Tag: We Are So Fucked

Why Trump Is NOT A Political Genius

This is how Trumplandia is governed.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I had a minor tempest-in-a-teapot run-in on Twitter with The New York Time’s Trump Whisperer Maggie Haberman. She sniffed – in so many words — that I was a hayseed rube in a flyover state who did not know how REAL journalism was practiced. It says a lot about my personal relationship to power I have a lingering resentment over this little minor event. It’s not like I have any recourse. She’s got fame, ACCESS, power and the respect of her peers.

All I got is a novel I’m trying to write.

Anyway, the whole point of that was to bring up something I feel Haberman gets so very, very, very wrong about Trump. Trump is a doofus. He’s a moron. Something is mentally wrong with him and he lacks any sense of empathy. As Benjamin Wittes of the Lawfare blog quipped once, Trump’s “ambivalence is only mitigated by his incompetence.” Trump won the political lottery of a lifetime. Someone like him was probably going to pop up between 2016 and 2024 do to macro socio-economic trends in the United States. Trump just happened to the would-be president of Sharknato who happened to jump in at just the moment.

You could, of course, make the case that Trump got a little help from his Russian friends along the way. But in real terms, just won because of dumb fucking luck.

The Dear Leader

Haberman and her fellow access journalists simply can not process that Trump is simply a doofus — nothing more than a deranged version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner. They probably feel that if they accept that Trump is just a very lucky Right Wing celebrity Twitter troll then their own investment in their person ascent to power is somehow invalidated. They have a vested interest in making me believe that Trump’s latest clusterfuck is really him subtly messing white women ages 24-35 in the exurbs of Phillie.

There’s no there there when it comes to Trump’s acumen. Yeah, he’s an adept marking and branding guy. And he has a celebrity’s knack for knowing an intended audience. But to suggest he has some sort of native political acumen is an insult to my intelligence.

One need go no further than what’s going on at this very moment. Trump is such a fucking moron that he not only waited 24 hours to do the exact same thing that Mueller’s poor “optics” in front of Congress pardoned him for, he bragged about it on the very phone call! Then was so clueless that instead of slow walking the release of the damaging information until sometime early next year, he releases it so House Democrats had time to find their backbones and start the impeachment process with time to spare before the ever-critical 2020 primaries.

Trump is so stupid on a political level that instead of taking the L with impeachment and laughing all the way to acquittal in the Senate, he is actively doing everything in his power to produce the conditions for his fate being decided by extra-political means. By this I mean anti-impeachment violence. Of course, that problem goes hand in hand with the real likelihood he’s going to snap on a mental level at some point during the impeachment process.

So, Maggie Haberman, spare me the ever-so-serious tweets about Trump’s fucking political genius. He’s a doofus and your willingness to trade access for any semblance of journalistic independence is enough to make me smirk whenever I hear one of your peers tout your journalistic abilities.

Buckle Up — The Sequence Of Events Leading To Trump Tweeting A 21st Century Version Of ‘Will No One Rid Me Of This Meddlesome Priest’ Has Likely Started

Uh oh.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Things are beginning to move fast now. Right Wing media is out for blood when it comes to the Whistleblower. They have apparently posted an imagine of the home of the person they believe to be the Whistleblower. So, that’s a pretty good indication that we’re racing towards some sort of situation where Trump feels he has the political cover to simply blurt the guys name out on Twitter.

I don’t think the average person realizes how bumpy things will get at that point. Trump is going try to message the base that this is all a witch hunt and or some sort of surreal attack on the guy’s personal character or history. My real fear is he’s going to get so fucking worked up about this poor guy that he’s going to say something so shocking, so transactional in a clueless way that it will be easy for the average person to believe a Trump tweet directly lead to an unprecedented indictment of political violence.

But that is, thankfully, the absolute worst case scenario. A more likely outcome is that in their desperation, Republicans will demand the guy testify before Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Committee so he can yell at the guy for 11 hours on TV.

I have lingering concern, however, that Trump is willfully going all-in on the Whistleblower that rational political thought will be sorely lacking for a pretty sizable chunk of the electorate. They will be so rabid in their desire to….uhhhhh….what? What point would they prove by physically harming the Whistleblower? What political objective, in real terms, would they achieve? None, of course, which is why after 24 hour hours of Republicans spinning this tragedy as a sign that impeachment has to end because “it’s obviously tearing the nation apart” the drive to get rid of Trump will go into overdrive. I just can’t see the average American shrugging if this horrible event happen. Political violence is so alien to American civil society that if there was even a whiff that Trump was somehow responsible for it that he may face some pretty serious political consequences.

But I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know. I guess anything is possible.

We are, however, just about to enter a very dark, very surreal moment in our nations political history, no matter what happens once the Whistleblower’s name is common knowledge.

Why The Racist, Misogynist Fascist MAGA Asshats Want The Whistleblower To Testify In Person So Bad

Now what.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Trump’s going all in on having the Whistleblower come forth personally and testify in public — even though Trump himself was such a wussy he wouldn’t give Mueller in-person answers to his questions. But, then, hypocrisy is very on-brand for MAGA, so there you go.

Here are my person hot takes on why Trump’s so wrapped up in this idea of being able to see his foe on TV testifying in person before Congress.

They Want A Mueller Moment
What MAGA shitheads took away from Mueller’s “poor optics” during his testimony before Congress was they have a chance of winning not on the facts but because we live in a media age and how something plays on TV is far more important than anything else. Even though we have enough to impeach and convict Trump as it is — they think if they can only get the Whistleblower in front of Lindsey Graham for 11 hours, all their troubles will go away.

They Want To ‘Kavanaugh’ Him
MAGA fuckwits want to do to the Whistleblower what they feel was done to Justice Kavanaugh. They want to swap out policy differences for facts, however. They want to prove a point — at least in their own minds — that the only reason why Democrats were so hard on Kavanaugh is they did not have politics on their side so they played dirty. Given that Republicans hate that someone may have bested them at their own ratfucking (at least in their own minds) they have a near-sexual craving to repay the favor to Democrats. If they can get women screaming at Democrat Senators in elevators over some personal issue in the Whistleblower’s past, dipshit traitor Republicans will cackle themselves to sleep at night.

They Want To Focus Their Hate On Him Personally
This is kind of the darkest part of all of this. This is the worst case scenario. They are so wrapped up in their own overheated, overwrought rhetoric that they are blinded to what might happen if someone took it the wrong way and physically harmed the Whistleblower. (Hint — it would be bad politics, to say the least.) But in the moment, they don’t care. They have bloodlust at this point and when it sinks in what a horrific mistake they’ve made, it will be far, far too late. They will pontificate on how Trump was “just joking” and he “can’t be held responsible” for the actions of a mentally-ill person, but they will say in the same fucking breath that OBVIOUSLY we have to stop the impeachment process because people are dying.

Addressing Criminal Fascist GOP Anti-Impeachment Talking Points

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I still have no idea what’s going to happen to Trump politically. We haven’t gotten to the point where the politics of impeachment really make it existential for Trump. He’s flipping out, yes, but that’s more a matter of him NOT being a political genius, but a man-child with poor impulse control.

But here are some Trump defenses I’ve seen lately and some of my hot takes on addressing them.

The Putin Defense
Trump may have done something wrong, but, really, politicians in general do bad stuff all the time and this is just a matter of degree. MAGA, MAGA, MAGA. Trump 2020.

Response
Trump’s specific crimes in this instance are so brazen, so egregious that if you hide behind this Putinesque defense, then there’s not much to say. You’re showing yourself to be so absolutely unwilling to consider the facts of the case that what’s the point?

The ‘Bad For The Country’ Defense
Trump’s impeachment is too divisive. We can’t impeach him because he won’t be convicted and he’ll only grow stronger. This is usually stated in the same breath as “Let the people decide.”

Response
This is a bullshit defense because what you’re really saying is it hurts your side too much politically. You secretly are a partisan hack and you have but a thin-veneer of objectivity to hide behind. You’re probably either too wealthy, too blinded by your love of young hack MAGA judges or too otherwise invested in the status quo to ever seriously think about the issues that impeachment would address. Bonus: “Let the people decide” is bullshit because the very thing Trump is accused of — fucking with the election — is something he’s going to do again anyway if he’s a free man and at least he should suffer some political consequences for doing it.

The Whistleblower Is A Partisan Hack
We’re likely to see this more very soon. This defense is that essentially, only a completely objective person can get you in trouble. If anyone with ANY sort of disagreement with you on a political level has evidence you committed a crime, lulz.

Response
This is something that is so passionately stated and yet so poorly thought out that it can take you aback. This is a strained attempt to muddy the waters between the rule of law and the laws of politics. Also, Bill Clinton was impeached in large part because of a partisan political trap sprung by Linda Tripp, Lucianne Goldberg and Matt Drudge. This is sort of the, “I’m not going to defend Trump, but attack the person who caught him” defense. I can only suggest you stay calm and somehow get the person to agree with you before hand that the rule of law is meant for everyone. They are likely to say Hillary Clinton should have been indicted. You have to remind them that not only did the Justice Department find she did nothing wrong with her emails, but that she’s not the issue at the moment, Trump is. This can lead to you going in circles because, well, you’re probably not talking to someone discussing this issue in good faith.

The Brit Hume Defense
Hume — and the editors of The Wall Street Journal — believe something along the lines of since Trump didn’t actually get the dirt on Biden, lulz.

Response
That otherwise cognizant, cogent and intelligent people would prostrate themselves in front of the Orange Caff of Trump in such a brazenly bad argument is pretty spectacular. This defense is a desperation-is-setting in defense. This is the defense of people who have gotten a little cocky after the “bad optics” of Mueller’s testimony to Congress got their man off politically….only so he could turn around and do it all over again. It’s a bad defense because the ask, itself, is a crime. It doesn’t matter if he got what he wanted. And, really, do you want a person like Trump as president if he does such a thing? (Of course they do, they are getting tax breaks and young hack judges on the Federal bench for life. Lulz!)

The Nancy Pelosi Should Not Be President Defense
I struggle to figure out what’s going on with this one. The argument is that Nancy Pelosi has too much of a vested interest in Trump being forced out of office and so, lulz, the whole thing is invalid, why are we talking about it.

Response
Mike Pence has a lot more on the line with impeachment than Nancy Pelosi. Why would people assume that simply because impeachment would make her one heartbeat closer to the presidency that, in real terms, she has a vested interest in Trump leaving office? Pence isn’t going anywhere and it would be he — not Pelosi — who named his veep successor. This one is pretty textbook misogyny in my book.

The End Of The Beginning Of The Trump Impeachment Process

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

It seems to me that we’ve crossed into a new phase of the pitched political war between Trump and his growing numbers of foes. Trump’s growing more noticeable in his mental instability. Not a lot, but some of his diction in his tweeting is growing a little more panicky.

I stand my prediction that this is a better-than-zero chance that Trump’s finally going to lose his shit in a rather spectator fashion before this is over with. So much so that when the history books of this shit show are written, they will note that but for Trump’s insane reaction to impeachment, he likely would have survived.

That is, of course, in a sense a little bit of my own liberal wishful thinking. It’s very possible that Trump will manage to hold it together just long enough to be acquitted, replace Pence with Kris Kobach, win the general — by any means necessary — then finally collapse into a puddle at some point in his second term so Kobach can establish The Thousand Year Trump.

Or, put another way, I wouldn’t start jotting Trump’s political obit just yet. But Trump’s already fragile mental state is going to be pushed to the limit as the existential nature of the threat he now faces grows large in his mind. If his usual mindfuckery doesn’t work and he gets impeached, he may be so far gone by that point that he isn’t even able to be acquitted by his Republican lackeys in the Senate because he’ll just be totally fucking bonkers.

I would note in passing that we are now at a crossroads. We may be in the pre-pre-pre-pre-pre stages of fabled, mystical Pence Pivot. If Trump’s too discombobulated to fuck with the election in 2020, the Republican Party may think long and hard about how Pence is a rather traditional — if insanely conservative — pol and in comparison he’s likely to do a lot better than Trump.

But, again, nobody knows nuthin about what’s going to happen with impeachment, least of all me. I have a few educated guesses, but I just can’t pace out any sort of endgame right now.

We’ll see.

A Most Dangerous Game — Republicans’ Trump Whistleblower Gotterdammerung Strategy

Our immediate political future.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Well, buckle up. Trump’s now goading anyone who will listen to out the whistlebower so he can turn around and rant about every aspect of the poor guy’s life on Twitter. The fact that the guy’s name is bouncing around the MAGA-InfoWars Bullshit Echo Chamber and Trump feels he doesn’t have the political cover to do anything about it is obviously really beginning to eat away at him.

Trump allies keep queuing the information up for him to retweet — namely Sen. Rand Paul — and for some reason Trump’s yet to take the bait. So, what I predicted would happen is, in fact, happening. The pressure is now slowly rising. Trump is stoking it as much as possible, too. Since he can’t rant about the personal life of the whistleblower, he rants about how he can’t do it in the guise of how the press knows the name and won’t publicize t so he can get the poor guy murdered with a “joke.”

At this point, the issue how, exactly, the name becomes so widely known that Trump feels he can blurt it out on Twitter. This is when the Trump Train becomes the Crazy Train. If I was playing music at this part of the Trump movie, I would play Motorhead’s The Ace Of Spades over a montage of the procession of events we’re now seeing unfold before our very eyes. The average person — especially those not on Twitter — has no idea what is about to happen.

Trump is so very, very close to being comfortable ranting all day about every aspect of the whistleblower to such an extent that any normal non-fuckwit MAGA fascist racist misogynist — will be taken aback by how dangerous Trump’s rhetoric has become. It’s all going to come to a head one way another. Either Sen. Lindsey Graham calls on the whistleblower to testify in public under oath for 11 hours to distract from the impeachment process or the poor guy is literally murdered in cold blood by a fucking MAGA dipshit with an AR-15 who wants to martyr themselves for the Der Fuhrer.

Republicans will clutch their pearls and say the MAGA assassin was OBVIOUSLY mentally ill and the president can’t be held accountable for that guys actions, and besides, we OBVIOUSLY need to end the impeachment process immediately because people are dying.

While I generally have grown extremely jaded with Trump president, I have a least a minor amount of hope that if this unlikely — but not impossible — scenario occurs, Trump’s political days will be numbered. But, who knows, really.

All I do know is that things are on the cusp of growing far more surreal and dark than we could have ever imagined.

The ‘Known Unknowns’ Of The Impeachment Process Endgame

Our Future.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

On a strictly political level, I feel confident in saying Trump is safe. He will be impeached by the House, acquitted by the Senate and be given yet ANOTHER political pardon for him to instantly abuse. He’ll grow far more brazen. He’ll pardon everyone he needs to, get Barr to indict an array of his political opponents, get Russians to directly hack into our election systems or get some MAGA plutocrat to bribe Electors as need be.

Lulz!

But there are some known unknowns I can’t possibly case out.

Trump’s Mental State
He’s already hysterical and he hasn’t even been formally impeached yet. So, there’s at least a reasonable chance his mental state could explode, not implode. He’ll grow transactional with his Twitter feed, especially in regards to the Whistleblower. Things may get so bad that it’s not the politics of impeachment that is Trump’s downfall, it’s that he’s completely bonkers and the 25th Amendment is a currently a dead letter.

The Fate Of The Whistleblower
While it might be an immediate goal of Congressional Republicans to out the Whistlebower so they can make impeachment about him and his motives, it’s reasonable to believe that will only work with the 35% MAGA base. Everyone else will be able to process that even though the Whistleblower has some professional connection to both Biden and Susan Rice, Trump still, in fact, did crimes against the Constitution that warrant his removal from office. This is really tricky, given that on an institutional level The New York Times continues to carry water for House Trump. (See, also, Maggie Haberman.) So, maybe it’ll work. But maybe it won’t. Who knows. The fate of the Republic hinges on the answer to this question, but lulz. Optics! The Whistleblower is murdered in cold blood by a MAGA fuckwit because of a throwaway line by Trump, then the criminal fascist Republican Party will in the position to finally have to defend Trump directly leading to someone’s murder. They’ll do it, too. They will win the news cycle, but there’s a good chance that their argument — that we have to end impeachment because people are dying — may not actually be as effective as they believe.

General Rat-Fucking By Republicans
Republicans are criminal fascists. They don’t believe in either liberal democracy or civil society. They only believe in power and making as much money as possible to the detriment to the nation as a whole. Barr could hand down bogus criminal referrals at any moment. All they want is to maintain power. They are willing to destroy everything to further that goal. Nothing is off limits. This will grow ever more so as there fucking moron of a leader grows more and more hysterical.

It’s because of these factors that I simply can’t case out the impeachment endgame. If this was any other person as president, I would resign myself to darkness finally falling across the land. I would assume I’d die at some point in Trump’s second term at an ICE Camp with a bullet to the back of the head. While that still may happen, we’re still at the beginning of the process.

Buckle up.

The Upcoming ‘Kavanaughing’ Of The Trump Whistleblower

Now what.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Impeachment is a political, not criminal, process. As such Republicans are growing increasingly desperate to change the media narrative so we’re not talking about Trump’s numerous impeach-and-convict worthy crimes, but the whistleblower on a personal level.

Republicans — especially Lindsey Graham — are itching to do to the whistleblower what they feel was done to Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings — it wasn’t policy that almost sank him, it was his personal life. So, Republicans want to out the whistleblower so they can first having public hearings where they scream at him for 11 hours but also so they can “kavanaugh”him in the eyes of the public.

Now, what’s bonkers about all of this is it really plays into the Republican base-only strategy. While about 35% of the electorate is fully prepared to dismiss the now-confirmed accusations on the part of the whistleblower because he was apparently Joe Biden’s pointman on Ukraine, the rest of the electorate can process this as rational human beings. Just because someone who you think doesn’t like you points out you did a crime, doesn’t mean you don’t have to face any consequences in the eyes of the law.

But, I suppose, Republicans feel as long as they can discredit the whistleblower strictly on his possible political motivations for 35% of the electorate, Trump survives in the Senate and they continue to rob the treasury, get young hack MAGA judges and drink a flood of liberal tears.

While on the face of this, this is a potentially winning strategy, there are some known unknowns that might — just might — give Republicans pause of thought before they go all-in on this strategy. Trump could get so worked up that he has a throwaway tweet along the lines of, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Some fucking fuckwit MAGA person murders the whistleblower with an AR-15 and the Republicans have to go on TV to spin THAT. (Which, of course, they will do.)

But that’s just a risk. I guess if you’re a fucking racist, misogynistic, criminal fascist organization like the modern Republican Party, as long as the Dear Leader is still in power at the end of the day, the rest is a lulz.

Life In The Time Of Garbage ‘Hot Takes’ From Republican ‘Thought Leaders’ On Twitter

Indeed.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Wow, we wow wow. The hills are alive with some fucking garbage hot takes on the part of Republican “thought leaders” on Twitter. The wild thing about it is, these people constantly bitch and moan about being “shadowbanned,” only for me to constantly see their fucking garbage hot takes on impeachment. So many garbage hot takes are being vomited by these so-called conservative “thought leaders” that it’s difficult to keep up with them.

Erick Erickson who apparently is tight as fuck with God and Jesus — at least he keeps acting like he has them on speed dial — constantly tweet the most asinine observations about House Trump, even though he has yet — as far as I know — to say he won’t vote for Trump next year.

Meanwhile, Brit Hume has totally lost his fucking mind. He’s no longer a journalist, he’s a brazen apologist for any thing Trump does. The only difference between Hume and Sean Hannity is Hume at least pretends to be a journalist, or something. Hume’s latest garbage hot take is that because the Trump quid pro quo did not actually happen, that somehow magically absolves him any punishment because impeachment would be the “ultimate punishment.”

What the what?

There are a few other fucking insane Republican fucktards on Twitter I don’t feel like talking about their so idiotic. I look forward to them somehow defending Trump indirectly leading to anti-impeachment violence. Good times, good times.

Ugh.

Some Ridiculously Nightmarish Trump Impeachment Endgame Scenarios

Uh oh.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I love to wallow in the absolute worst case scenario. My mom was the same way. I used to call this “opposite-positive thinking” when I was a kid — you think off the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen and when it didn’t happen, you felt better than you might otherwise.

Let’s go through some of the absolutely bonkers — and dark — Trump impeachment scenarios.

‘Trump Bit Bonkers”
Trump becomes completely unhinged. He goes transactional in his Twitter offense. He outs the Whistleblower while doxxing him. He incites anti-impeachment violence. This is the ultimate cause of his downfall, not anything he did on a political level. Trump is sane enough, however, to campaign for his hand-picked successor.

The Thousand Year Trump
Trump is acquitted, turns around and does the exact same thing again and wins. His second terms focused on calling a Constitutional Convention to “pass a balanced budget amendment.” It immediately goes rouge and codifies American Carnage in the Constitution. Darkness falls and I die in an ICE Concentration Camp.

Princess President Ivanka
Trump is somehow forced out of office. Somehow Pence is, too. But Ivanka is named Pence’s replacement at lightening speed. She becomes president and does such a bad job — topping even her father — that the conventional wisdom is we’ll never have a woman president.

Sometimes, They Come Back
Trump is convicted in the Senate, but only on the condition that he can run for president again. He promptly does so and either wins, refuses to concede or brazenly meddles in the election with the Russians, et al, and the 2020 Election is American Brexit in the sheer scope of its clusterfuckness.

Barr’s Big Day Out
The other shoe drops, Barr does sweeping criminal referrals as the impeachment process progresses. This is enough of a change in the media narrative that Trump survives and thrives.

President Pelosi Pandemonium
Somehow, magically, both Trump and Pence are force out of office politically with such speed that we get President Pelosi. Unfortunately, the economy tanks, Democrats are blamed and President Kris Kobach is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.

Endgame Endgame
As it becomes obvious that Trump will be convicted in the Senate, he lashes out and starts a war with the DPRK. It goes nuclear. Millions of Koreans and Americans die. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.