Trump Could Maybe Refuse To Accept A Loss in 2020

Past couple of days there's been a lot of noise in the media about WHY Trump felt it necessary to take classified documents out of the White House and stash them at his cartoon palace in the swamp. Was he selling secrets to our enemies? Was he using them as blackmail? Was he just fascinated with them like a 5-year-old?

Apparently, every time something classified came across his desk during a PDB -- especially if it was a pretty picture with lots of colors, as his briefers soon learned they had to be to hold his attention -- he would reach for it and attempt to stash it in his desk. The adults in the room said, "No, No, Donald you can't do that" but apparently he still managed to accumulate a trove of highly-classified pretty pictures.

Why did he take them? According to John Boulton it's because he said "That's mine not yours." With his upbringing, anything he grabbed became his and nobody ever disciplined him over it. Now it's his M.O.

But I have another theory, not necessarily contradictory.

Donald is sitting in his big play castle. He still refers to himself as "The 45th President." His stationery says "The 45th President." He signs his outbursts on TruthSocial "The 45th President." When Mar-A-Lago was raided by the FBI he put out a statement that "never before had the residence of a president of the United States ever been searched by the FBI."

In short, he still believes he's president. He has not only "refused to accept a loss in 2020," he's denying it even happened. He could not bring himself to say, in his taped address to the nation after 1/6, that "the election was over."

For him there was no election. He still thinks he's president.

Which is why he needs all these classified documents. They are what makes a president "presidential" so he needs the window-dressing so everybody else will realize the election never happened.

I'm sure the MAL staff (and any visitors) are directed to call him "Mr. President." I'm sure he has a daily briefing from somebody who looks somewhat like his old briefer. He gets waited on and served and kow-towed to by everybody he allows near him. The king doesn't need any clothes (of office) because he's created his own reality.

And I would not be surprised to find that he still calls foreign heads of state asking for favors and treaties and business deals, just to hear them call him "Mr. President." I wonder if MAL is bugged? It OUGHT to be. Remember when Ronald Reagan got in trouble -- or SHOULD have gotten in trouble -- for negotiating the release of the 52 US embassy personnel on inauguration day in exchange for lifting Iranian sanctions? A deal that was made BEFORE he was actually inaugurated? Strictly illegal to have non-presidents making deals with foreign countries, for obvious reasons.

Add that to Trump's list of felonies, mark my words.

Quote :: if Trump is trying for an “insanity defense” against the various investigations against him, “it won’t work.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-declare-me-president-hunter-biden_n_630d29dce4b063d5e61dd319

Frank Figliuzzi raised a concern on Chris Hayes' show tonight that I hadn't heard before. It seems very real though.

Chris & Frank were discussing WHY the ORC took all these classified docs to MAL. He obviously isn't reading them－the DNI couldn't get him to even LOOK at them when he was president－and he obviously doesn't care about what's in them or what harm it might cause to share them.

Frank said, "Maybe he's showing them to The Pillow Guy and the Overstock guy to impress them?"

Yeah, that sounds plausible.

Now, how do you prove it? SUBPOENA THEM. IMMEDIATELY.

Tomorrow the trial begins for Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers accused of seditious conspiracy. Although the evidence is open-and-shut, this is a charge not utilized since, i believe, the Civil War?

And unless I'm mistaken, the penalty is the same as for treason: execution.

Trump is expected to announce his candidacy for president in 2024 tomorrow.

Jamie Raskin has raised a second possibility: the 155 Republican election deniers in the House, which is 70% of them, could simply vote to install Trump as the Speaker of the House. The Speaker doesn't have to be an elected member of the House.

An un-elected third-in-line to the Presidency. What could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump will probably (?) announce Kari Lake as his running mate.

Vladimir will be so proud of himself. He will have brought down The Great Evil without a shot fired.

Republicans win a narrow majority in the House
Republicans elect Trump as their Speaker
Harris and Biden meet with some kind of 'accident' (falling down a flight of stairs, perhaps?)
Trump re-assumes presidency
In the ensuing chaos, Trump declares martial law
Under martial law, Trump suspends Congress and SCOTUS and the Constitution
Vlad's takeover is complete

Quote :: “I think he’s afraid of looking stupid,” the adviser said.

Yeah. We haven't noticed the combover either.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-running-for-president-2024_n_633c7706e4b0e376dbfb6a39

The Brazilian riots are not just an eerie echo of January 6, they were orchestrated by Steve Bannan and Stephen Miller, and probably financed by Putin.

One difference? Brazil has their shit together. They arrested 1,000 insurrectionists on the very same day -- rather than waiting six months and having to track them down via social media posts -- and now they are starting to prosecute the leaders of the insurrection.

That last part, the US has waited so long to do -- out of fear of antagonizing armed mobs, or fear of how deep the rot goes -- that now Jim Jordan is in a position to shut the whole thing down.

Which he will.

Charles Koch announces he's withdrawing support for Trump

This is HUGE. Could be the end of the ORC.

It's been said before but it's worth saying again:

Trump's downfall through bankruptcy will almost certainly come before he ever faces legal jeopardy. The banks will call in their loans. The banks will start to refuse to refinance old loans with new ones. His long-standing Ponzi scheme will collapse. Trump's campaign fundraising will be seized against outstanding debts.

I wonder if anyone has done a study...

Some states counted mail-in ballots first, before polls closed in 2020, and some counted them only after the same-day votes were counted. Mail-in votes of course favored Biden (called the "blue mirage"), and same-day votes favor Trump ("red mirage").

How big were the swings? What was the OVERALL trend if any?

Pennsylvania and Michigan counted same-day first. Florida and North Carolina counted mail-in first.

I have not seen an overall analysis of nationwide who was ahead when. Trump's claim that he "won by a landslide" was probably never true throughout the day, but I wonder if he was ever ahead, and by how much?

41,000 hours of security cam footage from January 6 has just been turned over to Fox by Kevin McCarthy.

Personally, I don't see the harm. Sure, the J6C cherry-picked the footage they chose to air, and there's probably 39,998 hours of clueless cosplay soldiers wandering around the rotunda.

I sincerely doubt Tucker Carlson will find anything exculpatory.

Tucker's rewrite was released today.

As expected, he claims the insurrection was all "fake news" and that the Trump-flag and Confederacy-flag waving rioters were, I dunno, leftists dressed up as Trump supporters maybe? He spends about 4 minutes of the six minutes released following the Q-Anon shaman, and proving -- by video evidence -- that the capitol police have some co-conspirators in their midst.

Yup, we knew that.

Tucker's timeline is all jumbled up, with him showing calm Capitol tours interspersed with people breaking windows outside. Um, those things did not happen concurrently, Tuckems honey.

I expect tomorrow, the responsible media will tear Carlson's constructed fairy tale to shreds.

Let's start with the Pentagon.

Quote :: “The most valuable weapon to the enemy is disinformation,” begins the narrator in the spot. “That’s why the Pentagon spends hundreds of millions training our troops to resist it. Yet, at the same time, the U.S. military uses taxpayer-funded facilities to broadcast disinformation on military bases, knowingly letting false propaganda infiltrate the ranks.”

If Dominion can't get Fox Propaganda shut down, maybe places can start banning it from public places.

Predictable outrage from defenders of truth, Congressmen who lived through the insurrection, mainstream media, political pundits on both sides, and everyone who values a functioning democracy.

Incredibly, the SAME NIGHT as Tucker's gaslighting, we get additional details of the behind-the-scenes e-mails flying around Fox Propaganda over the 2020 election lies. Everyone, from Murdoch on down, knew what they were putting on the air was false, but they were afraid they'd lose viewership if they told the truth.

So－I guess one should assume－the current attempt to rewrite the Januray 6th Insurrection as "a bunch of reverent tourists" is aimed at gaslighting the same viewer base.

Free speech laws probably allow broadcasting known falsehoods, though maybe somebody can claw back the word "News" in Fox's logo.

But here's the bigger issue. Dominion's lawsuit against Fox goes to trial on April 17th. Not only will the jury determine if Dominion Voting Systems was harmed by Fox's admittedly false presentations, but they're also going to be looking at Fox's pattern of behavior to see if this slander was a one-off, or part of a bigger business plan. By continuing to run the same playbook, telling known falsehoods to their viewers about Januray 6th as well as November 3rd, Fox Prop is setting themselves up for a Very. Big. Punitive. Judgment.

Possibly even losing their license to broadcast. It was never about the money.

NoCoPilot wrote:: Donald Trump will probably (?) announce Kari Lake as his running mate.

She's a leading candidate, but has stated her lawyers tell her she can't be VP because she's already the Governor of Arizona. You can't make this shit up.

Here's what I don't get. There were PLENTY of Republican congressmen who were scared for their lives on January 6.

Why hasn't a SINGLE ONE of these spineless jellyfish used their new power to call for a no-confidence vote of Kevin? He's obviously beholden to MTG and Matt Gaetz and Lauren Bohbert and Paul Gosar, even to the physical peril of the rest of the members.

Why not call the coup a "coup"? Good article from Huffpost.

Thom Hartmann wrote:: Jared and Ivanka made $640 million while working in the Trump White House, and then apparently sold US intelligence and their defense of the Khashoggi murder to the Saudis for over $2 billion the month after Trump left office.

Trump himself is now taking “a huge amount of money” from the Saudis, laundered through the LIV Golf Tournament they began when Biden became president. At the same time, he continues to mimic Putin’s positions on everything from Ukraine and NATO to their shared dislike of liberal democracy.

Will anyone ever investigate these crimes?

NoCoPilot wrote:: Here's what I don't get. There were PLENTY of Republican congressmen who were scared for their lives on January 6.

Why hasn't a SINGLE ONE of these spineless jellyfish used their new power to call for a no-confidence vote of Kevin? He's obviously beholden to MTG and Matt Gaetz and Lauren Bohbert and Paul Gosar, even to the physical peril of the rest of the members.

If they "go down with the ship" and allow a US default on the debt, it'll be very bad for the country but fatal for the Republican party. They'll become known as "the party of default."

Of course, maybe they don't care. Jesus is coming back.

NoCoPilot wrote:: He spends about 4 minutes of the six minutes released following the Q-Anon shaman, and proving -- by video evidence -- that the capitol police have some co-conspirators in their midst. Yup, we knew that.

And today an indictment was handed down.

It strikes me that the divisions in this country -- with active military, active police force, active FBI agents taking the side of the insurrectionists -- this sort of "us versus us" brother versus brother internecine fighting hasn't occurred in this country since the Civil War.

And we all know how THAT turned out.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Thom Hartmann wrote:: Jared and Ivanka made $640 million while working in the Trump White House, and then apparently sold US intelligence and their defense of the Khashoggi murder to the Saudis for over $2 billion the month after Trump left office.

Trump himself is now taking “a huge amount of money” from the Saudis, laundered through the LIV Golf Tournament they began when Biden became president. At the same time, he continues to mimic Putin’s positions on everything from Ukraine and NATO to their shared dislike of liberal democracy.

Thom Hartmann wrote:: Lauren “Bam Bam” Boebert announced at CPAC:

“We are going to investigate Hunter Biden because he has used his father’s positions in government for shady business dealings with Ukraine and China. We no longer need a resident in the White House. We need a president who puts America first and not his business dealings with corrupt foreign countries.”

You’d think such a statement by a Trump supporter would be met with shocked silence, but the crowd went wild with applause. And there is, of course, some legitimacy to the sentiment.

After President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother as Attorney General, Republicans freaked out and passed an anti-nepotism law against presidents hiring family members.

When Donald Trump put Jared Kushner into the White House (even after he failed a security clearance), his Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel ruled, essentially, that Trump could ignore the law.

Saudi Arabia was then run by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), the grandson of the nation’s founder, King Abdulaziz; MBN’s father, Nayef bin Abdulaziz, had run the country before him.

Like his father and grandfather, MBN was tight with US intelligence agencies and committed to a stable long-term relationship with the United States and Europe. He also kept oil prices stable to help the United States and Europe.

Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), then pushing his 60s, was arguably the most pro-US figure in Saudi leadership.

Back in the 1980s he’d studied at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, then at the FBI in Quantico, followed by participating in a 1990s “anti-terrorism” program at Scotland Yard.

After 9/11, he took on Al-Qaeda and they tried to assassinate him.

When Trump came into office in 2017, MBN’s cousin, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was merely one of many young Saudi princes (he was 32) jockeying for position and power in the kingdom (MBN was then 58).

At the time Trump appointed Kushner (then 36) in 2017, US intelligence and the State Department were concerned that if MBS were to overthrow MBN the consequences could be unpredictable for the United States.

Kushner, with his new security clearance in hand, would have had access to that information.

Things were then getting wild in the kingdom.

MBS wanted to overthrow MBN, and, according to some extraordinary reporting from Vicki Ward (who’s Substack newsletter is worth subscribing to), Jared saw an opportunity to go around US interests and help MBS overthrow and imprison his cousin so MBS could seize control of the Kingdom and its more than $700 billion in cash:

“Four well-placed sources,” she reports, “say that the primary reason Kushner has now received $2 billion is that he helped MBS depose MBN, knowing that this went directly against what U.S. intelligence wanted or thought was good for national security.”

Suddenly, the news was full of stories about members of the Saudi royal family who were being held by security forces in fancy hotels, some being tortured and a few even “vanished.”

Immediately after Kushner met in secret with Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), America’s ally and the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), was arrested and thrown into prison where he remains to this day.

As a result, Jared’s buddy MBS now runs the kingdom and controls its money.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post noted a few weeks after MBS began arresting his royal political foes, apparently using information from inside US intelligence agencies:

“It was probably no accident that last month, Jared Kushner, Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, made a personal visit to Riyadh. The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy.”

Did Jared sell out American interests for $2 billion? And is his father-in-law, Donald Trump, now following up on the deal with the money being laundered through the LIV golf tournaments?

— It was with MBS that President Trump negotiated a 2.2 million-barrels-a-day production cut in 2020, when the pandemic had crashed demand for oil: that cut raised the price of oil and bailed out Trump’s Texas oilman supporters.

— It was MBS who reportedly said he had Jared “in his pocket.”

— It was MBS who reportedly had Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered by an assassination squad when visiting a Saudi embassy to get a visa to marry his fiancé.

— And, the New York Times notes, it was Jared who was there for MBS when he needed a friend on the inside: “As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed [MBS], Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House…”

— It’s MBS who The Wall Street Journal reports is now moving his country “closer” to Russia and China to “punish” President Joe Biden for defeating Trump.

— It’s also MBS who’s given Donald Trump tens of millions — perhaps hundreds of millions — to host the LIV golf tournaments at his shabby properties (the tournament has a reported $2 billion budget).

Have we all been witnessing a young con-man and his grifter father-in-law walk away with billions after selling out the United States? With virtually no questions from the mainstream media or Congress?

The son of a professional con-artist (Charles Kushner, who was pardoned by Trump) and a minor slumlord, Jared is said to have gotten advice from a PR professional when his father went to prison. Ben Walsh noted for Huffington Post that Jared’s dad tells the story that his PR friend advised Jared:

“Step one: Buy a New York newspaper. Don’t be too particular…. Any newspaper will do. Step two: Buy a big Manhattan building. Any building will do. Step three: Marry the daughter of a rich New York family. Anyone will do.”

Jared, the story goes, then purchased the New York Observer newspaper, overpaid for the 666 Fifth Avenue office building just down the street from Trump Tower, and, now impressively credentialed as a Serious Guy, hooked up with Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.

From there it was a straight shot to the White House and then cashing in with $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, authorized by MBS, who had to override his investment advisors to hand the cash to Jared.

Which is a crime far more massive and serious than anything Hunter Biden has ever been accused of.

Our Constitution contains two emoluments clauses, both forbidding officials from taking gifts from foreign governments. The most well-known one (in Article II) forbids presidents from taking what could be bribes; the second, from Article I of the Constitution, forbids such behavior by anybody working in the federal government without the explicit permission of Congress:

“[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

As the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes:

“The purpose of the Foreign Emoluments Clause is to prevent corruption and limit foreign influence on federal officers. The Clause grew out of the Framers’ experience with the European custom of gift-giving to foreign diplomats, which the Articles of Confederation prohibited. Following that precedent, the Foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits federal officers from accepting foreign emoluments without congressional consent.”

When Trump was running for president, he reportedly told Fox News viewers in February 2016:

“Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi—take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”

But when the Saudis started shoveling money his way, suddenly his tune changed.

As The Jerusalem Post reported on March 23, 2018:

“Kushner, who is the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, and the crown prince had a late October meeting in Riyadh.

“A week later, Mohammed began what he called an ‘anti-corruption crackdown.’ The Saudi government arrested and jailed dozens of members of the Saudi royal family in a Riyadh hotel – among them Saudi figures named in a daily classified brief read by the president and his closest advisers that Kushner read avidly….

“According to the report, Mohammed told confidants that he and Kushner discussed Saudis identified in the classified brief as disloyal to Mohammed.”

The day before, CBS and The Intercept quoted MBS as gloating that Kushner was “in his pocket.”

The Washington Post noted that:

“Recently ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy and might make naive mistakes, according to people familiar with their reactions.

“… [National Security Advisor] McMaster was concerned there were no official records kept of what was said on the calls.

“Tillerson was even more aggrieved, they said, once remarking to staff: ‘Who is secretary of state here?’”

In January of 2021, as he was leaving office, Trump stole and moved to Florida information that, multiple sources assert, would reveal the identities of many of our spies, as well as our nuclear plans and capabilities.

Information literally worth billions of dollars.

Three months later, in March of 2021, Jared Kushner filed papers showing that his brand new investment company — against the advice of the Saudi government but at MBS’s order — had received over $2 billion from the Kingdom.

It’s still unknown if or how much money the Kingdom gave to Trump himself, presumably through the dark offshore accounts common among billionaires like Trump or through the golf tournament front.

This was not the first time Kushner had apparently altered US foreign policy or shared valuable US secrets with Middle East players in exchange for large quantities of cash that flowed directly to him or other members of the Trump family.

As investigative reporter Vicky Ward noted:

Kushner was struggling with the “ticking time bomb of a $1.8 billion mortgage on 666 Fifth Avenue that would come due in February of 2019—a debt no domestic buyer was interested in. Not even the Chinese or Qataris wanted it. … Kushner desperately needed a bail-out for his troubled building…and the clock was ticking.

“Then, in the spring of 2018, two things happened within weeks. First, the U.S. withdrew their support of the blockade of Qatar, leading the Saudis and Emiratis to lift it.

“Then, Brookfield, a Canadian real estate investment trust whose largest outside shareholder is the Qatari government, bailed out the Kushners in a deal that has real estate moguls rolling their eyes to this day: A 99-year lease paid upfront on a building that was bleeding money.”

Which brings us back, again, to 2021, just after Trump’s failed January 6th attempt to overthrow the US government.

About six months after the Saudis gave Kushner that second batch of billions, we learned that for several months “dozens” of American spies and agents had been “captured or killed” around the world. As The Washington Post reported on October 5, 2021:

“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.”

History will hopefully tell us if Jared Kushner and Donald Trump sold out their country and damaged prospects for peace in the world by helping MBS rise to power and then pushing Saudi Arabia toward Russia, just to get their hands on a few billion dollars.

But that history is being written today, and if there was ever a scandal more worthy of an FBI and congressional investigation than Hunter Biden, this is it.

» Trump files as a candidate for 2020 on Inauguration Day
» NBC analyst accuses Trump family of ‘insider’ trading with early knowledge of Trump’s market-moving tweets
» Mississippi Candidates Refuse to Meet Unchaperoned With Female Reporters
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