Trump and Other Republican Fascists Planning for Their Big Day

Trump and Other Republican Fascists Planning for Their Big Day

Counting from midnight tonight, there are 27 more days for Trump to bring on the crazy, plus a half-day on January 20th until Biden is sworn in at noon. 

Let's hope he doesn't launch a nuclear weapon somewhere, simply out of spite. I wish I could say I was kidding. Presumably the highest commanders of the military have made special arrangements so that if Trump were to push a nuclear button, the command will be immediately halted and reviewed by a host of responsible personnel and then cancelled. It's amazingly sad that we even have to think the POTUS is so deranged this is a conceivable possibility.

Trump is going crazy at the realization he is a loser and this time there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. The capstone of his career and he leaves an impeached one-term loser with the economy and country in the toilet. 

He'll leave after pardoning more war criminals who kill innocent children, and giving pardons or clemency to all his friends who were in jail or deserved it, and his grifter family, and probably even himself (which Biden can supposedly undo with an Executive Order, since Trump's self-pardon will be unconstitutional.) What remains is pure disgust for all the Republicans who have gone along with, and will continue to go with, Trump's vacuous and lunatic claims of fraud in an historical, fascist effort to overturn one of the cleanest elections in US history. To put it directly, they are aiding Trump in the seditious coup attempt. Trump could, and perhaps should, be brought up on articles of impeachment right now. The FBI and Department of Justice should be investigating his traitorous acts. 

Trump actually entertained the idea of martial law in the White House last Friday night, brought in by the admitted criminal Michael Flynn, who twice admitted lying to the FBI and who put this idea into Trump's head. Trump denied it on Twitter, but we all know what Trump's word is worth: 0 or a pile of shit, whichever is lower.

Crazy Sidney Powell was also at this wild, five-hour meeting, reported to be advocating for the seizure of the voting machines used in swing states and who knows what else. Trump was said to be considering her as special counsel to lead an investigation, which even Uncle Rudy was starkly against. How crazy was the conversation if Rudy Giuliani was trying to play the voice of reason?    

Trump has now resorted to rabidly attacking any Republicans who have dared to admit the election was fair, such as Mitch McConnell and John Thune, claiming that McConnell wouldn't have won reelection without Trump's intervention. Which is ludicrous because McConnell always wins reelection by a country mile, and Kentucky is land with a great deal of both open and mountainous country.   

New York's attorney general called Trump's consideration of martial law an "act of sedition." 

Trump and his corral of fellow seditionists now appear to be focusing on January 6th, which is when Congress counts the electoral votes. Remember, all the electoral votes have been certified -- each state's legislature matched electoral college voters with the results of the votes of their populace's vote on election day -- with no "faithless electors" -- electors who stray from the party the majority of their voters voted for for president. 

What a dumb way to elect a president. 

The 118th session of Congress begins January 3rd, 2021, which is when new senators and representatives are sworn in. This gives Trump several new ignorant crazies to do his diaper work, such as Tommy Tuberville of Georgia, who besides having a little boy's name doesn't know what the three branches of government are, and bigot and Qanon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Trump has called a "future Republican Star."

On January 6th, the newly seated Congress is to count the certified electoral votes. This is usually pro forma, with the occasional protest vote unrelated to the mechanics of the electoral process itself. But Trump is promising a "wild protest" on this day in the streets of D.C. Inside Congress, here's what can happen, which "constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail." From the NY Times:

The effort is being led by Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, a backbench conservative. Along with a group of allies in the House, he is eyeing challenges to the election results in five different states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin — where they claim varying degrees of fraud or illegal voting took place, despite certification by the voting authorities and no evidence of widespread impropriety.

“We have a superior role under the Constitution than the Supreme Court does, than any federal court judge does, than any state court judge does,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “What we say, goes. That’s the final verdict.”

Under rules laid out in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, their challenges must be submitted in writing with a senator’s signature also affixed. No Republican senator has yet stepped forward to say he or she will back such an effort, though a handful of reliable allies of Mr. Trump, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled they would be open to doing so.

Even if a senator did agree, constitutional scholars say the process is intended to be an arduous one. Once an objection is heard from a member of each house of Congress, senators and representatives will retreat to their chambers on opposite sides of the Capitol for a two-hour debate and then a vote on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Both the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate would have to agree to toss out a state’s electoral votes — something that has not happened since the 19th century.

Several Senate Republicans — including Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — have forcefully rejected the idea of overturning the results, and their votes would be enough for Mr. Biden to prevail with the support of Democrats.

“The Jan. 6 meeting is going to confirm that regardless of how many objections get filed and who signs on, they are not going to affect the outcome of the process,” said Edward B. Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University who has written extensively on the electoral process. “We can say that with clear confidence.”

But he noted that the session could still carry consequences for the next few years. If even one Republican senator backed the effort, it could ensure that the partisan cloud hanging over the election would darken Mr. Biden’s presidency for years to come. If none did, it could send a definitive message to the country that despite Mr. Trump’s bluster, the party trusted the results of the electoral process and was finally ready to recognize Mr. Biden as the rightful winner.

Mr. Brooks is far from the first lawmaker to try to use the tallying process to challenge the results of a bitter election loss. House Democrats made attempts in 2001, 2005 and even 2017, but they were essentially acts of protest after their party’s nominee had already accepted defeat.

What is different now is Mr. Trump’s historic defiance of democratic norms and his party’s willing acquiescence. If Mr. Trump were to bless the effort to challenge the congressional tally, he could force Republicans into a difficult decision about whether to support an assault on the election results that is essentially doomed or risk his ire. Many Republicans are already fearful of being punished by voters for failing to keep up his fight.

The dilemma is particularly acute for Mr. Pence, who is eyeing his own presidential run in 2024. As president of the Senate, he has the constitutionally designated task of opening and tallying envelopes sent from all 50 states and announcing their electoral results.

But given Mr. Trump’s penchant for testing every law and norm in Washington, he could insist that Mr. Pence refuse to play that role. And either way, it will call for a final performance of the delicate dance Mr. Pence has performed for four years, trying to maintain Mr. Trump’s confidence while adhering to the law.

Mo Brooks has, of course, only the best considerations of the country in his heart:

“My No. 1 goal is to fix a badly flawed American election system that too easily permits voter fraud and election theft,” Mr. Brooks said. “A possible bonus from achieving that goal is that Donald Trump would win the Electoral College officially, as I believe he in fact did if you only count lawful votes by eligible American citizens and exclude all illegal votes.”

Brooks has no evidence of any voter fraud and election theft, not one iota, just like the rest of these villains, and won't be presenting any between now and January 6th. Are journalists even asking him anymore?? 

In reality, if they can't get Trump installed as dictator, they at least want to get rid of mail-in voting, so all the blacks and other minorities won't have such an easy time getting to the polls and voting for Democrats. That's been a popular conservative project, carried out with great passion and enthusiasm, since the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. 

John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and majority whip, says any January 6th shenanigans "would go down like a shot dog," for which Trump flicked boogers at him and called him childish names on the playground. 

It's a bald coup attempt that cannot and will not be allowed to succeed, and if it worked would set America on fire like nothing before it except perhaps the Civil War. It's absurd to think it will work and how the twisted gears of Trump's diseased, tragic, psychopathic, fascist mind think it could, or how he could possibly govern after it. 

The most disturbing part of it all is how many elected officials are perfectly willing to help Trump overthrow US democracy. They should all be brought up on charges of sedition after the 6th, starting with Trump, and only with Trump if that's all Biden and Pelosi can muster, and even that is unlikely. They'll simply be passive in view of one of the greatest criminal attempts in American governmental history, in the interest of "moving on." Which never works in the long-term. Which means we will see even worse in the future, and probably in not many years at all, like, say,  2024. It's almost a certainty at this point.