Many a true word has been spoken in jest and many an insane scheme has been laughed at and ignored — until people lived to regret it. We have a situation like that in front of us now.
Steve Bannon was convicted of contempt of congress yesterday and he went right back to his podcast, without losing a beat. He failed to “go medieval” on the January 6 Committee during the trial and now his lawyer, David Schoen, is huffing and puffing and making big noises about his ‘bulletproof appeal.” Mebbee. Mebbee not. Schoen regularly puffs up and then deflates, just like the adder snake he is.
Bannon’s quest, as well you know, has always been to “burn it all down.” Listen to what he has to say and then we’ll check in on Ginni Thomas and her plans to aid and abet this mad scheme. Intriguing that a wife of a SCOTUS justice would be in league with the likes of Bannon but that is where we are. Maybe Ginni and Clarence and Steve all bar-b-que together.
Fresh off his conviction at trial, Steve Bannon jumps right back onto his show to unveil his plan for the midterms, how he plans to derail Biden’s agenda, and Trump’s second term. pic.twitter.com/lyqTswXkjx
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2022
Four thousand appointees, Deep Plan. Sounds whacko until you hear it coming from Ginni Thomas. She’s fully on board for this. Jonathan Swan at Axios has done a deep dive into the plans that Donald Trump and his allies have to wreck the government if he’s reelected and the wrecking ball begins swinging right now, in 2022.
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.
Realize what’s at stake here. When Trump took office everything was a complete shambles. The only way that the wheels stayed on the wagon of government was that loyal civil servants were showing up to work everyday and keeping things running in the midst of chaos. Trump and his allies would eradicate that.
Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.
Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.
It would effectively upend the modern civil service, triggering a shock wave across the bureaucracy. The next president might then move to gut those pro-Trump ranks — and face the question of whether to replace them with her or his own loyalists, or revert to a traditional bureaucracy.
Such pendulum swings and politicization could threaten the continuity and quality of service to taxpayers, the regulatory protections, the checks on executive power, and other aspects of American democracy.
Trump’s allies claim such pendulum swings will not happen because they will not have to fire anything close to 50,000 federal workers to achieve the result, as one source put it, of “behavior change.” Firing a smaller segment of “bad apples” among the career officials at each agency would have the desired chilling effect on others tempted to obstruct Trump’s orders.
In plain English, people would see the purge coming their way and fall in line before it got to them. And if you think that the people that Trump had in positions of power when he was in office the first time were straight out of bizarro world, hold onto your chair.
As Axios previously reported, Ginni Thomas had assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them.
Her recommendations to the White House included appointing the right-wing talk radio provocateur and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for a Homeland Security or counterterrorism adviser role. Thomas has recently been a subject of interest to the Jan. 6 Select Committee after the committee obtained text messages she sent to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to work harder to overturn the 2020 election.
[Kash] Patel had enjoyed an extraordinary rise from obscurity to power during the Trump era. Over the course of only a few years, he went from being a little-known Capitol Hill staffer to one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. national security apparatus.
He found favor with Trump by working for Devin Nunes when he played a central role in the GOP’s scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Patel was the key author of a memo in which Nunes accused the Justice Department and the FBI of abusing surveillance laws as part of a politically motivated effort to take down Trump.
Some of Nunes’ and Patel’s criticisms of the DOJ’s actions were later validated by an inspector general, and Trump came to view Patel as one of his most loyal agents. He put him on his National Security Council and made him the Pentagon chief of staff.
In one astonishing but ill-fated plan, Trump had wanted to install Patel as either the deputy director of the CIA or the FBI late in his administration. He abandoned this only after vehement opposition and warnings from senior officials including Haspel and former Attorney General Bill Barr, who wrote in his own memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that Patel becoming deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body.”
Never again would Trump acquiesce to such warnings. Patel has only grown closer to the former president since he left office. Over the past year, Patel has displayed enough confidence to leverage his fame as a Trump insider — establishing an online store selling self-branded merchandise with “K$H” baseball caps and “Fight With Kash” zip-up fleeces.
He hosts an online show and podcast, “Kash’s Corner,” and he is a prolific poster on Trump’s social media network, Truth Social. In May, Patel re-truthed (the Truth Social equivalent of re-tweeting) a meme of himself and special counsel John Durham “perp walking” a handcuffed Hillary Clinton.
He also set up the Kash Patel Legal Offense Trust to raise money to sue journalists. He recently authored an illustrated children’s book about the Russia investigation in which “King Donald” is a character persecuted by “Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight.” Trump characteristically gave it his imprimatur, declaring he wanted to “put this amazing book in every school in America.”
And the suing of journalists and destruction of a free press weighs in here heavily.
It has been said here before and it will be said here again. When Trump came down the escalator, it was not business as usual. He was not a candidate as usual. When he was elected, it was not yet another Republican administration as usual. No. All of it was the beginning of the end of the American way of life.
It’s not over yet.
The Axios piece is lengthy and worth the read. It’s a blueprint for what the crazies are up to. What you’ve read here is only a smidgeon of the information contained therein.
It’s not about Trump. Trump is a buffoon TV game show host. It’s never been about him. It’s about a coalition of truly evil people and a broken down Republican party desperate to hang onto power at any cost. That is the threat we’re facing. Trump was their mascot. They loved him because of the way he could shovel shit like a steam roller and it never cost him. They envied him that ability. But if they don’t have Trump, they will find somebody else to take over and “take over” are the operant words. Ron DeSantis is in the wings, as we speak.
This coming election, Nov 2022, could either lay the groundwork for Bannon’s plan or be the nail in the coffin for the rethugs. If we maintain control of both houses of Congress w/ a large enough majority to get things done, we can totally derail their 2024 hopes.
I have fingers crossed that good ol’ Ginni will find herself indicted in the J6 coup attempt. We know she raised money for the rally and provided some rally goers with transportation. I’m not sure if she knew about the vaunted “Green Bay Sweep”. In any event, her actions certainly aided and abetted the insurrection.
What do you mean the country was in shambles when Trump took office?
Presumably because Moscow Mitch blocked anything sensible or productive from happening
Ginni Thomas shouldn’t be making any plans for any administration. She’s just another version of the Kushner grifter couple, taking advantage of a family connection to benefit herself.
Yeah, they’re both scared shitless. People don’t huff like this unless they are this level of frightened AND stupid. We can take them at their word that this is their ideal goals. But take ME at MY word when I say that this is the equivalent of a bar room drunk swearing revenge after being pounded into hamburger. Learn some courage, people, and LAUGH at them. Worked pretty good on would-be fascist Josh Hawley, didn’t it?
I just want to know why Bannon is not sitting his ass in a jail cell awaiting sentencing? At the VERY least, the man should’ve been placed under house arrest and prohibited from doing any sort of media (podcasts, whatever) until sentencing.
If a judge holds a witness in contempt of court, that person is put in a jail cell until they’re ready and willing to apologize to the court and make whatever amends are necessary (answering a question, etc). So why is Bannon–who was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress–being allowed to continue spewing his bile? (Even if the judge were to give Bannon the absolute minimum sentence, whatever time he spent in jail before then would simply be shaved from the sentence.)
Oh, c’mon, Joseph, that one’s easy. The judge let him loose so he could run his mouth enough to justify throwing the max sentence at him when the time comes. And if he’s dumb enough to pull more crimes while he’s still out? All the better…the federal prosecutors will appreciate his proven arrogant stupidity in helping pile on the charges.
lock ginni thomas and her husband up
Dont worry. Merrick is on the case. Dont forget. He is “bipartisan” and right after he arrests the seditionists he is going after “qualified immunity”…..
What struck me about all this was the children’s books. Three decades ago we had next door neighbors that home schooled. I had occasion to browse some of their children’s books. One of the books that I remember was a story of two lands. One country good and one country bad. The good country shot missiles at the bad country and destroyed them.
These people were over the top wing-nuts. The husband was a chemist and a former Marine. Very smart but crazy eyes and seemingly no practical know-how. He would come get me to replace a washer in a faucet. He put a spare tire on his car and it would make a funny noise, so he came and got me. We rode around the block. He hadn’t tightened the bolts on the wheel. I say all this to give you a picture of a wing-nut family. This was 30 years ago. Trump and all that sail in him are tapping into these types.
I find it disturbing that Bannon wasn’t perp marched right off to jail, but it’s going to be THREE MONTHS! before sentencing. WTH is up with that? Why should it take so long? And why should he be free in the meantime?
Why is politizoom or anybody else posting anything about Steve Bannon ? He looks like a dirty street bum all the time , who cares about what he is doing or saying . He is a NOBODY … Quit giving him any coverage he’s an idiot !