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.

Donny Deutsch, a former Trump friend, was on MSNBC’s Nicolle today giving his perspective on Trump’s inexplicable claims of massive non-existent voter fraud.  His take?  Business. Business, plain and simple.  And it makes perfect sense.  Deutsch says that the “Trump Revolution Network“, a new subscription channel, is in preproduction preparing to launch as soon as Trump storms out of the White House claiming that the election was stolen from him.  He also asserted that Trump has already trademarked the term”Telerally” and is trying to set himself up as Republican kingmaker, demanding that future candidates kiss his ring to avoid his Omniscient Twitter Attacks that would sink the campaign of anyone who dares cross him.  Later on The Beat with Ari Melber, guest and confessed felon, Michael Cohen, pretty much confirmed the same theory, that this is all staging for the next step in Trump’s toxic career.  Cohen claims that Trump has no remaining revenue left, and is going to attempt to establish himself as the gatekeeper to Republican Nirvana.

This makes more sense to me that any other theory for his idiotic claims of voter fraud, even going so far as sending out Trump Humper Mike Pompeo to assert that there will be a “peaceful transition of power to a second Trump administration.”  With all the opacity of current events, one thing is clear…Trump and all of his enablers, including Pompeo, Barr, Trump Jr, Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Miller, and other Trumpists MUST be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  It’s hard to overthrow democracy from a prison cell.  It might, though, be a good setting for Trump’s new reality series, Celebrity Felon, Cell Block C Edition.

A company run by Trump’s digital director was caught sending thousands of incendiary texts to Trump supporters telling them to amass in Philadelphia and falsely demonstrate that Dems were stealing the election.  This will pretty much shoot down Giuliani’s claims of voter fraud.

Many of us believe Trump doesn’t care whether you live or die.  There is ample evidence of that from his behavior over the years, but was in plain view last night at Eppley Airfield outside of Omaha, Nebraska.  To use Air Force One as his backdrop, he had thousands of supporters bussed 4 miles to a remote area on the airport.  He held said rally, playing all of his Fat Elvis hits, then boarded his plane and was gone.

Thousands of his supporters were then left stranded out on the airfield, with few buses taking people back.  Oh, and it was 30 degrees last night.  Emergency medical teams were called and were treating people for hypothermia.  At least 7 people remain hospitalized this morning.

Two lessons here: 1) He really doesn’t care if you live or die; 2) Incompetence pervades every aspect of Trumpland.  They can’t even get buses right.