The National Parks Service used to issue estimates of the sizes of crowds at various public events but stopped doing so after getting hammered on all sides, both by those who wanted larger figures and those who wanted smaller ones. So now there are no ‘official’ crowd sizes, enabling anyone to make any claim that suits their purposes. Take for example, the Million Maga March in support of Trump held in Washington DC last Sunday. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany excitedly tweeted that a million people had actually turned up, while Trump initially claimed hundreds of thousands and later said tens of thousands.
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Trump campaign has had a bad 72 hours in courts in their efforts to challenge the results by arguing that there was widespread fraud.

Since Friday, state and federal judges in Pennsylvania have rejected Trump’s challenges to small batches of ballots ranging from the hundreds to the low thousands; Biden leads Pennsylvania by more than 68,000 votes, according to Decision Desk HQ. Judges have also undermined some of the legal theories that underpin the campaign’s effort to stop Pennsylvania from officially declaring that President-elect Joe Biden won the state.

The morning after Election Day, Trump declared that he would take the election to the Supreme Court, invoking the image of another Bush v. Gore, when the justices halted a ballot recount in Florida that handed the 2000 election to former president George W. Bush. Two weeks later, the legal landscape does not look at all like 2000. Trump would have to find legal paths to flip multiple states that Biden won, and the only case pending before the Supreme Court involves the fate of the 10,000 absentee ballots that arrived in Pennsylvania after Election Day.

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I am curious as to what is going to happen to the QAnon movement now. As readers know, these are people who think that there is someone at the top levels of government with high-level security clearance (possibly Donald Trump himself) who uses the pseudonym Q to drop hints as to what is going on behind the scenes. As a result, QAnon followers believe that the top echelons of the Democratic party consist of pedophiles, sex-traffickers, and even those who eat children and that Trump has a plan to flush out and arrest them in a spectacular denouement. They have been eagerly waiting for this moment. And waiting. And waiting. But like Godot (or perhaps more appropriately, Guffman), Q has so far not revealed themselves and the prediction have so far failed to materialize.
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Since her show airs on Wednesdays, yesterday was the first chance she had to speak about her joy at the way the election turned out. And she really let her happiness show.

Part 1:

Part 2:

It has been a while since I posted any of the Downfall Hitler parody memes but you knew that the parallels between Trump hunkered down in the White House wondering what the hell he can do and Hitler in his bunker during his last days offered too many ripe opportunities to resist. This is one that really captures what I think is likely going through his mind.

Trump is still in denial and tweeting away that he has still won and that all will be revealed soon.

Meanwhile the landscaping company whose back lot was used for Giuliani’s hilarious press conference is now hawking merchandize making fun of the whole thing.

Four Seasons Total Landscaping – a Philadelphia groundskeeping company situated between a crematorium and a sex shop where on Saturday Rudy Giuliani somehow held a press conference about baseless claims of voter fraud – has swiftly sought to cash in on its newfound fame, selling merchandise emblazoned with Trump-inspired puns.

“MAKE AMERICA RAKE AGAIN”, read one sticker on sale on the company website on Monday. It also featured the phrase “LAWN AND ORDER!” The stickers were selling for $5 each.

There was a curious juxtapositioning of events yesterday morning.

When the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden at 11:25 am, Trump was on the golf course, no doubt cheating at the game as he is often accused of doing. He apparently was told the news while he was playing and he looked decidedly glum as his motorcade went back to the White House, accompanied by the jeers of people on the streets, extended middle fingers, and chants of “Lock him up!” He is playing playing golf again today, with protestors at the gates of the golf club. Maybe he will play every day until it is time for him to leave the White House. That would be a good thing because that means he won’t be doing any more damage.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, things were even weirder. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accompanied by Trump’s second idiot son Eric and members of his legal team, were holding a press conference, for reasons that are not clear, in the back parking lot of a landscaping company, not the most impressive of backdrops.

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I usually try to avoid listening to Trump’s speeches but there was so much consternation at the vast number of lies in a speech he gave at a press conference yesterday that I felt obliged to watch it in its entirety. He delivered the written remarks in that weirdly flat monotone he uses when he is reading a script. It was pretty bad. Daniel Dale, who has been assigned the thankless task of fact-checking Donald Trump for CNN, lists all the lies in that short speech, that he called the most dishonest speech of his presidency, which is clearing a very high bar. (One thing that struck me is that Trump referred to ‘Mr. Biden’ and ‘Joe’ and did not use the usual insulting ‘Sleepy Joe’. But that was the only positive thing I heard.)
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