#INDICT DONALD TRUMP RIGHT FUCKING NOW

[wilwheaton]

For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room. After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. [...] Even had Joe Biden been at the top of his game, he would not have been able to parry all those lies and he shouldn't have been put in the role of being Donald Trump's fact checker. His choice was to either ignore the lies and let them stand so he could use his time to make his own case or spend the entire debate correcting the record. It was not a fair fight. It's obvious that Biden's terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats and liberal pundits and analysts. The calls for him to withdraw are loud and meaningful and it's going to be a very rough period in this campaign whatever happens. For me, this isn't really a question. As long as Donald Trump is on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic nominee. If it's Biden or someone else, the calculation remains the same. Nothing is worse than another Trump administration and I suspect that at the end of the day Democratic voters will agree with that. So it's still a matter of those undecided voters in swing states, just like it was on Thursday morning.

CNN's debate was no fair fight

CNN, yet again, gave Trump a national stage to vomit an endless stream of unchecked lies, and today, CNN is telling itself and anyone who will listen that the network and its moderators did a great job. That’s just plainly false, and America is paying the price for their failure.

That doesn’t let Biden off the hook. Biden had a terrible night. He was so bad, it’s allowed the political press to completely ignore not just how much Trump lied, but what he lied about: January 6, all his indictments, his Covid response, and on and on. President Biden was a disaster, and his campaign should be at DefCon 1 to try and repair all the damage. I am terrified that his awful performance will obscure his surprisingly good record and leadership in the post-insurrection era, and give the political press an excuse to run with “Biden is old” in the face of Trump’s endless lies, his felony convictions, his pending trials, and all of his criminality. Someone at Salon said that Trump didn’t win, but Biden absolutely lost. I can’t argue with that, even if the facts are all on Biden’s side.

I’ve seen President Biden on TV today, and even last night after the debate, where he didn’t come across as an ancient dude who needs a walker on his way to some Matlock reruns. He looks and sounds like the SOTU Biden we all expected would show up last night. I have no idea why he was so awful for 99% of the debate (the campaign says he has a cold), and I have no idea why the guy who is showing up to speak to supporters today, and who delivered the SOTU didn’t show up last night to save America from Trump, again.

But we have to live with this reality now, and I hope like hell that the Biden campaign, the candidate, and the entire Democratic party apparatus scrambles like fucking crazy to get all hands on deck to fix this, and remind voters that

This isn’t about BIden vs. Trump. This is about America vs. Project 2025.

There will be no second debate where Biden can try to salvage something out of the wreckage of this one. Trump has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Trump will crow about how he won, and declare he has no reason to debate again, and he’s right. Biden had one shot and he absolutely blew it. The moderators did not help, but the campaign had to have known they wouldn’t, and it sure looks like they didn’t prepare Biden for what we all knew was coming. I don’t know how those same people stop the bleeding, and if they can’t, America and the world are in real, real trouble.

But we all have to remember that we have a choice to make in just a few months. Right now, and probably on election day, the choice is between Joe Biden and Democracy, or Donald Trump and Fascism. It’s stark, it’s clear, it’s binary, and I can not believe that it is even a question. I just hope that there are enough voters out there who will understand that we do have a choice. The options suck, but we do have a choice.

Please choose Democracy. Please choose America. Please choose the future world our children will inherit from us.

[polyacrylamidepensieve]

If you don’t vote for Biden, Trump will probably win. If Trump wins, we have someone as President who has said he will make it so that shoplifters “can just expect to be shot” when leaving the store. Trump bad is on a whole nother level. As someone who has lived in China before… yes. We do currently have free speech here in comparison.

He has plans in place to fire all of the people in government who check your food for safety and your cars for emissions, and replace them with people loyal to him.

If everyone who could stand up to him is replaced by a Trump loyalist, and if everyone who stands up to him is fired or locked up or indicted somehow on bogus charges, we’ll lose the ability to democratically oust him when his term is over.

Lots of things happened under him before that we never thought could actually happen.

As an asian american, I am going to be substantially less safe in a Trump presidency where white supremacists only get wrist slapped and then pardoned for violence like Jan 6th.

I’m scared. I’m angry as fuck at Biden for a lot of reasons. But I’m so so so scared of even the possibility of Trump winning.

It can get so much worse than the Muslim ban. He doesn’t care about the environment. He doesn’t care about humankind or human rights. He isn’t kind, and he isn’t afraid to use deadly violence to get what he wants. He wants to ban abortion nationwide. He wants to delegalize trans rights in the military.

[anamericangirl]

There is a procedure when classifying and de-classifying documents. It is WRITTEN proof of said procedures. Trump did NOT do this. Period. You can't just think about doing those things and it's legal unlike Trump has stated. Stop being so fucking dumb!

I'm going to ignore your incredibly rude comments and what you think you know about how documents can be classified or declassified and make a statement about this situation that is the actual issue.

From what we know based on the information we have so far it looks like Trump did indeed mishandle classified documents.

BUT

So did Joe Biden.

So did Hillary Clinton.

And the DOJ set a standard with this occurrence when they didn't indict Hillary Clinton for not only mishandling classified information but also destroying it. They set a standard for it when they didn't indict Joe Biden for it. Joe Biden mishandled classified documents in the same way Donald Trump did. Hillary Clinton mishandled them in a more serious way. If you truly care about following proper procedures and people being prosecuted if they break the law and you're not just a crazy Trump hater who thinks he's the only one who should be held accountable then you should be furious right now.

If this is only going to be treated as a crime when a Republican does it, how is that ok in any capacity? If only Republicans aren't allowed to do it then this is just the DOJ being weaponized to go after political enemies and that is an atrocity.

And how convenient that Trump's indictment is going down and is all the fucking media is talking about right as we are finding out that there is strong evidence that Joe Biden has accepted a $5 million bribe from China and committed a serious felony. Why, I wonder, is Trump's, and only Trump's, mishandling of classified documents so important to you but everyone else gets a free pass?

[yeahiwasintheshit]

Wow!

Some much needed great news!

So somewhat recently, georgia republicans passed a law, for the first time in Georgia’s hundreds of years history, that the legislature can remove any prosecutor they want. Why would Georgia republicans all of a sudden decide that now, hundreds of years after it was founded, they would want to enact this clear abuse of power? Do you think it could be because one of the state’s prosecutors have indicted donald trump?

You’re goddamn right that’s the reason!

And they passed the law and that piece of shit governor, kemp, signed it. Of course it was immediately challenged in the states court system and finally made its way to the states supreme courtx, and last week, the night before thanksgiving the supreme court of Georgia ruled that that law was unconstitutional!!!!

So yaay! That’s the good news!

Bad news is that in their ruling they said that they can’t and won’t approve it “until lawmakers overhaul the measure” which means that the fucking republicans will in all likelihood try to rewrite it so that it can be passed. It’s to be seen whether the republicans actually decide to do anything... but they are shameless and power hungry, so it’s a good bet they will.

[variousqueerthings]

watched network and it's ofc very famous and the acting was very good, esp really interesting women in this one and it has some great moments and speeches, but idk. doesn't feel as though it has the same kind of heart to me as the other lumet films i've seen so far:

i thought it was interesting and worth watching, but both on an emotional and political level it seemed oddly disjointed to me in that way where it's abundantly clear that while it's meant to be satirising a whole swathe of ideas, some people have more innate humanity than others based on static identities (yes, the shadowy tv exec is a white dude, but so are almost everyone else. yes faye dunaway is giving a great performance as a cold, fucked up network person, but it's got great dialogue and there are other women in the film. black characters? well...) i don't even think it's anti-establishment as such, even though it does start there and probably wants to be and also could have been if it had been more focused

with parts that were tremendously good, especially the ex-wife speaking her part + the network executive describing the power of capitalist-fuelled "entertainment" in shaping peoples' opinions and how that plays now with especially american politics more shaped by that notion than what people have done politically a lot of the time, and other parts that were highly suspicious in their cold seemingly satirical dehumanisations, such as the depiction of a far-left liberation terrorist group based on the symbionese liberation army that is ultimately a hollow inclusion of leftist ideas (whether or not those ideas are positive it's just shallow) and certainly puts you in mind of what the fanatical ultra-radical hypocritical left looks like (and it looks like it's run by politically messy black people), or the anti-arab rhetoric that seems to come out of nowhere all of a sudden, twice! (and this without a single arab onscreen....)

that's it for me in the end -- where everything else I've seen so far of sidney lumet (12 angry men, dog day afternoon, serpico, running on empty.... so yes, i have a fair few yet to watch!) seems to be offering humanity within plots that have surface-level similarities, this one just seems very "throws ideas at a wall about being angry at... something, but it seems the people causing the trouble consist of a. the soulless network executives and capitalist CEOs (sure, yeah, ok) b. the shadowy arabs somewhere (huh?) c. the ultra-left, led by black people (.... wait) who ultimately will also cave to the great spectre of Ratings and d. literally everyone else who watches tv"

sometimes "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" begs the question... who are you mad at, exactly? and this movie, in failing to answer that beyond a vague "... society? tv...?" kind of way rather than being more specific and direct, falls into some very biased obvious ideas, and also I think is at the core of why there are so many "woah this movie predicted everything!!!" type articles. it's a blank space that doesn't have a clear political idea and so people can fill that space however they want

i didn't really speak much to the "prophetic" nature of the movie, but that does also feel not-entirely-wrong-but-not-quite-right, I think people exaggerate -- it is resonant, especially today, but it's also based in the times it was made in: soulless network execs? they existed in the 70s. people doing extreme things that got a bunch of ratings? happened in the 70s. prophets on-air asking you to get mad? you got that in the 70s. like it wasn't ronald reagan and donald trump or the sheer amount of reality tv, but like. it's all structures being built in the 70s already

and I do give it a lot of reasonable doubt in intention, because as far as I know sidney lumet was always making movies with a clear idea about what he felt, and so I guess I can say who he is mad at, but the movie itself? feels more like an indictment against itself by trying to float a hopeless endless churn of soulless tv vs. the self-fulfillment that seemingly comes from pursuing a more wholesome (het, white, marriage-based, american) lifestyle that can "save" you from the trap of tv's ensnaring entertainment cycle. as if those two things aren't inherently connected

[corporationsarepeople]

“This is eye-popping,” said John Malcolm, a former federal prosecutor based in Atlanta who is now a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, speaking of the contrast between the federal and state indictments. “What about the right — when you believe allegations to be true, or you have some evidence to support the allegations — to seek redress? And all of a sudden they’re perpetrating a conspiracy? I think that’s astonishingly dangerous.”

So what, John, you absolute fucking doorknob. They didn’t believe the allegations to be true. They didn’t have evidence to support the allegations. They were attempting to overthrow a valid election. They knew it, we knew it, everybody knew it. Not only that, it’s what trump was expected to do way back while he was still running in 2017 because he’s a total scam artist and crook.

Letting this slide would be astonishingly dangerous.

[macwantspeace]

Art comes in many forms: "somewhere inside his tacky Florida golf motel, a quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring debate-avoiding witness-tampering day-one-dictatoring disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling sneaker-hawking serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating stock-manipulating weather-map-defacing war-criminal-pardoning horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 88-count 78-year-old fluorescent-tangerine narcoleptic fart factory is melting down into a molten puddle of woe-is-me.

why is Donny Convict experiencing heretofore-unknown levels of sad of right now? it’s all because that peanut-farming fuck, Jimmy Carter, had the temerity to up and die — and now the flags at Donny’s inauguration will be flying at half-staff. so unfair!" The stack goes on to mention that Nixon was inaugurated with flags at half staff for Harry Truman. [And I now apologize again for having voted for Nixon.]

[faulentzer]

This guy was a disgrace when serving as the US ambassador to Germany and now he’s running around on the loose further fucking US diplomatic efforts. He’s a twisted puppy on the wrong path. Makes me think of the homosexuals in Hitler’s early administration who fell in love with the “strongman” in order to protect their inner lack of self esteem. His religious fervor and attraction to people he sees as strong indict a deeply troubled and flawed man. The perfect fit for Trump world.

[thatstormygeek]

Like, I know we all know that right wingers lie all the time and every accusation is a confession and all that, but sometimes I still get so fucking pissed off by how blatantly full of shit they are.

“The now-former Representative George Santos’ actions were not only unbecoming of a member of Congress, but the facts reported by the ethics committee point to numerous violations of House rules and federal law, rendering him unfit to serve in this distinguished institution,” - Representative Ron Estes (R-Kansas)

"This [Donald Trump] indictment news from New York is absolutely unprecedented and appears to be about politics, not justice. The House has already started investigating Democrat DA Alvin Bragg to look into this potential abuse of his office against political opponents." - Representative Ron Estes (R-Kansas)

I am absolutely no fan of George Santos, but it is super interesting that he is the single republican who is to be held accountable for the bullshit so many of them pull.

And, just, I know railing against their bullshit doesn't change anything, but FUUUUUCK. It's so enraging.

Talking shit about "activist judges" and then doing obvious judge shopping:

The state of Texas joined the lawsuit under the direction of Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022. The case was filed in Amarillo, an area without a Planned Parenthood facility – a jurisdiction that might seem an unlikely choice. There’s one good explanation, however: All cases filed there are heard by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The Trump-appointed judge made headlines in early 2023 when he suspended the approval of a common abortion-inducing pill. Kascmaryk’s anti-abortion history on the bench makes him a strategic choice to rule on the case against Planned Parenthood.

Hell, my own mom told me she couldn't bring herself to vote for her neighbor for city council because he ran as a Dem. She knows this man. Likes this man. But because he's a Dem, she just left the question blank. She is the only person who would have known if she voted for him, and she still couldn't do it.

Blergh.

[jim-fetter-illustrations]

The new Hitler, Donald Trump!

Ya know,....... Trump is turning out to be the newer, smarter, better criminally educated Hitler is what's going on in America today.

Former President Donald Trump once complained to his White House chief of staff that his generals weren't "totally loyal" like Adolf Hitler’s during World War II.

“You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump asked then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.

Most Americans were never informed by any news media of this outrageous remark by former President Donald Trump.

WE KNOW THIS,.... After Trump became president, he is impeached — and acquitted — over allegations that he solicited foreign interference in the U.S. presidential election. THEN,.... Trump is impeached — and acquitted — a second time for incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Because Republicans did not one of their own going down for what most of them supported, and they were the ones voting on it, NOT WE THE PEOPLE.........

Also,...Donald Trump is charged in two separate criminal investigations for sexual abuse.

Then,....Trump is indicted - in a historic first for a US president - over a Department of Justice investigation into the removal of classified material government documents from the White House, which were then taken to Mr Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, after he left office, and people who were not given classified status by the FBI were allowed to see, and read these papers.

Trump has consistently denied wrongdoing and criticised the justice department's investigation, branding it "politically motivated" and a "witch-hunt-hoax".

Now these are crimes that YOU or I would be incarcerated for until we could prove our innocence, but Trump has yet to spend one hour behind bars for his crimes,...... because he's running for President AGAIN!

................ and he has millions of Americans supporting him!!!

This is astonishing to myself,........ but it's not to people who miss the old America where we had Black people as slaves and use to beat and kill those not subservient to the most prevailing religion that tells followers same sex marriage partners, transgender people, and women teaching men anything is wrong, forbidden, and even a sin against God.

This type of American is labeled as a neuropsychiatric personality, that has a lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.

Which is exactly what we saw on January 6th, 2021 when Trump's supporters attacked the White House because Trump didn't win the election. Matter of fact it's Textbook neuropsychiatric behaviour.

But we are calling it Republican today,..... at least Trump is.

It's going to be interesting to see how the next presidential election unfolds, and will America go backwards in time and become more violent against those who are considered by Trumps supporters to be deviants,......... or will Americans once and for all put Donald Trump out to pasture right along with all his supporters.

And be done with the bigotry!

Just a thought given the current political arena..........

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[anonymous-dentist]

"It's not that deep"

Yes, yes it is. It is that deep. Buying a Trump flag is that deep. I don't know if most of these Dream fans leftover in their echo chamber of a fanbase remember this, because they were probably kids, but the Trump presidency signaled the end of the world of minorities all across the United States. We're still feeling the repercussions of that today in 2022, almost two full years into Biden's administration. White supremacists are out in louder numbers than they have been in years. Antisemitism is on the rise. Abortion is being threatened in most U.S. states after the conservative-packed Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade this summer, a court packed by Trump and including Christo-fascists, racists, misogynists, homo- and transphobes, and literal alleged rapists and actual cult members. Anti-queer legislation is being pushed in a significant number of U.S. states and in the federal government by members of the legislature who have been emboldened by having a president that agreed with them.

The 2020 presidential election was huge- some of the largest numbers in decades- because people wanted this man out of office. And he's running again in 2024 despite having been impeached twice (the most for any sitting president in the history of the United States) and despite being under investigation for a bajillion federal crimes, including a recent indictment brought against him in response to him instigating, encouraging, and assisting an attempted insurrection and violent takeover of the government in January of last year. (You people might remember it for Doomsday on the smp; many others remember it as one of the most terrifying moments in U.S. political history.) He's running despite the several charges of campaign fraud and election interference brought against him. The Republicans might not be done with him yet, which is a terrifying thought. Even if they are and they're going with DeSantis for 2024, Trump is still planning on running, and he's bankrupt right now. He's broke. His company is broke. He is broke. The only income he gets now are from MAGA supporters buying his merch. Those funny little NFTs from last week? Those support him.

Know what else directly supports Donald Trump and his campaign? Flags. Buying flags.

Does this mean that Dream and Sapnap are Trump supporters for buying a Trump flag as a gag gift for their British friend? No, absolutely not, but the joke of 'lol look at this stupid idiot flag we got you' doesn't land when, A, the person giving the gift is a former Trump supporter himself, and, B, the person that the flag was bought from is a literal white supremacist and fascist who is friends with white supremacists and fascists who all want queer people to die, they want women to be silent or to die, they want civil rights overturned, they want to turn this country back into a shell of itself in the name of white male Christian supremacy

Dream's audience is young and vulnerable. Many members are queer. Many are POC. Most are young. They might not remember how fucking terrifying 2016 through 2020 were. People woke up in tears the day after election day in 2016 for a reason. The polls were flooded in 2020 for a reason. These audience members might not remember that because they were so young, or they might not realize the gravity of the situation. What does it say to them when their hero pulls out a Trump flag and says it's a gift? It's something to laugh at, yeah, but is it really? It shows people that it's okay not to take Trump seriously, and he and his followers are still a threat to America today. It's dangerous not to take him and his followers seriously. And since the Democrats don't seem to have anybody they're pushing for for 2024, it's especially important for potential voters (because that's what these fans are, many will be old enough to vote by 2024) to start to research and understand the opposition.

Oh, and this also alienates members of Dream's audience that do remember the Trump administration. Reminder, thanks to Trump and his buddies, being queer is becoming illegal again. POC are constantly under attack because of the racist remarks encouraged by Trump during his administration. Treating Trump as a joke could, and probably has, alienated a portion of viewers. It shows them just how seriously Dream thinks these issues are. It's all worth it for a funny joke that won't appear for longer than a minute on a several hour long stream train, one viewed by tens of thousands of people live and hundreds of thousands more via vods and clips in the 12+ hours that have passed since.

You'd think that Dream would know better with a platform this size and with a fanbase as unique as what his used to be, but I guess not. Critical thinking is vital in this industry, whether you're a fan or a creator. Do I think he meant any harm in this? No, I think he's just a moron. A terrible man, yeah, but not for this. For this, he's just a fucking idiot, and he needs to get a PR guy, and he needs to fucking think before he does things for once in his life. Because it could've been funny to some people, including himself, but there is a responsibility to be, well, responsible with yourself and your audience when you're a content creator. It's very easy to send the wrong message out. There's a certain level of critical thinking that needs to be put into place, and that clearly is not a skill that Dream has.

[johnnyrobish]

Trump Now Hawking $47 T-Shirts With a Fake, Photoshopped Mug Shot of Himself

It seems Donald Trump and his merry band of grifters have been working overtime, tirelessly trying to cash in on the former President’s indictment.  First, by having sycophants like Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani hit the airwaves and beg MAGA followers to “Please send Donald Trump money!”  Now, after his arrest on 34 felony counts, the Trump money machine is now offering “Not Guilty T-Shirts” to those who make a $47 donation or more.  The tees sport an idyllic photoshopped mugshot pic of the former President.  Meanwhile, MAGA luminaries such as George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene showed up at the Manhattan Supreme Court to protest Trump’s arraignment, with Greene comparing Trump to Nelson Mandela and Jesus.

Soooo, it sounds like yet another grift is up and running.  Soon, we’ll have MAGA half-wits sending in all their beer, cigarette, and lotto money to this “billionaire.”  My, my, its Christmas in April.  Now, as far as the Jesus comparison goes, I don’t seem to recall Jesus ever telling his Disciples, “Now, go out and rough up protesters” and that He would “pay all their legal fees,” but what’ll I know?  I mean, where’s it read, “I bid thee, go forth and fuck up those damn Scribes and Pharisees.”  And, who knew that “The Passion of Christ” was all about nailing pornstars?  

The funny thing is, the folks showing up for these Trump rallies are some of the same folks who are really pissed about kids getting “participation trophies,” and yet they continue worshipping a dude who finished “second” in a friggin’ two-person political race.  Hell, I even read they’re claiming Trump is 6’5.”  Oh, hell yes!  Sure he is - if he’s standing on a pile of his indictments or on top of one of those boxes of classified documents he’s been hiding.

You know, Trump supporters love to claim he’s has accomplished more than any other President, and I have to admit they may be right.  After all, 34 felonies is one helluva lot of accomplishments, and it sure looks like there’ll be even more of these ��accomplishments” coming down the pipe soon.  Why this has poor Fox News hosts popping Xanax like breath mints.  In all fairness, Trump did work hard to deregulate big corporations whilw he was president.  You know, like railroads and banking.  How’d that turn out?  Perhaps we should ask residents of East Palestine, Ohio, or investors in Silicon Valley Bank for that answer.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve just read, please consider joining me at:

[robertreich]

Most Devastating of All: Mueller’s Indictment of Trump’s Character

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.  

In addition, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

We’ll also have Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

The practical question, then, is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.

Most Americans already hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40 percent who have held tight to Trump regardless.

So how to reach the 11 percent or 12 percent who may decide the outcome?

Reveal his moral loathsomeness.

Democrats and progressives tend to shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.

But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts most of all.

Even though Mueller apparently doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating indictment of Trump’s character.

Trump is revealed as a chronic liar. He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn matter go”. Mueller finds he did. Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it. 

Trump treats his subordinates horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.

He’s a thug. He regrets his lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.

Trump is unprincipled. The few people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are now gone. They resigned or were fired.

In other words, Mueller makes it official: Trump is morally bankrupt.

We still don’t have the full story of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted his wealth while in office with foreign cash.

It continues. In recent weeks he willfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking up for Muslim Americans. She has received death threats, including one by a supporter of Trump who was arrested.

He has also attacked the deceased senator John McCain, whom he falsely accused of leaking the Steele dossier and finishing last in his class at Annapolis. Then Trump retweeted a note from a supporter saying “millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain”. Americans know McCain was tortured in a prison camp for five years, in service to this country.

How many of Trump’s followers or those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from this moral squalor?

Donald Trump is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins – pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and sloth – and he is the precise obverse of the seven virtues as enunciated by Pope Gregory in 590 AD: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

Legal debates about obstruction of justice are fine. But no voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.

[bowtochris]

So Much Fucking Shit Happened This Month OMG

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

March

1st: Afghan president Ashraf Ghani rejects a clause in the U.S.–Taliban deal setting the release of Taliban prisoners Former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg suspends his presidential campaign.

2nd: Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar suspends her presidential campaign Two dozen more cases are reported in the U.S., bringing the total number of infected Americans to 102.

3rd: Three tornadoes, two at least EF 3 in strength, rip through downtown Nashville and surrounding towns, killing 25 people. Myanmar turns a Silversea Cruises cruise ship away due to fears of coronavirus

4th: The United States Armed Forces says it has carried out its first airstrike against the Taliban since a peace deal was signed on February 29, 2020. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suspends his presidential campaign. The United States confirmed 11 total deaths, with the first death outside of Washington state in California. California's total of infections has jumped to 51. The country confirmed 33 new cases, bringing the total number to 159.

5th: The Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives passes a bill banning transgender females from women's sports. In total, the US confirmed 69 more cases, bringing the total number to 228. Three more deaths were reported, bringing the total number to 14.

6th: SpaceX successfully launches a Dragon spacecraft in orbit to resupply the International Space Station. Florida confirms its first two deaths from the coronavirus.

7th: The Xinjia Express Hotel, which was being used for quarantining those with COVID-19, collapses in Quanzhou, Fujian, China. Ten people were killed and twenty-three are trapped. Thirty-eight have been rescued alive. The total number confirmed cases of for the US increased to 444. There was 1 new death, 11 in total.

8th: California U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris endorses former Vice President Joe Biden in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson endorses Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. The first COVID-19 death is confirmed in Canada.

9th: Black Monday - Prior to opening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market experienced a 1,300 point ... This predicted 1,300 point drop would establish 9 March as being among the most points the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped in a single day. By the end of the day, it fell a total of 2,013.76 points. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit confirms a 2016 ruling that Led Zeppelin's 1971 song "Stairway to Heaven" was not unlawfully copied from Spirit's instrumental "Taurus". The United Kingdom's largest retailer Tesco say they will be restricting the sale of essential food and household items in response to fears of mass panic buying.

10th: Vladimir Putin backs a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power after 2024 and make a lifetime presidency possible. Iran reports 881 new confirmed cases and 54 more COVID-19 deaths, the highest number of deaths in a single 24-hour period in the country to date, bringing the total to 8042 cases and 291 deaths.

11th: The bond market falls, in the first time since the financial crisis of 2007–08 that the stock and bond markets moved in the same direction. American film producer Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison for two felony sex crimes. The world's largest annual video game industry event E3 2020 is officially cancelled due to concerns over the coronavirus.

12th: Black Thursday - All three major United States trading indexes fall 7% during early trading, leading to a 15-minute trading halt. They all closed over 9% down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 10%, the largest one-day percentage drop since ... 1987. First day where every story on Wikinews is coronavirus-related.

13th: Delta Air Lines says it will cancel all flights to Europe for the next 30 days. Florida, Arizona, Illinois, and Ohio will proceed having Democratic Party primaries despite the coronavirus outbreak. Astronomers discover 139 new "minor planets" in the Solar System that are beyond the orbit of Neptune.

14th: A total of 16 U.S. states have closed all of their schools. Italy's Ministry of Health reports 250 more deaths from COVID-19, the highest number of deaths in a single 24-hour period in the country to date. The Mayor of Bergamo Giorgio Gori says churches are now being used to store dead bodies as the city's morgues are full.

15th: The first one-on-one debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries takes place between former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders in Washington, D.C., instead of Arizona as originally scheduled and without an audience as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues a recommendation to suspend gatherings of 50 or more people for the next two months. The governors of five states: California, Ohio, Illinois, Washington and Massachusetts, order bars and restaurants to close in response to the pandemic.

16th: The Dow closes 2,997 points or 12.9% lower - its largest daily points movement. The U.S. has 4,459 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of today, resulting in 86 deaths. West Virginia remains the only state with no confirmed cases.

17th: The Senate of Spain ratifies North Macedonia's accession protocol for NATO, becoming the last of NATO's 30 members to do so. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady announces he will not re-sign with the team, and will instead select free agency. West Virginia confirms its first case of COVID-19, becoming the last U.S. state to do so. Governor Jim Justice ordered restaurant dining rooms, bars, and casinos to close for two weeks.

18th: An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.7 hits Salt Lake City, Utah, with several aftershocks reported and tens of thousands of residents left without power. The earthquake is the largest in the state since the 1992 St. George earthquake. COVID-19 cases in Washington exceed 1,000. The United States reports its 150th death from COVID-19, with a total of at least 9,400 confirmed cases nationwide.

19th: Tulsi Gabbard ends her presidential campaign in the 2020 presidential election U.S. President Donald Trump calls for the Syrian government to release journalist and veteran Marine Austin Tice, arguing the "U.S. has done a lot for Syria". U.S. Senate Republicans unveil a $1 trillion economic stimulus package proposal to aid businesses and the American public during the coronavirus pandemic.

20th: The parliament of Ghana votes to legalize the medical and industrial use of cannabis. Madagascar confirms its first cases of COVID-19. The United States moves Tax Day from April 15 to July 15 due to the spread of the coronavirus.

21st: China reports zero domestic cases of COVID-19 for a third consecutive day. Yonhap News Agency reports that North Korea has fired two projectiles from Pyongan Province into the Sea of Japan. Ketchikan, in Southeast Alaska, shelters in place after six people test positive for COVID-19 in the town of 8,000 residents.

22nd: Pope Francis, in a call for a worldwide prayer, announces he will hold a special service to pray for the end of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Senate votes down a coronavirus relief stimulus bill. Former film producer and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein tests positive for COVID-19. He is put in isolation at the Wende Correctional Facility.

23rd: Colorado abolishes the death penalty and commutes sentences of death row inmates. The ancestor, Ikaria wariootia, of all animals with a bilateral body plan is discovered as a fossil in rocks of South Australia. Rapper-turned-informant 6ix9ine requests an early prison release over fears of COVID-19.

24th: I'm allowed to work from home starting today. In Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University reopens, despite the coronavirus. The 2020 Summer Olympics has been postponed to 2021 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

25th: Turkey indicts 20 Saudis for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. None of them are Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The United States has its deadliest COVID-19 day to date, with 223 related deaths. New York City records 81 more deaths from COVID-19, bringing the city's death toll to 280. Mayor Bill de Blasio has warned that more than half of all New Yorkers could become infected.

26th: The United States Space Force launches its first satellite into space aboard a Atlas V rocket. A bomb explodes near a Sikh crematorium in Kabul, wounding a child and disrupting funerals for 25 people bombed and shot the day prior. 2020 G20 Riyadh summit - World leaders convene virtually to coordinate a response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. reaches 1,200. The total number of cases in the country is 83,097. The U.S. has surpassed China in number of active cases, making it the country with the most cases in the world.

27th: Pope Francis delivers a special Urbi et Orbi blessing in an empty Saint Peter's Square, praying for the end of the coronavirus pandemic and offering a plenary indulgence to repentant sinners. The House of Representatives passes a $2 trillion stimulus relief bill as an effort to save the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump signs the bill. Uzbekistan reports the first death from COVID-19, a 72-year-old woman with underlying health conditions in the city of Namangan. The USNS Mercy, which has 1,000 beds, arrives in Los Angeles to offer assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

28th: In a televised address, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi offers to release five Saudi prisoners of war in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian activists convicted by Saudi Arabia earlier this month. New York postpones its primary from April 28 until June 23 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

29th: North Korea fires two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches. Both South Korea and Japan condemn the launching. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo extends the stay-at-home order for non-essential workers to April 15.

[faulentzer]

McCarthy was probably secretly subpoenaed and provided serious evidence against Trump. Now he’s trying to cover his tracks. To paraphrase the Dirty Knobs, he should be indicted for crime, he ain’t a friend of mine, fuck that guy!

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

crime and disorder

Previously on Impeaching the Motherfucker: Donald “Individual-1” Trump tried to use the Oval Office to shake down Ukrainian President Zelensky for a public announcement of bullshit investigations, which Trump wanted to use to discredit American citizens and intelligence agencies.

You may have seen people compare Trump’s scheme to have the Ukrainian president announce investigations into his Democratic opposition to James Comey’s various interventions in the 2016 election. This comparison is not wrong. If anything, it understates the similarities.

The story that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to feed Zelensky about a member of Joe Biden’s family was basically fascist fanfiction by a guy named Peter Schweitzer. Schweitzer worked for Steve Bannon, who led the Trump campaign for a while, at the racist agitprop website Breitbart. His books are funded by the Mercer family. (If you’re struggling to place that name, they also finance the Facebook data thieves at Cambridge Analytica.) As Schweitzer’s lies were being used to pressure Zelensky to abuse law enforcement, they were also being fed to the mortifyingly credulous New York Times. The NYT validated the smear, which gave Giuliani and his crew leverage to increase pressure on law enforcement to take action in the hopes that this would create more news.

These exact same people pulled these exact same moves in 2015 and 2016. Of course, that time the Democratic frontrunner was Hillary Clinton, and Schweitzer’s lies were about the Clinton Foundation.* Those lies were debunked as quickly and easily as the stories about Biden, but they were still validated and spread by the mainstream media, in particular by the New York Times. These stories were picked up by the various disinformation trollbot networks throughout the 2016 election and used to drown out the serious stories about Donald Trump’s many financial crimes. And it gave a partisan faction in the FBI an excuse to open an investigation into Clinton.

Giuliani, by his own admission, was also the Trump campaign’s connection to the FBI’s New York field office in 2016. Now he’s telling the press, on the record, that his scheming in Ukraine is an attempt to manipulate the Department of Justice into investigating Biden.

It’s important to remember what happened from there. Short-term, we need to prepare ourselves to keep it from being so effective next time. The impeachment hearings might have discredited this particular line of attack against Biden, but something like this will happen to whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being. Long-term, progressives need to start holding grudges the way conservatives do, not least because our grievances are real. And we have to do this for ourselves because, let’s be honest, most of the mainstream and nearly all of the “leftist” media would rather be rounded up at gunpoint and sent to a gulag than admit they fucked up in 2016.

We remember the EMAILS investigation because it was so public, but in fact, the FBI was also investigating the Clinton Foundation, despite the Department of Justice telling them there was no case, specifically because their “evidence” was just trash from Schweitzer’s book.+

An FBI investigation is a serious thing, even if the director doesn’t use it as a pretext to throw a presidential election. That’s why the FBI is supposed to take it seriously. They’re only supposed to open an investigation if they have an an actual reason. (To state the obvious, debunked conspiracy theories by a political propagandist are not an actual reason.) Then they’re supposed to shut the fuck up and actually investigate, not preen for the media about how great they are for doing all this manly investigating. This is both to protect the reputation of the person they’re investigating and because you can usually investigate something better if you minimize how many people know you’re investigating. When they’re done, they’re supposed to either charge someone with a crime or to close the case and leave the person alone.

The FBI clearly did not take the Clinton Foundation investigation seriously, because if they had been taking it seriously they never would have pretended there was a case there at all, but it was still a serious thing. The existence of this “investigation” bolstered these false propaganda narratives which were intended to distort a presidential election, and which publicly disparaged a world-class charity that has saved millions of lives around the world.

Worse, the bullshit metastasized within the FBI. It ate into the time and attention of senior leadership, when they needed to be making some genuinely complicated decisions concerning the national security threat posed by the criminal syndicate known as the Trump campaign. Instead, they were finding out what happens if you give a mouse a cookie. The faction of the FBI who were abusing their power to hurt Clinton and help Trump seem to have been emboldened by the indulgence. FBI leadership fell into the bad habit of feeding the press, especially right-wing media like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, hints that something crime-y was going on with the Clinton Foundation. A week before the election, after Comey had upended the election with his letter about the emails, “sources” at the FBI were telling a Fox News anchor that there were about to be indictments over something at the Clinton Foundation.

Reading between the lines of various reports, it looks like these pressures within the FBI to support the Clinton Cash propaganda helped desensitize Comey and his bros to the idea of taking dramatic public action against Hillary Clinton. It never occurred to anyone else that they would pull a stunt like this, not because everyone trusts the FBI so much, but because it is so far from what they do. Nobody expects the feds to start wearing mashed potatoes to the office instead of suits, either, not because they have such great fashion sense, but because it’s too bizarre to occur to anyone. But if there were a handful of agents crabbing every day that they should wear mashed potatoes to work, and those agents kept forwarding around a drumbeat of media speculating that maybe they would start wearing mashed potatoes to work, maybe they start to think it’s not too weird of a compromise if they just start wearing mashed potatoes instead of jackets and ties.

Law enforcement abusing its power to influence elections is bad for democracy. But it’s also bad for law enforcement. As long as everyone understands the FBI shouldn’t be expected to get involved in partisan politics, there’s no incentive for politicians to waste time trying to pressure them. But once they caved to this pressure from right-wing media, it showed that they could be manipulated by at least one side, and the Republicans have been hammering them relentlessly ever since. Trump doesn’t beat up on the FBI – or, for that matter, the NYT – because he’s afraid of them. He beats up on them because he knows, from experience, that it works.

Since all that happened, Trump’s had time to purge his dupes from FBI leadership and replace them with people he believes will be even more likely to follow his unethical directives. So that’s not great.

One major difference in Giuliani and Schweitzer’s scheme this year is that they’re trying to outsource their dirty work to Ukraine, which is a lot riskier and a lot more work. In a weird way, this is a slightly encouraging sign for 2020. Even if the real motivation is that Trump is fucking around with Ukraine to please Putin and smearing Biden is just a side benefit, I doubt it would be happening like this, because you don’t actually need to bring your clown sidekick and his clown sidekicks into your clear-cut impeachable offenses. It’s entirely possible that they’re going global because they don’t think the FBI will throw all the rules out the window to help them this time.

On the other hand, the fact that they’re changing the pattern means it could easily get even worse. Right-wing ratfuckers have already attacked at least two 2020 Democratic presidential candidates with false claims of sexual violence. At this point, it’s still the JV squad,± but once we have a nominee, the professionals are going to get involved. It wouldn’t even take Giuliani’s subtlety and finesse to get law enforcement involved, either, just one pro-Trump sheriff’s office in an area the nominee could have conceivably visited. I don’t have a concrete idea of what to do if things take this particular turn, but I’m legitimately worried that we need to brace ourselves for it.

*Substantively, this comparison is unfair, because Burisma is an oil and gas company with a mixed ethical record, while the Clinton Foundation is a clean, transparent charity that has saved millions of lives. The fact that Schweitzer and the New York Times describe them nearly interchangeably says it all.

+The existence of not one but two flimsy investigations into Clinton actually discredits both of them even further, because it shows a pattern of the FBI investigating a person rather than a crime.

±It’s easy to treat the Warren thing as a joke because this particular ratfucker faceplanted so badly, but the lie itself wasn’t funny. Escalating consensual BDSM into a vicious, traumatic beating isn’t some wacky cartoon trope, it’s a type of abuse that real people have experienced.