norms. NORMS. norms left the fuckin' building the minute trump came down the escalator. norms don't live here anymore. norms is on a beach in mexico having a mai tai and reflecting on what a good choice it was to throw his phone in the ocean. https://t.co/7SPPxggwiI
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) June 9, 2023
Two things.
(1) This bathroom looks like garbage, and I don't mean the boxes. Look at that shower curtain. That tacky chandelier!
(2) Recalls the (false) claim that Clinton stored her email server in a bathroom. pic.twitter.com/veCPHydSyr
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) June 9, 2023
New zoom backgrounds just dropped https://t.co/1y3T7bauBZ
— Dr. Bronner is the boy's mother (@magneticksara) June 9, 2023
Reading through the indictment, definitely feels like Trump swiped stuff he thought would be damning or embarrassing, in addition to his child-like need for trophies.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 9, 2023
What, like YOU never kept nuclear launch codes in the guest bathroom
— Andrew S. (@shoutingboy) June 9, 2023
lol oh boy its like duck soup pic.twitter.com/Whln1CAm5E
— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) June 9, 2023
“Goes to jail for showing military secrets to Kid Rock” was in retrospect always a very possible outcome of Trump running for President https://t.co/2qz4xqpae8
— Gas Stove Prayer Warrior (@canderaid) June 9, 2023
Holy smokes, even Turley admits it.
Anyone hear from Alan "I Kept My Underwear On" Dershowitz?
— JustDon'tShootTheDog (@_old_yeller) June 9, 2023
Everyone quotes The Wire, but Jesse Pinkman: “When the going gets tough, you don't want a criminal lawyer, you want a CRIMINAL lawyer” https://t.co/GcCAFgGyOV
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 9, 2023
Absolutely loving this. The Republicans who think gay people and refugees are a threat to national security are defending an ex-president storing stolen classified documents about U.S. defense capabilities in the bathroom of the club he rents out for weddings and bar mitzvahs. pic.twitter.com/nbQHqwCOeB
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) June 9, 2023
i read a lot of funny indictments and "the beautiful mind paper boxes" is right up there with the all-time funniest lines https://t.co/5NXiFHg4Go
— Matt Levine (@matt_levine) June 9, 2023
Ivanka (for Kushner’s foreign backers), or Melania (for… well… )?
Hannity to Trump in March: "I can’t imagine you ever saying: ‘Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House. I’d like to look at them.' "
Walt Nauta text in May 2022 (per indictment): "I think he wanted to pick from [the boxes]." pic.twitter.com/aDlaWFp6ex
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) June 9, 2023
‘And they didn’t offer *ME* a goddamned dime!!!’
Trump talking about the govt paying Nixon to get records back that he took: “I have the right to take stuff! Do you know they ended up paying Richard Nixon $18 million for what he had?” pic.twitter.com/XF6iZ3hoBB
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 9, 2023
'Orange Man Bad' is the 'Buy index funds' of political commentary.
Any idiot can repeat it, and it beats more sophisticated analysis virtually every time. People who talk themselves into deviating from the simple strategy always looks silly. It's undefeated.
— Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns) June 9, 2023
Brilliant one-line email from an historian friend, connecting Trump's nuclear-secrets-involved DoJ Espionage Act indictment to Trump's lawyer who handled a nuclear-secrets-involved DoJ Espionage Act prosecution:
"What was it that Roy Cohn got the Rosenbergs electrocuted for?"
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) June 9, 2023
Tacky, but — IMO — forgivable:
Bringing this back in light of recent news:
Get a limited-edition But Her Emails hat and support @onwardtogether groups working to strengthen our democracy.https://t.co/4TiUxjmRNY pic.twitter.com/uSofeNjBxy
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2023
The Jack Smith Indictment: Next Level Shade
Alison Rose
I swear to Moses, if I was any place other than the literal fucking Palace of Versailles after arriving in the 17th century via Delorean and saw a freaking chandelier illuminating the room where I’m trying to pee, I would laugh myself silly.
Mike in NC
Everything ever written about the Trump Crime Cartel needs to include the words “tacky”, “sleazy”, and “sketchy”.
Also, too, somebody once called him, “The Picaso of Pettiness” for being so notoriously vindictive.
Tony G
Jesus, that bathroom. Liberace had more restrained taste in decor than that. Aside from the fact that Trump is a criminal, a traitor and a fascist, I continue to be appalled by the fact that about 30% of the people in this country think of that weak, cowardly little man with the effeminate tastes as a big strong tough guy. Something is deeply broken in this country. Trump didn’t start the damage; he just cashed in on it.
t
Edmund dantes
Love the hat
dmsilev
Let’s take a moment to sit back and laugh at the dilemma of the not-Trumps running in the GOP primary. Either they say nothing (or denounce him) and earn the eternal rage of his legions of flying monkeys or they speak up to support him and …become supporting characters in his drama, which is not what someone running to become not-Trump really wants.
dmsilev
@Tony G: The examples of his lack of taste are legion. The one that always stuck in my mind was the family picture of him, Wife 3, and Child 5, in a room which looked like someone had loaded up a paint sprayer with gold-colored paint and set it on “coat everything”.
Geoduck
@Tony G: I don’t know about restrained, but Liberace would have at least picked out a better shower curtain.
West of the Rockies
Is it okay if I mention that HRC is quite hot in that pic?
Danielx
Lord Shortfingers his very own self, hip deep in schadenfreude – er, shit! I mean hip deep in shit! – and getting deeper all the time.
Truly a pleasure.
Gary
What sort of billionaire shower has a curtain? Surely he can afford shower doors.
Danielx
@Gary:
Servants quarters, dude.
Alison Rose
@West of the Rockies: I’ve always thought she was quite pretty, and while looks don’t and shouldn’t matter, it’s always made me angry when people called her ugly because I’m like…okay, ugly is subjective but also she’s just not.
NotMax
One more time. (Repeated from earlier today downstairs.)
:)
karen marie
@Tony G: What’s so crazy is the combination of contractor-basic finish, like the shitty window and shower, with that sink and chandelier.
Just weird.
Gvg
It’s not only tacky, it’s messy. It gives the impression of not being clean. Definitely not what I would expect in a quality hotel, and I am not a cleaning fanatic like my mother. In Florida, that over packed a bathroom also means mildew.
Trump shows signs of hoarding and dementia of that kind to me. These pictures and prior stories about him traveling with boxes of reports and such, I think he was always going to descend into one of those people who at first seems eccentric then goes definitely Gaga in a packed house.
Bishop Bag
I have always despised David ‘Axis of Evil’ Frum, but this made me laugh:
David Frum
@davidfrum
Any hostile foreign intelligence service that failed to steal US secrets from Trump’s Mar a Lago stash owes its taxpayers a big refund
zhena gogolia
@Gvg: I’m trying to read the indictment, but the quotations of the texts of employees who are trying to make sense of what to do with these fucking boxes is just filling me with anxiety.
Gvg
@Alison Rose: true. In fact, she just seemed normal. A lot like my mother. In fact the attacks on her for working seemed like an attack on my mother a teacher. Pretty much made me a democrat for life. Other reasons too, but I resented the attacks on her. They were so obviously false. It alarmed me that these people could be so dangerously delusional with hate over such a normal nice person.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tony G:
Trump is brave enough to kick puppies where people can see him do it. They are not that brave and wish they were.
West of the Rockies
@Alison Rose:
She looks intelligent, clearly has a sense of humor, and a charming smile. I’ve never understood the people who insulted her appearance.
WaterGirl
@Bishop Bag:
That is really true.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
Like, for example, this. It’s like Samuel Beckett came to life and wrote a fucking play about the neverending existential despair of BOXES. It’s like that one where the woman is buried up to her neck in sand or something.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Guessing he must have been looking for one particular box!
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I bet that, like me, you can’t watch scary, creepy movies?
Too good at imaging how the characters would feel in those situations?
zhena gogolia
James E Powell
@West of the Rockies:
I’ve never understood why people hate her so much. And this goes back to 1992 and is not limited to right-wingers Politically, she’s fairly anodyne.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: Yes. I adored horror movies when I was young, but can’t take them any more. And make no mistake, this is a horror movie.
Frankensteinbeck
@James E Powell:
I know from witnessing first hand that there are liberal women who will never forgive Hillary for not divorcing Bill when he cheated on her.
Ohio Mom
@karen marie: Yes, the bathroom is an extremely weird but mostly ugly room.
All those muddy browns, the overwrought sink, that cheap shower curtain, whatever that wall paint color is, that utilitarian window, such a hodgepodge. The chandelier is actually my favorite feature because it lends a touch of whimsy.
I said this at the end of an earlier thread. I think Trump took so many boxes because he didn’t have the smarts to pull out the valuable (to our adversaries) stuff. So he took everything. A very inefficient approach.
Ohio Mom
@Frankensteinbeck: Bill was probably playing around their entire marriage. Hillary married a bad boy, and she did so with her eyes open. Now he’s very, very smart and well-educated for a bad boy but he’s rake and a roue all the same.
SpaceUnit
I want one of those hats.
Also, I missed the part of the constitution that states that an aggrieved one-term president is entitled to make off with all the classified documents and roam the country committing crimes for the rest of their life. Fuck that ABC News line of BS.
ETA: Also, Trump is damn lucky there’s not a section of the federal penal code that addresses decorating crimes.
Suzanne
@karen marie:
Dude, that’s like 90% of Scottsdale.
I’d say, “All his taste is in his mouth”….. but he eats well-done steaks with ketchup, so I can’t even give him that.
Ken
At the risk of repeating GOLIKEHELLMACHINE — but it has to be repeated, since the bogus argument keeps being made — it is true that this would be the first time an ex-president has been prosecuted for crimes of this magnitude. But that’s because this is the first time an ex-president has committed crimes of this magnitude.
(Allegedly, although I don’t know why I bother given the confessions he’s made — not just the ones transcribed in the indictments, but the times he’s gotten on TV or Truth Social and bragged about it.)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Gvg: +1 as the kool kidz say. I was already a life long Democrat, but if I hadn’t been she would have converted me.
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
I will never forgive him for the Lewinsky affair. Never.
Without that, I doubt we get Bush II.
Anne Laurie
I get the impression it was meant for a staff bathroom, something the paying customers would never see. Tacky lowest-price-available construction… but when it came to the final lighting / fixtures, rather than spend even that much, the contractors just jury-rigged a spare chandelier & vanity left over from the last public-rooms remodel.
Just absolutely the Trump de la Trump of Trump’s supposed ‘design obsession’.
Gin & Tonic
@Bishop Bag: How does he know they failed?
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t think that’s what he’s saying.
I took it to mean that any foreign country that didn’t put someone in at MAL had failed to do their job.
edit: I think they all did it, include our allies. I would have.
prostratedragon
@dmsilev: “Velasquez Wept.”
(I am all but certain that the photographer was consciously if stealthily referring to a royal portrait by Velasquez called Las meninas.)
ETA I just lost my breath for a moment realizing how much that photo resembles the “Person …” recital.
JaySinWA
@Bishop Bag: Can you imagine the performance reviews of the spies that missed that opportunity?
WaterGirl
I have been at the computer all day and I haven’t done a lick of work for a single client. Instead, just taking in all the information. I just looked at my fitbit – 8,200 today as compared to my 16,000+ from yesterday. My eyes are getting tired so I am closing the laptop.
Hoping for a bonus episode of the Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord, which they said they would do this week if there was an indictment. I haven’t looked yet, but I am crossing my fingers.
Nice to be able to celebrate these last couple of days with everyone here. Goodnight.
Kayla Rudbek
Mr. Rudbek was asking me about what happens if TFG wins in 2024 (whether this would go away). And going and watching the interview with Chris Christie as well…
Mr. Bemused Senior
@JaySinWA: Fearless Leader was pissed. “Badenov!”
Ken
@WaterGirl: If I recall correctly, for years Mar-A-Lago has been making use of the law that allows companies to hire foreign workers if they can’t find any US citizens to do the work. (Apparently it is hard to find maids and pool boys in Florida.) So the foreign spy agencies had an easy way into the place. Or they could have bought a club membership. Either way, there’s definitely no excuse for any spies who failed to get access.
Shalimar
“Lock her up, asshole” should be the answer to every rightwinger whining about unprecedented attacks on political enemies.
JaySinWA
@Kayla Rudbek: I would hope there is an addendum or superseding DOJ directive that prosecutions in motion stay in motion regardless of campaigns or elections.
Ramona Rosario
@Alison Rose: Fidel Castro called her beautiful and my boyfriend who was 20 in 1992 said he thought then that she was hot. She truly is a beautiful woman.
RaflW
This won’t make any difference to millions of right wing Christians, but a small crack appears:
@jackmjenkins (reporter at Religion News Service)
INBOX: Brent Leatherwood, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, reacts to the Trump indictment:
“These charges are incredibly serious and, if proven, would constitute an ethical and national security breach of stunning proportion.”
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: The legal podcasts I listen to say that once indictments have been made, that is an entirely different thing from starting an investigation or making an indictment.
At that point, the legal process proceeds with a life of its own, and the “don’t do anything 60-90 days before an election” is not relevant.
different-church-lady
Trump said, in essence, “Do not look at this thing I am specifically showing you.”
Can’t even parody that.
Chetan Murthy
@Ramona Rosario: And let’s remember that she made top 100 lawyers in the country. She was putting food on the table while WJC was trying to get elected.
matt
It is really funny, all the dry as fuck articles, completely abstracted away from reality talking about the seemly dignity of the presidency, yada yada yada, stacked up against pictures of classified documents stacked around toilets, strewn on the floor next to guitar cases, piled up behind sound systems, and transcripts of Trump dementedly mob bossing and criming his way through all of his interactions with his staff and attorneys. The fucking norms were gone the second you picked this mobbed up reprobate, bitches.
Ramona Rosario
@Chetan Murthy: didn’t know she made top 100 lawyers… but yes, she supported that family financially even when he was Arkansas governor iirc.
Chetan Murthy
@Ramona Rosario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_honors_received_by_Hillary_Clinton
Lotta other honors on that list, from long before Bill was a national phenom.
Ramona Rosario
@Chetan Murthy: and we could’ve had this impressive person for a president instead of the despicable coprolite whose nightmare term we had to live through from 2017 to January 20, 2021! So depressing!
Chetan Murthy
@Ramona Rosario: In 1992 lots of us voted for Bill b/c we were getting “two for the price of one” and we were much more thrilled at the idea of Hillary being able to do stuff, than Bill.
Ah, well: America wasn’t ready for a woman who could raise her child and also have a stellar career. Just not ready for that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, that window is just like the ones my aunt had in the basement of her 1960 vintage split-level
James E Powell
@Ramona Rosario:
A part of me will always be angry about that.
Steeplejack
Ramona Rosario
@James E Powell: think of all we’ve lost because we’ve had to deal with this dangerous incompetent nincomTrump and all he has wreaked instead of working towards a better future for all of us
Redshift
@Ken:
The smart ones got people on staff. You’d think there you might get some access with a membership, but staff people would be completely invisible to all of these clowns. The operative would never have to sneak into anywhere because it would never occur to TFG and his sort to care about what a random staff member might be doing, even if they had a camera in hand in the box room.
Major Major Major Major
I know I should’ve learned my lesson by now but this whole thing is even stupider than I’d thought. Lol
NotMax
Leave us not forget about Li “Cindy” Yang and Yujing Zhang when it comes to Mar-a-lago.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major: Doesn’t somebody have a rule about that? “With Trump it’s always the stupidest thing.” Josh Marshall?
danielx
@WaterGirl:
Well, Ken Paxton has been under indictment since 2015. But the ways of Texas justice are wondrous and mysterious.
piratedan
@Steeplejack: I thought that was pretty epic.
there are times when I sit back and think about the Trump years and wonder if this will finally kill the American Exceptionalism myth once and for all. In return, that it makes us more serious about our country and what ideals we choose to embrace.
One additional note… that apparently no one had yet noted. Trump STILL has these motherfucking boxes… somewhere.
Chetan Murthy
@Fair Economist: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-scythian-slice-of-trump-s-razor
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dominance-and-humiliation-no-middle-ground
Steeplejack
🙈 🙉 🙊
Redshift
We may never find out, because it’s not important to the case (only for PR purposes), but I would dearly love to have the results of a counterintelligence investigation of M-a-L. Sweeps for bugs, background checks of all staff and members, etc.
Just to throw in the faces of all the dishonest wingnuts why pretend not to know that even if it’s not intentional, carelessly leaving secrets around where they can fall into the hands of malign actors is bad.
Ivan X
@Ohio Mom: Bonus points for “rake” and “roue” in the same sentence.
Redshift
@Chetan Murthy: But there’s so much stupid, it can be hard to judge stupidest. There were prescient (or lucky) people least night who were arguing “I kept them because they made me feel important” was the stupidest explanation, which was plausible, but I couldn’t decide if “I could make a bundle off these and not get caught” was more or less stupid.
prostratedragon
@Ohio Mom: Could be something to your conjecture. The guy doesn’t seem like the type who knows enough to be discriminating.
Capt. Spaylding
@Geoduck: Any one would have.
Also, that window spans the shower/tub space into the sink area. That is a bigger offense. Really awkward spatially.
The whole room just screams nekulturny.
The Trumps are trash, dumb fucking dollar store mafia trash with a chav cherry on top.
Alison Rose
@Frankensteinbeck: Which is bullshit for a number of reasons, the main one being it’s not their fucking business. I loathe the idea some have that feminism means “all women should conduct themselves the way I would”. Nope! You’re perfectly free to disapprove of something privately, but if someone’s choice doesn’t impact you, then keep that disapproval to yourself.
Jackie
@Ramona Rosario: Reminder: In 2017, if Hillary had taken office, both the House and Senate were controlled by the GQP. Not ONE SC Justice would have been appointed by Turtle’s majority during Hillary’s time in office. It sucks, but it is what it is. Between the Republican House and Senate, Hillary would have been a one term President.
We were forced to endure four years of TIFG, but now we have Biden, with an almost assured Biden second term. We can thank TIFG for that.
Chetan Murthy
@Jackie: What’s the “I” for in “TIFG” ? Just curious.
Jackie
@Chetan Murthy: Indicted.😊
brendancalling
This belongs here: “Traitor,” by Motörhead.
“You stand accused of treason, you offer no good reason/You are a bloody liar, yours is the stake of fire/ Say you are innocent, but you be caught and spent/ And now you pay the price, for avarice, your vice/
Intrigue your sole desire, you sell your wife, your child/ You sell your oldest friends, you sell your countrymen/ And yet we know your name— Traitor, traitor”
brendancalling
@Redshift: Guaranteed he’s already sold some.
Andrya
@Gin & Tonic: @WaterGirl: @Bishop Bag: @NotMax: Also, lets not forget Inna Yashchyshyn. She spent a lot of time at MAL, cozied up to TIFG, went golfing with TIFG and Lindsey Graham, and had VERY expensive gear. She also falsely said she was Anna de Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild banking family. Beyond suspicious (link). It almost surprises me that Graham, who as a JAG must have had a security clearance for years, did not contact the Rothschilds to see if her identity was fake, as indeed it was.
Citizen Alan
@James E Powell: Because she’s a good, decent, intelligent, and highly competent person, and the people who hate her are evil, disgusting, ignorant buffoons who despise her for the all the qualities we admire her for.
Citizen Alan
@Frankensteinbeck: This is true. Baffling to me but true.
Brachiator
Trump is like a Bizarro Richie Rich, a petulant man child who craves pricey and rare trinkets to show how important he is.
But I really do not understand why so much of his base is willing to overlook this clear, open, obvious infantile character flaws. I also do not understand why so many people are willing to work for Trump and help facilitate his insane grubbiness. It’s not just the money, since these dopes inevitably end up harming their own careers. Well, most of them.
But Indictment Week is exhausting. It’s clear that Trump will go to his grave believing that he has done nothing wrong. Punishment only feeds his bottomless sense of being aggrieved.
And the irony of it all is that he brought this shit on himself. His insecurities. His needs. But in leveraging his wealth and dubious celebrity into getting the suckers to elect him president, Trump puts us all at risk while he continues to act out. And the dumb ass GOP leadership enable and support him, keep him on life support.
Trump needs to be put in prison or sent into exile somewhere. And give him a few classified document folders that he can wave around. They can be his precious reminders of how great he thinks he is.
Citizen Alan
@James E Powell: How do you reconcile that with the polls suggesting Clinton would probably have won if he’d been eligible for a third term and the analyses suggesting that one of Gore’s biggest mistakes was distancing himself from one of the most gifted politicians of the era and refusing to let Clinton actively campaign on his behalf?
eversor
@Brachiator:
Trump won due to the Christian vote. It’s Christianity, it always is, always will be.
Citizen Alan
@JaySinWA: I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a satirical novel that would be a romantic comedy about two rival spies from different foreign countries who fall in live while working undercover as household staff at Mar-A-Lago. Bonus joke: Both of them spend the entire book trying to keep their covers up while concealing their relationship from their spymasters only to eventually learn that everyone who worked at MAL was a foreign spy except the actual members of the Trump Family and a few of the guests.
Citizen Alan
@RaflW: It might matter to the 20% or so who actually worship Jesus instead of Mammon and Moloch.
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan: “Didn’t you ever wonder why everybody else was also working for such shitty wages?”
Capt. Spaylding
Trumpers are exactly who we thought they were:
Stupid, resentful, petty, spiteful, pig ignorant, arrogant and trashy.
They are bad people. They crave what other people have. They crave possessions but above all positions.
They crave status and its bestower, power. Gold escalator, chandelier in the bathroom, name in gold letters, educated people deferentially saying “Sir”, and young teen and educated society pussies alike able to be grabbed ( which they let one do because person doing the grabbing is a celebrity, famous, and above all richer and more connected than whomever you prey upon,
Chetan Murthy
@RaflW:
In the Southern Baptist Convention? Ethics? That sounds like a great idea! I wonder when they’ll start?!?
Amir Khalid
@Alison Rose:
Hillary took charge of the marriage to save it. Many women might have just cut a cheating husband loose, but she chose the difficult path because she judged it was worthwhile, and I think she made the right call. Since then, I have admired her even more because of how she dealt with it.
NotMax
@eversor
Give it a rest. Please? We all are by now aware of where you stand on that topic. The copious repetitious interjection is unnecessary.
Citizen Alan
@Ivan X: Furthermore, I was this many years old when I learned “roue” was a word meaning “an elderly debauched man.” I’d just assumed @OhioMom misspelled rouge. Now I’m really glad I didn’t make that bad gravy-themed joke I’d been working on because for a second I confused “roue” with “roux.”
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Think Chevalier’s character in Gigi.
Citizen Alan
@Jackie: I disagree. I personally believe that if Hillary had won, the GOP Senate would have rushed through Merrick Garland rather than keep Scalia’s seat open indefinitely and risk the Senate changing hands two years later. But even if they hadn’t, if SCOTUS is tied, the lower court ruling stands, which means no opinion declaring that partisan gerrymandering is okay. And since Kennedy would never have stepped down under a Dem president, no Dobbs and gay rights would be secure for the foreseeable future.
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan: with an accent aguille (“‘”) over the “e”. *grin* B/c without it, it’s French for “wheel”.
Brachiator
@eversor:
An oversimplification. Trump became the voice of white resentment with the Establishment. He was the avatar for every aggrieved white loser who believed that life would be better if someone else’s life was made worse.
And obviously Trump threw a bone to evangelicals. But this was only part of his base.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
Because they are trash, the worst people who ever lived in the history of the world. And this is why I still can’t find a moment’s peace or contentment and won’t even if he’s convicted. Because we still must grapple with the fact that we are living with 81 million voters who are so deranged and malevolent that they might as well have been members of the Manson Familly. They will never stop trying to ruin this nation. And all to get revenge because they’re not allowed to own slaves.
sab
OT Chasten Buttigieg is on his book tour, and was at Cleveland City Club today. I was sorry I hadn’t known he was coming and didn’t get a ticket. But then listening to the program they wanted the audience to be very young gay and trans kids. So I was glad I hadn’t taken a spot. He was great.
I can’t link, but try WKSU Chasten Buttigieg. Also Ideastream Cleveland. Also Cleveland City Club.
Citizen Alan
@Citizen Alan: And naturally, I misspelled “rogue.” Sigh.
Citizen Alan
@NotMax: Was that the creeper who sang that song about “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” that always made my flesh crawl for some reason? Because that’s all I remember about Gigi except the song about champagne.
Mai Naem mobile
I was impressed with Jack Smith. Poker face. You could tell he was a little nervous in the first minute(who wouldn’t be?) and then made his statement and walked off. No smiles. No grimaces. After Mueller and Fitzmas I am not setting myself up for disappointment but I am glad people like him work at the DOJ. I am disappointed in Walt Nauta. WP had a fluff piece on him a couple of months ago. He came across as one of those straight arrow employees who does their job and doesn’t get involved in office politics. Guess the article was all wrong. His family in Guam was real proud of him. They must be sick over this. I think he’s going to flip and be very usual to the prosecutors.
Brachiator
@Jackie:
Hmmm. I agree that the GOP would have fought to prevent Hillary from appointing anyone to the Supreme Court. This was their standard operating procedure.
But I don’t think she would have been a one term president. The Republicans had no control over the voters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s Bill and Hill’s marriage. They decide. No one else gets a vote.
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
That is he.
tokyokie
I’m not sure a JAG would have a TS clearance unless the officer was involved in some sort of espionage case.
sab
I have had a grandmotherly crush on Chasten since forever. He is cute as can be. He is married to Mayor Pete. Also he teaches. Middleschool. That is hard.
Also too. He has taught middle school since forever. My grandfather’s sisters taught middle school. My great aunts thought it was difficult but worth it. One of them thought it was hard but the kids were okay.,
My youngest great aunt loved her middle school years. Those kids always surprised her. Made teaching fun and interesting.
Omnes Omnibus
@tokyokie:
You have to be able to get a Secret to be commissioned. Not all JAGs are trial lawyers, so some will need TS and beyond in order be able to give good legal advice. Some will have been soldiers prior to going to law school and have a clearance from that. So all JAG officers have a clearance and many would have a TS or beyond.
Mike in Pasadena
I liked Norms! NORMS!
Sort of last week’s “unprecedented!” Said about indicting a past president. Sure, just like Jan 6, that was unprecedented.
tokyokie
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks. I didn’t know that all officers had to have a secret clearance, although that’s not the same as having a Top Secret clearance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in Pasadena: I also remember there being lots of norms about how politics worked until the GOP decided there ignore them. They lost their right to bitch about norms.
Omnes Omnibus
@tokyokie: I am very aware of the difference between the two. One of them involved guys in suits visiting my parents’ neighbors and asking about me. The other didn’t.
Sister Golden Bear
@Tony G: When even the Madonna Inn thinks your decor is tacky….
Steeplejack
@Chetan Murthy:
Wrong. The word takes an accent aigu, or acute: roué. The è accent, which is right out, is an accent grave.
Andrya
@tokyokie: I actually just said clearance, not TS clearance. There are a lot of situations where a JAG might need a clearance in a case not involving espionage- for example, if a USAF guy was accused of recording test data without actually doing the test, or accused of selling USAF-owned parts to a commercial airplane maintenance country, either or both the prosecutor or defense JAG might have to look at classified info to fully understand the situation.
And, as a retired aerospace person, I can attest that annual security training below the TS level would be quite sufficient to make one realize that “Ms. de Rothschild”, haunting MAL and cultivating TIFG, needed to be checked out.
Fair Economist
@Citizen Alan:
That sounds hilarious!
Andrya
@Citizen Alan: Write it! I’ll buy a copy, I promise. When I was a teenager in the 1960s, my brothers subscribed to “Mad Magazine” and I eagerly perused the comic “Spy vs. Spy” in every issue. Your book sounds like an excellent development on a grand “Spy vs. Spy” tradition.
Steeplejack
New Mike Luckovich cartoon. (Couldn’t find it on Luckovich’s feed.)
tokyokie
@Omnes Omnibus: I had a TS clearance some 40 years ago because I was working for a defense contractor, so I know about the process. They interviewed some of my neighbors in the town in which I grew up.
NotMax
@tokyokie
Interviewing my neighbors would result in a series of resounding responses of “Who’s that?”
;)
m.j.
I know you don’t give a shit, but I feel the need to share anyway.
I will never buy merch from Hillary Clinton. She voted for unnecessary war. She stood on the Capitol steps and recited a loyalty oath and shouted, “god.”
I still voted for her. It doesn’t mean I have to like her.
MomSense
If I were a believer I would be convinced that of all God’s children they love the LGBTQIA+ the most because this pride month has been lit 🔥! Trump indicted, Boris Johnson resigns from Parliament to avoid sanctions, Pat Robertson DEAD and the Voting Rights Act survives SCOTUS.
Tony Jay
@Ramona Rosario:
When I wrote this yesterday it was about another disgraced n’er do well, but as was pointed out at the time, it’s true about so many awful people, and it’s all for the same reason.
Tony Jay
@MomSense:
All of that, and tonight the tongue-bathed sportswashing outfit that is Manchester City are in the Champions League Final and expected to win at a canter.
Come on Bad Week For Scumbags, drain some more tears into my wine glass.
opiejeanne
@m.j.: You’re right, I don’t give a shit.
MomSense
@Tony Jay:
ha!! Cheers!
Amir Khalid
I just got bact from the animal shelter with my new friend Aoife*. She’s a 10-month-old light brown tabby wirh a short tail, quite talkative and outgoing and friendly. Will try to provide pix soon.
* The Irish pronunciation is “Ifa”, which according to my sister sounds a bit like a Malay name — “Ifah”, like short for Latifah.
satby
@Amir Khalid: Congratulations! Pronunciation correct, and it means beautiful in Gaelic. I bet she is; and I’m so happy for you both.
PBK
@Amir Khalid: I’m so happy for both of you! What a lovely name for her.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
👍
CaseyL
@Amir Khalid: I’m so happy you found a perfect new 😺 and eagerly await photos!
eclare
@Amir Khalid:
Yay! Happy news!
JWR
@Brachiator:
Does this help? (From the BBC via Yahoo)
See? Just like their favorite president, they’re really infantile thinkers, highly susceptible to TFG’s style of propaganda, and not likely to read anything that might challenge their worldview. Well, I’m sure some of them are. ;)
Baud
@JWR: Clinton aside, the Hunter Biden things is particularly laughable because the US attorney is Delaware that is investigating Hunter Biden is a Trump guy that Biden won’t fire to avoid the appearance of impropriety
ETA: By the way, do media ever do “Democrats react” pieces?
JWR
@Baud: I know! It’s like these people settle on a narrative and ride it all the way down.
p.a.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”–Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: That’s great news! I like short-tailed cats and look forward to seeing a photo of yours. May you enjoy many happy years together.
Chris Johnson
I’ve said so many things about Trump and Russia and all that stuff, to the point where I just lurked here a lot ‘cos people got mad at me for sounding like a broken record.
Just gonna drop this: notice how Trump now says ‘boxes hoax’ where he’s for so long said ‘russia russia russia hoax’?
People talking about how negligent or uncaring Trump is to have put boxes of real specific documents in a bathroom etc. are still on the wrong track.
This was always about him getting as much salient espionage information to specifically Russia as he possibly could. Anything to the Saudis is just because he’s an ungovernable toddler. The ones he actually answers to are in Russia, and none of it is about him making deals or selling secrets. That would imply he has agency which isn’t true in the sense you mean. He’s been a hollow puppet this whole time.
Hillary literally called it, on stage, to his face.
You recognize the truth of the situation by finding out what Trump most loudly and obsessively denies in the face of obvious fact, with key phrases like repetition and ‘hoax’. Boxes are now added to that list, but it’s been Russia Russia Russia Hoax for years and years and that’s never changed. The man is a demented toddler and brazenness only protects you for so long, even when it’s completely outside the scope of what people can normally handle as a tactic.
Good to watch it all come crumbling down, and it’s always nice when my unsubstantiated hunches get more and more proved to have been accurate hunches to have. Swear to God, Trump is Putin’s wrecking ball, and the companion to Epstein in wreaking havoc among Putin’s hated American elites. I don’t know if he’s going to end up being dramatically whacked by Putin, it just depends on what will be more useful to Putin (who has a lot of other stuff on his plate right now).
MagdaInBlack
@Amir Khalid: Aww. I’m happy to hear you found a new room-mate ❤️
Betty Cracker
@Chris Johnson: Maybe, but I’m still not convinced Putin has any special hold on Trump, other than Trump’s childish fanboy admiration for a cruel autocratic oligarch in the mold that Trump himself would love to be. Remember, he expressed similar admiration for Kim Jong-un and other despots worldwide.
Putin absolutely manipulated Trump, but then so did everyone else. It’s trivially easy to do. Foreign governments ran rings around Trump because he’s dumb as a brick and his buttons are easier to push than a toddler’s busy board.
Amir Khalid
@JWR:
I haz a confused. If the accusations in the indictment are legit and Trump’s actions indefensible, then the motivation behind investigating and prosecuting him is to preserve the rule of law. Why would that be of grave concern?
lowtechcyclist
@Alison Rose:
But the kicker is the dollar-store shower curtain and curtain rod. I mean, I’d be OK with the silly chandelier if the rest of the décor at least tried to be in the same ballpark. But the chandelier is in there with a shower curtain that says, “I don’t care about this bathroom, do u? Just grab the cheapest stuff that’ll be functional and be done with it.”
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: I just saw upthread that Trump is now also making posts on Truth Social insisting that it is not an espionage case, it’s a retained documents case.
I mean… it just looks to me like it is in fact an espionage case, and he’s been doing all this for Putin this whole time to the best of his ability and brazening it out, and now you can read it in which things he outright denies the hardest.
I think he’s never had money of his own since he lost what his Dad gave him, he ripped off a bunch of people, and then he went to Russia thinking he could rip them off, and at that point they had him. Since the Eighties. So he’s an ungovernable asshole but he’s been their guy the whole time, and it’s all coming out. This is not him blustering and inflating his ego as a free agent. He is a spy. It’s an espionage case. He had reason to believe if he stole the most relevant documents he could, and hid them from all especially his own lawyers, that his masters would have a way of taking advantage of the situation he himself created for their benefit, as their agent.
He is a spy, and Russia has him ever since some real estate deals went very wrong on him. There’s no reason to believe other intelligence services have such a long history with the guy.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
I still remember that pic of him and Putin right after a private meeting at some international conference, where Putin’s looking smug, and he’s looking like a kid who’s been told the headmaster is going to show his parents the evidence that he’s been cheating on tests all semester and is about to be kicked out of school.
I don’t know what Putin might have on him, but I’d bet serious money that Putin has something on him that’s pretty damning.
Geminid
The good news in Central Virginia is that the we have better air for the second consecutive morning, after a nasty Thursday.
The bad news in Columbus, Georgia and Greensboro, North Carolina is that air pollution will spike this afternoon. Some time after 1pm, the Orange Churl will harangue the Georgia Republican convention in Columbus. Then he’ll then fly on to Greensboro to belch lies at that state’s Republican convention.
oatler
@p.a.:
“I Am the Walrus”?
lowtechcyclist
@JWR:
Yeah, trying to persuade them is a fool’s errand. The best response to their bullshit is laughter.
Baud
@Geminid:
I wonder if he’ll talk about himself.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: I think lots of people have something on Trump because he lies all the time and does stupid, illegal stuff constantly. What I was trying to convey is that I’m not sure Putin is the puppet-master he gets credit for being. He takes advantage of Trump and the GOP being dumb and evil and corrupt, but that’s hardly unique.
Trump’s crime spree has been so nonstop that I lose track of what happened when, but we definitely know Putin had one thing on Trump — the lie Trump told about not pursuing a development licensing deal in Moscow when he was in fact doing so. Can’t remember if that revelation took place during the campaign or presidency. It doesn’t matter now I guess.
OGLiberal
I’m sure this was already said by many others but this guy had to become president before he got indicted for anything. After all those years of criming. NY is a deep blue state but “blue” folks in that state/city let this fucker get away with shit forever. It’s kind of like the celebs (and journos) I notice who just can’t quit Trump because they thought he was a nice guy when they hung out with him at Studio 54 forty years ago. Yeah, narcissists can do that to you…wake up, stupid ass.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
The air was good in my part of Calvert County yesterday. Couldn’t see any haze, went for a medium-length bike ride and didn’t notice anything different about the air. Looks real clear this morning, too.
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: That’s fair. I try to fess up when I’m just being intuitive, and I’ve tried not to just run around denouncing all manner of people.
I may owe apologies to Adam Silverman as I saw him say he was really, truly surprised by what’s gone down w.r.t this. I mean… I absolutely wasn’t. I’ve been screaming about all this and more, and there are many implications of it all.
One of them is that Putin’s internet-based influence operations really are all over the place, and way more effective than the actual Russian war machine turned out to be… these days you can look for which people are hammering away against Ukraine and smell the influence, it’s no longer subtle
You can also see who’s not a faithful traitor. Lindsey Graham is hilarious. He’s a weathervane indicating where power lies. He was full on supporting Trump… until he absolutely wasn’t, and right now the man is flipping off Putin bigtime, publically. I still despise him but it’s really satisfying to watch.
It’s satisfying to watch Trump getting busted.
WereBear
It is also a window into how Republicans got away with so much in the past few decades. Trump essentially indicted himself.
By behaving in such stupendously obviously awful ways that even the incredible efforts of people paid well to do so are falling flat with the faithful.
I guess it’s their version of the many unhappy Star Wars fans. Now, may the Republican party itself become the enemy. I don’t know where else they can go.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
I just can’t imagine that, once he was President, Trump would have felt the least bit of dread about that becoming known. It would have taken something pretty damn serious to cause that look on the face of a man who is used to being able to bluster his way out of anything.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
They’re doing the right thing (prosecuting Trump for his crimes) using evidence obtained for the wrong reasons (because there’s a Deep State/DemoRat conspiracy to hound Trump in illegitimate ways).
So, I guess, even when he is found guilty, people should give the MAGOP and their media chums a mulligan for enabling the creep to show the conspirators that ‘real Americans’ don’t reward cheaty cheat-cheats, or something equally inane.
It’s basically the same old “This is a witch-hunt that, quite unconnectedly, keeps on finding witches” they always use. It’s how they could dismiss anti-War people over Iraq, because they were right for the wrong reasons while the neocons were wrong for the right reasons.
In other words, it’s deflection in the interests of denial.
snoey
@lowtechcyclist: It’s the money. Trump was getting loans through Deutsche Bank’s private loan office – which means that it was somebody else’s money, not DB’s. Three guesses as to whose.
There is also the matter of the Scottish golf courses that he allegedly paid cash for.
LiminalOwl
@WaterGirl: I’m with you on that.
Geminid
@Baud: I winder if Trump will complain about our “politically correct” Army, and cote a local example. Columbus is adjacent to Fort Moore, a very large Army base. That was Fort Benning up until a month ago, when it was renamed in honor of Lt. General Hal Moore and Mrs. Moore.
General Moore is known to the general public as co-author We Were Soldiers Once, and Young, the story of a fierce battle in Vietnam. Colonel Benning was a Confederate officer revered by Lost Cause historians for unsuccessfully assaulting Little Round Top, at the battle of Gettysburg.
Chris Johnson
@snoey: There’s lots.
I’m publically speculating that it’s ALL a giant puppetry operation, that Donald Trump really has nothing but what Russian oligarchs (aligned with Putin, or Putin himself) allow him to have, and everything goes back to him being a spy from as far back as the Eighties.
Hillary knows. The one thing that bugs me about her victory-lap posting lately is this: I already know the harping on her emails was a Russian op. I don’t care who it went through, that stuff was everywhere. And I do not care ever to hear ‘but her emails’ again because this is not ABOUT her.
If she was wearing a ‘Putin’s puppet’ hat, I’d buy one of those. This was never about her or her emails, she’s just targeted because she’s known what Trump was this whole time. I think she probably rescued Bill from being entrapped by the Russians ‘cos he would’ve/did fall for that kind of creepy nonsense. Good for her, good for the loyalty and all, but none of this was really about her, it was about protracted efforts by Russia to revenge itself upon the USA.
I guess we’ll see. This is far from over.
Percysowner
@Ohio Mom:
He probably was playing around the entire marriage, but I’m not sure she did go in with her eyes wide open. We know that when she found out about one affair, they went into counseling to save the marriage. I’ve been in marital counseling and the goal of many counselors is to save the marriage. Back in the day, and maybe even now, the message was “if he cheated in a marriage it’s because he’s missing something and YOU cheated on spouse, must take responsibility for why you drove him too it”. I suspect she was convinced that if she worked on it Bill wouldn’t do it again. Then when the whole Lewinski thing blew up, she knew leaving him would be letting the people who had been working to find ANYTHING to bring him down, could do it if she left and confirmed that “Bill is a bad man”.
I read an excerpt from her book that said that periodically, he will go over to her book shelf and rearrange it. The fact that she doesn’t then clunk him over the head with a cast iron skillet tells me that she also loves the big lug.
JWR
@Amir Khalid:
Goodness only knows. But I think the guy somehow thinks that the motivations of TFG’s persecutors carry more weight, are more damning, than the criming itself. “Sure, I rob banks, but I think your motivations for stopping me from robbing another are political”, or something like that.
Betty Cracker
@Chris Johnson: You could be right. I don’t know. I grew up during the Cold War, and I think trying to make sense of that bipolar world led me to overestimate the power and omniscience of the two main adversaries. Both empires are crumbling, and in the past few decades, their leaders have been revealed as incompetent clowns more often than geniuses, evil or otherwise.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: Good point. Shamelessness is that motherfucker’s super power.
Geminid
@Chris Johnson: I see that Greta Thunberg is now being maligned for siding with Ukraine and denouncing Russia’s destruction of the big dam in Ukraine. Now she’s described as an “imperialist” fronting for NATO.
The tepid response by environmentalist groups like Greenpeace to Russia destroying the dam revived allegations that Russia intentionally co-opted the leftward wing of environmental organizations over the last 15 years. Similar assertions were made when Amnesty International criticized Ukraine for defending its cities early in the war. This seems plausible to me, but hard to prove.
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know either. I’m mid-fifties and pretty cold war minded: so are a lot of the characters in this whole drama, so I feel the motivations are pretty plausible.
As far as actual power, if Putin was actually powerful then he’d own Ukraine now and Lindsey Graham wouldn’t be mocking him. People used to think Putin was more powerful than he’s turned out to be and that, I think, is the real truth of the matter.
There’s been years (including most definitely Trump’s term) when I think a lot of people were invested in arguing that Putin was the evil mastermind and must not be crossed. I was arguing that there were people making that argument because they were in league with the guy, not because they were third parties with independent opinions. But a lot of people in Congress believed the jig was up, and betrayed their country to have faux power.
A lot like Trump, really. I like seeing them learn they chose allegiances unwisely.
Chris Johnson
@Geminid: Oh, now, that’s part of why I still hang out/lurk here.
A LOT of ‘radical left’ people turned out to be super obviously Putin puppets. I could run down a whole list, including ex-Bernie people. I blame Bernie for not spotting them, but when he backed Hillary and then Biden and hasn’t betrayed ’em, I figured he had got played much as I had got played.
A LOT of leftists are revealed by Ukraine politics as just being Russian imperialists. There are still some who are legit, but there was a time when I trusted some of those guys and then woke up to what they were. I still don’t know to what extent some of those people just echo disinfo, and to what extent some of them are literal agents taking direction in some way. A lot of it is just echoing disinformation and getting sucked into chaos politics.
Geminid
@Chris Johnson: I think what sets Russia’s efforts apart is the vast amount of money Putin had available for suborning Western “influencers” and amplifying their message. He draws on the concentrated wealth of dozens of billionaire oligarchs. Robert Mueller’s team documented the 2016 efforts of Prigozhin’s St. Petersburg troll fame, but that was just the tip of an iceberg.
Scout211
The National Archives made a public statement about the presidential records act to refute Trump and the Trump spokespeople who are spreading false information about the act in defense of Trump. Link
I’m beginning to think that Trump’s lawyers aren’t that concerned about actual laws.
BellyCat
@eversor: Out of curiosity, are you referring to Evangelical/Radical/Extremist Christians, or ALL Christians?
If the former, I’m sympathetic to your argument. If the latter, you’re coming off as an intolerant religious bigot.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
I hope that you send pictures🤗
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson: Eh? She was targeted by VVP because he knew – because she said it – that she was going to work to substantially increase sanctions on russia. He was doing everything he could to damage her to keep her from winning, or short of that, weakening her presidency.
TFG was a convenient vehicle, but not the prize. Until he actually “won” and started breaking everything.
Grr…,
Scott.
Chris T.
@lowtechcyclist:
My guess is that Putin showed him the Pee Tape.
(The weird thing here is that even Steele said that some of the stuff in the dossier must be fake, yet everything that’s been tested has turned out to be true. It’s possible that the Pee Tape itself is fake, but given Trump’s famous aversions, that Putin showed it to him anyway, and that’s what rattled him so much.)
Chris T.
@snoey:
Sure, but Trump is used to using, and covering for, stolen money. Why would this particular stolen money shake him?
Gin & Tonic
@BellyCat: The latter. This commenter has a history and is best ignored.
Chris Johnson
@Another Scott: I would say Trump wasn’t meant to win, and that was the big surprise and delight for Russia. The guy was meant to break everything, but the idea of him actually winning, they hadn’t really planned for. If they did they might have picked someone more manageable.
snoey
@Chris T.: The original pee tape story is that Trump played out 2 of his hangups by having hookers pee on a bed that Obama had slept in.
snoey
@Chris T.: Threaten to call the loans?
Chris Johnson
Everyone saying ‘Putin showed Trump the pee tape/some bank statements/etc’ in the belief that Trump went IN to the meeting as a free agent and emerged chastened, is assuming it wasn’t a meeting between an agent and his boss the whole time.
Being a traitor and agent can’t shake him because he knows that already. I would guess that if something Putin said shook Trump and made him sad, it would be this: “You’re not done, and you’re not off the hook. Just because you won is no big deal, you would never have beat that woman without all our help. If you think you becoming President counts as you not owing anything anymore, you’re sorely mistaken. This is where you REALLY have to go to work.”
And so, many boxes of secret military documents later…
Chris T.
@snoey: Yeah, that’s the original claim. But it seems unlikely. More likely is that a Russian op faked it; they have a known history of putting together fake kompromat. Then—I think—Putin showed it to Trump, and given Trump’s aversion to bodily fluids and women in general and especially bodily fluids coming from that part of women, that seriously rattled Trump. Sure, it’s fake. Sure, Trump could denounce it as fake. But it presses Trump’s buttons, just as Putin knew it would.
As Chris Johnson said, Putin then probably used this as a lever, “you’re not done”.
snoey
@Chris Johnson: Trump went in knowing that he was in for a bad meeting with his banker, and it indeed was one.
The rest may be true, but Occam’s razor.
JWR
@Scout211:
I saw an interview with I think Trusty saying that we all misunderstood how search warrants work. See, the government asked that all requested documents be returned by such and such a date, but they never told them to continue looking for more docs after that date, so any that eventually showed up were on the DOJ and not them.
Yeah, it was pretty convoluted.
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson: (Without reviewing the timeline) I think that it’s more likely that VVP told him that there’s no way he would get to do some bigly deal for some DUMP building in Moscow. That, or no announcement on a slapped together arms treaty to get him his Nobel Prize to show up Obama.
It’s always about himself and money with TFG.
Grr…,
Scott.
Chris Johnson
Specifically, my speculation here is that, since Trump has been Putin’s guy since the Eighties, Trump seeks Putin’s approval as if from a surrogate Daddy.
And, rightly, Trump thought that ‘winning’ the Presidency (we can’t be sure of that! What’s going on in Texas? Can we be sure the election was not in fact already flipped, can we be sure that Hillary did not narrowly win?), that winning the Presidency was surely the thing that would win Daddy’s love at last. After so long!
He must have been sure that he’d earned love and praise, after managing this seemingly impossible thing. He won!
And this is why being treated with contempt and told ‘you’re not done, you win nothing, back to work with you!’ was so crushing. Of all the people Trump would want to praise him, his handler Putin would surely be the one he most longed for. I don’t think it can be just a matter of ‘Putin threatened him’, he wanted Putin to LOVE him and surely did not get that.
Again, this is speculation and yet look at how real life has drifted more and more in that direction. Look what Trump has done after that, the risks he’s taken, in service of… what? It ain’t random. And he’s been caught doing it, lying to his own lawyers, fucking the whole thing up. It ain’t random. It fits with the hypothesis that Trump has been trying to serve his surrogate daddy and Kremlin handler this whole time.
Anyway
@Chris Johnson:
Putin and Lavarov HATED Hillary and Obama. They had no respect for either and seeing Hillary lose was one of Putin’s motivations.
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Congratulations! 🏠 🐈
Chris Johnson
@Anyway: Oh, no argument there, Putin’s hated the Clintons since Yeltsin. This goes way back.
But what’s been done to America is not all about Hillary and harping on about her emails or personal righteousness is beside the point. I don’t care about what the stealth Russian propagandists used, the point is they were in there and they’re still there and still… okay, put it this way.
They have impugned Hillary’s virtue, and they have bombed Ukraine and are trying to pressure Americans to withdraw support. Given what they now do, I don’t want to hear about emails at this time, something more serious happened.
They did the ’emails’ to position themselves to do REAL damage, and that’s where our attention should be.
RaflW
@sab: Video link for Chasten’s pride month forum at the Cleveland City Club. Watching it now!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Chetan Murthy: “Indicted,” I think.
@Brachiator: Yes. We put people in jail partly to punish them, but also partly to keep them from harming other people.
@Citizen Alan: Do it!
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid: Yay!
Another Scott
@Chris Johnson: My impression of the “but her emails” hat is to remind people of a few things:
It’s not about relitigating the past, it’s about learning from it.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid: Yay, Amir! Hail the new feline overlord! (Yes, she is an “Overlord”. “Overlady” just sounds weird to me.)
LiminalOwl
@Gvg: Remember that the mass Hillary-hate started when she tried to reform the health-care system, and the insurance companies tried to destroy her with a huge advertising campaign. We might have had a single-payer for the past 20+ years, but SOCIALISM! (and other lies).
Though I’ve always wondered about her work, even before that, on behalf of children (vs. abusive parents). I haven’t seen it mentioned much in recent years, but she was so countering the “parents’ rights” extremism that is being weaponized now, that I wonder whether they started hating her then.
Josie
@Amir Khalid:
I am so happy for you. A new companion is balm for the soul.
LiminalOwl
@Amir Khalid: Congratulations, Amir. We eagerly await pictures. And may you and Aoife have a long, happy life together.
Another Scott
@LiminalOwl: Made me look…
Wikipedia – Whitewater:
There’s that newspaper again… :-/
Wikipedia – L. Jean Lewis:
The RWNJs have been after the Clintons (and other Democrats) for a long time, and love using the justice system to harass them.
Grr…,
Scott.
Princess
@Chris Johnson: Fwiw I agree with you. And I think who think that Trump is a bumbling idiot flailing around grabbing stuff are deluding themselves. The indictment makes it crystal clear that he knew exactly what he had and what it was worth. The thing is though, we’ll never learn whether he wax trafficking info or how much, for security reasons. The US could not survive public acknowledgment that a former President sold the country out to its enemies. So his worst crime may forever go unnamed.
I really don’t get the people who say Ztrump is stupid. He shows signs of a leaning disability and he seems to be at some level of cognitive decline consistent with his age but he is, or at least was, canny, shrewd, and charismatic whether we want to admit it or not.
Another Scott
@Princess: He’s probably got lots of motivations, but I don’t think selling out the country is in the top 5.
“If they hit you, you hit them back 10x as hard” seems to be his #1 mantra.
Someone on Twitter made the point that he thinks a lot of this classified document stuff is related to Gen Milley telling him “NO” on going to war with Iran, threatening China, wanting to pull out of ROK to make his best buddy Kim happy, and all the other stuff. He wants to get back at him – that’s probably what showing the classified thing to the reporter was about, supposedly. Milley challenged him, so he has to be destroyed (once he’s retired and the DoD and Congress and the rest cannot protect him).
TFG is all id. He wants to have continuous attention, wants continuous praise, wants money and power and everyone to know that he’s the bestest and most specialest. He wants to be a player with the table of tyrants around the world, because he’s big and powerful and feared just like they are (, right guys?). He doesn’t care about foreign policy or have some vision for the future of politics, or whatever. He wants his ego fed.
I kinda expect him to start crying when the MaL verdict and sentence are announced, because he’s never really faced consequences for breaking all the rules and norms, and he actually will this time…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
evodevo
@James E Powell: Yes…this. For someone supposedly as politically astute as he was supposed to be, being this careless was absolutely an own goal…
LiminalOwl
@Another Scott: Thanks for the correction! That’s what I get for going from memory; I thought Whitewater was a later development.
Shakti
@Alison Rose:
@West of the Rockies:
Trivia:
FWIW, her hat is actually photoshopped into a picture of her from June 10, 1999.
On that day, the 1998 World Series winner, the Yankees visited the White House and she wore a Yankees hat. Bill Clinton had been acquitted of his impeachment earlier in the year, NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia stopped and the Kosovo War ended a day later.
Right wingers love ragging women’s looks because they think that’s the only kind of power women should be able to have and that they recognize. Which is why they hilariously lose their shit over AOC existing in public.
I just remember a lot of “women who vote Democratic or are Democratic politicians are ugly fat and hairy and conservative women are hot and beautiful” graphics being circulated.
No One You Know
@Citizen Alan: I’ll claim it’s even pettier than that: they want to be able to use any language they want, abuse anyone they want, and command respect for their arrogance, poor education, and white foreskins.
No One You Know
@Tony Jay: All that and most of them still think the question to lead with is “Who won?”
None of ’em could handicap the horse race they insist on reporting, instead of the policies and NORMS we’d be living under based on whether you think the U.S. was a failed democracy or a nascent fascist theocracy.
Ramona Rosario
@Jackie: True. I had considered that. And the GOP would have blamed her mercilessly for Covid.