Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that, if elected to a second term in November, he would immediately fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against Trump.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump if he plans to pardon himself or fire Smith on the day he would take the oath of office.
“It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” said Trump, who added that he got “immunity at the Supreme Court” and called Smith a “crooked person.”
Last year, Trump warned that Smith and other Justice Department officials would wind up in a mental institution if he’s re-elected.
He’s going to be a dictator on day one. He’s made that clear.
Three Republican state senators in North Carolina have demanded an investigation of state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. The state senators, Buck Newton (R), Amy Galey (R), and Danny Britt (R), claim that Riggs has “blatantly violated” the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct. They called for an investigation into Riggs’ conduct by the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission.
What was Riggs’ transgression? She mentioned reproductive rights in a campaign ad.
Riggs was appointed to fill a vacancy in the North Carolina Supreme Court in September 2023. It is an elected position, and now Riggs is running for a full eight-year term. She is in a closely contested race against Republican Jefferson Griffin, a current member of the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
In a television ad, Riggs says that “women should be in charge of our own reproductive health care.” She notes that the Republican nominee for Governor, Mark Robinson, has supported a total abortion ban and that Griffin, if elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court, “could decide if [Robinson’s] ban becomes law.”
How dare she!
In a letter to colleagues announcing their request for an investigation, the Republican Senators claim that the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct “prohibits any judicial candidate, regardless of the office they seek, from taking a position on any issue that may appear before the court.” The letter was posted online this week by Billy Corriher, State Courts Manager at People’s Parity Project Action.
But the Republican Senators have mischaracterized the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct. It does not say that judicial candidates cannot comment on any issue that may appear before the court. The North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct states that judges “should abstain from public comment about the merits of a pending proceeding in any state or federal court dealing with a case or controversy arising in North Carolina.” Riggs’ ad does not comment on any pending court proceeding.
To the contrary, the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct says that a judge seeking election may engage in “constitutionally protected political activity.” Stating that you believe that women should be in control of their reproductive health care is unquestionably constitutionally protected political speech.
The letter from the Republican Senators mirrors criticism of the ad from Griffin during an October 11 debate against Riggs. “We don’t need to be out there telling people how we’re going to vote on cases,” Griffin said. “We don’t need to be out there telling folks how another judge is going to vote on cases.”
But Griffin himself has made his views on abortion very clear. Last year, the North Carolina Court of Appeals heard a case that “dealt with the termination of a mother’s parental rights because she had committed a crime while she was pregnant.” Griffin signed onto an opinion that found the woman’s “parental rights could be terminated — even though the child hadn’t yet been born at the time of the mother’s crimes — because ‘life begins at conception.'”
The ruling Griffin signed enshrined the notion of “fetal personhood” into North Carolina law. There was widespread outrage about the ruling and its broader impact on the state. In response to the criticism, Griffin and the other judges who signed on took the usual step of formally withdrawing the decision. That means “the potential precedent it had established regarding personhood no longer exists.”
Now that he is seeking a promotion to the North Carolina Supreme Court, Griffin and his allies are attempting to make any discussion of reproductive rights off-limits.
But of course they are. Especially in the wake of Dobbs.
It would not be the first time Republicans in the N.C. state legislature have launched an investigations of a Democratic supreme court judge (also a woman).
In August 2023, North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls received a letter from the commission informing her that she was under investigation for suspicion of violating the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct. The investigation centered around comments that Earls, the only Black woman on the court, made about the court’s approach to racial and gender discrimination in an interview with legal publication Law360.
In the interview, Earls was asked about a study that found that attorneys who argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court were primarily white and male. Earls responded that she sees “gender and race discrepancies” in the court caused by “implicit bias.” Earls noted that she thought the court treated white male attorneys with “more respect,” and that there were certain cases where she believed “[her] colleagues [were] unfairly cutting off a female advocate.” Earls also criticized the court’s decision to shut down diversity and equity efforts.
Earls clarified that she did not believe this was “conscious, intentional, racial animus,” but rather “that our court system, like any other court system, is made up of human beings and I believe the research that shows that we all have implicit biases.” Earls did not discuss any cases that had come before the Supreme Court.
The NCGOP majority is not a clan to allow such details to get between them and a partisan inquisition. Earls countersued the Judicial Standards Commission in federal court, arguing that investigation interfered with her First Amendment rights.
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In November 2023, a federal judge rejected Earls’ request for a preliminary injunction to block the investigation. In January, the commission’s investigation was dropped without any discipline against Earls. In response, Earls dropped the lawsuit.
Addtional color commentary
There’s even more GOP monkey-wrenching afoot on the N.C. state Supreme Court (from August):
North Carolina Democrats blasted Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court Thursday for ruling that Justice Phil Berger Jr. should not have to remove himself from a case concerning his father, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger Sr.
The case involves the power to appoint state and local elections boards. That power is currently held by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Republican legislators passed a law to give that power to themselves instead, and Cooper is challenging that law in court.
You’d think that would be a clear-cut case for recusal and you would be wrong in a state where Republicans dominate both branches of the legislature and the Supreme Court.
Sort of like Wisconsin not so long ago. There in January 2023, Republicans filed a similar complaint against Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Judge Janet Protasiewicz:
Randall Cook, a Barron County resident and GOP supporter, filed the complaint against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz. The complaint seeks to have the Wisconsin Judicial Commission investigate whether Protasiewicz has declared how she’d rule in cases the high court could eventually see regarding Wisconsin’s abortion ban and the legality of its legislative maps.
Those complaints against Protasiewicz were dismissed without action in September last year.
In North Carolina, Riggs faces a Judicial Standards Commission that Republicans reconfigured in October last year after the Earls and Protasiewicz dismissals.
“Republicans took away the state bar’s appointments to the commission and took those appointments for themselves,” Slate reported. The new commission will be comprised of “only judges and laypeople—no attorneys,” all chosen by the gerrymandered Republican legislature. Slate concludes, “This gives the GOP near-total control over enforcement of judicial ethics rules.”
“The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary,” wrote Robert Paxton, 92, in Jan. 11, 2021 Newsweek article. Previously reluctant to use a loaded term like fascism to describe the Trump presidency, Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election,” was the breaking point for the retired Columbia University historian of fascism.
Calling someone or something “fascist” is the supreme expression of moral revulsion, an emotional impulse that is difficult to resist. “The temptation to draw parallels between Trump and the fascist leaders of the 20th century is understandable,” the British historian Richard J. Evans wrote in 2021. “How better to express the fear, loathing, and contempt that Trump arouses in liberals than by comparing him to the ultimate political evil?” The word gets lobbed at the left too, including by Trump at Democrats. But fascism does have a specific meaning, and in the last few years the debate has turned on two questions: Is it an accurate description of Trump? And is it useful?
Most commentators fall into one of two categories: a yes to the first and second, or a no to both. Paxton is somewhat unique in staking out a position as yes and no. “I still think it’s a word that generates more heat than light,” Paxton said as we sat looking out over the Hudson River. “It’s kind of like setting off a paint bomb.”
Cokie’s Law resurfaces
But that paint is already splattered. Multiple Trump administration officials, including former John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general and Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, and retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, employed the term. Mark Esper, former Trump secretary of defense, won’t use the word fascism but tells CNN “it’s hard to say that” that Trump doesn’t fit the definition: “He certainly has those inclinations.”
The proverbial cat (Trump believes immigrants are eating) is out of the bag. Everyone knows it. Kamala Harris knows it too. Per Cokie’s Law, “it’s out there.”
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you believe Donald Trump is a fascist?
KAMALA HARRIS: Yes I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted pic.twitter.com/CgIvKmCkXU
In “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” Peter Baker and Susan Glasser recount Trump asking Kelly, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?”
“Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?” Kelly asked, knowing full well Trump had no idea who Bismark was. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?”
“Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals,” Trump said in Kelly’s retelling. Those generals tried and failed to assassinate the fascist dictator, not that with his ignorance of history Trump knew.
Paxton tells the Times that, in a way, Trump did not set out to launch a fascist movement, but the consummate marketer nurtured it:
Whatever Trumpism is, it’s coming “from below as a mass phenomenon, and the leaders are running to keep ahead of it,” Paxton said. That was how, he noted, Italian Fascism and Nazism began, when Mussolini and Hitler capitalized on mass discontentment after World War I to gain power. Focusing on leaders, Paxton has long held, is a distraction when trying to understand fascism. “What you ought to be studying is the milieu out of which they grew,” Paxton said. For fascism to take root, there needs to be “an opening in the political system, which is the loss of traction by the traditional parties” he said. “There needs to be a real breakdown.”
And here we are. It’s the patriarchy that is breaking down. Trump and Trump’s Men don’t like it. Not one bit.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote about the discontent young men feel at his substack in 2023. The mores that secured men, especially white men, atop the social ladder for millennia are crumbling. First came the civil rights, then came women’s liberation, then came Obama, triggering the alt right movement and the Trump backlash. Now the country faces choosing not only the second Black (and first Asian) president, but the first women president (for the second time). Murphy spoke about it last night with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner [timestamp 2:38]. In a post-patriarchal world, Trump promises to dial America back to a time when men were men and knew where they stood. It’s an explict part of Trump’s pitch.
Team Trump is already flooding social media with “I know you are but what am I” memes depicting Democrats as the real fascists (or communists; they can’t decide). They’re already drawing up their enemies list.
Guess what? We’re not going back. Not without a fight.
Tucker Carlson’s vision of a Trump presidency is that “dad comes home” and says to America, “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now. … It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”pic.twitter.com/fh25KmyYmG
Trump had a “town hall” with a bunch of rightwing Christians today. He’s been doing a lot of those lately. They must be concerned about the evangelical turnout:
Trump: "They say — and I would agree with this 100 percent — nobody has done what I've done for Israel." pic.twitter.com/rvdLLU8RiF
I don’t know about you but I find it very concerning that he’s talking to Netanyahu every day, no doubt telling him to keep that war going to hurt the Democrats and promising that as soon as he wins he’ll give the green light for Bibi to go wild.
How can this be legal? I know it violates the Logan Act but that’s a toothless law that’s been violated many times. But we’ve never seen anything like this before. Trump is running a shadow government from Mar-a-lago.
By the way, there’s a rumor all over twitter that there’s a video of Trump groping the young daughter of a wealthy donor that’s about to break. The Trumpers are all saying it’s a deep fake. I have no idea if it’s true. But I also doubt that it would make any difference because the right will convince themselves that it’s a Democratic deep fake election interference ploy and who knows, it might even help him. Whatever.
It also may be something like the last big rumpor to take the internet by storm — that Beyonce was going to appear at the final night of the convention. It didn’t happen. This probably won’t either.
Update — Oh my God:
BREAKING: In a senile moment, Donald Trump just claimed that while he was President, he stopped a war with France. This obviously never happened. Trump’s brain has gone to rot. pic.twitter.com/oMzg7JQvW7
Which party will win more congressional delegations, in case that matters for the presidential election? Jump to our answer.
What happens if you walk into the wrong polling place by mistake? Jump to our answer.
I spent hours trying to research our local candidates’ platforms and it was fruitless. Shouldn’t every candidate have a website with their platform?! Jump to our answer.
I can’t seem to get people to care about boards of canvassers. Can you explain the significance of the offices that play a role in elections? Jump to our answer.
It’s almost here folks and if we’ve learned anything in these looney MAGA years, it’s that we need to pay attention to the state and local elections where the Republicans have focused much of their energy. At some point that power starts to accumulate and there’s no end to what they can get away with.
BREAKING: Harris reacts to John Kelly's warnings in the NYT that Trump spoke positively about Hitler and would rule as a dictator.
"All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is … from the people who know him best," she said. pic.twitter.com/vHC3E93vUU
It’s true and it’s necessary to take that seriously. It’s also a strategy. Here’s Greg Sargent in a fascinating interview with Ron Brownstein, one of the best:
Sargent: Ron, you sometimes hear pundits argue that Harris should stop putting so much effort into attacking Trump as a threat to democracy and highlighting his authoritarianism, that the economy and health care will matter more to swing voters and so forth. But in your reporting, you’re finding that this large reservoir of voters, right-leaning moderates, independents, pretty affluent suburban, are absolutely gettable with messages about Trump’s authoritarianism. They’re deeply troubled and motivated by the anti-democratic threat Trump poses, right? Those voters are there. They’re a big growth opportunity for Harris still, and they are the swing constituency now, or at least one of them. Would it be malpractice not to go after them in this way?
Brownstein: Big is a strong word, in terms of how many voters we’re talking about on any front. But yes, I thought her appearances with Liz Cheney this week were a precision-guided missile aimed at exactly the voters she needs in exactly the places where they are most concentrated with exactly the message that will move them. I thought it could not have been more precisely targeted at what she can actually achieve.
She has made progress on the economy, particularly on questions of “Who fights for you?” But in the end, the share of voters who think that they were better off under Trump’s policies than Biden’s policies before Covid is an insurmountable obstacle if the frame of the election is solely “Who is going to deliver more for your bottom line?” She’s gotten more competitive on that, but if that’s the question people are asking the last week and going into the ballot box, I don’t think she can get there. But there’s no reason for that to be the question, right? Trump, every day, shows you why that shouldn’t be the question.
Sargent: Right, but there is a bit of a split-screen effect here. Harris is making these major appeals to affluent suburbanites, Republican-leaning, educated women, and so forth on the anti-democratic threat on how disgusting Trump is and what a menace he is, but an immense amount of resources is going into Democratic ads about the economy, touting her plans to reduce childcare costs, health care costs, home-buying costs, etc. Much of the ad spending is going to that according to some analysis I’ve seen. That’s aimed at these more working-class voters, both nonwhite and white. How do we make sense of these two tracks happening at the same time? Are all those ads just an effort to just contain Trump’s advantage while they win the election or try to win it on the anti-democratic stuff? How do we think about this?
Brownstein: Just think of it as different tracks aimed at different voters. In 2012, [I was] writing a story about how Obama was focusing on Romney as a plutocrat who closed the factory in town in the Rust Belt battlegrounds, which by then included Ohio, and running more on values in the Sun Belt battlegrounds. You have to be able to communicate to multiple audiences at the same time. As we said, all votes are fungible. For Harris in the former blue wall states, so I always put that former in there to distinguish, she has to get into the mid 40s among the noncollege white women. She can grow then among the college white women, try to hold her own among the college white men. And then she could withstand some erosion among the blue-collar white men and Black men.
Don’t forget, the paradox is that these states look best for her because generally speaking, Harris, like Biden before her, is holding the 2020 levels of support more among whites than nonwhites. College-educated white women, Greg, are three to four times as big a share of the electorate across these three states as Black men. So if she can increase, I hope my math isn’t wrong here, five or six points among college white women in these states—which don’t forget Biden won—she could withstand losses of 15 points, I think, among the Black men, which is not going to happen.
New ad from the Harris campaign on reproductive freedom, ahead of the VP's speech in Texas on Friday. This is a very tough one to watch, but it's incredibly important to. Thank you so much to Ondrea and Ceasar for trusting us to share their story. pic.twitter.com/ytJQg2ONiv
I urge you to watch this. This sort of thing is happening all over the country where there are Trump abortion bans. People’s futures are being destroyed. Women’s health is being ruined and some are dying. Families are going through desperate heartache at an already traumatic time in their lives.
We are an uncivilized country for doing this to our own citizens. If they are rewarded for this by re-electing that monster who made it all happen he will genuinely believe that he is impervious to all accountability. At that point it will be hard to argue that he’s not.
Media critic Margaret Sullivan is exhorting the media to discuss the stakes in the election in these last two weeks, noting that there have been some good signs in the last couple of weeks .She also taks issue with the people who say that we should all just calm down and look at the polling averages instead of stressing out. (I say don’t even look at those, for all the reasons Greg Sargent and Michael Tomasky lay out in this article in TNR.)
Sullivan explains why even those of us who know that the polls will drive us crazy and are trying to keep the horse race in prspective are still freaking out over the election: the stakes:
Believe me, it’s not the shifting polls that are stressing me out; it’s the knowledge that if Trump is elected, American democracy may well be over. Her take reminded me of the infamous column from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post on Nov. 4, 2016: “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.”
Readers, we weren’t.
I’m barely sleeping and drinking too much and generally stressing out not because of the polls which are out of my hands but because I know it’s going to be even worse this time. Way worse.
the morning after on the record revelations about a candidate’s admiration for Hitler and the generals who crushed Tiananmen pic.twitter.com/YZDwSZnGjJ
Fox host Brian Kilmeade justifies Trump wanting German generals
Kilmeade: I can absolutely see him go it'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do, maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever pic.twitter.com/6lpjH6foEk
The Democratic polling and messaging firm Blueprint recently tested the effectiveness of several closing messages for the Harris campaign. (This was before Kelly’s new remarks.) Here’s one message the group put before voters:
Donald Trump doesn’t have the character it takes to be president. He’s erratic and can’t control himself. He denied the results of an election just because he lost and is a threat to the fundamental American principle of democracy. He instigated a riot at the Capitol that left three police officers dead.
This general (and true) statement barely moved the needle on voters’ preferences. It presumably simply sounds like a reiteration of things voters have heard before.
What did move the needle was this message:
Nearly half of Donald Trump’s Cabinet have refused to endorse him. When Trump learned during the Capitol riot that his supporters were threatening to kill his own vice president, he said ‘so what?’ and refused to do anything to assure the vice president was safe. Republican governors, senators, and House members have all said the same thing: We can’t give Trump another four years as president.”
As soon as the message turned from an abstract argument against Trump into an unambiguous case that Trump’s own former allies were making against him, it became the single most persuasive line tested by Blueprint. It was stronger even than abortion rights and Social Security. In other words, hearing about Trump’s unfitness from people who worked with him, and from Republicans one would expect to defend him, seems to make a difference.
I’m going to guess that his own chief of staff calling him a Hitler loving fascist might have an effect.
