Donald Trump

At the moment Israel is being torn apart by the attempt of their right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pass bills that would do away with the balance of power in that country by allowing the legislature to control the judiciary and stop investigations into wrongdoing by Netanyahu. If that sounds familiar, it's akin to what Republicans in our House of Representatives want to do to protect Donald Trump from prosecution.  A trio of House Republican committee chairs say the House of Representatives could soon take up legislation to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority to prosecute former…

Today the January 6 committee held its final meeting to lay out criminal referrals to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol accused former President Donald J. Trump on Monday of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress and one other federal crime as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution. The action, the first time in American history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, is the coda to the committee’s 18-month investigation into Mr. Trump’s…

Yesterday Donald Trump announced that he's a candidate for president in 2024, a full two years before the election.  I can't stand Trump. But I'm pleased that he's running for the Republican nomination again. It'll be easy for me to explain why. I just hope that after the 2024 presidential election I don't take a look at this post and think, Brian, how could you have been so stupid? Wouldn't be the first time I've had that thought, of course. I think and do stupid stuff all the time. However, it's one thing to make a personal mistake, and a…

Hey, I survived the shame of telling my Donald Trump fantasy to a friend today, Jim, during our usual Sunday get-together at the Urban Grange coffeehouse in West Salem. So I might as well share that not-so-secret aspect of my political self with the much vaster audience who read this Salem Political Snark blog. (I have a liberal interpretation of much vaster.) I was describing to Jim the current status of my long-running depression about being a progressive Democrat in a time when everything seems to be going wrong for my side of the political spectrum. Inflation is skyrocketing. Biden's…

The depths of depravity to which Donald Trump will sink appear to be bottomless. As Putin was invading Ukraine, Trump was calling the ex-KGB authoritarian ruler of Russia a smart guy for sending his military into a sovereign nation without any good reason. Donald Trump on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin "very smart" for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that he supports a military conflict that will lead to untold civilian death.  "I mean, he's taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart," Trump said during a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. "He's taking…

The Republican Party now officially supports the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 that sought to overturn Biden's free and fair election and make Trump the presidential victor. Today the Republican National Committee approved the resolution below. I'll also share it as a PDF file.Download RNC Resolution It states in the last "WHEREAS" that those who stormed the Capitol, injuring hundreds of police officers and leading to several deaths, were "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."  Shameful. Unpatriotic. Disgusting. Keep this in mind next time you see a ballot with an R after someone's name. Don't…

Are you a Republican or a conservative-leaning independent? If so, are you fed up with how the GOP has become so closely tied to Trump, it has lost its way to such an extent it now embraces crazy conspiracy theories such as that Biden's victory didn't happen via a free and fair election? A "yes" answer, or even a "maybe," should cause you to check out Representative Adam Kinzinger's newly unveiled web site, Country First.  Kinzinger is an Illinois Congressman who was one of ten Republicans to vote for Trump's impeachment in the House of Representatives. I've seen him several…