The Biggest Loser

lousubcap · March 4

The Supreme Court has indicated it will issue rulings today, one of which could be the decision on whether Colorado should keep former President Trump off the primary ballot. The court noted on its website yesterday that rulings are expected, although today is not scheduled on the Court calendar as a ruling day, meaning the justices will not be present to announce any decisions as they normally would be. Trump is currently set to appear on the state primary ballot tomorrow after a hold was placed on the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that disqualified him due to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Lawrence Hurley reports for NBC News.

Gulfcoastguy · March 4

The result was a 9 to 0 ruling against Colorado.

lousubcap · March 4

No surprise there. We just need the wheels of justice to get past the across the board delay tactics and bring CHEETO to trial before November 2024. But the playbook is not a surprise to all in the various court cases.

JohnInCarolina · March 5

lousubcap · March 7

And this to succinctly summarize where we are today: F'me!

"Last night, even as Super Tuesday results flooded in showing overwhelming support for DONALD TRUMP and meager returns for NIKKI HALEY, a spokesperson for Haley’s campaign said the mood in her inner circle was “jubilant.”

The jubilation seems to have passed.

This morning, Haley officially suspended her campaign, striking a ruminant tone in remarks to supporters in South Carolina.

“I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that,” Haley said. “I have no regrets. And while I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.”

Haley declined to formally endorse Trump for president, saying today that it is now up to him “to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it, who did not support him, and I hope he does that.” More from Natalie Allison

Welcome to the general election. Trump is now the GOP’s nominee-in-waiting, and the matchup between Trump and President JOE BIDEN is now the indisputable main event in American politics.

“It will be the country’s first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years,” NYT’s Shane Goldmacher notes. “And it will be an eight-month slog, with two nominees who polls show are deeply unpopular and who are each determined to make the race about his opponent, leaving both bent on running exceedingly negative campaigns.”

Falling in line is outgoing Senate Minority Leader MITCH McCONNELL, who tepidly endorsed Trump. “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support,” McConnell said in a statement. More from Burgess Everett and Ursula Perano

Trump’s response to Haley’s departure: “Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries. Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. “I’d like to thank my family, friends, and the Great Republican Party for helping me to produce, by far, the most successful Super Tuesday in HISTORY, and would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”

Biden’s response: “Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in a statement after Haley made the news official. “I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.”"

JohnInCarolina · March 8

lousubcap · March 8

A Manhattan judge overseeing the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president is allowing members of the jury to remain anonymous, citing former President Trump’s “extensive history of publicly and repeatedly attacking trial jurors and grand jurors.” Trump’s trial is due to begin in New York on March 25. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said the decision to keep the jury anonymous is appropriate because “there is a likelihood of bribery, jury tampering, or of physical injury or harassment of juror(s).” Nada Tawfik and Max Matza report for BBC News.

Trump has been ordered to pay a six-figure legal bill to a British business intelligence consultancy that he unsuccessfully sued for making what Trump’s lawyer claimed were “shocking and scandalous” false claims. A London judge who threw out the case against Orbis Business Intelligence, the firm founded by Christopher Steele, said the lawsuit was “bound to fail,” and has ordered Trump to pay $382,000 in legal fees, according to court documents released yesterday. Brian Melley reports for AP News.

HeavyG · March 9

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5017260/uploads/editor/c5/9quq65vi785i.png

So Orban flies into Miami for a day visit the same day Trumpy is able to post the bond in the E. Jean Carol case. Guessing that Putin gave Orban a few big bags of money to deliver so Trumpy could get the bond.

JohnInCarolina · March 9

HeavyG said:

So Orban flies into Miami for a day visit the same day Trumpy is able to post the bond in the E. Jean Carol case. Guessing that Putin gave Orban a few big bags of money to deliver so Trumpy could get the bond.

I’m starting to see more reporters pick up on this angle, especially as Trump seeks to find a way to secure 500 mil or so for the NY bond. If he has to get a loan from the Saudis for a couple hundred mil, all of a sudden we have a Presidential candidate that is in significant debt to a foreign state.

Of course, no peep of this will ever be mentioned on Fox News, so half the country will have no idea it’s even an issue…

JohnInCarolina · March 11

lousubcap · March 12

"Trump’s legal team yesterday asked the judge overseeing his New York hush money case to postpone the trial until after the Supreme Court decides on whether he has presidential immunity. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in late April over whether Trump is immune from prosecution for any crimes he committed during his presidency. If New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan agrees with Trump’s request, his trial would be delayed beyond its current start date of March 25. Erin Doherty reports for Axios.

Trump once again denied allegations by writer E. Jean Carroll that he raped her, despite facing nearly $90 million in civil penalties for previously making similar statements. Carroll’s attorney responded that the writer’s legal team is closely monitoring Trump’s latest remarks, and suggested a third defamation lawsuit could be in store for Trump. Speaking in an interview on CNBC, Trump said, “I got charged, I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation.” Kevin Breuninger reports for CNBC."

JohnInCarolina · March 12

lousubcap · March 15

A worthwhile read if you value US classified information.

THE ATLANTIC DAILY

Donald Trump Is a National-Security Risk

The GOP candidate should not be given intelligence briefings.

By Tom Nichols

An Insider Threat

According to reports last week, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing to give Donald Trump classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy every White House extends to major-party candidates to ensure an effective transition. An excellent tradition—but not one that should be observed this year.

The decision rests, as always, with the sitting president, and Joe Biden is likely to continue this practice so that he will not be accused of “politicizing” access to intelligence. Such accusations need not be taken seriously; they would only be more meaningless noise from a GOP that has already stumbled in a clumsy attempt to impeach Biden after leveling charges of corruption at both him and his son. And although denying Trump access to classified briefs would produce squawks and yowls from Republicans, it would also serve as a reminder that Trump cannot be trusted with classified information.

The risks of denying Trump these early briefings are negligible. As we learned from his presidency, Trump is fundamentally unbriefable: He doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t understand complicated national-security matters anyway. The problem with giving Trump these briefings, however, isn’t that he’s ignorant. He’s also dangerous, as his record shows.

Indeed, if Trump were a federal employee, he’d have likely already been stripped of his clearances and escorted from the building. I say this from experience: I was granted my first security clearance when I was 25 years old—Ronald Reagan was still president, which tells you how long ago that was—and I held a top-secret clearance when I advised a senior U.S. senator during the Gulf War. I then held a clearance as a Department of Defense employee for more than a quarter century.

Government employees who hold clearances have to attend annual refresher courses about a variety of issues, including some pretty obvious stuff about not writing down passwords or taking money from a friendly Chinese businessman wearing an American baseball cap. (No, really, that’s a scenario in some of the course materials.) But one area of annual training is always about “insider threats,” the people in your own organization who may pose risks to classified information. Federal workers are taken through a list of behaviors and characteristics that should trigger their concern enough to report the person involved, or at least initiate a talk with a supervisor.

Trump checks almost every box on those lists. (You can find examples of insider-threat training here and here, but every agency has particular briefs they give to their organizations.)

In general, clearance holders are told to watch their co-workers for various warnings, including expressions of hostility to the U.S. government, erratic behavior, unreported contact or financial dealings with foreigners, unexplained wealth (or severe financial problems), an interest in classified material beyond the subject’s work requirements, or evidence of illegal drug use or substance abuse. Every case is different, but rarely does a government employee raise almost every one of these red flags.

Opposing U.S. policy, for example, is not a problem for people with clearances—I did it myself—but Trump’s hatred of the current administration is wedded to a generic contempt for what he calls the “deep state,” a slam he applies to any American institution that tries to hold him accountable for his behavior. This kind of anti-establishment rage would put any clearance in jeopardy, especially given Trump’s rantings about how the current government (and American society overall) is full of “vermin.”

Meanwhile, a federal worker who had even a fraction of the cache of classified documents Trump took with him after he left Washington would be in a world of trouble—especially if he or she told the Justice Department to go pound sand after being instructed to return them. And by “trouble,” I mean “almost certainly arrested and frog-marched to jail.”

Trump’s knotty and opaque finances—and what we now know to be his liesabout his wealth—in New York before he was a candidate would likely also have tanked his access to highly classified information. (Government workers can have a lot of problems of all kinds, but lying about them is almost always deadly for a clearance.) Worse, anyone seeking even a minor clearance who was as entangled as Trump has been over the years with the Russian government and who held a bank account in China would likely be laughed right out of the office.

Trump’s open and continuing affection for men such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean Maximum-Weirdo Dynasty Boss Kim Jong Un would also be, to say the least, a matter of concern for any security organization. (Or, I should say, for any Americansecurity organization. Russia’s FSB, I’m sure, would see no issues here.)

But even if Trump could explain away his creepy dictator crushes and clarify his byzantine finances, he is currently facing more than half a billion dollars in court judgments against him.

That’s a lot of money for anyone, and Trump’s scramble to post a bond for even a small portion of that suggests that the man is in terrible financial condition, which is always a bright-red light in the clearance process. (Debt trips up a lot of people, and I knew folks who had clearances suspended over their money troubles.)

Whether Trump is too erratic or volatile for elected office is a judgment for voters, but his statements and public behavior have long suggested (at least to me and many others) that he is an emotionally unstable person. Emotional problems in themselves are not a disqualification; we all have them. But Trump’s irrational tirades and threats are the kind of thing that can become a clearance issue. The former president’s lack of impulse control—note that he has been unable to stop attacking the writer E. Jean Carroll, despite huge court judgments against him for defaming her—could also lead him to blurt out whatever he learns from his briefings during rallies or public appearances if he thinks it will help him.

As to the other major category considered in granting clearances, I have no idea whether Trump uses or abuses substances or medications of any kind. But what I do know is that Trump encouraged an attack on the U.S. constitutional order and tried to overturn a legal election. He has now vowed to pardon people who were duly convicted in courts of law for their actions in the January 6 insurrection—he calls them “hostages”—and are now serving the sentences they’ve earned.

In sum, Trump is an anti-American, debt-ridden, unstable man who has voiced his open support for violent seditionists. If he were any other citizen asking for the privilege of handling classified material, he would be sent packing.

If he is elected, of course, government employees will have no choice but to give the returning president access to everything, including the files that are among the holiest of holies, such as the identities of our spies overseas and the status of our nuclear forces. Senior civil servants could refuse and publicly resign, and explain why, but in the end, the system (despite Trump’s “deep state” accusations) is designed to support the president, not obstruct him, and a reelected President Trump will get whatever he demands.

If the American people decide to allow Trump back into the White House, President Biden can’t do anything about it. In the meantime, however, he can limit the damage by delaying Trump’s access to classified material for as long as possible.

HeavyG · March 15

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5017260/uploads/editor/sb/58htdd2auktj.png

https://x.com/SwissWatchGuy/status/1768368415197040973?s=20

What we really need in the US is the EU equivalent of their GDPR.

HeavyG · March 15

lousubcap · March 15

"The judge presiding over the federal criminal case involving Trump’s handling of classified documents denied one his two motions to dismiss yesterday. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon found that Trump’s argument — that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague as it applies to presidents — is better suited to be addressed later “in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions.” Cannon made clear she was skeptical of his attorney’s arguments on their other motion to dismiss, which argues that the Presidential Records Act bars Trump from prosecution. Cannon said she would rule on that motion “promptly.” Katherine Doyle, Dareh Gregorian, and Gary Grumbach report for NBC News."

lousubcap · March 15

A bit more on Diana Ross and The Supremes decision regarding CHEETO and the 14th Amendment:

Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig issued a searing rebuke of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that Colorado could not disqualify former President Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban, which preserved his ability to seek a second term. Article linked below:

Former federal judge: Supreme Court ‘dangerously betrayed’ democracy with Trump disqualification decision

JohnInCarolina · March 16

lousubcap · March 17

And a look behind the clown show curtain:

"WHAT JARED KUSHNER IS UP TO: “Kushner Developing Deals Overseas Even as His Father-in-Law Runs for President,” by NYT’s Eric Lipton, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman: He’s “closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia … Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with RICHARD GRENELL … Mr. Grenell has said privately that he hopes to be secretary of state in a second Trump administration.”

CASH DASH: At Mar-a-Lago, Trump has hosted the likes of LARRY ELLISON and PEPE FANJUL for lots of private dinners lately, mounting a “charm offensive” that his advisers hope could ultimately give his campaign a boost, NYT’s Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report. Trump is facing a significant cash disparity with Biden this cycle, and multiple Trump donors have been asked lately if they could bump up from seven-figure to eight-figure pledges, as “some top donors remain hesitant” about contributing. Trump’s legal woes loom over his campaign as a significant personal financial drain."

CHEETO makes Nixon look like a saint.

JohnInCarolina · March 17

JohnInCarolina · March 17

Starting to think this Trump guy isn’t one of our best.

lousubcap · March 17

From Robert Reich yesterday:

"At a rally today outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Trump warned that “if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath … for the country.”

He also warned that if he didn’t win, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

In the rest of the speech he repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been utterly discredited.

He praised the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commending their spirit, and promising to help them if elected in November.

He cast migrants as threats to American citizens — claiming without evidence that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”

Trump is clearly desperate. He knows that his future freedom and his fortune both depend on winning in November. He has no qualms about turning Americans against Americans to achieve this goal.

This past week, Trump’s own former Vice President, Mike Pence, had enough integrity to refuse to endorse Trump. If other current and former Republican officials had an ounce of integrity, they would do the same. Today’s disgraceful performance should be a wakeup call, if they still need one.

The rest of us must do everything in our power to ensure that this monster never again comes close to the Oval Office."

The below from John Kelly continues to ring true:

"Former President Donald Trump’s ex-chief of staff said the twice-impeached Republican is intimidated by the possibility he may finally face accountability for his actions.

“He’s scared shitless,” John Kelly, the chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, told The Washington Post on Tuesday, (June 13, 2023).

dbCooper · March 17

"He praised the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commending their spirit, and promising to help them if elected in November."

This is all so confusing to me. Trump and the MAGA faithful had been steadfast in maintaining the Jan. 6th insurrectionists were ANTIFA and deep-state FBI operatives. How and why have they now become "hostages and patriots"?

lousubcap · March 19

Donald Trump said he reached out to the world’s biggest insurance companies to seek help in arranging an appeal bond covering the $454 million verdict against him in New York—and none would take his real estate as collateral. They all want cash and Trump says he doesn’t have enough. The twice-impeached former president will be forced to hold a “fire sale” of his properties to raise enough cash if the bond isn’t waived while he challenges the verdict, he claimed in a filing.

lousubcap · March 19

"Trump cannot find a private company to guarantee the $464 million he has been ordered to pay in a New York civil fraud case. Trump said the bond is “impossible for any company, including one as successful as mine,” while his lawyers said they had approached 30 companies without success. New York’s attorney general has vowed to seize Trump’s assets if he does not pay the fraud judgment. Madeline Halpert reports for BBC News.

The judge overseeing Trump’s criminal trial prosecution in New York has denied his attempts to exclude evidence relating to the Access Hollywood tape and testimony from key witnesses from his upcoming criminal trial, but prosecutors will not be allowed to play the tape to jurors. Judge Juan Merchan rejected the defense’s argument that Trump’s former lawyer should be allowed to testify because he has a history of lying and that calling him to the witness stand would be suborning perjury. “This Court has been unable to locate any treatise, statute or holding from courts in this jurisdiction or others that support defendant’s rationale that a particular witness should be kept off the witness stand because his credibility has been previously called into question,” Merchan said. Judge Merchan also ruled that Stormy Daniels is also able to testify, saying that the “probative value of the evidence is evident.” Aaron Katersky and Peter Charalambous report for ABC News.

Former President Trump adviser Peter Navarro must report to prison today, making him the first high-ranking Trump official to serve prison time over actions related to the Jan.6 Capitol riot. It follows the Supreme Court rejecting Navarro’s bid yesterday to remain free while he appeals his conviction for contempt of Congress. Chief Justice John Roberts said that he saw no reason to disagree with the determination of a federal court of appeals that Navarro had not “met his burden to establish his entitlement to relief.” Sareen Habeshian reports for Axios."

fishlessman · March 19

lousubcap said:

Donald Trump said he reached out to the world’s biggest insurance companies to seek help in arranging an appeal bond covering the $454 million verdict against him in New York—and none would take his real estate as collateral. They all want cash and Trump says he doesn’t have enough. The twice-impeached former president will be forced to hold a “fire sale” of his properties to raise enough cash if the bond isn’t waived while he challenges the verdict, he claimed in a filing.

i have a feeling this isnt going to happen. saw something about due process yesterday and this would fall under that. water dont stick to a duck.......

lousubcap · March 19

Liz Cheney on Trump RNC takeover: ‘Donors better beware’

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) took a swipe at former President Trump’s overhaul of the Republican National Committee (RNC), warning donors should “beware” after the former president’s legal team said it was “impossible” to secure a bond for the damages owed in his New York civil fraud case.

“It is just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?” Cheney wrote Monday on X, formerly Twitter. “Donors better beware.” (Article linked below.)

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4541912-liz-cheney-trump-rnc-takeover-donors-better-beware/?email=

lousubcap · March 19

Since I'm here- From The Hill-

Pence saved the country once; he might do so again

https://thehill.com/opinion/4540929-press-pence-saved-the-country-once-he-might-do-so-again/?email=
Be a while- CHEETO makes Nixon look like a saint.

lousubcap · March 20

"Trump told the Supreme Court yesterday he should be granted absolute immunity for his effort to overturn the 2020 election results that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, saying a ruling against him would “incapacitate every future president.” Trump’s legal team filed a brief outlining its legal arguments ahead of oral arguments set for April 25, saying, “The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.” Trump’s team also left open the possibility that, if the Court rejects his bid to find he is completely immune from prosecution, it could remand the case to the district court for further fact-finding on whether the charges involve official acts that receive a more qualified immunity. Lawrence Hurley reports for NBC News."

CHEETO's predecessors did just fine without this immunity CHEETO is crying for...

lousubcap · March 21

The Atlantic- Tom Nichols writings- (worth the read if you value insights)
BTW- this is core to @dbcpper's post of March 17- ("He praised the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commending their spirit, and promising to help them if elected in November."

This is all so confusing to me. Trump and the MAGA faithful had been steadfast in maintaining the Jan. 6th insurrectionists were ANTIFA and deep-state FBI operatives. How and why have they now become "hostages and patriots"? )

Donald Trump’s plan to pardon people in prison for their crimes on January 6—people he now calls “hostages”—is yet another dangerous and un-American attack on the rule of law.

A Loyal Cadre in Waiting

This past weekend, Donald Trump stirred up one of his usual controversies by declaring that there would be a “bloodbath” if he isn’t elected. Trump’s supporters played a game of gotcha with outraged critics by claiming that Trump was merely describing an economic meltdown in the auto industry. Unfortunately, Trump decided, as he so often does, to pull the rug out from under his apologists by defending bloodbath as a common expression and clarifying that he meant it to refer to “getting slaughtered economically, when you’re getting slaughtered socially, when you’re getting slaughtered.” Oh.

So much for purely economic “slaughter.” Trump’s threats and violent language are nothing new. But while the nation’s pundits and partisans examine what it means for a presidential contender to mull over “getting slaughtered socially,” Trump has added a much more disturbing project to his list of campaign promises: He intends to pardon all the people jailed for the attack on the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.

Trump once held a maybe-sorta position on pardoning the insurrectionists. He is now, however, issuing full-throated vows to get them out of prison. On March 11, Trump declared on his Truth Social account: “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”

Trump isn’t the first to use the loaded expression hostages in this context: The one-term member of Congress Madison Cawthorn—an embarrassment even by MAGA standards—used it in 2021 before many of those arrested in connection with January 6 were even convicted, and current member and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, whose nucleonic decay from establishment Republican to right-wing extremist is fundamentally complete, has also used it.

Back in 2021, Trump claimed to be appalled by the violence at the Capitol, but that didn’t last long (and there is no reason to assume Trump was sincere in the first place). Semafor’s Shelby Talcott on Monday detailedhow Trump went from “outraged” in 2021, promising that “those who broke the law … will pay,” to offering blanket pardons in 2024. As Talcott wrote, Trump’s “evolution” began with “instinctive support for some of the most hardcore members of his own MAGA movement” and is now “a semi-formal alliance” with the Patriot Freedom Project, which claimed in December to have raised almost $1 million to free people convicted of crimes related to the insurrection.

This is not evolution so much as it is a kind of synergy, however, in which Trump and the right-wing fever swamp feed on each other’s manic energy. The QAnon conspiracy theorists, for example, anointed Trump as their champion, and Trump responded by eventually embracing them in return. When Trump goes to rallies and bellows for two hours at a time while using words such as vermin, or when his response to a question about the Proud Boys is to tell them to “stand back and stand by,” the MAGA ecosystem amplifies him and organizes his sentence fragments into something like guidance.

The only surprise here is that it took Trump this long to adopt a radical position supporting the people who were willing to do violence on his behalf. According to the House Select Committee’s investigation, his own staff had trouble getting him to call off the January 6 mob, to whom he said “We love you.” Many of those convicted for various crimes committed on that day went off to prison convinced they’d done the right thing, and Trump—a sucker for sycophancy—must have been moved by such shows of support, which included people singing to him in jail.

Trump has also shown, both as president and as a businessman, that he has an innate disgust with the whole idea of the impartial rule of law. He’s in serious financial trouble for (among other reasons) lying about the value of his properties when it suited his interests; he has always seemed to believe that rules are for chumps, and that people—especially people named Donald Trump—should be free to enjoy the benefits of whatever they can get away with, legal or otherwise.

Indeed, the whole idea of “legality” doesn’t seem to permeate Trump’s consciousness, unless it is applied to Trump’s enemies or other people, especially those of color, who he thinks deserve punishment. (Trump is the embodiment of the famous statement attributed to the Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”) In his handling of classified materials as well as in his attempt to pressure Ukraine to aid his campaign, Trump has shown that he thinks that laws don’t apply to him if they hinder his personal fortunes.

But in promising pardons, Trump may have a motive even darker than his general hatred for rules and laws. As he makes his third run at the presidency, Trump no longer has a reservoir of establishment Republicans who will support him or serve him. He distrusts the U.S. military, not least because senior officers and appointees thwarted his efforts to use the armed forces for his own political purposes. And although he may yet win reelection, his MAGA movement is now dependent on the kind of people who will go to his rallies and buy the trinkets and hats and shirts that go on sale whenever he speaks.

Where, then, can he find a truly loyal cadre willing to offer unconditional support? Where might he find people who will feel they owe their very lives to Donald J. Trump, and will do anything he asks?

He can find many of them in prison, waiting for him to let them out.

As the historian and scholar of authoritarian movements Ruth Ben-Ghiat has noted, would-be dictators deploy such promises to build groups that will ignore the law and obey the leader. “Amnesties and pardons,” she told me earlier today, “have always been an efficient way for leaders to free up large numbers of the most criminal and unscrupulous elements of society for service to the party and the state, and make them indebted to the rulers in the process.”

The damage to the American constitutional order and the rule of law would be immense if Trump used his power to pardon people such as Enrique Tarrio (the former leader of the Proud Boys, sentenced to 22 years) and the Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes (who drew an 18-year sentence). Hundreds of others are now serving time, many of whom might be more than willing to do anything for a president whose call they answered that winter day and who would now be the patron of their freedom.

Trump is no longer flirting with this idea. The man whose constitutional duty as president would be to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” is now promising to let hundreds of rioters and insurrectionists out of prison with full pardons. And eventually, he will make clear what he expects in return.'"

The Biggest Loser

Comments

Donald Trump Is a National-Security Risk

Liz Cheney on Trump RNC takeover: ‘Donors better beware’

Pence saved the country once; he might do so again

A Loyal Cadre in Waiting

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