A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
Despite Trump's attempt to silence and minimize Martin Luther King Day (which is just a sample of how he minimizes the calls for equality and justice from Black and Brown and Muslim and all Non-White America) and instead promotes complete misinformation and lies regarding a "stolen election" and incites violence and insurrection not only in the Capitol but throughout the Nation, it is in America (whether he likes it or not) Martin Luther King Day.
The tributes to the Reverend King abound, here are just a couple; video courtesy Democracy Now !
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose activism we honor today, took stands far beyond Selma and Montgomery, and called on other capitals than Washington, D.C., to ensure a dignified life for human beings. Dr. King was an early and vigorous opponent of the white South African Apartheid (segregationist) government.
He wrote former ambassador Chester Bowles in 1957 on behalf of a rally in New York on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, organized by the National Committee of the American Committee on Africa, where Eleanor Roosevelt was to speak. He said,
“We have watched with great concern the relentless pursuit of official racism (apartheid) by the South African Government. It has defied the most elemental considerations of human decency in its treatment of African and Asian citizens, loosely called non-whites. Our concern has turned to horror as we have learned of the brutal treatment of these non-white South Africans and the extension of totalitarian control into almost every area of human life. What has been almost as shocking is the callous disregard of this tragedy by the free peoples of the world.”
King was throughout his life a warm supporter of security for Israel. Only late in his life, in 1967, did he cancel a trip to Israel over its preemptive Six Day War against Egypt and Tel Aviv’s unilateral occupation of Jerusalem, of which, reading between the lines, he disapproved.
An FBI wiretap of a conference call between Dr.King and Andrew Young and others in July of 1967 recorded Dr. King’s reasons for declining, in the end, the invitation of the Israeli prime minister’s office:
“I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced enough criticism including pro-Arab. I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt… Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up… I frankly have to admit that my instincts – and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right – I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed”
A careful reading of this text shows that Dr. King was not just concerned about criticism from “pro-Arab” African-American leaders of a Black Nationalist bent, or from African and Arab governments. He took plenty of criticism throughout his life. What he was afraid of was looking like he intended to endorse something he did not. “I do have questions of doubt,” he said, about Israel’s annexation of all of Jerusalem through an aggressive war.
Dr. King was an anti-war pacifist who had begun speaking out against the American war against Vietnam. He did not approve of wars of choice. Moreover, it was clear to him that the Israelis, having conquered East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Palestinians by force of arms, would never relinquish it. He seems to have felt a foreboding that Israel had just become a colonial occupier of the sort he had spent his life condemning.
Dr. King did not want to look as though, by going to Israel in the summer of 1967, he was signalling approval of what Tel Aviv had done.
(Israeli propaganda is so effective that it has convinced a lot of people that 1967 was a war of defense. It was not. It was a preemptive war of choice. Israel fired the first shot, and Egyptian leaders have admitted that despite Abdel Nasser’s big talk, Egypt was then bogged down in the Yemen Civil War and was in no position to launch a war against Israel in June of 1967. Moreover, Egypt’s superpower patron, the Soviet Union, told Cairo that if the Egyptian army fired the first shot, it was on its own and the Soviets would not offer any help. As for Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinians there were civilians and did not play a role in the war, which was Israel’s war on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and there was no defensive justification at all for occupying the Palestinians.)
There is a further consideration. Jerusalem is a Christian holy city, and Dr. King was a Christian clergyman thinking of taking a Christian group of pilgrims there. The UN General Assembly partition plan for British Mandate Palestine of fall, 1947, never had the force of law, since only the UN Security Council could so have endowed it, and they declined to do it. But even it avoided awarding Jerusalem to Israel. There is no warrant in international law for Israel to annex all of Jerusalem, and Dr. King was keenly aware of it.
We thus see there at the end of his life the beginning of a change in Dr. King’s thinking about Israel. Earlier, like many on the Left, he had seen Israel as a postcolonial state that freed itself from British colonialism, just as had Ghana and Kenya. Before 1967, most Palestinians were under caretaker rule, Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the West Bank. Israel itself was 20% Palestinian, but it was largely Jewish and many Israelis were from the families of Holocaust survivors. Israeli governments were socialist. Even an anti-colonial, Communist man of the left such as Jean-Paul Sartre was pro-Israel under those circumstances. The international Left, moreover, coded the Arab leaders as feudal or as fascist (in the case of Abdel Nasser, who persecuted Egyptian Communists).
The big difference between Sartre and Dr. King is that Sartre wholeheartedly supported Israel in 1967, but Dr. King could not. He had “questions of doubt.”
Those who have argued that Dr. King was pro-Israel are correct. He was also a major champion of American Jews against hateful bigotry and anti-Semitism.
But those who argue that Dr. King would have had no problem with Israel’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank after 1967 are being illogical. Israeli policies toward occupied Palestinians are if anything much worse than South African Apartheid. And we know exactly what Dr. King thought about Apartheid.
He slammed brutality. He slammed segregation. He slammed totalitarian control. What would he have thought of the Israeli checkpoints Palestinians have to go through to get from one town in Palestine to another (and even sometimes just to get to the hospital)? It deeply resembles the Apartheid pass system for black Africans.
“we are grateful that our state department has protested the mass killings of our south african brothers and we are pleased that the un security council will meet march 29th to consider that outrage.2 we urge that before march 29th our government issue a statement placing the administration firmly on the side of negroes in the southern states in their present struggle for their constitutional rights, since they are subjected to intimidation, threats and violence when they claim these rights.”
“Early on the 21st the local PAC [Pan-Africanist Congress] leaders first gathered in a field not far from the Sharpeville police station, when a sizable crowd of people had joined them they proceeded to the police station – chanting freedom songs and calling out the campaign slogans “Izwe lethu” (Our land); “Awaphele amapasti” (Down with passes); “Sobukwe Sikhokhele” (Lead us Sobukwe); “Forward to Independence,Tomorrow the United States of Africa.”…
According to the police, protesters began to stone them and, without any warning, one of the policemen on the top of an armoured car panicked and opened fire. His colleagues followed suit and opened fire. The firing lasted for approximately two minutes, leaving 69 people dead and, according to the official inquest, 180 people seriously wounded. The policemen were apparently jittery after a recent event in Durban where nine policemen were shot. Unlike elsewhere on the East Rand where police used baton when charging at resisters, the police at Sharpeville used live ammunition.”
What would Dr. King have said about the Israeli army on the Gaza border shooting fish in a barrel with live ammunition: or as the UN says, “In 2019, 33 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the GMR protests and 11,523 were injured, bringing the total to 212 fatalities and 36,134 injuries since the demonstrations began” (in spring 2018). The Palestinians in Gaza have shouted slogans similar to those of the PAC at Sharpeville. They have staged weekly the Great March of Return, insisting that the land is their land (70% of Gaza families were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel by Zionist militias, who then stole their houses and land).
What difference is there between the Sharpville Massacre of 1960 and the Gaza Massacre of 2018 – 2020, except the enormously greater scale of Israeli army brutality? You really think Dr. King would be all right with this?
Dr. King would be emailing President Biden, just as he telegraphed President Eisenhower. How far America has fallen is demonstrated by Eisenhower’s concern over Sharpeville and Washington’s decades-long insouciance toward Israeli Apartheid toward the Palestinians."
Stay Safe Guys.... P.S. Expecting high winds and rain in the next few days, so that means the electricity will probably go down as usual, so may not be around. Meanwhile, here's what I have on the recent updates on the Biden Inauguration:
Despite Trump's attempt to silence and minimize Martin Luther King Day (which is just a sample of how he minimizes the calls for equality and justice from Black and Brown and Muslim and all Non-White America) and instead promotes complete misinformation and lies regarding a "stolen election" and incites violence and insurrection not only in the Capitol but throughout the Nation, it is in America (whether he likes it or not) Martin Luther King Day.
The tributes to the Reverend King abound, here are just a couple; video courtesy Democracy Now !
"Ann
Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose
activism we honor today, took stands far beyond Selma and Montgomery,
and called on other capitals than Washington, D.C., to ensure a
dignified life for human beings. Dr. King was an early and vigorous
opponent of the white South African Apartheid (segregationist)
government.
He wrote former ambassador Chester Bowles
in 1957 on behalf of a rally in New York on Human Rights Day, Dec. 10,
organized by the National Committee of the American Committee on Africa,
where Eleanor Roosevelt was to speak. He said,
“We have watched with great concern the relentless pursuit of
official racism (apartheid) by the South African Government. It has
defied the most elemental considerations of human decency in its
treatment of African and Asian citizens, loosely called non-whites. Our
concern has turned to horror as we have learned of the brutal treatment
of these non-white South Africans and the extension of totalitarian
control into almost every area of human life. What has been almost as
shocking is the callous disregard of this tragedy by the free peoples of
the world.”
King was throughout his life a warm supporter of security for Israel.
Only late in his life, in 1967, did he cancel a trip to Israel over its
preemptive Six Day War against Egypt and Tel Aviv’s unilateral
occupation of Jerusalem, of which, reading between the lines, he
disapproved.
An FBI wiretap of a conference call between Dr.King and Andrew Young and others in July of 1967 recorded Dr. King’s reasons for declining, in the end, the invitation of the Israeli prime minister’s office:
“I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m
damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced
enough criticism including pro-Arab. I just think that if I go, the
Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would
interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do
have questions of doubt… Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem
and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it
they don’t plan to give it up… I frankly have to admit that my
instincts – and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right
– I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I
could come out unscathed”
A careful reading of this text shows that Dr. King was not just
concerned about criticism from “pro-Arab” African-American leaders of a
Black Nationalist bent, or from African and Arab governments. He took
plenty of criticism throughout his life. What he was afraid of was
looking like he intended to endorse something he did not. “I do have
questions of doubt,” he said, about Israel’s annexation of all of
Jerusalem through an aggressive war.
Dr. King was an anti-war pacifist who had begun speaking out against
the American war against Vietnam. He did not approve of wars of choice.
Moreover, it was clear to him that the Israelis, having conquered East
Jerusalem from Jordan and the Palestinians by force of arms, would
never relinquish it. He seems to have felt a foreboding that Israel had
just become a colonial occupier of the sort he had spent his life
condemning.
Dr. King did not want to look as though, by going to Israel in the
summer of 1967, he was signalling approval of what Tel Aviv had done.
(Israeli propaganda is so effective that it has convinced a lot of
people that 1967 was a war of defense. It was not. It was a preemptive
war of choice. Israel fired the first shot, and Egyptian leaders have
admitted that despite Abdel Nasser’s big talk, Egypt was then bogged
down in the Yemen Civil War and was in no position to launch a war
against Israel in June of 1967. Moreover, Egypt’s superpower patron,
the Soviet Union, told Cairo that if the Egyptian army fired the first
shot, it was on its own and the Soviets would not offer any help. As for
Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinians there were civilians and did
not play a role in the war, which was Israel’s war on Egypt, Jordan and
Syria, and there was no defensive justification at all for occupying the
Palestinians.)
There is a further consideration. Jerusalem is a Christian holy city,
and Dr. King was a Christian clergyman thinking of taking a Christian
group of pilgrims there. The UN General Assembly partition plan for
British Mandate Palestine of fall, 1947, never had the force of law,
since only the UN Security Council could so have endowed it, and they
declined to do it. But even it avoided awarding Jerusalem to Israel.
There is no warrant in international law for Israel to annex all of
Jerusalem, and Dr. King was keenly aware of it.
We thus see there at the end of his life the beginning of a change in
Dr. King’s thinking about Israel. Earlier, like many on the Left, he
had seen Israel as a postcolonial state that freed itself from British
colonialism, just as had Ghana and Kenya. Before 1967, most
Palestinians were under caretaker rule, Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the
West Bank. Israel itself was 20% Palestinian, but it was largely Jewish
and many Israelis were from the families of Holocaust survivors.
Israeli governments were socialist. Even an anti-colonial, Communist
man of the left such as Jean-Paul Sartre was pro-Israel under those
circumstances. The international Left, moreover, coded the Arab leaders
as feudal or as fascist (in the case of Abdel Nasser, who persecuted
Egyptian Communists).
The big difference between Sartre and Dr. King is that Sartre
wholeheartedly supported Israel in 1967, but Dr. King could not. He had
“questions of doubt.”
Those who have argued that Dr. King was pro-Israel are correct. He
was also a major champion of American Jews against hateful bigotry and
anti-Semitism.
But those who argue that Dr. King would have had no problem with
Israel’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and
the West Bank after 1967 are being illogical. Israeli policies toward
occupied Palestinians are if anything much worse than South African
Apartheid. And we know exactly what Dr. King thought about Apartheid.
He slammed brutality. He slammed segregation. He slammed
totalitarian control. What would he have thought of the Israeli
checkpoints Palestinians have to go through to get from one town in
Palestine to another (and even sometimes just to get to the hospital)?
It deeply resembles the Apartheid pass system for black Africans.
“we are grateful that our state department has protested the mass
killings of our south african brothers and we are pleased that the un
security council will meet march 29th to consider that outrage.2 we urge
that before march 29th our government issue a statement placing the
administration firmly on the side of negroes in the southern states in
their present struggle for their constitutional rights, since they are
subjected to intimidation, threats and violence when they claim these
rights.”
“Early on the 21st the local PAC [Pan-Africanist Congress] leaders
first gathered in a field not far from the Sharpeville police station,
when a sizable crowd of people had joined them they proceeded to the
police station – chanting freedom songs and calling out the campaign
slogans “Izwe lethu” (Our land); “Awaphele amapasti” (Down with passes);
“Sobukwe Sikhokhele” (Lead us Sobukwe); “Forward to
Independence,Tomorrow the United States of Africa.”…
According to the police, protesters began to stone them and, without
any warning, one of the policemen on the top of an armoured car panicked
and opened fire. His colleagues followed suit and opened fire. The
firing lasted for approximately two minutes, leaving 69 people dead and,
according to the official inquest, 180 people seriously wounded. The
policemen were apparently jittery after a recent event in Durban where
nine policemen were shot. Unlike elsewhere on the East Rand where police
used baton when charging at resisters, the police at Sharpeville used
live ammunition.”
What would Dr. King have said about the Israeli army on the Gaza border shooting fish in a barrel with live ammunition:
or as the UN says, “In 2019, 33 Palestinians were killed by Israeli
forces during the GMR protests and 11,523 were injured, bringing the
total to 212 fatalities and 36,134 injuries since the demonstrations
began” (in spring 2018). The Palestinians in Gaza have shouted slogans
similar to those of the PAC at Sharpeville. They have staged weekly the
Great March of Return, insisting that the land is their land (70% of
Gaza families were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel by
Zionist militias, who then stole their houses and land).
What difference is there between the Sharpville Massacre of 1960 and
the Gaza Massacre of 2018 – 2020, except the enormously greater scale of
Israeli army brutality? You really think Dr. King would be all right
with this?
Dr. King would be emailing President Biden, just as he telegraphed
President Eisenhower. How far America has fallen is demonstrated by
Eisenhower’s concern over Sharpeville and Washington’s decades-long
insouciance toward Israeli Apartheid toward the Palestinians."
Stay Safe Guys.... P.S. Expecting high winds and rain in the next few days, so that means the electricity will probably go down as usual, so may not be around. Meanwhile, here's what I have on the recent updates on the Biden Inauguration:
"President Donald Trump plans to make the unprecedented move to depart the White House next Wednesday morning, just before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, ABC News has learned.
Trump has requested a large sendoff to be planned for the morning of Jan. 20, sources said, after he choppers via Marine One to Joint Base Andrews, where he is expected to give remarks to supporters and departing members of his administration.
Sources add that Trump has requested his departure ceremony to have a "military-like feel," although details are not finalized.
He hopes to depart to the blare of a military band, with a red carpet and military honors, according to sources briefed on the plans. Even some sort of military flyover has been suggested, they said."
Update/edit 01/18:
There were some complaints regarding my choice of the 1986"Blue Velvet" film and characters as a metaphor of Donald Trump and his followers. So, reader beware, foul language ahead, not only from Dennis Hopper but from Mike. Point is, the character of Frank Booth to me is the embodiment of Donald Trump; he represents as one reviewer stated, "chaotic evil"; he is a pure psychopath. Take a good look at Frank's sycophants: it is a cult, they are hypnotized and captive. I thought and still do think the comparison was appropriate.
end edit.
Mike says it's even weirder than that and to "...send him off alright, straight to hell...make sure he takes the tramp with him and the whole fuckin family."
I'll be back, buzzing around here with really warm weather. Usually when it warms up you can really smell the raw sewage being dumped down the baranca from TIJ headed straight out into the ocean; we were lucky no aroma today .
"President Donald Trump
plans to make the unprecedented move to depart the White House next
Wednesday morning, just before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration,
ABC News has learned.
Trump has requested a large sendoff to be planned for the morning of Jan. 20, sources said, after he choppers via Marine One to Joint Base Andrews, where he is expected to give remarks to supporters and departing members of his administration.
Sources add that Trump has requested his departure ceremony to have a "military-like feel," although details are not finalized.
He
hopes to depart to the blare of a military band, with a red carpet and
military honors, according to sources briefed on the plans. Even some
sort of military flyover has been suggested, they said."
Update/edit 01/18:
There were some complaints regarding my choice of the 1986"Blue Velvet" film and characters as a metaphor of Donald Trump and his followers. So, reader beware, foul language ahead, not only from Dennis Hopper but from Mike. Point is, the character of Frank Booth to me is the embodiment of Donald Trump; he represents as one reviewer stated, "chaotic evil"; he is a pure psychopath. Take a good look at Frank's sycophants: it is a cult, they are hypnotized and captive. I thought and still do think the comparison was appropriate.
end edit.
Mike says it's even weirder than that and to "...send him off alright, straight to hell...make sure he takes the tramp with him and the whole fuckin family."
I'll be back, buzzing around here with really warm weather. Usually when it warms up you can really smell the raw sewage being dumped down the baranca from TIJ headed straight out into the ocean; we were lucky no aroma today .
Of course we all know Trump will deny everything and claim it was Anti-Fa & BLM who created hell in the Capitol, not him and his innocent White Supremacists. Doesn't matter, history has marked and noted - Trump's name is mud.
I know, what many of us wanted was the invocation of Article 25 and it didn't happen, but here is the latest:
~ From The New York Times:
And, let's hope and pray that "...two thirds or more members present (in the Senate) vote to convict. Trump is guilty. Separate votes would be needed to prohibit Trump from receiving benefits given to ex-presidents and to bar him from future political office."
Have to run, another litter of kittens showed up yesterday, what a disaster and need to make dinner - Callendars' Chicken which is yummy on these cold nights although a bit fattening. However, I have some excellent reports coming up on the ratboy McConnell & our amigo from Truthout. Until then....
Stay Safe Y'all.
~~~~~
Update/edit: About Ratboy McConnell that guy...I know what he said but he is so slick that with him, you never know what to believe :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Chapter 7 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the enormously wealthy Jay Gatsby becomes concerned about word getting out that he is having an affair with Daisy, who is married to Tom, and abruptly stops having the big parties he had been throwing, to which assorted society flotsam and jetsam had come, people he had barely known. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Then Gatsby lets Daisy drive his car and she accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle, her husband’s mistress. By chapter 9 Tom, wrongly convinced that Gatsby had struck and killed with his car Tom’s own mistress, murdered the millionaire in his pool. Virtually no one comes to his funeral.
Gatsby was always fated to be a parable for the Trump presidency. I think we’re now at that point in the story where nobody is coming to his parties any more and his paramour (the militias) has run over her rival (Congress).
Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos at the NYT got the scoop that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is done with Donald Trump, furious at him, and pleased that the Democrats are impeaching him. He is clearly releasing Republicans in Congress to vote to impeach, as well, if that is what they want.
The immediate trigger for this epochal blow-up between the two GOP leaders is Trump’s having sicced the white supremacists and Nazis on McConnell and other congressional representatives and senators on 1/6 (the date of the Capitol Insurrection), endangering their lives.
Trump has been siccing supremacists and Nazis on people for four years, however, and McConnell never batted an eyelash.
When ICE agents were tearing babies out of their mothers’ arms, Mitch wasn’t breaking with Trump over that.
In fact, for all of the last four years McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao has been Trump’s secretary of transportation. She initially did not divest from her investments in road building materials, and she is alleged to have pursued policies at Transportation that would benefit her family’s Chinese shipping business.
She came home from the office stinking of Trump after having been at cabinet meetings with him where he went on white supremacist rants (which must have offended her). But the McConnell-Chao gravy train did not stop running for an instant.
McConnell was never a Trumpist, but he was perfectly willing to use Trump to get what he wanted. McConnell is a servant of the billionaire class and the big corporations. He does not actually represent Kentucky so much as he represents Charles Koch and others in the Fortune 500. His job was to bend the Senate and thus the country to the will of the plutocrats, and say what you like about him, he was very good at his job.
He wanted to install a steady stream of deeply conservative and youngish federal judges, some of them obviously unqualified, so as to ensure the GOP control of the Federal judiciary for decades. McConnell had shot down Obama’s nominees for Federal circuit judges and refused to allow vacancies to be filled. He then filled all the vacancies. McConnell’s 200 judicial appointments were 85 percent white and 75 percent male. This wasn’t a judicial approval process, it was a fourth “Back to the Future Movie” where he transported us all to 1955. A third of all federal circuit court judges were appointed by Trump, and not one is Black, even though their decisions will dictate the parameters of the lives of the some 43 million African-Americans. That’s like conspiring to ensure that Spain (pop. 46.9 mn.) had no Spanish judges.
McConnell wanted a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that would help corporations further de-unionize American workers and would strike down government regulation, including environmental regulation, as well as supporting the GOP campaign of voter suppression waged against minorities and the less well-off. Again, mission accomplished.
But Trump went to Georgia and told his initiates that the election was rigged and they could not expect justice, which likely depressed the vote as his base did not come out in the numbers the GOP needed. Why should they bother to vote in a corrupt election where, he told them, Dominion voting machines would just erase their vote (they wouldn’t).
By his crazy conspiracy theories and insistence that he won a second term (he didn’t), Trump handed the senate to the Democrats for at least two years (and very possibly for many more) and demoted Mitch from Master of the Universe to bored little boy whose teacher is making him sit in the corner and not breathe a word.
Then on top of that Trump sent Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and that guy with the horns and face paint to kidnap or kill McConnell and his colleagues.
McConnell’s goal (and that of Charles Koch and his other billionaire donors) is to take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and emasculate Biden the way he stopped Obama from accomplishing almost anything. Then he wants back the White House in 2024.
Trump had taken over the Republican Party and clearly intended to run in 2024, though. Since Trump is so popular among the Republican base, with a majority supporting the Capitol Insurrection, there will be no peace in the party for the next few years if Trump remains viable. He can prevent Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and other would-be presidential contenders from plausibly getting in the ring and from attracting the big campaign money from donors. Why bet against Trump when he has a lock?
But Trump has already demonstrated that he is too dysfunctional to win a second term, whether in 2020 or 2024, which may mean the Republicans are facing long years in the wilderness. Trump could even make them so unpopular with his Mussolini schitck that the suburbs are spooked again in 2022 and the GOP can’t get back the House.
The Democrats in the meantime can undo the 2017 tax cut, can start filling the federal judgeships of retiring GOP appointees, replacing them with Democrats, and can perhaps convince Breyer to retire so as to avoid losing another SCOTUS seat. They can also back wind and solar and electric vehicles, effectively destroying the oil empire of Charles Koch and other big donors to the GOP over the next decade.
Trump was extremely useful to McConnell for four years, and McConnell swallowed the extreme right white supremacy promotion for all that time, because thereby he could serve the billionaire class.
Now, Trump is extremely inconvenient. It isn’t just about 1/6, though that is part of it. McConnell and his backers are far, far better off with Trump politically destroyed, now that he has outlived his usefulness.
Of course we all know Trump will deny everything and claim it was Anti-Fa & BLM who created hell in the Capitol, not him and his innocent White Supremacists. Doesn't matter, history has marked and noted - Trump's name is mud.
I know, what many of us wanted was the invocation of Article 25 and it didn't happen, but here is the latest:
~ From The New York Times:
And, let's hope and pray that "...two thirds or more members present (in the Senate) vote to convict. Trump is guilty. Separate votes would be needed to prohibit Trump from receiving benefits given to ex-presidents and to bar him from future political office."
Have to run, another litter of kittens showed up yesterday, what a disaster and need to make dinner - Callendars' Chicken which is yummy on these cold nights although a bit fattening. However, I have some excellent reports coming up on the ratboy McConnell & our amigo from Truthout. Until then....
Stay Safe Y'all.
~~~~~
Update/edit: About Ratboy McConnell that guy...I know what he said but he is so slick that with him, you never know what to believe :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Chapter 7 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,
the enormously wealthy Jay Gatsby becomes concerned about word getting
out that he is having an affair with Daisy, who is married to Tom, and
abruptly stops having the big parties he had been throwing, to which
assorted society flotsam and jetsam had come, people he had barely
known. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Then Gatsby lets Daisy drive his
car and she accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle, her husband’s
mistress. By chapter 9 Tom, wrongly convinced that Gatsby had struck
and killed with his car Tom’s own mistress, murdered the millionaire in
his pool. Virtually no one comes to his funeral.
Gatsby was always fated to be a parable for the Trump presidency. I
think we’re now at that point in the story where nobody is coming to his
parties any more and his paramour (the militias) has run over her rival
(Congress).
Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos at the NYT
got the scoop that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is done with
Donald Trump, furious at him, and pleased that the Democrats are
impeaching him. He is clearly releasing Republicans in Congress to vote
to impeach, as well, if that is what they want.
The immediate trigger for this epochal blow-up between the two GOP
leaders is Trump’s having sicced the white supremacists and Nazis on
McConnell and other congressional representatives and senators on 1/6
(the date of the Capitol Insurrection), endangering their lives.
Trump has been siccing supremacists and Nazis on people for four years, however, and McConnell never batted an eyelash.
When ICE agents were tearing babies out of their mothers’ arms, Mitch wasn’t breaking with Trump over that.
In fact, for all of the last four years McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao has been Trump’s secretary of transportation. She initially did not divest from her investments in road building materials, and she is alleged to have pursued policies at Transportation that would benefit her family’s Chinese shipping business.
She came home from the office stinking of Trump after having been at
cabinet meetings with him where he went on white supremacist rants
(which must have offended her). But the McConnell-Chao gravy train did
not stop running for an instant.
McConnell was never a Trumpist, but he was perfectly willing to use
Trump to get what he wanted. McConnell is a servant of the billionaire
class and the big corporations. He does not actually represent Kentucky
so much as he represents Charles Koch and others in the Fortune 500.
His job was to bend the Senate and thus the country to the will of the
plutocrats, and say what you like about him, he was very good at his
job.
He wanted to install a steady stream of deeply conservative and
youngish federal judges, some of them obviously unqualified, so as to
ensure the GOP control of the Federal judiciary for decades. McConnell
had shot down Obama’s nominees for Federal circuit judges and refused to
allow vacancies to be filled. He then filled all the vacancies.
McConnell’s 200 judicial appointments were 85 percent white and 75
percent male. This wasn’t a judicial approval process, it was a fourth
“Back to the Future Movie” where he transported us all to 1955. A third
of all federal circuit court judges were appointed by Trump, and not
one is Black, even though their decisions will dictate the parameters of
the lives of the some 43 million African-Americans. That’s like
conspiring to ensure that Spain (pop. 46.9 mn.) had no Spanish judges.
McConnell wanted a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that would
help corporations further de-unionize American workers and would strike
down government regulation, including environmental regulation, as well
as supporting the GOP campaign of voter suppression waged against
minorities and the less well-off. Again, mission accomplished.
But Trump went to Georgia and told his initiates that the election
was rigged and they could not expect justice, which likely depressed the
vote as his base did not come out in the numbers the GOP needed. Why
should they bother to vote in a corrupt election where, he told them,
Dominion voting machines would just erase their vote (they wouldn’t).
By his crazy conspiracy theories and insistence that he won a second
term (he didn’t), Trump handed the senate to the Democrats for at least
two years (and very possibly for many more)
and demoted Mitch from Master of the Universe to bored little boy whose
teacher is making him sit in the corner and not breathe a word.
Then on top of that Trump sent Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and that guy
with the horns and face paint to kidnap or kill McConnell and his
colleagues.
McConnell’s goal (and that of Charles Koch and his other billionaire
donors) is to take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and emasculate
Biden the way he stopped Obama from accomplishing almost anything. Then
he wants back the White House in 2024.
Trump had taken over the Republican Party and clearly intended to run
in 2024, though. Since Trump is so popular among the Republican base,
with a majority supporting the Capitol Insurrection, there will be no
peace in the party for the next few years if Trump remains viable. He
can prevent Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and other would-be presidential
contenders from plausibly getting in the ring and from attracting the
big campaign money from donors. Why bet against Trump when he has a
lock?
But Trump has already demonstrated that he is too dysfunctional to
win a second term, whether in 2020 or 2024, which may mean the
Republicans are facing long years in the wilderness. Trump could even
make them so unpopular with his Mussolini schitck that the suburbs are
spooked again in 2022 and the GOP can’t get back the House.
The Democrats in the meantime can undo the 2017 tax cut, can start
filling the federal judgeships of retiring GOP appointees, replacing
them with Democrats, and can perhaps convince Breyer to retire so as to
avoid losing another SCOTUS seat. They can also back wind and solar and
electric vehicles, effectively destroying the oil empire of Charles
Koch and other big donors to the GOP over the next decade.
Trump was extremely useful to McConnell for four years, and McConnell
swallowed the extreme right white supremacy promotion for all that
time, because thereby he could serve the billionaire class.
Now, Trump is extremely inconvenient. It isn’t just about 1/6,
though that is part of it. McConnell and his backers are far, far
better off with Trump politically destroyed, now that he has outlived
his usefulness.
"There is little doubt among readers of this online magazine that Donald Trump, like all U.S. presidents before him, is a criminal. His grotesqueness and belligerence, however, has elevated Trump to Nixonian heights. With Bugsy Siegel’s mob swagger and the ponzi-salesmanship of Bernie Madoff, Trump, the petty grifter, is unlike almost any official we’ve witnessed in public life.
“…the prevailing obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one hand, and the common herd on the other … The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”
The only point that Lasch perhaps missed in his pioneering work is the cultish atmosphere a specimen like Donald Trump is able to cultivate and exploit for his own personal and political gains. It’s this innate narcissism, emboldened by a coterie of abiding fools circling round him, that led to the invasion of the Capitol. His racist minions, not too unlike the conditioned and dutiful helter-skeltering Manson Girls, were more than willing to sacrifice their personal safety for what they believed was the greater good — in this case, a battle against the “injustice” Trump had faced at the hands of some mysterious electoral fraud. The sinister enemies were everywhere. The media. Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. The Georgia Secretary of State and even that smarmy Mike Pence. The lone truth-teller was Trump, the great defender of the supremacy of white America, and to his energetic fans, the only man able to save our fragile and dying Republic from the brink of collapse.
Understanding Trump as a cult leader is the only way to truly appreciate the power he wields and the idiocy he manifests. Few others could call upon their legions to rush government buildings with the dashing hope their efforts would make a difference, overturning what they falsely believed was a rigged election. No longer did police lives matter to these twisted Patriots. No longer did America’s legal system matter, which shot down one election lawsuit after another. No longer did common sense matter, if the Capitol stormers had any to begin with. Only their President mattered. Only fulfilling his delusional fantasies mattered, and this was worth risking imprisonment and even death for. While the refrain may have been “Make America Great Again”, the real mantra echoing through Washington last Wednesday was “Keep Trump President.” He had not, after all, lost, according to them. The multiple logics here were murky at best, but the essence of their rhetoric was not.
As an ice-cold Trump stood at his podium, cold air blowing against his puffy, orange cheeks, he bellowed nonsense to the assemblage below, which was largely made up of white men and women clasping red Trump flags and banners. Like so many of his election trail spectacles, his speech was long-winded, meandering, and bellicose. The crowd screamed “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” At the end, he called on the riled-up crowd to parade with him to the Capitol building where Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s electoral victory. They would finally be heard. There would finally be justice.
“…we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore … So we are going to–we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are going to try and give–the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try–give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
We all know what transpired next. The broken windows. The stolen podium. The “QAnon Shaman” with his horns and fur hat. A self-proclaimed white nationalist kicking back at Pelosi’s desk. The woman, shot and killed by police as her fellow rioters violently attempted to break down a barricaded door. One cop was killed. It was chaos as numerous fascist groups converged for action. Trump, of course, did not march with his cult down Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. He never intended to. Prior to his speech, Trump stoically watched his feverish crowd build on television screens safely under a white tent as Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” blared in the background. Everyone was packed in, smiling. Dancing. Celebrating. Maskless. Drunk on Trump madness, imploring him to “fight”.
Had the rioters had black or brown skin, armed or not, they would surely have been shot on the spot as they climbed walls and ransacked the congressional building. Instead, a few of Trump’s intruders were greeted by gleeful officers while hordes of off-duty cops hung out in the crowd. The breach was easy for the mob, as security forces holding the line futilely fired pepper spray. Their efforts failed miserably. They were outnumbered and ill-prepared. Why weren’t they ready for what so many knew was coming? Because these were wholesome white goons and not black rights activists? During last summer’s BLM protests in DC, there were far more stormtroopers present, an overwhelming show of force. The lack of police presence on January 6 appeared intentional.
As more photos are corroborated and verified, it’s becoming evident that a group of these fascist thugs, some with military backgrounds, had something even more sinister planned than smearing their feces on the walls of power. They planted pipe bombs and had a truck full of weapons at the ready. One instigator, as Ronan Farrowreported for The New Yorker, decked in full military garb and a handful of zip ties, was Air Force Academy graduate and retired Lt. Colonel. Ret. Larry Brock, a decorated combat veteran from Texas. He and his fellow Confederate flag-waving terrorists were out for blood. As the raid transpired, Trump, the pseudo-conductor, gleefully responded that he “loved” them and that they were “very special” but they could go home now. The National Guard, after Trump initially resisted, was finally called in. As of this writing, only 82 have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol. By comparison, DC cops arrested five times that number during last summer’s BLM protests.
There is little doubt, legal or otherwise, that Trump fomented this haphazard insurrection. While some of the planning was orchestrated in the darker corners of the web, Trump’s Twitter account acted as ground zero for the disorder. After months of claiming, falsely and without evidence, that the election was stolen, he tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” This was one of several tweets he blasted out supporting the action. “Be there, will be wild!”
His cult, from the Proud Boys to QAnon, latched on quickly, and Pro-Trump forums across the web were exuberant about their “daddy’s” call (yes, some called him “daddy”) for an uprising against Congress. It was all out in the open. They were planning to be armed. They were planning to “arrest” members of Congress. They said Trump’s Tweet was a “marching order” and prepared themselves toshoot counter-protestors.
While the FBI ignored the threats, Twitter and other social media giants took note. Following the three-hour takeover, Facebook and Instagram blocked Trump. Twitter placed his account in jail for 12 hours, only to later ban him altogether. By the weekend, Twitter began to scrub those they deemed QAnon or promoters and supporters of Trump’s call for insurrection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works to defend civil liberties in the digital world, was swift to respond:
“The decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.”
This social media blockade is the first real punishment Trump has faced for his actions since the failed impeachment attempt of last year. Could he receive more? The 25th Amendment is not going to be invoked and impeachment proceedings are facing hurdles. Once Trump vacates the White House he may be facing numerous charges in New York for financial crimes and even election finance fraud for his various payments to Stormy Daniels. But will he ever be brought to justice for inciting this ugly white nationalist riot? It’s possible. The New York Timesreports the DOJ is open to pursuing charges. Others believe the charges could stick. “Based on everything I saw my 30 years as a federal prosecutor, it sure looks like there’s enough to charge him with inciting a riot,” says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner.
Of course, any criminal case against Trump would not transpire until he leaves office on January 20. But what of a self-pardon? There’s plenty of talk of Trump not only pardoning those around him who have yet to be accused of a crime (Ivanka, Rudy, Jared, etc.) but of pardoning himself as well. Such a pardon, however, may or may not hold up in court. In a 1974 opinion by the Dept. of Justice, written in response to Nixon’s dealings with Watergate and the potential for his own self-pardon, the DOJresponded that, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
For such a self-pardon to be litigated, Trump would first have to be charged. Such an indictment is no guarantee but still possible. On Friday, a DC City official, who was not authorized to speak on the matter, told me the City was discussing a charge against Trump for the mob disorder. On Sunday it was confirmed by Washington DC District Attorney, Michael R. Sherwin, who said he will be going after all those involved, including any elected officials. However, any prosecution in DC falls under federal jurisdiction. So any pardon challenge would go into effect and likely make its way to the Supreme Court, where Trump-leaning appointees now stack the bench.
Though it may be only a matter of days, we have a long road to traverse before we reach the end of this four-year-long dumpster fire. Already, scores of Trump’s acolytes are planning a violent confrontation on Inauguration Day and these fascists are more armed and crazier than ever. As Trump, the pathological narcissist that he is, finally loses grip on power, his significance will wane and breed further resentment in this sick and sinister faction of white America, energized by their vile settler mentality that has existed since these lands were first stolen from indigenous nations. It may take years before this latest chapter of our country’s history finally comes to a close, if it ever shuts completely. In the interim, there will be more sporadic madness and more bloodshed, until the day the Trump cult, outnumbered and on the ropes, has nothing tangible to fight for, no leader, no mythical wrong that can be righted. Hopefully, Trump’s white nationalist goons will be left with only a faint memory of their childish insurgency, shining dully like the fool’s gold they’ve been sold.
*An earlier version of this essay stated that Trump watched the scene unfold under the white tent as his supporters stormed the Capitol, but the video was recorded prior to Trump’s speech.
JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book, co-authored with Jeffrey St. Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll him on Twitter @joshua__frank.
"There is little doubt among readers of this online magazine that Donald Trump, like all U.S. presidents
before him, is a criminal. His grotesqueness and belligerence, however,
has elevated Trump to Nixonian heights. With Bugsy Siegel’s mob swagger
and the ponzi-salesmanship of Bernie Madoff, Trump, the petty grifter,
is unlike almost any official we’ve witnessed in public life.
“…the prevailing
obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the
cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist
divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one
hand, and the common herd on the other … The narcissist admires and
identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a
loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his
attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”
The only point that Lasch perhaps
missed in his pioneering work is the cultish atmosphere a specimen like
Donald Trump is able to cultivate and exploit for his own personal and
political gains. It’s this innate narcissism, emboldened by a coterie of
abiding fools circling round him, that led to the invasion of the
Capitol. His racist minions, not too unlike the conditioned and dutiful
helter-skeltering Manson Girls, were more than willing to sacrifice
their personal safety for what they believed was the greater good — in
this case, a battle against the “injustice”
Trump had faced at the hands of some mysterious electoral fraud. The
sinister enemies were everywhere. The media. Mitch McConnell. Nancy
Pelosi. The Georgia Secretary of State and even that smarmy Mike Pence.
The lone truth-teller was Trump, the great defender of the supremacy of
white America, and to his energetic fans, the only man able to save our fragile and dying Republic from the brink of collapse.
Understanding Trump
as a cult leader is the only way to truly appreciate the power he
wields and the idiocy he manifests. Few others could call upon their
legions to rush government buildings with the dashing hope their efforts
would make a difference, overturning what they falsely believed was a
rigged election. No longer did police lives matter to these twisted
Patriots. No longer did America’s legal system matter, which shot down
one election lawsuit after another. No longer did common sense matter,
if the Capitol stormers had any to begin with. Only their President mattered. Only fulfilling his delusional fantasies mattered, and this was worth
risking imprisonment and even death for. While the refrain may have
been “Make America Great Again”, the real mantra echoing through
Washington last Wednesday was “Keep
Trump President.” He had not, after all, lost, according to them. The
multiple logics here were murky at best, but the essence of their
rhetoric was not.
As an ice-cold Trump stood at his
podium, cold air blowing against his puffy, orange cheeks, he bellowed
nonsense to the assemblage below, which was largely made up of white men
and women clasping red Trump flags and banners. Like so many of his
election trail spectacles, his speech was long-winded, meandering, and
bellicose. The crowd screamed “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” At the end, he called on the riled-up
crowd to parade with him to the Capitol building where Congress was
meeting to certify Biden’s electoral victory. They would finally be
heard. There would finally be justice.
“…we fight like hell, and
if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore
… So we are going to–we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I
love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are
going to try and give–the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting
for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try–give our
Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our
help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and
boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down
Pennsylvania Avenue.”
We all know what transpired next. The broken windows. The stolen podium. The “QAnon Shaman” with his horns and fur hat. A self-proclaimed white nationalist kicking back at Pelosi’s desk. The woman, shot and killed by police as her fellow rioters violently attempted to break down a barricaded door. One cop was killed. It was chaos as numerous fascist groups
converged for action. Trump, of course, did not march with his cult
down Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. He never intended to. Prior to
his speech, Trump stoically watched his feverish crowd build
on television screens safely under a white tent as Laura Branigan’s
“Gloria” blared in the background. Everyone was packed in, smiling.
Dancing. Celebrating. Maskless. Drunk on Trump madness, imploring him to
“fight”.
Had the rioters had black or brown
skin, armed or not, they would surely have been shot on the spot as they
climbed walls and ransacked the congressional building. Instead, a few
of Trump’s intruders were greeted by gleeful officers while hordes of off-duty cops hung out in the crowd.
The breach was easy for the mob, as security forces holding the line
futilely fired pepper spray. Their efforts failed miserably. They were
outnumbered and ill-prepared. Why weren’t they ready for what so many
knew was coming? Because these were wholesome white goons and not black
rights activists? During last summer’s BLM protests in DC, there were far more stormtroopers present, an overwhelming show of force. The lack of police presence on January 6 appeared intentional.
As more photos are corroborated and
verified, it’s becoming evident that a group of these fascist thugs,
some with military backgrounds, had something even more sinister planned
than smearing their feces on the walls of power. They planted pipe bombs and had a truck full of weapons at the ready. One instigator, as Ronan Farrowreported for The New Yorker, decked in full military garb and a handful of zip ties, was Air Force Academy graduate and
retired Lt. Colonel. Ret. Larry Brock, a decorated combat veteran from
Texas. He and his fellow Confederate flag-waving terrorists were out for
blood. As the raid transpired, Trump, the pseudo-conductor, gleefully
responded that he “loved” them and that they were “very special” but
they could go home now. The National Guard, after Trump initially
resisted, was finally called in. As of this writing, only 82 have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol. By comparison, DC cops arrested five times that number during last summer’s BLM protests.
There is little doubt, legal or
otherwise, that Trump fomented this haphazard insurrection. While some
of the planning was orchestrated in the darker corners of the web,
Trump’s Twitter account acted as ground zero for the disorder. After
months of claiming, falsely and without evidence, that the election was
stolen, he tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” This was one of several tweets he blasted out supporting the action. “Be there, will be wild!”
His cult, from the Proud Boys to
QAnon, latched on quickly, and Pro-Trump forums across the web were
exuberant about their “daddy’s” call (yes, some called him “daddy”) for
an uprising against Congress. It was all out in the open. They were
planning to be armed. They were planning to “arrest” members of Congress. They said Trump’s Tweet was a “marching order” and prepared themselves toshoot counter-protestors.
While the FBI ignored the threats,
Twitter and other social media giants took note. Following the
three-hour takeover, Facebook and Instagram blocked Trump. Twitter
placed his account in jail for 12 hours, only to later ban him
altogether. By the weekend, Twitter began to scrub those they deemed
QAnon or promoters and supporters of Trump’s call for insurrection. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works to defend civil liberties in the digital world, was swift to respond:
“The decisions by
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or
block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple
exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to
curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always
concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we
continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.”
This social media blockade is the first real punishment Trump has faced
for his actions since the failed impeachment attempt of last year.
Could he receive more? The 25th Amendment is not going to be invoked and
impeachment proceedings are facing hurdles. Once Trump vacates the
White House he may be facing numerous charges
in New York for financial crimes and even election finance fraud for
his various payments to Stormy Daniels. But will he ever be brought to
justice for inciting this ugly white nationalist riot? It’s possible. The New York Timesreports
the DOJ is open to pursuing charges. Others believe the charges could
stick. “Based on everything I saw my 30 years as a federal prosecutor,
it sure looks like there’s enough to charge him with inciting a riot,”
says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner.
Of course, any criminal case against
Trump would not transpire until he leaves office on January 20. But what
of a self-pardon? There’s plenty of talk of Trump not only pardoning
those around him who have yet to be accused of a crime (Ivanka, Rudy, Jared, etc.)
but of pardoning himself as well. Such a pardon, however, may or may
not hold up in court. In a 1974 opinion by the Dept. of Justice, written
in response to Nixon’s dealings with Watergate and the potential for
his own self-pardon, the DOJresponded that, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
For such a self-pardon to be
litigated, Trump would first have to be charged. Such an indictment is
no guarantee but still possible. On Friday, a DC City official, who was
not authorized to speak on the matter, told me the City was discussing a
charge against Trump for the mob disorder. On Sunday it was confirmed
by Washington DC District Attorney, Michael R. Sherwin, who said he will
be going after all those involved, including any elected officials.
However, any prosecution in DC falls under federal jurisdiction. So any
pardon challenge would go into effect and likely make its way to the
Supreme Court, where Trump-leaning appointees now stack the bench.
Though it may be only a matter of days,
we have a long road to traverse before we reach the end of this
four-year-long dumpster fire. Already, scores of Trump’s acolytes are planning a violent confrontation
on Inauguration Day and these fascists are more armed and crazier than
ever. As Trump, the pathological narcissist that he is, finally loses
grip on power, his significance will wane and breed further resentment
in this sick and sinister faction of white America, energized by their
vile settler mentality that has existed since these lands were first
stolen from indigenous nations. It may take years before this latest
chapter of our country’s history finally comes to a close, if it ever
shuts completely. In the interim, there will be more sporadic madness
and more bloodshed, until the day
the Trump cult, outnumbered and on the ropes, has nothing tangible to
fight for, no leader, no mythical wrong that can be righted. Hopefully,
Trump’s white nationalist goons will be left with only a faint memory of their childish insurgency, shining dully like the fool’s gold they’ve been sold.
*An earlier version of this essay stated that Trump watched the
scene unfold under the white tent as his supporters stormed the Capitol,
but the video was recorded prior to Trump’s speech.
JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most
recent book, co-authored with Jeffrey St. Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on
the Brink. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll
him on Twitter @joshua__frank.
