patrick.net

“Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump.”

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. ...

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.

Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime. ...

Plan E is to cheat. I know what you are thinking. But I’m not talking about Dominion voting machines. I mean the kind of “pre-cheating” that the regime boasts about as “election fortification”: change the rules in advance in ways that favor Democrats and hurt Republicans, especially in swing states. There is no question that they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? It worked last time, and the more overt cheating they can avoid, the better.

They are already using the federal government to thumb the scale in favor of Democrats. Biden’s Executive Order 14019, “Promoting Access to Voting,” requires “every federal agency to submit a plan to register voters and encourage voter participation. It also required agencies to form strategies to invite nongovernmental third parties to register voters.” That is to say, a federal takeover of state elections by the Biden administration. This is a replay, with federal power, of the $400 million in “Zuckerbucks”—money donated by the tech-oligarch founder of Facebook—that pre-rigged the last election, but this time with taxpayer dollars, a White House aide (Susan Rice) coordinating, and cabinet agencies like Housing and Urban Development implementing, in conjunction with leftwing NGOs. That combination will be hard to beat.

But suppose it is. There is always cheating-cheating. If you believed that Trump presents an unprecedented threat to the republic, would you really object to a few boxes of extra ballots falling off trucks near vote-counting headquarters in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta? When the Survival of Our Democracy Is on the Line?

One has to tip one’s hat to the rhetorical disadvantage they have imposed on us. All questioning of any election they win is denounced as paranoid, unpatriotic, “racist,” and a threat to the integrity of the process. (Never mind that they always do it when the right wins; see, for instance, 2000, 2004, and 2016.) The questionable practices such as late-night ballot dumps that lead to our questions are never explained, much less ended. They get to engage in shenanigans that make elections look fishy; we get blamed for saying they look fishy. When we point out that, hey, something looks off there, the response is invariably: How dare you sow doubt about the election! You are undermining confidence in Our Democracy™. Not their shenanigans, but our doubts undermine confidence. ...

Which leaves Plan F, which they have already sketched in broad outlines. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, but they have made clear that “under no circumstance” can Trump be allowed to take office again. Among the “circumstances” covered by the word “no” would seem to be an Electoral College majority, or a tie followed by a House vote in Trump’s favor.

What happens then? Well, in the words of the “Transition Integrity Project,” a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become “a street fight, not a legal battle.” Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House. ...

Rest assured, if what I fear might happen, happens, we will be blamed for it. And the fire next time will make their reaction to Jan. 6 look like a marshmallow roast. I don’t know which possibility is scarier: that they haven’t thought any of this through, or that they have.

Donald Trump was instrumental in Liz Cheney’s crushing defeat in the Wyoming GOP primary earlier this week. Of course, Liz Cheney helped. Her obsession with Trump was her undoing. But the consensus that she and her father represent underscores the panic coruscating through the arteries of the Deep State. Like many others, they have reached for the rhetoric of revolution to oppose Trump. They have vowed to do “whatever it takes,” to employ “any means necessary,” to keep him from getting “anywhere near the Oval Office” again. This panicked extremism has not only been ratcheted up against Trump — and it’s not only rhetoric, as last week’s FBI Stasi-like raid against Trump’s residence in Palm Beach reminds us — it has also and increasingly been wielded against anyone who can be presented as being allied with the spirit of Trumpism.

The Clintons actually broke the laws Trump is accused of breaking
The DoJ must explain why they were never charged or prosecuted

It always ends up back with the Clintons, doesn’t it? The laws Trump may be charged under at Mar-a-Lago appear to have been violated by both of the Clintons, yet the two were never searched, never mind charged and never prosecuted. Any action against Trump must account for that to preserve what is left of faith in the rule of law applied without fear or favor, or risk civil disenfranchisement if not outright civil unrest.

The more obvious case involves former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who maintained an unsecured private email server that processed classified material on a daily basis. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level — the highest level of civilian classification — that included the names of CIA and NSA employees.

The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server “was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.” Clinton and her team destroyed tens of thousands of emails, potential evidence, as well as physical phones and Blackberries that potentially held evidence. She operated the server out of her home kitchen despite the presence of the Secret Service on property who failed to report it. Her purpose in doing all this appeared to have been avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests during her tenure as SecState, and maintaining control over what records became part of the historical archive post-tenure.

Clinton seems to have violated all three statutes Trump was searched under...

The point is that if the FBI is going to take a similar fact set and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, it risks being seen as partial and political. Any further action against Trump and certainly any prosecution of him must address why Hillary was not searched and prosecuted herself. Fair is fair, after all.

And then there’s Bill Clinton. Bill made a series of some seventy-nine audio tapes from 1993-2001 with a historian inside the Oval Office, sometimes recording his thoughts and decision-making, other times directly recording his phone calls. He kept the raw tapes himself after a book was published in 2009, actually storing them in a dresser drawer inside the White House residence. Activist group Judicial Watch sued Bill for the tapes, claiming they were presidential records and had to be made available to the public through the National Archives (NARA), and that the Archives needed to seize the tapes. Clinton argued they were personal records outside the control of NARA.

In directly contravening what is happening with Trump, the court ruled in 2012, “NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as ‘presidential records,’ and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them.” ...

Any attempts to move the Trump case forward as a criminal one will first need to explain how it differs from the Bill Clinton case and from Hillary Clinton and her server. If DOJ can’t do that, then they have no basis to claim they are enforcing the law without fear or favor. It will be just plain old political quackery, using the criminal justice system to defeat Trump when the electoral system will not.

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau’s disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

Trump must account for that to preserve what is left of faith in the rule of law applied without fear or favor

risk civil disenfranchisement if not outright civil unrest.

I hope to wake up from the Twilight Zone nightmare someday

clambo says

I hope to wake up from the Twilight Zone nightmare someday

AMEN!

Also I would like the wind to slow down just a little bit. It's too windy to go sailing.

Also I would like the wind to slow down just a little bit. It's too windy to go sailing.

@stereotomy Which Great Lake are you near?

Patrick says

@stereotomy Which Great Lake are you near?

Lake Erie, in WNY. Barely within reasonable driving distance of @wookieman, and probably a couple of hours west of where @richwicks grew up.

I can hardly wait for Trump’s perp walk in handcuffs. More than a few Dem Globalist pussies would juice over that one.

However, if they tried, I imagine the Secret Service will hit the floor as the arresting ‘officers’ get chunked by military machine gun fire.

Mark Levin, the former president of the Landmark Legal Foundation and former chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese, claims that after reviewing material related to the Aug. 8 raid on former president Trump’s home, Mar-a-Lago, it is the FBI that violated the Espionage Act, not Trump.