MO’s sorry excuse for an AG, Andrew Bailey strikes again. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Also, President Trump’s claim that someone made decisions and performed duties without presidential knowledge and understanding is just a deflection of his relationship with Elon Musk.
Most importantly, this is a deliberate distraction from the truly destructive and dangerous things President Trump and his administration are doing, such as dismantling the Department of Education, etc.
Remember The Wizard of Oz’s (actually a conman) trick: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
You're absolutely right. The 25th Amendment exists precisely for this reason. As long as Biden was the sitting president and wasn't removed through constitutional means, his official acts remain valid. Trump (and everyone else in Washington) knows this, which is why this is purely political theater. If we applied this "retroactive capacity judgment" standard consistently, we'd have to invalidate the Louisiana Purchase because Thomas Jefferson was severely depressed and possibly medicated at the time; Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal policies when he was suffering from lead poisoning from the bullet still in his chest; most of Woodrow Wilson's second term decisions after his severe stroke when his wife was essentially running operations; Roosevelt's Yalta agreements when he was critically ill at the end of WWII; Nixon's decisions during the height of Watergate when he was drinking heavily and reportedly talking to portraits on the White House walls; the Panama Canal treaty negotiations when Ford had his famous stumbles; and Reagan's entire second term, which many of his own staff later suggested included early signs of Alzheimer's disease. The whole point of our constitutional system is that there are official processes for determining fitness, not retroactive political judgments.
This is the millionth example of the president blatantly choosing politics over people. The illegality of what he is saying is obvious based on any common sense with knowledge of the norms here, which the president obviously knows, contributes to, and is feigning rage about. Why would someone use a phrase like "worst president in the history of our country" if they were trying to be a president to everyone, including people who didn't vote for them? It's clear that he is the president of the Republican party, not president of the United States.
I've been thinking about my choice this year to turn off breaking news push alerts on my phone. With stories as intentionally exhausting and manufactured as this one, it's obvious that the strategy is to exhaust people into complacency. Turning off news alerts was scary at first—am I going to miss out on important stories? But I've found the opposite: whereas those alerts used to pile up and I could sometimes never bring myself to read them, now that I have newsletters like The Preamble and other investigative sources sending emails to my inbox, it's easier to dedicate time each day to reading each. They're curated to find balanced coverage of things that actually matter, without as many factual inaccuracies as news organizations that are clamoring to report first. I'm still spending the same amount of time absorbing the news, but the quality of that news is so much higher.
Donald isn’t even the president of the Republican Party! He exists solely for the maga crowd. Any republican not maga is a rino to him and might as well be a democrat.
I also find myself exhausted by the news cycle and have made it harder for myself to get notifications and access the news so easily.
Yes that’s factually accurate, but I was trying to be snarky 😌 If the Republican party seems to have abandoned any critique of MAGA even in its worst forms, then Republican and MAGA are becoming the same thing. It seems like non-MAGA Republicans are an ever-increasingly separate Venn diagram with party leadership, in terms of belief in the validity of the Constitution, so perhaps they’ll need a new name.
When I was a young intern for Jay Rockefeller, former US Senator from West Virginia, not only was it one of my jobs to use the autopen to sign hundreds of letters from the senator, but I also wrote an article for the congressional record, and his autopen signed it as his own! This is and has always been common practice across our government.
Donald Trump is incapable of refuting or admonishing anyone who speaks on his behalf, regardless of the level of lunacy. So, a MAGA A.G. from Missouri spurs an investigation based on a ludicrous premise in an obvious attempt to curry favor with Trump (and demonstrate to his constituents his loyalty to "the crown.") Now--think about this. A normal president, who does not possess a law degree, and before speaking publicly, would first seek advice from the U.S. Attorney General. "Is this a valid claim?" A normal Attorney General would brief the president on the lunacy of such claim by the MO A.G. Then, the 'normal' president would send a memo to the MO A.G., exclaiming in diplomatic terms, "nice try, but no cigar." But Trump isn't normal. He not only gives voice to people who speak untruths, or fight against the Constitution--he amplifies their message. Because that message, he believes, promotes his own standing. Putin, and other world leaders figured this out a long time ago. He is probably the weakest president in our country's history. So easily manipulated.
It is funny that the extreme right talks about “Trump derangement syndrome” when in fact it is Trump himself who is truly deranged and cannot move on from Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or January 6th.
“Truth Social” is a hilarious moniker. Trump does not give a fig about truth. He believes whatever he says will become true. In a sad way, he’s correct, as his followers will take what ever BS he pedals and run with it.
“Control the news cycle” for REAL. Did anyone notice the news about the law firms Trump manipulated via EO? No, because we are talking about a nothing burger of a story created via social media posts. My new rule is, if the basis of the story is a post on Truth Social, I ignore it.
Same but problem is, people who don’t follow politics hear this and get it into their heads. Like obv his supporters will clamp onto this, but whatever - he can’t do anything to change their minds. But the random person who just hears snippets in doctors office waiting rooms is like “oh Biden’s pardons didn’t count” and then it becomes discourse.
The thought of having to put up with trump’s bullshit for the next 4 years makes me nauseous, angry and exhausted. I’m literally to the point of giving anyone money if it has anything to do with putting don in his place or making him look like the idiot he is.
Now this is a waste of tax payers money. Diverting our attention has become a daily objective of this administration so we stop paying attention to the catastrophic things they are doing. Thank you Sharon for this information.
So trump is saying that he not only vetted each case to be sure that person was truly innocent, but he also personally signed every one of the Jan 6 pardons? 🙄
I appreciate Vladeck’s assertion about the need to control the news cycle. He (and many politicians) make these outrageous claims, it creates a media frenzy, people spend hours speculating, and it distracts from two things: 1) what is actually going on, and 2) doing what only we can do to bring about change in our communities and government at large. It’s an exhausting cycle and in modern history, Trump seems to use this tactic to his advantage ad nauseam. Then when confronted, he simply shrugs his shoulders and brushes it off, tries to make a case for why he pursued it, claims ignorance, but still clings to a thread to assuage his base. Can you imagine if he said he were wrong about it? Millions of people would also have to admit they were wrong. That’s a big ask.
This is how Trump wants to use our tax dollars—promoting conspiracy theories and wasting the DOJ resources, while simultaneously dismantling our government.
Very minor, but anyone else distracted by the way people keep describing non-autopen signatures as “wet”? What kind of crazy pens are these people using?
This is a standard industry term to distinguish between a document that has been physically signed and a document that has been signed and then copied or signed, scanned and printed.
Even with HR paperwork for work I've signed it's common place to hear this. That way we know which papers we have to physically sign and which ones we can use our digital signature for.
MO’s sorry excuse for an AG, Andrew Bailey strikes again. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Also, President Trump’s claim that someone made decisions and performed duties without presidential knowledge and understanding is just a deflection of his relationship with Elon Musk.
Most importantly, this is a deliberate distraction from the truly destructive and dangerous things President Trump and his administration are doing, such as dismantling the Department of Education, etc.
Remember The Wizard of Oz’s (actually a conman) trick: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
But EVEN if Biden was diminished in capacity, neither congress nor his cabinet ruled him unfit to lead, thus his actions wouldn’t be negated, correct?
You're absolutely right. The 25th Amendment exists precisely for this reason. As long as Biden was the sitting president and wasn't removed through constitutional means, his official acts remain valid. Trump (and everyone else in Washington) knows this, which is why this is purely political theater. If we applied this "retroactive capacity judgment" standard consistently, we'd have to invalidate the Louisiana Purchase because Thomas Jefferson was severely depressed and possibly medicated at the time; Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal policies when he was suffering from lead poisoning from the bullet still in his chest; most of Woodrow Wilson's second term decisions after his severe stroke when his wife was essentially running operations; Roosevelt's Yalta agreements when he was critically ill at the end of WWII; Nixon's decisions during the height of Watergate when he was drinking heavily and reportedly talking to portraits on the White House walls; the Panama Canal treaty negotiations when Ford had his famous stumbles; and Reagan's entire second term, which many of his own staff later suggested included early signs of Alzheimer's disease. The whole point of our constitutional system is that there are official processes for determining fitness, not retroactive political judgments.
This is the millionth example of the president blatantly choosing politics over people. The illegality of what he is saying is obvious based on any common sense with knowledge of the norms here, which the president obviously knows, contributes to, and is feigning rage about. Why would someone use a phrase like "worst president in the history of our country" if they were trying to be a president to everyone, including people who didn't vote for them? It's clear that he is the president of the Republican party, not president of the United States.
I've been thinking about my choice this year to turn off breaking news push alerts on my phone. With stories as intentionally exhausting and manufactured as this one, it's obvious that the strategy is to exhaust people into complacency. Turning off news alerts was scary at first—am I going to miss out on important stories? But I've found the opposite: whereas those alerts used to pile up and I could sometimes never bring myself to read them, now that I have newsletters like The Preamble and other investigative sources sending emails to my inbox, it's easier to dedicate time each day to reading each. They're curated to find balanced coverage of things that actually matter, without as many factual inaccuracies as news organizations that are clamoring to report first. I'm still spending the same amount of time absorbing the news, but the quality of that news is so much higher.
Donald isn’t even the president of the Republican Party! He exists solely for the maga crowd. Any republican not maga is a rino to him and might as well be a democrat.
I also find myself exhausted by the news cycle and have made it harder for myself to get notifications and access the news so easily.
Yes that’s factually accurate, but I was trying to be snarky 😌 If the Republican party seems to have abandoned any critique of MAGA even in its worst forms, then Republican and MAGA are becoming the same thing. It seems like non-MAGA Republicans are an ever-increasingly separate Venn diagram with party leadership, in terms of belief in the validity of the Constitution, so perhaps they’ll need a new name.
When I was a young intern for Jay Rockefeller, former US Senator from West Virginia, not only was it one of my jobs to use the autopen to sign hundreds of letters from the senator, but I also wrote an article for the congressional record, and his autopen signed it as his own! This is and has always been common practice across our government.
Donald Trump is incapable of refuting or admonishing anyone who speaks on his behalf, regardless of the level of lunacy. So, a MAGA A.G. from Missouri spurs an investigation based on a ludicrous premise in an obvious attempt to curry favor with Trump (and demonstrate to his constituents his loyalty to "the crown.") Now--think about this. A normal president, who does not possess a law degree, and before speaking publicly, would first seek advice from the U.S. Attorney General. "Is this a valid claim?" A normal Attorney General would brief the president on the lunacy of such claim by the MO A.G. Then, the 'normal' president would send a memo to the MO A.G., exclaiming in diplomatic terms, "nice try, but no cigar." But Trump isn't normal. He not only gives voice to people who speak untruths, or fight against the Constitution--he amplifies their message. Because that message, he believes, promotes his own standing. Putin, and other world leaders figured this out a long time ago. He is probably the weakest president in our country's history. So easily manipulated.
It is funny that the extreme right talks about “Trump derangement syndrome” when in fact it is Trump himself who is truly deranged and cannot move on from Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or January 6th.
Donald once again making stuff up that will spread like wildfire among his supporters and become fact. We live in two very different realities.
“Truth Social” is a hilarious moniker. Trump does not give a fig about truth. He believes whatever he says will become true. In a sad way, he’s correct, as his followers will take what ever BS he pedals and run with it.
“Control the news cycle” for REAL. Did anyone notice the news about the law firms Trump manipulated via EO? No, because we are talking about a nothing burger of a story created via social media posts. My new rule is, if the basis of the story is a post on Truth Social, I ignore it.
Same but problem is, people who don’t follow politics hear this and get it into their heads. Like obv his supporters will clamp onto this, but whatever - he can’t do anything to change their minds. But the random person who just hears snippets in doctors office waiting rooms is like “oh Biden’s pardons didn’t count” and then it becomes discourse.
The thought of having to put up with trump’s bullshit for the next 4 years makes me nauseous, angry and exhausted. I’m literally to the point of giving anyone money if it has anything to do with putting don in his place or making him look like the idiot he is.
Why oh why is this a thing? I know distraction.. wonder when we will see something that actual has to do with the middle class and not billionaires …
Now this is a waste of tax payers money. Diverting our attention has become a daily objective of this administration so we stop paying attention to the catastrophic things they are doing. Thank you Sharon for this information.
This is very helpful, thank you so much for clarifying the technical and legal factors of this so we can escape the swirl of the news spin.
So trump is saying that he not only vetted each case to be sure that person was truly innocent, but he also personally signed every one of the Jan 6 pardons? 🙄
I appreciate Vladeck’s assertion about the need to control the news cycle. He (and many politicians) make these outrageous claims, it creates a media frenzy, people spend hours speculating, and it distracts from two things: 1) what is actually going on, and 2) doing what only we can do to bring about change in our communities and government at large. It’s an exhausting cycle and in modern history, Trump seems to use this tactic to his advantage ad nauseam. Then when confronted, he simply shrugs his shoulders and brushes it off, tries to make a case for why he pursued it, claims ignorance, but still clings to a thread to assuage his base. Can you imagine if he said he were wrong about it? Millions of people would also have to admit they were wrong. That’s a big ask.
This is how Trump wants to use our tax dollars—promoting conspiracy theories and wasting the DOJ resources, while simultaneously dismantling our government.
Very minor, but anyone else distracted by the way people keep describing non-autopen signatures as “wet”? What kind of crazy pens are these people using?
Haha at least they didn’t describe them as “moist” 😅
This is a standard industry term to distinguish between a document that has been physically signed and a document that has been signed and then copied or signed, scanned and printed.
Even with HR paperwork for work I've signed it's common place to hear this. That way we know which papers we have to physically sign and which ones we can use our digital signature for.