Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Move over O.J. A trial like no one’s ever seen.

Hush. It’s not about money. The Donald Trump trial that begins jury selection in Manhattan today is about what elevates payments funneled to a porn star through a shall company to the level of felony.

A once-skeptical Mark Joseph Stern explains at Slate, “The falsification of business records is, by itself, a misdemeanor under New York law, but it’s a felony when it’s done with the ‘intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.’” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pretrial briefing erased Stern’s doubts left over from the initial indictment.

Stern writes:

Bragg has argued, convincingly, that the former president intended to violate at least two election laws—one state, one federal. First, Bragg asserted that Trump and Cohen ran afoul of the Federal Election Campaign Act by making unlawful campaign contributions (in the form of a payoff) at the direction of a candidate (that is, Trump). Cohen already pleaded guilty for this very act in federal court, so it is hardly a stretch to accuse Trump of intending to break the law by participating in the crime. Second, Bragg argued that Trump ran afoul of a New York election law that forbids any conspiracy “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” The district attorney claimed that Trump intended to violate this statute by committing fraud in order to secure his own victory in 2016.

There is nothing especially creative about these theories; they are not an example of prosecutors stretching the law to its breaking point so it can fit over the facts of a questionable case. The application of both federal and state election codes, and their interplay with the underlying violation of New York’s business records law, is straightforward. Really, the only half-plausible argument that Trump could mount in opposition was that the Federal Election Campaign Act somehow preempted the use of New York’s own statutes to punish election-related record-keeping fraud, meaning he would be liable only for misdemeanor record-keeping violations. Two different judges rejected this claim: Juan Merchan, who’s overseeing the state trial, and Alvin K. Hellerstein, who shot down Trump’s short-lived play to remove the whole case to federal court.

Stern had hoped one of the other cases about the election would reach court first, and before this fall’s elections. But this case “is about the election—albeit the one in 2016, not 2020.” The other three cases against the slippery Mr. Trump have been delayed by “a corrupt judge, a foot-dragging Supreme Court, and a district attorney’s questionable conduct in an already complex case,” Stern explains, leaving this one to start this morning in a New York court “less susceptible to political interference than the federal courts” have proved.

Bragg’s prosecution stands for the simple proposition that a rich and powerful man like Trump cannot disregard his legal obligations as a candidate for office in a constitutional democracy. He cannot avoid consequences by asserting, under the thin guise of various legal doctrines, that he is forever immune from his day of judgment because he was once president, and he is rich.

Finding jurors capable of judging without bias a former president, the first ever in this country to face a criminal trial, begins this morning. Each prospect will have to answer 42 questions Justice Juan Merchan has prepared.

Politico explains the process and systematically walks readers through what deeper beliefs hope to tease out of prospective jurors:

A starting point is identifying prospective jurors with strong feelings about Trump, his presidency and the criminal cases he faces. Each side wants to figure out whether any potential jurors actually know Trump, worked for his businesses or have a direct relationship with him or his family members. But mainly, the lawyers are trying to suss out any inherently strong feelings — positive or negative — about Trump.

Merchan, on the other hand, says he wants to limit efforts to determine whether prospective jurors like or dislike Trump.

“Such questions are irrelevant because they do not go to the issue of the prospective juror’s qualifications,” he wrote in an order last week finalizing the questionnaire. “The ultimate issue is whether the prospective juror can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”

This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Anything might happen. A jury might exonerate him. “But most experts don’t think it will,” Michael Tomasky writes at The New Republic.

Tomasky writes:

But faith in the jury system is high. That may well be especially so in a case like this one, which until this week has been, to your disinterested observer, a partisan circus. But a jury’s verdict has an authority and finality for these Americans that a Sean Hannity rant or a New York Times editorial lacks.

“So, with any luck, by Memorial Day or so,” Tomasky adds, “we’ll be able to write the phrase that has been crying to be written for about 35 years: ‘Convicted felon Donald Trump.’”

Trump himself is terrified, say those who know him. Even if he’s elected president — and it’s clear one of his major motivations for running is to keep from living out the rest of his life behind bars — presidential pardon power does not extend to state law. His base is already shaky. If he’s a convicted felon going into November, multiple polls show Trump’s support will erode further, and he knows it. Half the country already believes him guilty in the Manhattan case. Trump and his closest allies are already working up plans to declare the election stolen and seize power no matter how badly he loses.

Americans face a choice this fall not between two old men, but between two futures for our “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” They must decide whether or not it shall “perish from the earth.” Lincoln presented that choice at Gettysburg amidst a civil war for the preservation of the union. That conflict was between a new people dedicated to the theory (still unrealized today) that all are created equal and a faction of rump royalists unwilling to see feudalism die finally and for good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Just to sum up. You support Trump for president even if he's convicted in the classified documents case. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about… pic.twitter.com/RMXfOOkVBv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2024

The irony in the wake of Trump’s disjointed reflections on Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg over the weekend is that that civil war is still engaged. Trump’s “forces” on Jan. 6, 2021, fought a pitched battle on the steps of and inside the U.S. Capitol to undo what the Confederates conceded at Appomattox in 1865. Trump’s allies have surrendered any legitimacy as moral actors in this democracy, yet fight on to replace it with an older system of government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry. Or simply by a dictatorship.

They’re fine with dictatorship. Even if the dictator is in prison.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

The Washington Post reports on some of the MAGA faithful who are losing their nest eggs on Trump’s Truth Social stock:

Jerry Dean McLain first bet on former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social two years ago, buying into the Trump company’s planned merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, at $90 a share. Over time, as the price changed, he kept buying, amassing hundreds of shares for $25,000 — pretty much his “whole nest egg,” he said.

That nest egg has lost about half its value in the past two weeks as Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price dropped from $66 after its public debut last month to $32 on Friday. But McLain, 71, who owns a tree-removal service outside Oklahoma City, said he’s not worried. If anything, he wants to buy more.

“I know good and well it’s in Trump’s hands, and he’s got plans,” he said. “I have no doubt it’s going to explode sometime.”

Even the $3.5 billion loss in value since its debut last month hasn’t deterred them. Neither has the fact that it lost $58 million last year and only had 4 millionin revenues. And they’re fine with all the top executive making huge multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses.

This is so pathetic I can’t believe these people are allowed to operate a motor vehicloe or take care of childre:

But for some Trump investors, the stock is a badge of honor — a way to show their devotion beyond buying Trump merchandise, visiting Trump golf courses or donating to Trump’s presidential campaign.

[…]

Many of Truth Social’s investors say they’re in it for the long haul. Todd Schlanger, an interior designer at a furniture store in West Palm Beach who said Trump had been one of his customers, said he’s invested about $20,000 in total and is buying new shares every week.

Schlanger said he now watches his stock performance every day hoping for positive signs. In a Truth Social post last week, he encouraged “everyone who supports Donald Trump and Truth [Social to] buy a share everyday” and asked, “Do you think we have hit bottom?” (The stock slid nearly 10 percent after that post.)

He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”

That range of emotions is on full display on Truth Social, where thousands of mostly anonymous accounts have flocked to meme-filled investor groups, one of which is emblazoned with a computer-generated image showing Trump pumping his fist on a Wall Street trading floor.

Some accounts there have recently encouraged traders to keep investing in a fight they said was about “good vs evil” — a way to defend Trump from the liberal elites laughing at him and, by extension, them. The user @BaldylocksUSMC said “the fight has been long and hard on most of us” and that “this stock is not for the weak,” but that one day they would triumph over critics who were “brainwashed beyond repair.”

After the billionaire media mogul Barry Diller called Trump Media a “scam” stock bought by “dopes,” one account, @Handbag72, claimed to have bought more shares, arguing Diller didn’t “get it” or was “at risk of [losing] $$$$.” The next day, the account shared a 2021 blog post from the investing forum Seeking Alpha saying Truth Social could be worth $1 trillion in the next 10 years.

[…]

Some users said they were “baffled” by the stock’s ups and downs, and one asked for advice on how to tell her husband she didn’t want to sell. One user posted a meme image saying, “If you’re worried about your Money, Remember This, DJT stock is about FREE SPEECH & Without FREE SPEECH Money won’t mean much.”

But other users saw such questions as displays of unacceptable doubt. When the user @seneca1950 asked whether anyone was concerned that the company’s upcoming plans to issue tens of millions more shares would sink the stock price, two accounts criticized the account for spreading “FUD” — fear, uncertainty and doubt.

“Are you a Fudster,” wrote a user named “Jesus Revolution 2024.” Wrote another, called Rabristol: “You must be short with no way out!”

[…]

Carol Swain, a prominent conservative commentator in Nashville who previously taught political science at Vanderbilt University, said she invested $1,000 in Trump Media stock earlier this month, at $48 a share, over the objections of her financial adviser, who predicted the stock would dive.

“If I lose it, fine. If I make a profit, wonderful. But at the end of the day, I wanted to show my support,” she said. “There’s such an effort to destroy him and strip his wealth away, and so much glee about it. I would like to see him be a winner.”

She, too, suspects stock manipulation, arguing that “the people who hate Donald Trump would do anything to try to hurt him.” As for Truth Social itself, she said she posts there only sparingly and prefers X, where she has 35 times as many followers. “I have always wanted not to just preach to the choir,” she said.

McLain, the tree service owner in Oklahoma, said he believes the stock could “go to $1,000 a share, easy,” once the media stops writing so negatively about it and the company works through its growing pains. The company’s leaders, he said, are being “too silent right now” amid questions about the falling share price, but he suspects it’s because they’re working on something amazing and new.

McLain is an amateur trader — he invested only once before and “lost [his] butt” — and said he hasn’t talked to his family about his investment, saying, “You know how that is.” But he believes the Trump Media deal is a sign he is “supposed to invest,” he said.

“This isn’t just another stock to me. … I feel like it was God Almighty that put it in my lap,” he said. “I’ve just got to hold on and let them do their job. If you go on emotion, you’ll get out of this thing the first time it goes down.”

I’d feel sorry for them if they were taken to the cleaners by any other con man. But there is plenty of information available about Trump’s history of conning people and this ridiculous company is obviously a joke. Come on.

Yes, it’s finally here and it confirms what all the other polls have been showing for the last month. Acknowledging that the NY Times Sienna poll is considered the gold standard among the cognoscenti, Dan Pfeiffer does a nice analysis of what it says about this moment in time:

The Democratic coalition is heading home. As the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher wrote in his analysis of the poll:

Mr. Biden’s tick upward appears to stem largely from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters — he is winning a greater share of voters who supported him in 2020 than he did a month ago. Then, Mr. Trump had secured the support of far more of his past voters compared with the president — 97 percent to 83 percent — but that margin has narrowed. Mr. Biden is now winning 89 percent of his 2020 supporters compared with 94 percent for Mr. Trump.

Biden had a 43-point lead with Black voters in February, now that advantage is 53 points. Among Hispanic voters, Biden trailed by six in February. He now leads by nine. The President also increased his lead with voters over the age of 65 by three points. Based on this data, we can assume that the movement is largely among older voters.

These are also the voters expected to shift after an event like the State of the Union and an aggressive, well-funded television advertising campaign. Engaging older voters is simply easier in this fractured media environment. They consume more traditional news sources and still watch linear television and are therefore easier to reach with television ads. Younger voters have mostly cut the cord and watch TV through streaming services some of which are ad-free and some of the ones that offer an ad-tier don’t allow political ads.

The fact that Biden’s coalition is beginning to come home is very good news. It’s evidence that he can win and a validation of the strategy to date.

The Path Forward

I want to emphasize that, in a race between a sitting President and a former President where the electorate already has strongheld opinions about both candidates, the race will shift very slowly. Absent a significant exogenous event (like one of them being sentenced to prison), we are unlikely to see any real swings. This campaign will be a game of inches all the way to election day.

To give a sense of how subtle some of these shifts are, Biden and Trump’s favorable ratings didn’t change at all from February to now. People’s view of the economy didn’t improve either. It actually got slightly worse, but that is likely statistical noise given the margin of error. Based on this poll, there are few areas of priority for the folks across the anti-MAGA movement.

Focus on Voters of Color: Biden’s gains with Black and Hispanic voters are important progress, but there is more to do to get back to his 2020 margins. According to Pew Research’s Validated Voter study, Biden won Black voters 92-8 and Hispanic voters 59-38. So, there’s work to do. Biden simply cannot afford much erosion from these core parts of the Democratic coalition.

Young Voters Are a Weak Point: Per this poll, Biden continues to struggle with young voters. Biden actually lost ground among voters 18-29 years old since the February poll. Now, the polling of young voters has been all over the map this cycle, so I am a little skeptical that the President lost 11 points with this cohort in two months. However, the picture painted by this poll — and most of the other polls — is that younger voters — particularly younger voters of color — is the group with whom the President has the most work to do. Given their opinions on the President’s age (87% think Biden is too old to be effective) and how he is handling foreign conflicts (only 4% strongly approve), this group will take a lot of persuasion and is the one that requires the most investment of time and resources.

The Economy is Trump’s Secret Sauce: For all of the focus on Trump’s nationalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, there is a simple reason why he has a real shot at the White House despite his 91 felony indictments and failed violent insurrection. It’s the economy. The New York Times/Siena poll asked whether voters approved of “the way Donald Trump handled each of the following issues when he was president.” Nearly two-thirds of voters approved including 66% of 18-29 year olds. 74% of Hispanic voters, and 69% of Independents. Heck, even 27% of Democrats give Trump positive marks. Biden’s economic approval is 32-67. For a host of reasons, I am skeptical that the President can — or needs to — beat Trump on the economy, but he has to narrow the gap. The Biden campaign will begin that effort next week with a major tour of Pennsylvania focusing on the economy.

Much of the punditocracy has felt that Trump has a significant advantage and that it’s his race to lose. However, this poll—and the overall polling trends since the State of the Union—show that the 2024 election is a very close, very winnable race. We just have to do the work. And for all of the understandable hate toward the polls, it’s the polls that give us a roadmap for victory.

Yeah, I’m still not sure about these polls. But they do provide information that you have to take into account.

As for the punditry believing that it’s Trump’s race to lose — well, that’s true and it’s shameful. Jonathan Martin at Politico said it right upfront:

Just as the stock market’s record gains this year have been driven by anticipation of interest rate cuts, Donald Trump’s prospects have been propelled by an irrational exuberance in the political markets.

This week demonstrated how the conventional wisdom around Trump’s inevitability has solidified — and why those assumptions, much like the ones around rate cuts, are due for a correction.

I would hope so. Trump has never been more than a couple of points ahead and he’s a corrupt, criminal sociopath. Playing the horserace betting game with this one has done real harm. Biden’s going to have to work twice as hard and it was already tough enough.

This man is the perfect emblem of the modern GOP

STEPHANOPOULOS: Will your support for Trump continue even if he's convicted?

CHRIS SUNUNU: Yeah. This has been going on for more than a year and his poll numbers never go down.

S: But you're going to politics. I'm asking about right and wrong.

CS: This is about politics. pic.twitter.com/HfRXDAC6dg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2024

STEPHANOPOULOS: Please explain given the fact you believe Trump contributed to an insurrection how you can say we should have him back in the Oval Office

SUNUNU: For me, it's not about him as much as it is having a GOP administration

S: But he will be the president! That… pic.twitter.com/LG8oWeVY95

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2024

STEPHANOPOULOS: Just to sum up. You support Trump for president even if he's convicted in the classified documents case. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about… pic.twitter.com/RMXfOOkVBv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2024

I have no words.

Trump and the Republicans are flogging violent crime as their biggest issue after immigration. And they’ve actually conflated the two with a nonsensical new slogan called “Biden Migrant Crime.”

Not that it matters to the cult because they live in an alternate universe, but reality should be biting for anyone who isn’t indoctrinated in Trump fantasy. The Wall St. Journal reports:

Homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump.

Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023, according to crime-data analyst Jeff Asher, who tabulated statistics from police departments across the country.

Philadelphia saw a 35% drop in killings as of April 12 compared with the same period last year, police data show. In New York City, homicides fell 15% through April 7. Homicides in Columbus, Ohio, plunged 58% through April 7.

Here’s just a random sample:

The declines so far in 2024, on top of last year’s drop, mirror the steep declines in homicides of the late 1990s.

“There’s just a ton of places that you can point to that are showing widespread, very positive trends,” said Asher, co-founder of criminal justice consulting firm AH Datalytics. “Nationally, you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late ’90s. But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentages and numbers of the drops.” 

During the pandemic, homicide rates shot up around the country, sparking concerns that the progress made during a decadeslong drop in violent crimes had been undone. The number of homicides in the U.S. rose nearly 30% in 2020 from the prior year to 21,570, the largest single-year increase ever recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Researchers and authorities attributed the upward spike to several factors, including crime-prevention programs, courts and prisons being unable to operate normally when Covid was spreading; young people not in school due to shutdowns; and law enforcement pulling back after social unrest following the high-profile police killings of George Floyd and other Black people. 

“The police went to sleep,” said Dean Dabney, a criminology professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “The prosecution and the courts went to sleep, and the jails and prisons let people out. So you had an ideal situation for criminals.”

Who was president when that happened? I keep forgetting.

The truth is that any president probably would have faced a similar situation but Trump pimping crime as a Biden failure is really rich considering the facts. And saying it while the stats are coming down is just plain old gaslighting.

If you have a WSJ sub you can plug your city or town into the interactive data base to find your own statistics. It’s pretty astonishing.

Trump says he “wants to be able” to override the Constitution to “pick” when elections are held pic.twitter.com/sxuyrJVucL

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 14, 2024

Apparently, he doesn’t know the difference between the American system and a parliamentary system and just wants to be able to call elections whenever he feels like it — which, in his case, will be never.

He’s an imbecile.

The Philly Inquirer’s Will Bunch went that rally yesterday. He says he goes to them from time to time for a specific reason:

I go largely because I think the media still fails to understand America’s most important story of the last 10 years. U.S. democracy is staring out into the abyss not so much because of the narcissistic bluster of one alleged billionaire ex-president, but because of the people with fleece hoodies over their MAGA hats who spent hours in an April windstorm to see him.

You’re not supposed to say that, of course. His followers are all Real Americans who are good people who are hypnotized by Donald Trump and we can’t hold them responsible. It’s tiresome particularly since they have no compunction about slamming their political opponents with the grossest insults imaginable.

Anyway, here’s part of his report:

Things have changed a lot since I talked to folks outside of Trump’s 2016 rally in Chester County, when they were intrigued by Trump’s not-a-politician bluster and his “get-’em-out-of-here” rage at liberal protesters. Eight years later, a Trump rally has become an Orwellian celebration of an upside-down world where the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years is actually the worst U.S. economy ever, the nation’s cities are cesspools of violence despite a plunging crime rate, and the only person wronged on Jan. 6 was not the scores of injured cops but Ashli Babbitt, shot by “a Black police officer.”

In a sense, Trump himself is almost like the MacGuffin, the plot device that gives these characters an excuse to get together. “We already know what the spiel is, we know what he stands for,” one man, a middle-aged Canadian American executive, told me. So why wait on this massive line? It’s partly that a rally gives supporters a chance to get off the couch, shut down the TikTok app, turn off YouTube, and prove to themselves they are actually not alone in thinking that everything has gone to heck. But there’s an even more insidious reason for coming out.

“Look, they’re going to steal the election again,” said one friend of the Canada native who, like many of the Trump voters I spoke with, didn’t want to give his name. “They need to see a larger number of people supporting a different kind of candidacy than the one they’re trying to throw down our throat.” They are smitten by the theory that the Big Lie that Trump actually defeated Biden in 2020 is proven by their mass willingness to stand on a line in a howling wind for four hours, while Biden couldn’t even fill a high school gym.

They told Bunch that they aren’t actually rural rubes but are instead “executives” who traveled from wealthy suburbs or have a bi-racial child thus disproving the narrative that Trump is losing. Or something.

Most have constructed an elaborate worldview about what is happening in America today around the issues that matter most in Trump World, like the southern border or the part of the economy with high grocery prices (but not the part with plentiful jobs or a record stock market). Never mind the inherent contradictions, like the one 69-year-old woman from upstate New York who told me “America looks weak” on foreign policy” but also “not one more dollar for Ukraine.

I asked one gaggle on the line where they get their sweeping narratives, considering what they were also telling me about their contempt for the legacy mainstream media. “TikTok!” one immediately blurted. “There’s a lot of information on TikTok.” His neighbor quickly recommended YouTube, while others promoted obscure websites or the right-wing Patriot channel on satellite radio.

He points out that at the moment Trump was bloviating his greatest hits, Israel was intercepting hundreds of drones and missile strikes aimed at their country. The cult was all oblivious.

That’s why it was so jarring to see that the happiest place on earth was this mile-long line in Schnecksville. It was a kind of “Trumpstock,” one night of manufactured peace, unity, and shared disinformation, while the gale-force winds of truth blew well above their bubble.

I still maintain that it’s more insulting to these people to treat them like delicate snowflakes who can’t be confronted with their willful dereliction of duty as citizens (and human beings.) They are all adults and they all have agency. They know what they’re doing.

Swalwell: It's too rich that Donald Trump and Mike Johnson are talking to us about election integrity. That's like having to listen to a lecture by Bonnie and Clyde on bank security. I mean, it's absurd considering what they did in the 2020 election to try and overturn it. pic.twitter.com/V1NrMxjlvP

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 13, 2024

Donald Trump likes to proclaim himself the greatest businessman, greatest president, greatest everything and none of it is even remotely true. Well, there is one category in which he is the undisputed greatest of all time: he is the greatest sore loser in world history. And he’s such a sore loser that even when he wins he whines that he was cheated out of winning even bigger.

The best example of this was his lament after 2016 when he won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by 2 million votes that those votes were all illegal. He couldn’t live with the fact that even though he technically won the election it was not by popular acclamation. He used to say, “when people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.” (This does not happen, needless to say.) And he loved to say that most of those illegal votes came from undocumented immigrants.

Almost immediately upon taking office he convened a “Commission on Voter Integrity” and tapped his Vice President Mike Pence and a right wing “vote fraud” activist and then Kansas Secretary of State named Kris Kobach to head it up, larding the rest of the board with Republican hacks. Kobach and his various henchmen quickly lost whatever slight chance they had a credibility when they tried to strong arm the states into turning over massive amounts of private voter data which resulted in a succession of lawsuits that blocked most of the commission’s activities and caused chaos for elections officials all over the country.

One of the Democratic members of the commission was forced to file a lawsuit in federal court to get Kobach and company to share working papers with the few Democrats on the commission and a federal judge sided with him, ordering the Republicans majority to turn them over. At that point the commission was abruptly disbanded without ever issuing a report, they turned the matter over to the Department of Homeland Security and that was that.

But as we all know too well, that did not stop Donald Trump from continuing to insist that the election system is rigged despite no evidence of any kind of systemic fraud. It was even adjudicated more than 60 times in the post election period in 2020. But the Big Lie persists because he has relentlessly flogged it virtually every day since then and polls show that two-thirds of Republicans still believe that election was stolen. In fact, going back to his first election in 2016, prior to each one Trump has planted the seeds that the system is rigged against him. As we found out on January 6th, he has many followers who believe that he must win, or else.

After he incited that insurrection in 2021 it briefly appeared that the Republican establishment was going to finally break with Trump and put an end to this insanity. The leadership of the party stood up on the floor of the congress and denounced Trump’s behavior. A few of them even brought themselves to vote for conviction in his impeachment trial which would have prevented him from running again. But not enough were able to summon the courage and it wasn’t long before then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy scurried down to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club to kiss the ring and establish that Trump remained the leader of the GOP despite his coup attempt and numerous crimes, setting the stage for his inevitable comeback.

These pilgrimages have become a ritual for all Republicans with any ambition. (In fact, it’s become a required stop for foreign politicians covering all their bases as well.) Just last week House Speaker Mike Johnson made the trek, obviously to beg for protection from his arch-nemesis Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who is making a major power play to strip him his power as Speaker and possibly the chair itself. (She is threatening to call to vacate the chair unless Johnson does exactly what she wants.)

Trump was non-committal, trying to keep Greene appeased (she’s very popular with the MAGA crowd and he agrees with her position on Ukraine aid) while also showing support for Johnson whom he clearly sees as a puppet — which he is. It was a rather sad display, with Johnson looking like an eager schoolboy as Trump stood behind him grimacing like a stern head master.

Although we know why Johnson went running to Big Daddy, the ostensible reason was to announce a new proposal for, you guessed it, “election integrity.” Johnson pledged to introduce legislation to make it illegal for non-citizens to vote, specifically undocumented immigrants, claiming there is a danger that “potentially hundreds of thousands of votes” will be cast by migrants in the November election.

They seem to want people to believe that a big priority for all the people Trump claims are escaped mental patients currently flooding the border is registering to vote. Are they suggesting that these wily, sophisticated migrants are thinking ahead to the future when voting for Democrats may one day entitle them to a path to citizenship? It’s absurd to think that undocumented migrants would take a risk for something so abstract with no immediate reward and it’s not backed up with any data to support it. As CNN reported:

The right-leaning Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed fraud cases lists less than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than one billion lawfully cast ballots. And the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice analyzed more than 23 million votes from the 2016 election and found an estimated 30 examples.

This is just another way for Trump to play to his base’s prejudice and pump the paranoid “Great Replacement Theory”, the formerly fringe belief now mainstream on the right, that immigration from non-European countries is a plot to displace white people and create a permanent Democratic majority. He’s folding it into his Big Lie Redux preview in a two for one package of xenophobic outrage.

Perhaps the Democrats should just go ahead and let them pass this unnecessary, redundant bill so that when Trump loses again, they can say that the election must be legitimate because Trump and Johnson ensured that the integrity of the vote was fully protected. I’m sure that won’t stop Trump from his inevitable primal scream but it would be pleasurable to be able to say it anyway.

Salon

Iran throws a flurry of missiles and drones at Israel

Iran retaliated for Israel’s April 1 “bombing of its consular building in Syria that killed two of Tehran’s top commanders.” Buckle up (CNN this morning):

In decades of antagonism between Israel and Iran, there has never been an attack by Iran inside Israel. This crosses a threshold. What happens next rests on whether Israel will listen to the United States and not escalate the cycle of retaliation.

Iran’s massive drone and missile wave was 99% intercepted, and Israel said damage was limited. Triggered by Israel’s April 1 strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria, the barrage brings the region to a boil. We still don’t know exactly why Israel carried out the strike in Syria, but analysts say Iran was forced to respond for its own internal consumption and to demonstrate strength in the region. For its part, it says the matter is now concluded.

President Joe Biden said the US will not join any Israeli offensive against Iran. The very real question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will listen to the warnings of his biggest backer.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told CNN Israel had won this round and Netanyahu must think before any further action, warning that Israel is still stuck in Gaza, hostages remain captive, and the Lebanon-Israel border is highly volatile.In the meantime, despite the current escalation between Israel and US intelligence say there is no evidence Iran planned or acted in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Biden has a chance to tamp this down before things spiral out of control. If he doesn’t or can’t, God knows what comes next in the Middle East or for him in this fall’s elections.

CNN again (from last night):

Israel should consider tonight a win because the current US assessment is that Iran’s attacks had been largely unsuccessful and demonstrated Israel’s superior military capability, President Joe Biden told Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their phone call, a senior administration official told CNN.

The US’s assessment tonight was that almost all of the drones and missiles – including more than 100 ballistic missiles — launched by Iran had been knocked out of the sky. No cruise missile made impact, the official said, and nothing of “value” was hit. 

Israel war cabinet is meeting now

2 hardline Israeli ministers urge firm response to Iran attack

Just what your nerves needed

Washington Post:

World leaders are expressing concerns that Iran’s wave of missile and drone attacks against Israel could further destabilize the Middle East. Allies including the United States, Germany, France and Britain reaffirmed their support for Israel in the wake of Tehran’s first full-scale military assault.

In a statement condemning the attacks, President Biden said that U.S. support for Israeli security was “ironclad” and that he would convene Group of Seven leaders Sunday to coordinate a response.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the attack “unjustifiable and highly irresponsible,” adding that Iran’s actions risked “further escalation in the region.” Scholz said Germany stands by Israel and would be holding talks with its allies.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Iran’s attack was “reckless” and risked “inflaming tensions” in the region. “Iran has once again demonstrated that it is intent on sowing chaos in its own backyard,” Sunak said, adding that Britain would continue to “stand up for Israel’s security.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada “unequivocally condemns” Iran’s attack against Israel and that the strikes highlighted the Iranian regime’s “disregard for peace and stability in the region.” Trudeau said Canada supports Israel’s right to defend itself.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “unprecedented attack,” saying it “threatens to destabilize the region.” Macron expressed solidarity with the Israeli people and reiterated France’s commitment to the security of Israel. “France is working on de-escalation with its partners and calls for restraint,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admonished Iran on social media, writing that Ukrainians are all too familiar with the sound of Iranian drones because Russia uses the same type in its attacks against Ukraine. Zelensky also called on Congress to “make the necessary decisions to strengthen America’s allies at this critical time.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged all parties to “exercise restraint” and criticized Western members of the U.N. Security Council for failing to “adequately respond” to Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1, which Russia condemned at the time. The statement also highlighted Iran’s claim that Saturday’s strike followed a framework of self-defense in response to the Damascus attack. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian-Iranian relations have deepened, with Tehran providing Moscow with thousands of Shahed drones for its attacks on Ukraine.

China expressed concern over the “current escalation,” calling on “relevant parties” to exercise calm and restraint. “The conflict must end now,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, according to the Global Times, a state-backed newspaper.

Saudi Arabia expressed “deep concern,” with its Foreign Ministry saying the military escalation “would have grave consequences if it expands.” The kingdom said it was urging “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to protect the region and its people from the dangers of war.”

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry urged all parties to “exercise maximum restraint,” calling on “the international community to take urgent action to defuse tension and reduce escalation in the region.”

This is all developing in real time with little room for analysis (esp. by me), but there’s this (NBC News):

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel marks a significant moment in history, even if it was intended to be largely symbolic, according to an analyst with geopolitical risk advisory firm Eurasia Group.

“Make no mistake: even if #Iran intended this to be a telegraphed and (it would seem) largely symbolic show of force to restore deterrence, it has attacked Israel with missiles and drones for the first time,” tweeted Gregory Brew, an Iran analyst.

“Alea iacta est, folks,” he added, using a Latin term for “the die is cast.”

Brew wrote that he “did not anticipate Iran would use its own missiles, from within its own territory, against Israel directly.”

“A major milestone,” Brew tweeted.

Needed that like a hole in the head.

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History like you’ve never seen

Clips of his Saturday rally in Pennsylvania feature some epic, word-jazz weirdness wherein Donald Trump praised the state’s place in American history. It’s fantastical, but there’s a point to quoting it.

The punctuation is unclear here:

It’s where the army weathered it’s brutal winter at Valley Forge where General George Washington led his men on a daring mission across the Delaware and where our union was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg Gettysburg what an unbelievable battle that was the battle of Gettysburg what an unbelievable I mean it was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful and so many different ways it represented such a big portion of the success of this country Gettysburg wow.

Trump: Gettysburg. What an unbelievable battle. That was the battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable I mean, it was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful and so many different ways… Gettysburg wow pic.twitter.com/jyI1o9L0yE

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 14, 2024

Did he mean “Valley Forge where General George Washington led his men” across the Delaware,” or was there a comma in there? Washington crossed the Delaware a year before Valley Forge, but like Bluto and the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, forget it, he’s rolling.

Mrs. Betty Bowers (America’s Best Christian™) observed, “Donald Trump always talks about history (or, well, anything) like a fourth-grader doing a book report on a book he didn’t read.”

Trump rambled on, again, punctuation unclear:

I go to Gettysburg Pennsylvania to look and to watch and the statement of Robert E. Lee who’s no longer in favor did you ever notice that no longer in favor never fight uphill me boys never fight uphill they were fighting uphill he said wow that was a big mistake he lost his great general and they were fighting never fight uphill me boys but it was too late

This is another example of why he paid people to take tests for him in school. https://t.co/Xsoap0ekBL

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 14, 2024

Where he came up with this spurious Lee quote is anyone’s guess.

“You know who died at Gettysburg? A bunch of suckers and losers,”probably, tweeted Jennifer Mercieca of Trump’s Gettysburg comments.

Noting the weirdness of Trump’s reference, Newsweek asked the Trump campaign for comment this morning. But Trump’s recitation is not further evidence of his accelerating mental decline (unless confirmation of it), or even a script from “Peabody’s Improbable History.” In fact, this bit is four years old, at least.

Here’s a portion of a transcript from a Minnesota rally on September 18, 2020 in which Trump rants about never fighting uphill and people removing Civil War statues:

But Robert E. Lee won many, many battles in a row and it was supposed to be over in one day. You know, it was supposed to end immediately because the North was too powerful for the South. But it just shows when you have leaders, when you have a great general. And Robert E. Lee, he would have won except for Gettysburg. And that was because his general was killed who’s going to lead Gettysburg. “Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill.” He heard they were going uphill. “Stop them, stop them.” But we had no cell phones in that day, right, congressmen? No cell phones.

So they sent the horses to stop them, stop them, but it was too late. They fought uphill and they got slaughtered. That’s what happened. But Robert E. Lee, these were incredible things. But I hope you, I hope you appreciate that we had a period of time when they were ripping down all of the statues and monuments. And I said to my people four months ago, I said, “This is crazy. These people.”

They sent horses, huh? And who knew people were tearing down statues of Lincoln and Jefferson and Ghandi? And marching on Washington to topple a Lincoln statue?

And they don’t even know. You know, they started ripping down Abraham Lincoln. When they hit Lincoln I said, “Wait a minute. This is the man. And you can’t do—” Then they hit George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. They hit everybody. They even hit Gandhi. All Gandhi wanted was one thing. Peace. “May we have peace.” Ripped down the statue, “We don’t like it.” I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing. I think they’re just a bunch of thugs. Okay? You wanna know the truth? I think they are a bunch of thugs. [cheers and applause]

But they were gonna march on Washington and they were gonna rip down a statue of Abraham Lincoln. You know the exact statue. Its up very nicely. Up now. And by the way, they can take them down legally. They go through Congress as a way of doing it. But, you know, they didn’t want to do it that way. And they were marching on Washington. And I said, “Do we have any laws about this?” They said, “No, sir.”

“If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States and added them up, they would not have done near the destruction to our country as Joe Biden and the Biden administration have done. The worst president in history,” said the worst president in history on Saturday.

“We will fight like hell,” Trump exhorted the crowd as he did on Jan. 6. “2024 is our final battle,” etc., etc. against the globalists and communists, “the tyrants and villains who hate our country,” etc., etc.

I sat at my parents’ dinner table in early 2016 and said then Trump was mentally unstable. He’s at least as bad as that and probably worse now. And he’s hoping he’s still got an Animal House full of supporters ready to go out in a blaze of destructive glory for him.

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