Trump's Italian job

Could somebody investigate this before November?  Durham and Barr certainly buried it, and I'm pretty darn sure if they found something to exonerate Trump, they would have published it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dare we hope?

Joe Biden is set to meet with his family on Sunday, a discussion that might include talk about his political future, even though it was scheduled to take place before his calamitous presidential debate on Thursday with Donald Trump.

The meeting at Camp David comes as pressures have mounted on Biden after the vast fallout of the debate.

[...]

So far, at rallies and events following the Thursday debate, the Bidens have shown no sign of changing course, painting the debate as a one-off bad day and doubling down on 2020 election success against Trump.

  The Guardian

Of course. But, if they know that wasn't actually a one-off, or know that four more years (or four more months) could easily kill Joe, maybe they'll start discussing ways for him to bow out.  If they're not more concerned with the country than with their position in it, that is.

On Sunday, however, an administration official dismissed speculation that the Biden family summit was set to discuss the president potentially standing down.

“The premise of the [NBC] story is not accurate,” the official in a media huddle at New Jersey’s McGuire air force base.

The Camp David meeting, he said, “was public in our guidance before the debate. It’s been on the schedule for weeks. There is nothing more to it.”

But maybe they'll have a different take after that horrible night.

“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,” said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado.

You and me both.

A former Democratic National Committee vice chair wrote Sunday that leading Democrats must be pushed to urge President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race or history will judge them harshly.

[...]

Rybak wrote that Biden “deserves tremendous praise” for his time as president, but said people should not confuse gratitude for what he has accomplished with the need to win the 2024 presidential election over Trump.

“A Presidential election is not the Academy Awards where you are rewarded for what you did,” Rybak wrote.

[...]

“Our elected officials,” wrote former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak on Facebook, “are staying shockingly silent in public, especially considering how many of them acknowledge privately that this has to happen.”

“They fear political retribution but they should really fear that if we lose this election because they didn’t have the guts to do what they know needs to be done, holy hell and history will come down on them like an anvil,” he added.

  Politico

And then I don't want to hear any of them ever again saying Republicans are afraid to speak publicly about Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01:50 pm:  Jamie Raskin seems to indicate the party is not unalterably committed to having Biden be the 2024 presidential candidate.

Après le déluge: Get real, Joe

Joe is a fighter - sure.  I'll give you that.  He's a reactionary. He's belligerent in a different way - a more palatable way - from Trump.  Joe gets his back up if you dare question him. He (his team?) made a terrible blunder on debate night, not only in his horrible delivery and semi-coherent responses (maybe they gave him a cold medicine that made him loopy?), but in his entire approach to debating a narcissistic liar.  You CANNOT argue with a narcissistic liar.  

Joe's approach should have been to ignore whatever Trump was saying, giving it absolutely no credence whatsoever, because it deserved none.  Instead of arguing any point, instead of personal counter attacks, instead of a juvenile tit-for-tat (I have a better golf handicap than you???), he should have spent every minute he had talking about his own plans for the next four years versus Trump's Project 2025 plans.  He should have laid it out.  Reports show that most voters don't know what Project 2025 is.  They don't understand what Trump will do next time around.  That was Joe's best approach.  His JOB, I'd argue.

I'm like the person who said they'd vote for Joe Biden's shoe if that's what they put up there, but less politically engaged, more persuadable people - the people both sides need at this point - are not likely to see it that way.  They saw the trainwreck that was Joe Biden on debate night.

The president and first lady attended a political fundraiser on Friday evening in New York City, and on Saturday they visited the Hamptons home of Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner and mega-donor Avram Glazer and his wife, Jill, for a private meeting on Eastern Long Island.

[...]

“We converted more undecided voters than Trump did," [Joe told them.]

  Politico

If that's true, let's see the data.

"The Times had their editorial, and guess what? They also point out [Trump] lied 28 times in a matter of 90 minutes. It’s pretty good. The big takeaway were his lies."

Get real. There's no one left on the planet who doesn't understand Trump lies constantly. We all knew that going in. That was not the big takeaway. The big takeaway was that you are a liability. An old man who's barely hanging on. Democrats, pundits, and foreign governments alike were in a state of near panic.

"People remembered how bad things were during his presidency, how much they disliked him,” Biden told a star-studded crowd seated under a tent on the Rosensteins’ perfectly manicured lawn.

Talking point pre-debate: let Trump talk and people will remember what they didn't like about him. He hasn't been in the news all the time and people have forgotten. I assume that was one of the points they prepped Biden with.

Here's the problem with that, Joe:  You had the same amount of time to talk, and people suddenly saw what they didn't ever know about you.  And it scared the bejesus out of them. The debate was yours to lose, and you lost it. To a convicted felon, lying fraud.  Jesus wept.

Lizanne Rosenstein took the microphone first, telling the crowd that it’s more “meaningful to compare presidencies” than debate nights.” First lady Jill Biden followed: “Joe isn’t just the right person for the job. He’s the only person for the job.”

No, Jill. No he isn't. The Democratic party has plenty of people who could do the job.  And, it well might have been "meaningful to compare presidencies" instead of whatever it was Joe thought he was doing.  So maybe Lizanne should have prepped Joe instead of whoever it was who did.

Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks met privately Friday morning with top donors and bundlers at The Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta to convince them the debate was not a “campaign killer.” The trio made clear that Biden would stay in the race.

There is absolutely no doubt of that. There never was.  But stop trying to gaslight voters. Leave that to the Republicans and call it out.

O’Malley Dillon sent a new campaign memo Saturday afternoon, reinforcing the president’s message. She argued that once again pundits and the media are doubting Biden, while pointing to very early polling data that shows the debate had little effect on how voters viewed the race.

“If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,” the memo said, followed by several media clips highlighting Barack Obama’s 2012 rocky debate performance.

Joe Biden did not have a "rocky debate performance." He had an unmitigated disaster.

Joe gave some fiery speeches THE NEXT DAY. Hopefully they'll get Joe back on track, but please don't gaslight us. We saw what we saw, and it was terrifying.  THE NEXT DAY Joe was shouting, "I know how to tell the truth!"  So tell it, Joe.  Tell us what the hell happened to you the previous night.

Weissmann, former federal prosecutor and CNN analyst, was unrelentingly excoriated in the comments to that post (especially for bringing up Parkinson's), but he's absolutely right.  

That wasn't "one bad night," as apologists are saying.  That was a trainwreck on a par with the toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last year.  We might have forgotten about that at this point, but it was certainly not forgotten four months after it happened.   And all we've got is four months.

Do we imagine that Joe's fiery rallies (using telepromptered speeches written by someone else, by the way) are being seen by even a fraction of the number of people who saw that debate?  Not to mention the déluge of TikTok, right-wing "news", and other social media clips Republicans will be posting on an hourly basis from now until the election.

Others assessing the situation are probably right that it's simply too late to change horses.  We're in the middle of the stream.  Joe told us in 2019 that he was the only person who could beat Trump, and people believed him.  (How is that different from Trump's constant claims of "only I can do this" on everything?) He also said he was just going to get us through the next four years and then hand the reins to a younger person.  They should have stuck with that, but now he's saying again that he's the only person who can beat Trump.  

We don't need hubris.  Hubris will not save this country from Trump's band of autocratic Christian Nationalists and the Supreme Court they've created. We're going to have enough horrors and hard work saving ourselves from the Supreme Court.  We need every advantage we can get in the other two branches of government.  American politics are killing us.  And we thought Trump/Hillary was a bad choice!  Now we're fighting over whether we'll have Bubble Butt or the Crypt Keeper as our front man.  We're in serious trouble and we're still playing team politics.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:03 am:

UPDATE 01:50 pm:  Jamie Raskin seems to indicate the party is not unalterably committed to having Biden be the 2024 presidential candidate.  Let's hope everybody makes the right decision - whatever that is - to keep Trump out of the White House.  

It's Sunday

One step to hold the line.

But how many other steps to crash through it?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not a good look

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why does Trump hate electricity?

First he goes on a rant about being electrocuted if an electric boat went under water. Now this...

Were electric shocks part of his childhood punishments?

Also...what does the sun have to do with electric engines?  He forgot he's not talking about solar power.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Where was this Joe during the debate?

Last night it was reported he said he thought he did fine.  At least somebody convinced him he needs to clean that mess up.

Maybe the drugs last night were cold medicines that laid him low.  But, how about you show up at the debate next time, Joe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05:36 pm:

Don't expect SCOTUS opinions today to lift your mood

And in a terrible blow to the country and obvious grab for judicial power, the Court has ditched the Chevron doctrine - from the case decided over 40 years ago that permitted federal agencies, with their policy experts, to make decisions which the Court, with no experts, should defer to.

This Court session may well go down in history as the biggest travesty - and tragedy (see what I did there?) in our history.

And to round it off, they've given the January 6th defendants a helping hand.

No Jackson dissent?  That's interesting, and I'm sure she has good reason, but I am just too despondent from last night's debate and today's SCOTUS rulings to try to find it out.

Good luck, America.

UPDATE 09:57 am:  For all of you who had Trump immunity decision the last possible date in your office pool, you win.

UPDATE 01:02 pm:

No doubt, the Supreme Court’s decision deals a soft blow to the government’s use of the (c)(2) provision of Section 1512. Section 1512(c) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding in two ways: first, under subsection (c)(1), by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding, and second, under subsection (c)(2), by “otherwise” obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding. Rather than apply what the U.S. Solicitor General described as the plain meaning of the word “otherwise” to other means of obstructing the proceeding, such as by violently attacking the joint session of congress to count the electoral ballots–a plain meaning with which Justices Barrett, Sotomayor, and Kagan generally concurred in dissent–the Court held that the obstruction barred by (c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence.

[...]

Assessing the impact of this decision needs to be done dispassionately and with nuance. The upshot is that the decision means little in terms of the pending charges against former President Donald Trump. It means potentially more to a subset of the January 6th defendants who were charged under this statute, who comprise only a fraction – 24% – of the existing January 6th defendants. And even within that 24%, in the great majority of cases that have resulted in a guilty verdict (by plea or after trial) for a 1512(c)(2) offense, the defendant was also found guilty of one or more other felonies (62%). Further, as to the 71 defendants who have been charged under Section 1512(c)(2) and are still awaiting trial, all of them are charged with crimes in addition to 1512(c)(2), and a majority are charged with one or more other felonies.

  Just Security

Continue reading.

UPDATE 03:56 pm:

And one more thing...

You know it was bad when one of Biden's most supportive teams (three of whom worked with Obama) takes him down.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:10 am:

OMG the debate!

Would it have been any worse if they'd just put those two old men in spandex underpants and stuck 'em in a wrestling ring?  I don't think so.

Admittedly, I only made it through the first 15 minutes and had to go read a book.  At that point, I wouldn't have made a bet that Biden would make it much past 15 minutes.  He looked like they dragged him out of the crypt, and he mumbled so badly I couldn't even catch everything he said.  The looks on his face were like even he couldn't believe he was there.  And Trump put on his mugshot face and just spouted lies, ranting random nonsense like the madman he is.  

From other people's comments, I gather it went on that way the whole time.

Before the debate I heard justification for the moderators not fact-checking Trump in real time as the debate would devolve into Jake Tapper and Donald Trump.  Good point.  But that would have been so much better for the country.

Mehdi makes many good points in this video.  But Democrats won't just offer another candidate at their convention. However, they should try to convince Joe to stand down on his own.  What I expect, though, is for Joe to start apologizing for and excusing his bad performance and promise better. (Update: see below*) 

No.  We need to thank him for his service and name a bridge after him.  This is serious.  

Guardian headlines:

And THAT is the key note.  One man would accept a loss.  The other would lie, cheat, and steal, and call out an army of lunatics to the streets.

Unfortunately, Biden had a cold and came in with a hoarse voice and low energy. For the first 45 minutes, it was rough sledding for the President, who stumbled on answers and said outloud, “we finally beat Medicare.”

Oof!

[...]

[Biden's] performance reinforces the damaging story that he’s too old to run. Mind you, Trump is 78 years old and also didn’t come off looking great, but at least he was coherent during his absurd, ugly rants.

[...]

For the next debate, A.I. should simply ask questions and play the timekeeper. That’s what these two journalists did. Trump overwhelmed them with an avalanche of bullshit, lies and absurd statements but he was never once fact checked. There was never any pushback. A few times the moderators asked him to answer the question after he went on some rant or attack, but that’s about it. How does this type of “moderation” help inform Americans ahead of a Presidential election? What does this do except just help Trump mainstream lies? This man stood on the stage and said Democrats are executing babies after birth, and no moderator checked him.

  The Left Hook

Don't blame the moderators. It wasn't their job to critique.  It's a debate.  The other guy is supposed to counter the bullshit.  AI isn't a bad idea.

Unfortunately, Biden had a cold and came in with a hoarse voice and low energy. For the first 45 minutes, it was rough sledding for the President, who stumbled on answers and said outloud, “we finally beat Medicare.”

I'm not hopeful.

Democrats were trying to soothe each other out of the gate saying every incumbent president has had a horrible first debate (Oh, lord, there are going to be more!), and Joe had a cold.  And, WHY ISN'T ANYONE FACT-CHECKING TRUMP??!!??!!

But eventually, many settled in to accept reality.

David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign official, called the debate “kind of a Defcon 1 moment”.

“The biggest thing in this election is voters’ concerns – and it’s both swing voters and base voters – with his age, and those were compounded tonight,” Plouffe said.

[...]

Maria Shriver, the former first lady of California, said she loves Biden and knows he’s a good man, but the evening was “heartbreaking in many ways”.

“This is a big political moment. There’s panic in the Democratic party. It’s going to be a long night.”

Nicholas Kristof, the leftwing political columnist, said on social media that he hopes Biden reflects on the debate and decides to withdraw from the race, letting the convention decide who should be the nominee.

[...]

Former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that Biden had one job, and he didn’t do it: He needed to “reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed”.

[...]

On the liberal network MSNBC, anchor Nicole Wallace laid out how a candidate could release their delegates, while fellow journalist Joy Reid said someone sent her the rules for doing so.

“No one is saying it’s going to happen, it’s very unlikely,” Reid said, but added that the atmosphere among Democrats was “approaching panic”.

[...]

Some Democrats laid out ways the Biden camp could turn the moment back toward him and get his performance out of voters’ minds: send out his surrogates to support him, put strong speakers like Harris or Newsom on the morning shows, or announce an initiative or endorsement or big idea in order to change the narrative.

  Guardian

Yeah, people aren't likely to forget this one. And the Republicans will be airing clips of Biden all day long until the election.

Sure.  I'll stress how absolutely necessary it is that we hold back the MAGA/Christian Nationalist surge in this country. And I'll vote for Biden. (If he lives that long - and even if he's on his deathbed in the Oval, he'll have competent people in his cabinet trying to keep this country going, which Trump absolutely will not have.)  But I'll be disgusted and depressed doing it.  That might not be great, but it's rational.

If you missed the debacle and have a desire to ruin your day, you can watch it here.  But, honestly, this captures it:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08:47 am:

You know it was bad when one of Biden's most supportive teams (three of whom worked with Obama) takes him down.

*UPDATE 01:37 pm:  He's not stepping down.  He IS doing just what I suggested above that he'd do.

Last night it was reported he said he thought he did fine.  At least somebody convinced him he needs to clean that mess up.

UPDATE 06/29/2024: