Opinion

While Donald Trump spins out ever more brazen lies and nonsense to sow confusion over the seizure of stolen classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Republicans have seized on a particularly gross conspiracy theory to justify their ridiculous claim that all of this somehow impacts the personal freedoms of every day Trump voters: "87,000 new IRS agents."

A reference to new federal funding in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, this latest talking point appears to have been crafted originally as some anti-tax propaganda to get the base to defend the ability of the wealthy to cheat on their taxes. But it almost immediately morphed into something far more threatening. It is now an unhinged conspiracy theory that's spreading rapidly through social media, as armed right-wing nuts are riling each other up to commit more acts of political violence.

I fail to understand why so many people have long made such a big deal about Joe Biden’s lousy poll numbers.

Don’t they know their history? Haven’t they bothered to research recent presidents’ first-term performance ratings? It just so happens, for instance, that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took deep plunges during their first terms, that Ronald Reagan’s favorability share plummeted to 35 percent during his first term, and that even though Abe Lincoln didn’t have to worry about Gallup, it’s an historical fact that the “baboon” (as he was so relentlessly labeled) was widely perceived as a first-term screwup until the Union army won some key battles late in 1864.

The campaign of Georgia Republican U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker is resorting to a strategy often employed by his idol Donald Trump: When you have no defense, portray yourself as a victim.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed commentary carrying Walker’s byline today, the headline asks, “How Low Can Gutter Politics Go?” — with the subhead “Bill Kristol’s Republican Accountability Project tries to stigmatize me for my past mental illness.”

Former President Donald Trump possessed a lot of concerning government information in his home that he shouldn't have had. What has become obvious over the weekend is that Trump's behavior appears defensive enough to indicate he understands what he did was serious.

At first, he claimed he did nothing wrong and was working with the FBI and that they went rogue. The story then changed as he accused the FBI of planting evidence. The FBI indicated that the information that was found was top secret, the kind of information that isn't even available to the everyday FBI agent. Merrick Garland wasn't in Mar-a-Lago himself with the information, nor was an upper-level government official who would have had access to the information.

Of course, in the midst of the late Friday afternoon media feeding frenzy over the release of the Justice Department search warrant and inventory of what was taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump issued a statement claiming "it was all declassified."

According to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, the classified treasure trove removed from Trump's Florida manse on Monday included 11 sets of documents, "some marked as 'classified/TD/SCI' documents — shorthand for 'top/secretive/sensitive compartmentalized information.'"

On March 13, 2020, police officers used a fraudulently obtained no-knock warrant to break into Breonna Taylor’s home in Louisville, Kentucky and fire 32 rounds, killing her while she slept.

While there was immediate outrage, there has been little in the way of legal accountability for the Louisville metro police officers who shot her or the ones involved in obtaining the warrant.

A Texas jury awarded $45.2 million dollars in punitive damages Friday in a defamation suit brought by the parents of a murdered Sandy Hook elementary school student whom extremist conspiracy media baron Alex Jones smeared as a “crisis actor.”

This is on top of $4.1 million in compensatory damages awarded by the same jury earlier this week for Jones' relentless campaign against a dead 6-year-old and his family.

Politicians love some law-and-order policies. They seem to believe tough-on-crime rhetoric magically attracts that elusive center-independent voter. And sure enough, as the midterms approach, Joe Biden is promising to dump tons of cash on cops.

But the more-cops-yields-more-votes default is flawed.

The main reason that Donald Trump is forever turning Republican campaign events and conservative conferences into fascistic rallies featuring two-hour stemwinders is that he's a champion narcissist with a vampiric need to feed off the adulation of blockheads. But a major secondary reason is what happened on Thursday, when a deranged Trump supporter named Ricky Shiffer fired a nail gun at the FBI offices in Cincinnati, Ohio, before getting killed in an hours-long standoff with the police.

As reporters covering right-wing extremism swiftly documented, before much of it was taken down, Shiffer was all wound up by Trump's lies about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago Monday, lies that have been amplified and validated by right-wing media outlets like Fox News and much of the GOP establishment.

After Monday's FBI search of Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago, Trump blasted out the news of the unprecedented intrusion on a former president's residence. He asserted that it was politically motivated.

But late on Thursday, the Washington Post reported that "sources familiar with the investigation" say that "classified documents relating to nuclear weapons" were among the materials the FBI search was seeking. The Post's sources did not say whether the agents found such materials.

There is no limit to the depths Donald Trump will explore to beg for money.

A day after the FBI executed a search warrant on his home at Mar-a-Lago, the former president sent out emails to his supporters saying the FBI had "raided" his home, "broke into" his safe and possibly planted evidence. Was he upset? Maybe. Was he innocent? Who cares? But he was open about needing money to help battle "the corrupt left," whatever that means. And so, dear friends and neighbors, the preacher in the big pop-up tent is going to pass around the hat, and if you'd very graciously give everything you have, the billionaire who needs your money would much appreciate it. By the way, would you like a new shirt with Donald's portrait? He's got those too.

A pattern emerged in the hours after the FBI lawfully searched the Florida home of the former president. Indeed, it was deeply familiar.

It goes something like this.