No one has more contempt for the Trump base than Trump and Trump-affiliated grifters who part those wildly gullible fools from their money:
Folks, this really happened. pic.twitter.com/EviEJCGvs7
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 21, 2020
I was just reading a Josh Green piece about Bannon’s downfall. An excerpt:
Steve Bannon’s arrest on charges that he defrauded donors to a right-wing immigration group for $1 million marks the end of a political era—the era when a Trumpian admixture of economic populism and nativist immigration policy looked as if it could, as Bannon once put it to me, deliver the Republican Party “a hammerlock on the Electoral College.”
At the time he made this assessment, in the days after Trump’s 2016 victory, it seemed entirely plausible that Bannon, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and future chief strategist, was right. Before Trump, the GOP had imagined its future lay in purging its racist fringe and soft-pedaling its brand of laissez-faire economics to a diversifying nation that had spurned the 2012 Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. The Republican Party “autopsy” conducted in 2013 after their loss warned that the GOP risked falling into oblivion if it didn’t present a more welcoming face to immigrants, minorities, and young people.
Trump, of course, egged on by Bannon, instead offered a turbocharged anti-immigrant nationalism that promised to revive working-class fortunes, a message that resonated particularly among Rust Belt voters who’d previously voted Democratic. He was certain that Republican Party leaders would recognize this. “What Reince [Priebus] and Paul Ryan realize now,” Bannon told me after the election, “is that our message was the right one and that it’s gonna deliver Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to the Republican Party for a generation.” This was the Trump hammerlock.
The article recounts the messy Trump-Bannon divorce, allegedly caused by Bannon correctly stating that Trump’s adult children are blithering idiots. In a fit of pique, Trump got the Mercers to knock Bannon off his perch at Breitbart. I’d forgotten half that crazy shit, thanks to the Trump admin’s denial of service-like scandal swarm that has completely overwhelmed us all.
The article says Bannon got himself involved in the We Build the Wall grift in part to worm his way back into Trump’s good graces. Oh well. The Trump hammerlock has turned into “lock him up” time for Bannon.
I’m not so optimistic as to believe Trump himself will ever see the inside of a cell, but I do hope to see him bounced out of office relatively soon. His “American Carnage” inaugural speech, which GWB described as “some weird shit,” has become a Trump-fulfilled prophecy rather than a description of the state of affairs existing when he put his wee hand on a Bible.
Maybe if we’re all very good, the Flying Spaghetti Monster will reward us with additional Trump hangers-on going to the Greybar Hotel in this latest scandal. Kris Kobach would do for now! Maybe something else will bust wide open. Anything is possible.
Open thread!
Jeffro
It’ll all depend on whether or not Biden/Harris decide to ‘look forward, not back’…so let’s make sure they shine their light brightly in both directions.
(all the state AGs can just focus on the ‘back’ part ;)
Jeffro
MJ Hegar just cracked. me. up.
Hegar to Cornyn: “Spare me the pearl clutching, you wimp” LOLOL
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: She’s a bad ass.
Roger Moore
It’s nice that somebody is being arrested for at least one of Trump’s innumerable scandals. If we had managed a measly one conviction per scandal, the entire administration would be behind bars.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think the upcoming convention is going to look like CPAC held in the Star Wars bar scene. I’m so old I remember the Two Pats Convention of ’92, which I believe was a big hit to Poppy Bush’s campaign. And this will be worse.
I have little doubt that he’s committed tax, insurance and bank fraud, just for starters, and even less that his general self-pardon for federal crimes has already been drafted, maybe even signed, along with Jared, Junior and anyone else whose ass he has to cover to cover his own. Someone here– maybe a lawyer, maybe not– said trump can probably fight state-level prosecutors to a draw. He could probably whistle up a $50 million defense fund with one “DEEP STATE!” tweet.
catclub
I read in one of the articles on the Chinese billionaire funding Bannon that he is paying Bannon $1M per year for
consulting services. Why would Bannon want back in Trump’s good graces? One possibilty- that $1m is a made up number for conning the next customer.
cope
I have been strangely energized by the 2020 DNC* and now believe I have the strength and will to ride it out to the end of Trump’s tenure. Watching the seawall around him fall away chip by chip, stone by stone is also energizing. It seems that I have invested too much time paying attention to the point of the spear when the work has been going on down along the cutting edge.
Nomination to the Oxford Book of Convolutedly Extended Metaphor accepted.
*”strangely” because I only watch Colbert’s coverage and read lots of stuff online.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: Nobody will go to prison. The US, for better or worse, isn’t the kind of place where a new administration imprisons the outgoing one. And the media, above all, will be in look-forward-not-back mode because an honest look back will unavoidably note their role in installing this turd in office.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe so, but we should still make him prove it. If nothing else, I want the rest of his life to be consumed with efforts to avoid prison rather than enjoying his ill-gotten gains.
mary s
Hmm, is this true:
“Before Trump, the GOP had imagined its future lay in purging its racist fringe and soft-pedaling its brand of laissez-faire economics to a diversifying nation that had spurned the 2012 Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.”
Not sure how the “the GOP” is being defined here, but the soft-pedaling references to a “racist fringe” and “laissez-faire economics” are telling, to me. I am not a GOP mindreader but I haven’t ever gotten the impression that the leadership was interested in laissez-faire economics! Or in not being racist.
Litlebritdifrnt
Like I said the other day, at some point the MAGATs have to realize that they are simply marks, targeted by the grifters to make a buck. How many of these stories have to break until they get a clue?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gin & Tonic: public hearings would do more to expose trump and his enablers, and that will be a hard lift. John Hickenlooper might well be the furthest left of new Ds in the Senate, assuming he’s part of the majority.
MattF
It’s important to see how Bannon failed. He set himself up as Trump’s political genius, but turned out to be no such thing. His ‘genius’ really was hot air plus a talent for failing upwards.
Calouste
There are no right-wing immigration groups. There are only right-wing anti-immigration groups.
Jinchi
I think the SDNY may be saving the arrest and indictment of Rudy for the last day of the Trump administration.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Another obvious possibility is that the grifting possibilities from being close to Trump are worth a lot more than a measly $1M/year. Or that the $1M/year wouldn’t stop just because he went back to working for Trump.
randy
In the early eighties I went out as temp labor to A to Z Restaurant Salvage here in Denver. The young super, call him Little Joe, was catastrophically weak, belligerent, idiotic, incompetent, etc. Later I heard him whining to his older thuggish cousin about how hard it was to live up to expectations as heir to a mafia don. (They ignored me.) Years later I recognized him as the tragic young tool in What to Do in Denver when You’re Dead. Our current administration to me is a picture of what would have happened if Little Mafia Joe had actually inherited.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: yeah, well, we’ll see. We didn’t used to elect c-list reality show hosts to the highest office in the land, either. There’s a first time for everything. =)
Subsole
@mary s:
Yep. The party had a big autopsy/postmortem after Obama handed them their asses again in 2012 and they realized that this might actually be the first day of the rest of their lives.
I am mildly amused at a party that loathes the very concept of skillage and experts bringing in skilled experts for advice.
Which, y’see, they ignored.
Splitting Image
If any of the GOP actually believed that shit, they wouldn’t be so keen on voter suppression. The Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan GOP were all in on gerrymandering and suppressing the Democratic vote before Trump even appeared on the scene.
What may be over is the bobbleheads’ ability to pass off hard-core racism as “economic populism”. The current GOP would burn the country to the ground to keep America white. And it will burn your church, your company, your job, your family, and you along with it if that’s what it takes.
Subsole
@Litlebritdifrnt: Never happen. They have abandoned themselves and do not have the strength to admit otherwise.
They love the needle now. Only the needle. They’re gone.
Jinchi
@Roger Moore: Just a reminder: This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this particular Chinese billionaire.
germy
I agree. The NYT is not about to look too deeply into their own collaboration with Bannon on putting “Clinton Cash” out into the world.
Jinchi
Does less than a single presidential term really count as an era?
germy
@Jinchi: Pence was interviewed this morning on CBS. He accused Biden of “not mentioning China at all” during Biden’s acceptance speech. Of course, Biden mentioned China, but the interviewer didn’t push back on too many lies. Pence dominated the show; just kept loudly talking and ignoring questions.
After the interview, Gayle King observed that it wasn’t so much an interview as a monologue from Pence, with “many things that were untrue.”
Gayle King! You know things are bad when Gayle King says something like that on air.
I don’t understand how this administration is always simultaneously vilifying China while also yearning to do business with them.
JPL
Bannon’s trial won’t be until next year, and hopefully trump will be out of office then. He must understand that it’s a risk not to share information that he has. I guess he can wait until after the election though.
tomtofa
Did Rudi drop his promised bombshells about Biden’s mental capabilities yesterday? Haven’t seen any mention; would be an interesting juxtaposition to Joe’s acceptance speech…
Ken
@Jinchi: The last three years have seemed like decades, so yes.
Frank Wilhoit
“‘There was only a plan to get elected,’ says Sam Nunberg, a former Trump staffer. ‘There was never a plan to govern.'”
…
“…the political realignment Bannon thought was happening four years ago always depended on Trump delivering what he’d campaigned on….”
Put these two quotes together and you see what is going on. Trump did deliver what he campaigned on, which was to
winkeep the Democrats out. Nothing more; no “plan to govern”, there isn’t any governing to do, keeping the Democrats out is both necessary and sufficient. In the post-Citizens United era, all that matters is the flow of money to the Party, and this is what the donors want: keep the Democrats out, and do exactly nothing else (except maybe a tax cut). It’s pretty much what the base wants too — less a fringe who really care about the Christian Dominion stuff, and another fringe who can’t help fretting just a li’l’ about the pandemic.If — I say, if — Trump is rejected from a future leadership role in the Party, it will be because he failed in such a way as to whipsaw the Democrats back into power.
Ken
@tomtofa: After yesterday’s arrests, it’s possible Rudi was (again) booking those one-way tickets to Eastern Europe.
Splitting Image
@Jinchi:
Longer than that. Pat Buchanan, for one, has been pushing this since his presidential campaign in 1996. Before that you have the Reagan era when the GOP pushed the same ideas but it actually worked politically.
CaseyL
@tomtofa: I think they’re saving that for the RNC convention. Whatever programming isn’t Dolt45 shooting off his mouth will be proxies talking about Biden’s “mental problems.”
Martin
That’s what ‘drain the swamp’ always meant to them. It wasn’t to get rid of corruption, it was to get rid of Democrats. Clearly nobody in the GOP has a problem with corruption unless committed by a Democrat.
MisterForkbeard
@tomtofa: I was wondering about that too. I didn’t see anything at all from Rudy, and I was looking forward to pointing and laughing at him.
leeleeFL
@Jeffro: I said last night that the cut of her jib was liked. May she clean his clock!
Gin & Tonic
The hospital in Omsk has relented and are allowing Navalny to be medevaced to Germany.
JPL
@Jeffro: You should send that to Doug so that he can put it up, next he has a fund raiser for her.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Is he still alive, and I’m not being sarcastic.
Martin
@JPL: Trump can pardon him for what he’s been charged with, before a trial. See Ford’s pardon of Nixon.
leeleeFL
@Gin & Tonic: We need that to change, pronto. If we had prosecuted Nixon, no Reagan. If we prosecuted Reagan, no W and certainly no Trump.
Letting these lizards slide encourages far worse behavior. Moms and Grandmas know this.
West of the Cascades
I don’t think this is true if Loser Stench attaches to Trump after November 3rd (so say we all!). The rats will not be able to flee the sinking ship fast enough. I don’t expect a federal prosecution of Donald Trump Sr. himself, but given the unprecedented level of criminality in his administration, and a Vice-President who is a former prosecutor, I do not think that the new administration will be a purely “look forward not back” one. I expect selective prosecutions, including of people who enriched themselves by their official positions (and Ivanka and Jared have official positions).
I also expect that Leticia James and other state AGs will work to destroy Trump financially, which would be a fine outcome even if he never sees time in jail.
narya
@Litlebritdifrnt: The way that grifters continue to be able to grift, and con-people continue to con is that their marks are loathe to admit they were taken in. It’s too psychologically painful, so they keep buying the con.
catclub
i suspect most of the genius was recognizing and flattering the Mercers for funding his ambitions.
WereBear
Republicans were riding for a wipe out until Trump. Their usual suspects were lighting no fires, which is why they could not prevail over Trump in the primaries no matter how much money crazed Bircher billionaires spent.
Suuuuuuuure, the Republican Party was going to reach out to minorities and soft-pedal their basic message of “shut up and die for the economy.” You think Trump made that up? As if.
They would just ramp up the voter suppression and ballot theft and block any attempts to stop them. As we’ve been seeing…
catclub
@Gin & Tonic: They delayed until the poison dispersed.
Hoodie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That might have been me, or at least I’ve been thinking along those lines. Trump’s turn to QAnon signals to me that he’s lining up a new grift to fund his legal defense in state court after he pardons himself and/or any potential witnesses for federal crimes. The tax and bank fraud stuff in NY will be a document war of attrition, e.g., endless motions to quash subpeonas, privilege claims and other dilatory tactics.
I don’t see that he has a lot of daylight to win the election after the DNC proved that Biden doesn’t have farina running down his chin and, hey, actually is a pretty awesome grandpa kind of guy with a gorgeous family. I’m betting the RNC will be pure WWE/Alex Jones stuff. Cuddling up with Qanon is not going to give any votes he doesn’t already have, so he’s probably just locking them in to establish a channel for funding. He might use that to launch bogus lawsuits to fight election results in selected states where it might be close enough for him to squeak out an EC win. However, I think the likelihood of success there is pretty low, so it more likely is for legal defense afterwards and just general post-presidential grift (e.g., TrumpTV).
waspuppet
I’ve been dealing since the early 1970s with “clever” people who assume everyone, like them, discovered the existence of the Electoral College two months ago. I’ve kinda had enough.
pamelabrown53
@CaseyL:
I agree: totally expect Rudy to spew all during the convention. They might even bring in a wing-nut doctor to “verify” the diagnosis.
All in all, we’ll have 4 days of gutter-sniping, hate-filled divisiveness. At least, the trumpists won’t be subjected to the diverseness that is Us.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Trump has a problem with corruption if he doesn’t get his cut. Obviously that wasn’t happening with the Democrats, but he’s also gotten angry at Republicans who didn’t cut him in.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: Last reports I saw were that he is alive but in a coma. Although RIA Novosti is saying they aren’t going to fly out until Saturday morning (which probably means in about 8-9 hours from now.)
Gin & Tonic
@catclub: Yup.
West of the Cascades
@Martin: Assuming that Trump issues dozens or even hundreds of preemptive pardons in his last few days in office, what are the political implications of that? Could the Democrats use that to justify more radical reforms of the judiciary or immediate elimination of the filibuster?
(btw – there’s good Supreme Court and Court of Appeals precedent that accepting a pardon is a “confession of guilt,” and that the facts that led to the criminal conviction can still be used to disqualify pardoned individuals from other benefits – for example, a lawyer who is convicted and then pardoned can still be disbarred and prohibited from practicing law in the future based on the facts underlying the conviction … not sure how this would play out in the “preemptive pardon” situation).
HumboldtBlue
Now I’m crying again.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Chances he’ll be allowed back into Russia if he recovers?
James E Powell
@Gin & Tonic:
Villago delenda est!
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Or Carter’s pardon of the Vietnam draft dodgers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump issue a blanket pardon of everyone in the US government for official actions taken during his term.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
Oh wow.
moops
@Litlebritdifrnt:
uh, they can’t go there. I think conservative ideology and being a mark are fused concepts. Can people leave conservative ideology? yes, and then they can spot the grift, but not before utterly rejecting their foundational world view.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: Your guess is as good as mine.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue: Wow. Damn onions.
moops
@Roger Moore: Those people are not Trump, so I have a hard time seeing Trump pardoning everyone.
A blanket pardon for the entire Trump administration *just* might float up to the SC and give Roberts the chance to prove the court does not need to packed by the next administration. It would be good to have blanket pardons be rejected and set a precedent.
Ken
Joseph DeAngelo, the “Golden State Killer,” has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. Anyone offering odds on whether Trump pardons him during next week’s convention?
Gravenstone
@Litlebritdifrnt: As long as the grifters claim to hate all the right people, the MAGAts won’t care. This is their moment to shine!
And then once Trump is removed from office, they’ll go back to being aggrieved whiners, only now newly empowered and deeply embittered about what they perceived as the “power” and “respect” they earned by supporting Trump being stolen from them by Biden and the Democrats. They’re going to remain a festering boil on the body politic until they one by one die off. And as such, they will also remain gullible marks until their final days to anyone willing to further stoke their grievances.
Baud
@Ken:
Weren’t those state crimes?
Ken
@Baud: Oh, probably, but since when does reality matter to Trump?
Baud
@moops:
Or force him to testify about his actions before Congress. If he’s pardoned himself then he can’t please the fifth. If lies about his misdeeds (read, when) you can get him for perjury.
Anonymous At Work
The dream with Trump, prison aside, is that the Trump Organization is seized and declares bankruptcy, leading Trump from inheriting a fortune to poverty in one generation. Also, it might force his children to get honest work (feel a bit for Barron but his mom’s shrewd enough to have an escape plan).
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Weren’t Susan B. Anthony’s?
cmorenc
@mary s:
Paul Ryan was the embodiment of the laissez-faire body within the GOP, along with Wall Street / big business / chamber of commerce types who wanted less regulation and taxes for the “makers” (whom they defined as themselves as the economic engine of the country purportedly being hampered by government). Ever since Nixon in 1968, the commerce core of the GOP was willing to tolerate catering to the racist fringe, which attracted enough additional votes to be a substantial electoral advantage, particularly in closer elections. They realized in 2008 and 2012 that long-term, the demographics of the country were changing in ways such that this unholy GOP coalition would become unviable.
But in the meantime, the respite of the huge 2010 GOP midterm gains was fueled in substantial part by the Frankenstein race/resentment monster the commercial-minded masters of the party assumed they could still control, but Trump’s rise in 2016 (fueled by being perfectly attuned to the race/resentment instincts of the monster) shattered that illusion over the next two years. The previously dominant laissez-faire / commerce faction of the GOP happily went along with the unsavory aspects of Trump, but with increasing unease as it began to sink in that Trump had such iron-fist control over the now-dominant unsavory part of the coalition that they now dared not cross Trump.
Thus we get the entire (Romney excepted) narrow GOP senate majority going along with throttling the impeachment investigations, even though those on the intelligence committee knew the devastating facts about Trump’s betrayals of the country and their purported principles.
tokyokie
@West of the Cascades: I don’t think the issuance of a “preemptive pardon” has even been litigated. Not enough people were sufficiently interested in pursuing criminal charges against Nixon — especially after Ford’s pardon of him effectively cost the GOP the presidency — and Clinton did nothing to pursue the Iran-Contra types after Bush I’s general pardon of them. (As I recall, Bush’s pardon was not specific to either the people who were being pardoned or the crimes for which they were being pardoned.)
Pardons have generally been issued post-conviction for particular people for particular crimes. And the recognition of general pardons does nothing to advance a legitimate state interest, unless absolving criminal behavior of those with sufficient political connections is considered such. Do you think the original intent of the Founders was to protect criminal behavior at the highest levels of government? So I am of the opinion that the Biden administration move forward with prosecutions of members of the Trump administration in order to test the limits of the pardon power, or else we’ll see increasingly worse behavior go unpunished.
tokyokie
@Ken: Such as his recent “pardon” of Susan B. Anthony of what had to have been state charges.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@tomtofa:
Nope, Mr. Noun, Verb, 9-11 probably forgot.
Immanentize
@Roger Moore:
That right there is the loophole. Criminal acts that are knowing or purposeful cannot be official actions.
cmorenc
@moops:
A vastly more important acid test of Roberts will be how he votes on the constitutionality of the ACA (up for argument on 11/10/20). The combination of the urgency of the obvious need for federal health care leadership to manage the COVID crisis and a Biden win (especially if the Ds also take the Senate) should provide compelling incentive for Roberts to modify his restrictive views that the Commerce clause isn’t broad enough to support the degree of health insurance /health care federal action the ACA was designed to implement. But if Roberts votes to overturn the ACA wholesale because the tax leg supporting it was repealed in 2017 along with the huge Trump tax cuts, then we have an urgent need for SCOTUS reform.
Remember, FDR was initially hampered in dealing with the Great Depression by an even more ideologically hidebound SCOTUS majority until FDR convincingly trounced Landon 64-36 and the SCOTUS majority began following the election returns and upholding New Deal policies.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Apparently not. Wikipedia says she was tried in federal court. I didn’t look into it further.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Ford pardoned Nixon even before an indictment*.
* Nixon was an unindicted coconspirator.
Matt McIrvin
@tokyokie: Newt Gingrich publicly floated the idea of ordering soldiers to commit war crimes with a preemptive pardon accompanying the order. He thought it was a cool idea that Trump might be able to implement.
Immanentize
@cmorenc: That and the threat of packing the Court. “The switch in time” is no myth.
Frank Wilhoit
@Hoodie: You may be exactly right, but one Hell of a lot of collateral damage is going to come with that. I’ll just put this out there.
pamelabrown53
@HumboldtBlue:
Thank you for that link! Just so beautiful; I’m crying too.
Seriously, made my day.
cain
@Jeffro:
That would be a bad move – politically. To not punish anyone for corrupting a major part of government would be untenable – it would pretty much telegraph to everyone that the system is utterly broken and leave the door open to more abuse by the Republican party who are in the midst of transforming themselves into the lunatic party.
If they pull that shit, we need a national drive for a different way to vote for parties that isn’t a one size fit all.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:. @Baud:
I thought Anthony’s crimes were State crimes at first too — she voted in Rochester and was tried there….
But it turns out I was wrong — Susy was charged with the federal crime of voting illegally in the Presidential election. A Supreme Court Justice, Ward Hunt, went up to try the case. All male jury of course, but even then, Hunt took the issue from the jury (WTF?) and fined Anthony 100 bucks. Which she refused to pay. And nothing further was done.
Which is why her Center’s director said that Anthony would reject the pardon because she considered her conviction a badge of honor.
There, I have set my own bad record straight….
Baud
Ok, here’s more.
catclub
@tokyokie: ummm, somebody mentioned that Carter pardoned draft dodgers. That seems to contradict most of your arguments.
cain
It can’t end there – we need a thorough investigation of Republican politicians. Follow that Russian money and see where it is ending up. We already know that many conservative institutions are ostensibly receiving money for quid pro quo.
We need to prove that we mean business. I would put the never trumpers and other former GOPs as the head of the pack to take back their party.
catclub
Postponing the argument till after the election was a gift to the GOP, and they know it.
Martin
@tokyokie: I agree. They’re useful to signal ‘please don’t bother prosecuting these people, it’s not in the govt interest’, but I could see any number of Dem AGs go ahead if they felt the pardon was issued in bad faith or as part of a conspiracy.
The courts are generally not favorable to handing absolutely blank checks to other branches of government, so I don’t think they’d side with Trump here. What’s to stop a president from saying on the way out ‘everyone is pardoned for everything’. I could see the courts coming back and saying, no, you need to pardon specific people for specific crimes. You want to pardon all draft dodgers – Congress can do that for you – it’s called a ‘law’. And a president cannot use their pardon power to make someone a king.
cain
@moops:
The whole conservative party and is an all inclusive machine that wants to take money from you and put it in their pockets – they do it through govt and they do it through their political chicanery. That includes the religious right.
Immanentize
@catclub: Although Carter’s order was called a “pardon” it actually functioned more as a declaration of amnesty. The federal government stopped prosecuting draft dodgers.
That said, those convicted of violating the selective service act (not guilty of military desertion) could get a specific certificate of pardon. That would be nice to have hanging on the wall!
moops
@Baud: America doesn’t charge people for perjury anymore.
Immanentize
@tokyokie: I am starting to think that a general pardon (not attached to an actual conviction as the draft pardons were) may have some constitutional relationship to general warrants or ex post facto laws…. I gotta think on this more.
cain
Sure.. but as soon as they cross the border into Canada or any other countries – they should be arrested – especially if it is war crimes against NATO countries or allies.
James E Powell
@Immanentize:
Carter did that his first full day in office. Deserters were not pardoned.
I’ve often wondered, was that the genesis of the “Democrats hate the troops!” bullshit? Or does it go back to McGovern?
Immanentize
@cain: Pre-pardoning someone who commits a war crime is a war crime.
Jeffro
OT but a great short read in The Atlantic: America Never Learns, “Bootstraps” Are a Lie
MCA1
“Maybe if we’re all very good, the Flying Spaghetti Monster will reward us with additional Trump hangers-on going to the Greybar Hotel in this latest scandal. Kris Kobach would do for now!”
Oh, please, please, pretty please, Great FSM, make it be Curt Schilling. I don’t ask for much.
MCA1
@Litlebritdifrnt: Infinite. As evidenced by Qanon. They have made the determination that it’s easier to just let go of reality in total than it is to admit to themselves that they’ve been conned.
ballerat
@mary s: No. Josh is soft-pedaling. Or is collaborating, as I refer to it when the media help normalize Republican bigotry and advocacy of inequality.
Another example of his unwillingness to deal squarely with truth is where he describes Trumpism as an “admixture of economic populism and nativist immigration policy”.
Josh has had over 4 years, same as us, to see plain as day that the core of Trumpism is nothing more noble or patriotic than a mass temper tantrum of white racist idiots and their yawp of white grievance and white supremacy.
The title of Josh’s piece asks if this is the end of Trump. The dishonesty is here, too, as whoever wrote it is pretending Josh and the media are incapable of understanding that as long as they continue to normalize the racists and their racism, the answer to that question is obviously NO.
The media people know. They’ve always known. Like old-school Republicans, they don’t like to say the quiet parts out loud.
They’re collaborators, not naifs.
patrick II
@Frank Wilhoit:
I will kind of disagree with that. He promised cheap health care for everyone (it will be easy), return of manufacturing jobs to midwest, return of coal jobs to Kentucky and WV, to have Mexico pay for a wall, and treating immigrants like subhumans. He only succeeded on the last, but that was the one that counted.
prostratedragon
@tokyokie: Absolutely or as I’ve taken to saying, (some) pardons are just norms, after all.
Mai naem mobile
Maybe I am the only one but i am kind of surprised that Bannon got caught up in this. He seemed like the smartest one in the bunch , the one who might profit from the illegal action but not actually get his hands dirty. The ones I want to see in prison are obviously Bill Barr and then Mnuchin who’s been busy increasing the inequality gap.
Skepticat
We know he’ll never suffer real consequences, but I could accept this.
cain
@Jeffro:
People stubbornly stick to this because it hurts their grift operation. To admit that it’s all a false narrative is to hurt the grift.
patrick II
@tokyokie:
I think Biden had better pack the court first or it’s worse than a waste of time because of the precedent it would set.
ballerat
@Calouste: This. Good catch. It’s another example of how our collaborationist political media normalizes right-wing bigotry.
Fuck me with a stick. Immigration groups. As if right-wingers advocate a carefully thought out and crafted set of policies.
The policy has always been nothing more than a bigot screaming “go back to where you came from, you @*%#-er”, ideally while assaulting them or getting state-sponsored goons to do it in their stead.
patrick II
I do not believe a self-pardon can be legal in a functioning democracy. It would mean complete autocracy. It follows anyone involved in a conspiracy that would require a presidential self-pardon to avoid prosecution could not be legal either.
Omnes Omnibus
@moops: That is not true.
Jeffro
@cain: I think people stick to it because our “system” of nearly unbridled short-term-capitalism, such as it is, only works if people continue to act selfishly and on their own.
Once they realize the vastly greater power of acting collectively, and/or that those preaching individualism are in fact working together to keep themselves rich and others poor, it’s a whole new ballgame.
Sebastian
They are all eyeballs-deep in this.
The more I see the more I am convinced a lot of this is being rolled out with surgical precision. Not to be all conspiratory but this has Obama’s fingerprints/MO all over, the methodical approach, the impeccable timing, etc.
And we would be fools to think he is sitting back and doing nothing while this shit is going on. He and his people have enough folks in the executive apparatus to feed information and I bet you they knew all along that Eric, Jr, Ivanka, and DJT Sr funneled money into the Built The Wall charity and lined their own pockets.
It’s the perfect scandal to blow up: it’s financial so the proof is in writing and obvious, it violates multiple laws, and most importantly the marks are rightwingers so they are not going to brush it off as sticking it to the libs.
This story is anything but over. Friends, pour yourself a drink and savor. We are about to watch one for the ages.
ballerat
@mary s: To be clear, Yes and No.
So, yes, the GOP obviously looked at the changing demographics and knew their future appeal was limited. But it wasn’t a racist fringe. It was their base, even then.
Even before Trump, even before the GOP 2012 loss, Dubya had actually (and I believe, sincerely) tried immigration reform. (I think 2007) . And he was attacked and abandoned by his entire party because the bill — gasp! — provided immigrants with an actual legal path to citizenship.
To be clear the way Josh described it, it sounded as if the GOP had actually done this post-2012 soul searching. Can you imagine? The soul-less looking for their souls.
The GOP knew who buttered their bread. And they knew who their base is — the GOP had for decades made it an electoral strategy to make the racists welcome. (That’s why I consider Josh to be normalizing this — it’s a whitewash of history to describe in those terms — they are the GOP’s own framing.)
So, no, it’s not true. There wasn’t any sincere attempt to even find the road to Damascus post-2012 among the GOP. It was all just PR.
Note this well: even that bit of fiction pissed off their base. They were having none of it. They were done with pretending.
Trump makes sense now, no?
ballerat
White light, white heat.
2liberal
On December 24, 1992, President George H.W. Bush granted pardons to six defendants in the Iran-Contra Affairs.
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/thepardons.php
germy
Trump Says He’ll Have Law Enforcement Patrol Polling Sites on Election Day
ballerat
Was this before or after FDR attempted to pack the court? I imagine it made the returns much more persuasive : >
SCOTUS: Fuck you, FDR, you class traitor. Your pathetic and unconstitutional attempt to dilute us has failed. Bwa-ha-ha!
FDR: That was but a love tap. Now you know I mean business.
Heed well my words: On my Mother’s grave I swear Ima fix your shitty little red wagon, one way or another, if it takes my last dying breath. See these returns? Behold!
SCOTUS: [Looking at returns] Fuckibus nobis!
Ok, ok, uh, let’s not be rash! Say, we’ve thought more about this New Deal thing, and it has occurred to us there might be a wee bit of legal basis for the more controversial [spit] help-the-poors parts of it…..
trollhattan
@germy:
Patrol against cammo-clad “patriots?” I’m all for it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ballerat:
Sara Roosevelt may have had a problem with that since she was alive during the court packing, passing away 3 months before Pearl Habor was bombed.
ballerat
@germy: Trump is the same with women.
He vilifies them, and yet yearns for sex with them. Which to him is to do the business with them.
Trump is incapable of making love to a woman. Sex surely is a transaction, as everything is for him, and we know he must first rig it so he must be the winner and she must be the loser.
And of course he’s a serial rapist. We all know that, even if too many won’t acknowledge it. It’s all about control and domination and humiliation and power — winning, according to him. Raping women fits everything about him.
ballerat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Would you be willing to grant me an artistic license?