This Is NOT How It's Done

Morning Dispatch

Tom Homan, brown shirt thug, alleged taker of bribes

Dana Bash asked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY, sadly) about Donald’s post urging Pam Bondi to use the Department of Justice to go after his perceived political enemies. Schumer said,

I think it's a real threat to democracy, Dana. […] This is our rule of law. This is fundamental to our democracy, and we cannot let it stand. […] [W]e're going to fight strongly as we can in every way. […]

But are they?

Here’s Schumer with his master plan:

Hakeem Jeffries and I have now demanded to sit down with Donald Trump, because that's the only way to avoid a Trump shutdown. The Republican leadership is listening to Trump, and not talking to us.

So, no, they are not going to fight “strongly.” They’ve asking for a “meeting.”

When Bash reasonably asks,

If nothing changes, are you going to vote no and urge your Democratic colleagues to vote no, which will end with a shutdown?

Schumer responds:

So it's up to them, and I hope and pray that Trump will sit down with us and negotiate a bipartisan bill. That's how it's always been done in the past. That's how shutdowns have been avoided in the past.

This is not the past. The past Schumer and other Democrats like him continue to live in is no longer prologue. And it really does sound like Schumer is once again inclined to squander the only real leverage Democrats have in this fight—letting the Republicans shut down the government they completely control and hanging that failure around Donald’s neck—by making common cause with the fascists—a move that will legitimize them and increase their already considerable power.

But Schumer, et al., are more afraid of what people on the right or in the imaginary middle will think of them than they are of what their base thinks. They are more concerned with achieving a bipartisanship the Republicans no longer even believe in than they are interested in fighting for the American people.

As we have learned far too often over the last decade, the people with actual power to slow down, impede, or stop Donald Trump and his hideous movement have proven to be the wrong people at the wrong time. From Merrick Garland to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, they continue to confer the benefit of the doubt on those who have explicitly shown us they do not deserve it. They continue to confer legitimacy on a party that has told us time and time again that it is the enemy of American democracy—by seeking out bipartisanship and playing by rules that no longer exist—while the Republicans in Congress and in the corrupt illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court systematically take a sledge hammer to our institutions and our rights. They continue to bring politesse to a bazooka fight in a stunning show of ignorance and cowardice.

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Meanwhile, we learned over the weekend that Tom Homan was caught in a sting operation set up by the FBI in the summer of 2024 accepting $50,000. Carol Leonning and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC write that Homan was

soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe.

In a lawless and corrupt move, Emil Bove, then-acting deputy attorney general, told DOJ officials he didn’t support the investigation into Homan, and FBI Director Kash Patel later ordered the case closed.

Putting an even finer point on the realty that Donald Trump’s DOJ, as led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, is his personal defense firm and is no longer in the business of seeking justice or protecting the rights of the American people, Donald posted this on his failing social media site:

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!

It looks like the idiot inadvertently posted a private direct message meant for Bondi, but it’s all out in the open. And if so-called leaders like Schumer and Jeffries don’t see this as a call to action to fight with everything they’ve got to stop Donald and the Republican party in any way they can, all of this will get normalized, which is largely how we got here in the first place.