If you want a masterclass in dealing with powerful media types, just listen to the amazing “On” podcast interview between Kara Swisher and CNN’s Chris Licht.
It was very illuminative and combative. Licht reminds me of the extremely powerful executives of Media General and The Richmond Times-Dispatch that I once, long ago, hung out with when I was desperate to get a job at the TD.
Anyway, I was very impressed. It was interesting to see how a VERY POWERFUL dude struggled to weasel his way out of answering tough questions. I came away with a serious case of unease, however. Nothing Licht said made me feel any better about the fate of CNN on either editoral or business sides.
I think CNN is going to veer Right to the point that when it’s inevitable sold, it might get sold to some Right Wing plutocrat who will turn it into a Fox News clone. (This would likely happen in the context of the United States turning into a MAGA themed fascist autocracy.) The logical person to buy CNN, if a Right Wing plutocrat doesn’t buy it, would be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. He already owns The Washington Post and the two media properties would make a nice fit.
It will be a testament to the absolute stranglehold that Trump has over the Republican MAGA base that he can be as low energy and boring as he is at the moment and STILL be the 2024 frontrunner for the Republican POTUS nomination.
So, we are going into a situation where Trump is under any normal condition would be a big old dud of a nominee like Jeb! And, yet, Trump could very well be the next president of the United States despite how dull, low energy and boring he is.
And, remember, if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee, the possibility of a Second American Civil War increases dramatically. Not only could Trump brazenly steal the 2024 election prompting Blue States to think seriously about leaving the Union, it could be that once it’s clear that Trump’s second term agenda is cold hard fascism, the same thing might happen.
It could happen even though Trump is very, very low energy and should be pushed aside by someone like Ron DeSantis who would do the exact same thing only with a bit more pep in his step.
So, pretty much, we’re totally completely fucked. I’m always wrong, however, so it’s possible that something will happen between now and Election Day 2024 that makes all my alarm look very hysterical and foolish.
While I’m always, always wrong, I think I’m safe in saying that it’s now an immutable force of history that House Republicans are going to impeach a number of people in the Biden Administration.
And, what’s more, it seems pretty clear to me that there is a real chance that Biden himself will be impeached as many as three times. The first time will happen just because it can happen, while the other two impeachments will happen because Republicans wait to take away the “Trump is the only president impeached twice” talking point away from Democrats.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope prediction about all the potential impeachments we should expect in 2023 if Republicans do, in fact, take the House.
President Biden It’s pretty clear to me that a Republican House will be so full of spite and rage and bloodlust for revenge that it’s very possible they may accidently on purpose impeach Biden for no apparent reason in the early days of 2023. It will be so transparent as to what is going on that House Republicans are going to do severe political damage to themselves. But it won’t matter — that political damage would only matter if we were a functioning democracy. But we’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re in between autocracy and democracy — in other words, an “anocracy.”
There are at least two reasons why Biden will be impeached. One is, of course, his wastrel son Hunter Biden. The other is the “border crisis.” The big issue is will these be two seperate impeachments so Democrats will not longer have Trump being impeached twice as a talking point, or if these two issues will be fused together into one event.
At the moment, I honestly don’t know. There’s always a chance that MAGA Republicans will impeach Biden THREE times, for two reasons. They both scream at the top of their lungs that Biden is the only president to be impeached three times and at the same time they can, expo facto say it’s no big deal that Trump was impeached twice.
Veep Harris I have no idea why House Republicans will impeach Harris, but they’ll think of something. Just the idea that they could somehow impeach and convict Biden and Harris in quick succession is enough to give them all a boner and they have no self control so they’re going to do it at some point between 2023 and 2025.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas As I understand it, there’s already a move afoot by House Republicans to hit the ground running impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of the “border crisis.” So, there’s every reason to believe that he’s going to be impeached at some point between 2023 and 2025.
HHS Secretary Becerra This is a bit more speculative, but I could see that once the impeachment counter-revolution gets going that House Republicans will set their sights on Becerra for something connected to “gender affirming” care of minors. That seems like just the type of culture war edge issue that MAGA House Republicans would want to wallow in for a few months to prove a point. I could also see a potential impeachment article surrounding the Biden Administration’s handling of COVID — even though it was Trump who fucked that particular situation up. Who cares about facts when you have lies?
Education Secretary Cardona This is also rather speculative, but once the monster of impeachment is unleashed, House Republicans may go after Cordona on the nebulous charge of encouraging “critical race theory” in schools — even if this is total bullshit. They just want to be able to hold hearings where they rant about CRT for hours on end. It will juice the base while “owning” the libs.
FBI Director Wray If this happens, it will be a prime example of how wrapped up in their own bullshit MAGA House Republicans will be once they have power. Wray is ON THEIR SIDE and they will still come after him because something something Deep State.
Attorney General Garland This is obvious — MAGA Republicans are so blinded by their anger over the Mar-a-Lago raid that they want to impeach Garland for approving it, despite it being totally justified given what Trump did.
There could be a few Federal judges that spark MAGA ire that will be impeached as well.
I say this because the base continues to love Trump with such an absolute love that they are willing to put the country through THREE impeachments in a very short amount of time for a very, very petty reason. But here we are.
Remember, Republicans crammed through a massive plutocrat taxcut just because they could. And I think at the moment that the only thing that united Republicans is the need to impeach Biden a few times. The base is out for political blood and, as such, no matter how much impeaching Biden a few times will hurt the Republican Party in 2024….it’s going to happen.
It seems as though the United States faces a fork in the road. Either we go down the path of Trump and a potential civil war, or we don’t. We either succumb to the siren call of dingus Trump and destroy ourselves with our eyes wide open, we go down a far more gradual path to fascism in the guise of Ron DeSantis.
Because there is one thing that is for sure — America has a fascism problem that isn’t going away. The only difference between Trump being the person to strangle our democracy and, say, Ron DeSantis is one would be a lot more chaotic than the other.
If you wanted to get all technical about it on a macro historical basis, you could make the argument that Trump being the 2024 Republican nominee is the best of a variety of bad endgames because the likelihood of a “National Divorce” and a Second American Civil War grows as does the possibility that at least a part of America might not live under the yoke of fascism.
But that’s a very risky. And might only result in things getting way, way, worse than they might otherwise. I guess what I’m saying is — when your best case scenario is a horrific civil war…maybe things aren’t going so great for your nation on a macro level?
Anyway. I still don’t know which direction we’ll go. Are we going to gradually turn into a fascist state, or are we going to go the bumpy — but same — route via Trump. Only time will tell.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be black or Jewish. But, alas, I’m just a regular old white boy. Anyway, I continue to read up on the rise of the Nazis in Germany and, as they say, form follows function.
Where there’s fascism, antisemitism is soon show up. And I think it’s pretty clear that the United States is suffering from a bad case of fascism at the moment. At the center of this fascist problem is dingus Trump — who has to family members who are Jewish.
And, I think, we need to keep an eye what happens to Javanka. If those two are pulled into the rise of antisemitism within MAGA then we’re all in for a lot of trouble because it means not even the relatives of the Dear Leader are not safe.
But it will be interesting to see what happens one way or another. And, remember, Qanon is nothing more than updated old school antisemitism because the venn diagram of people who think “liberals” are destroying America and those who think “Jews are destroying America” is a single circle.
It makes you wonder why now. Why now, of all times, has casual antisemitism begun to drift into the mainstream. I can only assume that something about the rise of fascism in the guise of MAGA is awakening a monster we thought was long dead.
Or you could say that the astrology for dudes The Fourth Turning predicted this and lulz. Anyway. Watch this space. Hopefully when we finally turning to a MAGA fascist state we won’t have to worry about American Killing Fields in update New York.
I’m always wrong. Always. Though, to be fair, I did get Trump running for POTUS again right. (Although, as of this writing, he hasn’t OFFICIALLY announced.) Anyway, it seems inevitable that the Republican House will impeach any number of Biden Administration officials. And here’s my humble opinion why.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope prediction about all the potential impeachments we should expect in 2023 if Republicans do, in fact, take the House.
President Biden It’s pretty clear to me that a Republican House will be so full of spite and rage and bloodlust for revenge that it’s very possible they may accidently on purpose impeach Biden for no apparent reason in the early days of 2023. It will be so transparent as to what is going on that House Republicans are going to do severe political damage to themselves. But it won’t matter — that political damage would only matter if we were a functioning democracy. But we’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re in between autocracy and democracy — in other words, an “anocracy.”
There are at least two reasons why Biden will be impeached. One is, of course, his wastrel son Hunter Biden. The other is the “border crisis.” The big issue is will these be two seperate impeachments so Democrats will not longer have Trump being impeached twice as a talking point, or if these two issues will be fused together into one event.
At the moment, I honestly don’t know. There’s always a chance that MAGA Republicans will impeach Biden THREE times, for two reasons. They both scream at the top of their lungs that Biden is the only president to be impeached three times and at the same time they can, expo facto say it’s no big deal that Trump was impeached twice.
Veep Harris I have no idea why House Republicans will impeach Harris, but they’ll think of something. Just the idea that they could somehow impeach and convict Biden and Harris in quick succession is enough to give them all a boner and they have no self control so they’re going to do it at some point between 2023 and 2025.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas As I understand it, there’s already a move afoot by House Republicans to hit the ground running impeaching Mayorkas for his handling of the “border crisis.” So, there’s every reason to believe that he’s going to be impeached at some point between 2023 and 2025.
HHS Secretary Becerra This is a bit more speculative, but I could see that once the impeachment counter-revolution gets going that House Republicans will set their sights on Becerra for something connected to “gender affirming” care of minors. That seems like just the type of culture war edge issue that MAGA House Republicans would want to wallow in for a few months to prove a point. I could also see a potential impeachment article surrounding the Biden Administration’s handling of COVID — even though it was Trump who fucked that particular situation up. Who cares about facts when you have lies?
Education Secretary Cardona This is also rather speculative, but once the monster of impeachment is unleashed, House Republicans may go after Cordona on the nebulous charge of encouraging “critical race theory” in schools — even if this is total bullshit. They just want to be able to hold hearings where they rant about CRT for hours on end. It will juice the base while “owning” the libs.
FBI Director Wray If this happens, it will be a prime example of how wrapped up in their own bullshit MAGA House Republicans will be once they have power. Wray is ON THEIR SIDE and they will still come after him because something something Deep State.
Attorney General Garland This is obvious — MAGA Republicans are so blinded by their anger over the Mar-a-Lago raid that they want to impeach Garland for approving it, despite it being totally justified given what Trump did.
There could be a few Federal judges that spark MAGA ire that will be impeached as well.
The first issue is for all the talk about how the narrow the House Republicans’ control of the House is — all they have to unite them is impeachment, which would be a part of the broader culture wars. So, it’s easy to imagine the Freedom Caucus, through sheer force of will, browbeating the more moderate(?) members of the Republican House Caucus into impeaching at least Biden, if not a few other people.
It would be one of those, “Might as well score those political points why we have the power to do so” type of things. They want to do all these baseless investigations and the end will be already written — impeachment. I get why some people think that these so-called “moderate” Republicans won’t go along with impeachment, but I call bullshit.
Being a “moderate” House Republican at this point is like being a “moderate” member of the NSDAP in 1933. A fucking fascist is a fucking fascist, no matter how “moderate” they may come across to clueless access journalists like Maggie Haberman.
So, I believe my predictions to date on the whole impeachment front will turn out to be correct. It’s in the nature of Republicans to get so wrapped up in the idea of punishing their perceived political enemies — despite the broader political costs.
I have no idea how exactly it would go down, but once bitten twice shy as the old saying goes and, as such, I’m growing more and more alarmed about what’s going on with the Arizona Governor’s race.
The thing about what happened on January 6th was there was some build up. It didn’t happen overnight. It was only after a few months of a slow-moving coup and a lot of preperation that the events of January 6th occured.
But the thing to remember about what’s going on in Arizona is that state — or at least its Republican Party — is one of the more bonkers of the Union. So, in a sense, it’s a perfect storm. If another January 6th-type event is going to happen, it’s probably going to happen somewhere like Arizona.
I have no idea exactly how it would go down, however. I suppose if you really wanted to wallow in MAGA delusion, you might even suggest that the type of “spontaneous” rolling political violence that Barbara F. Walter wrote a book about might happen because of what’s going on in Arizona at the moment.
The point is — keep an eye on Arizona. It could get pretty dicey — and violent — a lot sooner than you might otherwise think. I just don’t have any details as to what might happen specifically. Maybe a new Brooks Brothers’ Riot? Or just some sort of general violence on the part of MAGA cocksuckers wanting to get their point across?
Steve Bannon has suggested that Trump just become Speaker of the House, but only for 100 days. What would that be like? It would, of course, be a massive, catastrophic clusterfuck.
My fear if it happened is that Trump would end up dangling Red States secession over the heads of reluctant Senators when they had to sit as jurists in the inevitable impeachments of Biden and Harris. And that doesn’t even begin to address all the insane things that might happen because the MAGA faithful would want to “speed up the process” of getting Trump back into the White House.
In other words, there would be a lot of coup attempts — even if the whole disaster only lasted for 100 days.
But there is one key thing to remember about the Trump-as-Speaker scenario: on paper it makes way too much sense. I mean, what is all the leadership battles happening in the House about but who can properly suck up to Trump? Why not cut out the middle man and let Trump be Trump.
What more hateful, delicious revenge for Trump than for him to take the Speaker’s gavel directly from Nancy Pelosi herself? I’m very conflicted about this possibility because on one hand it might destroy MAGA once and for all, but on the other we would risk Trump getting REALLY LUCKY and becoming POTUS in 2023 – 2024 instead of 2025.
Anyway, I get the sense that, thankfully, we’re not going to have to worry about a Speaker Trump, even though we’re going to head a growing chorus of insane fucking MAGA cocksuckers who think it would be a GREAT idea. Fuck MAGA.
I continue to dwell on the possibility that MAGA might, just might, not be the overarching popular fascist movement that I thought it was. Or, if nothing else, the context is a lot different than I thought.
What I mean is — not only was it something of a fluke that Trump won in 2016, but once he gave Republicans the red met of young hack MAGA judges and a plutocrat tax cut…the clock was ticking. So, when Trump, being a lazy dingus totally and completely blew what should have been an easy re-election bid to steal…he was on his way to broader defeat.
I’m not prepared to count Trump out just yet — he is still very, very popular for a would-be fascist autocrat relative to general American history. And, yet, the case could be made that if he has any political relevance left he’s going to have to fight for it. And, as we all know, Trump is both lazy and stupid. AND lacks any serious meta-abstract cognitive abilities.
He is, and has always been just a political grunt in macro terms. Rather than being a Great Man, Trump is just a vessel, an avatar for white Christian rage. If he wants to be POTUS again, he’s going to have to fight for it. If he had any abstract cognitive abilities he would realize that his best bet to be POTUS again is by becoming Speaker of the House and then impeaching both Biden and Harris…and maybe dangling the idea of Reds seceding from the Union over the heads of Senators.
But that’s a very devious and dialogical plot that, thankfully, Trump is just way, way, way too stupid and lazy to implement. At best, he might be drafted into being Speaker…but he would just thrash around, get Biden and Harris impeached….and that would be that…it would die in the Senate.
As such, there’s a real that Trump might — just might — be about to meet his political Waterloo. Someone like Ron “Too Short” DeSantis might win the GQP nomination instead of Trump — but that would be a very brutal fight if it happened. And, what’s more, Trump has such little allegience to Republicans that it’s very easy to imagine him simply bouncing to the Patriot Party out of spite…punting America’s otherwise inevitable transition into autocracy one more election cycle.
A Ploy to Convict Biden / Harris in the Senate In this scenario, it’s 2023 and Republicans have gone nuts. They have impeached both Biden and Harris out of spite. Now, for Trump to actively be trying to destroy the country, he would, of course, need to have some personal investment in it. So, this one only really works if he is the Speaker of the House and he thinks he can become POTUS again early. So, in a bid to scare the living shit out of the Senate, he, as Speaker, begins to demand Red States leave the Union in order to get what he wants. He says this just as a rhetorical flourish, but MAGA legislatures take him seriously and states, probably beginning with Texas, begin to convene Secessionist Conventions. And away we go.
I wrote that scenario up some time ago and as Republicans begin a massive power struggle over who will be Speaker of the House, it begins to become more and more relevant. Any back of the envelope study of the current Republican struggle over who will be Speaker of the House tells you that, all things being equal, Trump should be the next Republican Speak of the House.
All the sturm and drang going on about the Speakership is battle over who will be Trump’s proxy in the House. So, the logical way to end that struggle is to cut the Gordian Knot by simply naming Trump to the Speakership. Trump is the one person that the entire House caucus could unite behind.
What’s more, it would also unite the Republican House caucus because it would put Trump in line of succession. House Republicans are going to impeach Biden and Harris anyway, they should be at least be intellectually honest for once and make it clear what they’re up to — a coup.
But it is very easy to imagine Trump becoming Speaker, impeaching both Biden and Harris and then inciting violence on the part of the MAGA New Right to such an extent that Senate Democrats feel forced to convict them “for the sake of the nation.”
Then Trump comes back early and we’re right back where we started from in January 2021, with Trump demanding to stay in office forever because of “lost time.”
But — and this a huge but — Trump is not a Great Man. He’s just very lucky, very lazy idiot. As such, I would be shocked if he was able to pull himself away from running again in 2024 to be Speaker for, say, 100 days as Steve Bannon has suggested.
Trump just doesn’t have the abstract mental capacity necessary to be Speaker. But there’s another big unknown — what happens if a big chunk of the Republican House caucus drafts Trump to be Speaker? Would that be enough to entice him to do it for the specific purpose of leading the impeachment of both Biden and Harris?
At this point, this seems like just another daydream. But….it is an interesting scenario.
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