Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

In his newsletter today, Dan Pfeiffer discusses the political ramifications of the DC Circuit’s ruling yesterday that Trump is not entitled to immunity for his crimes. (You can subscribe at the link.) An excerpt:

If there is one thing we know about Donald Trump it’s that he never lets anything go. He still takes time at his rallies to complain about the Mueller investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. I know our collective sense of time might be warped, but that investigation began SEVEN years ago. 

Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump or refuses to take up his appeal, he is never going to stop talking about why he should be immune from prosecution. Each missive is more unhinged than the last. Here’s what he posted on Truth Social (via an account that reposts his “Truths” to Twitter):

This reads like a bomb threat from a particularly illiterate person at the end of a coke binge. As a general rule, we should amend the Constitution to bar people who communicate in all caps from the presidency. It’s truly disqualifying.

In terms of politics, Trump’s insistence on immunity is not only politically self-sabotaging but also contradicts public opinion. The vast majority of Americans believe Trump has committed a crime. According to a recent Navigator Research poll, 63 percent of Americans — including 30 percent of Republicans — believe Trump has committed a crime. 

When you step back for a minute, this is a truly stunning stat. That poll paints a stark picture: a considerable portion of voters actually believe Trump has broken the law, yet they’re still considering casting their vote for him come November. It’s a puzzling contradiction. But here’s the kicker: when the majority already see you as a wrongdoer, trying to pitch the idea of immunity becomes a tough sell. .

Also, and I find this very reassuring as an American, most voters oppose the concept that a president should be immune from prosecution. A PBS Newshour poll found that only 35% of voters support Trump having immunity from criminal prosecution from actions he took while in office.

We’re living in an era of extreme polarization where most issues tend to split the population right down the middle, with each side digging into their partisan trenches. It’s not often we come across an issue where the scales tip so heavily, with only 35% in favor and a significant 64% opposed. Trump’s staunch advocacy for the minority viewpoint presents us with a unique opportunity, and frankly, it’s one we shouldn’t pass up.

He goes on to say that research done on this subject shows that certain arguments work the best, this one in particular:

No one is above the law, not even a former president. When someone breaks the law, they should face repercussions. There shouldn’t be one justice system for everyday Americans and another for the rich and powerful where they pay no consequences for their crimes.

Pfeiffer adds:

Most of us aren’t crafting political ads; instead, we’re engaging in everyday conversations with friends and family to persuade them. That’s why it’s crucial to highlight Trump’s attorney’s admission about Trump’s belief that a president can’t be prosecuted for murder. This powerful example cuts through the noise and resonates with everyone—well, maybe except Trump himself. 

In my personal experience, that argument is very effective. I had occasion to use it on a Trumper and he refused to believe it until I pulled it up on my phone. He was taken aback, to say the least. A lot of times these people just haven’t heard anything but Fox propaganda.

And I cannot help but note, once again, that for some reason we have never had this problem in our entire history until now. Nixon was a criminal and his successor pardoned him. Why would he have done that if a president has immunity? Bill Clinton was accused of committing perjury in a dismissed civil case and agreed to a plea deal with the special prosecutor one=ce he was out of office by giving up his law license. Why would he have done that if a president has immunity?

No, Trump is the biggest criminal we’ve ever had as president. He is totally corrupt, a disgusting adjudicated rapist, he stole classified documents and he tried to illegally overturn the election inciting an insurrection. Please. This is a first. And god help us, it had better be the last. If he isn’t held accountable I’m pretty sure it won’t be.

This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nations. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.

It certainly wasn’t Donald Trump, we know that. But it also wasn’t JFK or LBJ or FDR or even Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. That was Ronald Reagan and such rhetoric used to be an anodyne sentiment among politicians of all stripes in the late 20th century. Those times are over, of course, and we’ve gone back to the bad old days of the early 20th century when we blocked “undesirable” immigrants from poisoning the blood of our country for decades. You know, when America was great.

Reagan was right. America has benefited tremendously from its historical welcome of immigrants and it uniquely prepared us for the challenges of the 21 century. Unfortunately, we seem to have decided to retreat into xenophobic fascism. It’s one of the stupidest moves we’ve ever made.

Greene: When they came to Washington to protest, you called that an insurrection but when Biden was inaugurated and this Capitol was surrounded with National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection pic.twitter.com/1gI2vnmEqf

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 6, 2024

She was in charge of the Mayorkas impeachment. It’s shocking that it failed.

On Tuesday night, after a long day of very important legal developments for Donald Trump, the former president posted on his Truth Social feed ” ALL A PRESIDENT HAS TO DO IS SAY, “CLOSE THE BORDER” AND THE BORDER WILL BE CLOSED. A COSTLY NEW BILL IS NOT NECESSARY!” This was in response to the total collapse of the Senate border bill which had been painstakingly negotiated of over the last couple of months to meet the demands of the GOP which said they would not advance any funding for Ukraine, Israel or Gaza humanitarian aid unless immigration laws were changed to their specification.

President Biden and the Democrats called their bluff. They agreed to a set of cruel changes to the law and massive new funding for the border and the Republicans blinked, saying they now want to wait until the election to fix what they previously characterized as an existential crisis. All Trump and his MAGA sycophants are left with is this bizarre refrain that a president has magical powers to close the border and refuses to use it.

It never had much of a chance to begin with. A few of the far right crazies in the House thought they could force their own bill HR2 (a ghastly, punitive measure designed to cause as much suffering as possible) down the throats of the Senate and then make Joe Biden crawl on his belly begging for the privilege of signing it. That was never going to happen and in any case, the original MAGA plan was for Senate Democrats to refuse to pass the bill so they could continue to bludgeon them as being weak on immigration and deny Ukraine any more funding. Now they have everyone from the Wall St. Journal to the Chamber of Commerce to the Trump-loving Border Patrol Union begging them to take the deal but they’re hamstrung by their commitment to service their Dear Leader, who openly demanded that they kill the bill for his own purposes.

Trump has been pushing this “the president can just order it done” line for some time, usually when he says that he wants to be a dictator “just for one day.” And it raises the question, obviously, of why in the hell didn’t Donald Trump do that when he was president then? Well, we all know why, and so does he. It’s because the idea that the president can unilaterally “close the border” is complete nonsense.

There was a time when he would commonly exhort to congress to pass border legislation:

…Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People. Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don’t allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018

The Speaker of the House sang the same tune just a few months ago as did many other Republican officials:

Republicans before our border deal: WE NEED LEGISLATION TO FIX BORDER!

Republicans after our border deal: KILL ANY BIPARTISAN DEAL TO FIX THE BORDER! pic.twitter.com/pNWWgXF4uM

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 6, 2024

In fact, for the first two years of Trump’s presidency he even had total control over the government and should have been able to pass the kind of legislation they demanded and they did zilch. Immigration actually soared in 2019 to historic highs that were only curbed when the whole world locked down because of COVID. Didn’t anyone tell the president that he could have just “closed the border” with a wave of his tiny regal hand?

In fairness, while it sounds as though he’s exhorting Joe Biden to seize those imaginary powers to close the border, he really isn’t. He reserves that privilege for himself. He’s been much more explicit about what he really wants, telling everyone who will listen that the reason to reject the bill is because it would be a “gift to the Democrats.” In other words, he thinks it will help him win the election to keep the crisis going.

In fact, the opposite is true. The GOP’s antics this week are the real gift to the Democrats. They made utter fools of themselves — again — proving once more that they are inept and dysfunctional. Not only did the Senate Republicans abruptly decide not to vote for the GOP Holy Grail of a bill on Donald Trump’s orders, the House produced one of the biggest clown shows they’ve staged since they won the majority (and that’s saying something.) Speaker Mike Johnson put the vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the floor … and he didn’t have the votes. How incompetent can you get?

Evidently, they didn’t anticipate this:

Greene: Democrats hid one of their members trying to throw us off on the numbers pic.twitter.com/8Da16eNJcj

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 7, 2024

That’s the designated “manager” of the Mayorkas impeachment complaining that the dastardly Democrats didn’t tell the Republicans that Congressman Al Green, D-Tx., who was in the hospital, was planning to attend the vote. When he turned up at the last minute to cast his vote her plan was ruined. But it wasn’t her fault! The Democrats cheated by having enough votes!

President Biden gave a speech earlier in the day after the Senate border bill went down in flames and he made it clear that he was going to make sure the American people know exactly who is to blame for this debacle. He said, “every day between now and November, the American people are gonna know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

I happen to think that this border bill is a draconian nightmare and I can’t say that I’m sorry to see it fail. I understand that the Republicans were holding the fate of Europe hostage with their need to appease Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin by abandoning Ukraine, so I can see why the Democrats were willing to negotiate as they did. But giving in to hostage demands is never a good idea and it wasn’t this time either.

But I do have to wonder if Joe Biden has some preternatural gift for seeing through GOP posturing in these situations. As I’ve noted before, back in 2011 he inserted himself into a negotiation with the Republicans by giving in to their demands for cuts to Social Security and they ended up walking away from that deal in similar fashion to this refusal to take yes for an answer on this border bill. Is it possible that Dark Brandon saw this one coming too?

It doesn’t appear that the economy is going to be the winning issue the Republicans hoped it would be and they certainly can’t rely on abortion or the Supreme Court to motivate their voters anymore. Trump’s favorite campaign strategy is immigrant bashing and they hoped it would be their ace in the hole. I guess we’ll see how that shakes out but it certainly doesn’t look as promising as it did last week. They’ve proved themselves to be incompetent about the issue they want the country to take most seriously.

And Joe Biden isn’t going to let them forget it:

You got it. https://t.co/GOea1AC2oy

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 6, 2024

Republicans aren’t the only ones who can use a wedge issue to hammer the opposition.

I would expect to see the president take this whole fiasco right to them at the State of the Union address in a couple of weeks. They will almost certainly act like the hooligans they are and show the American people exactly what they’re being asked to vote for.

Salon

‘None of these candidates’ wins Nevada

The presidential candidacy of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was never exactly soaring. She nonetheless hit a downdraft when a majority of voters in Tuesday’s nonbinding Nevada Republican primary chose “none of these candidates.”

Donald “91 Counts” Trump, the indicted former president and Haley’s only serious opponent, was not even on the ballot.

ABC News:

“None of these candidates,” Haley, a number of long shot challengers and two former GOP candidates — Mike Pence and Tim Scott — were on Nevada’s primary ballot.

Pence and Scott received a few thousand votes combined and some of the minor candidates garnered several hundred in total.

The Haley campaign did not respond directly to a question about their loss, instead releasing a statement where they called Thursday’s competing caucuses a “game rigged for Trump,” an allegation the Nevada Republican Party has repeatedly denied.

Even so, Haley was never eligible to win convention delegates on Tuesday.

The GOP primary carried little weight, because state Republicans opted to award their delegates through party-run caucuses, which Trump is expected to win Thursday. The party barred those participating in the primary, including Haley, from being eligible for the caucuses, which means Trump will face little competition.

Haley’s campaign dismissed the loss, stating it wasted no resources in Nevada.

“We didn’t bother to play a game rigged for Trump,” Haley’s team said in a statement. “We’re full steam ahead in South Carolina and beyond.” The South Carolina primary is February 24.

What Haley hopes is to keep her candidacy aloft long enough for special prosecutorJack Smith to bring Trump to trial on four Jan. 6-related charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. How the U.S, Supreme Court decides two pending Trump-related cases could determine the fate of Trump’s candidacy even before he reaches the nominating convention.

Enough Republican voters have indicated they would not vote for Trump the Convict to all but sink his reelection chances. Haley would like to be the GOP’s fallback candidate in the wings.

Trump’s candidacy may not be dead yet, but that metaphor is.

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A republic imperiled

Elie Mystal captured the tenor of our times in a single Formerly Twitter post Monday afternoon:

Me: We just ruled that presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution.
James Madison: You just figured that out today?
Me: Some people did.
Madison: Dear God. Next you'll be telling me you only recently figured out that traitors can't run for office.
Me: No, that's Thursday.

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) February 6, 2024

On the first ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday thankfully and logically ruled unanimously that former U.S. presidents, Donald “91 Counts” Trump specifically, are not immune from criminal prosecution.

“SAVE PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY!” the would-be potentate declared immediately on his social network. You first have to have it to save it, Donald.

Yes, Trump will appeal to “his” justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, and must by Monday, the Appeals Court ruled.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate:

The justices must now decide whether to halt the new ruling—an act that seems likely to push Trump’s criminal trial past the 2024 election—or allow proceedings at the trial court to move forward at a pace that might affect the election’s outcome. In theory, this call is purely procedural; in reality, due to the compressed timeline here, it may well determine Trump’s fate. If the former president persuades the justices to freeze the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan for months, then wins the election, he will undoubtedly exploit his office to scrap the prosecution. Once again, SCOTUS holds his fate in its hands. It does so on the very same week it will hear a different case about his removal from the ballot.

Which references the second part of Mystal’s quip. But we’ll come back to that.

While it’s impossible to predict how the justices will handle what would otherwise be a straightforward case of Presidents Not Being Kings, there is reason to think a majority of the justices might kick the can down the road far enough to help Trump evade accountability before November. Such a move would be indefensible. The former president’s arguments are not just weak but trivial, and even this hard-right court should not debase itself by pretending to take them seriously. The question is not whether a majority will ultimately agree with Trump (it won’t) but whether a majority will abet Trump’s efforts to run out the clock (it might). The bench slap he received on Tuesday, however, makes that craven move harder to pull off with a straight face.

Indefensible? Yes. Gutless? Epically. A dereliction of duty to the citizens they serve (meaning in addition to Clarence Thomas’ billionaire benefactors). The drain around which their reputations swirl beckons. A “craven move harder to pull off with a straight face”? Perhaps. But then regular readers know that shamelessness is conservatives’ superpower.

Trump’s arguments before the D.C. court were facially farcical. But since that describes Trump’s morning makeup regime, unsurprising.

Lithwick and Stern continue:

The court’s reasoning boiled down to a simple proposition: “At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches.” This position was, you may recall, taken by Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, who was asked at oral argument in this appeal whether presidential immunity would prevent the prosecution of a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent. Sauer was unable to explain why it would not.

Trump’s attorneys will offer nothing better behind which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority can hide. At best, SCOTUS might refuse the case and let the lower court ruling stand. Second. it might grant a stay. But that would imply the Supremes believe his case has merit, and/or signal the court’s sense that a lower panel should not have the last word on a ruling of such import. It would also serve Trump’s desire to put off special prosecutor Jack Smith’s prosecution in hopes that, should Trump win the presidency in the fall, he could simply abort the case from the Oval Office. Third, SCOTUS could affirm, “issuing a one-line decision that simply says the D.C. Circuit got it right, without holding oral arguments.”

What’s the betting line in London?

As for Thursday’s follies, a court will entertain whether or not the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump of Insurrection from ever again holding elected office. Trump’s attorneys offer more ludicrous arguments proving Trump is getting what he pays(?) for. Election Law Blog’s Richard Hasen has opinions, also at Slate:

Consider first Trump’s argument in the disqualification case that the Supreme Court will hear in oral argument on Thursday. That case concerns a Colorado Supreme Court decision keeping Trump off the ballot for the Republican presidential nomination on grounds that he engaged in insurrection in violation of Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment. I’ve already noted here at Slate that Trump’s arguments in his Supreme Court opening brief against the Colorado decision spent an inordinate amount of time on a hypertechnical argument about whether the president is an “officer of the United States” and the presidency is an “office” of the United States for purposes of Section 3. The argument is exceptionally weak. As Marty Lederman writes, “If the presidency isn’t an office of the United States, of what sovereignty is it an office? Ohio? France?”

As Marty helpfully explains, there are really two related hypertechnical arguments here. First, because the presidency is not an “office” of the United States, the disqualification provision of Section 3 does not disqualify anyone who engaged in insurrection from serving as president. The second argument is that disqualification does not apply to a former president who has violated his oath, because the president is not an “officer of the United States” and Section 3 applies only to someone who has “previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States.” Trump has focused on this second argument.

Trumpish BS gets piled higher and deeper, of course. What the republic faces is Americans’ freedoms hanging beneath a Damoclean sword held in place by the thinnest of judicial threads. The Supreme Court has to know its already battered reputation is also on the line:

The Supreme Court now faces what are potentially two outcome-determinative questions on the presidential election, and it will likely make one or both decisions in a matter of weeks. If the court disqualifies Trump, that should be the end of his candidacy. If the court finds one way or the other not to disqualify Trump (and there are many ways the court can do so aside from embracing the hypertechnical argument), then the decision on timing on the immunity question becomes crucial.

If the court lets the election subversion case go to trial after holding there is no immunity, there’s a real chance Trump is convicted, and that conviction could be enough to swing the election away from Trump. Indeed, if it happens before the Republican National Convention, there’s a real chance the delegates could choose someone other than Trump for the general election.

Whatever the court does, it needs to be guided by the principle that like cases should be treated alike, and no person is above the law. The surest way for the court to lose more respect in the public’s eye is if it creates a rule that helps Donald Trump and only Donald Trump.

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” Richard Nixon famously said as he faced the Watergate investigation. What Trump insists is that they not know until after he’s been reelected and declares himself sovereign.

Mystal’s tweet suddenly doesn’t look very funny.

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And it’s probably going to cost him

Trump’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, has been caught committing perjury in the earlier Trump Organization trial and is negotiating a plea deal with Manhattan prosecutors. The Judge in Trump’s fraud trial wants to know the details because Weisselberg was a major witness on the same topic in the civil fraud trial over which he presides. He does not seem happy:

In an email on Monday sent to attorneys for Trump, Weisselberg, the Trump Organization, as well as counsel for New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office, New York Justice Arthur Engoron explained he wanted answers before issuing his verdict.

“As the presiding magistrate, the trier of fact, and the judge of credibility, I of course want to know whether Mr. Weisselberg is now changing his tune, and whether he is admitting he lied under oath in my courtroom at this trial,” Engoron wrote.

“I do not want to ignore anything in a case of this magnitude,” Engoron added.

Engoron has asked the legal teams to respond by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Ultimately, Engoron noted, he might use the news as reason to invoke “falsus in uno”—which would discount the credibility of Weiselberg’s entire testimony.

“If you’re going to issue a ruling and if it turns out Weisselberg lied, that’s going to harm the Trump Organization when it comes time for the verdict,” former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN on Thursday.

Oops.

Weisselberg isn’t going to “flip” by any meaningful definition of the term. He’s been paid millions by Trump to keep his mouth shut and he already did several months in jail for lying about his perks. But the

Remember how Republicans used to spend lavishly at the Trump Hotel when he owned it while he was in office. For some reason they aren’t doing that anymore now that the hotel isn’t owned by Trump anymore:

[S]ince becoming a Waldorf Astoria in 2022, GOP spending at the largely unchanged luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building has all but disappeared. This directly conflicts with how Republicans explained their choice of venue at the time. When questions arose about their patronage of the then-president’s business, Republicans brushed off concerns of corruption saying that Trump’s DC hotel was simply a convenient location near Capitol Hill for lawmakers and political operatives to socialize, that they would be there regardless of who owned it.

As such, it would be reasonable to expect that Republicans would continue to frequent the hotel after Trump sold it and it rebranded as a Waldorf Astoria in June 2022, leaving many of the building’s luxury public spaces largely unchanged from its time as a Trump property. Yet political spending by GOP groups at the new hotel is virtually nonexistent, clocking in at a measly $37,878, according to the FEC’s most recent data covering the 17 months from June 2022 to the end of November 2023. For comparison, GOP groups spent $1,570,239, or 40 times that, in the interval between June 2018 and November 2019—the last comparable period when the building was still under Trump ownership. In fact, the amount spent since it opened is just a quarter of the $154,500 that then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s joint fundraising committee spent there in a single day in 2018, and a fraction of the $435,034 that Republican groups have spent at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence, since the Waldorf Astoria opened.

Imagine that.

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization continues to be busy with payoffs, past and future:

During Donald Trump’s first campaign and his four years in the White House, his foreign business dealings drew constant scrutiny for potential conflicts of interest.

Now, as he marches toward the GOP nomination in his comeback presidential bid, the microscope is again on his overseas empire—and those holdings are growing. Trump will likely again come under pressure to distance himself from his business ventures, partly by promising that the Trump Organization won’t get involved in any new overseas deals.

Since 2021, the Trump Organization, which had paused or pulled back from ventures during his presidency, has revived its global expansion efforts. The company is building a second golf course in Scotland and has branding deals with residential projects in India and resort developments in Indonesia…

During Trump’s years in the White House, the Trump Organization decided not to move ahead with projects it was considering in places such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. His company continued new projects in Scotland, Indonesia and India, and continued other managing and licensing arrangements throughout the world.

After Trump left the White House, his company resumed overseas expansion with a new deal in Oman. It also continued looking for new opportunities in Asia, Europe and South America.

[…]

Critics say Trump didn’t do enough the first time around to separate his administration and his business interests, and fear the same would happen again in a second term. “To have the president of the U.S. influenced by foreign money is extremely dangerous,” said Richard Painter, who was chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush.

Trump has long denied any wrongdoing. He and other family members have pointed out that the Trump Organization was involved in global real-estate projects and other overseas businesses long before he entered politics.

Once Trump left the White House and became a private citizen, he was no longer subject to the legal and ethical issues restricting the president, said Eric Trump, a Trump Organization executive vice president and a son of the former president. He said the company has been looking on four continents for new resort, golf, lodging and condominium developments.

“We have been in real estate for four generations,” Eric Trump said. “Are we supposed to sit back and do absolutely nothing?”

Eric Trump said the Trump Organization’s recent foreign expansion has been no different than deals being pursued by other major hotel, resort and real-estate companies.

“These are places in the world that it makes sense for us as a five-star brand to be,” he said.

Sure. No big deal. Trump is honest as the day is long and we can fully trust him to avoid any conflicts of interest. After all, it’s not as if his failure to divest himself of his businesses in the past, as all the other presidents have done, caused even the slightest appearance of conflict of interest.

The real problem is the vast corruption of Joe and Hunter Biden:

Mr. Trump repeatedly circulated unsubstantiated claims in efforts to link his Democratic rival to his son’s business dealings, which he painted as corrupt, even before Mr. Biden became his party’s nominee.

In 2019, Mr. Trump publicly called for China to examine Hunter Biden’s financial dealings in the country. Mr. Trump claimed, without evidence, that Hunter Biden “made millions of dollars from China” and that he used his political connections to persuade China to invest $1.5 billion in a fund he was involved in.

At campaign rallies, Mr. Trump frequently levied claims that Hunter Biden was corrupt, often pointing to a New York Post report about a laptop that was seized by the F.B.I.

And during a presidential debate in October 2020, Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Mr. Biden had both served as a consultant and used his former position as vice president to help secure business deals for his son. That series of attacks drew further public scrutiny to Mr. Biden’s son’s activities, as searches for “Hunter Biden” skyrocketed following the exchanges during the debate.

Mr. Trump later called for his attorney general, William P. Barr, to take action against his Democratic challenger for his son’s work, just two weeks before the 2020 election.

It’s all lies, of course. But whatever.

Trump suggests Hunter Biden should've received a death sentence pic.twitter.com/fQKyIvIybn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 11, 2023

It’s enough to give you a migraine. But then, that’s the point.

What a mess. The border bill is dead, Mike Johnson’s proposal for a stand-alone Israel bill will be vetoed by the president (if it even gets out of the House), and the fate of Ukraine and potentially Europe, as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza, hangs in the balance. These people are unrepentant chaos agents.

Here’s a report from Manu Raju of CNN from the smoldering ruins of the GOP Senate caucus:

McConnell, Cornyn and other top Rs say now the Senate should move ahead with the other aspects of the emergency aid package — Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan funding — and leave border provisions behind given deep divisions in the ranks. Schumer wouldn’t say how he would proceed after tomorrow’s failed vote. McConnell on his handling of talks: “I followed the instructions of my conference who were insisting that we tackle this in October. I mean, it’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it.”

Even he admits that his senate Republicans are perfidious liars.

Will they end up passing those foreign aid bills? Who knows? All this could have been avoided if they hadn’t decided to be cute to try to force the president to eat shit and agree to a border bill that his caucus hates. They got what they wanted. And then they decided not to vote for it!

This isn’t the first time they’ve played this game and it never seems to work for them. I suspect they know it in this case. But Dear Leader demanded it and Dear Leader must be obeyed.

WTF…

I’m sure you recall a few years ago when the right wing had one of their perennial meltdowns over the supposed plan to put conservatives in “FEMA camps.” I case you don’t here’s a brief recap:

The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.

The US government previously interned US citizens in concentration camps during WWII and developed, but did not implement, contingency plans for mass internment of US citizens in the 1980s.

This conspiracy theory had a huge revival during the Obama years and then died off when Trump came in.

But as you may have noticed from that Wikipedia entry,the plot really took off during the Reagan years because his administration actually did develop some sort of plan for … FEMA camps.

Rex 84B, short for Readiness Exercise 1984 BRAVO, was a classified scenario and drill developed by the United States federal government to detain large numbers of United States residents deemed to be “national security threats” in the event that the president declared a National Emergency. The scenario envisioned state defense forces rounding up 500,000 undocumented Central American residents and 4000 American citizens whom the US Attorney General had designated as “national security threats” as part of the secret Continuity of Government program. These people would be detained at 22 military bases in concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It’s a Republican thing.

Trump’s top henchman Steven Miller has been floating the idea of “deportation camps” and one of Trump’s big plans is to do sweeps in American cities and put the homeless into camps as well.

Camps are on the GOP agenda.

Now we have the laboratory of MAGA atrocities proposing the same thing:

We called them workhouses in Britain in the 1800s. Dickens wrote all about them

— adam mcquade (@AdamMcquade) February 5, 2024

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday endorsed a statewide strategy for dealing with homeless people that Republican lawmakers say is the first of its kind.

In short, put them in camps.

Legislators in the last week advanced bills that would require counties to ban homeless people from sleeping in public places and instead allow them to stay in designated camps with security, sanitation and access to behavioral health services.

Although the governor said the legislation is still a “work in progress,” he endorsed its goal of moving homeless people off the streets. He also said he was open to assigning money to help local governments treat and house them.

“We feel that if the Legislature is willing to lean in on this, that we want to be there to be able to offer support, but it’s got to be done right,” DeSantis said during a Monday news conference in Miami Beach.

“It’s got to be done in ways that is focused primarily on ensuring public order, ensuring quality of life for residents, ensuring that people’s property values are maintained,” he added.

And here I thought Florida didn’t have a homeless problem like these west coast hellholes…

Last year, Florida’s Council on Homelessness reported 30,809 people experiencing homelessness, up 9% from 2019. Of those, 15,706 were sleeping outdoors, in cars or in abandoned buildings, more than double the number from 2021. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties reported 4,144 people homeless last year, down about 300 since 2018.

According to this article there is actually some question about how this might work with some homeless advocates thinking it could be helpful if there was enough money to do it right. But most homeless advocates are rightfully concerned that there won’t be enough money to properly fund it and the idea that homeless people who don’t comply being arrested sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t trust Ron DeSantis to properly feed a dog much less show anything close to empathy for people who are in dire straits. You’ll notice that his priority is “ensuring public order, ensuring quality of life for residents, ensuring that people’s property values are maintained.” This is not a person who will be remotely concerned about the well-being of the people he’s incarcerating.