Donald Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen is trestifying this morning in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial. He’s begun by explaining how Trump would would instruct him to pay creditors twenty cents on the dollar. Take it or get nothing. Even for struggling small, family businesses. Screw you.
Renegotiate Trump university vendors — all but 2 settled for 20%. the other 2 were never paid.
He would tell Trump about it, to get credit from him.
Trump said, "that's fantastic." made him feel like he was on "top of the world."
First skeleton: he sometimes threatened to sue companies. eg press said something angered them. MC would reach out and demand redaction or they would sue. sometimes "strong and threatening manner"–> sets up a tape where he really browbeats a vendor.
Anna Bower (Lawfare correspondent) tweets (thread):
Before Cohen moved over to Trump Org, Cohen presented Trump with a bill for 100K, which Trump owed for work Cohen’s firm did on a real estate transaction. Trump told Cohen to come work for Trump Org, and Cohen agreed. Later, when Cohen mentioned the bill owed to his law firm, Trump said “Do you want to get fired on your first day?” The bill never got paid, Cohen says.
Cohen said that he always reported directly to Trump. There were times when he asked Cohen to negotiate payments or bills. He provides an example: Trump University ran into trouble, and there were vendors who were unpaid. Cohen contacted the vendors, negotiated a reduction in what was owed.
Mens rea on two legs
Trump did not use email. Trump once commented to Cohen: “There are too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having emails.”
Cohen testifies that Trump warned him that when his presidential campaign was announced, a lot of women would be coming forward.
Around the time that the campaign began, Trump expressed concern about negative stories coming out about him. He told Cohen: “There’s going to be a lot of women coming forward.”
Trump would not treat people to whom he owed money as even three-fifths of a person. This guy has no interest in representing Americans in the White House.
I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes of 2016. I really am. There was no way the country was crazy enough to elect Donald Trump president, I told myself. “He’s mentally unstable,” I told my parents one night while visiting for dinner. One well-heeled Bernie Sanders supporter, unnerved by Trump signs sprouting like weeds out in the county, printed and fabricated his own quarter-sized Clinton signs by the thousands in response. They went like the proverbial hotcakes.
Then I spent the afternoon of Election Day 2016 greeting voters outside a nearby polling station standing a few feet away from Talks To The Sky. You know what happened later. This fall, she might be proudly wearing adult diapers outside her pants in solidarity with her king.
Sadly, Americans are crazy enough to elect Donald “88 Counts,”professional huckster. They proved that once already. They left him in charge ahead of a global pandemic and got American carnage and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol. But if it’s not prion disease and it’s not an outbreak of brain worms — I was reminded yesterday that a friend once picked up one while living in Nepal; she’s fine — what’s behind it? Yes, a political and religious cult is at work, but what’s behind that?
Something Dave Weigel posted to BlueSky this morning gets to some of it:
Lots of Project 2025’s recommendations boil down to: “Democrats have effectively used this executive branch power to enact policy, it must be reversed until the 5th Circuit can stop it.”
Honestly a very useful guide to how the center-left does things when it has the presidency.
The center-left Weigel references actually believes in progress, in using the U.S. government to improves people’s lives, in promoting “the general Welfare” and in securing “the Blessings of Liberty” for everyone. That’s the government’s goal, stated explicitly. But it’s not everyone’s.
What Trump personifies is a multi-year, national tantrum that intensified with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. But the tantrum did not start with that. Wealthy movement conservatives have worked to roll back the 20th century for decades. Movements demanding equality for marginalized Americans incensed men (mostly) more obsessed with their marginal tax rates than with realizing the more perfect union imagined in the Preamble. So long as they could maintain their Brahmin status working within the system, they could tolerate “created equal” as a rhetorical flourish they never really believed and could forestall. Once challenged, however, they redoubled their efforts and mobilized the grievances of those lower down the social ladder against those nearest the bottom, and against their silly advocates whatever their castes.
The United States has often been considered a young democracy, even if a long-lived one. Until this century, it seemed the country was finally emerging from adolescence. What the backlash to demographic shifts and the Trump cult prove is that that assessment was premature. What a spoiled child does when asked to share his toys is to throw a tantrum and break them. MAGA Republicans mean to break America. They’ve made a formal project of it. They should turn in their flags.
I want to believe that the fever will break, that there is still enough good-old Protestant shame and Catholic guilt in the land among mature adults to resist donning Donnie diapers and throwing bricks through the nation’s windows in a fit of pique. I want to believe that Trump is bleeding support. It’s just not yet showing up in polls. But I’m not counting on it, nor should you.
His parochial obsessions are going to get us all killed
There has been some serious push back on social media to the belief that MAGA peacenik Donald Trump could start WWIII from both the right and the left. Apparently, Joe Biden is a violent warmonger for providing material support to America’s traditional allies while Donald Trump is a dove because he only oversaw a war with American troops on the ground in Afghanistan and ramped up the drone war to unprecedented heights throughout the world. But whatever. Facts aren’t really relevant at the moment. We’re all about feelings and vibes and because Trump has indoctrinated massive numbers of Americans with the lie that the whole world respected and feared him so much that they all bowed down to him and we have world peace for the first time in history. And yes, a number of lefties are similarly deluded about Trump because they haven’t closely observed what he is or what he has planned.
If Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House in November, NATO may fall apart, a recent wargame found.
As a presidential candidate, Trump has threatened to quit NATO unless European allies contribute more, and should he carry it out Europe may decide to go it alone on defense, the game suggests. “A US policy of frustrating NATO has the potential to cause the alliance to collapse, with the EU as a candidate for eventually replacing NATO’s ultimate function — defending Europe from Russia,” wrote Finley Grimble, the British defense expert who designed and ran the game.
The US doesn’t have to withdraw from NATO to imperil the 75-year-old alliance. Technically, the US is barred from leaving NATO after Congress voted in 2023 to prohibit withdrawal without congressional approval.
But the game showed how Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who said on the campaign trail that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO allies who spend too little on their militaries — could undermine NATO simply by doing as little as possible to support the alliance. “What Donald Trump can do is just really hollow out what NATO does,” Grimble told Business Insider. “He doesn’t need to leave NATO to ruin it. He can ruin it from within.”
Now maybe you think that NATO isn’t important anyway and who really cares if this happens? Well, we just spent almost an entire century, from 1917 to 1989 fighting wars in Europe, both hot and cold. That really wasn’t that long ago in the great scheme of things and the residual effects of those wars are still reverberating in Ukraine and Israel where hot wars are raging. It’s really not a great idea to let Europe turn into chaos. That doesn’t end well.
And chaos is exactly what happens in the game when the fictional Trump takes office in January 2025.
The new administration immediately attempts to broker a peace deal — without European help — between Ukraine and Russia. After the mediation fails, Trump slashes aid to Ukraine.
It is the first domino to fall. Trump then drastically reduces US participation in NATO, including redeployment of 50 percent of American military assets in Europe, where more than 100,000 US troops are based, to the Indo-Pacific theater. The Trump administration also institutes a new policy called “dormancy.” This includes a variety of go-slow tactics, such as less US participation in NATO exercises. A particularly damaging move is to bar the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) — the second-highest military position in NATO, and always a US officer — from acting without prior consultation with Washington.
“Ultimately, SACEUR is answerable to the president of the United States,” said Grimble. “So he [SACEUR] can start slowing things down, or prevent things from happening. The US can just take the funding from NATO programs and they will collapse.”
The article goes into all the possible scenarios that could result and the conclusion is chilling:
By the end of the game, the effects of a US pullback from NATO are global. China realizes that the US has really shifted its focus from Europe to the Pacific, which deters Beijing from invading Taiwan. Yet this doesn’t reassure Japan, Australia and South Korea — US allies whose forces and bases are essential to efforts to counter China — which worry that Trump might change his mind and abandon them too. Iran becomes emboldened to assert its power in the Middle East, which spurs an arms race with Saudi Arabia.
Do we really need this? To be sure, this is not a prediction but rather an experiment to game out the possibilities. It sure sounds probable to me.
It’s one thing to re-evaluate America’s role in the world in light of various changing circumstances. I don’t think anyone argues with that. But if we have an emboldened white, Christian nationalist US leadership, led by a narcissistic imbecile who still has no clue what he’s doing so the only thing he can do is babble on about Europe “taking advantage” and not “paying its dues” we will have chaos. And that’s the last thing anyone should want in a nuclear world.
Trump says he’s “been indicted more than the great Al Capone, on bullshit.”
The crowd erupts into a chant: “BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!” Trump seems to realize this is not a good look, glitches hard looking for an out, and comes up with his father who was in the KKK. pic.twitter.com/wAA45wRCnz
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) May 11, 2024
Remember when Republicans used to call for the smelling salts because Bill Clinton wore jeans in the White House and Bush ran his campaign promising to “restore honor and dignity” to the presidency? Yeah, that was a while ago. It’s a whole different story today.
Trump blasts Biden as ‘total moron’ before crowd of 100K at NJ rally: ‘Whole world is laughing at him’🥳🥳https://t.co/MgvK4PuXCU
Don't say Chris Christie is a Fat Pig! That gentlemen just said Chris Christie is a Fat Pig. You shouldn't say that, you shouldn't say Chris Christie is a Fat Pig. LMFAO. My Man, Donald J Trump. ❤️🤍💙 https://t.co/jJEvTSfSjm
The Ohio race for Senate is pivotal. And the GOP has put up yet another phony:
He is running for the Senate as an immigrant who made good, reaching out to Ohio voters with a stirring, only-in-America bootstraps story: arriving as a child from Colombia, taking a risk on a struggling business, and then turning it into a smashing success and himself into a millionaire 100 times over.
Running under the banner of Donald J. Trump’s populist political movement, Bernie Moreno, the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown, humbly calls himself a “car guy from Cleveland” and recounts the modest circumstances of his childhood, when his immigrant family started over from scratch in the United States. “We came here with absolutely nothing — we came here legally — but we came here, nine of us in a two-bedroom apartment,” Mr. Moreno said in 2023, in what became his signature pitch. His father “had to leave everything behind,” he has said, remembering what he called his family’s “lower-middle-class status.”
But there is much more that Mr. Moreno does not say about his background, his upbringing and his very powerful present-day ties in the country where he was born.
Mr. Moreno was born into a rich and politically connected family in Bogotá, a city that it never completely left behind, where some members continue to enjoy great wealth and status. While his parents left Colombia in 1971 to start over in the United States, where Mr. Moreno fully transplanted, some of his siblings eventually returned. One of his brothers served as Bogotá’s ambassador to the United States. Another founded a development and construction empire that stretches across the Andes from the Colombian interior to its Caribbean shores.
Give me a break. He didn’t come from “communist Cuba” where they confiscated the wealthy citizens’ fortunes. He came from Colombia and they obviously had plenty of financial support from the family back in the home country.
All these richie riches pretending to have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps is absurd and I’m sure plenty of Ohio Republicans see through it — and most of them just don’t care. They admire liars. It means they’re smart. But maybe some of those vaunted Independents might be a little bit skeptical of this sort of lie and will stick with Sherrod Brown as they have since 2007. I would hope so. Brown is a real populist, in his bones, and in the best sense of the word. I hope at least a few of those blue collar indies recognize that. He really is their champion. This dishonest scion of a wealthy Colombian family is anything but.
Georgia’s Republican Party has removed one of its officers after an administrative law judge found he voted illegally nine times after moving to the state.
The state Republican Committee voted 146-24 on Friday to remove Brian K. Pritchard, its first vice chairman, state Chairman Josh McKoon said after the closed meeting.
Many established Georgia Republicans including Gov. Brian Kemp have walked away from the state party organization. Kemp, for example, doesn’t plan to appear at the state Republican Convention next week in Columbus.
And yet:
But the fervor is having an impact, and demands for “election integrity” have translated into multiple changes to Georgia election law. Earlier this week Kemp signed a law that could ease the removal of people from the voting rolls through challenges to voter eligibility.
Yes, he stood up to Trump’s entreaties to overturn the election in Georgia in 2020. But like most Republicans it hasn’t stopped him from continuing on with the vote suppression efforts that have been the goal of white supremacists American politics since 1864 — which was what set the table for a demagogue like Donald Trump.
In case you don’t want to watch that video, it’s Trump’s top aide talking about how he carries some fake five dollar bills that he gives to panhandlers which he says they will then try to spend and get arrested. Hahaha.
As Max VonSydow said in “Hannah and her Sisters”, if Jesus came back today he would never stop throwing up.”
Flashback: Marjorie Taylor Greene blames WIC, an assistance program that helps poor moms buy baby formula, for contributing to the supply shortage: “The WIC program is making it more difficult for [parents not on WIC] to buy baby formula.” #GOPWarOnMoms pic.twitter.com/EvYBaWHU6w
What was your top issue two years ago? Climate change? Gun violence? Abortion rights? Preventing another Trump term? What will be your top issue two years from now? What are the odds it will be Israel’s war in Gaza?
I want to follow up on Digby’s (and Rick Perlstein’s) reflections on Saturday about Gaza and young people voting (or not). It’s my regular complaint every four years that the presidential race is not the only one on the ballot or the only reason to cast one. There will be over three dozen races alone on the ballot in my county, one of over 3,100 in the country. Only one race is for national office (two counting the VP). For some states with ballot measures, the fate of women’s reproductive rights is on the ballot. State district, appeals, and Supreme Court races may be on your ballot.
Remember how we held our breath over Janet Protasiewicz in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race in April 2023? Her colleague, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced last month that she will retire next spring, putting Wisconsin Democrats’ thin court majority, voting rights and more up for grabs again in April 2025. In your state, such races may be on your ballot in November 2024. Don’t be on the receiving side of what’s going down if Democrats lose.
In the race for governor and other down-ballot contests in North Carolina, Republicans have nominated the Trumpiest head cases they could find — just short of those proudly wearing adult diapers in solidarity with Von Sh**zInPantz. The New Apostolic Reformation is targeting local races in the bluest counties in eight states (including mine).
In 2016, a certain #NeverHillary celebrity argued that a Trump presidency would mobilize the left and hasten the revolution. And then “things will really explode.” Never mind who suffers in the explosion. What the Trump presidency gave us was three U.S. Supreme Court picks that ended a half century of women’s reproductive autonomy, 400,000 dead from COVID-19, and a violent insurrection that might have ended our 250-year experiment in self-government. Plus all those Federalist Society judges Republicans installed like Aileen Cannon.
Another Trump term in 2025 will define the rest of this century and perhaps the fate of democratic self-government across the globe, and the planet itself. There are plenty of reasons to vote this November beyond the presidential contest. And not just reasons to vote against things. For all their shortcomings (we all have them, Joe Biden too), your chances of advancing the issues mentioned above lie with the Democrats and the choices you make (or fail to) this fall.
What was your top issue two years ago? Climate change? Gun violence? Abortion rights? They are on the ballot this November. What will be your top issue two years from now? The same ones? New ones? Fight for the future. Vote for a beautiful tomorrow.
Jacob Blake's family hosting community gathering. Includes comm. clean-up, voter reg. booth as well as food, 🎶, free haircuts provided by local business. Celebration highlights contrast between Trump’s divisive & inflammatory statements & nonviolent demonstrations held by family pic.twitter.com/9D1eHmEMWh
