Please Read This
This was the “Week from Hell” for Donald Trump, his family, and his many ongoing businesses financial scams.
- A massive civil suit seeking heavy penalties filed by the Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James, against the Trump Organization threatens to financially cripple and end its very existence with no chance of revival.
- A federal appellate court ruled against Trump and allowed the US Department of Justice to resume its criminal investigation into analyzing classified government documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago last month.
- The “Special Master” overlooking the stolen documents case has advised the Trump legal camp to legally put up or shut up. While Trump can make outrageous claims on a daily basis, making the same assertions in a court of law carries great risk.
- With Congress back in session, the Jan 6th Committee will hold another nationally televised session later this week — hardly good news for Trump and others involved in organizing and implementing an insurrection in January 2021 for which hundreds of MAGA nuts are sitting in jail and more about to join them.
The noose is beginning to tighten around his neck as Trump probably feels the pressure — one which made him flaunt his telepathic powers on FOX News. This ”completely bizarre diatribe” seems to be hurting the Republican Party’s chances in the November Elections. As a sign that desperation may be setting in, Trump also fully embraced the QAnon Movement. It believes in conspiracy theories including one that the Democratic Party is running a secret pedophilic society.
Due to the overwhelming number of editorial cartoons published this past week (I saved well over 200, looked at many more), once again you get the benefit of not one, but two diaries. If time permits, I’ll try to post Part II a bit later this evening between 6:00-8:00 pm ET.
- Part I of this diary deals with voting issues, Trump and his many bizarre actions, abortion restrictions, and the Russia-Ukraine War.
- Part II of the diary delves more into Trump, MAGA nuts, Ron DeSantis and the immigration issue, and other miscellaneous items.
Hope you enjoy reading the diaries. Thanks.
Attribution for January 6th Committee cartoon: Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press @BennettCartoons.
Please Vote in the November Elections
Remember to register and vote in the November 2022 Elections. If you can, help a friend, neighbor, co-worker, or acquaintance along the way.
It’s time to play offense and work toward a return to sanity and normalcy.
“In-person voting for the midterm elections opened Friday in Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming, kicking off a six-week sprint to Election Day in a landscape that has changed much since the pandemic drove a shift to mail balloting in the 2020 presidential contest,” the AP reports.
The start of in-person voting comes as the nation continues to grapple with the fallout from nearly two years of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump due to widespread fraud and manipulation of voting machines. Those conspiracy theories, promoted by a constellation of Trump allies in the campaign, on social media and at conferences held across the country, have taken a toll on public confidence in U.S. elections.
What might happen in future elections if Republican election deniers are successful in 2022 in several states?
Uncertainty and chaos.
Reuters: “Refusing to certify election results would immediately be met by lawsuits and pleas to state courts to reverse such unprecedented actions, and there is no guarantee these Republican office holders would ultimately succeed in overturning results if they decided to try.”
“Yet at a minimum such radical action would delay election results, likely throw the country into chaos, undermine faith in the voting system and potentially lead to civil unrest.”
Need Proof of What Might Happen? Here it is.
We’re Screwed!
For Trump, is the End in Sight?
The moment Donald Trump is forced to withdraw from the political scene, that day will be declared a “National Day of Mourning” by editorial cartoonists in the United States and worldwide. Such is the hold he has over their collective imaginations.
The more outrageous the behavior, the more bizarre the news, and the more unthinkable the reason, Trump’s actions invariably elicit a reaction from most cartoonists, most of it unflattering in tone and coverage. He has successfully redefined “normalcy” to the point that it causes his blind and loyal followers to reflexively defend him — justified or not. For Trump, no publicity is bad publicity so long as he is in the center of the conversation. No wonder a low-key, stable leader like Joe Biden is frequently not the target of the cartoonists’ attention and ire. He doesn’t need constant adulation and admiration to do his job. He is not a narcissist like Trump.
To Contribute, Dial 1-800-SUCKERS
“Trump has spent most of his 76 years inflating his wealth, achievements and abilities, but James’s civil lawsuit, more than 280 pages long, is the first time his carnivalesque business practices have exposed him to existential legal consequences.”
The Trump Potemkin Tower
For most of his life, Trump has evaded the long arm of the law because he has repeatedly lied and manipulated the financial system to his advantage. That he has always had a tenuous relationship with the truth has been known to friends and foes alike for decades. He feels no social restraints because he is beyond shame and does not adhere to any of society’s standards that mere mortals must abide by. Politically, he has used innuendo, insult, and bullying tactics as means to achieve his ends. He couldn’t care less about what the media or his political opponents think about him.
How long will Trump’s brazen act continue to befuddle his critics? Perhaps not much longer, as the end may be in sight and Kryptonite (the law) may well be his undoing. The current legal actions against him on several fronts threaten to drastically change how he operates. And worse.
But that may not last for forever.
Trump does not do so well in the courts. In court, Trump’s superpowers seem to disappear…
You can lie to reporters, lie to your supporters, lie in books. You can say whatever you want outside of court. But what makes a sworn oath different is that if you lie while making such a declaration, the law can charge you. And if the law convicts you, then men with guns will force you to come with them.
All of the other spheres of public life are run on the honor system. We police ourselves and each other through complicated webs of soft incentives and disincentives. Anyone who does not wish to participate in these honor systems, we have now discovered, can opt out. The systems can be ignored, or fought, or corrupted. Because the only thing backstopping them are people’s opinions, thoughts, and feelings.
What may have worked effectively for Trump in the political, social, and financial arenas — and unbelievable as it might sound, carried him all the way to the pinnacle of political power — may well collapse in the legal realm.
Stark repudiation by federal judges he appointed. Far-reaching fraud allegations by New York’s attorney general. It’s been a week of widening legal troubles for Donald Trump, laying bare the challenges piling up as the former president operates without the protections afforded by the White House.
The bravado that served him well in the political arena is less handy in a legal realm dominated by verifiable evidence, where judges this week have looked askance at his claims and where a fraud investigation that took root when Trump was still president burst into public view in an allegation-filled 222-page state lawsuit.
In politics, “you can say what you want and if people like it, it works. In a legal realm, it’s different,” said Chris Edelson, a presidential powers scholar and American University government professor. “It’s an arena where there are tangible consequences for missteps, misdeeds, false statements in a way that doesn’t apply in politics.”
So Many Worries, So Little Time
Time Has Come Today
“Amateurs,” said Don Corleone
Deep Sea Fishing
Look What We Found Here!
MAGA Morons
Times Have Changed
Any Doubts?
WhatAboutism — MAGA Style
Headed to a MAGA Rally
The Full Story About White Supremacy — See This Video
Crossing the Line into Fascism
Abortion — Back to the Bad Old Days
Theory and Practice
Courtesy of the US Extreme Court and the State of Texas
His Morality, Their Bodies
The Russia-Ukraine Conflict — You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Lifeboat, Vlad
Another One Bites the Dust
Russian Roulette
Signs of Desperation
Choices They Are Making
Finally…
I always scan over 75 personal websites or Twitter sites throughout the week looking for hidden gems from editorial cartoonists. These items usually pertain to tweets from other people about policy issues, popular culture, history, and the like.
This week, it was a focus on the past from the 1890s to the 1960s. Hope you like what I dug up.
Did you know this? I sure didn’t. Ann Telnaes is the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post.
A Blast from the Past by Film Director Jean-Luc Godard
The current issue of the New York Review of Books has this to say about the film Bande à part (1964).
[H]e had the stars of his wonderful Bande à part (1964) run through the Louvre to kill a little time, even as time was killing them. Starring three young performers at the height of their beauty and ability to fascinate—Anna Karina, Sami Frey, and Claude Brasseur—this film, Godard’s seventh full-length movie, is, ostensibly, an homage to gangster flicks, but to me it’s about how youth doesn’t know itself, and what that confusion of energy and intention looks like as it plays out against history—in grand edifices like the Louvre.
Get Smart Premiere from 1965
The Diary Poll
Here is the “THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ALL THE WAYS DONALD TRUMP IS LEGALLY SCREWED” from Vanity Fair. It includes all the major investigations underway, as well as some lesser-known ones in which Trump is entangled. Can Trump survive all of these charges? Any one of these could bring him down.
The Jan 6th Committee’s hearings are largely political in nature but could lead to criminal charges and prosecution.
Who Are the Idiots Who Believe his Guy?
The committee has no power to prosecute, but it has gone to court to enforce subpoenas to testify and prompted criminal charges of contempt of Congress by the Justice Department against Stephen K. Bannon and Peter Navarro, two former Trump aides. Mr. Bannon has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing, while Mr. Navarro has asked a court to throw out his case.
But while lawmakers cannot indict Mr. Trump, they are debating whether to make a criminal referral recommending that the Justice Department do so. That has little substantive meaning, but it would raise the stakes for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
Also, see these two articles — New York Times, ”The Story So Far: Where 6 Investigations Into Donald Trump Stand” and the Guardian, "Of all the legal threats Trump is facing, is this the one that could take him down?"
Remember to take the diary poll.
Link to Part 2 of This Diary — "Recipe For a Second Coup" - The Week in Editorial Cartoons, Looming Threats Edition, Part 2