THE TAKEOVER HAS BEGUN
by Cash Michaels
“Elections have consequences!”
The more I learn about the U.S. Supreme Court’s extraordinary ruling on presidential immunity, and how it allows a commander-in-chief, in or out of office, to literally get away with any criminal behavior, as long as he or she can justify it as an “official act,” the more I cringe at the thought of a Donald Trump presidential re-election victory this November, and the existence of what conservatives hail to be their ultimate plan to takeover the United States - Project 2025.
According to at least one right-wing pundit I’ve read, the “takeover has already begun.”
So it’s frightening to think that all the man Joe Biden calls a “pathological” and “congenital liar” has to do is win in November - which the polls currently say he’s very capable of doing - and that will light the fuse to a variety of destructive and anti-democratic societal reactions like we’ve never seen before in this country.
For starters, Trump always had the gun, and has threatened to use it.
But now, with the High Court’s presidential immunity ruling, and Project 2025, he has the big bullets too.
Virtually all of the federal crimes Trump has been indicted for involving trying to undermine the 2020 elections, masterminding the January 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol, and attempting to entice U.S. Justice Dept. officials to interfere with the 2020 election results, now, disgustingly, could be minimized by the immunity ruling.
Trump’s legal team has successfully delayed upcoming trials, and is already leveraging the ruling every way they can to impact his other pending cases as well. Nothing has been dismissed or overturned, but they’re working on it.
“The nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 conservative majority. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”
Interestingly, “unofficial acts” were left undefined by Roberts and the Right-Wing Five, meaning we are in unpredictable legal territory here. The Chief Justice wrote, “…in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.”
Say what? NO, I refuse to pronounce Donald Trump “king.”
And, according to CNN, “The majority ruled that evidence about official acts cannot be introduced “even on charges that purport to be based only on his unofficial conduct. The Trump team is hopeful that language can be used to undermine the charges that survive the court’s immunity parameters.”
“Folks, elections have consequences!”
In a chilling piece of reporting titled, “Trump’s Not ‘Bluffing’: Inside the MAGA Efforts to Make a Second Term Even More Extreme,” Rolling Stone Magazine reported, after speaking to a variety of sources close to Trump’s “government-in-waiting”, that if he retakes power, expect him to follow through “on his extreme campaign pledges.”
So now, that hate-filled 2016 Republican Convention chant of “Lock her up” has a whole new meaning. If Trump wins again, Hillary, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, NY Attorney General Lettia James, Fulton County DA Fani Willis and everybody else felonious Mar-a-largo Man has a stick up his craw for, may see the inside of a prison cell, if he deems doing so as “an official act” once re-elected.
Rolling Stone further reported Trump’s MAGA laundry list is “profusely long,” “…but it includes criminally probing and possibly imprisoning political enemies and the prosecutors who’ve gone after him; unleashing troops on Democratic-controlled cities whenever he wants (reports note that when he was president, Trump wanted Black Lives Matter protesters shot in the streets); cracking down on legal and illegal immigration on a draconian, unprecedented scale; further solidifying his anti-democratic lies about the 2020 election into policy and party dogma; insulating himself from his own array of indictments; and turning the Department of Justice and other nominally independent organs of the U.S. government into his own personal protection racket.”
And let’s throw in, for good measure, that NC “Governor” Mark Robinson, who reportedly raises campaign cash from white cultist, slave laboring and sexually abusing children “churches,” could call up his MAGA boss Trump one day and tell him, “Some folks need killing!” Lord!!!
And Salon is reporting that Trump zealot and former administration official, Kash Patel, is threatening to go after the media.
”We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said in a recent interview with Steve Bannon, referring to the 2020 presidential election. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
Charming!
Of course all of the above would be wrong, but thanks to six right-wing Supremes on the nation’s High Court, it all would be legal if Trump calls it an “official act.”
This clown Patel is such a super MAGA-bot, by the way, he’s reportedly gotten rich selling crap to dumber MAGAbots, like a COVID-19 vaccine “detoxification system.”
And if that craziness doesn’t jump the shark, he’s actually published two Trump children’s books. In one, Patel “… exposes a plot by a thinly-veiled Hillary Clinton character against "King Donald."
I hope she sues the stains out of his underwear!
This is insanity on steroids!
And don’t forget, decent former Trump administration officials left his employ during his first term because of some of the crazy, illegal stuff he wanted to do, like bomb Mexico.
He couldn’t do a lot of it because either those officials, or his White House attorneys. stopped him.
If Trump wins again in November, no one can, or will stop him.
“Elections, ladies and gentlemen, have consequences!”
You see, I don’t buy this “imperial presidency” B.S. that counterclockwise conservatives like justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas wave around like upside down flags.
“[A]s the Court explains, the President’s immunity from prosecution for his official acts is the law, “Uncle” Clarence wrote in a stupefying concurring opinion with the 6-3 conservative majority. “The Constitution provides for ‘an energetic executive,’ because such an Executive is ‘essential to… the security of liberty.’”
Translation - “an energetic executive’ is a president who is supposedly so footloose and fancy free with power, he or she justifiably doesn’t have time to worry about whether what they’re doing is legal or not, because the office imbues him or her with the freedom, authority and ability to do any damn thing he or she pleases, unchecked by laws created by, and for, mere mortal men and women to obey.
No Democratic president would behave this way. A Republican president on the other hand…!
Anyone care for a simmering cup of extra strong white right-wing supremacy to go with that heaping helping of profound conservative bullcrap on your plate?
Whatever happened to “NO one in this country is above the law, even the president?” Whatever happened to holding the president accountable for his or her actions in or out of office?
Apparently five of the six conservative justices lied to this nation during their respective confirmation hearings for the job, when they each testified to believing in exactly that (Justice Thomas is the only High Court conservative who never proclaimed that the president must be held accountable. Wish I could give him a cookie for such devious honesty, but I read he gets enough gifts and free trips on the job as is).
This Supreme Court decision tells us that the president is God, if not king, especially if it’s a conservative president. Lord help us!
I like what David Mastio, a regional editor for The Center Square wrote, “The biggest problem with the majority’s position is that it makes up immunity out of whole cloth,” strongly suggesting that a clear reading of the U.S. Constitution does not support the majority opinion.
Make no mistake, there will always be times when a president is faced with challenges where extreme, legally questionable measures may be called for. But usually the country’s national security interests are self-evident in those actions.
Think Pres. Obama giving Seal Team Six the green light to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks thirteen years ago.
Violating the sovereign border of another nation is big time contrary to international law, let alone doing so to assassinate someone there. Pres. Obama took the calculated risk, knowing that if he failed, his presidency was essentially over in more ways than one. But there’s no argument that he did so in our national security interests, not his.
His respect for the office, and the nation, was never in question.
That cogent example is a far, far cry from what Trump is itching to do if reelected, meaning literally anything he wants, unfettered by legal repercussions. That includes screwing with the Constitution, plotting nefarious schemes, and maybe even murdering someone if it suits his personal agenda.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayer in making clear in her dissent that this absolute presidential immunity nonsense was dangerous drink.
“In the end,” she wrote, “under the majority’s new paradigm, whether the President will be exempt from legal liability for murder, assault, theft, fraud, or any other reprehensible and outlawed criminal acts will turn on whether he committed that act in his official capacity, such that the answer to the immunity question will always and inevitably be: It depends.”
Conservative pundits counter that “lib-er-aaaal” folks like me (actually, I’m quite moderate in my politics) protest too much, and that Congress still has effective tools for removing out-of-control commanders-in-chief, namely impeachment in the House, and conviction in the Senate.
Yeah, well Donald Trump has been impeached twice folks, and the Republican-led Senate still saved his crooked behind each time.
So the only way to protect against a criminally-inclined candidate for president in office, is by NOT allowing him/her to be elected in the first place.
While we work on that, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he and his crew are working “…to advance legislation to strip former President Trump of the immunity he was granted under a recent Supreme Court ruling protecting a president’s official acts from criminal prosecution.”
Yeah, good luck with that, Chuck. If that can pass the GOP-led House, we ought to make YOU president!
Citizens of good sense and good will need to do all they can to protect this imperfect, but worthy democracy we love, and cherish now, more than ever.
Especially when I read the words of Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who told Steve Bannon (yeah, THAT Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser, who is now serving the next four months in prison as you read this), “[W]e are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back,”Roberts boasted, adding that the Supreme Court’s absolute immunity decision was vital to “…help usher in Project 2025 if Trump wins reelection in November.”
Am I wrong, or is homeboy TELLING us out loud that his ilk is taking over as soon as “King” Trump wins the next election?
USA Today reports “The 2025 Presidential Transition Project” or [Project 2025] as is otherwise known, is a detailed 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” that lays out an administration-in-waiting for the next conservative president. It seeks to redefine the executive branch, including overhauling several government agencies and replacing civil servants with political appointees. The plan has critics up in arms and concerned about its “apocalyptic” and “authoritarian” nature.”
Democracy Docket reports, “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections,” the project’s website states. “If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration. This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.”
Folks who hear what Project 2025 is all about, namely to “institutionalize Trumpism,” are so put off, even Trump himself has had to try and put some distance between his campaign and this 900-page horror show. He’s lying again through his teeth, of course. And fortunately, more people are finding out about it. I pray they plan to vote!
That’s why I have tremendous new respect for actress/entertainer Taraji P. Henson (“Cookie” from the television series “Empire”) who hosted the 2024 BET Awards recently, and used that golden opportunity to school her hip-hop audience about Project 2025, and based on press reports, a lot of folks went online to further look it up as a result.
And MSNBC talker Joy Reid of The ReidOut, who also warned her audience about Project 2025 in an insightful on-air conversation with former NAACP Defense Fund Executive Director Sherrilyn Ifill, Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University.
Prof. Ifill made it very clear. This November, we should be “…voting for our survival as a democracy!”
“Elections, y’all, have consequences!”
As we literally careen towards the November 5th presidential election, these two earth-shattering developments in our country have helped to fine tune what the role of each sane-thinking American must be.
Add to that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s promise that if his MAGA-master is reelected, and Republicans hold onto the House and grab back the Senate, they will cut funding from Medicare, Obamacare, and Social Security, giving those dollars to the Trump-led military.
You know, the one Felon Face plans to use to “take back’ America with?
Unless you actually want a two-ton taste of fascism in your life starting January 20th, 2025, you need to carry yourself down to your local voting precinct on November 5th, 2024 or before for early voting, and do YOUR part to make sure this crap does not happen.
But, as has been already noted, thanks to Trump, and Project 2025, “the takeover has already begun.”
Yale University History Prof. Timothy Snyder, a noted author and expert on authoritarianism, states on X (formerly Twitter), “Unless Trump loses, America ends!”
We CAN’T let that happen!!!
This is our 1776 moment, brothers and sisters!
“Elections, my fellow Americans, have consequences!”
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