I was wrong about Biden. Not about his capacity but about his discipline. He spent a year and a half patiently working to deliver. Now, at almost Labor Day of the midterms, he’s uncorking the good stuff. He picked up a few things during that hundred years in politics.
Each day of Trump’s presidency has been grotesque. But seeing his corruption result in torture and death makes today especially grim. And unforgivable.
Spoiled by the excellence of Jared and Ivanka, Rick Perry and Ben Carson, Grenell, Ratcliffe and Whitaker, Republicans are concerned that a Biden appointee doesn’t meet their exacting quality standards.
Obama’s Spock quality is useful in discussing Trump. When he informs you Trump is a repulsive garbage barge of filth he’s just delivering a cold, clinical analysis.
It looks like fake farmer Devin Nunes bought a "farm" in his district so he can claim he's a real farmer. Based on its 15K declared value, the Sacramento Bee estimates the Nunes farm is about "100 square feet."
Today’s the 4th anniversary of Trump’s promise to release comprehensive info on Melania Trump’s unusual immigration “over the next couple of weeks.” I’m beginning to think he was lying.
If there were a social breakdown in South Carolina, the state’s senior Senator would hunker down in his home with a rifle, poised to shoot anyone who mistakenly believes the senator might provide leadership, guidance or assistance.
"I own an AR-15. If there's a natural disaster in South Carolina where the cops can't protect my neighborhood, my house will be the last one that the gang will come to, because I can defend myself." -- Lindsey Graham
Seems to be broad agreement there's not much GOP can do to reign in Trump.
Collins: "We can't tell the president what to say. All we can do is make very clear that we disagree w/the approach the president has taken"
Grassley: "I think only the president can reign himself in"
Barr lied about the Mueller report to rescue career criminal Donald Trump. He lied about Antifa and BLM to deflect attention from violent right-wing extremists. He lied about vote-by-mail to establish a pretext for challenging a fair election. Barr is a liar and a thug.
In his new book, Bill Barr talks about thwarting Trump’s attempt to make Kash Patel the deputy FBI director, an idea he says showed “a shocking detachment from reality.”
Of all the garbage they are throwing this seems the biggest tell. No crooked cop plants evidence that is not incriminating. So their resort to “planted evidence” by definition concedes their belief that what was found was *incriminating evidence*.
a Trump lawyer (Alina Habba) floats the idea that the FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago. That's the second time today a Trump lawyer has floated this.
I worked for a couple of bad men when I was very young but I’ve never met anyone in my professional, social or geographical life who is as disgusting as Trump. Never. Across a lifetime I’ve never known the equal of this skeevy sewer rat.
I don't know if Amy Coney Barrett will overturn Roe or kill the ACA. I do know she accepted a tainted nomination from a crooked president who expects her to help him steal an election and scuttle rule of law. Seems significant. via
@bopinion
I asked Quinnipiac about that intriguing poll data on Hispanics, in which 44% said Trump is not racist. Here's scoop: They surveyed 95 registered Hispanic voters. 7 of the surveys were in Spanish.
There is no great political gain for Romney on the other side of this. No power. There is only dignity for more humans and, I hope, more respect for Romney for doing what not a single one of his GOP colleagues has the basic decency to do.
This is a clip of
@JohnJHarwood
saying what every competent political journalist in the US knows. But other journalists choose, over and over again, not to say it. The incentives to evade the truth are clearly very powerful. Institutional crisis.
"Donald Trump is mentally unwell in a way that makes him interested exclusively in what benefits him."
CNN White House correspondent
@JohnJHarwood
reacts to a new interview where Donald Trump asks Putin for intel on the Bidens. Watch the moment here:
The president admitted to being a thief in official court documents released yesterday and you have to scroll down the Times website to find it because presidential crime stories are too routine to be big news.
The corruption here is so casual, so premeditated, so routine, so defiant, this might require John Roberts to adopt a whole new manner of pretending he doesn’t see it.
For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas has secretly accepted luxury trips from a major Republican donor, newly obtained documents and interviews show.
The extent and frequency of these apparent gifts to Thomas has no known precedent in modern SCOTUS history... 🧵👇
When Trump was elected we were told honest men like Ben Sasse, Rob Portman and Lamar Alexander would protect the republic. They proved to be greasy little cowards. The people who stood up and resisted? The political hacks.
Trump declines to pledge that his family business won’t take any of the hundreds of billions in relief for companies in coronavirus bill now before Congress
“let’s see what happens,” Trump says
Today was the third hearing that was uncluttered by MAGA bs and concerted gaslighting. Washington institutions can function if MAGA liars are restricted. Imagine if Pelosi had allowed McCarthy’s thugs on the panel.
Dems claim their scheme to impeach
@realDonaldTrump
is fair.
Here's the reality:
- All done in secret
- Led by proven-liar Adam Schiff
- No authorization from the House
- Full of misleading leaks from Dems
- Members of Congress denied access
This process is rotten to the core.
To indict, convict and jail Trump is only way to end his crime spree. It was bad enuf when he was just a corrupt heir. Now his criminality undermines US democracy, security & capacity. His addled followers commit violence, accomplices commit new crimes. The crime wave must end.
They gave him big, brightly colored kindergarten charts to pretend the deaths away. His aides know he is a corrupt buffoon who is killing people. But they like working at the White House. And he’s afraid of prison. So many thousands more must die.
Multiple 911 callers “frantically begged for help,” reporting shots fired in a St. Paul bar. A woman in her 20s was pronounced dead; 14 others were taken to the hospital.
There is no Minnesota statute making it illegal to concealed carry in a bar.
#mnleg
Deripaska had gophers in top ranks of the Trump campaign and the FBI. The NRA and Christian nationalists were infiltrated by a Russian agent who was a GOP consultant’s gf. The most MAGA GOP and FOX voices are openly pro-Russian. Everything’s fine.
The willingness to enable, and sustain, mass random death, via gun violence or Covid denial and related anti-science pathologies, is the defining feature of one of our political parties.
Under an executive order Gov. Baker signed today, Mass. "will not cooperate with extradition requests from other states pursuing criminal charges against individuals who received, assisted with, or performed reproductive health services that are legal in [MA]," per his office.
Dems should use market power and public shaming to raise the cost of supporting GOP authoritarianism. It worked with Jones Day. It's a tool that can be expanded. via
@bopinion
If the partisan data were reversed, every Republican would mention it in every media appearance every day. One of the great mysteries of American politics is why Simon is always out here singing this solo.
One party - the Democrats - has repeatedly brought growth, lower deficit, American progress.
The other - Republicans - has repeatedly been an economic wrecking ball.
Here’s the data:
Is anyone else curious about the content of Trump’s private discussions with Amy Coney Barrett at a time when he was publicly citing the Supreme Court as the mechanism by which he would remain in power?
The gunman who killed at least 10 people in Buffalo is a self-described white supremacist who advocates for the Great Replacement Theory.
He left a manifesto. See if you can tell the difference between it and standard fare on the Tucker Carlson show.
BREAKING: The Trump administration just released the latest number of still-separated migrant kids.
Of 2,654 separated kids, 211 are *still* in U.S. custody without their parents.
6 of them are under 5 years old.
Parents of 165 of those kids are already deported.
1/2
As I did in 2016, I want to express sincere thanks to all the conservatives and GOP stalwarts who turned away from Trumpism. It cost people like me nothing to acknowledge Trump’s unfitness and thuggery. But it did cost others. Thank you.
Sometimes you see things that aren’t there. But I’m having trouble unseeing a straight line from overturning Roe in the dead of night to overthrowing the 2024 election.
“To pretend that separated children do not grow up with the shrapnel of this traumatic experience embedded in their minds is to disregard everything we know about child development, the brain, and trauma,”
The central story of American politics right now is that one of the two parties is *radicalizing against democracy* in front of our eyes. There are tons of other stories as well, but they all come after that, I think.
As
@davidcorndc
points out, nothing about Barr's 4-page summary changes known facts about Trump's pervasive and extended corruption spree. via
@MotherJones
That we are 3 years into this astonishingly corrupt presidency and we still don't know the precise terms of Trump's service agreement with Putin remains the most alarming aspect of this cosmic fiasco.
Senator Cruz, who has called Donald Trump a "pathological liar," will be joining Trump in El Paso today, performing as a character witness while Trump tells more lies.
Walter Jones was a man of integrity, strong values, and great patriotism. My prayers are with his family and the people of NC’s 3rd District, for whom he worked for a quarter of a century. -->
“The most salient fact about Barrett is her willingness to accept a tainted, last-minute nomination to the court from a president waging war on the rule of law and the constitutional democracy that she, perversely, must swear to uphold.”
And remember when Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy joked about Trump being on Putin's payroll and then Ryan said to never mention it outside the room because it wasn't really a joke?
👀
.
@PunchbowlNews
reports House GOP discussing whether to strip committee assignments from the baker’s dozen who voted for bipartisan infrastructure bill.
If so, House GOP would send a message that members’ votes belong to the caucus not constituents.
@NormOrnstein
The inability of many to acknowledge Ornstein/Mann analysis in 2012 was precursor to massive media failure to acknowledge or communicate the GOP’s lurch into authoritarianism.
Credit where due: Putin recognized GOP and its key parts (professional Christians, gun fanatics) were so desperate and corrupt they would sell out to him. Now he has a US AG flying around world trying to exonerate Russia of its attack on US.
Trump’s first coup attempt was entirely serious. It’s not surprising to learn he is serious again. Either democracy is going to prosecute Trump, or he is going to take another stab at killing democracy.
I've been searching for the right modifier for "incompetence" to succinctly, accurately describe Trump's peculiar brand. I think
@michelleinbklyn
found it. "Savage."
One NRA rhetorical tic is to condemn Potus or others (Bloomberg) for having armed body guards while supposedly demanding that the little guy fend for himself. That Wayne LaPierre needs a yacht — rather than a gun — to feel safe is truly one of the great testimonials of the age.
LaPierre testified the yacht was “the one place I could feel safe, where I remember getting there going, Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here. That’s how it happened. That’s why I used it.”
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good friend with a yacht?
The "White House’s unprecedented lying and Trump’s nonstop assaults on the press are, at bottom, an effort to get the news media to be more tentative in calling out those lies and in holding Trump accountable than they otherwise might be."
@theplumlinegs
NEW: Kris Kobach said Tuesday he is eager to become
@realDonaldTrump
's Homeland Security secretary & confirmed he's been in communication w/ White House.
@dcexaminer
Their acquittal of Trump will mark GOP senators as made men, complicit in crimes past, present and future. They will cross a line from which there’s no return. The Gangster King will finally have the Gangster Party he’s long demanded.
JUST IN: Office of the Director of National Intelligence informs the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence that it'll no longer brief them on election security issues
Seven years ago today, I stood at my kitchen counter in Indiana and created a Facebook page that became
@MomsDemand
. I never imagined we'd become one of the largest grassroots movements with hundreds of thousands of volunteers and, as part of
@Everytown
, 6 million supporters.
We’ve known since before he was sworn in that Trump is disastrously unfit. The central question is the same today as it was then: What will Republicans do about it?
"There was no organization, no money, no cohesive, clear messaging,” said Ohio GOP operative Bob Kish. "It was a mess. It was like the Titanic.”
New from me on Issue 1's defeat & what it could mean for the future of the Buckeye State. (unlocked!)