Raging Lunatic in Chief 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🕎🤧🤒

Deranged: On Monday Trump took to Truth Social to share his thoughts on the tragic deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. His post was deplorable but not shocking because he is deplorable.  In short, he asserted that the beloved and talented Reiners had died because they were liberals suffering from extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome. When asked about his post, he showed no remorse, instead, without missing a beat, he doubled and tripled down. Sadly, he got the deranged part right, missing that the derangement wasn’t about him or in the minds of Rob and Michele Reiner, rather it was their son’s long term and severe psychosis complicated by his drug addiction, horrible mental illnesses responsible for the deaths of around 300 parents each year. Most people liberal, conservative, or just somewhere in between, at least those with any shred of decency, were thoroughly saddened by the Reiners’ deaths and disgusted by Trump’s remarks. Jim Geraghty of the very conservative National Review wrote that “The president of the United States is a hateful raging lunatic with all the empathy of Jeffrey Dahmer.” I can’t say it any better, so I’ll leave it there. 

Whippled:  Just one day after Trump made his dreadful Reiner remarks, Vanity Fair released Chris Whipple’s interview, actually the first two of eleven interviews, with Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Wiles who had been advised by one time Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to never give the skilled Whipple an interview, showed why that advice was worth following.  She revealed many things that in an ordinary administration would get her fired and maybe will shorten her tenure, but this is Trump-land, so who knows 🤷‍♀️. She says that she sees herself as a facilitator rather than a gatekeeper.  No surprise there because a competent gatekeeper would not have allowed Trump’s despicable Reiner post to see the light of day. Her other remarks confirmed what’s long been known. She said that Trump has an alcoholic’s personality because despite his sobriety he thinks that there’s nothing he can’t do. Last night Trump said he agrees with her on that; that JD Vance is a conspiracy theorist, something that he self-owned yesterday by saying all those conspiracies are true; that AG Pam Bondi totally whiffed her handling of the Epstein files; she called OMB’s Russell Vought a “right wing absolute zealot;” and said that the erratic and odd Elon Musk who she blamed for unilaterally disbanding US AID is an “avowed” ketamine user.  She also admitted that Trump appears frequently in the Epstein files but added that’s okay because he and Epstein were just guys doing what young single playboys do as if forty plus year old men sexually abusing young girls was just one of those ordinary things. She added that despite Trump’s multiple assertions that former President Clinton had frequently traveled to Epstein’s island, there’s no evidence in the files that he had ever been there.  She insists that neither she nor Trump know who made the decision to move felon Ghislaine Maxwell to her current “Club Fed” digs, adding that they were both very distressed when they learned about the move. No comments about how they felt when it was revealed that Ghislaine was further rewarded with a cuddly puppy. She says that Trump promised her that he would stop his retribution shtick at the end of his first 90 days in office but that she couldn’t blame him for still pursuing his enemies especially NY AG Tish James who has “$500 million of his money.”  She excused his January 6^th pardons, saying that most of those pardoned had already served their sentences and then said, despite evidence to the contrary, that the ones still serving had received longer than typical sentences so deserved to be released.  Also, despite Trump using his war against drugs, including fentanyl which he just officially categorized as a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD), as the rationale for his war against Venezuela, she admitted that he’s attacking all those “narco-boats” because he wants regime change and is hoping to wear Maduro down. It’s not clear what Wiles was thinking when she sat for the interviews, but she does appear to have some remorse, not for facilitating Trump’s every whim but for what Vanity Fair published.  She doesn’t accuse author Chris Whipple of lying, except about asserting she said that Musk is a ketamine user but instead attacked Vanity Fair for taking her remarks out of context. For the record, Vanity Fair has receipts, her Musk comment, like everything else reported, was taped. Trump world and Trump have rallied to Wiles’ defense, for now.  

More 💩;  Despite panic from swing state Republicans, Mike Johnson’s House will not be voting on extending the Obamacare subsidies. That probably increases the likelihood that Johnson will no longer be speaker after the midterms, good for Democrats but very bad for those who will be priced out of health insurance. War/Beer Pete Hegseth who shared top secrets on his Signal chat has no plans to release what he is calling the supersecret “double tap” video though he will be sharing it with members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Hegseth’s Pentagon is continuing to investigate Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly for speaking the truth about illegal orders being illegal.  Australia is planning to further restrict its already limited gun sales which is a good thing but maybe they should also focus on doing something about surging anti-Semitism. The Brown shooter remains on the loose.  FBI Director Kash Patel is on the case, at least when he’s not appearing on Stephen Miller’s wife Katie’s podcast with his girlfriend, the one who he flies everywhere and who has SWAT protection. Erika Kirk, who had the grace to express her sympathy to the Reiner family perhaps because Rob Reiner had expressed horror about her husband Charlie’s assassination, is trying to make nice with Candace Owens, who blames everything, including Charlie’s death on the Mossad, Israel and “the Jews,” a view shared by Tucker Carlson. Tucker and VP Vance will both be featured at the upcoming Turning Point USA conference and why not since Vance is into a lot of the conspiracies that Tucker’s into and Tucker’s son Buckley is on his press team.  Unemployment is up and job creation is anemic. Trump is making a speech to the nation tonight. Either he’s announcing something crucial or just going to brag about what a great job he’s doing while prepping kids for fewer dolls and pencils.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the speech was hastily announced just after the release of Wiles’ Vanity Fair interview or that the DOJ Epstein file release deadline is Friday or that facilitator Wiles can’t stop him from making it.

Viral Musings: Gavin Newsom’s California is hiring former CDC officials because someone needs to do the work that RFK is abandoning.  A school in Kansas sent everyone home early for the holidays because 25% to 35% of its kids and staff called in sick with respiratory viruses, likely some combination of flu, COVID, and RSV.  The measles outbreaks in South Carolina, Utah, and Arizona are still on the upswing. Buckle up, it’s viral out there. 😷🤧🤒