Two weeks ago a 26-year old soldier raced repeatedly into a burning Bronx apartment building, saving four people before he died in the flames. His name was Pvt. Emmanuel Mensah and he immigrated from Ghana, a country Donald Trump apparently thinks produces very subpar immigrants.
You look at the polls and think "he can't win." But Trump's path to victory doesn't depend on persuading Americans. It depends on voter suppression, mass disinformation, foreign interference, and unabashed use of executive branch power to shape events, and perceptions, this fall.
Al Franken was pressured to resign from the Senate. But Josh Hawley is a member in good standing?
Katie Hill was pressured to resign from the House. But Marjorie Taylor Greene is a member in good standing?
NEW: "This November, End Trump's American Carnage."
The ad, from Republican Voters Against Trump, is airing on Fox News and is being promoted digitally in key states.
@RVAT2020
I don’t know who’ll be Time’s 2017 Person of the Year, but I must say it would be nice if Robert Mueller turns out to be Time’s 2018 Person of the Year.
Trump to the troops in Iraq:
"You haven’t gotten [a raise] in more than ten years. More than ten years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one....I said no. Make it ten percent. Make it more than ten percent. Because it’s been a long time."
Just FYI, none of this is true.
I’ve been wondering why the video of the VP and senators at the border is so disconcerting. Is it that they enter, gaze at the refugees in the enclosure, and depart without even trying to speak briefly with them or wish them well—without, as it were, acknowledging their humanity?
A demagogue can win an election & become president. He can hold the base. But if checked and constrained by Republican elected officials and business and opinion leaders, the damage he can do is limited. The capitulation of GOP and conservative elites is the story of these years.
Unlike Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake, Gov. Doug Ducey supported Trump in 2020. So why was he censured by the AZ GOP? Because he certified the election results. Because he followed the law. Because he didn’t join in a plot to overturn Arizonans’ votes. Because he defended democracy.
We have a president who's a con man, a vice president who's a talk radio host, a White House chief of staff who for years claimed to have a B.A. but doesn't, a health secretary who's a lawyer-lobbyist, and an education secretary who's not an educator. What could go wrong?
The Obama Administration did do something (though perhaps they could have done more). They launched a counter-intelligence investigation, headed by James Comey. You denounced the investigation and fired him.
The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?
If the State Department IG opens an investigation into the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State promptly gets the IG fired--isn't that...illegal?
You're president. The Capitol is breached! What do you do? Everyone to the sit room. Orders to DOD, FBI, DHS, etc. coordinated by WH. You're commander in chief; you take command. That's what a president does. Trump watched TV. Wednesday he forfeited any right to remain president.
Tucker Carlson talking about coronavirus testing failures: "Why was the richest, most advanced country on the planet not prepared?" He said "government incompetence played an awfully big role in all of this."
This video from Republicans for the Rule of Law has clocked more than a million views since we released it less than 24 hours ago. I'm re-posting it here in case you missed it, or if you might want to retweet or forward it. Or just to watch again and be, again, horrified by it.
I’ve been looking at some polling crosstabs and I’ve got to say to my fellow white men over 55: You’re a great disappointment to me. On the other hand it seems fitting and consistent with the American story that women, minorities and young people now step up to save the republic.
Hey, don't want to interrupt my Democratic friends when they're engaged in their favorite sports of The Gnashing of Teeth and The Tearing of Garments, but it looks as if the Democratic Party will have the best midterm performance by a party in the White House in two decades.
"I'm the president of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way."
-- Donald J. Trump
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States."
"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
-- U.S. Constitution
To my Democratic friends:
Republicans said they cared about "election integrity." They didn't.
Republicans say they care about "healing." They don't.
Republicans will say impeachment would hurt the incoming Biden Administration. It won't.
The arguments are all in bad faith.
FYI.
What should happen in the next 24 hours:
1. Clear the Capitol—as peacefully as possible, but in any case remove the mob from the seat of the legislative branch of our government.
2. Reconvene and finish counting the electoral votes.
3. Impeach in the House, convict in the Senate.
Note to Dan Coats, Jim Mattis and others who’ve served honorably: Thank you for your service. But there’s one more thing you owe your countrymen: A candid and public assessment of the character and capacity of the president whom we have to decide next year whether to re-elect.
The GOP tax bill's bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Trump yesterday: "We had the worst weather--I think it was as bad a rain as I've just about ever seen. And it was a fog..."
Every other world leader made it there--to a commemoration at an American cemetery honoring U.S. soldiers and Marines who died in a famous American battle.
Who wanted Trump to withdraw U.S. troops and abandon the Kurds? Not the Defense or the State Department. Not the foreign policy establishment or the American people. Not Republicans or Democrats.
Who wanted Trump to abandon the Kurds and withdraw U.S. troops? Erdogan. And Putin.
It's an embarrassment that Donald Trump was ever our president. It's an embarrassment that so many still support him, and that so many others in his party cower before him.
“I don’t think we should be moving forward with a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that even if it was a Republican president.”
— Marco Rubio, 2016
Last night 52 legitimately elected U.S. Senators cast 52 legitimate votes to confirm a legitimately elected President’s highly qualified nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Republican and conservative elites are beginning to bail on Trump's effort to overturn the election, which is good. But they're bailing because it won't work, not because it's wrong. They're leaving Trump as he's losing. I won't forget how few stood up to him when he was winning.
Liz Cheney's presentation will, in my judgment, go down in the history books: Congress at its best, truth-telling at its best, American democracy at its best.
Lindsey Graham today: "President Trump is trying to heal the nation." This is a lie. It's an important lie, as it justifies voting not to convict. That in turn means not coming to grips with Trump's Big Lie--and with the complicity in the Big Lie of so many...like Lindsey Graham.
On the Marine Corps' 243rd birthday, President Trump has cancelled, because of light rain, his long-planned attendance at the ceremony at Aisne-Marne, where Marines who fought at Belleau Wood are buried. The WH COS and JCS Chair will be there. The President couldn't be bothered.
McSally calling a reporter a “liberal hack” for asking a question, and then taking high fives from today’s “conservatives” for doing so, tempts me to say: If it’s liberal to hold public officials in our liberal democracy accountable for doing their job, then I guess I’m liberal.
Until the SUV ride, I was urging consideration of Section 3 of the 25th Amendment. Now, if they care about the nation, the Vice President and Cabinet need to consider Section 4.
We’ve seen Susan Rice’s memo. We’ve seen the list of requested unmaskings by Obama officials.
Now could we see the transcripts of all the Kislyak-Flynn calls?
Five days after the assault on the Capitol, it feels as if:
We're underestimating the threat of further violence.
Republicans aren't rejecting Trumpism root and branch.
Conservatives aren't engaged in serious rethinking.
Some Democrats lack a real sense of urgency.
I am alarmed.
I can think of a pretty famous Republican living in Texas--the only living Republican ex-president, in fact--who's spoken eloquently about freedom and democracy and the right to vote over the years. He might say a word against Gov. Abbott's voter suppression.
So Trump doesn’t need to pardon Flynn; Barr dropped the charge to which Flynn had pled guilty. This is a foretaste of what a second Trump term would be like—the entire executive branch weaponized to help Trump’s friends, punish his enemies, and undermine the rule of law.
Just an innocent thought: We’ve seen Biden in office for over four decades, and we’ve seen Trump nonstop for the last four years. We’ve seen enough to make up our minds about them. So let’s skip the presidential debates but have three vice-presidential debates.
I’d take in a heartbeat a group of newly naturalized American citizens over the spoiled native-born know-nothings of CPAC, who today booed at the mention of citizenship naturalization ceremonies.
In Australia, with a spike to 13 COVID deaths a day, the government declares a disaster and imposes emergency restrictions in Melbourne. In the U.S., with a surge to 1,200 COVID deaths a day, the president goes golfing.
"I will not sit back and watch in silence while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former President's crusade to undermine our democracy."
-- Liz Cheney, May 11, 2021
When historians write about Donald Trump's presidency, his impeachment will be the second most important item. His abject failure in dealing with the challenge of the coronavirus, his complicity in the scope of its death and destruction, will be the first.
As a non-Democrat, I'm struck by how much the media seem obsessed by possible rifts among Democrats, narrow lines they'll have to walk, stray utterances of their backbenchers, etc, than by the rather more massive fact that we have a president and administration in total meltdown.
McConnell's office is distributing a document titled “Stopping Blue State Bailouts.”
So it's probably time for Joe Biden to echo his old boss: There's not a Blue State America and a Red State America. There's the United States of America.
A friend emails: “Of all the low life actions taken by the occupant of 1600 raising the flag this am at the White House was certainly in the running for the worst. It is an insult to all of us since it is not his house but ours.”
If someone in the UK had died in a terrorist attack (even if at the hand of another British citizen), Donald Trump would have belligerently weighed in by now. But when someone in the UK, a NATO ally, dies as a result of an attack on British soil by Putin's government...crickets.
Sean Doolittle: “I have a brother-in-law who has autism...How would I explain that to him that I hung out with somebody who mocked the way that he talked, or the way that he moves his hands? I can’t get past that stuff.”
I’m not a Democrat and it’s none of my business, but based on what I saw of their respective performances in that Oval Office meeting today, I don’t understand why it’s Nancy Pelosi who’s facing a leadership challenge and Chuck Schumer who isn’t.
Trump has cancelled his trip to his New Jersey country club this weekend, so will presumably be at the White House. If memory serves, President Johnson made his surprise announcement that he wouldn't seek renomination or reelection in 1968 on a Sunday night, from the White House.
It will be a happy moment when President Flying Water Tankers is a private citizen once again, a mere occasional annoyance rather than a national embarrassment.
"My 88-year-young mother is a life-long Republican. She has NEVER voted for a Democrat. As a sincere conservative Evangelical Christian, she voted for Trump in 2016...This week my mother announced she has decided to vote for Biden!"
Read the whole thing.
“Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with prominent evangelical leaders, where they laid their hands on him in prayer. Afterward, Trump allegedly said: ‘Can you believe that bulls--t? Can you believe people believe that bulls--t?’”