Calling Foul ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

GAAPing Holes:  The Trump position is that while sons Eric and Don Jr are astute and competent real estate professionals capable of taking over the management of the family business during Trump’s presidency, they know nothing about finance because math and numbers aren’t their strong points.  According to team Trump, it was the accountants with assistance from the lawyers who ginned up all the financial reports that were presented to lenders so neither Eric nor Don Jr can be held responsible for anything included in them, especially the hugely inflated valuations.  Tripling the size of their dad’s Trump Tower apartment or ignoring deed restrictions on places like Mar a Lago to inflate valuations, blame that on the guys with the calculators and eye shades, and anyway everyone does it so who cares? To the extent that they received and responded to correspondence about the valuations, neither Don Jr nor Eric, especially Eric, should be expected to remember any of it because they saw lots of emails and were too busy mixing cement and mowing grass to pay attention. Those standard “we relied on what you told us” letters that the accountants make everyone sign, forget about those too because who in their right mind would rely on anything a Trump, especially a Trump scion would sign?  Eric is expected to finish up his testimony today and Ivanka, who is still trying to get out of testifying because she’s Ivanka, is still on next week’s court schedule as is her father.  One sign that things aren’t going well for family Trump is that they targeted Judge Engoran’s clerk again yesterday, complaining that she was passing too many notes to the Judge.  Judge Engoran “exploded” at Trump’s legal team, calling them out for targeting her and for their misogyny. Enraging your judge at any time but especially when there’s no jury to influence is an unusual strategy unless of course you are really playing to the Trump fan base and hoping to use the Judge’s emotional responses against him in an appeal and we know there will be an appeal.  In other legal news, Special Counsel Jack Smith has just about had it with Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon and her complicity in helping Trump with his “overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost,” by that they mean falling for the Trump team’s efforts to get both the Washington DC and Florida cases delayed so as neither interferes with the other and both don’t take place until after the 2024 election.  Unfortunately, Cannon is incredibly stupid and naïve or is a willing participant in Trump’s delay tactics or all three so it’s not clear that Smith’s admonishment will cause her to start acting as anything but a Trump toady.  Stall, appeal, and throw dirt, the Trump playbook and why not, it’s gotten him to where he is today.   

Playing Games: On the subject of twisted playbooks, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, the former football coach who resides in northern Florida rather than Alabama, is sticking to his guns.  He’s still obstructing military confirmations though he did “allow” the confirmation of Lt. General Christopher Mahoney into the second in command role for the Marine Corp but only because the General Eric Smith, commander of the Marines, had a heart attack last Sunday and is currently hospitalized.  It’s quite possible that General Smith’s cardiac event had a lot to do with the strains associated with doing two especially taxing jobs, serving as head of the Marine Corp while continuing to do his previous job because of Tuberville’s refusal to allow the confirmation of the officer who is due to replace him in his previous position. It’s reported that most, though not all, of the Republicans in the Senate are just as angry at Tuberville as their Democratic colleagues, which is nice but isn’t particularly helpful since most of their kvetching has been taking place behind close doors and not enough of them are willing to vote to amend the confirmation rules to override Tuberville’s obstruction.  Just a reminder that Tuberville is holding up the confirmation to protest the Pentagon’s decision to reimburse military personnel for travel related to abortion care, not for the abortions, just for the travel.  To that end, one of Tuberville’s staffers floated a memo yesterday calling for anti-abortion groups to primary any Republican senator who votes for an end run around his confirmation obstructions. Naturally, Tuberville denies that he authorized the memo, but his denial is only because his Republican “teammates” as he called them are now even more furious with him.

Hate on Campus: Yesterday, the House held a messaging vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and the support of terrorist groups such as Hamas on college campuses.  It passed 396 to 23 with one Republican, Thomas Massie, and 22 Democrats voting against it.  The Democratic naysayers were  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Summer Lee, D-Pa., Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., Mark Takano, D-Calif., Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., Jonathan Jackson, D-Ill., Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., André Carson, D-Ind., Cori Bush, D-Mo., Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. Republican Massie says his no vote was due to concerns over free speech.  Most of the Democrats who voted against the resolution, are from the same crowd that always votes against anything related to Israel.  Worth noting that NYer Richie Torres’ whose vote stood out to me as odd given his usual stance on all things Israel tweeted (Xed) last night that his vote was a bigly error, he “mistakenly voted against a resolution condemning campus antisemitism. As a visible and vocal advocate against antisemitism on college campuses, especially in the wake of October 7th, I have submitted a correction for the record. I have no use for pro-Hamas protestors, and I despise them with every fiber of my being.” A big oops but given his record a believable excuse.  Otherwise, as the Wall Street Journal, a paper I hate to cite, said earlier this week, the Democratic Party has an anti-Semitism problem, one that could cost them at the polls with both Jews and probably of more concern to them, in swing states like Michigan, with Muslims upset about Gaza. That’s not to say that the Republican Party doesn’t have an anti-Semitism problem too but as Lawfare’s Ben Wittes’ noted on Wednesday’s Bulwark Pod Cast, after going through the Ten Simple Questions” he listed on “How to Know if you are a Left Anti-Semite” in his must-read dogshirtdaily.com, the right’s anti-Semitism while just as virulent, comes from a different place. Bottom line, regardless of the reason, they both suck. Though the House vote was all about messaging, a number of prominent law firms are taking things one step further warning law school deans to crack down on anti-Semitism or see their students face consequences as their law firm “workplace communities have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.” It’s not just the hate, which in and of itself is bad enough, it’s the total lack of judgement.  As anyone who has ever worked for a large company with a diverse workforce and client base knows or at least should know, spewing hate isn’t just ugly is also incredibly stupid, assuming you care about your career trajectory.

And:  No one is getting kicked out of the House or sanctioned for their contemptible behavior or speech anytime soon.  So at least for now George Santos is the only one in real jeopardy, Margie Q and Rashida Tlaib can continue to say what they do. That reluctance to punish even odious speech and in Santos’ case actual crimes, could explain the bickering and mudslinging going on mostly on the Republican side right now where everyone is publicly and privately bashing Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, where Gaetz appears to have “outed” his Republican colleague Missouri Congressman Jason Smith, and where Margie Q is continuing to act out while others dump on her. As to that outing, true or not, no one should care but then again, newbie House Speaker Mike Johnson is on record supporting conversion therapy and calling homosexuality deviant and his wife’s recently taken down website equated LGBTQ+ relations with bestiality and incest so there’s that.