TWGB: The Thrill of the Crowd

 

Donald Trump falsely claims on Truth Social that Kamala Harris' campaign "faked" the size of her crowd at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, saying that "there was nobody there".

The crowd at the airport in Detroit was very real, as numerous videos and images from the rally prove. pic.twitter.com/mRx34gvBRe

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 11, 2024

There are a handful of stories percolating around TrumpWorld that are pretty fascinating to me--for starters, yesterday, we found out that the Trump Campaign had been HACKED! Possibly by foreign actors hostile to the United States, with the intent of influencing the election! 

To which my first reaction as a 2016 Clinton voter is:

 <<<<HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA>>>>

 But no, really, that is horrible. The details are a little funky, though. The hack seems to have been an exploit due to a phishing email--shouldn't campaigns be totally training their people on how not to get "reeled in" by now? Also, Politico got a trove of docs from "Robert" from an AOL email address which included a dossier on JD Vance. 

So, let me get this straight: a hacker using a basic scammer skillset, with an AOL account, dumps docs on a Trump-friendly outfit that includes info on the Appalachian-adjacent Yale albatross that rumor has it some Trump advisors want to deep-six? And of course, having learned their lesson from eight years ago (and Trump being Republican) the very scrupulous media will not lend our enemies aid and comfort by divulging wrongfully obtained materials?

I'm just saying you could be forgiven if a little part of you wanted to believe this was an inside job. I mean, I don't doubt the campaign could have been exploited But there is exploited, and then there is....

I don't know what this is. 

TWBG: No One Promised You a Rose Garden

This has been a pretty crappy week for President Trump so far, what with the ongoing search for a replacement for outgoing CoS John Kelly (who Trump blabbed was leaving without giving Kelly himself a chance to so announce, and who will presumably now stay on until the end of the year) going poorly enough that regular CNN commentator and former US Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum pled out of the job, citing that he has a family, and sort-of front-runner Mark Meadows was let off the hook because Trump needs somebody in the House, and with setting his ownself up to basically own a government shutdown because being Mr. Art of the Deal, Chuck and Nancy got him flustered in front of a camera. And he stayed flustered, got his manhood questioned, and spent Wednesday morning up in his residence, watching cable and presumably still out of sorts.

The night before, Michael Flynn, Trump's top foreign policy advisor and hand-picked NSA until that totally blew up, offered a sentencing memo requesting no time to be served because of his timely cooperation once he understood his situation, and grousing that he sort of thought the FBI done set him up by not telling him to shut up and get a lawyer. This is very much in line with the sort of thing TrumpWorld seems to believe, with peripheral Trumpists sort of saying this one-sided statement from the Flynn defense should let him (and Trump) off the hook.

Let me get this out of the way--I do not know what is worse, assuming that one is so poor of reading comprehension to misunderstand the situation to the effect that a statement that there is a process to call on the White House Counsel actually equals a consultation not to engage an attorney, because then it would be some kind of thing and that a grown man who is not new to this rodeo somehow is receiving compensation from foreign governments (plural, Turkey and Russia) without filing the correct FARA paperwork, knows this to be true, and faces the line of questioning he should certainly expect without for a quick minute thinking of getting either an attorney consult or, maybe, and I'm standing out on a ledge over here--not lying; or being so disingenuous to have grasped these things and then presented them, however dim and unworthy of supposition, as one's best defense for a person who is already in a cooperating agreement and whose best defense in reality is coughing up information that sort of invalidates all pretense at innocence. I am unfamiliar with Byron York's compensation arrangement, but I personally would skip a paycheck before presenting anything this fucking stupid. Or demand a "walk-away" amount. 

But I digress, because the star of the day was clearly Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to 36 months and some fines and restitution. This is less than the 51 to 63 months that was recommended by the sentencing guidelines. Part of his sentencing included the plea regarding campaign finance violations, and before the claim that the Edwards defense might pertain to Trump (even though Edwards was indicted) escaped the lips of Trump defenders, AMI, the parent company of National Enquirer which helped facilitate the McDougal payoff, entirely agreed: this was all about the 2016 presidential campaign of--some guy. 

Now, Trump has a reason to be seething as Cohen maintains he was directed to do much of what he did by Trump (not the tax evasion stuff, and nothing to do with the taxi medallions, but hot damn the bribery things!) And really, who takes out a loan on their house to pay off a person who is only claiming to have had sex with a potential presidential candidate because that certainly sounds like a really great use of your credit rating, unless specifically told to by someone you anticipate will make good on the ask? Only Trump's direction makes sense. And the direction is because the claim is probably good (they did it) and Trump would for some reason, prefer not to have another credible claim against him (among already so many?) during a campaign that he now has to win because?

Not winning queers his deal.

My best guess is Trump is indebted to do the White House thing until he is somehow removed from office, and I think he hates it, and I sort of like the prospect that this makes him suffer a little. As with the Trump Tower Moscow project, maybe doing this POTUS thing was a dream too far, with a serious price. 

But there definitely was a Moscow Trump Tower thing going, and Trump also may have met with people he thought might help him make it happen. Or for sure his son did, more than once. And we now understand that Mueller is looking more closely at these Russia/NRA contacts, especially now that Maria Butina is cooperating. Her boyfriend seems to have already produced interesting leads. 

Now, if his bind is what I think it is, Trump always has resigning and coming correct as a possible out (although being as crooked as a corkscrew and having to wind his pants on each morning makes this a remote possibility). But I really feel like the evidence here indicates that he's up to his orange peel ass in fuckery, and the other alternatives are not going to be pretty. 

This Trump World Grab-Bag is Too Much

Because I am starting to become "an old", my memory is stuffed-full of detritus that is fertilizer to me, even if it is mere dead material to "youngs". The term "useful idiot" is associated with Soviet Communism to me, because my first experience understanding of the world was a Cold War understanding, before the Berlin Wall fell and before Glastnost and perestroika and all that--it was that weird thing where some people thought it was hip to be Gorky Square. You start out as a with-it socialist who cares about human rights but thinks the working man suffers more from Big Money than Big Government, and then you take rubles to talk out your ass about whether Mother Russia's government love-taps people into submission or just earns every bit of respect from the citizenry that comes her way with excellent government.

Maybe I come pre-programmed to distrust all things where a US politician seems especially enamored of another nation. Maybe I just have too much suspicion regarding an entity that has weaponized lying. But I will say that I do kind of agree with Michael Hayden, in this instance, when he uses the term "useful idiot" for Trump. The "idiot" is a guarantee. And I suspect by now even Russia has had reason to pause over how useful he is.

I've been a bit adrift posting these Grab-bags because I'm trying not to make more of them than they are--stories, somehow, and maybe not even very-well sourced stories (although I try to keep my links tied to legitimate sources, not fake news mills), but things that are real enough to help construct a timeline and a narrative. I want to help a picture shape up--but I also know I am biased so I try to refrain from all but logical commentary. I am aware fake news exists and that tasty nuggets might not be all they seem--also, some stories are just too obvious. I've eschewed posting some recent news as a "Grab-Bag"because it is just boring-- Nigel Farage is a Person of Interest?

Of course Nigel Farage is gravitating to whatever power and money he can find. That seems like his natural depth. And regarding recent interviews with Vladimir Putin, of course he tries to deflect responsibility for hacking the US election. What else should he do?

And if you want proof, there seems to be proof that Russia wasn't just being APT 20-something in the DNC's email but influencing US voter offices.  A lot. And then you get news like the piece where the NSA got word that Russia even tried hacking not just our election, but the actual voting. Courtesy a certain person charmingly named "Reality Leigh Winner"--now arrested.

It is too much! It is too damn much. But it is, apparently, our reality. It could turn out to be misleading--but why is there so much even misleading info connecting the Trump campaign to Russia--and Russia to influencing the 2016 elections?

Trump Thinks This is About Him--Sad!

So, the funny thing about Donald Trump, President-Elect of the United States, slamming Arnold Schwarzenegger for low ratings for the television show, "The Celebrity Apprentice", is that Donald Trump is the executive producer of that show. Donald Trump, who will sit in the White House doing executive things for this country, had to slag the new host of this tv show he still makes money from, because...

I don't even know. He compared Schwarzenegger's first day to his own, quite utterly forgetting that the show was rather different when Trump started it, and that so was the cache of the Trump name, which still clings to the show entire.  Is he really so petty that he begrudges an actual practiced politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his non-support of Himself as a candidate, any success in an enterprise from which they would mutually benefit? Does he need the ego-boost of comparison so badly?

It's hard to say (for the record, Schwarzenegger in return replied with civility and class) why Trump had to make his dig about the show he has on NBC, or even why he had to bitch about NBC having an exclusive regarding the news item of the IC report on the Russian hacking of the recent election. But bitch about it he did.

And after getting told the details? Still more bitching. Trump prefers to send out a message that there was no impact on the results of the election--because this is all about whether he was rightfully elected--has the "ratings". This could not possibly be, to his mind, an undermining of US government because if we would all just click our heels, we could start looking at Trumplandia as our home.

He actually described the focus on the Russian involvement as a "political witch hunt".  Like this thing Putin authorized was all about Trump and just about Trump, not our national security or the integrity of our elections. And like it was not somehow ironic for him to deflect from the focus on his own legitimacy as president-elect to talk about witch hunts, as if chants of "Lock her up" never flowed down from any podia at a Republican National Convention. Lock whom up now? Who looks like an ally of another nation? Hm?

I don't know if Trump really thinks presidenting is about "ratings" and misses all the bits where we are a democracy, and his job is defending our freedoms against outside treachery as well as inside.  He'll be taking an oath about it, of course.

Oh well.

I don't even know what to make of This- But Dana Loesch--

says something about Bobby Jindal for VP. I don't even have a link. I saw it at Democratic Underground like  sensamillionty hours ago. And you all know Romney's campaign is like thisclose to RW bloggers. So if someone on Democratic Underground says that it probably might could be Kenneth the Page because they heard Dana Loesch said so, I'm going to be the schmuck that says--why not?

I am also wondering why I still care about the whole VP thing. Why wouldn't it be Jesus Margaritas? People like Jesus, and they like tequila-based beverages. I think a conflation of the two would poll pretty well. Even better than Bobby Jindal.