October 3, 2024
In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll wrote the following passage:
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
I bring this up because there are a number of today’s stories that struck me as ones that involve things that I may have thought impossible in one form or another prior to 2016. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

Smith Shows His Hand
Yesterday, federal Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Special Counsel Jack Smith’s latest brief in his case against former President Donald Trump to be unsealed, with some light redactions. And even with that, there are some significant details that haven’t yet been heard by the public. As a reminder, in this particular case, Trump is accused of: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding (namely, the process of certifying the election results on January 6th), obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding (same), and conspiracy against rights in connection to his attempts to fight the election results of 2020. Some of the new details include:
- When told about Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated from his Senate office due to the proximity of rioters, Trump’s response was, “So what?”
- Trump reportedly told his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
- Multiple events where Trump and his team completely made up statistics about voter fraud, changing them at will to fit different narratives, and claiming the presence of evidence that was never produced.
- A previously unknown call from Trump to ally Steve Bannon on January 5th was followed by Bannon issuing a prediction on his War Room podcast that “All hell is going to break loose” on January 6th.
There’s more, including details about advisor Rudy Giuliani’s actions, and campaign employees encouraging chaos and rioting in Detroit and Philadelphia. Trump’s team filed a response that in turn caused Judge Chutkan to rebuke the ex-President, saying, “Defendant’s opposition brief repeatedly accuses the government of bad-faith partisan bias. These accusations, for which Defendant provides no support, continue a pattern of defense filings focusing on political rhetoric rather than addressing the legal issues at hand.”
Strange Bedfellows
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about (very) Republican former Representative Liz Cheney endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, and it seems that wasn’t just lip service. Cheney will campaign with Harris today in Wisconsin — specifically, a historic schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, known as the birthplace of the GOP itself — fully backing her previous pledge to doing what is necessary to prevent Trump from retaking the White House. During an event last month at Duke University, Cheney spoke directly to those still on the fence:
“I think it is crucially important for people to recognize, not only is what I just said about the danger that Trump poses something that should prevent people from voting for him, but I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states.”
At today’s event, Harris is expected to continue making that direct appeal to Republican and independent voters, promising that she will uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, even if they might disagree with her on some policy issues.
Melania in the Spotlight
Numerous news stories about former First Lady Melania Trump have hit over the past 24 hours. First up, CNN posted the revelation that, during negotiations with Melania Trump’s publisher for an interview ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, the publisher requested a licensing fee of $250,000. The publisher later said that the payment demand — a highly unusual request — was a mistake, and Trump’s spokesperson has declined to comment on the incident. It should be noted that this fee is similar to the $237,500 payment she received for an April event with Log Cabin Republicans. (LINK)
But wait, there’s more! Just this morning, Mrs. Trump released a video expressing her support for abortion rights, stating, “Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard. Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to these essential rights that all women possess from birth. Individual freedom. What does ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?” This obviously stands at odds with her husband’s actions when he was president, and the majority of the Republican Party’s stance on abortion. Mr. Trump has been attempting to shift to more of a middle-of-the-road approach in recent weeks, but he has also stated that he has “no regrets” about appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, effectively ending the constitutional right to abortion. (LINK)
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