TWGB: Pimping the White House

 

One man's idea of luxury is another man's idea of flypaper tacky; in rather the same way one man's idea of a distinctive hairstyle is another man's notion of a molded drain clog fastened to a moldering skull, but if I squint a bit, I can see what the tastemaker at the White House is going for with his gilded style complete with dance hall:

It's an homage to the Gold Rush brothel keeper who founded the family fortune. You know, a little something of l'esprit de bordel. You or I might cringe at it, but Trump is not one to turn his nose up at wherever his money has come from and has always had a soft spot for pimps. Professional courtesy? Or perhaps what passes for respect.

Some people of course simply note that this glitz is reminiscent of Mar-a-Lago, where former friend Jeffrey Epstein poached pubescents. People do say all kinds of things. For example, when I saw that Trump had the Rose Garden paved over, I might have wondered if there was anyone under the cement, in rather the way a troublesome witness might be deposited underground at one's golf course, but with less fanfare.

I also say all kinds of things, though. 

But then I saw the umbrellas and really understood:

The entrepreneurial vision of the man.

It's Especially NOT Funny Because It's True

 

pic.twitter.com/ZUeYUHMNjA

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

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

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

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

They Aren't Serious People

 

Two relatively weird and messed up things (I guess not just two, but these were the ones I was tracking) happened today--the Trump Administration got to pretend they were being "promises kept" about releasing the so-called "Epstein files" and they also seem to have gotten the Tate Brothers extradited from Romania. 

I'm not going to touch on Romanian politics or how President in fact Elon Musk is rooting for the pro-Russian candidate and mad the democratic republic wants a do-over and all that--my bandwidth is limited, and TrumpWorld is messy enough as it is. Per my understanding Cailin Georgescu earned his troubles honestly and you want to keep that between him and the country his dumb ass ran, cheated, and was caught on the verge of insurrection in. 

For a lot of reasons, I don't find that funny, myself. I do think it's very funny we are going to pretend the Tates are supposed to be, adamantly, "innocent until PROVEN guilty" when we just horked them out of the environment people were trying to find them guilty in. And their whole schtick was advertising themselves as successful pimps and human traffickers and admitted to being all the bad things they are accused of. 

Trump Sexual Abuse Verdict Upheld

 

A federal appeals court has issued a written opinion upholding Trump's defamation verdict which found him liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll:

"We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”

There is something about this case that fascinates me: the first defamation case found him liable with a $5 million dollar verdict. The second, at which he briefly testified, awarded an additional $83.3 million in damages. Something about Trump was very unsympathetic to a jury. 

Another One Bites the Dust?

 

Some people might think there's a real problem with Pete Hegseth's SecDef nomination once the whistleblower stories about getting kicked out of vet organizations for being a rape-y, drunken peculator start flying and the word starts trickling that he's always drunk at Fox News and the thing where he's an open Islamophobe and Christian Nationalist and you know, how his own mom deplored his serial adultery and abuse of women. 

I think it's really bad when the Trump transition starts floating "Tater Tot Ron" DeSantis as a possible replacement. 

But you never know. After all, if you want to get out there and show you aren't a problem person, just a hard-drinkin' man's man and a hard-lovin' ladies' man and also, you ARE SO completely competent to do a big boy job, you can always go on the propaganda network you work for and have your mom explain it. 

(Don't laugh. Elon Musk's mom tell folks they are just jealous of her smart boy all the time, and no one picks on him anymore. ) 

Nancy Mace is not Okay

 

This picture is a screencap from Rep. Mace's own Twitter-feed (I'm still not calling it "X") and this is s few days in to her manic posting about bathrooms and there being a transwoman in Congress now, and this is not okay. I think (I hope) she Photoshopped this, because this is the cap I took from her own feed. What the hell is going on with these angles? 

This is pro-ana ideation, and I am worried about this woman. I get that attention whores and bullies try to do DARVO and present themselves as victims, and Rep. Mace's grown woman response to whether she is bullying soon to be Rep. McBride is very much to claim she is the victim here because she was a former victim of rape and assault. But she also is telling us she lost 30 pounds because of a traumatic event that triggered her PTSD, and I am not going to front that I know what's up with all that. 

She has claimed that she was threatened as a rape victim by even being asked why as a rape victim she supported Trump and other rapist candidates and political figures. And received threats, because I guess that is a thing. 

How Can a Man Seem Less R@pe-y?

 

Four men chosen by President-elect Donald Trump for top positions have been accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct. https://t.co/9tcKslmkxy

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 20, 2024

You know this is an old joke--it was used by Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School": "How do you seem slimmer?  Hang out with fat people!"

Well, how does Trump, of the problematic penis, seem less like an adjudicated rapist who needs to give E. Jean Carroll her money and whose hush money trial sentencing has been set back in light of his election win, seem less like a problematic human? Surround himself with rapey people, I guess. Normalize the shit out of predation. 

The would-be protector is actually an obvious predator. It really does seem like there are more pictures of Trunp with Jeffrey Epstein than there are with his kids, but as an added bonus, there are pics of Trump with Epstein and his kids. 

Maybe We Will Just Protect Ourselves

 

I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket--just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn't have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.

I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don't really learn it. (You don't use your knee--it's inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it's really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters--most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It's a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.) 

TWGB: It's the Great Bumpkin, Charlie Brown!

 

Trump apparently can't stop touching his nose and mouth and has fucked up his make-up, but clearly he is being some kind of nightmare squash for Halloween. It's a nice touch that his campaign decided he should be wearing a reflective work vest in case he goes wandering off.

So, yes, the actual response of his campaign to the furor of Puerto Rico being called a floating garbage island and his lately referring to the whole country as a garbage can is to play dress-up as a sanitation worker and literally be seen in a garbage truck labelled "Trump/Vance". 

I’m sorry, everyone else saw him straight up miss the door handle and nearly fall over, right? pic.twitter.com/Au2mmulLcD

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) October 30, 2024

In addition to looking absurd and infirm, this working-class drag stuff really has to stop. I mean, we just recently watched him trying to serve McDonald's while smelling like a flame-boiled Whopper, and this, too, stinks. (Of course, they are trying to make it about the thing Biden never did say, because they want to be martyrs thrown to lions except, we all know who bites.) 

This Was "America's Mayor", Once

 

Watch "America's Mayor" Rudy Giuliani call Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis a "ho," and the Christian audience at the ReAwaken America tour go wild for it last night. pic.twitter.com/yy68oan7lg

— Stephanie Mencimer (@smencimer) June 8, 2024

He's not half racist and misogynistic, is he? It reminds me that he went out of his way to defame, and continued to defame, two Black, female election workers, also in Georgia.  But because my government name ends in the same vowel as his, let me help him with the pronunciation of Ms. Willis' name:

And she isn't a "ho"--but an adult female who can socialize with another adult person. Are we going to sit here in 2024 and pretend a professional adult woman is not allowed to have adult relationships? That "dating" is some form of harlotry?

Is this the Middle Ages?  I do not want to hear sexual slurs about anyone under the sun from this sleazeball. 

TWGB: Wheels Within Wheels

 

I joke from time to time that we aren't ever leaving the 2016 election, and it's not actually that funny--we're in 2024, but the Trump hush money trial feels like old home week, what with characters from earlier in the Trump Saga popping back up. This week, we will hear from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who plead guilty to a campaign finance violation regarding Stormy Daniels, Last week, in a story that was overshadowed by the trial, former 2016 Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort decided to step back from his involvement with the 2024 Republican National Convention--for which he was going to work for free, as he did for Trump's campaign. 

"Free" for a value of "access to our political infrastructure" which actually does have value. 

We are never leaving 2016. The Russian disinfo op that tried to blame Ukraine for the DNC hack that profoundly affected the 2016 election (in Trump's favor?) still has echoes in the Trump impeachment and the current-day GOP House still trying to impeach Joe Biden. The story of what happened to Stormy Daniels, now a little bit better understood as coerced sex--a situation not much different from the "casting couch" or the cartoonish image of a boss chasing a secretary (just imagine it in the White House) reminds us of all the stories we just barely heard in 2016 in the wake of the Access Hollywood video, which were drowned out by Wikileaks.

Only the Rapes that Matter

 

It was Elise Stefanik who let me know how Republican women were going to wear their shame this year: gossamer, barely there, nearly naked--shame like a second skin, all-surrounding, she announced that E. Jean Carroll was a liar and the media was just fluffing her up. Was the determination of his guilt actually made by a jury? So what? Juries can be misled. Peerless leader may have dozens of women who accuse him, but the reality is, he has had, nonetheless, dozens of women. Because he is who and what he is. And the GOP has made peace with that. He's their sex pest. Their letch. 

It's hard for me to think they haven't granted him droit de seigneur over the new brides honeymooning at Mar-a Lago or Bedminster.  After all, we knew about the TMZ tape and dozens of claims of sexual assault back in 2016. And he somehow won, with the support of the religious right. People like Katie Britt, who gave the SOTU rebuttal, support Trump, even while she decries the horrific sex trafficking that has, supposedly, something to do with lax border control right now, while she speaks of things that happened 20 years ago, and not in the US at all. 

Does she just not know that Trump goes way back with traffickers like Jeffery Epstein? Are we just going to ignore who Trump's associates have been? 

I just don't think the sleaze-puddle that is Trump's modeling business and beauty contest associations have been really explored. There's reason to think the whole Q/Pizzagate sex dungeon mole-children shit is just weirdo projection to distract from ""billionaire"" Trump's constant penising around female people, whether they invited it or not. 

TWGB: Perspective is a Dangerous Drug

 

Something very stupid happened today: Donald Trump as a candidate for POTUS had a hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States as to whether he was eligible to stand for president having participated in an insurrection against the US government, while the current US president, his opponent in that year, was exonerated of a charge regarding keeping classified documents but got some backhanded BS from a partisan Republican Special Counsel about being old with a bad memory. 

So, of course, the discourse on the socials is about the latter, not the former. 

To put things into perspective for me, I selected photos of both guys at my age (roughly) and they look terrible. (I'm not going to drop a selfie but I'm not looking my age--I'm fat but not old.)  Neither settled into their 50-something hairlines with grace. Trump's eyebrows were always bad, but at least this was before he applied his makeup with a wet turd. One is thinking, the other, mid-talking. It looks about right. 

Does that seem shallow?  Bitches please! I'm seeing people talk about whether Biden is a gaffe machine when he's been one since he was younger than me. He has always BEEN confusing names and whatnot, but getting off deep one-liners. And Trump has always been a crook. 

TWGB: It Should Cost Him More

 

The news that the jury in Trump defamation trial of E. Jean Carroll came back fairly swiftly with a verdict in the amount of $83 million gave me a sense of deja vu--it hadn't taken that long for a jury to decide the first defamation case in Ms. Carroll's favor, either. Now, our scandal-ridden former president owes her nearly $90 million. His not-especially good lawyer, Alina Habba, says they will appeal.

I don't think they should. I think they are the most unappealing bunch imaginable. 

Maybe delay has been a key strategy of Trump's with respect to his legal woes during an exceptionally legally contentious life, but this is wearing thin and is bound to have diminishing returns. Can he put up the bond for the amount of his judgments? Is he as liquid as he said he was (considering he's got the likely 9-figure judgment in his NY civil trial coming up)? And isn't he just bringing more and more attention to his miserable behavior?

As I've long covered here, his behavior doesn't diminish him in the eyes of the true MAGA believer. They can dismiss that Trump is a life-long sex pest because the real problem they have is with someone pointing it out. Take Elise Stefaniak or Nancy Mace--they don't care. And maybe TrumpWorld doesn't bat an eyelash that Trump's defenders include Matt Schlapp and Rudy Giuliani*--both under scrutiny for sexual misconduct. 

You Really Can't Fake Smart

At the rape defamation trial today, Alina Habba demonstrated that you can't fake smart in front of actually smart people. This isn't to say that she's dumb, but she was just not ready for this trial. Now, maybe recently departed counsel Tacopina was supposed to take point on this and looking the whole thing over, realized there wasn't a great case when there was nothing left to do but try to mitigate harm to the client, and Trump insisted on showing his ass up and not being remotely helpful, but I think she is trying to help create the illusion of Trump as the victim here in a way that isn't especially sympathetic. 

The argument that the plaintiff is just a fame whore who wanted this attention might be what Trump wants to convey, but the "she wanted this" part is...fraught with the idea that she, as a victim of sexual assault, wanted something from her attacker. 

Juries sometimes surprise, though. I find the argument appalling, but then again, I'm a feminist with a real problem with rape culture. And yet, it is all around us. 

This is one of those moments where the idea that Trump makes good choices or picks the best people wears thin, though. He talked to no one in particular during the trial (where he is not compelled to attend, which is why he has no especial need to be there if he has a funeral or any other pressing matter to attend to) and was advised by the judge that he could be tossed from the proceedings because he couldn't control himself. 

So, Iowa Picked the Rapist with 91 Felony counts?

 

I don't especially enjoy the primary season because the idea of caucuses themselves are dense and dumb to me--what the whole fuck is going on with those? People are dropping votes randomly into paper bags and empty popcorn buckets. Who knows who is showing up? (I see no ID's in the deep freeze, they don't need these when the voters are all Y.T.'s.) 

And then there's Iowa itself--an entire state that feels like a FOX news set-up in a rural PA diner no more than ten miles from the nearest militia training site. What gets me is the state gets these political creatures camping out among them, speechifying at them, trying to shake hands with them for at least six months out of the year, and when the inevitable man/woman-in the street interviews take place, they just say the most normie, uninformed things. Like, one guy was hung up on where Vivek Ramaswamy was from because of 9/11. There were no Hindu people with Indian ancestry having anything to do with that. And if he was concerned, how about looking up anything at all ever? Candidates do townhalls, have debates, have featured articles in newspapers and magazines and there's FUCKING WIKIPEDIA and some dolt allowed to vote doesn't know where this man's people are from. OR who did 9/11. 

One young lady said she was just thinking about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and wasn't that why Trump was going through all these trials? No, damn it, I want to yell--you weren't thinking that; Trump and every asshole warming up the crowds for him told you that and it somehow drilled its way into the thing you pick out sandwich fixin's with. Being in trouble for defaming one of his rape/assault/harassment victims has NOTHING to do with you. He stole government docs belonging to the US Gov't which is basically all of us, and that is a crime against you. The insurrection was a crime against our government. Also against you. 

How in the hell did about half the caucus goers decide the guy who has been determined to be a rapist and a fraud, is twice-impeached, and had a whole bathroom's worth of White House docs, PLUS, horked out of his Florida home is still somehow fit to be president?

TWGB: Epstein and the Other Shit

 

Trump is on the Epstein flight record and he made Acosta a cabinet member and Bill Barr, whose Daddy had a connection with young Epstein, visited the prison where the notorious pedophile pimp was stowed and the man dies shortly thereafter, and this is not actually anything Trump fans are concerned about, as previously well-noted. We know what Trump is and has been--he likes young girls and surrounded himself with pimps and pedophiles for years. And was involved with young, attractive women as often as possible. 

But you know what? Trump fans are rape apologist culture personified. He's supported by the religious right, the refuge of pedo pastors and promoters of the gospel of blaming the victim. That Trump is a godly man or a man of faith is a little lie the Trump cult likes to tell themselves.  It's a part of the bigger picture of the true Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Trump they have is lacking, so the faithful make up the Trump they want. It goes with the fake prophesies about Trump as chosen by GOD (so why did he lose 2020?) 

Trump will tell them, and you, like he wants to tell the courts--it was STOLLEN! Like, he's entering a 32-page round-up of voter fraud lies to an actual court. Shades of German servers and Italian satellites and Venezuelan software and bamboo ballots. Take it from Ken Block, who was hired by Trump to look into voter fraud--it was not a thing. 

But Trump loves that Big Lie. And in light of his adopting the language of "vermin" and "dictatorship", it's a good idea to see where he's going with the Lost Cause, Big Lie of his election--

He thinks he wants to rally in Madison Square Garden and other places he is not supposed to be a winner, in hope of winning not just swing states, but blue states.  So, that's great--because he pretended in 2016 he could have won California except for all the immigrants cheating (a lie he still makes to this day--that somehow, there's a magic path where people come over the Mexico border, get magic double-secret citizenship, and can suddenly vote in elections--he's barking fucking mad). 

This is TDS in a Single Screenshot

 

I tried to find the thread where the above comment came from or to sort out whether it was a not-particularly funny parody of ultra-MAGA thought, but deep down, I have a feeling this is where some of Trump's followers really are: they may know perfectly well he lost 2020, they may know he incited an insurrection, they may completely be aware that he had taken top secret documents for which he had no good purpose (and a lot of bad ones), and he may even be a rapist--and he's still their guy. 

I know this because when asked in man-in-the-street interviews whether there's anything Trump could do to lose their support, you can see the little tumblers flipping behind their eyes and no combination matches rejection. Even though a poll in summer of last year showed that over half of Republicans might balk if Trump was in prison, Fox News Propagandists are going after normalizing convict candidates.

This is the real definition of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" in action: the literal cultists who would watch him shoot a man on 5th Avenue and declare it was good thing he did, and he should have immunity for it, anyway.

How many people are ACTUALLY this cultish, vs. how many are just saying they are? 

It totally beats me--and I guess that's the disturbing part. Just how big is that "basket of deplorables" anyway?

TWGB: Fit to be Gagged

 

This is not the judge’s wife’s account. He is posting lies to incite violence, plain and simple. pic.twitter.com/P2d3UKrrYE

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 1, 2023

Trump's vicious attacks on his detractors have long been including lies--but attacking the wife of the judge in his civil case in NY supposedly without checking if this even plausibly is her account makes it really hard to say he shouldn't be clapped into a cell overnight for his flaunting of his gag order, recently reinstated, and for very good reasons. The man has earned his gagging by what he's been and done. And what his little old fan club wants to see done.

And let's face it, when he lets his mouth just fly, it gets ugly in a hurry. Like when he's demeaning one of his rape victims again. Oh, did it seem like I'm playing like there's multiple rape victims?  I don't know how often I need to read about any man's faults as seen by his victims without thinking "Goddamn, there are victims." 

Anyway, Trump just got caught trying to move money from his business to pay his personal stuff, like his civil debt to E. Jean Carroll and his taxes, by moving money from his business without contacting his court-appointed minder. 

Maybe that's why HER name was in his social media mouth again.  And he should pay for that too.

No Heroes, As Far as I Know

 There's this "stan" culture thing I don't really get. When the actual Eminem video for his song, "Stan" came out, he didn't mean it to be a good thing to be a "stan"--it was scary and dangerous and terrible. Idealizing, forming a parasocial relationship with, and inappropriately engaging with and revolving one's life around some other person is self-destructive. 

Social media made it easy to get to know people and feel like you really know them.  I follow Mark Hamill, Lynda Carter, Henry Winkler, and Jon Bowman on Twitter. I can tell my 6-7 year old self I follow Luke Skywalker, Wonder Woman, the Fonz, and Bowzer from Sha Na Na on the futuristic thing called the internet and she would be really impressed. These are her heroes. The human beings are far more complex and actually, they are or seem to be pretty good folks. Their good opinions and decency IRL make me pretty happy with my early appreciation.

But I don't do heroes now that I'm grown. People in the real world are real, and they can disappoint. You can't invest in people you don't even know with ride or die fervor. That isn't being real--that's being in a whole fucking cult. (See also: Biden fans don't need flags and swag and what not.) 

I did a little thing not too long ago about Jim Caviezel and RFK, Jr. Conspiracy theories are sometimes about filling in the difference between your own worldview and the differing worldview of many others as you confront them. It's hard to incorporate different points of view. Making up neo-narratives is one way of handling the difference. 

But you have to understand it is "made-up". A lot of conspiracy theories are just a "cope"--a way of dealing with the difference between the world in your head and what's actually happening.