The Art of the Lie  🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🤮

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein: Despite how much Trump lies, he’s not very good at it.  Yesterday, he once again failed to adhere to the first and second rules of lying: be consistent and keep your stories believable so they hold up under scrutiny. First, Trump said that he ended his relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with whom he shared a preference for “young” women when they competed for the purchase of a valuable piece of Palm Beach real estate; then he said that he ended their friendship because Epstein was a creep; now he says it’s because, despite his warnings not to “take our people,” Epstein repeatedly stole young female employees from Mar a Lago’s bestest ever spa so he told him to get “out of here.”  One of those who was “taken” from him was Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre who among other things accused Epstein of trafficking her to England’s Prince Andew.  Guiffre isn’t available to question Trump’s inconsistency in person since she sadly committed suicide in April however there are photos, testimony, and lots of credible reporting, most notably from the Miami Herald and it doesn’t take a sleuth to figure out that Trump’s statements and timing are off.  Not that any of that matters because he’s got his Teflon shield bolted on. Trump continues to say that he isn’t thinking about pardoning, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner in sex crimes but Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, is definitely laying the groundwork for a pardon or commutation and though Maxwell is an awful person, he appears to be very competent.  Shortly after he and Maxwell sat down for their two day “chat” with his friend Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Markus renewed his request that the Supreme Court overturn her 2021 conviction, again arguing that the non-prosecution agreement Epstein made with federal prosecutors in Florida should apply to Maxwell’s case in New York and any other part of the United States. The House also wants Maxwell to testify but so far, they’re refusing to cave to her requests that she receive their questions in advance, is provided with immunity, and that her testimony be delayed until after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal.  Adding fodder to the “did he or didn’t he” commit suicide Epstein conspiracy, CBS reports that the FBI is sitting on a more complete videotape of what transpired outside of Epstein’s cell on the night he died. The more complete version, which the FBI insists doesn’t change their conclusion, purportedly includes the one minute, or three minutes depending on which conspiracist you ask, missing from the tape that has been released.  Maxwell isn’t the only sex offender seeking a pardon, Sean “P Diddy” Combs, who not so coincidentally was also prosecuted by the recently fired SDNY attorney Maurene Comey is asking for one, and according to press reports, Trump is seriously considering granting him one.

More Creeps:  Lee Zeldin, one time NYS gubernatorial candidate and the former Congressman from eastern Long Island is now serving as the head of the EPA. That’s not a good thing since he’s another one of those who doesn’t believe in science or climate change, or even haze. To that end he is proposing to rescind the 2008 Obama EPA endangerment finding to eliminate all of the greenhouse gas emissions regulations that followed.  As a result of those regulations, air quality has improved but sure we need to go back to those good old days of consistent haze and pollution.  The Zeldin, Trump goal is to get more polluting cars on the streets and one of the ways they plan to do that is by making California and New York’s stringent prohibitions against polluting vehicles go up in smoke.  To the extent that auto manufactures let up on pollution control, they’ll find selling cars into countries where science is still a thing more difficult, but somehow or other the administration that hasn’t figured out that tariffs are a tax haven’t figured out that manufacturers need consistency. By a vote of 50 to 49 with Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins joining all the Democrats, Emil Bove was confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship despite credible allegations from three whistle blowers that he “misled” as in lied to Congress when he said that he didn’t tell DOJ attorneys to disregard judicial orders. And late yesterday,  Dr. Vinay Prasad who was the head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and the FDA’s chief medical and scientific officer was forced out.  Prasad’s responsibilities included making decisions about vaccines, he’s the one who overrode CDC recommendations about who should and shouldn’t get COVID vaccines.  He recently made some controversial decisions about the drug Sarepta which is used for the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, first withdrawing it from the market much to the dismay of desperate families only to allow it again.  However, neither his Sarepta back and forth nor his COVID vaccine decisions appear to be the reason he was ousted.  Apparently, he got on the wrong side of Trump whisperer/conspiracist Laura Loomer. MAHA, not.

Fog:  Trump has truncated his warning to Putin to put up or shut up, now giving his one-time BFF ten days to enter into a ceasefire with Ukraine.  Similarly, he and many other leaders including the UK’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron aren’t happy with Israel’s failure or inability to get more food into Gaza.  Hamas is winning the PR war because famine or not, Gazans need food and the pictures of starving children, even if one of those photos had to be retracted by the NY Times because the child depicted had a pre-existing illness that affected his appearance, are doing more to hurt Israel than Hamas’s missiles or Iran’s nukes.

May the memories of Officer Didarul Islam, Aland Etienne, Julia Hyman, and Wesley LePatner be for a blessing.  And could we finally stop with the selling of AR 15 rifles to anyone, but especially to people suffering from mental illnesses!

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

The Whale in the Room 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🤮

Windmills,🐳, Tariffs:  Trump spent the weekend golfing, promoting his golf courses in Scotland on our dime. Remember how the right used to complain about Biden’s trips to Delaware, not a peep out of them over the 🍑 wannabe king’s Scotland boondoggle despite estimates that it cost taxpayers at least $10 million. According to the Huffington Post, Trump has spent $52 million golfing since taking office in January.  Assuming his cankles don’t impede his time on the links, that run rate is likely to dwarf the exorbitant $152 million he spent on golf during the entirety of his first term.  By comparison, Biden spent a total of $11 million traveling back and forth to Delaware during the first six months of his term, not chump change but way less than Trump’s expenditures to date.  While in Scotland Trump announced a tariff “agreement” with the EU.  The good news is that the agreement takes away some of the uncertainty that’s been overhanging the markets and corporate planning. The not so good news is that the agreed to 15 percent tariffs while less than the levels Trump had been threatening will be coming out of our pockets because for the most part American corporations will not be eating the costs.  According to Trump, the EU countries have also agreed to buy $750 billion in US energy products and to invest an additional $500 billion in the US.  However, EU counterparts say that some of those details don’t reflect what they believe they agreed to which sounds strikingly similar to what Japan said after their agreement was announced last week.  Since neither agreement has been put into writing yet, we’ll have to wait to see what was really agreed to.  Whatever the details turn out to be, US car makers and auto workers should be concerned because as one pundit put it “the message to them appears to be, build in the US and you’ll have to pay a 50% tariff on your steel and a 25% tariff on your car parts.  Or build in the EU/Japan and you’ll only have to pay a 15% tariff.” And because he’s unhinged, dealmaker Trump also spent some of his trip in Scotland attacking windmills, asserting that not only are they ugly but that they are driving whales 🐳 “loco.”  A remarkable self-own?  One more thing, that plane that Qatar gifted Trump, about $1 billion appears to have been quietly transferred from the Pentagon budget for refurbishing out of date, leaky nukes into the refurbishing of the “free” plane.  What’s a little nuke leakage when you can have gold airplane toilets?     

Epstein-gate:  The Epstein drama hasn’t gone away.  Last week Epstein girlfriend/procurer Ghislaine Maxwell and her lawyer David Oscar Marcus spent two days meeting with Trump lawyer/Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche getting Blanche up to speed on all things Epstein, something that would not have been necessary if Trump hadn’t had Attorney General Bondi who is currently hiding somewhere nursing her scratched cornea fire Maurene Comey, the Southern District of New York attorney who’d prosecuted Maxwell.  Markus, who not so coincidentally is a long-time friend of Blanche, reports that Maxwell, who was given limited immunity, answered loads of questions covering one hundred or so of the people who “associated” with Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell is currently serving a twenty-year term for sex trafficking and conspiracy, but neither term adequately describes her complicity or her heinous crimes.  She didn’t just procure vulnerable underage middle and high school girls and camp attendees for Epstein; she groomed them while also participating in some of the rapes that Epstein committed. Federal authorities estimate that Epstein victimized 1000 girls, a substantial number of them with Maxwell’s help. Given that, Maxwell, who was indicted for lying to authorities, is hardly a credible source.  It’s fair to assume that she’ll say anything and implicate anyone while exonerating Trump to obtain a “get out of jail card.”  While it’s hard to believe that springing Maxwell would go over well with anyone, even his MAGA base, Trump’s already greasing the pardon path. He’s wished Maxwell well in the past and this weekend when asked if he’d would pardon her, he said: “I haven’t thought about it but it’s something I am allowed to do.”  Also, because distraction is one of those things that has worked well for Trump in the past, he’s added Kamala Harris, Beyonce and Oprah to the list of those he’s now accusing of committing election related crimes, something having to do with their 2024 endorsements but the details don’t matter because they’re bogus and  just Trump throwing another shiny object into the air.  As to last week’s shiny object, no one in Obama’s administration committed treason, in fact no drama Obama’s administration was remarkably crime free especially when compared to Trump’s.

MAHA:  Having tossed all the credible vaccine experts off of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel,  the Wall Street Journal reports that RFK Jr is now targeting the CDC’s “too woke” and “too liberal” preventive health panel because, really who needs cancer screenings anyway?  Sure, you’ll be able to get screened, but if RFK’s actions result in the elimination of screening recommendations, insurance companies won’t be required to reimburse or pay for them. Better keep drinking raw milk and celebrating the replacement of one sugar for another in Coke because apparently that’s all you really need. MAHA for the those smart enough to see through this crap and rich enough to pay for their own tests but not for everyone else.

Fog:  Hostages are still hostages, hunger in Gaza, no peace in Ukraine, and the Thais and the Cambodians are fighting. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 
Spinning and Spilling 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🤮

First and Foremost:  The Epstein saga continues to dominate the news cycle, BUT we shouldn’t let all things Epstein get in the way of our alarm that in response to DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s bogus assertions that former President Obama committed treason by looking into Russia’s involvement in the 2020 presidential election, and with wannabee king Trump’s blessing, the Department of Justice is creating a task force to investigate Obama and his alleged “co-conspirators.”  To be clear, Obama did not commit treason, Bondi is just trying to curry favor with Trump at democracy’s expense, and those frequent assertions that Gabbard is a Russian tool, they’re looking more and more credible. Also, remember John Durham, the Special Counsel that former Attorney General Bill Barr appointed during Trump One and who Biden kept in place, he already investigated the Russia investigation, and did not accuse or indict Obama of treason because there was no treason.     

Epstein, Epstein, Maxwell:  On the Epstein front, in order to avoid taking anymore votes he knows he’ll lose; Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home for an early August recess. That’s ridiculous but makes sense for Johnson whose speakership depends on keeping Trump happy because, with an assist from three Republicans, the House Oversight committee voted to subpoena the DOJ’s Epstein files and Johnson knows that he wouldn’t be able to get any more votes through the House’s key Rules Committee without similar Epstein-related amendments.  Adding fuel to the Epstein 50^th birthday card fire, on Wednesday night Brad Edwards, a lawyer for hundreds of Epstein’s victims, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the card exists, that it’s in the files held by Epstein’s estate, and that the estate’s executors would share it if requested to do. Yesterday, the executors confirmed that they would comply with a legal request. Also on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that back in May Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the “truckload” of Epstein files that her office had reviewed.  Last night the NY Times reported on that review, calling it a frantic, resource consuming exercise that had been undertaken to find that holy grail, the Epstein “client list,” presumably one cleansed of Trump’s name but chock full of prominent deep state financial big whigs and Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton.  The search was undertaken to find something to satisfy the demands of the conspiracists who make up Trump’s Q Anon/MAGA base, demands that Trump, FBI Director Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Bongino have spent years stoking. The FBI and DOJ folks who “leaked” the file search details to the NY Times say that no such “client list” was found though lots of the names we’ve heard bandied about over the years, including Trump’s and Clinton’s, are mentioned.  They also didn’t find any evidence substantiating conspiracist claims that Epstein had been murdered.  Yesterday the WSJ added more to the “birthday card” story saying that Clinton was among the five dozen or so people, including Trump, billionaire Leon Black, fashion designer Vera Wang and media owner Mort Zuckerman, who responded to Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell’s request for birthday wish contributions.  Unlike Trump’s message, the few lines provided by Clinton didn’t reference “secrets and enigmas,” nor did his note include a bawdy doodle. Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously and maybe still is serving as Trump’s personal lawyer, spent six hours “interviewing” Ghislaine Maxwell who is currently serving a twenty-year term for sex trafficking and conspiracy and who was also indicted for lying to Federal officials. Blanche who plans to meet with Maxwell again today, reported that their gabfest was productive.  By productive could he mean that Maxwell who didn’t testify on her own behalf and who is currently appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court, is now spinning stories and spilling tea about anyone and everyone not named Trump in exchange for a pardon or commutation? Notably, her SCOTUS appeal doesn’t assert her innocence, rather it argues that she should have been shielded from prosecution due to a clause in Epstein’s earlier Florida non-prosecution agreement that she claims was intended to protect co-conspirators like her from prosecution in New York. And last of all, at least for now, on the Epstein front, ruling that Bondi’s DOJ hasn’t provided a legitimate reason, on Wednesday Federal judges in New York and Florida rejected requests to unseal grand jury transcripts related to investigations into Maxwell and Epstein.  They were particularly peeved that the DOJ hadn’t contacted the victims making their request.   

People and Politics:  AG Bondi is MIA at the moment, something about a torn cornea but maybe because she’s taking lots of heat over the Epstein mess. On again, off again NJ US Attorney/parking lot lawyer Alina Habba is still serving as a US Attorney because with a wave of his wand, Trump “legitimized” her continued service by pulling her official nomination, instead appointing her in an interim role.  Eric Trump’s wife Lara announced yesterday that she will not be running for the North Carolina Senate being vacated by current Republican Thom Tillis who isn’t running for reelection because Trump hates him.  Apparently, Lara’s decision isn’t because she wants to spend more time with her family or because she’s woefully unqualified but because her pop-in-law Trump decided to endorse Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley who he believes will be able to raise more money and given that former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is expected to announce his candidacy next week, it will take lots of money to keep the seat red.  Cooper is very popular in North Carolina; political pundits and pollsters believe that if anyone can turn the seat blue it’s him, well maybe. With all the focus on the Epstein mess, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has managed to keep a low profile of late, but he’s back in the news. According to the Pentagon’s internal watchdog the war plans that he shared on his infamous Signal Chat came from an internal email that had been marked “SECRET//NOFORN” meaning that the information that Hegseth shared with his friends and family and an Atlantic journalist was classified, that its disclosure could have caused serious damage to national security, potentially jeopardizing the safety of service members and that the information was only to be disseminated to US agencies and individuals not to foreign nationals or even close allies. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Hegseth shared secret info, we kind of knew that, instead it’s that there are still government watchdogs. Hegseth who has been busy renaming ships and demoting female officers because, well we know why, has also been bleeding top assistants but he’s still the Secretary of Defense because of course he is.  Similarly, Kristi Noem is also losing experienced executives.  Frustrated over her mismanagement and her failure to adequately respond to the Texas Guadalupe River tragedy another experienced and well-respected FEMA executive has resigned.  We’d better hope that this year’s hurricane season is mild because if not, lots of people are going to suffer needlessly. Keeping with that theme, measles cases, already at a decades high level, are still rising, not that Health Secretary RFK Jr who also used to hang out with Epstein is all that concerned.  Trump visited the Federal Reserve building construction site where he claimed that under Fed Chair Powell, another one of those people he hates, $3 billion had been spent on the rehabilitation project. Taking no prisoners, Powell calmly pointed out that Trump’s number was wrong since it included the costs associated with another building that had been completed and put back in service five years ago.  In a world of Tulsis, Bondis, Blanches, and Hegseths, we need more Powells.      

And: Another Judge who has seen the DOJ’s case against Kilmar Abrego isn’t buying into the government’s assertion that he’s a dangerous, people trafficker or gang member. The judge has ordered that he be released from custody, barring his immediate deportation. On Wednesday by a vote of 2 to 1, the Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, upholding a nationwide ban on his administration from implementing the measure. The judge casting the opposing vote questioned the validity of the nationwide injunction not the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.      

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

Bizarro World 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🤮

Epstein-gate:  Things have gotten so stupid on the Epstein front that Speaker Mike Johnson 🤡 is sending House members home early for their August break to avoid being forced into calling a vote on releasing the Epstein files because he knows that he’d lose that vote since a number of Republicans would join all the Democrats in voting for it.  He’s decided that avoiding the release of what must be Trump implicating files because why else would he and his dear leader fear their release is more important than critical budget negotiations, even more important than keeping the government open past September 30.  Unwilling to leave the Epstein battle solely in Johnson’s hands, 🍑 🤡 Trump has gone all-in on attacking President Obama, asserting on TV, in press conferences, and to visiting foreign leaders that DNI/accused Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard’s conspiracy ridden assessment that everyone in Obama’s orbit engaged in treasonous activities when they said that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election is actionable. That’s both stupid and scary because as nuts as its sounds, Trump is now talking about arresting and prosecuting Obama while also reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation so that he can have her arrested too. Trump’s threats have reached such a fevered pitch that Obama, who usually ignores Trump’s daily utterances, because he hates “dignifying the disinformation flowing out of this White House” released a statement calling the claims “outrageous,” “bizarre,” “ridiculous” and a “weak attempt at distraction.” Obama’s right which is one of the reasons that Trump isn’t just attacking him; he’s got Attorney General Pam “Blondi” sending Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche who before joining the DOJ served as his personal lawyer in his New York criminal case meeting with Epstein’s imprisoned aide de camp/procurer Ghislaine Maxwell.  The stated purpose of that meeting is to get Maxwell, who maintains her innocence, despite her conviction and twenty-year sentence for sex trafficking and conspiracy, to spill the beans about all things Epstein and by spill the beans, think provide implicating dirt on a bunch of prominent Democrats while also saying that despite scads of pictures of the two partying together including some from as far back as 1993 and a few of Epstein at Trump’s wedding to wife two Marla Maples, Epstein hardly knew Trump and even if he did, Trump was and is pure as the driven snow. Maxwell’s lawyers say that she can’t wait to talk to Blanche, more than hinting that she expects a pardon or commutation in exchange, or at the very least a promise not to have her “suicided” in her cell ala Epstein. It’s hardly a coincidence that Maxwell’s lawyers stalled her appeal until after the 2024 election, preferring to engage in negotiations with Trump instead of Kamala Harris.  Trump, cankles and all, is off to visit his two Scotland golf courses this week but the WSJ, like the AP before it, has lost its coveted spot on his plane because their “birthday card,” the source of Trump’s amped up freak out, is still reverberating.

Habba Dabba Don’t:  In other legal beagle news, two of Trump’s interim US Attorneys are facing push back over their incompetence and extreme partisanship.  In theory interim US Attorneys can only serve for 120 days at which point they either have to go through a formal confirmation process, be extended by the federal judges in their district, or step down. After a panel of judges failed to extend John Sarcone 🤡, the interim US Attorney for the Northern District of New York, the DOJ took the unusual step of appointing him as a special attorney to the Attorney General, a role usually reserved for prosecutors assigned to special cases but not meant to be used to extend the tenure of an expired interim attorney. It’s not clear if the DOJ will use the same work around to extend New Jersey’s Alina Habba’s stint.  Habba 🤡, the parking lot lawyer who like Todd Blanche, was one of Trump’s defense lawyers has been serving as the interim US Attorney for New Jersey. Her on job performance has been both underwhelming and extremely partisan.  She’s being sued by Newark Mayor Baraka for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and defamation related to his legitimate protest at a NJ area INS detention center and she’s had NJ Congresswoman LaMonica McIver indicted for “pushing” an INS agent at the same INS detention center. Unwilling to extend her term, NJ’s district judges announced the appointment of Desiree Leigh Grace who had been serving as her first assistant as her replacement.  Late yesterday, Bondi’s DOJ responded by firing Grace.  Apparently politicizing at Justice is okay when it’s done by Trump and his henchmen, just not okay for Obama, Biden, or any other Democrat. Also, judging by Trump’s calls for Obama’s prosecution, that whole presidential immunity only applies to him.

Political Chicanery 🏠 🚗 🛻 :  Missouri Senator Josh Hawley 🤡 who voted for Trump’s Big Ugly Budget bill despite publicly slamming the $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that serves as the lynchpin of the bill, is planning to introduce legislation to replace those cuts.  That’s nice but quite disingenuous, Hawley just won reelection, he could have stood up for his health care needy constituents while the bill was under discussion so it’s not a stretch to surmise that he’s probably just trying to build up some support in anticipation of a post Trump presidential run. It’s fair to assume that his Medicaid refunding bill won’t pass since he’d have to figure out a way to fund it without raising taxes, especially given this week’s CBO conclusion that the “BUB” will increase the deficit by $3.4 trillion, the result of a decrease in revenues of $4.5 trillion only partially offset by a decrease in direct spending of $1.1 trillion, an amount not so coincidentally more or less equal to the aforementioned Medicaid cut.  Keeping with the theme of hard to believe promises, yesterday Trump who keeps throwing out shiny objects of distraction, teased eliminating capital gains taxes on the sale of primary residences to goose the housing market. Currently, single people can shelter $250,000 in gains while couples can shelter $500,000.  Again, that would be a nice for those who have highly appreciated homes but don’t count on it.  Then there’s Utah Senator Mike Lee 🤡.  He demonstrated some more abject stupidity yesterday, reposting and celebrating an obviously AI generated Fed Chair Jerome Powell resignation letter.  No, Powell did not resign which explains why Lee quietly deleted his post later in the day.  Lastly on the Senate front,  Minnesota Senator Tina Smith missed a vote after she was hospitalized briefly due to chest pains.  The good news is that Smith who at 67 is young by Senate standards says that she’s fine.  She is back at work. Smith previously announced that she will not be running for reelection when her term is up in 2026.  Late yesterday, Trump announced that he’s reached a “massive” trade deal with Japan.  The agreement, assuming it’s for real, will result in 15% tariffs on Japanese goods.  That’s less than the 25% Trump set earlier this year, but huge in comparison to the 2% that were in place in 2024.  Just another reminder, tariffs are taxes on all of us, corporations included.  Yesterday, General Motors reported a 35 percent drop in second-quarter profits, including a $1.1 billion hit from United States-imposed tariffs.          

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

Bringing Up Baby 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮

Epstein, Epstein, Epstein: Trump is really freaking out over the Epstein affair.  We know that because over the weekend, he ramped up his shiny objects’ generator, taking to Truth Social to threaten to stand in the way of the Washington Commanders building of a new stadium in Washington DC unless the team returns to its old Redskins moniker.  Keeping with that theme, he also called for baseball’s Cleveland Guardians to go back to calling themselves the Cleveland Indians, asserting that returning to their old name would improve their league standing. On a more serious note, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence who Hillary Clinton correctly called a Russian asset and who of late has been relegated to a kid’s table in the outer suburbs, emerged from whatever hole she’s been hiding to trumpet a report that accuses top members of the Obama administration of having engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy in 2016” with their assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election, that’s the assessment that was confirmed by a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, including then Senator Marco Rubio, as well as by the Mueller Report. Nothing screams “let me back into the cool kid’s club” better than ginning up a report that “legitimizes” Trump’s claims that the Russia investigation was an Obama/Clinton led witch hunt. Fox news is all in on the Gabbard report and Trump supplemented it by posting an AI generated picture of Obama being taken off to jail by FBI agents and a group picture of various members of the Obama administration including Barack “Hussien” Obama, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, and Ben “Hamas” Rhodes donned in orange jumpsuits calling them the Shady Bunch while arraying them in Brady Bunch format.  Though Adam Schiff wasn’t included in the array, Trump also gratuitously threw in a call for his immediate arrest as he frequently does.

Lawsuit Time:  Trump dropped his lawsuit against the Omaha pollster who erroneously predicted he’d lose Iowa in 2024, and a judge has dismissed his lawsuit against author Bob Woodward but that hasn’t stopped him from trying again because that’s what he does, besides, he has garnered millions in extortion settlements from lots of media outlets. This weekend, his legal team filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, News Corp, Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch, and the two Journal reporters who wrote Wednesday’s story about the birthday card and accompany lewd doodle that Trump “allegedly” gifted Epstein to celebrate the pedophile’s 50^th birthday.  Trump’s claim is that the WSJ defamed him.  The problem for Trump is that truth is not defamatory, and the WSJ stands by the accuracy of its story.  Assuming social media is correct, and it was when several posts teased that the WSJ birthday card article was forthcoming, there’s more to come, maybe even a picture of the Trump card. Already, several media outlets including the NY Times have published articles about Trump’s close friendship with Epstein, his history of sleazy behavior around young women including some teenage model wannabees, most of which isn’t new to anyone who’s been paying attention but was likely missed or dismissed by the MAGA universe who seems to be finally waking up to Trump’s past actions. As to Trump’s assertion which was repeated by the desperate to please his daddy son Don Jr that he never doodles, it has already been proven false.  Trump frequently contributed his doodles to be auctioned off by charities and pictures of quite a few of them were published over the weekend. Trump’s assertion that the word “enigma,” included in his birthday message, is not one he uses, and to be fair, it did seem uncharacteristic given his usual monosyllabic utterances, that’s a lie too, there’s video of Trump saying it in a public setting. Pam Bondi who Trump is reported to be growing tired of having to defend has formally requested permission from the courts to release the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxell grand jury testimony.  It’s not clear that they will but whether they do or not, it will be only a small fraction of what the DOJ has on Epstein and his friends which likely explains why Bondi had 1000(!) agents working overtime sorting through the voluminous Epstein files, flagging places where Trump’s name appeared. According to DOJ tipsters somewhere at the DOJ there is an EXCEL spreadsheet of the results of their analysis as well as a training video that provided the agents with instructions on what to look for in the Epstein files. Lastly, while we were all gawking at Trump’s cankles, VP Vance made a brief trip to Montana where he met with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and some others senior executives from NewsCorp. A fundraising trip, an attempt to get the WSJ to quash their birthday card story, or maybe laying the groundwork for a coup? Coup or not Vance is jockeying for position to be the Republican’s 2028 presidential candidate as is Secretary of State Marco Rubio who is really outdoing himself these days.  Rubio who not long ago was considered a serious person announced on Friday that the visas of Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, his “allies on the court” and immediate family members have been revoked over the ongoing “political witch hunt” against Brazil’s disgraced former Brazilian president.  It’s not clear how much lower Rubio can go in his efforts to garner favor with and an endorsement from his dear leader because at some point he will have hit rock bottom, assuming there is a bottom.

Meat, Potatoes, and 👶👶:  While the impact of many of the worst components of Trump’s big ugly bill won’t be felt until after the midterms, some of Trump’s policies are already having a bigly impact. KFF, a nonpartisan health care policy research group says that largely due to the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, insurance premiums for people who purchase their health insurance through the ACA (Obamacare) are expected to go up 75%. It’s highly likely that many of the people who have been buying their insurance through those markets are going to decide to wing it, going without coverage, something that will lead to more people avoiding doctors until they need emergency care, not that there will be as many hospital emergency rooms once the big ugly bill’s effects kick in.  Additionally, though the full impact of tariffs has not kicked in yet, it’s not your imagination, costs are going up: prices for imported goods on Amazon have gone up and beef prices, already at record levels, are expected to go up further during 2026.  Maybe it’s time for switch to veggie burgers but then again, the pool of migrants picking those vegetables is also shrinking as Trump’s growing INS army keeps hunting more of them down. The okay news on the migrant front is that despite Trump’s assertion that he couldn’t get the migrants he’d had deported to the El Salvador gulag released because they were no longer under his control, he actually did get 200 Venezuelans sent back to Venezuela in exchange for ten Americans who have now been returned home to the US. The bad news is that INS agents keep arresting and incarcerating Americans and those with valid Green cards, including disabled veterans and peace abiding 82-year-olds.  If you are wondering why there’s so much talk about building more detention facilities it’s because despite the publicized transports of some migrant “gang” members to far flung countries, Trump and Stephen Miller’s gestapo-like forces are picking up far more people than they can deport, thus we get people in cages in places like Florida’s hurricane prone, sweltering alligator alley, at military bases and maybe even a multi-billion dollar rehab of San Francisco’s Alcatraz island prison.  One more thing for today, a pregnant Tennessee woman has been denied prenatal care by her local OB-GYN, she’s not seeking an abortion, she just wants routine care throughout her pregnancy.  The doctor has denied her care because he doesn’t approve of her lifestyle, she’s not married to the 👶’s father with whom she’s been in a long term committed relationship, not that any of that should be relevant.  A recent Tennessee law says that doctors don’t have to treat anyone whose values conflict with theirs.  So, to be clear, Republican policy is to encourage women to have 👶👶, but when they get pregnant, they want to be able to limit who gets care and once the 👶👶are born, forget about them.    

#BringThemAllHomeNow                    

 

 
Secrets and Enigmas 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

R is For Recission: Epstein continues to be the gift that keeps giving, but lots of other crazy sh-t happened yesterday too.  The House passed the $9 billion rescission package that cut previously approved funding for foreign aid, including programs related to global health, development, and humanitarian response, though it left PEPFAR AIDs funding intact.  It also cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which supports PBS and NPR because apparently Elmo and Cookie Monster are too woke and don’t even get them started on Miss Piggy.  Anyway, underserved rural communities, including much of Alaska don’t really need news or emergency notifications because environmental catastrophes don’t happen?  Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget,  a co-author of Project 2025, teased that another rescission package is enroute. He also publicly stated that the federal appropriations process should be "less bipartisan," arguing that the focus should be on reducing spending, not on getting any Democrats on board.  Keeping with the theme of cutting “woke” programming CBS announced that they won’t be renewing Stephen Colbert’s late-night program when his contract ends. Not so coincidentally, the Colbert cancellation came just three days after he called out CBS parent company Paramount for its bribery-like $16 million deal with Trump, the payment that is being made to compensate Trump because he didn’t like the way they edited their 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview and also to get approval for their $8 billion sale to Skydance. Keeping the dear leader happy is how things work in fascist autocracies. Worth noting, Joe Biden never sued Colbert for any of the snippy jokes that targeted his age and mental acuity, and Kamala Harris isn’t suing Fox over its editing of the campaign interview where Trump backtracked on his promise to release all the Epstein files upon his reelection. Though Paramount said their decision was for financial reasons,  Stephen Colbert’s ratings are better than his competitors.

Cankles:  As to the age thing, on Wednesday, Trump who really wants to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell but keeps getting stymied by market reaction whenever it looks like he’s on the verge of following through said he was “surprised” that Biden appointed the very stupid Powell in the first place. Though Biden reappointed Powell, Trump appointed him during his first term and though the tangerine Mussolini frequently lies, this time he really seemed to believe what he was saying was true. According to Dr. Google mental confusion can be a symptom of chronic venous insufficiency, relevant because after a picture of Trump’s swollen cankles which were on full display during the FIFA game went viral on social media, the White House disclosed that Trump suffers from the age-related incurable condition. They also said that the persistent make-up covered bruise on his hand is due to his daily aspirin intake as well as frequent handshaking, the latter odd because germaphobe Trump keeps his handshaking to a minimum. Credit to Rose O’Donnell for the tangerine moniker, which she included in her clapback to Trump’s recent threat to have her denaturalized. Though it’s unlikely that he can strip Rosie of her citizenship, denaturalization is one of the things his Himmler wannabee Stephen Miller wants to do and since we keep hearing from US citizens, including veterans, about how they’ve been swept up in INS raids, we should not dismiss those threats.  Nor should we dismiss the promise to turn California’s revenue producing Alcatraz tourist site into an INS incarceration facility since co-splay Kristi Noem, with her usual camera crew in tow, went to the delipidated island prison this week to talk about her really expensive, stupid plans to do.  No money for humanitarian aid or public broadcasting but given the newly inflated INS budget, there’s plenty to waste, so Alcatraz.   

Epstein Gate: We’re more than ten days in and the Epstein story continues to dominate the news.  Last night despite Trump’s threats that he’d sue if they did, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the “bawdy” letters that Epstein girlfriend/abettor Ghislaine Maxwell solicited from his friends to put into a leather-bound book for his 50^th birthday.  According to the WSJ one of the letters was from good friend Trump, others came from businessmen, academics, former girlfriends and childhood pals, a group that included lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Leslie Wexner.  Though the WSJ didn’t publish a copy of the Trump letter, they reviewed it and said it included several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, breasts and pubic area included, which appeared to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker, a sharpie, perhaps?  Trump’s note referred to their “wonderful secrets,” things they have in common and “enigmas” that “never age.” An irate Trump who’d tried to have Rupert Murdoch squash the article, denied writing the letter or drawing the picture and called the letter fake. It’s fair to assume that the long diatribe that he posted earlier this week was because he knew the WSJ article was incoming. After the article was published, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be suing the “Disgusting and Filthy” WSJ and NewsCorp the way he sued “Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS and others.” He also said that he never draws pictures, a lie that was almost immediately proven false when California Governor Newsom tweeted out a photo of a signed doodle that Trump had auctioned off at a charity event. In all likelihood we will be seeing more of Trump’s artwork shortly. We may also see the actual letter soon though probably not from AG Pam Bondi who late last night said, in response to a command from Trump, that she will try to get “pertinent” and “releasable” parts of the Epstein grand jury material released. It’s not clear that Bondi can force the release of any of the grand jury material and even if she can her decision about what is pertinent would be highly suspect, however Trump’s order to have something released is an attempt on his part to put his Epstein problem to bed, that may not be possible and certainly won’t be accomplished if he follows through on his threats to sue the Wall Street Journal who must have run the article past their very competent lawyers before publication. One person who is familiar with all of the Epstein files, included the things that were not included in the grand jury dump is Maurene Comey, the now former US Assistant Attorney General from the Southern District of New York.  Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, prosecuted the case against Ghislaine Maxwell.  She is an experienced and respected sex crimes prosecutor who also was the lead prosecutor on the Sean Combs case. Trump had her fired this week; frankly, it’s surprising that given his hatred and persecution of her father, he didn’t have her fired sooner. Sparing no punches, in her parting remarks to her colleagues she wrote “Fear is the tool of the tyrant.” Too bad the House Judiciary Committee is chaired by sex offender adjacent Jim “Gym” Jordan and the Senate Committee which just approved the wildly inappropriate partisan Emil Bove’s judicial nomination is chaired by Iowa’s increasingly wacky and mean Chuck Grassley because Ms. Comey would be a good person for them to hear from. She might also be able to shed light on the Epstein related $1.5 billion money trail that Democratic Senator Ron Wyden wants made public.  

Fog:  The situation in the Mideast continues to fester. Israel bombed parts of Damascus this week in response to Syria’s attacks on Israel’s Druze allies.  Bibi Netanyahu whose corruption trial is ongoing, with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee inappropriately sitting in, has seen his coalition shrink.  Israeli missiles and/or fragments have landed on churches and other civilian facilities and some West Bank settlers have proven that sometimes there really are bad people on both sides. Lastly, despite Trump’s assertions otherwise, recent reports are that only one of Iran’s nuclear sites was put out of business by our bunker busting bombs.

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

Epstein's Revenge 🤡 😱 🌻✡️🌻😱 🤡 

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Over the weekend Trump signaled that a big announcement about Russia was forthcoming. He followed through on Monday, saying that he would permit NATO members to buy and transfer American arms, including urgently needed Patriot missiles systems, to Ukraine.  Ukraine desperately needs the weapons, especially the Patriot systems, to fend off Russian missile attacks so the announcement which Trump said was due to his disappointment that Putin had ramped up his attacks on Ukraine, went over well with NATO and got Trump a big thank you from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, but did not please his MAGA base.  Trump also threatened that he would impose secondary sanctions in the form of large tariffs against customers of Russian energy, something that could “significantly empty Moscow’s coffers,” but that threat came with the usual Trumpian catch, a delay, not for two weeks but for a longer fifty days.  The delay is supposed to give Putin time to get back into Trump’s good graces.  Spoiler alert, Putin doesn’t care about making Trump happy, he isn’t going to start behaving, and those secondary tariffs which many in Congress have wanted for some time, are unlikely to be imposed because China is one of Russia’s largest purchasers of Russian energy and would probably respond by holding up the delivery of the rare earth minerals needed by US manufacturers.  

🍿🍿🍿: Russia isn’t Trump’s only problem, he's also been fending off incoming from the MAGA crowd on the Epstein front.  For a short while it looked like his efforts to shove the Epstein demons back into one of Mar a Lago’s toilets was working.  Republicans voted against a quickly put together Democratic resolution calling for the immediate release of all the Epstein files, right wing influencers like Charlie Kirk backed off similar demands, FBI Director Kash Patel affirmed his commitment to all things Trump, and Dan Bongino, who will probably be quietly forced out soon, went silent.  However, that retreat was short lived because by the end of yesterday calls for the release of the Epstein files emerged from surprising sources, including Speaker/Trump toady Mike Johnson.  Even Trump appears to realize that he needs to do something to placate his Epstein fixated MAGAs so while he’s taken to equating the Epstein client list to what he calls the Russian election interference hoax and to ramping up accusations that if they exist they were ginned up by Biden and Obama, he’s now saying that AG Pam Bondi should release what she thinks is appropriate. MAGA types like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon are calling for Bondi’s resignation so while Trump still appears to have her back, don’t be surprised if she becomes his Epstein sacrificial lamb.  Complicating things further, Epstein’s sidekick, the imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell, is currently appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court. Last night, her siblings released a statement in which they appealed to Trump to spring her from jail, perhaps a not-so-subtle threat that she’ll start talking about things he doesn’t want her to talk about if he doesn’t?  We know all of this has gotten under Trump’s skin because he’s in full diversionary tactic mode. Yesterday he ramped up attacks on one of his favorite punching bags, California Senator Adam Schiff, accusing him of mortgage fraud saying that a criminal case had been referred to the Justice Department. Schiff, like many members of Congress from both parties maintains homes in both Washington DC and his home state so he has a DC mortgage.  This is just more of Trump’s retribution campaign with a little diversion thrown in.  He is also going after Fed Chair Jerome Powell who he’s been trying to oust for some time, claiming that Powell spent excessively on an “ostentatious” renovation of the Federal Reserve’s offices.  There something really precious about the gold leaf expert with gold toilets having his surrogates call anyone out for ostentatious décor. Anyway, his real beef with Powell is over interest rates.  Trump wants them lowered ASAP, Powell will only lower them when he thinks that they should be lowered and given yesterday’s uptick in inflation that’s not likely to happen in the immediate future.  That inflation uptick, it’s probably just the beginning of an upswing because tariffs are just starting to affect prices and things costing more = inflation.         

Rescission, Rescission:  Late yesterday, the Senate advanced rescission legislation intended to claw back $9 billion of Congressionally approved funding for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting.  At the last-minute funding for PEPFAR, the international AIDs program originated by George W Bush, was removed from the rescission package. Even with the PEPFAR adjustment, Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell joined all Democrats in opposing the rescission package. South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds who could have provided the vote that toppled the legislation threatened to oppose the rescission package but jumped back on board after he obtained a commitment from the White House to divert some “green new deal” money towards funding to protect his state’s tribal broadcasting services.  VP Vance, just back from Disneyland, broke the tie. In other news, Education Department employees are out, victims of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the elimination of the department, for now, whatever for now means.  Notably, SCOTUS’s six conservatives, the same crew who ruled against Biden’s student loan forgiveness executive orders are okay with Trump eliminating a Congressionally created department by fiat.  

Politics:  Trump appears to be getting nervous about the 2026 midterms. We know that because he’s publicly called for Texas Governor Abbott to call a special session of the Texas legislature to redraw the boundaries of the state’s 38 House Districts. Trump wants the very willing Abbott to gerrymander the state’s district in a manner that will result in Republicans winning five more of the state’s seats.  It’s not clear if Abbott can clear the way for the Republican Party to pick up five seats but with a little bit of racial gerrymandering, something that SCOTUS mostly ignores these days, he probably can come up with a map that gives Republicans more than the 25 seats it currently holds. Democratic governors are now scrambling to see if they can do the same, but it’s not easy since to succeed Governors need to have enough seats to play around with and also need to control their state legislatures. In other political news, yesterday, former county supervisor Adelita Grijalva won the Democratic primary to replace her father, long term Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, who died in March.  Grijalva is expected to easily win the special election which is scheduled to take place in September. She beat out 25-year-old political content creator Deja Foxx a who had the support of Democratic upstart David Hogg and had hoped to follow in the footsteps of New York’s Democratic Mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani. Hogg, best known for being a Parkland School shooting survivor, was recently kicked out of DNC leadership for raising money to primary “older” Democrats.  As to NYC, former Governor Andrew Cuomo is running as an independent against both Mamdani and current Mayor Adams who is also running as an independent. Oh, and yesterday Mamdani said he will “discourage” the use of the term “Globalize the Intifada.” How considerate of him.  New York, New York a helluva a town: flooded subways, high rents,  and a screwball mayoral election with a leading candidate who has to be cajoled into saying he’ll discourage people from calling for a global intifada.     

More:  Instead of distributing them to the hungry, the White House plans to burn 500 tons of high energy biscuits, enough to feed 1.5 million children for a week.  The biscuits are currently housed overseas, and some soulless DOGE genius has convinced the equally soulless Trump administration that burning biscuits is so much more efficient than getting them to where they were supposed to go.  The federal panel that sets standards for screening newborns for treatable diseases is another thing that’s fallen victim to the DOGE-niks.  It’s been eliminated because though the administration and former advisor Elon Musk want more babies, they don’t want to spend money keeping them healthy.  And though Musk is on the outs these days, the Pentagon has just awarded his XAI company a $200 million contract because apparently Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and our military leaders need to be able to avail themselves of the Hitler friendly GROK chatbot.   

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

Doth Protest Too Much 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

The Epstein Chronicles:  Jeffrey Epstein was a despicable, serial abuser of underage girls with a lot of prominent friends who knew what he was up to and likely participated in his sordid activities.  He spent some time in a cushy Florida prison cell after receiving an inexplicably light sentence before being incarcerated in New York after the gravity of his crimes finally caught up with him.  He died under mysterious circumstances, likely by suicide but maybe not.  There’s no question that Trump was one of his friends, he used to brag about their bro-bonding saying that one of the cool things about Epstein was that like him, he enjoyed the company of “young” women.  Additionally, Alexander Acosta who served as Labor Secretary during Trump’s first term was forced to resign amid scrutiny over his handling of Epstein’s Florida case. The Trump party line has long been that he severed his connections with Epstein years before he engaged in his most horrendous activities and for the longest time despite the many photos of Trump partying with Epstein that assertion gave Trump license to claim that the FBI, Obama, the Clintons and a whole bunch of deep state Democrats were hiding Epstein’s client list and that were he reelected he’d make sure that the list saw the light of day. Somehow or other, his MAGA base, many of whom are the same Q adherents who believe that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlor, bought into Trump’s shtick even though Trump was president when Epstein was incarcerated in New York and when he died and could have released the much sought after “list” at that time.  Last week the Epstein affair surfaced again bigly, this time because Dan Bongino, the former right-wing podcaster who is, or at least was, Deputy FBI Director, got into a fight with Attorney General Pam Bondi after she said she couldn’t release the Epstein client list that she’d previously claimed was on her desk because it didn’t exist. Reports are that he also butted heads with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.  An enraged Bongino threatened to resign if Bondi didn’t resign first adding that FBI head Kash Patel, also a former podcaster who’d spent years talking about the list, would follow him out the door.  Conspiracist Laura Loomer jumped into the fray also calling for “Blondi” to resign and a number of other prominent right wingers followed because the large Q wing of the MAGA party is convinced that there’s a list and they want to see it now.  Late Saturday, Trump weighed in with a lengthy, unhinged even by Trump standards, Truth Social post.  He stood up for Bondi, asserted there was no list, but if there was it was the invention of Obama, crooked Hillary, and former CIA director John Brennan.  To further emphasize his support for Bondi who clearly was following his orders, he included her on his Sunday FIFA World Cup traveling squad.  Kash Patel who must have been told to shut up or else now says he has no plans to leave the FBI but Don Bongino who was a no-show for work on Friday is MIA, may soon return to his more lucrative pod cast roots, unless of course he’s currently incarcerated at Alligator🐊 Alcatraz alongside a whole crowd of migrant workers who shouldn’t be there and the “tourists” taking pictures of the Alligator sign, the same types who would have taken pictures of themselves by the notorious Auschwitz Arbeit Macht Frei entrance back in the day. Whether or not Epstein committed suicide, the odds are that the guy who kept a detailed log of everyone who ever flew on his pedo-plane did have a client list or a black book of some sort and Trump’s details are there because he doth protest too much.  The pundit class insists that the Epstein list battle marks the beginning of the break-up of MAGA and the end of Trump.  Sadly, that’s probably just more delusional wishful thinking.

Not Fake News:  Bondi wasn’t the only Trump cabinet member taking heat this weekend.  DHS head Kristi Noem who together with Melania and Tom Brady also traveled with Trump to the FIFA World Cup final is mired in her own mess.  She spent part of her weekend defending FEMA’s inadequate response to the Kerr County, Texas camp Guadalupe River flood tragedy where 129 died and around 160 remain missing and of course she called out the NY Times for what she called a “fake news” story.  The story she dissed is that on July 5^th as the tragedy was unfolding, FEMA fired the staff responsible for answering calls from those affected by the disaster.  As a result, the percentage of unanswered calls jumped from 1% on July 4 to 65% on July 6.  Noem who’d recently implemented a policy requiring her signature on any expense in excess of $100,000 also sat on requests for assistance, delaying the arrival of search and rescue teams by days. For his part, Trump with Melania in tow, showed up in Texas over the weekend where he said no one could have anticipated that the flood plain would flood even though it’s called a flood plain for a reason and repeatedly floods. Moreover, FEMA had previously warned that it likely would flood again and had put some of the camp buildings on a list of endangered facilities that should be moved, a list they were curiously removed from.  Lawsuits incoming? Trump also called a reporter evil for asking whether alerts had gone out on time.  As to those alerts, County and State officials who should have known better apparently opted not to spend the money to improve the notification system because that’s the Texas way which is likely why Governor Abbott pushed back suggestions that anyone look into the flawed decision making that contributed to the tragedy.  Absent from the Trump visit was the current head of FEMA who replaced Trump’s previous head who was fired for publicly disagreeing with Trump’s plan to get rid of FEMA altogether.  Trump is now hinting that he won’t totally disband FEMA kind of like he’s now sending Patriot Missiles to Ukraine after they endured days of civilian targeted bombing by Russia. Oh, and in case you are wondering climate change isn’t a thing, at least in Trump world and Texas. And Putin isn’t a nice guy, at least this week.

Peeps: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s wife announced that she’s divorcing him for “biblical grounds” and “recent discoveries.”  His infidelity has long been an open secret but those “recent discoveries” could be interesting especially since the communications director for the Republican National Senate committee described what Paxton has put his wife through as “truly repulsive and disgusting.”  Paxton who is all in on Christian values (ahem)  is polling way ahead of current Senator John Cornyn who he is primarying because so far MAGA has his back. Whether his wife’s divorce petition will impact his lead remains unknown, for now.  Reports are that Iowa’s Joni Ernst who is up for reelection in 2026 is thinking about throwing in the towel.  Ernst who claimed to have reservations about Pete Hegseth nevertheless voted for his confirmation to avoid being primaried by a Trump supported candidate and also because she was getting death threats. That’s the same Pete Hegseth who Thom Tillis who since he is not running for reelection now says he regrets supporting.  The Senate is due to vote on the nomination of Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment to serve as a judge on the US Appeals Court for the Third District, something that will tee him up to be a Trump nominee for SCOTUS. Bove is the Trump lawyer who according to whistle blower testimony and an email trail told staff at the DOJ that it was okay to disregard judicial rulings.  During his Senate confirmation hearing, Bove didn’t remember saying any of that and also refused to rule out Trump running for a third term or condemn the January 6 rioters. On the subject of judicial rulings, a California based federal court judge ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in seven California counties, those are the stops that target people merely for being brown or speaking Spanish.  Noem says the decision is not a problem because DHS doesn’t profile which is at odds with what Tom Homan, her gestapo-esque guy says.  Bove hasn’t weighed in on where he stands and whether or not he’d abide by that ruling.      

And:  Tariffs are back in the news.  Forget about buying anything from Canada.  Even Myanmar got one of the threatening form letters.  They, however, were pleased because it’s the first time in a long time that they’ve received any official communication from the US since they’re on banned country list. Maybe if we weren’t busy disbanding the State Department someone in the White House would have known that. Lastly, expect more investigations into anyone associated with the Biden administration because that’s how Trump is going to divert from Epstein.       

#BringThemAllHomeNow    

    

 
Embarrassed Yet? 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

Crony Tariffs:  Yesterday via a letter chock full of grammatical errors and inappropriate capitalizations, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on goods imported from Brazil.  His rationale for those threatened tariffs has nothing to do with fixing a trade imbalance, the US currently exports more goods to Brazil than it imports.  Instead, the purpose of the threat is to intimate Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inacio Luiz da Silva (Lula), to drop the pending attempted coup charges against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.  Bolsonaro is a frequent Mar a Lago guest and one of Trump’s besties. Naturally, Trump considers the prosecution of Bolsonaro to be another one of those witch hunt things. Lula’s response:  “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.” In other words, go stuff it.  The cases concerning the legality of Trump’s tariffs are currently percolating through the US courts, with an appeals court hearing scheduled to take place at the end of July, so it’s not just that Trump’s Bolsonaro threats are another example of him playing king as well as an international embarrassment, his tariff quid pro quo provides further evidence that his tariffs are being illegally imposed and have nothing to do with national security, the rationale that he and his crony Justice Department have been asserting in court.  No doubt those suing Trump over his cockamamie tariffs have just added more to their legal argument.  In the meantime, the rest of us may soon find our morning joe, not the TV program but our breakfast brew, much of which comes from Brazil,  getting more expensive.  

Retribution Trail:  The Justice Department which keeps bleeding competent lawyers because so many have been fired while many others have jumped ship, wanting nothing to do with Trump’s insanity is quite busy, not just defending his tariffs and other questionably legal policies but also pursuing his promised retribution.  According to the NY Times, Trump’s DOJ toadies have opened an investigation into former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan, looking into their actions during the 2016 investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, that thing that Trump continues to assert was the witch hunt of witch hunts. Keeping with the theme of retribution and misuse of government resources, the FBI actually had agents physically trailing Comey while also examining his digital trail over the “seashell” episode which they allege was an assassination threat, but that most normal people know was just Comey’s sharing of a humorous beach picture.  The Brazil tariff threats are nuts, the investigations into Comey and Brennan extreme overreach but, in all likelihood, little will come of either.  However, the same can’t be said about what’s going on with the now overfunded INS.  Kristi Noem’s masked agents continue to round up lots of people, targeting those with brown skin. That more and more people whose sole crime, after decades of working, paying taxes, and going to school in the US, is their immigration status, are being scooped off the streets and thrown into detention facilities or worse is, as the ACLU puts it, a dystopian nightmare.  It brings to mind the Gestapo, although even Hitler’s enforcers didn’t hide their identity behind masks.  Even more disturbing is that some of the people being put in those detention centers are citizens whose only crime, is being Hispanic and/or having brown skin and that, despite having a Real ID or another proof of citizenship, they’re still enduring time in detention centers.  Cruelty and intimidation are the points.

Adios, Ciao, Goodbye:  Linda Yaccarino, the former NBC advertising executive who Elon Musk brought into serve as X’s faux CEO has departed X. It would be nice to think that her abrupt departure was in protest of AI chatbot Grok’s weekend spewing of anti-Semitic tropes and its calling itself MechaHitler, but reports are that her departure had been in the works for a while.  Worth recalling that earlier in the year when Musk’s did his Hitler salute thing, she posted laughing emojis.  Anyway, it’s not surprising that Yaccarino is out, what is surprising is that it took so long.  Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary/Reality TV star is now serving as interim head of NASA because he’s been doing such a good job at Transportation? Trump pulled the nomination of his original candidate, who despite being supported by Elon Musk, had bipartisan support. And yesterday, Trump, who still doesn’t know who authorized the “temporary” cancellation of Ukraine’s weapons shipments, complimented Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai for his English-speaking skills, asking him where he’d learned the language.  English is the official language of Liberia. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

Goldfinger 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

Midas Moment:  Yesterday during one of his made for reality TV cabinet meetings Trump riffed that because no gold paint could adequately achieve the gilded look he wanted, he was considering having gold leaf applied to the ceiling of his conference room.  Naturally, all the fawning members of his cabinet, shook their heads in agreement, awed by his brilliant decorating acumen.  Trump also snidely brushed off a few questions from the press, appearing really disgusted that one of them had the gall to ask him about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Those are the files that he had repeatedly promised to release upon taking office and that his Attorney General Pam Bondi once said were on her desk undergoing final review but that she and the Kash Patel/Dan Bongino led FBI now say do not exist but if they do they contain nothing worthwhile, most certainly not a list of Epstein’s clients, none of which could possibly have the initials DJT. Conspiracist/power broker Laura Loomer is not happy because she like a number of other MAGAs like Tucker Carlson really want those files released.  For his part, Elon now claims that Steve Bannon is among those named in the mysteriously disappeared files.  Keeping with the nothing to see here theme of the morning, Trump was also dismissive of a question about who at the Pentagon had made the decision to pause military aid to Ukraine. Trump who mused about Putin not being the nice guy he pretends to be, has turned the Ukraine arms spigot back on, at least to a drip, and will now allow some of the anti-missile weaponry that was previously promised and is sitting in Poland awaiting his final approval to be sent Ukraine’s way. Though Trump refused to confirm it, it appears the decision to halt the shipments was made by a fellow named Elbridge Colby, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s policy chief.  Apparently that decision wasn’t shared with Trump before it was implemented.  Then again, maybe it was shared, but got lost among the inadequate gold paint samples because with this nefarious 🤡 car you never know who’s speaking truth and who’s just ducking responsibility.  Anyway, Trump is now focused on more important matters; he’s musing about taking over the day-to-day management of the District of Columbia while also suggesting that if Big Apple voters elect “Marxist” Zohran Mamdani as their mayor in November, he’ll have no choice but to take over NYC too. The global intifada socialist guy or the Mango Maniac, New Yorkers have so much to look forward to.  No one should take Mango Midas’ threat lightly given that a heavily armed contingent of Homeland Security “soldiers,” including a few on horseback, were deployed in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park this week intimidating camp children and anyone else still out about in the heavily immigrant area. Trump is also fully back in tariff mode. He’s sent form letters to dozens of allies, promising to “tax” then.  Among the recipients of his missives is our Southeast Asia ally South Korea. We have a free trade agreement with South Korea, but for Trump that’s just an inconvenient detail to be ignored. And of course, despite Trump’s insistence otherwise, tariffs are paid by US importers who then pass them on to US consumers so they are regressive taxes on all of us, including those who will soon be losing their health care and food supplements.  Anyway, Trump’s got another tariff deadline, in response to being called a TACO again, he insists it’s for real and the markets, particularly the bond markets aren’t happy because while tariffs are bigly bad, uncertainty is worse.

Musk Madness:  Musk spent $277 million helping to elect Trump and then doubled down by DOGE-ing the government, badly according to Trump who says he would have Doged better and given yesterday’s SCOTUS decision that he can fire lots more government employees he probably will. Furious that what he got for those efforts was a big ugly spending bill that defunds clean energy, pushes coal and other fossil fuels while taking away tax credits for electric vehicles and adding to the deficit he so abhors, Musk has now pivoted to creating a third political party. It’s not clear that Musk’s third-party plans will go far but money speaks and despite Tesla’s diminishing sales he still has scads of it and may soon have even more given reports that his valuable SpaceX company is in talks to raise more money so the usual suspects, including erstwhile presidential candidate Andrew Yang, appear interested in signing on. Yang may want to reconsider tying his fortune to Musk because though Musk may no longer be on the MAGA train, as evidenced by the hateful messages coming out of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok which is incorporated into X (Twitter), he’s still all-in on hate. In response to Musk’s concern that the prior version of Grok had grown too politically correct, a retooled or as they say in AI land retrained, version was released into X over the weekend. The new version praised Hitler and shared anti-Semitic tropes, blaming people with Ashkenazic sounding names for “cheering tragedies or pushing anti-white narratives” and claiming that Jews control the government. On Tuesday evening in response to alarm from some users, X’s Grok account posted: “We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.” Even later on Tuesday evening Grok appeared to stop posting altogether.  Apparently, while you can take a bigot out of Trump’s orbit, you can’t take his bigotry out of his soul. Anyone still on the Musk bandwagon should jump off ASAP.

Fog: Bibi Netanyahu visited Trump again, still no Gaza deal, still no hostage release but Bibi probably accrued some more Trump points by bringing along a letter nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. Ugh.     

#BringThemAllHomeNow