Quite a Chyron, CNN marks the first time in U.S. history a former President is charged . . .
June 13, 2022, Letters from an American, Prof Heather Cox-Richardson
It was quite a chyron from CNN, marking the first time in the history of the United States that a former president has been charged with federal crimes. And in this case, what crimes they are: the willful retention, sharing, and hiding of classified documents that compromise our national security. Trump’s own national security advisor John Bolton said, “This is material that in the hands of America’s adversaries would do incalculable damage to the United States. This is a very serious case and it’s not financial fraud, it’s not hush money to porn stars, this is the national security of the United States at stake. I think we’ve got to take the politics out of this business when national security is at stake.”
Cameras were barred in the courtroom as Trump pleaded not guilty to the 37 charges in Miami today. Presiding magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman ordered Trump not to communicate with witnesses about the case, including co-defendant Waltine Nauta, then released him on his own recognizance, that is, without needing to post bail. Special prosecutor Jack Smith was in the courtroom; ABC’s senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott reported that Trump did not look at Smith.
Then Trump went back to his residence in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he gave a speech that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who is close to the Trump camp, described as low energy, focusing on his insistence that he had a right to keep the classified documents (which experts agree is nonsense and amounts to a confession) and that the indictment was “the most evil and heinous abuse of power.” Right-wing Newsmax and the Fox News Channel (FNC) carried the speech; CNN and MSNBC did not.
FNC has been hemorrhaging viewers since it fired Tucker Carlson, a threat to its bottom line that might have been behind its chyron tonight attacking Biden by claiming “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.”
In statements similar to the one from FNC, right-wing pundits spent the day flooding Twitter and other social media with furious insistence that Trump is being unfairly prosecuted, followed by attacks on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and with allegations that there are tapes of President Biden accepting bribes—allegations that Biden openly laughed at this evening.
But that performative outrage among leaders did not translate into support on the ground in Miami. Law enforcement had been prepared for as many as 50,000 protesters, but only a few hundred to a thousand turned out (one wearing a shirt made of an American flag and carrying the head of a pig on a pole).
The lack of supporters on the ground was significant. Since the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, much of Trump’s power has rested on his ability to call out his base to silence opponents by threatening violence. That power was in full force on January 6, 2021, when his loyalists set out to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president, believing they were operating under the orders of then-president Trump.
Since then, though, more than 1,000 people who participated in the events of January 6 have been charged with crimes, and many have been sentenced to prison, while Trump, who many defendants say called them to arms, has skated. That discrepancy is likely dampening the enthusiasm of Trump’s supporters for protest.
Today Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out that the audacity of Nevada’s militia-related Bundy family simply grew as family members launched successive stands against the federal government without significant legal repercussions. Republican politicians cheered on their attacks on federal officials for political gain, while Democratic politicians didn’t push to go after them out of concern that a show of federal power would alienate Nevada voters.
Trump’s threats and determination to stir up his base seem to reflect a similar consideration: if he can just rally enough support, he might imagine, the federal government will back off.
Federal officials permitting politics to trump the rule of law in our past have brought us to this moment.
After the Civil War, officials charged Confederate president Jefferson Davis and 38 other leading secessionists with treason but decided not to prosecute when the cases finally came to trial in 1869. They wanted to avoid the anger a trial would provoke because they hoped to reconcile the North and South. They also worried they would not get convictions in the southern states where the trials were assigned.
In the end, between President Andrew Johnson’s pardons and Congress’s granting of amnesty to Confederates, no one was convicted for their participation in the attempt to destroy the country. This generosity did not create the good feeling men like General Ulysses S. Grant hoped it would. Instead, as Civil War scholar Elizabeth Varon established in her book on the surrender at Appomattox, it helped to create the myth that the southern cause had been so noble that even the conquering northern armies had been forced to recognize it. The ideology of the Confederacy never became odious, and it has lived on.
The same quest for reconciliation drove President Gerald R. Ford to grant a pardon to former president Richard M. Nixon for possible “offenses against the United States” in his quest to win the 1972 election by bugging the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Washington, D.C., Watergate Hotel.
Ford explained that the “tranquility” the nation had found after Nixon’s resignation “could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” The threat of a trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”
In an echo of 100 years before, Ford’s generosity did not bring Nixon or his supporters back into the fold. Instead, they doubled down on the idea that Nixon had done nothing wrong and had been hounded from office by his “liberal” enemies. Nixon himself never admitted wrongdoing, telling the American people he was resigning because he no longer had enough support in Congress to advance the national interest. Although his support had collapsed because even members of his own party believed he was guilty of obstructing justice, violated constitutional rights of citizens, and abused his power, Nixon blamed the press, whose members had destroyed him with “leaks and accusations and innuendo.”
The willingness of government officials to ignore the rule of law in order to buy peace gave us enduring reverence for the principles of the Confederacy, along with countless dead Unionists, mostly Black people, killed as former Confederates reclaimed supremacy in the South. It also gave us the idea that presidents cannot be held accountable for crimes, a belief that likely made some of the presidents who followed Nixon less careful about following the law than they might have been if they had seen Nixon indicted.
Holding a former president accountable for an alleged profound attack on the United States is indeed unprecedented, as his supporters insist. But far from being a bad thing to stand firm on the rule of law at the upper levels of government, it seems to fall into the category of “high time.”
In other Chyron News …
Fox News Chyron Calls Biden a ‘Wannabe Dictator’
NY Times – June 14
The onscreen text appeared Tuesday beneath split-screen footage of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, who had been charged with federal crimes hours earlier.
A Fox News chyron appeared to refer to President Biden as a “wannabe dictator” during footage of his remarks from the White House on Tuesday, the same day that former President Donald J. Trump was charged with federal crimes in a Miami courtroom.
The onscreen text appeared briefly at the bottom of a split-screen broadcast that showed President Biden and Mr. Trump speaking from respective lecterns, at the White House and a Trump golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
“Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested,” the chyron read. It did not refer to Mr. Biden by name, but the implication was clear.
The alert appeared at the end of the 8 p.m. broadcast of “Fox News Tonight” … The footage of Mr. Biden showed him speaking on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday at a holiday event. …
On Tuesday’s edition of “Fox News Tonight,” the host Brian Kilmeade also referred incorrectly to Mr. Trump as the “president of the United States” before Mr. Trump began speaking at his New Jersey club.
A spokeswoman for Fox News said, “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.” She added that Mr. Kilmeade’s comment was an unintentional mistake. …
Trump’s legal representation pickle in the Classified Documents debacle…
To lawyers, Trump is a kryptonite clientIt seems a good lawyer is hard for Donald Trump to find — and that is no surprise.
Boston Globe – June 14
On the eve of his appearance in a Miami federal courthouse Tuesday to answer a 37-count indictment for his alleged mishandling, retention, and refusal to return classified documents, Trump was busy trying to boost his legal team after two of his lawyers, James Trusty and John Rowley, suddenly quit. Weeks earlier another lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, resigned.
Who did he manage to find to replace them? Apparently, no one.
So as Trump began his journey as an accused federal felon, his legal team was helmed by New York lawyer Todd Blanche, who not only isn’t licensed to practice in Florida but also has no experience in national security matters. Also on the team is former Florida state solicitor general Chris Kise, who was brought in to, among other things, help Blanche secure special permission to even appear in an out-of-state court on the matter. Not exactly a dream team. …
In this, and all other criminal matters, Trump’s guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and he is entitled to zealous legal representation. What he needs are attorneys with experience and expertise in national security and who themselves hold security clearances that allow them full access to the evidence in the case.
But these are also the very last people who would agree to represent someone who is charged with instructing another attorney, Evan Corcoran, to obstruct federal authorities’ attempts to get the documents back.
Unlike Trump, they know they are not above the law. But without the legal team he could have had if he ever listened to anyone but himself, Trump may soon find out that he too isn’t above the law.
“And in this case, what crimes they are: the willful retention, sharing, and hiding of classified documents that compromise our national security. “
This is exactly what they say about Snowden and Assange.
I don’t rember hearing any voices claiming Nixon was hounded from office by liberal enemies. I have heard that he was not liked by the neo-cons for his policy of detente. in any case i am disposed to take more seriously today than i did at the time the case for “national unity.” And if i remember correctly, Lincoln was remembered for his saintly forgiveness of the southern leaders…not to mention the southern soldiers, not because their Cause was so good, but because of the need for national unity, not to mention the profound importance of forgiveness itself without regard for practical political benefit.
The propaganda to the contrary with regard to Nixon and the “good” Cause of the South, would have been made anyway, as politicians seek to gain advantage from whatever claims they can make that feed the lies they and their bases live by.
Back to why the author of the post does not mention Assange: I quite agree that Trump is no Assange. but the author’s pious rhetoric about national security seems to give us license to do whatever we want to people who give away “national secrets.”
Could be the folks in the South revered Abe for his ‘saintly forgiveness’, and that’s why they think so highly of him to this day. So much so that they mostly became members of his party to honor his memory.
Dobbs
I assume you are being facetious.
No more than you are, I’ll wager.
Dobbs,
sadly, no. i am trying to be serious but I keep running into this Booth character.
We hounded Assange as best we could, and chased Snowden to Russia.
Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison.
Wikipedia: (Manning’s leaks) included videos of the July 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables; and 482,832 Army reports that came to be known as the “Iraq War Logs” and “Afghan War Diary”. The material was published by (Assange’s) WikiLeaks and its media partners between April 2010 and April 2011.
Manning was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others, but was acquitted of aiding the enemy and was sentenced to 35 years at the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
Obama commuted the sentence to 7 years. ‘After release, Manning earned a living through speaking engagements.’
And some guy named Daniel Hale got four years under Obama administration for revealing figures for civilian deaths from our drone war.
Meanwhile, thanks for the infor re Trumps document obsession. Sounds like he is just as neurotic as Nixon. I don’t think Watergate, lying about Monica, Hillary’s Emails, or Trumps documents deserve jail sentences, Trump is much more dangerous than that, and DeSantis and about 5o Congressmen-women/Senators are still more dangerous.
But we don’t have justice, much less mercy. Only a clown show where people get hurt…mostly the extras.
Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Dead at 92
NY Times – June 16
Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who after experiencing a sobbing antiwar epiphany on a bathroom floor made the momentous decision in 1971 to disclose a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at his home in Kensington, Calif. He was 92.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his wife and children said in a statement. …
The disclosure of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 government pages of damning revelations about deceptions by successive presidents who exceeded their authority, bypassed Congress and misled the American people — plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy.
It led to illegal countermeasures by the White House to discredit Mr. Ellsberg, halt leaks of government information and attack perceived political enemies, forming a constellation of crimes known as the Watergate scandal that led to the disgrace and resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. …
Mr. Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy and other crimes and tried in federal court in Los Angeles. But on the eve of jury deliberations, the judge threw out the case, citing government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping, a break-in at the office of Mr. Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist and an offer by President Nixon to appoint the judge himself as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. …
Daniel Ellsberg, the original whistle-blower, looks back — and forward
Boston Globe interview – Nov 2019
Daniel Ellsberg holds a storied place in modern American history as the man who leaked to multiple newspapers the Pentagon Papers, a candid Defense Department history of the United States’s involvement in Vietnam. He was prosecuted on charges of conspiracy, espionage, and theft, but those charges were eventually dismissed because of government misconduct. Ellsberg is now regarded as an iconic American figure, a courageous whistle-blower determined to cut through the fog of official lies and artifice and bring the truth to the American people. …
When you leaked the Pentagon Papers back in 1971, did you expect to go to prison?
I was certain I would go for life.
So you made your decision thinking you would be there until you died?
[President] Richard Nixon had in mind 115 years. If I had had good behavior, which my friends didn’t count on, I would have gotten out after 35 years. …
If you had one message to America about whistle-blowing and its value, what would it be?
We need more whistle-blowing, not less, and that has never been more evident than right now. . . . Don’t go through channels. Go to the press and Congress directly. . . . The risks are very real, but the risks can be worth taking.
‘I don’t rember hearing any voices claiming Nixon was hounded from office by liberal enemies.’
You don’t? (That was mostly before the Southern Strategy for converting the Dixiecrats into GOPsters fully unfolded, perhaps. They hadn’t yet realized their love for Abe Lincoln.)
Watergate was so egregious a scheme that Nixon became an embarassment to the GOP, and they were glad to be rid of him, apparently. Oddly enough, his ‘Peace With Honor’ scheme for ending the Vietnam War (with much effort from Henry Kissinger) actually worked, sort of, only costing an additional 20K American KIA.
(Nixon was my commander-in-chief for virtually the entire time I was in the US Army, although we never spoke together personally. I did call the White House to complain after the Saturday Night Massacre, but RMN was not available.)
We like to remember Tricky Dick for the good things he did, like starting the EPA, and providing a form of guaranteed income to low-earners.
Nixon demonstrated that he felt tremendous inadequacy as a person and didn’t deserve to be President, and revelled in the attention that got him, whereas Trump, who may feel the same way, is determined to get through this rough patch & achieve the glory that escaped RMN, achieving the redemption that Nixon never got.
Dobbs
I agree about Nixon’s inadequacies, but as times have unfolded, i figure he was a better President than we have had since. like, EPA is more important than a silly fraternity burglary. I hold Kent State (and Jackson Stare) against him, not because he we personally complicit, but because he shared the attitude of the Guardsmaen. As for Obama, he sure talks purty, but has a peculiar attitude about “collateral damage,” government secrets, and Social Security. It’s a matter of keeping your eye on the prize instead of getting hysterical every time the other side’s guy commits a foul.
Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Dead at 92
NY Times – June 16
Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who after experiencing a sobbing antiwar epiphany on a bathroom floor made the momentous decision in 1971 to disclose a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at his home in Kensington, Calif. He was 92.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his wife and children said in a statement. …
… The disclosure of the Pentagon Papers — 7,000 government pages of damning revelations about deceptions by successive presidents who exceeded their authority, bypassed Congress and misled the American people — plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy.
It led to illegal countermeasures by the White House to discredit Mr. Ellsberg, halt leaks of government information and attack perceived political enemies, forming a constellation of crimes known as the Watergate scandal that led to the disgrace and resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. …
Mr. Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy and other crimes and tried in federal court in Los Angeles. But on the eve of jury deliberations, the judge threw out the case, citing government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping, a break-in at the office of Mr. Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist and an offer by President Nixon to appoint the judge himself as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“The demystification and de-sanctification of the president has begun,” Mr. Ellsberg said after being released. “It’s like the defrocking of the Wizard of Oz.” …
Ok, so Trump is basically a weirder sort of guy thsn was realized …
At the Heart of the Documents Case: Trump’s Attachment to His Boxes
NY Times – June 15
The former president has long stowed papers and odds and ends in cartons that he liked to keep close. His aides have called it the “beautiful mind” material.
During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material.
It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.
The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security.
One former White House official, who was granted anonymity to describe the situation, said that while the materials were disorganized, Mr. Trump would notice if somebody had rifled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. It was, the person said, how “his mind worked.”
The contents of those boxes — and Mr. Trump’s insistence on hanging onto them — are now at the heart of a 38-count indictment against the former president and his personal aide, Walt Nauta. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Trump of obstructing their investigation into his possession of classified material after leaving office and putting national security secrets at risk. …
… Mr. Trump’s attachment to the contents of the boxes has now left him in serious legal peril, but it appears to be in keeping with a long pattern of behavior.
Mr. Trump has always hung onto news clippings, documents and other mementos, according to more than a half-dozen people who have worked for him over the years, including before his presidency. …
Starting in the early months of his administration, Mr. Trump began using a cardboard box to bring papers and documents from the West Wing up to the residence at the end of the day.
In the White House, according to two people familiar with the practice, Mr. Trump was generally able to identify what was in the boxes most immediately around him. One of those people said he was “meticulous” in putting things in specific boxes — notwithstanding a picture released by the Justice Department showing classified documents spilled on the floor of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago. …
Trump ‘weaponizes’ GOP leadership to attack his Documents Theft prosecution.
‘Stand with Trump’ becomes a rallying cry as Republicans amplify attacks on the US justice system
AP – June 15
Moments after Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he hoarded classified documents and then conspired to obstruct an investigation about it, the Republicans in Congress had his back.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy dashed off a fundraising email decrying the “witch hunt” against the former president and urging donors to sign up and “stand with Trump.”
Across the Capitol, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell steered clear of criticizing the former president, saying only, “I’m not going to start commenting on the various candidates we have for president.”
And at a public meeting in the Capitol basement, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared the case against Trump to the federal prosecution of people at the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, suggesting in both instances it was the Justice Department, not the defendants, under scrutiny.
The mounting legal jeopardy Trump finds himself in has quickly become a political rallying cry for the Republicans, many of whom acknowledged they had not fully read the 49-page federal indictment but stood by the indicted former president, adopting his grievances against the federal justice system as their own.
It’s an unparalleled example of how Trump has transformed the Republican Party that once embraced “law and order” but is now defending, justifying and explaining away the grave charges he faces with multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act by hoarding classified documents containing some of the country’s most sensitive national security secrets.
At the same time, Trump is rewriting the job description of what it means to lead a major American political party. Making another run for the White House, Trump is attacking the U.S. justice system that is foundational to democracy and emboldening Republican lawmakers to follow along. …
Trump and his lawyers keep ghosts of Nixon and Watergate alive and haunting
NPR – Sep 25, 2022
… Watergate happened half a century ago, but its name and spirit are still with us, thanks in large measure to former President Donald Trump. He has not been charged and may never be charged, but memories of President Richard Nixon have been revived repeatedly by two impeachment proceedings and countless other scrapes and potential scandals. Trump has found himself at odds with Congress, federal courts and legal authorities in at least two states.
And yet it is the document dispute, which has been public since the FBI searched and seized documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Aug. 8, that brings the specter of Watergate to the fore with renewed force.
Operatives hired with money from Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and bugging the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex. Fearful of the fallout, Nixon ordered aides to cover up the connection and directed the payment of hush money to the burglars. Discussions of all this at the White House were caught on Nixon’s own taping system, and two years later those recordings would force him to resign on the brink of impeachment and removal from office. …
Nixon was much influenced by ‘very left’ fellow NYer Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later NY senator. Go figure! (He was not a senator while RMN was in office, however.)
Wikipedia – Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an American politician and diplomat. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New York in the United States Senate from 1977 until 2001 and served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon.
In 1969, he accepted Nixon’s offer to serve as an Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and he was elevated to the position of Counselor to the President later that year. He left the administration at the end of 1970, and accepted appointment as United States Ambassador to India in 1973. He accepted President Gerald Ford’s appointment to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations in 1975, holding that position until early 1976; later that year he won election to the Senate. …
Dobbs
oh, yes. I agree with you about that Vietnam thing, but if I remember that was a bi-partisan adventure, started by John Kennedy, of blessed memory, who did not learn his lesson at the Bay of Pigs.
What about Truman, and his ‘losing China’? Not to mention the whole Korea ‘police action’ thing, which has never been settled. Dems must be to blame for all that also.
And Woodrow Wilson (a Dem!), who was supposed to Keep US out of War!
Remember San Juan Hill. Those were the Good Old Days!
Moynihan was a charming eccentric and seemed to be a good guy, until he got senile and went around muttering about the miracle of compound interest while trying to make a name for himself destroying Social Security to save it.
Senator Moynihan’s Last Legacy
Cato Institute – March 28, 2003
Former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died yesterday (about 20 years ago), will be remembered as an innovative thinker who was never afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom or the orthodoxy of his own party. …
Only days before his death, the trustees of the Social Security system unveiled their annual report, showing that Social Security begins running a deficit in just 15 years, and faces cash shortfalls of more than $26 trillion. This would have come as no surprise to Moynihan. He had been on the Greenspan Commission that was responsible for the last major reform of the nation’s retirement system. More recently, he was often a lone voice warning that our current Social Security program is unsustainable. Moynihan understood that, without reform, the program is unable to pay promised benefits. And he knew that no amount of political wishful thinking could make this problem go away. …
(Alas, this is debatable.)
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank
Senator Moynihan’s Last Legacy
Cato Institute – March 28, 2003
Former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died yesterday (about 20 years ago), will be remembered as an innovative thinker who was never afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom or the orthodoxy of his own party. As his successor, Sen. Hillary Clinton said in eulogizing him on the Senate floor, “He wanted us to keep looking beyond the short term, looking beyond the horizon, thinking about the next generation, understanding the big problems that confront us.” This was true on many issues, from national security to welfare reform. But perhaps on no issue was Moynihan’s vision as clearly demonstrated as in his support for reforming Social Security. …
(Alas, the Cato Institute is libertarian think-tank, and they are in favor of partial soc sec privatization, as was Moynihan.)
Hey, maybe do the google on ‘Senator Moynihan’s Last Legacy’.
The particulars won’t post.
See How the GOP Has Reacted to the Trump Indictment
NY Times – June 16
… Of the 271 Republicans in the House and Senate, more than half have issued formal statements or posted comments on social media about the new charges facing Mr. Trump.
According to an analysis by The New York Times, a small number of Republicans have made statements about the indictment that did not immediately dismiss the investigation.
At least 100 Republicans, from across the party’s ideological spectrum, have questioned the circumstances around the indictment, the timing of its release or a perceived unfairness in how the law has been applied. Many of these statements mention accusations against President Biden. Some stop short of attacking the content of the indictment itself.
A similar number of lawmakers have attacked the motivation behind the special counsel’s investigation, saying that the Justice Department has been weaponized to pursue Mr. Trump or that the indictment represents political persecution.
Almost two dozen of the officials went further, calling either the investigation or the indictment phony, garbage, a hoax, a sham, a farce or a witch hunt.
In at least 19 cases, legislators have claimed that the indictment amounts to election interference on behalf of Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump is currently the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
And at least 33 members have wielded even more extreme rhetoric, comparing the United States to an autocratic or otherwise undemocratic country with terms like “banana republic,” “third world” and “authoritarian.”
GOP: Y’know, unless Trump gets away with Documents Theft, there is no way he can take back the presidency that is so rightfully his, it seems. So, c’mon people, give us a break here.
(As if!)
Y’know, despite what Arnie Schwarzenegger says, we probably just ought to let Trump get re=elected else we could end up with a repeat of Ft Sumter and all that followed.
Arnie: (to Chris Wallace), ‘Don’t worry. There’s no way that Trump can get re-elected with only 30% of the electorate wanting him back in office.’
Dobbs
yes, the new daze republicans are criminally insane. because i try to be a non partisan critic of our leaders doesn’t mean I can’t tell the difference.
D’s, so far, are only guilty of ordinary political lies, graft, and inadequacy. the R’s are the “post truth” party and represent all the primeval insanity, stupidity and evil that humanity is capable of…true Sons of the Old South. see Preston Brooks for example. [there was plenty of that in the Old North too, so there is no need to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke.]
Preston Brooks was the US congressman (D-SC) who savely caned Charles Sumner (R-MA) , an ardent abolitionist Senator on May 22, 1856.
Surviving a House censure resolution, Brooks resigned, was immediately reelected, and soon thereafter died at age 37. Sumner recovered slowly and returned to the Senate, where he remained for another 18 years. The nation, suffering from the breakdown of reasoned discourse that this event symbolized, tumbled onward toward the catastrophe of civil war.
The Caning of Charles Sumner
Savagely caned!