"So What?"

As if there weren't already a billion reasons to defeat the Orange Turd again, the 165 page filing by Jack Smith ought to be the final straw for any sane person.

This motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant's private criminal conduct; sets forth the legal framework created by [the former guy] for resolving immunity claims; applies that framework to establish that none of the defendant’s charged conduct is immunized because it either was unofficial or any presumptive immunity is rebutted; and requests the relief the government seeks, which is, at bottom, this: that the court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.

Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein highlight eleven details from the document.

Much of Smith's brief focused on [Fuckface's] state of mind in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Smith described a slew of conversations suggesting that the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were spurious. And Smith laid out evidence that [the] sole objective was to stay in power — not, as he and his lawyers have claimed, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity.

Alone with his phone

[Dear Leader] asked: "So what?"

Disregarding the results

Inventing statistics

Broken promises of evidence

Mocking Sidney Powell

[The] January 5 call to Steve Bannon

A preview of forensic evidence

"Make them riot"

Rudy's rise

Rudy's follies

A Damning Non-Answer

While the vice presidential debate is largely viewed as a draw, JD Vance's response about whether Dear Leader lost the 2020 election will be remembered.

Tim, I’m focused on the future.

Vance is pretty slick. I found a comment immediately after the debate from NBC telling--it was described as a good, old-fashioned policy debate and nothing weird happened. Vance lied his ass off, but made the Orange Turd look like a lunatic in comparsion.

Four more observations:

Vance Made The Case For Himself As [the felon's] Heir

Minnesota Nice

Walz Found His Footing On Abortion

Vance's Too-Slick Answer on Health Care

Second Debate Disaster

But this time the former guy was the scowling loser while a smiling Vice President Kamala Harris handled him with ease. To their credit, the ABC moderators didn't back down from tough questions. The orange turd just can't control himself and that's what makes him the worst choice. Nick Vesser offers six key outcomes.

Harris had [the felon] shake her hand during their first-ever meeting.

Harris effectively baited the former president on crowd sizes and his 2020 election loss.

[He] went on wild tangents focused on false claims.

The moderators fact-checked some of [Fuckface's] wildest claims.

Conservative pundits were not happy with [Dear Leader's] performance.

Harris wants a second debate. [He] hasn't committed.

Update (September 11):  Heather Digby Parton sums up the debacle.

[Von Clownstick] relentlessly hammered on migrants which will probably play well with his base, along with all the other lies and conspiracy theories, but to anyone else he sounded like a lunatic, surly, rude and out of his depth. His laziness and inability/unwillingness to learn anything new caught up with him last night. He lost this debate, as he would say, bigly.

And Amanda Marcotte says there's no way to "sanewash" this performance.

After last night's debate performance, hopefully, the questions about [his] basic brain functionality will grow even louder.

Unhinged

These are just two recent examples of crazy shit the Republican presidential nominee says:

Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it.

The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.

But many of these kinds of statements aren't adequately covered in the press. Parker Molloy argues that media "sanewashing" is a form of misinformation.

By continually reframing [the felon's] incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former — and potentially future — president.

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering [the orange turd's] words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality.

Update (September 5):  Greg Sargent notes that news stories about President Biden's age were justified as relevant to his ability to do the job if re-elected.

But if so, then why don't things like [Dear Leader's] obvious cognitive impairment, his frequent inability to speak and think coherently, his resolute refusal to acquire minimal baseline knowledge on many consequential issues, his tendency to invent things on the fly that are wildly disconnected from reality, his intense narcissism, his deliberate lying and bigotry and misogyny—to name just a few traits—also go to his core mental and characterological capacity to do the job as president?

Sargent argues that reporting about the Republican candidate needs to "treat signs of the subject's questionable mental fitness for the presidency—and the politics surrounding them—as themselves being the real news".

Update (September 6):  Chris Hayes on "the quality of brains we've got over there".

And Heather Digby Parton points out another Fuckface train wreck answer to a question about child care.

But the media covered for him as they so often do. He has the whole press corps acting as his ghostwriter, sanitizing his babble for the public. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren't so lucky. They have to campaign and govern in a world where they are held to the standard that requires a president to be able to demonstrate his or her fitness for the presidency.

For the press to do otherwise

Why, they might even conclude that he doesn't have the mental capacity to be president. I guess that would be rude.

Update (September 7):  Additional reactions:

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah likened [the felon's] comments on child care to a "dementia clinic." And political commentator Digby said the ex-president "sounds like a 4th grader who didn't read the book." And Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell noted that she "can't even find a complete sentence" when reading the transcript of his comments.

Update (September 9):  Jennifer Rubin offers her take on the "sanewashing" phenomenon.

Imagine obsessing over polls in the 1933 German election without covering Mein Kampf. That is what is going on now.

It's utter journalistic malpractice if not outright bias to refuse to ask [Dear Leader] at the debate about his threats of bloody mass arrests. It's an easy call for ABC. I have no idea if they are up to it.

The Last Election?

How is this not an indication that the felon is a threat to democracy?

And again, Christians: Get out and vote! Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore. In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote.

Update (July 29):  Heather Digby Parton offers her take.

If it weren't for his constant praise for dictators and tyrants and his repeated comments that he should be allowed to stay in office beyond two terms, I might be willing to believe some people's interpretations of this startling remark to mean that he will fix everything in four years so they will have no reason to be involved in politics after that. But that makes no sense since unless he means he's not leaving office, people will always have to vote lest their opponents reverse their gains as [Fuckface] himself is promising to do right now. No, he said what he said and we know what he means.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat warns of more "troubling rhetoric" to come.

[The felon] is really making very clear his intentions of telling people that they need to get him into office — and then, there will be no more need for elections. And the way he phrases it is as though it's a bother, it's a burden to have to vote. [T]his is obviously disturbing from so many points of view.

[T]he authoritarian, from Mussolini onward, has always presented himself as not just the savior of the nation, but the person who will take care of things and lighten the burden of the people.

Update (July 30):  Yeah, this clears it up.

Don't worry about the future, you have to vote on November 5. After that you don't have to worry about voting anymore, I don't care. The country will be fixed and we won't even need your vote anymore.

Even worse, a Rolling Stone investigation finds that about 70 election officials in swing states are willing to block election certification.

Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a "ministerial task," and one required by state and local law. But as [the felon's] lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations — and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since [Fuckface] lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

A New Day

The felon's niece, Mary, offers a new realization.

I finally agree with [my uncle]: It would be a huge mistake to elect the oldest candidate in American history.

Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley had an insightful comment in January.

The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election.

And Joe Scarborough sums up the Republican reaction to the news that the President will not seek re-election.

Joe Biden puts country first and Republicans meltdown. What a tell.

Update (July 23):  Heather Digby Parton describes the sorry state of the GOP.

So what do the Republicans think about all this?

They seem to have been caught completely flat-footed.

It seems that they may not have anticipated that Joe Biden gracefully withdrawing from the race might be seen as an act of selfless patriotism in contrast to their [Dear Leader], the grasping egomaniac who incited a riot rather than admit that he lost. The contrast couldn't be more vivid.

And Amanda Marcotte points out the advantages of a Kamala Harris candidacy.

[The felon] and his team aren't hiding their full-blown panic that Biden dropped out. They're scared for many reasons. Their entire campaign could be boiled down to "Biden is too old," and now it's [Fuckface] who is the old and incoherent guy in the race. But I suspect it's also because Harris could blow up their strategy to turn out young male voters. The campaign obviously hoped they could send misogynist signals to certain kinds of young men, without female swing voters noticing. And it probably would have worked with Biden at the top of the ticket, unable to draw attention to what [Manbaby] is doing. Harris won't have that problem. She can do one interview and speech after another where she reminds female voters that [the Orange Turd] is a sexual predator and that he and his team would ban abortions, even for rape victims. With her background, she may be in a better position to push this issue than any other potential Democratic nominee could have been.

Update (July 24):  Marcotte further elaborates.

With Harris as the Democratic nominee [the felon] is caught in a no-win situation. If he continues to hang back from the campaign trail while she's out there hustling, he'll start inviting the questions about whether he's too old and weak, the exact questions that plagued Biden. But if he starts doing more media and events that are outside the MAGA bubble, he will draw negative attention and remind voters why they hate him.

Update (July 29):  Ryan Teague Beckwith sees a strong, simple theme for the new candidate.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign message is clear. She loves freedom and [Dear Leader] is weird.

It doesn't hurt that the campaign got permission from Beyoncé to use the song "Freedom" at events.

Sabrina Haake notes another strong message from the Vice President.

Harris talks about abortion rights clearly, forcefully and unapologetically, and will help shape abortion into the pivotal issue in November.

Update (August 9):  Democrats are energized and Heather Digby Parton notices that the felon just isn't the same after a "meltdown" press conference.

He was dour and angry and frankly is starting to look a whole lot older, just in the past few months. He's not enjoying himself and it shows and compared to the excited crowds greeting Harris and Walz this week this sad, pathetic appearance seemed almost funereal. [Fuckface von Clownstick] isn't fun anymore.

I think he's considering for the first time that he might lose again and he is not psychologically equipped to deal with that reality.

Update (August 16):  Frank Luntz describes the results he found from a focus group comparing the vice president to her opponent.

On these personality traits, Harris has a tremendous advantage over [the felon] and there are people who had voted for [him] in 2020 that will not vote for him again because they're tired of his rude and abusive behavior.

Update (August 19):  Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz spoke to the Aliquippa High School football team.

Politics isn't so much different than this. It's about something bigger than themselves. It's about setting a future goal and trying to reach it. It's about doing it with dignity and hard work. It's about doing it with humility and when you lose, you walk across the field, you shake hands with the other team and know they played hard, too. But we're all in it together to try and make it better.

Our country's not that different. Our neighbors wanna be with ya, our neighbors wanna do what's right and the more we figure out that we're in this thing together and we have more in common than we have separated, we're gonna do a heck of a lot better.

Heather Digby Parton sees a reason for optimism.

The Harris/Walz ticket has the momentum, creativity and palpable excitement on its side. Whether that's enough to overcome [the felon's] inexplicable hold on the Republican Party after eight years of his now very tired old schtick is unknown. ... [I]f the stars align and there is no external catastrophe, the Democrats might deliver that historic victory we all thought we were getting back in 2016, and our long [orange] nightmare may finally be over.

 

Hillbilly Hypocricy

Two days after facing an assassination attempt, the felon cranked up the election stakes by choosing Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance had previously been a harsh critic of Dear Leader, but is now full MAGA. I'm hoping this will do nothing to expand their supporters.

Sarah Burris lists four things to know about the V.P. pick.

Onlookers have claimed Vance's morals have collapsed
Vance has been accused of lying about being a "working class hero"
[Fuckface] has complete control over Vance, critics have said
He's been criticized as being little more than a right-wing troll

Update (July 19):  Heather Digby Parton is not impressed with the choice.

I have to say that in all the articles written about this decision, what comes across to me is that [Dear Leader] has lost a step. Maybe he's just so cocky about winning that he doesn't think it matters, which is possible. But from the way it sounds, he let himself be steamrolled into picking someone who on some level he knows wasn't the best choice for his electoral prospects. Maybe the 78 year old [felon] is just as weak and tired as that other old guy he's running against.