Trump this.

[TX-Beau]

The judge didn't fine Trump. he sanctioned the Law Firm. If they try and appeal, he'll go to the Bar Association.

 

[rareboy]

Ah...I misunderstood.

Yeah, this ought to place a chill in the future on legal firms pursuing frivolous suits by Trump.

 

[KaraBulut]

The judge didn't fine Trump. he sanctioned the Law Firm. If they try and appeal, he'll go to the Bar Association.

Ah...I misunderstood.

Yeah, this ought to place a chill in the future on legal firms pursuing frivolous suits by Trump.

I haven't read the full opinion but the press coverage made it sound like sanctions applied to both Trump and his representation. Read the quote below. I don't think I've read an opinion with this much exasperation against the plantiff and the attorney.

Trump and lawyer sanctioned almost $1 million for 'frivolous' lawsuit against Hillary Clinton

Donald Trump had claimed in a dismissed lawsuit that Hillary Clinton and others tried to rig the 2016 presidential election in her favor.

www.cnbc.com

“We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” wrote Judge John Middlebrooks in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in his order sanctioning Trump and his attorney Alina Habba.

Trump’s suit, which sought $70 million in damages, accused Clinton and 30 other defendants of conspiring to “weave a false narrative” during the 2016 election that Trump and his campaign were colluding with Russia in their efforts to win the race.

Middlebrooks in his order Thursday noted that “Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries.”

“He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer,” Middlebrooks wrote.

“He knew full well the impact of his actions ... As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.”

Normally, Trump would just set up appeals to grind down the opposition (and because he doesn't pay his attorneys, he's rarely out-of-pocket). However, the sanction against the attorney will make the attorney (and the attorney's law firm) think twice about getting into bed with Trump again.

The opinion is here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.302.1.pdf

Newsweek's article about Ms Habba's stupidity in doing business with the Orange Supremacist:

Alina Habba pays the price for cozying up to Donald Trump

The lawyer and former president must jointly pay nearly $1 million in costs after filing 2016 election lawsuits against 31 people, including Hillary Clinton.

www.newsweek.com

"No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim."

 

[TX-Beau]

Former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $250 million lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, ABC News reports...

Trump drops $250 million lawsuit against Letitia James after judge's stark warning

Apparently, rats are very, very fast.

Yeah right. Donald told them to stop... Sure.

 

[rareboy]

Suddenly feeling a little chilly in the room now?

 

[rareboy]

He is wrong of course. Next come planes...like F16s. And then ATACTMs.....and then after that we'll see.

What a dumbass fuckwad. Of course, he also neglects to mention that the easiest way to end this war is for his buddy Putin to withdraw rRzn troops, stop firing missiles at civilians and behave like a civilized countryu.

At this point, I would have thought that even Trump would see more value in Putin dead than alive.

 

[cabinfever]

He is wrong of course. Next come planes...like F16s. And then ATACTMs.....and then after that we'll see.

What a dumbass fuckwad. Of course, he also neglects to mention that the easiest way to end this war is for his buddy Putin to withdraw rRzn troops, stop firing missiles at civilians and behave like a civilized countryu.

At this point, I would have thought that even Trump would see more value in Putin dead than alive.

putin owns him

Didn't he say he admired what putin was doing?

 

[rareboy]

He does.

Putin promised him the White House and delivered.

In exchange all Putin wanted was Europe and Trump was so eager to hand it to him.

It must be hard for Trump...knowing that he was owned by rRzia and blackmailed by Vlad to be watching his own fantasies of becoming ruler for life in the US and then handing it on to his children to see Putin humiliated and the entire USSR 2.0 criminal organization collapsing into dust.

 

[KaraBulut]

Everything Trump touches dies.

And it continues with the reputation of a US Attorney and Attorney General who went down the rabbit hole.

How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled (Published 2023)

The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.

www.nytimes.com

• Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
• Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.
• There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

 

[cityboy-stl]

 

[rareboy]

McGonigal, Trump and Russia.

Now that McGonigal has been charged with taking money from a foreign actor ....the entire story that didn't make sense in 2016 makes perfect sense today. AS suspected, there was something rotten in the FBI concerning the Trump/Russia collusion. And all of us who were saying this at the time....turns out we weren't crazy with Trump Derangement Syndrome before the election.

Timothy Snyder's insight into the web of money and rZn influence in the 2016 election is worth a read. To see how Putin and Deripaska were able to corrupt so many actors in this story is enlightening. Americans should be demanding the release of the full, unredacted Mueller Report.

The Specter of 2016

McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America

snyder.substack.com

 

[TX-Beau]

Ooooh. Looks like the toad has begun literally selling snake oil.

Because major advertisers are avoiding Donald Trump's Truth Social, users are instead being exposed to a flood of ads from what the New York Times characterizes as "miracle cures, scams and fake merchandise," as the platform is forced to take what it can in an effort to survive...

MSN

This is particularly rich:

...That, in turn, has led to complaints aimed at the former president in his comment sections for allowing the forum to turn into a cesspool of ads from scam artists...

IBID

The whole site is a scam. From the perspective of the grifters though, it's a gold mine of people begging to be scammed. Ask yourself, how many times did these people get ripped off before they started suspecting something was up?

Will this cause them to consider the biggest scam of all? HELL NO.

 

[cabinfever]

Ooooh. Looks like the toad has begun literally selling snake oil.

MSN

This is particularly rich:



IBID

The whole site is a scam. From the perspective of the grifters though, it's a gold mine of people begging to be scammed. Ask yourself, how many times did these people get ripped off before they started suspecting something was up?

Will this cause them to consider the biggest scam of all? HELL NO.

I think the people who believe him are even more disturbing than trump himself.

 

[KaraBulut]

 

[KaraBulut]

Recurring themes:

January, 2023

Trump Has Completely Lost His Grip on Reality | National Review

The former president’s deterioration is on full display in the Truth Social asylum he built for himself.

www.nationalreview.com

And then there Donald Trump, who, despite being the only candidate who has officially announced his bid, is . . . well, ranting like a deranged hobo in a dilapidated public park. No, don't look at him he might come over here with his sign.

There was a point in time at which Trump unusual verbal affect and singular nose for underutilized wedge issues gave him a competitive edge. Now? Now, he morphing into one of the three witches from Macbeth. To peruse Trump account on Truth Social is to meet a cast of characters about whom nobody who lives beyond the Trump Extended Universe could possibly care one whit. Here in the real world, the border is a catastrophe, inflation is as bad as it been in four decades, interest rates have risen to their highest level in 15 years, crime is on the up, and the debt continues to mushroom. And yet, safely ensconced within his own macrocosm, Trump is busy mainlining Edward Lear. Day in, day out, he rambles about of Coco Chow and the Old Broken Crow the dastardly Unselect Committee; the (presumably tasty) Stollen Presidential Election ; the travails of that famous law-enforcement agency, the Gestopo Joe Scarborough wife Mika ; and other unusual characters from Coromandel...

June, 2021:

Report: Trump Has Fully Lost It, Won’t Stop Telling People He’s Going to Be President Again This Year

After he overturns the results of the election, which he legitimately thinks is going to happen.

www.vanityfair.com

December, 2020:

Trump Is Losing His Mind

The president is discussing martial law in the Oval Office, as his grip on reality falters.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[rareboy]

Ooooh. Looks like the toad has begun literally selling snake oil.

The whole site is a scam. From the perspective of the grifters though, it's a gold mine of people begging to be scammed. Ask yourself, how many times did these people get ripped off before they started suspecting something was up?

Will this cause them to consider the biggest scam of all? HELL NO.

They have all been scammed by Trump...likely sending him piles of cash he then uses for every purpose except for what it was intended.

Truth Social itself was a huge scam that suckered investors and 'members' alike.

They all deserve what they get.

Having said that, Farcebook also runs a huge number of scam ads for miracle cures and supplements. I suspect they are also willing to lick the bottom of the barrel as some of their premium advertisers no longer see the site as a target audience.

 

[rareboy]

Recurring themes:

January, 2023

Trump Has Completely Lost His Grip on Reality | National Review

The former president’s deterioration is on full display in the Truth Social asylum he built for himself.

www.nationalreview.com

June, 2021:

Report: Trump Has Fully Lost It, Won’t Stop Telling People He’s Going to Be President Again This Year

After he overturns the results of the election, which he legitimately thinks is going to happen.

www.vanityfair.com

December, 2020:

Trump Is Losing His Mind

The president is discussing martial law in the Oval Office, as his grip on reality falters.

www.theatlantic.com

And 35% of Americans appear to have lost theirs at the same time...An.d no matter that every sane person sees it happening right in front of them, the mainstream and social media will give him all the oxygen in the room as his ravings are amplified. His rants about Ukraine and American support just jost copied and pasted and re-posted so many times yesterday...even though the commentary was usually about what a ridiculous and deranged psycho this guy is. I even do it all the time when I post some shit he's carrying on about.

Until the day he finally has a stroke and can't talk or communicate except by blinking his eyes....his madness will continue to be a public obsession.

 

[TX-Beau]

That 35% has always been willing to buy insanity to justify their bigotry. That was true long before social media. People forget that there were actual American Nazis, the Birchers, the KKK and all the rest since the beginning. The toad's "political genius" is just being a nasty racist upfront in a belligerent fashion that other bigots have been dying to emulate.

What social media did was bring them to the surface and lend them organization. But don't fool yourself into thinking that they were created by the internet or the toad. It's useful to remember that for the majority of the last century, the U.S. was an apartheid state and in many ways it unofficially still is. That is before we even begin to discuss the misogyny.

Progress was made, and now the trog horde wants to take it away.

 

[KaraBulut]

There's just a group of people for whom 1+1 can't equal 2 and everything has to have a conspiracy. The moon landing was a hoax. COVID vaccines gave people COVID. Elections that their side didn't win were stolen.

Below is a current example of the mass insanity. We all saw this happen- either live or on the endless repeating loop shown on news outlets or on social media. Those of us with healthcare backgrounds saw it and thought, "commotio cordis". Others saw it and thought, "That was a bad hit". Others saw it and thought, "Poor guy".

Apparently, at least one person saw it and said, "COVID vaccines!".

Crazy, disturbing Damar Hamlin conspiracy theory emerges

In many respects, the modern world has lost its damn mind.

profootballtalk.nbcsports.com

As it relates to Hamlin, there’s actually a theory — completed unsupported by a shred of evidence — that Hamlin died from the COVID vaccine and that he has been replaced by a body double.

Think about that one. The person who attended Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Bills isn’t Damar Hamlin. It’s someone else, disguised as Damar Hamlin. And, presumably, his family and his teammates are in on it.

This is the latest example of the worst of viral conspiracy theories. This batshit crazy theory is everywhere.

And 35% of Americans appear to have lost theirs at the same time...An.d no matter that every sane person sees it happening right in front of them, the mainstream and social media will give him all the oxygen in the room as his ravings are amplified...

That 35% has always been willing to buy insanity to justify their bigotry. That was true long before social media. People forget that there were actual American Nazis, the Birchers, the KKK and all the rest since the beginning...

Shortly before the 2020 election, I started reading up on QAnon. I had seen the "We are Q" signs at the Trump rallies but it didn't really click until the summer before the election that these were the familiar crazies from the evangelical movements of the 1970s. The only difference is that, in the past, I had always dealt with them individually as evangelicals, the "moral majority", the social conservatives, the white nationalists and the yellow dogs that had religious adherence to a political party.

What is different now is that these groups are a super cell- there's a big overlap that has become Christian White Nationalists. They have the same attitudes about minorities, gays and the role of women. Only now they have the Christian certitude that they are the ones who are right and they have convinced themselves that they are doing God's work on earth.

I've also been doing some reading about the Know-Nothing Party, the Anti-Communist fervor of the 1950s and the Reagan era battle between the social conservatives and the anti-communist conservatives. History may not repeat itself but it damn sure rhymes.

What social media did was bring them to the surface and lend them organization. But don't fool yourself into thinking that they were created by the internet or the toad...

I'd also add the use of right-wing media, bots and AI to amplify small messages into mega-messaging.

One day circa 2020, we woke up and realized that all those Q people had been knitting and networking their insane theories about Hillary Clinton, pizza parlors, pedophiles, Trump, JFK Jr, the DNC, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi and the Deep State. This stuff had been festering in social media and websites while the rest of us were busy with other things. And in some way that I don't know that we completely understand, the pandemic acted as a catalyst to send it all into overdrive.

Trump is alarming. Even more alarming are the Ginni Thomases, the Charles McGonigals, the John Durhams and the Bill Barrs: these are educated intelligent people who have been indoctrinated into a cult and they're True Believers. Those cultist True Believers have taken over the Republican Party. And what is even scarier is watching these True Believers and thinking "What happened to them?" is probably the same thought that many of them have when they ponder the Democratic party and see them as pizza-selling, adrenalin-gland-eating, pedophiles. The level of Orwellian reality distortion is disorienting to those of us who are trying to separate fact, fiction and batshit crazy.

What seems to be the rhyming part of all of this is that the people in power always believe they can harness the passions of the masses to their ends. But like the fable about the man riding the tiger, they ultimately end up being eaten by the tiger. That's where we are: Trump is the monster they thought they could use to "unite the right" but they've lost control of the masses and the lunatics are the ones with the keys to the asylum.

Ponder this: Three years ago, we were worried that a QAnon adherent was going to be elected to Congress. Two years ago, she got elected. Two months ago, she was re-elected. Two days ago, there were rumors she is interested in running in 2024 to be Trump's Vice-President. When do we wake up from this Twilight Zone nightmare? When do we get the keys to the asylum back from the lunatics?

 

[rareboy]

What we have to hope for is the splintering of the right as has happened in the past. As you point out, it has coalesced into a more or less united group under the MAGA umbrella that Trump created and the Q nonsense that has been nurtured by the Trumpist power brokers.

Am I optimistic? Not right now. But I am hoping that demographics might unravel some of this.