Oust, Oust Damn Spot 🌻🌻🌻

Speaker Race 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️:  Despite hinting that he might, Trump is not running for Speaker, at least for now, but has thrown his considerable heft behind Ohio Congressman Jim “Gym” Jordan, the bombastic, jacket eschewing House Judiciary and Weaponization of the Government Committees Chair whose main challenger at this point is Louisiana’s Steve Scalise who had been second in command under ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Despite their connection, McCarthy is not supporting Scalise because he’s not happy that his “second” failed to step up to help him keep his seat.  As awful as Jordan is, and he is, and though Scalise is thought to be far more skilled in the ways of the House, Scalise is hardly a charmer.  He’s known for being KKK adjacent, in fact he has referred to himself as David Duke without the baggage. To summarize, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who’s been accused of having inappropriate relations with underage girls and who Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin says called South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem a fine bitch while sharing pictures of his conquests with House members and bragging about his mixing of Viagra with Red Bull to enhance his prowess triggered McCarthy’s ouster and one of the leading candidates to replace McCarthy who has been endorsed by a multiply indicted sexual predator has been accused by six of the wrestlers he coached at Ohio State of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse they endured at the hands of a university doctor and the other thinks that bragging about being like the former Grand Wizard of the KKK is a good thing.  Also, no one should be surprised to learn that Steve Bannon helped stoke the McCarthy ouster and that both Matt Gaetz and Nancy Mace who infuriated many by voting to dethrone Kevin after he contributed bigly to her campaign to hold her South Carolina seat, both appeared on Bannon’s podcast right after Kevin was forced to step down.  One more thing on the Kevin front, it turns out that he was behind both former Speaker Pelosi and Steny Hoyer evictions from their privileged “hideaway” offices. Word is that he plans to take over Nancy’s former digs, no report yet on who gets Steny’s. The Republican Party’s best?  The votes for Speaker are scheduled to start on Wednesday, must see TV assuming that watching trainwrecks is your thing.

Trump Trials:  Turning to the crime a minute, much indicted former guy, yesterday ABC News broke a story about how shortly after he left the White House, he shared secrets about the US submarine fleet with an Australian businessman who then shared those secrets with “scores” of his besties and some random acquaintances.  Notably the Aussie joined Mar a Lago in 2017 because he correctly calculated that that for a mere $200k he’d get access to Trump which would help him advance his personal business interests. As to all those impending trials getting in the way of Trump’s dictatorial aspirations, yesterday his lawyers went on the offensive in an attempt to extract him from and/or delay his various legal cases. To that end, they asked a Manhattan judge to throw out the criminal charges related to the hush money porn star payments, arguing that the case is interfering with Trump’s presidential campaign. They asked Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon to postpone the Mar a Lago purloined documents case until after the 2024 presidential election asserting that since they haven’t yet gotten access to all of the super-secret documents they need to peruse, they can’t possibly defend him now, and why should they since their plan is to get rid of all the federal cases against him if he or another Republican wins the 2024 election.  Along those lines expected to end up in the Supreme Court, they asked a federal judge to throw out the indictment accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, claiming that because those charges related to actions he took while still president he should be “absolutely immune from prosecution” because apparently staging a coup while in office is okay?  Trump’s lawyers also told NY fraud case Judge Engoron that they plan to seek a stay of his trial as well as a stay of his order to dissolve Trump’s corporate entities while they appeal all of his rulings.  Not all that surprising that they’re trying to do so since the NY fraud case threatens Trump’s livelihood and Judge Engoron, who Trump attacked mercilessly yesterday, has requested that a list of all of the investors in his properties be turned over ASAP.  Also, probably because he was due to be deposed momentarily, Trump has “temporarily” dismissed his retaliatory lawsuit against Michael Cohen, who he was suing for $500 million.     

🤡 🤡 🤡 Update:  Rudy Giuliani who hasn’t been paying his lawyers also owes the IRS around $500k so they’ve put a lien on an apartment he owns in Florida not to be confused with the $6 million apartment he’s selling in NYC which probably also has several liens on it.  George of many names Santos is still in Congress where Republicans want him to stay since they desperately need his vote to maintain the Speakership.  However, his life just got a little more complicated as Nancy Marks, his one-time campaign treasurer who served in the same role for former Congressman/gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin and a spate of other NYS Republicans pleaded guilty yesterday, admitting her role in fraudulently reporting a fictional $500k loan that Santos claimed to have made to his campaign. Pillow guy Mike Lindell has lost his lawyers, something about having no money to pay them.  And proving that Democrats can be sleazes too, we’ve learned a little more about NJ Senator Menendez and his wife, Nadine, none of it good.  It turns out that back when she was the Senator’s fiancée, Nadine totaled her car when she ran over and lethally injured a pedestrian. Not to worry, though the pedestrian is dead all’s good for Nadine because her car was quickly replaced with a Mercedes gifted to her by one of Menendez’s friends.  

And:  Biden is trying to clean up the mess at the border by building some wall!  He’s also looking for ways to fund weaponry for Ukraine through State Department grants since the mess in the House is likely to stall more traditional funding for a while. Cornell West, one of the potential spoiler candidates running for president, is no longer running on the Green Party ticket but instead says that he’ll go the independent route, a path that RFK Jr is expected to follow. Elon Musk, who is currently being investigated by the SEC not that he’s cooperating may be one of nepobaby RFK’s funders.  That’s Elon, whose X (formerly Twitter)  has been caught placing ads for mainstream companies such as Amazon, Samsung, the Denver Broncos, Cox Communications, STARZ, the WSJ, the Michael J Fox Foundation, the University of Missouri, Axios, Puck, and a few others on posts from VDARE a well-known, admittedly white supremacist organization. Musk and his so-called CEO Linda Yaccarino promised companies they would never ever display their ads next to hatemongers and some of them have now stopped advertising. How long before Musk blames the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for this too?  As to blaming the ADL, NBC media guy Ben Collins reports that since acquiring Twitter, Musk has been following a right-wing playbook written before he even bid for the company that not only detailed how one could run the “liberal woke platform” into the ground but also called for blaming the ADL for its failure.  Hmmm.