Turns out, per bombshell segment on CNN‘s NewNight Show (01/30/24) that political action committees (PACs) supporting former President Donald Trump are using the $50 million they have raised, to offset Trump’s personal legal bills. As NewsNight host Abby Phillips hastily points out, as shady as this may appear to the general public, it is apparently totally legal.
One would understand why the public would struggle with the legality of this action by Trump’s PACs, given the myriad news stories out there, of people being criminally prosecuted for starting GoFundMe campaigns to ostensibly raise funds for medical bills, only to turn around and use those funds for personal items like new vehicles, rent, jewellery, etc. If that is illegal, then why should it be perfectly legal for a PAC, which ostensibly raises money for Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2024, to turn around and use the raised funds to offset his personal legal bills?
Host Abby Phillip (0:15): “Sources tell CNN that $50 million, is how much the PACs supporting Trump, have raised and then donated to the cause of keeping Trump out of jail. Now, mind you, this is all legal, but a spokesman for one of those PACs insists tonight to the New York Times, that every dollar being raised by MAGA Inc is going directly to defeating Joe Biden in November. But at least some of those dollars and cents are as of this moment, being siphoned off for courtroom costs.”
Bottom line folks, reasonable people will agree that there is no difference between the financial fraud that GoFundMe scammers are rightly criminally prosecuted for, and what these Trump PACs are engaged in. Simply put, rather than just throwing up our hands in the air and accepting this cheating by Trump’s PACs as “totally legal”, maybe some legal eagle should embark on a novel federal lawsuit arguing that Trump’s PACs are defrauding their donors, and are in essence, no different than the criminal GoFundMe scammers. While this may not fix the issue during this 2024 election cycle, maybe, just maybe, it may spur members of Congress to come up with a legislative fix for these and other PAC loopholes, for future elections.
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An interesting segment on MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight (01/1624) show delved into the strange daliance between Evangelical Christians(predominantly White), and the politics of former President Donald Trump, often referred to as Trumpism, or MAGA Trumpism. The alliance between these two strange bedfellows has led many to question whether MAGA Trumpism has become some sort of political/civil religion.
The MSNBC segment came against the backdrop of Trump’s massive win in the Iowa Republican presidential primary, and specifically, his command of the White Evangelical vote, which polls placed at 53%. Back in 2016, when Trump first ran for president, he only received 21% of the White Evangelical vote in Iowa, a clear sign that he has now consolidated the White Evangelical vote in Iowa, and arguably nationwide.
#BREAKING:🔥Alex: "In the eight years between those two #IowaCaucuses, Donald Trump has not only more than doubled his support from #Evangelicals, he has also REDEFINED what it means to be one."
Host Alex Wagner posed this question to her guest, Author Tim Alberta, who’s also a staff writer at The Atlantic (2:07): “I wonder in your estimation, what it means to be an Evangelical in this country, at this moment?” Tim Alberta responded in relevant part: “We are beginning to flirt with this territory where definitionally speaking, Evangelicalism has far more to do, at least in the perception of the greater public, with political engagement, partisan political identification, than it does with any particular theology or any real religious conviction, and if you take it a step further, if you look at the exit polling, if you look at some of the social science around this, if you look at the fact that during Donald Trump’s presidency, more and more of Donald Trump’s supporters were self-identifying as Evangelicals even though they were simultaneously attending Church less and less often, I think one might reach the uncomfortable conclusion that perhaps the best definition now for what it means to be an Evangelical, is to be a conservative White Republican Trump supporter, and that is a tragedy on any number of different levels, but I think most profoundly, it’s a tragedy for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Host Alex Wagner then interjected with this profound question (3:50): “If the Gospel is no longer part of the equation, what is it replaced by…do you think MAGA-ism has become a placeholder for a certain kind of religion?”
Tim Alberta: “Yes…I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, the Evangelical community is large, it’s huge, and it’s complicated…but…we are reaching a place where we are being confronted with some uncomfortable realities about what it means to be a part of the Evangelical movement and frankly, where the line blurs between sort of religious identity and political identity, and is there a merging of the two, and frankly I think that there’s always a danger in politics…of sort of turning political conviction into religious conviction, or worshipping at a certain altar that is not an altar to God, but is an altar to political idolatry or to political identity. That is a danger that has always been there, but it is I think uniquely dangerous in this moment, and to be clear…we have examples from the not so distant past, of a sort of political religion, or at least a civil religion, supplanting, competing with actual religion, and I don’t think that we’re all that far removed from that in this country now, looking at just what happened…in Iowa.”
To conclude the segment, Tim Alberta floated this interesting scenario, which gets right to the fallacy of the Evangelical-MAGA Trumpism alliance. He said (8:19): “If during Barack Obama’s presidency, or while he was running for president, if you had heard him talking with, or promoting a video saying that he was a shepherd to all of mankind, the Evangelical movement would have been up in arms [and rightly so], I mean this is heretical, this is blasphemous and yet, Donald Trump seems to get a pass time and time again for doing these things that no other politician, Republican or Democrat frankly, would get a pass for doing, and we should ask ourselves why. If the answer does not at least start to flirt with this terrain of civil religion, or political religion, then I think that we’re not being honest with ourselves, and if we are being honest with ourselves, if we are willing to engage with the very uncomfortable topic around what happens when Trumpism becomes civil religion in this country for millions of millions of people, and what that might imply moving forward, then we are doing a disservice to our prularistic democracy.”
Bottom line folks, we’ve always operated on the separation of church and state doctrine, and have for decades, shunned foreign theocracies like the ones in Afghanistan and Iran. Author Tim Alberta is absolutely correct when he says, we need to be honest with ourselves, and admit that there is no difference between the Evangelical-MAGA dalliance in the American political scene, and the theocracies in Iran and Afghanistan. Simply put, we need to make a decision as to whether we want to continue with the separation of church and state doctrine, or whether, that time-honored tradition has also been sacrificed at the altar of MAGA Trumpism.
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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (09/24/2021), where she blasted elected Republicans in Texas for giving in to former President Trump’s baseless demands for an audit into the state’s 2020 election results. The decision by the Texas Secretary of State’s office to conduct an audit into the election results of Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties, came literally a few hours after Trump’s demand, which led a visibly upset Judge Hidalgo to tell host Maddow that Texas was “being run from Maralago.”
Judge Hidalgo told Maddow:“We have to remember we had incredibly successful elections here in Harris County in 2020. We had innovations that led to record turnouts from both parties, the highest in 30 years, I mean it was beautiful, and since then, no evidence has come out that would in any way cause the need for this kind of audit. All we’ve seen is [former]President Trump exhorting the state, or [Governor]Abbott, to have this audit…The reality of it is Texas is being run from Maralago, and that is dangerous, and it’s not appropriate…it’s extremely concerning.”
Judge Hidalgo added that time had come for politicians in Washington to get off the sidelines, and actively join the fight against voter suppression in the states, telling host Maddow, “We need the federal government to act, I mean, this has gone too far… This should be another call to action. We’ve got the writing on the wall. We’ve got to get off our chairs and get moving on all this.”
Bottom line folks, as Judge Hidalgo correctly pointed out, time has come for some decisive action to be taken against these naked efforts by Republicans at the state level, to restrict the voting rights of minorities. Democrats in Washington cannot just sit on the sidelines, and watch their counterparts in Republican-led states like Texas, go to war against GOP’s efforts to restrict minority voting rights. Simply put, time has come for Democrats in Washington to finally do away with the filibuster, and institute a national voting standard geared towards making it easier for people to vote, as opposed to GOP’s scheme of limiting access to the ballot box. As Judge Hidalgo correctly put it, congressional Democrats need to “get off their chairs and get moving” on a comprehensive federal voting rights law.
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Ever since Trump was elected U.S. President in November 2016, many Americans have wrestled with the question as to whether he is being unduly influenced by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The question of Russia’s influence over Trump grew into a crescendo prompting the launching of a formal investigation (Mueller probe) to look into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in 2016.
Even though the official finding of the Mueller probe was that there was not enough evidence to prove that TeamTrump colluded with Russia, questions about Trump’s ties to Russia have persisted, partly because Mueller never completely shut that door. Remember, Mueller never concluded that TeamTrump never colluded with Russia. What he said was that he never collected enough evidence to prove it. One of the key witnesses he had relied on to prove his case, Paul Manafort, totally stonewalled his investigation.
Beyond Trump’s strange ties to Russia, a lot of Americans have also been confounded by the extreme measures congressional Republicans have taken and continue to take, all in an effort to shield President Trump from any congressional oversight. This has led a lot of people to validly speculate that congressional Republicans are privy to some wrongdoings (potentially criminal) by Trump, and have made a conscious decision to hide this from the public–which has given rise to this notion that Trump’s GOP is a criminal enterprise.
Yours Truly raised this very question way back in August 2018 in a blog post titled Proof That Congressional Republicans Have Become A Criminal Enterprise, a post which you probably summarily dismissed as “yet another conspiracy theory” pushed by “radical liberal @Emolclause.” The blog post was based on an August 27, 2018 piece by Jonathan Chait of the Intelligencer, which made the bombshell revelation that congressional Republicans had essentially sworn to shield from any oversight, a list of things they figured would be harmful to Trump’s presidency. Some of the items in GOP’s shield-at-all-costs list included surprise surprise, Trump’s tax returns, Trump’s family business, White house clearances, and shockingly, issues dealing with election security/Russians hacking our elections.
Any reasonable person reading this bombshell Intelligencer piece would have concluded as Yours Truly did, that congressional Republicans had not only become a criminal enterprise, but that they were certainly not working in the interests of the American people.
A lot has transpired since August 2018 and what many of you summarily dismissed as “wild conspiracy theories by radical @Emolclause” is now playing out right in front of our very eyes. It has become impossible to continue assuming that congressional Republicans are just naively defending Trump. Many are now starting to to state publicly that Trump’s GOP has indeed become a criminal enterprise.
There are many reasons as to why people have become more comfortable in publicly calling Trump’s GOP a criminal enterprise but the best reason by far is the shocking conduct we witnessed during the recent impeachment hearings, when Republican members of congress, in an effort to defend Trump, kept repeating a debunked conspiracy theory pushed by Russian intelligence officials, that it was Ukraine who interfered with our 2016 elections. This shocking behavior by congressional Republicans drew sharp rebuke from Trump’s former adviser on Russia, Dr Fiona Hill, who castigated them to their faces, telling them they were doing Putin’s work.
Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris(CA) is no longer biting her tongue either regarding this topic and recently called Republicans a “criminal enterprise” on CBS’ Steven Colbert show, an assertion she gladly repeated on her Twitter account.
We are witnessing a criminal enterprise involving all the President’s men. I encourage my Republican colleagues to put country over party. Our democracy deserves justice. pic.twitter.com/2W8WyR4zPV
For the record, neither the Intelligencer nor Yours Truly were the first to start labelling Trump’s GOP a criminal enterprise. Shining lights like Author Sarah Kendzior were already warning about this right after Trump won the election–an assertion many in the mainstream media dismissed. Just today the aforementioned Sarah Kendzior stopped by MSNBC’s AMJoy show where she dropped this bombshell totally in keeping with her previous warnings.
Bottom line folks, we cannot keep kicking the can down the road over the very serious queston as to whether sitting Republican members of congress are engaged in some kind of criminal conspiracy with a hostile foreign power(Russia). There’s enough smoke at this juncture for Democrats and indeed the mainstream media to start publicly asking the question Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently posed to President Trump and that is, why all Trump’s/GOP’s roads seem to lead to Russia, and more importantly, what is so rotten with their Russia dealings that they are terrified of the public finding out?
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In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all but confirmed what most Democrats including Yours Truly have always suspected, that the GOP’s ultimate plan is to gut the three key entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security using the argument that they are the biggest contributors to the national debt.
Asked by a Bloomberg host what the GOP plans to do about the record $779 Billion deficit, Sen McConnell responded, “Its very disturbing and its driven by the three biggest entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. That’s 70% of what we spend every year…there’s been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully at some point here we will get serious about it, we haven’t been yet.”Translation? If the GOP wins both the House and Senate this November, expect drastic cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
While it is a fact that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are indeed the biggest contributors to the national debt, what Republicans conveniently leave out of the debate is that this was true even before they passed their massive tax cuts that favor the rich. As a matter of fact prior to the GOP passing the massive tax bill, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office(CBO) warned that the tax bill would severely worsen the national debt problem. So Republicans knew their tax cuts for the rich would balloon the already high national debt, rammed them through anyway, and are now trying to shift the blame to the working poor by arguing for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
US deficit to approach $1tn after Trump tax cuts and spending bill, CBO says https://t.co/piK0plZfSL
Several mainstream media outlets confronted key GOP members of congress about the wisdom of pushing through the massive tax cuts knowing full well that it would worsen the national debt problem. The answer given by House Speaker Paul Ryan, a well known deficit hawk was that there was nothing to worry about because the tax cuts would spur massive economic growth which would take care of the deficit problem.
It appears now given Sen Mitch McConnell’s recent comments to Bloomberg that Speaker Ryan was lying all along. The GOP knew full well the tax cuts would create a massive national debt which they would then use as an excuse to gut the three key entitlement programs–Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security–a lifelong goal for GOP Super Donors Koch Brothers.
Bottom line it is not a surprise that the GOP is now going after Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The important thing is that there is a surefire way of stopping the corrupt GOP dead in their tracks–voting in midterms 2018. Simply put, Democrats must campaign heavily using the argument that the GOP wants to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, programs that have predominantly helped the poor in order to sustain their reckless tax cuts for the rich. Now that is a winning campaign message for Dems both for the House and U.S. Senate.
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The U.S. Supreme Court deals with a wide range of issues affecting the daily lives of Americans. Because the issues the court deals with are so many and so diverse, it is impossible/unfair to paint the courts decisions with a broad brush. However when it comes to politics, especially as it relates to GOP vs Democratic Party issues, the Roberts Supreme Court has established itself as a reliable GOP ally making horrendous decisions that favor the GOP
One such horrendous decision was Citizens United, where the court allowed the unlimited flow of dark/anonymous money into political campaigns. No reasonable person can ever conclude that the Roberts Supreme Court did not envision the disastrous effect unlimited dark/anonymous money would have on U.S. politics. Reasonable people will conclude that the Roberts Supreme Court knew their decision in Citizens United would likely lead to a spike in political corruption (pay for play) but went along with it anyway because it favored the GOP. The disastrous effects of Citizens United on U.S. politics continue to be felt to this day especially by poor voters who feel their representatives only cater for their rich mega donors
Then this week the Roberts Supreme Court made yet another horrendous decision which any reasonable person knows or should know will lead to the political disenfranchisement of millions of minority voters but like Citizens United, favors the GOP. The Roberts Supreme Court struck down lower court decisions that had found Texas Congressional Districts unconstitutionally gerrymandered(racially). There is no question that this will embolden Texas and other GOP-controlled states to gerrymander congressional districts even further.
As if this is not enough, the Roberts Supreme Court also upheld Ohio’s policy of purging voters that a lower court found unconstitutional–targeted minority voters. This again is a horrendous decision by the Roberts Supreme Court which any reasonable person knows or should know will lead to even further purging of minority voters in Ohio and other states. The Ohio decision fits the pattern–it is yet another horrendous decision by the Roberts Supreme Court, whose disastrous effects are easily predictable, but the court upheld because it favors the GOP.
Bottom line it is time for Dems to come out of the wood works and start speaking boldly about the troubling trend being set by the Roberts Supreme Court as regards the GOP. As Yours Truly stated earlier, the Roberts Supreme Court has essentially become a trusted wing of the GOP. From sanctioning unlimited flow of money into politics through Citizens United, sanctioning racially-based gerrymandering, to now sanctioning voter purging, Dems have no otherwise but to start speaking out against these horendous decisions.
So you ask, “but @Emolclause how are Dems supposed to speak out against the Roberts Supreme Court? Won’t that look bad?” Well, Dems need to do what has worked for them for decades–peaceful protests. Peaceful protests outside the Roberts Supreme Court like the one done yesterday after the court upheld Trump’s Muslim ban must become more common.
Surely the strong grassroots Dem women who organized the highly successful Womens March can put together a Supreme Court March to protest Citizens United, Gerrymandering and voter purge decisions. Everbody knows the justices have lifetime appointment and there’s nothing Dems can do to effect their removal. However the justices like the rest of us consume the same national news stories. Images of massive protests outside the U.S. Supreme Court will not go unnoticed by the Roberts Supreme Court and may,just may, revert the court back to being the “people’s court” not the “GOP’s court”.
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After news that Rhode Island’s Senate approved a measure requiring all presidential candidates to release 5 years of their tax returns in order to be placed on the state’s ballot, the focus has again shifted to Trump’s tax returns, a major campaign issue during the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections. Grassroots Dems including Yours Truly, ecstatic about Rhode Island’s decision are now pushing for other states to follow Rhode Island’s lead and lock Trump out of the 2020 ballot unless he releases the tax returns he promised to–the #NoTaxReturnsNoBallot campaign
Left out of the renewed tax return debate however, is the fact that GOP members of Congress have played a major role in aiding the president hide his tax returns from the public, especially these 23 Republicans in the House Ways and Means Committee, or as Yours Truly calls them, the “wall of shame”.
Their efforts to block moves by Congressional Dems to have Trump’s tax returns released to the public were reported in this February 15, 2017 piece by the DailyKos. As you can see from the article, the DailyKos has done all the legwork in exposing these shameful GOP members of congress. Yours Truly is simply hitting you with a reminder now that midterms 2018 are around the corner. As usual they will be coming begging for your votes claiming they stand for “transparency in government.” They will be hoping off course that you’ve long forgotten about their lack of transparency re Trump’s tax returns. Boy are they in for a rude awakening this fall?!
Here is a handy list of the names and office phone numbers of the wall of shame members
U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (CA-22)
Phone: (202) 225-2523
U.S. Representative Kevin Brady (TX-08) Phone: (202) 225-4901
U.S. Representative Sam Johnson (TX-03)
Phone: (202) 225-4201
U.S. Representative Pat Tiberi (OH-12)
Phone: (202) 225-5355
U.S. Representative Dave Reichert (WA-08)
Phone: (202) 225-7761
U.S. Representative Peter Roskam (IL-06)
Phone: (202) 225-4561
U.S. Representative Vern Buchanan (FL-16)
Phone: (202) 225-5015
U.S. Representative Adrian Smith (NE-03)
Phone: (202) 225-6435
U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins (KS-02)
Phone: (202) 225-6601
U.S. Representative Erik Paulsen (MN-03)
Phone: (202) 225-2871
U.S. Representative Kenny Marchant (TX-24)
Phone: (202) 225-6605
U.S. Representative Diane Black (TN-06)
Phone: (202) 225-4231
U.S. Representative Tom Reed (NY-23)
Phone: (202) 225-3161
U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (PA-03)
Phone: (202) 225-5406
U.S. Representative Jim Renacci (OH-16)
Phone: (202) 225-3876
U.S. Representative Pat Meehan (PA-07)(resigned in disgrace)
U.S. Representative Kristi Noem (SD-AL)
Phone: (202) 225-2801
U.S. Representative George Holding (NC-02)
Phone: (202) 225-3032
U.S. Representative Jason Smith (MO-08)
Phone: (202) 225-4404
U.S. Representative Tom Rice (SC-07)
Phone: (202) 225-9895
U.S. Representative Dave Schweikert (AZ-06)
Phone: (202) 225-2190
U.S. Representative Jackie Walorski (IN-02)
Phone: (202) 225-3915
U.S. Representative Carlos Curbelo (FL-26)
Phone:(202) 225-2778
Bottomline folks, #NoTaxReturnsNoBallot is a win-win fight for Dems because it puts the GOP in the unenviable position of defending a public official(Trump) who promised to release his tax returns while campaigning but now chooses to hide them, even as questions about his corrupt business practices continue to pile up. Dem State Reps across the country must introduce bills like the one in Rhode Island so as to get Republicans go on the record with a vote to hide Trump’s tax returns–a vote for lack of transparency in government. Dems can rest assured that midterms 2018 voters will not be happy with pro-secrecy in government candidates–the GOPers hiding Trump’s tax returns.
Folks see if one of these wall of shame bums is your Rep in Congress and if they are, make sure to vote them out this Midterms 2018!!
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