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Shouting Fire in a Crowded Country [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-04

As much as Donald Trump and his sycophant entourage try to muddy the waters, the growing sense of his guilt is evident. Even with his lawyers wearing the mantle of disinformation by pleading his 1st Amendment right to lie, the smoke will clear, and the truth will out. For years I have used the phrase the truth is an easy master to serve, and a lie will enslave you. The Republican party and nearly 70% of their voters have shackled themselves to the wagon of Trump’s lies. Flogged and tied to the never ending tranche of grift and graft, conservatism is gasping to breathe. Donald Trump arrived yesterday in Washington DC (actually Reagan National Airport in Virginia) on his private 757 airliner before proceeding to court on the dime of his loyal supporters.

Republicans have moved the goalposts so often and so high to condemn or investigate the criminality of Donald Trump—Paul Bunyan could not kick it through the uprights. After Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, the Republicans cried foul, saying the electorate should have the final word. When he was voted out of office in 2020, they said the fix was in. After his second impeachment, they said the Democrats were supplanting the judicial system by playing judge and jury. Now that the actual judicial system has been called upon, Trump will undoubtedly call Jamaican-born American Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, picked to oversee the case, a racist immigrant, out to get the former President.

In the Introduction, Special Counsel Jack Smith stated in the plain language of his speaking indictment and by every slathering barrister on tv that this is not a 1st Amendment case. Famously the most widely quoted limit on free speech was ruled on by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., laying out the legal consequences of shouting fire in a crowded theater. Jack Smith made it clear Donald Trump could lie on tv, in rallies, and to his dead mother if he liked; the charges involved what he did, not what he said. “The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election, and even to claim falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” reads the indictment. Smith also made it clear that his case rests on the evidence of Mr. Trump and at least six of his co-conspirators corruptly working to change or alter vote counts, “ Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discouraging legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In doing so, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies.”

As long and as loud Mr. Trump’s defense team and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and his ilk cry that the former President’s 1st Amendment is being violated, they are wrong, and worst of all, they know it. Standing outside the bank yelling I WOULD LOVE TO ROB THIS BANK is stupid but not criminal—going in later, masked, with a gun and a loot bag, will get you either dead or in jail. Donald Trump robbed America’s bank of trust and allegedly went about doing it most overtly. The media will remind us Trump grows stronger with Republicans after each indictment. Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, and Bonnie & Clyde were famous criminals whose legends have grown stronger but were also heinous lawbreakers.

Vote Against Guns

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/4/2185078/-Shouting-Fire-in-a-Crowded-Country

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