Just citing the sum, $355 million, is all you need. Hearing that you immediately know what I’m referring to. It is actually bigger; with interest he and his co-defendants will need to cough up more than $450m.
- For insights from a neutral source, check out the BBC for their full wrap of the fraud case. And if you are wondering if Trump can pay those penalties, you can read this BBC article.
Here are a few tweets to bask in …
Il-06 Rep Sean Casten also nails it with this …
So what happens now?
Yes he will appeal, but he is also legally bound to deposit the full amount within 30 days. If things change during appeal and he wins, then he gets the money back. If he does not pay the full amount within 30 days then he will face an additional fine and might even have his assets seized.
- I personally suspect he will pay by securing a bond, but even that will be costly and will come with heavy fees and interest. Such bonds are usually about 10%
He will also most probably dip into the campaign funds that his gullible followers have very stupidly paid to this poor impoverished billionaire and fraudster. There is of course a federal law that bans the use of campaign funds for personal use, hence his “political persecution” narrative is the ploy being used to argue it is part of his campaign costs. The line has already been crossed. AP reported last October that his Save America PAC had paid $37m of his legal fees.
One other outcome is inevitable. His cult will buy the “political persecution” narrative hook, line, and sinker. It will tarnish the legal system in their eyes. I don’t need to tell you this, but none of that is true, the evidence of fraud is robust and solid, he is indeed guilty of fraud. We don’t have different rules for him, the same laws apply to all.
Why would his cult be so stupid to not grasp that they have been totally conned?
It is part of human psychology for people who have invested deeply into a cult to never hit pause and grasp that what they have done was deeply stupid. Some do make that leap, but most don’t. In this case it’s simply easier to buy into a persecution narrative. Doing that enables them to preserve their emotional and temporal investment.
This is not a new insight.
Social psychologist Leon Festinger studied a UFO cult back in the 1950s. Those people believed that the world was about to end and that aliens would be coming to save them, so they sold all they had and waited for the predicted outcome on a specific date. When that date came and went, what then happened to them, did they admit they had been conned and had been deeply stupid?
Not at all, they simply doubled down in their beliefs, rationalised the failure, and also frantically strove to recruit others.
The book written by Festinger and two other researchers that describes it all is “When Prophecy Fails“. It reveals to us what will now also happen inside the Trump cult.
- Some will fall away, but many will increase their personal commitment, and also increase their efforts to recruit others
Moving on, below you will once again find my usual selection of some truly bizarre and extreme claims that have popped up during the last 7 days. Each is laced with my snarky commentary.
With my usual hat tip to my various sources, let’s once again dive into this very murky pool of pure absurdity and raw stupidity.
Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalist Dusty Deevers, a state senator in Oklahoma, takes exception to those who accuse him of wanting to take this nation back to the 1800s. He actually wants to go *much further back* than that, like to the 1600s.
- So ….. he wants to give the natives all their land back, and also give the entire East Coast back to the UK, the midwest to the French, Spain gets Florida and Texas, and Russia gets Alaska …. right?
- It would also be back to the time when everyone but white men could be owned, sold, beaten or killed on a whim. What a grand vision
- Is he also willing to lead the charge by personally giving up indoor plumbing, modern medicine, and electricity?
Guess we have to give credit to Greg Stephens of the Victory Channel for coming up with this unique defense of Christian nationalism: If Hitler could use nationalism to do terrible things, “imagine what a good guy could do” with Christian nationalism.
- Narrator: Christian nationalists are never “good guys”
- He is arguing for Nazism with a Christian flavour … er seriously, that’s a hard “no” for that batshit-fuckery.
The Cult of Trump
Dave Daubenmire declares that “when your hatred for one man is greater than your love for our country, you might be part of the problem.”
- He’s talking about former President Donald Trump, but couldn’t the same be said about those who hate President Biden?
- It’s also worth pointing out that hatred for Biden is bizarre, he really is a decent person. Meanwhile Mr 91-Indictments is a literal spherical shit, in the sense that no matter what angle you look at him from, he remains a total shit of a human being and is utterly devoid of any redeeming personality traits.
What do Christian nationalists love about Trump? Andrew Wommack loves that Trump was “the most godly president in my lifetime,” while Gene Bailey loves that Trump is “a little crazy” and “you just don’t know what he might do”: “You want that guy [with] his finger on the button.”
- When he claims Trump is “godly”, then exactly which God is he referring to?
- Additionally, the thought that a guy who has temper tantrums and tosses ketchup against the wall, is not the guy you ever want anywhere near the nuclear trigger … period.
If you were wondering what MAGA Pastor and Trump cultist Shane Vaughn is up to these days, this past week he reports that he was at Mar-a-Lago on Friday.
- I can only speculate that it was simply to check that his tongue is now appropriately orange enough after his many month of Trump arse licking.
- Then again, given the observation that Shane was convicted of fraud and sent to jail while he was a pastor, perhaps you-know-who is seeking some jail-time tips from this subject matter expert.
- Hypocrisy Alert: “We now turn to Jesse Watters, who had an affair with his employee, to tell us why we should vote for a man who had an affair with a porn star shortly after his third wife gave birth.”
- Evangelical Christians are all pushing for the election of a guy who cheated on Wife1with Wife2 (who got pregnant while he was still married to Wife1), then cheated on Wife2 with Wife3, and then cheated on Wife3 with a porn star, and was also caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault. This is their “Family Values” guy. In other words, these guys have totally flunked the simplest morality test of our times.
MAGA cultist/self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman says that former President Donald Trump’s mean tweets were “God speaking against an opposing kingdom,” just like when Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal.
- He is claiming that Trump is literally a “prophet” who is channeling the voice of god via Twitter. In other words, a religious cult leader.
- What can we say expect to perhaps speculate that the 2006 Idiocracy movie was really a documentary.
What does Trump cultism sound like? It sounds like far-right commentator Anna Perez recounting how former President Donald Trump was her “first crush” and that she “almost fainted” when she got to interview him and he grabbed her by her face and kissed her twice.
- I think she is lucky it was only her face he grabbed.
Stolen Election
Even this past week the MAGA Movement is Still Promoting Bogus Claims That ‘Fraud’ Cost Trump 2020 Election
- Sidney Powell: The edition of her Defending the Republic newsletter distributed Monday was headlined, “Study finds that Trump almost certainly won in 2020.”
- Heartland Institute is also banging the drum. Yes, they are the same folks who claimed cigarettes were just fine long after they were known to cause cancer, and also known for playing a leading role in questioning the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Pick a big issue and you can more or less assume that their stance on it will be on the wrong side … for rea$on$.
$14 million
Well yes, there was also the Super Bowl ad promoting Jesus. If you had that kind of money to spend responsibly then what would you do with it?
Lance Wallnau had this gem of an answer – deploy fear porn to nuke you into believing…
- Hemant also nails it with this epic insight: “Marketing Jesus comes with an inherent flaw: Most of the people using the product aren’t worth admiring… The amount of harm caused by the most fervent Jesus followers can’t be understated.”
Christian “Love”
Far-right pastor Jack Hibbs defends himself amid the outrage over him being invited by Speaker Mike Johnson to deliver a prayer on the House floor last month, insisting that he has never preached ” in a way that is spiteful, or angry or hateful.”
- Er, well … how about his anti-LGBTQ stance … or … how about him praying that God will forgive California for electing “people with antichrist worldviews to office,” like Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris … or … how about him declaring that anyone who believes in evolution must oppose gay marriage because “Nothing comes of it. No life can come from it. No family can come from it.” … or … how about his declaration that being trans is satanic and is caused by demons … or … well you get the idea, just rinse and repeat.
Fear-mongering about “them”
Let’s first open this section with the bleeding obvious. You can condemn the actions of both the extreme right-wing regime in Israel and also Hamas without being xenophobic about the beliefs of ordinary people caught up in it all. Being Muslim or Jewish is not a crime, but slaughtering innocent people on either side really is.
Last year far-right broadcaster Stew Peters pretended that he was not an antisemite, but merely “anti-Zionist”? Well, given that he’s now straight up calling Jews “parasites,” he’s obviously given up the charade.
- Fear-mongering about “them” is a very basic tool commonly utilised to instil fear. By tapping directly into strong emotions with generic lies it can be used to bypass reason and empathy and also recruit.
Homophobia on Steroids
Stew Peters. yes the same guy from the section just above, declares that “homosexuality should be illegal” and fumes that “local police departments are being used by psychotic homosexuals and local governments to ideologically rape the rest of America.”
- During the above rant, Kandiss Taylor, the official Republican chair of Georgia’s 1st and also a Flat Earth believer, was the guest. After it she proclaimed that Peters is “my best friend.” … which if really true and Peters is the best she can do, then she has literally no friends, not even imaginary ones.
Florida Schools Update
And they are also now banning dictionaries …
Darwin Day
It was Darwin day last Monday. Every Feb 12 people celebrate the life and works of Charles Darwin. (I wrote a small posting about him to mark the day). Meanwhile others also joined in, and of course it is inevitable that some gave it a bizarre twist.
Jack Hibbs says we should “cancel Darwin” because “Hitler Loved Evolution”: “Hitler’s love for evolution drove him to believe in a supremely evolved race! The Aryans were at the top and the Jews were at the bottom.”
- Let’s make this clear: Evolutionary biology is descriptive, it simply explains the diversity of life and does not tell you or anybody else what to do.
- Hitler’s Germanic anti-semitism roots were rather robustly planted by Martin Luther long before Darwin was born. This is well-recognised.
- Evolutionary biology also reveals that all humans are one race; there are no separate races of men. Skin color variations are simply an adaptive trait of members of the same biological race. Again, I’m really not making this up, its a well-established genetic fact. We might indeed be socially conditioned to believe there are separate races, but basic biology says “nope”.
- This “separate races / separate tribes” is a bible idea, not biology. In other words, Mr Hibbs is an idiot, but hey you knew that already.
Deeply Weird
Ben Zeisloft is fully in support of Deevers’ bill that would charge women who get an abortion with murder: “When people hire an assassin to murder someone, both the assassin and the people who hired him should be punished. When a mother and father willfully hire an assassin masquerading as a doctor to murder their baby, all three should be punished.”
- If you follow his line of “logic” you soon end up with a miscarriage being manslaughter. Just to be wholly clear – abortion isn’t murder
Nick Fuentes used his Valentine’s Day program to wish his viewers a “Happy Elliot Roger Day.”
- Least you wonder, Roger was an incel who murdered 6 people and wounded 14 others in a 2014 attack.
The False Profit$
Most of us are pretty fluent in speaking “prophet,” but nobody can follow Robin Bullock’s explanation for why Trump needs to be “anointed again” to be president “because he’s already spent his two terms”: “He’s been president this whole time. Heaven recognizes him as president.”
- This dollar store Boromir has a real gift for enticing all those that follow him to ingest gallons of raw sewage. His trick is to assure them that it tastes absolutely yummy.
Self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman claims that God warned him about Barack Obama long before he ever became president: “God began to talk about one that would arise with black skin but would have dark policies.”
- Wow, he is claiming “it’s all the fault of the black guy”. Yikes, he is not even hiding his racism anymore.
- That wasn’t God talking to him, it was the ghost of Jefferson Davis.
- The only “dark policy” actually handled by Obama concerned daylight savings time, the tan suit was a tad too light to count as a “dark policy”.
Who is actually listing to grifters such as the above. This past week Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen says his spiritual leaders include Hank Kunneman, Robin Bullock, and Kent Christmas.
- Er yes … we think we see a slight flaw in his “spiritual” leanings.
- Poor bloke, they are going to drain him dry.
Super Bowl
Prior to the Super Bowl, MAGA evangelist Lance Wallnau attempted to discern what “prophetic significance” a 49ers victory would have, especially for Trump’s re-election, suggesting a 4-point win could signal “4 years of mercy with Trump.” But after the Chiefs won, he had to post another video trying to discern what that meant: “I think God is saying maybe there needs to be an alliance?”
- If he wishes to claim a 49ers win is “prophetic” for Trump, then rather clearly the loss was God telling him and all of MAGA to f**k off.
- Using the outcome of football games is just one step away from reading chicken entrails to predict the future.
- Just think about how utterly bizarre it actually is to claim that a god rigged a football game to send a deeply cryptic message that only Lance can interpret, and literally nobody else would recognise. Just how stupid do you have to be to buy into this? (No sorry, don’t answer that, because we all know)
- Meanwhile, since the Chiefs won, does this mean Taylor Swift will get elected president next Nov?
Some Good News
Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver, who seems to be a follower of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, has been stripped of his committee assignments, staff, and budget after promoting the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory last week.
- Actions really do have consequences
- Story details reported here – Michigan lawmaker stripped of committees, staff after endorsing racist conspiracy theory
- Quote: “I will not allow the Michigan House of Representatives to be a forum for the proliferation of racist, hateful and bigoted speech,” House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, said in a statement.
- Quote-2: Schriver’s colleagues, Republican and Democrat alike, have spoken out against Schriver’s posts in recent days. Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, wrote in a lengthy statement on Facebook over the weekend “such ideas truly have no place in our politics or our culture.”
- Meanwhile … oh come now, you know how guys like this react. Indeed yes, this past week he was boldly doubling down on his promotion of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying there’s “a racist plan to replace Whites with non-Whites through illegal immigration to irreversibly warp America’s demographics, voting citizens, and national identity to keep power in the hands of a godless regime.”.
- The “great replacement” tweet he shared that kicked all this off came from Jack Posobiec, so naturally he also appeared on Posobiec’s show this past week to play the victim: “God called me to represent him in government.”
Jason Rapert unsuccessfully attempted to use his position on the Arkansas State Library Board to withhold funds from state libraries in retaliation for suing over legislation that seeks to censor books.
- Story details reported here by Arkansas Advocate – Rapert tries to block funding for libraries suing Arkansas over 2023 obscenity law
- Quote: Rapert’s motion died after none of the other six board members seconded it.
Outstanding Candidate
He is not wrong, this truly is an exceptional ad …
Here is another rather good point …
Finally…
Thinking about choices in Nov, well yes, age is being made an issue, but honestly, there really are bigger concerns and this following tweet nicely sums that up rather well …
- Hint: “one of them talks kinda funny, the other promises to destroy galactic democracy, which is the bigger issue?” -Intergalactic Times.