He’s now below 40%
He’s underwater on all issues as well:
Just thought you’d like to know.
Meanwhile—
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Trump said earlier that “he has a tough past, we all have tough pasts.”
Here’s Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s tough past via Wikipedia:
Born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to a Syrian Sunni Muslim family from Daraa and the Golan Heights, he grew up in Syria’s capital, Damascus. Al-Sharaa joined al-Qaeda in Iraq shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and fought for three years in the Iraqi insurgency. American forces captured and imprisoned him from 2006 to 2011. His release coincided with the Syrian Revolution against the Ba’athist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sharaa created the al-Nusra Front in 2012 with the support of al-Qaeda to topple the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war. As emir of the al-Nusra Front, al-Sharaa built a stronghold in the northwestern Idlib Governorate. He resisted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi‘s attempts to merge al-Nusra Front with the Islamic State, leading to armed conflict between the two groups. In 2016, al-Sharaa cut al-Nusra’s ties with al-Qaeda and launched a crackdown on its loyalists.
I’m assuming he may have literally killed American troops in Iraq, something that would have had the right wing in a full blown hysteria not all that long ago. Today, they don’t care. In fact, they are happy to see their Dear Leader calling his a good friend and spraying him with perfume in the oval office.
We should never, ever, in a million years take these assholes seriously about anything except their desire for power again. It’s literally all they care about.
President Donald Trump has engaged in many televised rants since he entered politics. In fact, most of his appearances could be classified as such. But one of the most stunning he’s ever given came in his Nov. 2 “60 Minutes” interview with Norah O’Donnell. Trump spoke in his usual stream of consciousness style, but there was one extended riff that was substantially cut in the televised version and was only evident to those who read the full transcript published by CBS or watched the full interview that Trump eventually posted online. Fittingly, it focused on retribution against his enemies.
O’Donnell barely got a word in edgewise as she tried to pin him down on one simple question: Did he order the criminal investigations into former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former National Security Adviser John Bolton?
After minutes of obfuscation, Trump answered that he hadn’t ordered them to be investigated because their guilt was so obvious to the “honest people” he has working for him — a lie which was gently fact-checked by “60 Minutes” by showing Trump’s apparently accidental Truth Social post telling Attorney General Pam Bondi it was time to make a move. Within days, the Department of Justice indicted Comey. James and Bolton soon followed.
Comey, of course, famously opened the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, James won a major lawsuit against Trump for business fraud and Bolton is a harsh critic of Trump’s intelligence and abilities as president.
In the interview, Trump railed against all three, repeatedly calling Comey a “dirty cop” and James a “dishonest person,” while suggesting that Bolton is crazy. The president brought up his two impeachments, referred to Democrats as “scum” and recounted a bizarre story about then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learning that his infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been taped. “She said, ‘You made me go into this mess,’” Trump claimed. “She screamed at all these people that made her do it, bad people like Schiff, et cetera, et cetera. So what happened is, she went nuts and just to conclude, and they said, ‘Let’s do it anyway.’”
In fact, Pelosi actually resisted impeaching Trump until the transcript emerged. (There was no tape of the call.) She told an interviewer that, at that point, “what the president did vis-a-vis the president of Ukraine just removed all doubt that we had to act.”
Trump sounded like a Mafia don throughout this part of the interview, even saying that he “beat the rap.” The entire exchange was chilling, and it’s both unfortunate and telling that CBS News — now under the leadership of Bari Weiss, who is notorious for promoting right-wing views — did not air that portion.
From the moment he announced his third presidential bid, Trump made it clear he was bent on revenge. His intentions were never secret. In fact, he famously proclaimed “I am your retribution” to ecstatic crowds throughout the 2024 campaign — and he meant it.
Notably, though, the cases brought by his Justice Department against Comey, James and Bolton do not involve the so-called crimes Trump has repeatedly named, such as filing false changes, making up evidence and tampering with witnesses. If they are such corrupt, dishonest officials, one would have thought the department would have followed Trump’s specifications to the letter. Instead, Comey and James were indicted on picayune charges that appear to have little merit, and Bolton was charged with the crime for which Trump himself was investigated.
Last week, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that the department is actively investigating another of Trump’s designated enemies, former CIA Director John Brennan, over the 2017 Russia probe — which was already investigated by John Durham, a special counsel appointed in 2020 by Trump’s own Attorney General Bill Barr. (Durham found no wrongdoing.) Another target, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has been in Trump’s crosshairs since his first impeachment, in which Schiff served as a House manager. The senator is reportedly being investigated for mortgage fraud, but the prosecutors can’t find enough evidence to indict.
The Comey case looks to be in real trouble. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District in Virginia resigned in protest over the pressure to indict Comey without evidence, followed by others who were either fired or resigned. Last week the judge in the case admonished the acting U.S Attorney Lindsey Halligan — one of Trump’s former personal lawyers — in what was apparently a train wreck of a procedural hearing. The government, according to the judge, appeared to be “indicting first, investigating later” — a damning assessment.
The case involving James is a similar mess, as Halligan has fumbled about with a couple of inexperienced prosecutors brought in to replace other attorneys who were fired or resigned because they believed the case was without merit. Last week, James requested the case be dismissed on the basis of vindictive prosecution.
Bondi, though, remains determined to follow the president’s orders for revenge.
All of this is taking place as the Justice Department is purging lawyers and FBI agents they see as enemies of Trump. Dozens of experienced prosecutors and investigators are gone, leaving the department a hollowed out shell of its former self. “The cumulative damage done to the once-respected Justice Department is so profound that it may not regain any semblance of its former self in our lifetimes, warn career law enforcement officials,” investigative journalist Carol Leonning wrote in an Oct. 30 guest essay for the New York Times. “It’s impossible to discount as hyperbole the alarm that these longtime civil servants are sounding from inside the house.”
Leonnig is the author, with Aaron C. Davis, of “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department,” which revealed that Trump was “destabilizing the institution’s foundations — and weakening its resolve with his brand of bare-knuckle attacks” throughout his first term. During the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s gentlemanly leadership, which aimed to restore all the genteel norms and rules of the pre-Trump era, resulted in delaying necessary investigations, empowering Trump’s comeback and laying the groundwork for his ability to “beat the rap,” as well as his campaign of retribution.
The president’s enemies list grows every day. Speaking at a Federalist Society event last Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — another of Trump’s former personal attorneys — urged young conservative lawyers to sign up for the administration’s “war” against “rogue activist judges” who are “more political, or certainly as political, as the most liberal governor” or district attorney. Evidently, the administration would now like the purge to extend to the courts.
Donald Trump has always sought vengeance; it’s fundamental to his warped worldview. He always believed the Justice Department should be his own personal law firm engaged in helping him do it. He’s gotten his wish.
Salon
Does Donald Trump have enough blankets for his coverup?
My first post this morning (below) already mentioned the Epstein files and Donald Trump’s efforts at coverup. But just before I posted, this dropped:
The documents are here.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released email exchanges between Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and author Michael Wolff discussing Donald Trump.
In one email, apparently sent by Epstein to Maxwell, the convicted sex offender wrote: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is [T]rump..” A victim “spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned, police chief. etc. im 75% there,” Esptein added.
In response, Maxwell wrote: “I have been thinking about that…”
Trump has repeatedly emphasized that their friendship dissolved in the early 2000s and has called the renewed interest in the Epstein files a “hoax” cooked up by the Democrats.
Trump did not send or receive any of the emails and has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The Independent has requested comment from the White House. He has said publicly that he had a falling out with Epstein because the disgraced financier “stole” young women working at his Mar-a-Lago spa too many times — including Giuffre.
But a 2019 email from Epstein to Wolff suggests that Trump knew about Epstein’s “girls.”
“Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop,” Epstein wrote in January before his death in August.
In a third email exchange, Wolff advises Epstein that CNN plans to ask him about his relationship with Trump. Epstein asks for advice on how to answer. Wolff replies the next afternoon:
“I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”
Settle in. This opera ain’t over by a long shot.
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
The House to vote on releasing them in December
Speaker Mike Johnson has called members of the House of Repesentatives back to Washington. Members will vote, today if they can get there, on the budget agreement from the Senate and end the longest government shutdown in history. And then? What happens with those pesky Epstein files?
The monthslong bipartisan effort to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force the release of all Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is kicking into high gear this week, setting up a December floor battle that President Donald Trump has sought to avoid.
The cascade of action is set to begin Wednesday evening, when Johnson will swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva right before the House votes to end the government shutdown, ending a 50-day wait following the Arizona Democrat’s election. Shortly afterward, Grijalva says she will affix the 218th and final signature to the discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force a vote on the full release of DOJ’s Epstein files.
And then?
The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
And then?
The discharge petition tees up a “rule,” a procedural measure setting the terms of debate for the Epstein bill’s consideration on the House floor. This gives the effort’s leaders greater control over the bill, which will still require Senate approval if it passes the House.
Senate Republican leaders haven’t publicly committed to bringing up the Epstein measure if the House passes it. Republicans expect it will die in the Senate, but not before a contentious House fight.
It is more than clear that despite Donald Trump’s campaign promise to release the documents, he has no intention of letting the Epstein files see the light of day. Just as he had no intention of handing back the trove of secret documents he removed from the White House and stored unsecured in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
Johnson will do whatever Trump tells him. He may allow a vote as he has promised, but not before he and Trump try to strongarm Republican members into voting no. With Grijalva’s vote, Johnson has a mere two-vote margin.
Massie claims more Republicans will vote yes than signed onto the original petition. But he expects a failed, “last, desperate effort” by the White House to thwart the discharge petition. from Trump officials to undercut the discharge petition.
Johnson argues, Politico adds, that the vote is unnecessary:
“The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought — and much more,” Johnson said at a news conference last month.
All “credible information” would be released to the public as part of the panel’s monthslong probe into the matter, he said, while precautions are taken to protect Epstein’s accusers.
And then?
Who at the Justice Department decides what’s credible or whose names are redacted? FBI Director Kash Patel? AG Pam Bondi?
We already know Trump’s name appears in the documents. Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has already done her part from prison to exonerate Trump from participation in Epsteins’s child sex ring. During her softball interviews with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell repeatedly insisted that she had never witnessed any sexually inappropriate behavior by Donald Trump. Given her history, Maxwell’s idea of “sexually inappropriate” may not match yours.
Her cooperation was rewarded. Someone in the DOJ subsequently authorized an unprecedented transfer for Maxwell from a maximum security prison in Florida to a “club fed” women’s facility in Texas. This week, a whistleblower revealed that there she receives extraordinary special treatment.
According to a letter directly to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Maxwell is waited on “hand and foot.” One prison official reports being ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch‘:
Raskin’s letter said Maxwell has received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy.
Raskin said Maxwell was also afforded private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks. The guests were allowed to bring computers, which Raskin described as “an unprecedented action” that risked Maxwell having “unmonitored communications with the outside world.”
Maxwell is reportedly preparing a written request to Trump for a commutation. With her warden’s help.
Whatever is in those documents, or Trump thinks is in them, nothing about the Epstein files release is going to go cleanly. Trump is desperate to protect himself and/or others.
Given all the White House pardon activity and the concierge treatment for Maxwell, I’m not confident that reopening the House, swearing in Grijalva, and voting to release the Epstein files will actually shake them loose. I half expect a “the dog ate my homework” incident.
In a different context, a friend the other day referenced the end of Three Days of the Condor (1975). Robert Redford’s character uncovers a secret government plot and ultimately decides that his safety lies in telling The New York Times what he knows.
Cliff Robertson asks Redford ominously, “How do you know they’ll print it?”
UPDATE: What does digital flop sweat look like?
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
This interview with Laura Ingraham last night is something else. He is so out of touch these days he might as well be from Mars.
Some excerpts:
Ingraham: You said as many as 600,000 Chinese students could come to the US. Why, sir is, that a pro-maga position when so many American kids want to go to school and there are places not for them and these universities are getting rich off Chinese money?
Trump: If we were to cut that in half, which perhaps, makes some people happy, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business.
Ingraham: So what
Trump: I actually think it’s good to have outside countries.
Ingraham: They’re not the French
Trump: You think the French are better? I’m not so sure. Maga was my idea. It was nobody else’s idea. I know better than anybody else what Maga wants
Hey, remember when Trump went over to the middle east so he could take a victory dance as the King who brought peace the the whole world for all time? Jared and Ivanka stood behind their friend Bibi to announce the agreement to finally end the war in Gaza?
Guess what?
Some Trump administration officials are deeply concerned that the Gaza peace deal between Israel and Hamas could break down because of the difficulty implementing many of its core provisions, as private documents obtained by POLITICO and circulating among U.S. officials underscore the lack of a clear path forward.
The compendium of documents was presented last month during a two-day symposium for U.S. Central Command and members of the newly created Civil-Military Coordination Center, which was established in southern Israel as part of the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas that went into effect Oct. 10.
Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, the United States security coordinator for Israel-Palestinian Authority, convened approximately 400 people at the event from the State Department, Defense Department, nongovernmental organizations and private companies like RAND.
The presentation surfaces a particular concern about whether a so-called International Stabilization Force — a multinational security initiative meant to keep the peace in Gaza — can really be deployed. One slide shows an arrow with a question mark on it linking the first and second phases of the U.S.-brokered peace plan, underscoring the uncertainty about its prospects.
He said it was easy.
I don’t know about you but it just shocks me to the core that Trump’s team is completely clueless and the “peace plan” is little more than a chimera to give Trump a photo op.
That ignorant, drunken, talk-show-host, rapist Sec Def is systematically purging the military of women. I’m sure he’d be fine with keeping them around to cook and clean. Maybe they can do some clerical work. But that’s about it. After all, if you don’t have a penis there’s really not much you’re good at (except for, well, you know.)
They’re just making it impossible for women to pursue their careers:
Everything was set for the Navy officer to take over a new role that would have capped an already distinguished career— and made her the first woman in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.
Ranked the top officer for promotion in her cohort, she received a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack during a combat tour in Iraq. She then became the first woman to serve with SEAL Team Six in the role of troop commander, one of several senior positions within the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit.
A formal ceremony marking her new position was planned for July. Invitations went out two months in advance.
But just two weeks before the ceremony, her command was abruptly canceled with little explanation, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The decision didn’t come through formal channels but by a series of phone calls from the Pentagon, one of the sources said. The circumstances were unusual and seemed designed to omit a paper trail, according to multiple sources.
Under the Navy’s “up or out” policy, with no command slot to take, the officer’s more than two-decade military career was effectively over.
Everybody knew it was Hegseth. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want any women in leadership roles (or really, in the military at all.)
The Pentagon said that women are “excited” to work for Hegseth and his “strong leadership.” Sure they are. (I hope none of them are ever in a room alone with him…)
With Hegseth at the helm, many who spoke to CNN felt women are no longer wanted in uniform— a potentially seismic shift since they make up roughly 18% of the US military.
“To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” said Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander who served on a decades-old advisory group for women in the military before it was shut down this year.
“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women,” Tutalo added. “I also think that you’re going to see an increase in assaults, increase in harassment, increase in bullying, hazing, and I think there’ll be a lack of accountability for those things.”
There was already a problem with harassment and assault. It’s going to grow exponentially with the drunken womanizer who follows a medieval Christian nationalist preacher who believes women should be subservient to men in all ways.
For Hailey Gibbons, an Army veteran who was among the first women to graduate from Ranger School after it was opened to women a decade ago, the idea that women aren’t meeting the same standards as men is “laughable.” Her initial physical test at Ranger School – a grueling two-month training course – was the same as her male comrades, she said: 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, and a five-mile run in under 40 minutes, plus six chin-ups.
Hegseth is making it okay for others in the military to say, “women can’t do this,” said Gibbons, who served in the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.
Another woman in the Army who spoke to CNN – an enlisted soldier in a combat arms unit – said that she is already feeling real-life effects of Hegseth’s September speech.
Following the secretary’s remarks, she said a male noncommissioned officer in her unit told her: “All you women are getting out now.”
“I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she said.
This lout and his buddies are making the U.S. Military a hallowed out core of wild-eyed extremists and fools. They’re not just pushing women out, they’re firing a massive number of top generals who apparently haven’t shown the proper deference to Hegseth and Dear Leader.
Meanwhile, they’re gleefully committing murder on the high seas in such contravention of international law that our allies are now refusing to share intelligence because they want no part of it.
And they are preparing to start wars. Good luck.
This one is just … incredible:
A provision of the government funding bill that passed the Senate on Monday could give Republican senators a big payday over the government allegedly spying on them.
The legislation, expected to become law this week and end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, looks like it would allow the aggrieved senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 in statutory damages.
The FBI sought phone records from eight Republican senators in 2023 as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the certification of his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, according to documents obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who said the government “spied” on the lawmakers.
[…]
“Any Senator whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed in violation of this section may bring a civil action against the United States if the violation was committed by an officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any Federal department or agency,” the bill text says.
Crucially, the provision comes with “limited retroactive applicability” covering any violations since January 2022, so the eight senators would be eligible for damages for the probe that occurred in 2023.
The investigation, nicknamed “Arctic Frost,” looked at the timing of phone calls by the lawmakers from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021. The records included details about call times but not the actual contents of the communications, contrary to one Republican who complained his phone had been “wiretapped.”
The eight senators are Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Investigators also obtained phone records for Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), but the legislation doesn’t create a cause of action for House members. None of the lawmakers were charged with crimes or were known to be the targets of a criminal investigation.
Public record shows that those Senators were being sought to help with the coup. The special counsel was trying to establish a timeline. But naturally these senators are squealing about being “spied on” when the truth is that they were participating in a coup attempt. But whatever.
It’s the part about being able to sure for half a million dollars that really reeks. Apparently, this is another one of those deals where the DOJ just gets to decide if they deserve the money. Gosh, I wonder how that’s going to go?
The corruption and abuse of power has become endemic to the GOP. And they aren’t even trying to hide it. But then, why should they? Their voters think it’s great. As long as they own the libs they can do anything they want.
Republicans, that’s who
I wrote below about the idea of how to lose well and maybe there’s a way to do more of that going forward. In the meantime we have to hope that Democrats will work with what they have, which is not insignificant. Dan Pfeiffer writes:
This is now a messaging campaign. It is an opportunity to make sure that every American knows two things: Republicans raised their premiums and Democrats tried to stop them.
Do not sleep on what a truly politically insane decision Republicans have made. Affordability is the top issue in American politics. Last week’s elections made that crystal clear. And the Republican response to voters being incredibly concerned about the cost of living was to raise people’s health care costs.
And you don’t have to take my word for it. Tony Fabrizio — Donald Trump’s pollster — wrote a memo earlier this summer that detailed the danger for Republicans:
While the 2024 outcome for these districts was even, the generic Republican is down 3 points among all registered voters. Among those most motivated to vote — an early indicator of midterm turnout — the Republican is down 7 points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points. There is broad bipartisan support for the tax credits and their extension.
We need people paying attention if and when the Senate votes down the bill — and we need everyone to know that the House wouldn’t even hold a vote to prevent the premium increase. File this under turning chicken shit into chicken salad.
This means Democrats doing the following:
- holding town halls in Republican districts
- Democratic activists rallying in front of Republican offices
- organic and paid campaigns telling the stories of the people whose premiums have skyrocketed — with a special focus on former Trump voters and other Republicans
- elected officials, activists, and other influencers posting some of the premium notices that have gone out
- contrasting the rising premiums for millions of Americans with Trump building himself ballrooms and throwing Gatsby parties for his rich friends
- talking with our friends and family about how Trump jacked up health care costs.
He believes the Republicans have made “a potentially fatal error in service of owning the Libs. Democrats gave them an offramp to avoid this political fate, but they were too dumb to take it.”
As he says, next year no one will remember the shutdown cave but they will know their premiums have gone up. The Democrats have got to focus like a laser on making sure everyone in this country knows that it’s Donald Trump and his minions, The Republican Party, who made that happen.
I don’t think one is hard at all. The incredibly stupid “plan” the GOP is now pushing is going to be hugely unpopular. But that’s all they’ve got. In the meantime, people are going to get angrier and angrier.