More FreiKorps than Fry Cooks, Trump will have his post-election revenge using sovereign sheriffs and 70,000 other volunteers recruited from military veterans, because surely no one would call these folks a death squad.
“I am your warrior,” Trump proclaimed earlier this year. “I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Trump’s loyal surrogates have duly embraced the project — perhaps no one more zealously than Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who bills himself as the former and would-be president’s “future secretary of retribution.”
Raiklin is seeking to enlist so-called
“constitutional” sheriffs in rural, conservative counties across the country to detain Trump’s political enemies. Or, as he says, carry out “live-streamed swatting raids” against individuals on his “Deep State target list.”
“This is a deadly serious report,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story. “A retired U.S. military officer has drawn up a ‘Deep State target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.
www.rawstory.com/...
After Trump was impeached twice, Republicans promised that payback was in store. The standard for impeachment was lowered, they argued, so watch out.
The intervening 3½ years have shown that’s much easier to threaten than to make happen. And the standards for conviction in a court of law are significantly tougher than they are for an impeachment.
Republicans might believe that a red jurisdiction could convict Democrats on thin charges. But everything we’re talking about above is more speculative and nonspecific than the evidence and charges against Trump in the Manhattan case. The same goes with the many Republican theories about the purported “weaponization” of the justice system and government.
And that’s after years of Republicans seeking to turn over every stone in search of dirt on their opponents and abuses of the system.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
One of the two principals tasked with returning Trump to the White House, Chris LaCivita had long conceived of the 2024 race as a contest that would be “extraordinarily visual”—namely, a contrast of strength versus weakness. Trump, whatever his countless liabilities as a candidate, would be cast as the dauntless and forceful alpha, while Biden would be painted as the pitiable old heel, less a bad guy than the butt of a very bad joke, America’s lovable but lethargic uncle who needed, at long last, to be put to bed.
www.theatlantic.com/...
This is true. Those wanting to replace Biden just want Trump being hit hard and mocked during the heavy campaigning. No guarantee of victory. But Trump's more mistake-prone and incoherent than ever. Trump has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in court; he is a loser. He can be broken but not by Biden. Make people remember the worst of his Covid interventions,
*the incompetence of his appointees to see the pandemic coming and make simple testing happen
*his inability to help get the mass vaccination planned that allowed a return to normal,
*the losses that his stupidly conducted trade wars caused,
* the little investment that his regressive, debt-ballooning tax reforms caused,
*his failure to bring manufacturing back,
*his absolute commitment to burning the planet up,
*his openness about sexual assault via grabbing women's genitalia,
*his being found guilty of sexual assault,
*his demanding that 11K votes be found for him,
*his attempt to get martial law declared at Lafayette Park before Jan 6th
*his willingness to have the government reward donors with all kinds of deregulation and corrupt contracts for bribes.
Yet if today served as a reminder of how deep the unrest still runs, it’s possible that the window for action is closing more rapidly than Biden’s intraparty critics think. The president’s solo press conference set for Thursday afternoon could be the last significant hurdle standing in the way of his renomination, not because he has effectively made the case for how he will defeat Donald Trump, but as a result of the convergence of two powerful forces.
The first is a collective action problem. While an argument can be made for why Biden’s departure from the race is in the common interest of the party, rational self-interest for many Democratic officeholders — which includes, among other things, professional ambition, the electoral nature of their districts, fear of the Democratic base or even their assessment of Trump’s threat to win — is leading many of them in a different direction. The result has been paralysis.
Then there is the more practical consideration working in Biden’s favor — the calendar. It’s nearly universally agreed within the party that a convention challenge to the president would be both futile and undesirable. Biden has made clear in recent days he intends to be the nominee — and the most obvious hurdle standing in his way at the moment is another meltdown in a high-stakes situation. There aren’t many of those chances left before the Democratic convention kicks off in mid-August.
www.politico.com/…