“The president’s lawyers asked a judge Friday to extend key deadlines on the multibillion lawsuit against his presidential administration, but hidden within the pages of the legal filing was a profound detail: that the president has been in talks with his own government staffers to ‘avoid protracted litigation,'” The New Republic reports.
News
Marjorie Taylor Greene Takes Potshot at Biden in September 11 Tribute
Monday marks the 22nd anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. While most politicians are keeping partisanship out of it—even, uncharacteristically, Donald Trump—Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took the time to slam President Joe Biden in her tribute.
“Today, we remember the lives taken from us by the hands of Islamic terrorism 22 years ago. Americans are still dying and suffering from the toxic chemicals and dust they endured after the buildings fell. Let us also not forget the betrayal of everyone who died that fateful day by the Biden Administration who handed over weapons and ceded the territory we held in the Middle East to the Taliban, who works with Al-Qaeda, the very enemy we sought to defeat after decades of fighting and lost American lives,” Greene wrote on X, alongside a photo of firefighters lowering a flag to half-mast.
Today, we remember the lives taken from us by the hands of Islamic terrorism 22 years ago.
Americans are still dying and suffering from the toxic chemicals and dust they endured after the buildings fell.
Let us also not forget the betrayal of everyone who died that fateful day… pic.twitter.com/s4EvPUE5bj
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 11, 2023
Greene’s comment makes reference to the pullout of American forces in Afghanistan in 2021. Though Biden announced that the full withdrawal would happen by September 11, 2021—the 20th anniversary of 9/11—it was completed on August 30 of that year.
Though the withdrawal happened in Biden’s administration, the deal was brokered with the Taliban by former President Trump, and the Biden administration placed the blame on him in a 2023 report from the National Security Council, the Associated Press reported. Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s moves, according to the report. The report said that at the start of Biden’s term, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”
It’s not as simple as merely blaming Trump, however. Trump’s deal included a clause that would have allowed the U.S. to back out of the deal in the event that peace talks failed, according to the AP—which they did.
“If he thought the deal was bad, he could have renegotiated. He had plenty of opportunity to do that if he so desired,” Chris Miller, former acting defense secretary at the end of the Trump administration told the AP. Biden countered by saying that had he gone back on the agreement, he would have had to send more troops to Afghanistan, which ran counter to Biden and Trump’s shared goal of pulling out of the country.
“The choice I had to make, as your president, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season,” Biden said at the time.
While Greene’s tribute to those lost in the September 11 attacks was partisan, tributes from her fellow Republicans stayed neutral.
“In the weeks that followed, we weren’t black or white; gay or straight; Democrat or Republican. We were all American. In the face of tragedy, we found unity. In the face of despair, we found renewed hope. Even as we pray that no calamity like it ever happens again, we can still long to be reunited once again as one nation under God,” Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X.
I was in U.S. history class in 11th grade on 9/11. We didn’t just learn history, we watched it unfold as we watched the aftermath of the catastrophe. I remember to this day watching the heroism of the firefighters, police officers, and first responders who ran not from Ground…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 11, 2023
Even Trump kept things nonpartisan in a video posted to his social media platform, Truth Social.
“No one who lived through the horror of the September 11 terrorist attacks can ever forget the agony and the anguish of that terrible day. It was a terrible day. The images of dark plumes of smoke billowing over Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania—it was a beautiful field—are seared into our minds forever, we will never forget.
“Today on the solemn anniversary of those monstrous attacks, we remember the 2,977 precious souls who were savagely taken from us on that morning 22 years ago. Leaving a void that can never be filled—can never be filled. No matter what happens, it can never be filled. We will say a prayer for each of the beautiful families left behind whose pain is beyond comprehension. What they’ve gone through is not even believable.
“We honor the firefighters, the great New York PD—police department—what great people they are. They are so great. And the Port Authority officers, the Virginia, DC and Pentagon police and the military service members and other first responders—actually, all over the country—they acted with supreme heroism and they went to the site of the most heinous crime. They would leave other states far away and go to the World Trade Center site, the Pentagon, they go to Pennsylvania. When many cases gave their lives in the line of duty. God bless the memory of all of those who perished in the 9/11 attacks, we will never ever forget. Never forget you, we love you. God bless their families and God bless America. Thank you,” Trump said.
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President Donald Trump is now in “discussions” with his own government to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency he exercises limited influence over, after a contractor released 15 years of his tax returns in 2019, which were published by The New York Times two months before the 2020 election.
“Good cause exists to grant an extension in this matter while the Parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation,” Trump’s lawyers argued, TNR notes. “This limited pause will neither prejudice the Parties nor delay ultimate resolution. Rather, the extension will promote judicial economy and allow the Parties to explore avenues that could narrow or resolve the issues efficiently.”
TNR also repots that legal experts “have questioned whether a president can sue his own administration to pocket taxpayer money, and have expressed doubts about whether Trump’s Justice Department can appropriately defend the financial institutions.”
Critics allege a conflict of interest in the case.
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
“Right out in the open, Donald Trump is suing his own IRS to try to steal $10 BILLION taxpayer dollars,” charged U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who notes she has introduced legislation to prevent “this theft.”
Political scientist Brendan Nyhan described the situation as Trump “Negotiating with himself to loot the US Treasury.”
“Nothing beats reaching into the taxpayers’ pocket and helping oneself to $10 billion,” wrote Richard Field, the Director of the Institute for Financial Transparency.
“Trump is suing the federal government and cashing in. Who approves these settlements? HE DOES of course. There is no bottom to his shamelessness. Meanwhile American families suffer,” wrote U.S. Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL).
“Trump is just stealing $10 billion from taxpayers! That’s very MAGA,” charged Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
MAGA has made a deal with Donald Trump, and the deal is that “the humiliation is the point,” argues Republican former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger. In short, he says, “humiliating the MAGA faithful only binds them more tightly to Trump.”
Kinzinger, a never-Trump Republican who acknowledged last year that his politics are now probably closer to the Democrats, says that to “understand what Trump is doing, you have to stop thinking about each outrage as a separate event and start seeing them as a sequence.”
He walks through a timeline of humiliations.
Trump asked MAGA to believe the 2020 election was stolen, so they did, “including many who knew better.”
Trump asked MAGA to excuse the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a mere tourist visit, and they did.
“He asked them to accept that his 91 criminal indictments were a political witch hunt — and they did, turning his mugshot into a fundraising image,” he writes. “Each ask was larger than the last. Each capitulation required more of them — more willingness to contradict their own eyes, their own values, their own stated beliefs.”
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
Kinzinger reveals the psychology of what he believes is actually happening here.
“Every time MAGA accepts something they previously would have considered unacceptable, Trump’s hold on them gets stronger, not weaker. Because now they’ve paid a price. They’ve told their neighbors, their families, their coworkers, that they believe this. Walking it back would mean admitting they were wrong. And the movement doesn’t allow that.”
What does this mean for the future?
“Don’t expect a wholesale collapse in Trump’s support,” he predicts. “Some will leave, others have tied their conscience to his success. Those will double down, again and again.”
Kinzinger expects that MAGA is not breaking apart. “I don’t think there’s some dramatic rupture coming where the movement looks in the mirror and decides enough is enough. That’s not how this works,” he writes. Because Trump has trained his movement to accept humiliation as “proof of loyalty.”
“The more outrageous the thing he asks them to believe, the more committed they become,” he explains, “because disbelief now would mean admitting everything they’ve already accepted was wrong. It’s a trap that gets harder to escape the longer you’re in it.”
But, he says, “the humiliation ritual works until the day it doesn’t.”
“Until the day enough people decide that the price of belonging is higher than the price of leaving. We’re not there yet,” he explains. “But we’re closer than Trump wants you to think.”
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
The Trump regime has an “erratic” and “theologically incomprehensible” preferred religion, a “bellicose, nationalist Christianity,” that is organized along various “fiefdoms,” argues Sarah Posner at Talking Points Memo. Those spheres of control and influence are “aimed at protecting, and even justifying, the regime’s impunity.”
Posner writes that the “goal of the Christian nationalist project is to subvert democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”
She posits that during Trump’s second term, the White House and federal agencies “have been bludgeoning federal employees, the press, and the public with religious pronouncements of moral superiority to perceived enemies.”
On Easter Sunday, several administration agencies posted social media messages “heralding Christ’s resurrection,” the Associated Press reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote: “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth.”
READ MORE: ‘Incurable Conflict of Interest’: Kushner Under Sweeping Investigation by House Democrats
“He is risen,” was the message from both the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
The Department of Justice went even further.
“Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department —- is proud to protect and defend religious liberty,” the message read.
Posner argues how various administration officials use religion.
JD Vance “starts fights with the pope over his anti-war statements (even as Vance leaks to the press, with an eye to 2028, that he was against the war).”
Through his prayer meetings and press conferences, Secretary Hegseth “aims to compel Americans to embrace his Christian nationalist bloodlust and war crimes, and this week compared reporters to Pharisees for insufficiently cheerleading for the military.”
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer “has promoted her Catholicism in prayer meetings modeled on the ones Hegseth hosts at the Pentagon.”
“All these moves,” Posner writes, “are designed to crush dissent, marginalize other Christianities and religions, and empower government officials to violate the law. The fiefdoms, in different ways, prop up the would-be king’s corruption, and that of his allies.”
READ MORE: Conservative Christian Broadcaster Slams Franklin Graham’s ‘Embarrassing’ Defense of Trump
Image via Reuters
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