Citizen Trump ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Not a King: Well, yesterday was a bit of a humdinger.  Starting with Trump’s legal woes, the Washington DC appeals court finally weighed in and it turns out that the vast majority of TV legal pundits were spot on when they said that the appeals court would rule that former presidents are ordinary citizens, not kings, and as such are not above the law.  In a somewhat scathing opinion the three judge panel said that a former president can face charges for actions taken while in office and that the public interest in holding a criminal president accountable outweighs any potential “chilling effect” on the presidency, that last part a reference to Trump’s assertion that by denying him immunity the court would make it impossible for future presidents to do their jobs without fearing being criminally charged after leaving office for actions taken while in office. Trump’s way of saying that should he return to office he’ll go after Biden in retribution.  The judges also made it clear that they didn’t buy that it was okay for a president to engage in illegal activities to extend his stay in office, going so far as to say that “Trump’s alleged efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election were, if proven, an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government.”  They also didn’t buy into his assertion that only a president who’d been impeached and convicted could be criminally charged upon leaving office.  To hammer that home, they noted that the 43 Republican Senators who voted to acquit him relied on a variety of concerns, many of which had nothing to do with whether he’d committed the charged offense. Everyone expects Trump to appeal, taking the case to the Supreme Court, not because there’s much of a chance that a majority of SCOTUS will disagree with the appeals court but to stall for time.  To that end, the appeals court closed off one of his stalling tactics, saying that while he’s free to ask for an en banc review by all of the sitting DC appeals court judges, doing so won’t stop Judge Chutkan from proceeding with her insurrection case which means that Trump can only keep the case on hold by appealing directly to the Supreme Court by Monday.  Everyone expects that Trump will appeal to the Supremes leaving the success of his stalling tactic in their hands.  Some of the TV legal pundits believe that SCOTUS will take the case, others including former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal believe they won’t bother. If SCOTUS takes the case, the question is less about how the majority will rule and more about how long the court will take to issue a decision because even a ruling against Trump if delivered in late June will run out the clock by pushing the Chutkan election interference trial until September, too close to the November election. Switching gears to New York, where Trump stands to lose control of his business as well as huge amounts of money, presiding Judge Arthur Engoron hasn’t issued his ruling yet because he wants to know more about reports that former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg might be striking a perjury deal with New York DA Alvin Bragg’s office.  If those reports are true, Engoron could conclude that everything Weisselberg said in the fraud trial should be tossed which would cost Trump bigly.  There’s also been some activity in Florida, where Judge “loose” Cannon continues to do everything she can to accommodate Trump’s lawyers even if that means allowing the disclosure of super-secret stuff to everyone. Also, tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the 14^th Amendment, keep Trump off the ballot case, live audio available on CSPAN.  And one more legal thing, Robert Kur, the special counsel investigating how, after leaving the vice presidency, Biden was sloppy in his handling of documents, is expected to release his report shortly.  No charges but some snide remarks about Biden’s sloppiness are forthcoming.

Mike’s Mess: Right about now, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy is somewhere sporting a big grin because though he’s no longer third in line to the presidency, he didn’t preside over yesterday’s House debacle.  To recount the day’s sh-tshow, Speaker for now Mike Johnson put the kibosh on the extremely conservative border bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of Senators to meet his demands because Trump told him that mayhem at the border improved his chances of avoiding jail for the crimes he committed when he was president. Johnson then preceded with a vote to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, not for high crimes and misdemeanors but for being Biden’s Homeland Secretary.  That vote went down in flames after three Republicans, Ken Buck of Colorado, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Tom McClintock of California, the most that Johnson could afford to lose given his slim majority, voted with all the Democrats, including Texas’ Al Green who showed up at the last possible second in a wheelchair, still in his hospital garb, straight from having had emergency surgery, to cast the deciding vote against impeachment. In order to preserve the right to bring the Mayorkas impeachment up for a vote again, Republicans had one their aye voters flip to a nay at the last minute, a procedure that preserves the right for a mulligan. The plan is to get ailing Republican Steve Scalise who isn’t supposed to be exposed to crowds given his recent bone marrow transplant, to the House for another vote, something the Republicans will have to do very soon because their majority will shrink further if Democrat Tom Suozzi prevails over Republican Mazi Pilip in next week’s election for the seat formerly held by George of many names Santos. As if demonstrating his incompetency and complete fealty to Trump with the pointless impeachment vote wasn’t enough, pointless because even if successful the Mayorkas impeachment will go nowhere in the Senate, Johnson then followed up with a vote on Israel aid.  That vote also went down in flames, not because the majority of Democrats in the House doesn’t want to help Israel but because the Democrats, also want to help Ukraine and Taiwan and many, are pissed about the handling of the border bill that many found too conservative but were willing to sign on to in order to do something about the border while also getting the aid package passed. Remember when things like this happened during Nancy Pelosi’s reign?  You don’t because they didn’t happen, because Pelosi can count and didn’t call stupid votes she couldn’t win.

Primarily Yours:  Nevada held its Democratic and Republican presidential primaries yesterday.  Biden won his, garnering 89.3% of the votes counted so far. Second place went to “None of the Above” (5.9%), with third place going to Mariane Williamson (2.9%).  Congressman Dean Phillips was not on the ballot. The Republican primary was another story all together, Trump was not on the ballot though Nikki Haley was. Haley came in second garnering 30.8% of the vote.  “None of the Above” came in first with 62.9%, not a good look for Haley and a fairly obvious indication that had Trump been on the ballot he would have slaughtered her. Though he didn’t run in the primary, Trump is participating in Nevada’s Republican caucuses rather than the primary because with his “guidance” Nevada’s very MAGA Republican party told candidates that if they ran in the primary they couldn’t participate in the caucuses.  The caucuses will determine who gets the state’s Republican delegates, and of course all of the delegates will go to Trump. Last night Haley “celebrated” her performance noting that she did well considering that she did no campaigning in Nevada. In other MAGA news, Ronna Romney McDaniel who dropped the Romney part of her name to please Trump is expected to step down as Chair of the RNC after the South Carolina primary.  She’s done everything Trump has asked her to do but has failed at raising money and as a result the RNC is seriously in the red, not just politically but financially. Her replacement is expected to be North Carolina party chair Michael Whatley, not to be confused with one of my favorite NCIS alums, Michael Weatherly. By the way, though we keep hearing, relentlessly, that Biden is down in the polls, it’s not just the RNC that’s floundering, state Republican parties in Michigan, Arizona and Florida are also facing financial and/or leadership calamities.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow