Cagle World

These Republican presidential squabble-debates are so worthless, so utterly devoid of value, that they make three-dollar bills look like Bob Menendez’s gold bars.

How is it possible for these B-team blowhards to yammer on for two interminable hours without once mentioning that the cult’s AWOL authoritarian, Donald Trump, recently pined for the execution of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

Wednesday night, during the second Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election, wouldn’t it have been a decent gesture to at least thank General Mark Milley for his 43 years of service to his country and the Constitution? Shouldn’t the hapless trio of questioners (two were Fox-related) have asked the candidates whether it’s right to threaten a military leader with death? And whether it’s wise to pledge support to a potential nominee who’s formally accused of 91 felonies, who has been formally judged to be a sex assailant, and who, this very week, has been formally judged to be a serial financial fraudster?

Especially the latter.

Republicans have long revered private enterprise and hard-earned wealth. Yet they’re poised to pledge fealty in 2024 to a fake whose purported empire has been built on a pile of sand. We know this now, officially, because a judge in New York has crunched the incontrovertible numbers and concluded that Trump is the Great and Powerful Oz with the curtain yanked open.

Turns out, Trump for years has blatantly inflated the value of his assets – everything from skyscrapers to golf courses to his Mar-a-Lago estate – padding his bottom line by billions, defrauding banks and insurance companies in the process. Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general, says Trump lives in “a fantasy world, not the real world,” because he has repeatedly lied in his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums. Indeed, those financial statements “make abundantly clear that Mr. Trump was fully responsible for the information contained within” them – and the laws governing such statements do not “insulate liars from liability.”

For example, the judge concluded that Trump has inflated the value of his Trump Tower triplex apartment by three times its size, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114 million to $207 million. In Engoron’s words, “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.” And the judge discovered that Trump’s financial statements about Mar-a-Lago were wildly amiss – “an overvaluation of at least 2300 percent, compared to the assessor’s appraisal.”

Somebody on the debate stage should’ve had the gumption to say something like this: “Back in 2016, Donald Trump’s entire ‘brand’ was built on the false notion that he was a wildly successful multi-billionaire who’d apply his business acumen to the job of governance. Now we have learned that it was all a lie. Building a fraudulent brand is a failure of character, and we can no longer tolerate that kind of behavior in our party.”

But, as expected, everyone on stage insulated the liar from liability.

Here’s what the liar said on a debate stage seven years ago, during one of the autumn presidential debates: “I built a massive company, a great company, some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world worth many, many billions of dollars…A phenomenal company. And if we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of.”

But if memory serves, there was a candidate in 2016 who questioned whether Trump was the financial phenom he claimed to be. She said that Trump’s track record was actually quite hinky (multiple bankruptcies), that he was a serial grifter (he’d “stiffed” many of his small contractors, refusing to pay them), and she warned that “sometimes there’s not a direct transfer of skills from business to government,” that “sometimes what happened in business would be really bad for government.”

Best of all, she said this: “Maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is.”

On that debate stage, Hillary Clinton was right again.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The easiest way to write about the House Republicans’ purported impeachment probe of President Biden, a theatrical stunt launched with zero actual evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, is to simply focus on MAGA mascot Kevin McCarthy – the hapless Speaker best described by the late sane conservative pundit Michael Gerson as a “simpering paragon of mediocrity, shallowness, cravenness.”

It’s tempting indeed to just target McCarthy, who said two weeks ago that an impeachment probe of a president should only be launched when a majority of House members deem it necessary; in his words, “if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House, and not through a declaration of one person.” Then last week, having (rightly) suspected that he’d fail to muster a majority, he proceeded to open the Biden inquiry based on the declaration of one person, himself.

So pathetic, but so predictable. I wrote last November that McCarthy would be Speaker in name only, “with one ear attuned to his master in Mar-a-Lago and the other bent to the whims of the whackos.” Michael Gerson predicted that McCarthy’s MAGA clowns would practice “governing by gangsterism.”

It’s actually worse than that. This impeachment farce is a textbook manifestation of the nihilistic strategy best coined by MAGAt Steve Bannon: “Flood the zone with s—.”

That’s how Vladimir Putin rolls in Russia. His apparatchiks pump thick clouds of disinformation so that citizens can no longer discern what’s true. Fake stories obfuscate what’s real. People who are exhausted by all the dueling narratives instinctively question the credibility of their foundational institutions.

The American version goes like this: Trump has been indicted in four jurisdictions on 91 felony charges, with more revelations seemingly surfacing every day (the latest is that he wrote to-do notes for one of his aides on the back of classified documents)…but wait!, now there’s a Joe Biden impeachment probe that’s looking at corrupt stuff he does, too. Because everything is a sham and a con and everybody is corrupt and crooked, therefore Trump is no more corrupt and crooked than anybody else. And if Biden is getting impeached for high crimes, then big deal that Trump has been indicted for crimes.

Or something like that.

The flaw in this flood-the-zone strategy is the MAGA House Republicans have zip evidence that Biden has done anything that warrants an impeachment probe. As Republican congressman Ken Buck admits, the McCarthyites have concocted an “imaginary” narrative that the president has personally profited from son Hunter’s business hustles. But “despite years of investigation,” says Buck, Republicans have nada. Buck points out that “impeachment is a serious matter and should have a foundation of rock-solid facts.” Instead, House Republicans have begin impeachment proceedings in the hopes of finding something.

And that’s the opposite of how such an inquiry is supposed to work. First you get strong incriminating evidence, then you launch proceedings. Conservative columnist and attorney David French noted the other day that in 1998, House Republicans began an impeachment inquiry “only after DNA tests on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress exposed that Bill Clinton had lied under oath about their affair.” In 2019, House Democrats began an inquiry “only after (they) received reports that Donald Trump had attempted to coerce President Zelensky of Ukraine” into finding fake dirt on Biden. In 2021, the House launched a second Trump impeachment probe “only after” his election-fraud lies had climaxed in the domestic terrorism of Jan. 6.

But the strategy this time is to simply “flood the zone with shit” by running to the TV cameras and declaring that Biden is a crook, using the impeachment mechanism to find out whether in fact he actually is, and regardless whether the MAGAts find hard evidence or not, they’re already (further) degrading the credibility of what useful idiot Kevin McCarthy calls “the People’s House.” No wonder John Boehner and Paul Ryan bailed on the Speaker’s job; there’s no way to corral the crazies.

The danger, of course, is that half the people in this country will glean the flooded zone and say, “Biden, Trump, the courts, the Congress – they’re all the same.” The danger, with democracy on the line in the 2024 election, is that the right-wing infauxtainment complex will amplify the zone’s shit and put this nation in even greater peril.

As Jim Morrison of The Doors warned half a century ago, “Whoever controls the media controls the mind.”

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The second Republican presidential debate is less than two weeks away, co-hosted by the Fox Business network, and I know you must be excited. But there’s no need to wait, because I have exclusively obtained an advance transcript!

HOSTS: “Welcome to the second Republican presidential debate! We are honored to help you, the American people, make informed choices. To start, we’d like to ask the candidates for a show of hands. The Republican National Committee has a new loyalty pledge. Who here is willing, if the opportunity presents itself, to go to prison for Donald Trump?”

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: “I’m the only person on this stage who not only would go to prison for him I’d insist on rooming with him and if he splits his prison pants I’d sew ‘em for him if he can’t bend over far enough I’d tie his shoes for him if he needs to lowball his weight I’d lie for him and nobody else here will do what I’d do because they’re bought -and-paid-for lackeys of the administrative state and because – “

HOSTS: “Governor Christie, we noticed you failed to raise your hand.”

CHRIS CHRISTIE: “The real issue here is why isn’t Joe Biden going to prison with Hunter Biden. Because the evidence is overwhelmingly factual that Joe Biden is in fact the proven father of Hunter Biden.”

HOSTS: “Governor DeSantis, do you agree with what Governor Christie just said?”

RON DeSANTIS: “Notice that Governor Christie never said he’d take the pledge and go to prison for the former president. We need a straight shooter in the White House and not only would I jail myself for Trump, I’d root out every inmate who’s woke, shoot ‘em stone cold dead, and slit their throats before they read page one of a banned book – “

RAMASWAMY: “I’ll swipe a dining utensil and make a shiv with my own bare younger-generation hands and jam it between the shoulder blades of any lib watching MSNBC in the TV room – don’t interrupt me! – and during exercise hour I’ll be the prison yard wingman for the best president of the 21st century – “

HOSTS: “Vice President Pence, you seem to be tut-tutting what Mr. Ramaswamy is promising.”

MIKE PENCE: “As to the urgent question you’ve put before us, I solemnly upheld the Constitution on Jan. 6 but I also gave my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, so if God were to text me and say that going to prison for the man whom I so proudly served for four years is the right and just thing to do, then I would gladly bunk with him in the full confidence that our corrections facilities no longer hang people – “

NIKKI HALEY: “Would Mike really follow through on that promise? Margaret Thatcher once said that if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman. So here’s what I would do. I would seek common ground. I would lead. If the American people are willing to elect someone who’s in jail, which they’re not willing to do, then I would decline to join him in jail – but I will be the first woman on this stage willing to join him in jail if the American people are willing to elect someone in jail. That’s what leadership is all about.”

HOSTS: ”Senator Scott, you’ve been quiet, will you sign the new Trump fealty pledge?”

TIM SCOTT: “Going to jail for that great man would greatly upset my girlfriend, my swell girlfriend Marcia, and by the way I do have a girlfriend, her name is Mulva, as I hope the party donors know. But the bigger question we should all be asking ourselves is this: Why do Democrats want women to have abortions up to one year after birth? Or maybe the bigger question before us is, who else on this stage would fire Merrick Garland on Day One – “

DESANTIS: “And Dr. Fauci, too! I‘d sit him down in the prison cafeteria, fire him, stick him in solitary on the Woke Block, then hand him over to my vax-free Florida Nazis.”

CHRISTIE: “You can’t fire Dr. Fauci. He retired.”

DESANTIS: “Says who! Name me one book in Florida that says that!”

HALEY: “Can’t we all agree that we want to be respectful and seek consensus, that we want to humanize not demonize? There’s no place for hate in America, and don’t all Americans agree that Joe Biden is so old he’d die in prison?”

RAMASWAMY: “Shut up, you Super PAC puppets! Not only would I be Trump’s prison wingman, I’d even be his …”

MIKE PENCE: “Please, sir, no blasphemy! Mother is in the audience!”

HOSTS: “OK, that’s all we have time for. Good night America!”

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I’ll go out on a limb and take a wild guess that you didn’t watch Nikki Haley make a fool of herself on TV last weekend. I was reminded of a sentence penned centuries ago by none other than the Marquis de Sade: “Those who have no principles are never more dangerous than when they reach the age when they lose all sense of shame.”

Only a truly vacuous candidate can bring to mind the Marquis de Sade.

Haley won pundit praise for her recent GOP debate performance – at times she sounded saner and smarter than some of her rivals (an admittedly low bar). But then she hit the wall. She described Inmate #P01135809 as “the most disliked politician in America,” someone who would not be electable in 2024 – but she signaled, by raising her hand, that she’d still support Trump as the party’s nominee, even if he were criminally convicted prior to the election.

How was it possible for someone of allegedly sound mind to declare it would be nuts to fall in line behind a convicted felon…and then proceed to say that she’d fall in line behind the convicted felon? How can someone see Trump so clearly for what he is…and then proceed to shove her head up her own rear end?

She did it again this week.

On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” host Robert Costa asked: “Do you stand by your decision to hold up your hand on (the debate) stage and back Trump? Should he be the nominee and be a convicted felon?”

Haley: “What you saw were candidates on that stage said that they would do exactly what they signed and pledged to do, which is support the Republican nominee. That’s what we are saying…I will tell you that any Republican is better than what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing.”

Costa: “Even if they’re convicted of a crime?”

Haley: “You are implying that the American people are not smart. The American people are not going to vote for a convicted criminal. The American people are going to vote for someone who can win a general election. I have faith in the American people. They know what they need to do. And so, I think that, yes, I will support the Republican nominee always…”

Let’s try to unpack that.

On the one hand, she says it would be wrong to support a convicted felon and that the American people are “smart” enough not to vote for one. On the other hand, she would “always” support whoever the Republicans nominate, even if it’s a convicted felon, and, if that were the case, she would willfully breach her own “faith” in the “smart” American people and try to persuade them to be stupid.

Or something like that.

Haley also said, a few minutes later, that Republicans want to “go back to law and order,” which is a tad odd because it doesn’t quite jibe with her willingness to support someone who, at the present time, stands criminally accused in four court jurisdictions of committing 91 felonies; someone who has even been helping to raise money for the Jan. 6 terrorists – all of which is the precise antithesis of “law and order.”

But none of this is surprising, given the fact that Haley is little more than a weathervane who whirls with the prevailing winds. Back in 2016, she said, “Donald Trump is everything we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.” Then she went to work for him and later, “I was absolutely thrilled to see him win.”

She has also said stuff like this (yes, she really has said stuff like this): “He would never knowingly lie…I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged (in the 2020 election results). This is not him making it up…This would be different if he was being deceptive…I mean at some point, give the man a break. I mean, move on if you truly are about moving on.”

She was “disgusted” (her word) with Trump’s behavior during the Jan. 6 insurrection, until she was not. On the one hand, she said in 2021: “When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement. (Trump) went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

But a few months later, Haley’s spine shrank again. She said simply that “President Trump’s always been opinionated.” And today she’s willing to support the guy who’s been criminally charged with fomenting the coup plot that culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Would Nikki Haley, presumably having failed as a presidential candidate, lobby for a job in the administration of a convicted felon? Why bother to ask. If anyone can trump the Marquis de Sade, it’s Groucho Marx:

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them – well, I have others.”

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

In the annals of scandal, Aug. 29 was quite and eventful day. I’ll try to unpack the proceedings.

The federal judge in the feds’ election subversion case decreed that the coup commander shall go on trial in Washington on March 4 – and if he doesn’t like it, well, tough: “Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule.” (He doesn’t like it. He fled to social media and whined about “fascist thugs.”)

Meanwhile, ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows was in another court trying to weasel his way out of Georgia’s coup case, claiming that he was just trying to help Trump fight for “free and fair elections.” (Orwell just spun 360 degrees.) On a third front, a judge in Georgia decreed that Trump will be arraigned there next Tuesday.

Naturally, Inmate #P01135809’s groupies are in high dudgeon about everything. I won’t lard this column with their many fulminations. To nauseate and entertain you, two examples should suffice.

A Georgia congressman, Andre Clyde, denounced the “sham prosecutions” and said the House should defund special counsel Jack Smith: “Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars have no place funding the radical Left’s nefarious election interference efforts.” And one of his House colleagues, Claudia Tenney, said: “They’re trying to create this appearance of Trump being a criminal.” (She is sooooo close to getting it.)

You’d think that four indictments and 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions should be more than enough to cement Trump’s place in history as our preeminent lowlife. But the rabid right has its own unique take on what constitutes a scandal. Indeed, how fitting it was that Tuesday’s various court proceedings occurred on the ninth anniversary of Fashiongate – Aug. 28, 2014 – when President Barack Obama wore a summer suit that was tan.

Now that was a scandal! Let’s cue the talking heads.

A Fox News blondette said, “I looked twice to make sure he wasn’t a circus ringmaster.”

Another Fox blondette said “the tan suit made him look unpresidential.”

Lou Dobbs huffed, “I think it’s shocking to a lot of people.”

Another Fox pundit said, “Whoever talked him into wearing a tan suit? They’re so desperate because of low poll numbers.”

A Fox roundtable said, “I think it’s a sign to enemies that he’s a wimp.”

Another Fox guy said, “Only liberals could ever elect a guy with a tan suit.”

Republican congressman Peter King said on NewsMax, “For him to walk out – I’m not trying to be trivial here – in a light suit, light tan suit…When you have the world watching, it did not show the seriousness of purpose that you need from a commander-in-chief…The suit was a metaphor for his lack of seriousness.”

Right-wingers on Twitter wrote stuff like, “Skin-colored suits don’t scream POWERFUL.”

And this: “Obama sends the wrong message to our allies.”

And this: “You can’t declare war in a suit like that.”

Perhaps the real problem wasn’t the color of the suit, but the color of the man who wore it. Perhaps the real problem is thinking that a suit’s color is more imperiling to the republic than a far-flung coup plot or the theft of classified nuclear secrets.

As we trudge ever closer to Trump’s day of reckoning, the kind of people who excoriated a tan suit will continue to concoct absurd excuses for real scandal. It will be important to remind ourselves that they dwell outside the American mainstream, in a stupidity zone where fashion is deemed to be worse than fascism.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

In the early minutes of Wednesday’s Republican debate, while everyone on stage was studiously ignoring the fact that their AWOL rival is a serial criminal defendant, someone on Twitter asked what we’d prefer to be doing instead of watching that show. I posted my answer:

Prepping for a colonoscopy.

I would’ve preferred gagging on polyethylene glycol than witnessing what happened at the 58-minute mark of Fox News’ fascist-adjacent spectacle. That’s how long it took for this pitiable assemblage to even begin to address the most crucial issue facing America today: the ongoing, still-metastasizing threat to democracy itself, as perpetrated by the criminally accused racketeer and espionage agent who will soon be immortalized in a mug shot.

Nearly one hour in, co-inquisitor Bret Baier braved the braying MAGA audience and asked whether the contestants would still support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee if he were convicted of a crime prior to the election.

Six of the eight candidates actually raised their hands.

Trump is staking his 2024 campaign on his criminal contempt for democracy, and most of the wannabes are on board with it. That’s how precipitously far this party has fallen since the bygone days when it prided itself for being tough on crime, for championing law and order.

Did it matter a whit that Trump will be prosecuted for trying to overturn a free election and subvert democracy? That Trump’s former top lawyer, plus the lawyer who authored a coup blueprint, have now been booked in a Georgia jailhouse? That a key witness in the stolen documents case has flipped, and is now confirming that Trump tried to destroy key video footage?

Nope.

Instead, when Chris Christie stated the obvious – “Whether you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, (his) conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States” – the audience roundly booed him.

When Vivek Ramaswamy, the rich entitled motormouthed twerp who’s running as MAGA 2.0, declared that if he were president he would pardon Trump of all convicted crimes, the audience lapped it up like it was Jim Jones’ killer Kool-Aid. When Tim Scott was asked whether he supported Mike Pence’s pro-Constitution stance on Jan. 6, he bobbed and weaved and said “the bigger question” was the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department – and the mob in the arena ate it up. When underwhelming Ron DeSantis was similarly asked whether Pence had done the right thing, he dodged a la Scott and dredged up a golden oldie, to the mob’s delight, about sending Joe Biden back to his basement.

The lies began even before the show kicked off. Fox News branded its event as “Democracy ’24,” which was a tad hilarious, coming from the network that shelled out a $787,000,000 settlement to the Dominion balloting firm, which Fox had defamed while magnifying Trump’s lying assault on democracy.

One more thing: How was it possible for Nikki Haley to occasionally sound so sane, like when she dared say out loud that Trump (“the most disliked politician in America”) is no longer electable…yet she raised her hand to signal that she’d support him as a ’24 candidate anyway, even if he were criminally convicted for trying to overturn an election?

I could list more of the evening’s horrors – like when Christie detailed Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, reminded the audience that Trump has called Putin “a genius,” and was then heckled for his candor – but writing about this cult sickens me almost as much as colonoscopy prep. Excuse me, I need to lie down and gird myself for the next debate one month from now. At least colonoscopies are spaced every few years.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

While we ponder the pathetic fact that the top candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination is a twice-impeached quadruple-indicted electorally-defeated accused racketeer, and while we absorb the breadth and depth of Georgia’s “criminal enterprise” case (19 defendants, 41 felony counts, 30 un-indicted co-conspirators), let’s bear in mind what British essayist and novelist Aldous Huxley once said about the downside of human nature:

Man “often behaves more stupidly than the beasts. Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.”

In Georgia this week, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a grand jury comprised of ordinary citizens basically channelled Huxley and gifted us 98 historic pages.

Buttressed by scores of witnesses (most of them Republicans), they’ve concluded that Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election, refused to accept defeat, then conspired with 18 others to invent lunatic “election fraud” theories in a sustained criminal quest to overturn the legal results. Their “criminal enterprise” (so named in accordance with Georgia’s anti-racketeering statute) “engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, inluencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”

How sweet it is that, in Georgia, anyone convicted of a racketeering conspiracy is required to serve five years in prison (that’s the mandatory minimum); that a president or a governor cannot pardon a racketeering criminal (only the Board of Pardons can do that, and only after five years in jail). That’s called being tough on crime, something that all Republicans supposedly support.

And oh, I almost forgot: In Georgia, arraignments and trials are televised by cameras in the courtroom. At some point before the election, the mountainous evidence of Trump’s criminality will be broadcast worldwide. That won’t make a dent in the dead minds of MAGA devotees, but it will be edifying for the rest of us who presumably constitute the electoral majority.

We need a televised trial, if only to demonstrate that facts and truth are still the hallmarks of our fragile civilization. Mona Charen, a sane conservative who served in the Reagan White House, wrote the other day that Trump’s relentless lies are “an acid eating away at the already frayed bonds of affection among Americans,” and we need only read the Georgia indictment to see those lies at work.

“Trump will not have the scope, so often exploited in the past, to create diversions,” Charen wrote. “(A trial) will hold us and him in its grip.”

Page 51 alone gives us a flavor. When Trump tried to pressure three Georgia election officials into “finding” him enough votes to overturn his loss, he unleashed a barrage of garbage: That “anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” on election day; that “4,502 people” voted even though they weren’t registered; that “close to 5,000 dead people” voted; that “thousands of dead people” had voted in Michigan; that fake ballots were stuffed in Detroit and Pennsylvania; that a seasoned Georgia election worker named Ruby Freeman was “a professional vote scammer” who, with her daughter, rigged 18,000 votes for Joe Biden.

It’s all there in the Georgia document: The rancid lies, the harassment of innocent election workers (Freeman had to flee her home), the slate of fake electors, the whole nine yards.

It’s distressing that most members of his hermetically-sealed cult still indulge Trump – to the point where they’re apparently willing to award another presidential nomination to the accused head of a criminal enterprise who’s saddled with 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions. And Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who testified against Trump to the grand jury, is a party outlier who warns that Trump is “taking the party straight into the ditch.” But, at minimum, we should be heartened that our criminal justice machinery is still grinding along. Lies, and criminal acts on behalf of those lies, do not play well in courts of law.

Our best hope – don’t give up hope! – is that schoolchildren for generations to come will learn for themselves what it was like in America when the world’s stupidest mob boss and his criminal confederacy of dunces lied with alacrity in their desperate attempt to destroy democracy in the Peach State and the nation at large.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, it’s enough to conjure Ray Charles:

“Just an old sweet song / Keeps Georgia on my mind.”

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

In a red Ohio referendum this week, forced-birth reactionaries got blown out by a whopping margin of 430,000 votes. No word yet on whether Roe v. Wade killer Donald Trump has aspirationally asked Republican election officials to find 430,001 votes.

To fully appreciate what just happened in Ohio – where an anti-abortion ballot gimmick was crushed, 57 percent to 43 percent – we first need to revisit the Supreme Court’s anti-Roe ruling.

The MAGA-buttressed majority, led by Sam Alito, said that the issue of abortion should be “resolved like most questions in our democracy, by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” Ultimately, “the people” should have “the power to address (this) question of profound moral and social importance.”

Be careful what you wish for, theocrats.

The forced-birth forces in Ohio soon realized they had a problem. Mainstream citizens had managed, via a massive petition campaign, to place on the November 2023 ballot a measure that would put abortion rights in the state constitution. The November measure seems certain to pass, because, like everywhere else in America, a majority of citizens support abortion rights. It also seems likely to pass because – this is crucial – the Ohio constitution has stipulated, ever since 1912, that the document can be amended if a simple majority of the voters say so. In other words, 50 percent plus one.

But the extremists in the Ohio Republican legislature didn’t like the idea of 50 percent plus one. They sought to rig the November rules – by scheduling an August referendum (August, when supposedly the pro-choicers would all be on vacation) that would raise the threshold for passage to 60 percent of November’s voters.

Clearly, the rule-riggers were scared of their own constituents casting ballots in a direct democracy process with rules established in Ohio 111 years ago.

And no wonder they were scared! Because ever since Roe was erased, abortion had been on the ballot in five states – and the abortion-rights majority had won all five. It happened in red Kentucky. It happened in red Montana. It also happened last August in red Kansas. It happened this spring, indirectly, in swing Wisconsin, where a successful state Supreme Court candidate campaigned heavily in favor of abortion rights.

If you’re tempted to ask whether Republicans might wake up and realize that their crackpot crusade to control women’s bodies via government fiat is political suicide, the short answer is: They won’t.

They’ll tell themselves that the wipeout in Ohio last night was just a speed bump. (Ohio’s right-wing secretary of state said on Fox News: “The all out assault is coming from the radical left…the war continues.”) They’ll dismiss mainstream opinion as “the radical left,” because it’s comfy inside the batshit bubble. They’ll tell themselves that just because 57 percent of the Ohio voters (in a massive turnout, especially for the dog days of August) rejected their attempt to rig the November rules, that surely they can somehow still win a majority in November. This despite the mountain of evidence that women under age 45, in particular, are furious about Roe‘s erasure and the ongoing right-wing assaults on bodily autonomy.

The GOP’s anti-abortion extremists are impervious to facts; they’ll keep ignoring the will of the people and keep pushing for a congressionally-enacted nationwide ban.

Fine. Here’s hoping they keep it up. There’s arguably no better way to galvanize the Democratic grassroots in advance of the 2024 presidential election, to unite centrists and progressives in a common cause, and to buoy the only party that still believes in American democracy. Hey, the fight against home-grown fascism needs all the help it can get.

So put your hands together for Sam Alito, who authored the opinion erasing Roe. He said that the people, not the courts, should have the ultimate say about abortion; indeed, he said, “Women are not without electoral or political power.” True that, theocrat.

Be careful what you wish for.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

To borrow a quip from the Beatles, the long-awaited coup indictment is truly “the toppermost of the poppermost.”

Millions of Americans are benumbed by Donald Trump’s rampant criminality, while millions more rabidly embrace it. I only wish that all zombies and zealots would take the time to read the fact-packed document unsealed this week by the Department of Justice, because it’s far more than a narrative of how we came close to losing our democracy at the dawn of this decade. It’s ultimately a five-alarm warning of what awaits us in the near future unless the failed coup’s ringleader is convicted by a jury of his peers and jailed into old age.

Thanks to confessional material shared with the federal grand jury by a galaxy of Trump insiders – most notably, former Vice President Mike Pence – the indictment demonstrates that “the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies” during the post-election period when he refused to accept defeat and knowingly spread “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about nonexistent election fraud.

According to the indictment, Trump conspired “to defraud the United States” by impairing “the lawful federal government function” of collecting and counting votes. He conspired “to corruptly obstruct and impede” Congress’ ceremonial certification of the election. And he conspired against the average citizen’s “right to vote and to have one’s vote counted” when he ginned up fake slates of electors to replace the real ones.

Special counsel Jack Smith did three smart things. First, he indicted only Trump (not the six unnamed co-conspirators, whose lawyers could’ve slowed the court process), thus boosting the prospects of a speedy trial long before the ’24 election.

Second, he ignored the thorny issue of whether Trump had specifically ordered the Jan. 6 goons to commit violence, instead focusing solely on the fact that Trump “exploited” the violence once it happened, to pressure Congress not to certify Joe Biden’s victory.

And third, in Smith’s quest to prove criminal intent (crucial in a jury trial), he listed all the ways that Trump knew he had lost before “knowingly” lying over and over about how his purported win had been stolen.

Trump knew he had lost, according to the indictment, because he was informed of that incontrovertible fact “on multiple occasions” by his own veep, by his highest senior appointees at the Justice Department, by his director of national intelligence, by the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“whose existence the defendant had signed into law”), by the “senior White House attorneys selected by the defendant to provide him candid advice,” and by the state and federal courts (sometimes helmed by his own judicial appointees) who’d “rejected every…post-election lawsuit filed by the defendant.”

Trump’s own advisors got fed up with his lies. One senior campaign advisor lamented in an email that “our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the (election fraud) claims…I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

If and when this case goes to trial, it would be a hoot to see Pence in the witness chair, because, having escaped the MAGA noose, he’s well positioned to harpoon the whale. Turns out, he has shared his contemporaneous notes with the feds. He took notes during the dying days of the regime when Trump repeatedly and falsely insisted that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral college win at the Jan. 6, 2021 ceremony. Pence repeatedly pushed back, prompting Trump to tell him on Jan. 1: “You’re too honest.”

Bingo! Trump knew that he was dishonest. That quote will come up at trial.

On Dec. 29, Trump told Pence that “the Justice Department (was) finding major infractions,” i.e., voter fraud. That was a lie. On Jan. 4, according to Pence’s notes, Trump told him: “Bottom line (we) won every state by 100,000s of votes.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “We won every state.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “What about 205,000 (more) votes in PA than voters?” That was a lie.

According to the indictment, Justice Department officials had told Trump that was a lie “as recently as the night before.”

Mike Murphy, a veteran sane Republican strategist, arguably said it best on Wednesday night: “Donald Trump did far more to subvert our democracy than the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Party ever dreamed of.”

This wanton mutt will not stop unless or until our democratic system of laws puts him down. Bring on that speedy trial. The ultimate stress test is at hand.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

When George Washington was a schoolboy teenager, he composed more than 100 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior,” borrowing heavily from French Jesuits. Rules 21 and 22 go like this: “Reproach none for the infirmities of nature…Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another.”

That’s wise advice for those of us who’ve long loathed virtually everything that Mitch McConnell has said and done.

The Senate Republican leader had quite the medical moment this week. During a press briefing about a Pentagon bill, he started a sentence – “There’s been good bipartisan cooperation and a string of – ” but he never finished it. He stared at nothing for 20 long seconds as Republican colleagues hovered ever more restlessly, until Joni Ernst put her hand on his arm and said, “Are you, good, Mitch?”

He was not.

John Barrasso, who’s a doctor, coaxed him from the podium with the kind of query that many of us have said to aged loved ones who’ve lost their way in life. Barrasso soothed, “Let’s go back to your office. Do you want to say anything else to the press? Let’s go back.”

Now just imagine what the MAGA Republican reaction would’ve been if President Biden had zoned out at a podium for 20 seconds… especially after having recently fallen at a Washington hotel, suffering a concussion and landing in a rehab center (as McConnell did in March)… especially after having recently fallen at a Washington airport and done what sources called “a face plant” (as McConnell did earlier this month)… especially having frequently resorted to a wheelchair in airports (ditto McConnell).

If that had been Biden at that podium, with all those medical woes, MAGAts would be laughing hysterically. Heck, they’ve long been depicting him as half dead anyway.

Fox News would have that medical moment (a mini-stroke?) on a continuous loop. And we know from experience that the MAGAts are bullish on cruelty. Think back to all the jokes they made about Paul Pelosi after his skull was bashed in by a weapon-wielding MAGA lunatic. Think back to all the ridicule that Hillary Clinton endured (ridicule led by Donald Trump) when she suffered a bout of flu during the 2016 campaign.

By contrast – and in accordance with George Washington’s rules – Biden called McConnell to wish him good health. That’s what classy people do – they set aside fervent political disagreements and focus on the person. That’s how Biden rolls, like the time he was campaigning and encountered a kid who stuttered. He hit pause and comforted the kid.

Empathy should trump cruelty, although I suppose we’ll get another verdict on that in the next election.

For many of us, it’s tempting to play the world’s tiniest violin for McConnell – a scoundrel who said back in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” (more important than any policies helping the American people); who refused to give Merrick Garland a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the first big step toward rigging a 6-3 conservative bench; who refused to convict Donald Trump in two impeachment trials, even after blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection; who votes with the NRA to boost the nation’s weapons arsenal…don’t get me started.

But we should stay out of the sewer – it’s overpopulated at the moment – and simply offer McConnell our sincerest thoughts and prayers. Focus on the person, not the politics. Let’s wish him a long life, in the hopes that, well into his 90s, he will witness the ultimate downfall of the fascist-infested party he once led.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]