On MSNBC Wednesday, longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt tore into the GOP for abandoning its principles for the blind pursuit of power.

“I do not understand how elected Republicans like Mitch McConnell, and even right-wing hosts like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, do not say, today, there’s a line that can’t be crossed and that’s violence,” said anchor Nicolle Wallace.

“That line is in the rearview mirror, Nicolle,” said Schmidt. “They crossed it. They crossed the Rubicon. We cannot be fantastical in wishing what has not happened has happened in our thinking. It has happened. We’ve watched it play out. We’ve watched Trump and his loony attorneys. We’ve watched the declarations of fraud. We’ve seen United States senators, members of the House of Representatives, they all knew — they all know that Biden has won the election. What they’re doing is for no purpose other than power. The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class.”

“There has never been a force that has achieved power, or is within reach of achieving power in the next election, that’s been so hostile to the history, the foundings, the essence and the entire meaning of the country, as is this Trump and Trumpist movement that has taken over lock, stock, and barrel the Republican Party,” added Schmidt. “It’s no longer dedicated to American democracy. It is dedicated to Trump and Trumpism and to his family, to defense of his indecencies, his autocratic manner, his corruptions, an apologist for the profound damage he has done.”

Watch below:

Legal experts are having a field day with the latest Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by 17 red states, trying to overturn the election by literally disenfranchising millions upon millions of U.S. citizens.

The case is without merit, legal experts say, but what may be even more embarrassing and ridiculous is President Donald Trump is trying to join the case. To do so, he must petition the Supreme Court, which he just did.

It appears the only attorney Trump could convince to file his motion is a “disgraced white supremacist” who “who thinks Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio are not U.S. citizens.”

That attorney is John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Eastman is also the chairman of the National Organization For Marriage (NOM), the far right wing anti-LGBTQ faith-based organization that spent millions of dollars of dark money in a failed attempt to ban same-sex couples from marrying.

Here’s Slate’s legal expert Mark Joseph Stern, predicting Trump has “lost already.”

When you are the president and the only lawyer willing to sign his name to your SCOTUS motion is a disgraced white supremacist … you have lost already. pic.twitter.com/BwG6vnzw9M

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) December 9, 2020

UC Irvine Professor of Law and Political Science Rick Hasen, who is also an election law expert:

I was wondering who the Trump campaign could get to file a motion to intervene in the bogus Texas lawsuit. Some top tier election/appellate firm? No, John Eastman, the chapman prof who thinks Kamala Harris and Marco Rubio are not U.S. citizenshttps://t.co/JjfgddluvL

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) December 9, 2020

By the way, the claims Eastman is a white supremacist come from a Newsweek op-ed he wrote that was so offensive its editors had to append an apology to it, which read, in part:

This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. The essay, by John Eastman, was intended to explore a minority legal argument about the definition of who is a “natural-born citizen” in the United States. But to many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.

Law & Crime’s Senior Investigative Reporter & Editor, Adam Klasfeld weighs in:

Trump’s lawyer on the brief is John C. Eastman, who wrote the infamous editorial about VP-elect Kamala Harris’s eligibility denounced widely as birtherism. https://t.co/JaQZ9Ru6mX https://t.co/426eipJXsh

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) December 9, 2020

National security attorney Bradley Moss:

Literally not how this works. https://t.co/6LjaCvmgjC

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 9, 2020

UCLA School of Law professor Sean Hecht points out a falsehood in Eastman’s filing – one Trump tweeted out earlier Wednesday:

There’s a misstatement of fact (an immaterial one, but one that apparently Eastman believes is material) on the first page of the brief! pic.twitter.com/wrTti5nygc

— Sean Hecht (@seanhecht) December 9, 2020

UPDATE:
It appears Eastman didn’t even write the motion he filed. He’s being accused of filing a motion written by the author of the original brief, which is definitely not something the Supreme Court will appreciate:

So the John Eastman brief for Trump was ghost-written by the guy who drafted Texas’s brief that the Eastman brief supports?
Oh my.
The Supreme Court will not appreciate the sock-puppetry, especially in a case with these stakes. https://t.co/U8AQZm0aeq

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) December 9, 2020

He is not an elected official and serves no public or government function but Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, says when he tested positive for COVID-19 Trump’s physician treated him and he received the same course of treatment – not commonly available to most Americans – as the President himself.

Throughout the pandemic there have been numerous reports of celebrities, sports stars, the wealthy and the well-connected getting priority access to coronavirus testing, but now it appears that President Trump is facilitating access to experimental but life-saving drugs for his friends.

“The minute I took the cocktail,” Giuliani said when he called into his own radio show Tuesday, “I felt 100% better,” Business Insider reports.

The COVID-19 cocktail has not been widely available to the general public. It reportedly includes Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody therapy, which was approved for emergency use less than three weeks ago.

“His doctor sent me here, talked me into it,” Giuliani said, adding he was given “exactly” the same cocktail President Trump received, according to CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz.

“I didn’t really want to go to the hospital and he said don’t be stupid, we can get it over in three days if we send you to the hospital.”

He also “claimed he was not aware of its high cost or lack of availability to the general public.”

Giuliani, who is 76-years old, “said he felt 10 years younger after receiving some of the same drugs taken by Trump when the president contracted COVID-19 in October,” US News added.

Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Kovensky reports the drugs that make up the cocktail Trump and Giuliani took are “in extremely short supply.”

“Monoclonal antibodies, which medical science generally agrees are the best shot at an effective treatment for the disease, are expensive and rare. One Florida hospital reported that its phone lines have been ‘bombarded’ by people wanting the drug.”

“What’s more,” Kovensky adds, “all of the doses in circulation currently belong to the U.S. government.”

The former New York City mayor who has traveled the country in recent weeks promoting a farcical circus act of conspiracy theories in an attempt to overturn the election results while getting smacked down in the nation’s court, is said to be leaving the hospital on Wednesday. He was admitted Sunday, despite suggesting he had only minor symptoms.

Kovensky asks the question many likely are wondering about: “is the President using the perks of his office to grant his friends medical help?”

Image via Shutterstock