The Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union was, as usual, detached from reality

Posted on March 2, 2022 (Updated March 3, 2022) by Hunter

There was once a time when we might have live-blogged the Republican responses to a State of the Union address, but we're all much older and more tired now and the collective "news" broken during all State of the Union responses combined, in the past decade, consists of that time Marco Rubio needed to take a drink of water and pretty much nothing else.

The Republican response this time around was apparently given by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who perhaps needed a bit of good publicity after she was discovered to have taken nearly a half million dollars of federal pandemic relief money to pay staffers in her own state government office, which isn't what the pandemic fund was intended for. Reynolds also allegedly took steps to hide where the cash was going, and has also refused to provide the documentation required for auditing the expenditure, so she's clearly been doing her be more like Donald Trump homework.

Anyhoo, Reynolds continued the long tradition of State of the Union responses that completely ignore the actual speech they're responding to in order to fire off a laundry list of pre-determined attack lines, so we're going to respect that choice by reviewing Kim Reynolds' speech without bothering to actually watch or read it. I thought the part where she promised to kill, stuff, and mount Hank, the bear breaking into South Lake Tahoe homes for winter snacks, to be unnecessarily gruesome. I don't like the part where she swore that Republicans were on Ukraine's side and against Russia, but she kept mispronouncing "Ukraine" as "eclair" so it sounded like she was defending Republican dessert rights. The part where she juggled Hummel figurines while reciting Donald Trump's favorite poem, The Snake, showed remarkable dexterity but I thought muddled her central anti-Hank messages.

There you go, you're caught up.

From actual not-entirely-imaginary news coverage, it appears the parts of Reynolds' speech we missed focused primarily on convincing America that the pandemic, the economic chaos of the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a new wave of our children learning uncomfortable things are all Joe Biden's fault. According to The New York Times, she was selected for the bit by Sen. Mitch McConnell "in part" because of Reynolds' anti-masking stances. Reynolds is one of the Republican governors who has signed on to efforts to ban school mask mandates, because Republican parents don't like masks and it's extremely important to Republican parents that these preferences be played out in classroom proxy battles that may or may not kill teachers or neighbors or other parents or the kids themselves outright.

Do not let anyone, anywhere tell you that Americans "love their children." Some do and some don't. For many parents, that "love" is purely conditional and predicated on their children hating the right things or hurting the right people, which is why books that portray LGBT adolescents as normal and worthy of normal lives are among the top targets on all the newest banned book lists.

The other bit of Reynolds' speech consisted of a half-hearted attempt to erase all of recent Republican history to claim that Republicans are indeed in Ukraine's corner and against Vladimir Putin's bloody war, despite the Republican Party specifically stripping support for Ukraine from the last platform it ever bothered to write, per the demands of the Trump campaign; despite Republican airwaves and conferences being awash with praise for the "smart" Putin and his "smart" white nationalist, non-woke murders and violence; and despite Gov. Kim Reynolds herself being a strong backer of Donald Trump's extortion of Ukraine during Trump's first impeachment trial. According to the Kim Reynolds of back then, holding Trump to account for blocking military aid to the at-war Ukraine so that he and Rudy Giuliani could pressure Ukraine's democratic government into announcing a thoroughly fake investigation of the Biden family was outrageous.

Now she's just another one of the insufferably ambitious Republican governors insisting that the party's previous explicit support for sabotaging the Ukrainian government using propaganda backed by pro-Putin oligarchs is nothing the rest of us should be going on about. Republicans didn't back Trump's every effort to hand Putin whatever Putin expressed even mild interest in. Republicans didn't actually nod and applaud during the countless episodes in which Trump or one of his hackish underlings attacked the very premises of NATO or flung cheap, spurious insults towards the nations that comprise it. Heavens no, and to prove it Kim will add three more Hummel figurines to her performance.

I think we've given Reynolds' response about the right amount of attention now, so we're good. The short version is that once again, Republican leaders chose as their best spokesperson an anti-mask, pandemic-prolonging, culture-war-focused hack currently under investigation for stealing government funds and who turned in a performance that had not a damn thing to do with anything, but instead was filled with the same six or seven talking points Republicans have currently chosen to flood the airwaves with while completely ignoring all the misery their incompetence bestowed on the rest of us.

Who else were they going to pick? The still-indicted Texas attorney general? The Florida governor just caught on camera yelling at students for wearing masks in his presence? Tucker?

Subpoenas in Georgia’s Trump corruption probe won’t come until May at best

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Hunter

If we've learned anything in the last few years, it's that when powerful people commit crimes, the odds that our nation's various legal jurisdictions can be roused to do so much as even investigate what happened in a rational timeframe are iffy at best. It has been a year and change since the last Republican administration mounted an all-out effort to overturn the results of a not-even-close United States election; although each of of the connected plots mounted by Donald Trump, his allies, and complicit Republican lawmakers are now known in public detail, whether any of those involved face legal consequences for attempting to overthrow the United States government appears to depend on whether Rep. Liz Cheney goads the rest of government into doing so.

If you're feeling cynical about an entire year and change going by with no word from prosecutors that organizing a mob to interfere with Congress' ability to carry out a foundational constitutional function—or just calling up election officials directly to pressure them to change the vote tallies—then join the club.

Yes, yes, we are told that the wheels of justice turn slowly and that, behind the scenes, no doubt, prosecutors are gathering up vast mountains of evidence because they want to do this thing properly. That may be true and it may not be—the Mueller investigation suggests this is the rosiest possible interpretation. But as far as anybody can tell, top members of government conspired to nullify a United States election based on hoaxes, and nobody has done squat about it. The co-conspirators, in the meantime, are invited onto the Sunday shows to rail about the audacity of anyone even being upset about these things a whole year later.

In Atlanta, there is maaaaaaaybe some movement over a year past the time when the American public first heard the audio recording of the Trump White House pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" enough Trump votes to erase Biden's win of the state. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis received court approval in late January to seat a special grand jury to hear evidence in the case; this was necessary, she said, because witnesses to Trump's pressure were refusing to cooperate with her office without subpoenas forcing them to do so.

So here we are: A year later, key witnesses to the calls are expected to be subpoenaed to give their accounts of what happened. Welcome to the American justice system, subcategory "when you're rich or know somebody who is."

When will the subpoenas demanding testimony and documents begin? Well, the special grand jury won't be seated until May, so no sooner than that. In a new CNN interview, Willis predicted that "most" will begin to come "in June and later months."

In the interview, Willis sounded determined but not necessarily gung-ho about the investigation, which is admittedly the only public demeanor you're allowed to have when investigating even crimes that threaten the stability of government itself. "This is a criminal investigation," and "we're not here playing a game," she said. She also dismissed the expected Trump defense, the claim that presidents can't be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office.

You might remember the theory from its previous versions, in which Trump and the near-entirety of House and Senate Republicans argued during one impeachment that Trump couldn't be held accountable for crimes while he was still president because Shut Up, and couldn't be held accountable for crimes committed on his way out of office because it's just too damn Divisive. But the more generic version offered up by Trump defenders is that you can't prosecute [Republican] presidents for anything, at any time, period.

As for any hint as to which way the district attorney's office is leaning, Willis gave not much. She told CNN:

"You and I have listened to that phone call. But also I have the benefit of also having talked to a lot of witnesses and probably having read more on this than most people would like to."

I'm not going to argue here that the public should be "patient" in waiting to hear if elected officials are allowed to just straight-up phone elections officials to tell them that the election results are wrong and they need to "find" some votes to fix it.

I'm also not going to argue that prosecutors are dragging their feet, because we're in no position to know. But the facts of the matter are this: We're only going to be seeing subpoenas filed to investigate the Trump-Raffensperger call in summer, and the system will assuredly be gamed so that the first (secret) testimony takes place in the fall at best.

That means that the decision about whether to proceed with a Trump indictment will not be made until close to the midterm elections ... which means Willis will likely feel pressure to push it past the midterms so as to not be accused herself of influencing an election.

None of this feels like anybody, anywhere is treating an attempt to overthrow democracy via straight-up crookery as something that needs to be responded to with above-average urgency.

Yes, we get it; it takes vast amounts of time to do even the littlest things when laws are applied to people who have enough money to hire as many lawyers as it takes to make sure tee times are not threatened. But maybe that's been the underlying problem that's led to all the rest of it. We're a society in which a specific subclass of the wealthy, mostly Wall Street and real estate tycoons, can topple economies and even mount attempted coups—and it will all be considered just the sort of thing rich Americans are allowed to do.

Trump's been a crook his whole life and never faced a consequence, other than having to shell out a little bit of cash for settlements that would let the rest of his grift machine keep going. It's obvious he would expect that he could commit any crime he wanted to, as "president," and walk away again. And it's pretty damn obvious that Republican lawmakers have so internalized their positions as protectors of the wealthy that there is no crime an ally could commit that would result in abandonment. Crash the economy, kill hundreds of thousands, rouse fascist mobs to demand we put an end to vote-counting rather than put up with the results—nothing.

So long as the consequences for crimes can be pushed past the next election season, there are no consequences for crimes at all. It's just a question of being able to outlast whatever momentary public disgust is aimed at you.

Key impeachment witness Alexander Vindman sues Trump allies for intimidation, retaliation

Posted on February 2, 2022 (Updated February 3, 2022) by Hunter

It's been long overdue: Former Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has filed a lawsuit against a host of top Donald Trump allies, accusing them of attempting to intimidate him, then retaliating against him for his testimony in the first of Congress' two Trump impeachment investigations. Vindman was a key witness in the investigation, one of the few in the White House who witnessed Trump's conversation with Ukraine's president in which Trump asked the Ukrainian government to give public credence to a hoax targeting his expected election opponent, Joe Biden. It was a hoax promoted by pro-Russian oligarchs and Trump fixer Rudy Giuliani. It was also part of a broader revealed effort in which Trump's team promoted those pro-Russian interests, removed a United States ambassador who was seen as an impediment to them, and stonewalled congressionally approved military aid to the country while pushing its leaders to provide the Trump-demanded election help.

Vindman is suing Giuliani, along with then-Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, staffer Julia Hahn, and Donald Trump Jr. for their roles in the attacks against him. The lawsuit charges the Trump allies with an "intentional, concerted campaign of unlawful intimidation and retaliation."

There's zero question that Vindman was both publicly threatened and had his career cut short as an act of retaliation, because nobody in Trump's orbit even bothered to hide it. Donald Trump repeatedly posted public tweets threatening those who testified against him, and both Vindman and his brother were summarily removed from their White House duties immediately after Senate Republicans scuttled further investigation and backed Trump's international extortion. Trump's team followed up with a widespread purge of government watchdogs who were seen as insufficiently loyal to Trump's schemes. Republican lawmakers, pundits, and hosts all joined the effort to demonize Vindman for agreeing to testify.

The same dynamic would occur during and after Trump's second impeachment, as Republicans have done everything within their power to stonewall House and federal investigations of a Trump-organized violent coup. (Many of those Republicans are themselves accessories to the seditious acts.) Trump allies have again threatened those who willingly testify. Trump has again floated pardons for those who committed crimes on his behalf. The fascist party again settles into backing even violence by the party's leader, rather than abide election losses.

The Vindman case will be yet another test as to whether the nation's laws still mean anything when they run up against the petty whims of the powerful, but the evidence Vindman's team has provided isn't really disputable. The only remaining question is whether political hacks working on behalf of a president are allowed to intimidate and retaliate against witnesses simply because it was in service to a Dear Leader figure who wanted those things done. Unless Republicans retake Congress and write up a new law specifically prohibiting lawsuits against Giuliani and his accomplices—which could happen, after all—it's difficult to imagine the defense offering up any justification of Vindman's treatment that wouldn't be laughed out of the courtroom.

Fascism: Trump vows pardons for Jan. 6 seditionists, calls for nationwide protests if indicted

Posted on January 30, 2022 (Updated January 31, 2022) by Hunter

Republican Party leader and traitor to the nation Donald Trump continues to test new rally waters in anticipation of a repeat presidential bid. On Saturday the delusional narcissist made no particular effort to hide his disgust for the law and for those who would hold him to it, delivering an ugly, unhinged, and unabashedly fascist speech to a crowd of like-minded traitors.

His most newsworthy proclamation was a vow to pardon the seditionists of the January 6 insurrection. "If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly."

"And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."

BREAKING: President Trump promises to PARDON Jan. 6 prisoners if he runs and wins in 2024 pic.twitter.com/teYbYNBcuB
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) January 30, 2022

It is not immediately clear if the traitor, who gathered and incited a crowd to "march" to the U.S. Capitol on that day and hour as part of a multi-pronged plan for his Republican Party to nullify his presidential election loss while using "emergency" presidential powers to either militarily oversee a "new" election or simply declare himself the legitimate winner, is promising a blanket pardon of all those involved in the violence. He may also be vowing to use presidential pardons to erase legal consequences for only his own inner circle of co-conspirators, just as he used it to immunize those allies when he last had the power to do so.

The intent of the message is clear either way. Trump is allying himself with those that helped him carry out his seditious—and deadly—insurrection, and is dropping promises of "pardons" as encouragement to his allies to keep fighting to block probes into the violence. Stonewall the prosecutions and refuse to cooperate with investigators, the traitorous criminal hints, and he will make your troubles go away again when he is returned to power.

But Trump went even farther. Citing the (many) investigations against him for crimes ranging from the previous insurrection to the pressure on Georgia officials to "find" new votes to a lifelong pattern of financial fraud, the fascist leader pushed his fascist supporters to respond to any potential indictment against him by taking to the streets.

"If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt. They're corrupt."

After ranting about the prosecutors investigating him, Trump calls the prosecutors racist and says if they do anything illegal, he hopes there are massive protests in DC, New York, and Atlanta pic.twitter.com/RnY6F5OJNv
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2022

It is the hallmark of a fascist leader and his party: The claim that prosecution of his own crimes, or the crimes of his violent supporters, proves only that the whole nation was "corrupt" and needed to be remade. Trump is wedging racist in there because, both in Georgia and in New York, the head investigators of his crimes are Black.

Far from being deterred by the violence of his attempted insurrection, Trump is simultaneously promising to erase the crimes of those who attempted to topple the government on his behalf and pressing his Republican followers to mount even "bigger" street actions to keep his own criminal behind out of a prison cell. The man continues to betray his country in every way it is possible to betray it, and all of it is centered only around himself and his own desires.

In his previous rounds of presidential pardons, Trump pardoned those who committed war crimes; those who treated immigrants with illegal cruelty; those who obstructed investigations on his behalf; those who acted as agents of foreign powers. His pardons were all aimed at neutralizing prosecutions of those who did illegal things in service of racist, xenophobic, or Trump-promoting ends.

The Republican leader's promise to "pardon" those who engaged in violent insurrection on his behalf made barely a ripple on the Sunday shows or among the Republicans still loyal to that insurrection. Trump is overtly thumping for future seditious acts, and the Republican Party, purged of anyone who is not a willing accessory to even violent crimes, has little to say about it.

As gutless as ever, Sen. Lindsey Graham will only allow that it is "inappropriate" to promise pardons for insurrectionists. But only that; he will go no farther, lest he say something too bold and lose favor with the pro-fascist base.

"I think it is inappropriate" -- Lindsey Graham on Trump promising pardons to those convicted of crimes connected to the January 6 attack on Congress (Graham then tries to bothsides it by bringing up Kamala Harris) pic.twitter.com/Hr6Sgz8RPp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022

And as spineless as ever, Sen. Susan Collins—one of the few Republicans who dared vote to impeach Trump after the insurrection, will only allow that she is "very unlikely" to support Trump as future presidential candidate.

Susan Collins won't shut the door on supporting Trump in 2024 even after voting for his conviction following his second impeachment trial pic.twitter.com/tWfNt57kYv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2022

So not even orchestrating an attempted coup is sufficient reason to fully and completely rule out support for the plotter? Truly, there may never be another political figure as relentlessly rudderless as this one.

More of the Sunday show debate was spent on allowing the defenders of insurrection to sniff about the alleged impropriety of Biden's promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court than was spent on asking those same Republicans to stand against Trump's visions of mass riots and promised pardons for insurrection.

The Sunday shows are still pointedly neutral when it comes to the choice between peaceful democracy and violence-led fascism. They do not care. Nobody involved cares. They will book the same guests to tell the same lies and support the same crimes from now until the end of the republic, and not a single host will stand against such violence if it means losing interview access to those backing it.

Trump's latest rally speeches are clear-cut attacks on the very fabric of the nation. He insists that elections are "corrupt," leading the entire Republican Party into similar rejections of our democracy's validity. He insists that those who investigate his alleged wrongdoing—up to and including violent insurrection—are "corrupt," and promises to immunize those who ally with them against the institutions that would prosecute them for such crimes.

He is a fascist-minded, mostly-delusional traitor to the republic. All those who cheer for him are the same. Trump himself appears to believe that it would be better to plunge the nation into a new civil war than recognize either the validity of his last election loss or the validity of a new one, and he has nearly all Republican Party officials and lawmakers as allies in the effort.

It is impossibly corrupt, all of it, and historians continue to scream that this is precisely how democracies are toppled. With a lazy, dull-witted press; with a party that emphasizes good corruption over bad prosecution; with a base that does not give a damn about any of it, because they are single-mindedly obsessed over the notion that the nebulous other is oppressing them and for that, must be punished.

There is no way this does not end in a tidal wave of political violence. And that, too, will likely be downplayed by Sunday show hosts looking to book those who would ally with it.

Ted Cruz is trying to discredit the prosecution of violent seditionists. Any guesses why?

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Hunter

Sen. Ted Cruz has been beating pro-seditionist conspiracy theory drums since before the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place. It's still a bit novel to see Cruz use his pro-sedition conspiracy theory as a campaign fundraising gimmick, though.

But here we are, and the man who once ran for president—only to be crushed by Donald Trump, then subsumed into the fold of Trump's most obsequious boot-polishers—is using the newest Republican hoax to raise money from pro-sedition members of his base. The hoax Ted Cruz is promoting is the "Ray Epps" theory:

"Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?" asks Ted. Because "We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump" and just "look at the Russia Collusion Hoax" and "Peter Strzok" and "Merrick Garland won't answer questions" and "What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?"

If it sounds like any other Republican fundraising letter, down to the buzzwords and linked conspiracy theories and warnings of an "extreme-left agenda," it's because the party's vocabulary has dwindled down to a mere 500 words or so, all of them focus-grouped to the last serif, and half of those are references to theories that exist only in the Fox News universe. Literally any Republican in the party could send this same letter with only a sentence or two changed to fit their current position. Whatever individuality Ted once had, back in the days when he was known mostly for being the least pleasant person to be around even in Washington, D.C., has been smoothed out in favor of Generic Pro-Trump Conspiracy Guy.

Same fundraising language, same conspiracies, same blanket defenses of the most bumbling and crooked president of the modern era as being the fault of whatever enemies Donald has a personal grudge against.

The "Ray Epps" theory is, short version, a conspiracy theory being peddled by Republican sedition backers (including, of course, Trump backers who participated in the day's violence) that supposes that actually, the crowd that Trump and Trump allies scrambled to assemble on that day and hour were goaded into mounting a violent rebellion by the FBI. Or by antifa. Or by somebody. But the important point, in the theory, is claiming that the seditionists attempted to overthrow the government only because the government egged them into doing it, and so everybody should go free and once again we really should be investigating Trump's enemies, not the people doing grotesquely illegal things on Trump's personal behalf.

Sure, the crowd attacked police officers. Sure, there were deaths. But you see, some guy was seen outside the Capitol on that day but hasn't yet been charged by federal agents, ergo that guy must have been a plant and not a real Trump supporter, ergo the crimes don't count and none of this ever happened.

Ted Cruz has some personal stake in this, of course, given that Ted Cruz was one of those who attempted to nullify an American election that day, erasing the new administration rather than obliging Trump to hand over power. Ted can't well claim that the FBI goaded him into supporting an attempted autogolpe on the Senate floor, but as federal prosecutors target individual insurrectionists with "seditious conspiracy"—the first in-court acknowledgement that individuals in the violent crowd planned their actions as a serious effort to bring down the nation's government—it is to his advantage to argue that the only coup attempt that day was his own effort and that those people were doing something else entirely.

It's not true. Both efforts were linked, as documents from inside Trump's band of schemers have now shown. Republican lawmakers and Mike Pence were supposed to challenge the election's results as corrupted and invalid; Trump and allies had organized the large crowd to "march" to the Capitol grounds at exactly the same moment to intimidate waffling lawmakers into going along—and, under the assumption that violence would break out when Trump's crowd met "antifa" opponents that never appeared that day, provide grounds for using the Insurrection Act to summon the military, declare the election nullified, and promise a "do-over" election that might or might not have ever happened.

Ted Cruz did his part on that day, and the crowd of Trump supporters did theirs. The plan failed only because Mike Pence did not go along, and the expected counter-demonstrators never appeared—which meant there was no plausible deniability for the pro-Trump militia members and others who committed violence that day.

Cruz and his seditionist allies in the House and Senate near-immediately began inventing new theories to explain why the violence was actually the fault of antifa or other "anti-Trump" forces regardless of what we saw and heard on our televisions; one of the catch-all theories has been that the FBI staged the whole thing themselves, or at least helped plan it, or at least were the people goading Trump's frothing supporters into storming the Capitol and attacking people.

It was a theory invented in real time on pro-insurrection television programs and among pro-sedition lawmakers. It was based on nothing—another hoax in the now endless stream of pro-Trump hoaxes.

In real life, Ray Epps is a longtime militia member who was once president of the Arizona branch of the Oath Keepers, one of the two militias whose members are now facing seditious conspiracy charges due to their actions before and during the coup. He was in the pro-Trump crowd for the same reason as the others: to back Trump's attempt to remain in power regardless of the election's actual results. He has so far not been charged with criminal acts for a rather mundane reason: Epps appears to have never entered the Capitol building himself, and while there is footage of him encouraging others to go inside, there is so far no footage of him telling the crowd to be anything but "peaceful."

That makes him a small fry, when it comes to prosecution efforts. Courts and prosecutors are already overburdened with insurrection cases, and even those who did enter the building are not necessarily facing much punishment unless they manage to stack up other illegal acts as well. Prosecutors aren't targeting Epps because it's a harder case to prove than the others and his violations were less severe. So far.

If Ted Cruz is going to claim that every member of the pro-Trump crowd who hasn't been charged with crimes has not been charged with crimes because they're working for the FBI, he's welcome to go nuts with that. But he'd obviously be lying—and he's obviously lying now.

The last remaining bit of this farce hinges around the question that Cruz and other seditionists demand be asked: What if Epps was an FBI informant at some point? What if he did cooperate with investigators?

Okay, Ted, you've got me. What of it? Let's say this guy talked with the FBI and squealed as squealingly as a squealer could squeal—let's say he, or somebody else in the militia movement, sat down in front of a computer screen with three FBI agents named Edward, Thaddeus, and Bifftholomew and spent 10 solid hours going through security footage, naming every last face he recognized.

So then what? Oh my goodness, somebody cooperated with law enforcement to name people who attacked police officers, ransacked offices, or threatened to hang the vice president.

That's your conspiracy theory, Ted, so tell us what that would mean. Don't snivel like a seditionist little coward and suggest that something like that might be true; come out and tell us what the actual outrage would be.

Is it that somebody, somewhere might be cooperating with law enforcement to bring Trump's most violent supporters to justice? Is that what has you so upset?

Are you suggesting that those who stockpiled weapons and who planned their actions on that day so that they would have the best possible chance of toppling constitutional government should be set free, because somebody in the crowd is a snitch?

How very odd. But it's a pattern we've seen from Cruz and the near-entirety of Republicanism over and over again; whenever Donald Trump or someone close to him gets caught doing something that would have been grounds for immediate impeachment, removal, and likely prosecution during any previous administration, the Republican Party immediately launches an all-out war against whatever public official discovered the corruption. Every last time. The Republican enemies list is now just an unending list of names of government workers, foreign diplomats, top journalists, law enforcement agents and others who have reported or testified that Donald Trump did something corrupt.

Merrick Garland is now on that list because Ted is outraged Garland's Justice Department is charging people who attacked police officers and went hunting for lawmakers with crimes. That says a lot more about Ted Cruz than it does about anything else.

There's no mastery as to what is happening here. Ted Cruz was part of a far-right effort to nullify a United States election based on a fraudulent hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists and seized upon by his whole party as convenient excuse. He, personally, was accessory to an attempt to erase an election rather than recognize its results. It was all a lie, and Ted Cruz was one of its chief spokesmen.

But it failed, and now Ted and the other lawmakers who engaged in that seditious conspiracy are attempting to throw up whatever barricades they can between themselves and those who are investigating the day's events. They stonewalled congressional investigation—as in, the premise that there should even be one. They have supported architects of the day's events as those figures have defied congressional subpoenas demanding their testimony. They have tossed out countless new conspiracy theories intended to discredit law enforcement investigations of the people who were caught, on camera, attacking and injuring hundreds of police officers.

Ted would rather everyone who attacked police officers and ransacked offices that day go free, so long as that means federal and congressional investigations of who sent them there are stopped in their tracks.

Why?

Because Ted Cruz was part of a seditious conspiracy himself. And however large his part is known to be, it's very, very clear that it's Ted and his fellow lawmakers who are "trying to hide" the "full truth" of what happened that day.

What do you have to hide, Ted? What's so important that you're willing to shove conspiracy theories out to your base, attempting to discredit the entire federal investigation?

Just how low do you intend to sink, buddy?

Fascism: House Republican extremists look to support candidates as devoted to Trump as they are

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Hunter

There's a lot to take in on this Washington Post story about House Republican extremists recruiting like-minded conspiracy freaks in order to move their party even farther to the right than it has already gone. On the surface, there's nothing too surprising here: House conspiracy theorists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn are helping to boost the would-be careers of other conspiracy cranks in Republican primaries, so as to shove out more moderate Republicans who have beliefs like "presidents should not be allowed to commit crimes" or "overthrowing democracy rather than recognizing a valid election loss might, in the long term, not work out so well."

And the plan, to the extent that anything rattling around in Greene or Cawthorn's head could be called one, is also a tried-and-true one. The "MAGA" clown brigade wants to target insufficiently fascist-minded Republicans in hard-right districts, instead propping up like-minded conspiracy promoters and avid Dear Leader loyalists in places that will always vote Republican no matter who is thrown in front of voters. Greene is herself an example of that; there is absolutely nothing about her that would suggest she ought to be put in any position of power, her QAnon beliefs have been on the extreme end of batshit even compared to the normal batshittery promoted by Trump's own professional conspiracy inventors like Steve Bannon or Rudy Giuliani, her anti-democracy, pro-violence statements should have already gotten her driven out of Congress on grounds of bare decorum, and she is absolutely assured to keep her seat because Republican voters like angry, uninformed, and possibly violent conspiracy cranks.

The risk of such plans is that you can end up promoting cranks so dodgy that they end up doing something that even hard-hard-right voters can't quite stomach, resulting in a steep decline in Republican votes on election day as those voters stay home. Similarly, if your entire operation depends on promoting extremists with extremist views, the odds are high that a few of those newly chosen Republican candidates will end up having, ahem, past "hobbies" that get exposed to voters before election day and which may or may not constitute crimes.

The Republican MAGA brigade has been doing exactly zero vetting, basing support solely on candidate willingness to impeach Joe Biden, overturn the presidential election results, and/or appoint Donald Trump the God-King of the House. In fact, let's just pause right there, for a moment, to contemplate the thought of Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Fake Russian Wife Cawthorn and their combined staff attempting to "vet" would-be crackpot allies so as to weed out any that were too sketchy.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it's a top-notch operation. And I'm sure it got even better when the staff sprung for a second Ouija board to go along with the first.

So that's the story. But there's a whole lot of other sketch in the Post's story even taking all that into account, and it's ... concerning? Off-putting? Odd? It's hard to pin down.

For example: "Trump critics warn that a stronger MAGA wing in Congress threatens democracy," says the Post. Really? Really, it's "Trump critics" who are saying that elevating candidates who publicly express demands that elections be overturned based on known-fraudulent propaganda poses a threat to democracy? As opposed to, say, Every Expert Ever? When a political party is making a pledge to overturn elections a core measure of candidate loyalty, do we really need to cite "critics" to assert that elections might be in danger? Huh.

Or this: "Candidates seeking [Trump's] approval meet with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he peppers them with questions that test their MAGA bona fides," says the Post.

Okay, but we know what that looks like. We don't need to guess; we saw it in every Cabinet meeting and on every campaign trail. Candidates meet Trump's "approval" by kissing his ass wholeheartedly and more imaginatively than the last guy to come along, and they lose his "approval" if they say even the slightest thing critical of him, personally. He doesn't give a rat's ass about any other policy or issue. It's just the ass-kissing. Painting those sessions as Trump "peppering" anyone with "tests" of their MAGA loyalty is very odd phrasing.

MAGA is, without question, devotion to Trump. Nothing else applies. There's no other "test." The party is divided into those willing even to end democratic government on Trump's behalf and those that might have second thoughts while doing it. The Post story makes that clear, not needing to cite any experts for their assertion that MAGA looks to "purge the GOP of those not deemed loyal to the former president and his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged."

Greene-supported candidate Rick Slabjaw—sorry, a generic conspiracy crank of certain complexion who goes by the name of "Joe Kent"—"wants to force Republicans into tough votes, starting with articles of impeachment against President Biden and a full congressional inquiry into the 2020 presidential election, which he says was stolen from Trump," reports the Post. And, glory be, the other competitors are also ex-military or ex-athlete types, "telegenic and mostly White male millennials," as the Greene-Cawthorn-Boebert-Jordan-Gaetz wing of the party pin their hopes on thickheaded Aryan faces with telegenic paranoias.

It's the subtext of the story that makes it so off-putting. This is a very, very gentle way for the Post to be alerting the public of plans to further purge Republicanism of anyone unwilling to topple democracy on a bumbling, lying narcissist's behalf. We are talking about the most openly fascist wing of the party, a group obsessed with retaliating against anyone who does not promote known-false hoaxes meant to undermine public faith in our elections. We're talking about the wing of the party unwilling to condemn politically motivated violence, a wing that is continuously flirting with the edges of endorsing such acts themselves.

Here's one of the "MAGA" Republicans currently aiming for Congress: Noah Malgeri.

Republican US House candidate Noah Malgeri called for General Mark Milley to be executed live on C-SPAN. pic.twitter.com/DcdoG00aQx
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 27, 2021

Malgeri has the support of the white nationalism-allied fascist group "Republicans for National Renewal," and the endorsement of neo-Nazi dabbling Rep. Paul Gosar, and has been palling around in Lauren Boebert circles. He's a conspiracy-adjacent, fascism-promoting self-described "nationalist." There's not anything subtle about it.

Can you even talk about House Republican efforts to further radicalize their own party without that subtext? The "candidates" we're talking about are ones who so ally themselves with (1) Trump and (2) nationalist "renewal" that they are publicly demanding we throw away whatever parts of democracy conflict with it.

Five years from now, could this whole article be rewritten under the title How Fascism Happened? Because a group of House Republicans who are fervent conspiracy mongers, who continually tease at the edges of promoting violence, who vow to remove the current president and rewrite history to proclaim that Actually, Dear Leader was victorious all along—that feels like a lot to take in, and considerably more dire than "House MAGA squad seeks to expand" lets on.

We're in the odd place where anyone who knows anything about history or government is shouting at us that this, exactly this, is how democracies fall, but the papers are still trying very, very hard to write the story within the bounds of a normal political tiff. "Trump critics" worry that a party's devotion to malevolent propaganda, a rejection of facts, an insistence on anti-intellectualism that paints even dying in a pandemic as preferable to going along with scheming scientists, and a singleminded devotion to a showboating lifelong buffoon are all core fascist tenets that Republicanism has rewritten itself to accommodate.

Maybe that's because anyone unwilling to accept the new premise that a narcissist who has blamed "fraud" or "cheating" for every loss in his sorry-ass life was "cheated" out of reelection has been declared a "Trump critic."

Republican extremists have been very successful in defining that boundary and getting political reporters to adhere to it. If you are willing to denounce objective facts and declare that reality is now whatever Donald Trump last said it was, you are "MAGA." Everyone else, every other person in America regardless of party, partisanship, or profession, is now only a Trump critic.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigns

Posted on August 10, 2021 by Hunter

In a surprise announcement, disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has now announced that he will be resigning from the governorship. The resignation will take effect in 14 days.

Cuomo continued to defend his actions, claiming the claims against him were "false" and that "In my mind I’ve never crossed the line with anyone but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn."

"I am a fighter and my instinct is to fight," said Cuomo. But he said "wasting energy on distractions"—that is, impeachment proceedings against him—"is that last thing that state government should be doing, and I cannot be the cause of that.

"The best way I can help now is if I step aside."

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will become the next governor of the state.

Cuomo announces he is resigning as governor of New York pic.twitter.com/QtAjBrWLpI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 10, 2021

As Cuomo allies resign their posts, Cuomo himself remains in stubborn denial

Posted on August 9, 2021 (Updated August 10, 2021) by Hunter

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is not the sort of person to resign just because he did horrible things and everybody now knows about it. He's the sort of person who believes that he can bully his way through anything, whether it be pandemic scandals or harassment scandals. That means we're all in for weeks of having to hear him attack anyone and everyone in an attempt to scurry out from an investigation that called 179 witnesses (!) as it documented years of sexual harassment from a man whose defense has centered around a claim that he's just a hugging, groping sort of guy and it's too bad that nearly a dozen different women couldn't understand that reaching under a woman's blouse to grope her breast is just something he does to "put people at ease."

Cuomo is, as his most cynical critics presumed he would, attempting to dig in despite the New York legislature now moving swiftly to begin impeachment proceedings against him.

On Sunday, top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa resigned her post. The state attorney general's report had identified DeRosa as a main player in the effort to discredit and retaliate against one of Cuomo's accusers.

Also on Sunday, a CBS interview with the woman who last week filed a criminal complaint over Cuomo's sexual assault made any possible Cuomo defense even more difficult. Cuomo cannot plausibly claim that the assault, which included groping the woman, meets any definition of appropriate behavior.

On Monday, Time's Up Chairwoman Roberta Kaplan resigned from that organization after the investigation's report identified her, too, as someone who worked to discredit one of Cuomo's accusers.

There is little more to say about this. From President Joe Biden to most of New York's top Democratic elected officials, demands that Cuomo resign have been immediate and near-unanimous. New York lawmakers are moving to close out their impeachment investigation within a month. Party and union leaders have abandoned him.

He should resign. Probably won't, but should. The allegations against him are too detailed for him to claim that it was all a misunderstanding. If he could muster the barest minimum of grace, he might be able to keep his legacy from hemorrhaging into nothingness, but only if he were to leave before New York lawmakers boot him of their own accord.

NEW: Assembly begins to lay groundwork for @NYGovCuomo impeachment: - Heastie believes most, if not all, Dems support impeachment. - Lawmakers planning hearings, review of evidence, articles by early September. - AG already began sending report materials.https://t.co/NHStgzV5Rk
— Luis Ferré-Sadurní (@luisferre) August 9, 2021

Rosen testifies behind closed doors on Trump administration coup attempt at Justice Department

Posted on August 8, 2021 (Updated August 9, 2021) by Hunter

The full scope of the Trump administration's efforts to nullify an American presidential election is just beginning to come into view. Trump and his top allies engaged in an orchestrated, three-pronged plan to use federal officials to cast illegitimate doubts on the integrity of the election, explicitly pressure state officials to "find" votes or otherwise alter vote totals, and counter the official congressional acknowledgement of the election's results with an organized mob assembled specifically to "march" to the Capitol and intimidate the lawmakers carrying out that constitutionally mandated process. It was an attempted coup by Trump and his deputies, one that Trump himself continued to press even after that coup had exploded into violence.

The New York Times is now reporting that Trump's acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, gave closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary on Saturday. The subject of the testimony was the interactions between Rosen and Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as Clark attempted, on Trump's behalf, to press the Justice Department into issuing false claims suggesting that they were investigating election "fraud" of the sort that Trump's propagandists were claiming as the reason for Trump's loss. It was untrue, and the top two Justice officials rejected Clark's repeated proposals.

Transparently, it was an attempt by Clark and other Trump allies to throw the nation into chaos by claiming the election was so flawed that its results must be overturned—a claim which Trump's hard-right team believed would force the assembling Congress to erase the election's counted votes and, somehow, reinstall Trump as quasilegal national leader.

All three elements of the plan came perilously close to succeeding. All three were thwarted only because individuals remained in place who believed the plan to be insanity, sedition, or both. It is the efforts by Trump-aligned officials within the federal government, using the tools granted to them by government, that elevate the events culminating in violence on January 6 from insurrection to attempted coup.

In a pivotal decision, Rosen rejected Clark's attempt, leading to yet another internal administration crisis as Trump mulled whether to fire him and install Clark in his position so that the plan could be carried out.

In a Sunday CNN appearance, Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dick Durbin said Rosen had described Trump as being directly involved in Clark's actions. "It was real, very real, and it was very specific."

Significantly, the Times reports that Rosen scheduled his testimony "quickly" so as to allow them to go forward "before any players could ask the courts to block the proceedings." That may be a self-serving interpretation of events. As emptywheel notes, Clark's efforts to overturn the election and Trump's aborted move to fire Rosen and install Clark as acting attorney general was the subject of news reporting in January, even before Trump's second impeachment trial took place. The Senate Judiciary began their requests for documents pertaining to the plan near-immediately, and have been battling the Department of Justice for testimony ever since.

A half-year delay in gaining testimony about a "very real" and "very specific" attempt to overthrow the duly elected next administration by coup does not make it sound like anyone involved is attempting to provide evidence "quickly."

Most significantly of all, perhaps, is that the United States Senate could have investigated the Trump team's plot during the impeachment trial meant to gather evidence and come to judgment on Trump's behavior. For the second time, it did not do so. It avoided examining the evidence, rushing through the trial to again get to the inevitable close of having nearly all Republican lawmakers back Trump's actions, even after they had resulted in violence.

The job now falls to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection: The moves Clark, Meadows, and other Trump officials made to falsely discredit the election results were intended to provide the backing by which willing insurrectionists could justify their demands that the Constitution be tossed aside for the sake of Trump's reinstallation. The job also falls to federal investigators who now need to examine—swiftly—the criminality of the schemes.

It was not, however, a "Trump" coup. Donald Trump, a known liar and semi-delusional blowhard, had few government powers that would allow him to singlehandedly erase state election counts or make official his declarations that he had lost, after a disastrous single term, only through "fraud" concocted against him. It required the cooperation of top Republican allies, of Republican Party officials, of lawmakers, and others that would press the false claims and work both within and outside of government to give them false legitimacy. It was a Republican coup, an act of sedition backed with specific acts from Mark Meadows, from Jeffrey Clark, from senators such as Josh Hawley, from state Republican officials who eagerly seized on the conspiracy claims specifically so that they could be used to overturn elections they had lost, and from everyday Republican supporters who decided that the zero-evidence nationalist propaganda they were swallowing up was justification enough to storm the U.S. Capitol by force in an overt attempt to erase a democratic election.

Here we sit, waiting with bated breath as evidence dribbles out describing the full scope of what the entire world saw in realtime, from last November to January: top Republican officials spreading knowingly false, propagandistic claims intended to undermine the integrity of our democratic elections so as to justify simply changing that election's results and declaring themselves the victors. It was a fascist act. It continues in the states, as state Republican lawmakers use the same brazenly false claims peddled by Clark to impose new hurdles to voting meant to keep at least some fraction of the Americans who voted against the party last time from being able to vote at all the next time.

A bit more urgency is required, here.

Resign, dirtbag

Posted on August 3, 2021 (Updated August 4, 2021) by Hunter

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to a comprehensive report describing years of sexual harassment, abuse, and retaliation aimed at the women who worked around him with a gaslighting and farcical statement not even worth a response. Cuomo insisted that his numerous accusers—the investigation cited interviews with 179 people, 40 of them under oath—were all lying or misinterpreting his behavior and that he, of course, was the true victim.

It was a grotesque performance. Cuomo again said he will not resign, despite the expansive, damning evidence against him. He should.

Tuesday, Aug 3, 2021 · 8:50:28 PM +00:00 · Hunter

President Joe Biden is now calling on Cuomo to resign.

Tuesday, Aug 3, 2021 · 9:22:35 PM +00:00 · Hunter

New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie says lawmakers will “move expeditiously and look to conclude our impeachment investigation as quickly as possible.”

Cuomo's fellow Democrats are wasting no time in condemning him and demanding his resignation. New York Democratic Reps. Gregory Meeks, Tom Suozzi, and Hakeem Jeffries issued a joint statement calling on Cuomo to resign.

Even before the results of the investigation were released, top Democratic figures gave clear statements insisting on Cuomo's resignation if the allegations against him were found to be true. President Joe Biden made such a statement in March, as did Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Schumer and Gillibrand again demanded that resignation today.

New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has issued a new statement demanding that Cuomo "must resign for the good of the state." State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie issued a statement vowing the Assembly will "now undertake an in-depth examination" and that the conduct outlined in the report indicates "someone who is not fit for office." Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou says articles of impeachment against Cuomo have already been drafted.

Meanwhile, House Republican Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, a backer of alleged sex trafficker Rep. Matt Gaetz, jumped lazily into the conversation with a tweet, wondering "how long” it is going to take for each of the aforementioned top Democrats to call for Cuomo's resignation. Responders were thorough in documenting that each of those calls have already happened. Not that it mattered. Stefanik campaigned for, and won, Rep. Liz Cheney's leadership post after Cheney was stripped of it for being unwilling to lie about an insurrection; Stefanik’s pitch to the party was that she would have no such moral qualms.

Cuomo is finding no base of Democratic support today. The allegations against him are serious, severe, and well-documented, and his gaslighting and insulting blanket denials may only serve to pressure state lawmakers to impeach him faster.

Andrew Cuomo needs to resign immediately. His staff needs to resign immediately instead of continuing to support him. The investigation has been concluded; Cuomo has no plausible defense.