Tag: Donald Trump

What you can expect from Donald Trump tonight: More of what we always get from him: Provocation, Prevarication, Pontification.

He will provoke Kamala Harris with insults and mischaracterizations about her character, her experience and her job performance to distract her and get her to move away from discussing her position on issues. Every minute she spends addressing Trump is a minute she didn't get to spend answering the question and explaining her policy positions and planned agenda as President.

In answering questions, Trump will assert his most outlandish lies to date, about his record, elections, Democrats, Harris, and anything else his diminutive, fizzled-out brain can think of. Even Pinocchio wouldn't be able to keep up with him. Even the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz will know Trump is lying out of desperation, lack of preparedness and egotistical belief he is a better gauge of what will sell to the American public than his advisors. [More...]

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a new Indictment against Donald Trump in the January 6 case in the District of Columbia. (available here).

The charges are the same. But to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision saying his presidential acts were immune, the government changed the roles of those involved, and the wording and facts are different. The Indictment doesn't refer to acts while he was in the oval office, and instead uses his acts while he was just a candidate.

While prosecutors did not drop the four initial charges from the new indictment, they added more language that describes Trump as a "candidate," and not president, while describing others as "acting in their private capacity" and not "government officials."

[More...]

Newsflash, read all about it at the Orange County (California) Republican Party's website. Donald Trump is coming to Aspen for dinner this Saturday at an as-yet unpublished location to raise money for his campaign. The event is a joint project of 48 state Republican parties (Colorado is not even one of them).

I know it's hard to believe, but the cost of serving as a dinner "host" is $500,000 per couple, which can either be a direct donation of funds or raising that amount from others. So far, 8 individuals/couples have signed on as hosts. [More...]

Donald Trump has read his tea leaves and believes he will be convicted. Not because he is guilty, of course, but because the judge is corrupt. Outside the courthouse, after the jury began deliberating, he said:

"Mother Teresa could not beat these charges," Trump said, "These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged."

I've been waiting for the jury instructions to be released before commenting on the strength of the case. (They are now available here) Although, as it turns out, the jury will not have a copy of the instructions in the deliberation room. That strikes me as very odd in such a complex case. [More...]

Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has lost his motion to move the Georgia state criminal case against him to federal court.

"The court finds that the color of the Office of the White House Chief of Staff did not include working with or working for the Trump campaign, except for simply coordinating the president's schedule, traveling with the president to his campaign events, and redirecting communications to the campaign."

Meadows has filed an emergency motion to appeal to the 11th Circuit. It is available here.

The Judges 49 page ruling is here. [More...]

Donald Trump's Atlanta's lawyers were at the courthouse in Atlanta Monday hammering out a bond agreement with prosecutors in his election interference case. This is the case where he and 18 others, including Rudy Giuliani (I smile every time I type the words "defendant Rudy Giuliani") are charged with violations of Georgia's version of the federal organized crime statute known as "RICO".

Here's the final bond order , signed by the Judge.

The $200,000. is no big deal since Trump can elect to pay just 10% of it. And the Secret Service may well prevail over jailers at the Fulton County Jail as to whether Trump has to be mug-shotted and booked just like ordinary defendants. rules for ordinary defendants and refuse to allow him from being booked at the infamous, filthy, violent Fulton County jail, which just last month was notified by the DOJ's that the agency's civil rights division has placed the jail under investigation over its filthy conditions and abhorrent treatment of inmates, including the mentally ill.

The "non-financial conditions" of the bond order are what puts the zing to the court's order. The full 3 page order is here. [More...]

Here is the 16 page Indictment returned against Donald Trump - 34 felony counts of falsifying business records with (1) the intent to defraud and (2) the intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission of this other crime. There is no conspiracy charge. Each count pertains to payments to Michael Cohen to reimburse him for the money Cohen advanced to Stormy Daniels through a shell corporation he set up for that purpose. Each payment is charged three (or four) different ways under the identical statute. For example, Count One alleges: [More...]

The time has come to leave Donald Trump behind. He's toast. The fat lady sang. The Supreme Court is not coming to his rescue. He's lived high on our dime (and the dime of the Secret Service covering his and his kids' international and domestic travel) long enough.)

As soon as the media stops covering Donald Trump, which it will shortly, he'll be on his way to somewhere like Abu Dhabi faster than the speeding bullet trains in Asia can get him there. (He can't possibly be dumb enough to think he's safe from arrest at Mar-a-Lago and he would never be able to adapt to a non-opulent lifestyle or a place where English isn't widely spoken). So why is he hanging on to his desk in the oval office so tightly? What is he afraid of? My theory is five-fold: [More....]

In a two-punch whammy this week, Donald Trump brought back the death penalty and then, by packing the Supreme Court with conservative judges, got approval to use billions of dollars awarded to the military for his useless border wall, even though Congress had refused to authorize the expenditure.

Donald Trump's message to the American people: "You can eat dirt, or you can eat sh!t."

This should be the final nail in Trump's political coffin, but the Democrats seem in disarray. Until some of the 20 or so Democrats who think they should be President realize they are too old, or don't have a chance or are in it only to bring attention to one or two of their pet issues, it will likely be another lost opportunity.

(Hat tip on the quote to Teresa Mendoza in the antepenultimate epidsode of the fictional La Reina del Sur 2, referring to a most corrupt DEA agent who will kill anyone who gets in the way of the DEA's plan to choose the next President of Mexico. The Finale is Monday night.)

This is Time Magazine's cover this week featuring Donald Trump, Jr. Check out the larger version and the white writing on it.

Here's a funny article from the UK Independent comparing him to "Fredo" Corleone.

Shepard Smith has long been one of the few news anchors/talk show hosts I enjoy watching (and listening to in the car.) This rant against the Trump Camp for its "lies after lies" and his take on Donald Trump, Jr.'s evolving explanations of the Russian meeting is making the rounds. It's one of his best. Media Matters has the transcript.
[More...]

One week after the election, UnPresident Donald Trump shows he's not ready for primetime. His team is in utter disarray. It's one fiasco after another. The entire Republican party is mired in one crisis after another. And, barring an Indictment or impeachment of Donald Trump in both houses, the majority of the electorate -- who voted for Hillary -- are stuck with him and his seemingly rudderless ship for the next four years. [More...]

Sweden’s neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) held its largest march ever on Saturday, celebrating the election of Donald Trump, which it calls the start of a world revolution. The NMR has been promoting "an openly racist and anti-Semitic doctrine" since 1997.

Per Öberg, the Nazi group’s press chief, told the gathered crowd that Donald Trump’s election was a sign that a world revolution was beginning.

Also speaking was Vera Oredsson, a lifelong Nazi who was a member of the Hitler youth as a child growing up in Nazi Germany, and Fredrik Vejdeland, the group’s head of strategy.

More than 600 participated (despite being the snowiest Movember day in Stockholm in 111 years. [More...])