TWGB: The Bedminster Bore

 

Not that long ago, I watched some right-wing commentator on Bill Maher's show try to say that Trump was NOT a "country club Republican", and for some reason, no one told her that Trump owns the fucking country clubs. (Was it Batya Ungar-Sargon? I can't find the clip but it's hardly worth my time to keep looking for it.) He owns the country clubs. He is not a working-class hero. He stiffs working people whenever he can. 

He just sat down with fellow billionaire Elon Musk and talked about how unions were bad because working people would be paid more if they were unionized. And today, he stood in front of his country club in New Jersey with some prop groceries and...um...talked about Hillary Clinton's emails and calling Kamala Harris a communist. Because how long can someone talk about the economy when he's only talking about it to get elected?  He lied, as per usual, because it's what he does. 

It was a dumb snooze version of his stump speech that he fooled certain chosen journalists into turning up for. Low energy. Lower-case "t" Trump. 

TWGB: The Tale of the Tape

 

"I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case you know.... Except it is like, highly confidential."

That's a quote from the tape CNN played last night as an exclusive. It's Trump, at Bedminster, talking about one of the documents that proves his case. What case--does it absolve him of the Russia Hoax or the first impeachment? 

Nah. Just a pissing contest he's having in his own mind with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FGen Mark Milley. 

That audio comes from open pissing and moaning about, among other things, Trump's need to be right, and a discussion about how, supposedly, Hillary Clinton handled secret documents. "Please print" was a joke between Trump and a suck-up aide of his that can be heard on the tape. Irony of ironies: he knows having this stuff printed out is wrong, and here he is, with the actual paper in his hand.

TWGB: Sedition and Espionage

 

Before I talk Trump, I just want to discuss the sentences of Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs. The Oath Keepers were found to be guilty of a seditious conspiracy. They acted in the belief that it is acceptable in a civil society to take up arms in the case of a political disagreement over an election on the basis of lies--and I don't think they cared whether those lies were lies or not. The "tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots" types never seem to note that in a representative government, sometimes your particular flavor of "patriot" isn't winning elections and violence isn't so much a revolutionary action as a pity party gone badly wrong. They said, basically, "Fuck who voted for Biden, we want our Trumpy Bear," and somehow convinced themselves that was exactly on a par with what our founding fathers would have wanted. 1776, you guys! 

Stewart Rhodes, Yale-trained lawyer, was especially prolix on the subject of a "divided nation", and in reply, the judge pointed out that Rhodes presented an ongoing threat and raised the "t-word"--treason. To undermine our government because one can't fathom that other people differing in opinion are allowed to protest, speak, and vote, even win elections lawfully, and not have those elections overturned by the force of a determined few, heedless of the knock-on effects to our civil society, is an exceptional lack of a grasp on basic civics, let alone law. 

Behind the First Tee at Bedminster

 

I'm committing this here, just because when something niggles at my brain, I have to blog about it to get it out of my system because otherwise no further blogging will ensue. There is an air of tragedy about being buried behind the first tee at one's second husband's favorite self-owned golf course. The site is but the first of what is intended as a family plot, graced with a low-profile and simple stone--far simpler than what I imagine Ivana Trump would have wanted for herself and lacking even the least personalization--only her name and dates of birth and death. Not "beloved mother and grandmother". Just the absolute starkness of her having existed. 

I can shudder at the likelihood that this is her final resting place because her second husband gets a tax break from his Bedminster property being a cemetery as well as a working farm (it has goats!) (I'm not joking about the tax break--the property is also proofed against tax sales in the event of bankruptcy.) And I still can't cast the idea (described as #staircasecancer on Twitter) of something dodgy about her death having taken place, out of my mind. 

Imagine her friends or non-Trump family who want to pay their respects having to go through Trump's business to visit her grave? I imagine it. It's hard to think of Trump joining her there, although I balk at the idea of this country letting the president of the insurrectionists rest at Arlington. I find it too easy to see him, also, at Bedminster--but in something much more elaborate.  Subordinating her in death by having a nice mausoleum erected. 

This is the same property where Trump welcomed the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament, to the dismay of 9/11 survivor families and colleagues of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi alike. Suddenly Trump, who once was certain that KSA was responsible for 9/11, insists that no one ever really "got to the bottom" of that tragedy. We most certainly have gotten to the bottom of that one, but has anyone ever gotten to the bottom of Trump's greed, or is it bottomless?

I thought we were never supposed to forget what happened there, although Trump's memory has often been selective. 

The result being that the tickets were on sale for $1-3 on StubHub as crowds stayed away in droves. That's sad, especially since Trump graced this even with the prestige of the presidential seal, which the former president is still using despite having no authority to do so. As if putting the US government's seal of approval over the sports-washing of a murderous regime. 

It's unsavory, unethical, illegal, and to the world outside of Trump World, it looks bad--although it does seem par for the course.