Category: Donald Trump

Still Living Rent-Free in Their Heads

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Just scrolling around and saw this headline:

A lot of Americans embrace
Trump’s authoritarianism

What is this? “Authoritarianism”? Words have meanings, but to liberals in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome, definitions are distorted to such an extent that words like “authoritarianism” and “fascism” get tossed around haphazardly, reflecting the emotional trauma of people who still haven’t recovered from that night in November 2016 when the unthinkable happened: Hillary Clinton lost the election!

Does the name Kevin Allred ring a bell? Not long after Hillary lost the election, NYPD had to take Allred to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after he went on a bizarre Twitter rant.

 

At the time, Allred was employed as an adjunct lecturer at Rutgers University. A few months later, in August 2017, Allred was teaching at Montclair State University, when he got fired for a Twitter rant suggesting that Trump should be assassinated.

The problem with people like this — I mean, other than the fact that they’re crazy — is that they take politics too seriously.

For some people, politics is a sort of religion, and the defeat of their favorite candidate is an unbearable blow to their sense of identity. They actually believe all the overblown rhetoric of political campaigns, so that when you tell someone like Kevin Allred that the Republican candidate is “literally Hitler,” they behave as if this were really true.

During the recent election campaign in Virginia, the local TV airwaves were saturated with ads accusing Republicans — “MAGA extremists”! — of conspiring to deprive women of their rights. As I watched these commercials, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Does anyone really believe this stuff?” But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter whether the well-informed citizen is deceived by such rhetoric. It’s not aimed at us. Instead, such wild-eyed claims are intended (a) to alarm the party’s “base,” thus motivating them to turn out to vote, and (b) to persuade just enough clueless dimwits to make a marginal difference in close races. If a state Senate race is a 50-50 tossup, and a scary TV ad convinces 5% of women to vote Democrat instead of Republican (or ote Democrat when they might otherwise have not bothered to vote), this could prove decisive. And this is as good an explanation as any of happened in Virginia.

What happens, however, when the candidate demonized as a dangerous extremist actually wins the election? Such is the story of the past seven years, when many hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters believed their party’s campaign rhetoric: “TRUMP IS HITLER! DEMOCRACY IS IMPERILED! RUSSIAN COLLUSION! JOIN THE ‘RESISTANCE’!”

Well, some Trump supporters are now in federal prison because they got a little overwrought about the 2020 election. How many anti-Trump protesters got thrown in federal prison? Can you name even one? Explain to me again, please, how it is that Republicans are the party of “authoritianism,” when it’s Democrats who are sending their political opponents to prison. But here’s how Philip Bump begins his column in The Washington Post:

With every hour that passes, Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination grows tighter. Every day in which his opponents aren’t gaining ground on his position is a day in which he gets nearer to appearing on the ballot next November and nearer to possibly being inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.
To many observers, there’s an incongruity to this. After all, recent days have also brought new awareness of Trump’s plans should he be inaugurated on that day, plans that are often unvarnished embraces of an authoritarian use of power. Trump plans to root out disloyal bureaucrats and install ideologically sympathetic ones. He’s speaking openly of using the Justice Department to target his opponents, including to hobble possible political opponents. . . .

Does this man have any self-awareness at all? Is he inside some kind of cocoon that insulates him from any information about, e.g., everything the Justice Department (and the FBI in particular) has done since 2016?

But this kind of bizarre counterfactual rhetoric is everywhere now, e.g., Noah Berlatsky warning of “The Christofascism of Mike Johnson,” at a time when violent Hamas supporters are endangering Jews everywhere.

What part of “calm the fuck down” do I need to explain here? These campus Hamas mobs are the crazy tip of a vast iceberg of people who have lost their minds because they’re tuned into too closely to the 24/7 Political Noise Machine that is our national media establishment. Somebody needs to tell these people: “Put down your phones! Stop reading the messages on your social media! And for God’s sake, don’t watch cable news! You obviously can’t deal with it!”

Who’s threatening Jews on campus at MIT? (Hint: Not Trump voters.) Anyone in the media promoting the message that the great danger to America is Republicans — “MAGA extremists” like Mike Johnson and his “Christofascism” — is being grossly irresponsible. But no responsible person would ever write for the Washington Post, a discredited organization that employs Taylor Lorenz.



 

Best Mug Shot Ever

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The phrase “Acme School of Law” was coined during the Brett Kimberlin saga to describe the tendency of a certain pro se plaintiff (and such of his associates/fanboys as the neckless wonder Bill Schmalfeldt) to pursue legal action that was ultimately harmful to their own interests, a la super genius Wile E. Coyote strapping on his Acme rocket roller skates in another futile effort to catch the elusive Roadrunner.

Something similar seems to have happened with the Democrats and their latest “get Trump” scheme, where they arranged for Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis to bring RICO charges against Trump and his aides and — oh, such orgasmic joy at CNN! — force Trump to have his mug shot taken at the local jail in Atlanta. Don Surber has the hilarious tale of how this scheme exploded in their faces:

Liberals gloated, then reality struck.
The Hill reported, “Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) shared a video of him laughing at the mugshot photo and saying, ‘We got you, and more to come . . . Clown, thug, crook, criminal.’” . . .
Shortly afterward, the congressman realized the error Democrats made.
He panicked and tweeted, ‘This mugshot is not what you think it is.
“It’s a jackpot for Trump who will use this image to raise MILLIONS of dollars from his cult — and the worst part is they are going to use it to win even more elections so they can change our laws to make it easier to steal our democracy.
“It’s a symbol of everything that is wrong with our country. It is a reminder of the deep divisions that exist, the hatred that is spewed, and hate is tolerated. It is a sign that our democracy is in danger.
“After today, the Republican Party will solidify their support around Trump and our fate will be sealed.”

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Wile E. Coyote could not be reached for comment.



 

CNN’s Endless Indictment Orgasm

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Because my office TV was tuned to CNN today, I got to hear more-or-less endless “reporting” about the Fulton County indictment of Trump. This is all banana republic stuff, a circus performance to excite Democrats and distract the public from Biden’s scandals and general incompetence.

But oh! How the CNN anchors stroked themselves into paroxysms of orgasmic bliss today! They’ve invented a new genre — indictment porn, with Fani Willis as the new superstar performer. Sure, they got some thrills out of the New York indictment, and then the two indictments from Jack Smith, but this indictment — with a BLACK WOMAN prosecuting the hated Trump — finally pushed them over the edge.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson:

The most astonishing aspect of former President Donald Trump’s fourth criminal indictment is not the scale of an alleged multi-layered conspiracy to steal Georgia’s electoral votes in 2020 from their rightful winner.
It is that Trump – the accused kingpin of the scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, who was charged on Monday along with 18 others — could in 17 months be raising his right hand as the 47th president and swearing to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution he was accused of plotting to shred.
The grave political crisis created by Trump’s aberrant presidency and subsequent efforts to hold him to account deepened significantly just before midnight [Monday] with the unsealing of yet another indictment against him — this one from a grand jury in the critical swing state of Georgia. The charges in this state case — which bring to 91 the total number of criminal charges he’s facing across four separate cases — intensified an already epochal collision between Trump’s now extreme legal quagmire and the 2024 election in which he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
The 98-page indictment includes 41 counts that chart in stunning detail an alleged conspiracy to pressure local officials, make false statements about electoral fraud to state legislatures, harrass election workers, and solicit Justice Department officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence. It also alleges an attempt to unlawfully breach election equipment in Georgia and elsewhere and includes a list of actions by Trump and associates it says were all attempts to advance the conspiracy.

Love those adjectives. Now go take a shower, you sick freak.



 

When the ‘Investigation’ Is a Cover-Up

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First, the news:

In a dramatic shift, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss was being upgraded to a special counsel to investigate the Biden family finances.
The decision means the probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes and his father’s potential dealings with his foreign clients will carry into the 2024 election at the same time the president’s chief rival Donald Trump faces two federal indictments brought by the same department. The tax case is likely to be moved to Washington and Los Angeles, officials said.
Republicans, however, gave the announcement a cold reaction, saying Weiss was the wrong person for the job after offering Hunter Biden a prison-sparing plea deal that fell apart.
“This move by AG Garland is part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family coverup in light of [House Oversight Committee’s] mounting evidence of President Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling ‘the brand’ for millions of dollars to foreign nationals,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer wrote.
Added House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan: “David Weiss can’t be trusted, and this is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption. Weiss has already signed off on a sweetheart plea deal that was so awful and unfair that a federal judge rejected it.”
Garland said the appointment of Weiss to an independent prosecutor was in the “public interest,” required by department rules and requested earlier in the week by Weiss.

Ace of Spades points out that part of what’s going on here is that conferring Special Counsel status on Weiss is a way to block House investigators looking into the “sweetheart deal” plea bargain for Hunter Biden that Weiss himself orchestrated (likely under orders from, but certainly with the approval of, Attorney General Merrick Garland). More importantly, however, it’s a way for Garland to put a lid on the whole Biden family corruption saga until after next year’s election.

What Democrats are doing here, of course, is a variation of the Mueller “investigation,” altered to suit their new purposes. Remember what happened in 2017: Trump discovered after becoming president that the FBI had been doing surveillance on his campaign on the false pretext of “Russian collusion” (which pretext, of course, was manufactured by the Clinton campaign using the phony Steele dossier). So, Trump fires FBI Director James Comey and, when this provokes an outcry from Democrats, Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses himself from the matter, and appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate. OK, but . . . investigate what?

The real scandal in this was the “Russian collusion” hoax perpetrated against Trump by the Clinton campaign, in which the FBI played a crucial role (“Operation Crossfire Hurricane”), which was why Trump fired Comey. Instead of investigating that, however, Mueller’s investigation instead focused on trying to confirm the existence of “Russian collusion” — which proved impossible because, of course, there was no “collusion” — and also trying to prove that Trump’s firing of Comey somehow constituted “obstruction of justice.” But Trump was not the perpetrator of wrongdoing, he was the victim of wrongdoing, and the purpose of Mueller’s investigation was to conceal this truth.

In other words, the “investigation” was really a cover-up, and months passed while talking heads on MSNBC and CNN kept up their wild-eyed speculation about how “the walls are closing in” on Trump — speculation fed by leaks from Mueller’s team — keeping alive the myth of “Russian collusion” until after the 2018 midterm elections.

Mission accomplished.

Then, in March 2019, with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer now in control of Congress, Mueller releases his report, which disappointed all the cable-news talking heads by failing to confirm “Russian collusion.” The walls had signally failed to “close in,” but the Mueller had achieved his political purpose, namely to promote suspicion of Trump as a Kremlin dupe while concealing the Democratic Party dirty campaign trick behind that suspicion (and the FBI’s own role in that campaign trick).

Fast-forward to the present, and now we have a Special Counsel appointed in the Hunter Biden case who has a similar mission, namely to obstruct the House Oversight Committee’s investigation and deflect attention from the very real scandal by which the Biden family collected $20 million from Hunter’s foreign “clients.” Biden and his administration now have an excuse not to comment on anything related to Hunter because it’s “under investigation” and, the reader may be assured, there will be no leaks from Weiss’s office to the media to give fuel to speculation about the “walls closing in” on Joe Biden.

Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see what’s happening, but the media won’t tell the truth. And they wonder why we don’t trust them.



 

Banana Republic, U.S.A.

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A D.C. grand jury on Tuesday indicted former President Trump on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Meanwhile, murders in D.C. have increased 19% this year, and are on track for a 20-year high. But you see, our violence-plagued national capital is full of Democrats, who think that sending Republicans to federal prison is necessary, whereas carjackers and drug dealers are permitted to run free. So don’t worry about the dozens of people who get robbed, raped, stabbed or shot every month in D.C. No, you should worry about “election deniers,” who don’t believe Joe Biden actually got 81 million votes.

The Criminal Class now effectively controls our government.



 

If Trump Has Lost Ace of Spades …

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It’s never been my habit to over-interpret anything — a Foucault-style textual analysis is just more work than it’s worth — but today I saw Ace of Spades take a shot at Donald Trump and thought, “Hmmmm.”

Yesterday the special counsel added new charges to his indictment of Trump over #DocumentGate (or whatever they’re calling it) and in his reaction to this news, Ace felt the need to add these comments:

So now comes my least favorite phase of every new Trump indictment, the ranting by Trump’s more passionate defenders that Ron DeSantis isn’t doing enough to defend the man who slurs him as a pedophile and homosexual!! His statements aren’t STRONG enough in swearing for the honor of a man who smears him dishonorably!!! and that Trump’s legal problems — almost all of which are self-inflicted– are a reason to elect him president to fuck up all over the place some more, rather than a reason to elect a strong president who will pardon Trump and let him live peacefully and free as a private citizen.
Every one of Trump’s problems gets weaponized against DeSantis, and then people wonder — Gee, why aren’t DeSantis’ supporters more interested in talking about Trump’s problems?
Tell you what: If Trump issues a STRONG statement clearing him from the previous lies that DeSantis is a pedophile, gay, cheats on his wife, killed more people with Covid than Democrat governors Newsom or Cuomo, then I’ll join you in your calls for STRONG statements clearing Trump of crimes which, let’s face it, he probably did commit.

To repeat myself: “Hmmmm.”

Something I realized long ago, sort of Rule Number One for survival in the conservative blogosphere: Never piss off Ace of Spades.

Ace has very good instincts about who is or is not Down For The Agenda. If he ever starts taking shots at somebody, you can bet that sooner or later that person will prove himself to be an unprincipled quisling.

But why bring up Allahpundit at this late date, eh?

If you look at the RCP average, Trump is beating DeSantis 3-1 and, quite frankly, DeSantis is starting to look like This Year’s Scott Walker. It is therefore remarkable that Ace would take this stance just now, when Trump looks like a shoo-in for the 2024 GOP nomination.

After my experience in 2011-2012, I stopped trying to influence Republican primaries because, despite what some people may imagine, the voters don’t seem to give a damn about the opinions of bloggers. If my herculean efforts to stop Mitt Romney from getting the GOP nomination were futile, why even bother commenting on primaries?

Basically, I’m agnostic on the matter of who gets the Republican nomination, as long as it’s not someone named “Bush,” or a useless blob of frustrated impotence like Chris Christie. Everything I’ve seen so far suggests to me that Trump is a lead-pipe cinch for the 2024 nomination, however much anyone may wish otherwise, or however much better DeSantis might be as a candidate in the general election.

Is there some way that could change? I don’t know, but maybe some of Trump’s more outspoken supporters should think about toning down their rhetoric just a wee bit, because they appear to be in danger of violating Rule Number One: Never piss off Ace of Spades.

Trust me. You never want to see an angry ewok.



 

In Terms of ‘Owning the Libs,’ Nobody Else Even Compares to Donald Trump

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Forgive me for not watching Wednesday night’s CNN town hall with Donald Trump, but he’s a known quantity — what could be learned from such an exercise? Exactly why CNN decided to give Trump this fat slice of prime-time programming, I can’t say. Even with Fox News melting down in the ratings after Tucker Carlson’s exit, CNN remains mired in the ratings basement, so anything that could make them seem relevant and newsworthy is an improvement, I suppose. At any rate, we’re now reaping the benefits of CNN’s decision, as all the Trump-haters in the media are completely losing their minds:

CNN leadership under fire
after ‘disastrous’ Trump town hall
— Washington Post

CNN’s Trump town hall was a fascist ritual
— Noah Berlatsky

Trump’s team revels in town hall victory
as CNN staff rages at ‘spectacle of lies’
— The Guardian

CNN Went Full Jerry Springer
— Tom Nichols

CNN ripped for leaving Kaitlan Collins
helpless against Trump’s lies
— New York Post

CNN Employees Are Not Happy
With The Network’s Trump Town Hall
— HuffPost

This is excellent, in terms of “owning the libs,” and I’m perfectly willing to take pleasure in their misery, without worrying about what it may portend for 2024. In this weird era, the key to happiness is finding your zen space by enjoying such moments without any thought for the future.

Learn to be a groovy hippy: Live in the now, man.

Anything that makes Tom Nichols and Noah Berlatsky angry is, objectively, a good thing. When CNN is accused of staging a “fascist ritual”? Life doesn’t get any better than that. And why ruin such a peak experience by fretting over the contingencies of the next presidential election? Whatever happens in the future, it’s unlikely to be affected by your getting wrapped up in a ball of anxiety about it, so don’t sweat it.

Make America Hakuna Matata Again.