Pence doesn’t endorse Trump

Former Vice President Mike Pence said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with. “Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said.

[“…at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years.” Huh? There is little to no difference between Trump’s first reign and what he is proposing. At “press time”, no response from Trump but if Trump follows his usual response, he will mention disloyalty as well as something like he did a bad job as Vice-President.]

The judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, overseeing the Georgia 2020 election interference case dismissed some of the charges against Trump and others, but the rest of the sweeping racketeering indictment remains intact. The judge wrote in an order that six of the counts in the indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump. But he left in place other counts — including 10 facing Trump — and said prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.

Trump suggested he was open to making cuts to Social Security and Medicare after opposing touching the entitlement programs. These two programs for senior citizens are generally consider untouchable by almost all politicians. Trump campaign spokeswoman later said that Trump was “clearly talking about cutting waste, not entitlements.” That same spokeswoman says it is Biden who won’t protect entitlement programs when Biden has already said prior “Not on my watch” about cutting them.

[Trump seems to have quite a few spokespeople. I wonder if some need time off after all the running around to clarify statements Trump have said in a day.]

When Trump was president, his administration’s budget proposals included spending cuts to Social Security, primarily by targeting disability benefits, and Medicare, largely by reducing provider payments. Trump also signalled in an interview with CNBC in 2020 that he was open to cutting federal entitlements to reduce the federal deficit.

Without any changes, Social Security’s combined trust funds are set to run dry in 2034, at which time the program’s continuing income from taxes will only be able to cover 80% of benefits owed. Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, known as Medicare Part A, will only be able to pay scheduled benefits in full until 2031.

Attorneys for Trump want to delay the start of his upcoming New York criminal trial until the US Supreme Court weighs in on presidential immunity, according to a new motion – a ruling that may not come until late June. The criminal trial related to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels is scheduled to begin with jury selection on March 25.

[Unsure what has got to do with the other. Trump was never the president at any time during the trial or now. So immunity isn’t related.]

Recently, Trump met with the parents of a nursing student whose alleged killer was an undocumented immigrant. Trump has suggested hard-line immigration proposals, including a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

[Unsure, but would of Trump visited the parents if they were Republicans? Current statistics said that undocumented immigrant are not a large factor in the number of murders in the US. Between that and pushing Republicans in Congress to vote against the border deal, Trump and his cronies will still put the blame on the Democrats. Remember that Trump said no deal is better that the deal the Democrats put forward. Do you think Republican voters will remember this in November?]

“He [Trump] thought [Vladimir] Putin was an OK guy and Kim [Jong Un] was an OK guy — that we had pushed North Korea into a corner,” retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, said. “To him, it was like we were goading these guys. ‘If we didn’t have NATO, then Putin wouldn’t be doing these things.’”

Trump said, “Well, but Hitler did some good things.” Kelly said, “Well, what?” And Trump said, “Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.” But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. Kelly said, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.”

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said of the Hungarian president who visited Mar-A-Lago recently, adding, “He’s the boss and he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

[I don’t think many respect him. He’s another authoritarian leader like Trump.]

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Trump and his allies ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis may continue with the prosecution but only if Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor she appointed and had a romantic relationship with, exits the case. The judge wrote that the defendants “failed to meet their burden” in proving that Willis’s relationship with Wade — along with allegations that she was financially enriched through trips the two took together — was enough of a “conflict of interest” to merit her removal from the case. Wade resigned later on.

Trump asked Elon Musk last summer whether the billionaire industrialist would be interested in buying Trump’s failed social network Truth Social.

Trump, who is only a few years younger than President Biden, has said several times that he doesn’t think Biden is “too old” to be president but he did recently release a digital only add poking fun at Biden with comments Biden has said about his age.

[As you know Trump is the one to talk. Saying Mercedes instead of his wife’s name Melania. How could he mix that up? He’s also said the wrong name (maybe on purpose) for others including Nancy Pelosi. Also note that Trump doesn’t have a lot of campaign cash on hand. Some going to his legal defence. Maybe he will use his own money…. Hah!]

Trump mocked Biden’s stutter at a campaign rally in Rome, Ga., the latest in a series of insults he has hurled at his rival but one that disability advocates regard as a demeaning form of bullying.

[Do you ever see Biden knock any physical characteristics of Trump like being orange or overweight or his little hands? His mental capacity is a different story. And just what group hasn’t Trump demeaned except Christian whites?]

The Republican National Committee began laying off dozens of staffers, days after Trump’s handpicked team took the reins of the organization. The layoffs affect staffers across multiple departments. The cuts also go beyond senior staff to vendors and mid-level employees. Vendor contracts will likely be cut as well. Some staff who were asked to resign could reapply for jobs at the organization.

“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump said in a post on his platform, Truth Social, racistly referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He called Facebook “a true enemy of the people” but didn’t explain his reasoning. While in office, Trump wanted to expel TikTok from the US [because they are owned by ByteDance of China]. Now that Biden is pushing to expel them, Trump is having second thoughts.

“The thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media,” Trump told CNBC before US markets opened. Meta [owner of Facebook] stock dropped 5% at one point. “I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”

[I’m on Facebook. I really didn’t see anything on the platform that was directed more at Trump or the Republicans than the Democrats. It’s not like you will see something like huge banner saying “Vote for Biden” or “Down with Trump” on every page. Another lie.]

TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media apps and is used by roughly 170 million Americans.

Kellyanne Conway [remember her?] is a lobbyist for TikTok. Trump also supposedly has a major donor who owns a small chunk of TikTok.

[That major donor would be a good reason why Trump did an about face and now supports TikTok.]

In the House of Representatives, Trump “lost” the vote as 352 voted for a TikTok ban and just 65 were against [50 Democrats, 15 Republicans]. It may be harder in the Senate.

Trump said last month he would consider imposing a tariff upward of 60% on all Chinese imports if he regains the presidency. As president, Trump imposed tariffs of 25% on $50 billion of Chinese goods in June 2018.

[Trump’s buddy, President Xi won’t be too happy.]

Donald Trump Jr is as bad as his father

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot [a.k.a. Trump Insurrection] is looking to hold Trump White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Donald Trump’s onetime trade adviser Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress for their refusal to cooperate with the panel’s investigation or appear for their respective scheduled depositions.

Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump Jr texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures. Trump Jr lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process.

“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all… We have operational control Total leverage… Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now…. Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina etc we get Trump electors…. Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states… Once again Trump wins.” He is delusional.

Trump Jr.’s lawyer Alan S. Futerfas said, “After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.”

With all the troubles at Trump’s Truth Social platform, problems continue to mount. The app has fallen off the top app download ranking. The app, which was downloaded roughly 200,000 times on its launch day, plummeted to an average of 10,000 installs a day last month.

Devin Nunes, the former member of Congress from California, has worked to install his own people atop the troubled company, leading to the resignations of its chiefs of technology, product development and legal affairs.

Trump continued to pay attention to Twitter, which he has repeatedly criticized as irrelevant since the site banned him last year. He still reviews tweets from politicians and members of the media from time to time. Some right-wing influencers and others such as Roger Stone have soured not only on Truth Social saying its online censorship policies are just as problematic as those of the Big Tech sites they’ve criticized.

In other issues, there are supposedly over a million people waiting to get invited. One user who had signed up shortly after the app’s launch said that, when he finally got an invite, the welcome email directed him to a broken link. Those who do join are greeted by Trump’s official account, which has 846,000 followers – less than 1 percent of his lost Twitter following – and a single post from nearly two months ago saying, “Get Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!”

Only recently did Trump Jr and Eric Trump get accounts. Melania Trump hasn’t posted in weeks. There are no accounts for Ivanka Trump or Mike Pence.

Republican campaign groups, however, have routinely used the Truth Social name in fundraising emails, saying that the platform is “already #1” and that people should sign up for the social network “RIGHT NOW to prove that you are a Patriot.” Number one in their tiny minds…

Trump and a bunch of his top allies, donors and paying club members recently gathered at his palatial beachfront club for a reunion of sorts: to sip Trump-branded wine [eeeewwww], snack on fried shrimp and pastry-wrapped hot dogs [expensive!] on the Mar-a-Lago patio. Of course he talked about his 2020 election win that was stolen. It would be interesting if some came down with food poisoning.

Even wackier. That group saw a 42 minute film called “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump”. Damn. That will be on the small list of best documentaries at all film festivals. Not. Trump said he was looking forward to its screening more than Citizen Kane, Titanic and Gone with the Wind. I’m surprised he didn’t include Heaven’s Gate, Willy Wonka and Pinocchio.

In an interview, Trump praised organizers of the Trump Insurrection, some of whom have now received subpoenas from federal authorities, and repeatedly bragged about the size of the crowd on the Ellipse saying “I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to.” Wonder if he though 500,000 people showed up. He even wanted to participate in the Insurrection. The “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” he said. So he did something right for once.

He defended his long silence during the attack by claiming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [Is she a police chief? She has limited control of Congress security.] DC mayor and others were responsible for ending the deadly violence.

He is refusing to say whether he would testify before a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault. Trump said he didn’t remember “getting very many” phone calls that day, and he denied removing call logs or using burner phones. He was persuaded by lawmakers, family members and others to release a video asking his supporters to go home — 187 minutes after he urged them to march to the Capitol during a rally near the White House.

“At $150 a barrel and going up to more, you look at it, it’s going up to numbers that nobody has ever seen, it’s already the highest it’s ever been in history.” It never went that high. Highest was $115 US.

He claims that Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis [a.k.a. Ron DeSATANis] and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, would not want to run against him in a 2024 Republican presidential primary season. They said nothing about that.

Again, Trump knows how to pick them [one in a long series]: Michigan Rep. Lisa McClain, a freshman Republican member of Congress, made a series of false claims in a short speech at Trump’s rally outside Detroit on Saturday — notably including an assertion that Trump, who has endorsed her for re-election, was the president who caught terrorist Osama bin Laden. A couple of days later, McClain tweeted “Joe Biden misspeaks every single day and the media pays no attention to it. Isn’t it ironic how I’m under attack for an honest mistake.” Maybe she should fire her incompetent speech writer and the media has poked at Biden’s claims.

And in another one, Trump has endorsed former Vice-President running mate of the late John McCain, Sarah Palin, for her run in the House. The big question will be whether, if she gets elected, she will push to build that bridge from Alaska to Russia because it is so close. She can see Russia from Alaska. So the bridge won’t be too long. Maybe the equivalent of the length of the Brooklyn Bridge.

McClain claimed: “Under President Trump, if my memory serves me correctly, I don’t believe we had any wars. We got a war in Ukraine right now.” McClain’s memory didn’t serve her correctly. There were, obviously, wars during the Trump presidency. Technically, the US isn’t at war as there are no personnel in Ukraine. But in his 4 years, US ground troops fought under Trump in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq as well as incursions in Libya, Yemen and Somalia.