"You go, Prez! The Lawfare winner!"
"Prosecute 'em all!"
"This administration isn't draining a swamp. They are systematically removing the rules and norms of our democracy. They are ruining the lives of the very people that ensure food security, safety and wellness to all Americans. They are targeting any opposition and attacking them. They are incrementally removing institutions, institutional knowledge, and the working group with expertise." - Commenter on Reddit
Kim Strassel, standby WSJ Op-Ed Troll and Harpy, has now endowed Dotard Trump with preternatural praise. ("Trump Triples Down On Lawfare!', WSJ, Aug. 29, p. A13). But first knocking Dems for launching 'lawfare' in the first place, i.e.
"It was Democrats who first introduced the noxious art of lawfare, though master retaliator Trump is perfecting its use".
So, ok, then Trump is more noxious than the Dems in his use of it? Apparently, as Strassel bleats:
"Democrats might in retrospect be a bit embarrassed by how unimaginative and shoddy was the application of their craft, compared to Trump. All their efforts aimed at politically hamstringing one man: Mr. Trump. Most of their lawfare campaigns following the same pattern: shocking accusations of high crimes - collusion, insurrection, fraud, conspiracy - resting on painfully stretched readings of the law."
Uh, hate to burst your delusional bubble there, Kimmy, but all the cases struck pay dirt - except for insurrection. That was blown because then AG Garland waited too long to pull the trigger on bringing the case. Jack Smith ended up having to turn it into a process case to keep it simplified. The others were based on sound grand jury or juries of his peers findings. And to reach those levels HAD to be based on actual laws, not any 'stretching' of their readings. Where the REAL lawfare and stretching of reading laws occurred were in the assorted hollow-ass cases brought by Wm. Barr stooge, John Durham, all of which went kaput:
See e.g.
And:
As former NY prosecutor Danya Perry summed up the Durham result in an appearance on ALL In (Soon after the last flop):
"This entire case was a clunker right from the start and landed with a thud. Over three years- longer than Mueller's investigation - and only one trial with acquittal. There was never any there, there."
Thereby Durham, the REAL lawfare clown, wasted over $6 million pursuing phony cases to try to turn the law against the investigators pursuing a known criminal and traitor in Trump. To Kim, cavorting with Russkies to try to overturn the election in 2016 was just "business as usual" or a "political offense" - same with inciting the Jan. 6th insurrection. As she writes:
"There's no foul when prosecutors take a quiet look at an accusation and make a serious judgment as to whether a crime was committed...What turns it into lawfare is the singling out, the public broadcasting of accusation and investigation to pressure, threaten, disgrace, force concessions, or require massive financial outlay to defend against."
Which is exactly what Trump is doing now, as even Kim admits, i.e.
"Compare the Dems efforts with the journeyman performance of today's Oval Office. Note first the volume. The list of Trump administration investigations into political opponents seems as long as a congressional omnibus."
Adding:
"This Trump 'skill' is nothing to be proud of, it's a broken campaign promise. Mr.Trump passionately decried the political campaigns against him and vowed to put an end to lawfare if elected. He insisted his 'retribution' would be through winning office and 'making our country successful'."
And you were dumb enough to believe this asshole, Kim? Like the 77 m other yokels and dopes who believed his other promises - like stopping the Ukraine war on day one, stopping inflation on day one, and free access to IVF for all women who wanted it?
At least Kim finally agrees at the end that Trump is himself a lying scumbag even if she doesn't admit to his criminality and treason, as in the case of the 2016 Russia collusion which she dismisses, or the insurrection.
Let's consider what Kim and her WSJ sidekick (Holman Jenkins Jr.) keep calling the "Russia hoax". If that is indeed true then explain why The Espionage Act was used to put former AF officer Reality Winner in a federal slammer for 5+ years for leaking docs pertaining to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
The bottom line takeaway is that while Kim gets credit for finally seeing Trump as the liar he is, she is still far behind in seeing him for the arch criminal and traitor he is. THAT was why the Dems sought to being this scum wad to justice. Because he had violated the oaths he made to protecting the Constitution, choosing instead to side with criminals and confirm he's an uber criminal himself. Confirmed when he pardoned over 1,000 insurrectionists as he has continued to pardon other criminals.
After all, as Chris Hayes recently showed on ALL In, e.g.
Hayes blasts Trump: ‘Most pro-criminal president of my lifetime’
Trump is the most unabashedly pro-criminal president in our lifetimes. I mean, frankly, he makes Richard Nixon and Gee Dumbya Bush look like a veritable choir boys.
Credit here also to George C. Edwards III, a fellow at Oxford, who has contended Trump is "unique" in his audacious displays of criminality. Like the pardoning of the January 6th traitors and more recently using extortion to fleece funds from corporations and universities, as well as threatening sovereign nations - like Canada and Demark (Greenland) with military intervention
What makes Trump a one of a kind menace? Edwards recently elaborated:
“Trump’s undermining the structural and moral underpinnings of
the government and nation. Unilaterally dismantling the administrative state by
destroying expertise that took generations to build in areas ranging from
investigating and prosecuting crime and protecting the public against
environmental hazards to predicting the weather and curing cancer can cause
long-term, structural harm to American society.
Disregarding appropriate legal bases for action, disobeying
judicial orders, punishing law firms, stretching the interpretation of laws,
and employing the military for domestic purposes weakens the foundations of
American government. So do the many ethical lapses and brazen profiteering of
the president and his family. The rule of law is the bedrock of any democracy,
and the White House itself is threatening it.
For Trump, the rule of law is not a principle of democratic
government; it is a speed bump on the road to exercising unilateral authority.
In his own mind, he is on a path to the ultimate in gold-plated power."
To more succinctly capture this take, while also inculpating the craven American voters who brought the lawless imp back:
If Kim Strassel really wishes to find out why her 'hero' betrayed his promise of no political retribution, she can do no better than getting the book, 'Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths', by Bill Eddy. Eddy, co-founder and trainer for the High Conflict Institute is an expert on the high conflict personality - especially when it embodies a number of particular sociopathic and narcissistic traits ('Fantasy crisis triad') - such as peculiar to Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Donald Trump. Eddy lists them as follows (p. 141):
High Conflict Personality Traits:
1. Creates targets of blame.
2. All-or-nothing thinking.
3.Unmanaged emotions.
4. Extreme behaviors.
Narcissistic Personality Traits:
1. Drive to be superior.
2. Grandiose ideas.
3. Fantasies of unlimited power.
4. Lack of empathy
Sociopathic Personality Traits:
1. Drive to dominate
2.Deceitful - lies and cunning.
3. Highly aggressive
4. Lack of remorse.
In combination Eddy asserts these comprise the 'fantasy crisis triad' which sustains the malefactor in power while keeping media and the voting public splintered and paralyzed to stop him. Usually by allowing their own emotions to obfuscate issues that ought to have been clear.
Short circuiting any one of these triad crisis elements in the early stages of Trump 2.0 could have spared us the authoritarian terrors and criminality he's unleashed. But at different points, key institutions failed or were co-opted. For example, the combination of the Supreme Court's quisling kowtowing to Trump in granting him broad immunity last year, combined with a supine Reep congress after his election.
Read this book, Kim, and learn why all of Trump's excessive behavior was predictable long before now.
See Also:
Opinion | The Unchecked, Unbalanced Reign of King Donald - The New York Times
Excerpt:
Since his inauguration in January, President Trump has
exerted unfettered authority over pretty much anything and everything that
tickles his fancy, caresses his ego or bloats his wealth. And he has been
largely unchecked by Congress, whose Republican majority is his pathetic pep
squad. He has been inadequately balanced by the courts, as his administration
contrives ways to delay, defy or otherwise evade their rulings and as he
benefits from decades of Republicans’ painstaking elevation of jurists friendly
to the party.
He’s the monster the founders dreaded, rehomed from their
nightmares to the Resolute Desk, where he’s teaching us a lesson I didn’t get
in school: Some of the most important checks and balances reside not in the
architecture of our government but in the stirring of our consciences, the
murmurings of our souls.
Why is Trump attempting and getting away with power grabs that so few of his predecessors — and
certainly none in the past half-century — did? Because he’s unscrupulous and
unashamed. Because he’s unmoved by precedent, propriety, decency. Because he’s
rapacious and he has no interest in appetite control...
For Congress to check and balance Trump, its members must
first be willing to. It’s a separate power only if those members hold
themselves separate. But the Republicans who control the House and the Senate
have instead surrendered all control to Trump.
For the free press enshrined in the First Amendment to check
and balance Trump — or, for that matter, any other president — the best
information must be distinguishable from the worst, and it must find an
audience with open minds. But the digital revolution has created a chaos of
boutique obsessions, splenetic social media posts, deepfakes and slop. Reality
is whatever we’ve decided to purchase at the pick-your-truth bazaar.
We, the people, have always been the real check, the most
important balance, with the power, through our votes, to reject and depose any
would-be king with an unstirred conscience and a dormant soul. But we must
recognize what’s happening.
“I have the right to do anything I want
to do — I’m the president of the United States,” he said on
Tuesday, when, for three
appalling hours, members of his cabinet competed to find the loftiest
superlatives, the rosiest adjectives to describe his majesty. Had one of his
recent predecessors uttered that line, it would have been the story of the
week, the month, the year.
But from Trump, it’s routine.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | September 3, 2025 - 5:06am | permalink
— from The Hartmann Report
America is at risk of abandoning its founding principle of government, “by and for the people,” in favor of a system older than democracy itself: rule by one man.
Pretty much everybody understands that the United States and the old Soviet Union both had governments based on ideology or principle. The main notion of the US was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and has guided us toward what Lincoln called “a more perfect union” for 249 years:
“[T]hat all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
» article continues...
And:
Why The Insurrection Of January 6th Must Not Be Lost In The News Cycle
And:
Five Supremes Make It Official: Trump Is 1st Ever Felon President
And:
Trump Declares He's Now Beyond All Laws Because Of "Divine Orders" - He's Flat Wrong
And:
Yale Professor Gives Darker Reasons For Why Trump Unconditionally Pardoned Over 600 Violent Insurrectionists
And:
'Blatantly unconstitutional': Law professor says key Trump executive orders won't survive
And:
by Madhoosier | August 31, 2025 - 7:30am | permalink
Getting rid of Trump is going to be like getting rid of a virus, it goes away but it isn't gone.
Trump exists because more than fifty years ago, with the Powell Memo in 1971, the Conservatives began planning to hijack America's government and turn it into a wealth transferal system.
Decades later, when this transformation was nearly complete, it was hijacked by Donald Trump.
When Trump is gone, the same faction that gave us Trump will still be seeking to hijack what's left of America's democracy to create their Conservative Nirvana where the government exists to do Billionaire bidding.
Getting rid of Trump does not get rid of the Billionaire Agenda!
» article continues...
