Misipati Semi Bird (photo, left) wants to be Washington’s next governor.
But the Benton County GOP chair and former school board member (profiled here) won’t be, despite an attention-grabbing name that makes you think of a bird with one wing.
First he’d have to defeat popular former congressman Dave Reichert in the GOP primary, whose polling numbers are three or four times his.
Then he has to defeat the likely Democratic nominee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, in the fall election. Washington hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1980.
Like Republicans all over the country, Bird is weighing in on his messiah’s conviction in a Manhattan court:
(Read the rest of it here.) I’m gonna have some fun with this.
Semi Bird is leaving out that Trump’s New York conviction doesn’t remove him from the presidential race. It should, but Republicans aren’t decent enough citizens to replace a convicted felon with another candidate.
Let’s play along with Semi Bird’s claim that Trump’s New York trials were “attacks.” I agree that sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll was an “attack,” attempting to buy Stormy Daniels’ silence was an attack on our election system, and that during his criminal trial he attacked the judge, his daughter, the witnesses, and the jurors. But Semi Bird’s claim that Trump was attacked is, well, an exaggeration.
I can’t rule out the possibility of politically-motivated prosecutions, given that Trump is promising to prosecute his political opponents if he’s elected again. (As a legal note, the motive behind a prosecution is immaterial; what counts is whether a crime was committed and prosecutors can prove the defendant committed it.)
But as I pointed out here, our criminal justice system has safeguards in place to prevent meritless prosecutions. The prosecutor has ethical obligations; judges can dismiss charges; and a jury of ordinary citizens decides guilt or innocence. If this system somehow breaks down at the trial level, there are appeals to set things straight.
Semi Bird’s allusion to Saul Alinsky is interesting. He probably knows very little about him, certainly less than Hillary Clinton, who wrote her college senior thesis about him. I can guarantee Alinsky won’t interfere in the 2024 election, because he’s been dead since 1972.
What’s especially fascinating is the Tea Party adopted Alinsky’s organizing tactics (but not his leftwing views). Then they glommed onto Clinton’s and Obama’s “Alinsky connections” (Clinton’s college paper, and Obama also was a community organizer), which was a whole new hayfield of propaganda fodder.
The rest of Semi Bird’s tweet goes, “It’s time to ensure the rule of law, election integrity, and return power to the people, not the wealthy political elites.” 🤡🤣🤡🤣🤡🤣 I inserted clown and LOL emojis here because he’s being very funny, although I’m sure not intentionally.
If Semi Bird truly believes this, why is he supporting a guy who flouts the rule of law, tried to overthrow an election, doesn’t believe in majority rule, and claims to be one of the wealthiest people on the planet? The incongruity of this is striking.
Frankly, I don’t think this Bird will fly. He won’t be the GOP’s nominee for governor; but the state party endorsed him (story here), even though he — like Trump — has a financial crime conviction on his rap sheet (details here).
I wish Republicans were better than this.