Trump spoke in Philadelphia, supposedly to promote the candidacies of insurrectionist Douglas Mastriano for governor and snake-oil salesman Dr. Oz, Trump’s choice for Senate.
But he devoted most of his speech to his grievances about the past, his lie that he won the 2020 election, the FBI raid on his country club to recover top secret documents.. He even criticized Philadelphia. He almost forgot about the candidates.
David Frum writes in The Atlantic:
In 2016, Hillary Clinton warned that Donald Trump was a fool who could be baited with a tweet. This past Thursday night, in Philadelphia, Joe Biden upped the ante by asking, in effect: What idiot thing might the former president do if baited with a whole speech? On Saturday night, the world got its answer.
For the 2022 election cycle, smart Republicans had a clear and simple plan: Don’t let the election be about Trump. Make it about gas prices, or crime, or the border, or race, or sex education, or anything—anything but Trump. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost control of the House in 2018. He lost the presidency in 2020. He lost both Senate seats in Georgia in 2021. Republicans had good reason to dread the havoc he’d create if he joined the fight in 2022.
So they pleaded with Trump to keep out of the 2022 race. A Republican lawmaker in a close contest told CNN on August 19, “I don’t say his name, ever.”
Maybe the pleas were always doomed to fail. Show Trump a spotlight, and he’s going to step into it. But Republicans pinned their hopes on the chance that Trump might muster some self-discipline this one time, some regard for the interests and wishes of his partners and allies.
One of the purposes of Biden’s Philadelphia attack on Trump’s faction within the Republican Party was surely to goad Trump. It worked.
Yesterday, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump addressed a rally supposedly in support of Republican candidates in the state: Mehmet Oz for the Senate; the January 6 apologist Doug Mastriano for governor. This was not Trump’s first 2022 rally speech. He spoke in Arizona in July. But this one was different: so extreme, strident, and ugly—and so obviously provoked by Biden’s speech that this was whatled local news: “Donald Trump Blasts Philadelphia, President Biden During Rally for Doug Mastriano, Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.
The LiZaof Oz
The Great and Wondrous Oz
Is running just because
He wants the folks to think
He hasn’t had a drink
To voters in the room:
“I want the witch’s broom”
And don’t come back before”
“She’s melted on the floor”
Lizard of Oz
It’s apparent that Traitor Trump is terminal pancreatic cancer for the libertarian-theofascist Republican Party, because even if the traitor dropped dead from a massive stroke as I’m writing this, that RINO faction of the Republican Party is not going to go away. If anyone makes sure that doesn’t happen, it will be Demonic DeSantis.
Hopefully “the Republican Party is dead, long live the Republican King” in its grave.
Shocking Trump talked about himself. Who would believe that?
It’s astounding and shocking that this malignant buffoon still draws crowds and is taken seriously by a chunk of the US population. He is so obviously and blatantly a phony, a fake and a charlatan scum bucket. He was rejected by the popular vote in 2016 and he was, (mercifully for the nation), roundly rejected in 2020 by the popular vote and the Electoral College. He’s still lying about winning the election, that is almost criminal but the 1st amendment allows for morons to blather on and on.
An hour ago, the judge Trump appointed ruled that the documents seized by the FBI should be reviewed by a special master. The judge was confirmed a week after Trump lost the 2020 election. Her decision implies that the Department of Justice and the FBI are not trustworthy. The “independent” she chooses will decide.
In a way, this is a good decision for Democrats politically, because it keeps the loathsome Trump front and center whereas most Republicans wish he would recede into the background.
Just Us prevails once again!
The ever-Teflon Don slides again.
In her decision, this judge is blatant about apply special, or “Just Us,” rules to Trump: “As a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the Untied States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own.” So much for the principle of Equal Justice for All.
When I think of the defendants I prosecuted from the Englewood section of Chicago, and the likely odds of their getting a “Special Master” to review their evidence against them, I get sick to my stomach that this bozo is treated any differently.
What pisses me off more is how meritless Trump’s motion was. People should keep in mind what effect their chosen candidate’s election can mean to justice in the USA. They won’t.
But what would the MAGAs say if an alleged street drug dealer were treated this way? Other than “Lock him up!”?
Thank you, jsrtheta!
But he appointed the judge! She owed him her loyalty.
Well, maybe in her case. Every one of the “Trump” judges who heard a 2020 election case ruled against him.
She is massively wrong in this case, though.
She is looking for a special master?
A southern plantation owner with a whip?
And she quotes with approval the current Extreme Court’s indication that it might well overturn previous decisions suggesting that a current president’s decisions about whether materials are covered by Executive Privilege overrule a former president’s right to assert that privilege. So, in other words, both this judge and the current Extreme Court seem to think that a president is a kind and that once a king always a king.
cx: seem to think that a president is a king and that once a king, always a king
All this makes an utter MOCKERY of the principle carved onto the West Pediment, above the front entrance of the United States Supreme Court building: Equal Justice under Law.
The Teflon Don, Cheeto “Littlefingers” Trumpbalone, slides again.
The case is certain to go to the Supreme Court with a certain outcome.
Anyone who believes otherwise is just delusional.
But the charade must go on for the sake of the peeons.
From Heather Cox Richardson today:
Philosopher Jason Stanley of Yale University, best known for his 2018 book How Fascism Works, tweeted today: “Once you have the courts you can pretty much do whatever you want.”
Yup. It’s really, really important, at this crux, this crossroads, this cusp, for people to grok this, for that’s just what the Pugs are up to, right now. They are laying the judicial foundation for American Fascism.
Time to expand the Court. Or lose the country.
Two people are responsible for the MAGA takeover of the federal judiciary: Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who vetted the candidates, and Mitch McConnell, who pushed them through to confirmation without regard to their lack of qualifications.
Bob
If Biden were going to expand the court, he would already have done it, if not as one of his first acts as President, immediately after the recent Supreme Court decisions (particularly on Roe and Kennedy). Biden has actually said recently that he opposes such an expansion.
In general, Biden is not one to make major changes.
He is far too deferential to the status quo even when it is highly undemocratic and based on little more than Senate traditions with no Constitutional or legal basis.
For example, he doesn’t support elimination of the filibuster nor is he willing to even disregard the decisions of the Senate Parliamentarian (an unelected official whose rulings have no legal standing) when she opposes Democratic initiatives in the Senate (which are also presumably Bidens initiatives)
The Supreme Court Majority is all set to do more shredding of the Constitution in the coming weeks but Biden is effectively AWOL.
Stick a fork in us. We’re done.
Even if Biden wanted to expand the Supreme Court, he doesn’t have the votes to do so.
Yes, Biden can count. Which is why he’s being careful with his words before the election.
Then he’ll count the votes again.
We’re dumb too, since we the People have willingly asked — indeed begged — for the fork for decades.
Malignant narcissistic personality disorder
Throughout the Covid pandemic, Trump held daily briefings. But they were never about Covid. They were about how great Trump was.
Whenever he held cabinet meetings, each cabinet member was expected to begin his or her remarks with extensive praise of Trump. They did this. They knew that it was the only way to get his attention. Briefers of the president took to doing that, too. If there was something really important for him to pay attention to, they would related it to him and put it on big picture cards so he would attend and could understand it. Picture books. For the president of the United States.
But the most egregious examples of this were when Trump would meet with a Gold Star family member and immediately pivot into talking about how great he was. “Thank you for your service. And speaking of service, how about this economy I’ve created. Greatest president ever. People call me up and say, Sir, Mr. President, you are a genius. And I am. I had an uncle at M.I.T. Good genes.”
After listening to Pence, at a cabinet meeting, going on and on in the most breathtakingly groveling, toadying way about the Greatness of Trump, I wrote this satire, which, I’m afraid, isn’t far off the original:
The Loneliness of the Teflon Trumpkin, Film Excerpt
INT. OVAL OFFICE – DAY
Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Camera back to reveal Rod Serling standing D.R.
SERLING
His name, Mr. Little. A man with little education, little taste, little knowledge, little concern for other people. Neglected as a child, he grew into a black hole of neediness. And so he used Daddy’s money to build big, erected his name in Midas-gold letters across the landscape–his every action screaming, “I am worth something.” Everything became a zero-sum game. If someone else failed or was worse off, he was better, a “winner,” and so he cheated and harassed and ridiculed the unfortunate, the stranger, the down and out; appealed to the basest instincts of the basest among us; huffed and puffed and blew himself to gigantic proportions, at least in his own little brain. A twisted, malignant, metastasizing tumor of need and narcissism and knee-jerk nastiness, Mr. Little doesn’t know much, but the biggest thing he doesn’t know is that he just stepped over into a place where everything is bigger than he is, where everything is just beyond the grasp of his little mind and his little hands. He just stepped over into . . . The Twilight Zone.
Only Trump stepped into the Toilett Zone
The Toilett Zone
The Toilett Zone
Was made for Trump
A place, alone
To take a dump
In words of Don
A “shitty place”
Where Don puts on
His POTTYUS face
It is amazing that some fools are still buying the Trump fool’s gold brand. To me he is creepy and icky sort of like Jeffrey Epstein lite.
Nothing lite about it:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit/
More like Epstein-like
The two were once pals, after all.
If you want an accurate judge of character, just look at whether a person associated with Epstein and how often.
One photo might be an honest gotcha, but every photo after that first one in which one appears with Epstein, Maxwell or one of his girls is a strike against. Three photos and you’re out.
I have no sympathy for Republicans. Any Manhattan doorman or garbage collector could have told them this is what Trump was, if they’d had the wit to ask.
Instead, they are running a TV quack doctor for Senate and an exploitive, know-nothing loon for the governorship, and Trump won’t shut up because he hates anyone else hogging the spotlight. He refuses to acknowledge that a hall full of certifiably deluded fans DON’T represent the electorate itself, and he is compelled to whine about the unfairness of it all instead of boosting the losers he hath wrought on Pennsylvania.
Add to your list of totally unqualified Trump nominees the ex-football star Herschel Walker in Georgia, who is running even with the gifted Rev. Warnock. Walker says crazy things but it doesn’t bother almost half the voters.
My dog knows Walker has no qualifications whatsoever to be senator. The insane Republican Party knows this full well. The Republican Party is a clear and present danger to the survival of this country.
Herschel Walker is usually incoherent or says crazy things. He doesn’t believe in evolution because apes still exist. China is taking out good air and sending us their bad air.
Honestly, I feel sorry for Hershel at some level. The fact that he even gets any votes against Rev. Warnock is astounding enough. But if you look at who really would vote for him, they see him as a tool, not a human being. Not one of them them is under the impression that Hershel took one too many hits in the head. I wonder if he is even aware of the fact that he is not respected at all by the people who would vote for him.
I don’t believe in evolution because internal combustion engines still exist.
Any Manhattan doorman or garbage collector could have told them this is what Trump was, if they’d had the wit to ask.
Perfectly observed. Smart. Exactly right.
I started watching this buffoon back in the ’70s. Anyone could see this coming, unfortunately.
Jsrtheta: while I have watched the inexorable march of the Republican Party to the right, I Never believed the party faithful would elect Trump. When he won the electoral vote in 2016, I was depressed and amazed.
An alarm bell.
LOL. I thought this with Reagan. Then Bush Jr. But Trump? The lowest of the low.
“Republicans pinned their hopes on the chance that Trump might muster some self-discipline this one time…” Why would they ever believe that? Did the entirety of Trump’s loathsome steaming pile of a “presidency” just all of a sudden sweeten up, to be served between two slices of white bread and washed down with a Coke? When has the 45 ever exhibited even a modicum of self-discipline? Answer, never. It’s no different that an abused significant other thinking that maybe just this once, my abuser won’t beat me up again. It’s sick and twisted and wrong, but here we are.
Good example. Another: Trump is a spoiled 2-year-old who wants all the toys. He screams when he can’t have them. Nothing stops his narcissistic behavior.
Perfectly said, Oakland mom!
The title for this post has invoked the image of a performance of onanism and now I need to bleach my eyes. Good thing I’ve some left over after treating this case of covid!
SECRETARY: Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump. OMG. A truck just ran over Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka!!!! They are in the hospital right now.
TRUMP: Oh. OK. Just like the Russia investigation. Russia, Russia, Russia. Tried to run me over. It never stops. Anything to get Trump.
SERETARY: But Mr. Trump, your children!
TRUMP: I bet I could get a tax write-off if we planted one at each of three Trump golf courses.
SECRETARY: But they aren’t dead. They are just in critical condition.
TRUMP: Oh, OK. Let me know if that changes. Which side looks more tough right out of central casting, my left or my right?
Trump should just have a mirror installed in front of his face (mounted on a bracket around his neck) so he could look at himself 24/7.
Or maybe contact lenses with his photo printed on the inside.
Or maybe they could just do the same thing to the lenses in his eyes so it would be permanent.