Category Archives: Trump

The Supremes Vote

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One thing is clear about this year’s election for president. The Supreme Court intends to cast its vote. The Court, driven by the conservative majority, rushed to hand Donald Trump a victory the day before Super Tuesday, the day fifteen states, including Colorado, hold primary elections. It even went as far as to announce on a Sunday that it would be handing down a ruling the next day. And it leaked the subject so loudly every story that night predicted it would be a decision in Trump v. Anderson.

In Trump v. Anderson, all nine justices agreed that states lack the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against presidential candidates. All nine justices ruled in favor of Trump on this question. I’d like to pat myself on the back here because I predicted this outcome not long ago. I’d like to, but I won’t, because nearly every other court watcher made the same prediction.

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Mike the Misinformed

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Republicans scraped the bottom of the barrel last October when they elected the little-known Mike Johnson of Louisiana Speaker of the House of Representatives and second in line to the Presidency of the United States. Johnson emerged as the fourth Republican nominee in what had become a clown show of political infighting after the Republican caucus threw out Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Johnson’s election required fifteen votes.

McCarthy was voted out of the job in an extraordinary showdown, a first in U.S. history, forced by a gang of hard-right conservative Republicans. The vote threw the House and its Republican leadership into chaos. McCarthy’s crime was to have reached a bipartisan agreement with Democrats to fund the government for a brief period to prevent a shutdown.

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Election 2024 and the Supremes

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I remember vividly the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). The Supremes had opined on elections many times before. But this was the first time the top court literally decided an election, stopping the ballot counting process still under way in Florida, and declaring George W. Bush the winner and 43rd President of the United States.

Moreover, it came to its decision by a party-line vote of 5 to 4. That led many to question the validity of the decision, which was based on the determination that the vote counting in Florida would violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Note I wrote “would” rather than “did”. The Bush Court apparently consulted a soothsayer and reached its conclusion based on a prediction, not an actual event. We can never know if it was right.

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The Nuts Factor

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This is nuts. That’s all I could think as I listened to D. John Sauer, an attorney for Donald Trump, with Trump sitting in the front row of the courtroom, tell a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it should overturn a decision of the district court and dismiss the federal indictment against Trump for crimes connected to the January 6, 2020, mob assault on Congress.

To recap, on August 1, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four federal criminal counts after a grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the January 6th insurrection. In October 2023, Trump claimed in the case that he had absolute immunity from prosecution for actions he took as president but Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the trial judge in the case, rejected (opinion here) Trump’s claim, finding that “neither the Constitution nor American history supported the contention that a former president enjoyed total immunity from prosecution.” Trump appealed the ruling.

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Enter the Supremes

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Update December 28, 2023

There are reasons why journalists usually write analysis and commentary only after a breaking event has settled. Today Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, disqualified former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot. Her decision was based on the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding office.

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Who the Hell is Tommy Tuberville?

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Embed from Getty Images

9-11 Insert

This is the twenty-second year since the 9-11 attacks. An entire generation has passed. My memories of that day written two years ago can be found posted here.

In a Washington Post op-ed published on Monday night, the civilian secretaries of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force sharply criticized Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Republican “who is blocking the confirmation of our most senior military officers,” as they put it. It was a most remarkable document. And one which must have been a great comfort to the military leadership in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Tuberville is an anti-choice conservative and a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. He is an Alabama dilettante who decided after a successful career as a football coach, he might like to be a United States senator. The people of Alabama, one of the least educated of the United States, agreed and sent him to Washington in 2021.

Tuberville has single-handedly placed a “blanket hold” on the appointments of all “general and flag officer nominees” in all branches of the U.S. military. He strongly opposes what he calls “Defense Department policies that ensure service members and their families have access to reproductive health” — and, more specifically, to abortion services — “no matter where they are stationed.” The gist of this policy is that service members in states where abortion is now illegal or sharply restricted may travel at government expense to jurisdictions where it is permitted, a policy Tuberville and other Republicans strongly oppose.

In the Post op-ed, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth write that the policy on reproductive access is fully legal and “critical and necessary to meet our obligations to the force.” Tuberville‘s hold, they assert, is “putting our national security at risk” by preventing the Pentagon “from placing almost 300 of our most experienced and battle-tested leaders into critical posts around the world“:

Three of our five military branches — the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps — have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. … Across the services, many generals and admirals are being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. … Each of us has seen the stress this hold is inflicting up and down the chain of command, whether in the halls of the Pentagon or at bases and outposts around the world.

Washington Post Op-Ed, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth

Tuberville‘s claim that “holding up the promotions of top officers does not directly damage the military,” the three secretaries conclude, “is wrong — plain and simple.”

So, who is this guy who doesn’t mind doing the work of our foreign adversaries? He’s a Republican of course. Elected in 2021, he was the head football coach at Auburn University from 1999 to 2008. He was also the head football coach at the University of Mississippi from 1995 to 1998, Texas Tech University from 2010 to 2012, and the University of Cincinnati from 2013 to 2016. In 1976 he was awarded a B.S. in physical education from Southern Arkansas University. SAU’s ranking in the 2022-2023 edition of Best Colleges, Regional Universities South, is #94.

Adding to his unimpressive educational record, Tuberville has no military experience. And here’s the best part of the Tuberville saga, Tommy reportedly doesn’t live in Alabama! A published review of campaign finance reports and property documents related to Tuberville “indicate that his home is actually a $3 million, 4,000-square-foot beach house he has lived in for nearly two decades in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.”

If true, this would seem to make Tuberville ineligible to represent Alabama in the Senate. The Constitution itself clearly states:

Every member of the Senate shall be . . . at the time of his election, a resident of the state from which he shall be chosen.

Constitution, Article 5, section 3

I have been waiting for the Senate, which details the qualifications for Senators on its own web site, to begin an investigation. I will not hold my breath. This is just what the people of Alabama and the Republican party apparently want in a senator.

Yes, there is a way to override the hold. The Senate rules allow for a process called cloture, which can be used to end a filibuster or break a hold on a nomination or bill. Cloture requires the support of sixty senators to pass, which means that it can be difficult to achieve in a closely divided Senate. The Democrats can’t do it alone. No Republican is willing to break the hold.

It is further evidence that, whatever the original plan for the United States Senate was, it is one of the framers most failed experiments. Only an amendment to the Constitution can tame the monster the Senate has become. And that will not happen any time soon.

The country be damned.

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The Mug and the Eight Dwarfs

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Donald Trump had already been processed on three criminal indictments. But in each of those he was treated with unusual care, avoiding the mug shot usually taken for anyone arrested on criminal charges. That distinction ended with the fourth indictment. Fulton County, Georgia did not give Trump an exemption from its normal process. Trump now has a mug shot, and a number, P01135809. America now has its own Jean Valjean.

The mug shot on the left above speaks for itself. I don’t understand what message Trump is trying to convey with that scowl. Perhaps you do. The photo has been distributed widely by Trump’s campaign and it is being used on coffee mugs, shirts, and hats sold to raise funds. In just a few days, more than seven million dollars has reportedly been raised. There are many reports that a large amount of these “campaign contributions” are being used to pay Trump’s legal expenses. The quote often associated with P.T. Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.

 In his booking record, Trump states that he is 6-foot-3 and weighs 215 pounds, almost 30 pounds lighter than his White House physical in June 2020. This has prompted a lengthy list of joking comparisons on the Internet showing various sports figures with similar measurements. We are easily amused these days.

Trump’s latest arrest came the day after eight of his so-called challengers for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 met for a so-called debate in Milwaukee. The Fox channel entertainment, which Trump skipped, had little of substance beyond the moment when six of the eight raised their hands and promised to support Trump if he was the nominee of the part even if he was a convicted felon at the time of the election. You had to be there. See the other picture above.

It is amazing that the party of Lincoln has reached this point. It is really the party of Trump now, and little else. Republicans defended Trump when he paid hush money to a porn star. They defended him when he withheld weapons for Ukraine for political reasons. They defended him after he led a coup attempt against our democracy. They defended him after he removed top secret classified documents, stored them in the bathroom, and repeatedly lied to the authorities about it. They defended him after he pressured Georgia officials to overturn the election results in the state.

The Republican party I grew up with is long gone, dissenters Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson notwithstanding. According to a survey conducted Aug. 24, 58% of potential Republican primary voters back Trump for the GOP’s 2024 nomination.

With that statistic it seems a waste of time to talk much about this TV event. Hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who play journalists on various Fox channels, rarely mentioned Trump during the session. They opened with a question about a song on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

Eventually, prior to November 2024, I’ll get around to explaining inflation, the issue of most concern to American voters. This is where incumbent President Joe Biden is most vulnerable. Yet it was of little concern to the eight would-be challengers or the hosts.

Addressing a soft-ball question on inflation Ron DeSantis rambled something about fighting inflation by firing Anthony Fauci. Fauci, who was director of the National Insitute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading advisor to the president on Covid, retired from public service in 2022. He also had nothing to do with inflation. This answer was par for the course for DeSantis, who refused to answer questions directly, always offering some canned talking point without substance.

Vivek Ramaswamy introduced himself by stealing a line from Barack Obama’s first presidential debate in April 2007. The thirty-eight-year-old Ramaswamy made a fortune in finance, pharmaceuticals, and biotech. He calls climate change a hoax and promotes fossil fuel as the secret to economic success. Ramaswamy wants to raise the voting age to twenty-five. He’s also called for voters to pass a civics test. “The U.S. Constitution,” Ramaswamy says, “is the strongest guarantor of freedom in human history. That is what won us the American Revolution.”

The Revolution ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783. The Constitution was signed in 1787. It went into effect after the nineth state ratified it on March 4, 1789. Ramaswamy would flunk his own test.

Mike Pence declared himself to be his own man, defending his decision to not commit treason by illegally invalidating the election of Joe Biden to be President on January 6, 2021. Pence repeatedly says Trump is not fit to be president. But he raised his hand and promised to support Trump if he is the Republican nominee in 2024. Go figure. Pence also pushes a national ban on abortion as a divinely inspired mission affirming the sanctity of life. Pence is also a staunch supporter of the death penalty. Go figure.

Men wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. Will Republicans vote for Nikki Haley? Can any woman be elected president? Seems like an uphill battle for 2024. Haley surprised me by blaming Republicans in Congress for spending too much. She also was the best at exposing Ramaswamy’s uninformed positions on Ukraine and foreign affairs. She was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, a president who hated the United Nations.

Was Tim Scott really there? I got that he grew up in a single-parent household. And that’s all I got.

Doug Burgum is the current governor of North Dakota. North Dakota is a state that never should have been created in the first place. If you add the populations of North Dakota and South Dakota together you will still have a state where nobody lives. Burgum thinks small-town values can solve everything from crime to foreign affairs. He doesn’t appear to have enough to do at home.

The former governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson seems like a nice guy. He’s an anti-Trumper but beyond that there’s no there there. He does want to cut the number of government workers. At least he didn’t endorse the DeSantis plan to “start slitting their throats on day one.”

And finally, there’s Chris Christie. He’s fun and entertaining. He attacked Trump like no one else dared and withstood the anger of the pro Trump crowd. He doesn’t have a chance.

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