Yesterday's videos convey a lot more than a thousand words
After 13 days, an American mother and daughter were released by HAMAS yesterday. There remain 10 more Americans unaccounted for.
The greatest hits of now-convicted Sidney Powell.
The greatest hits of convicted felon Mike Lindell.
As court things unfold, be aware that several prosecutors have important strategies playing out here. Trump has lost the court case in NYC already. He’s in the penalty phase there. The witnesses now are simply testifying about the tricks and deceptions Trump used to fraudulently obtain his bank loans. The broad extent and array of his multiple frauds will help determine how many financial gains he’ll have to surrender plus penalties for breaking the law.
Highlights of that trial (and slide the bar from 6:55 to 8:35 to skip the commercial)
One thing not currently at the forefront here: one of the guys approving the bank loans was the son of the now retired SCOTUS judge, Anthony Kennedy. It wasn’t long after that came to light that Kennedy suddenly announced his retirement.
Also yesterday, because he violated the gag order, the NYC judge fined Trump $5000 and threatened him with greater fines or jail if he violates his gag order again.
And if that’s not enough bad news for Trump, he lost a major appeal.
In Georgia, recognize that Fani Willis is not going to offer plea deals to all the defendants there except Trump. There’s specific defendants that she’s aware possess information critical to the cases against the elected and appointed government officials. Her team of prosecutors have phone records and texts and emails. She’s not fishing randomly. The bail bondsman and two lawyers given deals can provide details that will strengthen the case against the others. So don’t expect to see many more plea deals that provide generous relief to the crooks involved. The 16 remaining defendants include the Coffee County Elections supervisor, a Fake elector from Coffee County, the state GOP chair who organized the fake electors, including himself and a former GA state senator. Those three fake electors were charged while 16 others weren’t.
Above them, there’s a GA trial attorney, a Chicago pastor who tried to intimidate an election worker into an admission of fraud she didn’t commit, a Chicago publicist also intimidating an election worker and a proTrump guy from MD who arranged a meeting between the publicist and election worker. Fani Willis has that meeting on tape already so doesn’t need further info for those prosecutions. Deals cut with any of those 8 are only for expedience, not ones likely to yield much more useful testimony unless they were communicating with the remaining 8 directors of the schemes from DC. As Willis may want to send the message that the dangers caused to 2 election workers is intolerable, I suspect the intimidators won’t be treated lightly.
Those top 8 include the remaining 2 Trump campaign attorneys, a Trump campaign official, and above them, 2 Trump attorneys (Eastman & Giuliani), a DOJ official (Clark), the WH Chief of Staff (Meadows), and Trump himself. That’s Trump’s innermost circle, so it’s possible she’ll need one of them to flip as well.
So I don’t expect many more deals being cut to gain extra testimony. Chesebro and Powell and the GA bail bondsmen are just the first three.
Meanwhile, in Jim Jordan’s third try, he lost even more votes before officially withdrawing from the race. So far, he’s blamed the House Democrats, the Senate and President Biden for the longest Speaker vacancy and the lowest vote total in history for a speaker. The hard sell approach that had House Republicans receiving anonymous death threats clearly impressed no one. And other than his initial endorsement of Jordan, Trump made no further effort to aid him throughout his painful three defeats.
The first 8:38 of this video covers it well.
Three other House Republicans have put their names forward but there’s no clear sign that the Crazy Eight extremists are willing to yield to any nominee less extreme. Tune in next week for that. After this weekend, when they resume their infighting on Monday, they’ll have 25 days left to come to an agreement on the federal budget but are now under immediate pressure to respond to the Ukraine/Israel/Palestine aid package President Biden has proposed.
I did enjoy this Twitter meme about the GOP food fight, though.
A must-read about the 7 news distorters dominating Twitter with misinformation about the Israel-HAMAS war:
The researchers branded seven high-performing accounts on X as “new elites,” because they have exercised “disproportionate power and influence” over Israel and Hamas news. The “new elites” include: Visegrád 24, a news aggregator run by a right-wing Polish social media marketing agency; Mario Nawfal, a Twitter celebrity known for hosting live audio chats focused on cryptocurrency who was the focus of an NBC News investigation; @spectatorindex, an account self-described as “News, media and data from around the globe,” reportedly operated by an Australian-Muslim medical doctor; @CollinRugg, a co-founder of the conservative site Trending Politics; and @CensoredMen, a 10-month-old account that before pivoting to the Israel-Hamas war primarily posted in support of the misogynist internet influencer Andrew Tate.
Tweets about the Israel-Hamas war from these accounts outperformed popular news accounts belonging to CNN, The New York Times, the BBC and Reuters, despite having far fewer followers, according to the research (NBC News was not included). Across the research period, tweets about the Israel-Hamas war from well-followed traditional news sources garnered 112 million views over 298 tweets, while tweets from the seven newly influential accounts drew 1.6 billion views across 1,834 tweets.
The researchers suggest Elon Musk may be aiding the misinformers outsized influence.
A review of the greatest hits of Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, a settlement occurred in a lesser known lawsuit.
Look, as one who usually tries to reach across the political divide so reasoned discussions can take place, I’ve found that much harder to do since 2008 as so many extreme Trump supporters are intent on fighting beyond the outer boundaries of rationality.
But it looks like this guy’s found a way through to some of them. So kudos to the greatest hits of a uniter.
And don’t overlook this general reminder.
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