It looks like that’s what he’s going with. Everyone’s thrilled with the repeal of Roe v Wade because that’s what the whole country always wanted. This is the most clear cut example of “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” since the Big Lie. He’s obviously decided that this is going to be his line:
I can’t blame him, honestly, He managed to make the entire Republican Party believe that he won the election in a landslide (or at least pretend they believe it) and that January 6th really was just an outpouring of love that his enemies have turned into a fake picture of a violent mob. He was able (with the help of his party) to convince his cult that there was nothing to the Russia investigation or any of the other cases against him. So why wouldn’t he do it again?
Charlie Pierce was right. In his usual understated way.
Lest you think the Republican rot started with Donald Trump, as early as 2013, Charlie Pierce attributed the spreading madness (mockingly) to prion disease. Even then, Pierce suggested Republicans ate the monkey brains back during the Reagan administration:
Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress — or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress — a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party’s 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn’t seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation’s insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up the the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson’s account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.
This is what they came to Washington to do — to break the government of the United States. It doesn’t matter any more whether they’re doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party’s mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address in which government “was” the problem, through Bill Clinton’s ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being “over,” through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find “common ground” and a “Third Way.” Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country’s higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
Pierce lamented lamentables like Reps. Gohmert and Bachmann sitting on the future Trump-branded side of the aisle. But in the fullness of time we got a larger set of whackadoodles.
COVID-19 was late to the party. The prion infection was ubiquitous among G.O.P. lowlights before 2020.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for some reason thought it worth air time to interview former Trump attorney general, Bill Barr. She asked why after Trump smeared him, he still supports Trump for president in 2024. After endorsing Trump, Trump mocked Barr for it. And Barr? He shrugs it off.
Bill Barr responds to Donald Trump mocking him after he said he would vote for him in 2024. And it's something. pic.twitter.com/YmHeC1WM6m
Collins: Just to be clear, you’re voting for someone who you believe tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, that can’t even achieve his own policies, that lied about the election, who is facing 88 criminal counts
Barr: The answer the question is yes.
In a Friday promo spot for his special “MisinfoNation: The Trump Faithful” (Sunday at 8 p.m.), CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan played a clip of a woman of the MAGA persuasion insisting that God is referenced throughout the Constitution (not true). She thinks the reporter is dissing her by questioning it. R-E-A-D it, she insists, and pulls it out her cell phone to prove it to him. Guess what?
It’s prion disease, isn’t it? Unless they’re all lizard people.
Back in table-waiting days when the evening’s business and customers got weird, we’d run out the back door to check the night sky. What was it? The full moon? I did the same online this morning (the sun is up). The full moon was the 23rd.
Maybe that’s when these bits that popped up first thing were crafted. People need to let off steam.
Trump is shilling something else to pay his ever growing legal fees and the discriminating MAGA crowd is thrilled!@MeidasTouchpic.twitter.com/Xpc5L5roii
It’s not just that Trumpublicans are trying to transport the entire country into Alice’s Looking Glass World. They’re working both sides of the mirror as it suits them, as if no one will notice.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes did.
WATCH– @chrislhayes on the Trump immunity argument:
One of the most galling things is that during Trump's own impeachment trial for his coup attempt, his own lawyer then argued the literal opposite of what his lawyer is now arguing to a receptive Supreme Court. pic.twitter.com/26s7sqUxVW
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) April 27, 2024
It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it.
Those of a certain vintage may remember an old bit by comedian Jack Benny whose comic persona was a penny-pincher. A robber points a gun and demands, “Your money or your life.” Benny hesitates and insists, “I’m thinking it over.”
I recalled that line as I shook my head during Thursday’s oral arguments. Trump’s attorneys at the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday demanded, “Your country or Trump!” At least four of the justices are thinking it over.
As of April 26, 2024 Donald Trump hasn’t stopped violating his Judge Merchan gag order. Until the punishments are strong enough to make him stop, we need totake steps to stop and punish his followers, who make threats on his behalf.
Marcy Wheeler was on the Nicole Sandler show last week talking about Donald Trump’s systematic threatening of his critics and how normalized political violence is for anybody who comes up against Donald Trump. I’ve written about, and asked a lot of questions about, how threats online and on social media have an impact and what can be done about them. It was great to hear from Marcy about the scope of the problem, how it involves the legal system, the media, social media and learn some names of major players who make threats on social media and get away with it.
“There is nobody who is on the wrong side of Donald Trump who is not stalked, who does not face mob violence, and it is systematic.
There’s a group of these people, Jesse Watters, we talked about. Jack Posobiec is always involved. Mike Cernovich is always involved. These are people in Roger Stone’s world. They have the ability to go find these people, they have the ability to stoke violence, they have the ability to terrify people. And it has been going on for years.
Marcy Wheeler, on the Nicole Sandler show 4-19-2024
Jack Posobiec and Roger StoneMike Cernovich
She points out how for the right it’s okay if it’s just Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. If it’s Michael Cohen, it’s okay. If it’s Marie Yovanovitch, it’s okay. If it’s the whistleblower, it’s okay. She had thought that when Don Bacon’s wife was threatened and had to sleep with a gun under her pillow, the Republicans might have done something. But they haven’t. They are quiet or they do what Republican Mike Gallagher just did, quit.
Marcy said that right now it’s the moment where we have to figure out how to get Trump through the trial.
My question is “What can be done to deter his followers from making more threats to jurors?” I don’t expect to stop them entirely. But there ARE ways. Law enforcement and the courts in NYC knew this was coming. They should be prepared to protect the jurors, AND arrest the people who are threatening them.
I’m betting there have already been threats, but people haven’t been arrested yet. One thing that we have learned is that law enforcement doesn’t want to talk about the scale and scope of the threats. Why? They give multiple reasons, but some are excuses for their failures: 1) The need to confirm who made the threats 2) Confirm that the threats were violations of specific laws, and for True Threats, the intention of the people making the threat. 3) They need evidence for indictments for the laws that were broken
We have seen them go after the most blatant and obvious threats first, hoping that will act as a deterrent for others. They don’t charge people making vague mob type threats, because they are hard to pin down. But based on the history of the scale and scope of the PREVIOUS threats to judges, prosecutors, witnesses and their families, there will be LOTS to solid, clearly illegal threats to choose from.
Arrests aren’t deterrents if nobody knows they happened
If I was in charge of promoting a “Protect the Jurors” campaign, starting this week I’d be pushing stories about the people who have been arrested for threatening the jurors. If they don’t have current cases, I’d look at historical cases where the person was arrested and convicted. I would include threats to people in person, on the phone, via email and on social media.
I talked to Glenn Kirschner about the steps the legal system takes for protecting jurors (and witnesses). He said when jurors are contacted with threats or bribes, they are supposed to tell the court immediately. Then three law enforcement agencies are involved: local, state & Feds. Because of this there needs to be a coordinated response. The Feds do the interstate threats, like social media. The locals do the in-person threats. Here is what I want to know now, but we probably won’t be told by law enforcement:
Are the Feds already monitoring the juror’s social media accounts? If not, when do they start? After they get their first threat? The COURTS already know the names of all the jurors and their social media accounts. Are they being monitored by law enforcement looking for threats? If they spot threats, what do they do? Do they contact the social media companies with subpoenas to get the information of who is making the threat? BTW, social media companies must comply with law enforcement subpoenas to provide information, it’s part of all of their TOS, that includes Truth Social and X.
Who is monitoring & counting the juror’s phone calls and emails? We know from the threats to Judge Engoron’s clerk that she was getting constant calls. The court Judiciary protection service counted 275 pages of transcribed voicemail threats. But the only reason we know how huge it was is because the New York State Court public safety people took that information to the media because LAW ENFORCEMENT WASN’T DOING ENOUGH TO PROTECT Engoron’s clerk and staff.
People need to know that it is not the standard practice of law enforcement agencies to tell the media about the scale and scope of threats to people, nor the status of investigations.
Here’s the thing I’ve found out after years of investigating: law enforcement agencies don’t want to charge people for their online threats, but they CAN. When they do charge people for the threats, the arrests need to be publicized. But right now they aren’t. They aren’t even releasing the mugshots of the people arrested.
Did you know that Tyler Vogel, 26, from Lancaster New York was arrested for threatening AG Letitia James and State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron? Did you see his mug shot in any media stories? I haven’t, and I looked. I did find ONE photo in a story about the threat. But it was on TikTok! I’m not using it here because I couldn’t confirm it was from an official source. I don’t know the reason for not providing the mugshot to the media, but I’m sure they have an answer. Maybe I’ll call and find out.
If law enforcement doesn’t want to put up the photos of people arrested for making threats, The media can put up the mugshots of the people who have been convicted for making threats on social media. Like Fredrick Francis Goltz, convicted for threatening Arizona election officials. Like Alan McCarty Jr., convicted for threatening to kill a judge.
Remember Taylor Taranto? He’s a Jan6er who went to Obama’s home with a van full of explosives after Trump posted the address on Truth Social.
A cardboard cut out of Donald Trump with Jan6er Taylor Taranto
“[Taranto] started engaging in whole martyrdom complex outside the DC jail and it got so bad he was such an disturbed person that even those nut jobs outside the DC jail said, “Please don’t come back.” And one day Donald Trump posted Barack Obama’s Kalorama address on Truth Social and that dude started stalking Barack Obama in Kalorama. And he was arrested for that stalking. He was arrested because he had a van with explosives in it. And he was he was hunting down a Secret Service protected former President, and it feels like you should be able to hold Trump accountable for that.”
Marcy Wheeler @Emptywheel on the Nicole Sandler show
“We really have to find a way to shame people for this kind of witness intimidation, because it’s going on everywhere. And it is one of the most toxic things in our politics right now. And we just haven’t had that conversation as a society.”
We are not going to “have a conversation as a society” unless we push for it. To do that
We need to demand for multiple people to be investigated, arrested and tried for their threats to jurors. If convicted and sent to prison we need to publicize their crimes big enough that they make it to Fox News audience, to act as a deterrent.
The DOJ and the New York Courts MUST make a big deal about the threats to jurors. There needs to be PR about it beyond putting out a press release. But it can’t just be about Trump, because as Marcy said, “Trump is very, very, very, very skilled at like toeing the line. He’s like a little child, a toddler who knows exactly how much he can get away with, and how to be most effective when he is doing that. And so in this case, in the Taylor Taranto case, all he did was post, somewhat public information. He didn’t say go, “Go stalk Barack Obama.” It is just the fact, and he knows this, that his followers are going to respond to that. And then people like Jack Posobiec, they’re going to ratchet it up, they’re going to say, “We need to defend our guy, we need to hunt out the dissident.”
Truth Social, GAB and Patriot(dot)Win have ALL provided detailed info in the past to law enforcement when a subpoena is provided. People on Social Media are NOT “anonymous” to the companies that post their information. Law enforcement can get their identities, can determine if they have likely broken laws, get a warrant and arrest them. The people will have a chance to challenge the arrest in the court system, this is good, some might be found to have NOT violated the law. BUT if there are NO PUBLIC arrests, then there will be NO deterrents for threats.
Photo of Taylor Taranto, the building he threatened to blow up, a weapon found in the car when he went to Obama home address
Marcy ended this week’s Nicole Sandler show with this New York Times story about a stalker of Lisa Page. Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer Who Criticized Trump Says Bureau Failed to Warn Her About Stalker (Gift Link) John C. Perez was barred from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina because of his obsession with Ms. Page, mass shootings and a fixation on child sex abuse, (Qanon stuff) The Marines told the the FBI about him, yet they didn’t take action or notify Ms. Page about him. Also, I looked for a mugshot of John C. Perez, I couldn’t find one.
The lesson of Donald Trump is everyone gets threats, everyone gets death threats, everyone gets stalked, and that never goes away. Whether or not he regains the presidency he is about using political violence, using threats of violence against everyone. And eventually you will be part of that, everyone.”
Messi, an 8-year-old Labrador retriever, has worked as a professional Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent for most of his life. Since his first day on the job at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, he’s enjoyed nothing more than screening luggage for explosives and keeping the airport safe.
But after years of hard work, Messi recently became eligible for retirement — and his beloved team of agents decided to celebrate him with a special surprise.[…]
The professional good boy trotted into work each day with his handler, Peter, excited for another shift of scent-tracking. As much as he loved sniffing bags for explosives, Messi’s favorite moments involved the celebratory tennis balls he’d receive whenever he did a great job.
So, for his last shift ever, his doting team showered him with an avalanche of tennis balls, which surprised the unsuspecting boy.
“A training aid was concealed in a large room and Messi, along with his handler, Peter, searched the room,” the TSA wrote. “When Messi ‘hit’ on the device, he was showered with tennis balls tossed his way by other canine handlers. Messi was thrilled!”
You can watch that moment here:
.@TSA passenger screening canine Messi alerts on his last bag before retiring. And then he is showered with dozens of his favorite toys as his retirement celebration kicks off at @Reagan_Airport this morning. pic.twitter.com/aMyqa2zd4s
— Lisa Farbstein, TSA Spokesperson (@TSA_Northeast) April 19, 2024
Messi leaped with joy as the hoard of tennis balls fell around him, scrambling to scoop at least one into his mouth. While some of his coworkers cheered him on, others began blowing bubbles in his direction to ramp up the excitement.
After a few minutes of playing with the tennis balls, Peter surprised Messi with a meaningful and long-awaited change in attire.
“Peter then removed Messi’s ‘Do Not Pet’ patch from his harness, thus officially signaling that the dog was no longer a working canine and could be petted,” the TSA wrote. “There was no shortage of guests who were eager to pet the newly retired dog.”
[…]
After an exciting evening of celebrating with the rest of the TSA crew, Messi returned home with Peter to begin a blissful retirement alongside his favorite human.
“The dog is ready to trade in his working vest for afternoons lounging on the sofa,” the TSA wrote.
All good boys and girls deserve to be treated with kindness and care even if they have a job to do.
Trump: So we have another day of court in a freezing courthouse. It’s very cold in there.. on purpose I believe. They don’t seem to be able to get the temperature up. It shouldn’t be that complicated. We have a freezing courthouse and that’s fine pic.twitter.com/O4nT3v6hqH
Is that something a young, virile alpha male would be whining about every single day? I think not. But then it is less common to hear an old man kvetching about the cold. That’s usually something that old women (like me) complain about.
Where are the front page stories about how frail and wan he looks under his makeup these days. How he can’t keep his eyes open in court and how his hair loss is accelerating before our eyes?
Since he’s doing very few rallies, even though he’s only in court four days a week, we don’t see his glitching every day but his commentary to the press outside the courtroom is downright weird.
I know that Joe Biden’s stiff gait from arthritis is of MAJOR concern to the media. Why not this?
Simon Rosenberg as some advice for Joe Biden’s campaign which includes ideas on youth outreach, climate change etc. It’s all interesting but I think he makes an excellent point here that I haven’t heard anyone else make:
I think Joe Biden should promise to clean up the city he has so long been a part of. Among the things we can tackle are the influence of foreign money, the need to raise ethical standards at the Supreme Court, eliminating the debt ceiling and the ability to shut down the government, and the wild abuse of Senate holds on nominations. Perhaps Biden could set up a commission to make broader recommendations on how to modernize and reform a city desperately in need of it.
The utter sleaze of the Trump years has never been properly addressed. These trials in New York have illuminated Trump’s personal corruption and sleaze but we have yet to see anything really penetrate what he’s done to the political culture in Washington. This level of blatant corruption is one of the greatest threats to the system of all and at some point it’s going to have to be dealt with. After all, Trump is hardly alone in this and when he moves on, which he will either sooner or later, this culture is going to remain.
As you may or may not know, Trump hates animals, especially dogs. S. Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is so desperate to be his VP pick that she is currying favor with him by telling the tale of how she hated her pet dog and shot her. I’m not kidding.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
She goes on to describe how she killed one of her goats that day too, first missing the shot and then chasing it to a gravel pit where she finally slaughtered it. The get a load of this:
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
There’s always been something wrong with her. She had an affair with Corey Lewandowski fergawdsakes and this weird story recently about her teeth for her full Mar-a-Lago Housewife makeover.
I have to wonder if this is some kind of attempt to be Sarah Palin redux — you’ll recall that she ginned up a whole phony story about moose hunting and supported aerial wolf hunting. But damn, even she didn’t brag about shooting her 14 month old puppy.
I think Biden's stiff gait is a huge part of why people think he's too old, and I would guess 1% of voters know that he broke his foot in two places, leading to arthritis in his feet, on top of spinal arthritis that he already had. https://t.co/oAMWhnn9jr
I guess the Village 2.0 is circling the wagons round the NY Times and have decided to stick the shiv into Biden just to show the White House who’s boss. They’re going after the age thing again.
President Biden has introduced a change to his White House departure and return routine. Instead of walking across the South Lawn to and from Marine One by himself, he’s now often surrounded by aides.
Why it matters: With aides walking between Biden and journalists’ camera position outside the White House, the visual effect is to draw less attention to the 81-year-old’s halting and stiff gait.
Actually, none of it matters. It’s 100% prime bullshit.
Some Biden advisers have told Axios they’re concerned that videos of Biden walking and shuffling alone — especially across the grass — have highlighted his age.
Weeks ago the president told aides that he’d prefer a less formal approach, a White House official told Axios. He suggested that they walk with him.
White House staffersand reporters alike noticed the sudden change in Biden’s walk routine beginning in mid-April, after more than three years in which he’d typically walked solo.
Senior aides such as deputy chiefs of staff Bruce Reed and Annie Tomasini and close adviser Mike Donilon are among those who’ve walked with the president across the lawn to and from the helicopter.
Since the change, some advisers think the images of Biden’s walks to and from the helicopter are better, and they expect him to continue to have aides join him.
In March, Biden’s five walks to and from Marine One at the White House were by himself, or with family members.
April 16, Biden was joined by staff or lawmakers nine out of 10 times he walked to and from Marine One.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates played down the significance of aides partially obscuring cameras’ view of Biden during the walks.
“He’s fully visible except for a few seconds,” Bates said. “Impeach.”
The big picture:Biden’s team has focused on changing voters’ perceptions about his age in recent months.
Biden has been talking about it more openly in public events and in a campaign ad last month.
The White House also has taken steps to prevent the president from tripping, as he did last summer on a stage at the Air Force Academy.
Biden increasingly has worn shoes with extra support, including a pair of black Hoka sneakers.
His doctor has disclosed that the president suffers from “spinal arthritis” and “mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet” which has contributed to his stiff gait while walking.
The doctor declared Biden “fit for duty” and released far more information about his health than Donald Trump’s team has revealed about the 77-year-old ex-president.
Between the lines: Biden resisted taking steps to account for his age early in his presidency, but has shifted gears recently.
Besides the different footwear, he now enters Air Force One on a lower level, taking shorter stairs than the ones used on his early trips to climb to the plane’s cabin.
Biden also continues to do physical therapy and stretching exercises most days.
Don’t ever get old, people. The world will revert to the shallowest, schoolyard perceptions of you.
What do you think these people would have done with this guy?
Donald Trump held a little rally at a construction site in New York before his trial commenced on Thursday morning. He glad-handed the workers and passed out some pamphlets saying that he would end Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. They all seemed to like him but then they would: Fox News reported that the attendees were solicited and vetted by the campaign. In fact, one of the “workers” interviewed at the event was actually a notorious former staffer of George Santos:
Black New Yorker to Biden:
“I don’t see you anywhere. I hope NY turns red because we’re NOT voting for you.” pic.twitter.com/LjtyHIGwyo
In other words, it was just another example of Trump fake news, which has been revealed in his hush money trial as a specialty of his going back decades.
Trump was very upset that he had to attend that proceeding since his Supreme Court immunity case was being argued before the Supreme Court yesterday and he had wanted to attend. Unfortunately he’s a criminal defendant and doesn’t get the privilege of making his own schedule of court appearances around the country as he’s used to doing. Instead, he had to face more testimony from his old friend, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker who took the stand for the second day.
When asked about Pecker at his little astroturfed rally, he simply said “David’s been very nice, he’s a nice guy” which is simply bizarre considering what he’s saying on the witness stand. It’s always been curious as to why he’s never had a bad word to say about Pecker when he always maliciously insults anyone he thinks has done him harm but something Pecker testified to later in the day may just explain it.
Apparently, once the campaign commenced, Trump had requested that Michael Cohen, his fixer and liaison on the hush money deals, retrieve boxes of information that Pecker had gathered about Trump over the years. Pecker told Cohen that he’d had an executive go through them and that there was nothing to be concerned about but he wouldn’t turn them over or let Cohen go through them. Knowing how Trump thinks — and assumes everyone else thinks the same way — he no doubt believes that it wouldn’t be wise to antagonize this man with whom he once conspired to destroy people’s reputations. Who knows what’s in those boxes?
Over the course of two days of Pecker’s testimony, the prosecution has laid out the details of what they say was a conspiracy to “promote or prevent” the election of any person under state law. (Trump is actually charged with falsifying his business records to cover up the violation of that law, which is what makes his conduct a felony.) It’s hard to argue that it isn’t exactly what they were engaged in doing. Pecker admitted it repeatedly and Michael Cohen previously pleaded guilty to the same thing and will presumably testify to that effect when he’s called in this trial. They were paying people off who were trying to come forward with negative information about Trump and then Trump and his company tried to hide the paper trail.
In his second day of testimony, Pecker told a number of anecdotes that implicate Trump in the scheme before, during and after, even during the transition and beyond often quizzing Pecker about the status of the McDougal matter. When the Wall St Journal reported on the McDougal affair, he said Trump was livid and called him up to ask, “how did this happen? I thought this was under control. Either you or one of your people leaked this story!” He also recalled that Trump had arranged a special “thank you” dinner at the White House to which he brought number of National Enquirer employees and at one point he and Trump were walking alone together and Trump asked him, “how’s Karen doing?” and Pecker replied, “she’s doing well, she’s quiet.”
#TRUMP TRIAL Former National Enquirer Exec David Pecker says pic shows him @ White House in 2017
Trump asking for update on Karen McDougal. “How’s Karen doing?” as they walk past Rose Garden from Oval Office “I said she’s doing well, she’s quiet, everything’s going good,” pic.twitter.com/fRYJE2Uko4
Pecker also testified that he spoke with former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about keeping Karen McDougal quiet during Trump’s presidency which is a little bit startling especially since he says they both agreed it would be a good idea. Hicks’ testimony is going to be interesting.
As for Stormy Daniels, Trump was clearly directing the plot once Pecker declined to pay the money, largely because Trump didn’t pay him back for the previous hush money agreements and because he knew from previous experience that there was exposure to campaign finance violations. Nonetheless, he was involved and was surprised to learn that Cohen had to make the payoff himself and was having trouble getting reimbursed as well. Trump was obviously trying to avoid having to pay because he’s a notorious deadbeat but he was also obviously trying to avoid having a paper trail. And that certainly wasn’t because he was trying to protect Melania.
The cross examination began at the end of the day and the defense got Pecker to admit that he’d engaged in such sordid schemes before, managing to get Arnold Schwarzenneger, Rahm Emmanuel and Mark Wahlberg’s names into the record in the process. Perhaps they’re laying the groundwork for some kind of selective prosecution argument but it’s unclear why any of this is relevant to the matter at hand except as a further illustration of just how depraved David Pecker’s organization really was. When Trump’s attorney elicited the comment that Donald Trump was his mentor and that he still considers him a good friend, it was very hard to see how that benefits his client. I’d imagine the members of the jury were all anxious to get home and take a shower after hearing about the gross conduct of all of these people, including the former president.
This sleazy tale of the arrangement Trump made with Pecker and his relationship with this extortionist gossip monger alone should be enough to sink Trump’s chances of ever being elected again to the presidency. But since he was elected the first time after having been shown on tape bragging about assaulting women it’s been amply demonstrated that a lot of people like that about him. Trump’s squalid character seems to be a selling point.
Throughout his life he’s been getting away with corrupt, unethical behavior and skirting legal accountability and he probably thinks he’ll slither out of this one too. The prosecution still has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified his records in order to cover up this conspiracy and all we have so far is Pecker’s testimony along with some incriminating texts and documents. There’s a lot more to come.
Trump reportedly spent much of the day listening to the testimony with his eyes closed, not reacting to what he heard. But he did seem a little bit rattled when he emerged, calling the days event “breath taking” and for some unknown reason telling the gathered press that the Charlottesville Nazi protest was “a little peanut.” He should probably get some rest.
Trump says neo-Nazis and KKK members marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” was “a little peanut”: “It was nothing” pic.twitter.com/zTTKECY4zr
