Trump’s GOP Is Running on a Platform of Freeing Seditionists and Cop Assailants
I’m halfway done my first review of the materials Jack Smith released today.
All of us who have followed this have concluded there’s not any new news (though the presentation of it reveals certain things about Smith’s investigation).
So why did Trump’s lawyers wail and wail about releasing these materials before the election?
Just days ago, after all, Trump’s lawyers argued that releasing these materials would alter the election.
It may be this:
As the appendix documents, on March 11, 2024, Trump posted to Truth Social that, along with closing the border and DRILL, BABY, DRILL, his first priority, Day One, was to free the seditionists and cop assailants who had fought for him on January 6.
Prosecutors cited that post to support their argument that Trump ratified the violence that day.
As the Government identified in its Rule 404(b) notice, ECF No. 174-1 at 8-9, the Government will introduce some of the defendant’s numerous statements that post-date his time as President in which he has blamed Pence and approved of the actions of his supporters who breached the Capitol and obstructed the certification proceeding,722 thus providing evidence of his intent on January 6.
The defendant’s endorsement of the violent actions of his supporters on January 6, and his sentiment that they were justified in threatening Pence—all made while the defendant was a private citizen after the end of his term in office—are probative of his intent during the charged conspiracies.
722 See, e.g., GA 1970 at 17:37 (Video of Trump Interview 07/10/2021); GA 1926 at 1:15:30 (Video of Conroe Rally 01/29/2022); GA 1971 at 15:51, 16:42 (Video of Trump Interview 02/01/2022): GA 1962 at 48:29 (Video of Trump at Faith and Freedom Coalition 06/17/2022); GA 1966 at 09:30 (Video of Trump Interview 09/01/2022); GA 1973 at 43:07 (Video of Waco Rally 03/25/2023); GA 1694 (Transcript of CNN Town Hall 05/10/2023); GA 1964 (Video of Trump Campaign Statement 2024); GA 1967 at 45:18 (Video of Trump Interview 08/23/2023); GA 1965 at 56:10, 57:11 (Video of Trump Interview on Meet the Press 09/17/2023); GA 1935 at 35:50, 01:16:16 (Video of Greensboro Rally 03/02/2024); GA 967 (Donald J. Trump Truth Social Post 03/11/2024); Isaac Arnsdorf and Maeve Reston, 7rump claims violence he inspired on Jan. 6 was Pence’s fault, WASH. PostT, (Mar. 13, 2023, 8:09 p-m.), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/13/trump-pence-iowa/. [my emphasis]
The GOP candidate for President has a criminal docket. And in that criminal docket, today, the government included a post promising to free seditionists and cop-assailants with the same urgency with which Donald Trump promises to close the border. “My first acts,” the GOP standard-bearer stated, would include freeing the people who assaulted the Capitol on January 6.
This was the proposal back in March, one of the first things Trump did after Nikki Haley conceded. And since that time, the entire GOP has fallen into line behind that plan.
The Republican Party’s candidate for President is running on a platform of freeing cop assailants and seditionists.
There’s nothing new in this appendix. But that post does clarify things considerably.
Donny Trump, Mr. Law and Order. Makes you wonder why so many law enforcement unions are behind this schmuck.
As for Donny, he may feel he needs a big mob to get back into office, but he’ll need a bigger one to stay there.
I think it is safe to say that it has never been about law and order.
And I think it’s safe to say you are absolutely right in your opinion…
There’s a really strong article up at the Atlantic, about the rhetoric Trump has been using of late…
Written by Anne Applebaum, who knows what she’s talking about…
I’ve never been this afraid of an American candidate before…
Trump would disagree.
“I am the Law, and I give the Orders. Just ask SCOTUS, who declared me immune from prosecution!”
Was a snark tag really necessary?
It has always been about law and order–in the George Wallace sense. Trump is old enough to remember that trope.
Quite the opposite. It is about law and order, which kind is enforced more and with what emphasis and in how timely (deterrent) a manner..
What Republicans have long referred to as ‘deregulation’ is a euphemism for legalizing what kind of crime?
“DRILL, BABY, DRILL” is a euphemism for legalizing what kind of crime?
Donnie thinks more drilling and mining – especially in currently protected areas – will lower the cost of gasoline.
Don’t forget, he and antivaxer RFK Jr. are gonna Make America Healthy Again!
Ratholes of Lost Time
Unsound
Like a brute who went viral
Like a squeal within a squeal
On a bender, never winning
On an ever skimming deal
Like a downfall always counting
on someone to impugn
Like a mobster still returning
to a nominal tycoon
Like some schlock that keeps creeping
past the limits of the base
And the world just can’t grapple
with a brute so out of place
Like the brutes that you find
in the ratholes of lost time
Like a pummel that you cop to
that begets a pummel of it’s own
Then you have to case for a tavern
where you’ll be left alone
Like a plan that keeps evolving
through a half cockeyed scheme
by the principals and rogues
and mob bosses in the team
Malaise now mingles in the docket
Records rankle in your head
A newcomer quite so glibly
did a doozy on your spread
Covers gone from in a drawer
can leave their imprints on the stand
Your assistant’s constant humming
says you’re not in such demand
Files hanging in their folders
Your stagnant speeches are all wrong
Half-remembered words and places
But just where do you belong?
Now you know it’s close to over
as you are forced to be aware
that the people now are yearning
for a leader from elsewhere
Like a brute who went viral
Like a squeal within a squeal
On a bender, never winning
On an ever skimming deal
All your images maligned
Like the brutes that you find
in the ratholes of lost time
https://youtu.be/ibe6qiRIl0w
“Windmills Of Your Mind (M.Legrand) piano JMAGP”
SL,
Thank you for Ratholes of Lost Time, and Armenta’s amazing performance. After listening to Armenta, I came back here and could ‘sing’ your lyrics all the way through and it is brilliant. Love the ‘Squeal within a squeal’ Spot on!
The first time I heard this song it was in the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Although some of the cinematic elements don’t play as well 55 years on, I still find it to be a powerhouse movie. Definitely Recommended.
Thanks, Fran. That’s the 1st time I heard it, too. I love the rhythm, the emotion and how the song lends itself to story.
Thanks for encapsulating the sentiment in prose… may the words not be lost to time.
I just wanted to write a note of thanks to Dr. Wheeler….for your persistence and excellence in tracking and writing about these developments.
Much appreciated!
TFGs physical and cognitive decline is becoming increasingly apparent. I think the time may be right for the campaign and/or the supportive ad creators to raise the prospect of JDV lurking in the wings, ready to take over.
JD is historically unpopular and Donny is looking feeble.
They should push the message that a vote for TFG is a vote for JD.
This would have the added benefit of driving Donny closer to the precipice.
J.D. Vance is my next worst nightmare after Trump. What you suggest is what has me worried, especially with the rapidly deteriorating behavior of Trump. Vance, even more than Trump, should not be any where near the organs of government power. He is a junior member of the Oligarchy which wants to have the power, as well as the money.
What is clarified is that the GOP is Public Enemy #1.
I’ve considered the GOP an existential threat to the country, and therefore the world, for quite some time now…
I’ve been watching this moment creep closer and closer for 25 years, and I’m not being facetious when I say that.
Trump didn’t create this… he’s just an accelerant, and feeding off the energy that’s been there for a long time, waiting for someone like him to come along…
Trump is not an aberration; he is a culmination.
Yes… a culmination…
This moment has been a long time coming…
Trump is the culmination only if he wins.
If he doesn’t, will his voters melt away? Some surely will, disappointed their hero was revealed to have feet of clay.
But a huge chunk of his base, the militias and hate groups, and the political machine prepared to implement his agenda (think Bannon, JD, Stephen Miller, the Project 2025 crowd) will not likely go quietly. They will organize another attack on the summit, another attempted culmination, maybe a bigger and more desperate bang.
Meaningful de-escalation and detoxification of our politics will take a long time: genuinely populist, noncorporatist policy from a Harris admin could speed things along!
However, I cannot think of any shortcuts to the rational polity (based in a shared reality of facts not feels) we so desperately need in this moment of climate crisis.
N.B. Rayne, I may have used a different email address last time. Using this address going forward.
Stating the obvious, the inevitable conclusion of nihilism is dissolution.
Pretty astonishing how much stupid he chooses to take into the ring.
Pretty much clear, as it’s been for years.
This is what it means to “sleep walk” into autocracy. If Trump is successful, wins another term, it’s what history has taught us.
Hurts more when you stood watch it coming, the helplessness is what undoes people.
If only I did this or that…
Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal excoriates the majority of white Americans for supporting Trump:
Where normy white folks scared by replacement theories blend with environmentalists freaked by climate change, mixed with greedy corporatist; you end up with an electoral fascist stew.
This halloween is gonna be real frightening as the Ghosts of John Tantom haunts us all:
“https://www.propublica.org/article/john-tanton-far-right-extremism-environmentalism-climate-change?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-newsletter”
All true…but those in laws and relatives don’t care and want tcf to get elected…they won’t listen to me because I am a “godless liberal”.
What do you think is in the heavily redacted section? Lisa Rubin thinks a big part of it is Pence’s testimony. Why redact stuff that’s quotes from Pence’s book? Could be juicy.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/jack-smith-trump-evidence-jan-6-election-case-rcna175265
Yes. Pence’s testimony itself is in the GA 400-section she imagines, per the footnotes.
Thanks for this! And to Marcy for pointing out that Rubin realized the transcripts are arranged alphabetically, and there’s 100 SEALED pages between Jason Miller and Katrina Pierson – – just where Pence would fit in. Also, she takes into account the bullet points about Pence/Trump meetings in the Immunity Brief.
If Lisa Rubin is right about the people in the first section, I actually got 15 of them right as I was reading that section yesterday. Also, if you remember, in Marcy’s post on 10/1/24 (Donald Trump Didn’t Do the Homework Assignment,) I provided several lists of people who were involved with the rally who might be in some of the redactions. And, indeed, some of them are there. I didn’t realize it was in alphabetical order, though. That’s helpful.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/01/donald-trump-didnt-do-the-homework-assignment/
You go! SL. :-)
And… as I’m now working on getting the SEALED pages listed,
it makes me wonder who could be alphabetically before BARR?
[pdf1 – 7/723] SEALED
harpie,
Ali Alexander? Not sure if that is right for the context, though, because I haven’t gone back to look.
Or Steve Bannon?
SL: Two GRRRREAT educated guesses!!!
…might be both…
[I just finished doing the SEALED pages and will be posting at “JS Appendix”]
To harpie:
Technically, it could also be Sharron Angle. (I shared this article on previous posts. Among other names it mentions are David Bossie, Pam Bondi, Johnny McEntee, Ric Grenell, Matt Schlapp, Sharron Angle, Monica Palmer, Jay Sekulow.)
“Trump and his allies made a series of brazen legal challenges, including in Nevada, where conservative activist Sharron Angle asked a court to block certification of the results in Clark County, by far the state’s most populous county, and order a wholesale do-over of the election.”
“Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman was incredulous.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-overturn/2020/11/28/34f45226-2f47-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html
Here is a consolidation of names I mentioned in that previous post that may have a connection to the J6 rally:
Ali Alexander
Justin Caporale – (Women for America
First; Event Strategies Inc.)
Cindy Chafian
Julie Fancelli
Kimberly Fletcher – (Moms for America)
Mike Flynn
Brian Gibson – (leads a church in
Owensboro, Kentucky)
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Alex Jones
Charlie Kirk
Amy Kremer
Kylie Kremer
Mike Lindell
Ed Martin – (Phyllis Schlafly Eagles)
Jenny Beth Martin – (Tea Party Patriots)
Linda McMahon – (America First Policies;
also co-chair of 2024
transition team)
Maggie Mulvaney – (niece of former top
Trump aide Mick Mulvaney)
Katrina Pierson – (Tea Party and
spokesperson for Trump’s 2016
presidential campaign)
Megan Powers – (operations manager/director)
Proud Boys (names unknown, Tarrio?)
RAGA members
Hannah Salem – (operations manager
for logistics and communications)
Dustin Stockton
Roger Stone
Eric Trump – (Burthday is January 6.
J6 committee subpoenaed
his phone records and
there were texts.)
Caroline Wren
Tim Unes – (Event Strategies)
Wow! This is great! I’ll see how these names fit in with the sometimes quite long SEALED sections of Volume 1, here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/jack-smiths-appendix/#comment-1074929
Not content to let this story pass out of the 24-hour news cycle without pouring some accelerant on it, Trump denounces Judge Chutkan as “the most evil person” for releasing the redacted appendix.
BBC: Trump calls judge ‘evil’ for releasing case files before election
(Obviously this is Trump projecting, as usual)
And because Trump follows Roy Cohn’s rules, including: Attack, always attach.
Trump is running on the sedition platform. And yet it seems that the GOP Congressmen and Senators are almost getting a free pass.
Not a single remaining or running republican has publicly spoken out against the coup plotters and soldiers, as far as I’ve seen. They all support the once attempted failed coup that is still ongoing. Each one publicly supports the ringleader himself.
Only a painfully tiny percentage had the courage to say overthrowing the government was a bridge too far. Those members have been purged, or self purged. Every republican congressional candidate should be labeled as an insurrection supporter.
They’re protected by law and court decisions.
I probably didn’t phrase that very well. I meant the entire Democratic party should be labeling their opponents as insurrection supporters.
Now is too late, but it should have been a major part of every House and Senate campaign with riot footage of police being beaten. With enough repetition, maybe(?) the media would have been forced to eventual question some GOPpers on why they back or refuse to condemn the coup attempt.
Most notably, Speaker Johnson “almost” has a free pass.
The Flaxen Felon is gonna release criminals. Because Law and Order! Got it.
MAGAsshole in my neighborhood drives a black pickup with Trump flag. Icing on the cake: “Police Have Rights” sticker.
Betting he doesn’t know or care that covid is leading killer of cops.
https://nleomf.org/memorial/facts-figures/officer-fatality-data/causes-of-law-enforcement-deaths/
I finally put up lawn signs for Harris and all Dem candidates. My next door neighbor responded by adding 2 more Trump signs.
It’s hard not to be depressed by the fact that it’s a dead heat. How could so many voters, with the information readily available, be making the choice to support Trump? And even if Harris wins, the fact remains that more than 40-percent (probably almost 50-percent) of our voters favored a candidate who uses straight-up fascist rhetoric.
My work involves representing a large number of blue collar people who’ve been taking it on the chin for decades. For just as long, I’ve been trying to tell everyone how angry they are. These blue collar folks feel – with considerable justification – that the establishment figures in both parties have betrayed them.
I think we’re now seeing that anger turn into something terribly malignant.
Remember polls don’t vote. And there are a lot of GOP polls flooding the zone, with bogus results.
I hope that’s right. But even if Harris wins by five percentage points, we’ll still have a big chunk of the electorate carrying a contempt for democracy. It will be critical in the long run to bring them back into the fold.
74 million votes for Trump in 2020. The unwind all begins with education. It will take decades.
Old Tulsa Dude –
Too true – but education alone will not win the day IMHO.
The judiciary branch will indeed take decades to burn through the performative assholery of Addison McConnell.
Yep. I agree we’re still divided. This is the same lesson from 2016 – that rural America and blue collar workers need to be heard. And also that people feel strongly about immigration, basically the top issue Trump runs on.
And yet Dems keep failing here. I’m pro immigration but I don’t understand why so many were let in the past 4 years, especially during a housing crisis.
It’s not going to prevent me from voting for Kamala but why we can’t get a middle ground on immigration baffles me.
Reply to CitizenSane77
October 20, 2024 at 12:18 am
Sticking a pin in this because it probably deserves a full post.
In the meantime, let me say Dems are not some mythic monolithic sparkle pony with a magic wand. They are engaged citizens who show up and do the work of democracy. You don’t think the work’s getting done? Have you considered the possibility that there aren’t enough engaged citizens showing up to do the work, and that too many people believe some magic sparkle pony isn’t doing its job?
He tweeted who he’d pardon. That was picked up by the press. Jack Smith wants to get the tweet into evidence at trial. It is cumulative. Did he ratify Jarad’s father by pardoning him? Did he ratify Build that wall Bannon? He pardoned when he had the power. We can infer all we want. It is one cumulative piece of evidence. A websearch = Trump would pardon Jan 6 defendants — shows it. He got coverage calling them “political prisoners.” He is touting it. I remain very happy I voted for Harris already, disliking Trump, for many reasons beyond Jan 6, but including it.
I do not see his campaigning that way as wrong if true. It is but one part of the things against Trump in deciding who to vote for. It surely is not breathtaking new News.
It’s not breathtaking new News that Trump is and has been engaged in criminal behavior.
But much of his criming passes to many unnoticed because the media never remarks on it. This is in no small part why Trump has been able to get away with so much cumulative criminal behavior — it’s never called out as such, it’s treated as just smack talk on social media though in reality it’s evidence of the conspiracy to defraud the US and implicit bribery. Only the biggest most egregious stuff is noticed though all the small stuff unremarked upon by media supports the big crimes.
Now the public is expected to ignore the GOP’s complicity in the same fashion, all its small crimes like aiding and abetting Indictee_1 and Conspirator_1 now part of its platform, embedding organized crime into its raison d’etre.
Do the GOP Members of Congress who supported the coup attempt have a viable alternative that doesn’t put them at risk of loss of their position and of incurring the enmity of. Trump supporters?
I don’t excuse them. I think they are the equivalent of “made men” in the Mafia.
I’m not here to suggest “viable alternatives.” We’re supposed to fire the made men. But the average voter doesn’t understand most GOP congresspersons are made men and that they’re supposed to fire them.
Or they’re just fine with what their mafiosos have served up for reasons, a key one of which is white supremacy.
Thanks Rayne for reply. If Trump wins I fear that, but my vote is in. If Trump loses, I fear JD. Win or lose, JD seems the MAGA future, and Cruz/Rubio and such do not seem to present a MAGA death star. If Trump does win and pardon as he has said, the nation will suffer but will it make JD’s succession easier or more troubled by ending propaganda “political prisoner” status?
Silicon Valley and J6 seem to present compatibility issues. There, IMO, follow the money.
IMO the GOP realignment is not temporary but now cemented into Republican DNA. The new money, Musk and Thiel, dwarfs Wall Street involvement while Hollywood/LA seems generally Dem – to stay that way.
As older than Trump I will not see how far JD gets, and how he ultimately acts, with age. He is a zealot. More that than opportunist, though both, IMO.
Of course they do. US Congress is not the Gulag.
Not breathtaking news either, but tonight there is a documentary on French tv, which can be watched for free the channel’s website, called “Operation Trump: Russian spies to the conquest of America”.
https://www.france.tv/france-5/le-monde-en-face/6569114-operation-trump-les-espions-russes-a-la-conquete-de-l-amerique.html
Featuring interviews with Kenneth F. McCallion, Peter Strozk, John Bolton, Jack Barsky (the inspiration for “The Americans”) and Oleg Kalugin (former KGB chief of exterior operations, 1974-1990 who was Putin’s boss but ran to the US when they fell apart),
Nothing they say will be news to the reader of this site (Russian mafia links, the KGB putting the screws on him starting in the 80s etc). But who knows: if Trump throws a tantrum about the show, it will attract attention to it when it would otherwise have gone unnoticed by the mythical undecided voters. He sometimes does these self-defeating things.
Trump: “Arnold Palmer had a big penis.”
Mike Johnson: “Why is Jake Tapper talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis?”
Trump: “I won 2020.”
JD Vance: “Why is the media talking about 2020?”
President Trump speaks for TWO HOURS at his rallies so OF COURSE Arnold Palmer’s penis is going to get mentioned. Why can’t Jake Tapper understand this?
–Mike Johnson
In addition to the hint to Anne Applebaum’s article in The Atlantic (above at https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/18/trumps-gop-is-running-on-a-platform-of-freeing-seditionists-and-cop-assailants/#comment-1074869): Today Applebaum received this year’s Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. The laudatio was held by 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Irina Scherbakowa.
More info available at the German Book Trade’s page https://www.friedenspreis-des-deutschen-buchhandels.de/en/alle-preistraeger-seit-1950/2020-2029/anne-applebaum (despite the URL’s name in English), including the speeches (as prepared).
Salon.com calls a spade a spade:
The NY Times is a paragon of courage compared to the Washington Post.
At least The NY Times has called Trump unfit and has endorsed Harris. This past weekend, it ran an editorial saying Trump would be bad for business.
The Washington Post has tiptoed up to that water’s edge a few times and has decided the water is too hot.
Both have softpedalled Trump’s rambling and incoherence. Both papers would have demanded Biden’s resignation if Biden had shuffled on stage for 39 minutes, swaying to a playlist that included Ave Maria and YMCA.
Profiles in cowardice.
You can lead a horror to water, but you can’t make it think.
That’s Dan Froomkin, writing at Salon.
He admits chiding many NYT reporters for the “pusillanimity” — I assume he prominently includes Peter Bake and Maggie Haberman among them — but their direction comes from the top, from Sulzberger and Kahn. Those two insist on ignoring the stakes and holding to a fictitious middle ground that no one occupies anymore, because it no longer exists. They cling to the cliche that when both sides are mad at you, you’re doing something right. If that were ever true, it’s not true anymore.
But I think Sulzberger and Kahn are lying about that. Holding to a fictitious middle ground allows them to sanewash Trump and lie about what he means, is doing, and will do to America and its government. I think they want those things to happen. They imagine, like so many in their wealth class, that because they came out on top last time, they will again. But as they know well from their generously compensated investment advisers, past performance is no guarantee of future success.
I think even Froomkin is being too nice by half calling the work of Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman pusillanimous.
Disingenuous is more accurate, which mirrors Sulzberger and Kahn’s intents.