SEAL Team Six ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Bedlam:  Three US Court of Appeals Judges for the DC Circuit heard arguments yesterday on whether the Constitution makes former presidents immune from criminal prosecutions.  During the hearing Trump lawyer John Sauer argued that only presidents who are impeached and convicted can be prosecuted for their crimes.  In response to a theoretical question from one of the judges, Sauer suggested that even a president directing SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent couldn’t be prosecuted.  None of the three judges seemed to buy Sauer’s “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it” logic.  It didn’t help when Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutor James Pearce pointed out that by Sauer’s theory, a president could step down after assassinating a rival and/or selling a pardon for bigly bucks before impeachment proceedings could even begin and as a result manage to walk away free.  After the hearing, Trump who has promised retribution and perhaps some of that Seal Team Six treatment to his rivals should he be returned to the Oval Office claimed that he was being prosecuted because he’s leading President Biden in the polls and warned that if the courts rule against him the result would be “bedlam.” It’s not clear when the judges will rule, but the expectation is that they won’t rule in Trump’s favor and that he will then appeal, first by asking for a review by a full panel of the DC Circuit judges and then to the Supreme Court because what he’s really trying to do is to stall and stall some more, pushing off the start of the election interference trial as much as he can.  Who can blame him, while his arguments may be falling flat with judges, they appear to be working with his party’s leaders.  Yesterday, Senator John Barrasso, number three in Republican Senate leadership and one of the three “Johns” competing to replace Mitch McConnell, endorsed him saying “we need Donald Trump back in the White House.”  Also, because it’s a strategy that’s worked so well for him in the past and because he’s not happy that his New Hampshire lead over Nikki Haley has according to a CNN poll shrunk to seven points, Trump is now questioning Haley’s citizenship, claiming that even though she was born in the US, she’s not really natural born.  Getting back to bedlam, it’s already happening, a number of politicians and judges have been the victims of  “swatting” of late including Jack Smith and Judge Tanya Chutkan because nothing is better than having a fully armed FBI team show up on your doorstep to “rescue” you from a devious “prank” call.  And then there’s Trump associate, Roger Stone who was taped last year in a Florida restaurant suggesting to a now former NY Policeman that it was time to “do it” to Democratic Congressmen Eric Swalwell and Jerry Nadler.

The Sick List:  We now know more about why Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is hospitalized.  It turns out that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December and like many men didn’t want to talk about it even to his boss, Biden.  He tried to sneak in what was supposed to be a fairly routine surgery over the Christmas break. His effort to slip under the radar was upended when after returning home from a one-night stay at Walter Read, he experienced severe pain due to a urinary tract infection.  That’s an unusual but not unheard-of complication.  He returned to the hospital, was placed in the ICU while the UTI and a related blockage were treated. Not fun and were he anyone else, only those near and dear to him would have learned the gruesome details but since he’s Secretary of Defense, he and his Chief of Staff who apparently was out of pocket suffering from the flu, should have been more forthcoming especially with Biden.  Austin, who is now out of ICU is expected to fully recover medically, though his lack of candor and its impact on Biden’s reelection run could do him in eventually. Also, on the medical front, Melania Trump’s 78-year-old mother, Amalija Knavs, passed away last night.  Her illness, rather than a tiff with the Donald, is the reason that Melania wasn’t in the Mar a Lago Christmas pictures.

Funding Fun: As predicted, the members of the House Republican lunatic fringe are less than pleased with Speaker for the moment Mike Johnson acting like a grown up with regard to government funding with at least one of them, Chip Roy who last November ranted about the Republican Party being useless for getting nothing done, is dangling a motion to vacate threat.  Roy and his crowd are unlikely to be all that pleased that another continuing resolution is on the table because as Mitch McConnell said yesterday, a short-term funding measure to avoid a partial government shutdown later this month is “obviously” needed.  So maybe Speaker Johnson spoke too soon when he said that he was “done” with continuing resolutions.  But then again, maybe his 🤡 🤡 🤡 can be distracted with their DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment and their Hunter Biden stuff.

#BringThemAllHomeNow