Apples and Honey  🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯🍎 🍯

Hate and Retribution: Yesterday during the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, Trump stated that he hates his opponents and doesn’t wish any of them well, not a surprising statement given that he ran for office promising retribution but still an alarming message from a president of a country founded on democratic principles.  So much for soothing the nation or taking the high ground.  Then again, he took to Truth Social on Saturday night to demand that Attorney General Pam Bondi more aggressively prosecute his “enemies,” including NY AG Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, Senator Adam Shiff, and former national security official John Bolton, calling them “all guilty as hell.” His post went on to say "We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"  Replace JUSTICE with PAYBACK to get what he really means. To hammer his point home, Trump forced the resignation of Erik Siebert, the career prosecutor who he had earlier promoted to be the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Siebert’s transgression: concluding that since he didn’t have evidence to convict Letitia James of mortgage fraud, there was no point in trying to indict her. Siebert also had made no progress indicting James Comey, who hasn’t committed any indictable crimes though he did start the Trump ball rolling by mucking up the 2016 election with his sanctimonious statements about Hillary Clinton and her emails.   Trump appointed Florida attorney Lindsey Halligan to replace Siebert.  Halligan, an insurance claims lawyer with no prosecutorial experience previously served as one of Trump’s personal lawyers.  Her most recent assignment included rooting out radical ideology at the Smithsonian Museums. It’s fair to assume that once she locates her desk, Siebert will try to indict Tish James, and who knows maybe unlike Jeanine Pirro, the former Foxy who is now the US Attorney for DC, who has been having trouble indicting Washington DC denizens for felonies that aren’t felonies, she’ll get an indictment from a Virginia grand jury, but getting a conviction will likely be near impossible. Kelly Hayes, the career prosecutor currently serving as US Attorney for Maryland could be Trump’s next target.  She’s been tasked with prosecuting Senator Adam Schiff for “mortgage fraud” and John Bolton,  for mishandling information.  She has told her colleagues “that she was under no illusions of the pressure she would face if she refused to bring cases she believed to be unsupported by evidence.” Weird thing about all that alleged mortgage fraud is that their only crimes when committed by Trump’s opponents, not much of a concern for his cabinet members, a list that has grown to include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And even weirder, mishandling secret stuff, that was okay when it was Trump stashing documents in Mar a Lago’s ballroom and toilet.  Also, apparently no one in Trump’s orbit was particularly concerned that before the 2024 election, Border Czar Tom Homan was caught accepting $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as businessman though they’re probably less than pleased that the facts about his case have just been published. Homan who was not a target of the FBI sting, got caught up in the operation when, taking a page from the forced out former VP Spiro Agnew,  he accepted the bag of money and agreed to help the  “businessmen”  secure future government contracts related to border security.  The funniest part about this episode is that the cash was hidden in one of those yellow Cava bag that have become so ubiquitous in my neighborhood, the not so funny part is that Homan spends his days crowing about the administration’s brutal treatment of migrants, none of whom are served tasty Cava Mediterranean salads when they’re thrown into INS holding pens or end up in overseas gulags.

Media and Tech: Moving forward, H1-B visas, the ones sought by skilled technology workers, will cost $100,000 per applicant.  That’s a problem for those seeking employment in the US, and also a problem for all the technology firms and banks seeking workers with the types of skills that they say and maybe are in short supply in the US. The tech titans who run the firms who need these workers have written bigly checks to Trump to forestall this, but at least for now their largesse has been trumped by mini- Goebbels Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon’s nativist positions.  Odds are that they’ll work out their differences, but in the meantime, no one should be all that concerned about those pro-Trump tech titans.  Over the weekend Trump announced that he’s closing in on finalizing an agreement to wrest control of Tik-Tok from its “manipulative” Chinese owners. His deal will involve handing over the reins of Tik-Tok and its valuable algorithm to a group including tech and media giants Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Lachlan Murdoch, the pro-Trump scion who recently emerged as the winner of the battle to take over his father Rupert’s media empire. Assuming the Tik-Tok deal goes through, Trump will be one step closer to having achieved his goal of getting US media into the hands of his conservative allies. Not that all of his wishes are coming true.  Late last week, US district court judge Steven Merryday from Tampa, Florida tossed his $15 billion defamation case against the NY Times saying that the suit was filled with “vituperation and invective” and violated civil procedure in federal cases for failing to get to the point. The judge, who wasn’t all that interested in a reading about why it was a crime to ignore Trump’s brilliant moves on the Apprentice, gave his lawyers 28 days to refile, but told them to keep their argument on topic and brief.  Even then he may toss the case because endorsing Trump’s opponents is not a crime or at least wasn’t one before Trump started killing the First Amendment and going after Disney, ABC, CBS and so on.  Jimmy Kimmel is still out of a job and people have started cancelling their Disney subscriptions but isn’t that part of Trump’s game plan?

Viral Musings:  As expected, on Friday, RFK’s vaccination panel further dissed COVID vaccines no longer recommending that anyone, even those over 65 get the jab. That contradicts the already watered down recommendations provided by the CDC earlier this month. The vaccine panel’s view is that anyone crazy enough to want one of those “killer” RNA shots first get a prescription from their doctor. The good news is that if you live in one of the western states (California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) or eastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont) and probably a few others  on the verge of joining one of the two groups, you will still have easy access to COVID shots and other vaccines.  The not so good news is that access in the rest of the country will be patchy and more restrictive and, really, why should Florida, the home of lots of elderly people care about keeping their vulnerable residents healthy anyway.  We’re closing in on another one of those government funding deadlines and the major issues separating Democrats and Republicans relates to health care funding. More people without affordable health insurance and fewer hospitals to treat them when they get sick.  That’s going to be a bigly problem especially when all those unvaccinated people start seeking emergency room care for COVID, the flu, measles and whatever comes next. 

Fog:  Vladimir Putin has concluded that Trump won’t do anything to stop him and given that Trump has characterized his incursions into the air space of Poland, Estonia, and Romania as mere accidents, who’s to disagree. Putin keeps ramping up his attack on Ukraine while Trump dithers.  Similarly, Trump’s Middle East peace efforts are bearing no fruit because maybe sending one’s real estate buddy to solve an intractable problem isn’t the best approach.  More countries recognizing Palestine probably isn’t what Trump intended either but not surprising.  Hamas is still doing its thing. Bibi is Bibi.  The hostages are still hostages.  And now Trump wants the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan back or else. So much for peace on day one. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow

Shanah Tova 🍎 🍯