Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

So many bastards, so little time.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

Republicans in disarray!

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Bark louder, little dog.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

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

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Consistently wrong since 2002

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

You are here: Home / Politics / Holy Cow

Holy Cow

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Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like Jesus “dying for our sins”.

Does Trump think he is Jesus now?

Also from Joyce today, we learn that the CA judge seems to be suggesting that Smirnov’s lawyers are complicit in his efforts to flee. Holy cow, we don’t just all need to be lawyer’s apprentices now, we have to read all the fine print!

Court filing (PDF)

It has come to this Court’s attention that counsel for defendant has sought an emergency hearing in the District of Nevada to arrange the release of Defendant Smirnov, likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.

The government then sought reconsideration or re-examination by this Court of the Nevada release order. That motion for reconsideration has been granted and this Court issued an arrest warrant specifying that upon his arrest Defendant should be brought promptly to this Court.

Indeed, at 9:00 a.m. Monday, February 26, 2024 the USMS is to bringDefendant to courtroom 5-D located at the First Street Courthouse located at 350 West 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA for a detention hearing.

The U.S. Marshal Service is advised there is to be no deviation from this Order.

I would like to think that all this craziness is the last gasp of a dying Republican party.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  1. 1.

    Gretchen

    Hilarious interview with Dean Phillips today. Now he’s pitching a unity ticket with Nikki Haley. Interviewer said, so you’d be Haley’s VP? Dead silence for the better part of a minute. It obviously hadn’t crossed his mind that he could possibly be considered the second place on the ticket.

  3. 3.

    Old School

    Trump has been pushing the “when they come after me, they’re really coming after you” line for a while.

    No clue why MAGAs believe financial fraud and sexual assault cases are an attack on them.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m not as restrained as you are, WG. No “Holy Cows” (or even “Papal Bulls”) for me — my immediate, out-loud reaction to this story was a simple Anglo-Saxon “Holy Fuck.”

    Except it came out more like “HOOOOOOOOLEEE FUUUUUUUUUUCK.”

  6. 6.

    WV Blondie

    Wow! I just read that very brief order. What struck me was the emphasis – that’s right, bold in the original – that Smirnov be delivered to the LA courthouse. And this sentence (again, bold in the original): The U.S. Marshal Service is advised there is to be no deviation from this Order.

  8. 8.

    artem1s

    So when will warrants be issued to arrest the lawyers? High time they start to pay for allowing themselves to be hired by such low quality crime bosses.

  9. 9.

    jimmiraybob

    “Does Trump think he is Jesus now?”

    Absolutely not!  Trump is the new Son and not some woke wimpy boy.  Literally.  Have you not seen the posters?  “And then God made Trump…” is a campaign theme.

  15. 15.

    Balconesfault

    @Old School: @Old School: 

    No clue why MAGAs believe financial fraud and sexual assault cases are an attack on them.

    The combination of tribalism and their victimhood fetish makes it so.

    It’s the same reason that self-professed moderate Republicans who would never go marching in the streets with guns were still willing to rally behind the Charlottesville Nazis or Rittenhouse. Not that going after Nazis or gun fetishists was necessarily attack on them personally.. but it was an attack on their member of their tribe and thus they had to support them because, you know, first they came for the January 6th defilers of the Capitol, then they came for the people who wanted to pay less taxes?

  16. 16.

    Princess

    He doesn’t think he’s Jesus. Jesus was a loser; Trump likes charismatic leaders who don’t get killed, okay?! But Trump has suffered more than Jesus, and is better and wiser and more important than Jesus. And since Trump’s followers like Jesus, they’ll like Trump even more than they like Jesus.

  21. 21.

    moonbat

    Has anyone started taking odds yet on how long Smirnov will last behind bars if he starts singing the dirty details about all his Russian connections and the congressmen who know about them? Is there a window high enough in the LA County jail for him to “fall” out of?

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    I am absconding from work tout de suite.

    What a grand expression. “No deviation” running a close second.

  23. 23.

    karen marie

    @WV Blondie:   Maybe you understand what’s happening.  Earlier today I was informed (waving my hand around generally) that Smirnov had been “arrested on the same charges,” insinuating that new charges, duplicative of the first, had been laid.  But from the order, I’m getting the sense that the CA court has taken over the case.  But I don’t understand how that happens.  Do you?

  25. 25.

    Jay C

    @Old School:

    Trump has been pushing the “when they come after me, they’re really coming after you” line for a while.

    No clue why MAGAs believe financial fraud and sexual assault cases are an attack on them.

    This is just bog-standard dictator-cult stuff: “I am you all” megalomania: “an attack on me – because I embody your aspirations and beliefs* – is an attack on ALL of us”… every tin-pot authoritarian uses some variation of this sick approach one way or another.

     

    *i.e., hates, prejudices and resentments

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    @moonbat: I’m more than a little worried for Navalny’s wife and daughter making public appearances. For clearly different reasons, but the same potential outcomes.

  27. 27.

    jimmiraybob

    @Baud: ​
    “Ellipses are the devil’s punctuation. Right wingers use them all the time to mislead.”
    For the last 15 years or more I’ve been following the “It’s a Christian Nation” road show and all of the “proof” citations use ellipses to omit anything that might be contrary to their desired conclusion.

    David Barton, Texas Republican operative and proven completely-fake historian, is one of the chief Liars for Jesus (Chris Rodda author).

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    I heard the news today oh boy: https://www.businessinsider.com/a-russia-linked-campaign-to-spread-dirt-about-hunter-biden-and-burisma-2024-2

    A thumb drive handed by a foreign national to an aide traveling with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019 suggests efforts by Russia-linked actors to influence the 2020 US presidential election with Hunter Biden disinformation began earlier and were broader in scope than has previously been reported.
    According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, a thumb drive containing poorly sourced allegations about Hunter Biden and his work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, was thrust into the hands of one of Pompeo’s aides at the conservative Claremont Institute’s 40th-anniversary gala in Beverly Hills on May 11, 2019. The man pushing the thumb drive was a citizen of an Eastern European country and a guest of Claremont. He was also, for a time, an FBI confidential informant with the code name “Rollie.” His true name is known to Business Insider, which is identifying him only as Rollie in order to protect sources who provided information for this story.

    KGB   agents everywhere!

  29. 29.

    moonbat

    @trollhattan: I saw Biden’s meeting with them as a shot across Putin’s bow, basically saying, “Don’t even think of trying anything, buddy.”

    Because they were clearly in danger as soon as the news broke that Navalny was dead.

  32. 32.

    Old School

    @WaterGirl:

    What eclipses?

    In the Joyce Alene tweet: (And “ellipses”.)

    Trump speaking to a religious group: “I’m a very proud Christian…I’m being indicted for you over and over and over.”

  34. 34.

    jimmiraybob

    @trollhattan: “I’m more than a little worried for Navalny’s wife and daughter making public appearances. For clearly different reasons, but the same potential outcomes.”

    I’m more than a little worried for Biden and Hariss to be on the same side of the continent.

  35. 35.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Baud: It’s not news to any of us here, b/c we’ve all been attending Adam Silverman’s Maskirovka seminar for the last seven goddamn years, but holey moley this is the biggest national security story of this century, and it’s getting almost no play in the press.  I mean, compared what it should be getting.  This is just colossal.

  36. 36.

    Frankensteinbeck

    One of the major foundations of Trumpism has always been that he is a stand-in for his voters.  He is incredibly good at it.  All the horrible shit we see and are repulsed by, they look at him and see themselves.  All the creepy shit like the pictures of him with rippling muscles or declarations that he always tells the truth or is being persecuted – the message here is ‘Our tribe are superior beings and we are angry we are not being treated that way.’

    @Old School:

    No clue why MAGAs believe financial fraud and sexual assault cases are an attack on them.

    Are you kidding?  It’s their literally god-given right to commit rape and cheat the system.  Did you see them freak the fuck out when Kavanaugh committing rape was treated as worse than an amusing boyhood peccadillo?

  37. 37.

    Wapiti

    @Chetan Murthy: Sounds like the FBI, or someone up the chain of command, is burning “Rollie”.

    To the OP, my uninformed guess would be that there is national intelligence regarding a foreign effort to get Smirnoff out of the country.

    Aside, I am curious how he got his US citizenship.

  43. 43.

    SNCO

    @karen marie:  You may have already heard this.  The charges are from California originally; he was simply arrested in Nevada.   So the original judge, when the release was ordered in Nevada simply asserted the jurisdiction of the Court where the indictment originated and where the trial would occur.   It isn’t a change; its the court which indicted him making sure he wasn’t “accidently” released by the Nevada Court.

  44. 44.

    Doc Sardonic

    As I said the other day, you start digging around these Republican investigations source materials, along with the roaches, worms and other detritus at the bottom of the woodpile you are going to find a KGB ( or whatever they call themselves these days) operative.

  48. 48.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    Trump doesn’t think he’s the son of God. He knows he’s the son of the other one.

  49. 49.

    cmorenc

    Trump is correct in that as with Jesus, there are lots of folks Roman’ the land who think he deserves to be crucified.  Except as Barnabas the thief (one of the other two men crucified)

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Princess: The End Times types always emphasize that when Jesus returns, he won’t be some meek and forgiving Prince of Peace; he’ll be a glorious conquering tyrant with a taste for mass extermination and maybe laser eyes to vaporize the unfaithful. No more chances from King Jesus!

  52. 52.

    Shalimar

    If Christians can’t see that Trump is an atheist, I don’t know how to help them.  He has way too much narcissism to believe in a God.

  54. 54.

    Jay C

    @karen marie:

    Though it truly sounds like something scripted into a Dick Wolf TV series, I think the Smirnov “re-arrest” flap works out to:

    Smirnov was originally arrested and arraigned in Las Vegas. For whatever reason, the Nevada court was willing to, basically, release him OOR, on bail. Whereupon Somebody High Up freaked out, assuming (likely correctly) that Smirnov would bolt out of the country ASAP, and got the judge in L.A. to issue an Order to have Alex trundled into court, in Los Angeles, next Monday, come hell or high water. And with a (unprecedented in my layperson’s opinion) pointed admonition to the US Marshals’ Service to make sure he gets there.

    SOMEBODY is not farting around with this guy…

  57. 57.

    bbleh

    Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like Jesus “dying for our sins”.

    Victimhood is CENTRAL to their worldview.  Their money is taxed away by an unjust government for evil purposes (mostly giving it to Others), their Faith is persecuted (Libruls have thrown God out of schools), and then they’re accused of racism!  Nobody is as persecuted as they are, or as Trump is, or as Jesus was!  This is why they are like Trump (successful but put down) and also like Jesus.

    @Frankensteinbeck: indeed, he has not merely exemplified their worldview but validated it.  He has given them permission to be their asshole selves, and they LOVE him for that.

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    @Frankensteinbeck:One of the major foundations of Trumpism has always been that he is a stand-in for his voters.  He is incredibly good at it.  All the horrible shit we see and are repulsed by, they look at him and see themselves.

    It’s true.  They’d rather go with the guy who gives them permission to revel in their horrible natures.  Being part of a democracy is just too boring, too much work, too much sharing.  trump makes them feel special, seen, ’cause they’re awful just like him.

    I have often wondered how a “why are you settling for this guy?  you’re better than that!” message would go over with MAGA-land.  But I think I already know the answer.

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    @Shalimar:If Christians can’t see that Trump is an atheist, I don’t know how to help them.  He has way too much narcissism to believe in a God.

    Hell, I’d go to church next week if it would get just one. lousy. snooze. reporter. to ask trumpov if he’s excited about Easter – Jesus’ birthday! – coming up in a few weeks.

    “What sort of birthday present would you give Jesus for Easter, Mr. trump?”

    “Um…he deserves all the presents on his birthday, of course.  He’s Jesus and it’s Easter.  Next question!”

    PLEASE snooze media, I’m begging here!

  62. 62.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jeffro:

    I think I already know the answer.

    Anger.  You are yet again insulting them with the implication that a stupid, mean, ranting, selfish, sleazy, dishonest, self-absorbed, out-of-shape white guy is less than a perfect being.

  63. 63.

    Dangerman

    When Trump loses, loses it, or loses IT (talking the big IT here; he’s riding on who knows how much Adderall), it will be very interesting how fast Desantis is, well, resurrected.

  66. 66.

    SNCO

    @Jay C: He was indicted in California, not Nevada.  He was simply arrested in Nevada.   So the Central District of California had to intervene when the Nevada Magistrate Judge (a lower-level judge) released him.   No re-indictment – since he was originally arrested in Nevada on the California Indictment.

  68. 68.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Dangerman:

    it will be very interesting how fast Desantis is, well, resurrected.

    I think Desantis has spent his one and only shot.  The hardcore bigots are not going to want a weakling like him if they can find any decent (by their standards) alternative.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jeffro:

    Hell, I’d go to church next week if it would get just one. lousy. snooze. reporter. to ask trumpov if he’s excited about Easter – Jesus’ birthday! – coming up in a few weeks.

    He’s still predicting that Covid will be totally gone by Easter.

  73. 73.

    Citizen Alan

    @jimmiraybob:  You laugh, but having grown up on evangelical End Times nonsense, I think a very credible argument can be made, using the language of the Evangelicals themselves, that Donald Trump really is the Antichrist. Indeed, if Shitgibbon actually wins in November, I think it will be conclusive. Because one of the Antichrist prophetic signifiers is that the Antichrist will, about  halfway through his seven-year reign, appear to be killed only to return to life. It seems to me that if the Antichrist-as-President analogy is accurate, then the A-a-P serving four years, losing, and then being reelected for a second term fits the bill.

    Of course, it also means that Armageddon will come sometime around the end of the third year of his second term, so … yay?

  76. 76.

    noncarborundum

    @Jeffro: Gee, I always thought that Easter was when they rolled the stone away from the door of the tomb, and if Jesus sees his shadow we have six more weeks of winter.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    Some New York State political news from Democrat and commentator Tom Watson (@tomwatson, reposting Newsday reporter Yancey Roy:

      Those IRC-drawn redistricting map? “They’re dead,” a source with knowledge of the discussion told Newsday.

    It’s a long story, but the 2022 redistricting process resulted in New York running House races on a map drawn by a court-appointed Special Master. Now the districts are being redrawn, and the map produced last week by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission  Commission was deemed deficient by Democrats including Rep. Jeffries. Albany Democrats have evidently decided to draw a better version.

    According to Tom Watson, New York Republicans were perhaps too quick to praise the IRC map:

       Gloating by Zeldin, Cox and Lawler may well have killed the compromise- and cost New York a couple of seats.

     Democrats have to consider a probable court challenge to their map, so they will not be but so flagrant with their “cracking and packing.”

  78. 78.

    Jinchi

    Does Trump think he is Jesus now?

    “So, I think I’ve done more for the Christian community than anyone else, and let’s take a pass on Jesus, cause he did good, although it’s always questionable,”

    -TFG on Jesus (probably)

  79. 79.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Chetan Murthy: It’s like a laundry list of bad actors acting badly. Truly traitorous.

    Gee, I wonder if this’ll be on p. 25 or p. 26 of TFNYT. Section B, of course.

  82. 82.

    jimmiraybob

    @Citizen Alan: ​ “I think a very credible argument can be made, using the language of the Evangelicals themselves, that Donald Trump really is the Antichrist.”I have good Evangelical friends, including Pastors, that didn’t even blink when I proposed that Trump was the Anti-Christ (based on being so antithetical to the heart of the Christ’s teachings). It had already occurred to them.​

  86. 86.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    WaterGirl @ Top:

    Is it just me, or does this sound a lot like Jesus “dying for our sins”.

    Does Trump think he is Jesus now?

    Maybe Patti Smith should re-record her version of Gloria, changing her opening line to “Trump was indicted for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”

  88. 88.

    kalakal

    @Dangerman: DeSantis has blown it. He also may have a self inflicted catastrophe on his hands soon. Ladapo, his crank Surgeon General recently issued a guidance letter to parents telling them it’s A-OK to send their unvaccinated kids to school in the middle of a current Measles outbreak in South Florida. A massive measles outbreak in the next few months will do wonders for FLs tourist industry /s

  89. 89.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chetan Murthy:

    holey moley this is the biggest national security story of this century, and it’s getting almost no play in the press.

    To be fair, the thumb-drive-to-Pompeo’s-aide story just broke today and was a Business Insider exclusive. We’ll see how that particular Russian-influence-operation story gets picked up tomorrow.

  92. 92.

    WV Blondie

    @karen marie: I understand your frustration about the reporting. OTOH, I think DoJ is taking this very, very seriously. Which means a real crackdown on the normal leaky Washington establishment. I was a journalist (not covering politics) there for more than a decade and I remember how different administrations managed what they did or didn’t want to get out.

  93. 93.

    lowtechcyclist

    @jimmiraybob:

    “And then God made Trump…” is a campaign theme.

    The one I saw gave Trump’s birth date as the date on which God made Trump.  Apparently Trump only became a person at birth.

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Dangerman:

    He may get resurrected but I’d bet it won’t go any better for him. The people that want DJT want him because of who he is, not in spite of it. And DumbSanta really does not fill those shoes. Not in any way, shape or form.

  96. 96.

    karen marie

    @WV Blondie:   I don’t have a problem with the DOJ but with all the media organizations that are running with the GOP talking point that Smirnov has been arrested twice for the same thing.

    I keep hearing about a “24 hour news cycle” yet somehow none of these jamokes appear to care whether what they report is accurate.  It took less than 50 words for SNCO to explain clearly what happened.  Why is it so hard for cable news and “legacy news media” to do?

  97. 97.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Citizen Alan:

    You laugh, but having grown up on evangelical End Times nonsense, I think a very credible argument can be made, using the language of the Evangelicals themselves, that Donald Trump really is the Antichrist.

    IIRC, one of the attributes of the Antichrist was that many (most?) persons considering themselves Christians would fall under his spell.  50+ years ago when I briefly bought into some of this horseshit, that was supposed to mean the lame mainstream denominations would be the ones to do so.

    Now that those denominations have shrunk considerably while white evangelicalism has become huge, I’m sure it’s never occurred to those evangelicals that they’re the Antichrist’s likely suckers.  They’ve certainly been trained to be gullible, so an Antichrist would have an easy time winning them over.

  98. 98.

    Miss Bianca

    @jimmiraybob: And here I thought I was the only one on this yere blog seriously going down the list of of all the Trump-as-Antichrist signs, ticking all the boxes one by one…

    What can I say, I’m a medievalist at heart…

  99. 99.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @karen marie: “Why is it so hard for cable news and “legacy news media” to do?”

    Because they are not in the business of providing people with informative and useful news that educates them about a given subject. Their business is to hype Republican bullshit as news while kneecapping Democrats in every way they can.

    Freedom of the press is wasted on them.

  100. 100.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It has come to this Court’s attention that counsel for defendant has sought an emergency hearing in the District of Nevada to arrange the release of Defendant Smirnov, likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.

    Naturally, the usual theofascist suspects are jumping up and down like Homer Simpson smelling cumin that this is “political repression.”

  102. 102.

    catclub

    Trump speaking to a religious group: “I’m a very proud Christian…

    Pride is the first sin. Humility is the first Christian virtue.

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