The Cult of Donald Trump

[Albany Rifles]

To quote The Trash Can Man in "The Stand" - "My Life For You!"

https://apnews.com/article/fbi-atlan...7ac1e88f1e8939

Navy veteran accused of ramming vehicle into barrier at front gate of FBI Atlanta office


The FBI says a driver rammed a vehicle into the front gate of its Atlanta office on Monday. The federal agency said in an email that the crash happened shortly after noon.

ATLANTA (AP) — Federal authorities have charged a U.S. Navy veteran who’s accused of ramming an SUV into a barrier at the front gate of the FBI’s Atlanta office.

Ervin Lee Bolling faces a federal charge of destroying government property stemming from the crash that happened shortly after noon on Monday, according to a court filing. A DeKalb County police spokesperson said Tuesday that officers have also secured warrants on state charges of interference with government property.

No attorney who could comment on the charges was listed in online court records.

Bolling enlisted in the Navy in January 1998 and served as a submarine sonar technician before retiring in 2017, according to Navy records. The records list South Carolina as his home of record.

The Atlanta FBI office in suburban Chamblee is surrounded by a metal fence with a retractable gate that employee enter by scanning an access card. Just inside the gate, there’s a barrier that flattens to allow authorized cars to enter and then lifts back up again.

Bolling was driving at 2022 Buick Encore GX SUV with a South Carolina license plate and crashed it into the barrier inside the gate, according to a sworn statement from an FBI agent filed in court.

Video from the scene and a photo filed in court show a reddish-orange SUV with its hood crumpled against the barrier just inside the front gate.

After crashing the SUV, Bolling exited the vehicle and tried to follow an FBI employee into the secure parking lot on foot, the statement says. The agent he tried to follow and two other agents who were leaving at the time instructed him to sit on the curb, but he refused and tried to walk further into the parking lot and then resisted when the agents tried to take him into custody, the statement says.

Once Bolling was in custody, the agents found a passport in his pocket that allowed them to identify him. He was taken to an Atlanta hospital for evaluation.

Pete Ellis, assistant special agent in charge of the agency’s Atlanta office, told reporters on Monday agents and bomb technicians checked the vehicle “as a precaution.” An FBI spokesperson said no weapons were found in the SUV.

The agent’s statement says there is significant damage to the barrier that the SUV hit and that a contractor estimated it would cost more than $1,000 to repair.

[TopHatter]

To quote The Trash Can Man in "The Stand" - "My Life For You!"

https://apnews.com/article/fbi-atlan...7ac1e88f1e8939

Trash Trash Trash Can Man....

[TopHatter]

Evicted, arrested and being sued by the boss: When will MAGA learn loyalty to Trump ends in sorrow?


Mike Lindell, Kari Lake and Donald Trump Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

When I saw the news that the stock price of Truth Social went into freefall after the company initally went public for $8 billion, I immediately sent a joke to a friend text circle: "Whoever allowed the contract to keep Trump from dumping the stock until 6 months post-sale is gonna be covered in ketchup." Shortly after it was released, the company's stock soared to $70 a share, initially meaning Trump, on paper at least, had netted $3 billion in wealth. But Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, told CNN he was "confident the stock price will eventually drop to $2 a share and could even go below that," because Truth Social's business model is not conducive to profit.

"The large mismatch between stock price and stock value will sorely tempt the cash-poor Trump to sell off a significant portion of his shares, in a potential maneuver that I believe I am the first to label 'Trump and dump,'" Timothy Noah of the New Republic joked. "Pump and dump is an unethical practice where influential figures talk up a stock they own a lot of shares in, artificially inflating the value, and then sell it off for a major profit before the rubes realize they bought a lemon. Because Trump is contractually obliged not to sell his shares yet, he's watching the value slide downhill before he can cash in, while other hustlers openly brag to Reuters they used the blind loyalty of Trump fans to pull off the pump-and-dump.

One investor bragged he bought at $35 when the stock first released, waited "for Trump's fan base to hear about it," which doubled its value, and then dumped it. Because of these shenanigans, Trump's already lost a billion of his initial $3 billion valuation.

We do not know yet how many ketchup bottles lost their lives due to Trump's anger over this, but he's found a public way to lash out at his underlings: He's suing them.

In a lawsuit filed right before public SEC filings showed Truth Social lost $58 million last year, Trump tried to push the blame onto his co-founders, two former "Apprentice" contestants named Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky. It is true the two only managed to get, as Noah calculated, fewer than 2% of MAGA Republicans to create accounts. But still, they managed to make Trump $2 billion richer (on paper), while also giving him an outlet to whine incoherently for hours a day. That is, of course, how it goes: Bend over backward to help Trump out, and he will thank you by coating you in rage-ketchup.

Trump regularly offers paeans to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, holding a ceremony to honor those who are facing legal consequences for their criminal efforts to help him overthrow the government. Sometimes he even promises pardons. All this is done for a nakedly obvious purpose: To convince followers to risk their own skins in the future on Trump's behalf. But it's telling that Trump never offers any material support to the over 1,300 people who have been charged with crimes. Despite his claims to be a "billionaire," he hasn't paid their legal bills or helped their families after they lost their jobs. He loves to get publicly maudlin about Ashli Babbitt, the insurrectionist shot by Capitol police, but he didn't offer to say, cut back a little on his golf club budget to pay for Babbitt's funeral.

Wednesday, yet another Jan. 6 defendant was convicted. Taylor James Johnatakis got 7 years in federal prison for carrying a megaphone and barking orders at rioters as they attacked police. "In any angry mob, there are leaders and there are followers. Mr. Johnatakis was a leader," the judge said, correctly. But it's also true that Johnatakis was following the lead of Trump. Maybe he'll be included in Trump's future public singalongs about the so-called J6 hostages. But he certainly didn't get a dime of support from Trump during his criminal trial.

All of this fake support for people who commit crimes for him seems to have bamboozled Tyler Vogel, 26, of Lancaster, New York. Last week, Vogel was arrested by Erie County authorities for texting threats to New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York Justice Arthur Engoron, who prosecuted and presided over Trump's civil case for committing decades of fraud in New York. "Mark my words I will kill you if you even dare to permanently steal Donald Trumps assets or his property," Vogel texted after Trump lost the case, incurring a fine of nearly half a billion dollars.

Not that Vogel deserves an ounce of sympathy, but this is yet another pitiful example of someone throwing everything away for a man who would not give them a penny if they were starving. It's especially pathetic to see someone give up his freedom to defend Trump's "right" to keep private jets and golf courses that were obtained through decades of fraud. Trump has been on social media for months, unsubtly begging his supporters to get violent against law enforcement trying to hold him accountable. But we can all guess how much he'll do for this one guy who did what his orange god-emperor asked of him: Absolutely nothing. Yet that reality never seems to breach thick MAGA skulls, where the faith that Trump cares about them — despite daily evidence he does not — seems immovable.

When is the last time Trump even bothered to call Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, who put his considerable fortune to work paying for what Trump would not: Various efforts to validate the Big Lie and rally support for Trump's coup? Lindell's once-mighty linens empire was delivered another humiliating blow last week when his company was evicted from a Minnesota building after falling behind $200,000 on rent. The month before, Lindell was hit with a $5 million judgment, owed to a software engineer who entered Lindell's "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge," in which Lindell claimed no one could debunk his supposed "evidence" that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump. But the "data" Lindell claimed to have appears to be random nonsense that has nothing to do with the election.

Good luck to that engineer ever seeing a penny of what's owed. Lindell hasn't been paying his lawyers and had MyPillow ads removed from Fox News for non-payment. He's also facing a massive defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which already won a similar lawsuit against Fox News for airing false claims that the company was part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. Dominion is seeking over $1 billion in damages. Trump's minion Rudy Giuliani has also gone broke in his push to help Trump steal the election. He finally filed bankruptcy in December, after losing a defamation lawsuit, to the tune of $148 million, for false accusations aimed at two random election workers in Georgia.

MAGA never learns, though.

After months of insisting to the press that she would prevail in court, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake declined to defend herself against a defamation lawsuit filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican official she's been lying about for years in her efforts to pretend the 2022 election was stolen from her. The reason she backed down, of course, is the same reason Giuliani eventually did. And it's the same reason why Infowars host Alex Jones refused to cooperate in the defamation lawsuits he lost: They know the evidence they lied is so overwhelming it's impossible to argue against it.

Considering that a jury will soon decide how much Lake owes Richer for lying about him, you'd think she'd shut up and start performing the remorse she is clearly incapable of feeling. Instead, she's out there talking smack about him, releasing a video where she openly gaslights him with, "Show me on a doll where my words hurt you" and offering to pay him for a "therapy dog." Richer has documented the death threats against him and his family, for which people are still getting arrested.

It seems that MAGA people believe they are endowed with the impunity that Trump has so long enjoyed, due to his wealth and status. It is repulsively true that Trump wriggles out of consequences for his crimes time and time again. But that is because he is a master at finding someone else to take the fall for him, from the January 6 defendants to his former lawyer Michael Cohen to Fox News and Rudy Giuliani. Loyalty to Trump doesn't mean getting a piece of his unbelievable levels of undeserved privilege. It just means being the next in line to be thrown under the bus as Trump escapes accountability yet again.
_________

Everything Trump Touches Dies

[Albany Rifles]

Trash Trash Trash Can Man....

I knew you'd get the reference!

[tbm3fan]

Five years. What a fucking joke.

Well since I had a pre-cancer growth excised recently I would tend to think that treatment might apply here since they are never going to change. Although I believe, from reading the case history, that they have moved into the cancer stage.

[tbm3fan]

To quote The Trash Can Man in "The Stand" - "My Life For You!"

2022 Buick Encore GX SUV

I wonder if he paid cash for that?

[TopHatter]

MAGA ‘Prophets’: The Eclipse Is a Warning to Repent — and Follow Trump



The total eclipse crossing the United States on Monday is more than a celestial marvel. According to MAGA-mined “prophets” with dubious gifts of divination, the eclipse is a signal of God’s design for America, and another marker that former President Donald Trump is heaven’s “anointed” candidate.

Julie Green is a charismatic preacher and self-styled prophet who claims to channel God on the daily, bringing “divine” news to a devoted following from a home studio in Iowa. Green is a viral star on Rumble, where she has more than 200,000 followers, and she’s become a celebrity of the Christianity-meets-QAnon circus known as the “ReAwaken America” tour.

Nevermind that Green’s prophecies are often either vague or preposterous. (She once infamously predicted that Prince Charles would murder his mother in a fruitless attempt to steal the throne.) Green’s influence in MAGA world is strong, and has even included delivering heavenly dispatches to members of the Trump family.

On April 4, Green and a prophetic guest named Larry Ballard — who claims he “died in 1968,” returning to life after a serious accident with supposed heavenly insight — unpacked the spiritual symbolism of the coming eclipse.

Green and Ballard took great interest in the fact that the “path of totality” crosses over Eagle’s Pass, Texas — a border town that’s become a flashpoint in the politics of immigration. Ballard spoke with awe at the eclipse arriving at “the very place that Texas has put a stake in the ground, and said we will defend our nation, our sovereignty, our border, and our God,” insisting, “This is no accident, folks.”

Green agreed. “There’s no coincidence about Eagle Pass,” she said. “God is saying they can’t pass through Me. Because He is our line of protection. God is our border. He’s our refuge. He is our fortress. And God is saying no one can get past Me.”

The higher power that Green and Ballard exalt is markedly aligned with the MAGA agenda — and less so the words of Exodus and Matthew that exhort the faithful to not oppress the foreigner and to welcome the stranger. Indeed, for this prophetic pair, the 45th president seems to be revered almost as a demigod.

“Donald Trump has given us the formula,” Ballard insists later in the broadcast. The seer asserts of the MAGA leader, “Donald Trump is God’s anointed,” adding that Trump is on a divine mission: “He’s going to close that border; he’s going to drill.”

In their conversation, Green and Ballard transform astrological woo into markers of providential preference. They infuse with deep meaning the fact that the path of the present eclipse crosses the path of the 2017 eclipse over U.S. territory, near Missouri. “God is saying this is a time of call of repentance, as a nation,” Green interpreted. “It is simply telling America: Hey, X marks the spot.”

While leading with warnings of divine outrage, Green and Ballard promise great things for America if it follows God — and fights for His man, Trump: “It’s Abraham’s covenant fulfilled. That’s what’s coming in,” Ballard insists. “All we got to do is one thing: Stand up.”

In the tangled theology aired during the hourlong broadcast, Green and Ballard describe an America that is engaged in a dark, spiritual war. According to Ballard, Washington, D.C., is “demonically controlled” and its leaders worship “a phallic symbol, straight from Egypt” — the Washington Monument. Green adds that the “evil” leaders of D.C. seek to appease the pagan gods of Baal and Moloch, and have “sacrificed people” in the capital city. Green claims that God has told her “about the blood that has been shed” and His plans to “destroy certain things.”

It may be tempting to dismiss Green and Co. as crackpots on the lunatic fringe of the religious right. (Ballard is also a Twin Towers truther who claims on his website that “9/11 was a false flag event.”) But Green has the ear of people Trump has promised to appoint to positions of power and prominence in a prospective second term in the White House.

One day after prophesying about the dark implications of the solar eclipse, Green welcomed to her show Gen. Michael Flynn — a fellow traveler on the ReAwaken America circuit, who is about to launch the straight-to-DVD movie Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost.

Flynn and Green displayed easy rapport on that broadcast. Green even prayed over Flynn, asking “Father God” to make the Trump-pardoned felon’s movie audience “grow exponentially — even greater than he imagined” in the service of aiding the disgraced former general to “wake this nation up.”

Flynn, in turn, quipped back to Green, displaying a military-industrial sense of piety: “As I’ve always told you, Julie, prayer is still the most powerful weapon system known to man.”
____________

Obey your Leader and follow His example:

[Albany Rifles]

I am fine after looking at the Eclipse. I just spread Ivermectin on my eyeballs.

What are all those sparkles I am seeing?

[TopHatter]

I am fine after looking at the Eclipse. I just spread Ivermectin on my eyeballs.

What are all those sparkles I am seeing?

That's the Glory of Trump, shining down upon you.

[TopHatter]

Authoritarianism Expert Explains Why Donald Trump Fans Love ‘Daddy’ So Much

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat has talked about Donald Trump’s ability to emotionally manipulate his supporters and why they think “he’s daddy.”

On the latest episode of Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway’s “Pivot” podcast, Ben-Ghiat explained how resentment of social progress propelled Trump to the White House and warned that it could see the presumptive GOP presidential nominee return to power once again.

Trump responded to the backlash to that progress by taking a page out of the authoritarian leader playbook and modeling himself on what people wanted, said the history professor at New York University and author of the 2021 book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

The four-times-indicted ex-POTUS was “the male brute” and “perfect person as the anti-Obama” who “addressed the people who felt that women had too much power, same-sex marriages were taking over, all of the racial stuff,” she added.

Trump told his supporters that “he loved them, that they were the forgotten, and so there’s a sense that he’s not just going to represent them, he’s going to protect them and take care of them,” said Ben-Ghiat.

Swisher suggested Trump was “a daddy, a big daddy” to his fans.

“He’s daddy,” agreed Ben-Ghiat. “And once they bond to him, they feel protected. But they’re also protective of him because he’s also the victim. It’s highly effective, this manipulation of emotion.”
_________

FFS...

History is inundated with examples of snake-oil salesmen whose only real talent was to bamboozle the easily-frightened and the easily-led (same thing, usually).

And for every one of them, there have always been opportunists who, though they may not have believed the rhetoric themselves, found a way to benefit from whatever mistruth was being promoted.

[statquo]

Anyone see the news of that guy light himself on fire outside the court building? Haven’t heard if it was a cultist or someone like a Palestinian protestor or someone.

[tbm3fan]

Anyone see the news of that guy light himself on fire outside the court building? Haven’t heard if it was a cultist or someone like a Palestinian protestor or someone.

Yes

[TopHatter]

Anyone see the news of that guy light himself on fire outside the court building? Haven’t heard if it was a cultist or someone like a Palestinian protestor or someone.

Yeah, sure looks like it:

Before the fire, the man threw a couple dozen pamphlets titled, "The True History of the World."

A QR code on the pamphlets linked to a Substack post published around the time of the fire.

In the post, an individual claimed that he was the one to set himself on fire. The post was filled with conspiracy-filled thoughts about the American government.

"I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan," he wrote.

[Monash]

Hmm, an 'investigative researcher' eh? Well you'd think he would have done a better job then of researching 'how to set yourself on fire'. That and the consequences of failing to die when you do. In particular, the very the long, painful recovery process and the life long scarring you face as a result.