Judge Juan Merchan has decided to postpone sentencing in the Trump “hush money” case until after the election. This was done to allow time for a potential appeal of an expected immunity ruling. The news story at the link explains this as well as I can. The new sentencing date is November 26.
The last post inspired some comments on bias in media, and I wrote a long comment about that, but I might as well elaborate here. But first see Heather Digby Parton at Salon, Donald Trump’s incoherence makes the media’s double standard hard to hide.
See also Lawrence O’Donnell on Trump’s speech to the New York Economic Club.
I have read news stories about this speech — see this one from The Hill — that somehow creatively interpreted Trump’s gibberish to make it sound something like economic proposals. The Hill article is not uncritical of what Trump was made out to have said. But it didn’t accurately express how demented Trump sounded. Reporting from Fox News was even worse, of course.
The child care plan has been all over social media today, at least. Alternet has a transcription of Trump’s response to the (actually intelligent) question about affordable child care. And Trump’s answer is pure, straight-up dementia. This is not some clever bit of gaslighting or saying something without saying anything specific. It’s just gibberish. If you use your imagination you might cobble together that he thinks his tariff plan will raise enough revenue to subsidize child care and a lot of other things, but that’s crazy in and of itself. Trump has no idea how tariffs work. He seems to think that if he puts a tariff on goods from China, then the government of China has to pay it. It’s, like, free money in his mind. But of course, the tariff is paid by the importing company, and the cost of the tariff is added to the price the U.S. consumer has to pay. And this cranks up inflation and is a drag on the economy generally. I am sure that at some point someone tried to explain this to him, but it went over his head.
Regarding child care, J.D. Vance isn’t much better. He was asked about reducing the cost of day care, and his answer was an insult to working mothers everywhere.
“One of the things that we can do, is make it easier for families to choose whatever model they want,” the Ohio senator said. “One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of the pressure on people is… maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more. Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.”
“If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending on day care,” he said.
Families are perfectly free now to choose whatever “model” they want from the “models” available to them. Turning to grandparents or other retired relatives who live nearby and are willing to become full-time babysitters is probably always the first choice. And there are no impediments whatsoever to making that choice if it’s an option. Vance seems to think this is some blazingly original idea that hadn’t occurred to anybody. The truth is most families just don’t have that option.
Anyway, back to Trump’s dementia — I’m sure a lot of us are hoping the full extent of Trump’s mental decline becomes apparent in Tuesday’s debate. Of course, I was hoping the same thing before the last debate. But if he ever does become visibly addled on live television, media can’t cover for him any more. And then maybe a “Trump’s dementia” narrative finally will take hold in media.
Oh, and this happened today.
Former President Donald Trump held a press conference on Friday that was supposed to be about him appealing a $5 million verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
Instead, for nearly 45 minutes, Trumpstood in front of a microphone ranting about Carroll and another woman who accused him of sexual assault, and then left without taking any questions.
I bellieve this is what “losin’ it” looks like.
In other news. In 2006 there was a shooting in an Amish school in Pennsylvania that took the lives of five children. And now it’s taken a sixth. Rosanna King was six years old when she was shot and was an invalid for the rest of her life. She could recognize family members and smile, but she could not talk, walk, or feed herself. She died recently of complications caused by her old injuries.
I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear that the father of the recent Georgia school shooting was arrested. He and the son appeared in court today and remain in custody. Prosecutors say he allowed the boy to have the firearm. This was after he promised authorities last year that he would keep the family guns out of the boy’s reach.
In more other news. Liz Cheney says her father, Dick the Dick, is voting for Harris. This might cause a rift in the time-space continuum, but okay.
One problem I do see with the media reporting on Trump's word salad, is, they've always cleaned up his word salad. And you know, this shows the perils of lying. By covering for his word salad at first, they made their job that much harder, when they have to report word salad for the first time.
I remember one point where I was watching him talk to a small room of people about the DNC server, and he said it *precisely* like it was an applause line.
"I want to see (pause) THE SERVER."
You know, the pause for people to cheer early, because they know the applause line's coming, then the applause line, and pause again. He looked seriously unwell, like, he wasn't actually saying the words, but reciting the speech, and, well….
No information, of any sort, was stored on "THE SERVER". It was just a hunk of machinery. You'd have to be a complete moron to think you're smart, because you wanted to see THE SERVER. It's like saying, you want to see THE CAR that the bank robbers drove. Not the readings from OnStar, or GPS, or from their phones' location services, but *THE CAR*.
So not only did he seem to be holding a conversation for a non-existent audience, everything he said made no sense whatsoever. Okay, I don't mean "he veered into his stump speech," because that's okay, I mean, "his stump speech has complete nonsense in it, and no one has had the ability to get him to stop repeating it."
Am I crazy for thinking the press is forgetting that facts are necessary for good governance, and if Trump is so stupid, he thinks the physical THE SERVER matters, and keeps saying so, then he is not making decisions based on facts? Well, Presidentin', when you aren't even working from facts, is, in fact, *very* hard – and it can only lead to disaster, be it trying to Trump up fake investigations, or trying to overthrow the lawful government of the United States.
"Dick the Dick is voting for Harris"
I think maybe Liz's announcement may have swayed seven or eight GOP voters Harris's way Dick not so much!
Older Republicans still like Dick.
Yes and he has the corner on the "I shot my friend in the face" crowd, that's got to be worth a vote or two! I'm not sure how much it helps to have the Cheney's onboard but I wouldn't think it hurts at all. If nothing else it may enable some GOP'ers to stay home election day, that’s a win for Harris/Waltz!
Democrats who imagine that Darth Cheney's endorsement of Harris is Good News are woefully mistaken. They have become so distracted by Trump's antics that they have forgotten that Cheney – and the old Big Money GOP that he represents – ended the New Deal (Tax Cuts for the Rich), turned our Republic into an Empire (Invasion of Iraq) and created the Mob which now follows Trump.
Cheney is far more dangerous than Trump.
You are missing the point. I certainly haven’t forgotten anything about Dick the Dick. But he’s not running for office. And he never will again. He won’t have a chance to be “dangerous” any more, and he’s certainly not more dangerous than Trump. But he’s still respected among older Republians and could swing some votes toward Harris. And then after the election he can disappear again.
"Dick Swings To The Left"; now why won't they let me write the headlines?!
If you want chaos, who better than Trump.
A lot of these people have lost touch with reality. They want to believe we are a failed state. They don't WANT solutions. They want to burn it all down and do something totally different. The really sad part is, they have no idea what they want from the ruins.
I mentioned the oddness of Trump being given a pass because I’d seen some commentary on the left angry at establishment Dems about Biden’s obvious unfitness, but nothing from those same commenters about Trumps obvious unfitness for the very same reason, plus a great many more disturbing reasons.
I’d been noticing leftist commentary (in a few places elsewhere) angry at Dems overall, but nothing about MAGA. Angry about lesser evil Democrats, but little about greater evil Republicans. Not everybody, but certain commentors. Attacking the left from the left is a progressive thing, since progressives are far more prone to debate over solutions in changing times, than are cult reactionaries who’d rather worship demagogues, chant tribal memes, and do group chimpanzee hugs.
But those commenters seemed to be suggesting that punishing Dems by allowing Trump would somehow be preferrable to continuing lesser evil “shitlibs” status quo. Yeah, as if 40 years of Franco or 400 years of Roman imperium is preferable.
The latest news strongly implies that huge sums of money are flowing into right wing influencer world. Most know about certain liberals and progressives who suddenly ‘have an epiphany’ and turn sharply right, with that “epiphany” sounding like nonsense. It’s becoming apparent that they aren’t doing so because it’s a business decision and the general audience over there is richer and spendier, but that a handful of donors from either the American plutocratic or America-enemy realm are giving them huge sums of cash to do so. Some progressives are even suggesting that much if not most traditional and nontraditional media have been operating that way for years.
Depending on whom you were reading, Trump's unfitness might be filed under "it goes without saying." After griping about Trump's unfitness for umpteen years one does run out of things to day.
I haven't seen any of that this time, but I've tuned out the Democratic Socialists of America . If you are still reading stuff from that crew, I suggest just ignoring them.
Over the past year especially they’ve jumped over several dozen sharks.
Majority Report is New Deal Dem. Vaush claims to be a socialist. Dusty Smith is an extremely cynical social democrat. There are others. None of them seem to tolerate the kind of self-contradictory commentary I’m talking about. Others like MSNBC, LGM, and Kos are reporting the Russian influence scandal and they don’t either.
However, there are websites further left than those (which I don’t follow), which do seem to taking, or allowing, influence. And I don’t think I’m including in that bunch the very far lefts who preach that everything America does is evil.
I’d dare say that these Democratic Socialists of America of which you speak may have been compromised. The conspiracy theorist part of me wants to believe that nefarious power brokers know how to capture, or at least confuse, such audiences. The quickest way to know them, is they’ll champion Putin over Ukraine and Nato, or proclaim that Biden/Harris are just as bad as Trump regarding Gaza, without considering any of the complexities behind such events, to then just ignore and repeat their ‘bad guy’ proclamations after being informed of complexities.
I doubt they've been "compromised." They're mostly just immature and wallowing in their own self-righteousness. I don't think they're going to be a factor in the election, which is all I care about right now.