Elon Musk and Donald Trump Cases Imperil the Rule of Law - WSJ - "The U.S. is the business capital of the world in large part because of its robust constitutional system and impartial judiciary. But two unprecedented legal decisions, against Donald Trump in New York and Elon Musk in Delaware, call that into question. In both cases, judges have ordered massive punitive judgments on behalf of dubious or nonexistent “victims.” Every American has a right to be critical of Mr. Trump’s politics—one of us ran against him in 2016—or Mr. Musk’s public persona. But equality before the law is precious, and these rulings represent a crisis not only for the soundness of our courts, but for the business environment that has allowed the U.S. to prosper. If these rulings stand, the damage could cascade through the economy, creating fear of arbitrary enforcement against entrepreneurs who seek public office or raise their voices as citizens in a way that politicians dislike. In Delaware, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Court of Chancery ordered the unwinding of five years of Mr. Musk’s incentive-based compensation at Tesla , which had been approved by 80% of the company’s shareholders. The plaintiff, Richard Tornetta, held nine shares in 2018—worth about $200 then and $2,000 today, after the execution of the compensation plan that supposedly injured him. Mr. Musk’s compensation plan awarded him stock bonuses tied to earnings and stock-value benchmarks, which many critics thought he could never meet. When he did, he received $56 billion, enriching shareholders like Mr. Tornetta along the way... Mr. Musk’s performance at Tesla enriched all shareholders, but Judge McCormick’s ruling may primarily enrich Delaware trial lawyers. In New York, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Mr. Trump to pay more than $350 million in a civil fraud judgment for inflating the value of his real-estate holdings. That case was brought by Attorney General Letitia James, who ran for office in 2018 on a promise to target the man she called “an illegitimate president.” The unusual New York law Ms. James used to investigate and sue Mr. Trump didn’t require her to prove that he had intended to defraud anyone, or even that anyone lost money. The Associated Press found that of the 12 cases brought under that law since its adoption in 1956 in which significant penalties were imposed, the case against Mr. Trump was the only instance without an alleged victim or financial loss. Bankers from Deutsche Bank , which lent money to Mr. Trump, testified that they were satisfied with having done so, given they were paid back on time and with interest. They also testified that they were uncertain whether the alleged exaggerations would have affected the terms of the loans to Mr. Trump—a key part of Ms. James’s case. Since there were no victims, the state will collect the damages. New York and Delaware have played an outsize role in business in the U.S. Many major companies are incorporated in Delaware owing to the state’s body of corporate legal precedents; and a significant number of banks operate in New York, the world financial capital. The appellate courts in those states now have a chance to review these dangerous judicial rulings and try to stop further damage to the reputations of their respective judiciaries. If they don’t, blue-state politicians may have the satisfaction of “sticking it” to Messrs. Trump and Musk, but the loss to those states will be significant. The damage to the legal fabric of the country will be even worse. A dispassionate justice system is at the heart of American exceptionalism, and the country will be poorer if we lose it."
Dem elites shouldn't be laughing at Trump's civil trial outcome -- they just made him a political martyr - "Was there ever a more predictable outcome than that of Donald Trump’s civil trial? Attorney General Letitia James came into office vowing to punish him and ignore all other crimes. Judge Arthur Engoron found him guilty before anyone even set foot in a courtroom. It was all over but the punishment: a $355 million fine and a three-year ban from running a business in New York. Guess they were out of tar and feathers. This was a politically motivated trial from the start, one that had the progressive James “protecting” big banks she would otherwise demean.Congratulations, you’ve won a trial without victims and proved that Donald Trump likes to exaggerate. See if that gets you elected governor. Democrats have again shot themselves in the foot, proving to an increasing number of voters that the justice system is stacked against the ex-president. This trial and the upcoming “hush-money” nothingness trivializes the more serious Jan. 6 case. And how many will dismiss the classified documents trial because elderly Joe skated?"
Donald Trump Georgia fraud case: Live updates from DA Fani Willis' misconduct hearing - "Trump special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s former law partner and divorce attorney seemed to admit in a text message read aloud in an Atlanta court Friday that Wade and District Attorney Fani Willis were in a relationship before 2022 — contradicting the timeline the former lovers gave in their respective testimonies a day earlier... There is a chance the two prosecutors could be disqualified from the case if evidence is produced that shows “an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said. Willis and Wade — whom the DA appointed as a special prosecutor in the Georgia election fraud case — had both been seeking to get out of testifying at this week’s hearing, where a Trump co-defendant is seeking to have the case dropped against him over the prosecutors’ alleged misconduct."
Why Trump’s withdrawal from Syria is bad for Israel — and good for Iran
From 2019. Of course, the shitshow under Biden is Trump's fault
Comment: "I like how the left is so far gone that they will simultaneously complain we should be the world police and we should not be the world police based on who they want to shit on these days"
Google's push to lecture us on diversity goes beyond AI - "Watching the treatment of Donald Trump in the last week, I’m reminded of a scene from the great film “A Man for All Seasons.”... Trump’s prosecutors certainly treat him like the devil. But have they really thought this latest move through? What do they think this town will be like for other property developers now that this precedent has been set? Is it unheard of for developers to exaggerate property values in this city? What about the seizure and effective confiscation of assets? On a bigger scale, who do people think will run for high office in this country now that total financial destruction is the latest weapon in the prosecutor’s armory? Sometimes the cost of getting your devil is far too high. And comes back at you."
Keith Olbermann Melts Down Over Trump's SCOTUS Victory - "Former ESPN and MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann did not take the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to put Donald Trump back on the ballot in stride on Monday. In a per curiam decision, the Court ruled that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in disqualifying Trump from the state’s presidential contest because states aren’t empowered to enforce the insurrectionist clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. On X (formerly Twitter), Olbermann reacted with fury, laying into all of the justices, including Democratic appointees Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. “The Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its members including Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor have proved themselves inept at reading comprehension. And collectively the “court” has shown itself to be corrupt and illegitimate,” he wrote. “It must be dissolved.” “The Supreme Court is full of shit,” Olbermann insisted in another post. But that was merely a prelude to his masterpiece, which came in his response to a reply from a right-wing influencer who urged him to “Cry more” and then pointed out that the decision to reinstate Trump was unanimous. “Those aren’t tears, Fascist,” retorted Olbermann. “They’re urine. I’m sure you enjoy being bathed in it.”
Meme - Keith Olbermann: "Those aren't tears, Fascist. They're urine. I'm sure you enjoy being bathed in it"
Aelfred The Great: "But you're in big trouble. I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast."
"You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?"
"No."
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t - The Atlantic - "Without clear guidance from the Court, House Democrats suggest that they might not certify a Trump win on January 6."
Ironic. Election denial and obstruction is only bad if it hurts the left
Meme - Harry Sisson @harryjsisson: "Insurrection sympathizer Clarence Thomas ruled that insurrectionist Donald Trump can remain on the ballot in 2024. That should be the headline."
#ThePersistence @ScottPresler: "The ruling was 9-0 & you attack the black man. Figures."
Meme - "AM I SO OUT OF TOUCH? NO, IT IS ALL 9 SUPREME COURT JUSTICES WHO ARE WRONG"
Meme - "They didn believe Paula Jones
They didn't believe Tara Reade
But they believe E. Jean Carroll"
Donald Trump’s populism is turning off corporate donors - "Republican fundraisers are in for a tough year"
So the US is an oligarchy?
Liberals like to complain that policies popular with most Americans aren't enacted, and call this oligarchy and say they don't live in a democracy. But of course they hate "populism"
Meme 2016: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2017: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2018: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2019: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2020: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2021: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2022: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
2023: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON" *you are here*
2024: Rachel Maddow - "TRUMP'S GOING TO PRISON"
A liberal spends a year with devout Trump voters, and discovers he's been wrong - "If I thought I was going to meet only modern John Lithgows, I was to be sadly disappointed. Instead, I met young evangelicals interested in social justice and refugee issues (how to help them, not how to keep them out). I met families who had committed their entire lives to helping the poor and those who live in the shadows. I met a pastor who had forged a major social service partnership with his city’s openly gay mayor to demonstrate how evangelicals could be known by what they were for, not just what they were against... Plenty of people who I talked to were struggling with rapid changes to society and seemed to lack the vocabulary to deal with some of the challenges of modernity. But for most, those social issues were entirely secondary. They wanted to talk about the role of the church in forming community, the responsibility to help others and the belief that private voluntary organizations could be the central convening place of a better society. I found myself nodding in agreement when Sam Adams, Portland’s first openly gay mayor, told me, “We can agree to disagree on gay marriage and disagree on abortion, but we probably agree on eight out of 10 things that are important to society … So we can act together genuinely in our communities on those eight out of 10 and break out of the trap that has been built around us.” Many have been puzzled by the fact that so many religious people (83 percent of white evangelicals) voted for Trump and have dismissed this support as proof of evangelical hypocrisy. But it is not so difficult to understand. I did meet a few impassioned Trump supporters, but mostly I found people who viewed their support for Trump as a compromised choice between two not particularly attractive options... Support for people like Trump and Roy Moore grows when you think you need hardcore, uncompromising street fighters to protect you from the other side. Democrats forget this at their peril. Over the course of the year, I often found myself in agreement with the evangelicals on the importance of community organizations, of feeding the hungry, housing the homeless and even on the importance of the two-parent family in combating poverty (though not on what counts as a two-parent family). I didn’t agree with everything I heard or with everyone I met, but that was OK. Many of us on the left talk about diversity and respecting differences in life, but that is often for the differences in race, sexuality and lifestyle that we find agreeable, not the differences in political persuasion, geography, and moral and religious vision that we find somewhat less appealing. When you don’t know the other side, it is easy to obsess about the two out of 10, and forget that the other eight are the basis for democracy and for the bonds of affection, as Lincoln once said, that unite us as Americans.
Ken Stern is the president of Palisades Media Ventures and the former CEO of National Public Radio. He is the author of the new book “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right.”"
This doesn't stop left wingers from mocking Christians, even though Christians do more of the things that the left claim they don't do than non-religious people do
The Davos Consensus: Donald Trump Will Win Re-Election - The New York Times - "Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase also got a lot of attention for his comments. In an interview with Andrew on CNBC, he didn’t predict that Trump would win, but suggested that dismissing the former president and his supporters would be a mistake. “Just take a step back and be honest,” Dimon said, listing the things that he thought Trump got at least partially right: NATO, immigration, the economy, China and more. “He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and that’s why they’re voting for him,” he said. “I think this negative talk about MAGA will hurt [President] Biden’s campaign,” he added... A little history: The Davos consensus was that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump in 2016. And in 2020, the prevailing view was that there were few risks to the economy … as the pandemic began to explode."
SHAPIRO: Trump on the road to achieving a political miracle - "Why does Trump retain such a grip on the Republican imagination after losing the 2020 election, contributing heavily to the loss of two Republican Senate seats in Georgia in 2021 and contributing heavily to the loss of the Senate in 2022 with his spate of bizarre primary picks? Why should Trump, who spends much of every day fulminating about his upcoming legal cases, have the upper hand against Republicans without such baggage? Why does Trump, who is certainly no conservative ideologue, live so large in the imagination of conservatives? There are several reasons. Primarily, Trump is lucky in his enemies. To be more precise, Trump’s very presence on the political stage — and his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 — drove his enemies out of their minds. Those enemies determined that any and all means were appropriate for undermining his presidency and his 2020 re-election bid. From Russian collusion nonsense to multiple impeachments, from nodding at historically damaging riots to blaming him for a pandemic, from changing the voting rules to lying about and then shutting down the dissemination of the Hunter Biden laptop story, anything was on the table. So when Trump claimed in the post-2020 election landscape that he had been robbed of victory, that contention rang true, even if his contentions about outright voter fraud remained unproven. Trump has been the title character of “Trump: The Series” since 2015. In the end, the chances that Americans would allow a recasting before his re-election effort were always low. But those chances shrank to zero the moment Trump’s enemies weaponized the legal system against him. When Trump’s enemies, in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win, continued to come after Trump using the legal system, Trump argued that he was a stand-in for conservatives everywhere who feel that they are targeted for destruction by America’s most powerful institutions. That argument had major purchase — by polling data, Trump’s bump to the top of the Republican 2024 heap came not with his re-election announcement, but with the announcement in March 2023 that he would be indicted in Manhattan on specious charges of campaign finance violation. The drumbeat of new legal charges against him, dropped everywhere from Florida to Washington, D.C. to Georgia, simply added fuel to the fire. Perhaps even that legal news could have been turned against Trump in a primary race. But there was one more factor Trump needed — he needed Joe Biden to be so terrible at his job, so outright awful, that Trump would suddenly look competitive. The electability argument — the argument that Trump’s losing record since 2016 would continue into 2024 — collapsed for Trump’s Republican opponents as Biden’s approval rating sank into the 30s. Republicans’ hearts were with Trump; now their heads could be with him, too... 2024 could easily be a referendum on Biden’s presidency. And if that happens, Trump will have capped the most remarkable political comeback since Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968"
Glenn Greenwald on X - "The massive and historic size of Trump's victory should lead to some self-reflection about what caused the complete collapse of faith in the legitimacy of US institutions of authority and justice, whereby voters so easily disregard 4 felony cases as irrelevant if not an asset... It's always tempting to say those who see the world differently are drowning in cult-like delusions. Conservatives often say that about Biden voters, too and, before that, Obama voters. But there are millions of Obama-to-Trump voters, whose appeal is anti-establishment vitriol."
Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives on X - "🔥🚨DEVELOPING: Da Fani Willis spoke after allegations of paying lover to prosecute Trump: “You cannot expect black women to be perfect. We need to be allowed to stumble. We need grace. We are all sinners” She really trying to act like she represent Black women and she chose to do it when she got caught for being a hoe. We don’t need everyone to represent us, just the right people."
MAGA Celebrates Donald Trump Being 'Exonerated' in Epstein Docs - ""In October, a judge ruled Alex Jones must pay $1.1 BILLION for 'repeated lies,'" Loudon posted. "Now that Rightful President Trump has been EXONERATED of visiting Epstein island, is the media going to retract their bogus articles?""
Of course, all the Trump haters who were unwilling and/or unable to read claimed this release showed the opposite
The Associated Press on X - "A pro-peace Russian presidential hopeful is blocked by the election commission"
Glenn Greenwald on X - "What kind of monstrous dictatorship bans a candidate who wants to seek office from appearing on the ballot? I shudder to think what it must be like to be a citizen of such a country."
Simon Ateba on X - "FLASHBACK: The Democrats blasting "dictator" Trump in 2019 for using the Department of Justice to investigate a political rival thereby turning the U.S. into a "banana republic." Not making this up. WATCH"
Collin Rugg on X - "JUST IN: Former FBI official Charles McGonigal, who helped investigate Trump for 'colluding' with Russia, has been sentenced to four years in prison for colluding with Russia. Read that again. McGonigal accepted over $17,000 from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska who he supplied information to. Deripaska is a close associate of Vladimir Putin and has a net worth of about $3 billion. "Charles McGonigal violated the trust his country placed in him by using his high-level position at the FBI to prepare for his future in business," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. "Once he left public service, he jeopardized our national security by providing services to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon who acts as Vladimir Putin’s agent." They always accuse you of what they are doing..."
George on X - "BREAKING: The bank Trump allegedly defrauded just gave a testimony saying Trump did nothing wrong in their dealings with him. “It’s not unusual or atypical for any client’s provide financial statements to be adjusted to this level to this extent.” Bank Exec David Williams Williams also said he personally went to Trump Tower in December 2011 to review bank and brokerage statements to verify there was $51.8 million in marketable securities $178 million cash balances. So exactly who did Trump defraud here? And what laws were broken?"
Actually, Trump Was NOT Wearing His Pants Backward At A Weekend Rally - "Former President Donald Trump transfixed a sizable part of the nation over the weekend — not through his words, as he has often done, but because of his pants. Or more specifically, because of unusual wrinkles in Trump's pants that people struggled to explain."
From 2021
Meme - Nick Adams @NickAdamsin...: "NASCAR is reviewing Brandon Brown's new "Let's Go Brandon" paint scheme on his race car. I stand with Brandon Brown's right to free speech!"
Miss Bella - NO DMS! @MissBella5735: "Freedom of speech does not include hate speech."
Miss Bella - NO DMS! @MissBella5735: "FUCK TRUMP! I have despised him for decades. #TeamBiden! If you need to know more about me, read pinned tweet. @#VoteBlue"
Charlie Kirk on X - "Donald Trump says he's open to Tucker Carlson as a 2024 running mate. At first, it sounds a little loopy. But upon further thought... Besides Trump himself, nobody enjoys the base's trust the way Tucker Carlson does. Nobody else intuitively understands their values, their priorities, or their worries the way they do. No other VP contender is as battle-tested as Tucker. Like Trump, he thrives under attack and under pressure. He's been targeted and smeared endlessly for seven years, but he's never cracked, never had a breakdown. He's only become more popular. Despite years of digging, his personal life is spotless. Tucker is the only Republican who can even begin to imitate Trump's rhetorical style. They're the only two men who can keep an audience transfixed speaking for an hour without a single note. The Democrat plan is to keep Donald Trump stuck in court or even in jail so he can't campaign. Is anybody a more viable Trump campaign surrogate than Tucker Carlson? And as we know, the vice president is just a heartbeat away from the presidency. If something were to happen to President Trump, God forbid, is there anyone we'd trust more than Tucker Carlson to carry the conservative mantle into the future? This isn't some flight of fancy. Trump/Tucker is a great idea."
Sundae_Gurl on X - "Can someone please remind me why we're not supposed to compare the present Republican Party and Trump in America with the 20th Century Nazi Party and Hitler in Germany?"
Only liberals get to make Nazi comparisons
Meme - Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "PRO-TIP: If you're still chanting "Lock her up" in 2022, you don't get to whine when we call your asses out for being fascists."
Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "LOCK HIM THE FUCK UP!!"
ACLU sides with Trump on limited gag order in Jan. 6 case - "The American Civil Liberties Union sued former President Donald Trump or his administration more than 400 times during his tenure in the White House. But now the ACLU is siding with Trump in the criminal case that charges he conspired to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power — telling a judge that a gag order she's imposed sweeps too broadly in restraining Trump's speech"
Did Democrats Hurt the Anti-Trump Effort by Bashing Mitt Romney and George W. Bush? - The Atlantic - "some conservatives feel that Democrats and liberal pundits have cried wolf, describing past Republicans with such elevated levels of alarm that warnings about Trump don’t elicit the same urgency. Dangerously ignorant about policy and incurious about the world? That was the line on George W. Bush 16 years ago. Radical, unacceptable views about women? Said of any number of Republicans. Overrated business career? Just ask Mitt Romney about that one. (Not only was Romney’s success credited to his father’s connection, The New York Times reported,“Mr. Romney, though, never ran a corner store or a traditional business. Instead, he excelled as a deal maker,” which sounds eerily familiar.) A temperament unsuited for the Oval Office? Some said the same thing about John McCain. Fascism? Two videos uploaded by users to a MoveOn contest likened Bush to Adolph Hitler in 2004.* Extreme positions? “He’s the most conservative nominee that they’ve had going back to Goldwater,” top Obama aide David Plouffe said of Romney in 2012. Once you’ve already used all of these insults once before, they start to lose their sting. That’s the point of Godwin’s Law, the theory that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches 1,” and of critiques of likening various politicians to the Nazi leader. Once you’ve compared someone to Hitler, you have both used up your one chance to compare her to history’s greatest monster—and you’ve risked downplaying the significance of Hitler by diluting the insult... Some of the same publications that were critical of Romney’s presidential run lavishly lauded him for speaking out against Trump... The prevalence of wolf-crying, rather than being the fault of any particular party or even specific politicians or pundits, is a symptom of a particularly toxic, polarized moment in American politics. Hyperbole is just about the only way to live in such a moment, and who better to exemplify it than a man who once justified his lies as “truthful hyperbole” (whatever that means)?"
Every Republican Presidential Candidate Is Hitler
Spooks Spooking Themselves - "With the news that a Cambridge academic-cum-spy named Stefan Halper infiltrated the Trump campaign, the role of the intelligence agencies in shaping the great Russiagate saga is at last coming into focus. It’s looking more and more massive. The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread the word to the press and key government officials. Reportedly, they even tried to use these reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration. Although the corporate press accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block “Siberian candidate” Trump. The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove, Halper’s friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London’s venerable Garrick Club, according toThe Washington Post, Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous “golden showers” opposition research dossier, that Trump “reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin.” Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn’t work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal... A few things stand out about this august group. One is its in-bred quality... Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence... The result is a diplo-espionage gang that is very bad at the facts but very good at public manipulation – and which therefore decided to use its skill set out to create a public furor over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election... the activities that got IRA in trouble in the first place are so unimpressive – just $46,000 worth of Facebook ads that it purchased prior to election day, some pro-Trump, some anti, and some with no particular slant at all – that Mueller probably wouldn’t even have bothered if he hadn’t been under intense pressure to come up with anything at all. "
From 2018
Clearly, the Deep State is a myth