I think what we’re seeing with Steve Schmidt unloading on Meghan McCain is a man who is at peace with his 401(k)
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) May 8, 2022
Because I do not have BettyC’s essentially optimistic temperament, my first response to Schmidt’s most excellent twitter rants last night was to check his specific targets. He went after:
In other words, Schmidt hasn’t burned any bridges he might want to recross in the future, should Trump’s henchmen go full Jonestown at the 2024 RNC convention.
The specific spark for the whole outburst — McMeghan ‘liking’ a tweet that accused Schmidt of ‘running a pedo racket during the Trump presidency’ — seems more important, IMO, than the exact depths of McCain-era depravity. That’s an attack on Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver, whose career collapsed spectacularly in early 2021:
I worked with a 61 year old closeted Gay man who grew up in a different era in America. He grew up Catholic and Texan. I met him through John McCain. He sent sexts to ADULT MEN and was accused by 21 of sending harassing emails. Let’s be clear about something. His life was
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 8, 2022
2/ destroyed because he had the nerve to stand up against Donald Trump. I saw John Weaver on one occasion between July 07 and today. Every person in the organization I founded was smeared in a grotesque series of garbage stories and guilt by association attacks. What is the
3/ Name of a single person who filed a harassment complaint against Weaver at Lincoln Project. There are none. No names. Why? Shouldn’t there be names? Why was the Lincoln Project blamed for Weavers conduct that took place when he worked for @JohnKasich in 2015, years before LP
4/existed? What John did is between John and the men he emailed. There is no evidence whatsoever for the constant Pedophile smear. None. It’s disgusting.
It’s pretty clear, given the Madison Cawthorn accusations, that the Trumpist wing of the GOP Death Cult has decided ‘Smear the Queer’ will be their all-purpose, go-to tactic for the foreseeable future. Every evidence of any Republican’s perfidy during the coming months — the 1/6 Committee investigations, the collapse of the Trump dynasty’s various schemes, the exposure of myriad crimes & misdemeanors by GOP office-holders and candidates — will be met with loud cries about how The pedos are coming for your innocent children!!! Will nobody think of the children!
Even the less demented / stupid members of the Republican Party understand that these accusations are not only toxic but very, very dangerous. (Don’t ask me to explain Peter Thiel’s choices; I’m neither a Master of the Universe nor a libertarian.) Of course, they wouldn’t worry about the collateral damage to individual humans targeted by the Qanonists and crazies they gin up, but those Repubs bright enough to read history remember that Joe McCarthy didn’t die a success. And, given the tenor of the last fifty years, the people who’ve picked up his list of commies homosexuals, embedded in the government are even more likely to damage the Party while tanking their own careers.
Good for Schmidt that he spoke up, but I’m still not sending the Lincoln Project any money. Not when there are so many Democratic candidates who can make better use of it!
piratedan
my biggest fear with the current state of affairs is the apparent lethargy in our judicial system to hold people accountable for the shit that they say and do, with cameras rolling in front of the press where they have admitted to treason, sedition, hate crimes/speech, conspiracy, et al and are allowed to sit on the sidelines and throw rocks at windows.
while I understand that cases take time to be built, but when the prosecution can sit back and say “roll tape” and let these villains own words convict them, I have a hard time understanding why those that that perpetrated this coup against our country are allowed to sit around and continue to fuck things up.
Does anyone think that the Roe decision continues to unfold if the DOJ had arrested Ms. Thomas and brought Mr. Thomas under additional scrutiny for his decisions and her actions in planning and financing Jan 6th?
For fucks sake, arrest somebody important for the shit that they did and put these asshats back on their heels.
Msb
Schmidt has been in a state of seething rage since I first heard of him. His first name should be Jeremiah. He’s still an old-style Republican (I.e. A conservative and not an insurrectionist).
zAs a-zqppopo caNaem mobile
I do agree that Steve Schmidt is criticizing people because he’s not worried about missing a paycheck. I just wonder if Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt were true ideological Republicans or if they chose to become California Republicans because they wanted to be with the ‘winning team’ – Reagan/Bush. I’ve run into people who choose their politics based on who is considered to be ‘cool’ and a winner. Also, California Republicans were overall not nutjobs and the California Dems overall were further to the left of the Democratic party. I remember reading that Arlen Specter and Marc Racicot chose to become Republicans because it was easier to win their local races.
Mai Naem mobile
I do agree that Steve Schmidt is criticizing people because he’s not worried about missing a paycheck. I just wonder if Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt were true ideological Republicans or if they chose to become California Republicans because they wanted to be with the ‘winning team’ – Reagan/Bush. I’ve run into people who choose their politics based on who is considered to be ‘cool’ and a winner. Also, California Republicans were overall not nutjobs and the California Dems overall were further to the left of the Democratic party. I remember reading that Arlen Specter and Marc Racicot chose to become Republicans because it was easier to win their local races
Mai Naem mobile
@piratedan: i cannot believe Merrick Garland is so stupid as to not realize that there’s a very good chance that the GOP takes over the House next year and a decent chance they take over the Senate as well and if that happens he has to know the investigations will either end or ve severely curtailed. If he’s not doing anything to speed this up, then he’s in on it for whatever reason. I cannot believe its taking so long to process the low hanging fruit of 1/6. Those people should have been taken care of last year.
Brachiator
What can we do to encourage more destructive in-fighting among Republicans?
piratedan
@Mai Naem mobile: there’s a point where I begin to wonder if we have too much faith in our institutions…
i.e. that they’re so shot full of dead weight to slow the events to a crawl or maybe they really aren’t that damn smart (to wit, that the FBI had to crowd source the identification to the public to identify some of the Jan 6th participants and they haven’t caught them all yet (or so I am led to believe)).
granted, it seems to me that everyone that Ginni Thomas and Charlie Kirk sponsored to be there to assault the Capitol should have been identified and brought in and for all we know, that hasn’t happened yet. We know that they sponsored it, we know that they arranged the logistics. we know that they worked with sitting members of Congress and the WH itself. There are the texts that show that they relationships exist, there are e-mails, cell phone calls, hell, they even have FB posts… from before and after…
I understand that there’s a certain, if you go after the King, you best not miss vibe, but I don’t give a shit about timing this properly and making a political calculation. Because every day that rolls by, the more it appears that there will NOT be a price to pay by those who NEED and DESERVE to pay.
it makes them look ineffectual.
Brachiator
@piratedan:
…said the January 6 insurrectionists.
What alternatives do you propose?
piratedan
@Brachiator: how about a progress report?
we’ve seen dispatches from various newspaper stories, twitter accounts, interviews with said complicit parties where they admit said crimes (say TFG himself and his actions)…
How about we arrest some of them for the crimes that they’ve openly stated that they committed?
could say the same for Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows… hell even Mitch McConnell, people who have admitted that they were aware that a coup would take place and that there was an assault planned on the Capitol to stop the certification of the election… is that not Sedition? or at least conspiracy to not report a crime? Does that not make them accessories?
Entirely possible that my understanding of the laws of the land are flawed here… but it seems to me that if we could at least take those people and their public statements at face value.
what have you got as an alternative?
Gretchen
@Mai Naem mobile: The House can’t shut down the Justice Department if Republicans win. It’s under the Democratic administration until the next president.
MazeDancer
steveschmidt.substack.com
At that link, Steve spills the beans.
He has been carrying John McCain’s lies for 15 years. And being attacked by Meaghan for it.
John McCain had an affair. Steve covered it up. And there is connection to Ukraine.
Steve says he is laying his burden down. Here is a link to the tweet where he announces the substack: https://twitter.com/steveschmidtses/status/1523510804494098433?s=21&t=srpMNUED-rajKgEIrak4Ag
mrmoshpotato
I assume the entire Rethuglican party is a pedo racket, and they can deny it all they want.
Also, BWHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Brachiator
@piratedan:
Good question. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if this is easily done.
I think that commenters here who are attorneys don’t see this as a slam dunk.
NotMax
Schimdt’s political antennae in severe need of recalibration. Besides his concerted push for Palin in ’08, he signed on to work with (hold the sniggering, please) the Howard Schultz campaign.
Betty Cracker
@MazeDancer: Just finished reading that — multiple tweet rants, and now a Substack. Someone in my earlier thread on this topic worried that Schmidt seems a bit manic. I share that concern.
As for the “why now” question, I don’t pretend to know. But according to one of the tweet-rants, someone sent fliers to Schmidt’s neighbors, insinuating he’s involved in a pedo ring. Maybe he really is just fed the fuck up with Meghan McCain’s bullshit.
I never have and never would give the Lincoln Project one red cent. But I wish them godspeed in their anti-Trumpism activities. As far as I can tell from the cheap seats, their hostility toward Trump and his suckups seems sincere.
Amir Khalid
@Mai Naem mobile:
As I understand, a Republican House can shut the 6th Janusry select committee. But that’s about it.
MazeDancer
@Betty Cracker: Wanting to not be branded a pedophile seems motivational. Steve seems to want to try to stop the GOP from slinging that smear on everyone.
Carrying guilt for 15 years is like carrying battery acid. He wants to be done with that. So he comes off a little manic. At least, for him, he now feels free,
@Betty Cracker:
Betty Cracker
@MazeDancer: I wonder if Schmidt will show up on Nicolle Wallace’s show today?
VOR
Another target of the wrath of Schmidt is Rick Davis, formerly (?) Paul Manafort’s partner. Davis worked on the 2008 McCain campaign and, per Schmidt, was responsible for vetting Palin. Or not vetting. Davis, like Manafort, has ties to Russia. Schmidt claims this shows Russian penetration of the Republican Party as early as 2008. There was a contemporary (2008) article at The Nation on these alleged Russia ties.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: I’m setting my DVR!
Betty Cracker
@VOR: Yep. I don’t know if Davis is still active in Repub politics, but unlike Manafort, he hasn’t been publicly disgraced and convicted of crimes.
In Schmidt’s Substack, he says corrupt activities by GOP operatives meddling in Ukraine many years back contributed to the situation in Ukraine today and that stuff like that shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
To the extent he uses his platform to expose that rot, Schmidt will be doing the lord’s work, IMO. One unheralded thing the Mueller investigation revealed was how openly these crooks operated in DC — for years
Dorothy A. Winsor
@piratedan: arrest somebody important for the shit that they did
That’s a long-running wish for me. Occasionally there’s a sacrificial lamb (Martha Stewart, frex), but usually they collect their money and skip away
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
This is Great News for McCain!
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: If Wallace wants to talk about this too, then her friend Schmidt is the ideal guest today. If she doesn’t, we won’t see him.
Hopefully she will see the opportunity to discuss things she had kept in confidence too. McCain seems to have inspired a personal loyalty that he really didn’t deserve.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I remember early August 2008, the time period just after Obama’s triumphant trip to Berlin and Iraq and just before the Beijing Olympics and Russia’s partial invasion of Georgia – the jobs report came out showing a loss of jobs for the first time in 7 years and a “reporter” from the Today Show said it was …. wait for it…. Great News for McCain. He said it would give McCain the chance to run on trade deals. The detachment was staggering: no one losing a job thinks it’s great news and the average worker (especially in the rust belt) hates trade deals. As Perot once said, “that giant sucking sound you hear is jobs going to Mexico” (under NAFTA). Yet the tire swinging media always found away to say terrible news was really great for McCain.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: Yes, and House Democrats know the January 6 Commitee could be shut down. The Commitee will complete it’s work before this Congress ends.
A friend who follows these matters more closely than tells me he has read that they will hold only 9 public hearings. A written report will cover much more ground. While the Justice Department is working from the bottom up, the Commitee seems to be most focused on the top cohort of wrongdoers, with special emphasis on office holders in the executive and legislative branches.
My Atlanta friend emphasized the blunder Kevin McCarthy made in boycotting the Commitee. While even a less noxious Republican like Rodney Davis (IL) might have been able to raise doubt and deflect blame, Republicans Kinzinger and Cheney are on a mission. They and the seven Democrats are a compact group and that should make for efficient and hardhitting hearings.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I sent them quarterly checks. I was really happy with the work they produced. They just savaged Dump and the GOP.
I also sent chunks of aid to tight senate candidates in Alaska, Montana, Kansas, Texas, Michigan and Iowa. I was so hoping we could flips some red states in addition to defending Blue Michigan.
MattF
I noticed early on that the Lincoln Project’s main target audience is ‘liberals-who-want-to-have-positive-thoughts-about-conservatives’. Which is all very well, but not my thang.
docNC
Meghan McCain is every thing Steve Schmidt says about her.
I love this set of clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbrNz1RUVY. Makes me laugh.
She’s terrible, but essentially a nothing in the grand scheme of things. If she goes away no one will notice her absence from their tee-vee.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Maybe, but even if you’re a liberal who utterly despises conservatives and always will, forever, LP content could be snarky fun because they know how to trigger MAGA dopes. Their ads probably had no measurable effect, but they also did get Trump to imprudently react to things he shouldn’t have, etc.
Kay
The longer post has a different focus than the Tweets. Schmidt seems to be saying McCain was reluctantly associating with the employees of Russian oligarchs because McCain was hiding a long running affair with a 41 year old lobbyist. I don’t know any other conclusion you can draw other than they had leverage over McCain because of the affair, which McCain denied repeatedly – lying. The affair was real.
It’s a poorly written mess though- all over the place – but I think that’s what he’s trying to get across without just saying it outright.
Geminid
@MattF: I think the Lincoln Project did some damage to trump. Maybe not a lot, but in a close election every bit helped.
Xentik
@piratedan: How is crowd-sourcing the identities of people who have committed crimes a sign of the FBI not being competent? We’re talking about hundreds of people who came from across the country to participate, and lots of them traveled via means that are effectively impossible for the FBI to track without knowing who those people are to begin with. The vast majority of didn’t receive orders through some master organization (or at least not one we can do anything about, *coughFACEBOOKcough*), they were just spurred by Trump’s call to action and their own stupidity and misanthropy. Last I checked we don’t have a surveillance state where the U.S. Gov’t has everyone’s picture in a database for matching against video footage. It’s not unreasonable to need help in tracking them down, nor have I ever seen anyone suggest otherwise amongst the experts I follow.
Additionally, the DoJ is making progress on prosecutions. They move slowly and hold cards close to the vest, but that’s because they have to look at the entire set of prosecutions as a whole and plan how to work their way up. Charging someone with a crime has implications. You have to release the evidence you have against them, and anything you charge you have to provide evidence of to the person you’re charging, even if you’re keeping some of the charges sealed. If you have evidence against someone like Roger Stone, and you have a shot at Trump, you don’t charge Stone before you can get to Trump, because everyone else will tailor their stories the moment Stone gets the evidence you have against him.
In the end, we’re not going after some random criminal mook, we’re basically trying to piece together a case against someone at Al Capone’s level. I’m sure everyone back then knew he was responsible for everything too, but the Justice system requires more than people saying “He’s obviously the source of our problems”.
I highly recommend following some podcasts like Opening Arguments that go deep into the why and how of the legal prosecution (but aimed at non-lawyers still) if you want to understand better how things are progressing and why things seem slow. There was also a fantastic twitter thread written by an ex-AUSA pretty recently that covered why things seem so slow from outside the DoJ. I am not sure if I can find it, but someone else here might have a link
Here’s a couple links to relevant OA episodes, the latter has a section on one of the proud boys seemingly now cooperating with the DoJ.
https://openargs.com/oa585-is-jan-6-justice-moving-too-slowly-with-randall-eliason/
https://openargs.com/oa587-alex-jones-continues-to-be-completely-porked/
Barry
@Gretchen: “The House can’t shut down the Justice Department if Republicans win. It’s under the Democratic administration until the next president.”
The House and the Senate can call people to testify, grant them immunity, and contaminate all cases.
They can tie the FBI and DOJ up, pissing away all of their time.
brantl
@piratedan: Because the funders aren’t on tape, except probably Ginny Thomas.
Kay
@Xentik:
The DOJ certainly may be “working their way up” – that’s a possibility- but I don’t think lower level prosecutions are necessarily an indication of that. The lower level prosecutions could be building blocks toward more powerful people, but without more that’s not really a reasonable conclusion to draw.
That’s my only quibble with the “little fish/big fish” theory – it’s a theory. They could be arresting 9 lower level retail drug dealers in my county because they are building a case against a meth distribution ring out of Cleveland, or they could just be arresting 9 lower level retail drug dealers. I don’t think the jump to “big fish” is supported by anything that has been released publicly.
Kay
@Xentik:
The charges against the people in the building or outside it attacking police were a given. That was going to happen. It doesn’t indicate or show anything other than charges against those people.
lowtechcyclist
I never understood why a Democrat would send them a red cent. It was obvious from the get-go that these guys were well-connected, and that they shouldn’t have trouble raising beaucoups of money from the people in their Rolodexes.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Republican on Republican voilance is getting quite open now.
Kay
@Xentik:
This was kind of widely cited as showing something or other and it just doesn’t:
It’s a budget request. All Monaco says is she wants more money to pursue 1/6 prosecutions and the “775” cases are justification for that. The “775 cases” are the rioters cases. They probably were expensive to prosecute- that’s a lot of cases- but it means nothing in terms of “big fish”. That’s the leap- the assumption- that in my view is not justified.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I agree that’s strongly implied in the Substack piece — that McCain was compromised. I can’t tell if he didn’t connect the dots more clearly because he’s being cagey or if it’s just that the writing is a hot mess.
SFAW
@piratedan:
I’m a little amazed that you haven’t suffered more “YOU have NO IDEA what Garland is doing; he’s methodical and building an AIRTIGHT case” slings and arrows at this point.
A month or so ago, someone — not here, but I don’t recall where — noted that we are hearing nothing about grand jury (or similar) proceedings vis-a-vis the big fish. There would be at least some leaking re: that, and/or some enterprising reporter(s) would keep track of — or at least notice — when certain persons get interviewed at a relevant DoJ facility. But none of that seems to be happening. But I am confident that justice will be served.
Just as I was confident that Alvin Bragg would indict TFG on a whole slew of charges. [OK, in reality, I have always maintained that TFG will never see the inside of a jail. But it would be nice if they at least tried. (Cue those who would admonish me about the damage to their credibility if the DoJ (or similar) indicts but does not get a conviction. Yeah, whatever.)]
RedDirtGirl
I’m assuming MM has been radio silent on Twitter through this whole thing, right?
Kropacetic
Voilance (n): A propensity toward revelation, often of the self.
lowtechcyclist
They can also:
Defund the DOJ investigation, that’s what they can do. If they need all this money for prosecuting the street thugs, they’ll need even more for prosecuting the suits, who will be able to hire the best of lawyers to defend them in court.
Betty Cracker
@RedDirtGirl: Pretty much. Last I looked she had retweeted a few defenders — one sad pushback against her pathetic book sales, one employee of The View willing to attest that MM isn’t a monster to work with. That’s about it.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m a sucker but I feel a little sorry for him. Because the truth is he knew McCain was a huge liar going back to 2008 and I guess he’s working out his feelings about that. But there just wasn’t any justification for him to ever believe John McCain was this rock of truthful virtue. It was all right in front of him.
But that’s human, right? You want to think your heroes are heroes, even as they order you to call their mistress and talk her off a ledge.
You remember the affair accusation about McCain, right? The completely accurate and true affair accusation. How all of media rushed to his defense? They’re all fucking liars too.
Obama must have known about it- and known it was true- since apparently everyone did except the public.
Betty
@Shalimar: What I have seen of Nicole’s show is that any mention of Palin sends her into “Please don’t ask me to relive those horrible days” mode. It was apparently pretty traumatic .
AWOL
@Kay: The NYT revealed the affair in the closing weeks of the 2008 campaign in a full front-page 48-point headline, then pulled the story. No surprise—McCain was a known horndog.
Betty Cracker
@AWOL: Whoa, I’d forgotten that if I ever knew it — the NYT piece, I mean, not the credible affair accusation, which I vaguely recall. Hmmm. I wonder if the lobbyist or associates will talk now that it’s suddenly topical again?
Kay
@AWOL:
I thought it was true at the time. McCain really did get favorable treatment by political media. It became a long running joke by Obama supporters, but jokes are often true, like “but her emails” is true.
It interests me in the bigger context of how Russia infiltrated the GOP though. They threatened them with revealing secrets.
SFAW
@Kay:
The cynical part of me* says that, were it ever revealed that a number of them are pedophiles, Cucker Tarlson would suddenly pivot to “no pedophile ever tried to cancel ME.” Not saying it’s gonna happen, just that it would not surprise me.
That these mofos can reverse course like that (in general) without being smote by lightning is perhaps the greatest piece of evidence that there is no such thing as a Just God.
* 99 and 44/100 percent pure!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, isn’t it?
McCain the empty suit, Schmidt the grey ememance and Megan the spoiled brat sums up the GOP. It also looks like the Spoiled Brat wing of the GOP doesn’t get they need the Grey Eminences more the Grey Eminences need them.
wenchacha
@Kay: I sure remember the report that JohnnyMac slagged his wife on a tarmac for troweling on makeup, and calling her the ” c- word.” That told me what I needed to know about that Great American Maverick Hero.
Xentik
Sure, but they’ve been pretty consistently handing out charges for smaller things, and we’ve started to get bigger charges coming out recently. Check out the second Opening Arguments link I posted for a discussion of charges that aren’t just small fry stuff. They’re going after the leaders of the Proud Boys now, who were actually responsible for actively planning a lot of Jan 6th stuff, and any links that turn up there will be relevant in continuing up the chain.
The bigger work is being done, and it’s starting to come out bit by bit, but the DoJ isn’t going to share anything that might threaten its ability to continue its investigation and prosecutions, which includes sharing things with the Jan 6th committee. Are the wheels of justice painstakingly slow? Yes, I don’t think that’s ever been in question.
You yourself have brought up many times how close to failing all the safeguards on our government were. The only way that will be fixed is through political wins that allow us to fix the courts and pass necessary laws. An unfettered DoJ which doesn’t follow the proper procedures won’t fix that, but it will make it easy for Republicans and the Media to play the both-sides card way more effectively.
Starfish
@SFAW: Dismissing the fact that the Justice Department is taking out the leadership of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys is a bit much. They can spend all their money on lawyers instead of guns. Their domestic terrorism was allowed to just be under the Trump administration.
Putting down these two violent right wing groups is pretty important.
Ken
“In my new book, The Evidence Was In My Hands All Along, I reveal how I learned in 2007 that the Republican party was compromised by the Russians.” — some so-called reporter
VOR
@AWOL: Actually, per Wikipedia the NYT article on the affair was early February 2008 and not the closing stages of the campaign. A second follow-up article came out in late February 2008. The lobbyist sued the NYT for $27M in December 2008, then settled in early 2009 “with no money changing hands between the parties”. The NYT published an editor’s note saying they never claimed there was an affair – just walked right up the line and clearly implied it.
My sense it was seeing a hero have feet of clay. Per Schmidt, McCain directly lied to him (Schmidt) about the affair, then lied to the American people in a press conference. That’s some shades of Bill Clinton denying Monica. Later McCain admitted the affair privately to Schmidt. Schmidt directly blames McCain for the Palin selection and seems to blame himself for not stopping it. Then, post election, McCain didn’t crack down on Palin because he was afraid of her and the proto-MAGAts adoring her. The great hero was afraid of a half-term governor. Instead, McCain went and pandered at the border “build the damn wall”.
I liked McCain in 2000 as a Bush alternative. But then after they savaged him, he fell in line behind GWB. In my view, he caved.
lee
@Betty Cracker: My guess is he is pretty sure that McCain was compromised but he does not have first hand knowledge.
From the little I’ve read Schmidt strikes me as someone who will only bring the heat if he has the receipts.
AWOL
@VOR: Thanks for the clarification. My memory isn’t what it used to be.
Kay
@Xentik:
But if the January 6th prosecutions could be happening with no “up the chain” – and they could- then one can’t use the January 6th prosecutions as evidence of “up the chain”.
If you start with “they are building a larger case” then the lower level prosecutions can be used to go to that theory. So you test it the other way- could the lower level prosecutions be happening with no larger inquiry? Yes, they could.
Again, the prosecutions of the rioters were a given. That happens with or without a “building blocks”.
SFAW
@Starfish:
You and I must have different definitions for the term “big fish.” “Taking [them] out” is not nothing, but it’s certainly not as big a win as you seem to be portraying it. And, no, I don’t expect TFG to be indicted for Sedition, Treason, or any other substantive charge. But the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Seven Percent Solutioners, the Wombat Brigade are pretty much the foot soldiers. And I would be surprised if jailing their leadership led to those groups falling apart.
Putting the fear of God into people like Meadows, Hawley, and the various Senators and Reps who supported the above groups before/during/after the insurrection — and by “fear of God,” I mean empaneling grand juries, launching serious investigations, etc. — would go a long way toward strengthening the institution(s).
Kay
@Xentik:
I don’t know why the Proud Boys are cooperating. There’s a wealth of possible ciminal activity by the Proud Boys that could be completely unconnected to any “little fish/big fish”. You can’t draw a line from “Proud Boys cooperating” to “higher level Trump involvement”. It just isn’t there. It may be! But it’s too far a leap.
...now I try to be amused
From Schmidt’s Substack:
I think this is a key difference between conservatives and liberals. The Nazi Waffen-SS’s motto was “My honor is loyalty.” That’s a cop-out, an abdication of one’s moral responsibility. No one deserves unconditional loyalty. NO ONE.
VOR
Amen, brother. Mine either.
SFAW
@…now I try to be amused:
Not even Baud?
TheTruffle
@Kay: I remember hearing one of the Proud Boys was an FBI informant already.
Geminid
@TheTruffle: There probably were more than one FBI informant among the Proud Boys, but you may be referring to Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio. He reportedly was an informant for the FBI on unrelated criminal matters earlier in the last decade.
There are also reports are that Roger Stone was initiated into the Proud Boys.
Mike in Pasadena
Anne, thank you for this post. Smear the queer, the pedos are coming for innocent children! It was so reassuring to read what you wrote. And you ended on a positive note: many good candidates need our donations. Wow. You and the other front pagers are a treasure.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: His essay/screed is poorly written (which makes me wonder what he did for these campaigns if writing was not his forte), but the reason he doesn’t just come out and say that McCain was compromised may be that he wasn’t privy to any direct evidence of it. He knew about the affair, and that McCain was desperately lying about it, and that McCain knew Davis worked for the Russians and McCain refused to get rid of him even after the guy who was running his campaign threatened to quit (and did) because of that connection. But he may not have seen or heard anything that directly showed that McCain was being blackmailed by Davis and/or the Russians, so he just leaves the inference to the reader.
Regardless, it is clear that McCain was morally compromised, and would say and do a lot of bad things to advance his status among Republicans and with the public generally, and that he definitely did not have the temperament or judgment to be President (of course, TFG was far worse, but that’s just a sign of the decline of the Republican Party.)
TheTruffle
@SFAW: I remember reading that Garland has hired 100-plus new lawyers for this case.
Mike in Pasadena
@piratedan: Worth looking into. Strongly! as TFG used to say.