Skip to content

Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Never thought I’d see the day

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

This is truly astonishing:

Fox didn’t question any of the kids table about this at the debate last night. In fact, they didn’t mention anything about Trump at all, not the indictments, the fraud verdict, the rape trial or any of it. And the kids table didn’t offer anything. What cowards. All of them.

On Cassidy

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

I’ve watched all the interviews with Cassidy Hutchinson and they’re just riveting. I thought this one with Lawrence O’Donnell was very good:

She is brutally honest about her own culpability and the emotional journey she’s been on in emerging from Trumpworld. You have to remember that she was only 24 years old on January 6th. There are a whole lot of more experienced, wealthy men in her situation who are despicable cowards.

Watching Nicole Wallace interview her I see more skepticism. As a Never Trumper from 2016, who left the Republican party, Wallace saw the danger from the beginning and she isn’t open to the idea that you can still be a Republican and not be an enabler of Trump and Trumpism. Hutchinson still is. When you look at it from Wallace’s perspective, Hutchinson is still mind-bogglingly naive.

It doesn’t take anything away from her courage. But the veil hasn’t entirely lifted.

Will these polls get the attention of that Washington Post outlier?

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

Probably not. And that’s a problem.

You can feel the febrile excitement in the media when a poll comes out that shows Trump beating Biden. They simply can’t help themselves. That poll that came out over the weekend was admittedly an outlier and they did it anyway.

It’s going to be close. We have to face that fact. But the idea that Trump is running away with it is ridiculous. We’re not that far gone …. yet.

One party is reasonably healthy, the other is terminally ill

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

The Democratic Party is far from perfect to be sure. There are times when they frustrate me beyond reason. It wasn’t all that long ago that I pretty much held mot powerful Democrats in contempt at least part of the time. But they have improved in recent years and I think it’s important to recognize that. The party has dropped much of its reflexive centrist dogma and, at least is more flexible ideologically. That the old dog Joe Biden could change his spots says everything about where it was and where it is today.

And let’s get serious. Compared to the neo-fascist MAGA party they are sane which, at this point, is all that really matters.

Here’s a Never Trumper:

On Monday I argued that the Democratic reaction to Menendez—which has picked up steam since then—was a sign of a reasonably healthy institution.

In response I’ve been told that I overstated the case. That the Democrats’ reaction is highly contextual. That if Menendez was a D in a state with a Republican governor who would appoint his replacement, then Democrats would be just as corrupt and unhealthy as Republicans. It’s really all about power. Both sides.

This is incorrect.

For starters, we have many apples-to-apples comparisons in the way of “context.”

-Had the Senate convicted Trump and removed him from office, he would have been replaced by Mike Pence.

-Had Ken Paxton been removed from office, his replacement would have been chosen by the Republican governor.

-If George Santos had resigned his seat would have remained open and would not have changed the balance of power in the House.

In case after case Republicans failed to police their own side even when it would not have cost them anything.

So the very least you can say about the Democrats is that, confronted with the same scenario as Republicans, they frequently choose the better part.

But that’s obvious. The “shifting context” argument is an attempt to move goal posts so that rather than giving Democrats credit for a thing they have done well compared with Republicans in the same situation, Democrats are compared to a hypothetical version of themselves.

This is projection. Republicans are so obsessed with the maintenance of power that they insist everyone else would pursue it with the same single-mindedness they have.

And I’m happy to grant that maybe, in that hypothetical situation, Democrats might not be their best selves. If the Senate was 50-50 and Menendez resigning meant that Republicans would take over the chamber, would Democrats be as good as they have been?

Maybe; maybe not.

But again, compare the Democrats not to a theoretical example of perfect consistency, but to the Republican party as it actually exists in the world today: Marco Rubio is arguing that Menendez should not resign. He is doing this purely because he thinks that this position might, at some point, theoretically help Republicans gain power in the future.

This is toxic behavior and it is absolutely not something that Democrats have done in recent years on the occasions when they were confronted with Republican scandals ranging from Roy Moore to Donald Trump.

Anyone who cannot admit that the Democratic party is a healthier institution—much healthier—at the moment is selling something.

I think we know what they’re selling, don’t you?

Trump is going to a non-union shop to speak about the strike

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

Why doesn’t the mainstream media make that clear?

WRONG!

Here’s the NY Times today:

Rather than attending the debate, Mr. Trump will appear with union workers in Detroit.

No, he is going to speak at a non-union shop and from what we have heard he’s going to trash the union. I have no doubt there may be a few MAGA union members in attendance to see their Dear Leader but this is not a “union” appearance.

The good news is that it appears the local news is telling it like it is:

This isn’t hard but for some reason the media just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to Trump and the working class. They are as dazzled by his bullshit as his cult members are.

A judge who won’t be gaslit

Published by digby on September 27, 2023

A rational person has enough of the Trump family’s nonsense

It’s been a long time coming but it finally happened. Donald Trump, several of his businesses and two of his sons were found guilty of fraud for massively inflating the value of their holdings and companies. Is it possible that Trump’s pathological lying and grandiose bragging have finally caught up with him after all these years?

The civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Leticia James was so unassailable to Justice Arthur F. Engoron that he issued a summary judgement on behalf of the state which strips control of Trump’s businesses from the family and may cost the former president as much as $250 million. The judge said that after looking at the facts and the arguments there was no need for a trial to determine that Trump had committed fraud. The ruling is what lawyers call the “corporate death penalty.”

Trump’s main lawyer in the case, Alina Habba, who travels with him frequently on his campaign plane, was hired by Trump after meeting her at his Bedminister Golf Club. She was previously general counsel for a parking lot concern and was known for her representation of former Real Housewife of New Jersey Siggy Flicker, in a case against Facebook which she claimed had disabled her account for wishing Melania Trump a happy birthday.

Evidently, her defense of Donald Trump’s allegedly multi-billion dollar empire wasn’t convincing to the judge who indicated that she didn’t really even bother to present one, saying that it basically consisted of her saying “the documents do not say what they say; that there is no such thing as ‘objective’ value; and that essentially the Court should not believe its own eyes.” He sanctioned each defense lawyer $7,500 for repeatedly using the same incorrect arguments after ruling them invalid saying, “Defendants’ conduct in reiterating these frivolous arguments is egregious. We are at the point of intentional and blatant disregard of controlling authority and the law of the case.” Yikes.

Trump ranted on Truth Social that it was all a Witch Hunt and the judge and the prosecutors are all out to get him. The usual. He insists that he never inflated the value of his company and that, in fact, his valuations are all very low because he doesn’t include the greatest value of all, his “brand” which is apparently worth gazillions. Hilariously, in his deposition, cited by the court, Trump defended himself by saying that the valuation of his properties cannot be inflated because he could find a ‘buyer from Saudi Arabia’ to pay any price he suggests. Now why would that be, I wonder?

We knew that Trump was a crook from the Trump University fraud case which Trump settled for $25 million after he won the White House to the grotesque con game they called the  “Trump Foundation” which they used for their own benefit and which was dissolved in a previous civil case they lost. The blatant pay-to-play at the Trump hotel and his various resorts during his presidency was astonishing.

That his sons are caught up in this one is particularly notable since this particular scam has been inter-generational from the start. The blockbuster NY Times expose of Trump’s father’s various dubious ploys to shelter his earnings from taxes showed this was a family affair from the time Trump and his siblings were toddlers. This latest case nails Eric and John Jr. right along with Trump since they were also “executives” who are legally liable for these fraudulent practices.

Don Jr. took to twitter to rant about “weaponized Blue State Marxist America” which he does pretty much every day anyway and Eric is apparently a world class whiner who seems to be throwing his father and brother under the bus:

While everyone can see that this case is egregious, the only thing worse than weaponizing the legal system against a political opponent is unfairly going after their family. Both the Attorney General and the Judge know I had absolutely NOTHING to do with this case. Every single person has testified that my job has always been acquiring, developing and managing properties, not back office functions. The only reason I am collateral damage is because my last name is Trump and I am unwavering in the support of my father, his accomplishments and what he has done for our country, a nation which is now rapidly in decline.

Poor Eric didn’t have anything to do with all those “back office functions” like the rest of them. He “acquires, develops and manages properties”, you know, the important stuff. I guess that’s why he took the 5th over 500 times when they deposed him.

Ivanka is off the hook for this particular scam because the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court dismissed the charges against when the attorney general missed a deadline for filing the case against her. She’s very lucky. (She was also up to her neck in the Trump pump and dump hustle in which they similarly lied about valuation of their properties to investors and customers alike.)

The amount that Trump will have to pay will be decided at a trial set to begin next week, presided over by the same judge. Trump’s lawyers have already said they will appeal the ruling and they have sued the judge over a separate issue which an appeals court panel will decide this week. If none of that works (and it might, you never know) Trump will be on trial next week. Since the judge has already found Trump guilty it shouldn’t last long.

In a healthy political culture Donald Trump being found guilty of fraud for lying for years about his wealth would at least put a dent in his reputation as a successful businessman. Sadly, we do not have a healthy political culture so this is unlikely to change anything. Trump has trained his followers to believe that any attempt to hold him accountable, regardless of the facts, even those they can see with their own eyes, are part of a massive conspiracy to destroy him.

That argument obviously didn’t work on this judge, who is rational and able to see the facts before him, but the MAGA movement is beyond reason. The more proof that is presented of Donald Trump’s corruption and criminality, the more they respect and revere him. But at least the rest of us know that we aren’t crazy and that’s about the best we can hope for.

Salon

Lies and the lying liars

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 27, 2023

It’s the contagion, stupid

New York State Supreme Court judge Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that Donald J. Trump, the former U.S. president, is a liar. His Trump Organization is a lie. His claims about his wealth are lies. All of this is known. David Cay Johnston knew long before Trump ran for president. David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of the New York Times won Pulitzers for exposing the Trump family’s corrupt and fraudulent practices in 2018. The Washington Post gave up counting Trump’s lies and misleading statements as president when they topped 30,000.

Sure, everyone lies occasionally. But Al Franken lampooned the right’s enthusiasm for lying in “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” (2003) before his stint as a U.S. senator. Lying as matter of course, as a political tactic, as a means of conducting oneself day to day was common before Trump. (Remember “death panels”?) Conspiracy theories built on smears and lies have been around for decades. But lying as a way to make a fortune at others’ expense seemed to become a contagion under Trump.

CNN reported in 2019:

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said he has “no obligation” to tell the truth to the media while acknowledging that he had not told the truth when asked earlier this year about his interactions with President Donald Trump.

Lewandowski was blunt about it, belligerent about it, perhaps proud of it.

An incident on Tuesday reinforced just how much lying with shameless abandon has become standard operating procedure on the right. President Biden went to Michigan to stand in solidarity with striking auto workers. He told them, “I marched a lot of UAW picket lines when I was a Senator since 1973. But I tell you what— first time I’ve ever done it as president.”

Benny Johnson, a right-wing media influencer with over 1.8 million followers on formerly Twitter, posted a clip of Biden misreporting “first time I’ve ever done it as president” as “first time I’ve ever done it in person.”

“He clearly says ‘As President’ but you knew that,” the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson posted of the lie.

BuzzFeed.com fired Johnson for plagiarsism in July 2014. The National Review snapped him up that September, telling the press Johnson had learned his lesson. The conservative Independent Journal Review hired him in 2015 but suspended Johnson and two others in 2017 after “publication of a conspiratorial article that suggested that former president Barack Obama might have influenced a federal judge in Hawaii to rule against President Trump’s revised travel ban.”

Johnson is now reportedly chief creative officer at Charlie Kirk‘s Turning Point USA.

The opposite of truth

Reuters reports this morning:

Elon Musk’s X, formerly called Twitter, disabled a feature that let users report misinformation about elections, a research organisation said on Wednesday, throwing fresh concern about false claims spreading just before major U.S. and Australian votes.

After introducing a feature in 2022 for users to report a post they considered misleading about politics, X in the past week removed the “politics” category from its drop-down menu in every jurisdiction but the European Union, said the researcher Reset.Tech Australia.

Adam Serwer comments at BlueSky, “The catalyst for the takeover was in part frustration that pre musk twitter was not a pliant conduit for right wing election misinformation .”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, commenting on the Biden visit to Michigan, said, “President Biden just joined a picket line. Wait til he finds out autoworkers are picketing because he subsidized electric cars and sent their jobs overseas.”

“This is the opposite of the truth,” the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent replied. “One of the UAW’s core demands is that EV-related manufacturing workers should be folded into the Big Three/UAW contracts. Those jobs are here in the US. By contrast, Kevin McCarthy and Republicans oppose the policies that help create those jobs.”

Doesn’t matter. Lying is SOP on the right now.

The Trump rot

This is a contagion, a contagion in circulation before Trumpism, but one his example encouraged to spread as freely as his COVID-19 disinformation and Big Lie. In both instances, Americans died.

Let’s look back to August 2020:

Norman Eisen, impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, writes of the moment he realized just how corrupt the Republican defense of Donald Trump would be. His attorneys told the U.S. Senate, “In the Judiciary Committee . . . there were no rights for the president.” They claimed the president had been denied due process. It was a lie. In fact, Trump had stonewalled.

Eisen continues:

That was the moment I realized how dangerously deep the Trump rot went: The president’s lawyers could have defended him capably without stooping to this. Lawyers are not in place to repeat the excesses of their clients. And yet Trump had managed to finagle his team into an alarming display of mimicry. Falsehood was his stock in trade, and they were enthusiastic franchisees. Worse, the GOP-controlled Senate was all too ready to accept it.

People who live a lie, teach lies, and defend lies, find it very easy to lie.

The Real Fraudsters of Manhattan

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 27, 2023

“Donald Trump is no longer in business.”

Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club (via William L. Jones Jr. / Google)

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that the Trump Organization is guilty of a decade of systemic fraud. The evidence is so plain that edjudicating the facts at trial is unneeded. Engoron also revoked its state business licenses and ordered it dissolved (Washington Post):

A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump ruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also ordered the cancellation of Trump business certificates and imposed sanctions on attorneys representing him, two of his adult children, two other company executives and the business for repeating arguments that failed multiple times previously and were called “borderline frivolous.”

Trump will appeal, of course. All the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until someone informs him that his friends on the Roberts court have no jursdiction in a New York state civil case. Trump and his boys will digitally scream how unfair they’ve been treated. As predictably as the sunrise, they’re doing that already:

“Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before. My Civil Rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether Federal or State, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision. If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”

Those who’ve spent a decade running a fraudulent business and overestimating its worth to the tune of billions know who YOU are.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has already won her case to secure monetrary damages against the Trump Organization. The trial set to start on October 2 now will be about how much the Trumps will pay. James is seeking $250 million.

The Guardian:

In pre-trial hearings before the ruling, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise told the judge that the former president is “an investment genius” and “probably one of the most successful real estate developers in the country”.

“President Trump is a master at finding value where others see nothing,” Kise told Engoron.

In his ruling, it is clear that Engoron sees things differently.

“In defendants’ word: rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote.

“This is a fantasy world, not a real world.”

David Cay Johnston has reported on Trump and his dealings for years. Trump is out of business, he explains bluntly:

Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday.

His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.

None of this is new to anyone who has watched Trump over the years:

In 2015 Trump claimed his net worth was north of $10 billion. When he became president, he asked if he could file his federally required financial disclosure statements without signing them under penalty of perjury. That request was denied. The statement Trump then filed, by my counting, showed a net worth of not much more than $1 billion, but was based on fantastical assertions of value.

News organizations, except DCReport, told their audiences next to nothing about how from June 2015 to January 2017 Trump’s claimed net worth fell by roughly 90 percent.

Trump’s chances of winning an appeal, Johnston estimates at “between zero and nothing.”

Creditors, any fines due the state because of the fraud, and taxes will be paid first from sales of Trump properties.

The various properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices and certainly not for top dollar when liquidation begins, probably after all appeals are exhausted. 

Among these properties is the portion of Trump Tower that Trump still owns and leases to businesses as office and retail space; his own triplex apartment there; his golf courses; and Mar-a-Lago, the Florida mansion he bought in a corrupt mortgage deal decades ago. He also has deals to license his name on buildings and businesses, which similarly he can no longer operate and whose profits he must give up.

The fact that Trump assigned values two, four, ten times and more above their actual values indicates that once all of the priority bills are paid there will be little to nothing left for Trump.

Karma’s a bitch.

Why aren’t the Republicans alarmed about addled Trump?

Published by digby on September 26, 2023

JV Last at the Bulwark notes that while the Democrats are wringing their hands so violently over Joe Biden’s age that they’re rubbing the skin off of their palms, the Republicans don’t really seem to care all that much about the fact that their presumptive nominee is an addled criminal.

… Some Biden supporters are frustrated with this increasingly public agita and they often state that this frustration is premised on the fact that the media doesn’t mention Trump’s advanced age with the same urgency or concern as Biden’s. I don’t know if that stated critique gets at the heart of the frustration, though. Yes, Trump is also old, and sure, it would be nice for The Media to mention that from time to time. But the real exasperation simmering underneath goes something like this: 

SURE BIDEN IS OLD BUT THE OTHER CANDIDATE IS A FELONIOUS MANIAC WHO ATTEMPTED A COUP AND HAS SAID HE WANTS TO END THE CONSTITUTION AND ASSASSINATE HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES. WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE—REPUBLICANS, THE MEDIA, MY FATHER, ANYONE!!!!—PANICKING ABOUT THAT INSTEAD?!

That is the issue flummoxing me of late. 

The timeline for Trump is the same as it is for Biden. Now would be the time for a full-court press to prevent him from being nominated and yet . . . only Jack Smith seems to be making progress in that regard. 

Look at this screengrab from yesterday’s Drudge Report which offers a little taste of the American Carnage that Trump has planned.

Those headlines read like they are from a dystopian, authoritarian fantasy world, not the American democratic republic we grew up in. Shutting down media outlets. Killing disfavored generals. 

Any human of any ideological stripe who is capable of looking at that news rundown with the slightest discernment must concur that Trump needs to be stopped. Which is why it’s the absence of Trump panic in GOP discourse that is the outlier, not the reasonable ongoing discussion about the best course for President Biden coming from the left. 

Despite Trump’s disastrous track record and his scary stated plans, it is inarguable that the institutions/politicians/commentators in America’s center-right are more sanguine about a Trump nomination now than they were at this same time in 2016. There’s no Against Trump magazine cover coming. No “Based” Senators plotting convention coups. No new Stop Trump PACs on the horizon. There’s no Shep Smith or Chris Wallace on Fox trying to inject some truth into the madness. 

It is impossible to envision a David Ignatius of the MAGA movement, whoever that may be, penning a column calling on Trump to step aside. Hell, just yesterday on Fox there was a former GOP congressional candidate who called on Ron DeSantis to step aside so the party can unite behind Trump. 

The only movement against Trump that I can detect on the right is Chris Christie and a tiny number of lower-level former White House staffers who have seen the light. Even Trump’s leading primary opponents barely attack him! 

This leaves the same old Never Trumpers, not exactly credible messengers with the MAGA base, out here screaming our heads off while everyone else just acts like this is business as usual. 

I think these people can be divided into two groups. One of them is just waiting it out. As Mitch McConnell reportedly said after January 6th, something to the effect of “We don’t need to do anything the Democrats will take care of him for us.” Thanks a lot.

The other group thinks that Trump will still be better for them personally than Biden and they don’t want to get on his bad side by publicly saying anything.

Either way, they are unpatriotic cowards.