Trump Has Lost His Popular-Vote Majority
Matt Gaetz withdraws as Trump’s attorney general pick: Live updates | AP News
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That was the theory the first time around too, but incompetence can be every bit as deadly as malice. Recall that the United States lost more lives to the poorly-handled COVID-19 pandemic than we lost to World War II.
Besides, allowing people like Gaetz into cabinet positions pushes the Overton window of what consitutes a “qualified and acceptable appointee” even deeper into the realm of madness.
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He’s not gonna do that… 
Yeah, that… Maliciousness is still maliciousness. He is going to be destructive no matter who he puts in the office, so how about we focus on that…
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Of course, I’m just saying we shouldn’t root for incompetence either. Gaetz would be a horrible AG on every possible level.
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Yeah, I’m agreeing with you that competence vs. incompetence isn’t the real issue. The maliciousness is… The goal is destruction of institutions and norms, and it hardly matters who is doing that.
And yeah, Gaetz was an awful pick. I am thinking that the whole point was to give him an excuse to stop the congressional investigation more than to get him in the job… Of course, that might have backfired, since so much shit is coming out now, though I doubt they’ll restart the investigation once he’s back for his new term.
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Every damned one of his appointees will be a new level of incompetent horribleness. It is how he is. If it were not so, he would not appoint them. And the Repubs in the Senate lack the intestinal fortitude to stop his most evil impulses. We need to be ready to oppose pretty much anything that he is trying to do wherever it is. Stupid evil is still evil.
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next up? gotta be paxton
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They’re nazis until they can do something for me. Lovely person there.
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The Onion published this one back in 2013 and it’s more relevant than ever today.
ETA: Oh man it’s been a long time since I read this article but damn…
And if my death in 15 or 20 years feels like it’s too far in the future to wash away your blues, you can take heart knowing that I’ll start to physically and mentally deteriorate well before then. Why, by 2020, I, a man who recently tried to extort the sitting president of the United States to release his college and passport records, might even begin to show signs of serious and unavoidable decline in mental and physical faculties, and doesn’t that just perk your spirits right up? Just imagine me shuffling along, hunched forward, with a noticeably shortened gait and perpetually haggard face.
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The competent people who will be doing most of the damage are not the people that TFG is making all the noise about appointing as if he were choosing ragebait contestants for The Apprentice: White House.
The competent people who will be doing most of the damage were lined up months, if not years ago, and will be the department secretaries and executive officers and senior managers. The ragebait contestants will be allowed to play and do their own special type of damage, but only insofar as it doesn’t interfere with the actual plan, which is not secret.
Whether Gaetz is AG or not is not the point. “Gaetz as AG or not?!” is the point: it’s all a distraction from the people who will be installed to subvert and dismantle the Justice Department and the Three Letter Agencies. Just like Brainworm Guy and the Department of Health.
Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain.
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While I agree with her takeaways in general, I do wish that Harris had waited until the official results were fully tabulated (we’re still two weeks away from that) before conceding. Note, T**** still hasn’t conceded the 2020 election. And I think it’s completely stupid for people to have initiated the circular firing squads before the official count is finalized. There is absolutely nothing that legally mandates it or even a practical reason for doing so.
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I suppose that if Dems had managed to make Congressional toilets gender neutral, Repugnicans would just change them back to the old fashioned binary.
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Kudos to whoever went with this photo choice to go with the “Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration” story. It’s like a more pathetic version of Jack Nicholson’s ”Here’s Johnny!” bit.
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I’ll just say that as horrible and damaging as both Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr were as AGs (and they were quite horrible and did do a lot of damage) for whatever reasons they both ultimately had lines that they weren’t willing to cross for Trump. I seriously doubt that Gaetz would deny Trump any request at all, no matter how extreme, and in my opinion that really does matter.
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But it’s more than that. Under Sessions and Barr, the Justice Department was staffed with people who saw themselves as working for the Justice Department, and Sessions and Barr (who were also competent, and thus knew what was and what wasn’t beyond the pale) had to convince people to do illegal things, and had enough self-awareness to know when they just couldn’t.
Gaetz wouldn’t have needed to be that competent, because the whole point of P2025 is to replace the department’s management with themselves, and to sack anyone who won’t do what they’re told. If a Sessions or Barr were AG this time, they’d find that there was nothing they could order that would get any pushback, and in any case they’d probably find the management having already started on these things before anyone even told the AG.
Also, you’re assuming that any other putative AG pick would be any less compliant in practice.
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