Week 78
By
President Trump teased his big prime-time speech for several days before Thursday. There were a number of anticipations to it, including a rather good rundown of what he might say to encourage his gangs and otherwise interfere in the elections. There was also something about declaring Senators Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock of Georgia illegally elected. Republicans were worried that he would further undermine their electoral prospects.
The reality was a great deal less. NBC and ABC correctly anticipated this and didn’t carry the speech. I’m not sure if Fox did, but they were fairly critical afterwards. It was the same old accusations that the 2020 election was stolen. The materials he said he was declassifying had already been in the news.
The timing was odd for anything but mobilizing his January 6 supporters. It would give themthree and a half months to plan how to disrupt the elections. A revelation that would undercut the Democrats would be more effective closer to the election. See Comey, James, and Clinton, Hillary.
His presentation was even worse than usual. He had a lot of trouble reading the teleprompter, which chopped up his sentences in a way that made it hard for me to understand what he was saying. Every word was a challenge. He can be effective at Catskill-style improv, but he didn’t have the energy for that. At least the teleprompter was under the camera, so we weren’t exposed to his swaying from side to side.
My guess is that he got a bug in his ear about something in the intel assessment, perhaps thanks to Bill Pulte or perhaps simply that Jay Clayton was going before the Senate this week for his DNI nomination. His aides figured that the only way to shut him up would be to give him a prime time speech.
Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller had their Antifa meeting this week, and Miller let go with a genuine Nazi blast against the “deformed” demonstrators. You look at them, and all of them are deformed, he said. I’ll let you find it if you want to do that.
The war against Iran is on again. Trump’s theory of war seems to be that you pound the enemy and then they give in. This has not worked since, oh, the Trojan War and probably earlier. I keep wondering about the military’s role in this – how they are briefing him and why so many seem to be willing to carry out his war crimes. I had expected the military to be better at holding the line. But Pete Hegseth has been removing a lot of them. It will be interesting to have a military with fewer brass and more of them young after we right the ship of state.
With Taco Bell’s help, the CDC figured out what was causing people to get sick. Taylor veggies seem to have been a problem in other outbreaks. If we had a real government, it might be time for an investigation into their labor practices. Those several thousand people who got sick wouldn’t have noticed the CDC efforts that kept them from getting sick if we had a real government. But those efforts would have been a good thing.
Trump and allies are excoriating Canada for negligently allowing their forests to burn while doing what they can to destroy renewable energy in the US and increase carbon fuel use.
Mark Joseph Stern got excited about a court ruling in Hawaii and shared his article on it with a gift link. I read it but don’t understand the excitement. The judge said a lot of things we’d all like to hear about the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. Apparently the states can ignore unreasonable things from the Authoritarian Six if it’s within the state only? IDK. One of the comments on Bluesky was that it was the sound of angels singing. But what I’d like to see is something that can remove those authoritarian judgments or slow them down. Maybe the lawyers here can unscramble it.
I’ve had a rather good week in my personal life, but the contrast with the Trump shitshow is disorienting. And the shitshow will probably get worse as Iran does not fold and other indications of Trump’s losing emerge. Stay strong.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker. I haven’t seen any of them write about the Hawaii decision.
Let’s stay away from hypotheticals, as usual. Post your pets.
130 more weeks to go. What are you doing?
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40, Week 50, Week 60, Week 70, Week 71, Week 72, Week 73, Week 74, Week 75, Week 13,044, Week 77