This Space Could Have Been an Email

 

Video of Trump hunched over and slurring his words while doing his Twitter Space. pic.twitter.com/V0hDakkJFA

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) August 13, 2024

The return of Trump to Twitter started with technical difficulties (and probably not a DDOS attack) and revealed a rambling, slurring candidate who could not be nudged to stay on topic. Is it possible the delay was due to a Trump malfunction, not a mechanical one? Because he sounded like either his teeth were left soaking in a jar--or he was. 

Anyhow, for me the funniest bit was Trump comparing Kamala Harris to Melania. On the Trump scale of weirdness, it's mostly only weird because he usually compares women to Ivanka. But of course, Harris isn't blonde. But it's not really that offensive for him to compare her to another attractive woman he isn't sleeping with either, is it? I mean, relatively speaking.

Also, he said that if he didn't win the election, he'd probably flee to Venezuela. I don't know how many people out on bail are that frank in public interviews.

Otherwise, the somewhat over 1.1 million listeners were treated to the kind of insights one might get from the average Trump rally, such as sea level rise meaning more waterfront property, and the need for an Iron Dome for the US, because you never know when Canada is gonna start lobbing short-range missiles at you, I guess. 

So, was it worth torching some Truth Social stock value over? Probably. People are talking about Trump, and he was always going to get paid, anyway. 

Did it help his campaign any? 

Honey, if this was pressing the Life Alert button, his ass is staying down. He seemed unstable and infirm and as has been noted more often of late, weird as heck. 

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? 

Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

TWGB: Been Caught Sleeping?

 

Maybe other things happened at Trump's first day of his first criminal trial, but the apparently most notable thing was that he appeared to nod off a few times. This prompted the ever-loving internet to change his nickname from Don Poorleone to Don Snoreleone (The Nodfather!), some wags to ponder if Trump wasn't loaded up with Xanax to keep from going ape, and Trump to give the stankeye to Maggie Haberman, who was the one who caught him whispering to his chest hairs. It's a pretty bad look for Trump, who once murdered Jeb Bush with the term "low-energy" and whose worst nickname for President Biden was, of all things, "Sleepy Joe".

The idea of a "sedated Trump" really doesn't seem too out of the realm of possibility to me--he's already skating on thin ice with multiple violations of his gag order and was apprised today that a courtroom outburst could result in a contempt arrest. His contempt hearing for the gag order violation is next week (between the $175 million bond hearing and the SCOTUS immunity argument). Trump's usual combativeness will NOT be an asset, here. (Buying popcorn for the Sandoval bit, tho'. As I understand it, that's where the court determines the kinds of Trump's shitty behavior that he can and can't be hit with in cross during the trial. I'm probably super-over-simplifying because IANAL.) 

I'm sure the Trump faithful will insist that, like Daniel in the lion's den. he was relying on the power of prayer. Or something. They are pretty good at making myths to deal with the paradoxes of TrumpWorld. 

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!

TWGB: A Volatile Day

 

The Truth Social stock continued to tumble after its 8-K was released (you can read it here, or a bunch of documents--I like to provide context). I've pointed out before that the business wasn't likely to appreciate in any sense from here--think about it? What is a cash infusion going to do? Build out memory for subscribers who won't exist? But $4 million revenue vs. $58 million losses does not net a $8 billion dollar valuation. But the docs are funny--they basically say we aren't tracking certain industry standard key performance indicators because that's not where our sense of value comes from, and also if we do have thoughts about that we're not telling. 

But maybe most of the value resides in the team! 

Guys, I don't know. If you said "8-K" to me a little while ago, I'd have said I never heard of one those races. But it seems to me if someone has deposited one's nest egg in that stock, one was...unwise. If one was a Trump fan who still owed like, $50K on a tricked-out long-cab short bed male insecurity-hauler 1500, I guess one could practice saying things like "The plan always was retirement at 80" or "Those kids never would have liked college anyway."

That's just capitalism. 

Trump's Revealing Post

 

This morning, Trump made a post to his Truth Social that was almost certainly ill-advised. Probably because he consulted only the legal brain trust of Ego, Superego, and Id, LTD. After his lawyers took pains to try to get a stay of the judgment day for his fraud civil trial settlement by claiming the impossibility of putting up a bond, Trump is now telling everyone he has it in the form of cash. Which is just fine--I am sure no one would like to hear that more than Letitia James. It does make me ask some questions though:

1) Why did thirty companies refuse to give him a bond, including Chubb, the source of his defamation civil trial bond? 

2) If you just have the cash, why have one's lawyers pretend you don't just for a stay?

3) And per the post on Truth Social, since when does he spend his own money on his political campaigns? And how would Engoron know he was planning on this stunning change of heart regarding using his own money for anything, when even his legal fees are being picked up by OPM? 

There's a good chance, if I understand how Trump uses social media by now, that this was a reaction to comments like those from Anthony Scaramucci regarding his Big Bad Brokeness. But here's the thing, it's like this post happens in a separate universe from the one where the Truth Social merger with DWAC is supposed to make him $3 billion richer. It happened, and the IPO goes public in a very weirdly timed way--like if this was a soap opera, we'd be complaining about the writers just pulling this convergence of events together as being contrived.

And yet--it doesn't fix his little red MAGA wagon and send him on his way, does it?

TWGB: Broke and Losing It

 

Donald, man. Check the tape. pic.twitter.com/PwXb9iqP4j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 29, 2024

I would call that mean, and unfair, and I would call it ageist and far, far out of context, except, I have written about how Trump never would have come up with the idea of him being a "stable genius" and defended that tooth and nail if he wasn't already well aware his stability and intellect were being regularly challenged. I also don't think much of the sarcastic "jokes" of a person who doesn't seem clear about what sarcasm is. Or what jokes are. Trump has long been a bully, and what I like about Biden is, he doesn't care for bullies and comes at them--no malarkey. 

Anyway, Biden got a physical recently and did not get a cognitive test because he didn't need one. Trump has to constantly talk about his. Trump takes the slight regarding his mental state very seriously. It's all about the Democrats! They are making him look crazy! 

OK, but what Democrats are doing this man's make-up and hair and dressing him? Just asking. 

I think the real thing on what's left of Trump's mind now, though, is being broke. He recently tried to play "Let's make a Deal" regarding his NY civil fraud trial damages, offering $100 million. Or maybe a little delay while he searches the sofa cushions in every one of his properties. (He was not aware, to use a very good turn of phrase, that the cruelty of the fines he faced, were, in fact, the point.)  He wanted to apply for an appeal of the E.Jean Carroll damages by fronting nothing at all. The plaintiff side argued that Mr. Broke might not be good for a bond for one thing and his financial situation wasn't getting better for another.

NBC Cleaning the Augean Stables with a Squirt Gun

 

It's all very well to feature a four-time indicted adjudicated rapist and racist serial liar on your television program to lie to your audience for an hour or so, and if that four-time indicted adjudicated rapist and racist serial liar is a former president and the front runner for his party's 2024 presidential nomination, it might even be newsworthy, but I think if that's the person you're hosting, be upfront:

"We are hosting a serial liar so you can see the things he is lying about." 

That he is all of those things is more important than his self-serving babble, is it not?

Because a little after-the-fact fact-checking isn't even where you need to begin. Our man Trump is a veritable Augean Stable Genius, the result of decades-worth of unshoveled livestock excrement. He is a man I'm almost certain who watches himself with the sound turned off because the bare fact of his fame is enough for him. What he says hardly matters. He doesn't want to be loved so much as he wants to be inescapable.  Omnipresent. He is without shame.

So, he can spit out a firehose of lies and possibly even incriminate himself? He can be partially rebutted and yet, even fact-checking him turns up little kernels of truth that his fan club can seize on: See? He's not all wrong. And people can argue whether he was mistaken or "fumbled" or just exaggerates. 

The above screencap is from a post on Truth Social from Trump to Jewish Americans wishing them a Shana Tova in his unique way. by basically calling liberal Jewish people traitors. He hopes they have "learned a lesson" which doesn't at all sound like a threat, right? Or does it sound like a threat when it isn't the first time? When prominent figures increasingly have been scapegoating minorities (including migrants, Blacks and LGBTQ folks?)

Can a practically mundane, respectful interview speak to that? Can it do so more than a decade after the national media as a whole seems to have given him a pass for birtherism, which truly always was racism?  

I don't think these particular stables get cleaned out until "justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream." 

TWGB: Surrender, But Don't Give Yourself Away

 

I really felt underwhelmed by the speculation about what Trump's mugshot would look like and the "tale of the tape" regarding his height and weight. I mean, is it not enough that he's now standing at four indictments and 91 charges? No other president measures up to that, I can tell you!

But what anyone could also tell you is that he would use the mugshot to fundraise off of his situation. And of course he is, ironically using the slogan "Never surrender" when he Just. Surrendered. Himself. To. The Jailhouse. For. Processing.  His "Kubrick stare" into the Fulton County camera is supposed to show defiance. 

Eh. To me it looks like he's using "MySpace angles" to plausibly make his face look like he could theoretically stand 6'3" and 215 lbs. This is not me making a ding against his vanity (his bulletproof vanity!) but the credulity that we'd get an honest reckoning. This wasn't his physician's weigh in (Ronny Jackson only dared to tell us he was 239 lbs.) or the hype before a heavyweight bout. This is Trump's charitable best guess that he must have at least lost that much weight in sweat since his Manhattan indictment. 

TWGB: The Bride at Every Wedding

 

The highlighting of the above screenshot is courtesy this Tweet from Ben Collins, wondering what exactly Trump is doing here. But I'm the idiot who does TrumpWorld Grab-bags, so I know. He's too clever for us, is Trump. He can't scarper. He won't go scuttling away in the dead of night--why no! he's too famous for that! He won't go abseiling down the wall of the tower he will, Rapunzel-like, be held in. Not even if you gave him enough cable.

He's thinking about it though. Does he think Daddy Vladdy has an extraction team ready to escort him to a well-appointed dacha? Because it isn't 55 years ago, and Russia can't even invade neighbors or land spacecraft on the moon like they used to. They tie up loose ends a very different way now. (He's 90. I mean nothing by this. Of course, I don't. Also...) 

What Trump is saying is "poor, poor, pitiful me" because he is far too rich and famous to disappear and that's just an incredible burden. He's too recognizable--what is he to do, shave his head? Wear sweats? Quel dommage, mais no. Even so, he's known from Jibib to Atlantis.  

Maybe Kushner has an in with the Saudis. I understand they can make people disappear. 

Am I being unnecessarily dark? Sigh. I am cutting up the revelations of the soul-baring of a narcissist who wants you to identify with his plight. Usually, it's only in banana republics a former leader needs to fear coming to justice for a planned coup. Usually, it's only in banana republics a leader plans one. He is, as Francis Albert (who didn't care for him, BTW) sang, doing it his way. And oh! the melodrama! 

TWGB: F'ing Around During Finding Out Season

 

So, it looks like the brilliant press conference displaying the report that was supposed to present "irrefutable proof" of his Georgia win and all-around innocence has been cancelled because his lawyers told him it was a very, very bad idea. This disappoints me so much because I was hoping to bend the report over and give it a right Bishop Berkely refutation (by means of employing one's foot to the meat of the argument). It is apparently not to be. Who knew that reiterating one's fraudulent claims could pose such a hassle?

It is possible something has changed in the atmosphere of TrumpWorld. Even Trump's Truth Social posts are creating a problem for him: is he witness-tampering? Is he giving the message to others to do witness tampering--or even jury-tampering? Because jury-tampering appears to be part of what is going down. Threats against jurors and court officials are now being investigated in the wake of the most-recent indictment. 

And these sad, violent souls think they are "helping".  They also like to apply Trump's new term "rigger" in the way he meant it--a word with two hard "r's". What he always meant by the vote-rigging in 2020  2016 and since isn't lost on me, or anyone with a good sense of who he is. And his race-based theories as well as his voter-fraud theories were and are...baseless.