Last Call For Pardon The Destruction, Con't

At this point, Donald Trump may pardon people just because he can create chaos by doing it.

President Trump isn't just accepting pardon requests but blindly discussing them "like Christmas gifts" to people who haven't even asked, sources with direct knowledge of the conversations told Axios.

Behind the scenes: Trump recently told one adviser he was going to pardon "every person who ever talked to me," suggesting an even larger pardon blitz to come. As with most Trump conversations, the adviser wasn't sure how seriously to take the president — although Trump gave no indication he was joking.

The big picture: The president relishes his unilateral authority to issue get-out-of-jail-free cards. Lately, though, he's been soliciting recipients, asking friends and advisers who they think he should pardon.

Trump has also interrupted conversations to spontaneously suggest that he add the person he's speaking with to his pardon list, these sources said. The offers haven't always been welcome. One source felt awkward because the president was clearly trying to be helpful but the adviser didn't believe they had committed any crimes. The adviser also believed being on the list could hurt their public persona. The White House declined to comment.

Trump argues the preemptive pardons may be necessary because the Biden administration will target his former aides, the sources say. President-elect Biden has said he doesn't want to pursue the Trump team, and he has vowed an apolitical Justice Department.

The backstory: As Axios first reported, Trump's decision to pardon Michael Flynn set the template for a wave of pardons to friends and loyalists. One senior administration official said the practice has since expanded, with pardons being discussed "like Christmas gifts."

Trump is just going to pardon everybody, because he not only thinks he'll spite Biden by doing it, he'll create an army of instant loyalists who will never, ever sell him out to Tish James and Cyrus Vance in NY. It won't work like that, but Trump doesn't care. He's going to continue to abuse his power for as long as he has it. 

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Donald Trump continues to tell GOP state legislatures that they must overturn the election to install him as President in a coup, and so far they are resisting him.

 

President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make the extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result.

The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, mark the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden. He previously reached out to Republicans in Michigan, and on Saturday he pressured GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in a call to try to replace that state’s electors.

The president’s outreach to the Pennsylvania GOP House leader came after his campaign and its allies have decisively lost numerous legal challenges in the state in both state and federal court. Trump has continued to press his baseless claims of widespread voting irregularities both publicly and privately.

The president said, ‘I’m hearing about all these issues in Philadelphia, and these issues with your law,’” said Cutler spokesman Michael Straub, describing the House speaker’s two conversations with Trump. “What can we do to fix it?’”

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls to Cutler, and a Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors, Straub said.

But late last week, the House speaker was among roughly 60 Republican state lawmakers who sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s congressional representatives urging them object to the state’s electoral slate on Jan. 6, when Congress formally accepts the results.

Although such a move is highly unlikely to gain traction, at least one Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Scott Perry, said in an interview Monday he will heed the request and dispute the state’s electors.

The embrace of Trump’s false claims by many Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers shows how the president’s baseless attacks on the integrity of the election have gained traction with his supporters. Protesters chanting “Stop the Steal,” some with firearms, demonstrated over the weekend at the homes of Cutler in Pennsylvania and the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan.

 

Just because the coup is comically ham-fisted and Trump is doing this badly, we've now had dozens of frivolous legal challenges to the election results that Joe Biden has clearly won, and the longer the silence from the GOP goes on, the more likely officials in these states are going to be hurt or quite possibly killed by Trump's cultists.

Of course, cowardly Republican silence may actually preferable to the alternative of aiding and abetting sedition.

President Donald Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede even after President-elect Joe Biden wins the Electoral College vote next week, calling on their party's leader to battle it out all the way to the House floor in January as he makes unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. 

The view of Trump's defenders is at odds with that of many top congressional Republicans, including leaders of the Senate, who believe the election will be over next Monday when electors cast their votes and make Biden's win official -- even though the Democrat's victory in the presidential race has been clear for weeks. 

But conservative House Republicans argue that next week doesn't mark the end of Trump's desperate efforts to overturn the election results, which he has failed to do through scores of fruitless lawsuits and brazen efforts to pressure state and local leaders to subvert the will of voters and appoint new slates of electors to the Electoral College. They said that Congress should engage in a full-throated debate over the results in key states because of their allegations of fraud, which have yet to be borne out in court. 

Asked if Trump should concede next Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: "No. No way, no way, no way." 

"We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes, I think, debates on the House floor -- potentially on January 6," Jordan, a trusted Trump confidant, told CNN. 

It is not unusual for a losing candidate's most fervent supporters to take their case to the House floor -- something that occurred after the 2016, 2004 and 2000 presidential races. But it is unusual for the losing candidate to mount a weeks-long public campaign aimed at sowing discord and distrust over a pillar of democracy, something that Trump has done relentlessly since losing the race. 

 

So expect another month of this at the minimum, completely with an exponentially growing chance of deadly violence.

 

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

We're now a matter of weeks away from the housing cliff that will see more than ten million Americans facing immediate eviction into the heart of winter and the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic have fallen thousands of dollars behind on rent and utility bills, a warning sign that people are running out of money for basic needs.

Nearly 12 million renters will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent and utilities by January, Moody’s Analytics warns. Last month 9 million renters said they were behind on rent, according to a Census Bureau survey.

The numbers were especially high for families with children, with 21 percent falling behind on rent, and among families of color. About 29 percent of Black families and 17 percent of Hispanic renters were behind, the Census Bureau reported. A separate analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, looking at people who had jobs before the pandemic, found 1.3 million such households are now an average of $5,400 in debt on rent and utilities, after those people had lost jobs and their family’s income plunged.

Economists say these data points show the failure of the U.S. safety net during this crisis, which is inflicting economic pain that will hurt families for years.

With coronavirus cases at all-time highs, the economic recovery has stalled and job opportunities remain scarce. Only 245,000 jobs came back in November, the slowest pace since the recovery began. Restaurants and retailers cut jobs, and more small businesses are closing, data show.

The 20 million Americans receiving some kind of unemployment aid have seen their weekly checks dwindle since August, making it harder to pay bills. About 12 million unemployed are slated to have their benefits cut off entirely at the end of the year, because lawmakers have yet to agree on extending relief for the unemployed.

“The tidal wave is coming. It’s going to be really horrible for people,” said Charlie Harak, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The number of people who are now 90 days behind and the dollars they are behind are growing quite significantly.”

 

Understand that Republicans are 100% okay with this, because 30% of Black families and 20% of Latino families getting evicted means they can't vote, can't get federal aid, and frankly die in the winter of COVID hell. It's genocide, and politically it helps them.

 

And the only thing that matters is Republicans protecting corporations so that they can continue to exploit workers who are sick.

Congress wants an extra week of time to negotiate government funding legislation and a coronavirus relief bill, according to lawmakers and aides familiar with negotiations.

The House is eying a vote Wednesday on a one-week continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Monday.

It would move the Dec. 11 government funding deadline to next Friday, one week before Christmas.

The deadline extension will allow for another week of talks to find bipartisan agreement on an "omnibus" spending bill to keep the government open into next year. It will also allow for another week of negotiations on another round of Covid-19 relief, that could include unemployment benefits.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he anticipates the Senate to also take up a one-week stopgap bill in the hope of completing a full-year government funding package by the end of next week.

Congressional leaders have said that if any Covid-19 aid agreement is reached, it will be attached to a government funding measure to speed up passage.

Party leaders are negotiating the coronavirus relief package based on a $908 billion plan unveiled last week by a bipartisan rank-and-file group. The main sticking point is the parameters of a liability shield for companies and organizations, a GOP demand.

The emerging plan includes unemployment benefits, relief for restaurants and other small businesses, and aid to state and local governments to pay teachers, police and other workers. It does not include direct payments to Americans, which some Democrats and Republicans are still pushing for. 

 

No housing or utilities relief though. No stimulus checks. Maybe even a government shutdown.

 

Make no mistake, we're headed for absolute disaster, Trump and McConnell's final destructive stroke to impoverish and kill millions.

 

Instant humanitarian catastrophe.

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Joe Biden is expected to pick retired Gen. Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary, Austin, if confirmed, would be the first Black man to lead the Pentagon.
• Some 33 million Californians are now under stay-at-home orders under Gov. Gavin Newsom's criteria as the state's COVID-19 cases now top 1.4 million.
• Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga has announced a new round of $708 billion in stimulus spending, following some $2.2 trillion in two previous 2020 packages.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is now personally headed to Brussels as Brexit trade talks between the UK and EU have now reached a critical point with time running out at the end of the year.
• Ride-sharing giant Uber is selling its self-driving Aurora startup as the company never recovered from a fatal 2018 accident involving a self-driving vehicle hitting a pedestrian.