F**king Mondays: Matt Taibbi Sad For Trump, Hunter Biden For President (?), And Mexico's New President!
by Ben Cohen
The latest edition of “F**king Mondays” is now out! In the roundup today:
Matt Taibbi is sad because Trump got convicted
Matt Taibbi is very upset that Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Taibbi has called it a “sham case” that should never have been prosecuted. “Of all the things Donald Trump has been accused of,” Taibbi writes, “none are as serious or system-imperiling as abusing the courts to dispose of a political rival.”
In classic Taibbi fashion, he opens his piece with a grotesque distortion of Maureen Dowd’s take on the verdict:
Maureen Dowd in the New York Times in this morning’s op-ed about Donald Trump’s trial:
Even though the case was a stretch and not the strongest one against Trump, there was something refreshing about the jury doing what no one else around Trump has been able to do — not the inexplicably sycophantish Republican lawmakers, not the corrupt Supreme Court, not the slowpoke Merrick Garland.
Whoa. Trump has so altered American consciousness that detractors feel comfortable publicly supporting the idea of slapping 34 felony convictions on the man as punishment for alleged earlier offenses.
You’ll note that nowhere in Dowd’s quoted sentence does it say she supports convicting Trump for alleged earlier offenses. In her article, Dowd agrees with the verdict because Trump broke the law:
It was great to see the 12 just say no, you don’t slime your way into the presidency by having your creepy gofer pay off a porn star you slept with while your wife was home with a newborn and call it a legal expense.
This kind of thing is extremely popular theme in alt circles, where edgy contrarians declare Democrats the real enemy of democracy because they engage in “lawfare” (the use of legal systems and institutions to damage a political opponent). If you can’t prove it, you just make it up and hope your readers are so ideologically compromised they won’t spot it. Because there is no evidence whatsoever that the Democrats orchestrated the prosecution of Donald Trump in New York.
The entire case was built on Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s admission of guilt on eight criminal counts. Cohen implicated Trump in the scheme saying he made the payments to pornstar Stormy Daniels "at the direction of a candidate for federal office". This led to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. opening an investigation into the Trump Organization. The Manhattan DA alleged that Trump improperly recorded the money, and accused him of falsifying the business records to conceal a second crime, which was a violation of state election law. The evidence was so overwhelming that the jury took only a day and a half to find Trump guilty on all 34 counts.
Dowd is correct in saying the case was a stretch and the weakest of all four criminal cases Trump is involved in. It was a stretch because it is notoriously difficult to prosecute white collar crimes, but thankfully the jurors did their job and convicted based on the evidence presented.
Taibbi even accepts Trump’s guilt, but says the case was bogus because big banks do the same and never face any consequences:
Using this logic, women shouldn’t press charges against rapists because wealthy rapists, like Donald Trump (allegedly), get away with it.
It is still shocking to see formerly reputable journalists like Taibbi churn out this kind of garbage, but when your business is built on feeding red meat to your audience, it is now entirely predictable.
Related:
Donald Trump vs Hunter Biden??
Did you know that Hunter Biden is running for president in 2024? You would be forgiven for having that impression if you read Breitbart.com or any of the other alt right pro Trump sites. Just look at the trending articles on Breitbart today:
Hunter Biden is facing three felony gun charges in a trial that starts today, and he could be facing up to 25 years in prison if convicted. As Alex Thonpson in Axios notes, this is a big deal because: “Some Republicans will likely try to focus on the case, the first of two trials President Biden's son faces this year, in an attempt to draw attention from former President Trump's recent felony conviction in New York.”
By “some Republicans,” Thompson really means “all Republicans,” because we are going to be hearing about Hunter Biden all summer long. Apparently some guy who isn’t running for public office and has never sought a position in government is an equivalent to the most criminal candidate for president in US history. Sure Hunter Biden is related to the president, but until he starts taking a salary from the US government or joins the Biden campaign team, no one should be paying attention to this.
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The world is actually pretty awesome
While it might seem that the world is getting more violent, less tolerant, and shittier by the week, I actually think the opposite is true. Look what just happened in Mexico (from the NY Times):
Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, won her nation’s elections on Sunday in a landslide victory that brought a double milestone: She became the first woman, and the first Jewish person, to be elected president of Mexico.
In the real world (ie. off of social media), race, gender and identity is becoming less important pretty much everywhere. Britain’s prime minister is a man of Indian origin, El Salvador’s president is or Palestinian origin, and Ukraine’s president is Jewish. Extremists on both ends of the political spectrum have made race, gender and identity central to pretty much everything, but in the middle where most normal people live, no one really cares.
See you next week!
Listen to the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast (free):
Guilty, Guilty, Guilty! Also: Libertarians Mock Trump, Alito the Liar, and a 'World At War' Update
On the show today: The verdict is in, and Trump is guilty! We provide an update before the show. Also: Trump gets mocked by libertarians, did judge Alito lie about his wife, and why does it matter? The world is at war update on Israel, Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, we have our long awaited return of ‘Fascist of the Week, followed by our Suns…
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The Emergency Meeting: White House For Sale!
How dangerous is it that Trump is openly selling the Oval Office to the highest bidder? In The Emergency Meeting Podcast, we discuss this frightening update to Trump’s plan to wreck democracy and enrich his friends. Listen by clicking the play button above!
Now if things go south in November I’ll go south as well. South to Mexico.
Yes Matt, you floundering journalist, if you can even call him that. He has nothing on Hannity or Tucker.
Agreed, this verdict was the least important or critical of all the criminal charges leveled against Trump.
Unfortunately, the Federalist Society owns the federal courts, and they made it clear that Trump should not be prosecuted during an election year; denying justice to over 170 million people.
And clearly Trump is guilty; not only was he convicted by 12 jurors of his peers, but not one Trump MAGA sycophant like Matt, has even denied Trump is guilty. Instead, they argue the process was coerced, and the case; political.
So much for making a clear, precise and logical argument. Instead all we hear is noise and banter.
As Carl Sandburg once said, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.
Sounds like Matt and the rest of the clown car, are just yelling “bloody hell”…:)