Trump finally reveals his true abortion position: Lying to women to win elections

By Kaili Joy Gray for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, April 08, 2024 at 8:58:55a MDT 

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Donald Trump finally has an official position on abortion, and his official position is exactly the kind of lying, incoherent, inconsistent, nonsensical ridiculousness you’d expect from him.

Trump released a nearly five-minute video Monday, in which he profusely praises himself for ending Roe v. Wade, declaring that overturning the 50-year constitutional right was something “that all legal scholars—both sides—wanted, and, in fact, demanded.”

It's fun watching Trump's Truth Social flush down the toilet.

Utter nonsense? Of course. But Trump never lets anything as inconvenient as the truth get in the way of his rambling, semi-scripted videos.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” he continues, “the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land—in this case, the law of the state.”

Sure, now abortion is available where everyone wants it—except in the 21 states where people want it and yet it is banned or restricted because lawmakers decided it shouldn’t be. Details, details.

In fact, since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the number of Americans who identify as “pro-choice” has increased, according to Gallup. And only 13% of those polled say abortion should be illegal in all cases—which hasn’t stopped states throughout the country from making abortion illegal in all or almost all cases.

And yet, according to Trump, “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.” That would be the same people who don’t want abortion to be illegal? Or are we talking about a different people whose will is supposedly now represented across the land?

Maybe it’s the will of the people in Kansas, who in 2022 rejected an attempt to pave the way for an abortion ban. Or perhaps it’s the will of the people in Ohio, who resoundingly voted for a constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion, despite lawmakers deciding that abortion should be banned at six weeks.

“Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing,” Trump says, without actually explaining what the “right thing” is. Is the “right thing” for Republican-controlled states to abide by the will of the people in their states and protect abortion rights? Nah, that can’t be it.

“Like Ronald Reagan,” Trump says in the very next sentence, “I am strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.” Exceptions to what? Trump doesn’t say, of course. But you can fill in the blanks pretty easily. Exceptions to abortion bans.

In other words, he says without saying, he’s just fine with abortion bans as long as you have these limited mythical “exceptions.” How do we know they’re mythical? Because doctors in states where abortion is banned—with exceptions—are struggling to figure out exactly how to provide care to their pregnant patients.

In Texas, for example, Kate Cox sued for the right to an abortion under the supposed exceptions to the state’s ban. Despite a court agreeing that she was entitled to an abortion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to prosecute any hospitals or doctors who provided such care. The state Supreme Court sided with Paxton. Cox ended up fleeing the state in order to exercise her will.

Hers is just one of countless stories of women who’ve been trying to exercise their will, as Trump now suggests they should, but have come up against the will of Republican lawmakers and courts. What is Trump’s answer to that?

“You must follow your heart in this issue,” Trump says. What does that mean? Who knows! 

Will this new official Trump position on abortion actually answer any questions or appease anyone? Nope!

The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America was quick to condemn Trump. 

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president. Not that such disappointment means the group isn’t all in on supporting Trump, though, because Dannenfelser also noted that the group will still work to “defeat President Biden.”

Does Trump’s new official position change anything at all? Nope! 

“The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that, and it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable,” Trump said just last month. Did he walk that back in his Monday video? No, he did not. Did he say he no longer supports some kind of ban? No, he did not. Did he say he would vote against any such ban, were such a ban to land on his desk? No. He. Did. Not.

So what is Trump’s actual position on abortion?

“We must win,” Trump says at the end of his video. “We have to win.”

And there you have it. Abortion is a losing issue for Republican politicians because while they are thrilled about the end of Roe, the majority of Americans are not. It’s why Republicans are trying like hell to avoid talking about abortion at all, after aggressively campaigning on “life” for decades. It’s why they’re scared that abortion could be on the ballot this November in a number of states and could turn out a lot of people whose will is to protect abortion rights—and perhaps even to punish those Republican lawmakers who’ve fought to take those rights away.

Does Trump really care about abortion one way or another? No. But even he knows that the same old anti-abortion rhetoric Republicans have successfully deployed in the past doesn’t work anymore. That’s why, in the same video, he can encourage people to follow their hearts and talk about the limited exceptions to abortion bans that he approves of. 

And what will he do if he manages to weasel his way back into the White House, thanks to, in no small part, the efforts of anti-abortion activists who will express their “disappointment” but still work to raise money and turn out the vote for Trump? Will he tell those groups to get lost? Will he refuse to sign any anti-abortion legislation? Will he refuse to issue any executive orders that restrict abortion access? 

Or will he do what he has always done, with a shrug and a sneer, dismissing the actual will of the actual people to give the most radical groups in the country exactly what they've always wanted?

And he's still bragging about killing Roe v. Wade.

Supreme Court filled with corrupt stooges for Trump and the morbidly rich

Image by Edward Lich from Pixabay

So, What Can We Do About the Naked Corruption of the Supreme Court?

By thomhartmann

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Friday, April 05, 2024 at 9:12:21a MDT 

 

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When the Mifepristone case came before the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito bizarrely brought up their desire to see the Comstock Act again enforced.

Even arguably worse, they’re in part responsible for giving Trump months of delay in the case Jack Smith has brought against him for trying to overthrow our form of government. As Liz Cheney, apparently quite pissed off at the Court herself, said this week:

“[Trump] now is pushing this idea that a president should have complete immunity against any criminal prosecution for anything he does in office and he’s pushed this appeal to the Supreme Court; I think it’s very important that the Supreme Court recognizes what he’s doing is a delaying tactic.

“It cannot be the case that a president of the United States can attempt to overturn an election and seize power and that our justice system is incapable of holding a trial and holding him to account before the next election.”

Actually, with a Supreme Court filled with corrupt stooges for the morbidly rich, it can be the case. It is, in fact, the case: they’ve given him as much delay as they legally can. So, what can we do about the naked corruption on this Court?

If Donald Trump wins the White House this fall, in all probability both Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito will retire to let the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo’s people pick two replacements in their 40s.

But if Biden wins, Democrats should be ready to help them both out, too.

But how? By using political theater!

Richard Nixon pioneered this strategy back in the early 1970s, when the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Abe Fortas, was a thorn in the side of the Republicans and the billionaires and big corporations who supported them.

His strategy was straightforward: launch a formal investigation into allegations of corruption against Fortas that the GOP had manufactured — yes, they were totally bogus, as time and historians have proven — that put enough pressure on him that he resigned.

In the case of Thomas and Alito, there’s no need to invent anything; there’s abundant evidence of corruption already on the public record. And there are a ton of questions about Kavanaugh. Nonetheless, the history is enlightening and can help provide a roadmap for change.

It started in the last year of LBJ’s presidency.

In June of 1968, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren — a liberal who’d been appointed by Dwight Eisenhower — decided to resign from the Court so that President Lyndon Johnson would have a full six months to replace him with another liberal.

LBJ proposed elevating the only Jewish member of the US Supreme Court, Abe Fortas, to become the new Chief Justice (and Homer Thornberry to fill Warren’s empty seat), but racist and antisemitic “conservatives” like Thurmond — and presidential candidate Richard Nixon — saw the upcoming hearings as a grand opportunity.

They postponed Thornberry’s nomination, front-loading the hearings about putting Fortas in charge of the Court, and then ran an inquisition into Fortas over a $15,000 speaking fee he’d taken to address a college group.  (Clarence Thomas has also taken $15,000 speaking fees, and more, for the record.)

With that “scandalous” payment — and his vote on the Court to legalize pornography — as the excuses, Republicans and racist Southern “conservative” Dixiecrats like Thurmond arrayed a Senate filibuster to block the liberal and Jewish Fortas’ elevation to Chief Justice. 

It dragged out for months; on October 2, 1968 it became obvious the filibuster couldn’t be broken and Fortas withdrew his name from consideration for Chief Justice, although he planned to remain on the Court as an Associate Justice like his peers.

By then it was too late for LBJ to elevate another liberal to Chief Justice (Warren stayed on the Court for another half-year to provide continuity) and also too late for LBJ’s nominee Thornberry to even be considered to replace Warren’s empty seat before the presidential election four weeks later.

But that was just the beginning.  

Once Nixon came into office on January 20, 1969 he put ending the Court’s “liberal” bent at the top of his agenda.  That meant not only replacing Warren (who stayed on until June 23, 1969), but, to tip the Court conservative, getting rid of it’s most liberal member, Abe Fortas.

Attorney General John Mitchell ordered the Justice Department to begin an investigation into Fortas’ wife, Carolyn Agger, who was a lawyer with the DC firm that had previously employed Fortas. 

Rightwing media had claimed — without evidence — that “documents that might be found in a safe in her office” might prove she was involved in a tax-evasion scheme.

There was never any evidence whatsoever, either of Fortas or his wife being corrupt. It was and is not illegal to take a speaking fee: members of the Court do so routinely today. And there was nothing incriminating in her safe.

But Richard Nixon, John Mitchell, and Abe Fortas knew the old legal saw: “A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich.”

Mitchell had also dredged up another payment that Fortas had earned, this one $20,000 a year for serving on the board of a charitable foundation (not uncommon for high-end DC lawyers then or now).

This was also totally legal (and nothing compared to the millions of dollars Ginni Thomas has taken from rightwing groups and Harlan Crow since her husband was put on the Court) but Fortas gave back the money anyway.  

Not only did that not help: his returning the money was, Nixon charged, proof that it was corrupt money in the first place!

Mitchell then announced he was going to have a Justice Department lawyer named William Rehnquist convene a grand jury to look into the “crimes” that right-wingers were claiming Fortas and his wife had committed.

As Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean, who was there and knew the players, wrote in his book on the era (The Rehnquist Choice):

“Did the Justice Department have the goods on Fortas? Not even close. Mitchell’s talk was pure bluff. … Lyndon Johnson’s Justice Department had investigated this question [back when Fortas was nominated for Chief Justice in 1968] and found nothing improper…. Reopening of the matter by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department was purely a means to torture Fortas.”

But faced with the possibility of his wife being dragged through the mud and both of them spending years and a fortune defending themselves, Fortas threw in the towel.  He resigned from the Supreme Court five months into Nixon’s presidency on May 14, 1969. 

With their mission accomplished, Mitchell immediately dropped the threat of the grand jury. As John Dean noted:

“The Fortas resignation meant that Richard Nixon now had two seats to fill on the Court: Earl Warren’s center seat and the seat of Associate Justice Abe Fortas, who was leaving the Court at fifty-nine years of age. It also meant that two of the Court’s most liberal justices were gone.

“Nixon’s aggressive posture toward the high court was paying off in a big way, with the help of John Mitchell and his hard-nosed team at the Justice Department, Rehnquist among them.”

Thus, Nixon was ultimately able to replace three liberal justices on the Court over the following two years, turning it from liberal to conservative (where it remains to this day) for the first time since 1937. They were Harry A. Blackmun (1970), Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1971), and William Rehnquist (1971).

Which brings us to today.

Aside from Clarence Thomas’ corrupt relationship with Crow, his wife has also benefited from a half-million dollars from Crow for her political activities as well as her apparently active participation in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.

This is the perfect setup for good old fashioned political theater, using the lesson Nixon left us. But, this time, doing it with integrity.

Instead of trying to impeaching Thomas — an almost impossible lift, given the composition of today’s Senate — the Biden administration and Democrats in the House and Senate would be better served investigating both the bribes he’s accepted as well as Ginni’s corruption and attempted sedition. 

Sam Alito is compromised by billionaires and wealthy foundations in many ways similar to Thomas, albeit not as egregious.

And Brett Kavanaugh has so many skeletons in his closet — that could be forced into the open with a grand jury or congressional investigation — that, like Fortas, he may be unwilling to suffer the outcome of a genuine congressional or grand jury investigation.

(There’s also the $10 million Chief Justice Roberts’ wife has taken from law firms with business before the Court, although I think it unlikely he’ll be as easily taken down.)

Replacing Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh would take the balance of the Court back to where it was in 1970, before Nixon decided to drive Fortas out with bogus charges.

If they’re lucky — or strategic — we may be able to get an Abe Fortas outcome and clean up the reputation of the Court in one fell stroke.

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BUNNY BULLSH*T: Everything the GQP says and MAGAs believe is a Damnable, Deliberate Lie

 

By Frank Vyan Walton

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Friday, April 05, 2024 at 10:12:11a MDT

  

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We know this is the case.  I’ve addressed this before, but I’ve come to realize with some recent examples that the GQP (Grand Q-anon Party) already knows that everything they are promoting, everything they are saying to the American people - is a lie.  It’s a lie made on purpose.

All of these people can not possibly be this stupid. And if they are, that truly doesn’t say anything good.

We recently had the GQP freak out that Biden was “disrespectful” to Christians by declaring that Transgender Day of Visibility fell on Easter.

That’s right - the Republican Transgender person was upset about Transgender Day insulting Easter. You can not make this shit up.

Seriously, people?

I had my last post about how tough it is  “Living in a country full of Magas” and one of them responded with.

Rocco 7 hrs ago

Oh no! People who's opinions are different than yours??! Oh my...how challenged you must feel.

No, it’s not about a matter of “opinion” — it’s about matters of fact.  We have them and they -  mostly - don’t. I know that they don’t accept that view, and don’t accept facts from credible or verified sources — but that’s exactly the point.  They think all those sources are “tainted” and “compromised” - but they have no evidence of that other than that they don’t like the answers they provide and it functions as yet another level of their deep sad paranoia. Then they do accept and believe the most crackpot bullshit on Earth without evidence or attribution because they choose to. Those delusions make them feel better.

And when you go “Yeah, sure the media/source is maybe sometimes ‘biased’ but where is the proof that the information they’re providing in this case is wrong? Where is the evidence they’re incorrect this time? Where are your *better* sources?”  

They can’t answer.  There is no factual argument. Just “opinions.”

It’s not a battle of bad fact vs. better fact - it’s facts vs feelings. Doing all this makes them “feel” better - while they tell us “Fuck your feelings.” Simply put, they want to believe that crap, that’s all.  It makes them think they’re the “smart ones,” that they’ve “cracked the code” of the dreaded “Deep State” and the “Left-Wing media” when they demonstrably haven’t and aren’t.  They pre-judge information based on their opinion of the source. Which is bigotry. They don’t even try to consider the character of that information’s specific accuracy.

They just prefer to believe ridiculous paranoid lies over verifiable facts. That. is. all.

We frankly don’t even live or exist in the same functional reality. Yes, it’s hard dealing with people who choose to exist in a delusional fantasy. It’s basically impossible.

And it’s not a coincidence or accident that Fox News spent hours on shit like this.

Matthew Gertz @MattGertz

Fox News and Newsmax combined for four hours of programming -- nearly 80 segments -- in an anti-Biden freak out over Transgender Day of Visibility coinciding with Easter.

1:00 PM · Apr 2, 2024

Florida’s Voice @FLVoiceNews Apr 1

BREAKING: DeSantis goes off on Joe Biden for declaring "Transgender Day of Visibility" on Easter, then claiming he didn't do it "Who's running the presidency? Is it a bunch of woke, 20 something White House staffers? [...] I don't know who's in charge. The fact that he's not…

ustonymc@ustonymc

Transgender Day of Visibility? Joe, one day in the future you will have to explain to God, face to face, why you proposed this despicable day of mental illness on the day He rose from the dead! GOOD LUCK! 3:56 AM · Apr 1, 2024

Yeah but…

Yeah, those pesky “Facts” amirite?

It’s not the case that this was an innocent mistake.  You can tell because as soon as News agencies and even the White House pointed this out - that March 31st has been “Transgender Day” for the last 15 years and Joe Biden didn’t do anything different here than what Donald Trump did four times - they ignore that fact. Even though the Daily Caller retracted this bogus claim - the GOP persists.

This is not a bug within the GQP system - it’s a deliberate feature.

This is all on purpose.

And this historical cartoon is from his presidential days. Thousands more lies have been told since then.  And all that ketchup splattered on the walls...

 

DARTAGNAN: "The whole line of 'immigrant crime' is contrived bullshit."

 

Liar

Trump lied about talking to murder victim's family. They say he never did.

By Dartagnan

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Tuesday, April 02, 2024 at 8:59:12p MDT

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Yes, I know. The first two words in the title to this post say it all: Trump lied.

Of course he did. He lies all the time.

Trump and his allies find a new way to be extra racist

Why should he care? it’s a pattern for him. People call him on it, and then they forget it. His supporters don’t care, why should we, right?

Well, yeah, except that it might matter to the victim’s family. But they’re just roadkill for Trump. More fodder for his lies.

As reported by Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Donald Trump used his campaign event in Michigan on Tuesday to denounce what he called “Biden’s border bloodbath,” zeroing in on the case of a young woman killed by someone immigration officials say had entered the country illegally.

“She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”

But Garcia’s sister, acting as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other immediate relatives — and rebuked the GOP presidential nominee’s effort to make the case part of his calls for a border crackdown.

“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” the victim’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”

Good question. When will Trump bring up the largest increase in rates of homicide ever recorded in American history on his watch? Or the once a month “most deadly mass shootings” that occurred, again, on his watch?

I guess those stats must have escaped him. But did he really have to make up a total lie about it? Pretending he talked to the victim’s family? How would you feel if he did that with your family?

As noted by Glenn Kessler, also writing for the Washington Post:

Never mind that violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. Trump, as he often did during his presidency, is using anecdotal evidence to make an emotional case against undocumented immigrants.

Of course, this must be liberal bias. A publication like Scientific American couldn’t be right, could they?

Studies overwhelmingly find no evidence that U.S. immigrants, including those who are undocumented, commit more crimes than native-born Americans. And now a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA that draws from a detailed and well-sourced data set comes to an even more dramatic conclusion. It reports that between 2012 and 2018, compared with their U.S.-born neighbors, undocumented immigrants in Texas were less than half as likely to be arrested for violent crimes or drug offenses and less than a quarter as likely to be arrested for property crimes.

“Simply put, we found that undocumented immigrants have lower felony arrest rates than both legal immigrants and, especially, native-born U.S. citizens,” says study co-author Michael Light, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The whole line of “immigrant crime” is contrived bullshit. It’s all Fox News, “give-us-clicks” inspired propaganda. That’s all it is, and with Trump and his Republican party, that’s all it’s ever been. It’s the same pattern followed by all would-be demagogues. Demonize the immigrants, the “other.” And I’ll “protect” you.

I really, really hope this country doesn’t fall for it.

Immigrants are "just roadkill for Trump. More fodder for his lies."

Lifelong Republican blasts Trump for sharing violent depiction of bound Biden

 

This is the image GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump promoted:

 

Jerry Olsen

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Lifelong Republican here.

This is the image GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump promoted.

It’s one thing for an image like this to be created by some random Biden hater. It’s another thing entirely for this image to be promoted by a US Presidential candidate. For most of the history of the United States, this sort of behavior would never have been even remotely “okay” for either Republicans or Democrats.

But in 2016, we entered the Trump era. Donald Trump defied all the norms of conduct, civility, honesty, and decorum that American voters had always expected and demanded from a Presidential candidate.

The majority of Republicans, practically without even realizing it, allowed their standards to plummet in order to accommodate Trump. They were conditioned to view Trump’s boorish behavior as “toughness”. Even worse, many Democrats and Independents were apathetic about the possibility that such an unfit person might seriously become our President — and they failed to do their best to prevent that from happening. Thus, Donald Trump became President of the United States.

So, here we are in 2024, and Trump is again the GOP nominee to become president, despite his unprecedented behavior. No previous generation of Americans would have ever tolerated a President who has done the things Trump has done:

• A botched COVID response, featuring many lies and defying disease experts.
• Having a heretic “Spiritual Advisor”, who says “Saying no to Trump is saying no to God”.
• Bragging about trying to fu#k a married woman, and that he can grab women by the pu$$y because he’s such a big star.
• Wanting to stop ballot counting on election night, declaring himself the winner (he lost).
• Inciting a riot at the Capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the lost election.
• Saluting those rioters and calling them true patriots, promising to pardon them.
• Facing numerous criminal or civil indictments, including election tampering, stealing documents, and defrauding the US.
• Losing a defamation lawsuit from a woman he sexually abused.
• Losing a massive financial fraud case (and having the CFO of his business plead guilty to numerous fraud charges).
• Causing an utterly dysfunctional GOP-led congress that would let the government shut down or default on paying our debts just out of spite. Trump compelled them to block their own immigration reform bill! They can barely even elect a Speaker.
• Having his own former VP accuse him of putting himself above the Constitution.
• Selling crap to his followers to raise money ($400 gold shoes, NFTs of Trump depicted as a superhero, $60 Bibles).
• Doing a commercial for Goya Foods from the Oval Office. Also calling for a boycott of a US Company because they have a policy disallowing employees to wear partisan political attire (such as MAGA hats).
• Going to a disaster site to see victims of hurricane flooding, and throwing rolls of paper towels at them.
• Referring to political enemies as “vermin” and speaking of migrants as people “who poison the blood of our country”.
• Causing so much division that extreme expressions of hatefulness and violence have become normalized. For example, a Presidential nominee promoting an image of the current President being tied up in the back of a pickup truck.

That Trump is again a Presidential candidate with a very realistic chance of winning reflects how far the USA has fallen since we were foolish enough to let Trump become President in 2016.

Fortunately, Democrats and independents improved greatly in 2020, coming out to vote in record numbers to stop this madness.

It remains to be seen what happens in 2024. This election will be our legacy:

(1) We can firmly state that such deplorable behavior will not tolerated by a US President.

(2) Or we can encourage more deplorable behavior, and cause it to become even more normalized in the USA, causing even deeper divisions and violence.

Trump team shrugs off his latest call to violence - this time against President Biden

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday, April 02, 2024 at 8:45:03a MDT 

 

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Donald Trump threatening violence against the country and even average citizens has become commonplace in America's political landscape. From “bedlam” to “bloodbath” to attacking the daughter of the judge presiding over his hush-money case, Trump's penchant for putting American citizens at risk has continued unabated since he stoked the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But after suffering few if any real consequences for endangering the safety of others, Trump went a step further last Friday—sharing a video on his social media platform that included an image of President Joe Biden bound and gagged.

The response from prosecutors and national security experts was immediate. 

"I know from experience how the Secret Service interacts with people who make threats against POTUS, even ones they can't carry out," Joyce Vance, a law professor and former federal prosecutor, tweeted Friday. "This, from a former President, is totally out of bounds. It's time to stop letting Trump break the rules. Long past time."

Former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi replied to Vance, writing, "If you or I did this, we’d have a knock on the door." Figliuzzi also tagged the Secret Service on his tweet—in case the outfit thinks no one was paying attention to their response, or lack thereof.

The Trump campaign shrugged off the controversy. 

"That picture was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway," spokesperson Steven Cheung said. 

Which apparently means it's perfectly fine that Trump circulated the graphic imagery to his cult followers as widely as possible. 

Cheung also offered an eye-for-an-eye defense, saying that Democrats are "actually weaponizing the justice system against him."

Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said the tweet was just one more example of Trump stoking violence. 

"This image from Donald Trump is the type of crap you post when you’re calling for a bloodbath or when you tell the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by,'" Tyler said in a statement. "Trump is regularly inciting political violence and it’s time people take him seriously — just ask the Capitol Police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6."

Voters can count Trump threatening the sitting president of the United States as yet another instance in which he's getting a special pass on behavior that would have warranted a Secret Service visit for virtually any other American. Surely, Trump would have complained quite loudly and publicly if such a visit had occurred. 

As Vance noted, Trump is currently out on bond awaiting trial in four separate criminal cases.  

"It’s time for the people with authority to do so to deal with him," she wrote in her Substack, Civil Discourse, over the weekend. "Trump is totally, and uniquely among our former presidents, out of bounds. It's time to stop letting him break the rules. We’re entitled to more, not less, accountability from our presidents than from average citizens."

Trump is playing with fire, and he doesn’t seem to care. And since authorities don’t have the backbone to hold him to account, someone besides him could suffer the consequences of his actions.

This so-called human gives cavemen a bad name.  Here he hauls Lady Liberty off to the woodshed to grab her by the you-know-what.  It was only a matter of time before he depicted Biden with a bullet hole in his head.

From 'big lie' to big grift, Trump’s destroying the RNC

Donald Trump

By Hunter for Daily Kos

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Friday, March 29, 2024 at 4:30:06p MDT 

 

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If Donald Trump knows how to do anything, it’s destroy a business. And while the Republican National Committee might not be a “business” in the conventional sense, Trump and his family are doing their level best to bring their special magic to the operation. Yup, they’re gonna burn the whole place down.

On Tuesday night, The Washington Post broke the news that prospective new RNC hires were being given a new loyalty test.

In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states—and who are reapplying for jobs—about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the applicants are based in key swing states.

“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.

The 2020 election was not stolen, of course. This lie was propagated by Donald Trump, a collection of now-indicted lawyers, aides, and hangers-on, as well as dozens of Republican members of Congress to delegitimize or even invalidate the election’s results. Through investigations and numerous court filings, we now know who constructed the lies, who spread them, what they were meant to achieve, and how the key players knew there was no damn evidence for any of it.

So prospective RNC hires were given this litmus test, according to the Post. It suggests that if the hires won’t parrot pro-sedition propaganda on Dear Leader's behalf, there's no room for them in Republicanism. And despite a bit of generic bluster from an RNC spokesperson, nobody's much denying that.

It’s just the latest episode in the Trump team’s quest to both grift and disembowel the Republican Party. Trump helped toss former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel aside earlier this year, even though McDaniel had been the loyalest of toadies for years, likely ruining future career opportunities for her in the process. The new RNC leaders are the conspiracy-promoting Michael Whatley and Trump's conspiracy-promoting daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

The new loyalty tests may in fact be merely a natural result of putting unqualified and not-particularly-bright conspiracy theorists in charge. Lara Trump may have stepped onto the scene as yet another of Trump's various, ever-grifting, off-brand Ivankas, but she's rapidly made a name for herself as—I think this bears repeating for emphasis—an unqualified and not-particularly-bright conspiracy theorist.

The new leadership team immediately purged RNC staffers while announcing that its operations would be functionally merged with Trump's presidential campaign, moving much of committee operations down to Palm Beach, Florida, the site of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, so as to better bask in his crooked glow. The laid-off staffers permitted to reapply for their old jobs appear to be undergoing these same loyalty tests, so it's fair to conclude that the new RNC will consist entirely of people willing to back Trump's authoritarian agenda with whatever addled and vicious lies he invents. 

At the same time, Trump and his family appear too focused on scraping money out of everyone they meet to care about the outcome of all this. His moves to gather up the RNC's tattered shreds and absorb them into his campaign is mainly meant to siphon off money for his own legal bills. He and his allies have been pretty damn open about funneling RNC funds to Trump’s Save America PAC, the vehicle paying those bills.

The end effect of all of this will remain the same. 

One effect, however, is already apparent. A second Washington Post article, published on Thursday, covers Republicans’ frantic efforts to keep their early voting and mail-in voting operations alive even as Trump continues to publicly bash mail-in voting as "totally corrupt." But these efforts appear largely aspirational for the time being. The Post quotes new RNC Chair Michael Whatley vowing that the party will pour money into such operations—but the RNC itself is running dangerously low on cash, in part because of the diversion of funds into auxiliary accounts that Trump can dip into to pay his many legal bills.

How important is mail-in voting to Trump’s chances to reinstall himself in the White House? The Post has a whole lotta quotes from people who think Republicans can’t do without it.

“We hear it at the doors, some Republicans are still very reluctant now to drop their ballots in the mail,” said Jon Seaton, an Arizona Republican strategist who advised the state’s Republican senator John McCain. “President Trump clearly has a great deal of influence with Republican voters, so his support of mail-in voting will have a real impact on how many Republicans ultimately return their ballots by mail.”

And:

Cody Hall, a GOP strategist who is a senior adviser to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), said Trump’s rhetoric against mail-in ballots hurt him in the state in 2020, and “it’s totally possible it cost him the last election.” Hall said he also hasn’t seen signs yet of a dedicated GOP campaign to encourage early voting in Georgia this year.

And:

“It will be a huge factor in Pennsylvania,” said David Urban, a Trump ally who ran the former president’s efforts in Pennsylvania in 2016. “If we’re not playing, we do so at our own peril.”

Mail-in voting could well make the difference in multiple swing states, but the RNC then wouldn’t be able to devote that money to Trump’s legal problems or general greed. And how’s he going to feel about that? Again, the Post can rely only on aspirational claims from staffers.

A person close to Trump said the hope is that Trump will largely leave the topic alone publicly and not sabotage the efforts.

Oh yeah, buddy, good luck with that. There's a string of judges who haven't been able to get him to shut up, even with the threat of jail time hanging of his head, but I'm sure aides will be able to stop him from bashing his own critical-to-success get-out-the-vote operations by, uh, reminding him not to. Maybe shove a cake in front of his face and hope it takes him past the election to finish eating it?

This is not a legitimate party anymore. It is an organized crime ring aspiring to bring about a post-democratic government—and Republican voters can't plausibly claim they don't know that's exactly what they're voting for.

The grifting, the gutting, the purging, the purity tests—where will all that end up for the organization responsible for electing Republicans? I’m not sure Trump cares. It’s only about him.

Trump has turned the Evil 6 on the Supreme Court into kangaroos.  Now it's everybody else who consider themselves Republicans.  Don't think.  Don't reason.  Just do as you're told.  Say what you're told...especially that the election was stolen.