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Qatar gifted Trump, about $1 billion appears to have been quietly transferred from the Pentagon budget for refurbishing out of date, leaky nukes into the refurbishing of the “free” plane.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