Skip to content

On this day (actually on yesterday) in Trump history

Thursday, January 4, 2024

I keep a sort of journal, usually only a few paragraphs a day. No Thoreau or Pepys am I, but during the Trump years I usually put in something about whatever idiotic thing the stable genius did on that particular day. The journal is on my Ipad, and it has an “On This Day” feature that makes it easy to look at entries from the same date on previous years. I read them to my wife most nights, so we can relive our boring lives, but I skip the parts about the genius. That is, i don’t read them to her, but I do look at them myself. It never ceases to amaze me how much of his bizarre behavior has been assigned to the memory hole. Again, if Joe Biden did any of this stuff we’d never hear the end of it.

In any case, it occurred to me that I might, every once in a while, resurrect some of this stuff. This is from January 3, 2018, and it is illustrative of something that continues to happen in the MAGA world. It is the case that no matter how much Trump abuses his acolytes, they are always willing to come back for more. In this case, we’re talking about Steve Bannon. Michael Wolff had just published a book about the Trump White House and Bannon was quoted, and he didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about the Trump campaign:

He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York. A trusted intermediary had promised documents that would “incriminate” rival Hillary Clinton but instead of alerting the FBI to a potential assault on American democracy by a foreign power, Trump Jr replied in an email: “I love it.”

The meeting was revealed by the New York Times in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

So Bannon basically accused the Trump campaign of treason. I’m not arguing with him, but it didn’t go over well with the genius, who released the following statement:

”Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

”Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base — he’s only in it for himself.

”Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

Pretty harsh language from both sides, not something most people on either side of the equation would be likely to forget, but my guess is that they both have. In MAGA land, one says what suits ones mood or interest at the time one says it, and then one proceeds to forget it if it suits ones interest. Just ask Mike Pence, who has totally forgotten that it was fine with Trump if Mike Pence was killed by the mob he sicced on the Capitol. And it’s true, as well, that Bannon had cause to get back to kissing Trump’s ass, inasmuch as he needed a pardon after he was indicted for defrauding Trump’s MAGA followers by claiming to use their money to build a wall.

Yet more proof that there simply is no fixed reality for Trump specifically and Republicans generally. They will assert anything that suits their purpose in any given moment, and assert the contrary the very next moment of that serves their purpose. Just ask Joe Rogan.

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Dean Baker calls out the media

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

I’m a big Dean Baker fan, but sometimes he just doesn’t get it. Take this post, in which he complains as follows:

It may not qualify as “The Big Lie,” but the media feel the need to constantly claim that young people can no longer afford to buy homes. The latest salvo is the Washington Post telling how young people have to live with their parents to save money for a down payment:

“The trade-off comes down to temporarily relinquishing a measure of independence to achieve a milestone increasingly out of reach for people their age.”

This is not true. Homeownership rates for people under age 35 are actually above their pre-pandemic level.

What Dean doesn’t appear to understand is that there’s a rule, unwritten though it may be, to which the major media must adhere. If a Democrat is in office, one must put a negative spin on everything in the economy. A corollary of that rule is that while, when a Republican is in office, one must scour Midwestern diners to interview fans of the current president, when a Democrat is in office there is no need to seek out and interview his or her supporters. Perhaps, to give the media the benefit of the doubt, they think that anyone with a brain considers such diner patrons risible curiosities while people who support Democrats are simply uninteresting rational people.

Despite Dean’s failure to understand this media-wide rule (or, more likely, expound on it, as I’m sure he’s actually aware), his economic analyses are well worth reading. I’m one of his Patreon supporters and he’s worth every dime. Well, actually it costs more than a dime.

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

Looking back on a horrible no good year!

Monday, January 1, 2024

I’m sitting here on the First of January, having spent yet another New Years Eve doing nothing, and remembering what a horrible year I had last year, all because, as they’ll tell you on Fox, of Joe Biden, who is personally responsible for anything that goes wrong. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this stuff, and I’ve seen the light. The folks at Fox are right. It’s all Joe Biden’s fault and everything was great when Trump was president.

Sure, my 401k is worth more now than it was a year ago, but that’s small consolation for all the other financial woes we had in the course of the year. When Trump was president everything was great, but last year we had to replace our washing machine here at home, the refrigerator at our house in Vermont, pay for roof repairs at our house in Vermont (and don’t start rolling your eyes about someone with two houses complaining about their money woes), besides paying for expensive stuff that we didn’t really need but ended up buying anyway. And that’s not to mention the stovetop microwave that’s not working right, and the sink in the downstairs bathroom that needs replacement. The sink is less than 80 years old and it already needs to be replaced! None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for Joe Biden, who is also trying to keep me from getting a gas stove that I don’t want. Sure, the economy is supposedly doing great, but the little guy like me still can’t get everything he wants for nothing, like those immigrants in those caravans can.

And it’s not just financial woes. I think I’ve mentioned that I spend a lot of time on my bicycle, but I hardly came within 1000 miles this year of the number of miles I biked in 2020, and why was I able to do so much that year? Because Donald Trump helped make sure there was nothing else to do, like see other people, travel, eat out or just go shopping. If Trump had been president in 2023 I bet he’d have managed to make sure that I could concentrate solely on bike riding, instead of all those other frivolous activities. I mean, what’s so great about being with other people, getting to know your grandchildren, and seeing friends and relatives?

And what about the weather? Ever since Biden got in, the weather has been awful. It rains all the time, and when it doesn’t it’s cloudy, and when the sun shines it’s too hot. We didn’t have a White Christmas, did we? But you can bet it will probably snow soon and screw things up. Hardly anyone remembers that the weather was always perfect when Trump was president. And have you noticed how the sun rises really late and sets really early lately? We had way more daylight when Trump was president

I could go on, but really, isn’t it all obvious? It’s really disgusting how a senile guy like Joe Biden can so craftily undermine the country while making it look like things are going well.

Looking on the bright side, maybe this post can get me a spot on Fox and Friends.

All this being said, Happy New Year to anyone who happens to read this.

Filed in Rants | | Comments (0)

A look ahead with added random thoughts

Saturday, December 30, 2023

The year is coming to an end. Almost every year, if not every year that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve written a year end post speculating about the coming year. For instance, at the end of 2019 I was both totally prescient so far as predicting that Joe Biden would be nominated and elected and the media would be pursuing the Hunter Biden non-story, and also absolutely wrong when I predicted that the Republicans would do the rational thing:

On January 21, 2020 Donald Trump will be consigned to the memory hole, like his most recent Republican predecessor, and the media will rush to proclaim that the Republican Party has been purged and is now, once again, the responsible party they knew and loved before the Trumpian aberration came along. Lindsay Graham won’t remember anything about the man. Both siderism, which has begun to be in a bit of a bad odor lately, will see a new rebirth.

I was even wrong about both siderism, because it a) never really went away, and b) didn’t need a rebirth because see a).

The difference between that year and this is that there was reason to hope. The thinking was that if we could get rid of Trump we could return to a sort of normalcy, though we would still be stuck with a Republican Party full of extremists, and it was fairly certain that we’d get rid of Trump. Who could have predicted (probably plenty of people did) that a majority of Republican politicians would go along with Trump’s lies about winning the election.

We now face the most important presidential election since that held in 1860. If the Democrats don’t win the presidency and capture both Houses of Congress, we will become, at best, an autocracy, and at worst, a fascist dictatorship.

The last few years have exposed, as never before, the flaws in our constitution and the form of government it created. It has become virtually impossible for the majority to get its way in this country, while, oddly enough, polls seem to show that the majority usually wants the right thing. There are obvious ways to fix things so that, for instance, the extreme gerrymandering that has handed this country to a whackjob minority could be abolished in favor of a representative legislature that truly reflects the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, the only way to get there under our present form of government is by a constitutional amendment process that itself is easily held hostage by a minority. While there may be ways to accomplish some reforms without a constitutional amendment, any attempt to do so would be struck down by a Supreme Court which no longer even pretends to follow established legal precedents or what were once settled rules of statutory and constitutional construction.

All this brings to mind the story about Kurt Gödel, the famed logician, who, when about to become a citizen, told his friends that the constitution was fatally flawed:

When Gödel was studying to take his American citizenship test in 1947, he came across what he described as an “inner contradiction” in the U.S. Constitution. At the time, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was good friends with Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern. Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state. Morgenstern tried to convince Gödel that this was very unlikely to happen, but Gödel remained very concerned about it. He was an Austrian by birth and, having lived through the 1933 coup d’état and escaped from Nazi Germany after the Anschluss, had reason to be concerned about living in a fascist dictatorship. Morgenstern had a number of discussions with Gödel about his concerns, and also told Einstein about them.

No one knows for sure what Gödel felt was this fatal flaw, but many, with good reason, share his fears today, and the nature of the Constitution’s many flaws is becoming ever clearer. Unfortunately, one never gets the impression that many of our politicians of either party share Godel’s fear. Perhaps they take their cues from the pundits, too many of whom spend their time trying to explain why Republican extremism is caused by Democrats. Whatever the reason, failing to appreciate or expound on the risk only makes a tragic outcome more likely.

To get to some specific predictions: I’m inclined to agree with those who think the Supreme Court will refuse to take up Trump’s immunity appeal once the DC Circuit rules against him. That saves Clarence the need to recuse himself, among other things. On the other hand, there’s not much question but that they’ll overrule the states that have declared that the insurrectionist can’t appear on their ballot. They’ll adopt one or more of the strained reasons that have been put forth about why the Amendment does not apply to the genius, or come up with one of their own. Maybe, for instance, a formal Declaration of Insurrection, is a condition precedent to applying the Amendment, unless, of course, the person charged is a Democrat.

Looking on the fairly dim bright side, if somehow Trump is denied the Republican nomination, he will undoubtedly urge his followers not to vote, which would hand the election to the Democrats, unless Joe Lieberman and RFK Jr., manage to achieve their goal of turning the nation toward fascism. No one should fool themselves into believing that a Republican other than Trump would respect democratic and constitutional norms. The party is now a full on fascist party and that won’t change unless they are decisively defeated at the polls while we still have somewhat fair elections.

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (0)

Bring it on

Saturday, December 16, 2023

So, the Republicans have initiated the impeachment process, all of them voting to do so, despite the fact that they have no evidence of wrongdoing. All the so-called “moderate” Republicans went along with it, though you can bet whatever part of your body you like that they did so unwillingly, but they all feel the necessity to hold onto the whackadoodle base that they have helped create. After all, if they don’t get their votes, they can’t win, particularly if their districts have a reasonable percentage of sane voters. They may not get those votes anyway, because I’m convinced that if Trump has been convicted of a crime and is unable to get the nomination of the fascist party, he will tell his people to stay home, and they will. In that event, voting for the impeachment resolution, and perhaps ultimately for impeachment, will surely cost them plenty of votes they might otherwise get in the swing districts they “represent”.

Among other things the Republicans nationally have been attempting to make sure that the history taught to our kids is a fantasy history, one in which, for instance, the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. At least we can give them credit for wanting to live in a world in which no one learns real history, even themselves, as they have clearly ignored it when it comes to impeaching Joe Biden.

They tried this before, though they don’t appear to have learned much from that history. They actually had a smidgen of dirt on Bill Clinton, though as most of the country agreed, it didn’t merit impeachment. What they seem to have forgotten is that they paid for it at the ballot box, and it’s quite likely it will happen again in 2024 if they spend a substantial part of the year spinning their wheels but kicking up no mud onto Biden.

The Democrats did not suffer from impeaching Trump for the simple reason that a majority of people in this country recognized that the impeachments were justified. If the Republicans proceed with the Biden impeachment, particularly if they bring it to a vote, it will simply provide ammunition for the Democrats, who, despite their overall inability to message well, can’t help but see the value of the gift the Republicans are giving them.

Filed in Crazies, Republicans | | Comments (0)

For once, it’s true that both sides are at fault

Thursday, December 14, 2023

I can’t quite get my head around the charges and countercharges about anti-Semitism related to the current war in Israel. Recently a college president was forced to resign because she incorrectly (according to the right wing-there actually was no right answer that the Republicans would accept) answered a gotcha question from a Trump Republican, who herself is a member of a party that is nothing but welcoming to anti-Semites, so long as they vote Republican. (Remember, Jewish space lasers?)

There are no good guys among the combatants in the war in Israel. What Hamas did was evil and an act of terror. What Israel is doing to the residents of Gaza is also evil and involves acts of terror. It appears to have resolved to push all the residents of Gaza out of their homeland to punish them for the acts of a group over which they exert little to no control. Israel’s policy toward the residents of Gaza was such that it created the conditions that almost guaranteed that some residents of Gaza would resort to violence against it. That doesn’t excuse the actions of Hamas, but it can’t be denied that a more enlightened policy on Israel’s part may have made a difference, and, if not, would have enhanced its moral standing.

It is hardly surprising that there are some people in this country who insist that all the evil is on one side. To a certain extent, when such talk takes place at universities by students, one can write it off to the typical tendency of young people to want to see things in black and white. It’s not a black and white situation, however. It’s shades of gray all over, but the fact is that those who see the Israelis as the sole bad guy are being lumped together with those who simply condemn Israel’s tactics. All such people are being tarred as anti-Semites, while those who insist that Israel can do no wrong, while it slaughters thousands of men, women and children that have done it no wrong, get a free pass.

Israel has become, over the last several years, the type of authoritarian state that America may soon become, if a certain criminal gets back in power. That is simply a fact and stating as such is not anti-Semitic. If it is, there are apparently plenty of Jews in this country that are anti-Semitic, because there are plenty that don’t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.

UPDATE: Just a few more links to illustrate some of the points I made above, here and here. Again, it must be pointed out that if Hamas had the resources they would do as the Israelis are doing and it should be kept in mind that they don’t much care how their decision to initiate this war is harming their own people.

Filed in Foreign Affairs | | Comments (0)

You can’t make this stuff up

Saturday, December 2, 2023

It’s pretty much a given that if Republicans are accusing anyone of anything, they are doing that thing themselves, but I have to admit that this particular example amazed me nonetheless:

The far-right Christian nationalist organization Moms for Liberty issued, then later deleted, a statement declaring support for its co-founder after her husband, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, was accused of sexual battery by a woman who allegedly has had a consensual “three-way sexual relationship” with the married couple.

“The Sarasota Police Department is investigating a sexual battery allegation against Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler,” The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. Bridget Ziegler, the Moms for Liberty co-founder and the spouse of Christian Ziegler, “has become a star within the MAGA movement,” the FLCGA notes.

“Christian Ziegler is also alleged to have secretly videotaped the sexual encounters between the couple and the woman, sources said,” the FLCGA added. Moms for Liberty was named an anti-government extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I won’t comment on the likelihood that these people did exactly as it is alleged, except to point out that there is a pattern of such allegations against Republicans turning out to be true. Just pointing that out. They are of course, innocent until proven GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!

Just an observation, but if you’re going to run an organization dedicated to persecuting gay people, but you want to engage in gay sex yourself, you probably oughtn’t to preserve your encounters on tape. Just saying.

Yet another piece of evidence that when they tell you they are for liberty, they are really saying they are “for liberty for me but not for thee”.

This is yet another of those stories that one would never hear the end of if the actors involved were Democrats, but it’ll fade away in no time, if it gets much attention from the media at all. I mean, poor George Santos had to lie with every breath he took, and commit crimes on a daily basis before he could grab their attention. Also, yet another one of those stories which, were it in a piece of fiction, would be criticized as far too improbable.

Filed in Hypocrisy | | Comments (0)

Everything (Republican) is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Just before he died, John Lennon did an interview with Playboy, and he observed that “everything is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?”. It may not be universally true, but it’s mostly true about anything Republicans or their fascist allies say or claim to do. Case in point is the aptly (for Republicans) named Moms for Liberty in that the group exists solely for the purpose of imposing their “values” on the rest of us. Of course that is completely consistent with the right wing conception of the word “liberty” in that they fervently believe that liberty consists of the right of the powerful to oppress those with little or no power. You know, like corporations should be allowed to smash unions, cheat consumers, or poison the environment because that’s liberty or like people who call themselves Christians, despite their scorn for just about everything Christ advocated, should be allowed to impose their “religion” on everyone else, even forbidding women with life threatening pregnancy complications to get the treatment they need to save their lives. So you see, liberty is the opposite of what it is, isn’t it?

What brings this to mind is this post at Crooks and Liars, where we learn that the Wisconsin GOP gerrymandered legislature is preparing to ban books at the instigation of the aforementioned Moms for Fascism Liberty.

All over the country these fascists are trying to make sure that our children don’t have access to any book that fails to reinforce their political viewpoint, including, of course, any book that fails to relate a fictional history of this country in which all slaves were happy and really a bit disappointed to be freed, and, among other things, in which “in every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterwards”. The latter statement is true if you don’t count the countless wars against Native Americans, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the theft of the Panama Canal Zone, and several other instances noted at the link.

The one hopeful note in all this is that Moms for Fascism Liberty (oops, screwed up again) took a drubbing at the polls this November. We can only hope that the Democrats will make an issue out of book burning, which, when I was a kid, had a bad reputation, and, I think, still does.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Hypocrisy | | Comments (0)

Is this really a big deal?

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Multiple other media outlets I’ve read seem to agree with Truthout that Former Trump Lawyer’s Revelation is ‘Devestating for Trump, Legal Experts Say. This refers to the leaked proffer testimony of Jenna Ellis summarized as follows:

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis told prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., that a senior aide to the former president told her he was “not going to leave” the White House even after losing numerous legal challenges.

Ellis in a video of a confidential proffer session with prosecutors obtained by ABC News and The Washington Post said that Trump aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” would refuse to leave the White House even though she told him that their cause was “essentially over.”

“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave,’” Ellis recalled. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’”

Now, I haven’t seen the whole video but I’ve seen her testimony characterized the same way multiple times. As I said in a recent post, maybe times have changed a lot since I was a practicing lawyer, but I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out why this is devastating.

First, I should state that I have no doubt that what she said was a true recounting of her experience, and that Scavino was absolutely conveying what Trump had said, either to Scavino himself or to others with whom Scavino had talked. But there’s still a slight problem. Herewith the definition of hearsay from the Oxford English Dictionary:

the report of another person’s words by a witness, which is usually disallowed as evidence in a court of law

Now, there are exceptions to the hearsay rule, but I don’t believe any apply here. Ellis would essentially be testifying that someone told her what someone else said. You could use that testimony against Scavino for any part he may have played in the plot to overthrow the government, but you can’t use it against Trump. There are good solid reasons for the hearsay rule, as if hearsay were allowed, there would be no way to subject the testimony to any type of substantive cross-examination, as the witness could simply maintain that he or she was simply repeating what she was told.

An interesting question about the Ellis testimony has to do with the identity of the leaker. I can’t see that anyone working for Fani Willis would have an interest in leaking it. I have the impression that the tapes would be shared with the various defendants, though I don’t know if that happened yet, and I suppose Ellis herself might have a copy. It certainly seems possible that, if they have it, the Trump people might have leaked it so they could make some sort of argument to the effect that it was leaked by the prosecution and therefore the charges should be dismissed or testimony excluded.

UPDATE: Apparently Fani Willis is fairly sure that no one in her office was the leaker. She wants a protective order, claiming that the “release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case, subjecting them to harassment and threats prior to trial”. She’s right about the intimidation. I hadn’t cited that as a reason for the leak, probably because, once again, it wasn’t the sort of thing that was done back in the olden days when I practiced law.

Filed in Lawyer stuff, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

New trends in lawyering

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

I’ve only been retired from the law for a few years, but it is becoming clear to me that the practice of law has changed dramatically since my days before the bench.

In the olden days, if you were taking a legal position in a case, you would try to convince the judge that your legal position was correct, or at least a reasonable expansion on existing law, and you would do so in a way that showed respect for the judge, since after all, it was he or she that would make the ultimate decision.

Apparently, it doesn’t work that way anymore, at least if the behavior of Donald Trump’s lawyers is any indication. Consider the latest. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bar cameras in the courtroom. A number of media outlets have asked Judge Chutkan, the judge in DC, to nonetheless allow cameras in the courtroom. Trump’s lawyers have joined them, but they have apparently adopted a strategy consisting of citing no law in support of their position, announcing in advance that they intend to play to the television audience which is precisely what the Department of Justice said they would do, and insulting the judge, as a few excerpts from their brief establish:

“Every person in America, and beyond, should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand and watch as, if there is a trial, President Trump exonerates himself of these baseless and politically motivated charges,” said the filing.

It accused Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team of violating Trump’s constitutional rights and attacked Chutkan for allowing “these attacks,” thereby “placing the interests of his political opposition” above his legal protections.

“These proceedings should be fully televised so that American public can see first hand that this case…is nothing more than a dreamt-up constitutional charade,” it said.

Bear in mind that they are asking the judge to set aside a decades old rule and make an exception in this case, so it seems a bid odd that in doing so they pretty much promise to disrupt the proceedings precisely because they are being televised, thereby causing precisely the harm the rule is meant to prevent.

The only conclusion one can reach, if one rejects the possibility that all of Trump’s lawyers are totally incompetent, is that, knowing they have no legal basis for their request, they are doing what they can to make their increasingly senile client happy and furnishing some lines he can use later to grift more money from his base.

Filed in Lawyer stuff, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)