Last night, for the first time in American history, we saw a mugshot of a former president. Donald Trump was officially arrested at Fulton County jail in Georgia. Unlike with the other 900 indictments, this time they decided to take and publish his mugshot. There was, of course, no legitimate reason to take a mugshot of a former president. The whole purpose of a mugshot is to provide law enforcement with photographic documentation of the suspect. But Donald Trump is the most recognizable and famous person in the world — possibly in the history of the world. When he shows up for trial they aren’t going to have to refer back to his mugshot to make sure it’s really him. There isn’t going to be anyone saying, “Wait, is that Donald Trump? It’s hard to tell. Pull up his mug shot.”
So why did they take this step? What was the point? The point of course was pure humiliation and vengeance. It was also to give the DA, Fani Willis, a political trophy to put on her wall. It’s something that she wants to use when she inevitably runs for the Senate, or governor, in a few years. Of course, it all backfired, as it was always destined to. The mugshot instantly became an iconic image, and had exactly the effect that any half-conscious political observer knew it would have — rallying the base around Trump. Trump is now fundraising off of the image — and smartly so — and will likely raise many millions just from the mugshot alone. In fact, we can say that if Donald Trump does manage to get elected to the presidency again, Fani Willis will be largely responsible for it. She is the most effective campaign manager Trump has ever had, even if unintentionally.
But even if this all obviously works to Trump’s advantage, that doesn’t make it any less outrageous. Nor should we be distracted from the lessons that this moment is trying to teach us. The most obvious one is that the Left is beyond caring about even the pretense of legitimacy — something they used to pretend to care deeply about. In fact, through this whole ordeal, they’re not even acting like they’ve stopped some grave threat to democracy — because they know they’ve done the exact opposite of that. They are wielding raw political power for the sole, lawless purpose of incarcerating someone who stands a very real chance of winning the presidential election in a little over a year.
In fact, many on the Left don’t want Trump incarcerated — they want him killed. An MSNBC anchor just openly fantasized about Donald Trump getting shanked and murdered in prison. Watch:
Nicolle Wallace literally has to stifle a laugh as she remarks that Trump is heading to a jail where three people have died over the last month.
Everyone at MSNBC is a ghoul. pic.twitter.com/auHpRfJ4by
— Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) August 24, 2023
We’ve played a lot of demented clips on this show over the years. That one is up there. Not long ago, Nicole Wallace was running comms for the White House during the Iraq war. Back then, she had to pretend to care about the deaths of innocent people at the hands of establishment Washington.
These people will do everything they can to silence Donald Trump. MSNBC and CNN, after obsessively covering Trump’s trip to Georgia all day, made a point of cutting away from his remarks yesterday. Watch:
CNN didn’t carry Trump’s remarks live either pic.twitter.com/Up9wr5eAHe
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2023
Maddow: If he does that, we're not gonna take those remarks live… as we said in the past there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. pic.twitter.com/OCakKmeg1d
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 25, 2023
If the statement “we’ll get sued if we air the remarks of the former president after his indictment” is, in fact, remotely accurate, then any self-respecting journalist would air the remarks anyway. They’d fight any consequences for it in court. If the First Amendment protects anything, it’s airing the words of a former president at a time like this. But MSNBC’s statement isn’t true, of course. It’s a dumb jab at Fox News over the Dominion lawsuit, and it protects their viewers from hearing about the substance in these indictments, or lack thereof. That’s why they do it.
Here’s what they’re not telling viewers at MSNBC. The Fulton County DA, Fani Willis, has indicted Donald Trump, along with 18 co-defendants, for the following crimes: Offering legal advice to the president, tweeting things that Fani Willis doesn’t like, and, in one particularly egregious case, getting someone’s phone number.
The indictment states: “On or about the 21st Day of November 2020, Mark Randall Meadows sent a text message to United States Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania and stated, ‘Can you send me the number for the speaker and the leader of PA Legislature. POTUS wants to chat with them.’ This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”
Think about what a remarkable paragraph that is. Mark Meadows, in his capacity as chief of staff to Donald Trump, was seeking to obtain the phone number of some politicians in Pennsylvania. And because the reason for that request was investigating potential voter fraud, Fani Willis says Mark Meadows needs to go to prison, along with more than a dozen other Trump advisers.
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One of those advisers is John Eastman. What’s his offense? He advanced the legal theory that alternative slates of electors could be seated if election fraud was found. That’s apparently criminal now. It wasn’t illegal in 1960, when JFK’s electors from Hawaii met secretly and submitted their own certificates to Washington, saying he had won the state. As POLITICO reported, “the Hawaii Democrats used virtually the same language” that Trump electors in five states “used in their effort to upend the 2020 race.” Ultimately, Kennedy’s electors turned out to be the legitimate ones, after a recount determined Kennedy had won the state.
Anyone looking at that episode in 1960 would say it’s a good thing that alternative electors can be sent to Washington, in the case of a recount that changes the result of the election. But now that’s criminal. It’s a “RICO violation,” supposedly. John Eastman and several other lawyers are now facing several years in prison because they did exactly what JFK’s electors did — and were vindicated for doing — in 1960. David Shafer, who was one of Trump’s alternate electors from Georgia, has also been indicted.
Ray Smith is facing jail time, too. His offense? Per Axios, Smith, “gathered witnesses to testify in hearings before Georgia lawmakers in Dec. 2020 about alleged problems with the state’s election.” That’s not allowed anymore.
Neither is tweeting about these hearings, apparently.The indictment states: “On or about the 3rd day of December 2020, Donald John Trump caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, ‘Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!’ This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.” For the crime of tweeting about a hearing about election fraud, and related offenses, Fani Willis wants to send Trump and 18 of his associates to prison.
And she wants to do it very quickly. Willis just filed a request with the court for this trial to take place in just two months — beginning on October 23. So, for this unprecedented criminal trial of 19 defendants, based on a completely novel and insane legal theory, she wants the defense to have a total of two months to prepare. Is that constitutional? Honestly, no one in the DA’s office seems to care.
It’s at this point that it’s fair to look into the Fulton County DA, Fani Willis. It’s long been known she’s a Democrat and an opponent of Donald Trump. In itself, that’s not necessarily disqualifying. Everyone, even DA’s, has a right to his or her own political opinions.
But Fani Willis has gone far beyond that. Just a year ago, she hosted a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate running against one of the targets of her election investigation, a state senator named Burt Jones. Jones was one of Trump’s alternate electors. Here’s how the judge responded when he found out about this:
This is a DA who has to be told by a judge not to host fundraisers for the political opponents of politicians she plans to prosecute. She’s that dumb and corrupt. By the way, Jones wasn’t indicted along with the other 19 defendants, maybe because Fani Willis knew the judge would throw it out. She blew that prosecution.
But if you look at Fani Willis’ social media feeds, as Benny Johnson did the other day, then you’ll come to the conclusion that actually, she’s blown all 19 of these prosecutions. Willis’ feed is littered with posts casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election before the vote totals suddenly shifted against Trump.
For example, “Georgia could determine who is our next president,” she wrote on November 4, 2020. “A TEAM of lawyers needs to watch them count every single VOTE. They can start in Fulton where we are having water leaks. What ballots are they throwing out? Georgia lets give an honest accounting. No stunts!”
In 2018, Willis said it was suspicious that local election commissioners hadn’t approved a recount of some votes in Fulton County. “You all better start paying attention to what is really going on,” she wrote. She also argued that the Secretary of State “controls elections,” adding, “I wonder if we yet realize that is an important role?” She also posted a lot of BLM propaganda, worships Kamala Harris, and owns a mug saying she’s a “proud Democrat.”
So we can conclude that Fani Willis is something of a politically motivated election denier. As always, the Left is guilty of doing exactly what they accuse their opponents of doing. The obvious point is that Donald Trump’s social media posts, if they are criminal, then so are Fani Willis’. Her prosecution of Donald Trump, based on her posts, is an “overt act” in furtherance of her conspiracy to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.
Will Republicans indict Fani Willis? If Republicans retake the federal government, will they jail her for election interference? Ask any conservative right now, and they’ll tell you it will never happen. And they’re probably right. We’re seeing a vast difference in tactics right now between the two major political parties. Conservatives would never dream of dragging, say, George Soros into court on some pretext for the sole purpose of harassing him. Liberals, on the other hand, have no problem suing Elon Musk for not hiring enough refugees. They relish every opportunity to use state power to punish their opponents.
With each passing month, they’re getting more comfortable doing it. First, they target grandmothers walking around the Capitol. Then they jail Douglas Mackey for some memes. Then they go after Donald Trump for his tweets and his “classified documents.” And now, in Georgia, they’re targeting not only Donald Trump, but more than a dozen of his advisers and associates. This will continue until they’re in jail, or all of their opponents are. After this latest indictment, it’s time to stop pretending otherwise.