Giuliani's Election Night Coup Plan

Reporters Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker have a new book out, "I Alone Can Fix It - Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," and the Washington Post has a riveting excerpt that covers election night at the Trump White (Supremacist) House.  One of the vignettes that caught our eye involved disgraced man- in- search- of- a- balcony Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani.  It presages Toot Toot's need to deny reality and go directly to the autocrat's playbook:

One Trump confidant who mostly stayed out of the Map Room was Rudolph W. Giuliani. That’s because the president’s personal attorney had set up his own command center upstairs on the party floor. Giuliani sat at a table in the Red Room with his son, Andrew, who worked at the White House in the Office of Public Liaison, staring intensely at a laptop watching vote tallies. The Giulianis made for an odd scene, as partygoers swirled around them. After a while, Rudy Giuliani started to cause a commotion. He was telling other guests that he had come up with a strategy for Trump and was trying to get into the president’s private quarters to tell him about it. Some people thought Giuliani may have been drinking too much and suggested to Stepien that he go talk to the former New York mayor. Stepien, Meadows and Jason Miller took Giuliani down to a room just off the Map Room to hear him out.

Giuliani went state by state asking Stepien, Meadows and Miller what they were seeing and what their plan was.

“What’s happening in Michigan?” he asked.

They said it was too early to tell, votes were still being counted and they couldn’t say.

“Just say we won,” Giuliani told them.

They said it was too early to tell, votes were still being counted and they couldn’t say.

“Just say we won,” Giuliani told them.

Same thing in Pennsylvania. “Just say we won Pennsylvania,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s grand plan was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing. Stepien, Miller and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible.

“We can’t do that,” Meadows said, raising his voice. “We can’t.”

That former chief of staff and former House Freedumb Caucus member Mark Meadows had to be the voice of reason tells you a lot about how far off the deep end Toot Toot was willing to plunge in order to overturn election results.  Of course, the malignant former guy was contemporaneously telling everyone he could buttonhole to "stop the counting" while he was still ahead in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, or to "find votes" for him in Georgia.  Toot Toot was simply going to the playbook the malignant former guy previewed before and after the election.

But, as we now know, that was only the beginning of Toot Toot's manic efforts to challenge election results around the country, which has subsequently made him the focus of a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, two Justice Department investigations, and the suspension of his law license in New York and the District of Columbia.  

And as predictable as the sun rising in the east, the "thing" Toot Toot has been so determined to please was trashing him behind his back and has since refused to pay Toot Toot's substantial ($20K/ day) legal expenses.  Sad!

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In Chris Wallace's wide- ranging interview with moron vector Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump over the weekend, Wallace asked COVID Donnie if he would accept the outcome of the election:

“I have to see,” he told interviewer Chris Wallace. “I’m not going to just say ‘yes.’ I’m not going to say ‘no,’ and I didn’t last time either.”

Repeating a contention he has often made in recent weeks, the president said he believed that mail-in voting would “rig the election.” Critics have said Trump is trying to delegitimize the vote in advance, fearing a loss, especially if the pandemic means that balloting by mail is more widely used than usual.

Trump’s presumptive opponent, Joe Biden, often shrugs off the president’s broadsides, but aides offered an acerbic response to his suggestion he might not leave office willingly if voters reject him.

“The American people will decide this election,” the Biden campaign said in a statement. “And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”  (our emphasis)

Biden has said before he's convinced the military would "escort" Trump out of the White House if he loses and refuses to leave office.  (We're convinced, too.) *

Phil Rucker and Felicia Sonmez report on that Chris Wallace interview as being full of the usual Trump lies and misinformation, much of which Wallace corrected in real time.  Trump's malicious ignorance on the pandemic was especially damning:

President Trump said in an interview aired Sunday that the rising number of U.S. deaths from the coronavirus “is what it is,” defended his fumbled management of the pandemic with a barrage of dubious and false claims, and revealed his lack of understanding about the fundamental science of how the virus spreads and infects people.

Making one of his biggest media appearances in months — an hour-long, sit-down interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace — Trump was visibly rattled and at times hostile as he struggled to answer for his administration’s failure to contain the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 137,000 lives [now over 140,000] in the United States. [snip]

Trump — whom aides say no longer attends coronavirus task force meetings because he does not have time — showed himself to be particularly misinformed about the basics of the virus that has been ravaging the nation for more than four months.

The whole piece is worth reading, especially if you haven't watched the interview (as we didn't).

It should be noted the lying and misinformation was the lede on news articles in both the Post article above and the New York Times:

Trump’s incessant dishonesty during interviews, rallies and other events is often convered in passing or not at all. Today, WaPo and the NYT treated it as the main story: pic.twitter.com/NgeJgsfdkc

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 20, 2020

 

Church attendance is down significantly due to the pandemic, although some preachers with bills to pay and pockets to line continue to spread more than the gospel:

Almost 40 places of worship and religious events have been linked to more than 650 U.S. cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began, according to tracking by the New York Times. Along with the nationwide surge in infections that has followed the loosening of restrictions aimed at combating the virus, outbreaks connected to churches have sprouted at several spots.

Those include a Pentecostal church in northeastern Oregon tied to at least 236 positive tests; five flareups linked to churches in West Virginia, the largest one resulting in 51 infections; more than 50 cases stemming from an evangelical church outside San Antonio where the pastor allowed hugging again; a large worship service in Cleveland, Tennessee, that appears to have generated at least a dozen cases, including the pastor, who said he stopped counting after 12; a Christian camp in Missouri that had to shut down after 82 campers, counselors and staffers contracted the virus despite taking a number of precautions.

We wrote about one unhinged superspreader preacher man earlier.  Nothing says "love thy neighbor" like passing on a little COVID-19.

Meanwhile, we all have a serious job to do to get this dangerous loon and as many of his Republican tribe out of office as possible on November 3.  Infidel 753 discusses why the support of "never Trump" Republicans should not be dismissed.  For one reason,

... A vote is a vote.  These people probably represent only a small proportion of Republicans, but in almost every election, several states are decided by very thin margins, and a few percentage points could change the outcome this time.  My overriding concern is to get Trump and his enablers and toadies out of power.  So long as someone votes for Biden and for Democratic candidates for the House, the Senate, and state-level offices, in practical terms it doesn't matter why they do it, only that they do it.  And while the size of the popular-vote margin will not affect the legal outcome, its psychological importance will be enormous.  Trump and Trumpism must be repudiated by the largest possible proportion of Americans, both for the sake of our standing as a people in the eyes of other democracies, and to discourage shenanigans by sore losers.

You should, after you've read the rest of that piece, check out Infidel 753's link round-up for the most wide- ranging topics he's curated from around the Internet.

* UPDATE:  Speaker Pelosi also weighed in on Trump's noncommittal answer --

“The fact is, whether he knows it yet or not, he will be leaving,” Pelosi told MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski. “Just because he might not want to move out of the White House doesn’t mean we won’t have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a duly elected president of the United States. [snip]

“There is a process,” she said. “It has nothing to do with the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there.” (our emphasis)

"Fumigated."  Get the foggers ready!

Quotes Of The Day -- STFU, Trump

"Trump’s 10-minute Oval Office address Wednesday night reflected not only his handling of the coronavirus crisis but, in some ways, much of his presidency. It was riddled with errors, nationalist and xenophobic in tone, limited in its empathy, and boastful of both his own decisions and the supremacy of the nation he leads.

"Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average fell in real time with virtually each word Trump uttered, signaling a lack of confidence among investors that he had control of the crisis and previewing another bloodbath once the markets opened Thursday morning." -- Phil Rucker, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey, "Inside Trump's Failed Attempt to Calm Coronavirus Fears."

__________________

"Trump spoke from the Oval Office exactly five weeks to the day since the end of his impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, which left him with essentially unchecked power after the Republican-led Senate voted against his removal. So much has happened since the trial, which already seems as if it happened in another era, but there is a through-line: Trump himself, constantly conflating the national interest with his personal interest. As the coronavirus spread and the President initially ignored, downplayed, and lied about it—even dismissing coverage of the risks as a media-inflamed “hoax”—the costs of the Senate’s impeachment decision have been cast in sharp relief. It will be a long time before we can reckon with the full damage done by an Administration whose incompetence, disinformation, and sheer bungling in the early stages of the crisis have been at once predictable and breathtaking."  Susan Glasser, on Very Stable Genius Donald "Dr. Trump, PhD'oh" Trump being less equal to the moment of any President in her memory, demonstrated most recently by his disastrous speech on Wednesday.

__________________

"You’re so bad at conveying accurate virus information, you make the Fox News channel sound like the Scientific American. If you were a medical doctor, the board of examiners would yank your license. The county prosecutor would then jail you for thousands of counts of malpractice. After that, he’d charge you with manslaughter for serving as the virus’ accomplice." -- Jack Shafer, Politico, telling Trump to shut the fuck up about coronavirus, advice the malignant moron is not going to follow, btw.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Phil Rucker on the front page of today's Washington Post on the racist- in- chief's deliberately stoking hatred and violence: 

President Trump has relentlessly used his bully pulpit to decry Latino migration as “an invasion of our country.” He has demonized undocumented immigrants as “thugs” and “animals.” He has defended the detention of migrant children, hundreds of whom have been held in squalor. And he has warned that without a wall to prevent people from crossing the border from Mexico, America would no longer be America.

“How do you stop these people? You can’t,” Trump lamented at a May rally in Panama City Beach, Fla. Someone in the crowd yelled back one idea: “Shoot them.” The audience of thousands cheered and Trump smiled. Shrugging off the suggestion, he quipped, “Only in the Panhandle can you get away with that statement.”

On Saturday, a 21-year-old white man entered a shopping center in El Paso, according to police, and allegedly decided to “shoot them.” Inside a crowded Walmart in a vibrant border city visited daily by thousands of Mexicans, a late-morning back-to-school shopping scene turned into a pool of blood. Twenty people died, and dozens were wounded. [snip]

Regardless of the El Paso shooter’s motivations, Trump throughout his presidency has stoked fear and hatred of the other, whether Latino immigrants or black people living in cities or Muslims.

Although he has not directly espoused the “great replacement” theory of white supremacists, Trump has openly questioned America’s identity as a multiethnic nation, such as by encouraging migration from Nordic states as opposed to Latin America.

In speeches and on social media, the president has capitalized on divisions of race, religion and identity as a political strategy to galvanize support among his white followers...

In the same paper, E.J. Dionne, Jr., defines the right and wrong side:

When one side proposes ways that human beings might begin to solve a deadly problem while the other side leaves it up to God, you know which side is right.

When one side proposes solution after solution to contain gun violence — and offers compromise after compromise to get something done — while the other side blocks action every time, you know which side is right.

When the president of the United States and his most incendiary media allies fuel hatred of those who are not white while his opponents say we should stand in solidarity with one another, you know which side is right.

When one side brushes aside the dangers of racist and white nationalist terrorism while the other side says we need to be vigilant against all forms of terrorism, you know which side is right. 

And when Americans are gunned down in incident after incident, when we are numbed by repeating the same sorrowful words every time, when we move within a news cycle from “something must be done” to “the Senate will block action” or “the politics are too complicated,” you know America’s democracy is failing and its moral compass is broken.

Dionne calls out Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, whose unctuous subservience to NRA gun humpers was on full display when speaking to the media:

The wrong side in this debate does not want us to come together. On the contrary, its goal after every mass shooting is to deflect and divide. Here’s what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said when asked by reporters what we should do about gun violence. “Listen, there are bodies that have not yet been recovered,” Abbott replied. “I think we need to focus more on memorials before we start the politics.”

No, Abbott, reading from the NRA’s script, started “the politics” right at that moment, and it is an insidious form of politics. Simultaneously, he deflected by pretending it’s impolite to answer substantive questions and divided by saying that those who raise them disrespect the dead.

Nothing disrespects those who are slaughtered more than the political paralysis Abbott and those like him are encouraging.

Nothing will be done as long as the wrong side is in control of the White (Supremacist) House and the Senate, where when Moscow Mitch isn't doing favors for Putin, he's blocking gun control legislation:

After the Democrats took over the House earlier this year, they passed the most significant gun legislation in a generation, requiring background checks on all firearm sales in the country, and another bill extending the background check review period from three days to 10 days.

The Senate has yet to consider the bills. 

After this weekend's mass shootings, Democratic leaders blamed Republicans controlling the Senate for blocking them.

They began demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take action this week, arguing they could help prevent the next large-scale tragedy. McConnell's office did not say whether the Republican leader is open to dealing with gun violence with new legislation.  [Spoiler alert:  of course he isn't]

Well, let's amend that last comment.  Republicans might be willing to deal with gun violence by attacking it at the root cause... video games!

House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took to Fox News on Sunday in the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH, to suggest that blame could lie at least partially with video games.  [snip]

McCarthy’s comments echo ones made by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on Fox & Friends Sunday morning. “How long are we going to ignore — at the federal level particularly — where they can do something about the video game industry,” Patrick said. “In this manifesto that we believe is from the shooter, this manifesto where he talks about living out his super soldier fantasy on Call of Duty.” 

Lie, deflect, delay, repeat.  The cowardly, sociopath Republican playbook.

This comes a bit late:

A San Francisco-based Web company announced Sunday it would no longer provide services to 8chan, a website notorious for hosting lawless message boards where manifestos have appeared before mass shootings.

The move came after a screed against immigrants was posted to 8chan shortly before a mass shooter killed 20 and wounded 26 at an El Paso Walmart and shopping center. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, a firm that protects sites from cyber attacks, said he decided to drop 8chan because it “has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate.”

Changing topics, the trade war with China is settling in for a prolonged duration.  Here's the immediate impact on retail clothing sales alone:

The new tariffs will jack up prices for consumers at the start of the back-to-school buying season, four large retail trade associations said on Thursday.

"President Trump is, in effect, using American families as a hostage in his trade war negotiations," said Matt Priest, president of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America.

Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, said his group's members were shocked that Trump had not allowed the resumed U.S.-China trade talks to proceed further before acting.

The measure will hit U.S. consumers far harder than Chinese manufacturers, who produce 42% of apparel and 69% of footwear purchased in the United States, Lamar said.

Finally, please check out Infidel 753's link round- up (where we found that last piece on the trade war).  It seems every week he finds even more interesting links to share.  Impressive.