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.

So it starts.  Two nights ago the right-wingers were all aflutter, excitedly posting that everyone should be sure to watch Hannity because he was going to drop the bomb on Biden and his son, Hunter, even predicting that Biden’s campaign was “cooked” and over.  What was the “bomb”?  The same old warmed over bullshit that Hannity always peddles.  Take whatever Trump is doing, turn it upside down, change the names and label it a Democratic scandal.  Never mind that the only sane person at Fox Noise, Shephard Smith, inoculated against their viewers earlier in the day telling his viewers that “this is not about Biden, it’s about the phone call.” How correct he was.

When news broke last week that there was a whistleblower complaint against Trump about this conduct in a call with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Trump hitman Rudy Giuliani went into full meltdown, shouting about some fictional corruption of Joe Biden.  That narrative the fell apart when news broke that Trump had ordered the freeze of some $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to put maximum pressure on Zelensky to force him to investigate the Bidens.  So, to be clear, Trump used the full power of the US government to damage his US political opponent.  When caught, his cronies have desperately tried to flip the story around that Trump wasn’t really trying to get Ukraine to open a fake investigation on Biden, but really trying to get Ukraine to clean up its own corruption (which coincidently happened to suddenly include Biden and his son Hunter).  It’s nonsense, but as we’ve discussed, totally predictable.

Then Nancy Pelosi happened.  Yesterday afternoon, in a serious speech to the nation, Pelosi announced the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.  The shift in politics was seismic.  To pile on Trump, word then got out that he had called Pelosi yesterday morning wanting to “work something out” about the whistleblower report that she’s demanding.  It’s reported that she told him that his people should follow the law.  That call to Pelosi was the tell that Trump has figured out that he’s screwed the pooch.  He’s in real trouble and that fact has finally penetrated the narcissistic fog within which he hides.  You can tell he knows just based on his speech which he barely got through and the remarks he made to the press prior to the speech.  He’s told so many lies that he can’t keep them straight, and is picking up the pace of lying trying to worm out of this one.  To wit:

1. Earlier this week, Trump admitted that he talked to Zelensky about Biden, but his first excuse was that it was to get Ukraine to crack down on corruption (supposedly Biden’s), and said that was why he was withholding the $400 million in military aid.  Yesterday he changed his story, saying he withheld it funding because European countries weren’t paying their fair share.
2. Trump is lying about European countries not paying.  The EU has already provided $16.5 billion in economic support of Ukraine after Russia’s attempt to annex the country.  Additionally, NATO has an active program in place to support Ukraine’s defense efforts.
3. He then said he’s leading in the polls.  That’s a blatant lie since he actually trailed Biden in recent polls by about 15 points nationally and trails Biden in the swing states.  He’s even trailing Warren nationally, even though he’s leading her in some swing states.
4. Then he said that since he’s leading in the polls, the only way “they” can get him is impeachment, which has “never happened before”.  See Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Andrew Johnson.
5. Lastly, Trump said that he put no pressure on Zelensky about Biden, but that Ukraine should clean up its corruption that Biden had supposedly engaged in.  He continues to lie about this even though the prosecutor in Ukraine that replace ousted Viktor Shokin (who actually was corrupt) publicly stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter.

For this tsunami of lies, the Washington Post awarded Trump 4 Pinocchios this morning.  Predictably, the Noise Machine is desperately trying to distract from yesterday’s disaster by whipping up “the Democrats did this,” “Joe Biden did that,” “Trump’s been investigated since he was born,” blah, blah, blah, but you can tell that the entire machine is on its heels, at least at this moment.

Will the system work and end this long national nightmare?  I don’t know yet, but you can feel the seismic shift in  our politics.  I continue to believe that as the cost of Trump goes ever higher, the Repubs will jettison him and throw him to the wolves.  We’re far from that yet, but you can see his iron grip starting to weaken.  Ousting him can’t happen too soon.

And while we’re watching the shiny impeachment announcement, Trump’s minions are rushing to finalize a change to Department of Agriculture rules that will kick 500,000 poor kids off of school lunch programs.  That’s right, Trump says the half a million poor kids are apparently no longer poor enough.

I certainly wish the Congress would hurry up.

Nancy Pelosi just announced a formal impeachment inquiry of the conduct of Donald Trump.  Here we go.  Let’s make some predictions…I would like to hear what others think.

My prediction: This is the beginning of the end for Trump.  As this proceeds and truth comes to light, I believe that the Republicans will FINALLY realize that the jig is up.  In order for them to have any chance at winning 2020, they need Trump out quickly so they can field some other candidate.  The veil will be lifted and everyone will run from him.  Wishful thinking?  I don’t think so.

What do you think?

During Trump’s silly visit to his wall south of San Diego last week (the one where he tried to reveal secret sensing built into the wall), he made the remarkable claim that 20 world class mountain climbers tried and couldn’t climb it.  The claim was bullshit, of course, like the virtually all of his claims.  The press immediately tried to confirm Trump’s claim by…wait for it…talking to world class climbers.  Said climbers said they had no knowledge of any climbers participating in any test of Trump’s wall, and even added that would help even if asked.  They also gave the parting shot that the wall could be easily scaled.

LOL.

George Conway teamed up with Neal Katyal yesterday to opine on Trump’s latest outrage of holding up aid to Ukraine as inducement to dig dirt on Joe Biden.  Katyal was solicitor general in the Obama administration.  It’s become obvious now that the whistleblower case that Bill Barr is covering up is a blatant incident of Trump violating the Constitution and US law to induce a foreign power to assist him in defeating a domestic political opponent.  Another weekend must-read, this one is powerful.