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I hesitate to make any predictions about that because I have been wrong about it so often in the past. “Surely,” I have thought, “this is it. The American people will not stand for this.”

But then they do. James Comey was OK. So was Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Michael Sussmann. The FBI does something outrageous. There are little eructations of unhappiness. Then people go back to their lattes and put it out their minds.

Will the astonishing raid on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence, be the line in the sand, the Rubicon, the straw that broke the camel’s back? Maybe. Just possibly.

Probably not.

But maybe. The volume of the response this time has been turned up. Everywhere one looks, eyebrows are raised. Concern — make that “deep concern” — is being voiced. As is so often the case, it’s the little things that push people over the edge. The news that the G-Men, in addition to carting off boxes of documents, also rifled through Melania Trump’s personal wardrobe struck many people as especially outrageous. Are we about to see some of those agents wandering around with the former first lady’s underwear? I wouldn’t put it past them.

Dems’ whole remaining strategy for 2024 is to make people believe Trump does not support American democracy. Propaganda/journalism/TV hearings failed to sway many minds. To succeed, it’s going to require something real, an actual court finding Trump actually guilty of an actual crime that meets the expectations set after flinging around words like “treason” and “sedition” like angry monkeys. Some goofy tax problem in a state court or empty process crime will not be enough. It is hard to imagine Trump taking with him some classified documents will be enough, despite the high-profile raid on Mar-a-Lago.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/merrick-garland-is-the-mar-a-lago-mystery-man/

Dems’ whole remaining strategy for 2024 is to make people believe Trump does not support American democracy. Propaganda/journalism/TV hearings failed to sway many minds. To succeed, it’s going to require something real, an actual court finding Trump actually guilty of an actual crime that meets the expectations set after flinging around words like “treason” and “sedition” like angry monkeys. Some goofy tax problem in a state court or empty process crime will not be enough. It is hard to imagine Trump taking with him some classified documents will be enough, despite the high-profile raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Some of these boxes contained sensitive material that may be so secret it's unknown if investigators will ever publicly disclose what information was found.

Of course, as usual, nobody has answered the question of just what exactly this new distraction is designed to hide. The gales of ridicule look like they are good to juice for upwards of four days.

July 6 — The U.S. military confirms it has pulled out of Bagram Airfield, its largest airfield in the Afghanistan, as the final withdrawal nears.

July 8 — Saying “speed is safety,” Biden moves up the timeline for full troop withdrawal to Aug. 31. Biden acknowledges the move comes as the Taliban “is at its strongest militarily since 2001.” Biden says if he went back on the agreement that Trump made, the Taliban “would have again begun to target our forces” and that “staying would have meant U.S. troops taking casualties. … Once that agreement with the Taliban had been made, staying with a bare minimum force was no longer possible.”

Biden assures Americans that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan “is not inevitable,” and denies that U.S. intelligence assessed that the Afghan government would likely collapse.

Asked if he sees any parallels between the withdrawals from Vietnam Afghanistan, Biden responds, “None whatsoever. Zero. … The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Biden adds that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

Biden also promises to help accelerate the issuance of special visas for Afghan nationals who helped the U.S. during the war.

July 24 — At a rally in Phoenix, Trump again boasts, “I started the move out of Afghanistan,” adding “I think it was impossible for him [Biden] to stop it, but it was a much different deal.”

Trump says that when he was president, in a phone conversation with the leader of the Taliban, he warned that after U.S. troops leave if “you decide to do something terrible to our country … we are going to come back and we are going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit.” Trump says he believes the two “had a real understanding” but that after Trump left office “now they’re going wild over there.”

Aug. 6 — The Taliban takes control of its first province — the capital of Nimroz province in Afghanistan — despite the agreement it signed with the U.S.

Aug. 15 — Taliban fighters enter the Afghanistan capital Kabul; the Afghan president flees the country; U.S. evacuates diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.

Aug. 16 — In a speech to the nation, Biden says, “I do not regret my decision to end America’s warfighting in Afghanistan,” and deflected blame for the government’s swift collapse.

“The truth is: This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight,” the president said. “If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.”