Time in a Bottle 😱 ✡️🌻😱 ⛸️

SOTU:  One hour and forty-seven minutes of Trump repeating his greatest hits, time that anyone who watched will never get back.  By hits think mostly lies because Trump’s self-congratulatory, campaign style diatribe was chock full of them.  The economy isn’t roaring; tariffs will not be replacing income taxes; affordability isn’t a new word coined by Democrats; inflation wasn’t at an all-time high during Biden’s administration and had come down to current levels before Trump took office; Trump didn’t win the 2020 election; Trump’s health plan is nothing more than a one page concept; he hasn’t resolved eight wars; JD Vance isn’t going to eliminate grift because if he does he’ll have to start with Trump, his family members and his cronies;  he hasn’t secured $17 trillion in investments from overseas, even the White House website says otherwise; and what are our ships, troops, and refueling planes doing in the sea around Iran if we eliminated their nuclear capability last year.  As to that last assertion Trump’s “negotiator” Steve Witkoff says that Iran will be able to make nuclear bombs by next week, likely the rationale that will be used if, or more likely when, Trump starts the next Middle East war. The list of lies goes on and on, but despite Trump’s dropping poll numbers, he’s sticking with the "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth” strategy because it’s worked for him in the past and as his fascination with tariffs proves he’s long past the point of changing.

The Polls: Trump’s numbers really are bad.  CNN has his approval rating down from 47 percent to 36 percent.  The Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll and another from NPR/PBS/Marist have his approval rating down 6 points since taking office and both polls show only 39 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the presidency, that’s down from the 45 percent who approved of it when he took office.  Notably his support from independent voters has dropped a “whopping” 17 percent. Naturally, he’s dropped far less among Republicans, which says a lot about Republicans and partially explains why a room full of them applauded him last night, the other explanation is that most of them live in fear that one nasty Truth Social Post will doom their reelection prospects.  Lastly, we shouldn’t be all that surprised that so many members of the US Men’s Hockey Team took Trump up on his invitation to the Oval Office and then attended last night’s speech.  They are his demographic: white and male. They may be great at hockey and lots of fun to watch and for those like FBI Director Kash Patel, lucky enough to have access to a US taxpayer funded plane, hang with, but we need to stop expecting athletes or any other celebrities to be better than anyone else.  

Epstein, Epstein, Missing Files:  Epstein is the leaky drip that’s keeps leaking no matter how many time the plumber is called in.  This time the plumbers aren’t Nixon’s fixers and CREEPERs but Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice.  Their efforts to eliminate references to Trump from the Epstein files appear to have been haphazard.  They redacted and held back lots of incriminating items but missed a few including several interviews with a woman who alleges that she was sexually abused and physically beaten by Trump when she was thirteen years old.  House Oversight ranking member Robert Garcia reports that he can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who he said did accuse Trump of  “heinous crimes." There are also additional files that detail more of Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes, files that her lawyers are trying to keep away from prying eyes likely over her concern that the more known about her the harder it will be for Trump to provide her with the clemency that she expects to get before his term ends. Another heavily redacted file indicates that Epstein was the subject of a previously undisclosed Drug Enforcement Agency investigation, a five-year-plus probe targeting him and 14 other individuals for suspicious money transfers possibly linked to illegal narcotics.  The DEA document also reveals the existence of other previously unknown investigations including ICE investigations in West Palm Beach, Las Vegas, and Paris, with the Paris investigation named Operation Angel Watch.  Is it a stretch to think that Angel Watch had something to do with the trafficking of women and/or girls? Trump owned a modeling agency during the period when these activities took place 🤷‍♀️.   Police in Paris, like those in the UK have now opened new investigations into all things Epstein.  On Monday, former UK Ambassador to the US Lord Peter Mandelson was arrested.  Like former Prince Andrew, his arrest wasn’t for any sex-related crimes but for allegedly sharing market sensitive government information with Epstein while a government minister. The White House’s response to all of this is that Trump has done more for the Epstein victims than anyone else and anyway Trump has been totally exonerated or so he says. 

Peeps:  FBI Director Kash Patel has been getting lots of criticism for partying with the US Men’s Hockey team on the government dime because his trip to Milan, which he insists was for official purposes, cost the taxpayers a lot of money, he had very few “official” meetings, and back in his podcast days he criticized FBI Director Wray’s more mundane plane use. Compounding the criticism, yesterday it was reported that when an FBI team needed an FBI plane to get to Providence during the Brown shooting event, there was no available plane because it was with Patel who was using it for personal reasons.  So far, a few Republicans including Nancy Mace, Anna Paulina Luna, Lauren Boebert, and Thomas Massie are calling for Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales to step down and/or drop out of his reelection race.  Gonzales who is married and the father of six, had an affair with his also married 35-year-old regional director Regina Santos-Aviles who killed herself by self-immolation after Gonzales ended their affair.  Gonzales denies he had a relationship with Santos-Aviles but there are implicating text message including some that show how he pushed her into the relationship that prove otherwise. There also are two other female staff members who say that he harassed them as well. Since he can’t afford to lose another Republican member right now Speaker Johnson, who already has a bigly problem with the female members of his caucus, is trying to ignore the situation. The French government is really pissed at US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner, father of Jared.  The dispute is due to Kushner’s failure to show up for a meeting over some Trump administration remarks that offended France.  It’s a big no-no for an Ambassador to ignore such a request but he’s Jared’s dad, and Trump pardoned him for the crimes that landed him in jail, so those rules don’t apply to him. Tucker Carlson keeps doubling down on his anti-Semitism but that doesn’t seem to concern Trump who had him over for a visit earlier this week. Longevity guru Peter Attia who had icky, chummy emails with Epstein will not be joining CBS despite news director Bari Weiss really wanting him to. And, while the battle for Warner Brothers rages on between Netflix and CBS owner Paramount, Trump is now calling for former Ambassador Susan Rice to be ousted from Netflix’s board because she’s nasty or said something nasty about him and Senator Lindsey Graham had Paramount’s CEO David Ellison as his SOTU guess because crony capitalism is so in vogue.  

Fog:  Last night Trump said that he doesn’t want war with Iran but he’s acting like he does. Wag the Dog time? Trump insists that his generals have told him that he can succeed at whatever he elects to do but reports are that Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine has advised him that a military campaign against Iran could carry significant risks, in particular the possibility of becoming entangled in a prolonged conflict.