DL Open Thread: Sat., June 8, 2024
Trump’s ‘Post-Constitutional’ Agenda. As framed by one Russell Vought:
A battle-tested D.C. bureaucrat and self-described Christian nationalist is drawing up detailed plans for a sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration. Russ Vought, who served as the former president’sbudget chief, calls his political strategy for razing long-standing guardrails “radical constitutionalism.”
Vought, 48, is poised to steer this agenda from an influential perch in the White House, potentially as Trump’s chief of staff, according to some people involved in discussions about a second term who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Don’t forget Trump’s constitutional right to go after his enemies:
Hannity asked a leading question, clearly trying to throw Trump a softball that will let him deny his intention to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution against his political foes – even though Trump has spent many months now promising to do precisely that.
At first, Trump took the easy swing and suggested that he won’t perpetuate what he implies is a cycle of retribution he’s already been victimized by. But then he launched into an extended justification of doing exactly what he had just disclaimed and asserting that he has “every right to go after them”:
Please indulge my outrage at the weakling who stands in his way. I know we can’t do anything about it, but it still pisses me off to no end:
But here is a broader thematic reality for the president: Bad vibes have been the persistent feature of his campaign. No matter the obstacles Trump creates for himself, Biden remains a comprehensively weak incumbent, weighed down by the same liabilities that burdened him from the start, beginning with the largest, and completely unfixable, one: At 81, he is much too old to run for president. Durable supermajorities of voters still do not want any part of Biden at this age. His bullheaded insistence on doing something no one has ever done (Ronald Reagan, then the oldest president in American history, was 77 when he retired), along with the unwillingness or inability of Democrats to stop him, remains an existentially risky, potentially disastrous, proposition. The stakes remain appallingly high. If Biden loses in November, that’s all anyone will remember him for.
My Primal Scream Therapy for the day. Ruth Bader Biden indeed. Thanks for allowing me to indulge.
Just An Inadvertent Omission. Justice Thomas meant to disclose that trip to Bali, just forgot to put it on the form.
Gotta go and rehearse for a Beatles’ singalong we’re doing tonight in Arden. Well, maybe not rehearse. Perhaps just print out the lyric sheet. I’m absolutely gonna kill with my rendition of ‘Back In The USSR’.
What do you want to talk about?
“Bad vibes have been the persistent feature of his campaign.”
This is inside baseball, boys on the bus bullshit. I’m surprised you fall for it.
I’ve had bad vibes about this campaign from the beginning.
“radical constitutionalism” It is soooooooo constitutional it appears anti-constitutional to people who don’t understand God’s plan.
Biden’s age is an issue because nobody thinks he is going to last a full second term. He is goin in to basically turn the White House over to a black woman. Primal American racism overrides all concerns about Trump. Whenever the question is – What’s wrong with America? The most reliably correct answer is always: Anti-black racism.
I’d put money worship ahead of it.