We saw the crack in the dam of invincibility a few days ago when the RNC confirmed they’ll stop paying TFG’s legal bills after he declares for the presidency.  Today, total waste of oxygen, Mick Mulvaney (who is inexplicably now a CBS News “analyst”) said that “[TFG] is the only Republican who can lose in 2024.”  Granted, he told that truth only after telling the whopper that election denial is a “both sides do it” problem, with the caveat that in order to come to that conclusion, you have to ignore January 6th.  LOL.

Mulvaney is a clown, liar, and partisan hack who most certainly has no place taking up time on national television; but he is a measuring stick for the Red Tide, and when he goes against TFG (and he’s been moving there for a time) that tide is clearly going out for him.

Today, the dam holding back all political challengers, critics, and investigators of TFG cracked.  And it cracked big time.  The RNC responded to his non-announcement announcement the other night where he said he was “…very, very, very probably” going to run.  Obviously, that non-announcement announcement pissed off the committee, especially since it is just a few days before the mid-term elections, and uncharacteristically, the committee pushed back hard, stating publicly that if he announces for president, they’ll stop paying his legal bills.  Up until today, the RNC has had its nose so far up TFG’s ass they couldn’t see daylight, and they have continued to use donor money to cover these bills, even two years after he left office.  The RNC’s rationale to keep paying, which is complete bullshit, was that they were for the investigation and subsequent lawsuit from NYAG Letitia James calling it “political”, and not for the fact that he and his entire family of arrogant shitheads who have been engaged in questionable shenanigans for years, cheating on everything from taxes to financial accounting.

For over 6 years now, the RNC has been all in for TFG, understanding clearly that he controlled their base of mouth-breathing, gun-toting screwballs who see a dark skinned bogeyman behind every corner and who are worried to death that their kid is going to be indoctrinated with nonexistent CRT propaganda and books about kids getting along with others.  Apparently, they see him (what took so goddam long?) as weakened by the mountain of the scandals, especially the federal document theft case, which clearly holds a whole raft of felonies that have in the past sent a lot of people to prison for a long time.

Is the TFG dam of intimidation finally going to break?  Clearly the RNC no longer sees him as the all powerful Oz (no pun intended), and this is a brush back pitch to tell him, “Not so fast, buster, we have an election, and then primaries for 2024.”  TFG pissing off Ron DeSantis yesterday didn’t help his case.  DeSantis is the GOP’s greatest hope to take back the White House in ’24, and he wants TFG out of the way.

This one will be a real soap opera to watch.  I’m popping popcorn.

UPDATED:

TFG is back.  One of Elon’s first moves upon taking over Twitter yesterday (after stupidly carrying a bathroom sink into Twitter’s offices and firing the entire senior management team) was to restore TFG’s twitter account, effective as early as Monday.  He did it after announcing a new “content moderation council”, adding that no changes would be made until the council convenes.  So much for that strategy.  In classic style, TFG is already gloating through a surrogate.

https://twitter.com/altnavigation/status/1585812009094119424?s=20&t=NQIprbgbvmxM8yoxWvZGqg

After the announcement, Musk backtracked, saying that “no decisions will be made until the council convenes”.  Right. I can predict how THAT will turn out.

To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies https://t.co/k4guTsXOIu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2022

General Motors has already suspended all advertising on Twitter in response to Musk’s takeover.
Apparently, Musk’s “free speech” ideology extends to defamation, insurrection, and getting people killed.  So the shitstorm begins.

UPDATE:

Twitter is now being flooded by MAGAt trolls, spewing the same racist hate and misinformation they were before the insurrection on January 6, 2021.  One watchdog has reported that racist tweets are up 500% since Musk took control of Twitter.

Evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on @Twitter. Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify derogatory slurs.

For example, over the last 12 hours, the use of the n-word has increased nearly 500% from the previous average. pic.twitter.com/mEqziaWuMF

— Network Contagion Research Institute (@ncri_io) October 28, 2022

Welcome to the cowardly new world aided by the world’s richest man.  When’s he going to Mars?

This afternoon, the SCOTUS issued a one sentence rebuke of TFG in his efforts to hamstring the DOJ investigating his theft of thousands of government documents.  The order, one sentence long, said:

TRUMP, DONALD J. V. UNITED STATES

The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.

Even the SCOTUS can occasionally surprise by doing its goddam job.

Earlier this week the NYTimes published an investigative story that had several revelations including an account of TFG demanding that yet another lawyer lie for him early last year that he had returned all the documents and that lawyer refusing.  More important, it’s damned likely he still has government documents somewhere else like his NY apartment, in Bedminster, or even Mar a Lago.

But the story also recounted TFG’s desire to used the stolen documents as trade bait.  The key quote:

“Mr. [TFG], still determined to show he had been wronged by the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, was angry with the National Archives and Records Administration for its unwillingness to hand over a batch of sensitive documents that he thought proved his claims.

In exchange for those documents, Mr. [TFG] told advisers, he would return to the National Archives the boxes of material he had taken to Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla.”

So there it is.  Not only did TFG recklessly steal top secret and other government documents, he then concocted a plan to use his unlawful possession of stolen documents as a hostage to get evidence to support his contention that the FBI was out to get him.  It’s classic mobster behavior; worse, it’s stupid, careless, and another example of the danger this man poses to not only the country but to himself.

I’ve had several theories about why TFG stole these documents and then toyed with the DOJ for over a year and a half; first, obviously TFG is a dumbass with shit for brains; second, I figured he saw value in them to sell to the highest bidder; third, he loves all the trappings of being president and continued playing Oval Office and pretending he’s still there; lastly I figured he just likes pissing off the “deep state”.  All of these theories are plausible and damned likely; what I hadn’t thought about that he believed he could use the stolen documents to steal more documents.  That act is just a glimpse into how evil TFG truly is.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just dropped a 29 page ruling on TFG, siding with the DOJ that classified materials are classified, that TFG had provided zero evidence he’d declassified anything when he infested the Oval Office, and that he had no purpose to possess US government documents.  Key quote:

“[Mr. Trump] has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents.  Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

The ruling went further to say that the Special Master, Judge Dearie, had no need to review any classified documents and ordered the removal of those documents from those he was to review.  This ruling cleared the way for the FBI to continue its criminal investigation into TFG’s hoarding of highly sensitive documents and his obstruction to stop the DOJ from recovering them.

Oh, and two of the three judges on the panel were TFG appointees.

Bad day for TFG, good day for democracy. Boom.