Month: June 2021

In spite of the widespread belief on the delusional right that the protests last summer were violent insurrections which were far worse than the January 6th tourist trips that just got a teensy bit out of hand, it turns out that the right wing was responsible for the worst violence there as well. David Neiwert reports:

Despite the widespread media narrative blaming Black Lives Matter and antifascist activists for last summer’s protest violence, there were plenty of suspicions that far-right extremists seeking to intensify the public’s fear of the “violent left” were in fact responsible for a significant amount of it. These suspicions were fed by such incidents as the assassination of a federal officer in Oakland by two far-right “Boogaloo Bois” and the arrest of another “Boogaloo” enthusiast from Texas for attacking a police station in Minneapolis.

Now we know, thanks to federal prosecutors investigating the Oakland incident, that in fact it was not the act of a single “lone wolf” and his accomplice, but rather part of a larger plot by a group of far-right extremists who called themselves the “Grizzly Scouts” and planned a series of deadly attacks on law-enforcement officers with the intent of making it appear to be the work of the “violent left.” Even more disturbing, according to the San Jose Mercury-News, most of these conspirators, following their arrests for destroying evidence in the case, have been released on bond by federal magistrates who have deemed them not a risk to the community.

The Grizzly Scouts, according to the grand jury indictment handed down in April, plotted a variety of lethal actions targeting law-enforcement officers in the months and weeks before fellow “Boogaloo Boi” Steven Carrillo—an active-duty Air Force sergeant—shot and killed federal protection officer Dave Patrick Underwood on May 29, 2020, and then a week later, a Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputy seeking to arrest him. Carrillo was a key member of the group, which in addition to planning attacks on police, engaged in paramilitary training exercises at the home of a member near Turlock, California.

The four men named in the indictment—Jessie Alexander Rush, 29, of Turlock; Robert Jesus Blancas, 33, of Castro Valley; Simon Sage Ybarra, 23, of Los Gatos; and Kenny Matthew Miksch, 21, of San Lorenzo—and Carrillo used a WhatsApp chat group for the Grizzly Scouts labeled “209 Goon HQ” to plan their attacks and organize training sessions as part of the so-called “Boogaloo” movement with which they identified.

The men created a so-called “Quick Reaction Force” intended to perpetrate acts of violence against their perceived enemies, and sent one member to scout a protest in Sacramento. They also cooked up an “Operations Order” document describing police officers as “enemy forces,” and described taking some law-enforcement officers prisoner: “POWs will be searched for intel and gear, interrogated, stripped naked, blindfolded, driven away and released into the wilderness blindfolded with hands bound.”

On May 26, three days before he shot Underwood, along with another federal officer who survived, at a Black Lives Matter protest in Oakland, Carrillo had messaged Ybarra that he wanted to conduct a “cartel style” attack on police, and the two men then met in person in Ybarra’s van to discuss the idea. Before leaving his home in Ben Lomond for Oakland on May 29, Carrillo had texted Ybarra that he was heading out to “snipe some you know what’s.”

There’s more and it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Honestly, I think the police are making a big mistake if they think the right wing is their ally. They may be in certain circumstances (when they’re going after Black people, for instance) but this newly radicaled right doesn’t recognize any authority but themselves.

As we know, Trump’s personality and worldview is built around the fact that his own weaknesses and pathologies are projected on to others. But it is very risky when he gets it wrong:

In early 2020, a frustrated and furious Donald Trump described Joe Biden as “a mental retard” while struggling to cope with his own placement in early polls, according to a passage from “Frankly, We Did Win This Election”: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, a forthcoming book by senior Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. The author notes that Trump vented his anger at the time by interrupting “a policy meeting in the Oval Office to ask, ‘How am I losing in the polls to a mental retard?’” 

In another moment Bender writes that Trump held back on focusing his firepower on Biden during the primary stage of the election because he was convinced that the Democratic Party was scheming to switch out now president Biden for a different candidate—such as Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama—over the summer. The source of this conspiracy theory, per Bender, was Dick Morris, a former Clinton White House adviser who was “quietly advising Trump” last year. “Dick Morris told Trump that Biden was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee,” Bender writes, while others in Trumpworld felt Biden would exit the race and be replaced by someone else if Trump began bashing him too hard. “Others said Fox News anchor Sean Hannity expressed concern that Biden would collapse under a sustained attack from Trump.”

According to Bender, Trump also felt that his attack strategy had backfired during the first stage of the Democratic primary. “The president, meanwhile, had often complained that his early attack on [Elizabeth] Warren had damaged her presidential bid, which he regretted because he viewed her as an easier opponent than Biden,” Bender writes. “Now he worried that a heavy blitz of attack ads would hasten the secret plot being hatched by Democrats, and his mind raced with who they might select in Biden’s place.” During a meeting held the month after the coronavirus outbreak hit the U.S., Trump expressed his Biden replacement theory to advisers, saying that Democratic leadership would “realize [Biden is] old, and they’re going to give it to somebody else. They’re going to give it to Hillary, or they’re going to give it to Michelle Obama.” 

One person in Trump’s circle did work to put a stop to this absurd belief, which Trump apparently clung to so deeply that he “had cited it as a reason to hold off on heavy spending against Biden earlier in the month.” Bender writes that Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio “devoted nearly an entire page of [a campaign memo] to debunking a conspiracy theory that had bubbled up inside Trump World, including with the president, that Democrats were going to steal Biden’s nomination at the convention.” In the memo, Fabrizio reportedly wrote, “I know there is some concern (which I strenuously disagree with) that if we go after Biden too soon, we can collapse him, and the Dems will replace him at their convention. I know POTUS tends to share this opinion.” Bender adds: “The pollster aimed to debunk the theory by outlining the remaining Democratic primaries, in which Biden had no significant challenger, and the delegate math to secure the nomination. Biden would have enough delegates to secure the nomination in just three weeks, Fabrizio explained, and it would be mathematically impossible to steal it in four weeks.”

He and his cadre of lunatics, con men and fools truly believe that everyone else in the country is as stupid and crazy as they are. Joe Biden is not senile. He ran a smart campaign and knew exactly what he was doing. The idea that Orange Julius Caesar is the sharp one is just hilarious.

I don’t doubt that he thought this. But you do have to wonder why he and Giuliani worked so hard to sabotage Biden’s campaign that he ended up getting himself impeached for it. I think it indicates that all this talk abut Biden’s alleged limitations was him protesting too much. He was worried.

We aren’t going to have a sober January 6th bipartisan commission because the Republicans know that many among them are guilty as sin. Hopefully the Democrats will be able to hold some serious hearings into the insurrection to connect all the dots that are still floating around.

In the meantime, check out this piece by Amanda Carpenter at the Bulwork which makes a good start at tying together some of the evidence:

Department of Justice court filings for the various arrestees offer crucial insights into what the participants in the insurrection hoped would happen. Read in conjunction with contemporaneous public statements from Trump and his allies, as well as comments from Pentagon officials, it is possible to assemble a rough timeline of what the various players on January 6 had in mind.

As it turns out, they were all talking and thinking quite a lot about insurrection long before it happened.

To understand January 6, 2021, we must first look back to June 1, 2020.

That was the day Donald Trump delivered a terse Rose Garden speech threatening to deploy the U.S. military to any city or state that “refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents.” The speech was prompted by the protests that began on May 26 in Minneapolis and spread throughout the country after George Floyd was killed by police. Trump’s staff argued that the threatened military deployment would have been permitted under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the president to deploy federal troops for domestic law enforcement under certain circumstances.

As Trump spoke, federal law enforcement officers, joined by officers from other local jurisdictions, clashed with protesters near Lafayette Square, just north of the White House. Officers outfitted in riot gear pushed protesters away from the square, firing rubber bullets at them. Tear gas was used. Army helicopters buzzed the crowds. Trump then marched across the square, flanked by officials and aides, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. All so Trump could have a photo op in front of St. John’s Church.

The message was clear. Trump had a military and was willing to use it. But the backlash from the military community came quickly. Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said he was “sickened” to “see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church.” Gen. James Mattis, the respected Marine general who had preceded Esper as Trump’s defense secretary, said he was “angry and appalled.”

Secretary Esper soon distanced himself from Trump, albeit after the fact. He told reporters at a June 3 Pentagon briefing, “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” Gen. Milley later reportedly got into a “heated discussion” with Trump over whether to send active-duty troops to the streets, and in July he publicly apologized, saying, “I should not have been there” for Trump’s photo op.

But Republican politicians and conservative commentators supported Trump’s move. Sen. Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Send in the Troops”; it was so controversial that the paper later said it should never have been published and one of the responsible editors resigned.

Through it all, Trump never let go of the idea. And as summer changed into fall, talk on the right of an “insurrection” that might be met with a military response shifted from the George Floyd protests and civil unrest to the 2020 election. The same terms and the same proposed action, just a new target.

In a Fox News appearance in September, host Jeanine Pirro asked Trump how he would react if he won the 2020 election and Democrats rioted. “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want,” Trump said. “Look, it’s called ‘insurrection.’ We just send in, and we do it, very easy. I mean, it’s very easy.” That same month, in an appearance on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars program, Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone—who would later be pardoned by Trump for witness tampering in the Russia investigation and lying to Congress—also talked up the idea of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act.

Although Trump and his allies were in disagreement with the military community about the Insurrection Act, Trump seemed to have other ideas about whom he could call for backup.

During the September 29 debate, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace asked Trump whether he was willing to “condemn white supremacists and militia groups and . . . say that they need to stand down.” Trump replied “sure” but then said the Proud Boys groups should “stand back and stand by” for the election.

“But I’ll tell you what,” Trump continued, “somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”

After the press called the election for Joe Biden on November 7, Trump quickly fired Esper, who had openly opposed invoking the Insurrection Act, and installed Christopher Miller as acting defense secretary. And, as “Stop the Steal” efforts gained steam through November and December, Trump’s allies Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and Michael Flynn often advocated using the Insurrection Act as a catch-all solution to any number of problems Trump faced. One disturbing Politico headline makes the point: “MAGA leaders call for the troops to keep Trump in office.”

If anyone was primed to take marching orders about insurrection from Commander-in-Chief Trump, it was Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. To him, it must have sounded like a bugle call directly in his ears.

Rhodes, who founded the group in 2009, has been talking about insurrection for years. And the combination of COVID lockdowns and BLM protests apparently triggered his militant aspirations more than ever. He wrote on Facebook in August 2020 that “Civil war is here, right now” and warned there would be “open warfare with Marxist insurrectionists by Election Day.” Shortly after the media called the election for Biden, Rhodes said in a livestreamed speech that viewers should “stand up now and call on the president to suppress the insurrection.”

He meant it.

There’s a lot more at the link about what came next with the OathKeepers.

It’s hard to believe that we’re going to let this whole thing just fade into obscurity because 40% of the country has been eating lead paint chips or something but there’s a very good chance that we will.

The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics. Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner. — Joe Manchin

Democratizing bills are almost always partisan. It’s damned near definitional. And when the white supremacists (always wanting to find ways to make America less democratic) don’t get what they want they stage insurrections and start civil wars.

Manchin is full of shit. But you knew that.

https://twitter.com/marinamaral2/status/1401939178502475778

Same old, same old …

John Amato on Trump’s looney Fox phone call this morning:

The seditious former so-called “president” told Fox Business that he won the election but Facebook stole it.

His grip on reality is GONE.

MAGA sycophant Stuart Varney asked what was to be done about social media companies taking action against him.

“I got 75 million votes which is more than any sitting president ever got. I won the election but they cheated,” the traitor said.

President Biden received almost 82 million votes, the most by any presidential candidate in history, chump.

Traitor Trump continued, “By the way, Facebook and Zuckerberg with 500 million dollars worth of phony lock boxes, that he put on. Some of them had 96% Biden votes in them, 96%. There were like just dumping ballots. It was a phony deal, and let’s see how that all turns out but there’s a lot of litigation coming..”

I’ve never heard this particular lie before. And it’s a whopper.

By saying there is “more litigation” coming against the 2020 election, he’s fueling the idea to his followers that he still might be reinstated.

It’s always about keeping the grift going.

This is why Trump has been kicked off Twitter for good. Facebook only suspended him for two years, but they will “review” that in 2023. Does anyone think his online behavior will have improved by then?

Traitor Trump continues to be a malignant tumor on the airwaves, spreading diseased ideas. But a fascist can’t do it alone, so he’s being equally enabled by conservative media outlets and hosts who refuse to question him about his crazed lies.

Some more highlights:

Trump's solution to cyberattacks is to stop using computers pic.twitter.com/txRp0jgE1I

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2021

Congrats, Senator Manchin pic.twitter.com/LbfUkgEmHW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2021

Last Friday I wrote about how the Democrats plan to spend the month of June deliberately failing to pass their legislative agenda in order to demonstrate how intransigent the GOP is being with their use of the filibuster. It is reminiscent of the House plan to pass “messaging bills” in the last congress as a way of illustrating that the Senate was blocking popular legislation.

How’d that work out? 

Judging from the comments from various Democrats in this article, many in the party remain convinced that if they can show how obstructionist the Republicans are being, they can persuade the filibuster clingers in their own caucus to support some reforms that would allow the party to actually fulfill its promises. The fatal flaw in that logic is that it assumes the Democrats even have 50 votes for such a simple agenda. They, of course, do not.

This weekend, Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, threw another bucket of ice cold water on that cunning plan with an op-ed in his local newspaper announcing that he would not vote for the big voting rights bill, the For the People Act, and reiterating his pledge that he will never vote to weaken or end the filibuster. It’s tempting to try to parse the word “weaken” to mean something other than “reform” but it’s getting a little bit ridiculous at this point. It’s pretty clear that Manchin will not touch the filibuster. And while he claims to support the less comprehensive “John Lewis Voting Rights Enhancement Act,” he also made it very clear that he believes it must be bipartisan enough to pass a 60-vote majority threshold. He seems to think there will be some Republicans on board with such legislation —which is highly unlikely — but even if there are there will not be 10, which means they will filibuster and we are back to where we started.

A few months back I wondered if Manchin wanted to be remembered as the Strom Thurmond of his time. Apparently he does.

In his new op-ed, Manchin wrote that Democrats “conveniently ignore how [the filibuster] has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.” It’s true. It did protect the rights of white racist Southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond. Today’s Democrats aren’t conveniently ignoring that, however. He is.

Fox News host Chris Wallace grilled Manchin on Fox News Sunday and asked him why, if he really wants bipartisanship, he doesn’t keep alive the possibility that he might vote to bust the filibuster, giving the GOP incentive to actually negotiate. He asked, “by taking it off the table, haven’t you empowered Republicans to be obstructionists?” Manchin went into a song and dance about how he knows there are 6 or 7 good Republicans who want to work on a bipartisan basis —neglecting to acknowledge that without 10, the GOP will still successfully filibuster every last bill.

At this point it’s more than fair to assume that the Koch-funded efforts to pressure Manchin to oppose the For The People Act and protect the filibuster at all costs have paid off. His clumsy, illogical, fatuous rationale doesn’t pass the laugh test.

So what does all this add up to?

Well, I’m sorry to say that it looks like it adds up to the end of President Joe Biden’s first term agenda. His administration may get a puny infrastructure bill that cannibalizes most of the money from vital programs which benefit average Americans. And that’s a win-win for the GOP. There’s also a possibility that Congress may pass the Paycheck Fairness Act aimed at increasing gender pay equity and maybe one or two other smaller priorities. There will be the usual fights over the debt ceiling and the budget. But that’s probably it.

So once they get done with what Sam Seder calls the June Loserpalooza what are all these elected officials going to do with their spare time? Well, maybe it’s time for them to start taking their oversight responsibilities seriously and crank up the hearings? Investigations have apparently been happening behind the scenes, obscured by the need to foreground the legislative agenda. They now need to come up to the front.

Last Friday, the House finally got to hear from former White House Counsel Don McGahn after years of stonewalling. A transcript of the testimony will be released this week but he reportedly confirmed the details in the Mueller Report about Donald Trump asking him to obstruct justice during the Russia Investigation. Democrats missed the chance to have McGahn testify in public and provide a reminder that Trump, the once and possibly future president, behaved in office like a mafia boss instead of a president. And as this weekend’s first big rally-style speech grimly demonstrated, Trump is not going away.

Since the GOP refused to back the bipartisan January 6th Commission, the Democrats will just have to do it and the sooner they get started the better. Perhaps the Senate Judiciary Committee could hold some public hearings with testimony from former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows whom they have uncovered was in close contact with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in the waning days of the administration pressuring him to investigate some of the most batshit crazy election conspiracy theories out there. I see no reason they couldn’t call Donald Trump himself to testify. President Gerald Ford testified before Congress about Richard Nixon’s pardon when he was still in office. Trump is a private citizen, just as Hillary Clinton was when they publicly grilled her for 11 hours in one of the 14 different Benghazi probes.

They also need a serious inquiry into what happened with the pandemic. The latest brouhaha about the Wuhan lab should certainly be explored but perhaps they might want to take a close look at Trump’s collusion with China during the first few months of the pandemic as well. Slate’s Will Saletan documented all the public evidence a few months back and it’s far more damning than people may realize. And naturally they need to look at all the malfeasance and corruption in the Trump administration’s completely inept response to the crisis.

There are a dozen other potential crimes to look at from Trump’s foreign policy dealings to the enduring mystery behind the weird, dangerous personnel moves in the intelligence and military hierarchies in the last months of the administration. And that’s just for starters.

The Big Lie is growing every day and the Democrats need to use their institutional power to contest this version of events and the entire idea that Trump had a hugely successful presidency and was cheated out of a second term. Joe Manchin and his comrades in the status quo caucus may thwart their ability to legislate needed change but he cannot stop Democrats from shining a light on what the Republicans have done. We simply can’t afford to let them sweep it under the rug this time. 

Salon

Donald J. Trump is a damaged human being. That does not excuse his cruelty, lawlessness, deceitfulness, abuse of power, or all the rest. He is the Seven Deadly Sins on two legs if not a walking DSM. But at his core he is pathologically insecure and needy.

He needs constant praise and affirmation. If Trump is not the center of attention in every setting, he gets angry. He becomes jealous of anyone who might draw away attention from Himself. He will publicly demean them or seek retribution.

It is Trump’s very neediness and insecurity that inspires his cult-like following. Followers see themselves reflected in him. Not in his silver-spoon upbringing, his gilded accommodations, or his pretensions to self-made success, fortune, and vigor. Like him, Trump’s faithful need to see themselves at the center of American civic life. They grow angry at anyone who threatens to draw away the spotlight or who demands a share. Like him, they seek retribution against rivals political, economic, religious, and social.

His believers have always been at the center of American civic life. As was grandpappy, and his grandpappy. That’s the way they grew up. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it always was. That’s what God intended when he bequeathed dominion over this land to white, Christian, European males. That is the natural order of things, the inheritance Trump promised to restore. He alone.

That natural order has been upset. By civil rights for Blacks. By women’s rights. By LGBTQ rights. By immigration. By diversity. By climate change. By anyone and anything that vies for a share of attention at the center of American civic life that Trump followers claim exclusively — just not in so many words. Stop the Steal is not about elections.

Freedom for the cultists means being unencumbered by responsibility for any good greater than one’s own. It is a shriveled, Scroogian view of the world costumed as personal responsibility and frontier self-reliance. There is no such thing as society to which they owe allegiance if their tribe alone is not at its very center.

It is not just Confederate monuments coming down off pedestals. It is the myth of the American Übermensch. Neither Trump nor his cult are happy about that. Not at all.

---

That’s not terribly profound. I just needed to write it down.

• 

Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) detectives finally caught up with Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and served him with papers (Axios):

Representatives of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) have finally served a lawsuit that alleges Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and other pro-Trump allies bear responsibility for the Capitol riot, the Republican congressman said Sunday.

Why it matters: Swalwell had been trying since March to serve the suit on Brooks. Attorneys for the Democrat said last Wednesday they’d hired a private investigator to locate Brooks.

What they’re saying: “Well, Swalwell FINALLY did his job, served complaint (on my WIFE),” Brooks tweeted.

• He alleged that the Democratic lawmaker’s team illegally trespassed in the process, “accosting my wife!” He didn’t elaborate further, though he added: “More to come!”
• Representatives for Brooks and Swalwell could not immediately be reached.

Forbes (later):

Swalwell attorney Philip Adonian told Forbes the allegation is “utterly false” and that the process server “did not enter the house,” adding that he “lawfully handed the papers to Mo Brooks’ wife at their home… which is perfectly legitimate under the federal rules.”

Brooks spokesperson Clay Mills told Forbes the Brooks’ filed a police report over the alleged incident, claiming “video proof” the server entered their home without consent and “refused to leave when Mrs. Brooks demanded.”

Well. Brooks the riot inciter is certainly a credible source on illegal trespass.

Sarah Burris at Raw Story:

Brooks has been in hiding for about a month, dodging process servers who delivered a subpoena in Swalwell’s civil lawsuit. Brooks claimed that the person who handed his wife the subpoena illegally trespassed. It was something that drew mockery from those online who saw his tweet.

If Brooks feels that the law was broken in serving the subpoena he can object in court, but he would have to appear there to do so, where he could be served a subpoena again.

Tarnation! The gentlemanly, rebel Mr. Brooks, is just confounded by it all. And, Suh, he will have satisfaction! Just not from Twitter.

Trespass you say? Did Swallwell’s team riot or kill anyone? https://t.co/G3Ewi214QO

— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) June 7, 2021

https://twitter.com/clwtweet/status/1401629382091943936

https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1401632700222615559?s=20

I’ll bet they allow Brooks to drive in Alabama.

He just can’t believe that over 80 million Americans hate him with a burning passion — but we do:

The former president questioned the notion of the country being evenly divided, despite having a Senate that is split with 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans and a House that is narrowly controlled by Democrats, along with swing states like Georgia and Wisconsin that were decided by slender margins in last year’s election.

“Their policies are terrible,” he said. “There’s no way they go 50-50. Who the hell wants to defund the police? Look at what’s happening where they’re defunding the police. The crime rate is going up. The policy is so bad. … But I don’t believe it’s 50-50 because our country isn’t there.”

He added: “I think a lot of these elections where they [Democrats] always seem to have an advantage … I don’t believe it. I can’t believe that some of these states are blue. I know those people. They’re smart people. They love me because they love what I stand for. They’re not into these things. There’s something going on and we have to be very, very careful with our election process.”

In the 2020 presidential election, Biden won with 306 Electoral College votes, to 232 electoral votes for Trump. Biden also secured 51% of the popular vote to Trump’s 47% percent.

Trump, who for months has pushed debunked conspiracy theories about his election loss, influenced a wave of GOP-led voting laws that have sought to place restrictive measures on elections across the country.

In his speech, he continued to reject that a majority of voters in many states wouldn’t endorse his policies, instead calling into question the validity of the results.

“I don’t believe we’re a 50-50 nation where these states are split evenly,” he expressed. “They can’t be split. These are corrupt elections, possibly. And we can’t allow it to go on.”

“We can’t allow it to go on.”

What do you think he meant by that? I suspect we’ll find out very quickly if he becomes president again. In fact, we may find out if any Republican becomes president again.