Trump Could Maybe Refuse To Accept A Loss in 2020

It's about time something got real.  JFC, this is bananas -- banana republic shit.

Quote :

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been meeting with former President Donald Trump and “Cabinet members” about plans to “move forward in a real way,” he claimed in a Newsmax interview on Friday.

He refused to divulge the specifics of plans being discussed with Trump — whom he referred to as “the president” — at the former president’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.

Trump is “a president who is fully engaged, highly focused and remaining on task,” Meadows insisted.

“We met with several of our Cabinet members tonight, we actually had a follow-up ... meeting with some of our Cabinet members, and ... we’re looking at what does come next,” Meadows said.

He didn’t identify any of the “Cabinet members.” It was unclear if he was referring to Trump’s former Cabinet members or if some new group has been formed and is being referred to as a Cabinet.

I was hoping, really hoping, that the daily outrages would stop when Orange Julius Caesar was voted out of office.

He's still trying, with new Third Reich memorabilia that misspells "official."

Today August 13 is the day the delusional Stop The Steal folks say the truth about the election will be revealed, the Supreme Court will rule the election was invalid, and Donald Trump will be re-instated as president.

Hold onto your hats for some new violent insurrectionists cosplay.




P.S. - SCOTUS isn't even in session.

Well, 8/13 came and went without a re-instatement or even any rallies that I've heard about. Do you think this means the Q-Anon conspiracy is kaputski?

Yeah, me either.

Mike Lindell has lost all credibility, even with his supporters.

Will he slink away into the shadows?

Will the Dominion lawsuit for $1.2 billion ruin him?

Or will the Russians run him for president in '24?

According to Joy Reid, the next insurrection is being organized for September 18. The insurrectionists are telling other insurrectionists not to plead guilty, because they will be pardoned when Trump is re-installed in the White House.

You can’t make this shit up.

Kellye SoRelle wrote:

“I have so much stuff in there,” she wrote, referring to her phone. “They either think i am the mastermind or they wanted a free dig through everything ― either way it is unethical.”

Gosh, she must not be much of a lawyer (surprise, surprise).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oath-keepers-trump-capitol-stewart-rhodes-kellye-sorelle_n_613a03ebe4b0640100a18249

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Seizing an attorney’s electronic devices raises a whole host of legal issues that prosecutors must sort out. After the FBI seized Rudy Giuliani’s phone in April, the government agreed that a “special master” should be appointed to determine which communications were protected by attorney-client privilege.

But:

Quote :

SoRelle, who doesn’t represent any of the defendants named in Jan. 6 cases but has fundraised for defendants’ legal fees, has served as a media contact for reporters writing about the Oath Keepers and the Jan. 6 investigation.

The TV box is calling today's rally on the Capitol a "far-right gathering" but here's the thing.  These Trumpist insurrectionists go WAY beyond the normal left-right political alignments.

They're more than right-wing, more than FAR-right-wing.

They're fascists.  Fascism seeks to rule through force and intimidation, fascists see violence as justified in the service of a cause, fascists see any opposition as "enemies of the people."  Let's call them what they are.  They have no interest in democracy or majority rule.

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters, quoting the band WASP in 1983), wrote:

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Kellyanne Conway in 2017 wrote:

Our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that, but the point remains that...

Last night on Chris Hayes he ran a clip from Ted Koppel's new show (9/18/2021) on the Mayberry RFD replica in Mount Airy, NC.  On a bus full of white haired old coots longing for the "simpler days" on the early 1950s when women and Negroes knew their place, he asked "How many of you think we had a fair election?" (10:18 in the below clip).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-trip-to-the-original-mayberry-the-andy-griffith-show/
Two hands go up out of about 14 people.  The rest believe the Big Lie: Democrats stole the election and Donald Trump is somehow really still president.  They think the January 6 insurrection was busloads of paid actors ("BLM people") brought in to discredit Trump. One woman says proudly, "We don't even watch the news on TV anymore. We don't feel like we are being told the truth. And we find our truth in other ways, and I won't say what those other ways are, but I feel like we're not being told the truth because we're trying to be swayed in a particular direction that we know is not the right direction."

In other words, "alternative facts."  "I substitute my own reality."

They KNOW intuitively what "the truth" is, and if the news isn't telling them the truth as they believe it to be, they switch to Fox News and Breitbart and OAN.  

Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1983 wrote:

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Democrats are still operating under this principle.  Republicans are not.  Left and Right, Republican and Democrat, USED to be about different opinions on how to interpret the facts.

No more.

Now one side doesn't believe "facts" are immutable anymore.  Not only are their opinions different, now even their FACTS are different. Rachel calls it "Earth 1" and "Earth 2."

Without a shared reality there can be no reconciliation.

Heh-heh-heh.  Even the Cyber Ninjas, tasked with finding all the missing Trump votes in Maricopa Country and discovering the faudulent Biden ballots...

Even THEY -- after SIX MONTHS of trying -- found Biden had 99 more votes than counted and Trump had 261 less. Oops.

Official count: Biden 1,040,774, Trump 995,665 = Biden 51.1%, Trump 48.89% = Biden by 45,109 votes
Cyber Ninjas: Biden 1,040,883, Trump 995,404 = Biden 51.11%, Trump 48.88% = Biden by 45,479 votes

That's a difference of +0.0095% in Biden's count, -0.026% in Trump's.

The fraudit cost at least $5.7 million dollars, or $15,405.41 per vote changed.

Maricopa County will have to spend an additional $2.8 million to replace all the voting machines, since they're now suspect, and possibly $6 million more if they have to replace the routers too.

NoCoPilot wrote:

.. now even their FACTS are different.  

One of the ladies (was it in this show?  Or another?  Doesn't matter...) said she didn't understand why Congress was investigating January 6 because all during the summer of 2020 riots were taking place all across the countries and "cities are still being burnt down all over this country."

I've heard this lie propagated on Fox.  It's one of their favorites.

But is flat-out ain't true.  The BLM protests (all around the world) were 93% peaceful.  In a COUPLE of cities -- Portland and Seattle and Minneapolis -- right-wing Proud Boy white supremacists infiltrated the crowds and initiated violence to discredit the BLM protestors.  In Seattle a city block was given over to -- voluntarily -- a bunch of BLM protestors with the police's permission so their protest could continue day & night and organizers could assemble and develop their protest (the protests were mostly spontaneous, and not really "organized.")  It was tense, but it was not "a takeover."  

Yes, some fires were started by infiltrators and quickly disowned and disavowed by BLM spokespersons.

Yet that is not the story on people's lips.  The BLM and MSM have done a really piss poor job of putting the facts out there, because the general perception is closer to Fox's than the facts.  I'm not even aware of any prosecutions underway, of the Proud Boy infiltrators, that would straighten out the facts (like they're trying to do with January 6).  Really unfortunate that we've lost control of the truth on that.

Tomorrow Republicans in Congress are poking a bear.

I don't think they have ANY IDEA how this could backfire on them.

Trump is trying to invoke executive privilege to stifle the January 6 investigation.

Two things:

1. There is no "executive privilege" for ex-presidents
   
   
2. What's he trying to hide anyway?

The House Committee just voted to hold Steve Bannon in contempt.  That's a felony.  He doesn't have a sugar daddy to bail him out this time.

Goin' to jail, I hope.

Oleg Deripaska's home just got raided.

We may YET see some progress on the Russian collusion investigation.

Sedition is a treasonous act, and is punishable by capital punishment. These six representatives should be charged with inherent contempt by the House, held without bail in the House jail, charged with sedition, and summarily executed.  It would be 100% legal.

History would see it as preventing a recurrence in 2022 or 2024, cutting out a cancer to save the patient.

Trump's complicity has been exposed.

This does not bode well for the former president's continued ability the remain at-large.

A question and answer from Quora.

What does John Eastman mean by calling Republican legislators "spineless"?

Attorney John Eastman got busted by a undercover activist who filmed him saying the quiet part out loud. He was speaking at a private event for the Claremont Institute, a far-right think tank that has been a integral part of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Eastman didn’t think he was being videoed when he said:

   I met... Trump, Giuliani and me met with 300 legislators on 2 January via Zoom conference call and they all spinelessly wouldn’t do anything, right even though we’ve given them all the evidence they wouldn’t do it...

He followed up by saying

  So look, I very much wish it were otherwise but these guys are spineless and now... now... if we take a bunch of them out in the primaries in 2022 and the precondition for getting elected is we’re going to fight this stuff then maybe we got an opportunity

Eastman has publicly denied that he was giving legal advice to Republicans that wanted to overturn the 2020 election, but this undercover video exposes that claim as a lie. Eastman supplied his advice to Republicans and expected them to follow his plan to object to the certification of the 2020 election.

The undercover activist, named Lauren Windsor egged him on by saying:

   I was floored that Mike Pence didn’t do anything. I mean, why didn’t he act on it? Because you gave him the legal reasoning to do that,” Windsor can be heard saying in the video.

Eastman also admitted in the video that Donald Trump was originally planning to accompany the January 6th rioters to the Capitol building.

   Yeah, I don’t. I don’t know because the breaking of the windows stuff had already started before his speech was over. And if he got down there, then all of that would have been blamed on him. I mean they’re still blaming him, but they would have had more basis for it

All of this means that Eastman is now up to his ears in legal trouble and his is almost certainly going to get subpoenaed to testify before the Jan 6th committee.

The Claremont Institute is also in hot water as it has now been revealed that the think tank was likely involved in the planning of the Jan 6th riot.

Stay tuned! This is gonna get interesting…

Eric Weinstein in his last The Portal podcast, done just after the 2020 election, talks about why Don Drumpf is pushing election fraud conspiracies.

He does not mention the only explanation that makes sense to me:

Trump had a deal with the Russians, in 2016 and again in 2020, to swing a percentage of the Democratic votes to him in exchange for a huge sum of money. He KNOWS there is fraud because he paid for it.  It's easier (for him) to blame his opponent for what he himself has done, than to admit that he cheating did not work the second time, due to a bigger-than-expected margin.  It's classic Trump, to accuse his opponents of what he is guilty.  It's classic Trump, not to accept that a huge majority of people dislike him.

NoCoPilot wrote:

There is no "executive privilege" for ex-presidents.

As Trump just found out about a half hour ago.

This does not bode well for him.

Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote:

Presidential privilege "exists for the benefit of the Republic, not any individual," she wrote. "Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President." 

Quote :

A President who refused to accept the result of a free and fair election and who incited a mob that invaded the US Capitol is arguing that he is acting to protect the republic, the presidency and constitutional norms. That argument is hard to read with a straight face.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/12/politics/donald-trump-january-6-committee/index.html

But people better start taking it seriously.  The narrative on the right is morphing toward violence, they're taking the facts and inverting them, and under their funhouse mirror they're the protectors of Democracy.  Fucking Congress and the fucking courts are not doing enough to head off the onrushing crisis.

I fear nobody will put on their "straight faces" until a Congressperson gets killed.  Mark my words, that's coming.

Here is a very good summary of where we are right now.

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The Republicans made a devil’s bargain decades ago, when they decided that they would not change course to win the votes of an increasingly nonwhite, increasingly progressive people, but would try to suppress those who would vote against them. That is, they pitted themselves against democracy as participatory government and free and fair elections. The rhetoric of the far right makes it clear they are fearful and know their power will ebb if they cannot command and subvert the laws and elections of this nation, and they are aiming at some form of minority rule.

Had they succeeded in grabbing power with such an openly lawless act, they could have kept it only by suspending the rule of law. This is what a dictatorship is, and this is what they wanted: a government in which laws are nothing and the ruling junta or thug is everything.

The crisis isn’t just that we had a coup attempt almost a year ago, but that the Republican party has itself become so venal, so corrupt, so ruthless in its quest for power, that it seems assured that we will see further attempts to overrule any election outcomes they don’t like.

The January 6 Investigation made news tonite by announcing that 'dozens' of members of congress, two Fox News hosts (Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity), and the president's own son Don-Don Jr texted Mark Meadows during the insurrrection begging him to call the president to call off his babboons.

Lawrence O'Donnell raised the corollary question:

• Does Don Jr. not have his father's own phone number?  Is his number 'blocked' by his father?  Why does he need to text Mark Meadows to ask his father to do something?
  

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Mary Trump predicted her uncle will lash out at the existence and release of the messages but suggested his inner circle has “become so small” there may not be anyone left for him to fire.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mary-trump-donald-trump-jr-texts-meadows_n_61b844c0e4b08ff57939de15