Backlash

Trump's little exercise in armed insurrection didn't work out quite the way he planned, to the extent that he had to issue a statement that is nothing more than dodging responsibility:

After encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol on Wednesday, triggering an insurrection inside the halls of Congress as he sought to overturn the election result, the president turned to social media after being suspended from his accounts.

“Like all Americans I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem,” he said in a brief video message, days before the end of his one-term presidency as lawmakers prepare to remove him from office.

He said that the rioters “who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy."

Meanwhile, there are calls from all sides of the political spectrum for his immediate removal from office. Twelve more days. Wonder what he'll try next, or whether his staff will be able to resdtrain him.

Wreck Everything

Trump seems determined to destroy the federal government on his way out:

As President Donald Trump’s tenure in the oval office winds down, his administration is apparently looking to leave a lasting effect on federal civil service employment. The administration is seeking to remove legal protections for 88 percent of the federal workforce and ultimately make it much easier for career employees to be fired, several news outlets reported this week. At least one congressional Democrat said the move appears calculated to undermine the incoming Biden administration.

The effort to destabilize tens of thousands of federal jobs stems from an executive order signed by the president late last month. The Office of Management and Budget is reportedly moving swiftly to ensure that it’s implemented before Trump leaves office on Jan. 20.

Under the order, political appointees in the White House sent every federal agency a list of positions that should be reclassified as “Schedule F” roles, meaning the employees could be terminated for a number of reasons including poor performance or failing to carry out the administration’s stated priorities. The deadline for the reclassification is Jan. 19, one day prior to inauguration.

There's a lot of speculation that Trump will try to fire everyone and fill the positions with his own loyalists. I wouldn't put it past him just to fire everyone on January 19.

I don't understand why this isn't in court already -- it's a direct violation of federal law, namely the Pendleton Act of 1883, which was passed specifically to avoid that Trump is trying to do.

We'll see if anyone tries to stop him.

Via Joe.My.God.

This Looks About Right

Trump's Idea of a peaceful transfer of power:

Image from Steeve Greenberg, via Crooks and Liars.

Today's Must-Read: But Don't Call It "Terrorism"

From Digby, this is something that Trump deserves to be branded with -- these are his supporters, who he has encouraged and parised as "patriots":

What would you say if you saw this in another country?

There is new and disturbing information in the alleged militia plot against the governor of Michigan.

The 14 men charged had far more violent plans than just a kidnapping, according to federal and state authorities.

New filings claim there was a Plan B the militiamen had drawn up, that involved a takeover of the Michigan capitol building by 200 combatants who would stage a week-long series of televised executions of public officials.

Actually, we've seen this before, on live television from the Middle East.

Read the whole thing, and hope that the Biden administration comes down hard on these "patriots" and others like them. (Can we repoen Alcatraz? Or maybe some coral atoll in the Pacific that's about to go under water.)

Thanks, Trump

I went to the Field Museum yesterday -- my last chance for at least two weeks: they're closing again until December 5, maybe longer, depending, in accordance with new guidelines from the state and city because of the new spike in COVID-19 cases. My cousin e-mailed me that the Art Institute is also closed (I had inquired about the "Monet in Chicago" exhibition); the Shedd Aqarium is closed; the Adler Planetarium has been closed, not being set up to encourage social distancing; the Nature Museum, ditto. Also, all Park District facilities, including the conservatories and field houses, are closed.

Lincoln Park Zoo is open, but closes for the day at 3 pm. two hours early.

And COVID-19 deaths have hit 250.000 and show no sign of tapering off. And now the forecast is for 2,000 deaths a day.

Just think how different it would be if we'd had a president who actually did something about the pandemic instead of denying that it existed. And now, of course, instead of trying to ameliorate the second wave, he's trying to steal the election.

Tofay's Must-Read: The End-Game(s)

Digby has a very interesting post that relies heavily on a piece by Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post (behind a paywall) describing three possible scenarios that explain Trump's behavior in the wake of his election loss:

The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt summarizes the various theories about what Trump is actually doing with his inane refusal to concede the election despite the fact that he clearly lost. In anyone else you would be talking about doing some kind of intervention and getting him some professional help, but this is Trump and he acts irrationally every day and his supporters love it so he remains in power, doing what he does[.]

The three scearios Hiatt outlines all make sense, given that it's Trump's reality we're dealing with, but underlying this is something more important, which Digby notes in her final comment:

From the moment Mitch McConnell stole the Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama in 2016, it was clear that the Republicans had finally completely gone rogue. They made it clear before Trump was even nominated that they no longer cared about hypocrisy and were going to retain power by any means necessary. Trump made that easier by taking all the slings and arrows from the rest of the country and allowing them to pretend that they were secretly embarrassed by him but couldn’t really do anything because their voters are a bunch of rubes and you can’t tell them anything.

They know now that they can get away with anything if they find the right points of leverage. It’s wide open now. The beltway establishment embodied by Hiatt is finally starting to come to grips with that. Let’s see if it sticks.

I've been pointing out for a while that this is what the GOP has been working toward since Reagan and their unholy alliance with the "Christian" right. Trump, with his ability as a rabble-rouser and complete lack of any concerns other than his own comfort, finally made it possible (with the connivance of the media, whether deliberate or just lazy).

Read the whole thing. It's worth it.

The Next Step

Toward Donald Trump, President for Life. After all, he's already claimed victory in the election; how better to make sure that it happens?

As ongoing vote tabulation in several key battleground states continues to slowly narrow President Donald Trump’s path to reelection, the New York Times reported late Wednesday that the Justice Department has told federal prosecutors that U.S. law permits armed federal agents to enter ballot-counting locations to investigate alleged “fraud,” heightening fears of possible intimidation efforts by the Trump administration. . . .

The Times noted that the Justice Department’s email, authored by Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, “created the specter of the federal government intimidating local election officials or otherwise intervening in vote tallying amid calls by President Trump to end the tabulating in states where he was trailing in the presidential race.”

While U.S. law bars the stationing of armed officials “at any place where a general or special election is held,” Donoghue claimed in his email that the statute “does not prevent armed federal law enforcement persons from responding to, investigat[ing], or prevent[ing] federal crimes at closed polling places or at other locations where votes are being counted.”

What better way to insure the vote goes your way -- I mean, is fair and accurate?

And you can bet real money that they will find fraud, if they have to invent it themselves.

I think, if I were the governor of any of these states, I would have these federal agents met by armed state troopers.

Birds of a Feather

And so forth. Actually, I think this is pretty funny:

President Trump's reelection bid received a vote of support Friday from an entity most in his party would reject: the Taliban. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview, "We hope he will win the election and wind up U.S. military presence in Afghanistan." The militant group expressed some concern about Mr. Trump's bout with the coronavirus. "When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but seems he is getting better," another Taliban senior leader told CBS News.

The Trump camp's reaction is about what you'd expect:

Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said Saturday that they "reject" the Taliban support. "The Taliban should know that the president will always protect American interests by any means necessary," Murtaugh said.

"American interests" in this context being Trump's bank account. And don't forget -- he only likes white terrorists.

Via Joe.My.God.

Nice Company You've Got There

Be a shame if anything happened to it. This broke a couple of days ago:

President Donald Trump said TikTok will have to close in the U.S. by Sept. 15 -- unless there’s a deal to sell the social network’s domestic operations to Microsoft Corp. or another U.S. company.

Trump also said the federal government will have to be paid a “substantial amount of money” as part of any deal.

“I don’t mind whether it’s Microsoft or someone else, a big company, a secure company, a very American company buys it,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “It’ll close down on Sept. 15 unless Microsoft or somebody else is able to buy it and work out a deal, an appropriate deal, so the Treasury of the United States gets a lot of money.”

Trump really has started to think of himself as the godfather. I can't see how the U.S. government can legally demand a cut of a business deal between two corporations. My own feeling is it's just Trump blowing gas again -- he announced originally, on Friday, that he would ban TikTok's operations in the U.S. on Saturday via his old stand-by, executive order. Nothing happened.

However, the reactions have been, predictably, not positive. The Chinese, in particular, are not pleased:

Chinese state media this week is blasting Washington for what it calls the United States' "nasty" treatment of TikTok — the wildly popular video-sharing app that has become emblematic of worsening US-China relations.

"The US' decoupling from China starts [with] killing China's most competitive companies," wrote the Global Times, a state-run tabloid, in an editorial published Monday. "In the process, Washington ignores rules and is unreasonable."

And as usual, Trump's own people have no idea how this is supposed to happen, if it happens (and that's a big if, but it's the press' latest shiny object):

White House officials on Tuesday could not say how the U.S. government would receive a portion of the proceeds from any sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations, one day after President Donald Trump called for a cut of the money.

“There’s no specific blueprint here,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Fox Business Network on Tuesday.

“It may be that the president was thinking, because the Treasury has had to do so much work on this, there are a lot of options here. I’m not sure it’s a specific concept that will be followed through ... Regarding fees or anything like that, all that remains to be seen,” Kudlow said.

This is revealing of Trump's thinking on this (among other things):

Experts have said the U.S. government generally does not have the authority to take a cut of private business sales. But Trump, a real estate developer and former reality television star who has touted his “art of the deal,” on Monday said “a very substantial portion” of any TikTok sale must go to the U.S. Treasury “because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen.”

That's a stretch, at best -- the only possible way we "allowed this to happen" is if it requires an OK from the Commerce Department, or DoJ, on anti-monopoly grounds, which wouldn't apply here.

The man's an idiot.

Oh, and if you're wondering why Trump is going after TikTok in particular, aside from the fact that it's a Chinese company, note this, from the Bloomberg story:

Teenagers opposed to Trump have also used the app to disrupt the president’s campaign activities, including signing up for tickets to his first rally since the beginning of the pandemic, in Tulsa. Attendance at the late June event was far below expectations, and Trump hasn’t held another rally since.

Bottom line: they're being mean to him.

All via Joe.My.God.

Catching Up: The Next Step

Toward what? you may ask. Why, toward a fascist authoritarian state, of course. This is from a couple of days ago (I don't seem to have highlighted it yet):

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

He can't do that of course -- no matter what Mike Pompeo says. The date of the presidential election is set by federal law. Good luck with getting Nancy Pelosi to agree to a delay. But even the Republicans aren't jumping on this particular bandwagon:

Top Republicans on Thursday rejected President Trump’s suggestion that the Nov. 3 general election be delayed — something he has no authority to order. “Never in the history of the federal elections have we not held an election and we should go forward,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, adding that he understood “the president’s concern about mail-in voting.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, declined to answer questions on Capitol Hill, but dismissed Mr. Trump’s suggestion in an interview with WNKY television. “Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions, and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time, and we’ll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3,” Mr. McConnell said. “We’ll cope with whatever the situation is.”

Meanwhile, Trump's minions are doing everything possible to make voting by mail untenable:

The U.S. Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs of mail across the country after a top Trump donor running the agency put in place new procedures described as cost-cutting efforts, alarming postal workers who warn that the policies could undermine their ability to deliver ballots on time for the November election.

As President Trump ramps up his unfounded attacks on mail balloting as being susceptible to widespread fraud, postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.

Of course, the Republicans have been wanting to kill the USPS almost as long as they've been trying to repeal Social Security.

Needless to say, the reactions to this ploy have been less than positive. A sample:

This is Trump's most dangerous Tweet ever. And I know that is saying something. It is not within his power to change the date of the election. But that he wants to try should set off alarms everywhere. He is publicly contemplating a dangerous, authoritarian power grab. https://t.co/QhOMi6AlTr

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) July 30, 2020

We all knew it was coming to this. Make no mistake about it: Any announcement of a delay of the election will be a declaration of war against America by our criminal president. https://t.co/fIAE4spGWd

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 30, 2020

I'm really starting to think we're heading toward a civil war, courtesy of Trump and the Republicans.

How to Turn a Demonstration Into a Broad-Based Movement (Updated)

Send in your brown shirts. Trump really screwed up this one:

First there was a Wall of Moms united to protect the peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters in Portland. The footage was absolutely amazing.

Now there is a "Wall of Vets" providing further backup. The group of military veterans joined the Moms and other groups on Friday night, standing united and in full force with signs showing support for the BLM movement. These veterans ranged in age from 20's to senior citizens to disabled.

This is what it's like in Portland, as of last night:

Portland right now. Stunning. pic.twitter.com/g2U5B8aFI3

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 25, 2020

Those are not Proud Boys with tiki torches. Those are the good guys.

A short history:

Feds started abducting protesters and a wall of moms formed.

They gassed the moms, so dads brought leaf blowers.

They beat a Navy veteran who just wanted to speak with them, then a wall of vets came together.

They attacked volunteer medics, so nurses showed up in scrubs. https://t.co/cQBCjojxq2

— ACLU (@ACLU) July 25, 2020

And he wants to try the same thing in Chicago?

Update:

Via Digby, an article on a very interesting survey done in early June. This paragraph is pretty revealing:

The reasons persuadables moved from opposing to supporting the protests, Prull said, can mostly be attributed to the demonstrations growing and becoming largely peaceful by their second week, with human stories of everyday police brutality saturating the media environment. Trump’s strongman performance on June 1 did almost nothing to turn public opinion against the demonstrations. Instead it likely backfired. “Between those two dates, the big driver that I see is the protests becoming larger and even more peaceful each day,” Prull told me. “The story was being told by people who are being hurt by police every day, and the empathy with that, and frankly the reasonableness of that, was breaking through. And then the president tear-gassing protestors outside the White House lawn, I think, was a nontrivial part of this. You had the draconian response of the government, and then the protests just seemed even more reasonable when it was a bunch of regular people being tear-gassed in the middle of Washington D.C. for the sake of a photo op.”

Trump is playing to maybe 30% of the populace -- the same 30% that's been against everything since Independence. (They were probably against independence, as well.) The rest of the country is leaving him behind.

Today's Must-Read: Nice Democracy You've Got There (Update)

or had. It's no exaggeration to say that Trump and the Republicans are aiming toward a fascist state. There's a lot of commentary that this is Trump showing he's a strong leader to energize his base because he's worried about the election. That's probably part of it, but the larger picture is that this is the next step in the Republican agenda: permanent rule, by whatever means necessary.

This story's been all over the place, but Digby has a good overview:

Trump has been saying over and over again since George Floyd was murdered, “if cities won’t deal with protesters, I will.” Bill Barr declared war on “Antifa” and blamed it for the violence and looting in the early days of the protests.

Guess what? They meant it.

The post is mostly a series of tweets, with videos, showing what's going on in Portland, OR. It's not pretty. And it's a blatant violation of Constitutional rights:

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That's the beginning of an opinion piece by Ruth Marcus at WaPo. It's behind a paywall, but Digby quotes it extensively.

There will be lawsuits, but given that the Supreme Court has already upheld a poll tax and blown a "religious freedom" hole in anti-discrimination laws. Just think of the fun Kavanaugh et al. will have with the right to assemble.

Update: Here's a follow-up story via Joe.My.God.:

The US Attorney for the Oregon District today requested an investigation into the masked, camouflaged federal authorities without identification badges who are arresting protesters in Portland. The request is aimed specifically at DHS personnel who have been captured on various videos arresting protesters and putting them in unmarked SUVs.

DHS is the last agency to be investigating -- well, the DHS. This goes back to AG Barr and Trump. This is the authoritarian secret police in action, courtesy of Barr.

And if you thought it was just Portland -- well, no:

Nonetheless, the administration has made it clear it intends to take these tactics nationwide. When asked about the arrests in Portland, Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli told NPR that “this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we're responsible for around the country.”

That's from this article by Heather Cox Richardson. (With thanks to commenter coram nobis.)

And a coda:

You think not?

Wow. Just, Wow. . . .

This story broke yesterday (actually, probably Friday, but I saw it late yesterday):

American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter. . . .

The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

(Via Towleroad, where you can year Rachel Maddow's commentary.)

The reaction has not been positive. A small sample:

NOTE TO AMERICA'S TROOPS:

Donald only protects troops who are made of metal or stone -- and fought for the other side. #TraitorTrump https://t.co/Z58SrAbtcC

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) June 27, 2020

A white supremacist, a sex offender, and a traitor walk into a bar. The bartender says "What'll it be, President Trump?"#TraitorTrump

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot) June 27, 2020

There's lots more at the link.

It's indicative of the way Trump's mind works that he accused Obama of treason for "spying" on the Trump campaign. (L'Etat, c' est moi) There is some speculation that this was a combination of projection and deflection, since he reportedly knew about the Russian bounties at the time.

I think with any other president, this would be unbelievable. But it is believable. Here's an interesting take on that issue:

Whether Trump has actually committed treason is arguable. Treason is defined as:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3.

Although there's been no format declaration of war against Russia, Putin's certainly not a friend of the U.S. And the Taliban is an enemy.

The White House, of course, is denying that Trump knew anything about it:

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Saturday that the President and Vice President Mike Pence were not briefed “on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence.” McEnany said her statement “does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story,” which said Trump had been briefed.

We're back at the believeability thing. Who are you going to believe, a serial liar or the New York Times?

At this point, it's almost a toss-up, but NYT still has more credibility than Trump.

Today in Alternate Realities

This speaks for itself:

Is there anything Trump can do to make you lose support of him?

"Commit adultery on his beautiful, classy wife."

What about Stormy Daniels?

"That was years ago before he ever became president. Nobody is accountable for what he done when he was a lot younger."#TrumpRallyTulsa pic.twitter.com/67OdKJXi0O

— Andrew Kimmel (@andrewkimmel) June 20, 2020

So, 60 is young?

Something tells me "Rosie" doesn't spend a lot of time thinking.

Something to Warm Your Heart

Thanks to TikTok and K-pop fans:

The New York Times reports:

TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. After @TeamTrump tweeted asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show.

It gets worse:

CNBC reports:

Talking up the rally last week, Trump said nearly a million people had requested tickets to attend. “We have a 22,000-seat arena, but I think we’re going to also take the convention hall next door, and that’s going to hold 40,000 … We expect to have a record-setting crowd. We’ve never had an empty seat, and we certainly won’t in Oklahoma.”

But they did have empty seats. Approximately 13,000 of them, according to the Tulsa Fire Marshal, who counted slightly less than 6,200 attendees at the 19,000-seat Bank of Oklahoma Arena on Saturday night.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

(Wonder who's going to get fired over this.)

Today's Must-Read: The Lunatic in Chief

From Digby, this article on our acting "president" and his destruction of the government:

During his three and a half years in office, President Trump has succeeded in damaging every institution of politics and government, from the Department of Justice to the federal courts to the Foreign Service and the State Department to the intelligence community, public health agencies and beyond. But until fairly recently he had more or less left the U.S. military alone.

The George Floyd/Black Lives Matter demonstration have really brought his dictatorial impulses to the fore. This bit is telling:

This episode illustrates one of the ongoing destructive dynamics of the Trump administration. The president makes mad demands and, in order to keep him from doing his worst, people around him appease him with flattery or come up with slightly less bad options and then scurry to carry them out. In the process, so many of them destroy their credibility and their reputations. Even if they succeed in short-circuiting the very worst of Trump’s impulses, their willingness to appease him always produces bad outcomes anyway.

It's a lose-lose situation for anyone involved -- and for the rest of us as well.

The man -- and I use the term loosely -- is insane.

Read the whole thing.

Today's Must-Read: What a Pathetic Creature

This post, by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, lays out what a total loss as a human being our "president" is:

The warnings have become clichés. There is no bottom. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. You can fool some of the people all of the time, etc. But as the country devolves into what the rest of world might describe as a hellhole, it is not clear what comes next after Monday. But it won’t be pretty.

Sullivan goes down the line and lays it out.

The trigger for this one is Trump having the police gas and fire flash-bangs and rubber bullets at peaceful, unarmed protesters in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, so that he could make a big show of walking across the street to St. John's church for a photo op -- and to prove he's a "real man" after hiding in a bunker the evening before.

In fact, scroll down today's posts at Hullabaloo -- it's pretty grim.

The Next Step

So, Trump is going to declare Antifa a terrorist organization:

Donald Trump has claimed that left-wing activists are responsible for the violent protests in Minneapolis and other cities, and declared his administration will move to designate the loose association of militant left-wing, anti-fascist demonstrators commonly known as “Antifa” as a terrorist organisation.

“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organisation,” he said in a series of tweets on Sunday blaming violent outbursts and rioting at police brutality protests across America over the weekend on the group and other “Radical Left” elements.​

As usual, our acting president is right on target -- Antifa (which he mispronounced) is not an organization; it's a loose association of groups and individuals opposed to fascism. Such groups and individuals have included the U.S., the UK, France, the USSR, Frankllin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and, in the present day, Angela Merkel, the Democratic Party -- well, you get my drift.

There's also a matter of U.S. law, which only allows for designating foreign groups as terrorists.

And his butt boy, Bill Barr, is chiming right in:

“In many places it appears the violence is planned, organised, and driven by far left extremist groups and anarchic groups using Antifa-like tactics,” the attorney general said.

In Chicago, the mayor says there's no doubt that the riots, looting, and arson were organized. we just don't know who organized the mess -- but based on recent history, my guess is that it wasn't leftist groups. (If what they've discovered in Minnesota is any indication, look to Trump supporters and other right-wing and neo-fascist groups. Irony note: the spelling the "Boogaloo Bois" use for "boys" is old gay slang for a gay man.)

This is a key point (with thanks to commenter BeccaM at Joe.My.God.)

It is extremely common for authoritarian states to broadly expand the definition of an activist group so that anyone they oppose can be accused of being a member, and thus be arrested and surveiled according to their invented pretext. That is what they will try to do with antifa.

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 31, 2020

The comments at Joe.My.God. are worth reading -- a lot of information there.

Giggle du Jour

Courtesy of commenter Jeff25 at Crooks and Liars:

That is such a Groucho comeback.

The Liar-In-Chief Gets Fact-Checked

And doesn't like it at all. A couple of stories here. First, Twitter is fact-checking Trump, from WaPo via Joe.My.God. (WaPo's story is behind a paywall.)

Twitter on Tuesday slapped a fact-check label on President Trump’s tweets for the first time, a response to long-standing criticism that the company is too hands-off when it comes to policing misinformation and falsehoods from world leaders.

The move, which escalates tensions between Washington and Silicon Valley in an election year, was made in response to two Trump tweets over the past 24 hours.

The tweets falsely claimed that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Twitter’s label says, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” and redirects users to news articles about Trump’s unsubstantiated claim.

Better late than never -- Twitter should have been doing this a decade ago.

And do I expect this to make any difference to Trump cultists? No, of course not.

Trump, however, is not happy, and his reaction is way over the top. Again, via Joe (Joe's post is quoting from Axios, but the link goes to Business Insider. I did find the Axios story, though.):

President Trump responded via tweets Tuesday evening to Twitter fact-checking him for the first time on his earlier unsubstantiated posts claiming mail-in ballots in November's election would be fraudulent.

What he's saying: "Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election.They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post," the president tweeted. "Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!"

Like I said, over the top -- fact-checking a habitual liar is now interfering in the election and "stifling" free speech. Like his followers, Trump has no clue as to what the Constitution actually guarantees in regard to freedom of speech -- which is simply that the government can't censor you. And as "conservatives" are so fond of pointing out, private entities are not bound by that.

And of course, the campaign weighs in:

We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters. Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility.

He's panicking.