The Wall Street Journal has the details on the money behind Trump’s incendiary “Stop the Steal—Save America” rally of January 6, which preceded a violent attack on the nation’s Capitol:
The rally in Washington’s Ellipse that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was arranged and funded by a small group including a top Trump campaign fundraiser and donor facilitated by far-right show host Alex Jones.
Mr. Jones personally pledged more than $50,000 in seed money for a planned Jan. 6 event in exchange for a guaranteed “top speaking slot of his choice,” according to a funding document outlining a deal between his company and an early organizer for the event.
Mr. Jones also helped arrange for Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a prominent donor to the Trump campaign and heiress to the Publix Super Markets Inc. chain, to commit about $300,000 through a top fundraising official for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to organizers. Her money paid for the lion’s share of the roughly $500,000 rally at the Ellipse where Mr. Trump spoke.
Another far-right activist and leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement, Ali Alexander, helped coordinate planning with Caroline Wren, a fundraising official who was paid by the Trump campaign for much of 2020 and who was tapped by Ms. Fancelli to organize and fund an event on her behalf, organizers said. On social media, Mr. Alexander had targeted Jan. 6 as a key date for supporters to gather in Washington to contest the 2020-election certification results. The week of the rally, he tweeted a flyer for the event saying: “DC becomes FORT TRUMP starting tomorrow on my orders!”
If only all the retrumplicans donated all that money to combating the corona virus. Imagine. 🧐
lol. yes
How awful.
Alex Jones should be sued for the inflammatory rhetoric he spews. I’m surprised he wasn’t awarded the highest civilian medal of honor by Trump. He’s just as good as Rush L.
He is far worse than Rush L. Have you seen clips of him? At least Rush was somewhat routed in reality. Alex Jones started the conspiracies about Sandy Hook not being real…. and wouldn’t let it go… even when people were threatening the families of victims because of him.
A judge in Texas just ruled that SandyHook families can sue Alex Jonesfor the distress he has caused them by his lies
Finally.
Shocking, but not surprising. What wealthy people can do with their money!
I somehow doubt this will become part of the focus of the FBI’s investigation into preplanning and coordination in terms of the resulting mob violence. I imagine that everything Alex Jones was able to arrange in terms of financing the rally itself falls under the “free speech” category. You’d probably have to prove he was directly coordinating with group leaders who were committed to violence and breaching the Capitol to have him face the music. Ms. Fancelli is probably also in the clear.
However, anyone who actually IS determined to have funded pre event training and transportation for groups who confess to an actual plot to breach would clearly be exposed to the Federal Government’s draconian “conspiracy” laws.
It would be ironic if the Reagan Administration’s effort to crack down on the drug trade in the 80s–which led to way federal prosecutors attacked organized drug distribution networks using the new “conspiracy” laws–resulted in the same kind of mass arrests and very lengthy sentences applied to the “kingpins” (those determined to be at the very top of the conspiracy).
It will be interesting to see how deep the Alex Jones involvement goes.
As someone wrote earlier, it’s amazing that Trump didn’t bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom—once a great honor—to Alex Jones. Trump cheapened it.
Yes, Trump put Rush Limbaugh, David Nunes, Jim Jordan, and Miriam Adelson (the wife of his largest campaign contributor) in the class that includes Dolores Huerta, Yo Yo Ma, Stephen Hawking, Felix Frankfurter, T.S. Eliot, Vladimir Horowitz, Katherine Graham, Toni Morrison, Fred Rogers, Harvey Milk, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron, and Harper Lee.
Trump degrades whatever he touches. Anyone who gets too close and serves him leaves with a diminished reputation or none at all.
Diane Trump is to democracy as Covid-19 is to social relationships. CBK
Trump is a walking, breathing, talking human version of COVID-19. You get too close and your life is ruined.
Trump is a black hole. Sucks in and destroys people.
I think it would be a safe bet that Trump also profited from his January 6 hate rally. If more money was raised than the rally cost, that money, for sure, would vanish into his crime family’s money-laundering machine.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-parscale-guilfoyle-spending-complaint-ads-fec-2020-7
Trump seldom misses an opportunity to steal and profit from what isn’t his to take.
RATIONAL HUMAN: You know, don’t you, that Trump is diverting much of the money you gave to his own personal use? Just look at the fine print.
TRUMP4BRAINS: Fake News!
I hope Floridian newspapers have this as front page news and it impacts Publix negatively.
It’s been in the news here, but it’s a nothingburger. Publix has issued a statement that Fancelli isn’t involved in the management of the company.
I read earlier today that Publix had lost customers due to their outspoken support for Trump and his coup.
Not really related, but thought you’d love this bit of comedy:
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/01/stephen-miller-freaks-out-about-biden
That’s almost funny, and Miller is loathsome.
Maria Bartiromo …. ugh. She had enough money before joining Fox and spreading lies. I don’t understand these people.
Let’s talk about the name that Trump gave to this attempted putsch, “Stop the Steal.” Let’s do a little close reading.
It consists of two parts, an imperative verb, “stop,” and a noun phrase, “the steal.”
The second of these makes an assertion: the democratically elected government about to take over is not legitimate because the election was stolen.
The first of these tells people what to do: stop the democratically elected government from taking over.
In other words, carry out an insurrection against the democratically elected government because it is not legitimate, and install a different government, headed by trump.
The very phrase used to name the event clearly states its intent: a treasonous insurrection against the elected government.
Trump, Guiliani, and everyone else involved in this big lie committed treason.
Thank you Diane. These posts about Jan. 6 and the investigations into it are very instructive–talk about being able to involve students in history as it’s made!
If I can make a brief commercial: I wrote about an analogous–and altogether different–attack on a federal building, the Pentagon, in 1967, in my new book “Our Sixties.” The similarities and differences might make for an interesting lesson.
Paul Lauter, “Our Sixties”—a must read !!
From the Amazon blurb on this book:
In Our Sixties, Lauter writes about movement activities from the perspective of a full-time participant: 1964 Mississippi freedom schools; Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); the Morgan community school in Washington, DC, which he headed; a variety of antiwar, antidraft actions; the New University Conference, a radical group of faculty and graduate students; The Feminist Press, which he helped found; and the United States Servicemen’s Fund, an organization supporting antiwar GIs. He got fired, got busted, got published, and even got tenure. He honed his skills writing for the New York Review of Books among other magazines. As a teacher he created innovative courses ranging from “Revolutionary Literature” and “Contesting the Canon” to “The Sixties in Fiction, Poetry, and Film.” He led the development of the groundbreaking Heath Anthology of American Literature and remains its general editor.
Wow. I’m going to have to read this. My kinda guy.
Paul, the protests you participated in were intended to extend freedom and equality. Trump’s rally was to overturn democracy and install a dictator.
I am fascinated with the events of January 6. We lived through a coup attempt that could have toppled our government, and we are watching in real time as the perpetrators are getting off with less than a scolding.
Guardian, Jan. 31, 2021, “It’s endemic: state -level Republican groups lead party’s drift to extremism”
At the state level is where the Koch network really flexes its muscle.
See my note, above, about the Texas Republican Party Facebook page just prior to the Capitol insurrection.
Trump, of course, has added a number of new words to our language: unpresidented, covfefe, bigly (his pronunciation of “big league”). But I don’t think those new terms, rich as they are, sufficiently celebrate the man (I’m using the term loosely) we’ve come to know. So, I’m putting these suggestions for alterations in informal English out there in hopes of seeing them widely adopted going forward:
And wow, she was apetrump mad!
Are you trumping me?
Don’t trump where you eat.
He doesn’t know diddlytrump.
He showed up totally trumpfaced.
He was spouting a trumpload of nonsense.
He’s trying to stir up some trump.
Holy trump!!!
I don’t give a trump.
I practically trumped myself!
I really don’t give a trump.
I trump you not.
I warn you, don’t get on my trump list.
I’m getting too old for this trump.
I’m telling you: He’s battrump crazy.
Keep this trump up and you’re fired.
No trump!!!
Oh, man, you’ve really trumped the bed.
Oh, you’re going to catch trump now!
Same trump, different day.
Seriously, cut the trump, man!
That’s like pushing trump uphill with a pity stick.
The hollers—that’s trumphole country.
Then the trump hit the fan.
Trump happens.
Two can sling trump, you know.
Well, THAT was a dumbtrump thing to say!
Well, you’re trump out of luck this time.
What a pile (or bunch or crock or piece) of trump (or horsetrump or dogtrump)!
Yeah, he has trump for brains.
Yikes! What a trumpshower!
You are so full of trump.
You won’t believe the trump he’s been up to.
You’re gonna have to eat that trump sandwich yourself.
You’re too chickentrump to try it.
You’re trump outta luck.
And, just for fun,
He was all over me like a fly on pence.
And, ofc, up trump creek without a paddle
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2021/02/01/trump-a-commemoration/
Pass the Democratic version of the stimulus and tax the wealthy and corporations.
Trump certainly has/had no problem wasting taxpayer money. McConnell and the GOP passed the tax cut for the wealthy and corporations in the wee hours of the morning SO now is not the time to start screaming about how we can’t afford to help people.
………………………….
Why Republicans Won’t Agree to Biden’s Big Plans and Why He Should Ignore Them
By Robert Reich, Guardian UK
31 January 21
The new president can achieve huge and vital reform and relief without the party of Trump – and they know it
f there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.
Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.
But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?
Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.
Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.
Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.
Repairing ageing infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one will make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt’s share.
No one in their right mind should worry that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world, in search of borrowers.
It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.
If they really don’t want to add to the debt, there’s another alternative. They can support a tax on super-wealthy Americans…
https://migrate.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/67576-focus-why-republicans-wont-agree-to-bidens-big-plans-and-why-he-should-ignore-them
carolmalaysia Mitch and his Republicans have forfeited any right to be trusted or believed in ANYTHING they say or do. Done Deal. To expect honesty and genuineness from them is to be the worst kind of stupid. CBK
Thanks, DR. You are amazing.
Looks like lawyers don’t want to ruin their reputations. Hopefully lawyers as dumb as Rudy will be there and totally bungle the responses.
Trump is wallowing in his bubble of home-made ignorance. Too bad the GOP is still mostly standing by him. I’d love to see him argue the case himself, but he won’t be attending the trial.
………………………………………………
Trump Impeachment Lawyers Quit, Who Will Be Part Of His New Legal Team?
By Megan Manning
01/31/21 AT 10:53 AM
Former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is set to begin on Feb. 9 and he will need a new legal team after five attorneys on Saturday left over a disagreement in his legal strategy. The legal team included attorneys Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris.
CNN reported that a person familiar with the departures said, “Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office.”
The New York Times reported that “Trump has insisted that the case is ‘simple’ and has told advisers he could argue it himself and save the money on lawyers. (Aides contend he is not seriously contemplating doing so.)”…
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg posted on Twitter that if the CNN report is right, “Trump wanted his lawyers to lie and they quit rather than do something unethical. It’s that simple.”
The legal team shakeup means more uncertainty for Trump’s defense. There have been no reports as to who will be added to the new legal team, which will be working on short notice…
Trump isn’t planning on attending his own trial in person, NBC News reports.
https://www.ibtimes.com/trump-impeachment-lawyers-quit-who-will-be-part-his-new-legal-team-3134264
If there are any lawyers with no ethics Trump will find them.
………………………
Trump names 2 lawyers to impeachment defense team
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump announced a new impeachment legal defense team just one day after it was revealed that he had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys with just over a week to go before his Senate trial.
The two representing Trump will be defense lawyer David Schoen, a frequent television legal commentator, and Bruce Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania who has faced criticism for his decision to not charge actor Bill Cosby in a sex crimes case.
Both attorneys issued statements through Trump’s office on Sunday saying that they were honored to take the job…
Republicans and aides to Trump, the first president to be impeached twice in American history, have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial, scheduled for the week of Feb. 8, is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office…
Many legal scholars, however, say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the U.S. Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice….
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-constitutions-pennsylvania-trials-crime-b6252ad1463af72810849838603b8428
David Schoen – a Georgia-based lawyer who represented the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. and sex offender Jeffery Epstein.
Rudy can’t represent Trump in the impeachment trial because he might be a witness. Too bad.
You know the old line that a man who represents himself at trial has a fool for a lawyer.
If you can’t win legally, try other routes.
……………………………
GOP lawmakers looking to make voting tougher
AUSTIN, Texas — Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country are moving swiftly to attack some of the voting methods that fueled the highest turnout for a presidential election in 50 years.
Although most legislative sessions are just getting underway, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, has already tallied more than 100 bills in 28 states meant to restrict voting access. More than a third of those proposals are aimed at limiting mail voting, while other bills seek to strengthen voter ID requirements and registration processes, as well as allow for more aggressive means to remove people from voter rolls.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing some politicians who want to manipulate the rules of the game so that some people can participate and some can’t,” said Myrna Perez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center.
The proposals are advancing not only in Texas and other traditional red states but also in such places as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania that supported Donald Trump four years ago, only to flip for Joe Biden in November.
Many Republicans have said the new bills are meant to shore up public confidence after Trump and his GOP allies, without evidence, criticized the election as fraudulent. Those claims were turned away by dozens of courts and were made even as a group of election officials — including representatives of the federal government’s cybersecurity agency — deemed the 2020 presidential election “the most secure in American history.”…
http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=57b5852e-9d2c-4bd3-ad25-a4eb3404419c
Kathy Griffith is selling hats that read
MAGA
Many are getting arrested.
Bob,
We will have to choose between “Many Are Getting Arrested” and your line, “Moscow’a Asset Governing America”
LOL. I hope, Diane, that one day the entire truth of the latter designation will be known. Without doubt, Russia’s successful embedding of Trump in the Whiter House was the most dramatically successful (from their POV) and appalling intelligence coup in history.
Bob Unfortunately, and from my experience, many of the Trump followers don’t know the history of Russia or its cold war relationship with the West. Though most understand what Hitler did to the Jews and others in WWII, they don’t know what Nazism is or what its resurgence looks like.
To be aware of the danger to our country and culture, first you have to know something about the difference between democracy on the one hand, and then on the other hand, the authoritarian forms of both ancient kingships and the various forms of totalitarianism we saw in the last few centuries. I know many who have no idea and have heard interviews with Trump followers that display just such political ignorance. CBK
A recent study showed that 4 of 10 millennials don’t know that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Absolutely. Some comparative government instruction is much in order!!!! VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
Bob “Absolutely. Some comparative government instruction is much in order!!!!”
The other problem is where political “instruction” is mistaken for “political propaganda.” It’s the same with courses like “World Religions” or similar survey courses . . . this is interpreted by the ignorant as necessarily proselytizing for one or another religious doctrine and worldview. CBK
Rather than guessing who paid for it…let me ponder, who did NOT foot the bill…
Top 10 list of people LEAST likely to have paid for Trump’s coup d’etat/rally/riot on January 6:
Noam Chomsky
Lloyd Lofthouse
Greta Thunberg
Anyone with an ounce of good sense
George Conway
Diane Ravitch
Bernie Sanders (who dislikes Trump so much he ‘flipped him the bird’ through his nice, Vermonty mitten….)
Marla Maples
All the regular folks that Trump coughed on and gave COVID
God or whatever higher power one might believe in….
Honorable mention: a seal from the D.C. zoo who thought the riot was about “Stop the Seal”. Yeah, we’re living in a really mixed up world these days.
Okay…enough procrastinating, John….back to shoveling.
Stay safe all!
Well said above. Following is a letter I wrote to our two Indiana Republican senators. Perhaps some of you might wish to emulate sending something similar to your senators if they are Republicans. As you can see I was VERY angry and this may not be the best way to talk to them but – at this point I could not help myself.
Yes Senator, please answer, I would like to know how it makes you feel that you have helped destroy democracy here. How, when all of Congress, including you had to run and hide from an angry mob calling to hang Pence, where is Nancy, to overturn a duly elected government incited to riot by Trump, and even you have to be protected by an army and you cannot find the perpetrator guilty and convict him of the crime we are doomed.
His actions and words are on tape, and you will not convict a traitor to our government just because he is not now in office? WHERE in the Constitution does it say that when a crime, especially of this magnitude occurs that one cannot be convicted of his heinous crimes just because he is no longer in office?
HAVE YOU NO SHAME???
Now you have reached the culmination. By your vote any future “president” will know he can do anything and when he gets out of office he is home free.
SO, any semblance of democracy is out the window. How does it make you feel to stand with Neo Nazis, white supremacists and Putin, the hate groups and yes the good people who have been duped by lies? How do you feel when emulating the collaborators in France who when Germany invaded chose to go with the Nazis against THEIR government. Now your children have a father whose “courage” should be emulated?
You have enabled an individual that you knew was the epitome of all antidemocratic ideals until we are at where we now find ourselves. You send people to fight and die to protect our country but you might lose your job if you dare go against your party and a tyrant. WOW!!!!
Thank God there are at least still a few Republicans in state and local government who have at least some integrity with guts to stand against tyranny. The party of Lincoln has morphed into the Trump party. No longer do we need to hold elections, the Trump party will tell us what the results would be anyway. 7 million votes? Makes no difference. The person in office decides if he is to stay there.
Just think, now for at least decades people know how to get elected. You lie outrageous lies, over and over, you divide and conquer, you team up with hate groups and appeal to people’s worst instincts, fornicate, bully everyone into submission, war on truth, science, scholarship, lead people to death by the thousands, cozy up to dictators while denigrating your country’s best government employees devoting their lives to keeping us safe and yell when any journalist dares say anything you do not like,
Yes, I would like to know how you plan to live with yourself, are able to sleep at night knowing what kind of cowardice you have displayed, that democracy and our planet your children inherit have been decimated by your “courageous” decisions.
Gordon Wilder: GOOD JOB, GORDON!!! Our two Senators [R-IN] are Trump lovers and they certainly deserve an angry letter this well written.
Who paid for Trump’s rally?
The Wall Street Journal reported the heiress to the Publix Super Markets donated $300,000 to fund the Jan. 6 attempted coup, throws light on why Gov. Ron DeSantis decided Publix and only Publix to be only outlet for dispensing COVID-19 vaccine in Palm Beach County. Could it be that Publix heiress, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of Publix founder George Jenkins, donated more than $980,000 to President Trump’s 2020 campaign, including our governor’s campaign and a little payback is in order.
Do we really need a throw-up day?
……………….
Republicans Pitch President Donald J Trump Day To Celebrate One Of The Greatest
Conservative Freedom Networks
Two Republicans in Ohio have reportedly suggested that June 14 become “Donald J. TrumpDay” in the state.
State Reps. Jon Cross and Reggie Stoltzfus emailed their fellow lawmakers Friday in an appeal for co-sponsors of the bill, which they said was intended “to celebrate one of the greatest presidents in American history,” Cincinnati.com reported.
Trump has never lived in Ohio but he won the state handily both in 2016 and 2020.
“Let’s show the 3,154,834 Ohio voters who cast their ballot to re-elect Donald J. Trump that we as a legislature recognize the accomplishments of his administration,” the email said.
“Let’s show the 3,154,834 Ohio voters who cast their ballot to re-elect Donald J. Trump that we as a legislature recognize the accomplishments of his administration,” the email said…
Source : Fox News
Check it out: https://conservativefreedomnetwork.com/republicans-pitch-president-donald-j-trump-day-to-celebrate-one-of-the-greatest/
carolmalaysia Judging from Trump’s MO and his followers’ degenerate character and moral compass: What’s the Con?
In my view, it’s the same thing as the R’s offering a different bill for relief: they know how fickle and short-of-memory the American electorate is, and so the bill means nothing . . . except to TAKE UP TIME so that the trolls can scream even louder and longer: Where’s the money Biden promised?” CBK