" If the next Democratic administration doesn’t take note and prosecute the criminals of today to the fullest extent of the law, then that criminality is doomed to repeat itself in the future."
If only Merrick Garland had started the ball rolling earlier, we wouldn't be having this conversation. And Cohen is right: if the next Dem admin doesn't learn from that disaster, we are toast. We are truly on the cusp of a tipping point as far as inequality in America goes.
The real fault lies not with Merrick Garland who faced the daunting prospect of bringing a former president before the bar of justice, but with those Republican Senators who voted to aquit Tump after January 6th. THEN we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Seems to me the only chance to do anything would be by mass impeachments by a Democratic congress, IF the orange convicted felon allows free and fair elections in November. I have serious doubts that will happen.
Otherwise, the orange convicted felon will pardon every last member of his family and his cult followers.
The pardon power is another thing that needs to be looked at closely and revised.
...If only Joe McCarthy had been convicted for his lies, or if Ford had not pardoned Nixon for his crimes... Roy Cohn is the link between both of them and iDJT. For too long we have let these criminals off lightly.
Yes..I’m 83 yrs along and have been watching that link for too many decade's. The shadowy puppet masters, and they are there now. We just have more outspoken articulate, tech savvy voices to push back now, thank goodness.
You left out Bush Sr. shoving the whole Iran-Contra mess under the rug before Reagan could be indicted for his crimes.
Republicans forgiving Republicans is a time honored tradition for them now.
Although Biden giving Garland a "consolation prize" as AG after having his Supreme Court seat denied by Mitch McTurtle was clearly a mistake on Biden's part!
You might also say that had Mitch McConnell and his toadies in the senate followed the House of Representatives in the impeachment process and convicted and removed Trump, what we're facing today would have been avoided. Don't forget what they did to the supreme court either.
"If the next Democratic administration doesn’t take note and prosecute the criminals of today to the fullest extent of the law, then that criminality is doomed to repeat itself in the future."
The Democratic Congressional leaders must be ready on Day One to hit the ground running with a list of actions they are begining THAT DAY. A list of persons to be investigated. A plan for recouping the president's irresponsible and unlawful expenditures. A plan to stop any further work on the White House grounds ir other public land. (No arches, no walkways, no heliports, and especially no ballroom.) If the Dems gain a Senate majority they must take back the power of the purse. They must have credible, effective plans they are prepared to go public with on January 3, 2027.
This is what we have been missing forever. I had hoped someone was keeping a spreadsheet of Trump 1's destruction and would systematically counteract it rapidly. Joe Biden was not Mr. Rapid. He tried, but he had a pandemic to deal with.
But at this point, we are sick of Democratic representation that is reactive, not proactive. The only way we fix this current mess is with A PLAN. You know, like the Project 2025 guys had? I also do not see A LEADER on the horizon, unless it is Pete Buttigieg--and he's campaigning for other people. This clip of his speech in Iowa is what a leader sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfdsbScRXs&t=790s
How right you are, KKG. I loved hearing Liz Warren say "I have a plan for that," regardless of what the issue was, and I believe she did. I hope she and other smart members of Congress will craft plans that have a hope of working in real time.
There must be someone out there who is keeping a record of his wasteful, recoverable spending.
And I'd love to hear Pete on this. So far he has a lot of support.
This is crucial! We/they cannot wait until the day after the election to develop strategy and tactics for implementing reform and accountability. We are already 7 years late.
I have, literally for decades, faulted the democratic party for being too timid and wishy washy when they find themselves in power and very poor at messaging and countering the propaganda of the Republicans. If they win the midterms, they must leave those tendencies behind and hold the Trump administration accountable and prosecute his cronies where they have broken the law and their faith with the American people.
I partially agree with you. I do think we'd be better in a system that allowed more than two parties to hold power, e.g., a parliamentary system, but even so, when the Dems have held power they fail to wield it as effectively as they might. (BTW, Biden was better than I expected, in part, because he took Bernie Sanders and the more "extreme" left seriously and worked to pass legislation that included some of their ideas in a number of areas. I feel compelled to use quotes around extreme, because the U.S.'s idea of extreme left is often less left than some European nations.)
There was a poll released yesterday that said among voters 65+, the progressives are most popular by far. The older I get (I’m 86), the farther left I find my opinions. I’m thrilled that Zoran Mamdani was elected mayor of NYC. If the DSA can run candidates who speak truth to power, we will have all of the accountability we need. Get out and VOTE!
Yes indeed. We need to become as loud (or louder) than the liars, literally combatting them with facts, truth and holding MAGA leadership and operatives (listen up, Stephen Miller) accountable. Investigate and prosecute.
Trump will just use his pardon power to continue to keep his cronies from facing consequences. He must be impeached immediately followed by his cabinet of narcissistic, corrupt drunks and brain damaged drug addicts. Lots of charges to choose from with that group.
Vance could still use the pardon for all the Trump administration’s massive criminality, so he would need to be impeached as well. It wouldn’t take him long to rack up charges. Afterwards the “President to be” (3rd in line) is the newly elected Speaker of the House, a Democrat from congress’ majority win.
Any corrupt Trump holdover would need to be purged before we would have clean governance that works for the people instead of the billionaires.
I'm not shocked. I've been expecting the collapse of the country since November of 2024. I'm not sure he (or those pulling his strings) could actually shock me. Although, teaming up militarily with Israel does come close.
It is time for the media to explain in articles what billions and trillions of dollars are in terms we have a chance to understand. A billion dollars is 1000 million dollars! A trillion dollars is a million million dollars!!! Journalists and DEMOCRATS should note these big amounts with the number of millions in parentheses in every article. Examples:
$1.8 billion ($1,800 million) for a slush fund
$70 billion ($70,000 million) for ice and border patrol
$350 billion ($350,000 million) additional for military spending
$1 trillion ($1 million million) in additional debt or describing Elon Musk’s net worth (surely good we gave him additional tax breaks)
There does come a point where the amounts become unrecognizable to most of us, and problably even to the legislators foking it over. It's not their money so they believe that they can be extravagant and irresponsible.
Thanks Brian. Your message is so clear. Democrats holding office or who will be sworn in to official positions have to empower the courts. They must work vigorously to get justice for those terrorized by DOGE & ICE.
Yes, the future of our democracy absolutely depends on what we do this fall and next year to take back our govt from the hands of maniacal self dealing monsters.
There are steps that need to be taken, the first being to change the majority in Congress. Next, repair and strengthen the agency that enforces the emoluments clauses (domestic and international). The repair to the department of justice will likely have to wait until 2028, and untill then, the attorneys will be busy filing complaints and lawsuits against the con-man who is bilking the American people. This was a fine piece of writing with good direction. It is worth attention.
If we're going to rely on GOP Senators to care about our multi-cultural, vision of democracy with equal justice for all, we're fools. Many of these "Americans" have been waiting for the South to Rise Again. And so it has. We need a landslide in 2026 to start wiping MAGA out of national politics.
The new ICE detention center in Texas will be called the "Auschwitz Correction Center". They are doing everything they can to get the gas contract down there. Very sick people inhabit our Oval office and Congress. Does anyone care?
Given that Trump’s address to the nation on Thursday will be almost exclusively political in nature, including reassertions that he was cheated out of winning the 2020 election, the Democrats should demand rebuttal time to rip his claims to shreds.
I believe, like you, in the rule of law. I also believe in the rule of grammar. Your over-correction in the following sentence reveals a violation: "In the 1990s, the post-Soviet Russian government auctioned off state assets to whomever was positioned closest to power." You use "whomever" as an object of the preposition "to": wrong. It should be "whoever" as the subject of the verb phrase "was positioned." What follows "to" as the object of the preposition is a noun clause "whoever was positioned closest to power."
`How blissfully irrelevant. The information came through, even though a grammarian finds fault in it. Let's get out the thought and forgive the lesson in good editing.
The brand new ICE detention center in Texas will be called the "Auschwitz Correction Center". They are doing everything they can to get the gas contract down there. Very sick people inhabit our Oval office and Congress. Does anyone care?
The worst part of this is that WE KNEW WHAT TRUMP WAS in 2024!
Even if you give MAGA a pass for 2016, for believing Trump would deliver the changes he promised, you cannot give them the same pass for trusting him a second time in 2024. They have no excuse for supporting a convicted criminal, a tax cheat, a liar and a person who was simply "bad at the job" of being President the first time!
Never believe anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 who tries to lie and tell you they believed he was going to fix or clean anything up in his second term.
What do you think that the facilities that immigrants (and who knows who else) are consigned to should be called? The concentration camps are already here.
To the question: Not that we know of, though a few have "disappeared" and living conditions with the stench of untended raw sewage is hardly humane. We aren't getting the whole story as investigators have been denied admittance.
" If the next Democratic administration doesn’t take note and prosecute the criminals of today to the fullest extent of the law, then that criminality is doomed to repeat itself in the future."
If only Merrick Garland had started the ball rolling earlier, we wouldn't be having this conversation. And Cohen is right: if the next Dem admin doesn't learn from that disaster, we are toast. We are truly on the cusp of a tipping point as far as inequality in America goes.
The real fault lies not with Merrick Garland who faced the daunting prospect of bringing a former president before the bar of justice, but with those Republican Senators who voted to aquit Tump after January 6th. THEN we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Seems to me the only chance to do anything would be by mass impeachments by a Democratic congress, IF the orange convicted felon allows free and fair elections in November. I have serious doubts that will happen.
Otherwise, the orange convicted felon will pardon every last member of his family and his cult followers.
The pardon power is another thing that needs to be looked at closely and revised.
...If only Joe McCarthy had been convicted for his lies, or if Ford had not pardoned Nixon for his crimes... Roy Cohn is the link between both of them and iDJT. For too long we have let these criminals off lightly.
Yes..I’m 83 yrs along and have been watching that link for too many decade's. The shadowy puppet masters, and they are there now. We just have more outspoken articulate, tech savvy voices to push back now, thank goodness.
You left out Bush Sr. shoving the whole Iran-Contra mess under the rug before Reagan could be indicted for his crimes.
Republicans forgiving Republicans is a time honored tradition for them now.
Although Biden giving Garland a "consolation prize" as AG after having his Supreme Court seat denied by Mitch McTurtle was clearly a mistake on Biden's part!
You might also say that had Mitch McConnell and his toadies in the senate followed the House of Representatives in the impeachment process and convicted and removed Trump, what we're facing today would have been avoided. Don't forget what they did to the supreme court either.
"If the next Democratic administration doesn’t take note and prosecute the criminals of today to the fullest extent of the law, then that criminality is doomed to repeat itself in the future."
The Democratic Congressional leaders must be ready on Day One to hit the ground running with a list of actions they are begining THAT DAY. A list of persons to be investigated. A plan for recouping the president's irresponsible and unlawful expenditures. A plan to stop any further work on the White House grounds ir other public land. (No arches, no walkways, no heliports, and especially no ballroom.) If the Dems gain a Senate majority they must take back the power of the purse. They must have credible, effective plans they are prepared to go public with on January 3, 2027.
This is what we have been missing forever. I had hoped someone was keeping a spreadsheet of Trump 1's destruction and would systematically counteract it rapidly. Joe Biden was not Mr. Rapid. He tried, but he had a pandemic to deal with.
But at this point, we are sick of Democratic representation that is reactive, not proactive. The only way we fix this current mess is with A PLAN. You know, like the Project 2025 guys had? I also do not see A LEADER on the horizon, unless it is Pete Buttigieg--and he's campaigning for other people. This clip of his speech in Iowa is what a leader sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfdsbScRXs&t=790s
How right you are, KKG. I loved hearing Liz Warren say "I have a plan for that," regardless of what the issue was, and I believe she did. I hope she and other smart members of Congress will craft plans that have a hope of working in real time.
There must be someone out there who is keeping a record of his wasteful, recoverable spending.
And I'd love to hear Pete on this. So far he has a lot of support.
This is crucial! We/they cannot wait until the day after the election to develop strategy and tactics for implementing reform and accountability. We are already 7 years late.
What in the world did everyone expect. We knew he was out for himself and that he was/is a corrupt s.o.b.
Completely agree. Anyone with any prior understanding of Trump, going back to his earliest days should have expected nothing less.
I have, literally for decades, faulted the democratic party for being too timid and wishy washy when they find themselves in power and very poor at messaging and countering the propaganda of the Republicans. If they win the midterms, they must leave those tendencies behind and hold the Trump administration accountable and prosecute his cronies where they have broken the law and their faith with the American people.
My sense, rather is that the primary fault lies not with one party or another, but with our ossified binary political party system.
I partially agree with you. I do think we'd be better in a system that allowed more than two parties to hold power, e.g., a parliamentary system, but even so, when the Dems have held power they fail to wield it as effectively as they might. (BTW, Biden was better than I expected, in part, because he took Bernie Sanders and the more "extreme" left seriously and worked to pass legislation that included some of their ideas in a number of areas. I feel compelled to use quotes around extreme, because the U.S.'s idea of extreme left is often less left than some European nations.)
There was a poll released yesterday that said among voters 65+, the progressives are most popular by far. The older I get (I’m 86), the farther left I find my opinions. I’m thrilled that Zoran Mamdani was elected mayor of NYC. If the DSA can run candidates who speak truth to power, we will have all of the accountability we need. Get out and VOTE!
Yes indeed. We need to become as loud (or louder) than the liars, literally combatting them with facts, truth and holding MAGA leadership and operatives (listen up, Stephen Miller) accountable. Investigate and prosecute.
Trump will just use his pardon power to continue to keep his cronies from facing consequences. He must be impeached immediately followed by his cabinet of narcissistic, corrupt drunks and brain damaged drug addicts. Lots of charges to choose from with that group.
Vance could still use the pardon for all the Trump administration’s massive criminality, so he would need to be impeached as well. It wouldn’t take him long to rack up charges. Afterwards the “President to be” (3rd in line) is the newly elected Speaker of the House, a Democrat from congress’ majority win.
Any corrupt Trump holdover would need to be purged before we would have clean governance that works for the people instead of the billionaires.
I'm not shocked. I've been expecting the collapse of the country since November of 2024. I'm not sure he (or those pulling his strings) could actually shock me. Although, teaming up militarily with Israel does come close.
HOW MANY MILLIONS IN $2.2 BILLION??????
It is time for the media to explain in articles what billions and trillions of dollars are in terms we have a chance to understand. A billion dollars is 1000 million dollars! A trillion dollars is a million million dollars!!! Journalists and DEMOCRATS should note these big amounts with the number of millions in parentheses in every article. Examples:
$1.8 billion ($1,800 million) for a slush fund
$70 billion ($70,000 million) for ice and border patrol
$350 billion ($350,000 million) additional for military spending
$1 trillion ($1 million million) in additional debt or describing Elon Musk’s net worth (surely good we gave him additional tax breaks)
There does come a point where the amounts become unrecognizable to most of us, and problably even to the legislators foking it over. It's not their money so they believe that they can be extravagant and irresponsible.
Agreed, so many huge figures are tossed around they lose the significance of the values. I keep wondering where all this money is coming from.
Thanks Brian. Your message is so clear. Democrats holding office or who will be sworn in to official positions have to empower the courts. They must work vigorously to get justice for those terrorized by DOGE & ICE.
Yes, the future of our democracy absolutely depends on what we do this fall and next year to take back our govt from the hands of maniacal self dealing monsters.
"How do we hold Trump accountable?"
There are steps that need to be taken, the first being to change the majority in Congress. Next, repair and strengthen the agency that enforces the emoluments clauses (domestic and international). The repair to the department of justice will likely have to wait until 2028, and untill then, the attorneys will be busy filing complaints and lawsuits against the con-man who is bilking the American people. This was a fine piece of writing with good direction. It is worth attention.
"How do we hold Trump accountable?"
Step 1;
Arrest Donald Trump for First Degree Murder. NOW,
As always. Thank you, Brian.
If we're going to rely on GOP Senators to care about our multi-cultural, vision of democracy with equal justice for all, we're fools. Many of these "Americans" have been waiting for the South to Rise Again. And so it has. We need a landslide in 2026 to start wiping MAGA out of national politics.
The new ICE detention center in Texas will be called the "Auschwitz Correction Center". They are doing everything they can to get the gas contract down there. Very sick people inhabit our Oval office and Congress. Does anyone care?
Given that Trump’s address to the nation on Thursday will be almost exclusively political in nature, including reassertions that he was cheated out of winning the 2020 election, the Democrats should demand rebuttal time to rip his claims to shreds.
It is time for America to take over its government. The media will NOT tell you how to do it.
The media has drowned us in "whataboutisms".
I believe, like you, in the rule of law. I also believe in the rule of grammar. Your over-correction in the following sentence reveals a violation: "In the 1990s, the post-Soviet Russian government auctioned off state assets to whomever was positioned closest to power." You use "whomever" as an object of the preposition "to": wrong. It should be "whoever" as the subject of the verb phrase "was positioned." What follows "to" as the object of the preposition is a noun clause "whoever was positioned closest to power."
`How blissfully irrelevant. The information came through, even though a grammarian finds fault in it. Let's get out the thought and forgive the lesson in good editing.
Editing djt’s grammar would require a village.
LOL!
The brand new ICE detention center in Texas will be called the "Auschwitz Correction Center". They are doing everything they can to get the gas contract down there. Very sick people inhabit our Oval office and Congress. Does anyone care?
Totally agree with everything you say!!
The worst part of this is that WE KNEW WHAT TRUMP WAS in 2024!
Even if you give MAGA a pass for 2016, for believing Trump would deliver the changes he promised, you cannot give them the same pass for trusting him a second time in 2024. They have no excuse for supporting a convicted criminal, a tax cheat, a liar and a person who was simply "bad at the job" of being President the first time!
Never believe anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 who tries to lie and tell you they believed he was going to fix or clean anything up in his second term.
Dear Mark; We have lost our democracy. Our countries future seems quite bleak to me.
And, here is the kicker.
Noone is doing anything to stop him. Our democracy is history.
Next comes concentration camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka.
What do you think that the facilities that immigrants (and who knows who else) are consigned to should be called? The concentration camps are already here.
Are they gassing their inmates yet?
To the question: Not that we know of, though a few have "disappeared" and living conditions with the stench of untended raw sewage is hardly humane. We aren't getting the whole story as investigators have been denied admittance.
A grim possibility and reason for quick corrective action.