2020 Election Fallout Part 16: Public Hearings Are Underway

[fraurosena]

This is quite interesting. Jeff Clark strikes me as the type who would do anything to avoid federal charges and prison time.

 

[fraurosena]

This is just heinous and vile -- and precisely what you'd expect from Trump supporters.

 

[CTRLZero]

Re Jeff Clark’s bar disciplinary action.  I don’t have access to Twitter, but there is a link to the filed complaint in this CNN article.  Maybe he can go work for Pillow Guy, since he seems to enjoy pushing false election claims.

CNN article with DC bar complaint

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

True.

 

 

Or they could have moved him to the bunker under the WH. Of course, TFG wouldn't have wanted that because it wouldn't have permitted his large group of sycophants to be there to genuflect.

[Shrubbery]

It’s got to a point where I really couldn’t tell for a moment whether the „yesterday’s a hard word“ clip was real or parody because that orange lump basically parodies himself every time he opens the cheeto-hole these days - and the hands looked especially tiny in the video.

[GreyhoundFan]

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

That dipshit Ziegler's rant isn't the strut he thinks it is.  Saying he invoked his right to remain silent over and over is implicitly admitting he engaged in conduct that would tend to criminally implicate him because that right only exists under oath if what the person under oath is about to say will tend to criminally implicate that person.  The right to remain silent after swearing to testify truthfully is not the same as the right to remain silent when being generally questioned.  By taking the oath, a person has agreed to essentially waive the right to remain silent but does not waive the right against self-incrimination so the right to remain silent is strictly limited to areas where the answer would incriminate the person testifying.  (A defendant in a criminal case, however, who chooses to take the stand, cannot invoke that right because otherwise all defendants could just avoid cross-examination.  If a defendant refuses to answer questions by "pleading the 5th" the entire testimony is stricken from evidence and can't be considered by the jury or in a bench trial, by the judge.)  So Ziegler is pretty much saying he was involved in criminal conduct (not to mention now making himself a very risky potential hire for future employment as he is on record saying racist and misogynistic things so anyone who hires him is on notice that he has high potential for creating a hostile work environment.  Way to go, brainiac!

The Josh Hawley video (and the crowd reaction) is straight up comedy gold.  The memes, the song dubs- my favorite so far is Britney Spear's "Sometimes" where the dub is the part "Sometimes I run, sometimes I hide" is played as he runs through the hall then down the stairs.  I haven't seen anyone else point it out but I am especially amused that he's wearing a mask since that group of seditious rioters were so anti-mask.  Oh Josh, how you betrayed the very people you fistpumped just hours earlier.

Kudos to the guy with the flag who stepped in the way to help Officer Fanone.  I really hope those officers were came up to the scene decided the whiny guy who was auditioning for the part of "Overacting Overactor #3" walked into the banner on purpose and so the banner holder did nothing wrong.  Or at least come to the conclusion that it was defense of another person.  

The tweet about Trump not being evacuated is spot on accurate.  I had tried to explain that to the Trumpers in my world ON January 6.  I kept saying that with him as well as Melania and Barron not being evacuated or brought to the bunker something was seriously strange about it all, especially with the big delay in the National Guard being deployed and so many other really very "off" details.  The biggest one for me was the scaffolding and nooses going up so fast.  That had to take some serious advance planning as well as somehow getting around security to be able to have all of the materials and tools close enough and ready to go.  I knew there had to be people "on the inside" who were part of it.  I just keep going back to some of the testimony and evidence that has come out that strongly suggests the people who weren't part of the plan managed to cause chaos enough to disrupt the plan.  How very ironic that Trump did too good of a job riling up the dipshits who weren't part of the scheme so they went en masse and fucked it up for the people in on the scheme. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Liz Cheney’s devastating final question puts the GOP to shame"

Quote

In no small part, the GOP in the Donald Trump era has been marked by a craven failure to take offramps.

Trump’s encouragement of white supremacy, his strong-arming of a foreign ally, his multi-tentacled plot to destroy our political order, and his incitement of a violent, deadly insurrection — none of these have pushed Republicans to finally disavow him as a leader of their party and unfit to lead this country.

When Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) delivered her closing statement at Thursday’s Jan. 6 hearing, she offered Republicans one more offramp. She posed this question:

Every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

Now ask yourself this: Why will so few Republican lawmakers forthrightly answer Cheney’s question in the negative?

The failure of most leading Republicans to answer this question has the capacity to be a defining moment in Republican politics, perhaps for years to come. While every one of these situations has been different, other previous historical moments — McCarthyism, Watergate, the militia movements of the 1990s — created a similar crossroads for party elites.

The latest hearing starkly demonstrated that Trump knew many in the Jan. 6, 2021, mob were armed and adamantly wanted to lead the mob on a march to the Capitol anyway. Trump actively chose, again and again, not to call off the violence, and the committee linked this directly to his apparent desire for the mob to help complete his coup.

Even after the attack started, Trump pointed the mob at his vice president, Mike Pence, like a howitzer — even as Pence’s security detail thought his life and their own were in grave danger. White House lawyers were appalled by his obvious desire to keep the violent rampage going, and took his designs on Pence deadly seriously.

Republicans failed to render Trump unable to run again by overwhelmingly voting against his impeachment and conviction after Jan. 6. So Cheney is asking: Now that we have starkly demonstrated Trump’s depraved dereliction of duty and illustrated the full scope of his likely criminal coup attempt, are you ready to say at this point that he’s unfit as a leader of your party and the country?

So far, the answer is a resounding “no.” Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP nomination, and may announce as early as this year.

In her closing, Cheney framed the choice for GOP elites as a threshold moment. Her question essentially asks whether Trump’s leadership of a movement that is more or less dedicated to destroying constitutional democracy is disqualifying: At stake, she said, is whether we will “remain a free nation.”

It’s hard to see how this will play out with Republican elites. One possibility is a muddled resolution that sidelines Trump while harnessing the radical right-wing, and even insurrectionist, tendencies that were long nursed by Republicans but under Trump have been overtly embraced.

Geoff Kabaservice, a historian of the modern GOP, notes that such an outcome would resemble previous historical moments. Just as GOP elites today want to exploit energies Trump has exacerbated, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunt “resonated with the Republican base very powerfully,” Kabaservice says, giving GOP elites “the possibility of riding his crusade.”

Ultimately, when McCarthyism really went off the rails and became a serious political liability, GOP elites mostly did not publicly break with him — though some did — but opted instead to quietly disable him via more discreet procedural channels.

There was not really a grand public moment of widespread repudiation or reckoning, Kabaservice says. Instead, they opted in McCarthyism’s aftermath to essentially say, “That chapter is closed, time to move on.”

Similarly, when Richard Nixon’s corruption became an overwhelming liability to the party, Kabaservice notes, much of the elite edging out of Nixon occurred via “private conversations.”

Then there’s the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Nicole Hemmer, author of a new book on 1990s Republicanism, points out that many Western Republicans did denounce the attack but continued to use incendiary anti-government language about jackbooted federal agents, and tacitly continued supporting the far-right militia movement.

“It took a lot of pushing to get even tepid disavowals,” Hemmer says. She notes that some Republicans preferred to allow the bombing to quietly pass without too much condemnation, to avoid antagonizing an “energetic part” of the base.

With Trump, one way this all ends, says Kabaservice, is that GOP elites quietly coalesce around GOP alternatives to Trump heading into 2024 — such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, they would cast Trump as an unfairly maligned but overly politically damaged victim of Democratic witch hunts.

In this endgame, Kabaservice notes, there would be “no open admission of error.” The narrative of Trump’s passing from the scene would be spun “in a post hoc way.”

In this scenario, Republicans would never decisively answer Cheney’s question. That would be a bad ending: Scholars of democratic breakdown believe a decisive repudiation by GOP elites of Trump’s crimes against the country could help avert a future of increased political instability and violence.

But the fact that Cheney’s question is still dangling out there, unanswered, suggests that may be the future that does await us.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Hawley’s effort to reap political rewards from Jan. 6 scampers off"

Quote

Given everything that’s happened since, it’s easy to forget the role that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) played in validating Donald Trump’s effort to undermine the 2020 election results.

In the weeks after states submitted their electoral vote slates to Washington on Dec. 14 of that year, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sought to keep his caucus from joining an effort to reject some of those electors. Over on the House side, there was a quick competition to demonstrate loyalty to Trump by announcing plans to object to submitted slates. But contesting electors needed both one member of the House and one member from the Senate to have a shot at success, and McConnell didn’t want that to happen.

It didn’t work. And the first senator to defy McConnell was the junior senator from Missouri.

Hawley was making a calculated political play that, for a year and a half, he’s managed to keep afloat. But one clip that aired during the House select committee hearing on Thursday evening might have made that water-treading impossible.

On Dec. 30, 2020, Hawley’s office released a statement announcing that he would object to the electors submitted by Pennsylvania. He tried to rationalize it by blaming technology companies, a favorite target of his, and raising objections to how votes were cast in the Keystone state, a question that had already been resolved by the state’s courts.

The plan was obvious. Hawley, an ambitious young politician, wanted to be able to be the guy who delivered for Trump’s base. Other senators knew it, too: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), similarly ambitious if less young, quickly came up with a plan for offering his own, slightly different objection. The race was on.

As he entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Hawley gave that infamous fist pump to the crowd of people outside — some eventual rioters among them. In the aftermath of the riot, there was a lot of criticism of Hawley’s gesture of encouragement, serving as it did as a reminder of his role in encouraging rioters to think that the electoral-vote counting should be derailed. After keeping a low profile for a bit, Hawley eventually began selling a mug showing the fist pump — continuing to do so even after the copyright-holder for the photo threatened to sue.

And why not? He’d weathered the immediate negative effects of his involvement in the riot, it seemed. Republican opinions on the day’s events had shifted and loyalty to Trump continued to be valuable currency. Even on the evening of Jan. 6 itself, Hawley was still hoping that eventuality might arrive. While at least one member of the Senate Republican caucus decided not to object to the submitted electors, Hawley didn’t. He still objected. Even after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) shouted at him, “You have caused this!”, Hawley — standing in front of a fuming Romney — objected to the electoral slate.

This, it seems, was the bet. Hawley bet it would all work out politically, that he could wave away concerns like Romney’s over the short term and be a hero to the base for standing firm for years to come. And until, oh, about 9 p.m. on Thursday, it looked like it could work.

Then committee member Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) turned the hearing’s attention to Hawley’s actions inside the Capitol that day.

She started by showing the fist-pump photo, noting that a Capitol Police officer had expressed frustration at his doing so, since “he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers.” Then Luria inserted the dagger.

“Later that day, Senator Hawley fled, after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the Capitol,” she said. “See for yourself.”

Video of Hawley dashing across a hallway aired on a large screen at the front of the hearing room. Then it aired again, this time in slow motion.

The hearing was theoretically predicated on proving Trump had chosen not to act in response to the rioters on that day. This little aside about Hawley did not obviously have anything to do with that. It didn’t help the committee’s case against Trump, certainly. It was at least in part an overt effort to embarrass Hawley, contrasting his proud demonstration of allegiance with the soon-to-be rioters with his eventually becoming just another elected official who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself at the rioters’ mercy.

There is a sense in which airing the Hawley video fit with the committee’s efforts, though. The committee wants to exact a cost for those who sought to upend the results of the 2020 election. They want, if only unofficially, to make it impossible for Trump to be reelected as president. It’s safe to assume they understand the narrow path Hawley has been trying to walk and understood that airing that footage would in no way help him succeed. The senator loves to seem tough. That video seemed anything but.

Hawley wants the visual of his involvement in Jan. 6 to be that fist pump: the guy willing to fight for Trump. Instead, it is now that slow-motion video: the guy who thought he was cleverly leveraging Trump’s base for his own purposes, only to see things suddenly unfold in a dramatically different way.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[ADoyle90815]

One of the funniest things I saw on Facebook today was someone's comment that they were going to start calling Hawley Josh Haulass.

Edited July 22, 2022 by ADoyle90815

[Ozlsn]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This, it seems, was the bet. Hawley bet it would all work out politically, that he could wave away concerns like Romney’s over the short term and be a hero to the base for standing firm for years to come

This is what amazes me about these guys. They rely on the democratic institutions to keep them in power, while simultaneously aligning with people who want to overthrow it - and they don't seem to realise that to the rioters, the militias, the mob they are the government. Why do they think the mob is going to spare them? Yeah sure they'll go after high profile Democrats first, but going after high profile Republicans won't be far behind. The mob loyalty is to Dear Leader, and in mob situations even the loyal brownshirts (or in Hawley's case brownpants) get burned.

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I would go to Mississippi for this.

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

In this scenario, Republicans would never decisively answer Cheney’s question. That would be a bad ending: Scholars of democratic breakdown believe a decisive repudiation by GOP elites of Trump’s crimes against the country could help avert a future of increased political instability and violence.

And every single journalist needs to demand a firm answer to that question at every single press conference, and keep demanding and reframing the question more and more pointedly and bluntly until it is obvious that they are in it for self-interest and nothing else.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Ozlsn

[47of74]

Baked Alaska’s social media accounts are in government hands

Quote

The federal government has gained access to the social media accounts of the notorious far-right troll and organizer who goes by the online name "Baked Alaska" after Anthime "Tim" Gionet pleaded guilty to Jan. 6 charges on Friday.

The plea was announced in a court filingafter the judge disconnected the public teleconference.

The plea agreement says Gionet also agrees to an interview with investigators "regarding the events in and around Jan. 6, 2021" prior to sentencing.

His mom, who is the holder of his cell phone account, sought to block a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This stick of fuck and his mother give decent people who need help from their parents a bad name  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ozlsn]

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

If whomever challenges Hawley doesn’t do at least one ad referring to him “running FROM office” it will be a serious damn shame. I really am not usually a fan of name-calling and mocking political ads (especially because of Trump) but Hawley earned every bit of it. Nobody is making fun of anyone who was terrified that day and whose deep fear was documented in moving and still film UNLESS that person was a raging jackass who either prior to, during, or after the seditious attack acted as though it was anything but a horrifying, terrifying, and deadly attempt to end our country as we know it. But playing solidarity with seditious criminals means you are fair game. 
 

“Josh Hawley- good at running away from the consequences of his own actions, but terrible at running his duties as Senator for Missouri.” 

“Josh Hawley- he ran on January 6th. Now let’s run him out of office.”

“Usually Senators run every six years. Josh Hawley runs every time he sees a spider.” 
 

Just spitballing here. 

 

[Xan]

There was a really good opinion piece on Salon by Lucian Truscott about not getting taken in by Liz Cheney's con job.  She is, after all, her father's daughter.

Quote

You don't even have to look for the tell. It's right there in the first thing they say after they  "cooperate" with the Jan. 6 Committee: The Republican functionary witnesses sit there looking smug and self-satisfied as they tell what they know about what Trump did and the puny shit they did to try to stop him, and when they're finished they've been told they can smile and say, "but just look at his accomplishments."

That creation stamped out of a prep-mold in a suit and tie sitting at the witness stand on Thursday night with the last name Pottinger was a perfect example of the con job they're trying to run. Why, I was so horrified by what I saw when I got finished with my off-site meeting with India's ambassador to the United States that I resigned! 

Then what does Pottinger tell us? A complete and utter crap-load of smarmy claptrap about how dedicated he is to "national security," and how proud he was that he served as deputy national security adviser, and how Trump got "tough" with China and put together some treaty in the Middle East that's not worth the paper it's written on.

Mr. Pottinger was at his desk in the National Security Council office when Trump was completely and utterly capitulating to Vladimir Putin at Helsinki. He was sitting there in the Executive Office Building working for John Bolton when Trump was putting a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and telling him he wanted the "favor" of trashing Joe Biden before Trump would release $400 million in military aid the Ukrainians needed in their fight against the Russian incursion into their territory. Pottinger sat there on his hands when Trump fired Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch on utterly spurious grounds, knowing that she had done nothing to deserve it and that Trump was just positioning himself to exploit Ukraine in his effort to get reelected. 

Pottinger knows full well that it was Trump's lap-dog nuzzling of Putin and his constant attacks on NATO and his weakening of U.S. support for Ukraine that gave Putin the idea he could attack Ukraine and get away with it in the first place. Where was our hero Pottinger when Trump virtually disassembled the entire foreign service profession at the State Department by cutting its budget by more than 30 percent? We're supposed to thank him for his heroic decision to resign 14 days before Trump left office after helping to facilitate every stupid-ass foreign affairs move Trump made for four long years?

It's a con job, and the chief con artist running the whole game is Liz Cheney. She was right there at Trump's side for 3.9 years as he loaded up the Supreme Court with right-wing lunatics and ripped children from the arms of migrant mothers at the border and then proceeded to lose them in a miasma of botched red tape and incompetence. She was all-in for that crime against humanity. She was all-in for the tax cut for millionaires and billionaires like her father who used his political connections to make millions as chairman and CEO of Halliburton and then turned around and loaded up Halliburton's coffers by being the chief architect behind the war in Iraq. 

She was all-in for Trump's absurd wall on the border, another boondoggle for Republican contractors that has done precisely nothing — zero, nada, zip — to stop migrants from crossing the border who are seeking to flee oppressive regimes in Central and South America. She is to this very day all-in on every attack on women's rights Trump enabled with his Supreme Court appointments. including the disastrous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She was all-in on Trump's loon-laden appointments to his Cabinet, all-in on his assaults on the environment and the regulatory powers of the EPA and other important agencies. She is still all-in on the complete legacy of Donald Trump, with the sole exception of his attempted coup after he lost the election of 2020.

And how about "rule of law" hero Pat Cipollone? He sat there in his White House counsel's office for more than two years while Trump told lie after lie after lie and eviscerated every single tradition and norm that has helped keep our nation running for 240 years. He supported Trump's disastrous policies at the border, including taking children from migrant parents and then losing them. He defended Trump at his first impeachment trial for soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 election, when Trump attempted to extort a foreign leader and obstructed justice by instructing officials to ignore subpoenas and refuse testimony. Cipollone authored an eight-page letter to Democratic leaders refusing to cooperate in any way with the impeachment inquiry and accused Democrats of "violating the Constitution, the rule of law and every past precedent" in their investigation of Trump. He represented Trump at his second impeachment trial for inciting the riot on Jan. 6. He provided legal cover for everything Trump did to attempt to "deconstruct the administrative state," in the immortal words of Steve Bannon. 

In short, Cipollone enabled Donald Trump right up to his attempt to overturn the election of 2020, and then he refused to cooperate with the  Jan. 6 committee until testimony by witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson forced him to meet with the committee, and then he still refused to answer questions about what Donald Trump did on Jan. 6 on spurious executive privilege and attorney-client grounds, although he knows perfectly well there is no privilege if you  witness a crime being committed, which Cipollone certainly did if he was present in the room with Trump on Jan. 6. And he was. 

And Cipollone was the chief usher to Trump's right-wing theocratic appointments to the Supreme Court, and I'm sure his buddies in the Federalist Society have patted him on the back so much he's worn out a couple of suit jackets.

Liz Cheney has spent about a quarter of her time on the dais of the Jan. 6 committee hearings reminding us that all the witnesses called before the committee to testify about Trump have been Republicans. Oh, boy, does she beat that tired-ass drum, like it's supposed to mean something. Of course they're Republicans! They were working for Donald Trump! And we're supposed to be impressed that responding to subpoenas, they showed up and in many, many cases reluctantly revealed a few "truths" about Trump's lies and illegal behavior after he lost the election in November? We're supposed to be impressed that they "stood up for the rule of law" after participating in an administration whose hallmark was breaking laws and norms for four long years? 

I'm sick and tired of Eric Herschmann getting praised over and over again for telling John Eastman that the only two words he wanted to hear out of his mouth were "orderly transition!" Wow! What a tough guy!

Uhh, hey, Eric, did it ever occur to you while you sat there watching Giuliani and Eastman and Jeffrey Clark and Sidney Powell and the rest of them commit multiple federal crimes in your presence in the damn Oval Office that you should pick up the phone and call the deputy attorney general in charge of the criminal division and report a crime?

Herschmann was in his White House office supporting Trump through two solid months of lying about "winning" the election, while he had his minions file no less than 60 lawsuits to overturn election results, every one of which he lost. Herschmann and the rest of the White House heroes supported everything Trump did right up until they made a determination that participating in Trump's conspiracies to overturn the election might subject them to criminal charges, and only when served with subpoenas demanding their testimony in the face of possible jail time did they reluctantly utter a few squeaks of disapproval to congressional investigators. 

Wow! That's some heroic Republicans for you! And according to Liz Cheney, these Republican pipsqueaks should be thanked for "coming forward and telling the truth." 

At the close of Thursday's hearing, Cheney gave one of her self-justifying-reach-around-and-pat-myself-on-the-back-like-I'm-triple-jointed statements, and this one was a doozy. She included this gem, which apparently we're supposed to get down on bended knee to thank her for: "As January 6 approached, I circulated a memo to my Republican colleagues explaining why our congressional proceedings to count electoral votes could not be used to change the outcome of the election."

Well, goodness gracious, sakes alive! She wrote a memo! Even thinking there was a need to tell her "Republican colleagues" something that is written into the Constitution should have been all the evidence she needed that the Republican Party had so completely gone off the rails that she didn't belong there any longer. But did she resign and become an independent? Noooooo. She started laying plans for a future she thought she could see, even if none of her "colleagues" could.

I think on Thursday night I realized what the Republican long-term plan is. Liz Cheney and the  "adults in the room" in the Republican Party are laying the groundwork for the party to survive after Trump is finally put in jail or in some other yet-to-be-determined way expunged from their midst. Liz Cheney is Dick Cheney's daughter. She is a lifetime right-wing Republican functionary. She wants there still to be a Republican Party so they can continue to grease the skids for billionaires to make more billions and millionaires to make more millions like her dad did. 

Remember the arc of Dick Cheney's career? He did his time as a House Republican back when that was a real shit-detail, for which he was rewarded with the secretary of defense slot under Bush I. He was an architect of the first Gulf War, which ensured that oil would continue to flow from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and that oil company coffers in the good old USA would continue to bulge. When Bill Clinton was elected, Cheney was taken under the wing of the Owners who made him CEO and Chairman of Halliburton, where he fattened his own bank account to the tune of several tens of millions of dollars. Then he appointed himself vice president under Bush II and promptly began his campaign for the war in Iraq, which further filled Halliburton's bottom line (it owned KBR, a major defense contractor in Iraq) and ensured that oil would flow from Iraq's massive oil fields and further pad the bottom line of the oil companies to whom he owed his millions.

Liz Cheney learned at her father's knee how the Republican Party works. It's who they are and who they have always been. As Gore Vidal used to call them, they are the "Owners." All the rest of this stuff, like screaming about transgender bathrooms and vaccine mandates and school choice and even their anti-abortion hallelujah chorus with fundamentalist Christians is crap. It's red meat for the rubes. Do you really think they care if their wife's or mistress' hairdresser marries his longtime partner? Do you think if a Cheney granddaughter got raped at college and got pregnant that she wouldn't be able to get an abortion? Do you think if a Cheney granddaughter just wanted an abortion because she broke up with the boyfriend who got her pregnant that she wouldn't be put aboard a biz-jet and flown across state borders to the best abortion doctor in the country? 

Of course not. They'll always protect the Owners and their mansions and their yachts and their Gulfstreams and their ability to avail themselves of abortion services or even contraception if it comes to that. They'll always cut taxes for each other even if it means that poor people get poorer and that children don't get fed at lunchtime in public schools and migrants continue to die in tractor-trailers in Texas. 

They don't give a shit about the poor. As Liz Cheney is at last admitting, they don't give a shit about Trump, either, so long as they've got their tax cuts and their millions and billions and they can keep the minimum wage at $7.25 an hour and maintain their control over red-state governments. Trump was just a hireling. He strayed off the reservation, and they grew tired of his gross lack of taste and slovenly appearance. So they're serving up a few schmucks with smug grins on their faces to tell us what a bad guy they suddenly discovered he is, after his usefulness to them came to an end. 

It's a con job. Don't believe a word of it. They're just ridding themselves of a cancer they accidentally found growing on one of their legs so they can continue stomping on poor people and women and gay people and anybody they don't like and ensuring we stay in our place. They're Republicans. It's what they do. 

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. You can read his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by Xan

[thoughtful]

I think there are lots of us that realize what the old Republican party is and was, and are just as suspicious of them as we always were. Cheney is no hero, nor are the people who are testifying because they have to do so.

I've always wondered how much what is driving Cheney is "it's MY Republican Party - my Daddy promised!" OK, I'm kidding - that's not her personality (she's no Ivanka). But she may be thinking the tougher, more cynical version of that.

My positive reactions to what they are doing and saying are more along the lines of being glad that some Republicans are finally backing off of the truly bizarre insanity they've been caught up in, pretending to forget 1/6 and act like all is normal and Trump is wonderful. And I'm hoping that the fact that Republicans are back to condemning Trump wakes up some people who have gotten caught up in Trump worship.

It's hope for a partial victory for sanity and honesty, but doesn't change the fact that these are the people who use poor and hardworking people, while pretending to be for them, and whip up the worst bigotry in those people, while raking in the bucks, destroying our planet, destroying lives, and creating potential for war.

And it doesn't change the fact that some of them have no moral compass at all, just ambition, and will bend whichever way the wind blows to try to have the big career of their dreams. For now, I just want to see the wind blow away from worshiping, or pretending to worship, Trump, the loonies and violent seditionists.

If and when the true loonies are weeded out, and the GOP returns to business (and I do mean business) as usual, I'll still vote against them.

Edited July 23, 2022 by thoughtful
clarity

[CTRLZero]

44 minutes ago, Xan said:

There was a really good opinion piece on Salon by Lucian Truscott about not getting taken in by Liz Cheney's con job.  She is, after all, her father's daughter.

Yep.  This is a good article that I may print out to go over the fine points as need arises.  In my inarticulate way, I’ve tried to explain the difference between conservatives, uber-crazy conservatives, and rich controlling types.  I just want our votes to be counted at this juncture, and hopefully this commission will put us back in that path.

Oh, and plus what @thoughtful just wrote.  😊

[Howl]

On 7/22/2022 at 9:19 AM, fraurosena said:

This is quite interesting. Jeff Clark strikes me as the type who would do anything to avoid federal charges and prison time.

Jeffrey Clark is one of a cadre of obscure government functionaries who have risen to some ridiculous level or prominence and influence by being fanatical Trump bootlickers.  Trump values loyalty above all else.

Kash Patel is another one as well as John McEntee.  John McEntee went from being Trump's valet ("bodyman"),  fired in March 2018 after he "failed a security clearance background check and was under investigation by the Homeland Security Department for possible financial crimes relating to gambling (WIKI)".

Trump rehired McEntee in 2020 as Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel.  "Trump assigned McEntee the task of identifying for removal political appointees and career officials who were insufficiently loyal to the president (WIKI)."

But back to Clark. I'm glad to see his little house of cards collapsing.  As we all know, Trump uses people and discards them like used Kleenex. He demands loyalty but is incapable of it.  Clark's only sane option to save his sorry ass is to flip and tell all he knows.  I'm 50-50 on if he's be able to make the right decision or flush his life away thinking there are great things ahead for him with Trump, like a pardon and some high level appointment. 

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, Howl said:

John McEntee went from being Trump's valet ("bodyman"),  fired in March 2018 after he "failed a security clearance background check and was under investigation by the Homeland Security Department for possible financial crimes relating to gambling (WIKI)".

Wasn't he also accused of domestic violence? Or am I mixing people up?

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good interview:

 

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, Xan said:

Do you think if a Cheney granddaughter just wanted an abortion because she broke up with the boyfriend who got her pregnant that she wouldn't be put aboard a biz-jet and flown across state borders to the best abortion doctor in the country? 

To be honest I doubt they'd fly her across state borders - international borders totally, but why risk state? 

6 hours ago, thoughtful said:

It's hope for a partial victory for sanity and honesty, but doesn't change the fact that these are the people who use poor and hardworking people, while pretending to be for them, and whip up the worst bigotry in those people, while raking in the bucks, destroying our planet, destroying lives, and creating potential for war.

More than potential - Iraq was invaded mostly to enrich people as far as I can tell. It had nothing to do with 9/11. Not that I am in any way sad Saddam has gone, but the cost was enormous.

And the current cost of doing business as normal to further enrich this cadre is rising by the minute.

Having said that, I agree with @thoughtful. I don't care that they're testifying to save their skins, as long as they testify. I would prefer an outcome to be the financiers hauled up to answer charges as well, but I hope the sheer parade of witnesses helps change some minds about what they have been voting for, and who it is benefiting. I know they're throwing Trump to the wolves in the hope the buck will stop there - but they're exposing a lot as they go.

[Howl]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Wasn't he also accused of domestic violence? Or am I mixing people up?

That was another guy. In Feb 2018, Trump's White House staff secretary Rob Porter was forced to resign after two (!) ex-wives accused him of  domestic violence.  Rob Porter hooked up with Hope Hicks (news reports use terms like "dating" and "romantically linked") while they were both in the White House.  

Previously, Hicks was on and off with Corey Lewandowski (Trump's former campaign manager). At one point, Lewandowski  roughly grabbed a female reporter, then lied about it; video footage that captured the incident didn't lie.

Lewandowski also  slapped a woman on the ass numerous times at a holiday party; the woman reported him to police.  Hicks and Lewandowski were reportedly seen have a screaming match on a New York City street in 2016.   

Two other male staffers (a speech writer and another guy) in the Trump WH were let go due to accusations of domestic violence. 

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

That was another guy. In Feb 2018, Trump's White House staff secretary Rob Porter was forced to resign after two (!) ex-wives accused him of  domestic violence.  Rob Porter hooked up with Hope Hicks (news reports use terms like "dating" and "romantically linked") while they were both in the White House.  

Previously, Hicks was on and off with Corey Lewandowski (Trump's former campaign manager). At one point, Lewandowski  roughly grabbed a female reporter, then lied about it; video footage that captured the incident didn't lie.

Lewandowski also  slapped a woman on the ass numerous times at a holiday party; the woman reported him to police.  Hicks and Lewandowski were reportedly seen have a screaming match on a New York City street in 2016.   

Two other male staffers (a speech writer and another guy) in the Trump WH were let go due to accusations of domestic violence. 

Yes Trump definitely had the best people didn't he? He had all the best domestic violence and males who do not deserve to be called men.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

2 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Yes Trump definitely had the best people didn't he? He had all the best domestic violence and males who do not deserve to be called men.

 

Well, Trump has not really been known for having good taste. Or for being a good man. Maybe it’s the ugly bridesmaid theory- if he surrounds himself with shitbags, his own shitbag won’t smell as odious.