Tag: Steve Bannon

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“Present the Body” — Yes. Mayors, too

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

May 10th 2025

On his podcast the other day, a right winger calling himself “DC Draino” (his parents, somewhat more sane, named him Rogan O’Handley) urged Steve Bannon to consider that eventually Donald Trump would have to suspend habeas corpus. Bannon has no formal role in the Trump administration, but like so many ‘positions’ in the incoherent world of Donald Trump, title, or lack thereof, has little to do with power and influence in this junta. Bannon has considerable power and influence, and didn’t seem to find suspending habeas corpus objectionable.

Nor did the White House mouthpiece: “I have not heard such discussions take place, but I can assure you that the President and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals on our nation’s border,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Well, the ‘legal and constitutional remedies’ that Baghdad Barbie envisioned is mentioned in the Constitution, as follows: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Since this appears in Article One, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives,” this is a power of Congress and not the administration.

The administration has proffered the fantasy that Venezuela is invading, or fostering an invasion of the United States through a criminal cartel called Tren de Aragua. A dozen courts have determined that this rationale has no basis in law or reality, but the Trump junta is still pushing it as ‘fact.’ Leavitt is lying.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for the crime of standing on public property outside of an ICE facility talking peacefully with two congressional representatives opposing the illegal incarceration of people in defiance of habeas corpus. They argued briefly with ICE thugs a few minutes earlier but had peacefully retreated. The mayor was singled out (a progressive Democrat, he had opposed the building of the facility on zoning issues and is running for Governor of New Jersey this fall). Nobody else was arrested or even asked to leave.

Trump’s gestapo may have realized they overstepped, and the mayor was released a couple of hours later, and he reported he was treated with respect during his incarceration although undeniably a prisoner.

Alina Habba, Trump’s personal mouthpiece and acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, claimed Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. … He has been taken into custody.”

In true Pravda form, DHS flak Tricia McLaughlin said, “Today, as a bus of detainees was entering the security gate of Delaney Hall Detention Center, a group of protestors [sic], including two members of US Congress, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.” Video shows that the arrest was clearly made on public property, the mayor and his fellow Bastille-stormers having already obeyed warnings and backed off.

Apparently ICE is so fragile that two middle aged congressionals exchanging sharp words with heavily armed guards is considered a “storming.” God help the poor wee bastards if someone flips them the bird. Although if Congressionals were doing this storming, why did they arrest the mayor instead? Wasn’t his role more along the lines of a brief shower, rather than a storm?

Over 200 court decisions have found Trump’s executive orders pertaining to arrests of immigrants or firing of federal employees and cutting of allocated budgets to be illegal, or at the very least, overreach. He has, in total, five decisions that didn’t just slap him flat.

Trump is becoming more erratic and less coherent by the day. Any other president displaying the behavioral and cognitive symptoms Trump has would have either been convinced to step down or face a 25th Amendment process to remove him from office.

But Trump is just the puppet. It’s the powerful extremist movements backing him that are the real danger: the fascistic Heritage Foundation and its dream of corporate takeover of America, the racist and nationalist neo-Nazis like Steve Bannon, and the religious nutjobs who want a vicious theocracy. They are the ones behind this, and they are the ones pulling the strings of the increasingly befuddled and pathetic Trump. He doesn’t even know if he is supposed to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.

We are now very rapidly approaching the point where the administration has become outlaw—it has already begun arresting judges and threatening members of congress for the crime of opposing them. It is ignoring, sometimes blatantly, 200 court decisions against it. And it is still quite literally tearing apart the fabric of USA governance, leaving the people with no representation and totally at the mercy of incredibly rapacious and corrupt criminals.

I still maintain hope of a peaceful and democratic solution to all this. Anything else will be a horror show. But we are now at the point where anyone who has taken an oath to obey the Constitution must oppose these people, and prepare for the eventuality that it may have to be “by any means necessary.”

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Contempt — The fascist right can dish it out. Can they take it?

Contempt

The fascist right can dish it out. Can they take it?

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 12th 2021

“[Steve] Bannon, 67, is charged with one contempt count involving his refusal to appear for a deposition and another involving his refusal to produce documents.” With that a federal grand jury today indicted Bannon with two felony counts. The Select Committee investigating the January 6th riots promptly announced that it would seek similar indictments against Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on similar charges.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Since my first day in office, I have promised Justice Department employees that together we would show the American people by word and deed that the department adheres to the rule of law, follows the facts and the law and pursues equal justice under the law. Today’s charges reflect the department’s steadfast commitment to these principles.”

It couldn’t have come at a better time. The fascist right, including that organized crime cartel The Republican Party, have been further and further outside of the constraints of the law, and growing ever more egregious and assertive in their sneers at the law. People, including me, were wondering if the Democrats and the legal and judicial authorities of the land had the resolve and courage to stand up to these fascist scofflaws.

It came at a time when at least some of the more egregious rioters at the January 6th insurrection were getting some serious jail sentences, four years or more. Decent people in America were sickened and disgusted by a parade of stories of people who beat cops and threatened the lives of public officials who were being treated with kid gloves. It came as a time when a flag-wagging clown of a judge was openly rooting for the defendant, who was accused of murdering two unarmed protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally and injuring another. Another murder case, in which two white men waylaid and killed a black man for the crime of jogging on a public street (or at least, that’s the excuse they offered) had a defense attorney comfortable enough in his ignorant racism to complain in open court in front of the judge and jury about the “black pastors” allowed to sit with the family of the victims. That was too much even for that judge, who upbraided the attorney for his swinish remark.

Of course, death threats are proliferating. A Republican Congressman got death threats from some anonymous piece of shit for the ‘crime’ of voting for the infrastructure bill that passed Congress last week. Another guy, Kenneth Gasper, 64, was arrested Wednesday for a telephoned death threat against Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who also broke ranks with the party on that vote.

Both threatening calls came in the wake of Congressional Joke of the Month Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who slammed the 13 Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill as traitors, and America’s Jabba the Hut gone rancid, Donald Trump, who whined long and loudly about a bill that he himself used to say he was going to present to Congress, He would do this every six months or so, grandly announcing it was “Infrastructure Week.” Of course nothing would happen because of Donald’s greatest strength as President—his utter incompetence and inability to lead.

It isn’t enough that Republicans have abandoned the values and beliefs they once held as Americans: they’ve abandoned the values and beliefs they once held as Republicans. According to Michael Moline at the Florida Phoenix, “The state of Florida would pay workers to quit their jobs by giving them unemployment benefits rather than submit to vaccine mandates under legislation filed for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ special session of the Legislature, due to convene next week.” Imagine: Republicans, paying people for refusing to work. Savor it.

If you need evidence of the hypocrisy and profound stupidity of Trump’s followers, there it is in a nutshell. They want to murder people for supporting something Trump was for just a year ago.

And there have been myriad incidents of people assaulting hapless employees for requesting people to wear masks per the law, or even for obeying federal rules regarding vaccines. One guy assaulted an American Airlines flight attendant so badly she needed surgery for facial damage. AA, to their credit, banned the guy from their planes for life, but he needs to be up on felony assault charges.

Heroes of the Heil Trump Brigade have been threatening and abusing school boards, voter registrars and volunteers, and regular employees.

If you threaten the life of anyone, it is a felony. If you make lesser threats against a public official, that is also a felony, and no, it isn’t free speech under the Constitution.

It’s time we went after Trump’s scofflaws. They need to be tracked down, reported, and arraigned.

Today’s move against Steve Bannon was a good start.

 

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It Can’t Happen Here — Of Course It Can. It Just Did.

By on Monday, June 18, 2018

June 18th 2018

Is there anyone reading this who approves of taking children from undocumented immigrants and throwing them in concentration camps? If so, please stop reading now, and go throw yourself into the intake of a running jet engine, or try flossing with a running chainsaw. I don’t much care what happens to you, as long as I don’t have to put up with you. Go. Now.

“It Can’t Happen Here” is, of course, the title of a 1935 satirical novel by Sinclair Lewis. It was a time of Huey Long and Father Coughlin, when American plutocrats openly admired fascism and strove to push America in the same direction as Germany and Italy. Both the Presidents Bush and Trump are descendants of the 1930s proto-Nazis who thought Hitler offered a better way.

It was also a time when Americans viewed themselves as independent and freer than any people on the face of the Earth* (well, the 35% of Americans who could own property if they wanted, eat at any restaurant, or run for office). It was a time when the notion that big business was a friend to Americans and would treat them fairly was rapidly losing ground, and both fascism and communism were gaining ground amongst working Americans with promises of decent income and respect.

Lewis understood that in times of deep national crisis, Americans could be their own worst enemy, more than willing, desperate to follow the siren songs of every demagogue that came down the path. And of course, quite a few did.

As horrible as the current situation is, I do see one ray of hope. I’ve never seen the American public so outraged, and it includes segments of the population that I believed had simply abandoned all ethics and decency in order to follow Trump. Wide swatches of the fundamentalist Christian movement, which had just last month been 80% pro-Trump, are not only breaking with Trump over the incredible cruelty of his immigration policy. Two governors, in Massachusetts and Colorado, have respectively pulled their National Guard or mandated they not participate in the ‘jail the children’ movement. Every single living first lady, including Melania, have condemned this.

Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, America’s tag-team of five-and-dime fascists, openly chortled over how effective truly vicious cruelty could be in dealing with the relatively trivial problem of immigrants sneaking in. Jeff Sessions, America’s most despicable Southern-fried pixie, described the Trump policy as “zero-tolerance policy that leads to the high rate of family separations as a method to deter immigrants.”

Steal their children and throw them in the camps. His answer to the immigration problem is to turn American into a place no decent, sane person would ever want to visit. It’s an effective policy; immigration to Germany plummeted in the late 30s.

Trump tried to play all sides of the issue, first declaring that throwing children in concentration camps would continue until he got his silly wall. Then he said it was a Democratic Law that was causing it, and his hands were tied. (Apparently he forgot that the policy—not law, policy—of jailing the kids began just six weeks ago). Most recently, he sent his forlorn flack, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out to explain that America wasn’t throwing children in camps. They shipped the Gestapo head in all the way from New Orleans, where she presumably was setting fire to kittens, to fill in for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who apparently couldn’t take another day of discussing the matter with the press.

Sanders is the most shameless and souless liar in America, and it would be nice to assume that she finally reached the bottom, ethically and spiritually. Hell, maybe she has. She wouldn’t be the first fundie this week to go, “Hey, Trump ain’t no Jesus! He’s a dirtbag!”

Trump today declared America would not become a “migrant camp.” Silly bastard doesn’t realize the United States have ALWAYS been a migrant camp. Nearly all of us are from somewhere else. Trump’s grandfather was from Germany, and opened a whore house in Canada. Then came to America to inflict his predatory capitalism on Americans. A fine family tradition.

I wonder how many members of the Trump administration have asked themselves, “Suppose it was my kids? How would I feel if they were forcibly taken from me, and tossed into a camp where they were not to be told how long they would be there, or if they would ever see their parents again? If the children cried, nobody could comfort them or even touch them. Apparently the administration isn’t even keeping track of what kids belong to what parents.  Have they discarded the notion that some of these kids might survive the camps?

An audiotape came out today that had one of the concentration camp guards mocking a childrenfor crying. Said guard sounds like someone who needs to be run over by a bus. Slowly. Repeatedly. While an orchestra plays. He can conduct, if he wants.

But Sanders probably just didn’t want to put up with those uppity reporters. I’m quite certain Trump is looking for internment facilities for the media, CNN in particular.

Or maybe she realized the Trump administration is doomed, and is just mailing it in now.

Doesn’t matter. Once she’s out of the White House, she’ll spend the rest of her life trying not to be recognized whenever she goes outside. That seems a reasonable fate.

Meanwhile, Trumpkins need to beware. Autocrats like Trump always end up turning on their own, and before America finally rids itself of him, he’ll have a fair bit of opportunity to do just that. Just ask Jeff Sessions. (OK, Sessions richly deserves abuse. But still).

Trumpkins, the next children Trump throws into the maw of his vicious Gulag monument to his ego might be yours. History makes that a near certainty. Especially if Americans wait too long, and this dissolute monster consolidates his power.

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