The former President’s loss in the E. Jean Carroll civil suit on accusations of sexual assault and defamation – but not rape – has provoked a visit or two from the ghost of former Rep. Earl Landgrebe, the owner of the quote, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot,” in connection with his loyalty to then-President Nixon.
Let’s start with Senator Rubio (R-FL):
“That jury’s a joke. The whole case is a joke,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday.
“If someone accuses me of raping them and I didn’t do it, and you’re innocent, of course you’re going to say something about it … it was a joke,” Rubio added of the defamation findings. [HuffPo]
Senator Tuberville (R-AL) gets in on the brown-nosing:
“It makes me want to vote for him twice,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told HuffPost when asked about the verdict. “They’re going to do anything they can to keep him from winning. It ain’t gonna work … people are gonna see through the lines; a New York jury, he had no chance.”[HuffPo]
Senator Scott (R-FL):
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), another Trump ally, simply repeated Trump’s denial of the allegation. “He said he didn’t do it,” Scott said. Asked if he could support someone found liable for sexual battery, the senator said, “I don’t know the facts. It’s a New York jury, too.”
One longs to hear Scott’s explanation, incoherent as it might be, for how it being a New York jury might be relevant.
So what’s going on? As I’ve mentioned before, Trump is not an accident or an invader, he is the product of a Republican Party whose culture directly produced a mendacious, boastful, grasping, and incompetent boob.
If his supporters condemn him, they condemn themselves through association: they are basically Trump’s ideological and moral siblings. That’s not acceptable to them, so of course they’re not condemning him en masse.
Instead, it appears the strategy is minimization and distraction. Erick Erickson demonstrates the first here:
How is the Jean Carroll lawsuit, funded by Democrats, supposed to hurt Donald Trump? I mean, really. The man was caught on video talking about how women would let him grab them by their…you know… and he still won a presidential election.
A lawsuit funded by Democrats in New York City about events that happened decades ago and rejected the central accusation of rape will not be what does in Donald Trump. But don’t tell the Democrats. They believe, epistemically, that this is the beginning of the end of Donald Trump. See the video above. We’ve been promised the beginning of the end since he got elected when they said there was no way he could be elected.
Grabbing women didn’t stop his election. Adultery did not stop him. Porn stars did not stop him. This will not stop Donald Trump. Neither will Alvin Bragg’s silly prosecution that even Democrats roll their eyes at.
And the second here:
Joe Biden and his extended family have received at least $10 million in shady deals from foreign nationals during his time as Vice President. Hunter Biden and at least eight other family members were involved in the creation of at least 16 companies that profited from countries overlapping with the policy initiatives Joe Biden oversaw in the Obama admin…
As to this latter post, entitled “Damning Evidence of Biden Corruption,” and mostly behind a paywall, this is the first I’ve heard of it. That means maybe Erickson is right.
But his history isn’t encouraging. While I’ll be waiting to hear more about this report, which apparently comes from a House committee, I will not be surprised if it sinks into the swamp. It smells of distraction, it smells of moral equality. Our guy may be shit, but so’s yours!
And, meanwhile, the GOP Senate response to Trump’s loss in court remains an embarrassment to all concerned.
