"A Bowl of Tarantulas."

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

Let's face it: Lawyers have never had a good reputation and often for very compelling reasons. After all, one of the most famous jokes of all time ends with the punchline, "A good start" when preceded with, "What do you call 100 lawyers chained to the bottom of the ocean?" But in the four weeks since Election Day, Trump's legal team, once bolstered by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (who'd famously ditched a lawsuit against Trump University after seeking, and getting, a $25,000 bribe from the guy for whom that crooked racket was named) and a pair of white shoe law firm who have since faded into the bushes.

     After a couple of dozen lawsuits that have crashed and burned, Trump's legal team has withered to Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who's a couple of decades past his shelf life, Jenna Ellis (whose job, it seems, is to attack right wingers who don't toe the Trump line and to provide a smirking backdrop to Giuliani's leaky press conferences), and some of the most heavily-ridiculed shysters in American history. To date, Trump's lawsuits have racked up an impressive 1-39 record in courts all over the country. Even after getting fired nine days ago, Sidney Powell, who's acting more and more like a shady character you'd see in a bad John Grisham novel, has revealed in her so-called "Kraken" lawsuit, that she thinks there's an Edison County in Michigan (there isn't) and in Georgia, in her allegations that the certification by the state to use Dominion Voting Systems wasn’t dated, she provided a document with the very date cropped out. 

 

   Yes, Trump has Georgia on what passes for his mind, the very state where he plans to campaign for Perdue and Loefller, two of the most crooked sociopaths that ever scuttled into the upper chamber, while telling Georgia voters that his own election was rigged. Of course, his "endorsements" will be nothing but grievance sessions, with lip service paid to Loeffler and Purdue, the dried out pieces of bubble gum that came with the trading cards.

   But then Joe diGenova, one of the fringiest of the right wing fringe lawyers that America specializes in producing in larger and larger numbers, went on the Howie Carr show that was simulcast on Newsmax and called for Christopher Krebs, the CISA head who was fired by Trump by contradicting his narrative that the election was rigged, should be "drawn and quartered" and shot at dawn.

    To his dubious credit, diGenova said he was only being sarcastic when he called for Krebs' execution. But diGenova knows damned good and well how dangerously reactionary Trump's red meat base is. Trump, or one of his minions, says something, they believe it, that settles it. Next thing we know, "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" turns into a plot on Governor Whitmer's life. "LAW AND ORDER!" turns into two shot-up corpses in the streets of Kenosha. Yet it honestly never occurs to Trump's army of fat, old, neo Nazi assclowns that the man who'd told over 20,000 lies (publicly) since taking office nearly four years ago could be lying to them.

   This is exactly the kind of right wing eliminationist rhetoric that our grandparents and great grandparents had heard shamelessly pouring out of Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s. And now, it seems, it's time for Bill Barr to take his place in Jenna Ellis' and Mayor Rudy's potato gun crosshairs since Barr informed the AP that the DOJ and DHS had found no evidence of election or voter fraud.

     One wonders if diGenova will go on another right wing radio show and call for Barr's drawing and quartering. So Nicolle Wallace was spot on today when she called Trump's legal team, "a bowl of tarantulas."

What Do They Do About the Aftertaste?

One is left with a sense of bewilderment why Republicans insist on getting into bed with Trump. After all, he's a man who's infamous for demanding loyalty yet not feeling the slightest obligation to reciprocate it. As if we needed to be reminded, his own niece, Dr. Mary Trump, reminded us time and again that all of Trump's relationships, or what passes for them, are purely transactional. And the transactions, 110% of the time, have to benefit him. Any mutual benefit to others is purely incidental or calculated to cast him in a benevolent light.

     Hence the bewilderment. Trump hadn't made any secret of the fact that it's always me, Me, ME 24/7. While still on the campaign trail over four years ago, the late Senator John McCain reluctantly gave Trump his endorsement even after Trump said in July 2015 that McCain was only a war hero because he was captured. Then McCain did the unthinkable and rescinded his endorsement from the man who actually equated military service during war with sleeping around and avoiding STDs.

     Trump never let up on McCain even while he was dying in Sedona, AZ from brain cancer and even after his death. McCain egged him on in the twilight of his life by handing the Steele Dossier over to the FBI then casting the deciding vote not to kill Obamacare. But that was just the beginning of Trump's shameless apostasy.

    Since then, he's attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for reopening Florida too early, even though that was precisely what Trump told him to do. He's now attacking Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for doing their jobs and certifying the election results, thereby making official President-elect Joe Biden's wins in their respective states. In fact, the once bosom buddy relationship has deteriorated to the point where Ducey wouldn't even take a call from the White House on his cell phone even as he was certifying the results on live TV.

     He's already attacked Bill Barr, his official fixer and star rodeo clown during the Mueller Report, and it's only a matter of time before Trump attacks his Attorney General for admitting there was no evidence of voter fraud or at least enough to overturn the election results. Yes, ladies and germs, we could be looking at Acting AG Rudy Giuliani during the last 51 days of Trump's term.

     Now, by calling the election in doubt to the very voters who will decide the balance of power in the US Senate, Georgia voters, he's essentially guaranteeing that Republican voters will stay away from an election they've been convinced by him is rigged and already been decided. It'd be exceedingly irresponsible and dangerous for any Democrat, especially the Rev. Gordon Warnock and Jon Ossoff, to feed those fears. But neither are they obligated to stand in Trump's way and encourage Republican voters to come out for the January 5th runoff elections. Because as the old political saying goes, when your opponent is falling, do not get in the way.