181 Comments

Trump held up a mirror to himself and loved what he saw. It has taken him decades, but he accumulated a network of misfit toys that wanted to be like him, and they rallied around the toy maker when he called them.

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Am I the first - it's nearly 7pm here on the Left Coast - to notice the Jamie Raskin quote date is 2002???

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Many have pointed it out.

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Thx. Good to know. I guess I just expected something from Bulwark.

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It is clear that the Jan 6th Committee is incredibly precise, using pertinent facts to weave this lurid tale of President Trump scheming to overthrow a free and fair election. We all knew he is a grifter, a narcissist, and a pathological liar, but this takes his behavior to a whole new level. My question is, if the Trumpsters had succeeded, what did they think Biden supporters would do? Did they think we’d just roll over and submit to a Trump 2nd term? Another 4 years of chaos? Seriously, can you imagine what a nightmare this ugly plan would yield?

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Amen Absolutely, Sir.........well said!

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Jul 14, 2022·edited Jul 14, 2022

If Bannon doesn’t get those melanomas removed from his forehead hairline soon, he’s gonna die a long, painful death. May be too late- I’m no doctor. And I’m gonna leave that right here.

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It seems that Bulwark has removed the Cathy Young article first posted in the last 24 hours about what she called the thin sourcing (ie. Likely false) narrative about the 10-year old rape victim from Ohio that had to go to Indiana to get an abortion. RWNJs questioned the veracity of the story; Cathy’s take was a bit more balanced but skeptical about the truth of the story.

Turns out the story is (sadly) true! Perp has been charged with rape and multiple news outlets have confirmed the remainder of the story. I guess HIPAA and other privacy considerations made the story tricky to substantiate but with the perp charged, factual support surfaced just a few days later.

On the downside, Cathy’s go-to “both-sideism” didn’t age well. On the bright side, Bukwark seems to have pulled her post. Bulwark’s response has to be graded a B-; to get a higher grade, they need to print a retraction and explain how the mistake was made.

Believe me, I love my “discovery” of Bulwark a few month ago (and read JVL and Charlie daily — and have finished Tim’s book)… but when mistakes happen, can’t hide the evidence.

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The thing that gets me about Jan 6 2021 still is just how many people only needed that much of an excuse

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<i>Just over an hour after the meeting was said to have ended, Mr. Trump tweeted at 1:42 a.m. on Dec. 19 that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost the election. In the tweet, he also urged supporters to gather in Washington to demonstrate, drawing dozens of responses from people sharing plans to occupy the Capitol building and photos of weapons they said they planned to bring.

“Be there, will be wild,” <i>

It is understandable that the bulk of attention has been given to Trump's 'invitation' at the end of his tweet, we should not overlook the fact that the entire tweet was bullshit--in particular his claim that it was "statistically impossible" for him to have lost. To the extent it means anything at all, a "statistically impossible" result is one for which the probability is exactly 0. The only sense in which Biden had a 0 probability of winning was in the fevered imaginations of Trump and his sycophants.

In addition, to being BS on its face, Trump implied that the basis for this claim was a report by Peter Navarro. But that report only said (twice) that it was "statistically improbable" for Biden to have won. So Trump was even lying about that! Navarro is a fabulist, but at least understands that there is a distinction between improbable and impossible. Trump clearly doesn't know the difference and couldn't care less. With him, it's just bullshit all the way down.

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I don't care if he goes to prison, (rich people rarely do) but he has to be prevented from running for President again.

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Better update the year of the date on the quote from Representative Jamie Raskin, from July 12, 2002, to 2022.

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Of course he did. For those who have followed along on his path of destruction going back to the 80s, there is no surprise whatsoever that he enabled and directed all of this with a grand prize at stake. For him just another "deal" to try to win at any cost no matter the consequences to anyone else.

And he surrounded himself with people who would do anything to feed that massive ego and please him with no compass whatsoever.

The question, good people of the USA, is, now that its really all out there for us to see:

What the hell are we going to do about it?

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At this point perhaps Trump should be impeached again? Is that possible? There is no double jeopardy involved since impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. With all the additional evidence the hearings have uncovered an even better case can be made, and it would give Republicans another chance to do the right thing (a chance which most of them will undoubtedly fail, but which could be used against them in the midterms). Seriously, this psychopath needs to be stopped from running for office again! Perhaps a few additional Republican senators would finally show some courage and vote to convict (unlikely, I know!).

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If the crowd had managed to hang Mike Pence & stop the certification (two things that Trump was doing everything he could to help make happen) would Bolton have eventually figured out that it was a coup or would it still just be Trump 'rambling'?

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I'm too lazy to do the research, but . . . Does anyone know who can certify if the VP wasn't available due to sickness or whatever?

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Jul 13, 2022·edited Jul 13, 2022

The senior most Senator. That would have been Chuck Grassley back then. I think he made some statements prior to the certification process that he believed that was actually going to be the case. There is more that hasn't come out yet. Looks like Chuck was told to stand by and stand back and Pence somehow managed to upset that plan (& hence deserved the hanging).

The Jan 6th committee has done an excellent job tying the event (& the events leading upto that day) to TFG. But they aren't investigating these peripheral actors (Chuck, Mike Lee, Lindsey, Ted Cruz etc. and the roles they played in enabling TFG) and others (for e.g. there was news/rumors that Mike Flynn's brother was in charge of the National Guard and played a role in them NOT getting deployed on time to push back the insurrectionists leaving the capitol police fighting alone).

Collectively America (at least a part of) has decided we have to get rid of TFG and then everything gets back to normal. Not enough acknowledgement that he was an useful idiot. He is/was the symptom, not the disease.

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Jul 14, 2022·edited Jul 14, 2022

Decided to look it up. Grassley didn't become the president pro tem until 1/20/21. It was Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. That would have been interesting!

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Nope. It was Chuck Grasseley indeed. The senior most senator from the majority party gets to replace the VP and as of Jan 6, 2021, the Rs still had control of the senate. Patrick Leahy is now in that position. Here’s a snippet of the rules from Wikipedia.

“Since 1890, the most senior U.S. senator in the majority party has generally been chosen to be president pro tempore and holds the office continuously until the election of another.“

I also distinctly remember that Grasseley had assumed he will step into that role and made some statements that he had later deflect. How he knew there was a possibility Pence might skip his certification duties on that day is a mystery and intriguing. Like I said earlier there seemed to be a lot more coordinating that happened but is not being investigated.

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Then the Wiki article I read reversed the last 2 names. Bummer. (There's another Wiki article that listed them correctly.) I read the wrong article. :-)

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Michael Cohen predicted Trump’s 2020 behavior during his Congressional testimony before reporting to federal prison. Too bad those, on both sides of the political divide, who could have headed ‘45 off — didn’t heed the warning.

All the non-MAGA folks in the administration who left between 2017 and 2020 and remained silent. Those who remained thinking they were guard rails against something worse — Cippolini, Esper, Pompeo and Pence — lead the second list.

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What boggles my mind is the people in the commentariat class who decided that all the guard rails were just part of a corrupt Deep State that Trump was valiantly and righteously trying to clean up. They seemed to believe that he should get to do whatever he wanted, without limit, because he was "the duly elected president." Of course they would never apply the same principle to any Dem president.

People who should have known better made Trump himself into the measure of what's good and right.

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Jul 13, 2022·edited Jul 13, 2022

I, for one, want Trump indicted. I understand the concern regarding damage to the country, but significant damage has been done. I understand the concern regarding that he may not be found guilty. As much as one can learn how to do such activities in the future, one can also learn how to mitigate/prosecute such activities. Trump and his co-conspirators have already shown that they are willing to use violence. This, to me, means that we need to be determine to be able to react to that, and I am not stating that we meet violence with violence. The country has to defend itself by it's various avenues. It won't be easy, but I think it is necessary. If there is a middle ground where he is kept from office and politics, with significant mechanisms in place to hold him to what these conditions would be, I am open to that.

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My mind stopped at the bottomline that it was all Trump and the rational ones let the crazies get away with aiding and abetting. Why didn't Team Normal speak out? Why, why, why? That is the question that should be asked of all of them, over and over. Perhaps they were asked on tape by the Committee. If so I hope they share it with key learnings summarization. TheThe GOP excepting 2 on the committee, need to be asked over and over too. Love the witness that said it is time to stop mincing words and call them out. The media needs to call them out...today I was not amused that the headlines in the Times and Wapo, did not place the evidence in the headlines. It was down, probably, under the fold. Enough, all ready. Inform the citizens. Now.

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