Freedom Caucus Free to Eat Each Other
May 29: MAGA cannibalism … Biden to be nominated virtually … Rafah not a red line … Jury gets Trump case …
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The convenient aspect of a political movement based on individualism is that it will eventually turn on itself like an ouroboros. I.e., this:
Which brings us full circle — ha! — to yesterday’s political news.
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) is the chair of the House Freedom [sic] Caucus, the predominant rhumba1 of congressional supporters of D4FRFP2 Donald Trump and the (low-)standard-bearers of the MAGA movement.
Not. Good. Enough. Fucker!
So, yesterday, Trump endorsed Good’s rival in the June 18 Republican primary.
What did Good do that was so horrific that the head House MAGA has lost the MAGA head? Good committed the cardinal sin of MAGA: not being loyal enough to Trump early enough, and not abasing himself enough early enough for his apostasy.
Specifically, Good originally endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for president. Both men ultimately caved and endorsed Trump, obvi, because they’re strong leaders. But as Trump said yesterday about Good switching to back him: “It was too late. The damage has been done.”
So now Trump is all on board for state Sen. John McGuire, who’s running against Good and who Trump definitely heard of before yesterday. McGuire “has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” and is “strong on crime, will protect our great Military/Vets, and will always defend our under siege Second Amendment,” Trump said after an exhaustive review of McGuire’s voting record and public remarks [pause for laughter].
It gets better. Turns out Good was one of the MAGAs who voted to oust briefly-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). So now McCarthy’s allies are signing up to oust Good. And so are even some House Republicans.
Good is still showcasing Trump’s support on his campaign website, however, in an apparent effort to show that he’s so MAGA he has little regard for facts.
And the MAGA self-mastication was also on display yesterday in Texas, where they had primary runoffs. Some established Republicans found they, too, were not sufficiently MAGA to avoid real fights for the MAGA crowns.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) wasn’t MAGA enough when it came to guns, so he had a hard fight against Brandon Herrera. The district includes the Uvalde school that lost two teachers and 19 future voters thanks to guns and no thanks to police guns — after which Gonzales voted to expand background checks and push red-flag laws, making him persona non MAGA among Texas Republicans.
Herrera is a self-described Second Amendment “absolutist,” meaning he supports making it a crime ever not to have a gun in your hand. Herrera’s also a fan of Nazis and thinks the Holocaust is funny, but not in a Hogan’s Heroes and/or Mel Brooks kinda way.
Herrera was backed by both Good and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Given his guns ‘n’ Nazis extremism, naturally Herrera lost the runoff by only 1.4%.
Also winning narrowly last night against MAGA, was not-MAGA-enough Texas state House Speaker Dade Phelan. Phelan won yesterday’s runoff after coming in second during the primary to a Trump candidate also backed by some MAGA members of Congress.
Meanwhile, in a race that’s more about internal Texas politics than national MAGA stuff, the chair of the state House Republican caucus, state Rep. Craig Goldman, easily fended off a challenge from a candidate supported by corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), still pissed that Goldman voted to impeach him. What with personal loyalty being the driving ethos of MAGA leaders.
(Ominously, Politico reports that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) had a good night knocking off state legislators who helped defeat his “school-choice” legislation to kill or at least continue killing what’s left of Texas public education.)
Anyway, have at it, internecine MAGA, in your cannibalistic battles to become your party’s nom(nom-nom)inees! And check out how a real democratic party does it…
Democrats to Nominate Presidential Candidate Ahead of Their Nominating Convention
After killing primaries and not holding debates, the party campaigning as the last hope for democracy will anoint its presidential nominee before holding its nominating convention.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced yesterday that it will nominate its candidate (spoiler: It’s President Joe Biden!) virtually, prior to its August national convention, during which party delegates will debate and deliberate before ultimately deciding which nominee they’ll already have nominated.
The technical reason for this is that, to be on Ohio’s ballot, nominees have to file by Aug. 7, which is before the Democratic convention. (Ohio Republicans, of course, are ensuring that deadline won’t move to accommodate the nominating process.)
But the virtual nomination — on a date still TBA — threatens to turn the convention into nothing more than an undemocratic, celebratory coronation. Which it already is, but now the DNC’s not even pretending.
The bigger issue for Democrats is the consequences when the party of democracy follows an undemocratic process. Some states didn’t even hold primaries. And Biden didn’t debate any challengers.
That should be a problem even for the staunchest Biden supporter. And not just on hifalutin’ principles, but on lofalutin’ principles, too.
Because primaries and debates help the winner. It’s months of coverage and suspense and attention — in which the candidate is literally fighting, and seen as a fighter. And learning. And responding to their party. Making concessions and taking action to ensure you don’t, say, lose young and non-white voters.
The DNC chose not to do any of that — passing on months of free media showing Biden as a fighter and a leader. And now the same party leaders who blocked the competitive aspects of democracy are the same ones unable to explain why Biden is struggling so much in the polls.
Rafah Killings Don’t Cross Biden’s Red Line
Israel’s weekend airstrike that killed 45 people in a “tragic mistake” in Rafah did not cross Pres. Joe Biden’s “red line,” according to White House officials who refused to put their name anywhere near that on-the-record shit.
Politico quoted “A senior administration official, granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal thinking.”
Biden has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to destroy Rafah with an all-out, all-at-once assault, but to use precise, surgical operations, over an extended period, to destroy Rafah.
Biden has warned throughout the spring that he would stop shipping some offensive weaponry to Israel if Netanyahu crossed that “red line” going into Rafah. The new reporting suggests the U.S. will only cut off those weapons if Israel is actually seen moving into Rafah after Biden yells, “Red light, green light, 1, 2, 3!” Inching forward, 45 deaths at a time, is apparently okay.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller drew a comparison — on the record, even! — with two other operations. In Gaza City and Khan Younis, Miller said, Israel sent in far more troops on the ground and far more bombs from the air. Rafah “is a different type of military operation,” Miller said, referring to the fact that it’s basically just slower.
By moving into/over Rafah incrementally, Netanyahu appears to be avoiding a clear moment of obvious red-line crossing, never mind the clarity of killing 45 people. And while the weekend attack reportedly led to videos of kids screaming for help as their parents burned alive, there’s no actual red line visible in any of those videos, so technically we’re all good.
Of course, even if you accept the premise of tens of thousands of acceptable civilian dead, the problem with the Israeli approach is not whether it’s conducted wholesale in Gaza City or piecemeal in Rafah. The problem is it’s not working. Israel is already re-fighting re-Hamas in areas Israel supposedly already cleared. Which leaves us right back where we started, minus 35,000 Palestinians and thousands of buildings.
Jury Gets Trump Criminal Case, Instructed to Fucking Deal With It
A New York City jury today will begin deliberations in the case of The People of the State of New York v. How Was That Guy President.
It is the first criminal trial in U.S. history of a former president, despite the long and proud tradition of rampant presidential criminality. That it comes down to a jury of 12 people now to decide the fate of D4FRFP Donald Trump is a milestone in the history of America’s democracy. It’s part of a tradition that no man is above the law until the Supreme Court says he is, and just the most recent instance in the American story when the stupidity of millions of southerners will have to be cleaned up yet again by a handful of northerners drafted for the task.3
In closing arguments yesterday, Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, argued that his client’s actions were not criminal, they were just how business is routinely done. Which, I should note, is criminal. (Fun fact, business leaders and presidents are perhaps the best known class of violent recidivists in the world.)
And Blanche practically acknowledged casual criminality, suggesting that Trump did nothing wrong by conspiring to steal the election — the 2016 one, that is (gotta be specific with this guy!) — because hey that’s politics: “It doesn’t matter if there was a conspiracy to try to win an election,” Blanche said, because “every campaign in this country is a conspiracy.”
Blanche also said prosecutors didn’t have “a shred of evidence” against Trump, apparently Blanche’s way of confirming that his client shredded evidence.
In fact, we’ve known for years that Trump is a criminal destroyer of evidence — including presidential documents, which you’re not allowed to destroy.
The Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s current co-defendant in Georgia, routinely burned documents in a White House fireplace, which the Supreme Court will assure us was the founding fathers’ original intent for the fireplace when they built it.
Trump himself flushed documents down the presidential crapper that could have provided important details about how he was flushing the country down the shitter:
And while it’s true that prosecutors didn’t have a shred of evidence, they had something even better, entire unshredded pieces of evidence.
The prosecutors used their closing argument to remind jurors of that evidence, with pictures and everything.
And according to former prosecutor Joyce Vance, prosecutors deployed their pictures to address the most powerful claim the Trump defense made: That former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was lying about paying off Stormy Daniels to protect the campaign. And that there’s no evidence to support his testimony.
Exhibits 35 and 36, Vance writes, do just that. And Blanche didn’t say “boo” about them yesterday (perhaps because Trump instructed Blanche not to say “boo” about anything after hearing that word repeatedly at this weekend’s Libertarian Party national convention).
Exhibit 35 shows CFO Allen Weisselberg’s handwriting on a record of the Daniels payment. Exhibit 36 is Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney’s notes about having to beef up Cohen’s reimbursement to cover the taxes Cohen would have to pay on it.
Blanche, Vance writes, failed to explain to the jury why any of this would have happened without Trump’s knowledge or say-so — even after multiple witnesses testified about Trump’s micro-management, which also explains why his business empire has fared more poorly than if he’d just invested Daddy’s money in the stock market.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass called the plot a “subversion of democracy,” not to be confused with the normal, legalized subversions of democracy routinely carried out by billionaires who have laws changed to legalize it.
We’ll never know whether Trump would have won in 2016 if he had obeyed the law and voters had known that Trump paid a woman who, like his wife, allegedly had sex with him but who, unlike his wife, was not his wife.
But Trump’s conviction on any of the 34 felony charges would establish a stolen presidential election more authoritatively than any comparable act in our history, yes, including John F. Kennedy stealing Chicago to beat Richard Nixon.
Today, Judge Juan Merchan is explaining to the jury how they should and should not deliberate. What they’re supposed to consider and not consider in determining Trump’s guilt verdict.
Instructions could include legalistic rules and guidance such as:
Not to be prejudiced by the fact that Trump fell asleep during the proceedings, which is literally a cliche about guilty people
Not to take into account that if they convict Trump, he’ll have them killed, pardon the killers, and the Supreme Court will throw them all a parade with upside-down flags
Good luck with that, Trump jury! We’ll see you at the book launch!
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids…!
Rhumba = A group of snakes, or in this case ouroboroses. (Ouroborosi?)
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
Apologies for the geographical caricaturing; I know there are MAGA in the north and hard-fighting, hard-suffering progressives in the south. I see you…I just can’t fit you into every zinger.
This is a gem of TFN..."Herrera is a self-described Second Amendment “absolutist,” meaning he supports making it a crime ever not to have a gun in your hand. Herrera’s also a fan of Nazis and thinks the Holocaust is funny, but not in a Hogan’s Heroes and/or Mel Brooks kinda way."
Perfect TFN edition right here: We laughed, we cried, we booed tfg. A LOT. 🤣