The White House Seal of Approval

 

REPORTER: You just announced a new nominee for US Surgeon General who never finished her residency, and is not a practicing physician. So can you explain why you picked her to be America's top doctor?

TRUMP: Because Bobby thought she was fantastic ... I don't know her pic.twitter.com/ZYjtiPk4sH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 8, 2025

Someone else picked her--I don't know her. You just can't get any more ringing a recommendation than that! 

Yeah, she's problematic and underqualified. But she gets advice from trees and whatnot, so it's gonna be OK! I am not kidding:

Means also went to "weekly group meditations and spiritual lectures at Self Realization Fellowship in order to tune in with Spirit... worked with a spiritual medium who helped me try to connect with my spirit guides for support and guidance... did full moon ceremonies with grounded, powerful women... talked (literally out loud) to the trees, letting them know I was ready for partnership, and asking them if they could help... did plant medicine experiences with trusted guides and wrote extensively about my experience and insights."

Now, now, you might be thinking--isn't that harsh? And of course, who am I to question what one has to do to find love in this mean old world?  But when I see posts like this:

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. 

Generational Wingnut Welfare Cases

 

Rep. Brandon Gill: "Listen, I think that the people of Panama, I think that the people of Greenland, I think that the people of Canada for that matter should be honored that President Trump wants to bring these territories under the American fold." pic.twitter.com/T6IJzunB0c

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 8, 2025

This obnoxious weird and wrong little man is married to Dinesh D'Souza's daughter.  D'Souza had to apologize for being very badly wrong about the 2020 election. His little son-in-law is just being part of the family--pay him little mind, because little mind is all they have 

Post-script: A lot of the GOP have adopted the "should be flattered" talking point, but to get at why this stupidity makes me furious--it's not a serious opinion. Telling a country "We will economically or militarily threaten you because we want something you have" is,a war of choice--and it amounts to saying "If someone threatens to rape you, you should be flattered." 

TWGB: Would You Buy a Watch from this Man?

 

So, obviously this thing where Trump is selling watches is a part of the "Trump campaign as business plan" ethos that the media doesn't quite know what to do with. It's at least as good as the NFT racket. It's better than the Trump DC Hotel racket, that Trump even found a new way to lose money at. 

We might not be able to really talk about things like the $10 million that flowed to Trump (allegedly) from Egypt in 2016, probably, or even fully investigate his business interests in China. But we could definitely ask why he's got the Mrs. out here pounding her book (which he hasn't read), her jewelry line, and fucking Chreestmas ornaments as a kind of Trump "lifestyle brand". 

Is this what serious people do? Like, if people can't afford bacon and eggs, is this really how you demonstrate solidarity with them? 

So, here's the thing--back in 2017, Trump trotted out a lawyer and like a pallet of blank paper in file folders to pretend he divested from his businesses, and LOL, no he did not do that. But dipstick MAGA  brainwashed cult members will tell you all about what he gave up to be president. That's right MAGA--he never did spend most of his time between Trump Tower, Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago. He wasn't still CEO of Trump Org when he was directing the payment of hush money from the White House. He didn't direct funds to his various properties from the US government whenever possible. 

James O'Keefe's History of Cringe Dance Videos

In honor of the recent Will Sommer piece at WaPo regarding just what embarrassing and much-lauded anti-journalist James O'Keefe III spent Project Veritas money on, I thought there was nothing more appropriate than to take note of what O'Keefe tried to convey with the power of DANCE! which is something TYT just variously touched on as being a real O'Keefe THING over the years. 

I know, I know, I just visited O'Keefe being a part of the vast RightWing Grifter ecosystem not that long ago, but it continues to be funny to me that this clown collected an award from Ginny Thomas and has been considered "untouchable" because knuckle-draggers like his irrelevant hits that mostly don't do anything in the real world. 

But this is so iconic, so truly choice, so much a beautiful indication of what it means to be a LEGEND of Griftopia:

In September 2021, according to the report, Hurricane Ida floodwaters threatened to destroy the Project Veritas office in Mamaroneck. The staff scrambled to save equipment and their own lives — one elderly employee was briefly pulled underwater and had to be rescued by colleagues. But O’Keefe had already left the scene, asking employees to prioritize his own evacuation so he could make it to Virginia for a performance of the musical “Oklahoma!” in which he had the lead role, according to staffers cited by the audit.

“Don’t worry, everything will be okay,” O’Keefe told his employees, according to recollection of a staffer cited in the audit, “but help me get out of here.” In 2022, Project Veritas admitted in a tax filing to improperly spending $20,500 moving some staff operations to Virginia during O’Keefe’s time with the musical production for his convenience.

OOOOOklahoma! where the wind comes sweeping down the sonofabitching middle-aged theater-kid ass plain as fuck Golden Boy nonsense with lashings of reality and so much lawsuits. 

He's not here to be the rightwing Woodward and Bernstein--his Pulitzer dreams are more Rodgers and Hammerstein! 

I'm just saying. So many of these rancid people want to be stars.They have big dreams. But the right wing stage is where they start paying in SWEAT! 

CPAC Is Embroiled in a Schlapp Fight

 

"A senior board member who resigned on Friday urged an independent investigation into additional allegations of sexual misconduct against Chairman Matt Schlapp."

CPAC urged to probe more sexual misconduct claims against chair Matt Schlapp https://t.co/EvcGgHBOoC

— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) August 27, 2023

The problem with CPAC isn't whether Matt Schlapp is a closeted queer man, although it's starting to get fishy--but whether he's an abusive individual who takes advantage of others regardless of gender for his sexual gratification and is also a liar who uses organization funds for his own shit. The resignations of other CPAC officials and their claims indicate Schlapp is a problem, but I would say the other problem is the overcompensation CPAC has come to represent: The Orbanist, happily self-proclaiming "Domestic Terrorist" side of the organization. 

Why are we so extreme, CPAC? Something up? Because this looks like a troubled child organization acting out because things are bad at home with their leadership. 

You know what this reminds me of though? Veritas and Little Jimmy O'Keefe. Well, he used to be cute and young once, but he and Project Veritas went to pot, mostly because O'Keefe was a self-involved grifter. There always were warning signs. Right from the revelation that the ACORN nonsense was B-roll and smearing. The CNN fuckyacht? The weird wiretapping thing.  Wait, not that one, the other one. And the stolen diary. 

The right wing has just an awful lot of grifters. dark money slopping all over the place to support who all knows what, but they've also sometime got the little guys rooting for orgs that are fronting by whole freaks. 

It's something you think the hoi polloi on the right would be more interested in--since it's their investment, too. But they don't even care if their political party is lead by a grifting pussy-grabber, so I would be obviously expecting a lot. 

What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Iowa?

 

The whackadoodles of Mike Flynn's travelling psyops parade decamped at the Doral where they were welcomed among the other bedbugs. It's an explicitly Christian Nationalist gimmick, and many Christians do not enjoy the political posturing. While Trump was not there in actuality, he was there in the form of his idiot son Eric and probably Lara Trump--they have been tight with this weird community of anti-vaxxers and convoy-promoters and school board and hospital protesters. And when his Iowa rally was called supposedly due to the weather, The Former Guy called in to let convicted and pardoned felon, the man who was collecting bucks from Russia and Turkey, Mike Flynn, know that he was definitely welcome in a second Trump Administration.  As he's been saying. 

Of course, one should be aware by now that Flynn is, to put it delicately, batshit. Someone who wants to overthrow the government, celebrates chaos, and thinks there's vaccines in the salad dressing isn't normal.  But this is Mr. 5th Generation Warfare, the guy who is telling his followers to look out because the internet is being used to tell people weird shit in order to manipulate them. Which is fun stuff from the guy whose son spread Pizzagate memes in 2016 and himself talked about Agenda 21, which is actually dead stupid. 

The coterie of kooks include Julie Green, who I almost feel sad for, because she is on a level of toxic dumb shit that is hard to divorce from thinking--is she okay? Why do people let her just be delusional like this? Is there money in it? 

(I mean like, fortunetellers do get paid sometimes, it's a reliable bunco. But when someone is so repeatedly wrong, shouldn't they they get moved to the next town by ripped-off and unhappy customers? Unless they have found the marksiest of the marks. And that is the Trump mishpocha. They want to believe.) 

George Santos is the GOP Poster Child

 

You know there's something wrong with a congressman when they turn down committee assignments. Is that even a thing? George Anthony Devolder Santos has turned down his committee assignments after GOP leadership went to bat justifying him getting them, because he would like to not make waves until he settles all his issues. 

That's amazingly optimistic. He has more issues than National Geographic. Are they going to get settled in a hot minute?

Like, take his treasurer situation. His treasurer just left.  Like, just. Left. His campaign finance statement was filed with a new guy, but at least not the "new guy" whose consent was apparently forged. The new treasurer looks to be Andrew Olson. Hopefully that's a real guy, unlike some of Santos' donors, who may or may not be real people, and may or may not have donated money to his campaign. 

That being said, I would not want to be his treasurer. And what we know of his actual funders, well, they are interesting. Like Andrew Intrader, who has also dumped money into the fight against progressive DA's, which is fun, because the people who are against progressive DAs all claim those people were put up by George Soros because of course they do. And it's true! And there is good reason for it. New approaches regarding fighting crime that are not based in nailing disadvantaged people to the fucking wall for accolades and calling it effective might get better results and be less harmful to the effected communities. 

Obviously, I care more about the possibility that these ghost donors are some kind of influence op to buy old George, who likes money a little bit a lot. They could just be simple graft, but also could be representing foreign money for some purpose. It's clearly worth our time to know and rises to the sort of thing a relatively neutered FEC should look at. 

The guy is endlessly weird, and his pathological lying seems almost funny (except that it extends, very pathologically, into his social life as well, apparently), but it certainly isn't because of what it says about our politics, and especially the politics of a certain political party. To his credit, he seems remarkably taciturn about his various woes and unravelling frauds, unlike a certain former president, who is lashing out in all directions on social media, not knowing from whence his first indictments will come. Santos doesn't know that, either, but at least he isn't being a whiny little turd about it. 

But as to the GOP response? We have Elise Stefanik, letting us know the voters were to blame for voting for the person who deceived them. But how were they to know? And who helped sell them this bill of shoddy goods, Rep. Stefanik? And are you ready to have a chat about it? 

Santos is a symptom, not the whole problem. Trump was a symptom, not the whole problem, too. The problem is dirty money, complacency, cowardice, and loyalty to party over any sense of duty or rectitude. And that certainly isn't getting settled over one election cycle. 

UPDATE: Which leaves out this guy and the evolution of the current GOP--the increasingly nihilistic alt-right aspect. It's sinister that the NY Young Republicans more openly embrace Proud Boys and truck with white supremacy out in the open. How Santos (clearly a performative clod) serves that agenda remains to be seen. But being a gay Brazilian racist clusterfuck certainly is one spin on identity politics for lulz, isn't it? 

George Santos says it's Nothing Personal (UPDATED!!!!!)

 

The New York Post reports that George Santos is now saying that the money that supposedly made its way into his campaign as a personal loan--like about a half a million dollars? Was not from him. Which makes sense, because despite his manufactured business success, he was poor just a few years beforehand.  

Is he saying where the money really did come from? No, he is not. Does that seem pretty damn sketchy? Yes, it really does.  Could we presume having a benefactor laying out large sums might unduly influence the votes of a legislator who seems to have no moral center? Sure, might could. Does Squeaker of the House Kevin McCarthy have a problem with this? (And like, the guy is going to be in so much trouble with the FEC and also probable wire fraud crimes and shit.)

Not at all. Schiff and Swalwell, sure. Deeply problematic (read: effective). But to his mind, the possibly tainted serial liar and larcenist freshman representative is not a problem. 

We know what Santos is. But what supporting Santos says about McCarthy (and also his weird fatal attraction to Marjorine Tater Grease) speaks volumes about what his leadership is about. And it's a full-body shudder from me, folks. 

Most New Yorkers want this guy to resign though. 

UPDATED: Guess who is a sort of illiterate who expressed a funny HAHA comment about Hitler?

NEW: https://t.co/iEPxBCZiEf

— Jacqueline Sweet (@JSweetLI) January 26, 2023

Yeah, me included, a lot of people were giving the benefit of the doubt with respects to his supposed white pride fingers:

Even though we knew some of his social media was giving pure trash. So, I wasn't going to say our boy was a straight up white-ish supremacist based on one little hand sign, but now I just have to say--it looks like he is to me. Serving Carl Palladino with the Michelle Obama trash talk. Also, too, the same illiterate writing quality turns up in his weak Wiki bio. If that is him. Notice also the aspirational dipshittery of wanting to be associated with Hannah Montana--and the idea that he could be a model in Vogue expressed elsewhere. Why is some of his supposedly college-educated language so poor, and once again--born in Queens or in Rio de Janeiro? Do we know for sure that we know?

His psychopathic style is like improv--always saying yes! Attempted hostage taking on 5th Ave--yes! Brain tumor--yes! Volleyball championship! OK GO! Does his campaign even have a treasurer--YES! Even though the person whose name might have been forged on paperwork says no.  That's amazeballs! Who retcons an entire whole human who can refute your bullshit into your campaign? 

And he is still a congressman! 

Sometimes Mules Kick

After the trouble that Regnery went to to try and sue-proof Dinesh D'Souza's stupid Trump-fluffing conspiracy-wank over the 2020 elections, it turns out that he is going to get sued for the stupidity of naming names in his dumb movie. There's a lot of fraud to confront in the old conservative movement (slaps hood of conservative movement-mobile); you can fit so much malign intent in here. I kind of figured this might happen.

D'Souza is operating in an alternative fact reality disconnected from the idea that "the libs" that he means to own are actual people with agency, livelihoods, families, etc. He struggles to be a relevant meme-producer now that actual relevance (having peaked in his youth as a Reagan employee forty years ago) has mostly passed him by, and he dropped all credibility in the Obama years when a POC of color in office broke his brain and he thought he had to defend colonialism. 

It has to hurt when your grip on utility is owning libs and you don't even have the credit to rent libs by the day. When your multiple Twitter threads always cast doubt on your anti-socialist bona fides with the caveat that you enjoy being publicly owned. Does it hurt to be a formerly philandering felon falling while fellating Trump by fomenting fraudulence for funds, also feloniously? 

I myself could not say, because I could never imagine trying to pin a case of voter fraud on people who cast mail-in ballots at a box near to them because they just happened to be near that site when it was probably near a school or strip mall or other place they regularly habituated because it was in their neighborhood and they live and shop and do errands and take their kids places around there. That people are generally around and about a spot they live near isn't a case of fraud. It's how living in a neighborhood works. The cell phone geolocation thing is dumb and bad and D'Souza should feel bad.

But he won't until he is sued for a lot of money, and I hope other people join in, because, hey--this is America. And while I don't think the defamation suit will fix the little red wagons of the people who believe the Big Lie about voter fraud (any more than a suit against True the Vote and the obvious federal case needed there would), maybe it would discourage the next Big Liar. 

And sometime that much itself feels like a win. 

It's Just Top to Bottom Fraud

 

There's something about the entire right wing that I wish the solid, earnest folks who support it with their donations knew--it's a goddamn scheme. Take Donald Trump's post-presidency fund-raising vehicle--Save America PAC. It's currently under investigation because of course it should be--Trump is saving American from what, now? He promoted dangerous lies about voter fraud and teases he's fixing to do something about it, but there wasn't any voter fraud and there isn't anything he wants to do more than have money is his legal fund to defend against his sedition (planned insurrection) and I guess also his treasonous (why does he have these top secret documents?) activities. 

Trump raised a lot of money under "Save America" but nothing went to voter fraud litigation because there was no provable voter fraud to litigate. So like, how do I know there's none?

Take the recall of Dinesh D'Souza's dumb book, 2,000 Mules, as an example of the problem.  It's a grift.  You see the movie, you buy the book, you paid to believe in the thing. But there's a problem--the book is recalled and I already know from the movie why--he didn't name groups he thought were responsible for the imaginary "mules" he posits based on cell phone data of people revisiting city blocks that happen to be in their own neighborhoods (which is just extra dumb) in the movie, but he decided to go ahead and do that in his book, because why not?

Public Lion, Private Mutton

 

The side-by-side comparison of Josh Hawley showing a power fist to the 1/6 protesters and later his madcap, long-legged flight from the same folks, is perhaps as genius a representation of the performative "tough guy" attitude of Trump World as you could want to see. It shouldn't be forgotten that Hawley was the first US Senator out of the gate indicating that he would protest the certification of Biden's election, which at the time struck me as a pure cynical stunt bound for tears. 

But it also struck me that Hawley was far from the only one who would have been likely to do such a thing, because being a massive troll is the rage (literally) in GOP politics. Whether it's dressing up one's finest Army/Navy store gear to go watch immigrants at the border and take a goofy little boat ride or taking holiday family photographs with everyone from the pater familias on down kitted out for a replay of Ruby Ridge or the Waco stand-off, signifying militancy and even the desire to overthrow the government is treated as quite normal. 

It's what they've pulled the discourse down to. Take the endless 2nd Amendment signifying about citizens taking up arms against their own government (you know, the government that our elected officials are representatives of) that Rep. Jamie Raskin had to patiently explain was...well, horseshit. 

And of course, a lot of these gunslingers just want to get strapped up so they can feel safe at the Chipotle or to menace random POCs or as a form of conspicuous consumption. Overthrowing the government might be something they vaguely support, but not in a whole life-disruption kind of way.

Hawley's shameless dash from the violent insurrectionists he definitely was insisting shortly thereafter were no such thing* can be compared to Steve Bannon's desire to "go medieval" regarding his "misdemeanor from Hell". Other than as a possible personal hygiene pledge, I'm not sure what he meant by that, but other than running his mouth after the hearing (where he was found guilty on both counts), it's hard to say what he means to do, other than possible appeal. 

But what's funny is his claim that it's the members of the 1/6 Committee that are "gutless" for not coming to his contempt hearing when he was the one who couldn't even be bothered to go to them, even to take the Fifth or flip them off or whatever actual confrontation could have been made. It's political theater--he's being performatively defiant, but it boils down to name-calling. 

It's possible that it's Bannon who has the best grasp of this ethos in his grubby way--after all, he made a bit of money off of homo ludens, He knows very well that people will pay real money for fake things because they love the thrill of sport and the sense of getting over. They will pay money for a wall that doesn't materialize. They'll wear tricorn hats and knickers and talk up a game about how they want to storm the castle. Shit. they will even sit in a medieval monastery (maybe) and train to be New World Order Knights.  It's all an amazing LARP--

It's just one where people can die. Trump World people have been living a fantasy. They still want to run away from the real world results. They swarmed behind Trump like sheep--but it's beginning to smell like mutton in here. 

*UPDATE: Oh my word, I totally forgot this chiclet-head had written in favor of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement when he was a little 15-year-old spud. He learned exactly not one grown-up thing in the interim. Not one. 

Nunes Left Congress for This

 

Anyway, you know the TMTG media thing that Trump launched after he left office and that looked like a pump and dump thing because the project seemed to have little material investment and lots of puffery?  The thing that started being investigated right away because wow, if it looks bad, maybe it is bad?  Anyway, subpoenas were issued to TMTG by the SEC and a grand jury for the SDNY--but Trump and Don, Jr. and a handful of other folks were already off the board. Apparently. It's amazing how that happens. 

So, according to the records, Devin Nunes, who left Congress for this, is still the CEO. It's very likely that the merger stuff between TMTG and Digital World was already in the can when he came aboard, and per Truth social posts, TrumpWorld is denying that Trump is really off the board. It's all a misunderstanding and a witch hunt. Except...

Is it? There's something really weird about a "successful" billionaire always being investigated to the extent Trump is (you know, like Trump University, and the Trump Foundation, and the tax fraud..) and always seeming to be dodging accountability (like, being himself or having associates in contempt of court for not turning over documents, which is still going on--would you believe?) that makes it seem like, maybe, just maybe, this Trump character isn't a great businessman, but a kind of possible...crook?

I'm not saying I know for sure. Maybe he's just extraordinarily unlucky. I mean, imagine the odds that Trump "foes" (also known as public servants who were just doing their jobs) like Jim Comey and Andrew Mccabe were selected for intrusive IRS audits by an agency run by a partisan Trump pick? Then throw in the odds that Michael Cohen fell under their gimlet eye as well (although that one doesn't necessarily feel as remote). 

The astronomical bad luck, am I right? You'd have to have some especial low opinion of how the world works (or at least, how certain people work in it) to see a not-so-hidden hand there, given how obviously bullies actually work in the open, yeah? 

Anyway, Devin Nunes, who left an influential seat in Congress for this, once sued an internet cow among other people who said very bad things about him on the internet, all of which were true. I think his current position is udderly ridiculous, and he should be cheesed off about it. 

He's Attached to Reality, All Right

 

Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Pres. Trump pushing baseless conspiracy about Dominion voting machines: "I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has lost contact with — he's become detached from reality." https://t.co/NRwraEI6rO pic.twitter.com/Mx6vQUR9Xq

— ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2022

 Not everyone is the hero of their own story when they tell it, but very few people make themselves out to be the villain. Bill Barr might have seen through the conspiracy theories that Trump claimed showed that he won, but he helped in his way with creating the illusion that maybe there was something to the voter fraud issue all the same. And if he thought that Trump was actually not in his right mind (as it is possible that Mike Pompeo and Steve Mnuchin considered as well) then he could have just said so.

It clears Trump to claim he was detached from reality, in a way. Poor old Trump, not knowing how to handle a loss, unable to accept it in the gilded frame of reference of his towering ego.  What's a belief to someone like Trump though? He believes he's worth TEN BILLION DOLLARS, give or take. Some people believe Trump is a Christian, but I think he'd be a Hare Krishna if there was any juice to it. It's like telling him something is good or bad, legal or illegal. Believing makes it so, if you have lived an utterly unaccountable existence. 

But two things happened with the curious belief.  He had the presence of mind to try and keep contesting the election on the basis of it, and to fundraise. He's still doing the latter. There's a whole "Trump Won" grift industry out there. It's a fable, but it's profitable. Even if entirely untrue, Trump will hold onto the claims until he's wrung the last iota of value out of it. 

Barr commented that Trump started making these claims directly after the election was called, before those claims could remotely be investigated. This is because he was always going to make those claims. He laughed when referencing D'Souza's "2000 Mules" nonsense. It should be embarrassing for the GOP that people can still make money off of this bullshit, but man, they still do. It's funny that people exist to be fleeced, and it's also very much not. 

How many elected officials and party hacks have also profited off the voter fraud fable? How many people were threatened or materially harmed? It gets less and less funny. Trump is not detached from reality, but even if he was--is the party that has been his support system and cover-up team all, also, detached from reality? Not quite right in the head? 

No. They are completely sane and fully knowledgeable that the claims about Chinese thermostats and Italian satellites and Venezuelan voting machines and North Korean ballots are bullshit, but they have lied right in their voters' faces and took their money and asked for their votes. 

Let me repeat that: they are completely sane and lied right in their voters' faces and took their money and asked for their votes. 

Is it any wonder they would rather people not watch these hearings, and that they want to discredit them?  They saw who these people they have been lying to can be on 1/6 and what they are capable of if their ire is roused. And I wonder if they ever thought what would happen if those voters realized they were being used as sheep--sometimes merely used for fleecing, and sometimes served up as mutton? 

They didn't just let Trump lie in people's faces and take their money. They helped. Even when people were getting death threats. When their families were being threatened. When the violence broke out 1/6 and subsequently people died. 

Get attached to that reality. It's not even about what Trump believed. What they fuck did his little friends think? 

TWGB: There's Something About Ginni

 

The thing that makes TrumpWorld what it is, is the sense of an alternative reality. It almost feels like they aren't drinking the same water or breathing the same air. I've been fascinated with Ginni Thomas as an activist in a world where we presume some degree of judicial impartiality but also consider SCOTUS justices based on partisan lines--and how she is an unabashed conservative warrior. A Tea Partisan. A supporter of Project Veritas. A conspiracy theorist. 

So, it doesn't actually surprise me that Thomas texted White House COS Mark Meadows running the full QAnon gamut regarding the Venezuelan voting machines, Italian satellites, Chinese thermostats, German servers, green clovers, blue diamonds, and the evil liberals who were after Trump's lucky charms and were definitely going to go to GITMO and face a military tribunal. 

She's been out there where the buses don't run for more than a minute. 

What is concerning is that she was talking with her "best friend"--her spouse, the temporarily, one presumes, hors de combat Justice Clarence Thomas, who was in a capacity to rule on matters concerning the contested election, and on matters concerning what documents became available to the 1/6 Committee.  And knowing of his wife's various intercessions on this issue, never thought to recuse. 

But the thing of it is, people like Ginni Thomas are still at work. Now, Mo Brooks, now that his endorsement by Trump has been rescinded, might be saying that despite Trump's continued entreaties, he was determined to draw the line at the impossibility of the election being somehow rescinded or done over after 1/6!? But ask yourself, how many other people besides Mo Brooks who have made the political pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the hem of the golf pants of St. Don might have vowed a path of continued fuckery?  After all, there are Trump supporters to this day who might acknowledge that Biden is president but draw the line at calling him "duly-elected". 

And as for the mindset of Trump himself, he has taken it upon himself to sue everyone for the "rigging" of....2016?  The election he actually won? Because he blames the "Russia, Russia, Russia" thing for his uneasy time in a job he was not especially suited for. 

So clearly, more alternative reality, there, folks. It's a plague in TrumpWorld, you see. Or it's just a grift to garner attention and donations in that particular case. 

And don't get me started on all the reasons why Trump wanted to stay in the White House, but seems just as protected outside of it. I will scream. 

Can We Handle....The Truth?

 

I don't know exactly how to explain this, but when I smell a grift, it somehow smells to me like other people are smelling burnt toast--does that make sense?  Anyway, the former president has launched a Space!! Fooooorce!! Distraction!!  social media company which is not either coming out just now as a distraction from other stuff on his plate and totally isn't in line with a certain real estate mogul's penchant for glossily overselling and over-promising things that are...not great, actually. 

The hype says it's going to be publicly traded (hello world of regulations that Trump doesn't usually deal with!) and the hot property TMTG is "valued at up to $1.7 billion".  Up to.  Four little letters just doing their damndest, right there. 

Anyway, the social media platform, which is competing with Twitter, Gab, Parler, Gettr--it's called Правда, I mean Truth, because Trump and friends could still see irony twitching a little bit and wanted to shaft that SOB for good. The business model is "We're going to fight the tyranny of Big Tech by becoming the same thing, only more so." The whole thing feels to me a little like Jared introduced him to some friends that were doing neat stuff with the cyber.  They will also have non-woke streaming programming so it's going to be a fully-integrated self-contained digital TrumpWorld echo-chamber, if it works. 

I am...skeptical. But I like the backwards planet graphic used in the marketing packet because it really feels on point. 

Sold, American!

How Trump ally Michael Flynn nurtured — and profited from — the QAnon conspiracy theory https://t.co/Rana8asAuc by @CandaceRondeaux

— The Intercept (@theintercept) June 27, 2021

When I hear Trump superfans laud Mike Flynn as a great patriot, I always flinch a little, because I think of the degree to which his behavior amounts to a betrayal of the service he had. And that was in no small part about money, too, or it least that's what it looked like to me.  The "Q" turn never felt like a turn to me, though, because you all remember back in 2016--Mike Flynns Jr. and Sr. were spreading "Pizzagate", the progenitor of Q. And the whole mass of alternative, conspiracy-theory promotion looks like psyops from one angle, pure and simple grifting from another.

But why not both? I've often wondered about his psychology a little bit--whether some of what he does can be ascribed to getting fired by Obama, and then acting like a lover scorned with respects to America. But he was kind of a mess before. Eh. There's only so much time you can spend mulling over the motives of strangers.

But yeah, he and his lawyer sure do want paid for what they are doing "for" this country. And they will keep doing what they are doing to this country so long as it works for them, I guess.

It Would Be Funny if it Wasn't Dangerous

Sidney Powell states that Trump should simply be reinstated and that a new inauguration day be set due to “abject fraud and obtaining a coup of the United States of America.” pic.twitter.com/F3tfSvg8dG

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) May 30, 2021

So, you might be unfamiliar with the exact part of the Constitution where the events that Sidney Powell is explaining come into play, but this is basically the "do-over" clause of the "No takesies-baksies" rule of the double, super-secret part of Article 2 which states that "A do-over is permissible in an election if the sun was in the president's eyes, if he was just not ready for that one, if he calls 'Cheats, cheats, bo-beats, banana-fana-fo-feets', or if his lawyers can successfully pull off the "Rubber vs. glue" maneuver of "No coup, you're the coup, we didn't try a coup."

You wouldn't know about these parts of the law because they are in invisible ink and you also need a decoder ring. 

In other news, her some-time client, Mike Flynn called for a coup.

UPDATE: In other news--still not funny.

UPDATE: Mike Flynn thinks if he says he didn't say what we all heard him say, we will think he did not say it. This is gaslighting. He has also said just as bad or worse. 

Kraken, Out

 

3 days after Trump's campaign touted Sidney Powell as a member of the campaign's "elite strike force" legal team, Trump's campaign disavowed her as "not a member of the Trump Legal Team." https://t.co/WwlMnymVWj

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) November 23, 2020

You can say what you like about the Trump campaign legal strategy (oh boy, can you!) but I would have to say nothing likely ended Powell's membership in the Elite Strike Force like "going rogue" and accusing GA Gov. Kemp of being paid by the Chi-Coms to throw the election to Biden, as well as suggesting that Rep. Doug Collins (endorsed by Powell client Mike Flynn), not Sen. Kelly Loeffler, should actually be in the run-off. 

That was drawing too many Republican bodies into her web of crazy, and while people will tolerate some goofy-ass conspiracy theorizing, this was getting to be a whole Disney parade of cartoon-ass conspiracy theorizing. And that's a little too close to two entire senate run-offs. The "kraken" that was about to be unleashed was just an amalgam of "crack" and Karen". She had to go. 

I do have to say that she is not weirder nor more obviously inept than Rudy Giuliani, who Tweeted today about the population of Wayne County:

Ok, that's his story, and there is no proof of any large scale fraud that has actually been discovered by anybody, but this Tweet seems to be referring to a fairly specific claim brought forward in a case by Lin Wood (who very probably is even more, uh, controversial, than Powell or Giuliani) based on confusing Michigan with Minnesota.  It's something that's not just laughable, but was widely debunked (and laughed at) days before. Did he somehow not know this is demonstrable bullshit before pointing it out or is he too far gone to care? (Or more to the point, is he just bringing it up for the benefit of an audience that never checks links and is also too far gone to care?)

Old sentimentalist that Trump is, I guess he has his reasons for hanging onto Giuliani, and competence in front of a court is not as important as loyalty. (Would it even help when these are the cases he's got?)

You know who I like for all kinds of reasons: NJ Rep. Bill Pascrell. He's filing legal complaints to the bar regarding 22 of these election-hoaxing horseflies trying to change the results of the election. And more power to him.

Scoreboard

🚨BREAKING: Plaintiffs have DISMISSED their lawsuit filed by seeking to stop the final certification of election results in Michigan.

Trump and his allies are now 1-28 in court.https://t.co/lLJZ4jIJ4x

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) November 19, 2020

I get that alleging that there is massive voter fraud, especially in areas like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, has been part of the Republican kayfabe for a long while now, but since the Trump campaign's actual lawyers aren't putting on a case that there really is voter fraud, and the cases aren't really going anywhere, doesn't the game plan seem just a liiiiitttttle bit busted? 

I mean, the popular vote margin is in Biden's favor by nearly six million. That's a lot. Biden said he'd beat Trump like a drum and he totally did. What we're looking at right now is pretty much part grift and part smashing all the game pieces in a fit of extremely dangerous and unpatriotic pique. Trump and his enablers went from saying "Make America great again" to being willing to create a sabotage effort against the next government. 

I don't think arguments regarding Trump's "serious path" are even serious. We know the score.

UPDATE: And Trump doesn't have any more business calling around to people about election results than Lindsey Graham does.

Michigan county official who wants to rescind her vote to certify election results says she received a call from Trump https://t.co/wtNexgBR9y

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 19, 2020