Tracker

'Yelling and cursing' broke out in the Oval Office in a last gasp of the Trump presidency: report President Donald Trump, weeks after losing the November 2020 election by more than 7 million votes and more than 70 electoral votes, discussed declaring national security emergency powers his White House attorneys told him he did not have. That's according to a stunning report that details a December 18 meeting in the Oval Office and the White House Residence from Axios, "Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency." The meeting included White House senior adviser Eric Herschmann, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and White House staff secretary Derek Lyons, on the one side, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, former Trump administration official Emily Newman, and attorney Sidney Powell, who is now being sued for $1.3 billion by Dominion voting machines. Powell "proposed declaring a national security emergency, granting her and her cabal top-secret security clearances and using the U.S. government to seize Dominion's voting machines." At one point Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani joined by phone, and was forced to tell everyone in the "heated" meeting to calm down. Axios reports at one point the "meeting had come entirely off the rails," and says "people were yelling and cursing" inside the Oval Office. 'Yelling and cursing' broke out in the Oval Office in a last gasp of the Trump presidency: report - Alternet.org

Matt Gaetz staffer cheered on rioters from Capitol rooftop: report Joel Valdez captured a five-second video with his phone and posted it to Parler, Gizmodo reports More information continues to come out about the fatal January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — one week before the start of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial. "As police struggled futilely to fend off a wave of rioters outside the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, Joel Valdez, an aide to Congressman Matt Gaetz, made his way to the rooftop of his boss's office building across the street on Independence Ave. Surveying the mob as it surrounded the complex, he captured a five-second video with his phone and posted it to Parler—the now-defunct social network where some supporters of President Trump are reported to have openly planned an insurrection for weeks," Gizmodo reportedMonday. In his post, Valdez used the hashtag #StopTheSteal to refer to the conspiracy theory that Trump actually won the election. Trump was impeached for inciting insurrection by pushing the same lie. "From the top of the Capitol office buildings, WE HEAR YOU LOUD AND CLEAR!" Valdez posted on Parler. Gizmodo reported on where the video fit in the timeline of events. "Metadata from Valdez's video, which Pro Publica published last week but did not connect to Gaetz's press assistant, reveals it was taken at roughly 1:14 p.m. ET that day," Gizmodo reported. "The rioters had by that time already breached at least three police barricades and forced officers back onto the Capitol steps where they violently engaged, according to a timeline of events reported by the New York Times." Matt Gaetz staffer cheered on rioters from Capitol rooftop: report | Salon.com

Trump’s lawyers quit after he refused to pay $3M in legal fees despite raising $170M: report Former President Donald Trump's legal team for his upcoming impeachment trial quit following a dispute about the cost of his defense, according to Axios. Five of Trump's impeachment attorneys abruptly quit just over a week before his Senate trial is set to kick off on Feb. 8. CNN and other outlets have reported that lead attorney Butch Bowers and four other lawyers he assembled for the team walked out over a disagreement about the ex-president's defense strategy but Axios reports that the team split following a blow-up with the "notoriously stingy" onetime reality TV host over legal fees. Trump, who is charged with inciting the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was "livid" after Bowers told him that the legal effort would cost $3 million, according to the report, even though Trump has raised over $170 million from supporters, ostensibly to fund his post-election legal efforts.

Now, where's that pinch of salt....

Trump in an interview said that outright- he said that if gerrymandering and voter suppression ended, they (the GOP) would never get back into power again. This terrifies the GOP, so they are now focusing on state governments. The thinking is that if they control the state governments, they can then use those to disqualify correctly appointed electors and nominate pliable electors in defiance of the voters' will. With enough GOP judges in place, this is a real possibility.

Lindsey Graham Warns Democrats Against Calling Witnesses In Trump Impeachment Trial Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cautioned Democrats against calling witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump for incitement of his supporters’ deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Graham told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy on Monday that a “Pandora’s box” and “a can of worms” would be opened if just one witness was brought forward in the Senate trial of Trump, set to begin next week. The House last month impeached Trump over the violence that left five people dead. Graham, a former fierce critic of Trump who after the 2016 election became one of his most loyal defenders, warned that calling witnesses could mean a months long trial “and that would be bad for the country.” Graham and other Republicans have argued it is time to “move on” from the insurrection for the good of the U.S. “If you open up that can of worms (by calling witnesses), we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people actually pre-planned these attacks and what happened with the security footprint at the Capitol,” the South Carolina Republican continued, parroting a right-wing talking point that the attack was planned well before Trump urged his supporters at a pre-riot rally to march to the Capitol. Lindsey Graham Warns Democrats Against Calling Witnesses In Trump Impeachment Trial | HuffPost Canada (huffingtonpost.ca)

Shock in Awe.

GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser Axios has a small squib about “The Mischief Makers,” a handful of idiosyncratic congressional backbenchers who make trouble for their respective party leadership. The leading Democratic mischief-maker is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who advocates some left-wing views I consider simplistic and impractical and, in some cases, poll badly. The top example of a conservative mischief-maker, presented in perfect symmetry, is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene’s views are just a bit more controversial. They include, but are by no means limited to, the following: • The QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Donald Trump is secretly fighting a worldwide child-sex-slavery ring that was supposed to culminate in the mass arrest of his political opposition, is “worth listening to.” • Muslims don’t belong in government. • 9/11 was an inside job. • Shootings at Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas were staged. • “Zionist supremacists” are secretly masterminding Muslim immigration to Europe in a scheme to outbreed white people. • Leading Democratic officials should be executed. The most recent Greene view to be unearthed comes via Eric Hananoki. Just over two years ago, Greene suggested in a Facebook post that wildfires in California were not natural. Forests don’t just catch fire, you know. Rather, the blazes had been started by PG&E, in conjunction with the Rothschilds, using a space laser, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project. GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Jewish Space Laser (nymag.com)

Wisconsin Vaccine Saboteur Steven Brandenburg Is a Flat-Earther, FBI Document Reveals -Grafton Police Department The Wisconsin pharmacist who intentionally sabotaged hundreds of doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine because he thought COVID-19 was a hoax, also believes the earth is flat and the sky is actually a “shield put up by the Government to prevent individuals from seeing God.” That’s according to a newly-unsealed FBI search warrant application obtained by The Daily Beast, which the bureau filed earlier this month requesting permission to analyze an iPhone, a laptop, and a thumb drive seized from Steven Brandenburg when he was arrested in late December. (Makes sense to me) The QAnon Timeline: Four Years, 5,000 Drops and Countless Failed Prophecies QAnon is not a static conspiracy theory. Since it first emerged in 2017, it has continuously evolved, focusing on different key topics and adopting elements of other conspiracy theories. As Bellingcat has recently written, this elasticity has been the key to its success. With the inauguration of US President Joe Biden, QAnon’s faithful are adrift and confused. Their distress has caused some observers to ask whether their cult may collapse entirely. That might be premature. Failed prophecies do not always collapse elaborate conspiracies — if that were true, how could QAnon have endured for four years? If we cannot predict its end, we can at least trace QAnon from its beginning — looking at all the falsehoods and conspiracies it peddled, from the initial Mueller investigations to the era of COVID-19 and the last days of the Donald Trump presidency. The QAnon Timeline: Four Years, 5,000 Drops and Countless Failed Prophecies - bellingcat

You get what you (may) pay for. Apparently Trump's defence will be not that he did not encourage the sedition, but that he was justified because the election was stolen from him. This is why no other lawyer was willing to represent him. His current lawyers had better make sure they get a large retainer in advance.

Los Angeles mass vaccination site closed for an hour due to anti-vaccine protests In yet another act of insanity, or just the new conservative nihilism, a COVID-19 vaccination site at Dodger Stadium, in Los Angeles, had to be temporarily closed Saturday afternoon after dozens of far-right extremists showed up to protest the very existence of the vaccination program, shout at those arriving for vaccination, and provide living examples of what this nation will become once conservatives have gotten rid of all the public schools and successfully convinced a majority of Americans that their imaginations are more authoritative than all of history and science combined, because a Facebook post or swollen-headed conservative television host told them so. How do we know that it was far-right extremists leading this anti-vaccination group, which resulted in the closure of the site for roughly an hour by on-site officials? Because they left a handy trail of breadcrumbs. The Los Angeles Times reports that in a social media post organizing the event, participants asked to "please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only." Ah, yes. Very clever. So instead of the usual pro-Trump flags, we were treated to anti-lockdown signs, calls for the state's Democratic governor to resign, claims that "CNN IS LYING TO YOU," and the other frequent staples of far-right anti-lockdown rallies around the nation. Oh, and the usual QAnon-isms, as with a sign proclaiming "Tell Bill Gates To Go VACCINATE HIMSELF!" Los Angeles mass vaccination site closed for an hour due to anti-vaccine protests - Alternet.org

Apparently the GOP strategy now that they have lost the federal elections is to shift their emphasis to state governments in the expectation that they will be able to execute the Trump strategy of overruling the electoral processes at the state level if they do not go the GOP way. This is, at best, a very iffy legal concept but they are assuming that it will be all they have.

There has to be a minimum of two weeks between shots, and FYI: the first vaccination does not kick in fully for two weeks.

What they are not telling you is that the swab has to reach the back of your throat.

Well, he is an expert in repressing these.

A bit better but still no cause for celebration.

One of Trump's favourite tactics is to refuse to pay his attorney(s) and then sue them for misrepresentation Then when he loses that, he refuses to pay those lawyers and then threaten to sue them if they do not accept pennies on the dollar as settlement, etc etc.

Gates intended this as a jab at the conspiracy nuts in the US. It kinda follows that the leader of the Proud Boys in the US was an FBI informer. I like that Gates has a sense of ha-ha.

GOP Lawmakers Seek Tougher Voting Rules After Record Turnout, Election Losses AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country are moving swiftly to attack some of the voting methods that fueled the highest turnout for a presidential election in 50 years. Although most legislative sessions are just getting underway, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, has already tallied more than 100 bills in 28 states meant to restrict voting access. More than a third of those proposals are aimed at limiting mail voting, while other bills seek to strengthen voter ID requirements and registration processes, as well as allow for more aggressive means to remove people from voter rolls. “Unfortunately, we are seeing some politicians who want to manipulate the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some can’t,” said Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center. GOP Lawmakers Seek Tougher Voting Rules After Record Turnout, Election Losses | HuffPost

We already have had a fascist president who was as dumb as a bag of rocks but was a glove-puppet of some people who were smarter than he (not a great feat). There is the Putin scenario- he was installed as a useful fool by powerful men in Russia but was clever enough to outwit, and jail them. I am not sure in the GOP or adherents would fit that description, but many who would try. Trump was undone by his pride and stupidity, but the next one may not be. Top Trump campaign fundraiser played key role in planning the rally that preceded the siege: text messages In the week leading up to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that exploded into an attack on the Capitol, a top Trump campaign fundraiser issued a directive to a woman who had been overseeing planning for the event. “Get the budget and vendors breakdown to me and Justin," Caroline Wren wrote to Cindy Chafian, a self-described “constitutional conservative," in a Dec. 28 text message obtained by ProPublica. Wren was no ordinary event planner. She served as a deputy to Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at Trump Victory, a joint presidential fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign. The Justin mentioned in her text was Justin Caporale, a former top aide to first lady Melania Trump, whose production company helped put on the event at the Ellipse. Text messages and an event-planning memo obtained by ProPublica, along with an interview with Chafian, indicate that Wren, a Washington insider with a low public profile, played an extensive role in managing operations for the event. The records show that Wren oversaw logistics, budgeting, funding and messaging for the Jan. 6 rally that featured President Donald Trump. Chafian told ProPublica that Wren and others had pushed her aside as plans intensified, including as a late effort was made to get Trump to speak at the event. On Dec. 29, after receiving the budget, Wren instructed Chafian, via text, to hold off on printing event-related slogans “until we decide what the messaging is and we have no clue on timing because it all depends on the votes that day so we won't know timing for a few more days." The “timing" appears to be a reference to Congress' Jan. 6 vote to certify the election results. Wren's services were enlisted by a major donor to Trump's presidential campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported Saturday that Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to Publix Super Markets, committed some $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 rally. Top Trump campaign fundraiser played key role in planning the rally that preceded the siege: text messages - Alternet.org Five attorneys quit days before impeachment trial and his backers turn on him Former President Donald Trump is apparently having some trouble finding legal representation in his upcoming impeachment trial. All five lawyers, including former federal litigators and Trump's anticipated lead attorneys Butch Bowers and Deborah Barbier, have quit less than two weeks before the trial is scheduled to begin the week of February 8, unnamed sources told CNN. Other attorneys with the good sense to distance themselves from Trump include South Carolina lawyers Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris and Josh Howard, a North Carolina attorney who worked on the Monica Lewinsky investigation during former President Bill Clinton's time in office, CNN reported. "A person familiar with the situation called it a 'mutual" decision,' New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman tweeted Saturday. "Bowers has been noticeably muted for someone leading a Trump defense, choosing not to talk to most reporters. The person familiar with the situation said there was no chemistry between Bowers and Trump."

This is a probable scenario, but it comes with real risks. If you think the right wingers went nuts over losing the election, both houses and the presidency, what would follow another loss in the mid-terms and the 2024 election is close to outright guerilla civil war. That would fulfill Putin's fondest dreams- a broken and divided America.

At least Bill Gates has a sense of humor about it!