The Opinionated Ogre is a Stay-at-Home parent first, foul-mouthed hater of fascist Republicans second. He’s been making the most horrible people in the country miserable for 15 years and the hate he feels for American Nazis is eternal and without limits. He plans to stop torturing right-wing trash the day the last fascist dies. So, you know, never. Please help support this potty-mouthed newsletter for just $5/month or $50/year (Almost 17% less!)

🌊Join The Blue Wave!🌊

Click here to leave a one-time tip!

Sometimes, the legacy press makes me weep tears of absolute despair. Even when acknowledging the horrid racism of the American right, they just cannot stop themselves from expending tremendous effort to whitewash it.

Here’s an article from last week in The Atlantic about how the death of St. Charlie the Bloodless has “unleashed” antisemitism on the right:

You can love Yair Rosenberg, or you can hate him. You can cry bloody tears about Zionism or point out that he’s punched neo-Nazis in the nose for years. Whatever your feelings, that’s for you. Me? I’m looking at this rose-tinted view of Republican politics with a massive amount of aggravation:

Before his life was ended by an assassin’s bullet, Charlie Kirk was trying to save the conservative coalition from turning on itself. To liberals, the late activist was known for debating left-wing students on college campuses. But on the right, Kirk was waging another battle, against people on his own side.

For years, Kirk was dogged by the overtly racist followers of the young white-nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes. An avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler, Fuentes sought to subordinate racial, religious, and sexual minorities to white Christians.

…

Kirk recognized that this crude conspiracism was poisonous to his project of popularizing the conservative cause.

Rosenberg is being extremely generous to Kirk here. OK, that’s a lie. Oh, not me. Rosenberg. He’s lying. Sorry, not sorry. Charlie Kirk was a Christian Nationalist. More specifically, he was a White Christian Nationalist. A point Rosenberg goes to great lengths to gloss over.

He aspired to forge a broad conservative coalition that could outlive Trump and bridge the traditional Reaganite GOP with the rising new right. As Kyle Spencer, the author of Raising Them Right, a book about Turning Point’s ascent, put it: “Charlie Kirk arrived on the scene as a kid who just graduated from high school in 2012, saying, ‘I have a vision. It is possible. This party is stodgy. It’s outdated, it’s old white men. We need to attract young people, Black people, Latinos.’” In 2024, when Kirk quarterbacked the Trump campaign’s ground game, it looked like he had finally pulled that off: The former president made major gains among nonwhite and low-propensity voters, and he finally won the popular vote.

This ignores who Kirk actually was, which is convenient for Kirk. But it’s bullshit. Kirk was not just a Christian with political ambition. He was a Christian who believed America should be run explicitly based on a specific vision of biblical fascism. The “Seven Mountain Mandate” calls for theocrats to seize absolute control, or “dominion,” of family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. Kirk said this out loud. If I know this, Rosenberg knows this.

If you’re not familiar with this movement, also called “Christian Dominionism,” I strongly urge you to read up on it because it is the basis for Project 2025. It is an explicitly white nationalist movement. There is no room for you if you are not white. It is explicitly misogynistic. Women are to be subjugated. It is explicitly anti-LGBTQ. They consider any deviation from heterosexuality to be a sin punishable by death. Finally, all other religions are heretical. The Bible does not call for tolerating heretics and living in peace with them. It calls for their death.

That would include Jews. If I know this, Rosenberg knows this. So why he feels the need to lie about it, I cannot say. But Charlie Kirk was not subtle about his Christian Nationalism.

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

Join The Ogre Nation Conversation!

Now, it’s true that Kirk defended Israel and pushed back on open antisemitism. But the why matters. It wasn’t because of his love for humanity or innate decency. Charlie Kirk was a racist piece of shit. He hated Jews just as much as he hated Blacks and Asians and Latinos and and and. We were not his brothers. We were, as all Christian Nationalists see us, useful idiots.

It’s important to understand that the eschatological1 prophecies of the Evangelicals require the existence of an Israel populated by Jews. If all the Jews left Israel2 and it became a Muslim-only country, that wouldn’t work. It has to be Jews in Israel for the End Times to come, and all the “good” Christians to be saved by Jesus, blablabla. What happens to all the Jews? They convert or die and spend eternity in hell.

This is the vision of Christianity Charlie Kirk pimped to his audience. We Jews were never anything more than disposable pawns, destined for genocide. Christian Nationalists hate us. They’ve always hated us, and when they have the power to do so, they will “deport” us to Israel whether we want to go or not, so their beloved prophecy can come true. And when it doesn’t, they’ll probably drop a bunch of nukes on us in frustration. After all, when Christ doesn’t return, who are they going to blame except the Jews?

Charlie Kirk was not saving the right from antisemitism. He was keeping it hidden. Buried out of sight so we would still play along with the charade.

Here’s the thing, though: The right’s lurch to antisemitism did not start after Kirk died. These motherfuckers right here? They were marching back in August of 2017:

They were chanting “Jews will not replace us!” while Charlie Kirk was still quite alive and breathing.

Trump’s 2016 campaign was so explicitly racist and so explicitly appealed to white nationalism, I stopped speaking to my Trump-voting in-laws because I knew, I fucking knew!, that antisemitism was going to spread like a fucking cancer.

My wife, who is not Jewish, did not understand, but I told her, “They always get to the Jews.” Surprise! Two months after Trump was elected, Richard Spencer, the most famous neo-Nazi in America at the time, moved ten minutes away from where we lived so he could be closer to Washington DC and the center of power he thought he would now have access to.3 Several months after that, Nazis were marching in Charlottesville and murdering Heather Heyer.

This was eight long years before Charlie Kirk was killed. The right’s descent into white nationalism has been accelerating the entire time. If I know this, Rosenberg knows this.

Long before Kirk was shot, Greg Bovino was running around the United States dressed like a Nazi. Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem turned ICE into an explicitly white nationalist organization using Nazi propaganda.

If I know this, Rosenberg knows this. He went to fucking Harvard. Don’t tell me I’m smarter and more insightful than a goddamn Harvard graduate. I’d like to think I’m a clever little ogre, but not that clever. I do not have a crystal ball that lets me predict the future behavior of the American right.

What I do have is an unwillingness to lie about it. I have no need to sanitize who and what these people are, which, apparently, Rosenberg does. I was very clear about this back in November of last year. The Nazis are going to win the war to take over the right. They were always going to win:

As I explained, it doesn’t have to be this way, but the American right has never once turned towards the center after a loss. Every defeat has been met with calls for doubling down on extremism. This is the history of the American right from the Civil War until today. If I know this, Rosenberg knows this.

Now the GOP is an openly fascist party of white nationalists. There’s nowhere left to go but to Nazism, the end stage of their ideology. This process started long before Charlie Kirk was born, it was happening while he rose to prominence, and it didn’t accelerate after his death. It’s just continuing down the path it was already on.

The Trump regime burst out of the gate the second time with a fully-formed whiter nationalist agenda ready to go. Stephen Miller’s Gestapo has been rampaging across the country, inciting violence and recruiting the worst of the worst. The regime has been openly appealing to Nazis, knowing that they are losing the minority vote. This is a calculated move that was happening even before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. This is who they are. This is who they’ve always been.

Charlie Kirk wasn’t defending Jews from a goddamn thing. He wasn’t a good person with noble intent, trying to hold back the tide of hate on the right. He was a fucking monster hiding his true face until he ascended the throne. Then he would have gleefully ripped away the mask and celebrated the antisemitism he and his fellow white Christian Nationalists wallow in every minute of every day.

To suggest otherwise is to look at the last year/decade/60 years and ignore what we all saw happening. That may suit Rosenberg’s narrative, but that is not the truth, and I’m sick and fucking tired of people pretending otherwise.

I write to help you cope with the fear and anger threatening to overwhelm you every day. If this newsletter gets you through these dark times, please consider becoming a contributing supporter for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Prefer a one-and-done tip? Click here!

There are only 266 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.

Please support this work by becoming a paying subscriber. This newsletter is free and will always remain free, but it still takes time and effort to produce. Your support means everything to me. For just $5 a month or $50 a year (a 17% discount!), you can keep the Opinionated Ogre going. Thank you!

⏪Press Rewind To Subscribe!⏪

Prefer a one-and-done tip? Click here!

For a group of people who love to pound their chest and brag about how manly and brave and tough they are, the American far right really is the softest group of whining toddlers in history. Just telling them they’re going to face consequences sends them into a temper tantrum of epic proportions that even the most spoiled brat would find distasteful.

These little punks need a spanking and, dear god, I cannot wait to give it to them.

Monday: How are you going to be the “Master Race” and such giant diaper babies at the same time?

Tuesday: The thing we dare not speak of? Wow!

Wednesday: Double livestream?! Daaaang!

Thursday: Podcast!

Friday: Republicans are a cowardly and superstitious lot…

5 Things I Found Interesting This Week

1. Megyn Kelly is Rush Limbaugh in drag - Right-wing influencer sells theatrical nastiness to boost her sick career by Mark Jacob at Stop the Presses

2. How To Tell You’re Being Manipulated By A Story - Three rules of thumb for navigating manipulative waters. by The Big Picture and Shane Snow at The Big Picture

3. The $159 Million Black Box: Why the Government is Ignoring Laws for Peter Thiel -A private monopoly has been building the system of federal surveillance for over a decade. From your Medicaid records to your grocery runs, see how the government uses your data. by Dissent In Bloom

4. The tide is turning as Trump hides from the public. by Robert B. Hubbell at Today’s Edition Newsletter

5. January showed why the Trump administration is failing - Trump’s unpopularity is at its apex and it can’t be explained with just high costs by The Fascism Heckler at A mocking a day, keeps the Fascism away

Please support this work by becoming a paying subscriber. This newsletter is free and will always remain free, but it still takes time and effort to produce. Your support means everything to me. For just $5 a month or $50 a year (a 17% discount!), you can keep the Opinionated Ogre going. Thank you!

🌊Join The Blue Wave!🌊

Can’t do a monthly sub? We got you!

It’s been obvious for some time now that Republicans are diametrically opposed to the idea of democracy. Several decades, actually. Longer if you trace their racist DNA back to Jim Crow, American Nazis, the KKK, and the Civil War. MAGA is just the latest incarnation of America’s original sin: Racist white men who cannot tolerate the idea of sharing power and space with people they do not consider human, much less their equals.

Despite the last 160 years of violence, the racist white men of the right have not been able to stop the march of time. They’ve slowed it down, sometimes a lot, but not stopped it. Now the end of white supremacy is near,1 and they are growing desperate.

Which brings us to this:

President Donald Trump said Monday that Republicans should nationalize elections, continuing to double down on false conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he said during an appearance on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast, which he relaunched Monday.

He’s been at this for a while:

Trump’s latest threat to nationalize voting harkens back to a promise he made last summer to sign an executive order bringing “honesty” to the 2026 midterm elections.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” he wrote in an August social media post. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

That’s so adorable. It’s even funnier when you remember how hard racist white men have been humping the clarion call of “STATES’ RIGHTS” for the last century and a half. States’ rights to own slaves. States’ rights to own 50 guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunition. States’ rights to force women to carry their rapists’ baby or bleed to death in a hospital parking lot. States’ rights to force school children to learn about Jesus and Creationism and ban all mention of The Gay and Black history. States’ rights to erase trans people from the face of the earth.

But elections? A thing explicitly stated in the Constitution as belonging solely to the states? Well, Trump says the federal government has the right to take those over, and most Republicans are quite mumbly-mouthed about opposing him.

Here’s the thing, though. While most Republicans won't come out and say they’ll never allow Trump to take over their state elections, I believe they’ll quietly fight him tooth and nail. Or put up so many obstacles that, gee whiz, we wish we could comply, Dear Leader, but it’s just not possible! Darn!

Back during Trump’s first time in office, he also tried to get red states to hand him control over elections. They refused. Trump wasn’t pushing as hard or as loudly, so the legacy press just kind of ignored the whole thing. Just another crazy Trump day, right? But the GOP’s refusal to obey was unusual and it said something important. It’s going to say the same thing now. Something I’ve been saying for some time: Republicans do not think Trump is going to win.

But, Ogre, you say, wouldn’t nationalizing elections ensure Trump’s victory? Wouldn’t putting a corrupt regime in charge of your elections so they can be rigged keep Trump in power forever? Republicans want to kill democracy. This is how every dictator does it, right?

Sure…but there’s a problem. Republicans can hand over control of their elections. They can’t hand over control of elections in blue states. Trump can’t march in and seize control, either, no matter what Steve Bannon, close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, insists the regime is going to do:

Before we go any further, I want you to think back to the last several elections. 2024. 2022. 2020. Do you recall reading about swarms of MAGA meatheads harassing voters? There were a few here and there, as there always are, but do you recall a massive coordinated effort to drive voters away from the polls?2

No, you do not because it didn’t happen. But you may recall reading about the “army of poll watchers” the RNC was recruiting.

Etc. Etc. Etc. Frequently, Steven Bannon is behind these efforts and public announcements that come to nothing. The right would dearly love to interfere with Black and Brown voters at the polls. The problem is that doing so is a crime that could land them in prison for several years. And since it’s also a state crime, not just federal, the Dear Leader will not be able to pardon them.

It’s important to understand that for all of their grandiose talk, the American right is populated by fucking cowards. They are not willing to die for their racist ideology. Kill? Yes. Die? No. They for fuck sure are not willing to go to jail for their beliefs.

Now, ICE may believe that they have “total immunity” when Stephen Miller instructs them to invade polling stations, but I’m willing to bet that an awful lot of them are going to understand that they will not, in fact, be protected. Especially when State Attorneys General, who are already starting to make noise about holding lawbreaking agents accountable, make very loud and repeated public statements that any federal agent who sets foot inside a polling site will be arrested on the spot for election interference. If you don’t think that’s coming, you have not been paying attention to how pissed off blue state AGs have been getting.

But let’s also be clear, this is a country of 340 million people. ICE and CBP combined just are not large enough to disrupt voting in blue states. And if they target specific deep blue precincts on election day, everyone is going to know what they’re doing and why. That will backfire so spectacularly, it’s hard to imagine any scenario where it works out in the regime’s favor. As I’ve said a number of times, the most important part of rigging an election is plausibility. If everyone sees what you’re doing, it’s no longer plausible, and you cannot claim legitimacy. In a country this large, that’s a recipe for guaranteed disaster.

So, no, ICE will not be taking over election sites across the country. These Nazi clowns can’t even successfully take over a single medium-sized city in Minnesota. Are you fucking kidding me?

But let’s bring it back to nationalizing elections. Red states resisted once because they didn’t think Trump was going to win, and I’m fairly certain that will continue to be the case. It’s too much of a gamble. What happens if they hand over their election infrastructure to the federal government and Trump loses?

It’s the worst-case scenario.

Now, a Democratic president controls all of the election infrastructure in red states. Republicans can’t just demand control back. I mean, they can, but all of the infrastructure is gone. All of it will be run by the federal government, which will be under no obligation to hand it back over. Red states voluntarily gave away control, tough shit, buddy.

Red state elections run by Democrats would be catastrophic for Republicans. The GOP will scream it was rigged, but “rigged” in this context would be “free and fair.” No voter suppression. No ballots thrown out because they come from minority communities. No polling places closed a week before elections in Black communities. Voting machines that work. Enough ballots so everyone can vote. My god, what kind of election rigging bullshit is this?!!?

It would destroy the Republican Party as we know it.

So, if you were a red state, would you risk it? I know I wouldn’t, no matter how much the Mad King stomped his feet and shat his diaper.

This brings us to the other Republican gambit: The SAVE Act. This is a voter suppression law Republicans would really like to pass in the Senate. The Republican-controlled House passed it last year, but it died in the Senate because of the filibuster. Or has it?

President Trump’s call for Republicans to “take over” voting procedures in more than a dozen states and “nationalize” the midterm elections has Republican senators debating filibuster reform to get around Democratic opposition to a bill that would require voters to show proof of citizenship.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a staunch Trump ally and chair of the GOP’s Senate Steering Committee, says Republicans have power under the Senate rules to force Democrats to hold the floor continuously to filibuster and block the SAVE Act, legislation that would require voters to present birth certificates and passports when registering to vote.

The SAVE Act would disenfranchise millions and, the hope is, lock in Republican power. But that’s only if it passes. And only if it survives challenges in the court. And if it works as intended. There have been previous attempts to disenfranchise voters that pissed them off so much, it ended up increasing voter turnout and cost the GOP dearly.

If Republicans nuke the filibuster, even for just this one election bill, they are playing Russian Roulette by themselves. Republicans will get one shot at this. Maybe two. Maaaaybe. Then it’s bang, lights out.

If they pass the SAVE Act in time to fuck with the midterms, they have to pray it’s enough to swing the elections in their favor. If not, Democrats will have two full years to smash Republicans over the head with it in the court of public opinion and just regular courts. If it doesn’t work to steal the midterms, it’s even less likely to steal a presidential election and then Republicans are fucked in every way imaginable.

This is something we’ve discussed several times. Remember, the filibuster is the only thing protecting the GOP from an extinction-level event. This is why they haven’t gotten rid of it despite Trump’s attempt to kill democracy. Again, Republicans do not believe the regime is going to survive. They are thinking ahead to 2029, and a Democrat in the White House with a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress.

Nuking the filibuster for even a single election bill opens the door for Democrats to do the same. And now the asteroid comes to wipe out the GOP.

Oooooffff. Only a slight exaggeration. It’s important to remember that Republicans have spent decades building their voter suppression machine and undermining voter rights.

It would take Democrats just a few months to undo all of it. We would have done it already if it hadn’t been for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two pieces of shit who whored themselves out to the highest bidder.

One bill to end gerrymandering. One bill to end voter suppression. One bill to get money out of politics. Those will be passed right after the Supreme Court is expanded to 15 seats with 6 new 30-year-old progressive Justices with lifetime appointments.

Within two election cycles, the Republican Party would be reduced to a regional party. They know it. That’s why tampering with the filibuster is like juggling a nuclear bomb with the safety off. It’s fun and edgy, but one fuck up, and there’s nothing left but a smoldering crater and lingering regrets.

Are Republicans desperate enough to risk utter annihilation? Maybe. The public is really angry and already demanding Nuremberg Trials with three years still left to the Trump regime. But there’s a chance that the party can throw Trump under the bus and rebrand themselves as the Tea Party 2.0 after the regime falls. They got away with it once after the collapse of the Bush regime. That has to be a more appealing option than gambling with guaranteed destruction at the hands of an unshackled Democratic Party.

We’ll know soon enough, but I’m betting Republicans will follow the course of maximum cowardice. It’s in their nature.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Click here for a PayPal donation!

There are 269 days until the most important midterm election in American history. The regime is afraid, and they should be. We are legion, and they are weak. Stay strong. You are never alone.

I was going to use “No Words” as the title for this column and run the picture of Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as apes, but I decided not to reproduce that disgusting racist image from the loathsome and hateful post Trump put on his Truth Social account sometime last night. And it turns out that I have a few things to say.

Trump’s racist post shows the whole world who he really is, and it is a threat to our national security.

Can you imagine how news about the President of the United States posting the racist image of the Obamas was received by other countries? A country’s national security depends on a lot of factors – treaties like NATO with other nations; a country’s own military defense on land, in the air, and at sea; its own economic health; its manufacturing base; the size of its population; the resolve of its people to keep themselves safe from invasion or attack by hostile nations.

We are one such country. We rely on all those factors ourselves. Because we are as powerful as we are, we also rely on the goodwill of other nations, all of which understand the enormity of our military and economic power, to come to the aid of the biggest kid on the block. Why worry about the big guy when everyone knows he can defend himself?

You can write the willingness of weaker nations to help the strongest nation into the words of a treaty. The free nations of Europe did it after World War II by approving Article 5 in

the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one nation is an attack on them all and commits the signatories of the NATO treaty to come to the defense of each other.

But Article 5 is just words on paper. It is what lies behind those words that counts, as we learned after 9/11, when NATO nations committed troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to counter the threat of Islamic extremism that had given birth to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. George W. Bush was the President of the United States on September 11, 2001. When he asked for help from NATO, signatory nations responded. The number of troops they committed, the amount of firepower, the financial size of their effort was not what counted. What mattered was that it happened. Article 5 was invoked, and NATO nations responded.

It is not out of the question that this country might come under attack again by hostile forces. Forget the leaders: What do you think the people of the NATO nations would do if it happened while Donald Trump is our president? Trump has already pissed off the countries of NATO with his insane obsession that the U.S. should “own” Greenland. How much enthusiasm do you think there would be among the people of Europe to come to our aid, to risk the lives of themselves and their children, when everyone knows that the leader of the United States is an avowed racist and proud of it?

As we have learned over the last 10 years, our Democracy is not a game. It is the bedrock of our nation. As we learned with Greenland, mutual defense is not a game, either. The world is not a playground where the biggest bully gets to make the rules and tell everyone what to do. We rely on each other like links in a chain.

6,000 years of history has taught that racism is like rust. The soul of civilization is eaten away by its evil. The supremacy of any race is a lie. We disrespect each other as people and as nations at our peril.

He thinks it’s a joke. It’s not. Donald Trump and his blatant and prideful racism has put us in danger.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Here is what we should do: We need to figure out another way to deal with Donald Trump at night, and Donald Trump in the morning. One way would be to prevent him from ascending the stairs or elevator into the residential rooms of the White House, because that’s where he comes up with the shit that drives everyone crazy the next day.

He goes up there and he cranks out Truth Social posts, or he gives podcast interviews and says wild stuff. I’m going to take over Greenland one way or another. Or, Putin’s not such a bad guy, I get along with him very well. Or, Iran had better watch out how many protesters they kill, because I might bomb them back to the stone age. Or, We should take over the elections in 15 states, we need to nationalize the elections.

We should thank our lucky stars it’s still cold in Washington, and he flies down to Mar a Lago every Friday and spends the weekend on the golf course and ordering burgers and well-done steaks on his dining patio, or he would be posting and bellowing Saturday and Sunday, too.

The thing is, we need to pay attention to his bellowing and whining and conspiracy theorizing, but we don’t need to let ourselves get driven up the wall by it. The day after he started talking about nationalizing elections, all the stories cited his claims of fraud in Democratic Party controlled cities, and it took them 10 paragraphs to write the sentence that contained the words, “without evidence.” Of course there is no evidence of fraud, because there isn’t any. They counted ballots in Fulton County, Georgia in 2020 until the things were practically in tatters without finding any fraud. The claims by Rudy Giuliani that were promoted by Trump about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss passing a thumb drive back and forth ended up with a gigantic defamation verdict in their favor.

It’s bullshit. Trump ordered the DOJ to get a warrant and investigate Fulton County election fraud. Somehow, his Director of National Intelligence ended up skulking around the FBI raid, and what’s happened since? Tulsi said Trump ordered her to go on the raid, Trump said he didn’t know who gave Tulsi the order, then Todd Blanche “distanced” the DOJ from the whole thing, then Trump said it was Pam Bondi, then Karoline Leavitt tried to say it was Gabbard’s idea and Pam’s, they were both in on it, then Trump blamed it on Bondi again.

Why is everyone pointing fingers at one another? Who the fuck is in charge here?

What does that tell you about the entire business of re-auditing the already over-audited Fulton County election results? Are you suffering flashback images of the “bamboo ballot” recount of the thrice recounted ballots from Maricopa County after Trump lost Arizona in 2020? Are visions of Cyber Ninjas dancing in your head?

After almost a year of fucking around in some mothballed basketball arena, the Arizona Senate, which was involved in ordering the ridiculous Maricopa audit, had to announce that Biden got 360 more votes in the county than they thought, and the finger-pointing started in Arizona. Who was going to pay for the $2 million they went over budget with the audit?

Steve Bannon pops up from whatever Epstein bunker he’s been trying to hide in and babbles something on his “War Room” podcast that “of course” Trump is going to order ICE agents to surround poling places, and there’s another freak-out.

Steve Schmidt had a wonderful column this morning pointing out what experts have confirmed, that “The states are sovereign, and the states administer elections. The states created the Union, and the Union is bound by the Constitution. Case closed.” This is what we need more of: rational talk from rational people about reality. Schmidt put it this way: “There is too much talk about Trump’s sick fantasy and too little talk about the consequences of his trying to achieve it. The right to vote will — to say the least — not go gently into that good night.”

Amen.

NBC News has a report about local election officials in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta “pushing back” on Trump’s absurd crap about “nationalizing” local elections. To sum up the lengthy NBC story, it ain’t gonna happen. “We all know the President’s playbook by now,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deely said in a written statement. “His remarks on elections are an effort to change the conversation from the fact that the federal government is killing American citizens in Minneapolis. We must be careful and keep our eyes on the ball.”

A-bloody-men.

There is a lot of good news this week. A Quinnipiac poll came out that put Trump under 40 percent in approval, with only 37 percent of voters approving his job performance, and 56 percent disapproving. On the economy, Trump was similarly underwater, as pollsters put it: 39 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove. On immigration, 34 percent of voters approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 63 percent disapprove. Fifty-eight percent of voters think Kristi Noem should be fired. Only 34 percent approve of the way the Chief Dog Shooter is doing the job of running the Department of Homeland Security. Another poll had 90 percent of voters wanting ICE agents to wear body cameras, while 5 percent oppose. DHS is spending just over a month training their ICE masked men. I’m not even going to give the negative figures: 76 percent think they need longer training, 75 percent think ICE needs stricter recruiting requirements.

I could go on. These are terrible numbers for Trump, for ICE, for everything. He’s underwater on inflation. Someone in Iowa yelled out at his rally to correct him when he tried to tell his supporters that they are paying $1.85 at the pump for gas. “It’s $2.69,” a guy yelled.

Trump’s lies are hitting a brick wall. People are not believing his bullshit. The two people killed by his agents in Minneapolis were not “terrorists.” They were innocent Americans. His bullshit about Greenland hit the brick wall of an emboldened Europe and Wall Street investors desperate not to have him tank the world economy by pitting the U.S. against its NATO fucking allies.

Here is what I think: The Atlanta FBI raid is a sign of a desperate man who knows he and Republicans are going to lose so big at the polls in November, it will go down in the history books not as a wave, but an earthquake. Trump is shaking in his overstuffed lace-ups that the Senate will go to the Democrats. You and I and Donald Trump know what that means. He will be impeached again in 2027. Even if he’s not convicted, he’ll have a Congress that will never approve his big plan for a Macho Arch on the D.C. Mall. Everything built there, from monuments to museums to sidewalks and benches has to be approved by the Congress, and it won’t be his Congress anymore.

Don’t listen to Donald Trump when he wakes up hallucinating tomorrow morning on Truth Social or farts his way through another vanity performance in the Oval Office. He’s so full of shit, he’s about to blast off from the Resolute Desk on a blue flame, and we should be treating him like we’re watching the lift-off and laughing at his increasing desperation.

Leave a comment

Share

Give a gift subscription

Beyond acceding to Donald Trump’s fondest dreams, what are we possibly to make of the FBI seizing 700 ballot boxes, voter machine tapes, digital data and voter rolls reflecting 2020 votes from a Fulton Country warehouse? How could we possibly not see this as Trump-fueled revenge and a blinking warning about the kind of challenges to expect in November’s elections?

Days later, the FBI’s execution last week of a judicially signed search warrant served by armor-clad agents clearly still feels extraordinary both politically and legally, and it represents a significant escalation in Trump’s breaking of democratic norms. It certainly reflects Trump’s obsession with having been declared a loser and a warning that he will do anything to influence this year’s elections.

But what exactly is supposed to happen with these ballots and tapes? What are they supposed to  show? There still is no justification for what Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was doing at the search. Even if we accept that she has decided to worry about election “security,” nothing offers a reason to be present during the serving of a warrant to gather evidence.

Though even the optics of a seizure may appease Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him, what is the practical outcome here? Aren’t these the same votes and ballots recounted multiple times by the state officials responsible for them? Aren’t these the very results that were the arguments in Rudy Giuliani’s loss in court of a defamation suit worth $148 million charging fraud by two election mother and daughter election workers?

Trump blamed results in Georgia for his loss to Joe Biden, pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,781 more votes. Recently, he promised anew to prosecute those responsible for rigging the election. Trump and his allies filed more than 60 legal cases across the nation seeking to overturn the 2020 election results — all of which failed, even those before Trump-appointed judges.

Can Trump Find His Votes?

The warrant said the materials to be seized might be “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots. Weirdly, this material already had been requested in a state-federal lawsuit, but release was held up by court order.

We don’t know what evidence or argument was presented to the judge who signed the search warrant; only the FBI presented its reasons. There is no suggestion of new evidence emerging, so the timing is off. A search warrant does not mean a crime was committed or by whom. Rather it means that there is probably cause to look at these elements.

Even a cursory look at the seizure raises a host of questions.

The first is what does the FBI hope to find that no previous investigation or recounting determined? In 2023, Giuliani conceded that while acting as a lawyer for. Trump, he made false statements by asserting that two Atlanta election workers had mishandled ballots.

Then there is the timing. This is 2026, and the voting was in 2020. Most federal and state election laws seem to have a statue of limitations clause that expires after five years. Can any “evidence” unearthed here even be submitted to a court in a criminal trial?

Who is going to review these records, if not the state and county election officials? Is the FBI going to do its own recount, or perhaps hire an outside private company whose background and political lean will be put under endless scrutiny? Who designates that they are not altered once out of the hands of election officials?

How is anyone reviewing the ballots supposed to determine “intent” as required by fraud laws?

And, of course, if Trump’s FBI and Justice Department magically “find” 11,781 votes, do we replay the last six years and re-install Donald Trump as president. Or better yet, determine that he already has served twice as president and cannot Constitutionally finish this would-be third term?

An Egotistical Warning

We’re left with the other conclusion possible here. There is no practical way for Trump to un-rig the 2020 election, but he can use his Justice Department and FBI to harass those who dare to suggest that he lost.

While such dreams may serve the infantile Trump ego, the real value is in signaling to an already wary electorate that Trump, who is not on any ballot in November, still wants an outcome that will leave him with a Republican Congress that will stand down from oversight and questioning of his administration.

To that end, he has endorsed and promoted congressional gerrymandering changes in multiple states, he is threatening to outlaw mail ballots and voter machines that are state controlled, he is choosing candidates to primary any congress member who challenges him, and he is encouraging the social media doxing or prosecution of political enemies. He is pushing for closing of polling stations in Black districts believed to favor Democrats.

And the example of ICE armies and National Guard deployments  in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington show that he is willing to have the appearance of military law in place to squelch voter turn-out.

Of course, he wanted the FBI to seize ballots and tapes, even if there is no prosecution case to develop sufficiently in the months before the election. His own reputation as a constant winner and his hatred for those who stand up to him are way more important than retaining a democracy.

Happy 250^th America.

IF YOU VALUE YOUR RIGHT, HELP US PROTECT THEM. PLEASE CONSIDER A DONATION TODAY. 

The post Seizing 2020 Ballots in Georgia appeared first on DCReport.org.