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.
I was going to shut up about this until I saw someone praise Maggie Haberman “habering” me on Twitter. “Bravo, Maggie,” is the exact quote. The issue is you can “huzzah, grrl power” all you want to, access journalism still sucks.
But why?
Apparently, Ms. Haberman’s argument is by definition journalism requires access and so, well, fuck you. But let me be honest — Ms. Haberman is no better than Trump for putting me on blast to make her point. Punching down is never cool, no matter who you are. So, in a sense, my pique is more about her flex on me than it is the facts. I find that Blue Check Nattering Nabobs have started to do this more often. For some reason, they want to do it to me. This is grating because generally — but not always — they put me on blast after having made a snap, inaccurate judgement about what my tweet was about.
Instead of getting information the easy way by coddling Trump — or whomever — maybe Ms. Haberman should be willing to burn her bridges in the bowels of House Trump if it means she’s able to be more critical of the would-be Thousand Year Trump.
She has her argument and I have mine. She’s powerful, I’m not. I’ll let you make up your own mind. I believe we’re in a crisis. It’s time for the press to forgo cozy relations with the criminal fascist Trump Adminstration and be patriots, to think about the best interests of the nation first.
All I can say is I love to write and fairly cogent in my rhetoric. What’s more, I’m not Ben Shapiro. I actually am working in good faith. And, really, it wouldn’t even be an issue if Ms. Haberman was a bit more polite to in her efforts to defend herself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let me be absolutely clear — I have only the highest respect for the Marines and Sec. James Mattis. At the same time, on a political level, Mattis is a coward.
The only person I can compare him to in this political war we find ourselves in is George McClellan. McClellan found himself on the wrong side of political history and he paid dearly for it. So spare me your indignation over me being shocked that Mattis continues to be mum about Trump’s attack on the Republic.
If Mattis joins William McRaven in addressing how bad Trump is, then I take back everything I just said. But, for the time being, Mattis is a political coward. He may be the best general since Patton on the battlefield, but he is not showing much vallor on the field of politics. And it would be so easy for him to fix this situation. Go on TV and simply tell what is self-evident. He would instantly be a civilian political hero.
Again, I’m just a global cuck. What do I know. I think I’ve made myself clear about exactly what I’m trying to say. The time for silence is over Mad Dog. The people need to hear from you.
Let me be clear — I’m no big fan of Nancy Pelosi. Even for me, she’s a bit too “woke” for modern American retail politics. But she is a leader and she does have what it takes to be a caretaker president simply so we can have a free-and-fair election in 2020.
If this was a normal Watergate-level scandal, then I would be content with President Pence. He’s conservative as hell, but for the sake of the country, simply pushing Trump out politically would be enough to right the ship of state at last. But, given that this is the biggest existential threat to the Republic since states started leaving the Union after Lincoln’s election, President Pence won’t cut it.
He’s too wrapped up in the criminal fascist conspiracy that is the current Trump Administration. Pence needs the old heave-ho too. I have no idea how this could possibly happen given that Pence has no shame, but sometimes it’s good to dream big politically. We need to set our sights on getting Pelosi into the White House as soon as possible using the framework that exists within the Constitution. In fact, I only even suggest this because it’s the only acceptable outcome if you take this clusterfuck seriously.
It’s too easy to imagine that Pence becomes president and lulz, Barr and Pompeo remain in office and we simply slide into a theocracy. I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those “secularist” Barr and Pompeo bemoan and I don’t particularly feel like finding myself in a weaponized ICE camp in some sort of surreal mixture of The Plot Against America and The Handmaid’s Tale. Pence’s vision of America is based on hypocrisy and the enslavement of women. If that’s not enough to actively work to politically shank him, I don’t know what is.
But, to be honest, the only way we get a President Pelosi is a Radical Resistance. We throw down the gauntlet. Pelosi takes up the moral mantle of the show president by pounding away at the entire corrupt, fascist Trump Administration on a daily basis. We’re in enough of a crisis that she needs to scare the shit out of people. Use inherent contempt to arrest Rudy. Lobby Obama to speak out. Maybe even get Jon Stewart to go on an impassioned rant on The Late Show.
Or, put another way, Pelosi needs to set the national agenda everyday. Trump and Pence are like characters from the movie Scream. They are attempting to tag-team the destruction of our Republic into some surreal dystopia.
I have my doubts, however, that Pelosi is up to it. She’s too conservative on a Constitutional level. Too reluctant to be political aggressive in any way beyond her status as a Constitutional officer. We’ll see, I guess. Stranger things have happened. Maybe she’ll at last rise to the occasion in the manner the nation needs her to.
I’ve seen some talk on Twitter about how Nancy Pelosi was “right” and huzzah, leave it to a woman to save the day. While I do believe she’s the right leader for the moment I call bullshit on any notion she right to be so extremely reluctant to give the pre-whistleblower impeachment cause any support.
By the time Trump got his political pardon when Chris Wallace bemoaned the “poor optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress in the summer, there was a very, very strong case for impeachment. Politically what was needed was Pelosi to rally the troops and lay out the case to the American public. No one had any idea — especially her — that Trump would take his “pardon” as a gimme to do the exact same thing all over again.
Even then, there were unprecedented obstacles to the whistleblower’s effort to get the authorities to look into the situation in the first place. So, in a sense, it all came down to Trump’s vainglorious behavior and dumb luck. Pelosi is not a mindreader and she’s not a clairvoyant. She could have even have had a very good read on Trump and STILL not be in the right to risk the fate of the entire country on her “hunch” that Trump would self-own. I just am not willing to give that to her. She was wrong, in that sense. At least in my opinion.
Or, put another way, I’m willing to give her supporters the facts that support their case. But my interpretation of those facts is dramatically different. That says more about my personal relationship to power than anything else. I just don’t believe in any form of blind faith. To say Pelosi “knew stuff” is the liberal version of MAGA cult blind-faith in Trump. She didn’t know jack shit.
She was very lucky –very, very lucky. But now that she’s won the historical lottery she is, in fact, just the leader we need to expunge Trump from our political system. Hopefully.
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