Is Trump Finally Cornered
Or Can He Really Shoot Somebody And Not Lose A Vote
The walls are closing in on trump, how many times have you heard that before? “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Recall when trump said that?
Maybe, just maybe, this time it will be curtains for the man who escaped two impeachments and lied or made misleading claims 30,573 times over four years. Call me Mary Poppins, call me a starry-eyed optimist, call me delusional, call me Don Quixote tilting at windmills, but I can still hope that finally justice will prevail.
In a ruling issued on Monday, a federal judge wrote that trump “more likely than not” committed crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2020, uprising. Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California ruled that trump and John Eastman, a lawyer who had advised trump on how to overturn the 2020 election, most likely had committed felonies, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States. The judge’s comments came as part of a civil case filed by the government against Eastman, who has refused to cooperate with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attacks.
“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” Carter wrote. “Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election.”
On the same day, it was reported that White House logs given to House investigators show a seven-hour gap in Trump calls on the day of the attacks.
Not surprisingly, there was no mention of the judge’s conclusion or the seven-hour silence on Fox “News,” the purveyor of trumpian propaganda or by Tucker Carlson, the “news” channel’s star propagandist and wannabe Joseph Goebbels. Carlson, whose show is watched by an average of 2.8 million viewers, instead opined that it is time for Congress to remove Biden because “For God’s sakes, this man cannot remain in power, for all of our sakes.”
Fox “News” devoted front page space to “Biden caught using cue cards in attempt to clean up ousting Putin gaffe,” “73-year-old man pummeled in grocery store parking lot after verbal dispute,” and “The Flash’ star Ezra Miller arrested after Hawaii karaoke incident.” I’m surprised that Fox missed the story about Nebraska Republican state Sen. Bruce Bostelman who said in a televised debate over a school funding bill on Monday, that he was concerned that students were dressing up as cats or dogs during school, and “meow, and they bark and now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?” Bostelman later recanted his comments after realizing the source was barking up the wrong tree.
Fox had nothing about the judge’s comments or the mysterious gap in calls from the man who made a living off of running from him mouth ad nausem and who obviously had a key role in instigating the attempted Jan. 6, 2020, coup.
The Washington Post fact checker column reported the number of lies and misleading claims while trump made his outrageous yet probably true claims about shooting somebody at a 2016 campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.
The seven-hour gap is intriguing and not without precedent. It reminds me of one, footnote to history, “Rosemary Woods.” She was Richard Nixon’s secretary from his days in Congress in 1951, through the end of his political career. Woods gained historic notoriety when she claimed responsibility in a 1974 grand jury testimony for inadvertently erasing up to five minutes of the 18 1⁄2 minute gap in a June 20, 1972, audio tape from Nixon’s office. The so-called “Rose Mary Stretch” happened when Woods said she had reached to simultaneously press controls several feet apart and accidentally erased conversations that most believed involved Nixon’s damning comments about Watergate. The contents missing from the recording remain unknown, though the gap occurs during a conversation between Nixon and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, three days after the Watergate break in.
The Nixon White House tapes are audio recordings of conversations between Nixon and Nixon administration officials, Nixon family members, and White House staff, produced between 1971 and 1973. The tapes’ existence came to light during the Watergate scandal of 1973 and 1974, when the system was mentioned during the televised testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield before the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon’s refusal of a congressional subpoena to release the tapes was the basis for an article of impeachment against Nixon, and led to his subsequent resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.
The holes in the trump phone logs were discovered amid the House committee’s probe of internal White House records as they related to the Jan. 6 attacks. It was reported today that the records show a gap in trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the hours when the Capitol building was being violently assaulted. That would be a total of 457 minutes and everyone knows it would be impossible for trump to keep quiet for five minutes, let alone 457 minutes. There was no record of calls made by trump from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m., while trumpers attacked, overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, forcing lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety, while at least seven people died as a result of the mayhem.
The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The House panel is probing whether trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as “burner phones.”
In a statement on Monday night, trump’s only comment was, “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” That reminds me of his first recorded lie when he told the crowd during his inaugural address that the rain “just never came” until he finished talking and went inside, at which point “it poured.” Sorry, it poured all day. Or his claims that the coronavirus was “disappearing.” Tell that to the 976,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19, so far.
Trump has a pattern of having been rather uncooperative and somewhat irresponsible in refusing to turn over official documents. After he finally left the White House, trump secreted away more than a dozen boxes of sensitive documents to his castle at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. Violating security concerns, trump also routinely used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, to talk with other aides, congressional allies and outside confidants.
Some of the records that the Jan. 6 committee has received had been ripped to shreds and taped back together, reflecting trump’s habit of tearing up documents. While he was in office, staff also would find wads of printed paper that trump had disposed, clogging a toilet in the White House.
Funny how trump won the 2016 election because of the scandalous revelations that Hilary Clinton had used a private email server while she was secretary of state. Trump’s antics make Clinton’s mistakes look like nothing. I say, lock him up.