Trump’s campaign IS the cesspool of corruption and incompetence we thought it was

Olivia Nuzzi’s stunning look inside the Trump presidential campaign confirms everything we’ve been saying, for so long—that it’s a disorganized disaster of a mess, riven by internal discord and rival factions, with no guiding strategy that could plausibly give the incumbent president a path to reelection. 

We’ve seen and discussed it before, but Nuzzi offers new insight. About the nepotism and grift that infects the campaign

“The campaign was spending all this money on silly things. Brad’s businesses kept making money,” the first senior White House official told me. “Everyone was like, What does he even do? He’s just milking the family, basically. And nobody could understand why Jared and the family were putting up with it. That was the talk all the time. Why? Why Brad? He’s not some genius. And I guess people just came to the conclusion that, well, who else would be campaign manager? We’re kind of stuck with this guy.”

Note, the campaign is still spending money in silly things, like TV ads in the Washington DC market so that Donald Trump can see himself as he wastes entire days staring slack jawed at the TV screen. And are the partners of the two Trump siblings still making $15,000 every month in a nepotistic fleecing of campaign donors? There are no indications that has changed. 

We know that the campaign has no message, and continues to have no message, comically fumbling the response to the Kamala Harris VP rollout. Indeed, this is the campaign that expended serious resources to build a case against Hunter Biden’s work in the Ukraine—an effort that led to a historic impeachment of the president, only to see a bored Trump toss it aside with little use. Also, remember Obamagate, the single most horrible scandal in the history of America? That one lasted like three days. Meanwhile, Trump can’t pivot away from “the best economy in the history of the world” (it wasn’t), even after his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic drove it into a ditch. 

So, having “rebooted” the campaign by ditching Brad Parscale and installing Bill Stepien instead as campaign manager, how has that campaign message changed? Nuzzi asked: 

But while replacing Parscale with Stepien has the look of a reboot, at the strategy level it does not seem much has changed or is likely to. Asked how the campaign can formulate a coherent message, given what life is like for most people across the country today, senior adviser Jason Miller said, “It’s very direct: President Trump built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and he’s doing it again.”

Oh well. 

Finally, we’ve seen how Trump’s actual actions only serve to shrink his potential base of support, further alienating key demographic groups that have abandoned him, like those suburban college-educated white women who delivered the House to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in 2018. (38 of the Democrats’ 41 House pickups were in suburban districts.) 

This is an ongoing Trump feature, from attacking Supreme Court decisions popular with those suburban swing voters (like protecting abortion rights, protecting young immigrants, and defending LGBTQ rights), to demonizing the Black Lives Matter movement, to defending Confederate monuments. So, what is the campaign doing to expand its base and win? Reading the Nuzzi piece, apparently nothing more than engage in wishful thinking. Take this passage, for example: 

“I don’t think we’re gonna lose this campaign,” said Bob Paduchik, Trump’s 2016 Ohio state director and a senior adviser to the 2020 campaign. “I don’t think we’re losing this campaign.” He told me the polling averages didn’t show Biden winning Ohio. I said that was wrong. Well, Paduchik said, the RealClearPolitics average didn’t show Biden winning. I told him that was wrong too — that I happened to be looking at that particular website as we spoke. Even Rasmussen, Trump’s preferred polling outfit, had Trump down by five, I said. “No,” Paduchik said, Rasmussen didn’t have a poll like that. When I said it sure did, that I was looking right at it, Paduchik said he couldn’t speak to that poll since he hadn’t reviewed it himself. Either way, he said, the polls were silly, based as they are on the premise that they measure how people would vote if the election were held today. “Well, the election is not today!” he said. “We haven’t had our debates and our convention yet. It’s sort of a fantasy guess.”

This newfound belief that the debates will bail Trump out is a new level of wishful thinking. Debates don’t mean shit. Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Trump, for all the good it did. Conventions also don’t do much to move the numbers in any lasting way, but they’ll be even less relevant in this year’s online format. But when you don’t have a message or an organization or a viable strategy to win back lost support, then wishful thinking is the final fallback. 

There’s one final fascinating piece of news in Nuzzi’s piece, one that we hadn’t really seen before, and that is whether the Trump campaign is truly as organized as it claimed it is. We saw a hint of this during the hilariously botched Tulsa rally, when the campaign claimed it had 1 million people clamoring to attend. In the end, about 6,000 did. The expected overflow area outside the convention hall was dismantled even before Trump took the stage. (Herman Cain, one of Trump’s few Black friends, died because of that rally.)

The embarrassingly empty overflow area outside Trump’s failed Tulsa rally.

But that failure could easily be placed at the feet the pandemic. The campaign could be as organized as it claimed to be, and yet still fail to get a crowd because death is quite the demotivator, right? In Pennsylvania, a must-win battleground state for Trump, and one he won by a sliver in 2016, the Trump campaign claims 1.4 million volunteers and an unprecedented ground game. As Nuzzi summarizes it, “The campaign says it’s the greatest ground game to ever exist, that while you don’t see enthusiasm for the president reflected in the rigged polls, you do see it when you talk to his real supporters where they live in Real America. In fact, they talk about surveys of enthusiasm not just as though they are more reliable than real polls but as though they are the polls — as though the traditional kind simply don’t exist, or matter.”

Nuzzi sets out to find this ground game in action, attending trainings and gatherings advertised by the state’s campaign. It’s a hilarious stream of empty rooms, closed doors, and puzzled campaign staff. Like this vignette: 

“What event?,” Kevin Tatulyan, an Allegheny County Republican official, asked as he waved me into the room.

“What event?,” Dallas McClintock, the regional Trump-Pence field director, asked.

One of the women, with lilac-colored hair, whipped her head toward McClintock.

“It’s your email here!” she told him, pointing to the advertisement I’d mentioned.

“My email?,” McClintock said in disbelief.

“Yeah!” she said.

He scrunched up his face.

For the next several minutes, the staffers tried to sort out how, with fewer than 100 days until the election, they had unknowingly advertised official campaign events that didn’t exist to potential campaign volunteers in the most important swing state in the country.

They squinted at their screens and asked questions.

“What time?”

“Where did you learn about it?”

“What was the address?”

The second event had been listed with an apparent misspelling in the street name, a detail that prompted the girl with the lilac hair to laugh.

“Sounds right,” she said dryly.

Trump thrives on good news and rose-colored information. Like a typical despot, he doesn’t want to hear the truth, so his staff tells him what he wants to hear. And they tell him those things were he’s sure to consume them—in the media. 

So is the Trump’s campaign entire narrative about its massive ground game a fiction, designed to appease their boss? Nuzzi’s dive into this little slice of Pennsylvania certainly suggests so. Of course, we can’t and shouldn't assume that’s the case anywhere. And in any case, is anyone really staying home this November? I doubt it’s possible to suppress this vote with “good news”. 

And even if Pennsylvania’s Trump operation is a mirage, that doesn’t mean it’s equally ineffective elsewhere. Remember, we’re not playing to win the presidency anymore. This is another 2018—we’re playing to deliver maximum electoral pain to the Republican Party. 

What this does suggest is that a Republican Party that has surrendered to Trump, both out of fear of his tantrums, and hope that his rabid foot soldiers can bail them out, may have miscalculated to a degree that we hadn’t even dare consider. If the vaunted Trump ground game is a fiction, our down ballot opportunities may be even greater than we hoped. 

I’ve said before, we are lucky that Trump is as stupid and ineffective as he is. The dumbass even admitted to gutting the USPS for electoral gain last week, like a cliche movie villain’s monologue. Now no one can pretend that Trump’s efforts aren’t nefarious, even those who wanted to like Fact Check. His penchant for surrounding himself with morons and refusal to follow federal law when making decisions has ensured that the damage he could cause was limited at best. (A quote in Nuzzi’s piece illustrates this perfectly: “What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump.”)

Among those unqualified people? Jared Kushner reigns supreme (of course). 

Trump has epically messed up the country, but it could’ve been worse. And now he’s bringing his special kind of incompetence, the kind that bankrupts a casino,  to his reelection campaign. 

That incompetence is a silver lining in what has been among the bleakest four years in our lives. It means we are on path to ridding ourselves of Trump and his party. Because at this point, we’re not fighting for November, we’re fighting for the next generation. 

House Democrats summon Trump Postmaster General to explain sabotages, may return from recess early

The sudden collapse of the United States Postal Service's ability to do their core job—deliver mail—is now so widespread a problem as to be stoking widespread public outrage. This may finally result in substantive congressional action—sort of. Perhaps.

House Democrats are now asking (but not subpoenaing) Trump Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on August 24th to explain his actions. DeJoy, who remains heavily invested in for-profit competitors to the USPS even as he guts federal mail delivery capabilities, was previously scheduled to appear on September 17; moving his appearance up by several weeks is an indication that Congress no longer thinks waiting until mid-September is defendable. Democrats ask that DeJoy confirm his plan to appear by tomorrow; DeJoy has also been asked to deliver requested documents by Friday, August 21.

The House is putting off the "urgent" hearing until August 24 "to give Committee Members adequate notice to prepare for your testimony" but also "to avoid conflicting with the Republican convention" beginning later that evening." Which is nice, given that DeJoy is a Republican megadonor who no doubt needs to (virtually) mingle at the now-virtual gathering.

While House Democrats' non-subpoena-based request for DeJoy's testimony gives mixed signals as to just how "urgent" Congress believes the intentional pandemic sabotage of the USPS truly is, there are other signs Congress may begin to move more rapidly. CNN reports that House Democrats are "seriously" considering calling the House back into session "as early as" this week to take actions to protect post offices. "Members are getting heavily criticized in their districts during this recess period for not coming back and trying to do something," notes CNN.

It is not clear what remedies may be plausibly available to the House. The Republican-held Senate is likely to continue to back Trump's sabotages of the USPS, moves he has explicitly said are meant to harm mail-in voting efforts, for the same reason the Senate refused to examine impeachment charges against Trump for using federal funds to extort a foreign nation into providing election help: to assist their own re-elections.

But that's becoming a more and more dangerous move to make. The United States Postal Service is one of the government services Americans most interact with, and the sabotage is creating nationwide problems that Americans are now witnessing in large numbers. Urgently needed medication taking weeks to arrive; "overnight" deliveries of live animals being delayed by over a week; checks, bills, and packages that once took mere days to ship now delayed for a month, or longer; it is untenable for both businesses and individuals. And people are getting furious.

Republican estimations that restricting vote-by-mail will prevent more Americans from casting ballots than are spurred in anger to vote against Republican incumbents come hell or high water or pandemic—it is certainly an all-or-nothing play.

Democrats are also requesting Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, currently engaged in an intentional effort to pipeline Russian election disinformation to benefit Trump, to summon DeJoy to testify about USPS sabotage to his own controlling Senate committee. Johnson, however, is a traitor to this nation, and is therefore certain to refuse.

Trump and the corrupt lackeys in his government need to know they will be prosecuted

For purposes of the following, let’s stipulate that Joseph Biden is elected president. Of course, we have a long road ahead to make that happen, but if it doesn’t happen, everything written below will be moot.

Given that scenario, and based on their past conduct, it’s fair to assume that the dominating, prevailing impulse among most if not all of Donald Trump’s appointees—and of Trump himself—will be to loot or otherwise exploit the vast resources controlled by our federal government for their personal ends. The lame-duck presidency will permit Trump’s appointees and their hires in nearly all of our federal agencies approximately 75 days of zero accountability, where their only goal, as they perceive it, will be to extract as much wealth as feasible for themselves, and to do favors for the interests that have placed them in that position to begin with.

Trump has surrounded himself with self-interested sycophants and corrupt grifters who have wielded enormous power within our government structure. The entire tenure of Betsy DeVos, Andrew Wheeler, Ryan Zinke, and Wilbur Ross (to name just a few), whom Trump placed in charge of our federal agencies over the past four years, has been dedicated to siphoning as much as possible from the taxpayer’s coffers and redirecting it for their own benefit or the benefit of interests they represent.

There will be no thought whatsoever by these people as to what type of future they are leaving the American people, or what kind of condition the country will be in after their loot-fest is completed. These are not people who entered public service out of any sense of responsibility or altruism; that is simply not the way they think. Trump carefully and deliberately constructed a kakistocracy—a government of the worst, most unscrupulous, most unqualified people—for which destruction of the government agency to which they were appointed was their primary qualification. Most of them could have drawn far greater salaries in the private sector, but they agreed to participate in government insofar as it served their own financial (or in some cases, purely ideological) interests, both during and after their tenures. So assuming Trump loses on Nov. 3, in addition to a spree of looting we can expect massive deletions of data from hard drives, probably outright destruction or theft of government property, shredding of documents, and more as they try to cover up what they’ve done.

In 2018, The New York Times compiled a comprehensive list of the administration’s corruption and conflicts of interest as of then—a list now rendered so incomplete that it seems quaint. 

Compiling the list made us understand why some historians believe Trump’s administration is the most corrupt since at least Warren Harding’s, of 1920s Teapot Dome fame. Trump administration officials and people close to them are brashly using power to amass perks and cash. They are betting that they can get away with it. So far, Congress has let them.

Two years later, the Trump administration has become a systematic web of conflicted interests and blatant theft more prevalent than any administration in history. Its tentacles have now enveloped the Department of Justice in the persona of William Barr, who is now utilized as a willing tool to conduct sham investigations, pressure foreign states to manufacture false evidence to serve Trump’s political interests, and reward Trump’s loyalists such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone with sentence reductions and outright dismissals of their criminal convictions.

Because Trump’s corruption of our federal government is pervasive at this point, and because it has gone almost entirely unpunished and unexamined, the question of accountability on the part of members of the administration should be addressed now, before the final looting begins. Up to this point, any attempt to unveil this morass of corruption was stymied by a complicit Republican Congress for the first two years of Trump’s tenure. Now that the House is in Democratic hands, the favored response of the administration is to stonewall and “run out the clock.” His appointees engaged in the actual corruption—Barr, for example—are similarly insouciant, in effect thumbing their noses at attempts to investigate or punish their behavior.

Like all criminals, they clearly believe they’ll “get away with it.” It’s our duty to make them understand they won’t.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for The New York Times, frames the issue as one of accountability, which is simply vital if this country is to move forward. She observes that although former Vice President Biden has not ruled out criminal prosecution of Trump himself, he has deliberately avoided the subject. Goldberg also acknowledges that it would be highly unwise for Biden himself to be leading the charge.

Biden’s reticence is understandable, because a president who runs the White House as a criminal syndicate creates a conundrum for liberal democracy. In a functioning democracy, losing an election should not create legal liability; there was a reason Trump’s “Lock her up” chant was so shocking.

But you can’t reinforce the rule of law by allowing it to be broken without repercussion. After four years of ever-escalating corruption and abuses of power, the United States cannot simply snap back to being the country it once was if Trump is forced to vacate the White House in January. If Biden is elected, Democrats must force a reckoning over what Trump has done to America.

Senator and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have both expressed the view that criminal prosecutions of Trump officials and Trump himself are likely unavoidable. While Trump officials will enjoy qualified immunity in the performance of their job functions, there are limits to that immunity when the conduct impugns the Constitution, or otherwise consists of acts not officially contemplated or made discretionary by their employment in government. The law itself, therefore, is not an impediment to prosecutions for gross corruption or other blatant acts of criminal behavior on the part of Trump’s appointees and their hires.

The much thornier question is whether pursuing criminal charges against these officials will be perceived as so political that it will create a precedent for whichever party is in charge to conduct investigations and criminal prosecutions, however frivolous, of the opposing political party. As pointed out in this report, prepared by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the issue of “creating a precedent” is actually moot. The fact is, as William Barr has amply demonstrated, that abuse of the nation’s law enforcement power against political opponents is now our current reality.

[T]he concern that law enforcement could be used to target political opponents is not a future hypothetical—it’s the current reality. The problem is how to respond to the way the Trump administration has used law enforcement to protect its friends and target its enemies. The precedent has been set; what is still to be determined is the nature of the response.

Any investigations should be driven by career officials following the facts where they lead. The only way to address the politicization of law enforcement is by eliminating it, which means that people in the Trump administration, or those with connections to the administration, do not receive special treatment.

Importantly, the authors of the CAP report point out that failure to hold these criminals accountable will set a far worse precedent: “If a free pass is provided to those who broke the law and subverted democracy, it will embolden them and any illiberal politicians or administrations in the future to show even greater disregard for the rule of law.” Further, a failure to insist on accountability will inhibit people who do have integrity—career, non-political employees—to stand up against corruption in the future.

The CAP report also addresses the  objection that such prosecutions will be “divisive.” Essentially the rejoinder is that the entire administration has been divisive—it is in fact completely predicated on dividing Americans. But all Americans (including even Republicans, presumably) are—or should be—united in their fealty to the rule of law.

But one of those shared ideals is the primacy of the rule of law: that people in the United States should be treated equally, and that there should not be one justice system for the politically well-connected and one for everyone else. Having a rule of law means that it applies at all times and in all places—not only when an administration chooses to enforce it. The law applies right now to the Trump administration; that the administration refuses to acknowledge that fact is all the more reason that a future administration must reassert it. That means holding people accountable for their wrongdoing.

The report also emphasizes that the investigations should be conducted without any White House involvement by career DOJ officials selected for their integrity and experience rather than their ideological and political leanings.

Goldberg quotes Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island to make the point that a Truth Commission of sorts was warranted after the Bush administration took our country to war in Iraq based on lies and phony, manufactured evidence, resulting in a geopolitical disaster from which that region has failed to recover, not to mention the massive loss of life.

Whitehouse was one of the Democrats who, in 2009, called for some sort of Truth Commission to examine the legacy of the last Republican to wreck the country. George W. Bush’s presidency left America “deeply in debt, bleeding jobs overseas, our financial institutions rotten and weakened, an economy in free fall,” Whitehouse said then. His administration took the country to war based on lies and authorized torture. There was a “systematic effort to twist policy to suit political ends; to substitute ideology for science, fact, and law; and to misuse instruments of power.”

But no Truth Commission was ever created. There was no accountability for Iraq, or for Guantanamo, or waterboarding, or “renditions,” just as there was no accountability for the Wall Street banks and financial behemoths that caused the financial crisis of 2007-2008. As a result, as former Obama senior adviser Ben Rhodes, quoted by Goldberg, states:

The “lack of accountability that people felt around the financial crisis and around torture didn’t go away,” said Rhodes. “It metastasized.” A generation of Republicans learned that there was no price for flouting the rules.

The point is that there is a direct line between the failure to hold Bush and Cheney accountable and the widespread, systematic corruption of the Trump administration. People like Stephen Miller, like Bill Barr, honestly believe they’re going to skate away and live happily ever after—perhaps, like Sean Spicer, even being invited to go Dancing with the Stars. They feel they are untouchable, and that’s why they continue with their corruption and illegality. After all, no one has ever been held to account; why would they be the first? 

With regard to Trump himself, in his mind, assuming he can somehow escape the prosecutions pending in the Southern District of New York, he clearly believes he has a future that doesn’t involve a jail cell for the rest of his life, possibly in some country without an extradition treaty with the U.S. The Trump crime family is now far more than Trump himself—it consists of his branding and the coercive power he has exerted by virtue of his office to benefit himself, clearly with a view towards pursuing additional ventures after he leaves office. If we allow that to happen, we’ll simply be setting ourselves up for another Trump.

The list of Trump’s crimes, grifting, and self-dealing, is of course inexhaustible. But Goldberg has a few suggestions on how to deal with this criminal. For starters:

The administration’s failure to contain the coronavirus — exacerbated, according to reporting in Vanity Fair, by Trump’s hostile indifference to hard-hit blue states — deserves something akin to a 9/11 commission. So does the wholesale corruption of American diplomacy, only a small part of which was addressed by impeachment. Just last month, The New York Times reported that Trump instructed America’s ambassador to Britain to press the British government to hold the British Open golf tournament at Trump Turnberry, the president’s money-losing golf resort in Scotland. But we have little visibility into how fully American foreign policy has been perverted to serve Trump’s personal interests.

It’s also certainly worth considering the prosecutions of Miller, ICE, and Border Patrol officials, if applicable, as proposed by Sen. Warren during the Democratic primary. As reported in Pacific Standard last year:

Warren states correctly that, as president, she could ask the Department of Justice to investigate and consider bringing charges against individuals from the Trump administration who violated the laws by detaining and criminally abusing immigrants," says Margaret Russell, a constitutional law professor at Santa Clara University. "This is within a president's authority even if the past administration defended its actions as permissible under the immigration laws."

As Goldberg points out, holding these people accountable does not simply mean “airing” or “exposing” their criminality. There is no benefit to that other than to encourage others by letting them know what they can get away with. What she is calling for are explicit legal sanctions—prison time for Trump’s criminal cabal. Of course, the right will call it a political vendetta. Fox News and every right-wing media outlet will call their minions into the street to protest, screaming at the top of their lungs. So? Just another reason to restore the Fairness Doctrine. It certainly couldn’t be much worse than what we’re experiencing right now.

Of course, the Biden administration—like any Democratic Administration coming out of this nightmare—will want to look forward, particularly since it will be attempting to rebuild what is likely to be the most damaged economy in American history. They will consider it a secondary matter to prosecute these people, secondary to saving the country itself from the disaster that Trump is leaving them to clean up. But in this circumstance, they may have no choice. As pointed out by Andrew Feinberg, writing for the Independent, Trump is a special case:

[G]ood government advocates, legal experts, and some prominent Democrats say the broad range of alleged violations of law by Trump administration officials and allies, ranging from misuse of government resources for personal gain; to the abuse and mistreatment of persons — including minors — in immigration detention; to obstruction of justice and making false statements to Congress; means a Biden administration effort to simply “turn the page” on the Trump years would be a dangerous concession to lawlessness.

It is a near certainty that Trump will contest any election result that goes against him, but assuming that our governmental institutions manage to thwart any attempts by Trump to evade that outcome, the timeframe between Nov. 3 and Jan. 20 will become the last opportunity for Trump’s cadre of appointees to indulge in a final spate of looting the public coffers.

The only way they are going to be deterred is by knowing that they will be held accountable to the full extent of the law.

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Postal Service warned 46 states last month that their elections are in jeopardy

The U.S. Postal Service sent letters to 46 states and Washington, D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee that mailed-in ballots for the November election will arrive in time to be counted. The Washington Post got the letter through a records request. The letters were sent at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, but were planned before Louis DeJoy, Trump campaign donor and willing lackey, got his appointment in June, according to the Post. (Here's the letter sent to Minnesota's Security of State Steve Simon on July 29.)

Seven states, with a total of 40 million voters, got a narrow warning saying that for some voters, ballots could be delayed. But 40 other states—representing 186 million voters and including the battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida—got the more serious warning "that their long-standing deadlines for requesting, returning or counting ballots were 'incongruous' with mail service and that voters who send ballots in close to those deadlines may become disenfranchised." Some states have scrambled to move their deadlines, either bringing forward deadlines for requesting and casting ballots or setting deadlines for when the ballots have to be received and to begin tabulating them. This opens states up to legal challenges, which we've already seen the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (they're basically one and the same) undertake. There are now some 60 suits in at least two dozen states over the issue of mail-in voting. Republicans are suing in Pennsylvania and Nevada to stop the states from setting up drop boxes for ballots. They're suing to retain strict photo ID and signature requirements for absentee ballots. They're suing to make sure getting a ballot to the elections office on time is as onerous for people as possible.

And they're sabotaging the Postal Service. Even removing mail boxes from the blue areas of red states, in this case Montana, where the blue boxes have been disappearing from the state's college towns and most populated areas, like some in Missoula "[a]cross from the center of University of Montana," and "[d]owntown in front of a large senior citizen living facility and several office buildings."

Vice News has also reported on Postal Service internal documents it obtained outlining existing plans to slow down the mail sorting process by removing sorting machines. The Postal Service originally proposed removing 20% of the machines but revised the plan down to 15%, taking 502 out of service according to the document Motherboard received. One document is dated May 15, suggesting that the plan was in the works before DeJoy took the position. But those documents are not reflective of how this is playing out, according to the Post.

They've obtained a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union that says the Postal Service has removed 671 mail sorting machines from across the country since June, concentrated in high-population areas. That represents a reduction in national mail sorting capacity of 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour. But the Vice disclosures make it clear that the plan to start hobbling the Postal Service has been in the works for months—DeJoy just stepped in to carry it all out. And then some. It's hard to know whether the warning from Marshall, the general counsel, to the states was a genuine attempt to save this election or an effort to stoke more panic.

What is clear, though, is that this requires immediate action from across the board—from state AGs to try to get injunctions to stop this interference with the mail (a federal offense, by the way) to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who could start immediate investigations and impeachment proceedings against DeJoy. Waiting until Sept. 17 to have him come to the House for a hearing on all this is not acceptable.

Trump House sycophants now concerned about being Trump sycophants

Next year’s collective Republican amnesia will be something to behold. Forget “I didn’t read this tweet” responses to the latest outrage from America’s buffoon “leader” Donald Trump. They’re all going to pretend that he never existed as they rediscover their supposed “values” like not surrendering to Russia, family values (for thee, not me), and concern over budget deficits. 

But for now, Republicans are still marching in lockstep toward that November cliff called “Election Day.” At least they’re doing so publicly. Privately? They’re being extra ridiculous. 

“Discontent with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is on the rise in the House, as Republicans increasingly fearful of a loss by President Trump on Election Day gear up for an intraparty war over the future of the GOP,” reports The Washington Post. “A cluster of GOP lawmakers is starting to privately question whether the California Republican is putting loyalty to the president over the good of the conference. And a small group of members is discussing whether someone should challenge him for minority leader if Trump is defeated Nov. 3.”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. 

[Deep breath]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. 

This is rich

Every single Republican in the House voted against articles of impeachment against Trump. The lone conservative who voted yes, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, had to leave the party and become an independent to do so. 

And now, as House Republicans face further decimation in the House, two years after they got body slammed into the minority, they’re wondering if someone else has been too close to Trump? 

Oh, and these profiles in courage still can’t talk on the record, “[T]he frustration with McCarthy had already been brewing for weeks as Trump’s polling has sagged behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. According to interviews with more than 10 House Republicans — all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank — some GOP lawmakers are worried that McCarthy has tied the conference too much to Trump, refusing to stand up to the president or act as a buffer to distinguish the conference from him.” [Emphasis mine.]

Those 10 “worried” Republicans sure didn’t vote to impeach, that’s for sure. And when it came time to vote for the now-stalled coronavirus relief measure in May, only one voted yes—New York Rep. Peter King. And we know he’s not one of the 10 fretting GOPers. How do we know? Because he already announced his retirement.

That’s not Kevin McCarthy casting those votes. 

Of course, all Republicans have every reason to worry about November. Democrats maintain a healthy 8-10 point lead in the Civiqs generic congressional ballot daily tracker. (The same tracker spotted Democrats a 6-point 50-44 lead in 2018, an election in which the Democrats won the House popular vote by 8.6 points, 53.4-44.8.) 

And for sure, being tied to Trump has been an electoral disaster for the GOP. Look at college-educated white women, the lone demographic to have significantly moved in the past four years:   

National vote,

college white women

Vote Margin 2016 exit polls (Prez) 2018 exit polls (House)
51-44 Dem +7 Dem
59-39 Dem +20 Dem

Polling this year has consistently shown continuing trouble among all college-educated whites, and especially women. (Trump and his party are even losing ground among non-college whites, but I don’t trust them to deliver Democratic votes just yet. They’ve been shown to be susceptible to racist appeals in the past.)

Trump is going down. He’s taking down his party’s Senate majority, and another chunk of House Republicans in mostly suburban districts. All that is clear. 

But anonymously whining that some guy is too pro-Trump, while every one of your public actions are explicitly and proudly pro-Trump, is a new level of ridiculous. 

Everyone who has enabled Trump, and that’s a near-unanimous calculation when it comes to Republican elected officials, deserves to be wiped out electorally. That entire QAnon-fueled party needs to be burned to the ground. And if a science- and reason-based conservative party emerges from its ashes? Fine. Let’s have debates on the future of our country based on observable reality. 

But unless your name is Mitt Romney, you don’t get to complain about the sorry, sad state of the modern GOP.

Adam Schiff Says ‘No Racist Appeal’ Or ‘Political Dirty Trick Beyond The Pale’ For Trump

House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff told MSNBC on Wednesday that President Donald Trump would stoop to any level to win the election, saying there was “no tactic beneath him, no bigotry too great, no racist appeal too much, no political dirty trick beyond the pale.”

Guest-host Ali Velshi said to Schiff, “A lot of people just don’t like Donald Trump. They forget the impeachment was about a dirty election trick. A dirty election trick is something you and I talked about I think a week ago with the intelligence that you have had that you like Americans to find out about, but you can’t right now.”

RELATED: Pelosi Says Trump Executive Orders Were Not To Help Hungry Children But To ‘Bolster Stock Market’

Schiff: We have ‘a president of the United States who will break any law, rule, abuse of power of his office, who will cheat…’

“This is another one,” Ali Velshi said. “If he’s helping Kanye West to run with the aim of defeating Joe Biden, falls into the same basket.”

Schiff replied, “Well, it does. It falls into the basket of a president of the United States who will break any law, rule, abuse of power of his office, who will cheat, and no strategy is beneath him.”

“You know, this idea of recruiting a third party candidate that you hope will siphon votes from your opponent, it is an old ploy, but it is among the dirtiest of the dirty tricks,” Schiff said. “You never wanted to be associated with it. But here it is all out in the open.”

 

Schiff accuses Trump of racism: ‘It is not even a dog-whistle anymore. It is a whistle that everybody can hear’

“The president’s son-in-law dispatched to meet with Kanye,” Schiff continued. “They’re not even hiding it.”

The Democrat added, “You know, Barbara Boxer, who was just wonderful on your show, talked about the dog-whistle in terms of the suburban households. It is not even a dog-whistle anymore. It is a whistle that everybody can hear.”

RELATED: Flashback: Biden VP Pick Kamala Harris Blasted Him for Racist Past

Schiff claims ‘Republicans in the Congress won’t say a word’ about Trump supposedly destroying the Republican Party

Schiff went on, “This is where the president has descended to low, no tactic beneath him, no bigotry too great, no racist appeal too much, no political dirty trick beyond the pale. And the terrible thing is the Republicans in the Congress won’t say a word.”

“They are watching their party destroyed,” he said. “They’re watching the ethics of the party leader just tear their party asunder, and they don’t have the guts to do anything or say anything about it.”

“That’s what enables this,” Schiff insisted.

The post Adam Schiff Says ‘No Racist Appeal’ Or ‘Political Dirty Trick Beyond The Pale’ For Trump appeared first on The Political Insider.

Sorting machines being taken from post offices! Sabotage continues …

NPR's Noel King interviewed the Iowa Postal Workers Union President, Kimberly Karol. I urge you to read the entire transcript. (It’s not long.) She has been at the USPS for over 30 years, yet she has never seen anything like this. Louis DeJoy, a Trump flunky, was appointed as postmaster general. He has numerous conflicts of interests and no experience whatsoever—but he was a large Trump donor.

His changes have drawn widespread criticism. Karol admits she “is not a fan,” and she is not alone. She said "mail is beginning to pile up in our offices, and we're seeing equipment being removed.”

"In Iowa, we are losing machines. And they already in Waterloo were losing one of those machines. So that also hinders our ability to process mail in the way that we had in the past."

She said the changes made aren’t designed to save money, but to undermine public confidence in the Post Office. I would agree with that, with the added bonus for Trump of undermining confidence in the upcoming election that he is terrified of losing. She also believes DeJoy is trying to circumvent the rules that require public comment. 

I would love for someone to explain to me how taking away mail sorting equipment, which stations already have, will 1) save money 2) do anything but hinder the mail going out in a timely manner. But that is the entire point, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, this is happening everywhere. Washington state officials are already complaining about mail sorting machines being removed. 

DeJoy has already cut hours, cut overtime, removed trucks and jacked up the price of mail-in ballots right before the election. He is also, like Trump, opposed to the USPS getting more funding, which is as nefarious as it gets.

Vote early, in person, if you can. If you get a mail-in ballot, please take it to the elections office or a drop box. If you have to mail it, make sure you have enough postage and mail it in IMMEDIATELY. Thirty-four states won’t count it if it comes after Election Day, and Trump’s team is doing everything in their power to ensure that happens.

#TrumpKillsUSPS

🚨Trump Is Removing Mail Sorting Machines From Post Offices https://t.co/m4WrVIFhYK

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) August 12, 2020

In the meantime, it’s all hands on deck, people:

Effective Get Out the vote can change an election. With Turnout2020, you call Democratic-leaning swing state voters & help them request an absentee ballot. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this is needed now more than ever. Sign up to volunteer, and you can make these phone calls from the privacy & comfort of your own home.

Thursday, Aug 13, 2020 · 4:58:18 PM +00:00 · SemDem

Trump just admitted he is sabotaging the post office to stop vote by mail. Dem leaders need to get an injunction and even consider impeachment, since this is a criminal act. It’s the right thing to do and I don’t care if the Senate acquits him—they will each have to go on record with destroying the USPS, and this puts the issue front and center. Most people don’t know this sabotage is even going on.

GOP Senate Source Claims Mitt Romney Leading Effort To Stop Subpoena Of Comey And Brennan

A senior Republican Senate source has claimed that Mitt Romney is blocking the subpoenas of James Comey and John Brennan.

Johnson: “I’m Not Naming Names”

During a radio interview on Wednesday evening, Senator Ron Johnson, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that fellow committee members were blocking him from sending subpoenas to James Comey, the former FBI Director, and John Brennan, the former CIA Director, as well as others involved in the investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“We had a number of my committee members that were highly concerned about how this looks politically,” Johnson told Hugh Hewitt on his show. If one of the eight Republicans were to defect on the committee of fourteen, the decision could very easily end in a deadlock.

Johnson, however, refused to name any names on the show, despite Hewitt repeatedly asking him.

“If there’s a senator who is blocking a subpoena, we need to know who that is so we throw them out,” Hewitt said.

RELATED: Never Trump Group Wants To Eliminate Republicans From The Senate – Except Mitt Romney

Source Reveals Romney Is Behind The Push

Following the interview, one name did in fact come out. Speaking to The Gateway Pundit, a senior Republican Senate source confirmed that it was Senator Mitt Romney who was leading the charge against the subpoenas.

“Romney was for impeachment. He has been against Trump every step of the way. Now he is obstructing going after the leakers and liars who went after Trump,” the source said, confirming this has been yet another move by Romney against the President and his supporters.

RELATED: Kayleigh McEnany Torches Romney For His Support Of Black Lives Matter

Another Attack On The President From RINOs!

This really should come as no surprise to anyone who backs the President. Romney was the only Republican who voted to impeach President Trump earlier this year, and since that’s failed, he’s doing his utmost to stop justice being done to those members of the Deep State who tried their best to stop the President from winning back in 2016.

If anyone should be impeached, it’s Romney!

The post GOP Senate Source Claims Mitt Romney Leading Effort To Stop Subpoena Of Comey And Brennan appeared first on The Political Insider.

Warning on Russia adds questions about Senate's Biden probe

Warning on Russia adds questions about Senate's Biden probeEven before last week's intelligence assessment on foreign election interference, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was facing criticism from Democrats that his investigation of presidential candidate Joe Biden and Ukraine was politically motivated and advancing Russian interests. The investigation is unfolding as the country, months removed from an impeachment case that had centered on Ukraine, is dealing with a pandemic and confronting the issue of racial injustice.


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