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Merged So what's next for Trump?

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Although the dress was not used as evidence, nor did Trump provide a sample for analysis, it seems like a very long con if there were not semen from Donald Trump on that dress.

And 25 years later, here we are.

A dress and a DNA sample.

Weird how things worked out, isn't it? The Republican Party - back around the time when the former dress and semen were still...fresh - were insisting that the events that led to the combination of material and material issue were more than enough to remove a sitting President from office. Now, the very same party is insisting that a similar collision of fashion design and discharge is not a barrier to the highest office in the land.

Back in the day, the fact that Clinton cheated on his wife!!! was enough to dig around in his past and find somewhere where he was less than honest about his extracurricular activities to the point where they'd be able to impeach him.

Now, the fact that Trump cheated on his first wife with his second, his second wife with his third, his third wife with a porn star, and sexually assaulted multiple women along the way is not even remotely relevant to his ability to discharge (there's that word again) the duties of the office of President.

Meanwhile, George Santos has been arrested and indicted on more than a dozen felony counts, and the GOP is like "yeah...but is lying really all that bad? I mean...if it gets us the votes it can't be that bad...right?"
Clinton did more than cheat on his wife with an intern. He certainly cheated on his wife with multiple women and was credibly accused of rape and of groping, fondling various women going back to his college days. These are different times #MeToo and to be frank, this is a different political party. Accusations against Clinton are definitely worse than those against Brent Kavanaugh, for example. Most of these seem quite credible to me. There is a certain kind of person who will try to get away with anything he can and thinks it's all ok because....he got away with it. I think Clinton is that kind of person. I think that Trump is as well, only far worse.

The interesting thing - for me - is the level of both rank hypocrisy and utter tone deafness on the part of the GOP. They rebranded themselves as the "Party of Family Values" during the Clinton years, literally making his infidelity and their stand for "the sanctity of marriage" into one of the pillars of their platform. Privately their leaders (like Newt) were just as philandering, but they banged the "family values" drum so loud that their voters didn't even notice.

Fast forward to the mid 2000s, and the Democrats were looking like they had another winner on their hands. He was young, charismatic, Southern, and was polling well in all the right places. He could easily be a nominee, and maybe even their ticket back into the White House. But John Edwards was found to have been carrying on an affair, and even had a child with his mistress. That was it. He was done. The Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with him. Perhaps not on a sense of true "we're the party of family values, too" sentiment, but more "jeez we can't go through this again." The Republicans had made infidelity a third rail in American politics, and nobody would touch it.

Until they met a train that exclusively used the third rail to get through life. Oh, some of them called out Trump as a sleaze bag, but when he knocked over their milquetoast candidates and stormed off with the GOP base, the party collectively forgot everything they ever said about "restoring integrity to the Oval Office." The Access Hollywood tape? "Locker room talk." The line of women accusing their guy of sexual assault? "Well they're only doing that because he's famous." Some folks even suggested that God chose Trump to be President.

Not long after he took office, the #metoo movement took off. Turns out women lining up to accuse powerful men of sexual harassment and assault was going to finally get some time in the spotlight. It brought down movie producers, A-list actors, a stand-up comic, and when a Democratic Senator got caught up in it, the party went "nope...he's gotta go."

The GOP? "We stand by President Trump 100 percent, and by the way here's a Supreme Court nominee and we're not backing down on him, either." Women who had been assaulted and harassed by powerful men were standing up and saying "no more," and most of the country was behind them, but the GOP basically said "fuck you." Just last night, their front-runner for the nomination steamrolled over a woman host in the ill-conceived CNN town hall, and his supporters and party lapped it up. Did he lie about everything? Of course. But the important part is that his supporters and his party cheered him on because he was talking down to a woman. True to form, he called her "nasty" and bullied her the entire time.

Every single woman who got cornered on a casting couch in Hollywood, a corner office in a corporate tower, a professor's office at a college, etc. etc. etc. was getting listened to when they said "this shit has to stop," but the Republican Party has collectively not only just ignored them, but leaned into the harassment and abuse even harder. Trump is the poster....man-child for sexual harassment, but he's their guy. It is appalling.
As a side note: most women who get cornered are not cornered by anyone who has any greater power than being male. I’m not writing that to make any of the men here feel ganged up on or really, for any other reason than to simply call out how absolutely pervasive it is. I just wanted to clear that up.

I think that there are plenty of high ranking members of the GOP who despise Trump and everything he stands for—except his ability to take in dollars. I’m sailing right on past the getting votes part because I believe that for a depressingly large number of politicians, it’s all about the cash they can take in and the power that buys them. I also cannot help but wonder what information Trump or his masters have on people like McConnell, who surely despises Trump, as does Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz and more than I have stomach to name.

As I mentioned before, I only watched a couple of clips of that interview. I heard the audience laugh, but not at parts I thought indicated support for Trump. I did see some of that laughter abd cheer but my interpretation was it was exactly the same kind of affirmation those green college boys dressed up in suits their mommies bought them would give an episode of Jackass or some other shock jock. Because that’s what Trump is: a shock jock, appealing to and affirming our basest instincts.
 

I think that there are plenty of high ranking members of the GOP who despise Trump and everything he stands for—except his ability to take in dollars. I’m sailing right on past the getting votes part because I believe that for a depressingly large number of politicians, it’s all about the cash they can take in and the power that buys them. I also cannot help but wonder what information Trump or his masters have on people like McConnell, who surely despises Trump, as does Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz and more than I have stomach to name.

This reminds me of a lunch I had back in the 90s. It was me, the radio station program director, and a record label rep. I've lost count of the number of lunches I've gone on with record reps. I count more than a few of them as friends. They have a job to do (move the label's product), and a big part of it is having lunches with radio programmers to get their record on the air. This particular rep was sharing some information about the artist they were really working hard at the time. He was a creative genius who had some...proclivities to put it mildly. The rumor was that he'd been in a relationship with another artist who was far too young for him. The rep was dancing around the issue, saying "well that's just Robert" and how you couldn't really deny that Robert had some great songs already and was going to be a huge star. The rep was doing his job, and the label stood to make a lot of money in the process. It was all about the money.

Robert? You may know him better as R. Kelly. This was long before he became infamous, but at the time the label was trying to tamp down the rumor that he'd married 15 year old Aaliyah. They knew. Perhaps they didn't know the extent of what would eventually transpire, but at some level they knew that Robert was problematic. And it was swept under the rug because of his ability to take in dollars.

With Trump, it's a bit different. The "label reps" (Graham, Cruz, etc.) didn't just know that Trump had some proclivities that might eventually become a problem. No...they knew everything. It had been on display for decades, and when given the chance to discard him over his activities, they still lined up behind him.

The label rep I went to lunch with back in the mid 90s? Given his age at the time, I doubt he's still around, but if he were, would he still try to work an R. Kelly record after all that's happened? I'd like to think he wouldn't. The Republican Party? They have their own Robert, they know everything he's done, and they're still taking people out to lunch and working the record.
 
Not exactly about Trump but one of his minions.

Federal inquiry details abuses of power by Trump's CEO over Voice of America

On the day after his confirmation as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June 2020, Michael Pack met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs.

"Hates Republicans," the employee had written about one in a memo. "Openly despises Trump and Republicans," they said of another. A third, the employee wrote, "is not on the Trump team." The list went on. (Firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law.)

Within two days, Pack was examining ways to remove suspect staffers, a new federal investigation found. The executives he sidelined were later reinstated and exonerated by the inspector general's office of the U.S. State Department. Pack ultimately turned his attention to agency executives, network chiefs, and journalists themselves.
The 145-page report independently corroborates many of the whistleblower complaints. It also lends new weight and depth to earlier reporting by NPR, inquiries by a U.S. inspector general and rulings by a federal judge and a local District of Columbia judge.

Taken together, they depict Pack's brief tenure as an ideologically driven rampage through a government agency to try to force its newsrooms and workforce to show fealty to the White House.

Pack punished executives who objected to the legality of his plans, interfered in the journalistic independence of the newsrooms under his agency, and personally signed a no-bid contract with a private law firm to investigate those employees he saw as opposed to former President Donald Trump. The law firm's fees reached the seven figures for work typically done by attorneys who are federal employees.
 
Watch Roger Stone Explain on Hot Mic How to Manipulate Trump - Puppet Master - "In footage obtained by The Daily Beast, Stone explains how to lie to Trump—and get him to say whatever you want"

What RS said at a right-wing conference at Trump's Doral golf club in 2019:
“I want to talk to you about Donald Trump,” Stone tells the crowd of MAGA-hat-wearing attendees. “Someone who is a force of nature in himself. Someone who marches to his own drummer. Someone who is not handled, not managed. Not controlled. A man who cannot be bossed. And cannot be bought, which has made him one of the greatest presidents since Abraham Lincoln.”
Very flattering. But he was also caught saying
“I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interest. He’s not easy to deal with. It’s complicated,” Stone said. “He resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed.”
He lies to Trump, like making up some fake event and hoping to implant a false memory of that event.
“You have to say, ‘Remember that night when we were in Buffalo. And you gave that speech, and God, it had to be 10,000 people, the biggest crowd they’d ever seen. And you said XYZ, and the place went crazy, remember that? I don’t know where you came up with that line, but it’s one of the best things.’”
How might Trump react?
“Yeah, I’m going to use that one again,” Stone said, playing the part of Trump.
He has been doing that for a long time.
“Doesn’t fucking matter that he never said it—doesn’t matter,” Stone said. “It’s time-consuming, but it works. I did it for 30 years.”
 
Even before its U.S. release, the documentary has already put Stone in hot water. As The Daily Beast reported last October, Stone was caught in the film calling Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch” and suggesting he wanted to “fight” Jared Kushner after not receiving a Trump pardon. Stone also said Trump would get his “fucking brains beat in” if he ran for president a third time.

...
“So here’s a weird thing,” Stone said while in a car driving with the filmmakers. “Trump is obsessed with the movie Sunset Boulevard. He watches it over and over and over again.”

“Isn’t that weird?” he asked. “That’s weird, right?”
RS has long been a Trump adviser, and he convinced Trump to run for President in 1988. But their relationship is rather complicated. "Over the years, Stone and Trump have had repeated falling-outs and reunions." RS and Trump are now together again, with RS doing some self-described “ratfucking” of Ron DeSantis.
 
Elster applied for the "Trump Too Small" trademark in 2018 to use on shirts. Elster said the mark was inspired by an exchange between Trump and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio from a March 2016 presidential candidate debate and aims to "convey that some features of President Trump and his policies are diminutive."

In legal papers, Elster cited remarks including Rubio's about the size of "certain parts of (Trump's) anatomy, such as his hands" and news articles about the former president's "Shrinking of America" and reduction of national monuments.

After the trademark office rejected Elster's application, an in-house tribunal at the agency upheld that decision, citing a federal law that bars trademarks that use a person's name without his or her consent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the ruling last year, allowing the trademark.

"The government has no legitimate interest in protecting the privacy of President Trump, the least private name in American life," and the right of publicity "cannot shield public figures from criticism," Circuit Judge Timothy Dyk wrote in that decision.
 
Gifted article:


FWIW, Trump apparently broke the story

Trump IndictedTrump Is Charged in Classified Documents Inquiry​

It was not immediately known what specific charges the former president is facing. One person briefed on the matter said there were seven counts.
 
Now for the important stuff:

"TRUMP TOO SMALL" lawsuit headed to Supreme Court

US Supreme Court takes up dispute over 'Trump Too Small' trademark

Elster applied for the "Trump Too Small" trademark in 2018 to use on shirts. Elster said the mark was inspired by an exchange between Trump and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio from a March 2016 presidential candidate debate and aims to "convey that some features of President Trump and his policies are diminutive."

This may be the first time in Trump's life when he is happy to have people talking about his tiny hands, instead of .... uh ... any of the other stupid shit he is up to his neck in.
 
Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned to oversee the case. This is the same Trump-appointed judge who tried to help him fight the government's search warrant that turned up the very classified documents at the heart of this case. She was apparently not randomly assigned, so it seems clear that Trump has his supporters in the court system working for him. Given her outrageous favorable treatment of Trump in the past and the overwhelming reversal of her judgments by the appeals court in the past, it seems obvious that this will not be seen as a trial conducted fairly and competently. It also seems obvious that she should recuse herself, but, if she chooses to fight to retain the case, this could draw the proceeding out--something likely to work in Trump's favor.

Trump-appointed judge who issued rulings favorable to him assigned to oversee criminal case

 
Hopefully just a thought exercise…

What if this Trumpsucking judge just summarily dismisses the case? Can someone else un-dismiss it once it has been dismissed?
 
Hopefully just a thought exercise…

What if this Trumpsucking judge just summarily dismisses the case? Can someone else un-dismiss it once it has been dismissed?

Good question. If she just dismissed it, then it could be reopened. If she dismissed it with prejudice, it could not. I don't know what would happen if she used some Trumped up excuse to dismiss it with prejudice. She isn't going to be impeached by Congress. That's for sure. So she can probably do pretty much anything she wants and get away with it. It would stink, but Americans have gotten used to the smell.
 
I'd think that if she dismissed it the DOJ would appeal to the same appeals court that smacked her down last time.
 
They can appeal a dismissal if it hasn't gone to trial yet.
 
Hopefully just a thought exercise…

What if this Trumpsucking judge just summarily dismisses the case? Can someone else un-dismiss it once it has been dismissed?

Good question. If she just dismissed it, then it could be reopened. If she dismissed it with prejudice, it could not. I don't know what would happen if she used some Trumped up excuse to dismiss it with prejudice. She isn't going to be impeached by Congress. That's for sure. So she can probably do pretty much anything she wants and get away with it. It would stink, but Americans have gotten used to the smell.

If some grotesque miscarriage of justice occurred here, this would cause a grand reaction. Prosecutors nationwide would be bringing more cases against Trump to even the score.
 
Hopefully just a thought exercise…

What if this Trumpsucking judge just summarily dismisses the case? Can someone else un-dismiss it once it has been dismissed?
A more interesting exercise, to me, is investigating the questions "Who decided to assign this case to Cannon?"
And, given the history, what were their rationales and motivations?
Tom
 
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