Today is Tuesday, August 9, 2022. A day has passed since the “unprecedented” search warrant was executed on the residence of the former president by agents of the FBI and the news has been chock full of stories about this stunning development. But the reaction on the far right was oh-so-understandable and downright disgusting, as expected. It appears that Dumpf’s acolytes won’t leave him until he’s indicted and sent to jail. This could take awhile, but in the meantime, the former whiner-in-chief will do everything in his power to agitate his zombie base to cause dissension in the country, possibly to the point of starting a “civil war.”

As a country, we should be totally dispirited by those freaking out over this investigation on the far right who still are operating in an alternate universe who think their orange-haired leader was the victim of political persecution. Have they forgotten their own unrelenting campaign of hostility against Hillary Clinton so easily? They never claimed this wasn’t politically motivated. Weren’t they obsessed with this Democrat to the point of chanting “Lock her up!” at Dumpf rally after rally? Can’t we be forgiven if we now start a new chant concerning Dumpf, given the latest news, by intoning, “Lock him up?” The hypocrisy of Republicans is just so shocking, it’s not even funny anymore.

As for explaining what really motivated the FBI to conduct that search warrant on Mar-a-Largo yesterday, Trump impeachment lawyer Daniel Goldman elucidated on the reasons in an online article for RawStory by Brad Reed entitled “‘This is a guy flushing documents down the toilet’: Impeachment lawyer explains why FBI needed Mar-a-Largo warrant.”

Goldman contends the U.S. Department of Justice executed this search warrant on the former president’s Florida estate because it couldn’t trust the former president to willingly hand over classified documents in his possession.

During a CNN panel discussing the Mar-a-Largo search, Goldman said that Dumpf’s history of mishandling official White House documents gave the FBI reason enough to bypass subpoenaing the documents and going straight for a search warrant. So it would appear that the truth-challenged ex-president brought it on himself, despite his complaining about it after the fact. But does his supporters ever think of the real reason behind this move on the part of a U.S. law enforcement agency? Never – they would rather believe the swill fed them by the Big Lie con man. Goldman states, “This is speculation, but from my experience as a federal prosecutor, I would suspect that DOJ has very good information from a witness that there is more there. And that’s why they did the search warrant. Remember, this is a guy who is flushing documents down the toilet. You’re not going to go ask him to turn something over. So, you have to do a search warrant.”

Oh, I forgot to mention this interesting tidbit to those who are interested: The “raid” on Mar-a-Largo occurred, incidentally, on the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation from the White House. Does anyone see a parallel here from that event 48 years ago to yesterday’s “unprecedented” occurrence? Will we soon see the “resignation” of the former president from polite society, as it were?

Another online article for Salon reveals another fact that the public should know about the just recently executed search warrant on Dumpf’s Florida estate is that the target of this warrant, Dumpf himself, knows the true nature of the warrant but is deliberately shielding the world from its particulars. Instead, “the wizard of lies” engaged in a diatribe that failed to mention any of the details inherent in the search warrant. He made vague mention of a safe that was violated by the FBI, but who really knows if he’s even telling the truth about this. The writer of the piece, Amanda Marcotte, contends in her article, “Trump, Alex Jones and Steve Bannon: GOP goons follow a familiar playbook when accountability knocks” that Dumpf failed to “utter a single syllable about the specifics of the warrant served on him.” She descriptively writes, “Instead, his statement was a diarrhea stream of deflections about Watergate and Hillary Clinton, centered around a conspiracy theory that Trump is a victim of ‘political persecution.'”

Marcotte further writes that Dumpf’s strategy isn’t subtle. “Trump is trying to fill the information vacuum left by the FBI’s silence with lies.” She further adds the pernicious aim of this strategy, saying, “He wants to fill up his followers’ minds with paranoid gibberish, so that by the time actual details come out, the facts cannot penetrate their red hats.”

As for Dumpf’s loathsome pal, Alex Jones, who was just handed down a $45.2 million judgment for defaming the parents of a child murdered in the Sandy Hook school shooting, he too seems to be following the same playbook that Dumpf has resorted to be using. While Jones’ trial was progressing, the founder of Infowars was raving to his loyal audience outside the courtroom, saying how the whole trial was a “deep state” and “Democrat” conspiracy to silence him from his supposed truth telling and other such “laughable nonsense.” So it would be reasonable to say that Jones barely bothered to put up a defense in court, instead focusing almost entirely on the outside game, which is what Dumpf is doing with his announcement of being the “victim” of a lawfully executed search warrant. Jones continued to rile up his unhinged base, hoping the plaintiffs, judge, and jury would just give up. But we know none of these people were particularly intimidated by Jones’ feeble strategy.

Another goon playing by the same rulebook, Steve Bannon, the chronically disheveled Dumpf strategist and all-around foe of democracy, also used the strategy of focusing on outside-the-court intimidation when he was facing charges of refusing a congressional subpoena related to the January 6 insurrection. “Bannon regularly held press conferences that were a mix of bravado-laced threats and whining about alleged persecution.” For a minute, his strategy did seem to scare a few folks, “but soon it became clear that Bannon had nothing but hot air to fall back on – and hot air is notoriously not the sturdiest of mattresses.” Great metaphor.

All three of these repulsive figures in American cultural life may not be fooling most of America with their balderdash, but sadly, they are speaking to an audience of armed and unhinged people who are eager to please them. So who knows what could happen if Dumpf becomes the target of an actual federal indictment? In the case of the organization that conducted the warrant on Mar-a-Largo, this appeal to violence among his supporters would be hard to carry out since what does one do against the FBI; it’s not the same as the January 6 insurrection where there was a clear and definite location to conduct an attack against, in this case, the U.S. Capitol. So this could be nothing but hot air from the bombastic ex-president. Let’s hope so!

Just a reminder: Tomorrow I will not be writing my blog since it’s our wedding anniversary. Elliot and I hope to see a Broadway play and have dinner out. Let’s hope this oppressive heat wave ends tomorrow. Today was unbearable.

Stay safe and be well.