Mike Johnson is an extreme Bible thumping super-Christian who talks about it at every opportunity. When he was first elected speaker he said this:
During an interview Thursday evening with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Johnson said he has been asked by members of the media for his positions on myriad issues. In response, he has told them to turn to Scripture to truly understand his perspective on the matters of the day.
“Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: what does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’” he explained. “I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview.’ That’s what I believe, and so I make no apologies for it.”
Maybe he hasn’t gotten to the Jesus part yet. If he had, what Budde said would have been very familiar.
Hannity: Would you want the Attorney General to investigate it?
Trump: I went through four years of hell by this scum we had to deal with… It’s really hard to say they shouldn’t have to go through it also. pic.twitter.com/1XzGkuqVgc
As I have been saying for months, now that Trump has received (in his mind) vindication and restoration — and stayed out of jail — there are only two things he really wants: vengeance and money. Nothing else interests him.
I think it’s clear he plans to leave office a vastly wealthier man than he enters it. He’s well on his way. And then there’s this from Axios. Did they think he was joking?
President Trump’s threats of retribution are rapidly materializing in policies across the U.S. government, an early warning to Trump critics that bygones will not be bygones.
Trump is flexing his vast new powers to target what he’s described as “the enemies from within” — enforcing loyalty tests, purging career officials and attempting to rewrite the history of the last eight years.
Trump has at times downplayed his thirst for revenge — but his first moves back in office suggest resentment against Democrats, former allies, prosecutors and the media will be a driving force in his second term.
“For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” the president promised supporters on the campaign trail.
Some of Trump’s acts of vengeance this week have been petty and personal.
On Day 1as president, he revoked the security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 saying the Hunter Biden laptop scandal carried “classic earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign.
On Day 2, he publicly fired thousands of Biden presidential council appointees, including former Joints Chief of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Biden-supporting celebrity chef José Andrés.
Within hours of taking office, Trump revoked Secret Service protection for his former national security adviser John Bolton, who has been targeted for assassination by Iran.
He pardoned about 1,500 supporters convictedor charged in the Jan. 6 Capitolriot, including hundreds who violently attacked the police officers protecting the building.
Trump’s new FCC chair plans to reinstate complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC for allegedly biased coverage, which the former Democratic chair had dismissed as a partisan attempt to “curtail freedom of the press.”
In his 2023 book, Trump’s ultra loyalist nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, compiled a list of “government gangsters”he saidshould be targeted for sabotaging Trump’s first presidency.
Even with Patel’s confirmation in flux, there are clear indications that the second Trump administration will channel his aggressive approach to rooting out the so-called “Deep State.”
At least 15 senior Justice Department officials have been removed or reassigned, including one who played a key role in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 as prosecutors sought evidence that Trump had mishandled classified documents.
Between the lines: In his final days in office, Biden pardoned Milley, Anthony Fauci, former Rep. Liz Cheney and members of his own family as a precautionary measure against the retribution Trump had telegraphed.
Trump and his allies have harshly criticized Biden, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) suggested Wednesday that House Republicans may investigate the circumstances of the pardons.
Johnson also announced a new subcommittee that would continue investigating “the false narratives peddled by” the Jan. 6 committee — a sign Trump will have allies on Capitol Hill as he pursues his revenge tour.
“I went through four years of hell by this scum we had to deal with,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity when asked if the attorney general should investigate his enemies. “It’s really hard to say they shouldn’t have to go through it also.”
By the way, the revenge tour is not just aimed at DC politicians. He is seeking revenge in various ways against all of blue America. None of us are exempt.
“Maybe the media that I’m following is not showing these.”
It’s going to be a long several years until the nation collapses. Or Trump does and VP Elegy takes over. Or the world somehow survives.
A couple of posts to flag.
Rude Pundit (Lee Papa) notes that hardcore MAGA types are beyond reaching. “Most,” anyway. Democrats trying to placate them, policy-wise, will win no points with them.
Most Trump supporters would be happy to die in a ditch as long as they feel free to use the n-word again and liberals are mad. The sooner Democrats get their head around that, the better they will be able to oppose Republicans.
Democrats need to do they best they can policy-wise to pursue their own agenda without compromising in the mistaken belief it will help their electoral prospects in Trump country. They cannot oppose Trump by trying to play nice with him and prove they are the adults in the room. It only makes the weak appear weaker. Nobody wants to vote for that. And even if they do, they won’t turn out to vote for that.
Will Stancil has sharper words on pushing back visibly.
If you work with elite journalists or top Democrats, you have a moral obligation to shout at them to stop hiding what's going on and start reacting appropriately. They're failing the country right now with consequences that will reverberate through generations
For all their experience, the Democrats’ gerontocracy is bringing 20th-century knives to a 21st-century gun fight. Too many learned politics in the 1980s. Even if they could learn new tricks, they’re not the ones to bring it now. The Trump-oligarch alliance is not your grandfather’s country-club Republican Party. That’s gone.
Younger Dermocratic leaders were born into this media and political melieu. Senior Democrats should be learning from the young-uns, but not trying to lead with half-learned skills they picked up last week. Remember your cringe when Joe Biden tried his hand at TikTok?
I’m not saying they are all reacting inappropriately. Some Dem senators brought real heat to questioning Trump nominees. But who sees that besides geeks like us, Dear Reader? Not the general public and not Trumpists with their eyes wide shut. That’s what Stancil’s responding to.
It’s what Jordan Klepper’s demonstrating here, especially in the last half of the clip:
It’s Everything Everywhere All at Once time. Democrats who can’t chew the leather anymore need to step back and let their junior members with the right skills stand in front.
Digby covered this guy on Wednesday, but Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, merits (I use that term loosely) more time in disinfecting sunshine.
Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, has a lot of federal employees living in his state. People with families, Americans trying to do a good job and make ends meet. Kaine questioned Vought, an architect of Project 2025, about his authorship of a budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government” that Vought produced for the Center for Renewing America where Vought was its president.
Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist, proposed deep cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps) and Medicaid. Quoting from the Bible, Kaine had questions for Vought about that and about what programs he considers “woke” during his Senate confirmation hearing.
“Is providing nutrition assistance to low-income kids ‘woke and weaponized’? Kaine asked Vought, who refused to answer, replying that he “wasn’t here to talk about the budget that center put out.”
Kaine pressed further, but Vought claimed he was only there on behalf of the president. The Virginia senator then pointed out that in the same document, Vought proposed deep cuts to Medicaid for low-income families, tenant-based rental assistance, and low-income housing energy assistance.
“This was all in your document about ending woke and weaponized government. OK, let’s see, we want to traumatize federal employees and then we want to take all of these programs that help everyday people who are struggling and cut them because they’re ‘woke and weaponized.’ Those are your words, not mine,” Kaine concluded. “From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
You may remember Vought from undercover video shot by two reporters from the nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting.
The New Republic noted when the video posted in August:
Vought revealed his group plans to create “shadow” agencies to implement its draconian vision to solidify the “Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”
“We’ve been too focused on religious liberty, which we all support, but we’ve lacked the ability to argue we are a Christian nation,” said Vought.
“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” he said. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
Vought means to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism.” Perhaps that’s just in his off-the-clock spare time, but he seems quite committed to it.
As Digby noted, “Trump is too stupid and narcissistic to even vaguely understand or care what this man is up to.” He’s too obsessed with wreaking vengeance on anyone and everyone he thinks done him wrong. “I don’t care,” Trump told Sean Hannity when the Fox News celebrity tried to turn their conversation to the economy. Vought can have at the rest of us for all Trump cares.
In a whirlwind of speculation and misinformation, a memecoin supposedly linked to Barron Trump, the youngest son of former President Donald Trump, ascended to a staggering $460 million market cap before crashing down by 95%, leaving investors in the lurch. This event serves as a stark reminder of the dangers lurking in the volatile world of meme cryptocurrencies.
The Rise of the Fake Barron Token
The memecoin, simply dubbed “BARRON,” captured the imagination of the crypto community with its rapid ascent. Within hours of its launch, it had amassed a market capitalization of $460 million, driven by rampant speculation and two misleading posts from CoinTelegraph. These posts suggested, without evidence, that Barron Trump was behind this new digital asset. The allure of being associated with the Trump brand, especially in the politically charged environment of cryptocurrency, was enough to draw investors into a frenzy of buying.
The Fall: When Reality Strikes
The excitement was short-lived. It quickly came to light that there was no official connection between the BARRON memecoin and the Trump family. The token was the creation of a group known for launching unauthorized celebrity-themed cryptocurrencies, essentially cashing in on the fame of notable figures without their endorsement or involvement.
Once this revelation spread, the memecoin’s value plummeted. The market cap, which had skyrocketed based on hype and unfounded rumors, dropped by 95%, wiping out millions in investor capital. The sudden realization that the coin was based on “fake news” led to a mass sell-off, showcasing the fragility and speculative nature of memecoins.
The Misleading Blue Checkmark
Adding to the confusion was the memecoin’s account on social media platforms, which bore a blue verification checkmark. This verification badge often implies authenticity and credibility. However, in this case, it was a deceptive signal; there was no indication that the account was genuinely connected to Barron Trump. This incident highlights the limitations and potential for abuse of verification systems on social media, where a blue checkmark can be misleading.
Lessons from the Crash
This episode with the BARRON memecoin is a cautionary tale for the cryptocurrency market, particularly the memecoin sector. It underscores several key points:
Due Diligence is Crucial: Investors must perform thorough research before diving into any cryptocurrency, especially meme coins, which often ride on speculation rather than substance.
The Power of Social Media: The rapid spread of misinformation through platforms like X (formerly Twitter) can significantly influence market behavior, often irrationally.
Volatility of Memecoins: Memecoins are particularly susceptible to dramatic rises and falls, driven more by hype and social media trends than by fundamental value.
Celebrity Endorsement Risks: The use of celebrity names, even in jest or without endorsement, can lead to significant financial consequences for unsuspecting investors.
I’m sorry. If people actually bought this and lost their shirts I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them. The whole “memecoin” market is a scam in the first place but the Trump version is the worst of all. It’s hard for me to understand why this coin was more fake than the $Trump or $Melania one was. They’re all bullshit.
Trump is too stupid and narcissistic to even vaguely understand or care what this man is up to. But it’s where the real action is going to be taking place. If he gets away with it the federal government will be turned into the corrupt patronage system that the oligarchs have always dreamed of.
Murray to Vought as he refuses to commit to following the law: "If the law is that it's a 15 mile an hour speed limit, you can't just say, 'well I think that's irresponsible and I'm gonna challenge it, therefore I don't have to follow it. The impoundment law is the law" pic.twitter.com/FykqB6Anzf
Murray highlights that Vought, Trump's pick for OMB director, believes in the *abolition* of abortion — with no exceptions at all pic.twitter.com/ax6Ok632sj
Merkley to Vought: "You believe cutting off healthcare encourages people to work when they need to get better health in order to work? It doesn't make any sense." pic.twitter.com/LR2U9YaNBs
MERKLEY: So you're very comfortable with a cup of coffee for the bottom 10 percent, while you give $300k to the richest Americans, according to the Treasury Dept analysis?
VOUGHT: Look, there are people at the higher end who are in charge of small businesses who are taking great… pic.twitter.com/gkHlN8XVrx
Over the weekend, the Washington Post’s Beth Reinhard published an excellent article about one of Donald Trump’s most visionary advisers, an obscure figure named Russ Vought. He was a boring Republican bureaucrat who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 until Trump left office. He previously served as deputy director and acting director at OMB and prior to his stint in the White House worked at Heritage Action, the activist arm of the Heritage Foundation, where he was budget director for the Republican Study Group in Congress. In other words, for years Vought was a numbers cruncher providing far-right Republicans with their specious arguments about the government going broke and the need to drastically cut the safety net.
Who knew that such a person also had big ideas about how to destroy the U.S. government from the inside?
Vought is a self-described Christian nationalist who is spearheading plans for a rapid expansion of executive power under a theory he calls “radical constitutionalism” (an oxymoron, but it sure sounds snappy.) He has been working for a right-wing network called the Center for Renewing America, which is full of Trump acolytes, many of whom would likely become high-ranking officials in a future Trump administration. That includes Vought, often discussed as a potential White House chief of staff.
Reinhard writes:
“We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”
Vought aims to harness what he calls the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy that stymied the former president by stocking federal agencies with hardcore disciples who would wage culture wars on abortion and immigration. The proposals championed by Vought and other Trump allies to fundamentally reset the balance of power would represent a historic shift — one they see as a needed corrective.
Vought has been named by the Republican National Committee as the policy director for the 2024 platform committee. He wrote the chapter on the executive office of the president for Project 2025. And he is said to be in charge of planning for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration.
Vought is an evangelical Christian who has adopted the Trump credo that the ends justify the means. While in the White House, he saw people who balked at illegal and unethical activity as squishes and whenever he could do so, his office helped Trump do end-runs around the law and regulations, from reappropriating funds for his border wall to helping him pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy to slander Joe Biden, the scandal that got Trump impeached the first time around. Vought also came up with the notorious Schedule F, a plan to eliminate many civil service posts and replace long-serving government employees with Trump lackeys. They ran out of time to fully implement that strategy in Trump’s first term, but you can bet they’ll get it done ASAP if he wins in November.
He’s an efficient bureaucrat, trained in the right-wing fever swamps who knows how to get things done. And what he wants to do is horrifying.
Trump’s only agenda is to prove he’s not a loser, keep himself out of jail and wreak revenge on his enemies. Whatever else his underlings and enablers have planned for his second term is fine with him. Well, Vought has plans, and they’re big ones. His “radical constitutionalism” is an extreme reinterpretation of what the American system and the rule of law stand for.
As Reinhard reports, Vought seeks to redefine immigration as an “invasion,” which would allow the president to invoke wartime powers. He’s on the same page as Trump with respect to mass deportation because he doesn’t believe that most immigrants can understand America’s supposed Judeo-Christian worldview. He calls this “rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.”
Vought is one of the primary influences in right-wing circles pushing to eliminate any independence of agencies in the executive branch, starting of course with the Justice Department. On a recent podcast, he backed Trump’s call to prosecute Trump’s enemies saying, “It can’t just be hearings, it has to be investigations, an army of investigators that lead to firm convictions.” He supports invoking the Insurrection Act, banning medical abortions and implementing policies to boost the birth rate. (Yes, he’s one of those guys too.) In other words, he is an authoritarian nightmare.
Whenever I read about extremists like Vought and others who are plotting to overturn the Constitution, like so many others, I can’t help but think about 1930s Germany. The parallels aren’t perfect but they are way too close for comfort. The Nazi Big Lie was about the supposed “stab in the back” — the notion that the Germans hadn’t actually lost World War I but were instead betrayed by Jews, Marxists, democrats and internationalists. Trump’s Big Lie is that he didn’t lose the 2020 election (typically, it’s all about him) but it’s had a similar motivating effect on his followers.
In both cases, there is a fairly pathetic attempt to overthrow the government and the political establishment subsequently fails to take the legal steps available to prevent them from making a comeback. This facilitates the growth of an authoritarian movement, infused with racism and grievance. Although this movement never achieves a majority in the country over time its leaders learn that there are better ways of achieving its goals by exploiting weaknesses in the system that had previously gone undiscovered.
This form of revolution doesn’t rely on violent overthrow but it does require intimidation and threats of violence against political enemies. It cannot succeed without the enabling and cooperation of establishment politicians and officials who either believe they can control the extremists in their midst or simply sign on for their own ambition uncaring of the consequences. Vought is in the latter category, an opportunist who sees Donald Trump as the ticket to a Christian-nationalist America. Whether Vought is a MAGA true believer is immaterial. He’s an efficient bureaucrat, trained in the right-wing fever swamps, who knows how to get things done. And what he wants to do is horrifying.
Bishop Edgar Budde: "My responsibility yesterday morning was to pray to the nation for unity… Unity requires a certain degree of mercy… We need to treat everyone with dignity. I was trying to counter the narrative that is so divisive in which real people are being harmed." pic.twitter.com/dJ7VZW8MUd
But whatever. Trump’s just blathering about the “valve”
Trump on wildfires: "Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it. All they have to do is turn the value, and that's the valve coming back from and down from the Pacific Northwest."
Back in 2021 when Biden was elected, a lot of people were still working from home so they were able to watch the inauguration. But the same thing was true yesterday. It was a national holiday and most people were home and could have watched Trump’s restoration. They did not.
Nielsen found that ratings across ABC, CBS and NBC’s coverage of Trump’s swearing in as 47th president on Monday hovered around 26.05 million viewers on average from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m (ET), reported The Hollywood Reporter.
According to Nielsen’s ratings, viewership for the two previous inaugurations, which includes Trump’s first term, faired much better by around 32 percent.
Around 39.87 million people tuned in to watch Biden take the oath of office in 2021. A hair behind Biden, Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 pulled in an average 38.35 million viewers. However, THR reported that viewership then was measured from 11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. (ET).
In terms of where audiences tuned in to watch the presidential fanfare, Fox News overwhelming held the most viewership. During the 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. window, Fox peaked at around 10.59 million viewers, just behind its coverage for Trump’s first swearing in.
President Donald Trump’s transition team and outside allies have been signaling for weeks that they were planning to “flood the zone” in the first 100 days of the new administration. Former senior adviser and activist Steve Bannon had pushed this idea during Trump’s first term, telling author and journalist Michael Lewis, “the Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” He called it “shock and awe” which was described by historian Douglas Brinkley as:
[B]izarre, rapid-fire presidential policy making …every day there’s a new, radical initiative, and it doesn’t give journalists or the public a chance to get a grip on what just happened.
Current senior adviser Stephen Miller has refined the idea for the second term. He recently told the NY Times that he believes that “those he regards as Mr. Trump’s enemies — Democrats, the media, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and portions of the federal bureaucracy — are depleted and only have so much bandwidth for outrage and opposition. Mr. Miller has told people that the goal is to overwhelm them with a blitz of activity.”
Russell Vought, Project 2025 author of the first 180 days memorandum and Trump’s pick for the Office of Management and Budget has described the political opposition as “enemy fire that’s coming over the target,” while urging allies to be “fearless at the point of attack” and calling his policy proposals “battle plans.” Bannon has recently said that “shock and awe” is “so 2017.” Now he’s calling it “Rolling Thunder.”
I think you’re getting the picture from all these military terms. These guys are all cosplaying Clausewitz. It seems to make them feel very strong and manly.
Trump signed a huge pile of Executive Orders on Day One but they’re are as substandard as MAGA legal work always is. Slate legal expert Dahlia Lithwick said:
We saw some shoddy, shoddy lawyering in some of these new executive orders. And I want to note that the one promise, for at least the last six months, as I understand it, was that these Project 2025 jobs were going to be ready from Day 1. That the greatest minds in the conservative legal movement were beavering away for months to make sure that when all of this went into effect on Day 1, or Week 1, it would be bulletproof. And this is not bulletproof. Some of it looks like it was written by A.I. or by a first-grader using A.I. And I just want to flag that one of the reasons Donald Trump lost a whole lot in the first four years of Trumpism was because of crap lawyering by crap lawyers cutting corners and doing a bad job. It seems to me that would’ve been the one lesson they learned.
Maybe none of that really matters if the whole point of the exercise is to flood the zone with shit and rain down shock and awe on the American people but I have to wonder if maybe people are on to them this time.
Rather than confusing and overwhelming everyone with their flurry of sloppy Executive Orders there was one specific action Trump took yesterday that has everyone’s attention, almost to the exclusion of everything else — his shocking pardons of over 1500 January 6th convicts and the commutations of the handful who were convicted of sedition. On top of that he completely went back on his promise that he would not interfere with the workings of the Department of Justice by ordering it to drop all pending January 6th cases.
Everyone knew that Trump was planning to pardon some of the convicted prisoners but it’s clear that nobody expected this full sweep. Polling before and after the election has shown that of all of Trump’s proposals, from the ridiculous to the bizarre, this one is the most unpopular. A Scripps-Ipsos poll before the election found that 68% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s plan to pardon the J6 rioters. Likewise a recent AP-NORC poll from this month showed that 60% disapproved .
Just a couple of weeks ago, Vice President JD Vance was asked about it and he said “if you protested peacefully on January 6th… you should be pardoned, if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi said just the other day in her confirmation hearing, that if she was asked to advice the president on the pardons (as is the usual process) she would take it on a case by case basis but added “let me be very clear in speaking to you, I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country.”
Trump pardoned people who were convicted of literally attempting to murder police officers that day. He was asked about it yesterday and his pathetic response was that he’d “take a look at it” as if that means anything and went on to say that murderers get away with it all the time in cities around the country:
BREAKING: In a stunning moment of incompetence, Donald Trump just completely failed to answer why he pardoned someone who used a stun gun to assault a police officer. This is insane. pic.twitter.com/VE2yZBZHOm
That officer had a heart attack from the stun and suffered a brain injury. More than 140 officers were injured that day the worst day for law enforcement since 9/11.
Trump had the chutzpah to then say:
Q: “Aren’t you sending the message that assaulting officers is okay with these pardons?”
Trump: “No, the opposite…I am the friend of police more than any president that has ever been in this office.” pic.twitter.com/XeYaxE34eF
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) January 21, 2025
As it happens ( in a proverbial leopards eating faces moment) the Fraternal Order of Police, which enthusiastically endorsed him last November, begged to differ, putting out this statement:
“Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety —they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law. Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.
They went on to say that, contrary to Trump’s deplorable excuses, this sent a dangerous message, potentially “emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence.”
But then, that may just be a feature not a bug. At the same press conference, Trump virtually invited the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to rejoin the MAGA cause, saying “they love our country” One of the leaders whose sentence Trump commuted, Enrique Tarrio, told Alex Jones yesterday that he wants the people who prosecuted him to “feel the heat” and be put in prison.
There is no mistaking the messages Trump sent with his sweeping pardons yesterday. He told his followers that if they commit crimes, violent or otherwise, on his behalf, that he has their backs. The immunity the Supreme Court gave him is therefore conferred on anyone who does his bidding. And he has told his political opponents, and any official protection they might have, that they are not safe from political violence.
He means it. Yesterday he revoked secret service protection from his nemesis John Bolton who was threatened by Iran:
News: BOLTON, in phone interview with me, says Secret Service called him at 11:30pm last night to say his protective detail ended today. It ended at noon. He said threat from Iran on his life and lives of other Americans continues nonetheless.
The new Trump administration may just have miscalculated what their “shock and awe” strategy might do. Pardoning even the violent criminals who attacked police officers has broken through the fog of war and people can see exactly what they’re up to. The “law and order” president is acting exactly like the convicted criminal that he is.
