Wow, just when we thought Viceroy Trump couldn’t do more to stage a coup or do so in a more incompetent and incriminating fashion, here we are.
Sunday January 3, somebody released a recording of a call that Trump and his staff (including Mark Meadows) made in conference with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger AND his attorney Ryan Germany. This ended up getting sent to the Washington Post and is available online. In this call, which lasted over an hour because Trump rambled, wandered, conjured conspiracies and made up big fish stories in his Racist-Uncle-at-Thanksgiving way, Trump insisted several times that “there’s no way I lost Georgia” despite Raffensberger telling him several times that the numbers were not with him, he told Raffensberger, who is in charge of election tallies, “The people of Georgia know that this was a scam, and because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote. A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president.” He added: “You would be respected if this thing could be straightened out before the election.” How did he propose to do this? He said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” In other words, start with the result I want, and create the statistic I know to achieve it.
This is of course Oh We’ve Got Trump’s Ass On A Rack And He’s Cooked For Sure THIS Time incident #14547, cause no matter how many times little baby gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, his pet political party is so pussywhipped that they really will give him legal immunity even if he did shoot someone on 5th Avenue. Not to mention the fact that the learned-helplessness contingent of the government (aka The Democratic Party) wouldn’t do anything even if the Banana Republican Party was standing out of the way. Still, with Trump trying to Stop The Steal with an actual steal, it’s telling that the Church of Trump is more determined to create a dogma to explain this paradox of faith than Christianity is at explaining, say, why we even need Jesus if Mary was without sin. At one point Trumpnik Jason Miller scream-tweeted that the Post had only released 4 to 6 minutes of the call, apparently under the impression that the entire thing would exonerate The Leader. It’s possible the WP released the entire thing just to piss in his mouth. Then you had several other members of the Church twitting that because Trump had the state of Georgia under a lawsuit for the election results that releasing the audio was illegal and a breach of the legal action. I presume that Mr. Germany is a better lawyer than (say) Sidney Powell, and could have notified Raffensberger if that was in fact the case. For somebody who so clearly wants to be a Mob boss, Trump still hasn’t figured out that “he was wearing a wire” isn’t a legal defense.
This in fact was only the escalation of the continuing campaign of the Party of Trump to assist him in his wishful thinking and denial. Last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (BR-Gohmert) sent a lawsuit to force Vice President Mike Pence, in his official position as presiding officer of the Senate, to accept “alternate electors” (i.e. Acolytes in the Church of Trump) over the Electors officially approved after the ‘safe harbor’ point. A lawsuit, by the way, which was thrown out by Saturday. But Gohmert was also one of the first to demand a challenge of the Electors on what would normally be a pro forma certification of the election on January 6. For this challenge to proceed, Gohmert or another Representative would need to be supported by at least one Senator, and despite Mitch McConnell imposing an iron discipline on his caucus otherwise, Senator Josh Hawley (BR-Missouri) just came out to support the motion, which everyone knows is going to fail, if only because the Democrats still have a majority in the House and there won’t be enough Republicans to support it. But at this point it’s all about playing to the ex-Tea Party/now Trumpnik/future Qanon “base”. And given how everybody tells me that Hawley is NOT a blithering idiot (as opposed to Gohmert), and therefore must know that Trump isn’t going to roll over and let somebody else get the presidential nomination in 2024 if Trump (or at least one of his genespawn) can get it, I have to assume Hawley is pandering to that crowd for his future political ambitions on the assumption that Trump will soon have to change his accommodations from separate beds with Melania to sharing a cell with a 7-foot Samoan named “Desiree.” The joke, of course, is that the smart Republicans refused to take down Trump in 2016 before he got too big for his britches, cause they didn’t want to alienate that precious “base.” And that’s why Trump is now dragging them all by the shorthairs.
Not to mention that a lot of institutional Republican paralysis is that they can’t afford to buck The Leader when there’s still a runoff election in the two US Senate races in Georgia, which due to weak but still net-positive Democratic gains in the chamber mean that if both those races are lost, Mitch “the Bitch” is no longer Senate Majority Leader because it would be 50-50 and Kamala Harris would break ties. And most polls show the two Democratic challengers barely edging the Republican incumbents. At this point, it all comes down to seeing if the Republicans’ Election Day vote floods the Democrats’ early vote the way it did in so many elections elsewhere. But the early numbers are not looking good for Republicans. But it may not matter. If the Trumpniks realize that their Leader’s back is really against the wall, they may rally to save him from all the lesbians, atheists and other Democrats.
Here’s the thing. I’ve often discussed how the process of government resembles both role-playing games and old-time boardgames in that there are Rules As Written (in this case, the Constitution) and the house rules everybody uses, which in this case are the various rules of Congress and unwritten “norms” by which the system really works day to day, which is part of why the “rule of law” Democrats (who didn’t care much for the ‘rule of law’ the last time we had a pathological liar and real-estate cheat in the White House) are so helpless against Trump, because they don’t operate on laws, just norms.
But with both the Trump Party stunt against the Electoral vote and Trump himself pulling a Zelensky on Raffensberger, it seems to have gone a lot further than that.
Most boardgames always use the same set of components, so if you play Monopoly or Risk, you’re always playing a variation on the same game. But in 2011, Hasbro released RISK Legacy, which was unique and controversial because it was specifically designed to be altered in play. For instance: “What makes this game unique is that when powers are chosen, players must choose one of their faction’s two powers, affix that power’s sticker to their faction card, then destroy the card that has the other rule on it – and by destroy, the rules mean what they say: ‘If a card is DESTROYED, it is removed from the game permanently. Rip it up. Throw it in the trash.’ This key concept permeates through the game. Some things you do in a game will affect it temporarily, while others will affect it permanently. These changes may include boosting the resources of a country (for recruiting troops in lieu of the older ‘match three symbols’ style of recruiting), adding bonuses or penalties to defending die rolls to countries, or adding permanent continent troop bonuses that may affect all players. The rule book itself is also designed to change as the game continues, with blocks of blank space on the pages to allow for rules additions or changes. Entire sections of rules will not take effect until later in the game.” This brand actually inspired a whole new genre called the legacy game, which is based on the idea that the game as bought is to some degree permanently altered in play.
The US government prior to Donald Trump was Monopoly or Risk. The US government under Donald Trump is Risk Legacy.
The only way the “rule of law” marshmallows are going to actually have the rule of law back is to admit that is exactly what we do not have now, and we are not operating under the set of rules we think we are. And in some respect we have not been operating under the Rules As Written for quite some time. You want to go back to vanilla Risk, then you buy a new board of vanilla Risk at the department store and start over with the REAL rules system, because this is Risk Legacy, and half the board is in the garbage can.
That means, among other things, using ALL resources at one’s disposal to slam the people who are trying to subvert the government. When the Congressional Trumpniks announced their scheme to make their gold-plated calf President For Life, a lot of leftists went over the 14th Amendment, specifically Section 3, which states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” This, along with the other sections, was passed because there were in fact a bunch of Confederate state representatives who had been kicked out of Congress in 1861 after secession, and the Union needed to make sure that such behavior was not rewarded after the Civil War. We had not needed to consider it until now because we didn’t have a bunch of redneck reactionaries trying to overthrow the government through the Congress until now. And when the idea of kicking the Trumpniks out of the new Congress was first proposed, I thought it was too harsh. But after Sunday? Fuck ’em.
At the very least, make sure any Representative who signed the petition to contest the Electors, and any Senator who supports the challenge, lose all their committee assignments for the duration of the Congress, because that’s all these vain little creatures really care about anyway.
You can’t end the game and set up a new one if the other players are still playing a completely different game without you. Bad enough that it’s Risk Legacy, but with Republicans, you’re gonna have a situation where they’re playing Risk Legacy and Trump is playing Calvinball.
You want the rule of law? Start enforcing the law for a change.
You don’t do that, it doesn’t matter if Democrats win Georgia.