Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

‘Planted’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I think we may know — if today’s Newsweek story is to be believed — why the FBI swooped in to Mar-a-Lago when it did. They had specific, credible information as to where the Classified documents were located. So, they went in ASAP to get the documents while the information was still hot and relavant.

Now, this brings up the issue of how Trumplandia is screaming at the top of its lungs right now that the FBI OBVIOUSLY “planted” evidence during its raid. If that’s not a tell, I don’t know what is.

As such, I think it’s safe for us to assume that it’s at least possible that Trump had Something Big in his possession when the FBI stormed the place. Which leads to the question of, what was it?

I have no idea. But for Trumplandia to rush to yet ANOTHER Big Lie instantly leads me to believe that whatever it is, it’s gotta be pretty big. Or, at least, Trump is freaking out about it.

It could be that we’ll never know. Trump is so good at “criming” that by the time we get anywhere close to knowing the truth, he’ll be POTUS again and we’ll all be so busy trying to leave the country now that we’re an autocracy that we won’t have time to care about all the secrets Trump stole.

‘Access Journalism & Its Discontents’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

In the name of full disclosure — Maggie Haberman was weirdly mean to me on Twitter one time and I never let anything go. Never. But, anyway, Ms. Haberman is an interesting press creature because she seems to inhabit the gray zone between just another establishment journalist and someone who is an active part of Trumplandia.

This is how Trump should be handled by The New York Times. Wink.

I think some of it may come from her potential political proclivities — I think she used to work for The New York Post.

Here’s where things get nebulous.

The conventional Twitter wisdom is Haberman is an “access journalist,” and, yet, that’s so ill-defined that she has every reason to get angry when people accuse her of this. (Which is probably why she got mad at ME.) She can rightfully say that she’s just doing her job and any talk of “access journalism” is coming from people who don’t understand how journalists do their jobs.

That, at least, is how all the journalists who circle the wagons around Haberman talk whenever the Twitter mob comes after her. But I do think any objective third party would say Haberman is a little too close to Trump. And she pulls her punches so as to remain chummy with Trumplandia.

That’s my hot take on the issue.

But I’m a freaky weirdo loser in the middle of nowhere and she’s a successful normal person with a great career at The New York Times. Who am I to judge?

When We Become ‘A Very American Autocracy,’ It Will Be Legalistic In Nature

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We’ve given up. While the exact timetable of when the United States becomes an autocracy is still up in the air, the fact that we’re going to become one is now a political and historical absolute. (Or, of course, we have a civil war.)

But given that whatever type of autocracy we have will have its own American spin to it, I suspect it will be a lot like the Russian style which is very legalistic in nature. Putin likes to go through the whole rigmarole of getting passing a law or getting “permission” to do this or that thing, but, in the end, it’s all a sham. And I think that’s what American autocracy will look like.

As such, when Trump or President DeSantis arrests their 2028 opponent on trumped up charges, they will have so crammed the government with their toadies — a “Deep State,” if you will — that the folks on Morning Joe will struggle to prove what everyone will already know: the arrest was political in nature.

And that’s because all of the legal requirements for the arrest will have been met, but the context will be totally different than what it would have been now when the United States is an anocracy, not an autocracy.

The whole point is — we’re fucked. It’s over. Get out while you can. Poors like me are going to probably get shot in the back of the head by ICE because we won’t shut up about how President DeSantis is a cocksucker, while wealthy Twitter liberals will flee to the south of France and wax poetically about how Mueller, She Wrote just wrote a Twitter thread that “destroys” the autocracy in America.

I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know when exactly all of this is going to happen, but, in general, I would suppose that it will happen starting around 2024 – 2025.

Schrodinger’s Secrets

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Trump is there are some issues where you don’t know what the fuck is going on. Take his taxes, for instance. Is it an ego thing or is there something actually there that might hurt him politically? And, now, we have the same situation with the Top Secret documents that Trump spirited away from the White House when he left office.

For the moment, they are both the nuclear codes and just random things classified for no real reason. But, for whatever reason, Trump is willing to burn the country down rather than admit defeat on the subject.

Trump’s supporters have already sprinted towards the idea that the FBI has “planted” evidence at Mar-a-Lago to use against Trump. If that’s not a tell, I don’t know what is. AND, what’s more, they have so far refused to release the search warrant. Another tell.

But it’s one of those things where we won’t know until we know. And because of the Fuhrer Principle of MAGA, there’s an even chance that either the lulz Trump literally being treasonous or they spin on a dime and turn their devotion to someone like Ron DeSantis who does exactly the same thing Trump would do, only faster and more adept.

As I keep saying, we’re fucked. I’m too poor to leave the country, so I fully expect to be shot dead by a weaponized ICE at some point after around 2025. Don’t quite know what I’m going to do about that situation. Or we have a civil war and I have to flee to a Blue State.

Good luck.

A Fascist Dog Without A Bite

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of my favorite YouTube channels is History Matters. And I often find myself thinking about how a future History Matters video might depict the fucked up politics of modern America.

And, yet, there’s one interesting thing about modern American politics that is interesting for what isn’t happening — for all the violent rhetoric of the MAGA New Right, there hasn’t been any major political violence since January 6th. It’s very curious in its absence. Not that I want any political violence, but you would think given how much the MAGA New Right rants about how they want to murder like me in cold political blood that they would eventually get around to doing it.

I don’t want to go into details of what I’m talking about because I don’t want to give anyone any ideas, but let’s just say the American government is a “target rich” environment if you were an insane Right Wing nutjob.

The absence of any major political violence since January 6th makes me feel a little bit better. It makes me believe that we’re probably just going to slide peacefully into autocracy and that will be that.

Is Trump Capable of Selling American State Secrets?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t know about this one. It’s too easy to jump to conclusions. And, as someone known to jump to conclusions, the idea that the reason why the FBI swooped in on Mar-a-Lago was they had evidence that Trump was selling state secrets….is a bridge to far. At least for now.

The reason why I think this is — for about six years, I came up with all these evil, elaborate schemes that Trump might do. And the he proceeded to impress me with how fucking stupid and lazy he was. Instead of simply firing people in the summer of 2020 until he got the result he wanted — an indicted Hunter Biden — he waited until the absolute very last moment to stage an autocoup. He is so dumb — and lazy. Don’t forget lazy.

So, there would be something next-level for Trump to do something so nefarious as sell American state secrets for cold hard cash. It just seems like another one of those obvious plots I came up for Trump between 2015 and 2021 that he never did because he was too stupid and lazy to pull them off.

And, yet, I guess the case could be made that since money would be involved and it would be a very, very simple plot — secrets for cash — that even Trump could pull it off. But, Trump is such a dingus that I struggle to imagine him being able to keep something so huge secret. He would say something now and again about it that would be weird and we would all be scratching our heads about why he said some odd ball thing out of the blue.

Like the toilet flushing thing.

If you put in the context of him constantly flushing secrets down the toilet, then, yes, his obsession with being able to flush the toilet “like the good old days” makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, I suppose it’s at least possible that Trump could have done cold, hard treason with state secrets, but I seriously doubt it. And, remember, even if we could somehow magical politically neutralize Trump, there are a dozen other would-be Republican autocrats who are younger, more organized and focused than Trump ever has been.

We’re fucked. Get out. I’m too poor to get get out of the country so I’m probably going to die at the hands of a weaponized ICE at some point after 2025 when an autocrat becomes POTUS.

Trump Selling State Secrets Would Be The Dumbest, Darkest Timeline

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m not prepared to seriously suggest that Trump would be so dumb as to get caught selling state secrets to, say, the DPRK or Russia. But it’s one of those things where we know the conditions at least exist for such a thing to happen. So, you’re left pondering something very dark and very dumb as being a very real possibility.

The Darkest Timeline.

Now, some context.

I don’t think Trump would really process what he was doing as “selling state secrets to the highest bidder.” He probably would see it more along the lines of “doing a buddy a solid” or something like that. While the most obvious person Trump would be selling access to state secrets to would be Russia, the DPRK is also definitely an option.

I say this because Trump loves Kim Jung Un (ick) and the whole DPRK régime is so weird that it’s at least possible that they might lean into personal relationship that Trump has with Kim to see if they can nab some state secrets from their good buddy and pal Trump.

And, given that the US is still technically at war with the DPRK because of the Korean War…well, that really does add an interesting complication to the problem at hand. And, honestly, that’s the thing that is so interesting about what is going on — why what happened for the FBI to strike now? Did they learn something? Did Trump do something so egregious that they had to move in to stop him from continuing to do it?

But the thing we have to contemplate tonight is this — there is a greater-than-zero chance that a former president of the United States has been caught selling state secrets to our most absolute sworn geopolitical enemies. And, what’s more, even if we politically neutralize him, there are a dozen other would be-autocrats who will be the ones to finally end American democracy.

What’s more likely to happen, of course, is Trump will announce his 2024 bid and there just won’t be the political will to do anything about him, ever. Good luck. Get out the country while you still can, I guess.

No, We’re Not Having A Second American Civil War Because The FBI Raided Mar-A-Lago

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Unless you’re prepared to explain to me how MAGA plans to find the leadership necessary to start a civil war, I’m going to take the excited Google search that led you to this site with a grain of salt. You’re going to have to actually risk death, not just talk about it, if you want a civil war because the fee-fees of your Dear Leader were hurt tonight.

I do think that Trump is going to announce his run for office in 2024 a lot sooner now, but for there to be a “civil war,” Trump would have to go transactional immediately. He would have to tell Red States to begin the formal process of leaving the Union.

He’s so deranged and dumb that I will admit that that, in fact, is a real possibility. It would be a monumental unforced error on the part of MAGA, but we are talking about Trump. I say “unforced error” because, lulz, the entire system has bent a knee to Trump and he’s well on his way to becoming our first true autocrat.

No need for a “National Divorce” or civil war.

And we still have a ways to go before Trump is charged. And Trump always has the…trump card…(excuse the pun) of announcing he’s running for POTUS in 2024. Which, I think is probably going to happen very, very soon now. Though, if Trump panicked and announced his run now instead of the day after the 2022 mid-terms….that would be pretty funny.

Anyway. Calm down. There will be no civil war tonight. Maybe in 2023 if Speaker Trump demands it….but not tonight. Though I do believe Trump is probably going to announce for POTUS very, very soon.

An Idle Summer Daydream About Why The FBI Raided Mar-A-Lago

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love to run scenarios. So, here’s a dumb (?) one that is mildly fun to think about on a warm summer evening.

For something to meet the Constitutional definition of treason, there has to be a state of war and a few witnesses. Ok, well, the DPRK is definitely still at war with the UN (and, as such the US) and so if when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago tonight, it’s possible that, in some way, the legal definition of “treason” was met if Trump was selling Top Secret documents to his “lover” in the DPRK.

I’m not saying this happened. I’m not “just asking questions.” I just like to run a scenario and this is interesting to think about. Or, put another way, I suspect that it’s at least possible that there’s more to come on this matter in the coming days.

Who knows.

Fascist MAGA’s Blood Libels Against Anti-MAGA

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh, where to begin with this one. There is a huge amount of froth within the Republican ranks these days. Even though they’re ascendant, the Republican MAGA New Right is trying to drill a few Big Lies into the minds of the general public in a form of Blood Libel.

The two biggest of these Blood Libels are that Democrats are fond of infanticide and that they want to “groom” young children into the homosexual lifestyle. Both of these things are complete bullshit. But the moment the political silly season kicks in, the MAGA New Right plays these canards like a xylophone. Just look at the below.

They honestly want voters to believe that Democrats are literally murdering babies. This is very close to the Nazi Blood Libel against Jews, of course. So close as to be rather startling if you think about.

And this is where you either grow really concerned that Republicans are, in fact, modern day Nazis or you lulz it and say, “Oh, you’re being hysterical.” I can’t predict the future, I have no idea what’s going to happen.

But Blood Libel is not cool, that’s for sure. And once Republicans gain power again, it will be interesting to see how bad things have to get before people sit up and take notice. What is going to happen, of course, is a lot of people who told me to “give MAGA a chance” will either leave the country altogether or they will become full blown American Nazis.

It will be interesting to see how and when the Good Guys manage to pull us out of this clusterfuck and how many people are going to die in meantime.