Prime
A substantial number of states and roughly half the Republicans in the House have now signed on to the Texas lawsuit again against Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. On its face Texas asserts the right to review the voting laws of states Joe Biden won, finds them lacking and asks the Supreme Court to throw out the results in those states.
Where Things Stand: The Coming Dissolution Of Trumpworld
Much of Trump’s 2020 infrastructure, established solely around the cause-célèbre of President Trump and his reelection, has not made the jump to the President’s post-election crusade to overturn his loss. Instead, that space is being filled by the President himself and a rag-tag band of allies.
Trump, Predictable and Predicted
At the suggestion of TPM Reader JC, I pulled up this article Jane Mayer published in The New Yorker just before the November election. It’s about why and how Trump feared losing – specifically legal vulnerability and crushing debt. But Mayer talked to Michael Cohen, who quite presciently described the aftermath of Trump’s defeat.
There are a few paragraphs about Mayer’s discussion with Trump. But this is the key one.
Read More
Where Things Stand: Trump Enlists Pence
President Trump often enlists the vice president to fight his more serious battles for him.
Where Things Stand: Fox News Punished After Lack Of Enthusiasm For Trump’s Delusion
Don’t give the cable news outlet too much credit. It’s done little besides the most basic function of a major news outlet during a presidential election — which is, declare a winner when there’s a winner.
You Were Right to Worry SCOTUS Would Steal it For Trump
A growing number of opinioners and editorialists are now arguing that those who warned that the corrupt Supreme Court majority was ready to steal the election on behalf of Donald Trump were simply wrong. As evidence they point to the federal judiciary’s general refusal to entertain basically any of the Trump legal team’s increasingly outlandish court challenges and examples like yesterday when the Supreme Court rejected without dissent or comment a challenge to the results of the election in Pennsylvania. But this opinion is wrong.
Our Performance Art Politics
This series of “King Over the Water” posts (the reference is to the Stuart Pretenders, James II, his son and grandson) circles around basic questions: what do Joe Biden, or Democrats or just people who value our civic democracy do if Trumpists or Republicans or some fraction of them refuse to accept that Joe Biden is the legitimate President and continue to believe lies about voter fraud?
Where Things Stand: The ‘Radical Liberal’ Strategy
It seems the GOP’s strategy in Georgia is to say “radical liberal” enough times that it sticks.
From TPM Reader GS …
Unlike MA, I don’t have expertise in the mechanics of power in DC. S/he lays out a compelling case for why Biden will be able to take effective control of the executive branch.
But the reason MM’s analysis has stuck with me is not what it means for the corridors of the Pentagon, but rather what it means for the public sphere of politics, namely the GOP’s internal dynamics when the only salient topic for the base is reversing the “steal” of 2020.
TPM Reader MM throws some water on TPM Reader MA’s warnings. I should add that to the extent anyone thinks Trump is going to be calling the shots or even influencing the shots at the Pentagon after January 20th I completely agree with MM. What interests me in all this is Trump’s apparent desire to set up something like a court in exile that not only gratifies his ego (central goal) but also keeps the GOP in his thrall and under his control. In a way that is Trump’s ideal presidency: all adulation and no responsibility or even work.
I share an initial with MA, and I think I understand pretty well why he feels as he feels, but I respectfully disagree with him more or less completely.
As to MA’s “military leadership” point, Trump has effectively near-zero ability to affect Joe Biden’s Department of Defense, even in the short term. “Gutting the leadership” is playing musical deck chairs on the Trump Titanic: all those bozos tender their resignations effective 12:01 pm 20 January (or whenever exactly those resignations are formally required to be submitted). Appointing turds like Lewandowski and Bossie to the Defense Business Board is meaningless. They can be dismissed with a stroke of the Biden pen, just as easily as Trump fired the nine “outgoing” members. Long-faced comments about “political loyalty tests” are equally without significance. All of that means less than zero.