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Our Happy Warrior is Fierce in Cross-Examination: Come on: Bring On Debates with the Dipsy-Trumpster! Bring them on!
Bring on the Debates! Bring them on Dipsy-Trumpster and face joyful warriors, Kamala Harris, Future-Madame-President, and Mr. Tim Walz, Future-VP.
Bring them on!
What are the issues?
Project 2025 is a rich minefield for the Republicans to trip over, and that without a minefield map. Not pretty.
First, I invite you to read today’s post by Daniel W. Drezner, a distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy here:
The distinguished Professor of International Politics reasons and supports his views with important data showing the real fix the Republicans are in now.
Mr. Drezner makes clear the bipolarity of today’s GOP on Trump: (1) Trump should quit droning on narcissistically and take on the Democrats for what the Republicans view as slam-dunk issues (Armando asks, What could THOSE possibly be: Mr. Drezner provides the answers); but (2) Distance yourself from Project 2025.
So many good people provide fodder on Project 2025. I refer specifically to good people:
One of my very favorite persons, a wise woman from Alabama, Ms. Celly Blue writes:
Another clear favorite, also from Alabama, the distinguished Joyce Vance, Professor of Law, University of Alabama, here:
Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History (American History — primarily from about 1850-1930) at Boston College wrote of Project 2025:
Aside from Trump’s obvious yearning to go back to running against Biden, on whom his personal attacks seemed to stick, and his attempt to find some nickname that will stick to Harris, this rant shows that the Republicans seem unable to counter popular Democratic policies.
The heart of their policies were in Project 2025, the extremist vision of a country ruled by a strongman who took the civil service, the Department of Justice, and the military under his own control in order to slash the popular, secular parts of the government and replace them with Christian nationalism. Right-wing evangelicals liked what was outlined in the project, but when the majority of Americans began to understand what was in it, they were quite clear they wanted no part of it. Trump then tried to distance himself from it, although he had publicly praised it, his political action committee had called it his plan, and more than 100 of its architects were people who had served in his administration.
And then it turned out that Trump’s vice presidential pick, J. D. Vance, had written the introduction for a book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, the chief author of Project 2025. The original publication date for the book, which calls for “a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution,’” was in September, shortly before the election, but today the publisher announced it would put off publication until November, after the election.
But advance reader copies of Roberts’s book are already in the hands of reviewers, and Madeline Peltz of Media Matters is posting some of the content online. In it, she notes, Roberts “rails against birth control, in vitro fertilization, abortion, and dog parks. He says that having children should not be considered an ‘optional individual choice,’ but a ‘social expectation,’” and that reproductive choice is a “snake strangling the American family.” It is no accident that Vance’s numbers with women continue to fall.
See:
So these are the issues that would come up in a debate between the Dipsy-Trumpster and the Future-Madame-President.
And Future-President Kamala Harris is deadly in cross-examination and in debate Madame-Future-President will shut-down Trump.
We don’t have to guess.
We have a preview, where Future-Madame-President Kamala Harris rhetorically packed a knock-out-one-two-three-punch to The Honorable Jeff Sessions, former Prosecutor, former-Senator, then-Attorney General.
During the Senate Intelligence Hearing of 13 June 2017, Mr. Sessions had done quite well under the friendly SIC Chairman, the Honorable Richard Burr (R-NC).
But then, Senator Burr called upon the then-Freshman Senator, the Honorable Kamala Harris.
What came next was a rhetorical bludgeoning.
What will the debate look like?
Today’s Washington Post gives a preview:
According to Post reporters, Liz Goodman and Leigh Ann Caldwell (the latter, Ms. Caldwell, has often appeared on NBC and MSNBC as a reporter and as a consultant on CNN):
Testifying in front of his former colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee as they investigated Russia’s influence on the 2016 election, Sessions fiercely pushed back on criticism that he had failed to disclose his earlier interactions with the Russian ambassador to the United States. But it was a brand new member of the panel, Kamala Harris, who elicited his rawest reaction at the June 2017 hearing, when she pressed Sessions repeatedly on whether he had interacted with other Russian nationals during the campaign, in a rapid-fire style that left him [Mr. Sessions] visibly flustered.
Ms. Goodman and Ms. Caldwell had begun today’s article with:
Jeff Sessions, then Donald Trump’s attorney general, had faced only about three minutes of a freshman senator’s fusillade of questions before he began to crack.
Ms. Goodman and Ms. Caldwell continued:
[Ms. Harris’ questions had flustered Mr. Sessions:]
“I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous,” Sessions said.
It was a viral moment
— and the first of many for Harris during her four years in the Senate as a Democrat representing California, where she deployed her courtroom-tested rhetorical skills to lambaste Trump and his administration officials, to the annoyance of some of her GOP colleagues in the upper chamber.
Here is a transcript of the hearing:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/13/full-text-jeff-session-trump-russia-testimony-239503
And here is the transcript with then-Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III:
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: Attorney General Sessions, you have several times this afternoon prefaced your responses by saying to the best of your recollection. Just on the first page of your three pages of written testimony, you wrote nor do I recall, do not have recollection, do not remember it, so my question is for any of your testimony today, did you refresh your memory with any written documents, be them your calendar, written correspondence, e-mails or notes of any sort?
SESSIONS: I attempted to refresh my recollection but so much of this is in a wholesale campaign of extraordinary nature that you’re moving so fast that you don’t keep notes, you meet people. I didn’t keep notes of my conversations with the Russian ambassador at the Republican convention. I didn’t keep notes on most of these things.
HARRIS: Sir, will you provide the committee with the notes that you did maintain?
SESSIONS: As appropriate I will supply the committee with documents.
HARRIS: Can you please tell me what you mean when you say appropriate?
SESSIONS: I would have to consult with lawyers in the department who know the proper procedure before disclosing documents that are held within the Department of Justice. I’m not able to make that opinion today.
HARRIS: It is a relates to your knowledge.
SESSIONS: To the best of my knowledge.
HARRIS: Did you have any communication with any Russian businessman or any Russian nationals?
SESSIONS: I don’t believe I had any conversation with Russian businessmen or Russian nationals.
HARRIS: Are you aware of any communications --
SESSIONS: A lot of people were at the convention, it’s conceivable --
HARRIS: Sir. I have just a few
SESSIONS: Well, you let me qualify -- if I don’t qualify, it you’ll accuse me of lying so I need to be correct as best as I can.
HARRIS: I do want you to be honest.
SESSIONS:
And I’m not to be able to be rushed this fast. IT THE [sic!] MAKES ME NERVOUS:
HARRIS: Are you aware of any communications with other Trump campaign officials and associates that they had with Russian officials or any Russian nationals?
For the video:
And:
Don’t you think that Future Madame-President, Kamala Harris (sorry for the repetition, but Armando really likes the sound of that! — Future Madame-President Harris) will “rush” the Dipsy-Trumpster in her cross-examination?!
Like a former prosecutor, Jeff Sessions, won’t Dipsy Trumpster feel, even if he doesn’t say, “I am not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous!”
We don’t have to guess!
If you have the heart, look at this poor guy, the Dipsy-Trumpster as he speaks, to foresee how Mr. Trump will fare against the prosecutorial instincts of Future-Madame-President:
Or here, on C-Span, where, at Minute 33:35, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Walz of having tampons put into boy’s restrooms:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?537538-1/president-trump-campaigns-montana
Or here where Mr. Trump drones on about Ms. Harris’ “ultra-liberal agenda”:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5127866/trump-debate-biden-potential-debate-harris
If a former Prosecutor collapsed before the rhetorical barrage of cross-examination of Future Madame-President, Kamala Harris, what will happen to the Dipsy-Trumpster . . .
Now, having previewed any debate between a former Prosecutor who rhetorically goes for the throat against a narcissist, Armando cannot resist, being Armando, a little cultural history.
Armando, as fate has it, despite being Blue, Blue, True-Blue, lives in the Mid-South, a suburb of Memphis, and had lived for 32 years on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, one-hour east of New Orleans, in Catholic-French-Croatian-Cajun-Vietnamese Long Beach, near Gulfport, having undergone Hurricane Katrina (national disaster of 29 August 2005), while serving as a proud Member of one of America’s most ethical, most respected law firms: Department of Navy, Office of the General Counsel.
If you drive near Memphis, and you see a sporty six-speed Honda-Civic (2022) with the license, NAVYOGC, you have just spotted Armando.
I was associate counsel for naval laboratories in the Gulf Coast and in Monterey, California. The Navy being what it is, Armando was stationed, not in beautiful Monterey-Carmel — think John Steinbeck and Cannery Row — but, rather, 40-minutes east of New Orleans.
Armando loves his former client.
Armando is proud of NAVY OGD and the 28-year career as Judge Advocate with the Air Force Reserves (only made the grade, Lieutenant Colonel, not smart enough, I guess, to make O-6, but — I am proud to have graduated from the strategic college of the Air Force: Air War College). In the Air Force Reserves, I did counseling on cases involving medical-risk management under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and I LOVED, just LOVED Air Force medical doctors, on the whole, a top-rate bunch of physicians. And my physicians loved my work. That, with my counsel to a branch of the Naval Research Laboratory, involved Armando’s favorite long-term career clients.
I will only talk well about the Air Force and Navy. I LOVE those two services.
Don’t ask me about the Army. Er . . . ahem . . . interservice rivalry. If you served, you know what it is. It is mutual. AND FUN.
But Armando speaks ONLY for himself. The Navy and Air Force have NOTHING TO DO with Armando’s garrulous posts, and the Navy and Air Force speak policy only through their own good offices, primarily through the Office of Public Affairs.
Armando, being Armando, loves history and asks you to excuse an excursion into Jeff Sessions.
Mr. Sessions is not just anyone.
Here is a bit of history on Mr. Sessions, himself:
Denied Judgeship
After working as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama from 1975-77, Sessions was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as U.S. attorney for the same region in 1981. Reagan also nominated Sessions for a judge’s seat in the U.S. District Court in 1986, but his political rise was thwarted during hearings held by a bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee.
Allegations surfaced that Sessions had made a comment in which he appeared to condone the KKK, however, Sessions apologized, stating that he was joking when he made the remark. One colleague, who didn’t consider Sessions a racist, testified that Sessions had nonetheless made comments describing the NAACP Defense Fund and American Civil Liberties Union as “un-American,” while another African American colleague, echoing the previous statements, also testified that Sessions had called him “boy.”
In his own defense, Sessions told the committee: "I am not the Jeff Sessions my detractors have tried to create. I am not a racist."
The judiciary committee, however, voted against Sessions’ judgeship, 10-8. Sessions was only the second nominee rejected by the committee in 48 years.
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/jeff-sessions
This Selma and Mobile Gentleman is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III.
Jefferson comes, in this case, not so much from the Author of the Declaration of Independence, the Author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty, and the Founder of the University of Virginia (the only three biographical facts appearing on TJ’s tomb — leaving out his terms as Secretary of State and President!), Thomas Jefferson.
Rather, Jefferson in the name comes from, of course, an old Confederate family, Jefferson Davis.
Born on Christmas Eve, 1946, in Selma, the second element in his name, Beauregard, is not just any name in the old Confederate South.
This is Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (28 May 1818 - 20 February 1893), who opened the Civil War at Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, and who at Shiloh, Tennessee served as second in command under one of history’s truly great cavalry officers, Albert Sidney Johnston. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, the afternoon of 6 April 1862 at Shiloh, General Johnston — whom Jefferson Davis wanted to ultimately serve as the Commanding General of the Confederacy — was shot in the leg. Now, that would could have been healed, the bleeding stanched. But General Johnston continued valiantly fighting, refusing to apply a tourniquet, and he died, hemorrhaging, at 14:30 (2:30 PM) on the battlefield. The loss of General Johnston deprived the South of one of its best strategists and a historic cavalry officer. Facing General Johnston was Ulysses S. Grant, who had transported massive Union Troops via steamboat to Shiloh with a view towards cutting off the South’s river and rail logistics, key to Southern Strategy in the War. Ulysses S. Grant succeeded by killing Johnston at Shiloh (a major port) and a clear victory at Corinth (where the rails met). Union possession of railway-and-river hubs substantially boosted the Federal posture in the ongoing War.
Shiloh-Corinth in April 1862 contributed heavily towards the Federal good position to win the Civil War.
For those interested in more about General Beauregard and General Johnston, see:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/p-g-t-beauregard
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/albert-sidney-johnston
As far as the namesake, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III, the Federalist Society proudly gives his biography here:
https://fedsoc.org/contributors/jefferson-sessions
This is the stuff of Deep-South Royalty, a family where the man bears the proud Confederate First and Middle names and the royal family suffix “The Third” (J.B.S. III).
Proud, Confederate, Deep-South, Solid Republican Royalty, the third generation named after the Confederate President and a leading, Cajun Confederate General. This is the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III who cracked under pressure inflicted by cross-examination by Future-Madame-President Kamala Harris, and Trump doesn’t stand a chance.
To quote the title of a favorite movie, that is As Good as It Gets!*
________________________________
*Apologies to Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.
All bold and italics are Armando’s emphasis, not in any of the originals. The quotes are full, but the highlighting is mine. This post is a little lengthy, so the italics and bold just help provide a roadmap as you read.
We do not have to guess.
Madame President (near future) Kamala Harris has long shown us her mettle, and we already know how Ms. Harris will make the Dipsy-Trumpster look for a clean retreat!
We have seen it.
Madame President, Madame President, and once again we all say MADAME PRESIDENT!! 💙💙💙
So how can we embarrass the MSM to be this thorough? The information, the videos, the investigations are out there to tell the story. Yet MSM WILL NOT TELL THE STORY.
Freedom of the press are just meaningless words in today’s world where timid apparitions sit in front of cameras, a space once occupied by giants.