In a furious flurry of posts over 40 minutes on his Truth Social platform early Sunday morning, Donald Trump raged at Democrats, the FBI and the Justice Department and then warned that a “dark period” is coming as the House select committee investigating Jan 6th prepares for one last public hearing.

The former president kicked off his morning by writing, “The Democrats will do anything not to run against me, MAGA, and putting AMERICA FIRST. Remember, they are the Party of MISINFORMATION, constantly saying the opposite of what they really want. I am beating everybody in the REAL Polls, by a lot, so they say, ‘Gee, we want to run against Trump,’ at the same time they spend $Millions to try and beat me, hoping for another candidate. I devoured them in 2016, and again, with much bigger numbers, in 2020, but that Election was RIGGED. MUST DO IT AGAIN!” which was quickly followed by, “The FBI’s Illegal Left Wing DOMINANCE over TWITTER, FACEBOOK, and other Big Tech companies, has been a shock to the World, but remember, this was only one of MANY ways that the 2020 Election was Rigged & Stolen!!!”

Continuing in that vein, he wrote, “DON’T FORGET, THESE THUGS SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

He then added, “The Unselect Committee of political hacks are the same group that came up with the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, not to mention many others. They are Corrupt cowards who hate our Country!!!”

“Republicans and Patriots all over the land must stand strong and united against the Thugs and Scoundrels of the Unselect Committee. It will be a dark period in American history, but with darkness comes light!!!” he added.

The former president concluded, “I’M JUST FIGHTING TO SAVE OUR COUNTRY!”

If so, you are a

SUCKER

During a panel discussion on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham pointed out that Donald Trump is running out of schemes to shake down his followers for cash to pay for his legal bills.

As the rest of the panel ridiculed and expressed disgust with the former president for hawking digital trading cards for $99 dollars each, Graham noted that the former president is being buried in legal fees due to a flood of criminal investigations and civil lawsuits.

Speaking with host Jonathan Capehart, she told him the former president can’t simply ask his fans to pay his bills which is why “the grift never ends.”

“The moment I heard about the NFT thing, and $99, I kept thinking, the man is raising money basically, this is a shadow legal defense fund,” host Capehart prompted. “He has got all these investigations, he has to pay for these lawyers — or is supposed to pay them, whether or not he pays them is another thing but it shouldn’t. Am I wrong to be thinking that this is not just a grift, this is a grift to raise money to help him pay his legal bills?”

“Oh, there is no doubt about it, there is a pattern here,” Graham replied. “This is what Trump does. He is raising this money to use for himself if nothing else, but to pay off the mountainous legal bills he keeps amassing because he keeps doing corrupt, criminal things.”

“So, when worse comes to worse, he can’t ask his followers, ‘send me money,'” she explained. “So he comes to put on some nonsense, ‘Oh I need this or that, here is something I am giving you.’ But at the end of the day, as Tara [Setmayer] said, it’s always about the grift — the grift never ends.”

Kevin McCarthy — who may or may not become Speaker of the House (and no one gives a shit if he does or does not) — says as soon as he becomes Speaker, the GOP-controlled House will pass “big bills”.

Bullshit.

Please. There will be no “big bills.” The only thing Republicans know how to do legislatively is cut taxes massively for the very wealthy. They are a one-trick pony, and that trick was done in 2017.

No one believes this Republican majority is going to pass anything except symbolic, mean-spirited gestures of right-wing grievance to placate their Fox News-addled base. Their entire agenda can be boiled down to three words: “own the libs.”  That’s not a recipe for legislating, it’s a recipe for posturing, posing and preening for the Fox News cameras, the only network these people will ever appear on because they are terrified of being asked serious questions, and they know Fox will always serve them pathetic softballs.

This is a house majority that the majority of Americans are going to sour on very quickly, and that will happen regardless of who Republicans finally decide to name as Speaker. Because:

• Outside of the Fox News bubble no one gives a damn about Hunter Biden. The thing is, Trump and his wretched family have made this country safe for a hundred Hunter Bidens. There is nothing that Hunter Biden could have done in the feverish fantasies of the entire Republican party that could possibly compare with the most criminally corrupt, incompetent and malevolent administration in U.S. history.
• Same goes for Afghanistan: nobody cares anymore, we’re out, and it’s over (finally). Whether it’s fair or not, that’s just how Americans think about Afghanistan, a country that Fox News and the GOP forgot completely about for decades until Biden finally had the sense to leave.
• Likewise, immigration is an issue that riles up the Republican base, even though it impacts virtually none of them personally. Coming from a party that just thwarted a comprehensive immigration bill it’s simply more hypocritical race-baiting from the party that perennially trots out the scary “caravan” in carefully timed stories from — you guessed it — Fox News.
• And as for energy “independence,” well guys, we would have had that decades ago if it wasn’t for the people who pay for your campaigns.

So, no, “history” is not going to be changed over the next two years, whether Kevin McCarthy is elected Speaker or not. Either way, it’ll just be an ugly, vindictive slog through the Fox News playbook, as meaningless and torpid as the “Benghazi” fiasco which no one really cared about either.

Meanwhile, Democrats will attempt to work with — or around –the same people who tried to overturn our democracy, the same ones who enlisted the country’s worst specimens to pursue that failed effort.

Trump and his driver were cruising along a country road one evening when a pig ran in front of the car. The driver tried to avoid it but couldn’t. The pig was killed.

Trump told his driver to go up to the farmhouse and explain to the owners what happened.

About an hour later the driver staggers back to the car with his clothes in total disarray.

He was holding a bottle of wine in one hand, a cigar in the other and smiling happily.
“What happened?” asked Trump.
“Well,” the driver replied “the Farmer gave me the wine, his wife gave me the cigar, and their beautiful daughter made mad passionate love to me.”
“My God, what did you tell them?” asked Trump.

The driver replied: “I’m Trump’s driver, and I just killed the pig.”

A Chinese philosopher once observed: ” If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”   I’m standing by the river and the bodies will be here soon.

According to a report from Steve People of of the Associated Press, Republican National Committee head Ronna Romney McDaniels is going to have her hands full through the holidays as calls to oust her from her position grow louder with GOP activists emailing each other demanding “Ronna’s gotta go.”

As Peoples wrote, the embattled RNC leader has been under the gun after the so-called midterm “red wave” never materialized and Republican insiders pointed out that during her tenure an incumbent president achieved the almost impossible by failing to be re-elected.

According to the report, “The family fight to lead the party has been largely overshadowed for national attention by the equally contentious struggle to become the new Republican House Speaker, with that election set for the first week in January. But both represent critical selections as the GOP works to overcome six years of electoral underperformance heading into another presidential election,” before adding, “Ronna McDaniel, Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the committee and the niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, is running for a fourth consecutive term. But the 49-year-old is facing a rising wave of discontent from Trump’s ‘MAGA’ movement, even as the former president stays silent — at least, for now.”

According to RNC member Ron Kaufman, “It’ll be ugly as hell for a while.”

The report notes that pressure on McDaniels is also coming from the far-right Donald Trump-aligned wing of the party and that challengers to her spot are lining up to take her on.

“California attorney Harmeet Dhillon has emerged as the MAGA favorite to challenge McDaniel, who secured commitments from more than 100 of the RNC’s 168 voting members earlier this month. Dhillon is working aggressively to peel away some of that support ahead of the formal vote at next month’s annual winter meeting in southern California,” the report notes. “Dhillon said she also notified Trump of her candidacy in a brief phone call shortly before she made her intentions public this month. She did not explicitly ask for his endorsement either, although she said the president did not discourage her from challenging McDaniel.”

Even one of McDaniels biggest supporters admits that is quite a movement brewing to dump her.

“Steve Scheffler, an Iowa-based RNC member who supports McDaniel, said he’s receiving 50 to 70 emails each day from Republicans, many of them angry, weighing in on the leadership fight,” admitting that most of them bluntly state, “Ronna’s gotta go.”

The report adds, “Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward said she’s received ‘a few thousand emails’ in recent days,” with Ward claiming in a social media posting, “NOT ONE regular person not affiliated with the current RNC apparatus has urged me to retain Ronna Romney McDaniel as Chair.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) delivered a farewell address on Thursday that read like an obituary for his own political party.

Kinzinger, one of just ten House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in the wake of the deadly riots at the United States Capitol building, lashed out at Republicans for embracing fever-swamp conspiracy theorists and turning their backs on the principles the party once held.

Among other things, Kinzinger drew an unfavorable comparison between today’s Republican leaders and former President George H.W. Bush.

“In the wake of the tragic Oklahoma City bombing, former President George H.W. Bush publicly refuted those who used fear to gain support,” he said. “In stark contrast today, our leaders belittle, and in some cases justify, attacks on the U.S. Capitol as ‘legitimate political discourse.'”

Kinzinger said this was a symptom of a broader sickness within the GOP as a whole.

“The once-great party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance,” he said. “Instead, it has embraced lies and deceit. The Republican party used to believe in a big tent… Now, we shelter the ignorant, the racist, who only stoke anger and hatred.”

The first 3 of 12 militia members who planned to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have just been sentenced to hefty prison time.  4 more have pleaded guilty and are awaiting their sentences, and another 5 are still awaiting trial in a different county.  The militia known as the Wolverine Watchmen is no more.  All of them are going to do hard time, as well as lose their Second Amendment rights for the rest of their lives.  They have all just lost the war they wanted so badly.

On Wednesday, December 14, Trump issued this announcement about a really big event coming on Thursday, December 15.

The news media — including Fox — either ignored him or joked about the announcement, further proof that no one gives a shit about Trump.

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HERE IT IS!!  HERE’S TRUMP’S MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!!  

Donald Trump’s much-hyped “major announcement” turned out to be, in the words of “A Christmas Story’s” Ralphie Parker, a crummy commercial.

The former president teased the announcement Wednesday by saying “America needs a superhero,” with a video of himself ripping open his shirt to reveal a Superman-style costume and shooting laser beams from his eyes, but the announcement turned out to be a promo for digital trading cards.

“MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!” the ex-president posted on his Truth Social account. “These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting. Go to collecttrumpcards.com/ & GET YOUR CARDS NOW! Only $99 each!”

“Would make a great Christmas gift,” Trump added. “Don’t Wait. They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!”

Buyers are automatically entered in a sweepstakes to win prizes, including dinner with Trump in Miami, an invitation to a Mar-a-Lago cocktail hour, golf with Trump and the winner’s friends, and a Zoom call with the former president.

This is interesting — buried deep in the small print that no ones reads is this statement:

By participating in the Sweepstakes, Entrant authorizes the Sponsor to collect, use, process, transfer and store all data provided by entrant, including without limitation, personal data, in the United States, or any location(s) throughout the world that the Sponsor deems necessary, whether within Entrant’s country of residence or elsewhere, and with such party(ies) as the Sponsor deems appropriate, for purposes of administration of the Sweepstakes.

So — if you buy even one Trump Digital Trading Card, he has your personal data — name, address, phone, email address, AND CREDIT CARD NUMBER — which he can use as he pleases — such as, to charge a monthly donation to Trump from your credit card.

These “trading cards” are digital — that is, if you buy any, you will receive a computer file that you open and print.

Also notice that these things are sold as NFTs — NFTs (non-fungible tokens) — a form of cryptocurrency.  In other words, a SCAM.

The news media was right to ignore him — just another scam

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Here’s another take on the latest Trump scam.

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UPDATE!!  UPDATE!!

Turns out, the company that is selling these “digital trading cards” has the same mailing address as . . .  Trump’s Florida golf club!!  Imagine that!!

On Thursday, after teasing a massive announcement the day before, former President Donald Trump unveiled a series of $99 “trading card” nonfungible tokens, or NFTs — images of himself backed by cryptocurrency technology.

The announcement was widely mocked — however, one slightly less discussed detail is the nature of the company making the cards.

It isn’t Trump’s campaign, nor is it the Trump Organization. Rather, it is a mysterious entity known as CIC Ventures, which, according to Ken Bensington of The New York Times, has a lot of overlap with Trump.

“The company that licensed Trump’s image and likeness for the $99 NFT trading cards appears to be one founded in 2021 by former Trump advisor Nick Luna and current Trump lawyer John Marion,” wrote Bensington on Twitter. “Its mailing address is the same as the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.”

“Little is known about CIC, but a little digging shows that a manila folder seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in August was marked ‘Serio Contract’ and contained a contract with CIC Ventures and Gold Ventures, per a federal court filing,” Bensington continued.

Even some Trump supporters grumbled about the NFT announcement, complaining that the cards on offer were “worthless” and a “scam.”

This comes as Trump has suffered setbacks with his 2024 campaign launch, with some polls indicating he is losing the lead among the Republican base to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — which Trump took to his Truth Social platform to rail against this week.

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UPDATE 2!!!

And soon parodies of the “Trump Trading Cards” appeared.

 

 

 

 

 

Because I am a sane person as well as being a Democrat, I would not really notice this taking place over the years.

For years, for decades, Trump obsessively watched cable news, Fox news and other right wing so-called news sites. He never worked a day in his life. All he does is watch the news. Millions of Republican voters were watching the same bullshit and believing it.

When Trump ran for president he knew exactly what the Republican voters were watching and listening to. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear. The Republican voters said “Wow!!  Finally we have found someone who tells the truth. Trump gets it and we are all in!”

Bottom line, Republican voters had let themselves be brainwashed for decades and Trump came along and completely verified what they had been watching and believing for years. He became their hero, their savior.

And now, he will be their downfall as we watch the Republican Party slowly sink into the toilet, to be flushed away over the next few years.