Thursday, November 17, 2022

Trump Launches Ill-Advised 'Revenge Tour' Campaign - Or Was It Really A Concession Speech?


 
                                     "Who ya gonna pick for prez? Joe Biden or me?"



"If one indisputable truth has emerged from the midterm elections, it's that Donald Trump is the political equivalent of herpes. Sure, the MAGA base loves him, but mainly as a blight they can inflict upon liberals, since infecting all Democrats with literal herpes is a logistical impossibility. Everyone else despises Trump, so much so that Republican candidates by aligning themselves too closely with Trump, surrendered a significant chunk of voters and lost a bunch of otherwise winnable elections."-  Amanda Marcotte, 'Trump's Announcement Proves Again Republicans Aren't Tough, They're A Bunch Of Weenies', Salon.com


The first paragraph of the UK Independent said it all:

 Donald — suppose you gave a big speech announcing you were running for president, and nobody really cared? What if it was a speech that both your daughters skipped, and even your oldest son missed due to a “hunting trip”? A speech even your pals at Fox News cut away from, with other major networks airing instead programs like “Bachelor in Paradise”? 


The takeaway?  The spurious revenge gig sponsored by the bombastic orange maggot kind of petered out with a whimper.  It had the aura of a concession more than a bold new political thrust by the nation's No. 1 Traitor. Hell, he couldn't even get his three brats to attend his pseudo-ceremonial presidential campaign announcement at Mar-A-Lago yesterday. In fact, those who did attend, as Chris Hayes showed on ALL In, were so bummed out by boredom after 30 minutes that they tried to leave - but were prevented from doing so by assorted Trump goons.  Go figure.  Well, Trump did and he figured the captive audience - all decked out   - would still like to hear his fulsome lies, whining and braggadocio, i.e.

Now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. We are here tonight to declare that it does not have to be this way...I will ensure that Joe Biden does not receive four more years.…Our country could not take that.”


But actually what this country cannot take, in any manner,  shape or form, is four more years of your insanity.  But this is the twaddle that one gets with a feral fool who in order to get his sole victory (2016) relied on a spell bound media to deliver a million hours of free air time, so mesmerized were they by his antics. And even then  as Hayes observed-  he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million.

Oh, did I forget to mention?  He did most of it with Russkie assistance. This depite WSJ trolls like Holman Jenkins Jr. still trying to feed the gullible this baloney ('Sunset For Trump and His Foes?’, p. A17, yesterday):

"A great failure has yet to be acknowledged—the failure of our elites to respond in a mature and patriotic way to the outcome of the 2016 election. You don’t have to be a Trump fan to see that Democrats, the FBI and the media deliberately promoted the collusion lie."

Actually, son, there was no collusion but there was conspiracy - which Mueller had shown and handed down an indictment against 12 GRU agents, e.g.


A subsequent Senate intelligence committee report put the capper on the case, e.g.


In tandem this led Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe to remark:

"What we have here is a situation where the Mueller report shows without any doubt that a hostile foreign power attacked the United States in this (2016) election.  That Donald Trump welcomed that attack, benefited from it and then - the last couple of years - tried to cover it up every possible way."

So how did little Holman come up with the "collusion lie" bunkum?  Easy! He swallowed former AG Bill Barr's reductive and false 4-page summary letter of Mueller's report e.g. see the latter below:


Asserting the criminal grifter, traitor and liar was "exonerated" by the  report when it was nothing of the sort.  As Mueller later had to make clear his report did not conclude Trump committed a crime (because of existing DOJ policy at the time re: sitting presidents) but this did not mean an exoneration. But Trump nation and its trolls as well as Trump jumped on it as proof of innocence.   As Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote at the time:

Donald Trump got a pass. He will walk away from this not just free from consequence, but emboldened in the idea that he really is above and beyond any rules. 

So let's not be fooled by the likes of Holman Jenkins Jr., who already got busted by lying in one column that Trump never advocated injecting disinfectant to combat Covid.  See my expose of the imp here:


Back to Trump's announcement. It was clear even to the lowest quartile of I.Q. segment this is a ploy to try to evade indictment or worse, imprisonment - for his fomenting of the Jan. 6th insurrection, illegal confiscation of top secret documents - or both.  He's also under investigation in Georgia for crass interference in that state's 2020 election, "I just need to find 11,000 votes....." 

But make no mistake, presidential candidate or not this sewer rat can not be allowed (yet again), and especially after the 2016 Russian conspiracy, to escape justice.  The traitor needs the full book thrown at him.  It is true, as a WSJ piece (regular news section not op-ed) noted:


"The announcement would put the Justice Department into the tricky position of investigating the declared opponent of Mr. Biden."


But that doesn't mean he gets yet another 'get out of jail free' card. Oh no.  The best option right now appears to be to: "appoint a special counsel to oversee the unprecedented inquiry into his handling of classified documents".

This will be a thorny issue for sure, but the DOJ can't back down because if it does the rule of law in this country will be meaningless.  It must either apply to all or to none.  Further, after the semi-shellacking his hand-picked deniers took in the midterms there ought to be no way he escapes indictment by sneaking in under the guard rails again.  

 But this means the media has to do its job this time around, and not treat the feral fungus like a regular (normal) candidate.  That means not being mesmerized by his antics or giving him a million hours of free advert time because of the nonsense, including tweets - given the moron Musk has now opened Twitter's doors to hate speech as well as lies.  

Karl Rove in his WSJ op-ed today ('Trump Believes In Yesterday') probably had the best personal take on Trump's "theatrics" (p. A15):

"Trump’s delivery was robotic and flat, his words too familiar. He read from a teleprompter, swiveling from side to side to look at the monitors. He recited, as if for the first time, his record on economic growth, border security, energy independence and national security ...He sounded like a male version of Siri."


Which contrasted starkly with a regular news brief in another section (p. A6) of the paper, which cited "a poll of 94,000 registered voters", noting:

More than half of the electorate thinks Mr. Biden, 79 years old, lacks the mental capacity to effectively serve as president"

Lacks the mental capacity to serve as president?  The guy who just got 4 major bills passed in the last year (American Rescue Act,Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act,Chips Act, Inflation Reduction Act)?  What are these folks taking, magic shrooms?  At the very least Biden has shown he's high functioning and more than capable - something Trump hasn't. (Trump being more like the "political equivalent of herpes" to quote Amanda Marcotte). Oh, wait. Did I forget Biden's masterful Ukraine policy? E.g.


So I suspect we can say this WSJ poll carries about as much weight as their "red wave" pre-midterm poll forecasts.

The GOP taking control of the House yesterday is indeed a pisser and likely promises a shit show Biden will have to navigate.  But as former Bush Jr strategist Matthew  Dowd put it a week ago, this could play into Biden's and the Dems' hands. They will surely overshoot the mark as they usually do, and opt to run stupid investigations instead of tending to the people's business. This will present an excellent opportunity to point to these clowns and say "See? You gave them the power of the lower chamber but they've done nothing with it."  

At least the Dems holding the Senate (hopefully also keeping Raphael Warnock's seat instead of that misfit Walker) will enable them to knock down any BS Reepo legislation or vapid impeachment attempts.  As for subpoenas issued under any nutty circumstances, I suggest the Dem brain trust just blow them off.

And if Trump tries to run with that 'stop the steal' shtick again he'd be well advised to read yesterday's WSJ lead editorial  (p. A16,  Kari Lake’s Loss Destroys ‘Stop the Steal’) which states:

"If anyone needs more evidence that “Stop the Steal” was a loser for the GOP this year, the party’s Arizona wipeout is definitive. On Monday Kari Lake joined the list of Republicans in the Grand Canyon State who ran on the stolen 2020 election and lost."

Let's be clear here that in the next two years - assuming this maggot traitor escapes indictment or prison - he will present a bogus case for redemption of country to the American people. But the swine's words aren't worth an ounce of doggie lickspittle. Whatever he spouts, indeed, won't mean putting any faith in American democracy but the opposite.  

To that end, the foul fecal fungus has already demonstrated he intends to take the office by hook or by crook. Which is why the vermin must be stopped.  If not by the DOJ via indictment or prosecution, then by the same voters who erected the 'blue wall' in the midterms to prevent Repuke authoritarianism.  This doesn't necessarily mean a majority of voters will say 'yes' to his spurious candidacy - but rather if they shun him again he will do whatever he can to subvert their decision. He will feel emboldened because he has enough deluded believers to try to do whatever they can to subvert the majority - like in 2020. 

This means persistent vigilance, both of the people and the lawful authorities, are needed to stop this mind virus and its foremost vector.

The knowledge of all this in concert, these sundry related issues, makes one wonder if Trump's pathetic low energy spiel  (where half the attendees wanted to bolt) was actually aa concession speech in disguise. Maybe he knew already when he spewed his bollocks he'd be stopped - if not immediately, then sometime down the line.

It should definitely be an interesting two years leading up to the 2024 election.  

See Also: 

by Amanda Marcotte | November 18, 2022 - 8:26am | permalink

— from Salon

Excerpt:

If one indisputable truth has emerged from the midterm elections, it's that Donald Trump is the political equivalent of herpes. Sure, the MAGA base loves him, but mainly as a blight they can inflict upon liberals, since infecting all Democrats with literal herpes is a logistical impossibility. Everyone else despises Trump, so much so that Republican candidates, by aligning themselves too closely with Trump, surrendered a significant chunk of voters and lost a bunch of otherwise winnable elections.


And:

by Heather Digby Parton | November 17, 2022 - 8:08am | permalink

— from Salon

Excerptt:

In one of the most predictable moves in American political history, Donald Trump announced the America First Vengeance Tour 2024 at his Mar-a-Lago beach club last night. Although commentators have been saying it's the earliest notification of a presidential run in history, it actually isn't. Trump himself announced his intention to run for re-election the day he took office in 2017. He has been champing at the bit to make it official this time, and only held back in order to collect as much unaccountable money as possible through his various PACs, which will now be subject to more stringent campaign finance rules.

It's pretty obvious that one of Trump's prime motivations for going into campaign mode now (aside from his bottomless thirst for revenge) is so he can claim that the various criminal and civil cases against him are all political hit jobs. He seems to be under the impression that running for president conveys magical powers, as if the Justice Department rule against indicting a sitting president somehow applies to a candidate. It does not, although there is little doubt that even a criminal indictment will not stop him from running. In fact, he knows he can capitalize on any legal troubles by claiming he is being persecuted, and knows his followers will eat it up with a spoon


And:



And:
by Thomas E. Patterson | November 18, 2022 - 8:41am | permalink

— from The Conversation

Now that he’s in the 2024 presidential race, the media circus that is Donald Trump is returning for a new season.

Trump is still newsworthy. He’s been weakened by his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, his attempt to overthrow its result and the underperformance of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms. Nevertheless, Trump is more than a party leader. “Make America Great Again,” known colloquially as “MAGA,” is a political movement. Trump has a legion of diehard followers.

Then there’s Trump the storyline. Trump is to reporters as honey is to bears. Journalists prize conflict, and Trump delivers it in abundance. It’s why he dominated news coverage nearly every week of his 2016 presidential run; why he got three times as much news coverage during his first 100 days as president as did his immediate predecessors; and why he has remained in the news since leaving the White House.



And: 

by Joan McCarter | November 17, 2022 - 7:08am | permalink

— from Daily Kos

Excerpt:

With the newly projected victory of Republican Mike Garcia in California’s 27th Congressional District, the U.S. House will flip to Republican control in the new session beginning on Jan. 3, 2023. The margin of the Republican win, however, will be so small that on any given day Democrats could have the majority of members present .


And: 


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