Tsar-A-Largo – Page 69 – The Trumplandia Report

Why Nobody Knows Nuthin About How Impeachment Will Turn Out

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While we’re in the worst Constitutional since late 1860 there’s no discernable endgame at this point. I just don’t know how it’s going to endup. It could end up either way. Either way, we’re not prepared for the new era. Either we convict Trump and hopefully put him prison after due process or he escapes and things get very dark, very quickly. Here are a series of reasons why I simply have no idea what is going to happen next.

Bill Barr
Barr has been very quiet. It’s very possible he’s going to strike at what he feels is the best time to cause the impeachment process to come to a grinding halt. I could see him thinking that if he dropped the smoke bomb of a wide-ranging list of criminal referrals connected to the Infowars-level bullshit theory that it was actually Ukraine and the Democrats who were the origin of the Mueller probe that all of Trump’s problems would go away. He might think this because similar bullshit messaging worked before with The Mueller Report so lulz. There’s a huge risk associated with this, however. The risk is that after about 24 hours of The New York Times buying into this bullshit ploy completely, other people might come to the conclusion that it’s a staggering abuse of power. So it would be used as yet another Article of Impeachment.

Asymmetrical Radicalization
One thing we all underestimate is how completely fucking insane the Republican Party became in the latter years of the Obama Administration. The Republican Party only sees liberal democracy as a means to an end — and that end is as much power as possible. So, while the Democrat Party sees itself as bound by the normals of a democracy, the Republicans just lulz that. So Republicans will crucify Democrats for the slightest infraction while they lie and cheat as much as humanly possible to keep Trump in power. This is a very real problem. Do not underestimate it going forward in the impeachment process.

Republican Senators — Mission: Impossible
There may come a point where 20 Republican Senators face an impossible political decision — the likelihood they will be primaried if they vote for conviction will be equal to the probability they will lose their general if they don’t vote for conviction. I honestly have no way of predicting how they would solve this problem. It’s simply impossible. None of them have any honor or courage — or at least have shown none to date — so, I don’t know. It could go either way.

Brexit
If No Deal Brexit does, in fact, finally happen on Oct. 31, then there’s a chance that will slow the global economy in such a way as to harm Trump’s political fortunes in a very unexpected manner. Trump’s got a base of about 35%. It’s rock solid. If the economy tanks that might change just a little bit.

Violence
Trump could very well up the ante and start transactional crimes with his Twitter feed. In other words, instead of dog whistling this or that thing, he might actually say: Do this. It could be anything from killing members of Congress to killing the whistleblower. You would think this would be bad for Trump — and it would be — but there’s also a chance that it will slow impeachment down just enough for Republicans to say, “Lulz, let the people decide in Nov. 2020.”

Trump Going Bonkers
This is a such a big known unknown that I simply don’t know how to gauge it. If Trump finally snaps in a very, very public manner, things could get very, very messy. But the gears of government are so fucking slow Trump could still make it until January.

Government Shutdown
It’s possible the government will shut down long enough that impeachment momentum ends. Trump survives and he rigs the 2020 election in his favor. Lulz!

Moscow Mitch May Feel Sated
It’s also possible that just as Moscow Mitch fills the last possible open position on the Federal bench with a young hack MAGA judge, he will find Trump having his trial in the Senate. Moscow Mitch will feel he has gotten the last ounce of blood from Trump and he’ll abruptly do the Pence Pivot. Lulz!

History May Not Repeat, But It Does Rhyme — John Brennan, Meet Daniel Ellsberg

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

You can’t make this shit up. It definitely seems as though just like Nixon’s obsession with Daniel Ellsberg sowed the seeds of his self-destruction that Trump’s personal vendetta against John Brennan may very well do the same damn thing to him.

I would not be at all surprised if it wasn’t Brennan who Barr was to bring a criminal referral against in his quest to give Trump the fig leaf necessary to pardon Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn. Yes, Trump will definitely win at least one news cycle by doing this, but long term it may be a bit more dicey. Things are just about far enough in the impeachment proceedings that Trump may feel he has to wait until after he’s acquitted in the Senate to go full Putin on us. Or, given that he’s bonkers and not the political genius everyone thinks he is, he may just say fuck it and do it between now and whenever he’s formally impeached.

Who knows. The key thing is there’s no discernable endgame right now, which is why, by definition, this is a crisis. A big one. It could go either way. What’re more, we’re not really prepared for either eventuality. We’re going to be in a new era, no matter what.

Systemic Rot At The New York Times In The Age Of Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I’m a nobody. I’m a failure. A loser. A rube who lives in a flyover state. But I would like to note the obvious — something’s amiss in the House That Ochs Built. The reason why it’s so dangerous to our apparently dying democracy is it’s systemic.

It’s not any one person — even though Maggie Haberman is a notable Trump suck up — but the very institution itself. It’s even more difficult to assess because The New York Times continues to be the premiere news organization in the world. It’s just that consistently since the dawn of Trumplandia the paper has gotten its overall coverage of our mad king wrong.

The reason why this is so dangerous is The Old Gray Lady pretty much sets the daily news agenda for most of the media ecosystem. So when they wilfully engage in the tried-and-true 2016 playbook of acting as though Trump and his minions are acting in good faith — when they clearly are not — that’s a serious, serious problem for the Republic.

If I’m so smart, what would I do differently? Well, I would have a townhall meeting of the entire newsroom and tell them to think of themselves as patriots first and reporters second. If that means burning some bridges so be it. If that means being extra-skeptical of whatever fucked up messaging House Trump is pushing then so be it. One notable example of this recently was when The Times cooed about how much money The Thousand Year Trump was spending on digital buys. That whole thing is political FUD meant to cower House Trump political opponents into thinking all is fucking lost.

Another issue is people like Maggie Haberman idly muse about how it is that Trump does demonstrably stupid things as if there was some other answer than, well, Trump is, in fact, stupid. At this point the only reason why I mention Ms. Haberman is she’s a fun to pick on. Anyone who sucks at the teet of House Trump that much and takes her self so fucking seriously deserves whatever snarky fate she may meet. You know who Maggie Haberman reminds me of? The guy who gave David Letterman the “GE Handshake” when he went to his new bosses with a gift basket.

I don’t know. It’s times like these when I wish Gawker was still around. It would be nice if Nick Denton had his old crew rant against what I’m talking about on a daily basis. It’s all very silly and yet extremely important given the stakes involved.

I love The Times. I just wish they would do better.

Attempting To Sketch Out Who Would Be The Deciding Vote To Convict Trump In The Senate

I’m no Ashley Feinberg. But I have a moment to mull a very interesting situation — is it possible to predict who might be the deciding vote to convict Trump should he be impeached by the House?

You need 67 Senators to vote for conviction. But here’s where things get screwy — the votes are done in alphabetical order. You need 67 Senators to vote but the Democrats and Republicans would be scattered across the alphabet. If you work with the assumption that all will be counted present and all will vote, at what point do you know for a fact Trump is convicted?

Here is where things grow exponentially complicated and I just don’t have the resources to do anything about it. I just don’t know the personalities involved. I have found a page with the US Senators in alphabetical order, but this is where I stop for the time being.

If anyone wants to help me do some predictive vote tallying, let me know.

migukin (at) (gmail) (dot) com.

Things Are About To Get Far Darker With Trump

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It’s clear that Trump wants violence. He and the rest of the MAGA shitshow think one strategy is to stoke such violence that the House is cowed into submission. When a few MAGA people armed with AR-15s martyr themselves in the process of murdering a few people here and there across the country explicitly in protest of impeachment then, the thinking goes, the entire process will come to a standstill.

Needless to say, this is an EXTREMELY risky and destructive strategy. It’s like dropping and H-bomb then sitting back and expecting your enemy to lulz it. There’s a real chance that after the shock wears off, the exact opposite of what Trump believes will happen, will happen. Instead of slowing impeachment down, it will only hasten it. There’s a real possibility that even if Trump says, “I was only joking, I can’t be blamed for mentally unstable people,” that the average voter will finally, finally be angry enough to push Trump out of office.

There’s also another dark scenario. This one is where Barr breaks his silence by releasing a slew of bullshit criminal referrals based on some surreal Infowars QAnon bullshit. The thinking here is that the confusion — and change of narrative — that this will garner will be enough to grind the impeachment process to a halt. By the time The New York Times finally realizes all of it is politically motivated, House Trump will graduate to The Thousand Year Trump and Don Jr. will be measuring drapes in the Oval Office.

Both of these scenarios are likely to happen. I have come to believe darkness has, in fact, finally fallen. The bad guys are going to win. We’re going to lurch into a Russian-style “managed democracy” far sooner than any of us ever imagined.

Or, put another way, something’s gotta give. I need something to happen to give me some hope. Now.

V-Log: An Update On #Writing a #Novel & Maggie Haberman’s Weird Twitter Flex On Me

Lulz.

It Doesn’t Matter If There Was A Quid Pro Quo, YOU IDIOTS!

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumarls

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Republicans’ messaging is this — if you can’t prove a quid pro quo then…four more years! This Big Lie is starting to gain traction as an effective messaging of the base. It gives Republican MAGA mouth breathers a talking point they can use to “own the moment” with people who disagree with them on Twitter.

But there’s one little problem with it — it’s entirely a construct of their messaging. The rough transcript of the call we have in black and white lays out all the impeach-and-convict behavior we need. But Trump’s rapidly falling back to Moscow if you will. He’s willing to cede whatever is necessary to simply stay in power. That’s it, that’s his endgame — stay in power.

I don’t what to tell you, folks. We’re in an existential political war with stakes that haven’t been higher without states leaving the Union.

Good luck.

Karen Tumulty, May I Suggest You Remember Mstislav Rostropovich?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

A real problem with Twitter is you have a very short space to articulate what can be very complex issues. I consider myself a journalist — I was at least trained to be one — and I love the trade and the people who make it up. But we’re in a crisis — the worst political crisis since late 1860 — and the manner in which the Press is covering it is, frankly, embarrassing.

Today I got into a minor Twitter-spat with Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post. She put me on blast to poo-poo my suggestion that them doing yet ANOTHER story about Hunter Biden’s vaguely unethical business dealings from half a decade ago might not be the best use of the paper’s resources right now.

I’m so jaded at this point that her putting me on blast to “put me in my place” evokes nothing more than a lulz from me. Ok, you got me. You have a huge Twitter following and I’m just a rando you feel you can use as a rhetorical foil. The point I was trying to make, however, is valid. Rather than aiding and abetting the destruction of the Republic in the name of “objectivity,” might I suggest she — and the rest of the press — remember Mstislav Rostropovich.

There’s an iconic picture , which, for the life of me I can’t find, of him holding a Kalashnikov during the segue of the Russian White House about 20 years ago. Rostropovich wasn’t a solider — he was a well known orchestra conductor — but in a moment of crisis he took up a weapon and decided to attempt to defend liberty in the nation he loved.

So, I would suggest to Ms. Tumulty she think of Rostropovich when she crows about how I should subscribe to the paper to get the “full context” of their reporting. Trump wants to turn the United States into an autocratic “managed democracy” hell bent on putting Ms. Tumulty herself into jail for during her job.

If that isn’t enough to give her pause before crowing about discovering “important” information about Hunter Biden’s unethical behavior five years ago, I don’t know what will.

Republicans Now Have A Cogent Messaging Strategy … But Trump’s Still President

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

After letting a number of precious days slip past them, the Republican Party now has something akin to an overarching messaging strategy. Remember, the whole thing is based on an arbitrary Big Lie. It’s not as though facts are important or that anything they’re doing is thought up in good faith. They have one goal and one goal only — keep Trump in power.

With that it in mind, it seems as though Republicans have finally established their bullshit conditions for them to alledgly take impeachment seriously.

Quid Pro Quo Has To Be Established.
This is complete bullshit because Trump and his cronies keep giving up the game on this one. But this is a key talking point right now. Even though we have all we need to prove an impeachable offense in rough transcript — quid pro quo or not — Republicans have set an impossible standard that they can then hammer home whenever asked. They’re messaging to the base that only if Trump actually uses the actual words quid pro quo does the House investigation into this situation come close to not being a “witch hunt.” This is total bullshit on their part because they honestly don’t give a shit about anything but keeping power and grifting. So Trump himself could do exactly this one thing they absolutely demand and they would simply pivot to the next talking point. They just don’t care. They don’t care about liberal democracy anymore. Fuck you, see if you can convict Trump in the Senate is their real agenda.

After this main talking point, they seem to have a hodge-podge of other, less important ones they reference as needed to “own the moment.” They rant about Schiff “lying.” They think it’s all a Deep State con job – entrapment. Everything they say is complete bullshit because we have Trump dead to rights and now it’s simply a matter of waging a pitched political war for the next few weeks. Republicans will destroy the Constitution, the Republic and whenever the fuck else they have to do keep Trump in power, even if he finally goes completely fucking insane.

As I’ve said before, I always though Trump would lose his mind in private and then a secret Regency would be set up. Now I realize Trump could very well snap and we’ll have a madman as president until the wheels of government finally grind towards some sort of endgame. Trump is obviously bonkers now, but he’s a least reasonably cogent and reasonably in control of his absolute worst instincts.

It definitely seems that Republicans are also doing their best to egg the base on into some sort of violence. They really, really, REALLY want MAGA people all over the country to start killing members of the media or Democratic member of Congress. They, of course, will say these people are mentally ill and it’s not their fault. But they will also use the death and destruction as a cover for telling us we have to end impeachment and “let the people decide” in 2020. This is fucking bullshit not only because Trump will simply bribe Electors or directly conspire with the Russians, or the Saudis or the fucking North Koreans to hack into the voting booth, but there’s a good chance that even if Trump loses fair and square, that they want violence then, too, so they can keep power.

The sooner we realize that the entire Republican Party is now a criminal fascist organization, the sooner we can be honest with ourselves about the stakes we face and what really is actually likely to happen.

And, really, the entire fate of the United States as we know it now rests on Trump losing his mind in some manner that is so completely fucking spectator that somehow 20 Republican Senators miraculously decide maybe Pence wouldn’t be such a bad president after all. That’s it. That’s all the hope I got right now.

The Republicans hate democracy so much that they will fight dirty, they will lie, they will cheat, they will burn everything to the ground simply to keep power. They are only interested in democracy as a transactional event. They want to abuse it to regain power if they lose it.

I don’t know, folks. Now what.

‘Thank, You Next’ — Mick Mulvaney Edition

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Mick Mulvaney is seen as something of a Little Big Man in the eyes of Donald Trump. Mulvaney is who Trump thinks he is. But today, Mulvaney has proven himself to be a big old doofus.

Let’s set the scene. Mulvaney came out today and attempted to update 2016’s “Fuck your feelings” with a “Get over it” message when it comes to a quid pro quo. He made it very clear that it happens all the time and “elections have consequences.”

He said it on tape. We have him absolutely dead to rights.

Now numbskull is saying he didn’t say what he explicitly said. I know I say Trump’s criminally incompetent, but there’s no taksies-backsies for confessing to Big Boy Crimes. I guess he’s going to get away with it. They always do. In fact, if he DOESN’T get away with it, that would be so out of the ordinary that it would be a datapoint that would make me re-evaluate my belief that only the absolute-worst scenario can possible by the endgame to all of this.

I got a good chuckle out this fuck up, if nothing else.

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