Category Archives: Donald Trump

Photo: Bloomberg/Getty/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Ron DeSantis makes a big show of picking on mask-wearing children, teachers, and LGBTQ+ people, but hes repeatedly proven himself no match for Donald Trump, the biggest bully U.S. politics has ever seen. Despite predictions that the Republican presidential primary would quickly turn into a two-way race between the Florida men, Trump has managed to maintain a huge polling lead over DeSantis, partly through the use of schoolyard intimidation tactics. Trump saddled DeSantis with a variety of juvenile nicknames, refused to invite him to major events, insulted his looks behind his back, and relentlessly mocked him for the weird way he (allegedly) eats pudding.

Now Trump is trying to start a rumor that DeSantis is quitting the presidential race, and he isnt even being sneaky about it. On Monday, Trump shared some hot gossip with his 6.4 million Truth Social followers, claiming rumors are strong in political circles that DeSantis would soon abandon his presidential campaign to run for the Senate against fellow Republican Rick Scott, who is up for reelection in 2024:

As FloridaPolitics.com pointed out, this rumor (which Trump originally misspelled as roomer) doesnt really make any sense:

DeSantis has tried to run for Senate once. After his second term in the House, he launched a bid forMarco RubiosSenate seat, but abandoned it to run for re-election once Rubio decided he wanted another term.

If DeSantis were to run against Scott and win, he would leave the Governors Office midway through his second term. While thats understandable for a run for President, there is little indication that DeSantis has an interest in leaving an executive position to be one of 100 Senators.

It seems highly unlikely that DeSantis would give up the last two years of his term as governor to primary a GOP senator. But of course, Trumps intent probably wasnt to share plausible information but to add to the narrative that the DeSantis campaign is flailing. (While DeSantis has been plagued by bad news and he isnt closing the gap with Trump, his poll numbers have not absolutely crashed.)

DeSantis has never been good at neutralizing Trumps bullying; his standard, cringey response to Trumps nicknames is that he can call him whatever he wants just as long as you also call me a winner. The campaigns response to Trumps rumor was similarly uninspiring. Bryan Griffin, a press secretary for DeSantiss campaign, posted on X:

This is fake news. Clearly, Donald Trump and his army of consultants are panicked about @RonDeSantis winning debate performance and the strong momentum that has followed. They know this is a two-man race, and we will carry this on to a win in this presidential primary. Instead of pushing fake news from New Jersey, the Trump campaign should be focused on getting their candidate on the campaign trail in Iowa and on the debate stage before its too late.

DeSantis didnt clearly win the first GOP debate, the primary is not a two-man race, and fake news is Trumps line. The governor should probably work on his tactics for countering Trump, but there may not be much time. A lot of people are saying he wont be in the race for long.

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Originally posted here:

Donald Trump Starts Rumor That Ron DeSantis Is Dropping Out - New York Magazine

Donald Trumps attempts to make political hay out of his myriad legal woes continued on Monday when he shared a fake mug shot of President Joe Biden on his Truth Social platform.

The former president ReTruthed a doctored image of Biden, next to the Fulton County Sheriffs Office badge, with the caption: The Mugshot America Deserves.

Trump also shared other edited images of his own mug shot, which was released following his arrest in Georgia on Thursday for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election result in the state:

Trump has predictably sought to raise money off the back of his mug shot, reportedly receiving more than $7 million in campaign donations in the first two days after its release.

The picture itself sparked a meme.

It also prompted Fox News Jesse Watters to say Trump looked good and hard.

Biden, meanwhile, had a deadpan response when asked about the image.

I did see it on television, the president told reporters. Handsome guy. Wonderful guy.

Go here to see the original:

Donald Trump Trolls Joe Biden In Pettiest Possible Way - Yahoo News

Donald Trump has made another claim and this time he didnt have to beg for his total to be changed.

The former president posted on Truth Social that he won the Senior Club Championship at his club in Bedminster, N.J. Trump, who apparently was able to dig out his golf shirts that were mixed among the classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, claims he shot a 67, but did not say if that was in a practice round or even what day he recorded that score.

I am pleased to report, for those that care, that I just won the Senior Club Championship (must be over 50 years old!) at Bedminster (Trump National Golf Club), shooting a round of 67, the 77-year-old Palm Beach resident posted. Now, some people will think that sounds low, but there is no hanky/lanky. Many people watch, plus I am surrounded by Secret Service Agents. Not much you can do even if you wanted to, and I dont.

Trump concluded his post: For some reason, I am just a good golfer/athlete I have won many Club Championships, and it is always a great honor!

The question is which number is larger: Trumps club championships or the 91 felony counts he faces in four jurisdictions.

]In January, Trump announced he won the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, despite not playing the first round of the tournament.

Members arrived the second day surprised to see Trump with a five-point lead using the Modified Stableford method. But Trump never played the first round as he was attending a funeral in North Carolina.

Trump told tournament organizers he played a strong round on the course Thursday, two days before the tournament started, and decided that would count as his Saturday score for the club championship. That score was five points better than any competitor posted during Saturdays first round.

Trumps latest claim comes two days after he became the first former president with a mug shot. He was booked in Fulton County stemming from his attempt to overturn Georgias 2020 election results by asking Georgias secretary of state to find 11,780 votes.

Trump had good reason to vehemently defend himself against hanky/lanky and insist people watch. Not only was he the subject of a 2019 book by sportswriter Rick Reilly: Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump; a video of Trump shanking a pitch shot at his club in Los Angeles went viral in June.

LIV Golf will hold three events on Trump properties this year, including Bedminster, which was played this month. Of the 144 rounds played at Bedminster by LIV golfers, six shot 67 or lower.

Trump typically plays in the pro-am leading up to LIV events he hosts, including the tournament at Doral. In October, after playing nine holes with Jupiters Brooks Koepka, Trump praised his game Trumps, not Koepkas.

I hit it straight, I hit good drives, I hit good irons, he said.

Original post:

Donald Trump claims he won another club championship: 'For some ... - Golfweek

Donald Trump's family "knows hes not going to jail".

The 77-year-old billionaire has been accused of trying to overturn his electoral defeat in 2020 - but his family aren't worried at all about the prospect of him going to jail.

A source told PEOPLE: "Everyone knows hes not going to jail. No one is worried."

Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have largely remained silent amid the controversy.

However, the married couple aren't hiding away from the drama, either, and they have been regularly spotted together in Miami in recent weeks.

The insider shared: "She's all over the place down here, always out and about.

"They're definitely not hiding. They live right on the beach. They seem like they don't have a care in the world."

Earlier this month, Trump claimed to be the victim of a political "witch hunt".

The billionaire businessman - who served as the 45th US President between 2017 and 2021 - took to social media to rubbish the allegations and to also question the integrity of the legal process.

Trump - who still plans to run in the next US election - wrote on Truth Social at the time: "So, the Witch Hunt continues! 19 people Indicated tonight, including the former President of the United States, me, by an out of control and very corrupt District Attorney who campaigned and raised money on, I will get Trump. And what about those Indictment Documents put out today, long before the Grand Jury even voted, and then quickly withdrawn? Sounds Rigged to me! Why didnt they Indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch Hunt! (sic)"

Read more from the original source:

Donald Trump's family 'aren't worried he'll go to jail' - The Daily Herald

Latest News on the Trump Indictment

If ever there was a moment in American history that should prompt the federal courts to change their outdated policy, surely the prosecution of a former president for attempting to overturn the will of the voters would be it. The time has come for the federal court system to catch-up with the times many state courts already broadcast live trial proceedings.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, which sets administrative rules and policy guidelines for federal judicial proceedings, has the power to change the rules and allow cameras in federal court rooms. When the conference convenes in September, it should decide to allow Trumps trials and related federal court proceedings to be broadcast in real-time. Notably, both Trumps lawyer and a growing number of congressional Democrats agree.

I suspect my former colleagues at the Justice Department are hesitant to depart from existing norms that date back to 1946 because they have been largely effective in keeping decorum in federal court rooms and protecting witnesses, jurors and judges.

But these are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times demand extraordinary transparency. At the least, the Justice Department should inform the Judicial Conference that it does not oppose efforts to broadcast Trumps trials live.

The bright light of transparency into both of Trumps federal cases would communicate an unfiltered and unbiased accounting of trial events, and the strong evidence the government has alleged in its indictments. Equally important, it would show Americans and the world what it means to pursue justice without regard to partisan politics. We saw a glimpse of this process play out in Fulton County, Ga., a state case when a grand jury there handed up its indictments earlier this month. With the 2024 presidential election in full swing, misinformation running rampant, and trust in American institutions at an all-time low, keeping the facts and evidence front and center would be in service to our democracy.

Americans have already watched high-profile trials at the state and local levels for decades from the trials of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to the final verdict of former NFL star O.J. Simpson. Over a six-week period last year, Johnny Depps defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard amassed a total of almost 84 million hours watched by Americans. Live broadcast access to these trials encouraged a highly divided and engaged public to view evidence and facts free from editorializing, and to better accept the verdicts. Similarly, the public may be more accepting of the outcome whatever it is in Trumps federal trials if they are held transparently.

If the Judicial Conference fails to act, Congress should step in. There is already bipartisan legislation by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would give federal judges the discretion to decide the appropriateness of recordings being broadcast live from their courtrooms. That discretion could include allowing just live audio streams of federal court proceedings.

While not as compelling as live camera footage, audio would still inform the public and could go further to help protect government witnesses, an absolute necessity given the former presidents incendiary rhetoric and attacks that have already endangered the lives of elected officials and even poll-working volunteers. Notably, the Supreme Court allows live audio streams of its oral arguments. And as then-Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Attorney General Merrick Garland voted in favor of allowing audio recordings of oral arguments in federal court to be published.

The first federal trials of an American president will be pivotal moments in our nations 246-year history. By permitting live recordings of trial proceedings to be aired in real time, we uphold the values of democracy, foster an informed citizenry and reinforce trust in the justice system and its outcomes. It is through transparency that we will preserve the integrity of our nation.

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Opinion | If You Want the Public's Trust, Broadcast the Trump Trials - POLITICO

A little over a week after a prosecutor in Georgia indicted former President Donald Trump for trying to overturn the results of the states 2020 presidential election, Republicans said they will use a new law to remove her from office.

In May, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law that created a new commission of political appointees with the power to remove and discipline elected prosecutors over decisions or policies not to prosecute certain offenses. The law seeks to limit or restrict reform-minded prosecutors. In the case of Fulton County which includes Atlanta though, District Attorney Fani Willis is not even known as much of a reformer. Instead, Republican lawmakers set their sights on Willis for another reason: prosecuting the wrong person.

In a Facebook post Monday, state Sen. Clint Dixon, a Republican, said Willis was indicting Trump because of an unabashed goal to become some sort of leftist celebrity and should be investigated for using the justice system against her political opponents.

The Public Rights Project, a nonprofit that worked on a lawsuit by a bipartisan group of Georgia prosecutors against the bill earlier this month, filed a preliminary injunction against the commission on Thursday seeking to stop it from initiating any disciplinary or removal proceedings against a prosecutor while litigation over the law is pending.

The original reasoning for the commission was to go after DAs who supposedly werent prosecuting enough, said Jill Habig, executive director of the Public Rights Project. Its not only about not prosecuting enough, its also about prosecuting too much if the defendant is the wrong one from the perspective of the partisan officials who are creating and staffing this commission.

Habig, who said her group disagrees with that characterization of prosecutors targeted by the bill, said the injunction to block Williss ouster was necessary to preserve the will of voters who elected prosecutors across the state. (The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The new Georgia law is one of close to 40 similar measures introduced in a third of states since 2017 that target prosecutors implementing popular criminal justice reforms. The recent efforts to subvert the authority of elected prosecutors have been largely driven by white Republican lawmakers in gerrymandered states against Black Democrats in the liberal islands of cities, Habig said.

Over a third of states have considered legislation to retaliate against local prosecutors for pursuing policies that they disagree with, Habig said. This is part of a national trend that were seeing of predominantly white, often gerrymandered state legislatures targeting prosecutors often Black prosecutors, and often prosecutors elected in cities and counties with larger Black and brown populations. So the partisan and racial nature of this retaliation I think is something thats really important to highlight.

The remarks by Dixon, the state senator, were the first shot across the bow, Habig said: The drumbeat is just starting.

Another Republican state lawmaker called last week for a special legislative session to investigate Willis, and others are drafting a statement to condemn her for indicting Trump, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. (Dixon and Kemp did not respond to a request for comment.)

Beyond the focus on Willis for indicting Trump, Habig said, the law is already having a pernicious effect on prosecutors across the state. There have already been changes in how DAs talk about their priorities and the kinds of cases that they think are most important, changes in the traction to build criminal justice reform efforts in the state, she said.

Georgia attorneys said they were afraid to discuss basic parts of their work for fear of being targeted for removal under the law. I have concern that some of my policies and approaches could be interpreted as a stated policy that could give rise to a complaint, investigation, and discipline, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston wrote in an affidavit supporting the motion for a preliminary injunction. Boston said her commitment to reforms like higher evidentiary standards and pretrial diversion guidelines could all put a target on her back.

In anotheraffidavit, the director of public policy and communications at the Savannah nonprofit Deep Center said the organization had been working with a local prosecutor to implement reforms, but, after the passage of the law, the prosecutor balked.

Deep Centers Coco Guthrie-Papy said her organization had worked with Chatham County District Attorney Shalena Cook Jones to develop plans to address the backlog of people awaiting trial and sentencing in the county jail, start a pre-arrest diversion program, and alleviate certain court fines and fees. Joness office embraced those efforts at first but soon became more reluctant, Guthrie-Papy said.

Guthrie-Papy said her organization started to see changes as the bill started moving through the legislature. Its one of those things thats never spoken out loud, but you can see peoples behavior start to change because people get scared. And fear is an incredibly powerful emotion, she said. It was very clear to us that all of this work that we had sort of been trying to push through the DAs office was going to come to a halt.(Jones did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Before the push for the new law, some prosecutors in Georgia, in response to calls from local communities, began to narrow their focus to the most dire crimes, Guthrie-Papy said. She pointed to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in 2020 as a catalyst for the election of more reform-minded DAs, but the new law put those prosecutors in a bind.

At the end of the day, she said, what it has really done is disrupted the legacy of bipartisan reform that has happened in Georgia, which has been really, really hard to get to.

The rest is here:

Georgia GOP Gears Up to Remove Atlanta Prosecutor Who Indicted ... - The Intercept

One by one, some with a little hesitation, six hands went up on the debate stage Wednesday night when the eight Republican candidates answered whether they would support Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination if he was a convicted criminal. Hand raising is a juvenile and reductive exercise in any political debate, but its worth unpacking this moment, which provides clarity into the damage that Mr. Trump has inflicted on his own party.

Six people who themselves want to lead their country think it would be fine to have a felon as the nations chief executive. Six candidates apparently would not be bothered to see Mr. Trump stand on the Capitol steps in 2025 and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, no matter if he had been convicted by a jury of violating that Constitution by (take your choice) conspiracy to obstruct justice, lying to the U.S. government, racketeering and conspiracy to commit forgery or conspiracy to defraud the United States. (The Fox News hosts, trying to race through the evenings brief Trump section so they could move on to more important questions about invading Mexico, didnt dwell on which charges qualified for a hand raise. So any of them would do.)

There was never any question that Vivek Ramaswamys hand would shoot up first. But even Nikki Haley, though she generally tried to position herself as a reasonable alternative to Mr. Ramaswamys earsplitting drivel, raised her hand. So did Ron DeSantis, after peeking around to see what the other kids were doing. And Mike Pences decision to join this group, while proudly boasting of his constitutional bona fides for simply doing his job on Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated the cognitive dissonance at the heart of his candidacy.

Only Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson demonstrated some respect for the rule of law by opposing the election of a criminal. Mr. Hutchinson said Mr. Trump was morally disqualified from being president because of what happened on Jan. 6 and made the interesting argument that he may also be legally disqualified under the 14th Amendment for inciting an insurrection. Mr. Christie said the country had to stop normalizing Mr. Trumps conduct, which he said was beneath the office of president. Though he was accused by Mr. Ramaswamy of the base crime of trying to become an MSNBC contributor, Mr. Christie managed to say something that sounded somewhat forthright: I am not going to bow to anyone when we have a president of the United States who disrespects the Constitution. For this, Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson were both roundly booed.

Its important to understand the implications of what those six candidates were saying, particularly after watching Mr. Trump turn himself in on Thursday at the Fulton County Jail to be booked on the racketeering charge and 12 other counts of breaking Georgia law. Only Mr. Ramaswamy was willing to utter the words, amid his talk about shutting down the F.B.I. and instantly pardoning Mr. Trump, saying Mr. Trump was charged with politicized indictments and calling the justice system corrupt.

We cannot set a precedent where the party in power uses police force to indict its political opponents, he said. It is wrong. We have to end the weaponization of justice in this country.

This is the argument that Mr. Trump has been making for months, of course, but when more than three-fourths of the main players in the Republican field support it, it essentially means that a major political party has given up on the nations criminal justice system. The party thinks indictments are weapons and prosecutors are purely political agents. The rule of law hardly has a perfect record in this country, and its inequities are many, but when a political party says that the criminal justice system has become politicized and that the indictments of three prosecutors in separate jurisdictions are meaningless, it begins to dissolve the countrys bedrock.

Mr. Pence said he wished that issues surrounding the 2020 election had not risen to criminal proceedings, but they did, because two prosecutors chose to do their jobs faithfully, just as the former vice president did on Jan. 6. He piously told the audience that his oath of office in 2017 was made not just to the American people but also to my heavenly father. But any religious moralizing about that oath was debased when he said he was willing to support as president a man whose mug shot was taken Thursday at a squalid jail in Atlanta, who was fingerprinted and had his body dimensions listed and released on bond like one of the shoplifters and car burglars who were also processed in the jail the same day.

Apparently Thursdays proceedings were a meaningless farce to Mr. Pence, Ms. Haley and the other four. But most Americans still have enough respect for the legal system that they dont consider being booked a particularly frivolous or rebellious act. The charges against Mr. Trump are not for civil disobedience or crimes of conscience; they accuse him of grave felonies committed entirely for the corrupt purpose of holding on to power.

Being booked and mug-shotted for these kinds of crimes represents degradation to most people, despite the presumption of innocence that still applies at the trial level. How does a parent explain to a child why a man in a mug shot might be the nations next leader? That should be a very difficult conversation, unless you happen to be a Republican candidate for president.

Source photographs by Erik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock and Fulton County Sheriffs Office, via Associated Press.

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Opinion | Raising a Hand for the Man in the Mug Shot - The New York Times

As much as anything, this week was the real start of the 2024 campaign, and the preview it offered suggested how much the next year will be dominated by variations on the tiresome theme of Trump, Trump, and Trump again. Even the former Presidents absence from the first Republican debate, on Wednesday, did little to distract from the story line of the poll-dominating elephant not in the room, as the Fox News anchor Bret Baier put it. But, if the subject is by now a familiar one, the plot has taken a notable twist, summed up in the extraordinary spectacle that unfolded in Atlanta late on Thursday evening.

In a highly public display manufactured for maximum prime-time impact by the worlds most famous criminal defendant, Trump flew into the city on his private jet ahead of a Friday deadline for his surrender, then motorcaded to the Fulton County Jail, where he was arrested, fingerprinted, and had his mug shot taken, before being released on a pre-negotiated two-hundred-thousand-dollar bail. There was no real news in this, of course, since he was indicted earlier this month. But that did not stop the breathless hours of coveragethe scenes of his plane slowly rolling down the tarmac, the extensive motorcade ride through Atlanta, his self-reported and highly suspect description of himself as six feet three and two hundred and fifteen pounds. The big reveal of the evening was his photo, in which he wore a navy suit and red tie. He glared straight into the camera for his big moment; the trademark Trump glowereyebrows raised, vaguely menacing, closer to a scowl than a smileis one he has cultivated for years. In the White House, his aides called it, simply, the Stare. He stands charged with illegally seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in Georgia and nationally. If the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has her way, he will go on trial as soon as October 23rd, alongside a rogues gallery of eighteen co-defendants in a scheme that Willis has likened to a criminal racketeering conspiracy.

The unprecedented photo of a former American President treated like a common criminal, which Willis seemed intent on orchestratingUnless somebody tells me differently, Fulton Countys sheriff had said earlier this week, we are following our normal practiceswill go down in history, and not, it is safe to say, in a good way. Look at the mug shots of the Watergate conspirators: there is a grainy satisfaction in contemplating those black-and-white figures today, knowing how their stories ended up. Yet, for now, Trump sees only political gainand, quite possibly, the spectre of a historic self-pardonin that snarly snapshot from the Fulton County Jail. And why, after all, shouldnt he? The four indictments this year have been good for his poll numbers with the Republican base, good for his fund-raising, and good for his favored political move of presenting himself as a perpetual victim who must seek vengeance against his persecutors.

Even the big event whose timing he did not orchestrate this week tended to reinforce his preferred narrative of inevitable victory over a largely quiescent field of Republican also-rans. Trumps absence at the debate, on Wednesday, afforded the eight G.O.P. candidates who made it to the stage a chance to argue over policy matterssuch as support for the war in Ukraine and deficit reductionwithout his oxygen-sucking presence. Only ten minutes of questions in two long hours were actually about Trump and the ongoing challenge to American democracy that he presents. But it did not matter. The takeaway from the first debate of 2024 was not all that different from the takeaway from the first debate of the 2016 election cycle: the Republican Party is the Party of Trump, whether hes onstage or not.

The essential moment came at the top of the second hour, when the Fox News anchors finally, belatedly, uttered the T-word, asking which Republican candidates would endorse the ex-President as their nominee even in the increasingly likely scenario that he becomes a convicted felon. The responses that followed unrolled as a sort of democracy car crash: first the young entrepreneur and aspiring Trump clone Vivek Ramaswamys hand shot up, high, followed quickly by Nikki Haleys, Tim Scotts, and Doug Burgums. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor once touted as a possible Trump-killer until his leaden personality and clumsy campaigning sent him sinking in the polls, did himself no favors by looking to see what the other candidates were doing, then raising his hand as well.

Next to go was Mike Pence, the former Vice-President whose candidacy has veered between sanctimonious reminders of how he stood up to Trump, on January 6, 2021, and almost inexplicable acts of sycophancy toward him. A few minutes later, Pence would demand, in that deep baritone of his, that the other candidates weigh in on his January 6th choice to rebuff Trump and certify his 2020 election defeat. I think the American people deserve to know whether everyone on this stage agrees that I kept my oath to the Constitution that day, he said. Did he think the audience would forget that he had just pledged to vote for Trump again, criminal convictions be damned? Pence has long since perfected the ability to abase himself in public without seeming the least bit ashamed.

In the end, six out of eight candidates confirmed what we already knew: they would back Trump as the nominee, essentially, no matter what. The two exceptions were Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie. Someone has to stop normalizing this conduct, Christie said, of Trump, prompting audible boos from the audience. Baier and his co-anchor, Martha MacCallum, didnt even bother to ask which felonyout of the ninety-one counts, in four separate criminal indictments that he is currently facingTrump might be convicted of. That was not the point of their hypothetical, which instead served to remind America that even Republicans ostensibly running against the ex-President are very likely to end up voting for him.

Watching these hopelessly outmatched candidates, I kept thinking back to one of the great lines from last summers January 6th hearings in the House of Representatives. Trumps former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, described how, after the 2020 election, he and others had been part of Team Normal, those who tried and failed to convince Trump that he had really lost the election, only to find themselves pushed aside in favor of Team Crazy, whose members, led by Rudy Giuliani, aided and abetted Trumps lies about the rigged election. The Republican debate stage in Milwaukee this week was filled with candidates who came from what passes for Team Normal in todays G.O.P., figures such as Trumps former Vice-President, Pence; Trumps former U.N. Ambassador Haley; and Trumps former friend and adviser Christie.

All three of them built their careers as governors in the pre-Trump Republican Party: Pence and Haley in the reliably red states of Indiana and South Carolina, respectively; Christie in Democratic New Jersey, a point he emphasizedto little availin his debate-stage pitch for Republicans to go for a candidate who knows how to win a competitive race in unfriendly territory. But, just like Stepien and the rest of Team Normal, they all eventually sold out to Trump. In this, they represent the very considerable part of the Republican Party that knew supporting Trump was a disaster back in 2016 and, yet, when it came time for the general election and divvying up the spoils of power that followed his unlikely victory, they did it anyway.

If this were a different time, a viewer of Wednesdays debate might have concluded that it was not a bad night for Team Normal. Haley and Christie delivered several of the more memorable zingers while making impassioned cases for decidedly normal causes, such as supporting Ukraine, a free country aligned with the U.S., over Vladimir Putins murderous dictatorship, as Haley put it, or choosing to protect the Constitution over terminating it, as Christie put it. Both took especial glee in going after Ramaswamy, a Trump for the millennial set so automatic in his Trumpier-than-thou responses to any question that Christie lampooned him as a sort of ChatGPT version of a Republican candidate. It was a good dig but also perhaps unintentionally revealing: ChatGPT might very well come up with a Trumpist candidate who sounds a lot like this one.

Besides, the polls these days about the Republican race for 2024 are clear: Team Normal is a sideshow, and a highly compromised one at that. There should be little doubt that most of those who now claim to have moved on from Trump, such as Haley and Pence, will nonetheless raise their hands and vote for him again if they have to. For Republicans, for now, there is, once again, only Team Trump.

Originally posted here:

The Harsh Glare of Justice for Donald Trump - The New Yorker

(Permanent

MILWAUKEE Much was made prior to Wednesday's debate of the fact that its organizers had banned various of the former president*'s surrogates from the post-debate spin room. Of course, this made all the sense in the world since El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had declined to participate, opting instead for a touching bout of virtual make-up sex with Tucker Carlson. Because this move by the debate made such perfect sense, it naturally got all up the nose of people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who whined so loudly that NORAD probably issued an alert. From Newsweek:

Not to worry, Marge. We were blessed by a visit from Donald Trump, Jr. and his inamorata, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who carried the former president's water, and bullshit, by the bucketful.

Sluggo scoffed at the very idea that his father, now d/b/a Inmate no. P01135809 in Fulton County, Georgia, even needed to hobnob with this pack of Lilliputian losers.

If you're wondering how this blithe dismissal of the competition, and of the debate itself, squares with the raging tantrums the Trump surrogates threw about being denied access to the spin room, you clearly have been in the northernmost regions of Finland, communing with reindeer, for the past seven years. Don't try to catch up all at once.

The Spokesman-Review in Spokane has found a woman who likely would disagree with Vivek Ramaswamy's contention that the climate crisis is a hoax.

You can see it coming, right?

There was an old episode of The Twilight Zone in which a survivor of the Titanic is picked up by the Lusitania and then picked up by another doomed ocean liner the Andrea Doria, I think and it's all a riff based on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Mary Kaneko is living that nightmare, and anyone who denies the crisis for which she has become a tragic focal point belongs in a zoo.

Remember when Inmate No. P01135809 came to Wisconsin with his golden shovel and turned the first earth on what he said was going to be the eighth wonder of the world -- a huge facility run by Taiwanese giant Foxconn that was going to employ 3000 people. Yeah, not so much. From the Washington Post:

This, of course, is a big part of the legacy of former governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. Foxconn played Walker and, later, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago for the suckers they plainly were. They rolled Walker for some $3 billion in tax credits, and it stuck the state and local governments for another $500 million in site improvements. And this was all without any real promises that the project would ever happen.

All hail the art of the deal.

You want something that could really scramble the 2024 elections? How about a massive strike in the automotive industries? From CNN:

Shawn Fain, the new UAW president, has been unsparing in his critique of how, by his lights, management has gotten off easy in negotiations over the past several years. He wants pay raises and he wants benefits returned to 2009 levels. Fain's mandate derives from a series of scandals at the top of the UAW that sent two previous presidents to jail. He also has been quite vocal on the subject of how the president must put up or shut up about his devotion to organized labor. My guess is they'll reach some sort of settlement. Whether or not the rank and file will approve it, however, is genuinely up for grabs. And that's going to be quite inflammatory on the campaign.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Down On The Levee Blues" (Sidney Bechet): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1963, we see London cracking down on the diesel lorries that are, as the narrator says, "belching smoke and smell." I do like the hilarious detail that "some tobacco manufacturers believe" that diesel smoke causes lung cancer. Informed sources say! Anyway, hard luck for the guy driving that "proper stinker." History is so cool.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Smithsonian:

Lakefront property always has been expensive.

Bruce Springsteen dropped Born To Run on this day in 1975. (It's also the anniversary of Keith Moon's driving a Lincoln Continental into a Holiday Inn swimming pool, which has something to do with BTR, but I can't quite put my finger on it.) Is it strange that, after all these years, and given the other tracks on the album, my favorite Springsteen track is still "Meeting Across The River"? It's stripped of all the grease-stained mythology that's drives all the other cuts on the record. Eddie and his partner are small-time semi-hoods who have to scramble even to get a ride into the city for a meeting with a guy that you just know isn't going to go well. They even have to fake being strapped. It reminds me of Vincent Patrick's great The Pope of Greenwich Village or, closer to home, George V. Higgins' The Friends of Eddie Coyle. And Randy Brecker's glorious trumpet accents lodge the story squarely in the traditions of the great films noir. The stuff that dreams are made of.

Hey, New York Times, is it a good day for dinosaur news? Its always a good day for dinosaur news!

Congratulations to India for joining the Brotherhood of Diplodocoid Nations. We'll be in touch about the dues. After all, even your dinos lived then to make us happy now.

I'll be back on Monday to see what other nuggets Vivek Ramaswamy has mined from the depths of American history. ("Do we really know that Custer was killed by indigenous soldiers? How do we know it wasn't Vikings?") Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline. Wear the damn mask. Take the damn shots, especially the damn boosters, especially the newest boosters. And spare a moment for the people of Ukraine, and of the earthquake zone in Turkey and Iraq, and in the flood zones of Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Vermont. and in the fire zones in Canada, Hawaii, Washington state, Louisiana, and the Canary Islands, and for our fellow citzens of the LGBTQ+ communities, who deserve so much better than they're getting from their country.

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.

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Donald Trump Jr. and His Dad's Band of Surrogates Don't Care ... - Esquire

Much of that evidence resurfaced Tuesday in special counsel Jack Smiths four-count indictment of Trump, which referenced call logs and White House records that were already familiar to Americans who tracked the Jan. 6 committee proceedings. Chutkan was randomly selected Tuesday to preside over Trumps latest criminal case, his third in the last four months.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President, Chutkan wrote in her 2-year-old ruling, a rebuke that is sure to echo as she prepares to preside over the newest criminal case against the current GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024.

Chutkan, 61, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and came to the U.S. for college as a teenager, attending George Washington University and then law school at the University of Pennsylvania. She spent more than a decade as a public defender in Washington, D.C. She later worked for the law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner before being confirmed as a federal trial judge in Washington in 2014.

Chutkan has avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered as theyve sentenced defendants who participated in the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol as part of Trumps bid to remain in power. Judge Reggie Walton has called Trump a charlatan. Judge Amit Mehta has said Jan. 6 defendants were pawns of Trump and his allies. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has chastised Republicans for refusing to level with Trump about the 2020 election.

It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man who knows full well that he lost instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert, Jackson said at a sentencing last year.

But Chutkan has delivered some of the harshest sentences to Jan. 6 defendants and made her disgust and horror over the attack clear, lamenting the prospect of renewed political violence in 2024 and noting that no one accused of orchestrating the effort to subvert the election had been held accountable.

You have made a very good point, she told Jan. 6 rioter Robert Palmer at his December 2021 sentencing, that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.

The issue of who has or has not been charged is not before me. I dont have any influence on that, she said. I have my opinions, but they are not relevant.

But Chutkan also said that reality wasnt a reason to go easy on those who bought into the election lies and acted upon that belief.

The people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it havent been charged, but thats not a reason for you to get a lower sentence, she said. I have to make it clear that the actions you engaged in cannot happen again. Every day were hearing about reports of antidemocratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024.

Chutkan has alluded more specifically to Trump in other Jan. 6 sentences, including her first to misdemeanor defendant Carl Mazzocco, who Chutkan said went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country.

During those early months of the Jan. 6 investigation, Chutkan also staked out territory that some of her colleagues were reluctant to tread: She pointedly rejected the equivalence some defendants were drawing between violence adjacent to Black Lives Matter protests and the riot at the Capitol.

Latest News on the Trump Indictment

One Trump-appointed judge, Trevor McFadden, had raised sharp questions about whether Jan. 6 defendants were being treated more harshly than people accused of similar conduct during the summertime violence of 2020.

I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city, McFadden said at the time.

Chutkan, while sentencing a defendant in a different case, appeared to allude to her colleagues remark, before saying she flatly disagreed.

People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent, Chutkan said of the protests and rioting that followed George Floyds death. But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.

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Trump's new judge is a tough Jan. 6 sentencer and has a history with him - POLITICO