Trump Derangement Syndrome

Former President Trump had made an appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals to have the disgraced Fani Willis removed from her case against him after the lower judge overseeing the case had denied his request.

Stormy Daniels has taken the stand in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in a bombshell moment.

The porn star is testifying about the alleged encounter they had in a hotel room when they met at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006.

The 77-year-old defendant has denied all claims he had a sexual relationship with Daniels.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with a few couples, friends of friends, all American. All were well-educated and successful in careers.
They seemed great! On the surface. For like an hour.
But slowly, over a few drinks, they began to let slip their true MAGA natures….

— Michelle Kosinski (@MichLKosinski) May 5, 2024

Read the whole thread.

h/t Mauser

Judge Juan Merchan, the Biden-donor judge presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York City, announced on Monday his intention to once again hold Trump in contempt of court for the tenth time for exercising his First Amendment rights by violating his gag order.

h/t Mauser

Like many commentators who have struggled to understand the reasons for the inveterate hatred of Donald Trump among the swank people who actually run the country, I have generally come up with two answers.

The first is aesthetic.

Yesterday, rounding out the Trump trial’s second week was testimony from Hope Hicks, former Trump advisor and campaign communications director — yet another trusted aide with whom the former president seems to have had a falling out (hers stemming from disillusionment over the “stop the steal” scheme and the Capitol riot). Hicks still has obvious affection for the Trump family and her old boss, and at times became teary. Testifying in such circumstances is an ordeal.

For some reason, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle decided to interview actor Robert De Niro on the Thursday edition of The 11th Hour. On multiple occasions, De Niro would compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and himself and his compatriots to Jews in Nazi Germany, claiming “it’s [bleep] scary.”

We were expecting this moment, and it came on Friday, the eleventh day of the Hush Trump trial in New York City.

It was the moment when Donald Trump’s attorney looked at the judge and invoked the name of destroyed, defiant, and disgusting movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, the poster boy of the #MeToo movement. It was, in baseball parlance, a brushback pitch by the Team Trump.

It’s hard to imagine a worse day in court than having a reliable witness come in, throw his own client, Stormy Daniels, under the New York Subway train, and then completely disembowel the prosecution’s case, at least the one they’re selling to the jury.

Last week, a story appeared in Politico’s West Wing Playbook about how Joe Biden’s inner team have taken to calling President Donald J. Trump—a president with a singularly outstanding record in protecting Israel and the Jewish people—“Hitler pig.”

I have argued that former president Donald Trump’s prosecution in the so-called hush-money case brought by Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg is offensive in various ways.

Bragg, an election denier, is trying to convict Trump of a crime that is not charged in the indictment — to wit, conspiracy to steal the 2016 election by suppressing negative information in violation of federal campaign law. This violates the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which requires a felony charge to be spelled out in an indictment whose criminal elements have been established by probable cause to the satisfaction of a grand jury. Here, the problem is not just that there is no indication the grand jury was presented with an election-theft conspiracy offense; there is no such conspiracy crime in New York penal law. As a state prosecutor, moreover, Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law — as to which Congress vested “exclusive” criminal- and civil-enforcement authority, respectively, in the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

Judge in hush money trial threatens Trump with jail after holding him in contempt for violating gag order

🇺🇲 2024 GE: "If Trump is convicted of crimes related to his handling of classified presidential documents"

🟦 Biden 50%
🟥 Trump 50%
—
"If Trump is convicted for RICO in trying to influence the 2020 election results in Georgia"

🟦 Biden 50%
🟥 Trump 50%
—
"If Trump is… https://t.co/Voxor8cGwF pic.twitter.com/njIj6YNHCW

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 29, 2024

h/t Mauser