2nd Chance Bail Bonds 🌻 🌻 🌻

Chock Full of Nuts:  Yesterday was one weird day.  Putin’s chef and former mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin was shot out of the sky presumably by goons operating at the direction of Trump BFF Vlad Putin; claiming political persecution Rudy Giuliani surrendered to Fulton County authorities and was then spotted leaving A 2^nd Chance Bail Bonds, where he went to obtain funding for the $150,000 bond he can’t afford; Rudy’s mugshot as well as those of several of his co-defendants including kraken queen Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis,  Kenneth Chesebro, and John Eastman were posted online; that other co-defendant, Trump, whose counterprograming Tucker Carlson interview aired on X last night during the first Republican presidential is due to turn himself in to Fulton County officials tonight during primetime; and India landed on the moon. And as if all that wasn’t enough, last night Fox aired the first Republican presidential debates. I tried not to watch but sadly couldn’t resist partially due to all those update texts I kept getting from friends 😊, so I did eventually tune in.  My take, tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy was loud and obnoxious, that kid you hated growing up, only far worse.  Moreover, his opinions suck bigly, especially if you think climate change is real, Ukraine gets to remain independent, and we need some government. Former VP Mike Pence was surprisingly articulate and forceful even if his religious righteousness is beyond hard to bear.  NJ’s Chris Christie wasn’t bad, but neither was he great, a bit of a disappointment though his characterization of Vivek’s spouting “chat GPT” text was spot on as were his criticism of all things Trump.  North Dakota’s Doug Burgum was a fish out of water, another rich dilettante who thinks he’s got what it takes to be president because he could afford to pay small dollar donors $20 to contribute $1 to buy his way up on the stage but doesn’t or else is just auditioning for a cabinet position or ambassadorship. I expected more from former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. but he came off surprisingly muted and will probably exit the race soon. Florida’s Ron DeSantis who at least three times exaggerated his military experience making it sound like he was a SEAL rather than a JAG officer, spoke in stiff canned talking points and came off sounding like the pompous liar he is.  South Carolina Senator Tim Scott may be a “nice guy” but his canned “above it all” message lacked substance and was repetitive, weak, boring and, like Pence, too rooted in his religion.  Saving the best performance for last, agree with her views or not, former South Carolina Governor/UN Ambassador Nikki Haley came off the best.  She’s smart and came armed with facts, slamming DeSantis for his statement that European Countries needed to ante up more for Ukraine by pointing out that most are already contributing more as measured by percent of GDP than the US. She’s firmly anti-abortion but at least spoke truth by saying that passing a national ban on abortion (ugh) through the Senate is a pipe dream given that doing so would require 60 votes that aren’t there.  Despite the fact that her performance exceeded all the others by a lot, it’s unlikely that she’ll rise much in the Republican polls because it’s Trump’s party and logic and merit aren’t likely to prevail and because though Republicans might someday nominate a woman, she’ll probably be more of a Kristi or a Sarah than a Nikki. One more thing, there was lots of dog whistling as in blaming things on George Soros (wink, wink Jewish guy) and also attacks on teachers, well teachers in unions in public schools because underpaid religious school ones teaching in segregated academies are presumably okay.     

Ripe Peaches: Neither Mark Meadows nor Jeffrey Clark have yet appeared in Fulton County.  Both tried to get their arrests put off while they await a decision on having their cases moved to Federal Court or even dropped as both are arguing that they were just doing their “federal” jobs when they participated in trying to toss out election results.  Too bad for them, late yesterday a federal judge ruled that though they can continue to try to get their cases moved, the law requires them to appear in Fulton County by Friday for fingerprinting, mugshots and the rest of the stuff that goes along with being arrested. Meadows who many believe has been cooperating with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors seems particularly perplexed. Unfortunately for him, to the extent he is cooperating with Jack’s team and given that we’ve recently learned that Meadows told Jack’s squad that he has no knowledge of Trump declassifying any of the super-secret documents the former guy claimed to have declassified Meadows probably is, that cooperation doesn’t appear to involve Fulton County DA Fani Willis, at least so far.  Keep an eye on Meadows because he may be formalizing a deal, but at least so far, his deal is not done. However,  Mar a Lago IT Director Yuscil Taveras who was first introduced to us as “Trump Employee 4” does appear to have worked out a deal with Jack’s team. Taveras has ditched Stanley Woodward, his Trump PAC funded lawyer who also represents Trump valet Walt Nauta as well as a few other members of the Trump squad. Taveras has come clean about how Nauta, following the directions of the “big guy”  tried to get him to destroy the video tape of the purloined documents being shuffled around Mar a Lago. Smith’s office wants Woodward removed from representing Nauta and the other defendants he’s repping on Trump’s dime.  The information about Taveras’ cooperation with prosecutors was released in response to questions from Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon who was “concerned” about Jack Smith still having a Washington DC grand jury looking into the events at Mar a Lago. With the Taveras testimony cleaned up, that grand jury is no longer active.

Spare Change:  If you are available on September 7 and are so inclined, head over to Trump’s Bedminster Club where he’ll be hosting a fundraiser for Giuliani. To be clear, Trump isn’t giving Rudy money but at the request of Andrew Giuliani he’s hosting a reception for the dye dripping former mayor.  Of course, to attend you’ll have to ante up $100,000.  Maybe you’ll get to see Margie Q. Don Jr, Kim Guilfoyle and Matt Gaetz who will probably still be fuming about being banned from Fox’s post-debate spin room, something to do with Rupert Murdoch and company exacting vengeance on Trump for his decision to eschew the first debate to instead give an X interview to Tucker where the two danced around violence and assassination.  As to X man Elon Musk, check out Ronan Farrow’s article in The New Yorker.  Musk who controls far too much of the technology that powers our defenses, cars and space program is also “escalating” his use of ketamine to calm his personal demons.  Fun?!?  And lastly, much is being written by respected legal experts like Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and conservative idol Judge Michael Luttig, the legal expert who told Pence that signing off on the electoral college vote wasn’t optional, about how the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution bans insurrectionists like Trump from serving as president. That’s nice but if we’ve learned anything by now, theoretical legal arguments, even when they’re right, aren’t going to get us out of the mess we’re in.  We need to vote, contribute and advocate like our lives depend on it because they do.