Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Trump’s federal indictment another first for the worst ex-president

Donald Trump likes to brag about himself. Well, today he got another #1 to add to his list of pseudo-accomplishments. Trump is the first former president to face federal charges. A New York Times story describes the well-deserved indictment.  The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The charges against him include…
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Posted inDonald Trump

Trump on CNN was horrifying. Also, disqualifying.

I had no plan to watch the Trump town hall on CNN yesterday. But it was still going when I drove home from a Tai Chi class around 6 pm, so I listened to it on satellite radio for about half an hour. It was ugly. Really ugly. Trump lied incessantly. He talked over the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. He called E. Jean Carroll, who had just won a civil lawsuit where Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, a "wack job" and said the trial was "a rigged deal." The New Hampshire audience, mostly Republicans and a…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Justice! Trump guilty of sexual abuse and defamation

Our legal system served E. Jean Carroll well today. Today a jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming her. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages that Trump has to pay. A New York Times story starts off this way. A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, but this is the only allegation to be affirmed by…
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Democratic worries about Trump indictment are overblown

Democrats worry about things going wrong politically even when they're going well. Republicans are optimistic about things going right politically even when they're going poorly. OK, that's a broad generalization. But there's still a lot of truth in what I just said.  Evidence in support of my thesis comes from the reaction to the indictment and arraignment of Donald Trump.  Yesterday Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, presented an outline of his case against Trump in a post-arraignment news conference. I thought he did fine.  Basically, a few weeks before the 2016 election Trump paid hush money to an adult…
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Posted inDonald Trump

Joyous day! Trump is indicted.

Nothing like an indictment of Donald Trump to make my day brighter. When I first saw a mention that a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict him, I thought this might be a joke. But when I realized the news was true, I felt freaking great!  It's been a long time coming. Trump has been lying and cheating and stealing his way through life for many decades, yet until now had avoided a criminal indictment. So it was richly deserved, even if making a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election that…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Israeli people fight authoritarianism in their country as GOP promotes it in U.S.

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…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

If a Democratic president acted like Trump, how would liberals react?

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…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Hopefully I don’t regret this blog post about Trump 2024

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…
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Posted inDonald Trump

I love the photo of top secret documents found in Trump’s residence

When Trump is convicted of mishandling government documents, many of which were marked top secret, as I dearly hope will happen, this FBI photo will be part of the evidence that led to his downfall. There's so much to love about this photo. For one thing, it demolishes any argument Trump could make that he didn't know the documents were marked as classified.  The big red and yellow borders around the secret/top secret cover pages show that it would be impossible to miss that these were highly sensitive documents. Which, of course, belong to the U.S. Government, not Donald Trump,…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Let’s imagine President Hillary Clinton acting like Trump

I realize that almost everybody is biased toward the members of their own political "tribe." For sure, I am. I readily admit that I'm more willing to overlook transgressions of fellow Democrat politicians than Republican politicians. But I deeply doubt that most Democrats would put up with all the crap that Donald Trump has done as president and post-president. At least, nowhere near to the extent that Republicans still bow down at the Altar of Trump. If you're a Republican who disagrees with that assessment, here's a thought experiment for you to consider. Imagine this alternative reality... In November 2016…
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Posted inDonald Trump

Eight cartoons about FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home

I was so happy yesterday when I heard that the FBI had raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in search of classified documents that the worst president in our nation's history had carted off illegally. Word is that the FBI agents left with about a dozen boxes, which follows on the fifteen boxes that were sent back to the National Archives earlier.  Since a federal search warrant can't be issued without a judge affirming that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed, and that evidence of the crime could be destroyed without the warrant, it sure seems like Trump…
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Posted in2020 election 2022 election Donald Trump

Anyone who still supports Trump is a democracy-hater

If there was any doubt that Donald Trump is the worst president in American history, the rock-solid findings of the January 6 committee have put that doubt to rest. I haven't watched all of my recording of tonight's primetime hearing by the committee into Trump's 187 minutes of utter inaction following the insurrection at the nation's capitol. But I listened to about an hour while driving around, and looked at some of the hearing when I returned home. It's amazing that there's anyone in the United States who still backs Trump. If any other president had done 1/1000 of the…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

My shameful fantasy involving Donald Trump

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…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Georgia election workers show what a hateful liar Trump is

At this point I'm rarely shocked by anything Donald Trump does or says. But today's televised hearing of the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol moved me deeply,  because what Trump did to two Georgia election workers -- Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman -- was so horrible even by Trumpian standards. Moss and Freeman at the January 6 committee hearing He and his lying accomplice, Rudy Giuliani, destroyed the lives of Moss and Freeman by falsely accusing them of falsifying many thousands of ballots for Joe Biden.  It was infuriating to listen to…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

The world condemns Putin for invading Ukraine. Trump praises Putin.

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…
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Posted inDonald Trump National politics

Read how the Republican Party views the insurrection as normal

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…
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Posted in2022 election Donald Trump National politics

Every Republican candidate should answer four questions

Our democracy is in grave danger. Not from an outside enemy. From within -- the Republican Party. This is a tweet shared on MSNBC today. MAGA, of course, is Trump's slogan: Make America Great Again. If only Republican leaders were behind the party's anti-democracy movement, there wouldn't be as much reason for concern. Or, panic. But two-thirds of Republicans wrongly believe Biden wasn't elected legitimately. Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him has infected the minds of a clear majority of Republicans. This has made agreeing with the Big Lie a prerequisite for Republican candidates who want…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump

Here’s the PowerPoint Mark Meadows turned over to Jan. 6 committee

It took me a while to find it, but I finally located a file of the 36-slide PowerPoint presentation dated January 5, 2021 that Mark Meadows turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation's capitol. Here's a PDF file of the presentation:Download Mark Meadows Power Point There's so much craziness in the PowerPoint, it's tempting to not take it seriously. But the presentation found its way into the White House, and it echoes talking points put forward by both Trump acolytes and Trump himself. This is an excerpt from a Washington Post story, "The…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Oregon politics

Police officers undo GOP lies about January 6 insurrection

Deeply moving. Inspiring. Gripping.  Those words don't begin to describe the testimony four police officers gave today about the Capitol insurrection by Trump supporters who believed the Big Lie that Joe Biden didn't win the presidential election. Their honesty and bravery put into stark contrast the lies and cowardice almost all Congressional Republicans have been displaying since they decided it was more important to kiss the ass of Donald Trump than stand up for our democracy, which rests on the foundation of a peaceful transfer of power after free and fair elections. But it isn't just Republicans in Washington D.C.…
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Posted in2020 election Donald Trump Joe Biden

63% of Republicans believe Biden won because of voter fraud

Today is the six month anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol where Trump supporters tried to overturn Biden's free and fair election as president of the United States. Chris Hayes marked the occasion on his MSNBC show by discussing with guests the upcoming special House committee that will investigate the insurrection, and the continuing Republican inability to recognize a simple truth. Biden won the election fair and square.  No reasonable person doubts this. The Trump campaign filed about sixty lawsuits challenging the counting of votes in a number of swing states. They lost all but one,…
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