Wow, Corey Lewandowski, my campaign manager and a very decent man, was just charged with assaulting a reporter. Look at tapes-nothing there!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2016
Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was charged with misdemeanor battery for assaulting a Breitbart reporter, an act that is strategically akin to a Fidel Castro aide clubbing a Granma stenographer with his cane. No one can figure out why all these violent people keep attaching themselves to Trump!
Open thread!
dr. bloor
Oh, it gets better.
Sad_Dem
So, the Jupiter PD is a bunch of liberals in Hillary’s pocket?
Waldo
I love that Cuba’s state newspaper is called Granma. Like a kinder, gentler Big Brother.
Anoniminous
I think “Due Diligence” doesn’t mean whatever the Trump campaign thinks it means.
David Fud
@dr. bloor: No wonder Gore choked in Florida. Or maybe I should say bit it?
In 2000, he was the attorney for former Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore in Florida as his campaign battled for a recount.
ETA: reference in said article.
NCSteve
This is the perfect window into the Trumpoverse.
The video is right there, showing exactly what happened. Supplemented with the other video of the incident, it’s incontrovertible. And yet, even in the face of that, he’ll stand there and flat out bald-faced lie about it, trusting the media convention that requires them to give flat-out lies equal dignity with the truth lest someone call them “biased” to see it through.
Add a “heh-indeed” for violence against the weaker party in a power imbalance, the bafflement of allies that, like all megalomaniacs, he treats them with the same casual contempt as enemies, a steaming loaf of misogyny, and the “I, Donald Trump and the Real Victim here and, on behalf of all you other victims of anti-white male racism, I declare that the bitch had it comin’ just like all the people whose necks will be under out boots after I win will have it comin!” subtext and there it is. The whole campaign in a nutshell.
schrodinger's cat
The race for the Republican nomination is a farce.
keith p
“If elected, will you pardon Corey Lewawhatever?”
Tee-ball.
Obdurodon
Lewandowski is the kind of guy who’d punch someone and then sue them for hurting his knuckles. Except that he’s too much of a coward to take on anyone his own size, or from the front, or without an entourage to back him up, so opportunities are limited.
LAO
OT Questions for the other (smarter) lawyers out there (or anyone with an opinion). What does SCOTUS’s Birth Control Order mean? I read Dennison’s “explanation” at ScotusBlog — and I still don’t get it. This feels like a win for the nuns.
Shell
But hey, at least he’s looking “forward to his day in court.” Like they all do , until the settlement.
benw
Trump’s whole campaign is a crime against America, so if they can’t get this guy on battery, they’ve got him on accessory. Kinda like how they finally got Capone.
joes527
Having some work done on my car today … sitting in the dealership waiting area.
I never actually watch Fox news, so I usually just imagine how bad it is.
I see now that I underestimated the badness by a mile. I despair for our species.
Roger Moore
Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?
Betty Cracker
@joes527: I dropped my car off at the shop yesterday, and while awaiting my ride home was subjected to TMZ in the waiting room. Oh well, better than Fox!
@Roger Moore: Heh! I had the same classic line in mind!
redshirt
I was literally half a mile down the road from this incident, on unrelated vacation business. Weird!
Zinsky
We can only hope his cell mate is a very large, hairy, well-hung XYY psychopath with an overactive sex drive and a nickname of “The Ram”.
Germy
So Trump’s campaign manager was arrested for grabbing a reporter, so he hired a lawyer fired for biting a stripper??
Major Major Major Major
My buddy was trying to explain how he likes Kasich because he’s an Independent Moderate(TM). I said that if you support Kasich’s proposals and history, that makes you a Republican. He said no, it makes me an Independent, and proceeded to outline all the wonderful Independent proposals he likes, such as privatizing social security (“Frankly, I find the Democratic position irresponsible. Everybody knows that social security is unsustainable, and yet Democrats pretend that if we turn a blind eye to it, the problem will simply go away.”).
I explained that he can call himself an Independent all he wants, but that doesn’t make him one any more than my wearing a nametag that says “Nathan” makes me him.
I… need to spend less time on Facebook.
redshirt
@Zinsky: lol prison rape!
Not funny.
Elizabelle
WaPost: Supreme Court suggests way employees could get contraceptive coverage without employer action
So, Court’s suggestion would give covered women cost-free contraceptives, and the dear religious folks a fig leaf.
More Thank You, Dead Scalia material.
And I wish those religious types would find something else to worry about than when other people’s “fig leaves” come off. How tiresome and God-bothery.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore:
Second favorite Onion headline ever after this one, which for some reason makes me think of John Cole:
Why Can’t I Sell Any of These Fucking Bibles?
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I assumed as much, but I thought I’d provide the link for people who didn’t know or make the connection. It’s one of the Onion’s all-time classics, almost as good as “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’ “.
Elizabelle
@joes527: You could ask them to turn the channel, or turn it off. I always do.
Last time I spied Fox News was when I checked into this hotel. Walking past the fitness room: Fox News on:
Greta van Susteren was the Fox Character Assassin of the day, tasked with the breaking Obama Tango Watch coverage.
Walked straight in, hunted down the remote, changed the channel to CNN (slightly better). Then went to see my room.
A few days later, noted that TV in fitness room was just plain off. (Have yet to see anyone in there…)
Germy
NY Daily News: Former Trump strategist disavows support for GOP front-runner in scathing tell-all column — ‘Trump never intended to be the candidate, but his pride is too out of control to stop him now’
Immanentize
@LAO: I doubt I’m smarter, but I can help on this one. The issue of additional briefing is straight up, Right?
It seems that in post-argument conference, the sides have narrowed the dispute — The Question the Court wants answered is how does an organization (like, say, Georgetown University) indicate that they do not want to be part of any evil contraception slut creation not sully themselves by admitting that outright to the government (we certify we are a religious organization — current law) but at the same time allow employees of that University (like a Wiccan janitor) to get free contraception without that employee being in any way burdened either.
I do not know how this can work, because the original religious organization would have to tell their insurer that they do not want to provide contraception which is the very issue in the case. The only difference being the religious organization would tell a private company (maybe) rather than the government that they are a religious organization. (No first amendment issue there? OK, maybe, but if the issue is government involvement in private speech, I think the University (or Hobby Lobby or the Little Sisters of Perpetual Torture) could still claim that the government was burdening their exercise because it is forcing them to say something to a corporation…. This suggests that there are four people (more likely two people — Roberts and Kennedy) desperately trying to create a majority in this case.
ETA for a little clarity
Rafer Janders
@Zinsky:
You think someone convicted of battery should be punished by violent multiple rapes? Who’s the psychopath here, again?
Miss Bianca
@Germy:
What was I saying the other day about reality these days outstripping (ha!) the ability of political satirists to keep up with it?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I am inappropriately happy to read of Corey Lewandowksi’s legal complication. Accordingly:
Trump’s yoooogely classy Drumpf verse form on the twitter about the legal news:
Having looked at the statute, simple battery works for me. In pertinent part:
784.03 Battery; felony battery
(1)(a) The offense of battery occurs when a person:
1. Actually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other; or
2. Intentionally causes bodily harm to another person.
(b) Except as provided in subsection (2), a person who commits battery commits a misdemeanor of the first degree,
Link one too many; emphasis added. Subsection 2 defines prior convictions with which the charge will be elevated to felony battery.
It’s defensible (ahem) with an argument that it was incidental rather than intentional, but there ain’t no fucking question that he grabbed her, slightly roughly. An apology could have kept his abusive ass out of court, but that ain’t the Trump way, and he’s there for a reason. “He” being formally known as the defendant in State of Florida v. Corey Lewandowski.
The defendant has two defense attorneys in his new case. One of them, Kendall Coffey, resigned from his post as U.S. attorney in 1996 over reports that he bit a stripper in Miami.
Coverage back in the day
It gets better:
You can’t make this shit up. It would never get past a reader at a publisher “not realistic enough for good fiction.” Forget it Jake, it’s Florida.
CarolDuhart2
Thugs hiring thugs. While he won’t get a long sentence for this, I hope he has to resign and Trump has to find someone to manage his campaign-and it’s a good long search. And the lawsuit causes him even more problems.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Elizabelle: I thought the ACA already contained that kind of compromise, or something similar? Didn’t an employer just have to sign a form saying they didn’t want contraceptive coverage, and IIRC, some god-botherers decided even that was too oppressive?
Or something. I don’t know. I’ve lost track of all of the stupidity coming from the ACA’s opponents.
Chris
@NCSteve:
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this, though maybe the first time from a presidential candidate? One of the more amazing and, to me, educational things about reading right wing blogs in the teabagger age is the multiple occasions when I’ve seen them point to a video or even a direct quote that says the exact opposite of what they claim and say “see, that proves we’re right!”
On PJMedia, I remember seeing links to scores of videos of Occupy Wall Street rallies being broken up by cops where the OWSers’ behavior ranged from throwing paint balloons at worst to doing absolutely nothing/cooperating at best, and yet the comments section is absolutely overflowing with enraged comments about how out of control the mob of rioters were and how incredibly brave those officers must’ve been to risk their lives confronting these violent revolutionaries before they burned everything down.
It’s really incredible to watch: the equivalent of that moment in “1984” when O’Brien burns a photograph and says “it does not exist. It never existed” “But it does exist! I remember it! You remember it!” “I do not remember it.” Except it’s even better than that: in this version of the story, O’Brien never burns the photograph at all, and the “it never existed” is delivered while waving it in Winston’s face.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolDuhart2:
Isn’t there a(nother) GOP Town Hall tonight? I wonder whether the moderator is going to push Trump on this.
Assuming, of course, that Trump even shows up.
Miss Bianca
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
aaaannnd…there’s my point made for me. Again. Satire may not be dead, but it’s panting on its death-bed, as far as I’m concerned…
Major Major Major Major
@Elizabelle: Thanks for the link! God bless Dead Scalia.
Also, guys, come on. Prison rape isn’t funny. You know, just like other kinds of rape? This isn’t rocket science.
Immanentize
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: It does contain that compromise, but the claim in the case is that the very act by the Little Sisters of Continuous Debasement of having to explain to the governement that they are religious and oppose contraception by filing a friggin’ one page form is itself a burden on the free exercise of their religion.
Germy
@Miss Bianca: It might be easier nowadays to be a satirist. All one needs to do is transcribe the actual headlines.
A person could work up an effective standup comedy routine by simply standing onstage and reading the news, with no further comments or jokes needed.
Frankensteinbeck
@Major Major Major Major:
Willful self-delusion about how partisan they are, and whether they’re willing to crossover vote, is a great American tradition. The most partisanly reliable voters describe themselves as ‘Independent’, especially on the Republican side. That’s just how it is, and it’s a big reason I dismiss Trump/Sanders crossover voting prospects.
LAO
@Immanentize: Thanks. It is amazing to me the hoops the Court must jump through because of its terrible decision in Hobby Lobby. I think I get it now — it just seems incredibly stupid to me.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck: I know. It doesn’t make it less annoying. I always get seated with this guy at weddings.
Roger Moore
@Immanentize:
The difference is that the religious organization can’t help but tell the insurance company that they don’t want contraceptive coverage. If they refuse to tell the insurance company they don’t want contraceptive coverage, they’ll get it because that’s the default. So what would happen is that they’d tell the insurance company that they don’t want contraceptive coverage, the insurance company would say sure, and then the insurance company would pay the (effectively zero) cost of providing contraceptive coverage while providing the illusion that the religious employer isn’t the one providing it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@LAO: Reads like a win for the nuns to me, but I’m in the “not smart” camp today due to brain malfunctions. I will defer to the neurotypical bar members.
@joes527: Can you use a remote app on your phone to turn it off or change the channel? I have IR Remote on Android.
Immanentize
Zubik contraception case last thoughts before I run to class….
1) I think that this is a very good sign for the ACA in that it means someone finally schooled the right leaning fellows how insurance actually works (their comments at argument were so dumb) and
2) I would not be surprised if, after the additional briefing that if they cannot come up with a majority opinion that the Court asks for re-argument next term (October). This will depend on whether the Senate has moved at all on the Supreme Court nomination….
Off to make more lawyers! I will check in later around 6 ish….
Immanentize
@Roger Moore: I agree that it might be a fix, but the religious organizations still would be forced to tell someone something by the government. I agree with LAO that this is a stupid sidedish created by Hobby Lobby. Ginsburg warned it would come to this….
And what about fraud and abuse?? I’m religious, really!
trollhattan
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Two of these things do not belong together.
But, who among us hasn’t at least once bitten a stripper…?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Immanentize: Oh, okay, so these are the god-botherers I was thinking of. I thought there were others making the same claim (although there very well might be — my brain is already screaming at me to stop thinking about these idiots, so I may have just blocked it out).
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Zinsky: I can’t participate in rape humor, but I can be a scold about it. I would like Ram to have a different characteristic: a burning desire to improve his bare knuckle boxing skills, or any rudimentary martial arts training he may have encountered. So that defendant Campaign Manager may experience what his generally abusive behavior is like from the other participants’ perspectives.
Germy
@trollhattan:
I bit a blow-up doll and we both flew around the room until all the air was out of her.
Gravenstone
@Germy:
Worked for Shatner doing a verbatim reading of la Palin, back in the day.
Germy
@Gravenstone: I don’t remember that particular comedy routine. Shatner must have added a layer of strangeness to her words.
Germy
Cole is upstairs discussing this same topic. Should I stay or should I go?
Miss Bianca
@Germy: @Gravenstone:
By gum, you all may be on to something here…the game could be throwing something in that was fake and trying to make people guess which one it is…
and then the second variation being, not throwing the fake one.
sigaba
I think a lot of this comes from the fact that these are comments from people on the Internet — people will just say stuff when they think it’s an uncritical situation and they see everyone they like saying it, and people who think it’s obviously false just won’t say anything. The Internet is a machine that manufacturers consensus and groupthink, while also creating a simulacra of a “conversation,” or enough of the fiction of one to convince you there’s a conversation happening, and it isn’t just people hitting their personal feed-bar with comment memes and tropes.
LAO
@Germy: I don’t know, either way there will be trouble.
smith
IANAL, so I’m following this with a puny amateur brain, but isn’t it at least a bit hopeful that these “burdens,” however slight, will be placed on the employer and not the employee? I mean, apparently the employee would still be able to get free contraception in a seamless way. (And, yes, I realize that that is what the godbotherers want to discontinue).
In a related note, how is it an unbearable restriction of First Amendment rights to have to sign a paper confirming something that’s true, but it’s no big First Amendment problem to force an abortion doctor to tell a patient something that’s false?
yellowdog
@David Fud: Was he THE attorney or one of a squadron of attorneys. Makes a difference.
yellowdog
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: The nuns say that signing a form is an “undue burden” because the sluts still get birth control.
Chris
@sigaba:
Sure, but even then I feel like there would, under most circumstances, be a limit to how blatantly out-there the consensus/groupthink can be. Put it like this: if someone sends me a video link of the Germany/Brazil World Cup soccer game from a couple years ago, the comments section will not be filled with comments about how Brazil totally won that game, even if every last single commenter is a Brazil fan. They’d certainly be biased, but they wouldn’t be denying the reality of their own lying eyes that way. But that’s basically the level of disconnect we’re seeing from Trump, or that I was seeing from these people.
Another example: I just read a tweet from a right winger in my social media circle about Washington journalists hitting back at Obama for criticizing the way Washington journalism works; the comment; “oh please, Washington journalists don’t hit back, they’re such total Obama bootlickers.” In an article relating how various pundits are criticizing Obama, his only comment is that Beltway pundits don’t criticize Obama.
There’s something at work in that kind of mentality that ain’t just peer pressure.
J R in WV
@smith:
And that OT question about “no big First Amendment problem” forcing a doctor to tell a patient falsehoods – that’s a great question that makes a wonderful point.
It shows how hypocritical these anti-choice forced-birth fake religious creeps really are, and how un-American they are! They don’t understand the First Amendment and don’t care about other people’s religious beliefs at all ~!!
b1narys3rf
@Chris:
Delusion. You can come right out and say it. Many members of the modern Republican/”Conservative”/In Reality Authoritarian Party are not living in the same reality. Their worship of invisible mythical spirits, their expectation that by robbing fellow “undeserving” citizens who belong to the “wrong” group they themselves will be enriched, their love of violence to solve issues, all are of a piece.
What is truly painful are the further attempts at sophistry to cover their double- and triple-think. I have seen very slickly produced YouTube videos, for instance, criticizing Black Lives Matter for abetting black-on-white and black-on-black violence, when the ENTIRE premise is based on a strawman argument (a favorite of the right) which ignores that the primary purpose of BLM was to point out and stop POLICE violence which is disproportionately doled out against African-Americans. It’s like saying that you can’t both walk and chew gum at the same time. The younger generations of internet Conservabros eat this shit up (you know, the ones who love Trump because it’s rebellious and use “Cuckservative” all the time).