Come to find out, Rudy Giuliani isn’t the only completely insane lawyer Trump has working for him privately to gain dirt on Biden in Ukraine.

The double team powerhouse of Joe DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing are plowing the dirt fields for Trump and considering their past, they ought to be pretty good at plowing for dirt.  They are teevee lawyers for Fox News, which is to lawyering what wrestling is to professional sports.

It appears that they are are on Trump’s private payroll, which means they’ll never get paid, which, coincidently, is exactly what they are worth.

Looking back, you’ve really got to hand it to Richard Nixon for holding it together so well there at the end. I mean, he went around crying and talking to the pictures on the wall in the White House but hell, that’s nothing.

This is something.

“If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” Trump tweeted, adding his own parenthetical to a quote from Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist preacher speaking on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday.

It’s gibberish, I understand that. If America is not successful in removing Trump, then what the hell is this warning about?

He’s threatening Civil War?  Civil Damn War?

If Robert Jeffers and his evangelical mob think civil war is the answer, then they are not very evangelical. Jesus, after all, is the prince of peace.

These are some creepy damn people, y’all, and the civil war they are talking about won’t be north against south, it’s be neighbor against neighbor.

Besides, most of them will retreat to their survivalist bunkers and eat the pails of food they have stored up because they are anxious to use that stuff. I say we lock them in there for about two years and then let them out one by one – in Mexico.

• Eric and Donald Trump Jr are running Trump’s international businesses costing the US taxpayer millions of dollars for security during their travel.  And, since they stay in Trump properties when they travel, the US taxpayer is pouring money into Trump’s pockets.
• Jared Kushner continues to run his family’s real estate businesses, but also works in the WH.  He’s personal friends with the murderous Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
• Ivanka Trump continues to run her clothing business while working in the WH.  Trump has issued waivers on her products so she doesn’t pay tariffs on Chinese goods.

But let’s talk about Hunter Biden, because that’s more important.  That’s not hypocritical, is it?  Nah.

File under What a Coingkidink, Trump’s State Department has been notifying former Clinton aids that emails sent to Hillary years ago have be RETROACTIVELY CLASSIFIED and that the investigation into her private email server has been reopened.  Of course, this new very serious “investigation” has nothing to do with Trump’s woes, I’m sure.  Not passing the straight faced test, a senior State Department official said, “This has nothing to do with who is in the White House.  This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.” Uh-huh. Right.

This feels like yet another abuse of power by Trump’s goon squad, whipped back up to give him more manure to throw against the wall on Fox Noise.

Apparently, the impeachment proceedings are flushing all the Trump nuts out into the light, especially on social media.  I had another one of THOSE FB conversations last night, this time with a Trumpist friend of my Never Trumper friend who described himself as a moderate.  When an obvious Trumpist describes themself as a moderate, you know the conversation is going to go bad.  This one did, and it didn’t take long for him to retreat into the normal Trumpist tropes.  He characterized himself as a moderate who supports Trump (while never actually saying that); when I talked about Trump’s many well documented felonies, he said it was inappropriate for me to say he was a criminal without him being convicted of said crimes.  He said that I should always use the word “alleged” before every act that Trump has committed.  So, to play the game, I described Trump’s “alleged” 12,000 lies documented by the Washington Post and his ten “alleged” acts of felony obstruction of justice documented in the 480 pages of the Mueller Report, as well as his “alleged” attempts to get help from the Russians in 2016 which are also well documented.  I then pointed out that Trump didn’t use “alleged” when he lied thousands of times over 6 years that Obama was not an American.  Or that no one used the word “alleged” when conspiracy nuts lied thousands of times over 10 years that Michelle Obama was actually a cross dressing gay man and their daughters were actually born in Africa (Yes, that happened; look it up).  The irony of that was lost on said Trumpist, so he told me that my “extreme fear” of Trumpists was hurting my ability to communicate with them.  I pointed out to him that it wasn’t “extreme fear” of Trumpists but complete disdain for them.  After he criticized my “reading skills” the conversation ended just as you can imagine.

I’ve never had a conversation with a Trumpist that has gone well.  It normally devolves as above.  My observation is that Trump supporters are either willfully ignorant, radically partisan, selfish, or just plain stupid.  The first two of these traits are normally linked since a radical partisan will over look all weakness of the side they support.   Now that we’re in impeachment territory, I’m giving no ground to them.

This phenomenon is hard to understand, but engraved in stone real.  AND, it’s not fun.

Last night I extricated myself from a FB conversation.  Yes, it was one of THOSE conversations, started by one of my conservative acquaintances who has become a Never Trumper.  A couple of days ago, he asked what act would turn his Trumpist friends against The Orange One.  The answer (nothing) was predictable; what was shocking was the nonsense they spewed in a continuous stream to justify that.  Intellectually, we all sense that Trumpists are unbalanced and misinformed.  When it’s laid out in plain English on social media, it makes your hair hurt.

One Trumpist would deflect all questions about Trump to Biden and his son, Hunter.  He would simply not address any of the issues about Ukraine or the thousands and thousands of easily disproven lies from Trump.  His source is Sean Hannity and he actually begged me to watch his show to “get the facts” that were going “to bury” Biden and his son.  He would only gloat about how Biden is “cooked” and would not even address the question.  Another Trumpist resorted to immediate grade school name calling and wanted to bet all comers $2,500 that Trump would not be impeached and that he would again be elected president.  He didn’t like I said I didn’t believe I wanted to bet on the level of stupidity of Trumpists.

One Trumpist kept quoting the Bible.  One even quoted Shakespeare, which I found entertaining.  One kept quoting the lies of Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, one of those fact free “investigative” books that makes people’s brains soft.  One said he would only vote against Trump if “he was convicted of a crime”.  He seemed puzzled when I said that was impossible since DOJ policy didn’t allow a sitting president to be indicted for crimes they committed.

The one who took the cake?  The QAnon Trumpist.  I have never had a social media conversation with anyone as unhinged as this one.  These folks are obsessed with pedophilia, and have this weird article of faith that the “Deep State”, whatever that is, is somehow covering up Hillary’s pedophilia ring that has “pedavores” as members.  I have no idea what a “pedavore” is, and don’t want to know.  This person was so unhinged that even the most Trumpist of Trumpists paused their ranting momentarily, one even saying, “I don’t even know what that means.”  I burst out laughing at that one, almost spilling my Jack on the rocks on my keyboard.

What I learned during this exchange was that to a person no level of corruption, criminality, or misconduct would cause a Trumpist to think again.  The really disheartening lesson was that how thoroughly these people are brainwashed with pure unadulterated bullshit.  We knew that the Hillary nonsense is encoded in the DNA – but right alongside those lies, the lies about Biden and his son have already been ingrained.  The facts have no bearing on these opinions; none.  I have finally given up even trying to talk to these people because I make no progress.  The message framing, as defined by George Lakoff, a linguist and retired professor of language at Berkeley, is perfect.  This message framing hits all the emotional buttons of fear, belonging, and Them vs. Us.  Once that kind of messaging becomes encoded, it’s almost impossible to alter it, and that’s what we’re witnessing.

These people are beyond reach of reason and critical thinking.  The only way they can be beaten is to neutralize them at the voting booth, and that requires the engagement in massive numbers of normal people who haven’t been brainwashed.  That is a huge task.