All the Godfather’s Capos

Trump’s Capos, ready to do the orders of their ‘Don’.

It’s a classic scene in almost every mob movie of the past century: someone inside the mob was ratting out the Outfit, being a cheese eater against the Godfather. So, the Don calls his boy in, his capo, and tells him to ‘take care of it’. The capo nods, kisses the ring, and is off…

… To subpoena Apple for phone and email records. Of course we’re talking about Donald Trump. Yes. there have been a lot of half-jokes about Trump being a 'mob boss' and the head of a crime family, but as the revelations show, it's not a joke. Trump used the Department of Justice, under both AG Sessions and Barr to go after political enemies and their families, including minor child.

A child.

Barr and Sessions have tried to blame others, (of course they did) but they were the people in charge of an agency that decided to heavily politicize their operations, and the denials they’re issuing now of Trump's non-involvement in going after Democrats and reporters is laughable nonsense. Trump was constantly calling for investigations of those who dared to criticize him (“Enemies of the People” after all), and the DOJ responded and bowed to his will. Trump lives for that crap. The demands for records went out when Devin Nunes was head of the investigative committee, and some people investigated were his colleagues on the committee (Rep. Adam Schiff, lead Democrat). As Nunes was constantly issued threats and lawsuits against anyone who crossed him (including a couple parody Twitter accounts, like ‘DevinNunesCow’), I doubt this was a coincidence. Trump’s supporter’s are as thin-skinned and paranoid as their leader.

Trump’s DOJ 'investigated' journalists and Democrats. It was all political. And Trump was the smiling cobra at the center of it all, grinning and directing behind the scenes. He's the Ernesto Blofeld of the GOP, stroking his cat (he hates cats) and directing his minions to hurt and kill but keeping his own hands clean. Of course, he can never really keep them clean, his pudgy fingerprints are all over this political payback.

The closest thing in recent history to compare it to would be Watergate, but this isn’t all that close. This is beyond 'Watergate'. John Dean, former Nixon lawyer who famously turned on the president, testifying for hours before congress, called Trump's actions, "...beyond Nixon, yes. It's Nixon on stilts and steroids." 

Nixon on stilts and steroids.

What else will turn up, now that Trump sycophants no longer control access to the files, now that gag orders imposed run out, now that former aids and insiders write their books or donate their papers?

My guess we’ll be seeing a lot more revelations coming out, and probably even worse than what we’re currently seeing. And we really haven’t even started on things like an involved investigation into the leaders behind the January 6th insurrection. Lord knows what will be found there, but it won’t be pleasant.

So many rocks to turn over, so many things trying to scuttle off to the protection of the night. It’s take years to turn them all over.

Trump may be out of office, but he is not out of influence. He may have led the party when they lost the White House, the House and the Senate, but he is still the head of the GOP, the most popular member to the membership. He may be a loser, but he still calls the shots. And the GOP is desperately trying to please him

And that's the problem, isn't it?

Trump doesn't care if he burns down the country, as long as he doesn't have to admit he lost the election to Joe Biden. He just doesn't care. Trump is all, and Trump only cares about Trump. He will do anything to prove himself right. If he destroys the country doing so, that's fine with him. And the GOP is more than ready to help him.

As long as he wins, it doesn't matter.

Let the country burn.

The flames won't reach Trump Tower.

America Didn’t Elect This Joe

Trump and Manchin. Looks like a Junior Prom photo.

I had hoped after I finished my last article on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin I was done talking about him, just like I had hoped we were all done talking about Donald Trump after November 2020.

But here we/I are, talking about both Joe and Donald still, one for being obstinate and clueless, refusing to let the outdated past go and the other…

Well, for pretty much the same thing.

This weekend Trump gave what had to be the laziest, more low energy speech I’ve ever seen him give, playing the hits for the crowd (stolen election, covid not his fault, Trump good, Biden bad) like a 60s band of on the second to last date of a year long 50th Reunion Tour of dive bars; tired, bored of their own crap, and ready to go back to the greenroom party. Really, I think Trump is a horrible human being, but he can fire up a crowd, and play it like Satan’s golden fiddle. This time, he seemed to be playing Satan’s cousin’s borrowed tambourine. Dead, boring, droning and not wanting to be there. Even Fox News didn’t bother showing it, one of the few times I’ve agreed with Fox.

Trump made no real news, said nothing that wasn’t predicted by nearly everyone, and the biggest takeaway seemed to be that he was wearing something beneath his pants. Maybe an adult diaper, maybe not, but still odd. Can’t say I really care. We’ll see what kind of things he says at the rallies he’s starting to book, to the people who show up to worship His Orangeness. He’s down, but his not out.

Fucking Joe Manchin.

Really, so tired of this man. The world’s most aggravating politician, friend of Donald Trump, shooter of bills he doesn’t like, and almighty Emperor of Bipartisanship, Manchin has now fully come out against the Democrats voting rights reforms, stating he refuses to modify or “weaken” the filibuster, that undemocratic relic that has been used to stop progress for decades. Seriously. Joe Manchin is more interested in protecting the rights of the minority in the Senate, than protecting the rights of minority voters. A bill that protects the voting rights of the American people is too ‘partisan’.

Too partisan.

Making sure people can exercise their right to vote, that states will have to be free and fair in their districting, that they must be answerable to the Constitution, is ‘partisan’? That’s nuts. It makes no sense, unless bowing to the GOP’s screwing of those who dare not vote for them is somehow ‘non-partisan’.

Insanity.

I don’t understand his endgame here. Does he really believe his own crap? Is he really thinking the Republicans are operating in good faith? Where are his ten Republicans, good and true, who are ready to help Biden fix this country?

They aren’t there, and won’t be.  

I’m sure Joe believes he’s the hero here, the one saving democracy from those damn liberals intent on destroying it, hell, we’re all the hero in our own Hollywood screenplay. But the nation did not elect Joe Manchin. For the past ten years, with McConnell in the Senate, (and then Trump in the White House) we have had a minority-ruled government, where people not elected by the majority of Americans, thwart what the majority of American voters want. The minority gets to say ‘no’ to the majority, over and over again. With little to no consequences. They have done this with the filibuster, using this archaic instrument to smash and kill everything not proposed by them.

Long past time for that to change.  

I don’t think Joe’s a stupid person, in fact, I think he’s fairly intelligent. This is all about being a Democrat in a deep red state. If he can stall the popular Biden agenda with silly ‘bipartisan’ nonsense, it gives him cover at election time. Maybe I’m wrong, but I bet I’m not. A political calculation is holding back the necessary reforms needed to keep this ‘American Experiment’ safe and functioning. Much like his Friend Trump, he’s willing to gamble country for reelection.

But if he really wanted to do something about the filibuster, but keep it in place, he easily could.

He could have proposed a ‘talking’ filibuster, as used to be the case (see ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, no, really, go see it), or he propose could flipping the vote requirements. Right now, the majority has to get 60 votes, but the minority doesn’t have to do anything, nada, squat. Make the minority prove they have the 40 it would take to uphold their filibuster. Make them gather them up for every vote, and then spring votes on them, make them work to keep their filibuster going. My bet is they’re going to get sick of the whole thing pretty quickly and give in.

There are ways to fix it and still keep it, lords knows why.

But Manchin has proposed nothing. Nothing. He made a couple feints at the beginning of congress, sounding almost reasonable, and but just wants to stamp his foot and hold his breath. If this were a terrible sitcom, we’d have a shot of Manchin, arms crossed and shaking his head, saying “You can’t make me, you can’t make me!” and then cut to him voting ‘yes’ on the bills.

But this isn’t ‘Gilligan’s Isle’, and we’re all the worse for it. At least Gilligan listened to his Skipper.

Manchin has proposed nothing but hope. He ‘hopes’ he can get more of his bipartisan, Republican pals to come to his party, over time, but until then he’s going to keep the rec-room lights on, the punchbowl filled, the chips and dip laid out, and Buck Owens on the turntable. And he’ll sit in that old recliner (with the handle on the side), just waiting for his buddies to leave the frat and show up.

Like we have all the time in the world to save democracy.  

He Won’t Let Us Walk Away

Wouldn’t you like to see that last of this face?

Here we are.

Six months from the defeat of Donald Trump, and we can’t walk away from him. Why is that? After we got rid of the last awful, destructive administration (yep, it was George W.). We talked about him, but we moved on as quickly as we could. Bush helped by staying out of sight and not popping up to swing at every pitch thrown at the backstop.

Trump has no such problem. He issues opinion and edicts, scorn and ‘blistering’ takes on everything thrown his way, and always ties it to either; how great he was and how everyone sucks, or how the election was ‘stolen’ from him and everyone sucks.

Rinse, repeat.

But that’s just Trump himself. We may have Joe Biden in the White House, but we are still living in the sulfur ruins of TrumpWorld ™, which threatens at all times to ignite into wildfire proportions. This is why we can’t rid the national psychic of the man and his followers. He may not have social media anymore, but he still has the entirety of the GOP to push and scream his message. Like an parasite, Trump has hollowed out the host GOP and now controls the party, making them more than happy to keep advocating his lies, keep swinging spiked baseball bats at the legs of democracy, keep riding that wave of Trump grievance into power.

We can’t stop talking about Trump not because he won’t go away (and he just won’t) but because we have to. He’s the toddler that heads right for the china collection the minute you look away, the dog who will pee all over the living room if you don’t pay an ever-increasing amount of attention. Only this time, the living room is our democracy.  

Look at Texas.

Texas has been descending into the fever swamps for years, but now they’re expediting it using Trump’s elections lies as an excuse. This past weekend, under a midnight deadline, the Texas house GOP was trying to ram though a particularly egregious voting ‘integrity’ bill. This was a bill that went into closed-door negotiations one size, and came out nearly double, with all manner of conspiratorial garbage shoved in. Like making it easier for a friendly judge to thrown out an election based on a ‘preponderance’ of the evidence of fraud, instead of actual evidence of fraud. Or limiting early voting to 1pm-9pm on Sundays. Or illegal to transport more than two non-family members to the polls. I wonder who that might be directed at?

Lots of crap like that. And they had the votes.

The Texas house Democrats (the minority, of course) though, after trying everything they could, just slowly, one-by-one, left the chamber. When the time came to vote on the bill, the Democrats were gone, denying the Republicans a quorum. The deadline passed, the bill died. For now. It’ll be back. But it’s still a victory.

The Democrats did two things here: they stopped a voter suppression bill and made headlines, and they took that ugly, racist and grotesque bill and dragged it into the sunlight for all to see. ‘This is what the Trumpublicans are doing! This is what we have to stop!’ and the Texas Democrats literally said “This is how we are fighting in Texas, why aren’t you fighting in Washington?”

They listened to Trump, just as the GOP is listening to Trump, but they acted to stop him. In DC, we have at least two Democrats who refuse to listen, who refuse to act and will likely continue to do so until it is too late. Joe Manchin, I think, has a stubborn if deluded sincerity to his insistence on a bipartisanship that hasn’t existed in decades, killed mostly by the grab for power by one party. The other, Kyrsten Sinema… Well, I have no idea what the hell Sinema thinks she’s doing. Arizona, her state, is a purple state where the GOP is screaming that it’s really dark, blood red if you only count the votes the right way. Maybe she thinks she’s keeping to the middle? Maybe she thinks she’s being a ‘maverick’ by acting like well, a jerk. She does admire John McCain she says, but playing cute games while the building is on fire is not the way to be a ‘maverick’, it’s the way to be a dead donkey.

And out of a job next election. If we still have elections by then.

No, we can’t look away from Trump and get on with our lives as much as we all yearn to do so, because he and his followers are still there, flicking matches into the pool of gas that is the country at the moment, trying to stay in power, or just to see what will happen if it all goes up at once.

The Fifty Six Percent

Trump supporter shows his opinion of the media. Uh huh.

Oh boy.

The latest Ipsos poll is out, with some good news, and of course, worrying news, because this would not be 2021 without some bad news lurking around the corner preparing to jump you. 

Here’s the good stuff, to bolster your sagging faith in humanity: 75 percent of Americans believe that Joe Biden is the “true” president, while 55 percent think he is the “legitimate and accurate” president; 25 percent disagree with each. Well, not crazy about the 25%, so let’s break this all down and look at the ‘by party’ numbers. This is where the face-palming comes in:

“56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden. Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents. As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents.”

56% of Republicans think the election was stolen from Donald Trump, somehow, someway, 53% of them think Trump is actually still president, and 87% of Republicans want to limit the right of non-Republicans to vote. These are the people Democrats are supposed to ‘listen’ to and ‘empathize’ with. Really. They are still firmly embedded in November of 2020, to just before Fox News called Arizona for Biden, still sitting in front of the TV or hitting refresh on the Fox site to see the numbers. They are so far beyond rational political thought they’d have to get off the bus and walk back ten miles to find it.

That’s the definition of ‘delusional’.

There’s simply no way to reason with or ‘understand’ the MAGA voter when they sit down opposite you with this already in their heads. If this is their starting point, where could the conversation even begin? If months of no evidence of fraud hasn’t shaken lose this dog bite clamp on the leg of the election, you calmly explaining their faulty reasoning/logic isn’t going to do it. This won’t be solved over a burger and a handshake.

Maybe though, just maybe, they’re playing us, trying to own the ‘libs’ though the polling. They might not actually believe what they claim to believe. Maybe they’re just telling the pollsters something outrageous to invite controversy or prove a point about mean liberal polling, as they seem to think the House/Senate races were just fine. Expressing their anger at the loss by stating something they don’t truly believe but wish to be so. Maybe we’re all being played.

I seriously doubt it, but maybe…

Of course, if this were true, it causes a big problem as well. The far right at the moment is a swirling cesspool of grievance, anger, blame, conspiracy theories, and potential violence just looking for an excuse to explode. The ‘Big Lie’ over the election is fueling that time bomb. The Republican leaders, in pushing and supporting that Lie, are working to light the fuse in the belief that that is what their supporters want. They are rightly scared to death of their own base (after January 6th, I don’t blame them). What if their base doesn’t actually believe the ‘Big Lie’? We have the perfect feedback loop, the base feeding the Lie to the leaders, and the leaders working on feeding it right back to the base. With each cycle, the belief in the Lie grows stronger, more ridged, harder to break, or break away from.

The GOP is using the whole mess as an excuse to push voter suppression (they are the same people who disastrously put together a commission trying to find 3 million ‘illegal’ votes in the 2016 election), to try and make sure they can hold power without having to worry about elections. But in doing so they are also riling up a base desperate to be riled, desperate to be told that yes, they are right; people are out to get them, to do them harm, to destroy them over their religion, politics, way of life, skin color. Yes, they are the true minorities and they are the true persecuted. The more the Republicans push this lie for their own ends, the more dangerous the situation becomes.

In the end, whether the base believes the lie, or the leaders are cynically pushing the lie to gain power, it doesn’t really matter. The end will be the same, destruction of our democratic ideals.

An AEI poll this year found most Republicans agree "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." They’re primed, 56% think they have an illegitimate president in the White House and 53% think the former president is still in power, or should be. Will they sit by and do nothing?

56% would rather live their shared delusion, stuck in their 2020 infinity loop than come forward into the sunlight.

And that’s where we are.

The Toxic Avengers Assemble

Doors open at 5, lyin’ begins at 5:01.

The Toxicity is the Point.

Let me explain.

The GOP is a toxic party that encourages and celebrates toxic people. It simply is. It’s like the GOP looks around for the loudest, most obnoxious person in the room, the person everyone just trying to have a civil conversation veers away from, and they point and scream “That’s the one!”. They then give that person a high-level job in the party infrastructure, make them a TV pundit for ‘balance’ on cable shows, or run them as a candidate for office. And since Republican legislatures have gerrymandered districts within an inch of their lives, they are gifted with safe havens, stone pulpits from where they can spew anything they want with impunity. All they have to worry about is getting ‘primaried’, but they can take care of that by running as far to the right as they possibly can. It’s the ‘No Daylight’ strategy, ‘let there be no daylight on the right’; and you’ll be safe.  

Doesn’t really matter if you help your constituents, if you write, sponsor, or actually pass bills (you know, do your job) as long as you say the right things and ‘own’ enough ‘libs’. In fact, you can be in trouble if you do pass a bill, because it could be easily used against you. Pass the ‘wrong’ bill, and you become part of the system, the ‘Deep State’ (TM and © GOP) or the oppressive ‘Big Government’ (TM and © GOP) and someone will pop up suddenly in your district (probably having recently moved there) and oppose your reelection. Yep, you’ve been primaried. Suddenly you will have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove your ‘rightness’. Maybe hang out at the border (even if it’s not your state) in front of the TV cameras and wrestle a few migrants to the ground to prove how right-crazy you are, or bow over farther to an out-of-work- grifter at Mar-a-Largo. The ushe’.

The GOP built a system that rewards extremism, and pushes, begs, for more while punishing any sort of moderation. It’s the system that ever since the founding of the John Birch Society (oh, you can go down that rabbit hole further to the Dixiecrats in ‘47, the OG ‘America First-ers’ in the 30’s and beyond, but this is an essay, not ‘Game of Thornes’), to their backing of failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater leading to a far right thought takeover in the late 60’s to an Avengers Assemble moment in the 70s with the Christian Evangelist movement, finally to the presidency in the 1980s. Whew. Been a long, hard and ugly road to the disaster that was four years of Trump, but it was always on the horizon. Extremist movements always burn and consume themselves eventually, but they leave much ash and destruction in the path of their flames.

So here we are.

In congress, we have some of the most aggressive, extreme, performatively ignorant (most of them aren’t that stupid, they’re stupid for pay and power) since the Civil War, when Democrat Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat abolitionist Republican Senator Charles Sumner with a cane, nearly killing him. Of course, from there to today, the parties are reversed. The difference being today the GOP mostly outsources its violence to their supporters, like the mob on January 6th.

These people are all stunt, not actual policy. Unless ‘owning libs’ can be a policy. Well, if not a policy it’s certainly a goal.

The new Preston Brooks’ of the GOP are people like Jim Jordan from Ohio’s 4th district, a district both famous for being far right and safe, and for being so gerrymandered and twisted (redundant?) as to resemble a duck. Jordan has a ‘colorful’ past in which he has been accused (pretty credibly) of ignoring sexual abuse as a wrestling coach at Ohio State. Several team members have come forward, saying they informed Joran directly about the abuse, and at least one referee claims to have confronted Jordan about it. Jordan claims he had no idea.

And he’s still in congress where he’s never written and passed a bill in his ten years there, he just holds them up, insults people and yells. And yells some more, all while refusing to wear his suit jacket, man-of-the-people that he is.

There’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has inherited his father’s aggressive style of ignorance. Paul’s biggest claim to fame is acting like a jerk during senate hearings, and trying to score stupidity points off Dr. Anthony Fauci. He’s yet another Republican who has nothing to fear from the electorate, as Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford, in 1992.

There’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy nut serving from Georgia's 14th congressional district, yet another safe district. She ran unopposed, as the Democrat running against her received so many threats that he feared for his life, ultimately leaving the state. The vile threats she made against her congressional colleagues were so bad, they stripped her of her committee assignments and her power within congress, but not the GOP where she is a money raiser and ‘rising star’. Recently she compared the torture and deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust with her having to wear one of her ‘Trump Won’ masks on the floor of congress. And then doubled down on it. GOP leadership has been very, very silent on this. Her grotesqueness is only rewarded. I’m sure the fund raising off the ‘Cancel Culture’ (TM and © GOP) of people telling her she’s waaaaaaaaaay out of line here has already begun.

Right now, Taylor-Greene is on a ‘Summer of Hate 2021’ Tour (not official name) with another equally horrible person, Florida (of course) congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is part of the ‘frat boy’ style of politics, like if one of the guys from Animal House, only with Red Kryptonite levels of evil, were elected to congress. He, almost more than his fellow Toxic Avengers, thinks stupid congressional pet tricks done in front of TV cameras equals ‘policy work’. He is the ‘policy wonk’ of dumb stunts, like leading a charge into a secure room where a meeting was being held, thus violating security and forcing the Capitol security team to perform a sweep and examination to re-secure the room, wasting hours and money, of wearing a gasmask on the House floor during a vote on covid relief while his constituents were literally dying in Florida. He’s just a petty, vile, smug jerk. There, I said it.

That’s not the worst. Gaetz has been accused of massive illegal drug use, paying girls for sex, statutory rape, human trafficking an underage girl, showing nude photos to his fellow frat boy congressman on the floor of the house, and for being a disgusting clown.

I can say he’s guilty of at least one of those.

I could go on, and that’s the problem, I could go on. I didn’t even get to Ron Johnson, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, John Kennedy, Lauren Boebert (who brags about illegally packing a Glock, because she’s an idiot), and the King Of Cynical Performative Toxicity (may not be real title), Senator Ted Cruz, who at least should know better. Probably a part two coming on this…

But that’s the point, you can’t tell the true believers from those just going along with the scam. How many actually believe Trump won the 2020 election? Even in their warped reality, probably very few. In the end, it doesn’t matter who among the GOP leadership actually believes the nonsense they vomit; because they’re all united in the message and in shouting it from whatever mountaintop they can find. They’ve convinced the majority of their voters it’s true, and that’s where the danger comes in. That’s where January 6th came from and it’s where the next January 6th will come from as well.

They restrict voting to gain power, they gerrymander to keep power, they lie to their supporters to maintain power.

They take that hate cannon they’ve constructed and aim it right at democracy. Because it’s in the way. The have toxic leaders because the system they’ve built rewards that very toxicity. Toxicity = Strength, and the more they show, the more money flows to them and that system is reinforced and grows stronger while their base becomes a reduction of intense hate.

Toxicity is the point, and will be until it finally breaks the party.

That can’t be soon enough.

It’s Not You, Democracy, It’s Them

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, attempting to demonstrate with his hands how far the GOP is from reality. His hands can’t go that wide.

Kevin McCarthy needs to see if he can rent back his balls from Donald Trump long enough to support the investigation into the January 6th insurrection. After all, it was negotiated by his own representative, signed off on by him, and was supposed to move forward. But now?

Now he doesn’t like it anymore.

Evidently, he got another friendly call from Mar-a-Largo because Donny doesn’t want an investigation. Of course he doesn’t. And now Kevin doesn’t either. Not anymore, anyway. Trump is against it, as is most of the GOP, because they are complicit; they supported it, they either went along with the lies that inspired the mobs, broadcasted the lies themselves, or said nothing and hoped it would go away like a bill that comes due when your bank account is empty.  

If we just don’t answer the knocking, it’ll stop, they’ll just go away. But they didn’t. They came back with a battering ram, looking for blood. Not metaphorical blood, actual blood. McCarthy is guilty of going along, of trying to stop democracy, of voting to kill it before it threw his unpopular party and its equally unpopular president out of power. After a period of a day or so where they pretended regret, trying to see where political chips were going to fall, they’ve sprung back into ‘Big Lie’ mode, denying the insurrection and supporting Trump’s continued spewed lunacies.  

The ‘Big Lie’ of the stolen election is now the Republican battleplan of taking power in DC and the states; keep telling your voters they were cheated, that they have actual grievances, that the election and their rightful president were stolen from them. Keep the base angry, seething, ready to storm the polling places and vote for anything Trump and the GOP tell them. Get them angry and near violence and keep them there.

Just not too angry and violent. It’s a subtle and deadly dance, like a replay of the classic French film ‘The Wages of Fear’, only this time it’s not truckers hauling degrading nitro, it’s the GOP playing with the nitro emotions and violence that their most extreme voters are capable of, both already on abundant display long before 1/6.

The Democrats must move ahead on the investigation, without the GOP. They will never cooperate anyway. Hell, they only regret the insurrection didn’t succeed, democracy be damned. A new CBS poll asked GOP voters that if they were a party consultant, would they focus on developing a message and “popular policies and ideas” to win over more voters? Or would they prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts?

Almost half the GOP, 47%, went with screwing voters, with making sure ‘those’ people don’t vote. You know, you and me. 2/3rds pledged loyalty to Trump, and thought getting rid of Liz Cheney, a far-right conservative who voted with Trump some 93% of the time, was a good idea. Not loyal enough. Insufficiently ready to steal coming elections.

They are done with democracy. It’s no longer giving them what they need. No, it’s not you, democracy, it’s them. Totally on them, they’re done, they want a divorce.

It’s now up to the Democratic Party to show that democracy can be saved, that it can work. The 1/6 investigation is needed to show the agenda of the GOP, to show the country where the rot is and how deep it goes. The Democrats will have to stop playing nice as usual, stop playing defense and start playing offense. Nancy and Chuck need to go it alone, while they still can.

2022 is coming at us like a freight train, we can hear its mournful whistle in the distance and soon it’ll be too late to get off the tracks.

We have to make sure we’re on that train and not in front of it.

The Last Free Election

Vote here, while we still can.

 “When you give up integrity the rest is easy”.

- JR Ewing

Was our last free election in November of 2020?

It was if the GOP has its way.

What we are seeing right now is an extension of the January 6th coup attempt, a slow-motion insurrection going on in the states where the Republicans hold the legislature. They are purging the party of anyone who doesn’t at least pretend that Donald Trump won an election he lost by 7 million votes. They are working to suppress the votes of those who dare not to vote Republican, to remove barriers that hold them from throwing out the will of the voters, to make flesh the bones of what Trump tried to do in the months after he lost. To make the ‘Big Lie’ our new reality.

Georgia, for example, in 2020 had Brad Raffensperger as Secretary of State. He oversaw a fairly uneventful (as actual electoral problems go) election. It was after the call was made and the outcome was one not expected by Trump and the Republicans that the problems occurred. Now, for a bit of context here, Raffensperger oversaw an election system set up by the current Georgia Governor Republican Brian Kemp when Kemp was Secretary of State, a system designed to elect Republicans. Kemp threw every dirty trick he could in his run for governor and as Secretary, there were a lot he could throw.  

That is the system that Raffensperger oversaw. It should have worked, but it didn’t, at least not the way the Georgia GOP thought it would. Shock turned into anger, turned into accusations of fraud, fanned by the lies of Trump and his supporters. Raffensperger, to his credit, stood up to it, denied the lies and held open recounts of the votes. He didn’t try to ‘find’ the votes Trump demanded he find. He actually ‘stopped the steal’, the attempted theft of the election in Georgia by Trump and his supporters.

Yeah. Well, the Georgia legislature fixed that. They removed the Secretary of State as head of the board of elections, making that position a political appointment. No more Raffensperger getting in their way. They also gave themselves the power to remove local election officials and reject vote totals if they suspect ‘fraud’. How do they define fraud?

When Democrats win, of course. It is obviously a crime and cannot be allowed.

Silly voters, you got it wrong! Don’t worry, we’ll fix that for you.

They are tossing anyone who will not toe the Trump ‘Big Lie’ line, from local election boards (remember Republican Aaron Van Langevelde in Michigan, the election board member who voted to certify the Biden votes? They got rid of him) to national leaders like Liz Cheney. They are setting up the mechanics to deny any Democrat who would win the 2024 presidential election the position. What seemed like fantasy in 2020, refusing to certify the election and throwing it to a GOP congress who would then decide the election themselves, is now the goal. This is the Republican dream, power without having to actually rely on people voting for them. Why bother with voting when you can just take power? Why pass go to collect $200? Just reach over to the tray and take $200, or maybe more? Who’s going to stop you?

The GOP is a party that has given up on voters and democracy. As demographics change they see their base shrink. If this was a business, they would introduce new products, try to grow into new markets, try to figure out what the people want and work to give it to them. Identify the need, and fill it. The problem here is the majority no longer wants what the Republicans are selling. Lower taxes for the rich, fewer services, and no social safety net for Americans just isn’t a good sell (never was, which is why they push the never-ending culture war), and they’re slowly running out of angry White people, so do they change their message to appeal to a broader audience? No, they just won’t bother with that messy democracy stuff anymore, too uncertain. Better to just take power, to declare the opposition as ‘un-american’ and ‘enemies’ and any defeat of Republicans as ‘fraud’.

There will not be another national election, or probably even local, where if a Republican loses they will not cry ‘fraud’. It’s already happening, Trump has shown them the way, what they must do in the future, and that’s exactly what they will do. Why not? Who will stop them?

They will audition this in 2022 in the sticks to see how it will play. 2024 is opening night.

This is the worst kind of ‘doom and gloom’ porn, I know, where the writer pelts you with godawful news, hardballs thrown fast and furious, one smacking you as you duck the others. I know, but this is what is happening right now, as I type this in a slow dawning morning here in Seattle. A fix for all I write here is sitting in the US Senate right now, S. 1, about to be introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, where it will die under the weight of a Republican filibuster. Right now, with this ‘Senate tradition’ the anti-democratic filibuster in place, celebrated by those who enjoy the fruits of nothing getting done, the proposed bill making it easier to vote will gasp and will die.

What to do?

We all know who is holding this up. Senator Joe Manchin claims bipartisanship is more important than actual reform, and his definition of ‘bipartisanship’ is not that the majority of the country (Democrats and Republicans) support it, it’s that the majority of his friends in the Senate support it, country be damned. Now that may be harsh, but I really don’t care. That is the motive I attribute to such an attitude that puts a Senate rule over the will of the people, over the health of our governing principles, our democracy. What else can we say about it?

We can say it to Joe, and the rest of the Senate. Manchin’s contacts are below. Letters are usually better than emails or calls, but anything will help. Mailing mine out later today.

We’ll talk more tomorrow.  

https://www.manchin.senate.gov/contact-joe

Ain’t No Civil War

Civil War? Don’t believe it.

I know. The press has to have their stories, with their storylines, ones they can see coming in advance, ones that fit past narratives and are easily pitched at the morning meetings. It’s very comforting, like a Simpson’s writing saying “Oh, we did something like that in season 12, but we can just give it a twist here. It’ll work!” A Republican civil war is an easy narrative, heck, you can just pull out and blow the dust off the ones from 2006, or ’12, or the summer of 2015. And the ones from 2015 have the advantage of not having to change most of the names, as many of the players are the same.

But that is just lazy, by-the-numbers sort of thing, above anyone but hacks on a deadline. Now, I can’t say anything about the ‘hack’ part, heaven forfend, but the lazy bit… well…

People love to see what they want to see, what they are expecting to see, and everyone loves a good fight. So, some Republicans are fighting some other Republicans and we’re all pulling up our lawn chairs (six feet apart, of course) and popping up the popcorn (salt, light butter) getting ready to watch the fight.

But there really isn’t one.

The fight is over. It ended with the nomination and election of Donald Trump. The professional sycophants (Cruz, Rubio, Graham) went from highly critical to embarrassingly praiseful overnight. It was like a photo-finish. I can see the 8X10, all three (there were more, but let’s go with the big three) in a leaning-forward run, lips outstretched, all aiming for Trump’s large ass.

The ‘civil war has been over for years. Trump swallowed the party whole. Oh, he burped out a few, Jeff Flake, Justin Amash, Republicans who couldn’t take Trump (but still voted for many of his policies) and left before the humiliation of their Trumpified voters kicking them out.

So, this isn’t a ‘civil war’, this is a purge. The last of the previous generation of Republicans, themselves heirs of a previous right-wing coup and purge (the ‘Reagan Revolution’), are now getting flushed out by the very radicals they nurtured, the vipers they thought they could control while they passed on to ‘elder statesman’ status. They were wrong. Vipers do what vipers do, they strike.

See, they have been striking for years, but with Trump giving the order that the ‘stolen election’ bullshit is now the Golden Rule by which all must be judged, the strikes, the Purge ™, has been increased in speed and scope; everyone who dared to question, dared to stop Trump’s steal must be cast out into the wilderness. They must be burned to the ground, and their cubicles and office mugs salted so no one who might question The Donald can grow there.

Liz Cheney? She’s just the most public face. The local GOPer’s, the ones who certified the votes, who oversaw the Republicans elections in reddish/purple states and followed the rules, all those Republicans who put in place all the rules designed to elect Republicans (that failed to elect Republicans this time), they’re either gone, or have had their power so curtailed they might as well be gone.

So, put away the popcorn, there’s no fight here. Everyone knows what’s up, everyone knows how this is going to go. Except those in the media who just don’t get it, or like the narrative too much to tell their editors what is really going on. The War is over, the War has been won, they’re dragging the bodies off the field.

The GOP is Trump’s party, has been for years, they’re just cleaning house. 100% Trump, or 100% gone.

Don’t Cry For Liz Cheney

Boom goes the dynamite. The Republicans continue their relentless march to turn Trump lies into the GOP reality, no matter who is in the way.

And just like that, Representative Liz Cheney is gone. If not in body, in power. She was the 3rd most powerful Republican in the House leadership and she lost that position for taking an odd, and at odds position to her colleagues; she insisted on telling the truth about the former president.

Nothing is punished so much as being right in a wrong world.  

She went down shooting though;

“We cannot embrace both the big lie and the Constitution," Cheney said on her way out the door. She says she'll do "everything I can" to ensure Trump never gets near the Oval again. "We cannot be dragged backward by the dangerous lies of a former president."

And then the door slammed on her, as a victory howl went up from Mar-a-Largo. High fives all around!

And she’s out, by a non-recorded voice vote, McCarthy and the House GOP were on-brand cowards to the end. This is what happens in today’s Republican party for daring to put your head up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t right…” You get that head chopped off. Dare to admit Trump actually lost the election by 7 million votes (which he did) and you’ve suddenly got Donald Sutherland pointing and screaming at you.

This is also what happens when a party becomes not a political entity of like-minded people, formed with the goal of governing, but a personality cult huddled around one god-like (or maybe, ‘god-claiming) person from whom all favor flows. To speak against that person, to poke that bear, gets you the fate of most who do venture their hand into the den; you get eaten.

Trump has consumed the GOP, well, since he’s lazy as hell, they consumed themselves for him, re-making the party from the ground up in gold plate, velvet curtains, and long red ties. They had their chance to walk, and almost did so after Trump incited the riot on January 6th, even McCarthy briefly grew a spine and blamed the President for his actions… and then went to Mar-a-Largo to kiss his ass and tell him how sweet it tasted. He was quickly followed by Cruz (who never misses a chance at humiliating himself, seems to enjoy it in fact), Lindsey Graham, (who literally has no shame, probably born without it) and others who have made the journey in spirit if not action.

"We cannot be dragged backward by the dangerous lies of a former president." Cheney said.

Sure we can. It’s happening right now, aided and abetted by the entire Republican party. The GOP is already there. They took that one little step, that toe-in-the-water after 1/6, shivered and went back in the Trump cave, never to venture out again. “Dragged”? Hell, they’ll happily march in lockstep by Trump. They like it, they want it, and have for decades. Trump, and everyone who has eyes and a keyboard (hello!) has said this; Trump did not spring up suddenly and unexpectedly, and this is true. The GOP arrived at Trump. Trump had his arms opened wide, and welcomed them… home. You can finger-trace the curve from the John Birchers in the 50s, to Goldwater in the 60s, though the Nixon ‘Southern Strategy’ in the late 60s-70s, to Reagan (a darling of the far-right from his time as governor of California) and his embrace into the GOP of far-right Christianity, to the demagoguery of Newt Gingrich and the rise of far right media in the 70-80s, all of these elements joining together with Fox News and Rupert Murdoch in the 90s to drive the right’s narrative ever farther and farther right to end at the warm embrace of… Trump.

End of the line. Everyone out.

Trump became the vessel for all the worst of the GOP; all the bile and hate and grievance and paranoia had found an umbrella to shelter under, a home to put their feet up, relax and plan/plot. They had seen each other across a crowded room and it was love at first sight.

Yeah. Ick.

Do not cry for Liz Cheney, I know I won’t. She is a person who supported torture, and threw her own lesbian sister under the bus to advance her career. She is an extremist in her own right, and is now enveloped by the hate her party has been nurturing for decades. The burning to the ground of the GOP has been coming for decades and it’s not over yet. Just as the Reagan/Gingrich movement purged anyone thought of as ‘liberal’ from the party, they will now also be purged for the sin of blasphemy, the sin of pointing out the nakedness of their own emperor. The purge is had been going on in the states for the past couple months, Cheney is just the most public national example of it.

No, Liz will be fine. She might lose her seat in the next election, but she will be seen as a martyr to the cause, and have many high paying speaking gigs and consultancies with the old guard Republicans (the true GOP) to tide her over before her inevitable run for president as the ‘Sane Republican” ™. She’s good.

The problem isn’t her, the problem is the GOP, once again, straining to reshape reality to a more comfortable (for them) environment for them to thrive. They’re trying to terraform democracy by getting rid of the ‘democracy’ part and forcing the country to accept it, basically trying to ‘Cheney’ the entire country until the only votes that count will be theirs, the only laws they obey will be the ones they pass and force on the rest of us, backed by the judges they appointed.

Don’t cry for Liz, she helped make this bed, She’s snug.

Cry for democracy.

The Insurrection Was Live Streamed

Huh. Where is the tear gas? Why aren’t the cops beating these MAGA idiots with baton, hitting them with rubber bullets? Weird.

Here we are. Gil Scott Heron was wrong, the revolution, the insurrection really, was televised. The nation, the world saw it happening in real time. In real time we saw a group of speakers whip the crowd up over lies and fantasies of a ‘stolen election’ with the President aiming the angry thousands directly at his own Vice President. It is a stupefying fact that a sitting president of the United states tried to overthrow the government and install himself for another term as president is... well, is there a word to describe this? It's such an overwhelming thing, it beggar’s description.

Seriously, I am so angry, furious, and fascinated at the same time. I find myself pulled in every direction. Furious at Trump and his enablers, who have been building up to this since 2015 with his CYA talk of 'rigged elections' (in case he lost, which he expected to). Yes, something like this has been coming for years with the cynical exploitation of the fear and grievance of his base. But I am fascinated by the passion and anger that drives the 'disenfranchised' Whites to think a grifting 'billionaire' gives a damn about them.

I fully expected something like this insurrection to happen, but not so naked and raw, so exposed and open. It was a river of grievance and anger, flowing from across the country and firehosed by Trump and his enablers right at the seat of American government. We must hold these terrorists accountable, every last one of them to the full extent of the law, but they were following the orders of people like Trump and his sycophantic and cynical enablers. They are every bit as much to blame as the Trump insurrectionists themselves. All need to be dragged blinking into the light of justice, but blame should be apportioned to those who believed the lies and followed, and those who didn't but thought it would look good on their resume. Those who called to overthrow a government with their eyes on 2022, or 2024.

These are resume builders, the cynical enablers, the 'why not-ers' including most of the 147 Republicans who 'objected' to Biden's palpable win (the number went down, slightly, to 138 after the insurrection), to the process of democracy they took an oath to defend.  Yet, here they were, objecting to avoid mean tweets, to position themselves for whatever race was next, ignoring the Constitution to gain the favor of a man who also ignored the Constitution. 

And five people died.

Was it worth it?

The 'base' seems to think so, pledging their soul to Trump and his 'next term' that will never materialize, a phantom 'four more years' the promise of which Trump has used to suck 300 million dollars out of them. They are willing to destroy democracy in order to ‘save’ it, by installing the dictator of their choice. 

This is not who we are!

But really, it is

It's crazy, a plot of a movie review on a 'so-bad-it's-good' youtube channel, not at all the sort of thing you associate with America. But that is because I'm a middle-aged White guy. Black and Brown will tell this is the America they live every day. Angry White people shoeing their ability to do the things that any person not White would be killed for.

They see no irony in this. Angry Whites thinking they have the right to cut in line, say anything they want, do anything without fear of being shot and killed (screaming into a policeman's face, actually pulling them to the ground and beating them into unconsciousness with an American flag), yep, everyday reality to many. I look at this and wonder in horror, they look and nod in affirmation. I see sick aberration, they see nothing new. 

Trump and the GOP know this, and play hard to the fear, the hate, and anger of the dying light, the panic of the waning White power, they mine that fear like the desperate prospector chipping away at a played-out mine, knowing this is all they have. This is why they fall into line with Trump and 'Trumpism', because it has taken over the party.

Without that White anger, the GOP would be nothing.

On my other site (www.tompstewart.com) I write about pop culture, history, comic books, my life as an actor and writer, various odd things. I would like to get back to that, really. I would dearly love to write about 1960s Batman comics, but these are not the times for an in-depth discussion of Batman’s ‘New Look’ of 1964. I can’t look away from this shit-show that is the Trump administration, and neither can history. I have to look, whether I want to or not.

We must evaluate and assign blame, hold the guilty accountable, now, and in future elections.

It’s our duty as Americans.

They Wanted a Massacre

Trump’s MAGA mob of traitors, bringing shame to the nation.

This was UGLY. The more we know about what went on, the uglier it is. They came with bombs, guns, Molotov cocktails, flex cuffs, knives, homemade weapons. They were looking for blood, chanting 'hang Mike Pence'. They were invited to DC by Trump himself, promising them it would be 'wild'. Trump and his enablers were calling anyone who actually acknowledged the fair outcome of the election was a 'traitor'. Rudy called for a ‘trail by combat’, Trump told them Mike Pence held the power (he doesn’t) to turn the election, and the White House, over to them, if he would only ‘do the right thing’. Anyone who stood in the way were traitors. ““We’re going to the Capitol,” he said. “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The president added: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he invited them to ‘walk to the capitol’ and ‘cheer’ the lawmakers on.

Vice President Pence announced that he would not object to the vote, which the president tweeted about, to his followers, the fired-up and angry mob he had just sent to march on the US Capitol. Trump told them, but his own rhetoric that Pence was now a ‘traitor’. He refused to do what Trump wanted him to do, but what he legally could not do. He would now just be part of the cast of traitors that stood between them and their prize

And they went looking for those 'traitors'. They went looking for a massacre.

They beat cops, they beat up reporters, smashing their equipment, the broke down doors, smashed windows, they ransacked the offices of the capitol, smashing and vandalizing as they went. They shit and peed on the floors and walls, looted, probably allowing foreign agents access to the building, including the Speakers laptop which went missing.

They beat a policeman to death.

Five people died during this insurrection, this attempt by Donald Trump to overthrow an election he can't admit he lost fair and square. He nearly got his own Vice President killed. It was ugly, deadly, and disgraced America in the eyes of the world while delighting its enemies.  

And they had wanted it to be worse, they had wanted actual blood for their ‘tree of liberty’.

Now, the very people who incited this travesty, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Keven McCarthy, Hawley, Cruz, and every Republican who defended this ‘stolen election’ nonsense, the 147 Republicans who objected on Jan. 6th to the certification of Joe Biden’s election, these people with blood on their hands are calling for ‘peace’, ‘healing’, ‘unity’, they are demanding not be held unaccountable for their own actions, their words, for inciting a mob that tried to do exactly what they were asking them to do.  

No.

Just. No.

The House will vote to impeach Trump, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He deserves it, a thousand times over. He’s a literal traitor to his own country. The rest must be held accountable, held to the oath they took when they were elected:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic”. That includes the President and those that supported and enabled the actions that led to the debacle, the insurrection aimed at installing Donald Trump as a king over America, because that’s would he would have been, that was Trump’s endgame here and that of his supporters. It failed, as any rational person knew it would, but Trump and his supporters are not rational. Never have been.

The only way to deal with them is the take them out of power and make sure they never get back in.

Never.

The Last Days of the Slow-Coup

Donny rallying his Redcoats.

Donald Trump has reached the Nixon ‘walking the hallways night at night swearing at the paintings’ stage. That hasn’t stopped him stepping up his desperate coup attempt by proposing in a White House meeting making election ‘lawyer’ Sydney Powell as a ‘special counsel in charge of the election, with a high security clearance and access to classified materials. This would put her in charge of ‘investigating’ the election, i.e.: making baseless charges from a high government position with resources like investigators and subpoena power. She could make a lot of election officials miserable, ruining their careers and their lives, dragging democracy through the mud for months.

Fortunately, this was shot down, but not before a lot of arguing and heated words, many from Powell herself, fighting for more power. Advisors pointed out she had yet to prove any of her accusations, prompting Powell to whip out yet more affidavits from the same dubious source she has used in the past. That doesn’t mean she will go away, or that Trump won’t go over his advisors and force an appointment.

Then busy little Donny, (busying doing anything but his job, or protecting America from Russian hacking or covid) in a meeting with Ken Cuccinelli, No. 2 at the Department of Homeland Security, asked that the DHS seize voting machines for an ‘examination’. Cuccinelli gingerly told the president that the DHS had no power over voting machines.

Not caring for that answer, Rudy Giuliani then called personally to ask Cuccinelli about seizing voting machines so they could be ‘examined’ (screwed and tampered with) by Trump partisans. The President’s personal lawyer asking to illegally seize property.

Maggie Haberman of the NYT reported: 

“Rudy Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, on Thursday night and asked him whether DHS could seize voting machines," Jonathan Swan reported, citing "a source familiar with the call."

Cuccinelli told Rudy the DHS didn’t have that power.

They really don’t like hearing ‘no’.

In the meeting with senior aides and Powell, was ex-general, and every bit as crazy as Sydney, fervent Trump (and pardon recipient) Michael Flynn. After getting turned down for his voting machine scam, and not being able to appoint Sydney Powell as Witchfinder General, Trump gestured to Flynn and asked about Flynn’s idea of martial law, using the military to overthrow the election and forcing either a national re-vote, or a re-vote of just the states Trump wants.

Yes, we have a President of the United States, asking to seize voting machines, demanding to appoint a persecutor-in-chief to go after his perceived ‘enemies’, proposing martial law, and calling for a violent overthrow of the government to reverse a lost election, with most of the GOP happy to do so.

This is treason.  

This is un-American. 

But he won’t succeed.

There are too many good people standing in his way who honor their oaths to the Constitution, and a few bad ones who know the gig is up, want to get their pardon, and get out. Trump can and will do damage on his way out, it’s the nature of the wounded animal to thrash, snarl and lash out at anything near… as they die.

Trump’s term dies the 20th.

And the marines know how to escort trespassers off the property.

The Stolen Steal That Must be Stopped

We must stop the steal that isn’t actually happening. Poor, deluded souls, almost feel sorry for them, but nah.

Stop the Steal.

Really?

What the actual fuck with these idiots. Do they believe this? Some do, god knows. I think most Republicans in the leadership don’t believe it, and are pushing this crap for their own motives (like being white-faced scared of Trump’s cult) they have shown, over and over to be brimming with bad faith. So, yeah, screw those guys hard. But the down market ‘Republicans’ (really, a lot are there for Trump and Trump only) actually believe it. Go on Parler (a ‘free speech’ site, but really full of whiny Trumpers, screaming, crying and threatening over the 2020 loss) and glory in the insanity; the people claiming Trump couldn’t have lost because of ‘crowds’, because of ‘boaters’, because of the ‘Trump Train’ truck rallies. It mystifies them that Trump’s super-spreader events didn’t somehow translate to a Trump win. Something musty be wrong! Trump must have won, and all evidence to the contrary must be wrong. Because! There cannot be any other result. can’t! Yeah, the crazy is thick and slimy with these desperate people, but the problem with desperate people is they do desperate things.

Like the ’Proud Boys’.

This is a group of idiots looking for an excuse for a fight. They’re that bully in Junior high that would get in your face, poke you in the chest and yell ‘What you gonna do about it’ while spraying spittle all over you. They want a reason, and if they can’t get one, they’ll just make one up. ‘Cuz, Trump, mofo!

Yeah.

We are in a dangerous time. We are in a time were the leaders of our government (126 of the bastards) are pushing a ‘lawsuit’ brought by an indicted Texas AG (who would like one of those pardons Trump is writing out, BTW) whose motives are questionable, and a majority of the Republicans in the House have signed out to it. They want to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans for the crime of not voting for Donald Trump. This is utterly un-American. This is a delectation of duty and a denial of the oath they took to defend the Constitution.  

Not that they care.

They hew to power, not to ‘truth’ or ‘rightness’, antiquated concepts that get in their way. Arguing in bad faith is second nature by now. Of course, that doesn’t make them any less the traitors than they are. Again, either they believe this nonsense, (they don’t) or they are pushing complete nonsense for they’re own benefit. It like they’re waving to Trump and saying ‘Hey! Donald! Look at me kissing your ass! See me kissing your ass? Tell your friends on Twitter…please..?

Yeah. Traitors for hire. The whole GOP is like this. Why people still vote for these grifters who lie to them election after election I will never understand.

Nuts.

321,094+ lost to covid, as of Saturday December 19th.

We may take as many precautions as we can but those who think the whole thing is a 'hoax' (as pushed by the president) refuse to take even the most basic measures continue to fuel the huge spike in numbers. We keeping falling into the pit because people insis it isn’t there. It's Insanity, utterly.

Those same defenders of Donny aggressively ignore the hundreds of thousands of deaths under his watch. They will point to the vaccine (not created by Trump) that came out while he was president that he seems to think he forced into being with his own mighty will. Bullshit. This is the idiot who denied the science, who tried to muzzle the scientists who were warning him how serious this pandemic would be.

321,094, I don't understand those who think this is acceptable, those who believe wearing a mask is somehow a horrible encroachment on their 'freedoms'. People are dying. If we had listened to the experts, if we had not allowed our 'leaders' to politicize the precautions to this damn virus, we could have been out of this by now. We are suffering, over and over, the arrogance of the minority.

We are chained to the least of us.

We await the coming of Biden/Harris not as a ‘savior’ but as sanity. The GOP already making plans so he won’t be able to fix anything (I said they were traitors, but we saw this behavior under Obama as well), and he will have a huge uphill stuggle just to do the basics of governing. That’s where we are, even simple agreements, like allowing the lights to stay on at the State Department is politicized. Everyday we have to fight the insanity because it’s important, because if we don’t turn on a light, the world sits in darkness.

January 20th cannot get here soon enough.

Trump Gives Up

Trump walks away, just like he’s walked away from everything worthwhile that didn’t have something in it for him.

296,637+ dead from covid as of today, 15,817,962 infected. Numbers spiking all over the country, the so-called 'red' states are getting slammed. Nearly every day we’re beating Pearl Harbor numbers. Every day setting new records, and the man who actually wants to handle the virus relief, Joe Biden, is being denied the information he needs to start helping the country on his first day. Why, because of pure, unadulterated, pettiness.

The guy whose response to the threat has put us at nearly 300,00 dead, put us into the vast and deep hole of despair, what’s he doing? Holding ‘vaccine conferences’ that the vaccine makers refuse to participate in (feeling it’s just another political grandstand, it was), where he takes laps for a vaccine he had little, if any, involvement in, and playing golf.

He’s walked away from everything important and worth caring about, shrugging his shoulders at the cratered job reports, the surge of unemployment, at the deaths. He’s done. He’ll keep working and milking the election grift for everything he can get, but he’s done.

He doesn’t care, and never will. Now that the election is over, he can just drop all pretense, bitch about the election and play golf. Screw the virus, and screw you.

Rudy Giuliani’s positive COVID-19 diagnosis has now led to a shutdown in the Arizona legislature. Doctors are saying since he had to be hospitalized now, he's probably be sick for days and had the chance to infect hundreds of people. His co-counsel, Jenna Ellis, has also tested positive and, like Rudy, has been attending White House staff parties, meetings, hearings. Both have exposed probably hundreds in their failed quest to overthrow a fair election.

This administration is irresponsible and utterly incompetent, they can't keep us safe, or even their own people. Covid has burned though the White House staff twice now, both because of arrogant maskless 'events' held at the WH, infecting everyone from the First Family, to members of congress, their staffs, the WH staff, insanity.

Because, of course... of course. What else should we expect?

They even had a plan. Back in the spring, a national plan was formulated but Trump and Kushner refused to go forward with the comprehensive plan to battle the virus because 'it only affects 'blue' states. Idiots. It's like passengers on the Titanic not worrying about abandoning the ship because their cabins are dry.

So, Trump just did little to actually help, taking over his task force briefings and treating them as if they were ‘The Trump Show’, contradicting his own experts, dispensing complete lies

This is utter cruelty, psychopathic indifference to the pain, deaths, and grieving of others. This is also typical of Trump's approach to everything; what's in it for me. He ignored the pandemic, as to fight it (he thought) it would hurt his reelection. He was wrong. To fight it, hard and public, would have been seen as heroic, to ignore and downplay it was seen as callous and cruel. It's probably the biggest reason for his loss. 

Since his electoral drubbing, he has completely given up caring about either the virus or the economy, or anything but trying to erase the label 'loser' from his name.

He doesn't care, he never cared.

And 296,637+ Americans are dead.

Trump Lies, Democracy Pays

“Suckers” as Trump would call them. But really, we’re all getting screwed.

Trump lost an election, he’s a loser, and he’s making sure we all pay for it.

He can’t admit to being a loser (which is what he is, a loser), so he’s screaming fraud. And he won’t stop for the next four years, hell, for however long he lives he won’t stop. There is, of course, no evidence of any widespread fraud. But this is about evidence, this is about the long con, and power. Trump yells ‘RIGGED!!’ He begs for money to ‘stop the steal!’ and then diverts that money into his personal ‘leadership pac’ (slush fund) to the tune of 200 million or there about. Jesus.

Insane. He’s grifting them, admits (at the crazy Georgia rally) to grifting them, and supporters give him more money to continue the grift.

I think the Kevin Bacon character in ‘Animal House’ defines the ardent Trump supporter. As a pledge being whacked hard on the ass all he can say is ‘Please sir. May I have another?!’

Yep. ‘Please sir, even though you are actually keeping my money and not giving it to fellow grifters Rudy Giuliani and Jena Ellis (Well, not all of it) please take more of my money anyway!’

Trump will probably announce a 2024 run, even if he doesn’t really mean it. This will ensure that he keeps owning the GOP and that all candidates have to kiss what must be a well-callused ass. It gives him the power and attention he desperately needs. Attention is like oxygen to him; without it he will wither and die.

Trump and the Trump Party (really, it kisses up to his ass so much it’s really the only honest label/name for the former GOP) is going to push this ‘rigged election’ nonsense and use it to shove (and probably pass) new and even stricter voting restrictions, coming down hard on Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, students, anyone who might be seen as a ‘Democratic base’. Trumpubican legislatures and governors will use the idiotic claims of the Great God Trump to screw anyone who might dare to vote Democratic. The ‘steal’ will be the excuse for years to come, a reason for draconian measures to make certain a Trump loss will never happen again, no matter which Trump is running. The Trumpers will punish anyone who would dare to vote against them, legal or not.  

This lie of a stolen election will consume the Republicans, if it hasn’t already. It will burn in those whose anger and grievance already overwhelms them and those Republicans that don’t show enough fealty to the lie, or to Trump himself, (the president-in-exile) will be purged from the party.

The faith cannot handle the influence of the non-believer.

Trump lies, and democracy pays. He and his supporters will make sure it will.

"We're All Victims.” …Yes, We All Are, Of Tump.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia. There, I had to use the most obvious joke, but only as a caption.

On a day that saw 227,885 new cases and 2,607 deaths from covid-19, Donald J. Trump, failed President of the United States and loser of the recent election, went to Georgia to have a campaign rally for a campaign that ended a month ago. He was holding a rally of some 10,000 mostly maskless people in a state that is reporting record infections and deaths.

And this was after calling Governor Kemp in the morning and demanding he throw out the votes of the people of his state, and call the legislature into session to have them hand the election to Trump. This is illegal, by the way. Simple as that. Still waiting for the GOP to say something about it.

They won’t.

Trump was tweeting insults at Kemp the whole plane ride to Georgia, demanding he ‘signature match’ the ballots (you can’t, after verification the envelopes and ballots are separated to ensure anonymity of the vote) and again calling for a special session to pick electors to steal the election for him. I imagine the whole of the election staff is really sick of his shit. “Oh god, he’s tweeting again…”

How did he greet the large crowd after Melania introduced him?

“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand.”

With a lie. Of course.

No, he didn’t win, obviously, and the popular vote wasn’t even close. In Georgia, the votes he constantly complains about were counted, and then recounted, Biden winning each time. Biden/Harris have won this election several times by now. The first lie set the tone, and was quickly followed by more. All on pretty much the same theme; what a big, big winner who wins super bigly at everything but especially elections, he is. He was a fire hose of nonsense, attacking the election, the Governor, the election officials, and anything that strayed across his mind.  

“We didn’t lose. Let me tell you, this election was rigged.”

If you read this far, or have been alive and paying attention the past month you know this is a lie. It’s grown from slightly amusing, to infuriating, to exhausting watching the electoral steal team Trump has fielded, claiming to have ‘proof’ of this huge election steal yet never offering any up.

“We actually won. Remember, so many of the states, I won every one of them. Every one of these states…. and by the way, the swing states that we’re all fighting over now, I won them all by a lot.”

So, he didn’t actually lose any states, he won them all, by a lot. It’s like he’s reading a thread of his own tweets out loud. He’s a human Facebook argument, dismissing all facts he doesn’t like.

“And I have to say, if I lost, I’d be a very gracious loser! If I lost, I’d say ‘I lost’ and I’d go to Florida and I’d take it easy and I’d go around and say ‘I did a good job’ — but you can’t ever accept when they steal and rig and rob.”

Sigh.

"We will find that hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast all over your state, and all over the country by the way. More than enough to give us a total historic victory…. Hopefully our legislatures and the United States Supreme Court will step forward and save our country"

I can’t see how screaming about ‘rigged elections’ will help elect two Republicans to the senate, but I can see how it would discourage anyone from bothering to vote. Why vote? It’s all rigged! That’s how they get ya!

"We're all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They're all victims. Every one of you."

This is the GOP slogan, the perfect representation of the Trump presidency founded on victimhood and White grievance. ‘It’s not our fault! It’s theirs! Anyone Non-White, immigrants, ‘antifa’, ‘elites’, all of them! ‘It’s their fault’. They’re the victims, it’s them being discriminated against, THEY’RE THE VICTIMS!!! And they gather together on the Georgia tarmac to listen to a man who will feed their greivance, and tell them fantastical tales in which they’re the heroes and everyone else is the villain.

No wonder they voted for someone who says out load what they whisper to themselves every day. "We're all victims.” They should put it on bumper stickers, tattoos, t-shirts so Trump can make even more money to throw in the 200+ million he bragged about wringing out of them to fight ‘fraud’. Oh yes, he told them about his grifting them. They cheered.

Of course, they did.

“We will never, ever surrender" Yep, not as long as he can add to that pile of cash, he and his family will continue to grift. And grift, and grift. And his supporters will gladly help him do it.

"Everything that we've archived is on the line on June 5th."

Yes, it is. Georgia, on January 5th, vote out the two crooks currently representing only themselves in the senate, and vote in someone who will actually work for you… and us.

They Can Run, But the GOP Can’t Hide from Trump

Trump, probably lying. Again.

We all have a lot of hope that the new Biden/Harris administration will bring some sanity, dare I say ‘normalcy’ to the country, but we also are staring at a Republican party determined to stop them from doing, anything, that will actually help the country. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans under Obama made the recovery from the Bush crash longer and more painful than it needed to be, simple as that, and did so deliberately knowing they were hurting people. As McConnell said, his job was to make Obama a ‘One-Term President’. It wasn’t to legislate, it wasn’t to help right the country after eight years of ruinous leadership, no, his only job was to ‘win’, not help. Obama had to fix the economy and pass the ACA without help from the GOP.

Obama had Mitch and the co-opped ‘Tea Party’ to contend with, Biden and Harris will have a GOP that is even father right. The Tea Party believed Obama was a Muslim radical, born in Kenya. The new version of the Tea Party, Oanon (with has taken over a lot of the base, and electing followers) believe all Democrats are Satan worshiping pedophiles who torture children to harvest a drug called Adrenochrome. Qanon is what is firing up the Republican base, and the god of Qanon is Trump. The leaders of the GOP have a choice;

One: cast off Trump and all the ugly he has revealed about the party,

Two: try to court Qanon and keep it under control, or

Three: just dive in and go nuts.

Far so, they’re doing both two and three.

The push since the election is just go plain full-on crazy, the more the better. I don’t see any signs of that stopping anytime soon. Going forward, the GOP/Trump/Qanon party, already a party of White grievance, will become all about that, it will fuel and drive it. It will be about ‘stolen elections’, about the shrinking White demographic, about ‘biased media’ (even Fox is taking hits for not towing the Trump line and lies), it will retreat even further into its bubble world, and it will strike out with the blind fury of a wounded animal. Trump knows a good grift when he sees it, and so does his family and all their enablers. He’s already shown he doesn’t care about the country, he’ll burn it all down just to get his way, so he’ll keep pushing, keep lying and keeping telling the people who want to believe that he, and they, were robbed.  

And they’ll believe him.

The Georgia and national Republicans are looking at polls showing the two senate races there either tied of the Democrats slightly ahead. Those polls are also showing them something else; Trump’s lies of ‘voter fraud’ and ‘rigged elections’ are causing some of his more fevered supporters to stay home. This can’t be good for them, but they can’t say anything out loud, even Perdue and Loeffler, the Republicans in the race, have to finesse their way around the crazy, calling the election and unfair while at the asking people to vote for them.

Crazy, right?

In 2022 we’ll see a wave of the crazy unlike anything we’ve seen before. Those Republicans running for reelection will have to either take the pledge and be just as crazy as the rest, or run the risk of being primaried by someone who is crazier than they are, or at least does a good job of acting that way.

So, what’s the Biden/Harris administration going to do the get even some of their agenda through the coming wall of craze?

Biden has a couple different ways to deal with this. Hopefully, he will not try to be collegial and work with them. I know, I know, that’s always the goal, to ‘work across the aisle, be bi-partisan. If Biden learned nothing from the Obama years, he should have learned that the Republicans are bad actors, they do not negotiate in good faith. Even those that might agree in private are going to be pushed, squeezed to the wall by the base who will demand blood… and they don’t really care which side bleeds; the Satanist Democrats, or the RINO’s who let their beloved Trump down. It’ll a race to prove which Republican is the most irresponsible, and that’s the Republican that will go forward. 

Right now, McConnell is saying the new administration won’t even get cabinet positions confirmed unless he personally approves of them, won’t even get a vote. No, unless he gets the Senate, (and maybe not even then) Biden will have to go it alone as much as possible, get things done administratively rather than through congress. And it won’t be easy, as every more will be protested, will be dragged into the courts. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Republicans filling out lawsuits now, to fill in the blanks later.

Biden is going to have to move fast, blitz the field before 2022, when chances are he might lose his House majority. He can do this with multiple teams pushing his agenda at the same time. I assume right now they’re readying Executive orders to sign, and they should do as much as they can as fast as they can, confuse and disorient the opposition into trying to figure out and deal with the numbers of different things coming out. Just as Trump does with outrages, committing new ones before the furor over the last one died out, Biden can do with policy. A Trump tactic for the good of the country.

That might be the best thing we’ll learn from Trump.

The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, They Just Hate it.

The poor, harried and over worked election officials of Clark County listen while a fool Trump supporter goes off on an angry, incoherent rant. They’s been hearing this cap all night at this point. He went away and they went on with their business.

2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers, setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.   

This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960’s), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.” 

Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?

Right.

As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting voting; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.

Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting altogether at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.

It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.  

Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.  

For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.

Burrowing in for destruction

How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be 'policy making' positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by 'presidential appointments', basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called 'burrowing', placing political allies into civil positions, but this is on a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.

Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”

Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.

Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.

This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.

The Republicans don't care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.

The Last Whine

Dude, buddy, calm the fuck down.

Trump voters, you need to try harder.

I don’t mean marching-in-the-streets-with-your-pet-AK-and-Trump-flags harder, no. You need to try harder to accept the loss, to ‘take the ‘L’

“The Lame-stream Media doesn’t say who is president!!” 

Uh huh.

Listen, because you need to hear and take this in. Ready?

President Donald J. Trump lost. By, the count so far, some 6 million votes. When all is said and done, it’ll probably be more like 7 million.

“But the lawsuits! We need to play out each and every lawsuit because fraud!!! Oh, the terrible, horrible, no-good fraud!!”

No. Sorry. The lawsuits have failed, the lawyers are all embarrassed (those that have enough morals left after working for Trump) and the judges have had enough.

The courts have all come down against Trump. I tell you, you Trump supporters are so far into right wing grievance you can't/won't see the truth. There just is no evidence of wide spread voter fraud, none, nada, keiner. My friend, stop listing to what the right-wing talking heads are saying and take a look at what the Trump lawyers are actually saying and doing in court, where they can't make stuff up. The judges are catching them every time: yes, there were observers in the polling places and tabulation halls, no, 'sharpies' didn't matter, no, no voting machines switched votes, nobody switched dates on ballots, no 'Biden/Harris' vans showed up in the parking lot of a polling place, then opened ballots and filled them out (in broad daylight, in a logoed van, where everyone could see!), and the rest of the nonsense they've been spouting, why haven't they gone to court? Filed complaints? For the most part, they’ve either dropped the claims (in Pennsylvania), are just making them on TV (the 'van' story on Laura Ingraham) or have watered their claims down to the equivalent of a shrug. It’s nonsense. Besides, if the evil Democrats could steal the presidency, why didn't they get the senate as well?

It literally makes NO sense. Come on, think about it, buddy. It just doesn't.

And now if he wants a recount in Pennsylvania, he’ll have to pay for it himself. 8 million, by Wednesday. You think he’s going to pony up that amount? Donald Trump? Pay for something?

Sit down, breathe. You want a soda, huh?

It's over, Biden won, Trump lost.

I know, you tell me over and over again, “look at the documents! Look at the facts.” Okay, that is what I'm doing. Trump is racking up loss after loss in the courts because he literally has no proof of fraud, like I said, none. Rudy, Jr., Eric, and Trump himself are spreading lies about our election they literally cannot back up. If they could, they would be winning in the courts (before several Republican appointed judges, btw), they would be backed up by the Republican election officials instead of having to smear them to bolster their own scheme.

He lost, the American people have rejected, soundly, Donald Trump and no amount of crying, screaming, and whining is going to change that. No, I’m not saying you’re doing any of that, friend. He is. He looks like an idiot, holding his breath, stamping his feet and saying 'nuh uh'.

Time to give it up.

Remember, Hillary, (now calm down) conceded the day after, and she had a better case for contesting than Donald (having won the popular vote), and the next day Obama had Trump and Melania to the White House, and the transition began. But they both have more class that Donald ever did, evidently. 

Yes, that was a dig, sorry.

Seriously. It's over. This isn't about the evil, evil media, but about reality. The right-wing media has never been about reality, but about helping Republicans, any way they can. Now that Fox News is actually trying to push back against the crazies they have on their airwaves in the evening (see Tucker have to apologize to a lady he accused of voter fraud? He wasn't gracious about it), people aren't getting the fix they need and are going to Newmax and OAN, there they will get told what they want to hear, regardless of the truth, or reality.

Is that what you’re doing? It’s okay, we all like our bubbles.

The reality is, Joe Biden (not a socialist, or controlled by them) and Kamala Harris (also, not a socialist, but a moderate like Joe) are the President and Vice-President Elect, and will be taking office noon, on January 20th. Donald Trump, if he does not leave, will be a trespasser and will be escorted from the grounds.

I know, it sucks, I was there in 2016. I feel ya.

You can take it.

No, you can keep the hat.

Donny, We Need To Talk

Loser Donny, the losing-ist loser in a family of losers. You don’t have to go home, Don, but you can’t stay here.

Donny, dude, you need an intervention, so let me ‘intervent’.

Donny, all this ‘voter fraud nonsense your pushing, even you know that’s crap, right?  You just come up with a crazy claim out of thin air (or your ass), and then go looking for evidence of your made-up claim, smearing election officials and voters as you go, and encouraging your supporters to continue to harass and threaten them? That doesn't seem to be how that is supposed to work… at all. In a real investigation, you investigate, find out what going on (you know, find evidence, facts, proof) THEN you make your judgement. Right now, you're just spewing nonsense ("I won the election... by a lot!" classic tweet there, Don, but not true).

I know, I hear you, you say I’ve been told ‘Trump is a liar’ over and over (anyone ever tell you this ‘talking about yourself in the 3rd person’ thing is weird? Cause it is). Ya see Donny, I have not 'been told' Trump is a liar, I see you lie ALL THE TIME. I have eyes and ears, almost every time you open that mouth, you lie. Sometimes I think you lie just for the practice. Now you’re claiming your election watchers were not allowed in the counting rooms? Come on, I mean, come on… Your own lawyers admitted in court that the watchers were in there, watching. Didn’t they tell you? You say there were 'massive' irregularities? What evidence is there? Investigate, find evidence, THEN you can make those claims, otherwise dude, you're just spewing. Seriously, if those vile, evil DemoRATS were going to steal elections, why didn't the steal the senate as well? They didn’t think of it? Uh… right.

All this yelling about fraud in the counting is dangerous, you know that, right? You heard about the death threats against the Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt has been receiving over the ballot counts? From your supporters?

No Donny, the evil 'progressives', ‘socialists’, and AOC are not making death threats in an election they won. You realize that makes zero sense, right? They aren't hiding anything. Seriously, you've bought into this so hard you don't realize you're talking and pushing baseless conspiracies.

Or do you..?

No one stole this election Donny, there is just no evidence of fraud, none, nada, zilch, just a lot of butt-hurt whinny Republicans who didn’t get their way. Even the Republicans in charge of the elections in their districts and states are saying it was a clean election, unless.... OF COURSE!!! They're only pretending to be Republicans! They've spent years undercover, knowing someday Biden would need them to smuggle in millions of ballots, disguised as Fox New camera equipment. Then, when all the aggressive GOP poll watchers' backs are turned... BAM! All those pre-marked ballots are thrown into the sorter. Election... STOLEN!!!

OMG… it’s all true!

Pre-tty nefarious. Really. See what I’m getting at here, Donny? See where it is allllll heading? Nutsy, coo-coo squirrel land. Yes, I'm making fun of the idea, but mine makes as much sense as what you, your family, and the GOP is selling. You do know Biden is up by 7 million right now. All fraudulent, I suppose? Donny, Donny, stop screaming. You want a soda? Press your Diet Coke button, buddy. Use it while you still can.

That better? Good. Where were we… Ah, yes, facts. Did you know that Republicans have struggled to win nationally for decades? Since 1992, only ONE Republican has won the popular vote. No, that wasn’t you pal, you lost by nearly three million votes. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. Donny, there is no evidence three million people voted illegally, none. No, there isn’t, No… Here I’ll press the button this time. It’s true, without the Electoral College saving them, Republicans can't win. You’re running out of angry White people. No Donny, it's not a conspiracy, it’s called ‘demographics’, and you’ve known it was coming for ya for years. And since you refuse to court POC, it's going to be harder and harder to win a national election.

Yes, even you, Don.

Come Donny, you know this nonsense is designed to undermine fair elections, undermine democracy (on the ‘Trump’ brand there), rile the armed far-right up (the ones making anonymous death threats, because classy) and give them a narrative to sell in 2022 (don't let them steal THIS one)…crazy.

You must know you can’t win, but you want to tear the whole place down out of spite. If you can’t have it, then no one can.

Like I said, on brand.

Movers will be here in January. Have your shit ready.