October 4, 2024 – In a truly inspiring and seriously historic event yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared with former Republican U.S. Representative Liz Cheney at a rally in Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party. Together, they called upon us all to vote for the presidential candidate of hope, honesty and opportunity, Kamala Harris. Cheney’s speech was incredibly good. Be sure to watch… – BenIndy
Category Archives: Presidential politics
Vallejo Times-Herald Editor trashes Trump & commends Kamala
[BenIndy comment: Wow! Times-Herald editor Jack Bungart doesn’t hold back. A good read, funny, snarky, true. And on the front page!]
Kamala and the Great Comeuppance
Vallejo Times-Herald, By Jack Bungart Sept 14, 2024
And so it came to this. Nine years after escorting his Pre-Nup Lottery winner down that escalator and into our collective gag reflexes, and just months separated from having a glorious evening of his standard lie-spewing overshadowed by Father Time taking out his first opponent in a TKO, Donald Trump finally met his match.
Or his mismatch, as it were.
That wasn’t a debate in Philadelphia Tuesday night. It was a Comeuppance for the Ages, nearly a decade in the making. A roasted pig if you will, more delicious than any household pet could ever be.
Kamala Harris, just months ago another meandering vice president on a long, undistinguished list of them, did a greater service to her country than she could possibly do in that Oval Office she took a giant step toward occupying.
Welcome to the New World Order. If you ever wanted rock-solid proof this country needs a female president — this female president — this was it.
Remember Harris the ineffective campaigner and anonymous vice president? That is so late June Joe Biden. Forget her. She no longer exists.
This Harris, soaring on the wings of momentum, rolling in fresh campaign cash and basking in surging poll numbers, did what so many before her — both Republican and Democrat — had failed to do. She took the bully out behind the woodshed and kicked his ass.
This long overdue, national TV takedown/exposure of Trump was beautiful in its ruthless simplicity. Hit him where he hurts. Not on his plans for the country. He has none, and he quite frankly doesn’t care. Hit him where his malignant narcissism and toxic, fragile ego live.
Start with, say, crowd sizes. Only a shallow, undisciplined fool whose next policy idea will be his first one would bother with the bait, and ladies and gentlemen, this is that fool. Then, smile, chuckle, and stay out of the way while the clown melts down into an orange pool of drivel and felonies.
You know those 63-7 football blowouts where the incredulous announcer says “Bob, this was actually worse than the final score indicates”?
This was that. But worse than the sports cliche indicates.
Worse yet for Trump were the rules. No props of any kind were allowed on stage, meaning he couldn’t drive home his point of Super-Duper MAGA Patriotism without an American Flag to, well, hump. No fans in Flyover Country proclaiming, “Honey, get over here. You say he don’t love our country because he belittles our military, but just look at him make sweet love to that flag!”
As the rout rolled on, Trump became utterly undone, undressed of any pretense of being a man capable of looking out for anything or anyone other than himself. Gone too was the pretense of Trump being a serious candidate worthy of serious consideration outside of that cult he oversees.
This had nothing to do with Republican or Democrat. It never does with Trump.
This is about a befuddled fool not just losing a debate, but losing his way. This was a man who didn’t just deserve to lose, but a man who had to lose.
Perhaps now, finally, we can rid ourselves of this insistence on trying to normalize a man who is so clearly the least intelligent man — and the worst human being — to ever run for the presidency.
Sorry, but when you are sordid enough to keep a straight face while name dropping Viktor Orbán as a character reference, you have got to go. And if you are attempting to actually make a serious case for this soulless sap, you need to check yourself.
Almost mercifully, it finally ended, but not before Trump came up with one last preposterous claim, noting that he was, in fact, “a leader” on the issue of fertility. Nonsense. Everyone knows that’s Nick Cannon.
From there, it was “off to the spin room!” … said no debate winner in political history.
It was in a spin room in Pennsylvania that Trump found his state of denial. Giddy with the pretend spoils of his make-believe victory, Trump rattled off the fictional evidence: “We won in all the polls: 90-10, 81-11 73-9 …” he said, taking a break from his new hobby of memorizing random statistics and fake numbers to make a mental note to put together plans for when the World Series Champion Chicago White Sox and Super Bowl champion Carolina Panthers visit the White House in February.
OK, so maybe he didn’t win. Undaunted, with his MAGA rattle and binky in tow, Trump quickly pivoted to the Battle Cry of the Loser: They cheated me!
The problem, claimed Trump and his handlers at Fox, was those darn ABC moderators and their facts! “It was 3-on-1” they whined, in unison.
Nonsense. This was weak, even for a small, little man like Trump who still can’t fully admit he lost four years ago. For you MAGA folks at home unfamiliar with the concept, this was called journalism. You want to simply throw crap against the wall and make stuff up? You will get checked. It’s called fact-checking. Or in this case, lie-checking.
And no, you don’t fact-check Harris on her flip-flop on fracking. That issue is addressed in the question, which she answered. The fact that she didn’t answer it well doesn’t make it the same as her opponent simply making stuff up — like murdered babies and rigged elections — again.
Did Harris answer every question? Of course she didn’t. I’m sorry, was this your first debate?
And did Trump talk longer than Harris — 5 minutes or so? Of course. See above.
This wasn’t about bias — not even close. It was the chickens coming home to roost for a decade of thousands upon thousands of ridiculous lies Donald Trump has skated on far too often. And it was beautiful. Not for any of those tired, old Democrat vs. Republican stuff, either.
For the truth.
They’re going to check on the truth? This, the evening’s big loser thought, won’t stand. Why, it could even catch on. Donald Trump shares no stage with the truth. Not now, not ever.
This — and that fragile ego — is the reason Captain Bone Spurs is ducking a rematch like it’s Vietnam.
Still …
Trump may be down. He may be missing Joe Biden more than he previously thought possible. He may have no concept of a plan to deal with this woman who is so clearly smarter, sharper, and younger than him.
But he is hardly out. Not as long as there are the archaic Electoral College and the confused, common sense-challenged, attention-starved species known as the undecided voter out there.
Plus, Trump had to be thinking, things could hardly get worse …
Hold my microphone, said one Taylor Swift.
And there it is. Now it’s a Miss-Match.
— Jack F.K. Bungart is the Executive Editor of the Vallejo Times-Herald and the Vacaville Reporter.
More:
Donald Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence 2016 election
[Note from BenIndy: The latest verdict against Trump buoys the hope that justice will be served, and elevates the principle that no individual, regardless of status, is above the law.]
Trump found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in first criminal trial against a US president
Guardian, by Hugo Lowell and Victoria Bekiempis, May 30, 2024
Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
The verdict came after a jury deliberated for less than twelve hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president. It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.
Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime.
In Trump’s case, the Manhattan district attorney’s office alleged Trump falsely recorded the reimbursements he made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about her affair with Trump, as “legal expenses”.
The prosecution alleged the falsifications were made to conceal Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which makes it a crime to promote the election of any person to office through unlawful means.
Prosecutors argued in part that those unlawful means were the $130,000 payment to Daniels, which was in effect an illegal campaign contribution, because it was done solely for the benefit of his 2016 campaign and exceeded the $2,700 individual contribution cap.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office called 20 witnesses who, over the course of four weeks, gave evidence of how Trump plotted with the tabloid mogul David Pecker and Cohen to bury accounts of affairs with Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The witnesses – some friendly to Trump, others openly hostile – said Trump’s worry over the Daniels story intensified after the October 2016 release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about sexual assault.
The recording featured Trump boasting about being able to grab women “by the pussy” without their consent because he was famous. Trial witnesses testified the Trump campaign worried that his efforts to dismiss the tape as “locker room talk” would fail if more boorish behavior came to light.
When the Daniels story threatened to become widely known weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen moved into action and paid Daniels $130,000 to buy the exclusive rights to her story – in order to suppress its publication.
After the 2016 election, prosecutors argued, Cohen worked out an illicit repayment plan in which he would be paid $420,000, an inflated sum that “grossed up” for tax reasons the $130,000 and other items Cohen billed.
The trial saw prosecutors elicit testimony from Cohen, Daniels and a parade of Trump’s confidants and employees, as they sought to establish that Trump concealed the alleged payoff scheme in an effort to ensure he would not lose support from female voters.
Cohen proved to be perhaps the most legally consequential witness for the prosecution, as he recounted how he used a home equity loan to raise the $130,000 he then wired to Daniels’ lawyer through a shell company. Cohen did so in the belief that Trump would reimburse him, he testified.
In January 2017, Cohen said, he discussed with Trump and the former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about being repaid for the $130,000, an overdue bonus and other expenses he incurred doing work that benefited the Trump 2016 campaign.
Cohen produced 11 invoices seeking payment pursuant to a legal “retainer” that did not exist, according to Cohen, which led to 11 checks being cut to Cohen and the Trump Organization recording 12 entries for “legal expense” on its general ledger – totaling 34 instances of alleged falsifications.
Cohen, who was the final witness for the prosecution, said that Trump was furious when he learned that Daniels was on the verge of going public – not least because Cohen had previously worked with Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, in 2011, to remove the affair story from a gossip website.
“Just take care of it,” Cohen recalled Trump saying. “This was a disaster, a fucking disaster. Women will hate me.”
“Would you have made that payment to Stormy Daniels without getting a sign-off from Mr Trump?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen.
“No, because everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off. And on top of that, I wanted the money back,” Cohen said.
Cohen said that he filed bogus invoices for legal services to cover up the reimbursements, and repeatedly said that Trump was the force behind the Daniels plot. He carried out the payoff “to ensure that the story would not come out, would not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States”.
In a watershed moment, Cohen told jurors these repayments started not long after an 8 February 2017 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, where they talked about money. Cohen hadn’t been repaid anything for the payoff.
“So, I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK, he asked me if I needed money, and I said: ‘No, all good’,” Cohen told jurors. “He said, ‘All right, just make sure you deal with Allen.’”
“Allen” referenced Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer at the time, who was recently incarcerated for lying at Trump’s recent civil fraud trial. Weisselberg had previously pleaded guilty to tax crimes, for which he was also jailed.
Cohen submitted $35,000 invoices for each month, listing the bill as for legal services. He said it was actually for “the reimbursement, to me, of the hush-money fee along with [another expense] and the bonus”.
Hoffinger went through every invoice and pay document and asked Cohen whether it was for legal services – or false. Cohen repeatedly said that the descriptions of invoices and payments in emails and business documents were, in fact, false.
“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr Trump,” Cohen said at one point, among the many times he directly implicated Trump. “Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off.”
Daniels provided stunning testimony that undermined Trump’s denials that they had sex following a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe nearly two decades ago. After rejecting Trump’s invitation to dinner, Daniels decided to go at the advice of a colleague, who said: “It’ll make a great story.”
Daniels said that she went to Trump’s hotel room, and they decided to chat before grabbing something to eat. He asked over and over about her work as an adult film actor, repeatedly asking her questions such as: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?” Had she been tested?
“Yes, of course, and I volunteered it as well,” Daniels said. “He asked me, oh, well, have you ever had a bad test? I said: ‘Nope, I can show you my entire record.’”
Trump started to show photos to Daniels at one point, including one of Melania, about which she commented that his wife was “very beautiful” – but allegedly added she should not worry about Melania because “we don’t even sleep in the same room”.
They spoke about Trump’s show, The Apprentice, and Daniels remarked there would be no way she would make it on TV given her line of work.
“You remind me of my daughter, she is smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” Daniels remembered Trump saying.
Daniels excused herself for the restroom, which was through a bedroom. When she came out, Trump was on the bed, in his underwear and a T-shirt.
“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare,” Daniels said. “I just thought: oh my God, what did I misread to get here? The intention is pretty clear if someone’s stripped down to their underwear and on the bed.”
Daniels tried to leave but he stood between her and the door, albeit “not in a threatening manner”, she said.
“He said, I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were serious about what you wanted, if you want to get out of that trailer park … ” Daniels testified. “I was offended, because I never lived in a trailer park.” Daniels said they had sex.
The description of the hotel room encounter was uncomfortable and cringe-inducing testimony, one of the prosecutors suggested in closing arguments. But that was precisely why Trump was so desperate to suppress the story – and conceal that he had done so.
“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Trump recorded pressuring and threatening Georgia officials yesterday
[Editor: If you can’t stand his voice, just read the excellent analysis that follows. – R.S.]
‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor
Washington Post, By Amy Gardner, Jan. 3, 2021
President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.
The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”
Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.
Trump dismissed their arguments.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.
“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.
In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”
The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.
Election results under attack: Here are the facts
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to Raffensperger, saying the secretary of state was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the “ballots under table” scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
Raffensperger responded with his own tweet: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true.”
The pressure Trump put on Raffensperger is the latest example of his attempt to subvert the outcome of the Nov. 3 election through personal outreach to state Republican officials. He previously invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House, pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in a call to try to replace that state’s electors and asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to help reverse his loss in that state.
His call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the electoral college’s vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday. Republicans do not have the votes to successfully thwart Biden’s victory, but Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.
Growing number of Trump loyalists in the Senate vow to challenge Biden’s victory
During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.
“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”
Trump also told Raffensperger that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardize the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s two Republican senators whose fate in that day’s runoff elections will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Trump said he plans to talk about the fraud on Monday, when he is scheduled to lead an election eve rally in Dalton, Ga. — a message that could further muddle the efforts of Republicans to get their voters out.
“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”
Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger put him in legally questionable territory, legal experts said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” Trump appears to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia.
But experts said Trump’s clearer transgression is a moral one. Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that the legal questions are murky and would be subject to prosecutorial discretion. But he also emphasized that the call was “inappropriate and contemptible” and should prompt moral outrage.
“He was already tripping the emergency meter,” Foley said. “So we were at 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and now we’re at 15.”
Throughout the call, Trump detailed an exhaustive list of disinformation and conspiracy theories to support his position. He claimed without evidence that he had won Georgia by at least a half-million votes. He floated a barrage of assertions that have been investigated and disproved: that thousands of dead people voted; that an Atlanta election worker scanned 18,000 forged ballots three times each and “100 percent” were for Biden; that thousands more voters living out of state came back to Georgia illegally just to vote in the election.
“So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this,” Trump said. “And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.”
Trump did most of the talking on the call. He was angry and impatient, calling Raffensperger a “child” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not believing there was widespread ballot fraud in Atlanta — and twice calling himself a “schmuck” for endorsing Kemp, whom Trump holds in particular contempt for not embracing his claims of fraud.
“I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now,” he said.
He also took aim at Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, trying to shame Raffensperger with the idea that his refusal to embrace fraud has helped her and Democrats generally. “Stacey Abrams is laughing about you,” he said. “She’s going around saying, ‘These guys are dumber than a rock.’ What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you.”
The secretary of state repeatedly sought to push back, saying at one point, “Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, that — people can say anything.”
“Oh this isn’t social media,” Trump retorted. “This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not. It’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less.”
At another point, Trump claimed that votes were scanned three times: “Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.”
Raffensperger responded: “Mr. President, they did not. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.”
Trump sounded at turns confused and meandering. At one point, he referred to Kemp as “George.” He tossed out several different figures for Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia and referred to the Senate runoff, which is Tuesday, as happening “tomorrow” and “Monday.”
His desperation was perhaps most pronounced during an exchange with Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel, in which he openly begged for validation.
Trump: “Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? ’Cause that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.”
Germany responded: “No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.”
Trump: “But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?”
Germany: “No.”
Trump: “Are you sure? Ryan?”
Germany: “I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.”
It was clear from the call that Trump has surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen. When he claimed that more than 5,000 ballots were cast in Georgia in the name of dead people, Raffensperger responded forcefully: “The actual number was two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”
But later, Meadows said, “I can promise you there are more than that.”
Another Trump lawyer on the call, Kurt Hilbert, accused Raffensperger’s office of refusing to turn over data to assess evidence of fraud, and also claimed awareness of at least 24,000 illegally cast ballots that would flip the result to Trump.
“It stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide,” Hilbert said. “That’s the problem that we have.”
Reached by phone Sunday, Hilbert declined to comment.
In the end, Trump asked Germany to sit down with one of his attorneys to go over the allegations. Germany agreed.
Yet Trump also recognized that he was failing to persuade Raffensperger or Germany of anything, saying toward the end, “I know this phone call is going nowhere.”
But he continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after more than an hour, Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Trump, for your time.”
Amy Gardner joined The Washington Post in 2005. She has worked stints in the Virginia suburbs, covered the 2010 midterms and the tea party revolution, and covered the Republican presidential nominating contest in 2011-2012. She was a politics editor for five years and returned to reporting in 2018.
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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