I've begun to suspect that Republicans aren't interested in defending freedom.

“If you had one day — like one real, rough, nasty day with the drugstores as an example. … One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately,” Trump said, referring to allowing police to physically counter shoplifters.

Apparently, Trump wants the Purge. Between this and his constant insults (which have somehow managed to get worse over the years) he's just showing what he really is: desperate.

Pence and Trump’s frayed relationship leading up to Jan. 6 insurrection on full display in latest special counsel filing

By Jack Forrest, Tierney Sneed, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand, CNN
Updated: 8:55 AM EDT, Thu October 3, 2024
Source: CNN

See Full Web Article

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s role in certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win over Donald Trump and his repeated refusals to help the former president overturn the results, was under a microscope in special counsel Jack Smith’s detailed court filing Wednesday.

Smith, in the 165-page document, provides the fullest accounting yet of evidence in his 2020 election conspiracy case against Trump, Pence’s former boss. Within its pages, the document provides a detailed recounting of the hours leading up to the US Capitol riot and the deterioration of the relationship between the two men that led crowds of Trump supporters to call for violence against Pence.

The filing lands in the homestretch of the 2024 presidential race, as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign seeks to draw focus back on Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss.

The role that Trump’s vice president is playing in federal prosecution against him has always been one of the most remarkable things about Smith’s case. But a ruling over the summer by the Supreme Court, which granted Trump sweeping immunity for official actions but left the door open for prosecutors to pursue him for unofficial steps he took, also explains why those interactions make a hefty part of the historic new brief.

While the Supreme Court did not fully strip away allegations against Trump related to Pence from the case, the conservative majority indicated that it was skeptical that Trump’s conduct toward Pence could be prosecuted. Addressing the allegations that Trump pressured Pence to disrupt Congress’ certification, the high court deemed that conduct a “presumptively immune” official act and set a high bar for prosecutors to clear if they wanted to keep it in their case.

Smith, in an attempt to clear that hurdle, went into granular detail about the circumstances around various Trump-Pence conversations – where they occurred, who else was there and what each party said – to argue that those interactions were beyond immunity as they could serve no executive function.

At least some of that evidence came from Pence’s book, according to footnotes, while other pieces came from his contemporaneous notes and likely other non-public sources, including perhaps his own grand jury testimony.

During Tuesday evening’s vice presidential debate, Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, repeatedly pressed Trump’s current running mate, Sen. JD Vance, on the January 6, 2021, insurrection and raised Pence’s role to ask: “Where is the firewall with Donald Trump?”

“Where is the firewall if he knows he can do anything, including taking an election?” Walz asked. “Will you stand up? Will you keep your oath of office even if the president doesn’t?”

During a rally in York, Pennsylvania, Wednesday evening, Walz made clear that the Harris campaign will lean on Smith’s filing as it seeks to bolster its claims that Trump is unfit for office.

“There is a reason Mike Pence was not on that stage with me,” Walz said. “I served with Mike Pence in Congress. We disagreed on most issues, but in Congress and as a vice president, I never criticized Mike Pence’s ethics and commitment to this country, and he made the decision for the Constitution,” Walz said.

Pence tried to console Trump after election
Smith’s team in the filing attempted to cast Pence’s communications with Trump outside of his official vice presidential duties by framing a series of interactions between the two as conversations between “running mates” and friends, where Pence looked to console Trump and urged him to accept his electoral defeat in the weeks following the election.

On November 7, when many outlets called the 2020 election for Biden, Pence allegedly “tried to encourage” the defendant “as a friend,” according to prosecutors. He told Trump that he should focus on how he revived the Republican Party and “gave it a new lease on life.”

At a November 12 lunch, Pence told Trump that he didn’t have to concede but he could “recognize process is over,” prosecutors said. And four days later at another lunch, Pence again tried to get Trump to accept the results and suggested running again in 2024, the filing says. Trump, though, responded: “I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.”

And during a November 23 phone call, Trump allegedly told Pence that one of his private attorneys was skeptical about the election challenges.

During a December 21 private lunch, prosecutors say Pence “encouraged” Trump “not to look at the election ‘as a loss – just an intermission.’” Later that day, Trump asked Pence during a private discussion in the Oval Office what they should do, to which Pence said, “After we have exhausted every legal process in the courts and Congress, if we still came up short, [Trump] should ‘take a bow.’”

The file also details how Pence relayed to Trump responses from the governors of Arizona and Georgia, who told him they “did not report evidence of fraud in the elections in their states” and “could not take actions to convene their states.” Trump disregarded his running mate, prosecutors say.

Increased pressure on Pence
Trump, after Pence told him he did not have the authority to decertify the election, began to up the intensity of his request, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors cite contemporaneous notes written by Pence – that allegedly show Trump and his co-conspirators “plotted to manipulate” the then-vice president about his role in the election certification process in the lead up to January 6.

Trump personally asked one of his co-conspirators, John Eastman, to explain to Pence why he should reject the official Electoral College votes on January 6. Pence took notes during that meeting, Smith says, which allegedly memorialized Trump saying that “when there’s fraud the rules get changed” and “this whole thing is up to MP.”

“[H]as to do w/you – you can be bold,” Pence’s notes allegedly say.

While Trump began to “directly and repeatedly” pressure Pence, his co-conspirators worked to orchestrate the pressure campaign behind the scenes, Smith says.

On January 1, Trump called Pence to berate him for filing a brief opposed to a suit brought by Trump and his allies that sought to force Pence to help throw the election to Trump, prosecutors say. On the call, Trump told Pence that “hundreds of thousands” of people “are gonna hate your guts” and “people are gonna think you’re stupid,” also calling Pence “too honest,” according to the filing.

Hours before January 6
On January 5, 2021, according to the filing, Trump once again met with Pence to allegedly try to pressure him not to certify the electoral college votes. It was in that meeting that Trump threatened to criticize Pence publicly, Smith wrote, citing Pence’s book.

Smith says that Pence told someone identified in the filing only as “P8” about that comment, and that “P8” was so concerned by the prospect that he alerted Pence’s Secret Service detail.

Trump tried again to pressure Pence on the morning of January 6, shortly before driving to deliver his speech at the Ellipse, prosecutors say.

Pence, however, again refused and Trump “was incensed,” the filing states.

It was then that Trump “set into motion the last plan in furtherance of his conspiracies: if Pence would not do as he asked, [Trump] needed to find another way to prevent the certification of Biden as president,” according to the filing.

“So on January 6, [Trump] sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundate with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral votes and to obstruct the certification,” the filing states.

According to prosecutors, Trump also showed his “desperate conduct as a candidate rather than a President” when rioters stormed the Capitol, forcing Pence to be moved to a secure location.

An unnamed White House aide, according to the filing, ran to Trump when he received a phone call that Pence had been taken to a secure location “in hopes that [Trump] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety.”

Trump, however, according to prosecutors, looked at the aide and simply replied, “So what?”

Trump tweeted infamous attack on Pence himself, prosecutors say
Trump personally posted on Twitter as the riot unfolded at the Capitol, saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election results, according to prosecutors.

At the time he posted the tweet, prosecutors say, Trump knew his request for Pence to block the Electoral College votes was illegal, knew that his supporters gathered in Washington, DC, believed his lies during his speech at the Ellipse that the election had been stolen, and knew that those supporters had now breached the Capitol building.

“It was at that point — alone, watching news in real time, and with knowledge that rioters had breached the Capitol building — that the defendant issued the 2:24 p.m. Tweet attacking Pence for refusing the defendant’s entreaties to join the conspiracy and help overturn the results of the election,” Smith wrote.

The tweet communicated “to his angry supporters that Pence had let him — and them — down,” Smith wrote, adding that it was “not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”

A rioter at the Capitol used a bullhorn to read out the post, according to the filing. One minute after the Tweet was posted, Smith wrote, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol.

Some of those inside the Capitol then later began chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!,” “Where is Pence? Bring him out!” and “Traitor Pence!”

Fascism as a political tool is relatively new for America.

Politics, however, have been this forever.

My Last Posting On This POS.




Comments are worth your time.
https://imgur.com/gallery/circumstantia … ng-IzScyw4

In Buddhism, there is the idea of The Hungry Ghost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost Never satiated, never happy, empty beings.  Just talking about this POS gives him energy.  I am done.

Last edited by DmtDusty (2024-10-10 17:39:24)

Sweet! someone did their research and asked Alexa the right questions.

"There's been people out there, if they have an Alexa, and they've asked, 'What caused Milton?' You can go on Alexa now, it's already predicted the numbers of deaths. It's already predicted it!" she says. "On a Google it won't do that."

Fact check: Vance falsely claims Trump did not ‘go after his political opponents’ as president

By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated: 11:41 AM EDT, Tue October 15, 2024
Source: CNN

See Full Web Article

Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, falsely claimed Sunday that former President Donald Trump “didn’t go after his political opponents” during his presidency – an assertion that is contradicted by a mountain of evidence.

Vance, who said Friday that the attorney general would be the most important government official other than the president in a second Trump administration, was asked by ABC News host Martha Raddatz in an interview on Sunday if Trump would go after his political opponents. Vance said no, then added, “Martha, he was president for four years and he didn’t go after his political opponents.”

Facts First: Vance’s claim is false. As president, Trump publicly and privately pressured the Justice Department, and others in his administration, to investigate or prosecute numerous political opponents.

Trump made extensive behind-the-scenes efforts to get his political opponents charged with crimes. But you don’t have to rely on investigative reporting or the memoirs of former administration officials to know that Trump went after political opponents as president.

He often went after them in public, too.

As CNN reporter Marshall Cohen has noted, there is a long list of political opponents whom Trump publicly called for the Justice Department and others to investigate or prosecute. The list includes not only 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton and 2020 election opponent Joe Biden but also Biden’s son Hunter Biden, Democratic former Secretary of State John Kerry, Trump’s former national security advisor turned critic John Bolton, Democratic former President Barack Obama, unspecified Obama administration officials, the anonymous author of a New York Times op-ed by a Trump administration official critical of Trump, MSNBC host and Trump critic Joe Scarborough, former FBI director turned Trump critic James Comey, other former FBI officials, former British spy Christopher Steele (the author of a controversial dossier of allegations against Trump), and various congressional Democrats – including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

Asked for comment for this article on Monday, Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk accused the media of having a biased “double standard” and said “it is indisputable that under Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s DOJ, the Republican nominee for president was targeted and indicted, while under President Trump, nothing like that ever transpired against either of the Democrats he faced off with in 2016 or 2020.”

But that wasn’t for a lack of Trump trying.

Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department as president to prosecute both Clinton and Biden, in addition to trying to get foreign countries to investigate Biden. That the Trump-era Justice Department declined to charge Clinton and Biden doesn’t mean it’s true that Trump didn’t “go after” them or others. (In fact, Trump literally said in 2017 that he wanted the department to be “going after” Clinton.)

John Kelly, whom Trump appointed as Secretary of Homeland Security and then White House chief of staff, told The New York Times in 2023 of Trump: “He was always telling me that we need to use the FBI and IRS to go after people – it was constant and obsessive and is just what he’s claiming is being done to him now.”

And contrary to Vance’s claim to Raddatz that Harris has herself tried to arrest political opponents, which Van Kirk echoed in her Monday statement to CNN, there is no public evidence that Harris pressured the Justice Department to prosecute Trump or her other opponents. The decision to bring two criminal cases against Trump – one over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and one over his post-presidency retention of classified documents – was made by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Trump made many public calls for investigations and prosecutions of political opponents

On some occasions, Trump’s calls for investigations, arrests or prosecutions of his political opponents sounded more like vague gripes than sincere attempts to prompt official action. On numerous occasions, though, Trump applied explicit, sustained public pressure on the Justice Department in general or his attorney general to pursue his opponents.

For example, in 2017 and 2018, Trump frequently harangued then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in tweets and public remarks to investigate various allegations against Clinton.

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” he wrote in one tweet. “So where is the investigation A.G.,” he wrote in another tweet. “So many people are asking why isn’t the A.G. or Special Council (sic) looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes,” he wrote in another tweet. In yet another tweet, he noted allegations about Clinton, then wrote that “at some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper.”

Trump made a direct public request in 2019 for Ukraine and China to launch investigations into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden – after he was already facing criticism for privately pressuring Ukraine to investigate them. And in 2020, Trump publicly demanded that then-Attorney General William Barr indict Joe Biden, Obama and unspecified others over their supposed roles in the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s links to Russia.

“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win and we’ll just have to go – because I won’t forget it. But these people should be indicted. This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama and it includes Biden,” Trump said.

Trump privately pressured the Justice Department

Trump suggested in that Fox News interview that he might have raised the subject of Biden and Obama indictments with Barr, saying, “I’ll be honest with you, he’s got all the information he needs. They want to get more, more, more, they keep getting more. I said, ‘You don’t need any more. You’ve got more stuff than anybody’s ever had.’”

Trump privately pressured the Justice Department and Trump administration officials to go after other political opponents, according to former officials and news reports. And it appears he was sometimes successful, though it’s impossible to definitively prove a direct relationship between his demands and the department’s actions.

Sessions told special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump pressured him in 2017 to abandon his recusal from investigations related to the 2016 election in order to prosecute Clinton, according to the Mueller report. Sessions did not do that, but he announced in March 2018 that he had (in November 2017) appointed a federal prosecutor to look into a variety of allegations against Clinton. She was never charged.

The New York Times reported this year that in April 2018, Trump told aides that if Sessions didn’t prosecute Clinton and Comey, Trump would prosecute them himself – prompting his White House counsel to write him a memo outlining the limits of the president’s powers.

Bolton wrote in a 2020 book that Trump was “obsessed” with having Kerry prosecuted for supposedly breaking a rarely enforced old law by remaining in contact with Iranian officials after leaving office to try to preserve the nuclear agreement Kerry helped to negotiate. Bolton wrote that “in meeting after meeting in the Oval (Office), Trump would ask Attorney General William Barr or anybody listening to launch a prosecution.”

The same week in 2018 that Trump tweeted that Kerry might have broken the law, the Justice Department assigned federal prosecutors to investigate Kerry, according to a book by former federal prosecutor Geoffrey Berman, who was ousted by Trump in 2020. Then, the same day Trump tweeted about Kerry in 2019, a Justice Department official called one of the prosecutors to apply more pressure over the case, Berman wrote. Kerry was never charged.

In 2019, Barr satisfied Trump’s investigate-the-investigators demand by tasking a federal prosecutor to help investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe related to Russia and the 2016 election. In late 2020, with about three months left in Trump’s presidency, Barr gave that prosecutor, John Durham, the status of special counsel.

And in early 2020, Barr tasked a different federal prosecutor with taking in information from members of the public, notably including then-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, related to allegations about the Bidens and Ukraine, which had been a subject of Trump’s public and private focus.

Last edited by Baywolfe (2024-10-15 12:03:29)

Made in USA, my ass!

I don't think I'll ever drink an Arnold Palmer again.  Just sayin'.

Baywolfe wrote:

Fled wrote:

I don't think I'll ever drink an Arnold Palmer again.  Just sayin'.

My grandma in Tennessee called it "Russian Tea" and it was dreadful.  What's the political reason for not drinking it?

One of the candidates in a stunningly "too-close-to-call" Presidential election was just making comments regarding the size of a certain dead golfer's penis.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess which one.

(On a side note, I think in my fatigued state I accidentally reported your comment instead of quoting it. If the powers that be could just ignore that, please...?)

Baywolfe wrote:

My grandma in Tennessee called it "Russian Tea" and it was dreadful.  What's the political reason for not drinking it?

Gag me with a spoon, vile stuff that. Somehow Trump seems overly focused on Arnold Palmer as a folk cure for toadstool disorder.

square wrote:

BorderCount wrote:

(On a side note, I think in my fatigued state I accidentally reported your comment instead of quoting it. If the powers that be could just ignore that, please...?)

Sure, no problem.  I'm being hammered into unconsciousness by political ads here in PA so I know exactly how you're feeling.

LOL.  I am encouraged that the ads are about 50/50 and I've heard that Harris' financial war chest is bigger than Donald's.  I'm also willing to go on record to state that her penis is probably bigger than Donald's too.

From our "No Shit, Sherlock!" bureau.

23 Nobel Prize-winning economists call Harris’ economic plan ‘vastly superior’ to Trump’s

By Phil Mattingly, CNN
Updated: 5:01 AM EDT, Wed October 23, 2024
Source: CNN

See Full Web Article

More than half of the living US recipients of the Nobel Prize for economics signed a letter that called Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic agenda “vastly superior” to the plans laid out by former President Donald Trump.

Twenty-three Nobel Prize-winning economists signed onto the letter, including two of the three most recent recipients.

“While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we believe that, overall, Harris’ economic agenda will improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness and be vastly superior to the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump,” the economists write in the letter obtained by CNN.

The letter serves as a stamp of approval for Harris less than two weeks from Election Day on the issue voters consistently rank as the most important in surveys: the economy. Voter struggles with inflation and an overall dour view of the state of the US economy have long served as a clear vulnerability for the Democratic candidate in the race, with incumbent President Joe Biden struggling for months to highlight his administration’s economic policy before he stepped aside and Harris coalesced party support to become the party nominee.

The letter was spearheaded by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor and 2001 winner of the prize, and marks the second major foray into the campaign by a group of Nobel laureates.

Stiglitz also led an effort in June, with 15 fellow Nobel winners, to highlight what the signatories said would be a “destabilizing effect” of a second Trump term on the US economy. The group said at the time that then-candidate Biden’s economic agenda was also “vastly superior.”

Trump dismissed the group’s letter at the time, and his campaign slammed those who signed on as “worthless out of touch” economists.

But the new letter, which began to come together after Harris detailed her economic vision late last month, includes seven new signatories and represents a wide cross-section in the field in terms of areas of expertise and approach to economics.

The expanded group includes two of the three most recent laureates – Simon Johnson and Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They received the prize, along with James Robinson of the University of Chicago, last week for their research into how institutions shape which countries become wealthy and prosperous.

The letter is intentionally brief at just 228 words, which reflects both an effort to secure consensus across a broader spectrum of economists and a desire to elevate that consensus with precision, according to a person familiar with the process. The letter was drafted to incorporate feedback from the initial effort.

It also marked an effort in the final days of the campaign to elevate what those involved viewed as an acute risk posed by Trump both in his economic proposals, but also, in their view, of the potential instability he would pose in an area where certainty and stability are paramount.

The letter points to Trump’s tariff and tax policies as inflationary and likely to balloon the federal deficit – a widely held view among economists. But it also issues a stark warning.

“Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these,” the economists write.

Despite the warnings and forecasts from economists across the political spectrum, Trump has been steadfast in his pledge to wield threats of sweeping tariffs as a cornerstone of his economic agenda.

Trump, in a recent Bloomberg interview at the Economic Club of Chicago, said his tariff plans would “have a massive effect, a positive effect.”

“The most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff,” Trump said. “It’s my favorite word.”

Trump has promised broad tax cuts beyond his 2017 tax law and promised to abolish taxes on tips, overtime and social security benefits, which analysts say would cost trillions, all as he pointed to tariffs and economic growth as the way to pay for the loss in revenue.

Economists view tariffs as effectively a tax on consumers who buy imported goods.

He has pledged large-scale de-regulation and, as part of the effort, unleash a surge in oil and gas drilling. He has also pledged to deport all illegal immigrants in the US in the “largest deportation operation” in the country’s history.

Trump has long held an edge when it comes to which candidate voters believe would best handle the economy as voters grapple with widespread discontent over the state and direction of the US economy.

Trump and his allies have sought to press that advantage in campaign events and in their advertising with a specific focus on the high prices that have weighed down American consumers for much of the last few years.

But Harris has steadily chipped away at Trump’s advantage on the issue in recent weeks, according to polling, and Harris campaign advisers see an opening to cut into Trump’s strength on the issue in the closing days of the campaign.

Those efforts have been bolstered by a steady stream of economic data that has boosted the confidence among US economic policy makers that they have successfully tamed inflation without pushing the broader economy into a recession.

The Federal Reserve has started cutting interest rates. Employment data for September showed hiring picked up, a dropping unemployment rate and strong wage growth.

Retails sales also remain durable.

The economic picture, at least based on the macroeconomic data, is one that appears robust.

Harris, as part of her economic agenda, has moved to address voter concerns about prices, the cost of housing, the cost of child and elder care and pushed for tax cuts targeting middle-and lower-income Americans.

She has also signaled support for the industrial policies championed by Biden designed to bolster US manufacturing for critical industries.

The contrast between the two candidates on the economy is central to the messages both campaigns are pushing in the final days of the race.

For the signatories of the letter, Harris’ message is the clear preference.

“Simply put, Harris’s policies will result in a stronger economic performance, with economic growth that is more robust, more sustainable, and more equitable,” the economists write.

Perfection....
This is a 78 year old man playing edge lord.

https://preview.redd.it/jxgrdh12gfyd1.g … 15d96c0ca2

He was tutored after all by Roy Cohn...

Last edited by SpacePuppy (2024-11-03 19:57:32)

Let's not forget the nine person firing squad he's going to order up for Liz Chaney.

At last, the pendulum has swung. We finally have a top law enforcement official who truly appreciates the values of hookers and blow. I definitely did not have this on my bingo card in the Nancy Reagan Just Say No era.

Johnny_Rotten wrote:

At last, the pendulum has swung. We finally have a top law enforcement official who truly appreciates the values of hookers and blow. I definitely did not have this on my bingo card in the Nancy Reagan Just Say No era.

To paraphrase a bit from The National Lampoon, "This is Attorney General Matt Gaetz.   I know I’m in there. If I don’t come out with my hands up, I’m coming in after me.”

Perhaps the reason for my state of constant disappointment is that I wake up each morning hoping that he didn't.

A True Nation of Rubes...

More cheerful projections.