Author: Mike Rothschild

Writer and researcher specializing in conspiracy theories, politics, history, and fringe beliefs.

When Impeachment and Re-Election Collide

Mike Rothschild

 

Democrats are riding a wave of anti-Trump outrage into the 2018 midterms, while Republicans find new ways to describe their discomfort at President Trump’s long, public breakdown.

Beyond that, historical precedent already puts the party in the White House behind the 8-ball. The House has changed parties four times since World War II: 1954, 1994, 2006, and 2010. All four were midterm elections where the president’s party lost control.

If that trend holds, Democrats will re-take the House, probably by a wide margin. And if that happens, it’s a safe bet that impeachment will follow. In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked if the first thing a newly Democratic House does is take a vote to authorize the House Judiciary Committee to begin an impeachment investigation, especially if Special Council Robert Mueller’s final report recommends it.

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Why I Don’t Believe President Trump Will Fire Robert Mueller

Mike Rothschild

Conventional wisdom is that we’re standing on the precipice of a Constitutional and moral crisis that will kick off when President Trump fires special council Robert Mueller and scuttles the former FBI director’s investigation.

There’s Salon asking whether Trump will fire Mueller. On the left, here are six disturbing signs from Think Progress that Trump is about to fire Mueller. And on the right, here’s National Review declaring it a foregone conclusion that Trump will fire Mueller.

In the absence of action from POTUS, his slavish acolytes in the conservative infotainment sphere have gone full broadside on Mueller, declaring him a partisan hack in charge of a biased deep state coup run by the Obama-Clinton machine. Apparently, Sean Hannity alone has called for Mueller’s firing or resignation nearly four dozen times since May.

And we know that when Sean Hannity speaks, Donald Trump listens.

But will he actually act? I’m not so sure. In fact, I’d be shocked if Trump went ahead and actually fired Mueller.

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A 1978 War Game Shows How We Weren’t Designed to Survive Trump

Mike Rothschild

During October 1978, the US spent a month practicing World War III.

The military portion of the plan was given the jaunty codename “Nifty Nugget,” and when paired with a civilian plan called “Readiness Exercise 78,” represented the first ever computerized, nuclear age exercise to test the nation’s ability to mobilize for war in Europe, fight in the field, move equipment and troops, and absorb the damage and casualties that would occur when the conflict went nuclear.

It was a fiasco, and showed that if war broke out, we’d be utterly screwed.

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A Look at that “Interesting” Flow Chart from MagaPill

Mike Rothschild

With conspiracy theory flow charts making their long-awaited comeback, it was only a matter of time before President Trump, who loves conspiracy theories significantly more than he loves charts, embraced them.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Trump’s insane tweeting took no rest, as the president did everything from attacking CNN International to declaring that he’s our favorite president.

But the tweet that got the most attention might have been one that retweeted a pro-Trump conspiracy site called MagaPill. The name is a combination of Trump’s signature catchphrase and a reference to the “red pill” that wakes people up out of the Matrix.

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A Conspiracy of Charts

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

Gawker didn’t do everything right, but when it really nailed something, that something really got nailed.

My favorite example was coining the term “chart brut” to describe the crude, mentally-impaired, MS Paint-made conspiracy pictures that popped up everywhere after the Boston Marathon bombing.

boston chart

You take a picture of something that “doesn’t add up” and add some red arrows, circles, and random bits of text to it, in order to draw our attention to…things. Toss in a few screen caps from Google and a Twitter handle, and the sheeple have been awoken.

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