Our Constitutional Republic faces a clear and present danger more deadly than that of the Civil War. The danger is the Republican Party, a "political party" that has sold out to white supremacy, autocracy, misogyny, and hatred of everything our Nation stands for. Republicans dismiss any sense of a common American narrative. The "Republican Party" is an outlier in our history – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of social and economic policies that have sustained us for a century; unwilling to compromise; dismissive of evidence, fact, and science; dismissive of the legitimacy of any viewpoint except their own. America needs to face the simple, frightening fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republic.
When Michael Capps was a Kansas lawmaker, he sponsored a bill to put “In God We Trust” in every federal building because religion and morality were intertwined.
Guess who was just found guilty of COVID relief fraud and money laundering?
While I am loathe to find joy in the suffering of others, when it comes to Donald Trump, I am happy to make an exception.
I am praying and hoping for indictments, for convictions, for prison doors being slammed shut, however, I have not lost sight of the fact that Donald’s real punishment has already begun – and in his mind, it is already worse than being locked in a cell.
He is alone – and terrified of what is to come.
Donald J. Trump is an old, fat, huffing and puffing retiree living in a motel room at a Florida golf course (New Jersey golf course in the summer) who is the butt of every humiliating joke the world over.
Trump’s punishment has already begun – and I am savoring every minute of it.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives just ended their legislative year. Besides passing $1.7 trillion omnibus package to fund the government, lawmakers also tucked a measure in the package that sternly rebukes former President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, along with his 187 minutes of inaction as his supporters carried out an attempted coup on his behalf.
In 2021, the constitutional crisis was averted when former Vice President Mike Pence stood firm in the face of an intense, if petty, pressure campaign led by Trump himself and an armed mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” as evidenced in the newly released Jan. 6 committee report. Never again, or so Congress hopes.
The measure they just sent to President Joe Biden is aimed at ensuring no future president can try to force their vice president to change the slates of electors that states send to Washington for certification every four years.
“I think it’s incredibly important,” Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) told Raw Story at the Capitol. “I think the Jan. 6 committee revealed there some weaknesses in our system that a dishonorable man chose to exploit, and the Electoral Count Reform Act goes about fixing some of those things.”
The reform act is the first recommendation made by the Jan. 6 panel. Its aimed solely at Trump and his allies who relied on the ambiguity of the constitutional text to try and seize control of the government using force.
“The constitutional role of the Vice President, as the presiding officer of the joint meeting of Congress, is solely ministerial and that he or she does not have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors,” according to a readout of the measure from Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who helped negotiate the compromise.
The bipartisan reform act also raises the threshold for objecting to the certification of any slate of electors. And it includes a provision requiring each state’s certification to come from their governor alone, which is intended to do away with the confusion Trump’s allies sowed by introducing slates of fake electors.
“It’s very important,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story at the Capitol. “It’s not going to fix everything, but this very old law—that nobody paid any attention to outside of this chamber on that important day—now will be updated so not so flimsy a challenge—fraudulent a challenge—can become law. But just a start. More to do.”
Besides security enhancements and taking steps to streamline communication between federal law enforcement officials who were caught unprepared on Jan. 6, many Democrats say the failed insurrection is the case in point for doing away with the Electoral College altogether.
The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 also gives aggrieved presidential candidates a fast lane to have their challenges heard in the courts through creating a new expedited judicial review process, which will be overseen by a three-judge panel that’s granted a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, if needed.
While on her way to vote on the House floor where lawmakers huddled, fearing for their lives on Jan. 6, 2021, Rep. Murphy added, “It’s a good start in ensuring that we secure our democracy.”
We’ve all been there. We dive into a much-anticipated first season of a new series and find ourselves intrigued and entertained. Then it’s season two, which fumbles a bit, but remains watchable. By season three it is utterly boring, maybe even cringey, and before we get through all of the episodes we’ve jumped ahead to something else.
This is what is happening to the Trump show. Weeks after the twice-impeached former president announced his decision to run again in 2024, hardly anyone is watching, and those that do are disappointed.
It is such a sea change to consider Trump as a boring has-been, offering nothing more than reruns of himself, but that is exactly what is happening. He may have had an iron grip on the political right and the mainstream media back in 2016, but now that grip has turned into nothing more than a pathetic, tiny-handed, attention-seeking wave.
Wait, you may be thinking. Didn’t the Jan. 6 committee just announce four criminal referrals against Trump to the Justice Department? That’s a pretty big story, right?
The answer is yes, it is a big story for our democracy and possibly a big story for Trump’s future as a free man, but it actually isn’t much of a plot shift in the story of Trump. He has literally spent his entire political career (and business career too) running from the law and facing ongoing threats of prosecution. Does the name Mueller ring a bell? Just Security runs a litigation tracker for Trump, covering what they describe as “a bevy of lawsuits and investigations.” Ever since he launched his 2016 campaign (and well before), Trump has pretty much constantly been under legal pressure. So for him to come under fire for breaking the law isn’t some startling new development. It is his constant status quo.
News coverage of the criminal referrals has been predictable as well, with Fox News claiming that the decision is nothing more than political theater.
The point is that Trump may still top the headlines on any given day, but the way he does it has changed. Now he is alternately a loser, a criminal, a joke or a has-been. What he isn’t is politically powerful. Those days are over. Even Ann Coulter has remarked that after three losing election cycles, “he is so done.”
Consider the following facts:
The critical development to note is that Trump is more than just a loser, which he has been since he started his political career. He lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the election in 2020. His hand-picked candidates almost all lost in 2022. But now Trump is a boring loser and that’s why his political career shows all signs of being like a third-season Netflix series on the slippery slope to cancellation.
If you’ve missed seeing these signs, that’s because folks have overlooked the fact that Trump was and always will be a media-created president. I don’t just mean he’s a politician who gets media attention. I mean that he’s nothing more than a TV actor playing a president in a reality series.
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Think about it. From Day One the main reason Trump catapulted upward in the 2016 race was because he knew how to manipulate his media coverage, control the narrative and mesmerize his audience. In those early days it totally worked.
Building off years on one of the most well-known and successful reality TV franchises, “The Apprentice,” which Trump hosted on NBC from 2004 to 2015, he translated those skills into a media spectacle campaign. He knew from experience that the key was to keep the audience watching. Reality TV reviewer Andy Dehnart explains: “Part of what makes reality TV so compelling is its unpredictability, and not really knowing what will happen when cameras start rolling.”
Trump isn’t just a loser, which is bad enough. He’s a boring loser, which is why his political career resembles a third-season Netflix series heading for cancellation.
As Trump was spewing outrageous comments and completely transforming the traditional political campaign script, he was amassing supporters (that is, viewers) who found his style fresh and exciting. While few media commentators initially understood how Trump’s combination of unpredictability and entertainment was attracting support, John Oliver and Michael Moore both recognized that those qualities made him a formidable candidate early on. It’s worth reflecting on the fact that it was entertainers who understood the special ingredient in Trump’s 2016 campaign.
But if Trump was able to effectively mount a reality TV campaign that got him elected in real life back in 2016, he forgot that in order to have another successful season, you have to follow the rules of good television. In the case of a series, you have to find a way to keep it fresh without being totally gonzo. Instead, he’s made both mistakes: He is both boring and unconvincingly over-the-top.
Today Trump is literally breaking every rule required to keep a show going into multiple seasons.
1. His drama is manufactured and unconvincing.
When Trump first ran, his schtick was fresh, even if it was repulsive. Trump created an interesting persona who embodied both an unconventional politician and an unpredictable swashbuckler.
But now, after hearing him ramble on about the same things endlessly, the story seems forced. There are various parts of the Trump story that lack convincing drama, but the most obvious one is his ongoing insistence that the 2020 election was stolen. While it started off strong, that story is getting boring and losing viewers every day. Every poll tracking support for the “Big Lie” shows a marked drop in adherents. For example, not long after the election as many as 70 percent of Republicans thought Joe Biden’s win in 2020 was illegitimate. Today that number is much closer to 30 percent.
Think of this in reality TV terms: If you lose more than half of your viewers, you’d expect to be canceled.
2. The hero isn’t changing
When Trump ran in 2016, he ran as an outsider. In TV terms that means the protagonist has a core challenge, a fight to win. But then he won.
For a hero who overcomes their central challenge to remain interesting, they need to face a brand new one in season two. While his election-denial narrative arguably sustained Trump’s character through the second season — at least for his core fans — it has gone totally stale now. Moreover, in order for a hero to remain interesting, his or her character has to develop. Trump’s stagnated, toxic baby-man identity has undergone no development of any kind. Eventually that type of character is just not worth watching.
Even worse, Trump designed a TV identity that is incongruous. Is he a winner or a victim? An insider or an outsider? A seasoned success or an upstart? The hero or the villain? Trump, himself doesn’t seem clear on any of that. Either way, these types of inconsistencies eventually destroy the watchability of a hero character.
To top it off, even venues that used to take him seriously think he is nothing more than a joke. After his 2024 announcement, the Murdoch-owned New York Post buried a story on Trump’s announcement and teased it on its front page with the headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”
3. His first season was so high-concept that it left no room for development.
As Dehnart explains, one of the challenges of reality TV is that what hooks the audience at first can be hard to maintain. “The struggle comes when a high-concept premise collides with the need to expand a series into something that can repeat itself over and over.”
Trump was a high-concept reality TV candidate from the start, more limited-series material than fodder for endless seasons.
Dating back to his birtherism phase when he regularly pulled media stunts designed to discredit Barack Obama and elevate his brand, everything Trump did was big. But that’s the problem. You can’t keep that sort of momentum or grand spectacle going indefinitely.
This is why, finally, news media ratings started dropping with the past midterm cycle. Only 22.2 million viewers watched primetime media coverage of the 2022 midterm elections, down 32 percent from 2018 midterm viewership.
Even with a full slate of Trump-supported colorful characters in the race, people just didn’t care enough to watch the show. They tuned out, even when a number of critical races still hadn’t even been called.
4. The story lacks an interesting conflict.
Dehnart explains that reality TV depends on unpredictability and the sense that the conflict isn’t manufactured. He further points out that “trying to prevent a boring season” may well lead “to a boring season.”
That may help explain what went wrong with Trump’s 2024 announcement. It was designed to keep viewers tuned in, but it was too staged, too contrived and too forced. Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House spokesperson, tweeted during the event, “This is one of the most low-energy, uninspiring speeches I’ve ever heard from Trump.”
Matthews, though, was also watching the audience and seeing that they were totally glazed over. “Even the crowd seems bored,” she went on. “Not exactly what you want when announcing a presidential run.” If the select group brought in to witness you announce a campaign is rolling their eyes, checking their phones and heading for the door, you have a problem.
For the story to be compelling it needs a good conflict. But there isn’t anything interesting here. It’s all been said and it isn’t going anywhere. And while Thomas E. Patterson suggests that Trump “is still newsworthy,” the conflict at the center of his story has just become repetitive and pathetic.
Trump’s stagnant, toxic baby-man character has shown no development of any kind. Eventually, that kind of character just isn’t worth watching anymore.
In fact, instead of Trump being able to control the story, media coverage is now making his downfall the story. Even National Review, house organ of conservative politics, underscored that the spectacle of Trump had grown passé. In an editorial titled “No,” the editors emphasized that the repetitive, predictable and grotesque story of Trump no longer held any fascination. “To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy,” they wrote, “once was an experiment, twice would be perverse.” The editorial described Trump as “bruised,” and encouraged readers (and by implication, Republican voters) to move on to another show.
5. He is desperate for attention.
Trump’s 2024 announcement felt like what happens when your awkward date texts you that they want to see you again before you even make it home. His candidates had lost, he was amassing legal troubles and he was losing the support of political leaders. Rather than backing off, taking stock and regrouping, he cried out for attention.
When he didn’t get the attention he wanted, he got even more desperate, performing the equivalent of blowing up the phones of his supporters to see if he could generate a response.
He started with a signature move that has worked many times before, suggesting on Truth Social that he would soon make a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT.”
But the next day that went badly off the rails, as Trump explained that his major announcement was the release of a set of collectible digital trading cards featuring poorly designed cartoonish images of himself. “My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!” Trump wrote. “These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career!” As Chauncey DeVega reports, the Trump NFTs, which feature Trump’s face on the bodies of figures like astronauts, fighter pilots and cowboys, are “worthless crap.” Even better, they cost $99 a piece and are in no way a “limited edition.”
Underscoring my claim that the story of Trump is now the story of a needy, desperate loser who refuses to move on, scores of social media users, including many of his own supporters, responded to the “major announcement” by blasting him for an obvious attention-seeking scam. One tweet asked, “How pathetic do you have to be to sell nfts of yourself photoshopped into various professions that you could never even dream of having?”
And there’s the rub. Unlike when Trump hosted a reality show on NBC, there’s no network president to cancel him. His media coverage will wane, his followers will dwindle and his story will get even more predictable and boring. The worse it gets, the more frantic he will be for attention. It’s going to make for some pretty ugly TV, that with every boring and pathetic new episode will draw fewer and fewer viewers.
Moments after Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account to insist that, in the 2020 presidential election “TRUMP WON, BIG!” he was back at it in another post — this time completely in all caps — demanding judges and prosecutors avenge his loss by going after his perceived enemies.
Early Friday, hours after the January 6 committee issued a damning report that recommended not only criminal charges against the former president but also bluntly stated he should not be allowed to hold public office again, the twice-impeached former president lashed out by writing, “The change in the Election was Complete & Total, with Millions of votes switched, at least 17%. TRUMP WON, BIG!“
In that vein he later raged in all caps, “SO, WE CAUGHT THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, THROUGH THE USE OF THE FBI & OTHER AGENCIES, CONCLUSIVELY & IRREFUTABLY CHEATING ON THE 2020 Presidential Election, AND COMPLETELY & ILLEGALLY CHANGING ITS RESULT. THIS WAS ONLY ONE OF MANY FORMS OF CHEATING, BUT FRANKLY, IT WAS A BEAUT!
He added, “THE FBI HAS NO EXCUSE, THEY WERE CAUGHT COLD, BUT THIS MUST NOT BECOME A COLD CASE. NOW WHAT? HONEST & BRAVE PROSECUTORS & JUDGES MUST STEP UP & CLEAN OUT THIS CANCER WHICH IS DESTROYING OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY!”
Moments after that he was once again insisting he won in 2020, writing, “The Government of the United States changed our Election Result, and it just doesn’t get any worse than that. Just look at the damage that’s been done to our Country, and the World, in the last two years — It’s incalculable. TRUMP WON!!!”
COMMENT: He’s nutty as a shithouse mouse.
A new report from New York Magazine takes a brief look into the second half of Donald Trump’s presidency, when he was becoming “isolated” due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reportedly “started to scare even those who had been willing for years to forgive anything.”
One former White House aide told NY Mag’s Olivia Nuzzi that the pandemic “really f***ed up his head.”
“He was already on that path, he was so desensitized and emboldened, and then during COVID, his interactions with real people were so cut off,” the former aide said.
The aide went on to say that while the pandemic was raging, Trump wasn’t experiencing any of its horrors. Also compounding the issue was the police killing of George Floyd, which created an “ugly cocktail” of societal upheaval — all things that “activated his worst features.”
“He lost touch with what was real, whatever limited ability he had before to connect was just gone,” the aide said, adding that “there were always weird people around him, but the more the normal people disappeared, and all he’s surrounded by are the cuckoo birds … His brain was vulnerable too because I think he was probably whatever his version of depressed is.”
“I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt,” the aide said, “to see the good things, and I think a lot of that was just giving myself a reason to be there.”
Trump first mentioned the new coronavirus in public on January 22, 2020, during a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine,” he said at the time.
The populist Republican consistently downplayed the threat posed by the pandemic, saying on numerous occasions that the virus would disappear as the weather warmed.
“Typically, it will go away in April,” he said in February.
According to The Washington Post, which analyzed the president’s statements, he said 34 times that the virus would disappear on its own.
Instead, the outbreak spread rapidly, forcing state governors and local authorities across the country to impose lockdowns.
By mid-March, the US had ground to a standstill, with schools closed and links to the rest of the world drastically reduced.
The economy soon collapsed and with it one of the president’s main arguments for re-election.
During his first debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden, Trump maintained that he had built “the greatest economy in history.” But he was harking back to pre-pandemic conditions that no longer hold.
This is strong language coming from McConnell. What this means is simple: The GOP is done with Trump and will move away from him. Oh, of course some percentage of Republicans will continue to have their lips surgically implanted to Trump’s fat ass but the rest of the party is moving on.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell deferred to former President Donald Trump’s handpicked candidates in competitive midterm races, culminating in jarring defeats and a larger Democratic majority that bucked the odds.
He promises not to let that happen again, insisting he will “actively look for quality candidates” to promote in the 2024 primaries.
In a rare and pointed criticism of the former president, who’s seeking a comeback in two years, McConnell said Trump’s power is on the wane and called on him to back off Senate primaries.
“Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished,” McConnell told NBC News on Wednesday in a wide-ranging interview in his Capitol Hill office.
The diminished standing has made McConnell — and by extension his allies, like the deep-pocketed Senate Leadership Fund super PAC — “less inclined to accept cards that may be dealt to us,” he said.
“We can do a better job with less potential interference,” he said. “The former president may have other things to do.”
For clarity:
On Wednesday, a key organizer of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally lashed out at far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her escalating feud with like-minded far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
“MTG is now attacking Rep. Lauren Boebert like a trailer park hoodrat,” wrote Alexander on his Telegram channel.
The core dispute between Greene and Boebert is support for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as he mounts his bid for Speaker in the new Congress — a thorny situation, as a bloc of Trump loyalist Republicans have declared they will vote as a bloc against him, which would theoretically put him below the 218 votes he needs to win. Greene has been fiercely promoting McCarthy’s bid for Speakership, after McCarthy promised her several concessions including restoring her committee assignments. Boebert, coming fresh off an unexpectedly tight re-election, remains noncommittal to backing McCarthy.
In a recent interview alongside several of the Republicans opposing McCarthy, Boebert took a swipe at Greene, saying, “I don’t believe in [electing McCarthy], just as I don’t believe in … Jewish space lasers” — a reference to a famous conspiracy theory Greene promoted.
Greene hit back on Twitter, saying, “Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump, she refuses to support Kevin McCarthy, and she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap sound bite … Americans expect conservative fighters like us to work together to Save America and that is the only mission I’m 100% devoted to, not high school drama and media sound bites.”\
Alexander has faced a mountain of legal problems after helping to organize the “Stop the Steal rally,” which immediately preceded the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Earlier this month, he took over the 2024 presidential campaign of far-right rapper Kanye “Ye” West, who exploded into the news after promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and professing his admiration for Adolf Hitler.
When you commit a crime or commit many crimes, it is best you do not get caught with a lot of other people. The fewer people involved with you in the crime the better. Fewer people to turn on you and confess.
If you count the fake electors, Trump’s lawyers, Trump’s inner circle in the Whitehouse house, Trump’s inner circle outside the White House, and all the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, III Percenters and other criminals, we are looking at A LOT of people who were part of the attempted coup. That’s a lot of targets for prosecutors.
DOJ has a bullseye on every one of them. A lot of targets who have or who will soon spill their guts in order to save their asses.
All these traitors just witnessed the J6 committee put forward 4 serious criminal referrals that come with long prison sentences. They all now know what possible charges they could be facing. They are now shitting in their pants.
Out of over a hundred traitors, the chances of the DOJ getting some of these traitors to talk, to flip, is extremely high. A lot of people are going to be indicted and some of them are going to turn, make deals, spill their guts. The investigations are going to snowball.
Trump is going down. A lot of the people around him are going down. Many, many more of the J6 criminals are going down.
Justice is coming. And Justice carries a big sword.
