President Trump – angry, manic, desperate, and perpetually needy – had not so legal eagle Sidney Powell back to the White House today to indulge his and her fantasies (ewww!!!!).
SPOTTED tonight at the White House: attorney & conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell.@abdallahcnn & I saw her leaving the residence side of the White House shortly before 9p.
She denied meeting with Trump tonight. When pressed again, she said: “It would be none of your business”— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) December 21, 2020
Would it be legally viable? White House counsel already told him it wouldn’t be. But Powell/Flynn others are telling him what he wants to hear right now. And if he went ahead with it, it would be destabilizing in a new way.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 21, 2020
Fixing after autocorrect fun – I had missed this earlier but the Overstocked CEO was also present for this Friday meeting that two senior Trump aides called “crazy.” https://t.co/rjC2RElKc2
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 21, 2020
And just who is Patrick Byrne? Byrne is the former CEO of Overstock who had to resign from that position when it was discovered/disclosed that he’d been having an affair, and enjoying very different types of positions, with Maria Butina. Since then he’s become an avid warrior against the Deep State (there is no Deep State) and for Trump.
In addition, any suggestion if there was talk of a military coup or martial law is also a flat lie. 100% false. I was there for 4 1/2 hours, I heard the entire conversation, that is a 100% fabrication. https://t.co/YloZGhEcpl
— Patrick Byrne (@PatrickByrne) December 20, 2020
Powell, in addition to her two meetings this weekend with the President, has also been airing her grievances.
Just an update on what Sidney Powell — who Trump met with Friday to discuss appointing as a special prosecutor — is retweeting tonight https://t.co/AtSRe1n1pg pic.twitter.com/ZOMV181AjL
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 21, 2020
All of this stupidity reached the point where both Secretary of the Army McCarthy and the Army Chief of Staff GEN McConville issued a statement on Friday that:
There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.
Powell, the perhaps even more unhinged LTG (ret) Flynn, Byrne, and others appear to be indulging Trump’s grievances, delusions, and worst instincts. This includes a new filing with the Supreme Court requesting cert to overturn three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings in the quixotic and never ending quest to get the Supreme Court to disenfranchise millions of Americans and allow Trump to remain president.
The senior military leaders have made it clear they are not going to get involved in the election outcome. Every court that Trump’s attorneys – Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis – or attorneys working on his behalf, but not directly for him – Powell, L. Lin Wood, a few others* – have gone to seeking to have all or parts of the election results thrown out have told them they don’t have a case. They don’t have standing, they don’t have anything that is justiciable at the district level or appealable at the appellate level or even constitutionally remediated at the state and US Supreme Court levels. And that’s before we get into just how bad the basic lawyering has been. Wood filed something at the end of last week attesting that there was “plenty of perjury.”
I’m sure some of our own actual legal eagles will weigh in, as I’m not a lawyer and I’m not about to start playing one here, but I don’t even see how Trump could have voting machines seized. They voting machines are the property of municipalities and the election laws that allow their use are state laws. I get that the tennis player illegally acting as the DHS secretary has already explained that DHS doesn’t have the authority to do this, and I’m sure Barr isn’t going to authorize the FBI to do it between now and his last day on Wednesday, so even if Trump could find someone with a badge and a gun to do this I can’t imagine state and local officials would allow it to happen.
And that’s the same thing with Flynn’s and Powell’s and anyone else calling for him to invoke the Insurrection Act, declare martial law, invalidate the election, and thereby remain president. You can’t undertake a coup with a disgraced, pardoned, unhinged retired general; a passel of really bad and incompetent attorneys; a disgraced, unhinged former CEO who can’t keep his fly zipped; and a bunch of people on Twitter. I once planned an insurgency as part of an Army war game – finding host country senior military, law enforcement, and government leaders who had gone to ground after their country had been invaded and organizing them as a host country insurgent/irregular force to harry the invaders while we and our coalition allies in the exercise simulation tried to force the invading army out, retake the country, and reestablish the government – and I couldn’t make chicken salad out of this chicken shit.
All that Trump, Powell, Flynn, Byrne, Giuliani, Powell, and all the sycophants, surrogates, and supporters are doing is degrading America’s political structures and institutions. They are putting the lives of local and state officials, as well as the lives of those working for the voting machine companies in danger. Eventually they’ll start putting state and Federal judges lives in danger. We saw the beginning of that this week with the 4chan hoax about John Roberts.
We’ve got four years of evidence that none of these people can effectively run the government, they’re not about to suddenly become competent revolutionaries. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to put people’s lives in danger or get people hurt or killed. They absolutely will. They’ll definitely do as much damage as they can to the United States, its political structures, its institutions, the constitutional order, and democratic self government as possible. And they’ll keep doing it even once Trump is out of office. As I wrote the night before election day:
Rule or ruin. That was the crux of it in 1860.
They seek to rule or ruin. It is all they have ever sought. They don’t care about party, when they finish consuming and using up what’s left of the Republican Party they’ll attach themselves to another party. Just as they abandoned the Democratic Party and attached themselves like the parasites they are to the Republican Party during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s when it became clear that they could no longer achieve their goals through the Democratic Party. All they care about is ruling or ruining. They don’t care about the ordered liberty, civic rights and responsibilities, and individual rights and responsibilities that animated the founders and framers. They don’t actually care about the Constitution or what it means. They don’t actually care about America and its ideals, the actual promise of those ideals, and the charge laid upon us all by the founders and framers to create a more perfect union. They certainly don’t care about providing for the common defense, securing the blessings of liberty, and promoting the general welfare. They don’t actually care about America or Americans except insofar as they can use America to protect themselves, their property, and their wealth and they can exploit every other American to further enrich themselves. If they cannot rule, then they will always seek to ruin.
Lincoln was clear eyed as to who they were and what they were about in 1860. As we go into election day tomorrow, even if you’ve already cast your vote by mail or in person during early voting, we need to be as clear eyed as Lincoln to the threat they pose to the Republic and recognize that voting tomorrow to disempower these anti-American wreckers is just the first step in a centuries long war for not just control of, but for the soul of, America.
Open thread!
* Because the writers this year have decided to just say “FUCK IT!!!”, one of the attorneys consulting for and aiding the president in his suits regarding Pennsylvania is also the attorney for Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky is being prosecuted in the US, owns the network that vaulted Zelensky into Ukraine’s presidency, lives in Israel, and may be one of the primary Ukrainian sources of the dirt that Rudy Giuliani has been looking for on Hunter Biden.
Cheryl Rofer
Ah, good. You got in the part about Patrick Byrne and the New Yorker article, which I read a few days ago.
I think we need to consider that Byrne seems delusional enough that he may be saying he was there, but in fact was not. The other side of that is that if Trump is consulting Sidney Powell, it would not be surprising if he were consulting Byrne.
[There have been times when I read a statement from the Biden camp, and it makes sense and comes out of normal strategies, and it is like the sun shining through the clouds.]
Cheryl Rofer
But you missed this. They are turning on each other, as conspiracy theorists are wont to do.
Lyrebird
Thanks for your column, Adam!
I’m glad the Army leadership piped up,and I’m sad that they felt the need to do so.
Would be very interested to hear your and/or Cheryl’s take on people alleging voting fraud in KY. I don’t know if it’s just that some reporters at Raw Story have gone off the opposite deep end… sorry this machine won’t let me get back on to post the link. Logic was something like, gee, maybe some of the feverish-sounding claims they have made about hacking voting machines is an admission of what they actually did to some E&S machines to clinch McConnell’s and Graham’s victories.
Again, I have no clue, and I have just found out that one of my kid’s school workers tested positive, and I am trying to think about anything else.
dmsilev
At least Trump is headed for Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday, so he’ll have even more opportunities to listen to various nutballs catering to his aggrieved ego.
That’ll make things so much better!
Mike in NC
This tedious four year long Airing of Grievances ends in 30 days. Enough is enough. If they want to go out like Mussolini and company, we can accommodate that.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I didn’t miss it. I just didn’t include it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Lyrebird: I distrust Raw Story and as a result haven’t followed up on this. I haven’t seen it alleged anywhere else.
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: My understanding is that there’s no there there with the Raw Story reporting.
dmsilev
Also, ‘I’ve got plenty of perjury’ was not one of George Gershwin’s better songs.
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: We’ll keep good thoughts for your kid and the school worker.
jonas
JFC, Nixon wandering the halls of the White House at night muttering to the portraits of former presidents is downright NORMAL compared to this batshit insanity. And I assume what Byrne is saying is that they’re not discussing “martial law”, but merely an executive order *authorizing* the military to seize control of certain states and municipalities in order to confiscate their voting machines and declare Trump the winner. See? Totally different than this fake news martial law business. They only do that in countries run by crazy people.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: What could go wrong?
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: Not every Gershwin song could be a hit.
John Revolta
Mercy!! Can nattering nabobs of negativism be far behind?
MisterForkbeard
@Cheryl Rofer: Explicit: They’re totally cool with him being massively corrupt with lots of “skeletons” if he just backs Trump.
I mean, we knew it already but it’s nice of them to say so. :)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Lyrebird:
Again, for the cheap seats – I despise McConnell, have taken the opportunity to insult the closeted on directly to his face (he had an appetite for chicken when he was an early middle aged local official).
He won KY fair and square – the spreadnecks in this state love cruelty even if they dislike him and think he’s a crook.
He’s THEIR crook, and no amount of misery is too much of it means that people who don’t look, think or act like white rural Kentuckians don’t get to be less miserable than them.
dmsilev
I realize that searching for logic here makes about as much sense as entrusting anything to Jared Kushner, but what would even be the point of seizing voting machines? Are they expecting to find little Trump-hating gnomes hiding inside the cases? The actual votes, which have been, well, actually counted, would seem to be more important.
Cheryl Rofer
@MisterForkbeard: It’s beyond corruption. Lin Wood is the one who had been responsible for all the spelling errors in the legal papers that Powell isn’t responsible for. He’s as delusional as any of them. Makes Mark Meadows look pretty good, which may be why he’s attacking him.
With an edge of KewAnon.
Uncle Omar
I hope the Secret Service taped these meetings. So, this is the remains of the Trump Inner Circle, three incompetent batshit crazy attorneys, one perjurious felon, and an eyes wide shut Russian honey trap victim. It looks like we might end up with a Seven Days in May situation yet. If he, Trump, is going to Mar a Lago for the holiday, maybe the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, Brits, French, or Iranians will release their tapes of any meetings he has with the A-Team there.
Wait until he finds out that all the money that Jared stole from the campaign went to cover his debts and there isn’t any left for Daddy Don.
Jay
Fuck, Kolomoisky wasn’t on my Covid 19 bingo card
rikyrah
@Lyrebird:
????
Emma from FL
Sometimes I wonder if they are mad or evil. Then I realize it doesn’t really matter. The outcome would be the same.
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: They’re convinced that a forensic examination will show that the software on them was created in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez orders, funded by the Lichtensteiners, on behalf of a communist Chinese and Democratic Party plot. And that it was designed to switch millions of votes in specific states from Trump to Biden. Or something. Despite several of the states they’re alleging this happened in don’t use the same voting machines.
Cheryl Rofer
The President will be sitting in his high chair pulling on his lip and saying “wubba-wubba.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Mike in NC:
I have been curious as to the conservative Republican end game – how do you get to enjoy your society with low tax rates, a structural legislative advantage and a lifetime of conservative judicial opinions if you’re spending all your time and money on security measures to duck assassination attempts, IEDs and have to start worrying about your families, donors and close friends being tainted by proximity?
MisterForkbeard
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m just comforted by the fact that McConnell is obviously not well and I don’t think he’ll survive the next 4 years.
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman: Makes total sense.
Amir Khalid
BWAHAHAHA
ETA: This is from the guy who told his fellow Georgiana, “We ain’t dermb!”
MisterForkbeard
@Uncle Omar: I’m hopeful whatever Biden AG is in place decides that they need to recordings or minutes of these meetings to determine if any crimes took place.
At the very least, deposing the Senior Trump Sources cited by Haberman seems like a good idea.
gratuitous
A pull quote from one of Byrne’s tweets: “I can promise you: President Trump is being terribly served by his advisers. They want him to lose and are lying to him.”
Uh, Mr. Byrne? Kiddo? President Trump has already lost the election. He lost it weeks ago. What his advisers want or don’t want is immaterial. Trump lost and that fact is beyond recall. Nitwit.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid:
Adam L Silverman
@Uncle Omar: @MisterForkbeard: The Secret Service does not record the president’s meetings or conversations.
Jay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
there is no end game.
CaseyL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I don ‘t know, but if there’s any chance of making “The War of The Mad & Evil versus the Merely Evil” a reality TV show I’d subscribe.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: And also that the voting machine companies are now threatening to sue, at last I heard, several Fox News commentators and Sidney Powell.
Thanks for this explanation. I can never recall all of it.
I can’t help laughing, but the other side is that this is the President of the United States of America. Until January 20, now a month away but who’s counting.
Good night. Gotta give the kitties their late-night crunchies.
Kent
Why not both?
MisterForkbeard
@Adam L Silverman: No, but hopefully someone wrote it down. They’re leaking to the press about it, so I’d be surprised if some of them didnt take notes about what was said.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Have a great night.
I keep the conspiracy theories straight so you don’t have to!
Philbert
@MisterForkbeard: McConnell is not well, I’m looking forward to the Dem Ky governor replacing McKkk with a Dem. Sweet
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer: And their threats are real enough that they got Lou Dobbs to do an on-air self-debunking. Guess having actual competent lawyers and an actual case counts for something.
Emma from FL
@Kent: I believe evil is a choice and madness is not. (added) But since the actions are the same as are the results… *shrug
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: I assume that with the seized voting machines they wouldn’t be seeking evidence, but rather planting or fabricating evidence. As such it would be limited only by their morbid imagination.
JanieM
@dmsilev:
This is my laugh of the week.
@Adam L Silverman:
Is there any difference?
As a former programmer I wish them the best of luck trying to prove any of it, supposing they could get their hands on the machines.
Oh wait, I forgot, they don’t have to “prove” anything, they can just keep making shit up. Any experts who might examine the machines without coming up with the right conclusions were just in on the conspiracy in the first place. Etc.
Matt McIrvin
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The endgame is the extermination of all the rest of us. We wouldn’t present any problem if we’re dead.
Uncle Omar
@Adam L Silverman: But, during the Great Clinton Penis Chase I remember a court ruling that Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify about what was said in Presidential meetings. It also seems that witnesses to a conspiracy to overthrow the constitution could also be compelled to testify and that Executive Privilege would not apply to a plot to overturn the election and seize power.
And, I’m going to bed and try to stop thinking about what a bunch of terrible people have power in this country. To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, “Get these motherfucking snakes out of our motherfucking house!”
Richard
@MisterForkbeard: he should have retired years ago. Moscow mitch gets no sympathy in this house.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to go watch the second half of Racing 92 V Harlequins. You all have a great night.
JanieM
@JanieM: Another thing about that convoluted mess of a conspiracy theory is that the perps of this alleged conspiracy (Chavez et al.) are smart enough to pull off the theft of an election but not smart enough to erase their tracks. I wouldn’t trust these people to make change in a convenience store.
Oh, wait………
jonas
@dmsilev: Dobbs didn’t do any debunking himself. Fox ran an “insert” segment of sorts during Dobbs, Baritomo, and Pirro’s shows debunking the election hacking nonsense. The hosts of course acted like it never happened, but I suppose Fox now thinks it’s covered its ass. It will be interesting to see what Smartmatic’s lawyers think of it. I hope they settle for nothing less than the hosts themselves admitting it was all bullshit. But Fox got away with not issuing a formal retraction of the Seth Rich story peddled by Hannity and others, even though the network paid a big settlement to the family, so maybe they can’t push it much further.
jonas
@JanieM: Don’t forget they did it all while somehow also making sure there was no discrepancy between the paper ballot count and the electronic count. It’s one thing to hack a computer system, but to also alter millions of paper ballots? Only Hugo Chavez’s ghost in league with George Soros and the Trilateral Commission, Freemasons, and Reverse Vampires could have pulled that off!
LeftCoastYankee
Halberman always has quotes from “White House staffers” who think that “new thing that happened” is crazy. This gives the incorrect impression that sane people are working there.
It’s probably more like: “Stealing the voting machines? That’s crazy! We should get Nicholas Cage to steal Obama’s face off of Mt. Rushmore!”
Lyrebird
@Cheryl Rofer: and @Adam L Silverman:
Thanks so much! I also have doubts about Raw Story, but some of my reasons are kinda pedantic, like not liking the click-bait sounding headlines they put out. I figure y’all have better reasons.
:-)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Thanks for the firsthand view. Sigh!!
Here’s hoping we can at least reduce his power.
VOR
@MisterForkbeard: obligatory clip from The Wire, Stringer Bell on note taking. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8&feature=share
Lyrebird
&
@rikyrah:
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
They’re both lovely people… yes to those good thoughts! Everyone’s been working their masks, so here’s hoping the big person has a mild case and my little one didn’t catch it.
Peace to all o y’all out there…
rikyrah
@VOR:
“are you taking notes on a MUTHAPHUCKIN’ CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY?”
Anotherlurker
Since this is an open thread, I’d like to take a moment to kvel a bit.
I lost my beloved Pup, Buddy 11 months ago. On Friday, I welcomed the new love of my life, the beautiful Addie. Addie is a 7 year old Golden Retriever who was a brood dog in China. It is wrenching to think that her puppies probably went straight to the slaughterhouse.
When Addie reached 5-6 years old, she was reaching the end of her value as a breeder. So, as is customary, she was sold to a slaughterhouse. Bunniesbuddies.org is an amazing rescue organization devoted to saving these wonderful dogs who are destined for the table.
She is truly amazing! Sweet, loving, calm and wicked smahart! She was actually someone’s pet before someone decided to monetize her. She knows sit! down! stay! . I was knocked for a loop when I opened the back door of my Prius and she jumped right in, as if she had been doing it forever.
The moment when I cut loose the safety ties that had secured the door to her crate is a moment I will never forget. I opened the door, secured her collar and leash and immediately fell in love! She left the crate, her home for 24 hours, and she let me hug her. As she felt her freedom, her tail was wagging in the table sweeping way a Golden has. She licked my face and then led me, quick time, to the small grassy area next to LAX Air Cargo area. Once we settled a bit and she was comfortable in the doggie hammock that occupies my back seat, we then started on our 5.5 hour drive to Walnut Creek. Jim, my oldest friend in the world accompanied me on the trip and he drove the whole way, while I gave Addie scritches and soothing words. After all she and her fellow liberated Pups experienced as dogs destined for the slaughterhouse, she and they showed great affection to their new Mommys and Daddies. What an amazing experience! Addie and I are in love!
The dogs were many breeds including Corgis, Labs, Goldens, Maltipoos, Dashunds and mixed breeds.
AJ
Thanks for this, Adam.
The 4chan hoax about Roberts…this stuff is truly unrelenting.
Hope the rugby is a good respite.
Omnes Omnibus
It will depend on his rooting interests. I will say no more.
Amir Khalid
@Anotherlurker:
Love is by far the most precious thing they bring into our lives. I wish you and Addie many happy years together.
rikyrah
@Anotherlurker:
Awe…you and Addie????
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Mark Meadows deserves to be made miserable by his own team. He’s an evil man.
Anotherlurker
@Amir Khalid: Thanks, so much! She is a real love!
Anotherlurker
@rikyrah: For me all my dogs have been emotional support friends. I get just as much from the arrangement as Addie does.
It is definitely a mutually beneficial relationship .
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Ah, but they have the sign wrong. The (ludicrous, to be clear) counter-narrative:
the machines (which cough produce voter-verifiable, recountable paper) were designed to switch votes from Biden to Trump; they just slightly underestimated the magnitude of the Democratic votes in the rigged battleground states. This also hand-wavingly explains the “polling error” underpredicting the Trump vote. And the Benford’s Law analyses of reported vote totals. The other stuff involving actual ballots was just smoke screen from Republicans to hide the real rigging.
/snark
Comrade Colette
@jonas:
You’ve been Spying on my Family Get-togethers you Murderous Bastard!
We have a long-time friend who always had a bit of a penchant for conspiracy theories but has been slipping deeper and deeper into them lately – not Q or election stealing, he’s still a Democrat, not a monster, but definitely Illuminati/Trilateral Commission-adjacent nonsense. The hardest thing to deal with has been his absolute conviction that the very improbability of any connection among the “conspirators,” and the utter lack of evidence for any overlap among them, is itself proof of how airtight and powerful their conspiracy is. Sigh.
Captain C
@jonas: You could make a more logical conspiracy by picking cards at random from a Steve Jackson’s Illuminati deck.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
No one ever claimed that anything out of the mouth or in the brain of a trumper has one micro gram of truth, common sense, uncommon sense, rationality, logic or cognitive thought.
Mary G
@Anotherlurker: So happy for you and Addie!
Ruckus
@Jay:
Sure there’s an end game. You have to be completely fucking insane to see or understand it but for sure, there’s an end game. And yes it’s absolutely true that shitforbrains couldn’t explain it logically or legally but still, he has an end game.
Amir Khalid
I am happy that Trump has so much trust in Sidney Powell. She is precisely the kind of lawyer I want to see picking and fighting his legal battles.
Mary G
Deleted.
TS (the original)
@Uncle Omar:
It really is starting to look like the end of the Third Reich with Hitler praising the young teens who took up arms on his behalf & ranting to his inner circle as to how they were still in a winning position.
Calouste
@TS (the original): I think Melania knows how that movie ends, and is happy to leave the role of Eva Braun to her eldest stepdaughter.
Of course the shitgibbon is too much of a coward to shoot himself, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about an (intended or not, fatal or not) overdose of whatever his favorite pills are currently.
TS (the original)
@MisterForkbeard:
Deposing Haberman would be a good idea and finding out why she decided to use her sources to write a book rather than provide the information she has on the behavior of this administration to those who could act upon same.
I hope the Biden administration refuses to give her the time of day.
Frankensteinbeck
So, following my predictions so far. Although I’m sure everyone here who has known a toxic narcissist expected the same. Trump actually believes the conspiracy theories. He has to. He just had to find them, because the one thing that cannot be true is that he lost. He is also trying absolutely every option he can think of to retain power. Some are just getting slapped down before they get out of the starting gate. The irony is that we are seeing first-hand that the system does work, because it is getting tested at every level.
It’s an interesting question whether Pence will refuse to read off that Biden won. It makes no difference, since his constitutional job is as an announcer, not decider. Pence obeys orders. He is too stupid to do anything else. But whose orders?
Another interesting question is how long it will take for the Republicans voters to stop hoping they can pull this out. It’s clear that every stage of losing has peeled off a layer, but how many? We have no numbers. SCOTUS’s rejection certainly lost a bunch. Some are desperate enough that they think the Storm (a worldwide coup by the American military) will happen just after Biden’s inauguration. It might be impossible even to poll, because central to the Republican ethos is spouting their side’s line as a middle finger to us even when they don’t believe it.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well yeah, but … I can all too easily imagine the Trump dead-enders seizing upon that, even if it doesn’t actually matter, and triumphantly declaring that Pence didn’t say it so it didn’t happen, Biden ain’t the President, neener neener neener. It will be stupid, childish, and disruptive; but we can expect no better of the Republican party these days.
Balconesfault
Mad or evil… I think the Trump’s behavior can be explained very well by his grifters mentality.
There are tens of millions of people that Trump still has a pretty good chance of continuing to grift off into the future, either by continued mailings of how to keep up the fight by sending him money, or by cultivating patrons of whatever media outlet he ends up hitching to or creating.
And right now, the one common thread among that base of marks is that if you’re not willing to do whatever it takes to keep Trump in the oval office, you’re either a craven coward or a traitor.
And that list has now come to include not only folks like Kemp and Raffe, and then Bill Barr, but now even Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
Trump needs to keep pushing for more and more extreme measures because if he doesn’t… That means he’s a craven coward or a traitor to his own cause. And the rubes aren’t going to be shilling out their shekels in the future for a coward or traitor.
Trump knows this, so he’s got to keep playing hand out to the bitter end. Since he has absolutely no shame except for being labeled a loser, there’s no reason for him not to start publicly calling for the craziness to keep jumping quantum levels in the coming weeks.
SFAW
@VOR:
Josh has a piece at TPM he titled “Criminal Conspiracy,” and every time I read that title, I think of Stringer.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The above would fit Trump too. Trump’s game is always to get someone else to break the law for him. This is why Trump has been talking about pardon all around.
Mo Salad
He’s been with the world.
And I’m tired of the coup de jour.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
The problem is that the Republicans kept a mentally unstable man in office for four years, and that Republican government officials continue to back him.
To describe Trump as a narcissist is insufficient. What do we call the Republican state attorneys general who tried to file a suit to vindicate Trump? These people have shown that they are incapable of evaluating evidence. They should be removed from office. But they won’t be.
It’s also pretty clear that McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in Congress will soon deny that they ever even knew Trump, let alone defended and protected him.
bjacques
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: late to this particular party, but if history is any guide, the nobility have more to fear from each other or from successful gangsters wanting in than from the peasantry or even the intendant class, because of the constraints of means, motive and opportunity. Revolts are rare, and revolutions less so.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
The saying USED to be something like “Never ascribe to malice what can reasonably be attributed to incompetence.” The Rethugs have switched that.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck:
How long did it take the descendants of former Confederates to stop saying “The South will rise again”?
evodevo
@Cheryl Rofer: Well, I live in Ky, and while there could be chicanery in Eastern Ky (makes Tammany Hall look like pikers), I doubt it in the rest of the state…our boards of elections are pretty straight arrow. Our local County Clerk is a Repub, and I hear no chatter with regard to the voting…we just have a LARGE contingent of right winger evangelicals in this state who would vote for the Devil if he promised to be anti-‘bortion…+, of course, rampant racism…
lowtechcyclist
@Cheryl Rofer:
The leopards are eating each others’ faces. Me happy.
lowtechcyclist
@Comrade Colette:
Since he’s still a Democrat, might it help to remind him of how Dubya’s gang used the fact that the inspectors couldn’t find Saddam’s WMDs as evidence that they were there, just extremely cunningly hidden?
Barry
@dmsilev: ”
I realize that searching for logic here makes about as much sense as entrusting anything to Jared Kushner, but what would even be the point of seizing voting machines? Are they expecting to find little Trump-hating gnomes hiding inside the cases? The actual votes, which have been, well, actually counted, would seem to be more important.”
You show print-outs which say: HUNTER BIDEN/KILLARY KLINTOON/OBAMA BIN LADIN WE HATE AMERICA AND GOD VOTE FRAUD SOFTWARE (copyright Satan, Inc.)
Uncle Cosmo
Simple: He shrieks I WON! as he kicks the table over into Biden’s face & stalks off.
That would go active as soon as they’ve set a Dem/lefty/POC up as the assassin. (They’ll almost surely do a half-assed job, and anyone with a halfway-functioning brain would see right through it, but Trumpistas would eat it up with a spork.)
Barry
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “I have been curious as to the conservative Republican end game – how do you get to enjoy your society with low tax rates, a structural legislative advantage and a lifetime of conservative judicial opinions if you’re spending all your time and money on security measures to duck assassination attempts, IEDs and have to start worrying about your families, donors and close friends being tainted by proximity?”
It hasn’t happened yet, so these people figure that it won’t. Also, they figure that between their guards and savage police ‘pre-emptive’ attacks, that they’d be safe.
These people believe (correctly) that consequences are for the Little People.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@bjacques: Do keep in mind all the major peasant revolts happened after major natural disasters like, say pandemics. Nobility loses the mandate of heaven and all that.
pluky
@adamsilverman “I once planned an insurgency.” You really do lead an interesting life!
Aziz, light!
@Mo Salad: We are not men, we are Devo.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@jonas: Someone said it years ago, that Trump wouldn’t talk to the portraits, as he wouldn’t know who they were.
Adam L Silverman
@pluky: That was part of an Army war game and that sentence should have included that. I’ve now gone back and added that information to clarify that remark. That said, I do know how to do those types of things. And you can’t organize the Trump supports/base of the Republican Party into an effective insurgent or revolutionary force. Too many big egos, too many different objectives, too little cohesion. We saw this happen with the what the Bundy’s were trying to motivate first in Nevada and then in Oregon. The result was infighting, groups coming and then going because they were being treated the right way or put in charge or given primacy, etc.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Hi Adam. Good to see you back posting.
I guess I should read some of your posts, one of these days … kind of on a news holiday. Keeping my mind clear for the Great Planet Conjunction (TM) later today
It’s about time the planets started aligning for us.
Bruce Baugh
I believe I know what they genuinely expect to find in seized voting machines: the equivalent of Marcellus’ briefcase. That is, a luminous glow, an interior we never see, and whatever they feel would prove their case. I don’t believe they’re any longer capable of formulating a more coherent goal than that.