Donald Trump dispensed with even the pretense of paying tribute to workers on Labor Day. Instead his three word Labor Day Statement, blasted out to his supporters everywhere via the right-wing media machine, was blunt about his political priorities: “Fix 2020 First.”
Source: Trump, Texas, and the MAGA Drive for Power | The Smirking Chimp
The protagonist of the story as told is Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the top position in the U.S. military. He was deeply alarmed that Trump kept denying that he had lost the election in late 2020, and worried that the president might try to use the FBI, the CIA and the Defense Department in such a bid. Milley saw Trump’s refusal to concede the election as a “Reichstag Moment,” saying that Trump was “preaching the gospel of the Fuhrer,” the German word for “leader,” referring to Adolf Hitler.
if you listen to him long enough — no easy chore — Donald Trump will tell you all his secrets. Witness this line from his July 3 speech in Sarasota, Florida: “If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.”
Source: Donald Trump just accidentally told the truth about his disinformation strategy – CNNPolitics
he is reportedly happy about the indictments, “thrilled” they are what he thinks of as light charges, and already anticipating how the cases can be leveraged for his big comeback in 2024 because it will “hurt Sleepy Joe.” He plans to make this latest “witch hunt” a theme of his upcoming rallies and since his political career has been built upon relentless whining, which his followers eat up with a spoon, he may just be right.
Source: Yes, Trump should be “thrilled” by this week’s news — indictments and all | Salon.com
Still, it’s deeply concerning that the rhetoric of justified violence is increasing, and not just in fringe social media circles, but on cable news networks being projected into millions of American homes. It’s also timed alongside this Arizona “audit” and its accompanying conspiracy theories, and placed in the summer months, when people are far more likely to be out and ready to gather in person than in the dead of winter, when the Capitol riot happened. The fire may not spark, but there can be no mistaking the immense amount of fuel that right-wing media is gleefully pouring over the kindling.
Source: Filling the Trump Void: Right-wing Media’s Calls for Violence Grow Louder | The Smirking Chimp
The QAnon conference came amid reports that Trump is attempting to orchestrate another election coup from his far-off kingdom at Mar-a-Lago. According to a Tuesday tweet from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, the former President has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.” Trump’s reported thinking echoes that of his former lawyer’s, Sidney Powell. On Saturday, Powell told attendees to the QAnon conference that Trump “can simply be reinstated.”
Email Sometimes people refuse to ask a question when they know the answer will be painful. Instead, they convince themselves that not asking the question will make the underlying reality change. Donald Trump and his regime committed many criminal, evil and otherwise despicable acts in plain sight. Those include, with no attempt to be comprehensive:
Their concern is that the “true lender” rule—one of the last moves by the Trump-era Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a federal office that supervises nationally chartered banks—upends more than a century of legal precedent to make it easy for non-bank financial institutions, like payday lenders or fintech companies, to evade state-level interest limits, lending at sky-high rates and trapping low-income customers in debt.
“…because Rudy’s an idiot,” Cohen said. “And that’s the problem — Rudy drinks too much. Rudy behaves in such an erratic manner that who knows what’s on those cellphones or what’s on those computers.”
Lying is all TraitorTrump knows and understands.
Source: Traitor Trump Demands National Guard During AZ’s Third Recount | Crooks and Liars
A group of 77 companies took $8.2 billion, and almost all cut jobs.
Source: The World According to Trump
Ted Boutrous, a constitutional law expert, told CNN, “The 1st Amendment provides strong protections for statements of opinion, but what Dominion is pointing to is the fact that Ms. Powell was declaring that she had evidence of this fraud and this election malfeasance and she was declaring that as a matter of fact. The 1st Amendment doesn’t protect knowingly false statements of fact.”
How Sidney Powell ‘Clowned’ Right-wing Media and Led Them down a Dark Rabbit Hole — Ending in Legal Peril | The Smirking Chimp
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Partially Shut Due To COVID-19 Outbreak | HuffPost
Former President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club has been partially closed because of a COVID outbreak.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Partially Shut Due To COVID-19 Outbreak | HuffPost
Eric Trump’s pushing Florida Republicans to change state law so Doral resort can become a casino | Salon.com
Eric Trump, the former President’s son who runs the family business, is pushing to transform the Trump Organization’s Miami Doral Resort into a gambling destination by actively lobbying Republicans in the state legislature to change a longstanding law.
Eric Trump’s pushing Florida Republicans to change state law so Doral resort can become a casino | Salon.com
Amid the pandemic, lockdown orders, and nationwide protests against police violence, a historically large increase in murders occurred in 2020. Previously, the largest recorded one-year rise in murders in U.S. history was a 12.7 percent increase in 1968. Last year, meanwhile, data from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies released by the FBI, running through September, shows murders up 21 percent nationally. This matches data we collected from a sample of agencies from 60 large cities showing a 36 percent increase in murders in those cities, as well as a Council on Criminal Justice analysis from 34 cities finding a 30 percent increase in 2020 compared to 2019.
What Drove the Historically Large Murder Spike in 2020?
As Donald Trump left the White House yesterday, he returned to a business empire in dire financial condition—far worse than previously reported, according to newly disclosed information. Trump’s final personal financial statement, filed Wednesday night, shows that revenues at his company, the Trump Organization, plunged by more than $150 million last year—a whopping decline of nearly 40 percent. The disclosure also reveals that many of his flagship properties saw much of their business evaporate over the last year.
More Bad News for Trump: Last Year, His Company’s Revenues Plunged $150 Million – Mother Jones
With his final acts before leaving office, President Donald Trump revealed a deep contempt for his supporters—and for the platform he ran on.
Trump Never Cared About His Fans. His Pardons Prove It. – Mother Jones
C
While White Right-Wing Domestic terror has increased under Trump
Crime, too, has dramatically fallen in the United States in the past 20 years, but Trump wants people to believe the opposite. Again, only if there is a crisis of brown and black crime will das Volk be willing to surrender their rights to the Great White Trump.
“The Horror, the Horror.” An epitaph for Trump’s Nazi Presidency
Despite the massive increase in mass murder by the right-wing in Trump’s term (ODT)
New statistics from the U.S. Crisis Monitor and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) show that police used violence against leftwing protesters three times as often as against rightwing demonstrators
Report: Police 3X More Likely To Use Violence Against Liberal Protesters Than Far-Right | Crooks and Liars
Last week’s assault, which was incited by Donald Trump, enabled by GOP officials and members of Congress, planned on social media, and buoyed by deeply entrenched white supremacy and Christian nationalism at the heart of our democratic dysfunctionality, were not attacks on any political party or ideology — they were attacks on all of us. The entire country has to be involved in responding to what could become a protracted violent conflict or, quite possibly, an insurgency. At the same time, this crisis, happening in the midst of a devastating pandemic, presents an opportunity to come together and build a country where liberty and justice are enjoyed by all Americans, without exception. It is an opportunity we should seize.
Why We need to prepare for ongoing insurrectionary violence and address its root causes
Donald Trump has been an unabashed menace to our country. Many lessons need to be learned. The biggest is that we should never allow a psychopath to run our country, no matter what divisions and hostilities are brewing among the people. His rhetoric, his motives, his intentions and his actions have all created chaos and turmoil — all with the goal of keeping him in power so he could serve himself, not others.
Our psychopath president has finally imploded: And all this was totally predictable | Salon.com
‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol
‘Delighting in causing complete chaos’: what’s behind Trump supporters’ brazen storming of the Capitol
In 2020, Media Matters conducted data studies on a vast array of issues. Here are the numbers that defined the year:
2020 by the numbers | Media Matters for America
Additional arms deals this week include $4 billion in helicopters to Kuwait, $169 million in military equipment to Egypt, and $65 million in drones and fighter jets to UAE.
Lame-Duck Trump’s “Middle East Arms Bonanza” Continues With Approval of $290 Million Weapons Sale to Saudi Regime | Common Dreams News
UK is doing 2M shots a week
The Washington Post tells us that 7.7 million first doses of vaccines have been shipped to date (two million shots have been given), with a target of 16 million by the end of the year. This is warp speed?
Is the Distribution of Vaccines the Biggest Trump Screw-Up Yet? | The Smirking Chimp
Trump said on December 9 that he “might” invoke the Korea War-era act, which allows the US government to direct companies to produce urgently needed goods necessary to national security. The US government pays the companies to do this, so it isn’t socialism and doesn’t involve a government take-over. It just delays receipt of other goods by other customers. Trump has repeatedly said he is reluctant to invoke the act because it is socialist in character and would make us like Venezuela. He did use it to compel GM to produce ventilators last spring, paying $489 million for 30,000 ventilators. It was a relatively minor use of the act given the scale of the national emergency.
Biden to invoke Defense Production Act for Vaccine manufacture. Trump? Playing Golf at Mar-a-Lago
It seems increasingly clear that the 21st century will be the Chinese century. And, China is going to get there sooner thanks to a new isolationism and a paroxysm of ignorant reality-denial for which Donald J. Trump has been the cheerleader and chief implementation officer. The BBC reports that a British think tank predicts that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in 2028 instead of 2033, as a result of its deft handling of the pandemic and as a result of outgoing president Trump’s monumental screw-up, the largest public health disaster in American history.
How incompetent Boob Trump took down America and launched the Chinese Century
The Biden administration will have to make hard choices around the pandemic and climate change while continuing to spend close to $1 trillion a year on its military. Adding yet another military service when American states are reeling from the economic fallout of COVID-19 and the warming oceans are churning out superstorms is something neither the U.S. nor the world can afford.
The U.S. Needs COVID Relief and Renewable Energy, Not a Space Force
As of Sunday, there have been nearly 19 million recorded COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and more than 331,000 deaths nationwide.
December Sees Highest COVID-19 Death Toll In U.S. Since Pandemic Began | HuffPost Australia
#9 TOP STORY OF 2020: World’s largest economy in free fall
ECONOMISTS WORLDWIDE are watching the extraordinary collapse of what was until recently a seemingly indestructible economy. The United States still has the world’s largest economy measured by gross domestic product (GDP). But among developed nations, it is now at or close to the bottom on most rankings of economic health.
#9 TOP STORY OF 2020: World’s largest economy in free fall
Let’s get one thing straight: Donald Trump does not care about the American people. Whatever Trump may say, he is not threatening to blow up the coronavirus stimulus bill Senate Republicans finally agreed to pass because the bill isn’t generous enough. Trump could not care less if all Americans starve to death, and he certainly isn’t breaking a sweat trying to get the COVID-19 vaccine out to the public. He was not defending working Americans when he released a video calling the GOP-endorsed coronavirus bill a “disgrace” and pushing for a Democrat-friendly plan to send out $2,000 checks instead of the $600 ones Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to.
Republicans enabled Trump for four years — of course he’s betraying them in the 11th hour | Salon.com
President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he’s granted yet another spate of pardons to 26 people, including his friend and confidant Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared. Trump also gave sentence commutations to three people. The move comes just a day after the president announced his decision to pardon or commute the sentences of 20 people, including three corrupt former Republican congressmen, two subjects of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and four Blackwater security guards who were involved in the 2007 killings of Iraqi civilians.
Trump Pardons Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner In Another Pardoning Spree | HuffPost Australia
Investigators for the military and the FBI later described the shootings, in which the contractors unleashed a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square, as unprovoked and unjustified. Federal prosecutors said that many of the victims, including women and children, some with their hands in the air, “were shot inside of civilian vehicles while attempting to flee.”
Trump Pardons Blackwater 4 for Nisour Square Massacre in Iraq, because Whites must never Suffer for Killing Innocent Brown People
So can we expect Barr and Pence to swing into action and charge Patriot Prayer members who rioted in Salem with sedition, sending federal agents in to whisk them away in unmarked vehicles? No.
Trump sent Feds to Portland, but will coddle White Supremacist militias who invaded Oregon State House
Trying to make the GOP look generous (ODT)
Senator Rand Paul rose up in rebellion against his own party Tuesday, objecting to the idea of helping people with their bills with a pittance of a payment to help with the pain of a pandemic they didn’t cause. “If free money was the answer… if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money?” Rand mused. “Why not give it out all the time? Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000?” “Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus?” he snarked. “Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?”
Rand Paul Rants About COVID Relief Payments: ‘Why Not $2000?’ | Crooks and Liars
Donald Trump is reportedly furious in private over the role Vice President Mike Pence is about to play in confirming his election defeat.
Mike Pence: Donald Trump fumes over VP’s role in confirming Biden’s win
24 President Donald Trump on Tuesday added more loyalists to the long list of friends who’ve gotten plum jobs as he eyes the exits. Hope Hicks, the Trump confidante and two-time White House employee, will serve on the board of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship. But Hicks isn’t alone. Tuesday’s list has a few familiar names: Ric Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence who later played a key PR role in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, was given membership on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. (Andrew Giuliani, Rudy’s son, was added to the council last week.)
Trump Gives Loyalists Ric Grenell, Hope Hicks, Pam Bondi Gigs On His Way Out | Talking Points Memo
With Trump raving in White House meetings, prompted by the equally certifiable Michael Flynn, about declaring martial law, it sets an old Middle East hand like me thinking.
Trump aping Mideast Tinpot Dictators and raving about declaring Martial Law, which even Iran Prohibits
Democrats refused to seize a rare opportunity to outmaneuver Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. They settled for a COVID relief bill that skimps on benefits, provides tax breaks to the rich, and pulls us toward austerity extremism.
We Can’t Survive on $600. The New Relief Bill Is Not a Victory.
When Donald Trump announces his intention to run again for president, tens of millions of Americans will flock to his side. If he ultimately doesn’t run, they will throw their support behind anyone that the disgraced ex-president selects as his successor. They will do so despite all the harm Trump has caused the United States and the world. For the United States, at least, that might prove to be the most dangerous denialism of them all.
How America’s Denialism– Elections, COVID, Climate — is Leading to its Downfall
Trump’s Role Model was always Putin and he tried to do it like Putin
Those living in the bubble created by right-wing news hear Trump’s lies repeatedly from multiple sources, making them appear credible. This is the underpinning of all propaganda. That firehosing lacks a commitment to consistency and objective reality can seem counter intuitive. But as Masha Gessen of the New Yorker explains, that is because the goal of firehosing is not persuasion but power. The immediate reaction of the media and others to a firehose of lies is to fact-check. That turns the lies into a political fight. What shouldn’t be up for debate becomes a partisan tit for tat. As Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British journalist and author, wrote about Putin’s information warfare in 2014: “insisting on the lie, the Kremlin intimidates others by showing that it is in control of defining ‘reality.’ This is why it’s so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible.”
The GOP’s Assault on Truth Is About Power, Not Persuasion | Washington Monthly
Trump’s coup attempt is on-going. Despite being rejected by state officials and the country’s highest courts, Trump and his agents are continuing their seditious and treasonous attempts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election — and, in effect, overthrow American democracy. These efforts to stop Biden from becoming president have extended to the use of stochastic terrorism and other provocations, to murmurs about martial law, political violence and a second civil war. Because Trump yearns to be a neofascist strongman, his campaign to remain in power indefinitely will not stop. Michael D’Antonio, a CNN contributor and author of “The Truth About Trump”, warned Salon about this during a recent phone conversation:
Richard Painter: Trump is an “incompetent dictator” — but a “shrewder” plot might have worked | Salon.com
Despite the fact that herd immunity failed in Sweden and the hospitals are now unable to cope. Trump wants chaos th reign and COVID-19 is a perfect ploy. (ODT)
Trump appointee at HHS, Paul Alexander, urged other health officials to “flood the zone” with coronavirus and infect “kids and young people” in order to develop herd immunity.
Trump HHS Official Admits ‘We Want Them Infected’ With COVID-19 | Crooks and Liars
“[I]t’s not over. We keep going and we’re going to continue to go forward. We have numerous local cases,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade before his campaign filed its latest lawsuit.
Trump sues New Mexico in continued election challenge as Electoral College affirms Joe Biden’s win | Salon.com
“It is equal to a 9/11 attack every day for more than 100 days.”
COVID death toll reaches 300,000 under Trump
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