Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is an open thread. Talk about anything you’d like, including today’s links, articles and posted comments.
Michael Tomasky/TNR:
The Trump Bubble Is Impregnable for Now—but Boy, Is It Going to Burst
The president is on a collision course with an accountability moment. Either he or our democracy will prevail.
Point one: On a personal level, Donald Trump is becoming more and more unhinged. He rambles, he stumbles, he fumbles. We don’t know whether he actually pooped himself in that one much-discussed episode in the Oval Office. But the fact that it has been discussed as something that might have happened is bad enough. And even if he retains full control of those evacuations, it’s the ones coming out of his brain and mouth that remain more concerning. Politico reported recently that the prime minister of Slovakia—a Trump ally—met with Trump at the White House on January 28 and later told other world leaders that he was concerned about Trump’s “psychological state.”
That repost of the Obamas as apes has been widely interpreted as one more Trumpian effort to troll the libs. Sure, I guess it was that. But what if it was something else? It may also have been the act of a man who is losing some marbles. It was beyond anything even he has ever done along those lines. He’s losing it. The mainstream media is afraid to touch the topic. The right-wing media screams that everything’s fine, it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s an apt phrase, all right, but it means the opposite of what the Foxies think it means. The bottom line for now is that the rest of us, the majority that finds him repulsive, just has to sit here and watch.
NPR:
The FBI seizure of Georgia 2020 election ballots relies on debunked claims
An FBI investigation of the 2020 election in Georgia's Fulton County was initiated by a lawyer working for the Trump administration who also aided President Trump's efforts to try to overturn that election years ago, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.
The affidavit, written by FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans, led to a judge signing off on a search warrant of Fulton County's elections hub, just outside Atlanta. The FBI executed that search warrant on Jan. 28, seizing more than 650 boxes of ballots and other 2020 election materials.
The affidavit relies on misleading and already-disproven claims about the 2020 election. Fulton County's 2020 ballots were counted three separate times, with the results affirmed.
The Atlantic:
‘The Trust Has Been Absolutely Destroyed’
Some state election officials say they no longer trust their federal partners.
With just more than eight months before midterm elections, Trump has already said that he will accept the results only “if the elections are honest,” and has mused that “we shouldn’t even have an election” given that the midterms typically result in defeats for the president’s party. He has called for the greater use of identification at all polling places, a ban on mail voting, and a prohibition on certain types of voting equipment. Inside the White House, his obsession with disproving the results of the 2020 election, which he lost, has led to the creation of a standing working group that meets regularly to coordinate federal efforts to investigate past elections and reform future election processes.
The result is a breakdown in the state and federal partnership that has long facilitated the nation’s elections. After a White House official, Jared Borg, told secretaries of state to expect a Cabinet-level briefing at a conference in Washington last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard failed to appear, according to Lawrence Norden, the vice president for elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice, who attended the briefing. Days later, the election leaders received the email from Hardiman, a career official, who had appeared at the conference to discuss the more traditional roles the FBI plays in assisting election administrators, including investigations of threats to state and local election officials.
Adam Klasfeld/All Rise News:
Rising This Week: 'The border is now everywhere'
A dissenting opinion decodes the radical implications of Trump's Fifth Circuit victory.
Then, on Friday evening, a divided three-judge panel of the most conservative federal appellate court in the United States granted Trump’s wish.
The dissenting judge unpacked the profound implications of that decision.
“In sum, the government’s proposed reading of the statute would mean that, for purposes of immigration detention, the border is now everywhere,” U.S. Circuit Judge Dana Douglas, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote.
POLITICO:
New York GOP’s midterm problem: No money, no bench — and Trump
The hard-knock life of a blue-state Republican looks even worse this midterm.
The state GOP faithful are kicking off their nominating convention today on battleground Long Island. Nassau County is home to gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who’s lagging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul nearly 2 to 1 in polling. The confab is also in the district of one of the country’s most vulnerable House Democrats — Rep. Laura Gillen — against whom, puzzlingly, Republicans have yet to put up a viable challenger.
That race and several other New York swing districts will be crucial in determining control of the House and the fate of Trump’s final two years in the White House.
New York Republicans’ misery is fueling Democratic elation.
“It’s bleak,” said Jay Jacobs, the state Democratic Party chair who doubles as leader of the Nassau County Democrats. “Right now, they’re in a bad political environment with the polling numbers for President Trump, who Bruce Blakeman has tied himself to as tightly as you can.”
Cliff Schecter/Blue Amp Media:
Donald Trump’s Super-Predator Billionaire Buddies Step Out of the Shadows
Trump's Jeffrey Epstein Entourage prey on young girls, jobs, pensions, democracy, and now the truth itself—and these billionaire enablers are only getting worse, believe it or not.
For years, we’ve been sold a comforting fairy tale: America’s worst predators come in different species. There are those predators; sex traffickers, monsters, villains in Netflix documentaries and then there are these predators; the respectable ones in fleece vests who “optimize” companies, “disrupt” democracy, and somehow always end up with your pension money in their carry-on.
Beside rolled-up tinfoil sporting someone else’s cocaine. I mean, c’mon, they they totally have no idea how it got there!
This week blew the lie straight to hell that those with bloodlust for bankrupting their neighbors and our country are different than those who prey on young girls. The only difference is we’ve allowed the first to become respectable since the Reagan days (remember when they were called “corporate raiders?” Private equity sounds more thoughtful. Kinder.).
It turns, out destroying people’s lives and livelihoods with no allegiance to anything but your own wealth and power is always evil. So, it turns out, it’s the same guys. Same billionaires. Same vibes. Same moral black hole—just different crimes on different days.
