Live and Let Die

COVID Tour: Trump’s coronavirus tour continued over the holiday weekend and is scheduled to go on to New Hampshire later this week.  While those around him, including more Secret Service agents, his oldest son’s campaign funded girlfriend Kim Guilfoyle, and one time presidential candidate Herman Cain, who had been sitting unmasked at Trump’s earlier Tulsa event, contracted COVID, Trump continued to dismiss the virus wreckage, falsely claiming instead that since 99% of the infected emerge unscathed COVID 19 is not a bigly problem, an assertion that FDC head Stephen Hahn declined to endorse on Sunday.  The White House is in the process of changing its virus messaging to something along the lines of “it’s out there, get used to,” a perversion of Paul McCartney song/Bond Movie Live and Let Die.  That messaging was apparent during his two weekend events, speeches, Friday at Mt Rushmore and Saturday at the White House. where few if any of those in attendance wore facemasks or were appropriately distanced. Though the speeches were written by White House favorite, the dreadful Stephen Miller, they echoed almost verbatim the nightly race baiting messages delivered by Trump whisperer Tucker Carlson on his too widely watched Fox show, the one with few remaining sponsors other that The Pillow Man, so much so that Carlson should be cited as a source and paid royalties. The speeches spewed divisiveness, calling the “radical” Democrats fascists and totalitarians, words that the speech impaired Trump mangled as he struggled to read from his teleprompter.  Sticking with the hatred and racial enmity theme, Trump celebrated Andrew Jackson, the president responsible for the Trail of Tears, the forced dislocation of the country’s Native Americans, while standing on their holy land as many of them peacefully protested outside. With the virus spreading like wild fire, Trump again focused in on statues announcing plans to sign an executive order to build a national park for monuments of some of his favorite heroes like evangelist Billy Graham and former conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and some others like Susan B Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr who he cares little about but included in the hope that  the mere mention of their names might gain him back a few of those white suburbanites who’ve left his fold. In the odd chance that his gambit works, maybe they can take the place of some of the South Dakota and Montana donors who were probably less than pleased to get calls from virus tracers over the weekend, that would be the donors who attended events where an unmasked and un-distanced Kim Guilfoyle was the virus spewing keynote speaker.  At least one prominent attendee, Greg Gianforte,  Montana’s Republican candidate for Senator and his wife are now in quarantine. Don’t feel too sorry for him, he’s the Congressman who beat the crap out of a reporter for having the nerve to ask a question back in 2018.

Justice Delayed:  A few notable things happened in the run up to the weekend.  You probably heard that Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s twisted sidekick/sometime girlfriend was arrested, caught hiding out in New Hampshire rather than LA or Paris, or any of the places that she was supposedly seen flitting about.  Her arrest was announced by SDNY’s Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss, the highly respected temporary replacement for fired former US Attorney Geoffrey Berman. Hopefully Maxwell, unlike the “suicidal” Epstein survives her incarceration long enough to spill some beans. Curiously, the Trump fawning NY Post wants us to believe that those beans will mostly concern prominent Democrats, foreign dignitaries and royals.  They cut Trump’s image from a picture of Epstein and Maxwell that they included in the paper this weekend.  That omission was striking because they left Melania in the shot.  Similarly, son Eric was quick to tweet out a photo of Maxwell at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, a tweet he deleted after he was trolled by others who followed up with dozens of shots of his father with Epstein.   It’s not clear if the Maxwell indictment and capture was one of the things that Attorney General Barr was trying to prevent when he fired Berman. Barr has now “arranged” for Maxwell to be housed in a federal facility in Brooklyn facility rather than the Manhattan detention facility where Epstein resided until he hung himself, or maybe hung himself, supposedly for her protection.  Who is he protecting her from? Barr is still up to his old games.  On Thursday when few were paying attention it was announced that Richard Donoghue, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY was being moved to Washington to serve as the second to Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.  The purported reason for the move is that Rosen needs Donoghue to compensate for gaps in his own capabilities but it's worth nothing that Barr had previously moved a lot of the investigations into all of the Trump-Ukraine shenanigans to the Eastern District and nothing slows down an investigation better than moving its leader without appointing an immediate replacement.  By the way, Berman is due to testify in front of a closed door session of the House Judiciary Committee this week about his Barr/Trump run in.  In other legal news, at the end of the week the Supreme Court said it would take up the case concerning whether or not Congress will get to see the Mueller Investigation Grand Jury notes.  Unfortunately, that essentially puts off the possibility of those details being released until after the November election.  

Et Cetera:  And then there’s Kanye West, A/K/A Mr Kim Kardashian.  Over the weekend he announced that he’s running for president. It’s not clear if he’s trying to fill the Jill Stein spoiler spot in this year’s presidential election or if he’s just drumming up publicity for a soon to be released album but if he’s serious, given his prior affinity for Trump, it’s quite possible that his motives are less than honorable.  By the way, Tesla’s Elon Musk has already tweeted his support.