Will Trump Use His Nuclear Option?

     I think we all know by now that Trump is a crybaby who incessantly whines when he doesn't get his way. I suppose that's all we can expect from a coddled sociopath who's been an executive since he graduated from college back in the 60s.

     The Democrats are unfair to him, the Supreme Court is unfair to him, the press is unfair to him. He's the ultimate spoiled brat and bully. It's still amazing to me that, after over a decade, Donald Trump still gets his way for the most part entirely through psychopathic persistence, whining, bullying and a toxic cult of personality. 

     But lately, he's been taking the whining to a whole 'nuther level.

     The most vivid illustration of this ongoing temper tantrum is Trump banning CNN, MS Now and Politico from covering the White House. The three media outlets filed an emergency motion in federal court and the courts sided with them. Then the White House (which is to say Trump) deliberately violated that court order by keeping them out. This led all media outlets who share pool duties (including Fox) to shut down the pool, which put Trump in the absurd position of blathering on without anyone at home being able to hear him.

     Then Trump whined about that.

     Now that we're officially less a month away from the midterms, there's uneasy talk circling around the Beltway that Trump may use his nuclear option, which is invoking the Insurrection Act. Six years ago, there were fears that Trump was going to invoke it, which would be the only legal option available to him around Posse Comitatus, the federal law that forbids the White House from deploying military troops on our streets.

     Now the grumbles are again beginning to circulate around the Beltway.

     When Trump found out he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he pulled out all the stops short of invoking the Insurrection Act. The ultimate delineation of this was in inciting a riot at the Capitol (that claimed nine lives) on January 6, 2021 when he attempted to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes. But prior to this, he'd filed no fewer than 63 lawsuits whining about the outcome of the election that were all shot down. These attempts on the part of his attorneys cost several of them their law careers, including Lin Wood, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and others.

     He tried twisting the arms of local Republican officials, including Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State, to "find" 11,780 votes.(Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes). And, not too long ago, Trump had the FBI seize voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, pertaining to the 2020 election, even dispatching then DNI Tulsi Gabbard to supervise the seizure.

     He's floated the idea of seizing voting machines and sending DHS to polling places next month, even though that would be a clear-cut example of illegal voter intimidation.

     So, considering how much Trump is panicking over the midterms, is it really beyond the pale for him to invoke the Insurrection Act?

     By now, it's become screamingly obvious that Trump doesn't give a shit about the Republican Party and doesn't give a damn if they retain the majority in either chamber. His interest in such is merely in denying Democrats the majority and subpoena power they'd need in order to pass articles of impeachment.

     Otherwise, if Trump truly gave a damn about the party to which he'd cynically attached himself, he'd open the purse strings of his $400,000,000 Super PAC war chest and contribute to some Republican campaigns. He wouldn't have primaried loyal Republican allies and cost them their seats such as John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

     So why wouldn't Trump deploy armed troops to intimidate voters on November 3rd?

The Last Witness is live (with addendum)

 

     I've just published my new thriller, The Last Witness, today. Well, "published" isn't quite the word. Right now, at least in the US market, it's in that Schrödinger's cat phase of paperback publishing. It's been cleared for sale but not actually available (except in the UK market).

     Here's the synopsis:

Sometimes the smallest decisions become the most disastrous. One night in Revere Beach, Massachusetts, restaurant owner Eddie Falcone takes a shortcut home and drives straight into a mob hit.

A traffic camera catches him at the scene. The feds need their last living witness and threaten him with prison if he refuses to talk. The mob wants him quiet and makes a counter-offer: Do the time and come out a made man. The only other door is Witness Protection.

Eddie reluctantly testifies and disappears into WITSEC with his wife, mother, and thirteen-year-old daughter. In Ames, Iowa, a psychotic U.S. Marshal obsessed with the girl calls in the mob’s contract killers, including a legendary assassin known only as the Brazilian.

After a bloody firefight, Eddie’s faith in the Marshals is gone. He runs from WITSEC and reconnects with an old Army buddy in Phoenix. The truth he’s tried burying comes back hard as shrapnel: He isn’t just a restaurant owner. He’s a former Army Ranger who resisted getting pulled out of retirement.

When the rogue Marshal kidnaps his daughter, Eddie returns to Massachusetts to take back his child and their lives. The man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time will show both sides of the law that no one gets to take his life from him.

     When the paperback (and Kindle) goes on the market, I'll provide the links, in case you're interested in getting it. Thanks in advance.

 

Addendum: The Last Witness is now available in paperback on the US domain.

Let Them Eat Cake... If They Can Afford it.

 

     First off, let's please dispense with the fiction that anyone in this psychological freak show of an administration gives a shit whether you live or die. Let's jettison the bumper sticker slogans like "America First" and "Make America Great Again". And let's wean ourselves from the comfortable and stubborn delusion that this government has our backs.

     Except if they're about to plant a dagger into them.

     The wheels are coming off the shit wagon and it's not just we in the liberal reality-based community who can see it. MAGA voters, the ones whose catchphrase is, "I love you, Mr. President, but..." are also hurling brickbats at this viciously avaricious kakistocracy of a clown show.

     Let's start with a video Dan Scavino, Trump's former caddy, put out on Twitter. Scavino had commissioned an AI-generated video of him riding a gilded luggage cart with two women and spurting champagne all over the place. In the last frame of the video, you can see Trump running into view. In an endless procession of tone-deaf videos that have come from this administration, this was perhaps the worst.

     Meghan McCain was one of the first to call attention to this AI slop and the White House then immediately removed it, which is why I had to settle for a screengrab. Even right wing Twitter accounts were outraged by the sheer cluelessness of Scavino's video, calling attention to the fact that while Americans and farmers are struggling with soaring prices of fuel and are having more and more difficulty putting food on their tables, the White House is rubbing our faces in the fact that they're living high on the hog while the rest of us suffer.

     And that was apparent long before Scavino's video yesterday. We got a good glimpse of their arrogance when Trump unveiled his flying bribe, the $400,000,000 Qatari jet "gifted" to him, which then cost the government over a billion dollars to retrofit to meet Air Force One security standards. "Look at my fabulous flying palace," Trump might was well have said, while the rest of us can barely afford coach as air fare skyrockets and thousands of flights are canceled every week. The only reason why they haven't built a solid platinum yacht for him is because there isn't enough platinum in the world.

     And the administration made it a point of kicking people off SNAP or reducing their benefits (Arizona, where I live, leads the nation in that regard). Early in his second term, Trump wiped out a half a billion dollars in food aid shipments to food banks across the country. And about six months before that, he axed another billion dollars in food aid to schools and food banks and crippling their ability to buy food from local suppliers. And just a couple of days ago, Trump and his vicious goons cut over three quarters of a million people from their health insurance. Got devastated by a natural disaster? Even if you voted for Trump, you're shit out of luck. It seems if there's any way to inflict pain on the American people, Trump and his psychopaths will find it.

     It's more difficult than ever for first time home buyers to acquire a mortgage or for existing home buyers to stay on top of their mortgages and homeowner's insurance. Rents are through the roof. And yet, in the middle of this quiet epidemic of poverty (which Trump recently called the "best poverty"), we're supposed to cheer this bloated autocrat while he tears down the East Wing at the White House to make room for a 90,000 sq. ft. ballroom that nobody but he wanted. With the inevitable cost overruns, the ballroom now has a price tag of at least $1.6 billion.

     Not too long ago, Trump snapped at a reporter just for mentioning the word, "affordability". "I don't want to hear about the affordability!" And around that time, Trump was asked if he factored in the financial pain of Americans before starting an illegal war against Iran and he said no, not even a little bit.

     Spoken like a true sociopath.

     And Trump is utterly and completely incapable of understanding why Americans can't muster any enthusiasm for his ballroom, the monstrous 250 foot-tall arch, painting the Eisenhower Office Building white, his marble helipad on the South Lawn, encasing the Rose Garden with concrete where he can then hold lavish bribe parties or his bungled attempts to improve the Reflecting Pool. He thinks, as with the kings and emperors of old, he can run the country by royal fiat or imperial edict with an endless succession of Executive Orders. He's utterly incapable of understanding the checks and balances baked into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers.

     And heaven forbid the media or the people should raise a whisper of protest. Trump's automatic and autocratic default setting is to snarl at those who refuse to cheer him on while he enriches himself at the expense of the American people.

     When he was in his 80s and long past his prime, Robert Frost once cryptically said, "I need all the honors I can get." Now that he's in his 80s, Trump is more or less in that same mindset. Trump knows his power is waning, that the Democrats will retake both chambers of Congress and that, despite his best rat-fucking efforts, after the midterms in a little over a month, he'll be a lame duck. This is why Trump is psychopathically obsessed with chiseling his name on the Kennedy Center, which was built and named to honor President Kennedy, not him. Hence the arch, the ballroom, everything. He's trying to remake Washington DC in his image.

     He feels the walls closing in. He knows he cannot run for a third term. In a little over two years, he'll be gone for good. And even to a guy who's incapable of reading the room, some things are obvious.

     And he will leave behind a festering ruin of what was once a great country, one in which people cannot afford food, fuel, health care or medicine, a nation with a middle class worn down to a nub in which only the 1% can afford things like beef. The guy who vowed to Make American Great Again will be allowed to slink back to Mar a Lago to enjoy the ill-gotten loot he collected in bribes and by pilfering the national treasury without giving a single thought to all the people to whom he'd denied food and medical care.

I'd Like to Help You, Son, But You're Too Poor to Matter

      It's long been an article of faith, one backed up by consistent poll numbers going back at least eight years, that Trump's overall approval rating would never sink below 33%. That's the third of the electorate that belly-flops into mud pits south of Mason Dixon and thinks all Democrats are Socialists. That 33% is what used to be considered that rock-hard, insoluble base that would never turn away from Trump.

     But an American Research Group survey published the results of their latest poll this week that puts the lie to that. While they didn't reveal data points such as how many people were polled or what their methodology exactly consisted of, it showed that Trump's overall approval rating has officially sunk to 29%. His numbers on the economy sink even lower: Only 26% of Americans approve of the way he's handling it.

     Considering how uniformly horrible the economic numbers are, it boggles the mind that it's even as high as that and that the number isn't closer to 1% (and we know what economic strata that 1% comes from). But, let's take what we can get. Trump's approval numbers have shown a very slow but steady decline in recent years.

     Trump is telling voters with his classic cluelessness to pretend that he's on the ballot this year. This comes from Trump's unshakable belief that he's the greatest, most popular president of all time and that all polls stating otherwise are a "hoax" or "fake news". But like the old saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for because you may get it."

     Voters are indeed pretending as if Trump is on the ballot, if the sagging poll numbers for down ballot Republicans are any indication. Those Republicans who once clung to Trump with the tenacity of grim death are now dumping him from their campaign websites (Like Byron Donalds, for instance). They know he's dragging the party and their electoral chances down and are sluggishly trying to swim away from the suction of Trump's sinking poll numbers.

     And historically, Republicans have sneered at low poll numbers, saying things like, "We can't legislate by poll numbers". Which is true up to a point but after a while, when the numbers are alarmingly low and are consistent or get worse month after month, they cease being poll numbers and because a relentless, unavoidable Greek chorus.

     And Republicans have largely if not entirely given up on doing anything for their constituents. They know whatever they do will be too little or too late to affect the inevitable outcomes of the midterms. Pundits and pollsters had been predicting since last year that House Republicans would get creamed this November 3rd. And now, it's looking as if the Senate will be handed to the Democrats as well. Suddenly, formerly red states such as Kansas, Texas, Alaska, Maine  and Iowa (Iowa!) are more than in play.

     Senator John Kennedy was asked recently about the lack of Republican effort in the Senate to lower prices and his answer was shocking but not surprising. He was asked by Kristen Welker if the GOP had the juice to address inflation, he said,

     "Sure, if we wanted to,” Kennedy replied. “We can do anything we want to in reconciliation and ask the House to come back and do it. I’m not saying we will do that. Certainly based on our record of the last five or six months, it’s not likely.”

     In other words, "I'd like to help you but you're too poor and insignificant to help. And it's not as if doing so will help us this November."

I Like This New Thing

 

     Every time Trump says or does something stupid, which is approximately every time he exhales, there's the inevitable stepping on a rake effect. Take his new fascist initiative: Removing CNN's, MS Now's and Politico's press credentials, essentially banning these three major media outlets from covering the White House at the White House.

     Naturally, this resulted in a federal lawsuit launched by the aforementioned media outlets because revoking their press credentials, including their hard passes, banning them from even entering the White House, is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Trump pulled this shit once before in his first illegitimate term, when he tried to ban CNN's Jim Acosta. A federal judge put a stop to that immediately and Acosta's access was immediately restored.

     Trump's reason for this blatantly illegal act was he didn't like the coverage he was getting in the press (Hitler and the Nazis had a word for that: Lügenpresse, which even Trump's own supporters were using a decade ago). Authoritarian leaders hate the very idea of a free press because it's a conduit to the people and if the people knew the truth about your agenda, well... It generally doesn't end up very well for the dictator.

     But the MSM didn't just stop there at the lawsuit. Several of them did something that should've been done a decade ago: They responded by simply not covering Trump. Even Fox got in on the action. So, when Trump had a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the helipad on what used to be the South Lawn of the White House, it was covered only by the White House's official video feed. Trump made some remarks and all anyone heard was eight minutes of static.

     The MSM,  in solidarity with their colleagues, decided to starve Trump from the attention he gets from the press by not sending the press pool. The press pool is a smaller detachment of journalists, photographers, videographers, boom mic operators and so forth that follow the president, that is, when we actually have one, so he's not followed around by the literally hundreds of other journalists on the White House beat.

     Because the fact is, although he'll never admit it, Trump needs the press that he's always sneering and howling at. He likes the attention they give him, an adulation and coverage that even Truth Social can't give him. He wants and needs their constant attention but not the disclosure that comes with it.

Good Times at Pottersville

Trump Is On the Ballot

 

     Since last year, when the wheels began falling off the GOP shit wagon, we'd begun hearing stories of Republicans being booed at whatever few town halls they hold when they have the courage to show their faces in public. And, wouldn't you know it, every such story I've read, every video I ever saw, involves a Republican.

     We're not talking about left wing agitators, either, liberal malcontents being bussed in by George Soros from out of state. These Republicans are getting yelled at, always for good reason, by their own voters, their own constituents. This is why more and more Republicans find themselves in a curious contradiction:

     Many of them want to go back to their districts and states and hit the campaign trail again but they're also reluctant to hold town halls and whistle stops because they know they're going to get heckled by their own voters. Almost all Republicans, including all congressmen, are left out there to dangle and twist in the wind. Their voters are angry with them and Trump has hardly freed up any money for them from his massive $400,000,000 war chest. He only cares if Republicans retain control of Congress because he's scared shitless he'll get impeached for a third time, which he surely will. He's even said as much more than once.

     You'd think this blowback would be good news for liberals and progressives. And maybe it is, at least in the short term before the general election in 2028. It was already a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will take the House by a huge margin, despite the idiots in the MSM claiming it's still a toss-up, and now Democrats have a better than even chance of taking back the Senate.

     It's always risky to form conclusions and make predictions based on a few cranks and malcontents at political rallies. Yet when they occur at a certain frequency, you begin to hear a definable voice of discontent and are able to identify a certain mood among the electorate, one that becomes too obvious to ignore. Eventually, the vox populi gets so loud even an ostrich with its head in the sane has to acknowledge it.

     Carpetbagger Roger Marshall of Kansas is one such case. A freshman senator, Marshall is running for reelection despite owning a house worth well over a million dollars in Florida. He was recently caught trying to list as a primary residence a house in Kansas that he'd already sold.

     Recently, Marshall took part in a debate with his Democratic opponent, Adam Hamilton, at the Kansas State Fair, Now, the Kansas State Fair is a quintessential American event and one that's usually a safe environment for Republicans.

     However in at least three different occasions, during the debate, Marshall was booed and heckled by the crowd. He tried to state that gas prices under Trump were lower than they were under Biden, which the people knew was a load of horseshit. Many of them, one can assume, were farmers who are outraged that diesel is now going for over $6 a gallon. When Hamilton said, "If you love $6 a gallon diesel fuel, you can thank Roger Marshall," the crowd burst into cheers.

     At one point, Marshall looked as if he was wishing Batman would rescue him with the sky hook that he'd used in The Dark Knight.

     At issue was also Marshall's penchant for going after his former patients, over 700, to be exact, in court for unpaid medical bills. 81 of those people were actually arrested and Marshall then charged them a loan shark-like interest rate of 18% (some owed as little as $101).

     And, at about the same time, Ted Cruz did an interview on ESPN during the UT vs Ohio State game and people behind him kept heckling him, some saying, "Ted, you suck!" Alex Bruesewitz, one of Trump's flaks, actually went on Twitter and asked Cruz to stop appearing on TV because he's hated more than AIDS in Provincetown.

     Cruz isn't up for reelection this year but if he was, he'd be in deep shit. Cruz hardly represents Texas any more than Marshall represents Kansas from his million dollar home in the Sunshine State (Cancun, anyone?). But people are getting sick and tired of the Republican Party lowering their standard of living, they're sick of the lies and disinformation. And, again, we're not talking about Democratic or Independent voters but solidly Republican voters who are smart enough to see there's something very wrong going on in this country.

     Trump has been going out and telling people, "Just pretend I'm on the ballot!". That's magical, right wing thinking but the real problem is that voters are acting as if he's indeed on the ballot because, ideologically speaking, he is.

     Republicans have spent over a year and a half shoving down their throats higher prices through ridiculous tariffs that even the right wing Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional, the One, Big Beautiful Bill that has nothing toward improving the lives of those in the bottom 99%. They've been promoting an unwinnable and pointless ear against Iran, which has resulted in record high gas prices. There's sky-high food prices, the Epstein files, Trump making $2.2 billion last year alone, the ballroom and arch, data centers. The list goes on.

     And even Republican voters who were stupid enough to vote for Trump three times are just smart enough to see the difference in their bank accounts, to know when their farms are getting foreclosed on, to know when their markets (such as soybeans to China) are drying up. Trump is selling the people a rotten bill of goods and Republicans have been Trump's salesmen.

     This is the year when the note comes due.

     So, yes, Trump's name is on the ballot, in a manner of speaking. And even incumbents like Cruz who aren't up for reelection are hearing the backlash.

A Quarter Century and What Have We Learned?

 

     9/11 happened over three years before I began blogging in early 2005. I've written about it on the anniversary several times and after a while, I ran out of things to say about it. One year, I simply listed the names of all 2977 people who'd suffered horrible deaths that day.

     I was working for an automotive/aerospace company's QC department on 9/11/2001. Not long after I got to work, those who had computers began getting the first reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. The North Tower was struck first then roughly 45 minuets later, the South Tower. At first, all we got were static images, fireballs belching from two of the tallest buildings in the world. Then it was the Pentagon then United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

     Then the towers fell, even WTC 7, even though it wasn't on fire and hadn't been struck by a plane. The trauma just never seemed to end that day. 

     You don't need me to tell you it was the darkest day in American history, at least since Pearl Harbor. For the only time in its history, NATO invoked Article 5, which states that all NATO countries have to respond when another NATO nation is attacked. When you attack one, you attack them all.

     Largely because he bellowed into a bullhorn on a pile of rubble, we gave our "president" an unheard of 91% approval rating despite him sitting frozen in a tiny plastic chair in a Florida classroom for a full seven minutes when his Chief of Staff told him about the South Tower. We looked, naively, up to a Republican government for leadership and guidance during the most emotionally vulnerable moment in our nation's history.

     Bush commemorated 9/11 by releasing four paintings on Instagram, including that moment when Andy Card gave him the news (at least he nailed the vacant deer-in-the-headlights stare).

     That Republican government responded by attacking two nations that had nothing to do with 9/11 and suspending our civil liberties. 

     A quarter of a century later, we still haven't gotten all of them back.

     But for one brief shining moment, America was united and nearly all nations united with us in our collective grief. There was no partisanship, temporarily, there were no political parties. We were all Americans and we were all hurting. That was all that needed to be said.

     However political partisanship eventually creeps its way into everything. Even sacred cows become partisans. And how soon we'd forgotten the words of Ben Franklin, who'd written in the 18th century, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     New York City Mayor Mamdani was a nine year-old boy when 9/11 occurred. If you'd told any New Yorker back then that within 25 years, New York City would have its first Muslim mayor, you would've been locked up in Bellevue's psych ward.

     But, at the end of those 25 years, we're seeing an ugly partisanship cropping up around this special anniversary. A petition was advanced that would've barred Mayor Mamdani from the 911 ceremony in Manhattan. 

 

     Because partisan speeches and political grandstanding are forbidden from official 9/11 ceremonies, Trump decided to stay away from his native city and chose, for the second year in a row, to fall asleep at the Pentagon during their own ceremony. If he wasn't allowed to grandstand and turn it into a MAGA rally, if he wasn't allowed to make it all about himself, he wanted no part of it.

      Keep in mind, this 9/11 ceremony comes less than a day after a midterm convention in which Ted Cruz inveighed against Democrats and some onlookers shouted death threats. Trump unleashed a monster in 2015 and it's one he won't be able to put back in the cage when he finally leaves office.

Donnie Does Dallas!

 

      I've taken a very short sabbatical as campaign manager for Commander Greg Bovino to attend the president's latest MAGA rally, otherwise known as the RNC midterm convention in Dallas. Don't let the liberal media throw sand in your eyes when they show you thousands of empty seats in the nosebleed section of American Airlines Center. The place is packed with virile, masculine Republican men if Grindr crashing in Dallas is any indication. 

      So I decided to take some time off from the hottest, indeed, the only Republican presidential campaign in the country to show my support for the party that's been so good to me and my family. Unfortunately, not too many of the attendees remember my father Ambrose and his glorious quarter term in Congress. It was 1953, after all, when Republicans were men and other men like Roy Cohn were grateful for it. 

 

 

    The usual liberal pinheads will try to make hay over the fact that our pundits chose to put up a picture of Hasan Piker in tight underwear on the first day of the convention, which is not to be confused with actual homosexual intent. Although my kid brother Cecil made a disturbing comment when he looked up at the Jumbotron and sighed, "Ah, if only that was taken of him 25 years ago!"

    I've heard the president's speeches and was concerned to hear that he's offering $5000 to every American if the GOP retains both chambers of Congress. That payout will cost upwards of $1.35 trillion. Apparently, the president never foresaw that if that happens, he'll also be giving out $5000 to every liberal fathead that votes for a Socialist Democrat. But our president has always been renowned for his generosity and forgiving nature.

     The Trump dividends are not a bribe. A bribe is a bribe only when the money is actually paid out. The president has promised checks to Americans yet, oddly, not a single one of them ever got sent out. But that's not to say no checks ever go out. Just recently, it came out that the president's largesse resulted in $155,000 in bonuses to four staffers, including Natalie Harp.

      Matt Schlapp has been seen on the convention floor, trailing a conga line of very young men with disgusted looks on their faces. Of course, everyone is eager to hear the vice president's keynote speech at 8 tonight, in which, it's rumored, he'll advocate for the return of the Spanish Inquisition.

AMERICA FIRST

“I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side, almost until the bitter end. It wasn’t what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things.” Traudl Junge

     Even Hitler's private secretary had her Road to Damascus moment after the war. When Traudl Junge discovered what the Third Reich was actually doing, she felt guilt after the war that she ever liked and admired a man she would call the greatest criminal in history. 

     But Junge, as a powerless young secretary, fell into the same trap that so many like her before and since- Failing to see the warning signs. She heard the shots ring out while she played with the doomed Goebbels children in the bunker and that was her wake up call to get out of Dodge. She had to learn from her Soviet and American interrogators about the crimes that Hitler had ordered done on his behalf.

     She had some moral fiber, in other words.

    That fiber is conspicuously absent in the sycophants that surround Trump like beetles around a pile of fresh vomit. Indeed, every morning when I wake up, I'm amazed that so many people in this country, both within and outside the government, are so completely in the tank for an incipiently demented, insecure person like Trump.

     Considering that 77,000,000+ voted for him in 2024, I think we can dispense with the word "cult". A cult generally encompasses a handful of people to perhaps hundreds or even thousands. 77,000,000 is pushing it. I don't know what to call this. Barring "mass hysteria", I don't think we have a word for it, yet. A "movement" doesn't quite capture why so many tens of millions remain so slavishly devoted to Trump. 

     Certainly there are alarming similarities between the people surrounding Trump and an actual cult, number one being that the Leader shall never be questioned. Cult leaders and authoritarian rulers all have one thing in common- They're weak men who brook no dissent and crush it whenever it rears its head. (For context, witness his ongoing war against late night comedians, especially Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.) 

     But I have never seen this at any other time in American history and I'm sure anyone else reading this would have to make the same admission. Even if Trump still had all his marbles, and he obviously doesn't, this slavish devotion to one man would still be alarming. But when you factor in Trump's cognitive decline, it makes it look even more inexplicable and gives such unconditional devotion a carnival ambience. God only knows what's kept the calliope silent all this time.

     And much of this government, starting with the Congress and the Supreme Court, seems to be conveniently forgetting that the Founding Fathers built into the Constitution a system of mutual checks and balances on all three branches. Congress had long ago abjured itself of it its Article 1 powers just as much of the federal judiciary has similarly jettisoned its Article 3 powers. Checks and balances, as least when Trump is falling asleep in his chair behind the Resolute Desk, on the Executive branch's Article 2 powers has been degraded into a quaint notion.

     The ballroom and arch are classic cases. Legally, Trump cannot make any changes to Washington DC without Congressional approval and at least one commission. But Republicans are conspicuously silent about these vanity projects because they fear for their incumbency. These Republican profiles in cowardice are terrified Trump will say mean things about them on Truth Social and threaten them with primary opponents.

     And now, anticipating a bloodbath in the midterms, Trump is fast-tracking the construction of the arch because he knows Democrats will surely oppose him. (It's something of a miracle that Trump hasn't opted instead for a solid gold pair of golden arches). 

    The Supreme Court recently allowed construction on the ballroom to continue. Republican lawmakers may at least have personal fear to explain their cowardice but the Supreme Court doesn't have any fear of Trump because justices, and all federal judges, have lifetime appointments. The SCOTUS has given Trump almost everything he's demanding of them (aside from birthright citizenship and tariffs). The high court is driven by pure, blind ideology.

      And it amazes me that our government and how it's been conducting its business for the past year and a half plus is being dictated, and I use that word literally in every sense, by one man, as if it's being run by a mad king or, at best, just one branch of government. And the right wing devotion to Trump is absolutely inexplicable since he loathes even members of his own party.

     He recently told a group of Republicans, "Don't ask me to come to your districts" unless they were running a close race. He's hardly freed up any money from his $400,000,000 war chest to help vulnerable Republicans and the only reason he's trying to steal this election is not because he wants Republicans to maintain control of both chambers but so he doesn't get impeached for the third time ("If they win, I'll get impeached!")

     And the party that went after Hunter Biden for years over a board spot on Burisma and for selling a few paintings (Narrator: Hunter Biden was never part of the federal government) is turning a permanently blind eye to Trump's staggering, cartoonish corruption. Recently, financial disclosures revealed that Trump made a staggering $2.2 billion last year off the presidency, about a billion and a half alone coming from his cryptocurrency scam.

     

     And just 24 hours after Trump met with a corrupt jailbird of a Brazilian beef executive, Trump just magically found 300,000 metric tons of beef that he's planning on dumping on the American market, promising to lower beef prices by 25%. Originally, we thought it was going to be tainted beef from Argentina but as it turns out it's coming from Brazil. And, gee, wouldn't you know it, but the meatpacking company that will provide it just happened to have donated $5,000,000 to Trump's inaugural fund (for a scaled down indoor inauguration). That five mil is more than Google, Apple and Facebook contributed combined.

     And, obviously, he's cutting American cattle ranchers out of the action just as he had soybean farmers.

     Meanwhile on the right side of the aisle: Crickets and tumbleweeds.

     It's yet another example of Trump's American First mantra being revealed as the hollow bumper sticker slogan it always was. Anyone with one functioning eye and a pair of neurons can see that with Trump, it's always Trump First. Or, at best, Russia First. Israel First. Saudi Arabia First. North Korea First. Hungary First. Argentina First.

     And, now, Brazil First. 

     Never America First.

Goodbye Dolly

     Everyone had a reasonable expectation that she would live forever.

     But country music icon Dolly Parton passed away today at the age of 80. 

     Dolly was just about the perfect celebrity. With her effortless charm and wit, she'd captivated audiences for seven decades and never made an enemy. And she succeeded in everything she attempted. She sold countless tens of millions of records, was a movie star, a successful businesswoman, bestselling author (she wrote a thriller with James Patterson) and remained happily married to the same man for nearly six decades. She wrote hundreds of songs that resonated with millions. "Jolene". "Coat of Many Colors". The discography goes on and on.

     She once dashed off a song and sang it on the Tonight Show, giving Johnny Carson credit for launching her career into the stratosphere.

     She famously refused to get into politics or even to express her political opinions. But in a rare example of making her feelings known, when the Tennessee legislature was hashing out a bill that would've banned drag shows, she publicly supported drag performers and the LGBTQ community in general.

     Dolly never wore her political stripes on her sequined and rhinestoned sleeves. But when Donald Trump tried to give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom not once but twice, she refused both times. Still, even though he famously holds grudges and never forgets a slight, Trump had ordered that all flags be flown at half mast for a week in Dolly's honor.

     But out of all of Dolly's many accomplishments, including the 10 Grammies and the Dollywood theme park, the thing she did that I admire the most was her Imagination Library donating over 300,000,000 books to needy children. That alone makes Dolly Parton perhaps the one human being who'd done more for child literacy than anyone else.

     Dolly achieved the nearly impossible- she straddled the Great Ideological Divide and united people across the entire political spectrum. With a seemingly effortless grace and good cheer, she made fans of even people who didn't listen to country and western.

     For the next few hours, or maybe even a day, we will all be united in mourning Dolly Parton.

Yes, We're Harping on This Again

 

     Perhaps it's no coincidence that the closer we get to the midterms, which are about 80 days away, the more revelations we're hearing about "President" Trump. It makes perfect sense. Take down Trump, lower his approval ratings, you take down the GOP and ensure that they lose both chambers of Congress. It's tempting to speculate who in the government is talking and why but I'll leave such speculation to others.

     Natalie Harp, the "human printer" that follows Trump's shambling, bloated body like Pig Pen's dust cloud, is getting a lot of attention lately. Lately, she's been given a new nickname as Trump's "binkie", like a human security blanket. She has no analogue in presidential history. And her role as "special assistant to the president" will be renamed by less sympathetic future generations as "special cultist".

     Because that's truly the only honest way to describe Harp's slavish devotion to an infamous misogynist and narcissistic psychopath like Donald Trump. Even during the happiest time in their marriage, assuming happiness was ever actually a component of it, even Melania never showed more than a small fraction of the loyalty and devotion that Harp daily showers on Trump.

     We've heard the stories for months now. The love letters, the ceaseless glowing shit written about Trump from random right wing asshats that she prints up for Trump on a portable printer since he can't go for more than a couple of hours without someone complimenting him. We'd heard how she'd literally lived in the women's locker room at Bedminster years ago when she was denied a room so she could remain near Trump.

     Less than two weeks ago, we learned that when Trump slipped off Air Force One in Ankara on July 8, he'd left behind at least two Cabinet officials and Stephen Miller after receiving a so-called credible threat of an Iranian strike but took Natalie Harp with him.

     Is there some hanky-panky going on between them? Again, I'll leave that type of speculation to others, partly because the thought of Harp or any woman having sex with Trump revives images of Jabba the Hutt licking Princess Leia.

     The newest story that came out just this evening is guaranteed to exacerbate Trump's already toxic attitude toward CNN's Kristen Holmes. It's a revelation that makes Harp look even more comically pathetic than she already had. According to Holmes, When Trump was about to go to a courthouse in Manhattan, Harp was told there was no room for her in the SUV. A screaming match then ensued in the lobby of Trump Tower and eventually, she dove into the cargo hold of the SUV.

     Holmes said she'd seen a picture that someone had taken of Harp in the wayback of the SUV (although she pointedly didn't share that with us nor provide any corroborating proof that this incident even occurred, thereby immediately dooming it to the level of mere speculation). Yet today's revelation is perfectly consistent with a young woman who plainly gargles Trump's Koolaid and is willing to debase herself, someone who has no pride or shame in her dubious service to Trump.

     Say what you want about Melania, say that she's every bit the elitist sociopath that her husband is (and you'd be right) but you have to admit that Melania at least has her pride and that she'd never hurtle herself into the trunk of an SUV so she could be near Trump. In fact, out of Trump's countless appearances in Manhattan courts, Melania never showed up for a single one of them.

     But at the very least these revelations show how willing and eager Trump is to surround himself with mentally and emotionally deranged individuals like Natalie Harp. It shows how desperately Harp needs to be near Trump and how desperately Trump needs to be near a constant source of adulation.

     It's well-known by now that Trump hates female journalists, even the right wing ones. He proved that just yesterday during an Oval Office meeting that should've been a feel-good ceremony for 16 year-old lifeguard hero Ryder Williams, who saved a 10 year-old boy's life in California last month (Tellingly, Trump told the child, “I don’t know if I’d do it. I wouldn’t, probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”). Because we all know that Trump is a craven, self-interested sociopath who would've serenely watched that little boy drown rather than get his swollen feet wet.

      But he also, typically, ruined what should've been a positive once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a young hero by tearing into Kristen Holmes, calling her "loud and boisterous". The White House then piled on later that day online by dragging Holmes' children into the melee.

     Natalie Harp to Trump represents the exact opposite of a female journalist, someone who approaches Trump with nothing short of unquestioning subservience and reverence. This is the only woman that Trump finds useful. Plus, the fact that she's sort of young, blonde and attractive doesn't hurt, either.

     But as the revelations about Harp pile up and become a distraction from the midterms, don't be surprised if Trump jettisons his human printer and moves her laterally out of sight like he did to Kristi Noem.

Taco Truck Trump

     On October 14, 1912, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a tavern owner named John Schrank shot former President Teddy Roosevelt. The kinetic force of the bullet was greatly blunted by Roosevelt's steel eyeglass case and the copy of the 50 page speech he was about to deliver. Even after that, Roosevelt refused medical care and remained standing in the car he was in and delivered the entire speech, anyway.

     Roosevelt came from a completely different generation, one in which, as the saying goes, "men were men and the women were damned glad for it." So perhaps it's a little unfair to compare the 26th president to the wet-legged cowards we see in our government today. Still, the contrast between the generations is jarring.

      The NY Times recently reported that Trump and the Secret Service engaged in some subterfuge in Ankara, Turkey last July 8th. The government had received a "credible threat" that Iran was planning on firing a missile at the old Air Force One. Since none of us received that threat assessment, we have no choice but to take it at face value.

     As we all know, protecting the president is the Secret Service's top priority. Using decoys is not exactly uncommon in that agency. My Social Studies teacher, Mr. Lemkin, once informed us that Nixon was so hated that when he took off on Marine One, the Secret Service sent out several helicopters so that potential bad actors never knew which one Nixon was on.

     So, in that respect, the NY Times article was something like a nothing burger.

     What is notable, however was the manner in which the Ankara subterfuge took place. Here's how it went down:

     Trump actually boarded Air Force One in full view of the press as the presidential press corps was still standing on the tarmac. On the other side of Air Force One was a little-noticed catering truck in which the box containing food supplies was lifted. What no one knew at the times, including the occupants of Air Force One and even the press was that Trump was in that box as it was lowered to the ground.

     Trump was then ferried to another jet, a smaller C-32A, while he left his top officials on the plane that was allegedly targeted by the Iranians. That included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Stephen Miller and his Communications Director Steven Cheung. It also included the press corps that follow the president wherever he goes.

     Here's who he'd taken: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, body man Walt Nauta, his former caddy Dan Scavino and Natalie Harp, aka the human printer.

     The press was then ordered by the Secret Service to lower their window shades during the transfer. 

     Trump then flew to England on the C-32A then returned to Joint Base Andrews on the original Air Force One as if he'd been on it the whole time. It could have been choreographed by David Copperfield.

     The strange choice in flying companions notwithstanding, the first question that should enter our minds is why were the nation's two top nuclear policy-makers on the same plane not once but twice on the same day? A day, again, in which Air Force One had been credibly threatened?

     The optics are horrible, to say the least. Trump had abandoned two Cabinet Secretaries plus the traveling press pool knowing Air Force One was targeted by a nation with whom we're (needlessly) at war. Furthermore, he escaped on a catering truck as if he was an aluminum half pan. One can easily imagine Trump screaming, "Save me, you assholes, save me!" as his eyes wildly darted all over the food box.

     It brings to mind Trump seeking refuge in the White House bunker as peaceful George Floyd protesters gathered in Washington in the summer of 2020. But, while he saw to his own safety, Trump abandoned to the Iranians' mercies some of his most trusted officials and advisors. They were called "sacrificial lambs" by the Times, a not unfair assessment. 

    Compare that to Teddy Roosevelt calling for mercy for John Schrank, who otherwise almost surely would've been lynched (His predecessor, President William McKinley, also called for mercy for his assassin, saying, "Take it easy on him, boys."). Trump abandoned his top aides and the press pool, sneaking off Air Force One like a thief in the night.

     It's part and parcel to Trump's cowardice and lifelong sociopathy.

Watergate 2.0

 

     David Hearn is vindicated. Sort of.

     In the latest in an endless string of fuck ups and clusterfucks in DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office, the neolithically incompetent Pirro was forced to enter a motion tho dismiss in the case of former Olympian, David Hearn. Hearn, you might remember, is the man who'd simply reached into the Reflecting Pool and pulled up a large chunk of the pool lining that had already become detached from the bottom. He'd even videotaped himself doing so. His hand reached only an inch or two into the water and his only crime was in exposing the Trump administration's incompetence.

     The government's response was an Orwellian nightmare. The elderly former Olympian was immediately placed in handcuffs and charged. And Hearn wasn't the only person arrested just for visiting a monument that, until Trump got his grubby paws on it, used to be publicly accessible.

     And Trump should've known better than to let Pirro take point. Since taking over the US Attorney's office in DC, Pirro has lost virtually every case that was handed to her (She literally couldn't indict a ham sandwich).

     Pirro's excuse for dropping the charges was based on a fallacy- She claimed the Interior Department fed her false information, which is true, but the Department of Justice still has a duty to do its due diligence and investigate a matter before deciding to go for an indictment and trial. As former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner pointed out in the video above, it's a classic case of "ready, fire, aim".

     Then, when news started filtering out that Trump was enraged over the DOJ dropping the charges against Hearn, Pirro then tried to shift the blame yet again and claim that she didn't drop the charges but was done by one of her underlings without her knowledge. As Kirschner also notes in his podcast, there was no way that Pirro couldn't have known about the charges being dropped and that she would've had to personally sign off on that.

     But, once again, as if Trump already hadn't, Pirro serves as an object lesson as to what inevitably happens when you put Fox talking heads and TV personalities into powerful government positions. Remember what the Turks once said about clowns and palaces.

     And it's obvious to anyone why the Lincoln Reflecting Pool got so fucked up. While they were still painting it, the infamously micromanaging Trump literally took his motorcade and drove over the lining while it was still setting, which alone could've caused the damage. Then, when algae bloom became obvious a few days later, the Interior Department, without consulting with experts, poured gallons of hydrogen peroxide into the water, which degrades exactly the type of sealant they'd used.

     Chemistry did what chemistry does and large chunks of sealant began floating to the surface like mob hits. Then the Trump junta restricted or prevented access and before anyone knew it, the Thought Police began rounding up people left and right because God forbid Dear Leader should be embarrassed and revealed as wearing no clothes.

      And all this dystopian douchebaggery is coming about because of one petulant asshole who can't stand the very idea of being proven wrong about anything.