The Thirty Ring Circus Around Donald Trump

      Always count on the Republican Party to immediately and shamelessly turn itself into a clown show rather than, say, a legitimate political party that's actually interested in governance, one that strives to earn the respect and trust of voters who don't try to overthrow the government with bike stands and fire extinguishers.

     Witness what we're seeing with this politically-palsied version of what used to be known as the Republican Party. They are so unwilling to confront the facts about Donald Trump and the search warrant that was executed at Mar a Lago last Monday and that they are literally quite willing to drag themselves into Trump's moral turpitude and to wallow in it.

     Not content with a three ring circus, the right wing is quite content to expand that by a factor of 10. And, as usual, in the middle of those 30 rings, stands the ring master, Donald Trump. Let's begin with the merely laughable:

     Political nonentity Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio decided it would be a corker of an idea to downplay the nuclear secrets that Donald Trump stole from the White House and stored with lawn chairs and umbrellas at Mar a Lago. "There are a number of things that are classified that fall under the umbrella of nuclear weapons but that are not necessarily things that are truly classified. Many of them you can find on your own phone."

     Except, I think the FBI and DOJ can be trusted to exercise some due diligence and know the difference between common, abstract knowledge about nuclear weapons that you can freely get on the internet and highly classified, specific knowledge about them that are marked "Top Secret" and to look, instead, for the secret shit that Trump stole. (Otherwise, why would Trump keep stuff that wasn't that important or sensitive instead of simply turning it over to the National Archives?)

     Then, there's the fact that even as the squatter in the White House who was generously referred to as the president, Trump wasn't allowed to unilaterally declassify certain nuclear documents as it would've required input from the Department of Energy.

     Another thing that Turner neglected to mention is the signal intelligence for which the FBI was also searching last Monday. The DOJ had released the search warrant and inventory that Trump opted to keep to himself and, on the inventory was certain signal intelligence documents. Several intelligence experts have already weighed in as to how important these documents are.

     Signal intelligence, or Sigint in intelligence parlance, is the interception of phone calls, text messages, emails and so forth generated by various parties of interest to the government. It often contains the contents of what was captured from thin air and, this is what makes sigint so dangerous, even a rare back door to understanding how the US government came by this information.

     In other words, we're talking about something much more potentially damaging than love letters from Kim Jong Un.

     So, of course, he had no valid excuse as to why up to 26 boxes of classified material was spirited out of the White House in the dead of night and wound up in an unsecured storage space in a resort that is extremely vulnerable to spies. You know, like this one, for instance. So that's why Trump and his dittoheads are accusing the FBI of planting evidence. That's not so laughable.

     This is an extremely dangerous and reckless lie that not only places the lives of FBI agents in danger, it resulted in an attack on the FBI Cincinnati field office yesterday that ended in a car chase and an hours-long shootout that resulted in the death of the gunman. That gunman, Ricky Shiffer, was seen at the Capitol on January 6th and had an account on Trump's Truth Social in which he'd written right before his death, 

     "Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn't. If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it'll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while —"

     He also posted angry screeds on that site the day after the search warrant was executed at Mar a Lago. He wrote,

     "People, this is it. I hope a call to arms comes from someone better qualified, but if not, this is your call to arms from me. Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat. We must not tolerate this one."

     Not a word from Truth Social, natch, except when they quietly scrubbed Shiffer's account.

     In other words, this loser from Ohio swallowed Trump's lies about the election then again about the search warrant, a lie that ended up costing him his life.

     They're even going after the judge, Bruce Reinhard, who'd signed off on the warrant. Right wingers on social media have used antisemitic names to describe him, he's been doxxed, with his address and phone numbers posted online. Fox even got in on the act when Brian Kilmeade's show purported to show Reinhard getting a foot massage from Ghislaine Maxwell. But Julie K. Brown, who broke the Epstein story in the pages of the Miami Herald, called bullshit on it and produced the original photo, which was of Jeffrey Epstein.

     Matt Gaetz, of course, had to get in on the act by comparing the FBI to the Stasi. Marjorie Taylor Greene, channeling Kevin McCarthy, is already vowing to impeach Merrick Garland for also signing off on the lawful warrant.

     And so forth and so on. The FBI dodged a bullet yesterday (or rather, nails from a nail gun). The next guy who decides to take up arms in Trump's service may be a little smarter and more successful than the idiot yesterday.