Neither Stimulated Nor Relieved

Whether you call it the flaccid stimulus bill or the frustrating relief bill, it appears there will be something passed no later than tomorrow. That’s assuming Trump doesn’t throw a wrench in the works.

[Update: The Mahablog magic strikes again — it was announced a deal has been struck just after I posted this.]

The poison pill provision introduced by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R, PA) that would have tied the hands of the Federal Reserve has been watered down. Here’s the deal:

Mr. Toomey had sought to bar the Fed and Treasury Department from setting up any loan program similar to those established this year that have helped to keep credit flowing to corporate, municipal and medium-size business borrowers during the pandemic recession.

The agreed-upon alternative, offered by Mr. Schumer and still being drafted near midnight on Saturday, aides familiar with the process said, would bar only programs that were more or less exact copycats of the ones newly employed in 2020.

That sounds annoying but not catastrophic. Yet to be resolved:

Among the outstanding hurdles for lawmakers and aides racing to draft text was a push to expand a paid leave mandate set to lapse at the end of the year, how much money should be allocated to private and parochial schools and whether businesses should be allowed to deduct from their taxes loans given under a popular federal loan program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

However,

One of the potential remaining stumbling blocks is President Trump, who has largely been removed from the stimulus negotiations as he continues to attack the outcome of the Nov. 3 election and undermine President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, he tweeted his frustration with Congress for not yet acting on a stimulus and signaled that he would want larger direct payments than the $600 payments currently under discussion.

“GET IT DONE, and give them more money in direct payments,” the president wrote on Twitter.

I’d like to see a larger payment, too, but Mr. Stable Genius should be complaining to Mitch. And I am so happy I am not in Congress. I think at this point I’d be homicidal.

Elsewhere: There has been a lot of talk that Trump is losing it. We might wonder whether he ever had it. But there have been leaked accounts of oval office meetings that claimed Trump talked about martial law and appointing Sidney Powell special counsel to inspect Dominion voting machines. Dominion, meanwhile, has threatened Powell with a defamation suit.

See Peter Wehner, Trump Is Losing His Mind.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Trump today was retweeting crap from Gateway Pundit and a string of people I never heard of that claimed more votes were counted for POTUS than there are registered voters in the U.S. He’s not giving up. We may have to send in marshalls to haul him out of the White House after all. Fun!

When Do We Get to Investigate Jared?

This is juicy. Business Insider reported that Jared Kushner set up a shell company that siphoned off $617 million from the Trump campaign to parts unknown. I wasn’t able to read the Business Insider article because of the popups demanding that I subscribe, but I did pull out some blurbs:

Kushner directed Lara Trump, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman to serve on the shell company’s board, the person told Insider.

American Made Media Consultants became the source of consternation for Trump’s own campaign staff, who were kept in the dark about its operations.

Despite its $617 million spending through AMMC, the Trump campaign publicly disclosed little information about the company, including how it used the money.

Here is a report on what BI reported from Daily Beast:

Jared Kushner approved the creation of a shell company that operated like a “campaign within a campaign” and secretly funneled millions of dollars in campaign cash to Trump family members, Business Insider reports. The company, American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, took more than half of the Trump campaign’s massive $1.26 billion war chest and was largely shielded from having to publicly report financial details. However, a source told Business Insider that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was the company’s president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew was its VP, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman was treasurer and secretary.

The mysterious company caused consternation among other campaign staffers, who had no idea how it was spending money, and the Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint with the FEC in June accusing the Trump campaign of laundering $170 million largely through it. A campaign spokesperson denied that AMMC paid Lara Trump or Pence’s nephew for being on its board.

No wonder Trump ran short of money for television ads.

Here’s some more from Raw Story:

Trump’s top advisers and campaign staff told Insider they were unaware of how the shell company operated, and campaign officials even conducted an internal audit of its operations under former campaign manager Brad Parscale but never reported those findings, and the next campaign manager Bill Stepien had little involvement with AMMC.

“Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” said a former advisor to Trump’s 2016 campaign. “What Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know.”

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint in July with the Federal Election Commission accusing the campaign of disguising” about $170 million in spending “by laundering the funds” through AMMC.

“[It’s a] scheme to evade telling voters even the basics on where its money is really going [and a] shield to disguise the ultimate recipients of its spending,” said Brendan Fischer, the center’s director of federal reform.

Here’s the best part:

The Department of Justice may open a criminal investigation if the government suspects the payments were a “knowing and willful” violation of election law.

Several sources from the Justice Department and FEC told Insider that investigators may already be looking into the campaign’s activity.

Oddly, the New York Times also reported on the shell company but buried it several paragraphs down in another story about how much money Trump will have when he leaves the White House. Also oddly, the Times doesn’t mention Jared Kushner.

Mr. Trump has long acted with few inhibitions when it comes to spending other people’s money, and he has spent millions of campaign dollars on his own family businesses in the last five years. But new records show an even more intricate intermingling of Mr. Trump’s political and familial interests than was previously known.

Lara Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law and a senior campaign adviser, served on the board — and was named on drafts of the incorporation papers — of a limited liability company through which the Trump political operation spent more than $700 million since 2019, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The arrangement has never been disclosed. One of the other board members and signatories in the draft papers of the L.L.C., American Made Media Consultants, was John Pence, the nephew of Vice President Mike Pence and a senior Trump adviser. The L.L.C. has been criticized for purposefully obscuring the ultimate destination of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending.

Ms. Trump and Mr. Pence were originally listed as president and vice president on the incorporation papers, documents reviewed by the Times showed. Sean Dollman, the campaign chief financial officer, was the A.M.M.C. treasurer.

“Lara Trump and John Pence resigned from the AMMC board in October 2019 to focus solely on their campaign activities, however, there was never any ethical or legal reason why they could not serve on the board in the first place,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Mr. Trump. “John and Lara were not compensated by AMMC for their service as board members.”

It sounds to me as if Lara Trump and John Pence bailed out of AMMC so as not to be caught in legal jeopardy. If AMMC was a Jared Kushner production, who knows where that money is now, and who knows if Trump himself knew what was going on?

And the Republicans think Hunter Biden is a problem? duh.

Meanwhile, as predicted, the Trump Administration is somehow screwing up vaccine distribution. Erick Lutz, Vanity Fair:

The White House reportedly turned down “multiple” offers from Pfizer over the summer to set aside additional doses for the United States. And of the vaccines the U.S. does have, a shitload are apparently just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, ready to be delivered, if only the Trump administration would give the company the word.

“This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to locations specified by them,” Pfizer said in a statement Thursday. “We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”

The company’s statement came after the Trump administration informed several states that they would receive up to 40 percent fewer vaccine doses next week than they’d been expecting. The White House implied the problem was on Pfizer’s end, but the company contradicted that explanation. “Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine,” it said in the statement, “and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed.”

This probably is just incompetence, a quality Trumpers possess in abundance. But I also wondered if Jared was involved in this somehow. Pfizer and (probably) Moderna need to be careful with inventory, or vast quantities of vaccine will somehow disappear into a deep underground black market. Along with a lot of PPE confiscated a few months ago ….

A Flaccid Stimulus

Mitch McConnell has budged just a tad on a mini-stimulus bill that includes direct payments, and yesterday CNN reported why.

During the call with GOP senators, McConnell noted that direct payments for individuals and families have become a major issue in the race.

“Kelly and David are getting hammered” on the issue, he said, according to a source who heard his remarks, a reference to incumbent GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are both facing off against Democratic challengers.

However, they’re talking $600 instead of $1,200 this time, which might seem like an insult to people who are months behind on house and utilities payments. There is also talk of $300 additional weekly unemployment benefits, but it’s not clear to me what might happen to people whose benefits are ending entirely. Beyond that, the negotiations are moving so fast, while still going nowhere, that it’s really hard to keep track of what’s in and what’s out.

Also, even if Congress manages to pass something before Christmas, there will almost certainly be a lapse in benefits to millions of workers. Emily Stewart writes for Vox:

After months of a will-they-or-won’t-they dance that’s left workers, businesses, and much of the economy in limbo, lawmakers yet again have a potential deal: a $748 billion proposal to help boost the economy as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on. While it may have some shortcomings — Democrats dropped state and local government aid from the main bill in exchange for Republicans dropping corporate liability protections — it’s not the worst deal in the world, and it does have new payments for the unemployed.

But there is a hiccup: Even if a bill passes, millions of workers will likely face a lag in receiving those payments while the regulators and states responsible for distributing them iron out the new process.

An estimated 4 million workers have likely already had their benefits run out, some of them for months, after they maxed out the number of weekly payments to them established by the CARES Act, the first stimulus package. However long it takes to get a new system up and running is how long they’ll have to wait before they get another check. Other programs expanded by the CARES Act are set to expire in December, and given the bureaucratic intricacies of the 50-state unemployment insurance system, the transition will probably be a messy one.

At this point, whether Congress passes its mini-relief bill or not, there will be massive evictions. There already is hunger, and that’s getting worse. Lots of people are probably going to try to get through the winter with the heat turned off.

But McConnell is only giving in to a bill to help Kelly and David. That’s because their opponents, Raphael and Jon, are running ads like this:

Kelly and David are selling themselves to voters as a “firewall” against “socialism,” Greg Sargent writes. If Mitch keeps control of the Senate, you can bet there will be no more relief/stimulus bills passed next year, no matter how many businesses close for good and how many families end up living in cars and shelters. But, by damn, Kelly and David will keep us all safe from socialists and antifa! Let’s remember what’s important!

Elsewhere

The Week reports that Trump still genuinely believes he won the election.

President Trump was privately coming to terms with his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, but he “has now reversed and dug in deeper — not only spreading misinformation about the election, but ingesting it himself,” CNN reports, “egged on by advisers like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis who are misleading Trump about the extent of voting irregularities and the prospects of a reversal.” One adviser told CNN, “He’s been fed so much misinformation that I think he actually thinks this thing was stolen from him.”

Even the Electoral College formalizing Biden’s win “did not appear enough to shake Trump from his delusions of victory,” CNN says, “but it is adding urgency to a push by several of his advisers to gently steer Trump toward reality.” Discussions of Trump’s post-presidency future tend to go nowhere because Trump “all but shuts down,” CNN reports. “In his moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge. The possibility has alarmed some aides, but few believe Trump will actually follow through.”

Oh, but it would be so much fun to see him evicted.

A food bank in the Cleveland area.

 

 

When Only the Demented Remain

More reporting has revealed that Mitch had a come-to-Jesus meeting with Republican senators yesterday, and he told them they weren’t going to file any challenges to the presidential election results. So that’s that. Unless Ron Johnson or Rand Paul get the nerve to disobey Mitch, it won’t matter what the minority House Republicans might do. Congress will certify the election results on January 6.

Greg Sargent:

If no senator objects to the Biden electors from any given state, and only a handful of Trump dead-enders in the House do, the objections will go nowhere, because they must have the support of at least one senator. But if they do have that support, then both chambers must consider the objections and then vote on them.

Why might McConnell want to avoid this scenario? Well, as Politico’s Jake Sherman reports, McConnell said on the call that this would require Senate Republicans to vote down those objections and that this is a “terrible vote,” because it would make Republicans appear anti-Trump.

The rage of the MAGA-heads is falling on McConnell today, but McConnell probably doesn’t care. He may assume he can be the bad guy if it protects other Republican senators from having to go on the record for being for or against the election results.

See also QAnon Supporters Vow to Leave GOP After Mitch McConnell Accepts Election Result at Newsweek and MAGA Turns on Mitch at the Daily Mail (UK). Short term, Republicans are going to take a hit in support. With any luck that might impact the Georgia runoff elections in the Dems’ favor. Mitch is probably banking on everyone settling down before the 2022 midterms.

Even today Trump is tweeting that he won the election. And he is re-tweeting stuff from Breitbart and OAN and the Epoch Times and random people I never heard of with “proof” of fraud and whatever. He may or may not understand that it was Mitch McConnell and the soon-to-depart Bill Barr protecting his ass for the past several months. Without those two, plus Fox News and other part of  Murdoch Media, he’d have had a lot harder time of it. Their protection allowed him to get away with corruptions no other POTUS in history would have even thought about.

But now Barr is leaving early — presumably fired for insufficient obsequiousness — and Mitch is cutting Trump loose. Trump may not be able to comprehend that Mitch watched his ass only for the sake of Republican power, and that Trump’s value to Mitch is now considerably diminished. And I would argue that as long as Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, he’s the most powerful man in Washington. Mitch is the gatekeeper. Very little happens that Mitch doesn’t allow to happen.

Even Fox News is backing away from Trump (see also). And I checked today’s Murdoch-owned New York Post. I found not one headline or editorial about voter fraud or calls to “stop the steal.” Although elements of Murdoch media may continue to pay lip service to “stop the steal,” it seems to me Murdoch has moved on.

Trump has completely lost the Republican/right-wing establishment, in other words. All he’s got left are the crazies.

The crazies are going to be with us for a while, and they can be dangerous. The mayor of Dodge City, Kansas, resigned yesterday after being slammed with threats over her support for a mask mandate. “I do not feel safe,” she said. I expect we will see more episodes of street violence for the next several weeks. The question is, is this flareup of right-wing sedition going to fizzle out in time, or will it grow?

See Jeannie Suk Gersen at The New Yorker, Trump’s Coup Attempt Isn’t Over.

In the United States, the longer our representatives contest the result of the election, the more possible violent escalation seems. The threats against U.S. election officials are particularly chilling in light of examples such as that of Kenya, where, three years ago, a top election official was murdered, and Belarus, where, last year, a former police officer revealed that he was involved in the 1999 abduction and murder of the former head of the central election commission.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said on Sunday that “if you want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that’s why you’ve got to have the whole system play out.” But it remains unclear how pursuing the goal of overturning election results, simply because one’s own side lost, bodes at all well for what happens when the legal process finally runs out. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who received a pardon from his former boss, insisted at a rally over the weekend, “We decide the election,” after having tweeted out, two weeks ago, a petition warning that “the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent,” and urging Trump to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and order a new Presidential election under military supervision. Those calls were swiftly condemned as dangerous by military leaders. That puts into relief the overarching question about what the Trump Presidency has meant for our laws and legal institutions. Are they weathering a particularly bad storm while doing what they’re supposed to do—namely, to channel the potential for violent conflict into peaceful if begrudging resolution and coexistence? Or are they truly beginning to crumble around us in Trump’s final weeks in office? We likely won’t know for years whether the emerging norms of today are merely testing democracy or destroying it.

That’s what we don’t know.

The Republican establishment, including the media infrastructure anchored by Murdoch media, supported Trump as long as he was useful. But he has proven to be a treacherous ally for them. I believe that if he tries to run again in 2024 the Republican establishment will have him kneecapped. And I think that once he is no longer POTUS, mainstream media, even CNN, will leave him alone. Whether he can maintain any significant support or power with the backing of looney-tune media like Breitbart and OAN alone is questionable.

I doubt Trump is capable of processing what is happening to him now. He is too damaged. See When the Narcissist Fails at Psychology Today; it’s fascinating. Going by this, the one thing we can predict about Trump on his way out is that he will do as much damage to everything and everyone around him as he possibly can.

 

Trump’s Last Stand

The Electoral College vote was another mile marker on the road of the endless election. The one significant development here is that now several Senate Republicans — including Mitch McConnell — have publicly recognized Joe Biden as the president-elect.

This seems to me to be a reasonably clear signal to Donald Trump that these Senate Republicans do not want him to push his overturn-the-election efforts further. They certainly don’t want to get the Senate involved in the scheme floated recently to use Congress to overturn the election results.

One, it’s doubtful Senate Republicans have the votes to overturn the election. After yesterday’s EC vote, several old establishment GOP senators, including Roy Blunt and Majority Whip John Thune, came out and said it’s over; Biden is the president-elect; time to move on. Even before the EC vote, a few senators had already signaled they were not going to get on the overturn-the-results bandwagon.

Two, after watching Proud Boys chant “Destroy the GOP!” on the streets of Washington last weekend, I suspect Mitch McConnell does not want to force any of his senators to go on record being for or against a second term for Trump. Nothing good could come of that for the Republican Party. Mitch may also be worried that the Trumpers are hurting Republican chances in the Georgia runoff elections.  Mitch’s congratulation to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was a big, fat signal to Trump that the Senate would not be dragged into his schemes, and also to Republican senators not to try anything stupid.

Aaron Blake, WaPo:

McConnell’s comments should have the effect of taking some pressure off his colleagues, but they also matter practically speaking. The position of the Senate GOP leader is now clear, pretty much negating any chance that Senate Republicans would participate in some kind of unlikely end-run not to accept the verdict of the electoral college. …

… The Senate was the best shot Trump had to at least gum up the works Jan. 6. If one House member and one senator object to accepting a given state’s slate of electors, Congress has to consider it. If a GOP senator does that now, they’ll be acting expressly in opposition to what their leader says. It might still happen, but McConnell’s statement should let some air out of the balloon. The gambit was never going to succeed, mind you, but it could have created some heartburn in our body politic; McConnell is basically signaling he won’t participate in such shenanigans.

It’s not ending, however. Trump is raving that the Republican governor and secretary of state of Georgia should be thrown in jail. Yesterday Stephen Miller was on Fox promising that the Trump team supported “alternate” electors who would send their votes to Congress, neener neener, but that seems to have fizzled out.

And, of course, right-wing media are still pushing “stop the steal.” Just today Trump seized on a new claim of fraud involving Dominion voting machines in Michigan. Although Trump is over the “boy who cried wolf” limit for most folks, the True Believers are lapping it up. As the Arizona electors voted yesterday, an Arizona state legislator called on consituents to “buy more ammo.”

Last night in Missouri, a Republican-led state House committee voted to approve a resolution that declared Missouri lawmakers “have no faith in the validity” of 2020 election results in six battleground states President Donald Trump lost this year. Rudy Giuliani was there, virtually.

Giuliani, who testified via Zoom, outlined examples of what he characterized as fraud in other states, which he said have not been fully investigated — not by election officials nor by courts.

That testimony drew an angry response from Rep. Peter Merideth, D-St. Louis, who referenced GOP officials who have certified the results of the presidential election. Merideth also cited statements by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who said there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the national election.

“Are all these Republicans lying?” Merideth asked Giuliani. “Are they complicit? Are they incompetent?”

Giuliani told Merideth to “calm down”; Merideth responded, “I am tired of your lies. America is tired of your lies. And they are dangerous, sir. They are dangerous.”

Well, good on you, Rep. Merideth. I’m glad to see there’s someone sensible in Jefferson City. Just don’t drink the water there, dude. I think it rots brain cells.

Missouri state Representative Peter Merideth, a Democrat who represents a district within the city of St. Louis. His district includes The Hill (Italian neighborhood; home of Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola) and the Botanical Garden.

The resolution carries no weight, and the Republican chair of the state House Rules Committee has already said his committee isn’t going to take it up.

And Vladimir Putin has congratulated Joe Biden already. Maybe Trump will get a clue that it’s over. Melania should be done packing by now.

See also:

Jonathan Last, Everyone Trump Touches Dies: The List

Jonathan Swan: Scoop: Trump’s frenetic, fanciful, bitter final plea

When Is Violence Not Violence? When Is Religion Not Religion?

Eric Lutz at Vanity Fair:

Normally, the task of state electors is perfunctory, their work in December going unnoticed by the average citizen, who tends to tune out between Election Day and the inauguration in January. But Trump’s relentless effort to overturn his loss have thrust these anonymous functionaries into the spotlight and made them targets of the harassment that other election officials—from Democrats like Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to Republicans like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—have faced for carrying out their duties against Trump’s wishes.

In swing states, electors are receiving police escorts to the locations where they’ll be casting ballots. In Arizona and Pennsylvania, that location has been kept secret, even from the electors themselves, until Monday, as a safeguard against threats. And in Michigan, where electors will cast their ballots at the State Capitol, “credible threats of violence” have shut down state legislative offices. “This is some scary stuff, man,” Khary Penebaker, a Democratic elector from Wisconsin, told the New York Times. “This is not what America is supposed to be like.”

I’m going to guess that none of these threats are being covered in the right-wing news, including Fox.

After the Supreme Court once again declined to hear one of the frivolous lawsuits filed on his behalf, Trump supporters took to the streets in Washington, D.C., vandalizing Black churches, instigating street fights, and even threatening violence against the president-elect. “Joe Biden will be removed,” the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said at one point, “one way or another.” As the nation’s simmering political tensions started to boil (four people were stabbed in D.C. Saturday as the Proud Boys turned the demonstration into a riot; a right-wing protester allegedly shot a counter-protester at a separate demonstration in Washington state), Trump kept turning up the heat. On Sunday, he threatened that electors would be charged with a “severely punishable crime” if they made the results official, and at one point suggested that he will sandbag his own party in the Georgia runoff race next month if Governor Brian Kemp doesn’t give him his way.

The Proud Boys vandalized several historic Black churches over the weekend. If left-wing protesters had damaged church property, none of us would hear the end of it for months. But if right-wingers destroy church property, that’s okay. That’s because righties presume religion belongs to them, just like “patriotism” and “freedom” belongs to them, and the flag belongs to them. Violence, though, belongs to lefties. Or else it seems violence only counts as violence when lefties do it.

Trump and his allies, though, remain undeterred. The president said after his most recent Supreme Court humiliation that “we have just begun to fight.” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, one of 126 Republicans who formally endorsed the lawsuit seeking to disenfranchise millions of Americans, suggested in a Fox News interview Sunday that he still wouldn’t recognize Biden’s win after the Electoral College vote. And Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Fox & Friends Monday that an “alternate slate of electors from the contested states” would be voting at the same time as the actual electors, and would send those bogus results to Congress to help fuel the next stage of the challenge there. This is all corrosive to democracy, as even a majority in a recent Fox News poll recognized. But if the temperature continues to rise, so too will the risk of things boiling over into something even more dangerous.

Overturning the election in Congress requires several steps, including a majority vote of both houses, which ain’t gonna happen.

See also Assessing the threat from America’s far right at The Economist.

They Sent Robespierre to the Guillotine

There are plans afoot to mess with the congressional tally of the Electoral College vote on January 5, the New York Times says.

But as the president continues to refuse to concede, a small group of his most loyal backers in Congress is plotting a final-stage challenge on the floor of the House of Representatives in early January to try to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

Constitutional scholars and even members of the president’s own party say the effort is all but certain to fail. But the looming battle on Jan. 6 is likely to culminate in a messy and deeply divisive spectacle that could thrust Vice President Mike Pence into the excruciating position of having to declare once and for all that Mr. Trump has indeed lost the election.

Overturning the election at that stage would require a majority vote in both houses of Congress, which isn’t going to happen. But it’s Mike Pence’s constitutionally appointed task to tally the votes of the states and announce the winner. What if he refuses? And if he does his duty, what does that do to his political future? Not that I care about Pence’s political future, but it’s a measure of Trump’s narcicissm that he would ask his vice president to commit political suicide.

Trump has also turned against Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. Nobody gave more fawning deference to Trump that these two, but it wasn’t enough. And in yesterday’s street theater in Washington, pro-Trump protesters chanted “Destroy the GOP” and booed the Georgia Republican Senate candidates.

This is radicalism worthy of la Terreur. And do not doubt these are dangerous people. If the Republican establishment has any sense left it will back away from Trump and Trumpism, now, to give people a couple of years to get over it before the 2022 midterms. Because there will be no such thing as being pure enough to appease these people. Even Trump may have to be careful they don’t turn on him eventually.

Last night a counter-protester was shot in Olympia, Washington, and several people in Washington DC were stabbed. This won’t stop any time soon.

On the streets in the District of Columbia last night.

Lingering, Like a Bad Smell

Trump is throwing a Pity Party for the Ages on Twitter today. See also Imploding MAGA World Turns to Civil War Fantasies, Secession After Supreme Court Disaster. I understand Milo Yiannopoulos had a psychotic break on Parler.

And the Proud Boys have showed up in force in Washington, DC.

The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, claimed to have been invited to the White House. The White House says Tarrio just took the public tour.

Trump swears he will fight on.  According to CNN, “Before the high court rejected his bid Friday, his campaign announced a cable ad buy to further his fraudulent claims about the election, and he clearly intends to try and meddle in Congress’ counting of the Electoral College results in January.” According to several reports, Melania wants to go home and is packing, already.

The Electoral College votes on Monday.

Trump, of course, is using the chaos to raise money and establish a post-presidential role for himself in the Republican Party. What the Republican Party is getting out of the deal isn’t clear. And we need to give serious thought about the 126 Republican members of Congress (listed at the end of this post) and the 18 state attorneys general who signed on to the embarassing Texas court challenge of other states’ elections.

The suit amounted to a loaded gun at the head of our democracy, said Chris Hayes.

If there is one potential silver lining to this sorry episode of U.S. history, it’s that a considerable portion of the political and media establishment is publicly recognizing that the Republican Party is no longer acting on behalf of the United States.

No one expressed this better than former Republican political consultant Steve Schmidt: “The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class.”

See also Paul Waldman, who writes that hatred of liberals is all that’s left of conservatism.

The Republican Party has proved that its hatred of liberals is so foundational that it will abandon any pretense of commitment to democracy, if democracy allows for the possibility that liberals might win an election. They have come to regard Democratic voters as essentially undeserving of having their will translated into power, no matter how large their numbers.  …

… Forget all that inspiring talk about the genius of the Framers and their vision for democracy; if having an election means that the people we hate might win, then the election must simply be nullified.

David Graham, The Atlantic:

Instead of Republican officeholders waiting out Trump’s postelection tantrum, he is waiting them out, and slowly bringing the party around to his side. In this way, Trump is ending his presidency just the way he won it: by correctly recognizing what Republican voters want and giving it to them, and gradually forcing the party’s purported leaders to follow along.

This embrace of the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election is both shocking and horrifying. As Trump’s fraud claims and legal cases have steadily failed, the arguments he has pursued have become more outlandish and absurd, and they have also become more disturbing. Many Republican voters agree, and in refusing to stand up to him and them, Republican officials have gone from coddling a sore loser to effectively abandoning democracy.

It has to be said that most of the characters perpetrating this atrocity are not political newbies, but have been visible parts of the national politcal landscape for many years. For example, Texas GOP Chair Allen West, who in effect called for states won by Trump to secede yesterday, had already been clanking around in the GOP for quite some time before Trump became POTUS.

And this happened:

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) on Friday urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refuse to seat any of the 126 Republican House members who signed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of the presidential election.

I don’t expect anything to come of this, but Rep. Pascrell is right to call for some kind of consequences for the failure of the 126 to abide by their oath to uphold the Constitution. I suggest the 126 be required to complete some kind of Reconstruction program before they can be seated in the House again. This might include a remedial course in the critical role of elections in a democracy and a deprogramming from the Trump cult.

Here are the members of Congress who signed on to the Texas suit.

Alabama

Rep. Gary Palmer, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Mo Brooks, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Bradley Byrne, First Congressional District

Rep. Robert Aderholt, Fourth Congressional District

Arizona

Rep. Andy Biggs, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Debbie Lesko, Eighth Congressional District

Arkansas

Rep. Rick Crawford, First Congressional District

Rep. Bruce Westerman, Fourth Congressional District

California

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, 23rd Congressional District

Rep. Ken Calvert, 42nd Congressional District

Rep. Doug LaMalfa, First Congressional District

Rep. Tom McClintock, Fourth Congressional District

Colorado

Rep. Ken Buck, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Doug Lamborn, Fifth Congressional District

Florida

Rep. Matt Gaetz, First Congressional District

Rep. Ted Yoho, Third Congressional District

Rep. Gus Bilirakis, 12th Congressional District

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, 25th Congressional District

Rep. John Rutherford, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Daniel Webster, 11th Congressional District

Rep. Michael Waltz, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Ross Spano, 15th Congressional District

Rep. Neal Dunn, Second Congressional District

Georgia

Rep. Doug Collins, Ninth Congressional District

Rep. Rick W. Allen, 12th Congressional District

Rep. Earl Carter, First Congressional District

Rep. Drew Ferguson, Third Congressional District

Rep. Austin Scott, Eighth Congressional District

Idaho

Rep. Russ Fulcher, First Congressional District

Rep. Mike Simpson, Second Congressional District

Illinois

Rep. Mike Bost, 12th Congressional District

Rep. Darin LaHood, 18th Congressional District

Indiana

Rep. James Baird, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Jim Banks, Third Congressional District

Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, Ninth Congressional District

Rep. Greg Pence, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Jackie Walorski, Second Congressional District

Iowa

Rep. Steve King, Fourth Congressional District

Kansas

Rep. Ron Estes, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Roger Marshall, First Congressional District

Louisiana

Rep. Steve Scalise, First Congressional District

Rep. Mike Johnson, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Ralph Abraham, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Clay Higgins, Third Congressional District

Maryland

Rep. Andy Harris, First Congressional District

Michigan

Rep. Jack Bergman, First Congressional District

Rep. Bill Huizenga, Second Congressional District

Rep. Tim Walberg, Seventh Congressional District

Rep. John Moolenaar, Fourth Congressional District

Minnesota

Rep. Tom Emmer, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Jim Hagedorn, First Congressional District

Mississippi

Rep. Michael Guest, Third Congressional District

Rep. Trent Kelly, First Congressional District

Missouri

Rep. Sam Graves, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Jason Smith, Eighth Congressional District

Rep. Ann Wagner, Second Congressional District

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, Third Congressional District

Montana

Rep. Greg Gianforte, at-large district

Nebraska

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, First Congressional District

Rep. Adrian Smith, Third Congressional District

New Jersey

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, Second Congressional District

New York

Rep. Elise Stefanik, 21st Congressional District

Rep. Lee Zeldin, First Congressional District

North Carolina

Rep. Dan Bishop, Ninth Congressional District

Rep. Ted Budd, 13th Congressional District

Rep. Virginia Foxx, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Richard Hudson, Eighth Congressional District

Rep. David Rouzer, Seventh Congressional District

Rep. Gregory Murphy, Third Congressional District

Ohio

Rep. Jim Jordan, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Bob Gibbs, Seventh Congressional District

Rep. Bill Johnson, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Robert E. Latta, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Second Congressional District

Oklahoma

Rep. Kevin Hern, First Congressional District

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Second Congressional District

Pennsylvania

Rep. John Joyce, 13th Congressional District

Rep. Fred Keller, 12th Congressional District

Rep. Mike Kelly, 16th Congressional District

Rep. Dan Meuser, Ninth Congressional District

Rep. Scott Perry, 10th Congressional District

Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, 14th Congressional District

Rep. Glenn Thompson, 15th Congressional District

South Carolina

Rep. Jeff Duncan, Third Congressional District

Rep. Ralph Norman, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Tom Rice, Seventh Congressional District

Rep. William Timmons, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Joe Wilson, Second Congressional District

Tennessee

Rep. Tim Burchett, Second Congressional District

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Third Congressional District

Rep. Mark Green, Seventh Congressional District

Rep. David Kustoff, Eighth Congressional District

Rep. John Rose, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Scott DesJarlais, Fourth Congressional District

Texas

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Second Congressional District

Rep. Kevin Brady, Eighth Congressional District

Rep. Michael Burgess, 26th Congressional District

Rep. Michael Cloud, 27th Congressional District

Rep. Mike Conaway, 11th Congressional District

Rep. Bill Flores, 17th Congressional District

Rep. Louie Gohmert, First Congressional District

Rep. Lance Gooden, Fifth Congressional District

Rep. Kenny Marchant, 24th Congressional District

Rep. Randy Weber, 14th Congressional District

Rep. Roger Williams, 25th Congressional District

Rep. Ron Wright, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Jodey Arrington, 19th Congressional District

Rep. Brian Babin, 36th Congressional District

Virginia

Rep. Ben Cline, Sixth Congressional District

Rep. Rob Wittman, First Congressional District

Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, Ninth Congressional District

Washington

Rep. Dan Newhouse, Fourth Congressional District

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Fifth Congressional District

West Virginia

Rep. Carol Miller, Third Congressional District

Rep. Alex Mooney, Second Congressional District

Wisconsin

Rep. Tom Tiffany, Seventh Congressional District

Proof? Who Needs Proof?

It’ll have to be short today, but … this is fascinating. See Aaron Blake at WaPo, The Trump team throws in the towel on proving voter fraud.

Executive summary: The Trump Team is still claiming voter fraud, but they admit they have no proof. Get this:

Rather than claiming evidence of proven fraud, it instead claims that the fraud is actually “undetectable,” because election officials made it so by doing illegal things. And that’s why it wants the results overturned.

“Despite the chaos of election night and the days which followed, the media has consistently proclaimed that no widespread voter fraud has been proven,” the lawsuit says (and that proclamation is accurate). “But this observation misses the point. The constitutional issue is not whether voters committed fraud but whether state officials violated the law by systematically loosening the measures for ballot integrity so that fraud becomes undetectable.”

Those sneaky election officials! Including the Republican ones! But Miz Lindsey has proposed that the Republican officials were conned by Stacey Abrams into doing these illegal things. Back to Aaron Blake:

“Whatever doubt there is about fraud by voters or political operatives,” it says, “there is no doubt that the officials of the Defendant States changed the rules of the contest in an unauthorized manner.”

It’s certainly a novel legal strategy, but it’s also one that reflects the last-ditch nature of the effort. The Trump team has spent weeks asserting that it could prove fraud or has proved fraud. It hasn’t — and in many cases lawyers like Giuliani have been forced to admit in court that they aren’t alleging actual fraud in specific cases — so now the argument is that this is beside the point. The real point, it seems, is that fraud could have occurred but that we might never see it because elections officials made it that way.

The arguments that there was fraud include the claim that no presidential candidate has lost both Florida and Ohio and won the presidency (see: John F. Kennedy, 1960). Also, ” It ridiculously suggests that late vote shifts in key states were astronomically improbable — to the tune of 1 in 1 quadrillion — a claim which Philip Bump dispatches here.”

See also:

David Cohen, Rolling Stone, Trump’s ‘Big’ Texas Supreme Court Lawsuit Is Just as Fake as All the Others

Charles Pierce, Esquire, The Confederacy of Dunces Wants to Disenfranchise Millions of Americans