care and elder care.

The willingness to make this a fight — to name the moneyed interests backing neofascism, explain why they’re doing this, and mobilize and energize America against their agenda and in favor of democracy — is critical to winning the 2024 election and preserving and rebuilding American democracy.

Biden and the Democrats must take this on, loudly and clearly. (Incidentally, Biden’s age — Happy 81st, Joe! — would be far less of an issue if he showed the grit and guts to do this.)

==

'Lawless and corrupt': Expert lays out how Trump’s plan is 'straight out of the history of authoritarianism' - Alternet.org

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Chris Christie questions Trump’s 'mental health' following 'crazed lunatic' swipe - Alternet.org

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an 11 23

one of the few foreign correspondents to be granted personal access to Adolph Hitler and his inner circle in the dark winter of 1933 was Welsh journalist Garreth Jones. Assigned by his home paper, the Western Mail,to cover Hitler’s push to absolute power, Jones accompanied the newly appointed chancellor and his entourage to Frankfurt for a massive political rally that was held on March 2 of 1933.

*This article originally appeared on Truthdig.

Jones’ eyewitness account of the event is bone-chilling because it looks so much like what we are seeing today at Trump rallies.

“For eight hours, the biggest hall in Germany has been packed with 25,000 people for whom Hitler is the savior of his nation,” Jones began his story. “They are waiting, tense with national fervor…I have never seen such a mass of people; such a display of flags up to the top of the high roof, such deafening roars. It is primitive, mass worship.”

Then Hitler took the stage to a “roar of applause and the thumping and the blare of a military band and the thud of marching feet.” Hitler, Jones observed, “is … a master in repeating [his] leitmotiv in many varied forms, and the leitmotiv is: ‘The republican regime in Germany has betrayed you. Our day of retribution has come.’”

As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist.

The rally closed with Hitler’s pledge to “complete the work which I began fourteen years ago as an unknown soldier, for which I have struggled as leader of the party and for which I stand today as Chancellor of Germany. We shall do our duty.”

“Again,” Jones wrote, “the hall resounds.”

Three weeks later, Hitler secured passage of the Enabling Act, bringing the Weimar Republic effectively to an end.

Flash forward some 90 years and you can hear echoes of Hitler’s Frankfurt address in the persistent messaging of Donald Trump. Speaking at the ultra-right Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 14^th annual “Road to the Majority” conference in Washington, D.C. on June 24, the former president proclaimed:

In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.

Trump delivered a similar message earlier in June, telling an audience of enraptured supporters in Columbus, Georgia, that he was being persecuted by federal and state prosecutors. He insisted that the “deep state” was also out to get those who followed him. “In the end,” Trump complained, “they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.” This was the usual stuff of Trumpian spectacle. In a rambling tirade delivered on Veterans Day in New Hampshire, Trump vowed to “root out…the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Trump’s fixation on Hitlerian imagery, memes and tropes is not an accident. The orange-haired demagogue has had a longstanding fascination with Hitler. According to a 1990 Vanity Fair article, Trump’s first wife Ivana, who died last year, told her divorce attorney that the former president kept a compilation of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender remarked on Trump’s interest in Hitler in his book on the 2020 presidential campaign, “Finally We Did Win This Election.” Bender writes that Trump told his then-chief of staff Gen. John Kelly during a 2018 trip to Europe that “Hitler did a lot of good things,” particularly for the German economy. (Trump vehemently denied Bender’s account.)

The cult-like bond between the movement leader and his most ardent followers, a bond characterized by pledges of mutual aid, threats of revenge and shared delusions of victimization, is one of the bedrock features of fascism. This was graphically illustrated by the ascent to power of the two pillars of 20 ^th-century fascism, Hitler and Bennito Mussolini, whose personal style Trump is often said to emulate.

“Mussolini put his hands on his hips, thrust his chest, jutted his lower jaw,” Jonathan Blitzer wrote in a 2016 New Yorker article that profiled the work of New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of the fore most authorities on fascism. “It’s all about showing that he cannot be contained,” Ben-Ghiat told Blitzer. “It was the same with Mussolini.”

“I’ve been studying cult leaders for a hundred years’ worth of them,” said Ben-Ghiat in an appearance on Democracy Now last June. Trump “has all the signs. He is not a conventional politician of either the Democratic or Republican [Party]… He is a cult leader. And the GOP has long been…submissive to him. He put them under an authoritarian discipline, and then he made them complicit. And this is what corrupt, violent authoritarians do. They make you part of their crimes.”

As I have written before in this column, fascism is an emotionally loaded and often misapplied term. But if understood correctly, it can never be dismissed as a vestige of the past. As a form of political behavior, discourse and ideology, Trump and the MAGA movement are clearly fascist. There is no longer room for debate.

Fascism has deep roots in the United States, from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, to the rise of the German-American Bund in the 1930s, to the ascendance of Depression-era demagogues, and, fast-forward almost a century, the election of Trump in 2016.

There’s a long-running class factor in the current of American fascism. University of London professor Sarah Churchwell’s June 2020 essay in the New York Review of Books exactly nails it when she quotes rabbi Stephen Wise: “The America of power and wealth is an America which needs fascism.”

Churchwell’s essay, fittingly titled, “American Fascism: It Has Happened Here,” offers a working definition of fascism. She notes that while fascist movements differ from nation to nation, they are united by “conspicuous features [that] are recognizably shared.” These include:

{“[N]ostalgia for a purer, mythic, often rural past; cults of tradition and cultural regeneration; paramilitary groups; the delegitimizing of political opponents and demonization of critics; the universalizing of some groups as authentically national, while dehumanizing all other groups; hostility to intellectualism and attacks on a free press; anti-modernism; fetishized patriarchal masculinity; and a distressed sense of victimhood and collective grievance. Fascist mythologies often incorporate a notion of cleansing, an exclusionary defense against racial or cultural contamination, and related eugenicist preferences for certain ‘bloodlines’ over others.”*}:

If he is reelected next year, Trump could make the January 6 coup attempt look mild. The Washington Post and Politico have reported that Trump and his allies on the extreme right hope to transform the federal government into a virtual presidential dictatorship. Trump and his allies, states Politico, are “collecting the ingredients and refining the recipe for an authoritarian regime.”

The fear is that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to deploy the military. This vision of horror includes Trump in the Oval Office using his immense power to quash civil unrest and dismantle civil service protections for government workers in order to secure their loyalty. And all this while weaponizing the Justice Department to do his bidding.

The New York Times warns that a second Trump term will be especially dire for undocumented immigrants, with mass arrests and the construction of detention camps on a scale not seen since the racist “Operation Wetback” of the Eisenhower era. The Times also reported that Trump plans to cancel the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Fascism thrives in moments of widespread social anxiety and moral panic, when large segments of the population are persuaded that liberal democracy no longer serves their interests. We are living in such a moment now. The urgency we face cannot be understated.

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tpm 11 9

A Michigan judge on Thursday heard arguments from groups seeking to knock Donald Trump off the ballot, the only swing state in which a serious Disqualification Clause case against the former President has been filed.

Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford appeared skeptical of arguments that the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause bars Trump from appearing on the ballot, though he was careful to grill both sides on their arguments.

The court had been scheduled to hear three separate lawsuits about the issue: two from plaintiffs seeking to disqualify Trump, and a countersuit filed by the former president seeking to ensure that he would remain on the ballot.

But Judge Redford shut down Trump’s countersuit after it emerged that his attorneys had committed a procedural error by failing to include a verification page in their complaint.

That left arguments on a suit brought by serial Michigan litigant Robert Davis and Free Speech for People, a good government group which has brought suits in Michigan and Minnesota seeking to disqualify Trump.

Judge Redford referenced a Thursday decision from the Minnesota Supreme Court punting the Disqualification Clause case there until the general election.

Free Speech for People attorney Mark Brewer replied that they were starting “from the premise that Michigan law vastly differs from that of Minnesota,” and added later that the state should not “dragoon” private political parties into having ineligible candidates run in party primaries.

But Judge Redford expressed the most interest in what could end up being another way to punt the issue: whether the Section Three Disqualification Clause bars candidates seeking office, not just those already elected.

Judge Redford asked, “Your position, if correct, doesn’t it make a dead letter the last sentence of Section Three of the 13th Amendment?” That provision allows Congress to remove the disqualification by a two/thirds vote.

He added, “Let’s assume somebody does it,” referring to the momentous decision to disqualify Trump. Wouldn’t that, he asked, deprive Congress of the ability to remove the disqualification?

“Do you know of any case since the adoption of the amendment that a person seeking to become a candidate for office, as opposed to someone who had already stood and was seeking to serve, who has sought that two/thirds relief?” Redford asked.

Brewer, the plaintiff’s attorney, replied that the question was “speculative” because Trump had yet to ask for that amnesty.

Later on, during questioning of Trump’s attorneys, Judge Redford raised a similar issue. Redford said that he had read earlier drafts of the 14th Amendment in which members of Congress had initially separated a ban on running from office from a ban on holding office.

“That was a conscious choice,” the Trump attorney replied.

Brewer emphasized that the Disqualification Clause “only allows amnesty” from Congress, meaning that lawmakers’ ability to act is limited. That goes to a key debate which has come up in the Disqualification Clause cases: whether Congress needs to act in order to disqualify Trump under the 14th Amendment.

Judge Redford pressed Brewer on the question, prodding him to say whether he believed the 14th Amendment only barred insurrectionists from serving, and not from candidacy.

“That would require, what, the country to rerun an entire presidential election?” Brewer replied at one point, saying that it would be “chaos” unless the Supreme Court ruled on the issue.

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Minnesota Supreme Court: It’s Too Early To DQ Trump From 2024 Ballot - TPM – Talking Points Memo

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14th disqual

Supreme Court faces a 'desperate race against time' to avoid a 'Constitutional crisis' - Alternet.org

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'Devastating': Expert stunned by Jenna Ellis’ testimony she was told Trump 'not going to leave' - Alternet.org

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jenna rolls, cries

Expert: Trump 'literally making the case a gag order is necessary' with late night Mark Meadows rant - Alternet.org deal not confirmed?

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Inexperienced legal 'expert' closes out Colorado trial for team Trump - Alternet.org

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Rachel Maddow: Trump’s unhinged courtroom 'rambling' was designed to undermine 'the whole legal system' - Alternet.org

fascism

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'Entire existence will be crushed': Trump spokesperson threatens critics - Alternet.org

Trump 'going full-on Hitler' with 'vermin' remarks: Morning Joe - Alternet.org

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The unsubstantiated claim comes from a Gateway Pundit post that was soon shared by Trump on Truth Social; the photos are purportedly workout progress photos someone posted to Engoron’s high school alumni newsletter online, but it has not been confirmed that it’s him in the pictures.

With a “censored” bar covering the male figure’s nipples, Curanaj attempted to shame Engoron: “If there was a shirtless photo of me I would lose my job, right? Because Newsmax would say, ‘What kind of judgment does Lidia have to do something like that?’ And he just recently did it. This is not something he did many years ago.”

mma 11 23

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an 11 23

Staffers who worked for former President Donald Trump are reportedly now assembling a database of MAGA loyalists in preparation for an unprecedented purge of federal workers, should Trump win a second term in 2024.

According to a new Axios report, former Trump advisors Stephen Miller and Johnny McEntee are working alongside the Heritage Foundation — one of Washington, DC's most established conservative think tanks — to build "a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army" of approximately 54,000 people to quickly staff the federal government in key domestic policy roles. Axios cofounders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote that "social media histories are already being plumbed" to screen potential candidates.

"We're told immense, intense attention will be given to the social-media histories of anyone being considered for top jobs," VandeHei and Allen wrote. "Those queasy about testing the limits of Trump's power will get flagged and rejected."

VandeHei and Allen added that the undertaking involves "hundreds of people... spending tens of millions of dollars" in order to "rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents."

The effort to pre-screen potential federal workers under a second Trump term is a key part of Project 2025, which Heritage has spearheaded in coordination with dozens of other conservative organizations. Under Project 2025, executive power under a Republican administration would be drastically expanded, and the typically apolitical federal civil service — what Trump calls "the deep state" — would be packed full of far-right apparatchiks with the goal of governing to achieve conservative political goals. Heritage President Kevin Roberts told Axios that Project 2025 is "orders of magnitude" bigger than any other transition plan assembled by a party out of power.

Earlier this year the New York Times reportedthat one of the first priorities of Project 2025 would be to re-enact Trump's "Schedule F" executive order, which was issued just two weeks before the 2020 election and that President Biden rescinded just days after his inauguration. While presidents are usually able to appoint roughly 4,000 people to various administrative roles throughout the federal government, Schedule F would have bulldozed various legal protections for federal workers that would allow a president to replace approximately 50,000 additional staff across all federal agencies. The Times noted that Project 2025's goal of screening potential new staffers has been assisted with AI provided by tech giant Oracle.

Trump has indicated that if elected to a second term, he would carry out various acts of vengeance, including weaponizing the Department of Justice against his political opponents. The Times reported over the weekend that Trump would also greatly expand immigration crackdowns, enabling the Department of Homeland Security to carry out large-scale raids, detain immigrants at industrial-size camps and deport millions of immigrants every year.

READ MORE: 'Time to be very very afraid': Columnist warns Trump plans to carry out acts of vengeance in 2nd term

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11 23

Trump is a confidence man, charlatan and liar — so why is America so vulnerable?

Thom Hartmann

November 11, 2023

When Dustin Thompson was hauled before US District Judge Reggie Walton for assaulting the Capitol police on January 6th, his defense lawyer, Samuel Shamansky, argued about Trump:

“You had, frankly, a gangster who was in power. The vulnerable are seduced by the strong. That’s what happened.”

The jury didn’t buy the argument and sent Thompson to prison, as US District Judge Reggie Walton, who was overseeing the case, said:

“I think our democracy is in trouble because, unfortunately, we have charlatans like our former president who doesn’t, in my view, really care about democracy but only about power.”

And yet Trump remains popular with about 20 percent of the American public, making up the majority of the Republican primary-voting base. But why?

There’s nothing new about charlatans and confidence men. Marco Antonio Bragadini (1545-1591) was one of Europe’s most famous: he convinced both a pope and the government of Venice that he could turn lead into gold and they financed a lavish lifestyle for most of his life.

William Thompson was America’s first labeled “confidence man” in New York in the 1840s because he’d approach wealthy men, pretend they were old friends, and ask them if they had “the confidence” to give him their gold watch for an hour: many did, and he ran the scam for years before being busted.

Donald Trump similarly convinced banks that he was had assets worth ten, twenty, sometimes more than fifty times their real value as was revealed in court this week. The self-proclaimed “king of debt” then used his borrowed money to support a lifestyle that reinforced everybody’s belief that he was truly rich.

After American banks refused to lend Trump money, he and his good friend Jeffrey Epstein turned to Deutsche Bank and managed to extract over $2 billion from that institution with the help of William Broeksmit, Thomas Bowers, and Justin Kennedy.

Broeksmit hanged himself in 2014, leaving a suicide note and paperwork tying him to the bank’s unit accused of laundering some $10 billion of Russian oligarch money along with over $400 million in questionable loans to Trump.

As stories about Trump’s finances began hitting the media in 2019, Tom Bowers (55 years old), who signed off on Trump’s loans, also hanged himself.

Justin Kennedy worked for Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009 and, according to the Finance Editor of The New York Times, David Enrich as reported by The Guardian’s Julian Borger:

“Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he [Kennedy] became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.”

Kennedy was also the son of US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who, when apparently asked by Trump to resign to make room for Brett Kavanaugh, mysteriously complied and stepped away from one of the most powerful positions in America.

Without the help of these three men, Trump would almost certainly have ended up broke and destitute. He’d been sued thousands of times for nonpayment of his debts and was well known to New Yorkers as a hustler and scam artist with a long string of failed businesses behind him.

In fact, by the time of his bankruptcies in the 1990s he had squandered almost all the roughly half-billion dollars he inherited from his father and stole from his brother, nephews, and nieces (as Mary Trump will tell you) before being rescued by mobbed-up Russian oligarchs looking to launder ill-gotten gains via real estate.

NBC further saved him by making him the star of a reality TV show that was every bit as deceptive about Trump’s wealth and business acumen as were Bragadini’s exhibitions of gold he’d “transmuted” from lead.

This is the great patriot whose father hired a doctor to lie about his being disabled by bone spurs in his feet to get him out of the Vietnam draft five times. Five other young men were sent to that hellscape to die or be injured in Trump’s place.

— He promised to build a wall across almost 2,000 miles of our southern border and he promised Mexico would pay for it. Instead, he built about 50 miles of wall and repaired another 400 that was scheduled for maintenance anyway. Mexico didn’t contribute a penny: the money was taken from the Pentagon budget for upgrading soldiers’ housing.

— Trump promised to cut the deficit, a routine lie from every Republican president since Reagan. Instead, he added at least $8 trillion to our national debt.

— He promised to replace Obamacare with a national health care plan that would cover everybody for lower cost. It was another lie, just like when he promised to cut drug prices for seniors: instead, Joe Biden got drug prices under control and insulin down to $35/month.

— Trump promised he was going to cut taxes on the middle class: instead, he raised taxes on working people while cutting over $2 trillion from the tax obligations of America’s billionaires.

— He told us COVID would just “go away like magic.” It didn’t. The week of April 7, 2020, when he learned that the disease was mostly killing Black and Hispanic people, he abandoned efforts to contain the virus and issued an executive order requiring mostly minority essential workers to go back to work: as a result, over a half-million Americans died unnecessarily.

— Trump ridiculed Obama for occasionally playing a round of golf, saying he’d be so busy as president that he’d never take that kind of time off. Instead, he billed you and me for over $135 million for the 250+ times he visited his own golf clubs.

— He said he’d increase economic growth by four percent, a number America hadn’t seen since the 1960s. Instead, like Herbert Hoover, he left office with fewer jobs than when he entered. Joe Biden, however, just oversaw a GDP increase that was over 4% and more jobs created in a president’s first two years than any time in American history.

— He repeatedly promised an infrastructure plan: every week for months, it seemed, was “infrastructure week.” But it never happened: instead, Joe Biden put a massive infrastructure program in place that’s today producing jobs across the nation.

— Trump promised to “fight for the dignity of women and mothers.” Instead he’s been convicted of raping E. Jean Caroll and more than 20 other women claim he did the same to them. And he brags about packing the Supreme Court to overturn abortion rights in America.

It’s almost impossible to find a transcript of any speech or press conference by Trump that’s not filled with exaggerations and lies: over 30,000 of his falsehoods while in office were compiled into a book. Trump’s persistent lies have become so common that the media no longer reports on them.

Trump cheated on and lied to each of his three wives, lied on his taxes, lied to his bankers and insurance companies, and lied to the American people.

And yet, he’s still held in the tight embrace of Republicans nationwide. Why?

One theory is that people are basically trusting, and we tend to measure somebody’s truthfulness by the certainty with which they make their assertions. Pathological liars like Trump can be shockingly convincing: it’s the con man’s stock in trade.

They prey on the fact that most people conflate or confuse confidence with competence. In fact, most truly competent people rarely act arrogantly confident: instead, they’re constantly testing their understandings and skills against reality to keep sharp and accurate.

Another theory is that the people who support him know he’s a liar and a fraud and don’t care, so long as he promises to hurt those they mutually hate: Black people, Hispanics, Muslims, the queer community, uppity women, academics, and liberals.

It’s a variation on the old saying, “He may be an SOB, but at least he’s my SOB.” People who are motivated by fear and hate — like much of the Republican base — aren’t usually all that concerned with what they consider the nuances of honesty and integrity.

Which brings us to the final reason why so many people still trust and follow a known liar and con man like Donald Trump: they’ve bought into what’s essentially a cult.

The first imperative of all cult leaders is to cut their followers off from contrasting information that may shatter the cult’s hold over them. While Jim Jones and Osho had to forbid their followers from reading or watching the news to accomplish this, Trump has three television networks, hundreds of websites, and fifteen hundred radio stations all echoing his lies to keep his cult intact.

The good news is that Trump has been able to get as far as he has, both in business and politics, because most people are basically good and trusting. The bad news is that he’s succeeded in suckering millions of those trusting people with his Pied Piper routine.

Trump’s civil and criminal trials may go a long way toward puncturing his carefully crafted façade of business and personal success. If they don’t — if, as feared, they merely strengthen him — we’re all in for a really rough ride over the next few years.

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Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Read Comments - Join the Discussion

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Trending Topics

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aug?

Ralph Nader: Indict Trump for insurrection, too - Alternet.org

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11 23

After Florida governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis visibly received less support than ex-President Donald Trump from Republican voters during the state's Saturday Freedom Summit, the Sunshine State leader is expected to be endorsed by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds Monday, NBC exclusively reports.

NBC notes, "Prior to Reynolds, two Iowa Republican statewide officeholders endorsed other presidential candidates. State Attorney General Brenna Bird gave her support to Trump, while state Treasurer Roby Smith backed businessman Vivek Ramaswamy."

Reynolds' decision comes after she said she planned to "remain neutral" on a candidate earlier this year, later adding during the August Iowa State Fair that she might change her mind "down the road."

Reynolds criticized Trump for failing to participate in the event's "Fair-Side Chats," saying that if he wants to win, voters "expect him to be here."

NBC reports:

*The endorsement is a major departure from tradition: Iowa governors have typically stayed on the sidelines ahead of the caucuses. An endorsement last happened in 1996, when then-Gov. Terry Branstad threw his support behind Bob Dole — though Branstad did also step out in 2016 to say he hoped Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would be defeated ahead of that year's caucuses.

READ MORE:'It’s going to be Trump': Here’s what proved DeSantis’ 'diminishing stature in his home state'

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an 11 23 no lnx

Team Trump interviewing 'aggressive right-wing lawyers' even more MAGA than the Federalist Society: report

November 01, 2023

During Donald Trump's four years in the White House, the people he angrily railed against weren't necessarily Democrats. Some of Trump's vitriol was reserved for right-wing Republicans he accused of letting him down — a list that included former National Adviser John Bolton, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, among many others.

The New York Times has been reporting that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he plans to give the federal workforce a major makeover and fill his administration with loyalists who, unlike Tillerson or Bolton, won't question him. Another part of Trump's game plan for a second term as president, according to the Times, is picking attorneys who as MAGA as possible and thoroughly committed to his "America First ideology."

In an article published on November 1, New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman explain, "Close allies of Donald J. Trump are preparing to populate a new administration with a more aggressive breed of right-wing lawyer, dispensing with traditional conservatives who they believe stymied his agenda in his first term. The allies have been drawing up lists of lawyers they view as ideologically and temperamentally suited to serve in a second Trump Administration."

The reporters continue, "Their aim is to reduce the chances that politically appointed lawyers would frustrate a more radical White House agenda — as they sometimes did when Mr. Trump was in office, by raising objections to his desires for certain harsher immigration policies or for greater personal control over the Justice Department, among others."

Trump and his allies, according to the journalists, have been having "back-room discussions" with lawyers and "building new recruiting pipelines separate from the Federalist Society." As those Trumpsters see it, even the Federalist Society isn't MAGA enough.

"The interviews reveal a significant break within the conservative movement," Swan, Savage and Haberman report. "Top Trump allies have come to view their party's legal elites — even leaders with seemingly impeccable conservative credentials — as out of step with their movement…. The move away from the group reflects the continuing evolution of the Republican Party in the Trump era and an effort among those now in his inner circle to prepare to take control of the government in a way unseen in modern presidential history."

READ MORE: GOP scheme to overhaul federal government is a 'bullet in the gun' aimed at US democracy: authoritarian expert

Read The New York Times' full report at this link (subscription required).

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10 23 djt calls emmer a rino globalist to sink spkr run, supports mike j?

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Donald Trump praises Rumble for letting him claim the election was “rigged” and criticizes Fox News for settling with Dominion | Media Matters for America

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rww

powell

The third item was a Sunday morning post by Trump himself to his Truth social account, in which he praised Powell for doing a “valiant job” defending Mike Flynn from “this now Fascist government of ours.” Powell’s newsletter quotes Trump: “Sidney Powell was one of millions of Americans who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLEN, AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!!”

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Trump campaign invades New Hampshire primary with an 'army' of 'horn-honking, flag-waving' supporters - Alternet.org

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an 10 23

thursday, October 19 saw a major bombshell in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' sweeping election interference case against former President Donald Trump. In an Atlanta courtroom, Sidney Powell — a former Trump lawyer and one of the many co-defendants —.

Powell, CNN reported, will avoid prison and be given a six-year probation sentence. In return, she must fully cooperate with Willis' office.

Legal expert Kimberly Wehle, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Baltimore, offers three major takeaways in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 19.

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Wehle's takeaways are: (1) "Two of 19 defendants have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors," (2) "Don’t be surprised if (bail bondsman Scott) Hall and Powell produce some jaw-dropping testimony," and (3) "Assuming (Kenneth) Cheseboro's trial goes forward, it will reveal a lot about the strength of the case against Trump."

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"Whether Powell's and Hall's testimony will hurt Trump's defense remains to be seen," Wehle explains. "Powell's counsel claims that she 'did not represent President Trump or the Trump campaign' following the election, although Rudy Giuliani introduced her as one of 'the senior lawyers' representing Trump during his 2020 campaign. Having participated in a news conference shortly after the election at the White House, at a minimum Powell can testify as to conversations she had with Trump that could reveal what he knew about the true election results and what he intended to have happen in the lead-up to the January 6th insurrection."

Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are the focus of two separate criminal prosecutions: Willis' for the State of Georgia and special counsel Jack Smith's federal case for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Unlike Smith, Willis is using RICO laws to prosecute Trump.

Wehle notes, "Powell's testimony could be important to special counsel Jack Smith, too, as she's believed to be one of the unindicated co-conspirators in the federal January 6th case. According to testimony obtained by the House January 6th Committee, Trump privately described her as 'crazy.'"

READ MORE:'Trump should be very concerned': Legal experts react to Sidney Powell’s bombshell guilty plea

*Read Kimberly Wehle's full article for The Bulwark at this link.

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Lawsuit alleging Trump 'tried to disenfranchise Black voters' handed to Judge Chutkan: report - Alternet.org

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aha pix bypass think brain eg nazi Leni R

i am YOUR  retribution, you have no power to strike down your enemies (demonization, polar) bit i do // retaliation/ transaction

strict fr fascist angry old man Jehovah

an 8 23 no lnx

The fascist who doesn’t want America to think

['A harasser and an abuser': Donald Trump seethes at special counsel Jack Smith]

Robert ReichAugust 27, 2023

I want to talk about symbols, images, and fascism.

Here is Trump’s mug shot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended to make his supporters and his Republican base feel defiant, too.

:{:{}:

}:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is Trump’s thousand-word response to Wednesday night’s Republican debate, which he declined to attend.

He timed his arraignment in Georgia for yesterday so that it — and this photo — would dominate Thursday’s and Friday’s news, rather than anything or anyone emerging from the debate.

:{:{}:

}:

But a defiant photograph isn’t “news.” It’s a symbol, an image. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is. He has no political platform, no specific policy agenda, no new ideas, and no plan for what he’ll do if he gets a second term.

:{:{}:

}:

He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America.

:{:{}:

}:

He is as close as America has come to a fascist leader, who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel.

:{:{}:

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Trump’s lackeys fell in line, expressing the defiance Trump projected in his mug shot.

On Newsmax, Sarah Palin called for civil war.

Fox’s Laura Ingraham told viewers that Trump’s arrest was proof that government officials are trying to “take them out.”

Fox’s Sean Hannity said the Department of Justice will target Republicans “until there’s nothing left of the party.”

All brainless bile.

Last Thursday, Trump complained that Fox News “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again … And then they want me to debate!”

Of course he’s angry. For the man who’s all symbol and image and without substance, a photo like the following conveys a brainless buffoon. It must drive him crazy.

But Trump is not a brainless buffoon. He’s a cunning marketer, adiabolic manipulator of the public, a sly producer of his own daily reality show. His lead in the GOP’s presidential sweepstakes has grown. He will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president next year — even if he’s in jail.

How to debate a symbol? How to take on an image? How should Biden and the Democrats, and everyone who cares deeply about this country, respond to a demagogue who obsesses over what he projects rather than what he stands for? How to deal with a fascist who doesn’t want followers to think but only to feel rage?

Expose him for who he is.

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https://boingboing.net/2023/08/24/trump-we-lost-35000-people-to-the-mosquito.html

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atl hannity coming for all gop, ingraham,

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ERIC BOLLING (HOST): When you see the former president being fingerprinted, having to show up, turn himself in, you see the mugshots of the other seven or eight who've turned themselves already, do you have concern for the country as I do?

SARAH PALIN (GUEST): Absolutely, I mean -- I think those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tiered system of justice and I want to ask them, "What the heck? Do you want us to be in Civil War?" because that's what's going to happen. We're not going to keep putting up with this. And Eric, I like that that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.

mma 8 23

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-new-fani-willis/

attack, protective order?

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1 VIOLATION OF THE GEORGIA RICO

(RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS) ACT O.C.G.A. 16144(c)

2 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH

BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 164-7 1640-1

3 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16-10-20

4 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 1610-20

5 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH

BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 16-47 16101

6 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH

BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 164-7 1610-1

7 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16102'0

8 IMPERSONATING PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. 16-1023

9 CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT INIPERSONATIN PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 164-8 16-10-23

10 FORGERY IN THE FIRST DEGREE O.C.G.A. 169-1(b)

11 CONSPIRACY To COMMIT FORGERY 1N THE FIRST DEGREE

12 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS

13 CONSPIRACY TO COMmIT FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. §§

14 CRiminAL ATTEMPT To COMMIT filing FALSE DOCUMENTS O.C.G.A. §§ 1641 16102o.1(b)(1)

15 CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT FALSE DOCUMENTS

16 FORGERY IN THE FIRST DEGREE O.C.G.A. 16-9-1(b)

17 CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT FORGERY THE FIRST DEGREE

18 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS

19 CONSPIRACY TO COMlVIIT FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. §§ 16-4-8 16-10-20

20 CRIMINAL ATTEMPT TO COMMIT INFLUENCING WITNESSES O.C.G.A. §§ 16-41 161093(b)(1)(A)

21 CRIMINAL ATTEMPT TO COMMIT INFLUENCUYG WITNESSES O.C.G.A. §§ 16-4-1& 16-10-93(b)(1)(A)

22 CRIMINAL ATTEMPT TO COMMIT FALSE STATEMENTS AND writings  O.C.G.A. §§ 16-41 161020

23 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 16-47 16-10-1

24 FALSE STATENIENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16-1020

25 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 161020

26 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16-10-20

27 FILING FALSE DOCUMENTS O.C.G.A. 16-1020.1(b)(1)

28 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 164-7 16-10-1

29 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16-10-20

30 CONSPIRACY TO COMlVIIT SOLICITATION OF FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. §§ 16-4-8, 16-4-7 16-10-20

31 INFLUENcing WITNESSES O.C.G.A. 161093(b)(1)(A)

32 CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT ELECTION FRAUD

O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2603 21-2-566

33 CONSPIRACY TO CONIMIT ELECTION FRAUD

O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2-603 21-2-574

34 CONSPIRACY To COMMIT COMPUTER THEFT O.C.G.A. §§ 1648 16993(a)

35 CONSPIRACY TO COMlVIIT COMPUTER TRESPASS O.C.G.A. §§ 16-4-8 16-9-93(b)

36 CONSPIRACY TO COMIVIIT COMPUTER INVASION OF PRIVACY O.C.G.A. §§ 16-4-8 169-93(c)

37 CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD TIE STATE O.C.G.A. 16-1021

39 SOLICITATION OF VIOLATION OF OATH

BY PUBLIC OFFICER O.C.G.A. §§ 16-47 16101

39 FALSE STATEMENTS AND WRITINGS O.C.G.A. 16-1020

40 FALSE STATEMENTS and writings

41 perjury

==

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fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday unveiled 13 charges against former President Donald Trump related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. The 41-count indictment, which implicates 19 defendants in a Georgia racketeering charge, “brings the total number of criminal charges this year against” Trump to 91, the Washington Post reports.

In an analysis published Tuesday by the Washington Post, reporter Aaron Blake details 4 revelations from the Trump Georgia indictment — including that the alleged crimes “went well past” the events of Jan. 6, 2020.

“One of the more striking details comes in the 38th and 39th counts — the last charges against Trump — which date to Sept. 17, 2021, nearly eight months after Trump left office,” Blake writes, noting the charge “has to do with a letter Trump sent to [Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger in which he enclosed a report alleging that 43,000 ballots in Atlanta-based DeKalb County were not properly handled using chain-of-custody rules.”

In that letter, the Washington Post reports, “Trump suggested that Raffensperger ‘start the process of decertifying the election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.’”

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?For prosecutors, that action amounts to the crime of Trump and others “corruptly [soliciting] Georgia officials … to violate their oaths to the Georgia Constitution and to the United States Constitution by unlawfully changing the outcome of the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia in favor of Donald Trump,” according to the indictment.

Blake also notes that the Georgia indictment differs from the 3 others brought against Trump because it includes the “Trump allies” his crimes “ensnared.”

“[Special counsel Jack] Smith opted this month to bring a case against Trump alone while listing six unnamed (but mostly easily identifiable) associates as unindicted co-conspirators," Blake writes. "Willis has gone in a different direction, also indicting 18 others she says took part in the criminal enterprise.”

According to Blake, Trump’s floated defense in Smith’s case appears to be that “he was merely exercising free speech.” But those “free speech” claims “won’t work as easily in Georgia,” Blake writes, because the state “has a broad prohibition against making ‘a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation … in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government.’”

READ: Ex-U.S. District Court clerk: 'Significant evidence' that fake electors knew 'Trump had definitely lost'

Finally, Blake notes that “unless the rules change,” Trump’s trial in Georgia — “unlike the federal trials” — “should be televised.”

“There remains the possibility,” Blake writes, “of Trump’s winning the 2024 election and facing this trial as a sitting president.”

Read the full analysis at the Washington Post.

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majority of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers believe Trump has not committed serious crimes

https://www.alternet.org/msn/trump-gop-caucusgoers/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/study-trump-leads-2024-fox-primary-dominating-oan-and-newsmax

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https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-2664059523/  mary trump fascist

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-jan-6-indictment/

no lnx

Why Trump indictments haven’t triggered another Jan. 6 — and why the worst may be yet to come

Jordan Green

andRaw Story

August 21, 2023

A grand jury handed up a 41-count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators late Monday night inside a courthouse in Atlanta. Outside, law enforcement prepared for a Jan. 6-esque riot.

But as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced her case against Trump, no right-wing MAGA supporters, equipped with tactical gear and assault rifles, descended on the courthouse.

No one stormed any government buildings.

The scene was quiet — eerily so — and largely replayed the relatively orderly, if not placid scenes outside courthouses in New York City and Washington, D.C., where authorities have also charged Trump with felony crimes.

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Even one of Trump’s most ardent bomb-throwers urged MAGA-ites to restrain themselves.

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“Don’t go to the Fulton County courthouse. Don’t give them an ounce of your flesh. Let them have their empty streets, barricades, and media circus,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) cautioned on Twitter, now X, the morning after the indictments.

ALSO READ: 11 ways Donald Trump doesn’t become president again

But while the arrests of more than 1,100 people for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and more recently, charges against high-profile Trump allies such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — appear to have temporarily deterred a broad mobilization of violence, far-right unrest is simmering under the surface as Trump’s legal troubles mount.

It occasionally emerges in the form of one-off violent acts, such as when an Ohio man who attacked the FBI office in Cincinnati in response to federal authorities searching Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago died in a shootout with law enforcement last year.

More recently, a Utah man died in a shootout with the FBI after he posted threats to kill President Joe Biden.

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A Texas woman is accused of threatening the U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

And just this week, after the names of the grand jurors were published in the Fulton County indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants, trolls reportedly posted their names and purported addresses on a fringe website.

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On another site that allows users to post anonymously, users reportedly encouraged one another to shoot members of the grand jury, with one invoking a notorious white supremacist text that provides a blueprint for political terror. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has announced it is investigating the threats.

And as Trump’s legal troubles mount and his supporters become increasingly desperate going into the winner-takes-all stakes of the 2024 presidential election, analysts who monitor right-wing extremism warn that political violence is only likely to worsen over the next 18 months as 2024 election approaches and the next president is inaugurated in 2025.

The seeds of such a scenario are being planted right now, largely out of view, in some of the darkest corridors of the internet.

Mixed messages: Culture war and vigilance

Just because there wasn’t an instantaneous reaction to the Fulton County indictment doesn’t mean the news didn’t push someone over the edge and cause them to start plotting, security analysts say. Violent plots take time to plan and carry out.

Online reaction among far-right influencers and groups to the indictment has been mixed, with the news jostling for attention alongside other conservative fixations, like the viral right-wing populist folk song “Rich Men North of Richmond” and the apology from the “crazy plane lady.”

Samantha Kutner, an extremism and terrorism analyst with Glitterpill LLC, told Raw Story that the current moment is a “focus-testing period for many extremist groups.”

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“Right now, it might be safe to say their reaction is similar to their reaction to Barbie,” she said. “Culture war fodder with attempts to fundraise.”

On Telegram accounts linked to the Proud Boys, posts about the Maui wildfires — typically suggesting sinister causes or accusing the Biden administration of neglect — appear to outnumber references to the Trump indictment roughly four to one.

Dozens of members of the Proud Boys face criminal charges for their role in the attack on the Capitol, and high-profile leaders, including former national chairman Enrique Tarrio, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. This potentially dampens enthusiasm for physically rushing to the support of a former president who infamously told them during a 2020 campaign debate to “stand back and stand by.”

But that shouldn’t offer peace-loving Americans comfort.

ALSO READ: Trump maintains trademarks with Russia, China and numerous other U.S. enemies and frenemies

Kutner predicted that as the consequences of Trump’s legal troubles become increasingly tangible, theProud Boys will “martyr him and use the event to organize and they’ll get more and more desperate as the 2024 elections pick up.”

One indication of that line of discourse is evident in a recent commentary posted on Telegram by the Cape Fear Proud Boys, one of the most influential and active chaptersto emerge in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

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The commentary posted on Aug. 1 following Trump’s first Jan. 6-related indictment accused Democrats of “plotting to subvert the 2024 election” while claiming “they will do anything to see Trump in jail.”

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The post included a vague call to action by urging readers to “come to the realization that you have to do more than ‘just vote,’” adding, “See you in the streets.”

Following Trump’s new indictment in Fulton County, Ga., on Monday, the Cape Fear Proud Boys chapter warned, “If he loses this he goes to jail, just like they have been planning all along.”

The Cape Fear Proud Boys’ call to “do more than ‘just vote’ is echoed in the messaging surrounding an “Election Summit” in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who helped finance a bus tour to fuel protests against the outcome of the 2020 election, the “Election Summit” promised an all-star cast of pro-Trump election deniers.

Businessman and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell talks with reporters outside the club house at the Trump National Golf Club hours ahead of a speech by former U.S. President Donald Trump on June 13, 2023 in Bedminster, N.J. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The MAGA luminaries billed as speaking at the event include Giuliani, who has been ordered to turn himself in for arrest in Fulton County by Aug. 25, Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim provocateur who recently met with Trump at his Bedminster club in New Jersey; former White House strategist Steve Bannon; retired Lt. General Michael Flynn; and criminally indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Lindell has been promising to unveil a “plan” on Thursday, the second day of the summit. Details of the “plan” have been teased by the Gateway Pundit, a far-right outlet that traffics in conspiracytheories.

ALSO READ: National security at 'high risk' as 'old school' methods degrade government security practices

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A recent article quoted Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who reportedly assisted Paxton with his unsuccessful lawsuit to invalidate Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in Pennsylvania, as being among a select group of Trump allies who have reviewed Lindell’s “plan.”

“We can no longer cast our vote and walk away,” Olsen said in the quote published by the Gateway Pundit. Through exposure to the “plan,” Olsen said viewers of Lindell’s livestreamed event will “learn how to become the watchman for elections — not just to cast a ballot — and you will be equipped for that task in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Lindell’s event has received promotion from Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, along with “The Pete Santilli Show,” whose host pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer in the 2014 armed standoff at Bunkerville, Nev., over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees for use of federal lands.

Discussing his plans to travel to the “Election Summit” during his show on Aug. 12, Santilli suggested some unspecified “wingnuts” might try to intercept him, before imploring listeners: “Anybody messes with me, everybody get your bulldozers and come get me. Okay? Bulldozer brigade. They do not want what is coming on the 16th and 17th.”

Santilli’s “bulldozer brigade” reference likely resonated with far-right antigovernment listeners who have lionized Marvin Heemeyer, who rampaged through the town of Granby, Colo. in an armored bulldozer in revenge for a zoning dispute before taking his own life.

During the same show, Santilli instructed his listeners: “Any time you see CNN, you smash their cameras, okay?

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“I say ‘smash their cameras,’ figuratively, I don’t know,” Santilli continued. Laughing he added, “Constitutionally.”

Then he showed footage of himself harassing a camera crew at one of Lindell’s previous events.

Radicalized by election disinformation

Trump is continuing to stoke fear and conspiracy theories, just as he did during the 2016 and 2020 elections, with predictable consequences, said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security who was pushed out of the agency after authoring a prescient reported that highlighted the threat of right-wing extremism early in the administration of President Obama. Johnson told Raw Story that the “heightened threat environment” can be largely attributed to one man: Donald Trump.

“We’re at the precipice of another national election, and he’s continuing to do the same thing he did in 2016 and 2020,” Johnson said. “He’s talking about how the last election was stolen, and a significant number of people believe it, despite the courts and the media saying otherwise. He continues to perpetuate the lie that the election was stolen. He’s radicalizing his base of supporters, and now that he’s facing all these indictments, unfortunately the hardcore Trump supporters believe this was orchestrated to keep him from becoming president again.”

A key question is whether Trump still has the ability to mobilize mass crowds in the streets, as he did following the 2020 election, when he tweeted, “Be there, will be wild,” summoning his supporters to Washington, D.C. for the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

ALSO READ: Neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet gets break over alleged possession of classified documents

The absence of large-scale extremist mobilization fits a pattern from the 2022 mid-term election, when many election-denialist candidates loyal to Trump were on the ballot, to the previous indictments earlier this year in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C., said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Holt said a post by Trump on his TruthSocial platform on Election Day 2022 suggests that the former president’s command over his most violence-prone supporters has weakened.

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Trump, for example, attempted to capitalize on a temporary software glitch at one of the city’s polling locations, and urged his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” in Detroit.

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Yet, “there was no major protest beyond a few dozen people,” Holt recalled. “That was a really interesting moment for me, as Trump explicitly saying, ‘I want people to protest here,’ and his supporters didn’t respond.”

More recently, in March, as his arrest in New York City neared, Trump issued a Jan. 6-like charge to supporters.

“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Trump’s Truth Social message concluded.

The former president also warned of "potential death and destruction" if he was charged with a crime.

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But few protesters came, and the scene was more comedic than chaotic.

The massive federal crackdown on rank-and-file Trump supporters who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection has prompted the far-right movement to retreat from mass-scale events, and strategically redirect energy towards small-scale local actions targeting local institutions and marginalized communities.

During the past two years, the targets have included school boards and hospitals over issues such as COVID-19 restrictions, teaching race and gender identity and books that highlight marginalized people.

More recently, drag shows have come to the forefront as a target of far-right harassment.

It's hard to tell how that model might be applied to a presidential election cycle with a sequence of events playing out on a national scale, Holt said.

But he suggested Moms for Liberty, a far-right group at the forefront of battles over COVID restrictions and gender identity that has forged strong ties with Republican officeholders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the kind of group that might be able to harness the disparate impulses of the far right.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure on the right to support small, local stuff,” he said. “You can see how Moms for Liberty has exploded into this major force in a couple years after getting money dumped on it.Moms for Liberty is both grassroots and Astro-turfed. It exists in this weird gray area.A lot of organizing is local, but there’s a really strong reward structure on a national scale that gives them talking points and hands out targets.”

The culture war issues pushed by Moms for Liberty, building on the backlash to the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, are all examples of an “activism and organizing muscle that the right is very good at keeping exercised,” Holt said.

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He added that “if someone stepped up and tried to use it in that way” during the election, “in theory it could cause a lot of havoc.”

Holt said he expects that the Republican primaries and the Republican National Convention will be key pivot points in the potential emergence of a far-right movement capable of mass action.

ALSO READ: U.S. Army reservist ran a ‘white nationalist’ training camp and touted KKK ties

“That’s when I’ll be looking to see who can flex the muscle and show that willingness to act on a broader scale,” he said.

Regardless of whether the leadership and organizational infrastructure falls into place to cause major chaos, Johnson observed that the far right now has something it’s been missing since January 2021 — a unifying objective.

“The 2024 election and Trump’s ongoing legal problems begins to create a cohesion and glue for people to rally around,” he said. “What we could see in the coming 12 months is these scattered groups of people coming together under a banner and fighting for a cause again.”

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Given the far-right’s reorientation toward more small-scale actions and localized targets, Johnson said it’s hard to imagine Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol again. But he said it’s not out of the question that something like that might happen at a capitol building in a swing state such as Georgia or Ohio.

The Jan. 6 arrests have had some deterrent effect, Johnson said, while Holt noted that the conspiracy mindset of many of Trump’s supporters causes them to look with suspicion on anyone who proposes large-scale political action, often accusing them of being federal agents intent on setting them up for arrest.

Johnson added that the law enforcement crackdown on Jan. 6 rioters, similar to a previous period after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, drove many of the most violent extremists underground. That increases the likelihood of more incidents like the Ohio man who attacked the FBI office last year, or the two individuals who threatened Biden and Chutkan earlier this month.

“What this boils into is more violence towards Democrats, judges, juries, the FBI and the Justice Department, more plotting assassinations and carrying assassinations,” Johnson said. “It’s very reminiscent of the 1960s, when we saw the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.”

As Trump and his supporters continue to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that Democrats are scheming to steal the next one, while demonizing political opponents and embracing aggressive tactics, the conditions appear ripe for unrest.

Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security analyst, Trump being convicted or put in jail could be a catalyst for violence. He noted that a few of Trump’s supporters have already been “pushed over the edge,” while others are already mobilizing by training with firearms.

“The catalyst is the event that triggers violence — Trump gets convicted and goes to jail, running for election and losing,” he said. “Even the fact that Trump wants to run and all of a sudden he can’t — that’s another triggering catalyst.”

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mma 8 23

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-medias-talking-points-about-trumps-indictment-fake-electors-plot

no lnx many

Right-wing media’s talking points about Trump’s indictment for fake electors plot have little basis in reality

Here are the facts

WRITTEN BY JACK WINSTANLEY & PAYTON ARMSTRONG

PUBLISHED 08/10/23

In response to Donald Trump’s federal indictment for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, right-wing media have embarked on a smear campaign against the entire investigation, spreading misleading and baseless myths to obscure the nature of the charges and the evidence being presented against the disgraced former president. 

Since the indictment was filed, Trump’s lawyers and right-wing media have offered flailing defenses and pro-Trump spin, as well as falsehoods about the charges.

MYTH: Trump was indicted for believing the election was stolen, which violates his free speech rights.

Right-wing media figures have claimed that Trump was indicted for believing that the election was stolen and suggested that the charges represent a criminalization of free speech rights — baseless claims that the indictment prebuts.

Fox host Greg Gutfeld said the indictment is “criminalizing thoughts and it’s criminalizing speech.” He defended Trump’s actions by arguing that “you have every right to think an election might be rigged or fixed." [Fox News, The Five, 8/1/23]

On Hannity, former Trump adviser Stephen Millercomplained that “free speech,” and the “Constitution itself” are “at stake.” He called the indictment “the legal equivalent of the French guillotine, the reign of terror,” and “a mob mentality to take out Donald Trump.” [Fox News, Hannity, 8/1/23]

Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo suggested that Trump’s crime was “saying that he thought that the election was stolen.” Bartiromo cited Fox legal analyst Jonathan Turley’s claim that the indictment lacks legitimacy, stating, “A similar sentiment talked about this being free speech, so what's the charge? What's the crime? Him saying that he thought that the election was stolen: That's the crime.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 8/2/23]

Right-wing influencer Greg Price posted on social media that “Jack Smith's indictment is nothing but a criminalization of political speech.” He added that, “In the 3rd paragraph, he says President Trump ‘had a right like every American to speak publicly about the election and even to claim falsely that he had won.’ But apparently he's indicting him for it anyway.” [Twitter/X, 8/1/23]

Fox News contributor Katie Pavlichcalled the indictment the “criminalization … of disinformation and misinformation.” She also argued that “the left believes that you should go to prison for saying things.” [Fox Business Network, The Bottom Line, 8/1/23]

Fox prime-time host Laura Ingrahamargued that the indictment was a violation of Trump’s right to free speech. Ingraham quoted the indictment to note that “the defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election” and that Trump had the right “even to claim falsely there had been an outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” Ingraham then argued, “So they concede that he had the right to have a different opinion. But, what? So they throw that in there to try to protect themselves, Bret, but then they violate what they claim they are still protecting.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/1/23]

FACT: Trump was indicted for his actions following the 2020 election and leading up to January 6, not for spreading lies about voter fraud.

The first pages of the indictment carefully acknowledged Trump’s First Amendment protections, while emphasizing that the charges relate to alleged criminal conduct and actions unrelated to free speech. The second page of the indictment notes that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” It goes on to explain that Trump was entitled to, and did, “formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures,” but it also alleges that Trump also “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

While Trump’s spoken words and social media posts are used as evidence in the indictment, that evidence is used to support the motive for his actions. As noted by legal experts, “Trump is being prosecuted for his deeds, not his words,” and while Trump had the right to claim the election was stolen, he did not have the right to attempt to throw out the lawful results through a criminal conspiracy.

Trump’s own Attorney General Bill Barr has cast doubt on the claim that the indictment violates Trump’s First Amendment rights. On CBS’s Face the Nation, Barr stated that the indictment doesn’t rely on what Trump said, but on the actions he and his allies took to conspire to overturn the 2020 election results.  

MYTH: The indictment will allow Trump to litigate the 2020 election and prove claims of voter fraud.

Some right-wing media figures have claimed that the indictment will provide the opportunity to relitigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election in federal court, which they argue will finally vindicate Trump. Such claims ignore the plethora of failed lawsuits from Trump and his team after the 2020 election. 

Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters celebrated that the indictment is going to open the door to litigate the 2020 election. He claimed that it is “going to give Donald Trump the opportunity to relitigate the 2020 election in federal court. This is what Donald Trump's been dying to do for the last two and half years.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/1/23]

War Room host Steve Bannon also celebrated the chance to relitigate voter fraud claims. On his show, Bannon said: “I love this. I’m highly optimistic. We finally – we’ve wanted a chance and a platform to adjudicate the 2020, and their bloodlust to take down Trump, they gave it to us.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/2/23]

Conservative radio host and Washington Post columnist Hugh Hewitt claimed, “The former president will be subpoenaing everyone who had anything to do with the unusual circumstances of the 2020 election in order to prove his genuine suspicion of the process.” He added that Trump’s lawyer made it clear that they are “going to explore every corner of the 2020 election with former President Trump empowered to subpoena everyone who can help prove his innocence.” [Twitter/X, 8/2/23]

On Infowars, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley suggested the indictment will allow Trump to litigate the election. Chansley told Alex Jones: “Now all this evidence that the other courts and other states refused to hear can now be subpoenaed. It can now be made public evidence, so I kind of wonder a little bit. How much this is actually going to work out the way that the shadow government deep state wants it to.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 8/4/23]

FACT: Trump’s claims of voter fraud were repeatedly litigated in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, and evidence for widespread voter fraud was never found.

In reality, Trump’s claims of voter fraud were litigated dozens of times after the 2020 election – and proof for the claims was never found. Trump and his allies filed at least 62 lawsuits, many of which were dismissed due to the weak merits of the voter fraud allegations and for lack of standing. Additionally, many of Trump’s lawyers reneged on the sweeping public allegations once they found themselves in a court of law under oath, and ultimately none of allegations from Trump and his team were even remotely proven. Still, conservative media are largely ignoring the plethora of failed lawsuits and claiming the latest indictment will be their chance to litigate the election.

Several Republican officials, including members of Trump’s own cabinet, have debunked his assertion that there was widespread fraud or inaccuracies during the 2020 election. Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr stated in a 2022 interview with The Associated Press that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.” Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also found no evidence of fraud during the 2020 election, and a prominent statehouse Republican in Pennsylvania conceded that he had no evidence to support his claims of fraud.

MYTH: In order to convict Trump, special counsel Jack Smith has to prove Trump knew he was lying about the 2020 election.

Right-wing media figures are falsely claiming that a conviction of Trump will hinge on whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knew he was lying about the 2020 election. Legal experts have disputed this claim, emphasizing that the charges are related to Trump’s actions. 

On a right-wing podcast,Trump lawyer Alina Habba asserted that in order to convict him, prosecutors have to prove that Trump knew he was lying about the 2020 election. Habba told right-wing influencer and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson: “We all know he still believes that 2020 was not a fair election. … I think that that, evidentiary-wise, is going to be very problematic. They have to get into his frame of mind and prove that he actually believed it to be false and was peddling a false statement.” [YouTube, The Benny Johnson Show, 8/4/23]

Fox News host Howard Kurtz published an article on the network’s website titled “Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment turns on whether he knowingly lied about the 2020 outcome.” The article argued that, “In short, if the Trump team can persuade a jury that he truly believed the election was hijacked, then he had every right to speak out and challenge the results.” [FoxNews.com, 8/3/23]

On a podcast for theopinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, editorial board member and podcast host Kim Strassel said it’s a “weakness” of the case that the prosecution has to prove Trump knew he was lying about the election. Strassel explained: “The problem with this is that you have to essentially know what Donald Trump's state of mind is. You have to claim that he knew that this was false and he did it anyway. And yeah, I think it's just difficult to make that argument, because what we don't have in this indictment is any evidence to the fact that he knew that what he was saying was untrue. It might've been wild, it might've been crazy. Let's all be clear, his behavior was deceitful and destructive, but that doesn't mean he didn't necessarily believe it. … That to me is the singular weakness of this case.” [The Wall Street Journal, Potomac Watch, 8/2/23]

Senior editorial staff at National Reviewwrote that the case requires prosecutors to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump hadn’t actually convinced himself that the election was stolen from him.” The article added, “Good luck with that” because “hyperbole and even worse are protected political speech.” [National Review, 8/1/23]

On Fox & Friends, co-host Ainsley Earhardt claimed that Trump's prosecutors “have to prove that he actually believed that he lost, because you’re allowed to question an election.” Co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed, adding, “You can’t get inside his head!” [Mediaite, 8/2/23]

FACT: Trump was indicted for his actions and a conviction will hinge on demonstrating that he “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

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Legal experts have noted that evidence will lay out Trump’s allegedly unlawful actions and to secure a conviction, the government “does not need to prove motive.” The indictment brought against Trump notes that he “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud,” and that he could challenge the election through “lawful and appropriate means.” However, the indictment notes that Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” Voting rights lawyer Marc Elias reportedly noted that for a criminal trial, the government “does not need to prove motive” and that the jury will actually receive an instruction stating that the government does not need to establish a motive for the defendant's alleged crimes. 

MYTH: Hawaii’s 1960 presidential election established a precedent for Trump selecting an alternate slate of electors.

Right-wing media have resurrected a bogus talking point to justify Trump’s scheme, comparing Trump’s fake electors plot to the slate of Democratic electors during Hawaii’s narrow recount in the 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

Fox host Jesse Wattersconcluded that “it’s fine” for Trump to have attempted to select an alternate slate of electors because “they did it in Hawaii in 1960.” Watters was responding to guest Harold Ford Jr.’s assertion that “no president had done that before.” [Fox News, The Five, 8/3/23]

Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak posted that “Kennedy used alternate electors in Hawaii in 1960. Trump only did what Democrats have done before.” He concluded that “all of these prosecutions are abuses of the justice system that will have long-term consequences for the country.” [Twitter/X, 7/18/23]

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirkclaimed on his show that “alternate electors had legal precedent of being selected and chosen in the Kennedy/Nixon 1960 election.” He continued: “So they were trying to overthrow the government by sending in alternate electors? How does that work exactly? The Vice President could have sent it back to the states and the judge in 1960, who selected the alternate electors in the Hawaii controversy of Kennedy and Nixon, said explicitly if you had not have sent those electors it could not have been chosen. The judge said that in 1960. The 1960 election. If you had not have sent them, we would not have been able to select them.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/2/23]

Breitbart stated that JFK set a precedent for appointing alternate electors in 1960. The article claimed that “Democrats themselves used this strategy in the 1960 election, a close race between Vice President Richard Nixon (R) and Sen. John Kennedy (D-MA).” [Breitbart, 7/18/23]

Newsmax’s Greg Kelly played and agreed with a clip of Trump attorney John Lauro arguing that the Hawaii case set a precedent and asserted, “President Trump not only had the right to raise these questions, but he had a duty.” Kelly added that Lauro “is totally right about Hawaii in 1960, a very close election. They didn't know who won. So they sent two slates of electors to Washington, D.C. It has happened before, and you're allowed to talk about this stuff. This is still America and I am allowed to point out that I've got my own concerns about the fairness of the 2020 election.” [Newsmax, Greg Kelly Reports, 8/2/23]

The Gateway Pundit cited the Hawaii case to say there is “Legal Precedent” behind the “Alternate Electors” Trump appointed in 2020. The article claimed that “legal precedent shows not only did the alternate electors not violate law, they actually took proper Constitutional action in submitting their certificates amidst a contested election, according to the Judge’s ruling in the 1960 Hawaii election dispute between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.” [The Gateway Pundit, 7/26/23]

FACT: Hawaii’s duplicate electoral votes were the result of a closely contested election.

During the 1960 election, Hawaii’s recount and alternate electors were part of a court order as the state’s election was decided on a less than 1% margin. In contrast, several of the audits and recounts that Trump and his legal team pursued in 2020 were in states where Trump lost by over 10,000, and even in excess of 100,000, votes. 

The recount ultimately switched Hawaii in favor of Kennedy and then-Vice President Nixon accepted the result and certified the votes for Kennedy. There was no effort by Nixon, Kennedy, or any third parties to cast doubt on the process by which the original vote, the recount, or the certification had happened, unlike Trump’s efforts.

MYTH: Trump was merely soliciting “good-faith” legal advice from John Eastman and other apparent co-conspirators referenced in the indictment.

Trump lawyer John Lauro has asserted that the former president was soliciting various legal opinions and acting under the advice of counsel — neither of which absolves Trump from culpability. Meanwhile, many of the attorneys Trump relied on in his effort to overturn the election results are facing civil penalties and disbarment for their role in promoting the unconstitutional scheme and for publically lying about election officials and equipment companies. Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman is seemingly described in the indictment as Trump's co-conspirator, responsible for devising the plan to halt the vice president's certification of the election results on January 6.

On Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, Eastman co-counsel Harvey Silverglateclaimed that “Eastman’s advice was perfectly within the realm of good-faith legal advice.” He added that Eastman’s advice was “cutting edge” and “creative,” and doubled down by stating that “Eastman's advice was perfectly within the realm of good-faith legal advice. I don't have any doubt about it.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/2/23]

Earlier in the program, Ingraham stated that “Eastman made an argument that I wouldn't have made — but one I disagreed with at the time and disagree with now — but it's not a criminal act to have a novel legal theory about something. Even if it's about something like the electors and the Constitution.” She went on to erroneously evoke attorney-client privilege, adding that “advice given from an attorney used to be sacrosanct and it usually falls under the attorney-client privilege. But this is just another norm that the left will sacrifice on the altar of getting Trump.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/2/23]

The day before on The Ingraham Angle, Fox-generated presidential candidateVivek Ramaswamy painted the co-conspirators as simply “lawyers who were giving good-faith legal advice to Trump,” adding that “the job of the lawyer is to actually provide legal advice. Trump was seeking legal advice.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/1/23]

Former Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz claimed that Trump’s impending trial “is a speech case, it’s also a case about right to counsel because they’re going after five of his lawyers, the unindicted co-conspirators, for advice that they gave.” He claimed that the indictment would have a chilling effect on people retaining lawyers, saying, “I’m afraid to say that this indictment may have the effect of encouraging people to take to the streets to protest elections because they’re told that if they go to the courts or go to Congress they will be indicted.” [OAN, One America News, 8/5/23]

FACT: A lawyer advising their client to break the law does not make that act legal, and there is evidence that other attorneys told Trump his scheme was illegal.

Several former White House lawyers who served under Trump testified to the House select committee that they had expressed concerns about the scheme's efficacy. Notably, former White House counsels Pat Cipollone and Eric Herschman testified that they were worried about Eastman's plan and were shut out of official discussions because of it. From the House select committee’s final report:

Cipollone also testified that he was “sure [he] conveyed” his views. Indeed, other testimony from Cipollone indicates that Trump knew of Cipollone’s view and suggests that Trump purposely excluded Cipollone from the meeting with Pence and Pence’s General Counsel on January 4th.

…

Likewise, Eric Herschmann, another White House lawyer, expressed the same understanding that Dr. Eastman’s plan “obviously made no sense” and “had no practical ability to work.”

If a lawyer advises their client to break the law, that advice does not make the act legal. Legal experts have pointed out that there are judicial avenues for candidates to pursue if they feel an election result was inaccurate, but Trump is accused of scheming to operate outside those legal processes. The American Bar Association, the administrative body that licenses lawyers to practice in the U.S., also maintains that lawyers are “personally answerable to the entire criminal law,” and the indictment alleges that Trump privately acknowledged that Sidney Powell — one of the lawyers who is reportedly one of the unindicted co-conspirators — sounded “crazy.”

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IN THIS ARTICLE

January 6 Insurrection

Related

After Trump’s latest indictment, Mike Pence is seen as a traitor within right-wing media

08/04/23

Right-wing media attempt to use disputed 1960 election outcome to defend Trump after third indictment

08/04/23

Right-wing media spin Trump indictment into calls to impeach Joe Biden

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no lnx an 8 23

Trump reneged on 'handshake agreement' to pay lawyers pushing false election claims: report

Brandon Gage August 16, 2023

Four of former President Donald Trump's legal advisers listed as unidentified co-conspirators in United States Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's criminal indictment for the alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election were never paid "despite the fact that their lawsuits and false claims of election interference helped the Trump campaign and allied committees raise $250 million in the weeks following the November vote," CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports.

"Trump has a long history of not paying his bills," Schwarts writes, noting one of the people that he "stiffed" was Rudy Giuliani, the ex-New York City mayor who was Trump's personal defense counsel and a long-time personal friend.

"Trump and Giuliani had a handshake agreement that Giuliani and his team would get paid by the Trump political operation for their post-election work, according to Timothy Parlatore, an attorney for longtime Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik," Schwartz says. "But the Trump campaign and their affiliated committees ultimately did not honor that pledge, according to campaign finance records. The failure to pay Giuliani and his team came up last week in a private interview between prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith's team and Bernard Kerik, a member of Giuliani's team in late 2020, according to Parlatore."

Schwartz recalls that "Federal Election Commission records and testimony from the House January 6th Select Committee hearings reveal that none of the private sector lawyers identified -- but not indicted -- in that case got paid for their post-election work: Not Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro or John Eastman."

Trump reneging on his gentleman's contract with Giuliani, Schartz observes, "is all the more striking" given that Giuliani was charged along with Trump by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for trying to steal the election in Georgia under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) of 1970 — upon which Giuliani built his career as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

Trump's fundraising push after he lost to President Joe Biden is also under scrutiny by Smith, whom Politico's Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney explained on August 8th is investigating if Trump'sSave America Political Action Committee "violated federal laws by raising money off claims of voter fraud they knew were false."

Those efforts, predicated on Trump's insistence that the election was stolen from him, raked in $250 million, according to the final report released by the House January 6th Select Committee.

READ MORE: Why Trump’s Georgia indictment is a 'reminder of the genius of American federalism': op-ed

"The money came in response to countless fundraising appeals that claimed it was needed to fund Trump's election challenges in court," Schwartz continues. "Yet instead of paying the lawyers who tried unsuccessfully to overturn his loss, the money went into Trump’s leadership PAC."

In fact, "Trump's entire political network, including his joint fundraising committees, spent over $47 million combined from the start of 2020 through the end of 2021 on legal fees, according to a report by OpenSecrets," Schwartz adds. "Today, that money is instead helping Trump pay his own legal bills. The PAC spent over $20 million in the first half of the year alone on legal fees as the president faced the first two of his four indictments."

READ MORE: Judge randomly assigned to Georgia Trump case once worked for Willis: report

Schwartz's report is available at this link.

'I’ve never seen anything like it': Economic analyst breaks down origin of Jared Kushner’s $3 billion profit

Trump releases attack on Jack Smith’s wife just hours before arraignment

Trump ally mocked reporter's purported ignorance of Georgia law — now she's been indicted

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08/03/23

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https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-media-attempt-use-disputed-1960-election-outcome-defend-trump

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mma 8 23

right-wing media are attacking Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over Donald Trump’s pending criminal case in Washington D.C.

Chutkan was randomly selected to preside over the case. Appointed by former President Obama, she has been described as a “tough Jan. 6 sentencer” of defendants who participated in the insurrection, though she has “avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered.”

Media figures on the right have leveled numerous attacks and charges against her, describing her as politically motivated, and calling for her recusal in the case against the former president.

• Fox News host Mark Levin described Chutkan as “the worst, radical, left-wing, Obama judge in America” on Fox and Friends, adding that Trump would be indicted for “drinking too much orange juice.”
• On his radio show, Levin reiterated his claim and called Chutkan “a whack job.” He then asked, “Do you think Trump will get a fair shot with her? Of course not.” He added, “And so the system is really truly rigged. Really truly rigged.”
• On WABC’s Chat with the Mayor, alleged co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani called her “the most inhumane sentencer on the court for January 6 people.” He went on to claim, “This is the Soviet Union, Red China, or Nazi Germany. That judge should recuse herself if she has any ethics.”
• Newsmax host Greg Kelly called Chutkan “a bad judge” for Trump’s case and said, “She has major conflicts.”
• The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro called Chutkan “a very left-wing judge” and said, “It is certainly fair to point out that Jack Smith is filing in a court in Washington D.C. with probably the most Trump-hating judge in Washington D.C.”
• Newsmax host Eric Bolling called Judge Chutkan “a very harsh judge on anything surrounding January 6.”
• On her SiriusXM show, Megyn Kelly predicted, “This judge is going to hate Trump, and she's not going to dismiss this case on the papers.”
• Newsmax host Sebastian Gorka said, “This is their attempt to steal 2024,” and called Chutkan “the worst January 6 judge possible — an Obama appointee who has given the harshest sentences to people who walked through the velvet ropes on January 6.”
• Laura Ingraham said she has “doubts about her” and said, “I want to remind you tonight that she worked for Hunter Biden's law firm at one point, Boies and Schiller.” 
• On Fox Business, Alan Dershowitz and Kash Patel called for Chutkan to recuse herself from Trump’s case, with Derschowitz calling her former law firm “one of the most corrupt firms” and accusing them of being “Democratic hacks.” 
• Dershowitz also appeared on BlazeTV’s The Glenn Beck Program and asserted that Chutkan “has a very questionable background” and “worked for years for a firm that’s highly questionable.”
• On Steve Bannon’s War Room, Patel again called for Chutkan’s recusal, saying, “She’s so entrenched through her past legal representations and family to the Democratic national party and the Hillary Clinton campaign that she could not be a fair, detached … arbiter of facts.”
• On Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime, an over-the-shoulder graphic featured an image of Chutkan with the words, “the Obama Punisher,” and host Jesse Watters described her as “an Obama donor.”
• Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson called Chutkan “a very nasty judge” and added, “This judge worked with Hunter Biden at a law firm. This judge should be recused, of course.”
• On Newsmax, co-host Bianca de la Garza pointed to the ties between Chutkan’s law firm and the president’s son, saying, “The person who runs it is a huge donor to the Democratic party.” She predicted that Trump’s team would request a different judge to preside over the case.
• On Newsmax’s special coverage of the indictment, Newsmax contributor Joe diGenova said Chutkan will be “very, very bad for Donald Trump” and suggested there’s a risk “that she will not conduct a proper jury selection process” in Trump’s case.
• On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity said, “The Obama-appointed judge overseeing this case once worked for the same law firm as Hunter Biden. Is anybody going to call that a conflict of any kind? I’d say that might be a conflict.”

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-cancels-news-conference/

will be legal doc thus no need for presser?

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FOX BOT 1/3 LOSS OF 1ST amend

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-rachel-campos-duffy-responds-trumps-third-indictment-really-most-dangerous-moment

https://www.mediamatters.org/rudy-giuliani/co-conspirator-rudy-giuliani-suggests-trumps-prosecutors-should-be-indicted

https://www.mediamatters.org/mark-levin/fox-news-mark-levin-says-jack-smith-has-started-war-against-country

https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-gutfeld-says-indictments-donald-trump-are-payback-being-outsider

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-laura-ingraham-says-donald-trump-was-indicted-january-6-protect-joe-biden-and

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-jonathan-turley-claims-donald-trump-protected-first-amendment-charges-january-6th

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/monica-crowley-they-are-basically-indicting-donald-trump-joe-bidens-crimes

NOT FOX?  https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-trump-was-doing-his-duty-make-sure-2020-election-had-been-fairly-decided

https://www.mediamatters.org/michael-knowles/michael-knowles-trumps-third-indictment-they-want-kill-him

https://www.mediamatters.org/dick-morris/newsmax-contributor-vote-against-donald-trump-endorse-dictatorship

https://www.mediamatters.org/dan-bongino/dan-bongino-says-its-clear-now-:{were-living-police-state-after-trumps-third-indictment}:

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8 23

Judge slams banks’ request to hide 'millions' in business deals with Trump from public: report

Maya Boddie

August 29, 2023

Thirty-four days ahead of ex-President Donald Trump's New York civil trial for Attorney General Letitia James' " $250 million lawsuit filed against the 2024 hopeful alleging 'widespread fraud,' the banks and companies that lended the former president "millions of dollars for business deals" want to hide the proof from the public, The Daily Beast reports.

Per The Beast, Judge "Arthur F. Engoron, ruled that—aside from information like the home addresses of certain employees and bank account numbers—the public has a right to see the documents and communications."

According to the report, the judge said Tuesday that "he'd allow the companies to hide personal information, but he sided with the AG that most of the documents should stay in the open."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Engoron wrote, “Here, the non-parties have failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in favor of wholesale sealing that outweighs the public’s right to access and the presumption in favor of open judicial proceedings."

The news outlet reports:

Some of these records form the backbone of [New York] AG Letitia James' $250 million lawsuit against the Trumps, purportedly showing how the real estate mogul and the family members he made executives got away with minimal scrutiny—by asserting fantastical financial numbers that weren't examined carefully. Had they been, auditors and loan officers would have realized that Trump was easily doubling and tripling the value of property to snag better bank loans and insurance policies.

"One employee who has already been publicly linked to the Seven Springs loan receives unwanted media inquiries every time the case appears in the news, which he finds 'disruptive and distressing,'" WSF Bank lamented, according to the report.

READ MORE: Letitia James’ $250 million fraud case against Trump set for trial: report

The Daily Beast's full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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MURDOCH 2ND TRY EG FOX? new ct jack s

https://www.alternet.org/wall-street-journal-gop-trump/

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https://www.alternet.org/smith-trump-sneered-ridiculousness-powell/

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new ct supercede acct boss wants server erased 7 23

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AN 7 23

A government watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW) published a bombshell report on Thursday that former President Donald Trump raked in millions of dollars from five Middle East nations while he was in the White House.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Kuwait were all identified as having deep monied ties to Trumpworld, which CREW uncovered from the indicted ex-commander-in-chief's income disclosures.

CREW's discovery comes amid investigations into allegations made by Trump and congressional Republicans that President Joe Biden and his family engaged in corruption in Ukraine and China.

READ MORE: Next stop for Jack Smith is Trump's financial ties to the Saudis: columnist

"Trump made at least $9.6 million from countries in the Middle East during his presidency, according to years of reporting and a CREW analysis of his tax returns," CREW found. "That means Trump pulled in at least six times his official presidential salary in side income from the Middle East alone during his time in office. The total is likely much higher, but public reporting only sheds light on the most high-profile instances of profiteering, and he is only required to report certain types of income on his tax returns."

Trump's refusal to divest, or separate, himself from his family's financial entanglements sparked "an endless number of conflicts of interest by blurring the lines between the government and his businesses," CREW explained. "The profiteering paid off, and Trump raked in tens of millions from international business interests during his time in office."

Trump and his friends on Capitol Hill "frequently visited and held events at his clubs, hotels and golf courses, advertising to those looking to influence the government that Trump properties were open for business. Foreign governments and officials in particular took advantage of the open opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the president," CREW revealed.

"The $9.6 million that we know Trump made from Middle Eastern countries during his presidency is likely just the tip of the iceberg. CREW tracked conflicts of interest involving multiple countries that are not even present on his tax returns. For example, officials from Iraq, Oman and Yemen made visits to Trump properties while he was president. Because we don't know the total cost for these visits, we did not include them in the tally," wrote Crew. "What we do know is that becoming president was Trump's best business decision, and his tax returns show how great the office was for his bottom line. As the 2024 election creeps closer, foreign interests including those in the Middle East are already buying access to Trump and pouring money into his pockets."

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7 23 no lnx

'If I was the deep state': Pro-Trump activists release disturbing campaign ad

Brandon GageJuly 25, 2023

Conservative pollster Frank Luntzon Tuesday shared a disturbing digital campaign spot to Twitter's rebranded X that alleges a vast conspiracy orchestrated by "the deep state" to hoodwink the American people. The one-hundred-ten-second video — which concludes by crediting the "Dilley Meme Team" and former President Donald Trump's "online war machine" — contains sinister male-voiced narration declaring that most significant events and major domestic issues in recent memory were lies.

"This is the most alarming political ad I've seen this year," wrote Luntz, who urged users to post their reactions.

The project's ten proclamations are virtually indistinguishable from indicted criminal defendant Trump's grievance-saturated attempt to return to the White House:

If I was the deep state and I wanted todestroy America, I would rig the election with a puppet candidate, one that was so compromised that they would never say a word about it. I would create a false flag that allows for mail-in ballots. I would be in charge of the ballot-counting machines.I would create a false flag to blame all who question the results of the election.

If I was the deep state,I would prosecute anyone that went against me. I would sue and prosecute anyone that spoke up about the fraudulent election. I would use my powers to shut down all your internet businesses and bankrupt you.

If I was the deep state, I would make everyone an example why you should never question a Democrat ever winning an election. I would imprison my foes. I would use my corrupt das and blackmail judgesto destroy you. I would make sure all crimes I ever committed never happened. I would prosecute my biggest competition. I would make sure they could never run for office ever again.

If I was the deep state, I would convince everyone that Ukraine Nazis were good and women are men.

If I was the deep state, I would own every politician that mattered.

If I was the deep state, I wouldpush my pedophilia ambitions on you.

If I was the deep state, you'd question your sexual identity, but not the medical establishment.

If I was the deep state, you would fear to ever resist me.

If I was the deep state, you would wish I was really the devil.

If I was the deep state, I would say mission accomplished.

READ MORE: Robert Reich: A Trump loss in 2024 will show that Americans 'reject fascism' and cherish 'the rule of law'

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: Georgia DA gearing up to prosecute Trump for 'criminal solicitation' and 'election fraud': report

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an 7 23

kentucky MAGA Republican James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, has been exposed as basically a con manwith his phony Hunter Biden bribe witness. Now he is trying to rewrite the history of Trump and Covid.

Comer’s latest stunt to try to whitewash Trump’s role in the unnecessary death of at least a half-million Americans is to argue — nonsensically — that the virus came out of the Wuhan virology lab and therefore something, something, something Trump is not responsible. He’s doing this with House Oversight Committee hearings this week.

The reason Comer and other MAGA Republicans are working so hard to push this perennial theory (which may be true, but so what?) is that they think directing the nation’s attention to the Wuhan lab — which got collaboration and minor funding from Anthony Fauci’s realm of the government — will point us at Fauci and thus distract us all from how many Americans Trump let die and why.

And it’s the “why” Trump intentionally let a half million Americans die unnecessarily where our media, and the Democrats, are really missing the story.

April 7, 2020 was the day everything changed in America. And hardly anybody realizes it.

It was the day that caused Jared Kushner to decide that letting Black and Hispanic Americans in Blue states die of Covid — yes, intentionally using the force of law and social pressure to push people into death’s jaws — could become part of what he called “an effective political strategy” to help them win the 2020 election, and Donald Trump signed off on it.

The most unreported story of the pandemic, the one that seems destined to be overlooked as histories are being written, is what Trump did when he learned the Covid coronavirus was largely killing Black and Hispanic people and mostly sparing whites.

The moment he came to that realization he completely altered the US response to the pandemic, leading to the unnecessary death of 300,000 to 500,000 Americans.

Deaths that he and his advisors apparently believed (correctly) would be, outside of nursing home residents, disproportionately Black and Hispanic people.

It’s an amazing story and the evidence is easily found. But even Congressman Jamie Raskin missed an opportunity to point it out when he corrected Comer during yesterday’s hearing to say:

”[E]ven if the virus came from a lab, as indeed it could have, we don't know that yet, that would only deepen Donald Trump’s culpability because he was the one who repeatedly and enthusiastically praised China’s early handling of the pandemic and assured us that he was working closely with President Xi on the response to it.”

But when you line up the timeline and events of 2020, a much more sinister picture of Trump’s willingness to let Americans die — and the reason why he was willing to let particular Americans die — emerges that is pretty damn compelling.

Here’s how it played out. It’s the story of the crime of mass death done entirely for political purposes.

Through January of 2020, Covid was limited to a few clusters in the US.

Trump — who’d privately told Bob Woodward the disease was a “killer” that “rips you apart” — kept downplaying its severity and assuring Americans there was nothing to worry about.

On January 30th the World Health Organization declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern.”

Louise and I joined two of my brothers and several of their and our kids on a family cruise the next day; when we left the ship and flew home on February 8th most of us were sick (we still don’t know if it was Covid) and the 3,700 passengers and crew of a different ship, the Diamond Princess, were getting headlines around the world, quarantined off the coast of Japan for two long weeks with hundreds of cases of Covid.

March 2020 was the month when things went to hell here in the United States. On March 5th there were 129 known cases and only 11 deaths in the US: just 33 days later, hospitals were using refrigerated trucks as morgues and over 10,000 Americans were dead of Covid.

Fear ran through communities and stalked our homes. We were washing our groceries with bleach after picking them up at the store’s parking lot from people wearing masks, goggles, and gloves. We bought up all the air filters in the country. We worked from home when we could. We isolated ourselves from other people as much as was humanly possible.

Within those few weeks in March and early April, serious Covid outbreaks were showing up across the Northeast and Trump — who had two years earlier shut downboth of the two federal pandemic task forces Obama had put into place after the Ebola scare — charged Jared Kushner with responding to the crisis.

Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.

By March 7th, US deaths had risen from 4 to only 22, but that was enough to spur federal action. Trump’s official emergency declaration came on March 11th, and most of the country shut down during the following week.

The skies and highways fell silent, the Dow collapsed, and millions of Americans were laid off but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration.

Jared Kushner put together a task force of preppie 30-something white men he knew from college to coordinate getting Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from Trump buddies and companies close to Republican members of Congress into hospitals.

They even had a plan for the Post Office to distribute 650 million masks — 5 to every American household — to slow the pandemic.

But then came April 7th, just one month later, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States. It was followed the day later with the all-caps headline across the top of the front page: BLACK AMERICANS BEAR THE BRUNT AS DEATHS CLIMB.

It hit conservative media, Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner like a lightning bolt.

Most of the non-elderly people dying from Covid, the report found, were Black or Hispanic, not White people.

As The New York Times reported on April 7th:

“The coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates…

“In Illinois, 43 percent of people who have died from the disease and 28 percent of those who have tested positive are African-Americans, a group that makes up just 15 percent of the state’s population. African-Americans, who account for a third of positive tests in Michigan, represent 40 percent of deaths in that state even though they make up 14 percent of the population. In Louisiana, about 70 percent of the people who have died are black, though only a third of that state’s population is.”

Republicans responded with a collective, “What the hell?!?”

Limbaugh declared solemnly that afternoon:

“With the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component.”

And here it was:

“The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder,” Limbaugh intoned, “harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody: disproportionate representation.”

It didn’t take a medical savant, of course, to figure out why, and it had nothing to do with the biology of race or Covid: it was purely systemic racism. African Americans die disproportionately from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth, and are also over-represented in low-paid public-facing service jobs where they would more easily catch Covid.

It’s a symptom of a racially rigged economy and a healthcare system that only responds to money, which America has conspired to keep from African Americans for over 400 years. Of course Black people are going to die more frequently from coronavirus.

But the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously publishing April 7th front-page articles about that disparity — followed by it leading or making the news that night on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox — echoed across the rightwing media landscape like a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Tucker Carlson, the only prime-time Fox “News” host who’d previously expressed serious concerns about the dangers of the virus, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.

Now, Tucker said:

“[W]e can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That’s our task.”

“The rest” are white people. Those “vulnerable citizens” Tucker wanted to get back to work appear to be disproportionately minorities. As a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus noted:

“Essential workers who needed to work in person, and their family members, were significantly more likely to contract the coronavirus early in the crisis. These essential workers disproportionately earned low wages and were more likely to be people of color.

“Black and Latina women were particularly ‘overrepresented as essential workers’ at greater risk of coronavirus infection ‘with Latina women making up 22% of women grocery store workers and Black women making up 27% of women home health aide workers’…”

On the other hand, salaried workers — overwhelmingly white — were telecommuting. For over a year I did my show from home, for example, as did all my peers at SiriusXM, Free Speech TV, and in most media operations around the country. Everywhere people could work from home, most employers were making accommodations.

But Trump wanted the rest of the economy to recover from the election-year shutdown shock because he knew presidents running for reelection during economic bad times almost always lose. He knew that if he wanted to win in 2020, that meant getting “essential” workers like transit drivers, store clerks, and people in slaughterhouses back to their jobs.

Particularly if they were Black or Brown.

Brit Hume joined Tucker’s show and, using his gravitas as a “real news guy,” intoned:

“The disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought.”

Left unsaid was the issue of for whom it was “not quite as dangerous,” but Limbaugh listeners and Fox “News” viewers are anything but unsophisticated when it comes to hearing dog-whistles on behalf of white supremacy.

Only 12,677 Americans were dead by that April day, but now that Trump and his rightwing media believed most of the non-elderly dying people were and would be Black and Hispanic, things were suddenly very, very different.

Now it was time to quit talking about people dying and start talking about getting those Black and Brown people back to work, even if it meant exposing them to a deadly disease!

On April 12th, Trump retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and declared, in another tweet, that he had the sole authority to open the US back up and would announce a specific plan to do that “shortly.”

On April 13th, the ultra-rightwing, nearly-entirely-white-managed US Chamber of Commerce published a policy paper titled Implementing A National Return to Work Plan.

The next day, Freedomworks, the billionaire-founded and -funded group that animated the Tea Party against Obamacare a decade earlier, published an op-ed on their website calling for an “economic recovery” program including an end to the capital gains tax and a new law to “shield” businesses from Covid-deaths and -injuries lawsuits.

Three days after that, Freedomworks and the House Freedom Caucus issued a joint statement declaring that “[I]t’s time to re-open the economy.”

Freedomworks published their “#ReopenAmerica Rally Planning Guide” encouraging conservatives to show up “in person” at their state capitols and governor’s mansions, and, for signage, to “Keep it short: ‘I’m essential,’ ‘Let me work,’ ‘Let Me Feed My Family’” and to “Keep [the signs looking] homemade.”

One of the first #OpenTheCountry rallies to get widespread national attention was April 19th in mostly-white New Hampshire. Over the next several weeks, rallies filled with angry white people had metastasized across the nation, from Oregon to Arizona, Delaware, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and elsewhere.

One that drew particularly high levels of media attention — complete with swastikas, confederate flags, and assault rifles — was directed against the governor of Michigan, rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer.

This was around the time long-standing rightwing networks began to awaken and coordinate with each other. They reached out to members of Congress and the Senate and found allies. Trump explicitly encouraged them to require low-wage essential workers to return to their jobs.

Suddenly things began to change as the federal government stopped trying to save lives and started promoting policies that would eventually kill — unnecessarily — a half-million Americans.

NBC News, when they’d gotten hold of April emails from within the White House, ran the headline:

“Trump Administration Scrapped Plan to Send Every American a Mask in April, Email Shows.”

When Rachel Maddow reported on meat-packing plants that were epicenters of mass infection, the conservative Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court pointed out that the virus flare wasn’t coming from the “regular folks” of the surrounding white community: the sick people were mostly Hispanic and Black.

He essentially said, “No big deal.”

The Republican meme was now well-established and was being repeated virtually daily on Fox “News” and rightwing talk radio. Working-age white people were far, far less likely to get less sick, more likely to be asymptomatic, or — even if they were unlucky and got sick — most likely to survive a trip to the hospital.

Then came news that bigger outbreaks than we realized were now happening in meat packing plants, places with few white people (and the few whites in them were largely poor and thus disposable).

Trump’s response was to issue an executive order using the Defense Production Act (which he had refused to use to order production of testing or PPE equipment) to order the largely Hispanic and Black workforce back into the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

African Americans were dying in our cities, Hispanics were dying in meat packing plants, the elderly of all races were dying in nursing homes.

But the death toll among working age affluent white people (who could telecommute and/or were less likely to be obese, have hypertension, or struggle with diabetes) was relatively low.

It took a lot of pressure off Trump and his Republicans. They could now politicize the virus, and, if they did it right, they could do so publicly with a “wink” to their white supremacist base. And if they could get the economy back to cranking along within the next few months, they might be able to pull the 2020 election out of the bag.

As an “expert” member of Jared Kushner’s team of young, unqualified volunteers supervising the administration’s PPE response noted to Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban:

“The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.”

It was, after all, exclusively Blue States that were then hit hard by the virus: Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. And there was an election coming in just a few months.

At year’s end, the United States was ranked 5th worst in the world in our response (behind Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Iran); we had about 20% of the world’s Covid deaths, but only 4.5% of the world’s population.

The lasting legacy of Trump’s changes in policy and encouraging Covid skepticism is that today we’re the world’s worst in terms of death and sickness, period. He’d thrown his unqualified slumlord son-in-law Jared Kushner at something even a professional would’ve found the challenge of a lifetime. And then manipulated it to help him in the upcoming 2020 election.

More people have died of Covid in America, as a percentage or in absolute terms, than any other developed country in the world.

Why? Because Trump and his Republican enablers and co-conspirators were just fine with getting the economy back on track to win an election over the bodies of dead Black and Hispanic people, particularly when they could blame it on Democratic Blue-state governors.

Former Attorney General Kennedy’s grandson Max Kennedy Jr, 26, was one of the administration’s volunteers, who blew the whistle to Congress on Kushner and Trump. As Jane Mayer wrote forThe New Yorker:

“Kennedy was disgusted to see that the political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as ‘a marketing genius,’ because, Kennedy said they’d told him, ‘he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the [Blue] states.’”

As that report released from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus reported just a few months ago:

“In the first half of 2020, African Americans and Latinos had death rates from coronavirus that far outweighed those of whites. While 62% of the population age 45-54 in 2020 was white, this population accounted for only 22% of coronavirus deaths in that age range. …

“Disparities were even more pronounced in some states such as Louisiana, where where in April 2020, African Americans represented 70% of coronavirus deaths despite being only one third of the state’s population.”

And once Trump and Kushner put that death-based reelection strategy into place in April, it became politically impossible to back away from it, even as more and more Red state white people became infected.

As Trump told Dr. Deborah Birx in mid-April and she reported in her book Silent Invasion: The Untold Story…:

“‘We will never shut down the country again. Never.’ His pupils hardened into points of anger… I felt the blood drain from my face, and I shivered slightly.”

Trump’s change — from a policy of prevention to a policy of “herd immunity” once he realized on April 7, 2020 that healthy white people were largely immune from death by the coronavirus — put the US on-course to have the worst Covid death rate in the world.

That was the day everything changed because Trump and Kushner were willing to let Black and Hispanic people die on a gamble they could still put the economy back together fast enough to win the 2020 election.

Over a million Americans have died so far, more than any other nation. Multiple studies show that up to 500,000 of those deaths wouldn’t have happened if Trump had just promoted masks and lock-downs through the year before the vaccine was available and, since then, if he had condemned the anti-vax movement that emerged in the last months of his presidency.

But he didn’t do either. All because he knew the virus disproportionately killed Black and Brown people and he was willing to do anything to win the election.

And sure enough, as Congress reported last December, a massive number of those deaths were — as a clear result of Trump’s policy ­— among Black and Hispanic people.

If that’s not racial mass slaughter, aka genocide at a Serbian war crimes level, then the phrase has lost much of its meaning.

Jack Smith: are you listening?

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valet no lawyer fla

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an 7 23

https://www.alternet.org/dhs-officials-terrified-trump-nuclear/

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an 7 23

as former President Donald Trump continues to face multiple investigations, U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack SmithSmith has subpoenaed Arizona's secretary of state's office, Axios reports.

This comes after The Washington Post exclusively reported Saturday, July 1, that Trump tried "to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the state's presidential election results" over a phone call in 2020.

Furthermore, the Post noted Ducey's spokesperson, Daniel Scarpinato, "confirmed the fact Ducey actively resisted Trump's attempt, saying, 'This is neither new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years. Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona's 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward. The Governor stands by his action to certify the election [hail to chief ringtone]  and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror.'"

READ MORE: 'I don’t remember': Pence rejects claim Trump urged Arizona governor to overturn election

Per Axios' report, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes' spokesperson, Paul Smith-Leonard, "said the office had received two subpoenas from Smith in recent months — one during the current administration and one in the previous, when Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) held the office.

According to Smith-Leonard, the office has complied with the special counsel.

READ MORE: Trump made 'secret' $1M donation to failed Arizona election 'grift disguised as an audit': report

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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/trump-reportedly-turning-against-spotlight-hound-kari-lake-as-possible-2024-running-mate/

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note gingrich gop memo

an 7 23

from June 29-July 2, the far-right MAGA group Moms for Liberty held its annual summit in a city so Democratic that it hasn't had a Republican mayor since Bernard Samuel left office in January 1952: Philadelphia. The four-day event, held at the Philadelphia Marriott near Reading Terminal Market and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, was greeted by angry protesters who slammed the group for its campaign to exclude books by gay, lesbian and African-American authors from public schools.

Moms for Liberty (M4L) touts itself a "parental rights" group, but to critics, their real mission is to purge schools of as many Black and gay authors as possible.

In an article published by the Daily Beast on July 5, journalist Kate Briquelet offers an in-depth account of what she observed at the M4L gathering in Philly — where the speakers included Republican presidential hopefuls such as former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Far-right radio host Dennis Prager was also there.

READ MORE: 'Shocking': Scholars condemn Philadelphia Museum for hosting Moms for Liberty event

Briquelet notes that while attending the summit, she didn't go out of her way to broadcast the fact that she was a Daily Beast reporter.

"My mission was to blend in and get the full experience of this ideological sisterhood, one that came with a swag bag holding a Trump air freshener, comic book on the Pilgrims' journey aboard the Mayflower, and 'awake not woke' sticker with a passage of scripture," Briquelet explains. "Throughout the summit, once people asked where I was from and whether I was with a M4L chapter, they didn't dig much further. Only one person, a fellow infiltrator, asked about my profession."

Briquelet reports that DeSantis railed against "wokeness" during his speech, while Trump promised to "liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and pervertswho have infested our educational system" if elected president in 2024.

Trump told the crowd, "On Day 1, I will sign a new executive order tocut federal fundingfor any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children…. For any public schools that are engaged in these militant and country-destroying practices, I will instruct the DOJ to pursue them as violators of the establishment clause, of the free exercise clause, of our constitution.:...

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/religious-right-activists-cheer-trump-calls-for-spiritual-civil-war-at-road-to-majority-conference/

pretty much only winning issue 2022 so big in 2034 see trump

r ww 6 23

former President Donald Trump received a rapturous hero’s welcome Saturday night as he delivered the closing keynote address to a room packed with religious-right activists in Washington, D.C. for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority conference.

Trump knew his audience. “We are warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,and we will restore our republic as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all,” Trump said. As part of his typically long and rambling speech, he denounced his recent indictments, bragged about his administration’s accomplishments–including his Supreme Court justices cementing the right-wing majority to overturn Roe v. Wade—and declared that Democrats have become “monsters.”

Trump thrilled the crowd with promises about what he would do as the 47th president, saying, “When I get back in the Oval Office, I will totally obliterate the Deep State.” And he vowed to push “school choice” plans—which divert public education dollars into private and religious schools and homeschooling—and, oddly, called for public school principals to be chosen by direct election by parents.

Trump’s speech and others at the conference signaled the issues and strategies around which the MAGA movement is mobilizing to try to take power in the 2024 elections: waging war on “wokeness,” demeaning transgender people and calling for institutionalized discrimination against them, mocking corporate support for diversity, equity, and environmental protection, and, in the name of parents’ rights,purging schools and libraries of materials that do not align with MAGA activists’ political and religious worldviews.

Trump’s speech was preceded by awards given to right-wing movement fundraising godfather Richard Viguerie and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Viguerie declared that the nation is in “a spiritual civil war” that “the left has launched against Western civilization, America, our Constitution, Judeo-Christian moral values, and much else we value at home.” Viguerie encouraged activists to get more involved in any way they can, signing off with, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen. See you on the battlefield of the spiritual civil war, and don’t be late!”...

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emigr post slavery

https://www.alternet.org/trump-wants-every-african-american/

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did not get tucker slot w gutfeld

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-suggests-audio-trump-discussing-secret-documents-was-given-cnn-distract-reporting

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): I would like to bring something else up. I'm wondering if the timing is affected. The New York Times gets these documents, gives it to CNN at the same time that Hunter's stuff hits turbo speed in terms of revelations and widespread interest. Now of course you don't script Russia, but that was fortuitous timing for the Hunter Biden investigation. But then here this comes, and I wonder is anyone curious what Joe Biden managed to smuggle out of the SCIF I assume for the past 20 or 30 years that ended up at the University of Delaware, at one of his houses, one of his lawyer's places, or in Chinatown. I just don't understand how they can both be doing investigations and only one side is leaked out.

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37 cts

https://www.alternet.org/doj-unseals-egregious-devastating-indictment/

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mma 6 23

Trump’s media allies are denouncing Thursday's federal criminal indictment of the former president as a politically-motivated persecution that marks the end of the American republic. Their frenzied demagoguery flies in the face of everything we know about the probe of Trump’s conduct – as well as their own behavior during the 2016 presidential campaign and his subsequent presidency, when they constantly demanded the investigation and imprisonment of Trump’s political enemies.

Trump is expected to surrender in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday after a federal grand jury charged him with seven counts in connection with his mishandling of federal documents. The charges reportedly include “willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.”

Trump’s media supporters responded with fury, denying the possibility that the former president committed crimes and instead declaring the charges to be evidence that, in Fox host Sean Hannity’s words, “Our system of justice has now been weaponized beyond belief and this country is in serious trouble."

While the indictment has not been made public thus far, the evidence that has seems damning. An August Justice Department filing laid out in detail how Trump had improperly retained government documents in spite of a monthslong effort by federal officials demanding their return. Trump’s lawyers turned some documents over in response to a grand jury subpoena and one of them attested that no documents had been retained. The FBI developed evidence that this was not true, leading to officials serving a search warrant at the premises and uncovering a trove of additional documents with classification markings. Trump has publicly acknowledged that he had such documents while claiming for various reasons that he was allowed to keep them – but on Friday, CNN produced audio of Trump privately admitting that he had retained “secret” documents that had not been declassified. Notably, even Trump’s own former attorney general Bill Barr has repeatedly acknowledged that the former president’s own conduct put him in serious legal jeopardy.

Trump and his allies, in describing the indictment as a “political prosecution,” are suggesting that President Joe Biden is chiefly responsible for the case and is trying to imprison his potential opponent in the 2024 presidential race. In fact, the investigation and prosecution have been led by Jack Smith, a career prosecutor and former head of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, but under the special counsel statute is largely walled off from political pressure.

Special counsel protections are apparently strong enough to have allowed Robert Mueller to prosecute several of Trump’s closest political allies as part of his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and to produce a report detailing potential acts of obstruction of justice by the then-president, even as Trump constantly railed against him.

Moreover, special counsel John Durham, who Barr chose to investigate the origins of the Russia probe during the Trump administration and subsequently named as a special counsel near the end of Trump’s time in office, recently completed his own probe. Durham produced little in the way of successful prosecutions, but Trump’s allies cheered his final report for purportedly uncovering vast corruption. If Garland and Biden were in the business of meddling with special counsel probes, as the Trumpists now suggest, why would Durham have been allowed to do that?

There’s no comparison between Trump’s prosecution and the array of investigations his media allies demanded and sometimes ranted into existence. Trump himself would frequently demand the prosecutions of his political enemies, often in response to the claims he saw on Fox – a fact that did not deter his allies. But when those probes based on right-wing conspiracy theories actually materialized, they generated a lot of headlines and airtime, but collapsed when prosecutors and courts looked at the evidence.

Led by Sean Hannity, a Fox host who also served as a close Trump adviser, Trumpian propagandists spent his administration claiming that former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and numerous top FBI and DOJ had engaged in a criminal conspiracy to launch the Russia probe that should end in “handcuffs.” Trump frequently offered versions of these overwrought claims in his own public statements. But Durham ultimately brought only three cases, all against obscure figures; he lost two of the cases in court, while a judge sentenced the third individual to probation after he pleaded guilty.

Trumpists similarly spent months declaring that the “real collusion” had been between Russia and Clinton, not Trump, citing her purportedly criminal role in the U.S. government's decision not to block the sale of the company known as Uranium One. Under pressure from Fox and the then-president, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. attorney John Huber to investigate in November 2017. But after a two-year probe, Huber concluded his work without recommending any criminal charges.

Many of the same Trump sycophants filled the 2016 presidential campaign with overwrought claims about purportedly illegal behavior linked to the Clinton Foundation. But while the Justice Department under Trump reportedly continued a probe of the organization “long past when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors knew it was a dead end,” it was ultimately closed without charges in the final days of his administration.

And of course, Trumpists on Fox and elsewhere have never stopped claiming that Clinton should have gone to prison over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. But Clinton was investigated by the FBI. The Obama-appointed attorney general, Loretta Lynch, publicly said she would accept the FBI’s recommendations as to whether to prosecute the case. Then-FBI director James Comey, a Republican, ultimately recommended no charges, saying, “Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

This did not satisfy the right. Trump promised to if he were elected, which did not send his supporters running away from him decrying the politicization of justice. And in the days leading up to the election, after Fox reported that an indictment was imminent, they cheered its potential to alter the race in Trump’s favor.

The indictment never materialized. But with Clinton’s server, as with all the other cases, the lack of prosecutions isn’t interpreted as evidence that investigators acted in good faith and still didn’t uncover crimes they could take to court – instead, it is interpreted as proof of their corruption. Indeed, their constant refrain on Thursday was that Trump being prosecuted while Clinton wasn’t is evidence of a two-tiered justice system.

Contrary to what Trump and his media allies would have you think, the only principle at stake here is whether Trump should be above the law or whether, like former leaders in numerous other democracies, he should be subject to it.

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in the past, Donald Trump has wanted the American public to cover him for his legal bills. Now a new report says he’s doing that by taking the money for his legal expenditures from his 2024 presidential campaign.

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher published a story on Sunday about Trump’s online fundraising, reporting a change they noticed on his website. The change pertains to how much donated funding goes to Trump’s campaign, and how much goes to the political action committee Trump is using to cover his legal costs.

From the *Times*:

When Mr. Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign in November, for every dollar raised online, 99 cents went to his campaign, and a penny went to Save America.

But internet archival records show that sometime in February or March, he adjusted that split. Now his campaign’s share has been reduced to 90 percent of donations, and 10 percent goes to Save America.

And the existence of the group has allowed Mr. Trump to have his small donors pay for his legal expenses, rather than paying for them himself.

The Times report indicates that the arrangement allows Trump to skirt around the rules declaring that PACs can’t spend money directly on a candidate’s campaign, and a campaign committee can’t directly pay for things for Trump’s personal benefit. The report also says that in the course of the past year, Save America’s coffers were down by over $100 million as it covered Trump and his allies over the course of their legal battles. This was before Trump’s indictments this year, both of which, he has attempted to fundraise off of.

“In February 2022, the PAC announced that it had $122 million in its coffers. By the beginning of 2023, the PAC’s cash on hand was down to $18 million, filings show,” the report says. “The rest had been spent on staff salaries, on the costs of Mr. Trump’s political activities last year — including some spending on other candidates and groups — and in other ways. That included the $60 million that was transferred to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that is supporting Mr. Trump. And more than $16 million went to pay legal bills. Mr. Trump’s rivals are not similarly splitting their online proceeds with an affiliated PAC.”

The report goes on to examine how Trump’s campaign seems to be trying to save money, judging by his attendance at events held by others, plus his lack of large political rallies.

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tdb hunter plea 6 23

...In the end, though, the most fiery remarks predictably came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Boebert fumed that there was “no raid of [Hunter Biden’s] crackhouse,” referencing the presidential scion’s well-known battles with substance use.

Greene took it further with a buzzword-filled tweet about the DOJ’s “stunt,” echoing Trumpworld’s unproven claims about President Biden’s corruption schemes and portraying Trump as a helpless victim.

“Meanwhile the pathetic and weaponized DOJ who protects their puppet President and refuses to prosecute Joe Biden and Hunter for taking bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs and raking in tens of millions of dollars from foreign countries bc the Big Guy makes policy decisions to be help his customers are the real crimes the Biden’s should be charged with!” Greene raged.

“Oh but hey, look at Jack Smith trying to throw President Trump in jail for 100 years for legally possessing documents he’s allowed to posses under the Presidential Records Act,” she concluded. “We are controlled by COMMUNISTS!!”

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bad incriminating interviews

https://www.alternet.org/bret-baier-trump/

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https://www.alternet.org/trump/trump-guillotine/

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rww

6 23

analysis

Former President Donald Trump was indicted and arraigned this week on multiple criminal charges arising from his obstruction of an FBI investigation into classified documents he took from the White House, kept in boxes in a bathroom and ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and showed to people without security clearances. Reactions from Trump and his allies included smears against the prosecutor, claims that Trump is the victim of political persecution, and threats of violence and civil war.

Demonstrating both his narcissism and lack of historical knowledge, Trump called his indictment “the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country” in a Tuesday email. “We are living through the darkest hours of American history,” he declared in another email the same day.

The indictment reveals damning evidence that Trump knew he was in the wrong. He even hinted that his lawyers should simply make some of the documents disappear before the FBI searched his home. But in spite of that evidence, Trump’s rhetoric was echoed by his loyalists inside and outside the government, including Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who called it “unconscionable” and a “dark day for the United States of America.”

Trump’s claims that he is the victim of political persecution are as familiar as his lies about the 2020 election being stolen, which incited some of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. It is clear that his rhetoric can still incite followers to threaten violence. “We need to start killing those traitorous fuckstains,” read a post on the pro-Trump message board The Donald.

Warfare rhetoric was not confined to anonymous online posts. Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, tweeted, “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye.” Rep. Clay Higgins tweeted, “President Trump said he has ‘been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.’” Deploying language of military combat, Higgins added, “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”

“The republic has fallen,” wrote the Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead in an online commentary. “The Deep State’s plot to take over America has succeeded.” Whitehead warned that “we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war.”

As Vice noted, extremism researcher Caroline Orr cautioned about the potential for violent rhetoric to lead to actual violence, writing, “The involvement of members of Congress, prominent political figures, and Trump himself in promoting, inciting, and even hinting at violence is a risk factor for acts of political violence.”

Right-wing pundits also amplified Trump’s claims that the criminal indictment is “election interference” designed to stop his election in 2024, with Tucker Carlson telling his followers that “they’re trying to take out Trump before you can vote for him.” Pundit Mark Levin was on message, saying “they want to take control of this country, they want one-party rule.”

Religious-right activist Gary Bauer told readers of his email newsletter that Trump’s arraignment is “an obvious effort by the neo-Marxist left to put him in jail for life or force him to drop out of the presidential race in exchange for a deal to stop the persecution,” which Bauer said signals “the end of the constitutional Republic we love.”

Bauer also used Trump’s indictment as an opportunity to stoke the grievance of religious-right activists at what the movement’s leaders have portrayed as anti-Christian persecution: “As we have repeatedly noted, the intolerant neo-Marxist left, which despises free speech and religious liberty, is increasingly criminalizing normal values and punishing faith.” And Bauer wasn’t done:

If the prosecution goes forward by the Justice Department run by the incumbent president, many Americans will conclude that our constitutional Republic is over, and that their suspicions of rigged elections were correct. The left and its Deep State allies will have plunged America into Third World status.

Trump-adoring pastor Shane Vaughn railed against the indictment of Trump in a screaming two-hour sermon this week, declaring that Trump had been “anointed” and “appointed” by God. Vaughn has since told his followers, “The presidency is above the law.”

Trump claimed in a Thursday email that he had raised $7 million since the indictment. He isn’t the only one raising money on his legal troubles. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise asked right-wing activists to sign a petition “demanding Trump’s freedom from the corrupt Witch Hunt” and asked for money to help House Republicans stand up to “the Radical Left’s corrupt Trump investigation.” House GOP Caucus Chair Elise Stafanik is also raising money, supposedly for an official Trump defense fund, but  HuffPo’s Jennifer Bendery read the fine print and noted that most of the money will go to Stefanik’s campaign.

Republican officials’ objections to Trump’s indictment reveal a dangerous unwillingness to hold Trump accountable, which undermines the principle that no person is above the law. We saw that same unwillingness in the overwhelming GOP vote against impeachment after Jan. 6. Trump and his MAGA allies are now demanding that all GOP presidential candidates pledge to pardon him, which would signal a surrender to his demands that personal loyalty trump adherence to the Constitution and rule of law, a hallmark of authoritarian leaders.

Tags: Clay Higgins Donald Trump Elise Stefanik Gary Bauer John Whitehead Kevin McCarthy Mark Levin Shane Vaughn Tucker Carlson Authoritarianism Civil War Election 2024 Rule of Law Trump Indictment Republican Party

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https://www.alternet.org/news-politics/trump-followers/

no lnx twt

'The final battle': Trump tells followers they 'have to' protest as some promise to come 'well-armed'

David BadashandThe New Civil Rights Movement June 12, 2023

More than 24 hours before he he is scheduled to be arraigned, Donald Trump’s supporters have started to show up at the federal courthouse in Miami, where the ex-president will be formally advised of the 37 felony criminal charges against him Tuesday at 3 PM.

Trump wants a big showing – “See you in Miami on Tuesday!!!” – he posted to his Truth Social account last week, in all-caps.

“This is the final battle,” Trump told supporters Saturday, Axios reports, and warned, “our people are angry.”

VICE on Monday reported Trump’s supporters “are planning mass protests at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday, following Trump’s indictment last week. Many are promising to come ‘well-armed.'”

It quoted some Trump supporters, including one who said, “MAGA will make Waco look like a tea party.”

“I used to laugh when my mom said that she was afraid if she registered Republican she may be arrested one day. I’m not laughing any more. Just buying more ammo,” VICE says another wrote.

READ MORE: House Republican’s Paranoid Rant Claims Trump Indictment Is a DOJ ‘Entrapment’ Plan to ‘Imprison’ Conservatives

Yet another over the weekend posted a photo of Attorney General Merrick Garland, and wrote: “America cannot allow this cowardly thug to destroy our democracy. This is what the Second Amendment was made for. Buy a gun or help organize your local militia today.”

On the highly-trafficked forum known as The Donald, many posts “directly referenced Trump’s own posts on his social media platform Truth Social. Under one screenshot of a Trump post about his aide Walt Nauta also being indicted, one user wrote: ‘Revolution Now.’ Another added: ‘I want blood. I want fucking blood.'”

Trump, VICE notes, “has done nothing to tamp down any potential threats, repeatedly calling for his own supporters to turn up en masse in Miami on Tuesday, just as he did ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot,” and he “shared a meme about his indictment with a caption declaring, ‘THIS IS NOT A GAME, THIS IS WAR.'”

Pushing for a big showing, Trump spoke Sunday on the radio show of his longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone, whose sentence he commuted.

Our country has to protest,” Trump said, as Rolling Stone reported. “We’ve lost everything.”

READ MORE: ‘What You’re Saying Just Doesn’t Make Sense’: CNN’s Dana Bash Cuts Off Jim Jordan’s Trump-Defending Rant

Real Clear Politicsadds that Trump told Stone, “our country is being taken away from us. Our country is going communist, it’s going Marxist, it’s going really bad, and the people of our country aren’t that way. But the people running it are. And we need strength at this point and everyone’s afraid to do anything. They’re afraid to talk, and they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully. They have to go.”

Reuters posted this live video feed Monday afternoon. Not a big showing.

Last week author Jeff Sharlet, who writes about extremism and the religious right, said he was “skeptical” that they would show, after all the January 6 arrests.

Sharlet says Trump’s remarks, like “Saturday’s claim that World War III ‘WILL’ occur if he’s not back, & that he is the ‘only one’ who can stop the obliteration of the world, are claims to divinity.”

On Friday The Guardian reported there are 12 million Americans who “believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power.”

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Trump supporters got hustled, fleeced and lied to — but don't be fooled. They still love him as much as ever ›

Former congressman recalls Trump voters saying God chose him to fight liberals guided by the devil ›

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'There’s going to be a disaster': Trump confidants fear MAGA courthouse protests could hurt his defense - Alternet.org ›

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an 6 23

no lnx

when Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal counts on Tuesday, June 13 in a Miami courtroom, numerous critics emphasized that even a former president is not exempt from the rule of law — including a long list of Never Trump conservatives. But those Never Trumpers, for the most part, weren't featured on MAGA-friendly right-wing media outlets. Fox News, Newsmax TV, Breitbart News and others have remained strident defenders of the ex-president.

The Bulwark, however, is a conservative website with an unapologetic Never Trump/anti-MAGA perspective. Many Bulwark articles have emphasized that being a former president doesn't mean that Trump is above the law.

But in a listicle published by The Bulwark on June 16, Never Trumper Will Saletan takes things a step further — arguing that numerous Trump defenders aren't saying that Trump is above the law, but rather, believe that Trump is the law.

READ MORE: Jack Smith: Trump broke laws critical to the 'safety and security of the United States'

"In Donald Trump's four years as president," Saletan explains, "the Republican Party became increasingly authoritarian through a simple formula: Each time Trump crossed a line — firing people who investigated him, usurping the power to appropriate money, extorting a foreign government to help him win reelection — his apologists claimed that whatever he had done was within his rights. That pattern has continued since Trump left office."

The Bulwark editor continues, "According to the indictment issued last week by a Florida grand jury, Trump took sensitive national security documents to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his term and then — unlike any other former president — illegally concealed many of these documents and withheld them from the FBI, even after the documents were subpoenaed…. Once again, Trump is testing America's tolerance for autocracy. And once again, his allies on the right are backing him up with extreme and dangerous theories of vast presidential power."

Saletan goes on to list 11 arguments that Trump's defenders typically use.

The first six, according to Saletan, are: (1) "A former president is entitled to obstruct investigators if he doesn't trust them, (2) "A former president is entitled to withhold documents from investigators based on his belief that he declassified the documents," (3) "Federal law grants a former president sole authority to decide what he can keep," (4) "The mere act of taking documents makes them the former president's rightful property," (5) "A former president is entitled to hide documents from investigators, as long as he doesn't destroy them," and (6) "A former president is entitled to destroy documents."

READ MORE: 'Obstruction and Espionage Act': Legal expert says Trump attorney’s notes show 'evidence of willfulness'

The others, Saletan adds, are: (7) "A former president can ignore rules about sensitive documents because the people who make and enforce those rules are corrupt," (8) "Former presidents are exempt from the classification system," (9) "Congress can't constrain a former president's treatment of documents," (10) "No former president should be prosecuted," and (11) "Prosecution of a former president who seeks reelection is like a coup."

Saletan warns, "There seems to be no limit to the unilateral authority Republicans will grant Trump…. If there's anything Trump could do to forfeit the allegiance of his party — any crime he could commit, any dictatorial power he could claim — we haven’t found it yet."

READ MORE: The republic strikes back': Legal experts hail federal Trump indictment as a victory for the rule of law

The Bulwark's full article is available at this link.

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Here's where Donald Trump allegedly kept classified documents at ... ›

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an 6 23

no lnx

Tucker Carlson claims 'neocon war agenda' is behind Trump documents prosecution

Alex HendersonJune 14, 2023

When former President Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal criminal counts in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday, June 13, a long list of right-wing media outlets reflexively echoed Trump's claim that the prosecution is a baseless "witch hunt."

Not all conservatives have been defending Trump, of course; MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, attorney George Conway, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson and The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes are among the many Never Trumpers on the right who have been applauding special counsel Jack Smith and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for pursuing the case and stressing that Trump is not exempt from the rule of law. Conway, in fact, slammed Trump's Republican defenders as

unprincipled and shameless" during a June 14 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

But MAGA pundits have been painting Trump as the victim. One of them is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

READ MORE: Trump takes aim at Jack Smith with treason accusation in late-night attack

In a 13-minute video posted on Twitter on June 13, Carlson argued, in essence, that: (1) storing classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago is no big deal, and (2) a hawkish combination of Biden Democrats and establishment Republicans are trying to bring Trump down because of his anti-neocon views.

Carlson told viewers, "What matters, then and now, is foreign policy. The invasions and occupations and proxy wars — the decisions that determine which global populations will thrive and which will die…. In Washington, that's what actually matters."

"Permanent Washington," Carlson added, "decided to send Donald Trump to prison" seven years ago because he opposed the "neocon war agenda." Trump, the former Fox News host argued, "sealed his fate" when he condemned the invasion of Iraq during the 2016 GOP presidential primary debates.

"Whatever else you say about him," Carlson told viewers, "Trump is the one guy with an actual shot at becoming president who dissents from Washington's longstanding, pointless war agenda. And for that — that one fact — they are trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him."

READ MORE: Retired conservative judge: Trump 'dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ' into indicting him

Carlson was highly dismissive of the federal government's system for classifying documents, saying, "Washington is a city where internal memos about Labor Day are classified because everything is classified…. None of this is done in order to make America safer."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk praised Carlson's video as "bold" and posted, "This is why we like Tucker!" And far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec wrote, "Tucker just spent 13 minutes giving the best explanation for why Trump should be president."

In the Daily Beast, journalist William Vaillancourt alluded to Carlson's legal battle with Fox News, writing, "Despite an escalating dispute with Fox News over the Twitter videos, Carlson returned to the social media platform, expressing support for the former president and criticizing the very concept of classified documents, asserting casually that in Washington, D.C. 'everything is classified.'"

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-geraldo-rivera-compares-trumps-alleged-crimes-library-book-was-overdue

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an 6 23

no lnx

Trump lawyers in classified docs case quit hours after indictment: report

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement June 09, 2023

Attorneys representing Donald Trump in the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s prosecution of the former president on what reportedly are seven categories of federal felonies have resigned from representing him, just hours after a grand jury indicted their client.

“Two lawyers who represented Donald Trump in the months before he was indicted on federal charges over his handling of classified documents quit working for him Friday morning,” CNBC reports.

“This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” Trump attorneys Jim Trusty (photo) and John Rowley said in a joint statement, according to CNN’s Alayna Treene.

“The attorneys,” CNBC also reported, “did not explain in detail why they had resigned, other than to say that ‘this is a logical moment’ to do given his indictment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.”

READ MORE: ‘Disgraced’ Trump-Appointed Florida Judge Initially Assigned to Oversee Ex-President’s Criminal Case: Report

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, “Trump announces on Truth Social thatTodd Blanche will be his criminal defense attorney in the Mar-a-Lago docs case with another firm yet to be named. Jim Trusty and John Rowley are out.”

This is far from the first time Trump’s lawyers have quit.

Less than one month ago, as Alternet reported, “Timothy Parlatore, an attorney for Donald Trump, made a major announcement on Wednesday, May 17: He is leaving the former president’s legal team.”

Trusty appeared on CNN just Thursday night, to defend Trump.

Watch video below or at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-anchor-disregards-foxs-own-debunks-gop-claim-fbi-document-shows-biden-was-paid

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-runs-ads-mike-huckabees-climate-denial-book-targeted-children

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/fox-news-responds-federal-trump-indictment-unhinged-demagoguery

former President Donald Trump has been indicted — again — and Fox News personalities are once more rallying behind him. In the hours after news broke that Trump is facing seven federal criminal charges over his mishandling of federal documents, his loyal propagandists denounced the indictment as a “dark day in America” and an attack on American democracy and the rule of law.

Trump wrote on social media Thursday evening that he had been indicted over his mishandling of classified documents. The New York Times later reported that Trump “was charged with a total of seven counts, including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Trump had taken government documents with him when he left office and refused to return them, leading to an August search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in which the FBI uncovered a trove of documents bearing classification markings, some at the “top secret” level. Special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating the former president’s conduct for months.

Trump is the first former president ever to face federal criminal charges and is expected to surrender in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday. The charges were not a surprise — even Trump’s own former attorney general Bill Barr had repeatedly acknowledged that the former president’s own conduct put him in serious legal jeopardy.

But on Fox, host Jesse Watters announced the news by saying that “the president, former, calls it the boxes hoax” and suggesting that the indictment was an attempt to distract attention from the House GOP’s investigations of President Joe Biden.

The situation rapidly devolved from there. Over the following hours, Fox’s hosts and the menagerie of Trump cronies and sycophants the network put on the air unleashed unhinged demagoguery.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba called it evidence that we live in a “sick world” with “a two-tier system of justice,” citing the lack of legal punishment for Biden, his son Hunter, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller claimed that “history will record today as the day that we ceased to be a democratic republic and we became a people ruled by an unelected government bureaucracy.”

Former Trump acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker called it “a really sad day for our country” and “the stuff of banana republics.”

For right-wing activist Ned Ryun, it was “late-stage republic behavior. When you use the legal system as a weapon against political opponents, you’ve abandoned the rule of law.”

“What’s going on here is a disgusting disgrace. It is war on Trump, it is war on the Republican Party, and it is a war on the republic,” Fox host Mark Levin screamed. “You have crossed the Rubicon twice, which has never been done, and we will never forgive you — never, ever, and that’s the bottom line,” he added.

“It is a dark day in America,” concluded longtime Trump adviser and Fox host Sean Hannity. “There is no equal justice. There is no equal application of our laws.” He added, “Our system of justice has now been weaponized beyond belief and this country is in serious trouble."

Fox’s furious denunciations may have taken the issue off the table for Trump’s would-be presidential rivals. When Fox’s Harris Faulkner brought on Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is theoretically running for president against Trump, to discuss the indictment, she asked him, “The bottom line is, you’re a Republican, this was a Republican president, and look at what has happened. Your reaction?” Scott took the hint and issued a rambling response that avoided directly criticizing Trump.

Fox’s over-the-top response is familiar. While some have suggested that the network and its Murdoch owners have turned on the former president, Fox always rises to Trump’s defense at his moments of legal peril.

The network’s stars were similarly furious in March, when Trump was indicted on 34 charges of falsifying business records in a New York state court in connection with the $130,000 hush money payment made to an adult film actress in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. They urged viewers to treat the charges as an attack on the U.S. Constitution, American democracy, the rule of law, and themselves, while denouncing the prosecutor and his purported “witch hunt.”

Likewise, when news first broke of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, the Trumpists at Fox denounced it as “the worst attack on this republic in modern history” and part of a “preemptive coup” to prevent Trump’s reelection, among other incendiary claims, with hosts urging viewers to believe that “the real target of this investigation is you.”

The throughline is that any legal attack on Trump is inherently corrupt and a signal that America has been lost — and that, if Trump is brought down, Fox’s viewers may be next.

Trump needs the powerful propaganda apparatus of Fox to keep his supporters in line and his primary opponents at bay, and the network’s hosts and executives are happy to oblige. But we’ve seen the disastrous consequences that can come from Fox’s overheated rhetoric in the former president’s service.

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6 23 an

propagandists on Russian state television are busy concocting new ways to return twice-indicted former President Donald Trump to the White House in 2024, The Daily Beast's Julia Davis reported on Monday.

"Troubled by the magnitude of the criminal jeopardy their favored candidate is facing, the Kremlin's mouthpieces on state media's airwaves are openly brainstorming how to help Trump by undermining President Joe Biden—reflecting the efforts that are likely taking place behind the scenes," Davis explained. "After all, Trump represents Moscow's best hope that the U.S. will eventually stop supporting Ukraine, which would in turn allow Russia to swallow it whole."

For instance, Davis noted that although host Evgeny Popov and his comrades have lamented the dozens of criminal charges that were filed against Trump, they "are not nearly as giddy but still hold out the hope that the Republicans and their mouthpieces—like Russia's beloved Tucker Carlson—will manage to harm Biden and undermine U.S. aid to Ukraine."

READ MORE: 'No one tells Vladimir Putin what to do': Martha Raddatz smacks down GOP candidate’s foreign policy plan

Popov's approach is not unique. "Dmitry Evstafiev, Professor at the School of Integrated Communications, suggested: In the West, we should be supporting crooks, scumbags, and idiots—then we will succeed! We should support them and convince them that they are geniuses," Davis wrote.

Davis further pointed out that "The grand plan of forcing the U.S. to focus predominately on its internal issues is in line with Trump's long-standing pledge to greatly limit America's global involvement, concentrating mainly on trade and financial dealings."

READ MORE: This Kremlin-friendly online media operation is backed by a US tech mogul: report

Davis' full report continues at this link (subscription required).

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see psych terror mgmt --> teflon don bobby azarian

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mafia don?

https://www.alternet.org/mar-a-lago-first-flooded/

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https://www.alternet.org/Frontpage-feature/aileen-cannon-2661174241/

federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.

Judge Aileen Cannon, known for agreeing to Trump’s request by assigning a special master to review the entirety of federal government documents the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last summer during the execution of a search and seizure warrant will, at least for now, oversee the government’s case allegedly charging Donald Trump with seven different felony categories in its classified documents probe, according to ABC News.

“The summons sent to former President Donald Trump and his legal team late Thursday indicates that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will be assigned to oversee his case, at least initially, according to sources briefed on the matter,” ABC News reports.

READ MORE: Trump Lawyers Blindsided by Existence of Bombshell Recording – ‘They Don’t Know How to Defend This’: Maggie Haberman

“Cannon’s apparent assignment would add yet another unprecedented wrinkle to a case involving the first federal charges against a former president: Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in 2019, meaning that, if Trump is ultimately convicted, she would be responsible for determining the sentence – which may include prison time – for the man who elevated her to the role.”

Cannon, agreeing to Trump’s request to appoint a special master last September, also halted the Dept. of Justice’s use of those materials, which included at least one hundred classified documents, in its criminal investigation into Trump.

Harvard University professor emeritus of constitutional law, Laurence Tribe, called Judge Cannon’s special master decision “utterly lawless,” and said: “She has disgraced her position as an Article III judge.”

ABC News notes that “Legal experts [had] accused Cannon of handing Trump a series of head-scratching victories over the course of those proceedings,” and added, “Cannon’s order was ultimately thrown out in its entirety by an 11th Circuit Court of appeals panel, which found she overstepped in exercising her jurisdiction in the probe.”

The 11th Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Judge’ Cannon’s decision to appoint the special master. One week later, without explanation or reasoning, she overruled the special master’s decision and extended deadlines – decisions which favored Donald Trump.

RELATED: ‘Pure Essence of Judicial Corruption’: Morning Joe Panelists ‘Stunned’ by Cannon’s Ruling on Classified Docs

Cannon is not the only judge whose name appears on the summons.

“In addition to Cannon, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s name also appeared on the summons sent to Trump on Thursday, the sources said,” ABC adds. “Reinhart, who was sworn in as a magistrate judge in 2018, is also familiar with the proceedings against Trump: he signed off on the initial search warrant of Mar-a-Lago last year and later ruled to unseal the search affidavit – decisions that made him the target of antisemitic jabs on the internet.”

A federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Donald Trump tried and failed to file his racketeering suit against Hillary Clinton with Judge Aileen Cannon ›
• 'NY's Judge Cannon' slammed for 'snide' denial of Bragg's request to quash Jordan subpoena ›
• The 11th Circuit is poised to 'slam' Judge Aileen Cannon for protecting Trump: former prosecutor ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Trump Special Master Ruling Lifts Profile of Judge Aileen Cannon ... ›
• Who is Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled for Trump in Mar-a-Lago ... ›
• Judge Aileen Cannon's Reign of Error Is Over | The New Republic ›

===

game over?

https://www.alternet.org/the-right-wing/trump-classifie/

===

===

no lnx an 6 23

so far, former President Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Polls released in late May found Trump leading his main challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 33 percent (Fox News), 31 percent (Quinnipiac) or 27 percent (CNN).

Yet some far-right anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists believe that Trump betrayed the MAGA movement when he promoted COVID-19 vaccines. DeSantis has been making a concerted effort to win over anti-vaxxers,and Never Trump conservative Tim Miller calls him out for it in a scathing column published by The Bulwark on June 5.

"The official 'DeSantis War Room' went after Trump for his unwillingness to 'acknowledge any of the adverse effects' of the vaccine in a conversation with a voter at one of his events," Miller observes. "The DeSantis campaign instead sided with the voter — who was arguing that it was the vaccine that caused deaths, rather than preventing them."

READ MORE: Stewart Rhodes’ son fears Trump or DeSantis will pardon his father

Miller, a former GOP strategist, argues that DeSantis' campaign is pandering to extremists only to take offense when people "notice."

"In the face of this campaign strategy," Miller writes, "the argument proffered by DeSantis supporters to skeptics in the middle is that we just have to sit there and take it while DeSantis does nothing to appeal to us and instead works like a mule to cater to the concerns of the anti-vax freaks and the most bigoted wing of the anti-woke brigade."

:{:{}:

}:

Miller continues, "I'm sorry, but being told we have to ignore our lying ears in order to defeat Trump is not a compelling argument….. So yeah, Ron DeSantis is far less likely to be the leader of a violent overthrow of the government than Trump. Strong agree! But you can't run to the nutball right of the person who tried to do that and then get mad at us simply for noticing."

Among Never Trumpers, there has been much debate over whether Trump or DeSantis would be more dangerous in the White House in 2025. Miller is a blistering critic of DeSantis, but he clearly views Trump as the greater threat to U.S. democracy.

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis heaped praise on Fauci in 2020: report

"This risk assessment is based, in part, on the record of both men in office," Miller explains. "You might recall that one has already attempted a coup. But it's also based on what Rummy (Donald Rumsfeld) called the known unknowns. How catastrophic would the staffing of a second Trump Administration be? Would Kari Lake be VP? Might lunatic cult leader Mike Flynn control the military?"

:{:{}:

}:

Miller continues, "Would Trump try to terminate the Constitution? Side with Putin in Ukraine? Similarly, the known unknowns for DeSantis tend to point in a less catastrophic direction. Would RD move to the center in a general election? I don't think so. Hire a more competent staff? Certainly. Is his personality less likely to inspire a rabid, violent death cult? Clearly."

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis vows to 'destroy leftism' and 'woke ideology' if elected president

Read Tim Miller's full column for The Bulwark at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Trump’s increasing 'grassroots' support is a troubling sign for Ron DeSantis: election analyst ›

'He sucks and so does Fox News': Donald Trump melts down over Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson ›

Donald Trump Jr. thrashes at Ron DeSantis in double daytime diatribe ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Why Ron DeSantis Is Limping to the Starting Line ›

Trump team trolls Ron DeSantis launch ›

DeSantis Privately Says Trump Can't Win 2024 Presidential Race ... ›

===

===

i thot fox corp backed desantis?

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-promises-he-wont-challenge-or-fact-check-donald-trump-during-iowa-town

===

random

| May 30, 2023 

• Haley Orion @ Talking Points Memo: How Paul Gosar Became An Icon To Those In The Modern Fascist Movement.
• David Edwards @ Raw Story: Trump vows to unilaterally end natural-born citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
• Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Ron DeSantis Declares He’s Running For President to ‘Destroy Leftism.’
• David Gilbert @ Vice News: The QAnon Shaman Is Out of Prison and Selling Yoga Leggings Now.
• Linda K. Wertheimer @ The New Republic: Inside the Christian Legal Crusade to Revive School Prayer.
• Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger @ The New York Times: A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Trump’s Megaphone.
• Media Matters: Candace Owens: “Do not shop at Target or else you’re gay and you’re a pervert.”
• Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Pastor charged with four counts of child cruelty announces bid for Louisiana House.
• David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: House Republicans Tied to J6 Admit Goals: Defeat Debt Ceiling Agreement, Kill Economy, Help Trump Win in 2024.

Tags: Candace Owens Dan Bishop Donald Trump Jacob Chansley John Raymond Paul Gosar Ron DeSantis Round-Up

===

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an 5 23

former President Donald Trump paid tribute to America's fallen military servicemembers on Monday by posting an all-caps rant attacking his political foes.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the former president linked the struggles faced in the past by soldiers in assorted American wars with the battles he's engaged with his own domestic enemies.

"HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THOSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE COUNTRY THEY LOVE, AND TO THOSE IN LINE OF A VERY DIFFERENT, BUT EQUALLY DANGEROUS FIRE, STOPPING THE THREATS OF THE TERRORISTS, MISFITS AND LUNATIC THUGS WHO ARE WORKING FEVERISHLY FROM WITHIN TO OVERTURN AND DESTROY OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN IN GREATER PERIL THAN IT IS RIGHT NOW," Trump wrote. "WE MUST STOP THE COMMUNISTS, MARXISTS AND FASCIST 'PIGS' AT EVERY TURN AND, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Trump has been ratcheting up his rhetoric against law enforcement officials lately as he faces a slew of legal problems, including a civil lawsuit over allegedly fraudulent business practices from New York Attorney General Letitia James; criminal charges related to his hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels; two different investigations into his efforts to illegally remain in power after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden; and an investigation into his decision to stash top-secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Trump was also recently found liable for sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

• Trump goes off-the-rails in tense exchange with NBC reporter amid press gaggle on his plane: report ›
• Donald Trump explodes at 'these morons in the White House' after report blames him for Afghanistan debacle ›
• Donald Trump furiously demands Alvin Bragg 'indict himself' following leak of pending criminal charges ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Trump Throws New Tantrum After Former Aide Exposes Jan. 6 ... ›
• Trump Throws Temper Tantrum Throughout E. Jean Carroll Deposition ›
• Trump Is Having a Full-Blown Temper Tantrum Over Michelle ... ›

===

https://www.alternet.org/special-counsel-trump-national-secrets/

500x qanon

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/his-first-year-actively-posting-truth-social-trump-amplified-qanon

===

fitton trying to get names targets doj fbi retaliate purge

https://www.alternet.org/trump-fani-willis-2660722042/

felony convictions 3% and proud boys

an 5 23

the verdict is in after several days of deliberation by the jury in the long federal trial against the Proud Boys.

According to Politico's Kyle Cheney, the verdict is a mixed bag for the men, but one main part is that the jury believed that the government prosecutors proved seditious conspiracy for all but recruit Dominic Pezzola. All of the men were guilty of obstruction of Congress, however.

Lawfare editor Roger Parloff has been in the courtroom every day, live-tweeting his observations at key moments in the trial. Throughout deliberations, he detailed the requests from the jury, giving the public an insight into the thoughts behind those working toward the verdict.

The trial began Jan. 12 and took 62 days before the deliberations began. Parloff explained that the 10-count indictment carries a 20-year maximum prison term if the five men are on trial. They're made up of four Proud Boys leaders and one soldier.

"The top count is seditious conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum prison term," explained Parloff. "Prosecutors allege that the defendants conspired 'to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States' or 'by force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States.' Specifically, their alleged goal was to 'oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.'"

Those five men areEthan Nordean, a leader on the ground;podcaster and Alex Jones favorite Joe Biggs, Zachary Rehl, who led the Pennsylvania chapter, and Enrique Tarrio, the national chair and leader on Jan. 6. The "soldier" was recruit Dominic Pezzola.

The main cooperating Proud Boy was Matthew Greene, who detailed the movements of the men both before and during the assault on the Capitol.

According to the Lawfare write-up, Parloff thinks that the government prosecutors have adequately proven their case.

they've argued it wasn't necessary for the Proud Boys to have a detailed plan to prove they conspired together to bring down the government.

"As Department of Justice attorney Conor Mulroe caustically put it at one point, the charge is not seditious plan; the charge is seditious conspiracy. And as long as there is an agreement—even an unspoken and implicit one—to achieve an unlawful objective, that’s sufficient," he said. "The shared objective, the government alleges, was the goal of stopping the certification of the election by any means necessary, up to and including force. The jury instructions, approved by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the District of Columbia, seem to accommodate the government’s theory."

At one point in the trial, the Proud Boys said that they**wanted to call Donald Trump to testify. Biggs announced in Feb. Trump would swoop in to save them. It never happened. Since then, however, tarrio has borrowed language from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), saying that the jailed militants were the victims of President Joe Biden's weaponization of government.The arrests of the men happened before Biden was sworn in. In fact, their trial also began before Biden was sworn in, indicating that the previous GOP-led Justice Department was behind the prosecutions of the militia members.

Now Tarrio blames Trump, saying that he's going to end up taking the fall for the former president.

“It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city,” said Nayib Hassan, a lawyer for Tarrio during closing arguments, according to Politico

===

===

mma 5 23

following the historic May 4 conviction of Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and three others for seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the violent January 6 riot at the Capitol, right-wing media have decried the ruling and asserted their innocence.

The Proud Boys have a history of violence and are known to spread hatred under the label of Western chauvinism. The jury found the four Proud Boy leaders guilty for conspiring to violently keep former President Donald Trump in power after messages and witness testimony hinted at violent action at the Capitol. Over the past two years, figures in right-wing media have frequently pointed to the lack of conspiracy charges related to January 6 as evidence that the insurrection was blown out of proportion. The Proud Boys' conviction takes that myopic argument off the table.

While Fox News has barely covered the conviction, many on the right have devoted time to undermining the seditious conspiracy charge and the Proud Boys’ acts of violence on January 6, attacking prosecutors, and defending Trump from potential similar charges. Since the conviction, right-wing media figures have also been defending the Proud Boys by attacking the courts.

Defending the Proud Boys’ innocence, undermining the charges, and calling the trial a “set-up”

• Founder of the Proud Boys Gavin McInnes posted on Telegram: “Antifa and BLM burn down this country with impunity. Proud Boys wander through a riot and now they’re facing twenty years. These guys have kids. This might as well be the death penalty.”
• Right-wing YouTuberSteven Crowder complained that the seditious conspiracy theory charge was too broad, asking, “Can someone give me the definition of seditious conspiracy?” He added, “We're all seditious conspiracy theorists.”
• Newsmax’s Greg Kelly called the “whole damn thing” a “sham and a shame.” He also claimed that Tarrio “was just unjustly convicted of the worst possible thing.”
• QAnon influencer The Patriot Voice posted on far-right social media site Gettr, “There is NO JUSTICE here.” He added, “They are being made an example of in the WORST way possible…Do this we will RUIN YOUR LIFE. SICK.”
• Right-wing radio host Mark Levin suggested that the trial was a miscarriage of justice, saying, “You don't have to be big big fans of the Proud Boys to believe in civil liberties and due process.”
• Infowars’ Alex Jones called the trial a “total set up,” before attacking trans people.
• Proud Boys’ lawyer Norm Pattis used his appearance on Infowars to ask Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to “get that weaponization committee to subpoena the trial transcripts in this case, all of them, including the transcripts that are under seal.”
• Gateway Pundit published a post titled: “JUSTICE DENIED: Proud Boys Members Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy by DC Kangaroo Court – Face 20 Years in Prison – After FBI Created and Planted Evidence in Their Chat Room.”
• Right wing social media account Carpe Donktum tweeted: “The entire thing was a total set up, and the cops were in on it. YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS IN DC, THEY WILL SET YOU UP AND LOCK YOU UP.”
• Conservative reporter Patrick Howley called the conviction, “a miscarriage of justice,” adding that they were found guilty by a “Soviet-style court.”
• Anti-muslim activist and failed GOP congressional candidate Laura Loomer attacked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Speaker Kevin McCarthy for not issuing a statement, adding, “How many more American patriots will be charged w/ ‘seditious conspiracy’?”
• Right-wing pundit DeAnna Lorraine reacted to the news saying, “DESPICABLE. Any last shred of Justice in America is DEAD.”

Suggesting that the Proud Boys’ conviction opens the door for the same charges to be brought against Trump

• Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly tweeted: “What’s happened to the Proud Boys is a travesty and it would frighten you more if you realized they’re gonna do the same thing to you. First it was them. Then it will be Trump. Then it will be you.”
• Right-wing influencers the Hodgetwins tweeted: “Corrupt and biased prosecutors, judge, and jurors just convicted the Proud Boys of Seditious Conspiracy, a 20 year felony, for Jan 6. They’re setting it up to indict Trump next…”
• White nationalist conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted: “Clear now the Biden Admin is going to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy. This is the end goal of the Garland grand jury and the Proud Boys convictions. GOP primary challengers are telling donors they are betting on it taking him out of the race.”
• On the May 4 episode of his show The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, co-host Buck Sexton hypothesized that “they're going to try to bring a seditious conspiracy charge against Donald Trump.
• When asked if she thought charges would be brought against Trump on the May 5 episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, guest and political commentator Julie Kelly alleged that, “None of this is by accident. It is a warning shot to not just Trump, but people around him, possibly John Eastman and others, for allegedly conspiring.”

===

===

claimed to be on his way to defend himself at rape trial but no show

===

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/eric-trump/hitler-promoting-antisemites-will-speak-trumps-miami-hotel-alongside-eric-trump-lara

ref mma 5 23

the Trump National Doral resort will host two antisemites who have promoted pro-Adolf Hitler propaganda and spread virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories. They will be speaking at an event in Miami alongside numerous Team Trump personalities, including Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Devin Nunes.

Trump Doral speaker Scott McKay, who has a streaming show on Rumble, has claimed that Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and were responsible for the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley. He has also said that Jewish people routinely torture children and eat their hearts.

He has praised Hitler for supposedly trying to take down a Jewish banking system and said, “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.”

Trump Doral speaker Charlie Ward, who also streams a show on Rumble, has shared posts praising Hitler for supposedly “warning us” about Judaism; claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”; and attacking the alleged Jewish media for supposedly lying about the Holocaust. 

The two are featured speakers in the “ReAwaken America” tour, which is set to stop at  Trump’s Miami hotel on May 12 and 13. Scheduled to speak alongside McKay and Ward are numerous members of Trump’s orbit, including: Eric Trump, Lara Trump, former Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former senior Department of Defense official Kash Patel, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes, andTrump ally Roger Stone.

Numerous other far-right conspiracy theorists will be speaking, including Stella Immanuel, Mel K, Liz Crokin, Ann Vandersteel, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.

Media outlets have previously noted that the tour, which has been holding events across the country, has also featured QAnon supporters, conspiracy theories, and Christian nationalist rhetoric.

Michael Flynn co-founded the tour and also has a history of antisemitism. He stated on the tour that he wants the United States to “have one religion.” In 2016, he shared -- and then deleted -- a tweet stating “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” And in 2021, he criticized Holocaust victims, stating: “Jesus, how could somebody stand there and just allow these people to do that to them? And then knowing what they knew, how could they get on that train? I would have rather attacked that machine gun nest.”

During a recent appearance on a QAnon program, tour co-founder Clay Clark told viewers that  “Eric Trump is a good friend of mine” and said “it's exciting … that Trump's inner circle is now going, they're all reaching out to our tour, to the ReAwaken America tour, to Gen. Flynn, to myself, to Kash Patel. And they're all saying, hey, can we come to the tour?”

Team Trump is hosting and participating in the tour and associating with its Hitler-promoting speakers despite heavy criticism over Trump’s meeting last December with Ye and Nick Fuentes, who have similarly praised Hitler.

The Trump officials’ association with McKay and Ward is part of a larger Republican Party pattern, with numerous officials promoting or speaking alongside antisemites.

Scott McKay claimed Jewish people torture children and eat their hearts and “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today”

[pix]From antisemitic commentator Scott McKay's Telegram page.

McKay, who also goes by Patriot Streetfighter, is a speaker at the Trump Doral event. He frequently makes antisemitic comments. Among the many examples:

• McKay claimed that Jewish people “built Hitler. … He was created by them” because they needed a catalyst to profit from a military conflict. He also praised Hitler for supposedly attempting to spurn his Jewish creators by trying to break “free of the Rothschilds’ corrupt money-magic fiat system” and create “a banking system for the people and the free world.”
• McKay said: “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today.”
• McKay claimed that 9/11 was perpetrated by “the same group of people that has done a very good job at hiding under the religion of Judaism."
• McKay claimed that many Jewish people are hiding “under the cover of this religion called Judaism” so they can “murder children.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people practice “satanism, child sacrifice, bleeding them out, torturing them, consuming them, eating their heart.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people created a banking system “in exchange for the child blood sacrifices.”
• McKay claimed that Jewish people were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing and the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William McKinley.

For more on Scott McKay, go here.

Charlie Ward shared posts praising Hitler for “warning us” about Judaism, claiming “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made”

[pix]

Ward is a speaker at the Trump Doral event. During a November ReAwaken America tour stop in Branson, Missouri, he said: “How many people in here know that more people have been killed by the jab than were killed in the Holocaust? And they're still doing it because nobody can stop them.”

He frequently promotes antisemitism and pro-Hitler content. Among the many examples:

• Ward shared a post embedding a speech by Hitler and praising him for “warning us” about Judaism.
• Ward promoted a book which claims to show “that the official narrative of the Holocaust cannot be sustained.”
• Ward shared a post claiming that “VIRUSES are Man (JEW) made including influenza, Polio, Measles, AIDS so was Covid created as a 'excuse' to vaccinate (contaminate)... .”
• Ward shared a post that referenced the antisemitic publication the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “The vaxxx passports are for you the GOYIM not for the specially selected, some elites and the 33's and above - THE RULES DO NOT APPLY .. You are the EXPERIEMENT NOT THEM - Protocols of ZION.”
• Ward shared a post that stated: “On this Memorial Day please remember the sacrifices our soldiers make so that JEWISH DRUG DEALERS can grow Poppy Plants in Afghanistan and control the worldwide Heroin supply.” 

For more on Charlie Ward, go here.

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covid plot to get me out

https://www.alternet.org/trump-19-chinese-plot/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-storms-out-after-cnns-kaitlan-collins-puts-him-to-shame-for-promoting-a-quack-doctor

===

===

an 4 23

https://www.alternet.org/donald-trump-civil-service-test/

===

https://www.alternet.org/trump-desantis-duke-it-out/

death penalty

===

mma 4 23

Right-wing media figures and outlets posted photos of the daughter of the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s arraignment today in lower Manhattan and accused her of having ties to Democratic politicians. Some commentators responded by saying that posting a judge’s family member was intended as intimidation, an argument that prosecutors took up as well. Prior to his surrender, Trump also posted information about the judge and his family on his Truth Social platform.

Judge Juan Merchan is handling Trump’s criminal case, the first ever for a former or sitting president. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts stemming from payments made to his then-fixer Michael Cohen to allegedly cover up an affair he’d had with porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, right-wing figures and outlets accused Merchan of being a secret partisan operative for the Democratic Party. Conspiracy theory site The Gateway Pundit and far-right blog Breitbart, which credited The Gateway Pundit with breaking the story, alleged that Merchan’s daughter previously worked for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 campaign and implied that this further proved that he was politically biased against Trump. Conservative tabloid The Daily Mail also wrote a lengthy piece, headlined “REVEALED: The progressive daughter of judge presiding over Donald Trump's hush money case in Manhattan who worked for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden - and is swirling speculation of bias against the ex-president.” All three outlets including photos of the judge’s daughter.

Needless to say, dubious reporting about Merchan’s family has no bearing on his ability to impartially preside over Trump’s case — but that didn’t stop right-wing actors from pushing the smear online.

• Donald Trump Jr. posted the same message to Twitter and Truth Social linking to the Breitbart article, which clearly displayed a photo of Merchan’s daughter to his more than 13 million combined followers. “​​Seems relevant… yet another connection in this hand picked democrat show trial,” Trump Jr. wrote. “The BS never ends folks.” Eric Trump also posted messages to Twitter and Truth Social. “They are all hand picked,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter. “It is all pre-arranged. This corruption is on a different level.” His post linked to The Gateway Pundit article which also featured a photo of the judge’s daughter. The tweet has since been removed.
• The Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec both criticized the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who tweeted out partial screenshots of the tweets of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., excluding images of Merchan. Hemingway dubiously claimed excluding the images amounted to deceptive edits, and Posobiec directed Twitter’s crowdsourced quasi-fact checking system “community notes” to “do your thing.”
• Newsmax's Ric Grennell called it “a legitimate story,” shared The Daily Mail article, and criticized an adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence for “shaming anyone who shares the story.”
• Conservative media site DC Enquirer posted a story about the judge’s daughter as well, aggregating information from Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit.
• Conspiracy theorist and Trump pardon recipient Dinesh D’Souza tweeted a link to the DC Enquirer story, headlined “Trump’s Indictment Judge Exposed, His Daughter Worked For Biden/Harris, Further Proving Indictment a Frivolous Witch Hunt.”
• New York Post columnist Paul Sperry tweeted: “The daughter of the Manhattan judge presiding over the Trump criminal case is a Democratic political strategist who worked on the congressional campaign of Democrat Rep. ADAM SCHIFF, who led the first impeachment of Trump.”
• Anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer tweeted a link to the Breitbart story, adding: “A BANANA REPUBLIC! THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!!! Judge should have to recuse himself.”
• Team Trump, Trump’s official campaign account, tweeted the Breitbart story and accompanying photo to its more than 2 million followers.
• Relentless podcast host Kyle Becker tweeted a link to TrendingPoliticsNews.com, which also relied on The Gateway Pundit’s original piece. “But wait, it gets worse,” Becker wrote. “The daughter of the judge in Trump’s case has strong ties within the Democratic party.”
• Right-wing commentator Greg Price tweeted: “The judge is a Democrat whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.”

===

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-demands-retribution-following-trumps-arraignment

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mma 4 23

KEVIN CORKE (CORRESPONDENT): And in yet another sign the former president still packs quite a punch, especially when it comes to TV ratings, last night's speech at Mar-a-Lago aired right here on Fox, in its entirety, to 6.6 million viewers -- that's more than double our closest competition and more viewers in the key demo than other news networks combined.

===

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-right-leaning-pages-are-leading-conversation-about-trumps-arraignment

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-says-trumps-arrest-is-why-you-need-fascism/

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===

tucker no time to give up ar15

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/trump-used-his-reinstated-facebook-page-post-misinformation-filled-statement-response-his

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-returns-barricades-indicted-donald-trump

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showed class docs to donors?

https://www.alternet.org/trump-peter-strzok/

===

zuck and edgelord musk bring him back for bucks

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/trump-used-his-reinstated-facebook-page-post-misinformation-filled-statement-response-his indict

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-returns-barricades-indicted-donald-trump

If Donald Trump watched Fox News tonight, after a New York grand jury made him the first former president in history to be indicted, he was surely pleased with what he saw. Trump needs Fox to play its old role — run interference, denounce his foes, and thus keep the Republican Party squarely behind him — and that’s exactly what the network did in the hours after news of the indictment broke.

The indictment, which has not yet been unsealed, was the result of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe into the $130,000 hush money payment made in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor who has since said that she and Trump had an affair (Trump denies it). The former president responded in a statement calling the indictment “political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history” and denouncing Bragg, the Democratic Party, and President Joe Biden.

Trump needs a powerful propaganda apparatus with a uniquely powerful hold on the GOP to hammer that message home and keep Republican politicians from abandoning him at yet another moment of disgrace.

He’s got one.

Minutes after news of the indictment broke — without seeing the indictment or knowing what Trump has been charged with — a parade of his Fox allies started furiously spinning on his behalf.

On The Five, Jesse Watters reacted to the breaking news by saying, “The country's not going to stand for it,” while Greg Gutfeld said the indictment showed Democrats are “hunting” Republicans.

On Special Report, Fox contributor Jonathan Turley called it a “raw political prosecution” while fellow contributor Mollie Hemingway compared it to “the Stalin era” and said that “people who care about the country need to stand up and make sure that they let it be known that they do not support this type of political prosecution.”

On Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters suggested “prosecuting Democrats the way they prosecute Republicans” when the party next gains the White House and said that in light of the Trump indictment, conservatives “can’t live in Democratic-run cities” without fear of political prosecution. Fellow Fox host Dan Bongino said it showed “we’re living in a police state” and Jeanine Pirro declared that the indictment “reeks of Third World country tactics,” adding that Trump “is being persecuted, not just prosecuted, but persecuted.”

Tucker Carlson Tonight brought the network’s biggest star saying that “there’s no coming back from this moment” as a country, describing the indictment as a “political purge” that has suspended the rule of law for his supporters and as “an assault on our system,” and running “Third-World banana republic” chyrons.

Hannity and The Ingraham Angle will surely feature more of the same.

We’ve seen this pattern play out the same way every time Trump’s actions have resulted in scandal since he became the Republican nominee in 2016.

Fox rallied to Trump’s side as he promoted lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud in 2020; amid the cornucopia of scandals involving his bigotry; when he corruptly pressured a foreign power to take action to benefit his political campaign, leading to his first impeachment; as he pardoned political cronies and war criminals; after he expressed support for white nationalists and Proud Boys; when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to end the Russian interference probe; as a series of women came forward reporting he had sexually assaulted or harassed them; when a tape emerged of him discussing his sexual assaults of women; and so many more.

Each time, Fox’s support was crucial to keeping the Republican Party united behind him.

Trump’s indictment marks yet another opportunity for Fox to change course. Trump leads in polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but he’s not the only one in the race or likely to join it. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the second-place candidate in those polls, has spent years cozying up to Fox hosts and adopting their pet interests — and he’s not under indictment. Rupert Murdoch, the chair of Fox Corp., has an iron grip on the network’s operations and said after the January 6 insurrection that Fox should try to make Trump a “non person” and “certainly don’t support him.”

But that’s not what happened.

Fox continued to protect Trump after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, concocting absurd conspiracy theories to turn the rioters Trump had incited into victims. The network supported him again after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence and found hundreds of classified documents, offering incendiary claims that any criminal probe into the former president is intrinsically corrupt and part of an attack on his voters. And after Trump claimed earlier this month that he was on the verge of being indicted by Bragg, Fox personalities once again mounted the barricades on his behalf.

What we saw tonight shows that Fox won’t abandon him now either. Fox’s hosts and executives are in too deep, and they know that if he tried, Trump could destroy them with their viewers. They will have his back, no matter what, to the bitter end.

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march 31, 2023 

• Nicole Narea and Ian Millhiser @ Vox: Your biggest questions about Trump’s indictment, answered.
• William Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Glenn Beck Hyperventilates About the End of America After Trump Indictment.
• Lee Moran @ HuffPost: Lindsey Graham Gets Super Emotional Begging Fox News Viewers To Donate To Trump.
• Zachary Leeman @ Mediaite: Mark Levin Calls Trump Indictment Declaration of ‘War’ on GOP: ‘Republicans Better Wake the Hell Up.’

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Levin appeared on Fox & Friends March 31, 2023 to denounce the indictment of Donald Trump (and plug his book).

When news broke Thursday that a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict former President Donald Trump, Trump and his supporters were quick to portray him as an innocent victim and to suggest that his prosecution spelled the end of democracy in America.

The charges follow an investigation into a hush money payment made to former adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. With the indictment under seal, the exact charges have not yet been made public, though some news reports suggest Trump faces about 30 charges and that he is expected to be charged with falsifying business records to cover up the payment.

Trump himself displayed his trademark narcissism Thursday, writing in one of many urgent emails, “We are living through the darkest chapter of American history.”

The always-blustery right-wing pundit Mark Levin ranted on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning, “We have crossed the Rubicon. This is atyrannynow.”

Right-wing youth leader Charlie Kirk, who heads Turning Point USA, claimed that the indictment of Trump is a “designed campaign” by the left to provoke right-wing violence “to justify the next phase of their takeover of the country.”

Ali Alexander, a leader of the “Stop the Steal” effort to keep Trump in power after his 2020 loss, wrote on his Telegram account, “TRUMP INDICTMENT refocuses some things. We’re approaching Luciferian-triggered civil war. We must fight Them. May God bless and forgive us where we fall short.”

Far-right broadcaster Pete Santilli—who last week said that if Trump were arrested, the military and law enforcement should round up and execute former President Barack Obama and other members of the “criminal cabal”—reacted to the news by telling his viewers that “these leftist, gun-grabbing Maoists, you will never have a peaceful resolution with. They’re going to come and kill you.:

amid reports that New York law enforcement officials are preparing for possible violence, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, “I’m going to New York on Tuesday. We MUST protest the unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

Although details of the indictment haven’t been made public, Sen. Ted Cruz used his “Verdict” podcast to denounce the indictment as “utter and complete garbage,” describing himself as angry and “heartbroken” over what he called a “devastating” blow to the rule of law. Cruz claimed that the Manhattan investigation was an effort by “radical Democrats” to “steal” the 2024 presidential election.

Cruz said the indictment would boost Trump’s election campaign, a sentiment echoed by other far-right followers of the twice-impeached former president. The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody said the indictment had made Trump a “political martyr.”

On “FlashPoint,” a show that appears on evangelist Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel that was a steady source of misinformation about the 2020 election and Jan. 6 insurrection, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and election denier Kari Lake denounced what she called “false, phony charges.” Trump’s supporters, she said, are “tried and true” and will stay with him “all the way.”

Trump’s religious-right backers also rallied around him, with Franklin Graham calling it a “shameful day for America.”

As noted by religion scholar Diana Butler Bass in her latest newsletter, Trump has been using increasingly messianic and apocalyptic languagein reference to his legal troubles in an effort to maintain religious-right support. Trump followers who believe he is anointed by God and is being persecuted like Jesus by the legions of Satan is “a theo-political wild card we’ve got to pay attention to,” Bass writes. She points to the biblical story of Jesus’ arrest in which one of his disciples attacked one of the soldiers. While Jesus insisted, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword,” Bass warns, “Do not expect the same from Trump.”

Tags: Charlie Kirk David Brody Donald Trump Franklin Graham Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Mark Levin Pete Santilli Donald Trump Election 2024 Rule of LawTrump Indictment

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1. ### Fox News' Laura Ingraham compares Donald Trump's indictment to “Stalin's purges”

03/30/23

2. ### Laura Ingraham claims Democrats are using Trump indictment to distract from Nashville school shooting

03/30/23

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amp req one up macho

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/i-smell-civil-war-far-right-tiktok-users-are-alluding-violence-following-news-trumps

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no lnx

author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions."

The current political moment was rooted in a decades-old struggle against fascism, and Sharlet said Donald Trump, intentionally or instinctively, used its "dream logic" to spellbind his followers, who fill in the unfinished thoughts in his pronouncements with their own beliefs -- and that creates the illusion that he's speaking their truth into existence.

"The free association that happens at Trump’s rallies, the ways people make connections that make no sense – it has dream logic," Sharlet said. "One minute, a scary man is crawling into the window to rape your wife, and then the next minute we’re laughing at windmills, and then the next minute we’re sad for the birds that were killed by windmills. And then, in the next minute, we’re yelling, 'Lock her up.'"

"This is dream logic, and there’s vanity in it, right?" Sharlet added. “'I will interpret what they’re saying and I will bend it.'It’s the vanity of the base, the vanity of the mob, the aggregate grotesque imagination of power. It becomes a spinning whirlpool that pulls more and more people in. These are people for whom reality is not enough."

:{:{}:

The illusion that's created for Trump and his followers feels interactive and very real to them, Sharlet said, and that's where the twice-impeached former president gains his power.

"This is why the right feels they are more democratic than the left," he said. "The intellectual rightwingers are like, 'F*ck democracy, we don’t need it.' But the everyday people, they’re like, 'This is the most democratic I’ve ever felt. I am not only receiving – I receive, I interpret and then I transmit back.'"}:

:{:{Sharlet sees a similar dynamic at work within the anti-abortion movement, which the left sees as an effort to control women's bodies, but the right sees as a cause so righteous that violence is necessary.}:

"Yes, the project is misogynist to the core," he said. "But it is not experienced as such by many on the right. Once you make that move, that we’re talking about children, what kind of person are you if you don’t want to save that child?"}:

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

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r. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is being mocked and criticized after issuing an off-the-rails rant defending Donald Trump after the ex-president was indicted late Thursday afternoon.

Trump reportedly will face over 30 charges when he is arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday, two weeks after he claimed would be the day he would be arrested. In that infamous social media post Trump also urged his supporters to “protest!”

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Congresswoman Greene, an ultra-MAGA acolyte and far-right extremist, on Friday announced she will travel to New York City to show her support for the indicted ex-president.

“I’m going to New York on Tuesday. We MUST protest the unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!” she tweeted.

Her remarks came barely hours after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a six-page letter to House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan warning that Congress must not “interfere” with the prosecution of Donald Trump. It accused him and two other top Republicans of “an improper and dangerous usurpation,” “attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation,” and warned them against “unlawful political interference.”

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READ MORE: ‘You Can’t Stand on Fifth Avenue and Just Shoot Somebody’: Donald Trump Indicted – Legal Experts Respond

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That letter specifically called out Congresswoman Greene for her rhetoric, noting “some committee members have explicitly stated an intent to interfere with the state proceeding.”

“For example, responding to Trump’s statement that he would be arrested, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that ‘Republicans in Congress MUST subpoena these communists and END this! We have the powerto do it and we also have the power to DEFUND their salaries and departments!’ … and that Republicans who ‘do nothing to stop’ the prosecution ‘will be exposed to the people and will be remembered, scorned, and punished by the base.’”

Clearly his warning had little impact on the far-right Georgia Member of Congress.

In response to Greene’s Friday morning tweet, former U.S. Congressman David Jolly, also a former Republican, appeared to suggest she was encouraging an untoward response.

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}:

“Lighting the match,” he tweeted.

NBC News senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake appearing to suggest it was a bad idea, responded by saying, “The situation downtown Tuesday is going to be tense. Narrow streets. Tons of press. Lots of police from different jurisdictions already highly visible.”

READ MORE: Favoring Right Wing Christians, Texas Judge Voids ACA’s Mandate That Insurance Cover Full Cost of HIV Drugs Including PrEP

Top CBS News reporter Robert Costa responded to Greene’s remarks, noting: “By order, NYPD officers here in lower Manhattan, outside the court, are already in full uniform, bracing for protests next week…”

Condé Nast legal affairs editor Luke Zaleski, also responding to Greene, wrote: “They want to incite violence in NYC.”

“Marge is a confederate soldier not an American public servant,” Zaleski added. “She has taken over Congress and wants to destroy the nation from inside. She admits it. Her public agenda is reinstalling a criminal traitor she’s obstructing justice for and breaking up the United States of America.”

Meanwhile, journalist Helen Kennedy appeared to not take Greene’s remarks – or Greene – seriously.

“Clown hurries to circus,” she tweeted.

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