Big Media Ignoring the Who What When Why of GOP Apology for Trump’s Crimes
Even before and especially in the wake of Trump’s guilty verdict, members of the MAGAt Party has stumbled over themselves to declare fealty to Donald Trump, and in the process to demean rule of law.
Chris Hayes described the process as a mob style pressure campaign.
This enforcement action is happening because the Trump people and the Fox people and most of the people in the upper echelons of the party understand: the only way to bring Trump down, to end his political career, is if Republicans turn against him.
As long as they stay unified, no matter what he does, no matter how abhorrent, or how dangerous, or how criminal, or how vile, no matter how much of a threat he is to the nation, if they all band together, then in a polarized landscape, they can basically keep him afloat and make it essentially a coin toss.
That is why they dressed up like him during the trial and rushed to debase themselves in cringe-inducing fashion on any live TV camera they can find.
[snip]
There have only been two times in Trump’s political career where that dynamic of Republican unanimity has broken, where Trump was near political death.
One was in the aftermath of January 6, the violent assault on the Capitol that he stirred up, when everyone was criticizing him, when the blood was still on the floor of the Capitol including Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy. Remember that? Trump’s approval rating dropped below 40%, about the lowest level it reached. Mitch McConnell was testing the waters for a vote for an impeachment conviction.
If it had not been for that man, Mitch McConnell’s abject, enduringly pathetic cowardice and McCarthy’s relentless quest to have the third shortest speakership in history — not to mention the legitimate fear Republican senators had for their families about violence — we wouldn’t have this issue now. They could have just voted to convict him and bar him from future office. Done.
Ironically enough, the other time — the other sort of near political death experience — was in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape. And just about every elected Republican tried to distance themselves and criticize him. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus was even considering how to get him off of the ticket.
But Trump managed to hold it together, due in no small part to the fact that right at that moment, he got a guy named Michael Cohen, his lawyer, to pay to keep the porn star from talking. And so the Republicans never heard about that story, nor did the public, which could have been the political death blow.
The lesson he learned is if you enforce this totalitarian unanimity, you can keep chugging along.
Journalists not named Chris Hayes are covering this too.
But they’re covering it differently.
Like this 1,400-word story from WaPo yesterday.
It describes that Republicans are backing Trump’s false claims of victimhood. It quotes at least twelve Republicans undermining the verdict, most in inflammatory terms. It even notes, in lukewarm fashion, that Trump’s claims of victimhood have no basis.
But even though it gives ample platform to Bible-thumper Mike Johnson to screech, it doesn’t use the word “porn,” opting instead for “hush money.” It doesn’t use the word “fraud,” opting instead to describe “falsifying business records.”
If you were Martian dropping onto the Earth to learn what the hubbub was about, you would never know that the Speaker who claims to live by the Ten Commandments was running cover for a guy who paid $400,000 to cover up fucking a porn star while his spouse was home with his youngest kid.
This one, also close to 1,400 words, is worse. It doesn’t even mention what crime Trump was convicted of (it links to a piece describing that Trump was, “falsifying business records to conceal alleged affairs.”
Donald Trump — in the form of his University, his charity, his real estate empire, and finally his biological person — has been adjudged a fraudster over and over. Along the way there’s the lady he assaulted in the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and the porn star he fucked who, he said, reminded him of his oldest daughter.
And almost nowhere, along the way, are journalists asking Republicans — or simply stating as fact — that the entire party has decided to apologize for fraud and fucking porn stars.
The press is giving Republicans a pass for conducting a wholesale assault on rule of law. Republicans are disavowing almost every thing they claim to stand for — and when you throw in the 140 cops assaulted on January 6, it would include everything — and yet the sordid details of what Trump actually did have disappeared.
Trump paid $400,000 to cover up fucking a porn star; he grossed it up to make sure it he’d kill the story in time.
It’s not just that Republicans are enforcing totalitarian unanimity in supporting Trump for fucking a porn star and covering it up. But that din of slavering Republicans debasing themselves to Donald Trump has silenced coverage about what it is Trump was found to have done.
Trump paid $400,000 to cover up fucking a porn star. Make the Bible-thumpers own that when they rush to defend him.
The press is indicating how it would cover Trump’s new mourning in America, were he to win in November. No problemo: both sides agree it’s just a little disagreement over not much.
Imagine how much the press would have to ignore to get there. Imagine the cultural, legal, and political conformity this version of the GOP would enforce, were it back in the WH and in control of Congress. And the physical coercion it would bring out at the hint of criticism of the Don. It would make 1950s whitebread America look like anarchy. It would lead to enormous levels of suffering and physical violence.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/03/donald-trump-hitler-similarities
While formally a resignation, given the way corporations hide what they actually do, Sally Buzbee seems to have been forced out at the WaPo, in the run-up to one of the most contested elections in American history.
Curious timing to bring in another Brit with no US experience. That the WaPo’s coverage will assuredly move further right would go a long way to explain the timing.
https://apnews.com/article/washington-post-buzbee-resign-editor-705e69a42fe8022ce46205bb06932fb8
Two new editors; one from the Wall Street Journal and one from a right wing British newspaper. Yep, shifting right in the lead up to the election.
Whenever the press fails utterly to realistically frame an issue, it helps to ask what frame democrats are pushing. Again here, they are pushing nothing, hoping that people will draw the correct conclusions. Is it surprising the press does the same?
Dems should demand the gop dump Trump. If they won’t (which, of course), declare that the gop is no longer a legitimate party, that they are unfit to govern in a democracy, they are little better than a criminal enterprise. Pressure, and name if you can, the so called moderates who whimper in the dark about how bad trump is. Force the tensions that we all know lie under the surface.
Journalists aren’t going to ask questions of GOPers that Dems themselves are afraid to pose.
Apples and oranges. Democrats and the press have two very different jobs.
We watch again and again conservatives putting the most ridiculous ideas and issues on the agenda of our media and then refuse to push our own framing of legitimate issues?
Why?
I’m not excusing the press. They should be able to describe reality without help, but when are we going to catch on to how this works?
Go take a look right now at what’s on the front page of major newspapers. Then look at who/what owns those papers.
The way this works is buying media and Democrats have a fundamental problem with subverting free press by owning it.
EDIT: still annoyed about your premise that Democrats haven’t been working the media correctly. I have spent weeks now trying to pull all the reports Voice of America — the media the American public owns — published about the Biden administration’s efforts to stop Netanyahu’s genocide. There is a massive mismatch between VOA’s plain fact reporting and the body of commercial news media’s reporting, as if the commercial media was intent on pushing a uniform narrative. It’s not as if the commercial media hasn’t regularly fucked with US public perception, like the run-up to the Iraq War or “but her emails,” no matter what Democrats made available to media for reporting.
There’s a point to what you’re saying. However with the press and the current state of the Rs a proven verdict would get framed as a he/she said. The press won’t suddenly change. They would much more likely write articles as- so and so says this, what say you? I wonder though if there are others with an audience who can try to put forward the framing you are talking about. I’ve been wondering myself why women’s groups aren’t publicly discussing the similarities between what Trump did to Stormy Daniels and what Harvey Weinstein did to actresses- the power difference, the you’ll never succeed without me, the hotel room, the assumption of sex, etc.
Do you believe for a second that the WaPo couldn’t have gotten some Dem quotes to match the TWELVE Republicans they chose to feature instead?
A lot of people like to complain about the Dems not “framing the issue”, but miss that the ones who truly frame most issues are the MSM, and they almost always choose Republican framing. Not because Dem’s don’t frame, but becuase their owners are predisposted to Republican framing.
Not likely to improve with the new Brit conservative running the WaPo, a major change just in time to further manipulate election coverage.
I get more than a little peeved at folks like Joe Scarborough, Michael Steele, Claire McCaskill and others who claim that in private many GOP pols admit how horrendous DJT is. If that’s the case, Joe, Mike, Claire, et al, out them. Is a friendship with or access to a source who is that much of an abject coward, worth it? Just out them. You all say the future of our constitutional government is at stake. So out the cowards.
Zirc
Larry Hogan (before the verdict: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
Lara Trump: “I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t support what he just said there. I think it’s ridiculous.”
I have deeply mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, shifting the Overton Window toward not respecting the rule of law is bad. On the other, Trump burning down Hogan lowers his chances of winning and the Republicans taking the Senate.
The Trumpistas have been undermining faith in our election integrity. Now they’re undermining faith in our system of justice. It’s an attack on democratic governance. Call it as it is. The fourth estate isn’t pulling its weight; it’s looking for clicks.
From now on, Republicans will not consider candidates unless they have a rap sheet equal to Trump’s; Business fraud, sexual predator, campaign finance scofflaw, reckless hoarder of national defense documents, and leader of the attempt to overturn the election on false pretexts, with a side of incitement to violence.
Possibly, the fearless reporters and analysts are so caught up in analyzing the impact of a felony conviction on the horse race, that they failed to notice what the felony conviction was for. Or that David Pecker testified that his paper was planting false stories about Trump’s opponents and killing adverse stories. One might hope for some retrospection and introspection from the news analysts and editorial writers. In vain.
Yup. Zero interest on the part of media about the stories Pecker’s AMI buried, or the ones AMI ran with the opposite intent.
What did Pecker’s vault contain? What other elections have been borked because of Pecker’s catch-and-kill practices?
Yeah, Pecker’s vault was almost surely a reason Trump and his lawyers treat and treated Pecker with such kid gloves. He knew better than to sell his vault files to the Don.
The McDougal stuff was included in the original indictment, right? And dismissed by Merchan.
I’ve yet to see any journalist ask Trump the most basic question:
“Now that you’ve been convicted of 34 felonies, will you be withdrawing your nomination and ending your campaign for President?”
Apparently he’s gotten into having reporters booted from his events if they ask him for evidence that Joe Biden was the mastermind behind his many charges, so I’m guessing he’d have the same reaction to any reporter asking this.
I think MSM is afraid of losing access to Trump and his circle, they are assuming he might win the election and then they will need that access. Also he will be on his revenge tour and will sicc his rabid MAGA fans on the “fake news media” again, or whatever.
If the Democrats win, it will be business as usual and no one will punish MSM for this phase of Trump-sycophancy. So they have incentive to soft-pedal Trump and no real incentive to go hard at him.
Which is unfortunate, because the world can not afford another 4 years with this unstable criminal idiot at the helm of the only remaining superpower. Russia/Ukraine, NATO/Russia, Israel/Gaza, Iran or North Korea with nukes, China/Phillipines in SCS, Taiwan… all of these conflicts require real leadership at the helm of the U.S. or they could have disasterous long-term consequences affecting the U.S. for decades. And if Trump wins, the U.S. might be too busy savaging itself internally to handle these crises effectively.
In the future, historians might look back on this time and say that WW3 had already started, and Americans just hadn’t noticed, so they reelected a corrupt immoral fascist “strongman” who wanted to appease Russia and sabotage NATO. Because the mainstream media wouldn’t ask his Republican enablers any hard questions. And i don’t want to live in that future.
While yelling about “Fake News” he was colluding to create fake news.
He had his crowds chant, “Lock her up” and has repeatedly insinuated that his opponents should go to jail.
The candidate that “tells it like it is” was proved to not be telling it like it is.
Maybe the press should just ask him why he didn’t just write the check straight to Stormy. If he says it was to protect Melania, ask them if Melania has access to the company’s books.
Michelle Goldberg has an opinion piece in the NYT about how Trump’s claims that Biden has weaponized the justice system against him are pure projection, a way to justify the abuses of the justice system the R’s plan to commit if Trump wins, by claiming they already happened while the D’s were in charge.
Media also strangely quiet about how the porn star fucker paid two research firms (BRG and Simpatico) $1.3 million to find election fraud but found none.
A theory about why today’s billionaires support Trump, apart from the professional courtesy of supporting another authoritarian dictator. Useful thing to investigate, when billionaires like Pete Thiel write, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” What Thiel means is “his” freedom to extract profits from any activity that produces them, without limit or accountability.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/03/billionaires-for-trump-presidential-election
MAGA motto:
Billionaires, Christians, fetuses, and viruses have rights!
Yes, I’ve been wondering about the circling of wagons. I think it’s that the billionaires are worried about the newly energized FTC
It means billions in fees and profits. But even if Congress, the courts, and the FTC made a full-on assault against monopolies and abuses of dominant positions, those billionaires would be fine. It would take longer to add to their pots of gold, but they would still have great mounds of them.
Like radical authoritarians on the Supreme Court and their patrons, those billionaires see Trump and this moment as their opportunity to control the entire government for their personal benefit.
Newly energized FTC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Amazon or just search = ftc amazon
That’s filed, Bezos brings in new editors at WaPo. And – if you like irony, how’s this for irony: https://www.amazon.com/Antitrust-Taking-Monopoly-Gilded-Digital/dp/0525654895
That’s Amazon selling the Klobuchar book about antitrust.
The Walton family has Walmart doing online retailing. Home Depot does online retailing. Bezos got there first and has market share. Walmart and Home Depot have separate retail market aims; Bezos is in each niche.
At a guess he did not buy WaPo on a whim. He did it as an act of capitalist democracy.
There is not much difference between Trump and the late Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, other than Batista was in the Cuban military and Trump thinks and believes he once served in the US military by being forced by his parents to attend a military boarding school for a short period of time when he was a teenager.
Batista was a ruthless and corrupt dictator who was bribed for years by the American Mafia led by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.
Trump is a Batista wannabe dictator who has been financed by the Putin led organized crime syndicate and the Saudi Arabia Royal Family organized crime syndicate for years.
The Florida Cuban exile community was created by the Batista loyalists who were thrown out of Cuba by Castro, including but not limited to, Judge Aileen Cannon’s mother and maternal Grandparents.
One of Trump’s largest support groups is the Florida Cuban exile community. And that community helps Trump create his anti-communist political positions.
Authoritarian dictators always quickly seize control of the media when seizing power. It’s the quickest way to brainwash and, thereby, control the citizenry.
Putin, Batista, Castro, MLB, Xi in China, Kim Jong Un in NK and candidate Trump covet controlling the media to control the citizenry.
And billionaires like Bezos, Murdoch and Miriam Adelson don’t care if Trump turns the US into an authoritarian dictatorship benefiting Trump because each already does business with Trump and their respective media companies support Trump.
They are planning on and paying for Trump to turn the US into an authoritarian state. Next to a resource-rich failed state, it’s the most profitable form of governance.
I agree.
Long ago these billionaires, who operate their companies as authoritarian dictators, figured out it is easier and cheaper to bribe/finance and control one president than 100 senators and 435 members of Congress.
Therefore, they finance and control the president and let him or her distribute campaign money at the president’s discretion to the campaigns of the senators and representatives.
Such a practice also grooms senators and representatives for potentially becoming future presidents.
search = biden comcast hollywoood
Hollywood swamps comcast in that search, for me using duck duck go; with the lead return link: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-11-30/joe-biden-hollywood-fundraiser-spielberg-reiner-caruso-shonda
Drop hollywood, search = Biden comcast, and the lead return is: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/31/fact-sheet-president-biden-highlights-commitments-to-customers-by-internet-service-providers-to-offer-affordable-high-speed-internet-plans-calls-on-congress-to-restore-funding-for-affordable-connect/
We live in an imperfect world.
Just a reminder that this was all in service to defeat Hillary. What a guy. Imagine didn’t he even tell us Stormy reminded him of his daughter —- what???
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We’ve adopted this minimum standard to support community security. It’s been a couple years since you commented last so you may have missed this change; unfortunately, at +250 comments to date you do not meet the threshold for grandfathering. /~Rayne]
The GOP are complicit, enablers and make more excuses for their leader with so much baggage.
And this from the party of law and order and the party of family values.
David Cay Johnston for over 30 years has reported on Trump, writes about the past to the present.
We Told You So!
Trump Guilty on All 34 Counts, But It’s Not Over
https://www.dcreport.org/2024/05/30/we-told-you-so/
AND
A documentary Trump had killed not seen for many years.
Trump: What’s The Deal? Full Documentary (1991)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYU2FJxsSeE)
Thank you for that article. David Cay Johnston pretty much nails the journalistic failures. The reporting from The NY Times and Washington Post on Trump’s recent civil fraud trial was seriously lacking. Trump Organization is so poorly run that a. Special Monitor was appointed. How is that is not worthy of follow up?
All politicians suck and most have no morals at all. Dems are no better than the GOP, they all stayed together when a sitting president was getting blowies in the oval from his 22 year old intern.
You have been flirting with demoralizatsiya here over the course of your 22 comments and now you’ve taken off your mask and gloves.
Goodbye, bad faith actor.
Thank you, Rayne!
Rayne, the excommunication choice is Marcy’s whether she does it personally or by an agent. That said, I am somewhat contrarian to the full Gestalt of EW but find it solid and helpful toward political beliefs I also hold.
I blog, as a Bernie progressive and hence a skeptic of the less progressive general tenor of the Democratic Party. I have time for it, but choose not to push my effort on this community to the point of only now pointing it out.
This interchange has caused me to post a firmer Biden 2024 item than previously, where lesser evil was noted as definitively favoring Joe. Bottom line, I could well be excommunicated from commenting on EW, if so, it is as it is, but before leaving I commend the entire effort here and urge any commentators retired as I am with time to blog to consider starting it, more voices at more outlets.
And GOTV effort is not a passive observation game. We need it.
Reply to Error Prone
June 5, 2024 9:36 am
Marcy and I met roughly 20 years ago as part of a movement to take the Democratic Party back toward a more progressive path. We’ve both been active within the Democratic Party. We know what it takes to make change happen within the party, through the party. I wrote a series in 2010 about my experience and most of it still holds up more than 10 years later. The party appears less progressive because voters on the left too frequently act as if voting is all that is required of them and not more active participation. They don’t show up to do the work, thinking some monolith exists which does it for them.
Given what we know, learned, and have invested into keeping this democracy for decades now, we have reasonable expectations of community members. When someone comments here without making an effort to read the content here they’re already on thin ice. When they come out and declare “All politicians suck and most have no morals at all” and spew both-side-ism, it’s obvious they have also never participated in the little-d democratic process except to publish their spleen or propaganda, whatever. They are acting in bad faith, their comments indistinguishable from trollery. They do not merit the time and resources offered here which are provided through donations of community members and Marcy’s dogged efforts.
Thoughtful commenters who’ve taken the time to read the posts here, engage seriously with that content and the community, are welcome. But don’t expect ass kissing, and don’t expect trollish behavior to be treated with kid gloves.
Your cynicism and gross generalizations are a symptom of the deteriation of American’s confidence in their government. You make Putin happy.
Another documentary the Trump Organization tried to suppress:
You’ve Been Trumped Too (2020)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9RweR9EUSg)
Investigative journalist Anthony Baxter travels between the US Presidential race and the Scottish countryside to chronicle the troubling confrontation between Donald Trump and a feisty 92-year-old widow, Molly Forbes, as she refuses to make way for his golf course. This shocking insight to a David and goliath battle is a remarkable document of the disconnect between political rhetoric and the lives of ordinary people.
Interesting documentary – thank you.
Perhaps Fox or Newsmax can tell us how many bad hombres with 34 felonies Biden let into the U.S.?
Which is exactly why they refuse to admit that politically Trump is a dead man walking and the GOP has put all their eggs in his casket.
I may be alone here but I loved the fact that trump has subjected every republican running for office to a loyalty test.
It places every one of them running in a purple district in a DIID-DIID situation.
If they swear loyalty to trump and all that he represents, they lose the independents and the suburban woman who are pissed about Roe.
If they distance themselves from trump they lose the MAGAt voters and probably garner a few death threats as a bonus.
Both scenarios result in them losing the race they are in as neither group is likely large enough to overcome the democratic opposition. They need the MAGAts AND the independents to win, but they are being forced by trump to pick one or the other.
I think most are doing the math and thinking MAGAt’s plus enough Indies are the more likely path to a win. So they put on their trump uniform and say their scripted lines with a shit-eatin grin and hope it’s enough. I think we’re going to see “Everything tump touches dies” at a whole new level come November.
“Trump paid $400,000 to cover up fucking a porn star; he grossed it up to make sure it he’d kill the story in time.”
This is awkwardly worded.
Perhaps the “it” is unwanted. That’s all you needed to say. But did you understand the point? Then done and dusted.
The message I think would be most effective is to refute Trump’s claim that he was convicted because the system is rigged.
He was convicted for basic legal reasons: (1) Prosecutors proved the case they outlined in their opening statement with sworn testimony and admissible evidence. (2) Trump’s opening statement said he would disprove the prosecutor’s case, but he did not provide sworn testimony and admissible evidence to do so.
This is a mirror image of his judicial challenges to the 2020 election — he was provided due process, failed to make his case, yet still claims he prevailed. “Heads I win, tails you lose.” To quote this site’s legal expert, “that’s not how it works.”
O/t this huffpost piece is well worth a read. It reports a correlation between Trump employees becoming potential witnesses and receiving significant increases in remuneration.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-witnesses-criminal-cases-financial-benefits_n_665dd41be4b0d187aa7b74e0
Let’s give credit where it’s due: HuffPost is running a ProPublica article. The original is here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-criminal-cases-witnesses-financial-benefits
Thank you.
Thanks Ms. Wheeler. I think the points contained in this post are breaking through and will become the conventional wisdom. People in other venues are saying the same things.
Find Ana Navarro’s comments on The View as an example.
One thing that I keep hearing is that “Trump Paid”, which doesn’t seem quite correct.
Trump paid Stormy Daniels with company money. This seems like an important distinction.
Wickedly good column, Prof. Wheeler! I love it when you get angry. Don’t accuse me of being a conspiracy wack, but I wonder how many people are aware of a lawsuit filed by a “Jane Doe” in the Southern District of NY on June 20th, 2016, alleging a series of violent sexual assaults by Trump and Jeffrey Epstein against Jane Doe when she was 14 YEARS OLD! The suit was withdrawn after threats on her life. Michael Cohen was still Trump’s fixer at the time. I wonder how he was involved??
https://www.alternet.org/2016/06/donald-trump-accused-rape-federal-court-lawsuit
As Ms. Wheeler further critiques MSM coverage, I wonder if she will conclude that the media is collaborating with Trump on keeping his fake persona alive?
Are his rallies fake?
He seems to be citing fake polls.
HIs business success was fake.
His playboy image was fake. He seems to have been one of Epstein’s pedophile clients.
Maybe most of the media doesn’t want to admit they created the fake Trump. Because then everything else they create comes into question.
Trump validates those who want power over the truth. (The law). That’s at the base. Cheaters (in general), are given legitimacy. It’s like a drug. It numbs the collective shame. What shame?
We have none. We can do what we want. And like a drug, it creates a frenzy. Free me of my sins, and all the rules that make me feel guilty. Free me of my shame. And the more he goes without consequence, the higher they get. Brainwash. Detachment from reality.
Addiction is a family disease. Dems have their part as the codependent spouse just trying to keep the ship afloat.
There is disease and dysfunction, denial on both sides. Right now the truth is that Trump (authoritarianism in general) is controlling our reactions, our choices. In survival mode we are reactive not strategic. We are in denial about the level of control we are allowing.
Donald Trump an unelected citizen has some control over the bills that pass, the congress, the senate, the judicial branch, and the 4th estate, enough to pose a serious threat to our country. We are accepting unacceptable behavior. He should not be treated as legitimate. As a candidate. Metaphor: we as a family are letting drunk dad drive us to the reunion. We are afraid to live in and face the truth in front of us.
The truth is marching on with or without us.
Thank you, Peacerme…
succinct summary.
Break up big media and the news monopoly.
OT: Cannon ordered the usual briefing schedule for SCO’s MOTION to Modify Conditions of Release by USA as to Donald J. Trump. After the week she wasted by making them re-file it, Trump’s response is due June 14 and any reply from SCO is due June 21.
Then she’ll probably wait a few weeks and issue a paperless order provisionally denying it but reserving the right to change her mind later. (Assuming no FBI agent is killed by a Trump supporter between now and then.)
If an FBI agent were killed and Smith mentioned it in his reply brief, she would scold him for the discourteous implication that she might have something to answer for.
Agree. Just about everything that matters has gone off the rails.
One of most aggravating (to put it mildly) oft repeated repub claim: all this is election interference!!!
The problem with that: Joe won hands down the last time, and Trump, MAGA and Fox have been lying about that ever since. There is -0- evidence in support of the big lie. Even in the Ninja Turtle’s farcical recounts in Az, their “results” found more votes for Biden. I’m sure, if Joe wins again, America and the world will be treated to the Much-Bigger-Lie (the sequel).
If you look at the 1860 Lincoln Prez election map it becomes crystal clear. The GOP has been engulfed by the Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats more recently). In-country migration has dramatically increased electoral heft of Confederate states and GOP owns the plains states (overweighting congress). GOP has taken ownership of SCOTUS -possibly for decades. Today’s GOP is reactionary, not conservative, and is jonesing to turn back the clock 150+ years to get to their comfort zone of white, male property owners controlling government. Christian fundamentalists can look past trump’s depravity & criminality to achieve this, they will shake hands with their devil.
If trump can pick up enough undecideds by beating his racist anti-immigrant drum effectively to make the election close his hand picked SCOTUS will push him across the finish line.
Undecideds should be scared shitless by what’s happening – but who knows? It’s close now with a strong economy, an October surprise could sens American democracy on an extended holiday.
At Alan Weisselburg’s suggestion (and I’m sure against every cheapskate fiber of his being), Trump reluctantly “grossed it up” for Cohen that one time.
In all other respects he has relentlessly grossed it down. All of it, and nothing more than the truth, or what used to be our shared reality. The ultimate confirmation: “I never said ‘lock her up.'”
As Seth Myers asks, what’s the play here? And it’s as obvious as it is brazen as it is, apparently, effective–not just to lie about a fact but to wash even momentarily inconvenient facts clean in the blood of the lie, to transform the truth into the shape of your lie…with the acquiescence of a willing mob.
Those Republicans (not all) haven’t any moral compass, for whatever reason. Temptation (such as power) finds such men (people) defenseless. They can’t do otherwise than trample on all and sundry and against all obstacles, not only the Law, if they can do so without impunity to themselves. I call them muck savages, because in the end, that’s what they are. Uncivilized at the end of the day, despite all faux appearances.
With each passing year they have revealed themselves. Now they bow down to the Animal without shame.
Kick them out into the wilderness where they belong.
Vote.
Blue suit, white shirt, red tie. A so-called Christian mumbling.
Remember this because when it comes, that is the Uniform, and that is the Speak.
6/6/24
Alito
White rose society
necessary and wise.
Supreme court take over
Foolish.
America the Beautiful exists.
A dream is extremely hard to kill.
Witch hunting repudiated.
So now you all know
that’s what I call alito,
the witch hunter.