Trump, disrupter in chief, found guilty
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ump, January 6, election lies, myths vs. facts, indictment, trials
"Call me old-fashioned but I don't think a president who incites a coup against the U.S. government deserves a $200,000 pension for the rest of his life, along with a million-dollar travel budget, all financed by U.S. taxpayers. Just sayin."
Updated 10-19-24. Originally published Feb. 2024.
• Trump is found guilty on 34 felony counts. Read the counts here (Ximena Bustillo and Hilary Fung, NPR, 5-30-24) Jurors in the New York criminal trial against former President Donald Trump have convicted him of 34 felony counts of falsified business records. This is the first time a former or sitting U.S. president has been convicted of criminal charges. The jurors said they unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
• Donald Trump Basically Admits to Interfering in 2020 Election, Makes Clear He Won’t Hesitate to Do It Again (Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, 9-3-24) Nothing to see here, just Trump claiming he had “every right” to interfere in a federal election. Meanwhile, this isn’t even the first time Trump has made clear he will very likely pull a 2020 again in 2024.
• Trump’s closing argument: full-throated fascism (Robert Reich, 10-24) Trump's fascism is now in the open. On Sunday, Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that the biggest problem on Election Day will “not be the people who have come in, who are destroying our country,” but, rather “the people from within — we have some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
"Retired General Mark A. Milley, whom Trump picked to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in new comments voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term (according to a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward)."
• Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini (Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, 10-18-24) 'The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.”
'This language isn’t merely ugly or repellant: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People.” '
"His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity."
• Trump gets profane at Catholic charity dinner (Peter Weber, The Week, 10-18-24) Trump "rushed through prepared remarks, stumbling at times as he read through pointed political jokes, bitter grievances and crude and at times profane personal attacks," The New York Times said. He "seemed most energized when he ditched his script, caught between being an insult comic or just being insulting."
• The Supreme Court Just Made the Prospect of a Second Trump Term Even Scarier Than It Already Was (Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, 7-1-24) "Since the day he left office in 2021—just two weeks after he inspired a deadly attack on the US Capitol—the idea of a second term for Donald Trump has been a fully terrifying prospect. Not just because his response to losing the 2020 election was to sic a bloodthirsty mob on Congress, but also because of his vow to use the government to Read More