[Discussion] Impeachment, Legacy, and Discussion of Individual 45

Though noted as discussion, news, debate, and all things related to events that occurred during the Tr*mp administration can go here. The scope of this thread is specific to the former administration and it's hangers-on in the aftermath of the shift in power for the United States and impacted areas worldwide.

Military coup in Myanmar. The reason shows how lucky we have been so far.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, charged that there was massive voting fraud in the election, though it has failed to provide proof. The state Union Election Commission last week rejected its allegations.

Trump officials actively lobbied to deny states money for vaccine rollout last fall

STAT wrote:

Top Trump officials actively lobbied Congress to deny state governments any extra funding for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout last fall — despite frantic warnings from state officials that they didn’t have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation.

The push, described to STAT by congressional aides in both parties and openly acknowledged by one of the Trump officials, came from multiple high-ranking Trump health officials in repeated meetings with legislators.

Without the extra money, states spent last October and November rationing the small pot of federal dollars they had been given. And when vaccines began shipping in December, states seemed woefully underprepared.

The previously unreported lobbying efforts underscore that even after the Trump administration spent billions helping drug makers develop Covid-19 vaccines, it not only dismissed states’ concerns about the help they would need to roll them out, but actively undermined their efforts to press Congress to get the funding they needed.

Much of the lobbying push came from Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services. He argued, repeatedly, that states hadn’t demonstrated they needed additional funding because, at least as of last October, they hadn’t spent the $200 million that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent to states in September.

...

Mango and other Trump officials started lobbying Congress to deny states the money last fall. At the time, states were working with the Trump administration and the CDC to craft plans to administer the first Covid-19 vaccines, which were expected to be authorized in November. Meanwhile, Congress was busy negotiating a Covid-19 response package that was almost guaranteed to include some funding for the vaccination effort. On Oct. 15, states formally asked congressional leadership for $8.4 billion in funding.

On Oct. 27, Mango told congressional staff, including those working for the House Appropriations Committee, that states did not need more federal funding because they had not yet spent the $200 million provided by the government earlier that year, a Democratic aide told STAT.

Mango also said that HHS had asked states for detailed financial plans for how they planned to spend the extra money, but that their plans were “vague.” STAT was unable to obtain those plans: The Association for State and Territorial Health Officials told STAT it did not have access to them.

“Every time we got on our biweekly update with the Hill, they said, ‘Don’t you guys need more money for distribution?’ and we said the same thing we told you: ‘We’ve already allocated $200 million. They haven’t drawn anything down, they haven’t drawn down their testing [funding], and we are looking for business plans. If we get those things, we will be the first to let you know and we will be happy to give them more money,” Mango told STAT.

It’s true that the states hadn’t spent most of the money by October. State health departments, for their part, say there are several good reasons why. For one, they hadn’t begun vaccinating anyone yet. States were also drawing down other sources of funding that were set to expire. And they were reluctant to immediately spend the new funding because they were unsure when new funding would be appropriated by Congress.

Mango also made a similar argument, repeatedly, about the CDC, according to a second Democratic aide. At the time, Trump’s CDC Director, Robert Redfield, was requesting $6 billion for states’ efforts on the vaccine rollout. Mango said the money Redfield requested wasn’t needed, according to the aide.

Mango told STAT this week that Redfield’s 2020 request was “lobbying Congress for money behind our back,” referring to the Trump administration.

“I call it the mutual-admiration society — they were trying to help their friends at the state public health offices even though they didn’t have any real plan to spend the money,” Mango said.

Mango wasn’t the only one using the argument. Russ Vought, the head of the White House budget office, likewise argued that states did not need additional funding because they had not already spent the $200 million allocated to them, a Republican Senate aide said. The Republican aide called Vought “obsessed” with the fact that states hadn’t spent the money.

The Republican aide also emphasized that even staunch fiscal conservatives knew that states needed more than $200 million to vaccinate the majority of Americans.

Trump staffers were so reluctant to acknowledge that states needed additional funding that staffers negotiating the relief packages eventually gave up on asking the Trump administration how much money states needed. Instead, they went directly to associations representing state and local health departments, a second Republican aide confirmed.

Now I gotta wonder if Trump knew he was going to lose the election so the petty side of him wanted to f*ck with the vaccine rollout to make Biden look bad or, more likely, Trump either didn't understand or care about the vaccine rollout and let his ignorant appointees do whatever the hell they wanted and then completely lost all interest once he knew he wasn't going to be around to claim credit for getting people vaccinated.

why vote when you can change the outcome by violence? Much more satisfying , much more American and manly Voting is for chumps

EDIT- Removed as this was not related to insurrectionists.

Axios just published a bonus article of its "Off the Rails" series that chronicle the end of Trump's presidency.

This one covered an absolutely bonkers four-plus hours long meeting that happened late on December 18th that degraded into a cage match between Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne (former Overstock.com CEO), Emily Newman (a little-known Trump admin official) and Eric Herschmann (senior Trump advisor), Pat Cipollone (White House counsel), Matt Morgan (Trump campaign lawyer), and other White House staff.

The article details just how insanely f*cking close Trump came to listening to Powell who was advising Trump to declare martial law, confiscate Dominion voting machines, and make her a special counsel so she could investigate the massive voter fraud she claimed (without proof) had happened. She was also telling Trump that he couldn't trust the FBI, the federal judges he appointed, or even White House staff because they weren't fighting for him enough. And those arguments almost worked.

He balked at that? Shocking!
Republicans still would have done nothing...

Maybe Sidney Powell's still on Trump's defense team.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/2z8dIPa.png)

OG_slinger wrote:

Maybe Sidney Powell's still on Trump's defense team.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/2z8dIPa.png)

The Best People

OG_slinger wrote:

Maybe Sidney Powell's still on Trump's defense team.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/2z8dIPa.png)

Don't you see!!!! This is conclusive proof that these impeachment proceedings are only serving to divide us even more and prevent us from uniting. It's so bad at this point that it can't even be spelled correctly!

OG_slinger wrote:

Maybe Sidney Powell's still on Trump's defense team.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/2z8dIPa.png)

I look forward to the conspiracy theories that QAnon will come up with around this.

If the Republican argument is that you can't impeach a person that is no longer in office, why are they referring to him as the 45th president of the United States? Shouldn't it simply be Donald J. Trump?

There's a new report out that Trump lost his previous impeachment defense team not only because he wanted them to go with the election fraud argument, but because he was a cheapskate who tried to screw them out of millions in fees and expenses.

Apparently Trump thought his impeachment defense would only cost $250,000, a price he negotiated with his former lead lawyer. However that only covered the lead lawyer's professional fee. Additional lawyers, research, expenses, and more brought the cost of Trump's second impeachment defense up to $3 million.

Trump blew a gasket at the price tag and tried to negotiate the cost down to $1 million.

From the election until December 1st Trump raised over $170 million by claiming the money was going to his legal defense. From the election until January 6th Trump and pro-Trump PACs have raised nearly $500 million, mostly on messages of helping Trump fight his legal battles.

Isn't the MAGA conventional "wisdom" that if Trump will be auto-exonerated by the Senate, why spend millions on lawyers?

I don't know, that is my "wisdom" currently. They won't convict they are vile and anti-American to their power grubbing core.

When Newsmax *really* doesn't want to get sued by Dominion for $1.3 billion.

Also lawyer conspiracy theorist Lin Wood's reward for spending months filing lawsuits claiming Trump lost the election due to voter fraud is that he is now being investigated by the state of Georgia for possibly voting illegally in the 2020 election.

It seems Wood bought a new home in South Carolina back in April and had been living and working there for months when he voted in Georgia.

OG_slinger wrote:

Trump blew a gasket at the price tag and tried to negotiate the cost down to $1 million.

From the election until December 1st Trump raised over $170 million by claiming the money was going to his legal defense. From the election until January 6th Trump and pro-Trump PACs have raised nearly $500 million, mostly on messages of helping Trump fight his legal battles.

This is just like when Trump was told he'd have to pay for a transition team that he didn't think he needed because he didn't expect to win. Instead he wanted that money for himself.

You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my f*cking money! What the f*ck is this?

That is 2 minutes of pure gold from newsmax. Literally playing with fire and mike dumps gas on it.

So proud to have his company here in the Twin Cities. /s
Can't wait for him to run for Governor in 2022. /s /s /s /s /s

JLS wrote:

So proud to have his company here in the Twin Cities. /s
Can't wait for him to run for Governor in 2022. /s /s /s /s /s

You know he was a fascinating, if insane, "success" story prior to getting MAGA power. Luckily, I think he's too crazy for MN. Also, he seems like he might be off the wagon.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
JLS wrote:

So proud to have his company here in the Twin Cities. /s
Can't wait for him to run for Governor in 2022. /s /s /s /s /s

You know he was a fascinating, if insane, "success" story prior to getting MAGA power. Luckily, I think he's too crazy for MN. Also, he seems like he might be off the wagon.

Yeah, my wife was a proud MyPillow owner for a lot of years, along with many folks we know. Those days are long gone.

MN rejected Trump in the 2016 caucus (he came in third behind Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz with only 21% of the vote) and hasn't elected a Republican for president since Nixon, the only state that can say that. So I'm hopeful our ability to reject crazy continues.

JLS wrote:

Yeah, my wife was a proud MyPillow owner for a lot of years, along with many folks we know. Those days are long gone.
.

I was going to toss mine when I noticed it was one of his but the money was already spent so it wouldn't have hurt him.
Instead I donated it to a homeless shelter. They can use it and I bet if he knew it would piss him off which is good enough for me.

We inherited one from my mom when we bought our house and threw it away. It was really uncomfortable and I didn't like it, politics aside.

Spurred By The Capitol Riot, Thousands Of Republicans Drop Out Of GOP

NPR wrote:

...

In the week from Jan. 6 through Jan. 12, about 4,600 Republicans changed their party status in Colorado, according to a CPR News analysis. There was no comparable effect with any other party. CPR News was able to contact dozens of them by tracking changes in the state's voter file.

The number of people changing parties spiked immediately after the Capitol breach. The same phenomenon is playing out nationwide. News outlets documented about 6,000 defections from the party in North Carolina, 10,000 in Pennsylvania and 5,000 in Arizona.

In Colorado, only a small fraction of the defectors made the same dramatic leap as Darrah did in choosing to join the Democratic Party. Some went to conservative third parties. But the vast majority — about 4,200 people — switched from Republican to unaffiliated status, accelerating a trend that has affected both parties in Colorado in recent years.

"I don't think there would be any other reason why it would begin at that day except that they looked at what was happening in Washington, D.C., and decided this is a time for me to make what is clearly a symbolic move," said Ryan Winger, director of data analysis and campaign strategy for Republican pollster Magellan Strategies.

All told, the Colorado GOP lost about a half a percent of its registered voters in the week after the riot.

The thousands of newly unaffiliated voters can still support Republican candidates and participate in the party's primaries. And both parties have seen registered members switch to unaffiliated in large numbers for years.

But interviews and data analysis show how the tumultuous postelection period has created a new split within the Republican Party.

For some right-of-center voters, like Lyle Darrah, the violence at the Capitol was simply the final straw. They described an increasingly strained relationship with the GOP, with some citing the rise of Sarah Palin more than a decade ago as the first sign that the party was focusing on culture wars instead of fiscal conservatism.

"As my husband said, it's just become the party of mean people," said Jo Swanson, 73, a retired school psychologist in Denver. She voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but didn't register as a Democrat until this month. She had always considered herself more socially liberal, but her anti-abortion rights beliefs had held her back.

"I really found that hard to let go," she said, adding that she will still fight for abortion restrictions.

Other newly former Republicans had the opposite reaction: They cut ties with the party because they felt its leaders had abandoned Trump by blaming him for the riot and refusing to overturn the election.

"I quickly realized that I would probably never vote for another Republican again. They have let America down," said Cara Samantha Toney, a 45-year-old mother of three who switched from Republican to Libertarian and lives in Jefferson County, a suburb of Denver.

Phil Trubia, a 52-year-old Mesa County voter, made a similar move to the American Constitution Party. He sees himself continuing to vote for Trump loyalists like Rep. Lauren Boebert, but not for mainstream Republicans.

"I do feel there is a split," Trubia said. "I'm not necessarily doing it to hurt the Republican Party, but the way they turned their backs completely on Trump, that kind of got me really upset."

This article was all the more interesting because an autopsy of Trump's 2020 campaign was released by his top pollster the other day.

Politico wrote:

The findings are based on an analysis of exit polling in 10 states. Five of them — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are states that Trump lost after winning them in 2016. The other five — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — are states that Trump won in both elections.

The report zeroes in on an array of demographics where Trump suffered decisive reversals in 2020, including among white seniors, the same group that helped to propel him to the White House. The autopsy says that Trump saw the “greatest erosion with white voters, particularly white men,” and that he “lost ground with almost every age group.” In the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump’s biggest drop-off was among voters aged 18-29 and 65 and older.

Suburbanites — who bolted from Trump after 2016 — also played a major role. The report says that the former president suffered a “double-digit erosion” with “White College educated voters across the board.”

It's going to be very interesting to see how the GOP responds to these things. Any decrease in the number of people who are willing to vote for them--whether they were turned off by the GOP's insanity or mad that the GOP didn't quadruple down on the crazy--is going to make their future elections even tighter.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/Cmb5Lr6.png)

OG_slinger wrote:

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Get your passport now.

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I would be shocked if he showed up but I also wouldn't be shocked if he suddenly showed up unannounced in an attempt to get them all scrambling.

Really though, this will go nowhere and that f*cking sucks.

I especially like the dig about not being president anymore.

What if he holds another rally?
I mean I guess the national guard is still there but talk about something with a whole lot of messed up potential consequences.