;)
Monday
Jul152024
The Conversation -- July 15, 2024
See the updates, further down the page, of the NYT liveblog. Trump has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) as his running mate.
Welcome to the Lawless States of America (unless it looks as if you did something wrong): ~~~
** Devlin Barrett & Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against ... Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment, on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a new court filing Monday. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon's ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have thrown longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith's appointment. Even if Cannon is later overruled by a higher court, the decision to dismiss Trump's indictment adds to a string of legal victories for him in recent weeks, including a sweeping Supreme Court ruling that gives former presidents broad immunity for their official acts while in office. Trump's legal team has long considered the classified document case to be the strongest of the four criminal cases against him.... The legal theory that Smith was illegally appointed and funded has generally been considered far-fetched.... But the legal argument gained more steam earlier this month after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the presidential immunity case that the special counsel's office needs to be established by Congress and that Smith needed to be confirmed by the Senate." ~~~
~~~ The AP's report is here. Politico's report is here. ~~~
~~~ The New York Times has a liveblog here.
Alan Feuer: "The ruling is an attempt to roll back nearly 30 years of how special counsels, like Jack Smith, have gotten their jobs.... There was a consensus opinion [during the Clinton administration] ... that special prosecutors needed to be independent enough to handle sensitive political investigations without undue influence from powerful politicians, but not so independent that they would encourage prosecutors to run amok and abuse their power."
Charlie Savage: "Judge Cannon's ruling will create a pathway for an appeal to the Supreme Court before the case can move forward -- and, for that matter, for the special counsel, Jack Smith, to ask an appeals court to remove her. But it all may be moot since Judge Cannon's previous delays have already all but ensured there could be no trial until after the 2024 election. If Trump wins, as polls currently indicate is likely, he could use his power over the Justice Department to have it scuttle the case anyway."
Feuer: "Judge Cannon's ruling came exactly two weeks after Justice Clarence Thomas deeply questioned the constitutionality of Smith's appointment in an odd concurrence in the Supreme Court's landmark ruling granting Trump broad immunity against criminal prosecution.... Thomas included his expressions of doubt in his concurrence even though the question of Smith's appointment was not under consideration by the court at all and had never been raised in the first place in the underlying immunity case.... For those wondering how Judge Cannon's decision will affect Trump's other federal case -- the one in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election -- the short answer is: Let's wait and see."
Richard Fausset: "The ruling should have 'zero effect' on the indictment of Trump in Georgia, said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University."
Feuer: "Prosecutors in Smith's office have for months been amassing a dossier of what they believe are bad decisions by Judge Cannon."
Eileen Sullivan: "Michael Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said Judge Cannon 'handled this case like an eager member of Donald Trump's defense team.' He cited her slow pace in making routine pretrial decisions and her patience for hearing 'somewhat outlandish legal arguments' without ever resolving some of them. Monday's decision, however, he said, 'goes beyond what she's done before.'"
Sullivan: "A spokesman for the Office of the Special Counsel, Peter Carr, issued a statement on Judge Cannon's decision and the special counsel plans to appeal it: 'The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel. The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court's order.'"
~~~ Marie: One thing Andrew Weissmann & Barbara McQuade said on MSNBC this morning: Smith could forget about the case, and the federal prosecutor (in Miami or even in D.C.) could quickly call a grand jury & reindict, likely drawing a different presiding judge. The two former prosecutors also emphasized that Loose Cannon's ruling may be a blessing in disguise: her other odd pro-Trump rulings tended to be within the wheelhouse of a district judge to decide, as were her delays. But this ruling gives Smith something to appeal.
Elizabeth Spears of the New York Times: "A whole generation of political professionals is so enamored of 'The West Wing,' [Aaron] Sorkin's show about the travails of White House occupants, that they now suffer from what I think of as Terminal West Wing Brain. The show, which ran from 1999 to 2006, portrays politics and policy not as ruthless powermongering pursued by nihilists (that's 'House of Cards') but as a higher calling that flawed but idealistic people engage in from a place of civic pride.... Working across the aisle isn't easy when your colleagues are telling their constituents that you're demonic, and pushing conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking in pizza parlors. Bipartisan cooperation requires a shared idea of reality that exists in 'The West Wing' but not in the real world.... Instead of watching 'The West Wing,' Democrats should have been taking to heart the lessons of 'Veep,' Armando Iannucci's very different White House series in which everything dumb and disastrous that can happen does happen. A dark and devastating comedy, it depicts Washington as staffed by petty, venal people who are too busy tripping over themselves to successfully advance their own interests." Read on; it's fun and instructive, especially the whole invasion-by-Canada part.
Weird News. John Byrne of the Raw Story: "The 20-year-old gunman who shot and injured ... Donald Trump, Thomas Matthew Crooks, appeared in an advertisement for BlackRock Inc., the company disclosed Sunday. 'Crooks was one of several students who appeared in the background of the 2022 ad and was unpaid, BlackRock, the world's largest money manager,' said in a statement to Bloomberg. 'The ad was filmed at Bethel Park High School, where Crooks graduated in 2022, and featured a teacher, the company said.' The firm didn't discuss the content of the ad but said footage would be made available to law enforcement and it 'will be removed from circulation.'"
Here are the New York Times' live election updates. ~~~
Maggie Astor: "The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on ABC News this morning that it shouldn't have been possible for the gunman to target Trump as he did. 'A direct line of sight like that to the former president should not occur,' he said. 'That is precisely why President Biden directed that an independent review of the incident occur.'... Mayorkas said it was 'unequivocally false' for Representative Mark Green of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, to suggest that the Secret Service had rebuffed requests from Trump's security detail for greater resources before the shooting. 'We had enhanced security for the former president beginning at least in June,' he said. 'We have not received any requests for additional security measures that were rebuffed.'"
Eric Schmitt: "Some 1,700 National Guard members from Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota, and a small number of active-duty troops, will support the Secret Service and F.B.I. in providing security and logistics at the convention, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on Monday. Those are the same numbers as were planned before the assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday, she added."
Matthew Goldstein: "Shares of ... Donald J. Trump's social media company surged on the first trading day after his attempted assassination."
Chris Cameron: "Donald Trump, in a post on his social media site, said the decision by a federal judge to dismiss the classified documents indictment against him was the 'first step' in 'uniting our nation,' before repeating the unsubstantiated claim that his legal troubles are being coordinated by the Biden administration. He added that the other criminal and civil cases facing him should also be dismissed."
Neil Vigdor: "... Donald J. Trump revealed on Monday that he would name his running mate later in the day, ending months of intrigue about a critical political decision as the curtain rises on the Republican National Convention...."
Glenn Thrush: "Prosectors and Justice Department officials -- who had spent the weekend working on the assassination investigation -- scrapped their morning schedules to assess the impact of Cannon's ruling on a range of cases, including Hunter Biden's looming trial in tax charges in California. Smith's spokesman said they were not prepared to comment immediately."
** Michael Bender, et al.: "Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Senator Marco Rubio have been told that neither one will be Donald J. Trump's running mate, according to four people briefed on the matter. Both men were among the top three contenders to join the former president's ticket, raising the prospect that the third person, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, may be announced this afternoon as the Republican vice-presidential nominee." [MB: There is so little reward for all that ass-kissing.]
Michael Gold: "Delegates at the Republican National Convention just approved the party's new platform, which reflects ... Donald J. Trump's wholesale takeover of the party. It jettisoned long-held positions on abortion rights and same-sex marriage, while removing many party specifics and reflecting Mr. Trump's priorities on immigration and trade."
Gold: "... Donald J. Trump has chosen Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his running mate, wagering that the young senator will bring fresh energy to the Republican ticket and ensure that the movement Mr. Trump began nearly a decade ago can live on after him. Mr. Vance, 39, is a political newcomer who entered the Senate only last year, but he has spent that time methodically ascending the conservative firmament. Once an acerbic Trump critic -- attacking Mr. Trump as 'reprehensible' and calling him 'cultural heroin' -- he won Mr. Trump's backing in his 2022 Senate race by wholly embracing his politics and his lies about a stolen election.... J.D. Vance is young, and his political career is tied entirely to Donald Trump. The choice as running mate makes him a very likely successor of the populist, right-wing movement that Trump started."
Cameron: "The Biden campaign is previewing their attack lines against Donald Trump's new running mate. Among the material: J.D. Vance's own statements about Trump. A Biden campaign spokesman just shared previous statements from Vance saying Trump 'might be America's Hitler.'..."
Jonathan Swan: "The behind the scenes campaign to talk Trump out of choosing Vance was intense. Rupert Murdoch, major donors, lawmakers all argued strenuously against Vance. In the end Vance was helped by a crew of his own influential allies including the former president's eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Tucker Carlson.... More than any of the other people on the VP shortlist, Vance could be seen as a successor to Trump and the America First movement. He is ideologically more aligned with Trump -- especially on foreign policy -- than any other contender."
Gold: "Donald Trump was just formally awarded the number of delegates necessary to secure the Republican presidential nomination, after his current home state of Florida announced its votes. Mr. Trump's son Eric made the announcement."
Nicholas Nehamas: "President Biden posted a fundraising appeal on social media about the Vance selection, saying that the Ohio Senator 'talks a big game about working people' but wants to raise taxes on the middle class while cutting them for the rich. 'Protect democracy. Defeat Trump-Vance,' the fundraising site says."
Simon Levien: "The Trump campaign updated its website, now fundraising as 'Trump-Vance 2024.' The announcement on the website, from Trump himself, indicates that the former president thinks Vance is fit enough to take his place, if necessary: 'When I made this decision, I knew it had to be someone who could step in and serve as your Commander-in-Chief,' he said. 'I'm calling on EVERY Pro-Trump Patriot to chip in and say, I STAND WITH President Trump & Vance!'"
Rebecca O'Brien: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will get Secret Service protection, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House briefing. 'In light of this weekend's events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr.,' he said. Mayorkas said the Secret Service had also enhanced its protection of ... Donald J. Trump."
Marie: CNN played video of several rally attendees yelling at police that there was a man with a rifle on the roof. Trump can be heard speaking over loudspeakers. The sequence, according to CNN, takes place about a minute before the gunman shot Trump.
Will Weissert & Zeke Miller of the AP: "President Joe Biden on Sunday urged Americans to reject political violence and recommit themselves to resolving their differences peacefully, saying the upcoming presidential election will be a 'time of testing' in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of ... Donald Trump. In a prime-time national address from the Oval Office, Biden said political passions can run high but 'we must never descend into violence.' The president said his party and the Republicans can compete forcefully over different policy visions -- but must do it in a civil fashion."
~~~ Marie: Unless some other sudden event changes everything, this stupid kid from Pennsylvania has ensured that Donald Trump will be the next president*. He couldn't have done anything more helpful to Trump than to wing him, giving him the bloodied appearance of a martyr with no more injury than an ear piercing. And, according to several teevee pundits, the near-miss shut down all efforts to replace President Biden on the Democratic ticket. He can no longer get through a full sentence without garbling words, sometimes to the point of changing the entire meaning of the sentence, such as when he twice referred to the "battle box" when clearly he meant "ballot box." ~~~
~~~ Here's the text of the speech, via the White House, apparently as written. Certainly not as delivered. ~~~
~~~ Update. Andrew Solender of Axios: "Congressional Democrats' all-consuming angst over President Biden's candidacy has taken an abrupt backseat in lawmakers' minds in the wake of an assassination attempt against former President Trump.... Democratic lawmakers say their immediate focus is on their personal security and that of their staffs, not on their party's political woes, helping to allow a crucial cooldown period for the embattled president.... A senior House Democrat suggested the post shooting atmosphere in the party is too 'chaotic' for internal battles over leadership." AND~~~
~~~ "Beyond Fucked." Jonathan Allen, et al., of NBC News: "At a time when President Joe Biden has been struggling to shore up support with fellow Democrats following a miserable June debate performance and shaky cleanup effort, some professional Democratic political operatives said Saturday's shooting will end up sealing the incumbent's electoral fate. 'We're so beyond f---ed,' one longtime Democratic insider said, noting that the image of Trump thrusting his fist in the air, with blood dramatically smeared across his face, will be indelible." ~~~
~~~ Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Some Republicans celebrated the fist-raised photographs as raw symbols of [Donald Trump's] strength and instinct. "Trump's chances of losing just went to zero," Representative Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, wrote on X. Mr. Trump and other allies rushed to suggest divine intervention.... His daughter-in-law Lara Trump, whom he appointed co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, posted a rendering of what appears to be Jesus holding Mr. Trump's shoulders on Instagram with the caption, 'Fear not for I am with you.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yeah, I heard all that fist-raising was Trump being pissed off at the Secret Service agents because they wouldn't let him go back and pick up his shoes, which apparently slipped off his feet during the protective scrimmage. Okay, I'm not serious, but this transcript shows that Trump yelled four times to let him get his shoes before he showed any interest in revving up the crowd.
Josh Gerstein & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "The attempted assassination of Donald Trump represents a glaring failure by the Secret Service, which left the former president exposed to gunfire in a breach of security that will likely haunt a long-idealized agency that has been repeatedly tarnished by scandal in recent years. Important questions about the shooting remain unresolved, but the fact that the 20-year-old gunman managed to scale a roof about 200 yards from where Trump was speaking has already prompted calls for a searching investigation of the Secret Service."
Emily Davies, et al., of the Washington Post: "The FBI said Sunday that investigators have not yet identified any ideology fueling the gunman [Thomas Crooks] who fired at ...Donald Trump at a packed campaign rally, and they believe he carried out the horrifying assassination attempt on his own.... Seconds after he opened fire from a rooftop outside the rally's security perimeter Saturday evening, using an AR-style rifle that was legally purchased by his father, he was fatally shot by the Secret Service, authorities said.... Officials said they had not reached any final conclusions and are still scrutinizing Crooks' associates to see if anyone aided his violent plan." ~~~
~~~ Pierre Thomas and others of ABC News report on what little can be gleaned about the shooter.
Elizabeth Dwoskin & Faiz Siddiqui of the Washington Post: "A chorus of right-leaning tech and business leaders, led by X owner Elon Musk, used their online megaphones in the wake of Saturday's attack to criticize the Secret Service's diversity initiatives ... and make unsubstantiated allegations about the shooting. The claims by powerful business leaders with large online followings helped influence the direction of platform itself, as well as the storylines viewed by millions of people. Musk's post endorsing Trump after the shooting received the most engagement of any post on X related to the attempted assassination.... Musk, turning to a familiar refrain of his, appeared to point the finger for the security breach at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts -- amplifying a post that ridiculed the U.S. Secret Service's director for what it called 'diversity hires.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: That's right. Despite years of Secret Service scandals, it is women and minorities who have ruined it. After all, Clint Eastwood played a fictional heroic Secret Service agent in a movie, so agents must be supermen.
"BlueAnon." Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post: "The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed 'BlueAnon' ... that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right.... Minutes after Saturday's shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., liberals began flooding social media platforms with conspiracy theories. They claimed the blood on ... Donald Trump's ear was from a theatrical gel pack; that the shooting was a 'false flag,' perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign; that the scene of a bloodied Trump raising his fist under an American flag was '#staged.'" MB: Despite the both-siderism embossed on this article, Lorenz admits "... BlueAnon claims bear no resemblance to the most lurid elements of QAnon -- which involve false allegations of Satan worship and pedophilia among liberal elites...."
Trump the Uniter. Ha! David McAfee of the Raw Story: "'... Donald Trump has completely rewritten his convention speech in light of the assassination attempt against him on Saturday and will call on Thursday for a new effort at national unity,' [a Washington Examiner reporter] states. 'In an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner a day after being hit by a sniper's bullet, Trump said he wanted to take advantage of a historic moment and draw the country together.'... Trump said, 'The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger ... Had this not happened, this would've been one of the most incredible speeches' that he said would have targeted President Joe Biden."~~~
~~~ Marie: Yep. I'm sure Trump's brush with death has made him a new man and the nasty disposition of a lifetime has melted away.
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Reader Comments (10)
Trump
"Donald Trump and the language of violence
No one has done more to frame American politics in violent terms"
Gil Duran
George Lakoff
Also a reminder of Trump's thoughts on political gun violence.
"Donald Trump: Maybe "Second Amendment people" have a way to stop Hillary Clinton's judges"
As for the blue conspiracies, I admit that I strongly considered the possibility that this was a staged false flag shooting early on. One of the main reasons is that the Right accuses the Left of things they would do if situations were reversed. And so the Right's continuous accusations of false flags made the possibility of them using one more likely. Unlike the Right I can accept new evidence to come to a final conclusion. I wonder what percentage of the Left conspiracies will continue on despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm going to guess not so many unlike the Right. Also shootings routinely have lots of crazy ideas flowing around in their immediate aftermath. What matters is if those ideas devoid from reality take hold in people's minds after the dust has settled.
Trump document case dismissed due to procedure concern with the Jack Smith appointment.
Oh there will be joy in Milwaukee today!
Did the loose Cannon just pave the way for a fastback appeal to the 11th Circuit?
Such is my dream...
I heard that the bullet actually went in one ear and out the other,
with nothing in between to stop it.
I've already seen dozens of pictures on the internets of people with
tattoos of Donald raising his fist with blood on his face.
Instead of MAGA, I'd suggest MAAA, (Make America Aim Again).
I shouldn't say that, so thoughts and prayers instead.
Biden Accomplishments
@RAS: The main difference -- for the most part -- between left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theories is that the left-wing theories usually are (1) initiated with facts, and (2) presented as theories, not as facts.
Here's an example. A couple of weeks ago when Our Friend Clarence wrote his concurring opinion in the Trump immunity case (see Alan Feuer, above, on that), I read or heard some pundit note, "That could be a message to Aileen Cannon, who is holding hearings on the special prosecutor's status." The conspiracy there is out in the open: it's not Ginni surreptitiously texting with Mark Meadows; it's Clarence -- unbid, but using a public document -- to give Aileen a lesson on how to serve the soup. Meanwhile, Devlin Barrett & Perry Stein (linked above) write, "Trump’s legal team did not adopt the argument attacking the very premise of the special counsel appointment until conservative legal groups pushed it." So any liberal who argues that conservatives were "conspiring" to throw out Jack Smith's cases against Trump on some flimsy, previously-rejected legal premise is right.
As for the right-wing theory that Biden planned to assassinate Trump, well, no.
J. D. Vance:
A well-educated weasel who will prove to be much smarter, but no less slimy, than his boss.
So Vance drew the short straw. IOW, Trump can go to his infernal reward and there will be no change of course. MAGA must have decreed "No Wimmin" as any of the trio Lake, Bobert, or MTG would have fit right in.
May the ancestors have mercy.
@Forrest, thanks for making me laugh today. I needed it.