Tag: OrangeCrush

Sen. Lindsey Graham Is Desperate To ‘Kavanaugh’ The Trump Whistleblower

Shelton Bumgarner

By Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The darkly comical thing about Republicans is they are so craven that they give the plot away in what they accuse their opposition of doing. One can often get a lot of insight into the Republican fascist mind in the crazy things they accuse Democrats of doing. If they have this or that bonkers thing at the forefront of their minds, then you get the sense that THEY are they ones who want to do that. It’s almost a dog whistle to the base. In a sense, they’re saying, “Don’t worry, fam, we got you.”

Anyway, it’s interesting how completely fucking obsessed Sen. Lindsey Graham is with outing the whistleblower long after much — if not all — of what was in the original complaint has been confirmed. Given that Republicans like Graham are so deeply bad faith in anything they say or do, every argument they are giving for why they so desperately want the whistleblower’s name to be common knowledge is total and complete bullshit.

The reason — they crave the opportunity to “kavanaugh” the whistleblower as one of several last-ditch efforts to prevent Trump from even being impeached. They want the entire country to look at everything the guy has done in his entire life instead of all the very public criming that Trump has done over last 40 odd years. They were impressed with how effective the character-based argument were against Kavanaugh and they want the opportunity to do it to the whisleblower to prove a political point. In their instance, they want to switch out their own losing fact argument for simply making everyone talk about the whistleblower’s equivalent of Squee, “boofing” and Beach Week.

That Republicans like Graham are essentially hanging all of their hopes on this strategy is rather bonkers, surreal and tragic. I’m not saying it won’t work. There’s a good chance it will. But there’s also a good chance that if they go all-in on destroying the whistleblower for daring to sound the alarm over the Dear Leader’s criminal activity, things may get out of control and, well, dun dun dun.

Graham and the rest of the Republican Trump sycophants won’t miss a beat, of course. Within 24 hours of the whatever Very Bad Thing happens because of their own overheated and overwrought political rhetoric they will have talking points written up for the MAGA sheep to graze on. They will include:

Democrats have to stop the impeachment process immediately, people are getting hurt.

House Democrats are at fault for starting the impeachment process and some of them should be charged for “involvement” in the incident.

Blah, blah, blah, let the people decide, blah, blah, blah

There might even be even more slinging of civil war talk at this point as, well.

The Dear Leader

The point is, Republicans are so absolutely devoted not to their party, but to Donald Trump on a personal level and Trump is nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner, they setting themselves up for having to defend the absolutely indefensible. They will gleefully do it because, lulz, democracy and human decency are for low-T betas, amiright?

How confident am I that this absolute worst case scenario may happen? Not very. But there is a greater-than-zero sum chance something along these lines may happen as Graham continues to bang the drum to out the whistleblower.


Struggling To Understand What Shit-For-Brains MAGA People Think Outing The Trump Whistleblower Will Accomplish

The Caine Mutiny (1954) Directed by Edward Dmytryk Shown: Humphrey Bogart
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Things are growing dark politically in the United States at an alarming rate. We’re probably hours away from the absolute need of MAGA fuckheads to out the Whistleblower causing it to pop out in some manner that makes his identity the subject of national debate.

But what’s the point?

He was the catalyst for all of this, but ultimately everything he accused Trump of doing has been confirmed. So, in a sense, this is about some pretty dark political strategy on the part of Trump’s defenders. They feel that as long as they can hold the line in the Senate everything else is disposable. And, really, they probably think through some tortured logic that they may be able to stop the impeachment process altogether if they simply hammer away on a personal level at the Whistleblower.

This is not The Mueller Report, however. The impeachment train has left the station for a sizable portion of the electorate. And, yet, I guess they feel that if they simply conflate things enough in the mind of the public they might be able to end the impeachment process cold and Trump can go back to being a moronic fucking traitorous idiot who wants to burn America to the ground in the name of plutocrats and young hack MAGA judges.

I guess they think as long as they have talking points and something to pivot to whenever asked about Trump’s proven tyranny that it’s a net win for them? I would muse that they may be so wrapped up in the metrics of a base-first messaging effort that when 65% of the population is able to process that even though the Whistleblower had a work relationship with Biden and Susan Rice….what he claimed to have happened actually, did in fact happen.

This doesn’t even begin to address the potential for violence against the poor guy. That’s really the absolute worst case scenario, so I’m unwilling to believe that is actually going to happen. But the pressure for the name to pop out is now reaching such intensity on the fucking idiotic MAGA Right that it’s going to pop out some way, somehow very, very soon. I would say it’s going to be Trump via a tweet. But he’s still cogent enough to want to wait until someone else gives him the political cover to do it so he can rant and rant and rant and rant about the guy and his “agenda” to the base.

Trump’s such a fucking idiot that he doesn’t realize that during the course of all that ranting what he thinks is a throw-a-way line may prompt some fucking MAGA fuckhead to harm the Whistleblower physically. Republicans will say Trump was “joking” and he can’t be held responsible for the actions of someone with mental problems. But in the same breath, they will say we have to stop the impeachment process dead in its tracks because people are dying.

What happens then is anyone’s guess.

Wargaming The Coming Trump Whistleblower Clusterfuck

This is America.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Some observations.

This news broke the night before the first serious impeachment vote. This gives all House Republicans more than enough cover to vote against it.

Republicans may have learned the wrong lesson from the Mueller Report. They think this will drain support for impeachment. They think everything will go back to normal and Trump will be politically pardoned AGAIN so he can turn around and to exactly the same shit by Friday afternoon. While this is — I guess – at least a possibility, it seems at least from what I can tell that the impeachment train has, in fact, left the station.

There’s a real danger Trump is both so stupid and so craven that he will tweet out a 21 Century version of, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” He will “accidently” dox the poor guy and he ends up dead. The Republican talking points will be three fold. Trump was “joking,” he can’t be held responsible for the actions of a mentally ill person, and we have to end the impeachment process because people are starting to die.

This may work with The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman for about 24 hours. But I suspect that this won’t hold much water with the average person who is isn’t on Twitter and is too busy paying their mortgage to care about impeachment. Should there be any type of impeachment-related violence then guess who most people will hold responsible — it’s not going to be Nancy Pelosi. Though you know that’s exactly what every Republican is going to scream at the top of their lungs. I guess it might work? But I have at least a modicum of faith in my fellow Americans not to fall for that bullshit.

But, really, the battle lines are now drawn. Either you are so partisan that you think it’s “game over” for impeachment because the whistleblower worked with Joe Biden and Susan Rice as part of his job, or you don’t. Either you believe in the rule of law, or your a Republican MAGA fascist.

We’re entering the political equivalent of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes video. This is now a political war for the ages. I still suspect that Trump is going to completely lose his fucking mind in a rather spectacular fashion before all of this is over. But I could be wrong.

Buckle up.