02b U.S. Politics – Left

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Excerpt from www.dailykos.com

Last week, Nikki Haley became the latest Republican to come crawling back into the fold to endorse Donald Trump after his abuse and humiliation.

“I think she’s going to be on our team,” he told a local New York journalist in response, kindly refraining from his frequent nickname for her: “birdbrain.”

Exactly what kind of team member will she be this time around, after serving as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations in his first term? It probably depends on what she can do, and continue to do, for the multi-indicted Trump.

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Excerpt from www.politicususa.com

Trump came up with the conspiracy theory that it is fascists who are controlling the Oval Office who are behind his prosecution.

Trump said, “Such a disgrace. So sad to see what’s happened to our country. Our country is going to hell under Biden, but look at the person, why don’t you look at the person that argued their case to almost the entire case? Look at the, he comes from unbelievable. He came from Biden and I don’t know if it’s Biden because I don’t think Biden has any idea what the hell is happening. But it’s from the fascist circle in the Oval Office. They circle the Resolute Desk. The beautiful resolute desk that’s being stinked up.”

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Excerpt from www.motherjones.com

The trial of fugitive Chinese mogul Guo Wengui kicks off in New York Wednesday, as federal prosecutors prepare to lay out what they have called a “complex” conspiracy involving elaborate financial schemes, dozens of offshore accounts, and evidence translated from Mandarin. But the heart of the case is a simple and familiar American phenomenon: political grift—a confidence job in which a demagogic leader allegedly translated partisan passion into personal gain. If the case against Guo sounds a bit like what critics say about Donald Trump, that’s no coincidence. Guo’s rise was aided by some of the same people who have boosted the former president.

Guo grew up in China, made a fortune there through allegedly corrupt real estate maneuvers, and arrived in the United States in 2015 as a billionaire. Once in America, Guo built an eclectic empire of organizations, created a public brand as a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party, and amassed large following of fellow Chinese emigres—people whose loyalty is reflected by their self-description as “ants.”

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Excerpt from www.dailykos.com

At least a few Republicans have issued mildly critical responses to Justice Samuel Alito’s upside-down flag, a symbol of support for Donald Trump, while the Supreme Court was debating election issues in 2021.

It’s been a long time since any statement from Donald Trump, no matter how outrageous, generated more from congressional Republicans than a kind of selective ignorance, or, of course, an announcement from Sen. Susan Collins that she is “very concerned.”

In the case of Alito, even reliable Trump lap dogs feel compelled to take a gentle poke. As HuffPost reports, that includes Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said that flying the inverted flag was “not good judgment.” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said that Alito’s flag suggested “a partisan take” on an issue before the court. And Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota simply called it “weird.”

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Excerpt from www.politifact.com

Former President Donald Trump in a May 21 campaign email and social media posts falsely accused President Joe Biden of putting his life at risk in an August 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

“BREAKING FROM TRUMP: BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!” read an all-caps subject line on an email from Trump’s campaign.

“It’s just been revealed that Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE for their DESPICABLE raid in Mar-a-Lago. You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable…Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” the email said.

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Excerpt from crooksandliars.com

Sloppy Steve Bannon spoke with Bloomberg News’s Joshua Green to ask him about his deep dive into Trump World in his latest piece. Bannon seems to think it’s cute when Trump talks about staying in power for more than two terms. Green noted that that’s a concern for voters, and they’re taking it seriously, Media Matters reports. And they should take it seriously.

“So my piece is called “Trump Forever?” with a question mark, and it’s based on, you know, I get to sit in on how to focus groups and stuff from time to time,” Green said. “Strategists in both parties will let me do this just to kind of get a pulse of what voters are talking about and worrying about.”

“And one thing that I picked up on was that a lot of undecided voters and a lot of voters who actually voted for Biden in 2020 but then have turned against him are hesitant to vote for Donald Trump because they’re afraid that if Trump is reelected, he’ll never leave the White House, that he’ll wipe out term limits, declare himself king and essentially establish a permanent presidency,” he continued. “And this is a real fear among real people who are out there.”

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Excerpt from crooksandliars.com

Does the FBI really need to point this out? This is the state of our nation, when a presidential candidates uses this accusation (that the FBI planned to kill him) to fundraise. Not only was this standard procedure, it was the exact same language used in the warrant to search the Biden properties! But facts will never get in the way with this bunch. Via ABC News:

The FBI has issued a rare statement after former President Donald Trump and several GOP lawmakers spread false claims suggesting President Joe Biden authorized his assassination during the search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022.

In a fundraising email responding to right-wing media reports that offered a distorted reading of a newly-unsealed court filing in Trump’s classified documents case, Trump falsely claimed Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out.”

[…] “The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the FBI said in a statement Tuesday evening. “No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”

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Excerpt from www.thenation.com

Consider Donald Trump to be in a racial bind when it comes to election 2024. After all, he needs Black voters to at least defect from Joe Biden in swing states, if not actually vote for him. Yet, more than ever, he also needs his white nationalist base to believe that a second Trump term will be even more racist than the first and he’s been openly claiming that he’ll address the ghost of anti-white racism. Not surprisingly, his evolving strategy for the Black vote has been high on empty symbolism and viral moments, but distinctly low on specific promised policy benefits for the Black community.

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Excerpt from www.politicususa.com

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had his excuse for flying a flag supporting the insurrection shattered when it was reported that a different flag supporting Trump’s insurrection flew at his beach house last summer.

The New York Times reported:

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

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Excerpt from www.truthdig.com

 

Earlier this month, the MAGA world was elated when Republican attorney Charlie Spies resigned from his position as the Republican National Committee’s top lawyer after two tumultuous months on the job.

Following a sustained campaign to oust the veteran party attorney and strategist from his role as chief counsel to the RNC, Trump partisans saw the removal of Spies as a final, triumphant blow to the “establishment” wing of the GOP within the national organization. “President Trump woke up to the fact that he didn’t want a RINO in there who is doing nothing on the election integrity front,” declared Steve Bannon on his popular podcast. Trump himself crowed in a now-deleted Truth Social post that Spies’ ouster was “great news for the Republican Party.”

Despite framing his departure as voluntary, Spies was most likely forced out of his role by the former president after months of vociferous protest from the MAGA faithful. From the moment Spies’ RNC appointment was announced, Trump supporters began uncovering old quotes and videos of him criticizing the former president and rejecting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Though Spies was eager to help his most fire-breathing RNC colleagues in their “election integrity” drive, he could not escape from his past.

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Excerpt from www.thenation.com

On April 22, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that focuses on whether unhoused—the term that has generally replaced “homeless”—people with no indoor shelter options can even pull a blanket around themselves outdoors without being subject to criminal punishment.

Before making its way to the Supreme Court on appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court held that municipalities can’t punish involuntarily homeless people for merely living in the place where they are. This is exactly what the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, did when it outlawed resting or sleeping anywhere on public property with so much as a blanket to survive in cold weather, even when no beds in shelters were available. The law makes it impossible for unhoused residents to stay in Grants Pass, effectively forcing them to either move to another city or face endless rounds of punishment. In Grants Pass, the punishment starts with a $295 fine that, if unpaid, goes up to $500, and can escalate from there to criminal trespass charges, penalties of up to 30 days in jail, and a $1,250 fine.

The issue before the court is whether such a law violates the Eighth Amendment’s restrictions against cruel and unusual punishment. The city is asking the court to decide that the Eighth Amendment doesn’t impose any substantive limit on what can be criminalized, so long as the punishment itself isn’t considered cruel and unusual. If so, municipalities across the nation would be free to make involuntary homelessness unlawful.

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Excerpt from www.politico.com

Republicans are openly trying to convince Rep. Garret Graves not to challenge his Louisiana GOP colleagues, fearing another ugly member-on-member fight in a state packed with House leaders.

Graves has kept his options open, and he’s facing a difficult choice. He can either run in his radically redrawn district, which now favors President Joe Biden by 20 points, or run against one of his fellow incumbent House Republicans.

The most likely match up is Graves challenging Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), a contest that could get personally nasty, since Graves has had a close working relationship with Letlow.

His colleagues argue he still has a chance to win in his current district, and are openly hoping Graves doesn’t cause trouble by crashing another seat — particularly not in a state that counts Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise in the delegation. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said “of course” GOP leadership is nervous about another member-on-member primary race.