***DONALD J TRUMP HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN IMPEACHED***

Halifax2TheMax

brianlux said:

PART II

By this point, he was visibly angry. His frustration was no longer something he was trying very hard to hide. She tried to move him to the economy, to the seventy percent of farmers who say they cannot afford fertilizer, and he cut her off and snapped: “Are you ready? Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions, and you don’t listen to the answers.” He insisted the farmers are doing great, that they all love him. It was just more spin, and performance, and not one real answer for the people he claims adore him.

Then she asked about the weaponization fund, the one his own people have said is effectively dead, and whether he was backing away from it. He would not answer directly. Instead, he did what he always does when cornered: he made himself the victim. Within moments he was defending the January 6 attackers, arguing they should be compensated, blaming crooked cops, dirty cops, maybe the FBI, and eventually circling back to his old obsession with James Comey. Welker kept reminding him there was no evidence for what he was claiming. He did not care. He insisted the rioters were “being ushered into the building,” describing an attack that millions of us watched unfold in real time, wondering whether the country would survive the day. “Try looking at the tapes one time,” he told her. We have looked at the tapes. We watched the windows shatter, the officers attacked, and lawmakers flee for safety. And as the interview went on, one thing became impossible to miss: every time Welker mentioned evidence, he grew angrier. Facts were not something he was engaging with. They were something he was trying to overpower.

And that is what finally broke him, because she kept saying it, calmly, accurately. There is no evidence. It has not been presented in a court of law. And that is when he detonated, and arrived at the one thing he cannot survive being questioned about, which is elections. “The election was rigged,” he said. “It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California.”

She told him he had never presented evidence that 2020 was rigged. She asked where the evidence was. “It’s four days,” he said. She pointed out that Republicans are actually doing well in California. “No they’re not,” he said. “They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election.” She told him that is simply how California counts its votes. “Do you know why they’re doing that?” he said. “Because they’re cheating on the election.” She asked him, directly, if he had any evidence to support that. And his entire answer, the whole of it, was this: “All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.”

She said, again, that is not evidence. And then he turned the whole thing on her. “They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.” She said, evenly, “To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.” And he said, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.” She said, again, “Let’s continue.” He told her, “You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press.” He told her she had no credibility. He said, “We’re like a third world country.” And then, finally:

“Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

She did not give up, even then. “Mr. President, let’s, please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin,” she said. He was unmoved. “I sat in the rain with you for an hour,” he told her. “On and off in the rain, and I’ve given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what?” And then he left her, and left the country, with this: “A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”

I want to be very clear about that last line, because it is the hinge of the whole interview. It was not just something he said on his way out. It was the point. He could not answer the questions, so he attacked the person asking them. He could not prove what he was saying, so he blamed the press for pointing that out. Over and over again, that is where he went. The problem was never his lie. The problem was the person who would not let him get away with it.

And that is the part that confirmed one of my worst fears. Because he is not just saying this in interviews anymore. He is not just angry in front of cameras. He is using the power of the presidency to act on it. The words matter because they show us what he believes. And what he believes is that any press that challenges him is dishonest, and any person who fact-checks him is the enemy. The clearest example may be what the White House is doing. They now have an expanded section on their official website called Media Offenders with a rotating Media Offender of the Week and an Offender Hall of Shame. There is even a form inviting the public to report journalists, and an email list supporters can join to receive alerts about the next ones. The government even has categories such as “Conspiracy Theories” and “Left-Wing Lunacy.”

And what struck me was how familiar that language sounded. In the very same interview, Trump used nearly identical language himself, calling the people who investigated him “radical left lunatics.” And that is why I keep coming back to the same concern. The interview was not simply a man losing his temper because a journalist would not stop asking questions. It was a glimpse into how this administration sees criticism itself. Not as something to answer or to debate. But as something to discredit, isolate, and eventually silence. The anger we watched in that barn was not separate from what is happening elsewhere.

And they are not just coming for the mainstream media. They now have a category called Leftist Influencers, and the names on it are independent voices. David Pakman. Ed Krassenstein. Brian Tyler Cohen. These are not networks with billion-dollar parent companies. These are people, individuals, reader-supported, sitting where I sit, doing what I do every night. The government of the United States has put their names on a public website and pointed at them. There is no charge or trial. There is no law attached to any of it. The only purpose of putting a private citizen’s name on a government enemies list is to mark them, and to tell the people who take their cues from this administration exactly who is fair game.

We know where this is heading. It never stops at the first target. That is the one lesson history refuses to stop teaching us. They start with the people who are easiest to isolate, the loudest critics. And once that is tolerated, once the country shrugs and scrolls past, the list grows. It always grows. The press becomes the enemy, then the professors, then the judges who rule the wrong way, then the election officials who count the votes honestly, then anyone who says a single word out of line. You do not have to write a post like this every night to end up on the wrong side of a government that has decided dissent is a crime. You do not have to do anything at all. Eventually the circle widens until it reaches the people who were sure it never would, the ones who kept their heads down and assumed silence would keep them safe. It will not. It never has. These movements do not stop until they have total control, and they do not get there by coming for everyone at once. They get there by coming for us one group at a time, while the rest of us convince ourselves it is not our turn yet.

So what do we do? We do the thing he is most afraid of, which is refuse to be isolated. The whole point of an enemies list is to make each name on it feel alone, to make the rest of us decide it is safer to look away. So we do the opposite of what he wants. We get louder. When he attacks a journalist for doing her job, that is our call to support her, to tell her network, her producers, and her advertisers that this is the work we want. And when he hands us a list of the voices he wants silenced, he hands us, without meaning to, a list of the people worth paying attention to. When we see a name on that list, we support it if we are able. Because money and attention are the only two things this movement truly understands, and both are still in our hands. There are far more of us than there are of them, and the moment we stop letting them pick people off one at a time is the moment this strategy starts to fail.

That is also why I keep this work free and reader-funded, and why I am so grateful to those of you whose paid subscriptions make it possible. You are the reason I can be here every night writing these posts and reaching people who may not hear this perspective anywhere else. But tonight I am asking you to think beyond my voice. Think about the journalists, independent publications, local newspapers, writers, and creators who are still doing the difficult work of telling the truth. If you already support this work, thank you. Truly. But if you are able, consider supporting some of the other voices doing this work as well, especially the ones being singled out and targeted. A free press survives because ordinary people decide it matters enough to sustain. That has always been true. It is true now. And it is going to matter even more in the months ahead.

We are in the fight of our lives for our country. The next five months are going to test us. There will be days when it feels overwhelming. There will be days when the headlines make it seem like the people abusing power are winning. But if we are paying attention, there are signs almost every day that the American people are not giving up.

Just a few hours ago in Los Angeles, news outlets reported that Spencer Pratt will not be on the ballot for mayor in November. Enough people looked past the noise, recognized him for what he was offering, and said no to putting another gravely unqualified politician in government. It was one election in one city, but it was also a reminder that we are not powerless. We still have choices. We still have a voice. And when enough of us use it, we can still change the outcome. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

*The following opinion is mine and mine alone and does not represent the views of my family, friends, government and/or my past, present or future employer. US Department of State: 1-888-407-4747.

Imagine carrying water for that POS and being proud to do so? Sheesh.

Go Beavers

Bentleyspop said:

nicknyr15 said:

gimmesometruth27 said:

josevolution said:

Gern Blansten said:

That was pathetic. I'm still amazed that Welker doesn't know how to confront this bullshit. 

You notice how he always walks out on women interviewing him! Leslie Stalls same thing, a total disgrace of a human let alone the president of this once great nation! He can’t leave this earth fast enough for me 

they are gonna boo the shit out of him at the game tonight.

i can't believe he is going to go and ruin the experience for all of the knicks fans that have waited decades for a finals game at the garden. imagine not being able to go to a watch party outside the venue. we do that here for every cardinals of blues playoff game. he can't let anybody else have the experience without inserting himself into it. that is probably in the top 5 reasons why i hate his guts. 

Seriously. What a fucking shit show. It’s crazy enough around the area without his presence. Stay the fuck outta the way of everyone and let them enjoy themselves. 

Knicks fans are pissed at him because MSG  and the security apparatus decided to cancel the MSG plaza watch parties.

Boo’ing videos to come

gimmesometruth27

josevolution said:

Gern Blansten said:

That was pathetic. I'm still amazed that Welker doesn't know how to confront this bullshit. 

You notice how he always walks out on women interviewing him! Leslie Stalls same thing, a total disgrace of a human let alone the president of this once great nation! He can’t leave this earth fast enough for me 

he walks out on the women because he does not respect them, and he does not walk out on men because the men are too cowardly to actually challenge him on anything.

darwinstheory

2019

gimmesometruth27 said:

josevolution said:

Gern Blansten said:

That was pathetic. I'm still amazed that Welker doesn't know how to confront this bullshit. 

You notice how he always walks out on women interviewing him! Leslie Stalls same thing, a total disgrace of a human let alone the president of this once great nation! He can’t leave this earth fast enough for me 

he walks out on the women because he does not respect them, and he does not walk out on men because the men are too cowardly to actually challenge him on anything.

💯 

mickeyrat

Kinzinger adbook post

Here's an uncomfortable fact that we all need to accept: this president can't handle the truth. And I'll tell you why that keeps me up at night...

Moments before tip off at Game 3 of the NBA Finals Monday evening, the cameras inside Madison Square Garden found Donald Trump in James Dolan’s private suite, high above the court, as Avery Wilson began to sing the national anthem. The president stood with his granddaughter Kai beside him, his right hand raised in a slow salute, his jaw set in the particular way it gets when he is trying to look presidential. And then, as it always does, the crowd told the truth.

The boos started the moment his face appeared on the jumbotron and did not stop for a full minute. Not scattered boos. A sustained, unified wall of sound from 19,812 people who had paid thousands of dollars to watch a basketball game and found themselves, instead, sending a message to the man who had turned their neighborhood into a security checkpoint for the evening. The watch party outside the arena had been canceled. Several blocks of midtown Manhattan had been closed. Thousands of fans had been rerouted, delayed, and searched extensively. The city had been inconvenienced for a man the city did not want there. And it said so, loudly, the only way it could.

The jeers ended when the flag filled the screen. They returned when Trump’s face appeared again. And they evaporated entirely when Jalen Brunson was shown standing on the court, because the crowd had not come to Madison Square Garden on a Monday night to make a political statement. They had come to watch the Knicks. Donald Trump made that impossible.

Somewhere in the second half, the cameras caught the president with his eyes closed. His head had dropped slightly. His shoulders had settled in the way that bodies settle when the muscles holding them upright have given up the effort. The White House, which has developed considerable experience explaining away photographs of this kind, later described it as a long blink. It was not a long blink. It was a 79-year-old man who had fallen asleep at a basketball game he had forced his way into.

The Knicks lost for the first time in the series. The crowd was deflated. The building emptied. And somewhere in the motorcade back to JFK, the president prepared to tell the world what had happened.

Standing on the tarmac before boarding Air Force One, Trump was asked directly about the reception he had received. He did not hesitate. “I thought it was great,” he said. “I mean, I thought it was amazing, actually. You mean when they had the camera on me? I thought it was very good, yeah. It was certainly amazing. It was, I think, mostly cheers. It was loud and it was very enthusiastic.”

I want to be careful here, because the temptation when reporting something like this is to treat it as simply another lie in an administration that tells many of them. But I do not think that is what Monday night was. Lies, by definition, require some awareness of the truth being obscured. What Trump described on that tarmac did not sound like a man who knew he had been booed and was covering it up. It sounded like a man who had genuinely processed the evening differently from everyone else in the building. The pool reporter from The Washington Times, not exactly a hostile outlet, wrote that Trump was thunderously booed. The video is unambiguous. The audio is clear. None of that appears to have registered.

At 2:11 in the morning, unable to sleep, Trump posted to Truth Social. He shared a clip from a conservative news site showing his motorcade driving through the city, with a handful of supporters cheering along the route. A Fox News contributor had captioned it: “NYC loves Donald Trump.” In the same clip, plainly audible, New Yorkers were booing as the motorcade rolled past. He posted it anyway, because to him, that was the night. That was what had happened. The cheers were real. The boos did not exist in any way that required acknowledgment.

I have been writing about this presidency for a long time now, and the question I find myself returning to, more than any other, is not whether Trump lies. He does, constantly, and the documentation of that is overwhelming. The question that keeps me up at night is something more unsettling: how much of what he says does he actually believe? Because there is a meaningful difference between a president who knows the truth and hides it, and a president who has lost the capacity to distinguish between what he experiences and what he wishes he had experienced. The first is a problem of character. The second is something else.

Consider what that operating system looks like applied to the decisions that actually matter. The CIA delivered an assessment telling the White House that Iran has restored 90 percent of its missile capability after two months of war and $30 billion in spending. Trump called the reporting virtual treason. His approval rating has collapsed to the low thirties. He describes a country that loves him. Inflation hit 3.8 percent in April. His economic team told CNBC that Americans are simply overwhelmed by winning. Nineteen thousand people booed him during the national anthem at Madison Square Garden. He went home and posted that New York City loves him.

This is not a new pattern. But something about Monday night made it impossible to look away from, precisely because sports arenas are one of the last places in American life where reality is genuinely non-negotiable. The score is the score. The crowd noise is the crowd noise. You cannot spin a jumbotron. Thousands of people had their phones out. The audio exists on a thousand separate recordings, uploaded to a thousand separate accounts within minutes of it happening. There is no version of that evening in which the president was not booed, and no version of his response to it that made sense given what everyone in that building heard and felt.

What I keep coming back to is the granddaughter. Kai Trump sat beside her grandfather in that suite for the whole of it. She heard what the crowd said when his face appeared on the screen. She watched the game. She watched him close his eyes. She was there on the tarmac when he described the night as mostly cheers. And she is seventeen years old, growing up inside the particular reality her grandfather has constructed, learning from the closest possible distance what it looks like when a man decides that the world around him must conform to his version of events rather than the other way around.

I don’t know what she took away from Monday night. I hope it was something honest. Because the rest of us don’t have the option of looking away from what it means when the person making decisions about a war, an economy, and a democracy comes home from a basketball game and tells the world it was mostly cheers.

It wasn’t. And we all heard it.

- Adam

gotthebottle

2019

She's being groomed as the next leader of the trumpian movement and I believe she is 100% into it

Poncier

She's 19, not 17 and has apparently replaced Ivanka as the new "perhaps I'd be dating her" figure in his life.

mickeyrat

Poncier said:

She's 19, not 17 and has apparently replaced Ivanka as the new "perhaps I'd be dating her" figure in his life.

makes her to old for #47

mickeyrat

ALTNATPARKSERVICE adbook post 

It makes sense why Trump is using the White House to promote UFC. Everything always seems to circle back to benefiting Trump. In March, Trump purchased a stake in TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC.

mickeyrat

I have been asked to retire my pet name for this...... this person.

so sometimes adbook provides , as if its listening off platform.....

I present you with The Wankle in Chief...

Poncier

How about Cankle in Chief?

mickeyrat

Poncier said:

How about Cankle in Chief?

you do you...  but it fits

josevolution

2018

Both work just fine 👋

Gern Blansten

I love the photos that the foreign press are posting of trump at the G7...cankles, fat/bloated side pics, etc.

He's a fucking mess. 

gimmesometruth27

Gern Blansten said:

I love the photos that the foreign press are posting of trump at the G7...cankles, fat/bloated side pics, etc.

He's a fucking mess. 

looking old and weak af.

well done, america.

mickeyrat

mickeyrat

MeidasTouch adbook post

This is quite the photo: the reflecting pool, national mall, and ellipse this morning. Trump's destruction of the area on full display.

brianlux

mickeyrat said:

MeidasTouch adbook post

This is quite the photo: the reflecting pool, national mall, and ellipse this morning. Trump's destruction of the area on full display.

Picture book!   My Most Idiotic Ideas, by Al G. Poole

brianlux

Solidarity! 

mickeyrat