The “magic” of Donald Trump’s b.s. is that he really believes it. Back in the beginning people were wondering if he was some really great actor. No, and he doesn’t need to be. He really believes the drivel that comes out of his mouth.
It’s pretty well established that Trump knew he lost the election and only got up and made his acceptance speech at the White House that night because a drunken Rudy Giuliani assured him he could get away with it. But, as time went on, Trump began to actually believe all the nonsense about the fake electors being real, bamboo ballots in Arizona, the whole psychedelic enchilada.
That’s why today it comes as no shock whatsoever that Trump is letting Mike Pence have it for not sending the ballots back to the swing states. Washington Post:
“Had he sent the votes back to the legislatures, they wouldn’t have had a problem with Jan. 6, so in many ways you can blame him for Jan. 6,” the former president said, referring to Pence’s refusal to reject the electoral college votes in Congress as Trump wanted him to do that day. “Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, number one, you would have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it.” […]
Speaking to reporters aboard his plane as he made his way to Iowa for his first visit since announcing his presidential bid last year, Trump suggested that Pence’s condemnation was driven by his single-digit showings in recent surveys of potential 2024 Republican presidential contenders. (Pence has not officially announced his candidacy, even as he has made moves toward entering the race.)
“I guess he figured that being nice is not working,” Trump said. “But, you know, he’s out there campaigning. And he’s trying very hard. And he’s a nice man, I’ve known him, I had a very good relationship until the end.”
If this isn’t enough to induce Pence to cooperate with Jack Smith and blow the whistle on Trump once and for all, then I don’t know what is.
Intriguingly enough, it comes down to Mike Pence once again to keep Trump from destabilizing America. If Pence will only come clean and tell Smith all that he knows, he might finish Trump, or at least dent him badly. Pence is trying to play some middle ground position, that yes, Trump was wrong, but no, Pence will not testify against him. It’s not going to work. Pence needs to pick one direction or the other and then go there 100%.
Trump incited a riot. Plain and simple. This is all Pence needs to point out.
Trump’s call to arms on Twitter was interpreted as exactly that.
Many posted online that they were ready to die for Trump’s lie and wondered whether the police were willing to die defending Congress and the Vice President against Trump’s mob. pic.twitter.com/OpZa7Hzdkl
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) July 13, 2022
Let’s see what Pence has the guts to do. Doing the right thing at this point might sweeten Pence’s emeritus grise standing in the GOP. Nothing he can do will get him into the White House, but his legacy could be made brighter, certainly, by doing the right thing.
Pants has NEVER been known for “doing the right thing”. That fly on his head knew what everyone else has known but has been too genteel to admit… He killed people lying about tobacco. He killed people lying and refusing to properly handle contraception and the AIDS issue in Indiana. He killed people refusing to expand Medicaid in his state. All he knows how to do is lie, cheat and draw flies.
But he prays and and speaks to god.
I’m betting G_d doesn’t take his calls.
45 is ugly. Has an ugly soul. If we all survive climate change, years from now, people reading history will ask “WTH were Americans thinking making him Potus?” His legacy will be dung, but what about America and Americans. I hope I’m still alive for any indictment and conviction and even his demise.
45 has a soul?
Our country is no monument to social justice. That being said, I doubt any of us would rather live anywhere else. He will be another ugly chapter, but the truth is he got kicked to the curb by the American voters, despite the lies, fox news, the gerrymandering, etc. If we continue to show up and vote, we should be talking about him in the past tense. We do need to show up!
Your statement about living here vs. anywhere else is kind of like the old quote about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. We’ve never been the country described in our founding documents, or the minds of those who bestowed our form of government to us. Also, as lofty as the ideals set forth were with the infamous three-fifths part to define slaves to suck up to slaveholding states to get our Constitution ratified even our founding documents are flawed.
Yet the general ideals and the system of government laid out were considered extraordinary at the time. And remain so. It’s incumbent on each of us to remember that the U.S. was called the Great/Grand Experiment by other countries and not as a compliment. In fact it was mockery. Even now, descendants of folks in the old powers in the world during our founding are contemptuous of this American experiment in government – and believe it is doomed to failure. And I for one believe some of them have tried to help that along in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways over time.
I was still a bit too young to remember JFK standing before the Congress after Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight and declaring we’d send a man to the moon and return him safely before the decade was out. James Webb, the head of NASA was despondent (yes, the dude for whom the telescope is named) because no one knew how it could be done. His top people were in his office and when he asked if we could do this Bob Gilruth said we’d need untold thousands of new people, new facilities and materials & technology that hadn’t even been invented yet! He was right on all counts but the goal was set and the engineering and political problems got solved along the way. But it was mostly a feat of engineering that started with a bold idea.
And the will to turn that idea into a reality.
The ultimate success of the Apollo missions was more solving materials and engineering, as well as massively expanding computer science (a form of engineering in and of itself) but when you boil it down it was engineering “things” more than anything else. People however are a different story, and entire societies are off the charts in complexity.
“Engineering” human behavior is a crazy notion. People are simply too complex for reasons you given your profession know better than most. Getting most people to go along with common values and goals is damned near impossible. At best there have been leaders in free societies that kept the bulk of people on the same page for a period of time. But there have always, ALWAYS been those out there who for whatever reason have been determined to piss in the soup.
No, we’ve never been the country promised by our founders. But bit by bit and sometimes with significant setbacks we’ve slowly progressed. And, lest we forget we are when taken in historical context a pretty fucking YOUNG country! For all our faults I also see things we did that were beneficial to the entire world. But, and this is a big “but’ one thing that’s always been true is that it’s far easier to destroy than to build. Sadly, we have people and forces at work (and our country isn’t the only free country facing this problem) hell bent on destroying freedom and rights for all. People and forces that currently have gained enormous influence and that is something that should if not frighten, then make us all sit up and take notice. And figure out how to do as much as we can do (however small) to overcome those people and drive them back into the shadows.
No, I’d rather live in several other places than this soon-to-be shithole. Canada comes immediately to mind as does any northern European nation. New Zealand might be nice.
The idiots are winning many of the battles but all they actually need to win is the last one. Get that ‘pube/magat trifecta again and it is game-over for our nation: it isn’t as if the s.c. will stop them from destroying the constitution (hell, the theocrats on it have almost finished that job on their own). We’re sticking fingers into a very large dam and that can only go on for so long. J6 proved one thing: our democracy is teetering on the edge and it really won’t take much to push it over that edge. The ‘pube/magats saw this, or at least their leaders did, and they will act upon this knowledge whenever and wherever it suits them. It is forgone conclusion that voting in red states is only going to be for show: there will no longer be fair/free/accurate voting in those states. That will spill over in a very big way onto the federal elections.
I won’t say that J6 wasn’t the first knifing our country received but it did put the country to where it is barely hanging on. The U.S. needs an I.C.U. and there really isn’t one for failing democracies.
Better to win a war without the shooting. Our founders set up a system to do just that.
Spike I understand ur frustration and dark vision but it’s simple for me. Having grown up in rural western NC, lived in fla, California, Oregon and Massachusetts, I’ve seen a bit, not counting cross country trips. Canada is nice in the summer. Like northern Europe and oregon…too many gray days and too cold too long. South of NC is too hot, muggy and buggy. New Zealand has more sheep than people and it too far from everything but new Zealand. Europe has too many countries crammed together and too many wars close by. Africa is too damn poor. South America too. SE Asia has too many smokers and too much pollution. China…well…i dont do well with that much government. The Caribbean is in hurricane alley, and having lived on the cape, you’re stuck on an island running over the same old ground with no where to run. In the US you can drive around for months and just scratch the surface. I guess I’ll stay here and slug it out. Ha.
Then again there are those of us who just can’t afford anyplace else. Me I don’t mind the cold, I live in Minnesota. But If I had the where-with-all to move else where I would.