An Epitaph for Trump: "One Thing Leads To Another"

 

Spencer Cox of Utah

Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, my homeland once-upon-a-tale, is trying to curry favor with Donald Jethro Trump. Gov. Cox ordered the flags in the state that have been at half-staff for the passing of Jimmy Carter to go to full staff today for the Inauguration. "Did you see, Sir? Did you see what I did in your honor?"

This may seem like a small thing, but the problem is that, with President-elect Trump, one thing leads to another .... When Trump first ran for president, other Republican politicians excused his bluster. Then, it was his immorality. Finally, it was his criminality. The result was Republican politicians, including some from Utah, defending behavior by Trump they would likely never do themselves and, in the process, urging other Americans to malign the justice system that all Americans should respect.

--Richard Davis, a professor emeritus at BYU, in the Salt Lake Tribune

 

His Vice Is Not Porn Stars. It's Filthy Lucre

 

Mr. Trump knows that he has never had as much power as he does right now. He intends to make the most of it, to extract its full financial value.

--Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, NYTimes

Oh he's rolling in the dough, you bet. Corporate execs and numerous billionaires are shoveling it his way, under cover of financing his inauguration celebration or simply out of deep concern that Don have enough pocket money.

"The money is just pouring in at Mar-a-Lago. Trump doesn't have to lift a finger. Everyone's coming to him," a Trump adviser told Axios. "We're looking at half a billion [dollars] by June, and we're on track," this adviser said.

Donald Jethro Trump is pure transaction, and it's all money in, nothing out. He's a back-country carnival barker who never went broke underestimating the intelligence of his public.

Trump Saved TikTok and He Expects His Cut

 

Trump tweet from yesterday. Notice especially the 3rd paragraph and its quivering lust for the "hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars" to be siphoned, sucked, or swindled in the deal.

If the United States is to have half-ownership of TikTok, in a trump-inspired deal, who do you think will be calling the shots? Trump himself intends to be master of TikTok, to have his own social media kingdom and to be like Musk with his own captive audience. 

One Wrong Man for a Right Important Job

“He brought 'norms' to a trump fight and democracy suffered.”

--Democratic lawyer Marc Elias describing why Biden's A.G. Merrick Garland was the “wrong man for the job” 

Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi testified at her Senate confirmation hearing that the Justice Department’s prosecutors had in her opinion targeted what she identified as "political opponents" by whom she meant trump. “That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this Administration,” she said.

So we know what's coming. Pam Bondi will conduct the first purge of trump2.0, the first of several, we would guess, as cabinet departments important for allowing the loot to leave the building will be firing or sidelining any career lawyers/scientists/experts who seem likely to resist dictatorship, question lies, or refuse unlawful orders. He intends to clear out the Justice Department, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, law enforcement itself, and foreign service, as he tightens his grip on anyone who can oppose him in a meaningful way.

Merrick Garland was a crucial misfire. Garland actually lived the famous moral dilemma -- would you kill the baby Hitler in his cradle if you could? He could have killed the future of trump during the last four years, and saved the world the pain and the disgrace. Instead, we're to be ruled by Colonel Blimp, the convicted felon of enormous appetite and zero ethics or moral qualms. 

Merrick Garland may have single-handedly let the dictator loose when he could still have been confined.

Thom Tillis Gets His First Republican Primary Challenger

 

Andy Nilsson is a bit of a head-scratcher. The Tillis campaign immediately labeled him a "never Trumper," and Nilsson does have a somewhat puzzling history of bucking the trumpist majority. "In 2019, he joined former N.C. Supreme Court justice Bob Orr [who left the Republican Party because of Trump] in trying to organize an alternative GOP convention to the Republican National Convention scheduled in Charlotte in 2020" (WRAL). Nilsson told the Charlotte Observer in 2019, “I’m doing all I can do to preserve the Reagan-Bush legacy of the Republican Party against the Trump takeover.” 

Going apparently for full-on cognitive dissonance, Nilsson told WRAL that he supports Trump, "but he was disturbed to see Republicans in some states cancel their GOP presidential primaries in an effort to protect the president." Nilsson is challenging Tillis "because he doesn’t believe the incumbent can be relied upon to fully support Trump’s America-first agenda," Nilsson’s campaign said.

This guy is confusing the hell outta me. In some ways -- the gingerly waffling all over the place about Trump -- he seems like another Thom Tillis.

He has a decades-ago history of running furniture companies in NC, moved to Australia in 2002 and didn't return to North Carolina until 2023. "Nilsson is a Cincinnati native whose family moved to Catawba County when he was a child. He graduated from Winston-Salem’s Reynolds High School in 1985 and Davidson College in 1989. Nilsson now works in special education at Reynolds High Schools, where he’s a teacher assistant and assistant football coach." He once upon a time -- 2000 -- ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor.

Jefferson Griffin Blinks in the Most Pathetic Way Imaginable

Judge Jefferson "Crazy Eyes" Griffin

Trying to keep up with all the moving parts of Jefferson Griffin's scheme to steal the Supreme Court election from Allison Riggs.

Recall the posting here on January 8th: "Conservative Majority on NC Supreme Court Fractures Over Griffin Attempt To Steal the Election." The Republican who disagreed most vociferously with Griffin's proposal to throw out over 60,000 legitimate votes, Associate Justice Richard Dietz, wrote

“Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules—and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules—invites incredible mischief."

Anderson Reports has out this morning news of an updated court filing from Griffin in which he blinks in the most pathetic way imaginable:

Seeming to recognize Dietz’s criticism, Griffin on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to consider a phased ruling, where it would first direct the 5,509 ballots from overseas voters without photo ID be tossed out first. If a retabulation showed Griffin overtaking Riggs’ 734-vote lead, Griffin would want the election to be certified in his favor. If a retabulation showed Riggs still ahead, however, Griffin would want the Supreme Court to proceed to the issue of 267 overseas voters who don’t reside in North Carolina and the 60,273 voters with incomplete registration, if necessary.

In other hilarious words, just toss out ballots until I say quit, and maybe it won't take disenfranchising the full 60,000 to give me Seat 6.

If I were a standup comic, I'd be exploiting this lame slug of a politician for big laughs. 

BREAKING -- The Street Theater of Kate Barr

 

One of my favorite, disruptive Democrats of 2024, Kate Barr, is right now, on Tuesday, January 14, reading aloud the over 60,000 names of legitimate voters Jefferson Griffin intends to disenfranchise to grab a seat on the NC Supreme Court. Kate is standing in front of the Supreme Court bldg in Raleigh, with a podium and a microphone. She began reading all 60,000 names this morning at 6 a.m. and expects to finish by 11 p.m. tonight.

It's a new public way to protest the outrageousness of Griffin's determination to win at all costs, including throwing out thousands of legitimate votes. Griffin is currently begging the Paul Newby Supreme Court to ignore the actual vote count -- Allison Riggs won by over 700 votes, after two different recounts -- and simply give Supreme Court Seat 6 to him.

Griffin is a special kind of sinister. Why is he a judge at all? (He currently sits on the 15-member Court of Appeals).

More about Kate Barr under this photo.

Kate Barr should be familiar to WatWatch readers. In 2024 she ran a funny, satiric, self-deprecating NC Senate campaign for District 37 (mainly deep-red Iredell). Her self-mocking motto: "Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Win!" Indeed, she couldn't. But she generated something of a movement anyway, raising both money and some justified hell, and her rallying of progressive voters in such a district also helped a statewide candidate like Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs to win.

You go, Kate!

"Unprecedented Criminal Effort"

Special prosecutor Jack Smith's REPORT ON EFFORTS TO INTERFERE WITH THE LAWFUL TRANSFER OF POWER FOLLOWING THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OR THE CERTIFICATION OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTE HELD ON JANUARY 6, 2021 has finally been released to the public. You can read it for yourself. It's full of solid evidence and coruscating truth. We are about to be governed again by a man who respects no laws, who doesn't understand the Constitution or our Republic of checks and balances, who runs his mouth and his petty desires like any downtown mob boss.

Part of Smith's summary of Trump's (alleged, yeah, right!) criminal activity leading up to the January 6th insurrection:

In 2020, then-President Donald J. Trump ran for reelection against Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Mr. Trump lost. As alleged in the original and superseding indictments, substantial evidence demonstrates that Mr. Trump then engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power. Although he did so primarily in his private capacity as a candidate, and with the assistance of multiple private co-conspirators, Mr. Trump also attempted to use the power and authority of the United States Government in furtherance of his scheme.

As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power. This included attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President, Michael R. Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump's personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters' violence to further delay it. 

 

Jeff Jackson vs. Predatory Landlords

 

Attorney General Jeff Jackson filed on January 7th a pretty damn impressive civil suit against six mega-landlords and the software company RealPage, which illegally uses data to help the mega-landlords fix predatory rental rates. Jackson joined nine other attorneys as well as the antitrust division of the U.S. DOJ. Jackson and his fellows "allege that six corporate landlords are trading private information and manipulating vacancies to boost rents." As Ned Barnett, lead opinion writer at the NandO, put it today, "Jeff Jackson is off to an encouraging start" (Barnett). 

No kidding. Predatory renters and their unfair tactics have long invited a comeuppance, and perhaps this will be a start. The six landlords being sued collectively manage hundreds of thousands of apartment rentals (no, really), which undoubtedly makes them big, bigger targets for prosecution. What about the ugly landlords in, say, university towns who don't rent hundreds of thousands of apartments, but who rent out certainly scores of them and hundreds and maybe thousands? There seems to be a universal principle of greed that can't resist exploiting the young.

To be clear, Jackson is amending with this new suit an action first researched and taken by former A.G. Josh Stein last March, when there were seven other attorneys general joining the suit against RealPage. No mention back then of the six landlords Jackson's amended suit adds, though Stein certainly knew where they were. At a news conference last August, Stein said three of the top 10 markets that RealPage has been exploiting are in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham/Chapel Hill, and Jackson's suit notes that none of the big landlords operating in NC are actually headquartered in NC. They're from all over, from Dallas to Chicago to Atlanta to Charleston, etc. Out-of-state corps exploiting the natives with the help of a clever software company.

Jackson’s office alleges that the singled-out landlords have allegedly used RealPage’s algorithm "to set rents for almost one-third of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in each of the three metro areas" (Avi Bajpai).