Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

The lights are all blinking red.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

He really is that stupid.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

People are weird.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

You are here: Home / Open Threads / (Fake) Jack Smith Can See the Future

(Fake) Jack Smith Can See the Future

by | 169 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Seriously, it’s impossible to argue with this, am I right?

He must be able to see the future!

Did You Have Sunday or Monday As Your Choice in the Pool?

If so, you may be a winner!

I think we should have given the office pool blog pool another dimension – not just picking the day that Trump would resume witness tampering, but also the case.  Or perhaps we should at least have to pick WHO he would be attacking.

Otherwise, it’s just too easy!

So many choices!

Holy shit.

This is bad strategy for Trump, and it is most assuredly giving heartburn to the attorneys who were either stupid, short-sighted, or both, when they took him on as a client, and if Judge Chutkan is true to her word, as I expect her to be, it surely will make the J6 Coup Trial happen sooner than it might have otherwise.

Win-win for us, I guess.

Oh, and I think someone sped up the clock, because apparently even the witnesses who were supposed to appear before the Grand Jury TOMORROW in GA are there today.

I was not prepared to bake anything before tomorrow!  Luckily, i have buttermilk in the house, so I can choose between both the chocolate fudge cake and the buttermilk cornmeal cherry galette.

Oh, and I heard 2 things on a podcast this morning that were new to me: 1) that apparently up to 18 people may be part of the indictment in GA (blows the dice… come on, Lindsay) and that every day of his life Donald Trump has woken up with the fear of going to prison.  Of all the things I worry about, going to prison has not yet been one of them!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

169Comments

  5. 5.

    Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)

    What, Trump says he’s READ reports? He can read, or do people tell him things in short sentences? He certainly can’t write.

  7. 7.

    Bill K

    I disagree that Trump fears prison.  His entire life his money had sheltered him.  He has always blustered and bullshitted his way through everything.  Any attempt to punish or restrain him is always met with a blizzard of money and lawyers.  All these rants and threats are just who he is.  I suspect if we ever get to see The Apprentice tapes it will show him behaving the same way.

  8. 8.

    Alison Rose

    Also, today or tomorrow would be nice, because I could think of it as a gift to my Dad in the beyond. Today would have been my parents’ 50th anniversary (or as my mom put it: Today IS their 50th anniversary), and tomorrow will be 6 months since Dad passed away. Hard to believe, honestly.

  10. 10.

    MomSense

    This is wild.  I have a feeling we will all be shocked by what we learn in the GA indictments even though we have been paying attention and know what a scumbag trump is.

  11. 11.

    Old School

    Part of me thinks if the post isn’t in ALL CAPS, Trump didn’t actually write it.  But I’m not sure that’s provable as a legal defense.

  12. 12.

    Old Man Shadow

    I have to imagine that if I were an indicted man who kept posting on social media to my millions of followers slagging the DA and judge that I would find myself pretty quickly remanded to the persons of the Federal Prison system post-haste.

    Really tired of all of the special treatment and kid gloves this asshole is on the receiving end of. I understand strategically and politically why they’re doing it, but I’m really tired of seeing him get away with shit.

  14. 14.

    Scout211

    The mainstream media is all over this indictment being so much different than the other three. And so much worse for Trump! Because reasons. Mainly, because if he is elected president, he cannot pardon himself.

    Okay, I am seriously tired of reporters who boil this down to a political win-lose for the candidate Trump instead of serious reporting on a criminal indictment X3 or X4 for the alleged criminal Trump.

    Maybe they should assign their crime reporters to these stories instead of their political reporters.  Yeah, not holding my breath on that.

  15. 15.

    Burnspbesq

    In addition to the imperfect phone call and the fake electors, apparently there are texts and/or emails tying senior Trump administration and campaign officials to the attempt to hack voting machines in rural Bumfuck County, Georgia.

    Fani’s gonna have the biggest circus since Ringling Bros. went under.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    that apparently up to 18 people may be part of the indictment in GA

    That’s enough for a chain gang.

  23. 23.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Bill K:

    I agree.  He’s mad because people are denigrating him in public and putting him through nuisances, and he sees those things only continuing to rise in the near future.  He has some sense he is being threatened.  But going to jail?  That is completely not real to him.

    It’s going to become real fucking real, Donald.  This is criminal, not civil court, and it’s you on trial, not a company you own where you don’t have to attend the trial.  You have never been here before, and it is a world designed to devour assholes like you.

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    Local VA ABC store manager: oh, back again, Fro?

    Fro: yeah Gene, it’s looking like Indictment Tuesday tomorrow!

    Manager: aw crap…I knew I should’ve staffed up…this guy, I swear…

    Fro: hang tough, Gene!  You’re going to be making serious bank for the rest of the year, amirite?  Catch you next Indictment Day!

  25. 25.

    JWR

    There was some confusion in the last thread about TFG’s “FNCNN” Tweet/X, but just now reading it in context, it seems clear that he meant “Fox News CNN”. Yer welcome! ;)

    And I heard that GA law makes it easier for a trial to be televised. Can anyone confirm this?

  26. 26.

    Tony Jay

    @Scout211:

    Yeah. Got to ‘love’ the frankly ludicrous narrative that a re-elected President Trump pardoning himself after being found guilty of multiple federal crimes = Trump becomes innocent and, therefore, ‘wins’.

    That’s… one hell of an assumption. Someone should really bring that up and laugh – loudly – in the faces of a lot of very dim pundits.

  30. 30.

    Almost Retired

    His insult game is off.  Loser?  Meh.  He’s regressing.  Soon he’ll be calling the special prosecutor “mister poopy-head.”  Or, more accurately MISTER RINO POOPY-HEAD LOSER!!!?!!!

  31. 31.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: Whiningcheesecake goes with RICO.  The perfect choice.

    It’s the reverse…it’s RICO that goes with everything.  =)

    Right, Donnie?

  32. 32.

    dmsilev

    @Suzanne: Here’s one that my mom found in the newspaper many many years ago and it’s become a family stalwart. Really easy to make and very tasty:

    Pumpkin Fudge Cake
    —————
    Cocoa powder
    3 oz bittersweet or 5 oz semisweet chocolate
    1 cup butter
    1 3/4 cup flour
    1 teaspoon baking powder
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    1/8 teaspoon salt
    3 eggs
    2 cups sugar
    1 2/3 cup (1 small can) pumpkin
    1/3 cup coffee liqueur
    Powdered sugar

    10-12 cup cake mold. I used a mold called a kugelhopf, but a tube or bundt mold will work just fine.

    Preheat oven to 350
    Grease pan with some butter or shortening, dust pan w/ cocoa powder. Shake out excess powder
    Melt butter and chocolate over low flame or double boiler
    Sift together flour, baking powder&soda, salt
    Beat eggs & sugar until creamy
    Add chocolate mixture to eggs, beat until blended
    Mixing at low speed, gradually add the flour alternatively with the pumpkin. Mix well
    Add liqueur, mix until combined.
    Pour batter into cake mold, bake for 70-75 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean
    Cool on rack for 45 minutes, turn out of pan and cool completely
    Dust with powdered sugar

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @Alison Rose: alcoholic beverage control store = VA’s state-run liquor stores

    But I think your version would do better business!

    ETA: no wonder Virginia has a huge budget surplus these days…

  37. 37.

    Redshift

    I like Teri Kanefeld’s assessment that his strategy for the indictments is both legal and political, and where they conflict, the political strategy takes precedence, which is why he continually does things that would have any sane lawyer tearing their hair out.

    His only real strategy for avoiding legal consequences is to get elected. And I’m seeing said about Republican strategist chatter that even they see the witch hunt talk as being effective in the primaries, but bad for the general.

    More popcorn!

  38. 38.

    Suzanne

    @dmsilev: That looks great! Copied-and-saved to the Notes app!

    I like cake but am usually meh on frosting, so I like making Bundt cakes. On Friday, I made this pumpkin cake, which is a sheet cake. It looks slightly sad without frosting, but it tastes great.

    I am sooooooo ready for fall, y’all.

  40. 40.

    cope

    @Alison Rose: Would gladly do so if I can find a suitable pigeon (opens calculator app to determine the maximum airspeed velocity of a carrier pigeon laden with a donut encased in a suitable container).

  43. 43.

    Tony G

    Both of your baking options sound delicious!  (Is this your way of saying that you expect the prosecution of Trump to be a cakewalk?)

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    @Redshift: His only real strategy for avoiding legal consequences is to get elected.

    THIS.  Good luck getting him out of the race, GOP!

    More popcorn!

    ALSO THIS!

  46. 46.

    dmsilev

    From the Post’s liveblog,

    McBurney, who previously oversaw the special purpose grand jury that investigated the 2020 election case, is the presiding judge in Fulton County this week — meaning he would receive any paperwork listing charges and release them to the county clerk. Several reporters and camera crews have been camped in McBurney’s courtroom for much of the day in anticipation of possible charges, which must be presented in open court.

    At one point, McBurney explained to a defendant on an unrelated case the reason for all the cameras. It’s not you, McBurney said. “There’s another indictment that people have been very interested in.”

    Heh.

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    This is bad strategy for Trump, and it is most assuredly giving heartburn to the attorneys who were either stupid, short-sighted, or both, when they took him on as a client, and if Judge Chutkan is true to her word, as I expect her to be, it surely will make the J6 Coup Trial happen sooner than it might have otherwise.

     

    Time for the Judge to move it up to November 1, 2023 :)

  48. 48.

    Redshift

    @Old Man Shadow:

    Really tired of all of the special treatment and kid gloves this asshole is on the receiving end of. I understand strategically and politically why they’re doing it, but I’m really tired of seeing him get away with shit.

    Hmm, I’m going to somewhat disagree in this particular case. It’s not just political and strategic, the First Amendment issues actually require a lot of care here. We really don’t want to be a country where political campaigns can be derailed by a candidate being charged (but not yet convicted) of a crime, and how to deal with one who abuses those protections is a genuinely hard problem.

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    trump ups the ante by going after judges and witnesses.  where’s the line?

    Good question, Aaron Blake!

    I bet we find out before Friday!!

    THROW.  HIS ASS.  IN JAIL.

    The question, as it often is with Trump, is whether he has gone too far — and where the line is for those charged with determining where it is.

    Experts say the situation could be coming to a head.

    Trump made his comments about Chutkan after he was explicitly told to abide by limits on what he can say about the federal Jan. 6 case.

    Trump signed a pretrial release form acknowledging that it would be a crime to “intimidate or attempt to intimidate a witness, victim, juror, informant, or officer of the court.” A judge is an officer of the court.

  51. 51.

    Tony G

    @Alison Rose: My theory is that the members of the cult of Trump worship him BECAUSE he is a soft, flabby crybaby with no brains, courage or decency.  He’s JUST LIKE THEM but with money (supposedly) and power.

  53. 53.

    JWR

    @JWR: Just found the answer to my question about TV in the courtroom, from NBC:

    Unlike federal or Manhattan courts, where the former president appeared for his three previous arraignments, Georgia law requires that cameras be allowed into judicial proceedings with a judge’s approval.

    In 2018, the Georgia Supreme Court, in an order amending the law to include smartphones, underscored the importance of transparency: “Open courtrooms are an indispensable element of an effective and respected judicial system.

    Good thing the decision won’t be up to Loose Cannon.

  54. 54.

    Redshift

    @Alison Rose:

    Also, today or tomorrow would be nice, because I could think of it as a gift to my Dad in the beyond.

    The GA grand jury only meets on Mondays and Tuesdays, and it doesn’t seem like Willis is going to let it go another week, so you should get your wish!

  55. 55.

    Betty Cracker

    The largest liquor store chain in Florida is called ABC. It’s a private company, and they claim they started calling their stores “ABC” so it would appear in the phone book first. But I gotta think the fact that government-regulated ABC stores are a thing in other states was a factor.

  56. 56.

    Jay

    @cope:

    You need to have her send you one of her local pigeons from her neck of the woods.

    otherwise your pigeon won’t have a clue where it’s going and will just arrange with a crow to remove the container and open it for splitsies,……..

  58. 58.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker: Back when we had real phone books the competition among various vendors but especially bail bonds became hilarious, leading to businesses like “A-A-A-A-1-1-1-1 Best Bail Bonds.”

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: One of Trump’s recent rants on his shitty social media platform starts off with “Someone please tell the grand jurors” blah blah blah. How can that NOT be an invitation to jury tampering?

  62. 62.

    Redshift

    @Scout211:

    The mainstream media is all over this indictment being so much different than the other three. And so much worse for Trump! Because reasons. Mainly, because if he is elected president, he cannot pardon himself.

    In addition to the horse race idiocy, it’s particularly galling because of the assumption that all these rules will apply if he gets elected again, because it has to be a normal election, right? He and his cronies have openly written and talked about how they’re going to clean house at the Justice Department and fill it with yes-men and hacks who will protect him and his friends and go after his enemies. Now, they may well not be competent enough to do that, or to get people to carry out those orders, or the whole government may collapse out of resistance to authoritarianism, but there’s no denying they want to.

    So the idea that “he can’t pardon himself” or “he can’t escape state charges” is something to rely on is as unserious as treating this as a normal election. The only sure thing would be keeping him from getting get back into power.

  63. 63.

    LAO

    @Redshift: Agree 100%.

    It’ll be interesting to see how the various courts (excluding Cannon for obvious reasons) deal with the defendant going forward.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    @JWR: If he is indicted, the trial will be televised.    We might have to stock up on popcorn now.   By the time the trial date comes, popcorn might not be available.

  65. 65.

    Ishiyama

    Sometimes one’s client is so far gone in their contact with reality that they can’t stay out of trouble when released on bond, repeatedly. It defeats the whole purpose of legal defense, and there is not much that one can do, as an advocate.

  67. 67.

    raven

    Former President Donald Trump could be facing a racketeering charge plus 12 other felony counts, according to Reuters, which took a screenshot of a charging document against Trump from the county clerk’s website.
    The document was apparently posted by mistake because the grand jury is still seated and hearing the case against Trump and his allies. That means these charges would be the ones the district attorney’s office is seeking but still must be approved by a majority vote of the 23-member grand jury. The document is no longer on the court’s site.

  71. 71.

    LAO

    @Alison Rose: I find it hilarious (and depressing) how he’s held up as a paragon of rugged masculinity. TFG is a flabby, glass jawed, snowflake crybaby.

    Also, my condolences on your father, my dad died on February 18th and despite his years long debilitating decline , I still have difficulty believing he’s gone.

  72. 72.

    scav

    @Scout211: Another reason the MSM might be all fluttery over this. one is they get to mainline their video feed and float into that 24/7 nirvana.

  73. 73.

    FooDonFah

    So it seems pretty obvious to me that Trump is too stupid and illiterate to be writing his tweets.  If he crimes through social media and someone else is cleaning it up and posting it for him, would that make them an accomplice?  I know there’s a mens rea component, but there must be some threshold where what shit really is becomes so obvious that you lose the plausible deniability of just being an intervening set of thumbs.

  75. 75.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Depends on which pen. Georgia’s Milledgeville is somewhat on par with the old Atlanta fed pen, I’ve been told.

  76. 76.

    LAO

    @Ishiyama: Honestly, I think it’s a deliberate strategy because the defendant’s chance of evading criminal liability is to try this case in the court of public opinion and win re-election. His major obstacle is Judge Chutkan because she’s unlikely to allow him to continue his conduct.
    I couldn’t represent a client under these conditions but that’s me.

  77. 77.

    NotMax

    @VOR

    Yuppers. Tourist kitsch. There’s one major intersection in Honolulu where multiple streets meet, standing in which one can turn 360 degrees and see five ABC stores.

  79. 79.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Baud:
    “that apparently up to 18 people may be part of the indictment in GA”

    That’s enough for a chain gang.
    ​

     Chain chain chaaiinn
    Chain of fools….

  81. 81.

    karl

    “Or perhaps we should at least have to pick WHO he would be attacking.”

    Let me be the first to respond properly to this: “WHOM”.

  84. 84.

    Roger Moore

    @Old School:

    Part of me thinks if the post isn’t in ALL CAPS, Trump didn’t actually write it. But I’m not sure that’s provable as a legal defense.

    If somebody else wrote it for him, that would just make it a conspiracy to tamper with witnesses instead of regular witness tampering.

  87. 87.

    LAO

    @LAO: has I read my comment before hitting the post button, I would have noticed that I left a few words out. 🤷🏻‍♀️

    especially, a not as in “I couldn’t represent a client…”.

    Oh well.

  89. 89.

    Suzanne

    @trollhattan: I used a moving company called Aardvark a few times back in the day. First in the phone book. Had a cute aardvark lifting a box as their logo.

  90. 90.

    RaflW

    @Redshift: “effective in the primaries, but bad for the general” also sums up the deal with the devil that the GOP made by overturning Roe.

    I get that 2016 broke the brains of so many in the press. But Biden winning, the mid-terms holding the US senate, and whompings like the KS abortion vote point to a lot of structural challenges for Republicans. Layer on a logorrheal social media freakazoid as the top of the ticket, and 2024 may be veeeeery interesting.

  91. 91.

    Alison Rose

    @Redshift: Dad will be toking up in glee in Olam Ha-Ba* when it happens. One of the many reasons it was sad to lose him when we did is because it means he’ll never get to see TIFG go to prison. He loathed him so much.

    (*Dad wasn’t Jewish, but we always said that after being with my mom for so long, he was sort an honorary Jew.)

  93. 93.

    LAO

    @JPL: LOL. I’m dying. Do republicans not know that the DA’s office hands the grand jury a list of charges they are seeking.

    I know that it’s all performance art but the level of stupidity republicans rely on is outrageous.

  95. 95.

    Wapiti

    While I’ve never been worried about going to prison, during an Army course in Kansas, we had a short (3-hour?) tour of the military prison at Fort Leavenworth. It drove home that I never want to go to prison, not even a better-than-average one like Fort Leavenworth. Which was probably the point of the tour.

  98. 98.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @JPL: Yep. Hence my comment about “you had ONE job…”

    The howler monkeys will take this to 11. At best it will be an unwanted distraction.

    As to how it could happen and is there a motive here, I suspect it’s just good old-fashioned incompetency.

    ETA emphasis: still, just a distraction.

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @Bill K:

    I disagree. I think he actually knows what he’s done. He didn’t give a crap what he said or did, only that he was being who he thinks he is. And of course he’s wrong about it, he always is. I don’t call him ShitForBrains for no reason. It’s who and what he is. In his tiny, shitty mind, he is perfect, just ask him. In the real world, he is exactly what most of us see him as. Far worse than useless, he was president, legally or not, and he thinks that puts him far above the law.

  102. 102.

    HeleninEire

    @LAO: Also if you look closely there are numbers missing in the count. So I think this may be the actual charges, and the missing numbers are the ones that the jury voted “no” on.

    In other words, it’s a done deal.

  106. 106.

    narya

    Two baking tips for you all: when there’re carrots in a cake, grate them and then roast them for awhile; this reduces the gloppiness of the cake and you can concentrate the carrot flavor. (I also (a) use butter, not oil and (b) sub some pumpkin for some of the butter.) When baking w/ zucchini, I salt/drain the grated zucchini, for the same reason.

    Oh, here’s a third one, for folks who missed this in an earlier thread: I like this for a very quick chocolate cake. I don’t usually make that frosting, and I have been known to add dried cherries, cooked-down strawberries, etc., but it’s great on its own, especially if you have some really dark cocoa to use for a bit of the cocoa.

  107. 107.

    Chief Oshkosh

    13 felonies, with the RICO one being a “serious felony.”

    I don’t know what expectations were, but this seems like a gracious plenty to me.

  109. 109.

    Ruckus

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    Goes back to the after days of alcohol being outlawed and a not small number of citizens making their own and of course in a country that has private business, selling same outside of normal business channels.

  110. 110.

    Betty Cracker

    @LAO: Here’s a PDF link to it published by Reuters.

    @dmsilev: Has Popehat been saying a RICO charge is unlikely or ill-advised? I’m out of the loop since Twitter fell into enemy hands.

  111. 111.

    Gravenstone

    @JWR: And I heard that GA law makes it easier for a trial to be televised. Can anyone confirm this?

    Was just reading over at TPM that the expectation is an open and publicized trial, unless the judge decides otherwise. In this case, it was reaffirmed that cameras would be allowed.

  113. 113.

    Alison Rose

    There’s an op-ed up at NYT titled “Why Are So Many of Trump’s Alleged Co-Conspirators Lawyers?” I skimmed it and the author seems to be pointing to increasing partisanship in the field alongside decreasing ethics oversight, but it reminded me of one of my favorite jokes from Law & Order, between Briscoe the detective and Kincaid the ADA. Briscoe asks, “How come New York has the most lawyers, and New Jersey has the most toxic dumps?” And Kincaid, in a sardonic tone, says “Because New Jersey got first pick.”

  114. 114.

    Gravenstone

    @Jeffro: I was thinking ABC Electronics (if that chain still exists) and I was wondering if your buddy was expecting a run on TVs for whoever wants to watch the trial?

  116. 116.

    LAO

    @Baud: Thanks.

    Alternate explanation of the “missing counts” — this counts charge others (not DJT) so there not listed on his charge sheet.

  119. 119.

    Alison Rose

    From NYT live blog:

    The presiding judge, Robert McBurney, just appeared briefly and told the deputies in his Fulton County courtroom that “we need to keep this courtroom and this courthouse open” beyond the usual closing time. It’s a sign that chances are growing that an indictment in the Trump investigation could come this evening.

  120. 120.

    narya

    @Betty Cracker: Popehat has basically been saying that he’s not an expert on GA RICO (or state RICO more generally), and that it does differ from federal RICO. He’s on Mastodon, btw.

  123. 123.

    Baud

    @Alison Rose: I wonder if the mistaken disclosure caused them to move things up.

    ETA: maybe they just want to do it when people aren’t using the courthouse for other purposes.

  124. 124.

    Gravenstone

    @Betty Cracker: How can that NOT be an invitation to jury tampering?

    Well, that grand jury had already been seated so he couldn’t be influencing who might be on it. As for his imploring them, well he’ll have a front row seat for his forthcoming trial and can attempt to rebut the charges. That’s how it’s supposed to go, after all.

  126. 126.

    Baud

    I can’t believe they’re going to infringe on Trump’s First Amendment right to persuade officials to violate their oaths.

  127. 127.

    catclub

    @JPL: If he is indicted, the trial will be televised. We might have to stock up on popcorn now.

     

    It would be amusing to have OJ Simpson as TV commentator on a trial.

  128. 128.

    LAO

    @Betty Cracker: I’m no popehat but as a former OC defense attorney, I’m going throw in my 2 cents:

    RICO makes a prosecution more complicated and potentially confusing to jurors. It may very well be warranted but it’s a real pain in the ass.

  130. 130.

    hitchhiker

    Lol, just saw a clip of a reporter asking DeSantis if he was likable, and heard Hillary Clinton snickering all the way from New York.

  132. 132.

    Suzanne

    For anyone else who likes cakes without frosting:

    SuzMom had apparently found a recipe back in middle school called “New Orleans Crumb Cake”, and that title is not accurate at all. It is none of those things. What it was, though, was a way to dress up a boxed chocolate cake mix so that you didn’t need frosting. I do not use boxed mix, but I tried it with Joy of Cooking’s Texas Sheet Cake recipe, and it was great. Super-simple…. basically makes it halfway between a cake and a brownie. I’m sure you could use any sheet cake recipe.

    All you do is mix 3 tbsp of melted butter with a cup of graham cracker crumbs, then a cup of chocolate chips, then a cup of chopped walnuts or pecans….. mix all of that into the cake batter right before you pour it into the cake pan. BAM! Easy, simple, yummy in that midcentury “simpler times” kind of way.

  142. 142.

    Anonymous At Work

    Every day of his adult life, TFG has woken up expecting his dead father to take back the inheritance and give it to Fred Jr’s side of the family.

  143. 143.

    Ruckus

    @Wapiti:

    I was on temp duty in the shore patrol for a while and had the opportunity to see a cell as a part of my job. It wasn’t all that great an experience, even on the outside looking in.

  144. 144.

    Ruckus

    @Wapiti:

    1. I was on temp duty in the shore patrol for a while and had the opportunity to see a cell as a part of my job. It wasn’t all that great an experience, even on the outside looking in.
  146. 146.

    Tenar Arha

    It’s weird. I’ve known for a while TFG was mentored by Roy Cohn. I recently realized that every time that carbuncle says “perfect phone call” I’ve started imagining the ghost of Roy Cohn saying “yes Donald, that was perfect” in response.

  148. 148.

    hitchhiker

    @Baud:

    I definitely will, especially if this turns out to be GA Indictment Day. HRC talking with Maddow in primetime during Peak Indictment Summer was once an unimaginable event; as Noonan would say, i plan to savor it.

  152. 152.

    MCA1

    @narya: He’s joined Threads now, too.

    I think the initial reference was re: the running joke on his old Twitter account about every commenter thinking any criminal activity involving more than one person was grounds for a RICO charge, and him sadly shaking his head 35x/day when it happened over and over.

  153. 153.

    Betty Cracker

    @Gravenstone: Okay, but if a potential defendant is telling members of the public to contact grand jury members to ask them to consider points outside of what they’re hearing in the courtroom, isn’t that a form of tampering with a seated jury? I’m not a lawyer and have no idea how this stuff works, but it seems like that should be a no-no!

    @LAO: Got it — thanks for that perspective.

  154. 154.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    Has Popehat been saying a RICO charge is unlikely or ill-advised?

    One of his mantras is that it’s never RICO.  He says this about just about everything, since people always want to bring up RICO.

  155. 155.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Ruckus: yeah, I grew up in Minnesota so the state left the liquor stores to the cities and towns. So Minneapolis allowed liquor sales at private stores, some of the suburbs had city liquor stores. And we had much looser laws concerning happy hours than these uptight Baptists here in Virginia, due to everyone being either Lutheran or Catholic :)

  161. 161.

    kindness

    So…when Trump goes to prison….which extremist group will he use for bodyguards?

    Just asking for a friend.

  165. 165.

    sab

    @Ruckus: My wealthy grandparents who retired to a dry county in North Carolina (Moore County?)  They had a bootlegger who delivered. They also had an alchoholic chaffeur. When the county finally went wet they kept on with the bootlegger because he delivered to the house.

  167. 167.

    Ken

    @Baud: Or the judge and DA got fed up with the reporters camped outside, and decided to give them an extra fifteen hours of empty podium footage, while everyone in the courthouse sneaked home by the back door.

  168. 168.

    karen marie

    @WaterGirl:  I want a chocolate fudge cake too.  Can we have the recipe you’re using?

    I made a blueberry cake today.  Sadly, it was only sort of okay.  It is flat tasting.  I’m guessing it’s because salt isn’t an ingredient.  I thought it was an odd thing to omit but I forged ahead.  It looks really nice but it’s not rewarding to actually eat.

    Does anyone else have a hard time throwing out something they’ve made that didn’t work out?   I had a long-ago boyfriend tell me I could just eat the icing on a cake I’d made that I didn’t like.  That was revelatory to me.  I  still struggle with feeling guilty about throwing away food I don’t like.

    I kind of hate thinking about that cake because the icing was a recipe of my grandmother’s for a pudding-like chocolate icing that I absolutely loved but have since lost.  A number of times, when I was a kid and my parents had gone out, my brother and I made a batch of that icing just to eat out of the pot.

Comments are closed.