Even with regrets MAGA leaders suffering stomach cramps from dining on the Trumpian feast will find that meal options are all still tainted with the same noxious samonella.

If you have a NY Times subscription read Regret, Thy Name Is Hawley. And Murkowski. And Musk by Frank Bruni. Even if you don’t read the summary of the article in RawStory, 'Reeks of regret': Analyst sees multiple Trump allies now giving off 'whiff of panic' by Travis Gettys. Whether you read the essay in the Tines or not look at the comments in Raw Story. The NY times piece doe not have comments.

I wrote my comment in RawStory (below) and then reviewed some of the others and saw that the same or similar sentiment and reaction as mine were expressed. This is what I wrote:

Great quote from Bruni - willed gullibility is a perfect term, and indeed it was a Faustian bargain. The Devil took his due.

"Theirs was a willed gullibility — they have always known deep down who Trump is," Bruni wrote. "They wagered that they could live with that. They made a Faustian bargain, abetting him so that he didn’t eviscerate them. They just didn’t understand the full price they’d pay."

The commenter below had another way of putting it:

Here’s the GIF on the left above.

At this moment there are only 65 comments to the RawStory article. They run the gamut, for example:

Down the road we don’t know whether the regrets of Trump enablers will amount to anything. It probably won’t be more than like someone with indigestion caused by eating tainted food passing gas. There might be momentary relief, but at their next meal the only food available would be served with the same Trumpian samonella. 

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A chilling story of how a journalist was terrorized by American neo-Nazis should be widely reported. I was going to write about ICE, then I read about how Neo-Nazis targeted a RawStory journalist.

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The RawStory article ( above and here) by a RawStory journalist, Jordan Green, who was directly targeted and terrorized by American neo-Nazis and had his family life upended led me to change the story I originally intended to write this morning.

You can read the article without charge where it was also published on The Assembly here.

On the RawStory artilce note that the shirt the man in the lower left pictured in front of Jordan Green’s house says “Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando'.” This is what the Einsatz-Kommando'” was:

Note that the shirt the man in the lower left pictured in front of Jordan Green’s house says “Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando'.” This is what the Einsatz-Kommando'” was:

During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) – up to 3,000 men total – usually composed of 500–1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to exterminate Jews, Polish intellectuals, Romani, and communists in the captured territories often far behind the advancing German front.^[1][2] Einsatzkommandos, along with Sonderkommandos, were responsible for the systematic murder of Jews during the aftermath of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. After the war, several commanders were tried in the Einsatzgruppen trial, convicted, and executed. Read more here.

I woke up at 5:00 like I usually do and was thinking of writing my daily Substack about what America would be like in a few years with an unrestrained ICE. This was prompted by this local story: “Immigration arrest outside Oregon preschool rattles parents" and the fact that in the morning after the arrest we were at our granddaughter's soccer game in the town where it happened. 

Here’s what occurred:

Parents at a preschool in a Portland suburb are reeling after immigration officers arrested a father in front of the school during morning drop-off hours, breaking his car window to detain him in front of children, families and staffers.

“I feel like a day care, which is where young children are taken care of, should be a safe place,” Natalie Berning said after dropping off her daughter at the Montessori in Beaverton on Friday morning. “Not only is it traumatizing for the family, it’s traumatizing for all the other children as well.”

Mahdi Khanbabazadeh, a 38-year-old chiropractor and citizen of Iran, was initially pulled over by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, while driving his child to the school Tuesday. After asking if he could drop off the child first, he continued driving and called his wife to tell her what happened, according to his wife, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to privacy concerns for her and her young child.

His wife rushed to the school, took their child from his car and brought him inside. Khanbabazadeh stayed in the vehicle in the parking lot and asked if he could move somewhere not on school grounds out of consideration for the children and families, his wife said. He pulled out of the lot and onto the street and began to open the car door to step out when agents broke the window and took him into custody, according to his wife.

There were lots of Hispanic families at the soccer game and I could see them being targeted by ICE. There were some multi-racial Black/White families where the children could be mistaken for being Hispanic too. I was thinking of how, with ICE on a rampage, nobody who could be wrongly or rightly be identified as Hispanic could feel safe. Ironically, considering America’s history of anti-Black racism the only people who can feel safe from ICE are those who are either Black or White.

I also thought about the talented lead dancer at the Kona Hilton Hotel in hula show we went to on our recent Hawaii vacation and his tan skin and tattoos. On the mainland, where people aren’t familiar with Hawaiians, he could easily be arrested by ICE agents thinking he was Hispanic despite his being an American citizen traveling with a real ID. His protestations that he was of Hawaiian descent and that his family, dating back for generations, were American citizens, would would fall on deaf ears. They’d only see his tatoos and skin color.

After composing the gist of what I wanted to write in my Substack in my mind, I read the riveting and chilling article about what could be unofficial subsidiaries of ICE, organized groups of American Nazis. In this instance it was about members of such groups terrorizing a journalist working for my favorite news and opinion website, RawStory (read about them on Wikipedia).

It hit home that a threatening email message about one of their writers was received at Raw Story’s email inbox for corrections:

Then, on March 28, 2024, my editor alerted me to a threatening message received at Raw Story’s email inbox for corrections.
The anonymous sender said they were delivering “a warning for the workers of the Raw Story,” and that they belonged to “another group with an international team.” Thanks to 2119’s efforts, they had my personal information.

I have sent hundreds of corrections to that address. Everyone who reads my emails at RawStory and then makes the usually minor typo corrections I alert them to sends me a prompt "thank you" back. They know who I am. For example:

For all I know that Nazi email was sandwiched between two of my emails.

Why Jordan Green has been targeted the horrible way he has, rather than a better known journalist, is a mystery. Perhaps it is because they thought he was an easier target than someone who worked for a TV network or mainstream newspaper. As recently as last night everyone on an MSNBC panel has said they’d received death threats. None of them went into detail. If they had American Nazis on their front lawn as happened with Jordan Green perhaps they didn’t want to give them publicity. Hopefully, law enforcement is aggressively investigating such threats, although if it’s up Pam Bondi’s DOJ and to Kash Patel’s FBI I don’t have any confidence that this will be done.

The target of such American Nazis could be anyone who has reported the truth about the MAGA Nazis. It won’t be someone like me since I am really obscure, but it could be anyone else who writes for a wide audience.

Green’s is a story which should be reported on far and wide in the non-MAGA media. Green should be interviewed on MSNBC and CNN. His is a story that must be told alongside the stories about ICE.

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How some old Trump drawings could lead to Vance becoming the 48th president, by Hal M. Brown

 

“I never wrote a picture in my life,” he said in a rebuttal to the accusations made in The Wall Street Journal as he vehemently denied having anything to do with the Epstein birthday card. I won’t delve into the syntax of this sentence suggesting cognitive decline since this is so obvious.

In fact, Trump does “write” pictures. Some of them have been sold at auction. The signed sketch shown below sold in 2017 for $16,000, according to The New York Times.

One has to assume that those sold at auction had their provenance verified. If this is a basis of Trump’s defense it is weak sauce. If it is all he has, he ain’t got bupkis.

He can’t say he never knew Epstein. He could try to say that it’s impossible to find an unbiased jury since I expect we will see pictures like the one below not just in the UK but all over the place (read article): 

Trump may hope that Rupurt Murdoch settles, folding like others have, trembling at the thought of being taken to court by the Mighty Donald Trump. He very well be underestimating the man that built a media empire and is now worth around $20 billion. Trump is worth about $5 billion. 

I have a feeling Murdoch relishes going up against Trump in court. I think the first order of business for him would be to do everything possible to assure the trial was televised. If he could do this he’d fire any Fox News personalities who tried to take Trump’s side and the trial would have wall to wall coverage on Fox News.

We should remember that Trump got his start with a major leg up from his father. He got $413M from his dad, much from tax dodges (article). Murdoch got his start when he inherited a small newspaper, The News, in 1952 following his father’s death.

Murdoch rightfully can claim that if any one person can claim that they greased the wheels of Trump’s ascendence to the presidency it is Rupurt Murdoch. Nobody can say that without Fox News Trump wouldn’t have been elected twice but their influence can’t be underestimated. If Murdoch cares about how history views him once he’s gone, he may want to be depicted as someone who meant well in supporting Trump, but eventually realized he created a monster and decided to bring him down. He could use this trial to begin the unraveling of Trump’s aura of invincibility.

This could lead to J.D. Vance deciding the time was finally ripe for initiating the 25th Amendment due to Trump’s impossible to plausibly deny dementia.

Vance has every motivation to do this since if successful he would become president. He needs a majority of the Cabinet to turn on Trump and vote to send this to Congress. This is where Vance has leverage. If he became president he could replace any Cabinet member. He could promise to keep enough of them so he’d get the votes he needed. You can bet he will be following national polls carefully.

Then there’s the most difficult part. A two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate is required to remove a president under the 25th Amendment. Assuming all the Democrats voted for removal obviously enough Republicans would have to look to their own futures to gauge the sentiment of the voters. 

Here’s where Elon Musk comes in. If he backs the removal of Trump he can pour massive amounts of money into any candidate’s campaign who will run against a Trump supporting member of Congress. 

J.D. Vance could become the 48th President of the United States.

Trump has normalized a president wearing a red baseball cap. If Vance really want to stick it to Trump he could wear a hat like the one below once he became president.

.

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When will it be time for Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment to begin the process of pulling Trump's driver's license? By Hal M. Brown

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The RawStory article title is 'Yikes': Ex-Tea Party lawmaker sounds alarm on 'cover-up' of 'Trump's cognition. The lawmaker it’s about is Joe Walsh.

Here’s the excerpt that made me think of my grandfather’s cognitive decline:

"As all of this is playing out, Trump’s health and cognitive fitness are in the spotlight again. White Housephysicians report that he is suffering from chronic venous insufficiency, which has resulted in his unsightly ankle swelling," Walsh wrote Friday. "Not a terribly shocking development for an obese 79-year-old man."

However, he said, "A bigger concern is his cognitive decline."

Drawing attention to a previous allegation Walsh himself made, he added Friday, "As you know, I’ve said there’s a cover-up going on in the White House with respect to Trump’s cognition."

"There was more proof of his decline this week, as Trump publicly questioned why Joe Biden hired Fed Chair Jerome Powell—even though he appointed Powell during his first term. Yikes," Walsh wrote.

My maternal grandfather lived with us all of my life until I went off to college. My parents moved into his and my grandmother’s house when they got married and my family continued to live there. My grandmother died when I was four and I ended up moving into their room which had two full-sized beds. 

My grandfather was a kind man. He was self-effacing, easy going, and rather passive. Prior to retiring he was a salesman in the families men’s clothing store.

His one passion aside from doting on my younger sister and me was dancing at the Y’s senior canteen where he was something of a ladies man.

Aside from liking the ladies after his wife died, he was absolutely nothing like Trump. 

In many ways my grandfather was a surrogate father since my own father worked 6 ½ days a week, left for work before I woke up and came home just in time for a 6 PM dinner. After eating he was too tired to do much more than fall asleep in front of the TV.

My father never got a driver’s license. He took the bus to work. Thinking back, I wonder if he had some kind of phobia about driving.

My grandfather and mother were the drivers in the family and my grandfather sometimes chauffeured my father around on various errands. 

By the time my grandfather began to succumb to dementia I’d already gone off to college but heard the following story which relates to Trump from my mother.

He was driving my father someplace and turned onto a oneway street going in the wrong direction. He drove for a short distance without encountering any other cars but then several cars approached and had to pull around him to avoid a collision. They were honking their horns and gesturing frantically at him.

His reaction was to happily say to my father “they know me, they know me.”

My father got him to pull over and turn around. When they arrived home he told my mother about it. They decided it was time to pull his driver’s license.

Some years later, after my mother died, he moved to Miami, Florida where other relatives had retired and he lived happily into his late eighties.

I assume you figured out the point of this story since it is my title.

When will it be time for Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment and for the process of pulling Trump’s driver’s license to begin so the elderly demented president can retire? Trump can then live out his life in Florida where he can play with his little putter and have people treat him like royalty.

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