Without fail, whenever I watch video or hear audio from the 1/6 insurrection, my blood boils, my pulse quickens, my face gets a bit flushed, I get angry as hell at the perpetrators of that event.
Every time. Every … single … time.
So, when Wylie, Texas, resident Guy Reffitt got convicted this week of five felony charges stemming from his role in the treasonous act against our government, I got angry all over again. The news media showed me what that crowd of terrorists was doing.
My anger only worsens when I hear sh** fly out of the mouth of those who defend nimrods like Reffitt. His wife is one of them. She said the Justice Department is trying merely to make an example of her husband. What utter crap!
Guy Reffitt made an example of himself. The moron didn’t need DOJ’s help in that regard. He recorded his own participation in the riot. We have audio and visual proof of the things he said and did on that horrendous day.
And then for Republican members of Congress to suggest that they were engaged in “legitimate political discourse” offends me beyond any measure. They are causing the founding fathers to spin in their graves. The First Amendment, I hasten to note, mentions “the right of the people peaceably to assemble … ”
Was there anything “peaceable” about that riot? Nope. It was a violent act of treason.
Guy Reffitt is likely heading to prison, possibly for decades, for his role in the 1/6 insurrection. The native of Texas and resident of Wylie — a town just across Lake Lavon where my wife and I reside — sealed his own fate with his stupidity.
It took a jury three hours to return a five-count guilty verdict against Reffitt, who was ratted out by his 19-year-old son. What was the nimrod doing? He “lit the fire” that ignited inside the Capitol Building on 1/6 and then actually recorded his own fiery rhetoric on social media.
The Hill reported: A jury found the Texas native guilty of attempting to obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, transporting guns from Texas to D.C., bringing a firearm into restricted grounds of the Capitol, interfering with Capitol Police and threatening his son and daughter upon returning from the riot.
It was that compelling evidence that persuaded the jury to ramrod a guilty verdict against the guy who belongs to some nimrod group called the Texas Three Percenters. He went to Washington on 1/6 carrying firearms, such as rifles and handguns. What was he going to do with all that firepower? He was going to storm the Capitol Building and drag politicians out by their hair, or so he said, and do … something to them.
Hey, it’s all recorded for the entire world to hear.
What a dipsh**.
The federal government has arrested more than 700 people in connection with the insurrection. Reffitt is the first of them to be convicted. He will face sentencing on June 8. He could get 60 years in prison.
Whether it’s the max or something less, my strong hope is that he gets put away for a long time.
Then let’s get on with prosecuting the rest of the traitors.
As I watch the congressional probe into 1/6 trudge along — hopefully to a constructive conclusion — and then listen to the focus of that probe, the 45th POTUS, I have come to an inescapable finding.
It is that I will go to my grave wondering how in the name of political wisdom did Donald J. Trump ever get elected president of the United States in first place. And how in the name of all that is sane and rational did this guy ever avoid getting tossed out of office on his oversized backside after the House of Reps impeached him twice?
He preaches The Big Lie about the 2020 election. His cult followers cheer him on. Trump teases them with hints about possibly running again in 2024 in an astonishing bid to get elected a second time to an office he had no business at all ever occupying even one time.
I read this idiot’s comments, given that I prefer to read them than listen to the sound of his voice. I then wonder: What the hell is this guy saying?
The list of treachery, transgressions and outright treason are too numerous to check off here. You know what they are, what they entail, and you know of the damage they have done individually and collectively to our cherished system of representative democracy.
Trump’s election in 2016 is a case study of a politician benefiting from astonishing luck. The popular phrase du jour of that election cycle was that Trump managed to draw “an inside straight,” while winning the Electoral College and losing the actual vote by 3 million ballots to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have read many accounts over the years since that fluke victory that Trump never believed he would win. When he did win, he was caught flat-footed, with no clue on how to form a government, let alone actually know how to govern.
Four years later, he got drummed out of office by a seasoned politician. He never accepted Joe Biden’s victory and skulked out of Washington the day before President Biden’s inaugural.
The 1/6 committee continues to gather information and sworn testimony from those who witnessed the disgraced ex-POTUS on the day of the traitorous riot on 1/6. We’re getting bits of info here and there about revelations on fake electors seeking to overturn the legitimate election results; about Trump sitting in the White House residence cheering on the rioting traitors; about the ex-POTUS considering blanket pardons for all the scoundrels who pooped on Capitol floors while shouting out their desire to find and “hang” VP Mike Pence.
There is much more to chronicle. I’ll leave it to you to piece together all that you have seen and heard from this moron.
I always have expected us to elect the best among us to public office. To think that one of the very worst among us managed to blunder and bumble his way into the White House simply defies my ability to explain it.
Donald Trump operates with a bottomless trove of outrageous pronouncements from which he uncovers ways to make declarations that are profoundly offensive and reprehensible.
This weekend, the 45th POTUS did it again. He ventured to Texas to declare that he might — if hell freezes over and he is elected president in 2024 — offer unconditional pardons to the traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on 1/6 and sought to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
That’s right. He would pardon the men and women who threatened to kill Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, injured scores of police officers, defecated on the floor of the Capitol and vandalized the hall of government by smashing through windows.
There is a reason this blog never has refused to print the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively. It is because your friendly blogger cannot recognize this lawless, corrupt, amoral, profane individual as my head of state, head of government and commander in chief.
For this moronic dipsh** to suggest he might offer pardons to those who — at his incitement — stormed the Capitol Building and sought to dismember our democratic process is so utterly beyond the pale that it boggles my understanding how any sensible human being can cling to the crap that flows from this guy’s mouth.
Merrick Garland has long been considered a fair-minded, reasonable, rational man who isn’t an overly partisan public official.
Thus, the U.S. attorney general can be counted on to do the right thing even in the face of intense political pressure.
I cannot possibly know this to be true, but I am willing to bet that AG Garland is getting a snootful of pressure to investigate the shenanigans orchestrated by the former president of the United States. They deal with POTUS 45’s relentless efforts to overturn what has been called “the most secure election in U.S. history.”
Is there an effort here to undermine the government? To subvert the democratic process? To actually mount what has been called a coup by the former POTUS to snatch the presidency back from the guy who defeated him in the 2020 election?
If there was a coup in the works, my understanding of the word “treason” tells me that POTUS 45 is guilty as the dickens of seeking to plot against the government he took an oath to defend and protect.
I don’t know what Merrick Garland will do. Nor do I know even if he is talking behind closed doors at the Justice Department about whether he should investigate the former POTUS. My hunch is that he has had that conversation with his top deputies.
Presidents are supposed to temporary occupants of the office they take. That is the case with President Biden’s immediate predecessor. His insistence on fomenting the Big Lie about phony vote fraud allegations tells me he does not believe that to be the case.
Merrick Garland has some studying — and perhaps some serious soul-searching — ahead of him.
By all means, President Biden is correct to call out the Big Lie for what it is, an assault on democracy itself.
Moreover, the president is correct to lay the blame for this assault directly at the feet of the individual he defeated in the November presidential election.
Biden has joined the fight against Republican efforts to subvert Americans’ ability to vote. He also has joined the chorus of those of us out here who are appalled that POTUS 45 — who once swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution — has been leading the effort to undermine it … even while he served as president!
As The Hill reported:
Biden blasted efforts from Trump and others to sow doubt about the election months after it concluded, which have spurred action from GOP-led state legislatures to push new elections laws that would limit absentee voting and make it more difficult for certain groups to vote.
“It’s clear, for those who challenge the results or question the integrity of the election, no other election has ever been held under such scrutiny or such high standards. The Big Lie is just that, a Big Lie,” Biden said at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
By my understanding of the term, I consider the ex-POTUS’s effort to undermine a free and fair election to be an act of treason. He incited the Jan. 6 insurrection. He continues to tell the Big Lie about alleged voter fraud. He has broken state and federal laws by seeking to get state election officials to overturn balloting results.
And yet there are those among us Americans who want the ex-Liar in Chief to return to the White House? So help me, I don’t which factor angers me more: that the ex-POTUS keeps telling the Big Lie or the cultists continue to believe it … and act on it!
The duly elected POTUS has weighed in. I am glad to hear the stern language he has used to call the Big Lie what it is.
Social media memes have this way of occasionally telling us startling truths about issues of the day.
For instance, a meme showed up on my Facebook news feed this morning that offered some advice to the nation looking at possible crimes committed by Donald Trump, the outgoing president of the United States.
It says we should examine “possible treason as thoroughly” as the nation investigated whether a previous president was, um, pleasured by a White House intern.
President Clinton got impeached for his dalliance with a young woman, but not until a special prosecutor revealed his findings while examining other alleged misdeeds involving the president.
Fast-forward to the present day. Donald Trump is being investigated for a wide variety of alleged crimes. The probe is occurring in state jurisdictions. The allegations go far more deeply than what Bill Clinton did more than two decades ago. They involve possible treason and betrayal of the nation’s security … by the president!
Is that worth the time, the effort and, yes, the expense of a thorough investigation?
Oh, that goofball/demagogue/liar Donald J. Trump just can’t stop hurling the “t-word” at Barack Obama.
He said the former president of the United States likely committed “treason” by spying on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. He said that former CIA director John Brennan knew about it; so did former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; same for former FBI director James Comey; of course, let’s not forget former Vice President Joe Biden … he knew about it, too.
Trump today called it the “biggest political scandal in history.”
Was it “treasonous,” Mr. President? Are you kidding me?
First of all, there was no “spying” done on the campaign. There were questions raised about allegations of Russian interference during the 2016 campaign. The Obama administration was obligated to examine it under the law.
Furthermore, for Trump to toss out “treason” once again amounts to demagoguery at its worst.
For the record, treason is defined by federal statute as a betrayal of the country, of doing something to aid an enemy state.
What’s the punishment for committing an act of treason? Death!
I am so damn weary of hearing Trump spew this trash.
We have an election just over the horizon. For my money, it cannot get here soon enough. Donald Trump’s incessant posturing about alleged “spying” is dangerous and it needs to end.
It appears to me the only way to shut this liar down is to vote him out of office.
U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley laid it on the line before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.
He has staked out a position regarding the naming of Army posts after Confederate generals that is diametrically opposed to the position taken by the commander in chief.
On these matters, I will stand with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman every … single … time.
Milley told committee members that the officers who signed up with the Confederacy were traitors to the nation and they violated the sacred oath they took when they were commissioned as American military officers.
What’s more, Milley said he supports a top-to-bottom review of the 10 Army posts named after these traitors and pledged to work to ensure the nation does right by the places that today house and train American warriors.
Of course, that is opposite of what Donald Trump wants. He said just recently, via Twitter: “The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.”
I won’t quarrel with what Trump said about how those bases “trained and deployed” these heroic Americans. That isn’t the point of this discussion. The point is about whether it is appropriate to commemorate the memories of men who committed an act of treason — which is the highest crime one can commit against our government, which carries a death sentence under federal law.
As Gen. Milley noted,“The American Civil War … was an act of treason at the time against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution — and those officers turned their backs on their oath. Now, some have a different view of that. Some think it’s heritage. Others think it’s hate.”
You may count me as one who believes in the latter description. Our nation fought the Civil Ware because the Confederacy wanted to retain the “states’ right” to keep human beings in bondage.
Donald Trump has remained silent on what might be the most heinous act of treachery perpetrated during this individual’s tenure as president of the United States.
Intelligence reports are piling up that say the same thing: Russian agents paid bounties of as much as $100,000 to Taliban fighters who kill U.S. service personnel.
Trump has taken aim at the reporting of this story. He calls it “fake news.” He reportedly is looking for the White House staffer who leaked the information to the media.
Has he said a word publicly about Vladimir Putin’s role in this astonishing act? No. He hasn’t. He won’t, either. Why? Because I happen to believe Putin has some goods to deliver on Trump that the U.S. president doesn’t want known.
It could be damn near anything. It’s as much a mystery to me as the tax returns that Trump refuses to release, even though he once promised to release them.
What we have here is an act of treachery on the part of a hostile power toward our fighting men and women. We well might have a much more egregious act by the president who took an oath to protect our servicemen and women. He has failed in his duty as commander in chief.
