Month: July 2021

Despite Peter Doocy’s clowning (see below) it appears that the Fox News division isn’t all-in on every aspect of the Big Lie. Last night anchor Bret Baier told the Trump cult that Trump didn’t win the Arizona election after all . And Dear Leader is NOT happy about it.

Trump was reacting to an Associated Press investigation that discredited his conspiracy theories about massive fraud in Arizona, a state which was won by Joe Biden.

“Arizona county election officials have identified fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud out of more than 3 million ballots cast in last year’s presidential election, further discrediting former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election as his allies continue a disputed ballot review in the state’s most populous county,” the AP reported Friday.

That investigation angered the former president, who emailed a statement to reporters as he has banned from major social media platforms for laying about the election.

“Fox News and other media outlets incorrectly side with the outdated and terrible Maricopa County Election Board to report no fraud found in the Presidential Election. They spew the gross misinformation purposefully put out by the county and the Associated Press, and IGNORE the very important Arizona Senate’s hearing yesterday,” Trump said, while repeating debunked allegations about voter fraud.

“The same anchor at the desk the night Fox called Arizona for Joe Biden now wants you to believe there was no fraud. The anchor was Bret Baier,” Trump said.

The Senate hearing Trump refers to was another shitshow put on by the Big Lie-crazed Arizona GOP. It was not convincing although Trump practically had a public orgasm over it. The man is truly obsessed.

Meanwhile:

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office has asked Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for potential evidence of illegal voting — a move that counters her request that he investigate a pressure campaign by former President Donald Trump’s allies to “stop the counting” last year. 

The attorney general’s email response pointedly notes that Hobbs, a Democrat, hasn’t submitted referrals for double voting. It marks the first time in more than a decade a secretary of state has not done so.

The Hobbs administration is waiting for a report from a national organization that works with states across the nation to help identify potential incidents of double voting, a spokesperson for Hobbs said Friday.

The email, sent Wednesday to the Secretary of State’s Office and obtained Friday by The Arizona Republic, was sent by Jennifer Wright, an assistant attorney general who focuses on Brnovich’s election integrity unit.

The correspondence marks the first public sign that Brnovich, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, intends to examine public records in the aftermath of The Republic’s reporting, which first detailed the pressure campaign. 

The Republic found Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, repeatedly reached out to Maricopa County officials to try to influence the election outcome.

In a letter to Brnovich last week, Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, said some of the communications The Republic reported on “involve clear efforts to induce supervisors to refuse to comply with their duties.” Her office obtained the same records the newspaper reviewed after obtaining them through a public-records request and offered to send them to Brnovich’s office.

A spokeswoman for Hobbs said the secretary of state was sending the records to the Attorney General’s Office on Friday.

A spokesman for Brnovich declined to comment on the email to Hobbs. The agency typically does not confirm or deny investigations.

Wright added, “Additionally, please provide any and all records your office possesses related to potential violations of Arizona’s election laws,” a reference to the pressure campaign.

The pressure from Trump’s allies focused intensely on Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman, a lifelong Republican who had been supportive of Trump’s presidential reelection campaign.

At the time, Hickman chaired the five-member Republican-controlled board, which oversees elections in the state’s most populous county. He let two phone calls from the White House switchboard, which sought to connect him to Trump, go to voicemail.

Text messages and voicemails obtained by The Republic show multipronged attempts by Ward to halt Trump’s impending loss to President Joe Biden in Arizona.

She tried to get the supervisors “to stop the counting,” delay certifying the results and to look into whether voting software added votes for Democrats, among other things.

Ward has not responded to The Republic’s repeated efforts to reach her about the communications. On Twitter, she wrote in response to a story about her communications: “BS.”

Later, she wrote, “No one can ever say that I am not doing everything I can to assure #ElectionIntegrity. And I always will! #ProudAmerican.”

Brnovich has faced criticism from Trump for not vocally backing the ongoing ballot review ordered by the state’s Senate. For his part, Brnovich has sought to clamp down on illegal voting, especially at a time when many Republicans see election integrity as a remedy to what they view as a presidential election tainted by widespread fraud.

Kelli Ward is an imbecile.

I have my doubts that Brnovich is going to follow through on anything relating to the pressure campaign. Defying Trump isn’t considered a smart move for Republicans seeking higher office. But you never know …

Fox News’ Peter Doocy’s attempt to be Dan Rather or Sam Donaldson is pretty lame, but he does try. Unfortunately, as Joe Biden said, it’s killing people:

The White House announced a new effort this week to combat coronavirus misinformation on social media, particularly Facebook. It’s an effort that carries legitimate questions about what role the government should play in policing (or, in this case, helping to police) such things.

But that’s quite different from what Doocy accused the government of doing. And he did so based upon nothing but innuendo and a dumbfoundingly apparent lack of research.

Psaki had offered a statistic Thursday in her daily briefing: “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook.”

When Friday’s briefing began, Doocy was raring to go. He accused the government of spying on people to obtain this factoid.

“Speaking of misinformation and the announcement from yesterday,” Doocy began, “for how long has the administration been spying on people’s Facebook profiles, looking for vaccine misinformation?”

It wasn’t exactly clear what Doocy was talking about. But after Psaki responded that his premise was inaccurate, he made clear that this was about the “12 people” stat. Doocy cited the number and suggested that the government must have been snooping around people’s Facebook pages to arrive at it. He even specifically cited the surgeon general’s office specifically as having done so, for some reason.

“But, okay, so these 12 people who you have on a list — 12 individuals — do they know that somebody at the surgeon general’s office is going through their profile?” Doocy asked. He went on to compare the situation to “Big Brother.”

Even if the government were doing this, we would need to have a debate about whether looking at publicly available social media accounts is spying. But that’s not even what’s happening.

I, like Doocy, was intrigued by where this number came from Thursday. I, unlike Doocy apparently, actually did 30 seconds of research on it. That’s all the time it took to find the publicly available study — which even has the number Psaki cited in its title, “The Disinformation Dozen” — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study was picked up by the likes of NPR and others in May.

Nor did anything in Psaki’s comments Thursday suggest that this was from some kind of government study or research project. But Doocy jumped from her factoid to not just assuming that it was, but also that this amounted to “spying” and that the “spying” was specifically done by the surgeon general’s office (perhaps because Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy appeared with Psaki on Thursday?).

This continues a long-standing, often tortured search on Fox for government spying on their allies. Amid the Russia investigation, it became an article of faith that the government had been spying on the Trump campaign. But that was undermined by both FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

More recently, in the last few weeks, Fox host Tucker Carlson has claimed with basically no evidence that the Biden administration was spying on him — and with an intent to take his show off the air, no less. Except Fox’s news side has shown remarkably little interest in reporting out this apparent bombshell story involving itself. And reporting suggests that this was what many suggested it might have been in the first place: Carlson reaching out to foreigners (apparently Russians) who were being monitored (as many foreigners are) and getting wrapped up in what’s known as “incidental surveillance.” In other words, Carlson wouldn’t have been the target.

At least with those things, we’re talking about the murky, shadowy world of government surveillance, where it’s difficult to fully prove or disprove something and lines are indeed often pushed or stepped over. The definition of “spying” is also subjective.

Doocy’s claim that the stat Psaki cited was proof of yet more supposed spying is just nonsensical, as he might have found had he done even the slightest bit of due diligence. But at least another spying conspiracy theory that can be turned into cable news segments has now been seeded.

And consider this:

As @PressSec emphasized, the effort against covid disinformation aims at public-facing social-media accounts, which sort of lets the air out of the “spying” allegation. 2/

Another hypocritical wrinkle: A White House source says the main tool that is uses on this front is CrowdTangle, the Facebook tool that provides social-media monitoring numbers. It’s what @kevinroose used to compiled his famous @FacebooksTop10 feed. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html 3/

Makes sense: Journos and their analytics shops et al. use CrowdTangle, which sweeps up only public postings. Again, so much for the spying. The Center for Countering Digital Hate used CT for its report on the “Disinformation Dozen.” https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_b7cedc0553604720b7137f8663366ee5.pdf 4/

And finally: Another frequent user of this exquisite “spying” service is none other than….Fox News, which adores citing it for its digital reach: https://press.foxnews.com/2021/01/fox-news-digital-network-delivers-record-year/ https://press.foxnews.com/2020/10/fox-news-digital-network-notches-highest-rated-quarter-of-multiplatform-views-and-multiplatform-minutes-in-history/ 5/

Originally tweeted by ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) on July 17, 2021.

My mother always used to say, “never put on paper what the worldcan’t see” which I’ve updated in my own mind as “never put on the internet what the world can’t see.” You might as well be shouting on the public square. The government, companies, crowd-sourcing non-profits and individuals all examine public postings on the internet for research purposes.

There are problems with the surveillance powers of the US Government. But this ain’t it.

Here ya go:

Super spreaders of misinformation, seditionists, & American life haters. #CovidFriends-Never met a vaccine they didn’t hate. https://t.co/EOAJHDDUUP

— Olivia of Troye (@OliviaTroye) July 17, 2021

Remember when conservatives cried “frivolous lawsuit” over burns an old lady received from McDonald’s coffee? (You dont’ want to see pictures of the burns, trust me.) They accused Stella Liebeck of seeking “jackpot justice.”

Naturally, conservatives are fine with frivolous lawsuits when they go seeking crackpot justice.

And, so another team of lawyers are facing sanctions for filing lawsuits based on Donald Trump’s election fraud lies (Washington Post):

Just before Christmas, two Colorado lawyers filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 160 million American voters, alleging a vast conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election by the voting equipment manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and elected officials in four states — and asking for $160 billion in damages.

The case was dismissed in April, but now a federal judge is considering disciplining the lawyers for filing a frivolous claim — sharply questioning the duo in a Friday hearing about whether they had allowed themselves to be used as “a propaganda tool” of former president Donald Trump.

“Did that ever occur to you? That, possibly, [you’re] just repeating stuff the president is lying about?” Federal Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter asked the two lawyers, Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker, during a hearing to consider sanctioning them.

The judge asked if they had considered that they’d been used as “a propaganda tool” by Trump. The pair argued that, no, they really, really did believe Trump’s reelection was stolen in a nationwide election fraud consipracy.

In addition to Team Kraken, that’s two sets of attorneys in a week at risk of losing their law licenses over blind fealty to Trump. More such hearings are on the way, including Wisconsin where Gov. Tony Evers (D) has asked a judge to order Trump to repay the state’s legal expenses from post-election litigation there.

Trump’s former persaonal attorney, Rudy Giuliani has had his New York law license suspended for “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements” and, basically, for being public nuissance.

Legal rules require that attorneys be truthful in court and not clog up the court system with frivolous motions. Lawyers who violate the rules can be required to pay their opponents’ legal fees or can be assessed additional monetary penalties. Judges can also refer them for grievance procedures that can result in disbarment.

I’ll spare you the details from Colorado, except to say that both attorneys said they did it and would do it again. They admitted they had relied on the allegations of Trump’s lawyers and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy.

“These are serious allegations, made by serious people,” Fiedler explained.

But the judge questioned whether, as officers of the court, the lawyers could file a lawsuit based on mere belief of problems. He noted the they had presented “not one iota” of evidence to support claims, for instance, that Dominion’s machines were hacked or that Facebook had manipulated the election via grants donated by Zuckerberg and routed to local officials through a nonprofit group.

Instead, he noted, they provided only sworn statements from people who believed the election was rigged — a belief fueled by Trump’s repeated false claims.

“Many people have been influenced by the outgoing officeholder saying the election was stolen. They sincerely believe everything that is stated by the outgoing officeholder,” Neureiter said. “Of course they’re going to think and feel and have genuine emotions about this. . . . How does that a federal lawsuit make, the fact that the people felt aggrieved somehow?”

Before this is over, one of these clowns is going to turn to a TV camera and say,  “Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!” 

Sand kittens!

Via Zooborns

Zoo Boise, a division of Boise Parks and Recreation, is excited to announce the birth of three male baby sand cats. Proud parents Nala and Simba welcomed the kittens into the world on April 4, 2021.

This is both Nala and Simba’s first litter of kittens, these are the first sand cats ever born at Zoo Boise, and the first sand cats born in 2021 at a zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). These births are not only important for Zoo Boise, but vital for the conservation of sand cats worldwide. There are only 51 sand cats in zoos accredited by the AZA, which means Zoo Boise is currently caring for 10 percent of the total population. Nala and Simba were paired together as part of the Sand Cat Species Survival Plan, a conservation program aimed at maintaining a healthy and genetically diverse population of sand cats in order to increase their numbers.

“This is an incredibly significant birth for the entire conservation community,” said Zoo Boise Director Gene Peacock. “The babies are doing well and we look forward to introducing them to the community.”

The sand cat kittens weighed an average of 90 grams each at birth. Combined, that’s only about half a pound. Full grown sand cats weigh between three and seven and a half pounds.

Sand cats, sometimes called sand dune cats, are found in the arid deserts of Africa’s Sahara desert, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of central Asia. Even though they are very small, that doesn’t stop them from being ferocious. Sand cats are opportunistic hunters and have been known to attack and consume venomous snakes.

I’m a big fan of the Sand Cat. This is my computer wallpaper:

Reporter: "What's your message to platforms like Facebook?"

President Biden: "They're killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and they’re killing people”

pic.twitter.com/VtqyFIfn5q

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 16, 2021

This piece about the effects of misinformation on the pandemic is scary. It’s long and highly detailed and I recommend that you read the whole thing. But I’m posting an excerpt with what I think is the most disconcerting finding:

A small handful of activists have used the Internet to persuade a very significant proportion of the public the world around—roughly one in every five people2—that contrary to overwhelming evidence, vaccines are not the safest, most effective and most consequential invention in medical history, but rather a sinister and dangerous menace that should be eschewed. It is an achievement on a par with persuading people to mix their drinking water with their sewage.

It should not be possible to convince so many people to believe something that is at once so unfounded in any evidence and so contrary to the most fundamental of human drives: staying alive. What does it mean that it’s possible? It strongly suggests that so long as social media is configured the way it is, anything is possible. The Internet, as it’s now structured, may be used to persuade at least one in five people that up is down, black is white, and if you leap off the top of a skyscraper, you’ll fly.

For open societies in particular, this is a massive vulnerability. It is trivially easy for hostile states and sociopaths to exploit this, and they do exploit it. They’ll continue to exploit it this way until one of two things happens: We find a more rational way to organize the Internet, or we’re destroyed by it.

If you think this an exaggeration, turn it over again in your mind. A recent study of the anti-vaccination movement found that 73 percent of the anti-vax propaganda on Facebook originates among the same twelve people.3 They are superspreaders. Other studies have come to similar conclusions. Here, for example, is Newsguard’s data sheet. Russia boosts these accounts—heavily—but the phenomenon is not of Russian origin.

What this suggests is that it’s not only theoretically possible for a dozen-odd people, mostly Americans and Europeans, to persuade a fifth of the world to join a death cult, it has happened already. So this is unlikely to be a rare event. These figures are well-known to researchers. The superspreaders include both physicians and alternative health entrepreneurs. They tend to be in it for the money. They promote “natural health” cures. They sell books and supplements. They run multiple accounts across different platforms. When taken off a social media platform, they pop up under other names and guises, but they’re the same people.

The impact of their activity isn’t a massive imponderable. It can be quantified and measured. Last February, Sahil Loomba et al. published the results of research on vaccine misinformation in an article in Nature titled, Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA. The experiment was randomized; the sample large; the results significant. In both the US and the UK, exposure to anti-vaccination propaganda induced an immediate 6.2-6.4 percent decline in willingness to be vaccinated.

“Scientific-sounding” misinformation, they found, was more strongly associated with a decline in intent to be vaccinated. And once people have been exposed to this garbage, it’s damned near impossible to reverse the effects. Telling people they should not take seriously reports that “an eight-year-old who got the vaccine was found dead in his bed ten hours later” has exactly the effect it will now have on you when I tell you not to think about yellow elephants.

It requires years of study to master complex and difficult questions in medicine. Bad ideas and superstition, however, are accessible to all. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome lives in Lagos. It is immensely unlikely that he independently arrived upon the thesis that 5G technology causes Covid19. He believes this because a handful of lunatics in the West have been spreading this idea—all the way to Nigeria. They’ve done so much faster than anyone could spread useful medical knowledge, because acquiring a body of useful medical knowledge takes years of study, much of it hands-on.

There’s much more and it’s fascinating. It’s also depressing as hell. This is the last thing we need…

By the way, Former FBI agent Clinton Watts said today on MSNBC that the Surgeon General’s report on misinformation is the best report on the subject he’s ever seen the US Government produce.

… one or more of these guys ae gong to be as smart as Tim McVeigh and they’re going to succeed:

Two Trump fanatics who abused steroids and had access to a disturbing home arsenal plotted to blow up a Democratic building in the wake of Biden’s win—and even reached out to the Proud Boys for help, according to new indictments unsealed Thursday.

According to court documents filed by DOJ attorneys in the Northern District of California, Ian Benjamin Rogers, 45, of Napa, and Jarrod Copeland, 37, of Vallejo started plotting to attack Democratic targets as early as November, after former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. They also contacted anti-government groups with the hopes of rallying them to commit similar acts of violence and overthrow the government, the indictment alleges.

Through a messaging app, the pair had discussed using “Molotov cocktails and gasoline,” to take out the California governor’s mansion as early as Nov. 25, according to court documents.

Then days before the Capitol insurrection, Rogers allegedly insisted the pair needed backup support from other groups in their plot. Text messages recovered from Rogers’ phone showed an effort to keep Trump in power at all costs, and showed that he intended to attack Democrats and places associated with Democrats in an effort to keep Trump in office, DOJ officials said.

“We need help though and I don’t know how to get more people involve [sic],” Rogers allegedly wrote in a message on Jan. 4.

Copeland responded: “Proud boys and 3%” then allegedly wrote that he had “emailed proud boys.”“I want to blow up a democrat building bad.”

Days after the Capitol assault, Copeland—who once deserted the U.S. Army —lauded “REVOLUTION” in messages to Rogers and fantasized about drinking Red Bulls, and grabbing his tactical gear and weapons, according to court documents. “I’m fucking juiced!!!!!” he wrote. “I’m bout to throw my gear on and drive around and punish sombitces.”

In the days that followed, the pair, who spent $1,200 on a stash of steroids, pointedly discussed targeting the Sacramento office as part of an initial attack. “I want to blow up a democrat building bad,” Rogers allegedly wrote. Copeland responded: “I agree” and “Plan attack,” the indictment says.

Both men allegedly planned to use incendiary or explosive devices in their attacks and believed the attacks would start a movement. They allegedly intended to initiate their plans following the January inauguration.

“Let’s see what happens after the 20th we go to war,” Rogers allegedly told Copeland in a message dated Jan. 11.

Rogers has been in custody since January when law enforcement officials searched his home and business and discovered a stash of weapons including 49 firearms, two dozen boxes of ammunition containing thousands of rounds of ammunition, and five pipe bombs, according to a criminal complaint at the time.

During their search, officers also seized two copies of books titled “U.S. Army Special Forces Guide to Unconventional Warfare,” and “U.S. Army Guerrilla Warfare Handbook.” They also identified a “Three Percenters” sticker on Rogers’ car, the complaint said.

After learning of Rogers’ arrest, according to prosecutors, Copeland allegedly contacted an unnamed militia group to which both men belonged that was affiliated with the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia group which advocates armed rebellion against the federal government. According to the indictment, members of the militia advised Copeland to use a different messaging app and delete communications with Rogers. Copeland was taken into custody on Wednesday.

Both men were charged with conspiracy to destroy by fire or explosive a building used or in affecting interstate commerce. Rogers is also charged with possession of unregistered destructive devices and possession of machine guns. Copeland faces an additional count of destruction of records, the DOJ said.

You have to wonder how many of these guys there are out there who have enough brains not to write down their intentions. I guess we just have to hope they’re all as dumb as these guys.

The dangerous GOP:

American confidence in science has split heavily along party lines, according to a Gallup poll released Friday.

The survey found that Democrats were very confident in science, with 79 percent saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the field, compared to just 45 percent of Republicans who said the same. Among independents, 65 percent expressed confidence.

The gap between Democrats and Republicans was the widest of any institution measured in Gallups polls this year.

The last time Gallup polled Americans on their confidence in science was 1975. GOP confidence in science is down 27 percentage points since then, compared with a 12 point increase among Democrats. Confidence declined 8 points among independents.

According to Gallup, the lack of confidence among Republicans may stem from conservative leaders’ allegations of liberal bias in the scientific community. It also tied the mistrust to issues surrounding COVID-19 vaccinations.

It also has to do with the Christian Right which has been hostile to science ever since the Scopes trial. And, it’s also that they believe it owns the libs who they think are a bunch of snooty, know-it-alls because they believe educated experts.

It’s fine, I guess, if they don’t believe in evolution. But it’s a big problem, as we’ve seen, when we are dealing with disease — and climate change. Their ignorance is lethal.

We’d heard about General Milley’s concerns that Trump was going to enlist the military in a coup by declaring an insurrection with a “Reichstag Fire” type of strategy in order to stay in office past January 20th. I did not know there was also fear of a major post election Wag the Dog scenario.

Susan Glasser at the New Yorker:

There were two “nightmare scenarios,” Milley told associates, for the period after the November 3rd election, which resulted in Trump’s defeat but not his concession: one was that Trump would try “to use the military on the streets of America to prevent the legitimate, peaceful transfer of power.” The other was an external crisis involving Iran. It was not public at the time, but Milley believed that the nation had come close—“very close”—to conflict with the Islamic Republic. This dangerous post-election period, Milley said, was all because of Trump’s “Hitler”-like embrace of the “Big Lie” that the election had been stolen from him; Milley feared it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment,” in which, like Adolf Hitler in 1933, he would manufacture a crisis in order to swoop in and rescue the nation from it.

To prevent such an outcome, Milley had, since late in 2020, been having morning phone meetings, at 8 a.m. on most days, with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in the hopes of getting the country safely through to Joe Biden’s Inauguration. The chairman, a burly four-star Army general who had been appointed to the post by Trump in 2019, referred to these meetings with his staff as the “land the plane” calls—as in, “both engines are out, the landing gear are stuck, we’re in an emergency situation. Our job is to land this plane safely and to do a peaceful transfer of power the 20th of January.”

[…]

A running concern for Milley was the prospect of Trump pushing the nation into a military conflict with Iran. He saw this as a real threat, in part because of a meeting with the President in the early months of 2020, at which one of Trump’s advisers raised the prospect of taking military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if Trump were to lose the election. At another meeting, at which Trump was not present, some of the President’s foreign-policy advisers again pushed military action against Iran. Milley later said that, when he asked why they were so intent on attacking Iran, Vice-President Mike Pence replied, “Because they are evil.”

Oy… I assume Pence was talking about the Iranians, but you never know …

In the months after the election, with Trump seemingly willing to do anything to stay in power, the subject of Iran was repeatedly raised in White House meetings with the President, and Milley repeatedly argued against a strike. Trump did not want a war, the chairman believed, but he kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against U.S. interests in the region. Milley, by statute the senior military adviser to the President, was worried that Trump might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified. Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,” Milley would say.

On January 3rd, Pompeo and National Security adviser Robert O’Brien gave Trump the bad news. It was too late to start his war.

So, I guess Trump turned his attention fully to the domestic insurrection that he hoped would keep him in power.

This guy knew him well:

Just a reminder that @MichaelCohen212 predicted 1/6 nearly two years earlier. https://t.co/7ZNU2bvm3r

— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) July 16, 2021

He was right. And the non-peaceful transfer of power is still going strong in the Republican Party. The “fraudit” in Arizona predictably found that there were problems so now they want to send MAGA thugs door to door to interrogate people about who they voted for. (So much for the secret ballot…)

I have been worried that the Democrats would not be able to get their vote out in the midterms without having Trump on the ballot. But he won’t go away so that fear may be overblown.

The Republican establishment is increasingly worried about it:

CNN’s Manu Raju asked South Dakota Republican Senator] John Thune on Tuesday about the former president’s claim that the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was a “lovefest.”

“That’s not what any of us here experienced,” he responded.

He continued, “Trying to rehash and revisit and re-litigate the past election is not a winning strategy for trying to get the majorities back in 2022.”

Raju asked the South Dakota senator if Trump’s claims of widespread fraud will hurt the party’s chances in the 2022 midterms.

“I mean, he’s gonna keep saying it. There’s not anything we can do about it,” Thune said.

He added, “But like I said, anytime you’re talking about the past, you’re not talking about the future. And I think the future is where we’re gonna live.”

Trump will never let it go. And his followers absolutely love to wallow in their grievance as well.