What he and others who make this argument refuse to comprehend is this: If the VP were allowed to pull a stunt like this, then we are essentially saying that the VP picks the next President of the United States. No need to hold an election; might as well just have Harris declare Biden the winner of 2024 already and let’s just skip right to the swearing in. Heck, let’s be efficient about it – who wants to be President in 2028? Might as well have Harris declare the winner of that election too. Look at that; we’ve got the Presidency sorted out for the next decade or so, and we can spend the next few years prepping someone like AOC for the White House in 2032.

I mean that’s the way it works, right? The VP can just unilaterally declare who did and didn’t win the election, right GOP? Because if this is the rule you’re gonna set forth, we might as well take full advantage of it…

Hold on…

You mean to tell me that a Trump deal was shady from the start, a whole bunch of people involved in it are under investigation and facing criminal charges, and in the end a whole bunch of people are going to lose their shirts and another business will go bankrupt?

Surely you jest! This has never happened with any of Trump’s transactions before!!!

The whole point of things like this is to dilute the impact of the words being used. This way, when they get caught doing the exact same thing, it won’t seem “bad” in the eyes of their constituents.

It’s one of the reasons the GOP are pushing so hard to impeach Biden. So when people say that Trump was impeached twice, the MAGA crowd can just say “Yeah, so was Biden. So was Clinton. Presidents get impeached all the time. They never get removed. It’s all for political show anyway, it’s no big deal. The next guy will probably get impeached too.”

It’s why GOP politicians are trying to frame even minor incidents of protest as “insurrections” or “coups”. They know it sounds ridiculous. That’s the whole point. If you water down words like “insurrection”, “coup”, “sedition”, and “treason”, then the MAGA crowd can just say “January 6th wasn’t an insurrection. The country is still here. Quit calling every protest an insurrection. We’re not in the 1780s any more.”

Same thing with the RICO charges. Why do you think Miller and MTG were tweeting “RICO?”. Charge everybody with RICO charges and Trump being charged no longer seems like a big deal.

It’s a long term strategy. Make the idea of being charged with crimes just a normal part of the political process, and make everybody think it’s not that bad. That way, when they’re caught engaging in the corrupt acts they routinely accuse others of engaging in, it’ll be considered “normal” and “no big deal”, and make it almost impossible to remove them.

Well, this should be no surprise.

She’s been bending over backwards for Trump since day one, and she’s spent this entire time dragging her feet on even the most basic of issues. She created delay after delay, and is now using the delay she created as the justification for granting the postponement that Trump has been seeking all along.

“Mid November.” What a god damned coincidence. The rotting corpse of Hellen Keller could have seen right through that load of bullshit.

I actually consider this a very big win for Trump.

Literal decades of fraud that netted him billions in profits and he only has to pay back $300 million.

Little decades of fraud, and he’s only banned from being an officer or director for 3 years. He gets to keep everything else.

Once again a very rich person got away with decades of crimes and only had to give back a portion of the profits. $355 million is only a small portion of the money he has made in the past four decades.

Guy should have been forced to cough up the full 375, and then permanently banned from doing any more businesses in the state. Anything else is a gift.

Washington Post: Refuses to endorse a candidate in order to appease Trump.

Also Washington Post: Gets sued anyway for not appeasing Trump enough.

How’s that non-endorsement working out for you, Bezos?

A couple of important details that got overlooked.

• Don Jr. and Eric Trump do not have to put up the $5 million each that they were fined. Those collections are being paused as well.

• The restrictions against Don Jr. and Eric Trump that would prevent them from running the business for 3 years has been lifted.

So much for that accountability. Can’t wait to hear about the entire judgement getting tossed because an appelate judge decided that the Susan Collins rule of “He learned his lesson, and he pinky swears it won’t happen again” applies.

“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda,” Walsh wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

In other words “Damn right we lied to everybody! Thanks, suckers!”

I guess there’s no need to even bother wearing the masks any more. Racism, misogyny and bigotry won the day. Handily. Republicans turned out in droves to sign up for more of it, and Democrats have said they’re willing to accept it rather than elect a black woman. At that point, why even bother hiding it. Everybody knows what it is, and last night they said in pretty decisive fashion that they either actively want it or are at least willing to accept it.

We did this to ourselves. Trump made some small gains, but Harris underperformed Biden by roughly 10% or so. That means millions of Democrats sat home instead of voting for Harris, which also cost the Democrats some House and Senate seats downballot due to the lower turnout. There was no election fraud. This was a free and fair election. Trump won the popular vote. There are no excuses this time. We. Voted. For. This.

8-10 million Democrats stayed home. I don’t care if you’re “protesting Gaza”, or if you’re a closeted bigot who would rather sit out than vote for a black woman. Or whatever. If you stayed home rather than vote for Harris, you voted for this. In the words of Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. And you made that choice knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.

The GOP had a damn good night last night. And they couldn’t even wait 24 hours before cramming it right down our throats. They couldn’t even wait 24 hours to take the mask off. Give it a couple of days and I figure the national abortion ban will be the next thing they don’t bother trying to lie about any more. Why bother trying to hide it? We already said we’re cool with it.

We can no longer hide behind the excuse of “the electoral college”. We can no longer say that Trump did not win the popular vote. Trump won the Presidency, retook the Senate, and are poised to retain the house. Progressive candidates and initiatives either underperformed or failed nationwide. A majority of voters nationwide saw everything that came with a Trump presidency and a MAGA agenda and said “Yes. We want more of that.”

We are not better than this.

Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I’m talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.

Here’s the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from “Hey, this game ain’t so bad” to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.

That’s where we’re at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn’t want to make it to level 3 because he knows he’ll never beat level 3. He’s looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.

But he can’t. So he’s essentially stopped playing the game. He’s telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick’s broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he’s getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren’t listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn’t even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.