Bigger Fatter Politics

Monday, November 16, 2020

Lock him up! If Trump refuses to leave the scene after his defeat, there's an obvious solution

Op Ed: Let's say we lock him up. What do we do about the other MAGAts? A lot of Trump's closest MAGAts have national secrets. We will have to lock them all up without bail but a better solution would be to lock them up, interrogate them Gitmo style and then shoot them.

MAGAts are the most dangerous enemies Americans face and therefore should not be given constitutional protection nor the protection of the Geneva Convention. Learn what we can from them and kill em all and let God sort em out.

Amanda Marcotte

Mon, November 16, 2020, 1:00 PM EST

Donald Trump behind bars Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

This article originally appeared here on Salon.com

The national celebrations after Joe Biden decisively defeated Donald Trump in this month's election focused heavily on the image of Trump being pushed out the door. People took to the streets and boogied down to Steam's 1969 hit "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." Signs carried by celebrants tended to focus more on Trump's loss than Biden's victory. During Saturday's underwhelming MAGA march in Washington, counter-protesters chanted, "Trump, pack your shit! You're illegitimate!"

Alas, like Freddy Krueger or the shark from "Jaws," Trump will not be easy to get rid of. It's not just that he refuses to concede and keeps telling his supporters he will find some legal miracle to invalidate the election, a ruse that stopped being serious several days ago and is now mostly the mercenary pitch of a con man.

"Donald Trump may not be president much longer, but he still wants to run the Republican Party for the foreseeable future," David Jackson and Phillip M. Bailey write in USA Today. "From setting up a political action committee to suggesting he might run again in 2024, Trump is already working to keep his hold on the GOP after his term ends."

And as Maggie Haberman reported in the New York Times last week, "Mr. Trump is talking seriously about announcing that he is planning to run again in 2024."

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Trump likes to talk, of course, and most of what he says is hot air. As Haberman writes, Trump is merely "trying to survive from one news cycle to the next" — as if "surviving" the news cycle somehow means anything after losing an election — and his energies are focused on not losing his grip on "his Republican base," the cow he milks for endless attention and vast amounts of cash.

Still, Trump's desperation to keep his name in the headlines — and to keep money and adoration flowing from his gullible supporters — is bad news. While it's true that Trump's divisiveness and authoritarianism is a symptom of the country's increasingly toxic culture war, and not the principal cause, it's also true that he's throwing gasoline on the fire and making things worse. By keeping up a constant stream of lies and conspiracy theories, Trump is training nearly half the country to believe that lying in the service of MAGA is no sin. He's helping to radicalize conservatives who might otherwise have had some attachment to reality and common sense, and creating permission for the right to be openly anti-democratic and bigoted in ways it largely shied away from before.

Biden ran on a campaign of unity and healing, which rightfully drew skepticism from those who believe that's impossible in our current climate. But if Biden has any hope of even moving toward those goals, Trump himself is a major obstacle. With Trump out there daily, generating conspiracy theories and trying to get press attention — or worse, running yet another four-year campaign, this time against a Democratic incumbent — unity and healing will be not just elusive, but impossible.

The only solution to this problem is for Trump to be too busy trying to stay out of jail — or too busy sitting in jail — to be the forever-candidate. To save America, Biden's Department of Justice and state prosecutors in New York should focus on holding Trump accountable for all the various alleged or apparent crimes he's committed. Trump's executive privilege ends on Jan. 20 at noon Eastern time. That's when the prosecutions should begin.

The list of such crimes is so long that the only real question should be where to start.

There's campaign finance fraud involving the illegal payoff to Stormy Daniels to cover up a sexual encounter, for which Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was already sent to prison. Because of the shield of executive privilege, Trump was merely called "Individual 1" in the court documents for that case. Now he can be unveiled and, ideally, serve his own stint in prison for that crime.

There's also the extensive obstruction of justice Trump committed in office, which, again, would have been prosecutable but for executive privilege. Special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election documented at least 10 instances of potential obstruction of justice. As Mueller testified in a congressional hearing in 2019, Trump can still be indicted for these offenses when he leaves office.

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Trump could also be hit with charges related to obstruction of justice in the Ukraine probe. As the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives amply demonstrated in their articles of impeachment against Trump, the president repeatedly abused his power to block subpoenas and other information that Congress had a right to access. The Republican-controlled Senate may have acquitted Trump for political reasons, but the Justice Department under Biden would be free to throw the book at Trump.

There are so many more probably or plausibly illegal things Trump has done that a hard-working prosecutorial office could likely draw up charges for. There are more than two dozen accusations of sexual assault, some of which may still fall within the relevant statute of limitations. There's the extensively documented likely tax fraud — and now there's no Trump to get in the way of releasing Trump's tax returns. There may also have been prosecutable crimes associated with the incident that got Trump impeached, which was extorting the Ukrainian president in an attempt to force him to defame Biden in the press.

One can already hear the objections, of course: Unleashing the DOJ to go after a defeated ex-president could make Biden appear vindictive and divisive. There have even been calls for Biden to pardon Trump so the country can "move on. (Fortunately, Biden has promised not to do that.)

Biden himself is on the fence about this issue, saying that prosecuting a former president would be "very unusual thing and probably not very good for democracy" but also that he wouldn't "interfere with the Justice Department's judgment" on this front.

The good news is there are ways for Biden to let the Trump prosecution proceed in a less political way. As Renato Mariotti writes in Politico, the new attorney general can appoint a special counsel who "should be a career prosecutor who has no connection to Biden or his team" to run the investigation. That wouldn't stop all criticism, of course, but could blunt it significantly.

Whatever the details, the grim truth is there is no "moving on" unless Donald Trump faces real accountability. For one thing, Trump won't let the country move on. He'll be running for president all over again, exploiting his status and power to continue stoking right-wing anger and spreading conspiracy theories. To make it worse, watching Trump get off scot-free will encourage a thousand mini-Trumps to bloom, as more GOP politicians realize they can break whatever law they desire without consequence. It could also have the impact of demobilizing the left, just when Biden needs their support the most, because so many progressives will be angry at Biden and the Democrats for failing to hold Trump to account.

No, in order to heal the nation, Trump needs to be prosecuted. Biden will have to swallow the unpleasant pill of weathering bad-faith accusations and negative media commentary, by both hiring people who have the guts to do it and letting them loose to do their job. Unity cannot be achieved by letting bad people get away with crimes. We need a reckoning, and real justice, before the process of healing can begin.

A nurse in a strained El Paso hospital says the sickest COVID-19 patients are put in a doctor-less room called 'the pit' where they are given 3 chances to be revived before workers let them die

Op Ed: The MAGAts in Texas are dropping like turds from a tall cow's ass. Chances are, these patients are Trump's anti-maskers so the more that die the better. The moral thing to do is let anti-maskers die and do what we can to hasten their deaths. The only good MAGAt is a dead MAGAt. Texas reports nearly 21,000 COVID-19 death and Texas has been under reporting cases and deaths.

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Travel nurse Lawanna Rivers recently recorded a Facebook Live video, where she described her experience treating COVID-19 patients at the University Medical Center of El Paso.
The city has emerged as a new hotspot of the virus, as the nation battles a third wave of the outbreak.
In the video, Rivers said the hospital's sickest COVID-19 patients were put in a "pit" that doctors don't enter for fear of exposing themselves to the virus.
"My first day at orientation, I was told that whatever patients go into the pit, they only come out in a body bag," she said, adding that this posting has been her worst during the pandemic.
The hospital told KFOX 14 it "cannot fully verify the events expressed" in Rivers' video but acknowledged the "difficult, physical and emotional toll" the pandemic has taken on health workers.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Video: How viruses like the coronavirus mutate

How viruses like the coronavirus mutate

Genetic mutations aren't as scary as they sound. With RNA viruses, like the one that causes COVID-19, they're happening constantly — basically every time it replicates. But not all mutations stick, and not all the ones that stick are bad. In fact, mutations are actually necessary for tracking and containing COVID-19. Here's why you shouldn't be worried when you hear about them.

A travel nurse has described the "horrific" scene at one hospital in El Paso, Texas, a city that has emerged as a new hotspot as the weathers its third and likely deadliest wave of the coronavirus.

In a nearly hourlong Facebook Live video published last Saturday, Lawanna Rivers said that she had served five postings at various hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, but her time at the University Medical Center of El Paso was by far the worst.

"Out of all the COVID assignments I've been on, this one here has really left me emotionally scarred," she said. "The facility I'm at has surpassed the one I was at in New York." New York was the epicenter of the US outbreak in the spring.

Rivers was most upset about how the sickest patients at the hospital were treated. She said they were all put into an area called a "pit," where they are essentially left to die.

"My first day at orientation, I was told that whatever patients go into the pit, they only come out in a body bag," Rivers said.

covid test — A nurse enters a tent for coronavirus patients at the University Medical Center of El Paso on October 30, 2020. Cengiz Yar/Getty Images

Rivers said doctors at the hospital would not enter the area, and nurses like herself who were stationed in them were under orders to perform CPR just three times on a patient before letting them die.

Rivers said she learned that doctors wouldn't enter the pit when she called a physician for help one day with a patient who was bleeding profusely. She said the doctor told her they don't go into the rooms for the sickest COVID-19 patients, so as to not expose themselves to the disease.

In the three-and-a-half weeks that she was at the hospital, Rivers said she never once saw a doctor go into a COVID-19 pit.

"The doctors don't even step foot in those COVID rooms to see those patients ...We as nurses, it's OK for us to be exposed, but you as doctors, you don't even come in there. You can't get exposed, but we can and y'all are making all the money," she said.

Rivers said that she volunteered to work in a pit every day, hoping that continuity of care would help her patients get better — but that it didn't matter because they were too sick by that point.

Rivers said she believes that if the patients had received better care earlier on, it may have made a difference.

"I have never experienced, and have no words, for what I just experienced in El Paso, Texas," she said. "If those doctors there would aggressively treat those patients from the beginning, a lot more would make it."

Rivers also accused the hospital of giving special treatment to the wife of a doctor once. She said this woman, whom a nurse at one point called a "VIP" patient, was the only person to make it out of the ICU alive during her nearly a month at the hospital.

"They pulled out all the stops for that woman, it was nothing that they didn't do for that woman. And guess what? She was the one patient that made it out of the ICU alive, and was able to downgrade to a longterm acute care. So you mean to tell me because she's a doctor's wife, her life meant more than any of those other patients?"

university medical center el paso — The University Medical Center of El Paso. Google Street View

In another shocking testimony, Rivers described how a worker once wheeled in a dead body into her unit because the morgue was full.

"The morgue was so full of bodies that they had ran out of room, so once the doors opened to the pit they come wheeling in a body already in a bag," she said.

"Lined 'em up with the rest of our alive patients, because they had to store the body in there, because the morgue was out of room. They've had to bring in freezer trucks because there's so many bodies."

Rivers said that she left her assignment in El Paso early because she couldn't bear to watch more patients die.

"I've seen so many deaths in this last month, than I've seen in my entire 13-year career," Rivers said.

She said she was also afraid for her life, and the kind of care she would receive if she got sick there.

"I kept saying: 'I can't get sick here in Texas, because if I get COVID here in Texas ... I'm going to die. It was that bad," she said.

Business Insider has contacted the University Medical Center of El Paso for comment.

The hospital has been releasing the same statement to local outlets about Rivers' video.

"After watching the video, while we cannot fully verify the events expressed, we empathize and sympathize with the difficult, physical and emotional toll that this pandemic takes on thousands of healthcare workers here and throughout our country," hospital spokesman Ryan Mielke said in the statement, according to KFOX 14.

"This particular travel nurse was at UMC briefly to help El Paso confront the surge of COVID-19 patients."

Watch Rivers' full 50-minute Facebook Live video below:

Texas currently has the most coronavirus cases in the US, according to Worldometer, and El Paso county has the third-most infections in the state, according to the Texas health department.

Earlier this month the county doubled its number of mobile morgues — which are typically refrigerated trucks — to store COVID-19 victims' bodies, and KFOX 14 reported that patients were dying at such a rate that medical examiners have not been able to keep up.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Sunday, November 15, 2020

A coup? A Trumper tantrum? Whatever Trump's doing, it's time for the 25th Amendment

To the editor: Our Constitution has a mechanism in the 25th Amendment for removing the president if he becomes incapacitated. Is this not the perfect example of a time to invoke it? ("Trump still hasn't conceded. What's his endgame?" Opinion, Nov. 11)

President Trump has gone from narcissism to a state of delusion so bad that he is now installing loyalists in strategic positions as if he is planning some kind of coup or military action. If he was a member of your family you would not ignore this failure to accept reality.

Why wait to see what he is going to do next?

Vice President Mike Pence and the White House Cabinet members need to remove Trump from power. Pence can pardon Trump if he likes and let the transition to President-elect Joe Biden begin. How can the Republicans argue with that? Or are they afraid "the base" will object when it's obvious that the president is not accepting reality?

This calls for an intervention. It's not time just to "wait and see" if Trump descends further into delusion and endangers all our lives.

Virginia Roth, North Hills

To the editor: Columnist Nicholas Goldberg raises the specter of a Trump coup.

The rallying cry of voter fraud, the firing of the secretary of Defense and the smearing of our national security agencies could well be the opening salvos in a "bloodless" coup attempt. Portraying Trump's behavior as a childish tantrum fails to convey the vigilance needed here.

Our democracy is currently in a fragile state. It is vulnerable unless great care is exercised to assure the peaceful transfer of power.

Where is that assurance to come from?

Nicholas Lewis, Los Angeles

To the editor: Trump never got over the fact that the Democrats cast suspicion on the validity of his election because of interference by the Russian government.

I don't think Trump really believes that he has a chance of winning any court battles and remaining in office. It's time for payback. He wants to sow doubt among his supporters about the validity of Biden's election.

"He's not my president" was often heard from Democrats after Trump's election. We're already hearing the same refrain from his supporters. Mission accomplished.

How sad for the country.

John Beckman, Chino Hills

To the editor: Whatever Trump's endgame is, someone should tell the Republicans to nip it in the bud and leave United States' institutions untarnished.

The next autocrat who comes along might be on the far left.

Richard Kauffman, Venice

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

25th Amendment | U.S. Constitution | US Law | LII / Legal ...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

'It's critical' for Republican leaders to explain to voters Trump lost the election: John Bolton

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser urged Republican Party leaders Sunday to acknowledge and explain the presidential election result to their supporters rather than continuing to appease the president as he promotes baseless claims of voter fraud.

"I think as every day goes by, it's clearer and clearer there isn't any evidence," John Bolton said on ABC's "This Week," dismissing Trump's claim that President-elect Joe Biden's victory is illegitimate. "But if the Republican voters are only hearing Donald Trump's misrepresentations, it's not surprising that they believe it."

"It's critical for other Republican leaders to stand up and explain what actually happened: Donald Trump lost what, by any evidence we have so far, was a free and fair election," he continued.

The appeal from Bolton, who has been a sharp critic of the president's since leaving his national security post in September 2019, came on a morning during which Trump, via Twitter, made one of his first acknowledgements of President-elect Joe Biden's victory -- albeit while repeating his unsubstantiated claim that the election was rigged. He tweeted later to say that he was not conceding.

"This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz noted that the president's refusal to accept the election's results is delaying the transition to the Biden administration and holding up intelligence briefings for the president-elect, and later asked former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in a separate interview, about the importance of the changeover.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

COVID-19 and MAGAts

If only 15% more people wore masks there would not have to be a shut down but MAGAts don't care about the health and well being of others. Do we really want these MAGAts breathing the same air as us humans?

Look at it like this. An enemy army has attacked the US but something in the US is making them sick and many of them are dying. Would our generals tell them how to stop this invisible killer. HELL NO!

Anti-maskers are anti-American. They are the enemy among us. Since they don't act like Americans, they are not Americans and they are not enemy combatants either. They should not be granted constitutional rights nor the protections of the Geneva convention. With their lies they are guilty of treason, sedition and espionage. Round em up and lock em up and let COVID-19 thing their ranks.

MAGAts are not as stupid as you think and they are more evil than you can imagine. They tried to kidnap and execute out elected officials. The have killed us humans.

We can plead with them to wear masks but they won't do it. We can show them that mask wearing in their one best interests. Unless some other MAGAt such death deserving Rand Paul tells them, they will pretend not to believe it. You can show them the science. They hate science because science reveals truth. They hate truth and you can't turn evil into good.

The MAGAts are stinking up the place but since late May 2020, most of the victims of COVID-19 deaths and infections have been MAGAts. Let em get sick and die. Saving them would be immoral. They will not get vaccinated. Good! Let em get sick and die. Saving them would be immoral.

Let the MAGAts exterminate themselves!

To Thom Tillis,

The virus is presenting a moral and political dilemma for many leaders. Since you have the morals snake it's mostly political dilemma for like the one Jesus crushed it must be important politically to you.

Governor Cooper is a moral man and he want to save as many lives as possible but there's not much he can do and I've told him that.

Sometimes evil people like you and "Ayn" Rand Paul do the right thing my mistake and good people such as Governor Cooper do the wrong thing by mistake. God will forgive Roy Cooper. You are probably already destined for hell. I say probably because you might do something magnanimous that could save you from eternal damnation but I doubt it.

If you believe in free will then you must believe people have choices. People who consistently do bad things are vary often bad people who are already damned like I suspect you are. If you vote for a stimulus package and mask mandates and a shutdown God will know that you're just sucking up to him... that's what you do because that's what you are.

Here's what's going to happen according to several of the math models. A lot of American mostly Trumper are anti-maskers and rule breakers. The are like you and Trump. The don't care about the right and the well-being of others. They are the anti-Christ. I don't know is you do what Satanic rituals that Trump does but you are the anti-Christ whether you know it or not.

We know from the data that most of the COVID-19 deaths since late May are Trumpers. The have a choice and like you and most other Republicans are selfish and totally depraved and that is why you vipers are anti-mask. The individuals who would vote for Trump and most other Republicans are anti-mask. Your people aka the GOP base are not going to wear masks or follow the rules and given their other vulgar health habit more than 4% of them who get COVID-19 will die. Many of them will believe Q-Anon and not get the vaccine. Your trash has called to the beheading of Dr Fauci.

Here is your dilemma. If you take the Rand Paul route a lot of the GOP base will perish. It's all part of the plan. If you vote for lock downs and mandatory mask the MAGAts who voted for you will call you a RINO and who knows what those "Gunfederates" might to.

If you vote against the stimulus your MAGAts will still hate you because they're MAGAts. Your nuts in a vice Thommy.

If you vote for lockdowns and masks I few less of your MAGAts will perish from COVID-19.

Having the wisdom of King Solomon, I know what to do but you have to figure it out on your own. In order for you to do the correct thing, you would have to know what I know about the science. And if you do learn it good luck explaining it to the brain dead hypocrites who would vote for the likes of you.

Charles Koch is trying to get right with God.

In case you find morality, here's the moral dilemma: If you do nothing and act like Trump and Rand Paul and suck up to your depraved base more of them will die. If you warn them and work with Biden, less of them will die from COVID-19 but they'll hate you.

If you do nothing more bad people will die making life better for good people.

Let's say you are a moral person Thom and you are leading an army. You find out that the enemy's army has a horrible disease that could kill them all spreading through their ranks but you can give them the cure but if you do they will continue to fight because they are really evil like the Waffen SS. LIke your base they have no morals. If you try to argue the point that your MAGAts were simply hoodwinked by the orange menace you will have to deal with the facts.

Trump cruelly mocked a disabled man and that wasn't a deal breaker for your MAGAts

Trump cheated on all his wives with hookers and that wasn't a deal breaker for your MAGAts. That loser had to pay for sex. You you hypocrite knew your MAGAts would excuse Trump's decades of cheating on all his wives so you went after Cunningham. Cunningham should have slapped the shit out of you.

Your MAGAts didn't care that Trump lied about the wall and his taxes because they prefer liars.

Your MAGAts didn't care that Trump surrounded himself with criminals and brought them into the White House. Your MAGAts prefer criminals.

Your MAGAts don't care that Trump is a traitor, a crybaby, a rapist, a pedophile, a cheater, and a con artist.

Thom, the chances of you not going to hell are slim and none.

I realize that none of this is going to affect you on any level of morality since you are immoral but hell is real and science has proven it. Better load up on Xanax, because the panic and anxiety attacks are about to start for you Thom knowing that your soul/consciousness will spend eternity in merciless and constant torment.

'Million MAGAt March' Pro-Trump Protest Clowned for Underwhelmingly Low Turnout

Jordan Rose

Sat, November 14, 2020, 3:25 PM EST

Following Donald Trump's loss in the presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden, his supporters decided to try and emulate Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March on Washington, calling it their "Million MAGA March" because... of course, they would. Their march, however, didn't receive the same kind of turnout that the real Million Man March did.

Despite some Trump supporters trying to tout an astonishing turnout for the demonstration, videos and pictures prove that the crowd looks like it barely had over 5,000 people in it, not the "one million" that they are reporting.

It also looks as though Trump himself drove through the march in his Motorcade as well, but he did not participate or speak during it.

While I'm not completely sure what the goal was behind the "Million MAGA March," it definitely wasn't met. Others pointed out that the march mostly consisted of the hardcore Trump zealots and others selling racist paraphernalia.

Others used a different hashtag, #MillionMoronMarch, to point out how ridculous it was.

TikTokers and teens also co-opted the "Million MAGA March" hashtag by adding pictures of pancakes.

Many Trump supporters were upset after he lost the election and thought he was cheated, calling for an immediate recount of only "real votes" so that the "fake votes" could be weeded out. This disillusionment likely carried over into the march as well.