UPDATE: Politico is reporting that the DHS is taking the August reinstatement conspiracy theory seriously in terms of stepping up efforts to follow discussions of extremists on social media, concerned about potential violence caused by disinformation pouring our of right wing media and lunatics like the Pillow Guy and other nonsense peddlers.  This story is coming from those who are familiar with a private briefing by DHS to members of Congress.

ORIGINAL POST: Seth Abramson, a defense attorney and author, has been after Trump for years.  His latest work is digging into how Trumpland planned and directed the insurrection on January 6, but he also has posited the only theory I’ve heard that makes any sense about one of Trump’s most outlandish lies, and that is how he’s going to be reinstated to the presidency in August.  Now, you know, and I know that there is simply no mechanism to restore someone to the presidency, even if an election was stolen, which this one most certainly was not.  Once the Congress certifies the Electoral College vote from the states and the new president is inaugurated, it’s over, game, set, and match period, end of story.  No one outside of the line of succession to the presidency can become president unless he/she is elected in the next national election.

So what the hell is Trump and his loudmouths doing?  Why is he repeatedly asserting he will be reinstated?  Abramson says that is all a dodge to avoid indictment in NY.  Abramson says that Trump believes that with his rallies starting back up and his incessant repeating of The Big Lie, he can keep his insurrectionist based whipped up and the threat of violence would be so great that prosecutors wouldn’t dare indict him for fear of major social unrest.  This is the only thing that makes any sense to me, that Trump believes he can keep the grift going long enough to run and win the presidency again in 2024, which will hold back the prosecutorial wolves from the door another 4 years.

https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1400470960587816961?lang=en

Sounds crazy, right?  Of course it’s crazy and I don’t think the NY AG or NY DA give a good goddam about Trump’s fantasies.  If they can nail him, they will, and they most certainly owe it to all of us Americans who suffered through over 4 years of the Trump Shitshow to protect our democracy by prosecuting that son of a bitch.  I do think Abramson is onto Trump, and having written about him for years, most certainly knows him well enough to have an informed opinion.  Besides that, NOTHING else makes the slightest bit of sense.

Wendy Davis and others have sued Trumpists for their dangerous conduct last October when they disrupted Biden campaign rallies and harassed a campaign bus as it attempted to travel on public roads.  One suit is against 7 people who drove their flag festooned trucks dangerously close to the bus and even attempted to run it off the road.  The suit was filed in federal court and claims the Trumpists violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act that made it a federal offense to obstruct, intimidate, or harass to stop political activities.  The defendants were identified through their own social media posts including live video.  Two of the defendants were also identified at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.  Here’s a good recap of the attack on the campaign bus:

A second suit was filed against the San Marcos Department of Public Safety and the San Marcos Marshal’s Department for failing to respond to desperate 911 calls begging for assistance.  You’ll recall during the time that a Trump Train of trucks chased and harassed the Biden campaign bus the entire time they were touring South Texas and police were nowhere to be found.

This kind of behavior by political conservatives has been going on for years; I remember Nick Lampson being harassed years ago by thugs at his announcement event when he ran for Tom DeLay’s old seat.   That was nothing compared to today where intolerance and hate are raised to an art form after 5 years of Trump’s influence on his party.  Add that to the continuous stream of bile flowing out of social media, Fox Noise, OAN, and other propaganda sources and the result can be literally explosive.  When the police stand aside during these events the result can be deadly.

The real tragedy here is that we have to depend on the federal courts in many of these cases since local and state courts in Red States can no longer be trusted to enforce laws against political allies.  Hopefully the federal courts will give the plaintiffs a fair hearing.

There is a giant headline on CNN saying that Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in New York because of his lies and whatnot over Donald Trump.

Okay #1:  Rudy Giuliani is a licensed attorney?  I thought he was just a showman who hangs out at Four Seasons, any Four Seasons, doesn’t even have to be in New York.

#2: Does this have anything to do with drippy sideburn leaks?

#3: Was this meant to send a message to Trump’s other “lawyers?”

#4: I’m sure the Alabama bar would welcome him with open arms and help him set up an office at the Four Seasons Trailer Park and Bait Camp.

Sometimes you gotta wonder why Republicans holler so much about election fraud but can’t give us any examples of it.

Well, I kinda figure that’s because election fraud does exist but it’s like lumps in the liter box that GOP cats are scratching like the dickens to cover up.

We have a couple more examples today.  First there’s this guy in Ohio.

Edward Snodgrass, who is a Porter Township trustee, has admitted to forging his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot and then voting again as himself, court records and other sources revealed.

Snodgrass says he’s a victim of the election fraud tooth fairy.  He says that his father had advanced Parkinson’s disease and that he had been signing for his Dad for years.  The ballot was mailed to his dad the day after his dad died.

“I was simply trying to execute a dying man’s wishes,” he said.

Instead of a felony with 6 months in jail and a $5,000 fine, he’s pleading to a sweetheart deal of 3 days in jail (which will be probated) and a $500 fine.  If he was black and a Democrat, they’d be rustling up a firing squad by now.

And we have this one from North Carolina.

McCrae Dowless got caught in a massive voter fraud scheme for Republicans that has gone on since 2012. Among other election violations, he paid people to gather absentee ballots and fill in any undervotes for Republicans.  It got so bad that opponents began outbidding each other for his “services.”

Once caught, the Baptist preacher wannabe congressman who had hired him and privately admitted he would win was never charged, even after people – including his own son – warned him that Dowless was committing felonies.

Dowless was charged but, as Republican do, he got greedy and hid his salary in order to keep his government disability checks. He was allowed to plead guilty to the government fraud but the election fraud case was dropped. That also cleared all the Republicans who hired him.

I’m just 100% natural guaranteed certain there’s more.

The Washington Post has published a harrowing account by insiders of Trump’s case of Covid19 last October that was downplayed and lied about since the day he got sick.  As we all assumed, Trump was a LOT more ill than his staff or doctors lead us to believe, and he left for the hospital only when convinced how bad it would look if he waited so long that he would be taken on a gurney rather than walking to Marine One.  The story also confirms what we all assumed, that he lived ONLY because he was president.  WH doctors poured every known treatment to him as he got more ill, including the experimental therapy, the monoclonal antibody treatment.  And then HHS secretary Alex Azar pulled strings so Trump could jump the line in front of others.  At the time Trump received the treatment, only 10 people had received it.  That treatment, and the others performed at the same time (which was unprecedented) undoubtedly saved his sorry life.

Trump’s contempt for science, human life, and common sense is well known.  He forced aides to remove their masks in his presence, even while complaining to them that WH visitors would often get too close to him during events he insisted on holding.  Covid19 outbreaks became so common that then CDC director Robert Redfield labeled 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as “not safe”. Because of Trump’s defiant ignorance, untold numbers of staffers, their families, and visitors were exposed and fell ill.  Almost 900 Secret Service employees contracted the infection, HALF of them special agents who protected Trump, his family, and Pence.  God knows how many fell ill from exposure during Trump’s idiotic Hitleresque rallies.

The worst part of this story, though, was that the gargantuan effort to save Trump actually backfired.  Everyone had assumed that Trump having a near death experience would change him and he would reverse himself on the Coronavirus response, encouraging mitigation measures and preparing for the vaccine.  Doctors were trying to decide when they would start speaking their mind about the disease.  Staffers were preparing for a reversal of Trump idiocy.  They were all wrong.  Literally dead wrong.  Trump insisted on returning to the WH early, and when he did return he was still very ill, but even more defiant.  He insisted on climbing the stairs on the South Portico and barely made it.  He then turned to the cameras and yanked off his mask revealing his heavy orange stage makeup, turned and stalked back into the WH.  Nothing changed.

That was the day that hope died because Trump didn’t.  And that’s the truth.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Four Star General Mark Milley set right-wingers  in the House straight yesterday when he lashed out at Matt Gaetz and other Republicans who have made Critical Race Theory, a longstanding academic perspective for understanding institutional racism, their flavor of the month to whip up the base.  National Embarrassment of Texas, Dan Crenshaw, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas have used the lie that the military is getting “woke” and soft and set up a “whistleblower” website for active duty military to report “wokeness” in their ranks.  The whole thing is idiotic, and only the uninformed are wound up about it.   Near the end of an Armed Services Committee hearing where Matt Gaetz and others pushed the Woke Lie, General Milley was given an opportunity to respond to their nonsensical assertions, his response was epic and a MUST WATCH.  As of this morning, it’s been watched over 6 million times, just another example of Republicans being their own worst enemies.