More of That Trump Crap

A headline that works no matter what side you’re on…

For a Card-Carrying Liberal I’ve got a surprising number of Conservatives friends and I think that’s an accurate statement because having even one Conservative friend surprises the hell out of me.

And one of my best Conservative friends is a guy named Bill who lives in Dallas and I probably hang out with Bill because he’s the funniest guy I know which is an unusual quality in a Conservative because they’re usually way too busy stealing candy from orphans and tipping over paraplegic’s wheelchairs to say anything humorous.

Be that as it may…

Bill says he hates it when I write what he calls that “Trump crap” and I’ll say, “Who’s making you read it?” and then he’ll say, “I don’t read it” and then I’ll say, “Then how do you know it’s about Trump?” and then he’ll say, “I read it until you mention Trump” and claim he stops reading at that point and hopes next time I’ll come to what’s left of my senses and write about baseball.

So, Bill, heads-up because this one is all about Donald J. (which I believe stands for “Jesus Christ, What’s He Done Now?”) Trump.

According to the Associated Press, Trump’s top White House lawyer – Pat Cippolone, who or may not be a minor character from The Sopranos  – called Donald Trump a few hours after the shit hit the fan on January 6^th and told Trump he needed to end his objections to the 2020 election and let Congress certify Joe Biden as the next president.

And Trump, fulfilling his oath to be a Titanic Asshole Until the Bitter End, refused.

Turns out Trump wasn’t hearing what he wanted to hear from his official White House lawyers so he started listening to a wide variety of nutjobs and lunatics like Rudy Giuliani  and Sidney Powell and at one point Powell and Michael Flynn (the former national security advisor who lost his job after the Washington Post revealed some of the sketchy stuff he got involved in) suggested having the military seize voting machines in the crucial states he lost which is a terrific idea if you’re a Latin American dictator.

Cipollone’s top deputy Pat Philbin told Jeffrey Clark, a Department of Justice lawyer, that if Trump tried to remain in office despite no evidence of fraud there would be riots in every major city in the U.S. and Clark (who the article describes as a low-level DOJ attorney who “positioned himself as an advocate for election fraud claims” which is how a reputable journalist describe what seems to be an ass-kisser) said:

“That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”  

The Insurrection Act gives the president the power to use military force inside the U.S. so you had a defeated president desperate to stay in power being urged on by a bunch of political leeches, suggesting maybe he ought to seize power and overturn the election with military force.

And some people want this guy back in the White House because after all, what could possibly go wrong?

And now a look at what could possibly go wrong.

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by the Kansas City Star’s Melinda Henneberger and a column she wrote reminding people just how much Donald Trump admires dictators like Vladimir Putin.

Here’s something worth thinking about:

The very worst things said about Donald Trump aren’t said by Liberals or Democrats or Cartoonists with Blogs and Too Much Time on Their Hands; they’re said by Republican insiders who worked for him and knew him best and here’s what former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham had to say about Trump right after she said Trump seemed to fear Vladimir Putin:

“I also think he admired him greatly. I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him. So I think there was a lot of that. In my experience with him, he loved the dictators, he loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press.”

One more time in case it didn’t sink in yet:

Donald Trump’s former press secretary thinks Trump would like the power to kill his enemies so if he ever gets back in the White House I may be fucked.

According to Melinda’s column, Trump has also promised that if he’s returned to power he’ll get rid of all the federal civil service workers who aren’t loyal to him, eliminate an independent Department of Justice and remake the American system of checks and balances.

You might think you’d wanna keep that kind of batshit-crazy agenda quiet, but apparently Trump and the wingnuts who support him see it as a selling point and cooperated with a New York Times story that laid it all out in a story that started like this:

“Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly into his hands.”

All of which is a good reminder that while some people say I criticize Donald Trump too often, I’m clearly not criticizing him often enough.

According to a CNN article two-thirds of Republicans believe Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election and I gotta think Joseph Goebbels is somewhat responsible for that.

As you may or may not remember Joseph Goebbels was Reich Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945 and according to the Jewish Virtual Library here’s what Joey had to say about “The Big Lie”:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Lots of people (including me) remember that quote, but forget what Goebbels said next:

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

(And hat’s off to the Jewish Community who keep reminding us that all the fucked-up stuff that happened in Nazi Germany can happen again if we’re not vigilant.)

You’d think going to prison for believing Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the election being stolen would fall under the “consequences of the lie” category and people would wake the hell up, but like all Great Liars in History when Donald Trump gets caught in a lie, he tells another one.

Trump’s Next Big Lie from his Greatest Snits Album is that being indicted more often than Al Capone is actually proof that the government is out to get him, not proof that he broke an impressive variety of laws.

And I’m guessing the people who are going to jail for what they did on January 6^th really want to believe they’re patriots trying to save the country and not a bunch of knuckleheads who got taken in by a Reality TV Show Host Con Man.

In the book When Prophecy Fails the author talked about a woman who convinced her followers a UFO was coming to take them away so they should give away all their stuff and end their relationships with non-believers and quit their jobs and when the UFO didn’t show up – and who could have possibly seen that coming – some of her followers said that’s it, I quit, but other followers “doubled-down” on their belief in her.

She gave them a new date for their UFO Uber’s arrival and they believed her again because if she was wrong, they were gullible idiots.

In any case…

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by an article that suggested part of Trump’s plan to beat the charges against him is to get elected president again and then claim immunity.

“Vote for me so I don’t go to prison!” is at the very least an interesting campaign slogan and right about now I wouldn’t mind a UFO showing up and taking Trump and his followers away so they could fuck up a different galaxy because this one already has enough problems.

I mean we managed to set fire to Paradise.

On more than one occasion the Republicans have suggested that the Democrats ought to “move on” from the events of January 6^th which is an “interesting” position if by “interesting” you actually mean “bullshit” because the Republicans look like they’re about to re-nominate the man that caused them.

Got a deal for them; I’ll move on when they move on they get to go first.

In conclusion: Texas, it’s like a whole other country

If he read this far (which is doubtful) Bill is now pissed off and when that happens he’ll say, “You make me want to dip snuff.”

Which is another one of those Texasisms you need a U.N. interpreter to clarify, but I always enjoy hearing them and trying to figure out what, “She’d make a freight train take a dirt road” means or why one of my cartoons “Looks like a stickman peein’ on the railroad tracks” or how just about any occasion can be celebrated by saying, “Boy, Howdy.”

When I go visit Bill this winter we can argue about all of that because if Donald Trump continues running for president I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep churning out more of that Trump crap.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/