Tag Archives: Charlie Sykes

Porn Star Pay Offs, Inciting Insurrection, Sexual Assaults, Bank Fraud, Election Conspiracy and FoxNews v. Dominion. But Still … Not Even an Indictment.

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Can I see a show of hands on the question, “Do you believe no one is above the law in America?” Please. Hands? Anyone? I didn’t think so.

Of all the lofty assertions of our exceptional nature, the claim that be they poor or be they rich and connected, everyone faces the same justice in this country is arguably the most transparently false. It’s a nice aspirational goal, but utterly without basis as we can all see day after day in the American legal system.

In the news today we have the grand jury in Georgia releasing an abbreviated, redacted version of its investigation into Trumpist meddling/fraud in the 2020 election. This plays with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s range of investigations into Trump’s hidden trove of documents at Mar-A-Lago, his incitement of a riot on the U.S. Capitol and other, um, lesser matters. Then there’s everything going on in New York, with very, very long-running investigations into Trump’s tax and banking frauds, his assaults on various women, his hush-money pay-off of a porn star. And elsewhere, but related, FoxNews’ battle with Dominion Voting Systems, and the revelation yesterday that all of its prime time hosts concurred that guests regularly booked on their shows were not only touting flagrant lies about Dominion rigging the vote for Joe Biden but were saying stuff that was, “mind-blowingly nuts.”

The point here being that we are now … years … after the fact in all of these cases (except the documents) and — exactly like Wall Street’s gamed-out trading of 2008 — no one of any significant status has suffered any consequence for outrageously obvious crimes. The kind for which you or I would have been indicted, tried, bankrupted and sentenced within months.

This point is emphasized/hammered on by Elie Honig in his new book, “Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It.” A former assistant attorney for the Southern District of New York, Honig is IMHO, one the better/least hyperbolic/more reliably credible cable news pundits. I caught him recently on Charlie Sykes’ daily Bulwark podcast.

(I can’t recommend Sykes’ show highly enough. Once the Jason Lewis of Wisconsin, Sykes looked at the Republican embrace of Donald Trump and essentially said, “These people are out of their f**king minds”, bailed on the party, has done multiple mea culpas for his role in enabling anti-constitutional idiocy to run rampant and now leads daily, consistently clear-eyed, rational discussions of where cult-think has led us.)

In short, Honig’s view of the likelihood of conviction in any of these cases is not encouraging. He firmly believes Attorney General Merrick Garland has lost his window for effective prosecution and is desperately looking for any way to avoid indicting Trump … on anything … preferring someone else, like Fulton County District attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta do the deed first and take him off the hook. Jack Smith may have a more “aggressive” attitude toward Trump, but he answers to Garland.

Furthermore, and this is where the rubber really doesn’t hit the road, is the matter of securing convictions. Good luck, says Honig, getting a unanimous verdict in New York, much less Georgia on any case where 30% of the possible jury pool remains convinced Donald Trump is not only innocent of anything and everything but sent from God on high to save them from woke liberalism. Point being, says Honig, no “buck stops here” prosecutor, like Garland, wants/dares a (super) high profile acquittal on their record.

But sadly, there is no “sure thing” in American court rooms, other than you know some black kid caught selling dope on a street corner.

Honig didn’t get into the Fox-Dominion case on Sykes show, but here’s tech’s Grand Inquisitor Kara Swisher on her podcast, (Also highly recommended.)

The takeaway there being that Rupert Murdoch has the resources and legal firepower to whittle Dominion’s $1.6 billion claim down to a rounding error for Fox, maybe even with the standard legalese of “admits no wrong-doing” in its final settlement. A settlement that will get no play on Fox and quickly disappear from public memory, much like Bill O’Reilly’s $32 million pay-out to one woman for whatever he did to her. (The “non-consensual sex” and gay porn angles are always worth a headslap.)

This stark, relentlessy reaffirmed double standard for American justice has no obvious resolution. (Honig argues for Garland to try the case against Trump for the basic Constititional demonstration that acts so egregious and historical must be publicly adjudcated, lone MAGA juror be damned.)

My only suggestion would be for pundits and legal experts to at least do us the courtesy of A: stop asserting that “no one is above the law” in this country and/or B: disclaim that assertion whenever someone else “wonders” if that is the case.

Excuse Me, What Exactly Do You Find “Offensive and Absurd”?

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Classic quotes of the Trump era never stop coming. There was Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”. Donny’s, “My administration has done more for the Black community than any President since Abraham Lincoln” and (my gal) Marjorie Taylor Greene complaining how, “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true … .” Truly immortal verbiage, each of them. But to those we now add Lindsey Graham reacting to the (Second) impeachment managers’ meticulous tick tock of the January 6 Trump mob riot by saying, “most Republicans found the presentation … offensive and absurd.”

The issue is not the chaos and violence of the attack mind you … but the presentation of the evidence of it. That’s what a Republican, 26-year veteran of Congress finds “offensive and absurd.”

Really, where do you go with something like that?

Prior to the start of this latest trial my attitude was, “Fine. Knock yourselves out. But we all know how this ends.” Impeachment deux was going to be another noble exercise in futility. There was — and is — no way 17 Republicans will ever vote to convict a life long con man turned reality TV star who is the most potent force in their party.

But after four days I’m here to say that the Democrats have significantly exceeded my expectations. While another acquittal is not in doubt, they have presented for the historical record a vivid, indelible, moment-by-moment, easily-accessible and indisputable chronicle of the highest crimes imaginable short of pulling out a gun and shooting an opposition candidate dead on live TV.

And the Republicans are no in a corner where they will go on record and vote to excuse it.

As W. might say, “Mission Accomplished.”

America’s beard-stroking class is full of punditry of … where do we go now? … when one of the only two viable political parties the country has has become so mired in fears of Trump, of Trump’s fevered and semi-literate base and the consequences of riling either of them to an intramural insurrection that they’ve acquiesced to a fantasy world. A world where for all intents and purposes Trump really did win “in a sacred landslide”, where “patriots” beat and kill cops, where stark visual/audio evidence is “offensive and absurd”, (or “crap” as Graham described it to Sean Hannity a few nights ago.)

Because I’ve come to believe the only plausible route out of this dungeon of grievance-stoked insanity is through a refortification of the so-called center-right, aka traditional country club Republicans, I’ve spent a lot of time lately listening to right-of-center podcasts like Charlie Sykes’ “The Bulwark.” (A former right-wing Wisconsin talk radio host turned mortified/horrified never-Trumper, Sykes has a polished, reassuring manner. He’s been good company as I’ve devoted a mid-winter cold spell to renovating the basement library/bedroom.)

Like other old school conservatives, Sykes and his guests are struggling to see a future for a party where a shameless nincompoop like Marjorie Taylor Greene exerts more influence on likely voters than Liz Cheney, the daughter of the goddam Voldemort of American Republicanism, Dick Cheney, for chrissakes. Facts are tough to ignore. And the fact is that Greene and the roughly 150 other GOP congesspeople like her are far … far… more reprentative of the zeistgeist of modern conservatism (or whatever you want to call it) than either Liz or Dick Cheney, or any Bush or any side show act like Mitt Romney.

Sykes and other former Republican bloviators and strategists correctly see a party overrun with post-policy grifters. People like Greene who clearly don’t have the faintest idea or interest in any form of legislation — save maybe gun rights and another round of tax cuts for their donors — but who have hit on an infallible grift. Namely, raging about any and every kind of hysterical nonsense that trends on social media … and encouraging people to write them a check to “fight for it.” (Greene is reported to have raised more than $1.5 million in the past couple months.)

A few old school Republicans gathered (on Zoom) a couple dsys ago to discuss the idea of creating … wait for it … a new party, and abandoning the “Republican” brand to the Greenes and Matt Gaetz’ and Louie Gohmerts and Oath Keepers of the world. But their central issue would also be money.

While fat corporate/tycoon dough would possibly follow a new party led by Ben Sasse, to pick a name, the Marjorie Greenes (like the Michelle Bachmanns before her) float on a sea of a handful of whack-a-doodle millionaires (Bachmann had Tim and Bevery LaHaye of the “Left Behind” novels fortune), but mainly they tap a fathomless sea of $25 and $100 checks from, well, from the likes of Hillary Clinton’s ‘”deplorables.” That sea will not be writing checks to Ben Sasse.

Historian Jon Meacham, one the more valuable of regular cable pundits, made an interesting point the other day when he said that while it’s true contemporary Republican senators fear Trump and his raging Borg-like base, what they fear is much is the full schism they’d create if they vote to convict Trump. Such a vote would very likely be the impetus for … Trump to create a new party. A Trump party based on nothing but Trump is a fear that is a stark, plain-to-be-seen possibility given the man’s cult-like appeal to seething mobs.

Almost any percentage of Republican voters who followed Trump away from the established party — and poll after poll shows an inviolable 32% who express a near religious attachment to him — translates to certain doom for any Republican caught in a three-way race with a Democrat and a Trumper.

Moreover, it then becomes a good question whether once reliably Republican corporate/tycoon cash continues to follow any Republican — old school or Trumper — into a campaign neither has a chance of winning. Far better, if you’re running the Home Depot political action account, to re-aim that money at “gettable” Democrats who’ll do big money bidding for the right price.

It’s a perilous predicament Reoublicans find themselves in. And if it weren’t for the fact they’ve built their careers on race-baiting, science-denying, economically-divisive “crap” that is truly “offensive and aburd” I might feel sorry for them.

Have We Finally Found a [Bleep]-Up That Matters?

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NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3There was a telling audience reaction to a moment in “Saturday Night Live’s” opening skit last week. “Weekend Anchor” Michael Che was playing Lester Holt interviewing Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump about the firing of James Comey. At one point Baldwin/Trump blurts out that yeah he fired him because he was rooting around in this Russia stuff. To this Che/Holt looks around, as though talking to his crew, “Is that it?” “Did I get him?”, meaning that — come on, folks — Trump clearly admitted obstruction of justice.

But then he quickly realizes, no. “No? So nothing matters? Is that right? Nothing matters?”

To which the “SNL” audience (99% of them sneering-at-real-‘Murican urban elites) responded with a laugh of cathartic recognition, as though a deeply shared suspicion had been pushed out into the light of day. “Nothing matters.” That’s what you and I have been  thinking. I.e. Is there nothing Trump says or does — and this was before dropping that “highly classified”/code word intelligence on the Russians in the Oval Office — that is appalling enough, stupid enough or legally indefensible enough to make a dent in his core support?

The hope is this latest fiasco — bragging to the Russians about the “great intel I get” (as though they’d be surprised the President of the United States gets juicy information) — will do the trick.

Maybe. But I doubt it. After the pussy grabbing stuff last fall, we all thought he was doomed. I mean, what politician could possibly survive that?

Over at The Daily Beast this morning, Michael Tomasky speculates on the polling numbers necessary to push your Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells out of the Trump support ICU. Basically, and I agree with this, he says that when (not if) Trump’s support drops into the 20% range, (George W. Bush territory), he will have shed pretty much all the tribal Republicans. This would be the crowd that really should have known better, but rationalized Trump as a better choice than Hillary Clinton on the grounds of her “corruption”. (In reality it was more likely the fact she was female, her last name was Clinton and they would sooner have their fingernails pulled out than vote for a Democrat.)

The stereotypical Trump voter — ill-educated or ill-informed or “left behind” or roiling with grievances or all of the above — constitutes maybe 20-25% of last November’s GOP voting bloc. Pissing them off is perilous to most Republican candidates. But, as I’ve said several times before, the name of the Ryan-McConnell game is not about making the lives of those sad stereotypes better, it is about providing service to the people who fund their careers. And if enough of those people fall away to drive Trump’s numbers down into the very low 30s or (oh my bleeping god!) the W-like 20s, they will have no choice other than to take the gamble and consent to the independent prosecutor (linked to the FBI investigation with full subpoena power).

At that point, and I’m repeating myself I know, Ryan and McConnell will have accepted that because of Trump’s astonishing laziness and incompetence they have no chance of getting “tax reform” through Congress, or even fully repeal Obamacare. (And always remember that Obamacare repeal is mainly about returning the $600-$700 billion in taxes the wealthy are paying to keep it going. Obamacare repeal is a tax relief play, with health care only as collateral damage.)

There have been several excellent analyses written recently about Trump’s endurance in the face of unequivocal incompetence. One of them was former Milwaukee conservative radio host Charlie Sykes’ piece in … The New York Times, very ironically titled, “If Liberals Hate Him Trump Must be Doing Something Right.”

Sykes, never an Alex Jones/Mark Levin nitwit, has gone over to the dark side as far as many Trumpists are concerned. Sykes is out of the William F. Buckley school of conservative thinking, which among other things involves reading books written by people other than Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and assembling, you know, facts to make an argument.

Complaining that conservative media, which has incited and sustained the Trump base, has lost all connection to traditional conservative values, (we can still argue the quality of those values), Sykes writes …

“What may have begun as a policy or a tactic in opposition has long since become a reflex. But there is an obvious price to be paid for essentially becoming a party devoted to trolling. In the long run, it’s hard to see how a party dedicated to liberal tears can remain a movement based on ideas or centered on principles.

Conservatives will care less about governing and more about scoring “wins” — and inflicting losses on the left — no matter how hollow the victories or flawed the policies. Ultimately, though, this will end badly because it is a moral and intellectual dead-end, and very likely a political one as well.”

And, “As the right doubles down on anti-anti-Trumpism, it will find itself goaded into defending and rationalizing ever more outrageous conduct just as long as it annoys CNN and the left.

In many ways anti-anti-Trumpism mirrors Donald Trump himself, because at its core there are no fixed values, no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character, only a free-floating nihilism cloaked in insult, mockery and bombast.”

A lefty moonbat like myself couldn’t have said it any better.