The Xerox Effect 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Peeps 👫:  Yesterday was newbie Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s first day on the job.  Zacharia was nervous and had trouble reading her prepared script, not all that surprising given that she was chosen for promoting conspiracy theories and because she looks like a clone of Ivanka, albeit a copy of a copy suffering from the Xerox Effect. Zacharia who despite her weird assertion that she passed the bar in China does not appear to have ever passed a bar exam in either the US or China. Being a lawyer is not a requirement of her new job but it’s a bad sign that she keeps lying about her credentials, then again lying is another thing she was hired to do. Unlike previous press secretaries, Zacharia was rushed into service after receiving only some minimal coaching from Trump who reportedly hired her without first informing Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.  To make an opening splash, she was gifted the privilege of dropping the notable news nugget that US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle had been asked to submit her resignation. It’s not clear whether Guilfoyle’s excessive grifting got her booted or whether it was timing of the articles about the grifting that got her fired, but at this point it doesn’t matter, she’s out. Before heading to a campaign stop to Alaska, another one of those reliably red states that’s looking less reliable, Trump said that he hadn’t spoken to Guilfoyle, adding that he barely knew her though he’d heard that she had once been his oldest son’s girlfriend. As he was dashing off, he also tried to recharacterize his promised purchase of Russian diesel as not a US purchase while denying he cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine. For her part Guilfoyle tried to save her job by pushing back against the WSJ reports of her incriminating texts that included instructions she’d provided a Republican donor as to how he could “secretly” pay off her American Express bill by saying that were AI generated by nefarious anti-MAGA players.  Despite her protests, she had wonderful things to say about Trump on her way out the door. It’s fair to assume that Kimberly’s kind words will transform into a tell-all book if she doesn’t get one of Trump’s ubiquitous pardons. It’s worth noting that we haven’t heard much from Don Jr, the son Kimberly was engaged to for four years, because while Kimberly’s grifts were bad the wedding festivities that Don and his new wife Bettina were gifted by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev were too. It’s not a stretch to believe that Don Jr who can’t be fired has been told to lay low, at least until after the midterms. 

More Peeps 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 🧑‍🤝‍🧑:  Guilfoyle wasn’t the only MAGA Republican hit by Murdoch’s WSJ this week. Yesterday the paper published an article detailing how Republican Ken Paxton, Texas’ current Attorney General and Senate candidate had spent New Year’s Eve 2024 partying in Dubai with two fugitives from US justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife. At this point everyone knows that Paxton is a sleaze so while the disclosure about the Dubai partying is new, it’s not clear that it will impact the Texas Senate race.  It’s also not clear whether the false rumors that Paxton’s camp spread about his competitor Democrat James Talarico’s flu “really” being a mental breakdown will move the needle but Paxton and Elon Musk who amplified them must think that they might, and to be fair, they could especially with VP Vance targeting Talarico with a homophobic joke intended to question Talarico’s sexual orientation. The polls show Talarico a few points ahead of Paxton, but his edge is within the margin of error and it’s Texas. Polls also show that the race between Texas’ Republican Governor Abbott and his Democratic challenger Gina Hinajosa is surprisingly close.  The most current poll shows Abbott leading Hinajosa but only by one point, well within the margin of error.  All that too close for Republican comfort polling explains why Elon Musk, is throwing somewhere north of $300 million into the midterms on behalf of Republican candidates. It’s not just Musk’s personal beliefs, it’s also all about his business interests; he needs data centers with benefits and fears that Democratic victories will make those centers harder and more expensive to come by. In other people news, on Monday agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s Washington DC area house.  It’s thought that they were seeking proof that Omar and/or her father had lied about her age in 2000 when filling out her naturalization papers by saying she was 17 when she may have already turned 18.  The age thing, even if it turns out to be true and there’s no evidence that it is, is probably a ruse.  Trump has repeatedly called for Omar to be deported for being Muslim, for her political positions, for being Somalian, and for being from being from “fraud ridden” Minnesota.  The DOJ supposedly follows a “60 Day Rule” of not going after politicians within 60 days of elections but these days they aren’t all that into convention especially when convention stands in the way of Trump’s commands and going after Omar is one of his things. You don’t have to like Omar to view this as a very bad act but then again so is a public streamed execution and though that might not happen due to political and religious leader pushback, it still might.  Lastly on the people front, Pope Leo had a cancerous node and part of his right lung removed yesterday.  Why does it feel like bad things seem only to happen to good people these days?  😮‍💨

More 💩: Late yesterday Federal District Judge Timothy Kelly extended his order blocking the Trump administration from banning CNN, Politico, and MSNOW from the White House complex. He rejected the Trump administration’s assertion that the block was for national security purposes saying it was obvious that it was viewpoint discrimination, all about violating free speech as well as the due process rights he’d earlier cited. The judge’s ruling is a good thing but as evidenced by Trump’s cutting down somewhere north of 500 trees at the East Potomac Municipal golf course in violation of a court ruling and the continued airing of government paid Trump political ads, he and his DOJ aren’t all that interested in abiding by court orders these days.