Optimism, not despair

Here is what we should do: We need to figure out another way to deal with Donald Trump at night, and Donald Trump in the morning. One way would be to prevent him from ascending the stairs or elevator into the residential rooms of the White House, because that’s where he comes up with the shit that drives everyone crazy the next day.

He goes up there and he cranks out Truth Social posts, or he gives podcast interviews and says wild stuff. I’m going to take over Greenland one way or another. Or, Putin’s not such a bad guy, I get along with him very well. Or, Iran had better watch out how many protesters they kill, because I might bomb them back to the stone age. Or, We should take over the elections in 15 states, we need to nationalize the elections.

We should thank our lucky stars it’s still cold in Washington, and he flies down to Mar a Lago every Friday and spends the weekend on the golf course and ordering burgers and well-done steaks on his dining patio, or he would be posting and bellowing Saturday and Sunday, too.

The thing is, we need to pay attention to his bellowing and whining and conspiracy theorizing, but we don’t need to let ourselves get driven up the wall by it. The day after he started talking about nationalizing elections, all the stories cited his claims of fraud in Democratic Party controlled cities, and it took them 10 paragraphs to write the sentence that contained the words, “without evidence.” Of course there is no evidence of fraud, because there isn’t any. They counted ballots in Fulton County, Georgia in 2020 until the things were practically in tatters without finding any fraud. The claims by Rudy Giuliani that were promoted by Trump about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss passing a thumb drive back and forth ended up with a gigantic defamation verdict in their favor.

It’s bullshit. Trump ordered the DOJ to get a warrant and investigate Fulton County election fraud. Somehow, his Director of National Intelligence ended up skulking around the FBI raid, and what’s happened since? Tulsi said Trump ordered her to go on the raid, Trump said he didn’t know who gave Tulsi the order, then Todd Blanche “distanced” the DOJ from the whole thing, then Trump said it was Pam Bondi, then Karoline Leavitt tried to say it was Gabbard’s idea and Pam’s, they were both in on it, then Trump blamed it on Bondi again.

Why is everyone pointing fingers at one another? Who the fuck is in charge here?

What does that tell you about the entire business of re-auditing the already over-audited Fulton County election results? Are you suffering flashback images of the “bamboo ballot” recount of the thrice recounted ballots from Maricopa County after Trump lost Arizona in 2020? Are visions of Cyber Ninjas dancing in your head?

After almost a year of fucking around in some mothballed basketball arena, the Arizona Senate, which was involved in ordering the ridiculous Maricopa audit, had to announce that Biden got 360 more votes in the county than they thought, and the finger-pointing started in Arizona. Who was going to pay for the $2 million they went over budget with the audit?

Steve Bannon pops up from whatever Epstein bunker he’s been trying to hide in and babbles something on his “War Room” podcast that “of course” Trump is going to order ICE agents to surround poling places, and there’s another freak-out.

Steve Schmidt had a wonderful column this morning pointing out what experts have confirmed, that “The states are sovereign, and the states administer elections. The states created the Union, and the Union is bound by the Constitution. Case closed.” This is what we need more of: rational talk from rational people about reality. Schmidt put it this way: “There is too much talk about Trump’s sick fantasy and too little talk about the consequences of his trying to achieve it. The right to vote will — to say the least — not go gently into that good night.”

Amen.

NBC News has a report about local election officials in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta “pushing back” on Trump’s absurd crap about “nationalizing” local elections. To sum up the lengthy NBC story, it ain’t gonna happen. “We all know the President’s playbook by now,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deely said in a written statement. “His remarks on elections are an effort to change the conversation from the fact that the federal government is killing American citizens in Minneapolis. We must be careful and keep our eyes on the ball.”

A-bloody-men.

There is a lot of good news this week. A Quinnipiac poll came out that put Trump under 40 percent in approval, with only 37 percent of voters approving his job performance, and 56 percent disapproving. On the economy, Trump was similarly underwater, as pollsters put it: 39 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove. On immigration, 34 percent of voters approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 63 percent disapprove. Fifty-eight percent of voters think Kristi Noem should be fired. Only 34 percent approve of the way the Chief Dog Shooter is doing the job of running the Department of Homeland Security. Another poll had 90 percent of voters wanting ICE agents to wear body cameras, while 5 percent oppose. DHS is spending just over a month training their ICE masked men. I’m not even going to give the negative figures: 76 percent think they need longer training, 75 percent think ICE needs stricter recruiting requirements.

I could go on. These are terrible numbers for Trump, for ICE, for everything. He’s underwater on inflation. Someone in Iowa yelled out at his rally to correct him when he tried to tell his supporters that they are paying $1.85 at the pump for gas. “It’s $2.69,” a guy yelled.

Trump’s lies are hitting a brick wall. People are not believing his bullshit. The two people killed by his agents in Minneapolis were not “terrorists.” They were innocent Americans. His bullshit about Greenland hit the brick wall of an emboldened Europe and Wall Street investors desperate not to have him tank the world economy by pitting the U.S. against its NATO fucking allies.

Here is what I think: The Atlanta FBI raid is a sign of a desperate man who knows he and Republicans are going to lose so big at the polls in November, it will go down in the history books not as a wave, but an earthquake. Trump is shaking in his overstuffed lace-ups that the Senate will go to the Democrats. You and I and Donald Trump know what that means. He will be impeached again in 2027. Even if he’s not convicted, he’ll have a Congress that will never approve his big plan for a Macho Arch on the D.C. Mall. Everything built there, from monuments to museums to sidewalks and benches has to be approved by the Congress, and it won’t be his Congress anymore.

Don’t listen to Donald Trump when he wakes up hallucinating tomorrow morning on Truth Social or farts his way through another vanity performance in the Oval Office. He’s so full of shit, he’s about to blast off from the Resolute Desk on a blue flame, and we should be treating him like we’re watching the lift-off and laughing at his increasing desperation.