Just in time for spring break, two male Andean bear cubs named Sean and Ian are now on view at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Washington, D.C. Over the past few weeks, the animal care team has worked with the brothers to prepare them for the transition. Cubs Ian and Sean began exploring the yard in mid-March alongside their mother, 4-year-old Brienne. For the past four months, members of the public have joined animal care staff in observing the cubs play and explore via a live Andean Bear Cub Cam and follow along with their growth through online “cubdates.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has doubled down on the state’s restrictions against abortion services.
On Thursday, DeSantis announced that he signed the Heartbeat Protection Act into law, which will now require a woman to provide proof that the pregnancy was a result of rape, incest or human trafficking in order to receive an abortion up until 15 weeks of gestation.
Documentation can include a restraining order, police report, medical record or other evidence.
This restriction is an exception to the new law, which states that otherwise, abortions will be banned after six weeks unless done to save a pregnant person’s life.
“We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida,” DeSantis, 44, said in a news release.
He’s supporting the family members who rape their daughters, that’s for sure. And any rape victim who doesn’t properly document her assault like a good little bureaucrat will just have to bear her rapists child. Paperwork is very important.
That’s what supporting life and family means in the state of Florida.
He has very little chance in a general election with this hard right agenda. It’s difficult to understand what he thinks he’s doing. It’s one thing to appeal to the base. But I think we expected him to be able to finesse this a bit better. He had a 15 week ban in hand that was working its way through the courts. He could have made up some babble about how it was important for it to go through the judicial process or something. The base would have bought it, at least for now. Rushing to get to Trump’s right on everything is simply not a winning strategy, particularly on this issue.
For decades, while posing as the Supreme Court’s everyman, Thomas has accepted lavish gifts, vacations, and private-jet flights, worth millions of dollars, from the Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. Then—in violation of federal law—he elected to conceal the financial relationship. We learned all of that thanks to the excellent reporting of Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica. And we know they have Thomas dead to rights, because he hasn’t denied any of it. Rather, he has sought to defend his behavior with what you might generously call lawyerly deception. Here’s the key part of the public statement he issued in response to the revelations:
Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.
I added the emphasis to identify the points of deceit. Reading his statement, you might imagine that when Thomas became a justice, he wondered what to do about his dear and generous friend Harlan who, while very rich, and very conservative, had no particular interest in the composition of the federal bench or what considerations enter the minds of Supreme Court justices when they interpret and make law.
But that’s not so. Twenty-five years ago, Thomas had already been a justice for several years, which means he only befriended Crow after becoming one of the most powerful officeholders in the world. We don’t know when Thomas sought guidance from his similarly lawless colleagues, or which jurists he sought it from, but we know he voluntarily disclosed these gifts until the Los Angeles Times first began reporting on this improper relationship in 2004, at which point the disclosures stopped. Then note the past-tense voice when he claims Crow “did not have business before the court.” That is conspicuously not the same as saying he “did not and does not have business before the court,” or “has never had business before the court.” We don’t know, because Thomas left too much unsaid, but at best this means Crow had no business before the court in or around 2004 when Thomas and his buddies on the bench all agreed he didn’t have to follow any rules.
A truer statement and timeline would have left a much different impression: That years after he became a justice, a right-wing influence peddler with a fortune and recurring business before the court befriended and began spending vast sums of money on him; that he disclosed these gifts for several more years before the press got wind of it, at which point he went looking for affirmation that it was OK to keep accepting the gifts without disclosing them.
This would be intolerable even if it were Thomas’s first offense, but his offenses are serial. His entanglement with Crow alone has seen straight up cash flow into his wife Ginni’s pockets and his own. As I was writing this we learned that Crow secretly paid above market value to purchase property from Thomas, parcels that included Thomas’s parents house, where they continued to maintain residence while Crow covered their property taxes.
Meanwhile, Ginni resides at the center of a sprawling network of right-wing activists who encouraged and participated in efforts to overthrow the government after the 2020 election. Knowing that her communications about the attempted coup might end up in the hands of investigators and the public, Thomas cast the sole dissenting vote against requiring disclosure of Trump administration records to the House January 6 Committee. No recusal. Her involvement, and his desire to cover it up, at least hinted at his awareness of, or even complicity in, an effort to overturn American democracy. It all could easily have formed the basis of a tidy impeachment inquiry. Instead, then as now, Democrats in Congress let it be. They contented themselves with impotent calls for Thomas to recuse himself in future insurrection cases, and for a statutory code of ethics to bind the justices going forward.
Democrats subsequently lost the House, removing impeachment as an option altogether. But that hasn’t left them powerless. They still have a significant bully pulpit. They could use it to insist (ineffectively, perhaps, but at real cost to Thomas and the GOP) that Thomas resign; that his defenders are complicit in selling the Court to right-wing billionaires; that a court that tolerates this cozy style of bribery and deception can not be trusted with as much power as it has. And they could back that up with a credible threat to investigate Thomas’s conduct more deeply, including through the use of subpoena power.
A few righteous House Democrats have indeed called on Thomas to resign, but the ones best positioned to make this a painful problem for Thomas and Republicans have all ducked. As alluded to earlier, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin’s first instinct was to pass the buck to John Roberts—”Chief Justice Roberts needs to take the important first step here as the chief justice of the Supreme Court, to restore the integrity of that court with a thorough and credible investigation of what happened with Justice Thomas,” Durbin said—while vaguely promising to “act.” Initially, eight senators signed a letter to Roberts pressing him to relieve them of this hot potato. Subsequently, under wilting criticism, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee wrote to Roberts again, urging him (again) to investigate this issue himself but advising him that “the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing regarding the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” One hearing! On ‘Supreme Court Ethics!’ Maybe!
So, for now, a buck passed and a box checked.
Astonishing. As @JudiciaryDems wrote, the Chief Justice must investigate how such conduct could take place at the Court under his watch. And if the Court does not fix these clear abuses, Congress must. https://t.co/DQCP6Lylnm
We thus witnessed the perverse spectacle of Republicans feigning more outrage in defense of their poor, beleaguered friend Clarence Thomas, and his right to be corrupt, than Democrats directed at Thomas for the extent of his corruption. Republicans felt freer than they might have to treat Thomas as the victim of a smear campaign, because Democrats did not respond in proportion to the seriousness of the matter. Republicans would have you believe they’d be totally cool with George Soros sending Ketanji Brown Jackson to various beach resorts on his private planes (NB: they would lose every last ounce of their shit) because they didn’t have to worry about their opponents calling them liars, complicit in the corruption of the American government.
I’m not here to say the Republican approach of abusing its oversight powers and carpet bombing the discourse with sham investigations has been a huge winner. There is some value in choosing battles, and in being even vaguely competent. But I do admire one aspect of their ethos: The almost reflexive tic they’ve developed to call the things and people they don’t like “corrupt” and promise accountability. It is impossible to imagine Jim Jordan running interference for Donald Trump by, say, calling on the New York State Bar Association to censure Alvin Bragg; it is impossible to imagine Republicans trying to intimidate corporations and entities that don’t toe the right-wing line by petitioning various uninterested regulatory boards and calling it a day. They run straight at their enemies. It is, sadly, almost as hard to imagine Dick Durbin referring Clarence Thomas to the FBI or IRS for violating federal law, or issuing him a subpoena and promising to enforce it expeditiously.
Sadly, I agree. Nothing is going to happen to Thomas. They are just waiting for him to die. That’s how we deal with corrupt Supreme Court Justices and it’s one of the best arguments for term limits.
In a new statement, Trump vows to get vengeance on “marxist local DAs” who have persecuted him, conservatives, and christians, and says he will launch civil rights investigations against them for racial discrimination, presumably against white people. pic.twitter.com/kFhZXw2YeT
A messyconfrontation between House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member, over panel rules dominated coverage last week. But the spat can’t change an uncomfortable reality for Democrats — when it comes to GOP investigations, there’s not much they can do in the minority.
So as Comer plugs away at his controversial, high-profile investigation of President Joe Biden’s family members and their business dealings, Raskin is doing his best to try to reorient the narrative. The progressive firebrand is crying foul at Comer’s methods while making sure the biggest committee news comes from the Democratic side, not from the Kentucky Republican.
The fight spilled into the open last week, incensing Oversight Republicans who argue Raskin is trying to distract from GOP breakthroughs in reviewing bank records tied to questionable Biden family deals.
In recent memos and letterssent both to Comer and Oversight Democrats, Raskin repeatedly complained that Comer isn’t playing by the rules. Raskin accused Comer of issuing “secret subpoenas” and failing to give Democrats “equal access” to information. Republicans, furious at Raskin’s claims, argued Raskin was spreading disinformation.
Along with Raskin’s procedural arguments, the Democrat has divulged major Oversight news within his missives. In a March letter upbraiding Comer for his treatment of the Mazars case dealing with Trump’s tax returns, Raskin announced Comer had subpoenaed a business associate of Hunter and James Biden. Raskin was at it again last week, writing that Comer had quietly subpoenaed four financial institutions and another Biden familyassociate.
Accompanying the subpoena news was an inside baseball dispute over whether Republicans were giving Democrats enough heads-up and access to information.
The issue is extremely niche and the arguments likely don’t make much difference to the American public. But the flashpoint still matters inside the committee and it’s sparked major conflicts.
To recap briefly: Raskin’s initial April 6 letter accused Comer of “efforts to shield information.” Comer responded by calling Raskin “untrustworthy.” A subsequent April 6 Raskin memo claimed Comer issued “secret subpoenas.” The House Oversight GOP Twitter account released an April 7 thread labeling Raskin’s claim “DEM DISINFO.”
Democratic aides rebutted the Twitter thread to us, arguing there was a difference between formal committee rules and a bipartisan agreement between the chair and ranking member. Here’s a statement from a Democratic Oversight Committee spokesperson slamming Comer for acting in bad faith. So that’s how strongly the two sides feel here.
Although this particular war of words is new for this Congress, the Comer-Raskin back-and-forth reveals a typical strategic dilemma. Minority parties in the House are powerless to issue subpoenas of their own — or block the majority’s subpoenas — and can do very little to obstruct investigations.
So the more the two sides bicker about procedure, the less attention is on the substance of Comer’s claims, Republicans argue.
“Democrats’ latest tactics are just more attempts to distract from the Oversight Committee’s efforts to hold President Biden and his administration accountable,” Comer said to us.
Raskin’s team insists these are serious concerns that deserve to be addressed.
In the meantime, Comer promised on Fox News this week that he’d hold a news conference in two weeks time with updates on his Biden family investigation. Until then, the partisan fights will rage on.
Raskin’s approach mirrors that of other House Democrats in similar positions. Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee Ranking Member Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) wrote to Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in March accusing him of keeping her out of the loop on committee business.
“I must assume from these actions that you are not a professional, nor are you an honest broker,” Plaskett said to the Ohio Republican.
And House Judiciary Democrats also tried to preempt GOP investigations last month by releasing a sprawling staff report seeking to pre-but whistleblower testimony that Jordan conducted.
If you are following the issue of abortion right now you almost surely have a headache. There is just so much happening all over the country that it’s very hard to wrap your head around what’s going on and how to fight it. This was the predictable outcome of overruling Roe v. Wade to “send it back to the states” because it was always part of the anti-abortion movement strategy. Instead of fighting on one front at the national level, pro-choice advocates would be forced to fight on many different fronts in many different ways while at the same time battling back one attempt after another in the federal courts to degrade the right in the states where it is legal. The final goal remains a national ban even if they have to get it done incrementally.
This was always obvious by the fact that while they always piously proclaimed that abortion is murder while at the same time insisting that they merely wanted to return the issue to the states, as if it was fine with them if some states decided to keep it legal. What they really wanted to do was disperse the resources and energy and wear down the opposition.
So far, it isn’t working.
If anything, they have galvanized the pro-choice majority and it’s wreaking havoc on Republican politics. In red states they have managed to enact all the draconian policies they dreamed of post-Roe — and that effort is ongoing. Just last night, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a ban on abortion after six weeks. But he did it in a closed door ceremony and didn’t announce it until 11 pm, illustrating how dicey abortion politics have become for politicians with national ambitions.
Here’s South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who announced a exploratory committee for president this week, trying to answer the most obvious question anyone can ask in this election cycle. He sounds like he’s speaking in tongues:
Even Donald Trump is having trouble negotiating the issue with his most devoted followers. According to Rolling Stone, he’s been meeting with evangelical leaders and trying to convince them that abortion is a loser and they need to change their approach. He tells them they must stop talking about bans and start emphasizing “exceptions” instead because otherwise Democrats will paint him as an “extremist.” And when he’s asked about how he plans to advocate for their cause in the future, he resorts to bragging about his past accomplishments (which basically consists of signing the three Supreme Court nomination papers that were pressed into his hands by Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo.)
His supporters were not amused. One wondered if Trump was “going to try to make us swallow getting next to nothing in return for our support?”
Apparently, Trump’s telling anyone who will listen that the Republicans are “getting killed” on abortion, which is true, and Republicans in Washington are freaking out, as Rolling Stone reports:
In recent weeks, numerous emergency meetings — focused on abortion-related messaging and the potential for compromises — have been held by conservatives in nonprofit organizations, on Capitol Hill, and in elite Republican and evangelical circles, multiple sources familiar with the situation attest. “The ‘Dobbs effect’ is real and maybe devastating,” says one Republican member of Congress, referencing the Dobbs v. Jackson case the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v. Wade, who requested anonymity to speak freely. “And there isn’t a solution that everyone can rally around yet.”
Trump seems to think that if the anti-abortion zealots will just agree to allow some exceptions for rape and incest (and maybe the health of the mother) that the whole thing will calm down and everyone can go back to the way it was. Sure, Don.
First of all, even if the anti-abortion zealots were to agree, the genie is out of the bottle. Roe was overturned and the battle for women’s autonomy isn’t going to magically disappear because they agree to allow for an exception for rape and incest, which until fairly recently was supported by most pro-lifers. The right to abortion is supported by a large majority of Americans and that majority is growing. Gallup polls from last May show support for abortion in all or most cases at 85%, higher than when polling began in 1975 (76%). With those numbers it’s not surprising that a recent PRRI poll found that in only seven states is there a majority against abortion rights: South Dakota (42% say it should be legal), Utah (42%), Arkansas (43%), Oklahoma (45%), Idaho (49%), Mississippi (49%) and Tennessee (49%). Not one state in the country had more than 14% saying it should be illegal in all circumstances.
Unfortunately, those numbers are not going to deter the anti-choice movement and the institutions that support it, including the churches that wield massive influence on the Republican Party.
And there are activist right wing members of the judiciary ready to step in, as we’ve seen with the Texas judge who banned one of the medical abortion drugs and an appeals court which upheld one of the worst aspects of his ruling by calling up the archaic Comstock Act banning the use of the mail to transport it. In doing so, they’ve also put the FDA’s ability to regulate all drugs at the mercy of a full variety of zealots who seek to interfere in all Americans’ private medical decisions. (Just wait for the vaccine cases to hit the courts.) The Supreme Court will now have to sort it all out. What could go wrong?
“If you’re ignoring abortion [as a 2024 Republican candidate], you do so at your own peril,” says Kristan Hawkins, president of Students For Life of America. Lila Rose, the founder of the like-minded group Live Action, argues: “What the GOP needs to be doing is doubling down on what makes them even have any kind of competitive advantage over the opposing party: that they defend families, they defend the vulnerable…”
Lila Rose believes the GOP’s national policy should be a total ban with no exceptions and she holds Trump responsible for going wobbly on the issue.
Meanwhile, the pragmatists in the party seem to be drifting toward some kind of 15 week “compromise” but they need look no further than Ron DeSantis who had already signed one into law yet felt compelled to push for the more draconian 6 week ban under pressure from the right as he tries to gain traction in the GOP primary. There is no reason to believe that he will be able to finesse this any better than Trump will.
They brought this on themselves. For decades they encouraged and enabled a religious right extremist faction in their party to seize power (even tacitly encouraging anti-abortion terrorism) secure in the knowledge that they would be thwarted in their goals by Roe v. Wade. They allowed them to demagogue the issue as murder, genocide and even a holocaust apparently thinking that it was all just politics. Now this has become inconvenient and these people are being asked to stand down. Apparently, they didn’t know that “sending it to the states” was just the anti-abortion movement’s strategy and they never meant a word of it. The GOP is stuck with a political albatross around its neck and it’s choking on it.
Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, 21, has been arrested by the FBI as the suspect in the leak of hundreds of classified military document to the internet (Washington Post):
The leak, probably the military’s largest in at least a decade, has revealed secrets about everything from gaps in Ukrainian air defenses to the specifics of how the United States spies on its allies and partners.
[…]
The crisis has blindsided the Pentagon, which did not become aware until last week that secrets had for weeks been spreading online, and forced the Biden administration to have awkward conversations with allies and partners about explosive issues. The FBI did not descend on the Teixeira home until after The Post revealed numerous details about the still-anonymous leaker on Wednesday night, and after the New York Times followed up on Thursday by naming Teixeira.
The FBI’s lag in response time may be explainable, but when they did after the press got there first, boy howdy!
He’s from a patriotic family — and allegedly leaked U.S. secrets, reads the Post headline.
The irony is not lost on you, Dear Readers, nor is it on Jeff Sharlet.
“At this late date this headline—structured to suggest these facts are at odds—constitutes mind-numbing know-nothingism at best and more likely journalistic malpractice,” Sharlet tweeted this morning.
At this late date this headline—structured to suggest these facts are at odds—constitutes mind-numbing know-nothingism at best and more likely journalistic malpractice. The leader of the “Patriot” movement in the US also stole secrets & spews racist hate. pic.twitter.com/bYcfzEGbkm
Teixeira was the leader of an online chat group who uploaded hundreds of photographs of secret and top-secret documents, according to the New York Times. The online group called itself Thug Shaker Central, made up of 20 to 30 young men and teenagers who shared their love of guns, racist memes and video games.
Members of the group have told the investigative journalism organisation Bellingcat, the Washington Post and the New York Times that the documents were shared on Thug Shaker Central in an apparent attempt to impress the group, rather than to achieve any particular foreign policy outcome.
Unless you’ve not had your second cup this morning, the young lad’s need to impress people by showing off top-secret materials to friends more than echoes the behavior for which a certain former head of state is under federal investigation. The FBI’s response in that stolen documents case was also a mite tardy. That one took months, and there’s still no arrest.
The photo above of Teixeira’s apprehension prompts a question: Why hasn’t Donald J. Trump received this kind of prompt, official escort? He was president, after all. Did he not also abscond with secret documents (allegedly) to show off to friends and resort guests? Is he not a patriot? Why the disrespect, DOJ?
Stranger things have happend besides Donald Trump’s presidency and Demogorgons. So, it would be unwise to predict that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed away his Oval Office aspirations last night. But then, it’s Ron DeSantis (Washington Post):
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signeda bill Thursdaythat would ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, after the legislature passed the bill earlier in the day. The measure cuts off what has become a critical access point for abortion care in the South since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
DeSantis signed the bill late at night and released a photo just after 11 p.m. — a sharp contrast to how he celebrated a 15-week ban on abortion last spring with speeches and live media coverage at a church. The quiet passage underscored DeSantis’s reluctance to talk about the bill as he tours the country touting other legislative achievements.
DeSantis is giving the GOP’s rabid primary voters the Handmaid’s Tale America they demand while making as little public show about it in front of non-MAGA general election voters. Quite a high-wire act to perform in white rubber boots.
Driving the shift from 15 to six weeks is the increase in Florida’s abortion tourism in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe decision last June. The Post reports, “Over 82,000 people got abortions in Florida in 2022, more than almost any other state. Nearly 7,000 of those traveled to Florida from other states, a 38 percent increase from the year before.”
“If people from Florida are now going to be flooding into the Carolinas and Illinois … that is taking spots that Alabamians and Mississippians need right now,” said Robin Marty, director of operations at West Alabama Women’s Center, a clinic that provided abortions before Roe was overturned. “That’s a crisis that’s going to ripple all across the entire country.”
The bill will take effect 30 days after one of a few scenarios occurs — most likely, 30 days after the state Supreme Court issues a decision on the constitutionality of the 15-week ban that is already in effect. That decision is expected within the coming months.
Florida’s new law comes in the wake of polling showing that legal medication abortion, also under threat, is supported by Americans by over two-to-one and by 71% of women under 30.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) worried aloud to CNN this week that abortion is “an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of.” Axios reports, “Top Republicans are in a state of paralysis over abortion, watching — with one eye on the 2024 ballot box — as a cascade of new restrictions threaten to dig the party into a political hole.”
At the bottom of that hole is Ron DeSantis, Republican governor of the state where freedom goes to die. DeSantis and GOP legislators in Tallahassee, the Post’s Editorial Board writes, are “waging frontal assaults on press freedom, reproductive freedom, free enterprise and academic freedom.” In their spare time, they are scaling back gun safety rules and continuing attacks on undocumented immigrants.
Were he leading a foreign country during the Cold War, DeSantis would be considered enough of a threat to U.S. security for the Penatgon and the CIA to draft contingencies for ending his rule.
For voters who haven’t been keeping up, the Post’s Editorial Board presents a bill of particulars against DeSantis detailing his assaults on freedom of the press, on women’s bodily autonomy, on free enterprise, on public education, and on undocumented immigrants. Some of those DeSantis attacks he obscures behind acronyms like ESG, CRT, DEI and CBDC. Non-MAGA voters might need a glossary to identify them as his pretext for a introducing a new fascist order.
“If the bullying coming out of Tallahassee is an indication of what [DeSantis] means, we think most Americans won’t want what he is offering,” the Board concludes.
Yes, but that’s what we thought when Trump rode down his golden elevator. Florida’s new abortion ban might be the final nail in DeSantis’ presidential aspirations. That may depend on where El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago spends the 2024 primary season. His numbers are sinking faster than Florida beachfront property.
ABC News/IPSOS poll: Trump's popularity drops to 25% while independent support for his indictment rises by 14% https://t.co/V74Vt3z3va
Republicans have talked themselves into believing that 2024 is absolutely, positively, the last time they’ll have to deal with Donald Trump. Yesterday Benjy Sarlin brought the room down by arguing that even if Trump loses in 2024, he might run again in 2028, actuarial tables be damned.
Is that possible? Absolutely. If Trump loses in 2024, he could easily mount another campaign—though this is as much an indictment of Don Jr. as a plausible heir as anything else.
But let me take this a step further.
During the Republican primaries, one of the arguments that Good Republicans will deploy against Trump as a way of passively challenging him will be to say something along the lines of, “Trump is great! But if Trump is the nominee, we can only get four years, because he couldn’t run for reelection in 2028. We need a Republican nominee who can give us eight years.”
Well I come to you from the future and I’m here to tell you that Donald Trump will respond with the following:
A lot of people are saying that, actually, I could run again. I was treated so unfairly during my first term—the Russia hoax, the witch hunt, the lovers—more unfairly than any president in history. [sniffs] And so I should get a third term. Let me tell you that we’re looking into it and we’ll have a statement very soon. It’ll be a strong statement. And I think a lot of you are going to be very happy with it.
In response, his Republican challengers will gape and sputter and twist their toes in the dirt. But they won’t say that a third term is impossible. Elite Republicans in elected office will decline to comment. And the various precincts of Conservatism Inc. will either ignore this claim, coyly play along with it, or roll their eyes and say, “Well of course this is nonsense so it doesn’t matter. Trump just says stuff.”
Why am I certain that this future is coming down the pike?
Because Trump already did it in 2020.
Look, there was a lot going on in 2020. Impeachment. A pandemic. Massive unemployment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans dying. A presidential campaign. So much to keep track of.
So you probably don’t remember this moment at a rally in Wisconsin in August of 2020:
“We are going to win four more years,” Trump said at a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Monday. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”
The crowd went wild. Republican voters loved it. And this idea wasn’t a one-off bit of improv. It was a staple. In September at a Nevada rally he said,
And 52 days from now we’re going to win Nevada, and we’re going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably — based on the way we were treated — we are probably entitled to another four after that.
Do you remember what Republican elected officials and people in conservative media said about the frequent assertion by their candidate that he would flout the Constitution in pursuit of a third presidential term?
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
So get ready for the Trump Gets a Third Term argument. It’s coming.
I knew Trump would run again in 2024. I said it on the day after the election was called. But I’m not sure we’ll see him run again in 2028 if he loses. Losing twice seems like a death knell, even for him.
But this? I think there’s an excellent chance that he’ll argue that he deserves a third term because people were mean to him in his first. Would it work? Who Knows. But by that time we might not even be having elections anymore. And his status as a super-hero among the cult will be unassailable. Yes, it could happen.
Alex Wagner just broadcast audio of a Trump campaign official acknowledging during a phone call with a Fox News producer in December 2020 that there was no evidence of physical issues with Dominion voting machines pic.twitter.com/yeHLTxecAE
Of course they knew. And yet, one month later, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and asked him to “find” just one vote more than needed to declare victory.
There is no doubt that they were lying. And Fox News was a huge help. I’ll bet District Attorney Fanni Willis is thrilled to see this.
