President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Revenge of Heather Heyer, Pt. 1

 

LOL

 

I can't remember who it was, it might have been my old fave Janeane Garofalo (whom I always secretly adored), but somebody on Air America said years ago:
"They hate democracy so much they can't even say the word 'Democratic.' "
Forsooth.

 

I have heard some people say that Jan. 6, 2021 might wind up replacing Aug. 28, 2014 as the most egregious day of presidential infamy.

 

Warnock is up almost 75,000 votes. Ossoff up almost 37,000 votes. Are we going to have concession speeches any time soon? Come on, some rich Democrat, invite Kelly to a future party if she will just admit she lost.

 

I remember driving somewhere, probably the school administration building since I was an education reporter at the time, and a caller to Lynn Samuels old show on Sirius said this and it’s stuck with me ever since.

“America is a third-world country in denial.”

 

As we said in sixth grade:

PSYCH!

 

Donald's not done yet

 

That just struck me as the National Guard or chain of command looking for cover to come in. Like, most of the accounts of yesterday suggest that Trump and Rudy gave their speeches literally encouraging people to move on the Capitol, and then they basically fucked off for a couple of hours. I think the normal chain of command is that the president would need to sign off on the National Guard being used, but getting the OK from the vice president struck everyone involved as reasonable enough.

I'm also somewhat unclear on what, if anything, Trump is doing in terms of actual governance, and the ability of people in the cabinet to do work. Even in the "best" times of his administration, it was clear that he gave orders by Twitter, and that his policy decisions depended on who he spoke to last or what kind of mood he woke up in. The last Kayleigh Screechathon was in mid-December, and the feds have fucked up the vaccine rollout, and the whole place just seems to be even more ineffectual than usual.

To touch on some other things brought up in the 20+ pages between bed and wake-up for me today, ha...

- My impression of the 25th Amendment and triggering it is that it requires loyalists to act. It isn't meant as an overthrow mechanism. I think it's more meant for like, "The President had a stroke and he's in a coma, and he could be out for a couple hours or six months." Trump's cabinet isn't going to use it on him as long as he's still breathing.

- I suspect we'll get Sad Trump or Withdrawn Trump for a couple days, before his mania surges again, thanks to reassurances from his supporters, like the conference call to Florida he made this morning. Since we've still got like two weeks until Biden takes office, I assume we'll get at least one more rally by Trump, but at this point I imagine any local and state authorities aren't going to rely on federal support, and they're going to do their best to minimize his madness.

- When it comes to yesterday, I kept thinking about "The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis. It came out in October 2018 and it was about the gutting that the Trump regime did to a variety of federal agencies when he took office, whether that means not filling federal positions by choice, refusing to use Obama or Bush staffers for non-political positions, or because of ineptitude like being unaware of contractual deadlines. During the initial pandemic response, it came out that Trump had disbanded one group about that subject and ignored the information prepared by Obama. It wouldn't surprise me if the Capitol Police have had similar management issues.