QOTD -- Covering Trump's Bogus Prosecutions

 

"...The key thing to remember is that we’re already well beyond the event horizon in the corruption of the Justice Department. If federal judges, having dispensed with the presumption of regularity in the functioning of the government, no longer give the Justice Department the benefit of the doubt in court, then we shouldn’t either.

"The implications of that shift are enormous, but too many editors and producers are not fully grappling with them yet.

"Among other things, leaked federal law enforcement details about crimes — which have formed the backbone of news coverage, especially in the pre-charging phase — can’t be taken at anything close to face value anymore (and perhaps never should have been). Social media posts by top officials, including the president himself, are not reliable, and rebroadcasting them as straight news no longer serves a public purpose. That’s not to mention the utterly unreliable real-time social media posts by a groveling FBI director trying to flatter the president and please the White House.  [snip]

"If for days, weeks, and months in advance of charges being brought, news outlets allow themselves to be used to parcel out each investigative development and procedural step in a politicized prosecution, then they’re letting themselves be co-opted by the bad faith actors in service of smearing the putative target. If the average news consumer is seeing the same old headlines they’ve always seen in the run-up to an indictment, how are they to process it as anything other than a normal prosecution? ..." -- David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo, on the media's need for a different perspective in covering the prosecutions of, for example, John Bolton and James Comey (and potentially, Letitia James).  Based on past performance, we're not hopeful that a perspective that demands that truth, rather than he-said, she-said reporting, will prevail. 

 

QOTD -- Trump's Dehumanizing Racism

 

"... It’s the former president of the United States turning his cult and his campaign’s hundreds of millions of dollars against people of color on a public stage in the middle of a presidential campaign. It’s a way of declaring open season on vulnerable minorities. It’s a rallying cry for every white extremist, fringe loner, and KKK wannabe out there looking for an excuse to act out their rage.

"We talk a lot about how racism in the form practiced by Trump takes it upon itself to define what is white and what is not, mocks racial and gender distinctions it considers illegitimate, and reserves to itself an imagined gatekeeper role for what is acceptable. All true. But more relevant for our purposes is that the purpose of that kind of racism is to dehumanize people, reduce them to less than, marginalize them – and the net effect is to grant permission to inflict all manner of atrocities and degradations on people deemed less than people." -- David Kurtz, TPM's Morning Memo, on the dangerous racism of the convicted felon Malignant Loser, most recently demonstrated in his NABJ convention remarks and subsequent doubling- down on questioning Vice President Harris' racial identity (in which his execrable running mate, Sen.J.D. "Junior Demagogue" Vance has also partaken). 

 

QOTD -- Taking A Sledgehammer To American Democracy

 

"... The rule of law, as the saying goes, must exist for everyone; otherwise, it exists for no one. By placing the president beyond the rule of law, the Supreme Court has deprived all of us of its protections. The constitutional structure we have relied on since 1789 — imperfect but resilient, a creation of man not of the divine, a work in progress never to be fully completed — was turned on its ear yesterday by an ahistorical decision grounded neither in the text of the Constitution nor our traditions and customs nor our best hopes for ourselves or our form of self governance.

"It is a shock to the system that is going to take a long time to come to grips with and decades or longer to remedy. In the first few hours since the decision came down, I’m not seeing it sinking in yet across broad swaths of the media, the legal system, the political system or society writ large. The high court has ruled it so. There is no immediate recourse against it or against the new and alien structure it has foisted upon us. Short of a new constitutional convention or a series of constitutional amendments, we are stuck with it. That is going to take time to settle into elite consciousness.  [snip]

"We have entered an uncertain new era. The door is now wide open to the kinds of fascism and authoritarianism we spent much of the 20th century and hundreds of thousands of American lives combatting overseas. Many of you will be skeptical of this. I will take no joy in being right about this. You can wait and see, but don’t wait too long. It may already be too late." -- David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo, on the sea change ushered in by the illegitimate Supreme Court's handing convicted felon Malignant Loser immunity for criminal offenses if deemed "official acts."  The insouciance with which much of the media and political chatterers have greeted this outrageous, un- American ruling (how many news stories, analyses, or op eds have you seen about it?) bespeaks a political culture casually sleepwalking into a fascist America.  The timing of the ruling was perfect, coming days after the disastrous Presidential debate focused the world on President Biden's performance, and has ever since.

Another "Sic transit gloria, America" moment in time.

QOTD -- Waltzing Into Criminal Charges

 

"Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton is widely credited with waltzing Donald Trump straight into criminal charges by advising him that he was legally entitled to keep the documents he had squirreled away at Mar-a-Lago.  [snip]

"It’s important not to reduce Trump’s mess of his own making to bad advice from Tom Fitton. It’s just an amusing addendum to the Trump train wreck.

"The truth is that multiple Trump lawyers (reminder: Fitton is not a lawyer) advised him of his legal peril if he did not surrender the documents in his possession. Self-interested accounts from lawyers now caught in bad situations? Sure, but this is no-brainer legal advice. You don’t have to be a high-powered superlawyer to reach the conclusion that Trump was facing a world of hurt if he persisted on his defiant course.

"Trump did what Trump wanted to do, as he always does. He ignored the advice he didn’t like, and proceeded as he saw fit.

"And here we are." --David Kurtz, TPM, on the role of bonehead advisor and non- lawyer Tom Fitton in the Malignant Loser's classified documents case.  The Malignant Loser is having enough problems finding legal representation because of people like Fitton holding sway over legal issues (not to mention legal representation that's accused of malpractice -- see below).  But, as Kurtz rightly notes, it's the Malignant Loser's own fault -- via his overwhelming narcissism, ignorance, and lack of control -- that he's in his current predicament.