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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.
First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".
But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.
No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.
Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.
But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.
Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.
This reminds me of another person who confidently prognosticated, back in the day, that Trump would be in jail within a matter of weeks. It didn't happen.
More seriously, the tit-for-tat has set in. I see the House of Representatives have voted to proceed with impeachment inquiry against Biden. And it was all done on party lines: Republicans voting 'yes', Democrats voting 'no'.
So the lesson about using the system to get the political opponents has been learned, and the other side is deciding to play now.
Is there something serious there for Biden to answer? Who can tell, now? It's all been reduced to partisan weaponry. Before anyone starts gloating over "Trump is going to jail!", they should look at this. What's to stop multiple attempts to 'get' Biden, including persuading some state attorney to grandstand about taking a prosecution? The playbook has been set out as to how to do it.
They can’t ‘get’ Biden unless they get 67 seats in the Senate.
But the precedent has been set and is being followed, that's the rub. And there's always the courts, as we see here. Maybe Joe can't be impeached, but thanks to Hunter, he sure can be dragged through the courts on tax charges, bank charges, money charges, whatever else.
Maybe Tara Reade will find a sympathetic prosecutor to special-case this one time extend the statute of limitations for her, as E. Jean Carroll got, so that Trump could finally be "we told you he's a convicted sex offender!"
She has defected to Russia. This sharply increases my estimation of her always having been a Russian asset. I realize how absolutely bizarre that claim sounds in light of ridiculous Russia conspiracies about election-related mind control, but here we are.
It seem weird to me to use "defected" after the fall of the Soviet Union. If I decide to move to Dubai (or Tokyo or Vancouver) and renounce my US citizenship is that "defecting"? It seems like the only time the word is used is in reference to moving to Russia. Do people defect to Iran?
People defect to North Korea, that happens occasionally.
It seems to me that if she gets a Russian state pension or equivalent, she defected, otherwise she just moved for whatever reason, possibly because she’s a traumatized mentally ill woman.
I can agree with that.
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