This week I’ll just share some cute little videos that came across twitter this week. (These are necessary to cleanse your brain from all the Nazis.)
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I finished it for him.
This was the opening speech of Biden’s campaign and he is making it clear how he sees the stakes and he is 100% right.
Unfortunately, we are clearly going to have to fight much of the media at the same time we will have to fight Trump and the MAGA cult. CNN’s commentary after the speech was dismal. Gloria Borger complained that it was “very personal” ignoring the fact that it’s a presidential campaign and Biden is running against Trump! Of course it’s personal. And all he did was use Trump’s own words. (He didn’t even call him old or fat or make fun of him, which I think is the actual definition of “getting personal.”)
Then former Republican Charlie Dent said that people are sick of all the “extremistm” and are looking for something different than Trump who they think is crazy and Biden who is too old. Then he brought up No Labels at which point I changed the channel.
*sigh*
Some more highlights:
Some other highlights:
There’s a lot of work to do to get people to pay attention to what Trump has in store if he gets elected again. This was a good start.
Update –— I thought this piece in Politico Playbook framed the issue well:
BIDEN SETS THE STAKES — One way to think about the last three years of American politics is as an ongoing effort to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
It started as a bipartisan effort that treated Trump as a pariah, but then it quickly polarized into just another red-blue issue, one that rehabilitated Trump among Republicans while generally benefitting Democrats electorally. Ever since, the accountability effort has pingponged through different branches of government, the states, and other legal and political institutions.
First up was Congress with Trump’s post-riot impeachment, which was ultimately rejected by Republican senators, including Leader MITCH McCONNELL, who argued that there were better ways in other parts of the government to seek accountability.
Next was the House Jan. 6 committee, which had no power over Trump but served as a catalyst for the next two forums of accountability: the 2022 midterms, where Republican candidates who supported election subversion were generally defeated, and the Justice Department, which indicted Trump.
Then came the GOP presidential primaries, the Republican Party’s internal system of candidate accountability. By then Jan. 6 had so fully matured into a partisan issue that trying to use it against Trump strengthened him and damaged the attacker. Trump will spend the anniversary on Saturday at two rallies in Iowa.
As the AP reminds, Trump “has called it ‘a beautiful day’ and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as ‘great, great patriots’ and ‘hostages.’ At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ sung by jailed rioters — the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.”
The Jan. 6 accountability project will dominate 2024, as the issue is taken up by the states deciding whether Trump is an insurrectionist and should be allowed on the ballot, juries in Georgia and Washington, D.C., deciding two criminal cases, and the Supreme Court which seems poised to decide three major issues related to these efforts.
But all of these efforts — the GOP primaries, the 14th Amendment movement, the JACK SMITH and FANI WILLIS indictments — might sputter out, just as impeachment did three years ago.
That would leave President JOE BIDEN and his reelection campaign as the last tool of accountability.
So it is no surprise that Biden is kicking off the 2024 election today with a speech reminding voters of Jan. 6 and alerting them to the threat he believes Trump poses — one he prepped for by meeting with a group of historians at the White House.
“Using the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection to frame the stakes of the 2024 campaign, the president will draw upon the history of the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, setting Friday to argue that his likely rematch with Donald Trump will be a seismic test of the republic’s foundation,” Jonathan Lemire writes this morning, citing senior Biden advisers who offered a preview of the speech.
“‘Democracy is not a sideline issue: It is a sacred cause,’ said one of the advisers, granted anonymity as part of the ground rules during a call with reporters. ‘When major events occur, people render the judgments in national elections. Voters won’t forget Jan. 6.’”
The content of the speech will be studied carefully by Democratic strategists who are in the middle of the same electoral debate they had in 2022: Should the party emphasize Jan. 6 and the threat to democratic norms, or should it focus on traditional policy issues?
There was a cottage industry of pundits ahead of the midterms who argued Biden was making a mistake by emphasizing the former, which was allegedly not as important to voters, at the expense of the latter.
But post-election analysis suggested that Democrats prevailed in places where they convinced voters to take “the MAGA threat” seriously, and suffered in places where that message didn’t break through. It’s not a strict binary choice, of course, but a question of emphasis. Biden will use the MAGA and Jan. 6 as an umbrella threat that affects numerous policies.
As Lemire writes, “Biden will extend the concept of freedom to other issue areas during his remarks on Friday, aides said. That includes access to vote, abortion rights and economic fairness.”
That alone should have disqualified him from ever running for office again. Now, he should be held liable for millions of dollars from families whose loved ones followed his advice:
Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of Covid-19, according to a study by French researchers.
The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits,” the researchers point out in their paper, published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
Now, researchers have estimated that some 16,990 people in six countries — France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. — may have died as a result.
That figure stems from a study published in the Nature scientific journal in 2021 which reported an 11 percent increase in the mortality rate, linked to its prescription against Covid-19, because of the potential adverse effects like heart rhythm disorders, and its use instead of other effective treatments.
Researchers from universities in Lyon, France, and Québec, Canada, used that figure to analyze hospitalization data for Covid in each of the six countries, exposure to hydroxychloroquine and the increase in the relative risk of death linked to the drug.
In fact, they say the figure may be far higher given the study only concerns six countries from March to July 2020, when the drug was prescribed much more widely.
Hydroxychloroquine gained prominence partly due to French virologist Didier Raoult who had headed the Méditerranée Infection Foundation hospital, but was later removed amid growing controversy.
It was also considered something of a “miracle cure” by the then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who said: “What do you have to lose? Take it.”
They had a lot to lose, obviously. How any politician, much less the president of the United States, could be so arrogant as to push untried snake oil on people during a deadly pandemic is beyond me. He was desperate to get the whole thing over with so he could go campaign for re-election but he was in so far over his head he literally didn’t know what to do. He only knows how to brag and attack his enemies. Something like this, which required serious leadership was way beyond his capabilities.
I guess nobody wants to remember what happened during those dark days. But I wish they would at least remember what Donald Trump did when he was confronted with his first serious national crisis. No president has ever done worse. Just imagine if it was a serious national security threat. It makes you shudder just to think about it.
Trump personally exhorted people to take an unproven cure that made people mistrust the medical advice they were getting — and it killed some of them. Is there any other president who has done something so despicably irresponsible for purely selfish reasons?
Yesterday I wrote about Trump’s right hand gal, Alina Habba saying she’d rather be pretty than smart because she can fake being smart.
She’s not faking it very well:
There is saying the quiet part out loud, and then there’s what Trump lawyer Alina Habba just did.
Addressing the Supreme Court’s looming 14th Amendment decisions on whether Donald Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for engaging in insurrection, Habba decided it would be a good time to remind people of just how much Trump has done for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
“I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” Habba saidon Fox News.“You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”
She tried to clean it up but please. Let there be no doubt about what she was saying:
[D]espite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh. This adds to a volume of evidence that indicates that Trump does indeed expect loyalty from judges and justices — along with plenty of others in positions where that shouldn’t be a consideration.
The second point is that this is potentially counterproductive.
Trump’s record on such issues is unambiguous. He has made clear he expects judges to toe his line, and he looks for loyalty in all the wrong places — from officials who are supposed to be insulated from politics. That starts with but is hardly limited to an FBI director whose investigation threatened Trump, James B. Comey. “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Comey testified that Trump told him in 2017 before Trump fired him.
The Washington Post has reported that, also in 2017, Trump considered pulling the nomination of now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch because of a perceived lack of loyalty. Gorsuch had in a confirmation interview with a Democratic senator expressed displeasure with Trump’s attacks on judges, calling them “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”
As The Post’s Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes reported:
The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested that judges he nominated would rule in predictable ways, including on issues such as Roe v. Wade. “If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide,” he assured evangelicals at one point.
Trump in 2022 also bristled after the Supreme Court declined to help him shield his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee.
“Many Republican Judges go out of their way to show they are beyond reproach, & will come down hard on people before them in order to prove they cannot be ‘bought’ or in any way show favor to those who appointed them,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding: “As soon as they get appointed, they go ‘ROGUE!’”
Trump suggested that this was a contrast to judges appointed by Democrats, who were more apt to toe the party’s line.
But that last point also shows how Habba’s comment could be ill-advised, even beyond the ethics of it.
Whatever you think of Trump’s expressed sentiment about relative party loyalty, it’s true that judges are fiercely protective of the perception that they are independent. Yes, judges and even Supreme Court justices often rule in predictable ways that align with the party that appointed them. But crucial to the legitimacy of the court is the idea that they aren’t just political operatives doing the bidding of their allies.
Habba’s comments — and Trump’s past comments — basically set the narrative that Trump is working the justices. And any favorable decision for Trump could be viewed as bowing to that pressure. Whether it affects Kavanaugh’s thought process or not, it puts him in a box.
Normally, I would say that it’s very stupid to say something like this openly. But the Trump cult is all about intimidation and frankly it works very well on right wingers. They cower like beaten dogs whenever he looks at them sideways. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Kav and Barrett and Gorsuch all broke out into a cold sweat at the idea Trump might sic his red hats on them. They are Republicans, after all, first and foremost.
Donald Trump uploaded the following to his Truth Social feed. Sure, he’s mentally stable. Nothing megalomaniacal about this at all:
This is so delusional it sends chills down my spine. How can this country survive when almost half the country believes something this batshit crazy?
Will it be a story for more than a day?
Yesterday I observed an exchange on CNN which perfectly illustrates our problem. While acknowledging that it’s important to report on it, Dana Bash said Trump did everything in plain sight “so how much of this is baked in and how much does that vs Joe Biden just cancel each other out. I’m not saying it’s not important I’m just looking at reality”
I wanted to scream in frustration. But one of her panelists, Laura Baron Lopez of PBS had the right answer:
That’s our job in the press to make clear the differences, not just “Republicans call Biden corrupt, Democrats call Trump corrupt and we don’t know what the truth is” when we do know there is no evidence right now at all that says that President Biden did anything wrong or benefited from his son’s business dealings whereas there is a paper trail and there IS evidence showing that former president Trump benefited from his business dealings while he was in office.”
That’s correct. Sadly, it appears to have been a one day story and that’s the end of that. Because it’s “baked in” and Biden did it too, except he didn’t, but people say he did so they cancel each other out. “That’s reality.’
Anyway, here’s my offering on this story:
A few months back I noted a little story in the New York Times about Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation that didn’t get much circulation. It pertained to the classified documents case:
One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.
It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.
We knew they were. As the NY Times had earlier reported :
Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.
Since the last flurry of activities around the Mar-a-Lago witnesses a few months ago, that documents case has gone very quiet. It’s a national security case so one wouldn’t expect any leaking and it’s being run by an inexperienced Trump appointed judge who is clearly dragging her feet in order to delay the trial until after the election (or have it canceled if Trump happens to win.)
This little episode came back to me when I saw that the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee yesterday had issued a report about the millions Trump made from foreign countries while he was president. Anyone who’s been charged under the espionage act, as Trump has been, would have their finances examined with a fine tooth comb, wouldn’t they? And according to this new report there is ample reason to be suspicious.
The corruption was obvious from the start when Trump refused to divest himself of his business and instead put it into a phony “trust” run by his two sons ( from which he could “withdraw profits” whenever he pleased.) Everyone knew that he was still in control of anything in the business he wanted to be in control of which made the conflicts of interest unprecedented in the annals of the US presidency. He had buildings, hotels and resorts all over the world, even one right down the street from the White House where the entire Republican Party and administration staff hobnobbed with foreign dignitaries and wealthy off shore businessmen who were spreading around a lot of cash.
The Democratic majority on the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into whether or not Trump was pocketing cash from all these foreign interests in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause which states that a president cannot accept any gifts from Kings and Princes and foreign governments without congressional approval (which he never sought.) They were thwarted at every turn in their attempts to obtain financial documents from the Trump Organization and the case was tied up in court for years. The Supreme Court declined to review one case, upholding the ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that members of Congress lacked the legal standing to sue under the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Later they dismissed two other cases as moot after Trump left office.
However, in late 2022, Mazar’s, Trump’s longtime accounting firm, reached a settlement with the Oversight Committee and agreed to start turning over financial information. The House Democrats finally got to see some of what they had been asking for for years. Needless to say, the Republicans promptly shut down the investigation when they took over in 2023 but the Democrats were able to see information about four of Trump’s domestic properties and who spent money there in the first two years of his term.
Even with those limitations on their investigation, they uncovered a huge amount of potential corruption. According to the report, over 20 foreign governments put cash into Trump’s pockets at just those four properties in 2017 and 2018, to the tune of $7.8 million. The greatest largesse came from just four countries. According to the report:
-Kuwait paid him at least 300k and moved their lavish holiday party to his hotel, after which he proclaimed that he was proud ensure they got a big $5B sale of American F/A-18 Super Hornet fighting jets.
-When he first took office, Trump declared Qatar a funder of terrorism and called them corrupt. But miraculously, after their Permanent Mission to the United Nations spent $6.5 million for an apartment in Trump World Tower (as well as almost half a million more in “expenses) he feted their King at the White House and welcomed them as an ally in the fight against terror.
-The Saudi government paid Trump over $800k in those first two years, no doubt in gratitude for his unprecedented decision to visit there on his lavish first foreign trip and his decision to bypass congress to sell them 8 billion dollars worth of weapons.
And, of course, there’s this:
As president Trump got the most money at those four properties during his first two years from China, which is richly ironic considering the current push to impeach President Biden without evidence for allegedly receiving money from China when he was out of office. (Oversight Committee Chair James Comer called the Democratic report “beyond parody” because Trump had “legitimate businesses.”)
Chinese interests spent more than $5.5 million at Trump Tower and at his hotels in Washington and Las Vegas including millions from the Chinese Embassy and a state-owned bank which the Justice Department believes helped the North Korean government evade sanctions.
Remember this?
Keep in mind that this is likely the tip of the iceberg. He owns hundreds of properties around the world which were wide open to foreign money and there can be no doubt that this went on until his last day in office and beyond.
Trump was the most corrupt president in American history but the fact that he did so much of this in plain sight seems to have strangely inoculated him from accountability on any of it. It’s possible that the Special Prosecutor is pursuing it as part of his espionage investigation and has discovered more evidence but we may never know about it. Even if we do it looks like it will almost certainly come after the election.
However, this absurd impeachment crusade against Joe Biden may just be the hook that pushes the media and the Democrats to refocus the people on what we know he did. It’s outrageous that this man has so many scandals that corruption on this scale is considered of lesser importance than the rest.
There are no words
Instigating an insurrection is not a deal breaker for Republicans. Nor is Donald Trump accepting untold millions from foreign governments during his presidency. (The reported $7.8 million reported comes from a mere handful of Trump properties.) Nor are felony indictments too many (91) to itemize here. Nor is screwing porn stars and Playboy models or sexually assaulting a journalist. Nor are threats by Trump to use the government to prosecute political enemies. Etc., etc.
Nor is “bending the knee” to their abuser beneath Republicans. Nor is idolatry.
What do Republicans offer prospective voters? Behold:
Jess Piper is Executive Director of Blue Missouri and host of the “Dirt Road Democrat” podcast. Also, she’s one of those straight talkers Republicans claim to admire.
“History is watching”
Weather has thwarted President Biden’s plans for a major reelection campaign speech. Biden originally meant to mark the third anniverary of the Jan. 6 MAGA insurrection with a speech using Philadelphia as a backdrop, as he did when he called out MAGA Republicans as “a threat to this country” at Independence Hall in September 2022. Biden’s speech will be framed to contrast Biden’s vision of America with that of his expected 2024 Republican opponent, Donald Trump.
The White House has rescheduled the speech for Valley Forge today to get ahead of a winter storm. (I’m still trying to find a time for the speech. Update: It’s at 3 p.m. ET.)
Biden aides had long considered holding an event near Valley Forge, famed as the headquarters of Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army during the American Revolution. Advisers during the media call Thursday said that the site has historical resonance not just as a venue for a battle for liberty, but also for the decisions Washington then made.
Washington twice willingly gave up power: first, he resigned his commission as head of the Army, and then later walked away from the presidency after two terms. His example, Biden aides argue, provides a clear and effective contrast to Trump.
Biden, flagging in approval polls and tied with Trump in several, plans to make defense of democracy again a centerpiece of the fall campaign, as he did ahead of the 2022 midterms.
The address, which builds on previous speeches about safeguarding American institutions and combating political violence, represents a bet that many Americans remain shaken by the Jan. 6 attack and Donald J. Trump’s role in it.
Leaning on a phrase used by America’s first president, George Washington, around the time he commanded troops at Valley Forge, Mr. Biden is expected to suggest that the 2024 election is a test of whether democracy is still a “sacred cause” in the nation, the aide said.
Mr. Biden is fond of using sites of historical significance to underscore speeches that he and his team see as important moments. He traveled to Independence Hall in Philadelphia before the midterm elections and to Gettysburg, Pa., during the 2020 presidential campaign.
His campaign views the events of Jan. 6 — when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent culmination of his election denialism — as critical to understanding how the 2024 campaign will unfold. His team notes that Mr. Trump and Republicans have tried to rewrite the history of that day but argues that images of the Capitol riot remain seared in the minds of voters.
Biden campaign officials spoke on Tuesday with reporters on their strategy on Tuesday (New Yorker):
“The choice for voters,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on the call, “will not simply be between competing philosophies of government.” She continued, “The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom. . . . We are running our campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it, because it does.” Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager, added, “Donald Trump tells us point blank—if he wins a second term, he will do everything he can to dismantle American democracy, strip Americans of their hard-fought and fundamental freedoms. . . . We should take him at his word.”
“I’ve made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency,” Biden says in new ad contrasting footage of Americans voting with white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va. and Jan. 6 MAGA violence at the U.S. Capitol.
“There’s something dangerous happening in America,” Biden continues. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.”
Biden is betting scenes from the Jan. 6 insurrection have not faded from Americans’ short memories. Subtext: You can have a democracy of the people, by the people, for the people, or an autocracy of Trump, by Trump, for Trump.
“History is watching. The world is watching.”
You have to watch this retrograde con woman to fully appreciate the caliber of “lawyers” Trump still has around him even after Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were flushed down the drain:
I look forward to reading the memoirs of the semi-serious lawyers who are defending Trump to hear more about the legal services Alina Habba provides him. I’d imagine they will be much like this:
A Florida-based federal judge has ordered nearly $1 million in sanctions against Donald Trump and his attorney Alina Habba, calling the former president a “mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process.”
In a blistering 46-page order, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks said Trump’s sprawling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and dozens of former Justice Department and FBI officials was an almost cartoonish abuse of the legal system.
“Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote. “Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer.“
The judge ordered Trump and Habba to pay $938,000 to cover the legal costs for the 31 defendants Trump linked in his year-old lawsuit. It’s the second time Middlebrooks has sanctioned Habba in the Clinton lawsuit. The first time was a $50,000 order sought by a single defendant, Charles Dolan. The new round of sanctions was sought by the remaining defendants.
Trump goes everywhere with her. I guess that makes sense. He does need a lot of legal counselling.
Lately I’m just seeing very little coverage at all which still benefits Trump. There are exceptions thank goodness: