And it’s not Mike Lee
It is impossible to understate just how completely fucking rotten Donald Trump is. To his core.
— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) June 17, 2025
He is rotten to his goddamn core.pic.twitter.com/cReCNncoiZ
I’m sorry but people who support this cretin are responsible for this as well. It’s unforgivable.
Sen. Mike Lee (R) of Utah is catching hell for his tweets over the weekend making fun of the double murder of a Minnesota state legislator and her spouse, and the gunshot wounding of another legislator and his spouse. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith was having none of it. She sought out Lee and got into his face over the pain he’d caused her, deceaseds’ families, and the survivors and their families.
From Semafor:
Smith pulled Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee out of a private Republican meeting to discuss what she called the “painful” effects of Lee’s tweets about the weekend shooting of two state legislators in her home state of Minnesota, one of them a personal friend. And one of Smith’s senior aides emailed top Lee staffers asking in stark terms: “Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?”
Lee posted a picture of the now-apprehended suspect in the murders of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the shooting of a state senator and his wife. The conservative senator added the text “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” an apparent reference to Gov. Tim Walz; Lee posted another picture of the alleged assassin with the message: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Smith’s deputy chief of staff, Ed Shelleby, asked Lee’s staffers: “Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success?”
The New Republic reports that Republicans are frantically trying to paint the alleged shooter as a left-winger:
Vance Boelter allegedly shot and killed Democratic Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Saturday. Hours later, conservatives were twisting Boelter’s political ideology to shield MAGA, claiming that the suspected cop/masked killer was a deranged leftist seeking violent retribution.
n reality, Boelter was a Trump supporter who voted for Donald Trump in November, his best friend David Carlson told reporters Saturday. Boelter was a longtime conservative who was a registered Republican when he and his wife lived in Oklahoma in the early 2000s. He was against abortion rights but “never mentioned any particular anger with the lawmakers who were shot,” Carlson told CNN.
Lauren Windsor noticed that Lee seems to be less of a tough guy wheh the pressure is on. He’s a bit red around the collar.
Smith tells Semafor:
“I wanted him to hear from me directly about how painful that was, and how brutal it was, to see that on what was just a horribly brutal weekend,” Smith told reporters after she confronted Lee, a discussion that left her visibly upset. “He didn’t say a lot, frankly. I think he was a bit stunned.”
“He should think about the implications of what he’s saying,” she added. “It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation.”
A Lee spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Semafor continues its reporting that Republicans now seem more concerned about their personal safety.
Threats against lawmakers, their family and their staff have more than doubled since 2017, according to the Capitol Police. High-profile attacks and near-misses have become a fixture in Washington. In many cases targeted members receive extra security from Capitol Police, sometimes for months at a time.
I don’t expect Lee will learn anything from the blowback from his tweets.
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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Donald Trump is a p@ssy grabber. He learned when he was a phony TV tycoon that as a celebrity he could get away with just about anything. Since his return to the Oval Office, Trump and men like Elon Musk, Russ Vought, and shadow president Stephen Miller have run amuck in Washington, D.C. grabbing federal p@ssies with reckless abandon. Trump’s entire party has calloused crotches from how tightly he’s grabbed theirs since 2016. It’s a wonder that the entire Republican caucus doesn’t walk bent over.
The wannabe dictator thought he could do the same with the U.S. military. Trump has been enamored of having a military parade since watching France’s Bastille Day celebration in 2017. He wanted one like his love interest, Kim Jong Un, gets. It’s what Supreme Leaders do.
When Trump tried to arrange a North Korea-style display of military might in his first term, James Mattis, then Trump’s secretary of defense, balked. Mattis claimed in his book that he’d “rather swallow acid” than see his troops so used. Trump 2.0’s Weekend SecDef Pete Hegseth has no such reservations. But it appears his troops do.
Anyone who’s seen clips from Trump’s birthday parade on Saturday noticed right away that the soldiers involved did not seem to have their hearts in performing in Trump’s circus.
Like this gentleman:
This veteran noticed too:
View on Threads
And this one and for comparison:
Trump once lived for good ratings. He’s got to be disapppointed with these. Assuming aides let him see them.
The Irish Times reports:
A veteran added: “I’ve marched in more military parades than I even care to remember. Probably watched dozens more as a spectator.
“And this is easily the worst and sloppiest marching I’ve ever witnessed at a formal military parade. It feels like a big “f— you” to Trump from the soldiers.”
A fourth user heard several comments from Army veterans, and they surmised: “After engaging with US Army veterans in the comments, I think I might have to issue a correction here. These guys do/should know how to march and could have if they wanted to. They probably just didn’t care about this parade at all and put in zero effort.”
Charlotte Clymer, an activist, DC-based writer and Army veteran, commented on her Substack that the limp performance was not a protest against fascism so much as troops responding to “being treated like props for the benefit of an egomaniacal toddler.”
I think this is just because they were treated very poorly and they didn’t care. I think the soldiers who were misstepping during the parade — there were a lot of them — were just tired, annoyed, probably to some extent angry, and they just did not give enough of a shit to march to a high standard of excellence.
“Everyone is aware that this parade was done in service of Donald Trump — even the soldiers who likely voted for him know it was done in service to his ego. And I don’t know about you, but I would never want to participate in the parade so that a lone individual could feel good about themselves,” Clymer told BuzzFeed.
If 5 million Americans taking to the nation’s streets on Saturday to protest this clown did not lift your spirits amidst the Trump chaos, be comforted that 6,000 troops voted with their feet on Saturday to tell President Bone Spurs where he can stick any plans for deploying them to enforce martial law.
This is too good not to repost.
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I think Trump needs to have a word with them. That 64 ft. putt won the U.S. Open for JJ Spaun. But it can’t overcome the sad fact that his dad is Black and his mom is Filipino and Mexican — DEI in every way. (Well, he isn’t gay or trans so there’s that.) And he’s proud of his heritage. Not good.
He stole that win from a more deserving white man, obviously. Sure Tiger Woods was a special case with a similar background, but we can’t start making that a habit. Golf isn’t the NBA. It’s the white man’s sport. This has to stop.
I suspect this (gift link) could happen to anyone who looks like a “foreigner” which could mean Latino. Asian, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, African or well, anyone with brown or black skin. It’s obviously time for anyone who fits that profile to carry papers. This is a Stasi tactic:
They swept into the Southern California car lot last Thursday at 4:32 p.m. — masked and armed Border Patrol agents in an unmarked white S.U.V.
One agent soon twisted Jason Brian Gavidia’s arm and pressed him against a black metal fence outside the lot where he runs an auto body shop in Montebello, a working-class suburb east of the Los Angeles city limits. Another officer then asked him an unusual question to prove whether he was a U.S. citizen or an undocumented immigrant.
“What hospital were you born at?” the Border Patrol agent asked.
Mr. Gavidia, 29, was born only a short drive from where they were standing, in East Los Angeles. He did not know the hospital’s name. “I was born here,” he shouted at the agent,.
Mr. Gavidia was eventually released as he stood on the sidewalk. But another U.S. citizen, Javier Ramirez, 32 — Mr. Gavidia’s friend and co-worker — had been forced facedown to the ground by two agents in the car lot. Mr. Ramirez was put inside a van and driven to a federal detention center, where he remains in custody. Mr. Ramirez’s lawyer said that officials at the detention center had denied his request to speak to his client.
They are rounding up Americans if they think they don’t look right. If this keeps up it won’t be long before anyone who lives in the wrong place (Democrat Power Centers) will be vulnerable to this too.
Get a passport card or at least a Real ID. You can’t be too sure.
These are influential people in the MAGA movement. And they are nuts:
DON JR: They talk a lot about the rhetoric and the violence and it seems to be caused mostly by them
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2025
NEWS NATION: You don't think everybody has to turn it down a bit?
DON JR: I'm seeing it come from the left. The guy in Minnesota seems to be a leftist.
NEWS NATION: He voted… pic.twitter.com/gShkwyooXG
DON JR: They talk a lot about the rhetoric and the violence and it seems to be caused mostly by them
NEWS NATION: You don’t think everybody has to turn it down a bit?
DON JR: I’m seeing it come from the left. The guy in Minnesota seems to be a leftist.
NEWS NATION: He voted for your dad
DON JR: I’ll believe it when I see it
This is an interesting development:
Trump recently appeared to declare war on the Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal advocacy organization that played an essential role in his election both in 2016 and 2024. After one of his first-term appointees ruled against him in a major challenge to his tariffs, Trump launched a public tirade against the former chair of the group, Leonard Leo, who Trump described as a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America” before blaming the group for “bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations.”
But the more tangible potential rupture with at least parts of the conservative legal movement is coming over Trump’s decision to nominate Emil Bove — formerly Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, currently Trump’s enforcer at the Justice Department — to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Apparently, the conservative legal establishment has been speaking out and the MAGA wingnuts are not happy.
Bove is a thug who has been doing Donald Trump’s bidding since he’s gone to DOJ, targeting political enemies and letting his allies off the hook. The legal establishment thinks that may not be the best thing for the judiciary. Imagine that.
But don’t count on the Senate Republicans who are little more than dancing puppets for whatever Dear Leader demands:
[B]ased on how Trump’s second term has gone so far, it’s clear Senate Republicans will be reluctant to tank one of his nominees.
That’s particularly true because the opposition to Bove has produced an aggressive defense from Trump’s most ardent defenders in the conservative legal community. The Article III Project quickly produced a stream of articles and commentary supporting Trump’s choice — largely, it seemed, on the grounds that Bove would be a reliable supporter of Trump’s political agenda and legal positions.
Mike Davis, the group’s founder and onetime counsel to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), lauded the appointment while tweaking both ends of the opposition. “The left fears Emil Bove because he’s effective,” Davis said. “The establishment right resents him because he refuses to play by their rules.”
Here’s the real nightmare. Bove is frequently mentioned as a top Supreme Court choice should one of the current justices retire or die.
There are many quotes from conservatives suggesting that we need checks and balances. Yeah, no kidding. Too bad they didn’t think about that when McConnell and Trump were manipulating the process to give them the majority on the court that they sought. Why would anyone think they had any limits now?
It’s been a long time coming.
A large and perhaps uncomfortable question for mainstream legal conservatives looms over all of this: What responsibility does the Federalist Society itself have over the state of American politics at the moment?
Few people would even know who Emil Bove is right now if the Federalist Society-approved conservative justices on the Supreme Court had not devised a doctrine of presidential criminal immunity last summer that allowed Trump to bypass a trial on the 2020 election indictment, arguably his biggest hurdle to the White House.
The legal theories that the Trump administration has invoked in support of its most aggressive moves on a range of issues also have their roots in longstanding conservative legal doctrines promoted by the Federalist Society and other members of the conservative or GOP legal establishment.
You can trace Trump’s position on congressional appropriations — essentially, that he can ignore them — to President Richard Nixon.
You can trace Trump’s position on staffing the executive branch — effectively, that he can fire anyone he wants whenever he wants, despite what Congress wrote into law — to the unitary executive theory developed under President Ronald Reagan.
And you can trace Trump’s position on laws passed by Congress — effectively, that he can ignore whichever ones he wants, particularly if he claims that there is some sort of emergency — to President George W. Bush and also, famously, to Nixon.
The criticism of these conservative legal theories was not obscure. Many lawyers and scholars argued over the years that these doctrines, if seriously adopted, would give too much authority to the president; that they would improperly diminish the role of our elected representatives in Congress; that they would eviscerate independent agencies and diminish the professionalism of the civil service; and that they would make the presidency both monarchical in nature and highly vulnerable to corruption.
They own this.
On the other hand, we need for them to have some limits now and do whatever they can to stop it. Democrats don’t have any power to do so. And pretty much the most they can do at this point is for establishment Republican judges to decide not to retire during Trump’s term. The good news is that some are apparently doing that. But will it be enough?
I guess the real question comes back to the Supreme Court and if the majority are still associated with the federalist society or if they have all succumbed to Fox News brain rot and Trump delirium.
The grift is unbelievable. And all the elected Republicans are happy to go along, no big deal.
Trump: "Putin speaks to me, he doesn't speak to anybody else, because he was very insulted when he got thrown out of the G8. He was thrown out by Trudeau, who convinced one or two people, along with Obama … he doesn't even speak to the people who threw him out. And I agree with… pic.twitter.com/7xboNrDO37
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2025
“Putin speaks to me, he doesn’t speak to anybody else, because he was very insulted when he got thrown out of the G8. He was thrown out by Trudeau, who convinced one or two people, along with Obama … he doesn’t even speak to the people who threw him out. And I agree with him.”
Carney had to end the exchange at that point.
By the way, Trudeau didn’t become Prime Minister for another year when that happened. And the reason nobody speaks to Putin is because he is a monstrous war criminal who has invaded a neighbor and declares that Europe is his enemy. Unlike Trump they are under no illusion that Vladimir is their ally.
Trump is refusing to sign the joint statement about the Israel-Iran strikes despite the fact that it essentially reflects his own public position. He’s just being an ass. I guess that works for him with the MAGA cult.
He remains an embarrassment to the United States. At this point I don’t think we can be sure that we will ever recover from what he’s done to America’s reputation.
The last few days have been one of those “Trump weeks.” You know, the ones that feel like a month? It’s been like this a lot since he took office for his second term but right now it feels like things are really coming to a head.
We’ve been dealing with the ups and downs of the daft tariff scheme that has got everyone in the country holding their breath waiting for the bottom to drop out of the economy. We’re seeing the civil service, the legal system, academia, corporations, even churches forced to deal with an unprecedented assault by a presidential administration bent on dominating every independent institution in our society. It feels like a tidal wave just relentlessly pushing through the fabric of our society and all you can do is just hang on to something and hope it holds long enough for the water to recede.
But something changed in the last week and it’s critical. The fundamental structure of the Constitution is now being assailed with direct threats to state and local sovereignty. Trump’s deportation push into Los Angeles opened up a set of issues that were closed for a long time in this country and which have the potential to tear us completely apart.
For as long as most of us can remember, “states’ rights” was the bedrock of conservative ideology in America. It formed the basis of many of the post civil war reconstruction policies and the southern states used it as a justification for Jim Crow for many decades. And while liberals didn’t approve of the use of states’ rights arguments used to deny universal human rights (and believed that those arguments were not made in good faith) they did not deny the concept of state sovereignty under our constitution. It’s obviously there, right in the document, and short of amending it or tearing it up altogether, it’s pointless to pretend that it doesn’t exist or only recognize it when it’s politically useful.
Recently, the conservative Supreme Court reified the idea with the Dobbs decision, reversing the constitutional right to abortion under Roe vs Wade. They held that states have the right to regulate abortion even including banning it altogether. This is actually considered a compromise among the anti-abortion zealots who believe that all abortion is murder but they were willing to take what they could get and live to fight for a total ban another day. So the concept of states’ rights still exists among conservatives, at least when it is useful to their cause.
The Trump administration may find it useful for some purposes as well but at the moment they appear to have decided that it is no longer operative. President Trump has ordered ICE to step up its raids in cities and states that are run by his political enemies:
He’s being very clear there about why he’s targeting these cities. It’s not because of immigration, although he’s using that as an excuse. After all, two of the three states with the largest populations of people in the U.S. illegally are the red states of Texas and Florida. He’s also exempted the agriculture, hospitality, and meatpacking industries, which apparently aren’t part of the “Democratic Power Center.” (The construction and manufacturing sectors better get on the ball and start doing some serious bootlicking.) No, he sees this as a way to start a conflagration in these cities which gives him the excuse to federalize them by sending in troops outside the control of local elected officials.
On his way to the G7 Summit on Sunday he told the assembled press on the tarmac that if he hadn’t ordered the federalized national guard to Los Angeles last week the city would be on fire:
That is nonsense. There are protests and LAPD is handling them. He’s saying to make the case for keeping troops in the city. He also sent active duty marines to Los Angeles for no reason and his order applies to any city he chooses. It’s almost certain he will do the same to these other cities in the “Democrat Power Centers.”
There’s a method to his madness even if he doesn’t fully recognize it himself. Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” wrote in the NY Times that Trump calling up troops to patrol the streets of Los Angeles, his partisan speech at Ft Bragg and the vulgar military birthday parade on Saturday, shows that he is trying to get the American public used to a different relationship with the military. In this new version we are to see the military as an institution that explicitly serves the president and his political agenda.
She goes on to explain that this is often a way that despots exert power and observes:
The Trump administration is now using the second-largest city in the country as a backdrop for its efforts to create the perception of a national crisis. Doing so could allow it to justify measures that would empower the government to act against its own citizens. This is concerning enough. Even more worrying is what history shows us: that all too often, such crises become semi-permanent — “not the exception but the rule,” as the anti-Nazi philosopher Walter Benjamin once observed.
The rhetoric in Trump’s Sunday post that Democratic politicians and their voters are “sick of mind” and “hate our country” means it is likely that there will be more arrests and roughing up of Democratic politicians who try to do their jobs. And we can probably expect more violence as we saw this weekend in Minneapolis when a far right extremist assassinated a Democratic politician and her husband and wounded two others. That’s the crisis he is determined to provoke.
But I don’t think he should count on the public at large, even in red states, complying with his plans. For all of his activity this past week, there was one event that dwarfs them all.
This is rigorous analysis by credible data researchers and it, along with the polling that’s been done in recent days, shows that the majority of the public is not fooled. (From the way the troops marched in his very low-energy parade, they aren’t sold on it either.)
The best case scenario is that this is just another one of his paroxysms of hate and he’ll move on to something else soon. (Unlikely because of his fanatical, bigoted adviser Stephen Miller, unfortunately. ) The worst case scenario is that we are in for a long, hot summer. But it looks like the American people are ready for some serious passive resistance and he can’t repress us if we won’t let him.