Bryan Zepp Jamieson
March 24th, 2024
http://www.zeppscommentaries.online
There’s a “train-crash” fascination to the on-going destruction of the Republican party. The other day the House caved on the latest appropriations $1.1T bill, and Armpits Maggie promptly filed a motion to vacate, the GOP rule that allows the party to dump their own speaker at any time and for any reason. Should the vote occur, then religious nutbag Mike Johnson and his “head-of-lettuce” tenure will go the way of Kevin McCarthy. And of course, even with a unanimous party-line vote, the GOP doesn’t have enough seats to refill the position. Two hundred and eighteen votes are required from the full House, and they only have 217 seats. That will drop to 216 in April.
That’s assuming the vote is even held. However, there is a procedure called “motion to table” which allows the House to decide if a motion should reach the floor for a vote in the first place. Yes, it’s repetitive and redundant, which makes it perfect for fans of repetitive redundancy.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who likes Mike Johnson about as much as he likes toe fungus, has an idea. A handful of Dems could vote for the motion to table, along with the large majority of Republicans, and that only needs a majority of the quorum, so at most 216 votes to pass. Mind you, they won’t be voting FOR Mike Johnson. They would simply be voting not to vote at all.
But Mike Johnson would have to make a deal. First on the agenda would be for Republicans to step aside and permit the $95b aid package to Ukraine to go through. Second would be to permit a full floor vote on the border bill that Trump scuttled a couple of weeks ago. And if it were up to me, I would add a third stipulation: shut down the Biden impeachment inquiry. Lev Parnas blew the inquiry, already a bad joke, sky-high. Johnson might actually see that as a favor, since it’s reached the point where the only people being damaged by it are Republicans. But it would mean that the House would actually have to do real work, like voting on legislation and formulating plans to move the country forward. So maybe it would not be such a gain for the GOP, unless of course they decide they need to distract from Trump rather than serve him.
Trump himself is disintegrating rapidly. His latest stunt was to boast that he had the cash to cover the real estate fraud judgment against him while at the same time insisting that he doesn’t have the assets or the ability to have the judgment underwritten. We’ll find out tomorrow how that is going to turn out. It’s not impossible that Trump could face criminal counts of fraud and perjury from this going forward.
The latest was the merger between Truth Social and Digital World Acquisition Corporation. The media are loudly braying that this merger would give Trump an on-paper valuation of three billion dollars, but in reality it will do nothing of the sort. Truth Social is a toy social network, with active membership around 850,000 and dropping. DWAC is pure smoke and mirrors, selling only memes, with their entire valuation based on the number of mouse clicks they get. Does that sound like something worth three billion dollars to you?
But Trump can’t cash out his shares for six months after the deal goes into affect. And lenders aren’t going to look at the initial IPO price and assume Trump has three billion in stock; they’re going to look six months ahead, to when Trump would have to repay their loan with interest, and see if the stock has retained even 1/6th of its value.
And it won’t. Neither company has anything tangible to offer, and I predict the IPO will be one of the most disastrous in market history—and it won’t recover. Why should it? It could lose 80% in its first day of trading, and I wouldn’t care to bet it even had penny stock status by mid October.
The latest with Trump is that his handlers are trying to keep him out of the public eye as his mental and intellectual deterioration continues to snowball. Instead, they’re releasing videos of speeches and rallies he held in 2020 and even 2016, and hoping the media won’t notice. Even American corporate media would have to take note of that, especially since the speeches would be referring to “Crooked Hillary” or talking about getting out of Afghanistan.
Further, handling Trump, even in his dotage, is a challenge. Compos Mentis or not, he’ll want to babble to live cameras about how smart he is and how everyone loves him and will vote for him to kick that wicked President “Gangly” Lincoln out of office once and for all. So he’ll be appearing on OANN and Newsmax, and posting all-caps messages on Truth Social, and Democrats will be gleefully recording and using all of them. Trump has already come out in favor of slashing Social Security and Medicare, and wants a nation-wide 15 week abortion ban, which is political suicide.
Trump wrapped up the delegates needed for this summer’s convention, making him the nominee. (Biden did the same, only much more quietly and in a more orderly fashion, and didn’t threaten to kick anyone who didn’t support him out of the party, because Biden has a functioning brain.)
But between his legal and medical problems, I’m only offering one in four odds that by election day, Trump will still be the candidate of the GOP. The party itself, to all intents and purposes, may have ceased to exist by then.
If three Republicans in the House quit or change their designation and leave the caucus, Hakeem Jeffries might well be Speaker and Democrats may control the House before they have to certify the election results, and there’s now a very good chance that may happen as the lunatic right, led by Trump, cause sane conservatives to desert the party in drove.
Say what you will, but it’s not going to be boring. Or routine. Or normal. Or even particularly sane.
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