I don’t know how long the two sides have been ready to release their reactions to the indictment of Trump for what happened on January 6th, but as usual, the debate is going right down what has become a too-familiar path.
On the red side, the pro-Trump side, he is being defended for voicing his concerns about a tainted and fraudulent election process, which even if he was wrong, is nothing more than his ‘right’ to exercise ‘free speech.’ You can hear and read this labored attempt to explain the whole thing away right here, courtesy of WaPo.
If you prefer the Fake News analysis of the meaning of this indictment, you can read about how Trump’s attempt to commit a coup against his own government was (thanks God) thwarted by the courage of Mike Pence and now the investigative efforts of Jack Smith.
I’ll ignore the bleating of GOP media noisemakers like Sean Hannity because what would you expect shitheads like him to say? That Jack Smith’s indictment is valid, and correct? As Grandpa would say, ‘gai macht,’ (read: stick it up you’re a**.)
On the other hand, even though they sound more reasonable, the continued attempt by liberals who try to spice up the Fake News by referring to what Trump was doing as planning a ‘coup’ or leading an ‘insurrection’ is nothing more than the continued attempt to turn a slapstick comedy of stupidity and errors into the greatest threat to the United States since the cannons were shot off at Fort Sumter in 1861.
My sister just sent me a link to a story on TPM which is based on messages sent back and forth between Ronna McDaniel, the RNC National Chair, Kelli Ward, the Arizona GOP Chair and Mark Meadows, who of course was at Trump’s elbow during the whole so-called ‘coup’ affair.
If this bunch of nitwits doesn’t qualify as a new version of The Lavender Hill Mob, I don’t know what does. Alec Guinness made this classic comedy back in 1951, in which he plays a quiet, unassuming clerk who steals a pile of gold bullion out of the London National Bank. He then puts together a gang of knuckleheads who manage to fu*k the whole thing up.
The other day I wrote a column in which I said that Trump’s team reminded me of Jimmy Breslin’s fanciful story, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, because only a novel could capture the existence of such stupidity within the human race.
It turns out that I was wrong because the back-and-forth messaging that you can read on the TPM piece is far dumber than anything that any talented writer or actor could invent. And let’s not forget that we also have the bunch of GOP dopes indicted in Michigan for creating those fake Electoral College ballots and then – ready? - bragging about it to the local press!
But before you go off half-cocked and exult in the stupidity of the GOP, you might want to consider this: The word ‘coup’ is defined as an attempt to use violence or the threat of violence to change who is in charge of the government. And now we have all the Fake News experts telling us that Trump attempted a coup on January 6th, except on January 6th, the United States government was being run by Donald Trump.
That’s right. Until Joe was inaugurated on January 20th, the Executive branch was being managed by Donald Trump. So, what are all the liberal pundits saying? That Donald Trump tried to pull off a coup against himself?
I’ll tell you what they’re saying. They don’t have the faintest idea what they’re saying and as long as their click numbers stay way up there, they don’t care.
Yesterday in an interview on CNN, one of Trump’s attorneys, kept referring to John Eastman as a “world renowned Constitutional expert.” Eastman has been floating around the edge of the alt-right Christian academic and legal environment for the last thirty years. He is such an expert on the Constitution that when Michael Luttig, the former federal judge for whom Eastman clerked testified in front of the January 6th Committee, he shredded Eastman’s so-called ‘theory’ on altering the Electoral College vote all over the place.
Meanwhile, later last evening on another CNN show, every time that one of the panelists mentioned Eastman’s name, the explanatory script running across the bottom of the screen referred to him as being ‘world renowned.’ Thank you very much CNN, for helping John Eastman solidify himself as a member of the Lavender Hill Mob.
The point is that dopiness in political punditry is generic to both sides, which is why I’m hardly surprised when Donald Trump acts like such a dope. After all, whom do you think he relies on for advice on how to behave? And of course, Trump’s not about to admit that he takes advice from someone else. He’s that big, tough guy who knows better than anyone else how to make a deal, right?
In 1979, I happened to be at CIA for a meeting to talk about the imminent regime change from the Shah to Khomeini in Iran. There were somewhere around 50 ‘experts’ in the room, representing all the intelligence apparatus of the United States – State, Army, FBI, NSA – and not a single individual could read Farsi, which just happened to be the language in which the Shah was communicating both within and outside of Iran.
At some point I turned to my seatmate who was a long-time CIA staffer and had been sidelined after we got pushed out of Vietnam. I asked him what he thought would happen in Iran. He shrugged and said, “Well, I guess we’ll fu*k up another one.”
Which is exactly my point. Like the Lavender Hill Mob, we manage to fu*k things up just about every time and somehow, don’t ask me how, we then manage to stick around and fu*k things up again.
God bless America from sea to shining sea!
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