When the shit hits the fan, I’m heading out into the streets to protest. I’ll be peacefully protesting, but protesting still. Traitor Barr has decided that any sort of protest is a major crime, and so I’m expecting to be arrested and put away for the rest of my goddamn life. But I just don’t see how I can take this bullshit sitting down.
Oh well, I wasn’t expecting to live much longer anyway.
Yes, this is a coup attempt, make no mistake about it. So far, the courts have held at every level and bounced his ass. But that’s not the actual point. The point is to sow a sense of “it was rigged” among millions of Americans, which it has done.
The real point is to find some way of delaying the certification of a state’s vote (see the suit they filed yesterday in PA). To create the illusion that there was something horribly wrong that needs to be closely investigated. Pennsylvania is the prime target, but Wisconsin and Nevada are in play as well. And if they can’t get the vote overturned (they can’t, there’s not nearly enough time to get what they want), they want state governments who are sympathetic to ignore the will of their voters and elect their own slate of electors for the upcoming EV vote to ensure the vote is “fair” to whomever THEY thought won. Namely… Trump. And note that there are already calls for this within some states. So far, though, the states are also holding the line against this push. But you could end up with faithless electors, or worse, two sets of electors from each state voting for their guy, tossing the whole thing to Congress, and then it gets REAL fucking messy fast.
Trump is a psychopath. Trump only cares about himself and winning. He will take this to the bitter end. I held some false hope he’d lose, file a few lawsuits, and then fade away with lots of bitching and moaning when Biden stepped in. The moves this week have changed my mind, and the Atlantic article from October that details this a month before it happened. This was all planned because Trump never believed he could win reelection, not the way the year had gone. Sow doubts about mail in ballots. Wait for the red mirage. When the blue shift happens, take those doubts you sowed all year and claim massive fraud. Start filing suit.
I cannot predict how this will all end. But it’s not going to be pretty and it’s going to damage us irreparably. Even if he is removed, Biden starts his term with millions of Americans who believe him to be an illegitimate president and right-wing media will work to undermine him in every possible way. If he isn’t removed. 75 million Americans will take to the streets, and it’s going to be a bad time.
We always knew Trump was going to be a shit show for the country. He’s making sure to burn as much of it as he can on the way out. And every time one of these folks resigns, it doesn’t impress me. I’d rather they try and stay and fight the tides within and get fired. At least then I’d know they cared more about their country than their careers.
Rick Bright was a whistle blower on covid who started working yesteday in Biden’s covid task force. So, maybe?
When this fails, they will argue for a delayed inauguration so they can investigate the “fraud”.
Weak democrats will see this as a reasonable compromise.
Not surprising that these Ersatz Nazis should use the same playbook as the real ones. Back stab legend redux.
It’s so difficult to get good coup help nowadays…
I am going to be so mad if there are actually faithless electors this time around when there weren’t any in 2016 when it would actually have been their constitutionally mandated job to stop this regime.
This…
and this…
… are what it’s really about. Like Putin in 2016, they’re willing to accept more than they hope for, but they’ll be satisfied with undermining confidence in liberal democracy and pandering to the Know-Nothing 27%.
Probably, but it’s also about score-settling. They’re going to purge anyone seen as disloyal to the regime. FBI director Wray and Fauci are likely going to be fired, too.
Not only that, there’s also the abroad scenario. According to the Guardian:
“Biden’s team is not receiving intelligence or defence briefings, as would be normal during a transition, because a Trump-appointed official running the General Services Administration has refused to sign the necessary paperwork”. This because “there’s no law that dictates that President Trump needs to share that information”.
So you see, a system based on gentlemen’s agreements and custom rather than written law is way too vulnerable when someone suffering from a total absence of scruples comes along.
And it seems he’s trying to muck things up abroad as much as possible, just to make things interesting for the next administration. I really really hope I am wrong, but I fear the damage done to your nation will be made even clearer in the next days, and is going to pile up further.
What a goddam coward. Each and every one of them who has resigned over the years are cowards and shouldn’t be celebrated or applauded. These people who claim to have some ethical fiber should STAY ON and resist, and then GET FIRED, NOT RESIGN. When they resign it ensures they will be replaced with some all too eager bootlicker. It precipitates the descent into the muck, it doesn’t slow or stop anything, it just makes things worse. These people think that resigning is an honorable act of dignity or courage? It’s at best just an attempt to cover their own asses.
He quit like a coward and will be replaced by an eager participant. That’s not integrity. And that most certainly is, if not “going along”, going out quietly.
He should have stayed on, found that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, in fact found that there is evidence of manufacturing false claims of wrongdoing, then made that very public from his official position, and then gotten himself very openly fired. THAT would be “not going along quietly”.
A lot of modern coups tend to be bloodless up front, the transition of power is signed by court order and the targets are driven into exile. Then when protests against the coup start that’s when the military steps in an kills a bunch of people to suppress dissent. But to actually work it requires the courts and whatever police they’re using to be on board without resistance.
Like in Bolivia.
Pilger is not an appointee but is effectively part of the DoJ’s permanent bureaucracy who’s been fighting actual fraud in government since 1992. Without people like him in all agencies staying on and doing their jobs as long as they could stave off interference from the regime we’d be in an even worse situation. More than any street protestors, I’d argue that they’ve formed the true core of resistance to the regime.
From what I’ve seen of the legal community’s reaction, Pilger’s resignation in and of itself is a very loud statement that Barr’s political interference was making it impossible for him to even pretend to do his job.
DOA
Do you mean recent events, which brought back Morales, or what was in place before then?
I mean like when Morales was ousted to begin with over false election fraud charges.
Okay, I thought/hoped so. Thank you for explaining.
IANAL, and certainly no expert on election fraud laws, but this statement from Barr looked like an end-run around Pilger and the part of the agency that is actually supposed to, you know, investigate election fraud. It appears that Barr gave a go-ahead to any of the federal attorneys out there to proceed with any investigations they could dig up, rather than routing them through the part that actually knows what it is doing. By resigning in a very public manner, he has drawn attention to this that would perhaps not have happened elsewise?
Pilger was basically being asked by Barr to go on a fishing expedition at a swimming pool. Whatever the reason for that request (it’s almost beside the point, even though we all know it), there’s no point to Pilger’s having tried to stay on and thus humour even the idea that this was a good and proper use of his and the DoJ’s time and resources. His resignation loudly says, right now when it needs to be heard, that he’s not going to be a part of this BS.
This is exactly why he should have stayed on and gotten himself fired. His “statement” is worthless and ineffective and only serves to save his own face. We are well beyond “statements” now.
