Last night, acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller, unilaterally shut down all transition meetings with the Biden team.  His reason?  The holidays.  Recall that Miller has only been in office a little over a month after the unceremonious firing of Mark Esper right after the election.  In a statement, Miller said the DOD is “taking a knee” for two weeks for the holiday.  The Biden team was unaware of Miller’s decision and staff throughout the DOD were shocked.

So let’s be clear – after over a month of refusing to allow the transition to move forward, another “acting” Trump staffer has thrown another monkey wrench into the works to sabotage Biden.  It’s beyond shameful.

The head of the WH security office, Crede Bailey, in the hospital for 3 months with what’s described at an extreme case of COVID-19, has survived, but required amputation of his lower right leg and big toe on the left foot.  He is now facing staggering hospital bills and a Go Fund Me page has been started.  Apparently a big Trump supporter, Bailey’s family has refused to talk to the press about his case and the WH press office declines to discuss his case.  I wonder where he could have possibly been infected.

When Trump was infected, he received an anti-viral treatment only ten other Americans had received.  He then bragged about how easy it was to overcome the virus.  When Giuliani was infected, he was given similar treatment.  Now Trump and his circle are jumping the line to get these treatments and the vaccine.  Let’s be clear here.  Between Trump, Giuliani, Pompeo, and many other in his inner circle, their carelessness has  exposed thousands of people to the Coronavirus infecting an unknown amount of people because of his resistance to any viable contact tracing protocol.

Even as this line-jumping is occurring, his sycophants now want Biden to “unify the country” by giving Trump credit for the vaccine.  In the Washington Post this morning, former GWB speech writer Marc Thiessen demanded just that, saying that Trump deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed, which never participated or supported the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine developed in Germany.  While providing funding for some manufacturing, this vaccine was developed with no US participation.  In fact, Trump’s incompetence put the US at the back of the global line for the vaccine since they refused to buy vaccine for more than 50 million people (yes it takes TWO doses to vaccinate, so the 100 million doses Trump touts only vaccinates half that number).   There are about 275 million people in the US over the age of 16.  The Pfizer vaccine will only cover less than 20%.

Trump has spent the better part of a year downplaying the virus, holding super spreader events, firing staff and insulting science ands scientists and now to “unify” the country we should now give him credit for the vaccine?  Fuck that.  We’re finally going to see him flee to Mar a Lago sometime between now and January 20 to continue inflicting damage on our society by tweeting his grievances.  It will take the Biden administration an untold number of months to begin repairing the vast damage Trump has inflicted on us.  The LAST thing he deserves is praise for anything.  It’s time to give Trump what he deserves – anonymity and criminal charges.  We can start by disabling his Twitter account.

First, here’s the good news – since the election, CNN is beating Fox News in average viewers.  Now the bad news – Fox and CNN both are losing to Newsmax.  Why?  Fox isn’t “Trumpy” enough for the red hats, but still unwatchable for normal people.  Newsmax and an even worse OAN have taken over the alt-right folks who are abandoning Fox in droves as more of their anchors have acknowledged that Trump has no chance of stealing the election from Biden.  If you’ve never watched Newsmax and OAN, don’t bother.  By way of description, if Fox News is manure, Newsmax and OAN are nuclear waste.  They have created a Superfund site of toxic and deadly conspiracy theories, gross exaggerations, and freeform lying.  And Trumpists lap it up. Since the election CNN has averaged 1.73 million viewers, more than double a year ago. Fox News Channel averaged 1.56 million and MSNBC 1.53 million viewers.  More important, Newsmax, a safe haven for delusional Trumpists to hide from gravity and arithmetic, Newsmax beat Fox for the first time ever.  Newsmax commentators, even today, continue to peddle the lies that Trump is going to prevail over Biden.

Newsmax and OAN (as well as some remaining Fox programming) engage in prodigious lying, creating toxic propaganda that has now made it impossible for normal people to engage their viewers in any kind of productive debate.  In recent days, I’ve attempted discourse with several people, and it’s like arguing with an audio recording that’s running backwards.  These folks have bought in to the Dominion fairytale, the suitcases full of ballots narrative, and even the new “Office of the President-Elect” story ignoring the decades of the use of that term.  Even talking to these folks is exhausting because you simply can’t make any progress.

Even though Trump will soon be hiding at Mar a Lago and fighting criminal and civil charges in New York, the damage he inflicted and made recovery of our democracy even more remote.  I personally don’t see a route to recovery.

You can say one thing about Donald Trump.  He commits his crimes in plain sight of the American people.  He fires officials who dare disagree with him; he fires officials who tell the truth; he engages in quid pro quo using the full force of the federal government for is own personal gain.  He engages in nepotism, daring anyone to challenge him; he lies when it’s easier to tell the truth.  He’s now decapitated the Pentagon, putting his loyalists in place most certainly there to either destroy evidence or stonewall investigations of Trump’s malfeasance.  AND, at this hour he has Michigan legislative Republicans in the WH to twist their arms to subvert the Michigan election and throw their electoral votes to him.  So let’s be clear here – Trump and his merry band of criminals knows there’s no voter fraud in the election.  They have failed in all the swings states where they have alleged fraud.  Now that those efforts have failed, Trump is now just trying to steal the election by convincing (bribing) Republican state legislatures to disenfranchise their own constituents and throw the electoral count to him.  In a word, Trump is instigating a coup against the new President, Joe Biden, who has been duly elected in both the majority of voters and electoral votes.  He’s doing that because he’s staring at a long stretch of hard time once he loses the shield of the presidency.

Trump has bent, broken, ignored, and subverted so many laws, regulations, traditions, and customs that nothing is normal.  He understands nothing but brute force, doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, and doesn’t care if you live or die.  This is all about Donald Trump and only about Donald Trump.  If you don’t like what you’re seeing, here’s John Cornyn’s and Ted Cruz’s phone number.  It’s long past time they should have gotten off their fat asses to do their Goddam jobs, but I’m certainly not holding my breath.

John Cornyn – 202-224-2934

Ted Cruz – 202-224-5922

Trump’s doing exactly what we predicted – lying, rage tweeting, threatening his “allies” to not get out of line, denying all access of the incoming president to briefings and transition documents.  And tonight, he made good on his threats, firing Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of DHS.  Krebs crime?  He spoke truth that this election was the most secure in US history and that there was no question as to outcome.  In a rage and abject denial, Trump canned him tonight.

Trump has no path to legal occupation of the WH, so what we’re facing in a few short weeks is a Constitutional crisis.  Trump has no regard for the American people and is totally self absorbed in his own sulking and scheming to steal the election from the American people.  Every hour he doesn’t step aside should be a month added to his prison sentence after all this is over.  What he doesn’t realize?  He’s guaranteeing criminal prosecution every day he continues his charade of Truth Decay.