He will continue doing it because it is PR fodder his minions eat up, he would rather do that than do his job, and it doesn’t cost him anything.
For Trump, the point is harassment and, hopefully, extortion. That’s always worth it. Forever.
On the one hand, we could view these as failures which show their incompetence and their willingness to waste their time on hopeless nonsense.
On the other hand — if their objective is to delegitimize the courts entirely by stringing together a series of failures which “actually” show the courts are “corrupt” and “useless” in order to prepare the ground for some new anti-democratic atrocity, well, this is a pretty good approach.
And the American people fought back, and Kimmel returned in less than a week.
And Trump has accepted the will of the people and agreed to stand down?
About half did. The other half embraced this move with open and loving arms.
Trump isn’t done trying. And he is doing plenty of other stuff that can’t be stopped.
I was simply giving an example where he was stopped. Every victory shows more victories are possible.
Winning some battles doesn’t mean the war isn’t lost, especially if nothing of substance was gained in the victory.
I realize that can be read as a slam on Jimmy Kimmel and I’m kind of OK with that?
Sometimes you have to fight hard just to stay in the same place.
There are so many battles going on, ranking which ones are more or less important seems like a huge waste of time. Is a comedian’s free speech more important than keeping an independent Fed, is that more important than preserving access to vaccines, or medicaid, or weaponization of the DOJ, etc. All of these have big consequences if lost, but winning just means maintaining the status quo.
No, now he is threatening to sue ABC:
Since ABC has already paid him $15 million, he’s now salivating at the opportunity to take more of their money.
I don’t think Kimmel is safe either. An attack via the FCC only partially succeeded. That is fine with Trump, he has other lackeys who can try various things. He’s got a big fixation on mortgages lately and he keeps trying to throw people in jail for mortgage fraud. But if that’s not a good attack vector, he’ll figure something else out. Since he’s trying to have Antifa classified as a terrorist organization, he can always just say that Kimmel is an Antifa supporter and thus a terrorist who has no freedom of speech.
Krugman addressed this in his Substack yesterday. I found this heartening to read. Paul is no fool. He points out that trump is trying to turn himself into a dictator at a time when his popularity is declining. This makes him different from other autocrats.
It’s irrefutable now: Trump is nakedly following the playbook of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. As his poll numbers fall, he is rushing to lock in permanent power by punishing his opponents and intimidating everyone else into submission. Craven congressional Republicans and a complicit Supreme Court have abetted Trump’s destruction of our democratic safeguards and norms.
Yet Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocratics, they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept. As David Frum says, this means that he is in a race against time. Can he consolidate power before he loses his aura of inevitability? Will those who run major institutions – particularly corporate CEOs – understand that we are at a crucial juncture, and that by accommodating Trump they have more to lose than by standing up to him?
To put it bluntly, is the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?
…
My bold. This gives me a glimmer of hope…
Read the rest of it. It’s short.
The reason the Trumpites hit on this is likely that members of Congress generally DO have two legitimate primary residences—even if law and practice don’t permit them to claim both as primary. (They live and work much of the year in the DC metropolitan area, and of course they have a home in their own state.) This can be true within a state, too, with state legislators and other officials having homes in the state capital, and also in the community from which they were elected or appointed.
So maybe a lot of them have some kind of “fudging” in their mortgage records. Possibly a higher percentage of Republicans have this issue. Of course the Trump Regime will leave them unmolested.
(Needless to say, Donald didn’t think this up on his own. Probably someone like Russell Vought came up with this attack-tool.)
That IS heartening.
But it’s possible that the job of accelerating the dictatorship isn’t being left to chance. I’m worried about the ‘gather all the general and admirals from all over the world’ plans for this Tuesday. (I haven’t looked, but assume there must be a thread about it here somewhere.) If there’s a burning of that particular Reichstag, then Donald could use it to justify some serious repression.
Here ya go!
Thanks. Sometimes it’s pure guesswork as to which sub-forum will host a particular topic.
And I doubt that it’s just Pulte’s relatives who are guilty of this. Probably a fair investigation would catch a LOT of Republicans. But we’re unlikely to ever see that.
Heh. Junior Senator and Chief Trump Toady Roger Marshall of Kansas lists his primary residence, which is on the voter rolls, as a hunting cabin near the small town of St. John, Kansas. His ‘vacation home’, where his wife lives, is in Sarasota, Florida, and is valued at over a million bucks. Where he stays while in DC is unknown.
Many such arrangements likely exist (particularly for Senators, I’d bet). I doubt that those folks would welcome scrutiny.
Trump’s attempt to make out like this is a major scandal may not be thrilling those who are vulnerable on this score.
A competent authoritarian regime would conduct the investigation.
Then they’d quietly call in a selection of people for a private conversation about what the investigation revealed regarding those people’s finances, and send them on their way with a new … understanding.
And apparently this kind of digging for mortgage fraud would have been impossible before the housing crisis, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were (theoretically) independent of the federal government.
But when they were taken over, all the mortgage records of everyone who had a mortgage insured by one of the government-sponsored enterprises became open to government inspection.
Robert Reich’s post today has a positive take on his declining mental state, poll numbers, and over reach in general.