The Longest Day 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

🗳️ 🗳️ 🗳️:  Tomorrow is finally Election Day, but it won’t be the end of the crazy because Trump only believes in election results when he wins.  If today’s NY Times is right about the Democrats being up in the Senate races for Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Maine, and Ohio, having an edge in Alaska and being tied in Iowa, not to mention whatever is going on in with Lindsey Graham’s sister in South Carolina it will be a very bad day for Trump and his MAGA acolytes.  Even if Republicans manage to hold on to the Senate, just about everyone expects the House to go blue, the only questions by how much and where a lot of us will move if it doesn’t. Federal officials have already sent conflicting signals about whether they’ll be sending “enforcement” agents to polling places.  The FBI has declined to rule out deploying agents, the Department of Homeland Security says it doesn’t plan to patrol polling places but has left open the possibility of responding to “threats“ or serving warrants nearby and the DOJ has said that it will “continue” sending federal personnel as part of its “monitoring efforts.”  If, as just about everyone expects, Trump loses control of the House but lucks out and holds the Senate, litigation will still be ramped up.  It’s sounds farfetched but it has been suggested that Trump might pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to replace the House Clerk with a Trump loyalist who he’d then order to refuse to seat the new Congress.  Trump has already spent the past few weeks, intimidating local election officials, sending out inaccurate lists of “non-citizen” voters, and litigating, not that the litigating is going well for him. Over the weekend a federal judge in Alaska dismissed an attempt to pre-emptively challenge the results of the state’s two Sullivans one Peltola Senate election and a federal appeals court panel denied a request to order California officials to set aside about 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claimed had been sent to possible noncitizens. That’s good news, but not the end of it, because Trump with an assist from his compliant DOJ will appeal up to the Supreme Court and if things don’t go well for him there, he can rely on his MAGA mob because experience tells us that he won’t think twice about spurring them on and why wouldn’t they comply because his call for action would come without any DOJ pushback and lots of pardons.  

Michigan Mishigas:  Yesterday, the simmering feud between Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his primary challenger Congresswoman Haley Stevens erupted into war ending with Stevens, who had reluctantly endorsed El-Sayed, taking the highly unusual step of flipping her endorsement to Republican candidate Mike Rogers. Stevens’ action was extreme, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum.  Relations between the two candidates, always strained, got worse after El-Sayed failed to fully push back at the anti-Israel/anti-Semitic ad promulgated by Cenk Uygur, who routinely purveys ugly rhetoric on social media. To be clear, this goes way beyond whether the US should be providing aid to Israel, it goes to whether or not Israel has a right to exist. Cenk clearly believes it doesn’t and while El-Sayed is more subtle, he is on record saying that he “struggles” with Israel’s right to exist, hardly a comforting thought to those who firmly believe that’s a question that shouldn’t even be posed, including Stevens.  Stevens and El-Sayed were supposed to appear together on CNN in a show of unity, but that plan went seriously awry. The whole situation is baffling.  El-Sayed could have made nice to Stevens; it wouldn’t have lost him votes and might actually have gained him a few. For her part, Stevens who like El-Sayed has a “strong personality” should have limited herself to snark rather than a cross-party endorsement because her political career, at least as a Democrat, is now shot and if Democrats miss taking the Senate by a Michigan loss, she’ll be held accountable. The last relevant Michigan poll taken before this weekend’s fireworks shows El-Sayed up by seven points over Republican Rogers, then again El-Sayed was expected to trounce Stevens in the Democratic primary but instead only eked out a victory. 🤷‍♀️

Things to Watch or Not:  Republicans won the House gerrymandering war, hoping to net ten additional House seats enough to temper the size of the usual midterm shift away from the president’s party.  Some of those redistricted seats will go red; however, some might remain blue because with voter sentiment having turned so negative on Trump over the war and the economy, even districts he won by over ten points or even more in 2024 are now considered in play and many of the newly created districts fall below that threshold. Florida, where polls close at 7 pm is mostly in the Eastern Time Zone.  Since Florida generally reports votes quickly, results there will provide an early indication of whether or not the Republican gerrymandering is working as planned.  With a number of the seats that Governor DeSantis redistricted to be Republican pick-ups now in the toss-up and/or lean blue category his efforts could turn out to be “dummymanders.” The results in the state’s close Governor’s race between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat/former Republican David Jolly will also be telling. Democrat Angie Nixon is not likely to win or even come all that close in her Florida Senate race against incumbent Rubio replacement Ashley Moody but if she does, the rest of the night will be tragic for Republicans. Texas, also in two time zones, has a few gerrymanders which could be dummymanders since Democrats are hoping Hispanic voters will shift back into their column, but Texas results won’t come until later. There’s also that hotly contested Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton as well as the currently in a dead heat race between Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa. Closer to my home, New York State where polls don’t close until 9 pm has a few hot races worth watching. In NY 17, the north of NYC race between incumbent Republican Mike Lawler and his Democratic challenger Cait Conley is either a toss-up or leaning blue depending on the pollster.  Polls are also all over the place in the race upstate between Democrat Blake Gendebien and Republican Anthony Constantino for the NY 21 seat previously held by Republican one-time darling Elise Stefanik. Elsewhere, don’t expect to see a winner declared in Maine even though it’s an eastern time zone state.  Maine like Alaska which is so far away that Sarah Palin could see Russia from her window, uses ranked voting which complicates official results. California as usual will take forever to come in.  Lastly, if South Carolina flips hide your ketchup. 🍅🍅

More 💩:  Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy who is 53 years old had a stroke yesterday. He’s currently hospitalized but expected to fully recover.  Who had that on their BINGO card? Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the WSJ related to the article that included his birthday note and doodle to Jeffrey Epstein is now officially kaput; it was permanently dismissed by Miami US District Judge Darrin Gayles. Odds are that the Trump lawsuit against the BBC will eventually go up in smoke too. So maybe crypto isn’t all that safe an investment, at least that’s what those affected by the $6.3 billion heist of their crypto from Binance thought to be committed by North Korean hackers have got to be thinking. Binance has managed to freeze half the stolen crypto and says that it will be making up the rest so that its clients remain unaffected but still the heist happened and it’s not a good thing. 

       

Two Dans and Cheesecake 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢💩

Midterm Mishegas:  As we get closer to election day things are getting crazier.  Trump and Obama are sparring over cheesecake while the NY Times is all in on its assertion that Mary Peltola’s campaign team got the second Dan Sullivan on the Alaska Senate ballot to confuse voters. With king of grift and retribution Trump in the White House spouting hate and tearing away at democracy while a slew of his MAGA acolytes prepare to upend any election that doesn’t go his way, whether or not Mary Peltola’s team ginned up the second Dan doesn’t bother me; even if they did, finding spoiler candidates has been done before by both parties doing so is probably more scuzzy than illegal.  Sure, my dismissal of the Dan imbroglio is hypocritical but really, it bothers me more that the NY Times thought now was the time to turn the Sullivan to-do into the crime of the century, especially since it’s unlikely to matter once the state’s ranked votes are tallied.  It gives off “but her email vibes” and we know how that turned out.  By the way, I have no recollection of ever dining at a Cheesecake Factory and given what Obama who has said about the décor, that’s a good thing.  As we go into the last weekend before Election Day, Trump who has been traveling and delivering incoherent and nasty speeches like the madman he is, has cancelled his remaining mileage plus plans, and will instead be spending his weekend holding tele-rallies, whatever those are, while his DOJ ramps up their efforts attacking states, despite court pushback, for all the thousands of nonexistent illegal voters, only the ones, who if they existed, might vote blue because the red ones, no problemo, while also making hay out of the Dan Sullivan issue even if it was bought to light by what he calls the “failing” NY Times.  On the Senate front, too many of the races to watch remain in the margin of error.  One of those in the error zone is in South Carolina which according to recent polls may or may not be in a dead heat. South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews beating Republican nepo candidate Darline Graham would be wild but in 2020, despite polls predicting a tight race between Democrat Jaime Harrison and Lindsey Graham, Darline’s brother Lindsey won by ten points.  Sure, that was Lindsey and now we’ve got Lindsey light, but those final results should temper expectations. On a more optimistic note, Fox’s respected polling gurus have shifted Ohio’s Senate race between Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Jon Husted and Governor race between Democrat Amy Acton and Republican despicable ad runner Vivek Ramaswamy to lean Democrat, remarkable given that until very recently Ohio was seen as a state that had become permanently red. Though he’s not on the ballot this cycle, Ohio’s other Senator Bernie Moreno who unseated Sherrod Brown in 2024 said yesterday during his speech at a pro-Husted rally that “anyone who does not believe Jesus died for their salvation is unfit to serve in the US Senate.”  He meant that as a slam against Michigan candidate El-Sayed but there are ten Jewish Senators, nine Democrats plus the Independent other Bernie who by Moreno’s definition wouldn’t qualify. So much for freedom of religion and separation of church state being a part of the Constitution that matters.           

Not Just Us 💩: Brazil’s election denier Flávio Bolsonaro is now in the US.  He still insists that he won the election that he just lost by 4.4 million (3.58%) and has declared himself the rightful winner, which goes far to explaining why the Trump administration helped him with his complicated travel “logistics” which included chartering him a jet for part of his escape. While Brazil’s election has a clear winner, the same can’t be said for Israel.  Turnout in the Israeli election was very high; overall 77.7% of Israelis, including 80% of the country’s Arab population voted. Bibi Netanyahu’s multi-party bloc won 53 seats, main competitor Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc won 48, and Arab parties won 19. However, as of now neither of the leading blocs have the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition. The coalition forming problem is complicated by some bloc members refusing to participate in any unity government that includes Bibi and others, despite Arab party participation in a previous governing coalition, refusing to participate in a coalition that includes the Arab parties.  If no coalition can be formed another election will be held in the Spring.  To quote Winston Churchill: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”              

Other 💩:  Secretary of Defense and War Pete Hegseth fired Lt General Brett Sylvia, the Pentagon's top military strategist and head of strategy, plans, and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over allegations, real or imagined, that he leaked classified information regarding Iran and Ukraine to the media. When asked about what proof there was that Sylvia had leaked, Trump referred to the general as “that woman Sylvia,” an indication that he’s totally out of touch with reality and/or out of the loop during a war that he started.  There are also rumors that to avoid being impeached in January or just to further his presidential ambitions, Hegseth is pushing Tennessee’s Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn who is expected to win the Tennessee Governor race to appoint him to be her Senate replacement.  It’s unclear which is scarier, Hegseth in the Senate or Hegseth running or even thinking about running for president. Lastly, we keep hearing more about the rationale for raiding Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar’s Washington DC home.  First it was because she was allegedly 18 rather than 17 when she was naturalized by her father.  Now it’s also over allegations that her first of three legal marriages was to her brother to help him immigrate.  The brother/husband withdrew his green card application and never became a US citizen and currently lives in the UK. In any case, the marriage fraud offense falls outside of the statute of limitations. All of Omar’s citizenship transgressions, real or imagined, were previously investigated and no actions were taken but we know how Trump feels about Muslims, Somalis, Omar and distracting shiny objects especially during election season.      

 

 

Lotsa 💩     😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢💩

Midterm Madness:  The madness, with more than a touch of hate and a whole lot of Trump retribution, continues to be ratcheted up.  At his direction, Trump’s DOJ is going after his enemies and doing its best, or in this case the worst, to disrupt the midterms.  On top of going after numerous states for “failing” to rid their voter rolls of mostly imagined aliens and indicating plans to reject Alaska’s election result if Republican Incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan doesn’t win, the DOJ filed charges again against former FBI Director James Comey as well as a few other FBI agents they’ve accused of lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop as if any normal person gives a hoot about Hunter or his laptop, especially given the grift that Trump and his family continue to engage in.  The charges against Comey accuse him of mishandling national security information by leaking information to the NY Times back in October 2016.  Putting aside that an earlier investigation of the “leak” went nowhere, if there was something there, Trump, whose first election victory owes a lot to Comey and his fascination with Hillary Clinton’s emails, has had years address the alleged leak.  This new charge was rushed out via an information rather than a grand jury indictment to beat the clock on the applicable ten-year statute of limitations. My TV legal advisor, Andrew Weissmann, says that the process was far from kosher.  Similarly, the NY Times reports that the charges against the others are highly questionable as well, more about flooding the news cycle than anything legitimate.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the Comey charge was revealed just after Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Former Director Comey’s daughter Maureen, a former federal prosecutor, was unlawfully fired last year and should be reinstated and given back pay.  The Maureen Comey ruling opens the door for a slew of similarly fired federal prosecutors to also pursue restitution.  Naturally, the DOJ says that it plans to appeal the Maureen ruling.  The DOJ also notched a failure with regard to its attempt to obtain an indictment against former Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson after a Washington DC grand jury rejected assertions that she’d lied when she testified about Trump’s January 6 actions.  

Turning to Hate: The anti-Amy Acton ads which questioned the Ohio Democratic Governor candidate’s horrific treatment by her mother and rape by her stepfather, who had previously raped another one of his daughters, have been widely and rightfully attacked except of course by Trump and his pathetic echo chamber.  Unfortunately, the anti-Semitic ad run on behalf of Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed have received less attention, less condemnation and even a few yawns.  The ad in question which aired widely across Michigan and on social media blames inflation, the prices of eggs, and just about everything else including our lack of universal health care coverage on Israel and by not so hidden extension “those Jewish people.”  The ad was created and paid for by Cenk Uygur whose social media feed routinely contains lots of hateful anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric.  Not so coincidentally Uygur is controversial left-wing, equally anti-Semitic or as he prefers to be called anti-Zionist, commentator Hasan Piker’s uncle. It’s fair to assume that their Thanksgiving table conversations rival those of David Duke and his KKK crowd.  It’s hard to understand how this kind of hateful crap does anything to improve El-Sayed’s odds of winning in Michigan where he already has the anti-Israel vote locked up but needs to gain more support from those members of the Black community who haven’t forgiven him for his tepid support of Kamala Harris in 2024. If anything, the ad gives his Republican opponent Mike Rogers more fodder for his, Trump’s and Vance’s already over the top Islamophobia pitch. For his part, borrowing a page from Ohio Ramaswamy’s early but then rejected playbook, El-Sayed has distanced himself from the ad, but he hasn’t condemned its message. Regardless of the outcome of the Michigan election which at this point seems to be leaning in El-Sayed’s direction, Michigan will not be sending its best to Washington. In more pleasant Senate news, yesterday Fox shifted Ohio’s Senate race between Democratic candidate and Former Senator Sherrod Brown and current Republican candidate Senator Jon Husted, whose butt Trump endlessly admires, to lean Democratic and two South Carolina former governors, David Beasley and Jim Hodges, a Republican and Democrat respectively, have endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews rather than Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline’s Senate bid.  

International Politics:  Though his party has conceded, taking a page from Trump and his father Jair, Brazil’s losing candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, has not. Instead, he’s fled the country to avoid answering questions related to an ongoing investigation into money laundering.  The US State Department announced yesterday that they granted him and his family entry visas.  It’s reported that they arrived in Miami last night. In all likelihood he’ll dine with Trump at Mar a Lago shortly because of course.  In other international news, the outcome of the Israel elections remains up in the air.  The good news is that Israel, unlike its neighbors is a real democracy, turnout was high with 77.7% of voters including 65% of Israel’s Arab population casting ballots, and the elections went off without a hitch. The bad news is that as expected the process is messy, Bibi could still manage a “win” and at least for the time being will head a caretaker government until the coalition forming process is completed, if it ever is.  As to that process, with around 75% of the vote counted it’s not clear who will get first dibs at trying to put together a governing coalition.    

 Mega 💩:  With all the election news, it would be easy to have missed that on Monday House Judiciary Democrats released a 50-page report alleging that the DOJ withheld key information from the Epstein files about Trump’s ties to Epstein.  Their report includes allegations by Beatrice Keul, a model and former Miss Switzerland, that she was raped by Trump in a Plaza Hotel suite in Manhattan when she was 24. Keul said that while attending the American Dream Pageant, which had a partnership with Trump, she met Trump at a press luncheon at the event, that he promised to arrange her visa in the US and ensure her acceptance into New York University through Paolo Zampolli, the Trump ally who was, until very recently part of his administration. Keul alleges Trump invited her to a hotel suite where he raped her. Following the incident, Keul alleges Trump made her promise she would keep quiet and repeated his promise for visa and college admission. She says that because her passport had been taken from her on her arrival for the pageant, she was unable to leave the contest following the incident.  Later when she was able to return to Switzerland, she declined to participate in an additional Trump-sponsored pageant. The Democrats’ report also includes allegations that it was Epstein, rather than Paolo Zampolli, who introduced Melania to Trump which might explain the odd, hastily scheduled press conference that Melania held in April where she denied rumors linking her to Epstein while explicitly “clarifying” that Epstein did not introduce her to Donald. No wonder Trump is freaking out about the likelihood that Democrats retake the House. Expect more 💩storms from Trump going forward.     

 

 

Eight Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Midterm Madness:  November 3rd is only eight days away.  Trump who regularly disses both mail-in and early voting voted early in Florida before attending Fox’s Sean Hannity’s and Ainsley Earhardt’s wedding.  I voted too at my unusually crowded early cool voting location at the Metropolitan Museum.  If you are nervous about next week’s outcome and what’s likely to follow, you aren’t alone.  Clearly Trump is too.  We know that because in addition to having his Department of Justice and his in-his-pocket Attorney General Todd Blanche litigate to prevent 20,000 Californians from voting, he’s now got the DOJ going after Alaska saying that if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan doesn’t win his Senate race he’ll stop the certification of the state’s results.  The issue in California where all registered voters are sent mail-in ballots relates to Trump’s assertion that 20,000 of those who were sent ballots are non-citizens.  Trump and his minions have a habit of basing their claims on flawed databases.  Earlier this year they claimed that Nevada had 16,000 illegal voters, an assertion that shrunk to 185 before turning into zero.  The California ballots have already been mailed out, Trump wants the voters on his likely flawed list, to have their votes set aside and is trying to jump ahead to higher federal courts to make that happen,  California is suing to prevent both the preemptive disenfranchisement of those voters and the inappropriate court jumping.  The Alaska fight has to do with the two Dan Sullivan situation. Incumbent Republican Senator Dan S Sullivan is clearly listed on the ballot as the incumbent and as a Republican, the other Dan J Sullivan Jr, a retired teacher, is listed without a party affiliation.  The Alaska Supreme Court has already ruled that teacher Sullivan can remain on the ballot, but Trump wants him removed or else because voters are stupid so none of them “know what incumbent means” and it’s “unfair” for teacher Sullivan to be running. He and Blanche are also upset that Alaska uses what Trump calls “corrupt ranked choice” voting. Except for Blanche, most legal “know it all’s” believe that Trump’s attempt to upend the Alaska race will go nowhere in the courts but that doesn’t mean that the legal voodoo and nefarious kvetching won’t feed election distrust, which is the whole point of both the California and Alaska suits. Adding to the Alaska news, over the weekend Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and her family were in a car accident, something having to do with another car hitting theirs. Though she reports only minor injuries she did cancel and/or reschedule a few of her planned campaign stops to get checked out at a local hospital.  Oy.           

The Polls:  The Cook Political Report wrote on Friday that the “outstanding question is how large Democrats’ majority will be in 2027,” rather than whether or not they will retake the House.  The Cookies predict that Democrats will flip between 12 and 22 seats; the low end of their estimate is probably overly conservative.  On Friday, the Cookies moved 19 more districts towards Democrats, some going to likely blue, others from toss-up to lean blue, others from lean red to toss-up.  With many of the critical Senate races still polling within the margin of error, control of the all-important Senate remains uncertain. The Cook Political Report currently lists Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas as toss-ups. Last week they moved three races, one towards red, two towards blue. Those three include:  Minnesota where Democrat Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is running against former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Tina Smith from likely Democrat to lean Democrat; South Carolina where Dr. Annie Andrews is challenging Lindsey Graham’s obviously unqualified sister Darline Graham from likely Republican to lean Republican; and Mississippi where Democrat Scott Colom is challenging KKK Adjacent incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith from solid Republican to lean Republican.  Things would have to go really bad for Republicans for Mississippi or South Carolina to change hands so while it’s fun to watch Republicans have to pour defensive money into South Carolina and Mississippi, it’s unlikely that either one will deliver a Democrat to the Senate.  Hopefully, it’s also unlikely that Minnesota will deliver Republicans a victory, especially with the very popular Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar running for Governor on top of the ticket. Lastly, on the polling front, it’s unclear why Trump, Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy think tripling down on Ohio Democrat Amy Acton, accusing her of lying about being raped by the creepy stepfather who also raped another woman’s child makes sense, but maybe they know something we don’t or more likely they’re all just awful.    

The World:  Over the weekend two of Trump’s preferred candidates lost their national elections. Serbia’s longtime nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic lost his general election, falling after two years of student-led street protests.  Vucic, the pro-Russian leader who’d been advised by Trump’s flunkies Chris LaCivita and James Blair conceded his loss early in the evening which sets him apart from Brazil’s Flavio Bolsonaro who is refusing to concede his unexpected runoff loss to Brazil President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”).  Flavio, not to be confused with his father Jair Bolsonaro who was convicted of planning a coup after his election loss, is asking the country’s Supreme Court to annul the election results, something about the Court allowing the polls to remain open for two extra hours at the request of both parties due to inclement weather and related transportation issues. Adding to the election stories, Israel’s election takes place tomorrow, October 27.  Don’t expect a quick outcome, as explained by one Twitter (X) pundit, Israelis vote for parties, not directly for prime minister.  The Knesset has 120 seats, so a governing coalition needs the support of at least 61 members. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party currently holds between 32 to 36 seats.  Bibi’s leading contender is Lt General Gadi Eisenkot whose more centrist political party, Yashar, which is expected to win around 22 to 26 seats is currently polling slightly ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, so the election outcome will be all about forming a controlling coalition, which takes some time. Once tomorrow’s results are in Israel’s President Herzog will then consult with elected parties to determine who has the best chance of forming a government.  That person who may or may not be the leader of the party that won the most seats will then have 28 days to negotiate a coalition.  If they fail, Herzog can then give another Knesset member 28 days to try. Assuming someone can assemble a government, they then must win a Knesset confidence vote. If this sounds confusing and time consuming, it’s because it is. On the war front, more ships downed in the Iran neighborhood and Ukraine’s Starlink access is back up but it was touch and go over the weekend.  Elon Musk is now claiming that it was his decision to turn it down in the first place because those Ukrainians, not the Russians, are the warmongers.  Apparently when you are a trillionaire you get to buy elections and make international policy.    

More 💩:  Britt McHenry, another Ivanka look alike, who’d previously been fired by ESPN for berating a towing company clerk was fired from the State Department press advisor position she’d served in for one day last week after she was caught on camera throwing beer at a basketball fan because only the best.  Chris LaCivita and James Blair, the two Trump advisors who’d also advised Serbian loser Vucic, “contributed” the money they earned working for the pro-Russian leader to Trump’s library fund because the orange one was bigly mad that they got caught advising Vucic when they were supposed to be helping him with the midterms. Saving the best or worst for last, on Thursday Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Matthew Cole’s newest book Princes and Thieves just published by Simon and Schuster.  The excerpt claims that the Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service had evidence that a Russian spy/hacker had obtained access to Jared Kushner’s cell phone and that the hacked information revealed that son in law Kushner had access to hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars which he was using for clandestine operations in the Middle East. Dutch intelligence allegedly observed Kushner logging into a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. The account was reportedly overseen by a senior Emirati royal.  There are also accusations that around $2 billion was placed into accounts for Kushner’s benefit including some money held at the Israeli Central Bank which the Bank denies. Worth noting Israel’s Central Bank does not hold, or at the very least isn’t supposed to hold accounts for individuals. Kushner is strongly denying all claims from the book excerpt, calling them "completely insane," "false and defamatory," and stating that the author provided no verifiable bank statements, transfer records, or documentation. His legal team has threatened legal action.  Vanity Fair published the excerpt relying on Simon and Schuster having vetted the book before publication and is probably indemnified.  This should prove interesting because someone, or lots of some ones are lying.  🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️ 

 

 

Whining 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Rorschach Test:   Ohio’s Republican candidate for Governor Vivek Ramaswamy’s slimy ad attacking his Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton is the Rorschach test that none of wanted to see but that we are nevertheless all seeing.  Sadly, the response by the usual players, while not surprising, confirms expectations.  That Acton was sexually accosted by her stepfather as a tween and brutally mistreated by her mother is a given.  Her stepfather was indicted, only avoiding a trial and punishment because he fled the state while her mother lost custody of Acton and her younger brother.  Though a number of Republican politicians have been “deeply disturbed” by the Ramaswamy ad, including Ohio’s outgoing Republican Governor Mike DeWine and at-risk Republican Senator Jon Husted who said he wouldn’t have run it, Vice President Vance praised Ramaswamy for his audacity and said he was disgusted, not by Acton being raped but by those Republicans who criticized the ad, telling them they needed to stop whining.  Trump attacked Governor DeWine for his criticism and then posting on Truth Social that Vivek should keep the ad up and running to “let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!”  Who’s surprised that Trump, an adjudicated rapist who has bragged about grabbing women’s crotches and has also been accused of more than a dozen other sex crimes, is team Vivek?  Polls show Acton leading Ramaswamy and Democratic challenger/Former Senator Sherrod Brown leading current Senator Jon Husted, the guy whose butt Trump can’t stop admiring.  However, Ohio is very red, and as shown by a recently exposed scandal concerning Wedgewood Polling, polls can be inaccurate or worse, as in the case of Wedgewood, intentionally misleading.  Wedgewood, a “progressive” polling company whose polls were including in a number of supposedly reputable polling averages, now admits that their polls were completely fabricated social experiments.  Those polls showed democratic socialist Francesca Hong leading in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary that she ultimately lost to the more centrist David Crowley.  The company’s polls also showed Michigan’s Mallory McMorrow losing badly to Abdul El-Sayed and Representative Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senator primary that El-Sayed ultimately won but by far less than the Wedgewood polls said he would.  The Wedgewood polls scared away McMorrow’s donors and contributed to her decision to pull the plug on her campaign.  As to the other polls, legitimate or not, they show many key races, including the unexpected tight race for Senator in Minnesota, within the margin of era.  If you aren’t nervous about the midterm’s outcomes you should be, not just because so many races are so close, but because Trump is already casting shade on their legitimacy.  Making matters more challenging, yesterday the Supreme Court said that it was fine for New Hampshire and presumably other states, to ban student IDs as acceptable proofs of identity. Could that be because younger people tend to favor Democratic candidates?   

War:  Yesterday, Trump said that he’d spoken to Elon Musk, requesting that he lift the restrictions on Ukraine’s military grade Starlink that Musk imposed on his own or with a wink and a nod from Trump last week (by the way it was Henry II not VIII who wanted his meddlesome priest killed).  US and Ukrainian officials say that the Starlink system is now back to working more normally as the result of Trump’s request although some Ukrainian officials said the system while working at higher speeds hasn’t been restored to full functionality. In other Russian related news, Putin, who delusional, inept real estate guy Steve Witkoff called a humanitarian has finally released long- held American 74-year-old hostage Steven Hubbard.  Note to everyone, humanitarians don’t take and hold hostages while intentional targeting civilian sites. Also, yesterday, the NY Times reported that the US and Israel are making plans for more attacks on Iran after both country’s elections.  Whether those plans are just plans or are for real, only time will tell.  Iran, however, is taking them seriously, doing more saber rattling, Strait of Hormuz ship targeting, and threatening worse. As reported by MSNOW earlier this week, Iran’s threats and capabilities shouldn’t be underestimated. Their earlier attacks on the US’s Fifth Fleet Naval base in Bahrain resulted in more crippling, possibly even irreparable, damage than revealed by Trump and Hegseth’s Pentagon. That damage hasn’t just affected infrastructure but has also seriously disrupted the lives of the families of those who had been stationed in what had been the relatively safe Bahrain.

Other 💩:  Yesterday Calley Means, RFK Jr’s top MAHA advisor, quit.  Means, whose sister Calley had been Trump’s Surgeon General nominee before her nomination was pulled over her cockamamie anti-vaccine position, reportedly resigned because he couldn’t get the Trump administration to implement his plans to get all the additive crap out of the food supply and because the administration refused to regulate the cancer-causing weed killer glyphosate. Means had been instrumental in arranging the shidduck (marriage) between RFK and Trump that helped Trump win in 2024.  For some reason, Means thought that Trump whose preferred diet includes hamburgers, fries, extra servings of ice cream, and Diet Coke would actually go after the food industrial complex. Also, yesterday it was reported that the Department of Justice is investigating former DHS de facto Chief of Staff and maybe still Kristi Noem’s paramour for “contract misconduct.”  Trump said that he’s heard something about that but that he doesn’t “know exactly what it is,” and that he wants “his people to be honest. And if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted.”  Then again Trump also went off on a tangent about not having received a Pulitzer Prize during one of his recent rallies so it’s fair to assume that a pardon awaits Lewandowski, who like Kimberly Guilfoyle, knows where lots of bodies are buried.  Trump is still threatening and restricting the press.  In addition to calling a slew of reporters stupid for asking real questions, he banned the Independent’s Andrew Feinberg from the White House press pool.  Feinberg’s crime, having a contentious exchange with Trump about his offering of financial rewards to whistleblowers who expose government fraud.  Trump called his question "fundamentally dishonest" adding "I don't know who the hell you are, but you better be careful." And then called him a “sick person” after he attempted to ask another question about Trump's golf course plans. By threatening them Trump has gotten Politico to retract the section of their recent article that said that Susie Wiles had set up Press Secretary for a nanosecond Katie Zacharia by scheduling her career killing interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity but is making less progress in his attempt to extort $10 billion from the BBC.  Trump’s been trying to avoid sitting for a deposition in his lawsuit against the British broadcaster, pushing off his last agreed to October date because he had important business to deal with.  The judge overseeing the case isn’t buying that attending a political rally to admire butts counted as important business and says that Trump better show up on December 11 or face having the case dropped.  It’s not a stretch to assume that Trump will be busy trying to overturn the Midterm results and/or waging war against Iran and won’t show up then or ever.    

   

 

Slime Time 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

🌻 🌻 🌻:  The who made the decision to slowdown Ukraine’s Starlink capabilities saga continues.  The Wall Street Journal reports that it was Elon Musk who acted, sparking “panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration” while leading to the death of Ukrainian citizens including a baby in a stroller.  Trump, who verbally attacks Ukraine’s Zelenskyy daily while cozying up to Russia’s Putin, is sort of standing by his denial that he had anything to do with the decision, however, the WSJ reports that while Musk was the one who actually pulled the lever, he did so after talking with Trump.  It sounds like the two had a “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest moment” with Trump acting the part of Henry II and Musk, who shares Trump’s antipathy to all things Ukraine, eagerly stepping into the role of murderous knight. “King” Trump now has his sights set on playing the role of FDR at a Yalta type conference where he together with Putin and Xi will carve Ukraine into pieces, giving Russia all the regions it wants.  Trump is no FDR and the conference shouldn’t happen but it might because as much as Ukraine’s fate shouldn’t fall to others, Putin wants it to and Trump for whatever the reason, lucrative business opportunities or just dictator envy, wants to please Putin while hanging out with Xi, the world power that unlike the diminished Russia actually has boatloads of money, resources, and power.  As also reported by the WSJ and as evidenced by his other devious actions, Putin craves more than Ukraine.  Over the summer he tried but fortunately failed to destroy a “massive” military cargo plane at Germany’s Leipzig-Halle airport and he’s been conducting a campaign of sabotage and covert action against NATO countries.  Naturally, none of that concerns Trump because if Putin’s doing it, it must be okay.  Sure, a number of Republican members of Congress, mostly outgoing ones, are upset about Trump throwing Ukraine under the bus, but those guys feign distress a lot. Whatever happens during the midterms, Trump will still be calling the shots for two more years and it’s growing increasingly obvious that he cares little about Congressional or Judicial pushback.

Midterm Madness:  Though the pollsters continue to predict that a blue wave amped by a red undertow is coming, Trump appears to have woken up and is loosening his pockets to the tune of an additional $277 million. He’s ramped up his travel to mostly red areas, or areas that are supposed to be red, where in addition to delivering unhinged messages that include truly odd observations about the butts and other physical attributes of Republican candidates, he’s making more financial promises to voters.  On Monday, Trump said he would send $8 billion in direct payments to farmers and because irony is truly dead, on Tuesday, he announced a program that would provide up to $30,000 to any Americans who provides a tip about government fraud, assuming of course that the identified fraudsters aren’t any members of his family or immediate entourage. Why would they be since VP Vance who heads the administration’s anti-fraud task force says he’s not aware of any Trump’s committing any 🤷‍♀️ 🤦‍♀️.  Those “incentives” follow his early $1 trillion proposal to send $5,000 to each adult citizen if Republicans hold the Senate and House, the $90 he’s already sent to lots of Medicare recipients to offset premiums and the $500 to nearly one million people for “excessive” Obamacare fees. Remember when Republicans cared about the country’s debt, #Fuhgeddaboudit.  Last night at a rally in North Carolina Trump also said that if Republicans keep their majorities, he will fast-track claims veterans have brought against the US over contaminated water at the state’s Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. His handpicked North Carolina Senate candidate/former RNC Chair Michael Whatley is expected to lose to Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s popular former Governor, so that promise will likely remained unfilled. Keeping with the theme of trying to buy votes, Musk has announced plans to give one share of SpaceX to every child in America starting next year. The pledge could total roughly $10.5 billion to $11 billion based on a share price around $146–$148.  That’s nice but it’s chump change for trillionaire Musk whose company’s value relies on lots of government contracts. We’d be better off if he’d just pay a reasonable amount of taxes, paid for his own data centers, and followed Mackenzie Scott Bezos’ example of giving money to good causes, or instead of stripping funding from medical research and other worthy causes funded them. Providing further proof that irony is truly dead, yesterday ProPublica reported that some Trump appointees tried to get CISA, the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, to obtain and then hack a voting machine so that they could then “prove” that elections could be hacked but the CISA people refused while also pointing out that because of Musk’s DOGE efforts there were no people left at CISA who could do the hacking.      

More 💩: On the subject of false statements and despicable acts, Vivek Ramaswamy the Republican presidential candidate for a few Scaramucci’s who is running for Governor in Ohio, in a neck and neck race with his rival Democrat Amy Acton went about as low as you can go yesterday, releasing an ad featuring Acton’s abusive mother throwing slime on her “honesty.”  Acton has long been estranged from her mother who took her stepfather’s side after he raped her when she was twelve years old, an account that her brother quickly verified yesterday when he rushed to her support. The stepfather who has since died was arrested and both Acton and her brother were permanently removed from their mother’s custody as a result of the rape and abuse.  Ramaswamy is facing some backlash for his comments, but he stands by them and his campaign plans to spend an additional $4 million distributing his ad because apparently standing by rapists and their abettors rather than victims is increasingly a thing among what Georgia’s Jon Ossoff calls the Epstein Class. Last week one time Trump lawyer, faux New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba alleged that Trump’s one time Ambassador to Germany/Kennedy Center head Ric Grennell had pocketed $6 million that had been “donated” by her newest husband instead of depositing it into the art center’s account. Yesterday, the NY Times reported that while still employed by the Department of Justice, Habba had engaged in some grift of her own, “allegedly” accepting money and a $50 million contract for what looks like a no-show job from the family of Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini in exchange for helping him obtain a pardon from Trump for his fraudulent activities. It can’t be a coincidence that the Habba pay for pardon story is appearing now, just days after she threw Grennell under the bus. Fun to watch these horrible people slime each other. 

 

 

Fifteen Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Midterm Madness:  While most of the focus is on November 3, early voting has already begun in 32 states and is due to begin within the week in all the rest except for Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire, the three outlier states with no early voting. New polls from the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos, NBC News, and Fox News put Trump's approval at 33%, 34% and 36%, respectively. Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation is up to 3.7% and to quote Democratic strategist James Carville, “it’s the economy stupid” so that should be bad for Trump, Teflon coating or not, since the economy is now his main vulnerability with the WaPo poll showing just 21% approving his handling of the cost of living and NBC and Fox showing only 27% and 22%, respectively, okay with his handling of inflation.  That said though Trump’s approval among mainstream Republicans assuming there is any left has dropped to 47%, 95% of MAGA voters, still love him which explains why he’s out rallying in the reddest of places, delivering nonsensical diatribes full of his usual false claims and braggadocio.  At this point rather than trying to change minds, he’s working hard to convince his MAGA people, especially the ones who forgive him for everything and still blame Biden and Obama for the current economy and “wokeness” that they’d better show up and vote because only he can save them from communism, woke culture and trans girls playing in their daughters’ soccer leagues. With so many polls, especially those all-important Senate ones, within the margin of error who’s to say that his strategy won’t work.

🌻 🌻 🌻:Trump is no longer even pretending he cares one iota about Ukraine. Over the weekend, after cutting back on intelligence sharing and restricting Ukraine’s access to Starlink/Starshield, he weighed in on behalf of Russia by issuing an executive order suspending the new Russia sanctions passed under the Lindsey Graham Act. Even his newest gal Darline Graham was upset, or a little bit pearl twisty about that.  Trump’s rationale is that only the removal of sanctions will “keep” Moscow engaged in peace negotiations with Ukraine and anyway he, son in law Jared, and real estate buddy Witkoff really want to do enter into lucrative business deals with Russian oligarchs.  He acknowledged that in addition to bombarding Ukraine’s civilian sites Russia is helping Iran in the war where our soldiers and Middle Eastern allies are getting killed and injured but said that without sanctions relief Putin would be being doing worse things, like dropping nukes.  Kind of like giving your kids more candy and cupcakes, later curfews, larger allowances, and a souped-up car as incentives to stop them from beating up their siblings and mowing down neighbors. The Wall Street Journal reports that Putin has proposed holding a “high stakes” summit with Trump and China’s Xi to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. No need to invite Ukraine’s Zelenskyy because it’s only his country on the chopping block so why should he have a say.  Apparently Putin raised his self-serving proposal during an October 9 phone call with Trump, where he also suggested that the US agree to purchase Russian diesel fuel and facilitate its sale on global markets. Manchurian Don already agreed to the diesel so to quote Kimberly Guilfoyle “the best is yet to come.”  

Other 💩: Eaten alive by Fox’s Sean Hannity Press, Secretary for 45% of a Scaramucci Katie Zaccharia is out, or pursuing other opportunities within the Trump administration.  Maybe she can carry the Xerox machine that binky girl/senior advisor Natalie who was her biggest supporter drags everywhere. Kristi Noem is no longer serving as Special Envoy for the Shield of Americas, the do-nothing job that she was gifted when she was fired from her Homeland Security cabinet position.  Too bad Kimberly Guilfoyle is so toxic because that would be a good landing spot for her. Just about everyone in the Trump administration asserts that the plan is to denaturalize Representative Ilhan Omar because she’s Trump’s favorite foil, not because they’ve found any legitimate reason to deport. Like her or not, the Omar situation is both despicable and weird because it’s not like Melania was really a genius when she obtained the visa that smoothed the way for her citizenship which then led to her parents getting theirs. Last week, a District Court judge told Trump to stop chopping trees down at the East Potomac Golf Links course, an order that followed her earlier order saying that he shouldn’t proceed with his plans to turn the public course into a high end, fancy “world class” facility without first sharing his plans with her so over the weekend Trump announced that he’s moving full steam ahead with his “renovation” plans.  He also asked for the judge to be replaced because any judge who disagrees with him is by definition biased and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to rule on anything affecting his interests. Trump told his MAGA supporters this weekend that the $5,000 he says he’ll give them if he holds both houses of government will barely cover a lunch at Mar a Lago, as if he’ll allow any of them at Mar a Lago, so spending $50 million plus on the Potomac golf facility on their dime seems totally in character and a bargain compared to the $800 million and growing spent on the ball room. Then again given that the $2 million Reflecting Pool fix is up to $16 million and counting who believes that the golf course renovation will come in on budget. In Europe Paris is burning, literally. And because the Israeli elections scheduled to take place on October 27 aren’t fraught enough, Trump has weighed by endorsing Bibi.