A Perfectly Reasonable Amount of Schadenfreude about Things Happening to Trump & His Enablers (Part 1)

Fuck Trump enablers. Keep them out of government. Keep them out of any job with any degree of public responsibility. Let them become poor people and then see what they want government to do for them.

Many other aides have left his side, eager to start anew far away from their former boss. White House aides and administration officials who once relished their West Wing perches have jetted off on remote getaways — cashing in on a mountain of unused vacation time. Others are frantically asking former colleagues for help finding work as they prioritize their own careers over whatever chapter Trump is planning for himself.

It’s not been easy. Tainted by Trump’s reputation, several Trump aides described an increasingly bleak job market with virtually no chance of landing jobs in corporate America and some even having seen promising leads disappear after the rampage at the U.S. Capitol. A second former White House official said they knew of “people who got jobs rescinded because of Jan. 6.” A Republican strategist was blunter.

“They are really f—ed,” the strategist said, pointing to some top officials who stuck with Trump until the bitter end. “The Hill scramble, one of the few places where they’d be welcomed, already happened a month or so ago… They were told over and over to take their hand off the hot stove, and they didn’t want to listen.”

It’s not just the lower- and mid-level staffers getting pinched. Two people familiar with his thinking said Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who spent seven years in the House of Representatives before joining the White House, was even considering a position at the Trump Organization because of a lack of options.

Here’s a link to the actual lawsuit, which is a thing of beauty.

Seriously, I’ve read a lot of court documents. Especially lately, I try to at least skim all of the election related ones.

But this is the first time I’ve ever seen one with pictures, lots of pictures. And they not only did a wonderful job of documenting every time Rudy repeated the lie - which is why the lawsuit is over 100 pages long, but they wove his other grifts into the narrative, illustrating the way his show used the election fraud narrative to sell gold and “internet security” services and American made cigars.

@Ann_Hedonia. I just read a good part of that lawsuit, and while I am not a lawyer, I’d opine that Rudy is screwed. I mean, the man was given a chance to shut up and instead, like his erstwhile boss, he doubled down instead, and with copious recordings to boot.

My guess is somewhere around August, when other things are occurring and Americans are (hopefully) enjoying their vacations, he’ll quietly settle the lawsuit, admit he was wrong, eat dirt and beg forgiveness, and perhaps pay Dominion’s legal fees. Although I admit, I’d love to see him try and argue this is court…

And just curious; is anyone going after the bogus ‘expert’ Ramsland? He’s damn near as culpable as the rest, IMHO.

Thanks again, Ann.

I expect Dominion to file suits against multiple other entities, including Fox News and OANN, and perhaps Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.

I expect that they will sue Trump and his campaign both.

And I don’t think Dominion is going to settle any of this quietly. Even if they settled for actual damages and dropped the punitive damages, that’s over 600 million dollars, which is way more money than Giuliani can grift from his supporters.

Dominion is looking to clear their name, loudly and publicly.

Someone also needs to seriously investigate all of these bozos for any ties to any of Dominion’s competitors. I’m not sure if they picked them to be the centerpiece of their conspiracy just because they were widely used in swing states, or if there is another reason.

I think this is the thing that bothers me most about the abusive nature of Trumpism, the total nonchalance about destroying the lives of innocent private citizens and small businesses as long as it advances their goals. Seth Rich’s family, the family of Joe Scarborough’s Florida intern, the individual election workers they have accused of malfeasance.

And if there is anyone out there that still isn’t buying into the idea that Trumpism is abusive, let me refer you to their own words.

https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom

The motto of the Trump War Room account is “this account punches back 10x harder”. That, the highly disproportionate response, is the definition of abuse.

Their logic for saying it’s wrong is dubious. By what evidence they gave, it should be marked “unconfirmed” or “unverified” or even “likely false.” It’s just unclear what caused him to have a heart attack, and it may have been a taser misfire, which may or may not have been at his balls. Talking to his wife who is trying to who is trying to minimize fallout by saying he was just there to “watch” (when he clearly did get involved) is definitely not proof.

Does a $1.2 billion lawsuit have balance sheet implications?

The Giuliani complaint (and thank you for linking it) has lots and lots of incidental references to Fox giving a platform to the Big Lie. 100% they’ll be sued shortly, and 100% they’re pissing themselves because they have no defense and will be obliged to eat shit.

A New York Times reporter witnessed him fall to the ground as he talked on his phone on a sidewalk outside the Capitol. I’m pretty sure the reporter would have noticed if he had been tasering himself in the balls. The allegations that he was and was inside the Capitol seem to be based on purely on second-hand Twitter posts; no one says they saw this happen. The assessment that it is false doesn’t depend on his wife; there is no eye-witness account or photo.

While I would dearly like this to be true, it appears it isn’t.

Please enjoy some beautiful schadenfreude as the sycophants and hangers-on drift away and leave Trump alone with his failure.

If there were no eye witnesses, then there’s no way the reporter would have been able to say exactly what happened. They wouldn’t know–they would only know he had a heart attack, but not what caused it. That’s precisely the flaw in their reasoning.

I’m not saying it did happen. I’m saying the article did not establish that it didn’t happen. Thus it should not be marked “false” which is Snopes’s rating for “could not possibly be true.”

Honestly, at this point, I’ll just link the person who alerted me to the issue and pointed out the flaws. And, no, it’s not one of those “Snopes is biased” people.

She’s skeptical. But she points out that being skeptical of something is not the same thing as declaring it 100% false.

The reporter was an eyewitness. He reported what he saw himself. The guy collapsed on a sidewalk outside the Capitol. He was talking on his phone, not tasing himself in the balls.

What I meant by there were no eyewitnesses of course is that no eyewitness reported that he tased himself, in the balls or otherwise. All those accounts are tweets of hearsay. That article you linked to is really just a load of bullshitting. It doesn’t cite any first hand account of the tasing. I can’t believe anyone on the Dope would take that seriously.

Given that there is an eyewitness account that says he collapsed while talking on a phone outside the Capitol, and no actual evidence that he was tased, I think Snopes assessment is correct.

The CNN article also mentions in passing that the food at Mar-a-Lago is “no good”. Hardly a surprise – Trump’s taste in food is as horrific as his taste in art, decor, and Slovenian hookers. He loves greasy junk food, and to him a steak is not a steak unless it’s grossly overdone to a uniform gray and the consistency of shoe leather, and eaten with ketchup. A class act from start to finish.

There was also this little gem in the Mar-a-Lago article. Funnily enough, the other day I was thinking it would be pettily amusing to do exactly this, almost verbatim. Great (or petty) minds think alike…

There was a wonderful (NYT? New Yorker?) review of the Trump Tower restaurant. Sounded absolutely disgusting.

Sorry, it was Vanity Fair:

Last week I read an interview with his widow who was quoted as saying she was talking to him on the phone when he went silent and had not tased himself. I no longer remember the source. Knowing me it was either the NYT or a poster her posting a link that included that interview. So, his wife saying he hadn’t tased himself qualifies as making the Snopes designation true about is being false that he tased himself in his balls.

As other have said, FoxNews, OAN, etc… will likely be sued. Fox has a ready answer. They (lawyers) have previously argued that *ucker Carlson, Hannity, etc… should not be held to a standard of truth. The average Fox viewer should know that these aren’t “facts” that are being presented.

And another old chestnut for Kellyanne Conway about “alternative facts.” https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/index.html

Or former Senator Jon Kyl “not intended to be a factual statement.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/after-jon-kyl-this-is-not-intended-to-be-a-factual-statement/2011/03/03/AFItUdSD_blog.html

HIAO - Humans In Appearance Only, pronounced “Hi-Yo”

Of course the article doesn’t contain an eyewitness account. It’s an article about establishing the burden of proof. It’s pointing out that Snopes did not provide actual evidence to back up its assertion. It is pointing out that the evidence given does not actually establish the statement as true or false. The entire point is that she doesn’t know whether it happened or not–that the article was done poorly.

You seem to have a mental block here, honestly. You can’t see that there’s an option between “yes it happened” and “no it didn’t happen.” There’s also “we lack conclusive evidence either way.” That is the point I made, and the one she made, and yet you keep arguing as if we said we know what happened.

You don’t even seem to get that I’m talking about the ranking on Snopes. You keep arguing whether you personally believe it or not, and not whether or not the article actually established the facts in question.

And, if you read the actual article, you’d know the reporter did not see what happened until the guy fell. But you’re too busy demanding the article prove a point it didn’t make. The fact that you didn’t rebut that is how I know you didn’t read it.

She’s a professional skeptic. She actually knew the Amazing Randi. Sure, maybe she’s wrong, but mocking her doesn’t prove that. That’s not how you respond to a skeptic.

You tase 'em in the balls?

Sorry, I’m just grieving the death of one of my favorite “get what you deserve” news stories.

BigT, I’m glad we’re in a forum where I can tell you you’re a fucking idiot.

I think there might be an essential difference between the Fox case involving Karen McDougal and the case against Dominion.

It has to do with the concept of a public figure. IANAL, and I invite anyone that is a lawyer to clarify or correct. This came to mind because it was discussed extensively in another thread a few months ago.

Karen McDougal would probably be considered at least a limited public figure. She took actions, regardless of her intentions — selling her story to the National Enquirer, coming forward about the affair -that had a predictable effect of putting her in the public eye. So she doesn’t have as much protection as an entity that is not a public figure against slander and libel, and she would have to prove malice.

But I don’t believe that Dominion Voting Systems qualifies as even a limited public figure because, AFAICT, they took no actions that would’ve had the predictable effect of putting them in the public eye. They were just running their perfectly legal business in the same way as they always had when a bunch of trolls decided to ruin their name as part of a political stunt from which they profited. I’m not 100% sure this theory would hold, but I think it’s solid.