The Conversation -- April 15, 2024
Here's Criminal Defendant No. 1 entering the Manhattan courtroom for the first day of his 2016 election interference criminal trial. Take a look at his lawyer Todd Blanche who is standing next to Trump; Blanche apparently thinks the Trump Mugshot Scowl is just the right look for discussing criminal matters:
The New York Times' live updates of developments in Trump's 2016 election interference trial are here. Trump has attempted again to out Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case. ~~~
Ben Protess: “Trump's attempt to oust the judge is expected to fail. Trump has argued that the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cannot be fair because his daughter is a Democratic political consultant. Ethics experts disagree.”
Jesse McKinley: “The courtroom which the former president will sit today is not a glamorous scene: wood paneling, neon lights, pleather seats. It is far more 'Fargo' than Mar-a-Lago.”
Maggie Haberman: “Trump’s lawyers have tried impressing upon him the need to behave differently than he did in the previous courtrooms, where he fidgeted, scoffed, made noises and, at the Carroll trial, stormed out during closing arguments. We’ll see if he can sustain it.”
Haberman: “Still photographers have been let into the room to take photos of Trump, who puts on his now familiar, stony scowl.”
Haberman: “Merchan, in his soft-spoken style, is making clear he does not buy Trump’s claims that he is dealing with a biased judge. Trump is squinting toward the bench as Merchan makes clear he is going to reject the recusal motion.”
Susanne Craig: “At 10 a.m. Trump blasted out a fund-raising note asking supporters to 'chip in' to support his campaign. 'They’re just a DEEP STATE plot from RADICAL Democrats to come after you – and I’m the only thing standing in their way!'”
Haberman: “[Joshua] Steinglass, the prosecutor, is doing a lengthy recounting of Trump's comments on the infamous Access Hollywood tape. There is no new information there, but Trump is listening as his own words about grabbing women’s genitals are recounted.... [Todd] Blanche, the defense lawyer, objects strenuously to admission of the language on the tape, as Trump sits with his arms tightly folded over his chest.”
Haberman: “Trump, listening to a tape of himself from fall 2016 in which he says no one has more respect for women than he, mouths: 'True.'”
Kate Christobek: “Justice Juan M. Merchan says that he is denying the prosecutors’ request to introduce other sexual assault allegations against Trump, calling them 'complete rumors, complete gossip, completely hearsay.'”
Jonah Bromwich: “The prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, before the break ended, indicated that the prosecution will ask the judge to hold Trump in contempt for his attacks on witnesses.... Trump on Saturday attacked Michael D. Cohen, his former fixer who is expected to be a star witness, as a 'disgraced attorney and felon.'”
Haberman: “Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.” (MB: There's definitely something wrong with Trump. This morning Haberman wrote that Trump “appear[ed] at times to be close to sleep.” It's safe to say that almost everyone would stay awake during his own trial.)
Christobek: “Christopher Conroy, a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office, is now discussing Trump’s recent social media posts, which he says attack potential witnesses Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen. He says these are clearly posts about their participation in the trial and violate Justice Merchan’s gag order.... Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, asks for the opportunity to respond in writing but is adamant that the posts do not violate Merchan’s gag order.” ~~~
~~~ Bromwich: “Merchan will not rule until after lunch, he says.” ~~~
~~~ [So it's after lunch.] Christobek: “[Justice Merchan] said he will let the defense respond and then will hear arguments [on violation of the gag order] on April 24.” ~~~
~~~ Bromwich: “Justice Merchan’s delay in hearing arguments about the gag order suggests that Trump could in the meantime continue to attack witnesses and others whom he is not supposed to criticize. During the lunch break, he posted a video of an ally, Laura Loomer, yelling about the judge’s wife.”
Bromwich: “Jury selection is underway. The first trial of an American president has begun.”
Bromwich: “The judge, Juan M. Merchan, is beginning to describe the case to the jurors, another quietly remarkable moment in a day, and a trial, that will be filled with them.”
Alan Feuer: “It’s remarkable that more than half of the potential jurors brought in for a first round of questioning immediately said they could not hear Trump’s case fairly. We knew that it would be hard to pick a jury, but a fail rate of 50 percent or higher right out of the gate is surpassingly rare.”
(MB: Looks like Trump planned a grand finale for Day 1, but it didn't work out. ~~~)
~~~ Haberman: “Shortly before court adjourned for the day, Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising email falsely claiming he had just stormed out of court.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Maxine Joselow & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post (April 12): “President Biden and Donald Trump this week outlined clashing visions for the future of fossil fuel production across the country, underscoring how the nation’s energy policies hinge on the outcome of the 2024 election. The Biden administration on Friday finalized a landmark rule that will require oil companies to pay at least 10 times more to drill on federal lands. The rule from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management represents the first comprehensive update to the federal oil and gas leasing program in more than 30 years, and is intended to generate more money for taxpayers. On Thursday, Trump held a private dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort with about 20 oil executives from some of the country’s biggest firms, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Continental Resources, Chesapeake Energy and Occidental Petroleum.... In recent months, Trump has also talked with energy executives about the need for fewer regulations on drilling and has asked the executives what they need to drill more oil....”
Katie Mettler, et al., of the Washington Post: “The FBI has opened a criminal investigation focusing on the massive container ship that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last month — a probe that will look at least in part at whether the crew left the port knowing the vessel had serious systems problems, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.” This is a breaking news story at 8:15 am ET. CNN's report is here.
Sex, Lies and Audiotape. Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: “On Monday, Donald J. Trump will go on trial in Manhattan — the first former U.S. president to be criminally prosecuted. The trial, which will begin with jury selection and last up to two months, will oscillate between salacious testimony on sex scandals and granular detail about corporate documents. Mr. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, all of which are tied to the former president’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.... The prosecutors, from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, have accused Mr. Trump of orchestrating a broader scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election by directing his allies to purchase damaging stories about him to keep them under wraps.” This is a longish article that tries to describe the essence of the trial. ~~~
~~~ Kate Christobek of the New York Times describes the jury selection process in Manhattan. MB: I've been in jury pools for high-profile cases (though not this high-profile) in Manhattan, and they are real cattle calls: hundreds of people -- and it's easy to beg off.
~~~ Lauren del Valle and others at CNN have produced a timeline of the events surrounding the 2016 election interference case. Fairly useful, inasmuch as the beginnings of the case are kind of ancient history now.
Finally, an Instance of Voter Suppression to Smile About. Miles Parks of NPR: If Trump is convicted, before the November election, of any of the felony counts he faces, will he be able to vote for himself? It depends.
Presidential Race
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?' To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked. -- David Sedaris, New Yorker, April 2024, via RAS, via digby
Tom Sullivan, in Hullabaloo, studies up on Donald Trump's version of Pennsylvania history as reported at a rally over the weekend. And other stuff that occurs to Donald. Like where he remarks, "[Robert E. Lee] is no longer in favor. Did you ever notice that?"
Donald Trump always talks about history (or, well, anything) like a fourth-grader doing a book report on a book he didn’t read. -- Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian™, via Tom Sullivan ~~~
~~~ Marie: Few candidates for national office know the histories of every state they visit. Like Trump, they may not know the histories of even states they've lived in (like Pennsylvania, where Trump allegedly went to college). So before these politicians visit a state, they get their speechwriters to come up with some popular stories so they can repeat them for the locals and at least pretend they are impressed with how important the state has been to American history. But not Trump. For him, incoherently spitting out fractured fairy tales suffices. And millions of Americans will vote for him. (IOW, they'll have the shit platter.)
Wherein George Stephanopoulos grills New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) about why he's supporting a candidate for president even if that candidate is convicted of crimes, and even though Sununu himself admits that candidate "contributed to" an insurrection against the United States, and lied about the outcome of the last election. Most elected Republicans suffer from some degree of gut-deprivation syndrome, and Sununu was diagnosed some while back.
Donald Trump Has Been Asking, “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?” Let's Check. Top News in the NYT, April 15, 2020: “President Trump’s claim that he wielded 'total' authority in the pandemic crisis prompted rebellion ... from governors [and l]egal scholars across the ideological spectrum.... 'When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total,' Mr. Trump asserted at a raucous press briefing on Monday evening. 'And that’s the way it’s got to be.'”
~~~~~~~~~~
Israel/Palestine, et al.
CNN's live updates of developments Monday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "Israel has vowed to 'exact a price' from Iran after an unprecedented large-scale drone and missile attack over the weekend. Israel's military said 99% of more than 300 projectiles were intercepted by Israel and its partners. Israel's war cabinet meeting ended Sunday without a decision on the size and scope of Israel's response, an Israeli official said. US President Joe Biden and members of his national security team told their counterparts the US will not participate in any offensive action against Iran, according to US officials familiar with the matter. Tehran’s retaliatory attack had been anticipated since a suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria earlier this month." ~~~
~~~ Here are the New York Times' live updates for Monday.
Steve M.: Say, know what's worse than Iran? Biden! Democrats! Steve checks out Republicans' reactions to the Biden administration's very effective defensive support of Israel and Biden's refusal to increase Mid-Est hostilities by assisting Israel in a counteroffensive against Iran.
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Reader Comments (30)
Umm…what?
Meant to comment on this yesterday but a link provided by Marie added more good stuff…
So…
Little Donnie Trumpy…historian!
Right.
During another of his long, rambling, bullshit filled speeches, this one in Pennsylvania, the Fat Fascist offered his version of why the South lost at Gettysburg. His favorite slavery supporting war guy, Robert E. Lee, according to Fatty, had a problem with a hill. Or something. But guess what? In addition to being a general, Lee was also, apparently, a pirate.
As Fatty tells it, Lee had this to say at Gettysburg: “Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill.” He left off the “Arggh, mateys!”
So…problems with this particular bit of fecal matter. What hill (me boys)? Is he referring to Little Round Top? Cemetery Ridge? To Pickett’s Charge? What? And where’s the attribution for this quote? No. My guess is that Lee lost because of the eye patch. Or maybe the parrot on his arm kept squawking “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
It looks like Fatty has used this story before though (see Marie’s link). At that time he said the battle was lost because Lee “lost his general” (what, in a sea battle?). What general? Jackson? It doesn’t really matter. And what about this command to not fight uphill? Wasn’t Lee in charge? Did a bunch of his guys say “Look! A hill! C’mon!”?
Maybe there was buried treasure up there.
We’ll leave untouched his astounding comment about how beautiful the battle was. 50,000 dead. Yeah. Really beautiful. But the MAGAts eat this shit up. Me boys. Arggh!
Too many links for this next one, but I’m sure you’ve heard the chorus of PoT war mongers screaming for Biden to declare war on Iran for the failed drone attack against Israel.
What about Ukraine? Where is all that war monger talk when it comes to an ally with tens of thousands dead at the hands of an invading force? An invading force from a country that has had it out for America for the better part of a century, that interferes with a presidential election.
Israel wasn’t invaded by Iran and no one was killed. There was very little property damage. In Ukraine, cities are in ruin. Bodies litter the streets. Putin shells maternity hospitals. But those same people now demanding that Biden attack Iran say “Not a penny for Ukraine!”
Trump, never one to miss an opportunity for ridiculous self aggrandizement, sez “This never would have happened if I were president*!”
Yeah, okay. You were great. Go back to your fantasy Civil War history, loser.
Biden, recognizing the potential for a dangerous escalation of war across the entire Middle East that would engulf dozens of other nations, including, and especially, the United States, and also recognizing Bibi’s propensity for war, especially if it keeps him out of prison, is doing the sane and responsible thing.
But not the traitors. So easy to scream from the sidelines. But once enmeshed in a nasty, costly, deadly war, you can be sure they’d change their tune. “Look at what Biden did! He got us into this war! Aieeee!”
Words fail.
Reading this morning's news somehow put in mind the image of a mass of lemmings following one another over a cliff into the sea...
https://www.britannica.com/story/do-lemmings-really-commit-mass-suicide#:~
Are those rodents (who don't commit mass suicide) smarter than MAGAs?
Apparently.
New Republic
"When the Supreme Court overturned a Colorado court ruling last month that had disqualified former President Donald Trump from the state ballot, the justices argued that it was necessary to avoid a “patchwork” of requirements for presidential candidates to meet. That would only invite “chaos,” they warned.
The Shady Right-Wing Threats to Keep Biden Off Some State Ballots
Conservatives got their way when the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s disqualification, but two red-state secretaries of state seem to be bent on retaliation anyway.
What makes Alabama and Ohio’s actions so striking is that the two states warned the Supreme Court that something like this might happen. In a friend of the court brief in Anderson, a coalition of Republican-led states hinted in unsubtle terms that they would retaliate with their own disqualifications if Trump were removed from the ballot anywhere. The attorneys general of Alabama and Ohio both signed onto the brief.
It would be one thing if Biden and the Democrats were missing a deadline through ineptitude or error. That does not appear to be the case here. A more likely explanation is that some Republican-led states are following through on the implicit threat they made in Anderson—to remove some presidential candidates for bogus reasons for partisan gain—even though the justices caved to avoid precisely that."
Occurs to me that the foursquare against patchwork argument the SCOTUS weasels put forth in their Colorado decision is precisely the contrary of their Dodd's stance...
But then, as we've been told, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of....something.
Matt Stoller
"The Silver or the Lead: How White Collar Crime Prosecutors Get Punished
Corporate defense lawyers have adopted a new strategy that not even the mob considered. When facing litigation from the government, file misconduct charges against the attorneys bringing the charges.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for paid subscribers on how and why the new antitrust regime is different than the previous regimes, showing that FTC Chair Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter take multi-billion dollar companies to trial routinely where their predecessors didn’t. Today I want to explain the cost of doing so, in antitrust or any other realm where the defendant is a politically connected or wealthy individual. And not the cost in terms of budget, but the cost to the specific careers of the government lawyers who take on the powerful."
I suspect General Lew Armistead is "the general Lee lost" at Gettysburg, in DiJiT's fractured-history cerebrum. He led his unit from the front in Pickett's Charge, and was shot three times after reaching the objective. Faulkner's "high water mark of the Confederacy." He died three days later at a Union field station in a farm.
More importantly, probably in DiJiT's brain, Armistead was poignantly played in the "Gettysburg" movie, by Richard Jordan, with a subplot of his relationship with Union General Winfield Hancock. It was all about friends across the battlefield, chivalry and the code of honor. Very maudlin. A noble death.
And ... of course Lee never said "don't fight uphill, me boys." In fact, when Longstreet got Lee's orders the day before, he tried to persuade Lee to call off the attack. Longstreet knew the numbers and the ground, and knew that the attack was absolute folly. Lee (today "less favored" because his errors have been more published in the past few decades) believed that the esprit and audacity of the Confederate troops would outweigh the high ground, numbers, and superior firing rate and range of the Union defenders. Lee had lost his military mind. When the Confederate attackers came in range (fighting uphill) , the Union defenders went into a merciless killing frenzy, yelling "Fredericksburg" repeatedly while avenging that earlier massacre of Union attackers.
For Lee, the war was all downhill from there. For Longstreet, he became the Lost Cause's scapegoat, as if he had lost the war single-handed because he "hadn't tried hard enough". You don't see any monuments to him down in Dixie.
I have a copy of a painting showing Lee and Longstreet the day before the attack, where Lee is justifying his orders and telling Longstreet to have faith. I have used that scene in management lessons, to make the point that, when your professional subordinate gives you absolute advice based on sound analysis, listen. Your gut feeling is not always your best decision factor.
@Patrick: Very interesting. I forget why, but yesterday I was thinking of my mother's remarking that she didn't think Dwight Eisenhower was very smart because every time she saw film clips of him with his generals, they were the ones doing the talking, and Ike was "just listening." Sounds as if maybe that was a good idea!
My Florida high school textbooks led us to believe that Lee was a brilliant general. From that lesson, which I think I accepted at face value, I learned that you can be simultaneously brilliant at one thing and dumb at something related to it -- like picking the wrong side in the Civil War.
@Ken Winkes: Patrick's comment got me to doing my deep Wikipedia research on Robert E. Lee's decision to lead the Confederate Army. I wanted to check to see if I'd remembered correctly how he made his decision, and really, I did not because I didn't realize how his loyalty to Virginia was the deciding factor.
So probably another argument against that "patchwork" of states the Supremes get so worked up about -- when it suits them.
@Akhilleus: I think Trump confused the Battle of Gettysburg with the Battle of San Juan Hill -- an easy enough mistake to make. "Remember the Maine!"
Maybe
"US drug shortages reach record high with 323 meds now in short supply
The shortages affect everything from generic cancer drugs to ADHD medication."
The Big D doesn't know Gettysburg from Pittsburgh. The only "Burg" he knows anything about comes in cardboard from Mickey Ds.
Real Trump Bibles
Re: Trump’s “lost general”.
At first I thought he might be referring to JEB Stuart, who was out of contact for days before the battle, depriving Lee’s infantry of vital intelligence regarding enemy strength and location. Choosing Stuart, however, would require a much more granular knowledge of the events leading up to Gettysburg. I’m guessing Patrick’s choice of Amistead might be more on point since it’s a lead pipe cinch that Fatty has never done any actual reading about that battle, but may have seen the highly hagiographic movie, or parts of it, when he wasn’t watching porn, working up scams, or gobbling Big Macs by the gross.
Even were that the case, Amistead’s survival would have meant nothing. Lee’s decision to go at the middle of the Union line was dead wrong (Longstreet, as Patrick points out, was right about that). Lee had tried this strategy before, with success, but Union General Meade knew all about this trick. Pickett’s charge was doomed from the get go, for many reasons, so Amistead not being lost would have made no difference. The High Water Mark at the Angle was place where the water started leaking badly for the slave states.
But here we are dissecting Fatty’s fatuous bullshit as if there was something debatable about it.
Trump is not just a naïf when it comes to American history, he’s a complete moron. This is the guy who thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive, and even if you buy his attempt at fixing that error, he is still suggesting that no one really knew much about Douglass until very recently, meaning him. Since he has only just learned about Frederick Douglass, no one else knew about him either.
Likewise his announcement that Lincoln was a Republican. Who knew??? Gee, Donnie. Everyone but you.
He claimed that Andrew Jackson was very angry about the Civil War. Jackson died 16 years before the war started.
He once announced, to great fanfare, that no president in history had signed more legislation than him. He was dead last, at that point.
He repeated the long debunked fiction that Black Jack Pershing had once shot Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
These tales probably have the MAGAts gushing with historicist outrage, but that means they’re just as stoopid as he is.
Historically so.
I forget who it was who a few weeks ago turned Trump's nonsense into "poetry." Certainly if Abraham Lincoln could wrench one of the finest speeches in American history out of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Trump could do even better! To wit!
Gettysburg Wow!
It’s where the army weathered it’s brutal winter at Valley Forge,
Where General George Washington led his men
On a daring mission across the Delaware,
And where our union was saved by the immortal heroes
At Gettysburg.
Gettysburg.
What an unbelievable battle that was,
The battle of Gettysburg.
What an unbelievable,
I mean, it was so much
And so interesting
And so vicious
And horrible
And so beautiful
And so many different ways it represented
Such a big portion of the success
Of this country.
Gettysburg wow.
@Akhilleus: According to Trump himself, he goes to Gettysburg "to look and to watch."
And that might be at least partially true. When you mentioned Big Macs, I checked the Googles, and there is a McDonald's right smack-dab in the middle of the battlefield. Unlike those crappy WWI cemeteries in Europe, you can go to McDonald's in the rain and never have to leave the Gettysburg National Cemetery and Battlefield. I mean leading Pickett's Charge will land you at the drive-up window!
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-criminal-trial-judge-merchan-c227f5eab200cccffb19ed931b4dac92
Look like Judge Merchan has been preparing himself to deal with the Pretender for much of his professional life. Just one more mental case to adjudicate.
Marie,
You mean Fatty goes to Gettysburg “to look and to watch and to gorge”.
Cuz isn’t this what famous historians do? Swan around historical sites with their entourage of idiot droolers, hitting the drive-thru window for thousands of calories, at a pop, while still spitting out bits of undigrested, poisonous balls of invented history, to cheers from idiots.
Real historians…are you missing something?
Because this latest enforced visitation to a courtroom by the Orange Election Interferer requires his fat ass to be seated there every day of the trial, here’s hoping jury selection lasts 5 weeks and the trial lasts two months. The longer he’s off the trump stump, the better for the nation.
Are sleepier now than you were four years ago?
Let’s ask Sleepy Don…
At his criminal trial in NYC, low energy fat boy nodded off. And not, apparently one of those momentary nods, this loser was sound asleep. For minutes.
Way to impress the jury, Fatty.
What was that? What’d you say?
Zzzzzzzzzzzz….
Zzzzzzzzzzz
So, an AI representation, but witnesses say it’s exactly what happened.
Make America Soporific Again.
Yeah. Let’s elect this fuckin’ guy. “Mr. President*…the country’s under attack. Mr. President*…Jesus! Wake up!”
Zzzzzzzzzzz
So, an AI representation, but witnesses say it’s exactly what happened in court today. .
Make America Soporific Again.
Yeah. Let’s elect this fuckin’ guy. “Mr. President*…the country’s under attack. Mr. President*…Jesus! Wake up!”
Posts disappearing again…
Posts disappearing again.
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stuff disappearing
@Akhilleus: It's not showing up in my SPAM, as is so often the case.
Marie,
Okay. Thanks. I'll try again in the morning.
@Akhilleus: Looks like everything showed up MUCH later.
Wow. I guess so.