Biden campaign has a user account on Trump's platform. — creativesoul

Not only that, but Biden's campaign on Truth Social has more followers than Trump's campaign! (Can't you just see the ketchup hit the wall when the Orange Emperor reads that.) :lol:

Chesebro...

Another one bites the dust.

Well, that didn't take long – 3 out of 18 dominoes have fallen so far. They're doing the MAGA flip, Donny! :clap: :sweat:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67174576

Ya love to see it. :rofl:

Obviously, Sidney Powell, like Barr, Tillerson, McCain, Romney, McConnel, Mattis, Espers, Miley, etc. was always a deep state, RINO, plant embedded to try to sink Trump. How diabolical!

Well, that didn't take long – 3 out of 18 dominoes have fallen so far. — 180 Proof

I wonder if we are about to see a race to see who can get their plea bargaining done before that door closes.

That's almost always how RICO prosecutions happen, about half plead guilty and some flip getting lesser charges in exchange for turning state's evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if several of the "fake electors" plus Meadows or Guiliani flip soon (before the end of the year). I understand that Fani Willis is aggressively pursuing cooperation from all of the co-defendants and, no doubt, Jack Smith's "J6 Conspiracy" prosecution against Criminal Defendant-1 will be greatly enhanced – like nails in the coffin – by the flippers down in Georgia. :party:

I am loving the state of Georgia right now. They aren't fooling around.

:up:

With Powell and Chesebro in the bag, the T team loses the chance to have a trial before their trial. The sled is beginning to pick up speed down the hill.

A succinctly apt diagnosis of "American Carnage"

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/847417

anyone heard anything about Steve Bannon's appeal against the Contempt of Congress sentence? According to prior reports 'Bannon appealed his conviction and sentence; he remained free pending appeal, with his sentence being put on hold, and the date for his appeal hearing was set for October 12, 2023' - but I can't find any reference in the media to a hearing on that date or its result. (Sooner he's in prison, the better, he's one of the principle back-office agitators behind the current crisis in Congress.)

//update - On October 3, 2023, Bannon's appeal hearing was delayed to November 9 at the request of the DOJ due to the unexpected death of the son of one of the government's lawyers.//

I am loving the state of Georgia right now. They aren't fooling around. — GRWelsh

I listened to a podcast or video the other week with a bit of background on Fani Willis. Her father was, apparently, a lifelong activist and lawyer, usually for defense cases, and used to take her to court to observe from a young age. She has been a dedicated prosecutor for quite a few years and has a pretty impressive track record of RACI convictions already. Definitely not a light-weight.

Yeah, I voted her in 2020 while I still lived in Atlanta. I was quite impressed (and bored enough from the quarantine to watch a tv local program on) her bio. My only regret is that I'm now living in Washington (Pacific NW) and no longer eligible for the Fulton County jury pool. Almost certainly I'd be stricken because of my years as a paralegal, bank auditor and/or (leftwing) political activist in the 80s-90s, but still I wish I had the chance to try to dumb myself down enough to survive voir dire. :mask:

Still, I think living in the Pacific NW would have its consolations. I've always wanted to go there, the closest I got was a road-trip from SF in 2012 when we got up to redwood country.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-false-claims-new-hampshire_n_6536e24fe4b011a9cf7ab60f

Trump is losing his mind.

The most newsworthy quote probably came prior to the rally, when a reporter asked Trump if his recent perplexing claim that Sidney Powell was never his attorney (although he’s previously said she was) meant that his interactions with her wouldn’t be covered by attorney-client privilege.

Trump, who has been indicted four times, responded by making the completely false statement that he was “never indicted.”

“We did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “This is all Biden’s stuff … I was never indicted. You practically never heard the word.”

...

“You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes,” he said.

...

Trump also remarked that “U.S.” and “us” are spelled the same and noted that he’d “just picked that up.”

“Has anyone ever thought of that before?” he asked the crowd. “Couple of days, I’m reading, and it said ‘us.’ and I said, you know, when you think about it, us equals U.S. Now if we say something genius, they will never say it.”

...

Trump also promised to keep immigrants who “don’t like our religion” from entering the United States. Of course, the First Amendment establishes that there is no state religion in America.

...

He also justified challenging the 2020 election results by saying he doesn’t mind “being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason.”

Trump is losing his mind. — Michael

With luck, it's more that the rest of us (US) are regaining our minds. Trump is preparing himself for jail by channeling Nelson Mandela. He would go to his execution convinced he is Jesus.

Jenna Ellis pleads guilty in Georgia:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/politics/jenna-ellis-fulton-county/index.html

Ellis has implicated former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in her plea deal by admitting that she aided and abetted the former mayor’s “false statements” to Georgia lawmakers at a December 2020 hearing, where they both peddled baseless voter fraud claims.

She acknowledged that she was “assisting with the execution of” that legislative hearing with Giuliani and another co-defendant, Trump campaign attorney Ray Smith.

Jenna Ellis, domino number 4 out 18 (3rd MAGA lawyer in five days) drops –

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/24/jenna-ellis-plea-deal-trump-georgia-election-case

– more MAGA flips to come! :clap:

Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 claims: Sources

Former President Donald Trump's final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

:clap: :cool:

Did you see that Stable Genius had a live revelation, on the podium, speaking to a convention audience? He realised that the world 'us' - as in, you and me, first person plural participle - is the same spelling as US - United States! Isn't that astonishing! He realised that! But of course, the press aren't interested in such genius insights, they probably won't even report it. Stupid fake media.

Notice that DT are the same letters as the DT's or delirium tremens? Which, like Trump is a medical emergency causing:-

Severe agitation and restlessness
Confusion and disorientation
Hallucinations (often visual)
Tremors and shaking
Rapid heartbeat (tachycardia)
High blood pressure
Sweating
Seizures
Fever
Delusions
Profound anxiety
Sleep disturbances
Loss of appetite
Nausea and vomiting

i think, when push comes to shove, which is likely to be 2024, when he is actually convicted and facing jail (pending all the appeals), that he might well completely loose it and have to be, ahem, 'looked after'. He seems on the edge of mental competence a lot of the time as it is. (The fact that he keeps being referred to as 'the Republican front-runner' is like a hybrid of a joke and a nightmare.)

The efforts to remove T from the ballot in a number of States is an interesting expression of Federalism, where the rights of States can cancel national criteria.

Update on same. 5 things to know about Trump’s 14th Amendment disqualification trial in Colorado.

Some highlights:

Opening remarks in the trial began Monday, where a lawyer for the plaintiffs – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and six Colorado voters – argued that Trump “incited a violent mob” to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 “to stop the peaceful transfer of power under our Constitution.” Those actions, the lawyer said, deem Trump “ineligible” to be president again.

“It was Trump’s dereliction of duty – in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution – that caused the constitutional process to stop,” attorney Eric Olson said.

But the former president’s legal team argued that the “anti-democratic” lawsuit is tantamount to “election interference” in the 2024 presidential race...

Olson, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, argued that the Colorado case has four basic components: Trump took an oath as an officer of the U.S. The Capitol attack was an insurrection. Trump engaged in that insurrection. And Colorado’s secretary of state can be ordered by the court to keep him off the state’s ballot because of it.

But Trump’s counsel claimed that the plaintiff’s case is based solely on the report produced by the House committee that investigated the riot, which they described as “poison.”

Like many, I sat through many sessions of the Jan 6th Commission presentations. It was, of course, utterly compelling, and totally damning of Trump. Maybe the Jan 6th report is indeed 'poison' - poison to Trump's candidacy for the 2024 election. As it ought to be. Seems open-and-shut to me.

For those interested in the legal precedent for disqualification under the 14th Amendment insurrection clause, see https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/past-14th-amendment-disqualifications/

There were 8 prior instances following the Civil War. It remains debated whether it is applicable to Presidents. The chart lists the mechanism of adjudication, which has included having a state court judge determine eligibility.

If Colorado does remove him, it will only martyr him more, and all for nothing, because Colorado wasn't going Trump anyway.

Nevertheless if one or more states disqualifies Trump from the ballot, surely that would have to be considered by the other states, you would think. How otherwise could you have a candidate for the President of the ‘United States’? (Even allowing for the possibility that he will be a candidate which despite the opinion polls seems highly unlikely to me, considering all the other legal challenges.)

Historical precedent also confirms that a criminal conviction is not required for an individual to be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. No one who has been formally disqualified under Section 3 was charged under the criminal “rebellion or insurrection” statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) or its predecessors. This fact is consistent with Section 3’s text, legislative history, and precedent, all of which make clear that a criminal conviction for any offense is not required for disqualification. Section 3 is not a criminal penalty, but rather is a qualification for holding public office in the United States that can be and has been enforced through civil lawsuits in state courts, among other means.

Well that addresses my initial skepticism that the lawsuit would succeed.

He seems on the edge — Wayfarer

The best outcome to push back against Trumpism and the degeneracy of these people would be if he completely and openly loses it and acts out his mental breakdown in front of cameras and the world to see in such an embarrassing moment that there's no possible way to spin it into something positive, even for them.

It would probably also be the only way to save Republicans from their growing cancer of anti-intellectual capitalists since I think it would be hard for any of them to support Trump after something like that as it would stain their own status in politics.

Even so, I think Trump is done. The real issue is how to defeat the anti-intellectual movement globally. The degeneracy of knowledge and wisdom among a large portion of the population who's unable to handle the overload of information that modern internet is washing over them. With AI pushing the capabilities of misinformation even further, these people will unable to operate as normal human beings since they do not have the capability to understand how to separate misinformation/disinformation and real information.

It's hard enough to evaluate real information from slightly (and traditionally normally) politically skewed information from unbiased information, but with an ocean of just pure crap floating around online I think it's almost impossible for some people to know how to handle it.

The problem isn't really Trump or his followers, it's how we operate in a world in which this online sphere of influence produces new Trumps all over the place. How do we fix the source of the problem?