Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Right wing disinformation is starting to run wild and it’s very dangerous

It’s bad and getting worse. And among the worst are Donald Trump and his misbegotten offspring:

Within minutes of circulating the first images of the horrific Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel, the Right Wing disinformation apparatus sprung into action. Right Wing accounts began spreading false information to score political points against President Biden and the Democrats. Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are weaponizing the information as it spreads like wildfire across social media.

Fast-moving, real-time events are the most fertile ground for disinformation and propaganda. The public is tuned in, the traditional media hasn’t yet had time to get all the facts, and people are sharing information without context or confirmation. The problem worsened after platforms conceded to wave the white flag against stopping disinformation. Elon Musk encouraged his 159 million followers to get their opinions from an account that has spread anti-Semitic disinformation.

With reports that American citizens may be among the victims and hostages, the ongoing conflict will dominate the political conversation for the foreseeable future.

The disinformation problem that was so bad in 2016 and 2020 will be much worse in 2024. Democratic campaigns and progressive media must play a major role in fighting back. Providing information to my readers so they can push back on Right-Wing BS to the people in their lives is going to be a major priority for Message Box this election cycle. Here is some advice to help you push back on the current Right Wing talking points.

Good Information for Context

President Biden delivered a statement from the White House on Saturday, laying out his Administration’s response. The statement is strong and worth sharing with people in your network.

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes recorded an emergency episode of Pod Save the World that helps explain what is happening, how the U.S. is responding, and providing factual pushback against Right Wing lies. 

Here is a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister thanking President Biden for his support:

The U.S. Did NOT Fund the Attack

As part of a recent deal to bring home U.S. citizens imprisoned in Iran, the United States unfroze $6 billion and struck an agreement with Iran to bring American prisoners home. Republican politicians and MAGA media accounts used this fact to claim that the Biden Administration funded the attack.

This claim is not true. The money is earmarked for humanitarian assistance and every penny of it remains in the bank account in Doha. But don’t take my word for it. Here is Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin pushing back on the false claims circulating on her own network:

“The $6 billion is still currently held in a Qatari bank account with U.S. Treasury oversight, I’m told. The money came from Iranian oil sales to South Korea and did not include U.S. taxpayer dollars. NK spokesperson Adrian Watson said in a statement, ‘Not a single cent from these funds has been spent and when it is spent it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people. These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.’ In fact, the US has pre-positioned $2 billion worth of weapons stored in Israel. I’m told the US will likely release some of these pre-positioned weapons to assist Israel in the coming days.”

U.S. Weapons were NOT Used

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump Jr. and others shared a photo as “proof” that the U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal were used in the attack.

This claim is also false. The photo being circulated is from 2021, not 2023; it was taken in Afghanistan, not Israel, and the people in the photo are members of the Taliban not Hamas.

It is clear that the Republicans see a ripe political opportunity to paint President Biden as weak. And it is also clear that we must push back on the flood of disinformation.

More Bad Takes:

And the ALL-CAPS bleat: “THE HORRIBLE ATTACK ON ISRAEL, MUCH LIKE THE ATTACK ON UKRAINE, WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT – ZERO CHANCE!” Trump posted to Truth Social.

Don Jr., who used the incident to display his inveterate ignorance once again:

“How is it possible that I’ve seen more videos out of this war in Israel in a few hours than I have from Ukraine in almost 2 years???”

Laurence Tribe (in since deleted post): “Is Netanyahu wagging the dog of war to take attention away from his own war on the independent judiciary? Can anyone put that past him?”

J.D. Vance, who blamed America first: “As we watch this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this. Money is fungible, and many of the dollars we sent to Iran are being used to now kill innocent people. This must stop. Israel has every right to defend itself. I wish our friends well, but most of all I wish they weren’t fighting against weapons bought with our money.”

The Democratic Socialists of America. Here’s Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres, denouncing the DSA:

Rona McDaniel Romney: “I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel time and time again and Joe Biden has been weak,” McDaniel said on Fox News on Saturday.

Senator Rick Scott: “@JoeBiden funded this attack when he bowed to Iran and gave $6 BILLION to this evil regime that starts every day plotting to destroy Israel. While Biden is silent, his appeasement of Iran and Hamas terrorists is heard in every siren blaring across Israel.”

Senator Tim Scott: “The truth is though, Joe Biden funded these attacks on Israel. America’s weakness is blood in the water for bad actors, but this is worse than that. We didn’t just invite this aggression, we paid for it. Iran is the biggest funder of Hamas. This is the Biden $6 billion ransom payment at work.”

There’s more, some of it even more outrageous. The macho, dick-measuring coming from these erstwhiloe peaceniks (when itcomes to Russia anyway) is overwhelming. Evenfrom the leading women:

What happened to Israel could happen to America.

We have been invaded by aliens from over 160 different countries.

We don’t know who they are or where they are. There are so many got-aways the Biden admin can’t even keep up with them.

This should be a wake up call. pic.twitter.com/b13AWAouUI

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 8, 2023

I guess she’s agitating for a massive manhunt and deportation program? Because we’re like Israel?

It gets even dumber than that. I will spare you the further details. Just be aware that they are out of their minds. As usual.

“Bleaching” Black residents from S.C.’s 1st District

Bishop William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign regularly invokes the fusion movement that allowed formerly enslaved citizens (men, anyway) joined by white allies to vote and win public office in the post-Civil War South. Nineteenth-century Supreme Court rulings backing white backlash to fusion politics set the stage, Politico Magazine reports, for “the American slide toward autocracy.”

The backlash to Barack Obama’s 2008 election provided the jolt of momentum autocrats needed, particularly in the former Confederate states, for resurrecting the not-yet-cold corpse of Jim Crow.

Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin recounts recent history with which Hullabaloo readers are already familiar, plus Alabama’s recent insistence on defying court rulings to preserve white dominance of the state’s congressional delegation:

In 2022, a three-judge district court found that the state’s proposed redistricting map diluted minority votes, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. It ordered Alabama to create a second majority-Black congressional district or “or something quite close to it” so that Black voters would “have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.” In a 5-4 ruling, the court in Milligan rejected Alabama’s arguments for a reinterpretation of the Act and ordered it to follow the lower court’s decision.

Instead, this state — where “Heart of Dixie” is still required messaging on all license plates — defied the court with a new map that did not create a realistic possibility for Black voters to elect a second congressperson. That led the annoyed lower court to direct an independent expert to redraw the map. Then Alabama filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court it had just defied, asking it to stay the independent expert’s work while it pursued yet another appeal.

Last month, the court denied this emergency request, clearing the way for a fairer map to be put in place by the 2024 elections.

The same happened with Republicans in North Carolina in 2022. They are rolling out new gerrymanders again in just weeks.

Old times there are not forgotten

In the state where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War, South Carolina Republicans are at similar work:

After an eight-day trial, the district court found that the legislature had imposed a racial target of no more than 17 percent African American for the 1st District and cut 62 percent of Black residents of Charleston County — more than 30,000 people — out of the district to meet it. The district court called this a “stark racial gerrymander.” The court found the South Carolina legislature abandoned traditional redistricting principles, instead “bleaching” Black voters from their former district. Those changes, the court concluded, were not required by any population shifts identified by the 2020 Census.

Yet South Carolina argues that the Supreme Court should presume it acted in good faith, for partisan not racial reasons. The court should reject South Carolina’s plea to “disentangle race from politics” because the southern history of race-infused partisanship explains why Blacks were excised, regardless of the legislature’s professed intent.

Tacitly acceptable partisan gerrymanders are Rubin vase illusions southern states expect us to accept on good faith are not racially prohibited districts. Roberts court conservatives may well prefer to see it Republicans’ way. Past courts have set the precedent, Cashin concludes.

As autocracy rises on the constructed divisions that politicians foment, the court has much repair work to do — lest we return to the anti-democratic despotism of 1883.

The jury of nine is still out.

U.S. sends carrier group to eastern Mediterranean

Israel formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday after a surprise attack that killed over 700. The Israelis are massing troops for a ground invasion.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement this morning that at least nine Americans died in the Hamas attack.

NBC News:

“This is Israel’s 9/11. Not since 1973 has there been such a catastrophic intelligence failure in Israel,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, who worked for 26 years for the CIA, where he specialized in counterterrorism, the Middle East and South Asia.

Israel’s intelligence services have long been seen as some of the most capable in the world, with an array of human intelligence, eavesdropping and other technical means blanketing the West Bank and Gaza.

“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” said Polymeropoulos. 

As with early reporting from any war zone, statistics and accounts will be revised. Be careful where you get your news and note reporters’ sources.

Patrick Kingsley, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, and two others report (relying in part on “two senior Israeli officials”) that a large portion of those 700 reported casualties in Israel came in attack by Hamas militants on an outdoor music festival. They bulldozed their way through border barricades and sped toward the festival still underway at dawn. It’s a chlling account:

The militants gunned down more than 100 ravers and abducted others, according to two senior Israeli officials, as they sprinted through the open fields. Video verified by The New York Times showed militants driving off on a motorcycle with an Israeli woman squeezed between them, screaming as her boyfriend was marched off on foot, his arm wrenched behind his back.

Those who survived often did so by hiding in nearby bushes, some of them for hours.

Bullets whistled overhead and shots resounded all around, said Andrey Peairie, 35, one of the survivors. He described crawling up to the top of a nearby hill to get a better sense of what was happening.

“Smoke and flames and gunfire,” said Mr. Peairie, a tech worker. “I have a military background, but I never was in a situation like this.”

Based in Tel Aviv, Ruth Margalit is a former member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff. Her account of the music festival attack is similar:

As partygoers scrambled toward their cars or lay on the ground waiting for the barrage to pass, another kind of fire began. [Hanoch Hai] Cohen watched as four pickup trucks filled with armed militants and gunmen on motorcycles encircled the road leading out of the event venue, which was bottlenecked with cars attempting to flee the area. “They were shooting at people just a metre away,” Cohen told me over the phone on Sunday. “These were executions. We were like ducks in a firing range.”

The music festival was one of the first sites targeted by the unprecedented Hamas ground incursion into Israel. It is also perhaps the deadliest. At least two hundred and sixty had been killed there, according to Israel’s search-and-rescue organization.

Militants also raided nearby communities, going from home to home, killing and taking residents—in some instances, entire families—hostage. On Sunday evening, the Israeli military was still engaged in battle with Gaza militants in several locations, more than a full day after the invasion began. The death toll in Israel climbed to seven hundred, and more than three hundred were seriously or critically wounded. Around four hundred Palestinians had been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

The attack at the festival appeared to be not only premeditated but also highly coördinated. Videos uploaded by attendees showed the sky above them suddenly dotted with militants on hang gliders. “Nothing there was arbitrary,” Cohen said, adding that the road to the event was ringed. “They showed up in an organized formation.” As the gunmen emptied rounds of live ammunition on the attendees, including hand grenades and mortar fire, Cohen and a friend broke off from the main road into a nearby field; from there, they navigated their jeep through dirt roads until they reached the main highway, which, Cohen said, was itself charred, with an eight-foot rocket strewn on the bank.

Kibbutz Nahal Oz lies adjacent to Gaza. People hid in their family bomb shelters only to realize there was more happening above than rocket fire. This time Amir Tibon also heard gunfire (New York Times again):

“There were terrorists inside the kibbutz, inside our neighborhood and — at some point — outside our window,” Mr. Tibon recalled. “We could hear them talk. We could hear them run. We could hear them shooting their guns at our house, at our windows.”

On the village WhatsApp group, neighbors were posting frantic messages. “People were saying, ‘They are in my house, they are trying to break into the safe room!’” recalled Mr. Tibon, a journalist for Haaretz, one of the country’s most prominent news outlets.

Messages from fellow reporters revealed even more terrifying news. They said that Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, had infiltrated scores of Israeli border towns, and that it would take time for the Israeli Army to reach the village.

The U.S. is scrambling to prevent (if it can) the fighting from spreading (Washington Post):

The Biden administration on Sunday scrambled to prevent Hamas’s assault on Israel from escalating into a multi-front, regional conflict, deploying a U.S. aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean and rushing arms to the Israeli military in a bid to deter the Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other actors from attacking.

The effort came amid close consultations between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday. U.S. officials expect Israel to unleash a broad-based ground assault against the militant group within the next 24 to 48 hours, following the sophisticated Hamas attack on Saturday that killed more than 700 Israelis. Israeli reprisals have killed more than 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

American citizens are probably among the hostages that Hamas is holding inside Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday. At least several Americans were killed in the attack, a senior administration official confirmed.

Politico Magazine sought out Matt Duss, a former foreign policy aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for comment on how this assault will affect the left’s view of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Duss is now executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. 

“This is something on the scale of the Yom Kippur war in terms of people’s perceptions,” Duss said. Yet the Palestinian issue will not go away. The attack “has destroyed this whole premise that we can just bottle up the Palestinians and it won’t matter.”

Duss tells Politico:

On the progressive left, you have a recognition and a respect for the rights of all people to live in security and dignity. That includes Israelis and Palestinians. I think the statements you see from most U.S. officials, including from the White House, are overwhelmingly focused on one side. It is of course quite true that Israel has the right to defend itself. Its people have a right to live in peace and security. The Palestinians have that right as well. The Center for International Policy put out a statement responding to the events of the last few days, making this point — that what Hamas has done is awful. We condemn it unequivocally. We also note that Palestinians have continued to suffer under an occupation and blockade that is decades old. That is absolutely necessary context. That does not excuse what Hamas has done. There is no excuse for that. But there is an important context of understanding where this violence grows from.

Mr. “I can fix this very quickly and very easily” will kindly STFU and tend to his multiple criminal indictments.

He’s a Trump henchman and accomplice and nothing is going to change

He should be on trial with Donald Trump but for some reason congressional officials are off-limits. Huff Post’s Igor Bobic has the story:

Staunch conservative Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is in the spotlight after launching a bid for the speaker’s gavel this week, a race that is sure to provide even more drama and chaos than the unprecedented ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

But one critical aspect of Jordan’s history that has been omitted by most Beltway publications is the prominent role he played in spreading lies about the 2020 election and rallying supporters to contest the results. The extraordinary effort led by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Jordan’s bid for speaker, led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who co-chaired the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the insurrection, said in a speech at the University of Minnesota this week.

“Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election,” she added.

Jordan, who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee, refused to cooperate with the select committee regarding his communications with Trump as the attack was occurring, defying subpoenas for testimony.

Trump spoke on the phone with Jordan for 10 minutes on the morning of Jan. 6. Jordan has never divulged the nature of the conversation, saying only that he had spoken to Trump “a number of times” that day.

He has said he had “nothing to do with” the attack on the Capitol.

Jordan also phoned then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows while the attack was underway, according to former Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

“They had a brief conversation,” Hutchinson told the committee. “In crossfire, I heard briefly what they were talking about. I heard conversations in the Oval [Office] dining room at that point talking about the ‘Hang Mike Pence’ chants.”

Jordan also sent a text to Meadows on Jan. 5 outlining a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, had the authority to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

Jordan was also actively involved in spreading falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election before and after it had taken place, baselessly alleging fraud had occurred in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Many of his false claims were aired again and again in repeated appearances on Fox News.

In October, the month before the election, Jordan claimed that Democrats “are trying to steal the election, after the election.” He appeared at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania after the state had already been called for Biden, urging supporters to keep up the pressure.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Jordan urged Republicans to “unite and fight for President Trump” by objecting to the certification of the 2020 election in Congress.

“He has fought for us, the American people. … It’s time for us to fight for him and the Constitution,” Jordan said in an interview with Newsmax.

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, on Thursday lauded Jordan for his college wrestling career and his education credentials. Trump wrote in a post to his Truth Social platform that Jordan “has my complete & total endorsement” in the race for House speaker.

Six former wrestlers alleged that Jordan as an assistant coach knew about an Ohio State University doctor who had been molesting student-athletes. Jordan has denied any knowledge of the abuse.

They’re arguing with each other over who can be the most bloodthirsty

You’re the embodiment of the kind of weakness that led to this. You should have paid attention when you were groveling at the feet of the master. Trump brought peace because the world knew — F around and find out! We’ll never return to the failed approach of you and your uniparty… https://t.co/vJGD3LMP3f

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 8, 2023

It will be interesting to see if all the wingnuts who want the US to stop sending aid to Ukraine because it’s not in our national interest find a reason to support more aid to Israel. Not that they care. Consistency isn’t something they understand or care about.

There is more disinformation and misinformation on the social media platform about this war in Israel than I’ve ever seen before.

It’s all so awful and the news just seems to get worse. There’s plenty of analysis out there but it’s contentious and difficult and I just can’t get past the horrors of the moment long enough to really absorb any of it. And if you follow any of the social media platforms it’s almost impossible to know what’s real and what isn’t. It’s a mess out there:

As one of the largest invasions in 50 years unfolded on the streets, sea and skies over Israel, misinformation about the assault proliferated on social media.

In one instance, a widely circulated video of an Israeli airstrike was said to show a retaliation to Saturday’s surprise attack by Palestinian group Hamas, which has left hundreds dead.

“BREAKING: Israeli Air Force is striking terror targets in Gaza,” read the caption of the video, which was shared on Facebook and social media platform X. But the video was from airstrikes that happened in May, Reuters reported.

In another, numerous users on X and TikTok shared a video that showed two jets being towed by ground. Some users claimed it showed Israeli Defense forces evacuating air bases near Gaza. One user said it showed Hamas forces towing Israeli jets.

That video, however, was published last month, appearing on YouTube on Sept. 19, according to Reuters. The reposted version of the video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times by Saturday afternoon.

Many of the misleadingly labeled videos were shared by verified users on X, who are eligible for monetization of their content.

Meanwhile, both fighting parties turned to social media and tech platforms to engage in information warfare.

In dozens of posts on X, TikTok and Instagram, Israel’s official social media accounts blasted Hamas and repeatedly stated, “We are at war.” In one video posted to Instagram and X, Israel compared Hamas to ISIS.

“Same ideology, different names,” text placed over a video of an alleged kidnapping said.

Many social media companies, including the less tightly moderated X, have banned Hamas-affiliated accounts and politicians. 

The group instead has turned primarily to the messaging platform Telegram to distribute its content and saw colossal follower growth on Saturday. 

In the channel, Hamas posted polished promotional videos as well as on-the-ground footage from Saturday’s violence. Others have since reposted the videos to other social media platforms.

Among the footage circulating Saturday were videos of Israeli civilian hostages taken into Gaza. Others purport to show Hamas opening fire at Israeli attendees of a music festival.

“The images and videos that Hamas has released of innocent civilians are objectively horrifying. And while they may have released these videos in hopes of rallying other Palestinians to launch attacks, it’s more likely to draw the international community to Israel’s side,” said Jonathan Lord, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington.

Just be careful. And whatrever you do, don’t listen to Elon Musk:

Elon Musk lauds this bigot as a good source of information, part Infiniti pic.twitter.com/n318hVaJaW

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 8, 2023

Trump blurts out nuclear secrets to anyone who’ll listen and it’s just not a big deal

By the way, Biden is old. I don’t know if you’ve heard. But it’s been on every front page in the nation for weeks now.

Trump throws a hail Mary at the Supreme Court in an attempt to finally declare the presidency immune from all legal accountability

Last week Trump filed a number of delaying tactics in the courts where he’s been indicted courts around the country but one may be the most significant. His lawyers filed a case in federal court arguing that the president has total immunity from any crimes he may have committed while in office. Therefore, his attempt to illegally block the peaceful transfer of power cannot be prosecuted.

It’s complicated but this article gives a good overview of the legal issues at stake:

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team went big in their latest effort to derail the prosecution against him for conspiring to interfere in the 2020 election: They filed a motion to dismiss that could be called a motion to make U.S. presidents into kings.

The 52-page legal motion filed in the D.C. case asks U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan to dismiss the indictment based on the concept of “presidential immunity” that Trump argues makes him immune from any criminal prosecution for acts he took as president. The legal precedent underlying the motion is that presidents have been immune from civil lawsuits over actions taken while they served as president and Justice Department policy that sitting presidents cannot be indicted while in office. But Trump seeks to expand this immunity from civil lawsuits for money and DOJ’s policy of forbearance from prosecuting a sitting U.S. president into a limitless doctrine of executive immunity that would green light nearly any criminal actions committed by a president.

Trump’s lawyers argue that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges against Trump must be dismissed because, “Here, 234 years of unbroken historical practice–from 1789 until 2023– provide compelling evidence that the power to indict a former president for his official acts does not exist.” While they are right that it has never been done before–arguably because no president has shown such brazen disregard for the law–the historical fact that it has not been done before adds nothing to the legal basis for the defense.

The Supreme Court case of Fitzgerald v. Nixon established absolute immunity for civil liability for actions by a president while in office. But the “absolute” qualifier was limited in that case to what has become known as the “outer-perimeter” zone of official duties, which made clear that presidential conduct that fell outside that boundary could be actionable in a civil context. The lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against former President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment was one such example of actions that fell outside the zone of official presidential conduct. In any case, Fitzgerald v. Nixon never established an absolute immunity against criminal prosecutions, so even though the DOJ and Jack Smith may be doing something that has never been done before, it’s Trump who is trying to extend legal precedent in a way never done before. Indeed, in another case involving former President Nixon, the Supreme Court famously held that Nixon could not use executive privilege to shield himself from a criminal grand jury’s subpoena for the tapes he had made while in office.

The DOJ will no doubt take apart Trump’s arguments in its response and Judge Chutkan is almost certain to side with federal prosecutors and reject Trump’s effort to dismiss the case. Trump–who loves to say: “I will appeal”–will certainly then try to appeal, and that is where the legal questions become sticky.

Appeals pre-trial are limited in criminal cases, with most arguments being taken up only after a trial and conviction (prosecutors cannot appeal an acquittal). But in certain limited situations an interlocutory appeal could be allowed, meaning the issues raised by Trump could be appealed first to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the U.S. Supreme Court. Precedent exists for allowing disputes over immunity to be appealed pre-trial. That’s because arguments involving absolute immunity are different than arguments involving factual innocence (I didn’t’ do it!) and other legal defenses (I did it but it’s not illegal) given the common-sense notion that a person who isn’t supposed to be subject to a legal process shouldn’t have to go all the way through before a trial and then be found that the trial never should have happened. Some of that precedent involves claims of double-jeopardy, where a defendant argues that they are “immune” from a prosecution in the sense that the double-jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment bars their prosecution.

Indeed, one of the arguments Trump also makes is precisely a double jeopardy argument, which looks silly on its face but may have strong strategic value in getting an interlocutory appeal. Specifically, Trump argues that his acquittal on impeachment by the Senate for his Jan. 6 conduct operates as a bar against his prosecution for election interference because to prosecute him criminally would be double jeopardy. That analogy is simply wrong, since by definition an impeachment is a political proceeding, not a criminal case brought by the government. The mere invocation of the double jeopardy argument, however, will bolster Trump’s chances of getting an appeal heard prior to his criminal trial starting.

If Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his claims of absolute presidential immunity are found to be appealable pre-trial on an interlocutory basis, then the case almost certainly will reach the Supreme Court. Although Trump has frequently been disappointed by SCOTUS not backing his legal theories, this one may be different because it involves expansion of executive authority. Trump’s appointments of three young conservative justices–Amy Coney-Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh–has created a powerful conservative majority. That conservative majority has indicated a leaning towards favoring expansion of presidential authority under the theory of the “unified executive theory.” Most recently, in the case involving whistleblowers, three justices (Thomas, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett) indicated their willingness to consider cases involving this theory in the future. A decision by SCOTUS upholding immunity from criminal prosecution for presidents would do more than allow Trump to escape accountability. It would transform U.S. presidents from chief executives into kings.

We can hope that the court won’t validate Richard Nixon’s famous assertion that “when the president does it it’s not illegal.” But you never know with this court.

It’s been quite a morning for the GOP superstar women on TV this morning

You won’t find a better encapsulation of Nancy Mace’s phoniness than her going on CBS today & claiming her big problem with McCarthy was he didn’t do enough for abuse survivors, then in the next breath endorsing Gym Jordan for speaker. She stands for nothing beyond getting on TV.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 8, 2023

Brennan: Do the past allegations of Jim Jordan that he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse give you reservations?

Mace: I’m not familiar or aware of that.

Brennan: Ohio state university allegations.

Mace: I don’t know anything pic.twitter.com/OGQQFqR9pt

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 8, 2023

Brennan: McCarthy said his ouster is personal payback from Gaetz for the house ethics committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct… Does that bother you?

Mace: Well, again, he’s not indicted for anything. I don’t really — I don’t know much about it. pic.twitter.com/i9qINKGP2m

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 8, 2023

Greene: And no matter how you feel about McCarthy, I can tell you I was getting things accomplished because through McCarthy, I was able to get the Ukraine money taken out.. I also got an impeachment inquiry launched… pic.twitter.com/IpdZ6sDsCN

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 8, 2023

Ronna McDaniel said the terrorist attack on Israel presents “a great opportunity” for Republican candidates.

Story …https://t.co/MHudG6AabS

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) October 8, 2023

What Lovely people..

A teeth-grinding interview

What if the next presidential election is a rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump. Kristen Welker of Meet The Press sat down with four Pennsylvania “swing voters” how they feel about that.

First off, how were they chosen for this conclave? What makes theses four representative stand-ins for swing voters in general? What makes their opinions somehow illuminating?

“If it’s a Biden and Trump race, I would vote for Biden even if he was dead. And I’m a Republican.”

-A Pennsylvania voter to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker. pic.twitter.com/DJy6dgZdfb

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 8, 2023

At least this Republican voter (above) will take a stand even if he believes (somehow) that Biden is on the edge of senility. Welker didn’t ask in this edit what people thought of Kamala Harris as president in the event…. That might have been revealing.

Samantha Cieslinski voted Republican in the past but now feels her “moral compass” won’t let her choose either Biden or Trump. Oh, and she’s the one panelist who says she might sit out Election Day 2024 if there isn’t someone running she can “support wholeheartedly.”

Moral compass? As if even if her ambivalence is real and not for the camera, has any experienced voter in this country ever, ever in their lifetimes entered a voting booth in a presidential election and found just one race on the ballot? There will be dozens of choices for citizens to make. Dozens of choices for city council, county commission, school board, perhaps judges, state Senate, state House, and council of state races on that ballot in addition to federal races for U.S. House and Senate. Oh, but if I don’t like who’s at the top of the ticket, my “moral compass” might require me to stay home and let others make those decisions?

These kinds of interviews, like reporters’ heartland diner visits, are not meant to illuminate. They are cheap political entertainment.