It's Especially NOT Funny Because It's True

 

pic.twitter.com/ZUeYUHMNjA

— Secular Talk (KyleKulinskiShow@bsky.social) (@KyleKulinski) March 17, 2025

MAGA doesn't care about this. MAGA says these friends of child traffickers say some things we agree with, so we will ignore that they also exploit working class Americans and threaten our retirement, our Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare and so on. Because THEY SAY SOME THINGS MAGAS LIKE.

So, it doesn't matter if they support dictators abroad, want a dictatorship here, support billionaires first, not America, and wipe their asses on the Constitution.

They say some things the MAGAS like. Are they ever true, correct, necessary things? They are just over the shit rainbow and think being along for the ride is winning--even while they are riding on a soon-to be jettisoned sidecar. 

Know Your Class War: The Trump US Treasury Casino

 

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tells @ErinBurnett why he thinks Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is a "giant rug pull scam." pic.twitter.com/WsVry8xNvS

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) March 8, 2025

I really don't have anything to add. Trump is turning a part of the United States' actual wealth into a casino where we are putting down real money for chips other folks are gambling. 

Trump notoriously bankrupted casinos. Some people think this was a kind of money laundering and I am not saying this is wrong, and when I look at this ill-begotten notion?

Why did people vote for a tax fraud, a business fraud, a con artist and cheat? 

The entire Trump presidency is a kind of Nigerian prince scam. He isn't who he represents himself as and people dump money into him hoping someday, he pays off.  I will literally never stop being mad so many people are this absolutely obviously janky person's marks.  

Celebrating Everything "We" Stand For!

 

Right before his (indoor, possibly cursed) swearing in (as opposed to his cussing out, which is every day around here), Trump has launched a meme coin because "it's time to celebrate everything we stand for" which feels about right, depending on your value of what Trump stands for. He might not do anything about your grocery bill--he's VERY likely to make your fuel bills higher, but he definitely, with a raised fist no less, will fight to do this.

This always feels to me like the sort of obvious buck-raking activity that should counter the sort of wide-eyed Trumpstans who say things like, "He refused his presidential salary; look at all he gave up!" The office of the presidency shouldn't be a gold mine!

But this also leans into the notion of Trump's popularity is a sunk-cost situation: forget about hats and flags and "emotional investment". This is a political figure who has made his political persona also about a financial investment. 

TWGB: The OTHER $DJT

 

I have expressed my dislike of cryptocurrency before--it's a waste of resources to create an exchange of false value for the purpose of mostly performing intentionally non-traceable transactions. Or something like that--except for all this memecoin shit, which is just POGS for cyberpunks. I' m just not the one--my money goes to tangible shit like internet access and costume jewelry and ravioli and vodka. I don't understand this weird tribal digital bead-trading thing. 

Anyway, I noticed a couple months ago that if you searched the social media site formerly and currently known as Twitter for "$DJT" you no longer just got current posts about Truth Social (Which is still failing! Sad!) but so many MAGAs and weird assorted bros just using that as a hashtag and stuff on their posts, and also, there was this memecoin with the same identifier: $DJT. And maybe it was supposed to kickback money to Donald Trump's eWallet or whatever? That's funny money-it doesn't matter--

Or does it? 

The Superlative Mr. Trump

 

Mike Johnson wants us all to know he spent part of his extended Presidents' Day vacation having made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to get his performance review and take this very optimistic picture with a shoe salesman. Johnson posts that he and Trump will "grow the majority and save America!" 

I always wonder what they are saving America from. Or maybe it's--what are they saving America FOR? Dessert? 

Anyway, that's a nice thing to say about the future of the House, despite the House being a complete clusterfuck with GOP members retiring left and right. And it's a nice thing to say about Mr. Trump, who is, as the title above states--superlative. He's the worst president ever, as determined by a group of scholars. 

Some people were aghast at this report. You just wouldn't think that a one-term, twice-impeached, four-times indicted man who is purely self-involved could somehow be the worst--if you were out of your goddamn mind. This is a man who finally had something to say about the murder of Navalny and predictably made it all about himself, while demonstrating contempt for our legal system in a way I can only call "un-American." 

I like presidents who actually like America--don't you?

George Santos Is Full of Surprises (UPDATED)

 

So, we've covered that George Santos is a fraud, and that he is likely funded with foreign money because frauds are susceptible to manipulation. And it's been widely corroborated--he's a fraud. Backed with Russian money.  He was part of a Ponzi scheme, he's engaged in all kinds of petty theft, and he lies about his name and his family whenever he can. His access to sensitive information as part of the US Congress is just unthinkable given his pathological mendacity. 

So to hammer home in a way that gives a face to the kind of creature this is, Anthony Devolder (because that's one of the names he has gone under) pretended to help a disabled vet get help for his service dog that was riddled with cancer. And he took the money and ran.  And the dog died. 

He pretended to fundraise for a disabled vet's service dog with cancer. Does it get lower than that? He stole the money. He steals money from people and has admitted it. 

What's more, there seems to be a plan behind his multiple aliases--he used "Zebrosky" when he wanted to fundraise more from Jewish people. He made himself who he needed to be to perform his best grift. 

What does that mean for him as a congressman?  Well, he's going to serve on the small business committee because of all his obvious small business adjacentness, and on the science committee because of his extensive role in oil and gas development, which is an actual thing he said out loud where the people could hear. 

The FEC and whoever else is looking into this guy right now can not possibly hustle enough, McCarthy's narrow House margin be damned, if it needs to have this guy, is it worth it? He is a veritable fountain of bad news on a damn near daily basis. And to be quite frank, as a part-time Florida man, I suspect he intersects with the ghost campaign rubbish in the Gaetz et als milieux. 

I have questions. Probably more pointed ones than those that Kevin McCarthy failed to follow up on. But if you want clarity on who Santos really is, look at that cancer-ridden service dog who never got the surgery needed. 

That's who he is. An opportunist and a taker. Not anyone who needs to be in office, and someone Kevin McCarthy desperately needs to be in office to keep his bullshit Speakership. And because of all the legal entanglements, this guy is gonna be a goner anyway eventually--I would place a bet. 

I hope Kevin loses his little speakership by attrition, all these petty crooks and insurrectionists getting theirs eventually, because this insurrectionist cabal can't stand for us. And he can't stand for us either if he sticks up for them. 

UPDATE: Did you know our boy did drag? 

NEW: I just spoke by phone with Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio. She said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach. pic.twitter.com/1MeeDR1O2O

— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) January 18, 2023

He also might have screwn the Russians who were investing in him and I'm not even sure how that's supposed to go. Feels extra-leverage-y.  The relationship is like, fraught. 

Also his mom wasn't even in the US on 9/11 so it's established he is lying about her being a victim of that.  In any context.

So that wasn't enough for a whole 'nother post, but it's only been one day! So probably we'll be learning new things about our friend George tomorrow. He just gives and gives. 

Memorializing "Virtual Nobodies"

We have now passed a terrible milestone in the US: the official count of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths, which I think can not be memorialized properly without also acknowledging that COVID-19 deaths are preventable. We have the information, and have had the information for some time, that the virus is airborne, which strongly indicates that people should wear masks and socially distance. The current president of the US maintains that everyone knew in February, when he was taped by Bob Woodward warning that the virus was airborne, that this was the case.

Even now, we're only quibbling about how far apart people should be to avoid the spread.

Trump admitted on tape in March that he was purposefully playing down news of the virus, and that he was aware that even children could be susceptible. White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany, perhaps unaware that everyone knows she's lying, and that anyway, she's supposed to be working for the White House, not the Trump campaign, says he never plays the virus down and even goes so far as to say he tells the truth. She uses a maximal hypothetical number of 2 million people*, an absurd figure that no one would have predicted for the US by September 2020, as being the number our current death toll should be compared to, instead of the actual death toll of other nations happening right now in the real, not hypothetical world in which we happen to live.

And why does she lie so outstandingly? Because she is hewing to Trump's own "moving goalposts" method of escaping blame. And she's trying to cover for the heinousness of something Trump said recently, like a teen store manager trying to pave over a corporate screw-up:

Bowling Us Over?

There is something so exciting about "alternative facts"--once someone in Trumplandia makes out with one of their regular shocking falsehoods, it becomes a kind of anthropological study to sort out where their bullshit came from and how it's supposed to support their narrative. It's hair-raisingly awful, but if it wasn't liable to lead to tragedy, it would make a sort of neat parlor game. 

Take KellyAnne Conway's recent bid at Terrorism Cluedo. Two Iraqi refugees, in Bowling Green, with a massacre, by way of IEDs. Except of course, when she says "Bowling Green Massacre", she means to say a massacre may have been prevented because the Obama Administration found out that two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green had been associated with IED deployment in Iraq prior to their coming over--which resulted in their apprehension and a strengthening of vetting procedures (which was not either the same thing as this "extreme vetting" mishegas the Trumpers have ordered).

The impression she means to make (if she hasn't somehow innocently conflated several terror/immigration-related concepts, and I believe she is too sharp to have done so) is that refugees are dangerous.  Except in reality, there have been zero attacks from people from the seven countries the EO references. Zero.

But conflation and confusion can be useful when you know your intended audience never fact-checks anything, and is already poisonously biased against the idea that fact-checkers are themselves unbiased. So when Sean Spicer invokes the Marathon Bombing as a reason why the EO exists (not to call it a Muslim or Travel ban, because that apparently gives Sean a sad) the intended audience might not note that Kyrgyzstan is also not part of the seven countries. He mentions Atlanta--which must be referencing the Olympic Bomber, but Eric Rudolph wasn't a Muslim at all, he was one of our homebrew terrorists. And San Bernardino was an American citizen and his Pakistani wife. These attacks are real, but they don't have anything to do with the ban, any more than the Quebec Massacre at a mosque--killing Muslim people, by a white, RW, Quebecois substantiates by any means the EO.

Trump U Fraud Case is Settled

So, another thing that happened this Friday was that Trump settled the suit against him regarding Trump University being a big old fraud by throwing enough money at it to make it go away.  He did once say he would never settle this case because there was not any wrongdoing and it only encourages more suits. I kind of tend to think he settled this one because 1) won the election and 2) totally was a fraud and 3) but being president might keep people from coming at him.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. Good luck with that, player.

Pay to Play the Trump Way

It seems like the media is loathe to report the ongoing issues surrounding Donald Trump's fraud case, even though his dismissal of said case because the judge is a Mexican-American is sort of a meaningful glimpse into his outlook, you might think?  Oh well. Maybe the mainstream media has been too distracted by the allegation (debunked) of CGI pay to play to recognize the actual Trump pay to play that was even documented at this humble blog a couple months ago. See, it looks like FL AG Pam Bondi did discuss with Donald Trump his donating $25K to her campaign, even if we don't know (but we do) what for. (Former TX AG, now Governor Greg Abbott got $35K--71 cents on the dollar tells me the gender bribe gap is a real thing you guys!)

Are we going to pretend this isn't something Trump has even boasted about previously? Funny old thing, that. He's has a funny old quid pro quo-looking arrangement with Rudy Giuliani in days gone by too, looks like.  Can't even rule out that there's some favors going on with NJ Gov. Christie.

It's sort of like Trump expects that how politics is done is predicated by grift.  The media could possibly make this a bigger deal.

Trump's Amusing Big Dumb Lie

When Donald Trump started describing a video that he watched of a plane where money was being off-loaded to Iran, discussing it as if it were very secret and not something everyone knows about, he created ripples of speculation: Was he now passing on classified information from briefings? What is he even talking about? Does this video exist?

But nope, that isn't what happened:

A Trump campaign spokeswoman told The Washington Post early Thursday that the businessman was, in fact, talking about the video from Geneva. She did not explain why he claimed it was a top secret video from Iran.

The video was “merely the b-roll footage included in every broadcast” of the prisoner release, spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed. Hicks did not respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

This means that Trump told his audience a half-dozen things about the tape that aren’t accurate. The video he saw was not shot in Iran, it did not show the exchange of cash, it was not “top secret,” it was not “a military tape,” and it was not “provided by Iran.” Nor was it released to embarrass the United States.

None of what he said was actually true. Not Iran, not top secret. Weird, right? And he even did this stupid thing again today in Portland, ME--mentioning the b-roll of a thing that was not clandestine or a drop in Iran or filmed by Iranians or even really even remotely embarrassing to the US any way as if it were all those things. The intelligence community, you think, wouldn't be amused, but they kind of are. Because it is literally laughable--this was a transfer of funds so not secret that Secretary of State John Kerry had it on his website. A person would have to be incapable of research (oh hey, Wall Street Journal!)or probably just not interested in details--right about January when it happened, to have missed this thing that some folks want to blow up. Which includes Donald (so prepared to be President--believe me!)Trump.

So The Trump Family Seriously Did This Again?!

So after the whole damn day was devoted to how the hell a whole paragraph of a Michelle Obama speech ended up in Melania Trump's mouth, no one vetted Donald Trump, Jr's speech to make sure it wasn't substantially lifted from anywhere? Like, there was no competent adult around to ensure that not repeating an easily not-repeatable thing was job one?

Look, we've been ensured by Donald Trump that he has the best words. If that is so, why is his closest kin going next-door to borrow a cup of words from other people? Is this just more signs of the lazy, slap-dash con-jobbery that the Trump famiglia  has been getting away with forever?

This is American presidential politics. These people need to raise their game to a better level if they want to do this on the con. Because we can see you!