Guess Who Lauded a Hitler Enthusiast?

 

NEW:

Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club hosted a convicted Jan. 6 rioter and alleged Nazi sympathizer twice this summer, where he was celebrated and gave speeches.

At one event, Trump sent a video praising the attendees as “amazing patriots.”

At the other, he won an award. pic.twitter.com/g7EMJiIvfg

— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) September 12, 2024

If I know my readers, you probably guessed "Trump" with a quickness and only wondered "Which Hitler enthusiast, though?"  But this is where Trump's "MAGA movement" is right now, with Trump clearly saying "we" when referring to the 1/6 insurrectionists during the very revealing debate (because he did want to be there--and also did not turn up and he did tell them to be there and they understood the assignment).  

But the answer is the guy who was most obviously Hitler cosplaying as if that was natural.  Which Hitler enthusiast even being a question, just like sitting down with obvious antisemitic clowns Kanye and Nick Fuentes, or cozying up to Laura Loomer today, or spreading a blood libel about legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio, is a hell of a sign that Trump has gone mask-off. Or maybe that needs to be: "hood-off"? 

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? 

TWGB: Are You Buying What He's Selling?

 

Donald Trump said he learned about murder victim Ruby Garcia's "contagious laughter and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room" from her family. The family denies speaking to him, and that language appears in her obituary as reported in Trump's beloved New York Post. pic.twitter.com/RjeuEdLdIW

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 3, 2024

I think I want to start this one with a weird lie--Trump said that he met with the family of Ruby Garcia and they talked with him about her and--that did not happen. It really looks like he "remembered" stuff from an obituary he read. I first wondered if he was conflating meeting with Ruby Garcia's family with meeting with Laken Riley's family. That doesn't seem to be it.  He just plumb forgot, after a long history of telling fictional "Sir" stories about strapping big men with tears in their eyes who sing his praises, that if you talk about real people, they can contradict you. 

That's not normal. Most people would understand that you don't lie about something like that. Trump does not. 

Most people would not go out of their way to violate a gag order, either. Trump would, though He would continue to lie about the relatives of a judge in one of his trials, and even insist it was necessary for him to do so. It would seem like he's either really just too dumb to know when to shut up, or maybe he thinks getting tossed in jail will earn him valuable martyr-points. (Jail is bad. Peter Navarro says so.) 

My question today is--are you buying what he is selling? It's a simple question--is this guy Mr. Honesty?  Are any Trump fans ready to wake up and smell the bullshit yet? 

We've got some fun, fun, fun stories about Truth Social today. It was reiterated that yes, Virginia, Truth Social was carried over the finish line to the IPO date by Russian money. And this is connected to the brothers who just pled to insider trading, because that's a very auspicious way to start a business.  And if you want to know where Trump sits in all of this, it's suing the Celebrity Apprentice guys who hooked him up with this scheme for poor management. He wants their shares. The value of the stock he has might be slipping so he saw what they had and went:

You know how he does--possession being nine tenths and a third of the law, or whatever--oh wait: that's his Mar-A-Lago documents strategery!

Did You Raise Your Kids Not to Kill?

 

I wanted to talk about the deaths of two children, but for a while I wasn't sure how. 

Brianna Ghey was murdered by teenagers because she was a trans girl. Nex Benedict died after an assault after a year (at least) of bullying because he was trans masc/binary. There are people who would claim that these children somehow died because of something called "gender ideology".  If some "force" didn't make them think they were trans--wouldn't they have just not stuck out and then been killed for that? 

The so-called "gender ideology" people are pissed off about is the idea that you are okay to be yourself. The gender ideology that they say is so fucking stringent and dogmatic is--let people live being what they feel they are, and don't fuck with them for it. They can express femininity or masculinity or not really identify with either. They can dress how they will and express their feelings about who they are and what they like without oppression.  How they dress, and whether they are gay or straight or ace or what they want from their one, great beautiful precious life is up to them.  

That life is theirs, and they should be able to live it to the fullest. 

And all society has to do in return is not punish them for existing as themselves. Call them by their names.  Let them live. Let them tend to their bodies as their own vehicles for living in. Just don't oppress. The same rights you would extend to anyone else and not one different thing. 

Stand Back, Stand By? (UPDATED)

 

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, was sentenced today to 17 years in federal prison — one of the longest January 6th sentences.

Prosecutors said he “served as an instigator and leader” during the 1/6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. pic.twitter.com/Xx1oKHWYuH

— The Recount (@therecount) August 31, 2023

Fuck around, find out.

 UPDATED: So, Joe Biggs broke down and cried a bit at his sentencing hearing because his kids wouldn't have him around. Wild if he didn't know that could happen before he allegedly was "seduced by the crowd." but we know it wasn't the crowd he was seduced by, right? Dominic Pezzola and Ethan Nordean--same story, right? Sentenced (to less than what DOJ wanted) with tearful family in attendance. Where are they going to be, as fathers, husbands, sons of elderly parents?

Here's what Pezzola's wife had to say:

Pezzola's wife, Lisa Magee, said that her daughters "have become victims and harassment, bullying at school." His daughter said, "Take a look at my father, and then take a look at me. I am everything good … I'm a college student, a scientist… I don't do drugs, I don't drink, and he contributed to that." 

Magee also said that she's been "financially destroyed by this, adding that "it's a struggle for me to find out how I am going to feed them. I have had to rely on the generosity of strangers." 

That's what his actions did to their family.

The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

Nothing New Under the Sun

There has been some discussion about whether there is a post-Rittenhouse embrace of violence on the right, as evidenced by the folks who want to now claim that Club Q patrons got something they deserved. I note that Trump attorney and sometime fart-snuffer, Jenna Ellis, wants to let us know that the real tragedy isn't so much that they were murdered, but that they probably died without the grace of Jesus entering into their hearts. They are just burning away in hell, and you know what?

Jenna Ellis does not mind that. She is sure enough of her own salvation that she doesn't think judging is a bad look for her--even if she has born false witness regarding an election. She wouldn't know how to start the day if she didn't know who she wanted to watch burn if she was given an all-access seat up yonder, to you know. Watch folks burn.

What other reward is there? 

Tim Pool was accusing everyone at Club Q as being "groomers" because that word is nearly as beat to hell as "woke". Instead of meaning a single individual who courts and isolates victims for their own gratification, it in his usage is "anybody who lets kids know queer people exist" which is really weird, because queer people do exist and knowing that isn't harmful. 

Sure--why don't you go storm a Southern Baptist church, tough guy Tim?  Go talk to some folks at the Vatican. Speak out about why the words "GOP politico" and "child porn" go together like peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. (Look, you go search some links yourself and get as sick as you need to be. But let me suggest Ruben Verastegui, Ralph Shorty, Charles Young, and Dennis Hastert for a start.) 

Skepticism and Scumbags

 

There is a flaw in the construction of "just asking questions" speculations--not all questions are created equally, have equal merit, or come from a place of good faith. When right-wing pundits, gadfly social media owners and even elected officials speculated that there was something "more than met the eye" regarding the break-in at the Pelosi residence and vicious hammer attack on the husband of the Speaker of the House, it's not hard to see what the point of that was--to deflect from the violence in current RW rhetoric and to imply that the Pelosis deserved violence. 

Police reports and court filings have now filled in the picture: the break-in appeared on a security camera that hadn't been manned. The assailant had broken in with a hammer. It's been verified, from DePape himself, that he went there with the intent of kidnapping and breaking the kneecaps of Nancy Pelosi if she did not tell the truth, because he believed that the Democratic party, of which she was the leader, was full of lies.

Think about that--what it means to "tell the truth" to a person who believes weird anti-vax, Qanon. and election denier conspiracies. Imagine what having to please a violent, demanding lunatic and say only what pleased him would be like. 

If that sounds a little like a metaphor for the bigger picture of how people are coping with the reality of heightened threats of political violence where a media ecosystem exists (Fox News, Newsmax, freaking Mike Lindell TV, whatever that is) that promote unhinged lies and poor mental hygiene--well, bingo. 

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald weighs in on the Paul Pelosi attack:

"Skepticism itself can never be wrong ... Even if evidence does emerge later on to prove it, the skepticism itself was not just valid, but necessary." pic.twitter.com/4ClCuPMnVb

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 2, 2022

When an argument is made to dismiss the actual conspiracy theory (that the altercation was not political at all, but that Mr. Pelosi was assaulted by a much younger gay lover/prostitute) by claiming that people were "just asking questions" like responsible skeptics, I smell a rat.  

It might be reasonable to hold an open space for the possibility that the assault was committed by someone who was non-political, although the threats against the Speaker are well-known and that it was likely to be political would be irresponsible to dismiss. It is unreasonable to play a game of connect the dots with dots that don't even exist. 

(Which also hilariously highlight stereotypical conservative biases--it's San Francisco; what makes more sense than a squalid tussle between an elderly queer sugar-daddy and a hippie hustler? I mean. who the hell else lives in SF?)

But even if the insinuations weren't unnecessary in themselves, the use of an 82-year-old man's fractured skull as a punchline tells be what kind of people we are dealing with--see the title of the post?

It isn't skeptics. 

An Assassination Attempt Doesn't Stop Them

 

A black-pilled 42-year-old conspiracy theorist assaulted the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in an attempt to get to the Speaker herself, who was not at home. He reported shouted "Where's Nancy?", echoing the eerie calls that echoed down the hallways of the Capitol on 1/6.  The backdoor had been broken into. A 911 call made by Paul Pelosi alerted law enforcement to his home, where they were able to witness a part of the assault, which included an attempt to tie Mr. Pelosi up until his wife came back.

And the right-wing world didn't blink. Fox News blamed Democrats for being soft on crime, the Pelosis for not having better security, and vaguely waved away the anti-vax and other bizarre conspiracies shared by the assailant--because their viewers share those sentiments, too, and because they are the cause of that.  Republican politicos on the campaign trail didn't take one respectful beat to keep the name of Nancy Pelosi out of their mouths. And the conspiracy theorists just kept making more conspiracy theories, because what was going to stop them? Reality? Basic common decency? 

As I found myself on Twitter yesterday, I liked and re-tweeted a sentiment that "They won't stop until someone gets killed," but even that doesn't sound right. We're four years from the anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue slaying. We've seen death in El Paso and Buffalo. This week, three "Wolverine Watchmen" were found guilty of a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A PA man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell and his staffers. 

It's almost a sick joke to ask where someone like David DePape becomes radicalized. Really? After Speaker Pelosi has been demonized by the RW press for so many years? When social media like Facebook has made a journey through a rabbit hole leading to a cesspit of lies and violence so accessible? 

If the hate train slowed down, even took a pause to acknowledge that they enabled this would the shock of it after so much acceleration in recent years derail it?   

I don't even know. I only know this time they never slowed down so the passengers could take a look.

TWGB: The Picture Worth a Thousand Takes

 

The rebuttal to the Trump filing I referred to as the "Clown Suit" from DOJ made some of the points I expected it to make, to wit--the former guy and his lawyers were lying about turning over all of the documents and they were already gone over so there was no need for a special master. It also included a picture of the kind of documents that had been found during the search, just to hammer home how clearly the top secret/classified docs were marked.  The white space is redacted. You aren't being exposed to anything other than what should be obvious to you by now--these were sensitive materials that should not have been in desk drawers or closets or boxes in a basement. They should have been in NARA's hands. 

Trump and his defenders are in denial. How dare anyone show these documents on the floor as if to suggest that was where he would carelessly leave them? Why would they take a picture of them if they were so secret? Is this how the FBI handles these docs?

Oh, for fuck's sake. This kind of picture is the story of many a bust. Cops love to pile up the evidence so people can get a tangible picture of what they were doing in a search:

In this case, the point is that you can see the clear markings on the docs, which were mixed in with random other shit and in boxes and in different rooms, because it's Trump who didn't care. The docs were on the floor (and they never did imply it was Trump who put them there) only to show the extent of what they were finding. And then those docs were put into containers and taken to where they were actually secure. The FBI didn't mishandle them--they were documenting what they saw.

Some Very Legitimate Business!

 

You know, it's not for me to question the ethics of a congressman who announces he's leaving the US House right about....now-ish, because he already has a really plum job lined up. It might look like he cast around for a job because his new district didn't look as friendly. Sure, some people might say that the only reason Trump wants Devin Nunes on board is their political relationship (and Nunes' abiding loyalty to Trump) but I don't know. He does have recent media experience, if you want to count trying to sue Twitter and a parody cow account. 

Hm. I don't know if that goes against the branding of Trump Media & Technology Group as being all about the freedom of speech, but that might be the least of the problems with anything bearing a Trump brand. 

My original take on Trump's media group is that it's got some big scam energy. Looks like that's not just me--the SEC is very interested in how this plan came together. There's good reason for it besides Trump being involved at all, but I've got to say, when you've got a twice-impeached former president who is going around still making Big Lie noises about the last presidential election, and that guy just happens to be someone who can't operate a charity anymore, ran a fraudulent "university" for six years, and has always been kind of money-laundering adjacent in his business practices--I mean, really? This guy whose Trump Organization is under indictment? Whose taxes may have been fiddled for years? 

I just have a hard time believing that really honest people would be putting their money where Trump's mouth is. It seems like the offering always was about employing the One Weird Trick of knowing when to dump out of it. But then again, some people do put their trust in Trump, I mean like Deutsche Bank--they were always willing to give the sucker a better than even break. Maybe Patrick Orlando just likes the cut of Mr. Trump's jib.

Ah, well, people do stupid things with their money I guess. The poor trusting souls, they are. 

TWGB: Charlie and the Foxtrot Factory

Even in a White House of never-befores, this may be one of the more head-spinning: The president’s chief of staff is trying to join a lawsuit against the president. ⁦@maggieNYT⁩ https://t.co/XzZVkKPSZx

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 10, 2019

I'm not exactly sure how the Trump White House actually works, but it seems like the stuff of pure imagination. Can you imagine working there, yourself? All these people in what should be "golden ticket" jobs, the almost-poetic ejection of player after player according to some fault found by the um, well, testy Oompa Loompa who is actually in charge. How strange and wonderful!

If you want to change the world, there's nothing to it.

Except bribery and extortion and obstruction of justice and the whole deal looking more and more like a giant revolving clusterfuck.

Leading with Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney's lawsuit is an example of the kind of thing we're talking about: the story suggests there's a mystery around why Mulvaney is suing to determine whether he needs to comply with a House subpoena. He has two other choices--he simply refuses to comply, as others are doing, or he can just show up for questioning, so why opt for door number three? Because he already confessed to the quid pro quo part really publicly and cannot reverse-dive back onto the diving board, and the testimonies of Dr. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman both strongly implicate him as having relayed the terms to Ambassador Gordon Sondland. The freeze in the aid to Ukraine starts with, apparently, Trump's direction through the offices of Mulvaney and acting OMB Director Russell Vought.

Mulvaney himself could be caught on the horns of a dilemma: he can't testify because he already looks like he's highly "burnable" by Trump and because it would wreck his name with fellow Republicans, but he has a lot of exposure if he doesn't because Trump might have indicated he's already looking to unload him anyway (when I see journos the President questions about Mulvaney's future, I assume they aren't reading tea leaves but hearing chatter). So, if a court order compels him to talk, he wins because what choice did he have? And if the court goes along with a claim of "absolute immunity" (I guess that means a VIP-level executive privilege, no?) well he also wins because he doesn't have to talk and Trump has a little more reason to keep him.

Living there, you'll be free, if you truly wish....

Of course, waking up from that dream means still being really, really implicated in a conspiracy with extortion and bribery with lots of obstruction of justice on the side. And while the president might not be subject to being charged while he's in office (debatable) and might not be removed by trial, nothing quite so cozy pertains for Mulvaney.

TWGB: Fear, Smear, Conspiracy and Obstruction

The place I want to start with in this post is the law: our Constitution is a document that protects people. That is to say, it enumerates certain rights for the people, and defines the roles of government. You don't want a government that does too much--that reaches into people's lives obtrusively, that invades privacy, that needlessly judges personal choices that do not violate the law. But you also want accountability: government should have an aspect of accountability and dependability. If the social fabric has a warp (to the backdrop of history's woof), the rules are it. 

Trump likes to say that he's transparent. He's not transparent in actuality: in his person, he is opaque and likewise dense. But he believes that he has clothed himself in a dress of transparency by having posed himself as a straight-shooter or truth-saying SOB, or by merely repeating endlessly the formula "I am the most transparent..." And yet, that transparent cloth he drapes himself in is the Emperor's New Clothes. It is transparent because it lacks either warp or woof. It lacks threads. He is not clothed in laws, or history, or accountability, or tradition. His bare-naked ass is therefore covered by so many lickspittles. 

Enter the whistleblower, who, like the child in the story, says what everyone was fearing to say--the emperor's ass is out! 

So tell me, do: does who says the very true thing matter more than whether the message was very true? 

We are presented with a distraction, engaged by Trump out loud and personally in front of many people: he says he had some dirt on Lt. Col. Vindman, and also, he wants to know who the whistleblower is. Sen. Graham has said he'd out the whistleblower. (Outing people against their will has never been something I've been a strong proponent of, TBH.) And Sen. Rand Paul, son of Ron, claims the name of the whistleblower is already known, and he would release it. You know, unless the media wants to. Which really sounds to me like an effort to smoke someone out for a right bit of witness-tampering and intimidation. 

You know: crimes. Because all this, the threats against an anonymous person who only pointed out something they thought was hinky and should be investigated? Is a crime. What is not a crime? Doing due diligence to be sure that the government is held accountable and does its job well. Smearing people or causing them to feel threatened in their jobs or in their person is not great practice--it's basically a sign that the person doing that knows they have no other defense but bullying. That's the kind of thing Trump has left in his pocket: smear and fear. And conspiracy with those who still think the power is in his corner, and not on the side of truth or the law. And obstruction to try to prevent any further truth from coming to light. 

TWGB: So, Guaranteed Frauds, Right?

There is a limit, I think, to how much news a person can freaking absorb in a damn day. Two associates of Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, were arrested at Dulles with one-way tickets to Vienna.  They had travelled to Vienna on business all the time, apparently. It's where Dmitry Firtash is residing. Why, it's completely normal to go to Vienna! Rudy Giuliani was just about to go there himself! It's probably something that came up in conversation when Giuliani met with them the Day before when they had lunch at the Trump Hotel in Washington. You know, the day before they got arrested at the airport! For campaign finance violations. Could happen to anyone! 

It was just a bad day for Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They made it all the way to the airport! And SDNY wouldn't have had to have even rushed everything if they weren't apparently attempting to flee the country? The rotten luck!

So, what kind of campaign finance violations? The kind where so much foreign money is pouring into a Trump SuperPAC and also to GOP politicians and it seems to have influenced the removal of the US Ambassador to Ukraine. You could say they're the type of people who like to give in a world where so many people like to receive. How influential were these guys? Well, it seems like they dined with the president and met all kinds of people. (Trump says he doesn't know them, but he says that about a lot of people he tries to distance himself from.)

Anyway, it's the funniest thing. Giuliani was working for Mr. Parnas' company, Fraud Guarantee,* to provide legal advice and stuff, but Parnas was also kind of working for Giuliani to get information that "proved" Ukraine was behind the DNC hack and to also dirty up Hunter Biden. It sounds all very symbiotic. You know, like intestinal flora. 

It's really striking that all this has such a Ukrainian flavor, what with Trump's completely perfect phone call still reverberating in the news and all (who really knew a little old phone call could be so alarming!) but I don't know.  It really seems to hammer home that the attempts to get the information on Ukraine involvement in the 2016 election and to investigate Biden were very serious (not joking) and that Trump considered removing the ambassador a favor to his good friends in Ukraine. 

Because that's the thing with Trump's "jokes"--they can be acted on by people in, say, Ukraine or maybe China, and it's hard to say he didn't have a constructive intent to collude with them in accomplishing goals favorable to himself. 

Naturally, because of the impeachment inquiry, there guys are so subpoenaed, as is Energy Secretary Rick Perry regarding Naftogaz. I'm guessing Giuliani should consider himself also under investigation. The neat thing about the arrest and the subpoena for Fruman and Parnas though is that they were asked nicely to turn over some documents to the House regarding what they've been doing with Giuliani, and their lawyer (a former lawyer of Trumps!) John Dowd, sent a letter explaining that the House was getting squat. It claims attorney-client privilege, maybe?

I mean, they were working with a lot of attorneys, right? A lot of attorneys were working for them.  (Weirdly enough, Paul Manafort's lawyers represented them Thursday). And the work they were doing for Mr. Giuliani was in connection with his representation of President Trump. I dunno. I think they will have to comply with the subpoenas but I am not a lawyer myself nor do I like to play one on the blog. I hear there may be some crime-fraud exception to the whole attorney privilege thing anyway. But heck, if they can't say they were helping with Trump's "case" maybe they can claim executive privilege since they seem to have been advising the "shadow policy" on Ukraine that Fiona Hill is supposed to be testifying about next week. 

* This is such a good name for a company--Fraud Guarantee. Does it do what it says on the label? The mind reels.

A NY State of Mind

In a power move or so today, the state of New York did two key things that I am really excited by--the state senate approved a bill to vacate double jeopardy where a person was convicted of federal crimes only to be pardoned by the president, and also resolved to release NY state tax information to the US congress upon request. This comes a couple of days after AG Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the IRS and the Department of Treasury for not complying with legally mandated records requests. 

This all serves as a great reminder that even if GOP Senators, House Members, and Cabinet members want to toady up to the White House, states can still signify, and of the many investigations currently ongoing into President Trump and all his dealings, there are currently NY state cases regarding his taxes and how he used his "charitable" foundation as a slush fund. He doesn't have any leverage regarding the state, whatever he may have over the US DOJ.

I love New York for other reasons--it's a beautiful state! But today reminded me of the importance of state governments and why federalism remains an important part of our republic. 

The Strange Case of Mr. Smollett

Regardless of whether you believe actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to stage a hate crime attack on him, the question on many people's minds is why he -- or anyone -- would lie about such a thing https://t.co/ujAR99aGgL pic.twitter.com/PBoP0PyIBn

— CNN (@CNN) February 22, 2019

There's something about the Jussie Smollett situation that pretty much scrapes every nerve, and even now, I find myself trying to understand why a person who is in a good position as an artist, is talented and well-liked, and who has a solid reputation for trying to do good, would engage in such a pathetic, time and emotion-wasting lie. There is a lot of real hate out there, for people of color and LGBTQ folks. There has been no shortage of examples of people who have experienced hate and violence. For someone to perpetrate a false alarm with the intention of just garnering sympathy to make himself more marketable or valuable in a salary dispute is so extraordinarily selfish it literally beggars my capacity to consider that such a nakedly selfish motive could be all there is to the story.

If anyone, anyone at all, considers the rights of victims of hate crimes or other deeply personal violence, it has to be understood that false accusations harm real victims. The biggest barrier to justice is the fear of reporting due to being disbelieved, or being accused of trying to ruin someone else's life or reputation. It places a terrible stigma on a person already injured by encouraging other people to consider "what if this terrible thing never happened?" Maybe the world isn't so terrible that people can randomly be assaulted for any reason. Maybe the victim is the problem. We can see this easily with circumstances of domestic violence or rape. Victims sometimes opt not to come forward because their reputations will be damaged, or they will face other societal or economic penalties for trying to receive justice. With hate crimes, this can also have other levels of blowback, if one suspects that law enforcement are not sympathetic to their race or orientation or gender expression. There is a risk of further oppression.

For Jussie Smollett to wave away the entirety of what the revelation of his imposture would mean to real victims, his counting on his identity to earn his sympathy, and the supposition that he would never be found out, shows an enormous ignorance or tunnel-vision about social and criminal justice. The idea that he staged this for solely monetary reasons, when the reality of his salary is already just nonsensically rich to regular folks, is as unsympathetic to consider--in much the way the plight of an actual victim of hate would seem sympathetic.

And yet--the perpetrated story of Jussie Smollett is his story, and it was told to family, friends, co-workers, fans, and the world. The love and sympathy and outpouring of affection he received, and the harshness with which people would condemn violence against people due to racism or homophobia are still good motives, even if what he did to elicit them was a lie. It is still right to stand by marginalized people because of real harms they experience, and it is still right to listen to the stories of victims because most really are true. It is still right to condemn hate and seek justice, and although Smollett's story called out MAGA hat wearing fake perps, I want one thing to be pretty clear:

The fake details were not a smear against all Trump-supporters. This was Smollett's version of verisimilitude. He was working with the reputation MAGA hat wearing people (like Cesar Sayoc) already had, in rather the same way Susan Smith blamed the death of her boys on a carjacking by black men.  He wasn't trying to make a political statement--his shit was very personal.

And what remains to be considered is whether some other issue (outside leverage or mental instability) encouraged what Smollett seems to have done. There may be a reason besides the extremely selfish for what he has done. But although the details were political, I don't see this as solely a political case. The people he hurt most were POC and LGBTQ people whose stories are now going to be met with "but Jussie". It was certainly not "MAGA country" people.

TWGB: A Tale of Two Lawyers and Other Stories

Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani seem, on the outside, pretty different characters. Cohen was Trump's "fixer"--not like a regular lawyer. He was the guy you could trust to threaten reporters or pay off inconvenient people, or maybe even rig polls. He's an okay lawyer from a not-great school who has thug connections. And Rudy Giuliani was once "America's mayor" and even ran for president!

Well, whoopie shit. Giuliani is in the process of learning something that Michael Cohen has probably known for some time. Being Trump's legal counsel, IMHO, looks to be the keto version of a shit sandwich--hold the bread! I am very much reminded of a story about two previous attorneys who worked with Trump, and discovered they needed to sit with him in tandem to make sure he didn't forget things.

Which simply sounds adorable until you realize it's actually pretty abusive. Because it means Trump wanted to lie and make his lawyers help him lie and the "forgetting" and "interpretations" were actually his way of being entirely crooked AF.

This sort of explains why Giuliani is caught saying things like: "I've been through all the tapes...I shouldn't have said tapes." But sure--why not say "tapes"? Because there definitely are Michael Cohen/Donald Trump tapes.  Over a hundred of them. Because Michael Cohen was dealing with Trump alone and needed a backup in case Mr. Trump "forgot things". And some of Giuliani's "gaffes" might be the result of Trump "forgetting things" like telling his counsel the entire story. This leaves Giuliani negotiating a minefield of swearing something isn't so that could very well get revealed later.

Like the Moscow Towers signed LOI. And like the apparent actual development plans, that would not exist if, as Trump always claimed, there weren't any active dealings in Russia.

That is why there are so many "Giuliani is incompetent/a liability/making Trump mad" stories out there right now. It truly does look like "ineptitude".  But I don't know that Giuliani is really in any danger, because his messaging about Trump, even while it incrementally moves the goalposts on Trump's potential liability, stays positive, and because his main function is probably "squid ink" anyway. He blurs the timeline because he can't very well reveal a whole picture he might not even have, right?

It's a dirty job. One Roy Cohn or even maybe Michael Cohen would understand "how" dirty.

But there is another, probably more fraught thing going on in the Cohen/Trump/Giuliani triangle--Michael Cohen recently postponed his House Congressional testimony "indefinitely" because of threats to himself and his family coming from Trump and Giuliani. This seems to have to do with dark-tinged Tweets and murmurings from Trump aimed at Cohen's wife and father-in-law. But I'm not counting out that Giuliani has also, in a way, obliquely crossed a line by hinting at what obstruction of justice is and is not:

“A president firing somebody who works for him, if he does no other corrupt act other than just fire him, can’t obstruct justice because that’s what Article Two of the Constitution gives to him solely. Not Congress. Not anybody else. If, for example, a president said, ‘Leave office, or I’m going to, you know, have your kids kidnapped,’ or, ‘I’m going to break your legs.’ Obstruction—I prosecuted a lot of obstruction cases.”

It's not Jim Comey's life he's suggesting could be turned into a Liam Neeson movie. Why is he saying these things are a possibility for anyone? Because there is someone who does have potentially "reachable" family members. (And anyone might, really. Depending upon how well you understand their points of leverage and social connections.) But probably particularly one of Bob Mueller's most reluctant songbirds.

The one who is still subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee (the one still gaveled by GOP) and will attend next month regardless of all that. Which will make for some lit number of Sunday talking head shows. Lucky spokeslawperson, Rudy Giuliani. Who is, if I am reading his relationship correctly, not actually going to skirt the crime-fraud exemption regarding attorney-client privilege by the time the subject gets to him (because Trump and friends always be criming).

Now, I know there was a conviction in absentia for former Ukraine President Yanukovich for treason and some stuff with Deripaska and sanctions (are they off, or what?)  and other valuable Manafort-related material which I am not addressing, which is probably the really key Trump campaign/administration collusion shit we should be looking at. And I haven't even worked in all the shit about Kushner's security clearance, and how Deustchebank is all up in this.

I will get there soonish--but I had to dump my open tabs right about now. I just got this weird blogger-sense that I better be ready for tomorrow. Because, well, tomorrow is another day! And there will I truly believe be more shit.


UPDATE: If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy the entire TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Series. I have linked a lot.

TWGB: Something's Gotta Give

President's lawyers think it was unfair for Mueller to ask questions of the President without first informing the President that he should tell the truth because Mueller might have evidence to show false answers were false. https://t.co/stFyKZjQNB pic.twitter.com/VycHZy6au6

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) November 29, 2018

Looking over the news contents of a super-busy day in TrumpWorld, this Tweet encapsulates something really "off" about the mindset of Trump and the folks surrounding him: Why would it be "unfair" for Mueller to ask President Trump questions without warning him of the penalties for lying, if not lying was something he should the hell have known not to do anyway? Was telling the truth such an unreasonable expectation?

Apparently! It seems to be taken for granted that Trump does not tell the truth and that people around Trump have reasons not to tell the truth, and frankly, that points to the likelihood that the truth is actually...not good. And it seems like his attorneys (of which he has had several) have never been able to entirely persuade him that the truth isn't bent into some origami abstract subjective performance art by either the frequency of one's lies or the Rashomon-like posting of several versions of the purported event because of an odd set of circumstances called "facts".

This brings us to the plea deal by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, for the charge of making false statements to Congress. In other words, he admits to lying, just as Jerome Corsi, who rejected a plea deal about the lying thing, admits rather publicly on tv to have actually been lying. (which makes it altogether seem to me that Corsi isn't really objecting to the perjury charge, but the cooperation agreement, because he'd like to still have some lies, thanks.) Cohen, on the other hand, wants to get washed, and has banked 70 hours of grilling with Mueller and company. Unlike Paul Manafort, he (like Rick Gates) might have come to the conclusion that he still has enough to live for to recognize the bind that he's in, and just be forthcoming. Because facts are facts, and you can get tripped up by them.

The material issue that was lied about in this instance was the development of a Moscow Trump Towers deal. This is a thing that had been a dream of Donald Trump for some time, and which other members of his family had worked on (with some interesting connections). This could be scoffed at as being a real estate matter only, except that it explicitly does tie into the presidency run, in the words of Felix Sater: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it." (I do not know if something like Trump Tower Moscow is what is meant in the cryptic "business deal" with Russia referred to in a recent George Papadopoulos story). 

This is liable to have some real fall-out for Trump. We already have reason to believe that Michael Cohen can point us in the direction of one or more campaign finance violations in the form of hush money to Stormy Daniels (and likely others--wanna bet?). The ongoing story about Trump financial dealing with Russians, which he once heartily disavowed ever having, could have been used by the Putin regime as leverage, even if there had not been any kompromat of the sort alleged by the Steele Dossier. (Buzzfeed, who initially published the dossier, has had some great reporting since that is corroborated by this plea deal, and suggests new questions raised.) But Cohen worked for Trump for a dozen years or so--and in that time, might have known who knows what about other instances of bribery or graft. 

Our estimation of Trump's generally sleaziness is such that when Deutsche Bank was raided just now, folks immediately thought of Trump, because Deutsche Bank was still loaning money to him after other banks weren't interested in the risk. (And even after he defaulted on a loan in 2008.) With Deutsche Bank's history of money laundering, and for that matter, history of money laundering in Trump's immediate vicinity, one could wonder whether he stayed a customer because he was "otherwise profitable". (So was Jared Kushner. Maybe.) Also, oddly, on the same day, Chicago alderman and former Trump Tax attorney Ed Burke got raided. Weird--but Trump got good tax deals, and, uh, so did Jared Kushner. I'm not saying these things are connected, only that Trump's former bagman might have knowledge pertaining to these things. And knowing nothing more about his potential liability (if reporting is correct that Rosenstein is still the man over this investigation, and Whitaker has not yet sought control, I guess nothing is funneling up to Trump,) somebody is sweating Man-Tan into his collar by now. 

And by now, what we know is, Trump doesn't react well to reversals of fortune, surprises, slights real or imagined, rain, random stuff said by celebrities, stairs, bad press, or reminders that he can't control everything and that things like facts and laws exist. So he is going to be a reclusive, surly, and probably fast-exiting omnishambles at G20. 

Which is a damn shame in the midst of a trade war he started, and seems to not understand the fundamentals of. 

Coming up--Manafort sentencing date will be decided. I am glad to be getting my blogging chops back, but I wish these folks would stop aggressively "newsing" at me. How can I follow so many stories? Also, I might think more indictments are forthcoming, and I am not even mad. 

(TWGB is my edgy new way of working "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" into the title of my blog posts, because I'm easily seeing doing a couple of these a week for the forseeable future and am not going to work that mouthful into the titles all the damn time.)

But We Do Accept This

"A child of God is dead. Can not we acknowledge in this country that we cannot accept this?" Former CIA and FBI official Philip Mudd breaks down into tears following the shooting at a Florida high school https://t.co/y6GqatInij pic.twitter.com/FuuB5gQsOs

— CNN (@CNN) February 15, 2018

Fuck violence.

Fuck "thoughts and prayers" platitudes.

Fuck the NRA.

Fuck "toxic masculinity".

Fuck images of school children jogging from their school with their hands up becoming something we could become immune to.

Fuck every politician that takes NRA money.

Fuck the Trump Administration for calling off a press briefing because a school shooting happened to change the subject for them.

Fuck a world where kids don't worry about passing pop quizzes but hide in closets worrying they will be popped.

Fuck a world where parents' phones buzz an alert that their child's school is a fucking kill zone.  Or they hear their own child's fear-stricken voice trying to explain what is happening and wonder if this is the last time they will talk to their baby.

Fuck a world where we put kids through active shooter drills telling them this will keep them safe when, well, this.

You can ask me if it feels better to curse this out and what the hell am I doing about it and all I have to give is explain I see this great unnecessary scene of horror and want to throat punch every smirking douche who ever makes jokes about "safe spaces".  Because violence ideation can be a very real emotional reaction to stressors but it is inappropriate and I actually won't throat punch anyone at all; but there's safety (an experience of feeling okay talking about things or just even showing up somewhere without feeling threatened or harassed, which doesn't seem like too much to ask) and then there's safety (not getting yourself or a loved one murdered because somebody took their emotional violence ideation all the way through, with the assistance of a very purposefully created murder tool).  And there are people who will on one hand wear you out with talk about how they love "law'n'order" and then display exactly no fucks about whether folks are even safe.

President Obama shed tears for the dead of Sandy Hook Elementary, and was mocked for having human feelings. Fake news shitheads tried to pretend it was a hoax. A hoax. Imagine the inhuman shitbag cruelty that tries to deny real human beings their grieving because it just doesn't sit right with their ideology?

Other folks can offer up their thoughts and prayers. I am throwing in all my fucks. This should not be acceptable. But whenever and wherever we shrug off investigating the problems that make the US so murder-happy, we are accepting it. It isn't just mass shootings, and school shootings. It's drive-by's and shoot-outs and that toddlers and dogs even end up killing people with guns. It's that the CDC can't study the damage guns do. It's that we look at shooters as insane as if to write off the society they came up in. It that people will literally say "It's too soon" to talk about the reasons why it happens, and trying to address it gets called out as "politicizing the tragedy" as if "politics" isn't just another word for people trying to make government work.

Thoughts and prayers--sure. But faith without works is dead, and I want to see politicians try to work on this for a change.

UPDATE: And here's Alex Jones chewing the "false flag" rag again.  And this guy was given legitimacy by Trump. And I will never forget or forgive that shit.

Even TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Get the Blues

There is a limit to how much good faith one can presume of other people. When it comes to Senate Republicans, Senators Grassley and Graham pretty much exhausted whatever confidence I had in them with the "stunt" recommendation to the FBI to investigate Christopher Steele for possible criminal charges of lying to them. In the midst of an investigation into whether Trump campaign officials conspired with Russia to use stolen information to win an election, the person these partisan hacks decide to finger as a problem is the whistleblower?

Add to that the news that the DOJ is opening a new probe into the Clinton email server and that the Clinton Foundation is currently being investigated by the FBI, and it's hard for me not to see a pattern that looks like Republicans using the Justice Department for partisan ends. It doesn't even seem all that low-key. And while they are at it, pretending that the FBI was actually Hillary Clinton's fan club. 

This is the kind of thing that makes me dread blogging. It isn't healthy to look around and just see examples of shameful dealing everywhere.

But then, someone does something that really picks me up--Senator Dianne Feinstein decided to release a transcript of a congressional interview with Glenn Simpson, founder of Fusion GPS, which was the research company that produced the dossier. And it appears to confirm what by now we should already know--the dossier was not the reason for the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia connections, because they already received information from someone inside the Trump orbit. Simpson also related the Steele broke off contact with the FBI in October 2016 when he became concerned that there might have been a pro-Trump faction within the FBI (which wasn't such a stretch--anti-Clinton is probably more like it) when a narrative was fed to The New York Times that no links were found between Trump and Russia. 

Now, I know this new information probably isn't going to change the whole conversation (I don't know--Trump hasn't mean-Tweeted about FBI DD McCabe since it was reported that his speculation about McCabe having anything to do with the Clinton investigation was rubbish) but it sheds some light where there was obfuscation. 

In other Steele Dossier news (how is there more Steele Dossier news?), Trump attorney Michael Cohen is filing a defamation suit against Buzzfeed for publishing the not-actually-discredited document. This strikes me as amazing for much the same reason as Trump's threatening to file a defamation suit against anyone over Michael Wolffe's Fire and Fury--it certainly looks like an effort to silence people to prevent true information coming out, and the discovery process would probably be brutal and unfavorable to President Trump because, and stick with me on this, Trump has a four decade long, well-documented history in multiple books and publications as being really shady. Why, before he was a fan of Trump, Steve Bannon shopped oppo connecting Trump to organized crime.  The connections aren't hard to make. 

It also isn't hard to see what Russia might have gotten in return for their "investment". This story from Spencer Ackerman that a White House official floated the idea of the US withdrawing from Eastern Europe reminds me a bit of the search for "deliverables" Trump wanted to offer Putin last year. And if one wanted an example of what a financially-leveraged President might be able to do, say, for his creditors, there is a nice example of a favor with respects to waiving penalties for interest manipulation that he is doing for a few banks, including Deutsche Bank. (The very one Steve Bannon noted might be of particular interest to Mueller's investigation.)