…aloud (via Bloomberg):
President Donald Trump predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the outcome of the November election and argued the Senate should confirm his nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to break any tie.
“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices, and I think the system’s going to go very quickly,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House, after criticizing the legitimacy of mail-in voting. He made the remarks during a meeting with Republican attorneys general about alleged anti-conservative bias of tech companies.
“I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling, it’s a scam, this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court and I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation,” Trump said. “Just in case it would be more political than it should be, I think it’s very important to have a ninth judge.”
Yeah, that’s alarming.
debbie
This man really is a cancer
ETA: Even Norm Ornstein realizes how much the GOP has damaged our democracy.
Gravenstone
He’s too stupid to realize that one of the reliable liberal votes is the one he’s clamoring to replace
eta: does he expect Roberts to vote against his scheme?
TaMara (HFG)
I just read the Atlantic article and now I’m gonna need a nap to cope.
TaMara (HFG)
Oh, I guess not until I read the Vanity Fair piece, too.
Ryan
Isn’t he saying that he doesn’t have any faith in the circuit court judges he installed?
Betty Cracker
@Gravenstone: That’s how I interpret it. I think he’s pissed at Roberts and maybe Gorsuch too for some adverse ruling (from Trump’s perspective) that I can’t recall.
patrick II
None of Trump’s attempts to stay in power are a surprise. Like any criminal who becomes a president or prime minister, he cannot leave office without being tried for crimes, so they will take any steps to stay. Trump’s particular genius is that he is able to draw so many others into his illegal activities. But the Republican party has been primed for it for a long time. Thomas Hobbes wrote many years ago that in conflicts between political power groups, such as religious, business, military or secular power centers, one of those must be able to make the final decision to be the sovereign. In his time he recommended it be the king. In our time in our country of equals democracy should be the ultimate ruler, but some Republicans (like most of Wall Street) think it should be capitalism and others, religious fanatics like William Barr or most Evangelicals, think it should be God’s Law. The heart of the Republican party doesn’t believe in democracy at all, and when they gathered enough power, as they have been planning for years, democracy in this country will end.
PsiFighter37
@TaMara (HFG): There will be holy hell raised if that happens – and if he even bothers to try it, you better believe that we should absolutely do our damndest to change the system of government wholly if it does.
debbie
Jesus, a coup in the United States of America. If my parents were alive, they’d be dead at just the mention of this.
Damien
@TaMara (HFG): I read a Tweet from the NRA last night (I know, but I went to report it) that said ammo sales have jumped 136% recently. They clearly seem to think it’s all wingers doing the buying, but I really don’t know about that.
kindness
Here in California I’m not all that worried about the integrity of my Elections people and our judges. Now some of you in the rest of the country…..Man…..This is going to make the Brooks Brothers riots look like Kindergarden.
A Ghost to Most
@debbie: Having had a ring-side seat to the growth and mutation of this malignant mass mental disease all my life, I had a big head start on most folks.
I’m glad to see y’all are catching up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie: Norm Ornstein has been on record for a while with that opinion
even more interesting is the article he wrote about the response to that one
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@A Ghost to Most: thanks for the chuckle on this otherwise dark day
Yutsano
I need to know who told the woolly marmot on his head this idea. Because yes states can choose electors who do not choose the candidate who got the popular vote in their state. They’re trying a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact on reverse. Instead of it going to the national popular vote winner, it’s going to the loser because he happens to be in charge. Any state that tries to go for this will have massive protests and riots. I can’t see how this won’t end in either blood or dissolution if this is somehow upheld. If this goes through I think the Left Coast is gone. We’ll get Pacifica up and running and Washington officially becomes Cascadia.
OT: whatever happened to Bob in Pacifica anyway?
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
To Republicans, when people vote, it’s a scam.
These fuckers have never gotten over the Civil War.
catclub
That would be extremely grim. All the south wanted to do was leave, so they could keep their preferred laws.
catclub
Bob in Portland?
kindness
@Yutsano: The Pacific Republic. We’ll take CA & Oregon, but Washington has to ditch the crazies out of Spokane.
Pamoya
So he is totally asking all of the potential nominees if they’d vote for him in an election case. And going with the one whose answer he likes best.
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: I think Norm has been talking about this since 2006 or so. It’s why he was kicked off the cable news shows – he insisted that it really wasn’t both sides, it was just Republicans.
MisterForkbeard
@Pamoya: At this point it’s basically implied. He says he needs a justice that will rule against Democrats.
Therefore, any justice that wants the job now explicitly understands that they need to rule against Democrats.
Aleta
leeleeFL
Let me just say this man is so predictably evil and dangerous I am beginning to fear he will break the Republic before we can vote him out of office. Even Republicans have to be feeling fear. Sweet holy Jeebus, he is amazingly awful even from my perch, and I knew what a piece of crap he was when I was a kid.
Woodrow/asim
Gorsuch has ruled against “conservative values” a couple of times — supporting civil rights for gay, lesbian and transgender Federal workers, and for Native American treaties in that Oklahoma case that was…not well explained, in the media.
Lavocat
I honestly cannot believe someone has not taken a shot at this traitor.
Archon
Republican elected officials and judges are going to have to decide if they are going to end the American experiment for Donald fucking Trump.
MisterForkbeard
@Lavocat: It’s probably coming, if he keeps it up. And that’s going to be a disaster for America.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, he referred to that article often in today’s broadcast. Still, he remains aghast.
Splitting Image
@TaMara (HFG):
Abramson isn’t wrong there, but I’m not entirely confident that a group who thought Hillary Clinton’s emails were the most important story of 2016 has the sense of proportion necessary to understand this.
leeleeFL
@Splitting Image: Truthfully, I think, until recently, all of this has been a game to them. One they have always, somehow, won. tRump has been spiraling downward for four years, until now, he truly, truly seems to be the destroyer from within that Lincoln warned us about. He is aiding and abetting the foreign power to drink from the rivers of America. I really do feel sick!
Jinchi
One of the conservative justices would have to break in order for there to be a 4-4 situation.
This in combination with Mitt Romney’s quote the other day that liberals have “gotten very used to the idea of having a liberal court” is their way of pushing a right wing fantasy that the court up until last week was somehow dominated by liberals, Roberts among them.
Jinchi
Didn’t Kavanaugh basically declare that he was out for vengence during his own testimony?
Jinchi
It’s not genius. Trump is a symptom of the complete corruption of the Republican party. They could have checked his worst impulses at any time. They simply chose not to.
leeleeFL
@Jinchi: If their oaths mean anything at all to even a few of them, now is the time for that fact to be revealed.
evap
I’m scared about a lot of things, but the Supreme Court installing Trump after he loses the election isn’t one of them. As a posted in a thread below. It’s the media, they need their clicks.
Soprano2
I read that Atlantic article at lunch, now I feel like I need a whole bottle of wine.
Mag
I wonder if Canada will open up its southern border for humanitarian reasons despite the pandemic if this happens? If there is violence, then there will be refugees fleeing it.
Uncle Cosmo
You mean the classic arsehole Boob in Putinland, nyet?
Zzyzx
Why do you think I’ve been freaking? Trump telegraphed this hours after Ginsburg died.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think the article he wrote in response was “WOW HOLY SHIT the Republicans are EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT*”
*in fact (seriously) wasn’t that the title of their book?
cain
@kindness:
You are referring to the great country of Cascadia. Which for some reason includes Idaho.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@cain: Idaho has ski resorts
Amir Khalid
@catclub:
We all remember Bob in Portland for being a Russia/Putin apologist. He stands out in my memory for his campaign to convince me that Ukraine shot down MH17.
Chris Johnson
Really strange to not see the phrase ‘GET RID OF THE BALLOTS’ all over Balloon Juice.
Cheetolini actually said that. Man said, on camera:
That’s literal. I saw the video of it. His answer to ‘how will you guarantee a peaceful transfer of power’ is ‘come and get me, coppers!’
Ask him that again. Feed him more rope. He is NOT supposed to say shit like that, his tyrant license will be fuckin’ revoked, the dumbshit.
You’re not supposed to say ‘get rid of the ballots, and then there will not BE a transfer of power, there’ll be a continuation’. Like fucking hell there will be. Anyone asked the military, who swear to the Constitution, what they think about that? Just because shit-for-brains cares about nobody and nothing doesn’t mean every other fucking person in the country is as brain-damaged as he is.