No? Well, give it a try anyway. It’s only about two minutes long:
And while we’re at it, this is a pretty interesting summary of the Trump years so far:
Try to enjoy June
It’s a beautiful day outside where I live.
I’m going out. Recent political and world events have been quite miserable, but I’m trying not to let that destroy my enjoyment of things – like spring and summer, friends, family, the arts, nature, all those wonderful things that help make life worthwhile.
In case you’re at home stewing, I suggest you do the same.
The left gaslights the right about the Trump verdict: But our sacred institutions!
Here’s the way the left’s game is played. It’s not just about the Trump verdict – for example, they have used the same technique in connection with accepting the results of the 2020 election. But it is very much in evidence right now in regard to the NY verdict against Trump:
(1) The left alters or ignores the usual rules, which destroys trust in an institution in order to “get” their opposition.
(2) The institution can be almost anything: the FBI, presidential elections, or the legal system, to take a few recent examples.
(3) The right responds by criticizing the compromised institution and the left.
(4) The left acts shocked, SHOCKED that the right has stopped respecting the hallowed institution that is a pillar of our government and society.
Case in point, Joe Biden trolling us yesterday about Trump’s remarks:
President Joe Biden on Friday called former President Donald Trump’s reaction to his conviction in New York on criminal hush money charges “reckless” and “dangerous.”
“It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden said at the White House, hours after Trump held a press conference condemning the criminal case. …
This jury was chosen the same way every jury in America has chosen,” the president said. “Five weeks after careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict.” …
“Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years,” Biden said. “And it literally is a cornerstone of America, our justice system … justice should be respected.”
“And we should never allow anyone to tear it down. As simple as that. That’s America. That’s who we are. That’s who will always be God willing.”
Joe Biden, gaslighter-in-chief. And these are the talking points parroted by Democrats right on down the line (or maybe it’s Biden who is the parrot – no matter).
It’s almost a thing of beauty, really. Destroy the institution – in an obvious way – and then gaslight the public by saying it’s the other side’s objections that are “tearing down” the institution that you have already trashed.
Another way to put it: the fox says that he guarded that henhouse most assiduously, and anyone who says otherwise is questioning the integrity of foxes – a sacred principle on which our republic rests.
The left, which long ago (or not so long ago) questioned the methods of the FBI, the DOJ, the police, and the government in general, now finds these things beyond criticism. The MSM is, of course, in agreement with the left. For example, see this AP story headlined, “Republicans join Trump’s attacks on justice system and campaign of vengeance after guilty verdict.” Note also the Orwellian reversal, because it is the left that has attacked and perverted the justice system to get vengeance on Trump and also to run election interference against him.
From the article:
Embracing Donald Trump’s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system after his historic guilty verdict, Republicans in Congress are fervently enlisting themselves in his campaign of vengeance and political retribution as the GOP runs to reclaim the White House.
Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party’s presidential candidate for the November election — in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.
And those Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan of Maryland, were instantly bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to “leave the party.”
Republicans POUNCE!
This is probably as good a place as any to link to this article by law professor Steven Calabresi, entitled “President Donald Trump’s Manhattan Convictions are Unconstitutional.”
And here’s Alan Dershowitz from yesterday:
The left thinks it will be able to stand upright in the wind that would blow:
Biden’s fake Israel/Palestine peace deal
Many years ago, when I was in my twenties, I had a friend who lived in a far-away city. We kept in touch by phone and letter (how quaint). It was many years before ordinary people had cellphones, so we called on landlines.
My friend and her boyfriend had lived together for about a year. I knew him, too, although not very well. But we’d spent time together when I had visited one summer.
One day I phoned and the boyfriend answered. He said my friend was busy but he’d get her in a moment, but in the meantime I should congratulate them. “What for?” I asked.
“We’re engaged to be married!” he said excitedly. And so I congratulated him, and we talked about it for a bit. Then he went and got my friend and put her on the phone.
“Congratulations!” I said.
“For what?” she asked guardedly.
That confused me. But I answered, “For your engagement, of course.”
“Did he tell you that?” she said.
More confusion on my part. “Why not; is it a secret?” I asked.
“We’re not engaged,” she said, with more than a touch of anger and irritation. “In fact, we’re breaking up. I’m planning to leave, and he knows it. He’s trying to shame me into staying by telling people we’re engaged.”
That was memorable enough as a twisted ploy that I’ve recalled it all these years since. And I was reminded of it when reading the story about Biden announcing a supposed peace deal to which the Israelis had agreed. Not so fast, said Netanyahu:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have rebuffed President Joe Biden’s ceasefire offer to end the military operation against the terror group Hamas in Rafah.
Biden presented it in his televised speech Friday as a new Israeli proposal, but it’s clear that was not true. He did it as the Sabbath was starting in Israel and used that quiet time to gather international support for what supposedly was a new Israeli proposal—but it was all a deception. Israel’s Prime Minister was forced to break Sabbath silence to tweet that Israel’s position had not changed and Hamas could not remain in power.
Biden declared Friday that it was “time for this war to end,” suggesting that Israel should halt all military operations against Hamas in Gaza. The president’s offer calls for a “full and complete ceasefire,” a move that would keep Hamas in power.
Biden declared it was an ‘Israeli offer,’ a claim since rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. A senior Biden White House official also contradicted the president, stating that Biden was in fact pushing a deal favored by Hamas. The unnamed staffer told CNN that Biden’s offer was “nearly identical to Hamas’ own proposals.”
And don’t tell me this is due to senility on Biden’s part. I have been consistently saying that although Biden is cognitively challenged, he is not senile – and although he is very much under the sway of advisors, he still has agency and makes decisions on his own. He was Obama’s henchman from 2008 on, when he was not senile but merely the same mendacious, corrupt, sly, narcissistic, nasty guy he always has been.
Another thing I’ve been saying from the start is that Biden will be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2024. They would have liked to have replaced him, but couldn’t find a way to do it, and the possible replacements don’t poll any better. So I predicted and continue to predict that he will stay, despite the fact that more and more Americans are onto his vile game. The left is counting on one or both of two things to pull him across the finish line and be elected president: lawfare against Trump, and fraud/”rigging” of the election.
The “evil” category
For most of my blogging career, I’ve had the category “evil” on my right sidebar. As I write this, there are only 118 entries there. Ordinarily, I’ve kept the designation for things like the Holocaust or terrible crimes rather than politics, but this recent trial and verdict in NY (or actually, all the lawfare against Trump) strikes me not just as being motivated by politics but as partaking of evil.
For example, when I saw Biden’s “duping delight” smile yesterday, it occurred to me that this is one of the manifestations of evil. It was turned into a campaign advertisement by the Trump crowd, and rightly so:
???Exclusive !!! The face of corruption. pic.twitter.com/IAvDv7X5ie
— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) May 31, 2024
Evil comes in many guises. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
Open thread 6/1/24
Israel now controls the Philadelphi corridor
I’ve heard it said right from the start of the war that Israel must do this. Well, now it has:
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that it had established “operational control” over the entire so-called Philadelphi Route along the Gaza-Egypt border, discovering dozens of rocket launchers and at least 20 cross-border smuggling tunnels there so far.
At a press conference Wednesday evening, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that the now-captured strip of land, which runs for a total of 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) all along the Gaza-Egypt border, served as “Hamas’s oxygen pipeline” for smuggling weapons.
Along the corridor, adjacent to the southern city of Rafah, the IDF said it has located so far some 20 tunnels that cross into Egypt. Hamas has been known to use such tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza, something the IDF believes it can no longer do as the military controls the area.
What will Egypt do? Not much, in my opinion, but I really don’t know. Egypt is in an awkward position, not wanting to seem at all sympathetic to Israel, but also really hating Hamas and not wanting the Palestinians in Egypt. Allowing the Gazans to smuggle weapons in through Egypt was Egypt’s way of getting payoffs and also of buying off the Palestinian crocodile so it doesn’t eat them.
Cicada double brood this year
Just to take your mind off the Trump conviction and onto something vastly more pleasant: locusts!
It depends on where you live, of course. But here’s the scoop:
It has begun. Legions of cheese-puff-sized insects have started to climb out of the dirt after spending more than a decade underground sucking sap from tree roots. Over the next month and a half, their numbers will continue to grow across the South and then the Midwest in what will become an emergence of trillions of periodical cicadas.
Dr. Jessica Ware, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, finds the insects graceful. “They have these beautiful red eyes and lace-like wings,” she says.
This small sliver of their life cycle that’s visible to us, when males and females get their sole opportunity to mate, is a raucous and unforgettable affair. There can be nearly 30 cicadas per square foot. Such high densities are likely a survival strategy since cicadas that come aboveground in off-years would find themselves easy, edible targets. “There’s safety in numbers,” Ware explains. During a mass emergence, “you hopefully have made your predators full with your siblings or distant relatives and you yourself live to pass your genes on to the next generation.” …
There will be no doubt once the cicadas have emerged in a particular place because they produce an ear-splitting wall of sound. “They are so loud,” says Dr. Susan Gershman, an evolutionary biologist at the Ohio State University, “that you can hear them inside your house with all the windows closed.” These are the males vibrating a special pair of abdominal membranes …
Where I live, we’ll just be plagued with the usual black flies and mosquitoes. That’s enough for me. But when I was growing up, I was around during a cicada year. I’ve written about it before:
I remember them well from my youth, circa 1962. In the well-arbored suburbs of New York and New Jersey, they sang in the trees and then carpeted the ground like fallen leaves in autumn, making an ominous crunching sound as one walked, the whole extravaganza a sort of cicadesque supernova explosion that signified their own demise and the launching of the next generation into subterranean abodes where they would hang out for the next seventeen years.
The Trump verdict: the bigger picture
The verdict makes it more and more plausible – to fair-thinking people anyway – that there indeed was voting fraud in 2020 and that there will be voter fraud in 2024. After all, the trial and verdict have made it crystal clear how unscrupulous the left is and how the rules mean nothing to them except “what I can get away with legally if I have the right people in place.”
The conviction further de-legitimizes any possible Democrat victory in 2024. No one on the other side trusts them, and no one should. Trust is a funny thing. It’s vitally important in the running of a country, and once broken it cannot be easily re-instated, if at all.
This means that the Democrats do not care about keeping the trust of at least half (or more) of Americans. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they must think they are positioned in a way that will allow them to keep power indefinitely even without the consent of the governed. I think that’s been evident for many years – plus it is a historical characteristic of the far left generally. But I think that, after yesterday, more and more people in the US will see that this is the situation we face as a nation.
Trump as martyr to lawfare at the hands of the Democrats
Clearly, the Democrats thought it would be well worth it to convict Trump in a nakedly political show trial. The lawyers among them – and there are many such – had to be aware of the abysmal weakness of the case. They also had to be aware that a guilty verdict ran the risk of turning Trump into a martyr, a transformation that Russiagate and two impeachments had already begun but that the trials would intensify greatly.
So why did they do it? I think there are a host of reasons, some emotional and some cerebral. The emotional motive is clear: they wanted to see him squirm and they wanted power over him. You can see their glee about that now. But the other calculations are probably as follows:
(1) Take up his time and money in fighting the charges, and make it hard for him to campaign.
(2) Frighten other Republicans who fear the same thing can happen to them.
(3) Don’t televise the trial and instead filter it for the public through the compliant and Trump-hating MSM.
(4) For the entire campaign, call Trump a convicted felon. It is hoped that this will turn off many Independents who might otherwise have voted for him, and even some Republicans.
(5) Allow Stormy Daniels free rein to talk about a purported sexual liaison with Trump, thus embarrassing him and humiliating him and hurting Melania into the bargain.
(6) Perhaps jail him; we’re still not sure how that will go.
But there was always one big danger, and it remains. The case was weak and strange, transparently a show trial in a Democratic venue run by Democrats and peopled by Democrats on the jury. This took away from its validity and authenticity. The more people who perceived this, the more people who might consider Trump a martyr and the Democrats tyrants, which might increase the vote total for Trump rather than reduce it.
Which brings us to point number 7 on the list: Democrats must have thought and must still think that they will be able to overcome any voting deficit through cheating and/or rigging. Perhaps they are right – but then again, perhaps they are wrong. I’ve read various polls on the election today that say the conviction might actually help Trump slightly with voters, but I’m not even going to discuss them in depth here because I think it’s way too early to tell. One thing we do know is that donations to Trump increased greatly, post-verdict.
Another thing that’s obvious is that the Democrats are not afraid of Republican retaliation in kind. At the moment, because he is the president, Joe Biden is immune from criminal prosecution. They are banking on his remaining president for four more years, and after that will he even be around? If he is, he will be even more decrepit and supposedly either too sympathetic for that reason or actually too incompetent to stand trial.
But there are lesser Democrats who might be vulnerable. The Democrats are probably relying on several things to protect them: their capture of the FBI and DOJ, the fact that Republicans could not get a conviction in DC no matter what the offense of the accused Democrat, and the idea that Republicans are not cutthroat enough to go through with what the Democrats are willing to do in the name of a ruthless drive to power.
It remains to be seen whether the Democrats are correct about all of that. But even such a formerly mild and non-Trump-loving lawyer-pundit as John Hinderaker is proposing what I guess would be called civil disobedience by Republicans against Democrats:
If Joe Biden is re-elected following this outrage, he will be an illegitimate president. What does that mean? It means, I think, that no one should be obliged to follow his executive orders. All such orders will be illegitimate and should be disregarded, as appropriate. Likewise, residents of the sane states, and their public officials, should be free to disregard rules and orders that come out of the Biden administration’s agencies–the Biden EPA, and so on. And rulings of Biden-appointed judges, or of panels on which one or more Biden judges were part of the majority, should not be given any precedential effect.
More fundamentally, the Democratic Party is now illegitimate. We should stop treating it as a normal political organization. We conservatives have played by the rules, trying to hold our country together in the face of increasingly radical and irrational conduct from our political foes. Those days should be gone. The Democratic Party is now exposed as the enemy of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and should be treated accordingly.
And yesterday Hinderaker advocated ruthless lawfare on the part of Republicans:
… [T]he Democrats understand nothing except the raw exercise of power. Therefore, Republican attorneys general and district attorneys should bring criminal charges against Democratic officeholders wherever possible. No Democratic officeholder should be allowed to retire, in any jurisdiction with Republican law enforcement, without facing criminal charges. …
Third, the criminal prosecutions should begin with Joe Biden. Unlike Trump, Biden is actually a criminal. He is already known to be guilty under the federal bribery statute, to the tune of at least $20 million. If Trump wins in November, his Department of Justice should immediately indict Biden, and Biden should be hounded until the day he dies or goes to prison, whichever happens first.
Of course, Republicans face a disadvantage that Democrats don’t. Some cases, including, I assume, a federal criminal prosecution of Biden, would have to be brought on the Democrats’ home turf, Washington, D.C. If that is the case, so be it: as Mark Steyn says, the process is the punishment. Biden likely would not live long enough to face a jury in any case.
And attorneys general in states like Texas, Florida, South Dakota, etc., should look into whether Biden’s taking of bribes or other actions could qualify as crimes under their states’ laws. After all, if Alvin Bragg can prosecute Donald Trump for federal campaign finance violations that he didn’t commit, another state official can likely find grounds to prosecute Biden for bribery, which he did commit.
It has been my impression that, until now, Hinderaker hasn’t been advocating any of this. And at least for quite some time he was not a Trump supporter. This event seems to have radicalized him – his J’Accuse…! and he is not alone. Anyone who cares about the rule of law faces the same decision about how best to fight this, because it cannot be countered by the usual means.
I plan to have more to say on that, too, in the future.
Open thread 5/31/24
Reactions to the Trump verdict
I spent the evening with a friend, trying to take my mind off things. Sometimes you just need to take a break.
But now I’m back. And I started to wonder what’s being said about the Trump conviction – not on the left; I’m pretty sure I know what they’re saying, and I have no interest in it; but on the right.
So here are some samplings.
From Ron DeSantis:
“Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America — all in an effort to ‘get’ Donald Trump,” DeSantis posted on X.
“That this case — involving alleged misdemeanor business records violations from nearly a decade ago — was even brought is a testament to the political debasement of the justice system in places like New York City. This is especially true considering this same district attorney routinely excuses criminal conduct in a way that has endangered law-abiding citizens in his jurisdiction.
“It is often said that no one is above the law, but it is also true that no one is below the law. If the defendant were not Donald Trump, this case would never have been brought, the judge would have never issued similar rulings, and the jury would have never returned a guilty verdict. In America, the rule of law should be applied in a dispassionate, even-handed manner, not become captive to the political agenda of some kangaroo court.”
Marco Rubio said much the same thing. And this from Tim Scott:
This was a sham trial and the clearest example we’ve ever seen of election interference. I am furious and no American is safe from Democrat political persecution. Joe Biden and the Democrat machine manufactured a legal case against Trump to win an election. I went to New York to stand with President Trump and the American voters will stand with him this November.
From Speaker Mike Johnson:
Today is a shameful day in American history. Democrats cheered as they convicted the leader of the opposing party on ridiculous charges, predicated on the testimony of a disbarred, convicted felon. This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one.
The weaponization of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden Administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents.
The American people see this as lawfare, and they know it is wrong—and dangerous. President Trump will rightfully appeal this absurd verdict—and he WILL WIN!
From Ted Cruz:
This is a dark day for America.
This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution. The only reason they prosecuted Donald Trump is because Democrats are terrified that he will win reelection.
This disgraceful decision is legally baseless and should be overturned promptly on appeal. Any judge with a modicum of integrity would recognize that this entire trial has been utterly fraudulent.
Elise Stefanik, J. D. Vance, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Mike Barrasso said similar things. So far, I see nothing from Mitt Romney. But much to my surprise, Mitch McConnell came through with this. It’s not much but it’s definitely something:
“These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal,” McConnell wrote in a social media post on X.
McConnell’s surprise decision to weigh in on the outcome of a court case that he has refused to talk about for months may indicate that Trump’s conviction could have a unifying effect on the GOP — rallying even his biggest skeptics within the party to his defense.
Likewise, we have Susan Collins of Maine:
“It is fundamental to our American system of justice that the government prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct regardless of who the defendant happens to be. In this case the opposite has happened. The district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump, brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct,” Collins said in a statement Thursday evening.
“The political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process,” she said.
McConnell and Collins were two of the biggest Trump skeptics in the Senate GOP conference to slam the Bragg decision to prosecute the former president but other Republican senators not especially close to Trump also rallied to his defense.
Thune was another one:
“I’ve been on a flight, but just landed and saw the news. This case was politically motivated from the beginning, and today’s verdict does nothing to absolve the partisan nature of this prosecution,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who opposed Trump’s effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2021 and whose career Trump later tried to end in an act of retaliation. …
“Regardless of outcome, more and more Americans are realizing that we cannot survive four more years of Joe Biden. With President Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, we can finally end the disastrous Biden-Schumer agenda that’s crushing American families and businesses,” Thune said in reaction to the verdict.
I said I wouldn’t take a look at what Democrats said. But I couldn’t help but notice, in the same article I got those quotes from, that Schumer’s statement was rather short and not exactly full of gloating:
No one is above the law. The verdict speaks for itself.
Indeed. And we know what it says: Democrats are utterly corrupt, utterly power-mad, and will do anything – including framing an innocent man – to hang onto power.