Shit--Here's a Good TrumpWorld Final Pitch:

 

Difficult time. The US elections are in a few hours. Just want to wish you all peace, guys. But if things go bad, save your families. You know where to go. We do care of YOU.

God bless. pic.twitter.com/qZbol82lxU

— Maria Butina (@Maria_Butina) November 5, 2024

But I'm pretty sure Trump is actually headed for Venezuela because he keeps saying so. Also being back in Russia has done wonders for Butina's health you can tell. She's looking greeeaaaaaatt. 

Look, I could point to all the misogyny Trump dumped out just today, suggesting he might like to hit Michelle Obama, imagining Kamala Harris in a ring with Mike Tyson, his running mate calling Harris "trash", or his racism and the racism of his campaign, such that the campaign only just last week--the final week of the campaign, they fired a white supremacist and that the bizarrely hateful MSG rally still reverberates. 

But I'm going to point to the fact that there is something wrong with thinking after the investigation into the 2016 election, after the first impeachment, after 1/6, some people don't recognize what hundreds of national security professionals have: 

The House GOP Found Their Johnson

 

You know, usually I like to make link-heavy blog posts that substantiate all the facts I drop in one of my screeds, but I will leave the research on this one to my readers because I had limited connectivity to the internet this week and have a whole carton of huevos to fry. But here's the funny thing to me: 

Look at the happy-ass motherfuckers in the picture above.  They think they just got their shit together and ended a long national nightmare. They just picked the most problematic of dudes to unify themselves around. He doesn't look like a whole lot, but whoo, this dude right here. 

This is a Christian nationalist of the kind it's been my whole life's business to want to take down. He's anti-science: a young earth creationist who doesn't believe in climate change. That right there is an air raid siren for me: he does not care about facts and doesn't care whether facts are even useful to the betterment of life for other people. He talks in terms of "belief" because empirical knowledge is inconvenient to his worldview. He is a 2020 election denier: that right there--he cares about power, and GOD DAMN the facts. 

He says he finds his proofs in Scripture: people write books all the time, but if you "believe in" God--who do you think put facts in the world? It feels very much to me like people who deny empirical knowledge are the ones really denying a revelation that can be understood and made accessible, and instead support a kind of false-witness bearing of twisting Scripture to one's own ends. 

Tara Reade Doesn't Live Here Anymore

 

In news that shouldn't surprise anyone with the attention span of a guppy, Tara Reade will not actually be testifying before Congress about her allegations against Joe Biden, but will now be defecting to Russia, because she just doesn't feel like she has a choice (between perjuring herself over a dead-horse op and, I dunno, not doing that). Her good friend Maria Butina will be helping her with this, because of course. Maria Butina seems to like many Americans very much. 

(NOTE: She's just very friendly, you guys.) 

Look, I tended to disbelieve Reade from the start as what I thought was an obvious homebrew ratfuck (and one that misused Me Too and survivor stories), but seeing her sitting with Butina makes a weird kind of sense. I mean, her attitude is just "use me".  And there are people who are very comfortable using people like Reade. The Russians certainly would in continuing support of Donald Trump, a thing which has long lost plausible deniability except for the very self-deluding.

So when she complains about America's unpaved roads in a country where not everyone has indoor plumbing, or talks up Hunter's laptop, and so forth, all I can say is, take it with a grain if you have any inclination to believe it. Of salt or polonium-210. Whatever floats your boat.

TWBG: The Trump Theocracy

One of the things that strikes me as astonishing about Trump's biggest fans is that they may even know that he is actually incurious, ignorant and lazy and basically spends the first five hours of his day watching news shows and Tweeting shitposts but on a spiritual level, they don't care. The real Trump, the one that pays off porn stars or cheats his employees and the government, is nonetheless "good for the evangelicals" that make up a strong part of his base. It reminds me, in a way, of how George W. Bush (in standee form)  was made a literal item of worship for the kids in the documentary "Jesus Camp".

The president may be fake, but the worship is real. Ish.

This is why Trump can assert, in the midst of a flurry of pious falsehoods, that he will never let the folks assembled at the National Prayer Breakfast this past week down. He won't, because they won't let him let them down. They will believe in him, because he is improbable and could only happen if God willed him.  (But then again, folks, some believe God willed Hitler, so...YMMV.) And he can also gaffe and state that people of faith can be celebrated for the "abolition of civil rights".   (But is that just a gaffe, or is it more of a Kinsley gaffe? Because while the modern religious right likes to pretend they always convened over something like, well, the "right to life" , which is nothing to do with the rights of mothers with respect to prenatal health care or maternal mortality or even doctors, nurses, or patients at reproductive health care clinics for whatever reason when harassment, closure, or even terroristic threats and actions may be concerned) but probably has a lot more to do with the kind of white nationalism Trump more or less advertently espouses.

And all of this makes it a fine time to take note of how the National Prayer Breakfast was used to insert Maria Butina into the right wing social circuit because as luck would have it, the RW evangelical set had gotten a bit of a crush on Putin, and well, it was for the kinds of anti-Muslim and anti-gay things you might think. (Consider the relationship of Scott Lively to anti-gay laws elsewhere in the world with Manafort picking Mike Pence to be Trump's running mate--a guy who basically tried to make segregation for LGBT people a thing. This is the religious right in the US influencing and being influenced by an authoritarian current in the world.)  But this sort of thing becomes very awkward when it is revealed that Maria Butina was in favor of arming anti-American, pro-Russian Crimean separatists to be totally acting in self-defense and Paul Manafort was still working on Ukraine politics even after his indictment.

This really makes me wonder to what extent the religious right here in the US is letting their hot buttons about things like LGBT marriage and participation in the military and telling women they are murderers for having fetuses they can't carry to term or will to live even if they desperately wanted to, has them choosing to ignore things like absolutely naked corruption and graft.  And how this lets them ignore detailed documentation of the real money-grubbing connections, soundly and roundly lied about, between Trump and Russia even during the 2016 election.

This isn't even really about how Russian adoptions or the placement of South American children in the care of an agency connected to Betsy De Vos--except it is--about how the religious right concerns (like raising the theocratic children of the future) can influence US policy in ways that immiserate  millions, undermine US democratic institutions, and work with foreign influences that don't have the best interests of our republic at heart whether because of apocalyptic (it doesn't matter because we'll all be dead in the long run" or absolutist (destroying current day America to create a better, more pure tomorrow) reasons.

The Trump Theocracy isn't strictly religious--but it has aspects of a cult, with hidden knowledge (Q Anon) and shunning of family and friends who aren't on board. Reinforcing the god-cult of infallible Trump seems to be an important part of conservatism at the moment, with many Republican figures assumed to be sane mouthing words that make no sense except as respecting Trump as a kind of sacred figure who cannot be criticized. Which is absurd and demeaning--he is a man, elected for a four year term (barely) and can obviously be challenged.

Unless his installation as president had an indispensability for some force, somewhere, that had nothing to do with his actual competency for the job, which still appears to be slight to nonexistent.  But about that, I can only assume this serves the highest bidder based on the swampiness of Trump associations.

TWGB: But What Does it Mean?!

George Papadopoulos deleted this tweet (using: Twitter for iPhone). #GeorgePapadopoulos #GeorgePapa19 #deletedtweet #screenshotbot #sshotbot pic.twitter.com/2eIKQixQy8

— Screenshot Bot (@sshotbot) December 29, 2018

There's something mysterious in the air lately, and, welp, I have no idea what's up with any of it. Nope. No freakin' clues. The above linked Tweet from George Papadopoulos regarding Maria Butina seems to pertain to the impression Russian tv is creating the Butina appears to have been "groomed" (in more ways than one) to perform some kind of campaign in the US. It appears to be a denial that this is even the case (and really, is it out of the way to suppose that Russian tv is not--GASP!--totally honest?) but frankly, what does he know?

I'm guessing he assumed the less said the better, in any case, which is a lesson better learned late than never, no?

In other fascinating news from McClatchy, it looks like a story they reported in spring may have firmed up a little, to the extent that Michael Cohen's phone (at least) appears to have been in the vicinity of Prague at the time when the Steele Dossier indicated that he was meeting with Russian officials to arrange a payment to hackers. This story from the dossier was originally met with by Cohen with a hard disavowal and a picture of the outside of his passport for some reason, and he still pretty firmly denies it--but a bit intriguingly:

He's never been, he says (although maybe he had, but it's been a while!) And yet, "#Mueller knows everything!"

Mueller knowing everything sounds good--but what does it mean?! (Stay tuned, I guess.) Sometimes these breadcrumbs we're following in this case seem like they are simply "for the birds". (I mean, honestly, one of the companies engaging in trolling during the 2016 campaign still appears to be trolling, filing a motion that tantalizingly refers to a "nude selfie".  Children, please do not let such sugar plums dance in your heads! It is probably nothing. Much.)

One of the things that does feel like "something" is that Russians appear to have actively promoted Jill Stein during 2016 to leech left-leaning votes away from Hillary Clinton as part of a protest contingent. This was enough to impact the totals for certain key swing states. (Although useless knob Gary Johnson impacted vote totals in my damn state by more apparently without Russian fuckery.) And remember her fascinating fundraising to try and get recounts? Well, it's paying for her legal defense, now. (And her ties to Russia aren't her only problem.) But all in all, the "something" I hope most people take away from this is that in America's two-party dominated system, right now, you have to vote your goals, not your feelings, and that might mean casting a vote for someone you don't love. It strikes me that I don't know if the problem is more about lack of civics or just innumeracy, but it gnaws at me that either deficiency could be so exploitable.

In another interesting "something" --look, I'm just going to post the lede of this Leopold and Cormier story and admit this is messed up and I also don't know what it means, either:

US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what multiple US intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.

Most startlingly, Russia requested sensitive documents on Dirk, Edward, and Daniel Ziff, billionaire investors who had run afoul of the Kremlin. That request was made weeks before a Russian lawyer showed up at Trump Tower offering top campaign aides “dirt” on Hillary Clinton — including her supposed connection to the Ziff brothers.

And why in the hell would there be any cooperation when the information asked for was this? If there's any transparency, it looks like transparent fuckery!

But nope, I can't fit it all into the big, messy, clearly fucked-rotten story about what happened during the 2016 presidential election. It just looks like one more way among several that a foreign entity wanted to skew the election against Clinton--and in favor of Trump.

TWGB: The Messy Things Called "Details"

Even though I'm just a normal person who waits with bated breath for things like surprise indictments of peripheral Trump/Russia figures or who refreshes Twitter threads about secretive federal Grand Jury hearings like a twitchy addicted lab animal looking for a fix (especially on Fridays), I'm also kind of relieved that Saturday was relatively quiet on the news front, so I could finally catch up with some of the hanging news out there. There are times when taking in Trump World news is a little like trying to drink from a fire hose.

On Thursday, Maria Butina plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to infiltrate the political sphere of a certain political party with the goal of influencing US/Russia relations as a foreign agent working in hand with Russian billionaire Alexander Torshin. Some people might quibble over whether political folks who met her through the NRA should have been a little suspicious over whether she was just a little...obvious or whether being an agent of Russia or a spy are different things, but I think The Daily Beast article includes a pretty valuable perspective:

John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, described Butina as an example of Russian “espionage lite,” operating openly but hiding the direction and support she got from the Russian government.

Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations, said Thursday, "It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service. She is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in the Russian government to do a job."

So maybe not a spy like a "secret agent"--but some kind of agent, anyway.  I kind of suspect her gun rights org was a cut-out but what do I know? But did US people think this back when she was making friends and influencing people--and did they care?  Eh, details!

In other news, we got a further corroboration of the activities of Individual One with respects to Michael Cohen's activities: Donald Trump was in the room with Cohen and AMI's David Pecker when they discussed what to do about Trump's long and winding road vis a vis horndoggery--in August 2015. So the idea that Trump would be making arrangements regarding the silencing of troublesome wenches was not a spur of the moment post TMZ video thing; it was known to Trump that this would be a problem (how big, though--a real quote from Steve Bannon in Wolff's Fire and Fury suggested Trump's other attorney, Marc Kasowitz, handled maybe "a hundred"). It was a part of Trump's entire campaign strategy to minimize a seedy existence (which may entail snorting Adderall and sleazing on underage beauty contestants--stuff which was known about, but never really addressed, by MSM during 2016 when it might have mattered--thanks!) But eh, details!

It also turns out that Paul Manafort, of the maybe kinda/sort of JDA with the Trump defense even since his plea deal and the being too close to Russia to stay on as campaign manager in 2016, but who still shaped the Trump transition, also gave Trump advice about how to discredit the lawful investigation of his activities by the FBI. Who would have thought? But there was so much suggestion of obstructing justice and lying to create a bad opinion about the FBI's work. And it really seems in retrospect like this is what Trump did--with a will! Take the regular snipes against McCabe (who offended Trump I guess because of the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation that was totally well-deserved?) and the low-hanging fruit of the Strzok/Page relationship, which, while interesting, never resulted in any leaks from their Clinton investigation or from their general distaste for Trump, and never actually resulted in any out of the way cover-up by the FBI of their texts. Some RW pundits are maintaining that the standard resetting of returned electronic devices to factory specs (as is procedural) was somehow a "wiping" (great shades of the "acid-washing" of Hillary Clinton's emails!) of damaging material--but no. Information was recovered because that is how data retention works. But eh, details!

TWGB: She's a Real Pistol and He's a Son of a Gun

The new pleading from Maria Butina in the Trump/Russia, changing her admission of guilt from "not guilty" to "guilty", with the potential of a cooperation agreement, is apt to be down-played and misunderstood, and I definitely understand why. Butina was apparently very good at making friends and influencing people and a catalog of Google images with her and numerous different people in the Republican milieu  is uncomfortable extensive....to conservatives. Among people she has met with--Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal. Meh. Donald Trump, Jr. 

Wait a minute. Donald Trump, Jr.? It sort of seems that Maria Butina's status as an agent of Russia falls somewhere between Anna Chapman (who her handler indicates she may have "upstaged") and Natalya Veselnitskaya. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider her status as "spy"--she apparently successfully and intentionally infiltrated a known very conservative-oriented social political group with the intent of coming into the orbit of prominent political figures. Making kissy-faces at NRA politics has been a big part of the Republican party for yonks. 

And of course, people meet people and have all kinds of interesting international contacts all the time. But there is reason to believe Russian money got funneled through the NRA to the Republican party, and that the NRA illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign. A very worrisome thing is that the first introduction we have to Maria Butina regarding the 2016 GOP race is in 2015.   Meaning Russia already, before the primary had taken off in earnest, had an interest in Trump (which could have developed in 2013, or 2011, or thirty years ago--this is how far back Trump has had Russian involvement in his affairs).

And yet, Trump wants to allege that somehow, the connections are only being drawn to himself and Russia because he won the 2016 election. Not even close. The timeline on the investigation into the DNC hack started well before Trump ever won. But in the meanwhile, at least 16 Trump associates have been found to have been contacted by Russia, which is more than the "zero" he once claimed, and certainly his very own family's contacts should have been known to him. Not in the least because his family and immediate associates are a terribly chatty lot.

I mean, is it even coincidental that potential front-running AG pick, William Barr, who has written such favorable things about Trump's defense and delusions was previously contacted by Trump prior to his pick for AG as a possible attorney for Trump's defense? (Which would be a very good reason, were he to take the job as AG, to promise to recuse, that sort of thing being very ethically troubling. But I think he's a throwback nutter in several ways, so who knows what he'd do?)

In the also "funny, but that likely merits a recusal" vein, Jared Kushner (last seen bucking up Prince MbS from the "just killed a guy and got caught" doldrums) had met with acting AG Matt "Hot Tub Time Machine Bigfoot DNA Big Dick Toilets" Whitaker, and presumably sipped tea and didn't mention at all the shit he was liable to be indicted for. Because why would that even come up. right?

And this is why people like Nick "Silver Spoons looking got $50 million from consulting and shit MF" Ayers does not even want to be WH COS, even if that would be a really cherry thing to put on the old resume in one's mid-thirties. But the job is poison, now. Being a Trump-wrangler is not worth it, even with hazard pay. Even Mark Meadows has too much sense (as of last I checked).

I have said it before, but it stays current: This looks bad because it is bad. The Trump Administration has to throw lies after other lies are proved to be wrong, because the truth is not good. Other members of the GOP defend this for reason I can not fathom at this point, unless there is also leverage against them (real or imagined).

But the overall picture: not good. And among the potential casualties, the NRA now wonders if they are not able to survive, and are cutting things like NRATV "talent".

To which I say: "Good".