Flying Monkeys
By Nobody
11 Mar 2011 1:42 pm in No Holds Barred Political Forum
21 Sep 2020 5:11 pm
NIH staffer to retire after he was exposed as the blogger behind anti-Fauci, anti-mask stories
A public-affairs specialist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will retire after revelations that he used a pseudonym online to savage the government response to the covid-19 pandemic — including the work of Anthony S. Fauci, who heads that agency, an NIAID spokeswoman said Monday.
William Crews told NIAID officials he will retire after the Daily Beast revealed he is also the managing editor of the conservative website RedState.com, where, under the pseudonym “streiff,” he has ridiculed the government’s activity against the coronavirus outbreak, according to the NIAID spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified because the matter involves personnel.
The spokeswoman, who confirmed the Daily Beast’s reporting that Crews is the pseudonymous writer, said the agency had learned of the matter Monday morning.
The Daily Beast reported that Crews, as “streiff.” has called Fauci a “mask nazi,” and implied that “government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.”
A public-affairs specialist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will retire after revelations that he used a pseudonym online to savage the government response to the covid-19 pandemic — including the work of Anthony S. Fauci, who heads that agency, an NIAID spokeswoman said Monday.
William Crews told NIAID officials he will retire after the Daily Beast revealed he is also the managing editor of the conservative website RedState.com, where, under the pseudonym “streiff,” he has ridiculed the government’s activity against the coronavirus outbreak, according to the NIAID spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified because the matter involves personnel.
The spokeswoman, who confirmed the Daily Beast’s reporting that Crews is the pseudonymous writer, said the agency had learned of the matter Monday morning.
The Daily Beast reported that Crews, as “streiff.” has called Fauci a “mask nazi,” and implied that “government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.”
21 Sep 2020 6:43 pm
A Young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, Turned Whistle-Blower
When Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Max volunteered with Jared Kushner’s COVID-19 task force, he likened the Trump Administration’s pandemic response to “a family office meets organized crime, melded with ‘Lord of the Flies.’ ”
Months before Bob Woodward’s book “Rage” documented President Trump’s efforts to deceive Americans about the peril posed by covid-19, Robert F. Kennedy’s twenty-six-year-old grandson tried to blow the whistle on the President’s malfeasance from an improbable perch—inside Trump’s coronavirus task force.
In April, Max Kennedy, Jr., despite having signed a nondisclosure agreement, sent an anonymous complaint to Congress detailing dangerous incompetence in the Administration’s response to the pandemic.
On the phone recently from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Kennedy explained why he’d alerted Congress. “I just couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I was so distressed and disturbed by what I’d seen.”
How did a Kennedy end up in a sensitive role in the Trump Administration?
After graduating from Harvard, in 2016, Kennedy did some time at consulting and investment firms; he planned to take the LSAT in March, but the pandemic cancelled it.
At loose ends, he responded to a friend’s suggestion that he join a volunteer task force that Jared Kushner was forming, to get vital personal protective equipment, such as masks, to virus hot spots.
Kushner, he was told, was looking for young generalists who could work long hours for no pay.
“I was torn, to some extent,” Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, said.
“But it was such an unprecedented time. It didn’t seem political—it seemed larger than the Administration.”
And he knew people who’d been sick. So in March he volunteered for the White House covid-19 Supply-Chain Task Force, and drove to Washington.
On his first day, he showed up at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and joined around a dozen other volunteers, all in their twenties, mostly from the finance sector and with no expertise in procurement or medical issues.
He was surprised to learn that they weren’t to be auxiliaries supporting the government’s procurement team.
“We were the team,” he said. “We were the entire frontline team for the federal government.”
The volunteers were tasked with finding desperately needed medical supplies using only their personal laptops and private e-mail accounts.
As the days passed, and the death count climbed, Kennedy was alarmed at the way the President was downplaying the crisis.
“I knew from that room that he was saying things that just weren’t true,” he said.
Trump told the public that the government was doing all it could, but the P.P.E. emergency was being managed by a handful of amateurs.
“It was the number of people who show up to an after-school event, not to run the greatest crisis in a hundred years,” Kennedy said.
“It was such a mismatch of personnel. It was one of the largest mobilization problems ever.
It was so unbelievably colossal and gargantuan. The fact that they didn’t want to get any more people was so upsetting.
”Kennedy believes that the Administration relied on volunteers in order to sidestep government experts and thereby “control the narrative.”
He said that Brad Smith, one of the political appointees who directed the task force, pressured him to create a model fudging the projected number of fatalities; Smith wanted the model to predict a high of a hundred thousand U.S. deaths, claiming that the experts’ models were “too severe.”
Kennedy said that he told Smith, “I don’t know the first thing about disease modelling,” and declined the assignment. (A spokesman said that Smith did not recall the conversation.)
To date, nearly two hundred thousand Americans have died.
The volunteers were also instructed to prioritize requests from the President’s friends and supporters.
According to Kennedy, the group paid special attention to Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News personality.
Pirro, Kennedy said, was “particularly aggressive,” and demanded that masks be shipped to a hospital she favored.
The volunteers were also told to direct millions of dollars’ worth of supplies to only five preselected distributors.
Kennedy was asked to draft a justification for this decision, but refused.
“Hundreds of people were sending e-mails every day offering P.P.E.,” he said, but no one in charge responded effectively.
“We were super frustrated we couldn’t get the government to do more.”
In the end, the task force failed to procure enough equipment, leaving medical workers, including Kennedy’s cousin, to improvise by wearing garbage bags and makeshift or pre-worn masks.
States were left to fend for themselves, bidding against one another for scarce supplies.
Kennedy was disgusted to see that the political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as “a marketing genius,” because, Kennedy said they’d told him, “he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the states.”
The response was in line with what Kennedy calls the White House mantra: that government doesn’t work, and “that the worst thing we could do was step on the toes of the private sector.”
Kushner came by the fema office a few times, once to ask the flailing volunteers what three things they most needed, and promising fixes by the end of the day.
He had “an air of self-importance,” Kennedy recalled. “But I never saw a single thing that Kushner promised change.”
After two or three weeks of growing distress, Kennedy wrote his complaint, addressing it to the House Oversight Committee, hoping that Congress would step in.
Meanwhile, the task force stopped meeting in person, because a member tested positive for covid-19.
In April, Kennedy quit, and he has since gone to work on the Democrats’ 2020 election efforts.
He decided to defy the N.D.A., which he does not think can legally stifle him from expressing his opinion, and he is featured in a new documentary, “Totally Under Control,” from the director Alex Gibney.
Kennedy said, “If you see something that might be illegal, and cause thousands of civilian lives to be lost, a person has to speak out.”
The Administration’s coronavirus response, he said, “was like a family office meets organized crime, melded with ‘Lord of the Flies.’ It was a government of chaos.”
When Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Max volunteered with Jared Kushner’s COVID-19 task force, he likened the Trump Administration’s pandemic response to “a family office meets organized crime, melded with ‘Lord of the Flies.’ ”
Months before Bob Woodward’s book “Rage” documented President Trump’s efforts to deceive Americans about the peril posed by covid-19, Robert F. Kennedy’s twenty-six-year-old grandson tried to blow the whistle on the President’s malfeasance from an improbable perch—inside Trump’s coronavirus task force.
In April, Max Kennedy, Jr., despite having signed a nondisclosure agreement, sent an anonymous complaint to Congress detailing dangerous incompetence in the Administration’s response to the pandemic.
On the phone recently from Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Kennedy explained why he’d alerted Congress. “I just couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I was so distressed and disturbed by what I’d seen.”
How did a Kennedy end up in a sensitive role in the Trump Administration?
After graduating from Harvard, in 2016, Kennedy did some time at consulting and investment firms; he planned to take the LSAT in March, but the pandemic cancelled it.
At loose ends, he responded to a friend’s suggestion that he join a volunteer task force that Jared Kushner was forming, to get vital personal protective equipment, such as masks, to virus hot spots.
Kushner, he was told, was looking for young generalists who could work long hours for no pay.
“I was torn, to some extent,” Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, said.
“But it was such an unprecedented time. It didn’t seem political—it seemed larger than the Administration.”
And he knew people who’d been sick. So in March he volunteered for the White House covid-19 Supply-Chain Task Force, and drove to Washington.
On his first day, he showed up at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and joined around a dozen other volunteers, all in their twenties, mostly from the finance sector and with no expertise in procurement or medical issues.
He was surprised to learn that they weren’t to be auxiliaries supporting the government’s procurement team.
“We were the team,” he said. “We were the entire frontline team for the federal government.”
The volunteers were tasked with finding desperately needed medical supplies using only their personal laptops and private e-mail accounts.
As the days passed, and the death count climbed, Kennedy was alarmed at the way the President was downplaying the crisis.
“I knew from that room that he was saying things that just weren’t true,” he said.
Trump told the public that the government was doing all it could, but the P.P.E. emergency was being managed by a handful of amateurs.
“It was the number of people who show up to an after-school event, not to run the greatest crisis in a hundred years,” Kennedy said.
“It was such a mismatch of personnel. It was one of the largest mobilization problems ever.
It was so unbelievably colossal and gargantuan. The fact that they didn’t want to get any more people was so upsetting.
”Kennedy believes that the Administration relied on volunteers in order to sidestep government experts and thereby “control the narrative.”
He said that Brad Smith, one of the political appointees who directed the task force, pressured him to create a model fudging the projected number of fatalities; Smith wanted the model to predict a high of a hundred thousand U.S. deaths, claiming that the experts’ models were “too severe.”
Kennedy said that he told Smith, “I don’t know the first thing about disease modelling,” and declined the assignment. (A spokesman said that Smith did not recall the conversation.)
To date, nearly two hundred thousand Americans have died.
The volunteers were also instructed to prioritize requests from the President’s friends and supporters.
According to Kennedy, the group paid special attention to Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News personality.
Pirro, Kennedy said, was “particularly aggressive,” and demanded that masks be shipped to a hospital she favored.
The volunteers were also told to direct millions of dollars’ worth of supplies to only five preselected distributors.
Kennedy was asked to draft a justification for this decision, but refused.
“Hundreds of people were sending e-mails every day offering P.P.E.,” he said, but no one in charge responded effectively.
“We were super frustrated we couldn’t get the government to do more.”
In the end, the task force failed to procure enough equipment, leaving medical workers, including Kennedy’s cousin, to improvise by wearing garbage bags and makeshift or pre-worn masks.
States were left to fend for themselves, bidding against one another for scarce supplies.
Kennedy was disgusted to see that the political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as “a marketing genius,” because, Kennedy said they’d told him, “he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the states.”
The response was in line with what Kennedy calls the White House mantra: that government doesn’t work, and “that the worst thing we could do was step on the toes of the private sector.”
Kushner came by the fema office a few times, once to ask the flailing volunteers what three things they most needed, and promising fixes by the end of the day.
He had “an air of self-importance,” Kennedy recalled. “But I never saw a single thing that Kushner promised change.”
After two or three weeks of growing distress, Kennedy wrote his complaint, addressing it to the House Oversight Committee, hoping that Congress would step in.
Meanwhile, the task force stopped meeting in person, because a member tested positive for covid-19.
In April, Kennedy quit, and he has since gone to work on the Democrats’ 2020 election efforts.
He decided to defy the N.D.A., which he does not think can legally stifle him from expressing his opinion, and he is featured in a new documentary, “Totally Under Control,” from the director Alex Gibney.
Kennedy said, “If you see something that might be illegal, and cause thousands of civilian lives to be lost, a person has to speak out.”
The Administration’s coronavirus response, he said, “was like a family office meets organized crime, melded with ‘Lord of the Flies.’ It was a government of chaos.”
21 Sep 2020 7:54 pm
21 Sep 2020 8:54 pm
I wonder how the 4,483,810 people who voted for Trump in California, the 782,403 who voted for him in Oregon and the 1,221,747 in Washington State who voted for him feel about that?
21 Sep 2020 9:48 pm
Dark Money and the Courts
The Far Right is pursuing an audacious effort to capture America’s courts.
Fueled by $250 million in secret “dark money” contributions, they seek to enact a radical social and economic agenda they could never achieve legislatively.
This page shares reporting on the secret donor network behind the Far Right’s attempt to turn the judiciary into a tool for partisan and corporate interests.
Learn more, including what you can do to protect a fair judiciary.
https://www.acslaw.org/analysis/reports/dark-money/
https://youtu.be/2e-BWMcJLuc
The Far Right is pursuing an audacious effort to capture America’s courts.
Fueled by $250 million in secret “dark money” contributions, they seek to enact a radical social and economic agenda they could never achieve legislatively.
This page shares reporting on the secret donor network behind the Far Right’s attempt to turn the judiciary into a tool for partisan and corporate interests.
Learn more, including what you can do to protect a fair judiciary.
https://www.acslaw.org/analysis/reports/dark-money/
https://youtu.be/2e-BWMcJLuc
21 Sep 2020 10:32 pm
21 Sep 2020 10:41 pm
Yes, he is.AnnoyedLiberall » 11 Mar 2011, 2:49 pm » wrote: ↑Wow. What a dick.Misty » 11 Mar 2011, 2:42 pm » wrote: ↑This is my signature thread where I post about a variety of issues that interest me instead of starting a bunch of new threads.
I can't start many new threads because there is a sick psycho stalker on this forum who destroys every thread I start.
21 Sep 2020 11:24 pm
So tonight on FOX News, before he started begging for money, Lindsey Graham said that they have the votes to put through Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before election day.
He said every member of the Judiciary Committee will back the nominee.
So they have already committed to voting for a nominee when no nominee has been named yet.
Maybe they should just skip the hearings.
Whatever Trump wants, Trump gets.
He said every member of the Judiciary Committee will back the nominee.
So they have already committed to voting for a nominee when no nominee has been named yet.
Maybe they should just skip the hearings.
Whatever Trump wants, Trump gets.
22 Sep 2020 12:09 pm
Trump blatantly lied to his followers at a rally last night.
Either his followers are too stupid to know that he's lying, or they know but they just don't care.
He totally contradicted what we heard him say on tape with our own two ears.As the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus prepares to eclipse 200,000, President Trump on Monday incorrectly claimed at a campaign rally that covid-19 “affects virtually nobody” younger than 18, again downplaying the extent of the pandemic and contradicting his previous statements that the virus poses a risk to “plenty of young people.”
In front of a crowd of mostly maskless supporters not adhering to social distancing in Swanton, Ohio, Trump suggested that only older Americans with heart problems and preexisting conditions truly need to fear the virus.
“It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems.
That’s what it really affects,” the president said.
“In some states, thousands of people — nobody young.
Below the age of 18, like, nobody. They have a strong immune system, who knows?
Take your hat off to the young, because they have a hell of an immune system.
But it affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing.”
[....]
In March in one of the president’s interviews with Woodward for the book “Rage,” Trump acknowledged downplaying the severity of covid-19, saying that the virus affected “plenty of young people.”
“Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob,” Trump told Woodward.
“But just today, and yesterday, some startling facts came out.
It’s not just old, older.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... ng-people/
Either his followers are too stupid to know that he's lying, or they know but they just don't care.
22 Sep 2020 12:16 pm
There is something very wrong with Senators vowing to vote for a SCOTUS nominee, when a nominee hasn't even been named yet.Termin8tor » 22 Sep 2020, 7:13 am » wrote: ↑What is wrong with a Senator voting for a rock solid SCOTUS nominee, psycho?
Oh, because it hurts liberals' feelings.
So do they even plan to vet the person that Trump nominates?
Isn't that their job?
22 Sep 2020 2:13 pm
If what is happening in Europe is any indication, we are probably headed for a second wave of this pandemic, even though we never really left the first one.
And thanks to Jared Kushner, who was put in charge of securing PPE, shortages of personal protective equipment are still an issue.
And thanks to Jared Kushner, who was put in charge of securing PPE, shortages of personal protective equipment are still an issue.
It may be hard to believe after all these months, but the shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other critical health care supplies for dealing with the pandemic in the United States still haven’t been solved.
Instead, they continue and some have gotten worse.
Hospitals, nursing homes, and medical practices routinely have to waste time and heighten their disease exposure by decontaminating disposable masks and gloves for reuse.
Many organizations must still forage for critically needed equipment through back channels and black markets.
And while the supply of ventilators is no longer an issue, shortages of ICU medications and test-kit reagents remain.
https://hbr.org/2020/09/why-the-u-s-sti ... l-supplies
22 Sep 2020 2:33 pm
.Misty » 22 Sep 2020, 12:16 pm » wrote: ↑There is something very wrong with Senators vowing to vote for a SCOTUS nominee, when a nominee hasn't even been named yet.What is wrong with a Senator voting for a rock solid SCOTUS nominee, psycho?
Oh, because it hurts liberals' feelings.
So do they even plan to vet the person that Trump nominates?
Isn't that their job?
Oh wow, that's a huge abuse of power, right psycho? Trump could nominate Bozo the Clown, and they'd have to put him on the Supreme Court.
Imbecile.
And Trump is going to nominate someone already vetted and through the process, so procedures should be minimal and easy.
So what's the smear job this time, claim a woman set up gang rapes?
She molests children?
The last Confirmation Clown Show and all those ugly lies was about as ugly as they could get.
And you of course spread many of them.
22 Sep 2020 5:09 pm
Right-wing Christians ‘praise the Lord’ for death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In a compilation of extremist Christians’ responses to the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at LGBTQ Nation, the late justice was called a “murdering hag” by one follower of Christ while another compared her to Adolf Hitler before stating he had redeeming qualities she lacked.
As the report notes, far-right Christians were beside themselves with joy after Ginsburg passed away from pancreatic cancer, paving the way for Donald Trump to nominate her successor who will likely be a deciding vote to eliminate a woman’s right to control her own body.
According to former GOP politician and evangelical Gordon Klingenschmitt, “With glowing tributes from leftists, pro-aborts, LGBTs and the mainstream media pouring in from around the globe, I personally mourn her death because she apparently did not know Christ.
This past month I prayed for her soul, that she would prepare to meet God.”
That was one of the nicer things said about the liberal Supreme Court pioneer.
Evangelical activist Dave Daubenmire didn’t hold back in his contempt for the late Ginsburg, writing, “Hitler condoned the killing of at least six million. Ginsburg – 60 million.
Do you mourn Hitler’s death? Who’s more wicked?
If it wasn’t a tragedy that Hitler died, why is it a tragedy that she died?
Can somebody explain that to me, please?”
“Hitler had good intentions,” he added.
“He reformed Germany. He did a lot of good things. He rebuilt their economy.
We’re just not going to hold this murder of these Jews against him, are we?
He did a lot of great things.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, why she went and advanced women’s rights.
She brought women out of the kitchen. Oh, she did so many good things.
Do you see where I’m going with this, folks? Wake the heck up.
She was destructive. She was wicked and destructive.”
Former Donald Trump adviser Frank Amedia couldn’t help but make a joke about her Jewish faith, writing, “very interesting that a Jewish princess was taken home on Rosh Hashanah — or taken somewhere, praise the Lord, I’ll leave that to him.”
At the right-wing Christian site Stream, John Zmirak speculated God killed Ginsburg “… at just this moment for some special reason,” giving the president an opportunity to dramatically alter the court in a way that would please Christians.
In a compilation of extremist Christians’ responses to the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at LGBTQ Nation, the late justice was called a “murdering hag” by one follower of Christ while another compared her to Adolf Hitler before stating he had redeeming qualities she lacked.
As the report notes, far-right Christians were beside themselves with joy after Ginsburg passed away from pancreatic cancer, paving the way for Donald Trump to nominate her successor who will likely be a deciding vote to eliminate a woman’s right to control her own body.
According to former GOP politician and evangelical Gordon Klingenschmitt, “With glowing tributes from leftists, pro-aborts, LGBTs and the mainstream media pouring in from around the globe, I personally mourn her death because she apparently did not know Christ.
This past month I prayed for her soul, that she would prepare to meet God.”
That was one of the nicer things said about the liberal Supreme Court pioneer.
Evangelical activist Dave Daubenmire didn’t hold back in his contempt for the late Ginsburg, writing, “Hitler condoned the killing of at least six million. Ginsburg – 60 million.
Do you mourn Hitler’s death? Who’s more wicked?
If it wasn’t a tragedy that Hitler died, why is it a tragedy that she died?
Can somebody explain that to me, please?”
“Hitler had good intentions,” he added.
“He reformed Germany. He did a lot of good things. He rebuilt their economy.
We’re just not going to hold this murder of these Jews against him, are we?
He did a lot of great things.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, why she went and advanced women’s rights.
She brought women out of the kitchen. Oh, she did so many good things.
Do you see where I’m going with this, folks? Wake the heck up.
She was destructive. She was wicked and destructive.”
Former Donald Trump adviser Frank Amedia couldn’t help but make a joke about her Jewish faith, writing, “very interesting that a Jewish princess was taken home on Rosh Hashanah — or taken somewhere, praise the Lord, I’ll leave that to him.”
At the right-wing Christian site Stream, John Zmirak speculated God killed Ginsburg “… at just this moment for some special reason,” giving the president an opportunity to dramatically alter the court in a way that would please Christians.
22 Sep 2020 5:19 pm
And they would.Termin8tor » 22 Sep 2020, 2:33 pm » wrote: ↑Oh wow, that's a huge abuse of power, right psycho? Trump could nominate Bozo the Clown, and they'd have to put him on the Supreme Court.Misty » 22 Sep 2020, 12:16 pm » wrote: ↑There is something very wrong with Senators vowing to vote for a SCOTUS nominee, when a nominee hasn't even been named yet.
So do they even plan to vet the person that Trump nominates?
Isn't that their job?
Vetted by whom? Him?Termin8tor » 22 Sep 2020, 2:33 pm » wrote: ↑ And Trump is going to nominate someone already vetted and through the process, so procedures should be minimal and easy.
His idea of vetting people, is hiring them right off FOX News.
22 Sep 2020 6:51 pm
22 Sep 2020 7:06 pm
We are now less than 45 days from the election and a nominee has not even been named yet.The general process for filling vacancies on all of these courts is the same.
The president’s nomination is sent to the Senate and referred to the Judiciary Committee.
After evaluation of the nominee’s record and legal career, and a background investigation by the FBI, the Judiciary Committee holds a hearing at which a nominee testifies and answers Senators’ questions.
The Judiciary Committee then votes whether to report the nomination to the full Senate with a positive, negative, or no recommendation.
The full Senate then debates and votes on whether to give its consent and, if it does, the president signs the nominee’s commission and the new judge takes the oath of office required by federal law.
Over the past three decades, the Judiciary Committee has held a hearing an average of 45 days after a Supreme Court nomination and a final confirmation vote occurred an average of 26 days after that.
https://www.heritage.org/courts/heritag ... t-nominees
23 Sep 2020 3:29 pm
Another super spreader rally.
No masks, no social distancing.
It's a death cult.
His goons laugh and cheer while he once again mocks a reporter who was shot with a rubber bullet while covering a protest.
No masks, no social distancing.
It's a death cult.
His goons laugh and cheer while he once again mocks a reporter who was shot with a rubber bullet while covering a protest.
23 Sep 2020 6:02 pm
Why are they so willing to risk their lives just to get a glimpse of their Dear Leader?Termin8tor » 23 Sep 2020, 3:31 pm » wrote: ↑Yeah, those deranged middle class Americans are part of a death cult!Another super spreader rally.
No masks, no social distancing.
It's a death cult.
I love psychotic moonbat humor.
23 Sep 2020 6:04 pm
23 Sep 2020 6:37 pm
Trump connects Supreme Court fight to his bid to hold onto power
The fear among Donald Trump's detractors is that he has a dangerous post-election scheme in mind.
They've described a possible scenario in which the Republican president will appear to have an early lead on Election Day among voters who cast ballots in person -- before mail-in ballots are counted -- at which point Trump will declare victory based on an incomplete tally.
From there, the president and his team will ramp up efforts to delegitimize ballots cast by mail, and turn to the courts to stop the vote-count in as many places as possible.
Part of the problem with this imagined series of events is that Trump keeps hinting that his critics are right about his plans.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina over the weekend, the Republican boasted, "We're going to have a victory on November 3rd the likes of which you've never seen.
Now, we're counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins.
In other words, the president wants to say he won before the votes are counted, and he expects Republican-approved judges to help deliver a victory, whether he's earned it or not.
During a brief White House Q&A with reporters yesterday, Trump echoed the point, tying his plan to his upcoming Supreme Court nominee.
Those words have actual meaning, though the president doesn't seem to know that.
But far more important is the scenario Trump appears to be describing: he wants nine justices in order to address "millions of ballots that they're sending."
There was surprisingly little subtlety to the president's comments: he noted the ballots, then the Supreme Court, then the ballots, then the Supreme Court, then the ballots, and then the Supreme Court.
We don't need a decoder ring to translate Trump to English: the president, if he doesn't win the election the proper way, expects the judiciary he's helped fill with far-right ideologues to hand him a second term.
Matt O'Brien joked, "Trump is like a Bond villain who can't help but tell us about his plan to rig the election."
Ezra Klein added, "The president keeps making clear that unless Democrats win by an unquestionable landslide, he will fight the results of the election and trigger an unprecedented legitimacy crisis, unless he's allowed to simply steal power. We are in such dangerous territory."
I couldn't agree more.
Postscript: During his brief Q&A yesterday afternoon, Trump referenced the need for nine justices five times, but let's not lose sight of the high-court arithmetic. As a result of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, conservative justices now enjoy a 5-3 advantage.
It's hard not to wonder whether the president is concerned that his election scheme will be so brazen and so hostile toward democracy that one of the conservatives may not be comfortable, so Trump wants a 6-3 advantage, just to make sure the high court will be corrupt enough to keep him in power.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-sho ... r-n1240813
The fear among Donald Trump's detractors is that he has a dangerous post-election scheme in mind.
They've described a possible scenario in which the Republican president will appear to have an early lead on Election Day among voters who cast ballots in person -- before mail-in ballots are counted -- at which point Trump will declare victory based on an incomplete tally.
From there, the president and his team will ramp up efforts to delegitimize ballots cast by mail, and turn to the courts to stop the vote-count in as many places as possible.
Part of the problem with this imagined series of events is that Trump keeps hinting that his critics are right about his plans.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina over the weekend, the Republican boasted, "We're going to have a victory on November 3rd the likes of which you've never seen.
Now, we're counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins.
In other words, the president wants to say he won before the votes are counted, and he expects Republican-approved judges to help deliver a victory, whether he's earned it or not.
During a brief White House Q&A with reporters yesterday, Trump echoed the point, tying his plan to his upcoming Supreme Court nominee.
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, it's probably worth emphasizing that sending ballots to voters -- especially during a deadly pandemic -- is neither a "scam" nor a "hoax.""We need nine justices. You need that. With the unsolicited millions of ballots that they're sending, it's a scam; it's a hoax. Everybody knows that. And the Democrats know it better than anybody else. So you're going to need nine justices up there. I think it's going to be very important. Because what they're doing is a hoax, with the ballots. They're sending out tens of millions of ballots, unsolicited -- not where they're being asked, but unsolicited. And that's a hoax, and you're going to need to have nine justices.... And the Democrats know what they're doing is wrong, and all they want to do is go forward with it. So I think you're going to need the nine justices."
Those words have actual meaning, though the president doesn't seem to know that.
But far more important is the scenario Trump appears to be describing: he wants nine justices in order to address "millions of ballots that they're sending."
There was surprisingly little subtlety to the president's comments: he noted the ballots, then the Supreme Court, then the ballots, then the Supreme Court, then the ballots, and then the Supreme Court.
We don't need a decoder ring to translate Trump to English: the president, if he doesn't win the election the proper way, expects the judiciary he's helped fill with far-right ideologues to hand him a second term.
Matt O'Brien joked, "Trump is like a Bond villain who can't help but tell us about his plan to rig the election."
Ezra Klein added, "The president keeps making clear that unless Democrats win by an unquestionable landslide, he will fight the results of the election and trigger an unprecedented legitimacy crisis, unless he's allowed to simply steal power. We are in such dangerous territory."
I couldn't agree more.
Postscript: During his brief Q&A yesterday afternoon, Trump referenced the need for nine justices five times, but let's not lose sight of the high-court arithmetic. As a result of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, conservative justices now enjoy a 5-3 advantage.
It's hard not to wonder whether the president is concerned that his election scheme will be so brazen and so hostile toward democracy that one of the conservatives may not be comfortable, so Trump wants a 6-3 advantage, just to make sure the high court will be corrupt enough to keep him in power.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-sho ... r-n1240813
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