Hopefully you missed it, but Donald Trump had a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson this week. And apparently, Jimmy Kimmel was not impressed. For example, Trump claimed that “the biggest problem we have in the whole world” is “not global warming. It’s nuclear warming”. There’s just one problem with this problem. It doesn’t exist. It’s not even a thing. It is less real than “covfefe”.
Kimmel comes right out and says it: “It did make one thing very clear: The fact that Donald Trump is a profoundly stupid person. I think it’s important to remember that. He does not have the best words, he’s not a stable genius, that mental competency test he’s always bragging that he passed? It’s something the average 7-year-old could pass.”
There’s so much more to this, and I suggest that you watch it.
It looks like the chickens are coming home to roost.
Not only that, but a new poll from ABC/Ipsos (done after the indictment) shows Trump with a favorable rating of 25%, and an unfavorable rating of 61% (with 13% with no opinion or don’t know). I believe that is the lowest rating Trump has ever had. And that was before the cheese slipped completely off the Cheetos’ head.
Yesterday morning, I published two cartoons about Donald Trump getting indicted. I actually wrote it the night before, but published it early the next morning. And lo and behold, a few hours later, Trump was indicted. Coincidence? I like to think not!
But I know what you are thinking. Trump has been able to wiggle out of just about everything in his life, and this time will be no different.
However, it is already different. Trump is now a loser. Since the Republicans became enthralled by Trump, they have lost the last presidential election, lost the Senate, and did much worse than expected in the House. I’d bet money that the majority of Republican politicians, who right now are screaming bloody murder about the indictment, are actually secretly hoping that Trump goes away forever. Their only concern is not upsetting his base.
Speaking of Trump’s base, note that there were no violent protests yesterday from the MAGA faithful. After all, after the 2020 election Trump incited them to riot and foment insurrection at the Capitol, and a bunch of them went to jail for it. And people died. Maybe they are thinking twice now.
In addition, even back in 2016, the thing that got Trump in the most trouble was the Access Hollywood tape, containing the famous line “Grab ’em by the pussy.” The current indictment is also all about Trump’s philandering ways. That will piss off some voters.
Also, this is the first time that Trump has been in serious jeopardy. This is a criminal indictment which contains more than 30 charges. Yes, Trump has been able to weasel his way out of civil lawsuits by settling out of court, and also out of political charges, including two impeachments (which are political, not legal). But the only thing that needs to happen here is for a jury to convict Trump of a crime. If this indictment doesn’t do the job, there are at least two more criminal indictments in Georgia and at the federal level, close to being announced, and which are slam dunks. After all, we have actual recorded phone calls of Trump attempting to overturn the election in Georgia, and the undisputed facts that Trump stole classified documents illegally, and then lied about it.
Today, Electoral-Vote has a very thorough article about why this time is different. If you don’t believe me, give it a read. You’ll be glad you did!
Even if Trump avoids going to jail (which I don’t think he can do), the indictments and the evidence that those indictments present will alienate more voters. Trump lost the 2020 election, and even in 2016 he lost the popular vote, and the electoral college was very close. If Republicans still nominate Trump for the next election, it is very likely he will not only lose (bigly!), but the Republicans will also lose control of both houses of Congress. Trump will continue to soak his base out of their money, but even they will tire of that.
So let’s celebrate the first indictment, and look forward to even more legal troubles for Trump.
Donald Trump is claiming that the investigations into his crimes are a “witch hunt” against a presidential candidate. But his followers don’t seem to see the gross hypocrisy of their (and Trump’s) calls in 2016 to throw Hillary Clinton in jail.
But even worse, Trump seems to be claiming that a president, even after he (or she) is no longer president, is above the law. That would make them a king, or at least a dictator!
I’m still hoping that Trump will end up in jail, and I will celebrate when he does, especially if his followers realize how idiotic they have been.
UPDATE: Trump was indicted today. The cheering has already begun:
From @maggieNYT: “A large group of former Trump Organization employees is sending texts quietly cheering the latest developments, a reminder of how many people have felt burned in various ways by Trump over the years.”
Two stories paint a dismal picture of the good old USA. The first is a study that shows that while life expectancy around the world decreased in 2020 due to COVID-19, most countries were able to reverse the trend and increase life expectancy by 2021, while the US continued to drop precipitously, down to the level it was in the 1990s. Not stated was the reason for the decline in the richest nation in the world. Was it due to people refusing to mask or social distance? Injecting bleach into their bodies? Mass shootings? Suicide? Who can guess?
Second was a new poll, done by WSJ/NORC that compared results from a poll in 1998 to ones from today. The number of people who say that Patriotism, Religion, Having Children, and Community Involvement is “very important” to them is dropping rapidly. The only “value” that is increasing in importance is Money. What a sorry state of affairs.
In 2008, the dot.com meltdown cratered a bunch of tech companies. In response, Obama got Dodd-Frank passed, to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Then Donald Trump got elected, and he repealed almost all of Dodd-Frank.
Now, the same thing that happened in 2008 happened again. If Dodd-Frank were still law, the Silicon Valley Bank would not have failed.
Hypocritically, Republicans are blaming the SVB failure on “woke culture”.
If you don’t believe me, just take “A Closer Look”:
Former VP Mike Pence is not the first member of the administration of Donald Trump to attack their former boss, but he is the first presidential contender to do so. At the annual Gridiron dinner for journalists, Pence said:
History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.
Pence also attacked Tucker Carlson of Fox News for portraying Jan 6 attack on the Capitol as a peaceful protest by “sightseers”:
Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by simply sightseeing. Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House. Tourists don’t threaten public officials.
Pence also lauded the press, and thanked them for their coverage of Jan 6:
We were able to stay at our post in part because you stayed at your post. The American people know what happened that day because you never stopped reporting.
Regardless of what I (or anyone else) thinks about Mike Pence, I thank him for speaking the truth. Especially after Tucker Carlson hypocritically kissed Trump’s ass and lied (again) to his listeners about the Capitol insurrection, just after the Dominion lawsuit publicly disclosed that around Jan 6, in internal communications at Fox News, Carlson said about Trump, “I hate him passionately.”
What gives me hope that this signals the rats are deserting Trump is that already Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) publicly agreed with Pence and condemned Trump.
We now know that the majority of Republican politicians and media dislike Trump and wish he would disappear, but they are too chickenshit to say it out loud.
I’m sure most of you know about the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox “News” Corporation, which claims that FNC defamed Dominion by spreading lies that Dominion’s voting machines deliberately switched Trump votes to Biden votes. You probably even saw the recent news that everyone at FNC — including management from the top on down, to their talking heads — knew that they were deliberately spreading lies. Yes, that includes Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the rest.
But FNC did it anyway, because after the 2020 presidential election, when FNC broadcast that Biden won in Arizona, their MAGA viewers started jumping ship for even crazier “news” organizations like Newsmax. FNC’s ratings were plummeting, and their stock price dropped.
In desperation, FNC did what they always do. They made up lies (or spread them) that their Trump loving viewers wanted to hear. They were so desperate that when one of their reporters accurately fact checked a tweet from Donald Trump, saying (the truth) that there was no evidence of any voting hardware that deleted or lost any votes, Carlson told others, “Please get her fired. Seriously… What the f*ck? I’m actually shocked… It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Yes, it is all about ratings and money.
This is no surprise. Way back in 2003, two Fox News reporters were fired because they refused to add information to a story that they and FNC knew was false. The reporters sued under the whistleblower law, but FNC countered that the whistleblower law did not apply because there was no law, rule, or regulation against a news organization knowingly lying in a news broadcast. Fox was admitting they were knowingly lying, but that was their right. Sadly, FNC won the case.
In the current suit, FNC again claims that it is their right to lie as much as they want. Isn’t it amazing that anyone actually believes anything they say? But this case is not about whistleblowing, it is about defamation, and the general consensus is that FNC will lose this case. I hope it costs them a lot of money and viewers. I’d be happy if it bankrupts them.
I have not watched a State of the Union speech for a long time, but for some reason I felt like watching Joe Biden’s speech tonight. I’m really glad I did. If you didn’t see it, you should. It starts off a little slow, but gets going soon. It had just the right amount of bipartisanship, along with some cute barbs that he threw at the GOP. Of course, they started yelling back at him, but that just made them look childish, to the point where even Kevin McCarthy started shushing his party members.
Overall, Biden looked strong and like he was having a good time, and enjoyed sparring with the Republicans. He even slyly backed them into agreeing to keep funding Medicare and Social Security.
One might even say that it is ballooning! Ever since the Chinese weather/spy balloon was sighted over the US and getting media attention, Republicans have been attacking Biden for how he handled it.
Marco Rubio said on CNN: “It’s not just the balloon. It’s the message they are trying to send the world: ‘we can do whatever we want and America can’t stop us.'”
Ted Cruz chimed in with: “I think this entire episode telegraphed weakness to Xi and the Chinese government.”
Republican congressman Michael Turner (R-OH) said waiting to shoot down the balloon until it would not hurt anyone on the ground “sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over.” He also called China’s decision to fly a balloon over the country “a crisis”.
And Donald Trump of course, weighed in, saying that he “would have shot it down before it entered the U.S.”
There’s just one problem. This is not the first time that Chinese balloons have drifted through US airspace. In fact, there were three known Chinese balloons that did just that during the Trump administration. Of course, Trump could use the excuse that since he never read anything, he didn’t know anything about the balloons.
There was also a previous balloon during the Biden administration. But it never came up in national media, so the Republicans ignored it.
I think it is safe to assume that the GOP’s plan is going to be to say anything that could possibly make Biden look bad. Even if it is something they themselves are guilty of. They have no interest in governing, or doing the right thing. It is all about power, and attacking their “enemy”, the Democrats.
UPDATE: Members of the Trump administration are claiming that there were no balloon incursions during Trump’s presidency. In response, the Biden administration is offering to brief them on past Chinese spy balloon incursions.
Not everyone is hurt by all this chaos, some thrive on it. You might have had problems affording gasoline, but Exxon Mobil had their most profitable year ever in 2022. Donald Trump did no campaigning until last weekend, instead having dinner with racists, but he still pulled in $9.5 million in donations. Republicans in Congress are threatening to crash the global economy by defaulting on the US debt, but are planning to prioritize paying Wall Street investors first, over people who depend on Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, and everyone else. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Republicans are also trying to eliminate federal income taxes, and replace them with a 30% national sales tax, which would destroy poor people and most of the middle class, while creating a titanic windfall for the richest people.
