<The story of the Indian Sultan Khan turned out to be a most unusual one. The "Sultan" was not the term of status that we supposed it to be; it was merely a first name. In fact, Sultan Khan was actually a kind of serf on the estate of a maharajah when his chess genius was discovered. He spoke English poorly, and kept score in Hindustani. It was said that he could not even read the European notations.

<[Event "New York International"] [Site "New York NY"]
[Date "1984.04.??"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "McCambridge, Vincent"]
[Black "Savage, Allan George"]
[ECO "A88"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "44th New England Open"] [Site "Boxborough Mass"]
[Date "1984.09.01"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "2.14"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Donahue, Robert T"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "E45"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 Ba6 6.a3 Be7 7.Ng3 d5 8.Qa4+ Qd7 9.Qxd7+ Kxd7 10.cxd5 exd5 11.Bd2 Bxf1 12.Rxf1 Re8 13.Rc1 c6 14.Nf5 Bf8 15.f3 Na6 16.Kf2 Rad8 17.b4 Nc7 18.g4 b5 19.Ne2 g6 20.Nfg3 a5 21.Nf4 a4 22.Nd3 Bd6 23.Rc2 Na6 24.Rfc1 Rc8 25.h3 Rc7 26.g5 Ng8 27.e4 Rcc8 28.e5 Bb8 29.f4 Ne7 30.f5 Nxf5 31.Nxf5 gxf5 32.Nf4 Ba7 33.Be3 Nb8 34.Nh5 Rh8 35.Ng7 f4 36.Bxf4 Bxd4+ 37.Kf3 Na6 38.Nf5 c5 39.Nd6 Rb8 40.bxc5 Bxc5 41.Rxc5 Nxc5 42.Rxc5 b4 43.axb4 Rxb4 44.Rxd5 Ke6 45.Ra5 Rhb8 46.Ra7 Rb3+ 47.Kg4 h5+ 48.gxh6 Rg8+ 49.Kh4 Rb4 50.Rxf7 a3 51.h7 Rh8 52.Kg5 a2 53.Ra7 Rxh7 54.Rxa2 Rh8 55.Rf2 Rg8+ 56.Kh4 Rxf4+ 57.Rxf4 Kxe5 58.Rg4 Rh8+ 59.Kg3 Kxd6 60.h4 Ke7 61.Rf4 Rg8+ 62.Kf3 Rf8 1/2-1/2>

<stalker>, so was this the opening or middlegame?

<[Event "44th New England Open"] [Site "Boxborough Mass"]
[Date "1984.09.01"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "1.18"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Onnen, Douglas"]
[ECO "D48"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<In the Trump era, Republicans have developed a dark but effective strategy to deflect from his staggering criminality. They appear willing to lodge any complaint or investigation, without an underlying good faith basis in law or fact, against any Democrat to create false equivalencies for Trump’s many felony charges. The noise from their constant false allegations produces the desired effect of minimizing Trump’s crimes in the court of public opinion, leading exhausted voters to tune out and lump together all politicians facing legal charges.

And because of the mainstream media’s “performative neutrality,” as the Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan put it, the GOP’s obvious political stunts garner excessive coverage. It is all meant to equalize coverage of Trump’s traitorous conduct, which has no equal. The new motion to dismiss and disqualify Georgia’s Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis from the state’s 2020 election interference case is just more of the same noise from the right.

The allegations against Willis

Earlier this month, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, former director of Election Day operations Michael Roman, filed a 127-page motion to dismiss the indictment and disqualify Willis and her entire team from the case based on allegations that Willis had an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a private lawyer whom Willis retained to work on the election interference case.

Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis says 'the law is non-partisan'

The motion alleges that Willis personally profited from Wade’s contract, under which Wade was paid $653,881 over several years, because Wade paid, or helped to pay, or shared the cost, for romantic trips he took with Willis. Roman alleges that “Willis and Wade have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, California, Florida and the Caribbean… Wade has also purchased hotel rooms for personal trips with funds from the same account used to receive payments under his contract with Willis.”

These facts, Roman claims, show that Willis and Wade profited significantly from Trump’s prosecution “at the expense of the taxpayers.”

The motion to disqualify is 127 pages of amped-up language amounting to nothing Wade’s personal use of “funds from the same account used to receive payments under his contract,” cited in the motion, just means he deposited his pay into his personal bank account, then spent his own money, like everyone. “Same account… contract” is only used here to sound suspicious.

Also, if it isn’t obvious, government prosecutors and their outside counsel are always paid with taxpayer funds, so Willis and Wade “profiting” at “taxpayer expense” just means they got paid for their work. They can spend their income on vacations, lavish or otherwise; they can spend it on Skittles and kittens if they want.

Mainstream media’s heavy coverage of Republicans’ attempt to disqualify Willis will likely crescendo in a big, fat “so what?” A romantic affair isn’t a nefarious conflict of interest, nor is traveling together, nor is getting paid. It’s another attempt to distract the public from damning recorded evidence of a defeated Trump on the phone pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 non-existent votes, a clear election felony. Indictment-adjacent, it gives Fox News a plausible substitution to avoid discussing the damning fusillade of evidence against Trump.

Specific “disqualifying” allegations

On Monday, Roman’s attorney successfully petitioned a Georgia court to unseal Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings, looking for embarrassing and salacious but legally irrelevant flair.

Roman has alleged, without evidence, that Fani Willis could have handled the Trump case within her office, but chose instead to hire “her boyfriend” as a private special prosecutor in order to benefit financially from his fees. Roman offers no analysis of staffing levels, caseload or professional expertise at the Fulton County prosecutor’s office to support his claim that outside counsel was unnecessary to prosecute one of the most consequential cases in U.S. history. And he offers only bootstrap arguments that the Willis-Wade personal relationship created a conflict of interest.....>

<....The gravamen of the disqualification attempt is that Willis hired Wade because they were involved romantically, and she wanted to benefit financially from his hourly compensation, which Roman claims is excessive. But according to a newly released book from veteran award-winning investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, “Find Me the Votes,” Willis tried to hire two other outside attorneys before she offered the work to Wade. Willis first approached Roy Barnes, a former Georgia governor, to serve as senior counsel in the Trump prosecution, but Barnes declined, According to CBS News, Gabe Banks, a former federal prosecutor, was next, and also turned down Willis’ offer. Both men are reported to have been concerned about Trump supporters’ threats to their personal and family safety, with Barnes asking, “Hypothetically speaking, do you want a bodyguard following you around for the rest of your life?"

The fact that Willis only hired Wade after two other private attorneys turned her down wholly defeats Roman’s claim that she hired Wade in order to benefit financially from his contract.

Regarding Wade’s hourly fee, Willis ultimately retained two additional outside attorneys to work on the election interference case. She paid all three outside attorneys the same hourly rate, but the motion to disqualify targets only Wade, and targets only his hourly rate. Wade is black; the other two outside attorneys are white.

A trumped-up claim that Wade was hired without county authority

Roman has moved for an order disqualifying Willis, “her office, and (Wade) from further prosecuting the instant matter on the grounds that (they) have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case…”

Roman argues that under Georgia law, Willis was required but failed to obtain Fulton County’s approval prior to appointing Mr. Wade as special prosecutor to work on the case, which means “the indictments he assisted in securing suffer from a structural and irreparable defect and must be dismissed.”

Roman’s motion concedes that Georgia law authorizes a district attorney to retain additional prosecutors who are compensated from county funds, but claims the indictment must be dismissed because Willis did not have specific authority from Fulton County to contract with Wade. Roman also concedes that the Fulton County prosecutor’s office had access to surplus funding to clear a COVID-era backlog and to hire additional counsel, but alleges that the use of that money in the election case was somehow illicit. “Covid backlog,” according to Roman’s argument, would not include Trump’s felony prosecution, even though Trump’s election interference in Georgia took place in Nov. 2020 and continued through 2021, during the heart of COVID.

The extent to which Willis consulted with county officials prior to retaining Wade, and her office’s staffing protocols, if relevant at all, will be addressed when she files her response to the motion on February 2.

But where is the conflict of interest?

The motion devotes pages to Willis’ alleged attempt to “defraud the public” by personally benefiting “from an undisclosed conflict of interest” without identifying exactly where Willis’ conflict of interest lies.

Whitworth v. State, cited in the motion to disqualify, dealt with bribery, and a Georgia statute that prohibits state employees from receiving “anything of value” to which they are not entitled in return for procuring a specific outcome. The appellant in Whitworth tried but failed to show that the prosecutor who secured his conviction had “a personal interest or stake” in his conviction due to a pre-existing employment conflict, which is neither alleged nor relevant to Wade. Roman does not claim, because he cannot, that Wade and Willis were not entitled to their income, nor that getting paid for their work “influenced” any kind of outcome in the Trump election interference case....>

<....Despite all the real estate Roman devotes in his brief to a presumed conflict of interest, he doesn’t identify any “personal stake” in his indictment. Wanting to succeed on a case, like expecting to get paid, does not rise to an unethical ‘personal interest’ in a defendant’s conviction, or attorneys would be acting unethically every time they care about the outcome of a case or submit an invoice for their work.

Roman relies on Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct’s instruction that, “[a] lawyer shall not represent or continue to represent a client if there is a significant risk that the lawyer's own interests … will materially and adversely affect the representation of the client.” But neither Willis nor Wade had or have their own interests which conflict with their client’s interest. The client here is Fulton County; the county’s interest is in securing a just conviction if that is where the facts and law lead. There is no “conflict” where attorneys and their client want the same outcome.

Having an affair and taking romantic trips together is not the same as when a judge, or a Supreme Court justice, receives millions of dollars in gifts from a litigant appearing before the court, then rules in favor of the gifting party in hidden quid pro quo. There is no allegation here that anyone accepted a bribe, or that either Willis or Wade are pursuing Trump’s conviction for financially illicit purposes, unless the desire to get paid for their work is somehow ‘illicit.’ Both Willis and Wade want to secure a conviction; there is no allegation that they received “gifts” to influence how they go about getting one.

Roman asserts, not incorrectly, that Wade has an incentive to continue working on Trump’s prosecution because that’s his source of income. But that is no different from any attorney who represents clients because they get paid (unless their client is Donald Trump, known to stiff his attorneys.) A “financial incentive” to prosecute Trump in this context sounds sinister, but it means nothing other than the expectation of receiving pay for work performed.

The glaring double standard

A jury in New York recently found Donald Trump liable for sexual assault, which has the same legal meaning as rape, yet Republicans still consider him qualified to serve as President of the United States. Under MAGA ethos, a man can rape a woman, and brag about grabbing female genitalia without permission, and still occupy the highest office in the nation, but a woman in a consensual affair with outside counsel is disqualified from service as a county prosecutor. Got it.>

<Mary Trump has seen enough to call Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) the “top gaslighter” of the GOP.

The niece of former President Donald Trump caught the Republican lawmaker in an embarrassing “lie that backfired spectacularly” Monday after Stefanik quoted a misleading post on X, formerly Twitter, about Trump’s ongoing E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.

Carroll sued Trump in 2019 after he denied her sexual assault claims against him, and while his own attorneys asked Monday to delay the proceedings by one day, Stefanik blamed “Joe Biden and his Democrat [sic] cronies” for this “blatant election interference.”

“The only problem?” Mary Trump wrote Monday in her Substack newsletter using bold and italics. “Not only does Joe Biden and the Democratic party have NOTHING to do with E. Jean Carroll’s civil case, but Donald’s own legal team asked for the delay. Also, it’s ‘Democratic,’ you immature twit.”

While Stefanik tried to argue that the GOP front-runner is unfairly expected in court on the day that the New Hampshire primary begins, Mary Trump clarified this “humiliating blunder” and explained that Donald Trump’s lawyer was given the option to continue or delay the trial after a juror reported being sick.

“It was at that point that Donald’s attorney, Alina Habba, disclosed that she too had a fever, after spending time with her parents, who both tested positive for COVID-19…and yes, she still showed up to court knowing all of this and sat next to her client without wearing a mask,” Mary Trump wrote, adding that “Habba herself asked for the adjournment.”

She noted that Stefanik’s “failed attempt to suck-up” and “kiss Donald’s ring” was only her latest, however, as the loyalist MAGA Republican recently defended Donald Trump after he publicly confused former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Stefanik even tried arguing Saturday on MSNBC that the former president mixed them up on purpose.

“Elise Stefanik remains an unrepentant liar and continues to be willing to do whatever she can to achieve her own political ambitions,” Mary Trump wrote. “In my view, her biggest mistake is the extent to which she underestimates voters - including you.”

The author and psychologist certainly has a point, as evidenced by social media.>

<Late last week, Sen. J.D. Vance spoke to a crowd in New Hampshire, campaigning on Donald Trump’s behalf head of the state’s presidential primary, when a woman in the audience interrupted him.

“When are we going to find out the truth about Jan. 6?” she asked. The Ohio Republican not only appreciated the question, he said this was “maybe the most important thing” Trump would do in a second term.

It might’ve seemed implausible in the recent past, but as this election year gets underway, it appears increasingly likely that Republicans are going to make this a prominent campaign issue.

In the House, for example, Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, in his capacity as the chair of the House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight, is overseeing a partisan investigation into “what really happened” on Jan. 6. The Georgian suggested two weeks ago that “the truth” about the right-wing attack on the Capitol is still out there, and he intends to help expose it.

Around the same time, Raw Story reported:

The Epoch Times, incidentally, is a conspiratorial outlet powered by Falun Gong, a Chinese religious group. As NBC News reported a few months ago, Falun Gong “launched The Epoch Times as a free propaganda newsletter more than two decades ago to oppose the Chinese Communist Party.”

Now, its influence in conservative politics has reached the point at which it can produce a conspiratorial film and receive support from a sitting U.S. senator.

“We always say, ‘To the victor go the spoils,’” Johnson reportedly said at the screening. “The victor writes the history, and unfortunately, in November 2020, Democrats had the full sweep. They had all the levers of power, and they wrote the history of Jan. 6.”

In reality, whether the Wisconsin Republican likes it or not, it wasn’t Democrats who wrote the history of the insurrectionist riot. The public’s understanding of the events was shaped by a combination of factors, including a bipartisan congressional investigation, probes launched by law enforcement and criminal prosecutors, accounts from rioters themselves, and extensive journalistic scrutiny.

And yet, prominent GOP lawmakers are telling the public that there are still hidden truths, as the party’s likely presidential nominee — and some of his more sycophantic allies — refers to Jan. 6 criminals as “hostages.”

Coming soon to a campaign ad near you.>

<It was late December 2022, and Republicans were furious about the 2023 omnibus spending bill, a sprawling piece of legislation designed to avert a government shutdown and keep federal spending flowing for the next 9 months.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had dubbed it the "omnimonster." Kevin McCarthy, then the speaker in waiting, even pledged to block the bills of any senator who voted for it. In the end, just 9 Republicans voted for it, only 2 of whom remain in Congress.

Republicans who voted against the bill cited the nearly $1.7 trillion price tag, disagreements with the process through which the bill was produced, or their preference that the matter be punted until their party officially assumed control of the House just days later, when they would have more leverage to enact their preferred policies.

Here are some of the most notable examples from recent years.

Rep. Mike Garcia of California, a member of the House Appropriations Committee that oversees government spending, was among those Republicans.

"I'm voting no on this bill, obviously," Garcia said in a Twitter post at the time. "It's too big, it's too expensive, we can't afford it as Americans."

Garcia also made that argument — protesting not just the size of the bill, but the haphazard way that it was thrown together — in a floor speech and in an interview on Newsmax that week.

'Delivering results'

Just over half a year later, a mailer from Garcia's congressional office landed in mailboxes across his congressional district, which covers northern Los Angeles county.

The announcement: Garcia had brought home nearly $15 million in federal spending to the district.

"As a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, I work hard to secure critical funds for our community every year," the mail reads.

$2 million for a nonprofit that aids the homeless. $1.5 million for the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. $1.1 million for traffic cameras in Lancaster. These were among the projects that Garcia touted in the mailer generating positive local headlines in the process.

"Congressman Mike Garcia was absolutely instrumental in securing these dollars specifically to support the Connecting to Success program," Kathy Norris, the President and CEO of the Valley Industrial Association, told a local outlet after her organization received $675,000 in federal funding.

Yet almost all of the funding that Garcia touted in the mailer came from the omnibus spending bill that he made a show of voting against the previous December.

Specifically, $12.9 million of the $14.9 million came from Community Project Funding — known colloquially as "earmarks" — that ended up in the 2023 omnibus.

Congressional documents from December 2022 confirm that Garcia requested that funding, even though he ultimately voted against the bill that delivered it.

The other $2 million, allocated to College of the Canyons for an aircraft technician training program, came from the annual defense authorization bill, which Garcia did support.

Taken together, it's one example of a phenomenon that Democrats in particular have dubbed "vote no, take the dough" — referring to when Republican lawmakers and other officials celebrate government funding or programs that they actually voted against....>

<....In recent years, there have been a wide litany of other examples.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, nonetheless celebrated billions in broadband funding that it brought to his state. Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona, who voted twice against a veterans' benefits bill, encouraged his constituents to sign up for a resulting program. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, who also voted against the 2023 omnibus, recently posed with a giant check that was funded by that bill.

Spokespeople for Garcia did not return Business Insider's request for comment, but in the past, Republicans have generally argued that when it comes to earmarks, they can have it both ways.

"I can celebrate this victory because I fought for it and put my name on this Community Funding project," Salazar told BI, even as she blasted the underlying omnibus bill for bringing "reckless spending for an already bloated federal government."

Garcia wasn't the only Republican to secure earmark funding in the 2023 omnibus, only to vote against that bill — in fact, over 100 Republicans did the same thing, according to Roll Call.

And Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who secured nearly $20 million from the omnibus bill, also voted against it, citing the bill's funding of the Department of Homeland Security and an increase in military spending.

Yet the case of Garcia and others appears to undermine one claims made by proponents of earmarks — that they can encourage lawmakers to take tough votes for major bills, or at least be less willing to tank legislation that stands to benefit their district.

In this instance, Garcia was able to secure almost all of what he requested for his district — just two of his earmark requests for Fiscal Year 2023 were denied, according to congressional documents — but that didn't stop him from ultimately trashing the bill.>

<[Event "44th New England Open"] [Site "Boxborough Mass"]
[Date "1984.09.02"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "3.14"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Chubinsky, Peter"]
[ECO "B36"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Central New England Fall Open"] [Site "Fitchburg Mass"]
[Date "1984.11.03"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "1.10"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Marcus, Edward"]
[ECO "E80"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "NAPZP M-02"]
[Site "ICCF"]
[Date "1997.06.??"]
[EventDate "1997"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Golyak, Isay"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "C14"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "6th Monadnock Marathon"] [Site "Jaffrey NH"]
[Date "1983.10.30"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "9"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Wolff, Patrick"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "E55"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Republican House members who are trying to use public hearings on Hunter Biden's legal problems, in an effort to damage President Joe Biden's re-election prospects, are finding the Democrats are more than willing to fight fire with fire.

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) along with House Judiciary Committee head Jim Jordan (R-OH) have allowed members of their caucus free rein to make attacks on the Bidens only to receive return fire from Democrats Like Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Riley Rogerson, Republicans are finding themselves back on their heels at the unexpected pushback from Democrats on what they thought was a winning strategy, with Moskowitz explaining his party is "giving them a taste of their own medicine."

As he explained, following his holding up enlarged pictures of Donald Trump with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein at a recent hearing, “They’ve decided to turn it into Cirque Du Soleil Oversight where literally, it’s just a total show. If that is the game that they are going to play, then game on."

As the Beast's Rogerson wrote, "... the young, spunky cohort of Democrats—mentored by the leader of Trump’s second impeachment, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD)—are refusing to take it. Where past generations of Democrats might have sat back, preferring to let Republican dysfunction speak for itself, the Oversight Dems are hitting Republicans hard."

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who got the expression "d--k pics" entered into the Congressional Record during a verbal battle with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), cut right to the chase about the Democrats' strategy.

“We’re calling out their bulls--t like every single time, and I think they’re surprised by it. I think they’re not used to it. And I think that we are causing them great embarrassment,” he explained.

That strategy, and lack of success by Comer in leading the inquiry, is reportedly making the membership sour on his machinations.

One House Republican who asked to remain anonymous told the Messenger this week, "One would be hard-pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee. It’s been a parade of embarrassments.”>

Advert for:

<Best Ways To Deal With Roach And Mice Infestation....>

I have an idea or three....

<Donald Trump is continuing his campaign of public threats to injure, imprison or kill his perceived personal enemies, and other foes of the MAGA movement, if and when he takes power a year from now. The most recent example came in a series of posts on Truth Social last Thursday morning. Although certain aspects of these posts made headlines with respect to Trump's preposterous claims of immunity, the full context is important.

In his trademark all-caps prose, Trump proposed that any U.S president "MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION." It's unusually generous, by Trump's standards, even to consider other actual or hypothetical presidents. Then he continued: ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END. EVEN EVENTS THAT “CROSS THE LINE” MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD. THERE MUST BE CERTAINTY. EXAMPLE: YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL “ROGUE COP” OR “BAD APPLE.” SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH “GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.” ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT! [Emphasis added.]

For Trump to claim that police must be allowed free rein to commit acts of violence with impunity was not a random "example." Its implications should be obvious. This from the same man whose attorney recently argued in federal court that Trump, as president, could have ordered political rivals executed and accepted bribes without being held accountable before the law. (Under this ludicrous theory, impeachment is the only recourse against a criminal or corrupt president.)

This also from the same man who publicly threatened the life of Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for alleged disloyalty because Milley refused to support a coup attempt against American democracy and the Constitution. And from the same man who has repeatedly threatened to have President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, the judges and prosecutors in his various trials and virtually anyone else (including journalists) who attempts to hold him responsible for his crimes prosecuted for “treason.” As Trump is well aware, the traditional punishment for treason is execution.

Trump no longer bothers to conceal his desire to rule as dictator of a virtual police state, and to claim the right and power to imprison, torture and execute any and all who oppose him.

NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a leading expert on fascism, discussed Trump’s murderous intent in a Thursday social media post:

Trump is telling Americans very clearly that he will be jailing and killing Americans. Anyone who votes for him is complicit with these future crimes because of this transparency & these threats. Americans cannot say they did not know ahead of time....>

<....Journalist Luke Zaleski echoed that warning:

Trump is telling you he’s gonna send his hessians to abuse you without due process. He’s a dictator emerging to take revenge on US citizens. Trump wants revenge. He’s a sick puppy, folks — and he’ll sic his dogs on anyone who fights to save America from him.

This “right” of the leader and ruling party to kill or abuse members of the public with impunity, and to reshape the law to their purposes, is a defining feature of dictatorships and autocracies.

Trump’s most recent threats against the American people (and, by implication, against democracy and civil society) attracted some mainstream news coverage for a day or so before disappearing down the memory hole. (Zeeshan Aleem’s essay at MSNBC was a notable exception).

Even so, there was little discussion of Trump’s specific threat or his self-comparison to a violent "rogue cop," licensed to beat, torture, abduct or murder citizens with "total immunity" from prosecution. At this point, some of the most stalwart and reliable voices in the mainstream media have fallen into the trap of normalizing Trump’s deviant behavior. One prominent commentator, for example, wrote about Trump’s most recent threats while entirely ignoring his "bad apple" analogy. That commentator also never offered any clear statement or interpretation of what Trump's promises of violent revenge will mean for the American people in practice. Instead, this journalist relied on quoting someone else, in rather too oblique a fashion, to get nearer the point.

That kind of political ventriloquism is utterly inadequate to the task of defeating Trumpism and the larger neofascist movement. Those people with a public platform who claim to defend democracy have a responsibility to be direct, bold and consistent in their truth-telling.

Why do we still face this problem? Why has the mainstream news media as an institution so consistently failed to focus on the MAGA movement’s promises, threats and acts of political violence and thuggery?

There are many reasons. Even after almost nine years of Trump's central role in our political life, many in the mainstream media still believe that "normal" politics and the supposed institutions of democracy will be enough stop Trump and today’s Republican fascists. What follows from that is the naive hope or belief that continuing to cover Trump as a normal candidate, according to obsolete horserace standards of “fairness” and “balance,” will somehow cause our democracy crisis to go away. Coverage of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, as Trump's rivals have fallen away, represented a brief return to familiar and comfortable terrain for the mainstream news media. But there is nothing familiar or comfortable about the Trumpocene era, and that security blanket will shortly be ripped away.

Of course there's also the ad revenue, along with the clicks, shares and "traffic" — the material incentives, in other words — that may flow from normalizing Trump and his behavior. This is motivated, not unreasonably, by a fear that telling the American people what they need to hear about this worsening crisis, instead of what they want to hear, will result in backlash and buzzkill, meaning lower revenues. The attention economy, like other aspects of consumer capitalism, is demand-driven. As I have repeatedly warned in this space and elsewhere, hope-peddling, happy-pill selling and catering to the emotional immaturity of the American public can be a lucrative business.

Let's not overlook that the “news media” consists of real people and human organizations: Trump's threats against his supposed enemies, which surely include journalists, are frightening and upsetting. Ignoring or downplaying the seriousness of those threats is an understandable reaction to stress that makes it easier to go to work every day. Responding appropriately to this crisis is, without question, damaging to one’s emotional, spiritual and physical health.

Realpolitik and self-interest may also be at play. Some reporters, editors and producers in mainstream media are positioning themselves with the expectation that Trump will win the election. They want access to his regime; the first Trump presidency was a media feeding frenzy.

Furthermore, many leading voices in the media, especially the professional centrists and institutionalists, have been conditioned by privilege to believe they are immune from any possible danger or threat, even from a dictatorial regime. Because of their skin color, their gender and sexual orientation, their class backgrounds and their lives rich with social and cultural capital, they cannot imagine they ever could become targets of state-sponsored violence. They may well learn otherwise....>