Daily Archives: August 2, 2023

Donald Trump Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Donald Trump's attorneys were told by the Department of Justice last week that he may soon be indicted and arrested for alleged crimes connected to the Jan. 6 coup attempt. That would makethe third time that Trump is indicted and arrested for allegedly committing crimes this year. The ex-president also faces an indictment in Georgia for additional alleged crimes connected to the events of Jan. 6 and the plot against American democracy. Also on Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith and his investigators filed additional charges against Trump that include obstructing justice in connection with the Mar-A-Lago stolen classified documents case.

If Trump is found guiltyof committing all of these alleged crimes, he may spend the rest of his life in prison.

How is Donald Trump going to respond? Predictably. He will threaten and encourage, through direct means as well as stochastic terrorism and other veiled commands, acts of violence, chaos, mayhem and murder. To that point, in response to his impending indictment and arrest for the crimes of Jan. 6, Trump is behaving like an unrepentant reprobate, as he rants and throws a fit on his Truth Social disinformation platform. Trump's verbal explosions there these last few days include statements such as:

"We'll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn't Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!"

"2024 ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!" "PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!!!" "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

"They ought to throw Deranged Jack Smith and his Thug Prosecutors in jail, with Meritless Garland and Trump Hating Lisa Monaco. They have totally Weaponized the Department of Injustice. Whatever happened to the Crooked Joe Biden Boxes Case? Why was Hillary Clinton allowed to delete 33,000 emails, many of them Classified, AFTER getting a Subpoena from Congress? Why was Bill Clinton allowed to take tapes out of the W.H. in his socks? Why has no other President ever been charged? ELECTION FRAUD!"

"How can Deranged Jack Smith bring a case on January 6th., as ridiculous as it is anyway, when I have already won such a case, and been fully acquitted, in the U.S. Senate? In other words, I was Impeached on this, and WON!!! ELECTION INTERFERENCE & PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, all rolled up as one. We are truly a Nation In Decline!"

"At the direction of Crooked Joe Biden and his Weaponized DOJ, Deranged Jack Smith is attempting to destroy the lives of two fine people who have worked for me (and have done a great job!) for a long time. They are being persecuted with one goal, to "Get Trump." This is textbook Third World intimidation by rabid, lawless prosecutors. These same craven tactics were used, and failed, during the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt and other Hoaxes. We will not let Radical Lunatics destroy our Country!"

Story continues

To reiterate: There is no evidence of real election interference against Trump and the Republican Party. Trump is again trafficking in the Big Lie, where any such "election interference" or related skullduggery in the 2020 election was actually committed by Donald Trump and his Republican Party and other agents to suppress, nullify, and outright rig and steal votes to keep him in power against the will of the American people.

Yetat a rally held in Eerie, Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump continued with his fascist-authoritarian Big Lie verbal fusilladesand other mouth noises against reality, the truth, and human decency as he continued to proclaim that he is being "persecuted" by some vast conspiracy because he is a champion of the MAGA movement and "real Americans":

They waited two and a half, almost three years, so that they could bring this up right in the middle of my presidential election because it's election interference. They're crooked people...You know they're not indicting me; they're indicting you. I just happen to be standing in their way that's all it is....Until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of paper they have on the Biden Crime Families corrupt businesses dealings. We have to know, and the public deserves to know.

Fake news is all you get. They refuse to discuss the Biden crime family, but enjoy covering false indictments of Donald Trump, who has done nothing wrong

During his speech, Trump made an exceptionally vulgar attack on President Joe Biden,calling him "a dumb son of a bitch":

We have somebody that's not at the top of his game, never was at the top of a game. Never was...We have a guy who's a dumb son of a b***h to allow this to happen Every dollar spent attacking me by Republicans is $1 given straight to the Biden campaign if he makes it.

The crowd of MAGA faithful in Eerie was in ecstasy.

Donald Trump is not going to change or otherwise modify or correct his behavior. He is 77 years old; violence is core and central to his personhood, identity, and way of being in the world. As mental health professionals continue to warn, Trump has shown himself to be a sociopath if not a psychopath. His collective behavior such as the coup attempt on Jan. 6, democide in response to the COVID pandemic, being impeached twice, the multiple indictments and arrests, embrace of neofascism, massive corruption, malignant narcissism and utter disregard for reality and facts, political cultism, and other pathological behavior by an American president is unprecedented in the country's history.

Thus, the problem and growing peril for the nation: what happens when the unprecedented keeps repeating itself and by doing so becomes normalized and no longer "shocking" or "surprising"?

In continuing with his many and varied incitements to violence and civil disorder, last Monday Trump shared an image on his Truth Social disinformation platform with the caption, "'Nothing can stop what is coming." This is language associated with the antisemitic Qanon conspiracy cult and a threat of massive destruction and violence in the form of a "storm" a bloody revolution and purge against the "deep state" and other "enemies" of the movement and "White Christianity" and "real Americans."A large percentage of Republicans believe in some or all of the Qanon conspiracy-lie and its claims about how Democrats, liberals, progressives, "the left" and other elements of some global cabal-secret society control the world using superpowers they obtain from drinking the blood of children and other victims.

The mainstream news media, however, with several notable exceptions such as MSNBC, was mostly silent about Trump's renewed Qanon threats.

And not to be ignored by a public and news media that are afflicted with a very short attention span and what too often appears to be a form of organized forgetting and collective amnesia, several weeks ago Donald Trump shared what he believed to be the Washington DC home address of former president Barack Obama on his Truth Social disinformation platform. As Trump intended, one of his MAGA cult members, who was armed with two guns, a machete, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, attempted to gain access to Obama's home with the goal of assassinating him.

On his Truth Social disinformation platform, Trump shared audio of him saying that "If you f**k around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

The ex-president continues to harangue, insult, and generally make threats against Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and the other prosecutors and members of law enforcement who are attempting to hold him accountable like any other person in the United States should be under the law.

Trump has also threatened that if he were to go to prison for his alleged crimes that "I think it's a very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016." So there is a move to keep the names of the jury members in Trump's impending criminal trials a secret because of concerns about their safety in the face of death threats and other acts of intimidation and violence.

Violence, malice, and menace are the animating energy for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and his Hitlerian promise of a final battle and revenge against him and his MAGA movement's perceived enemies such as the Democrats, liberals, progressives, the news media, and any others who dare to oppose them and their plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy.Trump's threats and plans are not hyperbole, bluster, or just "politics" and "polarization." These are real threats that should be responded to appropriately and with extreme haste.

On this, we should heed journalist Masha Gessen's wisdom:

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: Humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable.

National security, law enforcement, and other experts are continuing to warn that right-wing extremism is 1) the greatest threat to the country's domestic safety and security and 2) that there are many millions of Trump's followers who believe that President Biden and the Democrats are usurpers, otherwise illegitimate, and who "stole" the White House from Trump and the MAGA movement.

What should be done to stop Donald Trump and his repeated incitements and commands to violence and mayhem?

In a recent interview with host Dean Obeidallah on SiriusXM, Glenn Kirschner, who is a former federal prosecutor, explained why Donald Trump should be taken into custody immediately:

Donald Trump should be detained pending trial.And I say that not from my own personal preference or animosity, I have for the man....I say it because the law provides that when there is clear and convincing evidence that a defendant pending trial presents a danger to the community he is supposed to be detained, or she is supposed to be detained pending trial, that's the law.Everyone has ignored that when it comes to Donald Trump.

Psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, who is the author of the book "Trump on the Couch", agrees with Kirschner.In a recent conversation here at Salon, Dr. Frank told me that:

He gives permission to unstable people to carry out their grievances at a murderous level. This is not just because violent people love Trump, but because they are following Trump's stated practice of striking back "ten times as hard" with any means available when he feels wronged.

I'm beginning to think a warning, or even a gag order is not sufficient. He needs to be secured where nobody can hear his genuinely dangerous outpourings. And it needs to be now.

As I continue with my efforts to warn the American people about how dangerous Donald Trump and his neofascist movement continues to be, there are many moments when I feel like I am in a documentary film or TV series that is being directed by Joshua Oppenheimer or Errol Morris. I imagine myself sitting across from a detective, discussing a mass murderer, a cannibalistic serial killer, mad bomber or terrorist, or some other evildoer. I slowly read off the long list of arrests and criminal incidents and other warnings the proof of what this man was doing in the years and decades before he was finally arrested and put in prison. The detective, nervous, looks away sheepishly, his eyes searching for some type of explanation or deflection. He mutters, "We couldn't have imagined, it was all so shocking. Who could have ever guessed such a thing was happening? I press back, "The evidence was right in front of you. The police could have stopped him years ago and his victims would still be alive." I say nothing; Silence is an interviewer's friend. The camera focuses back in on the detective's face and lingers on it for a few seconds. He has nothing else to say. The screen then fades to black as he takes off the mic, gets up from the chair, and then exits the room.

That is America in the Age of Trump.

Will there be an epilogue and some satisfying closure from Donald Trump's criminal trials? That is the stuff of Hollywood movies. The Trumpocene is real life.

Read more

about the Trumpocene

Follow this link:

It's time to believe Donald Trump - Yahoo News

As he flails to reverse a polling decline that is beginning to resemble a rockslide, Gov. Ron DeSantis must be feeling a little clueless about why his political fortunes are crumbling so quickly. Attacking wokeness and bullying transgender people seemed to work so well in Florida, so why arent national Republicans in awe of the divisions hes deepened? Making repeated appearances with racial provocateurs never stopped him from getting elected as governor, so why did he have to fire a young aide who inserted Nazi imagery into his own video promoting Mr. DeSantiss presidential campaign?

But the political bubble inhabited by Mr. DeSantis is so thick symbolized by the hugely expensive private-plane flights that are draining his campaign of cash, since he and his wife, Casey, wont sit with regular people in a commercial cabin that he has been unable or unwilling to understand the brushoff he has received from donors and potential voters and make the changes he needs to become competitive with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.

For years, Mr. DeSantis has created an entire political persona out of a singular crusade against wokeness, frightening teachers and professors away from classroom discussions of race, defending a school curriculum that said there were benefits to slavery, claiming (falsely) that his anti-vaccine crusade worked and engaging in a pointless battle with his states best-known private employer over school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. He had the support of the Florida Legislature and state Republican officials in most of his efforts and presumably believed that an image of a more effective and engaged Trump would help him beat the real thing.

But its not working. A Monmouth University poll published on Tuesday showed Mr. Trump with a 20-point lead over Mr. DeSantis in a head-to-head match, and the advantage grew to more than 30 points when all the other candidates were thrown in. Major donors have started to sour on him, and The Times reported on Thursday that they are disappointed with his performance and the management of his campaign, which he says he will somehow reboot.

DeSantis has not made any headway, wrote the polls director, Patrick Murray. The arguments that hed be a stronger candidate and a more effective president than Trump have both fallen flat.

The most obvious fault in his strategy is that you cant beat Donald Trump if you dont even criticize him, and Mr. DeSantis has said little about the multiple indictments piling up against the former president or about his character. Granted, there are downsides to a full-frontal attack on Mr. Trump at this point, as other Republicans have become aware, and Mr. DeSantis still needs to establish some kind of identity first. But he cant become an alt-Trump without drawing a sharp contrast and holding Mr. Trump to account for at least a few of his many flaws. There are graveyards in Iowa and New Hampshire full of candidates who tried to ignore the leader through sheer force of personality, and even if he had one of those, Mr. DeSantis hasnt demonstrated the skills to use it. Both men will speak Friday night at the Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, and if Mr. DeSantis leaves his rival unscathed, its hard to imagine how he goes the distance.

The deeper problem, though, is that Mr. DeSantis is peddling the wrong message. Only 1 percent of voters think that wokeness and transgender issues are the countrys top problem, according to an April Fox News poll essentially a repudiation of the governors entire brand. Race issues and vaccines are also low on the list.

Lakshya Jain, who helps lead the website Split Ticket, which is doing some really interesting political analysis and modeling, said Mr. DeSantis misinterpreted what Florida voters were saying when they re-elected him by a 19-point margin in 2022.

The economy was doing well in Florida, and Democrats didnt put up a good candidate in Charlie Crist, Mr. Jain told me. Im not sure the majority of Florida voters really cared what he was saying on wokeness. Its not really an issue people vote on.

The economy, naturally, is what people care most about, but Mr. DeSantis hasnt said much about his plans to fight inflation (which is already coming down) or create more jobs (which is happening every month without his help). Clearly aware of the problem, he announced on Thursday that he would unfurl a Declaration of Economic Independence in a major speech in New Hampshire on Monday (a phrase as trite and tone-deaf as the name of his Never Back Down super PAC).

That appears to be the first fruit of his campaign reboot, but there are good reasons he doesnt like to stray from his rigid agenda, as demonstrated by his occasionally disastrous footsteps into foreign policy. Bashing Bidenomics means hell immediately have to come up with an excuse for why inflation is so much higher in Florida than the nation as a whole. Though the national inflation rate in May was 4 percent compared with a year earlier, it was 9 percent in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area for the same period and 7.3 percent in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.

The primary reason for that is the states housing shortage, an issue that Mr. DeSantis largely ignored during his first term and has only belatedly taken a few small steps to address. When the issue inevitably comes up on the campaign trail, you can bet that Mr. DeSantis will find some way of blaming it on President Biden. That way he can quickly pivot to his preferred agenda of rewriting Black history, questioning science and encouraging gun ownership.

He really cant help himself; just this week he said he might hire the noted anti-vaccine nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then he got into an online fight with Representative Byron Donalds, Floridas only Black Republican member of Congress, over the states astonishingly wrong curriculum on slavery, and a DeSantis spokesman called Mr. Donalds a supposed conservative.

Great way to expand your base. Remind me: When does the reboot start?

View post:

Opinion | Why Ron DeSantis Isnt Beating Donald Trump - The New York Times