A Trump appointee admits Biden won 2020.

This is interesting. A This Week interview of Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Karl: Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?

Wright: He was president for four years. Clearly so. 

Karl: He clearly won the election?

Wright: I’m not an election evaluator but it sure seems to me like he did.

That's a crack in the dam. 

Tonight Der Führer will speak to you of the Reichstag Fire, um, no, Donald Trump will speak to you of the stolen 2020 election. Same lie, same theme, by the same people, 93 years later. Let's blow American democracy's brains out to calm the wounded feelings of childish Donald Trump, loser.

By Eddie Adams, Associated Press - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/world/asia/vietnam-execution-photo.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153554473

Tonight Donald Trump will come on television to lie.  

The lie has been told before, many times.  Terrible demonized opponents, most probably Communists, have tried to subvert the the will of The People.  It's a crisis.  You must sacrifice your civil liberties, even if only briefly, in order to allow the State to take on this terrible, terrible danger.

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party told the lie in 1933.  Communists, the German people were told, had burned down the Reichstag.  The solution was to put the gun to the head of the fragile German democracy and blow its brains out.

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State of February 28, 1933

In virtue of Article 48(2) of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence endangering the state:

Article 1

Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Therefore, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Article 2

If in a state the measures necessary for the restoration of public security and order are not taken, the Reich Government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.

Article 3

According to orders decreed on the basis of Article 2 by the Reich Government, the authorities of states and provinces, if concerned, have to abide thereby.

Article 4

Whoever provokes, or appeals for, or incites the disobedience of the orders given out by the supreme state authorities or the authorities subject to them for execution of this decree, or orders given by the Reich Government according to Article 2, is punishable—insofar as the deed is not covered by other decrees with more severe punishments—with imprisonment of not less than one month, or with a fine from 150 up to 15,000 reichsmarks.

Whoever endangers human life by violating Article 1 is to be punished by sentence to a penitentiary, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than six months and, when violation causes the death of a person, with death, under mitigating circumstances, with a penitentiary sentence of not less than two years. In addition the sentence may include confiscation of property.

Whoever provokes or incites an act contrary to public welfare is to be punished with a penitentiary sentence, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than three months.

Article 5

The crimes which under the Criminal Code are punishable with penitentiary for life are to be punished with death: i.e., in Paragraphs 81 (high treason), 229 (poisoning), 306 (arson), 311 (properties), and 324 (general poisoning). Insofar as a more severe punishment has not been previously provided for, the following are punishable with death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment not to exceed 15 years:

1. Anyone who undertakes to kill the Reich President or a member or a commissioner of the Reich Government or of a state government, or provokes such a killing, or agrees to commit it, or accepts such an offer, or conspires with another for such a murder;

1. Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1933, p. 83.

2. Anyone who under Paragraph 115(2) of the Criminal Code (serious rioting) or under Paragraph 125(2) of the Criminal Code (serious disturbance of the peace) commits the act with arms or cooperates consciously and intentionally with an armed person;

3. Anyone who commits a kidnapping under Paragraph 239 of the Criminal Code with the intention of making use of the kidnapped person as a hostage in the political struggle.

This decree is in force from the day of its announcement.

Berlin, February 28, 1933

The Reich President von Hindenburg 

The Reich Chancellor A Hitler

The Minister of Interior Frick

The Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner

You are going to be told that tonight.

The 2020 election was stolen, Donald Trump will lie.  It must have been, as his fragile toddler's ego can't handle if it wasn't. Surrounded by sycophants who help sooth his suspicions that he's dumb (spelled, as he just apparently learned, with a "b"), he truly can't handle the truth.  So the solution is to put the gun to the head of American democracy and blow its brains out.

Trump's administration, with its own goals and desires, all of them anti democratic, have their own aims in this.  MAGA is a set of willing dupes, drunk on the lies and apparently unwilling to get up from the bar stool and get a ride home.

There's a very real chance that Trump will succeed at this.  From today, until November, democracy will be besieged.  If the Republicans cannot completely subvert the November election, they'll seek to subvert it thereafter.  If the Democrats win in the fall, the period from November until January will be an all out effort to destroy the results of the election.  It won't even be subtle.

And sadly, many Republican members of Congress, like John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, will go all in to help Trump even though, in backrooms and with their close friends, they undoubtedly think he's a lunatic.  

The question usually is for something like this, what can be done.  Well, being honest and open about your honesty from now until January is about all most can do.  Don't vote for the Chuck Gray's, Harriet Hagemans, Reid Rasners and Megan Degenfelders.  Be true to your conscience and the country.

And frankly, don't bother with Trump's parade of lies tonight.  Trump's only real power is that people who surround him are convinced they will not bear the price of his sins.  They will, at some point.  Sending the message that we're done listening to Trump starts letting them know that the bill is coming due very soon.

The Post Insurrection. Part IX. The waiting upon justice edition.

 

March 15, 2024

March 19, 2024

Trump, who represents that his assets are vast, is not able to post a bond covering the full amount of a $454 million civil fraud judgment against him during appeal and has related the same in a filing in court.  He's seeking not to have to post bond.

If the Court does not grant him relief, execution on the judgment could start immediately.

Cont:

Donald Trump is suing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos over comments made in the last This Week episode in the Nancy Mace interview.

April 25, 2024

As Trump sits in a New York courtroom on charges of election interference for paying porn figures not to reveal his dalliances with them, while a married man, a host of figures were indicted in Arizona for an attempt to seat false electors.

May 1, 2024

Trump was fined for violating a court "gag" order in a contempt of court ruling in his hush money trial.  He was further warned that he may be jailed in a future contempt ruling, should this conduct repeat.

The same court is allowing him to appear at his son Barron's high school graduation, which apparently would be the first time that he would attend one of his children's high school graduations.

Elise Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against Trump prosecutor Jack Smith, in a move that itself lacks moral ethics.  Stefanik should be ashamed, but the concept of shame is sadly lacking currently.

May 30, 2024

Trump was convicted on all 34 Counts in the New York election interference case.

The claims that it was a political prosecution and featured a rigged jury will start any second now.

June 6, 2024

The Georgia election interference case, which is one of the more significant ones, has been stayed while an appeal goes forward on whether prosecutor Willis may remain on the case, and so human foibles will end up causing this case not to be heard prior to the election, probably.

Willis should step aside to let t his matter go forward.

July 15, 2024

To the general amazement of the legal community, the classified documents case has been dismissed on the basis of the Special Prosecutor having been appointed in violation of the appointments act.  The Special Prosecutor is going to appeal, but there's no way an appeal will be heard prior to the election.

This is frankly bizarre.

August 3, 2024

The criminal case against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election shall resume.  It's been stayed for 8 months pending the outcome of the Supreme Court opinion on immunity, which the Judge will now have to figure out how to apply.

August 28, 2024

A new amended indictment has been filed.

September 7, 2024

Not related to the insurrection, but to Trump's legal problems, his sentencing in the hush money case has been delayed until after the election.

Frankly, this makes no sense.

November 25, 2024

Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested that all charges against President-elect Trump be dropped in the Federal case.

The progress of official justice in this mater was horrifically slow, which in part is why we now have somebody as President Elect who should have stood trial well over a year ago.

And hence, as Justice shall not come, and the guilty shall go free, we conclude this trailing thread.

Last prior edition:

The Post Insurrection. Part VIII. The tangled web edition.

Second and Third mortgages.

It’s one thing to sell your soul cheaply. It’s another to keep taking out second and third mortgages on it until all that’s left is debt and shame.

The Atlantic on conservatives supporting Trump. 

Omissions.

Apparently, the Bibles that Trump has been selling omit the deuterocanonical books.  No surprise, as Trump claims to be a Protestant and his religion's backing is primarily from Evangelicals, who follow Luther's dislike of them, Luther's reasons for having omitted them now proven to be based on a misunderstanding though they may be.

However, the omission of all the amendments to the US Constitution following the Bill of Rights, which is included in the Bibles he's selling, is a bit harder to grasp.

Of course, why the US Constitution would be included with the Bible, along with The Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics of God Bless The USA, is also hard to understand.

Not a profile in courage.

From Twitter.

First:

Larry Wolfe@WYWolfe

So Barrasso and Lummis have joined the Pro Putin camp. Lummis makes the same tired argument that we can’t afford it. What is Barrasso’s excuse for abandoning his boss McConnell and instead lining up with the far right fringe of Senate crackpots?

8:51 PM · Apr 24, 2024

It is an excellent question, although probably rhetorical, as we all know why Sen. Barrasso did this, he's running to the right of himself to keep his job.  The Wyoming GOP has fallen to the populists, who are not conservatives, and who are definitely isolationist without a grasp on foreign policy.  We all know that.  And a lot of us know that Barrasso doesn't believe a lot of the things he claims to, which makes this situation, frankly, sad, but for the fact that when Russia quits bleeding Ukraine, if Ukraine doesn't win, American and European blood will flow next.

Barrasso knows that, too.

I used to see Barrasso frequently as a passenger in airplanes.  When I did, I always left him alone, even though I slightly know him, and knew his late wife a bit better.  I've wanted to speak to him, however, as I frankly can't believe that he believes a lot of the things he states, and I've wanted to tell him that.

Somebody did just that, however.   

Cleaned up to take out the awkward nature of Twitter:

Replying to @WYWolfe

drew@drew53430308

Was lucky enough to fly DEN-CPR with JB back in February, the VERY day they failed to move the bill. We were seated close to each other, and had to wait on the jetway in Casper for our carry-ons. So I introduce myself as “Lt Col so-and-so” and offer condolences about his wife’s passing, but then I mentioned the day’s failure, and how the rest of the week was a work session, hard to do from home…

I told him that the innocent civilians in Ukraine needed help, they needed our help to end the rapes and murders. I explained that America doesn’t abandon her allies on the battlefield. I explained that then, that very night, with a few phone calls he could fix it…

I looked him in the eye and told him he was one of the most powerful men on Earth, and that he alone could save lives, starting right then. I told him millions of innocents were counting on him, that this was his moment…

JB thanked me for my service, explained this was all JD Vance’s fault, and there was nothing he could do. Told me I didn’t understand how things work. I replied that I’d flown back enough dead and maimed kids to learn a lifetime’s worth of foreign policy.

Well, good for Lt. Col. Drew. 

Postscript:

There's good reason to believe that Barrasso is fighting for his political career this election against a surprisingly strong Reid Rasner.  Barrasso has had those in the electorate who were vaguely discontent with him for some time.  In retrospect, a lot of that opposition came from people who believe the "Uni Party" brand of nonsense in which anything the government spends is evidence that you are a RINO, unless of course the money is spent subsidizing highways, which is good.  The same people, of course, are hugely opposed to balancing the budget, although they don't realize it, as they'd have to be taxed at a fair rate, which they aren't in favor of.

Anyhow, with the strong rise of populism in the state Barrasso is in surprising trouble as he has a track records that isn't populist, but conservative.  Those who didn't like him in the first place trend that way, and the overall state GOP is now on a populist warpath, the fall of Liz Cheney being evidence of that.  So Barrasso is now campaigning as a populist.

The thing he might be missing is that for a long time there have been Republican moderates and true conservatives, the people that populists, who aren't real Republicans but rather are Dixiecrats, who weren't hugely fond of Barrasso either.  Dr. Barrasso also knew that, which was why he was pretty careful, usually, but not always, to take carefully thought out conservative positions.  Many in this same class weren't hugely satisfied with Barrasso, if not outright dissatisfied with him, and were held back from voting for a Democratic candidate only due to certain issues, such as right to life issues.  Irrespective of that, in 2018, the last time he ran, Barrasso take at the pools declined from a 2012 76% to 67%, which is the same percentage that Donald Trump took in 2016.  Democrat Gary Trauner took 30%.

Trauner ran for elective office several times and failed to win, but he was respected and stuck around in the public eye for a while after the 2018 election.  He's not involved in politics anymore, but his race is illustrative.  Barrasso had no real opposition in the primary, although some gadfly entrants did run.  This time he has real opposition.  Most of the old moderate Democrats became Republicans in the state long ago and by this time may be too disgusted by these recent developments to even vote in the primary, and those who do may abstain from voting in this race.  That might push things over the top for Rasner, as at the end of the day, Barrasso is at least partially counting on conservatives and moderate Republicans who aren't thrilled with him right now to vote for him.

And while the winner of that race will win, whomever it is may not have the level of support that they have in the past.  30% of the electorate was voting against him already, which was worse than Cheney did in 2020 and worse than Hageman did in 2022.

Related thread:

The 2024 Election, Part XVII. Standing on their feet or crawling on their knees.

The Post Insurrection. Unfit for any office. Part V.

Trump and Mark Meadows.

December 20, 1922

Lex Anteinternet: The Post Insurrection. Falling chips. Part IV.: December 19, 2022

The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the U.S. Attorney General on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting, assisting or providing aid and comfort to an insurrection.  It has also referred Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs to the ethics committee for failure to honor a subpoena to the committee.

The committee has completed its work and issues its report.

The U.S. Attorney General is unlikely to specifically act on the committee's referral, as it is conducting its own investigation.

The committee's report declared Donald Trump "unfit for any office".  Truly, he is unfit for any office and was unfit to occupy his last office, at least after the November election.

In addition to those noted above, Trump lawyer John Eastman was included in the referral on two of the charges.

As noted, I feel it's unlikely that the Attorney General will act on the referred charges, which does not mean that it will not independently charge Trump. Given the current pace of US justice, that risks being so slow as to being meaningless.  It'll happen, but my guess is that it will actually occur in late 2023 or in 2024.

For that reason, the Committee's findings and referral are significant.

The committee's work was significant, even though it has been generally discounted by Republicans and wholly discounted by Trump loyalist.  Wyoming's GOP, which has some figures who were at the insurrection, has actually bellied up to the bar and had repeated shots of the Kool-Aid.  Wyoming has set itself on the path of conservatives who are destroying conservatism through their obstinate insistence on being tied to Trump, who ironically may not really be a conservative at all.

Nonetheless, nationally, it appears the bloom may finally be off the rose.  After Trump's third (or fourth, depending upon how you read it) election defeat for the GOP, Republicans have been pulling away.  It'll be interesting to see if they manage the break.  Kevin McCarthy, who briefly broke away from Trump immediately after the election before running back into his embrace, is in real trouble in his bid for Speaker of the House and might not make it.  He's been referred for charges, and he just received a Trump endorsement for the position, something aimed at Trumpites in the House who may no longer really listen all that much to Trump either, the Führerprinzip having now exceeded even Trump.

The message there is that even as Trump has crashed into the GOP and caused it to burn down in a recent election, the House, for two terms threatens to lurch to the right, thereby pouring gasoline on the fire the Trump flame out has caused.

Mirroring that, Rona McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, is facing opposition from Trumpites and may lose her seat to even more hardcore populist Republicans, thereby virtually guaranteeing a 2024 electoral disaster for the party.

On an illuminating personal note, as I am generally usually (if not wholly relably) conservative myself, I was recently included in an email chain of a set of highly educated conservatives regarding an article by a conservative columnist who was writing that Trump, while in the author's view having been a really good President, was destroying his legacy.  He clearly is doing that, which is no surprise in these quarters. What was a surprise was the reaction of some of "why are the Democrats so fixated on Trump?"

That was an illumination. 

May on the Republican right truly believe that the reason that Trump remains in the news is that the Democrats and a Democratic press are focused on him as they have nothing to offer themselves. They are flat out wrong.

Like it or not, the GOP is a minority party and, through its current adherence to Trump, is likely to make itself a very tiny one.  Elections right now are decided by independents who disdain Trump and who lean towards the Democrats for the most part.  Trump remains in the news as Trump insists on being the leader of the party, and he makes himself rather difficult to ignore.

Witness, he's running for the Oval Office again, as somebody who tried to steal the election, and he resorts to such drivel as this:

WY Rep. Landon Brown

@lbrownhd9

Who the actual hell is going to buy this? Please let me know if you are. One cannot simply laugh hard enough at this showcase of lunacy.

1:31 PM · Dec 15, 2022

Why are Democrats fixated on Trump?  Because large numbers of Republicans won't recognize that the man threatened to end American democracy and failed to do so only because a few stood in his way.  He's lied about the result of the election and, moreover, while President, we now know, was so internally unstable that no matter what a person thinks of his implemented policies, to a significant degree it was only the restraint that his employees showed that kept some truly scary things from potentially happening.

Democrats are fixated on Trump because the Republicans are.  He commands a significantly loyal based that worships him in the mold of men on horseback.

From the Republicans who wonder, "why can't we move on?", well look.  Kevin McCarthy, who first acknowledged the insurrection, went immediately down to Mar-a-Lago to cut some sort of deal with the disgraced would be caudillo and is threatened not from the center of the GOP, for the most part, but from the right.  If he doesn't become speaker, it'll be because he didn't have triple shots of the Kook-Aide.  Rona McDaniel, who should be a disgraced failure, faces a threat from her right, not the center.

Want to restore conservative election hopes, and move past Trump? Republicans can do that by openly moving past Trump themselves.

March 19, 2023

Donald Trump, the subject of a New York state grand jury, has announced he expects to be arrested Tuesday.  He additionally posted:

PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

 IT'S TIME!!!

WE JUST CAN'T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE, THEY'RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!

Given what occurred last time he called for action, it's reasonable to regard this as an incitement to insurrection.

March 20, 2023

Secretary of State Buchanan, in order to counter claims that the election was tainted, published a set of facts on the Secretary of State's website demonstrating that it wasn't.  When he abandoned his post for the judiciary, the Interim Secretary of State left it up.

The new Secretary of State, Chuck Gray, who campaigned on "election integrity", is now in office and its gone.  Of course, by "election integrity" he meant the fable he campaigned on, that there was something amiss with the 2020 election.

March 30, 2023

Frank Eathorne, head of the state GOP and an individual who has taken the party deep into populist GOP territory, is running for an unprecedented third term as head of the party.

Repeatedly failed far right GOP candidate Rex Rammell is suing the Sublette County Sheriff's Office for its actions searching his horses for brand inspection. That inspection resulted in his being cited and convicted in a jury trial.

An early prediction on this is that Rammell is going to lose this suit.

March 31, 2023

A New York Grand jury has indicted Donald Trump in connection with the hush money he paid to pornographic actress Stephanie Clifford, "stage" name Stormy Daniels, which as an aside might be noted as the least effective hush money of all time.

That apparently isn't the actual crime, and while asking for hush money probably is, paying it very well might not be.  This is apparently connected with something else in the nature of being a campaign violation due to the way the money was handled.

There is, it might be noted, a second film femme fatale, in the form of a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who also received hush money which might be part of this or which might end up in a separate charge.

My prediction is that this is only the first of what will be several indictments, and this may prove to be an unfortunate one.  Prosecutions for campaign violations are rare, and New York's legal system can be accused of having taken on prosecutions for political reasons in recent years.

Wyoming Congressman Hageman decried the prosecution as a "witch hunt", which brings about the embarrassing flip side of this.   Trump is personally icky, and his payoffs in this area expressed a fear that Americans still had some sense of shame, which proved to be an inaccurate fear. They should.  The party that generally associates itself with "family" and values is now really cosied up with a guy who had at least two affairs with women who had prostituted their image for cash, something that in any prior era would have been the end of his political fortunes. Granted, he apparently denies the affairs.

April 4, 2023

Donald Trump was indicted by the State of New York.  He plead "not guilty"

Indictment.

And so we conclude this installment.

Last edition of thread:

The Post Insurrection. Falling chips. Part IV.