Bill Maher sat for an interview with Jonathan Karl last week. Maher talked about the major comedy award that he received, about how disappointed he is with the Democratic field, and about the fact that even if you hate where they’re coming from, the GOP is still made up of human beings. He’s right, of course. It’s just that they disguise it so well.
Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy, was also interviewed by Karl, and this guy is a real sight gag. He didn’t answer anything that was asked, and went around in circles about how long he expected the war to last. Why is it that no one in Trump’s cabinet is able to give a coherent answer to any question about the war, the economy, immigration, or any other substantive subject? Does being loyal to Trump drain your brain of all other abilities?
But then at the end of the interview, Wright appeared to pull his nuts out of the fire when he was asked if in his opinion Biden won the 2020 election, and he replied that as far as he could see, Biden did. A touch of honesty out of the lying machine.
*****
Despite the fact that we have a war raging in Iran, the president chose a recent Thursday to address the nation on his favorite subject: the 2020 election and how it was rigged. This is the election of which Trump, despite truckloads of factual evidence to the contrary, claims to have been cheated. Of course, factual evidence has never affected anything that Trump has an opinion on, so why get into it now? Well, there’s another election coming up, and Trump is already setting up his claims of a fix months before voters even get a shot at making their opinion known. Why is he doing this? Well, even someone with as little real knowledge as Trump knows that if you can plant enough doubt about the veracity of the election, and if you can plant it early enough, you might get a friendly result. So, he’s off and running with his claim that “the fix is in.”
Intelligence sources assert that the most damage to any election is when some traitor is able to convince a significant number of voters that an election has actually been affected and the vote changes. That is exactly what Trump is attempting to do, which, according to our own intelligence sources, would make him a dangerous traitor.
*****
We have made a lot of noise about Trump and his rigged elections but that’s only because he won’t give it up and obviously it is just bullshit. It’s obvious to Trump that he will be absolutely trounced in the next election, so he’s busy ramping up all the lies and phony tales about what foreign governments are doing to invade our process. The reality is that Russia is the only country doing a significant amount of work on influencing our elections. Of course, Trump is selling China in that role because he doesn’t want to piss off Putin.
Trump looks at 2026 and he sees a big loss, but he looks at 2028, and he sees a disaster. So, if he can’t win the election, his only choice is to destroy the veracity of the vote count. Of course, if he is successful, he will also destroy the basis of democratic government … the base that our nation is built on.
*****
This week Trump’s Gestapo agents shot another young man in Maine, and four ICE agents viciously beat another young man in Virginia. It’s said that this is becoming such a regular occurrence that except for the victim’s family, people hardly notice. They do notice! They very definitely notice, and sooner or later the kind of emotion caused by these outrageous murders is going to lead to uncontrolled violence. How will ICE react when a truck loaded with serious, well-armed hunters who have lost a young relative to one of Trump’s murderers shows up with bad intentions and turns the place and all its Nazi occupants into debris. It will happen. It’s inevitable. It has been made so by the bloody arrogance of the ICE members themselves. This is not Nazi Germany, not yet, and the people who live here are armed to the teeth and used to expecting fair play from their government.
And what do the other government agencies, the ones that haven’t been thoroughly infected by Trump and his ass-kissing criminals, do when faced with this legitimate outcry for fair play and rule of law? Whom do they support? Do we end up with government agencies like the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, National Guard, and the military, going against each other in a civil war? It has happened before and it can happen again.
*****
Our country is now involved in a war that has lasted far longer than our president and his motley crew have told us it was going to. We try to figure out the future ourselves but it’s almost impossible, what with no one being a reliable source of information. We expect the enemy to lie to us. That is the expectation of all populations facing war. The enemy tells us lies, and our leaders tell us the truth. But we are faced with leaders who have no idea of the truth or how to tell it. Trump’s history is one of almost complete falsehood, having told thousands of provable lies during his first term in office and now trying to outdo himself in his second. The problem is that if there is no truth, there can be no believability.
Immediately after starting this war, Trump started lying about it. He hasn’t stopped. He started by telling us that we had destroyed Iran’s military capabilities, but they are still fighting and still killing our kids.
Lucky for him, Trump has found the perfect Secretary of War in Pete Hegseth. A liar of almost Trumpian dimensions, he obsequiously backs up Trump’s lies. The only problem is he is worse at it than Trump, and he keeps getting caught out.
In a recent confrontation Hegseth was first challenged by and then buried in a congressional hearing. Hegseth needs to go but then so does Trump.
*****
So, the GOP finally woke up. Two of their leaders, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, appear to have come to the realization that they will all be going to jail the moment Trump leaves office if they don’t try to stop his criminal game of chess with the IRS through the agreement that granted Trump, members of his family, and others associated with him a payoff and sweeping protection from future tax audits. That wasn’t bad enough. It also granted the criminals who attacked the capitol on January 6th a shot at collecting money despite the damage and bodily harm they did.
It looks like Cornyn and Tillis scanned this mess with real vision and realized that the crook in the oval office had to be stopped somewhere … and this is the spot.