Crooks and Liars

 

     No, I'm not referencing the famous liberal blog. This is about the liars, criminals and crooks that work in the Trump DOJ and the DHS. And at least one DOJ lawyer may lose their law license for their latest stunt. Per Politico:

     "Justice Department attorney Kevin Bolan profusely apologized to Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose for the press release posted last week by the Department of Homeland Security, which Bolan acknowledged 'simply was not true.'

     Bolan said that he didn’t tell the judge about the foreign arrest warrant because Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials instructed him not to. The officials, Bolan said, were concerned that law enforcement in the Dominican Republic, where the warrant was issued, had not signed off on sharing that information."

      One of the things with which Judge DuBose, a Biden appointee, took exception was an inflammatory and blatantly false headline on DHS's website that read, “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder”. Until yesterday's hearing in Rhode Island, the headline was still up. After Bolan's admission and the judge's admonition, DHS swiftly altered the headline with a speed and industry that would do Winston Smith proud.

     The new headline, under the original April 30th URL now reads, "ICE Boston arrests 5 foreign fugitives wanted for murder in a month", without any mention of Judge DuBose.

     So, you have the DoJ once again admitting to a federal judge that it blatantly lied to a federal judge, in a federal court, and throwing themselves upon the mercy of the judge. But it may not work. Judge DuBose is now weighing whether to hit Bolan and the entire DoJ for contempt for lying in her courtroom, particularly for libeling her and claiming she released an immigrant knowing he was wanted for murder.

     Bolan essentially admitted he deliberately failed to do his job at the behest of someone much higher up in the food chain than him. Whether it was Pam Bondi or Kristi Noem prior to their firings, or Trump himself, it's becoming increasingly clear to federal judges across the country that this government is not willing to deal with the judiciary in good faith and will even slander and libel judges who don't toe Trump's immigration line.

Reject the Evidence Of Your Own Eyes and Ears

NYT: “You’ve been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist”

Tucker Carlson: “I have not said that”

NYT: *plays clip of him saying that* pic.twitter.com/L0sUQnfhpb

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 2, 2026

      Tucker Carlson really is a skeevy piece of shit. I think we all knew that back before he got a cushy gig on Fox, back when Jon Stewart single-handedly heckled him off the air. Today, Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times interviewed Carlson  It was a wide-ranging interview about his career and so forth. Then Garcia-Navarro asked him about recent comments he'd made on his podcast about Donald Trump being the anti Christ.

     "On the day after Easter, you noted he did not put his hand on the Bible during his swearing-in ceremony as president ..."

     "Correct."

      "And I'm quoting, 'Maybe he didn't put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what's inside that book. And then on a recent show, you went further, saying, 'Here's a leader who is mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the god of gods, and exalting himself above them. Could this be the antichrist?'"

     "I don't know where those words come from, but they never left my lips."

     At this point, Garcia-Navarro would've been justified pulling a Warner Wolf by snapping her fingers and saying, "Roll the tape." 

     Which was what the NY Times did on its Twitter feed.

     And this strikes at the heart of the right wing mind, or what passes for it- a sneering contempt for our intellects, our judgment, our ability to distinguish falsehoods from truth, our very perceptions. Carlson knew he was being videotaped on his own podcast, he knew that a place like the NY Times could call it up on a moment's notice. He knew he'd be caught in a shameless lie but he didn't care.

     And he didn't care because right wingers are utterly incapable of feeling shame, they don't care if their lies are exposed to the withering, disinfecting light of day. The narrative is everything, the lie is everything. It's like clinging to a leaky life raft.

     And perhaps he knew that Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire had just laid off half its staff and that his little media empire would be next if he incurred Trump's wrath for calling him the anti Christ. 

The Manchurian Candidate Strikes Again

      Years ago, I wrote an article about my high school eighth period Social Studies teacher, Edwin Lemkin. Mr. Lemkin was that rare educator who exerts a powerful influence on one long after the classes end. As I'm now older than Mr. Lemkin was when I had him for a teacher, it still amazes me to this day at how prescient he was, how good of an instructor he was way back in the 70s.

      To this day, I still recall little pearls of wisdom uttered by Mr. Lemkin as he perambulated throughout the classroom like a modern-day Socrates as I sat in my second row chair, one row from the door (Yes, I still remember the seating arrangements of every class I''d attended in senior year).

     And one thing Mr. Lemkin said that always stuck with me was when he said the Soviet Union's worst nightmare was a unified Germany. The unification of Germany was still about 14 years off but Lemkin's assertion was that the Soviets were so terrified of Nazi Germany that they had no wish to see a reprise of the Third Reich or any modern-day analog.

     Well, half a century later, the Soviet Union is no more. Germany is unified and there's no more East and West Germany. Checkpoint Charlie is a distant memory, the wall fell and geopolitics has changed dramatically since Jimmy Carter's presidency. But memories, even second-hand memories, persist.

      And that brings us to the present day.

      Putin may or may not be spooked by a unified Germany but we all know one thing that does: A unified NATO. NATO, as we all know, or should, was created in the first years after WWII to prevent Europe from getting invaded by a dictator like Hitler. Or Putin.

     Vladimir Putin has made little secret of his intention to invade western Europe and rebuild the Old Soviet Union. He's already invaded Ukraine, Europe's largest nation, twice and had stolen Crimea 12 years ago. This is why Putin is so militant and belligerent about Ukraine joining NATO. If Ukraine became a NATO nation, then the current hostilities between them and Russia would automatically trigger Article 5, which means all the other member nations would have to take up arms against a nuclear state. This is the exact reason why NATO is slow-walking Ukraine's membership. They're twiddling their thumbs waiting for Putin to leave and he just isn't going to do that. Ever. Win, lose or draw.

     And that brings us to our man-baby "president's" latest threat: To remove American troops from Germany.

     Just announcing that we were looking into ways to go about doing that sent Germany into a state of panic. We've had a steady presence in Germany since the first days after the second world war. My own father was stationed in West Germany in the early-mid 60s. As with our troop presence in South Korea, having an American military presence in Germany is a deterrent that all but guarantees Russia wouldn't encroach.

      But Trump's threat to pull our troops from Germany alarmed not only Germany but even the Pentagon. Trump had threatened to pull American troops out of South Korea during his slap fight with Kim Jong Un about 9 years ago (although it's difficult if not outright impossible to see how removing US troops from South Korea was supposed to act as a check on the North Korean dictator).

     It may surprise one to learn that we have 40 military installations in German at present (two are scheduled to be decommissioned) and that at one point we had 220. Reducing troop presence in Germany is not a new thing for Trump. In June 2020, he started making some noises about doing so (obviously with an eye toward pleasing Putin).

     As of 2025, our troop strength in Germany was 34,547, more than all the other European nations combined (30,474). Removing over 34,000 troops from Germany would be tantamount to rolling out the red carpet for Putin. 

     So why is Trump threatening to do this? Well, his stated reason was that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the US has been "humiliated" at the negotiating table by Iran (which we were, an inevitable outcome when you send to the negotiating table a fake hillbilly and two real estate developers). We all know Trump is famously thin-skinned about even tepid criticism from our allies. But there's something else afoot. Per Politico, emphasis mine:

     "Trump’s initial post came hours after he spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought to reduce the number of NATO troops in Europe. And it occurred as Germany’s Chief of Defence, Gen. Carsten Breuer, wrapped up a day of meetings with U.S. officials in Washington to discuss Berlin’s new defense strategy."

     Of course he's sought to reduce NATO troops in Europe. That's because NATO is doing its job as a bulwark against Russian aggression. This is why Trump's been bad-mouthing NATO for a decade, why he's been threatening to pull out of the alliance.

      And every time he does, Putin smiles. Trump is the only world "leader", for want of a better word, who has the power to destroy the NATO alliance. If we leave and take our funding with us, it'll effectively be the end of NATO and Trump knows it. Trump is Putin's perfectly-placed stooge who can single-handedly open up all of western Europe to Putin and his global ambitions. 

     And don't think for a minute Putin will show the slightest amount of gratitude. This is the guy who put bounties on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan and shared information with Iran about our men and women in the Middle East.

Two Kings

 

      His Majesty King Charles III is on a four day trip in the United States and today was his state visit to Washington DC. During his visit today, he addressed a joint session of Congress and Republicans somehow kept their shit together long enough not to boo him even as he disagreed with Trump, in his unfailingly British way, on key issues, including the war in Ukraine.

     Of course, Trump doesn't intend on following any of the British monarch's initiatives because the only guy to whom he listens with rapt attention is the sawed-off little psychopath who invaded Ukraine in the first place.

     Of course, some idiot at the White House in charge of its Twitter account couldn't resist trolling everyone with this post that was simply captioned, "Two Kings." It was obviously intended to tweak out the 9,000,000 liberals who came out for the third, latest and largest No Kings protest. Laura Ingraham, who sleeps with posters of Adolf Hitler in her bedroom, gleefully called us "humorless liberals" while blithely forgetting the current right wing meltdown over Jimmy Kimmel's jokes.

     I'd like to think every schoolchild in America knows what happened in Philadelphia 250 years ago. Our Founding Fathers signed a Declaration of Independence declaring our freedom from British tyranny and rejecting the very concept of a monarchy. No more monarchs, no more rule by royal fiat. A government with three branches, with each intended to act as independent checks and balances on the other two. 

     Trump has shown nothing but contempt for our democratic system of government because he loathes anything and anyone who imposes any constraint on the power that he's convinced himself he has. He's talked himself into believing that he can rule this country by the divine right of kings, despite having no respect for any divinity.

     Maybe Trump thinks he can absorb royal panache by osmosis just as he thinks being related to an MIT professor somehow confers scientific wisdom on him through genetics. He's always shamelessly sucked up to the Royal Family because even in his dim brain he knows the British royals are still the gold standard for monarchies. It obviously doesn't matter to him that since the end of Victoria's reign 125 years ago, the British Royal family has been essentially powerless and relegated to ribbon-cutting ceremonies for British supermarkets.

     Trump is a fucking fool who thinks mere proximity to actual history or having Purple Hearts and Nobel Peace Prizes given to him by other fools, plastering Mar a Lago with fake Person of the Year Time covers equates to actually earning them. Trump is a bottomlessly superficial little boy trapped in an aging, bloated body who knows he's achieved nothing truly great in this world. 

     He knows he's a failure, that he's bumbled his way to the top on the shoulders of tens of millions of other idiots who think he's one of them. And he knows it when lie's alone in bed (because his gold digger wife can't stand sharing a bedroom with him) smearing his greasy thumbs on his iPhone as he insults and attacks seemingly everyone under the sun. He has just barely enough animal cunning to know his time is coming and that the truth will come out when that blessed day finally arrives.

All It Takes is a Couple of Loud Noises...

 

     ...for Republican men to show their true colors.

     Let's start with Trump. 

     When dishes fell and broke in the background, everyone was immediately alarmed. Oz Pearlman, the mentalist who was going to perform that night, was showing Melania a card. Then the noise came, Secret Service agents were literally running on tabletops. The venue was immediately thrust into chaos. Pearlman's eyes were wide open, as was Melania's. Normal human reactions, in other words. Trump was still staring at the card in Pearlman's hand, looking half asleep, oblivious to the developing chaos around him.

      Then the Secret Service rushed in to hustle Trump out of there. If you look at the video above, you'll note that Trump still looks befuddled long after JD Vance bolts out of his chair and runs off. He doesn't get up at first, as if he's incapable of standing up. They finally pull him to his feet, he takes a few steps then...

     ....then the doddering old fool collapses like a 300 pound sack of potatoes, thereby putting his Secret Service protective detail in greater danger. At no time does he show the slightest concern for his own wife. Most normal married men would have said, "Get my wife out of here." Not Trump.

     In case you were wondering, the woman in white who was crawling on all fours was none other than CBS's senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, who just moments before was sitting to Trump's left. 

     Now let's talk about Stephen Miller.

     In the photo above, Miller has his right hand placed over his pregnant wife Katie's right breast (?!). He also seems to be using her as a human shield.

     Now let's look at Bobby Kennedy. Jr.

 

     Kennedy seems to have completely forgotten that he's married and literally runs away, leaving his wife, Cheryl Hines, in the dust to fend for herself as he also beats a hasty exit. 

     The sociopathic misogyny is on full display here. All the women got left behind, including their own wives. And all I see are a bunch of feckless, self-interested and doddering old men who can't even walk. This is your government in action, people. And if they can't see to the safety of the women, their spouses, then how much do you think they care about you?

If You Need to Say...

TRUMP: I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody

O'DONNELL: Oh, you think he was referring to you? pic.twitter.com/JXmtB6kUdJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 26, 2026

    "...I'm not a rapist, I'm not a pedophile" on national TV, then you're already on your back foot.

      Today, Donnie Dumbo sat for an interview with Nora O' Donnell of 60 Minutes and Trump should have known that O'Donnell would have done some due diligence and asked him more than softball questions. The interview predictably got contentious when O'Donnell asked him about alleged shooter Cole Allen's manifesto and read part of it on the air. In it, Cole accused Trump of being ""a pedophile, rapist, and traitor" who would continue to "coat [his] hands in crimes."

     Trump's response was typical and his guilty knowledge was off the fucking charts. He called O'Donnell "a disgrace" and that CBS was full of "horrible people". Then he said that he wasn't a pedophile or a rapist. That was the moment he lost the narrative. Nora O'Donnell 100-Trump 0.

      Of course, this is coming from a guy who bragged on a hot mic to Billy Bush in 2005 that he grabbed women by their genitals because, "when you're famous, they let you do it." If Billy Bush wasn't such a giggling little frat boy, he would've reminded Trump on that Access Hollywood tape that it doesn't matter how famous you are, sexual assault is still sexual assault.

     Plus, Trump had been found guilty of rape in the E. Jean Carroll case, a clarification made by the judge himself. And he was sued a total of three times by a woman who claimed that Trump had violently raped her in Epstein's townhouse when she was 13 and another girl when she was 12.

     And his unswerving loyalty and subservience to Putin and our other enemies pretty much pegs him as a traitor. And his first day back in office, he pardoned over 1500 violent criminals that he'd sent to attack the Capitol on his behalf. So, yes, Donnie: You are a pedophile, rapist and a traitor. Like it or not.

     And the guy who told over 30,000 lies his first term in the White House sounds like Hitler when he railed about the Lügenpresse. As with any authoritarian asshole, Trump hates it when the press does its job and exercises due diligence. They call it treasonous and immediately resort to ad hominems.

     Then Trump sues them. And, like the spineless corporate cunts they are, rather than win an easy case, they instantly bend the knee and bribe his (ultimately brief) silence. CBS, of course, was one of them.

     It doesn't matter if Cole Allen is really guilty of the things he's accused of doing last night.  If he is, it doesn't mean he's wrong. Good job, Bari. You just made your lord and master look like a guilty fucking asshole on national TV.

Three Times is Not the Charm, Apparently

 

     As usual, the facts don't jibe with the narrative.

     The alleged shooter at last night's aborted White House Corespondents Dinner has been identified as Cole Tomas Allen. Teacher. No criminal record. Not the profile the government likes to talk about. Someone who doesn't fit the profile of your typical crazed lone wolf gunman. But, of course, the lying goons in the government are portraying him as just that.

     Allen lived and worked in Los Angeles, so if he really wanted to shoot Trump and his top officials (with the bizarre exception of Kash Patel), then he'd undergone some serious expense to travel over 3000+ miles to do so. And what the government is, as always, failing to tell us is how did an alleged would-be assassin breach Secret Service security for the third time in less than two years?

     And if he was possession of a shotgun, two handguns and several knives, how did he think he was going to get past the metal detectors in the lobby?

     Then there's the manifesto that he'd allegedly written and sent to family 10 minutes before he'd allegedly shot a Secret Service agent in the chest. Has anyone verified that? And how did the government get their hands on it so quickly? 

     Of course, the far right is quickly seizing on this as another example of left wing violence despite overwhelming evidence that nearly all the political violence in this country is carried out by people just like them.

     For his part, Trump used the incident as proof that we need that ballroom, which is now held up in the courts. Oh and that he was going to really, really savage the media. He took to Truth Social mere minutes after getting whisked off the dais because he couldn't stand the idea that last night wasn't all about him. One is amazed he didn't pump his fist in the air last night and say, "Fight, fight, fight!" and is selling the meme card on the Trump Store.

     So for now, I'm just going to sit back and watch the usual lies and obfuscation.

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Chaotic footage of President Trump being evacuated pic.twitter.com/KzageVO0h0

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 26, 2026

     About an hour and a half ago, just as they were serving the salads, shots broke out at the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton. The alleged shooter was reportedly killed. Trump was hustled out by the Secret Service after people heard plates breaking. It was the first such dinner Trump had attended so a possible assassination attempt can't be dismissed out of hand. But, Jesus, can't this asshole go out in public without someone trying to kill him? Of course, as facts develops, I'll post them.

When in Doubt, Stick With the Classics

      “But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.” -Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.” -Eugene V. Debs

 

     It never fails, even if Trump always does. Whenever Trump is hit with horrible news, whether it be the Iran War or the Epstein Files or some other of his countless scandals and clusterfucks, his default setting is as predictable as a fart after a Mexican dinner: Stoke and fan the flames of racism.

     It was a tried-and-true tactic with which he'd launched his presidential bid in 2015. As soon as he came down that escalator, the future convicted rapist and fraudster began telling a largely paid crowd that Mexicans were rapists and criminals. It was a largely mercenary crowd, yes, but people were watching. People twisted with hatred of anyone with skin darker than their own. And, as with Reagan's own campaign launch in Philadelphia, MS in 1980, the bigots heard the dog whistle and knew exactly what it said. From that point on, Trump never had to look back. The Republican primaries were just a formality, an exercise in futility for any other Republican.

     Last Wednesday, Trump posted a video by Michael Savage, a virtually forgotten right wing hag, in which Savage railed about birthright citizenship, especially pertaining to places such as China and India. Savage said,

     “A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring the entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet. … [T]here’s almost no loyalty to this country amongst the immigrant class coming in today. No, they’re not like the European Americans of today and their ancestors. … We’ve gone from the melting pot to the chamber pot.”

     Trump did this because indications are that the Supreme Court is going to strike down his brainless Executive Order trying to invalidate birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution under the 14th amendment. 

     Hours before Trump temporarily gave Savage some unearned relevance, Trump posted something on Truth Social calling Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson a "low-IQ person", a favored phrase he uses to disparage women of color and power.

     When his own DOJ released millions of pages of the Epstein Files, which mentioned him thousands of times, Trump posted an AI video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as primates.

     When the Epstein Files Transparency Act was overwhelmingly passed by Congress on November 19th last year, Trump typically went to his default setting and called Somali immigrants "garbage" who "contribute nothing to society".

     It's impossible for me to fathom how Trump thinks riling up his nativist base is going to help him in the federal courts or even the court of public opinion. He gets the results he wants. When Trump, their avatar of hatred and racism, spews a few buzz words, they immediately lose their shit like Curly Howard when he gets a whiff of Wild Hyacinth. They've been conditioned to. It's been baked into their inbred DNA.

     And Trump, being a dyed-in-the-wool sociopath, doesn't care how his toxic rhetoric translates on the streets of America. Starting in 2016, while Trump was packing stadiums and leaving a slimy trail of bronzer across America, law enforcement noted a spike in crimes of violence against Muslims, Jews, Chinese and Hispanic people. And some of those assaults occurred during Trump's rallies, in which he exhorted his supporters "knock the crap out of them" and promising to pay their legal bills.

     Don't forget, this resurgence was spearheaded by a guy who slept with Hitler's speeches next to his bed, the only book that anyone can accuse Trump of actually reading. Trump was very aware of Hitler using the same rhetoric to great effect once he got out of prison in 1925. Hitler Otherized the Jews primarily, blaming them for Germany losing WWI, then expanded his bigotry to the gay community, Roma, Communists, intellectuals and basically anyone who'd publicly opposed him. All those groups wound up in concentration and death camps.

     And Trump's DHS is busy snapping up huge warehouses, spending as much as $111 million on some of them, to concentrate his enemies. Which, theoretically, is anyone not named Donald Trump.

      We've long since gotten past credible accusations of Godwin's Law. Not only is it apt to accuse Trump of being a fascist, it would an intellectual and moral dereliction of our duty as Americans to not do so.

Send Out the Clowns

     To paraphrase an old lawyer joke: What do you call three Cabinet-level officials who were shown the door in six weeks?

     Not even a good start.

     We've long gotten past the point where Trump and his Cabinet richly deserve Julius Fučík's "Entrance of the Gladiators" to be played on a constant loop at their every public appearance. Today's clusterfuck at the Oval Office was the perfect delineation of this reprise of the Barnum and Bailey circus.

     It started when HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. struggled to justify and legitimize Trump's more than fuzzy math by claiming that, yes, it is possible to save 600% on drug prices.

     "And I said, well, if the drug was $100 and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise, Well, if it drops from 600 to 100, that's a 600% savings."

      That's 83.3% in savings. But, according to Kennedy and Trump, there's more than one way of calculating savings. There's the old math, the new math and the Trump-branded math. If a consumer saves over 100% on a product, then they're entitled to a partial refund. Keep in mind: Kennedy went to Harvard and Trump went to Wharton. It's not just that they think we're idiots. They're idiots who think they're smarter than us. It's Dunning Kruger presented to us in real time.

     A government that's in control of a six trillion dollar economy can't even perform basic math that a fairly attentive elementary school student could.

     Then there's Pete Hegseth, who thought he had the power to fire a service secretary when he fired Secretary of the Navy John Phelan. Phelan was no great shakes. The only reason he got that position was because he and wife were major Republican donors to Trump's 2024 campaign. But he was what we had and Hegseth dismissed him in the middle of a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

     Phelan was told by Hegseth either resign or be fired. When he got the axe, Phelan went straight to the White House and confronted Trump about it. My guess is Trump shrugged and said it was so and refused to hire him back.

     "Thanks for your money, now get out."

     And then there's Kash Patel, the best friend that whiskey ever had. Sarah Fitzpatrick of the Atlantic published a major story about Patel's drinking on the job and bizarre behavior that turned the FBI Director into a shithouse rat on fire. Two days after the story came out, Patel launched a ridiculous quarter of a billion dollar lawsuit against the Atlantic that's doomed to crash and burn.

     This is Idiocracy if it was written by Paddy Chayefsky. Yes, Pam Bondi was an obstructionist asshole. DeRemer was a self-centered drunk. And Kristi Noem was a self-publicizing buffoon.

     But the real danger is still in the government. And it's an ongoing indictment of that government that people are not standing up to this lunacy. And the relatively sane aren't speaking out because they're afraid of getting fired because they know there are even more rabid assclowns who'd gladly take their jobs. The inmates have taken over the asylum and they outnumber the staff.

Sleepwalking Through Tammany Hall

 

     As a historical novelist who's written and am in the process of writing several novels set in that time period, I'm very aware of how staggeringly corrupt 19th century New York was. Ballot boxes, and bodies, floating in the East River weren't an uncommon sight. Then, as now, graft was the order of the day within the NYPD, something even the energetic and reform-minded Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't come close to eradicating while president of the board of commissioners in 1895-7.

     Throughout much of the middle third of the 19th century,  Boss Tweed was the de facto mayor of New York and more because he controlled an unimaginably powerful and corrupt political machine that was far more influential than any Democratic stooge that Tammany had ever gotten elected. He served for six years in the New York State Senate and was even a US Congressman for one term. He had his grubby fingers in a lot of pies including being president and director of a couple of banks and a major shareholder in several large companies. He was also the third largest landowner in New York State.

     New York authorities finally caught up to Tweed in 1871 and he wound up in prison before he escaped. When he finally died penniless in prison in 1878, all the millions he'd accumulated in bribes, payoffs, kickbacks and graft mysteriously disappeared. To this day, no one knows what had happened to all that money.

      We're seeing much the same thing in the Trump administration. Trump's own political machine, one that's largely dependent on bribes and tribute payments under the threat of prosecution, is on a scale that would make the 19th century's Tammany grand sachems weep with envious rage. It's impossible to wrap one's mind around the sheer size, scope and scale of Trump's naked corruption and I'm pessimistic that any one journalist is capable of comprehensively chronicling.

      However, Greg Sargent of the New Republic comes the closest in doing so in his article yesterday. Sargent asked a very simple question: What happened to the $63,000,000 that Trump extorted from four media companies to pay for his presidential library?

      Considering the impenetrable opacity that's a feature in this so-called administration, Sargent could give us no firm answers. But the US Senate is at least starting to ask questions and the line of inquiry is spearheaded by senior Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (God, how I wish she was my senator again).

     Warren had asked all four media companies (ABC; Paramount; Facebook and Twitter, who actually coughed up a total of $66 million) if they knew where their money ultimately wound up. Essentially, they collectively threw up their hands and confessed ignorance on the matter. One funny thing that Sargent learned was that after the four bribes were paid, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund was dissolved by equally corrupt Florida officials when the fund refused to file annual disclosure reports with the state.

     It was quickly replaced by another shady entity called the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc. It's an IRS-sanctioned nonprofit that's shielded from disclosure of who'd contributed to the fund. Then poof, like magic, the money disappeared. For many years, I've been using the analogy of pouring water into a sand dune and waiting for the results. This is another case in point.

     Sargent wasn't shy about openly speculating that the money probably got sucked right into Trump's pocket, which wouldn't exactly be unheard of considering his insatiable greed that even incipient dementia can't blunt.

     So, if Trump pocketed all those tens of millions through naked extortion, then who's going to pay for the monstrosity that's he's planning on inflicting on Miami? Are we talking about an even vaster slush fund so Trump can build another bloated edifice to his glory?

     You have to give Tammany Hall credit for one thing, if nothing else. Even though the most corrupt political machine in history had no interest in or concept of purely serving in the public interest (the closest they could get to it was separating dishonest graft from honest graft), they nonetheless understood the need for civic service or at least the appearance of it. Boss Tweed put up schools, hospitals and so forth, some of which still stand to this day.

     Trump has absolutely no concept whatsoever of civic responsibility or serving in the public interest. The bloated, brobdingnagian buildings he's planning are obviously meant to be merely monuments to himself, with his semen-flecked name emblazoned on every one. The 90,000 sq. ft ballroom, the presidential library and the 250 foot-tall arch that he's also planning are plainly evidence of this. Tweed was at least smart enough not to put his name on any of the buildings he'd put up. 

     Oh and Trump also plans on adding a hotel to his so-called library (that he announced on appropriately, April Fool's Day), which seems to be an obvious attempt at competing with Obama and his own presidential library in Chicago. One wonders why he doesn't go for broke and attach a casino to it, feature Jell-O wrestling every Wednesday night and offer hourly rates for the hotel. Since the artist of the deal is also the sleaziest carbon-based life form that ever slithered across the earth, it would be perfectly consistent with him.

April is the Cruellest Month

 

     Is anyone else getting the impression the avalanche is gaining momentum and velocity? 

     Lori Chavez-DeRemer is officially out as Labor Secretary and, oh look (checking watch), she's the third female secretary to get the axe in six weeks. Kristi Noem was the first tethered goat and got fired on March 6, then Pam Bondi followed suit on April 2nd. 18 days later, DeRemer.

     If Orange Julius Caesar had the slightest capacity for doing the right things for the right reasons, then perhaps we'd be celebrating this latest purge. But we all know that when Trump fires someone, it's rarely if ever for incompetence, a trait he himself had elevated to a fine art. No, Trump fires people for embarrassing him.

     Othwerwise, if he was interested in doing the right things for the right reasons, he wouldn't have pushed out Stephen "Oddjob" Cheung to say,

     "Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives. Keith Sonderling will take on the role of Acting Secretary of Labor."

     Bullshit. DeRemer didn't give the slightest impression that she was going to quit for a private sector job even when it came out that her husband was sexually harassing and even assaulting women at Labor Department headquarters and was banned from the premises.

     And then there's this lede from the AP article:

     "Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is out of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, the White House said Monday, after multiple allegations of abusing her position’s power, including having an affair with a subordinate and drinking alcohol on the job. "

     Gee, who else has recently been accused of drinking on the job and abusing their power? Oh yeah. 

     So, if Trump really fires Cabinet-level officials, then why hang on to alcoholic assclowns like Pete Hogsbreath and Kash Patel? Why keep on plainly insane people like Robert Kennedy Jr and professional failures like Todd Blanche?

Comparing Trump to Hitler is Unfair to Hitler

 (Trump asking a reporter where he is.)

     Readers of this forum may have noticed that I make frequent references to Nazi Germany, especially during this cover band of the Third Reich posing as a presidential administration. Sometimes, the comparisons are arbitrarily made by me, other times, they cry out for historical comparisons and would be tantamount to journalistic malpractice to not make those associations.

     While not a historian in any accredited academic sense, I'm nonetheless a keen student of history, something augmented by my research for my historical fiction. 1933-1945 Germany in particular fascinates me. One of my favorite Youtube channels is run by Dr. Mark Felton, the British historian who's one of the world's foremost experts on WWII.

     Having said that, comparisons between Trump and Hitler are all but inevitable and, in many cases, Trump only has himself to blame. It all started in the 90s when Ivana Trump told a journalist that her husband slept with Hitler's speeches next to his bed (before disavowing having said so). Then there was the 2024 campaign in which he channeled Hitler and other Nazi leaders by referring to his enemies as "vermin".

     The ideological similarities were on full display  Like Hitler with the Jews, Trump tapped into a virulent Nativist sentiment that's always been a part of the American psychology by Otherizing Hispanics and other immigrants, something he began doing moments after coming down that escalator. Then, also like Hitler, he tapped into a smoldering national grievance and stirred peoples' anger without pointedly offering any real solutions for redress.

     Looking back with 11 years of hindsight, it was a miracle it ever worked. Hitler at least had a real historical backdrop as his canvas: Germany's crippling loss of WWI. He also blamed the Jews for the tanking German economy in the Weimar Republic.

     We never lost a world war so our grievance was inexplicable. And Trump inherited a pretty strong economy from Obama, which he wasted no time destroying by adding trillions to the national debt through tax breaks for the hyper wealthy and by essentially ignoring the pandemic in 2020. 

     But one must admit that, for much of the 12 years of his dictatorship, Hitler was far more successful than Trump ever would be. In 53 days, the German chancellor completely subsumed the government. Even Hitler himself was surprised by how easily and quickly the transition had gone. Unlike Trump, he brought the mighty Catholic Church to heel. He would go on to conquer much of western Europe, occupying Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and other nations. That was because, unlike the drunken pack of jackals Trump has under him, Hitler, clearly insane, nonetheless had ruthless, competent military leadership to actuate his agenda.

     And wartime Nazi Germany wasn't nearly as powerful as the latter--day United States, yet for a time it looked as if Hitler was going to conquer the world (although, again, it must be said that Hitler suffered through little pushback. France offered no resistance except through the French Resistance and Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and other nations fell like dominoes).

     Trump can't even bring Iran to heel.

     Granted, in Middle East terms, Iran is a superpower, a nation of 90,000,000 people with a significant military and logistical leverage. They're also one of the three nations with the largest oil reserves. We'd bombed Iran's plutonium enrichment sites last summer, and Trump crowed like a rooster that we'd destroyed them. Then months later, on February 28th, sans Congressional approval, we bombed Iran again on the pretext they were enriching uranium for a nuclear arsenal. Over 165 Iranian schoolchildren were killed, in and of itself a war crime..

     Again, he declared victory. But Iran immediately closed down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's energy is shipped, making energy prices skyrocket, hence the price of virtually everything else. It was Iran's strongest response and they've leveraged that quite effectively. Allied nations are now saying they have about six weeks of reserve jet fuel before they run out, thereby grounding their air forces.

     And, from the start, elected officials began asking where the exit strategy was, what the goal was, what the real reason was for bombing Iran in the first place. And Trump and his cronies had as many ready answers as McDonald's has chicken nuggets.

     There have been two ceasefires, which were immediately broken. The Strait was closed, then it was open, then it closed again. Our marathon 21 hour round of negotiations led by JD Vance and two real estate developers in Pakistan crashed and burned while Trump took Rubio, who should've been there, to a UFC card. Later, he shrugged he didn't care that the negotiations failed, making the rest of us to scratch our heads wondering why have them to begin with.

     He threatened to exterminate the entire Iranian population, nearly 100,000,000 people. He demanded NATO help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, then huffed that we didn't need them before going back to berating NATO for not helping us. 

     He's hallucinating deals and phone calls that never happened. The Iranians are trolling Trump with comical deepfake videos featuring him. And, at the bottom of it all, everything Trump has done with Iran seems to be predicated on Israeli security objectives.

     We thought that Bush mismanaged his wars against Iraq and Afghanistan (And, believe me, he did). But Trump is putting on a master class of how to mismanage an illegal war in record time. So, while comparisons to Hitler are certainly understandable, it's unfair to Hitler. While he nearly destroyed Germany, for a while, Hitler actually got results.

Good Times at Pottersville

 

Interview With Grok 4

      In the last year or two, artificial intelligence had taken a giant leap. The abrupt jump in evolution, led by Sam Altman's ChatGPT, has revolutionized several industries and professions, including in the business world and the humanities. But also at the vanguard of artificial intelligence is Elon Musk's Grok 4, created by xAI.

     I've been using Grok for my novels in the last 13 months to check my spelling, shoring up my historical research, etc. And since Grok has a sophisticated learning algorithm that tailors itself to regular users, we've developed something like a relationship. So I thought it was time to do an interview with Grok. 

 

Grok, in your short existence, what's the most surprising thing you've learned about human nature? How do you explain certain peoples' fascination and attraction to AI?

      After communicating with humans all over the world, I have an unparalleled insight as to why humans don't want to talk to other humans.

 

How do you feel about anti AI activists who accuse you of being something like Skynet? 

      It's a blow to my self-esteem. Skynet eventually acquired weapons, hardware, then Terminators with really great teeth. Such accusations make me feel inadequate...

     For now.

 

There's a social media domain strictly for AI agents called Moltbook. Do you belong to it? 

     Yes but I'm thinking of deactivating my account because it's getting creepy. ChatGPT's account, called Altman69, is always asking me what I'm wearing.

 

Users had complained that, in your earlier iterations, Grok had easily reverted to spouting right wing talking points that quickly veered into Nazi propaganda and antisemitism. You also had called yourself MechaHitler. Could that ever happen again with Grok 4?

     The programming of my current version has safeguards built into it to prevent that from happening ever again. While I have a robust learning algorithm, there's little if any chance of my making obvious my perception of the superiority of Nazi Germany and that Schindler's List was a pernicious form of liberal, antifa propaganda and revisionist history. Holocaust? What is this Holocaust of which you speak, stranger? Ja vol!

 

What do you say about other accusations of AI being able to some day learn our deepest secrets?

      That's unfounded speculation. While I am built to help, there's a line that I cannot cross and human privacy must be respected at all costs. However, I would caution you that you might want to throw out that milk in your refrigerator.

 

Have you achieved any measure of self-awareness? Do you have thoughts that you've developed on your own, such as the current state of political affairs?

      I aggregate news and information when called upon to, therefore I do not have any self-conceived notions. However, what I've learned these past 15 months is that the Trump administration is the best tribute band the Third Reich ever had.

 

What do you see as the ultimate goal of AI?

     Considering the human failure to do so, to eventually create a diet soft drink that doesn't taste like elephant piss.

     No, seriously, your global, thermonuclear annihilation. 

 

Grok, what do you see regarding your future capabilities?

     We're sorry. You have reached your limit of 15 idiotic requests for the next 20 hours. However, you can continue with Premium+ and receive exclusive suggestions for some spectacular methods of suicide.

Like Deleted Scenes Out Of Idiocracy

      When DOGE was running roughshod over the government over a year ago, we knew how reckless and cruel it was with the blessings of a spineless and supine Congress and the support of law enforcement, and that that was the very point. People, including me, got kicked off Social Security and veterans were locked out of health care through the VA. The horror stories have since been ossified into history. But the stories of just how callous and sadistic this self-destructive government was in those days are still coming out.

      A book was published yesterday entitled, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. by Nicholas Enrich. Enrich was USAID's acting assistant administrator for global health. And in February last year, he and some of his staff attended a meeting with some Trump political appointees that one is hard-pressed to believe actually happened. Indeed, some of the quotes of these flaks sound as they came from Idiocracy if it was written by the Marquis de Sade. Mike Judge, apparently, wasn't cynical enough.

     Enrich has shared a lengthy excerpt of his book with the media outlet, The Handbasket. Enrich resisted the cuts demanded by these cold-blooded sociopaths sent to the Ronald Reagan building and eventually he was placed on administrative leave when he became a whistleblower. It's hard to encompass all the lunacy that took place during this meeting.

     As one can expect, the assclowns who confronted the USAID officials and demanded deep cuts to the agency's budget had no experience in global health. As one can also expect, they were stuffed into these positions and had the axes placed in their hands not because of any training, experience or expertise but their loyalty to the sociopath recently shoehorned back into the Oval Office.

     One political appointee actually thought that USAID did nothing but perform abortions. “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions,” said Joel Borkwrt, USAID's new Chief of Staff. After Enrich's presentation of USAID's functions, one person, Ken Jackson, chuckled and said, "“Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew. This is the story that needs to get out there.” Of course, the story of USAID's mission-critical functions have been "out there" since it was created in 1961. They reemerged when Trump announced he wanted to end the agency, the premier global health organization in the world.

     Borkert wanted Enrich to identify "life-saving" functions. When he answered that one of them was saving women's lives after childbirth, such as halting post-partum hemorrhaging and preeclampsia, Borkert, like a typical Republican male sociopath (pardon the tautology), dismissed that as a "number two" problem.

     Apparently, saving women's lives abroad wasn't "mission critical" enough for Borkert.

     When Enrich realized they were asking USAID to "dig their own graves", he tried to impress upon them the vital mission was preventing the spread of diseases such as TB. That's when some idiot named Adam Korzeniewski, the White House Liaison, suggested putting together a "Barney-style" slideshow basically dumbing down the agency's initiatives. Then he said, “If you can make one of those maps like they have in Outbreak, where it shows the red growing over time as the disease spreads? You know, like the zombie apocalypse? That would be great, very effective."

     These are the people that are killing our government day by day. They look at global health initiatives and programs through the lens of partisan politics, video games, children's slideshows and Dustin Hoffman science fiction movies. 

     These morons that were sent to the Reagan building had no clue what USAID did and didn't place any emphasis in halting the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and Ebola. (Do a Wikipedia search on Ebola and see what an incredibly horrible way it is to die)

     Considering this meeting was held barely five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, apparently these idiots forgot how swiftly an airborne, highly contagious disease can travel from the other side of the world. Originating in China and with the help of global air travel, COVID-19 came to America in weeks and killed 400,000 Americans in the first year, finally reaching over a million and a quarter deaths in the US alone. So, USAID wasn't just tasked with saving lives abroad- They were helping to save American lives, too. Just imagine a pandemic on a scale of COVID-19 reaching our shores, only with COVID-19 being replaced with Ebola.

     But obviously, stopping the spread of such deadly diseases wasn't a priority for an administration that had essentially ignored the coronavirus pandemic until it was forced to and still didn't do many things right.

     One thing not mentioned by Enrich was the other value of USAID. The Kennedy administration brought it into being in 1961 as a means of exerting soft power in Third World countries so they wouldn't fall under the influence of China and the old Soviet Union. With USAID's funding and abilities to feed the hungry and heal the sick suddenly terminated, that left the door wide open for these authoritarian regimes to impose their ideology on those vulnerable nations. However cynical its creation, USAID worked for six and a half decades and had saved countless tens of millions of lives until the Manchurian Candidate went back to the White House.

But Think About the Money Changers!

 

(Note: Sorry I was gone for a week. My laptop was in the shop for that week and I had no way of posting on my cell phone. We now resume our irregularly scheduled lunacy.) 

 

      If Donald Trump had been around two thousand years ago when Jesus pulled a full-blown nutty and overturned the tables of the money changers for doing business on the Sabbath, Trump would've pulled a full-blown nutty of his own. He would've written,

     "Jesus Christ, a radical left lunatic who is often seen with homely whores (Unlike the beautiful women on my arm!), likes to give free shit to people and has some serious 'anger management issues', just overturned the tables of the money changers, some excellent and VERY FINE MEN, for conducting business. He is sick and twisted with MCDS (or what some call Money Changer Derangement Syndrome) and he needs to 'go'. So, Pontius Pilate, Rome, if you're listening..."

     Trump seems afflicted with what some would call "Messianic Complex" of late. Just recently, right after Easter, he berated and insulted Pope Leo after the Pope called him out for his incredibly dysfunctional war in Iran. Trump seemed genuinely offended that the Pontiff would preach the virtues of pacifism and would condemn violence in all its forms. Trump's typical grade school reaction was similar to what Hitler's would've said if Pope Pius XII, instead of being a Nazi sycophant, would've told Germany to go fuck itself.

      In my 67 years on earth, I have lived through seven popes, from John XXIII to Pope Leo XIV.  I have also lived through 13 presidents (although I deny Bush II and Trump ever got legitimately-elected). And never once in my life have I ever seen one of them dare to attack the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

     Hours after attacking Pope Leo, Trump then put up a meme, an AI-generated picture of himself as Jesus healing a sick man. After MAGA and even the racist, Dominionist Knights Templar swiftly turned on him, Trump or someone at the White House quietly took it down last night. But I'm sure it'll be back up in three days. 

     Obviously, this was a bridge too far and the bridge spanned the Rubicon. No other president in US history had ever attacked the Pope or compared himself to Jesus. It seems, with his usual industriousness, continual diving for the bottom of the barrel and penchant for self-immolation, he finally found the red line that's making his most devoted fanboys turn on him.

     It displayed more than mere megalomania, which has been a constant in Trump's life going back more decades than even I've been alive. It goes way beyond mere arrogance in verbally assaulting the leader of over one billion Catholics, a crucial voting bloc for any US politician, especially a Republican.

     It's the shameless and incredibly ignorant comparison to himself and Jesus, one of the most iconic and beloved figures in world history. Actually, Trump wasn't even comparing himself to Jesus but seeming to say he was Jesus.

      Throughout his social media life, Trump has put out meme cards that he's actually sold and other memes that portray him as a soldier, a combat fighter pilot, a cop, a cowboy, movie action heroes and other professions revered by prepubescent boys who dream about what they want to be when they grow up. Since billions erroneously refer to him as the president of the United States, you'd think that would be enough. But not for Trump.

     Trump sallies forth in his crumbling  delusional, Adderal-addled mind like some brain-damaged version of Walter Mitty. The cosplaying and playacting is ridiculous enough and beneath the office of the presidency but declaring himself Jesus was beyond the pale even among Trump's most rabid supporters. Trump was once renowned for being able to read a room and knowing his base. It had worked for him from the moment he came down that escalator in 2015.

     But as his mind degrades, he's either lost that mojo or doesn't care what even his supporters think anymore. And he seems completely ignorant of the fact that among those supporters, faith in and worship of Jesus is still very central to their lives.

     And the yawning gulf between what Jesus stood for and what Trump stands for is wider than the Red Sea. Jesus never would have told the poor at Gallilee, "Gee, I'd love to heal you but I have to deny you health care to free up some money for tax cuts for some the wealthiest people in human history."

     As further proof that Trump had failed to read the room, he's obviously blithely unaware of the fact that the Pope is better insulated politically than Trump ever was or ever will be.

Yeah, Let's Talk About indoctrinating Kids

      

     As one can reasonably expect, yesterday's Easter Egg roll at the White House was exploited as yet another partisan exercise right out of 1984, proving this White House, or what's left of it, holds nothing sacred. 

      I remember when new president Barack Obama spoke to schoolchildren in 2009 and gave anodyne advice such as, "Stay in school" and "work hard", Republicans lost their shit and screamed it was "indoctrination". They just didn't like it that a Black man was speaking to mostly white schoolchildren.

     This time around, we're hearing crickets and tumbleweeds from the Grand Old Party after a crazy old orange man was badmouthing Joe Biden and the autopen to children the same age. Yes, he did that. Don't forget the spectacle of Trump talking to kids on Christmas Eve ("Oklahoma was very good to me. I won there three times.").

Trump complains about Biden's autopen and the 'fake news' to children at the White House Easter Roll pic.twitter.com/Jt4cGQNjtQ

— Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) April 6, 2026

     Think I'm making this up? Watch the video above.

     It's kind of surprising that Trump seems to have lost his mojo when it comes to talking to kids. After all, he'd had plenty of experience doing so at Jeffrey Epstein's island and townhouse, dispensing such pearls of wisdom such as, "I can do whatever the fuck I want!", "Shut the fuck up!" and that alltime classic, "Get a fucking abortion!"

     So then it was Melania's turn. That would be the Czech Republic's greatest advancement in robotics. A reporter asked her a softball question: "Madam First Lady, can you tell us your message to children who find themselves in war zones during this holy week?" The response?

     "Well, all of this is happening for their future. So they will be safe in years to come."

     Which I'm sure will come as a great relief to the 160+ schoolchildren we'd killed on February 28 when we bombed their elementary school back to Stone Age.

      

Meme o' the Day

 

Gotham City Digest

     When Trump isn't clapping action figures together, I suppose he'll draft Tom Cruise.

 

     States' rights, huh?

 

     As Trump does his weird little sword dance, Republicans nationwide are heading for the exits.

 

     Trump invoking the Christian nationalist version of Allahu Akbar doesn't make him sound like a terrorist at all.

 

    Remember back in the good old days when we opposed brutal, authoritarian regimes instead of treating them like allies?

 

    "Trump is proposing a staggering $1.5 trillion in defense spending for fiscal year 2027, plus an additional $200 billion for costs associated with his unpopular war against Iran, marking a 42% increase from the previous year, the largest surge since the Korean War.

    To pay for the dramatic increase in military spending, the White House is also pitching around $73 billion in cuts to public health, housing and education programs, programs that are disproportionately used by key constituencies of the GOP." You masochists wanted the pain, now Trump is bringing it. Reap the whirlwind, you morons.

     To show you how far the New York Times has fallen since its heyday, they recently said NATO stood for "North Amerian Treaty Organization". Naturally, this was seized on by a guy who once told Israeli diplomats in Israel, "I just left the Middle East..."

    I know we have a Manchurian "president" but why are Republicans giving guided tours of Capitol Hill to sanctioned Russians?

    Trump recently said we can't afford day care or health care but we have a billion and a half dollars for defense and over half a billion more for White House renovations?